Third person.

 Third person. 

He walked down Bishop, down Crowder, down Division. The rain dripped down, the color of the leaves on the sidewalk. Corner Coffee: Axel and Nils were there ahead of him.
     And two women two tables over. The talking one kept pulling her hands toward her chest and pushing them out again as if to convince the other she was speaking from her heart. The sharp-faced other was dressed entirely in black. She was nodding.
     “What do you think they are talking about?” he asked Axel.
     “Luther,” he said. “The women come and go, talking of Luther.” he laughed at the back of his tongue, not quite into his throat.

“They’re talking about husbands,” Nils said, “how husbands continue to mislead wives.”
     “I don’t imagine the thin one is married,” he said, “the one in black.” She was making a gesture with her hand, as if she wanted to say something; then she stopped. The other kept talking.
     “They’re talking about a story they heard this morning on NPR,” Nils said, “not about their husbands but about husbands in general. About men: they continue to mislead women. It’s as inevitable as it is unfortunate. Some woman sociologist said so.”
     “What makes you think that?” Axel said.
     “What?”
     “That she’s not married?”
     “I don’t know,” he said — I said as Nils was saying something else. But I didn’t hear. I was listening to the espresso machine choke and cough and sputter. It gagged and stopped. His last word ended in “-er.”

                                                                      08.17.22
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Graphic: Corner Coffee in the rain, crabbed together on my box.

 Manchester United 1 - 2 Brighton & Hove Albion 
This was Tuesday.

Occasionally, I try to listen to one of the soccer podcasts; “Gab & Jules” it was this morning. But they are all too damn serious. And for all the podcasters know about the game, infinitely more than I do, they seem to me untethered to reality.
     This morning, Gab and Jules were talking about Man United’s loss to Brighton & Hove Albion. Completely unacceptable(!!), as if BHA were no opponents at all, as if there had been no players in blue and white on the pitch, as if Pascal Gross, in particular, had stayed home. So even if Man U was without a true number 9 . . .
     In which case — how could Manchester United be without? — they should just go out and get one. Better than, a damn sight better than, Marko Arnautović, never mind that he might be the best available — he is older than Jesus! Availability be damned — this is Manchester United: they should be able to get whoever/ whatever they want whenever/however they want it. Never mind how shitty they’ve been the last several seasons. (Proving they can't get whatever whenever, doesn’t it). But reality be damned.
     Renounce the laws of gravity, say you are above them, and they don’t apply to you.

Diogenes of Sinope was right, at least this far: you can only free yourself from the rules of the marketplace by absenting yourself from it. He meant by that that you cannot buy a center forward other than in the mall where you can buy a center forward. You can’t conjure one out of the air; you can’t conjure a God to conjure one out of clay, pace Gab and Jules. And, sadly, even if you are Manchester United, you can no longer go marauding and rape one as the Romans did the Sabine women.
    But, no! You can! There is a God, Sir Alex Ferguson, right? Reality be damned.

                                                                      08.11.22
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Graphic: Erik Ten Hag by m ball.

"mouse and cat," a farable of Jesop

 
  A farable of Jesop 

“mouse and cat”

 A lion and a mouse went on a journey. They had become friends and were friends until they argued along the way and decided to part company. The lion went home. The mouse went on but soon was lost and soon after baked into a pie.
     “I blame myself,” the cat said when she heard. Only she did not. 
                                   08.05.22  

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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!

Interpolations

  Interpolations   

 from Farah See’s commentary on The Gospel of Thomas and Other Sayings of Jesus (in the Incoherent series, published by Rantrage Press, 2012, p. 233) –

 

Jesus talks a lot in the canonical Gospel of John, but he says little. There are, however, sayings of Jesus interpolated into the gospel in several Latin fragments from the fourth century (now in the Blifil collection). The Latin is clearly a translation from an earlier, since lost, manuscript. Even the most knowledgeable scholars (Jones, Allworthy, et al.) aren’t certain of the original language, but they believe Old Tamil or another Dravidian dialect. This would place the original ms. in one of the Thomas communities of India, and indeed Thomas plays an important role in a number of these fragments, as in the following addition to chapter 17. In the canonical gospel, Jesus begins talking to his disciples, the so-called “last discourses,”  at 14:1, but he has long since left off (17:1) and is addressing “the Father.” This fragment begins at 17:25 to which it adds the verses I have numbered 27 and 28.

 

xvii.  ​25 “O righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you; and these know that you sent me,  26 for I have made your name known to them – I will continue to make it known,  so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” 

     27 Thomas said to him, “Lord, what do we know?” And Jesus told this parable, “A man was given a pearl that made him extremely wealthy, and by night he buried it in another man’s field. Who have ears let them hear.”  28 And he told another like it, “A man had a servant, whom he loved, but the servant ran away. When the master found him, . . .” Here the manuscript breaks off.

 

Commentary

Our concern is with Thomas, who, as depicted here, tries to bring Johannine Jesus back to earth, to rescue the incarnation from muddle-headed mysticism. He succeeds insofar as after he interrupts Jesus tells two parables, neither of which we know from other sources. [Note there are no parables in the canonical gospel of John.]
    In the first, Jesus considers a pearl of great price. What should one do with it — keep it or give it away secretly? In the second, as it stands, we don’t know the effect the love of the master that seeks out his beloved servant has.

                                                                       08.03.21

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For links to other biblical commentary from Rantrage, click here.