Dangling conversation

 Dangling conversation 

Our rector, Susan,* was away again this past Sunday, leaving the visiting rector to introduce himself. And he was one of those that has to tell a congregation that doesn’t know him all about himself: He told where he came from and how he was formed in the faith. He told us where he’d gone next and what he’d done. He told us how he had come to be with us this morning and how much that meant to him (which surely he overstated). He stood before the table, filling his wheat-colored alb, holding the broad red book with the gospel lessons in their liturgical order; his Christ-the-King stole fell through neat loops in his cincture. His socks matched his stole, Uncle Albert said later. He’d noticed, kneeling at the rail, also that the guest rector's shoes looked expensive and new.

     He’d had a very interesting life, our guest rector wanted us to know, especially full of good deeds, he implied (without saying outright) as many as the coins in Scrooge McDuck’s vault. Still, he needed forgiveness. As we all do.** So he segued into his sermon from Luke 23. Carrying the book with him, he walked over to the pulpit. He put the book aside; he looked down and up again. And,

     There [he gestured] was Jesus on the cross, remarkably calm, forgiving all and sundry. He forgave those that had conspired and those that scoffed. He forgave those that were gaping and those that mocked, providing wine unfit to drink. All would be forgiven because none knew what he had done or was doing. And one of the thieves hanging with him - he was also forgiven because he seemed to have put his priorities in order.

At least, that’s Luke’s take. And the rector could go no further. (He paused at the “mystery.”) 
     But Jesus? - what he is thinking is not so clear. We can’t imagine how he can be so calm - and chatty - as if he found himself not hanging on a cross but leaning back on the couch in someone’s living room, Peter’s or Mary and Martha’s; the disciples have gathered around, and he’s telling them the parable of the hanged man.

     And when someone asks the point, Jesus shrugs. And for a moment, all wonder if this parable has one.

     But it must, they decide: Every parable must have its point. And they will figure it out. Soon enough they will be in charge, and they will figure it out.

11.26.19

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 * (The former Miss Virginia.) See here.

** If he does, how much more the rest of us, purblind schlubs (purdeaf and purdumb) in the hands of a God that has every right to be angry?

Pathetic fallacy

 Pathetic fallacy* 

We drove out to Kansas in June.* We drove back in January, the sky spitting snow, the roads greasy and wet. We drove out through one bright day and one clear night. We came back - at least through Missouri and half of Kentucky, two leaden days, hovering between dawn and dusk with no noon in between. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

     To extend the metaphor: We picked up Nashe in Topeka midmorning the first day. He wedged his bag in the trunk, saw my golf clubs again, and asked how I planned to keep my hands warm.

     We spent the first frigid night in Columbia. We went back to The Turtle and met Sommers there to drink bland Midwestern beer and eat bland Midwestern bar-and-grill food. Nashe and Sommers got into an argument about a hearing going on in Congress. Sommers accused Republicans of attacking one witness, argumentum ad hominem: “Just because he’s short and wears a bowtie and uses longer words when shorter would do doesn’t mean he’s not telling the truth,” Sommers said. Nashe - “for the sake of argument, and consistency!” - his voice smiling, accused Democrats of argumentum ad verecundiam: “Just because he’s a decorated war veteran with a heart-warming personal story doesn’t mean he isn’t lying,” Nashe said.

Roz in her salad days
(photo manipulated by mel ball)

     “Why isn’t that called argumentum ab homine?” Roz asked. “Do I have my Latin right?” Nashe said he thought she did.

We ended the night, pretending to be young again, sleeping any old way in Sommers’ frowsty apartment: Nashe stretched out on a dusty couch; Roz curled up in two fat chairs pushed together; I was on the floor.

     We woke up, feeling -  and smelling and looking - old, stiff as the day outside. The sky looked like shirt board. According to the map, we had 840 miles to go.

Night two, we stopped at a Quality Inn somewhere near Frankfort, KY. And on the third day, we woke up back in summer. The sun was up before we were, yellow as mustard.

11.23.19

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 * And two logical ones. 
** See here (and the three following) if you haven’t been keeping up.) For more on Roz, see here.

Bell Jars and Motor Cars

 Bell Jars and Motor Cars 

Sylvia Plath

“So. Did you finish The Bell Jar?” Dr. Feight asked before I could lie down on the couch, close my eyes, and begin my monologue, before he had sat in his chair behind my left ear and taken up his clipboard and his pen.

