The unforgiving priest

 The unforgiving priest 

“I don’t think your therapist has many patients, or clients,” Uncle Albert said, “or whatever you’re called: loonies.”

     I had just come out of my appointment with Dr. Feight. Uncle Albert was in the waiting room – waiting. (He goes with me to my appointments; then we go to lunch.) “What makes you say that?” I asked.

     “What’s today?” he said.

     “Tuesday,” I said, “isn’t it?”

     “Right,” he said. “Not Monday.”

     “ . . . ?”

     “You usually see him on Monday, right?”

     “And Thursday, yes. But yesterday was Memorial Day.”

     “Yet he was able to schedule you today at the same time he usually sees you yesterday.”

     “Okay.”

     “And there are never other cars here when we come or when we go. We never run into anyone coming or going.”

     “Well, I’m the last appointment in the morning, I know that.”

     “Going or coming, then: we never run into anyone. Maybe you’re his only patient.”

     “I doubt it, but so?”

     “Would you trust a, let’s say, oncologist – an oncologist that had only one patient?”

We got into the car. I started the engine. “Shall we go to the pupusa place?”

     “Why not?” he said. “Would you trust a restaurant, if you never saw anyone else eating there?”

the little priest

We were waiting for our order. “I was talking to Dr. Feight about church again this morning,” I said, “about how you’d said you had half a mind to walk out.”

     “Did you tell him why, that the little priest skipped the confession of sin?”

     “Why do you call him little?”

     “Little in experience, then, one that knows much more now than he will, one hopes.”

     “I didn’t think about that, that he left it out.”

     “Well, he did. Probably because it’s still Easter. We’re not supposed to be thinking about our sins, still reeling over the fact that ‘Christ is risen!’” He said that loudly. I looked around; there were other people in the restaurant, and they were looking at us. I lowered my voice.

     “I thought it was the gospel lesson, ‘that bullshit from John,’ you called it.”

     “And wasn’t I right? – one of the more bloated ten verses in the” – he made quotation marks with his fingers – “the ‘Final Discourses,’ one of the most bloated three chapters in all of Scripture” that couldn’t possibly have come out of the mouth of Jesus. Imagine anyone standing up in front of a dinner party of twelve, even with, let’s say, a wait-staff of another four and four of the twelve had dates. He's standing there in front of at most twenty people and talking about ‘all those whom thou gavest me from the world.’ John may have wished the final gathering took place in Bryant-Denny Stadium, Tuscaloosa, Alabama in front of a 100,000 people with Billy Graham as the opening act; but it didn’t.”

     “No,” I said.

“What did he say?”

     “Who?”

     “Feight. When you told him about church.”

     “He said, ‘Do you ever think you think too much?’ He was kidding though. It was a way of asking why this came up now, when it did.”

     “What did you say?”

     “I said, ‘Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous.’”

Just then our pupusas came.

     “We’re all dangerous,” Uncle Albert said. He looked at the little Salvadoran woman that was serving us. “N’est-ce pas?” he asked her.

     “Sí,” she said, then looked away, then toward me. And softly, smiling: “O no?”

05.31.17

Acts 1, the parable

to listen to the parable, click here

 Another parable* 

“The kingdom of God – is it like this?” the man asked:

When they were pretty sure Jesus was gone and gone for good, his disciples gathered in Jerusalem. They went into a meeting room where they were staying, Peter, and John and James, Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James. And they sat down with Mary, Jesus’ mother, and some of his brothers; and there were other women present. And wine.

     Andrew drew his finger around the rim of his glass until it began humming, and they all fell silent. Then, Peter began talking, as usual, the proud speech of a man who thought of himself as one who had pulled himself up by his own sandal-straps.

     “Brothers,” he said, “and sisters: The Scriptures had to be fulfilled concerning this Judas, the Iscariot: That any man that buys a field with the reward of his wickedness, may he trip and fall, and may his gut burst open and his bowels gush out – the will of the Lord! That his shame become known to all Jerusalem and his field be called Blood – the will of the Lord! That anywhere he live become a place of desolation for ever and ever. Let the people say . . . .” And the people shouted out, “The will of the Lord!” Peter went on, “And that his office among us be taken up by another. All of this is in the Scriptures. Who has eyes and can read, let them find it.”

