It looks as if . . .

 It looks as if . . . 

 It looks as if there will be no more unless or until the Dead write,
or speak, or sing. But then... ?

  02.17.24 

A farable of Jesop

 The Fox’s Hump

A fox admired the camel’s hump so much he asked Deus if he could have one for himself. Deus agreed, and Homobonus made him one of fat and air and Tabitha sewed it under the skin of the fox’s back. But very soon the fox was back to see if the hump could be removed. It was not only that it prevented him from getting in and out of close places, but he dearly missed drinking from the stream each time he passed.
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The online reproduction of the original Jesop's Farables (1887), translated from the Latin and edited by G. F. Murray - and with my brief afterward - is now available. Here!

 

Jesop's Farables

  Jesop's Farables 

Perhaps the most enigmatic of the farables or, perhaps, a fragment, "The Lion and the Leopard":

The leopard replied to the lion, “What spots?”

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An online reproduction of the 1887 edition Jesop's Farables, translated from the Latin and edited by G. F. Murray - and with my brief afterward - is available here!

  03.17.24 

Axel said.

 Axel said. 

I called Axel at church, where there is still a landline. He was there, on the land, in his office. I walked down and rang the bell. Lucy "Peter Frampton" Burke let me in. "He's waiting for you," she said.
     He was, behind his desk as always, the wall of books behind him. Leaning back in his chair, feet crossed at the ankles on his desk. He pulled them down and swiveled round to face me. "What's up?"
     "Pretty much what I told you on the phone. Uncle Albert and I were talking about Cora Tull, the character in Faulkner's As I Lay Dying - and other Coras - and wondered what you thought."
     "Because As I Lay Dying is one of my favorite novels?"
     "Is it?"
     "No. I did take a Southern Lit course in college, but that was a Lutheran school in Minnesota."
     "But you remember the novel."
     "Sort of."
     "And you remember Cora Tull?"

Brother Jethro Tull

He had barely, but he'd looked her up while I was walking down. "She's one of these women, quite common really, that pride themselves in being good neighbors but especially to neighbors that they can look down on, neighbors that need good neighbors because they're always in trouble or they're sinners that need 'loving' correction.
     "But they're not always women. Many become Southern Baptist preachers, and none of them are women. But I don't want to pick on the Southern Baptists. They're not only preachers. Hardly. They're pundits, they're scientists, they work at NGOs. They're every self-righteous jack- or jillass with a golden corncob up their ass and a social media account.
     "They're me and you, though you may be the least of the thousands of problems.
     "It makes you wonder about the Prophets, doesn't it? Why people didn't listen to them. They, the prophets, know the truth that others ignore - and will continue to ignore - but they have to tell them. On the other hand, the others are thinking, 'These self-righteous jackasses think they know everything, and they just can't shut up about it.'
     "And they haven't shut up about it. Think about this: the ones that remain in the canon of Scripture do so because they turned out to be right." Axel took a breath. He scratched the sparse hair at the back of his head. He let the breath out with something between a raspberry and a sigh. "Have I gotten off the subject?"
     "Maybe not entirely," I said. Just above his hand, which was still attached to the back of his head, were two books on Luther, Bainton's Here I Stand and Erik Erikson's Young Man Luther. I pointed: "Have you read that?" He turned the chair, following my finger. "The Erikson," I said.
     "I have. But not long after I read Cora Tull. You?"
     "I tried," I said, "not too long ago. He spends the introduction and the first couple of chapters explaining how he can tell you things about Luther that you could never figure out, because you're not as smart as he is. No one could, before him."
     "I don't think Cora Tull thinks she's smarter. But Luther might have."
     "Yes," I said. "Calvin, too."

"When you are right and people don't listen to you . . . ?" Axel said.
     "I don't know. Not self-righteous. Or angry. A little irked maybe, but mostly sad. The last thing I feel is puffed-up."
     "But you're not one of those that thinks they know the mind of God."
     "Nor do I want to be," I said, meaning not one that thinks; I didn't ever want to know the mind of God. Or, at least, I haven't since I was fifteen. "That's too much for me," I said.
     "Psalm 139," Axel said.
     "Is it?"
     "Verse 6: "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; I cannot attain it."
    "Exactly."
     "'Irked.' I like that," Axel said. "Not a word I hear every day."

