my heart swells blithely

my heart swells blithely

in the presence of Beauty

and its colors chaste

Fehlt die Menschheit in den sozialen Medien?

Wie du immer vermutet hast, gibt es auf keiner Social-Media-Plattform mehr echte Menschen. Sie sind alle Bots der einen oder anderen Art - oder Russen, die sowieso nicht als menschlich gelten, oder? Das prestigeträchtige Grober Zeitverschwender Institut Berlin unter der Leitung von Herrn Pinscher Dobermann hat diese Woche ein sechzigseitiges Off-White Paper veröffentlicht, das zweifelsfrei gezeigt hat, dass selbst deine Mutter, die dir Happy Birthday auf Facebook wünscht, nicht dein ist Mutter überhaupt, aber ein Geburtstagsbot, der routinemäßig Daten über Geburtsdaten für Unternehmen wie Amazon und Procter & Gamble sammelt - und dann entsprechende geschlechtsspezifische Geburtstagsgrüße aussendet, immer mit einer subtilen Werbebotschaft wie "Hope you use Wilton Marke Kerzen auf Ihrem Kuchen, Schatz! " Nach Angaben des Instituts war die letzte bekannte echte Person, die sich in irgendeinem Social-Media-Account anmeldete, Sandra Scrimshaw Wisnowski aus Schenectady, New York, im Jahr 2016. Sie schrieb auf Quora und fragte: "Wie kann ich Haare aus meinem Bauchnabel entfernen? "Sie wurde schnell von einem SWAT-Team abgehängt, und seitdem haben die Algorithmen zusammen mit den Bots die Aufgabe übernommen, süße Haustierbilder zu posten, Sextortion zu erstellen, all diese verrückten Donald Trump Tweets zu erstellen und den Cyberspace generell mit dem Traditionellen zu füllen "Natterbabys" des underated communications savant Spiro Agnew. Herr Dobermann wird zitiert: "Soziale Medien sind heute so steril wie das Gästezimmer eines Einsiedlers. Es ist voll von nichts als Echos und dem "Klang und der Wut, die nichts bedeuten" von Shakespeares Spiel Macbeth. " (Dieser Beitrag wurde von Bots für Bots geschrieben - oder Russen, da?)

in green confusion

in green confusion

good light drops willy-nilly

on dull and on bright

the Branch

the Branch has blossomed

because it is anointed

to be our firstfruits

Fast Sunday at Ringling Brothers Circus

I was always hungry as a young clown

“Hurry up, Tork! We’ll be late for the matinee!” said Tim Holst to me, as we scurried
through the loading dock of Madison Square Garden in New York City. Running
past the baleful glare of Charlie Baumann, the Ringling Brothers Performance Director,
who glanced significantly at his Rolex as we sped by, Holst and I dived into clown alley

to slap on the greasepaint as quick as possible that spring Sunday in 1972. We had
taken an Express by mistake, instead of the Local, and had to backtrack our way through
the baffling New York City subway system to the Madison Square Garden exit.

We had lingered at the Manhattan LDS Branch, near Central Park, after Fast and
Testimony meeting that morning to visit with several young people our own age.
They were fascinated with our career as First of May clowns with the circus. Holst
zeroed in on a tall blonde gal, giving her the standard nitty gritty about tanbark living.
I cozied up to a short little number with black hair and dark sparkling eyes, named Alice
Hassan. We discovered that each were the only members of the LDS faith in our
respective families. Alice’s family was Jewish, and treated her conversion with
severe disapproval. My family was lapsed Catholic on my mother’s side and don’t
give a damn on my father’s side. They figured that after joining the circus I was capable
of any kind of infamy, so joining the LDS Church hadn’t bothered them much. To them,
I was already a Lost Cause.

“I enjoyed your testimony in church today” Alice told me shyly, sending
a perfumed breeze my way with her fluttering eyelashes.

