Table of Contents
13. Horatio Alger & the American Dream
12. The Harry Potter Guy (1)
11. Solomon Kravitz, Job Couselor at the Nazareth Branch of Employment Security, Interviews an Unemployed Carpenter
10. I Experience Cussing as an Art Form
09. Hitchhiking
08. Queen of Heaven & Earth
07. Meevils
06. I Go unto the Altar of the Lord
05. Lamb of God
04. Money
03. Heaven
02. Toilet Paper
01. Visionary
13 Horatio Alger & The American Dream
Let me be crystal clear: I admire the activities of the Horatio Alger Association. On their website they announce a laudable reason for existing—
The Association . . . was established in 1947 to dispel the mounting belief among the nation’s youth that the American Dream was no longer attainable.[1]
It goes on to state that the Association—
Is dedicated to the simple, powerful belief that hard work, honesty and determination can conquer all obstacles.[1]
Thus the Association regularly honors—
dedicated community leaders who demonstrate individual initiative and a commitment to excellence; as exemplified by remarkable achievements accomplished through honesty, hard work, self-reliance and perseverance over adversary.[1]
It seems almost sacrilegious to take issue with such noble sentiments. Yet as I read them, I cannot escape the suspicion that the authors have never read what Horatio Alger actually wrote. They miss the fact that in Alger’s work, there exists no causal relation between the virtues which they champion, and the success that results from having them.
It simply is not there.
But to see this, one must read Alger’s novels on their own terms: popular fiction designed to sell by encapsulating some of America’s most profound and archetypal myths written for teenage men.
* * * * *
Coincidence abounds in the Alger world and must be taken in stride. Joe (The Hotel Boy) travels to Chicago from the east coast, goes to the Palmer House and there encounters the villains of the piece who he last saw in Baltimore. Standing next to them, he overhears their nefarious plotting. In Adrift in New York, Dodger meets on the streets of San Francisco a starving mother with her child and, after buying her dinner is astonished to learn that she is the wife of his arch enemy, the evil Curtis Waring, thousands of miles away in New York.
Such things are commonplace in the unambiguous Alger moral universe. The reader always knows exactly where he, the youthful reader, stands Consider how he describes the vile Curtis Waring the first time we meet him—
He was a tall, dark-complexioned man, of perhaps thirty-five, with shifty, black eyes and thin lips, shaded by a dark mustache. It was not a face to trust.[2]
Alger’s heroes are likewise immediately identifiable. Ragged Dick fits the bill—
But in spite of his dirt and rags, there was something about Dick that was attractive. It was easy to see that if he had been clean and well dressed he would have been decidedly good looking. Some of his companions were sly, and their faces inspired distrust; but Dick had a frank, straight-forward manner that made him a favorite.[3]
A little later he expands on this initial impression—
He was above doing anything mean or dishonorable. He would not steal, or cheat, or impose upon younger boys, but was frank and straight-forward, manly and self-reliant.[4]
A manner at once frank and straightforward remains the hallmark of the Alger hero, throughout all the novels.
Occasionally there may be a character who exists in some grey area between the hero and the villain, but his status will eventually be clarified. Such a one is Percy de Brabazon who Alger describes as he first enters the narrative as “an effeminate-looking young man, foppishly dressed.”
Most telling of all, he speaks with a lisp. When told by Florence that she has a headache, he responds—
“I am awfully sorry, I am, upon my words, Miss Florence. My doctor tells me it is only those whose bwains are vewy active that are troubled with headaches.”[5]
As the novel unfolds, Percy gradually is shown in a better, more positive light. As this happens, his lisp astonishingly vanishes![6]
Alger’s heroes and villains inhabit a world utterly free of any constraints that reality may impose. Coincidences move the plots along. Every third (or so) chapter, it seems, something truly wonderful can happens. After a while, though, the role of coincidence in this two-dimensional world begins to take on a different cast. In turn, this forces a reevaluation of the hero himself.
Alger’s heroes (and here I must resort again to capitalization) are the Right Sort. They have a set of virtues. They are something. Because of what the are, good things happen and all ends well. But one cannot ever rely on that outcome.
Because it exemplifies so solidly this paradox, Adrift in New York is worth a closer look.
* * * * *
Some Alger novels are in essence picaresque. Joe the hotel boy’s adventures continue from city to city over half a continent). Adrift in New York, however, is tightly plotted. It opens in the home of John Linden. Linden, a rich man in his fifties, desires Florence, his niece, to marry the vile Curtis Waring, his nephew.[7] Because he is such a vile creature, she cannot continence the thought. Linden demands that she do so on threat of banishment.
Refusing to do so because she does not love Waring, Florence writes a letter to her uncle explaining that she cannot. The narrative voice then says—
The tears fell upon the paper as she was writing, but she heeded them not. It was the saddest hour of her life. Hitherto she had been shielded from all sorrow, and secure in the affection of her uncle, had never dreamed that there would come a time when she would feel obligated to leave all behind her, and go out into the world, friendless and penniless, but poorest of all in the loss of that love which she had hitherto enjoyed.[8]
Curtis Waring is, of course, behind all this. His only desire is to manipulate the weak older man until he rewrites his will making Waring his only heir. Two things stand in his way. An original will still exists leaving everything to his vanished son, stolen years before from the very household by (we later learn) Curtis’ machinations! A second will splits the inheritance between Curtis and Florence. Secure in the assumption that the true heir is long since out of the way, Curtis must convince Florence to marry him, thus assuring the fortune.
After further events and complexities (among them meeting the hero, Tom Dodger), the story follows Florence as she makes her way penniless in the world. She becomes a teacher to a rich young child, only to be dismissed when at an evening’s soiree Percy de Brabazon (less lisp and—gasp—cousin of the child’s mother[9]) dances so often with her that a jealous other woman poisons the child’s mother against her. The key here is that Florence lives in a lower class neighborhood and thus cannot possibly be refined enough to teach the child. We can tell off the bat that the mother is not the Right Sort.
Increasingly, the narrative turns to Dodger who, the reader finds out, is indeed the long lost son of John Linden. Waring manages to have Dodger drugged and sent of on a six month voyage around the horn to San Francisco. Waring leaves with the ship’s captain, a letter to be delivered to Dodger once they are at sea. In the letter, he explains why he has sent Dodger off and what his designs on Florence truly are. With Dodger out of the picture, Waring is sure that, given this much time, he can manipulate things so that the marriage—and hence money—will be his.
On board, Dodger meets Randolph Leslie, a reporter, He is an older man who is going to San Francisco. He becomes Dodger’s tutor, thus providing the hero the opportunity for an education—a prerequisites for upward mobility in the Alger universe.
They arrive in San Francisco, finding rooms at “modest hotel” where the rates are $1.50 a day. Because he now has both some education and some manners, Dodger gains employment at the princely sum of $15.00 a week.[10] At the end of the first week on the job, Dodger and his employer, a “small man of about forty, keen eyed and alert,” evaluates him. Since it is central to the whole ethos of this vision of the world, the exchange is worth considering in detail—
“I’ve been making up my mind about you.”
“Yes sir,” said Dodger, looking up inquiringly. “I hope you are satisfied.”
“Yes, I think I may say that I am. You don’t seem to be afraid of work.”
“I have always been accustomed to work.”
“That is well. I was once induced to take the son of a rich man in the place you now occupy. He had never done a stroke of work, having always been at a school. He didn’t take kindly to work, and seemed afraid that he would be called upon to do more than he had bargained for. One evening I was particularly busy, I asked him to remain an hour overtime.
“‘It will be very inconvenient, Mr. Tucker,’ said the young man, ‘as I have an engagement with a friend.’
“He left me to do all the extra work and—I suppose you know what happened the next Saturday evening?”
“I can guess,” returned Dodger with a smile.
“I told him that I thought the duties were too heavy for his constitution and he had better seek an easier place. Let me see—I kept you an hour and a half last Wednesday.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You made no objection, but worked on just as if you liked it.”
“Yes sir; I am always willing to stay when you need me.”
“Good! I shan’t forget it.”