                                                                          02.17.24 

Coindreau

from Uncle Albert's notebook (cahier)

Ted is always pretending . . . No, that's not fair: no one is always anything, neither always feigning nor always genuine, though perhaps almost always caught somewhere in between (playing a role and trying to be themselves). But Ted is often wondering aloud what motivates this person or that - he can't see. Indeed, like the poor poet in Emily Dickinson's "I heard a Fly buzz," he cannot "see to see"; the windows keep failing. So, he has to go looking for insight. He'll go to Axel, or he'll ask Roz; he'll come to me. Often, he'll interview all of us - and, I suspect, others as well. Then, I also suspect, at the end of it all, he'll be thinking we don't see any farther than he does; our blinds are no less opaque than his are.
        Yesterday, he came asking about Cora Tull in Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. "I know there aren't really types," he said, "because everyone is different." But that said, it seemed to him that there were a number of women he had "run into here and there" who, like Cora Tull, did not doubt they knew the will of God, which tended to coincide with their own. They are often, in his experience (See how he qualifies everything!) . . . . They are often "fundamentalists," which he puts in air quotes because they don't all know the Bible that well. They may read it assiduously (from the Latin assido, assidere, assedi, assessus, meaning to sit by in a counsel or as an assessor; to watch over; to camp next to; to besiege. Assess comes from the same verb) . . . . They may read the Bible regularly, but they aren't paying attention. They don't have to: they've known from before they could read what it means to say.

M-E Coindreau by m ball

        So, it is not by the Scriptures that they know what they know - that is, the mind of God. It is not by Scriptures but because they have managed somehow to get to "the front of the line" (Ted's words), which they did, whatever Jesus said about the last being first, whatever Paul said about putting others before ourselves - they got there by pushing and shoving their way to the front because the Lord helps those that help themselves. And now they are there, in God's lap, the Coras know. What did I think? Ted wanted to know.
        Since I didn't know what I thought, not being quite sure what the question was, I told him I once taught the book in Maurice-Edgar Coindreau's excellent translation in an advanced French course: Sur mon lit mort. That wasn't true, but with Ted, it is a good idea to have some sort of arcane reason for what you are about to say or not say. But just because I said that I had taught it didn't mean that I remembered the novel well, I went on. Still, I thought I understood what he meant about Cora Tull and the other Coras. And yet "their motivations were in a bailiwick other than mine." (God forgive me, those were the words that came out of my mouth.) So, what did Axel say? Or if he hadn't said, why didn't he (Ted) ask him?
        "That's a good idea," he said. "I will."
                                                                                02/15/24

 

Transfigured

from Uncle Albert's notebook (cahier)

As readers of Ted's blog have seen, he receives letters from the dead, especially from his sister Moira but also from an old girlfriend, Trudy Monae. And from his mother, I believe, though he's never published one of those. And, Roz tells me when I ask her (just a few minutes ago), from a "heavenly" bureaucrat named Stephen, who advises and chastises; he would guide Ted in his "earthly walk," as if Ted were guidable.
        Moreover, Roz volunteers, he responds. He has notebooks full of these letters. Colorful notebooks because his correspondents write him in different colors of ink, one in blue, one in red, one in green, one in teal that she's seen. He not only receives, moreover; he responds, in black.
        I have encouraged him to talk to Dr. Feight about this. It's not as if any of these died yesterday, but twenty years ago and more. He says that he does talk to Dr. Feight, and Dr. Feight says it's okay, that he (Ted) can distinguish between fantasy and reality.
        I'm not so sure. Dr. Feight is a religious man. Would he say the same about John of Patmos, that he could distinguish between fantasy and reality? Would he be right about that?

