Face It

I don't know about the rest of y'all, but my Facebook has become absolutely worthless, crammed with one extreme partisan post after another, one divisive hate mongering site after another, so much so that I've decided there's no point in even looking at the app anymore. It is one big invitation for people to hate on each other, and it is both depressing and exhausting to look at. I suppose some of these sites may be coming from foreign countries and paid trolls, but surely many of them are originating right here in the good old USA. Perhaps I have invited this trash through my own innocent interests. I am interested, for example, in politics, and I am interested in religion, and I'm even interested in a discussion of atheism versus religion, as long as there is some actual substance to it, and some civility. But perhaps I have unwittingly created a toxic algorithm that brings me all this poison. There is no exchange of ideas, no room for learning new things or discovering other meaningful points of view. No, it is all insults and curses and foul language, and most of all stupidity. I am endlessly astounded by the deplorably low level of intelligence displayed. Are Americans in general really this dumb, or is it just that Facebook particularly attracts the dumb among us? I don't know. It didn't used to be this way. But it is irredeemable garbage at this point and so I've decided to move my Facebook icon to an inferior screen on my phone with the other apps that I do not use and did not ask for. So goodbye for now, Facebook. I will check in once a month or so to see if anything has changed for the better.

A Holy Fool and his Followers

"Literature is a particular type of knowledge ... it is the perfection of imprecise forms." 

--The Books of Jacob, Olga Tokarczuk

I have finally finished this inventive and intellectually stimulating fictional documentary of the life and times of Jacob Frank, known to his followers simply as the Lord. The story ranges from Turkey to Germany and everywhere in between, most especially Poland, winding about like a mouse in a maze, meeting up with Muslims and Jews and Christians and Jewish converts to Christianity and stubbornly talmudic Jews as well as people pretending to be one or the other or the next for mere convenience sake. And then there is Frank himself and Frank's ever obedient followers. One might call it a cult and not be too far off. Frank, who started out Jewish, then became Muslim, and then converted, at least in name, to Christianity, was at base an anti-Talmudist, and ultimately, in many ways, pretty much anti everything, and yet he managed to manipulate the powers that were in force during the various periods of the 18th century, both religious and royal. Nor was he any stranger to the love of money. He was both a fool for God and just a plain fool. Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed this sprawling novel and will miss living between its covers.

Frankenshoulder

Back to the doctor yesterday. Bandage removed. Wound looks good (really cool, Frankenstein type scar). Doctor says that I cannot lie on my right side for 6 weeks, which is a bummer because that means I cannot do the back exercises that might help the pain from pre-existing disc disease because they would put too much pressure on the shoulder. Boy this world gets ya comin' and goin', don't it? One more visit scheduled in 2 weeks for a final post-operative x-ray. Two months before I can drive the motorbike again (if I am brave enough). I mean, Grab car is okay, but you kind of have to go just one place, and I am used to going here and there on the motorbike to get my various errands done. But the cost of going here and then there and then the other place using grab which soon become unmanageable. Ah well, such is life for the time being.

Allen Somebody

After coffee this morning at my favorite spot, I walk up to the nearest Kimia pharmacy. I have decided that methylprednisolone will assist in the healing of my shoulder. I also found last week after meeting the surgeon once again that the pain in my right mid back is from yet another broken bone. This one was not broken so badly as those in my multiply fractured shoulder, and yet it is causing much more pain than the shoulder. It is a stabbing pain, much worse when you get up or sit down, or certainly when you try to get out of bed in the morning. The doctor, last week, gave a pain medication that has proven completely ineffective. Pretty much the only way I can sleep at night is by taking Xanax. The main problem with the shoulder is frustration at the limited motion along with the need to sleep only on my left side. At night also there are shooting pains in the shoulder and twitching nerves in the arm. 

So from the Kimia pharmacy, I call for a Grab car. 16,000 rupiah going and 16, 000 coming back. Not bad. Together, the price of an evening coffee  somewhere, which I no longer enjoy, staying home instead. So that I break even as far as cost goes, for the two Grab trips are equal in price to one coffee at the beach.

On the way back home, the Grab driver plays country music on his stereo. Allen somebody, or somebody Allen. I don't know him, but he's pretty good. He's got the twang going, and it's hard not to sing along -- which the driver does. He is a mustached young man and has a deep, pleasant voice. He sings along about love gone wrong. What else can you do? 

The driver really likes this Allen somebody. He searches for another tune which he sends to the stereo from his phone. There is no tape, no disc, no radio dial. I guess this is the way they do it these days. I don't understand how it works. 

I'm thinking that I am pretty much cooked. I'm thinking that I'm about ready to clock out. Punch my card. 

What now? TV news that I can't bear to hear. Old movies that I have seen before. Books. Coffee. Medicine. Sleep. Half-hearted physical therapy. Maybe there's a cookie somewhere. Popcorn. The popcorn is always more entertaining than the entertainment.

Salvation

The Messiah is something more than a figure and a person - - it is something that flows in your blood, resides in your breath, it is the dearest and most precious human thought: that salvation exists. And that's why you have to cultivate it like the most delicate plant, blow on it, water it with tears, put it in the sun during the day, move it into a warm room in the night time. 

---------

My death, which until now has lurked somewhere in the distance, offstage, dressed up and made up, has now cast off its ball gown, and I see it before me and it's true form. I am not frightened, and my death brings me no pain. It only seems to me that the months and the years are now moving contrarywise. For how can an old person be permitted to go on, while the lives of the young are cut short? 

--The Books of Jacob, Olga Tokarczuk 

And thusly should we live. This I say of the first quote, and a beautifully expressed thought it is. Especially coming from a writer who is an atheist. That is my understanding anyway about Tokarczuk.

