[The obligatory image is an actual postcard that I received from a colleague, but it has been manipulated: Using state-of-the-art photo-enhancement software, I gently rubbed the “beauty bar” feature over the face of each individual.]
Sir or Madam,
I’m a week late in delivering this BREAKING NEWS: 2024 just changed to 2025.
I did nothing special for New Year’s Eve, or the 1st. I didn’t even stay up past midnight. But I’m embarrassed to admit this. I wish I could say that I partied hard, got drunk and injested loads of drugs – I admire people who know how to live it up and go wild. Here’s what Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal on December 28, 1831:
The year hastens to its close. What is it to me? What I am, that is all that affects me. That I am 28, or 8, or 58 years old is as nothing. Should I mourn that the spring flowers are gone, that the summer fruit has ripened, that the harvest is reaped, that the snow has fallen? Should I mourn because so much addition has been made to the capital of human comfort?
I agree with this, partly. But “what I am” IS, in some sense, the closing year. As Tennyson’s Ulysses says: “I am a part of all that I have met.” Also I think of the last lines of Stevens’ “Tea at the Palaz of Hoon”:
I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more truly and more strange.
My instinct is to remark: It depends how much you want to abstract yourself from, or identify with, the shared reality. But then I think: Do we really have a choice?
Let’s conclude that, since this truth is unknowable, what matters most is whatever one dares to claim. So here’s what I am willing to put in writing and sign my name to:
I am the spring flowers that are gone; I am the summer fruit that has ripened, the harvest that is reaped, and the snow that has fallen. These things are my total being. But do not mourn that “so much addition has been made to the capital of human comfort”: only lament that it remains heaped up and unused.
Now, what follows could be seen either as a change of subject or a continuation of all that I shared above. Interpret it whichever way you like.
In my previous entry, I wrote “The fact that mass-farmed meat does not taste awful is a proof that there is no benevolent God.” What I meant was that a compassionate deity could easily disincentivize the abuse of living creatures by causing flesh to lose its savor when tormented. Instead, it is impossible to tell, for instance, when consuming a steak, whether the cow that offered its beef to become your person did so willingly or under duress. – The reason I mention this again is that, directly after I finished yesterday’s writing, I happened to read a tale from the Brothers Grimm, and the following part seemed worth sharing in this context.
. . . Marlinchen came into the kitchen to her mother, who was standing by the fire with a pan of hot water before her which she was constantly stirring round. “Mother,” said Marlinchen, “brother is sitting at the door, and he looks quite white, and has an apple in his hand. I asked him to give me the apple, but he did not answer me, and I was quite frightened.” “Go back to him,” said her mother, “and if he will not answer you, give him a box on the ear.” So Marlinchen went to him and said: “Brother, give me the apple.” But he was silent, and she gave him a box on the ear, whereupon his head fell off. Marlinchen was terrified, and began crying and screaming, and ran to her mother, and said: “Alas, mother, I have knocked my brother’s head off!” and she wept and wept and could not be comforted. “Marlinchen,” said the mother, “what have you done? but be quiet and let no one know it; it cannot be helped now, we will make him into black-puddings.” Then the mother took the little boy and chopped him in pieces, put him into the pan and made him into black-puddings; but Marlinchen stood by weeping and weeping, and all her tears fell into the pan and there was no need of any salt.
Then the father came home, and sat down to dinner and said: “But where is my son?” And the mother served up a great dish of black-puddings, and Marlinchen wept and could not leave off. Then the father again said: “But where is my son?” “Ah,” said the mother, “he has gone across the country to his great uncle . . . he wanted to go, and asked me if he might stay six weeks, he is well taken care of there.” “Ah,” said the man, “I feel so unhappy lest all should not be right. He ought to have said good-bye to me,” With that he began to eat and said: “Marlinchen, why are you crying? Your brother will certainly come back.” Then he said: “Ah, wife, how delicious this food is, give me some more.” And the more he ate the more he wanted to have, and he said: “Give me some more, you shall have none of it. It seems to me as if it were all mine.” And he ate and ate and threw all the bones under the table, until he had finished the whole.
That’s from “The Juniper Tree” (in Margaret Hunt’s translation, revised by James Stern). My assumption, when reading it, is that the father will begin to feel a stomachache or notice some ill effect after eating up the black-puddings, since the meal was made from his own child. But look how the story continues:
. . . and the father said, “Ah, I feel so truly happy, and the sun is shining so beautifully outside, I feel just as if I were about to see some old friend again.”
Then a bird that has perched nearby begins to sing a song. “Ah,” the father remarks:
“. . . that is a beautiful bird! He sings so splendidly, and the sun shines so warm, and there is a smell just like cinnamon.”
The father walks outside to have a closer look, and the bird turns out to be carrying certain objects, one of which is a golden chain, which it lets fall:
. . . and it fell exactly round the man’s neck, and so exactly round it that it fitted beautifully. Then the father went in and said: “Just look what a fine bird that is, and what a handsome golden chain he has given me, and how pretty he is!”
I marvel at this upshot. The storyteller might have been our Father in Heaven.
Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you . . . This cup is the new testament in my blood . . .
Saul of Tarsus, alias Paul the Apostle, in his first letter to the Corinthians (11:24-26), alleges that the above words were spoken by Jesus of Nazareth.
As I said earlier, this Grimm tale could be seen either as a change of subject or a continuation of all that I said concerning the turn of the year. And now I add: You might find me in either or both of the male characters.
Finally, here’s another excerpt from Emerson’s journals (1832 May 19); this passage in turn gives quotations from John Jortin, D. D. (1698–1770), author of Discourses concerning the Truth of the Christian Religion – I only wish to assert in advance, with regard to those propositions in the ecclesiastic indoctrination he mentions, that, speaking as a “man of common sense,” I AM a believer:
Jortin said in his tracts that they who uphold the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity must be prepared to assert “that Jesus Christ is his own Father and his own Son. The consequence will be so, whether they like it, or whether they like it not.” He also said in a letter to Gilbert Wakefield, “There are propositions contained in our liturgy and articles which no man of common sense among us believes.”
That’s all I need to report, for the time being. Thanks for reading this far. I hope you have a pleasant rest of your day.
MORAL OF THIS ENTRY
Feign ignorance. Pretend to be unconscious or deceased when threatened.
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