AND HOLY LONELINESS

 

AND HOLY LONELINESS

       And holy loneliness...worn by the always changing shape…

             --Conrad Aiken, A Letter from Li Po

I. Outside on a plastic chair, late November

sun warming the notebook, lifting the poem

while the young man, on his back before me,

replaces the rusted-out generator muffler

on the mother-ship; mis-appropriated hope

that light holds off what’s dark and cold.

Morning travel from hospital bed to jail,

packed beauty of the poem yielding

harvest joy while receiving

all the news, all of it, hourly, infinitesimal,

and vast; the re-newable vow.

II. Arriving as Kierkegaard, all-ways

untimely. Temporal and eternal

encyclopedia of sin wound inside

the clock. Needed recognition

of the City of Stars, Star River-

Heaven-Milky Way, one of many.

Not a pleasant fast.

Sucking fish bones dry three times.

not to merit grace

carrying the word that carries me.

III. Marriage arrives as the last option.

And it must have been terror for Karen

to be the only, and absolute,

and I knew nothing of the husband.

Last option, early arrival.

Why me? to be so lucky.

IV. The cross again

In the August, 2021 issue of Harper’s Magazine, Wyatt Mason, in an article titled, ‘Seven Steps to Heaven,’ writes of Jon Fosse’s novel, Septology, published in three volumes, one available, still, only as an ebook. In the first person narrative, Asleik, a painter, looks at his painting on the easel which consists of two lines crossing, ‘the brown line and purple line cross.’ Of the dozen or so friends I send the article to, exclusively a painter, a jeweler, five poets, five pastors, (the five and five, here, a coincidence), the painter and jeweler, one person), two respond, one a poet, one a retired Lutheran pastor. Meanwhile, I have read Septology in its entirety, even Wyatt Mason, had only read the two published books, The Other Name, and I Is Another. I was as grateful to have access to the third, A New Name, as I had been by Wyatt Mason’s article. Mason has previously written of book criticism as ‘pablum.’

The poet who responded, brought the copy of the xeroxed Mason/Fosse essay listened while I talked on the front porch of places I thought Fosse had written particularly to him. He didn’t have much to say, forcing me into a kind of monologue. Here, listening to myself talk, I learned even more of the Saint Andrews Cross.

The pastor who responded, sent me a poem he’d written, unsigned, as his signature, (he believes nothing man does on his own without God is possible) ‘Joseph Sittler, Whacked.’ Even the title, a non-title, but the subject line in an email. But in his poem, ‘said the shape of the cross, the vertical line crossed by the horizontal line, symbolize being “whacked”: sweat, flesh and blood splattered in all directions. The cross is the symbol of human experience in this world.’ My old friend, my senior by a dozen years (I’m 76) had sent me this poem before, flattening me with Sittler’s words, further down in the poem, saying, ‘you need a bigger god.’ Years earlier, this same man, had lifted me up with one of Sittler’s essays, The View From Mount Nebo, demonstrating the clarity artists and outsiders have, and share, with Aaron and Moses, brothers, as Moses acutely focuses on the promised land from his point of view, without entering. Lifted up, did I just say? Ah, the experience of the summit. Fact of a crucified god. ‘Unless you have it,’ Sittler writes. He’s not big enough.

Another pastor, one who has not given up, and who hasn’t given up on me, but who has given up on my need for his communication, a generous silence on his part, a trust, really, is the rare still-practicing Lutheran pastor who reads Luther and Kierkegaard daily, daily and simultaneously, and who preaches what he practices, has just reviewed two new Kierkegaard studies investigating Luther’s Sermons and Kierkegaard’s journals. This is the backstory on how these two new books arrived for me through Inter-library Loan, one by David Lawrence Coe, the other by the Norwegian theologian, Alastair Hannay, Existence and Identity in a Post-Secular World. With a limited (and gifted) window, I have five more days (from a total of fourteen) to absorb these two volumes, brand new and unread, from the Loyola Marymount University Library.

