 Monday, April 25, 2005
Spore me a prayer from the Holy Host Take my numbness and the distance between You and me so that Ineffable, Invisible you may show thyself to effable, visible me. (0) comments • • • • • Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Oh to retreat to the womb of the library where the air is colored with sun-motes and thick with the scent of bindings and paper, and where reassurances live in their seeming permanence on shelves carrying on like Atlas. The spring sun enters through the west window and casts a transforming glow over the rosewood cases, turning their trunks into auburn jewels.Like a sea maiden calling from the near shore the leather couch sings as if to trap me in her feather caress, into which I could slump in sublime comfort and never escape. I mean to retrieve the Ratzinger volumes and consume them in one long text-fest while not missing anything of the hundred television programs that, like Cinderella, will expire at midnight. (0) comments • • • • • I decided to write a novel because I have Microsoft Word and writing one has never been easier.My friend told me to make an outline because that’s what some published authors do. I thought about that. But I began writing it anyway because I like seeing paragraphs, not outlines of paragraphs. I know I have to introduce characters. I’m not sure you can write a novel without characters. Perhaps it’s been done but I’m not aware of it. Describing characters has never been more difficult because they have to be based on real life people unless you have a really terrific imagination. Yet we real life people often make ourselves into one-dimensional characters by one-dimensional lives. Even when something really serious comes along, like our death, we have our loved ones tell the mortuary to decorate our coffins with Cleveland Browns paraphenaila. It’s hard to take us seriously even though we’re created by God Himself and we’re the most serious thing there is on earth. We whittle our lives down by avoiding pain in all its forms and then expect the trumpets to blow come Judgment Day. (0) comments • • • • • What a long, strange trips it's been. Cardinal Ratzinger is Pope. What an April to remember. Heard the totemic "Habemus Papam", a phrase I haven't heard in over twenty-five years, a third of a the average life.The tendency for me as an American is to regard what is foreign as neutral at best and against our interests at worst. So to hear the foreign-sounding words Habemus Papam provides a counterbalance. For this German who is now pope has some measure of control over me, has some responsibility for me, and protects my interests. "Brothers and sisters" he began. We are family. Hearing the grand words "Habemus Papam" recalls the universality of the Church in a vivid way. Germans, Poles, Africans, Italians, Mexicans, Americans, bonded beyond blood to something higher and infinitely greater. (0) comments • • • • • Friday, April 15, 2005
Back in the mid-70s, on the way home from church, my brother and sister and I would begin the chant "Stop and Get a Malt, Malt, Malt, Malt. Stop and get a Malt, Malt, Malt, Malt". The destination implied was Jolly's Root Beer stand, which in addition to frosted mugs of the coldest root beer shy of Anchorage, they had delicious malts. They might've had shakes too but shakes were never even considered. Even the word "shake" didn't have the power or authority that "malt" had. In retrospect I thought we batted about .333, a respectable average. Rod Carew numbers anyway. But my brother recently said that he remembers the chant but not the payoff. He never remembers getting a malt. This surprised me, but then he is six years younger and it’s possible that most of the "hits" were early in our career. I think if I'd gotten any more malts they'd have been taken for granted, any fewer and I'd have wondered why we didn't get more. A balance rare. We might've gone more often during the summer for root beer though I can't be sure. I've never gotten close to as thirsty as an adult as I did as a kid. I assume it was because caught up in play you manage to forget about drinking or eating for awhile. But when I was ten, eleven I could work up a thirst that was other-worldly and the other-worldly antidote was Jolly's Root Beer. It was impossible to sip; I recall downing it in two gulps, two long powerful gulps with the ice shavings from the glass as the cherry topping. And I remember thinking there never was a drink invented that quenched thirst better than Jolly's Root Beer. (0) comments • • • • • A saint, one of the Borgias amazingly (just two generations from the corrupt Borgia popes) once converted from a dissolute lifestyle in an unusual way. He was in a funeral procession for a beautiful woman who'd died, the most beautiful woman in his town, and it happened that an accident dislodged the casket and the body, now partially corrupted, came forth. He was so stunned by this graphic display of how temporary our our beauty is that he gave his life to spiritual pursuits.I also find it spiritually profitable (if not as profitable as our saint whose name escapes me did) to think on the corruptibility of our flesh. I recently saw an actress who I had a tremendous crush on, the one who played Daisy Duke on the "Dukes of Hazzard", and she looks different now. Very different. Age is a cruel thing but it really reminded me how meaningless looks are. We're all scarcely separated from being bones. (0) comments • • • • • Horrible fire at Miami U. killed three students. Three of whom were drunk. It was a Sunday morning/Saturday night so I can't much blame them. There but for the grace of God go I. Their vulnerability is such that I hope they were prepared. It would be hard for me to fathom any of them going to Hell when I, who was/am no more deserving, was preserved long enough to repent. Hopefully they have nothing seriously to repent of.