Facing History (and Ourselves): Used Motor Oil on Paper

David Macaluso, Desert Camouflage, (used motor oil on paper), 2006

You may want to move along to another post. Over on your left somewhere  is a list of this blog's most popular and beloved artless pieces.

Oh, okay, you blankety-blank, smarty-panted Reader. They are *my* favorites and it is one of the deepest wishes of my heart that they be widely read.

There?  Are You happy now, now that I kneel in abject pride before You?

My reasons for deflecting your attention?  I've stopped writing from within an inspired flow just to come and make my list.  I am trying hard to be honest.  It's difficult.

1. I am writing in a new room, which, while very familiar to me, is nonetheless different from the normal environment that births my words. There is no alternate media available, for instance, while there is a whole bunch o' religious paraphernalia. We're talking plural crucifixes, Dear Reader, and icons.

Also, Buddy the Freakishly Large Kitten definitively destroyed the antenna to my Sony Dream Machine.  Hey, hush, You!  Fred gave me that Dream Machine.  And if I am honest?  He gave it to me... because I asked for it.  If I am as freakishly honest as Buddy is large?  You don't want to leave your prospective gifts up to Fred's imagination.  That will garner lovely wrapped packages containing hand-carved chopsticks with mother-of-pearl inlay (each with its own stand/holder) and staidly plain, perfectly miniature sauce bowls, all dedicated -- for some reason still not revealed to me despite the passage of years and the attainment of much hard-won insight -- to vegetarian Thai food.  That's right, Thai cuisine sans Nam Pla, that font of much mysterious umami.

But then, one birthday or other, Fred also slipped me a tiny, hand-carved box, wonderfully jointed together, no hardware to jar the slippery smooth surfaces, not large enough for much, if anything, inside of which was carved a tiny i-love-you.  After three instances of what I called betrayal, I tried to give that damned box away, and each time retrieved it before other grasping hands could claim it.

It was that damned box more than the weird chopsticks that cemented the rule:  Don't leave the gift up to Fred.  Save him, at least, from himself.  Save yourself, oh God, from what Fred might think of you.

"I am writing in a new room, which, while very familiar to me, is nonetheless different..."

Wait! Wait! Look, I found an Inclusive Language Lectionary!  Had I been under the influence of the Dream Machine, I might've been too busy be-bopping to Graceland!

And right at eye level, here is the entire Priests for Equality series (a longtime project of the Quixote Center)
-- in its working parts, that is. I've yet to fork over the $21.53 for the Spiel-in-One. I am fond of these priests and what they've done. To quote Dubya: "It's hard. It's hard. It's hard work."



2. That's right. I discovered that I am so far from done with George Bush that it's, well... It's not hard work. It's excruciating work. Also sad. Pitiful. And a little violent. I hate the man. I hate what he did. I hate trying to figure what he was thinking on the basis of what he said.

(I break down when I work solely from what he did because then *I* imagine the words, and I imaginate more good than him.)

And I hate the Hating Haters, even as I watch myself, from between half-lidded eyes, close out the Hating Haters Queue, lining up right behind the people that owe him for the dripping glee in their eyes. I hate him, I hate him, I hate him. And I hate them, too, those simpering ocular Glee-Drippers, now free-ranging, unaffiliated, ugly sadists -- not yet crazy enough, and somehow, somehow, somehow... still in charge.

Dubya's presidency: coincidental with a nationwide, worldwide, politically hate-based resurgence of PTSD, irrespective of where the sufferer falls on the conservative/liberal continuum, irrespective of where one served during the presidency, irrespective of whether one engaged in urban, desert, verbal, or purely personal warfare, so long as one lost a limb (legs on which to stand) or a conjunctive joint (shoulders on which to lean), with extra-stressed trauma points for blood, even more for spurts of blood preserved on the lighter camouflage of sand.

3.  I am as subject to the influence of triune rules as anyone, but this third rationale for trying to redirect your eyes to some other post (almost any other would do) is simply a fib -- it's out of order, it's congruent more with my near future than with any of my past.

