human touch

Not just any touch. Human. After today's healing service, at St. Paul's Cathedral, downtown Syracuse, I wondered, "Why does this move me so?" When the priest puts the oil of chrism on my forehead, and even more when her hands press upon the top of my head, I am moved. I am touched, literally and figuratively. Why is that? Is it out of a deep hunger? A longing for human warmth and connection? To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, in "Prufrock," it is that and so much more. But if I am honest, it is not touch alone. It is smell as well, though I can't seem to name any. (There was no incense, yet in some deep recess the burning wax of candles resonates, I'm sure. And bread, morsels of sacred bread. Isn't all bread sacred? In our family, as kids, back in Stamford, Connecticut, if we dropped bread from the kitchen table, where we dined, our custom was to pick the bread up and kiss it. Was the practice imported from Poland or Slovakia? I should ask my mom, 98.) So today, snowflakes touched my skin, or could have, this late in cruellest April, but they ain't human. My head will touch my pillow and find comfort there, but it ain't human. Which begs the rank and obvious question, "Am I human?" That is not as morose or as depressing as you might first think. Back in high school, Father Giuliani often said we had to be human before anything else, certainly before we could claim to be Christian (or atheist, for that matter). What is it to be human? You could make an argument, couldn't you, that the absence of touch, inhabiting the arid, monastic cells of the Desert Fathers, vacant of human touch beyond my own skin, my own fragrance, would pin me with the solipsistic label inhuman.

heated reflections

Mr. Lucas standing against the brick wall of their apartment, cigarette ash visible. Heat lightning. His talk of going fishing the next day. Dad fooling around with the antenna in the attic to improve TV reception, grumbling about "sun spots." Headlines of tanks rolling through Berlin as a wall is built. Tension as electric as the static from storms. Hitting 'em out. Shagging flies. Guzzling ice tea so cold it burns. A hot bath to feel the contrast. No shower head. Talcum powder. Nervous about September and school. Seal off rooms with fans on exhaust during the day, on intake at night. no such thing as AC. The drone of a ballgame. Haircuts cut so short. Delivering the Shopper. Asking the Italian lady for some water. Ice water. Take it in like a boy in the desert. The beach, Dad and Mom never once ever going into the Sound. Fear of atomic war. Rabbit ears. Potato salad. The little metal box for the milkman to place the bottles. Caddying. The straps digging in, the thirst. The spidered night flashes but no thunder.

The Officious Offalness of the Office

Two out of two Pawlie Kokonuts daughters are fans of "The Office," the television series (the American version, not the British, original rendition).

While I will while away an idle moment or two watching "The Office," I cannot claim to be a fan (nor a public enemy). (Notice how the previous sentence used "while" as a conjunction and as a verb? Mrs. Rivers of Burdick Junior High School, in Stamford, Connecticut, in the early 1960s, would be delighted that I can make this parenthetical statement.) Why don't I delight in "The Office"? It's simple: it's too much like Real Life (no, not the Albert Brooks movie "Real Life").

Who cares to relive the petty crimes of the cubicle cosmos? The accumulated humiliations perpetrated by hubris-brimming "leaders" and unmanageable managers?

Not I.

I don't miss it.

It would be weird, wouldn't it, in an Andy Kaufman sort of way, to portray in my own office of entrepreneurial independence the twisted power plays and poses of office life, all played by The Laughorist?

Yeah, it would be.

What They Taught Me in Kindergarten -- and Beyond

First day of school here.

School? Some memories of my own, of school long ago and far away, in Stamford, Connecticut, and beyond:

1. The fear of being bullied by Dennis F. and his moo-ha-ha-ha sadistic laugh.

2. Enjoying recess as the high point of the day.

3. Never doing homework upon first getting home. Instead, changing into play clothes and playing outside. Doing the homework at night and then, if possible, being free to watch "The Dick Van Dyke Show" or "Andy Griffith."

4. Pining for Louise L., whom I spied at the wind-up pencil sharpener in 4th grade.

5. Anxiety doing long division.

6. Worse anxiety doing math word problems, and the tension in the kitchen as my parents tried to help.

7. Mrs. Rivers's shouting into our faces "know it now" or "bear that in mind" as she drilled us on grammar in 7th grade. (The term serial comma never came up, and I don't remember her position on the serial comma, but she was probably the best teacher I ever had, at least in sheer efficacy, but not the most cherished [that would be Father Giuliani].)

8. Diagraming sentences on the blackboard in Mrs. Rivers's class.

9. Saying the "Hail Mary" in French in Father Methe's class in high school.

10. The panic of trying to get to class after gym, after fiddling with the combination lock on the gym basket, hair dripping wet, in 3 minutes. (Try diagraming that sentence!)

11. Learning Latin in 9th grade, taught by Mrs. Nell Herndon (who had a very cool new Thunderbird) in a Texas drawl.

12. Boys' and girls' separate entrances at Burdick Junior High School (now replaced with condos, I think).

Remembering Buckley, and Me

Wm. F. Buckley, Jr. (which is how he wrote it), the patron saint of American conservatism, has died at 82.

For starters, I learned my favorite word, cited in the banner of this blog, and blogged about frequently, from him: I had read the words solipsist or solipsistic in his columns.

When I was in high school, in 1965, I wrote an admiring letter to Mr. Buckley, asking to meet him. I grew up and lived in Stamford, Connecticut, where he had a home (and where he died today), not far from my parish church. I got a return letter from him, typed in blue, as I recall, with a short note (long since lost), saying he was busy running for mayor of New York; here's my home phone number; call after the election. I did.

On the day of December 31, 1965, my father drove me to his house, on Long Island Sound. My older and younger brothers came along for the ride. As we drove into the driveway, I met Buckley outside his study, a garage (if I recall rightly) filled with books and papers scattered about; large horseshoe desk; old-fashioned typewriter (a Smith-Corona or Underwood or Remington). His son, Christopher, whom he called Christo, came up on a bicycle and WFB told him to tend to something or other. When I got inside the study, Buckley asked how I got there. My father. My father and brothers were waiting in the car; he insisted they come in.

He wore a sweater with his shirttail hanging out in back. ("Sloppy genius" was my father's stereotyped characterization.) I remember him casually smoking a cigar. He had had a reputation, among liberals (or more accurately among those who did not know him), as being condescending and churlish. The total opposite was true. He was gracious and charming. He made us feel relaxed and comfortable. Here we were, residents of a housing project, hanging out at Bill Buckley's on (early) New Year's Eve, for crying out loud.

I don't remember all of the conversation. At one point I said something, perhaps about the newly approved use of English in the Mass, and Buckley was on the phone, speaking Spanish to a secretary mentioning a magazine article, and Buckley, um, pontificating, stark blue eyes twinkling, eyebrows dancing: "The Church is never more glorious than when she resists the zeitgeist." The maid brought coffee. We drank it, even my younger brother, not quite 9 years old. (My brothers and I were brought up as tea drinkers; Mom's influence.)

My father, a lifelong Democrat, told stories of World War II. Leyte. The Philippines. My younger brother made a pun about Leyte and lady. My father mentioned something about Joe McCarthy (and not something all that positive), and WFB reached to a bookshelf and pulled out a copy of his "McCarthy and His Enemies," inscribed and autographed it (in red, no less!), and handed it to my delighted dad. (To tell you the truth, I never did read the book, which sits in my bookcase a few feet away. I really did not have an open mind about the snarling McCarthy, then or now. My father, not particularly a book reader, did read it.) Was my father stealing the show? (Only now do I ask: was Buckley teaching me a lesson in filial piety, one later ignored in The Rebellion Years?)

I, a seminarian and liberal-in-waiting, engaged in a playful debate about the use of English in the Roman Catholic liturgy (Buckley wanted to keep Latin in the Mass, of course). He said his "mind was slowly cringing shut" on the issue (as I was reminded by my older brother tonight), and he challenged me to write a book in defense of my position. (I never did.) (Buckley was a lector, in English by the way, at nearby Saint Mary's Church, in Stamford.)

We went home, and were late for dinner. I felt bad for my Mom. Here we were, waltzing in all high and mighty. Dinner was probably cold.

It wasn't how I planned it.

Several years later, I saw Mr. Buckley in Bloomingdale's and managed to chat with him. He seemed to remember me.

I remember him.

Requiescat in pacem.

In Latin. Or English.

Or the language of the heart.