     This was yesterday. I hadn’t seen him on Tuesday for reasons I can’t recall. I am forgetting more and more, whether unwittingly - and unwillingly - or on purpose, I am not quite certain. Or, it could be the drugs.
     I remembered only at that moment that I had a copy of a letter from Moira in my pocket, and I took it out as I sat down. I unfolded it as I lay down. Then, I said that I had finished the novel, also that I had written my poor (dead) sister* and asked her if she had read it. I had a copy of my letter, too, I realized; and I began with that.

Dear Moira,

     I hope you don’t mind my writing you about The Bell Jar, because I need to think about it myself. You know it, of course. You’ve read it? You must have at some point, maybe at Sweetbriar.

     I don’t know what I think about the novel because I don’t think about anything these days. I brood about many things, but I think orderly about no thing: I can’t even make a decent list.

     But these are my scattered feelings about the novel. I liked the first part of it, “up and coming” in New York City (vs. “down and out” in Paris or London), full of energy and dark, frenzied comedy, almost farce. The writing is bright and clear and energetic; the time, events, and people described are muddled and muddied and mad. The contrast makes the comedy. Plus, there’s a lot at stake at the same time there is nothing at stake.

     There is all and nothing at stake, that is, until the month in the big city ends and the scholarship doesn’t come through, and Esther must go home and live with her mother. There, in the dark, damp confines of her bedroom, she decides that everything is at stake. At the same time, the writing loses its shine. It’s still good writing, but it’s pedantic. It plods where it had skipped. It pleads, even wheedles, where it had described. Maybe because the story turns inward. Or, if it has always been inward, now it has become more about Esther than anyone else. There is no one else because there is no one here she can find to like; there is no one she doesn’t have utter contempt for her. Maybe she’s been contemptuous from the beginning, but her contempt hasn’t been utter, it has been edged with excitement.

     Her Lone Ranger has become completely lone. There is no Doreen, no Tonto. There are only one-dimensional villains to shoot up and lock up at the end of the half-hour. But the story extends beyond the half-hour, and she gets locked up. And it (the story) turns again. The asylum section is more like the New York than the middle (home) section: there’s a dark-comic verve to it. The contempt has a thicker veil. We can no longer see the sneer. (We know it’s there, but it’s not where we are seeing it all the time.)

     Then, there’s the (relatively) happy ending. Because it’s a novel, it has to end before the author does. She must go brilliantly on, strive, succeed, crash, and burn (if by turning off the flame). And what else can she do? What else but stick her head in an oven and leave her children behind.

     I know - at least, I suspect - you’ll say she didn’t want to do that but she didn’t see any other way forward. There was no way forward at all. She was already suffocating. And you would be right, I’m sure. In any case, who would know better?

     I find myself, though, filled with respect - with envy! - for Plath’s talent but almost empty of sympathy for her. No, that’s not right: I can’t empathize with her. And I can’t say why that is so. I only arrive at conclusions, you know; I don’t think my way to them. I jump to conclusions over the considerations, the judgments that should lead me to the. And had I considered carefully, judged wisely, or had I any imagination, I may well have been led somewhere else altogether.

     So, help me reconsider. Tell me what you think of the book.

     Outside, it is cold and gray, the sky looking as if it had been “rubbed with a soiled eraser,” as Nathanael West puts it. Write me.

Love, Ted

I looked at Dr. Feight. He was making a note. He looked up. He raised his brows. I went on:

     “Then I have this in return,” I said. “Or is it too much?” He shook his head. I read:

Dear Ted,

I don’t think it’s imagination you lack. When you look out and it is cold and gray, it is energy you begin lacking: It goes out of you at an alarming rate in the cold, the damp, the bleak. You are closed up with an ogre who is always hungrier than he pretends to be, who nibbles away at you bit by bit by bit by bit. You think you’ve lost a finger or two; you look down, you’ve lost a whole hand - you’ve lost an arm up to the elbow. But it’s not a finger or a hand or a forearm that is being eaten away: it is your energy.

     You should get out, take a walk - or a drive: Take a drive! Cars are good, they take us farther away than we can walk. Granted, they pollute the atmosphere. Which pollution, however, God could prevent if he were both good and almighty. Which atmosphere he could wash clean if he wished. (Correct me if I’m wrong.)

