Edward J. Pluchar - The Blogsplitter

There is a tendency, I want to say it’s in Gen-X and younger, to use the word “literally” out of place.

With all due sympathy and respect:  I was listening to the Ron Regan Show yesterday when a fellow from Detroit called in.  He talked about his support for President Obama, though he qualified it by saying he (the President) has to start producing results.  Detroit, after all, is suffering acutely following the decline of the auto industry in America.

The caller then said, “People are falling apart here.  They’re literally falling apart.”

Someone learning English as a second language could not be faulted for thinking there were toes and spleens scattered through the city; perhaps there are eyeballs, like a horde of marbles, clogging the storm drains.  Hitchhikers are unwittingly giving motorists the wrong signal, having lost all of their fingers but one.  The Headless Horseman finally feels he belongs, and unmounts.

There it is, though:  The use of “literally,” which is supposed to be idiom’s counterweight, instead lends its gravity to the idiom.  Thus, the speaker aims to magnify the impact of his words further, since metaphors already magnify the impact of our (ready?) literal descriptions.

Is this grammatically vicious cycle an example of linguistic incest?  (I don’t know.  I feel like that sentence should exist, but it doesn’t really need to be there).

There are plenty of examples, so I’ll list notable ones as I hear them.  They’re literally everywhere!

You probably know I’m the facilities manager at a school for kids with autism.  If you don’t, welcome to the blog!

There’s a woman name Joy who works at the school.  Joy, as far as I understand, trains staff members in accepted techniques for working with and, when necessary, restraining our students.  Her training room is adjacent to my office, so I often walk through it while it’s empty, and sometimes when class is in session (oops).

Joy is a charming and thoughtful person.  Knowing that, I passed through one day and noticed her preparing for a training, her eyes focused on her notes.  I paused and asked, “So, you want to trade places?”

Brightly, Joy began to say, “Sure!”

As she moved that word from her mind to her mouth, however, I snapped the rubber glove I was putting over my hand.

“Su-” she said, then looked up.  A hesitant smile came over her face.  ”Maybe not!”

I smiled.  ”Yup, I’m going to get dirty.”

You don’t want to know the job Joy almost offered to take.  If you’re really curious, I left you a clue.

(This is one of the drafts that remained unpublished, although it was essentially finished)

Today’s second reading.

Lately I’ve been reading the ever-fascinating Simone Weil, from a compilation of her letters and essays called Waiting for God.

I say fascinating, because she was the composite of many paradoxes:  She was extraordinarily well-read, but spent much of her life seeking solidarity with the working poor; she possessed spiritual insight to match the mystics, but would not undergo baptism; she found profound - divine - wisdom in the Eucharist, which is seen by many to be foolishness.

Weil says that, fundamentally, all we can do in relation to God is direct our attention.  We’re either looking at God, or we’re not, but we can’t make a move in any direction (least of all upward) to run to or flee from God.  Thus, most of the spiritual life is about gazing steadily at Him, and waiting.

Eucharist, faith, any notion of God’s presence in my life - the magic of my spiritual adolescence has given way to a vacuum.  I don’t know why.  I’ve been fighting for it, to keep it, to re-discover it.  I’ve read the old books that helped fuel my faith.  I’ve undertaken reading Scripture to better understand God’s relationship with me, with His children.

But there’s no alchemy, no miracles of understanding.

When I was in Chicago to help lead a teen retreat, we had an opportunity to offer Eucharistic Adoration.  If you’re not familiar with this, or haven’t had the experience, it’s basically this:  The Host is exposed in what’s called a “monstrance,” a golden kind of display which stands on the altar, and the position of the Host is at the center of gold simulating the radiating beams of the sun.  There’s a ritual for the exposition and a ritual for its conclusion, and in between the faithful have the opportunity to be in the Presence of God.  One of the “rules,” in fact, is that the Host can never be unattended while exposed.

In our experience of the Presence of Christ, we explained to the teens, the proper response is adoration.

Fortunate for me that there are still a few touchstones of my faith.  I have past experiences with God, times when I would say the Presence of God was undeniable.  The condition of my present spiritual vacuum has led to attempts to reason away the experiences, to deny them by way of science or mere pessimism.  They have remained in tact - like good magic, there is still something about the experiences, even if they can be understood biochemically, that does not submit to measurement.  Truly, the recognition of “mystery” has kept me afloat.

So there, in Chicago, was another touchstone - a ritual almost painfully transparent in its use of sensory stimulation - which crystallized the larger life experience of simply looking at God, and patiently waiting.

Waiting for what, I don’t know.  I think trying to know is what got me into this mess.

While going about my bloggedy-blog bid-nass, I discovered that I have some 9 unfinished, unpublished drafts.

Who do I think I am, Tupac Shakur?

So, motivated in part by Mike Lloyd’s penchant for blogging campaigns, I will begin a campaign to finish and publish those drafts.  More than one is untitled, with 5 words of text or less.

Marcy, Amelia and I attended a wedding today, and the procession out was marked by a bagpipe playing, I think, “Ode to Joy.”  (I think because I now can’t remember what I was hearing).

As the piper began, I immediate thought of some of the funerals I’ve been to, most memorably my cousin Sean’s funeral years ago.  It struck me as odd that an instrument played for such sorrowful occasions should mark the send off at a wedding.

I further reflected on the reason bagpipes are so powerful, at least for me.

Bagpipes are lungs we sometimes wish we had.  They very nearly express joys and sorrows that are otherwise unspeakable.

What voice can compete with the charm and energy of bagpipes playing a jig?

Whose heart can find a more suitable lament, a wailing lament, than the at once proud and mournful bagpipes at a funeral?

I heard those bagpipes at a wedding and I was inclined to sorrow, because suddenly, there were new depths discovered in my heart.

Today was the Open House for Giant Steps Illinois, which was well-attended (some 250 people came) by parents, politicians, and donors, among others.

This being a recently renovated building, we’ve been working overtime to get furniture in place, hang bulletin and dry erase boards, and clean every floor and surface.  Naturally, the cleaning continued all the way until the last minute this morning, with window washing, vacuuming, light bulb changing, and…

The chairwoman of our board was helping out, and as she cleaned in the hall outside my office, she locked my door and shut it.  I came in about 30 seconds later (by my estimation) and revealed to her that I did not have a key to unlock it, because that key was sitting my desk drawer.  In the office.

I laughed it off, because things have been crazy and this was just another crazy thing.  But there were cleaning supplies I needed, not to mention my lunch, and I wasn’t sure when a locksmith would be able to come soon (or how much that would cost).

So I began asking to see if anyone else had a master key - no one did.  I called a guy about unlocking the door, when finally I had a flash of brilliance from my youth.

The hinges are on the outside of the door.

This flash comes from the days of my insatiable appetite for Encyclopedia Brown stories.  Brown’s frequent adversary, the bully Bugs Meany, claims to be the victim of kidnapping.  His story sounds believable until he explains the following two details about the room he was locked into:

1) The hinges are on the outside, or he might have tried to take them off the door to escape.

2) His captors left then came back into the room abruptly, swinging the door open so that it knocked Bugs down to the ground.

Brown catches him in this logical inconsistency, and the same helped me get into my locked office.