The story of Ukrainian resilience and resistance has inspired me ever since my sojourn in their land, their experiences and efforts akin to those of Native and Black Americans in the U.S. fighting to preserve their culture, even their very existence. As is always the case with humans, Ukrainian contemporary culture has been shaped as much by their sufferings as by their responses to it. As is also always the case with humans, part of that response finds expression in the arts. When I returned from my trip, my daughter introduced me to a Ukrainian ethno chaos band she loves called DakhaBrakha. They wear traditional dress and use traditional instruments and vocalizations but have created a new and powerful distinctively Ukrainian sound, which we got to hear live a year later in Chicago. Check out “Buvayte Zdorovi” below. A poignant track with pertinent lyrics from their 2010 album Light:

“Be there, Be there,

Do not forget us

Everyday, every evening

Do Remember us all!”

DakhaBrakha https://lyricstranslate.com

When the few stand against the many, when the weak stand against the strong, the act of resistance awakens in us the ennobling possibilities of our own existence. David and Goliath. The Patriots and the Redcoats. The Battle of Thermopylae. Someone recently suggested to me that rooting for the underdog is a somewhat American thing, and, while I’m sure there are exceptions and nuances across individuals, cultures, and epochs, I believe it is, fundamentally, a human thing.

Some Notes from a Sojourn in Ukraine

Soviets relegated Ukrainian culture to museum status, even outlawing the creation of folk art. Ukrainians have worked hard to preserve their traditions.

The Soviets took Ukrainians from their villages, families, and traditional way of life, and moved them into massive apartment complexes built around factories where they were assigned to work.

But Ukrainians NEVER stopped resisting.

Members of the resistance were sent to camps.

Or to prison.

Were tortured in cells like this.

Were executed without a trial.

Disinformation campaigns were used to shape perception of what was happening in Ukraine.

But Ukrainians survived the Soviet era and have been working for decades to build a brighter future for their country.

We hope they will make it through this war.

That their children will have a beautiful future, free from war and Putin’s aggression.

That we will do what we can to help.

Don’t worry. We won’t forget you.

Listen to T. S. Eliot read his poem “Journey of the Magi” below or read the full text here.

It can be hard for the postmodern pilgrim when Christmas comes around, the ache of longing and loss more acutely felt as the beauty and power of the Christian narrative crescendos to its most profound and poignant expression in song, ritual, and symbol. For the disabused who still tremble at the mysterium tremendum but who are “no longer at ease here in the old dispensation,” the silence imposed upon them by their conscience is a frustration and a sorrow, a perplexing state of affairs requiring a deep surrender—an existential trust—which they most likely imbibed from the mystical currents flowing deep in the foundations of the very religious tradition from which the demands of good faith have exiled them. To add a little cherry to the top of this figgy pudding of paradox, the situation evokes none other than the opening lines of that most beautiful of Christmas hymns, “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence.”

Maybe, for us humans, who can’t seem to stop yapping our gums or arguing our positions on everything from whose religion is right to which toothpaste is best, silence is the only fitting response to an encounter with the Ultimate—and exile its best teacher.

Peace and joy to you all in this season that reminds us there is always a light in the darkness.

If You’d Like to Read more by S. K. KrusE…

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There are a lot of geniuses floating around the story of Allegri’s “Miserere mei, Deus.” First of all, there’s King David, a poetic genius who, 3000ish years ago, writes the text of Psalm 51 after sending the husband of the woman he has impregnated to the front line to die. There’s Gregorio Allegri himself, who 2600ish years later, in the 17th century, composes his musical masterpiece of the text.

I wonder if he knew what he’d done?

And then there’s that 14-year-old boy, Wolfgang Amadeus, 100ish years after that, who gets dragged along by his dad to Holy Week services in the Sistine chapel.

Let’s just take a sec to imagine that together.

Mozart’s sitting there, uncomfortable in his church clothes, annoyed at having to be there (because he’s a teenager) and bored out of his mind because everyone’s droning on for hours in Latin. But then…he hears it. The pure, startling opening notes of Allegri’s “Miserere.” He sits up straight. Can’t believe his ears. He leans forward from the edge of the pew. After the service, his father drags him from distinguished personage to distinguished personage (always trying to get him a gig) but Mozart can hardly wait to get home. He rushes through the door. Doesn’t eat or drink a thing. Shuts himself up in his room and doesn’t come out or say a word to anyone until he has transcribed the entire piece by memory.

I like that version.

But it’s also very possible he was just like:

“The pope says I can’t? F#%* that!”