I get the second quote too. My death also has lurked somewhere in the distance, but at 72, going on 73, its carefree lurking days are definitely over. Relatively speaking, the time is upon me. It cannot be put off. It cannot be negotiated with. It is just there, having thrown off that old ball gown (🤭) and appeared in all its glory, naked as the day I was born, peering around corners, ducking behind trees, stepping on the heels of my shoes, knocking me off my freaking motorbike. Ah, still here are you? it says. Well, so am I. But, you know, even when you are near the end, it is still hard to take it quite seriously. It is still hard to grasp the meaning of finality. And that brings me back to the precious thought expressed in the first quote: that salvation exists. 

Original Sins

The cow and the horse tracks in the road were full of water, the rain having been enough to charge them, but not enough to wash them away. Across these minute pools the reflected stars flitted in a quick transit as she passed; she would not have known they were shining overhead if she had not seen them there - - the vastest things of the universe imaged in objects so mean.

     --Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy

Behold, when thy face is made bare, he that loved thee shall hate; 

Thy face shall be no more fair at the fall of thy fate. 

For thy life shall fall as a leaf and be shed as the rain; 

And the veil of thine head shall be grief, and the crown shall be pain. 

     --Atalanta in Calydon, Swinburne

Well, appearances may be deceiving (and usually are when it comes to the first phase of romantic love), and sin, like equality, when portioned out may fall in unjust measure, particularly when it comes to the male and the female of the species - - sin being more sinful and equality less equal where the woman is the object. These are the dynamics at play in Tess of D'Urbervilles. 

It is a rather slow novel, and often needlessly so, as Hardy by the time he wrote this later novel had become enamored with naturalism, a school of literature particularly popular in the late 19th and early 20th century and known for such literary midgets as Theodore Dreiser and Hamlin Garland. Gone with the wind, those two. Happily however Hardy does retain a special talent, so ingeniously conceived in his earlier works, for interweaving nature and setting with character and narrative, and thus keeps his head well above the shallower efforts of others. At the same time, it is my feeling that he loses focus in many passages of this novel, and rather than working a magic of clean strokes and swift sleight of hand, gets too often stuck in a quicksand of mere nature, impressive for its detail but tedious for its delay of the tale. The story has finally picked up pace at around page 200, but too late I think to rank with the other three Hardy novels I have recently spoken of here. 

Black Stars

... And then the last thought that comes to him before he finally drifts off is how hard it is for us to ever get away from ourselves.

The Books of Jacob, Olga Tokarczuk

When I was in grade school - - somewhere near the midpoint, I guess - - I found an old ledger book of some sort in my parents basement and in this I would record the nature of the day I had just spent, giving each day some sort of colored star, as I recall. A sunny yellow star meant that it had been a good day, and a black star meant a bad day. I recorded a goodly number of those black stars, feeling sorry for my fate as I did so. And yet there seemed some sort of consolation in those black stars, something somehow, in some strange way preferable or certainly more notable than the sunny yellow stars. As it seems to me now, I noted them darkly down on the page with a certain sort of tragic relish. 

I count these days of this past week as Black Star days. And it seems that I am little by little understanding that my life is over 🤭. Well, my life as I have known it anyway in these recent years in Bali. 

They say that in older people there is almost always an event that marks the beginning of the end, something from which they will never fully recover and must finally expire. Will this be it for me? I cannot know. But I despair at this point of recovering even the limited good health I had before this motorbike accident, this broken shoulder. I confine myself for the most part to the house - - not that I cannot go out, but because doing so seems just too painful and too much trouble. I cannot enjoy the simple daily things that I used to enjoy. Hell, it's too painful really even to get dressed. I am wrapped up uncomfortably in this arm sling just as if I were tied to a chair. 

The funny thing is that it is not even the shoulder that hurts so very much as it is a focused area in my right mid back. Is this from the shoulder injury, or is it the pre-existing herniated discs in my back, or is it a localized nesting of arthritis. Well, perhaps I will find out when I see the doctor on Saturday. 

Don't have an accident in Indonesia, I have always said, because here they do not give narcotic pain medications. They are against the law. 

But boy what I wouldn't give for some Vicodin just now!

how I learned to be a one-armed man

First off, I

had to crash my back in order to cause the proper injury. So, when I was on my way back home from town on Wednesday, I turned onto my little home straight and halfway down the street, I managed to somehow suddenly crash onto my right side, specifically squarely on my shoulder. It was the strangest thing, really, it was as if the bike was suddenly in violently yanked out from under me, as if by the hand of God himself. Or Satan. 

Anyway, the young men nearby who were working on building a house, rushed to my aid, helped me to my feet, and it was immediately clear to me that my shoulder was dislocated. At the very least. Later, at the doctor's office, I was to find that the shoulder was broken in three places. 

I was helped back to my house by the aforesaid workers and ultimately joined by a parade of neighbors as well, one of whom offered to drive me to the hospital. 

That seemed like a good idea. 

So off we went to the emergency department and finally saw a doctor. Got an x-ray. Got an echocardiogram. And so on. 

The shoulder was in need of an operation, I was told, but the surgeon decided that we would have to wait until Monday because I am on blood thinners for a previous stroke. 

Given the severe pain I was having by the time I got back home, waiting nearly 4 days for surgery seemed ridiculous. By this time, everyone knew of the incident and begin calling around to different hospitals. Finally, Louise suggested a hospital where she has a friend - - in fact, the chief administrator of the hospital. Viewing the X-ray online, the doctor at this hospital disagreed with waiting because of a blood thinner, considering the injury an emergent situation. 

So off again to the new hospital and another ER and more tests and IV lines and so on. 

In the meantime, Evelyn in Java had heard of the accident and immediately booked a ticket to fly here and stay with me in the hospital. 

