Living in the penultimate

In the Spring of 2003, when I began at Columbia Seminary, I took the last class Walter Brueggemann would teach to non-doctoral students, before his apotheosis into an emeritus faculty. Cousin Cheryl was in that class, as well as some other friends. We took a class on Old Testament Theology and our text was Walter's book on Old Testament Theology - his magnum opus that looked at the older testament as a meeting place of testimonies with divergent trajectories of justice and purity, testimony and counter testimony, where the text creates a world of 'differance'. One of the things I took from this class is the impossibility of having the last word - or in some ways, the danger of presuming the last word. Ecclesiastes says that of the making of books there is no end, and She's right: this verse is descriptive of the ancient perception that a last word is impossible. Impossible in these ways: such a last word's use becomes inadequate to explain the quandaries of tomorrow; such a last word becomes irrelevant the longer it is untested by new circumstances - that is, such a last word becomes an idol. In this way, such a last word becomes a mask that hinders looking at the thing itself. And so it is that a last word is non-resistant to evolution.
The problem is that people demand certainty. Certainty I believe is the graven image that God warns us about in the ten words.
And so we're opened up into a world of questions, where even authority is questioned. Authority depends on inerrancy, but where inerrancy is questioned there is freedom. It will be sometimes claimed that authority grants some special freedom, but that is the freedom it wants you to have. What is that exactly?
I've posted two images of the same painting: "out of chaos" that I painted during chapel week in 2005. Each image is of the same state, yet different color ratios obtain. I can not tell you which is the final word on this image. Even if we should determine a correct color ratio, questions of scale would remain. Over the passage of time, with the possible loss of the originals, such questions proliferate.
Hence the need to state and restate. That is the freedom penultimacy gives us, the freedom to reexamine and evaluate. Of course this feels uncomfortable: in the midst of change individuals cling to things stated as certain, wanting to conserve some absolute place where things are as they remember them. Such a place is an idol, an illusion.
Why has God put us in such a world? A world where we are exiled from the certainties we grew up with. A world where we find ourselves in search of new orientations.

We've been married one year

And it's been a wonderful year. A year ago we were married at Oakhurst, dined with family and friends at Sala in Virginia Highlands, and packed for a trip to London. The above photos were taken in London, probably the pub in Hampstead where we'd visited Keats' house.

A year later we're in Jackson Hole, WY with our family. Today Jami went snowboarding - trees whizzing past her, while I sauntered over in the snow to the Star Bucks, where I drank an Americano and drew cowboy pictures, while reading Barth's Humanity of God. Tuesday we're going snow shoeing. Tomorrow we're visiting the Wildlife museum. I'm expecting lots of party relics, remnants of various Elk and Moose happenings.
It's a Wild Life is the little remarked sequel to It's a Wonderful Life. The children of It's a Wonderful Life grow up to protest the Vietnam war and join the counterculture, funding a commune called Pot R Ville with their inheritance from the savings and loan.

A year later and we're both ecstatic. I love her very much.
Thanks to all reading this who were there last year.

Holiday fun

Tomorrow we're taking off for the holidays, heading for the hills, for snow upon snow, - what fun we'll have.

skating

skating. I can't skate but I'm going snow shoeing in a few days. This picture was taken in Budapest in 2005 when I was on alternative context. We'd stopped at a restaurant and there was a rink below us. We had left the art museum on Hero Square.

The drawing for an earlier post

Take this as an example of "art as exegetical method." While I spent that Sunday lunch with my friends from church, 3 adults and 3 children and myself, I began drawing out my vision of "people arriving for a train departed."
Faced with the problem of a vast plain of people I drew hot air balloons as an alternative. The people keep a coming but the passage of the train goes unremarked.

Christmas: the most wunderbarishe Zeit des Jahrens

I have a story like Jami's Snorky story. But I don't have time to write it now. Here's photos of slides of me at Christmas when I was 7. I think I was 7. Batman was big. I got a bike. Jami comments on the bottom slide that I'm smiling but my dad and granny Wise are quite somber. We looked through photographs and we didn't have one of dad smiling anywhere. Whether he was holding me as an infant on the front porch of my great grandparent's house, standing in front of a personnel carrier in Germany (that's understandable), or posing with a friend in their Boy Scout uniforms - dad remains somber.
We'll see him and granny Wise today and I'll take a photo.

And I have an observation: last night we went to the Christmas Eve service at Oakhurst and I noticed during Silent Night that it shares some melody and rhythm with Blow the Man Down.
Try it. You have to slow Blow the Man Down down a bit. Blow the man down is a cantus firmus for Silent Night. Or maybe it's Silent Night that's the cantus firmus. Blow the Man Down might be more a ostinato.

Merry Christmas

My last post, which while I was writing it, seemed like a comedic tour de force of bathos, erudition, and existential reverie, in the mode of Beckett, instead was a dense, recursive jungle of syntax. I realized this last night when I was talking to Jami, who had attempted at least twice to move through it but was repulsed. She promises she'll keep trying. She's lovely and wonderful, but I know that it may just not be worth the effort. I still like it, though; it is my grotesque child.
Here's the gist: a verse is sung in a holiday hymn where people, who've made a good faith effort to come for a train, discover that there was only one train and that it has moved on without them. You might as well sing a hymn about Vladimir and Estragon waiting for Godot, except that this would be "just missing Godot."
Let's not start that again.
Here I've put up three Christmas card images I drew 7 years ago. One image I couldn't find, but which I have a paper copy of somewhere in my stored papers at the apartment, is of Santa swigging back a Coke, captioned overhead: "Congratulations! It's December 26th and you've just finished laying off the last of 20,000 elves - the stock will go through the roof! In the Spirit of the holidays, have a Coke and a Smile."
These three depict Santa as Lecher; as falling asleep with the remote in one hand, his cigarette having fallen out of the other onto the carpet where it'll make a nice bonfire; and as Nietzschean anti-hero, shaking his fist at the heavens.
What is this antipathy I have toward Santa? What has made him the object of my shadowy projections?
Oh Yeah.
Well more fodder for my counseling session.