Dodger felt proud of his success and put away the fifteen dollars with a feeling of satisfaction. H had never saved half that sum in the same time before.[11]
His thoughts, though, are still with the situation in New York. He receives a letter from Florence, informing him that she has lost her position. Dodger needs desperately to get back to New York. Not long after, Dodger comes upon an unfortunate woman who, with her child, stands on a street corner—
Her clothing was shabby, and her attitude was one of despondency. It was clear that she was ill and in trouble.
Dodger possessed quick sympathies, and his own experience made him quick to understand and feel for the troubles of others.[12]
After buying her dinner, she tells him of being abandoned by her husband. When Dodger finally asks the name, she tells him it is Curtis Waring.
At this point, it’s important to continue the narrative in detail, because Alger’s presentation of events lie at the heart of both his and America’s experience. The account begins with a careful summation of the whole situation—
Dodger, as he walked away, pondered over the remarkable discovery he had made.
It was likely to prove of the utmost importance to Florence.
Her uncle’s displeasure was wholly based upon her refusal to marry Curtis Waring, but if it should be proved to him that Curtis was already a married man, there would seem no bar to reconciliation.
Moreover—and this was particularly satisfactory—it would bring Curtis himself into disfavor.
Florence would be reinstated in her rightful place in her uncle’s family, and once more be recognized as heiress to at least a portion of his large fortune.
This last consideration might not weight so much with Florence, but Dodger was more practical, and he wished to restore her to the social position which she had lost through the knavery of her cousin.
But in San Francisco—a distanced of over three thousand miles—Dodger felt at a loss how to act.
Even if Mr. Linden was informed that his nephew had a wife living in San Francisco, the statement would no doubt be denied by Curtis, who would brand the woman as an impudent adventuress.|”The absent are always wrong,” says a French proverb.
At all events, they are very much at a disadvantage, and therefore it seemed imperatively necessary, not only that Dodger, but that Curtis Waring’s wife should go to New York to confront the unprincipled man whose schemes had brought sorrow to so many.
It was easy to decide what plan was best, but how to carry it out presented a difficulty which seemed insurmountable.
The expenses of journey to New York for Dodger, Mrs. Waring and her child would not be very far from five hundred dollars, and where to obtain this money was a problem.[13]
Having presented Dodger’s situation in excruciating detail, Alger then turns to the possible sources of funds. There is an immediate source of money: Randolph Leslie, his friend from the journey on board ship. Nevertheless, Dodger cannot ask him—
Randolph Leslie probably had that sum, but Dodger could not in conscience ask him to lend it, being unable to furnish adequate security, or to insure repayment.[14]
The Right Sort do not ask for loans without securing them. It does not occur to our hero that Florence’s uncle, a rich man, could easily and willingly repay the debt. Neither does it occur to him that he is balancing Florence’s entire future against his inability to “furnish adequate security” for the loan.
There follow two paragraphs that I personally find wholly remarkable—
“If I could only find a nugget,” thought Dodger, knitting his brows, “everything would be easy.” But nuggets are rare enough in the gold fields, and still rarer in city streets.
He who trusts wholly to luck trusts to a will-o’-the-wisp, and is about as sure of success as one who owns a castle in Spain.[15]
Alger is absolutely and unequivocally clear about this. Success comes not with luck. It comes, rather, with all the virtues articulated by the Alger Association: ” . .
hnesty, hard work, self-reliance and perseverance over adversity.” Precisely the sort of virtues that lead Dodger to refuse to ask for a loan from his friend because he cannot provide security.
Alger then summarizes Dodger’s situation—
The time might come when Dodger, by his own efforts, could accumulate the needed sum, but it would require a year at least, and in that time Mr. Linden would probably be dead.[16]
In short, all the hard work in the world will not serve to help. What happens then? Luck.Luck on a thermonuclear scale—
Absorbed and disturbed by these reflections, Dodger walked slowly through the darkened streets till he heard a stifle cry, and looking up, beheld a sight that startled him.
On the sidewalk lay the prostrate figure of a man. Over him, bludgeon in hand, bent a ruffian, whose purpose was only too clear.[17]
Rushing to the man’s aid, Dodger knocks down the “brutal-looking fellow” and seizes the bludgeon. A couple of raps from it and the “ruffian” turns and runs—right into the arms of a policeman coming around the corner.
Once the victim has recovered, he asks Dodger to help him back to his rooms at the Palace Hotel, a “sumptuous hotel, which hardly has an equal in America.” Once there the man, “of about average height, probably not far from fifty, dressed in a neat business suit, and looked like a substantial merchant.” The man, James Swinton, then asks Dodger about himself and what he would do if he “had a considerable sum of money given you, what would you do with it?”[18]
Once Dodger has told him of his need to get to New York, the man obligingly peels off two $500 dollar bills from the wad he has in his wallet:”You have given me a thousand dollars!” he gasped.
“I am aware of it. I consider my life worth that, at least. James Swinton never fails to pay his debts.”[19]
Clearly, James Swinton is the Right Sort.
Dodger, his problems solved, leaves the Palace Hotel feeling “he was a favorite of fortune.” But Alger, as if shamefaced and needing to reassure the reader, adds—
“It is not always that the money we need is so quickly supplied.”[20]
* * * * *
I have looked at this passage at length because it is the pivot, the delicate point of balance on which rests the Alger version of the American dream. It shines like a beacon, casting light on not only the American past but the future as well. It looks back to Franklin’s Way to Wealth and beyond him, the Puritans. It illuminates the long shadow of Gatsby, gazing longingly at the green light, desiring Daisy, whose voice sounds like money.
The Alger Association’s vision rests on the assumption that the Alger tells “tales of overcoming adversity through unyielding perseverance and basic moral principles.” The Association is “dedicated to the simple but powerful belief that hard work, honesty and determination can conquer all obstacles.”
But that is not the testimony of the novels.
Over and over, success is due to a timely accident.
Precisely at the critical moment, something good happens.
What we have in the Alger world, in fact, is the detritus of Puritanism, a world view without a theology to encumber it. There are the elect and the rest. The elect are saved, not by works, but by faith. It comes to them from outside themselves. The elect must, however, work hard because, if they are elect, god will favor their works. They must show honesty, hard work, self-reliance and perseverance. Then they will prosper. They will become rich.
In the Alger world, we have two kinds of people. There are the Right Sort, boys especially who have a frank and straightforward manner. Opposed to them are Brutal Ruffians, their hallmark being dirty, or, moving up the scale, the even worse Smooth Operators and Vile Seducers who, being clean, are harder to identify.
This is exactly the popular gestalt permeates the world in which we live. Read any of John McDonald’s color-coded, Travis Magee novels, a series that continues to sell over the years. Magee and his friend Meyer are the Right Sort. They are confronted with two sorts of villains: dirty ones (who must be dispatched with fist and force) and clean ones (who must be outsmarted and then beat with fist and force).
To bring up another example, rent the CD of Working Girl—Mike Nichols’ loving recreation of the Alger myth. Here, cutting from whole cloth, we see every bit of the Alger mythos. The Right Sort (the Melanie Griffith character) confronting the awful and overbearing authority figure (Sigourney Weaver), helped by the love interest (Harrison Ford), and overcoming against all odds to be seen, at last, on her way to wealth.
I cannot escape the possibility that the attitude of many white American men (especially older ones) toward those who come to America partake of Alger’s vision. People come to America, work hard and prosper. Yet they are resented. They are not white. How can they be “The Right Sort”?
* * * * *
I hope I’m not misunderstood here.
As I said at the outset, I admire the good works that the modern Horatio Alger Association espouses.
I much prefer to live in a world where people work hard, care for one another, and have goals.
I prefer wholeheartedly to deal with people who are manly and straightforward. Trustworthy. The world is better for them.
I applaud the virtues championed by the Alger Association. I only wish the Association had read the books on which they depend.
[1]All quotes taken from the website: horatioalger.com.
[2]Chapter 1, “The Missing Heir” in Adrift in New York. There exist numerous editions of the novels. Rather than citing a given page, I’ve simply identified the chapter where the quote is to be found. Alger’s chapters are universally short and easily read.