Gosh, people here are kind and decent. It always amazes me. 

While we waited for Louise and Wayne to come pick me up in their car, a score of neighbors hung around with me on my patio, brought me food, cut up some fruit for me, discussed all the mechanics of the incident. 

By the way, I should mention that it was not God or the devil who pushed my bike over. As it turned out, there was a cable across the road, like an internet cable, and as I drove over it, it wound into the spokes of my wheel and yanked the bike out from under me. Talk about freak accidents. 

To make a long story short, I was checked into the hospital, Evelyn arrived, and the next thing I knew I was in surgery and under total anesthesia. Which was a relief. I kind of wish I could have stayed that way. 

Now, back home again since Saturday, I must wear a sling on my right arm at all times. And when sleeping, I must lie only on my left arm. I am to move the arm as a little as possible for the next two weeks. 

So this is where learning to be a one-armed man comes into play. And I can tell you, it is not easy. Especially when every movement you make sends a shrieking pain through your shoulder and back. 

How to put on clothing with one arm? Well, there are ways. You have to employ special and unusual maneuvers to pull on pants or put a shirt over your head, or put on your socks. The whole incident is giving me a new found sense of respect and amazement for one armed men.

Unfortunately, Evelyn has had to go back home, this being Sunday now, and so I am on my own. Well, the dogs are here, but they are really not much help. More of a hindrance really. It is up to me alone now to discover how one-armed men prepare meals, for example, or shower, or dry after showering, or wash the dishes, or do the laundry. And so on. 

To make things worse, my pre-existing condition with degenerative disc disease is made much worse than usual, as, naturally, the entire back has been traumatized then twisted about. 

One armed men are not happy campers, as far as I can tell so far. But they have to learn to live this way. There's no other option. 

Obviously, I won't be driving the motorbike for some time to come. One armed men do not drive motorbikes. And so the only way out of the house is to get a ride from Grabcar. So I have to pay if I want to go anywhere, and I have to pay to get back again. But at least I don't have to pay for the gas!

The Comet of 1759

The comet resembles a scythe aimed at humanity, a naked glistening blade that might slice off millions of heads at any moment, and not only the ones on the craned necks in Ivanie, but also city dwellers' heads, Lwow heads, Krakow heads--even royal heads. There is no doubt it is a sign of the end of the world, a harbinger of angels rolling up the whole show like a rug. The play is evidently over, armies of archangels already gathering on the horizon.

The Books of Jacob, Olga  Tokarczuk

Signs and wonders.

I have an old friend who used to keep me up to speed on the latest end times/rapture/end of the world news. This time, each time, it was a sure thing. The signs and the times and the pertinent scriptures and the calendar of Jewish feasts and who knows what else were all aligned.  The puzzle is solved. The end is not only near. Near has never been satisfactory. No, this time the end is here. 

And yet, it wasn't. 

A slight mistake had been made. A miscalculation. 

No worries. The next end is soon formulated and locked in. 

But I always wondered how the words of the Lord and the apostles got locked out. 

A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a sign, but none will be given it except for the sign of Jonah. 

...for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.

But of that day and hour, no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only.

And...well, and so on.

Signs in the heavens. Earthquakes in divers places. Wars and rumors of wars. People were as certain of the impending end in 1759 as they are now. And that adds up to a whole lot of predictions going wrong. 

Maybe the Lord is waiting for us to understand and implement the meaning of his first coming before he bothers to come again.

And folks, that might take a good long time. Or maybe forever. 

Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

Communing with the Living Dead

"I commune with the dead," says the priest, showing with his hand the books behind him, lying on the table. "I'm accustomed to their stories. Nothing surprises me. I can even honestly say that I prefer to listen to the dead than to the living." 

--The Books of Jacob, Olga Tokarczuk

So much of what comes to my mind these days, thoughts that in the past would have pressed me to speak, seems just too depressing and too pointless to merit the effort of utterance. I used to think it would mean something. I thought that if we all spoke out at once it would rattle the world to wakefulness. Instead, I am overwhelmed by the deaf and dull march into oblivion of the irretrievable days and months and years. Much of which we feared losing is lost, behind us now. I may as well listen to the dead than to the living. 

In reading Tokarczuk's prescient novel, one can hardly help but see a reflection in our own time of the mid 1600s, a time of chaos, division, violence, hatreds, poverty, greed, depravity, despair. Thus, the desperate hope of a savior. The arrival of a messiah then, a sudden rapture now. 

Even the most bizarre, most frightening thing can start to seem natural, familiar, when it becomes a part of the plan. 

All of the stories have already been told. Nothing surprises me anymore.

The Boy

Those of us who think God addresses us by means of external events are wrong, as naive as children. For he whispers directly into our innermost souls. 

------------

Cry, brother, cry. Your tears will cleanse the wound, and it will heal quickly.

--The Books of Jacob, Olga Tokarczuk

Early this morning, I saw myself out by the front gate, peeking around the corner, looking back at myself. 

I was sitting at the table, smoking a cigarette, looking at my phone, and at first it was just something quick, in the corner of my eye, a trick of light or mistaken motion.

But then I/he peeked again, and long enough this time to be definite, real--a head of wispy blonde hair, nearly white in the sun. What are we now - - 8 or 9 years old?

Hey boy, I said, Hello. 

We are thin, the both of us, yet he with the vigor and fitness of youth, I with the atrophy of age. But I was once the same as he, and he, poor soul, will be the same as I.

The boy steps more toward the center of the open gate now and waves at me. He continues to look, and I don't know what else to say, or why is looking, so I just smile. 

He dashes off then, and I am about to crawl off, sloth-like, into the house, but then he reappears, this time with his mother. 

Now she smiles, and says, He likes your motorbike.

And I and myself and he and his mother all smile. 

