Ding, dong, bell.

 Ding, dong, bell 

Dr. Feight said - this was Monday morning, “You haven’t been writing.”

     “No,” I said.

     “Do you know why?” he asked. “It’s been almost two weeks.”

     “Maybe,” I said. Then: “This new car we bought; it's been working really well,” I said.

When I came home, after I’d fed Uncle Albert, who continues to come with me to all my appointments with Dr. Feight - we had what we often have, a cup of tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich; I had a Coke, the one I can have each day; he had a glass of water. Then, when he sat down on the couch to doze in front of CNN, I wrote a nursery rhyme:

Ding, dong, bell,
Ted’s been in the well.
What put him in?
Original sin.
What might get him out?
Bit o’ knockabout.

I wasn’t happy with it, but it was a nursery rhyme; I wasn’t trying to write “Sailing to Byzantium.”*

“Did I say tragedy? I meant farce.” - Simius

I brought it to my session this morning with a picture I made from a template Mel Ball had drawn up for me. I just added the pie and the quote and the attribution, which I made up - both of them: I made up the quote, and I made up the attribution.

     Dr. Tait looked at the nursery rhyme. He said, “Do you subscribe to that, ‘original sin’?”

     I said, “Not literally. But I don’t know a better imaginative explanation for why we are as we are, always, though we have more than enough, wanting still more then unhappy when we get it.”

     “I should have asked first maybe,” he said: “what’s this about ‘the well.’”

     “I thought I might have told you already,” I said.

     “Tell me again.”

     “Moira talked about it, falling down a well.”

     He waited. I waited. I didn’t want to go any further. But he kept waiting.

     “I didn’t tell you?” I said finally.

     “Tell me again.”

I said: “Once when I was really down, I called her. She was away at college I couldn't remember which time; but I was in New Orleans looking for a job. She’d already been in the hospital once, maybe twice; but she was doing well, I thought. We thought. Or it was what we chose to believe because we couldn’t believe otherwise.

     “And I think she was doing pretty well at the time. It sounded like it on the phone anyway.”

     I stopped. “Could I have some water?” I asked. There is always a glass on the table beside the couch I lie down on. I knew that, but I asked anyway. He said, “There”; and I could hear him pointing. I sat up and took a couple of sips. I lay back down.

I said, “‘I’m really, really down.’ That’s what I said to Moira. It was a selfish thing to do I know now, but I thought she’d understand, I thought, if anyone, she’d be sympathetic.”

     “She wasn’t?”

     “No, I think she was. I told her I was sorry to bother her. She said something like ‘Yes,’ which I took to mean, ‘It’s okay. Go on.’ And I told her I didn’t know what to do about it. I had tried to write about it. I'd listened to some jazz. I'd eaten lunch though I hadn't wanted any. And I was cleaning house.

      “‘Cleaning house?’ she said. And I said that it was what I did. I thought then - and I still think now, though I believed then and I don’t any longer - that there’s some relief in putting things in order even if you know they’re going to jump right back out.

      “‘You’re not falling, then?’ she said. I said, ‘No,’ then: ‘What do you mean?’ ‘You don’t feel like you’re falling?’ she said.

     “I still didn’t know what she meant exactly, but ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Do you mean like down a well?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Maybe,’ I said again. ‘Is there water at the bottom?’ she asked. ‘I don’t know. Why wouldn’t there be?’ She said, ‘Look.’

     “Look how? I thought, but I hesitated then said, ‘Yes,’ because I didn't know what else to say. ‘Yes, there is.’ ‘You’ll be okay then,’ she said.

“And you were?” Dr. Tait said. “Yes,” I said.

     “She meant,” he said, “when she was falling there was no water.”

     “No. There was nothing. But I didn’t know that until later,” I said. “She dropped out of school again at the end of the term and came down to visit for a few days. I asked her about it. She said, ‘I would never make light of how you feel, Ted, you know that. But when you fall, you know there’s a bottom. You’ll hit bottom, and, eventually, you’ll climb back up again. When I am falling, there is no bottom.’

     “That’s all,” I said to Dr. Feight. “About the well - that’s all.”

“It’s enough,” Dr. Tait said. “We’ll talk about why you think farce is a way out next time.”

     “I do think that,” I said.

     “Yes,” he said. “I know you do.”

We went home, Uncle Albert and I. I made eggs and toast and spinach - the eggs over easy on top of the buttered toast with a tablespoon or two of cooked spinach on top of it all. Roz is a great believer in eggs and spinach, I’m not sure why; but they do go well together with enough salt and pepper. We both drank water; I wanted to save my Coke for later in the day.

