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

The telephone

 The telephone    

We still have a wall phone. It's in the kitchen with a calendar above and the phone numbers we can't remember in a neat list beside. It’s cordless, but I leave the receiver in the cradle. Then, I have to get up to answer when it rings - or, more accurately, chirps. First, I read the caller ID. Then, mostly, I don’t answer. I press the button that turns the ring off, even if the phone upstairs will continue trilling.

     I don’t carry the receiver with me; that would save steps. And I don’t ignore the phone when it rings; that would save steps. I get up to answer it, even if usually I don’t.

     I don’t like interruptions, but the annoyance is good for me.

10.25.17

from the "but i could be wrong" dictionary

 from the “but i could be wrong” dictionary 

Douglas William Jerrold (1803 – 1857 English dramatist and writer), who wrote (in St. Giles and St. James) my favorite definition of human arrogance, the quality belonging to the one who “in the smug belief of its own election . . . looks upon its fellow . . . as irrevocably lost.”

10.23.17

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portrait of Jerrold by Daniel Macnee - National Portrait Gallery: NPG 292

Match of the day

 Match of the day 

We didn’t go to church this morning. Instead, Roz went to pick up Uncle Albert while I put a continental breakfast together, bread and butter and jam, coffee with cream and sugar - real butter and real jam, real cream from real cows, real cane sugar. After breakfast - here’s why we didn’t go to church - Uncle Albert and I sat down to watch his Arsenal at Everton: Sanchez, Mesut Özil, Lacazette; Rooney and young Dominic Calvert-Lewen.

     Rooney! The first ten minutes were all Arsema; but the eleventh belonged to Rooney when he got the ball in a bit of space just outside the 16-yard box and made it 1-0 Everton.

     Then, it was all Arsenal again - and Jordan Pickford, the Everton goaltender.

(Outside a flock of starlings, in their winter coats despite the warm weather, were attacking the two rusty dogwoods between our house and the Baxters’ next door, stripping away the bright berries.)

All Arsenal stymied by Pickford until the fortieth minute, when Nacho Monreal punched in the rebound from a Granit Xhaka shot Pickford couldn't knock far enough away. And it was 1-1 at the half.

Winter Starling   /   Rebecca Lowe

“An entertaining half of football,” Uncle Albert said. He was right. “Help me up,” he said. I did. He stood almost still for a minute, just rocking a little to the left and back, left and back. I reached for his elbow, but he waved me away and set off slowly in a brisk shuffle to the bathroom. “You could get me a cup of coffee, though,” he said.

     He’d drunk only half of his first cup. But I poured it out and made another, teaspoon-and-a-half of sugar, plenty of cream and set it by his chair. He was in the bathroom a while. I watched the starlings, at least two dozen that I could count. Finally, I called, “Uncle Albert!” “Coming,” he said. “Have I missed Rebecca Lowe?” he asked. “I hope so,” he said.

     “I’m afraid so,” I said at the same time. “She’ll be back at the end of the game though.”

Tom Davies was on to start the second half for Everton in place of Ashley Williams. “Was Williams on a yellow card?” I asked Uncle Albert. “I don’t think so,” he said, “but he should have been.” Uncle Albert doesn’t like Ashley Williams, who he thinks is something of a thug. I don’t agree, but I don’t say anything but, “Mmmm” (sounding a bit like Dr. Feight).

     The fifty-third minute: in a stunningly, beautiful Arsenal-at-its-best passage of play that brings three players into the box, Özil heads in a perfectly weighted Alexis Sanchez pass, and it’s 2-1 Liverpool. And in the seventy-third , five minutes after Gueye goes off on a second yellow, Lacazette scores on a lovely pass from Özil, just touch-touch: Özil passes to Lacazette who passes it into the net past a helpless Pickford.

     And the game is effectively over, though both Everton and Arsenal score another goal.

(The starlings must have been savagely hungry. By the time I’ve taken Uncle Albert home and come right back, they have stripped both trees and are gone.)

10.22.17

Think of it as a novel.

Think of it as a novel. 

I often think of this as a novel, similar in form to the best of the early novels in English, Tristram Shandy, a nervous tangle of tangents, heaped (I hope) into life if not health. But here, in The Ambiguities, the broader world the narrator reaches for - because he knows nothing outside of himself and the little way he can see with his dim eyes, the little sound he can hear with his dim ears, the little taste and touch and smell his dull tongue, fingertips, and nose can detect - here, that broader world has to be represented by the poets he loves.To show it, he relies on them.

Today, they are Su Tung P’o (in Kenneth Rexroth’s translations*):

10.19.17

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* from One hundred Poems from the Chinese

I told the witch doctor . . .

 I told the witch doctor . . .

I told Dr. Feight yesterday morning that I was “sick of this.” “Mmmm,” he said. “Not this,” I said, “not talking to you,” because having someone really listening to what you are saying is worth paying for. (It’s never free.)

     “Not talking to you,” I said. “I’m sick of the way I feel . . . most of the time anyway.”

     “Mmmm?”

     “You know - anxious, frustrated, angry - though I try to keep that tamped down.

     “I mean, I recognize that I’m angry. I also recognize that I don’t need to jump up and down, scream, stamp my feet like a two-year-old. Yell at whoever happens to be in the way at the moment. Or, it wouldn’t help.”

     “No?”

     “No. I don’t think so.”