Patmos John by Jacques Callot

The epistle lesson this morning, Transfiguration and Super Bowl Sunday, was from II Corinthians 4, in which Paul suggests that the gospel has somehow, or at least in some instances, become "veiled." "The god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers, to keep them from its light." So, who is in charge here? God "Almighty" proposes, the god of this world disposes? And the result is that some are fornifreculated?
        Our rector, the former Miss Virginia, doesn't enter that fray. She does preach a creditable sermon on the gospel, the transfiguration story, pointing out that Peter, John, and James want to remain "on the mountaintop." Too bad they have to come down, she tuts. But the light will dim. Then, God will speak (not out of the light but the darkness). It's his beloved, not the mountaintop, they should listen to. He (the beloved) will say, "We can't stay here!" It's a rebuke, she suggests to the one in four of us that have mountaintop experiences and want to stay on high to lord it over the rest. To which,
        "Amen," I croaked out. I didn't mean it to be out loud.
                                                                                                         02/11/24

Watching the Super Bowl in "heaven."

 Stupid Bowl LVIII 

My sister writes, Moira, the dead sister:

. . . I had oatmeal for breakfast this morning with the raisins cooked in and milk and brown sugar. I actually cooked the oatmeal - it didn't just appear. I stirred and stirred it into the boiling water. Doing something with my hands - cooking oatmeal, making a sandwich, writing a letter - reminds me of what it was like to be physically alive, walking on my own feet, talking and tasting with my own tongue, watching with my own eyes, having a cold in my own nose. Sadly, it's only a reminder. They are only reminders, I am not physically alive. (I've tried to explain this to you before, how it feels and how it doesn't feel, I think.)
     In any case, after breakfast - sweet and filling (if, yes, in a ghostly way) - I walked over to Lisa's; I hadn't seen her in a while. And we walked to the coffee on the corner place where we met Gretchen Moore and her John, and Phil that we went to high school with, and a girl named Jack, who was in college for a year with you and Lisa before she transferred to the University of North Carolina. And we all drank coffee and listened to Phil and this Jack talk about the Super Bowl. Apparently, that's soon. But here's a rub I think (hope, trust) you'll appreciate, no one here gives a damn about it - not even Phil, or Jack. Their conversation was a mock litany from the Church of Football Foolishness they belonged to while alive, though they agreed with none of its tenets even then. Who did truly? they wondered. Wasn't it all media hype and cultural pressure?
     Jack, who wrote sports for a paper in Carolina for a while, avowed when the litany was over that football was the stupidest game ever invented and the older it got, the stupider it became with coaches in the sky talking electronically through their helmets with players on the ground, with players on the ground growing ever larger so that more than a few weighed close to 400 pounds and none in good enough condition to run over 40 yards, but who had to be in better than that since the average play lasted about six seconds and substitutions were unlimited, whereas the time between plays averaged almost a minute when the clock was running? A game one hour long took three hours, at least, to complete. Doesn't that mean that the clock wasn't running for two hours!? In any case, of that one hour (played over three), only about twelve minutes were spent in actual play. Is this true, do you think? - I don't know, but Jack sounded like she knew what she was talking about.
     Then she asked if any one of us was having a Super Bowl party. She was willing to: beer and snacks, a TV the size of the side of a house; we could all get drunk and feel shitty the next day (shitty and triumphant if our team had won, I gather, just shitty if our team had lost). Apparently, there's a local exemption for former Foolish Church believers that covers both parties and hangovers, you just have to get a license. She would do that if enough of us wanted to, or were willing to, join in. What do you think of that? Should I? Phil said he'd take me - and Lisa - if one or both of us wanted to go. And Jack thought she could "scare up" some fools from her Carolina days.
      So, did we want to go? I asked Lisa on the way home. She said she'd rather go to the library and read Finnegan's Wake, but maybe we should. She was trying to remember Jack. "Melissa Drake?" she said. "I think." But she couldn't remember where she was from, or why she wanted to be called "Jack" and wanted to transfer. "Ask your brother," she said.
     Do you know?
                                 Love, Moira
                                                                           02.09.24