MERRY *#$%-in CHRISTMAS

Gone fishin'

 Gone fishin’ 

 

Not literally, but The Ambiguities is on vacation until Epiphany. Miss it before then? Watch for links to the best of on my Facebook page and Twitter feed.

12.24.17

 

"God, I presume."

 “God, I presume.”      

My friend Gaspar Stephens is reading Blake, listening to Ray Wiley Hubbard, and jumping to conclusions. Blake is deriding Swedenborg and the angels,* aery prigs all, thinking they understand God. As Hubbard suggests,^† only the Devil understands God. Of course, he misunderstands Him.

     To his credit, however, the Devil takes none. He doesn’t claim to comprehend God. Only the righteous presume to.

Wednesday afternoon I picked up Uncle Albert after Midweek Noons at St. Jude’s. Roz had taken the morning off work, and she had dropped him off. I picked him up. He waved me down with his cane, refused help getting in the car, and as soon as I’d gotten back in from trying, thrust a paper at me.

     “Fatuous blather,” he said, “pretending at faith.

     “Look here!” he said, pointing.

John of the Asymptotic Cross,

considering the bread of the True Sacrament within him,

while holding the butter for it unmelted in his mouth

“‘We are created with an inner restlessness that sends all of us looking for our True Self,’ it begins.” He began waving I about. “Capital letters,” Uncle Albert said, “our ‘True Self,’ ‘the God that is in us’ if we but ‘surrender to the Real.’” He pointed to the word. “More divine caps,” he crescendoed: “The Real, The Real, The Real!” punching his skeletal index finger into the paper. “Jesus!” he stopped.

     “No, nothing to do with Jesus. Only to do with Us - capital-U. “For where is The REAL?” He moved the paper in and out until it came back into focus. “At the living-watery depths, the ‘wellsprings deep within us,” suspended in which we’ll find ‘the true sacrament’ of ‘the soul itself.’ And all we have to do,” he looked up. “Well, we don’t have to do anything because it’s really ‘no more than a matter of becoming who we already are.’ But all we have to be, because ‘we cannot “get there”; we can only “be there” - which is ironically to “be here!” . . . all we have to be is - you know what’s coming, don’t you? - our fornifreculating True Self.”

     He had been leaning progressively forward. Now, he threw himself backward in the seat. “Drive,” he said. “Seatbelt,” I said. “Fornifreculate that,” he said. I drove.

I helped him out of the care when I left him off. It’s easier for him to sit down into than to climb out of it. Then, I reached in for the paper that had fallen from his leap to the floor when he’d thrown himself backward. He shook his head. “Keep it, he said.

     “Read it,” he said. “Read each word. Reprehend each letter. Set fire to it. Wipe you asymptotes with the ashes.”

     I’m not entirely sure what lit him so hot and bright. The presumption, I imagine. The one who will find God within, whoever he or she is, has no need to fear God without, a transcendent, mysterious, indeed unfathomable God. Rather he, she - and we at his or her direction - just need to get a handle on the One that is already within us. There is no need to seek wisdom or righteousness. We are already Righteous; true Wisdom is already in us.

When I get home, smoothing out Uncle Albert’s paper on the kitchen table, I find I’m interested in how much presumption looks like hypocrisy, especially to those that dare not, or at least try not, to presume. But it’s closer to narcissism. The kind of presumption Whoever-It-Is evinces is less a moral flaw than a mental illness. Such mystics, I’m dismayed to discover (because I find them as full of noxious bloat as Uncle Albert does), are less self-righteous jackasses than they are unable to help themselves. In Ecclesiastes’ terms, they are part of what God has made crooked that we can’t make straight.

     Nor can they straighten out themselves. Hypocrisy may be curable.^‡ Thinking oneself divine is not.

12.23.17

to be continued

_______________

 * in Plate 21 of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

 ^† in “The Way of the Fallen Is Hard”

 ^‡ I’d like to think so, there would be hope for me.

Miss Kitty

 Miss Kitty 

Hamlin Moody’s wife Kitty is one of the kindest people I know. She just wants to help; and she knows just what you need.

     She called this morning to invite me to her centering prayer group. “I know I asked you last year, or back in January” - this was right after I’d gotten out of lock-up but, I think, before Uncle Albert left Paradise to come keep an eye on me.* She said, “I know I asked you back in January, but I sensed you weren’t ready then.”

     I nodded, then realized I had a phone in my hand, and said, “No.” It was more a nervous than a persuasive “no.”

     “So, I put it on my calendar to ask you again. For today: it was on my calendar for today.”

     “I see.”

I forgot again I was holding a phone; I lost the thread of the conversation for . . . I think just a few seconds. Then,

     “So?” she was saying.

     I wanted to say that I’d tried centering prayer once and I just didn’t get it. I didn’t even get what there was to get. But I didn’t want to invite an explanation.

     I said, “How’s Hamlin? I haven’t seen him in a while.”

     “He’s fine,” she said. She sounded unhappy. To me she sounded unhappy.

     “Good,” I said. “Tell him I miss seeing him.”

     “But . . . ,” she said. I knew she was going to say it, “But” and then something else I didn’t want to hear, so as soon as she did - say “But” - I dropped the phone.

I counted to seven, slowly, and picked it up.

     “I’m sorry,” I said. “I dropped the phone.” And before she could start again, “I’ve got to go,” I said. “Sorry.”

to be continued

12.20.17

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 * The story beings here, and Uncle Albert enters here.

Ecclesiastes 7

 Ecclesiastes 7    

“We are magnificently impotent in matters of religion,” he began, “and reason.” This was last night.

He, Sol, is the product of divorce, a popular rabbi and a research biochemist that went very separate ways, she to teach in California, he to a new congregation in Miami.

    Sol stayed, to play piano with a jazz trio at home five nights a week in a little, little-known club in Brooklyn. His bassist, Bob, is Baha’i, the drummer, Blob, a born-again free-thinker. Sol keeps holding on to being a Jew as hard as he lets it go, so what kind of Jew he is now he can’t be certain - other than one with a mic. For occasionally during intermissions, he will take it up and start talking to whoever will listen about those things without thinking he’s been thinking about.

     For example, about what God can and, especially, can’t do: among other things, explain himself to us or help us understand each other.

Recently:

     “It’s his problem partly, God’s, for sure; but mostly it’s ours. (Even for God, it’s easier to shift responsibility. If you’re all-powerful, too, you can be all-shifting. But that’s for another time.)

     “We can pretend to wisdom and natter on about this and that, make up rules, and pretend they apply:

     “’A good name,’ we can say ‘is better than gold.’ ‘Listen to the wise man’s counsel, not the fool’s song.’ ‘Patience is a virtue; and anger leads to folly.’ ‘Wisdom, too, is like gold. Wealth and wisdom are a wall.’

     “Except, of course, when they’re not, or the wall’s a window or screen. A good name is better than gold, until there are debts to pay. It is better to listen to good advice than foolish singing, except when you really need music to soothe your savage beast. Patience is a virtue, except when something rash is required. Anger leads to folly, except when anger is what is needed to end folly.

     “Yes, we know, except when we don’t.

      “One thing for sure though: everything will work out in the end. Except what doesn’t.

“We can pretend to be righteous, but we are no more righteous than we are wise. I’m talking to you, my friends, on the right. (Applause? Is that - ‘right’ - short for ‘righteous’? Any of you out there?) That’s your blind spot, your self-righteousness.

     “You think you are right with God - and if you’re right with God, you must be right. But what if you’re not? Or, if you are, listen: there’s no claiming credit for it. You’re not right with God because of anything you’ve said or done.

     “On the other hand, my liberal friends . . . (Applause? I can't see. Six of you?) Your blind spot: you must be right because you’ve thought things through. But, hey, no credit to you either. It’s a gift, what you know (or think you do), it's not something you’ve actually worked for.