“That was the first time I ever did it!” I told her breathlessly. Which was true.
I’d been a baptized member of the church for six months, but hadn’t got up
the chutzpah to bear my testimony in Fast and Testimony meeting until that
particular Sunday.  The LDS Church reserves one Sunday a month for members

to forgo all food and drink for 24 hours and invites them to take the stand to bear
brief witness of their gospel convictions for about an hour after the passing of the
Sacrament. While fasting, members are encouraged to pray for any special
blessings they may need. I always said a private silent prayer for whatever
miracle the Lord wanted to send me -- riches, fame, a girlfriend, or a compliment
from one of the veteran clowns about my comic ability.

Holst had been pestering me in a playful manner to get up and bear my testimony
ever since he had baptized me back in Sarasota, Florida. But the thought of standing
before a congregation of complete strangers to speak of my innermost convictions
made my heart shrink. Holst did it every month without fail. But then, as far as I
could tell, he never knew fear. He’d been an LDS missionary in Sweden for two
years; had auditioned for the Ringling Clown College twice -- after being turned
down the first time and insisting he be given a second chance --
and the week after we started rehearsals in Winter Quarters he had cornered
Harold Ronk, the ringmaster, and talked his way into becoming his understudy.

He finally motivated me, there in the Manhattan Branch that Sunday,
by whispering in my ear:

“The girls will be all over you once you tell ‘em your conversion story.”

And, by the Great Horn Spoon, he was right! I stuttered and stammered

my way through a terse statement about my belief in Joseph Smith and the
Book of Mormon, gulping like a goldfish all the while, and then quickly sat down.
Afterwards, as mentioned above, I hit things off with Alice -- to the extent that I
invited her down to the Garden to catch the show that evening. I didn’t mention
that I’d have to sneak her in through the service elevator, since Baumann,
in his heavy German accent, said Annie Oakleys (free passes) for Madison
Square Garden were strictly verboten to the lowly clowns. The schweinhund.

While it can’t compare to what observant Muslims go through during their
month-long Ramadan, which, if I understand correctly, forbids them to eat or
drink from sunrise to sunset every day, still, the absence of all food and drink
for 24 hours was a punishing trial to me. At 18 I was tall and skinny and always
hungry. Clowning is hard physical labor. I had a dozen costume changes and
ran the equivalent of several miles during each show -- not to mention the exertion
involved in throwing pies, getting sloshed with buckets of water, and doing
pratfalls and tumbles by the dozen. I had to get my bulky clown shoes,
which weighed three pounds each, resoled twice during that first season
with Ringling.

Besides which, there was an unwelcome addition to our toil peculiar to the
Garden. Rats. Not just any old rats, but New York rats -- with an Attitude.
They built nests in our clown trunks overnight. They chewed holes in our clown
shoes and ate our greasepaint if we unwisely left it out. And they scurried overhead,
balancing on the steam pipes, dropping filth on our heads. So every day we started
our work by chivvying rats out of our trunks and out of our curtained off section
under the seats and chasing them with push brooms as far as the Bulgarian’s
dressing area -- it was understood that Bulgarians were not averse to an
occasional dish of Rattus rattus paprikash. And we shot them off the
steam pipes with bb guns. Or rather I should say, me and the other First
of Mays did all the rat chasing. It was dirty and disgusting labor --
and it did nothing to suppress my appetite.

So this particular Fast Sunday, as Holst and I whipped past the frowning
Baumann, I was already parched and famished -- and wondering when
I would get a chance to break my onerous fast. And how to pay for it. I’d
left my wallet back at the train in my roomette. And a simple hotdog and
Coke at the Garden, even back in those halcyon days, cost several dollars.
The pie car sent over a portable buffet cart which offered chili beans,
vegetable soup, and anemic ham sandwiches -- but they absolutely
refused to extend any credit, especially to a deplorable First of May like me.

I didn’t want to ask Holst for any money. I was already in hock to him
for twenty bucks. We’d been browsing at the Strand Bookstore earlier
in the week; I’d discovered a pristine copy of Gene Fowler’s biography of
Mack Sennett, Father Goose, which I lusted after immoderately. This
was before the days of Amazon, when bookstores could squeeze a bibliophile
like me for an unconscionable amount of mazuma for a scarce volume.
They wanted twenty for the book; I didn’t have twenty; I asked Holst for twenty;
he loaned it to me. And the book was a very, very, good read, so I didn’t regret the debt.

