Victoria Blake is impatient to continue…
For some reason, Aida was just standing there. She had gone late, empty handed, to the priest, and the smell of his house was still making its way up her nostrils. Now she was about ten paces from his door, hesitating. For some reason.
She wasn’t looking for an excuse; she was a professional excuse maker now. At first her family had been suspicious: they knew she liked to be alone, but they also knew her mortal fear of the priest. So they thought her sudden propensity toward going late was odd. At first she too thought it was odd. Somehow, though, once she realized the priest was deceivable, she was no longer afraid of him. She had thought him omniscient; now she knew he was just a man like anyone else. It was only heredity that gave him the job. Anyone can be born.
Victoria Blake has a story to tell…
Vanity of vanities, says the preacher. All is vanity.
Aida woke late. She was, thankfully, alone. Whatever other deficiencies Helena had, at least she got up on time. Aida rolled out of bed and tossed a corner of the sheet up to the head of the bed. It lay there, wrinkled, like so many ripples coming in to meet the edge of the laundry bucket.
A normal day began with feeding the chickens. Although Aida’s family was the weaving family, they also kept hens for eggs and a cow for milk. The hens were Aida’s responsibility, and the cow was Lysias’s. Sometimes Aida’s soul was offended that her younger brother got a more responsible responsibility, but most of the time she was glad to leave it to him. So Aida fed the hens, and while they were busy clucking down their feed with crusty greedy eyes, she stole their eggs. She wondered if they ever noticed when their eggs were gone. She doubted it. Chickens didn’t have minds, only instincts. Perhaps she only had instincts too. Maybe the chickens seemed to themselves to have minds. Maybe the gods took something out of her room every day, and she never noticed. Maybe the gods just viewed people as chickens, and their offerings as eggs. And then, did the gods themselves have owners? Or did the chickens have subjects? Although, the chickens weren’t exactly subjects. Aida’s mind begun working in profane earnest. They were the chickens of the gods. And if they rebelled? Adventure. View Full Post
I sat down to write a true story I’ve had in my head nearly my whole life. Somehow, I ended up writing this instead:
I seem to have sent most of my life in sleepy little towns. Some are sleepier than others, of course, but there is still that indefinable air to them, something that makes them, and the thing that happen in them, the same. The people and the places differ in the little details, and yet it is these details which make them the same.
The hardware store in Monroe was just like any other hardware store. We didn’t know this as kids—we just liked it for its toy aisle full of farm toys, and the fact that it had enough interesting tools to keep us entertained for however long Dad was in there. And besides, the store held two great fascinations for me: a cat that lived there, and a lifesize cutout of the Maytag Man. View Full Post
Victoria Blake writes,
I been standing here a while, now, jus’ looking at the water and thinking, pretty much. I meant to do it all along, an’ I still mean to. I’m jus’ thinking. I can hear them, little voices, saying something like Lookit what I found. An’ I wonder what it’ll be when they find it. Whoever these thems are.
I been thinking about how I first noticed that nobody looks direckly at me, maybe a little off to the left side a bit, even my own family sometimes, mostly Mae. View Full Post
A Love Lost and Regained: Installment V
At this point, we (John and Mark) came upon a manuscript in a different hand on a different type of stationary. It was, oddly, laminated. The paper inside was crinkled slightly, as if a tiny bit of water had dripped on it. It read as follows.
View Full Post
Day 1
I took the bus again today, and arrived at Terezín in the midst of a large group of American tourists. They were loud, and had little respect for the place. And when they first got there, they all made a pilgrimage to the WC. I wondered if they could even imagine having only two bathrooms for six-hundred people. I have with me no extra clothes—they didn’t get extra clothes, why should I?—and enough food to last me several weeks. The food that would “last me several weeks” is probably the amount of food they had for the whole five years. Assuming they survived that long.
I followed the tourists until we came to the tunnel system. The tour guide said that anyone who was uncomfortable with being underground for 500 meters could go around a certain way. I opted for that. And I hoped that she wouldn’t remember me as the one who had been so curious about the tunnel two weeks ago. She didn’t. View Full Post
From the desk of the editors/transcribers, Mr. Mark C. DenHoed and Mr. John R. Ahern -
A word of explanation and recapitulation. This story is written by Russe” ******, found by Ahern and DenHoed outside Reno on Interstate 80. This installment is a good deal longer than the previous installments due to the fact that, as we deciphered the script, we could find no good breaking point. We continued until we came, at last, to a good place to stop. We beg the indulgence of the reader towards the excess length of this manuscript. We have yet to begin on Installment V, so we can’t promise that it won’t happen again. For now, just find comfort, as we do, in the fact that this is not our fault: it is Russe*’s fault.