Against my will I have been thinking of The Bell Jar - since you mentioned it in a letter last week.

     Insulin therapy was for schizophrenia, I believe, but Esther Greenwood is more manic-depressive, isn’t she, what’s now called bi-polar, I believe? She climbs to the rooftop of her hotel as she contemplates leaving the “fine madness” of New York City, and she descends into the darkness of her childhood bedroom in the Boston suburbs. From there she will escape only by further confinement. She can wander away, but she cannot get away. She can attempt suicide, but she cannot succeed. She will get away from her well-meaning but horrible (unimaginative) mother only by being committed: The crazy house in which one is somehow to find oneself is not so crazy, after all.

     I’m not sure that’s what she does find, herself - or she can find. She may escape the bell jar for a time, but it will always be hovering, she knows. She may escape depression but only into mania. Or that seems to me what is happening at the summary/end of the story. I’m not sure though.

     You’d think I would know, wouldn’t you? - that’s why you wrote me. But I don’t know. I do know this, and it’s God’s fault because he has decided he doesn’t want to be almighty yet he still wants to be good. Or, he wants to be good, but he doesn’t want to have to do anything about it! I do know this: you come to realize that you can’t escape, but you don’t give up hope that some will save you. There will be a Savior!

    Still, when he comes - if he comes (or if he has come) - he can do nothing. He is strong only in weakness, they tell us, your theologians. What kind of bullshit is that? I am asking you, who reads the theologians, and who still loves Jesus. What the hell?

     I want to write more. Like: Where were you? Why didn’t you come rescue me? But that’s not fair. You were far away, and what did you know? And, finally, it doesn’t matter. I wasn’t rescuable anyway, any more than Sylvia Plath.

     And your Jesus, who put love above the law - above all things (am I right?) - what did he know? Here’s my last question: What did he know, who never (as far as we know) ever loved a woman? (Or had a car to get into the backseat with her?)

     Heavens! I’m being hard on you when you least need it, when it’s cold and gray and all. I’m sorry. But(!) I’m sending it anyway, and I have the nerve to close it . . .

Dr. Feight

Love, Moira

I folded the letters back up, and I put them back in my pocket. Behind my left ear, I could hear Dr. Feight’s pen scratching against the notebook paper on his clipboard.

11.16.19

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 * See here: Moira’s story. For more on Dr. Feight and my seeing him, see here.

two arcs and three tangents

 two arcs and three tangents 

figure a: two arcs and two tangents*

 

figure b: another tangent

11.14.19

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 * with thanks to https://etc.usf.edu/.

Another farable

Jesop

 A farable of Jesop  

“a bean, a donkey, and the moon”

A bean, a donkey, and the moon undertook a journey together. They decided to travel by night because the bean and the moon feared being boiled and eaten by day. The bean feared men; the moon was afraid of the sun. The donkey liked the empty night road as long as the others were with him for company.

     After six days they arrived in Athens. They spent two nights there, gazing into windows, watching the philosophers sleep. The third night they returned home, happy to believe they had become none the wiser.

  11.12.19 

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An online reproduction of the 1887 edition Jesop's Farables, translated from the Latin and edited by G. F. Murray - and with my brief afterward - is available here!

What I am reading

 What I am reading 

Yesterday or the day before I went to see Dr. Feight. I went by myself; Uncle Albert didn’t come with me because he and Nils Sundstrøm were going to Seeville to a lecture on the uses of ground glass or something like that. Uncle Albert had rented a big car, and Nils was driving them.

     I say “yesterday or the day before” because I have momentarily lost track. Momentarily! I was seeing Dr. Feight on Mondays and Thursdays; then, at some point without my being aware of it, it became Tuesdays and Fridays. Or, maybe it was the other way around. (Check here.*)

     Today is Wednesday/Saturday. I know because I checked. But the time has changed. That happened several days ago. We “fell back,” so there is sun this morning, but it will be pitch dark by supper time.

I told Dr. Feight that I understood why people committed suicide: Nothing-at-all was better than nothing-making-sense. He asked me what I had been reading; at least, I think that’s what he asked. I said I wasn’t thinking about suicide for myself because I didn’t expect things to make sense; I was pretty sure they didn’t, only unimaginative people thought they could - fundamentalists, atheists, Fox and CNN “news” anchors, some teachers, some scientists.

