Sunday, May 02, 2010
25. THESE LAST WORDS OF JESUS CHRIST:
All religions talk back to death and each religion somehow wrests varied meanings from death which meanings come densely packed in creeds and liturgies and which make up the condensed stew of the proud and mighty and strong churches which line the many avenues (especially here in Manhattan too - a place so strangely redolent of churches and places of worship that it is a smote in the eye of the modern day by which secularism too is brought to the cutting-edge and modernist curve of attitude and folly and all is advanced and I never was able to understand how so far afield it has all come yet here I am) and it is said that the 'least' sensible object of human experience is that oddly inert mass of decaying flesh and bones that we do delicately call a corpse and a corpse calls for a death and and that calls for life but we heed the remnants of such coagulation only intermittently by recalling things and words - Buddha's 'parinirvana' or Jesus' rage against going 'gently' into death's good night and no matter what we read we can find versions of the same wherever we look and for the taking we can craft almost that which we want - Buddhists have only one version of their founder's last words : 'all that is compound dissolves / work out your liberation with diligence' but the four Gospels contain no fewer than seven final pronouncements of Jesus and 'These Seven Last Words' include a prayer ('Father forgive them for they know not what they are doing') a promise ('truly I tell you that today you will be with me in Paradise') a command ('woman behold thy son...son behold thy mother') an anguished cry ('my God my God why have you forsaken me?') a statement ('I thirst') a declaration ('it is finished') and another prayer ('father into your hands I commend my spirit') - and all these words together reveal Jesus to be - among other things - a pious Jew a concerned son and a human being sunk into bodily distress and outside of faith this can all be debated one way or the other all day long (for there are those who say FAITH rules the day and all things understandable and seen are thusly only through FAITH and its consort arrived at) and this one vast crazed twisted crooked city itself - like some tarnished New Jerusalem of intention and merit in spite of all things - throws forth all its bluster and glimmer to evade and avoid revealing or facing these things : FOR THE WORLD SAYS 'Jesus did not die to pay a debt to God' [I hear that in the alleys and byways] 'authentic faith is hostile not only to capitalism but to war and family values' [I hear that in the alleys and the byways and the banks and the great chambers] and that 'authentic faith is all too rare in American churches and everywhere else throughout this land' - NOT JUST here in NYC's broken medallions of peace and money and if the words of Jesus on the cross are said to be words in turn about US - the all and the what of that which we ARE - then someone should employ every urban means and power to exclaim declaim and proclaim same from every perch [I hear little of anything there] for : LISTEN UP !! Reality is MAGICAL and all things are never what they seem to be and behind every thing are powers far greater than object and representation and listen you must for the hand and care of GOD wherever it may be for once ALL is accomplished it WILL be possible for us to live in PEACE but all will never be accomplished because ALL is unending and never truly exists and as we chase that chimera it in turn chases us back WORLD WITHOUT END amen ... but instead of going on I decided to sit down and stare back at the world and remember the times of men and monsters and the fiery realities which made all Gods and all furies and images and dreams and my eye is caught by the limousine door opening outward from some diplomatic plate and the two girls in shawls who erupt like flame from within the car and their clothing bears no resemblance to anything but excess and riches and they inhabit an Earth unknown to me and to what they claim to represent - for the dead are poor and they are poorly piled - and the Marines once looking for a few good men now seek any man they can find - whether between these United Nations' thighs or some Iraqi sands for the world has gone crazy with its own blight and the UN and all its vast edifice before me I see is twisting and listing itself and the hands of a nation which carries nothing but water are so soon empty swords into plowshares notwithstanding and where then shall we bury the dead - the two girls left standing at the curb are swaddled in lust and my own two eyes besmirch their forms and reputations too until they both dissolve to nothing in the January evening wind and the water sweeps its whitened way past land and park and building as taxis fly and land-buggies cower and some man in a German tongue explains something else to his wife alongside where I am standing - but it is as if everything was for nothing for all I hear are the silences and the people once present are gone and for every Rockefeller Paul Screvane Robert Moses John Vliet Linsday himself there are thousands of imitators and followers left behind and magic swords cross broken plows indeed (as I recall the old framed photo of a hatted Truman Capote as it once was shown from some nearby store window) and I can remember the ground upheaved for the great LeCorbusier headquarters of the worldly realm of men now gone and the shovels and steam and hammers and rivets and glass seem now all to have been for naught but no one knows anymore anyway and the secret stairways still run to the sky with pallid faces morosely bent on fulfillment of something - a promise a lilt a budgeted con if it need be - and where are they all and who to hear if the city spoke ? what would it say ? 'I am luster but it is nothing now I am hatred quartered in glamour I am theft and the pallor of disease I am some celebrated horseman dwindling my time for a very expensive fee' and surely the many would shrug and walk on.
