Captain Marvell and the Danes

 Another letter: Captain Marvell and the Danes 

Dear Ted,    
     When are you going to write to me? You could at least tell me what is going on that you can’t put your fingers on a keyboard, that you can’t pick up a pen and apply it to a page. I could guess, but I don’t want to. I don’t want to guess wrong, or to be right.
     In the meantime, I will write you. I’ll start with the walk I took this morning, which took me through many of the places you know about. I’ll begin silly! — I walked from the bedroom to the kitchen, where I sat down at the table to drink a mug of coffee and eat a cinnamon roll. And I walked from the kitchen back to the bedroom to get dressed, jeans and a t-shirt and socks and tennis shoes.
     It’s a spring-like day, a bit cloudy, a bit cool; it feels as if it may rain later. Typical Tuesday weather. The rain, if it comes, will be light, and I will be inside somewhere if I don’t want to be rained on.
     I walked to campus mail as if I had already written this letter and had (finally) heard back from you, so there was a letter to be retrieved and read. But I hadn’t written this letter, had I? And you are not writing (at all). So, I sat disappointed (insofar as I am allowed to be disappointed) in the first floor lounge of the Union and tried to console myself with the little Muses Library collection of Andrew Marvell I found in the hip-pocket of my jeans. I sat lonely: it was as if I were the only one in the entire building. And I read “Clorinda and Damon,” where she attempts to seduce him with the thinliest-veiled metaphor — her “little bell” tinkling “within its concave shell.” My goodness! Yet he manages to resist because he has . . . politics to pursue: the world calls him away from the pleasures of her pudendum — goodness, gracious sakes alive! (Here, I have a question: How can Pan represent the world? I don't understand that. Please, explain.)
     Then, a boy came in that I know a little, a “friend” of Alma’s, Kris with a K — for Kristian, I think — who, I have heard, knew Kierkegaard, at least by sight, and who died (Kristian, I mean) in a trolley accident in København. But he only asked me if I had seen a friend of his, Søren (not Kierkegaard). They were supposed to meet, he thought, here? I didn’t know Søren, I said, but no one had been around since I had come in. At least, I hadn’t seen, or heard, anyone. He said,
     “What are you reading?”
     “Marvell,” I said, holding up the little white and lilac book.
     He stuck out his tongue. “Ah!” he said, ending in a guttural: “Aach.” Then, “Bye.” And he left.
     Soon after, unable to discern what Damon was up to exactly, I left, too. I put Marvell back into my right hip pocket, and I walked back by my house and through the park to Alma’s for coffee and paper and a pen to write the letter I had gone to campus mail to find your response to. This one.
     “I ran into Kris from Denmark,” I told Alma.
     “Was he looking for Søren?” She laughed. Apparently, they are acting, along with another Dane, Hamlet (I kid you not!) in an improvised, Nordic(!) version of Waiting for Godot. Alma “knows” all of them, she says. “Nice boys.”
     I say, “You’re doing better than Clorinda.” She says, “What?” but as a perfunctory, if I may put it that way. She doesn’t wait for an answer but leaves me with my coffee and writing materials.
     And I use them to write this letter to you about my walk thus far and my walk to come: I will go from here with this letter to you in its envelope in the Muses’ Marvell in my back pocket back to the park. I'll stop here, sitting on “my” bench, and I’ll read “Bermudas” with its “eternal Spring,” which “enamells every thing,” and where we are “Safe from the Storms, and Prelat’s rage.” What does that mean, the “Prelat’s rage”? — my notes don’t tell me, but you, the theologian/literary scholar/religious historian, will help me out, won’t you? (Yes, please write.)
      Mac will come shambling by to cry on my shoulder. But he won’t know. After that, the crying on my shoulder for a little long-while, I’ll walk back to campus mail to post this in the OUTGOING MAIL slot.
     And that will be that!  Love,
                                                                Moira

Or, that will be that, except for this p.s.: If Godot ([God]) is God, who never comes (unless he is Pozzo, which I don’t think is the case), then isn’t Kris, Søren, and Hamlet’s play more absurd than Beckett’s, acted out here where God is both everywhere and all in all? Where God is not to be avoided!? Another puzzle for you to consider. Another reason for you to write me.

