The human condition

 Where we are now.

The human condition, according to The Apostle (2 Timothy 3).*

We are “narcissistic, covetous, arrogant, proud, blasphemous, disobedient, ungrateful, criminal, heartless, faithless, slanderous, lustful, merciless, unkind, treacherous, pig-headed, puffed-up.” We love earthly pleasures more than we love God: How could we not if our women are silly with lust, and leading men resist the truth because they love folly more?

 * * * * *

“The problem is,” Roz said, brows knitted, looking over my shoulder again.
“The problem is, you more than half believe this. You are a disciple of the apostle.”
     “No,” I said. “You don’t really think that.” I turned to look at her.
     She shook her head, but whether to say, “No, I don't think that” or to say “Maybe unwillingly, but” or to say “Oh, Ted! (Poor Ted.**)” I wasn’t sure.

08.10.21

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 * Please, I don’t want to hear the argument that Paul (of Romans, the letters to the Corinthians, Philippians, Galatians, Philemon, et al.) didn’t write this. So, he didn’t. The Apostle sure as hell did! Illustration: “Dutch Oven.”

** Poor, misguided Ted!

   Illustration: the Greek and the Latin from the New Students’ New Testament Workbook (Collegeville, MN, 1962).

Oh, Moira!

Oh, Moira!

I reply.

 

the day after yesterday

Dear Moira,

     You do have The Apostle wrong, I believe, but I wouldn’t trust me to get him right.

But then, who can? You know my favorite quote on the subject: “Only Luther understood Paul, and he misunderstood him.”

     But in this case (Romans 8:28), it doesn’t all work out for the good for those whom God loves; I wish it did. Instead, it works out for those who love God, and that means almost certainly for those who love God truly, aright. And that is The Apostle himself and those that understand him (period). I wouldn’t, then, go to him, to Paul, to find consolation.

     And I wouldn’t go to him to find out what foolishness really means. Paul may write of the foolishness of God (as in 1 Corinthians 1:25), but he doesn’t understand it unless he knows far more about Jesus of Nazareth than I think he does. Or, unless he cares more for Jesus of Nazareth than he ever demonstrates in any of the letters. For the foolishness of God (in my opinion)* is not found in the triumph of the Christ but in the ill-designed and poorly implemented Jesus experiment.

     So, I like “philomorer.” (I also like “seesay.”)

These are my immediate reactions to what I remember your writing. (I don’t have the letter in front of me.) But now I don’t know what to write next anymore than I know what to do next.

     I still (decades later) can’t seem to get organized. So, before I sat down to write you, I found myself surfing the web for planning calendars. “I need to play,” I was thinking, “And I can’t do it by myself. I need help.” A crutch, I was thinking. Then: Not that a crutch can help if you have no legs. Maybe you could swing at someone going by, knock them down, and steal one of their legs — though then, to be fair, you would have to come up with a plan to share the crutch. Or, you could steal both of their legs. I know that sounds harsh; it’s why I was only going to steal one to begin with. Besides, now you have both, where do you go? You could steal their map! But if it has a route traced on it, it’s their route, not yours. Besides, assuming you do know how to read a map — because I do — if you don’t know where you are on the map, it’s useless, right?

     You’re right, that’s what I do say, all the time, that it doesn’t all make sense. I’m never sure that any of it makes good sense. But that’s not the result of a position I have come to philosophically. It’s the result of a philomor(on)ic temperament: I have been dazed and confused from an early age, maybe from the first time Aunt Margaret asked me why I did something she didn’t like, and I didn’t know why. She would then always explain to me why it was a wrong, illogical, or stupid thing to do. But I couldn’t explain why it had made sense at the time. Because it hadn’t. I’d just did it.

     And I’d do it again if I could remember what it was.

                                                                                              Love, Ted

08.10.21

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Illustration: “Dutch Oven.” Cell phone drawing by mel ball.

From my sister Moira

 Dear Ted,  

From my sister Moira (the dead one) to me.

 

“This Perry Como business,” Roz said. “He didn’t die in 1981. He died in 2001. I looked it up.”

