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!

There Were Some Good Things in the "Good Old Days"

Yes. I have been watching the First Season of "Marcus Welby, M.D."  I am seeking a psychic vaccine against the ravages of a society tearing itself apart. I suppose, though, even when this show premiered in 1969, we were also going through the ravages of a society tearing itself apart. That was the era of the Vietnam War, of student campus protests, of complaints about the meaning of equality and its implementation. I guess, truth be acknowledged, with human beings there is always a catastrophe to be dealt with, real or imagined. So, Dr. Welby probably provided similar psychological medicine back when it was first run and I was watching it. 

What got me on this, besides the need to hide under my bed covers? That back when Dr. Welby was fictionally practicing medicine, his real life colleages were doing it in much the same way. This was the time when medicine still, though it was fading away, was a personal interaction with no more than one secretary between the doctor and the patient instead of a phalanx of paraprofessionals and administrative staff, and as we experience today in every aspect of life, the "phone tree" which confuses, confounds and frustrates. Today, the first thing on the phone tree of a doctor's office is, "If this is an emergency, hang up and call 911." Not so paranthetically, I am thinking, that phrase has always bothered me, because often when something is going on, I imagine the whole problem is that we are not sure if its an emergency, so that's why we want to call our doctor. Instead, now people stuff the Emergency Rooms with things that aren't real emergencies, but naturally, they just got scared, and they aren't allowed to commune with their doctors to see if they really should go, and clog the Emergency Rooms. Vicious circle. Well, that dovetails into one of the things still done back when Dr. Welby was on the screen and we were living without the level of technology that we have today. The doctor would make house calls. So, you called with a potential emergency, the doctor heard the problem, agreed or disagreed that it was an emergency, and that an ambulance was necessary, and was ready to be present when you arrived at the hospital.

Even in 1969, though, the world of the General Practitioner, the Family Doctor, was starting to phase out. Dr. Welby was fighting against it. But he didn't have a chance. And neither did we. Now, we have the Internist, who usually is a specialist in something, Cardiology, Urology, etc. but pretty much everything sends you off to someone else. I recall when my father was sick, that I got a snarky laugh from Dad's cardiologist/internist when I complained that it seemed that what was going on with his Urologist was unknown to him. That would never have happened with Dr. Welby. And quite frankly, it wouldn't have happened with my old Pediatrician/Family Doctor, who treated everyone in my family when I grew up, Dr. Alan Goldberg.  As late as 1979, when I was a last year student in law school and developed a massive rash and flu like symptoms, Dr. Goldberg came to the apartment my dad and I shared (they had known each other as kids as well) his house call concluding that I had a rather late in life case of the Measles. Once I was diagnosed, Dr. Goldberg, whose avocation was jazz, played a tune on my upright piano. 

Today, in additon to the guards at the desk, and the variety of paraprofessionals who take your most recent history only to have the doctor ask the same questions when he or she arrives on the scene for the most cursory of examinations and conversation, you have a secure link with which to ask your questions about a medical issue or medication. You ask your question. You have to wait for a response, but this means you have to log off and wait till there is a notice on your e mail that you have a message in your link. So you have to go on with your user name and password and read the message, usually from the secretary, which may or may not answer your questions, and then respond. Then go off the link and wait again. Sometimes the waits between communications are brief. Sometimes they are not. So, last week I sent a link note to my doctor that I was running out of my blood pressure medication. I had misjudged what I had left. He responded, it looked like himself and not some one else, because the answer was "Done". I had asked him to send the request to my local pharmacy, long used by me, instead of the mail in pharmacy to which I have become attached with a change of insurance cards. By Monday I was out of the medication. On Tuesday, the 21st, I went to my pharmacy, and they gave me a different medication, one the doctor had recently prescribed (which is a separate tale which remains to be seen) but did not apparently have the one that he and I had "discussed" on the link. I went back on the link and this time got the secretary. She said that it had been ordered and was at the pharmacy on the 19th. Ok. I guess I am the crazy one. I went back on the 23rd, after I got this message. They said they had no such prescription and in fact they were completely out of the medicine that was at issue. I showed them the note from my link, that I had to get on, that this was what I was told. The pharmacist assistant is a lady I have long known and liked as she makes an effort rare in customer service. She apologized. Meanwhile I was sharing the news on my link with the secretary, and that I had a half left (I had broken one in two) and I figured it would be ok, until today, when I was promised the medication. No notification by text that it was ready, today, Saturday. But there was a notification about the other medication, and how to use it, that I probably won't use (another story as I said). So I called the pharmacy and of course got their tree, and a mechanical notification that they were "working" on my medication order.  

