nathaniel-g-blog

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Heavens Casements (Driving Anxious)

Churches, dogs, maggots seize, glass past batons Push it around a bit, spot vectors Too soon, no spoons, mic now all cut off What my behemoth lacks in patience spoils sport Cops, cats, nincompoops Who pass, nails retracting Flip the nets, hail the taxes Cast out, den clout, whole squad hears a hush harms inductions funds everyones find fandom free 

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Yesterday wandering in the park I saw a cat that reminded me of one I was cruel to as a child. She had been dying, and I non-allegorically threw the heaviest books I had at her under a desk. So last night I said, now is my chance to make good. I will send you care, send you love. Do you have a message for me? Are you an angel? I know that you must be sent from God to tell me something. I will not threaten you, I will be still and gentle. Thank you. The cat ran under a tree. I said fine, you are a free angel, I can’t know what is the message. I’m not sure cats are the animal kingdom’s messengers, but perhaps I can see what others don’t. The cat turned to dig. I tell you it looked like giving birth, a surprise because it had not seemed pregnant. Then I realized the cat was pointing its asshole directly at me: unloaded, recovered, scampered. Reminded me of the Little Flowers book I’d been reading. Eventually, for posting purposes, I named the tree Ezekiel.

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Thursday August 31, 2001 Cow Haus Tallahassee, FL

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My Undergraduate Syllabus

My dissertation is a collection of things I have forgotten. My undergraduate education is one of those things, back when Obama was a junior senator. I do have transcripts though. I have often confided to anyone around the fear that my lack of “classical” education would be found out. To combat this I am remembering things I learned and knew, and the people who affected me. For a pedagogical exercise I am thinking of the classes in which I enrolled, at the state/commuter school to which I applied. Two things came to mind initially: a) how many of these are introductory or survey courses b) how many of these choices were made by the girls I thought might be enrolling.

Intro to Mass Communication

Freshman English

Intro to Oceanography

Beginning Logic

Intro to Creative Nonfiction

Survey of American Literature

Historic Survey Amer Civilization 

Introductory Sociology

Introductory Drawing

Diversity of Life

Bible as Literature

Propaganda and Persuasion

Intro to Critical Analysis

Rgnl Geography Non-Westrn Wrld

Introduction to Psychology

Intro to Public Speaking

Intro to Mass Communication

SpcTopAppldCmn:FundAudProd

Hist and Organizatn  Advertising

SpcTops: Meaning of Evil

Elementary Italian

Intrnshp/Comm Urban Community

Intro Interpersonal Communicatn

World History in Modern Era

Elementary Italian

Survey of Music in America

Expl: US Civil Rights Movement

Internship

SpcTop:CmnOrg, Hist&P:PublicRel

Research Methods in Media

Communication and Power 

Internship

(Cumulative GPA well below 3)

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Guilt Gulch

poem before writing a dissertation proposal for approval from administration

[DEAN] “Do you mean to tell me that you’re thinking seriously of building that way, when and if you are an architect? [HOW] “Yes.” [DEAN] “My dear fellow, who will stop you?” [HOW] “That’s not the point. The point is, who will let me?”

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Groundhog Day Poem

'Great is thy filthiness'

oh Phil my hedgehog

there seems a shadow of turning near thee

thou changest not, thy great passions they fail not

as thou has been, for weeks more thou wilt be.

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objectionable content caution

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A Thief in the Daytime

Editor’s note: Twitter user and “author’s author” David Congdon alerted followers yesterday to 2 important details: a) the existence of an old rapture film titled “A Thief in the Night,” based on the forthcoming rapture and b) the availability of this film for free on virtual platforms.

I had not seen the film but I knew the Larry Norman song it opened with, “I Wish We’d All Been Ready.”

The decision was then made: it was time to have fun, and I would try my hand at playwriting. How hard could this be? It has two characters (no meta-commentary). We hear the voice of Sam (the man in the picture above). If you want to think about Sam, you could think of someone like me doing something like reflecting on The Killers album about his future town at its 15ish anniversary, or watching the sun in Philadelphia or reading his first book in the Bible, or whatever else he’d been listening to or considering. Typical stuff.

[for the uninitiated, in the Hebrew story, Hannah is a crying barren river whose rivals provoke; she refuses sustenance. Her husband tells her to stop drinking. Samuel is implanted, but according to the terms of service he must be shuffled off at a tendrilous age, and she is not of a mind to refuse. Where he goes there are new brothers. Samuel grew. They fell like chaff. It's the middle of the night, in the house only Sam and the man he came to learn from. The calls and denials follow, the seeds of re-dedication. What doesn't kill you makes you (collectively speaking) stronger. After this, I'll go ahead and work the mines. After the play.] Sam Synopsis: As you can see above, no thoughts of his own. Broken up about this. We all know a “Sam” – acting tough, stuck in the past, and so on. So he writes what he imagines a girl named Patty (sp?) would write in her journal before she approaches him and (this is where it gets weird) reflecting on her own experience of seeing the film A Thief in the Night. I tried to indicate direct quotes where possible.

Grand opening

“One man taken, the other left

There’s no time to change your mind.”

That’s always been my mantra.

It sure seems clear at this point that originality isn’t my strong suit.

 ‘sees her friend is allergic to horse serum’

I am learning to accept that this was no one's fault, it just wouldn't help her the way it would someone else in the same time and place. Let that be a lesson to me!

Let me plaster on my Freddy Krueger gloves.

(Break back into the words you expect to hear, and suck the air out through its tires.) I wish we had been ready for this conversation. It sure was interesting that in the film, the first Mark you see is 4 (IV). For the words of institution it seems necessary to grab the parable by the horns.

I wish I had been ready, too bad there's no way to be ready now! Time only to get ready. "We - well actually you - broke this relationship" In this rapture, Time and Space are what leave. You really left yourself behind, if you think about it too hard. You've always been a no-it-all. Enough of all that. Charge whatever you think is fair. You can remember being young, unplugged from the cares of this present age. Hence the provision of a station for your imagination to dock.

(You are more than your body's parasitism. You have a higher call.) "There's no time to change your mind"

We want difference from each other. "All you have to do is accept it." Remember the friend who was allergic to horse serum? 'if you hadn't received it, you would be dead." It sounds scary, but hypnotism is just when the wrong people get ahold of you. "Affability" is the feeling that you know a secret but have no way or desire to prove it, like someone's watching you pick your nose, but it's just normal experience.

Sammy sure lays it on thick. (note to self - look up the difference between ! and /s) My most ill-considered Theological opinion is that being filled with the Spirit is exactly like being in love with yourself while held apart. Hashing out the implications proves distressing.

At 42:55 a man walks in front of TV cameras and you know it’s a big moment because he says it is being translated into every language for everyone, and he has a yellow ribbon around his arm, in order to represent unity. Here's my fascism hot take: Pentecostals among others have to reckon with the idea that the experience of the Spirit's falling is a lot like falling in love with yourself in a mirror.

(She peppers observations on the film, inspiration quotes, general sophistry based on whatever she'd been reading or listening to before.)

[(Learn to hold the crop, find yourself a more complex vegetable.)]

‘It happens nowhere else, in time or space.’

You know what they say about broken clocks: when they are right, you are right!

This film literally ended with an ellipsis. Where…what-about the credits? What happened to my sense of taste?

‘I was 13 or thereabouts, at the capital for Shock + Awe. I had headphones, I sang embarrassingly into the family camera. What album did I need to buy? What lyric brought me here? What even was the name of the band?’

Before you pastor, Balmer…before you speak… I was told you had [thing] for me, here?

I will be a dear…I would treasure a moment. 

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Opportunism (free theology/ethics writing)

“When the devil had finished every temptation, he left Him until an opportune time.

 Luke 4:13 BSB (Berea Study Bible)

“I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”

Philippians 4:13 (NIV)

“Would you run down past the fence?!”

"Everything Evil" by Claudio Sanchez (Coheed and Cambria)

Life is a series of choices. Life is a series of mistakes. Life is a series of unfortunate events. I could go on. I want to punch my existentialist father in the face (not my real one of course, his face couldn't handle it) and assume that you don't need any of this. My interpretations of your experience, re-directed back to provide a platform for your future choices don't seem helpful. "White devil sophistry," as the band Das Racist once said. Let's move on.

Who is the devil? How you ask of course shapes how you hear the response. If you want a thoughtful, well-researched discussion of how thinking on the devil has historically developed, and of its connections to political and economic structures, there are no shortage of classic texts. 

If you want to spend time with the allurement of that which God would refuse to redeem while maintaining a sense of judicious deniability, you might bury your head in something more abstract like Schmitt's friend/enemy distinction, or your favorite theologian's God/world distinction, or something to that effect.

Perhaps you have bigger fish to fry. Perhaps you didn't grow up as a gleam in Nicolae's Carpathian gaze. You aren't obsessed with the final boss, but the boss for the level you are on right now. There's your first problem, of course. If you'd read the B.I.B.L.E. (Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth) you'd already know that the temptations are now spent and the devil has temporally fled back to his hammer-throwing lair. What should you do now? What can you do?

Let's ask our three panelists. On the right, we have the virtue ethicist. On the left, we have the libertarian. Positioned to their center but joining us via Zoom is the pragmatist, more than happy to go with the flow and unconcerned by mute/unmute goofs.

Let's start with what we want, which is some kind of freedom, to get the devil off our collective case. What's important to you about the devil and what does it have to do with this fence? Well, says the lib, I have a Stoic side and sometimes just think that when the fence is locked you must imagine other ways through. I also have a little Pentecostal in me, and I want to say that we can and should pray for every chain to be broken off every fence.

What kind of soul would thereby run wild? For that answer we turn back to the person whose job it is to consider what persons either are or should be. There's your first mistake, says the virtuist. You aren't looking at the bigger picture. Some locks keep you safe. What's important is what went into you before you even saw this fence. Even when you are rightly free, you must recall the debt you owed which made your vision of the fence possible. Focus your mind on the strength which carries you across the fence, learn to rest in God.

Both these responses feel somewhat alien. For a more earthy approach we ask our final contestant. What do you have to say for yourself? When you are in front of that fence, what can you do? What should you do?

"The rest gathered in the room start their concerned smiles, collectively shaking their heads and pointing to their ears"

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Andre and King

Taking a break from the dissertation proposal on Weil and the police, after King's passing.

Let’s start with a different mode of studying reaction. Take the comedian and talk-show host Eric Andre. When one thinks of the greatest interviewers of all time, one might think of Cronkite or Costas, of someone who portrays cultural trustworthiness and voluntarily stimulates parasympathetic reflexes compelling their subjects to take a deep breath, to share whatever matter is on their mind. Eric Andre’s show attempts to throw the interviewee off their game. Our adolescent existentialist hero thinks it is funny that they are unsuspecting: from a 2016 feature.” “The show is a Google click away, and people just don’t do research. They’re coming in blind.” Celebrities just accept the offer of an interview. What do they find? Something outrageous, if the show has completed its own research. The same feature describes “the quasi-psychological torture that the show delights in inflicting upon its guests.” Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve spent time considering the morality of this schtick. For a second though, let’s not get caught up there. The point here is that people react more pre-reflectively than elsewhere, as the result of the show mechanics. In contrast to a show such as Candid Camera, the joke is not just that people are gullible and get surprised. [This sort of joke can be easily corrected through something like Malcolm Gladwell’s famous argument regarding involuntariness and stratification in Blink. The joke there is that you can get better at reacting, and that development is important, with more or less explicit intent of establishing empirical correlations between development and reading Malcolm Gladwell (whether this intent might be located in the reader or editor)]. What’s funny about Eric Andre’s guests are all the different ways people provoke and react. If we were doing a surveillance study of a given subject, we would want to trace out what philosophers talk about as patterns of significance, to arrive at some point of distilled significance, whether something like an idea or a practice. Of course here the point is not the subject but its direction towards significance. What if we are really studying whatever it is that we understand ourselves to be studying? Talk shows are famously ephemeral. What if we are studying surveillance? What are we studying then, at the base, beyond just whatever happens? What if we don’t want the show’s punchline to be a demand for emotional labor? If you are an unsuspecting victim, if being surprised isn’t even on your radar, then sure, we might share a jolt. What about the spaces where you want to be seen, to promote your products on the relevant sort of circuit?  

(now we can watch this)

Did you hear what I heard? I observed some mutual admiration and mistrust, some hesitant recognition. Hesitant how? If you have been on both sides of the chair, you know the feeling of an ulterior motive. It’s not that all interviewers are bad. Far from it! I’ve learned much from their work. But you know, sometimes, you feel they can’t be totally honest, especially when they need something specific from you (eg. calm, charm). You can’t prove this, of course, but you are entitled to the feelings you can’t address. (Such the foundation for a distinction between say, authority and friendship). In any case, these two really seem to like each other. Despite their differences (for instance, Eric’s father is not Jewish), I perceived respect. What is that these two could want from each other? It’s probably the sort of conversation where it’s value depends on how it is experienced. Both here had jobs to do. The job is to create an atmosphere of enjoyment for the viewer. In order to accomplish this goal, however, iron will need to sharpen iron. You must be on your guard. Now, if you are a theologian, you know something about whatever is prowling. Let’s assume it is less interesting than it sounds. The obvious reflex to the idea of the irredeemable enemy is sympathetic, another norepinephrine-like jolt. Assume you are too tired to chase fights. Maybe you don’t want a family-style show on PAX to pull your pants down, and maybe you don’t have an interest in ABC’s run at a hidden camera styled through an interrogative conjuring an imaginative ethics of the common person. How else could we shift the question and answer periods?

