In the beginning was the word,

 In the beginning was the word, 

Down Dr. Feight's stairs

When I went to see Dr. Feight yesterday, I took one of Moira’s letters. (About those see here and here.*)

     After Roz and I talked about Nightwood Tuesday night, I tried to write her, Moira, about the book, particularly about the character of Robin Vote. The blurb on the back of the paperback Roz is reading calls the novel “the story of Robin Vote and those she destroys.” Those are Felix and Nora and Jenny Petherbridge, also Guido, her son with Felix. Just as I was going to sleep, I began to remember pieces of the story. “Each of the characters becomes involved with Robin,” I wrote Moira, “and each is destroyed. But why do they become involved with her in the first place? What attracts them to her?” I couldn't see that. “It’s one thing with Guido: children become involved with their parents willy-nilly. But grown men and women - have they no choice when it comes to their lovers?”

     Then I wrote, “I’ll stop here. I’m running out of coffee. Or maybe I’m just running out (period), petering out.” But I go on: “Where does that idiom come from, to ‘peter out’? A woman describing her lover, perhaps? ‘He began well enough, but before we were half-done, he just petered out?’ Forgive me. Maybe that’s not something a man writes to his younger sister. Besides, there’s no need asking you, is there? You don’t have either a library or the internet, and your access to the All-Knowing seems - to me, oddly and surprisingly - limited.”

She wrote back Wednesday afternoon. She looked forward to what I found out about “peter out.” “It’s not, incidentally,” she went on, “that we don’t have access to the All-Knowing, but unless you happen on one of His (very few) interests, He doesn’t really pay attention. I might well ask, for example, where the phrase ‘peter out’ comes from, and even put a gasp of sexual innuendo into my voice. And He will likely respond by asking what I think of the phrase ‘cleverly devised myths’ in II Peter, meaning the New Testament book, and then, when I come up blank, he might suggest that could be something worth thinking about. He’d be glad to exchange views if I formed any.

Dr. Feight's couch

     “And I get the feeling that is true. He would be. He is never - He can never be - too busy for me - or anyone or anything else - because He is not only All-Knowing, He is All-Doing. Still, never being too busy and appearing accessible are two quite different things.

     “So, yes, please, you see what you can find out about the phrase.” She signs the letter, “Love, Moira.”

I read the letter to Dr. Feight. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do if he asked to see it, but he didn’t. Instead, he said, “It doesn’t have to do with sex, does it?” - meaning the origin of the phrase.

     “No,” I said. “It doesn’t.”

03.22.19

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 * Links to my lengthy history with Dr. Feight may be found here.

Nightwood

 Nightwood 

“Ted,” I hear. I look from where I’m lying down on the couch across the coffee table. Roz is sitting in her chair, feet tucked under her hips; she has raised her head from her book. Roz’s chair is blue. It has an aura that wavers a little. She is wearing gray, a lighter gray sweater-top and a darker gray skirt that she’s pulled down over her knees.
     I took medicine once that made everything shimmer under incandescent light. Except for Roz. She always sat, and she always sits still, except when she raises her head, and says, “Ted.” Then I look up. Behind her, shimmering in a different way: a Pat Matheny Album she likes, songs from the sixties and seventies, “The Sound of Silence,”“Cherish,”“Rainy Days and Mondays,” “And I Love Her,” among others. The name of the album is What's It All About.

Roz's chair

     “Did you hear what I said?” she asks.

     “I might have,” I say. “What?”

     “Are you okay? I don’t think you want to go to sleep right now.”

     “What time is it?” I ask.

     “It’s a little after eight.”

     “It’s Monday, right?” I ask.

     “No, hon. it’s Tuesday.”

     “Did I see Dr. Feight today? I was thinking it was tomorrow.”

     “No. You see him on Monday. And on Thursday. You saw him yesterday and you see him again the day after tomorrow.”

     “What are you reading?” I ask.

     “Nightwood.”

     “Oh, I remember that. I think I must have read it once.” Djuna Barnes, I know that;but I’m not sure I ever read the book any more than I’m sure what day it is or how it could be eight o’clock and not ten or eleven. The new drugs aren’t used to each other yet. Some days they seem to get along, and some days every one is angry at every other. Or, some want to cooperate and others are intent on forming alliances.

     I try to think how many there are, probably not this many but it seems as if I have one to calm me down and another to keep me awake, one to keep my stomach from buzzing and another to keep it from shutting off. There’s one to keep my brain from imploding and another to keep it from exploding. There’s one to open my lungs to the world and another from keeping my spirit from escaping through my nose. And there’s Vitamin D.

     “Why don’t you try reading something?” Roz asks.

     “What?”

     “Well, I don’t think Nightwood,” she says.
     “No,” I say, “From what I remember, not that.”

03.20.19

Anti-story

 Anti-story 

One of you wrote me about the last post in which Michael Gerson was telling his story, but I wasn’t telling mine because I had none (Click here.): “Didn’t you run into someone you knew, for instance? Something must have happened. If so, there must be a story.”

