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Nasty and Pungent

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To What Extent American? To What Extent Hungarian?

To What Extent American? To What Extent Hungarian?

A few days ago, I went into one of my Hungarian moods, most likely from feeling extremely dissociated from the Scotch-Irish Confederates that seem to be making so much of the political news. My old friend Lynette commented that she felt I was mostly an American who just happened to think of himself as a Hungarian.

To be sure, if I stepped off the plane at Budapest’s Ferihegy Airport, I’m sure I would think of myself as mostly American, especially if I got a whiff of Hungary’s own Right Wing, the (un)worthy descendants of World War Two’s Arrow Cross, which bid fair to out-Gestapo the Gestapo.

I find it helps to think of myself as a Hungarian whenever I take a sustained look at America’s ugly politics. Think of it as a distancing maneuver. Here is the America of Donald Trump, Wayne La Pierre, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, John Boehner, and the Tea Party—and there I am, off to the sidelines, with an expression on my face of having stepped into something particularly nasty and pungent. Me? I’m a Hungarian, folks: I had nothing to do with this stramash except, perhaps, to admit to having nothing to do with it.

Some people might say that instead of standing off to the side, I should be more directly active politically. Here’s where I must sadly shake my head and say, “Sorry, folks! I’m not really a people person.” I’m fully as capable of damning Progressives as I am of damning Tea Partiers, except that I hate the latter even more.

Some day, the last raggedy elements of the Confederate States of America will sink into the mire. I will probably no longer be around to celebrate. Besides, knowing American history as I do, I am sure it will be replaced by other tendencies equally repellent.

 

 

Old Bones

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Richard III (1452-1485)

Richard III (1452-1485)

I was on a Laker Airlines flight from London Gatwick to Los Angeles in October 1976 when I read Josephine Tey’s novelized biography of Richard III entitled The Daughter of Time. In it, Tey’s Inspector Allan Grant, while recovering in a hospital, decides to investigate the life of Richard III. Based on the picture above, he could not believe that Richard could be such as arrant villain as Shakespeare portrayed him in his play.

There is little doubt that Richard seized the crown that properly belonged to his young nephews, the so-called Princes in the Tower, whom he may or may not have ordered to be killed. As king, he was not so very bad; but there is always that suspicion of evildoing at its outset.

Richard is one of the few kings of England who have a fan club dedicated to restoring his reputation.

Well, it appears that they have found and identified the remains of Richard, which were discovered in a shallow grave in a parking lot where Greyfriars Abbey once sat before Henry VIII had it razed. DNA was taken and compared with that of a lineal descendent in Canada and found to be a match. And, what is more, Richard’s body was slightly misshapen, not quite an out-and-out hunchback, but near to it.

Now, was he a good king or a bad king? Or was he merely indifferent? The question rages on.

 

The Grittiness of Outer Space

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Endeavour in its Hangar at the California Science Center

Endeavour in its Hangar at the California Science Center

Today, Martine and I did something a little different. I was curious to see the NASA Space Shuttle Endeavour, which was on display in a large hangar at the California Science Center in downtown Los Angeles. To get there, we took the relatively new Metro Expo Line from its current end of the line in Culver City to the Expo Park/USC Station.

The Endeavour was amazing. There was nothing Disneyfied or cleaned up about its appearance. The shuttle had spent some 296 days in space between its maiden voyage in 1992 and its arrival in Los Angeles in September 2012. It had circumnavigated the earth 4,671 times for a total of 123 million miles. Instead of looking nice and neat and clean, there was something gritty about its looks, especially around the nose cone: The heat of re-entry placed the most stress on the protective tiles tiles (see below) that covered its surface.

Some of the Heat Protecting Tiles on the Underside of Endeavour

Some of the Heat Protecting Tiles on the Underside of Endeavour

Most amazing was the area around the rear engines (see below). Never again will I think of outer space as something squeaky clean: It’s either too hot or too cold, and the stress of re-entry is enough to wreak havoc on just about any made-made materials.

One of the Rear Engines of Endeavour

One of the Rear Engines of Endeavour

It was an awe-inspiring experience to see Endeavour and to appreciate the work of thousands of talented men and women who, for a period of some twenty years, guided its destiny.

Martine thought that the Endeavour should have been cleaned up a bit more before it was presented to the general public. I, on the other hand, liked it just the way it was.

A Poetic Fragment

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Antonio Machado

Antonio Machado

Poetry can twist you around sometimes even if you just read a little sample of it. The following lines by the Spanish poet Antonio Machado (1875-1939) were in the introduction to a book on Buddhism by Thich Nhat Hanh:

Wanderer, the road is your
footsteps, nothing else;
wanderer, there is no path,
you lay down a path in walking.