In which case, you also have to admire the pluck.

And then there’s another genius in this story who doesn’t get a lot of credit as such. Pope Urban VIII. Sure, he practically bankrupts the church through his politicking and warmongering and he isn’t exactly the scientific visionary we of the 21st Century wish he’d been, but, sitting there in the Sistine Chapel the day Allegri’s “Miserere” was performed for the first time, he recognizes that what he’s listening to is one of the great treasures of the Church. And he takes measures to make sure it stays that way. He only allows it to be performed once a year in the Sistine Chapel and forbids anyone to transcribe it so that by the time Mozart’s transcription gets into the hands of publisher Charles Burney in 1771, the piece is already a legend. I’m no expert on the topic, but I would say that makes Urban VIII—whatever his thoughts on the merits of heliocentrism—some sort of a marketing genius.

The last group of geniuses in the mix are a bunch of guys in their garages, 300ish years after Mozart, who invent a whole bunch of stuff that allows anyone, anywhere, at any time, with an internet connection and a compatible device, to discover all kinds of things, including Allegri’s incredible composition, which is how my daughter Lydia discovered it last year, how she shared it with me, and how I’m now sharing it with you.

You might have had the good fortune of discovering this work a long time ago, but if you’ve never heard it before, be prepared to be transported. Maybe it’s helpful that most of us don’t know Latin anymore because even though Psalm 51 is luminous and inspired and gets at the profound disconnect we experience between the enlightened kind of human we aspire to be and the disappointing kind we often feel we are, the conceptualizations, articulations, presuppositions, and supplications of the text can present the usual distractions for the postmodern pilgrim. If we don’t know Latin, we can’t get tripped up on the words, right? We can just close our eyes and let Allegri’s composition perfectly express the longing that aches in us for that plane of being his music also touches.

Tenebrae Choir Performs Allegri’s “Miserere me, Deus,” Conducted by Nigel Short

You can find the text of Psalm 51 in just about any translation here.

And, thank you, Gregorio Allegri.

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I launched my writing career in third grade. My first work was fictional, complete with captivating setting, lively characters, colorful illustrations, and at least one major plot point. My mother carefully typed the story, a couple of sentences per illustrated page. My first published work. My first byline.

My second work was an adaptation called Twas the Night Before the Fun Fair written also as a third grader for the Holy Ghost[1] Grade School newsletter. In fourth grade I wrote my longest piece yet—a chapter book entitled, The Cougar, in which I experimented with style, beginning each chapter with “He woke up,” and ending each with, “He went to sleep.” In fifth grade I did a lot of reading and, consequently, didn’t produce much, but in sixth grade I experienced a renaissance and produced several short stories in what I now refer to as my “Mystery Period.”[2] Two stories I wrote during this time were the beginning[3] of a series called The Bensen Brothers Mysteries. In eighth grade I found my muse in lost love.[4]  My most noteworthy poetry piece from this period was entitled “Almost Over You”[5] and most noteworthy short story was entitled, “Michael.”[6]

In high school, my career took a serious turn. I used the $400 I saved up from babysitting and bought an electric Smith Corona.[7] But more importantly, I got a writing mentor—my English teacher, Mr. Malcolm Mosing. He was an eccentric individual, passionate about literature, performance, and culture. Sometimes we’d skip Shakespeare altogether, and he’d just read us articles out of The New Yorker. He made us memorize “Jabberwocky” and “Buffalo Bill’s” and passages from MacBeth. He spent a lot of time staring out at us over his glasses, chewing gum, legs crossed and elbow posed on podium, thumb and fingers rubbing together as he prepared to deliver a thought. I hung on his every word.

It was a prolific time for me. I started bringing him my short stories, and he would give me his encouragement and advice. One day during lunch period as I stood next to him awaiting feedback on my latest masterpiece, he looked at me for a long while over the rims of his glasses, doing his trademark sideways-jaw, slow gum-chew, and offered me this seminal piece of advice:

“Perhaps it’s time to consider writing about
something other than death.”

It’s true my recent line-up had included an old man who dies at sea, a boy whose twin brother drowns in a bathtub, and an unappreciated do-gooder who is turned to ash in a burning town hall. I’m sure the hot flush in my cheeks communicated the almost instantaneous comprehension of my error, and I took his advice so to heart that it launched an entirely new phase of my writing career, which I now refer to as my “Theater Period,” and out of which came such play scripts as The Ketchup Theorem[8] and Ali’s Wall[9], in which not a single person died.

