The Sun Also Falls

March 5, 2015

Snowbound but free

Aahhh. At home. Snowed under. Snowed in.

          Which can’t seem to prevent my checking my work voice-mail and my email – which I should have given up for Lent. I thought about it; what I could give up for Lent: email! I did think that. But I am never one to follow my own best wisdom; I am only one to regret not having followed it. “Look how smart you were. If only you’d paid attention.”

So I’m snowed in; I’m not going anywhere. Just wandering:

Sad. After more than two weeks, putting Don Juan down, and away, the sixteenth canto having ended with a bang – or the promise of one – and the action of the seventeenth opening so coyly and then only space, the loose laces left untied.  Byron doesn’t say what may have happened between Juan and the frolicksome ghost-impersonator Fitz-Fulke, though they are late for breakfast, looking somewhat the worse for wear. And we don’t know if he would say, or chasing after myriad of tangent upon tangent, he would ever have gotten to it.

Repentance: It’s a big deal in the religion I pretend to follow. According to Jesus’ parable in Luke 13, we’ve got another year. But until then, until we do repent, we’re no better than the Galileans Pilate hacked up, mixing their blood with the blood of the animals they’d hacked up. We’re no better than the citizens of Jerusalem the Siloam Tower flattened.

          What if they had repented? Let’s say the Galileans’ sacrifices were sin offerings, accepted by God. Are they better off? Our answer seems to be “yes.” But, are they better? Does repentance make us any better, or only repentant?  Briefly. There is great rejoicing, we are told, at the return of one sinner; but how long does the party last? Plus, we know from the movies what can happen at parties themselves.

          Repentance – the Greek word is metánoia. That has in it the notion of turning around, as if from now on we’ll be heading in another direction. But, we’re not going to get five minutes down the road before we remember something we’ve forgotten at home; we need to go back to get that. And on the way back, we see one of our friends from the party pitifully wandering the border of the road with his thumb out, and good Samaritans that we’ve become, we stop to pick him up. And the next thing we know we’ve stopped at the 7-11 to ask a six-pack to join us.  It takes us to Skinny Dick’s La Merde Saloon. We meet girls named Candy and Apple; and we wake up smelling of White Shoulders, cat urine, athlete’s foot, and bleach. Our stomachs need dusting.

I know I own – or I used to own; it’s gone from the shelf – Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises; it was one of those sturdy Scribner Library paperbacks. I wanted to find that scene at the end, where Lady Brett wants to tell Jake how good – damned good, I think she says – they could have been together. There’s a bump in the traffic, and they bump against each other. And he says, “Yes." And he has to hesitate: "Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

I was just writing about fallenness, wasn’t I? Only a few days ago. [See here: Dateline: Pangloss California.] Wouldn’t it be pretty to think that we are only fallen and not incorrigible? We can get up and walk the other way.

          On the other hand, our incorrigibility could be our joy and crown.  Not even God – not even almighty God – can save us. It would be terribly, terribly sad but pretty to think so.

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