                                                                      06.28.23

From Moira about Carson

from my dead sister Moira

 From Moira about Carson 

Dear Ted,
     I have just escaped from a lengthy conversation with your old girlfriend, Trudy Monae. I mentioned to her at some point, days and ages ago, that you were reading Carson McCullers. She’s a big fan apparently, and she rushed off immediately to re-read The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Reflections in a Golden Eye, The Member of the Wedding, and Ballad of the Sad Café, and she was full of each part and overflowing with the sum of the parts, and . . . “conversation” is the wrong word. She had prepared a lecture.
     Fortunately, she is a good lecturer. Still, I only pretended to take notes. But you can imagine her at the rostrum and me in my school desk with enthusiastically inviting smile, enthusiastically nodding head, enthusiastically wrinkled brow, and the rest. I am the model student I never was (nor, frankly, wished to be).
     The sum of the lecture, as I understood it: McCullers is the master, or she is the mistress — in both senses, of head and of illicit lover — of the ridiculous. Her children are ridiculously gifted, as children tend to be, and her adults are ridiculously one-sided, even monomaniacal, as gifted children tend to become. So, they behave ridiculously. We all do, when it comes down to it, so much so that even ridiculously gifted children can’t figure us out. Again, that is as I understand it; I didn’t take notes.
     There was the lecture. And then there was an opportunity for questions; and one girl asked a ridiculously long hypothetical: you know, if so and so and this and that and if this and that and the other and if all the tea did come from China, then wouldn't it follow that . . . ? And Trudy said, “No, not at all,” and there were no more questions. The bell rang. Several sighs. And it was time for lunch.

Do I remember correctly that “ridiculous” comes from the Latin for laugh or laughter? Hmmm. Ridicule suggests derision to me, almost scornful (not even almost, just scornful-period) mockery. But when we call something ridiculous, we aren’t scorning it; we are only thinking it is funny, curious, absurd, preposterous — some combination of those. Am I right? And am I right about this(?): There is, not only in McCullers’ fiction but in the “real world,” an odd nobility in being ridiculous. We respect people for being ridiculous, especially openly ridiculous, because we are all secretly ridiculous. I except politicians, pundits, and preachers. Prigs. (I am tempted to except stand-up comedians as well though I am not sure I can say why. I am probably something you said to me at some point.)
     Anyway, that was my “morning.” Then I met some people you knew and some people you don’t know in the park for a picnic lunch. We had bologna sandwiches with plenty of mayonnaise because eating “badly” isn’t going to kill us. Lots of sweet white wine, the cheaper the better. And white cake with white icing for dessert. Then, we all lay down on the grass to take a nap, and when we woke up, everyone was gone.

But we are getting back together tonight to go see Reflections in a Golden Eye, the movie, since you so highly recommended it. [Not true!] I think we’re going to see the original “golden” version, and we’re going to a theater where we can turn the music off if we want to. We can even watch it simultaneously with music and without — also golden and in technicolor — if we want. Don’t ask me how that works, I can’t explain it (though something to do with the expansion and contraction of time).
     So, that is it! Write me soon. Love,
                                                                Moira
                                                                      06.22.23

PLEASE STAND BY

 

 

Hope to see you again soon. When the psychosomatic blindness passes.
    It’s not that I can’t see at all, but I am seeing in pale pastels fading to grays and whites, and I’m seeing in one dimension: Everything is as important, or unimportant, as everyotherthing. Even more so than usual.

Sorry, sorry, sorry 2.

 Sorry, sorry, sorry 2. 
This “chapter” begins here.

Bel is like a Brewer’s sparrow, small and nervous, colorless and easy to overlook. But Brewer’ses are, nonetheless. They exist – to one another, to other sparrows; they have a place they take up, if modestly, in the world, a place that belongs to no other. Another email. _________________________________________________________________________________________

Isabel Monk                                                                                                  WED, MAY 31 6:30AM ó : 6
to Ted (crabbiolio@gmail.com)

I won’t take up much of your time, but I sense you are as interested in this as I am.
      I called to ask Axel about humility “as a virtue.” He admitted that it wasn’t a matter he’d given much thought to. He’d brooded over it but without thinking about it. Could he get back to me?
     If he would, I said, but I wasn’t sure (that he would), so I went by the church the next day; and I did manage to get by Lucy.* (Does she look like Justin Hawkins to you, too? Do you know who that is?)
     He had several piles of books on his desk. Is that what that huge desk is for, piles of books? And he had some open, big like concordances and dictionaries and encyclopedias. And looking into them, like a sorcerer into books of charms, he said something like this. (Imagine his voice, the way he hesitates so he won’t sound too glib – it’s a kind of humility in itself. Disobedient to the Sermon on the Mount, he is always hiding his light under a bushel. (And I’ve always liked him for that.) (But sorry, I’m rattling on!)) 