Thirty-five years later, I still reflect on his advice—a check on my predilection for writing “deeply meaningful” melodrama and a reminder not to take myself so damn seriously.  Even so, when I look back at my early, failed attempts to make “great art,” I find at their core the undeveloped intuition that death is what makes life meaningful. Even in its inverse application—a worldview in which death makes life absurd and meaningless—death is still the driving force of the paradigm. It’s the IT factor in every weltanschauung because we all have to reckon with it one way or another, and great art—the aspiration of every young, earnest writer—helps us do that, even if no character has to die.

 [1] Made for interesting cheers at sporting events

[2] Influences seen in my work at this time include Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, and Trixie Belden.

[3] and the end

[4] Boyfriend moved away

[5] About said boyfriend

[6] Name of said boyfriend

[7] A typewriter, in case you are too young to remember

[8] Conceived in geometry class

[9] A very original script in which events in Ali’s life contribute to a wall being built up around her throughout the course of the play, not at all influenced by my burgeoning obsession with Pink Floyd

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

—William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939)

It wasn’t until I turned fifty that I stumbled across W. B. Yeats’ poem, “The Second Coming.” In my forties, I would regularly be shocked that, at such an advanced age, I was still discovering great works of art—some that I’d never even heard of before. Now, I’m counting on it. Surely the Germans have a word that encapsulates this experience we English speakers must use a paragraph to describe, but that particular rush that comes when the clarity and beauty of great art catches us by surprise is an experience I have come to treasure. When Yeats’ poem finally found its way to me, I could barely comprehend what I was reading because my heart started palpitating before I’d even finished the first two lines. My eyes raced through its genius, catching on phrases like “the blood-dimmed tide is loosed” and the “ceremony of innocence is drowned,” down through all of its relentless, disturbing brilliance, culminating in twenty centuries of stony sleep vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle and a rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem to be born. I mean, holy shit. I had to calm myself down and reread the whole thing about five times.

Every line in this poem deserves memorization, fresh analysis, and recitation in an ominous British accent, but l will limit my efforts to written analysis of just two lines—the least metaphorical of them all:

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst 
Are full of passionate intensity.”

Perhaps it’s because these lines are not imagery like the rest of the poem—but rather a concise, stark assessment of the times—that the entire poem seems to revolve around them. They may not contain words such as “a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,” but they strike their own terror in our hearts. We understand that the zeitgeist Yeats identifies in those early decades of the 20th century is the reason the falcon cannot hear the falconer. That it precipitates the anarchy loosed upon the earth. We know that humanity teeters, always, on the precipice of such horrors. We immediately see parallels with our own times, fearing that once again we will descend into madness. We anxiously search our fellow humans for signs of either disposition, oblivious or denying of the necessity to search within ourselves.

You can read more about W. B. Yeats’s life and work at The Poetry Foundation. And you can listen to a great, old recording of the poem below. (It claims to the W. B. Yeats, but I’m not so sure…. Also, try to ignore the visuals. :) Maybe just close your eyes and listen!)

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“We cannot live in a world interpreted for us by others.

An interpreted world is not a hope.

Part of the terror is to take back our own listening.

To use our own voice.

To see our own light.”

—Hildegard of Bingen: abbess, anchorite, composer, mystic, artist, natural scientist, polymath, 12th century Benedictine badass

There are those among us who have always walked to the beat of their own drum—a small subset of our species that has long fascinated me and whose existence begs the question: Are they even part of our species? Most of us have to find our way there. And the terror is real. Perhaps especially if you’ve been part of an intense community, religious or otherwise, healthy or not. When I discovered Hildegard a few years ago, I memorized this quote. It struck a chord. I’d just spent a year with the merry band of motley existentialists, and, though they didn’t agree on much—perhaps especially on being categorized as existentialists—I’m pretty sure every last one of them would have raised a glass to Hildegard’s words, even more prescient now in this postmodern era where every narrative has been deconstructed and where religious communities—the places people have traditionally procured their package of narrative and meaning—are in precipitous decline. Certainly, any of us average, unliberated members of the species searching for meaning and purpose and transcendence and truth must eventually face the terror, because, certainly, eventually, we all come to the Valley of the Shadow of Death, where we discover for ourselves, in unique and exquisitely painful ways, that an interpreted world is not a hope.

If you’re still in listening range, Hildegard, danke schön und prost.

