something something handmaid's tale...

What if - now go with me here, this is kind of crazy - what if - and I know how this is going to sound - what if we're not - look, I can hardly believe I'm saying this - what if we're not living in a television show or even a movie? I know, right? It's just crazy, but there it is. I can't shake this feeling that this is all *real*, you know? That it might even be bad for us to explain this real life using the plots of television shows and movies. Like, maybe we should, I don't know, life life straight with no chaser. Who knows? This lived life could then help us understand television shows and movies. If I really wanted to go completely off the rails I would say there is a stark difference between life and a work of art, that life never has the completeness, the sense of timelessness, of a great film or even a great television show (there have been only a few of these, and sadly, The Handmaid's Tale isn't one of them). But no, you're right, these are the warblings of a mind under strain from overwork and time spent away from the comforts of home. This is a time of national crisis. It has to be. Movies and television shows tell us it is. They tell us that dark forces are encircling us even now, dark forces that will create a dystopia we can binge watch through our living room windows.

playing along with the Prologue (which isn't a prologue) to the Gospel of John

     Here we have John 1.3. Please pardon the rough translations, which are hardly original or interesting; I'm just trying to work things out.

All things through him came into being, and without him nothing came into being. That which has come into being in him was life, and life was light of humankind... (πάντα δι᾽αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν. ὃ γέγονεν ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων…);

or,

All things through him came into being/were made, and without him nothing came into being which has come into being. In him was life, and life was the light of humankind... (πάντα δι᾽αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν ὃ γέγονεν. ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων…).

     So much hangs on the placement of a period. For what it's worth, to my ear the second makes more sense. Come to think of it, though, if you have Robert Grosseteste's De Luce in mind, the former begins to make more and more sense. For Grosseteste, light, as in a pure, metaphysical light enlivening all that was and is to come into being, was the first created substance. He even conceives of what we might call a singularity of light that then expands in all directions instantaneously (that last point is perhaps a matter of interpretation). So it's possible to say that 'What came into being in him (Jesus, the Logos) was life, and life was the light of humankind.'

P.S. - What if, instead of ‘came into being,’ or ‘was made,’ it’s ‘came to pass’? Does that work here? It enfolds making, sustaining, and providentially guiding all things to their ends. Need to think on this.

venus calling...

It being a long hot summer, the surprising news might have escaped your attention. There appear to be traces of molecules in the atmosphere of Venus, molecules that should not be there. Before any of us get too excited, we should realize that this could be the result of odd photochemical reactions we don't understand. That said, one real possibility is that these molecules, called phosphines, could be traces or echoes of life, at least at the cellular level. Odd to say, these phosphines seem to be riding currents some thirty miles above the surface of Venus, a surface that is about as inhospitable as you can imagine apart from the very real vacuum of space itself. One article I read (I didn't copy the link) suggested that these phosphine molecules could be the last remnants of a biosphere that once thrived a billion years ago. That's possible, as Venus isn't so different from earth, except for all the ways it is different. The pressure at the surface is like that found at ocean depths of 900m, and the surface temperature is about 740K, or about 860 degrees American. Why is it so hot you ask? The pressure for one thing, but mostly because the atmosphere is 98% carbon dioxide. So, I don't know if Venus has an atmospheric biosphere, or if we've detected the molecular echoes of life long extinct, or if it's simply a chemical anomaly. I do know that I have an interest in heat, pressure, and CO2.

a thought...

     This brief thought is offered on the way to something I intend to write at some point in the vaguest of futures.
     Whatever it is that we call 'mystical' is ingredient in the Christian life itself. Mystical must remain undefined at this point. 

karma karma karma...

    'He kicked his dog so a tree fell on his house. Karma!' 
     Look, I don't believe in Karma, but if you're going to talk about it, at least try to be in the vicinity of kind of getting it right. 
     Y'all don't even know you're on the Wheel of Samsara, suffering birth death and rebirth world without end, and yet you're out there talking about Karma. Y'all are just so totally ignorant of Krishna/Vishnu's disinterested creative destructive compassion for all beings because they don't really exist yet they do. And don't get me started about how this is all Brahma's dream - that would fry your world. But then, none of you want to stay in your lane and do what it requires. Y'all just want to be free to be whatever. Boy will that just keep all y'all on the Wheel of suffering until he wakes up (though he neither sleeps nor wakes) and this dream comes to an end.
     That, my friends, is Karma.

war and rumors of war...

