Sunday Morning: Some Things You Never Forget

Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty
Early in the Morning Our Song Shall Rise To Thee
Holy, Holy, Holy!  Merciful and Mighty,
God in Three Persons, blessed Trinity!

There I was heading the procession, my hands firmly grasping the long base of the polished brass cross which I held steadily aloft, balancing against the swaying of gravity’s pull, me, the fourteen year old crucifer, as I was called, first item in the opening act so to speak followed by the choir, singing their hearts out, and then the priest.  It was an Episcopal service, and rather low church.  I did not discover that Episcopalians did incense and genuflecting until I went to a service at the famed Church of the Advent at the base of Beacon Hill (“you couldn’t get a Catholic service this grand”).

When the two prominent men of the church congregation had moved amongst us with polished brass collection plates, they took up their positions at the back of the church facing down the aisle to the altar, and I was a-tingle waiting for the sounds as the organ cued us and we all stood and broke into the Doxology and they marched down briskly to deposit the plates with the priest.

Praise God From Whom all blessings flow
Praise Him, all creatures here below
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host,
Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost

Sometimes I was the altar boy, and stood close to the act, and shivered as the priest knelt at the altar preparing the Eucharist.  Despite being a committed atheist to this day  I will not join in and take a bit of bread in one of these modern churches where anyone in the pews is invited up to share in the celebration of communion.  It is not to be confused with Thursday Evening Church Supper.  Not me, something deep within still recoils at the magic of the transubstantiation, the miraculous change of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ.  The priest was at the altar saying “And in the night in which He was betrayed, He took bread; and when He had given thanks, He brake it,”—I can hear it to this day that crack of the dry brittle communion wafer as he broke it with his hands, the sound all alone and resounding in the willed and eager silence of the church and its congregation—“and gave it to His disciples, saying, Take, eat, this is my Body which is given for you.”  But was it supposed to be "thee"? Yes, I think so, and I have just gone through to capitalize the references to this particular deity as i am sure is the way It Is Supposed To Be. (God, how I love ritual!)

And finally when I had been alternately thrilled, terrified, and deeply bored, the priest released us all saying:

“May the Peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God, and of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” 

There was a transformation usually on those Sunday mornings, a surrender, however briefly, of my natural anxiety, and "the peace of god" meant something to me, enough so that intoning those words even now in my atheistical dotage is soothing, but I wonder if the more powerful contribution to my sense of being at peace did not derive from the relatively large dose of sacramental wine administered to me by the priest when it was time for the celebrants themselves to take the communion at the end.  It filled my body unused to alcohol at that age with a warmth that evolved into a glow that finally gave me serenity.  At the time it seemed a miraculous transformation effected by the wine and the wafer, and that is how I remember it. 

Wisteria

Behind our house here, the very house we are soon to leave forever, is a large twenty foot by twenty  foot square brick terrace built by my husband fifteen years ago.  When he was finished he erected over it a wooden pergola as a support for wisteria which now has grown up luxuriantly, providing on the one hand a miracle of shade that provides a temperature reduced ten degrees from that outside, and on the other growing so abundantly that trimming back its ever reaching, desperate, needy tendrils is a constant affair.  This morning after only two days I was at it again, busy with shears and various extended cutting tools, and I know that it will require more attention at the end of the weekend.  Why is it that I cannot be content with this and the other garden chores?  I was raised in farm country, learned the rhythm of repetitive work.  And I have seen the women of Sicily standing at the base of a statue of the Virgin ceaselessly running their rosaries through their fingers as they recite.  I remember so well my late sister-in-law working at her embroidery by the hour.  Farm women shelling peas on the back porch when we went to buy eggs.  Why is it that I must cry out "I want something more" when there is nothing more?  And yet I can  sometimes sit for an hour staring at the flowers or at the water cascading from the fountain in our garden with my brain emptied of thought.  The curse of a thinking mind demands a brain crowded with words.  Why do I feel compelled to write?  How is it that I am happiest when I am about to board a plane, going down the passage way and am now longer where I was and not yet where I shall be, in a blissful limbo?  Nothingness is so compelling, yet so terrifying.  Two years ago my dearest friend died at 97, and she was slow in going.  Just like my 89 year old sister a few years before that, very slow indeed, bleeding internally and resisting any effort to stop the process toward her death.  And what is that process of dying?  Well, it is not trimming wisteria, and I must not confuse the two.  Still it were good if I could surrender to the mindlessness of daily life, especially so as I age, and most likely will not have another major project, no new book, no article, even a lecture doubtful.  My dear friend who died at 97 kept complaining in the years leading up to that "I need a project."  She was a printer, who made elegant small books on her own press, and so I wrote an essay for her, that she might make it into a pamphlet.  She loved what I had written and I believed that I knew her well enough, understood her politesse, her lying while making complimenti, to know that she did indeed like it, and so watched from afar with a certain fascinated sorrow as she fumbled about, and I wondered how well she understood she could not take on a project again.

