Did you know that the term Gubbinal may derive from Gubbin slang for a dullard referring here to someone who takes the world to be ugly and the people sad.
Gubbinal
That strange flower the sun is just what you say Have it your way The world is ugly and people are sad
That tuft of jungle feathers That animal eye Is just what you say That savage of fire That seed Have it your way
The world is ugly and people sad.
Wallace Stevens
I remember working at the Mass General Hospital as a dispatcher part time at night in high school in 1965. Even then the MGH was a sprawling mass of buildings encompassing in what does not exist anymore The West End of Boston which was exited from Boston neighborhoods. I was fifteen and a half years old the youngest a human being can work in the state of Massachusetts and still be a legal worker.In other states I would be illegal or legal depending on the state. As well as going to High School, I worked their part time for three years. I worked three nights a week sixteen hours a week for 52 weeks that is 156 nights.
Sometimes, us dispatchers would work up to midnight.
One night working the midnight shift, I remember something so vivid in my mind after decades of overuse. It was my last dispatch of the night around eleven thirsty. I was in the Baker building none of the buildings in the MGH was named after Italians. It was okay for me I was sure that there was no building in Rome named MGH. On my last dispatch, I made a stupid mistake. The nurses were so kind. They said it was just a matter of no consequence and it was a human mistake. However, I was enraged and hated myself for doing something even of no consequence. I left the floor being dejected.
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of the world,
Fie on’t ha fie tis an unweeded garden,
that grows to seed Things rank gross in nature Possess it merely
Hamlet
I was going down the elevator of the Baker Building. In those days people had to run the elevator. There was no buttons to push. You asked the elevator operator to take you to a floor and he did. here was a kind African American man who ran the elevator almost every day. I was amazed by his adroitness and endurance. He had a lever and had to release the lever at just the right time so as to have the elevator and the floor even so that no one would trip. I was amazed that he knew exactly when to let go of the lever. Sometimes, he was off half an inch off. I thought no one can fall from a half an inch. But he nevertheless left nothing to chance and with magic managed to have the elevator and the floor even all the time. We always greeted one another. And he greeted me today. It was just a few words, but those words gave me a respite from the pain in the day.
As I began to walk out of the elevator. He asked: “You okay?”
I could not look him in the eye so instead, looking at my feet I replied: “Yes, thanks you.”
I lied of course. I was not alright. I was all wrong.
When far away an interrupted cry Came overs houses from another street
But not to call me back or say goodbye.
I have been one acquainted with the nigh
Robert Frost
At this time in my life, it did not take too much time for me to hate myself. I was really good at hating myself. I was self-hatred ready to happen. There seemed to be a ton of molten hatred inside of me like a volcano. I was very good at loving everyone else. Everybody loved me.
The thought that anyone could love me did not enter my mind. I was chosen more often than anyone in our crew as an usher wedding and a best man twice. My only thought was that they were desperate at having someone in their wedding. They only choose me because they didn’t have anyone else. The thought that they loved me and cared for me could never enter my brain.
“I have been one acquainted with the night.”
The basement of the Baker Building at that time of night was deserted like a desolate desert.
All of a sudden, I realized that there was someone that wanted to kill me and it was me. I was never more terrorized in my life. I faced violence as we all did, growing up in the North End and knew that I might have to kill someone because if I did not they would kill me. I never imagined a nightmare like this. There was a person who was going to kill me, and I was that person.
How would I run away? Wherever I went I was always there. How can I defend myself from this mad assassin? If I did not kill him, he would kill me. If I killed him, I killed me.
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Here is no water but only rock and no water and the sandy road.
The road winding above and on the mountains
Which are mountains without water.
If there were water, we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop and think. Sweat is dry and the feet are in the sand….
What the Thunder Said
TS Elliot The Wasteland
I created a nightmare. The darkness after the mourning of my mourning stretched out to infinite.
In my nightmare I had a vision. I hung around with some pretty bad and tough characters Fat Ronny, Uncle Ralph, Boon-y, Chico the Dull Blade. In my dream, we all died and we were to be sentenced. I was pretty bad, but these guys were much badder than me. I deeply admired them for that. We never glorified or nullified badness, we just were bad and, in some ways, loved it. We died together. This was an after-death sentence. We all stood in line in front of a mountain of a judge’s pulpit. This pulpit was sixteen feet high. No matter how many feet you had you could never see the Judge even if you stood up on all your tip toes.
One by one we faced our sentence. I was last to be sentenced. The Judge issued his apocalyptic apocryphal commandments. Fat Ronny face the pulpit. One in ten people must go to hell you are not that person; therefore, you will go to heaven.
‘What the fuck I thought if Fat Ronny is going to heaven, the worst I can get is purgatory.’
Ronny was escorted to the door to heaven. Chico the Dull Blade was next, and he got the same sentence and escorted to the door to Heaven. In fact, one by one my dear brothers my dear rebels with a cause and without a cause my fellow street fighting men got their sentence and walked to the door to heaven. I was left alone.
It was now my turn to be sentenced.
The Judge: “Mister Indrisano, one out of ten people have to go to hell you are the tenth person therefore you must go to hell.”
My blood turned to rage. ‘Get the fuck out of here!’ I thought and then screamed injustice. “Your Honor not for nothing but I am not as bad as the rest of my friends.”
The Judge: “’Thus spoke Zarathustra:’ One of ten people must go to hell you are that person you must go to hell.”
Again and again, I made my plea, but to no ears. Hot rage filled every cell in my body. “Fuck this!”
I began my climb to the Judges pulpit. Halfway up I yelled. “Who the fuck you think you are? Doing this to me?” I climbed up till I got to the base of his chair. I was about to say something “When reality broke in with all her matter of factness.”
I looked upon the judge, my sentencer for the first time. I saw upon his visage my visage. I was talking to a mirror talking to a mirror through the infinite. My mirror me calmly raised my judge’s gavel and said, “Mister Indrisano. One in ten people must go to hell and you are that person you must go to hell.”
Terror replaced rage I could not longer hold on nor face my sentencer as “I went downward to darkness” on unexpended wings. I screamed my way out of my nightmare and into my bedroom the other nightmare I lived in. It was like I was galvanized, and the jolt caused my upper body to be bold upright in my bed. I sat their gasping for breath grateful it was only a nightmare.
I knew that I could never tell anyone my nightmare, and never did until now. This solidified our sentence. Night after nightmare the same nightmares crept into this petty place called my life until my sentenced days brought me to my faith fueled morning.
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I have a dream:
Seasons past which turned into years after working as a dispatcher. Until one morning full of mourning. I was in bed for three days with no rest. I knew that if I did not force literally force myself out of bed, I might never get out. My psychiatrist Doctor Burke said to me there is a point where one loses control of their self-destructive instincts and if they do not got to an emergency room they will take their life. As I battled my depression, it took everything I had to go to my garage which was also my shop and try to do something that will avert the darkness that was overwhelming me. I tried to make some templates or shelves which would organize the shop better. I couldn’t. Then, I tried to go over all the tools and material and make the shop more workable. I couldn’t. I went to sweep the floor of my shop and found myself paralyzed by pain with the broomstick frozen in my hand. In despair I thought that I cannot even sweep this floor. My other arms were vibrating with pain beside my side. I watched my eyeballs surrender to the back of my head as unconscious vision called me. The pain was so overwhelming that I knew that I would not survive long.
I could hear and feel the cell phone calling in my back pocket. I hardly ever answer the phone when I am working, and being a heartbeat towards eternity why would I answer the phone. I felt this impulse to answer the phone. When I went to look at the phone to see who was calling, it was my friend Vincent a man whose love and fire infused me into his soul. If Vincent wanted to talk to me I was going to talk to him even though all I wanted was the isolation of non-existing.
“How are you?” Vincent said. I usually don’t tell people about my thoughts about suicide. I want to avoid being judge and also do not want to cause people I love worry. Could I lie to my brother in which I never had a bad moment never had an experience that I was not loved over our lifetime. “Vincent, I, I cannot hang on anymore.”
“You fucking listen to me. You hear me. You are big enough tough and smart enough to beat this thing. You fucking hear me and besides we, (Vincent and the rest of our crew,) are not done torturing you.” Then, Vincent hung up. The eloquence and love of it all streamed through my brain and heart. How much does someone have to love someone to say something like Vincent said.
And, then to complete the communication so perfectly by hanging up not giving me a chance
of saying no. This is an offer I cannot refuse. Like a drowning man who sees his life pass before him , I could see that love that all had for me passing before me.
The sheer eloquence of it all, the sheer eloquence of it all stunned me out of my illusions and brought me back “to this our land of the living.” Then, like “the gentle rain that fall it from heaven. “All the love that I never let in passed into me like a transfusion of love/life. Everyone who asked me to their weeding did so because they loved me. All those magnificent expressions of love became magnificent expressions of love now. “Mountains are mountains waters is water.”
Now! In front of me was the possibility of transcending my anguish and death my sentence. I can see the possibility that Vincent possibility of who I am is true. This doorway to this possibility of freedom had no prescription. I had to be the prescription-er. I had to be the prescription. I had to be the dancer and the dance. I had to be the answer and the question. I had to be the will and the determination.
What to do with my sentence? I saw now with love a life that transcended darkness. So, beautiful in its simplicity. I said to my sentencer myself made judge “To go fuck himself, and his sentence. What do I give a fuck about you and your sentence. Vincent isn’t going to like this and you do now want to mess around with Vincent. Fuck you! I am going to get a new sentence.” I knew what sentence I was gong to follow.
I will never throw away my soul;
Only for something for something I do not know
that One may come on randomly.
Saint John of the Cross
Gubbinal
That strange flower the sun is just what you say Have it your way The world is ugly and people are sad
That tuft of jungle feathers That animal eye Is just what you say
That savage of fire That seed Have it your way
The world is ugly and people are sad.
Wallace Stevens
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My Dear Readers, my Dear Listeners,
Our revels now are ended. These our actors As I have foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air
And like the base like fabric of this vision Our cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces
The solemn temples, the great globe itself Yea, all which is inherit shall dissolve
And like the insubstantial pageant faded Leave not a rack behind, We are such stuff As dreams are made and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep
William Shakespeare