Magic gardens

The story of our travels begins here.

There are gardens behind the cathedral.

 Magic gardens 

Behind the cathedral, we have been told, are gardens. And they are worth seeing, we have also been told. But they are difficult to access. “I am not sure myself,” Tural, our hotel clerk, says.

     “Have you never been?” Roz asks.

     “Only once," he admits,“when I was child.”

     “How did you get in then?”

     He was not sure. “My uncle take me,” he says. He thinks he, his uncle, must have known the gardener. Certainly not the priest. His uncle would not have known the priest.

     They are very beautiful, though, the cathedral gardens, many pink flowers, smelling like ripe plums, iridescent birds and butterflies with transparent wings. We should go.

Roz assures him we will.

     “I don't see how,” I tell her back in our room.

     “You will talk to the priest,” she says.“I understand he speaks French. You speak French.”

     “Not very well,” I say.“And what makes you think he speaks French?”

     She doesn't know for sure, but she's reasonably he does.“All priests speak French, don't they?" she says.“It's worth a try, at least" she says.“For iridescent birds and butterflies with transparent wings?"

07.28.18

Sunday once more.

The story of our travels begins here.

 Sunday once more. 

The city cathedral isn’t at all grand, only baroque.

     We went to the early morning mass and stood at the back. I didn’t understand a word. But I could follow the order of things.

     A bell sounded when God arrived, so he could not slip into the elements unnoticed. Rather the large wafer blossomed when the fat priest held it up; the wine gurgled, a healing whirlpool in the chalice.

     Six old women noticed nothing out of the ordinary, hobbled forward to receive the body and the blood. Staggered back to their chairs. And limped out, when the mass was over.

     We waited until the nave was empty. When we came out, the rain had stopped but was beginning again.

07.23.18

Bra & Girll

 Bra & Girll 

[The story of Roz and Ted’s excellent tramp steamer adventure begins here.]

Tural has suggested “Bra & Girll, if we want to venture out: “American food,” he said, as well as “little sheep and little cow.” Also, his friend Ratul “speak English. Help you.”

     We begin language lessons tomorrow with a woman, “very good,” Tural says. First lesson, I think: learn to read the menu, point and pronounce. And learn: “What is this?” - and if it’s okay to point at all. 

Our hotel room smells of pine, the hotel lobby of lavender. The restaurant does smell like American food, burgers and fries and bleach.

All the tables in “Bra & Girll” are for six. Ratul seats us with a young couple, both wearing eye-shadow. The young man speaks a little English. Later, a pair of men in gray suits joins us. They nod, offer wisps of smiles; but they talk only to each other - in German.

The boy says, “I Nemet. This Zayna.” Both are “student," accent on the last syllable. He studies “fō·tō·gra·fee.” She studies “li·teh·ra·tour.” (Also accented on their last syllables.) She “very smart. Me, not so much.” He tells her apparently, what he has said, for she shrugs, then laughs - almost crows, like a small rooster just finding his voice.

     But he gives us a card for a show of his pictures. “Begin next week,” he says. He pauses, begins to count, “Wan, tew, Wed-nes-day,” he says. “You here?” I look at Roz. She shrugs. I nod. He takes the card back and draws a map on the back, very tidy.

     “We here.” He marks it with a tiny x. “Fotos [long-s] here,” a tiny perfect circle.

     “See you,” he says when they leave. She waves.

We leave next, nodding to the German speakers. Their suits aren’t just gray, they are identical; they are wearing identical white shirts but different ties. We leave them arguing in one voice about den Scheisskopf, Dummkopf, Leerkopf. I think they are talking about our president, but Roz thinks a mutual friend - with an identical gray suit and shirt but a different tie.

The street smells of the sea - and ash.

07.20.18

What I say!

 What I say! 

“Do not hear what I am saying. Hear 

what I say I meant to say tomorrow.”

We come down to breakfast, stop to leave our room key with gate-toothed Tural.

     “What your president say yesterday,” he reports, “he not say today.”

     I wait.

     “He is Alice in Wonderland, Dumpty-Humpty.” Tural turns away to put the key in its slot. “Trumpty-Humpty,” he says as if it has just occurred to him. He turns back. Broad smile. The gap between his teeth seems to widen.

After breakfast, we take a short walk. We pick up our key. In the room, we sit on the ends of our beds.

     “What now?” Roz says.

07.18.18

Tramp steamer

 Tramp steamer 

Roz is standing at the end of the bed. She takes a sip from her cup of coffee.