Dr. Welby would have delivered it and had a cup of joe with me by now. And provided some bon mots about dealing with a pandemic and a quarantine. 

I happen to like my internist/cardiologist. He is talented. He is well-regarded by patients and fellow doctors. There is no place to go for me to get a better physician in these modern days. But soemthing, among the many somethings, has been lost from days gone by. 

In seeking its utopias, humanity has become less than human and mostly mechanized--just as science fiction writers in the 19th and 20th centuries predicted. 

I miss Doc Goldberg. I miss the image of Dr. Welby, though at least I can content and comfort myself by his kind manner on Amazon Prime. 

Before the Summer of '42 by Constantine Gochis

1930 Ford

Time for a Dad Story, a tiny bit risque, well, not so much in this wild world of ours. . . .It's in the present tense style of Damon Runyon. The part of the story about how he used to drive Model A's down south I can tell you is true. Dad told me. As for the rest, I just don't know for sure. 

Before the Summer of '42

The other day I see this guy polishing a Model A Ford, circa 1930, with loving strokes.  In the parlance of used car dealers, "it is a gold piece."  The finish is factory fresh.  Many of this vintage have been found in cartons hidden away in barns, and still unassembled.  It is the proverbial "find", a legendary car owned by an old lady who only used it once a week to go shopping.

I first hear this story about crated Model A's, and little old ladies when Ronald Potter, Continental George and Ignaz Skinder are shooting the breeze. I am a kid then.

I hanag out at Ronald's parking lot where I pick up a bob or two doing odd jobs.  Continental George is a car dealer, a recent refugee from Germany. Ignaz is an itinerant car mechanic, an aspiring wrestler, and prone to check the cars on the lot to see that they are securely locked.

I develop serious doubts about Ignaz and his probity when I inadvertently hear him being reprimanded by an angry Ronald.

"If'n I see you touch another door handle again, I will tear a piece off'n your ass."

Now Ronald is big and brawny.  He is know to uproot stubborn tree trunks manually.  I hear he is a captain of artillery in the National Guard.  I once express my admiration to Louise, his wife, and she disabuses me somewhat.

"The bum gets the heave ho from the guard when they discover a stolen motor in one of his cars."

Ronald loses a few points in my esteem. I begin to feel a little guilt about the job I do for him.  You see, he sells more parking spaces than his lot will hold.  Later, in the evening, he parks some of the cars on the adjacent streets.  In the morning, as the lot starts to empty, I return the street-parked cars to it.

This is one of the schools of experience I attend as a teenager as I cannot abide the confinement of a regular high school.  Of course, I learn many things I would like to forget, some of which I relate here.

Continental George deals in those Model A Fords.  He buys them in the Bronx where they are a glut, has them driven to South Carolina by indigent teenagers, where he sells them for more than a hundred dollars each.  He buys them for fifteen dollars. When he hears that I just get my driver's license, he offers me the opportunity to drive one of the Model A's to Florence, South Carolina.  He introduces me to another driver who he calls "Chippy". Chippy wears shiny boots, sports an earring on one ear, and has a studded belt around his waist fastened by a large, ornate buckle.  He is to lead our caravan.

George promises five bucks for the trip.  He gives me three in advance and a marker for the balance.  I almost do not go, however.  Louise, Ronald's wife, who is very friendly to me, and beautiful besides, cautions me thusly, "Listen kid, don't get involved with those bums. It's only trouble for a few lousy bucks."

