on loaded guns and father's day

Father's Day, for me, is a shameful day. Understand, please, that the shame is mine, not his.

Honor thy father and thy mother is the fifth commandment in the Christian Top Ten, and the first commandment to add a Carrot to the Stick.

Honor your father and your mother,

that your days may be long

in the land which the Lord your God gives you

--Exodus 20:12 (RSV)

One of my favorite off-the-cuff and exceedingly clever remarks to make? "Ewww, that is sooooo Old Testament!"

It's so wonderfully scathing a thing to say in response to some wannabe's harsh judgment or other. Sniff.

After dropping promptly out of college during my second semester, I toyed with this course and that course, using up precious elective credits while working as a nurse's aide in what was euphemistically called a "neurological post-intensive care unit." (Think carrots, peas, corn, eggplant.)

I lived with Baber, a drop-dead gorgeous woman who suffered various addictions -- to cocaine, marijuana, tequila, moonshine, cigarettes, and sex. She was lots of fun, for a while, until her Probation Officer began dropping by too often, and for the wrong reasons. If you get my blaring drift.

Somewhere toward the end of our year together, The Baber lost her job as a Respiratory Therapist, became a short-skirted waitress, began to deal coke out of our apartment (she had, believe it or not, a hollow-ended pool cue that sometimes came into play), and received her second Driving Under the Influence citation. Actually, I think these things are listed in the wrong order. Whatever. It all seemed to happen at the same time, belying cause-and-effect neatness.

Part of Baber's DUI sentence included the temporary suspension of her driver's license. She insisted I go to court with her that long ago early morning, getting us there right on time in her jaunty Toyota stick shift, expertly maneuvering into a choice parking spot three-quarters up a tree-lined, steep, and narrow street.

I learned to drive in a vintage pristine 1965 baby blue Cadillac, which resembled nothing so much as a boat, after which I was gifted with a white 1963 Ford Falcon, my first automotive love. That was the extent of my experience as a driver. (Please note that as I got older, so did my cars.)

So it was no surprise, to me, at least, that I almost got us killed on the way home. We lived in a mountain town, a *hilly* mountain town, to boot, which helped not at all as I struggled to hold my place in line at stop signs and to respond to Baber's barked, angst-driven instructions.

After that, my roomie called on her many other friends to get her from points A to B to wherever.

I remember a strong feeling of disconnect during those final weeks of living with Baber. I was working Night Shift at the hospital so as to free up my days and evenings for two classes: The Bible as Literature and The History of Western Civilization, Part One.

People like to play the game of "where were you when...?" -- I guess because it creates a reassuring collective -- something we had more of when we were less evolved. Where were you when John Kennedy was shot, and Robert? Where were you when you heard that Reverend King had been assassinated, that four were dead in Ohio? Where were you when they tore down the Berlin Wall, when Nixon resigned? When Lennon fell, and George died, and Pinochet got off scot-free? Where were you when the Challenger blew up, when the Twin Towers came down? When Michael Jackson overdosed, when Obama won the election, when the market crashed?

Where was I when I first encountered Plato's man in a cave, chained both fore and aft to his fellows, facing a blank wall, that blank tablet on which was cast the shadows of things?

Sigh. Everyone fancies themselves a semiotician.

Reference the shadow.
Reference the thing, itself.
Reference the thing that cast the shadow.

Where was I in that famously pivotal moment when I was washed in the Allegory of the Cave? Turns out, it was one experience that took place at two different times. Once at its first reading, in that mountain city, in the campus library, where I sat peering out a huge plateglass window at the golden light, setting. The bookend of the experience came 6 or 7 years later. I was walking down Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley, and came upon a beautiful blue shoe, a woman's pump, silk. One left shoe and I was awash in the arbitrary nature of the sign, and in what Plato makes Socrates call "truth"!

What a rush.