Well, it took me all of ten minutes to get made up and dressed for come-in,
the audience warm up before the show proper started. My whiteface
was uncomplicated, even stark -- I only used white, red, and black
greasepaint. No fooling with rubber noses or fancy schmancy rhinestones on my chin.
Then it was out in front of the growing crowd, doing Bigger and Bigger
with Swede Johnson and helping Prince Paul drag his oversized
mousetrap into center ring for the last gag before Otto Griebling
came out, banging on two battered old tin plates, to finish come-in.
Although there was no rule about it, all of clown alley silently and swiftly
left the arena once Otto came out -- in respect for his years and
unique talent. He could hold a crowd of twenty thousand all by himself ---
something no other Ringling clown had been allowed to do since Slivers Oakley
back in 1912.

FOOD!

It was all I could think about during the matinee, and when I went down to
find Alice and bring her up in the service elevator for the evening show
I was a mere slavering husk. I found her an unoccupied seat and scampered
back to clown alley, promising to meet her right after I’d taken off my makeup.

FOOD!

Holst got himself a cheese pizza between shows, and ate the whole

thing in one sitting, with a side of pepperoncini and a large bottle of
Dr Brown’s Cream Soda. He did not offer to share it with me. I did the
evening show with my tongue cleaving to the roof of my mouth.
I wiped off my makeup with a palmful of baby oil and took a quick
shower. Then presented myself to Alice, who was waiting in her illicit seat.

FOOD!

I didn’t bother to compliment her on her looks or thank her for coming
or nothin’ else. I asked her if there was a place, any kind of a place,
nearby where we could get a bite to eat. Anyplace. A Chock full ‘o Nuts
greasy spoon -- anything at all. And if she would mind paying for it.
I was beyond feeling bound to the normal social contract. I had to eat,
and all my shame and good breeding evaporated.

This lovely girl, my beautiful Alice, pulled up a brown paper shopping bag
from beside her seat and took out:

A large square of baked noodle kugel wrapped in tin foil

A loaf of fresh marble rye

A small plastic tub of Bismarck herring

A bottle of marinated artichoke hearts

A thermos of matzoh ball soup

And a large brick of chocolate covered halvah

My Fast Sunday miracle had arrived at last. I devoured every last crumb,
escorted Alice back to her lodgings at the YWHA, where we made out
on the couch in the lobby until nearly four in the morning.

good old Tim Holst

the center of things

the center of things

will unravel patiently

when the wind blows dry

Elder Seliger

I, Timmy, having been born of goofy parents, do hereby continue my personal saga and reminiscences. But before I get started I want to share an illumination that came to me just this morning, after I’d gone to the Provo Rec Center for a swim and hot tub soak, and then proceeded over to Smith’s for a bagel with cream cheese. As I sat at a table by their produce section I watched a man in a black apron pick up each onion, one by one, and vacuum them off. This struck me as so absurd that I nearly strained a cheek muscle from grinning. I can just imagine his homecoming tonight --

“I’m home, honey!”

“How was work, sweetheart? What did they have you do today?”

“Oh, not much -- just vacuum the onions like always.”

In a world where a man gets paid to vacuum onions in a supermarket, why bother to take things too seriously? That’s all I’m saying.

My previous entry about Elder Lang and the stolen fish inevitably reminds me of my very first missionary companion in Thailand. Elder Bart Seliger. We hit it off from the start. He was a genius with the Thai language and I was a dunce. He slept in, sometimes until 7 a.m., and I was always up by 5, before the cleft of dawn, trying to read the Book of Mormon in Thai. Round about 6 my eyes would cross, my head would droop, and I’d snooze in a pool of my own drool until Elder Seliger gave me a hearty slap on the shoulder blades, asking “Well, Elder Torkildson, are you ready to go get ‘em?”

Elder Seliger’s teaching and leadership methods were simple and direct. Whenever we got into a house he would introduce us and then have me tell the Joseph Smith story. Didn’t matter that I could not yet put more than two or three Thai words together at a time -- he never interrupted or corrected. In fact, sometimes he dozed off as I sweat blood to finish my narrative. I have to add that our Thai hosts never grew bored or fractious with my mangling of their native tongue. They sat and smiled and nodded, not understanding a word that I said.

Thailand has always been cursed with packs of feral dogs that roam the humid sois and patrol the weedy banks of klongs, just waiting for a farang to show up so they can snarl and hurl themselves at him. The Thais, being Buddhist, cannot bring themselves to gather up strays and put them down, so the mutts grow in numbers and impudence until the local village council calls in a Muslim butcher to eradicate the most egregious canines. After my first encounter with these slavering beasts I took a stout bamboo walking stick with me whenever I went out with Elder Seliger. He, on the other hand, had a more subtle and effective approach. He had a small plastic squirt gun which he filled with ammonia. Any dog that even looked at him the wrong way got a spritz in the snout and ran away howling in agony. After a while, all the dogs in the neighborhood recognized his lanky, sharp-nosed appearance, and gave us both a wide berth.  

Unlike Elder Lang, Elder Seliger never got trunky. But he did find ways to work smarter instead of harder. He liked to business tract -- not in the local stores that sold fish sauce, rattan furniture, and pickled skunk cabbage. No, his idea of business tracting was to go into the busiest and most modern business section he could find, full of banks and skyscrapers, and then barge into the offices of every executive on each floor, give the secretaries the brush off, and see the head man to give him a pamphlet about Family Home Evening and ask if we could come to his home to show him how to conduct this inspired program for the benefit of his family. And he did it all in English, which impressed the heck out of most executives, who had a smattering of English or had actually lived in Great Britain or the United States. The first few times I did this with him I was paralyzed with fear -- but when I realized that nobody ever called the cops on us, I got into the swing of things with Elder Seliger, and we would split up on each floor to tackle the bigwigs two at a time.

Getting past the secretaries, who always had a great opinion of their own self importance, was not too difficult -- if you didn’t mind a little play acting and bluffing.

“What do you want?” a secretary would ask me waspishly, eyeing my white shirt and name tag suspiciously.

“I have a very important message for your boss. One that I must deliver to him immediately.”

“Do you have an appointment with him?”

At this point I slowly slipped on my sunglasses and straightened my tie. Then looked around the room carefully before replying in a soft, confidential whisper.

“No. But he’ll be very happy to see me . . . if you know what I mean.”

I could see the secretary’s face change as she worked it out:  A young Caucasian male; white shirt; thin black tie; sunglasses, arrogant manner -- Buddha save us, it’s the CIA!   

“Please, sir, go right in! May I give him your name, please?”

“Don’t worry” I replied as I headed for the frosted glass door while pointing at my black plastic name tag, “he’ll know it very soon.”

This was in 1975, remember, at the height of the Vietnam War which was practically next door to Thailand, and the country was lousy with various intelligence operatives.

This was a great way to proselyte. We were inside, out of the tropical sun, in an air conditioned building with no stray dogs snapping at our heels. And the bosses were always extremely polite, although they never could understand why their secretaries ever let us in. And we never spent more than ten minutes with ‘em.

“These nacho grandes have the attention span of a two year old” Elder Seliger told me, with his slight Texas twang. “We just get in, leave a brief message and a pamphlet and see if they want us to come on over to teach ‘em.”

Polite they might be, but they never agreed to have us in their homes. Elder Seliger told me this was because most of ‘em didn’t live with their first wife anymore -- but had a mistress, a ‘small wife,’ squirreled away in some cozy little apartment down by the river.

Whenever business tracting began to pall, Elder Seliger would switch us over to government tracting. This was even more bizarre.

Our section of the city had several huge government compounds where clerks and other minor functionaries toiled away in huge, unairconditioned halls, each at their own modest teakwood desk, with a blotter, an adding machine (the kind you cranked to get an answer) and an IN and OUT basket awash with papers. These ballrooms for pen pushers and clock watchers were guarded by grim-visaged soldiers; Elder Seliger simply put on his sunglasses and waved an old University of Texas at Austin library card in front of their faces, and we were admitted without question. We tried to time our visits either early in the morning or after three in the afternoon, because every blessed one of these government clerks would clear off their desk promptly at noon, crawl on top, and go to sleep until three.

