ADVENT 1987
11/29/1987: in a ripple of expectation at daybreak, two Bufferin tablets fall into the palm of the hand, one with a “B”, the front, and one plain, the back;
11/30/1987: in the two birds flying to approach each other, crossing paths and then reverse directions to cross paths again and as one flies out of view the other reverses itself again to form a vague caduceus, as an ambulance races underneath, with a loud siren and flashing lights;
12/01/1987: in the shadow of a small palm plant above the head of a lady sitting in a red dress, eating in a cafeteria, to form a crown for her or maybe a Carmen Miranda chapeau;
12/02/1987: in the triangle formed, among the many lights in the rear view mirror, of two headlights and a reading light; repeated soon after in the two stop lights in the rear view mirror and another through the rear window; and, later, in the view of the sky through an elevated window a bird is seen to dive from the top to the bottom and disappear and soon after another saunters from the bottom to the top and likewise disappears, which calls attention to the constraint of the window for a more perfect view of the flight of the birds, when a third bird flies from the bottom to the right and followed by another which flies from the bottom to the left, birds described by Olivier Messiaen as the intermediaries between Heaven and earth, fly to the 4 corners of the world;
12/03/1987: in the car with the left headlight out seen while Yeats on tape reads his epitaph; and in the two crows on the side of the road, which fly into the sky, one to the right and the other to the left; and, later, in the full moon, uncertain behind a veil of cloud, over a circle on a billboard within which is written: “Open now”, as “Earth in beauty dressed awaits returning Spring” is heard from the Yeats tape; and, still later, the dark “o” of the otherwise fully lit neon sign for “Mayflower”;
12/04/1987: in the auto with one headlight on, followed by a second, and stopping at two red lights, when, in the anticipation of a third car with one light on, 3 more cars come into view: two with both headlights on and one with none on, as one traffic light turns green;
12/05/1987: in the sign on the left with its bottom quarter destroyed and not far away on the right, a window covering half off at the diagonal, forming a triangle; and, later, passing the same spot, a truck across the street at a 60 degree angle with the street the body of which points to the triangle in the window;
12/06/1987: in the two crutches leaning on the wall, one against the other to form two “V”s and two acolytes each with a white candle lighted who stand directly beneath two lighted purple candles of the Advent wreath before the pulpit, each with a chain around the neck, a “V” with a crucifix at the bottom; when, after the Gospel and the Preface, which deals with the two comings of Christ, the two crutches appear side by side;
12/07/1987: in the duet of a nun and a gardener heard from the radio, when a letter thrown at the waste basket balances on the rim; and, later, in the car coming in the opposite direction with the left headlight on and blinker pointing to a yellow mirage, floating a few feet off the ground, in the shape of a 3 foot question mark, which then becomes a black motion picture camera of the 1940s in the oncoming auto lights;
12/08/1987: in the squirrel that runs along the barbed-wire fence and stops, sits, and waits until the “Ave Maria” begins to be sung on the radio on this Feast of the Immaculate Conception, when it gets up and trots off;
12/09/1987: in the red cassock of an altar boy that is split in two by a pillar in St. Stanislaus Church;
12/10/1987: in the many sides of up: a man crouching in a van with his arm raised as if to throw a javelin; the man standing in the doorway of a garage with one hand on the overhead door above him; the crane beside the road; the broken branch stuck in the trunk of a tree; in the bolt of lightning through a circle on the side of a passing truck as its gears grind; the vertical “Wonder” attached to the horizontal of “Bar”, the sign for a restaurant long since gone; the slightly bent flag pole to which the blinking light of a truck points; the two prints of mountains by Jim Lenarz (“The Flight Home” and “A High Place”), that arrive in the mail;
12/11/1987: in the red lower case “r” painted on a pink rectangle on a building under construction, across from which is a black cross on a white triangle; and, later, thinking there may be no other affirmations when an “XYZ” on a license plate appears;
12/12/1987: in the hymn announcements framed by the pulpit and a pillar: 102, 96, 100, the differences of which are a trinity of multiples of two (2 and 4 and 6); and, in the sequence of differences, extended to 7 and 11 and 13, to capture the same variations of the first set of differences (2 and 4 and 6), which if in turn are subtracted from the numbers of the hymns, result in the dichotomous number of 89 (96-7 and 100-11 and 102-13), sublunary and spiritual; the 8 for earth (4 doubled) and the 9 for trinity (3 tripled);