Okay, let's get it out of our collective system. This was years ago, before hegemony and eurocentric became part of my stilted academic vocabulary, definitely prior to the time when I began to question the validity of The Canon, and a few universities away from reading Gramsci (as a requirement).

I was as if lost at Baber's place, never feeling it even half mine, despite paying half the rent. Work was rarely fulfilling, and if the Allegory of the Cave could rock my world, imagine my stupefaction when faced with the poet Isaiah, with Socrates drinking hemlock because his principal and the Superintendent of the School District deemed his teaching impious and too snarky for impressionable students. [In case you are wondering, I've topped out today at 101.3.]

Time with her was not a waste. I made some good and lasting friends, earned some easy college credits, and saved my money. I met a man and fell in love. I met lots of men, in fact, mostly musicians from Baber's work. I generally found them in the kitchen, searching desperately for coffee, happy to let me brew a strong pot while they played guitar in the living room. Baber was never an early riser.

But as someone famously said, about something else entirely: "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold..."

Baber had a gun that somehow made its way under my pillow, and the man I loved was called home. I felt a failure at 19, and spent 50-60 hours a week talking to people who literally oozed, telling their parents, their pregnant wives and lost-without-her husbands that "you never know..." I was sleeping with the husband of a bisexual friend -- actually both Baber and I were -- in exchange for unlimited organic carrot juices at his downtown health food store -- also for pot and blueberry shine.

One day, the precariousness of everything became too much. It had been well over a year since I had called... home. As if it were a habit, I picked up the phone and dialed numbers like an automaton.

The rift between me and my father is bottomless and so wide I cannot see the other side.

"Please come get me," I whispered.

"I'll be there tomorrow afternoon," Dad said. "Be ready to go..."

I may have 3 semester hours that were awarded for the apt completion of The Bible as Literature, but I had forgotten, let's say, that though Deuteronomy and Exodus are credited with the Ten Commandments, they cannot hold a candle to the grave legislation of Leviticus, written around the time of the Babylonian exile, and not, as some hold, by Moses -- but by that amorphous group designated P, for Priestly Sources.

"You shall rise before the gray headed and honor the presence of an old man, and fear your God: I am the LORD" (Leviticus 19:32).

Reverence, fear, curse, honor, obey, mock, scorn, contempt -- Biblical parent language is loaded language.

As I write this, it has been 20 years since I have spoken with or seen my father. I think of him everyday, which does neither him nor me any good, but it is, in all honesty, the very best I can do. I know you think otherwise. Sometimes, usually early in the morning, in the kitchens not making coffee for musicians, the man I loved long dead, and Baber's rabid enthusiasm finally understood as the manic portion of bipolar disease... I also think that I could do better.

There are no guns in The Manor, nor under my pillow -- and there never will be. That's the last full measure of my devotion.




My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun -
In Corners - till a Day
The Owner passed - identified -
And carried Me away -

And now We roam in Sovereign Woods -
And now We hunt the Doe -
And every time I speak for Him -
The Mountains straight reply -

And do I smile, such cordial light
Upon the Valley glow -
It is as a Vesuvian face
Had let its pleasure through -

And when at Night - Our good Day done -
I guard My Master's Head -
'Tis better than the Eider-Duck's
Deep Pillow - to have shared -

To foe of His - I'm deadly foe -
None stir the second time -
On whom I lay a Yellow Eye -
Or an emphatic Thumb -

Though I than He - may longer live
He longer must - than I -
For I have but the power to kill,
Without--the power to die--

--Emily Dickinson

For TW on the Occasion of His Birthday

Thanks, Fresca, for encouraging me to pursue giving to TW in the rich spirit of his own recent gifts.

I put it all in action, anyway, by asking my Brother-Units last year to consider packing boxes of Important Stuff From Their Lives in lieu of shrink-wrapped, brand-spanking new orders from Amazon.

Send only used items, I said. Send things that have mattered to you, at different times, over the years, I urged.

