7807. BELOW THE WATER LINE (pt. 163)

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 163)

When I got to the seminary, I had to

take Latin. It was a pre-requisite to

everything else, and we had no choice

in the matter, not even as if it was 

French or Spanish. Fact of the matter

was that there was no 'choice' in the

curriculum at all. It was funny being

directed immediately into an intense

language study of what was determined

to be a 'dead' language. It wasn't really

dead, in any sense except that there wasn't

a 'country' that spoke it, per se. Maybe

the Vatican  -  if you want to count that

as a country. Latin back then held a special

and particular place in the 'Catholic' church.

The Mass hadn't yet been changed over to

English  -  all that Ecumenical Council stuff

was just about to happen. That's when things

really began  -  swinging the altars around to

face the people, doing many things differently,

the hosts and the sacraments and all that. 

Changing over for the use of Latin for the 

Mass was like a huge and monumental thing. 

It was strange, because all it had ever amounted 

to was a form of garbled mystery  -  this use 

of old 'Latin'  -  just a way to keep the wizardry 

and separateness of the church ritual FROM the 

people. It was already supposed to have been 

theirs, for them, but the edicts and tenets of the 

ancient churches and all their councils and

stuff made money and magic out of keeping 

all these things away from the people. Peasantry, 

actually. They had to believe, and in order to do 

that they needed all the pomp and ritual, the funny 

hats and garments, AND the specialness of a 

specialized and secret language known only to 

their 'Masters' up on the altar. Everything was 

bizarre. African witch-doctors and shamans 

were not at all that far off from what the 

Catholic Church was  doing. Some people 

fell for it -   old ladies, always muttering some 

Latin gobbledygook, 'et cum spiritu tuo' and all

that crap. Always sounded like some gambling

code to me : Ed Conspiry, 220'. Yeah, place the bet.

-

So, for the Catholic Church, Latin wasn't a 'dead' 

language at all, except for it never changing and 

just being the same old stuff everyday, 100,000 times 

a day, all around the world. Tired old priests intoning 

the same format of Mass everywhere, and always in 

front of pewloads of weak and forceless people. Most

of the church's work, even today, as it turned out once

I discovered what was going on, was Colonialism by

another name. Some grand and powerful Westernized 

wizardry barging in on indigenous culture and belief

structures  -  somehwere, anywhere, Africa, Indonesia,

wherever  -  and usurping everything in the name of

'Our God, We who know better than you primitives.'

In order to fall for any of this church stuff, you pretty

much had to admit to being a weak, lost, powerless

person, with no resources of your own at all. It was

all about subjection and power over you. Using Latin 

was a means of keeping that 'power' over you intact

by arranging one-more distinction between you and

what was going on. Maybe JohnXXIII by the mid '60's 

realized that, understood how all that power crap was

about the fall away, The church changed, yeah, but the

'Church' never did. It's all the same, except now it's

meaningless and feeble, perverted and all confused.

Bending its own rules about never bending infallible

rules. Go figure.

-

So, I dutifully took up the learning of Latin. I actually

really enjoyed it. I studied good. It was OK to speak;

it wasn't all flouncy and female, like French seemed 

to be. My tongue worked in Latin. In French, I just

couldn't bring myself to talk like that. I'd imagine

myself walking along Avenel somewhere, stopping

in some candy store or something, and spouting on

in French; before getting belittled and having the

crap scrambled out of me for talking that way.

Latin was cool, except for one word that always

bothered me, freaked me out. A porno word, in fact.

We began our Latin I course with an opening phrase, 

and the little illustration that went with it: 'Maria cum 

servum ambulat.' It meant Marie walks with the

servant. That in itself was weird, but weirder yet 

was the use of that word 'cum'. Which in Latin 

just means 'with'. Maria walks WITH the servant.

I was only 12, I understood the deal, but still it

freaked me pretty good to have to deal with that 

stuff. 'Cum' anything, let alone Maria; it just never

worked. If it had been a living language, maybe 

I could have started a movement to like change

it; but as a dead language, man, there wasn't even

anyone to talk to about this 'cum' usage I couldn't

deal with. Let alone Maria, (again!). And the other

thing was, the use of the word 'servant', that was 

just a nicely translated version of the word that

could just as easily been versed as 'slave'. Slave?