     “The will of the Lord!” the people said again.

Peter held up his hands: “That means we need to find a replacement,” he said, “ – the will of the Lord! – someone that is familiar with our story.” And two were nominated: Joseph Justus, also called Barsabbas, and Matthias, who had only the one name.

Robert Wagner as Matthias and William Bendix as Justus
in the movie, Acts, Chapter 1

     And Peter asked Andrew to say a prayer, knowing that his brother would defer to him. So Peter prayed, “Lord, thou knowest the hearts of all men; show us which one of these two thou hast chosen,” and there were scattered “amens” as Peter paused; but he pressed on: “Show us which of these thou hast chosen to fill Judas’ place in this ministry and apostleship, who took a bribe and bought a field and whose stomach burst so his guts were strewn far and wide, in Jesus name.” Then, all said “Amen!”

     Andrew had some holy dice, and they threw them. And they spelled out Matthias, and he became the new Judas. And Joseph Justus, also called Barsabbas, went home to his mother and brothers and sisters, and later they all went another way.

     This was when Tiberius was Caesar and Lucius Pomponius Flaccus governor of Syria.

“Is the kingdom of God like this?” the man asked again. And he turned and went another way.

05.29.17

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* from Acts 1. Part of the TRV parable project. For more selections of the TRV (Ted Riich Version of the Bible), click here.

Randomonia Pauli

 Randimonia Pauli 

August 1031, 2014

Yet another random entry* from “a work in progress,” Gaspar Stephens’ Neo Encyclopedia of Greek and Roman Mythology (long in progress but still listed as forthcoming from Balthazar & Melchior Stephens Press).  For previous entries from the Neo Encyc. featured on The Ambiguities, see 08.33.14, 08.59.14, and 08.1023.14.

Paul (also Saul, also the Apostle) [Gk. Παῦλος, L. Paulus]. While technically neither a Greek nor Roman mythological figure, Paul, self-styled ὁ ἐθνϖν ἀπόστολος (the apostle to the nations), was a Roman citizen who wrote in Greek and a legendary figure both in his own mind and heart and then and since in many others’ as well.

The Apopsicle, though
Paul was never known
to have "chilled."

     Born in Tarsus in Asia Minor around the turn of the era, a Pharisee tent-maker by trade, Saul began his religious career with the Christian persecution arm (ΣΚΧ¹) of the Judean Inquisition.² But having met the risen Christ on his way to Damascus to suppress Christianity there, Paul converted to the new faith in order to harass believers from within.

     Now “the Apostle,” Paul trekked tirelessly throughout the known world. Based in Jerusalem, but accountable to no one there, he journeyed to Cyprus, Pamphylia, Derbe, Philippi, Salonica, Athens, Corinth, Thessalonica, Galatia, and Phrygia, in all but one of which he gathered people together, told them what to do and what not to do, and they listened. His singular lack of success came at Athens, his arrival haphazard with a time in the city’s cultural history when people already had “more than enough shit to think about,” according to the contemporary philosopher Protoiulian. So, “we didn’t need one more crackpot telling us what was what – and how to do it – where was where – and how to get there – or why was why, and that was that!” (The Lakides II.333).

     Paul spent considerable time in prison beginning in Jerusalem and continuing toward the end of his life in Rome; and prison life seemed to agree with him. It was on his way from one incarceration to another that he was shipwrecked on Malta, though he came safely to Puteoli and then to Rome. His imprisonment in Rome ended when he was beheaded by Nero, after which he went to Spain, where he settled in Augusta Bilbilis (now Calatayud), where – here legend is unclear – he was either friends with Martial (Marcus Valerius Martialis) or the cause of the poet’s leaving Spanish wine country for Rome.

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¹ τὸ συνέδριον κάκωεος τϖν χριστιανϖν² The term is Leopold von Ratzinger’s.

