Rapture

"sigh"

This will be short.

Judgement day is every day.

There are two columns, what you have given,

And what you have taken away,

Keep them balanced and you'll be OK.

The thing about "Rapture" is that it is available, and constant. It's like a train always rushing past us and we only have to jump on. Of course doing that requires an acknowledgment of how temporary, how insignificant, the things that keep us in one place really are. I include such things as Bible thumping, orthodoxies, personal preferences, and particularly the feeling that we have things figured out.

"There is nothing to fear, but fear itself"

Have a really great day tomorrow!

On The Road to Damascus

All nature is but art unknown to thee;

All chance, direction thou cans’t not see;

All discord, harmony not understood;

All partial evil, universal good;

And spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite,

One truth is clear, ‘whatever is, is right’

Alexander Pope

My Lenten activity this year has been to join our Rector, Pam Werntz, and a group of Emmanuelites, as we call ourselves, in the study of Paul's epistle to the Romans. It was this or give up chocolate, so the choice was easy. I am very wary of Paul. His writings seem to me to be in many ways damaging, yet in many ways beautiful; they are very inconsistent, their meanings often conflicting, and he therefore is, to me, annoying. I have been doing background reading, books about Paul and books about the Bible. I read A.N.Wilson's "Paul, The Mind of The Apostle," which presents an interesting, complicated character, a provocative promoter and business man, in contention with just about everyone and also achieving really great passages of Poetic insight.

"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."

We sit around a table in the Emmanuel room, enjoying food and one another's company, discussing what Paul meant here or there, the critic, perhaps I should say skeptic, in me thinking- sometimes saying- look at these words, don't they mean what they say? And if they don't, if it takes 1,900 years of modification and explanation to arrive at the meaning then is it really Paul we are speaking about or some convenient construct to which we choose to attach ancient authority?

At one point I blurted out "the guy's a crank!" to which Pam suggested that perhaps I was projecting. Touché, no doubt I am, projecting myself, my expectations, frustrations and concerns. And worst, "no worst there is none!" I fell into exactly the trap which frustrates me most in Paul, and in life in general: I made a statement poorly explained and open to exactly opposite interpretation from what I intended. I will expand about it here.

This particular outburst of mine was triggered by one of my friend's statement that the world is seriously wrong, and Paul was addressing that. I exclaimed that the world is exactly what it is supposed to be, and it is our job to deal with it constructively. Allow me to give this a context. The proposition is that the first person sinned in disobedience, condemning the human race to the darkness of evil, from which it is necessary to be "Saved," this, either as a group- by the sacrifice of Christ- or individually, saved either through "Grace," by which can be meant a number of complicated concepts, or through "Works," which are defined variously. Actually Pam makes sense of this, but I am pretty sure it is Pam and not Paul in whom the sense resides.

Some time ago I started to think very carefully about the quote from Pope that I have at the head of this entry. The line that was a real stumbling block for me was "All partial evil, universal good" sometimes Pope is as bad as Paul; whatever could he mean by that? The subject of evil in the world is prominent in any discussion of the nature of God and the subject of evil in the individual seems to be the motor of Christian religion- what is it that is meant by this word evil?

I think that one reason I am attracted to Pope is that I have found that it is easier to understand the world and my fellow man if I avoid words that denote abstract notions of evaluation. This is because of the eternally fascinating conundrum that when we speak these words we assume in our listener a complete understanding of concepts whose definitions are in fact very subjective, vague, at best culturally defined often individually defined, and circular. One of my favorites is "perfect" which means without flaw; perfectly clear until you start a discussion of what constitutes a flaw, which inevitably becomes an extremely subjective question. There is a very important aspect of the Japanese aesthetic that an object without any flaws would be very undesirable- not "perfect" perhaps. Evil, in the OED has many interesting meanings, but the entry starts with this:

"In Old English, as in all the other early Germanic langs. exc. Scandinavian, this word is the most comprehensive adjectival expression of disapproval, dislike, or disparagement. In mod. colloquial English it is little used, such currency as it has being due to literary influence. In quite familiar speech the adj. is commonly superseded by bad; the n. is somewhat more frequent, but chiefly in the widest senses, the more specific senses being expressed by other words, as harm, injury, misfortune, disease, etc."

One of our company spoke of insects. When she was a child she thought of them as being bad because they bit her- "why would God make anything so bad?" As an adult she sees how her limited understanding of the world as whole determined the formation of her question. It is a very simple example of a very human tendency, to view a thing as bad because it bites me. The first definition of "evil" in the OED is:

"Bad in a positive sense."

So, the insects are evil. They do harm to me; pollination not withstanding.

When one thinks of the recent tsunami this gets very complicated. I would not be surprised at all to find that some people's faith is shaken by such a disaster. I asked myself about it, but really, those villages and power plants were built very consciously in low lying areas, in full knowledge of their vulnerability, for reasons of economic convenience; for reasons of the flesh as Paul might determine. Earthquakes and tsunamis are not new, and the disaster a result more of men's greed and laziness than an act of God.

