but I shall stay the
way I am because I … I
do not give a damn
OBSERVATION
If I don’t drive around the park,
I’m pretty sure to make my mark.
If I’m in bed each night by ten,
I may get back my looks again,
If I abstain from fun and such,
I’ll probably amount to much,
But I shall stay the way I am,
Because I do not give a damn.
As printed in Enough Rope by Dorothy Parker
This material may be protected by copyright.
he made the Lord seem …
so real … after a long pause
he just said amen
Re-reading … well, listening to the audio book as I drive to work, the book Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Burns, I was again struck by the bit of dialogue between the hero, Will Tweedy (Yes, this is where I got Boy! Howdy!) and his Grandpa when Will has a near death experience after being run over (he lay low in the tracks) by a train.
Ms. Burn’s writes, picking up the story here where Will has told his Grandpa what happened – (The dialect is rural Georgia, to the east of Atlanta of the early 1900’s):
With the way he took it so casual, and the relief of getting it told, I felt like I’d been stuck back together. But one thing worried me. “Grandpa, you think I’m alive tonight cause it was God’s will?”
“Naw, you livin’ cause you had the good sense to fall down ‘twixt them tracks.”
“Maybe God gave me the idea.”
“You can believe thet, son, if’n you think it was God’s idea for you to be up on thet there trestle in the first place. What God give you was a brain. Hit’s His will for you to use it—p’tickler when a train’s comin’.”
Resting my chin in my hand, I thought about that while Grandpa finished up his pie. I felt awful tired. “Sir, do you think it was God’s will for Bluford Jackson to get lockjaw and die?”
Grandpa spoke kindly. “The Lord don’t make firecrackers, son. Hit’s jest too bad pore Blu didn’t be more careful when he was shootin’m off.”
“You don’t think God wills any of the things that happen to us?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows?”
“Mama and Papa think He does.”
Grandpa licked some meringue off his fork while he pondered.
Finally he said, “Life bullies us, son, but God don’t.
He had good reasons for fixin’ it where if’n you git too sick or too hurt to live, why, you can die, same as a sick chicken.
I’ve knowed a few really sick chickens to git well, and lots a-folks git well thet nobody ever thought to see out a-bed agin cept in a coffin.
Still and all, common sense tells you this much: everwhat makes a wheel run over a track will make it run over a boy if’n he’s in the way.
If’n you’d a-got kilt, it’d mean you jest didn’t move fast enough, like a rabbit that gits caught by a hound dog.
You think God favors the dog over the rabbit, son?”
I shook my head.
“I don’t neither. When it comes to prayin’, we got it all over the other animals, but we ain’t no different when it comes to livin’ and dyin’.
If’n you give God the credit when somebody don’t die, you go’n blame Him when they do die?
Call it His will? Ever noticed we git well all the time and don’t die but once’t?
Thet has to mean God always wants us to live if’n we can.
Hit ain’t never His will for us to die—cept in the big sense.
In the sense He was smart enough not to make life eternal on this here earth, with people and bees and elephants and dogs piled up in squirmin’ mounds like Loma’s dang cats tryin’ to keep warm in the wintertime.
Does all this make any sense, Will Tweedy?”
They’s a heap more to God’s will than death, disappointment, and like thet.
Hit’s God’s will for us to be good and do good, love one another, be forgivin’….”
He laughed. “I reckon I ain’t very forgivin’, son.
I can forgive a fool, but I ain’t inner-rested in coddlin’ hypocrites.
Well anyhow, folks who think God’s will jest has to do with sufferin’ and dyin’, they done missed the whole point.”
Grandpa had made the Lord seem so real, I wouldn’t of been surprised if he’d said good night to Him. But after a long pause he just said a-men.
Finally he said, “Life bullies us, son, but God don’t.
Well anyhow, folks who think God’s will jest has to do with sufferin’ and dyin’, they done missed the whole point.”
belongs to a church …
on certain Sundays enjoys
chanting Nicene creed
This is the Nicene Creed …
I believe in one God,
the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible.
I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Only Begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages.
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and became man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,
he suffered death and was buried,
and rose again on the third day
in accordance with the Scriptures.
He ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead
and his kingdom will have no end.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.
I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins
and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead
and the life of the world to come.
Amen.
This may be the key phrase …
He will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead
and his kingdom will have no end.
Onion Days in Chicago Poems by Carl Sandburg, (1916)
Mrs. Gabrielle Giovannitti comes along Peoria Street every morning at nine o’clock
With kindling wood piled on top of her head, her eyes looking straight ahead to find the way for her old feet.
Her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Pietro Giovannitti, whose husband was killed in a tunnel explosion through the negligence of a fellow-servant,
Works ten hours a day, sometimes twelve, picking onions for Jasper on the Bowmanville road.
