calling a work of art 'pretentious' is actually pretty pretentious...

     There's a certain philistinism that likes to sneer at a great works of art because they're 'incomprehensible', while praising the latest comic book franchise or Doctor Who series, as if all depth of meaning and beauty of expression amount to nothing more than pretense. I've always been suspicious of the charge that a work of art is 'pretentious'. So, the work either goes over your head or is too deep for you to appreciate it. That's actually a good thing. It has nothing to do with pretense on the part of either the artist or the work. Perhaps you just need to shut up, sit down, and learn something. That it might take you a lifetime to even begin to understand a great work of art is not a fault in the work, but simply a feature of human existence.

just occurred to me..

     So, one day we'll get to meet the shepherds who adored the newborn Jesus. How cool is that?

a small rant...

     I love it when some tendentious comparison is made between the US and some European country or another, usually to the effect that all would be well and all manner of thing would be well were the US to adopt whatever pet policy is on offer. It is often some dreary Scandinavian country with a tiny, homogenous population, a correspondingly minuscule budget, and no international relations of any kind. Norway seems to be rather popular for this at the moment, but Finland (which is not, technically, Scandinavian, but o well whatevs) has its share of devout followers. Yes, I suppose we could all be taciturn troll-hunters if so moved, but only if we lived in a small, mostly uninhabitable northern wasteland where the hobbies are burning churches, raising taxes, and suicide. 

on the other hand...

     In all candor, show me another polity that would allow itself to be so wracked (!) over the use of torture by its agents. There are a few I'm sure, but not that many. How often does China go into public paroxysms of doubt and moral self-excoriation over its labor camps and summary executions? Think there's a lot of *public* soul-searching in the halls of the Kremlin for all the world to see? Do we still await that very public report on the appalling condition of prisons in France, set within a system that demands the accused prove his innocence against a presumption of guilt, and where the judge is empowered to determine if the accused can even mount a case? But yes, Brutus is an honorable man etcetera. (Again, this isn't about particular souls in their private cells contemplating their culpability in the light of eternity.) There's something unique about a place where, yes, it takes forever to get at the truth, and yes, there are always those who offer public apologies for the worst offenses, but where, yes, people rise up and put their very polity and its laws to the test in light of its worst failures. I do much wonder what more we can expect this side of the Second Coming.

just an observation...

     I confess that it sometimes seems to me that many who live here would just as soon US society finally collapse. It's as if these people can't wait for the next financial crisis, or a massive oil spill, or some geophysical calamity created by a confluence of widespread fracking and the reactivation of long-forgotten fault-lines. We just can't punish ourselves enough you see for all the evil we have unleashed. If only we had remained aloof and neutral, this idyllic world would have advanced to ever greater tolerance and peace, but no, we had to go and wreak havoc with our imperial ambitions and our obsession with oil. For this, and many other failures, our doom is certain, and certainly at hand. It cannot come swiftly enough for these confident yet casual observers, for all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well when all Americans wear hair shirts and eke out livings as latter day Hobbits (nasty little bastards with their blood and soil *sense of place*). Then, once we have purged ourselves of the guilt of having existed in a terrible history which we did not create, we can rest easy in the New Kingdom. It's a nightmare whose consummation is devoutly desired by many.

46 years ago Thomas Merton died, so here's a poem...

A Dream



     Dante and Li Po wandered along a lakeshore.  Li Po wished to dive in after the moon’s reflection.  Dante held him back. 
     Later, they drank wine, exchanged verses.  Dante offered, ‘As a cunning man cures ills with his secret knowledge, so will our occult friendship heal these wounds of exile.’  Li Po responded, ‘I’ll return to my porch, drink some hot wine, and think of you always while watching the stars.’ 
     Li Po sadly kept vigil, for the moon’s reflection faded as the sun rose.  After exchanging gifts with Li Po and taking his leave, Dante dove in seeking a stone long come to rest on the bottom.  Li Po was too drunk to stop him. 
     After waiting a while, Li Po gathered his cup, his wine, his walking stick, and wandered away through the mist.
    

a little whine with breakfast...

