Excursus

 Excursus 

In which the blogger, like the narrator in a Henry Fielding novel, steps aside from the action to tell the reader what he thinks might be going on. Not ought to be! The blogger doesn’t have Fielding’s temperament, or his assurance. Thus, a parable, not an essay on form. 

It is as if ... 

It landed there when there was nothing but pasture and a few sheep. Later, grass would grow up around it. At some point, the field would flood, and the plane would sink. Someone would take the wings and dig up the half-buried wheels to take them, too, and it would sink farther into the ground. And more grass would grow up around it. Still, there it was, not far into the field at the end of the street, the half-buried fuselage, a two-seater where the pilot sat in the back and the passenger sat in the front. And you could still sit in it on the iron skeletons of the seats.

When the lion lies down with the lamb.

The pilot had started off not expecting anything to go wrong, though not expecting anything to go right either — just going, in ever-widening circles, figuring the center would hold, or if it didn’t, another center would take hold.
     Then, there was weather or a mechanical problem, or the plane ran out of gas — depending on who spoke the parable — and the pilot was forced to land. [This is the way of parables, as opposed to allegories, especially painted allegories. There are details in them, the parables, that do not matter. So, the same parable can be told in different ways at different times to different audiences, as Jesus does. And the teller doesn’t need to be always busy making everything fit. Because everything doesn’t fit. Jesus knows this if anyone does. Scientists are like allegorists. They have the allegorist’s imagination. As do apocalypticists. All three are interested both in how everything must fit (dammit!) and in doom.]
     The pilot bumped the plane down in a field of nothing but grass and a few sheep. He climbs out of the cockpit and limps away from the plane that has limped to a halt in a sheep pasture, dazed. The plane is dazed, and the pilot is dazed. Or, he thinks he should be, so he limps away.
     He sits down under a tree, and he wonders where the nearest roadway might be—in which direction the road might be? And where might the road take him?
     A sheep comes up and asks if there is any way the pilot can move his plane. Under it is just the grass, the sheep finds, it has a taste for. The pilot shakes his mazy head. “No speaka d’ Ovino,” he bleated. He shook his head again, swung his feet under him, climbed to them, and limed away. He still isn't hurt, but he limps for sympathy, even if only sympathy from an uncomprehending sheep.

It’s as if that. What you just heard.

 09.13.21 

Metafriction

Metafriction 

starring Willa Something-or-other

 

This Willa teaches what used to be called “English” at the local high school that used to be called T. J. Jackson. Now it’s called “Language Arts,” what Willa teaches; and the high school is called [Madrid]. She’s a friend of Roz, and of Uncle Albert; at least, they are all in a book group together.

     She said she read the blog, and she asked me if I was writing metafiction. Her voice sounded like reheated coffee.

     I didn’t say, “What’s that?” I said, “Not that I know of.”

     But she said, “Do you know what that is?” So I had to say that I didn’t.

     “No,” I said.

     I asked Roz. She said, “How do I know if you know what it is?” Then: “But Willa wrote a play about it. Don’t you remember?”

     “No,” I said.

     “We went to it!”
     “Oh.”
     “At the high school She wrote it, she directed it, she had a part in it. She played William Gass.” I didn’t ask who William Gass was because it looked like Roz was going to say something else. She did: “Wait a minute!” she said.
     She went away for a while, maybe a few minutes, maybe ten; and she came back with this.

“I had to say “No” because I didn’t. I didn’t remember the play at all. “Is that her?”
     “Yes.”
     “I don't remember her either,” I said though I thought I remembered her voice.

09.05.21

Later in bed

  Later, in bed - and later still.  

continued from last time

“Wait,” Roz said. “You make those up. Don’t you?”
      “What?” I said.

      “The letters.” She rolled onto her side and was looking at me.

     “ ... ,” I said. Or, I didn't say because I was trying not to.

     Without her glasses she herself looks unfocused. Without them, too, her eyes have to defend themselves. She looked fierce.
     “That Albert was referring to,” she said.
     “Oh. Yes. Yes, of course,” I said.

 

“My only concern,” Dr. Feight was saying, who normally says next to nothing but seemed to be feeling chatty, “is how much they may take out of you.” Now he was talking about the letters.

     “Well, I can’t think much. I don’t really work at them.” I stopped.

     “They just come to you?”

     “Yes. It’s more that I transcribe them than write them.”

     “But you are writing them, just you’re not writing in your own voice?”

     “No.”

     “You are writing with your own pen?!”

     “Yes,” I said, “of course.”

