Life Matchbook by Matchbook

I have quite a number of elderly friends, mostly from my parish in Los Angeles. We seem to have and had a number of people who have lived to be nonogenarians. 

Pretty much after the death of my father in 2008, himself, briefly, a nonogenarian, it seems that Providence, for I can think of no other cause, has asked that I assist others in that decade. This does not come easy to me, which is, perhaps why God seems to insist on my doing so, until it does become easy to do His apparent Will. The deeply personal aspect of helping an elderly individual is antithetical to my nature, one that seems to rebel against close human interaction. I was raised an only child in a familial triangle in which physical warmth was rare. I never married. I live alone. Or, it's just some nature-nuture thing. Suffice it to say whatever it is that makes me resistant in helping people so personally is being ignored by my Lord God.  I am wondering if He is offering a hint, that He asks me to trust Him that I can do whatever He asks, another of my resistances generated by lifelong anxiety. And add to that some guilt that there are those (slightly younger) that I have not helped as much as I might if I had not had all these years of other elders falling into my orbit. One is my aunt, who is cared for by my cousin. I believe I should be doing more for them, but the anxiety of dealing with those that already are on my schedule (and have been for some time) has made me less active with her than I otherwise would be. 

That's not the crux of today's entry, just an entre, as it were, to it. There are realities to getting old, many realities, practical, emotional and spiritual. I want to focus on one of the practicalities I have observed--the cluttered apartment or house that becomes an especial burden at the end of life. At a time when folks should be letting go of stuff (and as you know I had already been on a so far unsuccessful "get rid of stuff" trend) they seem to bring it in, or, at least there is no doubt it surely seems to grow. I have in the last 16 years, four times had to clean out the space of a person who either needed a care home or died. "Overwhelming" does not begin to describe it. I have already noted in a prior entry that I am terrified that I will be one of those elders, as I am merely one generation behind the nonogenarians, and I do have that clutter tendency. What I already knew and is seared into my head is that none of this material matters, not the expensive nor the cheap. When we are gone, so is that stuff. Oh, someone might keep a memento. But then that person dies and the next in line has no use for it, and it holds no memories for them. Maybe an item or two will have historic value, but the person attached to it years before may or may no longer be remembered. When we leave this earth, what we had is either inherited or its trash, but either way, it's value is transient. Everything in my apartment has a story--for me. But to others, it is ephemera. 

So. Back when most restaurants had matchbooks which advertised the glamor of eating in their particular venues, I was one of those people who took a book as a token of the dining experience, and as a memento of times spent with friends. Long ago restaurants ceased creating and providing matchbooks, often themselves mini pieces of art, but from New York to California and visits to places in between, I ended up with a fair collection.  Quite a number of the books are reminders of restaurants famous and long gone. Some just have a personal connection to me--a favorite that seemed would always be there for breakfast, lunch or dinner, but wasn't. I have twice offered the collection to a local vintage collector who has family connections to old Hollywood. But she has twice asked me to hold onto them until she recontacts me, and the gap between those times has been a couple of years. So I found someone else, from a matchbook collecting society of some sort. 

I went through them again today, kind of a reaction to having had to get another of my elderly friends (the second in three weeks) to the hospital for emergency care. As the paramedics and ambulance personnel checked him out in his bedroom and arranged for transport, I sat on the couch of his living room noticing just how much stuff he clearly could not care for had developed over the years since last I had been in that apartment. I know that some of it is likely valuable, but the valuable and the not valuable all merged into one large disheveled clump of STUFF. I could tell some of it clearly had meaning for him, certain books, certain pictures. When I got home I just wanted to get rid of something, and the matchbooks just beckoned, and of course, as I gathered them into a shopping bag, the memories came tumbling back of several of the places represented. I can get rid of the matchbooks; I should get rid of the matchbooks; the memories are left to me at least until I am a memory. Moments of my life reflected in a matchbook. I met up with a lovely woman, Denise, who is part of a club that collects and trades matchbooks of these sort and I donated my collection of the last 50 or so years. I took photos of the ones that hit my heart. 

Maybe some of these places hold memories for you. 

Peppercorns:  That was a place I went to with college friends quite often in my late college and early law school years. It was on Grey Oaks Avenue, Yonkers, New York right near the Saw Mill Parkway. They often had musicians playing that late 70s folk type music. It was comfortable. Dark. Casual. Cozy. I am trying to remember what my favorite drink there was. Bourbon Sour? Dacquiri? One of my friends who had a crush on a waitress there might remember? It was there I told Len and Andrew (do they remember?) after I had first visited Los Angeles that I wanted to move here. I seem to recall a particular evening pronouncing that intention. I was really set on it. And surprise of surprises in 1981, I did it!

Baci:  This was a little Italian place on Beverly Boulevard, with a small, but natural back patio. It was near my apartment on Spaulding Avenue in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles, and it was a place that my father, friends and I went for many evening meals. In Los Angeles, if you really wanted to see a celebrity (and best if you are not actually looking for them), the local eateries and shopping venues used to be (and still are a little) places to encounter them, not in the tourist sites. And so this was one of the places in which I early spied a celebrity, Rod Stewart and a wife, though I am not sure which one, along with a little boy in his arms. It was there that my father met up with my friend Susan's father, both men old time New Yorker's which always provides a commonality. I don't recall when that place closed but it is at minium 20 years and almost all of the descendants have opened and closed quickly. 

