Friday, July 3, 2015

THOMAS MERTON CONFIDENTIAL (or: did they or didn't they?)




I’ve never been much of a Mertonologist, though I know there are entire societies worldwide that exist only to praise his lowly, Trappist name.

For he was a Trappist (also known as Cistercian), a bona fide hermit, bestselling author, cult figure, and many other things besides. I think he probably wrote many hundreds, perhaps thousands, perhaps even millions of pages and is still writing them right now, even as we speak, though he was electrocuted in Thailand back in 1968. Always known to be clumsy, he grabbed a poorly-wired electric fan to steady himself when getting out of the bathtub. Don’t touch those things while wet, Thomas.




I don’t know, nor do I particularly want to know, all the details of Thomas Merton’s life history, except that when he was young, he was Bad, and when he was older, he was Good. I am not sure if he was poisonously good or not, but good he must’ve been, living in that hut and all.

I read a hilarious account written by Joan Baez in which she and her spiritual mentor Ira Sandperl witnessed the good Brother Thomas (or Brother Louis, as he was variously known)  put away two cheeseburgers, an order of fries and more than a couple of shots of Irish whiskey (let’s hope it was Irish, for God’s sake, and not that other stuff), while telling them that he had fallen in love with a woman in Lexington and wanted to go sneaking away to see her.

No one “sees” someone they are involved with. I think it involves considerably more than seeing. Other senses are involved. It’s funny that when you look up accounts of Thomas Merton’s infamous affair, many INSIST that it “wasn’t consummated”, while others insist that it obviously was. Or perhaps should have been.





Obviously, the only thing sexier than having sex is NOT having sex. We knew this in Grade Nine, for God’s sake, while fumbling frantically around in the back seat. An elbow in the eye was a fair price to pay for a digit in the right place. Or don’t you remember?

While I could never get through a  Merton biography because I don’t think they’re honest enough, and while I could not get through The Seven Storey Mountain to save my bloody life, I might be able to get through this semi-bio by Mark Shaw. It’s got an unfortunate True Confessions title (Beneath the Mask of Holiness: Thomas Merton and the Forbidden Love Affair that Set Him Free) that has serious Mertonologists hopping mad, hopping up and down in their faux habits which they wear to Mertocon conventions (in which everyone dresses up as the monk of their choice).





It’s just the good parts, folks, though of course to avoid lawsuits the author has had to put it all in context: how this great man and spiritual giant became human and proved, to himself and to the entire world, that he was Humble and Contrite and got away with bloody murder because he was so famous and the abbey needed the money.

Surely that must have been part of why this enigmatic spiritual genius got away with such murder, and why he wasn’t chucked out for frolicking in the green woods with a 25-year-old woman and lying about it (his dishonesty and deceptiveness, in the long run, being the more serious sin).

Merton got himself into this delicious mess when his back gave out and he was confined to the hospital for surgery. An attractive young student nurse gave him back rubs, sponge baths, etc., and one can understand the attraction: someone who hasn’t been touched in 20 years is suddenly getting all this professionally-sanctioned hands-on attention from a young woman.

Attraction quickly gave way to . . . attraction.





Margie Smith was completely awed by the grinning Catholic Buddha/walking contradiction that was Merton, who by this time was the most famous Trappist hermit in the history of the world. He was literally twice her age, and had a very big thing (sorry!) about his vow of chastity, so that in the next few months he pushed it as far as he could without – we think – or so we are told -  “breaking” it.

I have a little bit of problem with a grown man NOT having sex with a woman he is madly in love with. It seems somehow indecent. It reminds me of Bill Clinton and his famous statement, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” because in his humble opinion blow jobs did not qualify as “sexual relations”.  It’s a fairly common practice for men to have anal sex with a woman, particularly a virgin, then deny he “had sex” with her because he used a relatively (though not entirely) non-standard orifice. I have read more than once that this practice is particularly common in fundamentalist Christian circles, where “purity” is prized but perhaps a little ill-defined.





You can have sex with a knothole, men. ‘Fess up. Friction will do it. But there is a certain prissy sense of tiptoeing around, of walking along the line instead of stepping over it. For some obscure reason I find this infuriatingly dishonest.

