Re: holy smoke

Tim O'Connor (oconnort@nyu.edu)
Thu, 15 Oct 1998 10:19:16 -0400 

On Wed, Oct 14, 1998 at 11:22:13PM -0400, Vincent Griffin wrote:

> I forget if I can just "Reply to author" or not, so if I screw anything up,
> take it easy on me. 

It's OK to screw up!  We don't pick on people here!  And welcome to your
first posting (though it's a bit confusing because your account says
your name is "Vincent Griffin" and your signature says "Erin" -- so
welcome to both of you.

> was reading that response Helena Kim (?) made to--who was it? Tim? 

Yes ... it's sometimes hard to follow who says what, when the discussion
gets complex.  It's reasonably threaded on the web page
(www.nyu.edu/acf/staff/oconnort/JDS), by month.

> Anyway, I
> just wanted to say (even though it doesn't matter much) that I was sorry to
> read that reply about only the senile and little kids being in the thrall of
> the Church. I mean, I don't see what that has to do with anything. I don't
> think Tim's message (or are you Scott?) was about the strong faith of Irish
> youth or anything even close to that. I think it was just the
> experience--the very HUMAN experience--of searching for something. 

Nope, I'm not Scotty!  And Scotty is not me!  <*insert big grin here*>

That may have been part of it to, of what I saw there.  I think (from
my perception of it, which is as skewed as anyone's) I saw roughly three
types of people, excluding myself in the role of anthropologist.  8-)

There were the kids, who where there because that was where good
Catholic kiddies are expected to be.

There were the older people, who seemed, to me, genuinely with faith.

And there were many nervous-looking people (one man in front of me whom
I remember vividly because he had hands that looked like the hands of a
man who builds brick walls: with callouses and abrasions and the trace
of cement around the nails, very visible while he was clutching his cap)
who in my imagination fell in the middle.  Those were the people I
could most appreciate, because they seemed to be a few stages away from
being schoolkids-with-habit-of-attending-mass but also some steps away
from the people there who truly seemed to believe in where they were and
what they were doing.  They seemed uneasy.  Uncertain.

> you're right. Maybe all the Irish kids did get drunk and feel guilty and go
> to mass...how could we ever know? But, in reality, what does it matter?

Indeed.  Slice of life, that was all it was.  But an interesting slice,
to me.  Oh -- and there's one detail I left out, quite by accident.  It
was the year the IRA agreed to a cease-fire, and at that moment we were
a few months after the agreement, and the priest noted that for the
first time in many years it looked as if the fragile peace might be with
the country and that it might mean a real change from the long terror.

Now, *that* made an impression on me, more viscerally than any pomp and
ceremony.

> Do you remember in one of Salinger's stories (Maybe Seymour: An Intro), he's
> talks about profanity as being a sort of low form of prayer, some subtle
> simply human plea for help? Do you remember that? I think that, in that
> frame of reference, Salinger would say that the crazies and the kids you
> mention would be considered the lucky ones. The blessed ones, maybe.

I hope so.  Even those of us at the low end of hope need some rung to
grasp.

As it seems ever to be in that region, it was very rainy while I was
there, and I spent long periods walking in the town, tracing where my 
father had walked when he was growing up (he had described it to me
when he was alive, and I remember many of the details clearly).  The
day or so after Christmas, when all the shops except the video store 
were closed up, I was walking downtown and I heard a commotion.  There
swerved around the corner an old, old limousine with a few raggedy 
cars in procession behind it, and in the back of the limousine was a 
bride and a groom, and the whole procession was in high spirits.

Given that I was the only soul walking the streets, they honked their
horns at me and screamed and cheered in their joy, and I gave them a
"thumbs-up" sign, which seemed to delight them, and off they drove with
their noise and their hope and presumably their dream of a bright future
together.

And all I thought of was Seymour and Muriel's day in "Raise High..." and
I said to myself, You poor kids, may you be happy when you wake up one
day and look around and see the life you've made for yourselves.

I guess it was something to believe in for those kids.  I hope that
whoever they are, they have their own kind of blessing.  Like the kids
in my pew in the back of the church, each of us dodging the holy 
lightning bolts in our own way.

> OK...well, that was unclear. Anyway, you have my regrets.

It wasn't unclear, and no regrets are required!

--tim