     So there's a chance that Greece and Turkey may go to war in the next few days or weeks. At the very least a naval skirmish seems likely at some point. Well done, 2020. A small, regional war between two members of NATO is just the sort of thing to take my mind off my troubles.
     It would remain a small, regional scuffle, right? I mean, Russia would probably steer clear on principle, and Germany is unlikely to intervene even if the story of Merkle's fictional phone calls does cause a little embarrassment. Germans, after all, don't fight wars anymore. They peacefully sell weapons. They're a force for good really. Anyway, where was I?

i'm begging you...

     Stop talking about 'herd immunity' for the love of God. Please, just don't use those words again. Do it as a personal favor to me. Please.

it's been a while...

     Good evening to those of you who accidentally stumbled on this post while searching for the latest meme depicting Herr Donalt the Orange as either the destroyer of worlds or the latest overweight savior. I haven't done anything with this here blog in ages. Since last I was here the world lurched into flat spin, and we're about half-way to impact by my reckoning.
     So welcome! I hope you stay a while, because I intend to return to my old habit of posting regularly about any and all matters that strike my fancy. It isn't 2007, or even 2012, and Blogging in Blogdom ain't what it used to be. In fact, this is, oddly, about the most retro thing I can think to do on Teh Interwebs as we now know them. That makes it all the more compelling for me. So, I'll keep writing though I doubt anyone's around. It'll be good for me, and really now, isn't that the most important thing.
     So peace out, keep your distance, and for God's sake, where a mask, especially when going to the bank.

graven images in the commons...

     I have a few thoughts for you, and this is as good a place as any to offer 'em, here among friends. [Looks around wondering who will actually read this.] First, graven images are harmless things. They have no power. It is stupid and superstitious to be outraged over them, just as it is stupid and superstitious to cling to them as magic totems of a 'heritage' defined largely by sentimental justifications of brute force. Second, the categories used to 'understand' what's happening are old, tired, and need to die. They weren't any good in the first place. What's more, nearly everyone seems to be re-enacting, in deadly ernest, some period of the past. This isn't the thirties in Germany, or the late fifties and early sixties in Alabama. It isn't Reconstruction. The old scripts don't work, so let's throw them out. Even what passes for 'radical' and 'progressive' is obsolete. You want change, so change for Christ's sake.

a poem revisited...

     I wrote this a long time ago; it's been something like nine or ten years. It came to me after an illness had kept me locked inside for a couple of months. For some reason, I was reminded of it this morning.

Song



     Today I’ll go outside
leave the house as if for the first time
hear again snow under foot
see my breath again fog the crisp air
     yes today I’ll go outside
leave the house as if for the first time

     today I’ll go outside
see blue sky as if for the first time
feel again warm sun on my face
aslant mixed with the sting of the cold
     yes today I’ll go outside
see blue sky as if for the first time

     today I’ll go outside
hear folks talk as if for the first time
hear all the old neighbors talk
strangers talk while nursing their tea
     yes today I’ll go outside
hear folks talk as if for the first time

     those who won’t hear snow
under foot see blue sky feel again sun
on their face while the voices ring on
     regret regret as I go outside
leave the house as if for the first time

this inspires my inspirational inspirations...

     Found this on Facetube.

     If you hit a star, it would probably be the sun. If you flew as fast as NASA's New Horizon Probe, so the Interwebs tell me, you could slam into the sun's corona sphere in about 106 days. You would be going a little over 36,373 mpg (we're ignoring the drag from solar wind here, and ignoring the fact that it would kill you, just to keep things simple), so congratulations, you've been vaporized before reaching the Sun Proper. 

     Anyway, were you to miss the sun and tumble off into space, the nearest star to our solar system is Proxima Centauri, which is a mere 4.21 light years away. I suspect that you would die before you reached the Oort Cloud. But let’s say you started on the right trajectory and actually made it to Proxima Centauri some time this decade. That would mean you're a being with superpowers, so you probably don't need motivational memes and the like. You would also want to avoid *hitting* it, for the same reason that hitting the sun was a bad idea.

