Unmasked Thoughts

Picture by Djinna Gochis. 

There are a few things that I am thinking about today related to the now nearly six month restrictions nationally, and especially here in California. They are in no particular order. But they reflect, to my mind, a society gone amok, and one that is making its own citizens go mad in the name of public health and safety. 

I was in Home Depot today picking up some household cleaners and Spackle for a hole I made in my bedroom wall while removing a framed painting. A man in the elevator was wearing a black "mask" that looked more like it hung on a curtain rod, as it left this large gap between his mouth and his chin and regions where droplets could readily fall. Wouldn't have mattered to me at all, except that when I wore the far more full covering of a plastic shield that went below my chin, I was told that it was unacceptable. Also, lots of people are wearing paper disposable masks. But when I was rejected for wearing my plastic shield, I was told only fabric masks were acceptable. More and more people are wearing those disposable masks. My plastic shield is still considered insufficient. After an exhaustive experimentation with pretty much every kind of mask, I have finally resigned to the disposable mask, which despite its failure to be fabric, is accepted. I have also resigned myself to the daily face outbreaks caused by the masks of whatever variety. And the fact that breathing still is a chore while wearing any of them. 

Oh, and Home Depot was very crowded, and I doubt there was much social distancing, no matter how many signs exhorted the patrons. 

And the street is also crowded--with tents of the homeless that have exploded in the last six months. The once lauded Dream Factory that was Hollywood is now the center of waste management. All that we restricted masked passersby can do is to quickly pass the disease ridden detritus, perhaps to give (contactless,of course) a dollar or two to the man conducting an imaginary orchestra as he lay in his fraying belongings. But such is the residual freedom of America, to be mentally ill, sick, destitute, and drug addicted on the streets. 

Did Kamala Harris confirm what Mr. Biden said? I thought she did. That is, we will all be mandated to wear masks for at least three months once she and Mr. Biden are elected? That would be three months from JANUARY 2021. So expect to be wearing facial protection until at least April 2021. 

The Governor has this multi-tiered confusing plan for the reopening (and if warranted, the reclosing) of various businesses in different counties, based on color coding of the alleged ravages of the virus. My pastor said on Sunday that he would keep us all posted of where Churches fit into this panoply of public health protections. 

Said the Governor, he is extending the stay at home orders. And Newsom said the new system is “stringent and slow,” meaning that we are talking as one article I read said, something like we are in it for the "long haul".  

So what has got me so irked today? That the CDC reported only 6 percent of the deaths were Covid only and the balance were those with over 2 co-morbidities. Now, I see already that this is being disputed and re-interpreted, so as usual, there is no real consensus, though we are supposedly "following the science". 

I do not understand what this society is doing. Right now, traffic is back. People are out. Social distancing in the permitted arenas is virtually non-existent, but more people are wearing masks (not necessarily clean or property placed, but visually present). But business is still being devastated. Church going is restricted. 

People are still dying of things like Heart disease (647,457 in 2017), and accidents (169,936 in 2017) and a myriad of every darn thing living makes fragile human beings heir to, and masks are the sine qua non of our daily life in the United States. Add to the things being inflicted on the masked population--a level of pressure that is upping the suicide rate, and likely commitments to mental institutions. 

When the history of the once United States is written, the year 2020 will no doubt show itself to have been the watermark for its final fall. And the people with big brains of the various parallel universes which some scientists insist exist will laugh at the holographs of silly 21st Century barbarians in fashionable masks.

But the good news today, at least for unimportant me. I got a free bottle of hand sanitizer because I spent some target amount at Staples. I wonder if it will help the new zit that is developing on my face? But first, I better check the ingredients on the sanitizer. Might not be . . . .safe. And safety is the highest virtue. 

