In dreams you are fighting the current. Or, at least, you are in the current. The current is pulling at you, and you have to go along with it, perhaps without judging whether this situation of being in such a current is a good thing or a bad thing. The current is vague in the dreams, but ever present. The situation of being in the current prompts dreams to appear. The dreams are the best we have as a means of understanding the current that pulls on us. Strange. Thoughts we hold to us are stripped off in the circumstances of the river. We had them, and then they are floating away.
Later we pull ourselves up on the bank, still wet with sleep. Thinking awhile we remember little bits of those thoughts, of how the mind within the brain within the skull became like an atomic structure, with the electrons swirling around, sometimes lazily in rings as in the classic diagram of the atom, sometimes firing about unpredictably as in the model of the uncertain principle, sometimes outlining cat-scan type slice-throughs. In building our little models of understanding reality we only have ourselves as a mirror, as a frame of reference, and each scientific theory holds within a poem about our own nature. As we fell toward sleep, warmth, relaxation, the self-observations that allow the distance that then allows sleep to happen as it wells up from the warm body.
Kundera writes of his father dying. (The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, is it?) His old man, who speaks no more, who was a musical conductor, is sweating every night, under an effort, the effort of riding on horseback, having to go far far away. Every night he will make this journey, in his sleep, on his way toward dying.
Who knows where writing comes from.
Then the business became serious and far-reaching. It became interesting. It began to, sort of, hold together, to connect all things.
When you are young you feel you have time, and so you write things which aren't so serious, with only flashes of seriousness here and there. But then, slowly, surely, you get older, and then more and more you reach the point of understanding of having less time, less time to work with, to play with. And then you start becoming more serious. You could turn down then the other uses of time... You have to remain focussed and vigilant at all necessary times, and for this purpose you can seek entertainment on your own, as it comes to you in your atelier, your laboratory, your study, your conservatory, your recording studio, your news room. Rich is life around you, a garden for thought.
Even in the most serious, there is humor, room for fun. For sorts of things like song and dance. Because you are at work, and the things of work consist of getting the job done, from start to finish. Later, at night, toward the end, you bring out your own guitar, and the musician picks it up and marvels at it for being a good guitar. He plays it some, a Buck Owens song, A 11, and then you get to play it a bit, and he likes your ringing style. Cool. Sacred. Fun. And you earned it, too.
To become a writer is to enter into one's own self-appointed monastery. There is always work to do, always cause for silence and reflection, for music, prayer. Even wine, and the daily bread, is work too, for the soul, to understand. Joy is work, as well, as much as the hardness of confused toil of limited fruitfulness.
It is one's own choice, how productive he shall be, a matter of realizing the power of devotion.
By the time you get it, you're almost an old man. Your father has passed away. Your mum is old. You are going through your final growth spurt, out of some dignified joke from the pineal gland. Finally filling out. And it was a tiring growth spurt, full of sleep, and hormones, profound hunger, and life always leaving you a bit short, such that it was hard to feel you were on your feet.
And why did you not take up a career in music, so long ago, when you were fresh and young, and able to play with jazz men and rock and all kinds of music... What got you down? Who told you you shouldn't put that music first... that way you expressed yourself... And why now, should a man middle aged look back so...
Thursday, March 15, 2018
The day off comes, the physical hurdles cleared.
I'd been reading the Gospels for a while now, years, and the line about hiding the light under the bushel stuck with me. Without knowing it, the attempt to write in this venue with its accessibility via smartphone and web, I don't know, I guess it came out of that. Or was supported, fostered...
The question was posed, theoretically, why not then just take to writing "live." Why be scared of the thoughts that come, the muscular efforts to wriggle within the old skin, to break free of the old shells of limitation. Cracking free and out of the old leaves creatures vulnerable. Their new hides are vulnerable, sort, before they harden. Birds must come out of shells, just with the strength to match their obstacle; and then, even more vulnerable, they will face the next stage of the nest, parental warmth, feeding...
And so each thought was delicate, new-skinned, soft, embarrassing almost. This is nature, what can you do, but live with it, perfect in its imperfections..
We had come upon an age, you know... when even holy people would not be able to recognize themselves. A Mary would not know she was Mary, almost. Or, rather, she would be discouraged from the self-knowledge, so revolutionary, so radical, so out of this world and unexpected and miraculous... As if her very DNA would be discouraged from the power of its own inner transformations of self-realization.
And the same with humble Joseph, the old husband "carpenter." Same with everyone.
Not exactly that they'd be watching the news but just the sediment of two thousand years of skepticism would float down upon the species and its collective mind. The Christian advancement of the Old would be met with a backlash, so that all miracles, all words and commands from God through angels and Himself would be nullified by the rational. And the entire DNA of the species would reflect his reptilian retreat from the light, as if not wanting to be out in the light, feeling too vulnerable and with every assumption known by daily survival would be shaken.
I had started, without really knowing it, my little project of reading the Gospels fully and more carefully, in the spirit of giving something a chance. I began it in moments of leisure, following my truer interests on the gut level, that I feared I would have to seriously pay for down the road. I dabbled, but I kept it up. I did not know what, if anything, would come of it. There was an established pattern in it, the obvious literary quality, the obvious nature of the Gospels being something we all should be familiar with, and also the tradition you could sense in any good writer, in any good person good at public statement. The old records of Lincoln laid out on the couch reading from the Book of Job... Obviously, as good as anything to read, and, well, maybe even better, who knows.
And I had sort of begun to outgrow all the things you should read, if you had the time, to have a rough muster of literary history, parts of it, like say, the history of the novel, or any particular stylistic approach or advancement of prose, say, Joyce, or Flaubert, or of the subtle changes in material, aimed more to include the peasant, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, or the angle of perspective on the human condition in Chekhov's great heart. Things like that. Kerouac... Twain. Bookshelves... piles... Kundera's essays... Shelves full of Hemingway.
You sort of reach the stage, of "well, now what... Is that all there is..."
Then I suppose there is the next stage, the philosophical discussion of mind from the old doctors of such things, the Eastern mind... What do the mental habits of the Buddha, let's say, have to add to all this bulk and body of reading from Shakespeare down unto Yeats, then Larkin... Ted Hughes...
And then you wear that out too.
And but for a few things, a few tiny kernels, you've worn out even the things you wrote or would write. No, you're not even going to write about the job you have, the work you do, the things you know.
As if you knew, as in all along, there were bigger fish to fry, bigger fish to catch...
And all this, of course, you only had the roughest of inklings, and would, as is the modern style, dismiss the best of the good as childish, prattle, baby talk almost. Like talking of Bigfoot, or UFOs, would be the closest comparable thing...
Except for something growing within you. A strange thing. Kind of like a plant, a small tree within, a Caduceus of some sort, strengthening within, and strengthening you along with it.
O, but who am I, who am I, but a sinful man. A man with few chances left, a man of certain age, whose attentions must turn, yes... but with no clue, as it were. As if living in something like a lack of hope for anything but simply trudging on... Not quite, no, just that that could be the mood sometimes, something you'd never really accept, because as a human being you would not accept such a death sentence of hopelessness, a thing quite against our very nature.
I guess I'd been trained through a long pattern of scruffy encounters. Encounters haphazard, not ever fully realized, always somehow rushed, or clipped short, edited, censored by the great illnesses of the soul known to the modern, the Totalitarian, the selling of our own time, the rise of the great master of advertisement, marketing and distraction, the legion of serpents sent by a certain one, "eat from this tree of knowledge, and it will give you powers..."
Who would ever know the truth of these scruffy rough encounters, whose scruffiness was quite well-mirrored by my own appearances through the age of my years, my comings and goings, shirt becoming untucked, collar, life, organizations askew, but for running the barroom as tightly as my strengths and endurance humanly allowed...
But Lord, what blasphemy, the whole of the Old Testament and the New contains, so it would seem... Oh... Yes, but this is the best we know, can now, as of yet. And its words have garnered the attention and full respect of many a very strong and independent mind of great intelligence... This craziness of finding the Word of God. "What is it anyway, a myth like those of the colorful minded Greeks..."
And how could I know, anyway, God... What can I do but take the leap.
What is His Covenant with us, His low beings down here? What if we do, indeed, do, or attempt, humbly, to do His work? What is His work? How would we know it...
Do not hide your light under the bushel basket, He tells us.