Mirabelle:  Mirabelle was a discovery early in my sojourn in Los Angeles, even before West Hollywood became a city of its own in the county. It was on the Sunset Strip. My first visit there was with a college friend who had moved back to Los Angeles with her father before she graduated with us from Fordham, her father being in the entertainment industry. I was newly relocated to California and considering a return to the Catholic faith. As we munched, she told me of a little Church around the corner, on Holloway Drive. I was so new to Los Angeles, I did not know that there was a street between Sunset and Santa Monica named Holloway. Not long after I repaired to the little Church where I have been a parishioner for 40 plus years. It turned out, I would find, that the parishioners often went there after Sunday Mass for Brunch. The restaurant was run by a Greek man named George (what else?) and our Greek-Mexican pastor, Monsignor Parnassus, knew him well. It was casual, and bright, and the food was solidly good. Because they knew so many of us, substitutions were never a problem. The restaurant had been there since 1974 or so, and seemed like one of those places that would survive forever. But the 90s came, and the 2000s and the generational interests shifted. George tried to modernize the place, make it "hip" or whatever was the current word for updating. The new furniture was garish. No substitutions were allowed. Business did not increase. It decreased. Again what about 15 or 20 years ago (time is passing so quickly I can't recall really), George gave up the dining ghost, and retired. This space has also been innumerable restaurants that did not survive. Right now, it is again being remodeled by someone who clearly does not know that in the absence of great luck he or she will have none. Although I have no matches from it, there is another place on Holloway Drive, Dialogue, that used to be a sleepy sort of coffee shop type locale, and it was a place that we parishioners also used to go to, if Mirabelle's was not the particular choice. Some years ago, a retired couple bought it, and while it became a bit more upscale, it remained sleepy and always with available tables until one of their sons inherited it. He made it very successful among the z generation. It is always crowded. The old attentiveness is gone. The wait time for a take-out meal (also for which we parishioners liked it) is very long. So, it is alas no longer a favorite place. I am more likely to run to the Subway on Sunset for a quick sandwich. 

Sarno's:  There was a loss. On Vermont Avenue, Los Feliz, it was a place for food and opera by the waiters and waitresses. I can't say that I went there often, but it was authentic Hollywood of golden days opened in the 1940s in a building built in the 1920s initially only as a bakery, but later adding the coffee shop/restaurant.  I am not sure, but I think it was there I saw George Takei of Star Trek fame having a meal. The end of that famed place was of movie vintage.  But just as in a movie, in 1987, Albert Sarno, the progeny of the original owners, was shot to death near his home on Los Feliz Boulevard. Albert's wife kept the place going until 2000.

Yesterday's:  This goes back to before my actual move to Los Angeles. It was 1977 and I was in between semesters at Law School in New York. I had a week to do something and I decided, if I could stay with my father's youngest brother and his family, (whom I hardly knew, so they were very kind indeed) I would make a visit to California. I had a college friend (we still are), Dennis Vellucci, who was a fellow at USC and lived in Santa Monica. I didn't drive then, so he volunteered to show me the town. At that time, a big part of the town was Westwood, the college community by UCLA. It was a hopping place, lots of restaurants, lots of activity (Tower Records, Bullocks, Mario's Restaurant--there's a matchbook pictured here- Stan's Donuts, Monty's Steak House, Flax, Alice's Restaurant, lots of movie theatres).  And the place he took me to was Yesterday's, a two tier restaurant, with live music and great drinks (I loved frozen dacquiris). When I came back as a visitor in 1978, I went back there and a brought a friend or two. And when I moved to Los Angeles, I went there as often as I could. In the 90s, when all of Westwood was seeing a slump and gangs were maurauding and scaring visitors away, it closed, as did so many of the other places I mentioned in the parenthesis). I haven't spent much time in Westwood since then, and still they have a hard time keeping restaurants and businesses. 

Barney's Beanery:  Happily this restaurant is still there at the crossroad of Santa Monica and Holloway. It is, as you may know, the last place that Janis Joplin ate before she overdosed in the 1970s at the age of 27. It was a go to for the rock crowd back in the day with memorabilia galore. To me it's gotten a little seedy over the years, but back in the 90s I fairly well frequented it, including during the 1992 riots in Los Angeles that put a curfew on ordinary citizens--something new for me. I was there with my friend Andrew in the daylight hours one day before curfew, when a bunch of firefighters came in for a well deserved meal. Just as their food was served, they got a call. And out they went. The waitress seemed unphased, and the food was kept warm, if I remember, and they came back pretty quickly as another company had already answered the call. 

I could go on and on, but here is one more from the photos, and if you, the reader are inclined, feel free to ask me in the comments about one of the places I haven't mentioned. Not all, but most have some small story attached. So, here's the last for this entry.

Carlos and Charlies:  Here I only have a drink ticket. It was a Mexican Restaurant also on Sunset not far from where I live now. They had the best tuna based dip for tortilla chips. I went there early in my life in Los Angeles, in the early 1980s, with the staff of my then law office boss, and partners, for one of my opportunities to see Joan Rivers. And I brought a friend or two there when a choice of restaurant was sought. They too, in the 90s saw a downturn and ultimately it closed, and so far as I can tell it has never been another restaurant, but some kind of office building.

I loved Los Angeles, when I first visited and for the first 20 or so years I lived here. As time has worn on, as has been true of most major cities, the allegedly progressive politics that promised a better town made it so much worse. Oh, I know, you might not agree, depending on your affiliations. There are, however, only three things that keep me here now.  First, I am too old to leave and start a new life in a more policy attractive state. Second, I have more people here than elsewhere, and I am ensconced in a nice, presently safe home. Third, you still can't beat the weather. 

