Month: March 2020

Dagnannit!

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hiccuppia

the author being visited by Hiccuppia

I think I’ve mentioned before that the use of vulgar language has grown apace (as they used say) in recent years. At least Richard Nixon spewed his vulgarity and profanity[1] behind closed doors (though the tapes were running). I can’t imagine Jimmy Carter or Ronald Regan saying BULLSHIT when addressing the nation as Trump did in a tweet last October.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1179422987684077568

I heard in person Beto O’Rourke say “shit” in a stump speech last summer, and on Twitter, oh do Lawd, even such staid conservatives as Bill Kristol and Jennifer Rubin will occasional tweet an obscenity.  Don’t get me wrong: I’m not squeamish. Vulgar language doesn’t offend me.  I’m only pointing out a Late Empire anthropological trend.

For some reason, twenty or so years ago, the Muse of Light Verse, Hiccuppia, descended upon me and whispered the following in my tiny little ears:

 

A Meditation on the Sounds of Indecorous Words

                                                            By Gorgons with long whips pursued

                                                            How naked go the sometime nude!

                                                                                                            Robert Graves

Fellatio is a lovely word,

Operatic in a way:

“The role of Fellatio will be played

By Mr. Richard Cabot Clay.”

 

Sodomy, on the other hand,

Lacks that light Italian ring.

Biblical, confessional.

A cry of pain!  A serpent’s sting.

 

Cunnilingus could be a caliph

Thundering across desert sands,

Seeking long lost treasure troves

Guarded by jinn in distant lands.

 

Fuck, of course, isn’t exotic.

Its harsh cough can cause vexation,

But when a car door smashes your fingers,

it sure beats fornication.

 

 

jerry lee (original)

The idea, obviously, it that vulgar words can be beneficial in certain situations.  I used to encourage my students to use them sparingly, or those Anglo-Saxon monosyllables would lose their magic, wouldn’t be there for them when they need them to express rage or alleviate pain.

I can recall my late wife Miss Birdsong using the f-word only once, and it certainly got my attention. If I recall correctly (and I do), a second person pronoun followed the present tense verb.

On the other extreme, dig this cat who is featured in Sean Dunne’s documentary film American Juggalo.

cusser

Here he is ruminating on his adventures at a Juggalo gathering and how being a Juggalo has made him a better person.  You should hit the link and fast-forward to 5:09 and hear him for yourself because I can’t begin to do justice to his intonations, rhythms, phrasing.

Juggalo: The only way I got that vomit off me was to get to the fuckin raid.

Interviewer: What happened?

Juggalo:  I got fucked up.  I was drinking Caribou Lou on the fuckin carnival rides and fuckin got fucked up. Apparently, I fuckin passed out and then my fuckin homeboy fuckin comes, shows up out of nowhere, and gets me to the fuckin tent, and man, I fuckin fell out in the middle of the fuckin road. I had motherfuckers come ask me how I am. That how bad it was. I was a fuckin spectacle, and shit, I don’t give a fuck because it was fuckin righteous.

I’ll tell you for real about being a Juggalo, man. That shit made me the motherfucker I am today.  Honest to God, man.  If it wasn’t for Jay and [inaudible] that shit wouldn’t be on. I don’t wanna fuckin think about the kind of motherfucker I would be. I grew up a fuckin decent, fuckin good-hearted motherfucker. I’m a fuckin nice person. I can cook like a motherfucker who makes some straight up motherfuckin grub.  Fuckin  chicken fried steak, fuckin collard greens, fuckin mashed potatoes and all that. Fuckin sausage gravy biscuits, fuckin everything, man. I fuckin cook like a motherfucker.

I wanna find me a skinny ass little bitch and make her fat, and then we’ll lose weight together, and then we’ll bond.

[amiable maniac laughter]

But, o my brother, my dear Juggalo, what you gonna scream when you’re entangled in the metal mess of your wrecked car waiting on the Jaws of Life to extricate you?

O gee golly willikers – dagnabbit – ouch – Godfrey Daniels, muthafuckin muthafuckers!

Then again, an vulgarity can be sometimes effective when one is on the verge of a massive cerebral hemorrhage.  Take it away Jeff Tiedrich:

And on that discordant note, I bid you, dear readers, a fond fuckin’ adieu.