How can you not feel strange. Still, we are in that mode of hiding ourselves from the Lord, as in the Garden, having messed it all up. How could you not feel like here you are and you've worked hard, but you've messed up and your boss somehow knows this. Even our own family, even the holy one, wished to restrain His Son... "Quiet him down. Tell him to tell his friends to go home. Tell him to stop, and resume, after a time of restraint, to apologize and start back living a normal life..." Yes, we understand he was bored with his previous career choices... We hope that, with time, he will turn to familiar normalcy. Maybe try to get him the hope of a book contract, keep him happy in the meanwhile, working on a fictional piece, "my time as a savior." Stories with a touch of his old good humor, clever boy, kind of like old poor Yorick, to put the table a' laughing...
"It's a big world without."
"Yes, but it is a big world within, as well."
Following the old pattern, the Old Testament, the Prophets, the Gospels, was the best way around the interference pattern. I could not condition nor control as well as I wanted to the mind's processes in a more effective way. Even yoga, even meditation, mindfulness, even emotional outburst, nothing stood a candle to the great opening up. Nothing opened the potential like the old stuff.
For a writer it was indeed like getting rid of the many unclean spirits, the ones that did you no good when you had that time and were brave enough against all one's other condition to write.
Looking for the word, the logos of God, shining in the sky just on a normal day, like those of barren afternoon in Lenten March, even in the most mundane things, opened up matching potential. If you looked so, and granted this to your DNA, that you could grow and change, even at a late age, even at the age when maturity has arrived and beginning to over-ripen, as it were, then you were open to a new growth. Well, it's true that old vines make the best wine, sure... But...
It helped you get over that sense that there was something else you should be doing, a better way to conduct and protect yourself.
I saw myself less and less as a writer. The writing was only a form to communicate. One form. It balanced others. There was a satisfaction to it, and, just like talking to someone, it was tiring, and you knew your limits. It let you keep a record. Who knows the purpose of that, but... keeping a record.
I'd been reading the Gospels for a while now, years, and the line about hiding the light under the bushel stuck with me. Without knowing it, the attempt to write in this venue with its accessibility via smartphone and web, I don't know, I guess it came out of that. Or was supported, fostered...
The question was posed, theoretically, why not then just take to writing "live." Why be scared of the thoughts that come, the muscular efforts to wriggle within the old skin, to break free of the old shells of limitation. Cracking free and out of the old leaves creatures vulnerable. Their new hides are vulnerable, sort, before they harden. Birds must come out of shells, just with the strength to match their obstacle; and then, even more vulnerable, they will face the next stage of the nest, parental warmth, feeding...
And so each thought was delicate, new-skinned, soft, embarrassing almost. This is nature, what can you do, but live with it, perfect in its imperfections..
We had come upon an age, you know... when even holy people would not be able to recognize themselves. A Mary would not know she was Mary, almost. Or, rather, she would be discouraged from the self-knowledge, so revolutionary, so radical, so out of this world and unexpected and miraculous... As if her very DNA would be discouraged from the power of its own inner transformations of self-realization.
And the same with humble Joseph, the old husband "carpenter." Same with everyone.
Not exactly that they'd be watching the news but just the sediment of two thousand years of skepticism would float down upon the species and its collective mind. The Christian advancement of the Old would be met with a backlash, so that all miracles, all words and commands from God through angels and Himself would be nullified by the rational. And the entire DNA of the species would reflect his reptilian retreat from the light, as if not wanting to be out in the light, feeling too vulnerable and with every assumption known by daily survival would be shaken.
I had started, without really knowing it, my little project of reading the Gospels fully and more carefully, in the spirit of giving something a chance. I began it in moments of leisure, following my truer interests on the gut level, that I feared I would have to seriously pay for down the road. I dabbled, but I kept it up. I did not know what, if anything, would come of it. There was an established pattern in it, the obvious literary quality, the obvious nature of the Gospels being something we all should be familiar with, and also the tradition you could sense in any good writer, in any good person good at public statement. The old records of Lincoln laid out on the couch reading from the Book of Job... Obviously, as good as anything to read, and, well, maybe even better, who knows.
And I had sort of begun to outgrow all the things you should read, if you had the time, to have a rough muster of literary history, parts of it, like say, the history of the novel, or any particular stylistic approach or advancement of prose, say, Joyce, or Flaubert, or of the subtle changes in material, aimed more to include the peasant, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, or the angle of perspective on the human condition in Chekhov's great heart. Things like that. Kerouac... Twain. Bookshelves... piles... Kundera's essays... Shelves full of Hemingway.
You sort of reach the stage, of "well, now what... Is that all there is..."
Then I suppose there is the next stage, the philosophical discussion of mind from the old doctors of such things, the Eastern mind... What do the mental habits of the Buddha, let's say, have to add to all this bulk and body of reading from Shakespeare down unto Yeats, then Larkin... Ted Hughes...
And then you wear that out too.
And but for a few things, a few tiny kernels, you've worn out even the things you wrote or would write. No, you're not even going to write about the job you have, the work you do, the things you know.
As if you knew, as in all along, there were bigger fish to fry, bigger fish to catch...
And all this, of course, you only had the roughest of inklings, and would, as is the modern style, dismiss the best of the good as childish, prattle, baby talk almost. Like talking of Bigfoot, or UFOs, would be the closest comparable thing...
Except for something growing within you. A strange thing. Kind of like a plant, a small tree within, a Caduceus of some sort, strengthening within, and strengthening you along with it.
O, but who am I, who am I, but a sinful man. A man with few chances left, a man of certain age, whose attentions must turn, yes... but with no clue, as it were. As if living in something like a lack of hope for anything but simply trudging on... Not quite, no, just that that could be the mood sometimes, something you'd never really accept, because as a human being you would not accept such a death sentence of hopelessness, a thing quite against our very nature.
I guess I'd been trained through a long pattern of scruffy encounters. Encounters haphazard, not ever fully realized, always somehow rushed, or clipped short, edited, censored by the great illnesses of the soul known to the modern, the Totalitarian, the selling of our own time, the rise of the great master of advertisement, marketing and distraction, the legion of serpents sent by a certain one, "eat from this tree of knowledge, and it will give you powers..."
Who would ever know the truth of these scruffy rough encounters, whose scruffiness was quite well-mirrored by my own appearances through the age of my years, my comings and goings, shirt becoming untucked, collar, life, organizations askew, but for running the barroom as tightly as my strengths and endurance humanly allowed...
But Lord, what blasphemy, the whole of the Old Testament and the New contains, so it would seem... Oh... Yes, but this is the best we know, can now, as of yet. And its words have garnered the attention and full respect of many a very strong and independent mind of great intelligence... This craziness of finding the Word of God. "What is it anyway, a myth like those of the colorful minded Greeks..."
And how could I know, anyway, God... What can I do but take the leap.
What is His Covenant with us, His low beings down here? What if we do, indeed, do, or attempt, humbly, to do His work? What is His work? How would we know it...
Do not hide your light under the bushel basket, He tells us.
How can you not feel strange. Still, we are in that mode of hiding ourselves from the Lord, as in the Garden, having messed it all up. How could you not feel like here you are and you've worked hard, but you've messed up and your boss somehow knows this. Even our own family, even the holy one, wished to restrain His Son... "Quiet him down. Tell him to tell his friends to go home. Tell him to stop, and resume, after a time of restraint, to apologize and start back living a normal life..." Yes, we understand he was bored with his previous career choices... We hope that, with time, he will turn to familiar normalcy. Maybe try to get him the hope of a book contract, keep him happy in the meanwhile, working on a fictional piece, "my time as a savior." Stories with a touch of his old good humor, clever boy, kind of like old poor Yorick, to put the table a' laughing...
"It's a big world without."
"Yes, but it is a big world within, as well."
Following the old pattern, the Old Testament, the Prophets, the Gospels, was the best way around the interference pattern. I could not condition nor control as well as I wanted to the mind's processes in a more effective way. Even yoga, even meditation, mindfulness, even emotional outburst, nothing stood a candle to the great opening up. Nothing opened the potential like the old stuff.
For a writer it was indeed like getting rid of the many unclean spirits, the ones that did you no good when you had that time and were brave enough against all one's other condition to write.
