changes changes and more changes...

     There are changes afoot and aboot around here.       

     Right now, it looks like I'm going to dissolve my small company. I will be a W2 with the contractor I've represented since 2009, and my people will be W2s with me in their turn. (A lot of this has been taken out of our hands by changes in IRS regs and the like.) 

     This could, and do emphasize the conditional there, this could lead to me going completely corporate in a year or so as a, yes, general manager of one of our sales offices. That's a long way off, and I would have to do a lot to earn it, if I even want it in the first place. In any event, after a bit of whiplash, I've started to adapt and plan anew. 

     Oddly enough, none of this will change what I do every day, except that I will have a more formal role as a mentor with new reps as they come along. 

     What a weird life this is. 

     Have you noticed how many great novels are about how dangerous it is for you to read novels?
     I'm sure this is the first time anyone has pointed that out. Maybe I can get a grant.

Tedium -

seeking identity;
self-expression;
spirituality;
life devoid of dogma;
comfortable religion.

Give me Truth for Christ's sake!

Give me the light we have now. Show me the dying world in that light. Save me.

Everything else is tedium.

last things...

     I do wonder who reads this. I think there are five or six of you left.
     Snow is coming...
     Wrote a poem; played the guitar; did some reading; now, it's time for bed. I must be on the road in six hours. My tasks for the morning will be difficult.
     That's life in the Big City.

a small poem...

Watching and Waiting



A lone pistol hangs on the wall;

will it ever go off, sounding
in the cold air of midwinter,
or will it sullenly hang there?

A day of ashes and tears
when we’ll know at the last

how to weigh what we’ve lost;
in the sorrow of judgment,

we’ll have all our answers,
we’ll know all our secrets;
all the looming unrest
will come to an end on that day.

Have mercy that day on all;
fear that the pistol may finally
go off, fear even mercy
itself, for love is most fearsome.

indulgences will always be with us it seems...

     Who wants a Plenary Indulgence? It's for the World Day of the Sick after all, so how can that be bad?
     I read through the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church, and there really is so much that is good, beautiful, and true. Indulgences, however, don't even make any sense, especially as tied to the office of the Bishop of Rome.
     Sigh.

what's the point of having all these books?

     I have so many books. Even after several major purges, the last resulting in the disappearance of seven boxes of those fitted out for destruction before the foundation of the universe, the things are everywhere. I do much wonder why I keep most of 'em.
     As I get older, and have less and less time to fritter away, I search for the essential. I return to certain authors - Augustine, Virgil, Dostoevsky, Plato, Milton, Bulgakov, Shakespeare, Homer, Ovid, Goethe, Dante, Pushkin, Cervantes, Origen, Hamann, Dickinson, Melville, Kierkegaard - because they trouble me. Yes, I variously enjoy their works, in fact I love 'em for the simple fact that they exist, but there's more to it than that.
     They unnerve me; they make me want to change my life; they overwhelm me by their sheer extravagance and scope; they pull me in many different directions at once. What they share is that all of 'em, pagan and Christian alike, offer stark alternatives - salvation or perdition. Reading 'em becomes a matter of eternal life or death.

a poem reprised...

     I wrote this, lessee, in 2006 as an homage to Anthony Hecht, and haven't looked at it in at least three years. I just made a couple of small changes. It seems apt to the hour. The form is related to the sestina. 

Terms of Love



So then we dove into a lake of fire,
that we might prove ourselves in tests of love
and show them, yes, we were indeed afire
with all that ardor, all that cunning fire
that might shield from view our deep disgrace,
as all those cherubs with their swords of fire
are said to form a phalanx ranked in fire
that guards the gates of paradise - no water
can douse those flames, instead we crave pure water
that might, if thrown aright, yet stoke our fire
to burn with such an incandescent light
it just might set our stony hearts alight . . .

ah, come, let's say aloud, We fled the light.
For yet, one might protest, what of that fire
that we've forgotten, fire that brings to light
the bodies of those tortured with delight,
the bloodless rapist who, to feign true love,
will hold on to his best girl ‘til the light
of dawn shows all our shows of love as light
and airy fictions, our heroic grace
the ancient engine firing our disgrace.
It's not for us, this shadow play of light.
O bring us air, o bring us cold, clear water.
I gasp to think of how, along the water,

men sat in crumbling bars and asked to water
their whiskey on the cheap or guzzle light,
diluted wine and beer.  I prayed that water
might come and wash away our failure, water
cascading down one sunlit day, sapphire
and cold.  Earth's a condensate of water,
or so I'm told by one who lived by water
and with his bread found something I'd call ‘love,'
except that he just couldn't seem to love
the one who gave that vision of deep water,
dry land afloat and coursing with sure grace
along the oceanic tide to grace

the court of heaven as a bauble.  Grace
can seem as strange, as deep, as cold as water
in which we drown.  Forget heroics - grace
is nothing if we win it through that grace
found native in each limb, that fading light
you'll find in every seedy fall from grace
occasioned by what seemed an act of grace.
Dark shreds of cloud migrate before the fire
breaks out upon us all.  For us, that fire
is nothing but the wage of our disgrace,
our solitary raving wrought from love
of Nothing, with its vain idea of love.

I'll never sing a threnody for love
and thread a lie:  my song would tell of grace,
of that astonished Bride I've come to love.
It's just – somewhere a wraith is cowering, love
denied along with bread and even water: 
so as I loaf about and sigh with love
for all the hidden goodness of that Love
who moves the wheeling sky and shatters light
across the waters, still my head feels light
and giddy at the dark desire to love
no more while one lost soul is raked with fire.
But no, love calls us to a world of fire.

It's long since passed, the chance to quench that fire
that sweeps across each city, set alight
by nothing really.  We can only seek the water
that drowns us all within an act of grace
so violent I can only call it love.

axiomatic...

     If Henry VIII decreed it, then it is foolish and wrong.

     So, it seems I'm the only person who is terrified by flash mobs.
     How great - we can now call together a mob in mere minutes through the use of social media and the little fetishes in our pockets.
     What could possibly go wrong?
     O, and when did a mob go from being at least a little sinister, to being a great thing. It's like a crowd - one might crowd source a symphony, or a novel. Because, yeah, crowds have always been forces for good.
     Jesus can't come soon enough.

something from Paul J Griffiths...

     Paul J Griffiths offers a lovely string of vignettes* recalling turning points in his life, a life he notes is as opaque to him as ever. It all makes sense to me, though our worlds are so very different. Take and read.

*You'll have to register with the site to read it this week. It seems that when the time's up, the article will pass behind the wall once again if you don't have a subscription.

the church thing redux...

Don't get too excited about this. It's a phase I'm sure.

with Borges at the Arcade...

