The Cathedral Latin School, 1966-1970, home and Catholic seminary to myself, Keith C. Bruce and a few dozen other humble lads thinking then to wear God’s Cloth.  Keith has today gone home from this, our frenetic past, across the wooden bridge to perpetual present to be with God forever in His Garden.  Brother Keith, beyond dispute, is now at peace, as, in that Garden, there is only peace to be found.  Amen.  Requiescat in pace.

The Wanderer

By

Johnny Cash

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3YFmpSFJ40

I went out walking through streets paved with gold
Lifted some stones, saw the skin and bones
Of a city without a soul
I went out walking under an atomic sky
Where the ground won’t turn and the rain it burns
Like the tears when I said goodbye.

Yeah, I went with nothing, nothing but the thought of you.
I went wandering.

I went drifting through the capitals of tin
Where men can’t walk or freely talk
And sons turn their fathers in.
I stopped outside a church house
Where the citizens like to sit.
They say they want the kingdom
But they don’t want God in it.

I went out riding down that old eight-lane
I passed a thousand signs looking for my own name.
I went with nothing but the thought you’d be there too,
Looking for you.

I went out there in search of experience
To taste and to touch and to feel as much
As a man can before he repents.

I went out searching, looking for one good man
A spirit who would not bend or break
Who would sit at his father’s right hand.
I went out walking with a bible and a gun
The word of God lay heavy on my heart
I was sure I was the one.

Now Jesus, don’t you wait up, Jesus I’ll be home soon.
Yeah, I went out for the papers, told her I’d be back by noon.
Yeah, I left with nothing but the thought you’d be there too
Looking for you.

Yeah, I went with nothing, nothing but the thought of you.
I went wandering.

Today, in daydream, I returned to The Cathedral Latin School of 1966.  This dream, I am quite certain, occasioned in the unconscious by remembrance of a seminary classmate, Keith, who last night crossed his final wooden bridge in the transitory past of this life into the perpetual present of The Garden.

There are those, I think especially those who become, what is called sometimes today, accomplished at some level in life, who shed memories of their upbringing and schooling in their later years as a snake does his skin.  At Washington, this self-re-invention is the city’s principal pastime.  On the other hand, there are those, I think especially those who accomplish nothing in later life, who elevate their schooling and early upbringing to a level of sentimentalism and romance that it can’t possibly deserve.

I belong to that second set.

The Cathedral Latin School, viewed with an eye unclouded, was simply a school which, when I attended it appeared, to myself, my faculty, my contemporaries and my classmates, as holding no discernible interest or meaning to me at all. Now, in my gray years, my school has taken on the luster of the most important and formative time and memory of my life.

I have long thought that obituaries ought to be far longer than they are.  After all, they are the summing up of a life and are, usually, disrespectfully terse.  I can’t think why the news of Keith’s death made me reflect back to those much more simpler times.  Not, more innocent; simpler.  Perhaps the passage of years has made me more acute to the coming end of all of us.  It is far more likely that I am simply an old fool.  I suppose everyone remembers his formative years as having been somewhat important and looks back upon them in a manner sentimental.  I am perhaps more taken up by such sentimental memories of fresh-faced youth than are others of my class.  Or, then, maybe I am not.  Time plays clever tricks on us all.

Ours was a class of thirty boys of many sorts of backgrounds.  Some of us were orphan lads and charity cases made wards of the Church, others sons of policemen, postmen, government men of various levels, a few sons of lawyers and medical men, a fewer still of, comparatively rich, businessmen, all again of varying levels but set most in the middle social rankings.  In the main, we were of American middle class backgrounds of no particular consequence.

The concept of Cathedral Schools is an ancient and, arguably, antique, vanity of Mother Church. The great Cathedrals of Europe, and her later colonies, all had schools appending to train young lads to be priests for the Diocese.  Many still do.  In keeping with that practice, the idea and purpose of our Cathedral Latin School was to produce priests for the Archdiocese of Washington.