Looking for the word, the logos of God, shining in the sky just on a normal day, like those of barren afternoon in Lenten March, even in the most mundane things, opened up matching potential. If you looked so, and granted this to your DNA, that you could grow and change, even at a late age, even at the age when maturity has arrived and beginning to over-ripen, as it were, then you were open to a new growth. Well, it's true that old vines make the best wine, sure... But...
It helped you get over that sense that there was something else you should be doing, a better way to conduct and protect yourself.
I saw myself less and less as a writer. The writing was only a form to communicate. One form. It balanced others. There was a satisfaction to it, and, just like talking to someone, it was tiring, and you knew your limits. It let you keep a record. Who knows the purpose of that, but... keeping a record.
Tuesday, March 13, 2018
But following the old pattern, that of the Old Testament, the Prophets, the Gospels, for a writer was the best way around the interference pattern of those parts of the mind I could not condition nor control as well as I wanted to. For a writer it was indeed like getting rid of the many unclean spirits that did you no good when you had that time to write. It helped you get over that sense that there was something else you should be doing, a better way to conduct and protect yourself.
You wake with the familiar sadness. That's about all you can call it. You cannot know if anyone else experiences the same thing, but by a general sense, a way of reading the people you encounter.
Where does it come from? Why are you its custodian, its flag bearer...
But He would have been of the sadness too. For knowing everything. The virgin birth, the whole story of His parents... The way things would unfold for Him, because of His knowledge, His complete understanding..
How can you and I even face up to that? What an admission it would seem to be.
Yes, you could go to a doctor with your health insurance your employment allows you, "Doctor. what can you do for this?" And you could take some form of treatment.
But ask yourself, would that really be helping me? Would that really be helping other people?
And the answer is, no. Because there is the pain of living, the fact of suffering. Like any marriage is supposed to be, the acceptance of the bad with the good, in sickness as well as health. And any partnership, any work you must undertake, it will be steeped in the same, the suffering, the misery, the pain, the condition of being left alone and to suffer in the garden with sorrow. There will be the effect of those people around you who, believing it should all be about happiness and forward progress and activities that are culturally or professionally enriching, will go about business with a much lower body of knowledge and understanding. They come, they go, they come, punch in, do what they feel is their job, allowing themselves the things of happiness, and then they get tired and leave the master to close the shop down, all on his lonesome. They have an economic understanding, of what to give, shy of all, in order to receive the sustaining compensation, and it is no deeper than that.
But the wise cannot escape from the deep mysteries, the body of pain and unhappiness and great uncertainty. What balm, what anointing oil, is there for that, and such things? That is the burden of knowledge, if one would truly be a teacher, a good shepherd for the Lord's sheep.
The relationships that are real are acknowledgments, in their acts, of that pain, in each act. As if sorrow itself were the truer form of happiness, contentment, pleasure, whatever a culture might put up as a term for that which is comfort for the tested mind.
Sin is a word, as sorrow is. Waking up, yes, there are your sins right there.
Mother Angelica intones the Holy Rosary in the background as you have your tea.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.
Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil. Amen.
Glory be to the father, and to the son, and to the holy spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
O, my Jesus, forgive us our sins. Save us from the fires of hell, lead all souls to heaven, especially those in most need of Thy mercy.
Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope, to thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve; to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears; turn, then most gracious Advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us, and after this, our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb Jesus. O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary! Pray for us, O holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord. Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered unto Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; He descended into hell; on the third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from there He will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Amen.
And then, to relief, the Mass comes on the television, as I write, sitting over on my father's old brown chair, next to the chair of Madam Korbonski's home next door.
There was a wedding I went to, that of my brother's. The ceremony was beautiful, and fun, of Jewish custom. Then the wedding party departed to the memorial to Thomas Jefferson, where the sun came out and pictures were taken on the steps. And then we went back to the Mellon Auditorium, and it had been transformed into the place of the wedding feast. I was dreading my toast, as I had no clear idea of how to say what I felt. The night before my toast at the Rehearsal dinner had gone decently well, reconstructing how Jack and Bobby might have talked, grunting to each other in perfect understanding and love.
But this night, the other part of life in Washington, the figure of Lincoln, alone, on a horse, in the rain, as we all come upon our reality here alone and without cause for great direct happiness, and this I mixed in the scene from The Brothers Karamazov, The Wedding at Cana, Dostoevsky's recreation of the first miracle of the wine, for human joy... I was almost cut off, and the wedding director woman seemed to find my effort laughable, though my girlfriend, Sasha, hugged me, proud and pleased.
Later I would find that the Catholic spirit would approve, of my attempt to interject the spiritual into the fine celebrations...
You wake with the familiar sadness. That's about all you can call it. You cannot know if anyone else experiences the same thing, but by a general sense, a way of reading the people you encounter.
Where does it come from? Why are you its custodian, its flag bearer...
But He would have been of the sadness too. For knowing everything. The virgin birth, the whole story of His parents... The way things would unfold for Him, because of His knowledge, His complete understanding..
How can you and I even face up to that? What an admission it would seem to be.
Yes, you could go to a doctor with your health insurance your employment allows you, "Doctor. what can you do for this?" And you could take some form of treatment.
But ask yourself, would that really be helping me? Would that really be helping other people?
And the answer is, no. Because there is the pain of living, the fact of suffering. Like any marriage is supposed to be, the acceptance of the bad with the good, in sickness as well as health. And any partnership, any work you must undertake, it will be steeped in the same, the suffering, the misery, the pain, the condition of being left alone and to suffer in the garden with sorrow. There will be the effect of those people around you who, believing it should all be about happiness and forward progress and activities that are culturally or professionally enriching, will go about business with a much lower body of knowledge and understanding. They come, they go, they come, punch in, do what they feel is their job, allowing themselves the things of happiness, and then they get tired and leave the master to close the shop down, all on his lonesome. They have an economic understanding, of what to give, shy of all, in order to receive the sustaining compensation, and it is no deeper than that.
But the wise cannot escape from the deep mysteries, the body of pain and unhappiness and great uncertainty. What balm, what anointing oil, is there for that, and such things? That is the burden of knowledge, if one would truly be a teacher, a good shepherd for the Lord's sheep.
The relationships that are real are acknowledgments, in their acts, of that pain, in each act. As if sorrow itself were the truer form of happiness, contentment, pleasure, whatever a culture might put up as a term for that which is comfort for the tested mind.
Sin is a word, as sorrow is. Waking up, yes, there are your sins right there.
Mother Angelica intones the Holy Rosary in the background as you have your tea.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.
Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil. Amen.
Glory be to the father, and to the son, and to the holy spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
O, my Jesus, forgive us our sins. Save us from the fires of hell, lead all souls to heaven, especially those in most need of Thy mercy.
Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope, to thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve; to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears; turn, then most gracious Advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us, and after this, our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb Jesus. O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary! Pray for us, O holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord. Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered unto Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; He descended into hell; on the third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from there He will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Amen.
And then, to relief, the Mass comes on the television, as I write, sitting over on my father's old brown chair, next to the chair of Madam Korbonski's home next door.
There was a wedding I went to, that of my brother's. The ceremony was beautiful, and fun, of Jewish custom. Then the wedding party departed to the memorial to Thomas Jefferson, where the sun came out and pictures were taken on the steps. And then we went back to the Mellon Auditorium, and it had been transformed into the place of the wedding feast. I was dreading my toast, as I had no clear idea of how to say what I felt. The night before my toast at the Rehearsal dinner had gone decently well, reconstructing how Jack and Bobby might have talked, grunting to each other in perfect understanding and love.
But this night, the other part of life in Washington, the figure of Lincoln, alone, on a horse, in the rain, as we all come upon our reality here alone and without cause for great direct happiness, and this I mixed in the scene from The Brothers Karamazov, The Wedding at Cana, Dostoevsky's recreation of the first miracle of the wine, for human joy... I was almost cut off, and the wedding director woman seemed to find my effort laughable, though my girlfriend, Sasha, hugged me, proud and pleased.
Later I would find that the Catholic spirit would approve, of my attempt to interject the spiritual into the fine celebrations...
Monday, March 12, 2018
I myself would have wondered why.
It just seemed to help. Getting through the usual roadblocks when you awake, awkwardly, not knowing at all what you are doing, why you are doing, and think what you need to say on paper.
