One of the joys of my graduate years was meeting a number of people who, for lack of a better word, had very “interesting” minds. They were people who always seemed to have something “interesting” to say on almost any topic, so that you always came away from a conversation with them feeling smarter. Don Soucy, my friend and Joyce scholar, is one of those people, and so I’ve asked him to periodically write a guest essay for this Old Man Still Howling at the Moon. Enjoy!
************************************************************************************************************
By Don Soucy
My teenage idols were Jim Stark and Holden Caufield. I wanted to think of myself as a rebel and misfit, and like them, I got thrown out of school.
I attended a junior seminary, but I wasn’t really pursuing the priesthood; I was running away from home, which wasn’t terribly unhappy: just crowded. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, or where I was going, but the monsignor/recruiter charmed his way into my mother’s kitchen and convinced her I had the right stuff. He wore a red-lined cape and sounded like Bishop Sheen, so how could I lose?
My experience at the all-male seminary, however, tested me from the start. The rules were strict and strictly enforced, and I ran afoul of them often and well. I broke codes of silence, rules of demeanor, tenets of conduct, all signs of my lack of seriousness and maturity. The prefect of students in particular stayed on my tail and filled my free time with extra chores, extra time in the chapel to contemplate my many faults, and extra sessions with a spiritual advisor, a defeated little man with nicotine-stained fingers whose advice always boiled down to “pray for guidance.”
On the other hand, the “school” part of my experience was great. We received a medieval version of a liberal arts education, with heavy concentrations in language (Latin, Greek, French), history of the Church, the philosophies of the three A’s (Augustine, Ambrose, Acquinas), and Geometry, but sadly, no Alchemy. The schedule was rigid, yet somehow liberating; we knew every waking minute what we had to do and where we had to go.
I somehow made it into my senior year. As a senior, I was calmer and less rambunctious, so to encourage my new behavior, I was assigned as a sacristan at the priests’ main house. It was like being named prom king, but without a pretty girl to garner the votes.
A sacristan’s job consisted of preparing altars for the daily mass priests were obligated to celebrate. Since there could be up to 20 priests on campus at any time, and only 9 altars available, the job required attention to detail and some scurrying. I had to lay out vestments, fill cruets with water and wine, put a chalice on the altar and place a host on the paten, and see to it a seminarian was available to assist in the mass.
Watching all of this, I got some insight into the various personalities of the priests. Some were perfunctory, zipping through the liturgy, while others said mass with ceremony and sincerity. Some scarcely drank the wine, while some others avoided the water. One priest not only drained the wine cruet, but after mass, sneaked into the closet and chugged down what remained in the bottle I used to fill them. A few celebrants stayed behind to correct the Latin of some of the younger boys, while some tried to cop a feel. How one celebrates the mass, I thought, defines the quality of one’s vocation.
After a while, I started experimenting. I gobbled up a couple of hosts, pretty but tasteless. I tried on a few vestments: a Stole, an Alb, even a Cincture. And I tried the wine. First, a sip or two, then a cruet or two, until I got up the courage to beat the good father to the remaining half-bottle and to drink it on my way back to the classroom.
I didn’t get away with it. In study hall, I fell off my seat, yawned and snored through The City of God. In chapel my genuflection planted me face down in the aisle, and I couldn’t stop giggling. On our way to the dormitories, the prefect accosted me. I puked on his soutane and blurted out the truth. I don’t remember much after that.
Personal humiliations quickly followed. I was replaced as a sacristan and removed from the football team. I was called out of class. Father Superior ordered me to pack up my trunk and get ready to leave; he had notified my parents that I was expelled and to expect me on the late bus to Lowell, MA. The young priest who drove me to the depot berated and scolded me the entire hour’s drive, reminding me of my disgrace, and promising me that my mother’s shame would never wash away my sins. His final zinger was, “Whatever made you think that you could be a priest?”
My dad met me at the bus terminal later that night and did something completely unexpected. He shook my hand and welcomed me home. My mom, on the other hand, didn’t speak to me until she had to register me for high school a week later.
Pop psychologists would read this episode as a cry for help, or as a result of a profound ambivalence towards the Church. I tried to analyze it in a prose poem years ago.
Quo Vadis?
The title of a movie made famous by Peter Ustinov’s child-like Nero—all the more menacing for its murderous innocence. I admire Ustinov’s imaginative take on Nero’s querulous self-absorption that made him more comic than tragic—but then again, I wasn’t an early Christian. And who can forget his ridiculous song, “Oh, Wall of Flame,” in answer to his mother’s panic? The film slights St. Peter, the same Simon Peter who had almost perished by the sword, who had denied his friend, who was too scared to bend to God’s will and was now beating feet as fast as he could, muttering something about hanging out with the brothers in Asia Minor. That he would leave Rome under these circumstances marked him as human; that he would turn back to face martyrdom made him no more real than Nero himself.
