Here are a few things that have been helping me these days.
Vapor clouding from coiled shit, hot air from mouths and lips— face it, said the dark’s harpist— is the everything everything is.
Helpful as I watched the confirmation hearings. Helpful as I read the news, the statements “justifying” the dismantling.
*
Dead flies
rot and stink
up the finest
oil and ointment
i.e., a
little stupidity
goes quite far
when it comes
to spoiling what’s
been bequeathed
from eternity,
and one’s honor.
Helpful when I get a glimpse of the palace, the gilded Floridian chambers of power.
*
I saw as well
a ruler’s face
(like his palace
swell with corruption
and told myself
a god would judge
where evil existed
and what good was
though as we descend
to the issue of ends
the difference between
beasts and men
grows hard to discern,
or so it seemed
through darkness dispersing
thickened again
Helpful when I see the face of the one as he lifts an order for all to see—the signature, a Sharpie flourish of cityscape towers, just as if not more important to him than the order itself.
*
Reading a healthy selection of the many short essays I’ve written for “Good Letters” and “Close Reading,” a friend tells me he prefers those that aren’t political. I do, too.
This essay isn’t political. It’s about the heart. It’s about the spirit, bruised, battered.
It’s about friends, this essay. They feel agitated. They feel helpless. They are limiting their exposure to the minute-by-minute updates. They are turning off their news feeds. Or they are obsessively refreshing their screens. Fueling and refueling their rage, their fear, their despair.
*
It’s also, this essay, about power. For now, at least, I have the power to read what I choose, to read what reaches into my brain and heart, what touches my teeth, what reflects in my fingernails like the light of the braided havdalah candle, the multi-wicked candle that Jews light to mark the end of the Sabbath and the transition to the week. May we bring the light of the Sabbath with us as we return to work! I choose to read work that illuminates me within, from the crown of the head to the tips of the big toes, limited in their flexibility now by bone spurs. I choose to read work that illuminates the world outside my window—my study window, the windows of my screens, my 2009 Prius’ windows, my synagogue’s windows.… Work that affords me a close view and a view of the present as seen within the frame of distant time and place and language.
One poem that has been helping me since before the election and that continues to help me is Peter Cole’s “From the Qualmist’s Quair,” passages from which you’ve already read in this essay.
*
This essay is about the power of ancient literature.
“Utter futility!—said Koheleth—
Utter futility! All is futile!” (Ecclesiastes 1:2)
“There is nothing new
Beneath the sun!” (Ecclesiastes 1:9)
“A season is set for everything, a time for every experience under heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1)
Koheleth, also transliterated from the Hebrew as Qohelet, the text many of us know as Ecclesiastes, is the name, according to the text, assigned to the “son of David, king in Jerusalem.” That would be Solomon. But at its root—k, h, l—the name also suggests the word “assemble.” So, in this context, Koheleth could be the one of the assembly, “the one who has assembled wisdom,” the one who “assembled conflicting opinions and decided on the correct ones,” or the one who “assembled the people around to speak or preach wisdom to them” (Jewish Study Bible: Note I.1).
While we may never know who exactly the author of the text is, we do know this: the writer set out “to study and to probe with wisdom all that happens under the sun” and to report back to us on what he learned. Here’s a little of what he learned. Wealth, power, and wisdom are all futile. Righteousness and wickedness, too—both—will be doomed by God. That is, the righteous man and woman as well as the wicked man and woman will both meet the same ultimate fate: death. Those who die young are better off than those who die old. And those who are never born are better off than those who are born. A rather dark view.
What to do? Says Qohelet: “the only worthwhile thing…for men is to enjoy themselves and do what is good in their lifetime” and “eat and drink and get enjoyment” (3:12-13).
In other words, “From the Qualmist’s Quair”:
So savor what
you see and drink,
and work itself—
not what it brings.
*
Three and a half years into retirement, I’m still working. Not for pay. For what, then? Attention, recognition? Well, yes, sure, though if that’s the main reason I’m working, I’d be better off taking Qohelet seriously. The work is futile, so, if I can’t savor the work itself, that is, the process and experience of doing the work rather than what might be achieved in the world by doing it, I should quit. Now.
Working: writing.
Working: reading.
Working: engaging in a range of spiritual practices.
These three are inextricably bound. It’s my way of probing. It’s my way of growing. It’s my way of knowing and knowing and knowing. And being known. Being known by whom, by what? Language. God.
*
Deeply informed by the original text of Ecclesiastes, “From the Qualmist’s Quair” also questions some of the broad wisdom statements of the original.
and then I thought
of those who were suffering:
Is oppressed a cardboard
term to avoid
when they’re everywhere
being deployed
and riven by forces
deaf to their cries?
Don’t be so surprised
at the poor man’s neck
crushed by a knee
come down from on high
and higher.… Is
that just vapor
under the sun?
His gasping for wind?”
Was George Floyd’s gasping for wind just another example of vapor, futility, vanity? Vapor, futility, vanity: The Hebrew word haveil has been variously translated as all three terms.
Cole’s “From the Qualmist’s Quair” is a Qohelet for our time.
*
Qohelet teaches, “The making of many books is without limit / And much study is a wearying of the flesh.” My study is crowded with more books than I will ever get to read. And that’s to say nothing of the books I learn of, day after day, that I feel I must read if I’m ever going to know all I need to know in order to live in the way I imagine would make me feel whole. I certainly don’t want to write and publish and post anything that would make someone else feel inadequate, incomplete, or not yet fully realized. Nonetheless, especially now, in this uncertain and unnerving moment in America and the world, the lyric poetry and wisdom literature of others, including Qohelet’s and Cole’s, is as essential to me—my physical health, my emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being—as salmon, deadlifts, family and friends, meditation, song, and prayer.
Richard Chess has published four books of poetry, the most recent of which is Love Nailed to the Doorpost. Professor emeritus from UNC Asheville, where he directed the Center for Jewish Studies for 30 years, Chess serves on the boards of Yetzirah: A Hearth for Jewish Poetry and Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, where he co-directs its Faith in Arts project. You can find him at www.richardchess.com .