The visions of the minds of the Old Testament, why not sit in on their jam session, observe how they do it, see how they saw the major issues of the day. What did they think of? How? Why were they obsessed, if you will, with equipping the understanding of, with, the One God.
Why, and how, would it help the modern writer to sit in with the ways of Jesus Christ, the way he thought, put depths into words...
Is this something we resort to when things aren't going very well, seemingly, when the path you've been on seems to have not revealed its true self, its purpose, its satisfactory meeting of life's great problems...
What should I do for a career, how do I pay the rent in this town, how do I save for the future, how do I take care of mom, how do I save myself...
Waking up, you clutch the iPhone, looking for something within it. Some kind of information. You're not sure what. Is there anything you need to get back to in the triage of the day?
Easy to turn the television on, with the same excuses. What do I need to know, The Weather Channel, weather, yes, that is important. And yet it's already bombarding you with cultural messages, brain-washing you, lulling you, overwhelming you, so that any idea you might have on your own seems rather dumb now.
On EWTN it's coming out too slow. You're hungry, thirsty, in need of breakfast. Dirty dishes in the sink. Green tea, bone stock warmed up in the toaster over.
If you're a writer, well, this is it. This is the stuff you really have. You don't need to go off looking for fancier more interesting things. The mind is cubism. Capturing one thought would be enough to be art, a worthy study.
But what right would I have to think myself a connoisseur of Old Testament prophets, of the Parables...
And why does writing feel like you're sort of sneaking around. Hiding out. From the bedroom to the kitchen, retrieving the glass of water by the night table, a pint glass, along with retrieving your eyeglasses; multi-tasking, things in piles first, to then be sorted or made use of or taken care of to be more properly put away later; sometimes the objects make it first half the way, as if that too were part of a process, something the mind saw the overall purpose of, the entire process in its grasp, even as you do not consciously think of it. Is this the way some minds work? Is this the way my mind works...
But if if finally came down to it, after all the things you wrote, what you might have within you, in your wildest dreams as a writer, wise, why not shoot for the highest mark, the coolest groove...
Why not aim for the example of examples, the real true distillation of words with meaning.
(One thought comes, and others will follow. The hard thing is to not get distracted.)
Even Jesus, as a writer, would say, in essence, it is not me, it is my Father's business, it is from the Father.
And so I turned to what I thought would be the real things to write about, the things that I would mull over if I were, finally, a great writer. A Dostoevsky, a well-read Lincoln,. Converted. Of a different mindset than the one you had to at least be capable of mimicking in order to stay relevant and make sense to anyone...
The secular world is worn out for the writer. It doesn't offer enough, it's not interesting enough, at least not without its better counterpart, the life of the Church. You can come upon this realization, as I did, a bit late in life. Well, you knew it was always there. You became well-read in Eastern spirituality, the philosophy of the Buddha, did the yoga, meditated, but even that, where does it lead you? The Christian myth can be taken apart and analyzed by the scientists of myth and ritual, things that go way back, in history, in the psyche, but just as a way of thinking, you had to find the Judeo-Christian tradition working for you.
Taking in the mysteries, and working with them, prayerfully, it turns out working for you better than modern therapy treatment...
There are other things to do than mastery of the sophistications of the modern world, with all its great culture, its technological offerings... Those things take up your time, but for what? A career, you think, yes... But that might not hold out forever...
As a writer you have no choice, I think, being in my own situation. It was the way, there was no other.
Sophistication, moving to a city, etc., you thought chicks would like you better...
You can read Hemingway two ways... either as a model for sophistication, worldliness, or, the other way, as one of simplicity, of going back to simplicity...
It just seemed to help. Getting through the usual roadblocks when you awake, awkwardly, not knowing at all what you are doing, why you are doing, and think what you need to say on paper.
The visions of the minds of the Old Testament, why not sit in on their jam session, observe how they do it, see how they saw the major issues of the day. What did they think of? How? Why were they obsessed, if you will, with equipping the understanding of, with, the One God.
Why, and how, would it help the modern writer to sit in with the ways of Jesus Christ, the way he thought, put depths into words...
Is this something we resort to when things aren't going very well, seemingly, when the path you've been on seems to have not revealed its true self, its purpose, its satisfactory meeting of life's great problems...
What should I do for a career, how do I pay the rent in this town, how do I save for the future, how do I take care of mom, how do I save myself...
Waking up, you clutch the iPhone, looking for something within it. Some kind of information. You're not sure what. Is there anything you need to get back to in the triage of the day?
Easy to turn the television on, with the same excuses. What do I need to know, The Weather Channel, weather, yes, that is important. And yet it's already bombarding you with cultural messages, brain-washing you, lulling you, overwhelming you, so that any idea you might have on your own seems rather dumb now.
On EWTN it's coming out too slow. You're hungry, thirsty, in need of breakfast. Dirty dishes in the sink. Green tea, bone stock warmed up in the toaster over.
If you're a writer, well, this is it. This is the stuff you really have. You don't need to go off looking for fancier more interesting things. The mind is cubism. Capturing one thought would be enough to be art, a worthy study.
But what right would I have to think myself a connoisseur of Old Testament prophets, of the Parables...
And why does writing feel like you're sort of sneaking around. Hiding out. From the bedroom to the kitchen, retrieving the glass of water by the night table, a pint glass, along with retrieving your eyeglasses; multi-tasking, things in piles first, to then be sorted or made use of or taken care of to be more properly put away later; sometimes the objects make it first half the way, as if that too were part of a process, something the mind saw the overall purpose of, the entire process in its grasp, even as you do not consciously think of it. Is this the way some minds work? Is this the way my mind works...
But if if finally came down to it, after all the things you wrote, what you might have within you, in your wildest dreams as a writer, wise, why not shoot for the highest mark, the coolest groove...
Why not aim for the example of examples, the real true distillation of words with meaning.
(One thought comes, and others will follow. The hard thing is to not get distracted.)
Even Jesus, as a writer, would say, in essence, it is not me, it is my Father's business, it is from the Father.
And so I turned to what I thought would be the real things to write about, the things that I would mull over if I were, finally, a great writer. A Dostoevsky, a well-read Lincoln,. Converted. Of a different mindset than the one you had to at least be capable of mimicking in order to stay relevant and make sense to anyone...
The secular world is worn out for the writer. It doesn't offer enough, it's not interesting enough, at least not without its better counterpart, the life of the Church. You can come upon this realization, as I did, a bit late in life. Well, you knew it was always there. You became well-read in Eastern spirituality, the philosophy of the Buddha, did the yoga, meditated, but even that, where does it lead you? The Christian myth can be taken apart and analyzed by the scientists of myth and ritual, things that go way back, in history, in the psyche, but just as a way of thinking, you had to find the Judeo-Christian tradition working for you.
Taking in the mysteries, and working with them, prayerfully, it turns out working for you better than modern therapy treatment...
There are other things to do than mastery of the sophistications of the modern world, with all its great culture, its technological offerings... Those things take up your time, but for what? A career, you think, yes... But that might not hold out forever...
As a writer you have no choice, I think, being in my own situation. It was the way, there was no other.
Sophistication, moving to a city, etc., you thought chicks would like you better...
You can read Hemingway two ways... either as a model for sophistication, worldliness, or, the other way, as one of simplicity, of going back to simplicity...
Saturday, March 10, 2018
I knew there was to be a meeting at the restaurant at 3:30, and I found myself half awake around ten in the morning, made my tea, called mom who had texted...
But the body is not ready to go, and I am now getting texts from the kid, who wants me to cover his shift. And this is irritating, and distracting, because it throws the mind into the necessity to make a decision, when none should have been asked of, but of what the first true sentence might be, where to start of this so-called writing process. Every third Saturday, it seems, he has some sort of a problem, hey, can you help me out. Either it's something for his little brother, cousins visiting from New York, or he's sick, or injured, and this morning it's bad shrimp and food poisoning.
So, I have to go there anyway, and maybe I'm up for it, or maybe not. A little money is always good. You'll be going up to see your mom soon. But still, the legs are tired, the body is tired, the mind might be awake, and I'm doing the best I can talking to mom on the phone giving her a weather report, what does she need today if she is able to get out of the house...
I take a nap, and fall asleep, and then, I get up, shower, fold a work shirt, just in case, and off I go. On foot, through the woods, thinking I need the sunlight and the exercise...