     “I know,” I said.

     “So?”

     “What?” She looked worried. There was a line from her forehead into the bridge of her glasses. She’d put it there, but she couldn’t seem to keep it still. “What?” I said again. She couldn’t keep the line still, but she was still.

     “I don’t know,” I said,” because I didn’t. But then: “I’m taking my medicine.

     “You can check.” She wouldn’t, of course because she trusts me. Because I am trustworthy.

     You can trust me.

* * * * *

Today    

Dear Ted,

     Sometimes when I come to Alma’s diner to write you, I have toast and jam as well as coffee: generic white bread toast and the blobby stuff that’s in those little plastic packets they have in all diners. I did this time. And I got my fingers all sticky, and I said, “Aaarrggh,” and Alma came with a cloth napkin and a finger bowl. I had forgotten such things existed.

     What are you eating for breakfast these days? One piece of toast is usually enough for me.

     You were visiting friends is North Carolina? I was born there, wasn’t I? I ask because I forget why we were there, and I’m not sure where we went next, or even after that. Not that it matters. Except does matter, doesn’t it, in the sense that everything matters because everything works together for the good for those whom God loves? Isn’t that what The Apostle says? And God loves everything, so it all matters. That’s what I say. Which doesn’t mean that it all makes sense. That’s what you keep saying, right?

     But something doesn’t have to make sense to be true. I’ll say that, too. I mean “true” in the sense of “real”; and I mean “real” in the sense of available to taste, touch, and smell — you don’t only see and hear. It isn’t only hearsay or seesay. A wolf howls, and you can smell it; the sound of it enters you at the base of your neck and runs down between your breasts, even behind your navel and into your groin. At the back of your tongue is a coppery taste. Maybe?

This just occurs to me: If the wisdom of men is the foolishness of God — or is it the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of men — if that is the case, is Jesus not a philosopher but a philomorer? (And do I get that right? You know that I don’t know any Greek, but I do know sopho-more means “wise fool” and I extrapolate. What would Paul say?)
     And I extricate myself from my booth at Alma’s, taking my letter with me and my pen and another leaf of paper in case I want to add something. I am going to meet your old girlfriend, Trudy Monae. I’ve decided I’m going to like her after all, for your sake. We are going to the shelter to get a cat that will live with her half the week and then a hundred years with me. And vice-versa.
     Write me back soon. Answer all my questions!

                                                                 Love, Moira

08.07.21

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Illustration: “The Apopsicle Paul”

Dear Perry,

Dear Perry,  

From Cousin Roselle to Aunt Roselle.

August 4, 1981    

Dear Roselle,

     I heard on the radio news this morning that Perry Como died. I thought you would want to know. So, since we’re not talking, I wrote you, and brought the letter, this letter, into Staunton, walking along the railroad tracks. There’s a sign there on the station that it is 1,395 ft above sea level. I walked the letter to the post office, paid my 18 cents and put it in the mail slot. You should get it soon.    

     You are a bitch, pardon my French; but I knew you would want to know about Perry because you loved him almost as much as I did. They say he died with my name on his lips. It's true he was once in love with another Roselle, but I think it was me he was talking about because I am his biggest fan. It wasn’t your name at any rate.
     I guess that's it. I don't really have anything else to say to you. I hope my brother is okay, but that would be no thanks to you either.

                                                                Your loving sister-in-law, Roselle

* * * * *

Roz was looking over my shoulder, reading over my shoulder. “That’s not true, is it?” she said. “That wasn’t even your aunt’s name, Roselle. Wasn’t it Margaret?”

     “Martha,“ I said. “But it could have been Roselle.” Roz kept looking at the screen.

     “It’s true for some,” I said.

     Roz said, “I suppose.” Then: “We should go for a walk,” she said.

 

 08.05.21

Au revoir

 ​ Au revoir  

 End of Chapter One:

“George Grosz Toasts the New Year”

(799 posts)

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Chapter Two Begins Soon Enough:

“The Untimely Death of Perry Como and What Happened Next”

▪ dispatches and documents ▪

 

05.15.21