"Ronald says George is a right guy," I say lamely, thinking about the fiver, which is a large sum indeed.  The year before I works seventy-two hours a week delivering orders for a fat Turk who eats raw potatoes, skin and all, and vents his irritation shouting, "bok tam bok" which is Turkish for "worse than shit."

"Ronald is as big a bum as any you can find," she says.  "I lose him as soon as I save enough car far and a few extra bob for a trip back home."

I am indeed surprised.  Louis is as pretty a lady as I ever see.  I do not call her a "doll" as she does not seem to me a frivolous lady.  While I never hear them talking together, except about whether or not the clients pay their tabs,I do not consider this unusual.  Most married people do not seem overly talkative to one another.  I think this is a natural consequence of the married state.  Anyway, when she sees I am determined to dgo, she cautions.

"Stay away from that bum, Chippy, and get the money from that sleaze, Continental George in advance."

Now in retrospect, and as a result of my fine education in the principles of life, I feel a tinge of possible loss.  Louise seems to have been protective, though less than maternal.  We might become good friends, given time.

It was a long and wearisome trip.  I will not dwell on its dullness.

Chippy has all the cars of the caravan sequestered properly, dismisses the other, more seasoned drivers, selects one of the tidier vehicles, looks at me, and says,

"Hop in. Its too early for bedtime. Let's head for a little fun."

I do not know what he means by "fun".  I look at him for further explanation.

"You gotten laid yet?"

I do not answer.  I do not yet reach the age when I surely lie if even I hadn't.

He drives on and cruises until he spots a kid. "Hop on the running board.  Which way the 'ho' houses at?"

The kid directs with unerring expertise.  The unpaved street is line with clone like houses, each with a porch.  These are all lit except that the alternate ones have red lights.  Chippy gives the kid a nickel.

I once hear Humphrey Bogart make reference to the tinny piano in an ornate parlor.  He surely has to have been here.  The piano is indeed tinny.  A very fat woman in a gaudily silkish gown greets us effusively.

"Come on in, boys, lookin' for a date?" Then she looks at me.

"You done bring us a virgin." She then turns toward the stairs and shouts:

"Come on down, girls, we got us a virgin."

The girls amble in to see the "virgin".  They come in various sizes and shapes.  Several approach me as if inspecting an oddity, others tousle my hair. They all smile knowingly.

Chippy and the Madam talk price.  The cost is one dollar for an ordinary visit and two for a glimpse of Paradise.

Even if I am not frightened to death, there is nothing in that room that will cause me to part with one or two of the dollars I have hidden in my shoe.

Chippy decides on his trip to Nirvana.

Continental George completes his transactions.  He sells two Fords for one hundred and fifteen dollars each.  He does well with the others.

I ask him on the way back how the farmers can pay for Fords as surely they go for an excess of their available funds. 

"Vun dollar own and vun dollar a week for four hundred years," he explains.

I do not know what he is talking about but I decide Louise is right. He is indeed a bum.

He never does come up with the two bucks he still owes me. 

From Pandemic Protection to Article of Dehumanization Made Hip

Right now, to complain about wearing a face mask is considered selfish and, as the character played by Patrick McGoohan would have said as the "Prisoner", it is an "unmutual" act. It veers from the haranging narrative that one is doing the responsible thing by wearing it. This, despite the fact, that at the beginning of the appearance of the virus, the preponderance of thought was that a mask was only for those with illness, and not useful for the healthy, despite the fact that old bandanas were and still are considered adequate face coverings, though probably recently on one's dog, and not preventing germs under likely conditions, and despite the fact that people are touching their masks all the time, thus assuring that more germs are, well, germinating. All right, still, being a good citizen, moral in my concern about others, naturally anxiety ridden, and compliant with the voice of authority, however inconsistent, I have tried every version of a face covering in order to be, as I have always been, following the rules.