[3]Chapter 1, “Ragged Dick Is Introduced to the Reader,” in Ragged Dick.
[4]Chapter 1. “Ragged Dick Is Introduced to the Reader.”.
[5]Chapter 4, “Florence,” in Adrift in New York.
[6] I find it hard to talk about Alger’s world without resorting to capitalization and exlamation points. Truly astonishing in its aching simplicity, only an occasional punctuational emphasis will do.
[7]Never mind that they are first cousins; incest is not to stand in the way of a good story.
[8]Chapter 4, “Florence,” in Adrift in New York.
[9]Percy is first reintroduced into the narrative in a chapter wonderfully entitled “A Friend, Though a Dude.” Evidently to be a “dude” in this world is nothing to be proud of. Perhaps his dude-ness links back to his earlier-described “foppishness.”
[10]Chapter 17, “Dodger Strikes Luck,” in Adrift in New York.
[11]Chapter 32, “An Exciting Adventure,” in Adrift in New York.
[12]Chapter 32, “An Exciting Adventure,” in Adrift in New York.
[13]Chapter 33, “An Important Discovery,” in Adrift in New York.
[14]Chapter 33, “An Important Discovery,” in Adrift in New York.
[15]Chapter 33, “An Important Discovery” in Adrift in New York.
[16]Chapter 33, “An Important Discovery” in Adrift in New York.
[17]Chapter 33, “An Important Discovery” in Adrift in New York.
[18]Chapter 34, “Just in Time,” in Adrift in New York.
[19]Chapter 34, “Just in Time,” in Adrift in New York.
[20]Chapter 34. “Just in Time,” in Adrift in New York. And, of course, Dodger returns to New York, and Curtis Waring, unmasked for the Vile Seducer he is, moves to Chicago and takes back his abandoned wife “and he treats her fairly well, fearing that, otherwise, he will lose his income” provided by his forgiving uncle. Moreover, while “it is too early yet to speak of marriage, but it is possible that Florence will marry a cousin after all.” Incest be damned. Chapter 38, “The Closing Scene,” in Adrift in New York.
12 The Harry Potter Guy (1)
Every Friday for over two years, I visited the teenagers held at the county’s Juvenile Detention Home. For most of that time I was known universally as “The Harry Potter Guy.” How that came to be is a story in itself.
I first went to the place on the invitation of a friend. She had been asked to do an educational program about citizenship. I simply observed. At the end of the six week period, having found the young people interesting, I asked the Education Coordinator if I could continue to come up.
For two reasons, this began a profoundly disorienting period.
On the one hand, all of the assumptions about “education” that I unconsciously carried were summarily destroyed. Consider; I had—
- no stable group of students. They changed from week to week, sometimes two or three and sometimes as many as ten or twelve.
- no idea of their backgrounds or capabilities. Some were very intelligent; others borderline.
- no way of giving assignments and having them done.
- no idea of when a session would begin or how long it would last.
- no idea of where the session might be conducted. Usually it was in the tiny computer laboratory, but not always.
And of major importance, I had no idea of the state of mind of the teens. Some days they might be relatively placid; on others, when something had agitated them, they seemed utterly unable to concentrate on even the simplest of tasks.
On the other hand, it took me weeks and weeks to become aware of how different, how alien was the twilight world of JDH. One Friday, for example, because I would arrive late, I stopped at a deli and bought a sandwich and some potato salad to take with me. Once there, I asked in the kitchen for a plastic fork to eat the salad. When I had finished, I put the remains of my lunch in a waste basket. Before I could walk very far toward the computer room, the cook asked me for the fork. I said I had thrown it away. I had to return and dig it out. It could be made into a weapon, she told me. Another time when I had returned home, I got a phone call. A pencil was missing. Had I taken it with me? If they couldn’t find it, they would have to lock down the whole unit, and for the same reason: it could become a weapon. Similarly, I could not leave magazines for them to read: the staples that held magazines together could be taken out and used to hurt, sometimes another, more often than not the teens themselves.
Given these handicaps, I’m still not sure what kept me coming back. But I labored on. Each Friday, I would bring a poem or essay or newspaper article. Once there and told how many teens would be with me, I’d make enough copies for everyone. Sometimes this produced lively discussion. Others, the silences spread out like oil on water. I continued to wonder why I was there. I probably would have given up soon after I begin visiting, except that the Educational Coordinator told me over and over that the teens looked forward to my visits.
Regularly I’d ask, at the end of a session, what they might want to talk about next time. Usually this received a blank stare. One day I asked the group of four boys the question. One of them, Benjamin by name, surprised me. “Mythology,” he said. The other three concurred. They, too, would like to talk about mythology.
I don’t know what surprised me more—the choice of topic or that it came from Benjamin.
Benjamin was a fourteen year old latino. He had the oiliest skin I’ve ever seen–so shiny that it looked as if, after touching his brow, he would have to wipe his hand. His black hair, cut short, stood out in all directions from his head. But his most unusual characteristics were his ears. The came to a point. Hence his nickname: everyone called him Elf.
Elf, I learned later, came from a horridly dysfunctional family. He intended, as soon as he was old enough, to join the army. He read incessantly, regularly choosing from the cart of books. The other students later told me he especially liked military history.
Upon further questioning, it became clear that his choice of mythology was not simply an impulse. He genuinely wanted to know about Greek and Roman history.
Since this was the first perceptible flicker of interest I had detected, the next day at home I dutifully dug out my copy of Bulfinch and began looking to find something that might be suitable for discussion. A chapter in the “Table of Contents” caught my eye: “Modern Monsters: The Phoenix, the Basilisk, the Unicorn.” Since I had recently been reading Harry Potter, my literary antennae began to quiver. Upon reading the short chapter, I was absolutely sure this was Rowling’s source for significant details in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I found any number of similarities:
*Fawkes, Dumbledore’s phoenix, fit the beauty Bulfinch imputed to it;
*the way the basilisk looked and moved;
*that spiders were afraid of it;
*that unicorns were symbols of purity.
Early on, the following Friday, I told the group of eight that I wanted to give them three words and see if they knew anything about them. To my astonishment, they spoke in perfect unison, “Harry Potter.” Well they knew the source: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The more we talked, the more amazed I became. Not only did the group know the Potter novels, they knew them in encyclopedic detail. Elf told me he had read all of them six times.
Clearly, I had found the content, the subject matter that had eluded me. This was a rich vein I could mine as time went along. So, of course, I nearly blew the whole possibility. Forgetting that I dealt with a group of unsophisticated, incarcerated teenagers, I moved on to what seemed to me an interesting possibility raised by linking mythology to the novel. It offered an off-beat explanation for the magical car. Once it has delivered Harry and Ron to Hogwarts, the car vanishs, only to reappear at the crucial moment in the forest when the spiders are about to eat them. The car saves them and then flies off into the distance.
In Greek drama, when some improbably, implausible resolution to a problem concludes a work, it is referred to as the agency of the deus ex machina. The god from the machine. It seemed to me that this might be a private joke on Rowlings part—the god from the machine is a machine.
I raised this point, only to be met with blank stares from the group. Clearly I had missed the mark. But our mutual satisfaction at finding something in common let my blunder go quietly into that good night. Henceforth we would talk about Rowling’s novels.
Henceforth I became known, to teens and staff alike, simply as “the Harry Potter Guy.”
(to be continued)
11
Solomon Kravitz, Job Counselor
at the
Nazareth Branch of
Employment Security,
Interviews
an
Unemployed Carpenter
(With Apologies to Bob Newhart)
SK: Good morning, Mr. Josephson. Right this way.
JJ: ***
SK: Yes. The weather’s nice this time of year.
JJ: ***
SK: Just have a seat. These cubicles are a little small, but . . .
JJ: ***
SK: Oh, no. The intake interview is usually short. I go over the
application and we . . .
JJ: ***
SK: Clear to Cana. Must be a big wedding.
JJ: ***
SK: I understand. You won’t be late.
JJ: ***
SK: Definitely. I’ve got a Jewish mother myself.
JJ: ***
SK: Now, Jesus. Do you mind if I call you Jesus?
