Beauty as Bulwark

 

Over the years I have found that beauty can be a bulwark against despair.  

It can take various forms (visual arts, music, literature, etc) but I’ve noticed it most keenly in visual terms where something catches my eye and triggers some deep feeling pulling me back from a dark place.  In this regard it functions as a kind of metaphysical light shining in the darkness.  And it is in this “darkness” that my eye finds it most readily.  There are numberless examples of this I can think of through some tumultuous times in my life.  I oftentimes find them in a Christian context which is probably due to the cultural milieu I was raised in.  

What comes to mind at this particular moment is when I was a young infantryman living in Korea far from home and finding myself too often utterly alone.  In my incessant wanderings during that time I discovered Myeongdong Cathedral.  It sits hidden like an island on a hill surrounded by skyscrapers in the heart of central Seoul.  To get to it you have to walk through the streets of a bustling shopping district that falls away as you ascend the hill and a large cathedral suddenly appears amongst trees and terraced gardens.  The contrast to the hard steel and concrete of the city surrounding it is startling.

I visited there many times to find some peace and respite, either sitting quietly inside on a pew under its lofty ceilings or on a bench outside in the back where elderly Korean women sat and prayed at a shrine to Mary strewn with flowers.  As the son of a Protestant pastor it was an exotic experience of sorts that should have been disconcerting but the peace it brought me was undeniable.  

 

At one of these visits to Myeongdong an exhibit of large black and white framed photographs was set up on the descending stone terraces in front of the cathedral.  One in particular captivated me.  In it a priest was ascending a path on a windswept grassy hill.  The perspective was from lower on the hill and behind him.  He wore a black cassock and a round wide-brimmed hat from a time gone by.  I can’t rightly explain what parts of me it spoke to, but it was a deep place rarely explored and it gave me a hunger for more.

This might explain why I was so readily drawn to the Orthodox Church a few years later as a young man trying to find my way in Southern Indiana.  I was taking pre-med classes at IU with no assurances that I would even be accepted to medical school.  In relation to the number of applicants the acceptance rate was ludicrously low.  So much was uncertain and I was in desperate need of a stabilizing force.  This came by way of the Orthodox Church with its rich visual imagery and ancient origins.  

In retrospect it was a trajectory that started in Korea at the stone steps of a grand cathedral and carried me through time and space to the front concrete steps of the small and humble parish of All Saints Orthodox Church in Bloomington, Indiana.

***

The Cathedral Remains

 

I have died too many times before 

or maybe I have never truly lived.  

At times only the Cathedral remains

its spires piercing the heavens.

Despair can invade these hallowed 

spaces like an impenetrable fog

even as sorrows ever soar and

my thoughts scatter to the wind.

The edifice suffers superficial

sacrileges yet remains sound

filling with a melancholy song that 

calls me to something higher.

***

Snow Globe

 

It’s a kind of paradox

the world is agitated 

like an aggressively 

shaken snow globe

yet surrounding the 

swirling chaos is the 

beauty of being held

in the hands of Love.

***

Free as a Bird

 

Writing prompt for Monday, January 23^rd: perhaps my favorite photo of John Lennon that I’ve colorized in the craziest of ways while listening to “Free as a Bird”.

His look is one of calm introspection.  I imagine he is working out a song on his guitar.  I can appreciate that frame of mind and how it takes you out of yourself and into a world that is full of possibilities.  There are things going on deep in the mind, making connections and weaving beautiful images together, a kind of metaphysical wrestling, mysteries that bubble up to the surface to surprise and delight us as they blossom into our awareness.

I love his full beard in this one, his long hair, and those distinctive glasses that come from an earlier age.  I had those selfsame spectacles for at least a few years, but the metal bridge sitting on my nose dug in too deep and I had difficulties making them sit straight on my face.  My nose is crooked and my ears are not quite level to each other.  I wanted to make them work but reality dictated otherwise (AND someone at a party said I looked like Harry Potter).

I started to grow my hair out a bit in my early 20’s until joining the Army where it was completely shorn but not before my fellow Basic Trainees gave me the nickname “Peace”.  After I left the Army and returned to college I grew it out as long as it would ever get, but then I cut it after a year or two in order to participate in the Army Reserves to help pay the bills.  A beard came later with my conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy but the long hair never returned.

