140 Years After Sherman
...another Ohioan goes South
Ze Flight
He’s in his early 20s, polite, well-groomed & well-dressed. In his hand is, yes, the DaVinci Code. The book has more lives than Bush has enemies. He apologizes needlessly for our getting up (he had the window seat). Sigh.
The plane lifts off and my wife notices what I’m doing.
“That’s an accident waiting to happen,” she says as I put a full cup of coffee in the seat pocket, balanced precariously between
Skymall and the Delta magazine.
“That’s for sure,” I say, undeterred. She keeps an eye on the coffee and for the next ten minutes I take a perverse satisfaction, a vestige of Original Sin. I decide to remove it so as to avoid I told you so’s, having waiting long enough to have my own.
I notice that the requirements for those sitting in exit rows continue to grow more stringent with every flight. Someday there will be exams and physical tests to determine suitability. Standards for exit row husbandry grow while those in education and morality decline.
I can’t seem to get the '80s song “All You Zombies” out of my head, probably because I feel like one. 6 A.M. flights will do that. My fatigue is drug-like in its effect and I recall how my stepson once told me of a drug - peyote or something - that makes you feel really tired. I'm thinking, “why not just get early?”. It’s cheaper and I hear the rehab's a breeze.
Ze Arrival
Cardinal Newman once said that the man who confuses a feeling of physical well-being with any sort of internal goodness is a fool. The animal high spirits that a vacation engenders are of no merit. One runner said, “a good run makes you feel sort of holy” which is rot. The hell with feeling holy, I’d rather be holy. But I wonder if there’s a tendency to discount or diminish the natural even if it might serve the supernatural. If, after running five miles, I’m much more pleasant to be around, then I probably should run five miles often while not mistaking it for spiritual progress. God prefers to use natural means and it could mean that God led me to the book “The Joy of Running” and that I’m expected to use that. We are bodies, as well as souls. Johnny Cash used to sing, “Keep movin’ if you got the blues.” Good advice whether you got the blues or not I suspect.
I’m of two minds on bodily comforts. One is that it’s good to forgo them for the purposes of spiritual training. The other is that it is not my place to remove temporal supports, that that might be “tempting God” in the sense of asking him to do what I could, in a limited earthly sense, do for myself. Lent answers this question in the sense that there are seasons in which to purposely remove bodily comforts for spiritual training.
"They Say I’m Lazy But It Takes All My Time" - Joe Walsh
I read a line from a Paul Theroux novel and I think how true: “Far from making them seem like menials, these chores gave them an air of authority. Each time Ronda polished or dusted something, she seemed to be taking possession of it.” It’s usually when I’m mowing my grass that I not only become acquainted with the lay of my backyard landscape but feel a sense of ownership.
Another startling line from Theroux (which reminded me of Joseph Stalin, who was great with children but tortured his “friends”): “He was sentimental as well as sadistic - not so unlikely a combination of traits, a natural pair in fact.” It also recalled for me Flannery O’Connor’s line about how tenderness cut off from Christ leads to the gas chamber. And while I'm quoting: a Samuel Johnson line was remembered on the front page of today’s island newspaper: “I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.”
*
A vacation is a weight-bearing instrument, sometimes buckling under the load. She bears the weight of months of numbness, the numbness induced by the auto-pilot life of regimentation. I read much of Joseph Pearce’s book on Oscar Wilde this week and Wilde wrote about the danger of jobs: “The evil that machinery is doing is not merely in the consequences of its work but in the fact that it makes men themselves machines also. Whereas we wish them to be artists, that is to say men." Pearce said Wilde words were prophetic and preceeded the code of the distributists several decades later. “His words could very easily be the utterances of Eric Gill, G.K. Chesterton, or Hilaire Belloc.” Wilde went on to say that art “must not begin in the scholar’s study not even in the studio of the great artist, but with the handicraftsman always. And by handicraftsman I mean a man who works with his hands; and not with his hands merely but with his head and his heart.”
I look from the balcony and the vista appears unreal. My doppelganger is here but I’m too enmeshed in the mundane to absorb this wonder, this massive ocean in front of me. I seek to confine its confines to what I can see - this stretch of beach and horizon - unaware that it goes and goes and goes. The priest began his sermon Sunday by telling us how Tillich began his theology classes. He’d say, “Who do you think of when you think about God?” (Pause.) “Everything you just thought was wrong. Too narrow. God is much more than we can conceive.”
We decided to fly this year because of a prior commitment on Friday and wanted to save time by avoiding the 12 hour drive there and back. But lacking this “down time” - the 12-hour trip to mellow and prepare - seems a loss. When we drive we hear music, we listen to books on tapes, we see the gorgeous mountains of North Carolina and the long, patience-testing plains of the Low Country in South Carolina. You arrive tired but your previous life is already half-way shelved, you are already in the zone of being “ready for surprise”. A jet flight is so quick you bring your troubles with you, like going to Heaven without Purgatory.
*
Mass Sunday at Holy Family. A gigantic crucifix hangs behind the altar and I don’t remember that being there in ‘01 when I last visited. It’s so big that I can see the blood on Christ’s knees from almost the back of church and the huge wood of the cross extends so far below His feet that it gives an odd feeling of superfluity, as if to show his sacrifice so extraneous and generous that it extends far beyond what mere utility would proscribe.
Before the final blessing the priest says, “I don’t like to embarrass anyone but I did notice that Scott Hahn and his family are here today” and then he thanked Scott and talked about how the parish is involved in a bible study on the book of Romans and that his commentary is being used. I lingered after Mass and watched a small group gather around Scott to shake his hand and speak of how inspired they were. “I’ve listened to all your tapes,” said one man. I didn’t introduce myself, thinking I had nothing to say that he hasn’t heard before, in fact nothing unique from what that man had just said. Also this wasn’t a book-signing, it was Mass. My wife - who I can usually out-cynic in a New York minute but not this time - said, “but we pay his salary” (interesting use of the word “we” but that’s another story). Suffice it to say Scott deserves his privacy. It was about seven years ago, before I’d ever heard of Scott Hahn, when another priest on this island introduced him before the final blessing, unstinting of his praise of him. I recall thinking, “who the heck is Scott Hahn?” and wishing the encomium were truncated. It was about six months later when I found “Rome Sweet Home” and recalled the priest’s introduction. I think it ironic that I’d brought his latest “Swear to God” and would be reading it within a few miles of where the author was staying.
On to the beach! Foreward ho!
Another run on the beach and my legs are so fresh and the surface so giving that my arms can scarcely keep up. This will not last, but I’m enjoying it while it does. By nightfall I feel more torn up than a defeated bull rider. I feel every muscle but the joy of movement lives. I've gained the athlete’s economy of motion and there is a small pleasure in sitting or getting up, in walking or standing.
Midway through the second day’s run I can feel my quadriceps begin to give out and the surrounding muscles are compensating - which isn’t good in the “long run” because they will eventually fail since they weren’t meant for forward locomotion though very helpful in the short run. I do feel a tinge in the groin, never a good sign. Muscles not meant to carry the load will do so uncomplaining only for awhile. A possible analogy: During the 50s the clericalism caused the Church to rely too heavily on priests for her forward progress. But when they gave out under the strain, the laity not only did not compensate but joined the ruin.
*
I notice that the roofs on the hotels look like pagodas. The beach is emptying as we linger late in the afternoon, kissing early the eve. A storm visited and left a debris of driftwood and chilly temps. But here at half-past six the sun still has palette enough to paint her warmth upon us. The unblemished sand lies billiard-smooth, its magic dust reflecting a hatchery of pointillistic lights stretching to the breaker of grass and thistle where the rabbits hide. A strange - if human thing - is to attempt to preserve or extend time by writing it down.
Eating is something of a chore now, something to be sandwiched (pun pretended) between reading, swimming, running, biking. When it’s dark there’ll be plenty of time to eat. A 90-year old disabled person I know says that meals on one of her few remaining joys.
Marsh grasses lip the dunes and small crabs locomote distinctly. My wife is nearly finished with a book I’d borrowed from the library for myself, James Hyne’s “Kings of Infinite Space”. I started reading it on day one and found it unpalatable. I don’t want to read about work on the beach.
*
I’d be remiss if I didn’t keep an eye on cultural concerns here. The local legislature apparently passed a law requiring all women under the age of 30 to wear really small bikinis. Coverage here is receding faster than a balding man’s hairline. This “modesty” was presaged by a lean girl wearing a T-shirt that exclaimed: “Objects under this shirt are larger than they appear”. They walk the beach like aristocrats. Hopefully this post is long enough to discourage everybody except the terminally bored or those who might profit from it (they may overlap). Towards furthering the latter (at the risk of offering something that is obvious), here is a quote from the Pope in “Love and Responsibility”: “The sexual urge in man is a fact which he must recognize and welcome as a source of natural energy - otherwise it may cause psychological disturbances. The instinctive reaction in itself, which is called sexual arousal, is to a large extent a vegetative reaction independent of the will, and failure to understand this simply fact often becomes a cause of serious sexual neuroses.”
