Friday, April 14, 2023
IN bed at 9:30, up with GERD at 11, out of bed, into the bedroom recliner till 2:50, a rough night with minnow bucket thoughts racing through my head, back up at 6:50. 52℉, high of 69℉, sunny afternoon predicted, low winds 4 to 11 mph today, gusts up to 18. Sunrose at 6:09, sunset at 7:33, 13+21.
Geri on her beautiful Trek bicycle. First ride of the Spring. Beautiful lady on her elegant bike. I should have taken a photo of her! Drat!
Thinking of Checking Out from the News. I go through this fantasy periodically, but more and more the older I grow. In more extreme form it consists of finding a cottage or log cabin up around Three Lakes and living there without internet, without television news, without daily newspapers, withdrawn from all the wretchedness of contemporary American life - Red vs. Blue, fascists vs. socialists, mass shootings, AR-15s, gerrymandering, viruses of all kinds, climate change, etc. Currently, it consists of cutting down on watching television news and realizing that it, like ads and commercials, is designed to make me unhappy, worried about events and trends over which I have no power or, in the case of commercials, trying to make me want something I don't have (a nice new Lincoln!) or telling me about some disease of which I've never heard which can be treated by some medication about which I should ask my doctor, or making me feel like shit unless I donate $19 a month to save a child's life, or a tiger's life, or to save mistreated shivering starving animals. We move from deliriously happy, laughing people whose lives have been made so much more satisfying because of some consumer product to ads for a product to cure toenail fungus to videos of starving children with cleft palates needing help only we can provide. How can we live with a steady diet of this stuff, day in, day out, without wanting to jump off a cliff? Or am I just withdrawing from life generally, tired, worn out?
Home. I finished it, heart-aching. It reminded me a bit of my cousin Doug and his sister Christine. The thematic hymn in the narrative is Softly and Tenderly, one of my favorite hymns at St. Francis of Assisi, with its poignant 'come home, come home, you who are weary, come home.'
- Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling,
Calling for you and for me;
See, on the portals, He’s waiting and watching,
Watching for you and for me.- Refrain:
Come home, come home,
You who are weary, come home;
Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,
Calling, O sinner, come home!
- Refrain:
- Why should we tarry when Jesus is pleading,
Pleading for you and for me?
Why should we linger and heed not His mercies,
Mercies for you and for me? - Time is now fleeting, the moments are passing,
Passing from you and from me;
Shadows are gathering, deathbeds are coming,
Coming for you and for me. - Oh, for the wonderful love He has promised,
Promised for you and for me!
Though we have sinned, He has mercy and pardon,
Pardon for you and for me.
But the story told by the author suggests, like Thomas Wolf's novel which I think a read a half-century ago, You Can't Go Home Again. (Am I confusing this with Look Homeward, Angel, or did I read both?) Mysterious Jack Boughton is the focus of the story, though just as much as his sister Glory. The ailing aged father is important too but largely as a foil to Jack and Glory's sense of failure, disappointment, and essential loneliness. Reverend Ames, Jack's namesake, and godfather, central to Gilead, is also important to the story, but he's mostly on the periphery of the action, such as it is. Jack is a walking pity party, as is Glory. Jack has been a troublemaker since he was a child. In Gilead, Rev. Ames reflects that Jack had a meanness about him, a desire to hurt people, to harm them. In Home, it's not meanness or malice that stands out as his dominating trait, but rather loneliness, his difficulty, or unwillingness, to relate to others, his being largely anti-social from his earliest years, a loner. In the important scene in which he quizzes his father and John Ames about predestination and salvation, he must have been wondering in large part about himself, whether he was 'born this way' as Lady Gaga sings, destined from eternity to be the way he was, foreclosed from the salvation that his father and John Ames thought themselves privy to. But Jack also had a pretty keen sense of injustice, and of social injustice especially when it came to anti-Black racism. How much of that was innate in him and how much was due to his relationship with Della is unclear. Perhaps I'll have a better sense of Jack when I read Robinson's novel titled after him, or the novel titled after Ames' wife Lila, who, like Glory, has an easier time relating to Jack than others do. In any event, Glory is as important a character as Jack in the novel. Unlike Jack, she is loving, caring, and concerned about others in ways that Jack isn't, though both are quite concerned about what others think of them. She lives a lie about her marital state and covers up the fact that she was 'done wrong' by her "fiance", a married man. She lies to her father, her siblings, and the town and lives a life of remorse over what has become of her life. But she is Jack's only friend and is often brought to tears over his alcoholic, pinched life.
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