The Nonsense Room (Part III)

SHORT STORY MONDAY

The house that Greg & Leslie Moore had found a in Stillwater was turning out not to be a home. In the spring, when they moved an old refrigerator, they found some kind of secret room which Greg had found endlessly fascinating. Leslie had an eerie unease about this fascination.

The Nonsense Room
Part III

Nightly, for more than seven weeks, Greg gave himself to the closet, an activity that left him both stimulated and disturbed. Never once in that time did he find again a phrase, symbol or inscription which he had previously encountered. This proved to be a frustration only when he allowed himself to become obsessed with seeking such a thing.

What frustrated him more was that the meanings of the texts almost seemed to make sense, perpetually holding out the promise that a measure of persistence would yield a treasure of understanding. But there was no reward. No treasures of understanding were grasped.

From time to time he stepped back to take in the whole. He looked for and sometimes found constellations or clusters of word groupings, but like the initial image which captured him in the beginning (the trilogy of pyramid, Eye and script) the relationships he recognized so clearly only moments before seemed to have receded from view and became impossible to locate or manufacture again.

There was a common mystical quality to the inscriptions he read. Phrases such as,
"There is not a more crucial notion of force"
and
"determinism, theism and some brands of physics"
and
"it is God alone who coordinates created effects"
and
"towards which the human feels at once attraction" seemed to suggest something of cosmology here.

The phrases at first appeared arbitrary and unrelated, other than the common thread of metaphysical suggestiveness. This last phrase invigorated him because he saw that the word "attraction" must be followed by the words "and repulsion." The sudden insight made him dizzy. It was as if he had come into close proximity with something so extraordinary he was incapable of apprehending it.

Upon reflection later he might have said it was as if his consciousness, his inner ability to comprehend meanings, were somehow like a series of out of focus lenses which, if brought into harmony, would provide a clarity of inner vision like nothing he could have ever imagined. It seemed as if the shifting of these lenses into synchronicity was accompanied by a tingling sensation inside his skull and - here he couldn't be sure for it was so vague and foreign an experience he didn't know what to make of it - some kind of aural musical accompaniment not unlike wind chimes and pan pipes. Something deep inside him - from his soul? from his subconscious? - was being awakened, and this awakening was accompanied by both anticipation and an uncanny foreboding.

•

Their last meal together began with a long silence. Leslie had determined not to speak until Greg made notice of her muteness. When she finally caved in, she was incapable of concealing her exasperation.

"Don't you remember what day this is?" Her eyes avoided his for fear of his answer.

He stopped chewing but made no reply.

"Greg, talk to me. What's happened to us? I don't even know you any more."

He looked down at the floor. "It goes both ways. There are things I'd like to talk about with you, too, but I know you don't want to hear it."

"You always twist it, don't you. Like I'm the big bad bitch and you're Mister Wonderful."

"I'm not Mister Wonderful. But I'm not the only one shutting people out. Look, I'm sorry I forgot our anniversary. Will you forgive me?"

"That's not what this is about," she said sharply, tears brimming in her eyes.

He pushed his chair away from the table, stood and walked haltingly to the sink, trying to read her with small, discreet glances.

"You're not going in there again tonight. Not tonight." It wasn't quite a question; she was pleading. She stood up, half uncertain as to what she should do, whether to rush and cling to him or to flee.

He nodded as if considering her words, noisily scraping his plate and rinsing it.

"Why don't I run to town and get a video. Is there anything in particular you've been wanting to see?"

He turned away from her and walked from the kitchen without looking back.

CONTINUED

Lady Day

"I can't stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession, let alone two years or ten years. If you can, then it ain't music, it's close-order drill or exercise or yodeling or something, not music." ~Billie Holiday

About two weeks ago I painted this image of Billie Holiday, and have been looking forward to sharing it here. But I wanted to wait till I'd seen the film Lady Sings the Blues before sharing. Yesterday I finally saw the film, but during the in-between I was doing a little reading about the famous jazz vocalist and discovered a few additional things worth sharing besides the new painting.