     One Jonathan Mayhew offers some brief remarks on Jorge Luis Borges. The old man was given to certain quasi-platonic notions, and Mayhew alights on one in particular: Borges came to more and more relativize the given words of a poem as though they were shadows, if you will, of their archetype. As Mayhew notes, Borges came to think that Quevedo never found his archetype, and so his poetry became mere verbal virtuosity.
     I have many times written in ER of how a poet's job is to find out 'what the poem wants to be'. In formal terms, this simply means that you cannot force a ballade to be a sonnet to be a run of rhyming couplets. In short, a well-made poem will have an inevitability about it - try to imagine Paradise Lost in rhyme royale stanzas, for instance, or Shakespeare's sonnet 119 as a rondel. At a more minute level, this implies that the order of the words themselves within any given line, and the syntactical structures cutting across lines, will have a similar inevitability to them. To my mind, this is because the poet found the form and the music and all the other attendant details that allowed the made thing, the poem, to become what it was meant to be. It's like sculptor finding the form in a block of marble. I do much wonder, however, if this bears any resemblance to Borges's notion.
     Mayhew aptly says that certain lines have a 'chiseled quality'. Rather than being the slippery, provisional arrangement of sounds to approximate an archetype, such lines, indeed such poems, are themselves the archetypes for all the many and various translators that must move 'em from one language to another. For Borges, all poems, even the 'originals', become translations of a sort; for Mayhew, and for me, this just doesn't make sense. And yet, and yet, I must wonder again at the origin of that sense of rightness, that sense of a poem being chiseled into form.
     We're treading here into territory marked by Plato's epoch-making anguish over the thrice removed images of mimetic art and even the rhythm of song, and their ability to catalyze passions destructive and benevolent and all perhaps untrue. It was anguish, certainly - he returned to it again and again, using all the genius and mastery of his art to attack it first from one direction then another. I have no definitive answer to his question, and thus lack a cure for the anguish. It's an anguish I share, as a maker of poems [surely a grand tautology that]. What I will say for now, is that there is in the greatest of poets nothing like 'mere' verbal virtuosity, though we might value that more highly than we do at this benighted juncture of space-time.
     This all bears more thought. For my part, at the very least I'm glad to have stumbled upon The Arcade. Benjamin is in good hands.

o, and about that so-called 'poem' at the inauguration...

     I don't care if Richard Blanco is gay - that's none of my business - but pretending to be a poet while publicly reciting such garbage is immoral. I see and hear no evidence in this, or anything else, that he has the slightest talent; that he has studied and mastered anything; that he is anything more than a self-promoting nitwit. This makes the hideous verse of Maya Angelou sound like Homer. Poetry is a high calling. Scribble 'verse' all the live long day if you must, but don't inflict it on the world and don't assume the title of Poet if this is the best you can do.

take and read...

     ...this piece by Anthony Esolen.

Beyonce and Caesar, sitting in a tree...

     Caesar received his unction yet again the other day.
     Seems Beyonce lip-synched the National Anthem. Beyonce did this after showing up late.
     This is a scandal.
     Now, we elected a moral idiot as to be our Maximum Leader and Drone Warrior, and the inauguration was from what I can tell a mix of insipid moralism and mind-numbing atheism. The Maximum Leader and Drone Warrior mind you handled three Bibles. There was mention of something called God. We like something called God, you see, when we need something to bless us in our stupidity. Beyond that, dear reader, I don't think this God, whatever it is, mattered much to anyone on the Auspicious Day.
     No, from what I can tell the unction was provided by Beyonce.
     Hence the scandal. A true scandalon is possible only in the precincts of the Sacred. That all attention is focused on Beyonce's turpitude, that it is even imaginable that some might be scandalized by it all, indicates that Beyonce was in that instance the apotropaic manifestation of our autochthonous American Sacred.
     And still I cannot bring myself to care.

sure i hinted at Nazis, but she started it...

     Just read something from Salon.com. First, it's idiotic. Second, it's lucid. Call it, lucidly idiotic. Third, it's obviously time to revoke Godwin's Law. I mean, she did bring storm troopers into it:

     'Here’s the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal. That’s a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers. Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She’s the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always.'

     Quietly note, without panic, the intoxication of absolute power, and scorn for life unworthy of life [lebensunwerte leben, in case anyone has forgotten], and the brutality of expression that yet lacks any trace of shrillness.
     Then quietly note, again, without panic, that it is not presented as a provocation to revolution. Such quiet assurance is only possible after the revolution. It is the certitude of victory.
     Breathtaking it all is.
     Mary Elizabeth Williams shows herself to be a moral idiot, yes, but we must thank her for the honesty with which she exalts an act of sheer stupid violence into an expression of the supreme jouissance of the unmoored will careening about the world. She has also taken what would be a reasoned objection to her position - hey, you know that's, like, killing a child for profit and convenience - and neutralized it most effectively with a simple So what. She knows we're killing children - and? So what? This is about power, bitches, and don't you forget it.
   

     Mustn't allow them defective people to live - it's all in the timing, though. If you round 'em up and gas 'em, then you're a genocidal goon. If you kill 'em before they're born, you're performing a safe and legal medical procedure.
     Yes, it's all clear to me now.

     O for crying out loud, everyone should know who Inigo Montoya is by now. The name isn't even flagged by the auto spell check that plagues Apple.
     Besides, Inigo is the most noble character in The Princess Bride. Wesley is an ass you know.
     What, you like Wesley? He's a mass murdering pirate. Montoya is yes a mercenary but we see his honorable nature throughout the film. Wesley is, again, an ass. He even toys with Buttercup.
     And Buttercup, come on, she just wants a slave boy. As you wish my ass.
     Anyway, I see no cause for alarm in anyone wearing a T-shirt bearing Montoya's famous announcement.
     Unless of course you're the Six-Fingered Man who killed his father.

idiot ceos...

     I'd have to say that Mr. Kwak is right. CEOs of the sort puffed by the WSJ piece are more or less worthless on the whole, notable and noble exceptions aside. Now, I'm a CEO, but I own my little corporation, and if it fails there is no golden parachute in my future. Come to think about it, the golden parachute - or golden handshake - is about the most obscene clause in the history of contract law.

an auspicious day, a glorious day...

     On this of all days, when we face a multibillion dollar industry devoted to killing children for profit and convenience, I could say something about just and unjust laws, Martin Luther King, and the eugenic implications of that Industry, but hell, everyone knows all that already.
     Certain facts remain immutable.
     We hate children.
     If those fifty-two million human beings had been allowed to take up our space, we might have less stuff by now. It's hard enough to get by you know.
     Most of those fifty-two million human beings were undesirable as to race or class or, most important, gender. Can't have poor, brown girls roaming the earth. God knows what they might do, but we know for certain they would take our stuff.
     Given these immutable facts, and the vast sums of money involved, the multibillion dollar industry devoted to the killing of children for profit and convenience has a bright future. Were Planned Parenthood a publicly traded company I would issue a strong buy and hold advisory. Various laws that might make it more or less inconvenient for you to kill your child will therefore ultimately fail.
     They must fail. Nothing can stop this.
     We will continue to kill children until it is no longer profitable to do so. During an apocalypse one thing is certain - follow the money, follow the money.
     God bless America.

how i suffer...