We define “sex” and “consummation” in some pretty strange ways. I have no problem with the act that legally defines it, but it can and often does happen with no orgasm, at least not for the woman. That’s dreadful. A man with a talented hand can get you there without even undressing you. You see, we live in a sexually-limited society which is secretly still appalled at the whole thing, or at least doesn’t care two figs if a woman is sexually satisfied or not.

I get that feeling with Merton. He couldn’t get away from his feelings, but at the same time he skated around them. He was playing the naughty boy, the bad monk acting out, while secretly hoping his abbot would grab it and get him back to where he belonged. But he played his young would-be lover, too, perhaps even played her for a fool.





This excerpt from the Thomas Merton Confidential book kind of sums up the whole thing, with the same sentiments repeated over and over as he refuses to decide either way and deceives everyone in his monastic world.

“As May ended, Merton was frenzied as he attempted to sort out his feelings after a second secret interlude, where “we got ourselves quite aroused sexually” and he suffered “a great deal of confusions, anguish, indecision and nerves.” He decided, “I cannot let this become a sexual affair, it would be disastrous for both of us.” Placing at least part of the blame on Margie and her “being too curious . . . and too passionate for me (for her body to tell the truth was wonderful the other day, ready for the most magnificent love)”, Merton, praying he could resist her, recalled more talks about the need for the love to be chaste. He was fearful of another meeting alone on the Gethsemani grounds, and told her it was unwise.”





They keep meeting, though meeting right on the grounds seems like lunacy to me, not to mention more than a little “nyaa, nyaa, look what I’m getting away with”. They meet every place they can, which is pretty hard because he is not supposed to leave the abbey or venture very far from his hermit’s hut. His writings about his passionate, illicit interlude, which are surprisingly candid for someone who must have known it would eventually be published along with all his other writings, are full of references to eroticism, kissing, and “making love”, though stopping short of “real” sex in the form of intercourse (which is, after all, the only true sex).

“He admitted later that night that any step toward a ‘fully involved erotic and sexual love for (Margie) – completely fulfilled and frequently so’ would affect his life and vocation as never before. This was because he knew the loving affection he had for her – ‘with the explicit sacrifice of sex and of erotic satisfaction’ – was more in harmony with God’s love than against it. Did Merton’s words mean no consummation of the relationship had occurred?”





Perhaps the question is academic. But isn’t it true that he shouldn’t have been doing anything that wasn’t acceptable for his abbot to see? What about the most powerful monastic vow of all: obedience? This stuff wasn’t acceptable by anyone’s reckoning. If they weren’t having sex, some serious friction must have been going on. It bothers me just to read about it, even creeps me out. The most alarming passage recounts their wangling office space from a psychologist, drinking champagne, and (at least Margie) getting naked. You almost HOPE he jumps over the wall at this point, because the whole thing is beginning to seem downright agonizing and masochistic. Not to mention hypocritical and dishonest.

One fact which often isn’t mentioned in recounting this strange interlude is the power imbalance between a student nurse in her 20s and one of the most famous and revered spiritual leaders of the 20th century. Even more shocking is the fact that Margie Smith was engaged to be married at the time, her fiancĂ©e having just been shipped over to Vietnam. It gets harder and harder to see this as the wonderful (and, of course, unconsummated) romantic interlude that humanized the great guru and made him Even More Wonderfully Spiritual (because now wonderfully human) than ever.





What seems to have happened is that he gradually lost interest in Margie, after having broken it off a number of times (citing his precious vow of chastity. This begins to remind me of one of those wretched Southern debutantes attending a “purity ball”). He renewed his vows and pledged himself once again to being the most famous and gregarious hermit in the world.

One wonders about Margie. By all accounts, she pulled herself together and married (though not to the same guy she was engaged to: did stories of Thomas somehow cause a rift, I wonder?). I have yet to encounter anything written about this strange interlude that is at all critical of Merton, though it is obvious to me that a 51-year-old spiritual giant is no match for a confused, already-romantically-committed student nurse. And what about all the sexual dangling and lack of fulfillment, which may have carried on right to the end? Was that fair to her? Was it all just a titillating game? Was he dangling HIMSELF as the ultimate, unattainable prize?

