Which Path?

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Aaron Rogers: Quarterback, Trumper, Anti-Vaxxer, and All-Around Dickhead

I had a choice of two ways to go for today’s blog. Instead I took a third way. The first way was to continue writing about poet and printmaker William Blake, one of my all-time favorites. Then I was thinking about Aaron Rogers implying of ESPN that late night TV host Jimmy Kimmel was a pederast in Jeffrey Epstein’s circle of sexual deviants.

The third way turned out to analyze why I am triggered by the bad behavior of Trump and his followers. To the very core of my being, I despise what Trump and the Trumpites are doing to this country. But my political opinions are of no great interest to anyone. So many Americans, so many raw wounds that won’t heal, that keep on being re-infected!

It strikes me that my blogs about things that interest me make for better reading than blogs about my political opinions, especially when they involve the culture wars of the 21st century.

So tomorrow I return to writing about William Blake, a great artist and poet. Tomorrow, I’ll post some of his poetry. If you’d rather read about Aaron Rogers, trust me: It’s just too depressing for words. Even when I write them.

Old Testament Visionary

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William Blake’s “Nebuchadnezzar” (1795)

As I said in yesterday’s post, William Blake (1757-1827) was that rarity who was not only a great poet but a great visual artist. What I found interesting was his predilection for Old Testament subjects, especially the books of the Old Testament prophets.

Take Nebuchadnezzar II, the subject of the above illustration. According to the Book of Daniel, the Babylonian king has a dream that is interpreted by Daniel to mean that he would be deposed and die of insanity after living like an animal for seven years. The text from the King James version of Daniel 4:31 is “And they shall drive thee from men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field: they shall make thee to eat grass as oxen, and seven times shall pass over thee, until thou know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will.”

Satan Exults Over the Recumbent Eve After the Forbidden Fruit Incident

Here from Genesis is an image of Satan as a serpent coiled around the naked body of Eve as one of God’s angels (Michael?) points the way to the exit from Eden with his spear. It is interesting how the story from Genesis had resulted for centuries in women being held to blame for original sin and the expulsion from Eden. It’s just like the Jews unjustly being thought of as Christ-killers when it was actually the doing of Caiaphas, the Jewish high priest of the Temple and his cronies.

Blake never really took to painting, but as a print maker, he had few equals.

Tuesday at the Getty Center

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On the 781 Metro Bus to the Getty Center

In my retirement years, I sometimes drive where I’m going; sometimes I just take public transportation. The two Getty museums in Los Angeles are a good example of the advantage of traveling by bus. There is no admission fee, but parking at each museum costs twenty dollars. Compare that with an outlay of seventy cents for a round trip between Sepulveda & Exposition and the Getty Center. A big plus is that the 781 Metro bus runs every few minutes, so that waiting is not a big factor.

The reason for my visit is an exhibit entitled “William Blake: Visionary,” which closes on January 14. Organized with the cooperation of London’s Tate Museum, it includes a large number of Blake’s prints. I even dished out the money for the exhibit book. It costs a fortune, but I know I would have kicked myself had I passed up the opportunity.

In the next few days, I will write several posts about my visit to the Getty, particularly relating to William Blake, who is probably the only human being who is at one and the same time a great poet and a great visual artist.

The Getty’s Cactus Garden with Westwood and the 405 Freeway in the Background

I like to visit the Getty whenever they have a special exhibit that interests me. This time, I saw only the Blake exhibit and also a large selection of great photographs by Arthur Tress. (The Getty Center always has interesting photographic exhibits.)

Later this month, I will also trek to the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades to see an exhibit on the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Unlike the Getty Center, the Getty Villa concentrates on ancient Greek and Roman art in a building whose design is a re-created Roman country home within view of the beach.

