The longer I live, the more apparent it is to me that my memory is a very queer thing. In fact, curiouser and curiouser.

Ask me what I did yesterday, and you’re likely to get a blank stare. Or, perhaps, “Uh, lemme think . . . ” And, yes, I’ll probably come up with something eventually. But it’s no cinch.

It’s why my family is insisting that I get a SLUMS test as I stare down my 70th birthday in less than 2 week’s time. So, yep, I’m going slumming next week at Kaiser. And, BTW, if you want to see how your memory stacks up, click the above link.

But I dare you to figure this one out. In fact, I double dare you.

As I was noodling in preparation to write this post, a mere fragment of a phrase from Joseph Conrad’s novel, Lord Jim, came to mind. It’s been about fifty years since I read that book. Literally. And, even though it’s rated among the best 100 English language novels of the 20th century, it’s far from an easy read. (I started listening to it again, but quit after 7 or 8 chapters; it’s tough sledding. Would it have been better had I been actually reading it? Can’t say for sure, but probably.)

But with only two or three stabs on Google with word combinations like, “destructive element immersion” or “joseph conrad destructive element” I found the phrase you see at the top of this post. And that’s the entire phrase: five words. In a lengthy novel. After fifty years.

And they tell me I need to get my memory checked. Go figure.

The Sea Faring Life. Without Going To Sea.

I read Lord Jim during my, “I must go down to the sea again, the lonely sea and the sky” period. Scarcely out of my teens and rarely venturing beyond the borders of landlocked Colorado, Conrad’s novel was, no doubt, the literary apogee of that particular obsession for me. Otherwise, it was pulp fiction pot boilers about skullduggery aboard tramp steamers. And the long walk through our sleepy, upscale suburban neighborhood one drizzly night in my “sea going” pea coat with an upturned collar.

Unless you count the time I hitch-hiked from Denver to Provincetown, Massachusetts, with a layover at the YMCA in New York City. For a wet-behind-the-ears, cowtown kid like me, that big, old, rambling “Y” in the canyons of Manhattan was a spooky place. While in New York, I somehow made my way to a trade school or union hall that trained sailors for the merchant marine. I stood outside for a long time-I think I remember it had a gang plank-debating whether to go in and find out what it took to enroll. But I eventually turned around-and did nothing. I’ve been plagued with the “I’d rather study something than actually do it” syndrome for much of my life.

The Divine Comedy

For going on two months now, I’ve been reading Dante Alighieri’s epic poem, the Divine Comedy. And I’m only about halfway through the 800 some page account of the poet’s imagined journey through Hell, Purgatory, and, finally, his ascent to Heaven. Written in the early 14th century by the Italian poet, philosopher, and politician, the Florentine’s masterpiece makes Lord Jim look like a cake walk. But I’ve stuck with it; its cantos come in bite size nibbles of 6 or 7 pages-with footnotes. In its strange way, it’s addictive.

Don’t ask me how I originally got on to Commedia; I suppose it was because it’s considered one of the Mount Everests of world literature, in the same exalted company as the Bible or Shakespeare. But like Dante himself, it didn’t take me long to conclude that this arduous journey is best undertaken with the help of a guide. Dante had three: Virgil, who personifies reason; Beatrice, who represents faith and divine revelation, and Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, who symbolizes mysticism and devotion to Mary.

I, on the other hand, am muddling through with one guide: Rod Dreher and his book, How Dante Can Save Your Life. After all, you can only read so much. An interesting guy in his own right, Dreher grew up in the bayous of Louisiana. But, like a moth to the flame, he was eventually captured by the bright political lights of Washington, DC where he works as the senior editor of The American Conservative.

Until, that is, he was recaptured by the barely discernible twinkle of his Louisiana home town, Starhill, a suburb of the nearest “big” town, St. Francisville, population 1,765. Alongside his geographic meanderings, Dreher was also on a spiritual pilgrimage. Grown cold to his family’s old time Methodist religion, he enthusiastically turned to Catholicism until the Churches’ relentless pedophile scandals caused him, his wife and young children to embrace Greek Orthodoxy, Christendom’s most ancient branch.

The Prayer

One of the practices favored by Greek Orthodoxy is The Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.” Like the Catholic rosary, it’s repeated over and over. Also like the rosary, a knotted chord is used to keep track of the number of times the prayer is uttered.

When Dreher returned to his home town, he fantasized that he would experience a warm embrace from his family and the small town where he’d grown up. He wrote about it in, The Little Way of Ruthie Lemming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life. The reality was very different. His sister, Ruthie, had just lost her struggle with cancer, leaving behind a husband and three little kids. The grieving husband wanted very little to do with the Johnny-come-lately interloper from the big city. Dreher’s father was on the downhill side of life and couldn’t accept that his son had apparently forsaken his family, their faith, and the wide spot in the road that had given the Dreher clan meaning since the Civil War.

Dreher got so caught up in the undertow of all these family cross currents that his auto-immune system rebelled and he came down with the Epstein-Barr virus. He spent days-and then weeks-in bed with the curtains drawn; how his wife put up with him is a mystery to me.

But one night, late, in bed next to his sleeping wife, there was a glimmer of hope. After the fourth cycle around his daily prayer rope-three hundred prayers down and only two hundred more to go-a peace that passeth all understanding came over Dreher. Along with three words that he heard, not in his pointy head, but in his heart. And which threw him for a loop: God loves me. As he puts it, “It was the strangest thing-like someone was standing at my bedside, placing them into my chest. Not God loves you, but God loves me. Just like that: God loves me.”

The Rest Of The Story

How do the stories end? Not sure yet. I’ve only got about 450 more pages of Dante guiding me through the Byzantine political and ecclesiastical machinations of the early Italian Renaissance. Not to mention heaven, hell and purgatory.

And then there’s Dreher wrestling with his own demons. The peculiar hold of blood and soil in the Old South. A hold so tenacious that Dreher virtually abandoned his wife and family and took to his bed when he attempted to escape its gravitational pull.

And me? I’m holding on. But my memory’s going. My 70th is rapidly fading in the rear view mirror. I only answered 10 of 30 questions today correctly. Next stop? The neurosurgeon.