     “Think about it. . . Did you ever want to be uninquisitive?

“Both of you: No amount of righteousness or wisdom - religion or common sense - will avert disaster. We can’t escape either wickedness or stupidity, any of us. There’s no one on earth so righteous he or she does only good, never stumbles. There’s no one on earth so reasonable, he or she’s never going to do something foolish.

     “So what we do - or should, all of us: We do what we can, meanwhile not thinking too highly of ourselves - or our ilk. Practice not thinking about how good you are - how blessed - or how smart you are - how reasonable. Work hard, eat just too much and drink just too much, listen to music, dance naked with the one you love. Accept the good you get out of all of that. Joy in it.

“Speaking of music and dance, hey! Bob and Blob are on their way back up here. Guys! Let's hear it for them: Bob Blaine and Blob Baines. Wave at your adoring fans. Our next number is an arrangement they worked on together, a jazz version of the doo-wop classic, ‘Let’s Go to the Hop.’”

12.06.17

Espair and despair

 Espair and despair 

“There is no more reason for despair than there is for hope.”

                                                                                       - Uncle Albert

           

He means that both suggest a future we can in nowise predict. Every time our predictions are borne out is another coincidence, or the result of retroactive wishthinking: “Yes, this is what I thought would happen.” It doesn’t matter that we didn’t think that at all; it is easy to convince ourselves we did, we so desperately wish to be right.

If we could control our feelings, we might realize a state close to Ovid’s in Augustus’ Rome,* merry and bright, frivolity undaunted - not afraid to be foolish because gravity is greatly overrated: Few of our actions have any measurable consequences, and when they do, they (the consequences) are not what we so gravely planned.

Uncle Albert, Orrin Hatch, and P. Ovidius Naso

Bucharest, 1961

Planning is the enemy - and planners. Not only is planning itself work, but most planning is about work to do, which the planners will manage (gritting their teeth, “dammit!”), a series of burdens they will lay on us. “So,” Uncle Albert continues, “fornifreculate Orrin Hatch, whose yoke is not easy, whose burden never gets lighter.”

     “How did you light on Hatch?” I find myself asking.

     “I met him once,” he said. “A friend and I were traveling in eastern Europe. A foggy day in Bucharest town. Typical lawyer - scribe, Pharisee - he couldn't keep his tiny mouth shut. The koine for fornifreculate is e)mpiplana=i, incidentally. I learned that in Sunday School.”

12.02.17

 _______________

 * according to Kelsey and Scudder

Elsewhere . . .

 Elsewhere . . . 

Elsewhere in our not-so-grand media empire - on Facebook and Twitter [Follow here (Fb) and here (tw).] - are posts every Monday through Sunday: the wisdom of ancient Greeks and Romans - and now(!) ancient Jews as well. Athens, Rome, Jerusalem!

     This week we feature sayings from that wise old fraud, Qoheleth, the author of Ecclesiastes. For example:

"They make sweet perfume sour - dead flies."

Again, follow here: Facebook . . . Twitter.

11.27.17

Saturday

 Saturday 

This past Saturday.

     Roz woke me before seven. “Uncle Albert,” she said, handing me the phone that had been ringing in my dream.

     “Yes?” I said.

     “When will you be here?” it asked. “Kick-off is seven-thirty.” It was talking about the Arsenal-Tottenham match. The Gunners are Uncle Albert’s team.

     “I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” I said.

I was, if still a bit sleep-drunk. He was standing on the front porch that extends the width of the house he lives in. The young woman that served us lunch was with him. He was leaning on his cane. She had her arms wrapped around her shoulders. I started to get out of the car.

     “Stay there,” he said, waving his cane at me. She had taken his arm and was escorting him down the wooden stairs from the porch. Then, down the concrete stairs to the street. She took his cane from him and put it on the roof of the car. She held him lightly under his arms as he slid backside-first into the seat beside me. He maneuvered his feet into the vehicle; she handed him his cane.