We’ll never know, because the guy grabbed an electric fan while soaking wet, and thus was instantly delivered by the powerful slingshot of a few thousand volts to that great and unfathomable mystery on the Other Side.





Post-blog thoughts. I found out, to my great consternation, that there is only one YouTube video I can find featuring the real Thomas Merton giving a real talk. It takes place in Thailand in 1968. Shortly after this talk, feeling a little limp in the heat, he decided to take a shower (or bath depending on which Merton legend you buy into). Then came the encounter with the electric fan that ended his life. So Merton's last spoken words, in public anyway, were "let's go grab a Coke or something." Kind of makes me love him a whole lot more.




ADDENDUM. The death of Thomas Merton

Twenty seven years later, on the same day that he had arrived at the monastery - December 10th, 1968 - Merton died in Asia.

On December 8th, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Merton made his last journal entry, and said Mass at St. Louis Church in Bangkok. Merton had been invited to the 
Bangkok conference of Benedictine and Trappist Abbots. He left for Samutprakarn, 29 miles south of Bangkok, for the Sawant Kaniwat (Red Cross) Conference Center, arrived in the afternoon and was housed on the ground floor of Cottage Two.

On the 2nd day of the conference (December 10th), Merton presented his paper, “Marxism and Monastic Perspective”. The paper had been on his mind for many weeks, and he was somewhat nervous by a Dutch television crew that had turned up to film his lecture. (His abbot had ordered him to avoid the press.)

Merton’s paper dealt with the role of the monk in a world of revolution …

“to experience the ground of his own being in such a way that he knows the secret of liberation and can somehow or other communicate it to others.”

Finishing the talk, Merton suggested putting off questions until evening, and concluded with the words:

“So I will disappear.”

He suggested everyone have a coke.

At around 3 PM Father Francois de Grunne, who had a room near Merton’s, heard a cry and what sounded like someone falling. He knocked on Merton’s door, but there was no response. At 4PM, Father de Grunne, worried that something was wrong, looked through the louvers in the upper part of the door and saw Merton lying on the terrazzo floor. A standing fan had fallen on top of him. The door was forced open.


There was the smell of burned flesh. Merton, clearly dead, was lying on his back with the five-foot fan diagonally across his body. The fan was still electrically volatile.

A long, raw third-degree burn about a hand’s width ran along the right side of Merton’s body almost to the groin. There were no marks on his hands. His face was bluish-red, eyes and mouth half open. There had been bleeding from the back of his head. [see footnote]

The priests gave Merton absolution and extreme unction.

Merton’s body was dressed and laid out, and the abbots attending the conference maintained a constant vigil for him.

“In death Father Louis’ face was set in a great and deep peace, and it was obvious that he had found Him Whom he had searched for so diligently.” (Letter from the abbots attending the Bangkok to the Abbot of Gethsemani)

The next day Merton’s body was taken to the United States Air Force Base in
Bangkok and from there flown back to the United States in company with dead bodies of Americans killed in Vietnam.

An official declaration of Merton’s belongings came with his body and read:

1 Timex watch, $10.
1 Pair Dark Glasses in Tortoise frames, nil
1 Cistercian Leather Bound Breviary, nil
1 Rosary (broken), nil
1 Small Icon on Wood of Virgin and Child, nil

At the end of the funeral Mass at Gethsemani, there was a reading from The Seven Story Mountain, concluding with the book’s prophetic final sentence,
“That you may become the brother of God and learn to know the Christ of the burnt men.”

His brother monks buried Merton in their small cemetery next to the abbey church.


- Beth Cioffoletti, louie louie blog




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Sunday, June 28, 2015

Those dancing feet: Caitlin aces it!




Flowers in her arms, stars in her eyes! Caitlin triumphs once again at her year-end dance recital, but with a difference. She really worked hard this year and had some private coaching from the owner of the dance company, an eccentric English lady in her 60s who still dances up a storm. Caitlin displayed a dramatic leap in skills and focus. It all came together for her. Tap is especially difficult to master, but she blew us away this time with her precision and exuberance. This was a good old-fashioned 1930s-style number a la Busby Berkeley, my favorite kind of tap.