The People keep a coming but the train done gone

Advent gives us the word "adventure". I remember a sermon of my friend Karl's where, in explaining Advent, he reminded us that Christmas is not the same as Advent: Christmas is a destination, but Advent is about not arriving yet. I got the sense that Advent, like Holy Saturday that separates Good Friday from Easter, is too infrequently enjoyed, savored, experienced, mostly because people have a low tolerance for delayed gratification. We've got to get to the point; things have to be about something and we've got to get there. And so the danger is that weeks before Christmas people want to sing hymns about the baby being born in the manger. Advent says, "not yet." "Don't open the presents; don't read the last page; don't fast forward to the ending." Instead live in the present, live with not knowing, live with expectation: all of which go against our nature, our desire for closure, our desire to read the epilogue. Advent is an adventure of non-closure, an opportunity to hear God's story that winds around and suffers so many digressions that the point is buried like a seed in the earth. Can we enjoy such a journey?
This Sunday at Oakhurst we sang a hymn about the baby in the manger (why so early?) with the refrain I quoted in the title: De Peeple keep'a cummin' but de train dun Gone. I have no idea what this refers to. The underground railroad? But "the train done gone" - that's hardly hopeful - not the hope we find in the incarnation. The people keep a coming: how depressing. They're coming across the plains, through raging rivers, in danger from injuns and highwaymen (Dennis Moore on his horse Concord); they suffer from dengee fever and berry berry and bunions and migranes; they wander in the wilderness; they stand in line waiting for a stamp. And throngs of them advance toward the rails, footworn and slipshod, wearied and worn, famished, pushed beyond endurance. Wave after wave breaks upon the tracks only to discover, Ahhh the anguish, the despair, the wailing and gnashing of mashies and nibbling of niblicks, that the Train done Gone. The train is Gone, Done Gone, exerunt, locomotivus fugit, absented, vacated. And still the people keep a coming, continue their itinerary, pass over on in their passage. And what recourse do they have? A continual advancement, their Advent a misadventure peradventure inadvertent vertiginous. De Peeps 'l keep'a combing butter train'don gaw'n: that doesn't help much. They keep coming; the train is already gone.
When I labored over this problem at the Croissant Monde last Sunday after Church, my companions, all seminary trained thinkers, expressed solutions to this conundrum. Solutions that collapsed under the weight of the assertion: these people continue to arrive even in view of the fact that whatever train stops here is already passed through - nothing is said of another train. In fact the emphasis of the song tends toward the conclusion that the Train Done Gone is Gone for Good, for certain, final, fine, fin, without leaving room for the adumbration of a suspicion of a rumor that any kind of locomotion will revive along this way. Better just tear up the tracks. The third out of the last half inning of the last game of the world series has been made, the umpire has signaled, and the last uncorked bottle of champagne has fallen to the ground spewed and emptied on the last sober player of the year celebrating in the victor's clubhouse; the claret jug has been hoisted; the trophies dispensed to victors left and right. Not another inning, not another down, not another click of the clock remains for the aspirant, the hopeful, the expectant. All the potencies of potential and possibility have been drained, dregged and micturated, sopped, sucked up and filtered back to the source. This train is absolutely and irrevocably gone on and still, and yet, impossibly, implausibly, people, human beings like you and me, continue to set out, embark, commence a journey for a point of disembarkation, a certain station, stop, shelter, from where a vehicle of excursion might transport them on parallel tracks, conveying them safely and with all their goods and bodily possessions, wits and faculties, to some place of desire and finality and away from some place about which it might be said that "from there they've done gone." That even before people have commenced their procession toward commencement, the train is done gone. I feel like I've just sung an assertion that 2 plus 3 equals six. It makes no sense. The people keep a coming but the train done gone: what is that? There is no answer. It's neither a comfort, a consolation, a warning or a promise. Who are these people? What is this train? How do the people know where to go or where they're going? Is there a time table? Is there another train? Is there a station agent responsible for feeding and housing, at least diverting and repatriating, all these people: people who've been misled - one can only say that the failure of this song is that people are engaged in futile behavior? I would feel better about singing, "people quit a coming when the train done gone." We could sing, "people begin arriving well in advance of the train's departure." That would be all right, even though people might arrive too far in advance and sleep through the train's departure or starve, if they'd not brought anything to eat. People might also continue to arrive after that train's departure - but not so many as it might be said that they "keep a coming." "Some people might arrive just as the train's leaving and miss it," but they wouldn't keep a coming. If they keep a coming they're like wildebeests crossing a river and drowning. When I was a kid I saw this very thing on one of those PBS nature specials: the wildebeests kept a coming to their doom. None of the near by natives of the region engage in such futile activity - they've learned from nature - unlike the people of this hymn. One of the hallmarks of wisdom literature is that people do learn from nature: God has put nature here for us to learn from the behavior of animals. Perhaps this hymn enjoins us to read Ecclesiastes, Proverbs or the Song of Solomon during Advent. "Thy breasts are like two fawns, but the train done gone." "To every thing there is a season, but the train done gone." "I Wisdom sported with the Lord in the beginning, but the train done gone." While I was with my friends at the Waxing Gibbous, I drew this scene out on a the back of a children's menu - the biggest clean white sheet of paper I could find: people lined up along the hillsides converged enmasse to a set of empty rails, a wisp of smoke coiling from the horizon. Across the plain hot air balloons are ascending in various stages. I thought perhaps the train is done gone, but that doesn't mean the people are at a loss: we may discover ways to embark on our own. What was expected of this train anyway? Was it even certain that it could have contained all the people coming to ride it. Did it even go, punctilious in following it schedule, nearly empty. Would the people want to be on this train? Traveling from Prague to Budapest in 2005 I was with a group that endured a six hour trip where the, according to the conductor, "the dining car didn't go." No sadder words could have been spoken. These words were much sadder than "the train done gone." The people eventually got on the train, but the dining car didn't go - ahhh, what bitter respite! I'm suspicious of this train. It's capricious, perhaps promising more than it can deliver, never intending to carry people to some destination at all. And what kind of destination? Is it markedly different enough, a contrast between aridity and fecundity, to warrant such a mass evacuation of one indeterminate location for another. "The people are remaining in place in deference to the train's indifferent passage." And so drawing balloons that the people might get in seemed a grand solution. People might get some height and some perspective on the whole train done gone situation and judge for themselves. And that is Advent, a time for us to judge for ourselves, to gain some perspective, and perhaps decide that trains of indifferent passage are freighted with too much baggage to warrant our interest. Instead we might discover our own locomotion. "The people were engaged in discovering more habitable and liberated destinations and more certain conveyances than trains, confined to inflexible courses and schedules, might provide."

Our anniversary is in fifteen days

Rain, here in Decatur where we've gone so long without, reminds me of our honeymoon in London. It rained in London but the temperature was the same as back home in Georgia. In this photograph you can barely make out Jami. She's standing next to a puddle that is near in size to the present holdings of the reservoir for Durham. We're on the south bank, walking past the Millennium Wheel, having discovered that the Saatchi gallery was closed, and making our way to the British Film Theatre. We watched two Bogart movies: Sahara and The Big Sleep. [spoiler alert] No one wakes up from the big sleep. Bogart had earlier made a movie called The Good Sized Nap in the Middle of the Day that was Interrupted by Routine Water Line Maintenance Outside on the Street. GSNMDIRWLMOS, as it was known, much as Gone With the Wind is known as GWTW, or Fellini's Eight and One Half is known as 8 1/2, or Costa-Gavras's Z is known as Z, detailed the story of a small time hood turned detective turned sous chef turned detective as he makes a journey through the Parisian underworld in post-Vichy France searching for a room with a private bath and a view of the street that he has found hinted at in telling clues left on the body of an ex-associate who was taking a nap in the back of a bootlegger's van that contained lost art works destined for a nobleman's lost artwork collection (a collection of artworks that is either unknown as to location, or if located, of unknown contents). GSNMDIRWLMOS is a gem and at the same time difficult to find. It was last screened in the US in the early 60s. I saw a bootleg version on video that had been partially taped over with an ELO concert. The odd thing was I think I was at that concert. I'd gone with some friends of mine in high school to hear them at the Omni in Atlanta: the cellist breaks a string in the same place while performing "Can't get it out of my head." I remember that it rained that night and traveling that night back on I20 we told many outrageous stories. At the time I drove a Ford Futura, a Falcon with chrome. I drove that car another ten years. At times I miss it. But not when it rains - towards the end of my ownership, it had become nearly impossible to start in the rain and I had to dry the points off many times to get it running. Now I drive a Prizm, which is a Corolla made for GM, and it's very reliable. I bought this car six years ago this month, after my previous car, a Celebrity I'd driven around New Mexico, was stolen from a parking lot at the FBI building here in Atlanta. My car was the only car stolen from the lot in the year I worked for the web company that operated on the 8th floor. It was stolen on a rainy day. I remember that it was rainy because I went down to the lot to get my umbrella out of the car. I wandered around for half an hour before I realized that I wasn't going to find it. That is: neither the umbrella or the car were likely to be recovered. I lost a good set of jumper cables too, as well as a wool over coat and some cds. I also lost a copy of Barth's CD IV.3.2, which I regretfully left on the back seat. The replacement copy I purchased was later water damaged when my cousin put a lunch box filled with ice on it. I was a little disheartened but I put my library training into practice and rehabilitated the book as best I could. I still have it. The damage is less annoying now and improves with use. You can see me reading this copy in this blog: at a ball game and at the beach. Jami took each photo, and I'm reminded on such a rainy night as this, thinking about walking in the rain with her in London, or considering that we'd be trading witticisms by the fire, how much I miss her and wish that I were up in Durham. Our chimney up there has no chimney swallows like the one down here does. Sometimes a swallow comes down the chimney and flies about our house, like the Holy Spirit in a pin ball machine. Jami, tender soul that she is, retrieves the errant bird and returns it to nature. I've seen her do this twice. The cats have seen her do it many times and express an eagerness to help. I remember Thelma one afternoon springing up from a nap, launching herself onto the sill of the dining room window, from where she espied a tiny peeping fledgling that had wandered onto our screened porch through an aperture in the mesh. The motherly concern in that cat's eyes was unspeakable. I went outside and opened the door for the plaintive piping chirping bird to go out on the patio. When I returned Thelma was back in her sunny spot, napping. You'd never know that she'd moved. What a time we had in London. I can't wait to return. As Johnson said, "when you're tired of London you're tired of life." That was easy for him, he lived there. Finish this phrase: When you're tired of Atlanta you're tired of --------.
We returned to Atlanta from London and thus began our first year of marriage, excited about life together.