A Bit of My (College) Stuff

As you know, if you read this blog, and surprisingly, people seem to do so, I have been going through STUFF (the thought of this made me watch the George Carlin bit on this very subject; highly recommended). Some of the sentimental STUFF I have put in photograph form online, just in case somebody, 100 years from now, if we survive as the human race, might find interesting, from a kind of personal and historical point of view.  Just call me Ozymandias.  I believe in eternal immortality, but I also like the idea of an earthly version in memory. Maybe it will work better for me than it did for Ozymandias. I'm not holding my breath, but I have this bug about trying.  Of course, whether or not there is life after death (hint: I think there is), I won't probably care. I digress. 

Some of the STUFF I have placed in a similar form on this blog, like my Dad's short short stories so that he won't be utterly forgotten. A whole lot I have given away to a Veteran's Group, the STUFF that actually can be used, clothes, jewelry, books, small furniture. I should note that the latter seems not to make a dent in my lingering STUFF. The condo still looks chock full of tchotchkes, each of which, upon review, is emotionally indispensable. I know, this reflects all sorts of psychological realities. Hey, we all got them! Take a look around your abode. Bet you are holding onto all sorts of ridiculous things. 

One of those items I present to you today, both in photographic form and textual form. It's Freshman Year at Fordham University, the Bronx, New York, 1973, (that reality causes a groan!). I am in an English class and poetry is the current focus.  We have an assignment to write on John Keats, "Ode on A Grecian Urn", particularly it seems on both the style and the content; no surprise. I was usually pretty good about doing my homework on time, and ahead of time. But if my memory serves, this was one of those flash assignments, like a pop quiz. I tended to do my homework in my room (by then we had been three years in an apartment that had two bedrooms, instead of one for a family of three), but that evening, I took to the galley kitchen and the small round particle board table. What I remember about the exercise was that it was one of those rare times in which something came easy to me, flowed into my head, and just came through the pen (and then my handwriting wasn't as awful), and I found myself actually enjoying the task. I got a good grade, and there was something comforting, even joyful that something I enjoyed doing, was appreciated.

Yes, I feel compelled to put it here, and if you want, just skip over it. 

Djinna Gochis

English 15, Section 9

April 24, 1973

    An understanding of "Ode on a Grecian Urn" requires knowledge that only a classical education could give, or, at least, a little research.  With his allusions, Keats assumes that the reader has some prior conception of Greek life, art, myth and philosophy. An awareness of the extended allusions seems essential to the meaning and greater appreciation of of the ode.

By selecting as his subject, a Grecian urn, representative of a golden age of humanity, Keats effectively establishes his believe in the lasting perfection of human creation.  The urn is symbolic of physical and spiritual beauty, suspended in time. The expressiveness of Greek art is the expressiveness of human kind.  That such a thing was created by man seems proof of man's essentially lofty nature.  Indeed, while he describes the intricacies of the painted figures (descriptive), he allows himself the freedom to tell the story of mankind, the persistence of the spirit and of human ideas (narrative).

The images themselves are remarkably real.  All senses come into play while reading the poem. Once can see the forests and the maidens, chased by the gods in the growth.  One can hear the pipes and smell the sweet flowers.  It is even possible to feel the pulsation of life itself.  The poet chooses his words well--the diction allows the pictures to come alive.  Every detail is meticulously arranged--the picture is clear.  

But what does the poet say? Each stanza has its own significance.  The first tells of the joys of earth-bound living.  There are two mythical stories--one of Daphne, who, scorning Apollo, was turned into a tree at Tempe and the other of the revelries of Pan (half-man, half-horse) and the nymphs at Oready.  All life life to the fullest.  They enjoy physical pleasures (a kind of deification of human pleasure these myths).

There is more than physical joy.  There is the pleasure unbounded by time and space-the mind, the imagination. The youth will never grow old.  The tree will never lose its foliage.  Love will never fade for the young there pictured.

The third stanza is an extension of the second..  It is a development of the concept of the eternity of things beautiful--of art and of the mind. 

The life of Greece will ever be remembered.  Once the priests brought sacrifice to the gods.  Once there existed an ancient town and its sleeping ancient inhabitants.  All these will be preserved forever on the urn.  Their memory lives.  Herein lies the importance of art.

The fifth stanza draws Keat's thoughts through to a conclusion--neither unexpected nor startling.  He merely reiterates that BEAUTY lives when each generation is dead and gone. It provided that (envied) sought after link with eternity, with immortality.  Beauty is forever.

The meter seems to be generally iambic which represents perhaps the smoothness, the gentle flowing of time through eternity.  The rhyme is partial and peculiar (ababcdedce).  The stanzaic form is difficult to determine and required some research.  It is apparently a rather unconventional form, praise as a feat.  It is a combination of the quatrain (the first four lines) and the sestet (the last six lines, generally used in the Italian Sonnet).

The blatant metaphor, and the most famous is "Beaty is truth, truth beauty."  It is difficult to interpret, but perhaps easy to misinterpret.  It recalls the Platonic philosophy, the World of Forms, to which men strive. When a man seizes upon an IDEA, he has found Truth.  When he has found TRUTH, he has also found the Good or Beauty.  In reverse, when a man has found what is BEAUTIFUL, he has come to TRUTH.  Such is the message of Keats. 

This page I've carried around with me, how long--a bit over 51 years represents, essentially, freezes in time the  kid at the kitchen table, age just 19, trying to consider the depths of a poem for a school exercise and who then never would have imagined herself  sitting here, in California. At that point, the idea of leaving New York, or even the Bronx, had not yet really occurred to her. At that time and place, there had not yet been a diagnosis of her mother with a terminal cancer (that came just about two months later). That particular night, I seem to remember a peace as she wrote. Do I remember or do I imagine that my mother was feet from me preparing the dinner for our family triad. I know my father was not yet home. I was no doubt happy because Spring had arrived. I have always loved the arrival of the Spring, and the sense of coming out of an unsafe and dark cave. I know I felt good that night. Able.

And so, I have protected this little piece of paper more than any of the many other college things I maintained (until my recent purges). As I sit here writing, I am not sure I am going to let it go, even now, just now. No, I don't think I will. I will have to leave that to the person who gets rid of my remaining STUFF when that time (which I hope is not soon) comes!

A Long Way to Go

In the last year or two, I have been delving deeply into my Catholic Faith far more than the previous nearly 40 years. I have sought to stop being a perfunctory person in the pew or in assisting ministries. (People I know would say, I think, that I am far from perfunctory. I am often at Mass, and often in Confession, and participating in many parish activities. This is only proof that appearances are deceiving. I am and have been active indeed, but activity is not of itself transformative).

 I have once again explored two approaches to this life:  the Sartre/Camus existentialist "life has no meaning, life is absurd, life is hard and then you die, the end" variety and then "the God created us to be happy, and we were, yet, with our free will, we set off an explosion of sin and suffering and death, but God so loved us and has given us a second chance in the form of following Him who took on our sin, died and transformed death into life" variety. The former makes no sense to me at all, is, pardon the expression "meaningless". In "The Plague", Camus' hero fights a plague despite his fervid assumption that life has no meaning. He seeks meaning in fighting the plague.  Why fight for what does not exist? Why should we long for that which does not exist? How can a human being, thrown into the world randomly, discover meaning where there is none? Fighting for something presupposes there is something discreet out there warranting risk and charity.  Either meaning exists or it does not---and if you seek it, then it must exist, somewhere.  The desire for meaning seems to prove the existence of a universe with ultimate meaning. Ok, I'm not going down that rabbit hole, just leading to my choice of the latter, which posits the meaning that we humans seem to seek in every action we take and every argument we make. I have concluded, hopefully for the inevitably short balance of my life, that Catholicism, provides the fullest source of Meaning, that is God Made Man, who reaches out His physical yet Transcendent Hand to every single one of us, if we would just clear away the pride and its overgrown chaff. He asks us to see that the suffering we caused is transformed if we follow Him through it to Resurrection. 

The wounds of our lives, the result of the tsunami of sin caused (credit for the phrase here is to Fr. Ed Broom of St. Peter Chanel, who calls sin a "moral tsunami"), that we use to justify our rejection of God is the very thing that that can be healed through the Catholic Church, who is Jesus Christ. The people (Peter, the "Rock", the Apostles, the Disciples, Mary, His mother) upon which Jesus, the Church, upon which He joined Himself, upon which He laid His Foundation, are His branches (I am the Vine; You are the Branches). The branches break, some stop bearing leaves or fruit, while others manage to continue, but the Vine, the Church He is and He founded, survives and manages always to feed, to bring health. In the Sacraments we are nurtured and healed. In the teachings, we are led by the hand back to the meaning that we obscure. 

A retreat (through the John Paul II Healing Center held in Sacred Heart Retreat House in Alhambra), I went on a short while ago, was focused on the wounds, inevitably inflicted by other frail humans in our development, and inflicted on ourselves by our own consequent sins, did something being in therapy, studying therapy, and reading endlessly never did.  We all have wounds. All of us. That was the inevitable consequence of the first choice against God. It was four days of about 30 of us looking at wounds in both a psychologically and spiritually integrated way using a video presentation, prayer, Mass, Spiritual Direction, and Confession . I have looked at each dimension over the course of my life, but somehow, I never really joined them into a unity. I had nearly despaired that there was a chasm between me and God that something in me would not bridge. For all my church going, participation, receipt of the Sacraments (since I came back to the faith officially), I have been living parallel to God. I have, implicitly, and mostly unconsciously, even when I thought I was fully aware, been using what I perceive to be my wounds as a fortress to keep God at bay. I say all the time, "Lord, I believe, help my unbelief", while telling Him not to get too close. He, of course, could broach the moat and pierce the walls or heavy door, but He won't violate my choices. He reaches to me; and like the model of the greatest saint, Mary, His Mother, he yearns for my unqualified "Yes!" instead of a hedging one.

Wounds can be used as a shield against the rescue operation He successfully mounted on the Cross. "Nope," we/I say, my family of origin, my father, my mother, my brother, my school, the horribly human priest, or nun, "I am too hurt, too injured to reach out to a God even if it means that I separate myself from Him instead of living in joy restored to Heaven".  In Paradise, we had it all, and rejected it. Now, we have a second chance and we spit "I will not Serve" either deliberately or reflexively out of deep hurts and fear and anger. 

I have never said, "I will not serve" and I do seek to do His Will, knowing that ultimately it is not merely out of obedience to the Truth, but, to be truthful, beneficial self-interest. Am I foolish enough to prefer hell, worse than any suffering here, rather than bliss in the Beatific Vision? But those emotional carbuncles distract and confuse. 

The area in which my particular perceived wounds reflect themselves in everyday life, and after the retreat, there was a lightbulb, much brighter than all others which have flashed through my searching was in fear and anger.  For purposes of this entry, it matters not how they were developed, but that they have governed even the smallest interaction where those wounds were touched upon and how often they have been touched and limited me in my relationships and lacks thereof. And how, if I do not address both the psychological and spiritual at once, with the indispensable help of God's penetrating Grace, the last chance, to love the God who loves us, who loves each of us completely and fully, nor accept the love He so obviously offers by the historical fact of His death on the Cross and its Resurrection miracle, will be lost. 

Mostly, I have kept my anger to myself, driven it within; my fear I think has been more visible to those who know me, but a few have seen an outbreak of anger in public places. It has been rare, but it has happened, and seemed triggered by nothing. Oh, but it never has been nothing. It has been something the other cannot see. And when they have laughed,  or dismissed, to the extent they have seen, the determination to drive my heart behind the wall has increased away from everybody, and just in case, from God too, silly as that is. I haven't even realized it. That's what I mean. The retreat helped me see in a way I never have. I wouldn't recommend it to someone who hasn't first tried traditional therapy, and/or spiritual direction. I needed the preliminary insight. And I had insight up the wazoo. But it wasn't translating into a real change.

These days, since the retreat, I have noticed the moments that lead up to the feelings of fear and/or anger and their various components in a way I do not think I have before. I see that they defeat me and keep me from jumping the chasm and to God.  How exactly that happens, well, let's see from an example of yesterday.

I had some business to attend to that required me to mail a significant number of envelopes so that I could have tracking. I have a favorite small post office that is in an equally favorite tourist area. They are more efficient than the main post office nearby, and usually they are not terribly crowded because it is an odd spot for a post office. When I got there, there was just one person ahead and no one behind me. The lovely cashier was patient and kind as she began the painstaking weighing and printing of labels for each envelope, which was complicated by the fact that her new label printer was malfunctioning. Meanwhile, a line behind me had developed and I began to feel the general impatience of the gathering customers, which I certainly understood as I too have had to wait on such lines. My Spidey senses, the ones I developed as a young child, felt the seething annoyance not merely at having to wait, but that this person, me, was in the way. I felt the unfair pressure, but I also felt some guilt, or was it a sense of charity, I don't know. Perhaps it was both, as I have become especially aware of late of the reality of the wounds of others, but guilt in that I have never been sure when I have done something warranting remonstration or something that does not--a legacy of my early life. I asked the cashier if she could help some of the people that had quick needs, and one even was not that quick. At first she said no, because it would interrupt the momentum we had begun and the receipt process, then she said she was able to do it. So I let two individuals break into my task, which also created its own stress as I wanted to be careful and accurate. The context of the fallible labeler and the unhappy stares was an aggravating factor. I did not sense gratefulness from the first youngish woman, and sure enough though she said something to me as she finished, it was not "Thank You". The next was a man who needed to pick up some already paid for postcards. He said nothing as he passed me and left.  A third woman just walked up to the window, and I asked her politely I thought, I hope, whether what she was about to do would be a small task. She wanted to know why that was any of my concern. I explained it to her. She was displeased. Her husband thought that since I had a few envelopes left that this meant it would be fast and so I began to explain the situation, and by now, feeling anger at them, and at myself for having even attempted to be courteous, the woman accused me of raising my voice. Had I? I don't know. But I certainly was by now angry enough to as they huffed off. I had done nothing wrong. Right? So why did I feel like a bad little girl? So, apparently even when I am trying to do the right thing, I am doing the wrong thing? Oh, that is an old psychological ghost. You can imagine what it was like when as a prosecutor the other side inevitably threw out accusations about my doing my job and my motivations for doing it. Oh, in those earth bound situations, I have defended and will defend usually because it was my job to do so. I had an obligation to overcome my fear. I put it aside. I did not overcome it.   But I am never sure that I had a right to do it.  And so there was anger at the not knowing and the sense of potential repercussions. And as to a personal life--- not taking any chances with anyone, and that includes God. Oh, the power of transference and projection even beyond the bounds of the earth? Silly girl. But it limits, at least for me, both love and trust. They tell you in this retreat not to compare your wounds to that of anyone else. But let me tell you, I can't avoid it. My "wounds" are far less than many I have heard in my life's travels, and so there is also a bit of embarrassment that I haven't conquered fear, anxiety and anger that have tied me in knots, and kept me wary of man, and God. All of which implicates a pride that I can do it myself--even as I know God is there to offer His help. To reach out to Him, the God of the Universe, somehow is terrifying. It is a great risk even in the presence of faith, albeit it one that needs constant reinforcement. To trust and love God even in the presence of the very worst I fear. In the presence of the constant ambiguity of life. 

But, on the positive side, this time I saw what I was doing, that my first reaction was to withdraw, to ruminate, to avoid, to rage internally and to add another brick to the fortress (they talk about fortresses in the retreat) of my particular design. And this time, small thing that this was in the scheme of the harms and hurts of the universe, I looked to God. I didn't demand satisfaction from Him. I didn't demand that He answer my small and big questions.  I just asked Him to be with me.  And so, maybe one day, with a lot of prayer, with a lot of resort to the Sacraments, I will stop being parallel to Him. I will stop being afraid of suffering, large and small.  I will run into His open arms. I will see His hands and feet and side pierced and healed and will know I am safe. Resistance will be delightfully futile. 

 

Historical Perspective by Constantine Gochis

 Prescient for such a very short observational story. Dad was warning me about the state of the world for a very long time. I heard him. I even believed him. I didn't think it would come in my lifetime, though he said it would. This was written in June 2005.

   

        Woody Allen has added his insights to the general clamor.  Among other things he advises against putting too much stress on incidents such as the 9-11 attack.  He says that this and all other instances of man killing man must be viewed in historical perspective.  It has always been thus and thus it will alway be.

