The Potty Trapeze

Except ourselves, we have no other prayer--Vassar Miller, a cross over sleight of hand

Why I resist the violence necessary for divine grace relates to a failed devotional youth. I do not “praise the Lord” in the fashion of Pentatonix and their aspirational chorus, though their appearance under Steve Harvey’s televised presentation possibly initiated congestive heart failure, whatever Shawn’s concerted efforts on my behalf toward restoration. My armor crumbled against that transcendent lyricism, and yet resistance remains in the shards of equanimity: I cannot restore the faith that Mary, my mother’s sister, never left, not that she expresses her devout sensibilities on the edge, as I would if I tried again. We are quite past the war with God that we would find in the anti-clerical rebellion of Maldoror, and I spent a good portion of my young alienated heart throbs, their wall of separation, being apart from unity with an anthropomorphic creator. The rest of my lifespan is too short, yet this child Kaylee's convinced optimism and passionate invocation is enough to invite the will to perish. I never had that victory in the struggle for or against belief. As far as my circumstances are concerned, I have to work in very small increments until I can create the psychic wall between my necessary intimacy with this care giver, and the isolation a writer needs; and I can’t rebel. He stayed on rather than chancing a better position because I pouted, knowing what I could more easily manipulate to have my own way than not. Yet I do not have the mortal time left to “give it time,” in the common vernacular. You can count the five months as well as I, still in need of file conversion, particularly as I lost my link to Sean. He told me he would help me prior to Victoria’s ill repute gaining ground. Regardless of whether or not I manage to stay out of Inglis—no small miracle—my wick is at low burn. I’m certainly not going to tolerate tubular insertion into my digestive tract, as did my dialectical predecessor, Vassar Miller, who had a normal spastic lifespan.

The light touch I take with poetics is partly due to the vast aesthetics involved. There are too many poets, too many branches, and I am not known for the sterling discipline of a syllabus, but if I had enough access to her output, I'd clear the table for the critical analysis Vassar more than richly deserves. Her own hymnals embedded in her stanzas are as weighty as mine. I may reject the notion that a superhuman being posits humanity as its primary concern, but I take the ecumenical battle with the autonomic materialism of observable phenomena very seriously, as much as did Steven Sontag's mother. Like Jacob, I will not release the angel from my grip. My hip was dislocated long before the wrestling match ensued. That's Catholic atheism, as opposed to an agnostic cop out.

Learning By Obituary

'and love is not a victory march"--Leonard Cohen

Let me give erstwhile Britonian Andrew Sullivan his due: When he was still blogging The Dish, he defended Brendan Eich and his donation on Proposition 8, and that was courageous, and the right thing to do, as people need the right to be wrong, and at the time, I concurred with Sullivan's reasoning. Eich did not publicize his views, did not create hostile environments for homosexuals, and leftist hysteria, as it has been embodied in the criticism of #MeToo, apparently wants us all to blossom into pretty pastels and cat pics rivaling India's population, and Voila, Mary had a little lamb, we all live happily ever after in a glass globe pastoral; being a more sincere apostate in his Catholic faith than I, he also introduced me to Gerard Manley Hopkins, when he was having a bad week with his lungs, led me further afield on David Foster Wallace's painful suicide, and on the preponderance of that alone, aside from his playful screen shot of Amtrak which wasn't meant to marginalize, my antagonism is deplorable. I lost a voice I ceased to respect, no real reason other than anathema for speculative anal penetration, and his destruction of marriage as a sacrament. This is the crux of queer genius. What Proust did for literature, what James did for the novel, what Foucault brought to the table about state control of physical bodies, are invaluable contributions. I know all this, but progressives, by the same token, are actually destroying personal liberty, not expanding it. What's happening on campuses today makes the destruction of Huckleberry Finn look like a table ornament, never mind that Twain worked seven years to perfect his Mississippi dialect, that an African slave is the moral center of the book. We've turned a mere word, nigger, into a form of capital punishment. And I refuse to feel guilty. The black women who run this building deserved what I did to denigrate them, as I have never been allowed, that's right, to be a fully fledged woman who could fulfill her potential. I tried devotion, and all I did in full throttle melancholy youth prior to meeting Jerry was negotiate with Christ, this manifestation of the Father, negotiate and accuse. Why did you allow this to happen to me? Give me a man. Like I want to return to that, playing fiddlesticks, touching among an interior ferocity to be a warrior for God. Priests excommunicate what I represent, even the Argentine, with his gaffes befuddling the flock. I treat His Holiness with respect on twitter, but personally feel he does Catholicism no favors. Of course hell exists, even for atheists who rebel in an unreasoned emotional intensity. Faith carries too high a price, for me, too much sacrifice, and yet, my indifference to homosexual advocacy for itself has been vanquished against the realization that humanity is inexorably unraveling what humanity means. Milo says, if we want to upgrade his rhetoric a notch, that we need new shields, after a fashion. We'll probably get them, as the sanctity of what marriage means, spiritually, is analogous to turning Leonard Cohen's classical lyric into a televised spectacle, sugar coated by a little girl so carefully imitating adult maturity.

I did my research, after the fact. Cohen, as an incongruous Canadian, employing American tropes in modulated Canadian fashion, only came to light for me after his death in 2016. I had no idea Hallelujah was a celebrated classic, a challenge grasped by many vocalists. I wouldn't have thought he could put the challenge of faith in such bold, clever terms, even as I near the end of my life. I am no longer a good human being, not beneath, whatever I fail to read in the crystal of my imagination, I thoroughly believe in limits, and in that for which the Inquisition stood. Sullivan, I doubt, will never realize the backlash of his legacy, and damned himself without anyone's help, but he has sinned in a quite febrile sense, against transcendent majesty of grace. My sin is knowing what I'd do to him for that, if you care to pray for any scalded soul.