Anything over my face and nose I find virtually unbearable.  I take a blood thinner that has the side effect of occasionally giving me shortness of breath. And the mask creates a blockage of the fresh air, although I have been promised by the experts that have served us so well, that breathing back in my own exhalation is not in any way dangerous. So when when I would go into a store with appropriate covering, I could only manage a short time, rushing to get my stuff so I could get back into my car and free myself from the constraint. I know I wasn't alone in this. Pretty  much any person I  have spoken to has had the same complaint, but they are keeping silent. Can't be bucking the loudest, most powerful voices. And as to those people who really do have psychological conditions, like claustrophobia, great and lesser, tough. We are not hearing from them. Those people can just stay home, for the rest of their natural lives.

Finally I found a clear plastic type that I could bear and I have been wearing a version of that for about a month. It allows me to be slightly more comfortable for a longer period. It doesn't seem to affect my breathing, except to be a little warm in the area of my mouth. And my face can be seen, my reading glasses don't fog at the supermarket, and I can see clearly enough through the sea of other masks.

As time has gone on, over a quarter of a year now, as I write, the need to wear a mask has been extended. And not just in closed spaces, in the outdoors. In California, one must wear a mask whenever one goes out. A lot of people don't, and I, though I have always seriously questioned the logic of their use, I have worn whatever version I had gotten off of Amazon, quite successfully made afraid, despite my common sense that this wasn't and isn't the solution. I was after all raised by nuns, concerned about doing right, and being charitable to others, and finally afraid of the punishment that comes with failing to follow even arbitrary rules.

I was relatively happy with my plastic face shield. It covers all of my face, including the eyes. I actually sometimes forgot I was wearing it. "I can manage now," I told myself. People saw it and asked, "Where did you get it?" And several got their own.

Most places have accepted it, because the phrase on the makeshift signs say "face covering". And if a bandana or old scarf is enough, well, how could anyone object?

Well, so much for small moments of equilibrium. Today I went into an Italian Restaurant for take out. As I was looking at the menu, the host said I had to wear a mask. I said "This is a mask."  "No," he said, "it has to be cloth." I hadn't read that on any doors before. I objected. He said that it was possible that air borne spittle might somehow come under my chin. Besides he said, it was the law. He showed me a lengthy posting on the window outside. And sure enough, it said, that patrons had to wear a cloth mask.  This was additionally distressing, or confusing, or both because many people wear the disposable several layered paper ones. They are not cloth. But they are apparently still acceptable while my thick plastic face shield was not. The rules, they are abounding exponentially.

Now, we are hearing and reading that wearing a mask might become the "new normal". The conditions under which this will happen are not entirely clear, but they are listed as until there are fewer postives (though being positive isn't the proper measure, it is the one currently hawked with deep serious tones), no positives, a vaccine, or "we are not quite sure." The latter reason is because they, the experts, haven't got a clue. That's hard enough to hear.

Besides, this very day, our Governor Newsom closed again all the bars that had opened, and all in dining, and a variety of other things, like beaches. The view of our leader is that it must be these places that are causing an uptick in positives, though what that actually means in terms of safety is still unclear. And though this uptick is about 14 days after all those protests that occurred like, in all the neighborhoods around here, we are required to accept that the uptick had NOTHING to do with it. No, it is the bars that opened like five days ago.

I am going back to a couple of bandanas that I started out wearing. Of all the proper cloth masks those are the only ones that I can tolerate for, if I am lucky, up to an hour. And I will be seeing my doctor for a check up related to the heart stent that was placed in October. I will have to discuss the additional effect on my breathing related to the cloth masks.

It is kind of looking like masks are the future, forever. After all, when this particular pandemic is done, probably on November 3, if the right person wins the Presidency, there will be new viruses requiring the crippling of the society and to terrorize the populace. In fact, I recently read that another is currently percolating in. . . .dare I say it, China.