 

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[1] Profanity refers to words that offend religion; vulgarity deals with excrement and genitalia.

Whatchacallit? Angst, Ennui, Weltschmerz, or Something Else?

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Lewis chamberlain

Lewis Chamberlain

I admire those people in this period of suspended animation who have their chins up and memes cued-up. After all, there’s little else a non-billionaire can substantially do as the economy itself is rolled into ICU, except to try to make the best of a bad situation.[1]

It’s not bad to channel ol’ Norman Vincent and to tell yourself positive thinking is, well, positive. Look at all the time you have on your hands to start that herb garden, learn French or German or Sanskrit, read those classics you claimed you’d tackle after retirement.

After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns.

berryman

John Berryman

Me, on the other hand, I’m spending this gorgeous spring morning trying to pinpoint the perfect word to describe my present misery.

Let’s go alphabetically.

Angst. This word, of course, German, a language especially suited to embody dread in sound, and in, fact, can make pleasant situations sound somewhat dreadful with its “harsh discords and unpleasing sharps.”

For example, “Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh!” is usually translated as “Sleep in heavenly peace.”

 

 

But I digress. Angst means fear in German, but in English that fear is more generalized.  It’s not as if you’re afraid of that night shriek outside your pup tent but fear that life is merely a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Angst is stronger than anxiety, which for most people is a temporary discomfort rather than an entrenched world view.

So, no, it’s not angst I suffer from, nor anxiety either, now that my son Ned has almost fully recovered from his bout with the novel coronavirus or the Covid-19 virus or the Coriolanus virus or whatever you call it.

weltschmerz

Rockwell Kent

Ennui.  When I taught English, “ennui” appeared in three of the four high school editions of our Wordly Wise workbook. The editors defined it as “boredom,” but once again, it’s more generalized than mere tedium. It connotes a world weariness rather than a momentary I-wish-I-were-somewhere-else, expressed so well by soon-to-be suicide John Berryman’s “Dream Song 14”:

Peoples (sic) bore me,

literature bores me, especially great literature,

Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes

as bad as achilles,

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.

So, no, I’m not suffering from ennui.

Ennui c.1914 by Walter Richard Sickert 1860-1942

Walter Richard Sickert

 

Weltschmerz.  This German world means “world pain” and so correlates with ennui but connotes more pain and sadness.  So, no, that’s not it.

Well, what is it then?  Coopedinsocialestrangement.  That’s what I’m suffering from. Coopedinsocialestrangement.

I’m enjoying my bike rides with Caroline and Brooks, the uncrowded beach a quarter of a mile away, the movies we’ve seen, but I also miss my drinking buddies, Ellis and Bob, my beloved bartenders Jen and Rochelle and Solly and Sydney, my man Jeremy down at Lowlife Bar.

So instead I’ve been hanging out with Elmore Leonard and his crowd of criminals, cops, and cool black dudes. Still, it’s not the same.  I guess the good news is that unlike angst, ennui, or weltschmerz, you can eventually get over Coopedinsocialestrangement without undergoing a religious conversion.

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[1] Pro writing tip: avoid rhyming prose.

The Z Train to the Insomniacs’ Ball

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z train

 

 

As when an old film jumps in the projector,

        You will be wading a dun hallway, rounding

        A newel . . .

                             Richard Wilbur :   “Walking to Sleep”

 

mail slot 2

 

1

The tick tock clanging of a mail slot

is followed by a thud.  At this ungodly hour?

A typewriter-written invitation lies at your feet.

 

The Insomniac’s Ball.  Wednesday morning, one to five,

entertainment provided by Stan Kenton’s Big Band

reproduced mono on hi-fi.  Regrets Only.

 

How do they know that you are one of them,

whoever they are?  How do they know that at three a.m.

you tend to be tapping out trochees on a headboard?

 

elevator

 

2

The building isn’t as nice as you’d hoped.  You rise to the third floor

caged in an elevator, the only passenger.  The hall’s

somewhat seedy, the carpet worn, its roses faded.

