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. 

Spreading Fear for Our Good

I have found it curious that the new variant of the Covid virus, known as Omicron, which has mostly symptoms of the common cold, has been shouted from the treetops of our leadership as almost worse than the original version from nearly two years ago and its progeny, the Delta. The fear frenzy has returned. Curious. But rather expected. Things were calming down. Christmas was coming, when people want to and need to be close to one another. It is also when Christians celebrate a major religious holiday. And then, Voila! 

Pandemic redux! Test! Stay away! Watch out! Danger! 

Testing sites have sprung up again. All over the news, and within days, we have heard more and more people being found "positive" which could mean anything from someone on a ventilator to a sniffle. The numbers are ambiguous. A distinction is never, or rarely, made. Well, that's not new, they were ambiguous before. We could be told anything and we have no way to verify the truth of it. Well, was it the New Zealand Prime Minister who said it, along the lines of "Don't believe anything except what the Government tells you." 

I have been vaccinated up the wazoo. I see arguably vulnerable people in elder homes. I'm over 65. And I have had other vaccinations without a sense of concern. So, I have made the personal, medical decision to be vaccinated.

But as to this nearly two year circus I also believe that we have been the victims of a biological attack from a foreign country which we are not allowed to name; that vaccination is not the cure all; that the existence of this virus suits our current leadership in Washington some if not many of whose members may well have been complicit in the creation and spread of that virus attack; you take something "real" but "orchestrated" where people can and do die and you terrify the rest of the population who falls, mostly, into lockstep for the goal of a safety that can never be achieved. You take control and the citizenry has no choice but to take the trip over the cliff. Why? Because we have become so afraid, not necessarily for ourselves, but for others, just in case there might be something to the lie. We have been successfully gaslighted. Propagandized. Your care for others becomes the way to your very demise and that of your society.

I have my personal example. I go out fairly rarely, as I have said in other entries. In the week before Christmas, I did two things outside of my usual realm that brought me in contact, wait for it, "with people" purely for social pleasure. One of those people told me that he/she had tested positive for Covid. 

I hadn't been ANYWHERE since Sunday the 19th, and that was only to Mass where I serve away from the pews, in the sanctuary. On Wednesday the 22nd, I was informed that I was exposed to someone who was positive.  My first thought was not to panic and not immediately get tested. I felt fine. It was unlikely that I had a problem.

Then. I thought about the others. "What if I feel fine but I am more the walking germ stick than usual any human being is?" "What if someone gets sick that I happened to pass by on Sunday?" By nature, I suffer from a version of OCD, where I ruminate and create all sorts of catastrophic scenarios. Now my society has been generous enough to prove that worrying about virtually everything is the proper way to go. So, immediately I went out and got tested.

I was negative. Yea! Seventy five dollars well spent, right?  Folks said to me that well, by the 7th day you should be all right to go out because you are vaccinated and just need to be sure to wear the mask inside (which you must do anyway). I technically was at the seventh day on Friday, Christmas Eve, the 24th. But when you read the various suggestions for the unvaccinated and vaccinated and the time for quarantine, to me, it gets inconsistent and without certainty.  It's safe after seven days? But what about the MANY breakthrough cases? I'll get a test a few days hence. But still, there is no certainty of the safety mantra whatever I do. The other I have always been concerned about still is out there, and though I heartily believe we have all been had, my psyche cannot take the chance. I am too afraid. I am not among the many other braver Americans (in my view) who have decided to ignore the fear and fly and drive all over the country despite the confounding pronouncements from what my dad used to call the "Dome" in Washington. 

But for fearful me, Christmas became moot, in secular and religious terms. I had another word to offer other than "moot" but I felt it improper to say it in light of whom we celebrate at Christmas. You know what else it means to me, until this is over, and I realize that it may never be until full global domination is achieved for our good? I am not going to be with any people. I can't live with showing my papers and wearing a mask, which makes me feel like a straightjacketed inmate in a mental institution, aside from the fact I just cannot breathe with one (I know, it's an inconvenience I am told over and over despite my lying eyes and senses). And at the same time I cannot take even the infinitesimal chance that if something happens I would be considered the cause or worse, be the cause. So I have to choose my kind of imprisonment. My apartment. My terrace.  My own lack of bravery. It isn't a perfect isolation because there are a few things I have to do. But I will not do anything I DO NOT have to except out of pure human charity or obligation. 

I didn't feel sick before my friend sent me her news. I felt sick after testing negative.  A full on existential sickness. And it's affecting me physically and psychologically. And I bet I am not alone. And it's all been deliberate. We are being taken over by a full on totalitarian someone. I don't know who per se. But I know that the one thing they don't care about is your health or safety and in particular, your freedom. 

Here's some news. As of December 29, the CDC has announced that the quarantine period can be cut to five days for the UNVACCINATED as well as the VACCINATED as follows:

.... CDC is updating the recommended quarantine period for anyone in the general public who is exposed to COVID-19. For people who are unvaccinated or are more than six months out from their second mRNA dose (or more than 2 months after the J&J vaccine) and not yet boosted, CDC now recommends quarantine for 5 days followed by strict mask use for an additional 5 days. Alternatively, if a 5-day quarantine is not feasible, it is imperative that an exposed person wear a well-fitting mask at all times when around others for 10 days after exposure. Individuals who have received their booster shot do not need to quarantine following an exposure, but should wear a mask for 10 days after the exposure.  For all those exposed, best practice would also include a test for SARS-CoV-2 at day 5 after exposure. If symptoms occur, individuals should immediately quarantine until a negative test confirms symptoms are not attributable to COVID-19.

The "science" tells them so, they lie. But it is really the fact that people are calling in sick for their jobs and not coming back for 10 plus days, and that is wreaking havoc with employers (like that wasn't predictable two years ago). The language I have heard to justify the change is that it is also about what "Americans can tolerate." But note that as a vaccinated person I have as much or as little freedom as an unvaccinated person. 

And now, Dr. You Know Who is test flying the possibility of a FOURTH vaccination. 

Tell me again how all this is for our good. Or even marginally makes sense. 

DjinnfromtheBronxChapterThree: Bumnick's Fork by Constantine Gochis

DjinnfromtheBronxChapterThree: Bumnick's Fork by Constantine Gochis: Bumnick's Fork by Constantine Gochis I watch in fascination as the gentleman at the next table examines the ivory handle of his fork.  I...

Bumnick's Fork by Constantine Gochis

Bumnick's Fork by Constantine Gochis

I watch in fascination as the gentleman at the next table examines the ivory handle of his fork.  It is not a casual act. It is more as if he is looking for some mark, some imperfection. Can it be possible? Has he found himself in that position of unbearable ignominy, of universal opprobrium sparked by being found in the random possession of Bumnick's fork?

Impossible.  It is not in the realms of time and space as we know them, that the item could be in the man's hands. Bumnick's fork is a thing of my childhood years. It cannot be, unless there are truly other dimensions--parallel universes perhaps--or coincidence, nothing more.  I scoff--mentally that is.  One does not scoff carelessly in posh restaurants with headwaiters in white tie and tails elegance.

Then again.  Is there not in fact an element of overweening pride in the casual way the man drops the fork as if he has weighed its quality and found it wanting.  Is this not a kind of "hubris", some common trait in our species that proliferation makes so common we fail to notice its existence?

But why do I try to make something philosophic out of what was nothing more than childhood fantasy, of early play, sometimes a maliciousness, that should alert parents to the inherent deviousness of the children they are nurturing.

And why do I insist on cloaking a simple tale in words that weigh heavily but have no meaning? Well, perhaps that's not true.  Finding oneself in possession of Bumnick's fork was, to any of us children, myself, with six siblings, as close to secular mortal sin as is possible How often did I hear the chorus of my six junior siblings shouting, "He's got Bumnick's fork!"  Of course, when the evil lot fell to some other of the septet, how joyful was my clarion voice of condemnation for the victim.

Well, dear reader, you have been patient and tolerant, and have the right to ask:  What is this strange ritual at which you hint and do not explain?"

Family historians date it accurately.  It was the day of the big dinner to honor the arrival to this country of a paterfamilias of our family line--on my other's side--Uncle Dominick by name but refereed to slyly, by the relatives, in contemptuous terms, as a "cafone", a farmer in the souther Italian dialect. In terms of status or accomplishment, he ranked somewhat lower than street laborer or indigent. 

Truly, he personified the description if you add the terminology of coarse, portly and verbose in the patois of his village, which was in Calabria, a region additionally known as the country of the testa dura, or hard heads.  I record this here for future generations--this being a a life history exercise I write.  A remark about his dialect was made in my hearing by another relative, sotto voce, to wit, "Che diavolo di lingua parla quest'imbecile."

