Telegram

Riding by Radio

The telephone doesn't ring that often. Today my friend was driving back to Philadelphia, where he's in Lutheran seminary, from the Shenandoah, where he interns at a church two Sundays a month. I have never used a cell phone, and I think I can easily go without using one for another couple of years, but I am an indirect beneficiary of the technology, like an Amishman. He's in his car, with nothing to do, and a few hours to kill. We catch up on all the little things while he makes his way ever closer to his destination. For an hour I was in the passenger seat, chewing the fat, and I didn't even get car-sick.
David on 02.29.04 @ 06:21 PM CST [link]

Tramp Abroad

Some days live up to the advertising. This is one. It was cold and clear when I went out this morning, but by ten o'clock or so it was warming up nicely. I looked at the map and saw a spot, not too far way, where I could leave my territory and enter unfamiliar country. Five or six miles from where I've lived for years, and I'd never been there. I went past the old crossroads in Mendham and headed up a steep hill. Old colonial houses clustered halfway up. Across the ridge, then down a winding, narrow road into a hollow, up hill and down, not a familiar sight to be seen. On my way back I stopped to see the falls, modest, well off the road, in a sparsely-used preserve. Boulders crowded the creek-bed, and an earthen dam, breached, crossed the stream. Once there had been a forge on this spot. The corner of a stone foundation peeked through the snow. I slipped back out of the valley and came home. What other surprises are right out there, almost within my grasp?
David on 02.28.04 @ 04:37 PM CST [link]

Sucker

I am not a fool for buying a calendar at the end of February. Not for that alone. I already have a calendar, I have two, three, four. I am a fool for buying it, merely because it was on sale, half off. Considering the fact that I have already spent one-sixth of the year, by my calculations it's really only one-third off: I bought five-sixths of a calendar for three-sixths of the cost. And I needed none of it at all. But it has quotes for every day. I'm a fool for wisdom.
David on 02.27.04 @ 07:24 PM CST [link]

Old-Time Sensationalism

In the Confessions, Augustine tells how, as a youth, he was mad for the theater. As an adult, he looks back on this passion with bemusement and repentance. "A man listening to a play is not called upon to help the sufferer; he is merely invited to feel sad....so long as he feels sad, he will stay fixed in his place, enjoying every moment." Augustine finds this a perversion of the end of the virtue of compassion: "A man who is genuinely compassionate would rather that there was nothing for him to feel grief about." This mock grief of the theater fan is a mere counterfeit, and as all counterfeits, devalues and undermines the true coin. It's not tender, it just resembles it. So Augustine meditated on his one-time passion; maybe it's worth thinking about in light of today's Passion as well.

(Citations from Rex Warner's translation, II, 2.)
David on 02.26.04 @ 05:22 PM CST [link]

Queries

I should be asking myself: Do you really need to go in there? Is this conversation really advancing any good, or is it propagating some evil? Am I bearing witness to the truth? do I stand up for my own self-respect and integrity? Am I saying what I ought to say, keeping silent when I ought to keep silent, and properly, truthfully and compassionately reporting the things I have seen? Am I giving in to tale-bearing, complaining, gossiping or dramatizing? Have I lied? Am I willing to be courageous in what I say, and disciplined in what I keep to myself?
David on 02.25.04 @ 05:18 PM CST [link]

Shriven

It is the last day of the season, liturgically speaking, and the wet, pathetic snow that's falling is a lot like the last gasp of the season of weather. But it's too early for that to be true. I am in a lenten mood, I guess, but all seasons for me seem to be seasons of advent as well, forward-looking rather than present-dwelling. The big set-up for rummage will happen, if all goes according to schedule, on Maundy Thursday, with donations to start Easter Saturday. Forty days, if you don't count every one, and all the seasons of preparation coincide.
David on 02.24.04 @ 04:20 PM CST [link]

Nose Hymn

I am sneezing a lot today, or feeling the prophetic itch of a sneeze to come, or suffering the tremorous aftermath of sneezes past. Every life is really a biography of a misbehaving nose. When we are young we prefer the free-range nose; if it runs, it runs. If it's blocked, a finger intervenes, and a sneeze blows as wild as any volcano. Society teaches us to bring our noses into captivity: we grab tissues, keep our noses clean, and do our best to keep our fingers out, o matter how much good they might do. A sneeze becomes a pas de deux of hand and nose. The virtuoso hand emerges with the hankerchief just in time to corral the breakaway sneeze. I guess we don't sneeze in our sleep; I wonder why. It takes strength to sneeze, but I've never heard of anyone being too weak to offer one, however half-hearted. Any sneeze might be the last, I guess; they're as individual and as alike as potatoes. However much you might need to sneeze, you get no real joy out of it and no relief when it's over. But this entry is over, and that's a relief.
David on 02.23.04 @ 06:00 PM CST [link]

A Red, Red Rose

Three roses on the communion table, for three sets of grandparents. One grandmother is on the church staff, the other two are rummage people. I'm talking to Susie after worship. She is holding a red, red rose.

"You know, Z is a very sweet girl."

"I know. I like her a lot."

Later.

"Z's very sweet."

"I know."
David on 02.22.04 @ 07:09 PM CST [link]

Drive, He Said

A long time ago, before Stroke, she was laid up with a debilitating illness. Recovery was slow and she tired quickly. I started taking her on drives, long drives into the country, into parts we'd never visited before. Out Larger Cross, where the horse farms are -- this was before the Equestrian Team took up residence. Up along the ravine to the lake, looking across at the convent. The road was narrow and hugged the cliff over the water. Now I'm driving again, along these same roads, by myself, looking out over the landscape, still familiar, each page from today marked with a footnote of yesterday.
David on 02.21.04 @ 04:05 PM CST [link]

Scripture

"We seek to understand." In order to do so, whatever obstacles there are to understanding must be overcome. These obstacles can reside in the will as well as the intellect; there are plenty of people who have the intellectual capacity and background to understand, and yet are not fully willing to do what it takes to strive towards that understanding. To be fully understood, the objects of the understanding must be approached in a posture of humility, openness and defenselessness, and obedience to the call of the truth.
David on 02.20.04 @ 05:56 PM CST [link]

Trivia

It's Thursday, I have the day off, and that means, as usual, that any disciplined activity is not going to happen. I walked to the grocery, walked back, already it was a mild and forward-looking day. February is the real Janus month: one day looks back to the dying winter, two look ahead to the borning spring, and so on. Laundry, the dryer wouldn't dry. Library, looking for information on Kroger Babb, Mel Gibson's spiritual father. Home. Nap. Read. Out again to test my new digital camera. Now it's four o'clock, the sun will be out for another hour, and it's forty-five. Guelph, it'll happen to you too.
David on 02.19.04 @ 04:31 PM CST [link]

Back

Big buttons. I told her she had big BUTTONS. Somehow that's not what she heard, or so she claimed. Whatever I noticed, buttons or not, I was looking, and she had no problem with that.
David on 02.18.04 @ 06:04 PM CST [link]

Vet

I remember Ray. He was an old guy, meaning I'm probably older now than he was then. Kind of scrawny, thinning hair, a chipped tooth in front. He was a Vietnam vet and was attending my college, and he was going with a girl I knew slightly. He was studying English, I think, but from what I could see he was majoring in marijuana. As he told it, the kids in Nam would toss the soldiers bags of pot now and then. One day he saw one coming in and picked it up, only it wasn't reefer, it was a grenade, and he lost half his hand, and went home. As near as I could tell, he was reconciled to the loss, and considered that, all in all, he'd come through pretty well.
David on 02.17.04 @ 05:55 PM CST [link]

Car

It's a red Cherokee -- not a Native American but a motor vehicle. It always seems to be sitting there, in the garage; occasionally I see it from the street. It remains, therefore, very clean, and I don't usually see much inside. No individualizing touches unless cleanliness is an attribute and not a privation. That's certainly not in my philosophy! But the restraint and carefulness that are indicated are certainly personality traits of the owner. So why red? So bold, so outgoing, so boisterous...I've got nowhere to go with this. I'm not my car either.
David on 02.16.04 @ 04:14 PM CST [link]

Coming

On longer evenings,
Light, chill and yellow,
Bathes the serene
Foreheads of houses.
A thrush sings,
Laurel-surrounded
In the deep bare garden,
Its fresh-peeled voice
Astonishing the brickwork.
It will be spring soon,
It will be spring soon –
And I, whose childhood
Is a forgotten boredom,
Feel like a child
Who comes on a scene
Of adult reconciling,
And can understand nothing
But the unusual laughter,
And starts to be happy.



Philip Larkin
David on 02.15.04 @ 03:45 PM CST [link]

Heart 2004

It doesn't seem like Valentine's Day; there's much less of the usual irritation, aggravation and frustration that day usually brings to the perennial single. Maybe because it's Saturday, and I'm not around people much at all. Maybe because it's Saturday, and i'm seeing all the people in couples out doing their mundane weekend tasks. Maybe because I'm really pretty content. I thought about calling BZ this week and didn't -- however it would have gone I'd have stirred up some turbulence inside of me that I didn't need. The attachment is still there, and the door never closed, but caution, cowardice and shynes are still winning the day for both armies. At this point in my life, I've spent a lot of days in unrequited love, or unfulfilled yearning, and its familiarity is comforting. It's the old hound, dozing by the side of the chair, that I reach out and caress every now and then.
David on 02.14.04 @ 05:56 PM CST [link]

Author

While my clothes were doing their thing at the laundromat, I went to the grocery store for a few items. Anti-Atikins: bread, potato chips, and oranges. I went to the register and got in line. Two people in front. I need amusement while I'm waiting, so I look around. The rotating book rack, with the usual commercial stuff, romances mostly. And one by her: I was at college with her. I never met her, to my knowledge, though it wasa small place; she dropped out at the beginning of her senior year, when I was a freshman. Now she writes books of the sort that they sell in supermarkets. Her first six or eight were quite good, and then she hit on a successful formula. I don't read them any more.
David on 02.13.04 @ 05:23 PM CST [link]

How Firm a Foundation

I had heard a few mentions of the Pleasant Plains Methodist Episcopal Church over the years; I thought it had once been on a wooded lot in the Great Swamp near Meyersville, but when I'd gone by I saw no signs that a building had ever been there. Supposedly the church building had burned down in 1931. This week I'd come across a new source of information on it, and found that I was thinking of the wrong intersection. I drove past the right spot the other day ansd saw nothing but a whole lot of ice and trees. Today I went over and got out of the car to look around, and sure enough, nestled in the corner of a triangle described by the two roads and the swollen, frozen brook, a foundation. Fieldstone, laid out in a rectangle, not all visible but enough. The building had been about thirty by sixty feet, and from what I hear, the congregation was never in any danger of outgrowing the facility. Now the only congregation is a host of silent trees, bowing and nodding in the bleak midwinter.
David on 02.12.04 @ 03:44 PM CST [link]

No News

A while back I got an e-mail message from my class correspondent, asking me to give her some information on my life to put in the back of the alumni magazine. I demurred, but she persisted, and I sent back a three-sentence self-description, and I haven't heard from her since. When i get the magazine, and read the class notes, i get the feeling that people I never knew very well are using the space to try to impress me. Their real friends already know what they've been doing, o they se the soapbox to put a glossier version of their lives before the rest of us, who know the name, but can't place the person. My life doesn't slick up that well, and those days seem very remote now. I forgot to mention that I see John Pearson '82 now and then. Go, Camels!
David on 02.11.04 @ 05:01 PM CST [link]

C

Patricia Carlon, The Unquiet Night; I muddled along in "B" for so long that I decided to try something short and simple in "C". A tale of suspense, under 200 pages, seemed to fit my requirements, and it was surprisingly good. Easy to read without being trashy, well-written, moderately compelling, with above-average characterization. The book is flawed by the fact that the characters exhibit unusual credulity, which propels the plot, though otherwise they seem rather competent. There are some surprising twists but no sense of genuine jeopardy. I think I'm going back to "B" soon.
David on 02.10.04 @ 05:39 PM CST [link]

Games

When I was a kid one of the magazines we got every month was Scientific American. One of the features my dad, an actuary, enjoyed most was Mathematical Games. This went right over my head, and I can confidently say that the material still does, but it became part of the culture of our household, and something I learned from it must have settled into the back of my mind and rested there, because it's popping out again. One of my domains at work is setting up rooms for classes, meetings, and social events. This is not in itself interesting but it takes a certain amount of time, and it's generally solitary time. The mind has recognized these set-ups as geometry problems, and I find myself playing mathematical games with the points (chairs), squares (card tables), and circles (round tables) I am manipulating. I think of the numerical properties of the sixes and sevens I set out in rows, of the Platonic forms of the constellations of chairs around the tables, and tables around the axes of the room.
David on 02.09.04 @ 06:00 PM CST [link]

Casualty

I went into Bible study on Saturday morning, into the kitchen, and as I got myself a cup of coffee, I looked behind the recycling bucket. The mousetrap was overturned, and I saw alittle glimpse of furry white belly under it. Caught one. Of course, the guy were there, already talking, so I couldn't really dispose of it then. We went into the library, by and by, to talk about Methodism, but part of my mind was still on the dead mouse, back there. An hour of study, then back to the kitchen. The last guy lingered, talking about church business for another twenty minutes. I wonder how soon they start to smell. Finally, I'm alone. Work to do. I get a dustpan and brush. No actual contact. Unclean. A black garbage bag for a shroud. Outside, with the rest of the trash. All gone.
David on 02.08.04 @ 04:54 PM CST [link]

Fenix

The sun felt warm on my skin today. I was walking, out in the open air, and I felt warmth on the back of my neck. Pure from the sun. Boredom is a habit, and it can be broken. No more excuses -- "It's cold, it's dark, I'm tired, I'm sad...." -- they are only alibis ivented when the imagination and the will go to sleep. I saw the auspices; birds in flight mean new life is coming.
David on 02.07.04 @ 05:21 PM CST [link]

Survivor

Adella Wotherspoon died the other day. She was 100 years old. She lived most of her life, I guess, a couple of miles from here, in Watchung. Her father died in 1910, when she was six or so, and her mother moved with her out to New Jersey from New York. She graduated from Plainfield High School in 1921. She taught school for a year. She married a furniture salesman. He died in 1982; they had no children. I hope it was a full life; set down it looks like the kind of gentle but meaningful life so many people live. But here's the thing: she was a survivor of the General Slocum disaster. When she was a baby, her family was among the 1300 church member who went on a boat trip to a church picnic. The boat caught fire en route and over 1000 people died. Adella was the youngest survivor. In the end, she outlived the rest of them, from the youngest to the oldest to the only.
David on 02.06.04 @ 05:23 PM CST [link]

B

I'm having a hard time on "B". I have the feeling the problem isn't with the book I'm plodding through,The House in Paris, by Elizabeth Bowen; the problem, I think, is with me. The book is slow -paced but the prose and observations are crystalline, but I am reading it more out of self-imposed duty than any real enthusiasm. Maybe I'm not into reading right now at all; I have been over-committed a lot this year, and now I am drifting into late-winter grays. I'm restless, easily distracted, full of indifference, losing traction. All I want is a firm foundation to push against; all I've got, for now, is ice.
David on 02.05.04 @ 05:37 PM CST [link]

Exposure

A notable case of exposure occured the other night, and almost everybody has been talking about it ever since. I didn't see it, myself, at least not the first time around, but it has rattled around in my brain ever since. We tend to forget, I think, that physical modesty is not only an artifice but also a luxury. It doesn't take much to make that luxury too costly to keep -- have a stroke and you may well find that going to the bathroom has become a social affair. I'm not sure what happened the other night; the celebrity may have been mortified but she sure didn't die. However, not very long ago, an elderly lady, who suffered from gently advancing dementia, stepped out of her house in the night and became disoriented, and she did die. Of exposure.
David on 02.04.04 @ 04:41 PM CST [link]

Treading Water

I had to work on my own most of the day; the other sexton had lost his heat in the night and spent the day trying to install a new furnace. it was a nasty, late winter day; the rain froze when it hit the ground and there wasn't a thing I could do about it. I salted for show but it didn't hold. After I'd been home for an hour I was called back; the basement had flooded. As I drove back I saw theat the snow had plugged all the storm drains in town, and the roads were flooding although it wasn't raining that hard. The same at the church: The gutters, downspouts, and leaders were full of ice, and the ground was frozen or saturated. The water had nowhere to go but inside.
David on 02.03.04 @ 07:34 PM CST [link]

Inventory

Driver's License, expiring August, 2007. Insurance card, Cole Managed Vision, expired. Prescription drug plan card. Old calling card. Blue Cross card. Another Blue Cross card. Dental plan card. Card store card. A & P savings card. Photo processing receipt. Macy's gift card. Pathmark, Stop & Shop, King's;discount cards. Bernardsville library card. Record of immunization, 7/24/00; good for seven years. Automated teller card, never used, expired. Card-sized fresnel magnifier. Driver's license, expired. Coupons good for two admissions to local movie theater. $163 in seven bills.

Photo processing receipt. Florist's business card. Beautiful Zelda's business card (former employer). Master Card. Visa. gift card, Christmas, signed, Love, Mom. Expired. Photo of Dad c. 1947. Religious medal.

Social security card. "The Cross In My Pocket". Photo holder, empty. Picture of JM, age 4. College ID, 1980. Bernards Township library card.
David on 02.02.04 @ 05:41 PM CST [link]

Quiet

It is not virgin snow any more, and it's interesting to see what that means. It's a little sullied, a little soiled, sure, but that isn't what is most distinctive about it. It has a history, now, and that history is written on it physically. A trail of footprints, out of the woods, where a deer walked in the night. Another, lightly drawn trail, starting nowhere and ending without warning. A bird alit. A glossy patch, freckled and dimpled, where the dripping icicles left their trace beneath. The exposed, slumbering, earth, here and there, where the snow was not able to stay for long. Yesterday's youthful, leaping snowbanks have relaxed and crumpled into lower, flatter mounds. It's just as peaceful as it was before, but wiser, somehow.
David on 02.01.04 @ 05:32 PM CST [link]