The MacBook is frozen. We've been on hold with tech support for twenty-five minutes or so.

Sigh.

I hope Steve Jobs comes back as a slime mold.

*******

Update: All is resolved. The call consumed one hour and twelve minutes of my mortal life. Again I say,  Sigh.

'the church thing' isn't a thing...

     I found this, apparently from Kathleen Norris' The Cloister Walk, a book I've never read:

     'I should try telling my friends who have a hard time comprehending why I like to spend so much time going to church with Benedictines that I do so for the same reasons that I write: to let words work the earth of my heart. To sing, to read poetry aloud, and to have the poetry and the wild stories of scripture read to me. To respond with others, in blessed silence. That is a far more accurate description of morning or evening prayer in a monastery than what most people conjure up when they hear the word ‘church’.'

     Yes. 
     I must read that book.
     Oh, and I must find some Benedictines. It's been a long time since I spent time with 'em.

     Is this real I wonder. I mean, does the Pope have time to write for Twitterface?

     C'est vrai - 'felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,' Virgil.

brief Augustinian noodlings...

     Compatibilist doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, now does it? Still, I remain stubbornly a compatibilist of the Old School, and by Old School I mean the Platonist/ Augustinian tradition. The fix is in, the game is rigged, and love is elective and quite particular. Your citizenship papers were stamped 'before the foundation of the universe', as the kids would say. That, dear reader, is good news - he's had his eye on you all along. Really, it'll work out in the End, don't worry.

a poem...

Song



Sing, muse, how we’ll yet endure
as if this world’s wrought for our sake,
that face of love shining, a lure
for a heart no creature can slake;
sing soft, sing soft every word,
for we know all good things will die,
like stars spun by a note few have heard
about the last bright morning sky.

     Made the mistake of turning on the radio. Do they play 'Don't Stop Believing' on the shuttle to hell? I bet it's in power rotation, right before 'It's a Small World'.
     Whoa, that was a mistake...make it go away...

     Been reading economics.
     I feel like taking a random walk down a variance, but only if we first share a golden handshake.
     Time for some Pushkin.

trying to start a trend here...

     Homoscedasticity is a threat to our whole way of life.
     Don't say you weren't warned.

wendell berry acts like wendell berry...

     It doesn't really surprise me that Wendell Berry would rant so against opponents of so-called Gay Marriage. That he would be so intemperate, comparing us to varied evil-doers of the past, also fails to shock.
     That's simply the way Berry rolls.
     Many there are who imagine Berry is some kind of conservative fellow-traveller. Back in the heady days of the so-called Crunchy Con movement [anyone else remember that?], I read many a Crunchy sort riff on Wendell Berry. We here at ER had a shelf of books by the man until the first Great Book Purge.
     What many never seem to have understood is that Berry is a Southern Democrat, with the weight on the either the adjective or the noun depending on which essay you're reading at the moment. He votes for Democrats, and tends to hew to the party line when pushed. That he's all curmudgeon like and refuses to use computers and such is irrelevant to his fundamental liberalism.
     Make of that what you will. In any case, none of us should be surprised by his latest tirade. For me and my house, we're grateful for a few of his books, but there is no need to revisit 'em. Unlike some authors, for us he is The Past.

only good will come from this...

     A free online travel guide that anyone can edit - what could possibly go wrong?

zuckerberg's hoodie and the tyranny of a brand...

     What I want to know is, when does Zuckerberg get to stop wearing the hoodie? I mean, back in the day he was young, and it was all cool that a youngish Harvard guy could take the venture capital world to the cleaners while wearing a hoodie. It was rebellion without the rebellion, you know? As the man gets older, though, I wonder when it will be safe for him to shed the hoodie. It's now such a part of him, of, dare I say, his brand, that were he to start wearing, I don't know, Panama hats and pleated slacks with silk shirts, it's likely the whole of Facebook would collapse. The man is trapped in his hoodie. He can never be free of it. I can see him, in his nineties, shuffling around in a hoodie. He'll be the only human being in that world who even remembers what a hoodie signified at the turn of the century when life was simpler.
     Before it's too late, someone please send the guy to Savile Row. He's got the money. He just needs a decent suit for these public product launches and suchlike.

books! more books!

     As always, I have my finger on the pulse of the desires for the whims of my readers. For that reason, I'll let y'all know what books are scattered about at this time. I offer 'em in no particular order.

Philip Fisher's Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits, and Other Writings

The Logos of Heraclitus: The First Philosopher of the West on its Most Interesting Term, and, The Music of the Republic: Essays on Socrates' Conversations and Plato's Writings, both by one Eva Brann

Vasari's Lives of the Artists, volume 1

The Tempest

R. E. Allen's translations of The Republic and Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Gorgias, Menexenus

David Ricks, The Shade of Homer: A Study in Modern Greek Poetry

Plato's Phaedrus, A Commentary for Greek Readers, by Paul Ryan

Eros at the Banquet: Reviewing Greek with Plato's Symposium, by Louise Pratt [pardon me!]

The Tortoise and the Lyre: Aesthetic Reconstructions, by Liberato Santoro-Brienza [I swear that's his name]

Greenwald, Kahn, et. al., Value Investing, from Graham to Buffett and Beyond

Stephen Halliwell, The Aesthetics of Mimesis: Ancient Texts and Modern Problems, and Between Ecstasy and Truth: Interpretations of Greek Poetics from Homer to Longinus

Auerbach's Dante, Poet of the Secular World

La Vita Nuova

And that's about it. 

a book we'll never read...

     N. T. Wright has a new book on the way. It is in fact an installment in his Series Of Really Big Books. I wonder if he's read any history. O well, we here at ER remain resolutely indifferent to the Seven-Headed Former Bishop of Durham.

Why yes I have had a little wine, thank you.

     Only 45 more hits this month and ER will reach 1000 for the month of January, and many of those hits are legitimate even. That would be a first for this incarnation of ER. The old ER, back when there was a Blog-City, peaked at 26,000 in one month, but who's counting eh? I mean, it's not like I'm obsessed with such things.

     Really, I'm not.

     Why are you looking at me like that?

     I need a new picture. Damn.

guns don't kill people, people kill guns...wait, I know this one...people don't kill people, guns kill guns...damn...it'll come to me...