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John Keats is one of the early 19th century English Romantic poets, but, as a post-20th century reader of his letters, I see Keats, the thinker, in the intersection of a two-set Venn diagram, with Romantics in one circle and Existentialists in the other. Of course, no one’s weltanschauung emerges out of thin air. Consider the quote above in the context of his life. He died two years after writing it. From tuberculosis. At the age of 25. And that was just the culmination of his suffering. His father died when Keats was only nine, and his mother left him and his siblings when she remarried. His poetry was harshly rejected by the literary establishment, all the while he was enduring horrific early 19th century “medical” treatments for his tuberculosis and watching his young life ebb away. As far as credentials go—as far as seeking out those who have something to say about life that isn’t some trite soundbite cheaply earned—I’m paying attention.

The world as a vale of soul-making. Pondering Keats’ words and life calls to mind a funeral I attended recently for a remarkable woman who died in her forties after a decade-long battle with cancer. Hundreds of people turned out in a snowstorm to attend. We all listened, jaws quivering or tears running down our cheeks, as her brother gave a brief eulogy. He talked about her strong and beautiful spirit. Gave examples. Concluded by saying that she didn’t lose her battle with cancer—she won it. The preacher got up afterwards and said many words about salvation and giving your life to Jesus etc., but it was unnecessary. Diluting, actually, of the power of her brother’s simple summation of her life. We all knew what sort of human being was lying in that coffin, and, even while we mourned her passing, our hearts were stirred to the possibility of our own transcendence, the strength and beauty of her spirit inspiring us to live as she did in all the dark and difficult places in our own lives.

The world as a vale of soul-making. I think the carpenter from Nazareth would agree with Keats’ appraisal of things. I mean, why go through the bother of an incarnation if redemption isn’t existential? If you think there’s an omnipotent being who has all the resources of the universe at his/her/its disposal trying to save an infant species with nascent consciousness from destroying itself and or even just from missing the whole point of its existence, wouldn’t there be an infinite number of other, better ways that it could be accomplished? Like some sort of definitive and ongoing demonstration of transcendent reality? Something that doesn’t involve the betrayal and torture and death of an innocent man—a choice which, in light of the vast array of revelatory possibilities ostensibly at the disposal of the divine, doesn’t make any sense at all.

Unless, of course, it was the whole point.  

You can read more about John Keats and find a selection of his poems and letters at the Poetry Foundation. For more on Keats’ idea of the world as a “vale of soul-making,” check out the rest of his letter (excerpted above) to his brother and sister-in-law, George and Georgiana Keats, written April 12, 1819. Source: The Letters of John Keats, 1814-1821, edited by Hyder Edward Rollins (Harvard U.P., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1958), pp. 100-104.

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The Madman

I remember the first time I saw the madman’s words in print. “God is dead!” a placard announced from an old black and white protest photo in some cultural anthology of the sixties. I was in eighth grade, and my best friend from a family of ten had pulled it off the bookshelf to show me. With over a decade of rosaries, masses, Catholic schooling, and even Bible camps under my teenage belt, I looked in silent, sad astonishment from the picture to my friend and from my friend to the picture, simultaneously grieving and resolving, somehow, someway, to atone for this. I had no idea at the time who Nietzsche was or from whence such sentiment came, but it lodged in my heart, and, as my tenure at Holy Ghost Grade School came to an end that spring, I declared in my personal statement that I would dedicate my life to combatting this cataclysmic falsehood by being “cool for God.”

This first earnest articulation of ultimate concern in a girl who loved Sting and Jesus matured over the next 25 years, but her passion never abated and her purpose never faltered. She cranked out 11 kids, wrote a rock opera of the entire Bible, and co-founded a non-profit dedicated to helping fellow Catholics know and love God. But then 9/11 came. Followed by the church’s pedophilia scandal and anti-gay marriage campaign. Followed by a husband plagued with doubts. Her worldview teetered but held. Then the evangelical atheists came along and pulled a few critical blocks out of the infrastructure of her worldview, and it all came crashing down like a forty-year game of Jenga.

Who are the Evangelical Atheists?

Atheist humans come in all shapes and sizes. You’ve got your hard atheists and your soft atheists, your materialist atheists and your religious atheists, your glib atheists and your brooding atheists, but the ones who slammed a wrecking ball into my wobbling tower of certainty, were the evangelical atheists—the ones who spread their views with the zeal of your friendly neighborhood Jehovah’s Witnesses. They have dedicated their existence to disavowing you of erroneous beliefs and are eager to share their good news with religious people everywhere. You’ve probably heard them referred to as the “new atheists,” and some of their more prominent spokespersons have been affectionately referred to as the Four Horsemen.  

the Good News of the Evangelical Atheists

A quick breakdown of the evangelical atheists’ most salient points:

• “Religion has done more harm than good.”