In 1968 I moved to Ireland, moved from my secure upper middle class suburb, to attend the National College of Art, and I ended up living outside of Dublin in the countryside. I rented a room in a "County Council Cottage"- rural poor housing, with a friend and was immersed in a society in which meat was seen on the table perhaps once a week, children never had new shoes or clothes, and drinking water was a ten minute walk away. The woman I was renting from had never been more than five miles from this cottage, in which she had been born, claimed never to have had all her clothes off at the same time- with no plumbing bathing was always from a basin, and with no heat the incentive to not disrobe was strong. These folks were well off among their peers, after all, they had an extra room and were renting it for cash, so they didn't have to reuse the tea leaves as often as otherwise. This all seemed very romantic to me, but I acknowledge that I had a return ticket to the US so I wasn't trapped in it as they were, nevertheless I realized something rather surprising. All the hardship didn't seem to affect anyone's happiness. The profile of personalities in the community was pretty much the same as at home. Some were lazy, some were energetic. Some were religious some were "ferocious anti-clericals" and most importantly, as I got to know the community at large I was surprised to find that compared to my affluent, white, upper middle class hometown, about the same percentage were content and happy and the same percentage were discontent and unhappy. The same turned out to be true for me, my level of happiness was not affected, going from a warm well fed home with showers and laundry, to potatoes, reused tea and warm water on rare occasions. I found the same to be true when I was in Bulgaria under the Communists. I found the same to be true of my fellows during the period when I was held in jail during 2006, and I wouldn't be surprised to find amongst those folks sheltered in halls and gymnasiums in Japan, once the shock had passed, that the happiness that an individual has in relationship to their society reasserts itself and is not much determined in the long term by the externals of circumstance. As I say in the right hand column, happiness is something we do, not something we find.

So what is bad? What is evil? I once read a definition of evil as being that which runs counter to the aims of society. A good definition, because it points up the subjectivity of the word. That Pastor in Florida has staged a trial and shown that Islam is evil. Of course much of Islam feels that Christianity is evil. The difficulty is that by definition both are correct, because in both cases the other is counter to the aims of the particular society, and that is how we determine evil.

We are all children of the same God however. At least that is my belief. It has been much discussed, even in the ancient days in which Judaism was forming, whether "monotheism" means there is only one God, or that only one God among several would be worshiped, but I believe, and I think most Christian, Jews, and Muslims agree, that there is only one God. It then follows that any act of sincere worship is directed to that God, and would it not then follow that in calling other religious groups evil we are projecting our very human prejudices into a much larger sphere? "Verily, Verily, travellers have seen many monstrous idols in many countries; but no human eyes have ever seen more daring, gross, and shocking images of the Divine nature than we creatures of the dust make in our own likeness, of our own bad passions" as Dickens says in Little Dorrit.

Such is the problem with words of evaluation, and in this is rooted the basic meaning of my statement about the world being the way it is supposed to be. The word bad, or evil, implies an inherent quality; I think it is fair to say that that is how we tend to use it. So a distinction must be made in our discourse, whether we mean, when we say "the world is bad, is badly wrong," that we don't like the way things are going, or whether we mean that the world is inherently bad, structurally evil. The range of meanings could be anything from "I really don't like the way people are wearing their hair this year" to "the nature of creation is so badly damaged, the human soul so destructive, that our own actions are to no account." Whether Paul, whoever he was, was intentionally saying the later I think that that is the meaning that is often taken away from his writings, and I find it disrespectful to the creator.

When I say "the world is just what it is supposed to be" what am I saying? That it is inherently good? Good is just as slippery a word as bad, just as subjective.Things are what they are.

There is an interesting design exercise: to take a thing, or a color perhaps, that one dislikes, and base a design on it. When given to a group of students what results is often their very best work. It seems ironic, but the activity is to look beyond one's prejudices and preferences, one's comforts, and see the potential that any thing has to offer. There are no bad things. Some things offer one advantage, some another. Some may be useful to me, some may be useful to that crow I see hopping around outside my window. I don't think a whole lot of worms, but it seems to like them.

The world has many uncomfortable corners. It has certainly been no bed of roses for me, viewed one way; but no, it has been a very challenging, interesting, and at the end of the day, satisfying place to me, that's viewed another way. All facets of creation are linked in the most amazingly complex chain, and even the bad, the evil if you will, are links in that chain, sometimes are in fact the golden links in the chain. The world is just what it is supposed to be because there isn't any other way for it to be. This is my revelation, my incident on the road to Damascus, if you will. It came to me in an equally dramatic way (though after reading Oliver Sacks I start to wonder if it was actually Migraine-no matter.)

In Job, chapter 38, The Lord asks "Where wast thou... when the morning stars sang together and all sons of God shouted for joy?...Have you entered the places where the snow is kept? Have you seen the storerooms for the hail?" I come to believe that it is the greatest part of faith to accept not just that we don't understand, but that we can't understand; to trust that which isn't understood. That which is seen as evil is the partial evil Pope is referring to, and it is a link in the chain of universal good. That what we see as bad and what we see as good are in that dark glass, and we often can't distinguish them. That in that dark glass is our understanding of ourselves, of others and the world at large; and the only badness, or goodness, is contained in our acceptance of our own responsibility to love all of this world and all of it's creatures of the dust.

How many keys?

I am reading Bill Bryson's (or bill bryson, as he is described on the cover) "the mother tongue, english and how it got that way." Often, it happens that you are fully justified in castigating my careless capitalization, but in this case I am simply transcribing from the book cover. It was loaned to me by Dr. Funk. The subject interests me, and I find it delightful. It is a veritable mine of the sort of odd, erroneous or internally contradictory statements that I particularly enjoy.

"One of the persons to think to do so was, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, J.R.R.Tolkien, later to become famous as the author of the Hobbit trilogy."(capitalization his)

He is discussing the study of dialects. I suppose the superficial reader might miss Tolkien's interest in Linguistics. It is perfectly possible to assume that he was merely reporting those languages, not inventing them. It is rather surprising though, that he missed the fact that "The Hobbit" isn't a part of the trilogy, and that if you include it you have four books rather than three.

but it seems that math can be a problem, as witness;

"The Japanese have now managed to get around the pictographic problem by using a keyboard employing katakana syllables which are converted on the screen into kanji characters, rather as if we were to write "twenty percent" by striking 3 keys- "20," "per," "cent"- and then seeing on the screen one symbol: "20%."

How is it that I had to use 4 keys to get that 20%, I'm counting the shift of course, and, not counting the quote marks, 14 were needed for "twenty percent"

It is obvious that Mr. bryson's typing has become totally unconscious (I assume the Mr. should be capitalized, no?) There is, however a larger and subtle issue that over the years has become a great concern to me. I say this often, that it would seem that the public has become so passive that you can basically tell them anything and they won't challenge you. Amusing enough in this context, and I am enjoying the book, and I hope Mr. bryson will take my carping in good sport and not mind so much his poor math being pointed out. But in the political arena this passivity is being used to persuade the public into any unthinking position that certain politicians want them to take, and there it is dangerous.

Dr Wright's Cat

Today is Martin Luther King Day. It just occurred to me that that fact adds some interest to a number of currents that seem to be swirling around me, and impels me to leave aside the "work" I should be doing for my clients and make some observations.

These currents, that are combining into a force, let's see: there is the violence, waste and sickness of the attack on Congresswoman Giffords, and the attention it has brought to the level of hate and aggressive speech in our public discourse. Also, a friend of mine is working very hard to address the habitual denigration of female doctors in our medical system, and has this morning sent me quite a lot material about the cases she is interested in. She also looks at sex trafficking- in New York, yes, it's an established fact! My client and dear friend who spends the winter in Florida has sent a copy of a sermon she heard recently, it deals with Kurt Cobain's suicide and his personal pain which resulted from the anger and violence in his parents marriage. At church yesterday I was given a copy of "The New Yorker," which contains a very nice article on "Blue Heron" and contains a picture of some our friends, but I opened it carelessly this morning and found the pages just ahead are filled with discussion, some rather graphic, of Stieg Larsson's novels, their violence, and ability to hold the public's attention despite their rather poor writing.

I went on line to make sure I had the correct spelling for Congresswoman Giffords, and found an ABC news report about her, not bad in itself actually, sandwiched between a very long advertisement for Macy's "million dollar" makeover- change your appearance and change your life, and followed by someone bring on pretty little critters (I'm not making this up.) I think, actually, that those conjunctions pretty much sum up both the way this world looks to me and what I think is wrong in it.

As my readers have probably surmised I have been having a time of "writer's block," and I feel rather negligent, and in fact have made some poor attempt to keep up with posting. I feel especially negligent at not having related the very satisfactory resolution of my "post Dr. Choi" medical team, particularly as that as yet unposted piece sits unfinished here on "Sam." Sam is my hard drive, named for the cantankerous cat who spent 18 years with me, my longest domestic relationship as it turned out. So here is the upshot of that: I was assigned to Joe Wright, whose NPR posts over the last 6 years or so were a consolation to my fears of this dread disease I live with. As my Primary is Rafael Campo I come to feel like my health care has become a writer's workshop!

I am jumping around, I know, but if you will continue to jump with me you will perhaps discover that there is a place I intend to land.

The friend I mentioned above, who is concerned with women in the medical field, is kind enough to include me often in her Boston Symphony Orchestra season subscription. Last Fall, James Levine conducted Mahler's Fifth Symphony. I find Mahler emotionally exhausting, and in this symphony the 4th movement, the "Adagietto," speaks especially strongly to me now. By "now" I mean in this "post disease," "post acceptance of finality" existence that I lead, what I call my "afterlife." I told my friend that this movement is what I would identify as representing my personal "near death" experience, and I can't help wondering if there wasn't a good deal of James Levine's own medical struggle contained in his powerful and delicate reading. If it is the case that there is any purpose or intentionality in our fates, and if I look for the purpose in mine, then I wonder if I am perhaps left here to tell you all that the experience of transition from this life is like that movement, rapturous, warm and full of love.