     Guns are accidence - the substance is found elsewhere. We're afraid to look for it.
     It's like one of those creepy pictures of a bucolic, family scene, and hidden in a bush, or beneath a pillow, is a demonic face, a face that just blends in enough so that you can't see it unless you search for it. Of course, once you see it, you can't forget it. It is, well, haunting, and no one wants to be haunted now do they.
     But we are haunted, my friends. Something is out to get us. The guns just make it easier. Prudent or not - And who can untangle that skein? - executive orders will not help us.
     It's like the TSA requiring those little bottles of shampoo, and that we put them in a plastic bag [prophylactic] no less. We even know it's useless, absurd, that the airlines like it because they can charge premiums to go around it all, yet, yet, we allow it to continue. It's all action at a distance, frittering energy away because we must, must, must do something.
     I have been asked, Do you think we should do nothing? Yes, precisely that. The horror at stillness, the impossibility of patience astonishes me sometimes.
     So now we have a president who rules by executive decree. Well, we've had that for a while, yes? The difference is that now it's all in the open, and we even welcome it with a sigh of relief. It's the next step my friends, and it's the crucial one.
     Something is out to get us, yes that's true. It's haunting us even as we speak, and when we finally see it in the image of safety we've conjured for ourselves, we won't be able to look away as it destroys us all.
     Have a nice day.

     I am as always astonished by the gleeful sadism of packaging designers.

Yogurt - it has 'cultures' in it. Apparently this helps yogurt pushers sell the stuff. 'Cultures'. I bet they use a base 16 mathematical system and make awesome tapestries.

is this senator worth the money?

     You may have read that last post and responded, 'Uh, what?' See, we just had a gander at the voting record and suchlike of one Robert Portman, who happens to be one of our senators there in the Washington Swamplands. He is, get this, an eight- term senator no less, and he has accomplished precisely nothing. Now, I don't much care for the illusion that a senator busily passing all manner of legislation is necessarily a good thing - it's usually just bad for everyone - but for crying out loud, the guy has been taking up space since 1993. Surely he could have done something interesting in that time. The least he could have done is give us a good scandal from time to time. You know, something involving interns and pages and photocopiers, something to earn the salary.

     No wonder things are in such bad shape.

P.S.

     It just occurred to me that someone might have paid a bargain price for this senator. Who knows? Perhaps he has done precisely what his employer has required. 

     No, it takes guts to be that corrupt. 

     Come to think of it, 'Hell, elect me. I can do nothing with the best of 'em' sounds like a great campaign slogan.

     It's called a 'Mass'. Try not to panic.

One more - Carson is the greatest of the great postwar Irish poets.

more Ciaran Carson...

This video is of better quality:

The great Ciaran Carson. I've nothing to add.

     A memory: floating on my back in the Gulf of Mexico, where it's nearly a mile deep, listening to the ocean and wondering what was down there in the depths. I had jumped from our family's boat as it drifted. My mother was making sandwiches for lunch. It was a sunny day. I was about eleven years old. Earlier, we had seen a manta ray at the surface, and had circled it for several minutes. In my memory it is immense.
     I am grateful for my life.

a poem...

How to be Saved



What will you say and how will you hide
when you see at last that the sky is torn open
time at an end the sun going dark
and a voice, that voice you cannot escape
commanding once and for all that you state
for all to hear, Come, how can I save
you when I never knew you except as a rumor?
Find a splashing fountain in a courtyard at night
moon amber and big on the horizon, fall
into the cold water and drink, drink your fill -
drink and care nothing for what you’ll say
or how you’ll stand, drink and gaze at the moon
as it seems so to hang there, that is all.

how to waste time...

     A couple of weeks ago I paid a visit to OSU's Fisher College of Business to talk to a guy about the MBA program. Tuition alone, for the whole degree, is $90k. According to their marketing stuff, the average MBA graduate can expect to make a whole $89k upon graduation. First of all, that's just adorable, and second of all that's $1000 less than the tuition itself.
     Like I said, adorable.
     What it all amounts to, my only friends, is a $90k job interview prep course. You see, everything is designed help the student find a target industry, perhaps even a favorite company, then figure out how to get an opportunity to beg someone to give them a job. This job will no doubt require of them many, many hours of mind-numbing meetings; they will have to become adept at office politics; they will become better and better at begging people for raises and promotions. This is the life an MBA offers.
     There are no guarantees, mind you. A desperate and anxious graduate could go through three years of group projects and sensitivity training, all while taking on massive debt, only to find that no one wants to even let them beg for a chance to sell themselves for a pittance.
     So, there is no MBA in my future. How boring, how pointless, how stupid it would all be.
     Still, it's possible that I just might do something unexpected, like, for instance, sit for the GMAT. You can do more with this than apply for a stupid MBA.

because i'm lazy...

      Here are some notes I made for a post that never made it to a coherent form. They are, for all that, worth saving it seems to me. I don't remember why al-Ghazali was at the point of departure. By no means does he represent the typical Islamic theologian or philosopher; I'm just interested in him.
     Anyway, without any ado at all, make of this what you will.
*****
     It's not at all clear to me that al-Ghazali was an 'occasionalist' in any irrational sense, unless one wishes to assert that all that is, seen and unseen, can somehow remain in being apart from the sustaining act of God. Of course, I'm wading into waters that are too deep for me inasmuch as what little I know of him comes at second hand [Ormsby, etc]. I can say for sure, though, that I am not convinced by the argument [see Regensberg etc] that the 'Christian God' is rational by nature while the 'God of Islam' is a voluntarist abyss of irrational contingency. One can find much in the letters of Paul that would give the lie to such a line. Perhaps this has to do with the spin one puts on assertions of 'rationality', assertions which themselves are not innocent.
     No, the differences are much more profound than the Regensberg argument would allow - I must proclaim and assert much that is offensive: that God is Triune; that Jesus is the Second Person of the Trinity born a fully human man, that as such the Second Person of the Trinity suffered and died and was raised from the grave; that there is no list of works that show adequate submission, that in fact submission to the will of God in and of itself is useless; that Bread and Wine consecrated are in fact Jesus's Body and Blood, while not ceasing to be bread and wine, and that being offended by this is a sign of trouble to come...those are among the irreconcilable differences. There are other matters - like, for instance, the fact that Christians cannot be said to 'practice their religion' where they do not evangelize; that in fact we don't have a religion to practice, or at least, we shouldn't.
     Yes, dear reader, it's far from clear that the Holy Trinity isn't more than a little whimsical - make sense of all of that if you dare.

no place for God...

     I have read from time to time about the 'retreat of God' in our 'post-Christian, post-secular' world. Seems there is 'no place' for God.
     But of course there is 'no place' for God, you dolts. That's why he does not retreat, why he in fact cannot (think about that for a moment). In fact, let's go so far as to say that 'retreat' here is an absurdity, a pointless sign.
     So much silliness a little classical Christian theology and philosophy would clear up in a moment. Again, read Marion's book on Augustine.

a poem, revised...

Gnomic



A ruction is the hand
that tills a stubborn lea -
forsake all desire for land
away from shore in the open sea.

notes from tonight's reading...

