The table was set with a new saffron-yellow tablecloth, a candle in the centre, and new placemats where needed. We had little saucers for our food, dark brown to go with the faintly 70s colour scheme, and I put out the flower-sprinkled Gmunden tea cups for the traditional weekend morning coffees.
Mama cycled off to the bakery (the one with the nicest people in Berlin) and fetched croissants, Schrippen, and so on. When she returned, T. was just rolling along the street toward us to join us for breakfast.
Fortunately we had general Advent-time supplies left in the pantry. So for breakfast we had plates of fondant and gummy stars, hearts, circles and squares; Printen bars with dark candied sugar and an almond slice in the centre; Spekulatius, in the traditional windmill shape; Zimtsterne; marzipan 'potatoes'; and mandarin oranges. There were three chocolate St. Nicholases that we divided amongst ourselves. Ge. heated milk and whisked it, then poured us all cups of warm café au lait.
A little blasphemously, perhaps, I put Barack Obama's new memoir on the table, because I'd just bought the hardcover paper version at Dussmann yesterday, and it is almost like a St. Nicholas present to us all.
(Due to coronavirus safety measures, a long line of people led from the entrance of Dussmann around the side of the building, and shoppers were being let in gradually by a bouncer. Neither Mama, who had come along with me to look for a Latin grammar to help with her university studies, nor I, wanted to keep the people who arrived after us waiting. So we browsed very swiftly. But of course from a bookseller's perspective she was delighted to see the interest in a bookshop.)
After the meal, T. tried to set up Steam on Mama's laptop, so that Mama could play Age of Empires as a multiplayer game. I've liked playing Age of Empires, too, but it's a 'time-suck' for me and so — like manga and animé — I've decided that it's best to avoid adding it to my list of guilty pleasures for now.
*
My plans for the rest of the day are to listen to audiobooks and maybe begin reading A Promised Land. A Hundred Years of Solitude, Don Quijote de la Mancha and a few other books that I've started in paper form are also waiting for me...
I've already played Christmas songs on the piano, including St. Nicholas songs ("Lasst uns froh und munter sein") because the lyrics are necessarily only relevant for a brief window of time; and perhaps that has filled the musical quota.
A colleague passed on a link to a petition about the Rummelsburger Bucht, a bay on the Spree River here in Berlin that is being redeveloped, and I might do more research about it today.
Then I might take up my art supplies and do a bit of drawing. An HR colleague has commissioned me to make illustrations for the electronic thank-you cards that we use in the company, if I have time and without setting a hard deadline.
Perhaps I'll also do my half hour of daily exercise again; the programme has lagged lately because (probably in a reaction to the high-pressure achievements of the pre-Black Friday season) I feel weary.
Then there are letters that my father wrote in the early 1970s. I don't know if it's good for me to read them or not. They are excellent biographical material, but I don't really like myself for feeling so much self-pity over the last few months for not having Papa around any more.
I need to appreciate the good, feel grateful for having had a father whom one can miss so badly, and keep remembering that he died quickly and on his own terms, so that from his perspective it ended as well as one could expect. During the first months when he died, I felt that I need to honour his memory by taking things well. Inwardly I'm still throwing a few howling tantrums; and I might not be crying in my room every day as I did for a few weeks, but it's undoubtedly a life-changing experience.
***
In the meanwhile, Mama and I got out a stack of Bibles and, for the first time in years, we looked up the Vatican's suggested readings for today. It was nostalgic because when Papa was alive, every now and then Papa, Mama and I would feel more 'Catholic' than usual and do the same thing, in 2017 or earlier. Generally, the Bible being what it is, some of the readings would leave me thinking 'What the hell did I just read?'.
It feels awkward to read the Bible out loud even when the readings are more sympathetic, and I don't manage to do so in a natural way. I don't believe that everything I'm reading is right, and it sometimes feels like I sound like a bigoted Bible-thumper in a Hollywood western. It's also a little overawing to read an old text that has been processed by millions of people over thousands of years.
A Puritan in English in the 17th century, Martin Luther will have read them in Hebrew in the 15th, a French priest in Latin in the 18th, Spanish conquistadores will have heard them in the 16th as they were decimating the native populations of South America, whereas a Dietrich Bonhoeffer will have read them while resisting the Nazi era in the 1930s. Not to mention Christians reading them in the Middle Ages during the Crusades, and other Christians hearing these words before they were killed in Roman amphitheaters. Even earlier, the original scribes who wrote this down in (I'm guessing; I'm a bit shaky on the history of religion) the earliest decades AD; and then there's the textual dialogue between, for example, Mark's gospel in the New Testament with the much older prophesies of Isaiah in the Old Testament. And someone will have talked about the Bible with the Prophet Muhammad not long afterward. Everyone will have felt and interpreted these words differently.
Anyway, as always, I'll quote from the King James version. It's not because the translators were necessarily super-accurate. It's rather because I like the language so much and, secondly, because I think the twisty syntax and less accessible vocabulary are important barriers that make me take more time to really think about what I'm reading and that emphasize the ambiguity of its meaning.
"Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain:""He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young."
As Mama pointed out, this is practically a large chunk of Händel's Messiah already. (And I've listened to Marian Anderson's recording of "He shall feed his flock" again in honour of it, on YouTube here.)
"The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance."
I found that part nice because — unlike the common understanding of the Rapture — the idea is that everyone is supposed to be happy and that the benefit of the one is the benefit of all.
And now the disturbing bit:
"But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up."
"The voice of one crying in the wilderness"
I like this phrase, independent of the meaning. Of course 'crying' had a different implication when the King James Bible was assembled than it does now, and now it sounds more histrionic.
"And John was clothed with camel's hair, and with a girdle of a skin about his loins; and he did eat locusts and wild honey;"And preached, saying, There cometh one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose."
And there I enjoyed the description of John the Baptist as a proto-hippie.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment