Life on the high seas

First off, we had a wonderful week. We spent time together and with Jami's mother, Gaby, her sister, Jennifer, and our niece, Grace. We ate a lot of food, possibly going over our weight watchers total allowance of points - for the week, but still within our allowance for the month. Just one day in the sun and my belly was horribly burned. I mostly wore a shirt the whole rest of the week. But the beach is a wonderful place, perhaps the only place, in America where you can wear just shorts and be socially acceptable. I felt like a kid again, barefoot, coursing over the dunes and into the waves, whistling the Sailor's Hornpipe (the Popeye theme) with variations in minor and modal keys and in odd syncopations of rhythm, keeping my eye eye out for the Kraken. Especially the notorious Kraken Jack, who'd entered in a kraken time, and might be mistaken for a kraken the pavement. A few tumbles in the surf, the mild surf of Kiawah, and I was Kraken up. Breakers, rollers, tumblers, crashing, sliding, sucking, swelling, slapping, lapping, pulling, pushing, left me in waters wracked, laced with foam, green and sparkling, jagged and eddying, but cool under the hot sun.
Of the ten beers I brought, I consumed all but two. The best beer was a kolsch. But I enjoyed an assortment of IPAs and ales.
Among the books I brought I really enjoyed reading Rabelais. I read him standing in the surf and sitting under an umbrella. The five books of Gargantua and Pantagruel are satirical classics without parallel. I wrote earlier in the year about reading Bakhtin's Rabelais and his World, about Bakhtin's take on carnival and laughter and the grotesque: how these practices heal and subvert. Out in the surf, I read Rabelais in pure enjoyment: his lists, the fantastic adventures, the humor (scatological and sexual), all amid the roar and race of the foaming breakers.
I wound up bringing 42 books to the beach and managed to touch on 20 of them in some fashion.
I drew some but was unable to do any water colors. I spent some time trying to get my remaining .35 mm faber-castell TG1-S technical pen to work: the nib and the central needle and weight were misaligned and ink wasn't flowing through the nib. Months before I'd dropped the pen on my studio floor. I finally broke the pen, the needle becoming dislocated from the weight. I have to order these pens from Germany now, and two should be on their way to me. One day, I will have to change pen brands or go over to a different kind of pen. I don't know what that day will be like. Sad and expectant at once.
Again I read Barth, this time CD IV.2. After being burned the first day, I determined to expose only one square inch of my body to sunlight at a time (as witnessed above).
The best part was being at the beach with the most beautiful woman in the world, smiling and laughing.

Laughter

Rabelais said that laughter was a philosophical statement: not derisive laughter but good, straightforward belly laughter. Somewhere in Proverbs I think it is said that laughter cures the bones. From Top to bottom: me, laughing at Rabelais; Jennifer, my sister-in-law, laughing at something profound; Bill, my father-in-law, laughing at a story; Jerry, my dad, laughing at the fact that I have too many books; and Jami, at Carpe Diem, laughing at something her friend Genie said. There is nothing better than being with friends and family laughing. Is there anything more human?

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.

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?