"Yeah?"

Mt. Sinai today.

August 31, 2014

Let me tell you.

Summary. I am who I am promises what will be will be, if it turns out that way.

We were back in church this morning, a preacher I’d never heard before — shirtsleeves, tieless, gruff, intellectual. Exodus 3 brings that out in a preacher (however gruff), his intellectual side; he has to say something about God’s name cannot be named – so holy: “YHWH,” the sermon title.

          “The great I AM”: “I am who I am” or “I will be who I will be”; or “I am who I will be” or “I will be who I am.” All very interesting, but we get so excited about the possibilities, we ignore one of the oddest promises / non-promises in all of Scripture. I don’t know how many sermons I’ve heard on this passage (Exodus 3:1-15) but more than a handful; and none has ever commented on verse 12.

          The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is speaking to Moses out of the burning bush. He’s seen the pain and suffering of his people in Egypt and heard their crying out. He’s going to deliver them and bring them into a land flowing with milk and honey. Moses is to go to Pharaoh and make this happen.

          And Moses says, “Yeah?” And God says — here’s verse 12. God says, “But I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought forth the people out of Egypt, you shall worship me upon this mountain.”

Forget the rest of the passage, all the I AM stuff; doesn’t this strike you as odd? Here’s the sign, God says: “If you succeed in this, you’ll end up back here, because (you know) it’s on the way.” This is what will happen, if it happens. One is for fastball, if that’s what you’ve thrown. Moses says, “Yeah?”

Chicken Stock

August 28, 2014

Stock Responses 

Too often we think “know thyself” means “finding something we don't like, attributing it to others, and becoming indignant with them.”  – from Uncle Albert’s sentences

     More from The Antick's Notebook.  Responses for any occasion . . . to anyone, climbing up onto any platform (real or imagined). Most of these should be inflected with positive hesitation, as if they expressed agreement yet were uncertainly true. (Exceptions are noted.) Memorize these and you’ll never be at a loss for words, assuming you’re willing to do with fewer than ten.

        o   As if run through with a bayonet. 

        o   An attack of gas can be . . . . [Shrug and wince.]

        o   I had a cat like that.

        o   That was 47, right?

        o   Remember horehounds. 

        o   Armageddon.

(These two can be phrased either as a nostalgic or hopeful desire/question [as in “Remember when Aunt Mary . . . ?”] or as a call to arms [as in “Remember the Alamo!”])

Try it. Here are statements from yesterday’s news and opinion pages. Remember there is no incorrect or correct response, only one chosen at random.  My dog's choices are below.

 ***  

"Gov. Jindal is defending the liberties of citizens and the constitutional structure intended to protect those liberties."  - Emmett McGroarty, education director of the Washington-based American Principles Project

        That was 47, right?

"You can't defame someone with an opinion in Ohio. You can't control an idea. The way we control ideas is in the marketplace of ideas, not in a court." – Megan Lovett, attorney at the Pittsburgh-based nonprofit, Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services

        Remember horehounds?

“The House will continue to focus on solutions that help get people back to work, lower costs at home, and restore opportunity for all.”  -  John Boehner (R, Ohio)

        I had a cat like that.

"The Census Bureau released a report the other day on Americans’ wealth that seemed full of bad news. Middle-class wealth was down, and inequality — the gap between the top and everyone else — was up. Stereotypes seem confirmed. But wait. Buried in the bad news was some astonishing good news: The elderly defied trends and got wealthier." - Robert Samuelson, Washington Post columnist.

        An attack of gas . . . [Wince and shrug.]

Stewed Prunes

August 27, 2014
Stewed Prunes


The rich always know what the poor should be doing. - another of Uncle Albert's sentences

 

The Arrival of Godot

 August 23, Somewhen 

& Somewhere Down the Road

 

The next day (from the last) but years later. Sitting, back against the dappled brick side of 7-Eleven — camped between the store and a vacant lot, stuffing an air-filled doughnut into my doughnut-hole, washing it down with a paper cup of bad coffee. 

          Squatting on the side-walk, the judder of traffic on the highway, a few hoarse, scraggly birds, and the shout and shush of the air-conditioning unit. Thirty-six cents on the blacktop I didn’t see till I sat down, just out of reach; but I’ll have to reach it when I get up, because, if I am the bum I’m pretending to myself I am, I don’t know where the thirty-six cents after that is coming from.

          Maybe a little too well-dressed, I’m thinking: jeans cleaner than dirty, Hawaiian shirt, jacket (blazer!), because I always wear one now. It’s at least a decade old and worn at the cuffs and elbows. Shoes also old and beaten down, but they look like they were new at some point — bought to fit these feet.

On the other hand (I look down at myself), I’m writing in this notebook with a stub of pencil, dirt under my finger nails; leaning against the side of a 7-Eleven.

          Who but a lunatic bum (glancing again sideways at the thirty-six cents to make sure it’s still there), whatever the state of his jacket and shoes, would be doing that, bending over under a dusty Tigers baseball cap writing in a spiral notebook there on a Sunday morning before seven o’clock. A young woman dressed for mass walks by toward her car, averting her gaze the way people do now, pulling her phone from her purse and gazing into it.

          The make-believe bum takes a last swig of the bad coffee, rocks onto his feet, picks up the thirty-six cents, thanks God he’s not going to mass, and

Only that’s not what happens: While the pretend-bum writes of the future in the present tense as if he were already headed back in to get rid of some of his coffee thirty-six cents richer, a large brown woman with a limp walks by eyes down. She must have seen other coins lying around, because she says to, or at, him, how can people be throwing money around like trash?

          I’m about to say I had my eye on that thirty-six cents, but she has her hand on it. Then it’s in her pocket. Then she’s limping away across the vacant lot. Write about that.

"Hell is other people."

$9.95 - American owned, free TV, hot water

August 22, 1980

Reading Ionesco

Our sanity depends on others’ observing moderation in all things. — one of Uncle Albert’s Sentences^†

The problem with cheap hotels isn’t that they smell funny and then you smell funny the next day; it’s your seven tequila shots past schist-faced neighbors. There’s only so much white noise you can get out of the TV set on no-channel snow at max volume: it can’t drown out the bullshizoku’s and the that’s what I’m sayin’: fornifreculate her and the horse she rode in on’s, the maniacal cackling or the gargle of vomit and splash as insides are poured into the toilet bowl.

          It’s your drunken neighbors; that’s the problem. 

It's not just cheap motels, because you could stay somewhere else.  You could get up, get back on the road, drive all night, and get home smelling no funnier than you already are.  But . . . you’d still have neighbors.

          The real problem is that everyone else is a pig. Or: 
          what you want or need is more important than what anyone else wants or thinks he needs.  You want moderation; they've no real right to drink until they’re schist-faced.  You want quiet; how can they make so aarrgghh! much noise.

          Right. Exactly. Point, set, and match. Now push the puke back down your throats, you booze-basted, deadnecked furps, and shut your pie-holes so I can get some sleep.

                        

^† I interpret this to include The Other.

Good King Manasseh

August 19, 2014

Good King Manasseh 

The tale of Hezekiah turns to the tale of Manasseh, and the tale begins to wag the God, for, according to the Baalist narrator, though Manasseh did what was evil in the sight of Yahweh, the God of his father Hezekiah and his prophet Isaiah, he did what was good in the sight of the gods of the land, causing the high places his father had torn down to be restored, building altars for Baal and for the Host of Heaven even in the temple. He observed the seasons and their wonders — summer and winter, seed-time and. All this was wicked in the sight of Yahweh, according to his prophets said, but Manasseh did not listen to them, because the gods of the land were good to him and to his people: they had grain and wine, olives and figs, milk and honey, fresh flowing water. Their stomachs were full, their heads were easy and their hearts were light all the 55 years of Manasseh’s rule.

A footnote to Manasseh’s story, concerning his son Amon,

           Who was twenty-two years old when he began to rule and who served the gods his father served, and they were good to him as well. When he died after only two years of rule, one of the prophets of Yahweh claimed it was because he had forsaken Him, but it was actually because some of his servants conspired against and assassinated him; and the people of the land killed them, because of what they had done to their king Amon.