Her other number was a hilarious thing from Legally Blonde called Omigod You Guys!. The thing is, you guys, my kids were (and are) incredible athletes, smart, funny, caring people, everything you could ever ask for. But they weren't into the arts. At all. This next generation overflows with creativity in dance and music, and Caitlin has her own YouTube craft/cooking show. Caitlin also aced her clarinet solo, Over the Rainbow, at her band recital, and Erica's choir has been invited to sing at various cultural events. What can I say? Sometimes you just have to wait it out.


Saturday, June 27, 2015

Marcie in a coat of flowers: the brilliance of Joni Mitchell




Joni Mitchell – Marcie

Marcie in a coat of flowers
Steps inside a candy store
Reds are sweet and greens are sour
Still no letter at her door
So she'll wash her flower curtains
Hang them in the wind to dry
Dust her tables with his shirt and
Wave another day goodbye




Marcie's faucet needs a plumber
Marcie's sorrow needs a man
Red is autumn green is summer
Greens are turning and the sand
All along the ocean beaches
Stares up empty at the sky
Marcie buys a bag of peaches
Stops a postman passing by
And summer goes
Falls to the sidewalk like string and brown paper
Winter blows
Up from the river there's no one to take her
To the sea




Marcie dresses warm its snowing
Takes a yellow cab uptown
Red is stop and green's for going
Sees a show and rides back down
Down along the Hudson River
Past the shipyards in the cold
Still no letter's been delivered
Still the winter days unfold
Like magazines
Fading in dusty grey attics and cellars
Make a dream
Dream back to summer and hear how
He tells her
Wait for me




Marcie leaves and doesn't tell us
Where or why she moved away
Red is angry green is jealous
That was all she had to say
Someone thought they saw her Sunday
Window shopping in the rain
Someone heard she bought a one-way ticket
And went west again



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April - Deep Purple





Wild Orphan by Allen Ginsberg

Blandly mother
takes him strolling
by railroad and by river
--he's the son of the absconded
hot rod angel--
and he imagines cars
and rides them in his dreams,

so lonely growing up among
the imaginary automobiles
and dead souls of Tarrytown




to create
out of his own imagination
the beauty of his wild
forebears--a mythology
he cannot inherit.

Will he later hallucinate
his gods? Waking
among mysteries with
an insane gleam
of recollection?

The recognition--
something so rare
in his soul,
met only in dreams
--nostalgias
of another life.




A question of the soul.
And the injured
losing their injury
in their innocence
--a cock, a cross,
an excellence of love.

And the father grieves
in flophouse
complexities of memory
a thousand miles
away, unknowing
of the unexpected
youthful stranger
bumming toward his door.

New York, April 13, 1952

Thursday, June 25, 2015

To think of blue almonds: Polish phrases and how to use them


20 OF THE FUNNIEST POLISH PHRASES (AND HOW TO USE THEM)

BY OLGA MECKING
MARCH 5, 2015






Photo: PolandMFA

1. A Pole won’t tell you to get lost.

They’ll tell you to “stuff yourself with hay” (wypchać siÄ™ sianem).

2. Poles don’t snack.

They “take something on a tooth” (wziąć coĹ› na zÄ…b).

3. A Pole never beats around the bush.

He prefers to “wrap the truth in cotton” (owijać prawdÄ™ w baweĹ‚nÄ™).

4. Polish people are not nit-picky.

They are “looking for a hole in the whole” (szukać dziury w caĹ‚ym).

5. Polish people don’t count their chickens before they’re hatched.

They “divide the skin on the bear” (dzielić skĂłrÄ™ na niedĹşwiedziu).

6. A Polish person doesn’t sulk.

He “has flies up his nose” (mieć muchy w nosie).

7. Polish people don’t mess things up.




They “make bigos” (narobić bigosu) or “brew beer” (nawarzyć piwa) instead.

8. A Pole doesn’t daydream.

They “think of blue almonds” (myĹ›leć o niebieskich migdaĹ‚ach).