Imagine, above us, Ouranos

Tonight Jami is writing about the Bridge of Terror - bigger than the Bridge over the River Kwai, Higher than the bridge of San Luis Rey, more fraught with danger than a Bridge Too Far. An action packed, double barreled thrill ride of a roller coaster over a cascade vaulting over the briny deep's salty shallows. Sailine estuary harboring nautical bouyant seas keeled over hauling mast better schooner than yawl think. Last summer when we propelled ourselves over the water on this bridge, I thought to myself, "we're on a metaphor." We were like Theseus vying along the cliff road into Thessaly, confronting the giant Procrustes. We were like Oedipus knotting and knitting out the riddle of the Sphinx. Would we face the Minotaur; were the waters below haven to other animal-human hybrids? And the skies above a domicile to chimera and griffin? On either side of us Scylla and Charybdis? Had we forgotten lamb's blood in order to placate the shades of Hades, where we might inquire of Teiresias, he alone among them having his mind entire? Would bar-b-que from Hog Heaven suffice?
Sing muse the transmission's roaring engine whine
The tread and phalt of asph
The Triumph Spitting fire
Anchises chassis sizzling ceaselessly
The crash clanging craggy waves
Spouting capered whiting ruffian orange
Fluking flounder bottomed surf scuffing
Shore.
O Homer deranged
Ware he'd ear indie
ant elope splay.
And then just as quickly: we were over the bridge and my thoughts returned to normal.
In our rear view mirror the Bridge of Terror flailed its tentacles and banged its masticators in delirium. Its roar flung out after us and I repeated, "who has troubled you Bridge of Terror - No Man that I know. " We made it over with no serious toll upon our senses.

Now I must go to Figgo's and eat. But what: lamb ragu? a salad? something to demonstrate that I am not given wholly to meat eating? Shall I feast on greens like Nebuchadneezer, the roots and flowering of the Earth?

Indeed, the theater seats have been rescued from obscurity and honored with a place in our home. The note I wrote that I republished here actually succeeded in returning them to me. And now they grace our home, waiting for a flat screen TV, where our movies may be displayed and we may eat buckets of pop corn.
Or we may watch the MythsAmerica pageant.

I only wish that we were sitting together tonight, both of us working in Durham and our house sold here in Decatur.
I love her more than words.

A reprint but a good one

Some months ago, when Columbia Pres next door had a yard sale, I bought a set of seats. This was no ordinary set of seats: this set was arranged together like theater seats. They were three simple seats grouped together. The frame was iron and the seats were wood veneer. Attached to the back was a hymnal holder and a holder for tiny communion cups. I could not believe my good fortune at coming across such a thing. It was a prize and evocative of an era when churches experimented with practical alternatives to pews. I figured that this alternative was about 1935 - 1940. Immediately seeing the possibilities of such a seating arrangement, Geza, who was with me, helped me move it back to my dorm. We set it out in the hall, across from a blank spot on the opposite wall. Geza and I sat there and toasted our good fortune to be in such a place and be sitting in such seats. He later told me that as he sat there he had a revelation: he saw how it was possible for free men and women, under the eye of God, to sit on folding theater seats, made of wooden laminate, and dream visions and see thoughts of visions, and visions unthought of, and dreams unthinkable. For that moment we were the most fortunate of men. Geza and I weren't the only people to sit in these chairs. Others told me of their experiences. Some spoke of recovery, others mentioned a feeling of peace. It was a pacific set of ecclesial theater seats, iron framed and wood laminated. It welcomed all. Late at night I would hear couples speaking in low murmurs; old friends would come during the day and reminisce. Often, when I was coming back to my room, I would espy evidence of solitary contemplation: a prayer written on a small paper scrap and inserted in the iron-work, a tear-stained handkercheif left on an armrest. Some might say I was mad, and I can be easily faulted for leaving these seats out in the hall. Like the Moor, I loved not too wisely but too well, and out of a tender heart I left them there. Their vulnerability pinching my heart with a sweetness transcendental and immanent - and now I am bereft of them. Mistaken for derelict and cleaned out with the other hallway detritus, they were removed to the dumpster's vicinity, and from thence further removed by annonymous hands into obscurity. This removal occured while I sat in a theater, in stadium-style seating,watching a space opera. How much I feel my infidelity, as if I had traded the form fitting wood laminate for the cold companionship of a cup holder and the mesmerizing thump of dolby stereo. How now I ache for the simple welcoming appearance of this set of seats in my silent hall? What dark force now grips myheart? A force of memory at once bitter and at once sweet. Sweeterbit? I asked, "Oh ecclesial theater seats, can it be that you are lost to me forever?" The night drew me out and I searched. The thickets of the brambles among the trees scratched and tore at my skin. I stumbled along stream banks and thrashed my way through kudzu. At last I came to my senses in an open field under the stars. I looked up at Orion and the Plieades. I navigated the zodiacal signs and my own ignorance rebuffed me. What is left for me now but to continue on, to live with my loss, and to let this minor grief merge with all the sad grieving that runs through the great world like a river with uncountable tributaries.

Another Annunciation

Actually this is the second annunciation I've posted today, but in the blog it reads first - an instance of time being folded on time. I painted this (as I mentioned in my posting for March where I took this image from) in New Mexico, where it was purchased by my friend Shannon Webster. Now it hangs in his home in Birmingham, AL. This painting is more expressionist and less concerned with the individual Mary or the individual Gabriel. The angel here appears in a flame of fire. Fire is a peculiar symbol for God and is rooted in the Hebrew scripture, notably in Song of Songs 8:6 where it reads "[my memory's translation follows] Love is strong as death and Jealosy harder than sheol; [young's literal translation following] its burnings are burnings of fire a very flame of Jah." This is echoed (notably as well in the burning bush episode) in the New Testament in Jesus' desire in Luke 12 to baptize with fire, and later in Hebrews at the end of chapter 12 where it is said that "our God is a consuming fire."

Today in looking up more information on Mary (via Wikipedia - yeah, I know, but it is a good starting place) I came across the concept of panagia, or Mary of the Sign, where the Lord and sometimes the Trinity are depicted in Mary's womb in a cut away view. The intriguing notion here is that when Mary contained Jesus, she contained the universe as well. My mind immediately went to the possibilities of space travel. This concept does explain gospel fragments found in Egypt, written in Coptic, that describe, seemingly, that during one of Mary's visits to her OB/GYN the position of the big and little dippers reversed for 20 minutes; also contained in these fragments, and a puzzle to scholars, is a reported conversation between Mary and Joseph, in that while she was pregnant, she had to excuse herself, telling Joseph that she had to visit the ladies' room and that "this might take a while." Thus are the travails when you're peeing for the universe. In a later instance, while visiting relatives at a wedding, Mary apparently ate the whole spread, when no one was looking, escaping detection because she was fairly tiny, and the volume of food consumed was enough to feed 200 people. Such are the travails when you're eating for the universe. In some gnostic texts Mary didn't ascend to heaven so much as go behind a bush to relieve herself while on a journey to Ephesus. Some say that she is still there, reading magazines, doing crossword puzzles, and learning French, and that when she finishes the Messiah will return and speak in Duke chapel.

An Annunciation reprised

I painted this annunciation last year and our friend Bob King bought it. Jami told me the other day how she wishes we still had it, but that's how art is: you can't hold on to things. Well you can, but the idea is that paintings get out into the world and hang on different walls where they're appreciated by a vast numbesr of people. The image of the annunciation is so charged for me that I'm bound to paint it again. Not that I'll paint a copy of this one. I do like the mirror element; in the past I've indicated God with a large hand pointing out of a cloud at a small girl reading. This annunciation takes Mary's sexuality into account. The angel, Gabriel, in Jami's words, looks like Snape, Alan Rickman. I suppose with the mirror I'm refering to, among other things, Brokhurst's image called Adolescence. Mirrors figure heavily in art: Vermeer and Van Eyck made great use of them. Manet's Bar at the Follies Bergere uses the mirror as a way to flatten and expand space at once. So is the mirror an indication of God? Does this say something about our image of God being fraught with our own projections, desires and fears? Gabriel has announced God's intentions to Mary and turned away, downcast (much like the angels in Wings of Desire), while Mary gazes at her body's reflection. If I were to recreate this painting as a color field painting it would consist of two vertical bars: deep violet and rich red - these two colors dominate the painting and create a mood of foreboding? Melancholy, perhaps. The prospect of giving birth to the messiah is a somber one and charged with sexual anxiety. We have stories of God impregnating humans: Zeus with Europa, Danae, and Leda. I think that this story is prevelant in other cultures and religions as well. The story of the annunciation resonates with these ancient myths: perhaps not so much for us, but for the first hearers of the gospels, the echoes would be unmistakable. Mary eventually absorbs Aphrodite (and takes her title "star of the sea") and Isis (taking her title "queen of heaven") - so that Mary, as God's vessel, becomes a space ship as well as an ocean going ship. By now though these associations are nearly forgotten when people think of Mary. The protestant tendency is almost reductionistic: to see Mary as simply a girl who gives birth to Jesus (leaving out the clasuse, "who God impregnates.") In the Middle Ages, when piety could not imagine Mary ceasing to be a virgin, even after giving birth, Mary's impregnation is typically depicted through the ear - the Spirit speaks a word (The Word) in her ear. This kind of reverence leads us astray though: When we refuse to imagine God being sullied by the very creation she created, and in maintaining this docetic comception we fall prey to the notion that matter is evil and unworthy of God - a gnostic error. Rabelais teaches us that God immerses himself in creation, rolls in the muck, eats the tripe, knocks up the maiden - and that these activities are the very locus of salvation, the very foundational things that God heals in sending Jesus to us; and it is in these things and through these activities that her creation is reborn. It is jolly, festive, feasting, grotesque (in the sense of hyperbolic abundance being celebrated) and it is for us, his creation. So my next annunciation will be slightly different - or maybe very different.

Historical re-enactment

Who doesn't remember the stories of yesterday, the stories we grew up with: stories of a brontosaurus, Horatio, flying with the 8th bomber wing and braving the flak strewn skies over the Teutonic motherland. When he returns home he is greeted with a hero's welcome, a parade down 5th Avenue, a date with Rita Hayworth, and his photo on the cover of Life. But when all the acolades are over and the limelight fades, he finds it difficult holding down a job, wearing a suit and sitting behind a desk. He yearns for the joy and comradship he felt at 25000 feet, dropping payloads of happy explosions down the throat of the Axis powers. Where can he go? Back to the Silurian miasma - hardly!
Calvino's Cosmicomics has a character that is a dinosaur who lives beyond the age of the terrible lizards (not that they were bad at being lizards). People remember how fearsome dinosaurs were but have forgotten what they looked like. In Calvino's story, the dinosaur goes about his business, falling in love, raising a family, hoping that no one notices what he really is. Even today dinosaurs could lurk among us, selling real estate, managing banks, delivering candy grams.

My Palate

Over time paint builds up on my palate and I cut it off. When I did this the first time it yielded great surprises and the second time as well. I take a mat knife and very carefully peal back the paint slab and slice, inching my way across the surface. Here I went ahead and cut it in half. I am very careful not to cut myself. And the result of the process is a surface (which is the undersurface) covered with swirls and eddies with bursts of reds and yellows. I would never have guessed that such a psychedelic experience was occurring underneath the surface.
Jami tells me that cat brain waves are similar to the brainwaves of someone on LSD. This gave me a new perspective on the lives of our cats: that for them the world is one big Peter Max poster with radiating lines, cubist structure, and futurist indications of movement: like one big Giacomo Balla painting. Cat nip actually gives them relief from this state of affairs. I think I'm remembering this right - I'm sure that Jami will provide a correction if I'm mistaken in this. So understand this about the kittens you see: for them life is a magical mystery tour and you really are the walrus. I am the egg man. The other day, sitting in a glass onion, elevated above the tree tops about 45 feet, I reflected on the course of the sun, how Phaeton's chariot forms that figure eight over the span of the year, and here we are nearing the winter solstice, sacred to Druids, and the Druid heels are near us in Decatur, what with the price of oil, how sustained our clothesline wanderings and trappings are, when an idea occurred to me. I must admit it gave me a start but not a finish, nor a swede, and I ambulated over to the mantel over the fireplace and under the earth's crust, where I gazed upon the firmament, no slack loose mint a firmer meant and former meint, as Frommer's meant a star grazing reville, the boggy woggy bagel boy of companionish Beh. I prayed for strength and a spring in my step and a fall in my foot. Winter went here spring Sumerian Awe Tum - oh great pill o fight. The Pleiades, a pillow flight, take wing and walk, so tired, where wrest ye thimble nimble quick a caroling jangling jaw popping presents of mind, a mime mummer mamma's bo'sun on my shoulder makepeace tanquarey. Gin. Among the flavored vodkas available: merlot and PBR.
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And now I must return to my paper, a cpe final evaluation. A drab recounting of what I've learned and what I've felt and how I've felt and where I've felt and felt and flannel and cotton blends to make iodine. The bureaucracy of daily life, the Grendel of our times. As we live longer the wait becomes longer. Mark the score Langsam - which seems even more drawn out than the Italian direction Largo - which is equally slow. In high school band we hungered to play Presto or Vivace or Scherzo; Andante gave us fits. Adagio for now.
Yesterday, a mother was helping her son in the ICU. The son was in agony and the mother said, "think of something slow. Think of Brahms." Yes the Passaligia, that would be slow. Not as slow as some Wagner I remember performing. It's the slow movements that require the greatest intensity - fast movements are mainly precision and technique, but slow movements - how the mind wanders. Playing a double whole note at Langsam: it is similar to driving the speed limit on the interstate. Years ago my friend Mark and I were at the Atlanta Symphony when they performed Ligetti's Lontano - a massive set of whole notes. It was a revelation to us. The cherry on top was a woman who got up, threw her stole around her head, and walked out, demonstrably, in a huff. So delightful. I've been to hear other experimental or contemporary pieces at symphony hall, but people are possibly too well trained now - or else the woman in the huff stays away.
One of my favorite pieces of music is Pierre Boulez's Pli Selon Pli, or Fold upon Fold. My blog's title refers to it. It's filled with wonderful bumps and clangs. How I enjoy it. Try to hear the performance with Christine Schafer on Deutsche Grammaphone. Or better yet, simulate the performance with percussive objects at hand. All life is music and music is always right at hand.
Sometimes when I am in the house now there are bumps and clangs. When the cats were here I could just roll over and go back to sleep. Now I hope it's the ice maker. It is all langsam.
I miss Jami. I love her and being away from her so far away is not good for me. I can only hope to amuse myself with arcane projections of art until I fly to Durham this Friday.