“A Butterfly Secret”

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Bats Head in Dorset

I have just finished reading the essays in Earth Memories by Llewelyn Powys (1884-1939), one of three literary giants in a family that included John Cowper Powys (1872-1063) and T. F. Powys (1875-1953). The essays in the book are mostly nature studies with an occasional jaunt into the philosophical implications of his everyday reality. The following is from his essay “A Butterfly Secret”:

And, indeed, as one walks over these downs at nighttime, under the fathomless pricked dome of infinity, one receives but one answer, The matter is as plain as a child’s sum in a dame’s school. Life is its own justification. There is no other aim to it, no other meaning, no other purpose, and if we think otherwise, we are foolish. Let the truth be spoken. Each one of us, each intellectual soul among us, advances steadily and surely toward the grave. Abdel Krim and his Rifis, General Feng and his soldiers, are all marching down the same road—a road that leads to oblivion and that for a thousand years has been trodden by a procession of all nations. Every religion is as brittle as an empty snail shell in dry weather, as quick to disappear as cuckoo-spit in a summer hedge that conceals at its center no green fly. The secret to be remembered is that nothing matters, nothing but the momentary consciousness of each individual as he opens his eyes upon a spectacle that knows nought of ethics.

Let us, as best we may, reconcile our minds to the fact that all our self-imposed tasks, our political engineering, our brave talk have actually, under the shadow of Eternity, no consequence. Our idealism is treacherous. It is a moonshine path over a deep sea. We are cursed souls each one of us and resemble nothing so much as jackdaws flying about he radiant cliffs of God pretending to be seagulls.

And yet there is no cause to despair. Merely to have come to consciousness at all constitutes an inestimable privilege. The past is nothing, the future is nothing, the eternal now alone is of moment. This is understood well enough by every living creature but man.

Náthás

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My Nasal Congestion Was Nowhere So Pretty As Hers

Sometimes, from deep inside my early memories, a Hungarian word comes flying to the surface, bringing with it a whole jumble of interconnected moments from my past.

Today’s word is náthás, which was a word frequently applied to me as a child. It is pronounced like naht-hahsh, equally accented on both syllables. According to my trusty Országh Magyar-Angol Kéziszotár (translates as Handy Hungarian-English Dictionary), the word means “having a cold.” Actually, in my experience, it really means “having the symptoms of a cold, whether from an actual cold or allergy.”

In my case, it was respiratory allergies, going back to an early age. I remember all the vain attempts to unblock my nose, starting with the deceitful over-the-counter nose drops called Neo-Synephrine. It actually succeeded in unplugging the blockage for up to half a minute, immediately followed by an even more resistant blockage.

Then there was the old Hungarian remedy of filling a large pan with boiling water and mixing it with table salt. I would hold a towel over my head and bend low over the steaming salty water, breathing deeply. That didn’t work any better than the Neo-Synephrine. So much for old remedies.

Nowadays there are more effective medications and procedures. One good nasal unplugger is a sinus rinse in which salt is dissolved in distilled water and shot up each nostril using a squeeze bottle—the principle being that what goes up one nostril comes out the other, bringing with it the muck stored in the sinus cavity.

Nevertheless, I am still very much náthás, due to snorting, sneezing, and nose-blowing. That never seems to go away. I like to think of myself as a superhero in the Marvel Comic Universe, my super power being the ability to shoot great gobs of mucus at evildoers.

Death By Comfy Chair

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La-Z-Boy Maverick-582 Rocker Recliner

I have never understood why people buy those overstuffed recliners. Is it because they are tired of living and just want to sink into something soft while their body functions shut down? Never forget the old Monty Python episode in which the Spanish Inquisition uses comfy chairs as a form of (not unwelcome) torture.

All the seating in my apartment tends to be on the firm side. In fact, I refer to them as my uncomfy chairs. To that I attribute the back that, at my advanced age, my back doesn’t hurt; and I am more agile than most of my age cohort.

This brings to mind one of my favorite poems by Dylan Thomas entitled “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.”

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And so I continue to burn and rave at close of day from my uncomfy chair.

The Tadzhik Woman

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RUSSIA – CIRCA 1984: shows Tadzhik Soviet Socialist Republic flags and arms, circa 1984

I am currently reading a book of stories by the Russian writer Maxim Osipov entitled Rock, Paper, Scissors and Other Stories. In the title story is an incredible Tadzhik woman who kills an official of a small rural town in Russia who tries to rape her. Her name is Ruhshona Ibragimovma. Although working in a menial position at a restaurant, she is a highly educated woman, which, in the position she finds herself, becomes increasingly unimportant to her.