JJ: ***
SK: Certainly. Last names are so formal. Call me Solomon.
JJ: ***
SK: No. At the intake we only go over the form you filled out.
JJ: ***
SK: So. You’ve been a carpenter all your life.
JJ: ***
SK: I see. He’s been dead a while. You don’t want to carry on the
family business.
JJ: ***
SK: Messiah.
JJ: ***
SK: You’re tired of carpentering and think you’d like to try messiahing.
JJ: ***
SK: Well . . . would you mind if I asked you a couple of questions?
JJ: ***
SK: The Messiah is supposed to come to lead us to freedom, isn’t he?
JJ: ***
SK: Warriors and Weapons and all that.
JJ: ***
SK: And you don’t want to be that kind of messiah.
JJ: **
SK: A few disciples will be all you’ll need.
JJ: ***
SK: O.K. No weapons.
JJ: ***
SK: It’s a Gandhi kind of thing.
JJ: ***
SK: If that’s how you feel, then just do it.
JJ: ***
SK: But it’s not everyday I get to counsel someone who wants to go into that line of work
.JJ: ***
SK: Oh, no. I’m sure I can help. But it’s a challenge.
JJ: ***
SK: Well, when we talk about career change, we talk about groups of jobs.
JJ: ***
SK: Because that’s how the Dictionary of Occupational Titles is organized.
JJ: ***
SK: For a job to be listed in it, there needs to be lots of people doing it.
JJ: ***
SK: Because of the census. Say what you will about the Romans, that
census thirty years ago has given us plenty of data to work with.
JJ: ***
SK: Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it. “messiah” isn’t a statistically valid group.
JJ: ***
SK: Nope. It’s one-man only.
JJ: ***
SK: Oh, no, Jesus. It doesn’t mean I can’t help jump-start your
career change.
JJ: ***
SK: We can look at job functions. The Dictionary classifies jobs by how a
worker uses data, people, and things.
JJ: ***
SK: Right on. Carpenters mostly work with things.
JJ: ***
SK: So why don’t you tell me about how you intend to go about messiahing.
JJ: ***
SK: You’re going to walk up and down the country, talking to people.
JJ: ***
SK: Telling them stories. Proclaiming the good news.
JJ: ***
SK: And you’ll gather a group of disciples.
JJ: ***
SK: You want to start small.
JJ: ***
SK: Maybe the story angle will open some things up. I was looking at
“creative writer” in the Dictionary the other day. . . . See? . . . Just
enter it in the computer. Now, “selects . . . conducts . . . organizes.”
JJ: ***
SK: Of course. Let me turn the monitor so you can read it better.
JJ: ***
SK: Here we are. “Develops factors, such as theme, plot, order,
characterization and story line.” Had much experience doing this?
JJ: ***
SK: Your neighbors always ask you to tell them stories.
JJ: ***
SK: The University of Jerusalem has a fine creative writing program. You
get to work with practicing storytellers. . . . We could set you up with
an internship and . . .
JJ: ***
SK: No. I agree. Understanding people is important.
JJ: ***
SK: And stories are how we know who we are. Family. Friends. How we
connect. What’s really important.
JJ: ***
SK: But stories are so untidy.
JJ: ***
SK: I know. But two people can interpret the same story differently.
JJ: ***
SK: OK. OK. OK. Let’s try another angle. How about “prophet?”
JJ: ***
SK: No. But there’s been some talk around here to do a count to see if
there’s a statistically valid unit. Lots of them around these days.
JJ: ***
SK: But they’re false.
JJ: ***
SK: What about the older ones. Jeremiah. Ezekiel.
JJ: ***
SK: Most of the time they told people what not to do. How wrong they’ve
lived. Sin.
JJ: ***
SK: And you’ve got only good news.
JJ: ***
SK: Well, all right. And yes, time does fly.
JJ: ***
SK: I’d like to hear more about this new dispensation.
JJ: ***
SK: When you get back from Cana, let’s get together. Maybe do
lunch. We can brainstorm some more about your new career.
JJ: ***
SK: ust ask for Solomon.
JJ: ***
SK: Don’t be a stranger, Jesus.
10 I Experience Cussing as Art Form
It was the summer of 1953, the heyday of the gypo logger. One- and two-
and half-a-dozen man operations would bid on small patches of timber, bring in
tractors and make roads, fall and buck the timber and haul it to a loading site. A
log truck—itself often a one-man operation—would carry the logs to the mills.
Every third Oregon valley, it seemed, sweltered in its own diesel haze.
An uneasy peace lay on the land. The Korean War was ending. The men
who’d fought in World War II had come home, gone to school on the GI Bill, and now focused unblinkingly on families and careers. Nationally, housing starts continued to skyrocket. Lumber was in high demand.
High school diploma in hand, I waited to join many of my classmates, working a pre-college summer on a green chain at one of the local mills. Because I would not be eighteen until the end of June, I had to wait several weeks. The law would not let me work in a mill. I could, however, work in the woods. For that month, I got a job with Ernie McConkie.
On the day when my ineptness almost killed him, I experienced cussing at an epic, indeed Homeric, level.
Ernie was a prototype gypo logger. He owned a tractor—old and battered, with a metal sunshade held above his head by four posts welded to the frame around his seat—along with chainsaws and the other tools of his trade. He paid me the princely sum of $2.00 an hour to buck and set choke. Since falling was so dangerous, Ernie dropped the trees himself. If their lie was safe, I’d help him buck them into thirty-two foot lengths. Mainly though I set the chokes—attached the cables to the logs—so Ernie could tow them with his tractor to a central point for loading on trucks. I was his general roustabout, gofer and mule.
Ernie was near sixty. Forty years in the woods had turned him brown in the face and forearms. When he took off his battered hard hat to wipe his sweating brow, his forehead gleamed whitely in the sun. While in fine health, the hours spent on the caterpillar tractor had resulted in a strange physiological shift. He had been, in the excellent phrase of someone who knew him, “shook to middle.” He wore caulk boots that laced high up his legs. Wide suspenders held up faded pants. The denim had been cut off well above his ankles and a fringe hung on the bottom, swaying like lace in the wind. He wore threadbare flannel shirts that began each morning scrupulously clean and ironed, but after a day in the dust and heat ended an anonymous and wrinkled brown.
A god-fearing man, he belonged to some small evangelical sect. He lived a primitive kind of salvation through conversion. He rarely volunteered much about it. I learned of his practices only because they came up now and then in conversation, when he talked about his wife. He spoke of her regularly. As near as I could tell, her major life-function was to prepare his lunch. I found myself fascinated at each morning’s break when he would ritually open the metal lunch box to “see what she’s fixed.”
I brought with me a remarkably rigid set of assumptions about what should and shouldn’t be found in a lunch pail. Lunchmeat sandwiches. Sometimes potato chips. Perhaps cookies or cake. Milk. For one who’s idea of a gourmet lunch meant the bologna sandwich had lettuce on it, Ernie’s meals were a revelation. I noticed first how carefully they were wrapped.
In the days before aluminum foil or plastic baggies, waxed paper was the medium of necessity. Waxed paper allows no margin of error. If the fold isn’t right the first time, the lines, like glaciated scorings on bedrock, remain forever. Ernie’s wife never seemed to miss. Nothing marred the geometric precision with which she wrapped each item. Slices of buttered bread would be on top, just under the two packs of Chesterfields he’d smoke as he worked—in addition to the pack that began the day in his shirt pocket. Below the bread might be pork chops and applesauce. Or fried chicken and gravy. Or meat loaf. Turkey and dressing. Small jars of fruit salad. Cottage cheese. Pudding. One by one he’d take out each package or container, inspect it in ruminative silence, placing it before him on whatever log or stump was handy. When he’ d emptied the pail, he’d contemplate the entire culinary panorama. Then, with equally deliberate ritual, he’d repack the pail, now, it seemed, prepared to face the dust and heat and noise, secure in the knowledge that a just reward awaited him at noon.
Ernie was not a talkative man. Rarely did he say much about anything. Only when my misjudgment almost killed him, did his taciturn reserve fracture. Neither before nor since have I been cussed so majestically. It was Shakespearean. Jeremiadic. Within the anonymous logger there hid the sternly lyric soul of an old testament prophet.