Grader Boob, ever difficult, sent me a $300 gift certificate to Amazon.com -- 'nuff said.

TW took me at my word and sent me a box of music, books, videos, prayer flags -- I held my breath, I am still holding my breath.

I understood the enormity of the gift, and my appreciation knows no bounds (He sent me another box for my birthday in January.).

But I did not understand the risk; I did not understand the fear. (TW subsequently joked that he was sure he would never hear from me again.)

Both need to be transcended, of course, for the gift to be given. Hell, for the gift to make it to the car for the trip to the Post Office, one has to be at a kind of peace.

I know this because the contents of my box for TW -- he shares Hitler's birthday, the one piece of trivia I always remembered about my lost older brother -- how he lamented that coincidence! I know this because the contents of my box for TW lie before me on a faded patchwork quilt. I cannot find a box big enough to hide everything in, so it is all there, mocking me.

But I am at a kind of peace.

I have resisted the urge to enclose a "blank sheet of paper... by way of explanation."

Do you remember that line? From Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters? I always felt (pretty much like every Perpetually Misunderstood Perpetual Adolescent when left alone with Salinger) that my brothers and I were Franny, Zooey, Buddy, and Seymour, that we were capable of every fey bit of wit, and might have authored each slight, or unwieldy, whimsy.

That line figures among the choice few to which my mind clings with relative accuracy. Funny, but while there's nothing of Holden Caulfield in my memory, there are a dozen or so references from the Glass Family series, and Nine Stories. (Haven't you chuckled to yourself, then hummed, just before crowing to your love, busy pulling a tee shirt over his wet-haired, curly head: "It's a fine day for banana fish, darling!"? Of course, if you were as sharp as you like to think you are, you would have chirped "This is a perfect day for bananafish." But who would say such a thing?)

An old man, compact, tiny, an old deaf-mute man, affixed with a cigar and mute eloquence, this old man gloms onto Buddy as he dashes around town the day of Seymour's wedding. It's hot to the point of melting good will, notes are being left in lipstick on mirrors, ice is melting in gin, lightly clinking, and the Matron of Honor brays like a donkey, she is that mad. The old and tiny deaf-mute, impeccable in his wedding duds -- Muriel's uncle, if it matters -- nods and smiles at whatever he imagines is going on, and, clearly, the goings-on have morphed into something downright congenial and civilized for the dear man.

It's a lot to load on the shoulders of a fictive game piece (He's always figured in my head as one of the Monopoly game piece do-dads -- but now that I have seen them, I see that he is not all there, not at all.

He is adequately depicted by the Top Hat, I suppose. Or is that a Bowler?

No, it's always been: dog, top hat, wheel barrow, race car, boot, iron, ship, and thimble. Not Lincoln's stern stovepipe, but not a squat close-fitting bowler either.


Well, obviously, I have the whole thing confused in my extra-leaky sieve-of-a-noodle -- confused, maybe, with the Monopoly Man?



It's hard, dealing with resounding meanings, seeking to rely on memory, cultural memories and personal ones, too. It's confusing. [A remembered image of GW Bush springs up, unbidden, unwanted, and there he is, shaking his large head and cartoon face above some podium, somewhere, lamenting "It's hard work..." over and over and over again.



Anyway, I've resisted the urge to explain to Tumbleweed the rationale driving the choice of items in his birthday box. How to say that seven times, already, in the course of my years, I have gotten rid of what mattered the most to me, materially. A few times, it was after heartbreak. A few more times, the culling harvest came on the heels of deep depression (once this involved a good Beaujolais and burning things in a crackling fire). A couple of instances simply reflected the need for money, and so my treasures were sold off, piece by piece. Several years ago, I realized that Fred had hoarding tendencies. I always knew this, I guess, but it reached a crisis point when my pain and disability began to dictate some real physical limitations. I was his defense against chaos -- not just my harpy's tongue, but my inbred need for cleanliness and order. I had always at least set the boundaries for his mess -- his office, his workroom, and so on.


