Space saver.

Pentecoastal

email from Gaspar Stephens [dateline: San Francisco. May 19, 2018]

Pentecost. The birth of the [expletive deleted] Church. When the Holy Spirit, till May ad 33 not even a silent partner in the Trinity, a metaphor (for God’s sake), wafted in on his sticky scent and the disciples, sniffing the air, first pondered becoming bishops.

     Pentecost. On which Peter had the first inkling he could be Pope. And he came up with the “Rock” fairy tale and “the keys of the kingdom” scholium and the next day began telling it everywhere to insinuate it into the memories of people who couldn’t have been there but wished they were. Matthew’s dad, for instance.

     And contrary to folk wisdom, or by yet another “miracle,” the Rock picked up moss as it rolled down the hill, and the moss added soil and grass, and stones grew out of the stone, from which a great palace could be built, and out of the soil came a bush that bore fine clothing instead of fruit, white robe and golden slippers and tiara, that whoever put them on would become Pomposus I, the new Chief Pharisee.

     And that, Teddie, is why we go to church.*

05.20.18

_______________

 * You know how bad I am at this. But I cobbled together this illustration for a summer’s Vacation Bible School, “The Book of Acts, or How the Church Became God.”

The way it sometimes goes.

 The way it sometimes goes. 

John Wayne as Guthlac A

Then clamour was raised. The outcasts stood about the mount in hosts; shouting arose, the cry of the woeful; many spokesmen of the fiends called out, glorified in their sins: ‘Often we have seen between the seas . . . .’

(the beginning of Part IV,
R. K. Gordon’s translation)

05.18.18

Postcard from Canada

 Postcard from Canada 

When I have picked up Uncle Albert, escorted him down from his front porch and helped him into the passenger seat - and I’ve gotten into the front seat - of the car, he pulls a picture postcard out of his jacket pocket and holds it up. “This is for you,” he says, “when we are done at the doctor’s.”

     My doctor’s, not his. I am still seeing Dr. Feight twice a week, Monday’s and Thursday’s at eleven. Uncle Albert continues to accompany me, to read the magazines in the waiting room while I talk about whatever comes to mind at the time. Then, afterwards, we have lunch. Usually, I make us sandwiches, BLT’s or egg- or chicken- (or tuna-) salad or PB&J, or . . . today it’s bologna with mustard, mayo, and a slab of lettuce. We drink Pepsis or a glass of milk. Sometimes, there are store-bought cookies though not today.

I hope the postcard is from Cousin Jack, more recent than the last one Uncle Albert showed me,* new even. Instead, it’s from our trip last year,** through New York City and Ottawa, through Sudbury and the Upper Peninsula, then back.

     On the front is Cassio’s Bar BQ. On the back Uncle Albert has written in thick pencil: “The fortunate vastly underrate the importance of luck, and they force their calculations on everyone else.”

     “Especially on the least fortunate,” he says as he hands it to me.

“You make pretty good sandwiches,” he says after a few bites. “This is pretty good bologna.”

05.17.18

_______________

  * See here.

 ** And here and the post following for Sudbury. Follow the links to read the entire story.

Water, water, everywhere . . .

 Water, water, everywhere . . . 

I have a new regimen. Roz read somewhere that we can get dehydrated - we do get dehydrated - overnight. So, now, when we get into bed, we each put a full glass of water on our bedside table, and before we get out, we drink it. Mine sloshes uncomfortably around my stomach when I throw my feet over the edge of the mattress and put them on the floor. It sloshes around as I pull on a pair of pants and a t-shirt and slide my feet into my slippers. It sloshes around as I walk down the stairs to pour my morning one-cup of coffee. Which has lost its savor because there’s already too much sloshing around in my stomach, as in a bathtub without a drain.

     I eat a slice of toast, hoping to sop some of the wobbling fluid up; but it only swims around - more sinking than swimming - Sponge Island on the Bloat Sea.

 Edwin Hayes: Fishing Boats Off the Coast, in Choppy Seas, 1874

I told Dr. Feight yesterday that I was worried about Uncle Albert - he seemed “more and more out of it,” I said. “He needs to drink more,” Dr. Feight said.

05.15.18

Two definitions of "cliche"

 Two definitions of “cliché” 

The following, dated Tuesday (May 8) arrived yesterday:

Dear Ted,

     I am writing you as a way of clarifying what I’ve been thinking about. And I am writing you because you are of the few of my friends that would care about what I might be thinking. Not that I blame any of the others. Let’s face it, I don’t have a reputation as a thinker.

     Moreover, I am thinking about what next in my life? - a matter of even less interest to others than almost anything else. This comes up because I don’t think I’m going to make a living as a doodler. I’m better at doodling than thinking for sure . . . but not much.

     It’s true I don’t have to do anything. I don’t have to make a living. My blessed parents will keep me until they die. Then, they will leave me enough to keep me until I die. Then, there will be some left over for my “heirs and assigns” if I have any. (I’m not thinking I will.)