See, I knew that the Inclusive Lectionary was there.  I consult it with some regularity, if not some frequency.  It has my own scribbles in it, as I have not the specific compulsion against writing in books that I have against writing in general.  No, I am not correcting the Bible translations, as I have Latin but no Greek, although I have considerable experience nursing and mentoring others as they journey, during the hottest days of any year, through Greek School.  (It's properly called the Greek Workshop, and it is ten weeks of indescribable pain and frenetic learning.  There are local and regional versions, both greater and lesser, all over the world, of course.  Greek Schools tend to congregate, for example, around seminaries.)

What I am usually doing is returning the text to its familiar, patriarchal, power-driven form, for the same reasons I am likely to make a cheesy casserole with some sort of condensed soup for binding, for the same reasons some people dress in velvet and go "downtown" to see The Nut Cracker, that toe-tapper of a show. (Others stay in their jammies and visit YouTube to watch ballet school exams,  exploding pus, ear wax, and bot flies and anything to do with Jello.  Reliable things, all.)

Anyway, yes, I follow the lectionary, though I am kicking off Year B a week early.  The lessons and readings for Advent 1 in this particular book are Isaiah 63:16-64:8 (I inked in verse 9 -- Do not be angry beyond measure, Lord, and do not remember iniquity for ever.  I mean, really, why leave that out?),  Psalm 80: 1-7, 1 Corinthians 1:3-9, and Mark 13:32-37.

I am having considerable trouble quieting my mind because the Evil Spasms have returned to my right leg.  First it was a few twitches, only late at night, then came the familiar degradation, and now it is happening anytime, anywhere, and I am back to screaming.  Such was my state when I quarantined myself in this room, all dressed up with The Obviously Meaningful.

And darned if my close and measured reading of the Lectionary (Year B), my best chance to suppress the shrill screaming meemies, to slough off the accretions of meaning that corrupt all language, but especially that language (even as amplified and improved by me in inked marginalia) -- Darned if I didn't learn something worth learning.  I knew it was something worth learning because of the universal signs of that phenomenon -- the sparkling tear in the red eye, the shiver in the spine that translates to an odd palsy of the index finger, the way the same wet red eye returns to the same word again and again.

It's almost as if someone put that crap together with some sort of unity of purpose.

No, I won't share with you what I learned because I don't trust it.  I learned it but don't believe it -- it's that kind of thing.  The thing that you hope to be true at the moment of your death, a truth independent of your goodness, your badness, your actual life, your intended life, true whether you miss the moment of your death, or so obsess over it that it hardly stirs the waters when it comes -- that sort of truth.

Basically, given all this somber crap, you're getting ready to face some serious fluffery if you insist on continuing with this read.  You've been warned:

*I am trying to write in a different room because this room shelters my living companions from the sound of my screams;  **These screams, when queried, point at the sins of George Bush, as well as to the pernicious nature of hate;  ***The change of environment, coupled with all that screeching, apparently led to the weekly lectionary readings making more sense than usual, and I considered rethinking the Party's platform plank on God's faithfulness.

And you want to read what I wrote in there?  Are you crazy?

My personal stance is easy.  It doesn't matter. God's faithfulness does not matter in my prof-de-rien-centric world.  All that matters is my tradition, and my understanding of words.  Less is more, yeah, yeah, yeah, Grader Boob tells me that all the time.  But you know what?  I always remember Elie Wiesel when I think about God -- I remember what he says about words and writing.

Oh, get over yourselves.  No, I haven't elevated Elie Wiesel over biblical text.  Okay, sometimes, yes, he serves as Midrash for some thematics to which I am particularly resistant, forgiveness and faithfulness being primary among them. Okay, so I think to myself, once every few years, that the purifying fire of my anger must be God-born, and that I must be forgiven all sins committed while I play hostie to this flame -- while I so burn. No, it does not occur to me that burning fire carries its own lessons or that I probably ought to learn them, without permanent scarring, if at all possible.