     It's five in the morning. I've been up since about three.
     That's it. Nothing more profound to report, just that I've already been up and moving about for two hours and it's not even properly o'dark-thirty. O, and I have to work today.
     This is going to be the best day ever.

while I have your attention...

     So, you people know it's just a trailer, right? And that the original movies weren't that good, right?
     Hello? Is there anybody out there?

too many books!

     It is time once again for a book purge. This one will not be as extensive as the last one, but it will no doubt inflict some pain. Already two boxes of books destined from before the foundation of the universe for perdition stand by the back door, manifesting the glory of my terrible justice. As always, you cannot say why one books stays while another goes. It is only the decree of my inscrutable will that determines how the judgment will fall. Some books I love, some books I no longer love - it was but a temporary state of grace you see - while some books I neither love nor hate. With that, I return to my task. Peace out.

faithless in little things...

     A string broke on my classical guitar. Around these parts, that's a big deal. Couldn't find any strings in any of the places you'd normally find 'em, which shows how negligent I have been in this vital spiritual matter. Until tomorrow, she will remain mute and practically entombed in her case.
     Advent is a season of repentance, and I see now that I have much to do in a short time.

This terrifies me.

you guys sure are weird...

     I'm ever so fond of my friends near and far, but for the life of me it sometimes feels like we come from different worlds. I suppose that's the Way it's meant to be, and it doesn't bother me in the least (well, sometimes it does, but that's life in the Big City you know). 

     Still, my friends, you'll lose me - in the sense that I won't understand you - if you make references to, inter alia: Doctor Who at too great a level of detail (which Doctor is which, how they dressed, who the Bad Guys were and are, what's happened in the last three years, etc); Star Wars as though it's still a Thing; Tolkien, because he's overrated and most of us are not in high school anymore; any of C S Lewis's fiction, and almost all of his nonfiction (his criticism is, oddly, rarely mentioned though it's quite good); Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, mostly because I think they suck; comic books; video games after 1989; most anything intended strictly 'for children' (this goes all the way back to when I was a child); Gilbert & Sullivan (I only know a couple of lines because they're in other movies or television shows); etc. Any mention of Chesterton is likely to make me want to strangle a puppy, especially if it's a clever quote meant to Explain Something Important.

     None of that is evil (well, Chesterton...), it's just from another world. So I love y'all, my friends, but I really don't know what the hell you're talking about half the time.

why not post a low quality photo of myself?

Your humble chef and factotum. I look like an escaped convict who broke into the house and decided to do some cooking.

Um, sorry for the mess. I made eggnog.

an interim report...

     Last night we completed Phase 1 of Thanksgiving Cookingpalooza 2014 by making stew and biscuits. I also confected The Nog and prepped for Phase 2, a Thanksgiving breakfast of french toast served with The Nog after it has chilled several hours. I am pleased to report that Phase 2 was a smashing success. The Nog goes well with french toast, o yes it does. 
     We've already begun Phase 3. I sautéed onions, celery, mushrooms, etc, for the dressing. I also made a wine/brandy/stock mixture for said dressing. Now Lea Ann has taken over the kitchen to prepare The Bird. Later I will make my Insanely Good Mashed Potatoes. O, and there is still plenty of The Nog in the refrigerator.
     Here endeth the interim report on Thanksgiving Cookingpalooza 2014. I'll leave you with these words from the Reverend MacLean in A River Runs Through It: 'I'd say the Lord has blessed us all today. It's just that he's been particularly good to me' 

a couple of things in the news...

     Somehow I've never thought of cricket. 
     Seriously, cricket never crosses my mind, or at least it didn't until this morning. Now that I have thought of cricket, the sport doesn't look that violent to me. Yet there's this guy named Phillip Hughes you see, and he's on death's door, felled during a cricket match of all things. 
     O, and they've thrown a proper riot in Ferguson, which will no doubt make things all better. 

help out a writer with too many books and not enough time...

     I seek a patron, one reasonably indifferent to what I do as long as the requisite sonnets and epithalamia appear at the appointed times. If you know anyone who would like to set me up with $3k a week, let me know.

the gospel according to Beckett...

     As always, Sam’s wisdom is apt to the day: ‘All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’ 

so you know...

