It has come to my attention as of late that Noah was a very silent man. The only time we ever hear him say anything is after the flood when he’s hungover and cursing his son for walking in on him in his birthday suit. So, though he does the will of The Lord throughout the whole story in pious silence, the only time we hear him say anything, it leaves one with a poor impression. Was it the lad’s fault he happened in on his father in his nude stupor, before such a remedy as hair of the dog? Perhaps it is a story of the odd situations hangovers can get you into in the first place.

It was New Year’s Day 2002 around noon, and I was still in my bed–my eyes had not yet peeled from the previous night’s over-indulgences when the phone rang. On the other end was a Jehovah’s Witness trying to give me comfort four months after a national treasure had been laid low. He pointed me to one of those passages wherein Paul discusses how the Lord will protect us is the darkest times etc. At that moment all I longed for was the dark, given the sensitivity of my eyes. Yet even in that circumstance, I still had the ability to make a Jehovah’s Witness long to be absent my company. Lying on my stomach, eyes not yet open, my free hand fell off the edge of the bed to the floor groping for my trusty Bible. “I have a passage for you, try Luke 21:5-6 or Matthew 24: 1-2.” These passages, I felt, directly addressed the national situation at the time. He seemed to disagree. The conversation that ensued was shorter than you might imagine. It is odd to me that Witnesses have a reputation for not desiring to end a conversation. I have always found the opposite to be the case. Apart from that, he did say he would like to meet me at the park on Napoleon and Magazine. I told him I’d be there Saturday at 2:00.

It was chilly that Saturday, the rains came hard, and the bow of God was not to be seen in the clouds. When I came to the park I saw no one sitting at the designated bench. I decided to wait at the bar across the street, in keeping with my Catholic identity. I stood outside the door and crouched under a huge Dixie Beer sign, keeping an eye on the vacant bench. Torrents continued to fall, and it seemed that Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t even keep to Postal standards, much less those to whom they witness. I gave myself the limit of half past two to make sure I wasn’t the one who theologically finked, and then I would leave. No one ever showed.

As I was counting down the final minutes, a ruffled old black man came out of the bar. He staggered a little and popped his umbrella. Then another younger African American (or perhaps Afro-American, depending on his age) walked by. They both greeted each other with a zeal that did not fit the gray wet weather. By this time, Magazine Street had become Magazine River and the older man said the to younger, “You can’ be walken out there with no umbrella, here take this un’.” So the young man took it with much gratitude and walked on. The older man hopped on the bus when it came, and I hopped in my car feeling I had won a doctrinal TKO.

It was that man that I was thinking about Friday as I sloshed through the rain. Around five in the morning in the twenty-sixth year of my life, in the second month, on the twenty-first day of the month, it was on that day that the all the fountains of the great abyss burst forth, and the floodgates of the sky were opened. The rain seemed to come down as if in one huge drop–a drop not just wide, but very long. I was on my way to the auto shop to pick up my car, and had to zigzag my way through the neighborhood behind Carrolton in order to avoid overly flooded roadways. All of the streets were absolutely deserted. My umbrella had blown off its stick and I just caught it in time to be able to hold it by the skeleton of the covering for a while before it gave out. When my umbrella finally did go, that was when the old man popped into my mind. I thought it might be nice to have someone come by and give me an umbrella, someone, like Noah, who is better at action than word. I was standing on a portion of the sidewalk that was in the process of being taken over by water when I looked into a trash pile that was floating away and saw a piece of thick cardboard. I grabbed it and flipped it to the dry side, putting it over my head. On that side was a very large replica of a renaissance rendition of St. Peter, someone who seemed to be better at word then action, most of the time. But he did me a service this time, so I can’t complain. As I put it over my head, I turned to the porch to see two cats sitting beside one another, staring at me. I turned the corner the wrong way to avoid the newly-formed lake that used to be an intersection. No one was to be seen down any of the four ways to the stop. I finally turned the right corner to the auto shop, two stray dogs ran by, one beside the other. At this point I questioned myself at last. “What the hell am I doing out here in this deluge?”