Then I didn’t know what to say, so I stopped. There was silence for a while. Then I said, “Roz’s mother is coming to visit.

     “Mmmm,” Dr. Feight said.

with lots of mayonnaise

Uncle Albert and I came home for lunch. He’d gone with me to Dr. Feight as he almost always does. I talk. He reads the magazines in the waiting room. Then we eat lunch together. Today we ate bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches. I cooked the bacon in the microwave and toasted the bread. We both like lots of mayonnaise. We drank orange juice.

     “So Patsy’s coming,” Uncle Albert said.

     “Did I tell you that?” I didn’t remember telling him.

     “No,” he said. “Roz told me." He took a bite of his sandwich, chewed thoughtfully. “My sympathies,” he said.

     “It’ll be okay,” I said.

     “Doesn’t that depend on the purpose of the visit?” he asked.

     “What do you mean?” I said because I hadn’t thought of that. One of the many things I hadn’t thought of.

10.16.17

Nuts

 Nuts 

One of you wrote while I was away: “Are you back to work yet? You haven’t said.”

     No, I’m not. I am, it looks like, on pretty much permanent disability, because I can “not function properly in a work environment”; in short, I’m nuts. So, I see Dr. Feight twice a week still. Otherwise, I read a little. I listen to music. I cook dinner. I sleep. I can drink two cups of coffee a day.

I saw Dr. Feight yesterday. I picked up Uncle Albert, so he could sit in the waiting room and read magazines - Dr. Feight has added Lire and Les Inrockuptibles for his amusement - and we can go to lunch afterward.

     Yesterday Axel Sundstrøm joined us. He and Uncle Albert wanted to talk about the apocalypse that is upon us, so I moved to another table. I’m not that nuts.

We were all eating egg-salad sandwiches and drinking Pepsis. I took mine with me. I left theirs with them.

                                                                           10.13.17

People change.

 People change. 

The Apostle writes to the Philippians. (As we saw yesterday.) -

“Who is more righteous than I am, you Philippians? -  circumcised on the eighth day,

a Pharisee among Pharisees, blameless under the law; and don’t forget:

I persecuted people like you.”

He goes on -

But I have given all that up, as you know - completely: no more a Pharisee;

since the prosthetic foreskin fell off, I have decided that circumcision

doesn’t matter either way; I have given up killing you. Completely!
Grace before the law: I am a completely changed man.

You must believe that. You do believe it.

Of course, you do. Leopards can change their spots.

Before and after.

People change!

     And we believe it. If we like those people. Or if they change to our way of thinking (especially convinced by our arguments). Otherwise, no, they cannot change. And they are hypocrites if they say they have. (We can prove their hypocrisy from what they said before or did before, however many days, months, or years ago they said or did it.)

  10.12.17

Tomorrow . . .

 Tomorrow . . . 

The Apopsicle.

The Ambiguities returns after a ten-day hiatus, another week of “enforced vacation” and three days to recover from it.

Until then, this from The Apostle, his letter to the Philippians:

“Who is more righteous than I am, you Philippians? -  circumcised on the eighth day,

a Pharisee among Pharisees, blameless under the law; and don’t forget:

I persecuted people like you.”

10.11.2017

passing the peace

 passing the peace 

Roz has difficulties, as she puts it, with the “technology” of The Book of Common Prayer. So, she doesn’t often come to church with Uncle Albert and me. True, she doesn’t often come to church anywhere at all. She did come with us this past Sunday, though, because, she said, “I’ve been up for a long time. I need a break.” She hadn’t slept well. “Tell her church will be a good place to catch up,” Uncle Albert said when I called to tell him we were on our way to pick him up. “Or, it would be,” he said after a moment’s hesitation, “if we didn’t keep moving around all the time.”

     We do: We stand. We sit. We kneel. We wander around passing the damn peace.

St. Jude’s has a new rector. She came in June. Susan. A former Miss Virginia, a dozen or so years ago. (She’s in her middle thirties, I’d guess. Her husband, who must be at least 15 years older, is a former state legislator, congressional aide, and lobbyist, who works now for a liberal think-tank with an office in Seeville. He’s an expert on U.S.- Scandinavian and Finnish relations. They don’t have children.)

     She conducts the service very formally, but she preaches informally as if from notes on the back of an envelope. This Sunday’s sermon (from Matthew 21:23-32 - the chief priests and the elders ask Jesus about his authority, so he asks them about whether the baptism of John was from heaven or earth; then he tells the story of two sons) - the sermon was about how little those that must know the most about religion know about Jesus; then, it was about how for Jesus knowing has so little to do with what you can say and how much with what you are already doing.

     Uncle Albert agreed - both with the sermon and with Jesus. I agree - with Uncle Albert, the sermon, and Jesus. But both Uncle Albert and I are more knowers than doers. We’re in church, aren’t we? at eight o’clock in the morning. (Granted we go at 8:00 because we also agree that it’s good to get our religious obligations out of the way early in the day so we have the rest of it to do other things.) But, for whatever reason, we’re there as we have been many, many, many times before, thinking we’ll discover something we need to know. It’s sad.

We went out to breakfast after the service. Uncle Albert treated. We took him home. We went home. “What did you think of the sermon?” I asked Roz. She hadn’t weighed in at breakfast.

     “I didn’t think anything,” she said.

 10.02.17