     You know, maybe it's better if you don't aim for the moon in the first place. After all, were you to hit it even that collision would kill you. But let's say you landed safely on the moon all by your lonesome. There's nothing to do there. I doubt the old car we left behind still runs. O, and there's *no air*, the moon being by nature inhospitable to us. The long story short is that, even if you aren't killed *hitting the moon*, you'll die in short order once you're there. No, aiming for the moon is not a good idea at all.

     Now, I suppose this could mean that you're trying to *shoot something at the moon*, in which case I just don't see the point at all.
     Hope you're feeling motivated to do something.

a poem...

Untitled

I want to meet my father Avraham the wandering Aramean,

ask him if he had ever heard the Voice before that day,

ever seen that Angel like a flaming pillar with the Name inside

him as an onyx stone might be set in a piece of marble.

How to recognize the Voice of the One who happens

along if not by those imperious commands - 

quit father’s house kindred homeland quit all that’s dear,

go, go now, go to the Land, don’t bother with where

you will go, I will show you the Land you will know it when you see it.

Just go; always go; forever go. There will be rest at the end.

O my father Avraham tell me at length of the terror
that still tosses nations about like motes in an April windstorm.

time for math...

This is excellent.

yeah, it's the Guardian, but still...

     See, I don't really want to care how people live out there. I have problems of my own. This, however, is an abuse of language, and that I do care about: 'Transgender soldier is first female to serve on British army frontline'. That's a lie, and as such it is an attempt to do violence to the order of being itself.
     Though it count for nothing, I must say no, this man is not 'the first woman to serve' on the frontline. He's a man, serving on the front line while suffering from the delusion that he is a woman. That several venerable institutions have colluded in supporting this man's delusions is irrelevant to the question at hand. As for the man in question, frankly, he's not my problem, but I'm not going to look into the night and call it day.

i hear the humanities are dying...

     It always puzzles me that we commend the study of one or another of the humanities, not because of the discipline itself, but for the sake of some ancillary benefit. So, study history, not because the study of history is worthwhile for its own sake, but because it instills something called 'critical thinking'. In fact, 'critical thinking' seems to be the universal yield of all the varied humanistic disciplines. It hardly matters which one you choose, for no matter how arcane it may seem, you will nonetheless obtain, develop, or somehow find yourself with 'critical thinking', or, even more impressive, 'critical thinking skills'. (What, after all, is a degree worth if you don't develop skills?) As a sales guy, let me tell you, that is a bad pitch, because it takes attention away from the discipline(s), and places it on some 'skill' abstracted from any particular course of study, a skill moreover that one can probably attain through the study of mathematics, say, or economics. What, one might reasonably ask, is the point of studying history, or classics, or neo-classical architecture, and not finance or mechanical engineering, if one can get 'critical thinking' from them all, and the later might just yield gainful employment in the bargain? I studied history all those years ago, because I found that I liked studying history in a particular place with particular people and that was that. The result is that I learned how to study history, which was the point.

'o the humanity!'...

     Amidst all the Election Insanity and Rumours of War, this appeared in today's Columbus Dispatch. Someone had An Idea, you see.

This could have been avoided if those in charge had watched enough classic television:

reading the news...

And who but Rumour, who but only I,
Make fearful musters, and prepared defence,
Whiles the big year, swollen with some other grief,
Is thought with child by the stern tyrant War,
And no such matter?   
                                    Henry IV, Part 2.

let's try this again...

    Well, here's where I begin to grow skeptical and wary of all these quick condemnations of Herr Donalt, including my own. It bothers me when a consensus forms so quickly, so easily, that adopting the regnant position is practically a reflex that entails no risk and no second thoughts while erasing all complexity.

an aside...

     Well, here's where I begin to grow skeptical and wary of all these quick condemnations of Herr Donalt, including my own. It bothers me when a consensus forms so quickly, so easily, that adopting the regnant position is practically a reflex that entails no risk and no second thoughts while erasing all complexity.

tradecraft...