     I didn’t say, “different pens” (plural) and that was because they all had different pens, different colors. And different hand-writings, of course.

09.01.21

_________________

 “If you’re new to the blog, you can catch up with Roz’s story here. And you can catch up to Dr. Feight’s story here, whether you’re new or not.”

Later, another day

 Or,  

Later, another day.

Antonius Barth

I said, “When writers kill off characters, they’re dead. In real life, they hang around like Banquo’s ghost.”

     “Who said that?” Roz said.

     “I did, just now.”    

     “No, I don’t think so,” she said. I always try to tell the truth, and she knows that. So why doesn't she always believe me?

     “Maybe I read it somewhere,” I decided.

     “Where?”
     “Maybe Markus Barth, his commentary on one of the Thessalonians.”
     “You can’t say ‘Markus Barth,’” Uncle Albert said. “He’s a real person.”

     “Who is he?” Roz said.

     “He’s a Bible scholar,” Uncle Albert said. “And he’s real. The son of Karl Barth.” He paused. “The theologian.” 

     “What do you mean, ‘he’s real’? Why wouldn’t he be real?” She looked straight at Uncle Albert. He shrugged, not because he didn’t know what he meant but because he didn’t want to explain. “Why shouldn’t he be real?” Roz put the question another way. Uncle Albert shrugged again; his poor old shoulders barely move, he can hardly lift them.
     “How real is he anyway, at this point? In any case,” I said. “Isn’t he dead?”

     “I don’t know. Look it up.”

     So, I did, on my cellphone. “He’s dead.”

     “Well, he was real. So, you still can’t use him.” And he paused. “You should be talking to Dr. Feight about this. And he should be doing something about it.”

     “Antonius Barth, then,” I said. “Antonius Barth said it.”

     “About what? Dr. Feight should be doing something about what?” Roz asked. She looked again at Uncle Albert.

     “No, nothing,” I said. Maybe too quickly. There is no way to strike a happy medium; either you don’t answer quickly enough, or you’re jumping in too soon.

08.28.21

_______________

Illustration: Antonius Barth from the artist’s photo on the dust jacket of his 1957 travel book, Moldovan Beaches. Badly colorized by a “friend” of the blog.

P. S. from Trudy Monae

 P. S.  

more from Trudy, right after this.

 “Lee and Leda,” I said to Roz.

     “What?” she said.

     “So?”

     “Tell me about them,” I said. “Are they our friends?”

     “What do you mean?” she said.

     “I don’t know exactly,” I said. “We’re not ‘good enough for them,’ I get the idea.”

     “Why not?”

     “It’s more how not,” I said. “We’re not cool enough. Or they’re not quite as democratic as they would like to think they are. They hesitate before they decide to include us because we might not get it, whatever it is. They’re condescending, I think.”

     “Doesn’t everyone have to have friends they can condescend to?” Roz said. She paused. “Bless their hearts.”

* * * * *

P.S. (continued from here)  I wanted to get back to you about In Watermelon Sugar before you went on to something else.

     So: inBOIL’s mayhem must be suicidal, too! Violence in such a drab, armored place can only destroy itself. It can’t touch the narrator, or Pauline. Or it can’t be more than a nuisance for her. It can’t even affect Chuck, inBOIL’s brother.

     Here is what I think. The death of the last tiger, the removal of all danger until inBOIL begins getting drunk and recruiting his band of scary, but not because they’re dangerous; actually, they’re suicidal ... before inBOIL starts getting drunk and recruiting his band of crazy followers ... The death of the last tiger settles the society in and around iDEATH into sleepy, bland bland-sleepiness. There is living, but there is no life to it; there is no creativity at all. Anything remotely odd – Margaret is the prime example – is considered threatening. Her interest in the past is especially so: there is no time but present time, dammit! (Best then that her funeral does take place in silence; best nothing at all can be said. Actually, best that she is dead. Suicide.)

     There is color, I’ll grant you that: the colors of the sky and the colors of the sun, but they are without variation; they come only in a predictable order. The planks of watermelon sugar can be turned out in any color, too, as long as it’s solid. No stripes (like the tigers have0, no speckles, spots, streaks, dapples, brindles, etc.; no blemishes.

     Finally, the people are colorless! There is no passion, only, at the most, affection. Or, if there is passion, as in Martha’s case, it can only irritate, as it irritates the narrator; it can finally only destroy itself. It cannot live or move or have real being; especially, it cannot ignite.