Tuesday in Paradise
the sea
A lapidarist works
with sound effects
and egrets have no regrets.
At Mass today they sang a hymn which I can’t recall now but with words significantly altered to avoid the loathed male pronoun. But not just “God’s love” instead of “His love”, which is understandable, but actual changes to the meaning just to avoid the whole subject. It ruins the song for me and I suppose it will for most of my generation except ardent feminists. (In a perfect world I would be lobbying for gender neutral songs and women would lobby for the classical renditions, but alas..) On the bright side the young who haven’t heard the song will hear this new rendition untainted. Our generation will pass soon enough and it will make little difference.
As a youth I loved the song “Praise the Lord, ye Heavens Adore Him”. I loved that the moon, sun and stars became animated in their praise of God. The words were completely changed in the song “Alleluia, Sing to Jesus” and I cannot approach it with anything close to objectivity. It was satisfying to hear the original words sung at our wedding. They couldn’t find the lyrics and I knew only the first verse by heart but fortunately I was able to find it in my library, in a 1970 hymnal I’d picked up at a garage sale for a quarter.
*
The foliage-draped paths are restorative. The beach inheres restlessness with the wind and the call of the surf and the wilding of the blood. The quiet bike paths are antipodal and soothe, creped with hanging moss and shade trees and dappled sun. I am the coxswain of peace:
ridin’ to a trance
like the dance
of the natives in Dineson’s book.
Spanish moss dances with dendrites
ghost ghasts hag the trees.
*
I hold the door for Scott Hahn after leaving morning Mass. I don’t think I consciously arranged that. Honest. But in a celebrity culture I suppose the best we can boast of is to trade up: J-Lo for Scott Hahn. My wife keeps nagging me to talk to him so I decide that better than talking to him I’ll see if I can arrange to be blessed by him. I’ll just sit behind him and greet him at the Sign of Peace. Would I not kick myself if he were canonized some day? Stranger things have happened and I suspect he’s farther down that path than most of us.
*
We saw a figure walking down the beach who looked like Jesus. He had the beard and long flowing locks, was carrying a bible in one hand and a stole in the other and wore the long white robe. Pretty well-done. My wife wants a picture so I go up to him and ask if I can take one and he says sure. He said his name was James Joseph and that he travels around like a missionary. He was featured on 20/20. I told him I saw him at Holy Family and he asked if I knew they had Eucharistic Adoration 24-7 there. I did not. He said that Mother Teresa said she got her energy from the Eucharist.
*
Ideally vacations, like movies, allow you to suspend disbelief by making you think “this is my life now”. When you’re a kid, this isn’t a problem; a week to a ten year old feels like a month to an adult. I wonder where the line is. I’ve never gone on more than a nine-day vacation so have never had the opportunity to really go in believing “this is my life now”, a belief that eradicates a sense of urgency, that “if it’s Tuesday it must be Belgium” mentality.
We don’t
go to the beach, we take it - like the forces at Normandy but with more planning. Like gypsies we follow the tide but when she rolls out she creates long supply lines and logistical nightmares, the bedevilments of generals before us. Our base camp is far to the North now; to retrieve a beer requires a long hike across hostile territory in the form of hot sand and flying balls. The base camp consists of an extra chair, an umbrella, a cooler of beer, pop and water, seven or eight or nine books, a cigar and a lighter, a watch and earplugs, a walkman, a beach towel, tennis shoes, a sheet and a cast of thousands more.
Even longer supply lines lead to the condo - mondo distance away…
_
On the beach at night
in the utter darkness you can’t see but don’t fear
There’s nothing to bump into.
_
The waves are scattered with catamarans
skiffs that skate the sea’s surface.
Galloping steeds of surf
send armies along the coast
a vigil motion omnipresent
with water having salt
tasted but not seen.
In the haste to tick of the ToDos - groceries and bike rental on day one - I told my wife I’d take care of the latter. Two days later I noticed the sin of my haste - the rental car must’ve gotten scratched during the loading of the bike into the too-smallish trunk. And so we await the verdict from the Enterprise jury as to its severity and our expense.
A sense of constantly being responsible is one of the things vacations are meant to escape, as long as that responsibility is not of a moral nature. Given a key to our place without a keychain didn’t set off any alarm bells but it should have. It was lost in the afterglow of a two-hour bike ride.
Pearce writes that Wilde had the “wisdom of foresight which is the mark of prophecy”. On a trip to America Wilde said that “everybody seems in a hurry to catch a train.”
