The words "complete," "protects," "energies," and "hurts" are supposed to be italicized. -- I don't know why, when I try to send something single-spaced, it appears double-spaced (and w/out italics).
Language Poem
There’s a look. Flying over
a flyover state, you see it on
the face of a fundamentalist
you start to talk to – avoiding a
predictable movie, book
or thought – then realize:
fundamentalist. And wearily,
inevitably you invoke basic
logic, science,
historiography, and get
the look. In the mid-Eighties,
I taught at a thing called
Northrop University. Saudi and
United Arab Emirates
students got nominal degrees in
engineering so that they could go home
and sign off on work by
anonymous hired engineers; meanwhile
they could play for two years
in the stripclubs and bars near LAX.
I pretended to teach them English.
During breaks we discussed
their beliefs. “Islam
is complete,” they said. Concerning
women, they said that Islam protects
women. When I tried, with
infinite circumspection, to unpack
“completeness” or “protection,” they gave me
the look. Elsewhere in
California, and
not only there, you’ll encounter
New Age types; and if, really working
gentleness, eye contact,
etc., you say “What
‘energies,’ exactly?” –
or let them do your chart
and prove how right it is,
then tell them all the dates and locations
you gave them were wrong – you’ll see it. It’s
remarkably similar when
the ruling class allows a
brother thief to be slapped above
the wrist:
he stands beside his lawyer
who says they will appeal, even
cries because his client is
a saint, a victim … and there
again, in the fox-sloth
eyes beside his: the look. –
Or try to teach evolution to
some kids, or anything to others. It’s
hurt, of course, with
admixtures – I’ll get you for this,
this can’t be happening – but, basically,
childlike
hurt. Friday nights
I swing by the University
to pick up Croce.
We enjoy the bars and cafés and
windowshopping along Montana
and Sunset. Why him? No
particular affinity; I need an idealist
or rationalist, I can’t stand the others any more.
The judgments that we give
when we judge an action to be foolish
or wicked, a statement false, a work of art ugly, are
all metaphorical. In delivering them
we do not mean to say
there is an existence called error,
ugliness, foolishness, but only that
there is a given existence and that another
is wanting. He’s glad of
the company – has been dead fifty years, and his
philosophy was never very alive, but
he’s kind enough to puff sagely on
his pipe and say, “It’s an age of transition.” It isn’t.
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