Thanks, and have some fun,
A Love Lost and Regained: Installment IV
My love is gone, so far away
Gone
Lost
Never to return
The cords that bound us are snapped
The ties that bind are broken
I shall never love again
That day I lost my love
As in the fields, the stars shone above
-Pherden And
Chapter 8
I remembered waking up on my birthday 7 years ago. I was 11. As my beautiful amber hair lifted from the pillow, Burton, our butler, entered the room.
“Miss Cantaloupe,” he said, “Eet ees quahtur to 10 and your parents ‘ave asked that I wake you. Mais oui? You will, no doubt ruhmember dat today is your birthday. And,” he added, “your parents have a surprise or two for you!”
I smiled.
“Thank you, Burton,” I said.
“O, la, la! Joi de vivre!” he replied, and strutted out singing Rossini.
Our house was a beautiful Victorian mansion. It had more rooms than I could count (about 27, I think), many sprawling acres of lush, green land, and a dock on the ocean. Our front was faced with the most beautiful stain-glass windows. They showed a lass and a lad in a beautiful forest playing amongst the dandelions. He would play the fiddle and she would dance. It was so lovely that every time I looked at it, tears would well up in my eyes. Then, the hag from the mountains came, carrying in her wake distension [sic] and fear. She broke the bow of the fiddle and broke heart of the girl.
The uppermost windows were crowned with eagles, and rampant lions stood proudly before two enormous columns of the shiniest marble. Everyday would our maids would rub the columns up and down so cleanly that I could look at my face in it. It always used to make me laugh so.
As Burton left the room, I pulled out my finest ball-gown. It was a scarlet silk frock with lavender diamond sequins and a beautiful sky blue and magenta bow. I put on aqua-green emerald ear rings inset in gold, a diamond bracelet, and silver-leather shoes.
It all looked so beautiful. I flung open the great mahogany door and tore down the marble hallway. As I came around the last turn in the cast-iron spiral staircase, the light shining on and illuminating the gentle, delicate, golden-hued folds of the ball-gown, I saw my family waiting for me around the table, smiling. I slowly made my way through the golden-tinted room. The sun, gazing through the pure and the colorful windows, filled the atmosphere with its warm rays of gold, forest green, bright blue, and blood red.
My father looked over the top of his paper and set his crescent-moon spectacles lower on his nose. His lenses caught the glint of the sunlight, reflecting a glint of sunlight onto the table. He had a kindly, weathered face. His face was not young, but weathered and kindly. His short graying hair shone brightly in the warm morning light.
“Ah, Cantaloupe,” he said, tossing me a carefree grin, “I trust you are well rested after your nice sleep.”
I laughed. Father often made the wittiest comments.
“Oh, Father,” I cried, so happy I thought I could bust. [sic]
“Come here, you rascal,” he said, reaching toward me. I screamed and ran about the table, giggling. My mother – oh, she was so beautiful – looked upon the scene and smiled, sipping her coffee.
“Now then,” said Father, “Back to our game.”
Father pulled out our chess set. It was a beautiful mahogany set, with delicately carved pieces.
“Now where were we?” asked father, adjusting his spectacles.
“As I remember,” said father, “the board was something like this.”
Father began placing pieces on the chess board.
“Wait, daddy,” I said, “As I recall, I had an Alekhine’s Gun on C1 through C3.” I gave him a sharp look and smiled.
“You’re so clever, Cantaloupe.” I blushed. “Well, I recall that I had a Maróczy Bind, here,” he said, pointing at the center of the board. We decided to just start anew. The game was begun by me with a strong King’s Gambit Accepted. It was replied in typical fashion by father with a Cunningham Defense.
“Not so good at chess now, are you?” I taunted later in the game, as I set up a brilliant Philidor Position, my favorite endgame strategy. “J’adoube,” said Father, adjusting his king.