One week we logged a stand of mature Douglas fir that grew on an isolated ridge point. First Ernie cut a road, making a tight, U-shaped track up the fairly steep side hill and so around to the point. The road finished, we spent a day or two falling and bucking. Then we began hauling the logs down the road to the loading area. The cycle repeated endlessly.
Setting a choke involved wrapping one end of the 1” cable around the end of a log and attaching the ring in the other end to the rear of the tractor. I assumed they had been named “chokes” because the cable end that attached to the log had a fitting on it that acted as a slip knot. The pull of the tractor seemed to strangle the wood, cutting through bark to the pale sapwood within.
Because the logs averaged between two and three feet thick, rarely would we try to haul more than one at a time. While Ernie was pulling one down the dirt road to the loading area, I’d remain behind to set a choke on the next. This done, I’d use a small chainsaw to lop off whatever limbs remained. He’d come back and I’d hook him up. Enveloped in a blue cloud of diesel smoke, sitting with regal calm in the ear-splitting roar of the unmuffled tractor, off he’d go.
Dry weather continued.
We knew the Forest Service would soon close the woods, shutting down all logging. Ernie decided we would haul to the loading area all the logs we had bucked on the ridge point. By our morning break, we had most of them down. When we went back to work, he told me, since we were running out of time, we were going to finish things off differently. He wouldn’t bring the tractor up the U-shaped road on the side hill and then around onto the point. Rather, we’d run a 1/2” cable from the logs directly down the steep side of the ridge.
At least that’s what he insisted afterwards he’d told me. I may not have been paying attention. He may not have been clear. It may have been the post-pubescent hormonal haze through which I saw the world. Whatever the reason, I set off with the long, 1/2” cable wrapped on my shoulder, sure that I knew that Ernie wanted to take all three remaining logs out together, in one pull. While I climbed he walked down to the staging area to see how much room was left.
Since I’d already put chokes on all three, I fastened them together with a U-bolt and then attach it to the longer cable. By the time Ernie got back, I was waiting for him on the road at the foot of the slope, ready to hitch the smaller cable to the tractor. Once done, he told me to go back up and begin collecting the equipment. I hurried back up the hill. As I did so, he checked something on the tractor.
Peering down through the crushed ferns at the top of the hill, I waved to him that all was well. In a plume of diesel smoke, the tractor began to inch forward. The three logs groaned and moved. Came together. Slid toward the steep edge. Then one of them caught on a large root.
I watched, fascinated. It never occurred to me to signal a problem.
At the resistance, the tractor bucked a little. Ernie gave it more diesel. It roared and lurched ahead.
The cable vibrated wildly, humming up the scale like a conductor’s pitch pipe. With a vicious snap it broke flush at the U- bolt. Down it whipped toward the tractor, it’s huge loops sounding “whough, whouGH, WHOUGH” and then wrapping around and around the tractor.
The four posts that held up the heavy sheet metal roof were all that saved him. The cable wrapped around them, attacking with terrier-like intensity. Ernie cowered on the seat. Then he looked up at me. Even at a distance, I might have looked into the eyes of an Old Testament prophet at the moment he perhaps discovered that harlotry was rampant in the camp, or that someone in the rear was in dialogue with a golden calf.
Off the tractor he leaped. Ignoring the road, he came at me directly up the slope. Hand over hand he came, pulling himself along by grabbing grass and ferns. As he neared, I could see his mouth already working. Flecks of saliva flew to either side.
Arriving before me he drew himself up and denounced my stupidity, ineptness and general worthlessness.
The way he went about it had little to do with the stale and mindless repetition of the half-dozen or so excretive and copulative nouns and verbs that today pass as cursing, where even incest has been so leached of all significance that it can become a staple filler in movie dialogue.
No.
This was cussing. This was an art form in its own right. Complex. Ornate. Rococo, even.
Bach would have approved the structure. Here sanitary habits and biological functions–both personal and parental. In counterpoint, obvious affinities I had with the lower animals. Variations on sub-themes: interesting physiological realities that must have obtained at the moment of my conception; the primal darkness of my intellect; the general disgust I engendered in all right-thinking, working men.
On and on it went. The sternly musical cadences riveted me. Oh, that I could have captured it all on tape. As it is, I recall clearly only the roar of the final, denunciatory thunderbolt—
And you’re as useless as a one-legged man at an ass kicking contest, you rotten crotched little snot gobbler.
I stood stunned. Immobilized. Struck dumb. The preternatural silence of the woods rang and echoed in my ears. Ernie seemed paralyzed as well. Then I, so absorbed in the wonder of the invective that I momentarily forgot who and where I was, did the unthinkable.
I laughed.
He looked at me. I could see the adrenal frenzy begin to pass. His eyes lost their maniacal bulge. He acted surprised to find one shaking forefinger still pointed at me.
Seemingly puzzled, he slowly drew it back, twice pausing to frown at it before it reached his pocket. He gazed at me, bemused. He shook himself.
“Well,” he said at last, “I reckon we better take these last three out one at a time. Around on the road. Like we done before.”
And that’s what we did.
09 Hitchhiking
Once while sitting in the terminal in O’Hare waiting for a plane, I had a thought. Half the people in the terminal were waiting to leave. The other half were returning. All carried luggage. Those leaving had clean clothes. Those returning had dirty clothes. Half of the thousands of people who passed through the terminal in a give day carried dirty underwear. Airline terminals must have the greatest concentration of smelly garments in the world.
The thought had considerable weight because of my experience as a college student. The size of the pile of dirty clothes on my closet floor played a significant role in timing my existence. When it reached critical mass, it meant that I had to go home. In addition to Mom’s cooking, it meant getting clean clothes.
It usually took about five weeks between trips. I’d fill my suitcase to the brim with dirty clothes, cage a ride with a friend to highway on the south of the city, and hitchhike home. About 200 miles. I usually tried to get out as early in the afternoon as I could. Daytime hitchhiking was much easier.
The experienced hitchhike knows something of the ins and outs of hitching. First, pick the right spot. The place must be one where an oncoming driver could see me at distance. Second, it must also have room for the car to pull off should the driver chose. That way he (almost always) had time to look me over. Third, look presentable. Be clean shaven. Finally, be sure and make eye contact with the driver. Move the thumb pleadingly as the car nears. That always leaves the option of giving the driver the finger if his look seems contemptuous.
Once a car stopped, the driver would usually open the door. If not, I’d open it and ask, “How far you going.” If they’re going to turn off before long, of course I’d not accept the offer. But this isn’t really the point. You need a moment to size up the driver. If he (and/or his car) don’t pass muster, I could thank him and keep on hitching.
I hitchhiked for all of my undergraduate years. Only twice did I ever make a poor choice. Once a car with three men in the front seat stopped. About my age, they were on their way from Portland to Los Angeles. This meant I had a ride clear to Roseburg, two hundred miles south. I was tired (a dance the night before). Once my suitcase and I were in the back seat, I went to sleep. Some time later, on the outskirts of a small town, the car had a flat tire. The trio left to get their spare patched. I decided to stay and continue sleeping. Two of them returned. The driver started the car and drove it, thumping along on its flat, to a service station. We had hardly arrived when a police car cut us off. A second followed. Out we were jerked and up against the police cars we stood. Only later did I learn that the trio had gone to one service station and, while one diverted the attendant’s attention, the others stole a tire. Two came back to get the car while the third rolled the stolen tire to the next gas station down the street.
Soon after the lineup, I was put in the back of a police car and grilled mercilessly. “We know there are more than one of you. You might as well confess.” Since I had nothing to confess, all I could do was insist on my innocence. Finally, the police turned to the others, who eventually corroborated my story. Picking up my suitcase, I walked into the town.
I found a small restaurant. Since I did not have enough money for a hamburger, I searched the menu for something I could afford. As I did so, I told my story. The waitress took pity on me. Gave me a burger. They even threw in fries.