And I, at 17, kicked out of the seminary. Unlike Peter, I lacked faith in my frailties and had no answer—just the waiting car and driver whose buttocks were where his head should have been, and Nero himself playing a mean Maritime fiddle while autumn burned.
Jim and Holden, on the other hand, would have understood.
You can find Peter Johnson’s books, along with interviews with him, appearances, and other information at peterjohnsonauthor.com
His most recent book of prose poems is While the Undertaker Sleeps: Collected and New Prose Poems
His most recent book of fiction is Shot: A Novel in Stories
Find out why he is giving away his new book of prose poem/fragments, even though he has a publisher for it, by downloading the PDF from the below link or going to OLD MAN’S homepage. His “Note to the Reader” and “Introduction” at the beginning of the PDF explains it all: Observations from the Edge of the Abyss+
View draft history
One of the joys of my graduate years was meeting a number of people who, for lack of a better word, had very “interesting” minds. They were people who always seemed to have something “interesting” to say on almost any topic, so that you always came away from a conversation with them feeling smarter. Don Soucy, my friend and Joyce scholar, is one of those people, and so I’ve asked him to periodically write a guest essay for this Old Man Still Howling at the Moon. Enjoy!
************************************************************************************************************
By Don Soucy
My teenage idols were Jim Stark and Holden Caufield. I wanted to think of myself as a rebel and misfit, and like them, I got thrown out of school.
I attended a junior seminary, but I wasn’t really pursuing the priesthood; I was running away from home, which wasn’t terribly unhappy: just crowded. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, or where I was going, but the monsignor/recruiter charmed his way into my mother’s kitchen and convinced her I had the right stuff. He wore a red-lined cape and sounded like Bishop Sheen, so how could I lose?
My experience at the all-male seminary, however, tested me from the start. The rules were strict and strictly enforced, and I ran afoul of them often and well. I broke codes of silence, rules of demeanor, tenets of conduct, all signs of my lack of seriousness and maturity. The prefect of students in particular stayed on my tail and filled my free time with extra chores, extra time in the chapel to contemplate my many faults, and extra sessions with a spiritual advisor, a defeated little man with nicotine-stained fingers whose advice always boiled down to “pray for guidance.”
On the other hand, the “school” part of my experience was great. We received a medieval version of a liberal arts education, with heavy concentrations in language (Latin, Greek, French), history of the Church, the philosophies of the three A’s (Augustine, Ambrose, Acquinas), and Geometry, but sadly, no Alchemy. The schedule was rigid, yet somehow liberating; we knew every waking minute what we had to do and where we had to go.
I somehow made it into my senior year. As a senior, I was calmer and less rambunctious, so to encourage my new behavior, I was assigned as a sacristan at the priests’ main house. It was like being named prom king, but without a pretty girl to garner the votes.
A sacristan’s job consisted of preparing altars for the daily mass priests were obligated to celebrate. Since there could be up to 20 priests on campus at any time, and only 9 altars available, the job required attention to detail and some scurrying. I had to lay out vestments, fill cruets with water and wine, put a chalice on the altar and place a host on the paten, and see to it a seminarian was available to assist in the mass.
Watching all of this, I got some insight into the various personalities of the priests. Some were perfunctory, zipping through the liturgy, while others said mass with ceremony and sincerity. Some scarcely drank the wine, while some others avoided the water. One priest not only drained the wine cruet, but after mass, sneaked into the closet and chugged down what remained in the bottle I used to fill them. A few celebrants stayed behind to correct the Latin of some of the younger boys, while some tried to cop a feel. How one celebrates the mass, I thought, defines the quality of one’s vocation.
After a while, I started experimenting. I gobbled up a couple of hosts, pretty but tasteless. I tried on a few vestments: a Stole, an Alb, even a Cincture. And I tried the wine. First, a sip or two, then a cruet or two, until I got up the courage to beat the good father to the remaining half-bottle and to drink it on my way back to the classroom.
I didn’t get away with it. In study hall, I fell off my seat, yawned and snored through The City of God. In chapel my genuflection planted me face down in the aisle, and I couldn’t stop giggling. On our way to the dormitories, the prefect accosted me. I puked on his soutane and blurted out the truth. I don’t remember much after that.
