Where have you been?

 Where have you been? 

Drowning. That’s where I have been.

In Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men, that’s the way Jack Burden talks about his drive to California, when he runs away from it all: he’s drowning west. He’s running away not from the horrors of what just happened, the assassination of the Boss by his friend Adam Stanton and the death of Adam Stanton in the attempt; he’s running away from what he may learn about himself and how that may change who he is.

     There are two things we fear more than anything else: ourselves and change.

07.30.17

Proposition 3

 Proposition 3* 

What if there were no rule of three? But of four??

    Yesterday, today, tomorrow, and the next day, things would depend upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens

over there by

the farmhouse.

    And there would be Four Stooges.

07.17.17

_______________

 * See here.

Three

 Three 

Propositions to be examined later.

      1.    What if we ate horses and raced cattle?  - Meat would be better and better for us; and race days would be even more leisurely and foolish.

      2.    What if when Jesus said, “No one comes to the father except through me," he was talking like a linebacker - “If you want to score, you’re going to have get through me”?  - We’d actually understand what the Apostle meant by “stumbling block.”

      3.    What if there was no “rule of three.”  - Lists would be shorter.

07.15.17

Dateline: Ottawa

 Dateline: Ottawa 

I woke up this morning, thinking, “Gosh I need to” or “Gosh I ought to” – a combination of those – “write something.” But not knowing what to write I refrained. For which the reader is, I trust, grateful. It is a gift, Uncle Albert says, to know when to shut t-fup.

07.13.17

________________

“Friday the 13th, she come on a Thursday this month.”

Oh . . . oh

The computer I bought (See previous post.): it became infected while I was installing the anti-virus software. So, suspending operations here for a while.

The anti-virus software company will be named later if I don't get a quick fix. Until then (the fix), The Ambiguities is the opposite of quick. So, call your local Staples store and ask whoever answers to pray for it's resurrection.

So be it.

Engines and alcohol

  Engines and alcohol

I went out and bought a laptop today - right off the floor of a big-box office supply store. Now what?

I’m not sure I know. I’ll have to set it up; but, though these days that’s pretty much an answer-a-few-questions-and-push-the-buttons-we-tell-you-to-when-we-tell-to you deal, I’m hesitant. It will likely sit in the box for a day or two, while I “gin up” the nerve. I use “gin up,” so I can look it up - what slope of what mountain in what state, province, or shire in what country did it come from? - and, looking it up, put off thinking about the computer sitting in the box for another several minutes.

     I’m using "gin up" in the sense of “generate,” “create,” or “stir up,” which apparently comes from gin as short for either engine or generate + up. This from Wiktionary, which also gives a second definition, “to drink or become drunk, especially on gin." That comes then from gin (+ up), the beverage that can be distilled from any kind of alcohol but is then flavored with juniper - all gins include juniper, which gives gin its distinctive flavor. But “botanicals” are also added to enhance that flavor: coriander, angelica,* orange peel, lemon peel, cardamom, cinnamon, grains of paradise,* cubeb berries,* and nutmeg - six to ten of those, according to www.ginvodka.org.

     I happen to have some gin in the house, Pinnacle, which according to the bottle is “distilled 4 times and infused with botanicals” (though it doesn’t say which ones) also “handcrafted in small batches.” How it gets here - or to Portfield Bottlers in Deerfield, Illinois, where, as the name of the firm indicates, the gin is put in bottles - my bottle doesn’t say. I imagine a tanker.

I bought the computer because Roz and I are going on vacation for more than a week, and I wanted to continue blogging and tweeting and hanging stuff about the blogs and tweets on Facebook. I could do that, I’m told, from my phone, but the person that told me has much smaller fingers than I do.** So maybe he could do it from his phone, but I’m not confident I could do it from mine, especially after a couple of Pinnacles and tonics, which I’m planning as soon as I finish this post.

     Those should “gin me up,” but they’ll also render me unable to set up the new laptop, so it will be safer sitting in the box at least overnight.

We leave Sunday.

07.07.17

_______________

  * angelica is an herb also known as wild celery. grains of paradise is a spice commonly known as commonly known as ossame but also as alligator pepper; and cubeb berries from the cubeb plant are a savory, that when cooked, one source says, have a “warm and pleasant” taste, “reminiscent of allspice.”

