a poem, repeated here

Last Days


Handwork, breath-
work - wine
bread water oil -

promisory time
of icehearts thawed
fast

merton madness...

     So, George Weigel displays his ignorance early in this article. As a matter of fact, I'm not entirely sure what a 'rubrical traditionalist' is. As for the rest of the opening paragraph, it's a matter of perspective I suppose - to his abbot, Merton was a complex pain in the ass. For evidence, you might consult Merton's journals, but if you don't have time for that, this article by Patrick Henry Reardon is a fine place to start. Still, as Reardon will show you, one can be a complex pain in the ass, while remaining a faithful Catholic.
     Take this for example: 'it is a documented fact that Merton, unto the day he died, cultivated standard and traditional disciplines of Christian piety: the observance of the Canonical Hours, the daily recitation of the Rosary, the habit of regular Eucharistic adoration, the constant recitation of the Jesus Prayer, and so forth.' Make of those practices what you will, Reardon's conclusion is apt: 'These were not the practices of a Buddhist.'
     Now Reardon is not uncritical of Merton, nor should he be. That's not really my point. Weigel got on my nerves, my friends, because he simply wants to use Merton as a foil. I'd say his column amounts to a longish version of 'Even a liberal like Merton wouldn't like X', which is just stupid. In fact, it makes me suspect that Weigel is something less than a 'rubrical conservative', whatever that is.
     Peace out.

o so true...

no more waiting...

     Basil the cat died yesterday. I had to make the call, there was so little of him left.

don't expect much from this...

     Been doing some work since I'm up...this isn't insomnia, by the by - I could fall asleep right now - but, again, I feel like I should stay awake.  I have to leave for work in four hours.  I've got nothing...

waiting, just waiting...

     On a vigil here - my old cat Basil is in a bad way.  He could die at any time - could be another three months, could be tonight.  His breathing is labored, he's weak, not moving much, and yet he still wants company, still wants affection.  It's a bad sign when they disappear - they usually go off alone to die.
     So, now we wait, and wait, and if needs be we wait some more.  This kind of waiting is itself a kind of mourning...

happy day!

     This just arrived!  Delightful, just delightful.

just a naive thought...

     So I read here that the wave of riots in Engelond is 'not a revolution (though it may be part of a revolutionary sequence) and I’m fairly certain no one has suggested it is. It is a heterogeneous expression of rage.'  I don't know enough to say one way or another, but a thought occurs to me - what if the riots in the UK, in Greece, the incipient unrest in Spain and Italy, are of a piece with the crisis that spread from Tunisia to Syria since the winter?  What if, that is to say, we have here a general crisis, at least in its early stages?  
     Here in the US, we have spreading protests as well, though they go unnoticed.  Especially troubling is the 'flashmob' phenomenon, where young people will spontaneously mass to cause carnivalesque chaos.  You see, we have a similar legacy of broken promises, promises that should never have been made in the first place.
     More disturbing still, is the growing sense that our economy, such as it is, has become far too complex and technocratic to be the province of representative governance - that, in short, politics as we know it must yield to Finance, and thus to technocratic management of one kind or another.  This is far different from politically mandated wealth redistribution in the form of taxes and government social programs.  And it certainly isn't the same thing as Socialism, which is rather quaint by comparison.  What's more, it's far from clear to me that a new regime of managerial expertise, with balanced budgets and zero debt, all taken out of the hands of elected representatives, would be any kinder to the poor and disenfranchised than the current arrangement of things.
     Again, it seems that Finance has rapidly replaced politics - which itself long ago replaced religion - as the ordering principle of our social lives, and Finance is a mystery religion that makes the Cult of Isis look downright transparent.  Food and gas prices are on an upward tack, all due to the mysteries of Finance, you see, and that shows no sign of coming to an end any time soon.  Those upward price pressures are enough, dear reader, to send an incipient general crisis into a spiral of destruction the likes of which we have not seen since the seventeenth century.  Consider - the riots and uprisings we've seen around Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, those are confoundingly political responses to problems the Powers have framed in essentially technocratic terms as matters of Financial Management.  The violence, however stupid and unacceptable it may be, cannot be dismissed out of hand as pointless - it's a confounding anachronism in a world dominated by the IMF, the World Bank, and the Fed. 
     In short, the Powers seem to have missed the point.  They are trying to manage their way out of what is essentially a political crisis.  Which leads to a still more disturbing question - if wider and wider protests against, say, Qadafi or Assad signify the loss of legitimacy by their 'regimes', what do the riots in the UK, Greece, and such signify?  And what happens when roughly representative governments, whether parliamentarian or republican, show themselves no better able to withstand the tender mercies of Finance than good old-fashioned dictatorships?  Makes me wonder, that's all I'm saying...

complain complain...

     So, why the constant attention at a restaurant?  Why the endless interruptions by ebullient staff, including visits by the manager to see if I 'love' my meal?  Especially vexing is the question, 'Does everything taste delicious?' - well, that's damned manipulative.  Look, at Lasarte, they can ask that question [though they probably don't].  At the local Bob Evans at seven in the morning, it's just stupid.
     All this likely comes down to class.  You know, that reality we don't talk about here in the US.  'Class' here signifies not economic station - it's never really signified that here - but a mentality, an ethos, even a cosmology if you will.  Most restaurants cater to the Middle Class don't you know, and the Middle Class, such as it is, has always been average and anxious, so they require service, overt and regular service, from a staff trained to provide constant attention.  Having folks wait on 'em, you see, provides what these Middling Classes need most - a sense of worth fed by the illusion that they have power in a world in which they feel - with ample justification mind you - less than powerless.  What's more, the Middle Class places a premium on 'friendliness', for without it they will not receive the endless affirmation required to get through the day.  They are responsible for the epidemic of empty smiles and greetings that in a well-ordered world would be far too personal for most relations.
     So yes, I blame them for the lack of tact and professional distance at most restaurants, even 'fine' ones.  In fact, the Middling Classes have destroyed most of the rituals that allowed civilized people to go about the days and years with some semblance of social sanity.  But that's for another day.
     Peace out.

marketing!

     Received an email from Amazon offering discounts on 'academic tools'...don't have a clue what an 'academic tool' might be, although I suppose it could refer to the typical dean or department chair, and really now, who would want to buy one of those?