05.27.17 

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

Dropsies

 Dropsies 

I am still seeing Dr. Feight on Mondays and Thursdays. He counts the two sessions as one, and the one is paid for . . . well, I’m not sure how – some combination of insurance and anonymous charity, or so I think. I saw him this morning; our appointments are now at 11:00. I’m “the last thing in the morning,” he tells me, but he doesn’t explain what that might – or might not - mean.

     I am driving myself now, but I pick up Uncle Albert on the way,* and he reads in the odd combination of magazines and journals in the waiting room - The New York Review of Books, Scientific American, Poetry, Dissent, and Field and Stream - while I talk to the doctor. Then, usually, we go to lunch. Today, though, we came back to the house. I had made soup over the weekend, lentils and onions and ground up Andouille sausage spiced with a splash of beer and a couple of pinches of thyme; and there was plenty to get rid of.

     We drank small glasses of beer with it. Uncle Albert lamented the end of the Premier League season – and Arsenal’s finishing out of the top four (and the refereeing in yesterday’s match against Everton). He doesn’t know how much attention he’s going to pay to the transfer window this year, he said; and he asked me what was going on with Dr. Feight. “Have you said anything to him about how clumsy you’ve become lately?

     “I haven’t,” I said.

     “You should. It’s like you’re half drunk half the time."

It’s true. I drop things three to a dozen times a day – pencils, books, salt and pepper shakers, note pads, napkins; I spill drinks pouring them. I stumble going up the stairs; I burned myself brewing the soup. Yesterday, I almost fell when we stood up when the priest came in.

St. Jude’s

     I stepped on an edge of the kneeler, sticking its tongue out from beneath the pew in front of us and my ankle and then my knee buckled. Fortunately, I caught myself on the edge of that pew, before Uncle Albert reached to lend assistance and I knocked him down. (Thank God for his 96-year-old reflexes.**) I caught myself and had to hold on hard to keep from going to the floor.

     “I suppose you’re right," I said, perhaps because the sermon yesterday was about listening, and that included validating what the person you were listening to was blathering on about. I don’t know how from any of the passages we got there, unless (speaking of blather) we were supposed to be ready always to pay close attention to others when they began giving their “account of the hope that was within them.”

But you know already what I think about hope, that it is the enemy of joy; I should today, however, add that it is better than dropping stuff all the time, especially when I reach down to pick it up and it slips through my fingers – I drop it again.

05.22.17

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  * . . . as I think I’ve said: (05/15)

** I don’t know how many years I have been referring to Uncle Albert as 96, or maybe said he was 97, thinking I’d said he was 96 in a previous year’s post. The truth is I don’t know how old he is, except more than 90 and – I’m more than reasonably sure – more than 95. As I’ve said before, he is not really my uncle, though I’ve begun in the last year or so to wish he were.

Finally, the randomonia continues.

 Finally, the randomonia continues. 

August 1023, 2014

Random entries* from “a work in progress,” Gaspar Stephens’ Neo Encyclopedia of Greek and Roman Mythology (still in progress and still listed as forthcoming from Balthazar & Melchior Stephens Press). For previous entries from the Neo Encyc. featured on The Ambiguities, see August 33, 2014 and August 59, 2014.

 

Iulapios
based on a description
in Spiff & Randall

Minthe (also Menthe, Mintha, or Mentha) [Gk. Μίνθη  or Μήνθη]. According to Spiff & Randall (Dictionary of Greek and Babylonian Amorous Biography, 1957), compare Lit & Niagara (The Hits and Myths of Ancient Greece and Rome, 1917), it is unclear whether “in a lighter moment,” Hades pursued Minthe, the “lovely meadow nymph associated with the river Cocytus” [S&R], or “dazzled by his brooding, Byronic beauty,” she pursued him [L&N]. In any case, Persephone discovered the “imminent seduction” [both modern sources] and intervened. Poor Hades she dragged back into the underworld by his ear. Poorer Minthe she turned, according to Strabo, who alleges the seductio was not interrupted; rather Hades and Minthe engaged in a long-term affair – poorer Minthe, Persephone turned into “the garden mint some call hedyosmon” [Gk. ἡδύοσμον, meaning “sweet-smelling”], and not by simply going “Poof!” but spreading the nymph about either by having her trampled underfoot, or trampling her underfoot herself. Since then, parts of “Mint” have been torn off or up for various purposes – combined with rosemary and myrtle to dress dead bodies, and by itself to dress an alcoholic mixture used in the Eleusinian mysteries and at horse races: In ancient times the drink was called kykeon [Gk.  κυκεϖν  from κυκάω, “to stir, to mix”]; and outside of the mysteries it was apparently consumed mainly by peasants. In more recent times the drink took its name from Minthe’s brother Iulapios and seems to be consumed mainly by people wearing fancier pants.