Pride Goeth Before A Fall

I nearly hesitate in presenting this short short story by my father. It is very cynical and its cynicism is not assisted by the invocation of God. My father was, for years, a non-practicing Greek Orthodox. He had agreed to allow my mother, a non-practicing Catholic, to raise me as a Catholic. I left for a while and came back to the faith, and remain with it to this day. But he always hovered around religion, and participated on the peripheries with me when I attended my parish activities, even occasionally attending a service so that "I can hear you read." I have been a lector for many years. He met my pastor, similar to him in that both had Greek fathers, who ruled the roost. And my pastor said, "Leave him alone" when it came to any consideration of belief or conversion. And so I did, and went about my business religiously speaking. The only difference between my father and me regarding cynicism, which I share with him in abundance, is that I battled mine inside the faith. He battled his, like the protagonist of this story, outside of it. I will have more comments after you read this gloomy short which was written in the 1990s, as the Enron scandal was in full bloom. What was Enron? It was an energy supplier and it became a trader in the market of commodities. The machinations of the company were originally praised as creative, and I am a market idiot, so I cannot really understand what happened but when the dot come market collapsed, whatever the machinations in accounting for profit and loss, making the company look more profitable than it actually was, until the actual losses could no longer be hidden. Lots of people got charged ultimately for insider trading and fraud and some of them ended up in jail. Lots of people thought this was justice because of the damage likely done to investors who didn't have money to spare. But some people felt that there was an unreasonable inequity in punishing this type of crime so assiduously while coddling those who do physical harm to others in comparison. When I was a prosecutor at the State Bar of California, attorneys who got into these kind of "white collar" transgressions would remonstrate with me in what they considered my ivory tower (though I had worked for people much like them in my early career and was very familiar with the rationales) because "everyone did" what they were often caught in doing. They didn't raise the bigger issues with me as does this prisoner of the short story raise with the minister/probation officer in the exchange of letters. My father was a thinker, not as famous as thinkers of the past or the future, but a thinker he always was. He needed, as so many of us do, proof of absolute justice that will never be found on this earth. And not finding it, like many thinkers, he railed. 

**********************************************************************************

PRIDE GOETH BEFORE A FALL

The following may be a true story.  I discovered the text folded neatly within the page of a volume I bought at a yard sale.  It consisted of a series of letters between a convict and his parole officer and spiritual advisor.  I thought it a particularly interesting exchange in view of the Enron situation--a morality tale for our times.

Dear Reverend John:

Please forgive the familiarity of the salutation.  After all, your name is John.  I will admit that the use of the word, "dear" may be excessive in view of our mandated association.  Please accept it in your most liberal interpretation of salutations.

On the other hand, you do deserve some deference in view of your interest in my REHABILITATION, my continued education and the invaluable assistance you have given me over the past five years.  I entered this hallowed institution a crass, uneducated, materialistic felon. I am now an erudite criminal, with five more years to go--though perhaps a probation will be called for I continue to hope. I can read with a modicum of comprehension, something beter than the daily stock quotations.

I have just completed two of your more recent contributions, Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, by this guy Dostoevsky.  They are both dismal narrations by a man who was half afraid there might be a God, in the way that Hamleet was restrained by the same phobia.  I did not get the message that crime does not pay. What comes through to me is that there are crimes and there are crimes-the phenomenon of equivalence. When I borrowed a few hundred thousand rubles from my clients, I did not tap some unwary person on the noggin or murder a close relative for his holdings.  I performed an accepted business maneuver--a daily occurrence in the investment field, which simply required, for a short period, sufficient capital to cover an imbalance in accounting.

Think about it.  If the stock had gone up the next day instead of down, I would have been a milionaire and a hero, instead of a patsy for an ambitious district attorney.

Padre, you are taking a chance with my sense of morality and ethics with non-relevant musings by a morose Russian.  The bad guy kills himself not because of his sin against humanity and God but because he cannot even trust the anti-God or the secular satainic ministry either.  His comfortable world was shattered.  If you can't trust God or the Devil, where can you look in this dog eat dog world?

In a revealing passage of Dostoevsky's book, Christ, who has reappeared suddenly on earth is dragged before a Grand Inquisitor.  He is castigaged for his inopportune incarnation.  "Get thee hence," he is told, though not in those words, else, "We will crucify you again."

The Grand Inquisitor likes the world the way it is and needs no God to offer interference, however authentic He may be. He is urged not to meddle in a successful consortium of prelates, and the secular acolytes of a compliant government, a consortium which will abase itself to the blandishment of either.

I am convinced I was better off as a partially educated con man.  The doors you have opened for me are not portals to mercy and goodness, the ultimate surcease promised by some God merchants and withheld by others, soem judges and those who interpret the law as it is dictated to them.  It is an illusion.

In what y fellow inmates refer to as "stir", there is an underground culture of right and wrong.  WE are like a species suddenly discovered in soe subterranean depth that does not respond to the xternal forces of life.  In this Plutonic underworld, we are anomalies with our own rules of existence and death--and especially Justice.

This last is not the traditional blindfolded lady with the pendant scales.  More often, she peers beneatha bandaged eye and permits the scale to tip one way or the other.