In walking, you lay down a path
and when turning around
you see the road you’ll
never step on again.
Wanderer, path there is none,
only tracks on the ocean foam.

Is this the entire poem? I don’t know. It could be a fragment, but if it is, it is remarkably self-contained.

In the meantime, I will continue along the path that is no path, that is being wiped out by the ocean foam even as I make tracks—toward what end? At least the water feels cool to my bare feet.

 

 

 

What Matters …

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Martine and the Moose

Martine and the Moose

If there was no blog post yesterday, it was because Martine was ill, and I thought I would have to take her to the hospital. Fortunately, after two weeks of illness, she suddenly got better.

It all started two-three weeks ago, when she started complaining of muscular back pain. It was her decision to go to a clinic and get some sort of pain killer. And that’s what almost did her in. The physician on duty prescribed hydrocodone acetominophen. Literally minutes within taking it, Martine developed a nasty reaction which, while not alleviating the pain in her back, made her feel week and took away her appetite for food.

Martine’s bad reactions to prescription drugs are hardly new. She has been suffering for over a year from the anti-malarial chloroquine she took on our Argentina vacation. Then, when she had the flu, she developed a bad reaction to cipro.

All week, I was haunted by this feeling that I might lose Martine. Although we are two very different people, I love her such that it would be difficult to imagine my leading a happy life without her soft voice and gentle smile.

People who know us sometimes have a hard time imagining the depth of my feelings for Martine, but that’s because they do not necessarily know about how our relationship functions.

Nothing in this life is guaranteed: I know that, at some point, I will either lose her or she will lose me. Fortunately, it has not come to that yet.

Corporate Zombies

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If Corporations Are People, What Kind of People Are They?

If Corporations Are People, What Kind of People Are They?

The most popular posting I have ever made here at WordPress was entitled “Notes on the Zombie Apocalypse.” Why zombies and not werewolves, vampires, re-animated mummies, Frankenstein monsters, or even Creatures from the Black Lagoon? Then I thought of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling about corporations having the same rights as people. Bingo!

It took the zombie conservative phalanx of the Supremes—Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy—to attempt to pump life into this horror story. If corporations are people, what other things might have the same rights as people? Perhaps Tweets and Ann Coulter blog posts might also be so classified. What if we have to admit a Wayne LaPierre NRA Tweet into the Boy Scouts as a Tenderfoot? Would it have to learn how to swim and memorize the Morse Code? (Or is that a requirement any more?)

Now that corporate zombies have a whole slew of rights, we can look forward to having our brains devoured with increased efficiency.

Look out, people! The undead walk among us.

 

Of Heaven and Hell

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Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges

I cannot ever stop thinking of Jorge Luis Borges, of his poems, of his stories, of his diamond-like essays. For the better part of a half century, the man has guided my steps, sent me off to the Iceland of the Sagas, the paradoxes of G. K. Chesterton, the fantastic stories of that forgotten writer Rudyard Kipling, and the paintings of Xul Solar.

Today, I want to share with you the ending of a poem called “Of Heaven and Hell,” which I found in a Penguin Borges collection entitled Poems of the Night:

When Judgment Day sounds in the last trumpets
and planet and millennium both
disintegrate, and all at once, O Time,
all your ephemeral pyramids cease to be,
the colors and the lines that trace the past
will in the semidarkness form a face,
a sleeping face, faithful, still, unchangeable
(the face of the loved one, or, perhaps, your own)
and the sheer contemplation of that face—
never-changing, whole, beyond corruption—
will be, for the rejected, an Inferno,
and for the elected, Paradise.

For me, I think that face will be that of Martine. (My own face is out of the question: It is trapped in some mirror that first time I recognized it reminded me more of my father’s features than of my own.) No, Martine’s face frequently forms in my thoughts, as a special gift given to me by a God who showed me a gentle pity that was, I have always believed, more than I deserved. Does that mean I am one of what Borges called the “elegidos,” “the elect”? Time will tell.

The More Things Change …

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Roman Graffiti from Pompeii

Roman Graffiti from Pompeii

Let us say we were seated across the table from an ancient Roman and, say, a Viking. Aside from the obvious language problem, would there be enough commonality to allow for a spirited discussion? I think there would be, primarily because I have read enough Roman and Viking (I should say Icelandic and Norse) literature to vouch for the fact that, when all is said and done, we are not all that different from one another.