The commercials, on television, on Facebook, everywhere are now proclaiming one after another the fashion of mask wearing. There are designs abundant out there, cute little things, like animal faces, or political statements, colors and patterns of all kinds. Wearing a mask is the cool thing to do in the quest to conquer illness and death. Just watching these brainwash exercises makes me profoundly depressed.

What should have been short-term protection is now mainstream. A mainstream mandate.

When I see a group of people wearing the cloth masks, as most people still do,  and to which I must return, covering a significant part of their humanity, I find myself feeling, well, depressed, yes, but also as if I am in some science fiction movie that usually doesn't end well. It removes any semblance of humanity. It makes us facially anonymous. It makes us substantially anonymous. It is a branding.

It began as voluntary, and as all things that are said to be voluntary by anyone in government, it becomes a requirement with punishment for the failure to comply. Right now that punishment is secured by the media shaming not only those who fail to comply, but those who, though complying, are fighting the extensions into forever.

You are never going to make me content about having to wear a mask in most environments indoors, if not outdoors, by showing me commercials of young people jumping joyfully with their pets in the park or telling me how we are all in it together. We are not. A few are in it together. The "it" is the dehumanization of the rest of us so that we can be led, controlled and contained. Why? Because that is what human beings do to one another. The United States (and England, and Australia) were once bastions against such things, but they have been transformed and absorbed by the pawns of the devil himself.

Since we know that germs will exist after this pandemic, then really, using the logic of our government officials, there can never be a time, when we are free of restriction. And that's just how someone or a group of someones' clinking glasses and laughing at the rest of us, like it.

The Funkiest, Most Fashionable Face Masks, Ranked

https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/05/face-masks-coronavirus-fashion-ranked.html

But you will be fashionable in your imprisonment.

P.S. You know what many people do when they think no one is looking? They put that little cloth mask under their noses, so they can breathe. Others carry them in their hands when they are outside.  I even saw a police officer yesterday on a call with her mask below her chin. Today, I was doing my laundry in my building. I was alone but I had my cloth mask with me and when I heard people coming down the stairs, I put it on, assiduously. But two of my neighbors weren't wearing masks. They didn't even have one on them.  We couldn't pass within six feet of one another, cause it is a narrow hallway. Oh, well. I am not upset at them. I truly understand. I know some of you are probably shaking your head at their selfishness at wanting to move around their own apartment building without a mask.

I am doing what I am told. I better get used to it, just like when I was a kid, as more and more rules are implemented and enforced. But right now, I hope it's ok if I object. I know that soon that will change too.Then our health, body, mind and soul, will really be in trouble. Heck, we are already in trouble.

Still Life

If you have lost loved ones, as most of us have, you might remember a certain moment in the aftermath. You return to their apartments or their homes to begin the clearing of the material of a life. You walk inside and everything is as if the person has just stepped out, and will be back again. But the excruciating reality in the midst of the space filled with things that once were indispensable is that the person who was here, the person who used the things maybe days or minutes before, will never be here again. 

I have rarely seen movies that capture that quiet, yet dramatic part of loss. Or the sense that so quickly can a space be empty of us, with only impressions of our former presence. 

And in the case of the movie I watched last night that did capture it, the even more dramatic reality of how anticlimatic that moment is to the world at large. 

The movie was one I had never heard of, and not likely one that anyone would rush to see, given its theme. Called "Still Life", it takes place in London and the actors are mostly none I have also never heard of, except Downton Abbey's Joanna Froggett. 

John May is a particular kind of bureaucrat, one who seeks the relatives, and friends, if any, of people who die, alone, at home. He works out of a long, one window, industrial room with boxes and files. He is quiet, and clearly a man himself alone in the world, with orderly, even obsessive, habits, and a determined focus  to find someone who might have cared about the deceased, and in the likely absence of anyone who cared, providing a dignified service. The service could be religious, or not, burial, or not. He takes small pieces of the person's life from the home or the apartment, and around those odds and ends, constructs a eulogy of someone he has never even met. Open a closet and see the suits, or the dresses, next to be in some thrift shop or a dumpster, the detritus of a once breathing human being. 