The CSX rolls through Decatur

I have always loved trains. Some of my first memories drawing were of endlessly figuring the curve of tracks around a bend with curly plumes of smoke. I believed the only real trains were the old steam locomotives; diesels turned me off: where was the romance? The opening credits to Petticoat Junction thrilled me with the smokestack puffing along the rails. At that age I thought nothing about the health issue of people swimming in the water tank. As I grew up I rode trains at theme parks, where fake soldiers and card sharks played out "19th century class struggle scenarios in some locale dissonant with even the slightest historical connection to the purported events" - as I reported in one eighth grade essay on what I did over the summer. Jami and I both have photos of our sojourns in these parks: Maggie Valley and Panama City and I have memories of this happening at Stone Mountain - an unlikely confederate vs yankee shoot out. What would have made sense might have been a KKK vs FBI shoot out - being Stone Mountain and all. When I think about it I am amazed at how much of the history I encountered was reified, preinterpreted, homogenized, and packaged for consumption. Amazing too is that these are the criteria for deconstruction - that is, these states of affairs make deconstruction necessary. When I hear people decry deconstruction for removing certainty from the text, I am reminded of instances where the last thing a text needed was certainty, a stamp of approval, because to give such approval would be to participate in a lie. So let us deconstruct away.
And hence, as I've grown up, I have become less fond of the steam locomotive - at least the old conical smokestack, bilging smoke, while laboriously chugging, chased by Indians, wild bunches, desperadoes, soldiers, and other trains, while gentlemen with derringers jumped from car to car. There is something to be said for the sleek, art deco, streamlined engines of the 20th century, smashing their way across the Scottish moors or the Canadian shield.
I remember when my dad began work at Southern Freight and Tariff Bureau (later called Railroad Publications and referred to as Southern Frightened Giraffe Bureau by those who worked there), when there was still passenger service: how excited I was about the possibility for a family trip on a train. But we never went. Shortly after dad took the job, passenger service was discontinued. The old stations in Covington and surrounding counties became derelict, only decades later being reborn as restaurants. Old tracks have been torn up and the right-of-way has reverted to nature. And now I love these old diesels. When I lived out in New Mexico and I drove between Roswell, NM and Lubbock, TX a lot, I would come up alongside trains or come upon trains, as the road often paralleled the tracks: great long trains traveling fast and I could feel the energy come up through the ground.
Now when I work in my studio trains are just outside my door. Here I've stopped to stand near the edge of the tracks to capture the passage of a freight train from the crossing at Chandler Road past the Carpe Diem restraunt. When the light filled up the lens it took my breath away. I had to check and make sure that I was a good ten feet off the rails. And there was one shot of exactly that, which the shutter didn't cooperate on: the light filing up the lens. And how do you take a shot of thunder? Painting sound is a real challenge. I want to paint thunder.

psychiatric action figures

It seems unlikely that Jami's step dad would have psychiatric figurines: but here's a guy on a couch talking with a bearded guy writing. When I saw this I immediately thought of Freud burrowing into the substance of people's dreams. What if this was an early session where Freud and Jung analyzed each other. Perhaps this is right before Jung made Freud faint. But what is the guy on the couch holding? It seemed to be a musical text of some sort. I was also nonplussed by Freud writing with a quill pen.
Last year I bought an action figure of Van Gogh, which I left in its case. He came with five canvases and a french easel. A french easel is one of those things that fold up into a box and which can be set up outside. It's called a french easel because the english easel requires helpful badgers, an eagle and a donkey that is lost, away from home, on an epic journey of discovery and valor that will test their loyalty and prove their friendship. I think that's more the CS Lewis or Beatrix Potter easel.
Today in church I was scanning the hymnal and came across the hymn "there's a wideness in God's mercy" which I always read as "a wildness in God's mercy". It makes more sense to me that God's mercy is wild than that it be wide. Wideness goes without saying and the fact of it being wide is not interesting to me, not as interesting as that that mercy is wild. God's mercy is untamed, untrammeled, pristine in a natural state. God's mercy sneaks up on you, overflows its boundaries, floods, grows over, blows through. Who knows when God's mercy will bump into you. Wild!
More disturbing is the hymn misreading "while shepherds washed their flocks by night." I can see this as an action figure though: it's not surprising that ancient shepherds washed sheep at night, bonfires blazing, buckets filling troughs. All this time the cattle are lowing, sometimes hitting a C below the staff, and the deer baby sleeps - how does he sleep? Fawningly.
But the little lord Jesus, no crying he makes? Give me a break. Tell me he bawled like a baby. I'm tired of these docetic Christmas hymns. What isn't assumed isn't saved, as the ancient adage goes, and it's important for the incarnation and all that follows from it, that Jesus be typical in terms of feeling and needs.
A friend of mine is sermonizing on Acts 17 - the episode where Paul preaches in Athens. Metzger's textual commentary indicates a great textual variety in this section. The passage begins with Paul being left in Athens where he's disturbed by the profusion of idols. It seemed odd to me that he was disturbed about that: certainly idols are all over the place in that world. It may be the display and splendor of those idols that disturbed Paul. Acts is an interesting book. I think that it only vaguely reflects Paul's actual activity and personality: a memory, a trace, used for a history based on the epic form, like the Aneid and others of that time. Paul is presented as a type and acts according to the rules of honor and shame. Whereas in the letters, Paul is keenly aware of these rules and pictures himself as someone who has no ostensible honor. I'm sure that there are areas where my conjecture can be criticized: sections of letters where Paul is concerned with how his honor is perceived or passages in Acts where Paul acts without recourse to how he's perceived. I think that the preponderance of instances points to a Paul who in his letters works to subvert the honor/shame system of the ancient world, while the Paul of Acts doesn't exhibit that subversive program. The most interesting Paul of course is the one shacking up with Thecla in Spain - essentially the Paul of my imagination. The girl baptized a lion right after she baptized herself (in the only instance of baptizomai in the middle voice in koine literature) in front of friends and family at the Roman equivalent of NASCAR.
Paul and Thecla action figures would be great - accompanied by that lion. Their child, called in utero Pauline, with her full name, Pauline Theologie.