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An interview with a wildly successful marketing executive

from time to time I come across an interview my commuter-school alma mater did with me, when I had a job with prospects. the quotes never cease to amuse.

The piece begins: “I recently sat down with alumnus Nathaniel Grimes to speak about his experiences at UNH Manchester and his journey after graduation, and I related to his story instantly.”

“I just wanted to be where my friends and family were. So I came home, worked two jobs, and saved up enough to move into my own apartment while attending school.” Here I sound like exactly the sort of person one would want their daughter to marry.

“I knew I wanted to major in something general, I just wasn't quite sure what that would be. I didn't know specifically which industry. I thought of everything – finance, PR, even sports. Communication Arts was the perfect major for me because it allowed me to explore all of those interests.” Here I sound like a theologian. 

When prompted to recall professors who had impressed me, my first thought was a man who had written on cinema and class and space. I said “I liked his classes because I just really enjoyed learning from him. He was probably even responsible for why I decided to go this route because he got me thinking about marketing and communications in ways that I hadn't before.” There was more, so I continued after remembering the woman who had really gotten me through. “She really pushed me to finish even when I felt like giving up.”

On the interviewee’s job: “I knew what a great company ___ was, but I wanted to know more about it. I just needed to know what he [Boss] did. So I chased him down and luckily he allowed me to buy him a cup of coffee.” Here I sound like a theologian. “The reason I’m here is to be a part of the evolution of this agency.”

Any final words of wisdom, Nathaniel? “Don’t try and sell yourself, but focus on building sincere relationships.” Like most good interviewers, this one ended the piece graciously. “Nathaniel gave me a lot of great advice and his story provided me with some real assurance. He really proved that you can do anything if you put your mind and heart into it. And you can get your start right here in your own backyard.” 

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Whom have I to speak with?

I was taught to reply through the phone at the telemarketing firm when I was 16, when the person on the other line indicated the absence of the man or lady of the house. Ostensibly, I could just as easily sell the coupon book to the next person down the line, provided we shared something in common. I was probably 15 or 16, and left the strip mall smelling like I'd been soaking in lit cigarettes, which I didn't mind so much though I knew my parents would, even though I hadn’t yet touched one myself. My manager seemed to like me, and I could read the sheet in front of me well enough. I did not get many sales, but I wasn't bad. Some people were mean to me, as one form of dinner interruption. I felt no choice, I needed gas for my Chevy Nova, which I remember driving down Mammoth Road and singing along to Anthony Kiedis’ "can't stop, addicted to the shindig." It's not that the idea of gathering around in a room of old folks selling the promise of a future discount held no appeal for me. I knew I was getting older.

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HEARTHOGs

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if your trap had a ❤️? Very little, as it turns out. The scheme is simple. You could exterminate, but that doesn't sound like what a good non-hunter would do. If they are eating your vegetables, they cannot stand. So what if you are on the other side? What if you recognize the ultimate importance of life, of heart? You will find a nicer box. Ours was simple. Trapdoor, wires, aluminum at the bottom. Nothing you haven't seen before. What's the point? Let's pan out and plan out. What is the situation, and what do we want? It seems like a woodchuck (groundhog?) is eating iceberg lettuce. This does not work for anyone, so one has to go. Won't be the one responsible for the veggies in the first place. I'm feeling philosophical. Imagine an intra- rather than inter-subjective story. Let's imagine you as all the agents. Has some reason been restored? Can you see why someone might not want a rodent in their fields? You could be a mother. You must. Zoom back in, now just looking at the trap. What differentiates this in your view from other traps, other than name? Imagine the alternative extermination, with no trap necessary. There is now one trap, we speak as though blood runs through it. Cut the existentialist bilge for 1 minute. This is not No Exit. Remember the destination, the work of distinction. Where do you think we should deposit this robbing motherfucker? You are the sort of person to purchase a trap with heart, you would likely go somewhere with grass and trees. Not anything like a desert, or wherever the big hedgehog wouldn't want to go. None of us are monsters. Concentrate on people, or planters.

