"We cannot get over the fact that tho we are gods—we are gods who shit."
Ernest Becker was a literal life saver for me as a young man leaving fundamentalist religion of youth and teen years. I was frightened but knew I was no longer of that hung up crowd tranced by CERTAINTY at all cost, even that of (at least my sanity which was tenuous enough even before the Calvinistas knocked on the front door of our then very remote house on a hill hovering over a fishing lake, red as the mud all around, and, turns out, as the iron-laden blood-o-Jesus all these 2000 years or so. A fateful knock at the door. Impaction still reverbing in my life. And in a brother who really (differently than me) committed to the Euro-Christian Protestant juggernaut but, to his surprise, found an inner activist that sent him into the streets to preach repentance to corrupt government and cops abusing non-white citizens and immigrants arriving in the "hood" from the violence and poverty that perhaps got a minute on the daily/nightly news.
I found Becker's book, The Denial of Death (1974), in 1975, a year after I outwardly fled the Sanctified....took years and years to inwardly separate with the eventual realization that it, they, is/was/are a part of my inner world for the duration, that despite my existentialist self there is this insistent part self that is still fecklessly, wreck-lessly on the outskirts of the Holy Hill folk, hearing, seeing but alone at a safe distance, a Glancing Belief-Enough to keep the lad oriented otherly toward Hinterlands splintered and cracked as they really REALLY are; I tell him I know it is the deep friendships he misses but not the self-hatred induced by the Calvinism, calcified to "THE Harrowed/Narrowed/Winnowed WORD" attached to an Absurd Unfathomable Terror or, rather, IF fathomed, should be run away from as fast as one can - took me awhile but I did - fled but did not run since I needed a lot of time, and and massive outer SPACE, to sort as long as it took through their harsh Deity (or at least the cultural expressions of it in history past and present, especially in the white USA, BUT that's for another essay or braying for another page) . . .
Read a pdf of the book free here:
**
How It Was I Came To Be What I Am - A Fable
for 'Spider' Bottas
They would argue over tides
Who bade me come into the world.
One said, Six o'clock.
The other, No, twelve.
I was born at the thirteenth hour
All the while mother arguing,
This is not the time but a little spell,
While father argued it was death,
You are dying and your child, too,
Is dying. You have been poisoned.
It was full moon and high tide,
The hour of birth.
All arguments yielded to the tide's.
The moon lit up the stadium
Of their gripes while I was
Born amidst their sweeps at
Each other, the nurse neglecting
To wipe me free of blood and salt
Being drawn into their strife.
He was born at day, one said.
No, at night, and he is a she,
Said the other. The nurse,
Speaking truthfully, said,
Cleaning me at last, No,
You are both right. The child
Is he and she, a hermaphrodite
Born of two days labor, its head
Out of the womb the duration.
Ruination! father cried.
Fame, mother sighed.
Both right, the nurse agreed,
Of these fables are made.
Then father tossed me into the sea.
The nurse saved me who later
Became my lover, hiding my
Sexes with a four leaf clover.
**
This film linked below is based on Becker's book The Denial of Death which is not at all bleak. It's actually vastly orienting and inspiring —Denial of Death::
https://archive.org/details/DenialofDeath_201411
NOTE - The film was made decades ago so the tie-dyed tea-shirt very California surfer dude voice is actually, now, hilarious to hear as he talks existentialism. So, keep a few eye-rolls handy and a sense of humor. I wonder if this guy is still amongst the living.
**
Exodus-Excursus After Folly - An Aging Poet Addresses One Who Wanders In Mountains Remote - Reprise
for Andrew Linton
Now I've broken my ties with the world of red dust;
I spend all my time wandering and read all I want.
Who will lend a dipper of water
to save a fish in a carriage rut?
—Han Shan, Tang Dynasty, China
1
There's a wary Moses in the distance counting pocket
change to give to the ferrier, coins to fit the eyes.
I'm hanging at the back of the crowd. There's manna
enough for pockets. My Red Sea is long parted but old
Pharaoh's got a new army. Each day is a scrape in the tents.
Prayer and fear is sustenance dragged further out by pillars
of fire. A volcano rumored to be God publishes 'Mandates for
a New Junta', led by a well-bred stutterer (prototypical politician,
it seems) . In odd limbo there trail reluctant murmurers.
That Golden Calf Incident was a silly mistake,
an overreaction, but there were agreements made
at the outset, sealed in blood, first born sons threatened
or worse, guaranteed real estate for dairy farmers and
bee keepers, oodles of milk-and-honey futures, money
to be made in hopefully greener pastures. Now it can
be said with certainty, a 'promised land' comes with
big catches - I've exchanged one for another, same
mistake - the barbs are plenty, mostly mistaken people
thinner than scripture loudly staking claims to land
and deity in long meander.
It's a luxury, sure. Some choose to wander. Some don't.
Water is scarce in deserts. Wheels are few but for
chariots of war, not many ruts though there's thirst aplenty,
not the bounty promised before the journey.
A penny for a wet tongue.
I'm of that hung up crowd forced to flee, a victim
of unleavened fate, or is that too Greek a notion?
The question begs asking. Unintended impertinence
must be forgiven. That's the theme, right? the long
march of history, that of redemption in time though
each and every has an opinion. Can't be helped.
Much to explain.
All's a seeming washed in blood.
2
"I say we very much don't merit these
unverifiable epiphanies." —James Merrill
Old friend, I've been reading zen, the death poems,
and Sayings of the Desert Fathers, in many ways
the same. These orient, assist. I can still lift a head
up among stars while swatting flies just to be silly
for what do stars care at all but for real-ing eyes,
they're wanting to be the more perceived, more
than lumps in solidity, but as sublime, as they once
lightyears dreamed, as a boy's fright-years dreamed,
too, despite a hard father's boot-steps on childhood's
stairs just other side the door to send him packing,
Future's shy Desert Father
anonymous on purpose,
beneath the bed,
a wilderness of sorts,
hiding still.
3
Now
I'm flung further into the fray though I sway up 5 flights
of stairs, long in exile, dizzy with the street, the human
beauty and brokenness there, all those flower pots in
windows, on stoops, the blossoming tree brightening
between darker bricks to truly dwell. It is for me, a shy
son, to see in spite of big chunks missing or torn out,
to remake the world as it always is for gods long to
be bread to dwell in our finitude. To them, then, I am
'the Dude', a daffodil in my lapel, gate of heaven and
h*ll open at the end of the block. I skip forward singing,
'La La La, ' poems a'pocket. If questioned at the gate
I'll blame you, meandering still, granting permission
the entrance to boldly storm.
Between St. Marks and the horizon my fingers still work.
**
Natalie Merchant - Weeping Pilgrim
(Traditional Protestant Hymn)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JXQczExSS8
Kvetch, 'Pathetique'. Bleak
plead, wretch, here stretch
arms, at least one, grasp as,
wreckt, wrack on pain, wrench
kindness render, or try, pity,
and so end City of willful man
'is Clod's cruel tred improv
replete - hyssop, vinegar to
lips sponged tourette-ic cry
'I can no more' reduced
down to a man, no further
compression possible, I bear,
endure, WILL, no choice in
[NOTE: All photographs are by Warren Falcon. All rights reserved.]
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