(0) comments • • • • • A pleasant enough week, at least while the alcohol flowed. Fri, Sat, Sun & Monday were all extravagantly laden with Guinness and Beck Darks. The weekend because it was warm and sunny and because it was the weekend. Monday? Because it was Red's Opening Day and I'd taken a half-day. That nice stretch of time made Tues-Wed-Thurs a mere pinprick. By Friday it was getting old though, my brain fatigued by Access queries and a dearth of poetry.(0) comments • • • • • I've noticed that dad's side of the family always seemed infused with mystery while my mom's side seemed to have much less mystery.Mom's side came to Ohio because a famine in Ireland in 1846 caused our ancestors to choose between death and America. No contest. No mystery why they came. But with my dad's side it's shadier. We don't know why they left Germany, or even where James Smith came from. James Smith is like Melchizedek - we don't know where he came from or why or when he left. His story is mystery personified, but there's more mystery where that came from. When I was a kid the film "Roots" got me interested in genealogy. I started, naturally, with my four grandparents and realized if not for the first time how odd it was to have only three living grandparents. As I got older the loss only felt greater because you can know yourself better if you know your parents, and you can know your parents better if you know their parents. And I never knew her. Even her name was foreign to me. While "Margaret" tripped easily off the tongue, I had to remember to pray for "Ruth". My wife says I care more for the dead than the living but I always look at it more as reverence for those who have passed on and experience what we only long for - the presence of God. And the dead have the advantage of growing greater in hindsight. But how much greater can someone grow whom I never knew! Hence I imagine Ruth as a bright spot in the heavenly firmament. (0) comments • • • • • Thursday, April 14, 2005
He burned his notesfor which Matthews praised him a humble act for a pope he said. For different reasons I'd best burn my notes and the lines that arch-ache into bosom-blossoms of flesh, each nuance chiseled by the light of lanterns held to the holy curves of pistillate flowers. They haunt the inner drawers of a former life and gather in the hid-circuits of this machine. (0) comments • • • • • Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Thought experiment: I sent the book out to a fellow blogger at their request and at my expense (i.e. it was free to them). Should I feel put out that they never acknowledged receipt of it let alone thanked me? Perhaps they thought that they would have to say something kind about it in order to acknowledge it and they preferred not to say anything instead of something negative. I wonder if I should email that person and ask them if they received it or just suck it up and "offer it up" as was popular pre-Vatican II? The funny thing is I seem to have a different standard for Catholic bloggers than a cousin or uncle. If a relative had asked for it, I would've sent it and expected no comment. Interesting...(2) comments • • • • • Friday, April 08, 2005
This week was also attended by the unpleasantry of having to move from my protected, private and unmolested hideaway to the first cube in the throughway just outside Jack’s office. It was either there or practically share a cube with Steve Fix in Melanie’s old cube, and I recall with disdain the times I visited her there. Her cube seemed set in low-lying land prone to floods and mosquitos and mudslides. A sad orange chair sat in the cube, a cast-off that looked like something one would find on a Appalachian’s porch. I moved it outside the cube and a few hours later it was back where it was, like Poe’s raven. Torn between bad real estate and worse, I went with Mike Porter’s very visible old cube. People stopped by to wish me well or welcome me to the neighborhood, which only made me feel more overexposed than I already was. It was like wearing a sign.(0) comments • • • • • So much news in such a short period. One feels more alive when history makes a housecall. The overhype of the 24-7 cable news means that what is considered news is usually cotton candy mistaken for steak. But this – oh this – is different. When a saint dies you become attentive. When a pope dies, you become attentive. When a saint and a pope dies you hold the moment to your bosom because you know that you’ll not see this, or their like, again. A teachable moment, and one that by virtue of its surpassing rarity it imprints on your consciousness. As rare as one of our yearly liturgies, a papal funeral Mass is as rare as it gets. And now comes the unbearable suspense in waiting to see who the Cardinals choose as our next spiritual father. The saying goes “may you live in interesting times” and these times are interesting. The news of the past four years as been nothing if not electric. A tied 2000 election that went to the Supreme Court. 9/11. Iraq. Terri Schivao. The Pope. So much grist for prayer. These times seem to call for involvement.(0) comments • • • • • I’m involved in an alcohol relocation program – relocating it from the refrigerator to my stomach.* * * I’m a bit jealous of Walker Percy’s enthralldom with semiology. He always felt like he was “on to something” even though semiologists suggests his studies were, well, crackpot. I’ve always longed to be a crackpot, but for optimal effect I don’t think you can know you’re one. It’s like watching a baseball game and thinking it as pointless. There has to be meaning infused in it, something riding on it, for it to be truly engaging. Which is why I tend to watch Opening Day and the playoffs. Both make or break heroes. And the heroic is what enthralls us. * * * Everything you need to know about the ‘80s can be said by the fact that there was a successful rock band that called themselves “Loverboy”. (0) comments • • • • • Monday, April 04, 2005