     “You remember Maggie?” he looked at me. I waved at her across him. She dropped her fingers over her palm, shut the door, and turned; rewrapping herself in her arms, she turned and started back up the stairs.

To Uncle Albert’s delight, Arsenal beat Tottenham 2-0. Mustafi and Alexis Sánchez scored the goals.

Katje Ogbonna and Alexis Sánchez

     Roz made brunch for the three of us, waffles with a scattering of pecans and syrup, coffee blacker than anthracite, which I lightened with half-and-half and sugar. She was playing a CD of Cuban jazz, Rubén González bumping his piano against Carlos González’ congas bumping against Orlando “Cachaito” Lopez’ bass in a series of descargas.

     After, Uncle Albert lay under an afghan on the couch in the living room, snoozing, while I policed the kitchen. Roz went to meet her young friend from work, Katje Ogbonna, who told her, she said later, that the differences between black and white weren’t shades of gray but of fuchsia.

     “What did she mean by that?” I asked.

     Roz shrugged, but not as if she didn’t know, rather as if I should.

11.22.17

what it's like

 what it’s like 

It’s like when you see it well in advance and deke your way around a pile of dogshit on the sidewalk. Remember that youthfuldrunken lightness of mind, divided only into three parts, one directing the exaggerated action, one providing the commentary - “He fakes right, he goes left, and, oh my, did you see that?” - and one supplying the accompanying laughter: there’s the thrilling play, the breathless play-by-play, and the delighted response. We act. We watch. We watch ourselves watching.

It’s like that.

11.16.17

sleeping and waking

 sleeping and waking 

It’s harder and harder to get up in the morning - it’s the medicine. I fall asleep in the afternoon, sometimes while I’m drinking my second cup of coffee: I’m sitting on the couch; it’s on the table beside me. I’m listening to music - this afternoon it was Peter, Paul, and Mary’s version of “Don’t Think Twice.” I’m listening to music, and I’m trying to read - I’m working my way - for almost two months I’ve been working my way - through Naguib Mahfouz’ Cairo Trilogy. The coffee is on the table beside me; Kamal is getting ready to give up on love again - it is easier to be lonely - for however long it takes. I have a slice of headache behind my eyes, and I put the book aside, because of the headache and because the loneliness Kamal is choosing is too palpable. If I put the book aside, I won’t feel it as much. Peter, Paul, and Mary are singing Igavehermyheartbutshewantedmysoul. I put my feet up on the coffee table, sliding down into the back cushions of the couch.

Sometimes I sleep only ten minutes but sometimes two hours when it’s harder to wake up. It’s the medicine.

the time signature keeps changing

The grocery store is in walking distance. When I wake up, I look for a recipe. It has to be simple in the sense that it takes one step at a time; it can’t have “while” in it. It’s good if it has a lot of chopping; I like chopping, I’m good at it.

     After supper, I do the dishes. I’m good at that, too.

It’s not hard to go to bed; it’s not hard to go to sleep. But it’s hard to stay asleep. The dreams come, and I become anxious and have to get away. They’re not frightening, but I become anxious because they have “while” in them; the time signature keeps changing; the keys are all minor.

     It’s the medicine.

11.15.17

Duck. Soup!

 Duck. Soup! 

“What’s up?” I asked Uncle Albert because he’d asked me to lunch at his digs. I wondered what he might want.

     “Why should something be up?” he asks. “Nothing’s up,” he said.

     Then he said, “But what does it mean ‘she could eat me up’?” – referring to Maggie who’d made our lunch. [See here.]

     “It means,” I said, “that she’s not her mother. That’s something her mother would say, so she’s not saying it.”

     “But she did say it.”

     “Do you really like milk?” I said. “You said you did.”

11.10.17

Uncle Albert update

 Uncle Albert update 

Uncle Albert continues in the house he moved out of our house to. It’s nearby. He continues to share with the same two university students and construction worker that were there when he moved in in May.

     He continues to come here, but not every day anymore. I pick him up at nine, and he stays with me much of the day. Most days we eat lunch together. Monday and Thursdays late morning he rides with me to my appointments with Dr. Feight.

After I saw Dr. Feight this morning – or after I saw him and Uncle Albert read his magazines – we went to his "boarding house, as he calls it. (“I’m Major Hoople,” he sometimes adds.) He had invited me to lunch, which one of the young women he lives with had contracted with him to make for us.

     The young woman’s name is Maggie – she’s a sophomore from the Tidewater, majoring in biology. She loves Uncle Albert. She could “eat him up,” she says.

     “But that’s not what we’re having for lunch?” Uncle Albert says. Maggie looks at him, he smiles, she shakes her head. “No,” she says. Uncle Albert looks at me.

     “What then?” I ask her.

     “Tomato soup,” she says, “and grilled-cheese sandwiches.” And a glass of milk.

     “Do you like milk?” she asks.

     I say I do just as she says, “Albert likes milk.”

     I look at him: “You do?”

     “I guess I do,” he says.

     “You know you do,” Maggie says. “You’ve said so.”

Mae West

We sit down at the kitchen table, Uncle Albert and I. The soup smells good, and the sandwiches hiss in the frying pan. Then, Maggie is ladling the soup into bowls and levering the sandwiches from the pan onto plates and cutting them in half corner to corner. She puts the soup and then our sandwiches in front of us.

     “Serve from the left and take from the right,” she says under her breath, adding aloud, “though I won’t be here to take.” She has a class to rush off to. “But just leave everything on the table.” She’ll take care of “it all” when she gets back.

“Bye,” she says, looking back in on us an instant later, sheathed in a blue slicker with matching blue wellies.

     “Bye,” I say. Uncle Albert raises his glass of milk – he’s got a mouthful of grilled cheese.

“What’s up?” I ask as he swallows. “Why should something be up?” he asks. “Nothing’s up,” he says.

11.09.17

fallen

 fallen 

So, I don’t remember last November. Do you? I do remember voting, of course. And I remember the results – as you do. But do you remember what you were doing the Thursday after the Thursday of Election Week without consulting your calendar? Maybe I’m not alone.

     A sappy enough beginning? – the hero identifies a flaw in himself then invites the reader to find the same defect in him or her: we’re all in this fallen world together.

    

Sappy meaning “exploitative.”

The reader responds, “‘Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.’ Yes, the world is fallen, and we have fallen into it. But only you were in Bedlam by Thanksgiving.”

     I have smug, self-righteous jackasses for readers. And I thank God for you.

Always up to date as well as timeless, He responds, “No problem.”

11.07.17

. . . loose ends . . . .

 . . . loose ends . . . 

I like loose ends. They are one difference between life and fiction. So, I tend not to tie them up here. But in answer to two readers’ questions . . . .

            1.    “Your Uncle Albert was commiserating not long ago [See here.] because Roz’s 
          mother Patsy was visiting. What happened with that?”

            2.    “You didn’t go to lunch with Sundstøm and Fjeldheim (or Pettersen). Then what?”

The answer to the first question. Nothing happened. One of the many things I hadn’t thought of, one of the many things I wouldn’t anticipate: Patsy didn’t come.

Re the second [See here.] : Sundstrøm called this morning: “I’m sorry you missed Lonnevig," he said.  “He’s friends with your hero, Ezra Nehemiah.”

     “Ezra Nehemiah who?”

     “Give me a break. The author of that commentary on Ecclesiastes you read - you wouldn’t stop talking about it. It couldn’t have been more than a year ago.”

     “Oh.”

I went to my shelves - I have six of biblical commentaries, many of which I've actually read. There was a time in my life when I read commentaries like novels, from page one to the end - difficult novels admittedly, like Ulysses (though not like Finnegan’s Wake).

