The Time of Man

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t’s unknowen.

“It’s pretty stuff, clover a-growen. And in myself I know I’m lovely. It’s unknowen how beautiful I am.” — Ellen Chesser in Elizabeth Madox Roberts’ The Time of Man.
     But how beautiful is she if in the next paragraph Joe Turner driving by with Emphira Bodine doesn’t turn his head to look?

From my sister, Moira: I see you are reading The Time of Man. I read it . . . when? I’m not sure, but it was in a group reading Virginia Woolf and Willa Cather and Sarah Orne Jewitt. And how did Woolf get in there? Either we weren’t paying a lot of attention to what we were doing — though we were serious about it. Or, more likely because there wasn’t then a group of women readers of four or more that there wasn’t one in it but insisted on reading Virginia Woolf as if she was the Bible and anyone else was a sermon typescript or a poorly printed in red-and-black tract
     But as I remember, I liked the Roberts novel as much or more than anything else we read: there was an honesty about it that Woolf lacked because for her it was more important to be fine than to be honest and that Cather aspired to but managed only by dint of hard work, and the hard work showed.
     At least, that's the way I remember it. But I’m remembering only my feelings. The critics likely prove me wrong though for me that is
                                                                              still unknowen. There are clouds of unknowen.

Brought to you by the letter L.

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uke 4:                                                                                                 

It’s confusing how he gets his start, Jesus. He’s in Nazareth talking about what he did in Capernaum — the Nazarenes will be expecting the same. This is in vv. 16-23. Only he hasn’t yet been to Capernaum. He doesn’t get there until verse 31. There he does do what they, the Nazarenes, were expecting or will be expecting when he gets there because I think Luke has got his paragraphs out of order. Or the printers didn’t set it up right.

But whatever the order in time, Jesus just keeps going. He casts out demons, he rebukes fevers, he lays on hands and heals and heals and heals. He fills Peter’s nets with fish, for all the good it will do him, for the moment he, Peter, gets his boat to land and climbs out he follows, leaving everything behind. John and James, too: they leave all the fish everything behind and follow.
     They’re all leaving everything behind. Levi is next — though Luke gets his paragraphs out of order again: first, Levi leaves and follows; then, he gives a big banquet at the house he’s already (though just) left.
     But my point is, that was what they were doing then, leaving everything behind. Nobody does that anymore.

CHAPTER II

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hen September’s slippery showers . . . . (It’s already cold in Finland.)

When Villa come back to draw with City and United run over Arsenal 3-1, the world must be turning back to itself. It would seem. IF the world could turn back.
    Nor am I going back to my meds. So I say. [Let the reader beware.]

Outside a clamor of grackles bicker-talk-sing: squeaky wheels and hoarse, rusty gates.

Third person.

 Third person. 

He walked down Bishop, down Crowder, down Division. The rain dripped down, the color of the leaves on the sidewalk. Corner Coffee: Axel and Nils were there ahead of him.
     And two women two tables over. The talking one kept pulling her hands toward her chest and pushing them out again as if to convince the other she was speaking from her heart. The sharp-faced other was dressed entirely in black. She was nodding.
     “What do you think they are talking about?” he asked Axel.
     “Luther,” he said. “The women come and go, talking of Luther.” he laughed at the back of his tongue, not quite into his throat.

“They’re talking about husbands,” Nils said, “how husbands continue to mislead wives.”
     “I don’t imagine the thin one is married,” he said, “the one in black.” She was making a gesture with her hand, as if she wanted to say something; then she stopped. The other kept talking.
     “They’re talking about a story they heard this morning on NPR,” Nils said, “not about their husbands but about husbands in general. About men: they continue to mislead women. It’s as inevitable as it is unfortunate. Some woman sociologist said so.”
     “What makes you think that?” Axel said.
     “What?”
     “That she’s not married?”
     “I don’t know,” he said — I said as Nils was saying something else. But I didn’t hear. I was listening to the espresso machine choke and cough and sputter. It gagged and stopped. His last word ended in “-er.”

                                                                      08.17.22
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Graphic: Corner Coffee in the rain, crabbed together on my box.