The meeting is not about anything at work, really, just about a new ballot initiative, about tips and minimum wage.
But the meeting starts out, when we all are seated around the table we eat at, the boss asks me, what is this about, and he hands me a copy of a check, a closed check from two weeks previous. The young lady, who had her rehearsal dinner with us, a friend of the boss who is overseas, was generous and appreciative, as a lawyer would be to an old bartender, and left a tip of one hundred dollars. I shrug, what can you do? It's plain there was a charge for her drinks.
Well, well, the meeting ends, about nothing else than the ballot initiative to which we need to make our view clear that we do not want the abolishment of tips... I leave quietly out the front door and I do not have the energy, after stopping by the public library in vain to look for a spirituality section, to go to the grocery store, nor to make the fuss of hailing a cab of some sort, and so I walk back down through the woods and up again back out onto the avenue of embassies lining in a row. Well, the sun is out anyway. The tree pollen, maybe I'll have to pay that later, but it's pretty out.
By the time I get back, it is still light out, but I am cold, feeling rather tired, and my stomach is aching. It is easy to drift off back into a good three hour rest, and not much writing today, though lots to say, just that it all got pissed away, distracted. Awake at 11 PM, reheat a Bolognese with gluten free pasta, have a little wine, but again, bored, unhappy with the boss, who had also scolded me when Wednesday Jazz World Bank night was blowing up even at 7:15, "you two should be able to handle it," but the kid is going at his own pace, arriving a half an hour late, "I'm going as fast as I can," I tell him. And I am. Mom texts me again around 5 in the morning. Her television cable hookup, tricky at best, isn't set right, there is the clock change, and she is cold and lonely and it is dark. I have a couple of chats with her over, have another splash of wine, and down in the basement I put in a colored load, with enough energy to transfer socks and underwear and colored tees into the dryer.
I've helped build up a crowd of regulars, and that involves taking care of them from time to time, and not all of it rational, and sometimes as instinctive as the woman Mary who anoints Jesus' feet with costly spikenard.
But ah, so much for my little church without walls, my little Christian work up upon the second floor dining room. So much for the Holy Spirit. Eat something, take another nap, and go off to the beginning on another work week, Sunday evening with the clock change throwing everyone off.
And then, a fresh perspective. Things become small, details, in the larger story of the old book. You took things too seriously, but then the burden is lifted.
Is it as if you have an inner little brother, a sort of idiot you have to take care of. A holy goof. You're a bit wiser, and you have to help him out, spiritually, because he is spiritual.
It's like the girl. You obsessed over her, or at least that's who another person might describe it, the thing they would say about it. It was a painful thing, too random, unconsidered actions... If prone to a moodiness, it kind of haunts you. But then, finally, it becomes a detail. It no longer touches you, because you are no longer the person, that person who such things would bother. The things that matter more are the message you send, the overall message. Your message is one of decency, respect, an inclination toward Christian act.
Your kindness, that's what matters. You didn't need her after all. Just like you didn't need the stone turned into bread, nor to be placed on a high temple, nor to rule the world. You didn't need that. All you needed was to write your own spiritual biography, as a means of figuring things out, so that, when finally wise and wizened, you could go on keeping doing the wrong thing.
The poor thing, in her fitting in to a sophisticate world, full of action and ideas and things to do, she ignore the important thing, the things of kindness. She didn't see the divine being within you, and that might be as much your own fault as hers, but, so what, it doesn't matter.
Or is it that you think you've arrived, when the only real bosom you can ever long rest upon in peace is that of Abraham...
The death of Jesus on The Cross, being crucified, was a shameful thing, the priest in the day's homily mentions. And there is shame in our things too, like the shame over the way it ended with the girl, like the shame of having to go find a shameful job... Like not being able to pay your bills, shameful. But Jesus did not shy away from the heightened shame, to make a point about our own grievous sins, and how they too are forgiven, just so.
And in my own shame, The Cross does offer the cure, to cure to failed literary and professional enterprises. Cheer up, it was never about that, those things. The literary effort was just a kind of a dreary training so as to keep a particular kind of journal that one would day reach a maturity of perspective. The work I did was to the purpose of me being able to see within the basic desire to provide comfort for the people of the world, a true lasting comfort...
Passion is a very hard thing to explain to people. Christ remains the best example of a man following his passion, even up until the physically grisly end. But he has to follow it to the end, so that there would be meaning, and so that there would be resurrection, that all the words of all the prophets from the Garden of Eden on down would have the living life they deserve. Like you'd water a plant.
And the Passion, yes, this is a sad thing, a heavy thing sometimes, not just the beauty of clarity and sunshine and the warm day, but of people being mean, accusatory, uninformed, rash, harsh, putting their own sins upon you to distract themselves from their own.
Poor Old Kerouac, he had it too, bringing the scroll into the room of the publishing house, and even Bob Giroux looking at him and it... You have offended the Holy Spirit, Jack Kerouac said, and he picked up the box with the scroll manuscript of what was to be On The Road, and left.
But the body is not ready to go, and I am now getting texts from the kid, who wants me to cover his shift. And this is irritating, and distracting, because it throws the mind into the necessity to make a decision, when none should have been asked of, but of what the first true sentence might be, where to start of this so-called writing process. Every third Saturday, it seems, he has some sort of a problem, hey, can you help me out. Either it's something for his little brother, cousins visiting from New York, or he's sick, or injured, and this morning it's bad shrimp and food poisoning.
So, I have to go there anyway, and maybe I'm up for it, or maybe not. A little money is always good. You'll be going up to see your mom soon. But still, the legs are tired, the body is tired, the mind might be awake, and I'm doing the best I can talking to mom on the phone giving her a weather report, what does she need today if she is able to get out of the house...
I take a nap, and fall asleep, and then, I get up, shower, fold a work shirt, just in case, and off I go. On foot, through the woods, thinking I need the sunlight and the exercise...
The meeting is not about anything at work, really, just about a new ballot initiative, about tips and minimum wage.
But the meeting starts out, when we all are seated around the table we eat at, the boss asks me, what is this about, and he hands me a copy of a check, a closed check from two weeks previous. The young lady, who had her rehearsal dinner with us, a friend of the boss who is overseas, was generous and appreciative, as a lawyer would be to an old bartender, and left a tip of one hundred dollars. I shrug, what can you do? It's plain there was a charge for her drinks.
Well, well, the meeting ends, about nothing else than the ballot initiative to which we need to make our view clear that we do not want the abolishment of tips... I leave quietly out the front door and I do not have the energy, after stopping by the public library in vain to look for a spirituality section, to go to the grocery store, nor to make the fuss of hailing a cab of some sort, and so I walk back down through the woods and up again back out onto the avenue of embassies lining in a row. Well, the sun is out anyway. The tree pollen, maybe I'll have to pay that later, but it's pretty out.
By the time I get back, it is still light out, but I am cold, feeling rather tired, and my stomach is aching. It is easy to drift off back into a good three hour rest, and not much writing today, though lots to say, just that it all got pissed away, distracted. Awake at 11 PM, reheat a Bolognese with gluten free pasta, have a little wine, but again, bored, unhappy with the boss, who had also scolded me when Wednesday Jazz World Bank night was blowing up even at 7:15, "you two should be able to handle it," but the kid is going at his own pace, arriving a half an hour late, "I'm going as fast as I can," I tell him. And I am. Mom texts me again around 5 in the morning. Her television cable hookup, tricky at best, isn't set right, there is the clock change, and she is cold and lonely and it is dark. I have a couple of chats with her over, have another splash of wine, and down in the basement I put in a colored load, with enough energy to transfer socks and underwear and colored tees into the dryer.
I've helped build up a crowd of regulars, and that involves taking care of them from time to time, and not all of it rational, and sometimes as instinctive as the woman Mary who anoints Jesus' feet with costly spikenard.
But ah, so much for my little church without walls, my little Christian work up upon the second floor dining room. So much for the Holy Spirit. Eat something, take another nap, and go off to the beginning on another work week, Sunday evening with the clock change throwing everyone off.
And then, a fresh perspective. Things become small, details, in the larger story of the old book. You took things too seriously, but then the burden is lifted.
Is it as if you have an inner little brother, a sort of idiot you have to take care of. A holy goof. You're a bit wiser, and you have to help him out, spiritually, because he is spiritual.
