Time does pass.

I don’t remember - ever - what I do before I go away. Nor do I understand what “away” is supposed to do for me. I don’t understand what it does for me. And, I don’t know how far away I get. A block, a town, a county? From one side of the bed to the other - I’ve not gone anywhere at all?

     Except away - I’ve been away.

In Hogarth’s engraving (See here.): there’s a dog barking, there are musics playing, baroque in one layer of the burnt air, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in another; people are talking to the air, and the air answers though not as if it had been listening. It is the color of an old high school gymnasium. It smells like a gymnasium the day after the prom. A half-dozen of you have come back to take down the decorations, which look like clothes bought at a second-hand store without having been tried on. 
     The undecorating goes as quickly as you can make it: no one wants to stay any longer than necessary; but there’s a day-after-the-night-before clumsiness that slows everything down. It takes much longer than expected.

Time does pass.

     The days run together, but one can keep track of them. There’s a day-and-date calendar with pasteboard numbers below the clock on the gymnasium wall.

So:

     I arrived sometime before two on Wednesday. Next I knew, it was Friday, then on the third day I woke up again, and I went to church. One day after that I saw a man named Frank. And on another day there was a program. A woman talked about Anne Bradstreet.

     I thought I was coming back on Wednesday-again; but then it was Thursday. Then, finally I did come back on the second Friday afternoon though I felt no better by then; I felt no different. As I remember.

* * * * *

 Blest 

Last Sunday before yesterday.

     The man comes with his Bible and song sheets, his full, deep voice that he loves, a jolly fat man as angry as Choler himself. He tries to hide the anger – in the folds of his fat, under the sweet jelly of his jolly; but he fools only the mad – and himself. (He is as mad as the maddest among us, yet he can come and he can go.)

     We sing the songs he bangs out on the piano though you can’t hear us over the hammers pounding the wires and his barking basso. We offer shaky suggestions when he asks us what he should pray for: he will do the praying; whatever we ask for, he prays for the world, for the nation, for the church, “for the congregation here present and those that minister to them” (meaning him), for forgiveness of sin, and life everlasting. And he prays for God Himself – whatever we do to f**k things up, may His will be done.

     Then, “may the words of his mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable,” and he will harangue us like the most self-righteous of stand-up comedians. (Have you noticed how self-righteous most of them are? Just listen to them some time talking about comedy. They are like Casuists talking about the law or Presbyterians talking about religion, like NRA members explaining the Second Amendment or advice columnists writing about men.)

     We don’t listen to the words, though. At least, I don’t, only the voice rushing this way and that, imitating the waves lapping the sand, the wind coming around the side of the house, a clap of thunder, the hiss of rain, a cook banging empty pans together to call ranchhands to dinner.

     “Old Maria,” who was here last time I was (and will be the next time and the every), shouts an occasional “Alleluia” or “Amen” timed with admirable, amazing skill to cover her farts.

Afterward, we all shake his hand, or those of us that can stand to be touched do. Some reach out, decide differently, and pull away with a wave.

     Then, we go to lunch. On Sunday it’s chicken and broccoli and mashed potatoes, all beaten into the consistency hard-scrambled eggs.

 03.12 & 03.07.18