But one day, his books were piled on my shelves. His collection of fine backscratchers were piled on top of my sundries, things much more genteel, Gregorian Chant and seashells.



Somewhere along the way, through the many moves, the incessant cleaning and sorting, stuff had lost its importance. I was filled with an urgency, a growing need to get rid of things. And so, I did. The difference between this latter instance and the times before? I did not reacquire. After I sent my favorite novel to the thrift store, along with a fine assemblage of American fiction, I did not reorder it six months later, desperate to reread what had once been so important.



Believe it or not, I did not finger meaningfully each besotten Memory Charm. I didn't sit with it, second-guessing, sighing. I remember tearing up one of two pictures I had of my paternal grandfather, disposing of several chapters from my thesis, preparing some fine Irish linens for donation -- all without a hint of a muscle twitch in my face.



It was, simply, time. I had enough, more than enough, and my gathering of things no longer represented me.



In other words, I was sure that there was nothing here for me to send to Tumbleweed, nothing that meant anything to me, nothing that met the requirements I had set last year for The Gifting. Any music I might choose was already music he would have, for I was instructed in things musical by our brother Grader Boob, who had been schooled, early on and most lastingly, by TW, himself.


Besides, he had given me the gift of his DeadHead days -- I had not tramped around the country making recordings, living large. No, I had it easy. And maybe I am a bit of what TW most derides -- maybe I am of the bourgeoisie, maybe I am a bit "pop" instead of "cool." His bookcases are full of resplendent nonfiction works of revolutionary ideology. I have all the Harry Potter, and I like Maeve Benchy.



He photographs, religiously, the Grand Canyon. I snap pictures of pink azaleas.



Yes, I almost defeated myself before beginning. He's my big brother and I want him to think well of me.



So I took the me out of it, in order to represent me, truly. I began to play a question game and let the answers commandeer the choices. Then I employed some common sense and returned those items beyond the pale of personal to their proper places in my home. TW does not have the right to everything meaningful, particularly when -- without that "blank sheet of paper... by way of explanation" -- the defining context for the thing is left out, left aside, or best left unsaid.





Beyond the pale. Yes, that's it, richly.



From Gary Martin's website, The Phrasefinder, the origins of beyond the pale:

Meaning: Unacceptable; outside agreed standards of decency.

Origin: Firstly, let's get get clear what word we are talking about here. It's pale, and certainly not pail, - the phrase has nothing to do with buckets. The everyday use of the word pale is as the adjective meaning whitish and light in colour (and used to that effect by Procol Harum and countless paint adverts). This pale is the noun meaning 'a stake or pointed piece of wood'. It is virtually obsolete now except in this phrase, but is still in use in the associated words paling (as in paling fence) and impale (as in Dracula movies).

The paling fence is significant as the term pale became to mean the area enclosed by such a fence and later just the figurative meaning of 'the area that is enclosed and safe'. So, to be 'beyond the pale' was to be outside the area accepted as 'home'.

Catherine the Great created a 'Pale of Settlement' in Russia in 1791. This was a western border region of the country in which Jews were allowed to live. The motivation behind this was to restrict trade between Jews and native Russians. Some Jews were allowed to live, as a concession, beyond the pale.

Pales were enforced in various other European countries for similar political reasons, notably in Ireland (the Pale of Dublin) and France (the Pale of Calais, which was formed as early as 1360).

The phrase itself comes later than that. The first printed reference comes from 1657 in John Harington's lyric poem The History of Polindor and Flostella.

In that work, the character Ortheris withdraws with his beloved to a country lodge for 'quiet, calm and ease', but later venture further - 'Both Dove-like roved forth beyond the pale to planted Myrtle-walk'. Such recklessness rarely meets with a good end in 17th century verse and before long they are attacked by armed men with 'many a dire killing thrust'. The message is clearly, 'if there is a pale, you should stay inside it', which conveys exactly the meaning of the phrase as it is used today.