     It's been a while since I waxed all aphoristical. It's a perishable skill, like playing the flute, say, or reading the news without praying for death.

   

a heartfelt query...

     Yeah, I'm still a compatibilist. Why don't we get a convention every now and then?

another revision, because i sometimes show my work...

A Satisfactory Conclusion

     He felt the woman standing over his shoulder and looked down, shaking his head and laughing softly.

     Never thought you’d find me

     The woman leaned on the bar and said, I knew I would eventually.

     Should have known better I guess. 

     I guess. There was silence for a minute or so, then, Want to finish your drink?

     He held up his glass and looked through the scotch, bemused at this turn in his affairs. That’d be good. 

     Take your time, I’ll be outside.     

     I’ll be along directly. 

     He watched her leave, finished his drink, then all unhurried wrote something on a napkin. He left it with some money on the bar and carefully walked across the nearly empty space, admiring once more the high coffered ceiling with its intricate designs.
     When he reached the revolving door, he stopped, smiled slightly, said to himself, So this is how it is, and walked into the light of midday.

a story, revised...

A Very Short Story

     He felt the other standing over his shoulder and looked down, shaking his head and laughing softly.

     Never thought you’d find me

     The other leaned on the bar and said simply, I knew I would eventually.

     Should have known better I guess. 

     I guess. There was a pause, silence, then, Want to finish your drink?

     He held up his glass and looked through the scotch. Yeah. That’d be good. 

     Take your time, I’ll be outside.

     I’ll be along directly.
     He watched the other leave, finished his drink, then all unhurried wrote something on a napkin. He left it with some money on the bar, carefully stood and slowly walked across the nearly empty space, admiring once more the high ceiling with its intricate designs.
     When he reached the revolving door, he stopped, smiled slightly, said to himself, So this is how it is, and walked into the light of midday.

a story...

A Very Short Story

     He felt the other standing over his shoulder and looked down, shaking his head and laughing softly.

     Never thought you’d find me

     The other leaned on the bar and said simply, I knew I would eventually.

     Should have known better I guess. 

     I guess. There was a pause, silence, then, Want to finish your drink?

     He held his glass and looked through the scotch. Yeah. That’d be good. 

     Take your time, I’ll be outside.

     I’ll be along directly. 

     He watched the other leave, finished his drink, then all unhurried wrote something on a napkin. He left it with some money on the bar, carefully stood and slowly walked across the bar to the door leading to the street. When he reached it, he stopped, smiled slightly, said to himself, So, this is how it is.
     With that, he opened the door and walked into the light of midday.

a poser...

     I returned to my much neglected German lessons this morning, only to be confronted by this question: Ist eine Fliege wichtig [Is a fly important]? O my friends that is a matter of profound theological consequence.

a story...

An Encounter in Time

     There once was a boy, and he sat one afternoon in the middle of his living room holding a toy tractor. He knew it was his living room, but he did not know why. He studied the toy tractor in his hand, studied it with the seriousness that only a boy of one year can afford to lavish on such a small, commonplace object of devotion. He knew the tractor was his, you see, just as he knew the living room was his, though he knew not the words Tractor, Living, or Room. He had also just realized that were he to set the tractor on the floor and turn away from it, the tractor would remain where he had placed it. This was a new thing, as though the world were coalescing around him as he moved through it, forming itself ever more permanently so that he could for once take his eyes off something without it slipping from being. That freed him up so that he could do something like study a toy tractor with such seriousness without worrying that those other, larger people who somehow held the key to his world would slip from being. He did not know it, of course, but he was on his way to forgetting the transience of all things, setting himself up for the grief of loss later when people and things would in fact slip from being into...well, that’s for another time. For now, we have a tale to tell of this boy who could finally stand on his own, but who for all that could not simply amble down the hall and into the wide world. Little did this boy, barely one as he was, realize that he was about to be visited by someone, someone only he could see, someone at once terrifying and delightful. 

     The boy, you see, was about to be visited by an Angel, and not just any Angel, o no, but one of those we call Archangels, though again, only the boy could see him as an Archangel. To the rest of the other, larger people in the household he would seem like their neighbor John, a kind fellow to be sure, but one who never seemed to be able to hold his life together.

