RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,089
(puttering among peacocks)
I used to get disheartened often
enough. And still do, some,
but now it's all for different
reasons. Back, before, it was
about darkness and corners.
Now it's about, quite simply,
running out of time, and death.
It's a tiresome dilemma. I have
no clue what existence is meant
to have been about, and I certainly
can't expect, now, to start finding
it out. As Winston Churchill said
of the Soviet Union, or Russia,
'It's a riddle wrapped in a mystery
inside an enigma.' Something like
that, and it was good enough for
me. Some rich ladies, in New York,
I always remember, would be
referred to by their 'toothsome
grin' description. A 'toothsome
grin' sure knocked me out; that
was some cool, elitist, descriptive,
language. I never actually 'saw'
much of that rich-lady grin stuff,
but whenever I did it was perfectly
apparent. A number of those ladies
in the 'rich-library women' club,
so to speak, had it, and I'd see lots
of them. They'd be doing their
voluntary-time with the Library
Guild or whatever. One lady in
particular I can recall was often
seated at a small entry podium
and service desk by the entrance
to the vast public reading room
area. She was always dressed
seriously-wealthy-like; perfectly
coiffed, jewelry, beautiful fabric
clothing, etc., and with the
perfect aplomb of a millionairess.
In 1970 terms anyway. Toothsome
grin? You had to bet. When the
Library Ladies lunched, they
were serious about it - socials,
library teas, even the book clubs
and talks and discussion of books
and authors had serious meaning
and intent. I kind of liked that.
-
Mary Flannery O'Connor, the
author we know now better as
just Flannery O'Connor, spent
her youth in Savannah. She was
born in 1925. In 1943, she and
two cousins visited New York.
(Manhattan : Chinatown, St.
Patrick's Cathedral, Columbia
University, etc.)...By 1945 she
was back 'North,' enrolling in
the Iowa Writer's Workshop,
where she dropped the 'Mary,'
(it put her in mnd of an 'Irish
washwoman), and became
Flannery O'Connor. 'Less than
two decades later she died, of
lupus. She was 39, the author
of two novels and a book of
stories. A brief obituary in
the Times called her 'one of
the nation's most promising
writers.' Some of her readers
dismissed her as a 'regional
writer'; many didn't know she
was a woman. ' She wrote of
the 'Christ-haunted South.'
Typically, for all of us now,
it's being found out, through
her letters and scribblings,
that she was a racist - watch
out, O'Connor statues; the
blue-meanies will get you:
'a bigoted young woman.'
Though we see her now (no,
not quite the 'toothsome grin'
type, nor a ladies-who-lunch
member), as a wise elder, a
saint, the societal eclipse of
stupidity we are now undergoing
will have all that erased too,
soon enough. 'A literary
saint, poised for revelation
at a typewriter set up on
the ground floor of her
farmhouse near Milleggeville
Georgia (where she died),
because treatments for lupus
left her unable to climb the
stairs. She is now as canonical
as Faulkner and Welty. More
than a writer, she's a cultural
figure (and therefore soon
doomed): a funny lady in a
straw hat, puttering among
peacocks, on crutches she
likened to 'flying buttresses'
(an architectural term). Her
visage is on a stamp.'
-
One time, (May, 1955), she
was in NYC for an interview.
The host prompts, 'I understand
you are living on a farm?' She
answered: 'Yes. I only live on
one though. I don't see much of
it. I'm a writer, and I farm from
the rocking chair.' When asked
if she was a 'regional writer,'
she answered: 'I think that to
overcome regionalism, you
must have a great deal of
self-knowledge. I think that
to know yourself is to know
your region, and that it's also
to know the world, and, in a
sense, paradoxically, it's also
to be an exile from that world.
So that you have a great deal
of detachment.' Those are very
fine words, and they recognize
how a writer is often left alone
and apart.
-
I always tried to come up with
some jet-setting homily sort of
thing about the times I was living
through. I did, and I didn't, and
I suppose the end result of all
that are these endless chapters
of exegesis and exposition which I
keep weaving and threading here.
My 'world' for all practical purposes
is over and gone - for me to try
here and echo back 1964 is a
heavy load. When Kennedy go
shot, and killed, I was in the
seminary library, minding my
own business, as it were, until
some priest (Father Jude, as I
recall), came in and announced
the shooting, and then the death
and, in that library, in the small
semi-circle of the periodicals
section, I - with the few others
there - was instructed to get to
my knees and we all had to begin
praying for the soul of the President,
at first still-with-us, and shortly
thereafter, not. Our few feeble,
oral, prayers, I admit, weren't
expected to be of much help. It
was too far a reach and, besides,
shouldn't we better then pray for
Dallas, for Love Field (the airport
there), the attendant doctors, and,
even for this Bernie Tibbit guy,
who was, as I recall a dead cop
shot at the scene somehow.
-
Anyway, the entire scene there was
so bizarre, as was the manner that the
information came through, that only
a religious naif could assume that
some silly prayer was going to lend
a helping hand to a deep and devious
situation. Nonetheless, we were told
to pray, so pray we did. I think back
on all that, now, and just slowly wonder
what that world, then, was. It certainly
can't compare, or even be compared,
to today's world. I, for instance, well
recall that I was still using a bladder
type FOUNTAIN pen! Then, shortly
thereafter, a cartridge pen came out
and was available, and I began using
cartridges instead of the ink bottle and
the bladder-fill. Pretty crazy to think
about that now; like using a quill or
feather to write with. That's a deep
and vast difference, over the course
of 60 years or whatever it is. There's
no unity to any of this; the two
planes of being can't even be placed
side-by-side, except intellectually,
perhaps - and I expect that the
intellectualism of those earlier days
stands up far better than does today's
glib cyclamate-of-sweetness matter.
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