Sunday on the Phone with Al

 Sunday on the Phone with Al 

Seven o’clock, Sunday morning. The phone rings. Uncle Albert wants to know
if I’m picking him up for church.

     “Don’t I always?” I ask.

     “I don’t know - yet.”

     “Hume,” I say.

     “Yes," Uncle Albert confirms.

“But, are you?” he says.

     “I plan to.”

     “When, then?”

     “The usual time,” I say.

     “What time is it now?” Uncle Albert says.

Uncle Albert with Guillaume Apollinaire, c. 1914

Am I going to have to start worrying about this? - that he’s beginning to become confused. It’s the first thing we do, isn’t it? - wonder how other people’s hurts or confusions are going to affect us. Entangle us.

     “What time is it?” he asks again.

     “It’s just after seven,” I say.

     “Oh,” he says. “Right. Yes.” He sounds better.

     “Okay?” I ask.

“When are you coming?” he says.

04.30.18

Crossword

 Crossword 

Uncle Albert gave me a crossword puzzle book for my birthday. It was labeled “medium to difficult.” “I hear these are a good way to pass the time,” he said.

     “Do you do them?” I said.

     “Never have. They’ve always seemed to me rather a low-brow endeavor,” he said.

     “Oh.”

     “But a good way to pass the time,” he said. “Or at least, so I’ve been told.”

     “Oh, I said.”

I’ve never done crossword puzzles either but not because I thought they were low-brow. They just didn’t look interesting. Why would you put words someone else gave you into a grid rather than write words of your own into a sentence, a paragraph, a story of some sort?

     But I thought I’d give it a try. I have time to pass. And I suspected Uncle Albert would ask what I thought about the book, as if I could write a review of it.

I have been trying to do a puzzle every two days. I go as far as I can the first day, and I try to finish the second. I don’t look anything up the first day. I use a search engine the second. I am learning all kinds of things but nothing yet of any value.

     Just this morning I learned that “K.C. Royals, e.g.” are alers, though that doesn’t mean beer-drinkers. I learned “What manslaughter lacks” is intent, though I probably should have known that. And I learned there is a Scandinavian language called sami. I did look that up, after the fact. The Sami are a Finno-Ugric people inhabiting Sápmi across a large part of the north of Norway, Sweden, and Finland. They’re what used to be called Lapps, but that’s become a derogatory term for some reason. Their language belongs to the same family as Finnish, Hungarian, and Estonian, and 35 others, including Votic, Livonian, Mansi, Mordvinic, and Urdmurt. These are languages, apparently, that are beautiful to listen to but in which no one understands anyone else.

     In the latter aspect, they differ, then, little, it seems to me anyway, from English, French, German, Russian, or Urdu.

 
04.27.18

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     In honor of her birth in Spitalfields 259 years ago, the Unmannerly Manor corrections team has offered these emendations to the introductory essay on Mary Wollstonecraft in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Seventh Edition, Volume 2.

Hypsipyle

 Hypsipyle

Oinoie at the 1964 Pelopponesian Jazz Festival

August 1365, 2014

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 the Neo Encyc. featured in The Ambiguities, see 08.33.14; 08.59.14; 08.1023.14; 08.1031.14; and 08.1137.14. 

Hypsipyle [Gk. ‘Ypsipu&lh). Stinky queen of Lemnos. The unfortunate smell came about this way. Ever on the alert for an occasion to take offense, Aphrodite (’Afrodi&th) decided that the women of Lemnos were neglecting her shrines and cursed them with smelling like goats, and not the goats the men of Lemnos were used to but alien goats, meat-eating goats. So the men of Lemnos left their wives and mistresses and took up with women imported from Thrace. Ever alert to take offense themselves (and not without reason), the women of the island declared revenge and, in one night, killed all the men. Except for Hypsipyle’s father, Thoas (Qo&av), whom she secretly tied to an oarless boat and set adrift in the Aegean Sea. (He would come to the island of Oinoie and there consort with a sea-nymph (also Oinoie, Gk. ’Oino&h), who smelled of gardenias. (According to Spiff & Randall’s Dictionary of Greek and Babylonian Amorous Biography, 1957, gardenia flava, which, they note was Sigmund Freud’s favorite flower (according to a remark he made to the Imagist poet, H.D.)) Long enough after the androcide that the carnivorous goat smell had pretty much worn off the women of Lemnos, Jason and his Argonauts arrived at that island on their way to Colchis. There may have been a little (of the smell left) but that didn’t matter to the sailors who were as horny as puffins. The women were at least as eager (according to Apollonius), and both sexes had staying power. The Argonauts remained on Lemnos for two summers and two winters, during which time “they had extensive relations with the island’s women.” And, Jason “consorted often with Hypsipyle and swore eternal fidelity to her.” (Ian & Nai Bullfinch, A Short History of Lemnos, 1936).  Then, the twins came (Euneus and Nebrophonius). Jason sailed. The Lemnian women, not only alert to take offense but sturdy to nurture it, drove the father-saving Hypsipyle off the island. She and the twins were taken by pirates and sold to Lycurgus, King of Nemea after which all but Nebrophonius, “the father of Peloponnesian Jazz,” drifted into the mists of Oblivion (Lh&qh)).

04.24.17

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  Gaspar Stephens teaches “Western Thought” at St. James - English University in Santo Domingo.

Sunday to Sunday

 Sunday to Sunday 

Last.

“You’ve heard me talk about Gaspar Stephens.” I was sitting in Nils Sundstrøm’s tiny kitchen.

Nils Sundstrøm’s dish towel

     “No, I don’t think I have.”

     “He teaches ‘Western Thought’ at St. James - English University in Santo Domingo.”

     “Oh, that Gaspar Stephens.” Nils was being sarcastic.

     “Well, he’s a good guy,” I said. I knew I sounded defensive. Then, I was trying to decide whether to press on with it: Gaspar had emailed me about Axel and Nils. (The story begins here; Gaspar’s email is here.) It didn’t take long.

     I said, “Never mind.” Then, “What have you been reading?” - just to change the subject.

     “Adam Bede,” he said, “Or the Parable of the Older Brother’s Revenge.”

     “Oh,” I said, but I didn’t mean it.

     “The good brother steals the younger’s party,” he said.

     “Oh,” I said again.

This.

 Today’s lesson from the Gospel. Jesus sneaks one in on too-pleased-with-himself John and his too-pleased-with-themselves readers: “I am the good shepherd,” Jesus tells his disciples. “And you are my sheep.” They know that, they say. “But I have other sheep, not of his fold. I must bring them in as well, and maybe they will listen to me.” [John 10:14-16, TRV]

04.22.18

Here, O sinner, is thy sting.

 Here, O sinner, is thy sting. 

from Jon Bill Swiftmahr’s* commentary on Revelation (in the Incoherent series, published by Rantrage Press, 2014, p. 106) –

 

Here, O sinner, is thy sting.

 IX. The fifth angel blew his horn, and I saw a star falling, falling from heaven to earth, and the star was holding the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit in its hand.  2 And it unlocked and opened the door to the shaft of the bottomless pit, and from the open door came smoke as from the stacks of the chimneys of the filthiest factories, so thick that the air became like pea-soup fog and the sun was like in eclipse.  3 And out of the smoke came locusts swarming the earth, but they were like scorpions -  4 they didn’t gobble up the grass or any tree, or anything green; they bit with their tails any of humankind that did not have the mark of God on their foreheads.     

     5 They tortured them for five months, but they weren’t to kill them; they were to torture - as a scorpion does, when it stings,  6 so that in those days men will seek death, but they won’t find it; they will long - they will yearn, ache - to die, but death will run the other way.

     7 The locusts were like horses dressed for battle; on their heads were what looked like crowns of gold, but their faces were like human faces,  8 their hair like women’s hair, their teeth like lions’ teeth;  9 they had scales like plates of iron, and the noise of their wings was like the noise of countless horse-chariots galloping into battle.  10 They had tails like scorpions, and scorpion stingers in their tails, and their power to torture men was in those tails.
    11 They have as their Caesar the angel of the bottomless pit whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon and in Greek Apollyon.
 