Jack pulled the voltage meter off the battery, “No . . . it’s not charging.” The sun was actually shining on Thursday when I got to work with my battery light on. I had Jack check it and see if it was charging or not and I got my answer. “Well if you go by Auto-Zone and pick up an alternator for it, Carey and I could put it on after work, around five. We don’t mind. It should only take about thirty minutes. We’ve got to wait for the UPS truck anyway.” I scanned his face. Jack is not one to lie, but I know cars well enough to know that a job that “should only take about thirty minutes” is easily a two-hour job. What’s more I get off at four, not five and it’s dark by seven. So the choice was before me: stay an hour late, then add two to that, and get the alternator put on for free. Or pay a hundred and fifty bucks labor and sleep late on Friday morning guilt free, and maybe even in the nude! The choice seemed so obvious, yet I paid for my sloth.

By the time I reached the shop I was soaked through. Then I had to drive the car down the flooded streets to work. I was glad for the new battery, as I was in need of some serious arc-ing for the ark-ing I was doing on the way. The water was above the hood on at least one occasion. For the remainder of the day the squish of my socks under my feet was like walking on wet mushrooms and my displeasure, aroused by work in general, was intensified by the damp clothes.

When I got home that evening my mind was a bit scattered. Mostly I wanted to get out of my clothes, which had been a scarlet letter reminding me of those oh-so-sensual extra moments of sleep I enjoyed that very morning, tossing and turning between warm dry flannel sheets. I stripped to the skin and prepared to shower, it being a designated bathing day on my weekly calendar. I stepped into the kitchen and put water to a slow boil for shaving, a technique I recommend to all. As I was in the kitchen, I noticed that my fake tile floors were perspiring like a plumber’s backside in July. This happens whenever there is a long period of rain. I quickly turned the fan on to get some air circulating and ran a mop over the floor. I started wondering if it might also have had something to do with those pinto beans I got at Suda’s Salvage Grocery. I soaked them all day and then had to boil them for hours two days before. I wondered at the unique properties of beans that would not cook properly, a line of questioning not unknown to products purchased at Suda’s. As I pushed the final passes of the mop over the kitchen floor, I reflected on how nice it is to live alone. It gives one the space to be able to boil water and mop in the nude without having to worry about anyone questioning your sanity or sanitary practices. In that peace, I forgave Noah for cursing his son, and realized that privacy is a cherished item, especially in the nude.

Phillip G.

Prologue

Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop is a bar at the end of Bourbon a good stretch from the main strip. It looks pretty much like a dilapidated barn, but at night it is quiet, a rarity for a bar in this city, and the only real lighting is by candle. This makes it one of the few places in the French Quarter that I actually like. On this night, I was hanging with the Portland contingent for the first time and Will decided he was going to clue me in.

“So they’re together,” he said indicating the two girls, “And I’m bi, we’re a pretty sexually alternative crowd.”

My face remained like stone. If he thought he was going to shock me with this bit of information he was quite mistaken. I doubt such news would surprise anyone in Portland, much less in New Orleans, and I have enough homosexual friends to start a pink battalion. I realized it was time to show this upstart who the real sexual deviant was.

“Oh, that’s cool, I’m probably more sexually alternative than all ya’ll combined.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I’m a celibate.”

I’m also very much accustomed to rendering people stupefied with my terse comments, but it is uncommon, even for me, to see mouths literally drop open. This was one of those times. Will’s immediate response was in a tone of utter disbelief, “Why would you do that to yourself?” This remark made me less sad that he ended the night in the central lockup. His question reaffirmed my belief that in our culture, it is acceptable to have sex with just about anything, as long as you’re having sex with something. Of course I’ve never taken a vow, so I’m not a celibate in any real sense, but there’s no institutional way to become one if you’re not in a religious order, and I’m always open to whatever romantic intrigue may be ahead.

Tale I

It was one of those nights that you can only get in a mire that has been paved over. It was 99 degrees at two in the morning, and the swamp seemed to be wanting to take back its own. I don’t really remember what I was doing in the Quarter that night, years ago, when I first moved here. I only remember it was a bad night, and I had ended it at the trolley stop waiting to get home. I just witnessed a very angry middle-aged woman tell her husband she wanted a divorce, then “she” walked up. She had on khaki pants and a jet-black button-up shirt. Her skin was very fair, green eyes and light red hair, a beauty.

