And now we come to the brunt of the anecdote. Something I have harbored within my bosom, smoldering; something spoken to no-one, lo for half a century and more. Even now I can scarcely bring myself to tell it -- even now, with grey hair framing a weathered visage, even now I blush to think upon it … It’s not that it was exactly shameful; it’s just… it was … just …well… all …. so…. : stooopid…. ; and so lame….
Ah well. Worse things shall be bared to the vision of every adjudicating angel, upon Judgment Day. Worse things -- far worse; but yet nothing, quite, so … embarrassing…
(Perhaps you are by now -- conditioned by a churlish media -- expecting something overtly gross. Nothing of the sort. The media flattens and demeans. For the true searing sense of mortification, and its paradoxical sources…. Look into your heart... look into your heart…..)
Well I… okay… one day… I ad-mit it!! I -- just : went :
up : to her, and,
without comment and without so much as a by-your-leave,
I,
…
… …
… handed her a dime.
(??) (!!???)
(Did that register? Do you grasp the full pathos and horror of this?)
I: Handed; her; a : dime….. (…..)
And then skedaddled.
Well. That much is bad enough.
But the saga does not end there.
Eheu! Would that it did….
You need to understand:
This was 1956; more than half a century has passed,
since those dim distant times.
And in 1956, in our own little household,
ten cents was two weeks of my allowance!
And that meant a hard and flinty choice between:
One (1) Mickey Mouse comic book (about the only sort of literature/art/culture we at that epoch took in).
bzw.
Two (2) candy-bars @one nickel each (and ye who now treat these as nothing: Know :
never were we casually granted candy-bars, back in Ike-time, save as we saved;
so that, for us little ones, the savor of a Tootsie roll,
was as water from a clear spring, to the fawn…)
So this…dime…. which, to you, is nothing more than an annnoyance,
mixed in with the lint of your pocket-litter,
which you might -- fling! to a beggar,
in complete contempt…
This thing was, to us, like… the Symbol,
the summary and the symbol
(FDR on it -- not that we knew him -- but he saved gramps and grandma from
starving to death ) --
Yea much as the wafer -- round as a dime -- doth prefigure the mystery of the Eucharist --
the symbol of two whole weeks of our young lives…
(: our smallsweet lives which
came, we knew not Whence,
and knew not, Whither tended….)
: An incalculable commitment.
For: from thence, unto
> Death Us Depart <
is but a skip and a hop
across the yawning chasm of godhumbled Time ….
And so. Myself, I might well have left it at that. Already ashamed; and yet,
Time Heals all Wounds. (Does it Not? -- No it Doesn’t.)
But yet: She. She came up to me, the very next day.
and said: : : ((said)) :
with a chipmunk-facies of nut-lust
(wince ye, as though anticipating a blow)
=> “How about if, tomorrow , you give me a quarter?” ?!!??!!!
(The auditorium rocks, as with the groans of the damned.
In time they die down; and we resume.)
Ah! Carol, Carol, wherever you are,
No doubt but, by God’s grace, thou hast repented --
bitterly repented.
Bitter as colocynth, or the salt of the sea.
Indeed I pray that thou hast done so, and found relief;
for hast thou not… It does not bear thinking.
For what I here -- for me! -- recount in shame,
this -- thou, for thee --…. ‘tis unimaginable.
The incident was almost laid to rest (being after all unknown,
to any but our own two stupid selves; and between us, never alluded to),
when, perhaps a week later, perhaps a month --
ah, but why try even to guess at metric time,
when for us, durée filled up all of empty space --
for all I know it was the very next day ….
but anyhow…
One of my classmates told me, or else I overheard him saying it to another boy
(there was really little distinction between these two scenarios, at that time of our group-mind pupation):
“Stay away from that Carol: she’s a …. gold-digger!”
(Ah, Carol! Carol! Such sleepless nights thou must have passed,
as that epithet -- shared by the group-mind among every child on the planet,
looking suddenly up alertly from the drinking-fountain,
irrespective of any actual participation in that particular exchange of words --
as that cruel blade of an epithet did repeatedly slice
| slice |
down !
through the epidermis, the dermis, the underlying tendons,
For our health and our sanity,
Repentance is needful,
more than bread.
De profundis clamavisti, Carolina! )
*
It is finished. My quill is dry.
She, as I,
has felt the stroke of sixty.
God willing, she is a grandmother.
God grant that her white hair,
now covered with a modest cap,
its simple white contrasting with the black or brown of her plain woolen gown
-- her hair turned white in a single night, at the age of eight,
when she in a soul-stroke realized the full horror, of what she had done --
God grant that it did, in the fullness of time,
miraculously regain its full true color,
as it was stroked by her sweetheart, the pastor,
in the simple woodland setting where they dwelt with the rest of the Bruderhof:
praying and praising, thinking and thanking, feeling and fasting --
joining in a sweet embrace of an intensity the yet more shattering,
as it was unmixed by any base concerns
of Lust, or Greed, or Pride…
Her face weathered, but still fair, after years of poverty
gratefully embraced,
with no wealth to bequeath
her children save the Truth
as it was nourished in a mother’s breast.
And having once passed through the flame, annealed and anointed,
with faith now fortified,
they could with the more fortitude behold
as their own offspring sped tumbling into life,
to repeat all the same, all the agèd mistakes,
the same heart-breaking, unhappy-making, mistakes and missteps,
that ever our proud cotton-headed wool-gathering distracted folly has concocted,
again and again, down all the generations and in every age,
since our blessèd and unhappy race was first engendred:
since we all splashed miraculously into being,
brightbloodiedbrilliantly,
from the loins of Adam,
and the womb of Eve …
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