12 And that’s the first “woe”; there are still more to come.

 Notes

  ix. 1.  “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” (Lk 10:18) In Hebrew/Jewish adaptations of the Canaanite myth in which the Day Star, Ashtar, tries to replace Baal and is exiled to earth when he fails - there to reign as “god of it all,” a whole order of angels fall from heaven to corrupt the earth by teaching human beings how to write, for example. But good angels defeat the bad, round them up, and lock them in the bottomless pit. See I Enoch 6 - 10.

       2.  “And the smoke went up like the smoke from a kiln.” (Ex 19:18).

       5.  The life-span of a locust is about five months.

       6.  “Why is light given to one in misery - that longs for death, but death does not come. (Job 3:20). “They shall prefer death to life, the remnant of this evil tribe.” (Jer. 8:3)

      9.  The Italian for locust is cavaletta, “little horse,” German slang Heupferd, “hay horse.”

     10.  God does not put sinners out of their misery; the idea, according to Patmos John, is to keep them in it. Let them wish to die, but keep them alive and suffering.

     11.  See - and read! - Dawn Powell’s wonderful novel, The Locusts Have No King. “The locusts have no king, yet they march in file.” (Prov. 30:27). Here they have a king, and they swarm.

Commentary

The sun comes up. I am squinting into it. As yet, I see nothing, but Apollyon Abaddon is fizzing up out of a crack in earth and ocean, from New Babylonia into the Lower Sea, the First Horse and Rider in one beast with the sting of a scorpion in its tail. (See figure 7.)

     Here is the genius of the torture: The sting of the scorpion seldom kills - it would not kill a hardened sinner; it burns instead from the outside in and then from the inside in. It ignites; it blazes; it boils the blood and the blood boils over and scalds the skin. This is what God has in store for miserable sinners. Anyone not marked with his 888 will be stung - and stung again. And again, again, again. Again! He will dance St. Vitus’s Dance - he will walk as if he is running and run as if he is stumbling, his arms will shake, his hands will milk one another, his face will be filled with tics, his mouth will be filled with worms.

Figure 7

     This is what God has in for him from icy April to gelid November, burning, boiling and chilled to the bone and freezing all at the same time. This is what God with the help of his Lower Angels can do. This is what God with Their help is going to do. Pretend to live it up now, you rich and powerful suckers - politicos, bizzos, high culturos. Pretend; but it is only pretense! Soon enough you’ll be in hell on earth. The shit - your own shit - will hit the fan, and you’ll be coated in it, its gritty dirt, its gagging stink; it will cover you like fleas and crawl into every orifice like maggots.

     This will last for five months. But it is only the first shit to hit your fan. Selah.

     The sun climbs several degrees. Under it, between its tail and the horizon, is a thin line of smoke.

04.18.18

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

. . . and Maggie and Roz

the story begins here

 Axel and me, and Maggie and Roz 

At this point [here, bottom of the page], while I was trying to find Axel and me on my map, in come Roz and a woman she works with at the college . . . Maggie Something; and she (Maggie) points and waves, and they walk over to our table; and Maggie asks if they can join us.

     And they do.

     “I like the looks of that,” she says (Maggie), pointing at my egg-salad sandwich and Pepsi.

     Roz makes introductions, “This is Axel Sundstrøm, you remember Ted,” and orders a salad and water.

“What are you guys talking about?” Maggie asks.

     “Axel’s brother,” I say without thinking.

     “Nils, right?” Maggie says. Axel nods and starts to say something. “I read his letter in yesterday’s paper,” Maggie goes right on. “That’s what came to mind when I heard ‘Sundstrøm’ - not a common name around here for sure.

     “He’s written a few, hasn’t he, in the last couple of months, letters? - not a friend of our president,” she says.

     “No,” Axel manages to get in.

     “No!” Maggie says: “‘a sociopath’s regard for the truth wrapped up in a psychopath’s relationship with reality,’ he said yesterday, I think.”

That, it turns out, is what Axel wanted to talk to me about, Nils’ letters.

     “I can’t very well ask him not to write,” he tells Roz and Maggie. “On the other hand, his council president isn’t calling him at 6:30 in the morning growling what is his brother thinking about?

     “And my council president has a point. He says, ‘You don’t have to like the president, but all your brother does is call him names, and what good does that do?’ And he's right, as far as it goes. Nils isn't saying: ‘This is what he’s doing, the president, and this is why it’s a bad idea.’ It’s: ‘This whatever-he’s-doing can’t be a good idea because he’s a “fucking moron.”’” He actually said that - Axel; that’s why I am writing it out. I don't think he meant to say it. Then, he put air quotes around it, but he'd already said it. Then, he says,

     “He is probably. A moron, at least a moral moron. The president. But that doesn’t make name calling a sufficient argument. I mean, does it Ted? This is your area of expertise, logical fallacy.” I couldn’t tell if he meant that in practice or in theory - if it was something I knew something about or something I was always doing; but I said, “No. Argumentum ad hominem. Calling somebody an idiot doesn’t mean they’re wrong. It can’t make them wrong any more than calling them a . . .” - I started to say the eff-with-ing word myself, but I couldn't -
“. . . calling them a genius can make them right.”

     “So, what do I tell my council president?” Axel looks around the table.

“Tell him you’re not your brother’s keeper,” Maggie says.

     Roz looks at Axel, who is raising his hands to his head; and she says, reaching over and taking the hand closest to her, “Of course, you can’t say that. We know that.

Trump’s policies on the Middle East, trade, and tax cuts by m ball.

       “Say you’re not your brother’s censor. But also say - I think this is right, see if you don't agree. Say something about how hard it is to argue with someone’s ideas if they don’t have any ideas, or at least none that are clear enough to argue with, or if the quote-ideas are always changing so you don’t know that they will be the same tonight they were this afternoon - and they’re liable to lie tonight about what they said this morning. Ask what someone does when it’s clear something is wrong but they can’t point it out because it isn't there or it's always moving - they have to point at something, don’t they? That’s why people attack the president, or his character: it may be erratic, but it’s consistent in the way his policies are not.

     “Does that make sense?” Roz says.

04.15.18

Axel and me

continued from here

 Axel and me 

the usual

We were back where we always are, eating what we always order as if we had no imagination, or one overwhelming desire: to play it safe! Not even “as if”: I’m liable to go mad if I don’t keep to a prescribed routine, and Axel is a Lutheran. So, I was having my usual egg-salad sandwich and Pepsi, and he was having a tuna-salad and 7-Up (because you want a light soft drink with fish).

     We’d each taken a couple of bites; we were sipping at our drinks, Axel through a straw; I don’t like straws.

     “If I were a man of leisure like you,” he said, “I might be having a beer.” I didn’t know what to say to that, so I put my Pepsi down and took another bite, a small bite, of sandwich. Axel said,

     “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I know you’re not a man of leisure by choice. Sorry.”

     I didn’t know what to say to that either, but I didn’t want him to feel bad, so I said it was okay.

I don’t know that it is, though - it doesn’t feel okay. On the other hand, I don’t know that it isn’t: whatever I feel, it’s not likely at this point that I’ll go back to work - ever; it’s not likely I could find work if I could work.

     Normally, I just don’t think about it because if I do I only start worrying about money, though then Roz says, “Don’t.

     “We’re fine,” she says. Then, I say, “Well, some of us are.” It’s supposed to be a joke. It is a joke - it’s just not entirely funny.

“What’s up?” I said to Axel.

     “Brother Nils,” he said.

     “I thought he moved out,” I said. That was supposed to be a joke, too; but it wasn’t entirely funny either.

     Axel waved it off with a weak smile to let me know he knew I was kidding.