     Sundstrøm was close to right. It was a year ago the middle of this month that I finished Nehemiah on Ecclesiastes: I put the date (11/16) on the inside back cover. That was about a month before I woke up in Bedlam.* And that was in the middle of December of last year. And I remember little if anything from weeks before then.

     In short, late-November/early-December 2016 is mostly a blank. Even when I open Nehemiah’s book and look at my underlines and the things I’ve written in the margin: Here I’ve underlined a quote from Augustine, “True wisdom is such that no evil use can ever be made of it.” And I’ve written beside it, “But we marvel at technology.” I don’t know what either of us was thinking. The note doesn’t even look like I wrote it - it’s my writing but as if written with someone else’s hand.
     “Oh,” I said.

     “Nehemiah was in school with Jon Bill Swiftmahr.”

     “Oh,” I said.

     “The commentator on Revelation.”

     “Yes,” I said. I remembered yesterday. Or, was it the day before?

11.04.17

_______________

 * For that story, begin here. I do remember pieces of this.

Revelation 4

 Revelation 4 

from Jon Bill Swiftmahr’s* commentary on Revelation (in the Incoherent series, published by Rantrage Press, 2014, p. 53) –

DOOR NO. 1

IV. After this, I looked up and saw an open door. And the voice I’d heard earlier, the voice like a trumpet, motioned to me. “Come here,” it said. “Let me show you the future.”

     ² And I was spun around by the Air, and when the spinning stopped, I saw a throne, hovering. And on the throne: ³ It looked like Jasper and Carnelian and around them a rainbow as in Emerald City. ⁴ And around it, 24 more thrones and sitting on them 24 old men, dressed in white with hair like spun gold.

     ⁵ From the main throne came flashes of light, a babble of voices, and thunderous drumming. In front of the throne were 7 columns of fire. “These are the Spirits of God,” a voice said. ⁶ And swimming in the lake also in front of the throne, clear as glass, were ⁷ a lion, an ox, and a man, and flying above them an eagle. ⁸ Each had 6 wings and each wing had 1,000 eyes (24 wings and 24,000 eyes), and the eyes were singing “Who Was and Is and Is to Come.”

     ⁹ And whenever the quartet sings, and the wings and the eyes on the wings, ¹⁰ the 24 old men fall on their knees, so they’re never sitting, they’re always falling onto their knees and always throwing their spun gold hair into the lake, ¹¹ and singing, too in their old man voices “Who Was and Is and Is to Come.”

Notes

4. It’s back to the future for John Patmos though his future is the ghost of Apocalyptic Past.

   3. Jasper and Carnelian. Some of the scholars that hold that Patmos John’s visions transcend time believe this to be a reference to the vaudeville team (actual names Eos O’Day and Dämmerung Wehnacht, active 1919-1928) whose gags included Jasper’s removing - with great clatter and squeak - tools from various of Carnelian’s orifices, a hammer from one ear and an anvil from the other, saws from his eyes, a chisel from his nose, a two-edged sword from his mouth, and an adze from his anus.

   5. seven columns. Orthodox commentators continue to insist that 7 means 1 and columns is singular. (Pax nonatarians.)

  10. always falling on their knees. The writer is clear he is not to be taken literally, as the 24 old men can’t be simultaneously sitting on their thrones and falling on their knees - unless there are 48 of them with one leg apiece (a proposal by Madeleine Blatant in The Literalist (Vol. 8, No. 4 - 1986).

Commentary

This much is true: every weeknight I go to bed just before twelve, whether I’m tired or not. Usually, though, I am, and I go right to sleep. Before long I’ve fallen into a dream that pulls me this way and that until I’m pulled apart: I wake up and go to the bathroom; I get back into bed and dream until morning - trolley cars and subway trains, empty classrooms and cathedrals, a mockingbird on the rail and a crow in the magnolia outside my window. I’ve never had a dream like John Patmos’, so precisely and chaotically literary, “The Vision of God on Their Throne Pastiche.”