Predictably, my fires always seem to degenerate into messy, popping, sizzling, toxic-fumed arson parties: word slogs, charred pith, in pools of oily shimmer. The evidence before your eyes.

Don't stand idly by.  Words are as silent as they are loud... so if you start talking, you sure as shit had better not stop until you know what your are doing so that you can end on the right note, with the right word, and not cause hurt, or at least, not kill anyone.

If you hear someone calling for help, help them.  If you freeze with fear, do something.  It may be ridiculous and clearly absurd. It might be offensive, leading friends and strangers, both, to question your intent.  Your mother might be drowning, say, in a bath tub full of caramel and you decide to eat a Three Musketeers bar. The crack whore from next door might be raped at gun point in the full moon light of your neighbor's back yard and you may indulge in a rousing karaoke rendition of Eat Me Alive.  Maybe your choices won't be as immoderate as these I dream up.  Maybe you will remember that you cannot swim, maybe you conclude there is no way to avoid getting shot by the rapist, no way to save the crack whore being raped. It could be that you will call for help, that you will relay the cry, the dilemma, until such time as someone somewhere responds.

Maybe your choices will be infinitely more unacceptable than those I dreamed up. Maybe you hate your mother and she hates you right back. Perhaps the whore just yesterday would not lay down for you, even after you sweetened money with blow ("like promises," you thought).

How were you to know that I keep Anouilh's Becket next to all my Samuel Becketts, my Samuel Becketts next to my Elie Wiesels, and that Elie Wiesel forms the left border to my collection of Bibles? Very much my sentimental Becket/t is my Wiesel, and he will tell you, and repeatedly has, that questions of forgiveness are moot until forgiveness is requested, and until then, we are just pissing in the wind with all our prognostications.

Clearly, any stammering, meandering pretension of God's faithfulness -- angry allegation as much as happy claim --  must wait until all the data on forgiveness has been verified, entered, and checked for error.  Which is, of course, where I come in, and leave Anouilh, Beckett, Wiesel, and even The Word --  behind.

If you want an easy out from this blog post, and, my God, who could blame you?  As I told you up top, give the "Popular Post" listing, to your left, downdowndown, there, there, STOP! Give one of them a read.  Something else that is equally sporting, and also just fun?  In the upper left corner of this browser page, next to the small Blogger search box, right after Follow Share Report Abuse, you will see Next Blog.  Make sure your passeport is in order, that you've all your shots, and click on that!

Because this is the only stuff I wrote this morning ("I just want to thank everyone who made this day necessary," - Yogi Berra):

Do you remember all those dire predictions of "One day..."?


One day, you'll thank me for this...


One day, you'll discover that your parents (grandparents, aunts, uncles, alcoholic high school algebra teacher, philandering pederast of a Methodist Youth Choir Master, President Nixon, Perry Como, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, the recipemeister for Campbell Soups, Admiral Zumwalt, your second lover, your fifth lover's wife, that psychic holed up inside her trailer in Appalachia, Mrs. Lola Litttle, and the fourth grade teacher who punished you for reading Isaac Asimov's The Human Brain: Its Capacities and Functions  when you were supposed to signal being done with the spelling quiz by putting your head atop your crossed arms on the desk) were either right or way smarter than you ever imagined, like geniuses, or something.


I'm sure there is some annoyingly precise aphorism to express what I am trying to say.
Or maybe not.
Because today, and for at least three years now, for me, it all comes down to just not caring anymore.


Although I recall noting the phenomenon in those few adults I knew well, I do not recall any adult every wagging a finger under my pug nose and crowing:  "One day you will stop caring... then you'll start saying the stuff you really think, girly!" 


I especially don't recall anyone explaining the finer points to the matter, such as how I might tend to confuse my actions as having relative impunity when actually, no, that silence I hear in response to my great proclamations is just the natural result of my opening my big mouth and not caring what came out of it.