     Uncle Albert fell asleep in front of CNN. And I wrote this.

02.14.19

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 * Not that I could even if I were trying. Not that I would try.

". . . as a direct result . . ."

 “. . . as a direct result . . .” 

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. 227) –

In the following pages are sayings falsely attributed to Jesus. He could not have said them, much as someone might have wished he had. I confine myself to sayings attested to in the first half of the fourth century or earlier. Otherwise, to paraphrase the last verse in John’s gospel, the world could not contain all the books I would have to write. 

* * * * *

This first example is attributed to Jesus by Cyprian of Carthage, according to Pontius the Deacon, who cites a work we no longer have, the Ad Aspasium Apostatam (Against Aspasius the Apostate).¹

Tunc si quis vobis dixerit: protinam sequitur, non credideritis verbis proximis eius.

He said, “If anyone says to you, ‘. . . and as a direct result . . . ,’ do not believe them, what they will say next.

Commentary

Not because they would be lying, Pontius comments, but because they cannot know what they are talking about.

_______________

 ¹ Not to be confused apparently with the proconsul Aspasius Paternus.

02.01.19

For links to other excerpts from Rantrage Press commentaries (Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Ecclesiastes, Revelation, et al.), click here.

Last Friday night.

 Last Friday night.

We took our turn.* Axel came and Nils, and Bel Monk. Roz served wine and crackers and cheese from the fancy big basket that showed up on our doorstep Christmas Eve instead of Moses in his ark or Jesus in a manger. “So God comes these days,” I said, “not as the one that will set his people free from bondage - or the whole world from sin and death - but as something pleasant to look at and to eat. Bread and wine,” I said, paused, “and cheese.” Or likely I didn’t say but only thought it. Or more likely I only thought of it later.

     I poured their wine, and a glass of water for myself. I put on the music. We ate quietly. The music played, Melody Gardot's My One and Only Thrill.

The album revolves around “if.” The first cut, “Baby, I’m a Fool,” begins: 

                   How was I to know that this was always only just a little game to you?
                   All the time I felt you gave your heart I thought that I would do the same for you.

The singer is the “fool who thinks it cool to fall in love.” The one she loves doesn’t seem to feel the same way. Or he doesn’t want the world to know he does. So, she promises that she “would never tell if he, too, “if you became a fool and fell in love.”

“If the Stars Were Mine,” the next cut begins, “I’d give them all to you.” If the birds were mine, if the world was mine, I’d give them all, I’d give it all to you: the stars in a jar, the birds in a song, the world in the brightest colors. IF. The lyrics are all in the subjunctive.

I can’t listen to Melody Gardot without thinking of her life, particularly how the bicycle accident, in which she suffered head and spinal injuries and a pelvis broken in two places, confined her to a hospital bed for a year, how she then had to learn how to walk again, how to remember again, how to tell time. How she still remained painfully sensitive to light and sound, so that she still wears tinted glasses most of the time and prefers quiet music. How her music aided in her recovery but didn’t take away the pain. She probably isn’t, but I see and hear her as both clear and confused, both sinewy and fragile. Likely I’m projecting.

We listen all the way through in silence: “Who Will Comfort Me?”; “Your Heart Is As Black As Night”; “Lover Undercover”; “Our Love Is Easy,” but “like water rushing over stones” (and won’t the stones get worn? I always think); “Les Étoiles”; “The Rain”; the title song, “My One and Only Thrill” : “When I’m with you, my whole world stands still.”; “Deep Within the Corners of My Mind,” which hopes eventually there will be “a place for you and me” in time, meaning, I take it, in the world as well as in the mind.

     There’s a bossa nova “Over the Rainbow,” which makes me think again about how the song ends - with another if. If “Little bluebirds fly over the rainbow, why, oh why (oh why!) can’t I?” Because, clearly, I can’t.

     Then the reprise of “If the Stars Were Mine to Give”; but they aren’t.

After we listen, Roz asks if anyone wants more wine - “Ted will pour it for you.” I am hoping no one does, especially when Axel declines. Bel hesitates; then Nils says, “I will, another glass of the red if it’s okay.” “Of course,” Roz says. Bel decides she’ll have another white. And I go to the kitchen to get it out of the refrigerator.

01.25-30.19

_______________

 * For a musical evening. See here.

Today: this morning.

to hear this morning’s post, click here.

 Today: this morning. 

I don’t know where the books come from. Roz says I order them, and that it’s all right. It’s all right, too, she says, that I don’t remember why.