     First, the dreamer standing at the open door and the doorman with the voice of a trumpeter swan, “Come into the future.” And the swan holds the door, the dreamer walks through. Then, the crowd of smoke, sound, light, and mirrors.

     Heavy metal from God’s throne, the music between the gags of Jasper and Carnelian, and jerking and twerking to the music the Seven Spirits of God beloved of the nonatarians, the atonal singing of the old men in the blonde wigs they snatch off their heads and throw into the sea to be devoured by the ox, the lion, the man, and the bird, “The Night Has a Thousand Eyes.”

     The reader can only stand outside the door, listening to the sweet Bobby Vee hit clubbed to death by Iron Maiden; perhaps, he (the reader) peers around the corner of the jamb: there he sees none of this, only words on a page. It’s only words on a page, thank God.

     I wake up from my dream, and I look out the window: there’s a mocking-bird on the rail and a crow in the magnolia.

11.02.17

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 * 2015’s “the angriest man in the Bible biz” (Roiling Stone)

That jackass Luther

 That jackass Luther 

I was supposed to meet Axel Sundstrøm for lunch today. He was bringing a friend, a Seminary classmate - Fjeldheim or Pettersen or something - he wanted me to meet. We would raise a glass to the 500th of the 95. But it is one of those days I cannot leave the house, a carry-over from the weekend when Roz’s cousin Jamie came up from Atlanta with her new husband, a drearier misanthrope than I am.

that jackass Luther by that jackass Cranach

Actually, I am not a misanthrope. I don’t hate my fellow human beings. “I am only weary of them,” I started to write; but that’s not true either. 
     This is from Naguib Mahfouz’s Sugar Street; he is describing how Aisha feels about her daughter Na’ima, all that is left of her family, her husband and sons having died of typhoid. Aisha has become so “afraid for her daughter," she is afraid of her, she finds.

Jamie’s husband, who is “Todd,” like the insufferably priggish neighbor in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, finds everyone anyone can mention as insufferable as he must find himself. “That jackass,” he says of every one. So, I find myself sticking up for them: we can’t know what impels them, what imps push them this way and that.

     “You mean ‘demons,’” Todd says. “No,” I say. “If I had meant demons I would have said so.”

We all have the answers to nearly everything if we’ll only admit it. Only some of us are willing to revise on the basis of further evidence. It’s a painful process, however, confronting the evidence, sifting through it. It requires great energy; even with that, it is tiring. Some days it is better to stay inside and read through the index cards you have already written: there is too much new information beyond the front door - even among present-day Lutherans.

10.31.17

poor old Michael Finnegan, begin again

 poor old Michael Finnegan, begin again  

Today I begin another news fast. Ten days, I promise myself: ten days at least. It’s like turning off a game between rivals in a year when one is so much better than the other and it decides humiliation is the better part of gamesmanship: I am embarrassed for both the conquered and the conqueror - it's too painful to watch. The news has become that bitterly adversarial; commentators have become like divorce lawyers.

I invoke Ganesha.

     According to one account, Parvati formed Ganesha from the rubbings of her body after making love with Shiva; then she posted him to stand guard at her door whenever she bathed. When Shiva arrived, he was angry at being kept from her, and, unaware that the guard was his son, he lopped off his head. To console Parvati, Shiva promised to replace it with the head of the first living creature he saw. This was an elephant.

     Ganesha, also Ganesh or Ganapati, is the remover of obstacles.  Thus, he is seen at entrances; he is appealed to at the beginning of a new project.

Here is a poem by my friend Rick Dietrich, called “Pascal’s Diner”: “It’s the difference between East and West, isn’t it?” he says, “Or, perhaps between women and men, what we expect of our gods, what we expect - or don’t - in exchange for our worship?” The poem is illustrated with m ball’s Ganesh with a Blue Head.

10.28.17