John has done many of these searches, and each time, he has kept a photograph of the deceased person, usually pictured in some hopeful pose at a time before life hammered them and cut them off from love, or they did it to themselves thinking that they had all the time in the world, and placed it in a huge album. He goes through them from time to time, he the only person to mark the life that is gone. 

Mr. May's plodding farewells to those alr eady forgotten or abandoned in life are his undoing after 22 years. There is a bureaucratic consolidation, and he is told that his newest case, of a hard drinking nearly homeless bearded man, Billy Stoke, a veteran of Grenada, who might have had a daughter, will be his last. "Wrap it up, quickly," he is told by the young manager who merely tolerates his underling bemused at efforts May has always taken, too slowly for government preferences. What makes this one poignant is that the man who died lived in John's building, just across across him, at a window John can see from his own. 

Slowly, John May uncovers a history, relationships, mostly broken.  Billy Stoke had two daughters. One from a relationship from which he abruptly left, without knowing he had been a father, and another, Kelly, that had begun hopefully but ended when that daughter was 18, by his own hand. He had saved one of his buddies in the war, and that man had fond feelings. Two homeless men knew him during his rough days, before the apartment, and remembered him, if not fondly, without rancor. 

None of these former acquaintances, at first, show any inclination to join John at the funeral to be held, and at the grave which John, who finds himself slightly more energized about engaging life now that he has been fired and this is his last memorial, donates to the man. His opening himself up a little to Kelly, Stokes' daughter, has the two of them, she also a lonely soul in animal services, in the first moments of a possible relationship. She decides to go to the service, and so meets up with him to discuss the final details, and is touched by his rigid, but definite tenderness toward her father. They agree to have "tea" after the service and they shyly wave goodbye as her train door closes. Things are looking up for John and Kelly.

As he comes out of a store having bought two mugs each with a picture of a dog, a homage to the young woman who seems perhaps interested in him, he crosses the street----and is hit and killed by a bus. Death can come at any time, and there is no human power to stop it. 

One can now imagine why this is not a very popular movie. There will be no happy ending. Well, there will be no happy ending of the sort that we are told to crave and for the lack of which we see our lives as failure.

On the day of her father's funeral, Mr. Stokes' daughter is at the grave of her father, along with the several people John May had located so that Mr. Stokes would not be another man whose was buried without mourners. Another service has just been held, with only a priest in uncomfortable attendance. A car takes the casket to the weedy part of the cemetery, passing those gathered at the grave of Mr. Stokes. His daughter sees it but she is looking for Mr. May who was supposed to be among them.  Of course he is. He is the one being buried up the hill. She has found a family and healing through a man who dies and is buried without fanfare. She will never likely know.

The reviewers found the ending rather treacly. Me? It gave me hope. There does come a gathered crowd around May's mound, the people whom he tended to when no one else did, the spirits of men and women who know that John May's life was worthwhile, though not remembered by the world. 

I suppose, even if one doesn't believe in an afterlife, as so many of us do not, it still is hopeful, because lives in the here and now have been altered for the good, by this John May, an Everyman. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt9CsXrlO8Y

A New Entry, Related to a Prior Entry

My friends who with kind loyalty read this blog, and perhaps others of passing readers, might know that I began a podcast, called "Ordinary Old Catholic Me". I suppose it is something of an audio version of this blog but focused on my, and hopefully that of others, experience of being a Catholic in the 21st Century. Hopefully not just Catholics will find it interesting because after all as human beings we most all are searching for something meaningful, even Transcendent, to hang onto as we trudge the road from birth to death together. 

I have done five episodes so far, and I tend to record them, much as I tend to write here, when the mood or subject strikes. At some point I will no doubt try for a more regular time slot, like I post on Mondays at 10 (not yet), but for now I am learning and experimenting.

I have been waiting for the height of the pandemic to pass to invite folks from my parish, where I spend a lot of time with other Ordinary Old Catholic Mes, to come on and pick some aspect of their religious faith to dialogue with me, and share with you. Soon, I hope. Interaction is the spice of life! As a natural loner, I have to try to remember that!

