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Goines also remembered Jesus – Jesus as he chose to imagine him, as somehow perhaps Goines’ own ideal self, despite the apparent fact that the Jesus passed down by churches seemed concerned exclusively with humans and wasn’t necessarily concerned about birds or other non-human animals.
Of course, he didn’t really know about Jesus. And neither did anyone else, despite their self-assurances. And Goines remembered that if he tended to identify with Jesus, it was probably only because he came from a mother who had displayed the framed first studio portrait of himself as a baby on the wall beside a framed representation of Christ. That might have been weird, but it was a fact.
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That last fact, about Goines' baby portrait sharing the wall with Jesus is what Pound would call a "luminous detail." There's a whole story in that!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Eric. I'm a Pound fan, and it's YOU making this point, so I can already feel the inspiration to tell this further vignette of that wall-sharing. Or rather, I am motivated to call on my muse to tell ME what that story is and to show me some words with which to tell it to others....
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ReplyDeleteYou remind me that in many traditional society's, where hunting is a necessity of life, hunters are closer to the animals than we can be to the birds outside our windows. Neil
Right, the “necessity of life” angle. Nature lives through the killings of others who equally wanted to live and also killed to do so. Interesting “God” who many believe set all that up. It is still possible for Goines to imagine himself in an abattoir freeing the animals rather than slitting their throats or stunning them with a captive-bolt pistol. He’s that sort of human being.
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