05.20.17

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

Six

 Six 

Six (all but one recent) events that explain how we got where we are now: culturally, socially, and politically –

April 8, 1966. Manhattan, Kansas, USA. Roz’s imaginary older sister, Salome, decides when she grows up she’s going to be a nun.

October 2-27, 1911. Little Falls, Minnesota, USA. Charles Lindbergh suffers a head cold lasting almost a full month.

June 2, 1992. Hamlin Moody burns the tip of his penis, sitting on the john sneaking a smoke in the stall of the men’s room at the Humpback Rock rest area on the Blue Ridge Parkway, Virginia, USA.

November 7, 1887. Xikou, Fenghua, Zhejiang, China.  蔣中正 is not circumcised on the eighth day.

April 1, 1882 and January 3, 1889. Messina, Sicily and Turin, Italy. Nietzsche declares God dead, and God declares Nietzsche mad.

347,983 BCE and 1968 CE. The invention of fire ( at what was then called “Blib,” near present-day Yokneam, Israel) and the invention of the Duraflame® fire log (in Stockton, California, USA).

The non-circumcision of  蔣中正
abstract by m ball (original 5 x 5/5 in.)

May 17, 2028. Tromsø, Norway. On the 214^th Norwegian Independence Day, vacationing Finnish philosopher Saku Vihreä discovers that none of these events is related to any other and begins his Diselicans* of how it is that must or must not be so.

05.17.17

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 * Disexplanation. The treatise was or will be (depending on whether one is Yah or Friedrich) written in Latin under the name of Siclus Viridus.

Uncle Albert update

Uncle Albert update   

Uncle Albert has moved out of our house. He has a lease at least through August in one nearby he is sharing with two university students and a construction worker.

     He has two narrow rooms on what seems to have built onto the house above a mud room and a small office as a sleeping porch, very similar to the one on the back of our house. There are windows all along the outside wall and the walls at either end. In one room is a single bed against the inside wall and under the windows a row of shelves built with board and brick and filled with books. In the other room are more books on shelves under the windows, and on the inside wall are a very narrow desk with two shelves above it and a large armoire. There is a huge padded rocker with a footstool that doesn’t match, and a hospital table, one of those on wheels that can be swiveled, raised and lowered. On this is Uncle A’s laptop, on or from which he does everything that he does not do by hand: He watches the news; he listens to music; he watches Premier League football – for one more week at least, when baseball season will begin for him (lasting until Premier League play resumes in August); he writes emails to his new Senators and his congressman, a “Neanderthal,” he will not call by name, only “that black-hearted, ice-hearted, stone-headed illegitimate son of a lawyer and stoat.” (I think he begins his emails that way: “Dear black-hearted, ice-hearted, stone-headed son of a, sir: . . . .”)

     There is a bathroom just down the hall. And he has access to the kitchen, two shelves in one of the two refrigerators, use of the stove, oven, microwave, dishwasher. He has contributed to the well-thought-out kitchen fund, started and maintained by the construction worker, the longest-term tenant and for that reason (but cheerfully, it seems) in charge of most of the minutiae of communal living. The landlord lives “somewhere else entirely,” Uncle Albert says – he understands from the real estate company that collects the rent and manages the property, it may be Bombay, or Eugene, Onegin.