Another time, even though I got an early start, my luck seemed all bad. I got a series of short rides. Finally, late in the day—a grey February evening with light rain falling—two young men picked me up. Gradually they drew me into the conversation. They were on their way to a dance. The girlfriend of one of them had taken up with someone else. They were going to settle this score. I was invited along to share the fun. At this point, the passenger opened the glove box and took out a gun.
I suddenly felt no desire to go to the dance. They let me off on a lonely stretch of highway. I knew the place. The highway curved uphill for almost a mile. No good place to be seen in the headlights. The rain began to fall. Toting the suitcase, I trudged up the hill, not because there would be a better place to be seen, but because at the top of the hill, the Manning Road overpass promised shelter from the rain. Once there I waited patiently, holding out my thumb to the occasional vehicle. Night fell. I was invisible to the drivers. Minutes turned into hours. Fewer and fewer cars passed. At last, well after midnight, a driver stopped and picked me up. I sat, huddled over the heater, telling him my story. Even though he was on his way south to California, when we reached Roseburg, he turned east and drove me the twelve or so miles to my parent’s home.
A major fringe benefit to hitchhiking were the stories. A driver would pick me up and, as a tacit bargain, could talk to me, knowing that he would never see me again, and so nothing he said would ever reach anyone who knew him. Once when I’d transferred to Berkeley, Cal won the Pacific Coast Conference and so would go to the Rose Bowl. I decided to hitchhike to Pasadena. Several rides later, a well-dressed man in a new car picked me up. I heard his life story. He was an artist (in his mind) who had never been able to succeed. Forces beyond his ken had constantly frustrated him. He made a living drawing posters and advertisements in a graphic arts studio, bitter and underappreciated. I listened to this tale of woe. Evidently, he thought me an excellent fellow, for rather than simply letting me off at the point where he turned off, he found a place where he could park his car. Taking out supplies, he drew me a fine sign—”Rose Bowl” it said. He sized it to my battered suitcase. Then taped it on.
With this, even though cars passed, I got smiles. Didn’t take too long before I reached Pasadena. Iowa beat Cal, 38-12.
It saddens me now, as I drive, to see the signs regularly proclaiming, “Do Not Pick Up Hitchhikers.” It speaks to me of the pervasive fear that now dominates our world. Not to know someone is automatically to assume the worst. The stranger is de facto a threat. He must be shunned. No one hitchhikes any more.
08 Queen of Heaven & Earth
I never much cared for Mary. Perhaps it was something left over from the tenuous Protestantism of my childhood, but I was at best neutral toward her.
Not so my wife. Her devotion has been deep and unwavering. Decades ago, when we left our wedding reception, we began our honeymoon by returning to the chapel so she could place a flower from her bouquet at the foot of Mary’s statue.
But for me, Mary was always too cold, too remote. All my life I’ve been put off by her inhuman perfection.
Not long ago I had one of those moments of insight that come only with age, when one finally brings enough life experience to something so that, for the first time, it makes sense. For no apparent reason, I was thinking about the time when Jesus was twelve and remained behind while Mary and Joseph had journeyed a whole day on the way back home before they realized he was nowhere to be found.
Suddenly it occurred to me that I had something vital in common with them. I think I could reach that moment of understanding because I had already gone through a kind of preliminary stage. I had got beyond the westernized Mary with whom we are all so familiar.
In pictures and especially in statues, Mary has regular Anglo-Saxon features. If you asked central casting for someone to play the role, they would send a blue-eyed blond whose promo pictures would have words like “wholesome” and “reserved” and “modest” in the margins.
When Jesus was twelve, Mary was somewhere around thirty. She was a Jewish matron. She had a dark complexion and dark hair. Her nose was probably large and her eyebrows may have met over it. Certainly, she had hairy legs and armpits. She could well have had a light moustache. Since she bathed no more often than anyone else, she smelled no less gamey than any of her friends. To all outward intents and purposes, she was average, normal, usual. She melted into the Semitic woodwork.
Breaking through the cultural stereotype that my world had given her was only the preliminary step. I still was no closer to appreciation than I had ever been. This happened when I was thinking about the temple episode. The whole sequence of events made sense to me—only made sense to me—when it occurred to me that Mary had forgotten Jesus is the son of God. When she thinks about it—about the angel and the virginity, the heavenly host and the years spent in Egypt—when she calls all this to mind, she knows who he is.
But most of her time is spent in going to the bazaar and bargaining for food, seeing to it that the house is in order and that Joseph’s clients are greeted properly when they come to look at the custom cabinets he’s building, that she has mended tears in her son’s everyday robe which happened when he was playing hide-and-seek near the thorn bush.
She lived her life on the same human terms as the rest of us. We all know what the important things are: birth and death, sickness, love, compassion, charity.
But the important things are crowded out by the urgent. Can we afford new drapes? How hard is the quiz going to be? The car certainly is not running well. Will the Giants win the ballgame? Not the important. Just the urgent.
They are the things that fill the average lives of the average layman and laywoman. That is what Mary and Joseph were—laity; living in the world, trying to get along.
When Mary and Joseph leave Jerusalem and trudge back toward home, they are probably thinking about the kinds of things lay people think about. Joseph is probably wondering if he priced the job right. The wood was expensive and maybe he should have bid it a few drachmas more.
Mary has her concerns. Somehow, she’s got to save a few shekels out of the household money. The kid goes through sandals like he thinks they grow on trees.
If they were not thinking thoughts like these, they would have been profoundly irresponsible in losing track of their charge. But they were not irresponsible. Only human. The urgent had crowded out the important. So Joseph comes back in the evening and says, “By the way, Mary, where’s the boy?”
And what does she answer? “I thought he was with you.”
And both of them feel the sinking feeling in their stomachs, as they set out to find him, aware fully that somehow the truly important has been elbowed aside, simply by the urgent.
For me, they are, at that moment as nowhere else in scripture, human. There is something here that I can understand, something that goes far beyond the cultural differences that separate us, a profound continuity between their world and ours, their century and ours, their destiny and ours.
I feel much more comfortable now with Mary as an intercessor.
07 Meevels
Many lovely things inhabit God’s universe. I’ll go on record that nothing is lovelier than a six year old daughter, fresh from the bath, wearing a clean nightgown adorned by cavorting small bears that hold musical instruments.
Dr. Seuss clutched in her hand, she crawls up on the sofa beside me. I’m engrossed in Pale Fire. She attends The Cat in the Hat. In the livingroom quiet, the only sounds come from the bathroom down the hall where her Mother bathes her younger brother.
Several moments pass in comfortable silence. She then announces, in tones so definite they brook no argument, “We don’t like the meevels.”
A little startled, I glance down at her. It’s clear that I’m not part of a conversation. Her eyes are fixed on the far side of the room. I’m ignored.
Had I not been so interested in Nabokov’s novel, I probably would have asked what she meant. I didn’t. We continued companionably to read. Soon her mother comes to fetch her and off to bed she goes.
That might have been the end of it, except that several nights later the scene repeated itself. This time though, when she asserted her dislike of meevles, I fond myself oddly defensive. In retrospect, I can think of all sorts of leading questions I might have asked to get to the bottom of this intense emotion. Somehow the dad-ness of the moment did me in. Dad’s aren’t supposed to have to ask about things like that. Her demeanor implied that I, as a Dad, fully agreed with her and that was that.
It happened a third time. She spoke with iron determination, a frown creasing her forehead, her head shaking back and forth. “We don’t like the meevels,” she intoned.
Faced with something larger than life, I did what all young fathers do.
I talked to her mother.
My wife was equally baffled. She had no idea what meevels might be. We considered several options. Had she been playing with anyone new? Were there some children at school who might have introduced her to these heinous creatures? Television?
Several nights later, I went to bed early. Abruptly, before I dropped off to sleep, my wife came into the bedroom, wiggled into bed, put her head under the pillow and giggled uncontrollably. I tried to get her out.
“The children will hear,” she managed, holding the pillow down with both hands.
At last, evidently sated with laughter, she emerged, wiping tears from her cheeks.
“The mystery of the meevels has been solved!” she said. Back under the pillow she went. More laughter. “These awful creatures will never bother our child again,” she managed .
Utterly baffled, I could only wait.