     'Certain of Aristotle's ideas concerning the poet's relation to real happening, as set forth in the Poetics, follow from this attitude. He states very clearly that reality must not be represented as it comes to us, in its apparent disorder and disunity, and his view in this matter was taken as a norm for centuries to come. To his mind the disorder and disunity of actual happening do not stem from the inadequacy of the eyes that look upon it, but are present in happening itself, so that the poet must create a happening superior to actual happening and tragedy must present a correction of actual events,' Erich Auerbach, Dante: Poet of the Secular World, p. 8.
*****
     Commenting on one of Barth's more witless passages, R. E. Allen offers this in his commentary on Plato's Symposium:
     'The noun αγάπη is in fact a late back-formation, first found in the Septuagint, from the verb αγαπάω, which in classical Greek means to delight in, to greet with affection, thus making its application to sexual intercourse in the Septuagint intelligible; it becomes the ordinary word for love in New Greek. Barth is quite right in claiming that έρως and έραν, in ordinary classical Greek usually used of sexual love, do not occur in the New Testament; this is a dialect shift characteristic of New Greek. Barth's inference from it, that "the reader is not even to be reminded of this other love," is inadequate even as an argument from silence,' p. 96.
     Jean-Luc Marion has much to say in the notes to In The Self's Place: The Approach of Saint Augustine about the supposed distinction between έρως and αγάπη, with particularly scathing comments reserved for Anders Nygren. I don't have the book with me on this trip, so I can't offer anything specific. I do seem to recall that Marion used the word 'barbaric'. You should, dear reader, pick up Marion's book for yourself. In any case, Anders Nygren is among the most boring of boring theologians.
*****
     As you can see, my friends, the obsession with Plato continues to grow unabated.

more books!

     Good company for a rainy evening away from home.

cartoon time...

     Drones are our friends.

okay, *now* you can deport him...

     Did Piers Morgan really call the US Constitution our 'little book'? Was he really derisive? I've seen the video, and I'm afraid he did, and that he was.
     I don't want to care about this moral idiot, really I don't. I only stumbled upon the video by accident, and I only knew about the whole 'deportation' business because some folks seem to have thought it was really news. So again, I don't want to care about the guy. Who is he even?
     Still, that one derisive remark, tossed off with an air of condescension, rather annoyed me. Of course, we don't think much of the US Constitution here in the US. Look at the regularity and the alacrity with which we ignore it in both its varied parts and its overall structure. I can't very well wax wroth if someone from Britain thinks little of the very law of the land that we mock for inadequacies real and imagined.
     Having said that, Piers Morgan is an ass. We should deport him for being a moron.

an untitled poem...

A ruction is the hand
that tills a stubborn lea -
away from shore in the open sea
ever seek a place to land.

checking in...

     So far the thing is not as bad as I feared. I do seem to be learning something, and I don't want to kill anyone. All in all, I'd call that a win.

'the sound of inevitability'...

     I've been up since o dark thirty. Don't you just love that phrase? O dark thirty - it's mysterious, and tough, while conveying an ever so subtle air of complaint. Tell me, dear reader, whence this genius in the language?
     In a few minutes the thing starts. It's raining outside. I would rather not do this thing, you know. When I signed up for it, well, it was like I was an uncanny enthusiast in some sort of cult. Now, here I am, having paid a smallish fee for the thing, and I would rather read patristics or Vasari's Lives or Plato....
     You get the idea.
     Don't I have people to do things like this for me? I mean, this is ridiculous. Shouldn't I be on a yacht somewhere receiving the occasional report from underlings busy about the task of making money so that I might read patristics or Vasari's Lives or Plato on a yacht? Let's say we're off the coast of one of them Azores, that'd work, or perhaps in the Aegean. Come to think of it, the Aegean sounds just fine, although I hear it's a tad polluted at the moment.
     O well, dear reader, here you find me, with responsibilities and obligations [they aren't exactly the same]. Cumbered I am, o my friends, cumbered with cares. This must be what it's like to be an emperor, say, or at the very least the President. Come to think of it, were I the President, I could have drones circle overhead, listening to the thing and recording all of it. Were their video game operators.... O, I'm sorry, apparently they think they're pilots.... As I was saying, were the pilots [heh] to detect anyone asleep during a particularly important and riveting presentation, well, then, KAPOW!
     Where was I? O yes, the thing. I won't bore you with details. Suffice it to say that it's all business. No one will mention patristics or Vasari's Lives or Plato, not for three whole days. O, look, some denizens have arrived and are making their way as we speak to the thing. I feel a creeping sense of ennui. I mean, it wouldn't be so bad if one of them were to say, 'You know, I don't much feel like discussing patristics or Vasari's Lives or Plato, but have you heard of this Richard of St. Victor?' That would be fine. Let's not wait for it.
     So now this has become an exercise in writing for the sake of procrastination. Time never seems to stop for me. O well. Assuming Jesus doesn't return in the next few days, and granting that it's unlikely an asteroid will hit the earth, it's likely that by Sunday I can return to patristics or Vasari's Lives or Plato or, now, have you heard of this Richard of St. Victor?
     Peace out.

more adventures of a freaked out businessman...

     Ah, the Sheraton in downtown Columbus - it's such a, well, it's a hotel. Sitting here in the bed, I can see the city lights in the distance. It's not so bad really.
     Some of us are here for a conference. We're going to learn all about something or other, and it'll be good for business. Who would have ever thought that your humble narrator would one day have multiple revenue streams?
     Weird.

ringing changes...

     Tried to post this earlier, but it was lost in the virtual void of the interthing.
     In most of Plato's dialogues where it lodges, δόξα signifies opinion, nothing more. An opinion is groundless; an opinion is easily acquired; everybody has an opinion about everything; and everyone thinks they're entitled to these opinions. [They aren't, by the bye, but that's for another hour.]
     Consider the changes rung on this simple sign by the time it becomes embedded in our Christian orthodoxy. Here, δόξα signifies not opinion, but praise, teaching, proclamation, confession. This is crucial because it's yoked to such a word that makes it the right praise, teaching, proclamation, confession. This opposes heterodoxy, which is 'other', 'split away', 'divided from', the right praise, teaching, proclamation, confession. [Many nowadays refuse to accept that there is, within the Christian Church, such a thing as heterodoxy. They are wrong.] Thus does a simple term of abusive art become honorable and multivalent when yoked aright.
     I just like that.
   

or did he say it?

     The 'beautiful is difficult' -  Plato said that did he?
     That occurs at 435c in The Republic, part way through Book 4 in English translations. It is tossed off in passing by Glaucon during an exchange with Socrates. Here you go, starting with the ugly little guy himself:

     But again, a city seemed just when three kinds of nature were present in it, and each did what is its own. And again, it seemed temperate and courageous and wise through certain other affections and dispositions of these same kinds.
     True, he said.
     And so, my friend, we will thus also expect the individual to have these same forms in his own soul, and rightly expect the same names for them as those for the city, because of the same affections.
     Quite necessarily, he said.
     Here again, we have fallen into a trifling inquiry about soul, my friend, I replied: whether it has in itself these three forms or not.
     It hardly seems trifling to me, he said. For perhaps the saying that noble things are difficult [χαλεπά τα καλά] is true, Socrates.
     Apparently, I replied... [translated by R. E. Allen, p. 132].