I've been up since 2:30am. That's all. Suffering needs no embellishment. 

pre-flight whining...

Why do people insist on bringing bags bigger than Cadillacs onto the plane? They're wedging the damn things into the overhead compartments with crowbars and frontloaders. This is why it takes fifteen hours for everyone to find their seats.

South Park Tells About the Foundation of Mormonism and Joseph Smith

This about sums it up.

only God and the Marines are up that early...

     I must rise at o'dark-thirty in the morning to catch my flight to Jacksonville. That's 3am in human time, which is about when I like to fall asleep. So, it should be a doddle, a cinch, a lark, a piece of cake, a walk in the park...

my very own modest proposal...

     While we're killing children for convenience and profit, we might as well use the opportunity to see who really means what they say. So, I propose we decree that those who declare themselves 'Pro Choice,' either by explicit statement or by the votes they cast and their common associations, must register to kill an unborn child before they will be allowed once again to vote, hold office, serve on a jury, drive a car, register for a firearm, or legally work in the US. What's more, each of the killings must be of a child at four months development or later. 
     The use of proxies for these killings would be forbidden. Under the supervision of licensed professionals, those who are 'Pro Choice' must themselves deliver the chemicals to burn the child to death, or they must dismember the child. If need be, they must partially deliver the child, insert the scissors, and suck out the child's complex brain so as to make the skull collapse. No one who is 'Pro Choice' would be exempt for any reason. 
     (Those who have openly declared themselves 'Pro Life,' but who exhibit all the proclivities of those who are 'Pro Choice,' will be required to participate in this program.)
     Those who complete the killing of an unborn child will be given a tattoo signifying their willingness to kill a helpless human person who is completely vulnerable and at their mercy. After being given their special tattoo insignia, they will also be given the remains of the unborn child they killed as a reminder of their special day. 

I've wandered into a Stephen King novel. 

Did you ever have the feeling that something was fighting you, something you couldn't see? 

Yeah, you're right, that's crazy talk.

just noodling about...

     Won't do a job that requires neckties. The damn things should only be worn at funerals to signify the absurdity of death. 

Denys Turner on Julian of Norwich...

     Turner spins an argument that I find challenging, since for years I have been on the 'Scotist' side of that great divide about the 'necessity' of the Incarnation. In short, so the question goes, would the Second Person of the Trinity have become incarnate had Humanity not sinned? Mine has been a kind of 'soft Scotist' answer to that question, inasmuch as on the one hand I find it a bit pointless given that Humanity did in fact sin, while on the other hand I would never confess that the Fall took God by surprise. He had no need for an emergency remedy, yet the Incarnation is a remedy indeed.
     So, to Turner we go.
     'And the reason why Julian would appear to have less need of this Scotist distinction is that she has less trouble with seeing the Fall as behovely, because for her the divine end of self-disclosure in glorified humanity is most fully achieved precisely through the single complex event of the Fall and its remedy. Creation, Fall, and Redemption are all of a piece with one another, embodying in their conjunction the primary and only motive of the Incarnation.
     '...Within that providential act the Fall is indeed a crucial element, but not as if standing outside it and as if necessitating it causally. That, of course, was the principal burden of the example of the Lord and the Servant: Adam's fall and the falling of the divine Word into Mary's womb are one and the same falling. Hence Julian, unlike Scotus, has no need to distinguish between what God would have willed absolutely had human beings not in fact fallen, and a secondary motivation arising out of the fact that human beings did in fact do so. From all eternity "sin is behovely." That is all we can know as governing the Incarnation's necessity, because all you need to know by way of answering Anselm's question is that "it is a joy, a blisse, and endlesse liking to me that ever I sufferd passion for the[e]."'
     
   

bears repeating...

     '...it is never unequivocally clear who God is. The one for whom we live and die, whom we love or hate, who possesses us in our inmost being, yields the evidence. If this is so, then Christianity is not merely akin to conviction, even less a mere religious doctrine, or conversely a particular morality within a limited social sphere. Rather it is worldwide service in the discipleship of Jesus and in resistance to superstition. What is determinative is the tie to the Lord, who was crucified on Golgotha, ' Ernst Kasemann.

flee the madness while there's time!