Well then, come in, I say. Take a good look. 

The boy checks with his mother for approval, and then slowly approaches the bike, and with reverence, as if it were an object of worship. The boy walks a full circle around the bike, this holy relic (or no, I am the relic, don't let me get confused), nodding shyly with admiration, reaching out with a hand but never quite touching. He is shy. I was shy too. I, this boy. 

And then he is gone, out into the world, and I wonder whether I will ever see myself again. I think that would be nice, but with things such as these we can never be certain.

Trash

So we're having a bit of a trash situation here in Bali these days. Or I should say these many days. Apparently the government has decided that there will be no more trash on the island. Or no trash collection anyway. They say that there is nowhere to take the trash. 

Well that's a bit of a kerfuffle, isn't it? 

So here is this mountain of trash just in front of my house. Gunung sampah, in the language. It is growing with each day and more putrid with each day, and with each night the dogs drag various portions of it into the street and into my driveway. 

It seems also bound to attract various creatures such as rats and snakes and cockroaches and God knows what else. Alligators? 

This morning when I came home from having coffee I opened the door and found a rather large snake in the middle of my floor. 

Of course as soon as I approached, the snake slithered under the nearest obstruction, attempting to hide himself. Otis the dog came in and immediately sensed the presence of this snake. He began to hunt it beneath one of my shoe racks. He flushed the snake out of that hiding place only to have it slither back behind my tall, heavy bookcase. I had to wrestle this thing out from the wall so that Otis could get behind it. The snake then made his way around the dog and back to the shoe rack, as Otis decided he was not about to be careless around the thing. Pretty smart dog, as it turns out that the snake is of a poisonous type. This I learned after sending a picture of the snake to the neighborhood group. It is a picung snake. It can spray a fluid at its enemies which causes blood clotting and poisoning.

Anyway, by continually moving things and using a broom to direct its movements, along with Otis's rearguard attacks on its tail, we managed to get it outside onto the front patio, which is where the photo above was taken. Oma (Gramma) from down the street was alarmed by the barking of the dogs, Otis having now been joined by Jagger, and came up to help with her own broom and a metal dustpan. 

The snake is no more. RIP. 

But what of his brothers still out there? 

Oma advices that I keep my door closed. But that's something I plan to be doing anyway, not so much to prohibit the snakes, which may or may not come, but to block out the stench as far as possible. 

Not a very good advertisement for Paradise island, is it.

Sparks

That night I saw the world in a completely different way than I had ever seen it before, illuminated by a pale gray sun, small, miserable, and crippled. Darkness was emerging out of every nook and cranny. Wars and plagues were raging the whole world over, Rivers overflowing their banks as the earth quaked. Each and every human seemed like such a brittle being, like the merest eyelash or speck of pollen. I understood then that human life is made of suffering, that suffering is the true substance of the world. Every single thing was screaming in pain. 

--------

"Don't be fooled by all that gilding. Scratch it with your fingernail, and you will see what's underneath," said Reb Mordke, and he dragged me into filthy courtyards, where he began to show me a completely different world. Ulcerous, ill women begging outside the bazaar, male prostitutes dressed as women, ruined by hashish and sick and poor, crumbling mud huts on the city's edges, packs of mangy dogs scrounging through the trash, in between the bodies of their companions, starved to death. It was a world of unthinkable cruelty and evil, in which everything raced towards its own destruction, toward death and decay.

--The Books of Jacob, Olga Tokarczuk

Pretty bleak stuff, right. Ah, but now I remember, or I begin to remember. Jacob Frank, acolyte of Sabbatai Zevi before him, a 17th century Jewish Messiah figure ultimately captured by Muslims and given the choice of death or conversion to Islam. Zevi chose conversion (so much for his term as Messiah). Frank, like Zevi, believed that only descent into the realms of utter degradation could ultimately save those trapped therein (the trapped 'sparks'), lead them back out again, and thereby bring about the Tikkun, the repair, the restoration of the world. Or some such nonsense. 

The strange thing about all of these strange philosophies is that the deeper you go, the more confused you become. It's like falling into one wormhole after another. Maybe. I've never actually fallen into a wormhole, but I imagine it might be something like this. My son, Holden, seemed to have things more or less straight in his own mind, but then again his mind was not so much straight as it was labyrinthine. For me, the gospel was always both a simpler and a more elegant path to follow. 

Nonetheless, it seemed good entertainment at the time, and an avenue by which I might keep a handle on my son's journey, to somehow know something about what was going on, just trying to keep my head above water, and hoping that he could too, or at least that I might be there to rescue him when his arms grew weary.

 

Mostly Concerning Literary Matters.

Walking along the lane at dusk the stranger was struck by two or three peculiar features therein. One was an intermittent rumbling from the back premises of the inn halfway up; this meant a skittle alley. Another was the extensive prevalence of whistling in the various domiciles - - a piped note of some kind coming from nearly every open door. Another was the frequency of white aprons over dingy gowns among the women around the doorways. A white apron is a suspicious vesture in situations where spotlessness is difficult; moreover, the industry and cleanliness which the white apron expressed were belied by the postures and gaits of the women who wore it - - their knuckles being mostly on their hips (an attitude which lent them the aspect of two-handled mugs), and their shoulders against door posts; while there was a curious alacrity in the turn of each honest woman's head upon her neck and in the twirl of her honest eyes, at any noise resembling a masculine football along the lane.

Here's a nice little piece of artful insinuation from Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge, which might be generally described as a novel of betrayal and revenge, blind anger and painful regret. It is in my mind somewhat inferior to Far from the Madding Crowd and Jude the Obscure as it seems uncharacteristically melodramatic, as far as my estimation of Hardy's work has developed (this being my third Hardy novel). It reminds me a bit of Hawthorne's novels, though minus the fantastical/supernatural elements. That's not to cast any aspersions on Hawthorne, who for me is unequaled in his specific genre. 