(Besides, I have to save some things for Future Boxes.)

This is what I am sending TW:

A hand-loomed weaving from Nicaragua, the details of which tell the story of a farmer, a scarecrow, haystacks, and the crows, themselves. I wrote a short story based on this weaving. Maybe next box, I'll send the story along, to complete the gesture. It was a mystery, a real who-done-it, and took place in Texas. The background color is a deep purple. Somehow, the bright primary colors on top of that manage to be pretty instead of garish.

A Mercedes Sosa CD, just because of Gracias A La Vida:



A CD/DVD combo of Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris: Real Live RoadRunning. Okay, so this is not important to me... but it's something from Grader Boob to me, and I would like TW to have it. The same goes for the Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection. Yes, I re-gifted.

A cassette of people (Gabriel Byrne, Minnie Driver, Colm Meaney...) reading The Poetry of William Butler Yeats.

The Definitive Collection: Nina Simone. 1959-74.

Neil Young: Live at Massey Hall, 1971.

A documentary on Townes Van Zandt -- Be here to love me. (I don't think I've ever before mentioned my total, total, total love of Townes Van Zandt on this blog before. I kind of liked the guy.)

Old Friends Live On Stage: Simon and Garfunkel. From the Old Friends tour -- "Their first and quite possibly last Second Coming for the Twenty-First Century..."
I very much appreciate how Simon chose to explain the thorny relationship between himself and Garfunkel -- "I don't think of Art Garfunkel as my friend. I think of him as family."

One worn copy of Thomas Savage's The Power of the Dog, with an afterword by Annie Proulx. The inside front cover, unfortunately, bears my scribbles about various mutual funds that I apparently was considering as investments. Trust me, if any of them were great picks, I'd pass them on.

T. H. White's The Book of Merlyn. A talisman, that book. Improbably, it is the book I have discarded and then replaced maintes fois. My folksy bible? I dunno. But I actually remember the very moment I first read the passage about Arthur's final meeting with Mordred, when he had almost brokered, hammered, hobbled together, and achieved -- a bit of truce, a peace -- when one of Mordred's officers saw a snake in the grass -- real, not proverbial -- and drew his "bright sword" to slay it:

The waiting armies, taking it for treachery, raised their shout of rage. The lances on both sides bowed to rest. And, as King Arthur ran towards his own array, an old man with white hair trying to stem the endless tide, holding out the knuckled hands in a gesture of pressing them back, struggling to the last against the flood of Might which had burst out all his life at a new place whenever he had dammed it, so the tumult rose, the war-yell sounded, and the meeting waters closed above his head.

Lancelot arrived too late.

Vasari's Lives of the Artists. I am having a hard time letting it go... but it will go.

The Thurber Carnival -- I am having a hard time letting it go, too, but only because it is a superb help when I am sick. It will go, too, but I am not sure that is the height of wisdom.

Despite TW's deep and abiding atheism, Thomas Merton's Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander -- because this is about what has been meaningful and important to me, and something must represent the considerable amount of time I have spent forcing myself on various fine monks at various fine monasteries -- my ideal vacation for many years! Odd that the dozen or so passages I marked up (at least I used a pencil) now leave me cold. But Merton stole my heart when I discovered he also read Oppen. [There is no need to send TW any copies of Oppen's poetry, as that is something I did within weeks of first finding him two years ago. If you are dear to me? You will, in short order, possess two books: George Oppen's Selected Poems and Disturbances in the Field by Lynne Sharon Schwartz. The latter is pure self-indulgence but I have tired of pretending to care. I like it, that's all. If you are especially beloved, there is much more to the Reading List, but also a greater likelihood that I will make you listen to Important Book Passages during Extended Late Night Readings. It's part of my secret plan to keep that group very, very small.]

