A New Absurdist Commentary on the Book of Ecclesiastes

June 30, 2015
from Ecclesiastes 12 

The grasshopper drags itself along and desire fails; . . .  the silver cord is snapped . . . the golden bowl is broken, and the dust returns to the earth as it was . . . . Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher; all is vanity. 

The giraffe doesn’t seek to stand on two legs. It doesn’t migrate to Norway. It doesn’t invent the wheel that leads to the cart that leads to the Model A. It doesn’t build apartment blocks or drill or mine. It isn’t looking always over its shoulder as it devises new ways to kill other giraffes. It doesn't have shoulders.

Guns and Jesus, though not in the same sentence

June 26, 2015

Guns and Jesus, though not in the same sentence

Apologies to all 61 – or 16 – of you, dear readers. It would be irony to say I was kidnapped by duty to Paradise, were it not in Paradise, Michigan I spent the last several days. There I found Uncle Albert in an unusual more-than-a-little-worse-for-the-wear condition and no way could I discover to kiss and make it better.

     Eventually, in my presence if not with my help, he came out enough of his funk just before the news cycle on the Charleston slaughter had come to its end, and his immediate, simultaneously inchoate and voluble rage brought him nearly back to himself. At least he was able to see how “the brouhaha of the flag,” as he put it, was, as he also put it, “the diversion du jour” to keep us from seeing straight on how much of the devil handguns were – “and always will be we are such angry, violent, and mad jack- and jillasses.”

 

Storm at Sea - Tempest in Kitchen Sink

June 19, 2015
Storm at Sea - Tempest in Kitchen Sink 

I forget, when I’m away from Uncle Albert, how difficult staying with him is. Imagine living as a gentile servant with no prior experience and with no instruction, only reprimand, in a family of orthodox Jews. One of the first things I was shown, not minutes after I had come into the house, was how to use the kitchen faucet correctly. Apparently, though not to my recollection, I had misused it the last time I was here last fall, though since Uncle Albert stood between me and what he was showing me, I’m still not sure how. Imagine, then, the reprimands given in Hebrew, head turned away, to a deaf-mute.

This Sunday’s gospel lesson, Mark 4:35-41, from the not only heretical but also exasperated Ted Riich Version.

Proverbs 33

Undated (Timeless)
Proverbs 33:1-10 (TRV) 

Solutions to other problems you didn’t know you had, though, to be honest, that was because you weren’t looking.

Never be embarrassed. Let others be embarrassed for you when you drag the toilet paper out of the restroom on your boot-heel or return to your desk with your skirt tucked into your panties or your shirttail sticking out of your fly.
     ² Don’t be embarrassed when someone else discovers where Fate has led you. Don’t even shrug your shoulders.  Say – politely! : “Thank you. I’ll attend to that later.” Then, don’t.
     ³ Also, at the end of the day, remind the someone of his or her helpfulness: “Thank you again for letting me know about [whatever it was – be specific]. I plan to take care of it as soon as I get home.

⁴ Don’t see why others are upset, even if you do. It’s not a lie to do nothing. You’re not feigning: what can you really know what others are thinking (where Fate has led their thinking)?
     ⁵ This is not to say, “Don’t be sympathetic.” But don’t rush to sympathy. Don’t believe that all others deserve your kindness.

     ⁶ And, for God’s sake – not to mention your own – don’t pretend sympathy for ideologues or fanatics of any stripe. They are the rabid possums of the world. Throw water on them and hope they scurry away. (Always carry a squirt gun, laced with ammonia, in your jacket pocket or purse.)

For Sale!

⁷ Suffer fools gently. Only beware of the wise. Scurry away from the doctrinaire as fast you can go.

⁸ Have no respect for wealth or position. Leave that to fans of Ayn Rand. But neither have respect for poverty and sorrow. Leave that to the bleeding hearts.
     ⁹ Still, don’t be contemptuous of either. Admire what is admirable, the chrome on this one’s Bentley, the lettering on that one’s cardboard sign: “I still have hope. Anything will help.” State your admiration.

¹⁰ Last: Take no advice. Ignore all imperatives. Selah.