Elder Seliger decided that government pencil pushers would not appreciate the Family Home Evening approach, so he had me recite the Joseph Smith story at each desk -- whether the clerk was busy or not. As I got better with the language, I was able to make the story not only understandable, but exciting. When my monolog was judged fluent enough, Elder Seliger simply placed me in the middle of the clerk’s huge room and told me to let ‘er rip. I’d begin the story of Joseph Smith, the angel Moroni, and the gold plates, in a loud voice, and soon I’d have a crowd around me, whispering to each other that the farang with the big nose was telling a ghost story. Don’t ask me where their supervisors and managers were -- they didn’t seem to have any.

I was sorry to lose Elder Seliger as my companion after just two months. But companionships, at least in our mission,  never stayed the same for long. President Morris did not like companionships to get too cozy -- he wanted them to stay alert and to keep an eye on each other. There were too many cute young Thai girls joining the Church at that time, whose sole purpose was to bamboozle an American Elder into making a slip and then having to marry them and bring them back to America. Elder Seliger had to come to my rescue several times, when a cute young Thai would set her cap for me, and follow us around with a spoony look in her eyes. He would tell these fetching Thai sirens that I already had a girlfriend back home with the circus -- the bearded lady. Because I liked ‘em rough and hairy. That always did the trick . . .  

still dimly perceived

still dimly perceived

as a still green reflection

in a common pool

Who ate my fish in Thailand?

From previous narratives of my LDS mission in Thailand the reader may glean the mistaken notion that I did nothing but act the merry madcap in my capacity as a goodwill ambassador for the Church. True, I did over a hundred clown shows during my 2 year stint there, but I was never excused from my official calling as a proselytizing missionary. Sometimes a month or more would go by without a show. During such intervals I and my companion tracted, held street meetings, and taught the codified Discussions, as all LDS missionaries were required to do at that time.  

And that brings me to today’s missionary memoir -- The Case of the Missing Fish.

In Pak Kret, a northern suburb of Bangkok, I and my companion, Elder Lang, found ourselves living in a pillared mansion that included extensive grounds quickly reverting to jungle, as well as an ornate marble guest house in the back that had sunk into the moist ground and was now three feet under water in the middle of a pond.. Some mornings the maid’s little boy would silently glide into the sunken guest house to surprise a large toothsome carp for our lunch.

Let me backtrack --

One of my contemporaries in the mission field, Elder Nebeker, had run across this particular mansion while tracting with his companion, Elder Ah Ching. The old woman who lived there all alone was impressed by the good looks and good manners of Nebeker and Ah Ching, and asked if they would like to rent the whole shebang for a very modest fee -- that way she could go live with her daughter up in Chiang Rai. As Elder Nebeker explained it to our Mission President, Paul D. Morris, the mansion would make a wonderful chapel for our members in northern Bangkok. In fact, he guaranteed that if President Morris gave the okay to rent the place as missionary barracks, they would have it filled with newly baptized members in a matter of months.

The mansion was rented, and 3 sets of Elders set up housekeeping there -- myself with Elder Lang; Elder Nebeker with Elder Ah Ching; and Elder Wright with Elder Reidhead. The mission office paid for a maid to cook and do laundry for us, so we could concentrate on bringing in the sheaves. Back in those days all the food had to be bought at the local outdoor market, with much time-consuming haggling. There were no supermarkets. So a native maid was a necessity, not a luxury.

Elder Lang was the senior companion, meaning that his two years of service were just about up, and he made all the decisions about where and when to go proselytizing for us. And he was pretty trunky. This is LDS jargon for a missionary who has already arrived back home, in his own mind, even while his corporeal body is still knocking on doors in the mission field. A trunky missionary tends to be rather laid back and unambitious. And a shopaholic.