With Great Reverence,

Federico Speranza

Dear Federico:

I am saddend by your cynicism.  Your trials are half over.  You are no longer the man who entered those stone pillared gates five years ago.  I see in your letters words that tell me His Light has indeed penetrated your heart. Yes, your sentence was severe. Yes, ore grievous transgressions escape the notice of the law, but this can only be a sign of God's Infinite Wisdom at work.  Shall you rail against the Almighty? Remember how He chastised Job for questioning His unknowable purpose? Patience my son. 

Reverend John Burton

Esteemed Reverend:

"What news, O Pastor of the Damned, you ask?"

Samantha, my wife, has relocated.  She has taken the children to an unknown location.  There were tear stains in her letter.  It is out of love for me and for our three daughters, she said. They will no longer be encumbered with the name of a criminal.

Suggest, dear Reverend, a passage from the God book to palliate my pain.  Tell me about the wisdom of the Eternal Father, and the forgiveness that awaits me when I am dead.

Help me to curb my rage, to repress my curses against the secular and the Divine. I will grow a beard and rend my clothes and rail against the immutable tempest of the cursed maelstrom of life, like that idiot King Lear, "What would he do had he the motive and the cue for passion that I have?" His need was only Pride and the ego disaffections of a madman.

Reverend Father, spare me your parables. There is nothing outside these walls that is preferable to my solitary cell.  Like that legendary king, I had a wife who loved me, three daughters and a kingdom within my grasp.  Now, there is only the abyss.

********************************************************************************

Nothing can assuage such pain if we are unwilling. Federico, it could be argued, is looking into an abyss of his own making, even if that conduct was arguably not as bad as that of someone who escaped humanity's imperfect justice. He blames all on God, but denies his own free will. Of course, we are never sure what part of our will is free and what part mere chance--or manipulation.

But as to my father. Some years after he wrote this story, at the age of 85, he called me on the telephone late into the evening, after dinner and no doubt a few glasses of wine, and announced he was going to become a Catholic. My own genetically inherited cynicism was alerted when the only clear utterance of the sudden decision was "It will make it easier for you." I would ever have to speculate what would be easier for me. The burial after he died? He could thus be buried in a Catholic Ceremony and interred in a Catholic Cemetery. But if he did it only for that reason, he could easily have eschewed attending Mass after he was received into the Church. Instead he became a regular Sunday attendee, an usher and a Communicant. And while it was not a Pauline conversion--blinding and of auditory dramatics--it brought him inside, where there is, again I can only say, arguably, as many will disagree, the Grace to look into the abyss, and think, even at the very periphery of mind and soul, that God will indeed make sense out of it all. 

After all, it was my non-practicing Greek Orthodox father, and my non-practicing Catholic mother, who put me on the path of Catholicism. That somehow does not seem to have been any accident. There is a phrase that seems to apply here, "Felix Culpa". Happy fault.

Taj Mahal by Constantine Gochis

 Time for another Constantine Story!!!!

Taj Mahal

She stood, barely taller than the wrought iron fence that shields the elderly from the world they have eschewed.  Others lolled around umbrella shaded tables that fronted the Golden Years Retirement Hotel. Some fed the omnipresent fat pigeons, others dozed under a friendly sun.  There remained only the call that would announce the evening meal.

There was nothing passive about her.  She wore an air that denied capitulation.  A coquettish hat crowned an ermine collared jacket of yesteryear.  She held gloves that could not ever fit over her multi-ringed fingers.  I had the feeling that all her accessories had to match.

"Hello there!" she called out, as I was passing.  "What's your name?"

I approached the fence for a closer look at this little lady dressed to go somewhere.

"My name is Anita," she said extending her hand.  I took it gingerly, lest the slightest pressure on the multi-ringed fingers cause her injury.

"I was a dancer once", she announced. "I danced at the Taj Mahal."

"In Agra, where the Sultan built a temple to his beloved?  How seductive", I said.

"Not that Taj Mahal. Not India. New Jersey, where they had all those casinos, and the great boardwalk."

"You mean ballroom?"

"Yes. I danced professionally with my husband. He left me a year and a half ago."

"He abandoned you for another lady?" I asked impishly.

"No, he died."

Departing the realm is not unexpected in these environs, I thought.

"We danced everywhere, but we were a big hit in the Taj Mahal."

She raised her arms and made a respectable pirouette.

She was wearing very high heels but she came to a graceful fianle and smiled, charmingly and professionally.

"You know," she said, "there is dancing on Melrose Avenue."

I know of no cabarets that feature dancing on Melrose Avenue.

"Really?" I asked, my tone suggesting my doubt.

"Really. It's on Melrose Avenue. Not far. I went there once, but it's no Taj Mahal."

She is right. It is not a cabaret.  It is a senior center. 

A local newspaper advertises dancing from 12 noon to 2 p.m. every Saturday afternoon.  Indeed, not a Taj Mahal.

"Let's go dancing," she said suddenly.

I was surprised.  I did not know how to answer tactfully.

"Will you drive? I do not have a car," I said. I knew full well she could not.

She was clearly disappointed.

"Never mind," I said. "We can return in our imaginations and dream of the Taj Mahals of our glorious yesterdays."

She extended her ringed hand.

I brushed it with a kiss.  

Acceptable Violations

There are currently three requirements in some stores, in no particular order. One is that even if you are 105 and look like you are on death's door, you have to show ID to buy alcohol. This is apparently the solution to having to deal with kids under 21 who seek to buy alcohol. Don't enforce against them or people who sell to them. Simply inconvenience everyone by creating rules that make no sense. The second is "no dogs allowed, unless they are service dogs". I suppose the idea is that your pet should not be around food or other perishables, and that there are people who are allergic to dogs who shop in them. Now, I am a big animal person, so I don't care about that one particularly, but I completely am on board with it because it has clear logic and reasonableness.  The third, of course, is the wearing of masks in order to "flatten the curve" of the Corona Virus. Now, if you are in a plane, right next to someone, crushed in like a proverbial sardine, you CAN take off the mask to have a snack. If you are at a restaurant that has outdoor seating, you must wear the mask while standing at your table, or walking through the restaurant, but you can eat, talk and breathe freely at your table, as long as you are sitting. If you are homeless in Los Angeles, whether or not you actually wear a mask, you can live, eat, and poop on the street while I am passing by fully garbed and in danger of fine and ample shaming. 

Joe Biden, apparently thinking he is already President, opined that "we" should be wearing masks for at least three more months. Is that three months starting now? Or is it three months from the time that Kamala is sworn in? Or three months that becomes forever? 

Well, of course, we can't flatten the curve. We can and probably have (unless you believe the screamers on national media) flattened this one, but they are 80 or so days shy from admitting it, depending on who becomes the President. If Kamajoe is the winner, then it will be over and life will return to its progressive bliss. If the Orangeman wins it will remain with us for the NEXT four years. And anyway, no matter who wins, after all, there are plenty of diseases out there affecting the human race that probably require life long mask wearing, per the folk who "follow the science". 

I digress, as I am wont to do. What got me started today? Well, it is a particularly hot day in Los Angeles, and I had to visit the UPS store for a friend, and thus I had to wear a mask. In fact, a young, trendy woman came in without one, and was immediately given the appropriate remonstration. She had a bandanna with her--a fresh new one she was clearly hoping that she would not be required to don--and she complied, with that air of youthful contempt which is so lovely to behold in the millenials and zoomers. I could barely breath, but it was only for a few minutes. My next stop was the local monster drug and sundry store. As I wended my way through the aisles I saw three customers, masked because otherwise they would be tossed out, with their respective dogs. None had anything indicating that they were service dogs. I got to the counter to pay for my goods, which included, two large cans of beer.

I would have said nothing about the inconsistencies on display in the enforcement of the rules du jour. But then she asked for my identification so that I would be permitted to take those two cans of beer. 

I made my complaint. Why are you allowing people in here with their dogs, but requiring me to wear a mask and to be carded? She has surely heard versions of this lament before, and dutifully gave me a number to call with my fruitless objections. 

Right now, it is approved progressive behavior to have your dogs in stores. They don't feel threatened by any public health consequences. Their politicians are in control. And woe betide any poor store keep who tries to point out that it is a rule. It is also progressive ideology that I don't have to present ID to vote, but at nearly 70 I must present some to buy alcohol.  And it is a matter of panic if I don't wear a mask in a store. It doesn't have to be clean or otherwise useful. A bandanna is useless but approved. I have seen people with shirts pulled up over their faces. Approved. A plastic face mask is not acceptable. 

What really makes me mad, I realize? I lack the courage to violate openly, like so many people, some I agree with, some I do not. 

Dennis Prager, who is making waves against progressive tyranny and thus is being royally attacked in an effort to silence him, has asked the logical question that causes hysteria in the left, "When will it be safe for us to go without masks?"  Well, of course, the answer which no one is willing to give because then people might wake up to the fact that they are being primed for the next great restriction, is "NEVER".  It will never be safe. We can't be safe. We are temporary creatures.We get sick. We die. We die from eating. We die from drinking. We die from everything under the sun and so far, there is no stopping it. We were told it was only temporary, this wearing of masks. We are now in the sixth month. 

