Standing by.

 Standing by. 

Sometimes the dysthymia sets in and I can’t turn thoughts into notes or notes into sentences or sentences into something remotely coherent, or I can’t get out of bed.

     But tomorrow or the next day, I hope, I’ll conclude the conversation Axel and I were having about Matthew 11, and I’ll tell about Alfredo's and my going to the drive-in movie.

07.30.20

_______________

 * Or so I’m told. Not cuncatory anxiety. See here. I made that up. A joke. But not a very funny one, apparently. At least Dr. Feight didn’t think so, I discovered later. Who would have thought a character of my invention would lack in humor? But he doesn’t normally. So, the joke must have been truly unfunny. Sometimes I can’t tell.

Blessed are the gentle.

 Blessed are the gentle . . . 

The phone rang.

     “In the RSV,” Axel said, “it’s ‘gentle’: ‘Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’ For I am ‘gentle and lowly in heart.”

     “Yeah?” I said.

“The RSV,” Axel said, “Revised Standard Version.”

     “I know,” I said. “I know what RSV stands for.”

     “But at 5:5, it has ‘Blessed are the meek.’”

     “Yeah?” I said again.

     “Matthew 5:5,” Axel said.

     “I know,” I said. I don’t know much, but I know that.

“What’s this all about?” I said.

     “Can we meet somewhere?” Axel said. “Is it okay with Roz?” Roz is in charge of social distancing at our house.

     “I’ll ask,” I said. There was a pause. “You’ll have to hang up,” I said, “so I can call her.”

“She says we can meet on the campus, in front of the library. There are chairs. There’s shade. There’s plenty of room.

     “‘Ten feet apart.’ she says.”

     “Okay,” Axel said. “When?”

He was there first, and he had written on the sidewalk with an egg-shaped piece of green chalk:

“What’s this all about?” I said again.

     He pointed to what he had written. “PRAH-OOS,” he said. “Gentle or meek?”

     “I’m about to find out,” I said.

     “Maybe.” Then he said, “How are you?”

     “How are you?” I said.

     “You do that a lot,” he said.

     “What?”

     “You answer a question with a question. Rather, you don’t answer a question with a question.”

     “I don’t know how I am,” I said. “How are you?”

     “I don’t guess I know either. How about this heat?”

     “Yes,” I said. “To answer a question with a question: ‘How about this heat?’”

I pointed at πραΰς.

     “I was re-reading Matthew 10 and 11 this morning,” Axel said. “It’s full of shouting. Or it begins that way: woes that bring judgment on me as much as on Chorazin, Bethsaida, or Capernaum. ‘Stop yelling,’ I want to tell Jesus: ‘This is not what you do best.’ Then I think, ‘But it’s Matthew yelling, not Jesus. What Jesus is telling his disciples is really what Matthew wants to tell the church.’

     “I don’t know that, of course, but I’m thinking anyway, ‘Is this long speech from one who is “gentle and lowly in heart”? That’s the Jesus I want to come to, the one that will give me rest. That’s the Jesus I want to learn from. Could he teach me to be gentle as well?”

     “What’s the Latin?” I said to see if he knew it though he always does.

     “Why?” he said. Then: “mitis.”

     I laughed. “You know more shit about more shit than anyone I know,” I said.

     “No,” he said. “You do. I only know more shit about this shit.”

He got out his phone. “Let’s look it up,” he said. “Okay," I said. I hadn’t thought of that possibility.

     “Here,” he said, “mitis, mitis, mite - first definition ‘mellow.’ The verb is mitigo, mitig­āre - mellow, ripen, soften, appease. The adjective is mellow, ripe, soft, calm, mild, gentle. Interesting, right?”

     “Yes,” I said because it was. “Yes, okay,” I said, “but what’s the point?”

     “You don’t want the rest of the lecture?” Axel asked, trying to sound disappointed.

     “I don’t know. Do I?”

“The point is 5:5, ‘Blessed are the meek.’”

     “It’s the same word.” I pointed to the sidewalk.

     “Yes, πραΰς. What if King James had translated, ‘Blessed are the gentle’?”