 

You have been given the coded knock.  The first six notes of the 2nd movement

of Beethoven’s Ninth.  KNOCK knock, KNOCK knock, KNOCK knock.

The creaking door opening sounds like Bela Lugosi’s coffin

 

as your eyes adjust to a mazelike apartment, crowded but eerily quiet.

The Stan Kenton LP is scratched, the other guests preoccupied,

unfriendly, drifting through the rented rooms.

 

creepy parlor

 

3

You peek through a door down the hall

and meet the stare of your dead grandfather,

the one whose room you used to tiptoe past,

 

a medicinal darkness reeking

of the Great Depression.  As you escape, his memories

trail you like a shadow down the hall darkening

 

the passing stream of old folks, great aunts and former teachers,

rouged and wrinkled, mumbling to themselves,

some in bedroom slippers, others in stilettos.

 

library10

 

4

The library’s quite impressive. A ladder runs along a rail

to reach the volumes way over your head: a textbook

in Sanskrit on Chinese mathematics you must master

 

to pass that class you’ve completely forgotten about!

a course you need for graduation!

You climb to the top reaching, but then look down

 

dizzyingly into a snakepit, concentric circles

spiraling with antlike companions from your youth,

descending, swirling, like bloody water down a drain . . .

 

upper-hell

 

5

There is a shrine for your departed lovers.  On display

the beds where you once slept preserve the imprint of bodies.

Perhaps a long golden hair lies on the dented pillow,

 

but you’re not allowed to go beyond the red velvet ropes.

Where are they now – you wonder – what are they doing,

are they even alive, were they ever alive? You’re so

 

sleepy anything seems possible –

slants of light, cathedral tunes, leaden feet, riveted lips.

Couples waltz by mouthing one-two-three; one-two-three; one-two-three.

 

rusty and debbie oaint daubs

 

6

The oncoming day stretches out like a desert,

like the Bataan Death March, like life plus forty.

Thoughts of daytime responsibilities start to ricochet like billiard balls

 

without transition cold sheets, institutional whiteness, the ICU –

physicians and nurses whispering about your condition:

BEEP beep, BEEP  beep,  BEEP  beep . . .

 

You ride the rented hearse of sleep home

to twisted sheets, to creeping light, to the bedside’s time bomb’s

tick tock tick tock tick

A Poem by Jason Chambers

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jason dog

Here’s a kickass poem by a friend of mine, Jason Chambers, a cat who every morning clambers out of bed in the dark to encounter the dawn in a marsh or on a beach or some other natural setting unsullied by humankind. Afterwards, he posts a photo on Facebook, an appropriate quote from his wide reading, and usually a link to a song he deems appropriate. Once the plague is done, you can catch him at the Pour House when it hosts one of its poetry readings.

A poem by Jason Chambers, read by Wesley Moore

 

In the first month of this year
I saw a thing as pure and true as any
but did not then know what it meant.
I stood behind the Kings on the deck,
and though I could not see it,
Liz knew without looking that
Brian’s head hung for a
moment just a little too heavy,
his shoulders had dropped, just so,
wounded by the world in
some invisible way.
She reached her arm up and
around him to squeeze for a
moment one shoulder, just so,
and let her head fall on the other.

Four months later our neighbors
up the creek shoot day and night
at paper silhouettes on which they
can never quite find their fear.
The report hangs over the water
like a foretaste of despair,
and we are all the time being
urged to temper our hopes,
to be realistic, and practical.

But I have met enough dogs,
low, shimmying, tail-waggers,
squirming back-layers, and
all manner of face-lickers, to
know there is no upper limit
to bliss, and the line between
heaven and earth was never there,
and I ignore their advice.

Finally it is clear why God,
however perfect, chose not
to exist alone for even
one whole second.

Listen: everywhere musicians
sit in empty rooms yet play
and sing to thousands.
And my friend is for the first time
planting every inch of his farm,
the low field, the far field,
even the wet field.
He says, I’m going right up
to the house.
Whatever else happens,
we will all eat.

When Liz let go, they both stood
up straight, taller than before,
determined as only those
deeply in love can be.

We start from a place of joy,
and quiet astonishment.
We do not end anywhere.
We do not end at all.
Now is the barefoot season.
It cannot be taken away.