So it is not about safety. It never was about safety. Otherwise having a dog in the grocery store would not be allowed. But in the course of brainwashing and remaking modern man who used to be free, it is an acceptable violation. Until it's not. 

The most frightening thing, though, is that soon it will not be an acceptable violation to object to all of these inconsistencies and arbitrary rules. It won't be enough to comply. You will have to enjoy it or be punished. Feel free, say I am wearing a tin foil hat. And pretend past history can't become present history. 

POSTSCRIPTUM, AUGUST 18, 2020

Today, I heard the good news from California's public health spokesperson that the number of deaths and hospitalizations is down 37 percent and that five of six goals have been met but people must continue to wear their masks and avoid congregating. They should also stay home while conserving energy in the current heat wave or go to State approved cooling centers. So, the curve has been flattened? No? It must be eradicated? Wanna bet that masks will remain the order of the day? You know, that "new normal" of the aptly misnamed Open Society? 

Susan Sontag: The Defacer of Books. Good for Her.

As the confinement of coronavirus continues into a fifth month, I have watched a great number of documentaries, the latest NetFlix's two parter on Sinatra. But just before that I watched one about a writer I knew of, but knew little about. She came of age about twenty years before I was born, and she was I probably knew vaguely, an intellectual force of the Counterculture as it developed and matured in the 1950s and 1960s. And, of course, she was a renowed activist. As all good activists do, she wrote about, among other things, sex, camp (not the Boy Scout kind, but rather the joys of things of bad taste and ironic vulgarity), human pain and the evils of the United States. She passed away in 2004 at the age of 71. 

At the program's conclusion, I was glad to have learned of her. I think I would like to read one or two of her essays or non-fiction, but it was clear she and I would be on opposite ends of the political divide, then, and now. Still, I went on line to read a little more about her, in particular, to indulge my curiosity about her relationship with her son, David Reiff, who was born when she was only 19 years old. In her countercultural pursuits she gave up her rights to him, but ultimately they had a relationship, and he was very much present for the difficult death she endured. It was, let's say, as most parent child relationships are, complicated. 

Then I ran across an article, the name of which I no longer remember by a critic or commentator whose name I no longer remember. In passing, the author said that he had learned Sontag underlined the books she read. He opined that this habit suggested the reader was not attentive. But then he absolved her, sort of because he noted that for her, it worked. 

Her intellectualism, thus, as I interpret the comment, was shall we say, marred, by this plebian habit. 

It is the only thing that I have in common with her. Since I am neither famous, nor an activist (unless one can be an activist on behalf of conservative values, but I am guessing that is forbidden), the fact that it works for me to underline the books I possess, is irrelevant. But that little thread of commonality between me and Ms. Sontag, made me like her, a lot. 

I would never underline a First Edition. I think I might have one, given to me by an aunt, and nobody is going to want it, "Gone With the Wind" and it is on the secular index of banned or soon to be banned books. But it wouldn't be the kind of book I'd underline anyway. It is fiction. When it came to disposing of books for a couple of people for whom I cleared out apartments, I found that nobody seemed to want them. I remember going to every bookstore in Los Angeles to try to sell the books, and you were lucky you would get one dollar for a tome purchased for 30 dollars. Even libraries didn't seem to want them. So what harm in underlining before they ended up in a garbage skiff? 

As for me, I underline non-fiction, biographies, philosophy, theology. Notwithstanding the opinion of the Sontag commentator, it makes me a more attentive reader. I make little notes. I know that for one reason or another, I will go back to the passage I found meaningful. Attentive though I am, I have not got a computer memory.

So probably a majority of the books you see in this dining room library have my mark. 

And since most of my books, if not all, will end up in a garbage truck after my demise, why is the habit of marking them an act of lese majeste in the minds of some thinkers, though of course, Ms. Sontag got a pass? 

As for me, since I do sometimes buy used books, I am happy to see markings, a name, some little note. It connects me to the person. I tend to feel about having underlined or notated books that belonged to others as did the writer of one of my favorite books (and it is fiction) and movies, 84 Charing Cross Road, Helene Hanff. She said:

“I love inscriptions on flyleaves and notes in margins, I like the comradely sense of turning pages someone else turned, and reading passages someone long gone has called my attention to.”

It is kind of the feeling that I had when I was in Pompeii, or Jerusalem, where you can see the once used fountain, or once used item of ritual. It is why I like photographs of other people, even strangers. It is this incredible thread between the past and the present and the future, here on earth. 

So Ms. Sontag, you marked your books. Good for you!