Thanksgiving by Constantine Gochis

 

So. Back to Dad stories. Well, at least this one. I am always amazed at how cynical Dad was. I don't know why exactly, because I was exposed to his disposition of it for 50 years of my life. I think perhaps it is a matter of incongruity because he rather surprised me by converting to Catholicism at age 85. This suggests a faith in Providence a story like this would gainsay. On the other hand, as a practicing Catholic myself, I understand the cynicism. It's hard to avoid with the abundance of insanity thrust upon us fragile humans by other humans who think they are invulnerable to death and the consequence of hell. Cognitive dissonance is a regular experience in modern times. 

I cannot say that I recall a particularly memorable Thanksgiving.

True, I have attended my share of these events and hosted many. If I must expand about these, some were worthy of a Roman banquet and others dull to disastrous at best.

Perhaps I misunderstand the theme proposed by our mentor for this week's writing exercise. I do not think it called for a recapitulation of exciting table talk. I thought, peraps, there may have been an inference that the spirit of the holiday called for some reflection on a meaning other than the pleasures of gatronomy.

"Like what?" as Woody Allen is likely to say i one of his film monologues.

"Well," as he might reply, "Like an expression of gratitude received, a sense of some metaphysical interposition in our lives to interrupt the ordinary banality of every day living."

"Like the non-intervening God of your movie, 'Crimes and Misdemeanors?"

"O.K. so He don't go to Thanksgiving parties. Maybe he prefers the aroma of roasting lamb instead, certainly more material than the unintelligible mumblings of sated party goers."

I would then ask, "Who's to thank?"  Maybe the friendly Indians who supplied the Plymouth colonists with a spate of turkeys, thereby establishing our national predilection for this friendly but unwary bird as a meat course for this fete?

It would have been fun to discuss this matter further with Woody, but I could not conjure his presence for more dialogue.  I bethought myself of my street bum friend Diogenes who was sure to accost me soon for his regular periodic stipend of spare change.  I expect he was about due to find himelf, by pure chance, in the environs of my apartment.  IT is suspeiciously coincidental that he times his appearances to when I am returning from a shopping tour with bulging plastic bags. I am prone to give him some items from the largesse.

His expected appearance, as I predicted, was consonant with my needs for some counsel on the subject of Thabnksgiving.  I must note here that Diogenes is a man of surprising erudition. He was not, in fact, always a bum. Rather, he occupied the apogee of economic success and was suddenly hurled into the depths of bum hood by love.

At this point, some description of Diogenes is called for: He has a full head of disoriented graying hair, and a full, similarly untended beard.  He carries a long staff that was once the handle of a push-broom. If I were recasting for the remake of the film, "The Ten Commandments" he would be my Moses--though he has more the tragic quality of John the Baptist.

For those of you who eschew Biblical references, his severed head, I mean John the Baptist, was an expression of gratitude to Salome for her celebrated dance and more pertinently, her later rendezvous with a grateful Herod.

Without further exploration of meaning, let us say that her gratitude was better than turkey.

Diogenes was expressing great interest in the contents of my shopping bags.

"Maybe you got something I could eat raw?" he questioned.

I gave him several ears of corn. He eats corn raw and is known to eat raw potatoes.

"Diogenes," I said, without preamble, "have you had any memorable Thanksgiving holidays?"

"One," he answered without hesitation. "It was the year my wife Seraphina abandoned me as we were on a cruise on the Mediterranean.  She fell in love with poetry and a poetess."

"Seriously, Diogenes," I offered, "Aren't you scheduled for one of those spectacular full course meals at a homeless center, you know for one dollar and fifty seven cents. I bought ten of these for bums like you I don't even know."

"You might have deposited the one dollar and fifty seven cents to a more worthy cause, like me." Diogenes opined.

"I generally avoid those festivals unless times are particularly hard.  The food isn't bad, but usually some guy preaches at ou about salvation and you are reminded there is an obligation to thank someone for the meal.  This causes me much mental distress and a bout with dyspepsia." 