[D]eath’s omnipresence is no accident, no unhappy mistake. Everyone fears death, just as they fear misfortune, yet death is inescapable, which means it is real. And that we did not invent it. At this very moment Ruhshona begins to see death as the most important thing that can exist within a person. She views those who don’t carry death within themselves—who don’t live by it—as empty, like wrapping paper, like candy wrappers. Hollow, soulless people. She can pick them out at a glance.

A Fragment of the Golden Eternity

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Jack Kerouac spent many years studying the Dharma of Buddhism. It shows up in many of his earlier works, particularly in his The Scripture of the Golden Eternity, from which the following excerpts are taken:

11.

If we were not all the golden eternity we wouldn’t be here. Because we are here we cant help being pure. To tell man to be pure on account of the punishing angel that punishes the bad and the rewarding angel that rewards the good would be like telling the water “Be Wet”—Never the less, all things depend on supreme reality, which is already established as the record of Karma-earned fate.

16.

The point is we’re waiting, not how comfortable we are while waiting. Paleolithic man waited by caves for the realization of why he was there, and hunted; modern men wait in beautiful homes and try to forget death and birth. We’re waiting for the realization that this is the golden eternity.

22.

Stare deep into the world before you as if it were the void: innumerable holy ghosts, buddhies, and savior gods there hide, smiling. All the atoms emitting light inside wavehood, there is no personal separation of any of it. A hummingbird can come into a house and a hawk will not: so rest and be assured. While looking for the light, you may suddenly be devoured by the darkness and find the true light.

I am not sure that Kerouac’s Buddhism is the genuine article, but in a way it doesn’t matter. His questing had its value and brushes against the truth at a wide number of places.

Discharged

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I Was Expecting Something Much More Demanding

If you’ll remember, I was hospitalized in November for two days and a night at UCLA’s Ronald Reagan Medical Center for losing consciousness in the bathroom in the middle of the night—either from a lack of adrenaline (my pituitary was removed years ago) or low blood pressure. If not, you can read about it in my post entitled “I Dodge a Bullet.”

Although I had been hospitalized for roughly similar reasons three times before, this time I also had an ugly hematoma on my left forehead and a broken eleventh rib.

Apparently, this qualified me for a higher level of care than previously. Also, I am now 78 years old; and the good doctors probably thought I was a shut-in. So I had eight weeks of visits from a nurse, occupational therapist, physical therapist, and even a social worker. The last official visit was today from the physical therapist, a stunningly beautiful young woman from Ecuador.

Back when I was in high school, my mother worked at a Cleveland hospital for the terminally ill. During the summers, I volunteered in the hospital’s physical therapy department—not working with patients, but mainly inventorying and storing the materials used by the therapists. Most of the department’s patients were paraplegics and hemiplegics.

Three times before, I had benefited from physical therapists who had worked with me when I had a hip replacement in 2002 and two separate broken shoulders, one from a fall in Argentina and another (on the other shoulder) closer to home. As a result, I have always respected the profession.

The home visits from the therapist sent by UCLA were likewise helpful to me. The balls of my feet have for several years been tingling from diabetic neuropathy. The exercises the therapist had me do were relatively simple, but have mitigated the neuropathy to some extent. That’s good, because I remember one of my former physicians had the same problem and had to retire when they had to amputate his feet, which exhibited a severe case of neuropathy.

So I have now been discharged from the home visits, which have been extremely helpful in transitioning me to what is to come.

Januarius/Gennaro

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The Dried Blood of St Januarius (AKA San Gennaro)

He is the patron saint of Naples. At the church named for him, the dried blood of Saint Januarius (or Gennaro) is supposed to liquefy three times a year:

  • September 19, the saint’s feast day
  • December 16
  • The first Saturday in May

When the miracle fails to occur, it portends “imminent disaster including war, famine or disease,” according to one website. Apparently, the miracle occurred again in September, but I have not been able to find whether the December 16 miracle occurred on schedule.

Januarius was a third century bishop of Benevento, Italy, who was martyred during the persecutions of the Emperor Diocletian.

For a number of years, I have pre-empted the name of Januarius to refer to my practice of using the first month of the year to read only authors I have never read before. My reasoning for this is to constantly broaden my horizons. For example, this year I plan to read several Cuban novels.

One result of my Januarius project is also that I read more women authors, which I had not done so much heretofore.

I will report back to you probably in early February if I have made any finds worth noting. (I probably will.)