Dinner with Vladimir Putin

In the post-success phase of life you're allowed to wear a t-shirt to a dinner party. The hostess will think it an interesting choice, as long as it's worn beneath a black cashmere V-neck sweater.

You're a little late. You'll be expected to make up for it with wit, not by seeing how many times you can say "Pussy Riot" at the dinner table but by advancing your newly-developed theory that forgetfulness, not memory, now has the greatest political potential.

The napkins are linen but you draw on one anyway: weakness=power. It's like you've dropped a precious wineglass made of crystal, but no one says a thing.

Finally the host, his eyes on the napkin you've soiled with your purple Magic Marker, asks you to elaborate.

"By weakness I mean withholding revenge," you say, holding up the linen napkin so that everyone can see the diagram you've made. The napkin's white which adds an unintended but completely appropriate semiotic flourish to your argument, not unlike the banging of a man's heavy leather shoe on the table.

You hear yourself saying that power is shifting away from bellicosity to more a carefully nuanced position, in which the nation that has been most victimized by atrocity, and therefore has the most to avenge, will accumulate power in a degree directly in proportion to the level of its forgiveness.

Dessert is chocolate ice cream. When the table talk falters, you mention how much you admired Kirsten Dunst's performance in "Melancholia."