The first is the quote at the opening of this blog entry. It could easily have been lifted from Dylan's Chronicles. This creative approach to every single performance has been one of Dylan's mainstays as an artist. And to some extent this has been the nature of my own art. Each experience in the studio is a performance, and I feel compelled to explore, to not be limited by a style, an expectation, or even my own lack of technical facility.

But the more important connection between Lady Day and Dylan is that both were discovered by one of the great forces behind the music scene, John Hammond. Check out this list of musicians he discovered or whose careers he furthered: Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Teddy Wilson, Big Joe Turner, Pete Seeger, Aretha Franklin, George Benson, Bob Dylan, Freddie Green, Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, among others. A tip o' the hat to Mr. Hammond, who dropped out of Yale to pursue a career in the music industry.

Here are some quotes from the great lady of jazz, and maybe later this week I'll have time to make a few comments about the film Lady Sings the Blues. You can see from even these few brief remarks that she was no lightweight, but a serious artist. Wish I coulda been there to see her.

• "Somebody once said we never know what is enough until we know what's more than enough."

• "Don't threaten me with love, baby. Let's just go walking in the rain"

• "If I'm going to sing like someone else, then I don't need to sing at all."

• "I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That's all I know."

• "If I don't have friends, then I ain't nothing."

• "If you copy, it means you're working without any real feeling."

• "I'm always making a comeback, but nobody ever tells me where I've been."

• "I never had a chance to play with dolls like other kids. I started working when I was six years old."

• "No two people on earth are alike, and it's got to be that way in music or it isn't music."

• "Singing songs like 'The Man I Love' or 'Porgy' is no more work than sitting down and eating Chinese roast duck, and I love roast duck."

• "Sometimes it's worse to win a fight than to lose."


Portrait of Lady Day, 16"x20", acrylic on canvas paper.

A Book That Changed History

This past week I’ve been listening to an audio biography of Robert Kennedy by Evan Thomas and just yesterday reached the chapter dealing with the Cuban Missile Crisis. RFK later published a book based on his memoirs during this crisis called 13 Days, which led to a pretty good film by the same name.

13 Days is about a critical moment in the Cold War. Robert Kennedy was Attorney General at the time, with his older brother John serving as President. The adversary during this critical juncture in history was Nikita Kruschev. When it was discovered that the Soviets had begun setting up nuclear missiles in Cuba, the president and his team of advisers had to determine what course of action to take.

It was decided that the president would go about “business as usual” so as to not alarm the press or the public, while his brother RFK led the brain trust that would work out scenarios and a path of action. Amongst this inner circle were Adlai Stevenson, McGeorge Bundy, Dean Acheson, Dean Rusk, and trusted friend/aide Kenny O’Donnell.

Several important events preceded the crisis: the Bay of Pigs debacle; the building of the Berlin Wall the previous year, which revealed the nature of their adversary; the riots in Oxford Town several weeks previous when James Meredith was to be enrolled at Ole Miss, which showed Bobby how inept and unprepared the military was for a crisis; and the January publication of Barbara Tuchman’s Guns of August, which spent 42 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and which both JFK and RFK had read. This is a book that changed history.

The insights from Tuchman’s tome had a riveting effect on RFK when the brainstorming began and he perceived how hawkish men like Dean Rusk and the others were. In evaluating courses of action, Berlin was not a city with free people inhabiting it, but rather a bargaining chip. What’s worse, the Pentagon agreed that it was highly unlikely a pre-emptive strike would take out every missile silo in Cuba, so we would most likely lose at least one and maybe more major U.S. cities.

Tuchman’s book, primarily a description of the first weeks of World War I, was the wakeup call. Tuchman showed how the drums of war create their own momentum. Because of this book Bobby was probably the first to understand that military action very likely could lead to World War III, something no one in a nuclear age could ever hope for. And as a result, the brothers dug in their heels against being drawn down that slippery slope by overly-confident military exuberance.