“I’ve been teaching her prayers,” she said. “You know. The Hail Mary.” She paused. “The Our Father?”
I shook my head,
“And lead us not into temptation, but delivers us from . . . “
06 I Go unto the Altar of the Lord
Once many years ago, when I was only seven or eight years old, my mother and I went to mass in a newly constructed church. Before the service started, the priest, a tall, bald man, came out and asked if there was an altar boy present.
I was volunteered.
In the sacristy, I found to my dismay that there were only two cassocks. One looked as if it were intended for a dignified midget, the other for someone who might play power forward for the Celtics. Perhaps because I was short and fat, the smaller one looked uncomfortably like a black tutu.
I put on the larger.
By rolling up the sleeves and then gathering six inches or so of excess length in one hand, I managed with the other to get the candles lit and the altar prepared. Then, followed by a train that could have graced the court of Elizabeth, I led the celebrant out.
All went well until the priest finished reading the Epistle, on the right side of the altar, and moved to the center to pray. At this time the server was to pick up the missal and its heavy stand, descend the three altar steps, turn, genuflect, and then mount to the other side, there to set the book on the altar so the priest could read the Gospel.
(Recall, this all happened long before the Second Vatican Council. The altar had not yet been turned around. Most of the time the celebrant had his back to the congregation.)
The missal and stand were extraordinarily heavy. The only way I could manage when I picked them up was to lock my elbows at my sides and lean backward. Then I shuffled cautiously toward the top step, peering out of the corner of my eye even as I felt with my toe.
After a number of frantic taps, I found the edge. In order to be sure the cassock was out of the way, I began with several preparatory kicks. Then I wobbled down the stairs, turned and genuflected.
I think I knew even before I stood up that it was all over, but with a fatalism that would have done credit to a Hemingway heroes, I played the cards as they had been dealt.
I was mounting the steps inside the cassock.
The first step was all right.
As I placed my foot on the second, it was as if I suddenly had been clubbed on the back of the neck.
My chin was violently jerked to my chest and then to my knees.
The heavy book and stand flew from my hands.
As I lay curled in fetal splendor on the top step of the altar, I was surrounded by a dull, gong-like reverberation. Only later did I realize that at the moment I let fly with the missal and its stand, the priest—a tall man—was still leaning over, his lips an inch or so away from the altar, whispering cabalistically to himself. The book took him just above the back of his knees, driving him forward with such force that the top of his head hit the tabernacle flush on.
I honestly have little memory of what happened after that. I only recall that the rest of Mass was punctuated occasionally by muffled screams of laughter from the congregation.
Being something of an introvert, I’ve brooded over this and kindred incidents, seeking to suck some marrow of meaning from the hard bones of humiliation.
I’ve reached a couple of conclusions.
First, I respect dignified people. Especially in the church, I’m glad there are those who are able to carry off the grand gesture.
But try as I may, dignity is not mine, nor is it for those who I know best. Things never quite measure up. I’ve finally decided that it is simply impossible not to play the fool, now and again.
To be human is to risk constantly the ludicrous. We can’t always avoid the banana peels on the sidewalks of life. Laughter confirms our common humanity.
The other conclusion is more strictly theological. If we are created in the image and likeness of God and if laughter is somehow a hallmark of the genuine human condition, then so it must be for God as well.
The Trinity remains a mystery, but some things, we are told, can be said of it: that God the Son is the Father’s knowledge of himself and God the Holy Spirit is the love that flows between them.
I take that holy spirit to be laughter.
The fullness of joy that awaits all of us.
05 The Lamb of God
The New Testament is clear: people liked Jesus.
I don’t refer to the crowds who came to listen to him. The sick who came to be healed. The crippled who wanted to walk again. That’s the public part of Jesus. Peo***********************ple who wanted something from him.
I refer to the private. To Martha and Mary and their brother Lazarus. To the prostitutes and tax collectors and others with whom he broke bread.
Why did they like Jesus?
For me, the answer to that question grew slowly out of my appreciation of a part of the iconography of Catholicism: Jesus as the Lamb of God. Regularly we come across the image of a lamb, usually with some crosier or other implement nearby. We generally think of the lamb as innocent. Helpless. Led to the sacrificial altar.
I spent part of my youth on a farm. Our view was more pragmatic. We always had a few lambs. We fed them. Watched them grow. Butchered them and ate them. That’s what lambs were for.
But that practical vision of reality never lessened my joy at watching the lambs grow.
Nothing in God’s creation compares with a lamb. Nothing. They are totally present to the world. When a lamb sleeps, it is utterly relaxed. Looks as if it has no bones. It wakes up. Is hungry. Is totally hungry. Often when a ewe would have twins, one would be favored and the other not. That second had to be hand fed from a bottle. More than once, try as I might to hold on to the rim of the rubber nipple, the frantic lamb would jerk it off, then to stand astonished as warm milk gushed over its face.
Once fed, lamb’s play. Race about. Chase one another.
I once saw a lamb stop stock still, amazed, as a butterfly lit on a bush. “My goodness,” it seemed to say, its front legs spread, its head held high, “a flower that flies.”
Held stock still, stunned by this stupendous event. This wondrous moment.
Totally present to the now.
The more I’ve thought about it, the more I believe Jesus was like that. I believe he went through life with the same wonder as the lamb. The same total presence to the moment.
Once in New York City, I walked at noon on 5th Avenue. Hoards of people passed me on the sidewalk. None of them looked at me. None of them met my eyes. Momentarily one did–a man clearly deranged, madness flickering across his expression, saliva flecking his beard. I realized the rest of the people avoided eye contact because they were afraid someone like him might notice them.
Jesus was never afraid of people. Jesus noticed them.
I think he looked at every person he met. Really looked at them. He saw sorrow and regret. He saw sins and atonements. He saw hope amid the ruins of a life. Saw sins of commission and sins of omission.
But beyond all that, he saw the goodness of each of those he met. The profound goodness that does not go away, regardless of how often we make misguided choices. Hurt those we love. Hurt ourselves, when we do not know how to love ourselves.
I believe that is why people genuinely liked Jesus. Simply put, he genuinely liked them. He did not come to sit at table as the Son of God. He came as a very real person. A person who could listen to them. Who could advise them. Who could tell them stories. Far and away, beyond everything else, he told them wonderful stories.
He was their friend. They could look forward to his visits.
And they listened to him because they knew when he looked at them, he did so astonished at their goodness, with all the immediacy of a lamb looking at flowers that at any moment might fly
04 Money
I taught for years at an urban university. The school had made a commitment to recruit minority students from around the city.
She was very tall, angular and very black. She looked to be in her late thirties. She hugged her books with both arms crossed over her chest. She stood for a moment in the classroom door, uncertain, unsure. Then, turning left, she walked to a seat at the back of the row. As classes went on in the freshman composition class, she did not volunteer. When I called on her, her answers seemed at odds with her posture. She held herself defensively, and yet her answers had overtones of belligerence.
Essay topics always presented a problem. Part way into the quarter I asked them to explore what money meant to them.
Her response was far rawer than I had any right to anticipate. It was the most passionate piece of writing I ever received.
While she wrote it a rush, without any paragraphing, it sang in my head as poetry.
* * * * * * *
Money means belonging—
belonging to the group
to the world of belongers
rather than the world of bystanders.
Money means food–
it means being able to buy
the french-fries, hamburgers and pizzas
to enable a teenager
to move with the clan.
Money means a simple thing like peanutbutter
that doesn’t stick to the roof of your mouth
and not having to eat openfaced peanutbutter sandwiches
upside down so it doesn’t stick
and the non-stick kind is too costly.
Money means being able to pay for a permanent yourself
rather than having a teacher give you the money
because she feels sorry for you
and wants you to be able to look
like your classmates at graduation.
Money means having a phone in the house
and not running from door to door
trying to find somebody at home
when you are six
so you can call a doctor for your foster mother
because your foster father came in and keeled over
while you were washing dishes.
Money means maybe he wouldn’t have died
if you had a phone
and a doctor could have been summone
immediately.
Money means
bicycles, roller skates, dolls and games for Christmas
rather than mittens, sox and underwear.