    “Where is mine?” I ask.

    “This is yours,” she says. “Sorry. “ Then, “I guess now is the time.”

     “For what?”

     “You haven't been listening to the news?”

     “No.”

     ”Trump. Russia.”

     “Worse than expected?”

     “Than imagined. Could be imagined.”

     “Shit.”

     “I wish we could,” Roz said.

I keep talking about leaving the country before it’s too late. As if there were still tramp steamers that took on passengers to wherever the steamers were going, and they took the better part of a month - or more - to get there. “A month at sea” sounds delicious in my talking, like biting into an apple picked up off the ground in early October: you saw it as you were walking toward the tree - you watched the apple hop off and parachute lightly into the long thick orchard grass.

     Leaving by steamer and ending up somewhere where the dock workers care for your troubles as little as you have cared for theirs, and the taxi driver, and the desk clerk at the hotel and the servers in the restaurant: No one cares for your troubles any more than you previously cared for theirs.

The desk clerk will speak enough English to ask through the gap between his front teeth, “American?”

     “Yes.”

     “Your president is idiot.”

     “Yes, he is.”

     “‘Dangerous’ do you say that?”

     “Yes, I do.”
     “Welcome to Kristovia.”

He will laugh, and in a week or so you will become friends. At least, he will want to help you find a place to rent - “of your own,” he will say - and someone to teach you the language.

“I am sorry,” Roz says. “And I don’t mean about the coffee. But I can’t quit working yet.” In truth, she doesn’t want to quit working, ever.

     Also, she thinks things will get better, they have to. I think, like my new friend Tural, that our tolerance for dangerous idiots is much, much too high.

07.17.18

Cat Picture

 Cat Picture 

I apologize to my readers for how little I have written these last several weeks. It’s a matter of confidence, or lack of it. Or amazement. I am amazed that those that have so little of interest - and nothing new to say - write so authoritatively as if we must be interested: this is new, original.*

This is a promise: I will write nothing until I have something say, however frivolous. In the meantime, cat picture**:

07.16.18

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  * I’m speaking, of course, of the usual P’s: pundits, preachers, and politicians.

**  Magpie-tiger, ink & water colors, late Yi dynasty; collection of Emille museum. Photo by J. LaViolette Dwyer

Umtiti

 Umtiti 

Eleven o’clock: The phone rings. Maggie Paul’s voice: “Hi.”

     “Hi.”

     “Your uncle - or Albert - says the game begins at one.”

     “I thought two.”

     “Well, he says ‘one,’ and I’m to bring him by at noon for lunch. Is that okay?
     “I guess,” I say. Then, because what else can I say? “Sure. Tell him though that it’s either cereal or PB&J here.”

     “Wait a minute.” Murmuring. Then: “He says, ‘Sandwich is fine. Do you have milk?’”

     “Yes,” I say. “Of course” - I wasn’t going to eat cereal dry.

I’m looking out the front window so I can help him up the steps if he needs it. There are five steps up from the sidewalk to our walk and then another five from the walk to the front porch. I open the front door, step out on the porch. But he waves me off. He has the handrail in one hand and Maggie in the other.

     Does she want to stay for sandwiches? I ask Maggie. She says, “Maybe.” She thinks a tick. “No. Better not,” she says.

     “Call when I’m to pick him up,” she says.

We eat in the kitchen. The game does start at two.

     “We’ll turn it on about a quarter till,” Uncle Albert says. “Okay?” he adds uncharacteristically.

     “What do you want to hear?” I ask when he’s in his chair in front of the TV. “Through your sleeping ears?”

     “Miles?” he says.

     “Sure.”

     He falls asleep just as “Will o’ the Wisp" begins, as the percussion clicks in.

Emperor Joseph II

A back-and-forth first half, first Belgium dangerous controlling, then France more dangerous on the break. But there’s no scoring until the 51st minute when Umtiti gets in front of Marouane Fellaini for a header from an Antoine Griezmann corner. No one on the post. Kerplunk.

     And it’s a frustrating jump, waddle, wiggle, and limp to the end for poor Belgium. It was another pretty ugly edition of “the beautiful game.”

Uncle Albert celebrated my groan - of real pain!

     I am not sure why I have rooted for Belgium throughout this long, often messy slog, but I have. And against France, again I don’t know; but I will have to watch them in the final.

     It is, I decide, as Emperor Joseph says it is, over and over again in Amadeus, the fool, who, however, understands life better than Socrates does philosophy: “There it is!”