 ** mostly because he’s six.

The parable of the ewe and her ram

to listen, click here

 The parable of the ewe and her ram 

The kingdom of God - is it like this?

A ewe and a ram were grazing on Mt. Moriah when they heard humans approaching, a grim-faced man, followed by a boy that hurried to keep up. The goats escaped to the rocks from which they watched the man and the boy moving earth and gathering wood, creating a mound. The boy asked the man something in their language; the man shook his head. They waited several minutes. Then the man asked the boy to lie down on the pile of earth and sticks. He tied the boy’s hands and feet. He took out a great knife. 
Then they all heard a third voice, but the goats could not see where it came from. The ram moved around the rock to get a better look and, uncharacteristically, stumbled and fell into a thicket, getting his horns caught in a thorn bush. The ewe heard him bleat in pain. The man heard it, too - he turned in the ram’s direction. He put his great knife back in its sheath. He untied the boy. Together they wrestled her mate free of the bush; they tied his forefeet and his back feet together and put him on the earth with the sticks on top of it. The man took the knife back out of the sheath and with one furious swing of the blade cut her ram’s throat. The blood ran out.

     The man and the boy watched the blood running. Then the man took out a box with two stones, one of which he struck against the other. The sticks caught fire, and the ram began to burn. The smell was intolerable. The ewe bleated once and ran away. And ran away

Is the kingdom of God like this?

07.02.17

_______________

For links to other stories from the TRV, click here.

"All human things are subject to decay"

 “All human things are subject to decay”  

Thomas Mack died Monday. The grand memorial service was Thursday at First Methodist Church, across from where I used to work. It was an occasion for me because I knew the office was closed for the funeral, to slip in and slip out again unnoticed. I'm not ashamed to say why - and I will - but . . . Was it Stephen Crane that said every story is allowed one coincidence?

     Here's this one's.

Mack was a lovable dimwit. He had, as Uncle Albert said of him, “the brains God gave an animal cracker,” and he (Uncle A) would always greet him (Mack), “Hey! Flecknoe!” Mack assumed, I think, that Uncle Albert was hard of hearing and had misunderstood his name when they'd been introduced; and he was too kind to correct him. "Albert!" he would call back. “Good to see you!” (This was after that first meeting the extent of their conversation, as far as I can remember, punctuated always and only with exclamation marks.)

     Now I was slipping into the office with the key I'd never returned because no one had ever asked for it to retrieve a book I had hidden in the basement men's room, pushed to the back of the shelf about eighteen inches deep just inside and above the tall door. The door was marked "Men," though there was nothing manly about it, just a toilet anyone could sit on and a sink anyone could wash his or her hands in. 
     Why there was a shelf above the door I never determined. It was empty as far as I could tell except for the book I had pushed all the way to the back. Maybe Kareem Abdul-Jabbar could have seen it if he jumped up looking for it, but it was invisible to anyone else. I could reach it, however, and it had provided over time many hours of enjoyable on-the-can reading: Selected Works of John Dryden [introduction and commentaries by william frost], a Rinehart Edition published in 1967 and pretty beaten up by the time I got it maybe 20 years ago.

     I don't think I beat it up much more as I never read anything in it but Absalom and Achitophel, The Medal, and (over and over again) Mac Flecknoe. Which I could read in one sitting and felt so good in my mouth and sounded so good in a whisper bouncing off the tiled floor, the plastered walls, and the unusually high ceiling that I read it again and again and again, always thinking when I got to the lines about the "neglected authors" whose works had become "martyrs of pies, and relics of the bum" that there were plenty of relics in Frost's Dryden if needed as I was never going to get past the first 70 pages or so (of 426).

My key still worked. The book was still there - of course, it was - if dusty from sad misuse. It slipped neatly into the right front pocket of my cargo pants. I didn't dare one last sitting, for fear the funeral would let out earlier than I anticipated - unlikely as that was - and I'd run into loads of mourners choking the way. But I did not, I could hear as I walked up the sidewalk across from the church the trebles squeaking (for fear of death?) and the basses roaring (courageously against it?). The book slapped pleasantly against my thigh as I said half aloud, "O Church Street, may thou be hereafter Pissing Alley."*

07.01.17

_______________

 * The name of an actual London street, Frost is careful to point out in his introduction. Let me point out that Church Street is the name of an actual street in our town.