07.22.20

 to be continued

Double vision

 Double vision 

And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the village; and when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands upon him, he asked him, “Do you see anything?” And he looked up and said, “I see men; but they look like trees, walking.” - Mark 8:23-24

I started out of the bedroom on my way to the bath this morning. I walked through the door and into the door jamb. And I sat down on the bedroom floor.

The last time something like this happened, my eyes working independently of one another, was in New York City. Roz and I were visiting her son Bart, his inamorata Dominga, and her son, the pocket Junot Diaz, Alfredo. We were walking along Fort Washington Avenue.

     On the pavement, the shadows of the buildings begin merging with the sunlight and the sunlight with the shadows. I look up: the sky is green. Below, the buildings themselves are expanding and contracting, and one falling into another. The contents of one apartment on one third floor spill into another apartment on another third floor. The sidewalk is stumbling into the street, and the street is stepping up onto the sidewalk. The riders safe in their cabs find themselves walking, jostled and sweating. They won’t arrive at their meetings or assignations as sweet-smelling as they hoped. The pedestrians find themselves leaning back in their cabs, enjoying the air-conditioning; but they haven’t thought yet about where they may be going or how they’ll pay the fare.

     And I run into a signpost and find myself sitting on the concrete. I hear, “Ted.” It is Bart, or it is Alfredo; they are standing side-by-side-by-side. “Are you okay?” one of them says. “Yes,” I say.

     “I can get up by myself,” I say, and I do. “But you better take my hand.” Someone does. “And take me home,” I say.

     “How far is it?” I ask.

07.16.20

The Sundstrøm Political Report

 The Sundstrøm Political Report. 

I don’t answer the phone if I don’t recognize the number. I can think of reasons I might want to talk with someone I don’t know, but none of the reasons I can think of make me pick up the phone. They can leave a message.

The phone rang. The screen said “Nils Sundstrøm” and gave his number. I picked it up. I know Nils. You know Nils.

     There was chatter, and I was losing track. I stumbled back on at “haircuts”: “Axel and I were giving each other haircuts this morning, and I was wondering what was going on with Tom Nashe,” I heard Nils saying. “I’ve got something I’d like him to take a look at.”

     “I didn’t know you knew Nashe,” I said from my end.

     “Well, . . . ” and Nils admitted that maybe he didn’t, not personally. “But what happened to Go Around Back?” He meant my feeble, failed attempt at political blogging, which I got Nashe to take over for me for a time. Until he later abandoned it himself.

     “He gave it up, I guess,” I said. “Or, he gave up on writing about politics altogether. Or, he gave up on politics.”

     “Why?”

I wanted to say that he’d come to agree with me that everyone writing about politics ended up looking smug, or smugly trying not to look smug. Instead, I said truthfully,

     “I don’t know.”

     “You’ve got a theory, though,” Nils said.

     “An hypothesis,” I said, and I told him what I’d wanted to say and hadn’t.

     “There are no idealists, then?” Nils said.

     “Not if they’re getting paid,” I said.
     “You weren’t paying Nashe, surely?” 

I didn’t say anything. Then, I did say, “Well, gotta go!” But I hesitated.

     “Wait!” Nils said. “Anyway,” he said, “do you know how I can get in touch with him? I have an idea.”

     “Last I heard he was quarantining himself in the cabin of a friend, somewhere in the National Forest.”  And,

     “Gotta go!” I said again. Again I hesitated.

     “Wait!”

Here’s Nils’s idea that he came up when Axel was cutting his hair. As a barber, Axel doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he’s aware that he doesn’t and he’s careful: he doesn’t so much cut Nils’s hair as he trims it, the way he would a yew bush, clipping the strays and keeping the shape of the bush. So, Nils looks okay when his brother’s done, or he looks okay enough. No one sees him anyway.

     Also, Nils works the same way, cutting around the edges of Axel’s fringe, and if the people that see him on Zoom and Facebook Live meetings in Bible studies and Sunday morning services think he looks odd, they don’t say anything.

     This hair-cutting had gotten Nils thinking about barbers, and hairdressers, then about masseurs and masseuses. Then about prostitutes. Then, about the “gig economy,” which “We’ve come to wonder about,” Nils was saying, “but what made us ever think it was going to be a good idea when the business model from the beginning was prostitute-pimp?”

