Forbes Field

 Forbes Field after Forbes Field was gone

This is a usual morning. We eat our spare breakfast, toast and coffee; and Roz, having gotten up early to shower, wash and dry her hair, and dress for work, leaves for the day. I won’t see her again until supper time.

      I take the half cup of coffee I haven’t drunk and the half cup left in the pot and pour them over ice, a generous splash of half-and-half, and another teaspoon of sugar into a tall glass - iced coffee. I counteract the effects of the caffeine with a valium. I police the kitchen: scrape our dishes, rinse out the coffee cups, and put them into the dishwasher; I wipe down the table and the counter.

     That’s all the order I have to my morning though I am encouraged to keep all things in order. But what does “things” mean? It’s hard to know: So many expressions intended to be helpful are only vague.

     I try to read. I read the newspaper, I read Nathanael West, and I read and re-read Tristram Shandy and the first sixteen pages of Finnegan’s Wake. I try to write and make only these largely vacuous letters to the ether. At the same time, I am supposed to be staying in the here and now - another piece of good, vague advice. What does it mean? Don’t tumble into the past; don’t stumble into the future; don’t bumble into the mist that surrounds and seems both to shroud and to point the way into madness.

Ken Tekulve pitching to no one :
Forbes Field in the fog under the lights and out of time.

     But all is mist, as the Preacher says: “Mist of mist, all is mist.” You cannot see it and you cannot see through it. And the air is full of its tiny droplets, none the same, each with its own distinctive smell: If you could distinguish the smell, you’d know where that prick of damp came from, the past or future, here or there - whether it blew down from Ohio or up from Georgia; but you can’t distinguish. Soon though you can’t read or write either; in the damp, the pages begin to curl at the corners, then they curl at the edges, finally, the letters begin to sprawl and blur. (It doesn’t matter if you’re reading and writing on paper, or if you’re scanning and typing on a screen.)

Before lunch I am drenched. For lunch, I have a dish of cereal. Sometimes there are bananas or blueberries. Sometimes, in these afternoons of late summer / early fall, there are baseball games on TV.

09.10.19

Bible Friday: the grimmer brother

 The grimmer brother

from Scott Bradwardine’s commentary on Obadiah (in the Incoherent series, Obadiah, Nahum, and Habakkuk by Bradwardine and Krab Drukte published by Rantrage Press, 2019, p. i)* –

INTRODUCTION

“The wages of forgiveness are resentment that can last many lifetimes.” So says the sage, Samba. This may be particularly true between brothers.

     Anyone reading this will know the rough outlines of the Jacob and Esau story,¹ how the conflict between the brothers began in the womb and despite the elder’s best efforts lasted generations.

    The twins begin when Isaac marries Rebekah and takes her “into the tent of Sarah his [dead] mother”; it is “comfort,” he finds, “after his mother’s death.” (He was, after all, 40 years old when he finally married.) Sometime later they (Isaac and Rebekah) had twins, destined according to what Yahweh tells the mother because they are already fighting in her womb - destined to be two nations, divided. Esau is born red; Jacob rides into the world hanging onto his brother’s heel.

     They grow up active and quiet, straightforward and deceitful. Jacob connives to rob Esau of his birthright and blessing, either by trading on his hunger (for a bowl of soup) or pretending to be the older brother when Isaac sends for him to give his fatherly blessing. Rebekah assists, for she loves her younger son more than her older. She cooks goat for game and clothes the smooth-skinned Jacob with the goat’s skin so he’ll feel like Esau under his blind father’s hands.

     When Isaac is not convinced, Jacob ceases to merely deceive and lies directly, “I am Esau, your firstborn. Eat what I have brought you and bless me. Now.” Isaac hesitates, but finally, he is taken in. And, apparently, he has only one blessing to give. For the fond Esau gets only a curse though it is leavened with the promise that he will “break [his brother’s] yoke from his neck” someday.

     Man of action, Esau decides that day he will break his brother’s neck will be the next, but Jacob runs away in the night.

     He stays away as long as he can, but he must come back eventually. That means he must confront his brother, still older, still stronger, still right. But he (Jacob) can send ambassadors: “I’m a rich man now, I could be of use to you. Don’t hurt me.” The ambassadors return with the news that Esau is coming to meet Jacob.

     Then, Jacob can send presents ahead of the meeting - perhaps they will mollify Esau. And he (Jacob) can put a buffer between himself and his brother: he sends his wives and his children ahead while he loiters safely (cowardly) behind.

    But Esau runs straight through it all, straight to his brother. And he forgives him. Esau forgives Jacob; he forgives him all. As a result, Jacob takes up the land of their father Isaac. And Esau goes off to Seir, that is, Edom.