01.04.18

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*By Anton von Maron, 1775 - Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien

Ruthful

 Ruthful 

from Cholérique Misandro’s commentary on Ruth, Chapter 3 (in the Incoherent series, published by Rantrage Press, 2019, p. 8) —

III. 4 “Watch where he goes to sleep. Go there. He’ll be lying on his side,” Naomi said. “Open his cloak, and lie next to him on your side with your backside to his front. Say you are cold. Ask, ‘Aren’t you cold?’ He will tell you what to do.” (“As if you didn’t know,” Naomi thought.)

Commentary

As always in this commentary, we are interested in what goes unsaid. The stories of women are incomplete unless women fill in the blanks. The blanks include the usual patriarchal innuendos,^a but they may also include the contributions that strong women can make to the few stories of strong women we find in the Hebrew Scriptures.^b A more literal translation might read, “Then, when he goes to lie down, make sure you know where it is; then, go and uncover his feet and lie down at them; he will tell you what to do.” But such a translation ignores, among other things, that Naomi has other (much more poetic) feet in mind; it also ignores that, however far Ruth has come with her, her mother-in-law hasn’t forgotten that she’s a Moabite; nor has she forgotten where Moabite women come from.

     The story is found in Genesis 20. Lot and his family, his wife and daughters, have been allowed to flee from Sodom before God rains fire and brimstone upon it and all of its inhabitants are consumed, the whole city going up like smoke from a factory furnace. And flee they do; only Lot’s wife looks back and for no reason, except that he told none of them to look back, the Lord (Yahweh) turns her into a pillar of salt.

     Father and daughter flee first to the village of Zoar,^c but they go on from there to live in the hills away from the town, the three in a cave. It is the elder that says to her sister, “Before it’s too late . . . . He’s getting old; there is no other man to have sex with us so we may have sons to berate when they are small and when they grow up to protect us. So, let’s get him drunk, and we can sleep with him - to put it euphemistically - and maybe we’ll get pregnant.” It is the younger that agrees.

     So they get their father drunk, and the elder gets into his bed and climbs under his cloak, and - willy-nilly, for he seems to know nothing about it the next morning - she “lies” with him. The same thing the next night. The elder says to the younger, “Your turn”; and the younger agrees. And she gets into his bed and under his cloak, and - willy-nilly, for he seems to know nothing about it the next morning - he gets into her.

     And both ces poufliasses^d (in the patriarchal narrative) get pregnant. The son of the younger was called Ben-ammi, the forefather of the Ammonites “to this day”; the son of the older was called Moab - the ancestor of all the Moabites from that day to the day Naomi sends Ruth out to climb into the make-shift bed and under the cloak of Boaz. However many the generations, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

     We’ll see this when we get to verses 8 and 9, where Ruth carries out Naomi’s plan by going her one better. She doesn’t wait for Boaz to tell her what to do; she tells him what to do.

Notes

     ^a Always only innuendo because they cannot tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, especially if they miss so much of it drunk or asleep.

     ^b The advice women give to women in the stories and the ability of women to read between the lines of stories written by men.

     ^c The Hebrew means something very like “Tiny Town.”

     ^d  Hebrew: שלטת אשת־זונת. See Ezekiel 16:30.

    

07.05.18

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  Links to passages exegeted in this and other volumes from Rantrage Press’s Incoherent Series, may be found here.

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A Sunday in the country

 A Sunday in the country 

Uncle Albert isn’t going to church during the World Cup, at least now that it is into the knock-out stages. He can’t follow more than one religion at a time, he says.

     So Roz went to church with me this Sunday. She’d heard somewhere that the narrow man was preaching at one of the Presbyterian churches out in the county. “He must have retired,” she said. “How long since we heard him?”

     “A couple of years at least,” I said.

     “And you like him, too,” she said. “Don’t you?”

     I had never asked her - or I don’t remember asking - so I did: “The question is, ‘Why do you like him?’”

     “I like his voice,” Roz said. “He never plays tricks with it.”

“Maybe he has only one trick,” I thought, meaning his earnestness; but I didn’t say it.

The church was a ways away, up US-11 to a crossroads with a gas station on the northeast corner and then along two country roads, to the east and the south again, crossing a railway line and then alongside it.

