1.17.2021 – dinner with Jesus

dinner with Jesus
casual conversation
rang bells in my soul

We had Jesus over for dinner last night.

No, not THE Jesus but Jesús.

Jesús is 21 years old and lives with his Mom and Step-Dad in the apartment across the hall.

His name brings to mind how to tease my Dad, my brother Pete would say that EYE-VAN DE JESUS was the shortsop for the Chicago Cubs instead of EVONNE de HEY SUESS.

His name WAS spelled Iván De Jesús but I digress.

Jesús has his own at-your-home car detailing business and was working on a car in the parking lot while I was changing a tire.

I had neglected to put the parking break on so when the car slipped off the jack and crashed to the pavement, Jesús came over to say, “That’s not good.”

We got the car back on the jack and we changed the tire and I asked if he had plans for supper?

When he said no I invited him over to share our Saturday night hotdogs, crab cakes (welcome to the low country) and fries and he was happy to accept.

Jesús and his family were living here when we moved and have always been friendly as well as intriguing.

They had told us that they were from Venezula and that they had been in the United States for about 2 years.

But that was about all we knew.

Then by chance we were looking at the website for a local church and Jesús was listed as the church’s Spanish Pastor.

Like I said, intriguing.

Jesús came over and I set out the hot dogs, crab cakes and fries.

Ellington came and ate with us as well.

And we talked.

And we learned about Jesús.

We learned that Jesús and his mother where in the United States on refugee status.

Jesús and his mother could not leave the US as their passports had been canceled by the Government of Venezula.

Jesús was a little unsure of their future status in the United States in particular and their future in general but he refused to worry about it.

Jesús told how at one time Venezula had been one of the richest countries in South America.

Now it was one of the most corrupt and most poor.

People in Venezuela DO live in fear of the government.

My wife Leslie asked about social programs for feeding the poor or providing employment.

Jesús responded “They don’t care.”

He told how there were curfews in place and people were allowed out their homes from 7AM to Noon.

I asked if people were allowed to be out during the curfew to get to work.

Jesús said there is no work, there are few jobs.

Leslie asked how families without money or jobs and just a few hours to be out could get food and what was the government doing about it.

Jesús responded “They don’t care.”

Then Jesús said that he felt the people there were maybe more hopeful than the people he met in the United States.

Jesús said truly the people there have no hope for the future, let alone a better future.

Jesús said that the people there, the people he knew and grew up with, tried to make it through the each day.

Jesús said that the people there were happy in the fact that each day was one more day to be happy.

Jesús added that there the people there had none of the concerns or worries about getting the things that he felt most Americans were concerned with.

It was a simple understated, stating of the facts as Jesús saw them.

NOW please understand.

This was not an expert talking on CNN or a news program.

This was not someone writing an OP ED piece for the New York Times.

This was casual conversation over hot dogs and fries on a Saturday Night on a kitchen table in Bluffton, South Carolina.

Jesús was not trying to impress, shock or overwhelm us with pathos of his story.

Jesús was just talking.

Jesus told a simple tale in his slightly accented English that rang bells in my soul.

I felt a lot of emotions as I listened.

Mostly I felt ashamed.

To see the United States from someone else’s perspective.

To understand that people here do have an INCREDIBLE amount of freedom.

With that freedom comes a lot of responsibility.

And what do we do with this?

Squander the freedom.

Spurn the responsibility.

Sad.

Ashamed.

We hear a lot of the phrase, “This is NOT who we are.”

Sorry to disagree.

This is JUST who we are.

Living now in the low country of South Carolina, we had Jesús over for dinner last night.

Just one more impossible thing to add the list of what has happened to us here.

1.15.2021 – move us rapidly

move us rapidly
across an area might
as well not exist

I based this haiku and several others like it from the writing in the book, The Art of Travel (2002, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton, and the passage:

On entering a new space, our sensitivity is directed towards a number of elements, which we gradually reduce in line with the function we find for the space. Of the four thousand things there might be to see and reflect on in a street, we end up being actively aware of only a few: the number of humans in our path, perhaps, the amount of traffic and the likelihood of rain. A bus that we might at first have viewed aesthetically or mechanically—or even used as a springboard to thoughts about communities within cities—becomes simply a box to move us as rapidly as possible across an area that might as well not exist, so unconnected is it to our primary goal, outside of which all is darkness, all is invisible.

*Adapted from the book, The Art of Travel (2002, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton.According to the website, GOOD READS, Any Baedeker will tell us where we ought to travel, but only Alain de Botton will tell us how and why.

As I said in the section on Architecture , what I find irresistible in reading Mr. de Botton is his use of language.

To also quote myself, I get the feeling that if you made a spread sheet of all the words, adverbs and adjectives used by Mr. de Botton, you just might find that he used each word just once.

And to reemphasize, neat trick in writing a book.

If I knew how to do that, hey, I would.

1.14.2021 – But night upset this

But night upset this
claim to normality, now see
inside and wonder

Adapted from the book, The Art of Travel (2002, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton, and the passage:

I began word-painting.

Descriptive passages came most readily: the offices were tall; the top of one tower was like a pyramid; it had ruby-red lights on its side; the sky was not black but an orangey-yellow.

But because such a factual description seemed of little help to me in pinning down why I found the scene so impressive, I attempted to analyse its beauty in more psychological terms.

The power of the scene appeared to be located in the effect of the night and of the fog on the towers.

Night drew attention to facets of the offices that were submerged in the day.