     So, one sign that I should flee the Proper Job came in the form of an email to 'all employees', in which we were informed of an important update to company policies. Seems that twenty years is sufficient to earn four weeks of vacation. That's right, after twenty years, you can have your four weeks, but wait - don't try to take 'em all at once.
     What the hell? First you tell me I have to work on Sundays - which, mind you, contradicts what they told me at the interview - and now this? I mean, the hideous break room with the blaring television and the sea of dead eyes I can endure, sort of, but this manhandling of my time is beyond the pale. 
     Y'all fight so hard for these jahbs. Why? I'm happily returning to the world of independent contractors. Join me. It's harder at times, yes, and there is no job security to speak of, but you set your own hours, pay your own way to earning as much as you want (it's running a business you see), no one can legally bark orders at you, and you can take as much time off as you please. Walk toward the light, my friends, walk toward the light. 

something from Dame Julian...

     'The blewhed of the clothyng betokenyth his stedfastnesse. The brownhed of his feyer face with the semely blackhede of the eyen was most accordyng to shew his holy sobyrnesse. The largnesse of his clothyng, whych was feyer, flammyng about, betokenyth that he hath beclosyd in hym all hevyns and all endlesse joy and blysse. And this was shewed in a touch, wher I saw that my understandyng was led in to the lorde, in whych I saw hym heyly enjoye for the worschypfull restoryng that he wyll and shall bryng hys servanunt to by hys plentuous grace,' Shewings XIV.51. 

     I now have a sign on the wall by the desk in my home office that reads DON'T BE PRUDENT. 
     Wisdom, let us attend.

things to do, people to annoy...

     Tomorrow morning I have a few things to do. First, I quit my job. Then, it's time for a lovely omelette at a diner that has the best iced tea as well. Perhaps I'll have the fried potatoes as well with some salt and pepper. That'll hit the spot. 

a concise definition of 'the Church thing'...

     You know, the weirder workings of the deus absconditus, and the hard to parse distinction between a simply and stupidly heretical coven, and the catholica hidden sub contrario, can drive a man to his wit's end. 

a proposal for Indigenous Peoples Day...

     Now, you might imagine that Indigenous Peoples Day is just another condescending project for bien pensant middling folk everywhere, a way for such middlers to find yet another use for people they know little about and care about even less. But you would be wrong. It is a chance for us to call to memory the forgotten history that has shaped our present just as assuredly as the Master Narrative cobbled by the victors. 

     On this auspicious Indigenous Peoples Day, let us celebrate the Aztec Empire. More specifically, let us celebrate the fall of the Aztec Empire. Seriously, two expansionist empires collided, and one fell as a result. What's more, the one that fell was based on slavery and human sacrifice. The larger empire that resulted was, it's true, based on slavery, but there was no human sacrifice. Quetzalcoatl was banished, and believe me, that was a good thing.

Want to be an Aztec? Behold your god.

     See? This is a fitting tribute on this Indigenous Peoples Day, one that will in no way fill any of us with a feeling of smug satisfaction at our own moral superiority. Go forth, dear reader, and hold high festival this year, remembering the fall of one of the most brutally omnivorous empires in the history of the world. 

television is good for you...

     So, yes, I indulged in some Classic Television, and for the first time in many a year spent a few hours watching Star Trek The Next Generation, and no, I did not come upon the lost episode where Wesley Crusher is tossed out an airlock. I did, however, watch quite a few episodes that featured the whimsical Q. I like Q. He's gleefully amoral, a kind of Dionysus manqué, and it wouldn't surprise me at all to run into such a being Out There. He's certainly more fun than the Captain, who, to my surprise, grates on me with his monotone moralism. None of this changes the fact that TNG is generally bad, mind you, and it reminds me that once upon a time I was baffled that no one ever made a movie centered on Q. O well, it's all history as they say. Tomorrow I go to my Proper Job, and will no longer have time to indulge in such ridiculous pursuits. That's sad. 

Columbus Day is really just a day off for most people, but whatever...

     On this fraught Columbus Day, let us speak of the ways we invest Columbus with symbolic significance, either as a hero or a villain, a significance he did not have in his own day. (The refashioning of Columbus as an Italian-American Hero, for instance, is both touching and pathetic.) Let's also take a cold, hard look at the ways we have transformed the Arawaks et al into Indigenous Peoples, of a uniform innocence and purity opposed to the grasping, violent Western Conquerers.   

     [Hypothesis: At some point the specter of Rousseau would appear, casting his shadow over all that came before him. Just a thought.]

     None of this is to suggest that Columbus was a particularly pleasant fellow, and it wouldn't surprise me if he was at once barely competent and ridiculously violent in the administration, so to speak, of his domain. But it's annoying all the same that there can be no dispassionate assessment of a rather complicated history. 

     For my part, this yearly masochistic thrashing of the guilty dead has bored me from the first time I encountered it at the university twenty-three years ago. Imagine a yearly fit of hand-wringing over the sacking of Rome in 410 by the Visigoths, or the conquest of North Africa by the Vandals. Our Columbus Festival, wherein we excoriate his memory to purge ourselves of the guilt of having been born on this side of history, is just as stupid. 

why is it so dark in here?

     So here I am, looking around the ER offices. Seems the electricity has been cut off, so I need a flashlight to see all the cobwebs and the dust, the scattered papers and loose ceiling tiles. Looks like a pipe burst over there on the far wall. That'll cost me. O well, here I am, back to work, after quite a while away doing God only knows what.
     Really, a lot has happened since last your humble narrator saw fit to come to the office. My life has taken many turns, some for the better, some for the worst, some whose consequences remain to be seen. I have left one job and taken another. I have taken steps to return to graduate school, after many long dull boring years of talking about it, although it's nothing like any of us imagined. (For one thing, I'm not studying theology in grad school, not yet anyway.) More momentous to no one in particular is the simple fact that I have resolved the Church Thing, by not resolving it. Not to put too fine a point on it, I remain the strange Luthodox humbug you've known and loved since 2004, and the wife and I will be attending a Luderan parish.
     To the last, I refuse to be anyone's convert.
     O, and I've taken to reading Robert Jenson once again. It feels like the time to do so. I suspect the disagreements will remain. I just feel the need for something bracing and brilliant.
     Speaking of bracing and brilliant, Maximus the Confessor has taken up residence at Chez Hall, and I am quite enjoying the new edition of his Ambigua. I remain a heretic in despite of Luther's dismissal of Denys the Areopagite, and really don't see what the problem is. Also on deck is Edmund Schlink and Herman Broch, the later if I recall being no friend to the Reformation. So sad - he has important things to say about art and the limits thereof, things I need to revisit. I'm also reading Eksteins and Fussell. As what I predict will be a cold, damp Autumn winds down, I should have a look at the new book by Richard Hays, along with a few other things. Suffice it to say, we'll have a few things to write about in the coming months. 
     For now, though, I need to have someone clean this place up. It's a mess. 
     Peace out.

let's all grow up, what do you say?

     If you believe that Capitalism exists, and that it is evil, then I have some fairly rigorous criteria that will determine whether or not I take you seriously. I might listen to you, but first you have to tell me, truthfully and without hesitation, that you can watch with your own eyes as people starve to death during the transition whatever New Order seems best to you. I'm not talking about the kind of injustice we have now, which is bad enough, but the deliberate death by starvation of millions, possibly billions, of people worldwide, starting with your own family. You also have to accept, and endure, the deaths of still more untold millions from disease and the warfare that will wrack the planet as chaos spreads. If you can't handle that, then you have to tell me how to pay for the complete subjugation of all people under martial law. Tell me who goes up against the wall, who you are willing to co-opt as useful idiots, and who makes the cut as the inevitable elect. If you tell me there would be no elect, then I know you're lying because the very fact that you can advocate something so nebulous and yet so destructive as the uprooting of an entire social order tells me that you imagine yourself among that elect. 
     If none of the above applies to you, then stop talking to me about the Evils Of Capitalism. You're not serious. You like it all just fine, and have a more or less interesting, if not comfortable niche within the Order Of Things, but you fancy yourself a Radical in some way. You're not. (If you drive a hybrid or an electric car, then you're even more deluded.) So let's dial it down, and start talking about how we can raise up those who are cast down without immiserating the rest. 

lazy cross-platform post...

     I'm always surprised for some reason when I learn that others are more cynical than I am. Perhaps I never had any grand expectations to be dashed against experience, but it's true, I'm not really a cynic. I never looked for grandeur from Rome, or any other City of Man, and so I could enjoy the ambiguous beauty of Virgil's poetry, just to take one example. He surely thought the founding of the Imperium, after decades, even centuries, of civil war and political purges, to be a gift of tranquilitas. He also knew what was lost, and lamented that loss, and at times you can hear him wondering if it was all worth it. (Amazing how many people fail to read all of Virgil, but that's for another day.) 
     Then, too, we can read Tacitus and Sallust, Polybius, even from time to time Livy and Cicero, to learn just how far from the Republican Ideal Rome fell even during the Republic. They were searching for something - or rather, for Someone - and kept chasing darkness while running from the light. In this way, they were like The Greeks, who were really the Athenians, the Spartans, the Corinthians. Reread Thucydides alongside the tragedians who remain alive - notice anything? Thucydides writes the Tragedy of the Fall of Athens, and Plato finds the fallen City a Cave fit only for slaves, not citizens. 
     That others erected their utopias on an illusion of Rome and Greece is interesting at times, but not as beautiful, sad, or real as the Greeks and Romans themselves.

television!

     For some reason, in my downtime I've been watching marathon runs of 24. Only when you watch it over and over again, do you realize just how bad it really is. On a scale from one to ten, it's about a fifty on the Weird Melodrama Meter. The people at CTU are lucky to be working at all. O, and Jack's psychopathology manifests more and more as the story unfolds. But wait, if you're patient, you'll be rewarded with a Plot Twist that justifies another seven hours of story. And everyone in the world is right, of course - Kim Bauer is the single most annoyingly stupid character in the history of television. Really, 24 is just so bad, and I can't stop watching the damn thing.

militarized police? i don't think they exist...

     I was driving the other day through Granville, Ohio. Look it up on a map somewhere - it is to say the least rural, though it's hard upon the bustling metropolis of Newark. Don't get lost in the three square blocks of 'downtown' Newark, o heavens. And the less said about Heath, the better. 
     Anyway, all this is by way of noting that the sheriff drove past me the other day in an armored vehicle that wouldn't go amiss in some of the more genteel regions of Syria or the Ukraine. An armored fucking vehicle it was. Needless to say I'm glad they didn't pull me over for speeding, a bad taillight, or some other capital crime. I can see it now, the phrase 'hail of bullets' in the headline.
     Yeah, I know, I'm white and all, but the cops do sometimes make mistakes.

a very special episode of the new hit '12 and a half'...

'The following takes place between 8:15 and 9:15pm. Events occur in real time.'

A man sits at his kitchen table and fiddles with a laptop.

He gets up, puts on water for tea, sits back down and fiddles with a laptop.

The water comes ever so close to boiling, so he gets up, kills the heat, makes tea. Then he sits back down and fiddles with a laptop.

A Muslim Terrorist who is actually a Mercenary paid by Russian Separatists who are actually Ukrainians of Bulgarian decent comes to the door. He is selling siding. The man uses sophisticated methods of counterterrorism to fend off the attack. That is to say, the man ignores the knock at the door.

The man sits at his kitchen table, drinks his tea, and continues to fiddle with his laptop.

As we reach the end of this crucial, stressful hour in one man's life, it occurs to him that it would be pleasant to pick out a book and go to bed.

Cut to a clock ticking away the seconds as a split frame shows the man choosing a 19th century Spanish Realist novel while outside not a whole hell of a lot happens and the sun starts to disappear. 

a poem reprised...