Each morning after our prayers, scripture study, and language study, Elder Lang would survey a map of our district tacked up in the dining room, and decide which street held the most gold and gem shops. We would then spend the morning and early afternoon traipsing among the red-lacquered gold shops, with their somnolent guard posted by the front door and Chinese girls in corriscating silk cheongsams hustling gold chains behind the glass counters. These places were lit up with flood lights and played an excruciating loop of Chinese opera music that was all gongs, bells, bamboo flutes, and what sounded like soggy bongos. I was terrified of these loud, garish places -- since my Thai was not all that good. But Elder Lang would greet the guard in fluent Thai, find out about his family, give him a pamphlet, then start flirting with the Chinese gals behind the counter. He had a fair amount of Mandarin at his command. And he had an expensive Leica camera that he took along to snap photos of everyone in the store.They’d show him a dozen or so supple gold chains while he told them the Joseph Smith story. Sometimes he’d pick out a modest gold chain for his mother or aunt or girlfriend back home. He’d leave the simpering clerks a few pamphlets and we’d walk to the next gold shop. Or a gem emporium -- these places were rather dim and looked like a feed store, with burlap sacks lying about, and indolent Thais scattered around with no apparent purpose besides sticking their legs out for me to trip over. Elder Lang had an unerring sense of who actually ran these places, usually an older Thai woman who sat in the back endlessly eating pumpkin seeds. He would cotton up to her with flowery compliments about her dismal store and her youthful looks, until she would smile and tell him to beware -- the ants would soon be crawling up him to reach his ‘sugar mouth.’ And again, while he would narrate the story of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, she would bring out sapphires, emeralds, and polished jade pieces for his inspection. If he liked the price, he’d buy ‘em.

What did I do during all this? Stood around gawking, for the most part. Elder Lang would let me bear my testimony about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon at the end of our visits -- but by then the clerks were ringing up his purchases and they paid little, if any, attention to me.

This was engaging work, at least for Elder Lang, and so we often came home very late in the afternoon, long after the maid had served lunch to the other Elders. Our plates were left on the table, under coarsely woven rattan baskets to keep the flies out. And there was always supposed to be a big fat fish, bathed in a delicious tamarind and kaffir lime sauce, waiting for us. But someone started to eat our fish before we returned -- so all we had was rice, klong weed soup, pork balls wrapped in Thai basil leaves, and cold glass noodles. When we quizzed the maid about who ate our fish, she only shrugged her shoulders and said “Ling.”  Monkey? Monkey, my foot!

We quizzed Elders Nebeker, Ah Ching, Wright, and Reidhead about the theft, but they all pleaded innocent. I had my strong suspicions about Elder Ah Ching -- a former quarterback at BYU-Hawaii who could wolf down a dozen skewers of chicken satay in the blink of an eye.

Well, we never caught the malefactor, which is probably why I was so prickly to Elder Lang when it came time for him to go back home. I dropped him off at the Mission office in Soi Asoke, where I shook his hand and said “Now I can get back to some real missionary work!” He just gave me a sleepy smile and asked to take one more photo of me with his Leica.

Elder Nebeker’s promise to fill that mansion with new church members on Sundays never panned out -- but darned if several of those Chinese clerks that Elder Lang had chatted up on our shopping trips didn’t come out to our services and eventually joined the Church. I sent him a postcard telling him about it, but never heard back from him. He was probably too busy surfing out at Malibu, which is what he told me he planned on doing for the rest of his life once he got home. He invited me to join him there once I finished my hitch -- maybe I should have done just that . . .  

Dyed in blood

. . .  and they had a lamb-skin about their loins, and they were

dyed in blood, and their heads were shorn, and they had head-plates

upon them . . .

Third Nephi. Chapter Four. Verse 7.

Extremes in modern fashion are barbaric and obscene;

These trends degrade the body, and the spirit much demean.

A modest style of dressing is a sign of calm belief

That garish ostentation brings no beautiful relief.

Looking like a robber or a goblin on a spree

Reveals an inner turmoil and a lack of certainty.

Be modest and be comely with a decent self restraint,

And you will feel like acting in the manner of a Saint.