Of course, many other men have made similar statements. Old Joe Stalin for one. He is credited with the epigram, "the death of a single person is a tragedy; the death of millions is a statistic."  What consequence is the murder of a few thousand people in the history of human interactions?

I cannot quarrel with Woody.  I like his work.  I agree with him that what we are witnessing is nothing more than a repetition of history. Men do not change nor do the patterns they create. The machinations of governments are the same as they were when Israel sided with Assyria almost three thousand years ago and was wiped out by Babylon for making the "wrong" choice.  To coin a phrase--"Seems like Deja-vu all over again."

The history of empire can be traced to success in commerce and the development of weapons that make those aspects of opposing nations obsolete--the Egyptian and Persian chariots, the Greek Phalanx, the Roman Gladius (short sword), gun powder and now the hydrogen bomb.

Now this together with the suicide bomber forecasts an interesting dilemma.  The MAD doctrine (Mutually Assured Destruction) no longer restrains combatants.  One cannot localize and identify a dangerous enemy.  He can be anywhere among us, armed not only with ultimate weapons but with the mental pathology to use them though he himself dies.

And the world needs only the striking of the match to create a holocaust.  But surely, not all humans will die. And peace will return after the war as it has in the past.  The philosophers, historians and mountebanks will reflect on the millions wiped out, and dismiss the numbers as another phase in the history of mankind.  And as it was in the beginning the soothsayers will look to the future and propound prophesy as it has been before:

"And behold a pale horse: and he that sat upon him, his name was Death. And hell followed him. And power was given to him over the four parts of the earth, to kill with sword, with famine and with death and with the beasts of the earth." (Book of Revelation, chapter 6)

If Dad were alive, he'd be beyond apoplectic (if that is even a thing). He was pretty well already there in 20025, nearly 20 years ago. Today, not only can we not localize and identify a dangerous enemy, we are inviting them in and no one is allowed to object. Iran nearly has the bomb and we attribute logic to a nation that is rageful of the West. That Bible from which he quoted was held in little esteem two decades ago, and now it is considered less than comic book, though it describes us perfectly, and our faithlessness. And when the new worst comes, we will be surprised. Oh, well, I guess. 

They Were Real and Wonderful Days by Constantine Gochis

 We meet up with Dad's writing alter ego, Diogenes.

I am not always surprised to encounter by street bum friend in front of my house, but today I find him, ignoring my arrival, not eagerly solicitous for his periodic stipend, but sitting on an abandoned carton perusing intently a copy of People Magazine. It is held aloft so that I can easily read the headline:  "Journalist Hunter S. Thompson Kills Himself".

For those of you who do not know Diogenes, he is a classic bum who has been on my tab for years. His history extends from the heights of affluence to the nadir of penury.  Additionally, his sagacity has always been a source of knowledge fro me, sometimes surcease from the petty trials of life; hence, I always supply him with what he reveres most--spare change.

I interrupt his reverie, somewhat annoyed that he does not greet me. I hail him jovially, disguising my annoyance.

"What ho," I say, "What news from the Rialto?" I am confident in the knowledge that he is sufficiently erudite to know the source of the line from a Shakespeare play. He was--Diogenes I mean--a man of intelligence and education as well as a CEO in industry before his wife abandoned him for the love of a poetess, making a bum out of him, financially, as well as in his incarnate state.

Diogenes does not respond immediately.  He reaches into one of many plastic bags and produces a book and a copy of a newspaper review. I would say the review was annotated, but that is incorrect.  It was lined in black ink throughout.  The book is the late Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in San Francisco".  I am curious as to what distraction would divert Diogenes from his usual purpose of small change or an occasional dollar bill.

"You know," he says without preamble, "I am in San Francisco at the time Hunter writes about, but I never see or feel the glory the reviewer sings about, the Reformation he extols.  It is of course a hymn to a glorious era.  I grieve now that I had no visionary awareness, though there were intimations.  I am not a bum at this time, and whenever one of the faithful hands me a flower, I get the feeling I am somehow at the root of their naked poverty.  My guilt deepens; corporate evil at work. I feel opprobrium in the air.  It is true. The wealthy must do some reflection on the meaning of life, see the visions so talked about, when tripping--albeit in the argot of the gifted enfants du Paradis, loosely children of Paradise--'cool man, make love, not war."

Diogenes reads from the review of the glorious meeting between the author and the reviewer in those halcyon days.

"In March of 1968, armed with two LSD capsules, I got there about 9 p.m. Hunter drank beer crushing the empty cans and throwing them along with cigarette butts into the empty fireplace.  The fierceness with which he hurled the cans and flicked the butts punctuated his non-stop rage about politics and religion and society. . . Hunter's position was, 'get the bastards before they get you!'"

Diogenes continues.

"We went to the men's room and sat in the middle of the floor, facing each other. Delicately, I removed the capsule from my pocket and tried to open it so that the tiny granules would be equally divided.  But things were swimming around. The granules slipped out and fell on my sweater.  Hunter and I looked at each other and shrugged.  And then we started sucking on my sweater.  Hunter stopped for a moment and said, 'What if some stock broker swine comes in now?'"

I said, "Indeed Diogenes, that is poetry," though I felt he was putting me on. I took the page from the Diogenes and read further. The reviewer had a kind of apologetic conclusion.

"And yes, to some degree it does show that anything was possible then. I don't want to minimize our drug fueled epiphanies.  They were real, and they were sometimes wonderful.  It was ignoring that actions have consequences. It was our denigration of the straight.  But it was about betrayal, mine, Hunter's for the sake of protecting our precious trip."

I looked sadly at Diogenes.  Had he been beguiled by the evil one? He had always seemed, despite his travailes, a straight arrow.  I felt that despite my chagrin at his apparently new found liberalism, he should have some reward.  Accordingly I increased my donation.  But I had to know the why of his defection.

"Diogenes," I said to mitigate my sadness, "when you finish the book, may I borrow it?"

"I don't intend to read it," he responded quickly.

"Why then did you buy it, or at least find it?"

"Of course," he concluded, "so that I might burn it."

Terse. Laconic. To the point, as always.  

Next by Constantine Gochis

It is two days in a row that I have done some reviewing of my father's rather voluminous short short stories, and observations and have actually posted them. I found myself separating a few out that I will never post, because something is missing, a page or because of how badly dad typed, lines I cannot quite edit to clarity.  I have also separated out those in which he waxes, often interposing tales of mythology, on sex with a certain amount of frankness. Oh, nothing extreme, but despite the frenzied society's embrace of the most disgusting habits, they will remove or flag something that is harmless or true, and censor it. It is wildly inconsistent. But we are, alas, the victims of the hubris which generates the inconsistency.

And,  in other postings, sometimes my father's cynicism is just too much, albeit I completely understand it. So, I've put aside several stories that will not see the light of day on this site. I have considered destroying them, but really, some are quite good. Maybe someone clearing out my stuff after I have shuffled off this mortal coil will think them worthy of some public denouement.  I doubt it, though, because neither dad nor I have any particular cache, especially the cache of fame. Still, he could be another Vivian Maier, the late photographer, whose hoard made her famous after her death. I think he might like that. The following really short piece was typical of dad's travels in his neighborhood. In his way, using words, he did what Maier did with her photos--he captured the detail of the ordinary parts of real life. 

NEXT

We spend our days in anticipation of some event, sometimes routine, sometimes joyous or sad.  e are destined for a lifetime to await the next call from some umpire in the game of life, within our roster of destined events--next. . .

I am reflecting on this matter as I inch my way towards an overburdened bank cashier.  

It is always crowded and burdensome at the bank.  I miscalculated in that I forgot that social security checks would be distributed early.  There is, this month, an intervening weekend before the third day of the month, the official day of distribution.  Washington is ever solicitous on behalf of the senior citizen on that signal day of our golden years. 

I am so engrossed in this state of inconvenience that I do not hear the mellifluous bell tone that signals the availability of the next teller.  My reverie is broken by a rude and impatient "next in line!" on the loudspeaker by a stressed out voice.  The announcement is not for me. The ample lady ahead of me is NEXT. She, however, urges me forward.  I am familiar with the reason. She is waiting for a cashier who speaks Russian.

"Spasiba," I say and she smiles, revealing a series of alternately spaced gold teeth.

As the cashier ministers to my financial needs I look at the ever growing, snakelike file of walkers and canes. I hear the incomprehensible drone of new languages, as it must have been in the ancient city of Bab-El. I think, "Wherein O Maker of All Things, have we offended Thee again?"

It is no different at the Albertson Market where I must perform my next task of necessity.  I follow a lady bent almost into an inverted L, pushing her empty cart into the store.  There is more than the usual clamor and bedlam, more of the elderly maneuvering their metal prosthetic aids through the obstructed corridors of can laden shelves. But this is ordinary madness.  I am not prepared for what happens next.

An elderly man taps me on the shoulder.  He leas forward with a partially filled hand basket and says: "May I leave this a moment in your cart?"

He is also pushing a modified perambulator, one that carries a prostrate figure, covered snugly against inclemency, and immobile.  I would have thought her dead except for two bluish eyes that did not blink, yet betokened life.

"Was she looking," I thought, "at vistas beyond the scope of our vision, an incomprehensible dimension that might be next when we leave this world?

I did not ask any questions, but he answered the one I was thinking. "She's my mother. She's ninety-two."

I would have guessed she was older.  She had the appearance of a ancient cadaver excavated from a long abandoned tomb.

I motioned him to precede me in the checkout line.

As he pushed his charge forward I looked at the other customers.  No one was paying attention, even looking our way. Was this lack of curiosity, interest or concern, or was it whistling past the inevitability of our own mortality?

"You are a very kind gentleman," the man said in leaving.  I thought the accent was British.  Perhaps it was the way he emphasized "gentleman" that gave it a sense of class distinction.

"By the way," I said, "how old are you?"

"Sixty-seven," he replied.

I thought older.

"Next," called the sales clerk.

You may well ask. 

Mater Dolorosa by Constantine Gochis

The painstaking effort to put as many stories on my blog written by my father, continues, ever so slowly. I think by now, it is close to 100, and I cannot tell you how many more are, in my eyes, so good, so evocative of times and places in his life, that I still want to add. No matter. I will do what I can, when I can in the middle of distractions of (my) life.

There was a deep streak of cynicism in my father. And belief, especially in a religion, the one he was vouchsafed upon his birth, Greek Orthodoxy, and the one he was received into at age 85, Catholicism, the faith he conceded to me at the behest of my mother, was always resisted and always tinged with an unbeliever's sarcasm--at least to my mind. Did he become a Catholic because he believed? I will never know. Perhaps my late pastor and friend Monsignor George Parnassus had insight into that, and perhaps, since he received dad into the Church, he saw belief. I do know my father's practicality, and he always said that he wanted to make things "easier for" me. It was certainly easier to bury my father out of a parish and have him interred in the Holy Ground of a Catholic cemetery. Now that I am old(er) myself, and he has been gone over 16 years, I have realized how much he sought and achieved to make things easier for me. Because I see that now, in a way I did not (though if I really thought of it, was right in front of me) when I was young, I more than a little guilty that I often felt he did not hear what I felt I needed as a child, giving me entirely what he thought I needed. Now I see the overlap in the two, though I still think he often missed the point of my all too often objections to his parental style, which persisted right up until the day he died. In any case, this preface is prelude to a story that like him, circles religiosity, and critiques it, all at once, in a way that I often found a tad, shall I say it, dear dad, smug, spectating God and finding Him wanting. I suppose that is part of what doubt is.  And the realities of the world do engender doubt. 

