social justice | CURIOUS AUTOBIOGRAPHY

The day after anything is the day after something. It’s too late for me to write about the something. For that something is Christmas, and that was yesterday. Even before that, last week, someone wrote to me privately about the last three blogs, “I don’t get it,” he wrote, “Christmas Yard? Is there a message here?” Well, I might say charily, there is. Yet I can’t expect everyone to get it. With such a story about a fictional place I could only hope to create a small window into the interior of Christmas, as if, standing for a moment on a snow covered street, one should unexpectedly cast a glance through the fog of one’s own breath in the crisp winter air to see into, ever so briefly, the home of a family not personally known to the viewer but perhaps long admired, wondering from afar, “What goes on in that family? What does a family like that do? How to they construct their family time?” This would be especially true if one comes from a family where time is never or rarely construed, where there isn’t a plan or a modus operandi in place for carrying on as a family, but merely a modus vivendi of mutual tolerance. I shall return to these familiar phrases, modus operandi and vivendi, in a moment, with a gentle adjustment of them both.

First, let me offer an apologia (“afterward”) about the tripartite series about a town called Christmas Yard, if you happened to have read it, in case anyone else might have had the same reaction as the aforementioned reader. The point of that story is to direct the reader’s attention and affection toward what, quite incidentally and indirectly, a family might be (or at least become) and, by extension, what any institution consisting of people might best encompass, whether that institution be a church or a town or society at large. One might deduce that this is my goal by effecting a contrast of the two churches in the last installment of the story. More generally, one can see this goal fleshed out in the combination of Elaine’s deep sense of social justice and my own still-in-progress sense of grace, especially when that kind of grace, sometimes known as charity, in fact, also dovetails with social justice.

But today I am writing about the day after anything, for there are rarely ditties or songs, blogs or essays written about the day after things; only those written about the event itself or anticipation of it become well known. To wit, “’Twas the Night Before Christmas,” “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” (not the day after), “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” (not is heading back to the North Pole). Even non-Christmas songs like, “Until We Meet Again,” look forward, not back. It is safe to say that the day after anything, especially something that you’ve been looking forward to, could be a letdown. I have a friend who worked for years to get his PhD, and even the day he got it, as it turned out, was, to his mind, anticlimactic.

Another friend of mine’s daughter will be married in a few days. He recalls, not so many years ago, a moment in time when they shared at an event that likely no longer exists—for it is no doubt now deemed sexist or exclusive of fatherless families—called “Dads and Donuts.” He told me that he recalls that day vividly, how much it meant to his daughter and more especially to him to go and have a little breakfast with his beloved child when she was, I think he told me, just in the fifth grade. He explained to me that he was so moved by that day that he thinks of it often as he prays for her, and that he will remember it fondly till the day he dies. And now she is to be married and start a family of her own.

For her, the day after she gets married will be the day after the biggest party nearly anyone has in their whole life. Afterwards, there will be, of course, a bit of letdown. But here’s where this term that I said I wanted to come back to is relevant—modus operandi—or really, modus gerendi would be better. There are a few Latin terms here that sound as if they come straight out of an old law book or at least an old grammar book. But lest they should become for you, owing to their erudite tone, somnolent or soporific, it will be useful, both for us on this day after Christmas and for my friend’s daughter on the day after her marriage, to reflect upon them for a moment, as we reheat a piece of pie for breakfast or just relax and read the newspaper (or this blog).

For today is the day to put that old terminology into practice. Let’s start with the familiar modus vivendi, which may in fact be the way that any given family may have spent this past year. The implication of that Latin phrase, which, though it means “manner of living,” is most often simply a reflection of a live-and-let-live posture: “that’s fine, I’ll work around that, provided it doesn’t intrude too much upon my personal space.” Thus, modus vivendi really signifies a way of coping, or at best coexisting. While at times, of course, this has to be done, that is no way to conduct family.

Then there’s modus operandi. It’s a stronger term, probably too strong for how to manage one’s family, as it reflects a way of operating, the way one functions. “That’s his modus operandi,” someone might say, and certainly is the expression that detectives often shorten to “M.O.,” meaning the signature or trademark of someone, usually a criminal. And that’s not really a great way to conduct family, either.

