There’s a sentence in George Gissing’s novel Sleeping Fires which summed up my feelings about Mary: “It was the woman whom a man in his maturity desires unashamed.” And there I was, unashamed after a long process. To capture that feeling, a song would have be something that began in a long and hesitant fashion, but then moved from diffidence to confidence, lyricism, and joy. Bebel was the song.
Perhaps the point of the title Aerial Boundaries was the actual possibility of something that had seemed impossible. Like Michael Hedges’ two-handed plucking/tapping. Like a hive of activity in a field that first seems to be sleeping in the sun. Or like finding music for myself. And some measure of serenity.
But acceptance, though assertedly the last stage of dealing with impending death, is only the first phase of deciding to divorce. Then you need to summon courage, logistical skill, and cash. And the greatest of these is courage.
In a barbaric legal culture, even conscientious lawyers are likely to find themselves acting a lot like barbarians.
And there in the sunroom I stood, one afternoon shortly after my father had died and we had moved into a new house and my life was all jumbled up beyond recall, with the light of the dying day filtering in through the tree outside, tears welling up as I honked through a requiem for my father with the instrument I knew best how to play.
Catholic turf should not be the bishops’ to rule in the first place. The hospitals and the universities were built with the funds and the blood, sweat and tears of generations of all Catholic believers, and should by all rights belong to all of their successors, the entire body of the faithful. Instead of acting like the in-title-only trustees of these institutions, accountable to those who built them and their successors, the hierarchy behave like the equitable owners. And if you think these would-be owners are in favor of religious freedom for the rest of us in the Catholic fold, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I want to sell you.
Kate, I guess, continued to date that other guy, Jim, until the school year ended. That summer, she was somewhere else. I knew she was out of town, and yet somehow, I kept finding reasons to visit her home. Not knocking, not asking if anyone else was there. Just walking by. That fall, the fall of 1966, the Four Seasons came out with a song that expressed exactly how I felt, their cover of Cole Porter’s immortal I’ve Got You Under My Skin.