    MATER DOLOROSA

If someone asks me where I am going, I do not know; and yet it cannot be by pure accident that I find myself in the old neighborhood.  Today it is the feast of the Madonna, Our Lady of Mount Carmel.  It is very festive, but not like in the days of my memory. Long ago the streets are lined with the stands of the peddlers.  One buys the watery but ice-cold lemon sherbert, the inevitable pizza.  There are the stalls that stock the disembodied facsimiles of arms, hands and other body parts, which the faithful keep in memory to the Saints' ordeals of penitence.  One sees again the massive candles that accompany the sculptured effigies of the Madonna and a pantheon of those saints.  Yes, it is very festive, but not like in the days of my youth.

How strange. You walk for hours along familiar streets searching for lost memories, and the years impose themselves, initially inexorably resistant, then suddenly a smile, a face like one you used to know, an old familiar air, a simple cooking aroma. 

Yes, this is the house.  It is the same, though perhaps a little shabbier.  Though it is hot outside, the halls are cool and dank  I would like to walk to the top floor, but the years weigh heavily on me.  Besides, I know what I will find, two doors heavily paned with frosted glass that face each other, silent guardians against the probing eyes of memory.  I hesitate. I turn to go, but the ghosts of other days, once aroused, do not return easily to their rest. Instinctively, my hand goes to the knob. "How futile," I think.  These are different days, and other unfamiliar lives abide here.  I merely stand and think how when I was very young. . .

Aunt Carmela was my favorite aunt.  She rarely smiled, but I was sure she was glad to see me whenever I called.  It was always the same.  She would go to her improvised cupboard behind print cloth suspended by a string, for three or four cookies.  Later, I would be allowed access to the player piano in that perpetually shaded room, where I would pump the pedals, my legs barely long enough to reach them.  Atop the piano three votive candles in little red cups illuminated three photographs casting eerie shadows in the semi-darkness.

Sometimes, I would sense her presence behind me, as I played.  She would be staring, tearfully, at the memorial photographs of her three dead children, two girls, by scarlet fever and her first son, by drowning.  The piano was his.  The daring devil may care, Tony, suffered a cramp when he tried to dive under a Hudson River ferry and failed.  Only Nino was left, her last child.  Young as I was, I knew she listened perpetually for any sound, any signal that he was coming home. He was as daring as his brother, unpredictable in his comings and goings, but when he did appear, though she did not smile, her face illuminated with joy.

It is strange that this sad house was the family gathering place on the day of the Madonna.  

The Church was only a few blocks from my aunt's house.  Each year, she hosted the family for the celebration, always dressed in forbidding black, never smiling and rarely participating in the ceremonies.

Yet, there was always laughter, and food and wine, and cookies in mounds--unprotected from the natural avarice of children. Teresa, my beautiful cousin from across the hall would dance the Tarantella with Nino, and all of us would clap our hands to the tempo of the usic.  Teresa would be flushed and happy, and everyone would remark on how well they danced together.  The children would repair to the fire escape, secured by sturdy planks, to observe the activity five stories below, watching the hydrogen filled balloons that escaped unwary hands.

Downstairs, the penitents continued their procession toward the Church, some crawling on hands and knees in supplication or in hope of a miracle.  Others walked barefoot, rosaries in hand, intoning prayers, interspersed with mutterings of self-castigation. But these things were far from us.  Here, there was food and drink and family and love, and looking down we could feel what God said at Creation, "It is good!"

The door on the right opens suddenly.  I am startled.  The face is unfamiliar, but looks very much like one I would expect, a ubiquitous face, lined, one that has known much of pain.  It is like my aunt's face, perhaps the last of generations, bound, like Prometheus, by the chains of custom and taboo.

I turn to go, but cannot.  There are voices from the past that intrude themselves. They seem to be coming from the landing that leads to the roof. The voices are familiar, insistent, hushed, afraid, uttering forbidden words of love. Cousins. Unmarried. "Jesu misericordia!" 

How hard it is to trace one's memory to that day of epiphany, when childhood innocence becomes disillusion.

There was music and laughter, and gallons of wine at the last party. There were trays of pastry, but one did not feel like having one more cookie.  Somehow the laughter did not hide the pain in eyes that did not smile.  Teresa, my beautiful cousin from across the hall did not dance with Nino. They sat as if a thousand miles apart.  I think of a phrase, "And for the first time they knew that they were naked in each other's presence."  So it must have been in that primeval beginning.  As I watched other eyes watched too.  Hate exploded.  A gallon of red wine came crashing down.  There was a flash of steel and ino fell, and rich red blood mingled with thick red wine.

A memory remains.  A face of abject, wordless sorrow.  It is her face, the face eternal of the Mater Dolorosa.  "There stood by the cross of Jesus, His mother. "

We must allow these restless ghosts to wander.  They are now beyond our compassion.  Downstairs, there are crowds and joy and laughter, and questions.  The festa of the Madonna del Carmine is at its height.