I took father’s last pawn en passant. He fell into my trap, taking my rook. As I moved into the setup for checkmate, I said, “Your move, father,” with a victorious ring. Father, visibly embarrassed, swept the pieces from the board. He took off his glasses and put them in top of the chess set, which he then put in its box, which, in turn, went into the cabinet in the corner.
“Now to the business of the day. What would you like for your birthday?”
“Father,” I said, looking into his deep, shining eyes, “All I want for my birthday is a father’s love! It’s all I could ever want! What else could there be?”
“Oh Cantaloupe,” he said, hugging me, “You have such a good Heart. I’m sure it will serve you well. But, you know, there are people out there who don’t have Hearts as good as yours.”
I felt tears well up in my shining eyes. “What?” I said.
“Steven,” whispered Mother, “Don’t bring that up, especially on Canty’s birthday!”
“You’re right, June. Remember, Cantaloupe,” he said, turning toward me, “As long as you keep thiiiis much -” here he stretched out his large arms as far as they would go – “Love in your Heart, nothing can ever happen.”
“But I already have Love in my Heart,” I said.
“I know you Love your mother and me, Cantaloupe,” he said, “But to Truly Love is to be Loved.”
I began to cry. “But don’t you and mother Love me?”
“Of course we do, Cantaloupe,” he said, softly, patting my shoulder lightly, “but, everyone in the whole wide world, all the way past those hills and mountains, all the way over the great bay, must Love you, Cantaloupe. Everyone you meet. Only then can you truly Love!”
“Remember, Cantaloupe,” he added. “Remember these words, for they shall prove useful. I’ll always be there for you!”
He then began to tap his foot, as he always did when about to sing. He quietly began to put forth a haunting melody. Mother joined in, harmonizing as only she could. The words were sung in a foreign tongue, but one that my heart could understand. These are not the words, but a shadow and shimmer of the magic conveyed in those beautiful syllables.
The way to your home is in your heart,
The path of life is in your soul.
You must always do your part
Make it your unceasing goal.
To love the people in your sphere
It doesn’t matter who they are.
For it is fine to shed a tear
One for every blazing star.
Make Love your well practiced art
To love the world, in its whole.
The way to your home is in your heart,
The path of life is in your soul.
“Oh, daddy,” I exclaimed, “That’s so beautiful!”
“Yes, it is,” he said, “Now, come, dear, it’s finally time to open your presents.”
We went into the cozy family room that had a lofty ceiling stretching up 20 feet to the heavens. Near the hearth of the fire were a pile of presents, wrapped in packages and bows of all sizes, shapes, and colors.
“Oh! Mommy! Daddy!” I jumped up and down for glee while they watched on with big, encouraging smiles.
I remember so well those presents – a new dress, a new pair of shoes, a new deck of cards, dozens of books by Finley, Blackmore, Curtis, Burnett, Burns, Woody, and Sebastian, a new, shiny blue cart for the pony, a new pink hair brush for me, a red one for Saza my pet tiger, a new necklace, and gold-leaf harpsichord with pictures of baby angels with rosy cheeks shooting arrows into the hearts of happy mortals, painted delicately on the side. While Burton took away all the presents to my room, I hugged and kissed my parents and sat on their laps.
“But there’s one more present we – your mother and I together – must give you.”
I heard the sound of water lapping at the side of the boat. I opened my eyes and surveyed the boat. Antonio faced his tan, beautiful features towards me, smiling, rowing as no other man had never rowed before in all of history. [sic]
“How are you holding up, dearest?” he asked.
“Oh, Antonio, I’m fine. You’re not getting tired, I hope.”
“Of course not. We Italians do this – what is it you say – rowing all day.”
I pulled out my heart-shaped pocket watch and watched as the crimson radii slowly made their way across the watch’s face.
“Why, Antonio, it’s gotten to be eight o’clock,” I exclaimed.
“Eight o’clock?” mourned Antonio. “And we have not eaten a thing!”
I reached into the larder and pulled out some sandwiches I had made.
“Thank you, my heart’s desire,” he said as I handed him one of my trademark tuna and grilled zucchini sandwiches. “Oci ciornie!” He put his fingers to his lips and kissed them as they sprung away from his face, in a picture of ecstasy. In that face, I saw Heraclitus, Julius Caesar, Constantinople [sic]….
“We must not take long with Dinner. If I stop rowing too long, we may be caught in a riptide and drift further out to sea. I’ve been rowing to the shore all afternoon and I do not want to lose progress. For your sake, of course.”
I laughed. Antonio was so smart. But, deep as I loved him, I missed Jack. “Antonio,” I asked, “Do… do.. do you drink?”
“Only a little.”
“Oh, Antonio”, I laughed, scrunching up my freckled nose, “you’re so funny sometimes.”
“Shhh,” yelled Antonio, “Can you hear that?”
I closed my eyes very tight and listened as hard as I could.
At first, I heard the sound was a bell from a wharf. But then, I heard over that the familiar sound of garden chimes. The gentle tones reverberated through the air, rising and falling with the wind. I saw that the world is full of magic.
“Antonio,” I exclaimed, “That sound… those bells… I-I-I recognize th-them. I don’t know where, but… I’ve heard them somewheres before…”
“Then we have hit land!”
Antonio found new vigor, rowing with new-found vigor. After being at sea for so long, I could almost cry at the sight of land.
I cried.
“Oh, Antonio… we made it! I almost lost hope!”
“There seems to be a dock,” said Antonio as we came upon the dock.
The grass had all withered. The old weeping-willow tree was bent almost to the ground. It was a dreary sight.
The wood of the pier was old, stiff, rotting, and beautiful. All that was left of what was once, no doubt, a boathouse, was a plank of wood, standing on end, like a sentry, watching over the old dock, keeping out the foreigners. They hung a bell which tolled morosely in the maritime blue. There also hung the garden chimes, singing in the wind, which I had previously heard, several yards away up the path from the dock.
I slowly stepped out of the rocking boat onto creaking dock. I wondered, asked, pleaded of the world, the reason for the condition of the dock. Antonio jumped out of the boat in his own strong way. I wrapped my jacket tight about me, for the fog was so cold I thought it would freeze my bones. The bracing breeze swept my long hair out of my face, and I thought, deep in my heart, that I could hear a small child crying off in the distance.
It was all too much for me.
I ran.
The cool wind streamed through my face as I tore up the cobblestone pathway. My feet splashed softly through the puddles on the path. A fog hushed all of nature like a wet, cold blanket of moisture. The only sound I could hear was that of my own fevered crying. I knew that something terrible had happened here long ago. But what? I listened very hard and I thought that I could, just a little, make out the sound of dripping water. I hurried on ahead.
I stopped and stared. A lone tear made its winding way straight down my cheek.
It was the saddest thing I’d ever known, seen, felt. There was a rosebush, small and fragile, with nothing but its own inner strength and unbreakable spirit to shield it from what fate might bring. It had but one rose, just budded.
I felt Antonio’s presence behind me.
The one rose was covered with golden beads of water from the fog. The beads collected and, hesitantly, began to gently [sic] slide down the petals. Then, converging into one large drop, they edged to the tip of the petal, stood for a moment, and fell, falling like the last breath of a faerie as it dies from the loss of a silent lover. That infinitesimal tear splashed into a small puddle in the ground. The waves – oh, how small! – reverberated unto the edge of the water and were no more. The glassy surface of the puddle stood still, reflecting the hazy image of my tear-stained face.
>
I cried.
Antonio’s strong arm came around my shoulder.
“There, there, Cantaloupe,” he said reassuringly, “All will be well.”
“Oh, but Antonio,” I cried, “How can it? There’s so much evil and hatred! How can anything ever be happy again?! It would be better for nothing good or bad to have ever happened than for this one thing to happen!”
“Oh, Cantaloupe,” he said.
He burst into song. His tenor voice was magical and delicate.
“Just hold on to your hope,
Cantaloupe,
Open your mouth and sing,
Dearest thing,
Everything will be alright
Just stay bright.”
“It’ll be alright,” he said, “As long as you hold onto your hope and keep your chin up!”
“You’re right, Antonio,” I said, wiping away my tears.
Now that my eyes cleared, I caught a faint glint amidst the rubble.
“A-antonio,” I said, “What’s that?!”
We slowly made our way through the soaked stone and wood.
We came into an open area of what I now realized was once a building. A huge stone claw, as if of a tiger or a jaguar, was tossed on its side. Beautiful, delicate glass was strewn here and there, and Antonio and I had to make the greatest efforts that our feet not be pierced. The remains of a spiral staircase stood, ready to topple at any second. There stood in the corner a box of delicate wood with blue and gold paint pealing off and metal wires sticking out in all directions like the snakes on the Gorgon’s head.
The glint that had attracted me was sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker, than when I had first seen it, but now, as I had almost lost hope of finding it amidst the chaos, the light was refracted in a swan-shaped pawn in a brightness that practically blinded us. It was made of the most transparent glass, except for the rose in the swan’s beak, which was a rosy-red colored glass.
I clutched the pawn in my blushed hands. And put my hands to my chin.
“En passant,” I whispered.
Memories once more flooded back on me.
Father put me down and walked to the hearth above the fireplace. Pressing on the hearth, he balanced his weight forward, and there was a rumbling as two secret cupboards arose from the ground on either side of the hearth. Out of the right one he took a small object wrapped in tissue paper.
“Here,” he said. “Unwrap it.”
I unwrapped it, and there inside was the most beautiful pocket-watch I had ever seen. It was dark gold in the shape of a heart, with pink arrows for hands. The band was made of silver. I looked on the back. The word “Love” was inscribed in delicate golden cursive.
“Treasure this watch forever, Cantaloupe. And always keep my words with you. For, with Love, Wisdom, and Power, you will inherit the greatest treasures. And Cantaloupe, don’t forget this – never forget this – Lamas Therion!“
I hugged him. “Thank you, Father.”
And then…
And then…
[Editor's note: We edited out several more "and thens" for the sake of space. Just realize they're there.]
There was a commotion in the other room. My father looked at my mother.
“Burton probably just spilled something,” mother said.
“I shall treasure this watch forever,” I said, hoping to keep the magic. But it was gone.
“Cantaloupe,” said my mother, “I’ll tell you what. Let’s go shopping for a new gown!”
“Oh, that would be delightful, mother! Is father coming?”
“No, I can’t come, Cantaloupe,” said Father, “There’s…there’s a house wreckage I have to go adjust.” Father was an insurance adjuster, you see, and his job often involved all sorts of horrible tedious work.
“Goodbye, Father,” I said, as Mother and I left.
“Goodbye, Cantaloupe,” he yelled after us.
“Have a good time, June,” he added.
Mother and I had a glorious time shopping. And when we came back…the house was gone. Burnt. To the ground. In a pile. Of ashes. And soot. And smoke.
The sound of Antonio’s voice returned my thoughts to the present.
“Cantaloupe, what’s wrong? Where have you seen this before.” he asked.
“I… I think that…”
“What? What do you think?”
“This was my house!”
Antonio and I both gaped at the gravity of my startling revelation. For, if this was my house, I must have lived here!
“Cantaloupe… I don’t understand,” said Antonio.
“You’re right,” I said, my hands twitching, “You don’t understand! It’s you that can never understand. My parents were wrong! Everything is wrong! JACK was wrong!”
Suddenly, I felt an indescribable pang of sadness pierce my heart, like a sword skewered into an innocent pig, only to be used for the food of greedy men.
“Oh, Jack. Jack. I miss you! Can’t you come back!”
But I am right here.
It was a voice not in my ears, not in my head, but in my heart. My heart lept at the feeling. I felt an indescribable, all-consuming joy welling up from the very depths of my being as I slowly felt the full impact of those beautiful syllables. I slowly, hesitantly, turned around.
Antonio suddenly starting turning around, slowly at first, and then began twirling faster than my eyes could stand. And then he came to a gradual halt. Only, it wasn’t Antonio anymore. It was Jack.
“Oh, Jack. You’re back. Why did you disguise yourself like this?”
“To test your love. Now I know, my dearest Canty, that you truly love me. Nothing can separate True Love. Not even death or not paying the bill.” He slipped his strong arm around me.
“Oh, Jack. I love you so much.”
“And I you, Canty. Only, do you have a drink?”
I laughed, really laughed, for the first time in months.
Suddenly, a voice said, “Da mihi basia mille, deinde, centum….“
We turned around, and there stood Mrs. Willowbend, with a little smile on her face.
“Mrs. Willowbend! You were speaking in tongues!” I exclaimed.