Genocide. War. Terrorism. Executions. Torture. Oppression. Persecution. `Nuff said.

• “You are living in a bubble of delusion.”

You only believe what you believe because you grew up with it (What if you’d been raised in a different religion and culture?) or because you had a spiritual experience that you (falsely) believe validates your religion as true, when these types of experiences are reported across all religions and don’t prove anything in particular about yours. And don’t forget that throughout history your religion has opposed truth and reason on every turn, so why cling to ridiculous beliefs that violate reason and keep you shackled to a horrible religious institution?

• “It’s all natural.”

Remember Paley’s old watchmaker argument for the existence of God? Obsolete. The Darwinian metanarrative provides a perfectly natural explanation for the design of everything on the earth, including religion, morality, and spirituality, with no need to postulate a watchmaker, devils, angels, heaven, or hell, so why cling to ridiculous beliefs that violate reason and keep you shackled to a horrible religious institution?

Why Religious Humans Should Listen to Atheist Humans

Religious humans should listen to atheist humans, first, because they are fellow humans and deserve love and respect. Second, because atheist humans have legitimate points, and religious humans shouldn’t live with their heads stuck in the sand. Third, because any religious human claiming to love truth should follow wherever the truth leads. And, finally—for those of us formed in the Christian tradition—because maybe we’ve gone astray in our understanding of what it means to be Christian, and the atheist critique shines a spotlight on where we went wrong.

Consider that, historically, Christianity has placed an enormous emphasis on correct belief and doctrinal assent. The Eastern and Western Church split 1000 years ago over a preposition in the creed. I only slightly exaggerate. Then, of course, there’s the Index and the Inquisition and the members of the flock who were tortured and killed and silenced and excommunicated to keep the rest of the flock from encountering the realities to which evangelical atheists today are determined to expose the flock. It was only sixty years ago, at the Second Vatican Council, that the Catholic Church finally cracked open the doors to the insights of the modern world, though it still maintains a system of internal reprisal for leaders who don’t toe the doctrinal line, making change, at least in this church of my spiritual birth and growth, a centuries-long process. Contemporary mainline Protestantism seems to have avoided these pitfalls (though one could argue it has also been the source of its precipitous decline), but most of the evangelical and fundamentalist forms of Christianity labor under similar dogmatic emphases. Many of these denominations, in reaction to the excesses of the mother ship, have tried to pare the number of doctrines requiring assent down to the bare minimum, but the few doctrinal swords on which some of them choose to fall can be so contrary to reason (think creationism or inerrancy of the Bible) that one could argue their adherents are at least as burdened, if not far more so, than their Catholic co-religionists.

Are correct belief and doctrinal assent really what being Christian is all about?

What if the evangelical atheist critique is the crucible of faith for Christians of the postmodern West? Not as some test to see if we can remain true to certain beliefs despite evidence and reason but as an epistemic refinery that forces us to be honest about the state of our churches, the inconsistencies in our sacred text, and the lack of falsifiability of our dogmas.  What would happen to your faith if you listened to them? Accepted their insights? Conceded their valid points?  

What Might Happen if You Listen to the Evangelical Atheist Critique

I’m not going to lie—if you’re a Christian in a dogmatic church and you really listen to what the evangelical atheists have to say, it might be devastating. I don’t want to scare you away, but the more you’re invested in your faith, the more devastating it might be. At first, when the foundation starts eroding beneath your feet, a gnawing panic might take root in your gut. You will search for solid ground, but the more you search, the more you will find there is nowhere safe to stand—not the Church, not the Bible, not the reasoned arguments of Christian theologians, which, at the end of the day, all rest upon assumptions. Your panic will probably grow. You will most assuredly begin to grasp. The theistic philosophers! The quantum physicists! Well, they’re doing their best, but as compelling as their greatest arguments and speculations are, there are always counterarguments and alternate speculations. Then, when it all finally and utterly penetrates your heart, and the precious narrative that has directed your life and has given you meaning crashes to the ground, you might experience the emptiness and purposeless you were, hitherto, only aware of through the works of chain-smoking, beret-wearing French nihilists.

Then, you might be angry. You might be angry at your church, which ensconced misogyny and bigotry in a dubious metaphysic. You might be angry at your priest who told you to go to confession if you voted Democrat in the last election, or your pastor who had you believing that you would be healed if you just had enough faith or you would get rich if you just gave enough money. You will certainly be angry with yourself for being such a fool. “You duped me oh Lord,” you will cry to a God you are no longer sure exists, “And I let myself be duped!”