I ran into two people I knew. I ran into the big, fat, angry preacher that was out to preach last time I was there, about a year ago. (See here. The story of that stay begins here.) He still comes, apparently. And he’s been coming all along.

     The day I ran into him this time must have been a Sunday, but I wasn’t keeping good track of the time, so I didn’t realize it was Sunday. I hadn’t gone to “worship.” But he came over at lunch; he remembered me somehow. And I saw that lunch was “Sunday”: fried chicken - a leg and a thigh - covered with corn-flake batter thicker than the meat; a runny lump of mashed potatoes and a stew of mashed green beans, which I stirred together into one camouflage-colored glop. Also: sweet tea; and Jell-O with fruit in it for dessert, a smudge of whipped cream on top.

     The chair across from me was empty. He sat down in it - or surrounded it - and he asked me how it felt to be back. There wasn’t a touch of irony in his voice that I could tell. It was as if he genuinely wanted to know, as if we’d been vacationing for years on the same week on the same half-mile of road leading off Highway 12 to Canadian Hole Beach, and I’d missed last year for some reason.

     I didn’t know how to answer, so I said, “Fine.” Then, after a minute watching him watch me while I ate, I asked him what he thought God was up to the when he struck Saul mad. He looked at me. He shook his head. Then he said he was in the loving-God, not the second-guessing-God business. I said, “Oh.” He started getting up, pretending that it wasn’t an effort to get all that weight from sitting to standing and that he wasn’t angry about gravity, about my question, about everything else in the world God had made good but Man insisted on mucking up. “Good to see you again,” he said. “Good to see you,” I said. I didn’t mean it, but I don’t think he meant it either. Still, it was good of him to see and try to say something to me.

Staff

I heard from one of the staff that has been around longer than the preacher has been coming out - much longer - that Molly had been back but was gone again. He wasn’t supposed to tell me that kind of thing, he said, “But I got such a kick out of it when you guys broke out of here that time.” 

     That was at the end of December two years ago. And we didn’t exactly break out; more, we drove away. (Molly enters that story right after Roz takes me out for Christmas dinner, which is here. Just page on from there.)

     Staff said he wasn’t supposed to tell me this either, but Molly was about the same. “He reminds me of a dead leaf blowing along the sidewalk,” he said. “He looks like he’s dancing in the sun, but you know . . . .” He stopped. “Well, you know that it’s not dancing, it’s something else.”

     I hadn’t thought about Molly for a while, I told staff. “Do you know where we went?” I asked, “not that you could tell me.” No, staff said, he couldn’t tell me if he knew; but he didn’t know. “He just blows in and he blows away again,” staff said as he went back to scrubbing the floor. When someone throws up, he mops up, staff said; then he scrubs the whole hallway; then he mops again.

03.08.19

Some time later

 Some time later . . . 

I saw Michael Gerson on television in the common room the other day: He was talking cheerily about being hospitalized for depression. He’s written about it, too; I read one of the articles. He’s telling his story. That’s good.

     I’m not telling my story because there isn’t one. That’s my experience: There is no story.

Some years ago I bought used an anthology called . . . Anti-Story, I believe.* I thought I might find something helpful for writing this in it, so I went looking for it this morning after Roz came to get me and brought me home. Uncle Albert was with her. She had to go back to work for a while, and he was going to stay with me until she got home.

     I thought I knew right where the book was, or at least what other books it would be with; but it wasn’t there. And I didn’t know where else to look.

03.04.19

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 * I was right. I looked it up on the internet: Philip Stevick, ed., Anti-Story: An Anthology of Experimental Fiction. New York: The Free Press, 1971.

Masks

 Masks 

“When you look at me, what do you see? What are you looking for?” I asked Dr. Feight this morning.

     “I’m listening more than I’m looking, actually,” he said.

     “What do you hear, then? What are you listening for?”

     “Different things at different times.”

     “Do you sense I’m putting on different voices?” I said.

     “Not intentionally.” He paused. “Are you? . . . Intentionally?”

     “I hadn’t thought so,” I shrugged.

     “Why this line of conversation?” he asked.

Zombo face mask, pre-1917

Roz and I had gone to Richmond to see an exhibition of African masks, I told him. And every one was different from every other one. Even those of the same pattern, carved of the same wood with the same tools, painted with the same dyes were different from one another, as if there was an honesty in the wood the carver couldn’t cut away or around, that the dyer couldn’t cover over with paint.

     The masks looked to me the way we would look if we looked the way we felt, never quite symmetrical, always pulled somewhat askew. One eye slightly larger than the other or the other slightly nearer our nose than the one: then, the world is not symmetrical either because we see differently from the different eyes. One ear protruding more than the other or the other flatter to the head than the one, so that the music of the spheres is never regular either because we are hearing it differently through the different ears. Our sense of smell is sideways, too, because one nostril is wider than the other, the other nostril is more nervous than the one.

“I had always thought of masks as disguises,” I told Dr. Feight, “but maybe they are more the way we really look.”

02.18.19

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 * For more about Dr. Feight and me with links to all “our” posts, click here.

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.

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 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.