Let me take as a case in point graffiti that has been discovered from the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum. You can probably find the equivalent in any nightclub’s restroom wall:

  • Philiros spado – “Philiros is a eunuch”
  • Apollinaris, medicus Titi Imperatoris hic cacavit bene – “Apollinaris, physician to the Emperor Titud, had a good crap here”
  • Oppi, emboliari, fur, furuncle – “Oppius, you’re a clown, a thief, and a cheap crook”
  • Miximus in lecto. Faetor, peccavimus, hospes. Si dices: quare? Nulla matella fuit –
    This one was found in an inn: “We have wet the bed. I admit we were wrong, my host, but if you ask why, it is because there was no chamber pot.”
  • Virgula Tertio su: Indecens es – “Virgula to Tertius: You are a nasty boy.“
  • Suspirium puellam Celadus thraex – “Celadus makes the girls moan”

Now I have not seen the graffiti of Ancient Rome, but I saw the viking graffiti in the tomb at Maes Howe in the Orkneys. Built over 5,000 years ago, Maes Howe was frequently visited by Viking raiders in the hopes that some buried treasure could be found there. They found none, but left such observations as the following in their Futharc runes:

  • “Thorni fucked. Helgi carved.”
  • “Ingigerth is the most beautiful of all women” next to a picture of a slobbering dog.
  • “These runes were carved by the man most skilled in runes in the Western Ocean.”

You can find more about the Pompeiian graffiti by clicking here. The runes at Maes Howe are explained here.

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

[St. Peter] Chanel High School (1957-2013)

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Seal of Chanel High School

Seal of Chanel High School

I was there when St. Peter Chanel High School in Bedford, Ohio, was born—I was in the school’s second graduating class in 1962—and now it looks as if I’m around when the school dies later this year. When I attended, it was called simply Chanel High School and was run by priests of the Society of Mary (Marists, not Marianists).

My four years there were largely happy ones, even though the brain tumor that was to come to a crisis later on was already causing frequent severe frontal headaches. My teachers were excellent, particularly the priests who gave me the best background in high school English it was possible to receive anywhere. My teachers were, in order,  Fathers Gerard Hageman, Raymond E. Healy, Alan Parker, and Edward Murray.

Back then, Chanel was strictly a boys’ school, with girls being admitted much later, probably when the school was taken over by the Catholic Archdiocese of Cleveland, which changed its name to St. Peter Chanel, after the 19th century Marist martyr of Polynesia after whom the school was named.

In recent years, the enrollment has plummeted, with only 54 students enrolling for the current ninth-grade class.

I feel a great sadness about the school’s passing, because now I will never to be able to indulge in my fantasy of coming to the school’s aid with my millions. (Who am I kidding?) I feel I owe a debt to the good men who taught me—dedicated, smart, and devout men who gave their lives to God and to an ideal of education that seems to be passing away before our eyes. Who is that dedicated today? Few, very few. And those that are are under constant attack by Conservatives who back a misguided goal of home schooling by idiots.

Dinosaur

Okay, Jim, so you’re a dinosaur. It is your sad role to note the passing of things that meant a great deal to you, while so many contemporary phenomena leave you cold. All those girls in jeggings and boots with their smart phones. All that cacophonous pop music. Television. Celebrities. Will you kids get off my lawn before I call the police!

La Poderosa’s Final Tour

Ernesto “Che” Guevara

Ernesto “Che” Guevara

Due to a premonition, Alberto didn’t want to drive [the motorcycle nicknamed “La Poderosa,” “The Mighty One”], so I sat up front though we only did a few kilometers before stopping to fix the failing gearbox. A little further on, as we rounded a tight curve at a good speed, the screw came off the back brake, a cow’s head appeared around the bend, then many, many more of them, and I threw on the hand brake which, soldered ineptly, also broke. For some moments I saw nothing more than the blurred shape of cattle flying past us on each side, while poor Poderosa gathered speed down the steep hill. By an absolute miracle we managed to graze only the leg of the last cow, but in the distance a river was screaming toward us with terrifying efficacy. I veered on to the side of the road and in the blink of an eye the bike mounted the two-meter bank, embedding us between two rocks, but we were unhurt.

…. [W]e were put up by some Germans who treated us very well. During the night I had a bad case of the runs and, being ashamed to leave a souvenir in the pot under my bed, I climbed out on to the window ledge and gave up all my pain to the night and blackness beyond. The next morning I looked out to see the effect and saw that two meters below lay a big sheet of tin where they were sun-drying their peaches; the added spectacle was impressive. We beat it fast.—Ernesto “Che” Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries