Devil's Night, Competing with Jesus · 30 October 2009
Last week was the midterm—grading exams is such sweet hypnosis. I don’t mind it at all; and now ninety three more innocents have had the intimate differences between affect/effect and the importance of accurate apostrophe impressed upon them in no uncertain terms.
I was ticketed by the parking police yesterday in the most maddening way. I could tell you, but it would take the whole post and then we would miss the part about Hell night. The ticket—though—it sliced open my frustration at this economy and a sense of powerlessness I have within it. Horrible! This is useless! Nothing useless happens to me! (She says.) But then… that is the useful part. The steam from it, the way it ties up my ego in a new kind of pretzel-knot that will be most useful to sit in for eight breaths or eight days. The way it burns off my patience for bullshit. The urgency I a released pocket of frustration: well worth the sixty dollars and the excellent parking space it bought me.
And it was a large day, hour by hour, from dreams to practice to teaching to school and a seminar and beyond. I discovered retrospectively that if I believed in the finer points of Greek astrology (godhelpyou if you do), I’d have had some reassuring predictive tools at hand for the day. All auspiciousness: so it wouldn’t have taken me several exasperated hours to decide the parking ticket was a gift from—what’s her name?—God.
Meanwhile... now in transit to Ann Arbor, town that is trying to win my affections. (Well, who doesn’t feel affectionate toward the town with the highest social capital and best farmers’ market in the country? People who doubt cuteness. That’s who.) Just me, a neck pillow, and a couple of Tylenol PM (I’ll leave Shinzen’s “mindfulness method” of getting to sleep to the people in first class, thanks). Michigan’s high yesterday was 70—the zenith of autumn—and tonight while I fly it’s set to drop under freezing and not get back up much higher than 40 for the rest of the week. Well, how cute of you, Ann Arbor. Guess I’ll stoke the fireplace and put on the effing cider.
So much for working on me here, lady. I may appreciate your sweet acorn squashes and your leaves as they float down in to the awaiting Huron, but there’s only so far we’re going to get with this travel magazine idyll.
Probably better to embrace the dark side. The curfew’s already on tonight in Detroit—everyone has to be inside by six on the thirtieth of October. Devil’s night, Hell Night, the Night of Mischief… since the decline of Industry, Detroit has taken this night to be the one of self-immolation. Up to 800 fires a year and unbridled acts of vandalism all over the city. Did you know? It’s the night for mass cooperation against the man: burn down your house this night, everyone, and the firemen and insurance people will never keep up. There’s also a militia—a yoga police—50,000 strong, out there to try to keep people from torching up their old rotted boards and cashing in on the ashes.
But maybe Detroit should go for it? I fly in at six, before dawn, slipping in under the layer of lake clouds. We’ll see what kind of destruction is lighting the horizon.
And tomorrow, full moon Halloween. My birth day starts on the death-day, and then I rise three days later, cumpleando anos on the third.
It is thirty-three this year. I remember when my dad turned thirty-three, the disappointment that he was now the age of Christ when he died but had not yet accomplished nearly so much.
I don’t know. Christ’s even tougher competition than the Detroit citizen’s militia on the dawn of the day of the dead. I’m fairly delighted with thirty-three. It is easier not to compete with Jesus.
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Oooh you are only 33!!! THAT is cute!
I had no idea about hell night in Detroit actually. Isn’t it depicted in a Mad Max movie of the future with a big dome over it? Cap it and let them do what they will!!
I was there once, 12 years ago. I flew out to visit a childhood friend who has a ranch and trains horses professionally about an hour and a half north of the city, where the money is. She picked me up at the airport, but one night we went to Greek Town, in the city’s small, core, non war zone center. The strata you go through getting there! It’s a weirdly scenic drive…
Posted by: boodiba · Oct 31, 11:23 AM · #
Jesus was the son of a carpenter and born in a trough. Buddha was the son of a king and born in a palace. The Devil is Jesus’ public defender. A known future is the past (why I am not interested in astrology). And nothing useless happens to me and nothing useful happens to me because I am real downright unknowing nothingness/shunyata so there is nothing to hold on to…
Now you can spin at the speed of a LP. Happiness on your Birth – we are the better for it.
Posted by: e&sj · Oct 31, 06:53 PM · #
Thank you for writing the abstract… for abstracting me.
You and Sara have similar appreciation for metaphor. No surprise.