Illusions Perdues

The young handsome would-be author Lucien in Balzac's Illusions Perdues reminds me so much of myself at various stages of my life.  It is a marvelous portrayal of simple provincial snobbery at work as the young man tries to make his way in his small town and later when the local society woman who takes an interest in him brings him to Paris.  I grew up in a small Iowa town in the upper reaches of its social order--for what that's worth--only to be surprised first at Andover by  all the self assured and very wealthy boys, then later at graduate school at Harvard which was so much more luxurious than the State University of Iowa, and where my fellow students had all been studying the classical languages since the early days at prep school, and whose knowledge of each other and their teachers was gleaned from summers on the Cape, the Vineyard, and Nantucket if not Maine.  When I went off to Manhattan at eighteen I had every opportunity to make something of myself--handsome, intelligent, and witty, and what was the calling card that would have gained me entrée to every level of society was that I was gay.  But I was too shy, too provincial, I did not know how to work the gay bars to meet the right (read powerful) males, I did not know the lingo and the references.  Poor Lucien!  I felt for him on every page as he stumbled and mumbled and revealed what a provincial dolt he was.  Now after having lived on and off in Manhattan for years, having held an important post in the teaching profession there, having lectured at non academic locales where social status matters, having been received at extraordinary addresses, I still feel that I am the inconnu from Iowa, utterly at variance with the smooth and knowing persons who surround me.  Part of it is I have never really been to the Hamptons, never been to Fire Island, have never really found my place in this great city with its many over lapping social milieux.  Lucien is an intelligent lad and he recognizes very quickly that his benefactor whom he thought very grand back in the village is a provincial nobody, and that he himself is a laughable joke in pathetic clothes, but he has a rage to break into the game.  I wonder if turning to the field of classical languages and literatures, becoming a professor, was not in some real sense opting out of the game.  And what was this aggressively gay guy getting married all about?  Now in my dotage in my new life in Florida my husband and I live very simply in a most unpromising site, between the parking lot for a high end mall and the local middle school, chosen because of its proximity  to so many important destinations available by walking.  But "nobody" would live where we live.  Because we donate a considerable sum to support a student at the Asolo Repertory's Dramatic School, or whatever it is called, we are thrown in with the other donors for whom dropping ten thousand or so on a philanthropic project amounts to something like a checkbook error, if they even notice it. Still provincial, still trying to make my way.

Balzac and the observed life

I have been reading a good deal of Balzac recently, and for the first time in my life.  A historian friend of mine who has been directing my reading on various projects for reducing my ignorance, suggested the novels of Balzac when I had finished my readings in the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte and his successors.  Balzac was to be the substitute for a historical overview of the Restoration.   No doubt about it, his precision in matters of social, economic, and political detail, the intense realism of this narrative, makes it a very good substitute for historical research.  But what I am enjoying most of all is the normalcy of the events and people of the narrative.  My husband and I have just recently finished watching the English version of "House of Cards," after having watched as much as is available of the American remake.  I have to say that I think I have had it with involving myself hour upon hour with such monstrous people.  My husband completely disagrees, but then he loves science fiction, blood and guts shoot 'em ups, all that stuff.  I watched "The Sopranos" because it was so brilliantly done on every level, but here again I must say after awhile my psyche began to rebel against the constant barrage of ugly motives and actions.  I never could get into "The Wire" because of the violence and ugliness.  Well, the two versions of "House of Cards" has the same effect.  Yes, I have known so many cruel, ambitious, soulless persons.  You can't spend your life in academia without pulling a few knives out of your back as you go along, often planted there by someone you thought your friend and protector on the faculty.  But, hey, life is not just made up of evil persons.  I have never known anyone to murder another person, I have known a few out to destroy the career of other people--after all I taught at Boston University for twenty years!--, but by and large (could this just be because I am a warm hearted simpleton?) I think people are out to do something positive for themselves, their mates and spawn, the community at large, honest I really do.  The odd thing that I have yet to square away as I think this through is my aesthetic and moral love for so many of the pieces of ancient Athenian tragedy, I think of Medea, for instance, or Agamemnon, or Clytemnestra, or the brutes who populate the Iliad.  And Richard III.  Maybe in both instances, royalty and the temporal past provide the requisite distance so that I do not have to have the same engagement that I must with Tony and Carmela Soprano or Francis Urqhuart and the others.  Interesting problem.

A Belch After Lunch In Harvard Square

Goodbye, Square,
And all the crazy people there
Bookstores, restaurants,
It was a village fair.

Brick sidewalks, goodbye!
Spitting and heaving,
Something I'm not at all sorry
To be leaving.

What used to be shops
Are now clones from the mall.
Thank God for the University Bookstore
With which we are blessed, each and all.

Goodbye, Widener,
The Square's raison d'être,
Yes, yes, I know--the teaching
And yet. . . .