Uncle Albert met La Rochefoucauld
in a night club in Paris, 1997*

He says he is happy to be out from underfoot here. But I pick him up every morning at nine, and he stays much of the day. After we drink a cup of coffee and eat a slice of toast, he sets up his lap top on the dining room table and connects to our wi-fi. From there he can hear the television – he can manage the television from a remote he has installed as an app on his laptop; if something catches his ear, he can even see the television, if barely, through the connecting door. He can swear at it or yell at me, “Come down and look at this.” I get off the bed, where I am reading and dozing and thinking I need to get up and move around. I come down and look.

     We eat lunch together in our kitchen. We go here and there as warranted. He rides with me to my appointments with Dr. Feight and sits in the waiting room. From nine to three, we are like school children under the care of a benevolently absent teacher, who has advised frequent recesses.

Uncle Albert continues to study La Rochefoucauld. “Listen to this one,” he yelled up the stairs just a few minutes ago, and I came down:

Quelque disposition qu’ait le monde à mal juger, il fait encore plus souvent grâce au faux mérite, qu’il ne fait injustice au véritable.**

He continues to write his own sentences, though he is never satisfied with what he has written. Here are two from this week:

We are all Puritans about vices that either never did, or – especially – that no longer, appeal to us.

I spend at least one hour every day looking for scapegoats.***

05.15.17

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   * So he says.
  ** However inclined we are to misjudge, we will give credit to false merit more often than we will be unjust to true.

 *** If true, Uncle Albert's efforts in this area appear to me very modest.

Sing. Sing a gray song!

 Sing. Sing a gray song!

Canción Cantada

En el gris,

el pajaro Griffón

se vestía de gris.

Y la niña Kikirikí

perdía su blancor

y forma allí.

Para entrar en el gris

me pinté de gris

¡Y cómo relumbraba

en el gris!

                           - Federico García Lorca

In “the gray” the vulture Griffón dresses himself to match. The young girl Cock-a-doodle-doo loses her pallor and takes on a gray disposition as well. And the singer in order to join them paints himself gray. And now he glows gray. How he glows gray!

     We don’t think of gray as glowing, do we? – or joyous? But here it is. The singer’s gray sparkles. His song is full of joy. Because all that belong together are together – bird, girl, and balladeer.

It’s gray outside today where I live. The sky has joined in the singing.

05.13.17

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  Thanks to her that helped with the Spanish – more, that pulled the blind man out of the ditch!

More a-philosophy

 More a-philosophy 

A few days ago, I wrote about the pessimist, Palladas of Alexandria, noting (here) how much I appreciated philosophers like him that, as far as we know, “don’t know shit about metaphysics” and “so have to talk about one thing at a time.”  I appreciated such philosophers, I wrote, not just because one thing at a time is all that I can absorb but also because one thing at a time is, I believe, all we ever know. We go on connecting the dots anyway, but why? Because someone told us we could. (And: “Go ahead,” I say. “Keep connecting them. Only, if you want a true picture, don’t follow the order of the numbers: try 7 – 11 – 4 – 1 – 9 – 8 -12 – 5, leaving out 3, 6, 7, and 10. You’ll get a more accurate picture of what is actually on the page.”)

Today’s antick wise man is Bion of Borysthenes, according to whose own account was the son of a fishmonger and a retired streetwalker. These parents, to pay off a debt, sold young Bion - “not an ungraceful youngster” he described himself – to a certain rhetorician likely looking for just such a student. The rhetorician soon enough died with Bion as his sole beneficiary; and the wise heir, he alleges, after burning this master’s books, “scraped everything [else] together, [went] to Athens, and turned philosopher” - by declaring he was one.

The first bit of philosophy Diogenes Laertius gives Bion credit for is today’s bit of antick wisdom – and wise it is! “You can’t catch a piece of soft cheese with a fish hook.”

Wise I might have been simply to have left it there, but – damn metaphysics, damn those dots! – I figured there must be a story behind it.

     Bion apparently said of Socrates that if he desired Alcibiades and abstained, he was a fool; if the philosopher did not desire the graceful young man, then his conduct in abstaining was in no way extraordinary. The soft cheese and fish hook comment came when he, Bion, was asked why he hadn’t paid court to another Alcibiades.