But the "Adagietto" is not the last movement, neither of the symphony, nor of my life. It is followed by the cheerful "Rondo-finale." The odd thing is, well, odd to you I suppose, that it was that movement that I had trouble with. There was pain in moving from the quiet resolve of the 4th back to the cheerful life of the fifth. A distance felt, as though life is being watched from afar, and the joy and the dancing filled with pathos, this is just how I feel in this phase of my life. I expect people to think it somehow ungrateful of me not to rejoice in having overcome, if that's what I've done, AIDS and it's attendant problems, the personal and material loss I've experienced, but I've been teased with an experience of the end, and it was glorious, and so I wait.

In composing my "unposted" post about Dr. Wright I went to his blog to collect a link and found this very beautiful statement about loss. I feel just like Dr. Wrights cat, looking through the glass, perplexed and vacant.

And so to get back to the beginning of all this I want to tell you what I see.

I see us all tending to cause pain to our fellows and the world; often to our gain, but as often with no gain in mind at all. A woman promoted and honored by her colleagues only brings them and their department credit. Keeping people down and excluding them only prevents the accretion of good. The man who pays and exploits for sex degrades himself more than he degrades the person he exploits. He denies himself human fulfillment and erodes his own sense of self. Those who focus on their desires will always be disappointed, and not because their desire can not be achieved, but because, as Dr. Johnson said 250 years ago, our wishes are vain and false. Those who pay money for, and reward, the creation of violent fiction harden themselves and condone violence in our society. Those who seek their own benefit without taking care of the world they live in make a fortress for themselves and will live under siege.

These lessons have been presented to us repeatedly. It doesn't take a great sage, although it does take a certain amount of courage, to grapple with them. It also takes a willingness to live with a concept and deal with it over time, a capacity that our society seems to be losing rather quickly.

I wonder in particular about the situations where pain is caused for no reason. I have been subjected to those actions in the past, and I observe them around me continually. Dr Johnson would say that they are where real evil lies. I don't know about evil, we always use that term for the things we don't approve of, I prefer the word destructive. Whether we are good or evil, I think we all know when we are building up and when we are tearing down. As a society I think we should be talking more about why destruction is so "salable" as entertainment, why we look so strongly at the differences between us and ignore the similarities. When we criticize is it to be helpful or just to show off, when we deny others their rights, or proper credit for their accomplishments could it be because we have no confidence in our own? And when society strikes out at good people, and we protest and complain, do we ask ourselves what change we can make in ourselves that will give us the right to our own complaints.

Finally I ask what we suppose we add to the value of our own lives or our society by depriving others and oppressing them? The discussion is often cast in terms of the rights and hardship of the oppressed. From this side of things I have to say that I really can't see what the oppressors are gaining. It seems like yet another case of the emperor's clothes: that in the end the oppressors are denying themselves the skill, support, and benefit of those they oppress, whether spouses, coworkers, nations or races. It's just stupid.

Renewing an old hobby:

Collecting conundrums.

It is such a short time after my previous post, and yet I have come upon a real topper in an article in today's Boston Globe concerning the Homeland Security employee who has been convicted of a felony for employing an illegal immigrant.

Here is a quote from the article:

She secretly tape-recorded Henderson advising her not to leave the country or she would be deported.

This is presented as evidence that Henderson, the Homeland Security employee, was encouraging Bettincourt, the Brazilian cleaning lady, to remain in the country illegally. I'm not making this up- there it is in the newspaper. I guess it's sort of like "you can't fire me because I quit." That is, unless the reach of Homeland Security now extends to deportation from other countries. Would she be deported back to the US?

The Judge is looking for a sense of proportion, for which I laud him.

We are told Bettincourt is now in the country legally. Therein lies a tale, I'm sure.

I have another statement ripe with internal contradiction to add to my collection of public utterances that prove, once again, that Edmund Carpenter was right about the force of the media.

And finally, the now legal cleaning lady will lose her employer.

Cheers!

Stonewall to Gay Marriage

"Pride Week," or as a certain friend of mine refers to it, "the Gay High Holy Days" is now over. Emotionally it's been a little tough on me. I start out with a photo of the official flag raising at City Hall, and it ended with the very unlikely circumstance of your humble servant giving a gay historical tour of Boston's South End called "Stonewall to Gay Marriage, a Long Road Through the South End. Today, I see in the New York Times, that the final arguments in the marriage trial in California have been presented, so there is a nice arrangement of events.

Folks who knew the "Mad Genius" through his "Lucubrations" don't know that he worked at City Hall for a while, so finding myself there for the flag raising was peculiar; my head fairly buzzed with his caustic comments, not the least because I was there at the behest of my friends at "Ethos," and Boston's community of elder LGBT's (I hope I haven't left anyone out of the acronym.) It would seem that I am now officially part of that community which he didn't survive to join with me.