He’s a good friend. For all his oddments, he’s a likable guy. And he tries very hard to like me.

_{* * * * *}

Axel’s brother moved in with him at the end of last year. He wasn’t exactly on the run, but he’d left wherever he was and he didn’t seem to know exactly where he was going. He knew Axel had read Genesis 4, not once but several times, and so Axel must know the right answer to Cain’s question. The question may have been rhetorical - or intended to be - but the answer was not.

     So Axel kept his brother for a little more than three months. Then, a couple of weeks ago, Nils found a place of his own, over a different downtown storefront.

I don’t know what he does for money, Nils, any more than I know what Roz and I do; but I guess he has some sort of severance. Uncle Albert said something like that once anyway.

I need to stop here because this is getting all too long and involved. It’s not because I have become confused: I know where I am going with this, nor have I forgotten how to get there. But it wouldn’t hurt to look at a map.

(click to enlarge)

04.14.18

Cerea dilata

 Cerea dilata 

I was meeting Axel for coffee, so I was drinking only a quarter of a cup for breakfast: I’m still on - I’m still restricted to - one cup in the morning and one in the afternoon. Sometimes, I admit, the cups are bigger than they are at other times, when they are smaller.

     But then, the phone rang. I read the dial. “Hi, Axel,” I said. “Are we off?”

     “Can we do lunch - even early - instead?” he asked . . . his voice on the phone asked.

     “That would actually be better,” I said. I was having trouble getting dressed.

I didn’t say that, that I was having trouble getting dressed.

     This is a relatively new phenomenon. I get up as usual. I pull on my sweatshirt and put on my slippers. I go downstairs because Roz is in the bathroom upstairs. I make my cup of coffee and toast an English muffin and sit down at the kitchen table.

     I wait.

The kitchen phone, the color of Roz’s robe, and Axel’s voice.

Roz comes down in her long, green robe, falling from her throat to just above the floor. Her feet are bare; her hair is wet. She looks older and lovelier without make-up.

     She pours her coffee and puts it on the table. She asks me if I want another muffin. I say “no.” She asks me if I have taken my medicine. I say “no.” She puts her muffin in the toaster. She gets orange juice out of the refrigerator and pours three fingers into a rocks glass. She puts it in front of me.

     She picks up her coffee and stands holding it between her hands, leaning on her hip against the counter. The muffin pops up. She puts her coffee back on the table, butters and jams the bread, and sits down opposite me. I am about to cry as at a ballet, the music and the movement are so unworldly perfect. And that’s when I realize - just before she is going to say, “Your medicine?” - that I am going to have trouble getting dressed today.

     And the phone rings.

to be continued

04.12.18

Snow job

 Snow job 

April 9 and it was snowing in the Valley of Virginia. What hath God wrought - or failed to prevent us from working?*

     But the roads were clear, so I went to see Dr. Feight. Uncle Albert stayed home.

“No one can hate snow more than I do,” I was telling him (Dr. Feight). “Hmmm,” he said.” “Although,” I went on, “anyone can see there’s nothing good about it.

     “It is cold: Wouldn’t we rather be warm - at least, comfortable? It is wet: Don’t we prefer to be dry? - who wants to walk around damp? It looks, smells, and tastes of death. That is, it has no taste, no smell, and no color. It covers color and smell - and taste for that matter.

     “Take the simple matter of the ground. It covers the green of the grass, the red or brown or black of the earth. It covers the smells of the grass and the ground. You can’t taste the world around you if you cannot smell it,” I said.

I said: “I don’t know what the cause is, madness, creeping dementia, the medicines I’m taking, but I can’t concentrate on anything for more than a few seconds. I can’t follow an argument - even a football match - because it continues while I do not.” “Hmmm,” Dr. Feight said.

There was a long silence. Then, I asked Dr. Feight if he had ever read Adam Bede. “Why?” he asked.

“Do you want to think about changing any of your medications?” Dr. Feight asked me at the end of the hour.

     “Why?” I said.

04.10.18

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 * “Wrought” is the archaic past tense of “to work.” See here.