For no reason, here's a photo of my granddad.
(My granddad is the old male, not the young females.) Actually the reason I share this photo is that I am out of images again, and I found the file on my computer which I created the last time I was at my mom's house: I set up a file and saved a bunch of photo scans therein.
By the way, my granddad's name was Randolph. He worked at the fish hatchery. And he never drank more (or less) than three beers per bar visit. And his brother lived in a mobile home (I am told) and owned a great many books. I never got to meet this migrant bookworm granduncle of mine, but I fancy that I am more of a continuation of HIS proclivities than the proclivities of ol' Randy-pa (alias grandpap Rando); for I'm an absinthe surrealist...
But all this info is for another entry; I have a more pertinent entry to write now, so I better begin before my happiness pursuit expires:
Dear diary,
I used to be on the path to some great accomplishment. Now I’m just lost. I have no clue where I’m going or what I’m doing in life, beyond knowing that it’s good to keep writing it down. I figure that maybe if I textify (commit to text) the episodes of my lostness, I’ll strangely and more truly find myself: I’ll have accomplished a minor matter after all.
So yesterday my mother & sister paid us a visit. It was Sunday. Now that we live in the pseudo-suburbs rather than in the shit-hole mini-pseudo-ghetto, and in a house rather than a lousy apartment, we’re the talk of the town. Or maybe talk of the town is going too far; that’s like claiming we’re the Prom King & Queen. I only mean to say that, if house guests were money, my sweetheart and I would be the wealthiest non·business·people in recorded history. Post T-Rex; anti-Aquarius and auto-Oedipus. (I added that last sentence just for the sound.)
Anyway, they paid us a visit: mom and sis. And since we’re all adults, we have nothing to do; no interests, no desires; so we sit around attempting conversation. I kick myself, now that I’m reviewing my memories of our day, because I realize that I too often veer my speech toward religio-polisdung (politics & religion). It’s a terrible habit, boringer even than the speaker himself.
Oh! I should mention, before I forget, that my mother brought us three fine towels as a gift. Not gold frankincense & myrrh but hand-towels for the bathroom. This was a good gift, because just yesterday we—again, by we I mean my sweetheart and I—ended up “retiring” a sect of old towels and demoting them to the level of household rags. We even, yesterday, when visiting The Soft Store (for details about which, see my previous entry), gawked for a long time at the towel section, contemplating buying some fresh new recruits. So this act of generosity was appreciated.
But back to my bad habits of conversation. I somehow, when given the chance to talk to fellow humans, always end up waxing prolix about U.S. politics: about the Republicans and the Democrats; about the economy; about past presidents; about Capitalism and Fascism and Communism and Socialism and Bryanism. (Bryan·Ray·ism is the only system that works: it makes everything perfect and there are neither problems nor troubles anymore, forever. Amen.) Nobody cares about this stuff, yet I realize this fact too late—that is, after I’ve spoke my·damn·self blue in the face, I stop to catch my breath and glance around the table at my audience and realize that they’re unanimously heavy-eyelidded.
The last time my sister visited, she visited alone. I asked her why she did not bring mom along, and she said “It’s different when mom comes; there’s a different vibe. We all don’t talk as freely and easily.”
So this time, since she and my mom were both in attendance, at a certain point I turned to my sister and said, “Dear Susan, what would you be talking about if mom weren’t here? Speak up, or else you’ll regret succumbing meekly to the…”
“I would be talking about the book that I’m reading,” Susan said.
“What book is that?”
And she gave the title and told about the plot. I’ll try to relay what I remember from her synopsis, tho I fear I’ll butcher it:
It’s a story about the grandmother of Jesus. (Yes, that Jesus.) Or rather it’s about the spirit or soul or ethereal will or extra-dimensional vibration or jinn or poltergeist, which intruded upon the body of Jesus’ grandmother. (Breaking and entering usually results in a prison sentence of greater than one year.) This ghostly substance, according to my sister’s source, is called Saint Anne. However, in chapter 4 of my gospel Why I Am Not a Surrealist, it is given its proper title: THE NONA. From what I can gauge (according to the tale, as told by my sister, full of sound and fury) The Nona (St. Anne) infiltrated the body of the Nazarene’s great grandmother right at the instant when she was giving mammal-birth to her matriarch. So The Nona managed to nab an abode located within that sweet spot between existences. And she lived in Atlantis, then she moved to Egypt and Athens, and eventually ended up in England, where christ was born. And you can capitalize the “c” in christ, if you believe that his soul was more of a king than yourn.