I marched in the Parade with Emmanuel Church, and I will confess that I marched in my first Pride Parade, bare chested with my honey of long ago, with a little more ease than I did "Coming out" as this staunch Episcopalian which I've been lately- of course I worked out a lot then, and the church is much different now; and then there was the joyfully bizarre gathering on City Hall Plaza at the completion of the parade, now filled with booths for break away Catholics complete with tonsure, leather men, drag queens, corporate sponsors, doggie gift sellers, and politicians. I have been avoiding these gatherings since "The Mad Genius" passed. I have an almost surreal feeling of watching the proceedings from somewhere beyond the grave. I say this all the time but it is starkly true- almost everyone is either 10 years younger, or 10 years older than I. Of those with whom I was even acquainted during the 80's only 2 or 3 are seen around. I keep a mental tally of men I hear of in Boston who about 60- the present number is 9. When you consider that the year of my birth, 1948, was the crest of the baby boom, that we should be the largest, not the smallest, segment of the population, the devastation of AIDS becomes apparent. As I wandered around the festivities I felt like a "stranger from a strange land."

I don't need to tell you about my walk through the South End because one of the new friends who joined us has reported on it already, and very well, here, at Diffuse5. I encourage you to explore her blog.

So on to this report in the New York Times which has graced the cyberworld this morning. As usual, I have some questions. I realize that these may be more about the report than about the arguments reported upon, which I am not about to read in transcript,there are limits to my political enthusiasm!

Here are my questions, the quotations from the NYT report are in italics:

“The marital relationship is fundamental to the existence and survival of the race,” said the defense’s leading lawyer, Charles J. Cooper. “Without the marital relationship, your honor, society would come to an end.”

This line of argument against Gay marriage has always confused me. Yes, this is the lawyer defending Prop. 8. It is as though extending marriage to Gay couples will remove it from world of straight couples, once gay people can marry there won't be any more babies. All the straight people in the world will suddenly revert to Hippies who feel it is unconscionable to bring children into the world, I guess. Or another explanation, which I feel seriously may be the case, has to do with latent homosexual feelings. this is particularly conspicuous in the case of religious leaders: making sexual relations between men OK will threaten sexual relationships between men and women (when we speak of procreation we are speaking of sex after all.) In what set of circumstances could this be true? Only if men are much more attractive sexually than women, right? So when you hear this argument, doesn't it make you wonder about the inclinations of the speaker?

At one point, Judge Walker wondered at Mr. Cooper’s logic. “Do people get married to benefit the community?” he asked. “When one enters into a marriage, you don’t say, ‘Oh boy, I’m going to benefit society!’ ”

Here, my liberal friends will have to excuse a sardonic comment. I have always thought it strange that the homophobic community would be against gay marriage rather than insistent upon it. Gay people are bad, right? And really at their worst when they are running around the streets at night, looking for sex and having fun dancing to loud music. Get them off the streets and confined to the restrictions of marriage like decent people! Let them model themselves on us and benefit society! I suppose that the danger of this line of reasoning would be that straight people would have to stay in their marriages, raise their kids responsibly, do good for the community, and work to reverse the divorce laws. Odd that these "procreation as a standard" folks are not so active in that area.....

Judge Walker also asked why the state’s domestic partnership law, which affords most of the same rights as marriage, was not “sufficient accommodation” for the rights of gay people. Mr. Olson countered that marriage was a unique institution and more significant than domestic partnerships.

“It means something completely different,” Mr. Olson said.

Arguments in the trial began in early January, and included two weeks of evidence and testimony by plaintiffs and experts on marriage, sociology and political science.

The defense offered much more limited testimony, with two witnesses arguing, among other points, that same-sex marriage damages traditional marriage as an institution and that special judicial protections are unnecessary for gay people.

I have very conflicted feeling about the issue of "Gay Marriage" verses "Domestic Partnership," but will also acknowledge that my ambivalence is self interested: had the community in Massachusetts accepted domestic partnership rather than holding out for marriage "The Mad Genius" and I would have had some protections, and I would have been able to claim his assets when he died. Because of this personal cost I have always been skeptical that the price of "Marriage" was worth the delayed protection that the fight resulted in. I am now coming to see the wisdom of it however.

The quote above contains another oddity. I must say that I am continually amazed at the obvious lack of logic in statements that are made in the media- and also in court. California was mandated by the Court to apply the marriage laws equally to all people, not only to heterosexual people. This mandate was reversed by Proposition 8, and that reversal is being defended by Mr. Cooper who is saying that it would be a special judicial protection to apply the law equally to gay people, and that that is unnecessary; that applying the law to one section of society is routine, but applying it to another is unnecessarily special!

This appeal to the myopic view of a self-centered and fearful majority is exactly what our constitution is meant to protect us from.

and finally, back to the parade!

One problem with marching is that you only get to see what is just in front and just in back of you. I did get to see, however, a couple in a pedicab carrying a sign that read "55 years together, 6 years married." Here is another of my long standing observations about the validity of gay relationships. Consider that in our society all the legal, social, financial, and religious institutions have historically reinforced, supported, even demanded heterosexual marriage, yet the divorce rate is high and examples of happiness rare. And in times past, the times this couple established themselves during, gay people in relationships have suffered legal prosecution rather than protection, were ostracized by society at large and often their families as well, received no financial advantage or religious support, yet have managed to maintain a meaningful relationship. It is rare assuredly, as rare as the fifty-fifth anniversary of a straight couple, and who can say that it is of any less value to society.

A Few Controversial Statements....