My Navajo friend Lloyd Draper says that Hozho, the Blessingway, reveals God through thunder. He, too, is in this mix, and serves to introduce the fence-line cross that confronted me as my brother and I hiked to the top of Rocky Top, setting for another poem and a version of the painting in the Jon Fosse novel, The Other Name. The trail is full of crossing lines through circles of barbed wire. Professor Coe explores suffering, the sighs, resolved and resigned, in Kierkegaard and Luther. Sin, to Kierkegaard being time’s obstruction

of the eternal. While walking after worship on Sunday, I called my jeweler-painter friend, who brings me news of the Milky Way, only one of many, telling him, imploring, Don’t ever allow me to lose sight of how much we need to see this creation as a city of stars. He, too, listened, like my friend the poet listened. What did I hear myself saying? How did I get here? Where did I come from?

When asked about influenza, the Blessingway Singer looks off the question. No, we will have not of that. It is not our business, he says. The plague is not ours.

The Saint Andrews Cross and the cross of the fence-posts.

Joseph Sittler and Jon Fosse.

Whacked. My old friend. And the mail.

Mail-whacked. Gob-smacked.

VI. Karl Barth and the God of my North Dakota Childhood. We knew it was cold in winter, that mosquitoes used our arms for landing strips. We didn’t know we walked on the bottom of a shallow sea. The Lutheran Church was across the street from our house, and our house and yard mirrored the church in size, if not stature. Admittedly, the house and the fence around us had seen better days.

Mosquitoes

fueled-up

sucking blood

from the arms

of boys like me

The front porch

came together

at a point

warped, weathered boards

sprung free from nails

Nothing held together

like God

and he was

right across the street--

an old man, now,

reading the likes

of Barth and Tillich,

comfortable, thrilled words,

In this one man

God sees every man,

all of us, as

through a glass--

the possibility

Barth arrived

at my porch

early on

filtered into North Dakota

through seminaries

and country pastors!

Maybe Grandpa Charlie.

Who could have guessed!

Karl Barth, my teacher,

God in Him,

in this One,

I heard it, I did,

but all I could see

were little critters

carving out homes

in warped boards

after the nails

came out,

beginning point

for humiliation.

VII. Muffler Bandit

On my red bicycle in November, this review.

Yesterday, all afternoon at the muffler shop

sitting outside on a chair.

Muffler Bandit, family owned.

A life-time in mufflers.

Keep it quiet.

Tin man, rusted on a snow-board,

masked, rusted sculpture

beside me

while I read

Aiken’s Letter from Li Po.

Things are slow at the jail,

busy in the hospital,

I write in my notebook.

ER’s a circle of curtains,

revolving beds. Jail boring,

with a machine for money orders

upon entering. Fully bilingual, and producing.

Money orders while you do your time.

Fully holstered guards

will help you make it work.

Lots of jail staff

taking home food

from the kitchen for their families.

Stolen jail food can’t be all bad.

IX. Muffler Bandit grace.

Kierkegaard’s little while,

little while to the end,

echoing Navajo Blessingway—

this is the only thing one can do

until he dies. Sing like this.

Sing us whole, sing us back.

Saying, No to influenza—

No, that’s not our work, not our business.

This is a great house, it is.

This is a great house.

It is a great house, sacred, it is.

X. Letter from Li Po and Conrad Aiken

Banished immortal

and all the news,

and the poem that is never done.

This garden where I walk

among cairn, tree,

sheltered shade--

But only if by this,

we mean everything!

The young man repairing

my rusted-out muffler

on his back, sliding

around on a bed of wheels,

extracts rusted out screws

with the patience

of one who knows

the power of his tools,

who knows, too,

this is not about him.

Screws are like nails.

They take a little while.

They’ll come.

Rust, too.

Beauty-way.

Patina and the sound-volume song

from sun-filled November pipes.

Jim Bodeen

1-10 November 2021