From time to time, I play a game with myself and lose my inhibitions. This causes me to have no problem looking a beautiful woman in the eyes. Usually when this happens I get myself into trouble. She saw me and unbuttoned the cuff on her shirtsleeve. She rolled it up exposing some sort of tattoo, like a peacock ruffling its tail, pretending to take no note of me. She rubbed the tattoo in a seductive manner and rolled her sleeve back down. I saw this as odd behavior and shut my eyes, leaning my head back on the glass window of the shop I was propped up against.

When the trolley came, she took a seat all the way in the back. I sat in the middle. The trolley grinded down the track carrying its sparse late night cargo to their final destinations. About halfway home I had my chin propped in my hand staring out the window as she walked past me and slammed her bag down in the seat in front of me and violently slouched into the seat. This was an odd twist-I need to learn to keep my eyes to myself. I dared to be stupid,

“Are you okay?” I asked.

Instead of the verbal response I expected she turned and handed me a card. I looked at it and couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

“People get on my nerves.” She scowled. I sat staring like a slack-jawed opossum caught in the headlights of a barreling Mack truck blaring its horn, holding a meaningless card in its little paws.

“I noticed you staring at me at the stop” She said.

I managed to stammer out, “well, you’re very beautiful.” That was about the best I did all night.

Her simple response was, “I know.”

She proceeded to ask me if I would mind walking her home, telling me she would pay my way back onto the trolley. I decided that might not be the best plan, and proceeded to inform her that I had spent all my money and would actually have to take her up on that, hoping to diffuse the situation. She accepted, to my great surprise, and handed me a dollar, the fare at the time. She explained that since the Essence festival, a yearly African American music festival, was going on she was afraid to walk home alone.

The trolley doors slammed behind me as I stepped off on an unfamiliar stretch of St. Charles Ave. “So what’s your name?” I asked.

“Erin,” she said, “it’s on that card I gave you.” I turned the card over and sure enough, there it was. “The address is where I dance.”

Now, I have never been in a strip club before in my life, but I was pretty sure she wasn’t a performance artist. We proceeded down the street to her house. Through our small talk it was discovered that I was a student of religion.

“Oh, I’ve done some ghost hunting in my time,” she said.

“Don’t ask me where I got the equipment.”

I was wondering exactly what equipment would be needed besides a video camera and a notebook. I was also wondering what ghost busting had to do with religious studies, when I notice the pentagram necklace around her neck.
“What’s this?” I asked.

“Oh I’m a Wiccan.”

So I was walking down the dark street with this faux witch, who apparently had no problem putting the antics of Bill Murray (granted, a genius in his own art) on the same level with the high theology of Thomas Aquinas. I was slowly coming to realize that I’d rather be walking the other way, alone, when it came out that she was married.

“He’s cheating on me anyway, I’m to the point where I want to put up cameras all around the house to keep track of him.” I glanced longingly back down the ever-widening stretch of empty street toward St. Charles.

“Oh, we’re almost there,” she said, noticing my averted eyes. We stopped a block or two from her house, I assume because her husband was there, and parted with a hearty handshake.

By the time I was heading back down the long road to the trolley alone I was glad I had taken her dollar. The last thing I needed was to get wrapped up in an affair with a vain, possessive, pagan, racist stripper who happened to be unhappily married. The visions of her butch husband alternating successive hook punches onto my jaw was all I needed to see in my mind’s eye to convince me to chunk that card into the refuse before boarding.

Tale II

Butler’s Black Pearl Lounge is within walking distance from my house. It is one of those joints that is so hip that my presence is needed to counterbalance the coolness of the joint. I usually show up on Saturday nights with my flannel shirt, receding hair line and obnoxious drawl to bring back to the middle a crowd of people who are, unbeknownst to them, too fashionable for their own good. Just by showing up, I put a drag on this dimly lit bar, covered in retro Schlitz ads and Atari paraphernalia, as Nag Champa wafts through the air. As I walk in, an almost imperceptible sense of somberness comes over the place, as people begin to realize that the world created by Butler’s is apt to corruption by outsiders and only a shadow of the true world of hipness where no such intrusions would be tolerated.

The other week I showed up with Will, who had been drinking since noon. It was about 11:30 when we came and by the third round of drinks that I realized that perhaps Will had a problem, and maybe I shouldn’t be encouraging it. He had much failure that night, not being able to find anyone to dance with him. Repeatedly I pointed him to girls sitting in their respective corners bobbing to the music and repeatedly he returned alone to curse my name.