So, there! – if you need a story, there is one. Or if, as I hope, you don’t, just contemplate the wisdom of the saying itself: 

“You can’t catch a piece of soft cheese with a fish hook.”

Once again, let me say –

     You can find this kind of one-off, antick wisdom most days on my Facebook page or Twitter feed. Tech services says you can get to either by clicking somewhere over in that ➠➠ direction. (See: where it says "follow on Facebook or Twitter.")

05.10.17

I am always going to church.

 I am always going to church. 

I’m always going to church, it must seem like. At least, I am often writing about it – maybe these days because it’s about all I do that’s of any interest. It’s one of the three times a week I may get out of the house.

I used to go to the big Presbyterian church downtown, and Roz went with me. It’s walking distance from the house, and we went almost every Sunday. I’d go to Sunday school, and she’d meet me at eleven o’clock worship. There was nothing wrong with it. The Sunday school class did Bible study with a pretty open mind. The music was good. And the preaching was okay, even if it was very Presbyterian. I’m not entirely sure why we stopped going there: it was probably a combination of the Sunday school class – more and more they were asking me to teach, and I was never comfortable either doing it or saying “no.” And the preaching got what I’ve heard called “musty.” It didn’t forget to say that we are sinners but Jesus loves us; but it focused more and more on what we had to do, needed to do, must do, because Jesus loved us. We weren’t very lovable either, so there was a lot we had to do. It got mustier and mustier.

In Paradise, the weeks I was up there, I went with Uncle Albert to his Methodist church, and then we’d spend part of the afternoon going over everything. I didn’t have answers to any of his sixteen weekly questions; but he didn’t care, he only wanted to say them out loud: what the woman preacher might be wearing under her alb? was there a significance to the way she tied the knot in her rope? did she know any science at all? The questions were mostly about the preacher – but not all. Every time we sang “In the garden,” he wanted to know how it was that the hymn writer’s joy being with Jesus’ was not like anyone else’s. Every time we sang “My hope is built on nothing less,” he wanted to know why (period).

When he came down here, we started going mostly to the Episcopal church, where we heard Clara Bow preach, or the young woman that looked like her; and Uncle Albert liked the regular priest fine, too, another woman, and one that knew something about science. She also had a sister that lived in France. And we go to the early service, where there’s no singing to worry about.

We also went to hear my Lutheran friend Axel Sundstrøm preach a few times, Uncle Albert and I. Roz has pretty much stopped going to church. Sometimes, when she hears that “the thin man” is preaching somewhere, she’ll say, “Let’s go.” She likes “the thin man” for some reason; I’m not entirely sure what that reason is, but I think it’s his voice. He sounds like a radio announcer that doesn’t sound like a radio announcer. And he likes to tell stories about Jesus, and he tries really hard not to explain them to death, just let the stories stand on their own.

Axel's Wunderkind - Lee Davidson

A couple of weeks ago, Sundstrøm, who had a Sunday off because he was just back from vacation – Sundstrøm and I went to a little Methodist church back in the country somewhere south of here. Axel drove; and I couldn’t find the church again, if I had to.  It must be on Google Maps – of course! - but it’s one of those places you can imagine isn’t or is somehow in the wrong place on the map, even on Google Earth in the wrong place.

     We went to hear this Wunderkind preach – that was Sundstrøm’s term – “not that he’s going to be the next big thing,” he added. “He’s definitely not. He’s never going to find his way into the prosperity gospel. But he’s young and completely uneducated, except that he taught himself Hebrew and Greek, and people claim he’s memorized the whole Bible.”

     “Have you heard him before?”

     “Not in person. But I’ve heard tapes. They’re pretty amazing.”

     I prepared myself to be pretty amazed.

And I guess I was. Here’s what happened:

     He read from 1 John 4, the “God is love” and “Perfect love casts out fear” passage. He said, “I know you’re expectin’ a sermon on love, but that’s not what you’re gettin’. Sorry. This is more about fear.” And he talked a minute or two about fear, fear of heights, fear of snakes, fear of growing up and going away; but he wasn’t interested in any of this – at least, I didn’t sense he was. He also talked about how some people had overcome their fears, but he wasn’t interested in that either.

