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I didn't do anything today.
But I did have Mass with Murray and
Dominic. Today is the feast of Christ the King. The gospel got
us thinking about the losers, the ones who never get picked,
the down and out. We thought that it's important to pick them
up and dust them off when we can. I think, yes - but not because
it's good for them. Not because it makes us feel virtuous. It's
good for us to do this because, in fact, we're all losers eventually.
So we're doing nothing more than treating others the way we'd
like to be treated. It's good for us to be less self-involved.
Lose yourself; find yourself. That kind of thing. I was also
thinking of Laurie Anderson's haunting song "Strange Angels"
wherein she keens "We don't know where we come from. We
don't know who we are." (Implication being that we're all
strange angels.)
What does this have to do with being
a King? Nothing. Kings are stupid. We don't have kings anymore.
"Every man his own football."
Then I came up here to my room to
think and read and antagonize the cat. I've been thinking about
this week's classes, flipping files in my brain to find something
useful to do with Whitman (just begun) and To Kill a Mockingbird
(just about done). We have only three days of class before Thanksgiving.
In between thinking about these things, I've been reading a little
in A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel and Mason
& Dixon by Thomas Pynchon. The former is delightful,
insightful, packed with fascinating bits, and much more optimistic
than my grim buddy Birkerts (whose Readings is on hiatus
at the moment). My reading of the latter, if you know Pynchon
at all, is an exercise in hopefulness: it is a very large book,
written in a beautiful hokey 18th century patois like this:
On southward the
Seahorse gallops, as if secure forever in a warm'd melodious
Barcarole of indolent days, when in fact 'twill be only a few
degrees of Latitude more till we pick up the Trade Winds, and
hear in its Desert Whistle the message the Ghosts often bring,-
that 'tis time, once again to turn to. And, in denial of all
we thought we knew, to smell the Land we are making for, the
green fecund Continent, upon the Wind that comes from behind
us. (57)
My guess is that if you read 773
pages of this something spectacular will happen to your brain.
I'm at 76 right now. But, you know, I got through Gravity's
Rainbow. I really did. And it was worth every wiggle. Of
course, my eyes were much younger back in '74.
About the cat: I grab her, roll her
over and rub her fuzzy white belly. She pretends to hate this
for a second. Three or four minutes later she warns me that I'd
better not try that again, gets up and prances off to her cave
beneath the bed. Cats are so weird.
And then there's Computer Stuff.
I've been trying to teach myself Forms - one of which, you'll
note, is at the bottom of this page. Please try it out - if for
no other reason than to help me see if and how it works. You
type here, and it comes to my e-mail via the Yahoo!Geocities
server.
"Wondrous Machine!" Tomorrow
is the Feast of St. Cecilia, patron saint of musicians. To set
the mood, I'm listening to Purcell's odes for the feast: "Hail!
bright Cecilia!" and "Welcome to all the pleasures."
I'll round this off later with some Nirvana or Monk or something.
I haven't heard how Mom's doing today,
but I suppose I could pick up the phone and find out. I might
not do this, though, because she don't need my noise. And she
knows I'm thinking and praying real hard.
Yes, I do know where I was 36 years
ago today back when we were all in black and white. Where were
you?
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