Our boys themselves grew up to become men of different lines, in the main like their fathers and, like those fathers, of little particular note in the sense that society makes note of men’s lives.  Some of us have remained remarkably close-knit, a rare occurrence today.  Rarer still, when one reflects on the accidental connections that threw us together in the first place in summer of 1966.  The world was all afire but of course none of us fully understood what that meant.  There was a war on; there were racialist demonstrations, hippies, bohemians and still odder sorts right in our laps.

Cathedral Latin was but a few blocks from DuPont Circle, then all ablaze with the cries of sundry revolutions.  We spent our summer of 1966 at Georgetown University reading Latin grammar in preparation for reading the very same thing, all over again, in the fall, in our first semester.   I remember this with alacrity because I was the only one to ever fail Latin grammar in both venues.

Keith, in contrast, was a stand-out student who was at, or near, the top of our class throughout our time at school.  I remember his being quiet, studious, friendly, devout and helpful.  And never, noticeably, mean.  In all such he was my antithesis.  I used to joke that we balanced one another out in some odd, moral ledger.

The first day of seminary we were informed that “there is no new sin, so put aside pretense of invention.”  All sin, we were told, is either direct or derivative of acts committed just outside the gates of The Garden from which man was unceremoniously booted for having displeased Our Father.  That is likely the most memorable academic  admonition I took from school, as I have lived my life trying so very hard to disprove this maxim.  I have failed.  There is no new sin. I’ve searched high and low for it.

As it was the singular lesson I took from my years at school, learned very first day, very first hour, the notion of sin and the notion of the deprivation of The Garden, has been the only persistent, lasting, intellectual interest of my life.

From that first lesson, I have taken simply this: all of what is called our temporal life, is a hurried past.  In that past, all our stumbling, rambling, strident searching for power, rapacious grasping for gold and glory are merely misguided, invariably errant, attempts to enter once again into The Garden.

Throughout our lives, we cross many bridges.  These lead us to those things we like to imagine will be The Garden, but of course they never are.  We are told when young “do not burn your bridges.”  But of course, we must burn them and I, having learned the only lesson of consequence my very first day at school, have deliberately set afire and burnt down every bridge I have walked across.  This I have done not simply to be naughty, but to remind myself and to caution my contemporaries that the bridges we cross in life, with their gaudy advertisements of fame, gold, power, social prestige and happiness, are all futile illusions.

After crossing over the bridges of temporal temptation which always leave us dissatisfied, we come in the end to a very simple, wooden bridge, devoid of gold and glitter and harmless of appearance.  This we walk across, quietly, without trumpets or illusion of any triumph or glory.  When we have crossed over this simple wooden bridge at the end of the turbulent past of our temporal life, we have entered The Garden and the perpetual present.  There awaits Our Father and His perfect peace.

It is over that simple wooden bridge from our earthly past to the perpetual present of life with Our Father in His Garden that our Brother Keith has now crossed.  We not only wish him well, we cannot but envy him his happiness in that perfect place.

I say, have you ever met a man who was a gentleman where women are concerned?.

Inspired by both the sculpture of Étienne Maurice Falconet, Pygmalion et Galatée(1763) and the earlier mythology of the perfect woman, Galatea, Professor Higgins taught Miss Doolittle to speak properly and not to vex–as today so often do the screeching girls of estate fourth who torture young Danny with their ceaseless pronouncements of the elections in Ohio, 2012.  Higgins also taught his Galatea to fold her legs properly, another etiquette today abandoned, Danny tell us, by the girls of estate fourth.

Young Daniel is always an earnest inspiration.  But I don’t quite know what we are going to do about him as he is sorely burdened by affairs of state—and it wears on him—it does.

Our young Daniel, man of the Department, finds himself peevish these days contemplating the fate of the nation as delivered to him, hour on hour unceasing, on the television by the fetching little girls of estate fourth.  These girls, I am told, are, generally, pretty enough, but have absolutely no shelf-life and are discarded as tissues when first wrinkle even hints itself.  I wonder where they go after that, poor things.

Moreover, Dan says their Nanas must have neglected their manners as these girls on the television wear their skirts about 8 inches above the knee and do not know how to cross their legs properly—I know, a gingerly exercise that, girls–to avoid camera angles–that take the viewer on a tour that causes mixed messages when the viewer is supposed to be concentrating on the chirpy girls’ searing pronouncements about election developments in Ohio, 2012, or some such awful place as that, and, instead rivets the eye on other points of interest far to the south.

The constraints of life at the Department cause young Daniel to endure daily tasks and subjects boring unspeakable.  Despite his admirable capacity to endure such privations, Dan says he has about had it with the girls of estate fourth and their little pronouncements about “election stuff in Ohio.”

I’ve tried to settle him down.

Dan said to me: “John, these girls screech like jungle monkeys and never stop—all day—all night.  I know you never watch the television, but as a Washington man, I must attend to it and these trollops are, on my honor, screeching monkeys.” I said, “I see.”  Dan said “What is more, they dress like 7^th Avenue hookers.”

I was jolted by this last.

I sat upright.

“Dan—I have to ask—I can’t think where you ever even encountered a term such as that—‘7^th Avenue hookers?’”  That is an antique term, I think, as Gracie Mansion has long since moved those enterprising ladies to other parts in the Mansion’s ongoing efforts to clean up the city.  Dan conceded he was reflecting on a “misspent weekend from college.”  I said, “Oh, one of those weekends.”  Dan said, “well yes—one of them.”  Dan also said “If Gracie Mansion has moved them as you say, off 7th Avenue, it seems to me that they have moved them onto the television to talk about Ohio elections, 2012.”

I said “Oh, how awfully funny!”

Dan allowed that it’s not as though he isn’t always a gentleman of the Department and always on duty day and night also, but what with their screeching, their skirts raised 8 inches above knee—and—cattily—very few of them have the legs to bring that off—who does?—and not knowing how to fold their legs properly in camera angle—again, who does?–and their tiresome and endless screeching about Ohio elections, 2012—“well, John, I’m dammed—it’s these days often hard to be a gentleman where certain women are concerned.”

My mind cleared at this.

My eyes lit up at this.

I leapt to my feet at this.

Telling the waiter to tend to young Daniel’s every need, I rang for Joseph and sped home, there to read a rough draft of Mr. Shaw’s’ Pygmalion—a wonderful play, an even better movie starring the best movie man ever—himself—Mr. Leslie Howard—and introducing the fascinating young Miss Wendy Hiller, who knew quite well how to fold her legs properly.

I here commence to quote Mr. Shaw in raw Draft:

I say, Higgins,  are you a gentleman where women are concerned?

I say, Pickering, have you ever met a man who was a gentleman where women are concerned?”

I have—men of a sort.

Men of a sort—well don’t confuse me with that sort of men.

So, are you, then?

Am I what, then?

A gentleman where women are concerned?

I don’t care sixpence for women.

Oh?

I’ve taught hundreds—yes hundreds–of American millionheiresses to speak English properly.

Hundreds?

Many hundreds.

And you behaved a gentleman with all of them?

I treated them all the same.  They are as blocks of wood to me.

Were any of them, hummm,  pretty?

All of them!!  In America, they are not like here you know.

I don’t know.  Never been.

Well, rich Americans don’t marry girls for the proper reasons as we do here you know.

Oh?

They marry them solely on their looks—solely.

Oh?

I say Higgins—are you or are you not a gentleman where women are concerned?

I say, Pickering—Of course not!!

Can you give me a reason why?

Why what?

Why you are not a gentleman as to women.

A reason?

Yes.

I could give you hundreds of reasons.

Just give me one.

Alright, one.

Well?

Well, they don’t deserve it!!

I here cease to quote Mr. Shaw in raw draft.

Goodnight, Daniel.  Goodnight, Joseph.  Good night screeching monkey girls of estate fourth ever on and on about Ohio elections, 2012.  And, above all the others, goodnight, Galatea–perfect woman.