“This is a state not favorable to poetry or romance. Had Romeo or Juliet been in a constant state of anxiety about trains or had their minds been agitated by the question of return-tickets, Shakespeare could not have given us those lovely balcony scenes which are so full of poetry and pathos.” Well I’m feeling some self-pathos for the rental car situation.
Wilde called America “the noisest country that ever existed” and this was before the days of leaf blowers and gas-powered hedge clippers.
*
Clutch & grasps he at the extended hours
catching waves that never felt the human touch
grasps too the shrieking bird
talon’d fish a shish-kebob.
*
I like to get to the beach early
and bow to the unexpired day
By noon fed by prose and doze
By four on waves and haze.
Days’ consecutive don’t break my ardor
but gathers like the sea.
Day Five
One hopes to find some “action items” as “take aways” from down here, if you’ll forgive that brazen bizness-speak. I hope I take more long, leisurely runs. I’m certainly not in good enough shape. Swimming, biking and running down here are exhausting, and I never realized how in shape you have to be to have fun. Running, to be really useful, should be at least forty minutes long and that’s a stretch for me, a once-a-week effort. Once a week does not a habit make. Note to self: get in shape for the beach next time. My wife tells me of her co-workers who are triathletes, running 26 miles and biking 50 and swimming who knows how long. They are strange beings from another planet to me.
It’s day five and my previous writings look like feverous drivel. I look out at my “co-workers” on the beach and some of the faces are familiar now. Ralph McInerny wrote that he built a beautiful study at his house with large windows overlooking a golf course and sharp built in floor-to-ceiling book shelves but that, in the end, a study is a study and the environment matters little when your face is a few inches from a computer screen all the time you’re there.
But it’s different I think with this beach, my “study” for this week. The room at the hotel is infiltrated with shade and faux coolness and newspapers but most of all
enclosure, that amputation of the sky, that which appears as a huge basin or, as Oscar Wilde put it: "clouds are the only thing unchanged from the beginning and they remind me of Renaissance paintings”.
One could have worse studies. The shock of reading under the quintilliant (if it ain't a word, it should be) sun at noon reminds me why we’re here. It all becomes clear after assuming the horizontal position. In the condo we bravely say that we’re ready to go back home. But when supine before the truth of the sky's majesty and beauty we remember why we came but also why we don’t want to leave.
It is interesting that one can’t get from here to there - i.e. feel like I do on Day 5 on day 2. I’m speaking of getting to the more sanguine, laizze-faire, sang-froid, “how many cliches can I sling” sort of attitude. You can’t hurry love. Technique is effected when the heart is changed.
*
Reluctantly, I sit behind Scott Hahn today at Mass today. Directly behind him would be too obvious so there’s a row between us. At the Sign of Peace he didn’t shake my hand but half-turned and smiled reticently, if that’s not an oxymoron. His child (maybe eight) raised his hand in blessing towards me and I felt like
here was my blessing, the one I didn’t ask for and the one from who’d I had ignored. And it finally occurred during Mass to pray for Hahn, and for his apostolic endeavours, so there’s progress in that.
*
One feels keenly the sense of loss when the end approaches. The sun, the dying Gaul, stands in the Western sky as we turn our back from mother ocean that we might have the company of the Gaul. A week at the beach seems insufferably long given the Spartan entertainments of just book and radio and exercise. But it passed surpassingly fast and now we cast a gimlet eye at the prospect of that last mourning, a half-day at the beach, a grotesque centaur at which we stare at in disbelief, so fast went this second-to-last day.
A final bike ride. In the patches of sky in the dappled-noon schwarzwald I catch glimpses of the past. Was that my best friend’s father’s car? Are we on a camping trip to Lake Hope?
Back to the beach. There’s 1985 music on one station. It sings the truth - that I’ve become my father. His music stopped in 1958 and mine around ‘85. Did they make a bad song in ‘85 or is it just me? A couple Pale Ales serve as consolation and fortification for leaving this brine of sea, set in equal part salt as my own blood. Why do vacations open the trap door of memory so readily, music or not? Nabakov and Proust are good company, in their seeing something in the past worth recovering. I decide that the mass of men lead quiet last half-hours of desperation on vacations. But one can no more hold back time than the tide.
And so tomorrow the lifeguard will perform her umbrellic rituals again. And the turtles big as canned hams will pee on someone else when they carry him to safety. And the birds will go about their business as the rabbits will theirs and so. must. we.
Wash, waves, wash
in your climbing cliffs
and thunderous crashes!
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