 

jason and me

Jason and me, Caroline Tigner Moore’s sunglasses, and a couple of All Day IPAs 

Coronavirus Hits Home in Germany

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18703944-3f8c-4f89-aeb4-23e7fc008301

My son Ned (second from left) and his housemates. Two of the four have Coronavirus

In Germany, where my younger son Ned has been suffering from the coronavirus for nine days, Chancellor Angela Merkel has “barred groups of more than two people from gathering” and has herself gone into isolation after learning her doctor had tested positive. Ned, who is fluent in German, listened intently to a speech she gave a few days ago on how her government planned to combat the contagion.

He described her as calm, straightforward —  a well-educated, unemotional, yet empathetic grandmother telling her brood that matters were serious, the greatest challenge the country had faced since reunification, but that by coming together and following her advice that they would overcome the disease.

Ned said that he felt fortunate to be living, as he put it, “in a first world country.” He might have added in a country not so horribly polarized by political divisions. Although I voted against Ronald Regan twice, I think he’d be an excellent spokesman in a time like this because he possessed a sort of serene confidence. He did not require a coterie of toadies to preface their technical expertise with praise for his unmatched leadership. He would not have lied in ways that could be so easily refuted, nor make statements like “the world has never seen anything like this before.”[1]  He would have projected a calming presence and have reassured the populace.

I’m not going into what might have been done differently to mitigate the virus’s rapid spread here in the States. I’m pleased to see a sort of a sort of un-self-pitying camaraderie developing, virtual get togethers, musicians performing virtual concerts. We’re all in the same boat, more or less, stuck at home with worries galore, but it’s not like we’re in London during the Blitz.  Nevertheless, war is an apt metaphor, and we all certainly owe much gratitude to the men and women on the front lines, the health care workers who are battling this pernicious disease.

Today, Ned says he feels much better, that his breathing is almost back to normal. He and his housemates are making the best of a bad situation.  Here’s a photo of a Corona Cake they made for a birthday party they couldn’t go to, and it ended up that the birthday boy or girl only had three rolls left.

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I’m not much of a silver-lining sort of person, but at the very least, this experience should remind us not to take life for granted, and while forced to forego televised sports, we now have a chance to notice the “birds in the trees/ —  those dying generations — at their song.”

merlin_170836479_362a8ef3-904f-45c0-bdc7-7fd12416cfb0-superJumbo

A park in Munich (Laetitia Vancon for The New York Times)

[1] In the mid-14th century, the bubonic plague killed ~20 million people, roughly a third of Europe’s population.

Cento: Retirement

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peaceful-retirement

P Alvatos

 

 

Glad I was when I reached the other bank,

a love of freedom rarely felt.

 

Man to be poor, man to be prodigal,

the half-man searching for an ever-fleeing other half,

 

and the countryside not caring,

a shadow of cloud on the stream.

A cento, sometimes referred to as a “collage poem,” consists of lines from other poems cut out and reassembled.

Poems sampled Robert Browning’s “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came,”  Tennyson’s “In Memoriam,” Michael Field’s “O Eros of the mountains, of the earth,” AK Ramanujan’s, “Elements of Composition,” Philip Larkin’s “MCMVI,” Yeats’s “Easter 1916”

Note: Michael Field was the pseudonym of Katharine Harris Bradley and Edith Emma Cooper, pictured below.

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Partying During the Pandemic: Hubba, Hubba, Hubba, Hack, Hack

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red death

Of course, whenever there’s a celebration on Folly Beach, I shed the fedora and don my pith helmet to study the folkways of the island’s men and women, whether they be our ancient, reptilian residents who seem to make up the majority of the population[1]; the younger year-round renters who often work in the food and beverage industry; the bourgeois house-renting vacationers; or the daytrippers, which include surfer dudes and dudettes, but mostly consist of young people eager to ditch their sobriety.  The question arose: what type of person (besides intrepid anthropologists) seeks out crowds during a pandemic?

I began my foray early, keeping at least six feet away from those as foolhardy to brave the great outdoors as I walked to Center Street via the beach. The strand itself was wind-swept, and the few cloud-bathers who braved the beach had placed their chairs and blankets on the leeward side of the concrete groins where they huddled and shivered. Most of the other beach strollers consisted of dog worshipers, who barely outnumber the host of young females who have chosen The Edge of America as the destination for their bachelorette parties.