This post is inspired by Joan Vennochi's comments in today's globe regarding Helen Thomas's statement that the Jews of Israel should go back to Germany and Poland. Ms. Vennochi's comments, equating Helen Thomas with Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh et al seem to me to be poorly developed. It is interesting to read the many comments. Most of them would be amusing if they didn't expose such disturbingly poor reasoning on the part of the American public, but a few bring important points to the discussion, not least the difference between Thomas's position and voice as a serious reporter compared to the the position of outrageous talk show hosts who are, it is suggested, entertainers. Technically this is a valid point and might have been considered, but whether it obtains in the mind of the general public is a question- I will once again refer to "Oh what a blow that phantom gave me."

There are many difficulties involved in this discussion, not the least being coming to an understanding of the difference between being "anti-zionist" and "anti-semitic." I know Jews who are not Zionists, and by the way the Arabs are Semitic people. A subtext read in Thomas's statement, I suppose, is that returning to Germany or Poland would be a return to pogroms and death camps, which inference I think the Germans and Poles of today might resent, and by the way, wasn't America included in Thomas's original statement? And while reading the comments Obama's oil spilling in the gulf came up- I thought the oil was British, obviously connected with Balfour, I'm really surprised the commentators missed that, and I also learned that the Jews are right wing, I always thought they were left wing. The world is becoming so confusing to me, it must be my age, just as it must be Helen Thomas's age, which is great, and her career long. Perhaps, in the impatience of age, perhaps not quite at her best, she has slipped a little. We will all , at least the fortunate amongst us will get to that place in life, and having gotten there will think that the world might extend a little consideration, but alas, Dryden was right...

"When I consider life, 'tis all a cheat;

Yet fooled with hope, men favour the deceit;

Trust on and think tomorrow will repay:

Tomorrow's falser than the former day;

Lies worse; and while it says we will be blest

With some new joys, cuts off what we possest.

Strange cozenage! None would live past years again,

Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain;

And from the dregs of life, think to receive

What the first sprightly running could not give.

I'm tired with waiting for this Chymick gold,

Which fools us young, and beggars us when old."

You cast your bread upon the water, as the good book says, when you jump to criticize the indiscretions of our seniors.

But still, that situation in the Mid-East is very confusing and distressing, so I want to share the opinon of a woman I once worked for with you. My first job out of college, where I minored in stained glass, was working for Durand Studios in New York City repairing stained glass. obviously this caused the team I was on to spend much time in religious establishments, I have many stories to tell! We were working in a Mid-manhattan Synagogue on this occasion. The Synagogues and temples were always the most hospitable and generous places to work- a marked contrast to the RC churches which wouldn't let come inside to eat our lunches. It was a cold rainy December day in 1972, and the woman who staffed the placed was busy making sure we had what we needed and were comfortable. "The Weather- you're working in this weather- we should be in Miami... You think it's warm in Miami? even in Miami it's cold!" She thought a lot about Miami it seems. During lunch we were chatting about the news which contained much distress from Israel just then. She threw up her hands and said "Oy! They should have given us Miami, then we wouldn't have all this trouble!" I still chuckle every time I tell this story.

Watch this!

Here is a link to a film about Kevin Bright teaching blind students at Perkins School for the Blind to use a video camera. It is a "Must Watch!"

I am reminded, by one of the incidents in this short clip, of an exchange I witnessed, I should really say overheard, in the locker room of the Metropolitan Health Club many years ago. I should mention for the benefit of those who live in the real world that the Metropolitan Health Club was Boston's first avowedly gay gym. There was a blind fellow who worked out there and was quite popular, and he was chatting with another fellow while they were changing. I was in the next row of lockers but recognized the voices.

Our blind friend ask what the other had done over the weekend, to which he responded quite readily that he had gone out on a "blind date." By the time he finished the statement, however, he realized that he had probably transgressed all sorts of codes, manners and PC standards, and so without taking a breath started profuse apologies for making this thoughtless statement to one who was actually blind.

"No, no, it's fine, I use the term myself" said our very secure and grounded friend. But what followed was, to the ears of an eavesdropper, a foolish and continued insistence on the part of the sighted fellow that he was in error, while all the time the blind fellow was consoling and reassuring him.

I have learned how often it happens that it falls the lot of an assumed victim of affliction to take care of his comforters. I encourage you to watch the video!

It's Raining Today So I Hope You Are Going Out!

I came in from the Friday Matinee at The Boston Symphony to find the message "It is raining today so I hope you are staying in." I had been reveling in the extraordinary beauty of the day on my way and on my return, the colors in the soft moist light, pinks and whites and the hot lavender of the early rhododendrons. The walk was ravishing. why would one stay in? I grabbed my camera in order to show you!

Reckless

This afternoon I went to see the SpeakEasy Stage production of "Reckless." The Emmanuel Center had it's "talk back" at this Sunday's matinee. These are very worth attending and I give a link to the Emmanuel Center web site and suggest that you participate. The production was very good and very imaginative. I am all amaze at what they can do in that small theatre; the quality of the sets and the performances; but I am not a theater critic and so won't attempt a review. What I want to do is to share some thoughts on the themes of the play. Actually I'm "Talking Back" to the "Talk Back" with benefit of time and access to the online edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.