And that’s where you will be stuck forever.

Unless…

After all of that, you still can’t quit the carpenter from Nazareth. Then, you might be on the verge of discovering the pearl of great price. But only if you refuse to beat a hasty retreat into fideism! Only if you flee the siren call of cheaply resolved dialectic! Like the Son of Man, you will have no place to lay your head. Having surrendered your dogmas and your certitude—straying, as through an infinite nothing—you will be left with only the stark, unflinching words of your master: “If any man come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.”

Robbed, then, of every consolation of the mind, only a few questions remain: Will you still—knowing where his love took him—follow his command to “love one another as I have loved you?” Do you believe—without any “assent of faith” necessary—that love this radical is the only salvation of our species, because the truth of it is knit into the marrow of your being? And will you dare to sell everything you have for this pearl of great price?

If so, there’s probably an atheist somewhere you should thank.  

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This week, I thought I’d share an excerpt from one of my short stories, “The Stretch Motel.” It was longlisted for the John Steinbeck Award for Fiction and was published in Issue 153 of Reed Magazine. It’s included in my short story collection, Tales From the Liminal, coming this fall from Deuxmers Publishing.

A wad of chewing tobacco bulges behind Francine’s bottom lip as she presses a Gideon into my palm and says, “You know, Jimmy, you’re gonna die someday.”

I look down at the little green book, vinyl-bound with fake gold letters. We put ’em in every nightstand, along with a dogeared coupon for Angelino’s Pizza and a color postcard for the Klassy Gents Klub. The Stretch Motel is all about options.

“And that someday might be soon,” she adds, spitting into the dandelions that sprawl out of the cracks in the curb.

“Francine,” I reply with a raised eyebrow, “you’re not thinking of having a hand in that, are ya?”

She grins, flecks of tobacco clinging to her yellow teeth. Brown juice oozes up to the top of her bottom lip, and I wonder why she’s bringing up death so goddam early in the morning. She unlocks the next room.

Cleaning motel rooms isn’t hard, per se. You rip off the sheets and put on a new set. Swipe down the toilet and the sink—no need to bleach anything, just make it look good. Stash the bathroom with clean towels, fresh soap, and those little shampoo and conditioner bottles everybody takes home and leaves sit in the medicine cabinets for six years ’til they finally throw ’em out, unused. Vacuum if necessary. Dust with a generic orange-scented wax product. Wipe the windows with a generic lemon-scented glass cleaner. Make sure the coupon, the card, and the Gideon are neatly arranged in the drawer, bottoms together, tops fanned out. Rotate the one that’s on top if you’re unsure, like me, which you prefer.

We’re just about to step into Room 176, when we hear tires squeal into the parking lot. We hurry down to the end of the 170s and lean out around the corner, bracing ourselves against the wind gusting off the semis that whiz down the interstate. It’s so damn bright we can’t make out the vehicle, so we shield our eyes in synchronicity, like recruits saluting the flag. A boxy, brown Buick LeSabre with out-of-state plates pulls up to one of the cheapest rooms nearest the highway. A room so damn loud you can’t help but picture the poor insomniac bastards flipping through the channels late at night, the fake pine paneling closing in around ’em, as they reach for the nightstand drawer.

Order pizza.

Call a girl.

Get saved.

No one’s really sure which way to go, so you try a little of each, and then, as Francine has reminded me for some goddam reason today, you die.

If you would like to read more, you can order a copy of Tales from the Liminal
from your local bookstore or Amazon.

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Etheridge Knight (1931–1991) dropped out of high school when he was a teenager to serve in the Korean War and was wounded in combat. He returned home with an injury that led to a drug addiction and eventual incarceration for robbery. On the back of his first published book of poetry, he summarizes his experiences this way: “I died in Korea from a shrapnel wound, and narcotics resurrected me. I died in 1960 from a prison sentence and poetry brought me back to life.”

I’ve got about 13 poems dog-eared in The Essential Etheridge Knight, but I think “A WASP Woman Visits a Black Junkie in Prison” is my favorite. Take a minute to read it here. Or, better yet, listen to Knight read it in the two-minute clip below.

Audio clip of Knight reading
“A WASP Woman Visits a Black Junkie in Prison.”