Over the course of the day, I counted six different groups engaged in celebrating the waning days of some betrothed female’s status as a single. Depending on the socio-economic situation, the attire of the ladies ranges from civvies to tee-shirts printed for the occasion. Although anthropologists are not supposed to let ethnocentric emotions like pity come into play, I felt sorry for these chilly, less-than-festive seeming young women in short sleeves hugging themselves.  Who can blame them, having planned the events months ago not knowing it was going to be a Masque-of-the-Red Death weekend?

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Indeed, the numbers of revelers who decided to come out was scant. It was like, as my fellow anthropologist Caroline noted, living in Charleston thirty years ago when parking spaces were plentiful and sidewalks easily traversed. I began and ended my fieldwork at Chico Feo with brief stops at the rooftop of Snapper Jack’s, St. James Irish Pub, and the Sand Dollar Social Club (cash only).  Here’s a virtual visit for my social-distancing readers.

On a typical St Patrick’s Saturday on Folly, these venues would have been packed to, as they say, the gills.

 

[1] The overall median age of Folly residents is 49.7 years, 43.7 years for males, and 58.4 years for females.

 

Old Habits Die Hard

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Triumph-of-Death-1024x844

Triumph of Death Wall Painting, ca. 1448, Palazzo Abatellis, Palermo (Photo Rob Cook, 2012)

 

“Thus each of us had to be content to live only for the day, alone under the vast indifference of the sky.”
― Albert Camus, The Plague

Although avoiding skin-to-skin human contact makes a lot of sense during a pandemic, old habits die hard. Yesterday, for example, I attended a funeral. An old, dear friend invited me to share her pew, and as I leaned over to kiss her, she shied away — a not-infrequent occurrence of my youth, but one I hadn’t experienced in a while. After the service, as we entered the reception hall, two bottles of hand-sanitizer stood next to the guest register. Although I had never used a hand-sanitizer outside a cancer ward, I confess I did a couple of dollops.[1]

UnknownAt a funeral reception, you don’t want repulse people who need a hug. As we embraced, one of my former students said, “Corona Virus be damned.”  For a young person who most likely will face what amounts to a bad cold if infected, this attitude seems reasonable to me. For a woman in her eighties, not so much so. Anyway, at the reception, I let whoever was making eye contact make the first move, whether it be the awkward fumbling of an elbow bump, a handshake, or hug.

Of course, on the way out, I forgot to reapply the hand sanitizer, scratched my beard, tugged at my ear, covered my mouth as I burped, and headed straight to Chico Feo for a couple of beers.  Earlier in the day, I had checked out a bit of Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year and ran across this horror-inducing sentence:

‘That disorderly tippling in taverns, ale-houses, coffee-houses, and cellars be severely looked unto, as the common sin of this time and greatest occasion of dispersing the plague. And that no company or person be suffered to remain or come into any tavern, ale-house, or coffee-house to drink after nine of the clock in the evening, according to the ancient law and custom of this city, upon the penalties ordained in that behalf.

Being of an advanced age, I would rather hazard death than be reduced to drinking at home alone. My sparkling wit might very well wither and die. “Rage, rage, against the dying of the light,” Dylan Thomas wrote sometime prior to bragging about having downed eighteen straight whiskeys, lapsing into a comma, and going ungently into that good night.[2]

_78960954_dylan_thomas_18_poems

As far as sporting events go, the timing couldn’t be worse. Spring training and the NBA have been suspended, March Madness cancelled outright, and the Masters golf tournament postponed, which echoes precautions enacted in Defoe’s day:

‘That all plays, bear-baitings, games, singing of ballads, buckler-play, or such-like causes of assemblies of people be utterly prohibited, and the parties offending severely punished by every alderman in his ward.

Even Donald Trump, a Corona-Virus optimist, “out of an abundance of caution” has postponed “the Catholics for Trump” event scheduled for 19 March in Milwaukee.  Sources say that Trump has shaken hands with a Brazilian who has tested positive for the virus, but the President himself doesn’t plan to be tested. On the other hand, Court Jester/sycophant Lindsay Graham is in self-quarantine, no doubt binge-watching Lady Di’s wedding while enjoying a hot toddy or two or four or eighteen.