The way it works

Undated - Unnamed 

Here’s the way it works:

Find a pair of slacks you haven’t worn in a while. Get them off the hanger.  Pull out the contents of all

Stefan Lochner, Last Judgment, c. 1435

four pockets, every jot and tittle, and hold them in your hand: a dime, a nickel, and two pennies; two or three – it’s impossible to tell: one is proudly separate; one looks like conjoined twins – nubs of lint; a six-month old receipt from Walmart,* various items totaling $16.47 with tax; a crumb of candy-wrapper foil; an emergency valium tablet. Hold them in an open palm.  Parse them with the index finger of your other hand, as if separating the sheep from the goats – this is serious business. Then, put them back into your pockets. Hang the slacks back on the hanger.

 _______________

 * Speaking of hyphens: It was at the end of its second-quarter earnings release in 2009 that Wal-Mart notified all reading it that it was no longer “Wal-Mart” but “Walmart.”

Around the corner

June 13, 2015
Around the corner
 
Uncle Albert writes:

 

Tree

    You know that song without bounds – you  
    can sing it forever, like the bearded then beardless 
    “Michael Finnegan,” but I like this one better:

     “Around the corner and under a tree,”

          A sergeant-major said this to me:

     “Who would marry you, I would like to know?

          For every time I look at your face, 
                                   it makes me want to go

     “Around the corner and under a tree,”

I have been working on this (next) that La Rochefoucauld never dreamed of, I don’t think, the unending sentence. It’s more difficult than it looks. Or, maybe it’s as difficult as it looks, since this isn’t very good, but :

It is not always we who are false; sometimes the world plays false with us. When it does, we should not try to run away – as those arrogant fools, the monks and the mystics,* do. For where can we run to?

     But: the monks and the mystics are not alone. Aren’t we all looking for opportunities to fool ourselves? This is not to say that it is always we who are false; sometimes the world 

_______________

     * If the purpose of the form weren’t economy, I might have added “the macroeconomists” and “the masturbators” (if you can tell any of them apart).

Bathsheba sings the blues.

June 12, 2015
Bathsheba sings the blues. 

          O villain! Thou wilt be condemned into everlasting redemption for this. 
                    - Much Ado About Nothing, Act IV, Scene 2 - Dogberry to Borachio

The sad case of Samuel, Saul, and David. This week’s Old Testament passage is from 1 Samuel 15; but you can’t start there, for heaven’s sake. I’m not even sure you can end there. In any case, here’s my version, starting and ending wherever and wherever. If you have ears, click play.

 

 

Lethe, ND

June 6-8, 20015

Lethe, North Dakota

We’re here for the weekend, to visit a high school friend of Roz’, who, like her, left Kansas never to come back except to visit and then never more than a day or two at a time. “You can’t go home again” is no threat, it causes no sadness if you never want to.

     She lived a while in New York City in a tiny apartment in Washington Heights and tended bar.  She lived a while in Atlanta, a basement room in a big house in Virginia Highlands and waited tables. She ran away with a crazy man to Kampala; he left her there, but with enough to get back to the States. Now she’s here.

     The man she lives with here is rich. He also sleeps like a cat, twenty-one hours out of twenty-four. It doesn’t take long to find out why. The moral weather of the place captures me too, wraps me up, holds me close, wraps me up like an autoimmune disease. And soon enough, however much I kick back, I am most of the time more asleep than awake. I can’t read more than a paragraph my eyes fall closed, write more than a sentence I lose my train of thought. I go for a walk and turn around at the end of the sidewalk.

     Thank God we leave after two days, while I still can. Another day I’d have been stuck to the couch, unable to get up. Even so, Roz drags me to the car; she drives us to the airport. She pushes me onto the plane.

Your Aura

June 2, 2015

Your Aura

From a letter received this morning from Uncle Albert, the 91-year-old devoté of LaRochefoucauld and composer of sentences of his own.* Advice on retirement:

I know you’re more than a few years away, but you can’t begin looking too early: for a place to wear cotton and broken-down shoes, a place where your disorder might even appear orderly; a place where time and industry won’t always be nibbling at the edges of your aura.

Not that I believe you have one. “Aura” is the invention of people that would like to believe they have no edges at all.

 

______________

* A few more recent Uncle Albertisms:

on curiosity, 

on insight (into ourselves),

on arguments and Puritans,

on guilty pleasure,

how everything is not about death and salvation, 

on the comfort of prejudice,

on Fortune’s indifference, 

on Hillary Clinton, though she is not mentioned by name, 

on wit vs. humor.