Lit by the sun, the offices could seem normal, repelling questions as effectively as their windows repelled glances.

But night upset this claim to normality, it allowed one to see inside and wonder at how strange, frightening and admirable they were.

The offices embodied order and cooperation among thousands, and at the same time regimentation and tedium.

A bureaucratic vision of seriousness was undermined, or at least questioned, by the night.

One wondered in the darkness what the flipcharts and office terminals were for: not that they were redundant, just that they might be stranger and more dubitable than daylight had allowed us to think.

Adapted from the book, The Art of Travel (2002, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton.

According to the website, GOOD READS, Any Baedeker will tell us where we ought to travel, but only Alain de Botton will tell us how and why.

As I said in the section on Architecture , what I find irresistible in reading Mr. de Botton is his use of language.

I get the feeling that if you made a spread sheet of all the words, adverbs and adjectives used by Mr. de Botton, you just might find that he used each word just once.

Neat trick in writing a book.

If I knew how to do that, hey, I would.

1.13.2021 – back at the point of

back at the point of
making shoes for dead people
who no longer walk

For the first time I am quoting my own haiku.

Back when I had just stared posting haiku but not writing anything else I posted this haiku.

I always liked it so I repurposed it for today.

It comes from a line in the book, SHORT-TIMERS by Gustav Hasford.

The movie, Full Metal Jacket, is based on this book.

I watch the news and the faces change and the voices change but the story and words stay the same.

And nothing happens.

Guess I am just old fashioned or just old but I would have thought, regardless of why you were there or who told you to go there, rampaging through the United States Capital would get your butt hauled away in a paddy wagon.

Silly me but I thought the same thing about carrying a loaded machine gun into the State Capital Building in Lansing, Michigan would land you in jail at least over night.

I myself was once told by a Detroit Cop outside Joe Louis Arena that if I bought 3 Red Wing hockey tickets some feller was offering to me AT FACE VALUE (he had three friends who didn’t show up), I would spend the night in city lockup.

I had exams the next day so we didn’t buy the tickets.

Well at least not in front of that cop we didn’t.

We went around the corner of the Joe.

I am sure you want to ask what I was doing at a Red Wings game the night before exams,

See, my Dad always said that as far as the night before exams went, if you didn’t know by then, you’ll never know it.

So when my roommate proposed going into Detroit and catching a hockey game, it was an easy decision.

What was funny about the night seeing as how that cop wanted to stop this small effort at supply and demand was that the game was against the old Quebec Nordiques.

At the time they were famous for having the Šťastný Brothers.

Three brothers, Marián, Peter and Anton who had escaped from Czechoslovakia.

Three french Canadian guys from Windsor sat behind us and yelled, “You G**D*MN COMMUNIST B*STARDS,” at them through the entire game. (Sorry got complaints about cuss words)

I used the phrase later at a Michigan Basketball game.

At the time I had been at Michigan long enough that my student seats were in the 2nd row.

I yelled at the ref.

He heard me.

Stared right at me.

Then shook his head and went back to the game.

Thinking no doubt the things folks yell in Ann Arbor.

But the night in Detroit, I didn’t go to jail.

I did enjoy the game.

I think I passed the exam.

But I digress.

Seems like the punishment for breaking into the building would be a bigger personal risk than buying hockey tickets.

And I admit, I WANT to see them punished.

I watch the video and hope that this time the police will start using their riot sticks.

And I feel very frustrated that so little is happening.

That nothing seems to change with this story.

Lots of words.

Lots of calls for action.

Nothing happens.

When is it that this has all gone too far?

I AM JUST SO T I R E D of it all.

Making shoes for dead people
who no longer walk.

In my reading today, I came to these verses in the Bible.

From the Book of Psalms.

Psalms 74, verses 5 and 6.

They behaved like men wielding axes
to cut through a thicket of trees.
They smashed all the carved paneling
with their axes and hatchets.

The Psalmist closes with a call to God:

Do not ignore the clamor of your adversaries,
the uproar of your enemies, which rises continually.

Sorry to say though it was the first verse that saddened me the most.

O God, why have you rejected us forever?

Not that I feel God has rejected us.

Not that I feel God has rejected us forever.

But that I know why.

As Thomas Jefferson said and as I have quoted here often, “Indeed I tremble for my country when reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever.”

1.11.2021 – sustain a number

sustain a number
questions neither so simple
nor so trivial

Adapted from the book, The Architecture of Happiness (2009, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton, and the passage:

If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest—in all its ardour and paradoxes—than our travels. They express, however inarticulately, an understanding of what life might be about, outside of the constraints of work and of the struggle for survival. Yet rarely are they considered to present philosophical problems—that is, issues requiring thought beyond the practical. We are inundated with advice on whereto travel to, but we hear little of why and how we should go, even though the art of travel seems naturally to sustain a number of questions neither so simple nor so trivial, and whose study might in modest ways contribute to an understanding of what the Greek philosophers beautifully termed eudaimonia, or ‘human flourishing’.

Adapted from the book, The Art of Travel (2002, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton.

According to the website, GOOD READS, Any Baedeker will tell us where we ought to travel, but only Alain de Botton will tell us how and why.

As I said in the section on Architecture , what I find irresistible in reading Mr. de Botton is his use of language.

I get the feeling that if you made a spread sheet of all the words, adverbs and adjectives used by Mr. de Botton, you just might find that he used each word just once.

Neat trick in writing a book.

If I knew how to do that, hey, I would.