     It was small, smelling of dust, and hot. Windows were open on both sides, but there was no breeze. The one ceiling fan way to the back was too high to be of any help even if it could have turned faster. As it was, the blades moved so slowly you could count them: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 . . . 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

The Psalm was 130; the Old Testament lesson was a knot of confusion from Lamentations about how the God that “does not willingly afflict or grieve anyone” may nevertheless afflict and grieve you. In the Epistle, Paul is trying to explain to the Corinthians that while “the one that has much doesn’t have too much and the one who has little doesn’t have too little,” they should nevertheless give away some of the much they have to another of Paul’s projects that has even less than they - or needs what they have more.

     We sang three hymns, “Be Still, My Soul” (the Lord is on your side); “Softly and Tenderly” (Jesus is calling); and “Savior, Like a Shepherd, Lead Us” (much we need thy tender care). We didn’t sing well; there were only 18 in the congregation, maybe three, Including Roz, with decent voices. The rest of us pushed the edges of the tune further and further away from the middle; it was always in danger of overflowing its banks.

     The narrow man does have a pleasant, clear speaking voice, but he doesn’t sing at all well.

He preached from the gospel lesson, the raising of Jairus’ daughter, which is interrupted by the story of the woman with the flow of blood, which, after a dozen years and more than a dozen doctors, is staunched when she touches Jesus’ cloak.

     The narrow man concentrated on the interruption, especially Jesus’ desire to know who the woman was. They have a pretty lengthy conversation by Gospel standards.

I lost track at some point - I may have dozed in the heat. So, I had to ask Roz on the way home, “What was the point?”

     She said, “That Jesus stopped. His disciples want to push him forward - Jairus is an important man - but he wants to hear what the woman wants to say, her whole story.”

     “Oh?” I said. Roz shrugged. What did “Oh?” mean? Did I mean I didn’t get it? “Well, maybe I did get it,” I said,“but then, maybe I didn't get it at all.” I wasn't sure. I'm never quite sure.

We stopped for lunch at a hole-in-the-wall barbecue place just outside of town - everything plastic: the tables, the chairs, the flatware, red Coca-Cola glasses, the baskets the sandwiches and damp fries came in.

07.03.18

Knock-out Stage

 Knock-out Stage 

Uncle Albert says he’s hired a “car service.” He means he’s paying Maggie Paul (See here.), one of the young women he lives with, $15/day to bring him here half an hour before the day’s first knock-out stage game. She picks him up when the second game is over.
     He doesn't say anything about hiring a “caterer” because he's not paying me $5 to fix his lunch. But he's not paying me either to tell him what he's missed when he mishears one of the announcers or analysts. Finally, he's not paying me to listen to his analysis.

Sergio Agüero

     It was right this (Saturday) morning, I have to admit when he said confidently that Argentina would lose if Sampaoli didn’t start Sergio Agüero, whatever Messi’s position on that was.

I’m not sure what I would have charged him for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a glass of milk, which is what I gave him. Not much of a lunch. But enough of a lunch that after he fell asleep in his chair.

     There are two long hours between games. He managed to sleep through most of one of them.

     He came to slowly. Then, he began with a matter unrelated to “football,” as he always calls it.

There are things you know you’re going to have to talk about sooner or later; still, you hope you won’t, that they won’t come up. It’s like putting off to tomorrow what you ought to - but definitely do not want to - do today. Perhaps circumstances will have so changed that your neglecting the task will turn out to have been a good thing. Perhaps what you are leaving undone will fall out of everyone’s ken. You might die in the night. Tomorrow itself might die before morning: The Apocalypse was not fiction after all. The possibilities aren’t endless, but there are a lot of them, you’re pretty sure of that.

“Do I hear rightly that you are getting letters from your dead sister?” Uncle Albert asked.

     I shrugged. He chose not to listen to it (the shrug). He looked at me as if I’d said nothing at all. So,

     “Where did you hear that?” I said.

     “Roz,” he said.

     “Oh.”

     “She’s worried about you.”

     “I know.”

“Have you told Feight about them?” Uncle Albert said.

     “About what?”

     “The letters. Don’t act like you don’t know.”

     “No,” I said. “Not yet.”

“How do you get them? - I’ve been wondering,” he said after a minute or two.

     “I guess you could say that I find them,” I said.

     “Where?”

     “Where they are.”

     “That’s it?” he sounded testy.

     “That’s it,” I said, glad if he was upset. He knew as well as I did that I wrote them, just as I wrote my letters to her. But it wasn’t the same: I composed my letters; hers I just wrote down.

“I still think,” Uncle Albert started to say, but he stopped. Then,

     “No,” he said. “Let me put it this way: Don’t you think you ought to talk to Feight?”

     “No,” I said. “I don’t.” Then: “Maybe,” I said.

07.02.18