The Reader Travels

San Francisco started out as one of many Catholic missions established in California by Spanish priests. The priests and the natives of the land flourished together with the father, the son and the holy ghost for many generations. Then in 1834, the Mexican government smashed the mission system in an attempt to secularize the country. Priests were persecuted and the natives scattered like Jews in the desert.

The fogs of San Francisco Bay were mirrored by the hordes of people flowing onto the land in search of gold. People of all languages, religions and nationalities confused the religious landscape, made it difficult for the Catholics to regain the control they had lost. But they kept their presence in California, even when they had to hide.

The same sort of thing is happening in The Mists of Avalon. The Christians are taking over the land, persecuting the Druids, who must create a shroud of mist to hide the practice of their faith. Their actions are defensive, grasping in the fog to maintain control, to keep from losing their faith, when finally they realize that the Madonna is just another incarnation of the goddess, and She is eternal.

Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Avalon books brought me to world of pagan appreciation for the beauty and power of nature. Churches with walls and roofs are an aberration, for the beauty of god is not inside a man-made structure, but outside with the earth and the sky.

In Lady of Avalon, priestess initiation happens on an ocean cliff described as one of the sacred places where earth meets sea meets sky. I visited San Francisco shortly after reading this novel, and I realized that the northern California coastline is also one of those sacred places.

As I sat along the shore and watched the waves crash into the craggy rocks, I couldn’t help but gasp in ecstasy. The rocks are hard, but the water is persistent, patiently molding the earth, crash after crash.

Divine.

In Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Tom Robbins poses the question about San Francisco, why, when mother nature keeps destroying your city do you insist on rebuilding it? I’ll tell you why. It’s because despite the earthquakes, San Francisco is prime real estate. It’s gorgeous, and prosperous.

But what about New Orleans? Mother nature sends the hurricanes. Cleanup and upkeep are a nightmare. It’s a swamp, but it’s still prime real estate, a port of entry, fecund with commerce.

With their Roman Catholic origins, these cities represent strength in suffering, power through martyrdom. It’s all about perseverence in the face of devastation.

Some of the most awesome stories are those of the Catholic saints, these wondrous people who suffer beheadings, crucifixion, burning at the stake, piercing by arrows. The saintly cities suffer earthquakes and floods, and like the saints, they are eternal.

I was talking to my teen-aged nephew Alex about how we both remember the answers to tests by visualizing the place where we read them in the book. I know a lot of people are like that, but I think there’s something genetic about the way we both do it. Alex’s father doesn’t really think that way, but his grandfather does. I’m thinking maybe it’s a recessive trait.

My sister and I were staring at the bloody head of John the Baptist at that Russian icon exhibit back in December. So, we’re both gawking at this gruesome image, nodding our heads, saying, “huh, huh, coool,” like we’re Beavis and Butthead, and she says to me, “It reminds me of that awesome picture we saw at that art exhibit a few years ago.”

My memory failed me, because I couldn’t bring up the image. But I remembered exactly where we were standing in the exhibit, and the path we took around the other paintings to get to this one in the corner that just floored us, and we stood gawking just like we did last month at John’s noggin. Just so you can get an idea of what we were seeing, the painting was Caravaggio’s Judith Beheading Holofernes.

Anyway, I was talking before about Alice Walker’s The Temple of My Familiar, a book which takes journeys from South America to San Francisco to North Carolina and Georgia, to Africa to England, back to South America and San Francisco. Because my spatial memories lend themselves to geography, I find that this book is inextricably linked in my mind to Isabel Allende’s Daughter of Fortune, which also takes an important trip from South America to San Francisco.

Ah, San Francisco. I think it’s time we went back there.

Psychologists will tell you that eating disorders are more about control than anything else. It happens a lot to young women who have little to no control over their lives. The food they ingest is something they think they can control. They abuse themselves because they can.

You also see a lot of young women who get themselves knocked up with similar notions that maybe if they had a baby they’d have someone around who was even weaker and more helpless than they are.

Then you have the anorexics who want to have a little baby to love, but they can’t get pregnant because their hormones are all screwed up because they won’t eat right. But if they could only get pregnant, then maybe they could start eating again. It never ends.

Years ago, I was reading in Omni magazine about this saint from Portugal who wanted so bad to stay a virgin for Jesus that she prayed and prayed to become ugly so her daddy couldn’t marry her off to some prince. So one morning she woke up with a beard on her face, and her dreams came true. But her daddy was so pissed off, he had her strung up on a cross so she could die just like her Jesus.

Anyway, Omni magazine likes to make up crazy stuff in the name of science, but I really liked this one. They speculated that instead of a miracle from God, maybe this saint was just an anorexic. She screwed up her hormones and grew some facial hair. It coulda happened.

Depeche Mode sang, “I don’t want to start any blasphemous rumors; but I think that God’s got a sick sense of humor; and when I die, I expect to find him laughing.” Is that it? Is God just a sadist? Some people stop believing in God because they don’t understand why an omnipotent being would let all that bad stuff happen to people. Others just hate God because He’s so darned cruel.

Robin Williams speculated that God must’ve been stoned and joking around when He created the platypus. If He created us in His image, then it’s just as likely He needs to blow off a little steam sometimes. At least the platypus didn’t hurt anybody.

