Cellphone n’etiquette

 Cellphone n’etiquette   

Axel’s damn phone

The phone rang. It was Axel, I could see it on the caller ID.
     “Did you call?” Axel asked. (See previous post.) He smelled like onions. Or, the phone did. Like onions and carrots.

“Did you call?” This is a question worse than, “Where have you been?” He may not know where I’ve been (though where but nowhere?). But he knows I've called. It’s on his caller ID or log or whatever it’s called. It’s why he’s calling me. because I called and didn’t leave a message.
     The question is a lie. Why the lie is acceptable I don't know. So I say, “No.
     “No, I didn’t,” I say.
                                                                 01.28.21
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 * Follow Axel’s story here.

Snap!

*

 Snap! 

I seldom call anyone, but this morning I called Axel. “Where have you been?” I wanted to ask him though it is a question I hate when people ask me. (“Where have you been?” I want to answer.) But from Axel I got his message: “You’ve reached Axel’s phone. Leave a message. I'll get back to you when God will it.” Note that it doesn't ask the caller to leave a message. note the use of the subjunctive.
     I hung up on my end and went into the kitchen for a ginger snap.

01.27.21

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* ‘ginger snap’ - most ridiculous phone drawing ever , by m ball

Off-the-point Monday

 Off-the-point Monday (yesterday once more) 

“Listen to this,” Axel said: “Quote: ‘Mr. Hawley denounced Pelagius for teaching that human beings have the freedom to choose how they live their lives and that grace comes to those who do good things, as opposed to those who believe the right doctrines.’”
     “Yes.”
     “What’s wrong with it?”
     “It’s wrong?”
     “Clearly.”
     “Who’s Mr. Hawley?”
     “Josh Hawley, the brown-nosed trumpophant. But it doesn’t matter who Mr. Hawley is. I’m asking, ‘What’s wrong?’”
     “Read it again.” He did, “‘. . . that grace comes to those who do good things as opposed to those that believe the right doctrines.’”

     “It misunderstands,” I hesitated. “It misunderstands orthodox objections to Pelagius,” I said, the words stumbling clumsily out of my mouth. Winter light seeped through the windows and trickled down the walls then out as if through drains in the floor, not quite reaching the middle of the room where I sat with the phone. “Is that right?” I said. “We can no more command God’s grace by right belief than we can by right action.”
     “It is right. She misunderstands. Willfully, maybe. Polemically. Or ignorantly. It doesn’t matter. In whatever the case, damn right.”
     “My guess is it’s polemic. Where’s it from? Who’s she?”
     “I suppose you’re right. It’s from the Times. Op-ed by a Katherine Stewart, a religion writer. You didn’t see it?”
     “No. Let me find it. Wait a minute till I get upstairs to the computer.”
     “Okay. But call me back. Nils is on the other line. Let me get rid of him.”

* * * * *

I said to Axel, “Isn’t it Hawley that’s saying it – we’re not saved by right action but by right thinking – Hawley has it wrong, not Stewart? At least that’s what she seems to be claiming.”
     “So, maybe. But she should be clear: she should explain how wrong he is – and how he’s wrong. But she doesn’t care, she wants to rush on without stopping to explain what he must mean, nothing to do with grace at all but with the destruction of pluralism by blind fundamental orthodoxy. Though I’ll have to add, it’s hard to believe he can think that.
     “But what neither of them understands, nor do they want to, any more than Pelagius does – what none of them understands is grace. Because it’s what the faith has to offer that the world doesn’t want: it’s too scary to believe that anything can be forgiven – anything at all! –  that she could forgive him and he her, that a pluralist could forgive a tribalist, that a midwestern conservative could forgive an eastern liberal – and on and on: Too much forgiveness like that could lead to chaos. Grace: that God forgives the self-righteous jack-and-jill-assery of both Josh and Katherine though that doesn’t mean that their meannesses don’t have consequences that are harmful each to each.”
     “But how much harm is there?” I asked.
     “What do you mean?”
     “Well, it is assery, isn’t it? That's what you're saying. They don’t care what they are saying, you say. Right? They just want to show each other their asses?”
     “Yes. I guess.”
     “Well, don’t give it so much importance, then. Let’s just admire them, or pretend to, however beautiful or ugly they are. Admire them from afar. Can’t we just leave it at that? ‘Josh, how lovely your muscular bumhole!’ ‘Kat, what a wrinkled delight your prim anus!’?”
     “Hmmm.”
     “If it’s assery, it doesn’t ultimately matter. It won’t matter tomorrow!”
     “You may be right.”
     “Unlikely, but it would be a nice change.”

* * * * *

“This is not off the point, by the way,” Axel said as if he could read the tab on the file into which I was putting our conversation. “It’s an example of perfectly woke. Let’s explain to the dunderheads what we want them to understand whether it’s correct or not. It doesn’t matter if it’s correct. They can’t understand it anyway.”
     “I’m still not sure you’ve got it right. But, is that the apocalyptic temperament? ‘The ends justify the means’?”
     “Maybe so. Maybe that summarizes it in a nutshell. But I’m waiting to hear from Gaspar.”
     “It won’t take him long, I wouldn’t think.”