So, the hair, beard, and glasses never existed simultaneously in my young life much to my regret.  But now I am older and have been dipping more deeply into that creative well that I imagine John Lennon knew so well.  If I become morose about my late start to the game I only have to think of poor John taken too soon from the world as I carry on creating in his memory as he haunts my thoughts and inspires me to try and bring beauty to my fellow man.

***

Simply Present

She sleeps in the quiet of a church, 

front and center, under a candle.

The Psalms are droning on in a 

place just behind her head in the dark.

Friends float in and out all through 

the night to keep her company.

They stand silent, simply present, 

and then bow to kiss her cold hand.

Look, they say inside their heads, she’s 

wearing her knit cap snug in her bed.

Will I pass so peacefully and be cared

for so sweetly when my time comes?

***

For Those Who Truly Love

 

What if we just fly

on out of here, my love?

This house has bound 

us for far too long.

I know I can’t follow

but time and eternity 

will bring us back 

around beyond the sun,

a place beyond hope 

or heartbreak, where 

goodbyes do not exist

for those who truly love.

***

“Drifting”

 

My teenaged son told me he has a friend who was into “drifting” with his car until it resulted in damaging his vehicle at which point it didn’t seem quite so cool anymore.  He described the phenomenon to me and it sounded a lot like fish-tailing which we used to do in our cars that had rear-wheel drive when I was a teenager.  I guess with front-wheel drive or all-wheel drive cars these days fish-tailing is not as easy as it entails losing traction only on the back tires.  So “drifting” is the phenomenon of losing traction on all four tires by banking hard into a turn and over-steering the same direction as the curve.  

The discussion of this phenomenon with my son brought back a memory of maybe the one time in my life that I actually drifted a vehicle in spectacular fashion.  

I was in my early twenties and serving in a mechanized infantry unit in Korea.  Our company was “Delta Death” and each platoon had four Bradley Fighting Vehicles making twelve total (3 rifle platoons and a headquarters platoon).  These vehicles looked like small boxy tanks because they had a rotating turret with a main gun but also a compartment to hold infantry soldiers.  It was a hybrid vehicle of sorts halfway b/w a tank and a troop carrier.

Anyway, our unit was one of the first to transition the Bradleys into use in Korea so we were all green when it came to this particular 27-ton behemoth.  We spent months getting familiar with it to include learning about its specs, maintenance, weapons system, etc, until they finally arrived and we could actually put our hands on one and drive it.  

And driving it was a challenge.  It was a tracked vehicle like a tank and so heavy that getting it to move from a dead stop took some doing.  When backing up if you wanted to turn your back end to the right you would have to rotate the steering mechanism to the left and vice versa.  In a car it is just the opposite and so it was awkward to overcome all of that muscle memory.  Also when driving a car you are thinking about the direction you are turning your steering wheel which is turning the two wheels below you in the same direction, but on a tracked vehicle it is different.  For example, if you want to turn right you turn the steering mechanism right and give it a lot of gas but it is not a wheel that you are turning below you or even a steering wheel in your hands for that matter.  Instead, the right track slows and the left track speeds up in order to turn the vehicle in a rightward direction.  You get the general idea.    

One particularly miserable rainy afternoon my platoon took its turn at a Bradley training area.  It was a muddy plateau that had been carved out of the side of a mountain somewhere in the no-man’s-land between Camp Casey and Camp Hovey.  The main part of the training entailed driving as fast as you can towards the front of a rectangular open bunker, execute a 180 degree turn, and then enter the bunker via a ramp from behind it.  These bunkers are part of the strategy used by the Bradley Fighting Vehicle whereby you drive down into it so that the bottom part of the vehicle holding the troops is below ground level and the only thing sticking up above ground is the rotating turret which can survey the landscape and fire its guns if need’s be at a pursuing enemy.  

Waiting my turn was excruciating.  I watched the other soldiers take their turn and drive cautiously down the open stretch coming to an almost complete stop when they got to the backside of the bunker and then do a slow and laborious turn of the vehicle until they got it far enough around to enter the bunker.  This looked like an inefficient and herky-jerky mess to me.  If you were the Bradley Commander or gunner half sticking out of the turret (as sometimes happens when just driving around) it would feel like being on a mechanical bull ride where your body and head would be flopping around with each punch and lurch of the vehicle as it swiveled in fits and starts.