My brother Tony, who was gifted in the ability to characterize a person in one all encompassing word, dubbed him "Bumnick", a name never expressed in the presence of elders, since disrespect was a province allowed exclusively to grown ups.

Bumnick, and his eating habits of that day, became legend, but this only to us children. He also became a dinner time game, a time of perpetual hazard for all of us, anxiety, world class ignominy for a victim--always for one of seven. Parents were excluded.

The hazard was finding you had eaten with Bumnick's fork.  Well, you might ask, "How was this ivory handled utensil different from its fellows?" All were a pristine white except for the one Bumnick ussed in that historic dinner.  A slight purple-blue stain infected the fork at the joint where the metal began.  It was usually invisible until the spot caught the light when the fork was manipulated.

It made its appearance many times over our growing years.  From a statistical point of view it favored no one of us with immoderate frequency.  I watch the gentleman at the next table who seems about to order. He does not.  Instead, he holds up the fork he had discarded, says a few words to the waitress and hands it to her in a manner that suggests immediate disposal.  Clearly his position in this story is simply a stimulus to my precious memory, nothing more. Nevertheless.

I could almost swear that I caught a glint of bluish light as the fork changed hands in his seeminglly disagreeable interaction with the waitress.  

Stealing Beauty: Random Thoughts on a Bernardo Bertolucci Movie by Constantine Gochis

 
This is one of my insomnia nights.  I keep thinking of the latest Bertolucci opus, "Stealing Beauty" which I walked out on. My feelings are ambivalent.  I am sure there is no real story.  Essentially, the theme is about a beautiful nineteen year old needing very much to lose her virginity.  It is a pictorial glorification of this primordial ritual.

The players are a familia Cinecitta melange of poets, artists, ageing courtesans and satyrs.

The maiden arrives at the altar and the camera greets her and walks with her over a country estate of sprawling proportions.  They pass, together, life sized sculptures, many in the supine positions of pleasure. The statues seem Roman in construct. So close does the camera pan that sometimes only a portion of the subject can be seen at one time.

For a while only the architecture and the maiden are pictured.  Ultimately she encounters an elderly, seasoned blonde, a decadent, ill character played by Jeremy Irons, a voluptuous, lounging woman and a grungy looking, unshaven man who says he wants to look at her for a while before he begins a portrait of her.  Of course, I cannot fault him for this.  She is very worthwhile visually, sometimes in a low-cut, mid-thigh shift which augments rather than conceals the perfection of her body. The flimsiness of its weave makes it conspiratorial with the breeze that is trying to remove it.

A very old Jean Marais--he of the original Cocteau "Beauty and the Beast--greets her warmly and familiarly. I can think of no reason for his presence in the film except perhaps that he exudes a kind of elegant decadence--white haired and frail, another sculpture of depravity though a living one--perhaps the reason Bertolucci hired him for the part.  Who else would have seen him as an asset to a cast already chock full of characters unto a Bacchanal. The camera moves on.

Couples cavort in a pool nude as the progenitors of us all.  Our heroine romps in a staged scene, innocent play in her revealing shift that the breeze still tries to remove. A young girl-child whirls unrestrainedly with the maiden and the camera records the gratuitous ballet.  Later, it follows the heroin through flashes of chiaroscuro, as she goes form atrium to stone interiors.  She is treated to sounds and partial views of a couple in a frenzied stage of the eternal embrace. She hides in the shadows to tarry rather than escape. She emotes with star quality the full range of artfully phrased erotic expressions of empathy.  The camera is stealing beauty.

At night, sleep eludes her. The camera gazes lovingly at her body, pauses on her perspiring face, where droplets of moisture form on the upper lip of her parted mouth.

I may return to give the movie a second chance.

Bravo Bernardo, voi sapete godere la vita.  Bernardo, you know how to live.

Post scriptum:

Today I went back to the theatre to check on the name of the female lead. Liv Tyler.  As I wrote the name down on a scrap of paper, literally my losing Lotto receipt, a voice addressed me.

"You seen the movie?" she asked.

"Yes," I replied.

"Is good?"

"If you like Bertolucci."

There was no animation in her face.  No comprehension.

"It's kind of avant-garde . . ." I stopped.  The face was stony, impenetrable.

"It's about a nineteen year old trying to lose her virginity."

"Vy not---vy not." The woman's face broke into a broad smile.

"Vy not? What's so bad?"