The O.E.D. becomes a factor here because one of the things I started to puzzle about was the word that forms the title. This is one of those very interesting words that is used very generally and frequently, the meaning of which is fairly well understood, we assume, but whose meaning is really understood when examined with a kind of peripheral vision. When we look directly at it it starts to get sort of fuzzy. What does it really mean. And why is there no "W?"

Clearly the "Less" is a suffix, lets remove it, we have "reck." Reck; wreck; wreak; I deal only with verbs here, and my mind starts playing all sorts of games of association. She wreaked a wreck-full recklessness. That's what happens in the play, by the way. Wreck comes from the latin wrecare and means "to cast on shore": "a1440 Sir Eglam. 894 He say that lady whyte as flowre, Was wrekyd on the sonde."

Wreak: to drive, press, force to move, from Old English, also to banish or expel, as the characters tried to do to the past, whether their passive or their active past. I said that I was dealing only with the verbs, but the noun wreak is so interesting I can't pass it by "1. Pain or punishment inflicted in return for an injury, wrong, offence, etc.; hurt or harm done from vindictive motives; vengeance, revenge.

In frequent use from c 1540 to c 1620." By the way wreckful means, not full of wrecks but full of vengeance!

But it is "Reckless" that is the main concern here, less the less: what is Reck?

I make an aside to tell you, in case you aren't aware, that you can access the OED online with your Boston Public Library card. Log into your account, go to electronic resources and select the oxford English Dictionary Online. you will need to put your library card number in the log-in box, which is easy if you copied it onto your clip board when you logged in to the BPL, you now simply paste it. I assume many libraries and academic institutions offer this access.

The etymology of "Reck" is very long and interesting, at least to me. The meaning, in each variant is short and clear, but they are preceded with this:

From its earliest appearance in English, the verb is almost exclusively employed in negative or interrogative clauses. In the former the simple negative may be replaced by nought, nothing, little, not much, etc.; in the latter, the pronoun what is most usual. Now chiefly arch. and literary.

1.a To take care or thought for or notice of something, along with inclination, desire, or favour towards it, interest in it, etc.; to think (much, etc.) of.

b. To take notice of or be concerned about something, so as to be alarmed or troubled by it, or so as to modify one's behaviour or purposes on account of it.

Now add back the "Less," and we have "without the concern about something, so as to be alarmed or troubled by it, or so as to modify one's behavior or purposes on account of it," exactly what has been driving, wreaking, the action in the play.

But there is one more thing to say- that this lack of "recking"- oddly reconing is a different root so won't do here- this driving on reckless is one thing when it is Lloyd, who was the perpetrator of the actions that wreak him and make his past a nightmare that he wakes up too; whereas Rachel was a victim and what appears to be the equivalent to Lloyds, or Pooty's, impulse is actually a very stark and quite accurate representation of a very severe post traumatic stress disorder.

The children were mentioned in the "Talk Back" session- they are a troubling factor- why did she run from them, why were they abandoned? I think that the comic aspects of the show, and in particular the comic portrayal of Rachel's character, tended to trivialize the enormity of the emotional shock she experienced. It is one thing to be left unexpectedly by one's mate, it is another thing to have a ones murder attempted, but the mate being the murderer is a thing so devastating that we can't credit it, we take it as absurd and trivialize it and proceed to equate Rachel's running away with Lloyd's abandonment of his family. This distinction was inadequately made in the play and the result was a real confusion of reality and dream.

It can come sometimes that reality and dream can be confused, but the confusion is a first person confusion. When was Rachel dreaming? Ever? Never? The incident with Lloyd and Pooty, or Lloyd's drinking and death? Or was her brake down a dream, or her recovery and final meeting with her son? Was the doctor really the bus driver- "The bus driver" or just a bus driver?

Life can be like that, I'm here to tell you. "A Serious Man" is like that. But Job isn't. Job wasn't dreaming, he knew and he persevered. He retained his integrity. We, the audience, the third person, are observers, and while there is some benefit to experiencing the confusion of the protagonist it is also inevitable that we will make judgments. If we are not allowed to see beyond the dream then we become like Job's comforters, who lack understanding and whose opinions are worthless. I don't like being put in that position.

As I was saying to Ben Affleck.....

Those of you who know me will wonder that I, who always describe myself as "popular culture challenged" will bring up such a person as Ben Affleck. Ahhh! but fate plays all sorts of little games with us.

I give you photograph of a building in Boston's North End, and also a drawing of mine. In 2000 a client of long standing asked me to design a facade for this building he had just purchased. I don't talk about my design work very often in this blog, but this particular project is perhaps the best illustration of it. I have a very particular knowledge of classical detail. It is seldom that I have the opportunity to exercise that knowledge and work to my full potential. To do so requires a very intelligent and patient client and unfortunately that species of client is rather rare. The gentleman I refer to here is one of those and I have had a long and rewarding association with him.

When we started there was only stucco and aluminum and plate glass on the first two stories. You see what we did. Everything below the second floor cornice is new. The cast stone was fabricated in Nebraska and the mill work was done in Rochester NY. I designed the facade and worked with a local architect to execute the design and supervise the construction. It took years- the patient client was very committed- and it won the 2004 design award from the Cast Stone Institute of America.