Money means a Christmas tree that touches the ceiling
rather than a decrepit, anemic branch
decorated with tinsel
saved from year to year.
Money means being able to throw the tinsel away.
Money means being able to put a sticker on the flyleaf
of your favorite book
that says this book belongs to ME
rather than walking ten blocks each way
to the library twice a week
than always having to take the books back.
Money means being able to see the Philadelphia orchestra
in their own city
rather than waiting twenty-five years
and seeing them 3,000 miles away.
Money means being able to buy your clothes in a store
instead of a reminder by a teacher in class
that today is the day you go to the Children’s Aid Office
to get your clothes
which are invariably rejects
and though adequate to cover
are not calculated to promote vanity.
Money means not having to shoot a dog
because you can’t afford dogfood
and a table that is often bare
has no leftovers.
Money means having a newspaper delivered to your door
rather than getting it two or three days later
from a kind neighbor.
Money means feeling you are not different,
not alone,
and not outside the pale.
Money means belonging
and feeling right about yourself
and your world
because the world is your world.
03 Heaven
EARLY IN THE NOVEL, Miss Watson tells Huck about heaven. “Heaven,” she explains, is where people “go round all day long” with harps, playing and singing. Quite sensibly, I think, Huck opts for “the bad place.”
The passage raises an interesting question, one familiar to athletes and business people, teachers and farmers, politicians and laborers, lawyers and students—to everyone, in short, who sets goals and then works to realize them.
It is much easier to achieve something if you can image yourself doing so. If you can see it in your mind’s eye, it becomes much more possible.
Logically, if the purpose of life is to win an immortal crown, then it follows that the more clearly we can image what heaven will be like, the more it will impact how we act.
So what will heaven be like?
Heaven, we are taught, is the place where we will know God directly, face to face, rather than through a glass darkly.
Since I can’t comprehend God any more than a word I utter can comprehend me, I’m in trouble. I can’t do much positive imaging about something so different.
The only way I personally have been able to image what heaven might be like is to begin with what I know of the life I now lead.
I experience life as an impossibly, bewilderingly complex set of results, of consequences. Every day I am affected by the decisions of others.
The food I eat.
The clothes I wear
The car I drive.
The newspaper I read.
The television I watch.
The music I hear.
The issues I vote on.
The prayers I say.
The people I work and play with, laugh and cry with, like and dislike.
All these have been shaped by decisions made by others.
As I play my role in the workplace, in the family, in society, I too exert an influence. Those I teach. Those for whom I am a model. Those I engender and help raise.
All this I want to understand.
I want to understand the world in which I live. Many more nights than one I’ve laid awake, thinking about the things that preoccupy all of us: love returned and love departing; friendship ruined or health restored; justice delivered or justice delayed; perseverance and perfidiousness; ought and is.
That, to me, is at least a part of what heaven will be about. I will be able to understand the “why” of things, to appreciate the moral quality of human life and actions.
Every human life.
Every human act.
From the time Adam and Eve first bit the apple until we reach the core of truth as the trumpets ring out at the earth’s four corners.
I imagine spending some part of eternity contemplating each and every decision—from assassinating a president to eating ice cream for dessert; from laying down a life for a friend to mailing a letter—that every human being ever made, from the slowest stacker of rocks on the pyramids to Bonaparte himself.
And I want to contemplate as well the rippling impact of all of the decisions I ever make, those that touch my wife, children and relatives, colleagues and friends, students and readers.
If God is closer to us than we are to ourselves—as Augustine put it—then to see the world as God sees it is to understand it not as a sequence of events, but as a part of an everlasting now. It is to appreciate divine justice and divine mercy; sin and redemption; grace, freedom, and the infinite uniqueness of each individual soul.
Those are things I can begin to picture. Those are things I can imagine.
02 Toilet Paper
He leaned against the bus stop pole. TGIF. Finals over. A whole, long weekend to himself. Time enough after that for summer job hunting.
She walked toward him. Petite. Stylish cowboy boots. Plaid miniskirt. High neck blouse with a buckskin fringe jacket. More than once he had seen her in the Student Union and on the way to class.
He had never met her. He had wished he had.
She smiled.
“It’s late again,” she said, gesturing.
“Don’t know. I don’t usually take the bus.”
She stood on tiptoes on the curb, looking up the street. Then she walked out several steps, as if to get a better view.
He realized, with a jolt, that six inches at least of toilet paper hung down from under the back of her miniskirt.
“No sign of it,” she said, coming back. She held several books in her arms.
“No,” he said, feeling a flush rise on his cheeks.
He really should tell her. She really should know.
How do you tell someone she’s got toilet paper hanging down from under her skirt. How would he do that.
Maybe humor. Looks like you’ve brought a souvenir with you.
No. That would not do. Just blurt it out? I hate to tell you this, but . . . Not that either.
There’s no easy way to say this, but . . . If she was a guy, he’d say something like XYZ. Something to begin a conversation.
Let it go. It’s her problem.
The part in her brown hair looked preternaturally straight.
He should tell her, though. Because if he doesn’t and she finds out, she’ll know he saw it and didn’t tell her. She’ll be embarrassed. She’ll never want to see him again.
“Were you in Farmer’s 20th Century lit class?” she asked, nodding toward his book bag. She smiled at him. Here teeth were even and white.
“No. Weston’s.”
She’s noticed me before, he thought. His mouth felt dry. He had trouble swallowing.
Her perfume, gently floral. Enticing.
Either way, she’ll never want to talk to him again.
“Did you like his reading list?”
“It was OK.”
“I really liked it.”
Suppose someone else came up now and saw it. Saw the toilet paper. Simply told her. How would he look. Like a donkey.
Surreptitiously he glanced up and down the sidewalk. Empty so far.
It’s too late now, it occurred to him. If he meant to say anything, he would have already said it. She’d know.
Maybe the best thing to do would be to follow her onto the bus. As she goes up the steps, grab the toilet paper. He had a momentary vision of himself as caped super hero.
Depends on where it’s caught, he thought. For a moment he lost track of where he was.
“His tests are hard, though,” he heard her say.
“Really.”
Pretend to trip. Hit her in the back with his arm as she goes up the steps. Grab the toilet paper.
That was the best thing to do. All he’d need to do would be to grab it. Tear off the visible part.
Then apologize for his clumsiness.
“Farmer’s going to teach Fitzgerald next quarter. Do you like Fitzgerald?”
“Yeah,” he responded absently.
“I really like his last novel. You know, the one about the psychiatrist. You know, Tender is the . . . “ She appeared to grope for the rest of the title.
“Toilet Paper.” he heard himself say.
He suddenly wished he were in a comic strip, with the dialogue in little bubbles, so he would reach out and catch it and put it back in his mouth.
Slowly she turned to face him.
Blankly she looked up at him.
“Toilet paper?” she said.
01 Visionary
It seems, as one becomes older,
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence. . . .
The moments of happiness . . . the sudden illumination—
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness.
T.S, Eliot The Four Quartets
“Older” I can live with. I’ve long since decided that “old” will always be at last three or four years beyond whatever I happen to be. But I do grow older.
That having been said, I partially agree with Eliot. Memory returns to us individual moments, some of happiness, some of anguish, through which we lived, but did not understand. We missed the meaning. Then, in moments of illumination, we approach the meaning and so the experiences are restored to us, but in a different form.
And there’s the rub.
Individual moments can make sense, but the larger context, the overall woof and warp of one’s life, does not.
To repeat. I can make sense of a given experience. Derive some modicum of meaning from it. But in the larger context, life does not make sense.
That is one of the two things I’ve finally learned. One of the two universal statements I’m willing to make about all human experience.
Life does not make sense.
The other is that, as humans, as thinking, feeling beings, we cannot help but try to find rational meaning where there is none.
We try to find sanity in an insane world. We want the rationality of science or capitalism or religion to tell us how to live.
What we find, instead, is paradox. We live in a world where laughter is not just possible, but necessary. Where faith continues to sustain. Where a deaf musician can make the greatest articulation of joy the world has ever known
Life is not meant to be understood
donaldhaynes.com 