She takes a street car at half-past five in the morning, Mrs. Pietro Giovannitti does,
And gets back from Jasper’s with cash for her day’s work, between nine and ten o’clock at night.
Last week she got eight cents a box, Mrs. Pietro Giovannitti, picking onions for Jasper,
But this week Jasper dropped the pay to six cents a box because so many women and girls were answering the ads in the Daily News.
Jasper belongs to an Episcopal church in Ravenswood and on certain Sundays
He enjoys chanting the Nicene creed with his daughters on each side of him joining their voices with his.
If the preacher repeats old sermons of a Sunday, Jasper’s mind wanders to his 700-acre farm and how he can make it produce more efficiently
And sometimes he speculates on whether he could word an ad in the Daily News so it would bring more women and girls out to his farm and reduce operating costs.
Mrs. Pietro Giovannitti is far from desperate about life; her joy is in a child she knows will arrive to her in three months.
And now while these are the pictures for today there are other pictures of the Giovannitti people I could give you for to-morrow,
And how some of them go to the county agent on winter mornings with their baskets for beans and cornmeal and molasses.
I listen to fellows saying here’s good stuff for a novel or it might be worked up into a good play.
I say there’s no dramatist living can put old Mrs. Gabrielle Giovannitti into a play with that kindling wood piled on top of her head coming along Peoria Street nine o’clock in the morning.
I repeat, this is the key phrase …
He will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead
and his kingdom will have no end.
The Jasper’s of this world can hear if they want to.
despairing, hopeless
inevitability
deliciously so
Looking up the word hopeless in the Online Oxford Dictionary, it said:
1 Feeling or causing despair about something:
Jessica looked at him in mute hopeless appeal his situation was obviously hopeless.
Or …
That delicious uncertainty has been replaced by despairing, hopeless inevitability.
2 Mainly British English Inadequate; incompetent:
When will governments learn they are hopeless at running businesses?
I really liked those examples.
think God’s on your side
John Calvin’s under floorboards
during board meetings
He told me that I should note in my reading of journals, monographs, and texts how all the great predators were theocratic …
that if you were going to rape the land and people, whether it was the original Indians or the working class that followed …
it was important to think that God was thoroughly on your side.
“John Calvin is always under the floorboards during America s board meetings.
From True North by Jim Harrison (New York, Grove Press, 2004).
Probably quote from Mr. Harrison a lot more than I should and I admit it isn’t without some misgivings.
The passage I quote today, I feel it explains much of what makes the Evangelical Church of Trump work.
There is a lot of my West Michigan background in the background of Mr. Harrison, though his foreground can take in a lot of life I did not experience.
And I wonder, do other people get it?
Take the John Calvin reference.
I am sure that most folks might know who Mr. Calvin was, but in West Michigan, where I grew up, John Calvin wasn’t under the table, he had a seat at the table.
The local college was named, Calvin College.
My wife went to a grade school operated by the Christian Reformed Church name Calvin Christian.
Most folks I knew had copies of The Institutes of John Calvin on a shelf in their home.
But I was raised Baptist.
Mr. Calvin was there in our theology with his TULIP acronym*, but we also told the joke that Calvinism was the fear that someone, somewhere, was having a good time.
BUT I DIGRESS.
I make no apology for Mr. Harrison’s content.
It is what it is.
But his use of language and narration and view of life, lives and lifestyle is powerful.
I remember back in the day when I worked in a bookstore and this one customer, who by his dress and manner and overall appearance was probably from what we called, ‘Up North’ which took in the part of the State of Michigan that was north of Kent Country up to and including the Upper Peninsula of the state.
Boy Howdy, maybe just north of the Grand River all the way to Lake Superior.
Nothing wrong with guy understand, but going north, you entered a different world that often times might have been more comfortable had it been about 1952.
Close to the same feeling I get when I drive across the back country of the State of South Carolina.
This feller as I remember him would not have stood had he been in the band, ZZ Top, including the long beard and dark sunglasses.
He was buying a copy of Garrison Keillor’s latest book, though I can’t remember which one.
I chit chatted with him, told him I hoped he enjoyed the book as I read all the Keillor stuff and enjoyed it all myself.
He stopped and looked at me for a second.
“I am getting it for my nephew”, he said, “he needs to read about life.”
Well says I, you should get something by Jim Harrison.
He stopped and looked at me for a second, looked away then back at me and said, “No, no way, this kid is not ready for Harrison …”
He looked off again, then said:
“Someday …”
And he caught my eye, nodded, a nod with a lot of understanding and kinship in it, and walked out.
*The acronym TULIP is used to represent the five core doctrines of Calvinism:
Total depravity,
Unconditional election,
Limited atonement,
Irresistible grace, and
Perseverance of the saints.
No Haiku For You 