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.

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."

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.

smoke pouring out of a box car door

I discovered this as a book mark in a book recently. I was reading Ricouer's Conversation and Critique - a book length interview about his life and the development of his thought, when I came across this newspaper clipping. I had clipped it away because just as I opened the page to it, Dylan's song Idiot Wind, which has the lyric "smoke pouring out of a box car door", was playing. I turned the page and almost in time with the music there was the image. It's a harsh song saved by Dylan's implication of himself: that he as well is an idiot, lucky enough to be able to feed himself: and that thinking of what might have been, he feels so sorry.
A lone soldier on the cross.
I'm fascinated by trains. My studio is near the tracks and every time a train goes by I go outside to watch. Trains continue to be romantic images to me. When I lived in New Mexico the train tracks often paralleled the road. Driving along I would see a train coming and I could tell how long it was - no trees or hills obscured it. Sometimes I would catch up with a train as it flew down the road.
Night time is when I find trains to be most mysterious: only a few lights define a massive shape moving through space. The train is almost invisible at night, yet I can feel the heaviness. In Europe one of my pleasures there was riding from Prague to Budapest. Even though it was a bit uncomfortable [the dining car didn't go - as the conductor told us- and we were forced to jump off the train at a border station and retrieve some drinks and food before the train left the station] I enjoyed sitting in our compartment and watching the towns go by, very slowly in Czech, and then, passing through Slovakia, gaining speed into Hungary as we followed the Danube. We passed quickly through rich farmland.
How nice it would be to still be able to ride the rails here. Amtrak counts only in the northeast. If I could take a train from Decatur to Athens or to Macon or Covington, that would be more of what I'm thinking of.
Next year in Chicago I may take the El to the Art Institute - it seemed so brisk running into the city next to the interstate. What must it be like inside?

Train a'commin'

One of the nice things about my studio, one of the pleasurable things; one of those things that don't figure in settling on some place, but that afterwards, when I've settled in, during the course of living there, I discover and take pleasure in: one of those nice things is that the rail road tracks are near by and that trains still travel on these tracks. I enjoy that while I am painting I can hear the blare of the horn, the dissonant interval announcing the arrival and passage, of a freight. When I hear this I can walk out of my studio, and since my cubical is right near the door, I can walk out and witness the mighty engines pulling the heavy cars: pulling sometimes coal, sometimes metal, sometimes unknown materials - but I suspect highly secret materials: perhaps remnants of a UFO crash; perhaps secret government labs run by animal/human hybrids, who are even now engineering the defeat of global capitalism; perhaps relics of a lost civilization (not lost the way America is lost, but lost in the sense of being misplaced by time). When I hear these trains I put down my brush (actually I carry my brush outside with me) or I put down my book, my Kierkegaard, my Barth, my Ricouer, and I venture outside to stand on the hot concrete and watch this train pass on through town. I watch as cars take the short cut for the trestle. I watch as I realize trains today no longer carry a caboose. I remember cabooses. I remember when passenger service still thrived, when people took a train from the depot in Covington for jobs and shopping in Atlanta. All the depots I know of have been transformed into restaurants or left to shambles. Even hobos have no place on modern trains. What a sad people we've become. We've become a sad people who have sad trains: and no amount of indignant protesting will change that: we've become a sad people ruled by our greed. Our trains are witness against us. They are now bland utilitarian affairs, sawed off from their history, and they travel through our cities like a punch in the gut. Even the vagrants no longer call them home.
My dad worked for the railroads in that section that became Railroad Publications: it was called Southern Freight and Tariff Bureau when he started work there in 1969. He told me that they called it Southern Frightened Giraffe Bureau at the office. When he began they had offices in San Francisco, San Antonio, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Roanoke. Over 200 people worked at the Atlanta office. When he retired around 2000 all operations had been consolidated into Atlanta and there were less than 50 people working there. Now I think all their work is done on a computer in some back room by two guys. Deregulation and automation: what grand things. And of course the world is better now: I should say it's more predatory now. A stock market over 13000 is a sign not of our goodness as a nation, not of how ennobled with mercy we've become, not of learning the "lessons of Vietnam" - but it is a sign of how much we value predation, and it is a sign of how far we have to fall. How can I be so pessimistic? Well no where in scripture does God reward a nation so proud of itself as ours with anything less than destruction, calamity and exile. It's coming. Not in a Left Behind kind of scenario but more in an Ozymandias kind of desolation: Look on ye capitalist and despair. Even if we didn't have scripture the weight of history is against us now.
One last thing about trains: when Jami and I visited her folks up in Cleveland, TN, we slept upstairs. Her niece slept in the other room. Grace is three and wonderfully expressive. In the middle of the night she came into our room, crying "aunt Jami, I heard a train." Jami claims that Grace was referring to my snoring, as if my nasal intonations attain a high decibel level, perhaps comparable to a train. Well you can hear a train from their house. When I told Jami that I could hear a train and that perhaps Grace was not frightened by me but by the distant echo of the Norfolk and Southern, she just laughed and laughed. She railed at me, "Aunt Jami, I heard a train."