     Consider, Glaucon, Socrates, and the rest of their party, are engaged in a long and arduous inquiry into the nature of the soul and its formation, or deformation. The City conjured in the long and arduous inquiry, dear reader, is itself a simulacrum for that formed or deformed soul. To thus inquire about the nature of the soul is noble, and beautiful [καλά], implies Glaucon as he offers this gnomon, and, again, noble and beautiful things are difficult [χαλεπά]. Socrates approves.
     Or does he? Plato is the master ironist in his portrayal of the ironist Socrates. I hear a certain tone in Socrates's reply, a combination of astonishment and resignation. One can see him looking down a bit, and almost muttering Apparently. This inquiry will be even more difficult than any of them first thought. So far so good, but can we say unequivocally that Plato says categorically that noble and beautiful things are difficult? I think we can infer that he would echo his master's Apparently, and the whole of his works attest to a love of and a desire for the Good, however understood, and a conviction that the attainment of the Good is arduous and therefore quite rare.
     To reach that conclusion, however, requires that we hear a gnomic saying, woven into a brief exchange designed to shift the dramatic flow of the dialogue at a particular point in the inquiry, in the context of Plato's work as a whole, and The Republic in particular. We must grasp at least somewhat the many modulations of the word καλά. [noble, beautiful, good, and so forth - Philokalia, etc.]. We must, finally, understand that the true danger and difficulty of this dialogue is that it just might lead to greater perplexity about the nature of the soul. If we find ourselves ever more perplexed as to that nature, we will thus be ever more perplexed as to how that soul can be rightly formed so as to tend to the Good.
     We might, in short, end up in a Dark Wood of Error. It is no accident, dear reader, that Plato can seem quite the absurdist, especially in the early and middle dialogues.

     'Plato has told us that the beautiful things are difficult, but that we must not avoid the beautiful dangers. The human species would be placed in peril, and soon in despair, if it shed the beautiful dangers of intelligence and reason,' Jacques Maritain.
     I always liked Jacques. Oh, by the bye, Plato tells us that beautiful things are difficult in The Republic 435c, just in case anyone, you know, cares to check.

a lazy cross-platform post about 'personal spirituality', edited for content and length...

     The gift of dogma and doctrine resulting from the disciplined meditation on Scripture over time; great traditions of liturgy and other forms of corporate prayer; libraries full of books; curved space-time; entangled quarks; platypi and junipers; wine, scotch, tea; food; my lovely wife; terrifying extremes of sin and virtue; all of which I barely understand after forty-four years: these I suppose form the 'scaffolding' I'm supposed to kick away when I finally mature enough to cultivate my own 'personal spirituality'. We live in a world of wonders out there, and I'm supposed to get lost in my own curved inward something?

     I would rather not, thank you. I will, mind you, but that's called sin don't you know, and sin is bad for us. 

not a book review...

     So, I'm disappointed as hell in the new Poems of Octavio Paz. The poems, of course, are beautiful. It's just that the collection itself is slapped together from already existing books that, taken separately, offer a far more generous collection of the master's poems. This went right over my head as I went all euphoric at the possibility of finding in this book poems never before found. Alas and alack, my friends, that was not to be. Instead, you get selections from Paz's early poems, from Eagle or Sun, from East Slope, etcetera. That there from is the key my dear reader. 

     You are better off picking up Early Poems, 1935-1955, Eagle or Sun?, prose poems; and The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz: 1955-1987. While you're at it, why not pick up Alternating Current along with The Bow and the Lyre, two of his finest prose works. Oh, and you'll need The Double Flame. Then there's...

the new 'murder, inc'...

     Killing children sure is a lucrative business. Of course cancer screening and other preventive medical procedures must give way - all those children need to be killed. Imagine, folks at Planned Parenthood killed just shy of a million children between 2009 and 2011, with a rise in productivity each year. Thus did they earn that $542 million in fiscal 2011-12. After all, we as a people hate children. What's more, we know that there is only a limited amount of stuff to go around. Imagine if there were a million or more clamoring lives unworthy of life out there taking some of the stuff that could be ours. The only reasonable thing to do is kill as many of the little bastards as we can.

books!

     Books by Vasari, Castiglione, Plato [in Greek!], and Cellini are on the way to my door. What a wonder.

     I must away. There is much work to do later today. Why, it could take me two or three hours of concentrated effort to get through it all. 

     G'night.

'californee is the place you oughta be'...

     I'm thinking about taking a trip. You know, someplace warm, sunny, on the other side of North America.

     Last year the epic trip to California fizzled. It busted. It was a wash. The epic trip to Seattle and Portland was delightful, but, still still I never made it to California.

     It's time to make that right.

     This will take some planning on my part. That's right, I plan things now. Feel free to look about for the Four Horsemen.

     There are people I want to see out there. Unfortunately, in an example of blatant indifference to my needs, they are found in Northern and extreme Southern California, Berkeley and Irvine to be precise.

     Madness!

     So, I haven't quite worked it out. I have a business to run, you see, and customers and employees and all manner of responsibilities. That's right, I have those now. See above.

     It may require two trips, one in early February, one later in the summer. We'll see. Of course, if some folks would just move then it would be easier on me, and really now, isn't that the most important thing?

an 'atheist church' you say...

     Seems that someone has founded an 'atheist church' in England. (Or is it in Britain? It can be so hard to keep track of such things.) Now, the tedium of this development boggleth the mind. There are some few 'edgy, progressive' Christian and other types who imagine that this is of course another edgy and progressive appropriation of 'church' by yet another edgy and progressive gaggle.
     They are of course wrong.
     You see, my friends, there is The Church, otherwise known as One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic; also known as Hard To See and Shipwrecked; there is, I say again, The Church, and there are all the other gaggles we like to form and found. This gaggle in Brenglelond sounds like any other voluntary association, and I wish 'em well, really I do. But what they have there is not a church.
     Having said that, I await eagerly the hymnody sure to flourish in their midst. One could even call their central confession The Tedium. They can indulge witlessly in all manner of supposedly comforting rituals, and cultivate fake community all the live long day. It'll keep 'em off the streets at least. For me and mine, to spend time telling anyone why the whole venture is boring, stupid, and ultimately self-defeating would itself be boring, stupid, and ultimately self-defeating.
     If I were an atheist, I would avoid anything modified with 'church'. I might take up table-tennis, or learn how to break into bank vaults, anything to avoid spending time with people who imagine there is such a thing as an 'atheist church'.
     Peace out all, even you atheists.

stunning announcement...

     I have in fact resolved the Church Thing.
     Really, it's true. Why are you looking at me like that?
     I resolved the Church Thing this afternoon. It was remarkably simple.
     No, I'm not going to tell you how I resolved it. Suffice it to say that it's done.
     Now what do I do?

