Hazard Faces a Sunday in the Decline

We need the ceremony of one another, meals served , more love, more handling of one another with love, less casting out of those who are not of our own household. ‘This turkey is either not cooked enough or it’s tough.’ The culture is in late imperial decline. The children don’t like dark meat or pepper. They say the mother sometimes deliberately puts pepper on the things the grown-ups like better. Less casting out of those in our own household with whom we disagree. The cat will not hear of cat food, he waves it away. He has seen the big thrush taken from the cold box, dressed and put in the hot. ‘If I set the alarm clock, will you turn on the oven when it goes off?’ then she went off to see the profane dancers of the afternoon. It was done. The fact that I don’t like his pictures should not obscure the facts that he is a good man that many admire his work (his canvases threaten my existence and I hope mine his, the intolerant bastard) that we are brothers in humanity & the art. Often it does, though. The cat has followed Hazard from his studio, he looks mean. He upbraids the innocent dog and all of us, he casts us out. ‘There’s pepper in this gravy. We’re supposed to eat dry turkey and you’ve put pepper in the gravy.’ The meal is served , nevertheless with felt love, some godless benediction. The grown ones have wine after the other bottle. They cast out a lot. ‘The dancers this afternoon were, well, thinky ,’ she says. She toys with her glass. ‘He is strictly a one-joke painter,’ he replies, ‘painted that one twenty years ago and is still putting pepper on it, ha hah. Finish your turkey you two and leave a little gravy for someone else.’ The cat is taking notes against his own household. He watches. Hazard would like once to see things with the cat’s eyes, flat. Now it is time to go to bed. Hungry and alone most go to bed in this decline and in all others, yet Someone has fed us again and blessed us with the manners of bohemia. Among barbarians, a lot is expected of us, ceremony-wise. We rise to that expectation.