It's like the girl. You obsessed over her, or at least that's who another person might describe it, the thing they would say about it. It was a painful thing, too random, unconsidered actions... If prone to a moodiness, it kind of haunts you. But then, finally, it becomes a detail. It no longer touches you, because you are no longer the person, that person who such things would bother. The things that matter more are the message you send, the overall message. Your message is one of decency, respect, an inclination toward Christian act.
Your kindness, that's what matters. You didn't need her after all. Just like you didn't need the stone turned into bread, nor to be placed on a high temple, nor to rule the world. You didn't need that. All you needed was to write your own spiritual biography, as a means of figuring things out, so that, when finally wise and wizened, you could go on keeping doing the wrong thing.
The poor thing, in her fitting in to a sophisticate world, full of action and ideas and things to do, she ignore the important thing, the things of kindness. She didn't see the divine being within you, and that might be as much your own fault as hers, but, so what, it doesn't matter.
Or is it that you think you've arrived, when the only real bosom you can ever long rest upon in peace is that of Abraham...
The death of Jesus on The Cross, being crucified, was a shameful thing, the priest in the day's homily mentions. And there is shame in our things too, like the shame over the way it ended with the girl, like the shame of having to go find a shameful job... Like not being able to pay your bills, shameful. But Jesus did not shy away from the heightened shame, to make a point about our own grievous sins, and how they too are forgiven, just so.
And in my own shame, The Cross does offer the cure, to cure to failed literary and professional enterprises. Cheer up, it was never about that, those things. The literary effort was just a kind of a dreary training so as to keep a particular kind of journal that one would day reach a maturity of perspective. The work I did was to the purpose of me being able to see within the basic desire to provide comfort for the people of the world, a true lasting comfort...
Passion is a very hard thing to explain to people. Christ remains the best example of a man following his passion, even up until the physically grisly end. But he has to follow it to the end, so that there would be meaning, and so that there would be resurrection, that all the words of all the prophets from the Garden of Eden on down would have the living life they deserve. Like you'd water a plant.
And the Passion, yes, this is a sad thing, a heavy thing sometimes, not just the beauty of clarity and sunshine and the warm day, but of people being mean, accusatory, uninformed, rash, harsh, putting their own sins upon you to distract themselves from their own.
Poor Old Kerouac, he had it too, bringing the scroll into the room of the publishing house, and even Bob Giroux looking at him and it... You have offended the Holy Spirit, Jack Kerouac said, and he picked up the box with the scroll manuscript of what was to be On The Road, and left.
Friday, March 9, 2018
After work, day one getting over the aches, letting the body recover, then there is the next day, letting the mind recover. The gyroscope is spinning, realigning, setting one straight again and upright. First was the body sore and tired, and then, so is the mind, the voice, the thoughts, from the effort to sustain the good thoughts through the workweek's hustle. Both physical and mental energies, but importantly spiritual energies have been put to the effort of matching the work to be done. The spiritual energies too need a bath in salts to get back on track. Which might mean, hmm, maybe I'm in the wrong line of work, too indirect, too blocked, too contrary.
But then you look out at the world and its gainful professions, and you see no other real better place within it, the secular world...
And still it is cold out, with tree pollen, and there is no energy for the walks in the wood.
One tries his best to deal with the secular world, to live in it, to match it, to follow, to keep up with it.
(In the midst of that, there are dreams to remember. Why do we dream?)
More and more you ask yourself, though, why? Really, is it for me? What does it offer me? Do I abide by the logic of the secular world...
Or rather, is not there another gift within you, an important thing, that makes the effort to work within the secular world like a creature out of its element... Kindness of the deep sort does not fit in with the model of the modern health insurance business; believe me, I tried.
And so things come to pass, on this path of realization, encounters with the honest self. The main observation is the fake, the falseness of human behavior.
Jesus did not glow, shimmering, clad in white, upon the mountaintop at the Transfiguration in just one day right off the bat. It seems he has to work up to it. He has to take the steps of correcting people, of showing them the obviousness of what he can see. It takes the telling of parables. It takes building the temple up, piece by piece, to understand, from foundation on up.
The world he encounters is, despite its best intentions, despite all its learnings, and its laws, one of pettiness, rote law abiding without the law brought to live in real life. And it would seem, Jesus has a list, to encounter, to go through things one by one...
But even then, even with all the rest, then there is the work of all the good information to take in, to sup at the table of the banquet, freely given, of God's love and wisdom, sustaining us, healing us. And this is full work too, a day that wants for no distraction, how sweet its water tastes.
One is left again, in the chasm between the two worlds, but closer to the holy, and further away from the secular is a pleasant change, a welcome balm. Each little period of days off you work your way up toward the far hill, and with each little hike toward it, the air is pleasant, salubrious, and your muscles are working again toward something rich with spirit and meaning.
Now, the body needs to be fed again. The cold-cuts from the Safeway, despite their best intentions, taste of preservative chemicals and unnatural texture, why... is that necessary? The roast beef was okay, but still. The food from the secular world, not the spiritual world of that from God.
The body is sore and stiff, after the recuperative rest. One's molecules, the atoms, the little dynamo genies of energy of which we are comprised, are beginning to fire again, after this long period of interminable work that required the great patience, the patience of the enslaved and in Babylon. And that firing is a good thing. Come out, come out, Lazarus of deadened flesh, rise from the worldly tomb they stuck you in," here lies Lazarus, whatever he did." Take off your burial garment. Laugh with me and be joyful, taste the sweet fresh air that rejuvenates all of us poor folk. Come and taste the wonderful feast the Lord hath prepared for you (in need of no Yelp review...) Let the still warm waters bathe you.
And there is lots for Lazarus to say, reawakening. He has been, for his part, dreaming enough that he might grasp this new light of the spiritual, non-secular, this burst before him of white life giving energy...
Here you can reawaken, cast off all the admonitions, the nitpicking accusations that you are not following the law to perfect little order, that come from the controlling sort of people who are not willing to leave their precious earned spot on the secular hill and its city. Here all the laws are easy and friendly, beneficial, obvious, supportive, and one can only follow them with deep renewed appreciation. In their attack upon you, they knew not the fullness of your being, your actions, your intent. Humorless, blinded, that they went after you is rather funny.
Yes, even Moses had too much wine and had to be put to bed, but after all that, and you can't blame him. That's the human heart for you. Better to have human heart than none. The people who enforce such laws, who accuse others, of course, they are only responding to their own sins known deep in their own hearts, the staining lack of morality covering their beings in an unpleasant way, such that there is much anger.
What do the old people, worn down by their own immeasurable day in day out workweeks and lack of proper rest, need but to be brought back to the spiritual? We cannot give them new bones and new brains. No wonder they are addled, having lived so long in their separate secular world prisons, without getting that which is necessary and sustaining, only getting it in small amounts, and even then probably arguing with themselves and their own logic of how best to defend themselves... The lack of that support which is pure faith, even as that faith is the furthest thing from self-protective rational thought.
Sad it must make you to witness their frailty, their infirmities, their dotard confusions from years of leaning on the wrong support. But rejoice, they were healthy enough to get so far, intact, and they must obviously had known that which supports, the real life of love for fellow humanity amidst all the toils they did even as they were not made to do. The being, made after God, was not meant to be a prison guard, a humorless bureaucrat, an angry clerk, a futile pounder of hard rock and stone, and lastly not made to upstart nor correct the holy law of divine order and health of creation. People were not meant to pollute the waters of life with toxic compounds made in a laboratory to our own grievously short-sighted ends.
And so to heal them, one needs to wipe away a lot of falseness. Sin, we call it. Sin of being the proponent of an "Ism." Nazism, Fascism, whatever the particulars... nothing more than words in the end, though the words can bear deeds terrible and cruel beyond all proportion... Isms accusing others of their own predominant fault... Isms created to begin arguments...
Only he who knew all such things would offer support to the poor and the troubled, to the infirm and the weak of mind, for otherwise he would have fear of being useless, of doing more harm than good, not the good shepherd.
Sleep the gentle just sleep of the holy child tucked in the safe bosom of the Father. He who does not act to gather causes then to scatter.
I spend much of days off with kitchen related things. Exercise means going out in the cold to gather some groceries for dinner. The secular pleasure of going out to dinner is less a joy, only a necessity.