That leaves us with the rather scarce modus agendi (or modus gerendi), both of which are so infrequently used that the former is automatically changed by the spell checker to agenda and the latter just underlined in red. But these archaic-sounding terms—and the latter is better—are what one really needs to know how to do to conduct family. The former means “way of doing” the latter “way of conducting” or “managing,” and thus the latter is a bit better, because one doesn’t “do family,” one “conducts” or “manages” it.

Which brings us back to the notion of the day after, a day that might be one of reflection, especially if it’s the day after Christmas, when one is reflecting on how one didn’t do Christmas well—it was just about ripping into presents, putting up with your child’s ingratitude or worse sarcasm, and laughing too often inappropriately or at least uncomfortably at your own husband’s crude joking. What was so inappropriate that mere laughter made you uncomfortable? Nothing, really, but—yes, there was something: Christmas is supposed to be a religious holiday, but perhaps “it sure didn’t seem that way.” Maybe for you Christmas day seemed to encompass everything bad about the season, playing itself out as materialistic, greedy and snarky; simply put, perhaps it felt empty. No, this was not my Christmas, but if yours should have been something like it . . . .

Here’s where the observation about the day after Christmas and my friend’s daughter’s immanent marriage finally dovetails. It is, on this day after the holiday, as will be on the day after her ceremony, not the time to think about what went disastrously wrong or just had to be tolerated. Now is the time to change the expression from modus vivendi, upon which most Christmas celebrations (and marriages) are based, to modus gerendi. It is time, not next year, next month or even tomorrow, but today, to start managing your family. That way, when Christmas comes next year, it will be special, not just an excuse to binge spend and ravenously tear off pretty paper. It will be a time of joy and wonder not because its story is unfamiliar, but the opposite, precisely because the story is familiar, for you’ve prepared for it spiritually all year long.

Perseus quote — Bartholomaeus Bruyn the Elder (1493-1555)—Portrait of a Knight of the Order of Malta (detail), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gemaeldegalerie, Vienna, Austria

For that to happen, a change in thinking must come, for the time to structure your days and measure carefully each moment begins the day after, which happens to be today. After all, that is the central aspect of that revolutionary but perhaps archaic-sounding idea that the Bible calls metanoia: a changing of one’s thinking. The little-read but profound Roman poet Perseus once wrote, vive memor leti; fugit hora (“Live mindful of death; time flies,” 5.153). Few have ever penned better advice. With each moment comes the opportunity to draw another breath, formulate a fresh thought, craft a better phrase. What better time than the day after to turn in a new direction, one very different than the present empty, unmanaged course?

It’s too late to wish anyone Merry Christmas this year, for it’s the day after. But it’s not too late, with a bit of Divine inspiration and guidance, to begin to manage one’s time, to conduct family, to produce a very, very happy new year, or in my friend’s daughter’s case, a new family. Blessings on that project, dear daughter, and on you, dear readers. May you find your modus gerendi, remember forever your own personal version of “Dads and Donuts” or “Moms and Muffins,” and, finally, Dominus vobiscum, which, more or less, is Latin for “Happy New (and Every) Year!”

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“The poets down here don’t write nothin’ at all, they just stand back and let it all be.” The words of an arguably pretty good poet, Bruce Springsteen, from a song called “Jungleland,” not necessarily his best ditty, for his best songs are all on his first album, “Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ.” That record that was, like The Curious Autobiography that inspires this blog, quirky, innovative, and pushing the envelope of its genre. Nonetheless, the words that open this paragraph and stand out in “Jungleland” are of interest here, offering as they do a not-so-subtle criticism of poets “down here,” meaning, I suppose, the poets of the pockets of cities where trouble brews, where fights break out, where lawlessness rules.

