God Himself Goes Silent

The New Testament.  I had to do it.  We all should do it, right?  There is no other written work of greater historical significance in the Western cannon.  The Odyssey comes close.  Gilgamesh was earlier.  But really, regardless of one’s interpretation:  Word of God, or word of man, the Old and the New Testament are, together, the underpinning logic and collective reference points of Western Civilization. 

I didn’t realize Paul was such a predominant P.R. man.  The initial four gospels work rather magically, because there it is, once, twice, thrice and again, the story of this exceptional historical figure, Jesus.  I’m an atheist.  But he’s a singularly remarkable character to trod along with towards his unfortunate end.  His voice is rather unique I must say, in its combination of mildness and sternness.  And, here I can’t be the first person to say this, it’s kind of deflating when Mathew, Mark, Luke and John are done and we don’t get more detail on the messiah’s words, deeds, miracles, parables.  Rather, Paul comes, and lets’ face it, he just can’t command the same gravity.  It all becomes a bit more bureaucratic. 

Lesson number two for a dummy like me, the efforts extend beyond the Holy Land, through modern Syria, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Egypt.  Paul’s mission and all the time spent on questions like, can uncircumcised guys be of the faith, suggest the remarkable process of this radical faith’s first internationalism  And, this notion, adopted and interpreted by Islam six hundred years later, that all souls are fair game, and that anyone can be “saved” is first propagated, first overtly tasked, by Christ’s intercession to Paul. 

Another small observation, having also read the Old Testament earlier this year, once we get Christ, God himself goes silent.  He lets his Son do all the talking.  I may have missed something obvious but the Almighty, who shows up rather frequently in the Old Testament, usually grumpy, and annoyed, full of threats to the “chosen” people, is all rather (perhaps more majestically?) silent in the New Testament.  Christ talks.  Christ knocks Paul off the ass, on the way to Damascus.  But the big Poppa does not weigh in, as he was earlier so want to do. 

One imagines that the debatably apocryphal last book, Revelations by St. John is much of what made this book the world’s all-time best seller.  If the Bible had just wrapped up with James final letters out it would have arguably lost considerable selling power.  Revelations is the ultimate hook, to ensure one stays tuned for the sequel.  The end is nigh.  It’s gonna be rough on the non-believers.  Here is what it may well look like.  There will be no place to hide, and you’d better be prepared.  Personally, I didn’t like John’s voice here.  I also wasn’t so sure I could reconcile the meek, and sagacious Jesus of the first four books with the sword wielding soul-slaker, in the last.  All gospels take liberty with Christ’s voice, but Revelations, which is yet to be revealed, is the most extreme and the least plausible of all such efforts.

Friday, 02/28/20

Miracles Don’t Have to Stop

Who’s eating the meal worms?   I can’t say.  Every morning I go out and sprinkle a half a gallon of sunflower seeds out on the lawn.  By the time I sit down to work later in the morning the lawn is crowded with squirrels and cardinals and sparrows.  The day before yesterday, out at Lowes in the bird food aisle, the bag of mealworms caught my eye and I grabbed a bag to see just what animals it would attract and yesterday I deliberately choose the concrete slab which is, I believe, the opening for our septic system and sprinkled a cup of dead worms on the slab.  They remained unmolested by the squirrels, and the birds all day long and then, in the morning, they were all gone. 

Rain.  This may have been a factor.  It was windy too. Were they all blown off or had the skunk or somebody come and nibbled them up, under cover of night?  Today I put them back out there.  When I came back from my walk, still day light, the worms are all gone.  Yes, it was windy.  But I don’t think the wind’s what did it.  I’m staring down at the slab now.  I don’t mind someone eating up all that meal, but the bargain has to be that I get to watch. 

Half-way through the New Testament.  What a remarkable contrast to the Old Book.  God kept showing up and berating people in the old Testament.  He is silent in the new Book and speaks through Jesus or after his death, his disciples. The miracles are such a common part of the first four gospels.  It seems to anchor Christ’s legitimacy, each prophet takes labors in the middle of Jesus’ life story to have him return eyesight to the blind and send Satan from a crazy man, off into a heard of swine.  It is a wonderful bookend for the consideration of European Medieval literature.  Miracles don’t have to stop after the annunciation.  In the Age of Bede, the venerable siant is forever finding the devil controlling someone or causing “fake fire.”  Certainly, I was supposed to start the other way around, with more of a grounding in the New Testament before I read accounts of the Venerable Bede.

Getting sleepy.  I think I’ll take an afternoon nap.  I’ve been up since very early.  Nice arrangement with lots of drama, pulling at me all hours of the day and night.  I’ll take a nap before my little one comes home.  She wants help with her paper on the Aztecs and I’ll nod off otherwise.  Ahh, this morning, we finally polished off the last four pages of "Anna Karenina."  We’d been at that for nearly two years.  Levin meditating on goodness, realizing he won’t be in-the-moment of divine benevolence all day long, but it is something that is always there when he needs it, emanating to everywhere. 

Thursday 02/27/20

The Halved, Beef Balls

I was out on the porch in the cool, dark drizzle of midnight and I noticed something sizable moving down on the yard.  I went over to look closer and surmised it was all but certainly a skunk.  He noticed me.  And walked a little and turned back again at me, up on the porch.  Fifteen feet up and away is probably enough of a buffer, but why take chances?  I backed away let him trundle off towards the woods.

My pizza last night was crap.  I stretched out the dough well enough without any parts too thin.  I didn’t overload the pies and I let them back for till the dough was crispy, but once again the pizza did not slide off the pan, but rather stuck here and there and if you used the pizza roller cutting tool, as my daughter did, you could scrape the slices off the try.  One pie came out better than the other.  But it was all rather unimpressive.  Later my wife came at me screaming, because I’d scratched the pan.  Next time I’ve got you use olive oil or sprinkle more flour. 

My wife picked up our daughter at school tonight and around five I put down my book to go and get the dinner started once again.  This time, I was playing it safe, with a stir fry or two.  Last week we’d visited a mom who had been spending some days in Poughkeepsie after a New Year’s visit with her son that got prolonged, due to the virus.  She invited us over and wanted to present us with some of the food she’d bought to cook but wouldn’t be able to, now that she was returning home.   It was like clowns coming out of a car with one after another bag of unopened meat, and condiments and vegetables. 

Down on my knees I spy a bag of rouwanr.  These are beef balls that should be used in a bowl of Pho.  I try to imagine what I could do with a bag of beef balls.  First, I’ve got to boil them.  As I go, I imagine a taste that might work and decide to chop up an entire bunch of garlic and the bag of oyster mushrooms she also donated to fry with the halved, beef balls.  Imagining the Pho, I decide to pour in a healthy dose of Sriracha sauce.  Done quickly enough, my sample tasting suggests it’s pretty damn good.

Wednesday, 02/26/20

She Puts the Car

I’d heard tell that my wife had allowed our younger daughter, fifteen years of age, to drive the car down the driveway.   In the wee hours of the morning, as the sun was just rising, and I’d made my way around the back yard spreading sunflower seeds on the ground so the critters would come, I took my reheated coffee out of the microwave and turned on the car so as to warm it up.   I asked and she was game to dry to drive it up the hill this morning.

Disconcerting, certainly.  The same person who was only yesterday in diapers is about to put this SUV in motion.  Hold the break and shift it into reverse.  Have you gone backwards yet?”  “No.”  The windscreen is covered in droplets from the night’s rain.  “Let me show you how to turn the wipers on.  That one.  Turn the tip of the knob.  Yes, that one, you see?  That controls the back wiper.   Turn the lights on as well.  Just twist it forward.” 

She puts the car in reverse confidently and the car slowly moves backward.  “Cut the wheel all the way.  Now turn it back as you go forward.”  She wants to know why this car is not a standard, because there is a gear handle that looks not unlike what Vin Diesel used in “Fast and Furious,” and I explain the difference between stick shifts and automatics.  We bank right and then left and arrive at the top of the driveway where cars are speeding by at fifty miles per hour.  She breaks just find but I found myself missing an emergency break I might grab ahold of, just in case. 

Neither of us are ready to fully imagine the world, where she continues up, puts on the blinker and accelerates out and up to fifty herself.  She’ll have a permit soon and then a license and like any normal teenager, she’ll want to drive off to see her friends.  For now, she agrees that driving into traffic would be terribly intimidating.  For now, that fear is comforting, to me at least and I exhale just a bit as we trade places: driver’s seat to passenger’s seat, and wait for the school bus to chug around the corner.

Tuesday, 02/25/20

Calmly if Reservedly

I was determined to finish S. Y. Agnon’s “Only Yesterday", from last evening.  This morning I was up very early and was uncharacteristically productive on a Monday morning.  My mediation was done early.  I enjoyed some good time with my daughter.  And I had bandwidth to approach the challenge that remained.

Agnon has been compared to Chagall and the simple peasant logic, ethereal connectedness and magical sense of travel all remind me of the Chagall print we have in our home.  I looked and it remains untitled. A peasant woman is talking to the man on the roof of a simple house.  He has rooster on his head and to the right a gigantic dream like young woman in flower pants is approaching the simple abode.  Agnon's Isaac also ponders love and never quite figures it out in the rapidly changing world's of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, before a rabid dog suddenly bites him and ends his life. 

Trying to type.  I’ve got some gentle, swinging Tal Fallow on my earbuds.  And everything should be conducive to typing up here in the first seat of the bus, but my early morning rise now begins to overpower the simple double espresso I had standing at the Village Grind. The espresso, however still has me twitching like a frog responding to electronic stimuli.  I put away my computer and put away my phones and try to get some sleep, lying in the chair and every so often I spasmodically clutch at nothing and no doubt give pause to the woman sitting calmly if reservedly beside to me. 

Now we are pulling off for the Lincoln Tunnel.  Not exactly sure what we’re up to here in the city today.  An old friend wants to intro me to a good friend of his.  They're both in town.  We’re to talk Indonesia.  I’d like more reach in Indonesia.  Let’s see what happens.  Before I make the ten block walk up to meet him, I need to visit the Port Authority men’s room.

Monday 02/24/20

Experimenting With Annoying Noises

My nephew and I went for a walk.  First I’d had a good bike ride, up the Wallkill bridge and back.  I went a bit beyond the bride, early in the morning, past the Coppersea Whisky distillery sign and out int to the field by the no trespassing sign, which bars your way from a field out to this.  I’ try to take black and white snaps of the branches on an apple tree and of the line of poplars and all the shadows they make.  Ever since I read about Gustav’s wife Alma Mahler I’ve been listening to one of his ten symphonies, per-ride.  Up to the Fifth today with that insane, devastating opening that hooks from optimistic to doom. 

When I’m back home I make little one and my nephew who spent the night a bit of breakfast and after some chit chat, we agree that he had head out for a walk.  My nephew wants to know about my best funny faces.  I show him two.  He is experimenting with annoying noises.  I willingly share him one or two favorites. 

Down on the trail there is long drain on either side.  He wants to test if it will hold us.  It’s easy to tell the section he’s gesturing to, certainly won’t.  I walk out and sink to my ankles in my water-proof boots.  I stop and take a photo of some of the remarkable serenity of brown and green leaves decomposing within the water, beneath the ice.  My nephew suggests that the walk was fun.  He keeps saying "Sum Guk Yusa," which is the name of a Korean tale of three kingdoms but one can emphasize the “yusa” as "Loos-ah" and it becomes oddly mnemonic.   He is using it that way.  I have his commitment to unleash the nonsense phrase at school to see if it will spread, virus-like.  

When we got back, it was already time for him to change his shoes and head off.  He and I posed for a few photos, each holding up a wet boot making some of the new faces we practiced.  And with that, we wave them up and out the drive for their long drive down to Brooklyn 

Sunday 02/23/20

The Wind is Ripping

I’m thinking back to when I loved skiing because I’m skiing today.  When I was young I used to love to explore all the different trails, when I was good enough to do so.  I loved the trail maps and I enjoyed considering all the places you might be able to one day visit.  They all had maps that outlined their places as well.  I’m thinking back and I know I saw other trail maps but without the internet I wonder how it was I actually found them?  Perhaps it was going into my uncle’s bathroom and reading Ski Magazine.  There were probably ads. As an adult going to new places is all that I do.  That wiring may have first found a flowering n my early fascination for ski places and the maps to those places.

And, I found myself up on top of Suicide Six in South Pomfret, Vermont.  Who were the Green Mountain boys I thought as I saw one tight, rolling hill after another forming one after another hamlet?  There is something particular and snug to a Vermont scene that just isn’t replicated anywhere else.   The Berkshires, the Adirondack none of them 'feel' like Vermont. 

Looking out my knee told me it wasn’t so sure about sliding down a mountain in Frankensteinian foot ware.  I suggested my nephew and my little one should go ahead on and I shook my knee and bent down and up trying to have the knee pop and loosen itself  I took photo down at the next bluff and as I fiddled with my camera and twisted myself around and I somehow extended the stress my left knee’s had been feeling now over to my right knee.  I would need to be careful here as I regained my ski legs.  One wrong move and this would end rather badly.  Why hadn’t I bothered to stretch?  What, do I think I’m eighteen again? 

The cover is thick, if not exactly powdery.  The sun’s out and there isn’t a hint of ice, so the margins of the trail allow you to go fast and enough to test your ability to turn and stop on a dime.  Mentally I know all of what I should do but my body is reluctant to responding to the commands.  My daughter looks like she is reluctantly enjoying herself.  She holds a permeant wedge and turns conservatively.  I try and succeed to convince her to try an Intermediate and in fact, it’s a bit too tough for her. 

The second-to-last run of the day, after lunch and a beer or two my sister and I head over the crest of the mountain and head down the “Face", which has been well groomed.  It’s a steep broad plain and it’s easy to turn and forgiving when you do.  I don’t think I’ve sailed along at a speed like this in something that wasn’t motorized, in years.  Now.  My heart is rising to the challenge and the wind is ripping across my face, with a confrontational immediacy.  One turn and then another, barrel over the last crest and dive down towards my family who is waiting for me at the bottom of the run.

Saturday 02/22/19