The barmaid who usually works on Saturday night is mythic in her beauty. She looks like an elfin princess who floats rather than walks. Her hair is short and black, accented by full lips, high cheekbones, and dark eyes. Will asked me her name and I pleaded ignorance. “She looks like a Sarah,” he said.

“She looks like an Erin to me,” I rebutted, unconsciously drawing on some long-ago conversation I may have had with her. The next time she came by he asked her and she affirmed that her name was Erin.

“I’m Will and this is my friend Phillip.”

“I know Phillip, I’ve seen him around here and at the Maple Leaf.”

This time the jaw that dropped was mine, and I am not easily surprised. The shock was in being recognized at all, though I have only been to The Maple leaf once, about four years ago. I never returned out of protest for being asked to pay a cover after having already ordered a few drinks. Regardless of whether she mixed me up with someone else from time to time, the fact remained that I was a recognizable person in her mind. This fact alone necessitates sexual attraction, in the male mind. This odd universal belief for men called the Male Belief of Acknowledgment Clause states that any form of acknowledgement of a man by a woman is to be taken as a direct solicitation for at least romantic, if not overtly sexual, activity.

There was a brief conversation wherein she invited us to come the next night to listen to reggae music. She returned to her duties. “I asked her name, and she was staring at you the whole time!” Will whined, still smarting from his rhythmic rejection. “I think she’s into you.”

“I think, she’s a bit out of my league,” I said. I am unfortunately endowed with the horrible curse of retaining some modicum of reason no matter how much I drink. I get buzzed easily, but it takes a lot to get me drunk, and I hadn’t come near my limit, though I had had more then my usual already.

“You shouldn’t sell yourself short,” he proceeded, bolstering my dormant pride. He continued to talk and I continued to listen, constantly reminding myself that all the facts that he was spouting were completely ambiguous.

The time had come: Will had finally been rejected by every woman in a bar where people were packed wall to wall like sardines, and he wanted to leave. He walked up to Erin and shook her hand, delivering one last tip. “Ya’ll are leaving?” she said. He shook his head and turned to go.

I walked over to her and leaned to her ear, “I don’t think I’m going to make reggae tomorrow but do you work Saturday?”

“Ten o’clock,” she said.

“I’ll be here Saturday and see you.”
She waved goodbye and we left.

“What are you up to?” said the voice of reason in my brain, recognizing my submission to Will’s propaganda. Maybe I was more in my cups then I thought.

“Ah ah,” I answered, “but, that was completely ambiguous too.” So I had made a hasty move, forgetting one of my greatest precepts: patience is a virtue and haste is a form of violence.

I met Clay in the Coffee shop to discuss the situation, laying out all the facts as they were, and noting the ambiguity of the situation, but also playing up the Male Belief of Acknowledgement Clause. I then laid out my master plan, which consisted of showing up Saturday night and waiting around to see if anything happened. He agreed to accompany me.

Saturday arrived, and I lay in bed all day, barely stirring to exercise and cook. Clay, Laura and I arrived about 11:00 and got our libations. Erin was sitting at the end of the bar conversing with some patrons. I waved to her and she waved back. We went over to one of the Atari consoles so that Clay could put to rest a theory, wide in scope, about the pending war in Iraq having something to do with Donkey Kong. We played a few rounds and sat on the couch. Laura noted that the barmaid was looking at me, making me wonder if it was perhaps the Human Belief of Acknowledgement Clause and not only the Male Belief in Acknowledgement Clause. It didn’t seem to occur to Laura that maybe she was just checking to see if that drunk greaseball who was making eyes at her last week was still stalking her or if he had left.

Laura suggested that it was time to freshen the drinks and that we should go to the bar and sit. We did this and got another round from the male bartender. This time I got water, as I judged that I had been drinking too much over the last few weeks. A discussion was started about the fact that I have no game, and all agreed on that point. Erin came by and Laura asked her “Is that a real Chia Mr. T in that box up there?” As the conversation unfolded, my eyes glazed a bit and I began to stare at the corner of the ceiling. This is a bad habit of mine that I indulge in when the conversation holds no interest for me. I often snap back and have to make up for what I missed by assuming parts of the discourse absent to my memory. When I came to myself this time, Erin was gone. In her place was the male bartender who was lifting his shirt to reveal a slightly out of shape gut and a Mr. T. tattoo on his upper right chest, complete with gold chains and feather. Even more odd than this was the fact that, by some strange set of circumstances, I had actually seen this tattoo before. After more discourse on the merits of Mr. T in the modern paradigm he walked away.

Clay leaned over to me and said in my ear, “The boyfriend reference was noted.” Actually it wasn’t.

I asked him what he meant and he said in a deliberate tone stressing each syllable, “That guy was her boyfriend.”

My eyes smiled as I rubbed my hands together. The hasty stroke oft goes astray, but this had worked out better than my fears, or my expectations. I did “try to get the girl” in my own lame way, just by showing up. Now I could stave off criticism that I’m too passive about romantic opportunity. I can remind the accuser that recently I made a desperate attempt to snare the affections of a beautiful bartenderess, but despite my constant barrage of amorous assaults she would have none of me. On the other hand I didn’t have to suffer the mental consequences of actually getting rejected or the practical consequences of having a girlfriend. My serene celibate lifestyle, filled with days of quiet and nights of peace remain intact.

I downed my water as we wrapped up our conversation and we left not too long after.

Past the gulf of low-rise jeans
and painted smiles
the bar opens, engulfs, stares, and stumbles.
(And winks because they’ve shared your pain).

Syrupy twang of Sheryl Crow jolts me back to frigidity
as the Chairman eyes up Norah Jones,
makes a crack about pipes,
(which ones I don’t know),
and offers her an olive.

Conscience looms like the elephant;
lurches forward, and winks too.
Jack London’s clear thought gives way
to ambivalence, morning haze and hilarity.

Murder, rape, cannibalism, and sex
hold attention momentarily, but
laughter reigns.

1-30-02

Where Science Meets Metaphysics

The heater was blasting in the North room of the parish center. The machine had a vintage seventies look about it, all gray steel with a large fan, the grating large enough for a small child’s hand to fit through. The noise was not as bothersome to me as it normally would be given the quality of the lectures going on in the RCIA that morning. One woman seemed to have a hang-up on constantly explaining to us all the things that don’t “exist in a vacuum.” By the third time she said it, interrupting the other lecturer to interject a relating point from last week, so as to remind us that “the lectures don’t exists in a vacuum”, I’d had my fill. My mind wandered, wondering what would happen if I went to a vacuum shop and demanded the dismantling of a vacuum so that I might know what actually did exist in a vacuum, as the pickings would seem to be slim.

As my thoughts played out the pun in every conceivable way, the class wrapped up and I began to make good my escape. I didn’t see my candidate there, which was not uncommon, and was wondering at his absence. It seems that I was stuck with a lame duck candidate, because he was very tentative and the director felt I would not put undue pressure on him, given my calm disposition. This was so much the case that I have barely talked with him at all, and have not gotten to push all my various overzealous ideologies into his brain, much to my dismay. The only time I really got to talk to him at all I had given him a ride home and upon turning onto his street I noticed that there was a Catholic Church right there on the corner, as there usually is in New Orleans. “Why didn’t you go to this church?”

“I’ve never been in that church actually,” he said. “I’ve always heard about Holy Name and wanted to go there.” I hate it when people call it Holy Name. The whole title is The Church of the Most Holy Name of Jesus. The abbreviation is understandable, but this is not how I would break it down. Over the twin doors that enter the church the name is spelled out in the concrete one section over each door. I prefer the first section in and of itself “The Church of the Most”. That, I believe, is what I would call it. It gives it sort of a hiphop flare.

He went on to talk about another church that he had heard a lot about and that these two were “the type of church” he would like to go to. I got the impression that he meant affluent. This did not sit well in my mind. Two opposite thoughts reared their heads in my mind simultaneously. The first was that I couldn’t have this upstart poking his head around trying to grab all the fame at my church. This would be too much competition. The second was a dread in my head that had been slowly gnawing in the back of my mind that, yes indeed, I do go to an affluent church. Not because I chose it, like my candidate, but because it was the first one I saw close to my house. I began to wonder if I should start going to St Joan of Arch down the levee. It’s a mostly black Catholic church and I think, given my working class background, I would fit in better there, but I loath change too so I remain.