Now December

Almost 11 months ago Jami and I were in London, on our honeymoon, and we had a wonderful time. I can't wait to go back. I can't wait to walk with Jami along the south bank of the Thames again, visiting the Courtauld and National Gallery, exploring more places, venturing further afield. Sure its cold and wet, especially in January. But cold and wet is part of the ambiance in London. Here's a photo of Nelson's pillar: it's admirable. Nelson had it made as a door stop to a country cottage he planned to retire to. The cottage itself was only partially built when Nelson sailed away for the last time. Some say that he never died but is frozen in a block of artic ice, still living, where he guides the course of the British empire through telepathy and has set up a pen pal correspondence with King Arthur and Charlie Chaplin. Legend says that when Nelson is thawed out he'll return to England, and a new age will dawn, where he'll finish building his cottage.
Speaking of returns from "Death's dream kingdom" and "Death's other kingdom", Jami took three hours Saturday to sit in Duke Chapel in order to hear the Messiah and he never showed up. I say "he" never showed up, but of course, Christ could return as a woman. If he returned as the girl in the Golden Compass that would freak everybody out. I'm all for freaking people out when they're so grounded in their expectations that they're writing God's script for Her; what are the Sinister Derriere books but an attempt to write God's script. Traditionally God takes a pranksterish view to these prewritten scripts, and so Christ coming back as a 12 year old girl and sitting on St Peter's throne shouldn't surprise us: people who are accustomed by the media to seeing only people in expensive suits, who travel with large entourages and security details, as emblematic of power, as worthy of making the 'big' decisions - as if only these people are the only ones worth listening to. Yet it's these people, educated in the world's best schools, who've got the world in such a bad place. How far are we from the monkeys banging femurs in front of a black obelisk, despite all our culture and technology, when our propensity to solve problems through violence is near indistinguishable from early primates.?
Nelson, come back and finish your cottage.

See the tree how big it's grown

This is the oak I planted from an acorn dropped by an oak growing in my grand parents' yard ca. 1965. I remember scooping a bunch of acorns into a Swisher Sweet cigar box and scattering the acorns all around our front and back yard. This oak survived, thrived and grew. The Japanese maples mom planted are gone (mom always planted Japanese maples), but this tree remains. I'm as surprised as anyone. I know that one day it will be cut down, but so far, even though it takes up the space of two or three cars, free market principles haven't brought about its demise. I didn't plant it per se: as I remarked I scattered it around, purely by chance, and this tree is the product of that chance. Chance is the foundation of my art. Well, ever since I was in high school I've found chance based art liberating. Duchamp, Cage, Klee, Pollock - all used chance elements in various constructive ways.

Today a death occurred in the emergency department. A man who'd had a gastric bypass (and he's not the only person to die after this procedure recently) passed out at home and was brought back to the ER where he died when something happened to stop his heart. His wife and sister were distraught. Their church is one of those charismatic churches that emphasize healing and miracles - that God commands us to command him and that our words, our confession brings about reality. The wife looks at me and says, "he's still warm. We can bring him back. There are miracles. You do believe in miracles!" It dawns on me, she expects me to act like I can bring him back from the dead. She expects me to begin praying demanding God to make this man live. And I'm stunned. I say nothing at first only to flatly say that yes, I believe in miracles. Inside I'm thinking, "if I bring this guy back, I'll have to bring everyone back." Once you bring someone back from the dead everyone will demand, will feel entitled - they'll say, "you brought him back, what about my husband? Doesn't my husband deserve to come back? Why isn't my husband good enough?" And then family, "you brought a stranger back, why not aunt Mildred? Isn't she as deserving as some stranger?" Then people are knocking on the door at 2 am: all demanding that someone be brought back to life. Once you start bringing people back from the dead you can kiss a ski vacation to Wyoming good bye - and I want to go to Wyoming: we're going this New Years - and I'm not sacrificing time with my wife and in-laws to raise some guy from the dead, because that's not the end of it. Then people are crashing their cars into trees and trains, once twice thrice - fifty times and more: why not, "Fred'll bring em back." And then the whole country is a Christian zombie nation, people dying and popping back up every day. And then when I die, what about me - no one's bringing me back. The Christian zombies won't care; they won't try.
Also I looked at this guy and I thought, "Jesus died. Jesus was deader than this guy, stone cold non-heart pumping, non-lung expanding, non-circulatory brain dead dead. Jesus was deaddeaddead. And to just willy nilly raise someone up who's still warm seems to dishonor the Lord's death. Death was good enough for Jesus. Death freaks us out; but it didn't freak him out. he was content to be in God's hands - even a God whom he'd felt had forsaken him. "
I'm not looking forward to death. More than ever I value life and want to keep on living; and I would be crushed if I lost Jami. I remember my mom's death, and my grand father's death, and my grand mother's death, and so many others. They all affected me but not the same way. I cried, I felt empty, I was relieved.
Faith to me is more real when it lives without moving mountains. Real faith lives in the fact: the death, the loss, the disappointment. Real faith finds joy when all is down - not a fake joy, pretending. There's something about the kind of faith that exercises the miraculous to engineer my wishes and desires when I wish and desire them that seems like a stupid faith, a dull brained dim watery faith - such a faith denies the pain, the suffering.
But who doesn't want quick results. We live in a culture of results. The free market ideology is about results and immediacies - no waiting, no long term - maximize gains, and productivity is the bottom line, a bottom line that justifies everything. There's no room for death. Death is a luxury, an inconvenience, laziness. Death is nonproductive. Death says there's something more than the bottom line. Imagine a Bergman film, the pointing bony finger of death - but imagine death being shocked at the laughing feasting figure of Jesus. And that is our faith: death sits down at the table with us, but only as a guest, only to pass the salt.

Happy anniversary

Friday November 30th is our eleventh month anniversary. I am in wonder at this beautiful woman.

