A Quiet Normal Life

Martin Mess

nobody@vox.com(chrysostom) — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 03:47:19 -0800

The other day I received my CD-ROM from New Advent: The Summa, the Catholic Encyclopedia, the Church Fathers, and other odds and ends of ecclesiastic writings. I browsed over to the article on Luther this morning, which was extensive if not balanced, and took a glance at the one on Calvin as well. The sectarian scholars of a century ago looked askance at Luther (not surprisingly; I suspect even Lutherans did so then and do so now) but were rather respectful towards his rival. No wonder; Luther's a hard man to like and his unlikeableness fairly drips from his biography, and from his bibliography. Possibly the most unlikeable thing about him, though, is that there is absolutely no way we can mistake him for a man of our times, or potentially in sympathy with them. He is exceedingly foreign to us. Of course, the same is true of Saint Francis, or Abelard, or Raphael, or Dante, but we always manage to latch onto a little facet of their personalities which helps us maintain the illusion that they are more like us than different. But what is normative for us is not the measure of all men; maybe it shouldn't be the measure of any of them. Or any of us.

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The Goodbye

nobody@vox.com(chrysostom) — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 13:57:03 -0800

Goodbye

Holidailies

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Hogmanay

nobody@vox.com(chrysostom) — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 15:34:35 -0800

Things I Discovered This Year: Speaking of Faith; Dead Like Me; the GIMP; Scrabulous; Miro.

Things I Rediscovered This Year: 3 Fast, 3 Furious;Taoism; King Crimson; Powell & Pressburger; Joan Miro.

Best Development in the World of Entertainment: The Bonzo Dog Band reunion.

Worst Development in the World of Entertainment: The ubiquity of Presidential campaigning more than a year in advance of the election.

Friends Who Went Away: Pat; Sarah; Stu.

Friends Who Turned Up Again: Bill; Linda; Debbie.

Friends Who Died: Steve Worowski; Barbara Neill.

New Friend: Sarah.

New Task: Stephen Ministry.

New Path:

Holidailies

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The Book I Read

nobody@vox.com(chrysostom) — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 14:45:50 -0800

When I was a child I was surrounded by books. My father was a reader, and my mother was a reader, and my brother was a reader, and my brother was a reader. Books about Shaw and Russell and Buber and Tillich. Novels by Agnes Sligh Turnbull and Mazo de la Roche and Ben Ames Williams and Frances Parkinson Keyes. Thrilling adventures by Burroughs and Wells and Howard and Verne. The Harrad Experiment. Stranger in a Strange Land. Darker Than Amber. Bug Jack Barron. Beneath the Wheel. Naturally enough, I read one. I read The Phantom Tollbooth.

I reread it recently and I have to admit, it didn't cast the same spell on me. But I have read many books since then. There have been only a handful of days in the past forty years when I couldn't have affirmed that I was “reading a book”. Or two, or four, or five. Right now I am reading one by J. P. Marquand, and one by Merton, and one by Chesterton. For better or for worse, I am a reader.

About the oldest piece of unsolicited advice in the history of the world is that of the Delphic oracle, “Know Yourself.” Strangely enough, one of the best ways to get to know yourself is to know others, and one of the best ways to know others is to shun their company, and read. It has all of the advantages of socializing, and none of the handshaking.

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The Pause That Refreshes

nobody@vox.com(chrysostom) — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 15:20:48 -0800

It is one of the comic tragedies of the human condition in the 21^st century that we enthusiastically embrace habits while vigorously eschewing disciplines. I came up with that platitude while walking in the woods this afternoon, and thought it might easily be expanded into a thought-provoking entry in this journal, and fulfill my obligations to the Holidailies people another day. But it's not much of an idea yet; I'd have to articulate the distinction between “habits” and “disciplines”, which seems tiresome (i.e., it would require disciplined thought and disciplined writing); and it's getting late and I'd rather get this over with in time to watch some television (Scrubs, which I've gotten into the habit of watching in the evening, though it is plainly a poor use of my time, and only intermittently rewarding in terms of entertainment value). I'm not sure I fully understand why driving to work invariably becomes a habit, but walking to work is, potentially at least, a discipline. I did feel more virtuous last week when circumstances forced me to walk to work, but I didn't start voluntarily walking to work once I got my car back on the road. (Parenthetically, let me observe that several co-workers of mine routinely drive to work, though they live within a half-mile of the place. I have seen X, for instance, walking her dog within twenty feet of the place, then take him home and drive back for work. Not to pass judgment. It just goes to show the persistent power of habit over our behavior.) Nor do I, upon awakening, exercise, study the Bible or the Tao Te Ching, catch up on my correspondence, or clean up the kitchen; instead I make a little coffee to wake me up and idle away an hour on the internet. I guess I'm just not the disciplined type, which is about as good a reason as I can think of for giving up. So, to hell with Holidailies! There'll be no entry today; maybe tomorrow.

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Big Steve

nobody@vox.com(chrysostom) — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 15:25:10 -0800

When I first started doing the Rummage, almost ten years ago, Steve wasn't around. They talked about him: big guy, ran the record department, he was off in South America or somewhere, teaching or something. A few sales later he showed up, and he was big. I was a little put out at first. Big voice, big body, and a lot of big talk. But the guy was a blast to be around, and he knew his music. He'd pick up a beat-up old guitar with four or five strings on it, and the thing looked like a ukulele in those big hands of his, but he made it jump and jive and come to life.