As an aside I thought the following anecdote from the RFK biography was amusing. The magnitude of the resistance to the integration of the University of Mississippi had an unsettling effect on RFK. The violent clash at Ole Miss left two dead including a French journalist covering the story for a London paper. 48 soldiers and 28 U.S. Marshalls were wounded by gunfire. When a few weeks later he learned that there were nuclear warheads in Cuba aimed at the United States, the younger Kennedy quipped, “Think they could hit Oxford?”

This morning I want to thank God for Barbara Tuchman and her efforts to put down in lines the insights she’d gained from her dedicated research. This incident is living proof of the power of the written word. It is not a stretch to imagine that her book saved many lives, if not the world.

Stepping Out

"Many lives remain unfulfilled because of a lack of courage in affirming one's inner convictions in spite of all obstacles." ~Paul Tournier

There is a story in the Gospels about Jesus walking on water as the disciples are crossing the Sea of Galilee in a boat. In Matthew's version of the story, these guys are terrified and think Jesus is a ghost. Peter impulsively says, "Lord, if it's you, tell me to come to you on the water." Jesus invites Peter to come, and then after a couple steps the experienced fisherman sinks, but gets saved from drowning in the turbulent sea.

Now whatever your stance toward miracles (whether you believe them or not), I've often thought this story makes a great metaphor for our approach toward life. I've applied it to myself in the following way.

The boat in which my life was launched into the deep (adulthood) was shaped in my youth. The way I interacted with the world was always from within the safety of the shell of that boat. The boat protected me. In Freudian terms, my boat was constructed of defensive mechanisms that kept me from being hurt by others, kept that tender inner self from getting hurt.

The boat conveyed me through life and was useful for me. But there are certain points when, if we want to engage another, we must leave the safety of our boats. This involves risk. This involves becoming vulnerable. It is something a bit fearful and outside our comfort zone.

What are the inner walls that hold you back? In what ways have you restricted your own personal growth and full engagement with life by staying within the "safe" zone of your controlled environment? Maybe miracles only happen when we first dare to step out.

"To live into the future means to leap into the unknown." ~Rollo May

Kindness

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle." ~Philo of Alexandria

One of the toughest jobs in America is parenting. Not that kids are the problem, per se, but that the responsibility never goes away. And the demands at certain times. And the more you care, the more you can worry about whether you did this or that right, etc. Add to this the financial responsibilities and you have a handful of additional concerns. Fortunately, there are two of you...

Unfortunately, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 13.6 million single parents in 2005 with approximately 21.2 million children under 21. A majority of these are single moms, but there are dads who had to carry this burden alone, too. Quincy Jones wrote that he and his brother, for example, were raised by his father when his mom had been institutionalized for mental illness.

An encounter I had yesterday made me think of all the lives we touch on a daily basis in which we do not know the back story. Single parents, people fighting with cancer (FYI, it is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month) or abuse, or economic hardships, loss of a loved one.... We may not know what's going on, but we can help ease things a little by kind words and gestures.

In the case of single moms or dads, if you're close to someone in that situation, maybe you can give the mom or dad a little break by taking their kids to the park or swimming sometimes. My brother and I did this for a single mother of four when we were young. It was the one afternoon a week in which this friend had any time to herself. Susie, my selfless better half, has been involved in the Mentor Duluth program in our community, a program designed to help young people get linked to healthy adult role models. Many are from broken homes, all are reaching out.

But you don't need a program to role up your sleeves and pitch in. Here are a few quotes to mull over as you go through this day. May it be special for you as you look for new ways to lighten anothers' load.

"When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people." ~Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The best portion of a good man's life - his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love." ~William Wordsworth

"A bit of fragrance always clings to the hand that gives roses." ~Chinese Proverb

Conviction Is Worthless Unless Converted To Conduct

“Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct.” ~Thomas Carlyle

“Whereas mysticism placed the emphasis on the journey inward, Luther stressed the importance of breaking out of the self into the service of others.”
~Donald Bloesch

Two good quotes from my quote book, which when woven together address the issue of solipsism. When our lives revolve around ourselves, we are missing the point of Christian faith, says Bloesch. And Carlyle's comment nudges us to make our walk keep up with our talk.

Dylan gives it to us this way, one of my favorite songs from his critically acclaimed Oh Mercy album, 1990.

What Good Am I?

What good am I if I’m like all the rest,
If I just turn away when I see how you're dressed?
If I shut myself off so I can't hear you cry,
What good am I ?

What good am I if I know and don't do?
If I see and don't say, if I look right through you,
If I turn a deaf ear to the thunder in the sky,
What good am I ?

What good am I while you softly weep
And I hear in my head what you say in your sleep
And I freeze in the moment like the rest who don't try,
What good am I ?

What good am I then to others and me
If I had every chance and yet still fail to see
If my hands are tied must I not wonder within
Who tied them and why and where must I have been.

What good am I if I say foolish things,
And I laugh in the face of what sorrow brings
And I just turn my back while you silently die,
What good am I ?

Is Life Worth Living?

Albert Camus opens the preface of his book The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays with this statement:

“For me ‘The Myth of Sisyphus” marks the beginning of an idea which I was to pursue in The Rebel. It attempts to resolve the problem of suicide, as The Rebel attempts to resolve that of murder, in both cases without the aid of eternal values which, temporarily perhaps, are absent or distorted in contemporary Europe.”

It is an intellectually honest inquiry. In a post-Christian world, when God has become a meaningless concept and the Bible a neglected guide to ethical behavior, where do values come from? And even more fundamentally, is life worth living? Hence Camus’ essay begins, “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”

David Ogilvy, founder of one of the most influential ad agencies in history, wrote in his autobiography about coming to America in the late 1930's and being astonished to discover that so many Americans still went to church. Here a majority attended weekly services, and many more than one. In England, where he originated, church attendance was no more than 3% if that.

This is the milieu within which writers like Camus and Jean Paul Sartre found themselves. Add to this the horrors of want and war that ravaged the European continent, and from where do we derive our answers to life's big questions?

In 1942 Camus wrote his essay on the myth of Sisyphus, whom he used to exemplify the existential hero in the midst of an absurd reality. Sisyphus, whose life was not the epitome of sainthood, had been condemned by the gods to an eternal fate of having to roll a large boulder up a hill only to have it roll back down again, an absurd an meaningless task. (I think here of Paul Newman's assignment to dig a hole and re-fill it in Cool Hand Luke, another story about an existential hero.)

It is a variant on Nietzsche's concept of eternal recurrence. Except that in Nietzsche's equation, we have the power to choose our fate, must use our will to create our destiny, and in Camus' bleak equation the task of living is endlessly futile.

So where does Camus take this image of absurd fate? In his essay, he notes that for a brief time, Sisyphus has to walk down from the mountain to retrieve the rock, and for that brief space in time there is respite from his suffering. Moreover, he can use that walk down the mountain to smell the flowers, to appreciate the vista, to take deep gulps of fresh air into his lungs. In other words, even in the midst of a hard lot there are moments we can treasure, and when we put our minds to it, we can discover more of these than we realized.

This is not Christianity by a long shot. But Camus is offering something here for the post-Christian man wrestling with meaning in the midst of yet another absurd world war.

Christians look to the Bible as a source of light to illumine the way in an otherwise dark world, may not understand where writers like Camus and Sartre are coming from, but many there are who do wrestle with such questions. Camus is to be commended in that he himself was attacking head on the major questions and not just playing word games or the mind games of radical skepticism which doubted whether the sun would come up tomorrow.