Free association: Byron pointed out that The Devil is the hero of Paradise Lost (our neighbor here, a political theorist, dressed up as an Obama Death Panel last night… neo-Grim Reaper). Byron also wrote Appostrophe to the Ocean (should look that up). Last night I dreamt of saving my (long deceased) cat from a tsunami.
Mad Max: I had no idea! They domed Detroit like the inverse of the biosphere? Not as a haven but as a hell? Amazing. And… we’ve basically done that to Detroit, it’s true. People in the burned out epicenter are planting gardens and starting a barter economy. Also, they’re teaching yoga and having babies. Shockingly hopeful.
It’s sunny here and leaves are falling. I have entirely lost track of time. But it is time, right now, to stoke the space heaters and find a second series.
Posted by: (0v0) · Nov 1, 07:55 AM · #
J.C.—distant relative of RF and AW? O wait, that was a different post…— was caught at the unfathomable intersection of vertical and horizontal, right smack in the middle of tadasana and savasana… with all kinds of unwanted props to guarantee a long hold.
Phoenix phoenix on the wall, who is the most destroyed of them all?
May the problematic peace of being utterly pinned to reality be yours! May your day of continuation be butterfly-icious (ok, that neologistic compound wasn’t so smooth— but I just got back from Amsterdam, where words get “smushed together”).
And on a very serious note, may you have a great glass of wine or its celebratory equivalent.
Your blog should celebrate its “birthday” too, for it is a creature unto itself!
Posted by: Sara · Nov 1, 11:48 AM · #
The early thirties were good. The winter is not good.
Blech.
Posted by: LI Ashtangini · Nov 1, 04:20 PM · #
Hand out a few punctuation and usage citations, get a parking citation in exchange. Everybody asserts something to somebody.
Posted by: Carl · Nov 2, 10:31 AM · #
Thanks and yes… I will have wine.
And Carl, good call! We’re all just acting out our state-sanctioned roles.
FWIW, I’m holding office hours for those students who wish to dispute their grades. When I disputed the ticket, the cop said, “You’re right, but once a ticket is written, I can’t take it back.” There is money in parking tickets.
Posted by: (0v0) · Nov 2, 10:40 AM · #
When he said “can’t,” he meant “won’t.” Legally, issuing tickets is a discretionary action.
Posted by: karen · Nov 2, 12:46 PM · #
!!! It was a hilariously cheap ticket. The street sweeper had passed long before and the official street-cleaning time expired in about 4 minutes. I had parked and taken ten steps from my 2-door Honda Civic when she swung in and started writing it up, passing by several other empty cars (luxury vehicles, including a BMW and a Mercedes) on the same curb. I walked back up to her with an arm full of exams and asked her if there was no mercy. And she said she had no choice.
Way outside the realm of what I’m used to, anyway.
Posted by: (0v0) · Nov 2, 01:20 PM · #
I see a large theological and ontological exposition on mercy vis-a-vis choice from a cheap ticket.
One assumes that your refined skills in reading and interpreting parking signs will slowly atrophy in bucolic upper midwest climes.
And you also touched on the application of traffic laws in relation to perceived value of automobiles. When I drove a clunker I got pulled over every month for some nonsense. When I moved up market to a “luxury sedan” I rarely saw those red lights in the rear view mirror again. Its the assumed guilt of low socioeconomic strata (and perhaps the man might find some other scofflaw activities).
Posted by: e&sj · Nov 2, 03:47 PM · #
True, my parking wiles are in danger here. On the freeway, people treat the left lane as the passing lane and otherwise line up in the right lane and drive the speed limit!
Mercy vis-a-vis choice from a cheap ticket…
Posted by: (0v0) · Nov 2, 06:43 PM · #
Oh, it was a full-on traffic cop? I thought maybe a patrol officer. The traffic cops are BRUTAL. They ALWAYS write their tickets. Always, always, always. It’s their raison d’etre. My Cop is perplexed by their career choice.
Posted by: karen · Nov 3, 11:46 AM · #
ay bendito, nena, feliz cumpleanos.
Posted by: arturo · Nov 4, 04:24 AM · #
Gracias Arturo.
Karen, I tried to stop another one from ticketing a friend this morning! Said friend has the flu… I was outside his house bringing him a latte. I said, “Sir, I know you have discretion over this.” He didn’t respond. I said, “Sir, this guy is just trying to stay healthy—I will run out and move his car right now.” The cop then made to get out of his car as if he was going to cite me! So, well, I stopped protesting.
Posted by: (0v0) · Nov 5, 07:50 PM · #