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.