Rwanda and Henry Miller
“The next day Father Seromba asked the people to collect the bodies, but they refused. Bourgmestre Grégoire decided to bring in the bulldozer to evacuate the bodies.”
This is an excerpt from today’s work, a little missive to be translated from Kinrwandan into English about priests who shuffle their female parishioners in and out of the presbytery, until one fine day, a group of Interahamwe show up at the refectory entrance in their white pickups, and in the wink of an eye the priest is leading the chorus to demolish his own church, and inside, 2000 of the faithful get to meet the god of their choice.
These days, it’s easy to think we should maybe just start all over again at square zero. Only problem is that nobody agrees on what square zero is. Many are lobbying for some form of cleansing – infidels, sexual deviants, smokers, Muslims, Jews, meat eaters – or in the case of the Dutch, your kitchen sink.
Miller wrote during a war, and feelings were running pretty high in the thirties and forties as well. Plenty of historical recrimination and place in the sun shite being sold. Religious freaks, and of course, the dictators all against decadence, while some of the great cabaret and expressionistic talents were putting on their midnight shows right from the belly of the beast – Germany during the rise of fascism. Maybe the rise of fascism is a necessary sine qua non for decadent art. Or in Hitler’s case, the reverse is true.
Miller was a Teuton, and like all Teutonic artists, he had a weakness for Jews and for Paris. Miller was the first German to surrender. His abdication was so complete that he conquered the world and the world never noticed. Oddly enough, after trials and tribulations of various sorts, he reduced his world view, becoming physically, spiritually and morally myopic to the point that his attention became fixed on some lice in his roommates armpit, and Tropic of Cancer was born. The world, as exemplified by the US Postal Authority, declared printed discussions of lice obscene, while another branch of the government continued bombing Dresden and nuked the Japs, ahem, excuse me our oriental brethren, a couple of times. Fortunately for Miller, what the censors thought obscene struck American GIs as the only intelligible language left in a world gone mad.
Miller, of course, understood that the world has always been mad. Devreux’s like that. I asked what his thoughts were, knowing that while his return flight from NYC taxied down the runway, a band of traveling Saudis, those wild and crazy Wahhabis, were getting the world’s closest close up view of the World Trade Centre on their way, ha ha, to paradise. And, even were kind enough to invite a few thousand stock brokers and secretaries along to meet the great Allah. Inchallah, baby.
“Ah, David,” said the great Devreux, “I haven’t lost a wink of sleep since the fall of the Byzantine empire”, implying and proving through the enigmatic, crackly, puckish Devreux smile of a Hunan librarian, that he was at the very least a thousand years old.
“The next day Father Seromba asked the people to collect the bodies, but they refused. Bourgmestre Grégoire decided to bring in the bulldozer to evacuate the bodies.”
This is an excerpt from today’s work, a little missive to be translated from Kinrwandan into English about priests who shuffle their female parishioners in and out of the presbytery, until one fine day, a group of Interahamwe show up at the refectory entrance in their white pickups, and in the wink of an eye the priest is leading the chorus to demolish his own church, and inside, 2000 of the faithful get to meet the god of their choice.
These days, it’s easy to think we should maybe just start all over again at square zero. Only problem is that nobody agrees on what square zero is. Many are lobbying for some form of cleansing – infidels, sexual deviants, smokers, Muslims, Jews, meat eaters – or in the case of the Dutch, your kitchen sink.
Miller wrote during a war, and feelings were running pretty high in the thirties and forties as well. Plenty of historical recrimination and place in the sun shite being sold. Religious freaks, and of course, the dictators all against decadence, while some of the great cabaret and expressionistic talents were putting on their midnight shows right from the belly of the beast – Germany during the rise of fascism. Maybe the rise of fascism is a necessary sine qua non for decadent art. Or in Hitler’s case, the reverse is true.
Miller was a Teuton, and like all Teutonic artists, he had a weakness for Jews and for Paris. Miller was the first German to surrender. His abdication was so complete that he conquered the world and the world never noticed. Oddly enough, after trials and tribulations of various sorts, he reduced his world view, becoming physically, spiritually and morally myopic to the point that his attention became fixed on some lice in his roommates armpit, and Tropic of Cancer was born. The world, as exemplified by the US Postal Authority, declared printed discussions of lice obscene, while another branch of the government continued bombing Dresden and nuked the Japs, ahem, excuse me our oriental brethren, a couple of times. Fortunately for Miller, what the censors thought obscene struck American GIs as the only intelligible language left in a world gone mad.
Miller, of course, understood that the world has always been mad. Devreux’s like that. I asked what his thoughts were, knowing that while his return flight from NYC taxied down the runway, a band of traveling Saudis, those wild and crazy Wahhabis, were getting the world’s closest close up view of the World Trade Centre on their way, ha ha, to paradise. And, even were kind enough to invite a few thousand stock brokers and secretaries along to meet the great Allah. Inchallah, baby.
“Ah, David,” said the great Devreux, “I haven’t lost a wink of sleep since the fall of the Byzantine empire”, implying and proving through the enigmatic, crackly, puckish Devreux smile of a Hunan librarian, that he was at the very least a thousand years old.
1 comment:
You write very well.
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