 Manchester United 1 - 2 Brighton & Hove Albion 
This was Tuesday.

Occasionally, I try to listen to one of the soccer podcasts; “Gab & Jules” it was this morning. But they are all too damn serious. And for all the podcasters know about the game, infinitely more than I do, they seem to me untethered to reality.
     This morning, Gab and Jules were talking about Man United’s loss to Brighton & Hove Albion. Completely unacceptable(!!), as if BHA were no opponents at all, as if there had been no players in blue and white on the pitch, as if Pascal Gross, in particular, had stayed home. So even if Man U was without a true number 9 . . .
     In which case — how could Manchester United be without? — they should just go out and get one. Better than, a damn sight better than, Marko Arnautović, never mind that he might be the best available — he is older than Jesus! Availability be damned — this is Manchester United: they should be able to get whoever/ whatever they want whenever/however they want it. Never mind how shitty they’ve been the last several seasons. (Proving they can't get whatever whenever, doesn’t it). But reality be damned.
     Renounce the laws of gravity, say you are above them, and they don’t apply to you.

Diogenes of Sinope was right, at least this far: you can only free yourself from the rules of the marketplace by absenting yourself from it. He meant by that that you cannot buy a center forward other than in the mall where you can buy a center forward. You can’t conjure one out of the air; you can’t conjure a God to conjure one out of clay, pace Gab and Jules. And, sadly, even if you are Manchester United, you can no longer go marauding and rape one as the Romans did the Sabine women.
    But, no! You can! There is a God, Sir Alex Ferguson, right? Reality be damned.

                                                                      08.11.22
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Graphic: Erik Ten Hag by m ball.

"mouse and cat," a farable of Jesop

 
  A farable of Jesop 

“mouse and cat”

 A lion and a mouse went on a journey. They had become friends and were friends until they argued along the way and decided to part company. The lion went home. The mouse went on but soon was lost and soon after baked into a pie.
     “I blame myself,” the cat said when she heard. Only she did not. 
                                   08.05.22  

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An online reproduction of the 1887 edition Jesop's Farables, translated from the Latin and edited by G. F. Murray - and with my brief afterward - is available here!

Interpolations

  Interpolations   

 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. 233) –

 

Jesus talks a lot in the canonical Gospel of John, but he says little. There are, however, sayings of Jesus interpolated into the gospel in several Latin fragments from the fourth century (now in the Blifil collection). The Latin is clearly a translation from an earlier, since lost, manuscript. Even the most knowledgeable scholars (Jones, Allworthy, et al.) aren’t certain of the original language, but they believe Old Tamil or another Dravidian dialect. This would place the original ms. in one of the Thomas communities of India, and indeed Thomas plays an important role in a number of these fragments, as in the following addition to chapter 17. In the canonical gospel, Jesus begins talking to his disciples, the so-called “last discourses,”  at 14:1, but he has long since left off (17:1) and is addressing “the Father.” This fragment begins at 17:25 to which it adds the verses I have numbered 27 and 28.

 

xvii.  ​25 “O righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you; and these know that you sent me,  26 for I have made your name known to them – I will continue to make it known,  so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” 

     27 Thomas said to him, “Lord, what do we know?” And Jesus told this parable, “A man was given a pearl that made him extremely wealthy, and by night he buried it in another man’s field. Who have ears let them hear.”  28 And he told another like it, “A man had a servant, whom he loved, but the servant ran away. When the master found him, . . .” Here the manuscript breaks off.

 

Commentary

Our concern is with Thomas, who, as depicted here, tries to bring Johannine Jesus back to earth, to rescue the incarnation from muddle-headed mysticism. He succeeds insofar as after he interrupts Jesus tells two parables, neither of which we know from other sources. [Note there are no parables in the canonical gospel of John.]
    In the first, Jesus considers a pearl of great price. What should one do with it — keep it or give it away secretly? In the second, as it stands, we don’t know the effect the love of the master that seeks out his beloved servant has.

                                                                       08.03.21

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For links to other biblical commentary from Rantrage, click here.