All religions talk back to death and each religion somehow wrests varied meanings from death which meanings come densely packed in creeds and liturgies and which make up the condensed stew of the proud and mighty and strong churches which line the many avenues (especially here in Manhattan too - a place so strangely redolent of churches and places of worship that it is a smote in the eye of the modern day by which secularism too is brought to the cutting-edge and modernist curve of attitude and folly and all is advanced and I never was able to understand how so far afield it has all come yet here I am) and it is said that the 'least' sensible object of human experience is that oddly inert mass of decaying flesh and bones that we do delicately call a corpse and a corpse calls for a death and and that calls for life but we heed the remnants of such coagulation only intermittently by recalling things and words - Buddha's 'parinirvana' or Jesus' rage against going 'gently' into death's good night and no matter what we read we can find versions of the same wherever we look and for the taking we can craft almost that which we want - Buddhists have only one version of their founder's last words : 'all that is compound dissolves / work out your liberation with diligence' but the four Gospels contain no fewer than seven final pronouncements of Jesus and 'These Seven Last Words' include a prayer ('Father forgive them for they know not what they are doing') a promise ('truly I tell you that today you will be with me in Paradise') a command ('woman behold thy son...son behold thy mother') an anguished cry ('my God my God why have you forsaken me?') a statement ('I thirst') a declaration ('it is finished') and another prayer ('father into your hands I commend my spirit') - and all these words together reveal Jesus to be - among other things - a pious Jew a concerned son and a human being sunk into bodily distress and outside of faith this can all be debated one way or the other all day long (for there are those who say FAITH rules the day and all things understandable and seen are thusly only through FAITH and its consort arrived at) and this one vast crazed twisted crooked city itself - like some tarnished New Jerusalem of intention and merit in spite of all things - throws forth all its bluster and glimmer to evade and avoid revealing or facing these things : FOR THE WORLD SAYS 'Jesus did not die to pay a debt to God' [I hear that in the alleys and byways] 'authentic faith is hostile not only to capitalism but to war and family values' [I hear that in the alleys and the byways and the banks and the great chambers] and that 'authentic faith is all too rare in American churches and everywhere else throughout this land' - NOT JUST here in NYC's broken medallions of peace and money and if the words of Jesus on the cross are said to be words in turn about US - the all and the what of that which we ARE - then someone should employ every urban means and power to exclaim declaim and proclaim same from every perch [I hear little of anything there] for : LISTEN UP !! Reality is MAGICAL and all things are never what they seem to be and behind every thing are powers far greater than object and representation and listen you must for the hand and care of GOD wherever it may be for once ALL is accomplished it WILL be possible for us to live in PEACE but all will never be accomplished because ALL is unending and never truly exists and as we chase that chimera it in turn chases us back WORLD WITHOUT END amen ... but instead of going on I decided to sit down and stare back at the world and remember the times of men and monsters and the fiery realities which made all Gods and all furies and images and dreams and my eye is caught by the limousine door opening outward from some diplomatic plate and the two girls in shawls who erupt like flame from within the car and their clothing bears no resemblance to anything but excess and riches and they inhabit an Earth unknown to me and to what they claim to represent - for the dead are poor and they are poorly piled - and the Marines once looking for a few good men now seek any man they can find - whether between these United Nations' thighs or some Iraqi sands for the world has gone crazy with its own blight and the UN and all its vast edifice before me I see is twisting and listing itself and the hands of a nation which carries nothing but water are so soon empty swords into plowshares notwithstanding and where then shall we bury the dead - the two girls left standing at the curb are swaddled in lust and my own two eyes besmirch their forms and reputations too until they both dissolve to nothing in the January evening wind and the water sweeps its whitened way past land and park and building as taxis fly and land-buggies cower and some man in a German tongue explains something else to his wife alongside where I am standing - but it is as if everything was for nothing for all I hear are the silences and the people once present are gone and for every Rockefeller Paul Screvane Robert Moses John Vliet Linsday himself there are thousands of imitators and followers left behind and magic swords cross broken plows indeed (as I recall the old framed photo of a hatted Truman Capote as it once was shown from some nearby store window) and I can remember the ground upheaved for the great LeCorbusier headquarters of the worldly realm of men now gone and the shovels and steam and hammers and rivets and glass seem now all to have been for naught but no one knows anymore anyway and the secret stairways still run to the sky with pallid faces morosely bent on fulfillment of something - a promise a lilt a budgeted con if it need be - and where are they all and who to hear if the city spoke ? what would it say ? 'I am luster but it is nothing now I am hatred quartered in glamour I am theft and the pallor of disease I am some celebrated horseman dwindling my time for a very expensive fee' and surely the many would shrug and walk on.
