by douglas john imbrogno | thestoryisthething.com | october12.2024
I must finally admit something to myself. ‘Hey, you, Self!’ I cry out to my mirror image. ‘You may be too abstruse, obscure, inscrutable, and cryptic for the web at large.’ This insight leads to several possibilities: 1) Wind down my frequent oddball, cabalistic, prolix posts and grow more conventional and scrutable; 2) Shut up and go write books; 3) Illustrate and post a half-century-old book review quote which references the Sung Dynasty …
You can see the direction I went. Because feeling oneself as tiny and not-so-significant, while ping-ponging between weeping and then feeling breathless from the world’s misterioso grandeur and alternating awfulness, pretty much describes my life’s arc. And yours?
Wait a moment. What is that sound? Oh, yeah. It’s my unfinished first book, calling out in distress. (I have it locked in a back room …). I really need to get back to that room. But I just cannot concentrate on private, big projects, given the massive stakes that will determine America’s future on Nov. 5, 2024.
As for the illustrated quote above, I hand-scribbled it down in a journal around age 16 after coming upon it in some magazine, which dates it to the early 1970s. I re-encountered it after it surfaced recently in the ever-expanding quotation bank on my hard drive. The quote still evokes for me something notable about the confounding drama that powers human existence, as our teensy, seemingly insignificant selves look out upon a vast, perplexing, regularly maddening existence. I like to refer to this grand, yet opaque reality as ‘The Great Mystery.’ Or maybe just ‘Mysty.’ And Mysty doesn’t easily give up the secrets behind his-her-its inscrutability, now, does he-she-it?
Uh-oh. I’m writing eccentric, peculiar prose again. There has to be a 12-Step program. (‘The first step to scrutability is admitting you have a problem …‘)
SPEAKING OF THE GREAT MYSTERY
Along similar lines, above is an amusing, if somewhat daunting, meme found on the web. It’s a perspective worth sharing around this year’s Thanksgiving table. Maybe to divert your Trumpublican-cult uncle from waxing ecstatic over the coming round of mass deportations, if not summary executions, that soon-to-be inaugurated Imperator Trump may have just announced. Or, in a far happier outcome, your now miserable uncle may absently swirl circles with his fork in his mashed potato gravy, morose at the prospect of a dynamic, forward-thinking Black-and-Indian woman as his president.
We can only pray for ‘Morose Mashed Potato Uncle.’ And, also, do everything we can amongst our friends, acquaintances, communities, and on our social media timelines, to get folks to vote in the final days of possibly the most consequential election in American history. It is worth heeding Mother Jones’ words, via a limerick by the world-class, op-ed Limerick Master Colleen Anderson, which I animated in 2020 during Colleen’s first round of anti-Trump limerick editorials.
CLICK TO VIEW VIDEO
SPEAKING OF BREATHLESSNESS
I have done my share of whipsawing between the kind of weeping that shudders the body, and then being silenced into breathlessness by the splendor of universal things. I am recently back from the sadness of the funeral of a cousin who died way too soon. This farewell took place near Lake Erie in Lorain, Ohio, just west of Cleveland. I didn’t grow up in this small, multi-ethnic burg, but my parents did. After they found and married each other, they moved away — the first of their respective clans to exit the old hometown — as my father worked as an itinerant drafting engineer, finally landing a permanent job at General Electric’s Evendale plant in Cincinnati.
With six kids in our family (‘No birth control for YOU, Catholic parents in the 1950s and 60s!‘) we couldn’t afford vacation runouts to Disneyland, Niagara Falls, or the Atlantic beach. So, twice a year we undertook a pilgrimage to Lorain for 10 days or so in Summer and again for the Christmas holidays. As a result, I grew up running with a pack of cousins. We bonded in the Lorain streets, the parks, and along the Lake Erie shoreline after escaping adult supervision. More often than not, we left them arguing loudly over adult things as they sipped from small cut-glass tumblers of Grandpa Gene’s homemade red wine (on the Italian side) or played cards while tossing back Pabst Blue Ribbons or highballs made with Canadian whiskey and ginger ale (on my Mom’s side).
‘FIERY WAVES’ | An inflamed sunset paints the million waves of Lake Erie one recent night out beyond a cousin’s place. | thestoryisthething.com | october2024
Lake Erie was ever-present as the hypnotic, shoreline-to-horizon backdrop and lapping tidal soundtrack to our cousin life. Glimpsing the lake’s blue, roiling waves at the conclusion of a four-hour, usually cantankerous family car ride north was always a moment to savor and celebrate. (Plus, escaping my younger brother’s backseat booger assaults.)
As sad as cousin Benny’s untimely passing was — rest in peace, good fellow, or whatever the Great Mystery has in store for you next — cousin life goes on. My older brother Dave and I were blessed to lodge with another set of cousins during our visit, who live alongside that great lake of memories. We enjoyed a lakeside bonfire one night after the sky caught on fire in one of the more spectacular and, indeed, breathless sunsets I have ever witnessed. I have taken the liberty of mingling photos of that sunset by cousin David and brother Dave into the short musical montage below.
‘LAKE ON FIRE’ | Click to view video
The cousin pack is Italian and Italo-Polish on Dad’s side, with another diverse, exuberant crew of cousin offspring from Scottish-German immigrants on my mother’s side. These many decades later, alas, the larger part of my Lorain-centric extended family differs significantly on presidential politics compared to most of our relocated Southern wing — although some of us with stronger constitutions have tried to underscore the dire threat to the actual Constitution. So, we don’t talk about it much. Yet, this election has thrown into strong relief just how well we think we know another person, especially when we find them rooting, without question or hesitation, for a man devoted to violent division. Or, as I quote Trump’s own former defense secretary, Jim Mattis, in my Election 2024 series NotesBeforeYouVote.com:
Yet our ethnic cousin bonds are strong, ancient, and rooted in great, communal memories and countless shared meals. So, that helps keep us talking and together. And, let’s be clear: talking and together is the only way forward as all of us whipsaw between weeping and breathless wonder. One of my favorite political commentators, Joyce Vance, always ends her always thoughtful commentaries and legal analysis at her ‘Civil Discourse’ substack blog with a worthy line I am here going to borrow.
We’re all in this together.
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