Tom of Disputations writes that the reactions of people is "less a reflection on the Pope than it is on the selectors themselves."Very true. The statements by recent presidents were nothing if not predictable. Carter liked the Pope's desire for peace, Clinton liked the mercy, Bush the life issues. Of course we've been doing that with Jesus for 2,000 years too so the Pope's in good company. (0) comments • • • • • I ill spent my illness I’m afraid. I laid down and watched all of “Lawrence of Arabia” which led to a bit of curiosity about T.E. Lawrence. I read an encyclopedia entry about him. He seemed a daredevil but what made him tick? Did he really die in a motorcycle accident after the war? How like Patton this sounded. Both took enormous risks in war only to die in the vehicle accidents in the safety of peace.I did watch the “Passion of Joan of Arc”, a 1928 silent film. It was pretty good if only for the excerpts from the transcript of her trial. Enjoyed seeing when and where she made those comments that seemed to twist her persecutors in knots, so like Christ did of the Pharisees who were constantly trying to trap him. Some of the faces were positively Fellini-like. Very odd and memorable. The film certainly lived up to the title – she did have something close to Christ’s passion. Even to being mocked by wearing a faux crown and scepter. And her feeling of being forsaken which made her sign a confession. I watched “I Dream of Jeannie” and “The Munsters” which are the sort of sticky confection that go so well with sickness. I can’t imagine watching “The Munsters” healthy. I just can’t slow my mind and body sufficiently to do something so wasteful and in the moment. Sad. Still I could’ve read much more. I could’ve read deeply of prose-y books filled with art. One needs a spot of art in life. I should’ve picked up something meaty and yet readable, like “War and Peace”. After the last Percy read there’s a real hole in my reading artillery. I can’t find anything lyrical and consolatory. Sure I could read Updike but he’s so inconsistent. Maybe I could get Proust. Instead I was reading about a woman reading Proust. Two degress of separation kind of thing, but not the same. Accept only original sources. (0) comments • • • • • I feel like there’s been too much to absorb of late. First the ups and downs with regard to Terri’s situation. Was I doing enough? Was I praying and fasting enough? Did I care enough? It was a haunting. When Congress came in and the President like a white knight arrived in the middle of the night to sign a bill they seemed to make things right with the world again. The good guys always win, don’t they? But then came the court hammer which said, in effect, “we’ll take a message and get back to you”. And when the message came in it wasn’t good. The feeding tube sat unused. And Terri died suddenly, not suddenly, after some 13 days, and the injustice was made permanent, writ on tombstone.And I hadn’t been able to digest that. It was still on the subconscious. Drained with no time to refill, our Pope was suddenly on a feeding tube. And then he died. And now I can't catch up. I need to write all this out. (0) comments • • • • • Sunday, April 03, 2005
Our pastor said that they need help with Bingo, which is the major fundraiser for our Catholic school. Now I'm not exactly an extrovert and the idea of going to bingo strikes me as nothing short of pentitential. (Can I bring a book?) But I don't see how I can avoid it; the previous parish I was desperate for bingo workers and I avoided it and forever felt that I was a leech. So I believe in Catholic schools and the crucial role catechisis plays and I feel I should do my part, to pitch in, to be a team player, to have works and not just faith, to ... (stop me here anytime). So I'm going to up and volunteer. End of whine. (0) comments • • • • • Just heard an "audioblog" on Surburban Banshee's site. She sings a self-written protest song about Terri Schiavo. The lyrics are good and after some initial tenseness her voice quite good. Still, it cracks me up what hams we bloggers are. It's not enough to show off with our writing, now we want to make sure others hear our voice. On the other hand, an audioblog is crack cocaine to the reader. I was grateful that she took the chance and even googled "St. Blog's" + "audioblog" to find others. There is a great satisfaction in hearing someone's voice or seeing a picture after reading them for awhile.But I think posting a picture or putting your voice on the blog is a destroyer of mystery. Let the reader imagine. Imagination is good. Of course, if you are good looking or have an excellent voice then destroying the mystery isn't the worst thing to do. Since I'm average looking with an average voice, I'm in no particular hurry to ham it up. Give my regards to Broadway, remember me to Harold's Square... (0) comments • • • • • |
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Desperately Seeking Retirement      |
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