 He said: This is not me; it’s (and he spread his hands) my sources.
      In the Old Testament, humility has to do with social status. There are the humble, the lowly that the LORD will raise up, while the rich and the powerful (and arrogant) will be sent away empty. This isn’t everywhere, but it’s there. And the logical conclusion is that the king that is coming will not be like Solomon in all his glory; he will be like the servant in Isaiah’s songs; he will enter Jerusalem, riding not on a great white horse but a donkey, as Zechariah has it.
     He looked up out of his books. Okay so far? he said. And then he looked down again. No, he said. No. That sounds patronizing, doesn’t it? Of course, you get it. Nils [link/ put links in footnote?] used to preach that way, perfectly good sermons, but he was always stopping to ask, You see what I’m getting at, right? And he’d say whatever it was again. He got that from our father. He was the same way, always thinking what he was thinking was too smart to be understood.
     (I didn’t need to put that in, sorry! I am always getting off-track, especially when it comes to Axel.) (When I write, I mean: I get off-track. When I paint, I am always concise.) 

In the New Testament, Axel said, looking back up at me and back down again, gesturing again at the books to show it wasn’t him but his sources. Or, he said, that’s the way the New Testament reads it. The Messiah will not come in power but in weakness, not in arrogance but in humility. He will not conquer but be crucified. Having emptied himself, he will be humble, meaning immediately “obedient unto death,” but also meaning gentle. And his followers should be the same. Of course …. He looked up again: I’m going off-script, he said.
     Of course, we shall have to get them organized – the followers of Jesus. And that means some must have authority over others – and signs of authority. And you can’t run a church without funds, so while some may choose poverty – they may be humble in that Old Testament sense – the rich …. We have to figure out a way for them to be humble, too. So, it can be an attitude, humility; it doesn’t have to be a way of life.
      Eventually …. (This is still Axel, or my rendering of Axel.) Eventually, the original meaning, poor, will for all intents and purposes disappear. Traces of it will hold on in the liturgy; and it holds on in the phrase, “humble beginnings.” But humble beginnings always come to a glorious, rich, powerful, famous ending, don’t they? You may have had a good start and followed Jesus, or become like him, who had no roof over his head. But why would you do that when instead you could become Croesus or Caesar or Rockefeller or Carnegie and build a church almost as big as your house?
     Sorry! Axel said. He pretended to look in his books again, but he was just taking a breath. I’m preaching, aren’t I? Well, sorry, I’m not done. Whatever our start, we are all humbled at the last by death, though it is also true that some of us are buried in Potter’s Field and some of us lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda.
     Read again the parable of Dives and Lazarus. We’re back where we started, Axel said. 

And Isabel says, That’s enough. Sorry, sorry, sorry, for chewing on again. Thanks for reading this if you did.

                                                                         05.26.23

_______________
  * About Bel and about Lucy and about Nils. Brewer’s sparrow.

La Rochefoucauld and Uriah Heep

 Sorry, sorry, sorry. 

 “Il arrive quelque fois des accident dans la vie, d’où il faut être un peu fou pour se bien tirer,” Uncle Albert said.
     “La Rochefoucauld,” I said.
     “Yes, I know.”

“Did you read the blog?” I said, gobsmacked as the British say, because he never does.
      “Roz showed it to me.”
     “Did Roz read the blog?” I said, gobsmacked again, because she doesn’t either.  
     “Apparently.” 

La Rochefoucauld at Cannes 1971

I asked because I knew it was La Rochefoucauld only because of a conversation we’d had, Uncle Albert and I, some weeks ago. About humility. He had quoted La Rochefoucauld.
     I had said, “Something, something about having at times to be a fool – there are situations.”
     “Yes.”
      “And?”
     He took on his Zen master look. 

Later, the next day I think, I said, “Are you suggesting that a willingness to be publicly foolish could be a sign of humility?”
     “What do you think,” he said.
      “It could be,” I said, “if it’s not a case, like with comics, of being foolish to say ‘Look at me, look at me. I’m foolish. Damned good at, it too, aren’t I?’” I said: “It can’t be a strategy.”
     “Or part of the plot?” he said.
     “Humility as a strategy isn’t humility,” I said. “It’s something quite else.” I found myself practically shouting: “It’s hypocrisy.”
      “Uriah Heep,” Uncle Albert said.
                                                                            05.26.23

Sorry, sorry, sorry.