So many years later, when the Babylonians come to take Isaac’s land from Jacob’s descendants, and Esau’s progenies decide to stay home, for what can they do if they throw in with their “brothers”? What will happen to them but that they will be destroyed as well? In any case, won’t “Jacob” weasel his way out as he always has? So Esau chooses expediency; surely Jacob will understand - and forgive!

     Not a chance in hell. And we enter the world of the prophet Obadiah, who has no doubt that for its perfidy, the house of Esau will be punished - decimated! The house of Jacob will become “a fire” and the house of Esau “stubble.” Jacob’s holocaust will consume Esau; not one will survive.

     The Lord says so. What a Guy!

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¹The story of the brothers is found in Genesis 24, 25, 27, 32, and 33.

09.06.19

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 * Links to passages from other Rantrage Press commentaries are here.

Arsenal 2, Tottenham 2, Kristen Lavransdatter 3

 Arsenal 2, Tottenham 2, Kristen Lavransdatter 3 

Sunday morning I went to pick up Uncle Albert for the Arsenal Tottenham match. He’s a long-time Arsenal supporter.

    Had he been to church? I asked. “No,” he said. “How would I get there now if you’re not taking me?”

    “But I am taking you,” I said, “when you let me know you need a ride.

    “I thought Maggie Something was taking you, not the woman in your house but Roz’s friend - that Maggie.” (See here.)

    "She comes when I call,” Uncle Albert says, “but I don’t like calling her.”

    “Why not?”

    He shrugged.

    “Well, call me then,” I said though I didn’t want to. I wanted him to call Maggie.

Uncle Albert with Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang

Tottenham jumped out in front against the run of play, which was all Arsenal until Christian Eriksen tipped in a pass from Lamela from Son on a break.

    Through the flat screen, Stanford Bridge glows green as Ireland, but there are no Irishmen on the field. Damn few British. Arsenal starts one German, three Frenchmen, a Brazilian, a Greek, an Albanian from Switzerland, a Bosnian, Uruguayan, an Ivorian, and only one from the UK, Ainsley Maitland-Niles. Tottenham does have three British starters, Harrys Kane and Winks and Danny Rose; otherwise, there is the Frenchman in goal and one more in midfield, two Dutchmen, a Columbian, an Argentinian, a Korean, and a Dane.

    (The Korean) Son and (the Dane) Eriksen, Tottenham’s two best players in Uncle Albert’s and my opinions, were both on their games. Arsenal’s keeper, the usually mediocre Bernd Leno, robbed Son in the 17th minute and Eriksen in the 37th. By now, Tottenham was flying, and Son (again) managed to pick up a foul in the box on Granit Xhaka. Harry Kane put the penalty kick into the side netting. And Arlo White went apeshit. White, otherwise a good announcer, is a tremendous Harry Kane fan. Besotted.

    Arsenal got back into it just before the half. After Tottenham’s keeper, the sometimes brilliant, sometimes dull Hugo Lloris, made a good save on Pepe, Lacazette, playing in the middle of the front line between Pepe and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, pushed one by on a pass from the former. In the 46th minute, so that Arsenal went in at half-time only one down.

    The Gunners started the second half much as they had the first, dominating play. Lloris made another nice save on Guendouzi ten minutes in. Three minutes later Kane hit the inside of the post on a Tottenham counter. How could he miss? Arlo White couldn’t get over it. The post must have moved.

    Lloris made two more good saves on Danny Ceballos, who had replaced Lucas Torreira in the midfield, and on Guendouzi, who shortly slipped Aubameyang through for the tying score.

    And that was it though Arsenal continued to dominate. They scored a third goal, but it was called back because Kolasinac was offside.

    That was it. The game ended in a draw. Arsenal is in 5th place and Tottenham in (God forbid! - but thank him nonetheless) 9th.

* * * * *

At the half, I’d asked Uncle Albert if he’d really met Sigrid Undset. Of course, he hadn’t he said. “I’m not that old,” he said. “A fig-newton of your friend Ball’s imagination,” he said. (See here.)

     The teams were coming out from their locker rooms. “I’ll tell you all the Sigrid Undset, I know after it’s over, Uncle Albert said, from The Cross. That’s the last volume of the three that make up Kristin Lavransdatter.

Uncle Albert has this phenomenal memory for quotations, from the Bible, from French poetry and drama, from American lit from Hawthorne through Twain, from the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, from pretty damn anywhere. Now he was quoting Kristen. It’s the way she is, Kristen, he was saying. This is toward the end but before she leaves on her pilgrimage, he thinks. (I haven’t gotten there. “What pilgrimage?” I say. “Sorry,” he says.) Then: “Kristen is about to turn truly religious, but she’ll never be able to, no matter how much the author needs it for her plot.” Then, he quoted:

Kristin praying on the cover
of her third book.