Personal humiliations quickly followed. I was replaced as a sacristan and removed from the football team. I was called out of class. Father Superior ordered me to pack up my trunk and get ready to leave; he had notified my parents that I was expelled and to expect me on the late bus to Lowell, MA. The young priest who drove me to the depot berated and scolded me the entire hour’s drive, reminding me of my disgrace, and promising me that my mother’s shame would never wash away my sins. His final zinger was, “Whatever made you think that you could be a priest?”
My dad met me at the bus terminal later that night and did something completely unexpected. He shook my hand and welcomed me home. My mom, on the other hand, didn’t speak to me until she had to register me for high school a week later.
Pop psychologists would read this episode as a cry for help, or as a result of a profound ambivalence towards the Church. I tried to analyze it in a prose poem years ago.
Quo Vadis?
The title of a movie made famous by Peter Ustinov’s child-like Nero—all the more menacing for its murderous innocence. I admire Ustinov’s imaginative take on Nero’s querulous self-absorption that made him more comic than tragic—but then again, I wasn’t an early Christian. And who can forget his ridiculous song, “Oh, Wall of Flame,” in answer to his mother’s panic? The film slights St. Peter, the same Simon Peter who had almost perished by the sword, who had denied his friend, who was too scared to bend to God’s will and was now beating feet as fast as he could, muttering something about hanging out with the brothers in Asia Minor. That he would leave Rome under these circumstances marked him as human; that he would turn back to face martyrdom made him no more real than Nero himself.
And I, at 17, kicked out of the seminary. Unlike Peter, I lacked faith in my frailties and had no answer—just the waiting car and driver whose buttocks were where his head should have been, and Nero himself playing a mean Maritime fiddle while autumn burned.
Jim and Holden, on the other hand, would have understood.
You can find Peter Johnson’s books, along with interviews with him, appearances, and other information at peterjohnsonauthor.com
His most recent book of prose poems is While the Undertaker Sleeps: Collected and New Prose Poems
His most recent book of fiction is Shot: A Novel in Stories
Find out why he is giving away his new book of prose poem/fragments, even though he has a publisher for it, by downloading the PDF from the below link or going to OLD MAN’S homepage. His “Note to the Reader” and “Introduction” at the beginning of the PDF explains it all: Observations from the Edge of the Abyss+
View draft history
One of the joys of my graduate years was meeting a number of people who, for lack of a better word, had very “interesting” minds. They were people who always seemed to have something “interesting” to say on almost any topic, so that you always came away from a conversation with them feeling smarter. Don Soucy, my friend and Joyce scholar, is one of those people, and so I’ve asked him to periodically write a guest essay for this Old Man Still Howling at the Moon. Enjoy!
************************************************************************************************************
By Don Soucy
My teenage idols were Jim Stark and Holden Caufield. I wanted to think of myself as a rebel and misfit, and like them, I got thrown out of school.
I attended a junior seminary, but I wasn’t really pursuing the priesthood; I was running away from home, which wasn’t terribly unhappy: just crowded. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, or where I was going, but the monsignor/recruiter charmed his way into my mother’s kitchen and convinced her I had the right stuff. He wore a red-lined cape and sounded like Bishop Sheen, so how could I lose?
My experience at the all-male seminary, however, tested me from the start. The rules were strict and strictly enforced, and I ran afoul of them often and well. I broke codes of silence, rules of demeanor, tenets of conduct, all signs of my lack of seriousness and maturity. The prefect of students in particular stayed on my tail and filled my free time with extra chores, extra time in the chapel to contemplate my many faults, and extra sessions with a spiritual advisor, a defeated little man with nicotine-stained fingers whose advice always boiled down to “pray for guidance.”
On the other hand, the “school” part of my experience was great. We received a medieval version of a liberal arts education, with heavy concentrations in language (Latin, Greek, French), history of the Church, the philosophies of the three A’s (Augustine, Ambrose, Acquinas), and Geometry, but sadly, no Alchemy. The schedule was rigid, yet somehow liberating; we knew every waking minute what we had to do and where we had to go.
I somehow made it into my senior year. As a senior, I was calmer and less rambunctious, so to encourage my new behavior, I was assigned as a sacristan at the priests’ main house. It was like being named prom king, but without a pretty girl to garner the votes.
A sacristan’s job consisted of preparing altars for the daily mass priests were obligated to celebrate. Since there could be up to 20 priests on campus at any time, and only 9 altars available, the job required attention to detail and some scurrying. I had to lay out vestments, fill cruets with water and wine, put a chalice on the altar and place a host on the paten, and see to it a seminarian was available to assist in the mass.