In the meantime, I have begun my reading of a ponderous 900 page tome by Olga Tokarczuk and entitled The Books of Jacob. I happened to hear about this novel in some way, I have forgotten how, and the subject drew me strongly because it reminded me of my son's passing obsession with a Messianic figure by the name of Sabbatai Zevi--a 17th century Rabbi and Kabbalist who briefly led people as a sort of Messiah. I don't remember the details now with any clarity of Zevi's philosophies and adventures, but I do remember having many a long discussion with Holden, or rather sitting for many a long lecture on the rabbi's views. Tokarczuk's novel follows a similar historical figure from the 18th century, and I just wanted to kind of reacquaint myself with something that used to engage me with my son. But I have only gotten to about page 100 thus far and so I cannot say much about the novel. I'm actually surprised that I was able to find it at all. I could have found it of course if I still had a functioning Kindle reader, but I don't. Or rather, the reader functions but I have no US visa to connect it with. However, I thought one fine day that I would just take a look on the internet marketplace here in Indonesia, called Shopee, and lo and behold there it was. So this must be a providential sign, as Holden surely would have thought. If only I had him here still to interpret for me. 

In matters not touching on the literature, I was surprised to hear today from my stepdaughter, Jamila, whom I have not seen for some 16 years and more. She is traveling here to Yogyakarta and then to Bali, and I am very much looking forward to seeing her again, as I have very much missed her during this long period of time.

Blue Shoes

Henchard gave Elizabeth Jane a box of delicately tinted gloves one spring day. She wanted to wear them to show her appreciation of his kindness, but she had no bonnet that would harmonize. As an artistic indulgence she thought she would have such a bonnet. When she had a bonnet that would go with the gloves she had no dress that would go with the bonnet. It was now absolutely necessary to finish; she ordered the requisite article, and found that she had no sunshade to go with the dress. In for a penny in for a pound; she bought the sun shade, and the whole structure was at last complete. 

The Mayor of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy 

 

Just a humorous bit from this novel, which, 1/3 the way through, has offered a a quiet handful of such tongue in cheek incidents. And I can identify. Any of you other husbands or ex-husbands out there with me? 

The dress doesn't fit right. I have no blouse to go with this skirt. I have no skirt to go with this blouse. Oh my God, I have no shoes! No shoes at all! 🤭

I can vividly remember my ex-wife standing outside her closet, staring at the two shoe racks therein, and exclaiming that she had no shoes.

"No shoes? But my dear, what are these?" 

"Blue!" she said. "I need blue shoes! I can't wear this dress without blue shoes!" 

It occurred to me at the time that I did have a pair of blue shoes that I might offer, but on second thought I decided against mentioning the idea.

A Last Word Followed by a First Word

The landlord of the lodging, who had heard that they were a queer couple, had doubted if they were married at all, especially as he had seen Arabella kiss Jude one evening when she had taken a little cordial; and he was about to give them notice to quit, till by chance overhearing her one night haranguing Jude in rattling terms, and ultimately flinging a shoe at his head, he recognized the note of genuine wedlock; and concluding that they must be respectable, said no more. 

Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy 

One suspects, if he has read enough of Hardy, that the author was less than enthusiastic about the joys of marriage. And that is an understatement. The quote above in any case represents a very rare bit of humor in this otherwise breathlessly tragic tale. 

Throughout the novel, Hardy's theme has been one of true, simple love juxtaposed against properly adjudicated unions bearing the stamp of religious and societal approval. The killing influence of the letter in opposition to the natural outpouring of the heart. As the novel was written near the close of the 19th century, you can probably guess which power prevailed--although, in truth, a dynamic is set wherein all things fail. 

So I leave Jude now to his grave and his great love for Sue to her passionless marriage and move on to the Mayor of Casterbridge, by the same author, where we find this very early on indeed: 

That the man and woman were husband and wife, and the parents of the girl in arms there could be little doubt. No other than such relationship would have accounted for the atmosphere of stale familiarity which the trio carried along with them like a nimbus as they moved down the road.

Lol. So here we go again with stale marriages. The man seems to have carried the issue from book to book like Marley from place to place with his ponderous chains.

Jude the Acherontic

Is a woman a thinking unit at all, or a fraction always wanting its integer? 🤭

Remember that the best and greatest among mankind are those who do themselves no worldly good. 

Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy 

Learned a new word today. Rhadamanthine. To show stern and inflexible judgment. 

And another. Acherontic. An adjective describing something as dark, dismal, gloomy, or Infernal, often evoking a sense of death or the underworld. It is derived from the Greek mythological river Acheron and signifies a profound, hopeless sorrow or a pitch black atmosphere. 

And there you have the whole atmospheric canvas of Jude the Obscure; for, my goodness, this novel is grim and gloomy indeed, and rather shockingly so, in my mind anyway, for a novel published in 1894. 

And it is all rather wonderfully, astoundingly done. 

I wonder if anyone has ever counted the occurrences of the word obscure or its various forms through the pages of the novel. Surely someone has, I think. And then there are the many synonyms as well. Hardy has planted these throughout the text, and quite artfully so, I thought; gradually, though ceaselessly, adding darkness and dimness and gloom and fog and storm in ever heavier shades.

Only 50 pages or so remaining now. What else could go wrong? Much, I suspect, if the preceding 300 are any clue.

Tragic Comedy

'But it seems such a terribly tragic thing to bring beings into the world--so presumptuous--that I question my right to do it sometimes!'

--Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy 

My girlfriend has often expressed the same general thought--that the world now is such a terrible, tragic place that it calls into question whether she should have ever agreed to bear children. Why has God made such a world, she wonders, wherein tragedy and disaster thrive? 