     “And?” I said.

     “That’s it.” That was his idea.“That’s it. Fill in the blanks,” he said.

I couldn’t think what the blanks would be, but I don’t think that way. The op-ed pieces I read have no more idea about the business model of the gig economy than Nils’s, yet they go on for 2000 words. I couldn’t have written 20 words after the opening paragraph. Then,

     “Incidentally,” Nils said, “your friend Moody [link] may be onto something - Trump on steroids: that’s why he’s so damned angry all the time. He doesn’t have ‘roid rage. He is ‘roid rage.”

I nodded. “Gotta go,” I said, and I hung up. Here ended the conversation. Then, the phone rang.

“Axel,” Axel said.

     “I know,” I said because I could read his name and number on the phone.

     “Here’s something else for you. An experiment to propose.”

     “Okay.”

     “Let’s - for a week anyway - retire the term ‘racist’ and substitute the more forgiving - and more accurate! - ‘dupe,’ at least for those making less than the average Post or Times pundit, E. J. Dionne, Charles Blow, and their ilk.”

     “Ilk?”

     “Bruni, Dowd, and their . . . yes, ilk, that is, those most likely to use the term in print. And I’m pegging that at $200,000 a year, though I’m probably aiming low. And they’re the only ones that have to avoid the term and only avoid applying it to people, let’s say, making less than half of what they make, people whom they may not understand.”

     Pause. “And they can call them dupes.” Another pause.

     “That’s it,” Axel said. “Just not racists.”

     “Okay,” I said again. I thought, “And what am I to do with it?” but I didn’t say that. He said,

     “No, you know, forget it. I don’t know what I’m talking about.” And he hung up.

Twenty minutes later, the phone rang.

     “You won't say anything about this to anyone, will you?” Axel asked.

     “Okay,” I said.

     “Not even Albert,” Axel said. “Because what do I know, right?”

     “Okay,” I said.

     “About anything,” Axel said.

     “Okay,” I said because I know the feeling.

07.14.20

Don't ask, don't tell.

 Don’t ask, don’t tell. 

You can’t wrestle someone else’s demons. Why do you try?

            - Uncle Albert

I play golf the way study German, on and off again. I get as good as I am going to, and I give it up. Add that now I am older as good as I’m going to get isn’t as good as it used to be.

     It’s a game for the young, forget what golf’s cheerleaders want to tell you. And forget what the new equipment, the new woods that are metal and the irons with hollows in the back, the balls that whistle through the air and whisper to a stop - forget what the equipment wants to say.

     Thirty years ago, I drove the ball 230 yards with a driver with a persimmon for a head. Thirty years later, I drive the ball 230 yards with a driver with springs in it. Thirty years ago, the pros outdrove me by 40 and 50 yards. Today they outdrive me by twice that much, easy! Bryson DeChambeau has come back from the coronavirus break averaging 350 yards per drive.

     So, how does he do that? My friend Hamlin Moody wants to know if he’s been tested for steroids. “I mean,” Hamlin was saying on the phone earlier this week, “I know this isn’t a question you ask, but he looks more like Roger Clemens, circa 1999 than Roger Clemens three seasons earlier.”

     “What do you mean it isn’t a question you ask? You thought Tiger was on steroids if I remember.”

     “So, right. What do you make of this, then? DeChambeau averaged 350.6 yards per drive last weekend. Three-hundred-fifty-point-six! Averaged! Breaking a record set in 2005: 341.5 yards a drive. Set by?”

     I hazarded a guess, “Tiger Woods.”

     “Looking more like A-Rod after than A-Rod before,” Hamlin said.

“You don’t look very happy,” Roz says. “What are you writing about?” She hardly ever asks.

     I read her what I had so far.

     “Can you write about that?” she asks.

     “Nobody reads what I write anyway,” I say. “It’s just a hypothesis anyway.”

     “I guess so,” she says. “Is that the end? ‘Looking more like A-Rod after than A-Rod before’?”

     “It sounds like it to me,” I say.

“You know the President’s on steroids," Hamlin said.

07.09.20

_______________

 * Hamlin Moody is a guy I sometimes play golf with. See here. Roz is, you know, Roz. Here.