     Then I said, “The Bell Jar.”

     “Why, for God’s sake?” Dr. Tait said. He paused. “Why not something cheery like Wise Blood?”

11.09.19

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 * There, too, you’ll find links to other posts featuring the good doctor.

Out of season

 Out of season 

It’s neither June nor January, both of which are invoked in Thomas Carew’s poem “The Spring.” (It’s not June in January.) It’s not long’d-for May, which is when Carew’s poem seems to begin.

     You can read the poem here. Or you may both read it and hear it read by clicking the YouTube icon below. As I say in my introduction to the reading, they don’t write poems like this anymore. “They” would mean, in this case, men. None of us woos his woman by telling her how beautiful she is now, but it’s not going to last. None of us has a woman he may call his for one thing. For another, who woos?

     The poem is long, long out of date, then. It remains, however, a delight for some right reasons – the frost that “candies” the grass, the arch joy of the language, the sound of the thing with all its headless lines. So, I like it this November day. I like Carew any day of the year. Shoot me!

11.07.19

Bible Tuesday

 Bible Tuesday*: checking back 

Sometimes I look back over what I’ve written, mostly to see what I’ve been doing. Otherwise, I forget. Or I’ve already forgotten, so I look back to remember.

     Last night, when I couldn’t sleep, I read the prophet Amos again. Then, this morning, when Roz came down to breakfast, just as she was sitting down, I said in my best race-track announcer’s voice, “Prepare to meet thy God!”

     We were having our usual toast and coffee. We should eat more and better, but we don’t.

     “Where did that come from?” Roz said.

Lions and bears

     “I don’t know.”

     “Amos,” Roz said.

     “Oh. Right.”

     “Do you know how I know that?”

     “No.”

     “You told me.”

     “ . . . . ”

     “I saw that sign down near Marion.”

     “Oh?”

     “Remember. It was a month and a half ago, maybe a little more. You said you were going to write about it.”

     “Oh,” I said again.

And after breakfast and Roz was gone and I had policed the kitchen, I looked it up. And I had written about it; and I read what I had written, and I remembered.

     And I thought:

From the point of view of Jeroboam, king of Israel, and Amaziah, high priest at Bethel, there isn’t much to say for Amos, the self-proclaimed prophet (a tree-trimmer cum shepherd by trade), a nuisance, a meddler, who showed up suddenly from a place where there was plenty enough for him to piss on about, he didn’t have to come to your place - especially, he didn’t need to come uninvited to your place - to carp at you, make threats, scare people; he could have stayed home and played the outraged Puritan there.

     We don’t do this often enough, I don’t think: We don’t imagine the Bible from another point of view. The book is Amos, we decide; the words are Amos’s that God has shown him. And we take him at his word, or his words, as if there could be no other way to take him or them. We don’t think about how important Amaziah’s job is to him though we know he has a wife and children. We don’t think about how little the king of Israel wants to hear from a prophet from Judah. We don’t think. We forget there could be other points of view.

     But there have to be, right? We’re as dull-witted as Amos’ sheep if we don’t look around to see other points of view. Or we’re as blindly pious as his tree-saws but not as sharp: “Piety thrives on lack of imagination.” Who said that?

11.05.19

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 * This week Bible Friday comes on a Tuesday. It can come any day. A Thursday. A Monday. There were no reasons for these aberrations. Roz believes I don’t know what day of the week it is because when she asks me, I say, “I don’t know.” But I can always look it up.

     I do look it up before I go anywhere. Or, I try to. I don’t want to drop by Axel Sundstrøm’s office on a Sunday morning, for example, or go to the dentist on a Tuesday if my appointment is for Thursday. True, there’s no reason to know the day if you aren’t going out - or if you’re only going for a walk or a drive or to the 24-hour drug store for a Coke or some Gingko.

     (I wrote “Gingko” just for the sound of it. I don’t ingest. I don’t even know what it does - or is, for that matter. I doubt Amos knew either; he doesn’t mention it. But God could have given it to him in a vision he didn’t write down. “The priests of Bethel are like the gingko tree, its leaves torn off and chewed to heal the mind, yet they do no healing.”)

     Forgive the rambling. I’ve put it both below the line and small - below the line, for who reads below the line? - and small, so you could easily skip it.