“Mrs. Willowbend!” Jack shouted out in a voice that I’d never heard before. It was not angry, but it seemed to call upon all the inner forces of nature and goodness and the unbreakable human spirit with authoritativeness. “My Watch!”
Mrs. Willowbend mused for a moment, and then brought her head up with a jerk. “Ahh! Your watch. Quite right.”
Fumbling about in her pocket, she brought out a simple pocket watch, and then smiled. “You want your watch, deary?” She took it off and dangled it invitingly in front of her face. “Come and get it!”
Jack leaped towards her like the prince of the deers, only to find himself caught in a trap laid by Mrs. Willowbend!
She looked up in a mystified amusement. “You know, I thought my relatives were bad, but you really do amaze me. I didn’t think anyone could possibly fall for that.” And then she let out a fearful laugh that filled our ears with hate, anger, and despair.
Oh, hold on, Jack! I’m coming for you!
To be continued…
Vicki writes
(it’s too long to put in one post)
Terezín. 5 years. 32,000 prisoners. You don’t hear about it because it wasn’t the Dachau or Ravensbrück, or Auschwitz. But it was there. And for 32,000 people, it was hell.
Now you can walk through it in the gorgeous Czech summer, you can see the mass grave out front, each tombstone adorned with a rose-bush. You can see the courtyard where they entered, with the wickedly ironic slogan Arbeit Macht Frei on the portal. You can see the place where three men escaped—the only successful escapees. You can see where the prisoners lived in squalor, and where the Germans lived in the lap of luxury. And you can see the barracks for the less important Germans, now converted into a museum.
I knew Great-Grandpa was a German. I guess I knew he was a Nazi too. But nothing prepared me for the shock of seeing his name on the wall of the museum. The museum was divided into little rooms, with posters of information and pictures on the wall. And on the inside wall of each room, there was a painting of an agonized hand. The paintings were actually different in each room. Some of the hands were clutching something, some of them had Nazi symbols on them, some were bleeding…
One of the rooms had pictures and information about the Germans who worked at the concentration camp. The first was Heinrich Jöckell. He was the one in charge, and he was the worst. But there were others too, of course. I went around the room reading about the Germans, what they did (always described in the vaguest of terms), and how they were brought to justice. And then suddenly there was Great Grandpa, smiling down at me, informing me that he had never been punished. He had lived out his days quietly and pleasantly, the poster informed me.
There was something else in the camp, too. The camp wasn’t built as a concentration camp. It was built as a military fortress in the 1700s. And as such, it needed escape routes and places to shoot from. For this purpose there was an extensive tunnel system. It wasn’t used during the concentration camp days, but the tunnels were re-opened when the camp was turned into a memorial. Actually, only one of the tunnels was opened. The rest were grated off, so that over-curious tourists couldn’t wander in and get lost. But you knew the other tunnels were there, because that was where they put the lights. The main tunnel, the one the tourists were allowed to walk through, was 500 meters long. Other tunnels branched off it, and they put the lights a way back in the other tunnels, so the main tunnel was lighted but still dark.
I saw the tunnel first, before I went to the museum, but afterward the tunnel kept forcing its way back into my mind. If you could get over the grates—and I was confident I could—without anyone seeing you—of that I was less confident—you could potentially live there for quite some time without discovery. By the time our tour was done, and we were back on the bus to Tli?in, I was obsessed with the idea. Actually, two different ideas were sloshing around in my brain, bumping into each other, intertwining, tangling up, latching on, until they were absolutely inseparable. Great-Grandpa was never brought to justice. I could live in the tunnels probably indefinitely. Great-Grandpa worked at Terezín. I could live at Terezín. Great-Grandpa never atoned for his deeds. I could.
I’ll post the rest at a later date.
John Ahern writes,
A while back, Philip and I were arguing about beauty. Or rather, that’s exactly not what we were arguing about. I was saying that everything on some level reflects the Trinity – even and especially the grotesque things. He disagreed, and I won’t explain why because I won’t do it justice. And I’m throwing this out here in hopes of a response from him. But here are my ruminations, put better in the words of others with my entirely unworthy elaboration.
“My own feeling is that writers who see by the light of their Christian faith will have, in these times, the sharpest eyes for the grotesque, for the perverse, and for the unacceptable.”
Flannery O’Connor explains this further on down the paragraph – “Redemption is meaningless unless there is cause for it in the actual life we live, and for the last few centuries there has been operating in our culture the secular belief that there is no such cause.”
Secularism denies original sin, as human evil and human deformity are both things to be evolved out of. The Christian is playing into the hand of secularism’s condescension of the idea of original sin whenever it denies the existence and even the necessity for dark, grotesque, ugly things in art and writing. Plato never, to my knowledge, imagined making ideals out of the dark, the grotesque, and the ugly, perhaps because they are deeply material. But that doesn’t mean they’re not spiritual – the Cross is just as spiritual as it is material.
And the Cross is the crux of the matter – interlinguary pun intended – as it is the most grotesque and ugly. As for return to the Platonic, Neo-Platonic, and gnostic duality between spirit (good) and matter (evil), O’Connor comments on the Manicheans.
“The Manicheans separated spirit and matter. To them all material things were evil. They sought pure spirit and tried to approach the infinite directly without any mediation of matter. This is also pretty much the modern spirit, and for the sensibility infected with it, fiction is hard if not impossible to write because fiction is so much an incarnational art.”
Here O’Connor’s trinitarianess comes right through – that, for the fiction writer, the Incarnation gives fiction its boundaries. Its essence. And, according to herself, she is counter-modernity. She is fighting with “an incarnational art” against the lie that the grotesque has no place in the religious.
But is that ugliness simply a process to get through, a process discarded so that we reach the beautiful? Is childbirth only ugly until it brings forth beauty as a child? Is ugliness never an end in itself?
The lesson to learn from grotesqueness isn’t just something we meditate on and then continue. The Cross has long-lasting effects: the holes are still in His hands after the Resurrection. And to hear about Thomas sticking his fingers in them is kind of gross. The unacceptable is very close to the infinite, in this case, and it isn’t a stain that becomes magically zapped-free of ugliness once all the darkness is over.
I don’t deny that there is a certain extent at which we must see beauty in the ugliness of scars and perverseness and deformity, but that is what O’Connor and her intellectual mentor, Jacques Maritan, would call Mystery. Perverseness is not something to be avoided (and it certainly isn’t avoided in O’Connor’s short stories), but it isn’t necessarily revealed as beautiful. Hence the Mystery. O’Connor’s refusal to shy away from this is shown in a scene in Temple of the Holy Ghost as the hermaphrodite shouts, “God made me thisaway and if you laugh He may strike you the same way. This is the way He wanted me to be and I ain’t disputing His way.” I doubt he was the first to suggest it, but Douglas Jones wonders if any other author would have thought that Christ could appear “as a carnival hermaphrodite?”
If it isn’t obvious how this relates to the Trinity, then why not get Dorothy L. Sayers to set your minds at rest? “I will go so far as to maintain that the extraordinary confusion of our minds about the nature and function of Art is principally due to the fact that for nearly 2,000 years we have been trying to reconcile a pagan, or at any rate a Unitarian, aesthetic with a Christian — that is, a Trinitarian and Incarnational — theology.” It should be obvious how this relates to the Trinity because central to the Trinity is a “death” to self (Psalm 110), from which, as the Nicene would have it, proceeds the Spirit. And, not simply a metaphorical or spiritual death, but a real, unplatonic, tangible death. But this, as Hans Decker would hasten to point out, is only another divine joke.
N. D. Wilson, a children’s author for Random House, consented to an interview with Pontification Ad Nauseam on what advice he could give to young authors – style, plot, the ideogenesis of themes, characters, milieu, and, of course, personal influences.
Mr. Wilson passed all our expectations, and I really recommend the interview below to anyone who’s writing fiction. It completely changed my approach to writing a (serious) story, in any case. You may have heard the things he’s said before, but I can assure you you’ve never heard them quite like he says them. Nobody in my lilliputian knowledge has ever compared writing a story to a shopping spree.
The interview took place over Skype, and special and highest thanks to Mark DenHoed for putting in a lot of time and effort editing the file. He never officially gets heard or acknowledged during the interview, but he’s behind the scenes doing important things.
Still. We qualify Mr. Wilson as a blockhead.
N. D. Wilson Interview
The Bug — (no comment.)
We will be posting a Google Documents Text Transcript as soon as possible.