Watching all of this, I got some insight into the various personalities of the priests. Some were perfunctory, zipping through the liturgy, while others said mass with ceremony and sincerity. Some scarcely drank the wine, while some others avoided the water. One priest not only drained the wine cruet, but after mass, sneaked into the closet and chugged down what remained in the bottle I used to fill them. A few celebrants stayed behind to correct the Latin of some of the younger boys, while some tried to cop a feel. How one celebrates the mass, I thought, defines the quality of one’s vocation.
After a while, I started experimenting. I gobbled up a couple of hosts, pretty but tasteless. I tried on a few vestments: a Stole, an Alb, even a Cincture. And I tried the wine. First, a sip or two, then a cruet or two, until I got up the courage to beat the good father to the remaining half-bottle and to drink it on my way back to the classroom.
I didn’t get away with it. In study hall, I fell off my seat, yawned and snored through The City of God. In chapel my genuflection planted me face down in the aisle, and I couldn’t stop giggling. On our way to the dormitories, the prefect accosted me. I puked on his soutane and blurted out the truth. I don’t remember much after that.
Personal humiliations quickly followed. I was replaced as a sacristan and removed from the football team. I was called out of class. Father Superior ordered me to pack up my trunk and get ready to leave; he had notified my parents that I was expelled and to expect me on the late bus to Lowell, MA. The young priest who drove me to the depot berated and scolded me the entire hour’s drive, reminding me of my disgrace, and promising me that my mother’s shame would never wash away my sins. His final zinger was, “Whatever made you think that you could be a priest?”
My dad met me at the bus terminal later that night and did something completely unexpected. He shook my hand and welcomed me home. My mom, on the other hand, didn’t speak to me until she had to register me for high school a week later.
Pop psychologists would read this episode as a cry for help, or as a result of a profound ambivalence towards the Church. I tried to analyze it in a prose poem years ago.
Quo Vadis?
The title of a movie made famous by Peter Ustinov’s child-like Nero—all the more menacing for its murderous innocence. I admire Ustinov’s imaginative take on Nero’s querulous self-absorption that made him more comic than tragic—but then again, I wasn’t an early Christian. And who can forget his ridiculous song, “Oh, Wall of Flame,” in answer to his mother’s panic? The film slights St. Peter, the same Simon Peter who had almost perished by the sword, who had denied his friend, who was too scared to bend to God’s will and was now beating feet as fast as he could, muttering something about hanging out with the brothers in Asia Minor. That he would leave Rome under these circumstances marked him as human; that he would turn back to face martyrdom made him no more real than Nero himself.
And I, at 17, kicked out of the seminary. Unlike Peter, I lacked faith in my frailties and had no answer—just the waiting car and driver whose buttocks were where his head should have been, and Nero himself playing a mean Maritime fiddle while autumn burned.
Jim and Holden, on the other hand, would have understood.
You can find Peter Johnson’s books, along with interviews with him, appearances, and other information at peterjohnsonauthor.com
His most recent book of prose poems is While the Undertaker Sleeps: Collected and New Prose Poems
His most recent book of fiction is Shot: A Novel in Stories
Find out why he is giving away his new book of prose poem/fragments, even though he has a publisher for it, by downloading the PDF from the below link or going to OLD MAN’S homepage. His “Note to the Reader” and “Introduction” at the beginning of the PDF explains it all: Observations from the Edge of the Abyss+
View draft history
One of the joys of my graduate years was meeting a number of people who, for lack of a better word, had very “interesting” minds. They were people who always seemed to have something “interesting” to say on almost any topic, so that you always came away from a conversation with them feeling smarter. Don Soucy, my friend and Joyce scholar, is one of those people, and so I’ve asked him to periodically write a guest essay for this Old Man Still Howling at the Moon. Enjoy!
************************************************************************************************************
By Don Soucy
My teenage idols were Jim Stark and Holden Caufield. I wanted to think of myself as a rebel and misfit, and like them, I got thrown out of school.
I attended a junior seminary, but I wasn’t really pursuing the priesthood; I was running away from home, which wasn’t terribly unhappy: just crowded. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, or where I was going, but the monsignor/recruiter charmed his way into my mother’s kitchen and convinced her I had the right stuff. He wore a red-lined cape and sounded like Bishop Sheen, so how could I lose?