* * * * *

I thought after, though again I could be wrong. But I thought:
     It’s amazing how often the “ruling” class – the pundit class, the political class, or he that went to Stanford/Yale and she that went to Bowdoin/Harvard –it’s amazing how they become so certain they understand those they decide they can caricature when they don’t understand them at all. Education doesn’t teach understanding.
     It’s true, they may be misunderstanding on purpose, in order to create the caricature, but it’s lazy: the caricature is only neater and more convenient than the truth. It’s so much easier to move flat characters around on a two-dimensional page. Round ones might roll off, even fall on the floor and roll on under a table or chair. How inconvenient to have to leave one’s laptop, get down on hands and knees to search for them. To hell with it! There isn’t time. It doesn’t matter anyway. It’s close enough for government work, close enough for newspaper work.

01.12.21

Woke

Grace Lutheran - side door*

 Woke 

When it’s nice out – when it gets above 50°F and it’s sunny – Axel and I get together in the courtyard of the church. It has bought three metal lawn chairs so Axel can meet people six feet apart if he needs to. He hasn’t needed to though. He sings the service in front of a cellphone on a tripod each Sunday. He preaches a short sermon, “five minutes tops,” he says. He’s done six funerals, outdoors in the cemetery, just for family.
     I’m always cold, so even when it’s fifty, I’m wearing my long winter overcoat over a hooded sweatshirt and flannel lined jeans; thick socks, hiking boots, wool gloves. Too much. I’m always cold when I set out, and I’m always sweating by the time I get home. Axel wears a windbreaker and a stocking cap and he keeps his hands in his pockets.
     We sit more than six feet apart. Roz approves now Axel is living alone again, and there still isn’t church at Grace. “You both need the company,” she says. She wasn’t a big fan of Axel the first time they met, “but he has grown” on her, he “has his purposes,” I think is how she puts it now. The main purpose is someone for me to talk to; otherwise, I wouldn’t talk with anyone but her and Uncle Albert, and Dr. Feight once a week on the phone.
     But mostly it’s Axel that talks.

“There’s a lesson in this for all
of us.” - L. E. McKibben

He talks about living alone again since Nils left early in the pandemic, and moved in with Bel Monk. Which Axel didn’t see coming** though that’s beside the point now.
     What is the point now is that they are leading each other off the deep end: They have become, Axel is saying, “conspiracy theorists – woke and apocalyptic.” But Axel’s voice can wander, even as he is talking in a straight line. When I ask him what that means, “woke” and “apocalyptic,” he says, “Google it.” I tell him, “Okay,” that I’m willing to google “woke,” but “apocalyptic” is a theological term, so he needs to tell me what he means by it: He’s the theologian in the room. How does he define it?
     He tells me he’ll get back to me. And I say, “When?” I mean to say, “Why?” but I say “When?
     “In the next millennium?” I rush to say. He shrugs his shoulders then shakes his head:
     “Next time we meet he says.”

* * * * *

This conversation was a couple of days ago, Wednesday, I think. Axel called this morning: Friday (I think). He’d been making a list, he said, but he wanted to run it past someone.
     “What kind of list?”
     “The apocalyptic temperament,” he said.
     “Oh,” I said.
     “Not by you,” Axel said. “I don’t want to run it by you.”
     I waited. Then, I said, “Good.”
     “Who’s that friend of yours whose family runs Rantrage Press and is writing that dictionary?”
     “Gaspar,” I said.
     “Right.”
     “Stephens,” I said.

 “How do I get in touch with him?” Axel asked after another minute of dead line.
     “BR-549,” I said.
     “Very funny,” Axel said.
     “I’ll email you his email,” I said.

* * * * *

Here is what I sent to Axel:

     pastor@GraceLS.net
     “Gaspar”

          Here’s G. Stephens’s email: Gaspar@Rantrage.com. You can tell him I sent you. – t

And here is what I sent to Gaspar:

     Gaspar@Rantrage.com
     “inquiry”

          My friend Axel has a question. Have an answer, please. And thank you. - t

  01.09.21

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  * Cellphone drawing with photo by mel ball.
** Even after they started experimenting with वज्रयान.

Dramatis personae:  Axel, Roz, Nils, Bel.

Voices

 Voices 

I am writing this because some of you have asked, kindly, where I have been.
     Sometimes – often! – when a ceiling fan is turning, I hear voices. This is not uncommon, I’m told. There’s a name for it whether or not I can remember what it is. The voices sound far away. I can hear the rise and fall of them, but I can’t understand what they are saying. “Maybe they are talking about tea,” I think – not the culturing of the plant or how tea leaves get from the field to market, but how we brew them when we get them home, how we make a pot of tea and pour it out into cups and sugar and cream it if we do, what we eat with it for “tea.”
     Other times I hear the voices when the fan is not turning, the sound of the smell of dust. Then, they will come closer; they tztztztztz closer like wasps. They don’t become more distinct, only louder. TZTZTZTZTZ. Still, they sound like wasps. Whatever they are saying they are saying in wasp-language. It doesn’t sound pleasant like friends talking about how they like their tea. It sounds more like a political discussion about to turn from civil to yelling. It sounds like one of the so-called “news” channels when everyone begins talking over everyone else as if he or she thinks the listener can only hear at her or his register.
     This is when I switch over to Law & Order or one of the Music Choice channels. But I can’t switch the wasps off. They tztztztztz at the dialog. They tztztztztz at Cannonball Adderley and Nancy Wilson. They tztztztztz me up the stairs to bed. They are still at it when I fall asleep. They argue me awake in the middle of the night. They don’t stop to sing hymns to the dawn.

01.04.21

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“Ceiling Fan.” Cell phone drawing by m ball.