     The narrator himself cannot be ignited; he is fireproof, swamp-soaked, sad-soaked wood. And we, his readers, just can’t get him. That’s the sense I get. We’re rubes. As hard as we try, we’re not going to get it. On the other hand, we don’t seem to be trying as we should. In either case, we’re pitiable. We don’t see the need to try, or we are trying but we’re failing miserably.

     Do you ever feel that way?
                                                 Trudy

Another oar in the water. 
on another day, at another time

Dear Ted,

When will I hear from you? Only after I have initiated, it seems.
     Your sister told you we were getting a cat (to share)! She is a small, orange — almost pumpkin-colored tabby. Potato! Moira probably told you all of that.
     She told me — or us — that you were reading Richard Brautigan, or you were reading some of him again. Her college friend Gretchen Moore (not to be confused with my college friend, Gretchen Monet) said something like, “How cute is that?” And Bucket* laughed, taking her side.
     But I have more sympathy with you! They understand why you would read him in the sixties and seventies, but now, in your sixties? But I get it, I think. There’s a strain of gentle and sweet (in the best sense of both words) in both Trout Fishing and The Abortion. Not quite as much in Confederate General at Big Sur, but it’s still there. The gentle-and-sweet come from the narrator’s modesty: he knows what he is talking about up to a point, but he won’t go beyond that point without admitting he is: “From here until I tell you otherwise I’m only telling you what I understand to be the case, but I’m not sure I trust my understanding, so you shouldn’t rely on it either.” And that’s good, that kind of modesty. There isn’t enough of it fifty years later.

I just buzzed through those books, the three I mentioned. They don’t take very long to read, do they? And I liked parts of all of them. I found Vida unbelievable, I’ll have to say. There must be women that turn men’s heads like that, but to that degree? Besides the young Elizabeth Taylor, who? And Elizabeth (in Confederate) is at least as unbelievable. But I did like Elaine, who became lovelier the longer Jesse looked at her.
     I liked Jesse, too, even if I didn’t quite “get” the hold Lee Mellon had over him. He’s almost what people mean now by “toxic masculinity,” Lee Mellon, if I understand the term correctly. (Do I?) And it’s not just Jesse! How does Elizabeth make love to a man with so few teeth? (She becomes only more unbelievable.) So, it’s the author that likes him so much; he sees something in Lee Mellon that he can’t explain. At least, not to me — I don’t see it.     
     Are you going to read In Watermelon Sugar, too? What about Revenge of the Lawn, Hawkline Monster — is that right? — the poems, etc.? Let me know. I mean: I’ve written, so you can write back.                                                                                                                                          Who used to be, Trudy 

 08.21.21

 _______________
 * Leslie Becket (one t). See here (also about the Gretchens). Illustration: “Richard Brautigan.” Cellphone drawing by mel ball.

The human condition, part 2 - where we're going.

 Where we’ll end up. 

The human condition, according to Patmos John.*

 

Uncle Albert was sitting in his chair, reading his Bible in French. I was half-sitting, half-lying on the couch across the brass table from him, alternately reading Trout Fishing in America and staring into space.

     Steps coming up to the front porch, the click and clatter of the front door opening. Roz.

     “What’s for supper?” she said, knowing it wasn’t anything yet because I had called her earlier about if I should cook, and she’d said, “No. Nothing: It’s heat-up-leftovers Monday.

     “When I get home,” she’d said.

 

“Albert,” she said now. “What are you reading?”

     “L’Apocalypse,” he said.

     “Oh? Where?”

     “Voici que je me tiens à la porte et je frappe.”

    “Then, he comes in,” Roz said – her voice is like an angel’s, or a dove’s – “to ‘sup’ with them.”

     “Souper, yes, et eux près de lui.”

     “But not to spend the night,” Roz said.

     “Well,” Uncle Albert was careful, his voice soft as ashes: “We don’t know for sure. It doesn’t say.”

 

“What happens when Jesus overstays his welcome?” Roz asked him. Then she hurried on, looking at the floor: “I’m not talking about you, Albert. I didn’t mean that at all!”
     “No,” Uncle Albert said. “You wouldn’t.”
     She was still rushing forward: “It was a theological question. Not even about the story. Generally.”
     Uncle Albert looked at me. I said, “I don’t know.”
     “Dogma,” Uncle Albert said. “Or/and ritual. That’s what happens. The church adjourns to the study or the theater.”
     “It leaves poor Jesus in the kitchen by himself,” I said, “washing the dishes.”

08.17.21

_______________
 * Revelation, chapter 3.

   Illustration: dirty dishes [https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soubor:Dirty dishes.jpg]