     Suddenly there came a light tap tap tapping on the front door. The boy did not look up from his tractor. There was another, louder rap rap rapping on the door, and what sounded like someone falling against it from outside. The boy’s father, one of the larger people in the household, appeared from the kitchen, drying his hands with a dishtowel and muttering incomprehensibly. He opened the door, and in fell John, his clothes wrinkled and hair mussed from sleeping on his couch the night before. 

     ‘O, sorry,’ he said as he rose and stood all unsteadily. He was obviously and even painfully drunk. No, this was no hangover - he long ago had passed three sheets to the wind. It would be a long while before he got them back. The boy’s father helped him to a chair in the living room. 

     ‘What brings you by?’

     ‘Hmm?’ John asked, looking up a bit befuddled. ‘O yes, I just wondered, have you any...the...th...thea?’

     ‘Thea?’

     ‘Yeth...th...no, tea...tea...have you any tea?’

     ‘Would you like us to make you some tea?’

     ‘No no...no no...loose leaf tea...I was sitting...,’ at this the room seemed to pitch and roll, causing John to sway first to the front then to the back, then from side to side, as if he might fall out of the chair, but he gallantly pulled it together at the last second. He continued, ‘I was in my apartment...thinking...thoughts...and realized I wanted some tea. But I have no tea, so I came...to search...for tea....’

     ‘I think we have some Earl Grey.’

     ‘Good, good....’ At this, John spied the boy in the middle of the living room. ‘Young Master Elias! You’re so big!’

     His voice had changed, though the boy’s father seemed not to notice. Instead of the slurred drawl of a drunkard, John spoke with a poise and clarity that gently drew the boy from his revery. As the boy turned to the source of such a kind summons, his father stopped in mid step - all was suddenly still, so silent, and the boy was as it were embraced by a sentient kind of light that spoke to him as it were. It seemed to the boy that John smiled at him as no one had ever smiled to him, not even the larger people who lived with him. 

     ‘Yes my young friend, you are so very big of a sudden, as you would say of course.’

     The boy started to laugh and clap his hands while speaking his barely year-old tongue in return.

     ‘That is so,’ said the Archangel. ‘You are very perceptive to notice. Not a lot of the larger people would you know.’

     The boy laughed as he awkwardly stood to walk over to John. He was taken up in an ever more intense embrace of light and laughter as they spoke of many mysteries, though of course John never used words quite exactly. The boy understood that this strange creature was his friend, would always be his friend. In fact, he had been Young Master Elias’s friend from long before time began, as we would say of course. ‘I thought it time we got to know each other,’ he told the delighted child. John told him of the wonderful and terrible world into which he had been born, and of the One who had made this fabric of gossamer to show, in its own way, His truth, beauty, and goodness. This One, who was strangely Three (the boy laughed with pleasure when he heard that), would always be Elias’s ultimate Friend, the One who had set John as a protector for the little one until the day of his death. ‘O yes, that,’ John said. ‘We’ll have more to say about that later.’ And the boy understood it all.

     Then John said it was time for him to leave. Young Master Elias’s lower lip started to quiver a little, and he made as if to cry. ‘O no no no, my friend, I’m always around, though you won’t always be able to see me, and you have your mother and father who love you, and all their friends who are looking out for you.’ And there was another sort of embrace of light, and John as it were placed what you might call a finger on the boy’s chin and lifted the boy’s face to his own. ‘One last thing. This is very important. Don’t be afraid, no matter what happens. Don’t be afraid. It’s ever so much harder to protect you when you’re afraid.’

     At this, all the many sounds of the boy’s world returned in a rush, sound upon sound - the air conditioner in that window with its wheezing compressor, the cat scittering across the kitchen floor, and of course his father’s voice.

     ‘Just sit there and rest, I’ll get that tea.’

     John seemed to snore for a moment, then roused himself. ‘Wha...? O, tea...good, good...need some tea. I don’t exactly feel like myself right now.’              Young Master Elias stared at the drunkard slouched just so in his wrinkled clothes and mussed hair for a long time, then returned to his study of that toy tractor. If anyone had looked closely, they would have seen that he never ceased to smile that whole evening.

something for this here election...