     But that brings me to my point if I have one, at least my point of departure. I’ve met a woman. We’ve been seeing each other for a while. We’ve decided we’re going to see each other for a while longer. She may even move into “the commune”* though she may not. Alvah.

     She bartends three or four nights a week (then sleeps over here because it’s a lot nearer than her place). And she makes jewelry out of junk, stuff left lying about on the street. And she sells it.

     That’s the point of departure. Or those are. I am giving up doodling, at least as a livelihood, and I am taking on Alvah without having a livelihood. So, I keep hearing in my head how one door is closing but then another is opening up. It’s a cliché, I know. But is it a cliché because it’s true? That’s one way a saying becomes a cliché. It’s repeated over and over and over again because it applies. But another way is that it’s repeated over and over again because people wish it did.

The letter ends here, midway down a page. So, this morning I called Mel.

     “I have a letter from you,” I said.

     “Yeah.”

     “It just . . . stops.”

     “Yeah,” he said again. “Sorry.”

     “So,” I began without knowing what I was going to say.

     “Yeah,” he said a third time. “I was just done.”

     “You don’t seem done,” I said.

     “Well,” he said, “I probably should have signed it ‘Love, Mel,’ or something.”

05.11.18

_______________

 * See here, then follow the continuation links.

Next slide, please.

 Next slide, please. 

I went to church alone this morning, for when I went to pick up Uncle Albert, he wasn’t ready: he’d forgotten it was Sunday. But I should go on anyway - to represent us, he said. So, I went, saying I’d come back to check on him, even if, as he also said, I didn’t need to.

     So, I went - though I thought of getting coffee instead. The church thing has been for several weeks now more wearing than a “blessing in and of the spirit.” Still,I went to church  - though our rector, the former Miss Virginia, is on vacation for all of May, and her stand-in today was the so-ancient-as-to-be-almost-invisible, the almost-inaudible Father Corbett, who, as I expected, preached about the great mumbledy-squeak-mumbledy mysteries of God’s gracious mumbledy-squeak-mumbledy-amen. 

I went to church alone this Sunday, for when I went to pick up Uncle Albert, he wasn’t ready: he’d forgotten it was Sunday.

Next slide, please.

     When I got back to check on him, he was up, sitting at the kitchen table. He was dressed for church and wanted to know what time it was.

     “Almost nine o’clock,” I said.

05.06.18

h ball by m ball

 h ball by m ball 

Seepferdchen und Flugfische

Hugo Ball

tressli bessli nebogen leila
flusch kata
ballubasch
zack hitti zopp

zack hitti zopp
hitti betzli betzli
prusch kata
ballubasch
fasch kitti bimm

zitti kitillabi billabi billabi
zikko di zakkobam
fisch kitti bisch

bumbalo bumbalo bumbalo bambo
zitti kitillabi
zack hitti zopp

treßli beßli nebogen grügrü
blaulala violabimini bisch
violabimini bimini bimini
fusch kata
ballubasch
zick hiti zopp

05.03.18

Oye como va . . .

 Oye como va . . . 

Who am I to criticize Pope’s metrics? Yet, here am I to do so. He’s so orderly when he calls for disorder, you can’t believe he believes what he's saying. This is from the “Epistle to Miss Blunt” (sent with the works of Voiture):

Let the strict life of graver mortals be

A long, exact, and serious comedy;

In every scene some moral let it teach,

And if it can, at once both please and preach.

Let mine an innocent gay farce appear,                                  5

And more diverting still than regular,

Have humour, wit, a native ease and grace,

Though not too strictly bound to time and place . . . .

Who am I to mess with perfection? But perfection is not what’s wanted here. That damn “still” in the sixth line: why is it there but to make the line regular? And the line is about diversion as opposed to regularity. Rip it (“still”) out. And the “too” that begins the final line: why temper the farce by binding it at all? Rip it out. While you’re at it, rip out “though” and “strictly.”

     One more, “wit” in the next-to-the-last line: “Grace” in the same line shouldn’t mean “gracefulness” (the kind of grace that wit can provide); it should mean “forgiveness”(as in God's grace). Let my innocent, gay, farcical life be full of humor, a natural ease, and forgiveness. Forgiveness brings the line full circle, for it is a virtue of humour. Of wit? Is it forgiving? Not so much.

     So, here’s what we have. Here’s my appeal (if not Pope’s). (Wait, still one more: rip out “and,” also in line 6.)

Let the strict life of graver mortals be

A long, exact, and serious comedy;

In every scene some moral let it teach,

And if it can, at once both please and preach.

Let mine an innocent gay farce appear,                                  5

More diverting than regular,

Have humour, a native ease and grace,

Not bound to time, or place . . . .

This morning at seven o’clock, the phone rings. It’s Uncle Albert, caller-id says. I take a breath.

     “Hello.”

     “Can you take me to the doctor tomorrow afternoon?”

     “Sure. Why?”

     “I have an appointment.”

05.01.18