BeHeadlines

February 9, 2015

BeHeadlines 

Here is the headline in yesterday’s paper: US charges 6 immigrants with helping Islamic State.  These are Ramiz Zijad Hodzic, his wife Sedina Unkic Hosdic, and Armin Harcevic, of St. Louis County; also Nihad Rosic of Utica, NY, Mediha Medy Salkicevic of Schiller Park IL, and Jasminka Ramic of Rockford, IL, all immigrants from Bosnia, “point people for funneling, money, guns and military equipment to Islamic State fighters in the Middle East.”

Welcome to my world.

          My first reaction, in jest, is to flesh out the summary below the head: “Suspects accused of sending cash, arms to extremists.” Adding – Trial tomorrow. The women to be burned on the courthouse steps in the evening, the men beheaded under the arch the next morning.

In jest? – Then the jest isn’t very funny; it isn’t funny at all. And it was probably only partly in jest in any case.  For truth be told, I am as mean, both in the sense of “nasty” and “low or narrow” as the next guy, who is as mean as I am.

          I read the article over breakfast and described my additions to Roz, who shook her head sadly and suggested we go to church. She was also jesting, in part – as if church would do me any good; but we went.

The lessons where I went: Psalm 147 and Isaiah 40. A psalm to the God that is gracious, who “gathers the outcasts,” who “lifts up the downtrodden,” who “heals the broken-hearted,” the same God that counts and names the stars, whose “understanding is beyond measure”:

¹⁰ His delight is not in the strength of the horse,
   nor his pleasure in the speed of a runner;
¹¹ but the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him,
   in those who hope in his steadfast love. 

He is not “with” power and strength but with hope and love. Isaiah adds that this God “who sits above the circle of the earth,” who made the heavens, everlasting, creator “of the ends of the earth” – this God brings princes, who are like grasshoppers, “to naught”; he “makes the rulers of the earth as nothing” – those in power are like plants that have no root:

²⁴ . . . when he blows upon them, and they wither,
   and the tempest carries them off like stubble. 

It is not the powerful that God is concerned about: the young (and strong - soldiers!) “will faint and be weary . . . fall exhausted,” while those that wait and trust

³¹ . . . shall renew their strength,
   they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
   they shall walk and not faint.

“Yes!” I’m ready to shout out from the back pew and rouse all those sleeping with their hearing-aids still on.

          I’m about to score a point in a long-running argument I have with Gaspar Stephens, who wants to believe that we don’t need a God to believe in. My contention is that if we didn’t have a transcendent God, something/someone that is outside our universe, that judges us – I’m not thinking of a last judgment but an ongoing standard - if we didn't have such a God, we’d have to invent one. Except we can’t invent one and he/she/it still be transcendent.

          Moreover, we wouldn’t invent the one we (meaning “my ilk and I”) are lucky to have, a god not of might but of lovingkindness. Not the god of the psalmist (in 137) that will bash the Babylonian babies heads against the rocks, not the god of Nahum that will “rage against his enemies” (who are, conveniently, the same as Nahum’s), not the god of John of Patmos, who writes his (John’s and John's god's) enemies out of the Lamb’s book of life, nor of Jude, who will make them an example by burning them in eternal fire. Not any god that burns or beheads or shouts for blood. Rather the god of gentle Jesus, meek and mild.

          The young men shouting for blood are running and running and growing wearier and wearier, but those that trust in him, let’s just say it – in Jesus – are growing stronger in kindness and gentleness and . . . how else do we get there?

Gaspar knows, I’m sure.  But I don’t; I’m too mean.

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There are wits with no sense of humor.  - Uncle Albert

Over on our political side, “Go Around Back,” my Uncle Albert tells why he won’t vote for Hillary.

Photo Essay

Washington Heights (NYC), February 6, 2015

Down for the count

The Fourth Sunday After Epiphany

Super Bowl Sunday

                                    “Now concerning food sacrificed to idols . . .”

                                                                                    - 1 Corinthians 8:1

Hamlin Moody (See here.) calls just after one. “What are you doing?” he asks. I look outside – dreary, cold, traces of snow in the shade in front of the north-facing houses. “Not thinking about golf,” I say. “Nah, nah,” he says, hesitates. “Nah, not at all. Why did you ring that up?” – hurt. “What else?” “Anything right now.” “Do you mean what am I doing right now?” “I guess.” “Besides talking to you . . .” a half question; I look around: “I’m washing the dishes,” because the phone is in the kitchen, I can see the sink; I’m not really washing dishes, I just can’t think what else to say.