In Isabel Allende’s House of the Spirits, Clara, the clairvoyant matriarch, sees all the suffering around her, but she doesn’t take things too seriously. Why? Because God has a sense of humor, always testing people. It wasn’t that Clara wanted to laugh at people’s misery, it was that God created beauty and suffering all together, and there was always a good side, something to laugh about.

Like, who put that snake in the Garden of Eden, anyway? And who got Noah to cram all those stinky animals and his stinky family on a big old boat so he could blow away the world and start over? Then when He started over, He had to do it with Noah and his child molesting self? And who put Jonah in the belly of a whale just so He could yank him out again? And who helped the Israelites escape from the Pharoah just to get them lost in the desert for hundreds of years?

Personally, I think God is into slapstick.

Happy birthday to Lori and Maggie and Ana, my lovely December birthday ladies. We’re all glad you weren’t the products of virgin births. Because that just wouldn’t have been any fun for your parents. And it would be a helluva thing for you to live up to.

I mean, think about how rough that would be, all the speculation about who the father really was. Because you know you can’t believe a word she says if she’s telling you she ain’t never had the sex before. Okay, so maybe she’s really a hermaphrodite, and she impregnated herself. Yeah, so now she’s a real freak, right? And so is the kid. Forget about the reindeer games, buddy, you might as well go live on the Island of Misfit Toys. (Don’t you love a good mixed metaphor?)

The idea of virgin births makes me think of dear, little Owen Meany. I actually watched Simon Birch last year, just interested to find out what Hollywood did with John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. It had nowhere near the poignance of the book; the character was Simon, not Owen; and the story was not really Owen’s either. I guess that’s why Mr. Irving couldn’t let them keep the name.

So different from everyone else, his life is not easy. But Owen is a miracle, and he is destined for greatness.

Christmas carols keep me from being a big humbug, and Christmas makes me think of Christianity, which makes me think of The Bible, which makes me think of blood and gore, which appeals to my morbid side. Is that wrong?

Our local suburban arts center hosted an open house last week with a Russian Christmas theme. All the schools decorated a Christmas tree with Russian imagery, and children painted pictures of Russian dolls and such. There were cookies and balloons for the kids, and old ladies tap dancing in little red Santa’s helper dresses, admittedly fun for all ages.

Beyond the middle school artwork, there were a number of authentic Russian icons painted on canvas and wood and etched on metal. The best icon was the dark face of Jesus raised on what looked like a wooden window shutter. The name of it had something to do with not being created by human hands, like it was one of those miracle pictures that just appears on a wall or a window overnight. Like the face of the Madonna that appears on a tortilla (see Off the Map). It must have been carved and painted, but it did have an ethereal effect, and it was really spooky to think of it as being created by the hands of god or an angel.

But my second favorite icon was all about the violence. It was the head of John the Baptist on a bloody platter. There are lots of such images in the Russian Orthodox tradition. I don’t know what it is, I just think there’s a lot of power and poignance in this type of stuff. Like the image of Jesus nailed to the cross. The idea is to cringe and say, “Whoah!”

Then there was this painting, which a friend posted on The Arcadian Bookroom’s art discussion. It’s Giotto di Bondone’s fresco called Massacre of Innocents, all about what happened shortly after Jesus was born. It’s one more example of biblical gore for all to enjoy (”endure” rhymes better, but it’s really not what I wanted to say).

I may be going to hell… But I’ll go there singing Christmas songs.

After visiting with The Outsiders in 1960s Tulsa, I went back in time to rural Oklahoma in the 1930s. It seemed to me that Ponyboy and Johnny could have been direct descendents of some of the farmers who lost their land in The Grapes of Wrath.

Instead of traveling across the country on Route 66, these folks moved to the city and took low paying jobs so they could feed their families. Or maybe they went all the way to California and back, deciding that if they were going to be poor anyway, they might as well be back in their home state.

I found it quite interesting that both of these books had a beloved martyr with the initials JC. You know, like Jesus Christ? Life was dismal, but there was eternal hope.

One thing I loved about John Casey in The Grapes of Wrath was that he used to be a preacher, but his humanity and humility made him give it up. Little did he know, those were the very traits that made people want to follow him and listen to him even more. He was a servant leader, a shepherd. He was holy.

Don’t you know? Jesus lives in Oklahoma.

One of my favorite books took place in New Mexico — Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya. Ultima is an old wise woman, a curandera, with magical secrets and an owl for a familiar.

One of the things that intrigues me about this book is the juxtaposition of Catholicism and the old beliefs that remain an important part of the culture. That’s where the fishes come in. The Golden Carp is a symbol of the old beliefs, this large, wise and beautiful fish.

So, of course that ties me into Halloween, because I wanted to be The Incredible Mr. Limpet in honor of Don Knotts. I’ve been searching the Internet and costume shops around town, trying to find a fish costume for Tuesday. If you search the online costume stores for “fish,” pretty much all you get is slutty costumes that feature a pair of black fishnet stockings. And the closest thing I found in town was a rubber fish head with an elastic band used to strap the fish to your nose. Not quite the look I was going for.

Anyway, I decided it would be much easier to dress up as Henry Limpet before he turns into the fish, so I bought some round glasses, which strangely make me look like an owl. See how I did that? Full circle, baby.