Turn About



My sorrowful pen, my notebook, full of pain
from long neglect, confront me as I plead
my case for treating them with rough disdain –
for they can’t abide a careless deed,
however driven by necessity –
We are the petty servants of the heart,
it’s true, they say, but anyone can see
how far you fall in failing to depart.
So let fatigue and sickness do their worst,
I’ll walk a while under the sun today,
perhaps repent of caring who’s the first
or who’s the last along this weirder way.
It feels like death to turn aside and choose
to ditch what wiser men would fear to lose.

well damn...

Goethe!

Find the poem here.

     O the periphrastic locutions I'll employ to avoid the word 'tweet'. 

irresolute resolutions...

     I've been thinking lately that it's time to return to a more deliberate practice as a poet, a more persistent practice as a theologian. How to get there is a poser, but I suspect it has something to do with simply going down the street to that parish church every Sunday whether I like it or not. O, and I still need to make a living. We shall see. In the mean time, I give you this from Madeleine Delbrêl: 'Our Christian life is a pathway between two abysses. One is the measurable abyss of the world’s rejections of God. The other is the unfathomable abyss of the mysteries of God. We will come to see that we are walking the adjoining line where these two abysses intersect. And we will thus understand how we are mediators and why we are mediators.'
     I don't know how to be that. 

     So, our air conditioning is broken. It's as if we've been plunged without warning into the 1970s. 

I for one support Steven Spielberg's right to hunt Ceratopsians for sport.

just thought i'd point this out...

     You know who you are:

     If you are among the easily offended; if you are outraged by the Hobby Lobby ruling, and think that a Gay Pride parade signifies the expansion of tolerance and equality; if you complain because no one wants to pay to have your child killed; then congratulations, you are among the New Bourgeoisie. 
     You are the bien pensant, conventional, milquetoast, soft and squishy mediocrity at the heart of any ordered polity. You are in charge of most of the Bourgeois institutions, from colleges to hospitals to investment banks. You are a rich class, but middling because of your fears, fears which in good middling fashion you project onto the rest of us in your quest for control. (The Bourgeoisie crave control the way a heroin addict craves the needle.) 
     What's so sad is that, again like all middling classes, you imagine that you are interesting, radical, on the cutting edge of history, or whatever else they tell you is good in the NY Times, on HuffPo, or on one of those Disney channels (including of course ESPN - yay Soccer!). You're not. Your speech codes, your implied sumptuary rules, your protected classes and your peccadilloes, are all so thoroughly boring and conventional as to make me want to mainline scotch. 
     You have all the power, but are increasingly vicious in the use of it, as befits the middling rulers that you are. You are vicious, moreover, because like all middling classes you fear the inevitable fall, for you know your time is short on this earth. You are, at the last, old and lashing out as a result of the fact that, while you won and have become settled in your middling power, you know that soon you will die and leave nothing behind. 
     Have a nice day.

something from Goethe...

     So, I’m learning German. It’s a slow process because I have little time to devote to it, so I'm still in the first group of lessons. Still, poetry is beginning, just beginning, to reveal itself to me word by word. With that in mind, I give you this delightful, brightly sad poem by Goethe, 'Permanence in Change'. Blütenregen - blossomshower! - is just lovely. 

Dauer im Wechsel

Hielte diesen frühen Segen,

Ach, nur eine Stunde fest!

Aber vollen Blütenregen

Schüttelt schon der laue West.

Soll ich mich des Grünen freuen,

Dem ich Schatten erst verdankt?

Bald wird Sturm auch das zerstreuen,

Wenn es falb im Herbst geschwankt.

Willst du nach den Früchten greifen,

Eilig nimm dein Teil davon!

Diese fangen an zu reifen,

Und die andern keimen schon;

Gleich mit jedem Regengusse

Ändert sich dein holdes Tal,

Ach, und in demselben Flusse

Schwimmst du nicht zum Zweitenmal.

Du nun selbst! Was felsenfeste

Sich vor dir hervorgetan,

Mauern siehst du, siehst Paläste

Stets mit andern Augen an.

Weggeschwunden ist die Lippe,

Die im Kusse sonst genas,

Jener Fuß, der an der Klippe

Sich mit Gemsenfreche maß.

Jene Hand, die gern und milde

Sich bewegte, wohlzutun,

Das gegliederte Gebilde,

Alles ist ein andres nun.