In old Latin? Slaves there too? Maria's doing

what with the slave? You see where I was headed;

even at twelve, this Latin stuff freaked me; 

Let alone Maria (again!!).

-

So, the church had its tales and mysteries, mistakes 

and powerplays. Remember, even that pope in 1979 

or whatever it was, John Paul I, lasted only about 4

days before he was murdered. found dead, and all 

that was hushed up and John Paul II swiftly put 

into place. Hush hush Vatican intrigue, as late as 

1979, and long after Latin was gone. There's lots

more of that stuff. All you have to do is look  -  

Ambrosio Vatican Bank scandal, the dead guy 

hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London.

that's all 1980's stuff, for God's sake (no pun). 

Wise up. Don't fall for magic tricks so easily. 

God's inside you, and God don't believe in 

churches. I eventually got the hell out of there 

like it was a smoking funeral pyre of death. 

Which it was. (By the way, do yourself a favor,

look up 'vatican bank ambrosio scandal' and

then give me a call. English only, please).

-

I used to like to parse and diagram sentences. 

What's that tell you? That's when you take a 

nice, fat, healthy writer's sentence and break 

it apart by lines and boxes and things which 

connect and show all the subsidiary parts and 

usages underway within the sentence. Loads

of fun, and puts crossword puzzles way to 

shame. In the seminary,  no one ever 'talked' 

Latin, maybe in jest here and there, for fun  -  

tennis scores and stuff. Once in a while, maybe 

a joke about some made up Latin guy (we'd give 

out really funny names), like 'Incineratus' or 

'Flatulus' who wanted to cum with Maria. Stuff 

like that, to get the mealtime rafters really rocking. 

Speaking of mealtime, right outside the refectory 

(eating room) doors, we had rows of lockers. There 

were kids, I kid you not, who would go from their 

dining station, having just eaten, right to their locker, 

on the way out, and it was filled with like 15 Hershey

Bars, bags of M&M's, powersacks of jellybeans and 

mints, and just gorge themselves, by the palms-full 

of such junk. It was funny to see.

-

My life was pretty funny. You wouldn't think it

but I could laugh about it. I wanted comedy. I 

wanted to be a comedian  -  some of the stuff that

hit me was hilarious. But I never stayed with that;

instead I took everything and turned it serious, made

all these mordant stories and poems out of it. I would

have walked away from it all, but each time I got

somewhere serious  -  the chapel, the altar, my bunk, 

even the bathroom, for pity's sake, something would

come over me and start pounding into my head the

idea that I had to, HAD to, follow through with the

things being given to me  -  the words and ideas, as 

they came  -  under penalty of death, or at least a

completely worthless and useless life. I'd be 

abandoned by my Spirit, which Spirit commanded

me, and took order from my higher Being, which 

in turn had to answer to this God dude. It was serious

shit. Now it's 60 years later, and Jesus K. Rist here

I am doing the same stuff, in the same situation. 

Except now I reach out to people, really. I have a

mission, and I do it. One loving moment and person

at a time. And it's a forever task, and that's me, and

I just go on. So, that's where Latin got me  -  dead

language, entrusted with nothing, far from Avenel,

where no one would know a fucking word anyway

of what I was saying if I said it in Latin  -  not even 

any of those nails-on-the-blackboard Mrs. Kuzmiak 

type church ladies. I never had nothing, and I got

nothing now. Maria, Mary, Virgin or not. Nothing.
-
While it was fun learning a dead language, year  
after year it became boring. People began speaking
to each other, in weird platitudinous ways, 'well, if
you don't become a priest, knowing Latin's good in
the medical profession,' pharmacy, science.... Everyone
ended up saying something different. All false, and all
just stopgap measures to say something, anything.
Fact is and was, Latin is good for a million things.
It's somehow the base language for most of all the regular
'Romance' languages we use  -  and because of it I held 
onto a good command of words and word-roots and 
derivations, and even usages. Be forewarned : One thing
it's not good for is traffic stops. You get pulled over, for a bad
taillight, or running a red, or something, and you start
babbling your excuse off to the cop, in Latin. 'Ain't gonna' 
do ya' no good', as they say in Avenel. Or maybe, 'Dictat
ad judicatum.' Something like that. 'Tell it to the judge.'
But, officer, can Maria cum with me?