two R's

Me, I'm no writer, I like to write, and I love to read and I know good writing when I read it, and I'm no writer. IDK, maybe I'm other things, something else. Mark Helprin is a good writer and Salman Rushdie is a good writer. Winston Churchill was a good writer. Charles Lafond can be a good writer, I enjoy his stuff and by the way, he's recently moved from New Mexico to Whidbey Island, Washington. After his other places and roles in life I had thought he was all set and content. But it's Charles and Kai-the-dog walking paths to the Pacific Ocean. He talks in an essay about shedding Things each move of his lifetime to accommodate room and perceived needs - - this move having been from five rooms into two, and I identified with: must we really do all this unpacking, can't we just stack the dozen boxes aside in my den study office and leave them for the heirs, I don't need all that stuff; this chair looking across StAndrewsBay is all I need for the rest of life. And the window ledge to sit a cup of black. The old life is, tentatively, we'll see what October brings this time round, new again.  

Though I do, scholars don't like Mark's writing, his Greek, and he starts practically every sentence with "and" (καὶ) (there's a literary word for it that I forget) and his noticeable use of εὐθύς (immediately) that adds a breathless touch to his story, as if everything is moving rapidly and Mark feels rushed to tell the story in a hurry before it's too late, like a runner who's just arrived with a vital message. And he uses a literary device called the historical present that brings the story alive as if he's standing there breathlessly telling it to you; most translations "smooth and straighten" all that out to eliminate Mark's eccentricities, which diminishes the telling and his personality: would you change Mark Twain to make him politically correct? Yes, you probably would. I also like what scholars call the "Markan secret" or "messianic secret" in Mark, and the consternation he stirs as scholars argue about why he uses it (the scholars are dim damn fools, if you look at the forest instead of the trees, it's perfectly obvious in his agenda why Mark uses it), and his techniques and why he employs them, or if he's just a poor writer. But of the synoptics I like him the best. Of all four canonical gospels, in fact, he's my favorite. Mark and Genesis. 

Man alive, it's lightning like Hell outside, beyond Shell "Island" and over the Gulf of Mexico. Once much loved, since Joseph, lightning is threatening; and since HMichael any gathering storm most ominous. I hope to get back to much loved, but Life is Short, and in 2018 and 2019 has given me new truths.  

As a teenager I loved writing to friends and girlfriends and grandparents and aunts (that was eons before texting and email and long distance phone calls were too costly), and hearing back from them, but I could never write a novel, and I sometimes wonder, and doubt, if I could ever have put together a doctoral disertation even though if I were doing life again I'd want to be academic in some field or other, astronomy, foreign languages, maybe New or Old Testament. 

The lightning grows closer and more startling, bright in my face, and thunder louder. Eyes and ears. It's Fear, isn't it: I need to get back on the horse before October returns.

Years ago I loved Harry Golden's writings, sharp political satire and essays about growing up a Jew in the garment district of New York. And his Golden White Baby Plan, for desegrating movie theaters. In the America that some damn fools want to make great again, there was the White Only front ticket booth and entrance, and the Colored side entrance to part of the upstairs balcony off to the side the other side of a solid wall six or eight feet high, because we certainly weren't having Them sit with Us. But a black nanny could bring the white children she was minding into White Only, in fact, she had to because we certainly could not have white children sitting with Them. So the GWBPlan was to issue each black person a white doll at the entrance, a white baby doll like little girls used to play with, so black people could sit downstairs, or in the White balcony. It was brilliant. Maybe it will return as part of making America great again. 

Why am I on this track? I don't know. I can't stand "spiritual writings", they bore me to tears, but Sunday afternoon read half dozen or so of Lafond's recent essays. Onetime monk and later sometime parish staff, he's a disillusioned Episcopal priest and a potter, now a bit of a loner who lives with his companion Kai-the-dog. Maybe Charles named his dog after reading Mark's gospel? His writing is thoughtful.  

Yesterday, Sunday afternoon, we did some work in 7H, I put up my bathroom mirror, if no writer I'm no mirror-installer either, because for the rest of my life in 7H I'm going to have to pretend it's straight. No matter, I've called the plumber enough times to correct my mistakes to know I'm no plumber either. Working on trucks and cars with my father taught me enough about mechanics that in my late teens I could keep my car running, first the '47 Buick then the '48 Dodge, but not today's cars. 

Or maybe a naval aviator, catapulted into the wind, lifting off the bow of an aircraft carrier.

Whatever, it'd be different. There was a time when I wanted to be a new car dealer, I don't know what happened to that dream, one day long ago I noticed that it was gone and had not occurred to me in ages.

Anyway, something else, but not a writer. Or maybe Nothing: at this age, my favorite thing to do is sit here at my seventh story window looking out at StAndrewsBay into the driving rain. I'll be the Narrator in Our Town, or even live there, probably across the street from the Gibbs.

RSF&PTL

T