     Thesis:  Support for 'Gay Marriage' is pharisaical and a manifestation of contempt.

     Discuss. Or not.

     Peace out.

another bare beginning...

     I don't imagine this would count as a translation, but here are the first four bars of The Odyssey:

Sing Muse, through me tell the story
of Odysseus, he of many tropes and tells,
who learned the minds of many a man in many
a city once he sacked Troy's sacral center...

aristotelian reflections from another...

     This, the opening of Fran O'Rourke's 'Human Nature and Destiny in Aristotle':

'Aristotle's inquiry into human nature is manifold and far-reaching. Each aspect of his philosophy discloses an understanding of man as unique - distinguished in his diversity. Aristotle's man merits the Odyssean epithet [polytropos]: of many turns, versatile and resourceful. Superficially his creative and adaptive character is confirmed by the titles of Aristotle's various treatises. A cursory review indicates that man is a living, breathing animal endowed with soul; he investigates the world and deliberates how he himself should live, pondering his actions as dramatically represented by the tragic poets. Aristotelian man sleeps, dreams, and is anxious about old age; living in a political state and fascinated by the animal world, he looks to the heavens in hope of discerning his destiny.'

That sounds about right.

of God and the gods...

     I am a weird sort of monotheist.
     You see, it wouldn't surprise me if I ran into Apollo, or Athena. Of course, they would be creatures, but strange creatures all the same. It's no stunner that Milton limned his Gabriel and Michael and the other angelic powers as gods. They're embodied, albeit differently than us humans; they bleed lichor like the Olympians; they live off ambrosia. They are ultimately indestructible. The battles in heaven resemble the almost farcical combat between the gods before the gates of Troy in the Iliad.
     So again, Kalypso, Athena, Apollo, Dionysius - for all I know, there are creatures out there with those names. Creatures, mind you, who for a while didn't mind making humans worship 'em. I have it on good authority that such Powers and Principalities have been defeated and subdued.
     Yes, I confess the one true God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Yet, there are no doubt strange creatures most of us  now imagine, superstitious hypermoderns that we are, were drawn as fictions to while away the hours. Then again, I believe in transfigured Russian saints with fire streaming from their fingertips and all kinds of other wonders.
     Sue me.
     In that Spirit I am drawn to ask, when all creatures bow the knee to Jesus, will Zeus be among them?

false analogies...

     Have you noticed that when we make something clever, like an internal combustion engine, say, or a supercomputer, we will then turn around and say that the human person is 'like' that very clever thing?
     So, our 'mind' is nothing of the sort - supposedly it's like software that orders and runs hardware. Our bodies are 'like' the machines we make with such ease.
     No one seems curious about this kind of analogy.

thoughts tossed at random...

     Plato is a poet in service of a peculiar dialectic. His dramaturgy is as great as Shakespeare's, his prose as peerless.

     Plato and the Greek dramatists and Thucydides all have in common an obsession with argument, dialectic. 'One the one hand x, on the other hand y' in stichomythian patterns that would make Quentin Tarantino weep, that is the manifestation of the classical Greek mind.

     I'm not original in saying this. Were I to offer a footnote for all who said this, the footnote would exhaust the capacity of every server on earth.

     Well, it would still be a pretty damned long footnote.

     It's all a wash of light and dark grey out there today. Is it day? What is 'today'? We don't have snow of course, but freezing rain.

     The Church is not invisible, by the bye. She's just, well, hard to find at this particular place in space-time. A couple of hours to the north, and we'd have a whole different set of problems.
     We no longer have any cats. We will therefore never be celebrities on the Internet.
     Surprising discovery: the novels of Robertson Davies aren't really that good.
     I've run out of things to say.
     Peace out.

     

     

  

Here you go:

i resolve the church thing in one sentence...

     Given that, as Jaroslav Pelikan pointed out, the Luderans are now either Baptist or Methodist, those communions being honorably wrong in themselves and not at all that Luderan in any substantive way, it is clear to me that me and my house cannot eventually land in any particular parish of any Luderan gaggle, for I was and remain the kind of Luderan that can only be called Luthodox, with a strong love of Augustine built in that prevents me and my house from permanently taking up residence in any particular parish of any Orthodox gaggle, though each of those gaggles is beautiful in themselves and worthy (Axios!) of love and respect, yet I can only figure out one thing at a time, time being distended being given to a man in limited quantities and qualities for the purpose of praise embodied, such embodiment the sine qua non of human life in space-time such that, all things being equal, we would find heaven without a body to be nothing more than a sensory deprivation dimension, and that one thing at a time this past year has been what to do with the next fifteen years of my and our life, it therefore seems meet and right and salutary that I resolve to not resolve the conflict known to any and all as The Church Thing at this time (see above remarks about time, distension of being, and suchlike), because I really, like, for crying out loud how is a guy supposed to make sense of this clusterfuck in the first place?!?

property properly speaking is not proper...

     It's weird, sitting here in my study at home. I personally own almost nothing here. This Macbook? Not mine. This desk, the chair, the credenza on which sits that printer/copier/fax? None of it is mine. The paperclips, rubber bands, pencils, printer/copier paper, pens, post-it notes, floor lamp belong to another, well, it's a kind of person.
     That's what the Robed Supremes tell me anyway.
     You see, dear reader, all of that belongs to my company. Now, of course, the company belongs to me. I alone own it. So, all of this is mine to do with as I please, but only because I own the company that bought it all. That's just bizarre. Philosophically speaking, I'm the mind moving the body made up of lamp, credenza, chair, paperclips, desk, pens, pencils, post-its, etcetera and so forth. I give form to the substance that would otherwise remain inchoate.
     That's vertiginous my friends, and a little creepy. Could be the mimosas - they were enormous, 24 ounce mugs of delight. So, perhaps it's best to say that all this is mine but it isn't mine. I can take it and throw it out the window if so moved. But it's not mine in the same way that flat screen television in the living room is mine.
     Then again, that's not entirely mine at all. It belongs to my wife and me.
     Only the books scattered about the house really belong to me free and clear. The books and my truck. If I could store all my books in the truck [ha!], there you'd have the stuff that belongs to me simpliciter. Then again, even the books stuffed in the truck are all-in gifts from another, and don't really belong to me, or any of us for that matter.
     Madness.

the end the beginning...

     As Twelfth Night comes to a close, let's have that great eschatological conclusion to the Fool's Song:

     A great while ago the world begun,

     With hey ho, the wind and the rain,

     But that's all one, our play is done,

     And we'll strive to please you every day.

     A song for the Last Days, the Fullness of Time, that end of all ages inaugurated at the conception and birth of Jesus, the Incarnate Son. Tomorrow we celebrate the Epiphany, or more properly, the Theophany, of Jesus - his baptism in the Jordan and the revelation of the Holy Trinity in our space-time. 