     For example, I have this little Andre Gide book on Oscar Wilde. I know who Gide is though I can’t find a novel of his I was sure I had somewhere, Strait Is the Gate. And I know who Wilde is though I can’t find The Picture of Dorian Gray either. I remember looking for it last week sometime, too; I can’t remember why.

As the epitaph to the first of Gide's two sketches in the volume, there’s a quote from Renan - I assume the historical Jesus guy. A bit of blah-blah-blah, then he says this about “harsh measures taken to assure the rule of our morals and manners,” that “the most serious abuses [against the rules] are less damaging than a system of inquisition which degrades character.” The cure is worse than the disease.

     For, is there an inquisition that is not degrading? Isn’t the point to raise the inquisitors’ righteousness over - and to place it in judgment of - any failure to live up to it? Righteousness despises any unwillingness to recognize its rightness, it can't stand any disinclination to take its seriousness seriously.

Art Carney as Ed Norton as Apostaticus Ludens

     For the inquisitors’ business is serious - it is a grave and solemn business, damn you.“Yes, damn you. God will damn you if you don’t . . . You, there, look at me! Don’t turn away. What you need to do is turn around, turn back. Save yourself before it’s too late.” It will be after I have killed you - after I have robbed you of all spirit and taken away all joy and then killed you.“Never overestimate either spirit or joy. They are nothing in God’s larger scheme of things.”

     Be ye solemn as he is solemn. As I am. Solemn!

 Tomorrow: last Friday night.

When Roz is God, things will be different.

01.29.19

The will of God that man seldom prosper.

 The will of God that man seldom prosper.

Looking for something to read this morning, and I found a book Bob NLN* gave me for Christmas - a surprise, I hadn’t seen Bob for quite a while. The book: Why Can’t We Get Along? a conversation among a Muslim, a Christian, and a Jew, all academics or former academics in Britain.**

     And here’s the first line: “Religions are seldom complimentary about human nature.” Moreover, “the human predicament is rooted in human nature itself.”

     It is a “predicament”***: the plot is contrived before the actors come on stage. Anyone that has read the play - or even about the play - can predict its outcome, for example, that, a miserable sinner for more than sixty years, I will be sitting here constipated, nursing a bad back.
     Right?

01.26.19

_______________

   * No last name. My former uncredentialed cognitive behavioral therapist. See here.

  ** Dawoud El-Alami, Dan Cohn-Sherbok, and George D. Cryssides, Why Can’t They Get Along? A conversation between a Muslim, a Jew and a Christian. Oxford: Lion Books, 2014.

 *** from the Latin prae + dicare (not dicere), to announce - or pronounce - beforehand.

A master had three servants.

 A master had three servants. 

 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. 213) – 

The so-called unrecorded sayings of Jesus are often difficult to reconstruct, especially those attributed to the so-called “Gospel of the Apocalypse,” since we have no manuscript for the “Gospel,” only references to it in third-hand copies of the sayings of unnamed oasis fathers. As in this case, which begins as follows:

 

   kai\ ei]pen au00toi=v : kurio&v tiv ei)xen trei_v doulou&v. 

   He said to them, “A master had three servants.”

The parable goes on something like this:

Going away for the night, he left them in charge of his household. When he returned suddenly at midnight, he found them up waiting though they had fallen asleep. He shook each gently and sent them all to bed. Then, he went back out into the night. When he returned in the early morning, he found them again up waiting, but again asleep. Tell me: Will God not know his own whether they are awake or asleep?

Commentary

The parable cannot be genuine; that is, it cannot belong to Jesus of Nazareth. Even less, even though it has been attributed to the “Gospel of the Apocalypse,” can it have come from any early apocalyptic tradition? And the answer to the question, “Where does it come from then?” can only be “We do not know.”

     However, it does ask that tradition an interesting question, “What might God know that you do not, you supercillious, hypocritical, pig-headed prigs?”

01.25.19

For links to other excerpts from Rantrage Press commentaries (Joshua, Ruth, Ecclesiastes, Revelation, et al.), click here.

*2*Ba-dum-tss-bam*2*

continued from here

 *2*Ba-dum-tss-bam*2* 

“Brenda Lee,” I said.
     She shook her head, sadly.

     “Patsy Cline, then,” I said.

     “Edgier,” Roz said. “I think edgier.”

     “Edgier than Patsy Cline?”

     “Etta James,” she said.

We compromised on Melody Gardot, which suggests we may have different definitions of “edgy.”

01.21.19