Anyway, here is the link if you are so inclined. And if you think, "Hey, this isn't so bad," would you tell folks you know about it?

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-b6j6d-deb1c0?utm_campaign=w_share_ep&utm_medium=dlink&utm_source=w_share

Conversations with An Echo by Constantine Gochis

Here we all are in the middle of purported or real pandemics and the quiet and civilized outrage of people protesting real, and imagined, evils, both, and looters who likely claim no particular allegiance except themselves. It is all very discouraging, to be certain. And it might even engender considerations of the meaning of life, when meaning seems horribly elusive, as it does right now, as it has for eons before. My late father, gone from this earth over twelve years, would probably be locked and loaded in this very apartment, were he still here. And he might be writing another short story like this one as he tried to deal with another series of life's tragedies. I post this entry full of my own sense of despair at the actions of a depraved, probably sociopathic police officer, who was no doubt protected by his union, and watch the well prepared idle young breaking into stores and taking essential items like digital screens, and cool shoes, and sporting goods--all of this, in my unimportant opinion, orchestrated by those powerful people hiding in the shadows looking for complete and utter control over your life and mine. 

⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪



"Tell me a riddle," you said.

"Life's a riddle."

"That's a platitude. Life is predictable, repetitious. One has only to look backward to see the future.  How's that for an echo?"

"Those are words.  Give me evidence, from life, from literature, from anyplace.  Don't continue to be a redundant sound."

"To begin with, there are no insoluable riddles.  Oedipus did it in a trice.  'What is it,' she asked, as she straddled the road, 'that crawls on all fours in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three in the evening?''

"Who said that and what is the answer? Before you reply, what's black and white and read all over?"
"Very funny. Laugh this off. The Sphinx, the 'throttler'--that is the meaning of her title, killed herself when the simplicity of her query was solved."

"It is the inevitability of every man.  He crawls in the morning of his birth, walks upright at noon, in the illusion that he has something to do, or say, then in the evening of his stay leans wearily on a cane.  Afterwards it is night, forever."

"It is more complex than that.  There is a spirit, a mind that can say no to Divinity, though many varieties of hell are threateed as consequence, or kneel in the simplicity of a need to believe."

"An ancient stole Fire from the gods.  Though chained to a rock for arrogance, he suffered an Eagle to gnaw at his entrails with great patience.  Such was his faith.  Such was the love of another, who allowed His eternal Substance to be nailed to a tree.  Bounce that off the cavern walls."

"There are no 'Eternal substances'  Another literary fiction.  This is the arrogance of the species which cannot abide his non-meaning.  He did take the original Fire and used it to make tools.  Of course he was 'created' and by an Infinite Power, therefore he too is divine, uniq"ue, in a universe of lifeless masses and congealed atoms.  Even his God needs him.  Who else is there to gather in the holy edifices, the pantheons and bring him tribute and obeisance.  The temples of mutual adoration."

"Pure cynicism.  You know the origin of that word--dog like, contemptuous.  It is the dinner conversation of a deposed Lucifer, a Devil of make-believe urbanity, of denial of life. Man has made tools that can propel him into the beginning of time, and immortality, yes, perhaps to fifteen billion years ago, when it was, "In the beginning.'"

"And back into an eternity of nothingness.  He has thirty thousand tools each of which can obliterate a world.  Man has a flaw, a gene that bars his entry into the Eden of his creation.  He is not only a
creator but a destroyer."

"Yes, this is so. He has made and will again make pyres against his fellows.  He has been seared, consumed, in that stolen Promethean but it is out of the ashes that he is fated to arise a Phoenix."

"But the fire that burns in his soul is in the music of Bach, and the Pietas of Michaelangelo, of creations out of stone that cry out for just a little spark to make them animate, a life force inherent in that little blade of grass that seeks the sun out of that little crack in an unwary concrete sidewalk. 

And a gene is only a gene."