So what are those plastic covered signs above the first floor windows all about? They were a surprise to me on a recent trip to visit my client. It turns out that the building has a new distinction. It is the "bank" that Ben Affleck robs in the movie "The Town" which was filmed here recently. Here is a link to a picture of him standing, rather heavily armed, in front of my windows. And a good thing too that they choose this building, because part of the design problem was to make the windows sound proof. We were thinking about fire engines at the time, not machine guns. Mon dieu!

I started designing buildings in 1974. I have a small but very faithful group of clients, but except for one book and the odd magazine article I have never received any public notice- until now. So watch the big screen in 2010!

Unfortunately no one has offered me any residuals... always the bridesmaid... as a friend of mine likes to say!

Cheers

Hats off?

When I was young we had in our family a book of riddles. This was before computer games. It was called something very imaginative like "101 riddles for young persons" I may have the number wrong. As is so often the case, it is the perplexing ones that I remember, to whit:

Q. When is a boy not a boy?

A. When he is abed!

The syntax should date the publication, even in the 50's we had to seek out our septuagenarian baby sitter to explain. In my youth the proposition that one's essence could be changed by simply lying down was troubling. I have come to understand that it can, puberty helped with that, and I find that the world continues to be indefinite, filled with troubling questions about the nature of things, such as:

Q. When walking through Copley place, as I will be shortly, I'm having breakfast with "The Other Reader," am I inside or outside? Also, when leaving one building and crossing the bridge to the next, does that condition change and, which is really the pressing concern, at least to those of us who have managed to outgrow baseball caps, do I remove my hat or not?

I have actually watched the bifurcated video screen at the top of the Huntington Avenue escalator for clues, thinking that Louis Vuitton's models would know, but have been unable to ascertain what is hat and what is hair, except in the case of the black bunny ears, but they are on what we can assume is a woman. She keeps them on, but women do keep them on, being relieved by the sexism of our culture from having to fumble with their hat as well as their shopping bags while trying to open a door. Or pass through a revolving door in defensive posture (more on that later.) Or still yet, press an elevator button. I say nothing about men's rooms.

Keeping my hat on in the hallway does allow me to remove it on entering a shop, which still makes a pleasant impression, and under the skylights it can still serve the stated function of protecting my aged skin from the harsh rays of the sun. That answers fairly well in regard to the bridge, and as we know, in some contexts the dear bought fedora is never removed- but those folks have evolved a different taste that eludes me as yet.

Ah!me.

I suppose this could be extended into a contemplation of the question "where are we really when we enter the mall, is it possible to ascertain in any real sense?"

Meanwhile, I'm at the revolving door so will sign off. As I said, you'll be hearing about that too!

Cheers

Hooray!

The farmers market at Copley Square has started. It is a wonderful thing full of life and beauty and good things to eat. It is a very good thing for my spirit to watch humanity at it's most beautiful and most productive, at one with nature, the city and themselves. Tuesday and Friday- don't miss it!

At The Opera

Gerry Springer The Opera.

I assure you, had this not been an event of the Emmanuel Center I would never even have considered attending. I went out of loyalty to the organization, and if I had any curiosity it was only to discover what in fact Rev. Werntz and Rabbi Berman could possibly do with this in their "Talk Back" session afterwards. We hadn't left "Blackbird" with a very high opinion, Dr. Funk decided to sit this one out, and I left home out of a sense of duty.

I was surprised to find the house packed, and even more to find myself in constant hysterics from the first number to the end of the show. The music is brilliant and the staging is brilliant and the actors are brilliant, and there would have been a long standing ovation except that the audience was so exhausted by laughing that at the end we could hardly clap.

Gerry, in the first act is in tension with his "inner Valkyrie" (she appears in the upper corner of the set to taunt him in her helmet and shield.) This is appropriate because the music is a very imaginative pastiche of Wagner- along with jazz, Busby Berkeley, Jerome Kern, Sondheim, and I think Papa Haydn was stirring the pot at one point but it gets hard to sort out about midway in the first act. 

Amongst the challenging questions asked by "Gerry Springer, The Opera" are these. Can two jealous women fighting over a man be a valid premise for a soprano duet? Obviously, yes, even if they are redneck sluts fighting over a Ku Klux Klan member- I should have included Leonard Bernstein in the list above. Can a Wagnerian chorus be built on the text "we eat, excrete, and watch TV?" again, yes, but more surprising. Most surprising indeed is that "Gerry Springer The Opera" pulled this sort of thing off with great craftsmanship. 

And then Mozart- Gerry, like Don Juan, takes a trip with Satan to warmer climes- and decides he'd rather stay there "I'm less confused here" and bring a balance of sorts between Satan and Jesus, and the God "it's not easy being me" and the inner valkyrie is reconstituted as St. Michael.- we even have Milton poking around here. The show is a tour de force of "Reducio ad absurdem" and I recommend it heartily.

You can, by the way, bring your pretensions, they will probably survive, not quite intact but perhaps a little better for the workout!

Cheers