My experience at the all-male seminary, however, tested me from the start. The rules were strict and strictly enforced, and I ran afoul of them often and well. I broke codes of silence, rules of demeanor, tenets of conduct, all signs of my lack of seriousness and maturity. The prefect of students in particular stayed on my tail and filled my free time with extra chores, extra time in the chapel to contemplate my many faults, and extra sessions with a spiritual advisor, a defeated little man with nicotine-stained fingers whose advice always boiled down to “pray for guidance.”
On the other hand, the “school” part of my experience was great. We received a medieval version of a liberal arts education, with heavy concentrations in language (Latin, Greek, French), history of the Church, the philosophies of the three A’s (Augustine, Ambrose, Acquinas), and Geometry, but sadly, no Alchemy. The schedule was rigid, yet somehow liberating; we knew every waking minute what we had to do and where we had to go.
I somehow made it into my senior year. As a senior, I was calmer and less rambunctious, so to encourage my new behavior, I was assigned as a sacristan at the priests’ main house. It was like being named prom king, but without a pretty girl to garner the votes.
A sacristan’s job consisted of preparing altars for the daily mass priests were obligated to celebrate. Since there could be up to 20 priests on campus at any time, and only 9 altars available, the job required attention to detail and some scurrying. I had to lay out vestments, fill cruets with water and wine, put a chalice on the altar and place a host on the paten, and see to it a seminarian was available to assist in the mass.
Watching all of this, I got some insight into the various personalities of the priests. Some were perfunctory, zipping through the liturgy, while others said mass with ceremony and sincerity. Some scarcely drank the wine, while some others avoided the water. One priest not only drained the wine cruet, but after mass, sneaked into the closet and chugged down what remained in the bottle I used to fill them. A few celebrants stayed behind to correct the Latin of some of the younger boys, while some tried to cop a feel. How one celebrates the mass, I thought, defines the quality of one’s vocation.
After a while, I started experimenting. I gobbled up a couple of hosts, pretty but tasteless. I tried on a few vestments: a Stole, an Alb, even a Cincture. And I tried the wine. First, a sip or two, then a cruet or two, until I got up the courage to beat the good father to the remaining half-bottle and to drink it on my way back to the classroom.
I didn’t get away with it. In study hall, I fell off my seat, yawned and snored through The City of God. In chapel my genuflection planted me face down in the aisle, and I couldn’t stop giggling. On our way to the dormitories, the prefect accosted me. I puked on his soutane and blurted out the truth. I don’t remember much after that.
Personal humiliations quickly followed. I was replaced as a sacristan and removed from the football team. I was called out of class. Father Superior ordered me to pack up my trunk and get ready to leave; he had notified my parents that I was expelled and to expect me on the late bus to Lowell, MA. The young priest who drove me to the depot berated and scolded me the entire hour’s drive, reminding me of my disgrace, and promising me that my mother’s shame would never wash away my sins. His final zinger was, “Whatever made you think that you could be a priest?”
My dad met me at the bus terminal later that night and did something completely unexpected. He shook my hand and welcomed me home. My mom, on the other hand, didn’t speak to me until she had to register me for high school a week later.
Pop psychologists would read this episode as a cry for help, or as a result of a profound ambivalence towards the Church. I tried to analyze it in a prose poem years ago.
Quo Vadis?
The title of a movie made famous by Peter Ustinov’s child-like Nero—all the more menacing for its murderous innocence. I admire Ustinov’s imaginative take on Nero’s querulous self-absorption that made him more comic than tragic—but then again, I wasn’t an early Christian. And who can forget his ridiculous song, “Oh, Wall of Flame,” in answer to his mother’s panic? The film slights St. Peter, the same Simon Peter who had almost perished by the sword, who had denied his friend, who was too scared to bend to God’s will and was now beating feet as fast as he could, muttering something about hanging out with the brothers in Asia Minor. That he would leave Rome under these circumstances marked him as human; that he would turn back to face martyrdom made him no more real than Nero himself.
And I, at 17, kicked out of the seminary. Unlike Peter, I lacked faith in my frailties and had no answer—just the waiting car and driver whose buttocks were where his head should have been, and Nero himself playing a mean Maritime fiddle while autumn burned.
Jim and Holden, on the other hand, would have understood.
You can find Peter Johnson’s books, along with interviews with him, appearances, and other information at peterjohnsonauthor.com
His most recent book of prose poems is While the Undertaker Sleeps: Collected and New Prose Poems
His most recent book of fiction is Shot: A Novel in Stories
Find out why he is giving away his new book of prose poem/fragments, even though he has a publisher for it, by downloading the PDF from the below link or going to OLD MAN’S homepage. His “Note to the Reader” and “Introduction” at the beginning of the PDF explains it all: Observations from the Edge of the Abyss+