9. Poles will not speak bluntly.

They’ll “tell it straight from the bridge” (mĂłwić prosto z mostu).

10. A Pole is not uninformed…

He just “fell from the Christmas tree” (urwać siÄ™ z choinki).

11. Poles do not simply grin and bear it.

They “put up a good face for a bad game” (robić dobrÄ… minÄ™ do zĹ‚ej gry).

12. A bad Polish writer doesn’t waffle.

He “pours water” (lać wodÄ™).

13. A Polish person doesn’t just run away.

He “gives a leg” (dać nogÄ™) or “takes his legs under his belt” (brać nogi za pas).




14. A Pole is never a know-it-all.

Instead, he “ate all wits” (pozjadać wszystkie rozumy).

15. Polish people won’t pull your leg.

They’ll “stick you into a bottle” (nabić kogoĹ› w butelkÄ™).

16. A Pole won’t take you apart.

He’ll “mix you with mud” (zmieszać kogoĹ› z bĹ‚otem) or “hang dogs on you” (powiesić na kimĹ› psy).

17. A Pole won’t promise you the world.

But you might get “pears on a willow” (gruszki na wierzbie).

18. Polish people don’t run like hell.

They “run where the pepper grows” (uciekać gdzie pieprz roĹ›nie) or “where the devil says 

goodnight” (gdzie diabeĹ‚ mĂłwi dobranoc).

19. Poles won’t pester you.

They’ll “drill a hole in your belly” (wiercić komuĹ› dziurÄ™ w brzuchu).

20. Polish people don’t bite off more than they can chew.

They “jump at the sun with a hoe” (porywać siÄ™ z motykÄ… na sĹ‚oĹ„ce).






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Has this ever happened to you??


 

Monday, June 22, 2015

The Matt Paust Show: Killer Kids





This is the closest thing I'll ever have to The Matt Paust Show. It's about a hideous crime committed back in 1992, in Gloucester, Virginia, Matt's beat when he was a reporter. I think of him then as the old-school newsman, tirelessly tracking down clues, getting the story beneath the story, wearing out shoe leather. Probably with a hip flask in his pocket and a hound dog named Beauregard (oops, cancel that last detail). Wish I had a picture of him. Sometimes, rare times, you click with someone you've never met and you somehow keep an eye on each other, make each other laugh and know that you're friends. Such a one is Matt.




Portrait of the Reporter as a young dog.

Healing hands


Tuesday, June 16, 2015

"Doom & Gloom" (Third Eagle's Tune)






Doom and Gloom
Doom and gloom
Coming soon
Listen to Third Eagle’s tune
Doom and gloom
God is telling us
The end is coming soon
Very soon
You’ll see signs up in the sun
And stars and moon





Doom and gloom, very soon
Rapture comes at night or noon
Doom and gloom, very soon
If you’re ready you will meet
The Bride and Groom
Don’t be dumb
Rapture comes
Long before the seventh trump
Don’t be dumb
It will be as in the days
Of Noah’s flood
Rapture comes
Lot and Noah did not have to
Shed their blood




Don’t be dumb, rapture comes
Trim your wick or face the gun
Don’t be dumb, rapture comes
Fill your lamps
There won’t be oil for everyone
Seven years
Tears and fears
Tribulation will appear
Seven years
Jesus said that it would be
The very worst
Tears and fears
You will think our lovely planet
Has been cursed




Seven years, tears and fears
Catholic church will be a ghost
Seven years, tears and fears
Britian, Russia, and the U.S.
Will be toast
World War 3
Don’t blame me
Listen to Third Eagle’s plea
World War 3
That’s the New World Order plan
For what it’s worth
Don’t blame me
‘cause Obama will provoke
the king of North
World War 3, don’t blame me
You’ll have no ‘lectricity
World War 3, don’t blame me
Store some water, food and fuel
Immediately




Antichrist
He’s not nice
Take Third Eagle’s good advice
Antichrist
He will try to say that Jesus
Is not Lord
He’s not nice
He’ll behead you if you
Follow Jesus’ word
Antichrist, he’s not nice
Take his mark, you’ll pay the price
Antichrist, he’s not nice
He will take away
God’s holy sacrifice