My time finally arrived and I giddily entered through the driver’s hatch and donned the helmet with built-in microphone.  I pulled the hatch lid down sealing myself into the driver’s compartment.  I heard the sergeant’s voice through the headset from the turret.  “You ready Haney?”

“I’m good to go Sarge!” 

I got the Bradley lined up at the beginning of the run and got the OK to proceed to the bunker.  I pushed the gas pedal to the floor and it lurched forward.  Peering out the little rectangular glass portals was difficult but I could just make out the muddy tracks in front of me and the bunker up ahead which looked like a small rounded rise with grass on it.  I kept the gas pedal buried so it could reach top speed by the time I reached the bunker.  As we got closer the voice in my headset said “Ok, slow down, slow down, SLOW DOWN!”

I estimated at this point I was beside the bunker and without letting up on the gas I buried the steering mechanism hard to the right and that 27-ton monster box slid full sideways and around in a beautiful wide 180 degree arc and ended up facing the way I’d come at a full stop lined up with the bunker.  My foot was off the gas at this point as I paused and then proceeded nonchalantly down into the bunker.

My headset buzzed angrily: “Goddammit, Haney!  Don’t EVER do that again!” as I sat there with a big smile on my face that no one could see.

***

Theophany on Mars

 

They ascend the hill 

with hands intertwined,

their translucent robes 

flapping in a windless void.

They sense the presence

of a being from another 

world transported by a

numinous needle of fire.

The landing has marred

the surface of their world

but only on the most 

superficial of levels.

Curiosity draws them to

the top of the hill as does

the free compulsion of 

an all-connectedness.

In the valley below them 

the traveller is setting up

a shiny cistern of sorts

on a quad-legged table.

Inside his helmet they 

can sense from afar

the oscillations of a chant

forming on a blue wavelength:

“When You, O Lord, were

baptized in the Jordan

the worship of the Trinity 

was made manifest…”

The meaning is unknown to them

but the beauty of it is undeniable

as the subterranean waters 

sing deep below their fleet feet.

***

I Dream of Danger

 

In my dream…

It was something I’d heard about and seen play out a time or two in the news, something  utterly terrifying. In these grainy newsreels it would show someone in a car stopping because of a car sitting sideways in the middle of the road.  Beside the car would be two cartoon-like characters that looked to be men in costume.  The costume made them look like simple children’s drawings: large and puffy, all white, and a simple face drawn on with a black marker.  There was something paranormal about this phenomenon such that if the person found themselves confronted by this scenario they were going to die and there was nothing to be done about it (a la “The Ring”).

So, I am pulling out of a parking lot with my family and as I turn there sits a car with the two cartoonish characters by it blocking the road.  In a full on panic I put my car in reverse.  I speed off backwards towards the downtown skyline and when I get there I briefly see the outline of a giant fox-like creature in the distance towering over some skyscrapers in my rearview mirror.  I realize it is part of this thing I am now caught up in and I make my family exit the car.

We run across the street and into an empty department store.  I am trying to get them to move as fast as possible without having to tell them we are in mortal danger.  I am kind of running behind them saying “go, go, go!” staying between them and whatever is behind us.  We run down an aisle to the back and I am looking around trying to find a way further in and further away from the danger stalking us.

I have them go through some doors into the back offices and then into a bathroom where I lock the door and tell them to be as quiet as possible.  I have no idea if anything I do will actually save our lives but I am determined to do everything in my power to increase the odds of our survival.  We stand in silence and I hear someone or something approach the door.  I put my finger to my lips and make eye contact with each family member to make sure no one makes a sound.  But then my teenage son starts to get impatient and gives me a kind of annoyed look and says in a low voice that isn’t quite a whisper “There’s nobody out there”.

I don’t know how to make him not talk and at this point I am sure we have been compromised.  It is such a feeling of total despair, but I can’t give up hope and so I push open a window and lift up my daughter to get her outside so hopefully she can continue to run and possibly escape the inevitability of this nightmare.

***