Me, I’m sequestered in my drafty garret skimming Camus’s The Plague and Boccaccio’s The Decameron for quotable quotes, puzzling about how bear-baitings and Macbeth could attract the same audiences, and touching my forehead every five minutes to see if I’m running a fever.

So far, so good.

[1] Thirty-four years of classroom teaching has produced in me a robust immune system. The last time I took a sick day was in 2003.

[2] According to eyewitnesses, he only had, alas, four straight whiskeys. If you’re going to die, you might as well go whole hog, as they say in Wales.

In Memory of Erica Lesesne

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Erica

Erica Lesesne 1945-2020

I first met Erica in August of 1985 at a school leadership conference; she immediately impressed me with her eloquence and presence. Although “from off,” Erica came to Charleston as a pilgrim, embracing the city’s Otherness rather than criticizing its eccentricity. I dare say that few scholars anywhere know as much about Charleston writers such as Beatrice Ravenel, Josephine Pinckney, and DuBose Heyward as Erica did. A few years ago, we collaborated on creating a course for adults on the literary movement known as “The Charleston Renaissance,” and although our efforts came to naught, I learned so much about Charleston’s literary legacy from working with her on the project. She was forever a teacher.

Although it’s sometimes easier for a teacher to pretend that she just doesn’t see, whenever Erica encountered bullying, student backbiting, or the twisting of truth for personal advantage, she directly confronted the offender, expressing her displeasure rationally, calmly (and with serious eye contact). On the other hand, Erica championed talented students who had acquired the reputation of being troublemakers. As I put it in the speech I delivered upon her retirement, “Erica possesses that admirable talent of being able to discern whatever diamonds may be lurking somewhere beneath the layers of mud adolescents sometimes coat themselves with. She inspired these rebels to consider the world at large as she cultivated their creativity, channeling their anger and angst into art.”  How life affirming to have a wise woman as an advocate, someone who understands your youthful dissatisfaction with a wounded world. It can be life-changing.

Drama was Erica’s favorite genre, and over the years she orchestrated a number of superb student-directed productions, plays in which actors performed without microphones, having to project their voices throughout the acoustically challenged spaces of Gwenette Auditorium.  She carefully chose each play according to the abilities of the senior class who performed them, on one occasion writing a script herself. More often, however, she selected plays of high literary merit, exposing students and adults to the joys of commedia de arte or the absurdities of Pirandello. I remember Jeannie Faircloth Green, the superb math teacher, leaning over to me during an intermission and remarking that “after five minutes, you forget it’s a student production.”

Erica play

Ultimately, however, teachers earn their pay in the classroom. As our mentor Sue Chanson has said, an excellent English teacher can teach at any level. Throughout her career, Erica taught sixth graders, and seniors, and grades in between, introducing them to Pip and Estella via Dickens, touring the Lake District with Wordsworth and Coleridge, guiding well-to-do eighteen-year-olds through the impoverished, labyrinthian streets of Dostoyevsky’s St. Petersburg. She taught impressionable souls how language functions, how it can sing  — or screech — and how to manipulate words to convey melody or cacophony according to the writer’s purpose. Being able to string sweet sounds together to embody devotion is a valuable skill, but being able to rat-a-tat Anglo-Saxon plosives that spit like machine gun fire can also come in handy. Porter-Gaud’s reputation as a school that produces superb writers owes an enormous debt to Erica Lesesne, who had a hand in creating the English Department’s curriculum. And, oh, the hours she spent carefully assessing writing, circling misplaced modifiers, bracketing fragments, praising deft phraseology and clear thinking. Each student, handled with care. Taken seriously.

Erica Lesesne lived a good life and has left a legacy that will live on, not only in the memory of her devoted family —  Dan, Emma, and Daniel, their spouses, and their children —  but also in the memories of a generation of students who were so very lucky to have her as a teacher. For the sake of our own children, let’s hope the cliché  “they don’t make ‘em like that anymore” isn’t true.

Good night, sweet Erica.