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The Person of Lawlessness

“...the love of many will grow cold” (Matthew 24:12)

How did Judge Barrett’s judgment err? Perhaps we do not want to comment on how she does a job that we don’t know how to do. Critics seem to disagree on the nature of the case. For some, an unfathomable cruelty and disregard for life, and for others, a rigorous investment in the analysis of law in its living form. Perhaps we cannot say exactly how it was the wrong judgment in a legal sense, but we intuit something and recoil. I will not recount the charges here. Something seems wrong with this judgment. Yet from whose perspective? How will we know unless someone tells us? Subpoenas are issued, explanations made. To say that it is now this time a farce is ever more to naturalize its absurdity. Everyone seems to feel this, and how can it be communicated?

The idea of an originalist is someone stuck in the past. I do not understand all the term’s technical dimensions, though I might try, but I have no investment in doing so. In these noisy times, everyone has an opinion and they all stink. Who are we to think that we might know better what we would have done in someone else’s shoes. What are the experts saying? Who has known the mind of God? Looks like these folks over here are partial to originalism, they say it’s not stale, it’s not a mere excuse for slaveholding, it’s about the integrity of the law, any law. these over here insist that it must be as stupid as it appears.

Who will step forward to save this troubling soul? As a man of unclean lips, among a people of unclean lips, I protest. All are stirred, but not a one steps forward. Something burns, and therein feels cleansed. In being sent, the called are equipped, and not with just the same old equipment. This mission is different. I tell them only what I was told. “Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving” (Isaiah 6:9). They comply. As the world becomes more complex, it seems even more necessary to rely on the wisdom of those who understand the nuance between things. The universe of law, religion and politics expands at such breathtaking speeds, perhaps that is what we need is the ability to take another breath. We have all been in a shouting match where neither wanted to understand the other. Imagine this didn’t have to be the case. Imagine all could be made to see the transhistorical in the concrete. Imagine we could all just take a step back. What would fill these shoes? Who understands not only what happens but the differences between sorts of happening? Will anyone blow the whistle?

Suppose there are two laws: of sin and death, and of life. Suppose you think you have tried to eradicate the first and affirm the latter, and little success. What about a merger, an acquisition? That might work in theory, but where in a way that seems right to us? Perhaps we imagine there is a high council deliberating constantly on matters of great historical importance. How do we get one of ours in there? The spirit descends, and finds the one who is pleasing, who is like, and who represents the general discipline; who has been chastened, and stood firm. What transcends is a multiplication table. Not mere matter and information any longer, but a set of relations. Once on the altar we seek scientifically to determine its substance. First go and be reconciled. It's all going up, transformation through asymptotic renewal. We now have just enough to disagree on the inessentials.

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There's something about my parents associating my birth with "Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!" (John 1:47) and finding out they had received a wannabe comedian whose jokes did not compute. Somehow, I do have to hand that one to them.

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Da Da Da Da

The reason I was such a poor church drummer can perhaps be illuminated through reference to a story; I do not want to boil it down to something like "fear." I have known from everyday experience the feeling of development, that first things come first and last things last. I was around 13 when a man from church who had been a professional took interest in me, and I went with him and another father to look at the first set available. It cost something like 300 dollars. I had been working for a while and money was not the concern it seemed. Yet I had a nagging feeling that I should not choose the first one, that somehow logically the next one I saw should be better. I have seen plenty of sets in my time and intuited no such progression in the course of observations. Perhaps this was due to a split between use and enjoyment. In any case, I bought this set with a heavy heart, knowing that I wanted to bang on it and bother my parents and myself and that it did not matter what it sounded or looked like because it was only going in my room. There was already at church a seemingly pristine and well-guarded set. I banged on everything I could, Bibles during the service in the balcony (I remember older children signalling that this was comical in a way I didn’t think it was) and was eventually invited in. To say it was a struggle perhaps is not a description which captures the sympathy which must have been present in those around me. An obvious thing about Pentecostal worship is that in some sense you do just have to go with the flow. In my church this rarely sounded like anything you would want to buy. I worked with the high hat, switched around stick-holding positions, the set-keeper taught me about the concept of rudimentariness and the sound of para-diddle. A woman approached me, teasing, one day I think after service, while I was tapping away, and asked if I knew how to play something "Black." This was my moment. I couldn't breathe for a moment. A chance to prove myself. Now which rudiments come first? What is it that I mean to say here? What was the cause of this sinking feeling? That seems yet to be determined. Whatever the explanation I or anyone else could provide here, it just seems obvious to me that it was not because I didn't want to be. I am saying there are as yet unexplored reasons that I did not know how to mix it up, how to play recessional, the cessational.

Daaaa dut. da-da