from “Flesh and Blood”, Louise Erdrich:
“I just put the wax down,” I said. “You have to wait.” He stood there looking at me over that long, shiny space. It rolled and gleamed like a fine lake between us. And it deepened. I saw that he was about to take the first step, and I let him, but halfway into the room his eyes went dark. He was afraid of how deep this was going to become. So I did for him what I learned from the nun. I put my hand through what scared him. I held it out there for him. And when he took it with all the strength of his arms, I pulled him in.
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from Impossible Exchange, Jean Baudrillard:
Identity is a dream that is pathetically absurd. You dream of being yourself when you have nothing better to do. (now ya tell me)
(in that case) Cyndi Lauper – Girls Just Wanna (“have fun”) (mp3)
Is it not our constant desire, in the absence of God, to convert this accidental world into something intended for us . . ? And it matters little whether the outcome is good or bad, provided this fatedness transforms us into strange attractors, which is something we all dream of. (ouch) Just because a tile falls off a roof, there isn’t necessarily someone underneath it at the right moment: that would be too good to be true. . . Yet we feel (we who?) that everyone somehow dreams of such a fateful conjunction—if not, perhaps of being the person right underneath the tile. –It reminds us of the days when the powers of heaven and hell did battle over our souls.
Bishop Allen – Vain (mp3)
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From “Love Medicine”, Louise Erdich:
We filed in that time. Me and Grandpa. We sat down in our pews. Then the rosary got started up pre-Mass and that’s when Grandpa filled up his chest and opened his mouth and belted out them words.
HAIL MARY FULL OF GRACE.
He had a powerful set of lungs.
And he kept on like that. He did not let up. He hollered and he yelled them prayers, and I guess people was used to him by now, because they only muttered theirs and did not quit and gawk like I did. I was getting red-faced, I admit. I give him the elbow once or twice, but that wasn’t nothing to him. He kept on. He shrieked to heaven and he pleased like a movie actor and he pounded his chest like Tarzan in the Lord I am Not Worthies. I thought he might hurt himself. Then after a while, I guess I got used to it, and that’s when I wondered: how come?
So afterwards I out and asked him. “How come? How come you yelled?”
“God don’t hear me otherwise,” said Grandpa Kashpaw.
I sweat. I broke right into a little cold sweat at my hairline because I knew this was perfectly right and for years and not one damn other person had noticed it. God’s been going deaf. Since the Old Testament, God’s been deafening up on us. I read, see. Besides the dictionary, which I’m constantly in use of, I had this Bible once. I read it. I found there was discrepancies between then and now. It struck me. Here God used to raineth bread down from clouds, smite the Phillipines, sling fire down on red-light districts where people got stabbed. He even appeared in person once in a while. God used to pay attention, is what I’m saying.
Now there’s your God in the Old Testament and there is Chippewa Gods as well. . . . Our Gods aren’t perfect, but at least they come around. They’ll do you a favor if you ask them right. You don’t have to yell. But you have to know, like I said, how to ask in the right way.
Ben Harper and The Blind Boys from Alabama – Mother Pray
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