the passage of time

These two photographs are taken in approximately the same spot: Salem Rd in Newton County. When I was two we moved to this house and lived there until I was 12. The top photo was taken in 1964, note the old frame house across the road. We lived in a ranch house that I will post a photograph of later - but it looked like a typical red brick ranch house. That ranch house is still there, though painted white now, and the office of a used car lot for the last 20 years. The yard is paved, except for this oak tree I'm standing under as I take the bottom photo. 39 years ago I planted this oak tree from an acorn that I gathered from underneath an oak that grew in my grandparent's yard.
Just last year the cow pasture that had been across the road was sold and developed, all with astonishing speed. Now there's a Kroger. Three months ago I noticed a stop light, right where we used to live. And this time a road has been graded and paved.
This Thanksgiving Jami and I, on the way to see dad and granny Wise, stopped at the neighboring Shell station and I walked over into this yard, this parking lot, and stood in a spot that I hadn't stood in since I was 12, since this oak tree was a slender sapling verging into a mere ability to provide shade. I stood there and took a photograph approximate to the slide my dad took 40 some years ago. That yard was small. How did we fit here? How did it take so long to mow this lawn? How did I get lost in woods as small as a strip mall and a gas station?
More of my youth is erased. My great grandfather's farm, a quarter of a mile down the road, is now under a subdivision and day care center. This whole road, once an obscure country road with two stop signs along 8 miles south of I-20, where very few cars drove on any given day, is now crowded with traffic even at night, houses abound and stores - a McDonald's even across from my great grandfather's old home, and another McDonald's at the interstate.
Now I am resigned to change. When I was a young child my mother read me a story about a house in the country: in image after image a village and then a town and then a city grew around the house, until the house was surrounded by tall buildings. I was fascinated by this progression. I listened to this story over and over. I devised maps as I grew older where I imagined the growth of settlements into cities. I poured over diagrams of progress. Birth growth and deterioration and rebirth fascinated me. The little house in the story is eventually moved out into the country.
What did I feel while I stood on this piece of ground? Not a revelation. Not a recapitulation. A repetition? Maybe the sense that whatever was there for me is no longer there. I can never go back to some simpler time or some time before, some time where a deep mystery might be discerned in its inception. I'm a 47 year old man standing under an oak tree in a small patch of asphalt surrounded by used cars taking a photo of an intersection. Before I was here, even as a 12 year old, there was a dirt road, a dirt road that curved and twisted in different ways, that wasn't straight, and oddly fewer trees punctuating cotton fields. And even further back was there a road or even a path? Indians. Buffalo - Buffalo roamed throughout the eastern seaboard. Perhaps I can find the small road again - but not here.
Once Jami and I went to a small church way out in the country. It was spring and the scene was bucolic. The church was on a hill, overlooking granite escarpments scattered among pasture land. Picturesque. We thought, " how can we get here?" But even there, development was not far away - just over the hill and down the road.
Is it possible, like the small house in the story my mom read to me, to be returned to our beginnings, back into a place of nature's abundance and purity. Isn't this the human desire to return to the garden? If only we can find the way back to Eden, past the fiery sword brandishing angel, through the over grown gates, into a forgotten paradise? Revelation itself ends the human story not back in the garden but in a city. But any garden we might end in is not the original garden. That garden has been traced and erased many times. Like our memories the facts change and are transformed: we discover that the north facing window really faced east; the well house was wooden and not brick; the tree was pine and not ceder. Places we remember so clearly turn out to have never existed; things we don't remember, we did.
When I stand here, what am I remembering - even more so, what am I forgetting? My dad remembers that when I was 12 or younger, that I pestered him no end to go to a stunt car show at the Lakewood fairgrounds. I have no memory of this. Even having my memory jostled, I can not conjure a vague trace of a memory. I have absolutely forgotten something I desired with all my pre-adolescent heart.
The Bible is an artifact of things we've forgotten. We have here narratives recorded - but also narratives lost. The history of the Church is a history of remembering and forgetting - but remembering and forgetting imperfectly.
In the Scottish nudist camp, people are off kilter. I'm sure that pun's been made before. I thought about that this afternoon, as I sat in CPE, and I wrote it down, so I wouldn't forget it. I've thought of better puns, puns that I have failed to record, and now these gems of wordplay are lost to history.
The world is full of things forgotten. Great paintings are now lost. Vermeer painted more than 42 paintings. A van Eyck nude with mirrors, the pendant to the Arnolfini Marriage, was lost at sea. Rembrandt's only sea scape has been lost in a robbery in Boston. We have no way of knowing what the music of the Romans sounded like. Ancient writings are lost to us. What is Beowulf but the popular literature of its day - and what is lost to us from then: more stories of Grendel? different monsters, different heroes.
Under such an oak on such a bit of asphalt did once a child weld a plastic sword in a last ditch confederate stand against the Saxon invaders, saving Guinevere from the dragon, so that Lincoln might drink from the Grail and king Arthur might walk on the Moon. My parents stood in wonder at their sleep walking son under the moonlight. Why did we buy him that sword?

Moving into the new place

We have a new place. Jami found us an apartment surrounded by Duke Forest. The apartment is as big as our house, but it is laid out differently - in our house (which we're selling) you can get to any room via a central hallway (almost a circular layout); the apartment is laid out linearly - you have to walk back through the living room to get to the bedroom or study. I like the apartment. It is surrounded by quiet woodlands. As Jami said: there are no buses and cars and people. But we do miss being three blocks down from our church. It's unlikely that we'll find a church like Oakhurst in Durham. We like living in a neighborhood near stores and parks, but we'll try this for a while.
Of course I couldn't stay up there (not yet). I drove back to Atlanta to return the rental car. I drove in the rain all the way. All the way I listened to satellite radio's NPR and BBCAmerica stations. There's something comforting about listening to people have reasoned conversations as I drive. I remember when I lived in New Mexico: I would be driving at night, 90 miles between towns and absolutely nothing in between, and listening to people have conversations about aliens and paraphenomina. I know that that doesn't sound reasonable - but this was reasonable for New Mexico, and it was entertaining. CS Lewis once remarked about Charles Williams (a Christian writer of occult romances) that you sometimes forget about how peculiar another human being can be underneath appearances of respectability. Hearing people talk about anal probes and ESP, normal people, people who if you saw them on the street you'd say, "there's a normal person, clean cut, well dressed, not over eating and exercising, probably possessed of moderate political opinions and believing that Church shouldn't interfere in the state and vice versa," gives me insight into the the weirdness that is humanity. Take any person, no matter how rationalistic they might seem, and at some point, I believe that you'll find the numinous center, that place that they may not admit to themselves (much less anyone else), but a place of unfounded belief - that is belief that relies on personal experience, is unverifiable and non-duplicable, but is nevertheless a belief in something other, something strange, something unknowable. For some people this center is nearer the surface; for some people this center pokes out. This center doesn't necessarily express itself in religion. Religion may cloak this center in fact - especially where religion is considered a social norm.
I find drives such as this, 370 miles, SUV chugging along at 19 mpg, with a mild drizzle to light rain, to be wonderful for thinking, conducive to the creative juices; indeed, the car becomes my monastic cell, a vehicle of prayer and meditation. The broken white lines become the beads of a rosary. Each intersection is a cross.
I made it back to Atlanta, dropped off the car, and took MARTA back to Decatur. I'm back in our now catless near empty house and I can't wait until I'm able to make it back to Durham - the place that I increasingly feel like is home, the place where the most wonderful woman in the world lives.

Reading Rabelais

What have I been doing all this time? A few months ago I did almost three posts a day; now I'm closing in on three posts a month. Can it be that the rigors of chaplaincy, moving, painting, scheduling, cooking, devising intricate anecdotes salutary for humor and incisiveness have held me back from developing further my time folded upon blog blog blogging bloggidly? Can it be such a state of affairs that ensues and entails rigors and chaplaincy and chaplincy - and the Champlain See - take so much from me that when the time comes to write, I writhe.
Several times in the last few weeks I've had conversations where Jami or Bob or Cheryl or some one will say, "see here, this conversation we're having right now here now - this is what you need to be writing in your blog, this is what you need to be blogging." And I won't have time. I'll sit down to write and sleep, with its needs and demands, its soothing promise of eyes closed and warm covers and deep dreams, dreams of lands of warm dreams and oceans of sleep, or rest, will converge on me and remove me from this task, this writing task.
I think something similar happened to the Apostle Paul, when he was living in Spain, the lovely Thecla at his side, as he looked out over his vineyards, and read Horace, while sitting under a cork tree, while he composed songs and taught his sons Latin and Greek and the stories of his Greco-Hebrew childhood, that things just slipped his mind. He didn't write further letters telling believers to not dis the leadership of women; to not get carried away by end time predictions, but instead do some good in the here and now.
What a time to have lived. Still I would not depart this present moment to live there and then - no matter how many questions might be answered - and all sorts of form critical and redactional and canonical questions abound. But at some point the past has nothing for us. What is past is so far removed from our concerns that our will, much less our emotional strength, is lacking. We are eventually thrown back to the present, and as Ecclesiastes counseled: living in the present is our appointed task - not piling resources away for the future, nor pining away for a golden age. In the present we meet all our pertinent challenges. About each moment of the present we can only ask: Am I savoring enough of this? Am I seeing clearly? Am I drinking fully and recognizing the content of the air - such that were I to breathe it again, I would know it and relish it? am I l0ving fully or do I love absentmindedly?