          “What about the game?” “Yeah?” “What are you doing about the game?” “Watching it, I suppose.” “Right. Aren’t we all?” He hazards half a chuckle. I hazard a swallow and push out: “Do you want to come over?” Not that I want him to, but I’m stuck. Roz is going out, in any case, getting together with a friend; they’re going to cook something for a mutual friend, who’s down and out with something, and watch the game on the TV behind them while they’re cooking – at least until halftime.

          “I’ll probably be home by halftime,” she said last night, just before she turned away from me and her light off. “Yeah,” I said to the dark. “Okay.”

“No. I don’t think so. Would it be all right?” “Sure.” “No,” I can hear him waving it off. A long pause; I tell myself I’m not going to end it. And, I don’t! He wavers back in: “I was thinking about going to Bellows'.” “The painter’s?” “Is there a painter? . . .  No, the bar – it’s on Lexington just off of Great, you don’t know it?” I do; I just didn’t know the name; it keeps changing hands, and I can’t read the smeary temporary-permanent sign.

          “They’ve got a good screen; it won’t be too crowded I don’t think. I don’t know. You wanna come?

          “You were there once.” I remember. I don’t think I want to start this either, but I end up saying, “Sure,” because I can’t think how to say, “No.” Maybe it will be okay.

Phoenix Fight Night

We watch the game. I won’t elaborate: you saw it; if you didn’t you don’t care.

          “That was something, no?” “Yes,” I say, “that was something.” He’s just shaking his head and shaking his head. And shaking his head.

          “You have money on it?” I ask. He shakes his head: “No, though I’d have bet on Boston.”

          He signals the bartender for the tab. We’ve had several beers; I’ve lost count but not consciousness. “What’s my share?” I ask. He shakes his head. “I’ve got it. . . . No, wait. I’ll bet you the tab.” “What? You can’t take the Patriots.” “No, I’ll bet the tab neither of our wives knows who won.”

          I don’t tell him I’m not married; that’s a conversation I don’t want to start now, if ever. “Okay,” I say, though I have minimal confidence in Roz, especially if she came home at half-time, especially if Downton Abby was up against the game.

          But we call her first - on speaker. “Hey,” I say. “I’ve got a bet here” – I don’t tell her I’ve got money on it. “I’ve got a bet here. Who won the game?” She hesitates only long enough to give me “that look.” “Not Seattle,” she says.

          “Then, there was a fight,” she says. “Stupid.”

          I look at Hamlin, mouth “Good enough?” He shakes his head and shrugs his shoulders. I say into the device, “Home soon.” It replies: “Good.”

We call it even. He doesn’t have to pay the double, but he does pay the tab.

          “I’ll head home, then,” I say. “Let me drive you.” “No, I can walk.” And I could. It had gotten warmer. A light rain was falling, hardly more than a mist. It felt good on my face.

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oli-olio

God creates the sun and the moon.
Sistine Chapel (unretouched).

January 27, 2015

In the beginning, Miss Lonelyhearts . . .

 

One more from Jack’s two-filing-cabinet olio commentary. I knew I’d find a reference to Nathanael West if I began looking. I should add that there in his two-room apartment was besides desk (full of mechanical pencils) and chair, a mattress and two lamps, a television though hooked up to nothing but a dusty VCR.

This comes from his thick Genesis 1 folder.  The section in question begins, “As usual von Rad is extremely helpful” – and Jack types this (from von Rad on Genesis) out:          

  

There has been an increasing disinclination to interpret the concepts contained in v. 2 in terms of the mythological conceptions of tx hx ex neighboring religions.  The Hebrew word for “priveval flood” 9x (t’h­ôm)probably has a linguistic affinity with Tiamat, the Babylonian dragon of chaos.  A more direxct connection, amounting to a “borrowing” cannot be assumed.  Nor can it BE ASSUMED THAT THE Hebrew bôhu goes back to the Phoenician mother goddess Baau. Bôhû is a noun (always connected with tôhû) which means emptiness desolation. Tôhû is connected more with the concept of the wilderness or even with the wilderness itself . . . .  So it is inappropriate to suppose, as has long been the  case that P had to resort to strange and semi-mythical conceptions to elucidex ate the primal state of chaos.  The conceptions used  in v. 2 are cosmological keywords which were the indispensible requisites of Priestly learning.  The relationship of Gen. l to Babylonian mythology now looks quite different from the way it did to the “Babel-Bibel” conflict at the beginning of the century.