The class was over and I edged toward the door. The director was handing out qustionaires for the rite of acceptance. The questions are designed to let help the candidate or catechumen discern if they are ready for the next step. The sponsors too received a sheet of questions to let them express how they think their candidate is coming along. I was slinking toward the door hoping to avoid getting a sheet so as not to have to rat out my man when the director stopped me. “Phillip, I think Jason moved to Australia last week.” This was the first I heard of it. Apparently he had gotten accepted to medical school there and moved out that week. Shows how much I kept up with my candidate. So I got out of having to write him up for not showing up to class enough and seeking fame through the Catholic Church in some Machiavellian move to acquire the status of “Holy Name.”

I told the director that I would still come to the classes to help if I could but it puts me in an odd position. Given that my candidate fled the country, now I am neither team member, sponsor, candidate, nor catechumen. It seems I now exist in an RCIA vacuum.

So my friend Becky moved in town form Portland. I was sitting in the apartment of the Portland Contingent, a small advanced team she sent ahead of her to do the scouting, and was asked this question, “So what do you do every day at work?” I was taken aback, he knew I worked in an environmental chemistry lab. I first judged that the best way to answer the question was to relay what I had done that day. I told how I had been the first to arrive and had to disarm the alarm. From there my talk devolved from an explanation of my workday to my interior disposition when having to turn off the alarm. I hate it. Every time I go to turn it off I fear a slight slip of the finger and very loud response. After relating the whole story of how I set off the alarm on Martin Luther King Jr. day and the subsequent doubt as to whether I had to be at work at all that morning, I noticed the blank stares gazing at me. So I skipped ahead to when the day actually started, though I wasn’t finished my tirade. I started telling them the projects I was working on and the methods by which they were done. I was met with equally blank stares. Finally I broke down. “Okay I take dirt and water and squirt acid on it. Then I put it into a machine that turns it into numbers.”

“So what do the numbers mean?”

“Good and bad.” The answer seemed to satisfy.

Upon going home I began to realize the profundity of the statement. I take dirt and water and transform them by the methods of science from their physical properties into moral categories. In my mind I changed bad to “evil” to give it a better effect. The question struck me so hard that was in need of immediate reconciliation, how did science get into the position of being able to change physical entities into moral propositions. Such empiricists as A. J. Ayer, who stated that, “all metaphysics are nonsense” must be rolling in their collective graves.

The answer is of course the standard. In science you have to have a standard for everything. If you have a scale you have a weight that means 10g and it means that because somewhere in the bureau of weights and measures there is a weight that means 10g and the one you have was weighed against one that was weighed against one that matched that one, all of course within a plus or minus minimum. This weight is put on the scale every day to make sure the scale is working properly, if it weighs “right” you’re “good” to go.

This, through the myth of objectivity leaves out the fact that humans do this and most of them don’t give a bean about plus of minus. Doubt also creeps in when weighing. If you have your 10g and it weighs within the measure but a little low, say 9.95, that’s good but 9.98 is better, not only is it closer, but looks prettier, all curves and not as jagged. If however you weigh a 10.00, would any one really believe that? After all this is the third day in a row. Better make it 9.99 just to be sure. It’s a human desire to change what could be a perfect system in theory because we can’t handle perfect. If you want to be a metaphysical determinist about it you can just remember this triolet,

Divine purpose at work write the numbers as you please.
The God of the gaps will like what it sees.
.5 to .9 the pen moves with ease.
Divine purpose at work write the numbers as you please.
Write the right wrong, wrong right as you style,
the path, the teleological extra mile.
Divine purpose at work write the numbers as you please.
The God of the gaps will like what it sees.

Wa la it was meant to be. But enough of this nonsense, I digress, the point was that standards allow for moral determinacy because scientists all agree on them, and the way we regard them, allowing them to change our behavior doing certain actions and avoiding others, makes them a type of moral category. In short, the number I get for mercury in a soil sample has a direct effect on what the company does with the loads of dirt they have, because the EPA says there’s a standard to be met and the law says they have to do it. Why can’t the Holy See come up with a scam like that? The Papal EPA! The fact that A. J. Ayer would think morality “nonsense”, that is not apt to sensation, holds firm also for those oh so precious numbers that science holds so dear, have you ever seen a “five”? I have not, much less a “point five”. Moreover the fact that science’s love for knowledge, as defined under its system, seems almost always to be manifest as a change in behavior, presumably “for the better.”

It follows that though I have proved that it is not true that nothing exists in a vacuum, given my position in the RCIA, it appears I will not find science in there with me.

Phillip G.