In this poem, we have two human beings from very different worlds. The only thing they seem to have in common is that they’re both human. It’s not much, yet they make a connection. How? Each takes a critical first step. The “WASP woman” makes a visit. Why? We don’t know, but if she’s anything like the rest of us, her motivations are probably mixed and unclear even to herself. I think it’s fair that she’s probably trying to do a good thing—it’s not easy, after all, visiting a prison, nursing home, or veteran’s hospital, suffering everywhere you look—but maybe she imagines herself some kind of saint. Maybe has a White Savior Complex. Maybe her daddy was in prison and she never went to visit him and now he’s dead and she’s trying to make up for it. Maybe she signed up for the Prison Visiting Committee at church and now that she’s there she doesn’t know what she was thinking. She’s sits, nervous in her chair, unsure what to talk about, but she is there.

The protagonist “black junkie” walks in. Guard up. Skeptical. The very idea of the visit “a cake baked with embarrassing icing,” but he sees the woman sitting there and something tells him to give it a chance. To give her a chance. He says to himself, “Hold your stupid face, man, Learn a little grace, man,” and then, in the crucial action of the poem—in the crucial action of life—he tells himself to:

“drop a notch the sacred shield.” 

Ah, yes. The sacred shield. The god of our unenlightened lives. The ego self, always at hand, keeping us safe, keeping us isolated. How many missed connections in life because we were too afraid, stubborn, angry, anxious, arrogant, self-protecting, self-involved, bitter, prejudiced, spiteful, and/or wounded to lower it a notch? But even if/when we find the courage to lower it, it doesn’t mean it’s gonna be a cake walk. Knight, who is writing about his own experience in the poem, narrates what happens next:

“After the seating

And the greeting, they fished for a denominator,

Common or uncommon,

And could only summon up the fact that both were human.”

That’s it. That’s all they could come up with. That they’re both human. Like I said, not gonna be a cake walk. He’s agitated by this lowest of common denominators. Feels the “hot words” he put down earlier boiling back up to the surface, but chastises himself when he recognizes a crucial aspect of their shared humanity:

“The lady is as lost as you.” 

So, he decides to try again. “You got any children?” he asks, and the dam breaks. They begin to chat. “Small and funny talk.” No “compact sermons” or “pills to cure his many ills.” But they make a connection, and in the powerful closing lines of his poem, Knight lets us know this connection is the essential thing:

“Her chatter sparked no resurrection and truly

No shackles were shaken,

But after she had taken her leave, he walked softly,

And for hours used no hot words.”

I think Knight is saying that our shared humanity is enough, but only if we have the courage to lower our ego shields and offer our true selves to one another. Anyone who has ever made one of these rare, fleeting, mutually ego-less connections with another human being knows the awe and serenity that come in their wake. Knows what it’s like to walk softly and, for a couple of hours, to use no hot words. Knows how surprising and sweet the sustenance to the soul can be from one of these cakes baked with embarrassing icing.

You can read more about Etheridge Knight’s life and work at the Poetry Foundation, and you can access more of his recordings on the University of Pennsylvania PennSound website. The video below is of Knight reading some of his poems for the Friends of the Scranton Public Library Poetry Series, October 8, 1980.

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It can be tough being a lyrics person in a beats-driven world. Before I started writing Postmodern Pilgrim, the only humans I could subject to my song analysis were my children.

Person of Lyrics + Mother of 11 = Captive Audience of Annoyed Offspring

Don’t get me wrong, I’m also a music person—I freak out like the next music lover over a fresh bass line or a slick guitar riff.  I wait with anticipation for “the drop.” My heart breaks or soars along a progression of emotive piano chords or plaintive strumming. But no matter how awesome the music might be, I always want to know what the lyrics are, and when there is a perfect marriage of the two, I lose it.

Exquisite Music + Profound, Poetic Lyrics = Ecstasy

About six years ago, I started curating the Existential Playlist. My thirteen-year-old son asked me what it meant, so I explained, “Well, it’s got songs on it that are about existence rather than falling in love, having sex, or partying at the club,” to which he replied, “Well, aren’t those parts of existence?” Excellent point, Timmy. Excellent point. I guess a better explanation might be, “Songs that get at certain truths of existence other than falling in love, having sex, and partying at the club,” which is simply what most songs are about. Though there are plenty of songs on the playlist with their feet in this terrain, the songs of these types that tend to make the cut are those of a reflective nature that offer some insight into the why. Take “Iris,” by the Goo Goo Dolls, which also happens to have that synergistic magic that can only be created by the perfect marriage of music and lyrics. So many incredible lines in the verses, but the chorus kills me every time:

“And I don't want the world to see me
'Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am”

“Iris” from Dizzy Up the Girl, Goo Goo Dolls, 1998

John Rzeznik makes this impassioned declaration before the onslaught of social media. Before we began sharing the happy, colorful bits of our lives with hundreds of online “friends.” But even without the mirage these billions of Facebook facades create, the landscape of alienation he paints is familiar to us—one littered with the rusting relics of planned obsolescence and bathed in the phantasmal glow of electronic entertainment. And in this desolate landscape, he lays claim to a small, sacred space where, trembling, he will reveal himself to another. He knows, like you and I know, that love lives or dies on such revelations, but they must be made or we will not be known, and that is more terrifying than rejection.