A slim volume, also something I have discarded and repurchased a few times, but out of need and not want: A Tomb for Anatole by Stéphane Mallarmé, with daring translations by Paul Auster. [Uh-oh! In looking up that link to Amazon, I happened to see that there is a new version out, For Anatole's Tomb, Patrick McGuinness (Translator). I do not DARE scratch that itch in the face of my declarations about divestment, above!] I have little love for Mallarmé, in general, but abiding love of this project of his, to which I have returned each time the death of a child has joltingly brought the world to an end.

Except for a small clay figurine of a bonsai master, a malleable brooch in the shape and color of an autumn leaf, and a sample of my astounding collection of islamic prayer beads (I use them as Worry Beads), there remains only one more item for TW's box, this go-round:

The Complete Letters of Vincent Van Gogh Volumes I-III bound by the New York Graphic Society. These are my most prized of tomes, and I am happy to be sending them to my big brother, for I know that he will read and treasure them, in his turn. ["This collection requires, and rewards, a devoted reader."] These are the entire texts of every extant letter Vincent wrote to his brother Theo, with beautifully reproduced facsimiles interspersed throughout. Bought from an English professor at the University of Virginia who auctioned them on eBay, I opened his heavy box to find he had enclosed what amounts to a formal Letter of Introduction:

I am so pleased that these books have found an appreciative home.
I know that I enjoyed them and I am sure you will. I trust that you and
Vincent will have many enjoyable hours together.

If I can manage to find it, I plan to include a picture of Sleepy John Estes' hands. It is beautiful, a gift from many years back. It was an image from a CD liner that a photographer friend enlarged for Fred, who then had it framed for me. My best recollection is that I broke the frame, Fred was gonna repair it... and at that point, Sleepy John's hands are lost.

Maybe I will take on the search in time for Christmas. Someone should have those beautiful, bowed hands to look at.

"Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart."

Believe it or not -- and, likely, you do not, given my latest postings -- I don't think that videos and photos are sufficient to a blog.

Fred sent me a link to this YouTube video last night. Neither one of us can figure why we had never heard of this... event -- before. Late to the party and irrelevant, I nonetheless found myself belatedly typing away as if something might depend on it beyond my own sanity, outrage, and sadness.

This is a remarkable piece of footage that chills the soul. Knee-jerk leftist-leaning liberal that I am -- because real socialism is not available in a ready mix formula here in the states -- I respect the authority of police and believe, à la Anne Frank, that "(d)espite everything... people are really good at heart."

Usually, tossing in a laden quote from such a heavy source as Anne Frank translates as nothing short of cheesy -- and mightily lazy.

But I think I can pull it off here. The "ceremon(ies) of innocence" are so well documented, by the diary, by surveillance film, that assignations of guilt and innocence should be rote and incontestable.

Thesaurus.com claims these synonyms for incontestable: hard, inarguable, incontrovertible, indisputable, indubitable, irrefutable, positive, sure, unassailable, undeniable, unquestionable.

And yet, in both cases, all we really know is that the principles are dead -- and only in rereading do I see the double entendre, that ethical rigor is as much absent to these situations as mercy or justice, individuated or girded by systemic approbation.

Oh, big words, grand thoughts.

In this video, Michael Pleasance is murdered by police officer Alvin Weems.

When I read about the ensuing cover up, scary in its extent and practiced nature, I found myself humming Dylan's Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll. (Really! Not a song I normally reference, it had been recently in mind due to the title of my post about Evan Tanner.) Most of the lyrics, I remembered, but not the all important last strophe wherein William Zantzinger faces the judge and is sentenced to six months for Carroll's murder.

When so much has gone so wrong, we all would like to be able to isolate the blame and forget that an ultimate necessitates a penultimate. When so much has gone so wrong, we forget that no event is discrete.

You who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears,

Bury the rag deep in your face,

For now's the time for your tears.