Cary speaking

Cary, pictured above, who delivered the sermon for my ordination, ministers at Mountain Brook PCUSA in B'ham (the official name of the city in 50 years when the next great vowel shift in the language occurs - where English fractures into ten dialects and today's American Standard English is used mostly for official documents, reminiscent of the Church's use of Latin in Italy ca 1500). Cary preached a sermon where he used the story of the Monkey God and the Buddha. I told Shannon (who came and sang) that Cary had piqued my interest in this Monkey God and that I'd like to investigate this Monkey God some more.
Let's be clear about one thing: monkeys are not chimpanzees. I was looking at my notes from when I did my internship at Mountain Brook supervised by Cary 3 summers ago and a man who grew up among missionaries in India and worked with primates was very emphatic that chimps and monkeys are two different species. But a monkey is a primate: just like the Pope is the primate of the Roman Church. I love the fact that primate signifies such diverse things: what if one day a monkey might be elected Pope or perhaps the Curia might be sighted swinging from vines and grooming each other clean from lice and fleas. Ahh Monkey God, you'll always be, one sweet primate to me.
And what is a primate. Primate stands for first or perhaps final; then penultiMate should stand for second or as a prelude to the end. There could be postmates, trimates, quadromates - a regular mating ritual. Middlemate would be that that stands (or sits or reclines) in the middle, media res - in the media resting, wresting.
So if the Monkey God meets the Buddha coming through the rye - as opposed to the road where the Buddha must be killed, which seems harsh - but instead meets coming through the rye, which could be a great teen coming of age story, a picaresque, a gambol, a rollicking thrill ride for the summer like a Separate Peace: say the Monkey God goes to college and rooms with the Buddha, but the Buddha runs out of deferments and gets drafted and the Monkey God helps him escape to Canada, and they gin their way rye vermouth, and coming upon a camp of gypsies or counter culture communitarians or prophylactic presbyterians (it could happen: check back to my comment on Dan's comment on Gaye's comment on Jami's comment on my ordination paragraph where I talk about zombie presbyterians: it could happen); but this Monkey God and Buddha and the hippies or dead heads or simple farming folk create a utopian society only to have the cutlery division still running after 100 years (think about it: Oneida cutlery was the going concern of a utopian community dedicated to open marriage and educational and societal experimentation - but no one thinks about that when they're cutting their steak).
I think the Monkey God is the last best hope for America. We've aped sentient creatures long enough.

Writing

Pop in fresh, dough boy, said the Germans on the other side of no-man's land, trenchantly. Enough of your tankless onsluaghts, we treaded carefully, around the subject, the subjective and the subjunctive. Or might would could've'd, co-ordinate Claus and subordinate Claus at Christmas time, a gift of speeches and cream, pyre are squared, rounded hedged and lopped sided.
We left the dough boy behind, but the painting, which I did in the Spring of 2006, is in our house and will soon be moved to Durham, where the most beautiful woman in the world resides. It's an expressionist landscape. Why don't I do more of them? My hope is that eventually I will do paintings as thick and indecipherable as Auerbach or Kiefer or de Kooning.
How I wish that I were in Durham right now, even as Jami is concocting vichyssoise of indescribable richness and warmth.

And now I'm ordained

On Sunday I was ordained to the ministry of word and sacrament. A host of people were involved: Billy and Dan came from my home church in Covington; Nibs and Caroline and Suzette from the church here at Oakhurst; Lou from Memorial Drive; Cousin Cheryl from Fellowship; Joe from Twain's aka Good Shepherd; and driving from Birmingham in atrocious traffic - Shannon to sing and Cary to preach. It was a good commission. In the service I was especially proud of paraphrasing the last few verses of Psalm 100 to make a reference to Bakhtin's discussion of time and space: human cosmogony conforming to hierarchal space in the middle ages, and to leveled out time in the Renaissance. That is: the house in which humanity finds itself is hierarchal, everyone has his or her place with no hope of going up or down - except in so far as they are subject to fortune or live in destiny; when the Renaissance comes, this hierarchal spatial home is exploded and out of its ashes is built a cosmogony built on time, a home where humans move up and down in freedom [albeit limited freedom understood as autonomy; whereas the medieval freedom might be understood as living in one's space modeling the virtue of contentment], but where people experience themselves as not moving up and down but back and forward. Hence time is a leveler: anyone can light anywhere, regardless of birth. So I wrote that God "our Creator, Judge and Defender is steadfast in goodness and mercy, the same throughout all time and in all places." How many people will have spotted Bakhtin's reference to Pico della Mirandola? A whiff of neoplatonism perhaps. But it is the remnant of my desire to create a carnivalesque worship service. There was no grotesque and no visceral laughter - well maybe a little, as I stepped on Billy's lines as he was asking me the 9 questions: "whoever in our company be dined, must answer me these questions nine."
Afterwards a group of us went to Twain's. We drank pints and ate fish and chips. Shannon called our friend Karl who recounted ribald tales of ordinations past and various legends, which refreshed us with their grotequeness and laughter. It turned out to be a carnivalesque evening after all: what with the feasting, the ribaldry, the grotesquery and laughter.

It's November now

It's November now - Fall, the season where we celebrate the Autumn of humanity, where Adam and Eve, disAbled raised Cain. Enoch already they flooded, Aunty Deluvianne, arc de triomphefetted their babble, and ur-Urian unmenschenables adequate sacrifices of gout, frankenstein and merv. It came about in those days, along the river Euphrates, **** said "lights" and divided the lithe from the awkwardly moving amphibious landing goal tendering tofu wabohuites of Kenosha, Wisk Cosine. Sines and nomine worked wonders and all the saints weened hollow days and pumped full knights, rooked and bishop pricked fungible goods and evens, getting. And then arose a pharaoh that knew not where the remote was, not the remotest idea, and **** spoke to Moscowitz burning brush saying, "go tell that that that that that that," and so it was, and came to pass, and happened, that from that day till this and even till this day, that wherever that that that that is that-ed, that those that that that that even till this day and a day and half a day hoist a moist frothy two and a half eight and a quarter before half and a hilt halter top topped unter den linden and through the hills to grossmutter's hause wir knock dame treffen hen arf!
And then arose Shamgard who killed six full days of time with a hang nail.
Deb, the Canaan knischites bee, hailed Jael time and her trepanatorish arts, pegged barracks heading home.
Judge for yourself and they did as each did what was left of their own time and righted themselves acquitted. What the ex-honor ate.

All Hallow's Eve

It's been an exhausting month at the hospital and I've written few posts: it always seems that it's one in the morning when I sit down to write and my brain is tired. People ask me about the studio: was it violated? Did someone buy the whole thing as an installation piece?
And tonight was Halloween at the hospital and I was the duty chaplain. Halloween is traditionally the night when we are slammed with traumas and weird things happen: Princess Leia comes in epoxied to Frankenstein's monster, that kind of thing. And you're probably wondering: What did happen? What has Fred left out?
And I'll tell you.