"God don't hear me otherwise"

So afterwards I out and asked him. "How come? How come you yelled?"

"God don't hear me otherwise," said Grandpa Kashpaw.

I sweat. I broke right into a little cold sweat at my hairline because I knew this was perfectly right and for years not one damn other person had noticed it. God's been going deaf. Since the Old Testament, God's been deafening up on us. I read, see. Besides the dictionary, which I'm constantly in use of, I had this Bible once. I read it. I found there was discrepancies between then and now. It struck me. Here God used to raineth bread from clouds, smite the Phillipines, sling fire down on red-light districts where people got stabbed. He even appeared in person every once in a while. God used to pay attention, is what I'm saying.

Now there's your God in the Old Testament and there is Chippewa Gods as well. Indian Gods, good and bad, like tricky Nanabozho or the water monster, Missepeshu, who lives over in Matchimanito. That water monster was the last God I ever heard to appear. It had a weakness for young girls and grabbed one of the Pillagers off her rowboat. She got to shore all right, but only after this monster had its way with her. She's an old lady now. Old Lady Pillager. She still doesn't like to see her family fish that lake.

Our Gods aren't perfect, is what I'm saying, but at least they come around. They'll do a favor if you ask them right. You don't have to yell. But you do have to know, like I said, how to ask in the right way. That makes problems, because to ask proper was an art that was lost to the Chippewas once the Catholics gained ground. Even now, I have to wonder if Higher Power turned it back, if we got to tell, or if we just don't speak its language.

I looked around me. How else could I explain what all I had seen in my short life--King smashing his fist in things, Gordie drinking himself down to the Bismarck hospitals, or Aunt June left by a white man to wander off in the snow. How else to explain the times my touch don't work, and farther back, to the old-time Indians who was swept away in the outright germ warfare and dirty-dog killing of the whites. In those times us Indians was so much kindlier than now.

We took them in.

Oh yes, I'm bitter as an old cutworm just thinking of how they done to us and doing still.

So Grandpa Kashpaw just opened my eyes a little there. Was there any sense relying on a God whose ears was stopped? Just like the government? I says then, right off, maybe we got nothing but ourselves.

(Louise Erdrich, from "Love Medicine")

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But for you, O Lord, do I wait;

it is you, O Lord my God, who will answer.

Look away from me, that I may smile again,

before I depart and am no more!

(David, from Psalms 38 and 39)

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Tabors, Wilco, Fraktur

I very much enjoyed seeing the Tabors ever-so-briefly this weekend--particularly Nick, who I haven't seen in over a year. If I end up at Vanderbilt next year, we will be only an hour or so away, which would be fantastic.

Nick and I talked about the new Wilco album--he enjoys it but is significantly less enthusiastic than I. I think it's fantastic start to finish.

Here Tweedy pairs grim lyrics with aggressive, upbeat music--just as, in the wondrous album closer, which I posted recently, a dark story of paternal disappointment is told in a peaceful, lovely manner. I love the wailing guitar line. As Tweedy says in a really nice piece about the creation of this track, "I can play that guitar riff. I can't make it sound like [Nels Cline does]."

---

I filled the past week with late nights translating smudged German Fraktur, a frustrating but also rewarding task. This was my first time doing any extended reading in Fraktur, so it was good to work on that long overdue skill. And as always, there's a certain pleasure in correcting some little technical, grammatical error and then seeing the whole phrase or passage fall into place and make sense.

My translation work Friday morning went much slower than anticipated, and I did not finish before I had to go to work. So at 11 PM that night, after work, I sat back down to the task of translating and worked until 4 AM, slept, woke again at 8 AM, worked two more hours, and then slept again. I woke for good 11:30 AM to burn a cd for Bill Nye. Then I washed some dishes and cleaned the bathroom before the Tabors arrived.

I want to sit one morning on the porch of a wood cabin in the hills next to my wife with a hot cup of a coffee and a Book of Common Prayer. I don't even want to read it, just sit with it in my lap.

It feels like the story of Jack Boughton distilled into a song, and it sticks to your ribs after it's finished.