But then you look out at the world and its gainful professions, and you see no other real better place within it, the secular world...
And still it is cold out, with tree pollen, and there is no energy for the walks in the wood.
One tries his best to deal with the secular world, to live in it, to match it, to follow, to keep up with it.
(In the midst of that, there are dreams to remember. Why do we dream?)
More and more you ask yourself, though, why? Really, is it for me? What does it offer me? Do I abide by the logic of the secular world...
Or rather, is not there another gift within you, an important thing, that makes the effort to work within the secular world like a creature out of its element... Kindness of the deep sort does not fit in with the model of the modern health insurance business; believe me, I tried.
And so things come to pass, on this path of realization, encounters with the honest self. The main observation is the fake, the falseness of human behavior.
Jesus did not glow, shimmering, clad in white, upon the mountaintop at the Transfiguration in just one day right off the bat. It seems he has to work up to it. He has to take the steps of correcting people, of showing them the obviousness of what he can see. It takes the telling of parables. It takes building the temple up, piece by piece, to understand, from foundation on up.
The world he encounters is, despite its best intentions, despite all its learnings, and its laws, one of pettiness, rote law abiding without the law brought to live in real life. And it would seem, Jesus has a list, to encounter, to go through things one by one...
But even then, even with all the rest, then there is the work of all the good information to take in, to sup at the table of the banquet, freely given, of God's love and wisdom, sustaining us, healing us. And this is full work too, a day that wants for no distraction, how sweet its water tastes.
One is left again, in the chasm between the two worlds, but closer to the holy, and further away from the secular is a pleasant change, a welcome balm. Each little period of days off you work your way up toward the far hill, and with each little hike toward it, the air is pleasant, salubrious, and your muscles are working again toward something rich with spirit and meaning.
Now, the body needs to be fed again. The cold-cuts from the Safeway, despite their best intentions, taste of preservative chemicals and unnatural texture, why... is that necessary? The roast beef was okay, but still. The food from the secular world, not the spiritual world of that from God.
The body is sore and stiff, after the recuperative rest. One's molecules, the atoms, the little dynamo genies of energy of which we are comprised, are beginning to fire again, after this long period of interminable work that required the great patience, the patience of the enslaved and in Babylon. And that firing is a good thing. Come out, come out, Lazarus of deadened flesh, rise from the worldly tomb they stuck you in," here lies Lazarus, whatever he did." Take off your burial garment. Laugh with me and be joyful, taste the sweet fresh air that rejuvenates all of us poor folk. Come and taste the wonderful feast the Lord hath prepared for you (in need of no Yelp review...) Let the still warm waters bathe you.
And there is lots for Lazarus to say, reawakening. He has been, for his part, dreaming enough that he might grasp this new light of the spiritual, non-secular, this burst before him of white life giving energy...
Here you can reawaken, cast off all the admonitions, the nitpicking accusations that you are not following the law to perfect little order, that come from the controlling sort of people who are not willing to leave their precious earned spot on the secular hill and its city. Here all the laws are easy and friendly, beneficial, obvious, supportive, and one can only follow them with deep renewed appreciation. In their attack upon you, they knew not the fullness of your being, your actions, your intent. Humorless, blinded, that they went after you is rather funny.
Yes, even Moses had too much wine and had to be put to bed, but after all that, and you can't blame him. That's the human heart for you. Better to have human heart than none. The people who enforce such laws, who accuse others, of course, they are only responding to their own sins known deep in their own hearts, the staining lack of morality covering their beings in an unpleasant way, such that there is much anger.
What do the old people, worn down by their own immeasurable day in day out workweeks and lack of proper rest, need but to be brought back to the spiritual? We cannot give them new bones and new brains. No wonder they are addled, having lived so long in their separate secular world prisons, without getting that which is necessary and sustaining, only getting it in small amounts, and even then probably arguing with themselves and their own logic of how best to defend themselves... The lack of that support which is pure faith, even as that faith is the furthest thing from self-protective rational thought.
Sad it must make you to witness their frailty, their infirmities, their dotard confusions from years of leaning on the wrong support. But rejoice, they were healthy enough to get so far, intact, and they must obviously had known that which supports, the real life of love for fellow humanity amidst all the toils they did even as they were not made to do. The being, made after God, was not meant to be a prison guard, a humorless bureaucrat, an angry clerk, a futile pounder of hard rock and stone, and lastly not made to upstart nor correct the holy law of divine order and health of creation. People were not meant to pollute the waters of life with toxic compounds made in a laboratory to our own grievously short-sighted ends.
And so to heal them, one needs to wipe away a lot of falseness. Sin, we call it. Sin of being the proponent of an "Ism." Nazism, Fascism, whatever the particulars... nothing more than words in the end, though the words can bear deeds terrible and cruel beyond all proportion... Isms accusing others of their own predominant fault... Isms created to begin arguments...
Only he who knew all such things would offer support to the poor and the troubled, to the infirm and the weak of mind, for otherwise he would have fear of being useless, of doing more harm than good, not the good shepherd.
Sleep the gentle just sleep of the holy child tucked in the safe bosom of the Father. He who does not act to gather causes then to scatter.
I spend much of days off with kitchen related things. Exercise means going out in the cold to gather some groceries for dinner. The secular pleasure of going out to dinner is less a joy, only a necessity.
Thursday, March 8, 2018
At night I took refuge from work and its pains in the early morning with an old children's book of ours. I'd ordered another copy of it from the old book sellers of Amazon, wishing to give it as a gift to my niece and nephew, but the 'very good condition' copy that arrived has a musty feeling to it, and with its inked in dedication, I thought I'd better just hang on to it. Brian Wildsmith's Illustrated Bible Stories as told by Philip Turner. There's just something nice about a book you grew up with, and at various times in your more mature life, returning to it has been a good balm for soreness of all forms mental, physical, of the heart, of the soul, of the agitated blood.
The tree pollen has come forth, and in the beam of a flashlight or a bicycle helmet lamp, the grains of it are visible and granular, coming down like a very fine precipitation, particles afloat riding sideways and down in the breezes of nighttime. Sneezing, puffy eyes, itches of the sinus. And you can plainly see, buds on trees, the first of the flowering pink ornamentals here and there, the peek out of the magnolia, and the rose-like offering of the Camellia tree out even in the cold that has returned after two very warm days when no one needed a jacket.
An old book in one's sickbed, with brief text and pictures colorful and evocative of ancient times in the holy lands. Adam and Eve. Cain and Abel. Noah. Abraham and Isaac. Jacob. Joseph. Moses. Joshua. Samson. Samuel. David. Elijah. By the waters of Babylon. Beautiful stories. And with the paintings of watercolors with the line structure of ink drawings that depict these stories in prismatic color, so do the old stories tell us of our light, broken into the different colors in all their shades.
And it dawns upon one, in an hour of need and the dissatisfactions that come even when we are giving of our good efforts, this is our story. This is my story. I am part of this. Part of that long history of the communion of the human spirit, ready, hearing the voice of the One God. Part the tale of our part of the bargain with God, the Commandments. The difficulties borne, the history of a people, wandering, besieged, battling... There is no New if there is not this Old. The Old is what we all are coming from, and somehow, as dumb as it might sound, it is good, very good, to know. And I say to myself, yes, I remember. For there is morality, moral lesson, the things of every adult maturity as far as making good decisions and doing the right and the good within these old pages, here of childhood, from 1968, the publisher's date, when I was three.
So, this is why I have acted the way I have acted. There is the element of the prophet in our lives and their little insignificant life stories. The same struggles. The same awakenings, at odd lone moments when little seems as alive as the stars far away, to the holy good of God.
There you are yourself, in some sort of biblical situation, out in the desert, an exile, wandering, much like the people of the tribes themselves, subject... And while you work away in slavery, still, there is something going on, something good, and it has to do with your own particular talents.
And here you are awakening to the old stories, the true deeper reality, found not to be the one of solely in the Buddhist sense, accomplished lotus style, or of the wisdom of the Zen monastery, but that of a collection of special people, who are caught in the act of realizing a positive reality, not simply a negative reflective one, (such as 'thou art that which is.) There is something real behind it all, and real reasons to do things.
Then your own story comes into focus. Everything is taken in stride. If you came afoul of certain people, so what? If a particular girl didn't work out, so what? The true nature of your purpose as a human being had not come forward to you yet; it was not made clear what it was.
