The Ambiguities: September 2014

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Game Day

September 30, 2014
Game Day

Another of those days when I imagine calling in sick: monthly team meeting. Gathered around the wood-grain table in the conference room, smelling of coffee dust and various shades of cologne, oh, how we shall marshal our arguments, darkly whistling at windy length about the little we’ve managed to accomplish in September. These will be followed by longer range planning, the almost-speeches like so many dresses hanging in young, fall closets before next year’s May prom - in case we’re invited. Then, paint notes on the easel: these are the great things we are going to do in the meantime, at least as the time becomes ripe. Right now, of course, this week, we are so busy we can’t imagine when that will be. But, let it be soon. The road has many twists and turns, furrows and mounds, but . . . . Then:

Big-head Henry will bring up someone like "Camus," because it is absurd to think (whatever the prophet Isaiah might say) that the rutted road will be repaired. The mountains will not be depressed, the valleys will not be elevated, the uneven places will not be made level, the rough places will not become smooth by divine action or at all. But we will persevere, because we must: we can never escape (esquiver - he'll use the French) the absurd but real present into an ideal but uncertain future. I suspect your team meetings have a similar tone to them.

“Henry has a point,” furrow-browed Bob will say. I will not ask how in the world he describes there can be such a thing.

Sunday, September 28, 2014

Neorandomia

August 59, 2014

Neorandomia

Another random entry* from “a work in progress,” Gaspar Stephens’ Neo Encyclopedia of Greek and Roman Mythology (forthcoming from Balthazar Stephens Press).

Though, typically, Odysseus claimed credit, it was Epeios [Gk. 'Epeio/v], son of Panopeus [Panopeu&v] that designed and built the Trojan horse. In The Wooden Horse [Le cheval en bois], the play by Jean Andouille, he also drove it into Troy and threw open the belly, so the Greeks with him could get out. A brilliant artisan but also a notable coward, Epeios remained behind to protect the horse. He was discovered in the wooden equine’s entrails by three Trojan women, Zoe [Zwh&], Chloe [Xlo&h], and Woe [Uo&h], whom he gave shelter. The grateful women agreed to go home with him, but when they heard about the murderous jealousy of Epeios’ wife, they set fire to his ships before they set out. Now grateful himself, Epeios had it given out that all four of had died in the blaze. Thence, they made their way somehow to Pisa, where he set up as a sculptor and builder and, according to Andouille’s play, designed the leaning tower.

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* Our motto: “Everything is random, and there is nothing that not random is.”

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Two Parables

September 25, 2014
I am all too serious but not serious enough.

Here is my version of a pair of parables, though I am cheating, my educated friends tell me, every rule of modern exegesis since the Germans invented it in the late 19th century. For example, one cannot pair a parable from Luke with one from Matthew – they aren’t a pair; it doesn’t matter that both occur in 18th chapters, dumb-ass. Nor can one draw no conclusions whatsoever; and that there may be no conclusions to be drawn is not a satisfactory finding.

That there must be proof in the pudding: Here is where, I ignorantly propose, we actually go wrong with how we read Jesus’ parables. We come to an end of our reading and, instead of living, even sleeping, with the story he’s told, we begin to explain it – we exegete, we preach, we theologize, we make a conclusion; from the delightfully, purposefully thin air of the parables, we create structures of steel, we draw lessons of iron. Where the parables end with only the almost inaudible pip-hiss of Jesus' closing his lips on his laughter, we make as much moral noise as the man proclaiming his prayer in the first of those parables here (Matthew 18).

So, when I try to wrangle these two parables into shape, I find my hands around the neck of no-shape at all. There are just two parables, one and then the other; then Jesus is turning away, chuckling to himself. Also at us. There’s the lesson, if there must be one.