The Second Coming (for the last time)

One of the most famous poems in the Western world is The Second Coming by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats.  Everyone has read it, or at least has heard some parts of it read to them, or seen those parts in print.  Most anthologies include it.
The well-known phrases are:  "Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world" or "The ceremony of innocence is drowned;  the best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity".  And finally,  "...what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"
These lines are favored by the impressionable young for their magical music as much as their apocalyptic promise.  The pundits of the world, on a slow day, will summon a vision of the Beast slouching toward Washington, approaching either from the Left or the Right, according to their ideological bent.  The poem has become a cliche.
I confess to having liked the poem while confessing also that I never understood it.
The problem, for me, lies in the title and theme.  The original Second Coming refers to a biblical prophecy that foretells the return of Jesus Christ, or the Messiah.
However Jesus did not slouch toward Bethlehem.  Neither did Mary, but it must be clear to all that whoever slouches toward the metaphorical Bethlehem to bear the Beast must be the Pregnant one, not the Beast itself.  Otherwise we are dealing with an event as unusual as the Virgin Birth.
Or it is just a bad metaphor formed from the conflation of Beast and Bethlehem infused with an evil slouch.
Flannery O'Connor overplayed the metaphor when she wrote the following:
"...nothing harder than Christian realism.  I believe there are many rough beasts now slouching toward Bethlehem to be born, and that I have reported on the progress of a few of them, and when I see these stories  (her short stories, ed. note)  described as horror stories I am always amused because the reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror."
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Richard Feynman Quotation

I found this quotation of Richard Feynman's on the Internet.  I like his honesty.

"I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing.  I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong.  I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything, and in many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here, and what the question might mean.   I might think about it a little, but if I can't figure it out, then I go to something else.  But I don't have to know an answer.  I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly.  It doesn't frighten me."

from The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of  Richard Feynman
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When I Get Blue

I watch this and the world looks rosier...

Alan C. Hunter, 1935-2010. In Memoriam.

The poet and sermon-giver, John Donne, wrote that "no man is an island" and "any man's death diminishes me."  That's true, no doubt, but sometimes a particular death does more than diminish one's being or soul.
The death of my brother Alan leaves me bereft, hollow, empty.  Everything seems changed and altered forever.  I sense consequences that remain unseen, unknown.  Never before have I awakened to  the day without knowing he was alive somewhere and ready to answer my questions.  No more. 
A few years ago I mailed Alan a VHS tape of the movie The Straight Story, a film about two brothers.  He wrote back that he liked the movie very much.  He also said that he loved me and always had.  Those words made my heart sing.  I immediately wrote back saying "Please don't die before I do!"  Alas.


I have written about my brother before, a tale of how he was part of the most perfect day of my life.
  There was so much more.  We fought World War II together.  We dug our foxholes in the side hill west of the house.  I had my submachine gun made of 1/2" galvanized pipe, tees, ells, and nipples.  He had some kind of homemade wooden rifle.  We collected metal and paper for the scrap drives, had a Victory Garden, bought Defense stamps for War Bonds.  We met the troop trains to beg for shoulder patches.  We saw all the war movies and we loved them all.  Patriots to the core.  Our own little band of brothers.
We were cowboys too.  We built our own corral.  Rounded up cattle.  Had bar room fights.  Gunfights in the street.  We fought only bad guys, not Indians.  We liked Indians.  We had read the books of Ernest Thompson Seton and knew well the Indian ways.
We often discussed which movie was the best Western ever made.  Was it Red River?  My Darling Clementine?  The Gunfighter with Gregory Peck?  Or High Noon?  Then, one summer evening in Biloxi, Mississippi in 1953,  as I came out of the base movie theater, having just seen Shane, I said to myself  I have got to tell Alan about this movie.  He must see it, I thought, it is the best.  Of course, he did see it, and he did agree.  Shane was the best Western ever made.  Young men, now, we both realized how much better if we could have seen it as boys.

And that reminds me of what I will miss the most.  So many times over the years there was a news event, a book published, a movie shown, a TV program, a magazine article, or something personal, and I would think, I have got to tell Alan about this.  I desired and respected his opinion.  I needed to know what he thought.
Although I was sixteen months older than Alan, he was more an older brother to me than I was to him.  For whatever reasons there were, I was reclusive, an emotional cripple.  Alan was not without his problems but he was more normal than I was.  He made friends easily;  I did not.   He engaged with girls easily;  I did not.  He explored the outside world sooner and more boldly.  I hung back.
When I did make the move, I went with him and his friends since I had none of my own.  He accepted me as he always had.


I spent a few days with Alan in May.  There was great physical change and there were periods of mental drifting.  Sleep was sporadic and short term.  On two occasions, Alan, his wife Jerian, and I sat outside on the front porch of his home.  He spoke of the enjoyment that gave him, pointing out the game trails for the deer who crossed the road.  A bluebird flitted between a powerline and the gravel driveway.  A Maryland yellowthroat could be heard singing in the brush off the lawn.
At different times, we conversed about our childhood, people we knew, some politics.  Once he expounded on an article he had read about narcissism and how it is infecting our social and political life.  His voice strengthened as he showed how thoroughly he had read and understood the article.  I was impressed, as always.

On the morning of my departure, I stood before him as he lay propped by pillows on the couch.  What now, I wondered, does he know I'm leaving?  Then he raised himself slightly and held his arms open wide.  I knelt on the floor beside him and wrapped my arms around him.  I love you, he said.  I love you, I said.  A moment more, and then I broke to stand up.  I stood there unable to move. He looked at me and then, gesturing with a hand, he looked at my face and gave me my last advice from him:  "Just go," he said, "just get in the car and drive away."  Firmly, gently, the words bathed me.  I was released.

Alan died a few weeks later, much sooner than I had expected.  I'm told his last four days were ugly and painful.  Then the sooner the better, I thought, for him.
What now, I wonder.  Like the boy in Shane, I want to cry out "Come Back!"  But there is no going back. 
The rider rides on.

"Taking us where we would not go -

Into the boundless dark.

When what was made has been unmade

The Maker comes to his work."

by Wendell Berry

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Poem for June 8, 2010

Certain portions of the heart
die, and are dead.  They are
dead.
Cannot be exorcized or brought
to life.
Do not disturb yourself
to become whole.
They are dead.  Go down
in the dark and sit with them
once in a while.

by Gilbert Sorrentino
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Who's Gonna Build Your Wall?

Capitalism is failing

..or perhaps I should say it is failing us as a people. This is because  there is no moral component in the American capitalist system.  Corporations do not get involved with community or social life as there is no money in it.
Insurance companies  refuse to insure people who need medical care from the get-go. They  drop people who are too sick to insure any longer. Profit and the concerns of the stockholder are the only standards for their policies, not the health and well-being of fellow citizens.
Manufacturers have shipped their factories overseas. This left many communities devastated and jobless. This weakens our society and removes a solid base from the national economy.
Mergers and acquisitions have decimated many good American companies. American capitalists intentionally buy good firms, some with famous names, and proceed to strip them of their assets and sell what is left. Millions of dollars are made this way. It is legal, but it is anti-social and hurts the nation.
This blind loyalty to the profit goal and the shareholder is what concerns me about the privatizing of military activities. There are thousands of private contractors performing a variety of support and logistics for our men and women in uniform. I believe these contractors have no serious interest in winning, or ending war quickly. Why should they? No one wants to work themselves out of a job, especially one that pays so well.