     The play is done, and yet here we live in a kind of epilogue. Into the seemingly empty theater sounds a Voice, saying 'This is my Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased', and the Holy Spirit is revealed to always be alight on the Son, manifesting his glory as the only-begotten of the Father. And with that, the story of Jesus has barely begun before we hear of death, resurrection, and Triune love. 

     Tell me there's another who saves, who loves. Tell me there is another who is Life itself. Tell me, and I will not hear you.

      

We welcome Eros with pizza and champagne.

canon my canon...

     Seems some still think it interesting to ponder the 'openness' of the canon of Scripture. This is a boring question, because the answer is obvious that one can in fact add to the list of books on offer.

     The Bible is a book of books after all.

     So, how to keep this from going all loopy and Episcopalian? 

     Measure the canon by the Canon. Simple.

     Remember the fundamental principle: the Apostles read Jesus according to the Scriptures. Scripture is meant to remind us who Jesus is. This does not foreclose historical and other kinds of inerrancy, it just states the Name of the King in whose service we must always press such notions, should they prove valid.

     At some point, however, it seems meet and right to say that we shall not allow this book of books to become so unwieldy that an elderly bishop might fall to his death under its weight. Thus we allow for extra-canonical works that have more or less authority depending on how closely they hew to the apostolic canon for measuring the Canon. Thus Athanasius has more authority than Arius though Arius be flush with good intentions and meek as a lamb. In suchwise, Ignatius of Antioch has more authority than Ignatius Loyola, loyal to Christ though that later knight may have been (and he was, my friends, he was). 

     These writings help us read the Apostolic Scriptures with greater clarity, and often with greater delight. I'm not sure the book of books should take on the dimensions of a decent seminary library. What's more, it seems to me that this question is too often floated by those who would keep the Church in a constant state of agitation. To my ear, they also call unseemly attention to themselves, as though no one has ever been such a free spirit. Certainly those of us content to simply read the Scriptures we've received lack the vision of one who must always be about the business of noodling with profundities like a list of books in a Book.

     

music criticism...

     Why o why are waltzes associated with the New Year, as the pagans call it? There's even a Strauss festival to ring in the day. I stumbled upon it as I drove from Ohio to Florida. Now, now a waltz plays over the muzak here at the place of writing and tea. It's the Twelfth Day of Christmas, for crying out loud. Give us some Renaissance music, for the love of God. Make like it's a court in Tudor England, with lot's of hand-held drums and lutes and suchlike.
     Well, now, with the illogic of muzak, even 'classical', we have, sounds like Haydn, but really now who can tell over time? This music as faint background annoys me. True, true, some pieces we admire were in their spacetime divertimenti for the famous and fatuous. All the same, dear reader, we don't recall each divertimento composed, say, at the time of Mozart, but we do remember Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, which is delightful even if the Mozart cult is a tad mannerist.
     O well, it would be better for all if there were no muzak of any kind. Alas and alack the day, your factotum has not been granted the absolute power needed to make such sweeping social changes.

under the same management only different...

     I serve at the pleasure of the Steve Jobs, who lives and walks amongst us.
     Really, it's true - he's a ferret named 'Bill', and he now belongs to a ten year old boy in Westerville, Ohio.
     Well.
     I doubt any of that is true, but for all that I type this iddy biddy post on a new Macbook. It's so thin and light, and truth be told it's good for all the work I do, so there you go. The only annoying thing about it so far is the 'delete' key, which is in fact a backspace key. It's confusing as hell.
     Details people!
     As you can see, we've returned to the ER offices, and have spent a week or so cleaning the place and unpacking boxes. We came back for various reasons, not least of which is the simple fact that I missed it. Nothing else I've tried has ever felt right. So, ER it is.
     Of course, I'm in a rather different place than when last ER was a going concern. I am now a small business owner; I've won awards for sales and customer service; our office occupies part of an actual house; and and and, get this dear reader (whoever may be left), I have paid off all our debts.
     That's right, the once carefree amateur theologian and poet extraordinaire that you once knew so well is now cumbered with cares of every stripe. I meet payroll. I train and manage employees. I own a company. My family has, dare I say it, money. Not, you know, a lot, but lessee, before we had none, and now we have some, and my extensive math studies remind me that some > none, ergo and qed.
     This has changed our lives dramatically, but I remain as ever a poet and amateur theologian with a taste for Greek and Latin. Then, well, there is the Church Thing, which remains unresolved as of this post. So, you see, there is still a mess. Not all is well in Denmark. So all is well.
     I'm reminded of these lines from Warren Zevon, who could be the patron saint of ER: 'Still out here in the wind and rain/I look a little older but I feel no pain/And it stands to reason that I'm/Still looking for love, still looking for love'. Yes, that's me my only friends - a little older, a little wiser, a whole lot happier, and still still still looking almost desperately for those traces of the Love which moves the Sun and other Stars. I hope a few of my old readers who migrated with me to The Pebbled Shore will find their way back here. I hope some few newer folk will stumble on the place. I hope fake stat services will stop screwing with my numbers.
     I hope, in short, to keep ER for a long time to come. There may be further changes coming, but ER will always be mine and yours.
     Peace out.

     Good evening all. Just trying out this here new Macbook Thingimabob. That's its official name, you know. You have the 'Air', the 'Pro', and the 'Thingimabob'. The later is ridiculously cheap due to an almost complete lack of anything you might want in a laptop.
     And yes, it's still a basic laptop, which is laughable these days I know. Don't you fret none, for soon we'll have a tablet again around these parts, and the Apple Tyranny will be complete.
     Now, if you'll excuse me, the test here is over, and I have to check to see if bots continue to inflate my stats.
     That just sounds so wrong.

I'm afraid to stand. Anything might happen.

poetics...

     I've had five asian pear mojitos. All I can think is *Cold outside. Outside, snow*.
     Alcohol is the origin of Haiku.

reading Plato...

     Though he is at pains to assure all that his speech is free of satire, I cannot help dear reader but think that Aristophanes has played us in his quite outlandish speech for the *Symposium*. It would seem a whole system of belief depends upon this slender speech, at least if movies are to be believed.
     Weird it all is.

apropos the news...

     While I'm all motion ill and such, let me go on the record as a guy who wouldn't know how to hold a gun: not only should folks be free to own all the guns they can afford, they should also be able to get a hold of kevlar body armor.
     While we're at it, folks should be able to read the CIA's mail, and listen in on the NSA.
     You think I'm joking.

noodling about...

     Just trying the new app...move along...

another poem, as yet a fragment

Retreat



The shore at day’s end -
rivulets form as the tide recedes,
all creatures come, drink,
though the water kills.


Calcified fragments of a sand
dollar crumble, the sea
calm, a shimmering
lure in the slanting winter sun.

a poem

Birth Pangs



Hope the sun will cease
to kill and make alive after eons
of time have passed, seas
boiled away, rock worn
smooth, all that is
remade in fires of resurrection -
destined end to the pain
of a mind mad with occult desire.