     “‘Surely she had never asked God for anything except that he should let her have her will. And for the most part, she got it. Now here she was sitting with a contrite heart - not because she had sinned against God but because she was unhappy that she had not been allowed to follow her will all the way to the end.’ Something like that,” Uncle Albert said.

Yesterday, I finally came to the quote. Uncle Albert may be right about the plot, but he was wrong about the quote. It lacked the second negative. Here’s how it reads in my book, Tina Nunally’s translation: “Surely she [Kristin] had never asked God for anything except that he should let her have her will. And every time she had been granted what she asked for - for the most part. Now here she sat with a contrite heart - not because she had sinned against God but because she was unhappy that she had been allowed to follow her [own] will to the road’s end.”

     So, he’s almost dead wrong about the quote, but he might be righter about Kristin than Undset is. I think he’s right about most of us: Surely she/he/you/I have never asked anything except that God would let us have our will. And now as we’re getting a little older, closer to the end, we’re unhappy that God may intervene, we might not get to follow our own way to the end.

     I don't have to belabor the point, gentle reader, launch into a long explanation. You are perceptive. You understand. You know: Damned if we won’t keep trying, in every prayer pointing out to God what he ought to be doing. Pay attention, dammit!

09.04.19

Burning bushes II

continued from the previous post

 Burning Bushes II  

“What’s this week’s sermon about?” I was asking Axel.

     “The passage is ‘the burning bush’ in Exodus 3,” Axel said.

“That’s next year's,” I didn’t say. (But the story is here, in case you were interested.)

 

08.30.19

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 * Other stories from the TRV (Ted Riich Version of the Bible).

Burning our bushes

 Burning our bushes behind us 

Yab-Yum in a fishbowl

I was asking Axel about Nils, who was heading off on some sort of retreat with Bel Monk. “Uncle Albert says he is converting to some sort of Buddhism - it begins with a V, I think?”

          “Vajrayāna,” Axel said. “Nils is an idiot. He’s a Marxist, then he’s a Buddhist; and somehow he is going to hold those in tension ‘within himself.’ It’s bullshit. It’s impossible bullshit.”

          I started to say, “How so?” for what do I know about either? But Axel rushed right on: “They’re both bullshit to start with. Marxism is bullshit. And Vajrayāna Buddhism is bullshit.

     “At least in Nils’ hands,” he added after a pause.

     “How so?” I wanted to say again, but it didn’t seem like the right question at this point, so I said, “Oh.”

We were in Axel’s study at Grace, a cavern of a room with bookshelves on two walls and windows on a third, the shades pulled against the afternoon sun. Axel was in his big leather chair behind his big mahogany desk. He was leaning back, hands behind his head, trying to decide whether to put his feet up.

     I was opposite in one of the two overstuffed parishioners’ chairs. The whole office felt over-stuffed. There were too many books on the shelves, the blinds trapped too much air in the room. (You know, how water in a fish tank looks denser than water in a pond.) Axel had eaten too much for lunch; his stomach was rumbling. There were too many ideas in his head. Maybe it was his brain that was rumbling.

     There were too many butterflies in my stomach. There are always butterflies in my stomach. I am always anxious. That’s what I take medicine for, to kill the butterflies. But at best it only wounds them: some sink to the bottom where they continue to flutter their enfeebled wings. Others continue to sail drunkenly about bumping into one another. The few that manage somehow to escape the poison altogether yell at the others: “Get up, you lazy jackass!” “Watch where you’re going, you besotted son-of-a-bitch!”

“What about Bel?” And I found myself wondering if I’d said that out loud. It’s a delicate subject, I keep thinking.

     “Eff Bel,” Axel said, except he didn’t say “eff.” Then he must have wondered if he’d said that out loud. He decided he had. “I’m sorry,” he interrupted himself in a rush. “I shouldn’t have said that.

     “She’s an artist.” He stopped. He started again: “Not a wonderful artist,” he went on, “though I like her work. But she’s serious about it. So for her,” he hesitated.

     “Anything for art’s sake,” he decided. “She thinks this stuff may help. Somehow.”

     I was trying not to say anything out loud.

     “And maybe it will,” Axel said and pursed his lips.

“Today’s Thursday,” I said after a long silence. We’d come to the church after taking Uncle Albert home from Thursday lunch.

     “It is, Einstein. So?”

     “What’s this week’s sermon about?”

     “The passage is ‘the burning bush’ in Exodus 3,” Axel said. (Incorrectly, it turns out. See here.)