     Then he started in on the fear that people can’t seem to overcome themselves, fear of their neighbor. It didn’t matter that Jesus said, “Love your neighbor.” And it didn’t matter that:

     “‘Perfect love casts out fear,’ as John says.” It didn’t matter, “because we got nothin’ like perfect love here. And I don’t mean here” – and he threw his arms out as if to embrace everything. “I don’t mean here in these not so United States or in the world beyond it that’s got almost half as many wars as it has tribes. I mean here” – and he put his hands out to the side about the level of his hips. He wasn’t standing behind the pulpit. He had stepped to his right side of it, and he’d stepped forward, and his toes were hanging over the edge of the chancel. “Here,” he said again, jiggling his hands. “Here. Where we got brothers like Cain and Abel or Esau and Jacob, we got sisters like Esaundra and Jacobina, Cainie Ann and Abelise. We got scheming mothers like Rebekah, and we got sometimes partial and mostly disengaged fathers like Isaac. This is our story: we can’t wait for each other to screw up; and I’d use the stronger word – not just ‘screw’ – if I weren’t here in church.

     “Now, I’m not about to go meddlin’,” he said, “stop preachin’ and go meddlin’, as they say. For two reasons: I don’t have to – you know exactly what I’m talkin’ about, you know who I’m talkin’ about. That’s one. And two: You’re not about to do . . . ,” he hesitated: “You’re not about to do . . . a darn thing about it.”

     He stopped, walked back behind the pulpit, looked down at the big Bible there, walked back to the edge of the chancel, hung his toes over it. “A damned thing,” he said. “You're not about to do a damned thing about it, because you not only can’t wait, you’re desperate, for each other to screw up; you want each other to fuck up royally.”

     And he hopped down from the chancel, he walked around to in front of the communion table, he looked all around, “because you can’t wait to see what will happen next.” He looked all around, but he hadn’t really stopped walking; he kept walking, not fast or slow, right down the aisle and out of the front door of the church.

     No one moved until we heard the engine of his truck start up. Still no one moved much, but Axel turned to me and said half-aloud. “Well, I didn’t see that coming.”

     I shook my head. “Jesus,” Axel said, standing up so I stood up, too. We were sitting in the last pew. He put his hand on my shoulder, gave it a nudge, and we went out, the first of the congregation to go.

Yesterday Uncle Albert and I went to the Episcopal church again, where the rector is doing a series on “joy.”

 05.08.17

"clucks and jick heads"

Boffo Press imprint

 The rule of three 

1. Dr. Feight points out to me that :  Roads to Anxious was published by Buffo Press, which has both its business office and printer in Parodia, Rutilans.
2. Also that :  self-diagnosis should only be undertaken by “clucks and jick-heads” (his terms, but also to be found in the book).
3. Finally that :  

05.06.17

Call for submissions

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 Call for submissions 

I have been struggling lately with what has been called “cuncatory anxiety” (Feight and Muze. Look aside.). Symptoms apparently include “overactive somnolence,” “inveterate procrastination,” and “whelming guilt.” 
     Some weeks ago I invited a number of friends: philosophers, psychologists and psychiatrists, sociologists, theologians, and those that have the answers to all things great and small – politicians, pundits, and radio talk show hosts – to write a brief, helpful, healthful – actually, restorative – essay on c.a., if not to relieve my condition, at least to help me (and others) understand it better. (Those invited included, incidentally, Dr. Feight himself, Tom Nashe, Axel Sundstrøm, my uncle Albert, Rick Dietrich, Gaspar Stephens, the ghost of Aristippos, and Barter Theater.)

     Several promised to get to it and back to me soon.

This morning I received in the mail, lonely in a rather battered envelope with no return address, the following unsigned piece of advice, oddly entitled “Ethics.”

                         For those who lie awake while others sleep,

                         whose minds are racing anxiously ahead – 
                         while we lie deep

                         in easy bed,

                         our dreams unreeling slowly frame by frame –

                         for those whose shame

                         or guilt or pain keep them awake,

                         up in the dark, alone –

                         ADVISE: philosophers take Trazadone.

05.05.17