     A comparison with the Ras Shamra mythology leads to essentially the same result.

    That is no result at all for anyone not Teutonic and anal.

The handwriting resumes:

So last night I decided to watch Lonelyhearts, the 1958 movie based on the play based on Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts, sort of.  West must have been spinning in his suicide’s grave.

     But some of his words – and images – manage to make it to the screen, including the sad letter of the girl born without a nose, which, it struck me so I had to stop the tape, is a reference to the Gogol story: did I never see this before in the eight or ten times I read the novel?

     The story has one of the most delicious beginnings imaginable: the barber Ivan Yakovlevich whose last name has been lost, his wife fond of coffee taking fresh rolls out of the oven and Ivan Yakovlevich’s asking for a roll but no coffee not to put her nose out of joint; his putting on his frock coat over his nightshirt to sit at table; his cutting the roll in two and finding “something whitish” in the middle of it, which he pokes at first with his knife, then with his finger; finally his thrusting two fingers into the roll and pulling the “something whitish out.”  Says Gogol: “It was a nose.”

     Maybe a better beginning than Genesis.  That one man’s nose can go missing and turn up in another man’s breakfast roll, be tossed into the Neva, be seen in uniform, apprehended by the police, returned, and refuse to be stuck back in place tells how little control we have over anything.  The order Yahweh has made out of chaos is a rumor.  An illusion as in that chapter in Miss Lonelyhearts, when . . . .

     It’s “Miss Lonelyhearts and the Dismal Swamp” (one of only two natural lakes in Virginia, incidentally).  Having been dragged into bed and dragged back to bed by Fay Doyle, Miss Lonelyhearts falls sick.  For two days he sleeps; but “on the third day [underline!] his imagination began to work.

     “He found himself in the window of a pawnshop full of fur coats, diamond rings, watches, shotguns, fishing tackle, mandolins.  All these things were the paraphernalia of suffering.  A tortured highlight twisted on the blade of a gilt knife, a battered horn grunted w/ pain.

     “He sat in the window thinking.  Man has a tropism for order. Keys in one pocket, change in another.  Mandolins are tuned GDAE.  The physical world has a tropism for disorder, entropy.  Man against Nature . . . the battle of the centuries.  Keys yearn to mix with change. Mandolins strive to get out of tune.  Every order.  Every order has w/i it the germ of destruction.  All order is doomed, yet the battle is worthwhile.”

      And he enters the fray in a mock-epic fugue state: “A trumpet, marked to sell for $2.49, gave a call to battle & Miss L – plunged into the fray.  First, he formed a phallos of old watches & rubber boots, then a heart of umbrellas & trout flies, then a diamond of musical instruments and derby hats, after these a circle, triangle, square, swastika.  But nothing proved definitive & he began to make a giant cross.  When the cross became too long for the pawnshop, he moved it to the shore of the ocean.  There every wave added to his stock faster than he could lengthen its arms.  His labors were enormous.  He staggered from the last wave line to his work, loaded down w/ marine refuse – bottles, shells, chunks of cork, fish heads, pieces of net.

     “Drunk with exhaustion, he finally fell asleep.”  Poor sap.

     When he awakes, he’ll find Betty there, putting his room in order, but Shrike will arrive soon after to take every dream (and every order) apart.  Or, it (they) will fall apart under his “hands,” his barrage of words.

     No center can hold for more than a beat or two.  Things will fall apart whatever the God of the universe intended.

     Tell me that’s not the case!  In the beginning the Word and the Word with God and everything getting made - then, before it’s properly out of the oven, falling into black-out.

ב

A photocopy of Jack’s actual notes is here.