     Today we here in Ohio vote in our minor, inconsequential primary. This really is shaking out as the most important Presidential election since, o, 1980. So, it seems meet and right to keep these words from our first President in mind as I head to the polls. 

'In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I could wish; that they will control the usual current of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations. But, if I may even flatter myself that they may be productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good; that they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism; this hope will be a full recompense for the solicitude for your welfare, by which they have been dictated,' George Washington's Farewell Address.

electionisticalnexcitementnpunditry

Five more days and we here in Ohio will once again put the *swing* in swing-state. I am as yet undecided, though in good apophatic form I know those whom I shall not vote for. 

Sanders certainly is out - he's better as a gadfly in the Senate - and Kasich, should he remain on the ballot, shall be as a vessel of dishonor. As for the various strageric schemes to throw a spanner into Trump's hair, they're all too complicated and have only a faint chance, if any, of success. Besides, I can think of fates worse than Trump. 

If Romney screws this up I'm setting everyone's shoes on fire.

Incidentally, early this morning in New Albany I saw a fellow putting out signs for the Kasich campaign. Lea Ann and I speculated that perhaps he was an in-law who felt obligated to at least do something. I admired his quixotic dilligence in the face of certain, humiliating defeat. 

Anyway, the Ohio Primary is almost upon us. Be afraid, be very afraid.

a translation...

Antonio Machado, ‘Sobre la tierra amarga...’

   Upon the bitter land,

the dream holds labyrinthine

roads, tortured paths,

parks in flower and shade and silence;

   deep crypts, climbing above stars;

icons of hopes and memories.

Tiny figures that pass and smile 

- an old man’s melancholy toys - ;

  friendly images,

at the path’s flowered turn,

and roseate chimeras

that make a way . . . far away

today's fun thought...

     The most extreme manifestation of American Exceptionalism is the breathless condemnation of any manifestation of American Exceptionalism. 

rambling rambles about nothing at all...

     I need to start exercising again. Fell out of the habit thanks to the long bout of flu, infected sinuses, and general plaguiness. Still not back to full - in fact, I've lost my voice for like the fifth time or so. O well, this can't continue forever, no no no it can't I say. It's time for a return to cardio! Sounds like a movie - A Return to Cardio. 'Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks star in this Romantic Drama about two men who fall for the same woman in the same town after The War, and then return years later, each unbeknownst to the other, to rekindle their lost kindle with her - A Return to Cardio'.
     So like, yeah, I need to start exercising again. 

nothing to see here...

     Seems Noam Chomsky has seen fit to say something about The Donald. I don't really care about Chomsky, so no, I won't be reading the article in question. That would cut into my free time. I will simply note here the inevitable convergence of the twain, like the Titanic and its Iceberg riding the currents of Absolute Will.

it's like christmas has come early...

     O boy o boy o boy o boy o boy Facetube gave us cute virtual stickers we can use for anything! It’s like we’re kids again! Kids with debts and jobs and lawyers and doctors and accountants boy do we need accountants and kids and cars that need fixing and lawns and roofs and an ever growing list of regrets and doubts about whether we ever made the right decisions when pushed to it...but yay, we got some badass virtual stickers! Woohoo!

thoughts on this here election cycle...

     It seems that the fate of the Republic is at stake in this latest Hunger Games, Presidential Edition. That is simply not true. The fate of those who will live through the final death and fall of the Republic is at stake. That's totally different.
     Have a nice day.

a poem...

When it is Nearly Winter

A thunderstorm comes tearing from the west,

and once again the ground is thick with leaves

wet and matted, mottled brown and yellow; 

some few fly about the gathering dark

of early evening in November, as

curled shavings fly before the carpenter’s plane.

These are not yet the shortest days, but when

the dark slams down upon those rushing home, 

those who have seen so little daylight while

they worked or slept or ate in tiny rooms,

it seems an almost perpetual night, the day

an errant dream lost before we’re awake,

like some frolicsome snake we glimpse as it 
streaks out of sight along a garden path.