"Do you not think that the colonists in Plymouth gave thanks for their bounty to a higher being?" I asked.

"I thought, " Diogenes responded,  "this might be true when I attended a parochial elementary school.  When I hit the publi ones, the teachers suggested this was a lot of mythology propounded by the gun lobby, and those who wanted to destroy the separation of Church and State.  If I am not mistaken, I think they included the tobacco executives and Republicans."

"By the way," he added, "would you have a spare cigarette and another quarter, for which I will bestow everlasting gratitude upon you, in the best tradition of the season."

I felt this was a modest request.  When I confer with Diogenes, it is a learning experience. In addition to the wisdom he exudes, he is imbued with a huge store of "chutzpah".

"Listen," he said as he departed. "It's all political.  Republian Presidents name a date and the Democrats filibuster. It's all a question of what is or not.  For the less contentious like me, it is best to be less confrontational about matters that have no visible effect one way or the other. If you have to--look upward as if in devotion and take on your most pious expression.  Every guy who donates one dollar and fifty cents, once a year, expects some visible proof of gratitude.

As he departed, I had to reconsider casting him as Moses or John the Baptist. Perhaps the role of Mephistopheles or Faust would be more appropriate--after he was cleaned up and combed, of course.

How sad. Is this all there is? Well, in the meantime, there's a good dinner in the offing. I shall be a guest in sumptious surroundings.  I will bring a bottle of wine I prefer. It's best to be prepared since if there is a Providence that guides these things, it makes only occasional appearances, and these can be attributed to mathematical chance--lousy odds but its the best we got.

It is the Season to Be Merry by Constantine Gochis

 I am home, indefinitely, as the crie du jour goes into the land once again, "Be Afraid, be very Afraid!" and no one seems able to avoid someone positive for Covid. A friend I saw last week was/is positive. I am, alas, a woefully fearful human being who knows in the depth of her being that the last two years have been an orchestrated use of an opportunity in the form of one of the many viruses and dangers that exist around us. Still, overwhelming fear means she cannot take the smallest chance that she might be responsible for the possibility that someone she has come into contact with is felled. Clearly whether one is vaccinated or not is irrelevant to the need to take basically the same scrupulous steps to prevent either sickness or death. This is particularly distressing in that sickness and death are inevitable no matter that in this one instance it MIGHT be held off. It may well come to the mind of one of our saavy politicians that, in fact, except for them in the pursuit of their duties and of course, the exceptions for their recreational needs, the rest of us should never be in contact with another human being because we are, walking germ sticks and are always likely to harm another. 

Be that as it may, I am here and I have plenty of time to add Dad's stories and observations. This was written circa 2001, after the murders at the World Trade Center. As you know, in more recent, enlightened years, we were told by a Congresswoman who was about 8 at the time the destruction happened, that "some people did something." Politifact said her comments had to be taken in context. I read the context. The description of the event is not changed by the context, in my opinion, if my opinion be allowed, as may not be the case. If my father is able to hear me, or even care in that he has met God and that trumps all earthly concerns, I think he would tell me that he is glad that he is dead, and reserves compassion for me, his daughter, who is living through the hell on earth courtesy of the diabolical leaders and their minions of the mass media and the universities.

The observations were written, apparently, around Christmas, 2001, because the title of the piece is "It is the Season to Be Merry".

Andy Rooney, of the CBS Magazine Show, Sixty Minutes, has read the Koran.I suspect he digested this monumental work in less than sixty minutes. Andy is a quick study.

He read his dissertation on that tome, and interpreted the liturgies of the West in less than five minutes.  I do not wish to critique his theology.  Suffice it to say that I suspect Rooney is another disenchanted Catholic who was kicked in the ass by a nun or an exasperated brother in an elementary school.  Probably with justification.

The content of the program featured two turncoats. The first was an FBI double agent whose twenty years of spying for the Soviets amounted to calumny and deceit beyond the metaphysical boundaries of Hell:  Death, sexual perversion, treason, among his lesser transgressions, which were legion.

The other, Senator Jeffors, who has achieved historical immortality by deceiving his supporters who elected him to his representative status, as well as the country, by an example of political chicanery unparalleled in two centuries. This pebble in a field of boulders gave leadership of the Senate to the political party whose obsession is oriented to the capture of Congress, even if it means damage to the defense of the country and the destruction of the economy as an added bonus.

His change of allegiance has brought the reign of senatorial leadership in the incarantion of Senator Daschle. This sombre, unsmiling postulant for hte Presidency, has hugged the current President in public and has then unleashed the dagger of obstruction in a campaign of calumny.  His acolytes fill the media with obsequious eulogies for George W, tempered by lies and deceitful allusions.  There is always the popular vote the Supreme Court intervention. The Supreme Court is only valid to the cultist Democrats when it refers to Roe v. Wade. 

The call has gone out to the faithful, "We need a new Gingrich!" The odds on favorite is Ashcroft, a prime choice for demonization, but he holds an eighty percent popularity rating among the unwashed.

Still, it is a dangerous war and surely Bush will stumble, and the economy will go bad and the mantra can be revitalized, "It's the economy stupid." It served to disestablish the father.  And will surely do in the son.  This is their hope for 2002 and 2004. 

Ask David Corn. Who is David Corn? He is the editor of The Nation.  The LA Times published his analysis of the Bush War effort in its opinion section.

"We are killing civilians in Afghanistan," is the substance of a full page of calumny.

There is no mention of the three thousand collaterals buried under the World Trade Center.

And the others of this species who have scurried into the dark in the illumination of the tragedy of September 11 venture out again.  The liberal strategists, cloaked in the texts of the Constitution, spew their venom against a country that gives them freedom.  They miss the hey day of the Alger Hiss apogee, the party faithful who took their orders from Moscow.

There are as many enemies within as without.

At the very least we dishonor our dead of World War II, the several hundred killed in our wars against the Soviets, and those who will surely pass as a sacrifice to the corrupted God that Andy Rooney has so quickly digested. 

Rising "Above" My Principles

 I haven't been making entries onto this site since late December 2021. I guess I just kept hoping that the inconsistent insanities of Covid "policies" would end soon, even though I knew intellectually that such a lovely opportunity for societal deconstruction is not easily relingquished by those who are doing the deconstruction. 

As before, in some states the national milieu went back to normal. But here in California it took until about last week to lift some of the mandates. Of course, in the County of Los Angeles, a large area in which I happen to live, the emergency remains red hot. No way that a virus can cross county boundaries, correct?

I have, as I have endlessly said, tried to avoid entertainment venues in which I would have to wear a mask or show a vaccination card, though as I must always disclaim so that I am not disregarded even more readily than I will be anyway, I was thrice blessed with the anti-virus potion that well, doesn't has it happens protect as was advertised. I have conceded in obligatory environs, like my Church, but for the most part I was not participating in what to me had become an arbitrary and capricious soft totalitarian warm up to hard totalitarianism.

But I am a small creature, alas, and as the New Year arrived and friends wanted to get together for ordinary human celebrations like birthdays and the odd entertainment movie event, I found my resolve crumbling and making exceptions, willing to go and to wear a mask, and worse, willing to show my vax card and ID to demonstrate that I am clean enough, virally speaking, to be allowed inside a restaurant, while other humans relegated to the status of  lepers, were excluded. Worse, I enjoyed myself.

You might say, what does it matter? What's the big deal? The big deal is that the slippery slope is real. Take a look at Canada. 

Human beings incline toward all sorts of evil, but one version is that they like to exert power over one another. And if one does not take the threat of these prefatory efforts at control--disguised as a matter of good and protection--seriously and takes the position what does it matter to me, history shows that how much it matters becomes very apparent, in short order, and when it is too late. 

I keep hoping that this Covid incarceration will end and I won't feel compelled to write about it any longer. On the other hand, today it is Covid, tomorrow there will be another crisis that aspiring dictators will find useful for their consolidations of power, and you and 
I will be footnotes in history. And we will bear responsibility for sheepish failures which led to our very demise.