Jonahwocky

Der Philosoph

January 25, 2015

Zirkus Schopenhauer

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,

“To talk of many things:

Of shoes – and ships – and Cousin Jack”

My cousin Jack has appeared in these pixels before. (See here, here and here.) But I haven’t told his story, and it seemed right to tell some of it before outing him in what follows. Jack Cousins was born in the year of his birth and disappeared on the day of his disappearance. In between he was the sunniest child of us all and the most bitter young man, running smack dab from one into the other, straight from five before noon into one a.m., for no reason that anyone else could tell – no one pushed him that any of us knows of. No reason that anyone can tell, and he was never in the mood to explain.

     To call his black humor a “mood” is to trivialize it, which is exactly what he would wish, but his deep, deep pessimism – in the philosophical sense: his absolute certainty that we lived in the worst of all possible worlds – was real as well as philosophical: It was a habit of heart as much as head, in his spirit as in his blood as in his brain.

     So he left college when we all did, pre-medical degree in hand, took a year, as he said “to find myself, because I have quite clearly gone missing,” and entered seminary. A year later he dropped out. He dropped in and out and in and out again, graduated “with highest downers” (his words), and was ordained by the Presbyterian Church, which he served in “the smuggest and dowdiest, leanest and most crapulous parishes” in the Carolinas, three of them in eleven years until the day he served no longer, giving three weeks’ notice effective the end of his three weeks’ vacation. In short, he wouldn’t be back. Indeed, the notice indicated that I would come in and box up his things and collect whatever might be due him or nothing at all he didn’t care peace be with you and your legitimate and illegitimate children now and for ever and ever more amen.

     As far as any of his siblings, cousins, and friends could tell, Jack had withdrawn all he had invested anywhere, a tidy sum, especially given his dusty way of living. There were left for me to collect at his office a thousand books (close to five hundred commentaries) and two crammed file cabinets of papers and from his apartment four plates, four knives four forks, four spoons, a fry and a sauce pan, a wooden spoon and a spatula, a desk and chair, a mattress on the floor and two lamps, and, finally, a large assortment of mechanical pencils.

     This was eighteen years ago this week. I have not seen him since nor heard from – or even about – him except through Uncle Albert (who is not Jack’s uncle either; see here), who gets, he says, very occasional post cards from “an undisclosed province of our neighbor to the north.”  I once asked Uncle A if the post cards were in French, thinking to narrow the search if I ever decided to undertake it. “Yes,” he said, “and in English as well, with smatterings of Greek, Hebrew, and, I believe, Sanskrit – I can’t read it.” “Do you write him back?” “Didn’t I just say I don’t know Sanskrit?”

This could be a romantic tale of sorts were not Jack, as I said, the deepest, darkest pessimist I have ever known even if laughing all the way. “And if the laugh is bitter,” he said once, quoting Nathanael West if I’m not wrong: “If the laugh is bitter, I must laugh at the laugh.” I suspect it was West. Jack did love West. And Swift. And Juvenal. And Evelyn Waugh.

     I started rooting around in his papers three years ago – almost entirely sermons and pages and pages and pages of notes on the passages he preached from, all handwritten, both sides of the page but every other line: long quotations from commentaries, interspersed with observations, interpretations, and explanations of his own, some of which responded directly to the commentators, much of which veered off on tangents heading into the night.  For example . . . I pulled this out from the second of three folders on Jonah – because today’s Old Testament reading is Jonah 3:1-5.  It is, as much of Jack’s writing is, stitched together with “so,” because for him one damn thing does follow the other.

     One other thing to say about Jack’s writing: he doesn’t have, or he doesn’t often exercise, the gift for euphemism of Uncle Albert.

 

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What I seed.

January 20, 2015 - Seed 

I had a note from Nashe: “Still reading, but . . .” (I hate “but” – it bodes no good.) “ . . . you’re not an essayist, explaining things you don’t quite understand yourself: elaboration. (Leave that to better egos.) Think describe, compress. Write a post – what it’s called, right? – sonnet-length, no more - 140 syllables. And get outside your head. Into the world of things.”

          Easier challenged than accomplished. This morning’s kitchen table, after last night’s cooking for sick friends: cookbook, candle, cumin, Kindle; notebook, newspaper; headphones, crossword; two lists, two pens, one pencil, one plate; one sunflower seed.

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