Yet that is not what I want to talk about with this installment of the Residual Welshman’s blog. Rather, I want to say that, thanks to Elaine Jakes, I knew, even when I was a child, some pretty fine poets, whose names have not abode in my memory, for my mother introduced me to them when I was too young to remember. I think, though, that they were not the poets that Bruce Springsteen criticizes, for though they were “down here,” they were nonetheless writing something meaningful. I met them and heard them read in Philadelphia when Elaine lived on Pine Street with Sheila, who loved me as if she were herself my mother. Those poets performed at the Egg Bar on the corner of Twelfth and Spruce. They had profoundly deep bathos, reading their works aloud with insufferable pathos and an earnestness that befit a time of social upheaval and change. They wrote about racial equality and social justice. They didn’t write “nothin’ at all.” But Bruce Springsteen did not hear them. I did.

[03] Lenis Rabbi.rev — Drawing of Leni’s b&w oil painting, “Rabbi” from The Curious Autobiography of Elaine Jakes.

James martin walnut table — Walnut Plank Coffee Table by Nakashima Woodworker James Martin.

When Elaine moved to New Hope she became part of a new circle of friends, many of them artists. A few, like Leni Fontaine, whose workshop was on Fisher’s Alley, James Martin, whose small woodworking gallery was on North Main, and Gretchen Laugier, whose rather spacious atelier was on South Main, were quite good. Others, like Cookie McMurphy, were rather bad. Cookie did not seem to me to know much about art. She did, however, know a great deal about “texture,” a word she liked to use quite frequently when attempting to speak about art. As a lad I took “art lessons” from Cookie, which was fun, for I liked playing around with plaster of Paris and paper-mâché, two artistic expressions that seem curiously French (particularly the latter). “Why should French art forms,” I wondered at age nine, “be of such great interest to a woman who is obviously of Scottish descent? And why,” I continued to muse, “is she so concerned with texture? And why,” my juvenile mental nattering mustered one final thought, “does she smell of cheese?” Of these three queries I only ever got a satisfying answer to the third: her apartment was directly over Ye Olde Cheese Shoppe of New Hope. That is why Cookie and her dog, Thom (with a silent ‘h’), always smelled of cheese.

But to return to the art lessons. I am overbold in criticizing Cookie McMurphy’s lack of precision, shall we say, when it comes to art, for I am even worse at it. But I learned not so much from Cookie—though I did learn from her quite well the importance of texture—about the value of art as I did, say, from Simone Martini, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Marc Chagall, Rob Evans, Paul McCoy or Makot o Fujimura. These taught me on their own, through their art.

Art and poetry. That’s where we began, and that’s where we shall end. I think Paul McCoy or Mako Fujimura would agree with me that the point of art is the expression of something true, something real through a means that reflects that something; I say this, because on separate occasions I’ve had dinner with Paul and Mako and I have been lucky enough to hear each of them speak about their own artistic creations. Leaving aside any Lessingesque difference between verbal and non-verbal expression, I think I can say at least that poetry shares a particular quality with good art: each points beyond itself to something else, a grander idea. Neither kind of artistic expression is meant to be pretty; rather each wants to be good, divulging a kind of beauty that is not associated with an aesthetic ideal of beauty. Rather, poetry and art direct the viewer or reader toward something beautiful not as beauty is known with the eye, but with the soul.

Another word for what that beauty might be or at least encompass is, I think, “meaning.” Art and poetry can remind us in this flood of mortal woes, in the chaos of life that, while there is not always order or deliverance from our immediate circumstances, there is meaning in the middle of them. Would that there be comfort, too, but that is perhaps the subject of a future blog—nay rather, it is the provenance of poets and artists, of which I am certainly not among the latter. I do not have a dog with a silent ‘h’, I do not smell like cheese, and I was always a bit skeptical about “texture” as being vital for every art project (though Paul and Mako would be right to say that it is for some). Nor do I believe that plaster of Paris comes from France or even that paper-mâché is entirely French. To wit, another friend of mine, a papyrologist, tells me that the ancient Egyptians used it liberally for mummy masks. But more on mummies and their masks on another occasion. For now, perhaps it is enough to admit that I could be wrong about plaster of Paris. But if I were, would it not in that case be le plâtre de Paris?

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