Please don’t dread
Armaged’
Have no fear Third Eagle said
Please don’t dread
Jesus said that He will stop
The death and pain
Armaged’
Only New World Order scum
Will fell the flame
Please don’t dread, Armaged’
Antichrist is such a liar
Please don’t dread, Armaged’
If you take his mark
You’ll join him in the fire




You can win
Just don’t sin
State of grace you must stay in
You can win
If you never do
The filthy sins of flesh
Just don’t sin
Think of Mary and her baby
In the crèche
You can win, just don’t sin
Please don’t watch pornography
You can win, just don’t sin
Onan’s sin is what will make
Your God angry
You can win
Just don’t sin
At Millenium
God’s peace




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Caitlin plays Over the Rainbow!



Why Choo Choo is the coolest character on Top Cat












Monday, June 15, 2015

For your evening's (inexplicable) entertainment. . .


The hate crime no one talks about




Oh yes. Oh, yes, Captain Kirk, and his noble soliloquy in perhaps my fave original Star Trek episode, Miri. The one with all the kids on that planet, you know, all by themselves cuz the adults all died, and they get all gross when they hit puberty and Yeoman Rand's leg looks like a major cigarette burn. I watched it at 13, tape recording it as I usually did on our old reel-to-reel Webcor with the fan-shaped microphone. Kirk wasn't ridiculous then, he wasn't a joke, he wasn't a buffoon and to date, he had done no Loblaws commercials. Kirk was just Kirk.

But his immortal line, "no blah blah blah!" has taken on a special significance in my mind over many decades of observation.



Do you know what I'm talking about? Happens so often I want to yip with irritation. In fact it happened yesterday:  we're in Denny's eating our veggie omelettes with hash browns, when I hear a familiar drone coming from behind Bill's seat.

Umbumummm-bumbumbummm-bumdabumdabumdabuuuuuuuum.

I -

UMMM da bummada bummda. Mm-mmoom-dah! Da bomada bomadadamda bom.

A - 

Bum BUM DA dum dum, demda dum! Dem -




So you get the idea by now. It was one of those totally one-sided conversations you constantly overhear (without meaning to: this is hardly eavesdropping, as I would have loved to shut out all this blathering) in restaurants or theatres or other public places. 

One person is blathering on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and - sorry, my hand just fell off - but as this blathablathablathablathablathablatha goes on, all of it self-referential, all of it self-serving, all of it self-entitled, all of it related to the blatherer's intense suffering at not being treated like a crown prince/ss, I can sense the listener/receiver's blood volume being slowly, slowly, and surely sucked down and siphoned out.

When they leave the restaurant, the blatherer will be hugely inflated with self-righteous helium and all ready for the next deadly gas attack, but the victim (for that is what it is) will be but a pale shadow of his/her former self. She will be so anemic, you'll be able to see through her. She'll have to go home and lie down for a month or more, maybe get a transfusion.




But the thing is, they'll still go out again next week for lunch. The same thing will happen all over again. He or she will tell the same pompous, pointless stories, the same tales of persecution. No one even notices how soul-destroying the experience is. The entitled one will be bursting with hemoglobin by now, ready to explode like some honey-forced queen bee or ruptured giant termite. The victim will now weigh 37 pounds. Doesn't matter how many pancakes she puts away.



I heard it yesterday and I heard it at the mall food fair the day before with a similar booming, thrumming, droning male voice, this time with some sort of European accent. Bom-bomda-BOMmmdaa-bommmm-daBOMmada-bonga, etc. etc.

This is not a conversation. This is a monologue. The monologuist has no idea that it isn't a conversation and in fact thinks he's a very good conversationalist, very smart and sharp. His blathering about camping equipment or the plumbing in his house or his car troubles or the asshole at work who got the promotion he should've got (or his bitch of a wife, always a favorite) strikes him as scintillating discourse sparking a lively debate, an exchange of witticisms rivalling the Algonquin Round Table in sheer witti-blah-tudinous-ness.

He doesn't know, because his brain is made out of shoe leather and his psyche is about as penetrable as a block of obsidian. I would like to start carrying a baseball bat around with me to play whack-a-mole with these characters, but there are just too many of them, and besides, then *I* would be considered obnoxious and antisocial, hitting these poor innocent guys who weren't doing nothin'. 




This is abuse. The endless, boring, repetitive blathering with only the occasional squeak out of the audience/receiver/victim/codependent masochist.  This person NEEDS this sort of ego-stroking, this constant reinforcement of his (or her: one of the worst I've encountered is a her, droning on for 45 minutes about her Grade 11 science teacher and what he wore to class) innate sense that his every word is interesting and useful and even enlightening, when in reality it's a torrent of horseshit more horrific than the result of opening Mr. Ed's stable door.

There is nothing to be done. Stay away, that's all I can say to you, try to stay away and not call them friends. A friend does not stick a drinking straw in your jugular vein and begin to vigorously suck. Blatha-blatha-blathata-blah.




I don't know if this codicil belongs here, but I might as well tack it on. It's the self-proclaimed expert who charges into a room full of chemo patients and bellows, "TAKE MILK THISTLE AND YOU WILL BE CURED!" The person so sure of (his or her) convictions that they force them on others as absolute, unassailable gospel truth.




One doctor I know is a doozie. Educated, an "expert" on many things, in fact famous.

"Illness means you've repressed your emotions."

"No, you mean: I believe illness means you've repressed your emotions."

"There's no debate about this, it's simply true."

"So everybody else, everyone who believes something different from you, is completely erroneous and full of shit?"

"I didn't say that! Don't be so defensive. It's just an opinion."

"Then why didn't you say so?"

"Because it's an opinion that happens to be true."

"Jesus, don't you hear yourself? That's total arrogance!"

"Obviously you have issues with authority figures."

"No, just with YOU, asshole!"

(That last line was fantasized, but isn't it great?)



I once attended some sort of workshop (it had something to do with my sick and dying church trying to manage a last-minute, futile resurrection) where the facilitator said, "Tell me the difference between these two statements: Divorce is terrible."

(Slight tremor in the room, caused by minute vibrations from the divorced people trying not to spit at her.)

"MY divorce was terrible. Which statement is easier to accept?"

Wa-a-a-a-al.



But people don't do it that way! They stride in and say, "Everything happens for a reason/God never gives us more than we can handle/It's all in God's plan." This person has never suffered a major hardship, and in fact has led a charmed existence.  God's will has been, at least up to now, a piece of cake. (Secretly she/he thinks it's because she prays a lot and "surrenders", so God favors her.) But never do they say, "I've come to believe that - " or even, "It's my conviction that - ". No, they just take one of those thingamabobs they used to tamp down powder in a cannon, and casually shove it down your throat.

"I was about to die in a car crash, but my angel saved me."

"God must have intervened."

"It was meant to be" (but NEVER with reference to anything negative. Only positive things are "meant to be". No sense of entitlement here.)

"It was God's plan that little Timmy survive being run over by an express train 47 times."




Oh yes? What about this couple over here, dying of grief because God DIDN'T save their son? What about the man whose wife actually did die in a crash? Didn't she believe enough, didn't God love her enough, didn't she have the right mojo or put enough on the collection plate?

It's really just more BLAHBLAHBLAH, of a particularly toxic variety. It's toxic because it is so un-thought-out, so carelessly said. So smug. So entitled ("see, God loves me enough to pull me out of flaming wreckage. What's wrong with you?")



I wonder sometimes if even half of what people say is really considered, or if it just pours out of them like so much raw sewage. They snag on to jingles, axioms, homilies, catch-phrases, churn them around unexamined, and spit them in your face. They never preface these statements, just jam them up your nose as "fact".  It's easier than thinking, easier than feeling empathy or compassion or any of those dangerous things that require a little stretching of the soul.



The blatherers of the world are verbal thugs. When you see one, whether it's in Denny's or the hardware store or your local church or synogogue, whacking the palm of his hand with a lead pipe and wearing a smug self-involved smile, there's only one thing you can do.

Ru-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-n!






"You had me at hello"

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