The day the Muzak died

 The day the Muzak died . . . 

Arrangers arrange for themselves, their interests; their imaginations don’t extend farther than the edges of the pads they make their lists on. If others benefit . . . “Oh. Yes. Good.” If others suffer harm . . . it was an arranger that coined the term “collateral damage.” It benefited knife-nosed Jürgen, Molly’s local brother-in-law (See chart.*) – to get rid of as many complications as possible as soon as possible. Two, easily dispensed with he thought surely, were the Blazer and me.

     It didn’t occur to him – or he didn’t care; in either case, it wasn’t on the list – that the driver of the vehicle didn’t have a driving license, only the clothes on his back, the money remaining in the glove compartment, and Paperback Dostoevsky.

     The driving license wasn’t on my list either until I had driven about two hours and saw the first police car I’d seen all trip. It was then I started a list. It was of things I might need that I was missing: 1. a driving license. 

Writing on the
wind with water.

     I might also need a map, if I was going to stay off major highways, which seemed a good idea. Seemed, because I had no idea really what I was going to do next.

Here is what I learned in my December term at Bedlam College, where everyone’s major is Philosophy (and everyone’s minor Tautology): The future is a blank: whatever comes next is the next thing. 
     So: I didn’t want to go back there; and I was clear both that there must be alternatives but also that those alternatives were, as the Poet said, written on the wind with water.

I stopped for gas and lunch about halfway and about three-quarters to pee in a field.

The end.

12.29.16

_______________

* You can't tell the players without a scorecard:

Yesterday once more

 Yesterday once more  

Molly wasn’t sure he knew how to play golf, “though,” he said, “I think I knew how once.”

     “It’s like reading,” I said. “It’ll come back to you. Drink your soda.”

The soda seemed to be working. Molly discovered he did know how to play golf; and he played calmly and well, though he refused to use the metal woods: the driver looked like a balloon, he said; how could you hit a golf ball with a club like that – it might explode. I tried to show him, but he became sufficiently agitated, I didn’t use my metal woods either. This gave him a tremendous advantage, as he could hit his 3-iron well over 200 yards, and I couldn’t hit mine in the air.

     But he had no interest in competition, only in moving his own ball from place to place. He paid no attention to what I was doing, so after the third hole, I quit doing and just drove him. He finished the nine a couple over par.

When we came back to the club house, we found his other sister, there to pick him up. She had the fierce look of an old maid school teacher from a hundred years ago, and when she said, “Get in the car,” he did. Their meeting had to me a sense of a ritual: the priest raised the wafer, Hoc est enim corpus, and I tried to look solemn, sitting on an imminent fart. As they drove away, I let it out.

     The pro, Ed, called me over. He was heading home early, he said; I should follow him. I could spend the night and head back in the morning. I wasn’t sure back was where I would be heading, but I didn’t say that.

Green beans, meat loaf & mashed
potatoes through a glass darkly.

Ed lived in a modest ranch house with a wife and a dog. One’s name was Elise the other’s Lisa. I was fuzzing out by this time and couldn’t get straight which was which, so I called them both Lise.

     One of the Lises fixed supper, more meat loaf with mashed potatoes and beans boiled a foot past within an inch of their life.

Sometime after supper Molly’s other brother-in-law came by. He’d made arrangements for me to drop the Blazer back at the BP in Sh—ston. Bedlam was willing, he said, to take me back and lose any paperwork that said I’d been missing – he’d arranged that, too. He had a nose like a knife; if you touched it, I thought, you could cut yourself. He was clearly someone that liked to arrange things.

     “The world needs people like that,” Roz would say. I’m not so sure. It’s not – in my experience - that anything anyone arranges stays that way.

As soon as he left, I took some of my sinus medicine and went to bed. The walls of my room were pink; the air smelled waxy; I began to feel I was in someone’s ear.

to be continued

12.28.16

Yesterday

 Yesterday 

About noon: we were looking for a place to eat.

     “Stop the car,” Molly said suddenly. “Here!” he practically shouted. I pulled off onto the shoulder. He got out. “Where are we?” he asked. I told him. “I know someone here,” he said.

     “Yeah?”

     “But I’m not sure who.”

What we didn’t count on, that we’d be off our meds.

     It hasn’t affected me too much; I was only taking valium and something-else-I-don’t-know-what. But Molly had been on a fistful of stuff, and he was getting increasingly odd and anxious. Now he sniffed the air – to the right and to the left and with his nose pointed at the sky. “It has something to do with . . . with . . . ,” he looked confused. “Golf,” he said finally. “I’d almost forgotten. I used to play golf.”

“Let’s see if there’s a course anywhere around,” I said. We stopped at a drug store. I got some sinus medicine and asked the woman at the register, “Faye”: “Is there a golf course anywhere around here?” There was. She called Tommy, the manager. “Yeah,” he said, “one of the best in the state.”

     I got directions. Tommy gave them, and Faye wrote them down for me in big round letters.

I gave them to Molly to read. He said: “I used to be able to read, but . . . .” He shrugged.

     “You were reading last night,” I said. “Try.”

And we got there. We got to “Country Club Drive,” then we got to the sign to the club house. Then we got to the club house, and we got out.

     “Yeah,” Molly said.

     “Yeah, what?”

     “I know a guy here.”

The pro, it turns out. They played together at North Carolina State.

     “You guys should play now,” he said. “Let me get you some clubs.

     “You stay here,” he said to Molly. “Ted –right?” I nodded. “Ted will help me find some clubs.”

     “Okay,” Molly said.

“Where did you find him?” he asked me, when we got into the next room.

     “I didn’t,” I said, “not exactly. We were in Bedlam together, and then we got out. His sister had a car for us.”

     “Pam,” the pro said. I nodded. “Jesus,” he said. “Listen . . . .” And he told me what to do.

He got Molly a gin and tonic from the bar, a tall one – in a to-go cup. He put us in a golf cart. “Do you know anything about this?” he asked me. “Golf?” I asked. “Yes.” “I do.”

     He sent us off to play nine, while . . . “I’m going to make a couple of phone calls,” he said. I thought: “The shit’s going to hit the fan now; but I did what he said, and it didn’t.

to be continued

12.28.16

On the road

 On the road 

Molly's sister arranged the car, which turned out to be an old Chevy Blazer with, Molly said, a Mercedes diesel engine, his sister, Gloria’s, husband, “my brother-in-law” had put in it. “He’s always doing stuff like that. He gets parts here and bodies there and engines and mixes and mashes them and sells them, too” – with a Mercedes diesel engine and out-of-state plates. It was at the BP station across and three blocks down, parked out front. The keys were in a magnetic box under the rear bumper. The tank was full. There was $1000 in the glove compartment.

     “Where did that come from?” I asked.

     “It’s mine,” Molly said. “I’ve got money.” Then, “Get out,” he said. I was in the passenger seat, looking in the glove box, as he’d told me to. He was behind the wheel. I looked at him. “I forgot,” he said. “ I can’t drive.”

      We walked around the vehicle, and he got in the passenger side, and I got behind the wheel. “I used to could,” he said, “but some time I forgot how.”

At the motel the morning before we headed for elsewhere.

We headed east: across the Blue Ridge, through the Piedmont, and into the Tidewater. We stopped for coffee at a Starbucks. Later we stopped for BBQ – that was somewhere just east of Petersburg after we got on US-460. We followed it quite a ways, then we turned south.

     We stopped before it got dark, because I don’t like driving in the dark. Molly said he didn’t mind, and he thought he could – it was daylight driving that he’d forgotten how to. But I said I was tired and hungry, and we ought to stop now; and he agreed.

     We ate at a local restaurant, the kind of place that features meat loaf, which is what I had, with mashed potatoes and pre-masticated green beans, and chicken tenders, which is what Molly had, with fries and brightly colored coleslaw. We drank Pepsi’s and decided against desert. We’re staying in an old hotel.

     Or motel or “motor inn”: it has twin beds like in our room in Bedlam. We had a little trouble figuring out who was going to sleep where, because there the bed on the left is nearer the door and the bed on the right is nearer the window, but here the bed on the right is nearer the door and the one on the left nearer the window, and Molly wanted to sleep on a bed on the right nearer the window. Finally, he decided he could put the pillow at the foot of the bed, and he’d be all right. I was all right with the way my bed was.

     We’re going to read a while. We couldn’t bring any clothes, but we each put a book in a back pocket. I’m reading Notes from Underground, and Molly has a book about the 1955 Dodgers baseball team. I won’t read long; I’m pretty tired. Molly says he won’t read long either. When he finishes the chapter on Campanella, he’s going to turn out his light.

     All that was yesterday though. This is tomorrow. So, don’t look for us there; we went a different way today.

12.27.16

Christmas dinner

 Christmas dinner 

Roz came. She kissed me between the eyes. She said I might get out the third. Maybe.
The food was red and green, and yellow and brown. My milk was off-white, my choco-
late pudding black as a pirate's eye-patch.

                                                                 12.25.16

Why I am imprisoned . . .

 Why I am imprisoned . . . 

               Nous essayons de nous faire honneur des défauts que nous ne voulons pas corriger.*

                                                                                                                    – La Rochefoucauld

La Rochefoucauld

 But Roz can free me for three hours this afternoon, if we go to the S & W cafeteria. And if she will.

12.25.16

______________

 * We try to pride ourselves on the faults we don't want to correct.

The rumour mill

The rumour mill

"Fellow Bedlamites . . . ."

 “Fellow Bedlamites, . . . .”     

We had a speaker last night – from another ward. I decided to listen because the blurb about him in the Loony Times cited the old French proverb that guides me when I let it.

            Praise the God of all, drink the wine, and let the world be the world.

He acted like he knew what he was talking about – he was the speaker, after all. But did he? Here’s what he said, more or less.

What I’m about to say doesn’t need to make sense, for nothing really makes sense, does it? We can impose sense on the world around us, but chaos continues if not to reign to pick at the edges until they become increasingly ragged; soon the middle will become unraveled.

     We can acknowledge or ignore that.

When is a glass of wine not a glass of wine?*

So, which is more open to recognizing – and acknowledging (not ignoring) – the disorder around us, science or religion? The answer is . . . poetry.

     Science concedes there are things we do not know – yet! Disorder is actually only apparent; eventually we shall discover the order that underlies it, all the way to the edges.

     Religion loves the edges and mystery, as long as it is the one that defines it – and solves it: “God is the answer.”

Poetry, on the other hand, simply describes. Any explanation it offers is tentative – and ultimately dismissed. “Here is a way to understand this,” it says, “not that it really works. Consider it for the moment, just until I tumble onto another possibility.” And another and another.

     Only poetry lets the world be the world, because only poetry drinks the wine. Science must analyze its composition; religion must transubstantiate it.

At that, one of the orderlies held up a sign, “Applause!” So we did. Then, it was time for a story and bed. My story was “The Frog Prince.”

12.22.16

_______________ 

 * When it’s a beaker or chalice.

All will wear pajamas . . .

Lunch is at

The American Crifis

 The American Crifis    

Or Tom Paine and the way he wrote her:

Another bit of foolishness brought to you on 490 AM.

12.18.16

Commitment, or how we got to this point.

 Commitment 

Or, how we got to this place.

Let's say I work in H.R. in one of those “small but vibrant” companies, where everyone knows everyone else, and this happened several weeks ago.

     I come into my office to complain to myself about me. Naturally, I TRY to deflect the complaints, “Yes. Yes. I know. But you know that underneath he’s not a bad guy.” I’m not convinced: “Yeah, I don’t know. Way underneath he’s, you know . . .” I circle my ear with my forefinger.  

     Ultimately I convince myself that my assurances about me are sounding pretty hollow. Officially, I can’t admit as much, but I promise to take my complaints seriously.

     And the next day I call me in. On the one hand, I’m taken completely by surprise; but on the other, I can’t disagree.

12.16.16

Mad House

 
 Mad House 

Everyone on the Psych Ward is sick – and on the day I (finally) get my computer privileges. This includes staff, so I only get ten minutes.

Barely long enough to find out what day it is. Only 18 crazy days till Christmas.

12.15.16

Two-thirds of three

 Two-thirds of three 

Corner Coffee

Because something was happening somewhere in the world – a broken Brazilian butterfly wing, an Orthodox priest having trouble micturating in Minsk, a leak in the Michelin man – something had tweaked the schedule at work, and I had yesterday morning off, if I’d make it up, of course, somewhere along the line at a time uneasily unspecified. So I was having coffee* with Axel Sundstrøm, who wanted to talk more about centering prayer.** He’s disturbed about any attempt to lasso and corral God, to put him inside; he’s also concerned about what might be going on in peoples’ centers, their insides, especially given what is going on in his. I share the latter concern – sadly, I can’t imagine a soul disinterested in its own best interests. But every word about God is another strand of hemp in the rope and every book of theology is an attempt to fence him in.

     Still, I listened. I didn’t say to Axel what I just wrote to you, because it didn’t occur to me until later. Then, his phone went off; then he did. Then I moved from our table to the armchair in the corner of the window that looks onto Bye Street, deciding “I’ll just sit for a minute.” After which I needed to go home to dust. Roz had said the night before, “If you’re going to have the morning off, you might at least dust.” She didn’t care what else I did was the implication, but dusting was what pundits like to call – coughing the stern gravel they carry in their guts into their throats – “non-negotiable.”

Two young women were sitting at the table next to the big chair, sisters surely – maybe even twins: the same dark eyes, inky eyebrows, hard nose; the same high forehead and delicate chin. But the neatly-cropped hair of the one as opposed to the wild mop of the other threw everything off. They might be twins, but it was hard to tell; surely, though, they were sisters: you could have told that with eyes closed by the way they talked to one another – the complaining sister and the explaining sister.

Not these sisters.

     I didn’t follow the conversation as well as I would have liked. It was murmuring for one thing; words were lost as they chuckled at each other like doves. The angry dove and the shrugging-here-we-go-again dove. Whole sentences were lost as they went back and forth from English to Spanish according to no pattern I could discern. The plaining dove would say something in English, and her patient sister would answer in Spanish; then they’d be Spanishing for an exchange or two. Annoya raised her voice in English. She was mad at a mutual acquaintance, a victim of . . . I didn’t hear what. “She keeps saying, you know, ‘I’m different, so you have to listen to me, so shut up.’” Two paragraphs later, the listening sister responded to something in Spanish – about eating I’m pretty sure: “Mom says that’s not good for you.” “Yeah, well, Mom’s not good for me.”

     At settling that she got up and went toward the rest room. And I got up, bussed my coffee cup and started up the hill toward home, thinking suddenly and a bit sadly half-way there, I should have stayed a little longer. I needed another nugget from the sarcastic sister. I wanted to write about her, but I hated violating the “rule of three.”

     “You really shouldn’t do things by two-thirds,” I thought.

11.16.16

______________

* See here **and here.

Off-center

 Off-center 

I was sitting at my desk. The phone rang. It woke me up.

     I let it ring twice more. Humming. I was humming, because that’s supposed to clear your voice. I looked at the clock; it wasn’t even ten yet – the morning wasn’t half done. “Ted Riich,” I said.

     “Ted?” I waited. “Axel.” I waited. “I just quit,” he said. I waited some more. “Aren’t you going to ask what?”

     “What?” I said. “What did you quit?”

     “Prayer.” I waited. “Centering prayer.”

     “Hmmm.”

     “There’s something wrong with it – it isn’t just me.”

     “Of course not.” I tried to put an edge in my voice, but who knows? It still felt half-asleep, raspy, not at all clear.

The young Luther practicing de-centering prayer.

     “You know I’ve been going, right?” I did, to a “course” at the Episcopal Church a block from his own.* He’d been trying to get me to go with him.

     “Yes,” I said.

     “Not the course,” he went on. “I haven’t quit the course.” He paused. “Yet!” I waited. “I may do that, too. You don’t want to come to the next session with me, do you?”

     “I don’t think so.”

     “No. You wouldn’t. Not the course anyway, I didn’t quit the course; but I did quit this morning. The prayer.”

     “I gathered.”

Then, he told me what he’d been thinking. He was being pushed through the silence, this way and that and swimming back toward his center with his magic word. The word was vanitas, the first word in Ecclesiastes in the Vulgate. (Trust Axel to pick a magic word that way.) Then, he couldn’t get back – to the center - because it occurred to him:

     “It occurred to me – very strongly – that the practice throws away, like so much trash, the doctrine of irresistible grace.”**

     “Hmmm,” I said again.

     “You see, right? The practice suggests – very strongly – it holds that we normally resist God’s grace, so we have to make a place for it – light a candle, straighten our back, clear our mind. Or, it suggests – no, again, it holds – that we normally wouldn’t recognize God’s grace if it hit us over the head, we have to make our heads right. In the first place, it short-changes God – if we don’t answer the door when he knocks, he can’t get in? It doesn’t just short-change him, it demeans him. In the second case, it’s a form of Gnosticism.”

     “Explain that again.”

     “What? You don’t get it?”

     “No. Gnosticism. Explain that.”

     “It’s just what I just said. Our heads have to be right. We have to know certain things – especially how to do certain things, and do them the right way – or else God is beyond us.”

     “Isn’t God beyond us?”

     “No. Dammit, no.”

There was someone on the other line. I told Axel I had to answer it – in case it was “the Holy One in our midst,” I said.

     He said, “Very funny.”

_______________

  * More about Axel Sundstrøm, my Lutheran pastor friend, here, all the links fit to print from the time he showed up at a wake and had to be driven home to the review of at least one sermon and mockeries of our various conversations.

** For the even less initiated than I, here is Van Harvey’s definition: “the grace that cannot be resisted by the will of man.” If I do get it, it goes something like this: If God is God and we are we, we can’t put him off. (Or her.) God comes to us when God comes to us. We can zip our Bibles shut, wrap them in swaddling clothes, lay them in a manger, seal the whole package, Bible, swaddling clothes, and manger, in a plastic bag, and throw the whole kit and kaboodle (like centering prayer does irresistible grace) down a well; the Holy Spirit is like Houdini and will show back up wherever and whenever it wishes.

11.11.16

Another parable?

 Waiting for God (OT)? 

Is the kingdom of God like the oracle the prophet Habakkuk saw?

Habakkuk by m ball

The prophet cried out to God, “How long?!” – “How long shall I cry for help and you not listen? How many times will I point out, ‘Violence,’ and you’ll do nothing? How long can I look on – pain, persecution, conflict; we're wading in blood - how long? The law can do nothing, it turns away. The wicked surround the innocent – and that is ‘justice.' 

    “Still, here I am, where you put me. Here I am. How long can you look on?”

Then the Lord appeared to the prophet and said – is the kingdom of heaven like this? – what God said, “Write this down. Write it in big letters so that people running can read it on their way by. There is a time that is coming. If it comes slowly, wait. There is a time that is coming.”

The prophet waited. Is the kingdom of God like this?

     Who have ears, let them hear.

10.31.16