I earnestly hope to stop writing about politics. I’ve said this before, but I kept being pulled in against my will. The fact of the matter is that I have nothing really to add to this stinking mess. My political opinions are too predictably anti-Republican, anti-Trump, anti-Conservative. Given that, I would rather just vote quietly in every election and keep my mouth shut.
No doubt, I will be severely tested the next time I am confronted with political infamy. And sad to say, the infamies are coming fast and furious.
There are several friends with whom I do not wish to discuss politics, even when they agree with me. It’s just that they get so caught up that our friendship becomes nothing but a political debate. My friends mean too much to me for me to imperil the friendship by something so dreadful as today’s political reality.
Sarah Silverman at the L.A. Festival of Books April 2010
One of the events I miss the most during this grey endless quarantine is the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, particularly when it was held at the nearby UCLA Campus. Hell, I wouldn’t even mind going again to the USC Campus, where it’s always considerably warmer than Westwood.
I always liked Sarah Silverman’s comedy. I even thought she was pretty sexy—as well as uproariously funny.
Of course, now we all have to stay away from one another because of this ghastly coronavirus outbreak, which seems to be getting worse all the time. With luck, I will survive a couple of years of a monastic existence; but in going back over old photographs, I deeply miss events like the Festival of Books.
I even miss going to the library and walking through the stacks looking for books to read.
Eventually, the world will open up again. But I will have wasted two whole years in disgruntled loneliness.
It’s an unusual combination, but it sat well on Rebecca Elson’s shoulders. She was at one and the same time an astronomer and a poet. Unfortunately, she died young at the age of 39 with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. I learned about her from Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings blog.
Canadian Poet and Astronomer Rebecca Elson
Antidotes to Fear of Death
Sometimes as an antidote To fear of death, I eat the stars.
Those nights, lying on my back, I suck them from the quenching dark Til they are all, all inside me, Pepper hot and sharp.
Sometimes, instead, I stir myself Into a universe still young, Still warm as blood:
No outer space, just space, The light of all the not yet stars Drifting like a bright mist, And all of us, and everything Already there But unconstrained by form.
And sometime it’s enough To lie down here on earth Beside our long ancestral bones:
To walk across the cobble fields Of our discarded skulls, Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis, Thinking: whatever left these husks Flew off on bright wings.
Roughly four years ago today, I had the worst night of my life. Curiously, I was on the last night of my vacation in Ecuador at the time. It was election night in the USA, and I made the mistake of tuning in on CNN for the voting coverage. Big mistake!
I could not believe my eyes that Trump was winning. Not that I liked Hillary Clinton, but I thought her opponent was—at best—a total buffoon. There I was at the Hotel Viejo Cuba in the relatively posh La Mariscal district, waking up every few minutes and compulsively turning on the television.
When I finally stumbled out of bed in the morning, I knew I had to get a cab to the airport—but I didn’t want to return to the United States! That night, I had lost faith in my fellow Americans. How could they do such a thing to themselves, acting against their own interests.
The Hotel Viejo Cuba in Quito
It is now 9:20 PM in Los Angeles, and I don’t have any idea how the final count will go. But I still distrust the American voter—even more, if that is possible. There are some Trump-voting states that I would never want to visit, such as West Virginia and North Dakota. And I feel somewhat queasy about some of the rural areas in California.
Whatever happens tonight, I am not the same person I was before the 2016 results came in.
Statue of Skeletal Woman at Mérida’s Hotel La Piazzetta
At some time in the 1980s—I disremember the year—I was on a long bus ride between Mazatlán and Durango over the mountains. It was November 2, the Day of the Dead, and the bus was crowded with men, women, and children headed toward distant cemeteries with baskets of food. A young mother with a baby and numerous packages sat down next to me taking the aisle seat. I helped her by holding the child or various packages for a while, until she disappeared at some small town to hold a picnic by the grave of one of her loved ones. Was it her husband? her mother? I never knew.
The following quote is from Elizabeth Sayers and Chloe Sayer’s book The Skeleton at the Feast. It throws some light on the feast day:
In Mexico—to quote Ms Sayer—the first and second of November belong to the dead. According to popular belief, the deceased have divine permission to visit friends and relatives on earth and to share the pleasures of the living. To an outsider the celebrations might seem macabre, but in Mexico death is considered a part of life. A familiar presence, it is portrayed with affection and humor by artists and crafts workers. For the Aztec, as for other ancient peoples, death signified not an end but a stage in a constant cycle. Worship of death involved worship of life, while the skull—the symbol of death—was a promise of resurrection…. The death of the individual was seen as a journey, for which numerous offerings were needed. Life is a fleeting moment—a dream—from which death awakens us.
It is all summarized in the Mexican saying “Todos somos calaveras”—“We are all skeletons.” The candy stores are full of confections shaped like skulls and skeletons. All the energy that we Gringos put into Halloween is directed toward La Dia de los Muertos. I suspect that, perhaps, the Mexican holiday is, all told, more healthy than our Halloween.
Today is All Saints Day, which neatly occupies a space between Halloween and the Day of the Dead (All Souls, or the Dia de los Muertos in Mexico). It is one of the Catholic “Holy Days of Obligation,” when the observant believer was required to attend church services, even if they didn’t fall on the Sabbath.
It is said that there are more than 10,000 saints recognized by the Catholic Church. Just one grouping consists of St Maurice and the entire Roman legion he commanded, the garrison of Thebes in Egypt, consisting of over 6,000 souls, who had converted to Christianity and were martyred by decimation in AD 286 by order of the Emperor Maximian. I’m not even sure the Church knows the names of the members of that garrison.
When I was in grade school at St Henry (himself the Holy Roman Emperor Henry II who ruled from AD 1004 t0 1024), the Dominican nuns would reward us for good behavior with what we called holy cards, which are now called prayer cards. They’re still around:
Prayer Card for St Cecelia, Patron of Music
I remember once visiting San Cristobal de Las Casas (named after St Christopher, who is no longer officially venerated) during the Feast of St Cecelia held around the local church named after her. It was one of the best Mexican fiestas I ever attended.
When I visit Christian churches that are not richly decorated with statues, stained glass windows, and paintings depicting the saints, I feel that there is something missing. I often think the bare white walls could do with a few saints. After all, the Bible was written two or more thousand years ago: I see the saints as manifestations that the Christian God did not simply go on vacation after the Crucifixion to work on His tan.
In Lima, Peru, I visited the burial of three New World saints of the 16th century, one of whom, St Martin de Porres, was African-American. His feast day is celebrated on November 3, Election Day this year.
St Martin de Porres in the Chapel Dedicated to Him
If it seems strange to you that a non-practicing Catholic such as myself feels the way I do about the saints, I see it as part of the richness of the Catholic (and Eastern Orthodox) religion that appeals to me. In their own way, the saints update Christianity.
I may not be a good Catholic, but I prayed to St Martin de Porres when I visited his chapel and saw where he was buried.
Tarnmoor 
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