Sitting at the Beijing airport arrivals area
Starbucks. There is a little alleyway-like
area to order drinks and an enormous pavilion out in the hall where people can
sit and nurse their drinks waiting for people to arrive. The comfy chairs are all taken. I’m at a stool staring back at the arrival
area. Behind me the manta-maw mouth of
the glass stares out and all commers to consume them. The plane was early. I’m here on time. And it appears I have a long wait in front of
me.
My double espresso on the
rocks is long since drained, but I place the cup of coffee-ed cubes out in
front of me to assert my role as a legitimate Starbucks customer. We chat hums:
“Oh boy” “We’ll be here a while” “Immigration line, longest I’ve ever
seen.” Fortunately I’ve brought a book
and I break it out to the bookmarked page.
The heroes in medieval
literature fought it all in the moment.
The Lord and the Devil were just as busy in Kiev in the eleventh century
as they were in Western Europe. But
Christ’s afterglow burned with a different radiance back then. The Lord did not hesitate to interfere. The
hero prays hard enough and you know the Lord is gonna show. And mind what steps you take: the Devil’s
waiting, everywhere, always in disguise, always discernable to the reader. You don’t need to work through pages of
scene-set-up in medieval literature, either.
Queen Olga wants to kill the unsuspecting suitors? They will be buried in the trench before the
paragraph’s done. It’s not fair, but its
fast. The author isn’t particularly concerned
with the protagonist’s psychological landscape.
She wanted to do it and she did.
We’re all guilty. But the holy man atones and God listens.
We chat hums. “Mom pretended to be Chinese. We went to the Chinese line for
immigration. We’re through. We’re on the
train to get the luggage.” They’ll be
here soon. Viking Shimon should not have taken the golden girdle
“weighing fifty grivnas” nor the
golden crown from the statue of Jesus. Simple
pagan. The Lord isn’t gonna calmly sit
back and let free will run its course.
No. With the voice that leaves
the Norseman on the ground for a while struck with awe, the Lord informs Shimon
to go deliver the gold apparel to Reverend Father Theodosius . . .
I’ll need to put it down
if I don’t want to miss them all spinning around through the customs line and
out into the lobby.
Sunday, 8/06/17
No comments:
Post a Comment