 Sorry, sorry, sorry. 

Isabel Monk                                                                                                  WED, MAY 24 6:30AM ó : 6
to Ted (crabbiolio@gmail.com)

I am so sorry if I chewed your ear off yesterday. I have been worrying about that since we talked. Or I talked at you. I shouldn't get so upset about things I can do nothing about. I accuse other people of being prideful, but then I am. - Bel
____________________________________________________________________________________

Ted Riich                                                                                                     WED, MAY 24 3:30PM ó : 6
to Isabel (imonk@yabyum.org)

How long did you "chew"? – five minutes? And my ears agreed with your mouth.
     I have two friends who have – in one case intentionally and in the other I believe un-, rather by sheer good luck – memorized hundreds and thousands of lines of poetry. If called up, I could recite, besides nursery rhymes, psalms, and limericks, maybe 39 lines total. But among them would be these, an accidental credo:

I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

The first two or three lines are a bit irritating, I must admit. But from there on: "They'd advertise," because they always do. But "How public – like a Frog" may be my favorite five words ever strung together.

Ted
____________________________________________________________________________________

The virtues of humility. The virtue of humility. How to write about either one? — but especially the last. There is the immediate thought, that humility has never been a virtue, at least not one that anyone has truly believed in. No one has championed it without tongue firmly in cheek, at least not for him- or herself. And to claim it is arrogance.
     So I am stymied.
                                                                            05.26.23

Don't call me Al.

 Don’t call me Al. 

“What do you have to do with this Go Around Back blog?” I ran into Bel Monk this morning on the corner of Center and Division, where the Methodist church is. “He’s a friend of yours, this Tom Nashe, not an illusion?” She hesitated. “Or delusion,” she said.
     “No,” I said. “No. He’s as real as you or I.”

“Song Sparrow”
4" x 5"

“No doubt,” she said.
     She said, “I liked this week’s, the President as Gumby, dammit. But I have been thinking about the one of Al Sharpton as a circus ringmaster. I agree, I guess, with what I take to have been the intention, what an egoistic, publicity hound he is: ‘Look at me. Look at me! Look at me!!’ Look at how angry I am, too. There are, I take it, people that enjoy that. They enjoy being angry, especially if it gets attention, and they enjoy infuriating others. There is the attention.”
     She looked around to see if anyone was looking at her now. Center and Division is a busy corner but in a not busy at all town, especially mid Tuesday morning. She looked back at me. “Am I keeping you from anything?
     “I’m sorry if I am.” I said she wasn’t. I wanted to ask her how the Buddhism was coming and to remind me of the name of it, but I didn’t. “I am not one of those either that doesn’t care what other people think. You know, ‘It’s what I am. What you see is what you get with me!’ That kind of statement seems to me both the height of egoism and a lie.” She looked at me for agreement; I nodded.
     “You see what I mean, don’t you?” I nodded again because I knew she was going to explain. “Because this I is also all the things you don’t see. This includes all the things you don’t see, especially the things you don’t see, because the I is hiding them from you. The I is lying on the face of it: ‘What you see is what you get!’ is a pathological lie, but there are other pathologies beneath. ‘Oh, you don’t want to go there, honey!’ This is the same one talking that has said so certainly, ‘What you see is what you get.’”
      She stopped, looked up and down the street again, up and down Center and up and down Division, then back at me, down at her feet, and back at me. “Granted,” she said, “we are all masses of contradictions. But a little modesty, please.” She paused. “Humility, I know, is too much to ask for.”
     “Certainly among public figures,” I said.
     “Yes, or among the wealthy, even the middle class, among intellectuals, in the clergy, in law enforcement, these so-called ‘influencers.’  Where are the meek to inherit the earth? Where are the poor in spirit; no one will see God.” She started giggling. “Don’t tell Axel I said this, but doesn’t even Jesus get up on his high horse from time to time?
     “I probably shouldn’t say it to you. But in the Gospel of John, for example. Actually he is up there from the beginning, and he never really gets down.”
     I looked at her. She was embarrassed and defiant at the same time. I thought, “Like her little paintings; it was the perfect description: embarrassed and defiant at the same time.” I smiled before I could stop myself: her latests of sparrows smaller than the birds themselves. And she was looking at me:
     “What?”
     “Nothing,” I said.

“I wasn’t saying he was ever anything like Al Sharpton,” she said.
     “No,” I said. “No more than Al Sharpton was anything like Jesus.”

05.24.23