Well, if it is any comfort, we can see from the Hardy quote that the world now is not any worse than the world of the mid 19th century; and one may safely assume that it never has been much good. Especially if one is acquainted with history and literature. So if misery loves company, this has been a long, long affair.

By extension then, we can appreciate the soundness of scripture when it says: God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Always terribly tragic, I guess 😉😅

Of course the key to the issue, theologically anyway, is that the good world that God created ended with original sin and the fall from grace. Since that time, it has been pretty much of a dumpster fire. Our eyes and our minds are therefore rightly set upon things above, things beyond, even as we struggle through things as they are. 

She doesn't believe that last part. She wants God to fix things now. This crappy world was his fault to begin with, she figures, and he should have done it right in the first place, or not at all! 😅

obscurity

All laughing comes from misapprehension. Rightly looked at there is no laughable thing under the sun. 

'Well, now we have met, come along,' she returned, ready to quarrel with the sun for shining on her. And they left the tent together, this pot-bellied man and florid woman, in the antipathetic, recriminatory mood of the average husband and wife of Christiandom. 

Just a couple of sober jewels from the relentlessly somber novel, Jude the Obscure. A careful menace of fate hangs over every chapter, and when the sun breaks through it is fragile, momentary, a passing illusion of a life that might be but never will be. A darkness of ill-advised passions lingers always in the background, just beyond the illusory parting of the clouds. 

I'm loving it! 😅

I am also back now from Lovina, the land of dreadful humidity, and having spent a few additional lovely, breezy, sunshiny south Bali days with Evelyn, I am now on my own again and having to readjust to her absence. 

There seems a sort of sad harmony with Jude the Obscure--a synchronicity that so often happens in the intersection of literature and life. My own thoughts pop up in the novel, and the novel pops up in the fabric of my life, and there is no laughable thing under the sun. I am plucked out of time and plunked down in the midst of paradise lost. Paradise, yes; but lost already. 

But ah well, I am content as long as contentment shines. To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.

More from Lovina

Aching in Lovina

Spending a few days in Lovina, North Bali, now and generally suffering from the high humidity. I wondered if humidity has a bad effect on arthritis, and so I looked it up, finding on Google that: 

High humidity often has a bad effect on arthritis, frequently increasing joint pain, stiffness, and swelling. Rising humidity can cause bodily tissues to expand and fluids in the joints to thicken, resulting in greater discomfort and flares.

Jeeze. 

Felt like I was being run over by a train all night long, slept very little, and was unable to join Evelyn and other guests for an early morning dolphin watching excursion. 

Oh well, I can see it on their videos 😉

Just coming from south Bali to North Bali entails a trying trip on two lane roads which wind up the mountains and then wind back down again in a constant corkscrewing through hairpin turns. Happily, I don't have a driver's license anymore and have not driven a car in some 10 years, so Evelyn drove and was bailed out at the halfway mark by her daughter Michelle. 

Lovina is much, much less developed than the southern tourist areas and therefore much less crowded, which would be nice if the stifling humidity could be removed from the experience. As it is, I will be glad to be headed back to Sanur.

The Writing on the Wall

Learned a new word today. 

Dermatographia. 

This I learned in the course of searching Google for the cause of instant red streaks on my skin whenever I have an itch somewhere. I mean that after scratching that itch, though not vigorously or anything like that, these bright red lines appear, sometimes with little darker spots along the way, like a modern art painting on a pink canvas. 

The common, non-technical, more descriptive term for dermatographia is "skin writing" . 

My goodness, how appropriate. I've always wanted to be a writer, and now it's as easy as scratching an itch. 

Unfortunately, skin writing presents in some kind of a mysterious code or ancient language. I don't know what it says. 

Yet. 

It is the writing on the wall, and I am the wall.

Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.

The sounds of silence. 

I am a rock, I am an island.

These scarlet lines and doodles appear almost instantly upon scratching an itch and then disappear within minutes. It's like writing a novel without any knowledge of the story you're telling, for it disappears almost as quickly as its composed. 

In the Book of Daniel, chapter 5, we learn that ...

Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall, near the lampstand in the royal palace. The king watched the hand as it wrote. His face turned pale and he was so frightened that his legs became weak and his knees were knocking.

Well, the hand is mine, and my legs are always weak and my knees always knocking, so scripture doesn't seem to help very much in this instance. 

It appears that the book of the scarlet scratches must remain locked for the time being, lacking, as I do, a wise man to interpret the writings. I  do know a dog who is pretty smart, but of course he does not speak English, or any other human language.

But a rock feels no pain, and an island never cries, nor do these scratches hurt or weep,

and therefore am I content to search the mystery whenever I have an itch to do so.

Jude the Obscure (thus far)

The schoolmaster was leaving the village, and everybody seemed sorry. 

--Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy 

We writers, even we washed up ones, have a thing about first lines. 

Such as this: 

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

And this: 

None of them knew the color of the sky. 

And this one: 

Call me Ishmael. 

I like that quoted above as well, from Jude the Obscure. 

Why? you ask. It's quite simple. It's hardly earth-shaking. 

Well, because it's music. And it echoes throughout the terrain of the narrative. It is the first stitch and all the rest of the garment spreads out from there. 

Why make a point of calling you Ishmael? What's in a name? 

Much.

Why did none of them know the color of the sky? 

Why were people sorry to see the schoolmaster go? 

Anyway, I'm about a third of the way into Jude the Obscure now, inspired by my recent reading of Far from the Madding Crowd to read more of Thomas Hardy. I actually read Jude some years ago (well, many years ago) but I remember very little about the story (which is not surprising, given the decaying quality of my mind). 

Jude is a much different novel from Far from the Madding Crowd, having in common only locale, that region of Wessex preferred in most of the Hardy novels. But other than that, the tone here is heavy and lacking the mischievous humor of Far from the Madding Crowd, although it does pick up a thread (there's that stitch again!) from the former--call it love and disaster😉 That's pretty clear from the quote from the Book of Esdras that Hardy places on the front page of the novel: 

Yea, many there be that have run out of their wits for women, and become servants for their sakes. Many also have perished, have erred, and sinned, for women .... O ye men, how can it be but women should be strong, seeing they do this?

What! Misogyny again? 

Well blame it on Esdras. Or on the original trespass. It is in any case a thread that has been often sewn.

A Final Word

"A good wife is good, but the best wife is not so good as no wife at all. Now that's my outspoke mind, and I've been called a long-headed feller here and there." 

--Far from the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy

Well that's one way a lookin' at it--and not without cause, some might say. I myself have had seven years now (or is it eight?) of lonely peace, even despite deteriorating health. In fact, it has been all-in-all a peaceful kind of deterioration 😅 Ah but one misses a woman eventually and the chaos and ruin she can exert upon one's comfort. And a cozy companion with whom to sit by the hearth when the struggle of the day is done. 

A Feth in the Damily.

My laptop died for good and all today, God rest it's weary soul. It has been ailing for some time now and has finally kicked the bucket. RIP. So it's just me and my phone now, on which I can peck away with one or the other of my index fingers. I never learned to type away with my two thumbs as I see many people doing these days. It's just beyond me. As President Obama recently said, we all age out at a certain point. The problem is not a case of having two thumbs but of being all thumbs. And in any case, my fingers are always pecking at the wrong letters on the miniature keypad, so I generally just voice type anyway. That does require some proofreading, but it's still faster than my fingers. 

I went to see my neurologist yesterday, just for my usual 6-month appointment, which itself is pretty much only to renew prescriptions. But I enjoy seeing him, and he speaks English quite well, which is certainly a bonus, because the more Indonesian I learn, the less I am able to speak it. Curious that. 

But that is something I talked to him about, in addition to the usual rousing subjects of degenerative joint disease and arthritis and MS and stroke. And old age. 

On the latter line, I mentioned to him my increasing trouble with word searching and with often getting words backwards, not to mention a general haze of forgetfulness and cognitive blunders. But I get words in the wrong order, you know, or mixed together. Like, for instance, Lord help us may become Mord Lelpus. Stuff like that. We discussed the fact that my mother had died of Alzheimer's disease, and he said that yes this was a concern and we should keep an eye on whether current problems progress. 

Progression. That's one thing I'm good at in my old age. In particular, progressive diseases. Nonetheless, unlike my laptop, I live.

Obsession

Perhaps in no minor point does woman astonish her helpmate more than in the strange power she possesses of believing cajoleries that she knows to be false--except indeed in that of being utterly skeptical on strictures that she knows to be true. 

Gabriel was greatly depressed. This debauch boded ill for that willful and fascinating mistress who the faithful man even now felt within him as the embodiment of all that was sweet and bright and hopeless.

Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd

It occurs to me that literary critics, bless their souls, might see something of the misogynist in Thomas Hardy, but I try to avoid such buttonholing in my old age. (Actually, I don't even need to try). Literary critics are, as someone or other said (I'm sure), angry people who cannot themselves write and therefore have their revenge in tearing down people who can. Despite all attempts at deconstruction, what rings true simply rings true. We have our experience in life and the talented author, having the same experience, wields his genius in forming and focusing and then giving back to the reader what he already knew but could not quite put into words--of the foibles and fantasies and catastrophic weaknesses of both male and female in their distinct and separate character. 

Every man has suffered the frustration described in the first quote--what might be loosely called the fickleness of the woman. But it is not fickleness--that is far too shallow. There is a deep archetypal unwise urging in the pit of the soul that presses her on. It is an obedience to the thrust of passion.

It is interesting, and it is something that very often happens, that what one is reading will be mirrored in some secondary source--something else that he is reading at the same time, for instance, or some movie or series that he has tuned into, or something that has happened in his life or the life of someone close to him. I happen to watch while reading this novel a TV series called The Museum of Innocence, from the novel by Orhan Pamuk, a story, like that told in Far from the Madding Crowd, of passionate obsession, idolization. And this brings me in turn to the guy who delivers water to my fiancé's house and who is apparently obsessively attracted to her. This began one day when she was kind to him and spoke to him for a time as he delivered water to her house. He then began texting her and sending videos of himself (though nothing inappropriate). Next, he began following her on his bicycle as she rode home from work on her own. Not speaking to her but just following slightly behind. In time, she asked him to stop doing this, which he did, replacing this with just happening to pop up in the background wherever she went. The point is that these obsessions, in the novel, in the series, in everyday life, are self-contained, self-nourished, self-sustained, having finally little to do with the actual character and soul of the object, the idol. 

The second quote reminds me of Gatsby, that glowing green light at the end of the dock across the bay, somehow symbolizing his love of Daisy Buchanan with the exception that the 'embodiment' is sweet and bright and full of hope--was hope itself. Gatsby loved and adored with confident hope, whereas Hardy's Gabriel Oak loves without hope. 

Hardy, it strikes me, looks forward in literature to Fitzgerald and anticipates also Crane and Steinbeck and even Faulkner in comedic tone. Reading his work has been the purest pleasure and perhaps will become something of an obsession my own! 

Young Arrogants

"A strange old piece, ye say!" interposed the maltster in a querulous voice. "At the same time ye be no old man worth naming--no old man at all. Yer teeth bain't half gone yet, and what's a old man if so be his teeth bain't gone? Weren't I stale in wedlock afore ye were out of arms? 'Tis a poor thing to be sixty when there's people far past fourscore--a boast weak as water." 

--Far from the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy 

Well there you have it. Such is my feeling about every young know-it-all who presumes to tell me what's what about American life and politics, old age having rendered me unable to think clearly, I suppose. Fie! Away with ye, and a plague upon your house! Lol. One is never too old to understand. One can only be too young to understand.

Two Kinds of Magnificence

 The maltster's lack of teeth appeared not to sensibly diminish his powers as a mill: he had been without them for so many years that toothlessness was felt less to be a defect than hard gums an acquisition.

--Far from the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy

Well, I get that. The lack of teeth--or such as mine once were--is not so much a matter of regret than relief. Oh sure, there is the bother of having to apply Polident several times a day, if you care to eat several times a day, but this seems more than a fair exchange for having to brush several times a day, or floss (thankfully not even an option with dentures), or submit to the dentist's drill, or suffer through a root canal procedure. 

And speaking of root canals, I have during the past couple of months suffered through the literary version of the procedure known as The Brothers Karamazov. 

I know this is blasphemy, folks, for which many would see me roasted in eternal fire kindled by the thousand pages of this interminable novel. But there you have it. It is a boring, ceaselessly talky, endlessly tedious monstrosity--not so much novel as philosophical treatise. 

Freud called it The most magnificent novel ever written. Sounds like a blurb on a book cover. Oh wait, it is the blurb on the book cover. Well, you can have it, Siggy. 

I'm glad, or rather relieved to have finished it, so that I too can now say Ah, magnificent, but all in all, I'd rather have hard gums. 

So, I have moved on now to Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd. I'm about a hundred pages in and fully in love with this novel, astounded by the artfulness on every page, the careful juxtaposition of the character of nature and the nature of character, the odd cadence of the language that demands strict attention and often sends one backward in order to fully digest what one has just read. I can't believe I am discovering this novel for the first time, but I am aware at the same time that maybe I would not have been able to genuinely discover it before now. It is a book whose time has come. That's how I think of it anyway.

An Epistle from Home

I'm not mad at you. 

Do you need help? 

These are phrases commonly used by domestic terrorists. Or so our government would like us to believe. I'm not mad at you. Do you need help? 

My stepson is mixed, Caucasian / Indonesian. He was born in America, came here to Indonesia with his mother and me when he was about 10, and then some years later returned to the US to finish out high school and enter college. He lives there in Arizona, works at a bank, lives with his father, who is also mixed Caucasian and Indonesian. 

He sent me a message today on Instant Messenger. Said he misses me. Talked about some old memories from his childhood, times and events that I myself have no recollection of. It's funny the things that little children store away in the memory. Things of little matter that somehow do matter.

I said that I hoped that all is okay with him back there in the States.

Not to worry you, he wrote, but you already know that things are less than stellar. What's worse, between you and me, is that my dad is on team red. I always knew he was the way he is, but he is actively rooting for ICE now. 

A lot of my friends are Mexican and I'm worried for them, but he can't get it through his head that my friends might be in danger because of their race.

He simply lacks empathy. 

I'm worried too. I'm worried for my son. In a strange way, it seems like he has never quite understood that he is not white. Yes, his entire reference is America, he dresses like a young American, he thinks like a young American, his culture is fully America, not Indonesia. But he is not white. He could just as well be targeted as his Mexican friends. Yes, he is an American citizen, but so are his friends most likely, or at least legal residents. But we have seen that this does not matter to ICE.

If one of his friends were in trouble, and he came to their aid, what might he say to the assailants? I'm not mad at you? 

What might he ask his friend, other than Do you need help? 

And what might be the penalty for those simple words?

This is the reason you are my favorite parent, he concluded in his note today. 

And he, regardless of parentage, regardless of race, regardless of anything under the sun, is my beloved son. 

Look what they've done. 

Look what they've done. 

Look What They Done to My Country

Look what they done to my song, ma 

Look what they done to my song 

    --Melanie, 1970

"What have you done!", the woman shrieked as she ran across the icy Minneapolis street. "What the fuck have you done!" 

The SUV had already stopped moving, crunching up against a parked car. One bullet had crashed through the front windshield, two others were fired through the open driver side window at point blank range. 

By the time the the horrified woman reached the car, the ICE agent was already walking away, ignoring her screams. On the videos captured, his face appears to show no appreciation of having just taken a human life. 

It's just another day. 

Except for this woman's 6-year-old child. Except for her family members and friends. 

She was well-loved, the background stories tell us. She was unusually kind. She was involved in the community.

A physician on the scene tried to help, but was blocked by ICE agents. The victim was dead before she reached the hospital. She was probably dead before the second and third bullets burst through her skull. Spilling out of the glove compartment in the car were some of her daughter's beloved stuffed animals. The driver's side airbag was splattered red with blood. 

She was a domestic terrorist, we are told by the authorities, out to use her car as a deadly weapon. 

This 37-year-old woman with a glove compartment full of stuffed animals.

Look what they done to my song, ma. 

Look what they done to my song.

Well they tied it up in a plastic bag 

Turned it upside down, ma. 

Look what they done to my song.

I have seen the videos, and I have heard all the increasingly desperate, obvious lies. I have seen and heard the cold-hearted and stunning utter lack of remorse. She was the killer, we are told, not the man with the gun. 

And I am filled with rage. I am filled with a white hot hatred of those who are telling their evil tales, and of those who are offering their heartless, ignorant, careless comments on social media. Their irresponsible, disingenuous, cowardly excuses. It was her own fault. She had it coming. Good riddance.

I wish I could find a good book to live in 

Wish I could find a good book 

Well if I could find a real good book 

I'd never have to come out and look at 

What they done to my song

Look what they've done to my country.

She had a name, by the way. 

Renee Nicole Good

Murdered January 7, 2026