Steve had been in bands his whole life, and his whole life was organized so that he could continue to do that. He'd been around; he'd met people. There's a difference between being a good person and a good musician; our opinions differed on who was a good musician but I always trusted his judgment on who was a good person. Some of the famous ones: not so good. You'd be surprised. But if Steve said it, it was so.

Over the years we got to be pretty good friends, in that Rummage, spring-and-fall, kind of way. He wasn't in great health, some of the time, and his back bothered him, and then one year his Dad died. I got occasional emails from him during the off-season, and wrote back. I was a little pissed off when he started reading my journal. Telegram, it was called then. I was uncomfortable because I had written, quite a lot sometimes, about some people we both knew, and though I was trying to be oblique and clever, he managed to put the pieces together sometimes. If he'd figured out who Micawber was, why not Agnes?

Then, two falls ago, we started losing him. Rob had also been diagnosed with cancer, and then Rob was gone in a flash. He'd seemed so strong, and just getting ready to start a new life in Maine, and that life never happened. I'd had a wedding at the church the last Saturday that Steve and Rob were both at Rummage, and when I got back they had both gone home.

Steve spent a lot of time in the hospital, got a stem-cell transplant, and chemo, and I got an email from him that fall which was optimistic but resigned. And then he slipped out of sight, and we heard from time to time how he was doing (not too well, but holding on) and I felt bad, when I thought of it, that I hadn't been trying harder to keep track of him.

At the fall sale, Linda showed up out of the blue, and brought us all up to date. He'd been in the hospital pretty much the whole year, and he was in pretty bad shape, but he was holding his own. I gave her a hug and a promise, a promise I never got a chance to keep. In a few days he was gone.

I miss you, Steve. I'll see you when I get home.

Steve Worowski

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The Delicate Prey

nobody@vox.com(chrysostom) — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 15:43:32 -0800

Pakistan is very far away. It's far enough away that I have no particular right to comment on events there, express meaningless sympathy for its people, analyze the impact of those events either within that nation or in the context of world politics, predict the future based on any such analysis, or in any way condemn, praise, scold, eulogize, reprimand or second-guess anyone involved in or proximate to those events. It's very far. There's no blood on me, not literally anyway, and there isn't a burning car in sight.

There isn't any progress in human affairs, there is only order and chaos, The more elaborate the order, the more energy it takes to maintain that order. But, as Markowitz observed, chaos is always in the interstices. Chaos broke out and set about dismantling the order that men had built up. There was never any doubt that it would. The only question was, where, when, how.

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The Long Christmas Dinner

nobody@vox.com(chrysostom) — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 13:52:24 -0800

A glass of champagne is probably the cure for just about anything. It sure made me feel a lot better yesterday. I was exhausted from working twelve hours on Christmas Eve, and by early afternoon the was an intermittent pain in my head and an unpleasant brew simmering in my belly. Up too soon, too much coffee, too much excitement. But I'd accepted the invitation and wasn't inclined to back out – I'm still sad at having missed Christmas dinner last year at Pat's house, because I miss her so.

The glass of champagne was in my hand minutes after I arrived, and dinner followed soon after, with much conversation, very little of which I was required to participate in. A lovely meal, and the other guests were congenial, friendly strangers. I enjoyed myself thoroughly, and was happy to excuse myself.

But I ended up at another Christmas dinner. I dropped in on my “drop-in” friends, and they were just getting ready to sit down. Not wishing to offend, I took a little more nourishment. Daughter was planning next year's Christmas menu, mother and aunt were carrying on some entirely separate dialogue, Dad and I offered asides, interjections, and irrelevancies, and Grandma complained merrily to herself about all the things in her world which were wrong. There were two pies. I left shortly after the video began, shivered in the car under the pale selenic beams, and got home after the day was spent. And so to bed!

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Two or Three Things I Know About Her

nobody@vox.com(chrysostom) — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 10:45:44 -0800

I do not imagine her as a child. Instead I think of her as a bit older, and still unmarried, still parthenos, because she was crippled, deformed, blind, or grotesque. Taught by her condition to be resigned, disciplined, obedient; and also assured by it of her specialness – so that her special fate did not surprise her. After all, wasn't the world turned upside down at that moment? Why should not all its values be inverted?

She saw a lot of the world for a woman of her time. She visits her cousin, and the city of her husband's ancestors, and Egypt. All this before the story is really underway. Later on, we see her far from home again, when she was certainly no child, to be present at the end of what started in her.

She only carried the torch for a moment, really. She accepted it when it was passed to her and handed it over when her moment was past. All the rest of her life she was ordinary. And that was possibly the greater burden, as it is for all those of us never called to such distinction; to live an ordinary life which has come so near to brilliance.

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Mignonne

nobody@vox.com(chrysostom) — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 15:56:24 -0800

I would have thought that I had never heard of either Pierre de Ronsard, nor of this poem, Mignonne..., but this can't be true. I have read the book at least twice before, and must have seen the references to it. In fact, I remember very clearly the scene in which the inspector makes hollow claims of erudition in reference to the reference to it, but I presume that I was happy with hollow claims to erudition as well, and I never took any interest in the poem or its author. Luckily, the internet makes armchair scholars of us all, as television made us armchair athletes; luckily, because the oblique reference is a key one. Maugham is a little tricky here, I think, because he seems to deliberately mischaracterize the meaning of the poem – for in the scene referred to above, the character Maugham quotes a portion of the poem to the inspector, a courtesy that, pointedly, the author Maugham denies his readers. What remains unsaid is perhaps what is most at the heart of the matter.

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