It makes all kinds of coincidental sense that the big breaking news of the day is that Newt Gingrich finagled the endorsement of the New Hampshire Union Leader editorial board.  Why, Newt practically embodies that which I am stumbling all over myself to explain!


The news from Pakistan today is chilling.  NATO and Afghan forces, perhaps in retaliation for earlier shots fired on them (perhaps not), killed 24 (at one point, 26) Pakistani soldiers yesterday.  Pakistan, of course, claims the attack on their soldiers, our allies, was unprovoked.  Provoked, unprovoked, who knows, dare I say who cares, dare I say it?  When 24 (or 26) -- when ONE (1) life lost in a game of tit-for-tat is absurd beyond Ionesco's Bald Soprano?


When this crap about Pakistan as an ally keeps mucking up the works of my Logic Machine?  When Pakistan hates the United States -- institutional hatred, I am talking! -- more than any other hate-capable entity on Earth?  When the effers hid bin Laden in plain sight -- and not for hours, or for days, but for years?


I actually got excited at the thought of "relations" going visibly to honest Hell;  I don't even care about the big bad nuclear scare that is always invoked in the next sentence.  Go ahead, blow us to Kingdom come -- it's the only way I'd ever get there anyway, you fuckers!  (I tried to warn you, Dear Reader.)


Someone will quickly bring up that US aid to Pakistan secures US safety.  Michele Bachmann will chime in with a perky "Pakistan is too nuclear to fail." (She hears point bells going off in her head... It's all ding-ding-ding in there.)


And that will seal the deal, end the conversation.  I've had this conversation now, at least bi-monthly, for a decade.  I know how it ends.  It ends stupid, that's how it ends. Now, would you like to discuss Israel?  No? Chicken.  You unmitigated piece of hypocritical domesticated fowl turd.


God isn't dead, you babies.  There never was a Santa Claus.


We all preferred Patty Hearst as Tania. Guys jack off, still, to that image of Tania of the S.L.A. holding onto her "modified full auto M1 Carbine with sawed-off barrel..."


Yes, sometimes I do blame the victims because sometimes it is their fault.  I usually only do it, though, when in the safety of a situation where any discussion of fault, itself, is the height of ugliness, anyway.  It's an indulgence, like chocolate, but too much.  Too much chocolate.  Two sins for the price of one, you might think.  (Unless you've heard the news? God isn't dead?  There never was a Santa Claus?)

Anyway, Dear Reader, it went on a bit longer, but it got really... unattractive.  I assaulted some heretofore unquestioned truths like nobody's business, delivered body blows to organized religion, and, in my confusion, ranted against organized politics, government, and put the local school systems to sleep with a rear naked choke.  God and Santa Claus? Interchangeable child's play!

It also got a little too revealing, too personal, though the rabid cursing did slowly disappear.  I definitely used my words.

I admitted to loving my father and being perennially ambivalent about my mother.
I reiterated that they both continue to scare the bejesus out of me and that the bejesus-scaring far overshadowed any love, hate, or affective ambivalence.
Fear rules.  It's true, and you know it.
I said Grader Boob pissed me off with his retarded refusal to speak to Tumbleweed.
I screamed to the universe (but intended my half-sister as the real recipient) that I really AM phobic about telephones, and that really is why I don't call.  The cursing returned for a few sentences, admittedly.

The post, such as it was, ended this way:


All those dire predictions of "One day..." --
One day, you'll thank me for this... --
One day, you'll discover that x is really y... --




But I just cannot address the worst of it, the one that reduces me, variously, to tears, to despair, to chuckle upon pew-shaking chuckle:


One day, you'll understand...

*** *** *** ***     *** *** *** ***     *** *** *** ***     *** *** *** ***

APPENDIX:



"We May Use Words to Break the Prison": Elie Wiesel on Writing Night
Uploaded to YouTube by facinghistory76 on Aug 31, 2011

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