08.29.19

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* वज्रयान
Dramatis Personae: Axel, Nils, Bel Monk.
 

a pack of dogs

My recent absence from Twitter can be explained. I was blocked for ten days for “insufficient crass political content.” For my absence from these pages, I have no excuse, but I do have the following explanation.

 A farable of Jesop 

Jesop as the dog Zeke

“a pack of dogs”

A dog decided to form a pack. He went out looking for dogs to join. He found another dog and asked him to join. The other dog said he would if he could be the leader. The first dog agreed: “Sure, why not?” The second dog asked the first, “How many do we have to have to have a pack?” The first dog said, “Five, like the fingers on a human hand.” “Then we'll need three more,” the second dog said. Soon, they found one who knew another who knew another, but the last wouldn't join unless he could be leader. “Can a pack have two leaders?” the second dog asked the first.” “I don’t think it can,” the first said.

  08.27.19 

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The Farables (online reproduction of the 1887 edition with an afterword by Ted Riich) is available here.

Reading Kristin Lavransdatter

 Reading Kristin Lavransdatter   

“What do you hear from your sister?” Uncle Albert asked. This was Monday on our way to my appointment with Dr. Feight. And Uncle Albert meant Moira, my dead sister, not Hannah, the alive one. He asks because he thinks it’s nuts that I get letters from a dead sister. That’s why he asks me about it on the way to Dr. Feight’s because Dr. Feight is in charge of “nuts.” Almost every week, he asks about it.*

     I told him I’d brought a letter to read to Dr. Feight. “You’re mentioned in it,” I said.

     He didn’t reply, and I didn’t look at him because I was paying attention to my driving. He didn’t reply. It happens more and more. He asks a question then falls asleep before you can answer – even in the car.

I read Dr. Feight the letter from Moira.

Dear Ted,

I see you are making plans again. Is that going to make it any better? But, maybe, for you, it is. You seem to like a plan. You’re anxious until you have one. Then, sadly, you’re anxious about its working. It’s not until you begin making a plan that you also begin to think about how it could go wrong.

Uncle Albert yukking it up with Sigrid Undset
Copenhagen, 1940 / by m ball

     How are you getting along with Kristin Lavrandsdatter? Are the characters as hemmed in and sad about their choices as I remember them? Is anyone going to get any release? I forget, it’s been so long ago.

     I wondered often as my life was winding down about how I could get release, maybe by taking a vacation from myself. No, I didn’t know that it was winding down; I didn’t know when it would end (though I never imagined it lasting as long as Uncle Albert’s has – how is he by the way?). I did know it was growing tighter and tighter as if I were getting too fat for my clothes (when I definitely was not!); but I was living in a smaller and smaller emotional space, there was less and less nearby room to escape into. Thus, the idea of a vacation! – getting somehow away from nearer-by to farther away. But where? And how?

     Reading Kristin Lavransdatter was not the answer. Reading was not the answer. I read much as I imagine you read now (from what you write about your reading, what you’ve written about Kristin). You don’t so much go to the book as it comes to you. You don’t lose yourself in it, but you are always present, wondering why? why? why? Or, you’re thinking, “This is just what I would do! How can she be so stupid?” You’re always judging what the characters are thinking and doing and simultaneously judging yourself. At least, that’s what I did, and reading ceased to be a joy; it became an exercise, increasingly demanding and draining.

     Sometimes drugs helped, especially mixed with a little alcohol – and the alcohol mixed with a little company if I could get myself out and I could find someone to talk (or listen) to. But that was hard. Who would want to talk with me who didn’t want to talk with herself?

     I’m a little easier about things now. Sometimes it’s good to be dead, not pressed by time or space  - where there is neither (in any sense I understood before; nor can I explain it now – don’t ask!). There is no harrying, no hurrying.

     So, don’t you be in a hurry to get started on new plans. The sooner you do, the sooner you’ll be looking for the wrong turns you’re about to make. Take your time in getting started. Take your time once you do.

     I don’t know what else to say at the moment. I sense that reading this is only going to make you both more determined and sadder. I am sorry for that. Neither is the result I want for you. I only want you to be happier.

     Please, please, be more lighthearted, my beloved brother,

                                                                                                 Moira

“May I see it,” Dr. Feight said.

     “Well,” I said, “it’s just a copy I typed out.”

     “Hmmm,” he said. Then, “Is this right? Is this the way you read?” he asked.

     “Pretty much,” I said.

08.21.19

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 * Dramatis Personae. The Uncle Albert page still isn’t ready. But you can read about how (and why) he accompanies me to my appointments with Dr. Feight here. And about Moira here.