The special talents of particular individual men are made for the times in which they must find themselves in. A holy light, a star, shines over them, in time, marking their coming into their maturity, as to when they are ready for the deeper understanding, the one that makes all other things fall of as meaningless.
Interestingly enough, the standing up requires none of the special acts we might take as one bearing upon such. A liberal can only be so much of a liberal fighting for every liberal cause before imploding into meaninglessness. The ways of joining the religious order might seem promising, but that might not be the only way, nor necessarily the best, nor necessarily better than going it out on your own, communing yourself with the soul and its realities. A hard obscure path, one no one was witting of, could be far better, perhaps.
The old stories have a commonality, in that they are of a story that shows a new leader, a new kind of leader, to be called for. The established leadership has become stiff, inflexible, unseeing... And along comes a man, maybe even not even yet a man, not quite, unexpected, different, wise in a way that is not of previous wisdom's canned vintages.
What would this, what does this, look like... It would on the one hand fulfill prophecy and the subtle pattern. Recalling a steady theme that has not been honestly recreated in a legitimate fashion. Like that of The Shepherd, the being gentle and wise who can overturn the mighty Pharaoh, by knowing "God's Will."
But no man, as such, can describe himself, but by the words of others. Higher words. Better interpretations. Wisdom. The acknowledgment of all the hard work, toil, exile, or rather, of all those things that make for that which feeds a true spiritual life of leadership and insight.
One can only take an almost joyous solace in rejection of a people who have lost all sight of the righteousness of the judgments of the Lord, who have conflated their own as if to make a marketplace, a business culture out of the temple that is justice.
God will judge. He will judge you and I. It will not be left up to the economy, nor to money and material riches. It will not be the judgment of your neighbors, your classmates, the popularity contests, the tastes of those who hold themselves up as being so gifted as to discern the human heart through appearances. The low will be raised, for their willingness to serve, for their patience, for their steadfast belief that the transient opinions of people mean little compared to being aligned with God and the Holy Spirit.
The Old Testament is the vines from which the grapes spring forth, upon which they are nourished by the water that falls as rain and the sun that shines and the earth itself, rooted in a hard stoney existence in otherwise barren soil. The New represents the wine, which comes forth out of the tenderness of man, his understanding of the divine and divine processes everywhere as yeast and fermentation and the maturing of the juice. Wine is the symbol of this carrying on...
But it is a judgmental world we live in. Perhaps it's on a shallow level, the judgment which is the meat of the banter of a city and its pecking orders. They'll hit with a cudgel and then express surprise at the hurt, and that you are the one at fault for being hurt. Maybe particularly in intimate matters.
I'd seen enough. I'd even lived a life not that far off from Jesus, as much as you could get away with unnoticed, and it was something no one even wanted to notice, and the thought of it even being possible would never have crossed their minds. It was easy to go along unnoticed. As if good was not even visible anymore, should it arrive and pass by in front of you...
The tree pollen has come forth, and in the beam of a flashlight or a bicycle helmet lamp, the grains of it are visible and granular, coming down like a very fine precipitation, particles afloat riding sideways and down in the breezes of nighttime. Sneezing, puffy eyes, itches of the sinus. And you can plainly see, buds on trees, the first of the flowering pink ornamentals here and there, the peek out of the magnolia, and the rose-like offering of the Camellia tree out even in the cold that has returned after two very warm days when no one needed a jacket.
An old book in one's sickbed, with brief text and pictures colorful and evocative of ancient times in the holy lands. Adam and Eve. Cain and Abel. Noah. Abraham and Isaac. Jacob. Joseph. Moses. Joshua. Samson. Samuel. David. Elijah. By the waters of Babylon. Beautiful stories. And with the paintings of watercolors with the line structure of ink drawings that depict these stories in prismatic color, so do the old stories tell us of our light, broken into the different colors in all their shades.
And it dawns upon one, in an hour of need and the dissatisfactions that come even when we are giving of our good efforts, this is our story. This is my story. I am part of this. Part of that long history of the communion of the human spirit, ready, hearing the voice of the One God. Part the tale of our part of the bargain with God, the Commandments. The difficulties borne, the history of a people, wandering, besieged, battling... There is no New if there is not this Old. The Old is what we all are coming from, and somehow, as dumb as it might sound, it is good, very good, to know. And I say to myself, yes, I remember. For there is morality, moral lesson, the things of every adult maturity as far as making good decisions and doing the right and the good within these old pages, here of childhood, from 1968, the publisher's date, when I was three.
So, this is why I have acted the way I have acted. There is the element of the prophet in our lives and their little insignificant life stories. The same struggles. The same awakenings, at odd lone moments when little seems as alive as the stars far away, to the holy good of God.
There you are yourself, in some sort of biblical situation, out in the desert, an exile, wandering, much like the people of the tribes themselves, subject... And while you work away in slavery, still, there is something going on, something good, and it has to do with your own particular talents.
And here you are awakening to the old stories, the true deeper reality, found not to be the one of solely in the Buddhist sense, accomplished lotus style, or of the wisdom of the Zen monastery, but that of a collection of special people, who are caught in the act of realizing a positive reality, not simply a negative reflective one, (such as 'thou art that which is.) There is something real behind it all, and real reasons to do things.
Then your own story comes into focus. Everything is taken in stride. If you came afoul of certain people, so what? If a particular girl didn't work out, so what? The true nature of your purpose as a human being had not come forward to you yet; it was not made clear what it was.
The special talents of particular individual men are made for the times in which they must find themselves in. A holy light, a star, shines over them, in time, marking their coming into their maturity, as to when they are ready for the deeper understanding, the one that makes all other things fall of as meaningless.
Interestingly enough, the standing up requires none of the special acts we might take as one bearing upon such. A liberal can only be so much of a liberal fighting for every liberal cause before imploding into meaninglessness. The ways of joining the religious order might seem promising, but that might not be the only way, nor necessarily the best, nor necessarily better than going it out on your own, communing yourself with the soul and its realities. A hard obscure path, one no one was witting of, could be far better, perhaps.
The old stories have a commonality, in that they are of a story that shows a new leader, a new kind of leader, to be called for. The established leadership has become stiff, inflexible, unseeing... And along comes a man, maybe even not even yet a man, not quite, unexpected, different, wise in a way that is not of previous wisdom's canned vintages.
What would this, what does this, look like... It would on the one hand fulfill prophecy and the subtle pattern. Recalling a steady theme that has not been honestly recreated in a legitimate fashion. Like that of The Shepherd, the being gentle and wise who can overturn the mighty Pharaoh, by knowing "God's Will."
But no man, as such, can describe himself, but by the words of others. Higher words. Better interpretations. Wisdom. The acknowledgment of all the hard work, toil, exile, or rather, of all those things that make for that which feeds a true spiritual life of leadership and insight.
One can only take an almost joyous solace in rejection of a people who have lost all sight of the righteousness of the judgments of the Lord, who have conflated their own as if to make a marketplace, a business culture out of the temple that is justice.
God will judge. He will judge you and I. It will not be left up to the economy, nor to money and material riches. It will not be the judgment of your neighbors, your classmates, the popularity contests, the tastes of those who hold themselves up as being so gifted as to discern the human heart through appearances. The low will be raised, for their willingness to serve, for their patience, for their steadfast belief that the transient opinions of people mean little compared to being aligned with God and the Holy Spirit.
The Old Testament is the vines from which the grapes spring forth, upon which they are nourished by the water that falls as rain and the sun that shines and the earth itself, rooted in a hard stoney existence in otherwise barren soil. The New represents the wine, which comes forth out of the tenderness of man, his understanding of the divine and divine processes everywhere as yeast and fermentation and the maturing of the juice. Wine is the symbol of this carrying on...
But it is a judgmental world we live in. Perhaps it's on a shallow level, the judgment which is the meat of the banter of a city and its pecking orders. They'll hit with a cudgel and then express surprise at the hurt, and that you are the one at fault for being hurt. Maybe particularly in intimate matters.
I'd seen enough. I'd even lived a life not that far off from Jesus, as much as you could get away with unnoticed, and it was something no one even wanted to notice, and the thought of it even being possible would never have crossed their minds. It was easy to go along unnoticed. As if good was not even visible anymore, should it arrive and pass by in front of you...
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