12/13/1987: in the isosceles triangle of shadow in the early morning on a neighbor’s garage, which appears as light in the photograph (“Weir’s Close – Edinburgh”) by Alvin Langdon Coburn, taken in 1904 and reproduced on a card that is being sent to a friend as a birthday greetings and again in the slice of clay pizza of David Gilhooly on the top of a file cabinet; and, in the theme of the evening sermon: the 3 part Benedictine rule of prayer, study and work;
12/14/1987: in the two red “r”s which frame a black cross; the red coat hung over a telephone wire in the middle of the road, the length stretched along wire with the sleeves hanging down as an “r”; and in a lady’s red jacket hung over a railing, again lengthwise with the sleeves hanging down; and in the black tau cross upside down on an oil truck, the eighteenth letter of the Greek alphabet, its lower case appearing as a “r”, which in ancient times was symbol of resurrection and in the uppercase represented and represents the monastic habit St. Francis of Assisi and his followers, who became and become living, walking crucifixes when wearing it;
12/15/1987: in the two sirens heard while waiting in the rain, when in a rush of wind a woman walks by holding a roll of large white paper in a cone as though a dunce hat or a container for flowers, echoing the shape of two nearby trees springing from the same trunk, as another woman stops to turn and stare for no apparent reason; and, in the evening, in the “V” the phone cord makes from the phone to the arm of a chair to the ear the father who receives the news that a daughter is happy to be singing Christmas Carols at vespers;
12/16/1987: in the black “G” for God on a bridge sign only partly seen behind a smudge of gray paint in contrast to a sticker of a skull and cross bones on the rear window of a passing car; and, later, in the evening in the flashing of lights on the roofs of two police cars, which call attention to the window on the third floor of a building with the paper covering half off on the diagonal to form 2 triangles, one of paper and one of glass, directly above the manger on the first floor;
12/17/1987: in the radio report, announced by flickering caution lights, of a juror who bought a lottery ticket with the same number as that of Section 936 of the law ( 936 is Trinity cubed, Trinity, Trinity doubled; and 936 divided by the 3 of Trinity times the 4 of earth, which is 12, equals 78, Perfection beside the cube of the earth), a number frequently quoted in the trial, and won the lottery; and, later, 3 votive candles stand lit in a triangle, below a crucifix, beside a loudspeaker with seven round speakers, faintly seen through the protecting screen in St. Stanislaw Church;
12/18/1987: in the cradling of a typewriter in the arms of a business man while entering a repair shop as a young mother approaches cradling her baby in the same fashion; and, later, while thinking about the incident, one passing woman is heard say to another: “…my favorite institution…”; and, still later, 8 black geese in a line, behind 4 white swans in a parallel line;
12/19/1987: in the blue scarf around the turret of a former convent and now an office building reflects the blue wings of a cherub in a stained glass window in St. Brendan’s Church, seen during the funeral mass;
12/20/1987: in the narrow triangle formed by the lights on the crucifix above the altar in St. Mary’s Church, which intersect on the altar and point to Christ in the mosaic of the last supper in the front of the altar;
12/21/1987: in the bird which flies in a perfect circle above the “127” sign for the restaurant, which adds to 10 and then to 1 to represent the creator of the universe, while a white car following a black truck pass by; and, later, in the five pieces of tinsel in the floor of a Ob-Gyn Doctor’s office in the shape of a fish;
12/22/1987: in the three street lights on the Triborough Bridge in New York City, one is lit, one is blinking, and the third is off; and, later on I95, in the tarp, which covers the lower half of a Route 1 Truck, and bisects the 1;
12/23/1987: in the alpha “a” of an oil spill at sunrise; and, later, in the black plastic bag that floats up from a dead animal by the side of the road and then drops to the other side of the median near a highway sign that has been boarded up; and, at sunset, in the scarf that falls to the floor in an omega, God is the alpha and the omega, the first and the last, as a choir sings from a record of Bach’s “Weihnachtsoratorium” (“The Christmas Oratorio”): “Fallt mit Danken; fallt mit Loben” (“Fall down with thanks, fall down with praise”);
12/24/1987: in the Madonna and Child through the rust on the back of a pickup truck, with a shepherd and an angel kneeling;