An alien race might encounter these lyrics someday and wonder at such desperation to be known. By one person. Whether it be a friend or parent, sibling or lover. It sounds like such a little thing. But to us humans, it feels like everything.

(Human + Self Revelation)^2 x Acceptance^2 = Love^∞

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Admit Something

Admit something: Everyone you see, you say to
them, “Love me.”

Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise
someone would call the cops.

Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us
to connect.

Why not become the one who lives with a full
moon in each eye that is always saying,

with that sweet moon language, what every other
eye in this world is dying to hear?

—by Hafiz…or Daniel Ladinsky…or both? Published in The Sun, October 2013.

“Admit Something” is the best poem I’ve ever read on love. It circulates as a poem by the Sufi mystic-poet Hafiz (alternately, “Hafez”), who lived in the 14th century in Shiraz, Iran, but poems like this one from Daniel Ladinsky’s books are not so much translations of Hafiz’s work as they are “renderings” of the mystic poet. I think it’s interesting that Mr. Landinsky does not take credit for the poems. That he gives it to Hafiz. Some are critical of this approach, but any writer who’s ever been in a flow state, whose ever been held captive by “the muse,” knows what it’s like to feel you had little part in what came out on the page. Maybe the experience that Mr. Ladinsky describes of writing these poems with Hafiz isn’t so incomprehensible to me because in my Catholic tradition it’s not uncommon for people to have special relationships with certain saints, or to describe what they have written as direct revelations from beings who have long since passed on from this world. However the process works for Mr. Ladinsky, he has delivered to us poetry that lays bare the longings of the human heart.

“Admit Something” does this so eloquently I don’t feel I can offer any commentary that would add anything of value. In fact, when I’m old(er), if the youngins come around asking for life advice, I plan to look at them over the rims of my glasses and, through the parted drapes of my long silvery hair, simply and mysteriously reply, “Why not become the one who lives with a full moon in each eye?”

You can find Hafiz’s collected works in the original Persian/Farsi or in English translation (though the translations mostly seem to be poorly reviewed ) in the Divan of Hafiz. You can find more of Daniel Ladinsky’s renderings of Hafiz in his books.

You can also listen to a wonderful recording of some of Hafiz’s (translated) ghazals by the incredible Samaneri Jayasāra below.

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“All alone or in twos
The ones who really love you
Walk up and down outside the wall
Some hand in hand
And some gathered together in bands
The bleeding hearts and the artists
Make their stand

And when they've given you their all
Some stagger and fall
After all it's not easy
Banging your heart against
Some mad bugger’s wall”

—“Outside the Wall,” The Wall, Pink Floyd

I spent a lot of the seventeenth year of my life analyzing the lyrics of The Wall with my dear friend Herman. My children like to point out that I’m probably amongst the .001% of Pink Floyd devotees whose relationship with the band is non-cannabinical, and, though my reflections might have been more profound if I’d partaken of the sacred herb, it’s hard to imagine that I'm not also amongst a .001% of devotees who mined that double cassette like it was the Old and New Testament. To me it was all one and the same—Shakespeare in English class, St. Paul in Religion class, Pink Floyd over lunch hour. If you sorted through the clutter strewn across your path, you would find the little gems they left, sparkling in the debris, and, if you followed where they led, you would surely find your way. For me, “Outside the Wall” was one of these gems.

After an eighty-minute descent into the depths of human isolation, fear, and despair, Pink, the protagonist of The Wall, is condemned to ultimate exposure and vulnerability. As you hear the wall come crashing down around him, the wistful opening bars of Outside the Wall begin. Almost a throw-away at the end of the album, this final song—like the closing scene of any great novel, movie, play, or television series—delivers the meaning of the entire story, and to me, because of this song, the story of The Wall has always been one of redemption—real, true, gritty, existential redemption, comprised of the unending but ennobling work of love. I think “Outside the Wall” is an apt and artfully understated title for this perfect song, but “What Wondrous Love Is This,” would also have been money.

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