Well that’s all of my gospel that Evilzon, its distributor, will allow me to screen-capture. So now back to my walk-n-talk with mom-n-sis:
Then I asked my biological sibling codenamed Susan, “So, according to this book that you’re reading, what exactly is the importance of Jesus?”
And she answered, “I don’t know. I haven’t read that far in it yet.”
So I said, “Well then what’s the importance of Jesus, to you yourself?”
And she said, “Well Jesus is important because he’s the Christ: he’s the star-being who was sent here to our earthly existence to show us how to love each other.”
I let this answer stand as the final word, because I wanted to listen and not get into an argument. But now, since I’m just writing in my journal, I can say whatever the fuck I want – so I’ll tell you my thots. My thots were as follows, with regard to my sister’s assertion that “Jesus is the star-being who was sent here to show us how to love each other”:
I thot: “Alrighty then during all those years that we label ‘P.C.’ [Pre Christ], no one knew how to love? LOVE was simply not known?”
Then I turned my big fat face to my mom and said, “When you hear Susan talk about this stuff – about your savior’s great grandmother’s pregnancy being usurped by stellar ectoplasm, and its subsequent travels throughout the ancient world – do you see any connection, any relation, any echoing of your own beliefs?” (For the record, I should remind myself that my mother was born into the Catholic Church and then spent her entire adult life in the Protestant Reformed Church; & she remains a devout believer in the authority of preisthood.)
“No,” mom said, “I don’t relate at all to what Susan is saying, or to what she believes or studies: I see neither a connection nor a reflection, nor even a mutation of my own convictions. But she reminds me of you, dear Bryan, because these books that she reads are so obscure.”
And I shouted, “OBSCURE!?!? My books are the King James Bible and Shakespeare. Dante and Homer. William Wordsworth, Emily Dickinson. Ralph Waldo Emerson. I’d say these are rather the opposite of obscure: they’re the most renowned books in the Whole Wide World (not to be confused with the World Wide Web). Their well·known·ness is part of the reason I ever bothered to give my time to them; I eventually learned to love them genuinely and personally, but the reason I first approached them is that I was tired of being manacled to underground rap music – I YEARNED to be part of something universal; I wanted to give my mind to a truly SOCIAL phenomenon, not just to cower under a fad or niche subgroup. If modern inventions in so-called entertainment, like television and prerecorded music etc., have lured the majority away from the School of the Ages, away from what used to be called the humanities, so that these towering accomplishments are nowadays enjoyed by none but a happy few, that’s a sad proof of our time’s decline; but I lament any seeming obscurity in the art I embrace: at least I don’t strive towards the abstruse and arcane; I don’t intentionally go seeking out amorphous doohickeys.”
And my mom said, “I simply meant that the things that you care about are unfamiliar to most people, and so are these ideas that Susan relayed.”
So I said, “Well I see Susan’s care for myths and stories ancient and modern, and for the creative and metaphorical upshots thereof, as a twist on my enthrallment to art and literature; but I also see Susan’s credulousness in these matters of spiritism as analogous to your own overwillingness to trust the church’s priests.” And then I said, “What do you think, Susan?”
And Susan looked up from her phone and said, “About what?”
And I said, “Do you see the connection between your own thinking and mom’s?”
And she answered, “No: mom and I think nothing alike.”
INCONCLUSION
So maybe I’m wrong. Maybe my mother and sister are unique individuals, wholly different from each other, and not a continuation of a type of pre-scientific credulity.
CONCLUSION
The important thing is that we human souls are all isolated from one another, so that, someday soon, this Corporate Capital Culture can steamroll over our mass grave with impunity.
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