The winged word
Is soon forgotten,
What's printed out
On recycled cotton

Is for the ages,
Goodbye, Square of my dreams,
The Square what was, who cares?
It joins other romantic memes.

Happy Days

My husband was 46 when we met, I was 59.  He was living on very limited funds, having resigned a full time position in order to explore the possibility of getting a PhD.  I was the holder of a prestigious endowed chair and well known for my books and articles, six years away from retirement.  He was exceptionally handsome, vivacious, and charming, and I was somewhat heavy set, more than a little bit pompous if also witty and fun.  He was in awe of my position and what he perceived to be my many attainments.  I was dazzled by his youth and sexuality.  We have lived together almost from that moment to this, along the way getting legally married in Massachusetts when such a feat was possible.  We are two alpha males, over achieving, controlling, passionate people who are used to holding center stage in a class room situation.  In the early days of our relationship he had to push back against what he perceived as my obvious superiority in position, wealth, prestige, and social position, whereas I was always worried about where I should be making allowances for his various kinds of insecurity, financial, social, educational.  Over time I grew to appreciate his rock solid capacity for endurance and his total commitment to me and our relationship even though in little matters he sometimes seemed unbelievably insensitive, as for instance his nonchalant departure from the table in the middle of a meal when he wanted to verify something on Google (never was the difference of our backgrounds more sharply displayed!).  He is now 71 and I am 84 and this morning at breakfast he was remarking on how most couples seem to experience the most extreme emotional conflicts and ruptures when in the soul destroying process of moving households, but that he felt we had grown even closer together.  It is because, as I don't think he sees it, he has become in the course of this move so very aware of how vulnerable and frail I have become in the last few years.  I am so very much aware of his great patience with my fumbling, forgetting, and slowness, all of which is a very new aspect to my being.  I was happy this morning that after having weeded the garden in my topsy turvy way for two hours I came in to make him scrambled eggs with capers for his breakfast, happy because he was delighted, and I felt that in some small way I was repaying him for the extraordinary amount of the shared labor of preparing the house for the move which he has assumed.  Two days before the movers arrive I will take a train to Manhattan, he will get ready for the van, then drive to Florida, while I will stay north until the van has arrived and unloaded at our condo.  Then I will fly down.  That is the way it is now, and I look forward to hanging the pictures in his company.  I hope he is ready with his hammer and picture hangers, and then maybe I will make him a delicious omelette with smoked salmon.

Ma ride ben chi ride/ La risata final.

So sings Falstaff in Verdi's opera--"He who has the last laugh has the best laugh"is more or less the translation. It is a thought which is how a friend would describe my triumphant ride to the exit of life.  When he began reading my blog he counseled me against yielding too often to the morbid tone as in Horace's famous poem the first verse of which is
Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume                            Alas, Postume, oh, Postume the years are flying by,
labuntur anni, nec pietas moram                              they drop away, and no amount of goodness
    rugis et instanti senectae                                      will hold at bay the wrinkles of old age
        adferet indomitaeque morti;                             nor grant delay to death that conquers all.
Anyone who has watched the documentary of Joan Rivers will shudder at the intensity with which she is determined to follow Falstaff's advice.  I found the film quite exhausting and her as one of those monstres sacrées better viewed than known.  I cannot imagine what her legendary Thanksgiving dinners could be like.  Living in Sarasota which is often jokingly called "God's waiting room" has been a revelation for me who has spent almost his entire life in university precincts where the average age of the resident population must be twenty.  I really never noticed old people before that even though as time progressed I had ample opportunity looking into a mirror or talking with my husband, not to mention lunching in Cambridge with friends from graduate school days.  But nothing really settled it for me until I began to work out at the Sarasota Bath and Racquet Club which is famous for its many tennis courts always in operation from early morning until the evening hours.  They are filled with energetic people darting about and returning serves with a fluency that belies the age they reveal in repose which has to be well up into the high eighties, the women whose naked arms and legs in shorts reveal skin hanging in subtle folds, having lost all the flesh that once provided the padding for the skeleton.  The energy and enthusiasm of their glance shows that they are going with Falstaff not with Horace.  I can see that it was my mother who kept me in thrall as a child to the morbid view of things.  She never got over losing her first husband to influenza four months after their marriage, her subsequent marriage to a dynamo who impregnated her twelve times in his zeal for family, her horrifying discovery that she was utterly alone some sixteen years later when he died in a sudden car crash and left her with the six that survived to birth far from her natural family and friends.  I remember once making these observations to a crabbed old lady as we sat in a limousine going to the funeral of my first wife, a proper time for melancholy thoughts, to which the old lady responded furiously and angrily "Well, with all her money I'm crying for her."  My mother was so witty, and gracious, and fun at table, while introspective and melancholy over cocktails when we were alone.  She died at sixty one; the melancholy won out.  As you can see, she has quite a hold on me.