losing my religion

          "modest apostasy..."

         is that a description of the pinking cheeks of the occasional - when convenient - believer?

         or, does it describe the individual who no longer attends a house of worship but professes a belief in god...?

         or, is it just a clever oxymoron?

       

[with thanks to ed wissing]






 



         

key west - part five

i know ernest  hemingway was an impossible pain in the ass...at least later in life...but he was a hell of a writer.  when we had the house in key west there were two things we wanted to do - ride the conch train [because someone told us we had to...at least once] and go to  the hemingway house [because i fancied myself a writer - though not in hemingway's league].

the conch train ride was a real trip...five cars dragged by a thinly disguised jeep through a driving rain storm.  we sat in the middle car, the only two people on a tour which would normally accomodate thirty or so.  tourists silly enough to be out on the street stared at we two idiots, soaked, and feigning interest in the equally stunned driver's mechanical iterations of shotgun houses and audubon birds.  the absolute high point of the morning was the drive by the key west cemetery wherein resides a corpse whose headstone reads "i told you i was sick."

the hemingway house was a bore once one got by the little gable overlooking the pool where he did most of his writing.  the garden was populated by six toed cats - supposedly descended from the ones ernest favored and the front room was filled with paperback copies of his novels.  the absolute high point of our visit, however, was when i snuck into the roped off dining room and sat in the great man's chair at the head of the table - just imagine, my ass perched - only momentarily - where his ass had been throughout many a drunken evening.

stanley

swan hired him...i didn't.  stanley was from south andros...he said he was a bonefish guide and, in his spare time, a preacher.  i know the latter was true because swan and the girls went to hear him sermonize - i wouldn't go. his children hollered "mama, mama, here come the white people..." as we approached his house near the church - that was enough to send me back to the hotel for a beer.

stanley preached "the woid of god."

according to god - stanley said - 85% of the people in hell were women - 10% men - and the other 5% men who were there because of women.

i should tell you he was also a horseshit guide, fat, had a lousy boat, and poled around with an old mangrove stake.  swan didn't catch many fish.              

drink

      "twas a woman who drove me to drink.  i never had the decency to thank her."

                                                                                          w.c. fields

      i did.



    [with thanks to chuck gleason]

key west - part four

front door flower bed - anthurium - the "penis plant" - 'nuff said....

death

i think i've seen death...stared it in the face, so to speak.  i suffer from epilepsy and, so, seize every once in a while...not of the grand mal type but absence or petit mal sort.  i go away but have no recollection of leaving [fortunately the medicine i take has stopped even these events] but, having gone there in the past i can tell you there is nothing to fear...nothing, no blinding white lights, no white robes, no long hallways leading to god knows what, no fire and brimstone, no angelic choir.  in short... nothing.  don't be afraid.

ghost

i'll tell you a ghost story - which may seem a little out of character because i don't believe in the afterlife, but this one can be backed up by a witness - sally - and neither one of us is a fabulist.  also, it will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

my mother died in 1968, was cremated and interred in a crypt below the altar in saint peters church - her home parish - in philadelphia.  end of story you say...not quite.

some years later she was dug up - which i didn't think was legal but happened anyway.  my cousin got a letter from the parish secretary saying she now resided on her desk and would we please come pick her up - which i did.  from then on she sat, in an urn, on the bureau in my library.  when sally and i moved to carpenters row i brought her along where she rested, quietly, for some years under a table in the front room.

at some point i, from my seat at  the counter in the kitchen, started seeing a dark shadow, a murky cloud, rise from the area of the urn...not often but enough that i took note.  i didn't say anything to sally.

one evening i saw it and sighed in exasperation.  "what's wrong," asked sally.  "nothing.  i just saw my mother again," i replied, nodding towards the urn.  "have you been seeing that too," she exclaimed.  it turned out that she, from her position at the stove had seen the apparition as often as i had.

"what does she want do you suppose?"  sally asked.  "to rest in peace i guess.  too much noise around here," i replied.

the next morning at 6 a.m., a lovely may day, we took her to the brandywine and poured her ashes into the fast moving water.  she swirled away in a long train of grey.

neither of us has seen her since.