Und was sich an jener Stelle

Nun mit deinem Namen nennt,

Kam herbei wie eine Welle,

Und so eilt's zum Element.

Laß den Anfang mit dem Ende

Sich in eins zusammenzieh'n!

Schneller als die Gegenstände

Selber dich vorüberflieh'n.

Danke, daß die Gunst der Musen

Unvergängliches verheißt:

Den Gehalt in deinem Busen

Und die Form in deinem Geist.

just thinking out loud here...

     So it seems I'm an idiot for suggesting that so-called 'abortion', that is, the killing of children for convenience and profit, is Big Business. Planned Parenthood is after all a non-profit corporation, and as such I suppose is incapable of pursuing the Big Evil for the sake of money. Well, no. Consider - $1.6 billion in assets, executive positions commanding high six-figures, hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding at stake - that's real money last time I checked.
     Whence all that money, you ask? People want to kill children because the children get in the way, are inconvenient and cost money. Some of the children have - gasp! - defects, and are therefore unworthy of life. These people cannot yet legally kill their children, so they need someone to do the job. Planned Parenthood simply offers what the market demands.    
     Let's keep it straight. The people who kill children, and who have their children killed, are doing it deliberately, with malice aforethought, and we have to start saying that out loud. We also have to turn it around and point out that keeping the money flowing through the Organization is what drives Planned Parenthood, and essential to that revenue stream is the killing of children.
     In any case, I'm tired of glad-handing people who kill children for a living, and I'm tired of giving their supporters the benefit of the doubt. This is the Big Evil, and it makes anything done by Monsanto or BP look rather bland.

it's the art of the possible after all...

     Were I a man of energy, vision, and courage, but little wit and less soul, I might think of forming a new political party here in the US. Our platform would be simplicity itself.
     First, all registered Democrats shall be required to demonstrate the ability to dismember a living infant with just a boning knife. Ideally, each Democrat should meet this requirement by dismembering his or her own newborn with a boning knife, but if that is not possible an infant shall be provided at no cost by the State, which will levy a dedicated tax on all registered Republicans.    
     We will need tutorials in how to dismember a living infant with just a boning knife.  In addition to a series of Public Service Announcements for adults, such children as live to attend school shall be taught the techniques necessary using chickens and rabbits, with the added value that they will thereby learn important cooking skills at the same time.
     Obviously Braised Infant With Crispy Skin will be a delicacy served at all state dinners. 

you don't really want a revolution, trust me...

     I know, I know, this Potemkin Protest took place several news cycles ago, but I've been busy. Anyway, seems some fifty thousand or less took to the streets of London to protest Austerity. 
     Russell Brand gave a speech. Russell F*cking Brand.
     Bored now.

     I mean, look, Austerity is a way of saying Bend Over, but what is this 'revolution' of which they spoke? Were they going to shut down Sellafield? Storm Buckingham Palace and occupy Westminster? And what the hell, not a revolution of radical ideas but of ideas we already have? Like the Poor Laws, perhaps, which were and are designed to keep poor people poor? What a joke. Lest we forget, Austerity is the English Way and it's about time they revolted. Russell Brand et al, however, are making this so much trivia. Where's their Vaclav Havel - let someone like that come forward and we've got a ball game. (Come to think of it, where's ours?) No, spare me the Hippy Branding and the Lefty Lite pseudo-revolutions that change nothing while shuffling the deck chairs and reassuring the powers. 
     Not that I want the full-on, Leftist Stalinist Iconoclast Desert of the Real either. Had to make that clear.

i rant a little about some emergent christian lunacy or another...

     So, it seems we must learn to let go of Sunday worship. It's about freedom, it's about going with the flow of God's Spirit, it's about, well, I can't keep going like that because it makes me want to set my hair on fire.     
     Look, let's not waste time with bullshit - it's all about the Money. I'm a wanderer and a lazy bastard, gotta have my eggs benedict with scallops and a couple of mojitos of a Sunday kind of guy, but that's not a principled choice, it's not something anyone should imitate. So take it as written that I'm no shining example to the wider world of how to live. How do I know that? Well, I'll tell you.

     Is it only me who sees how blindingly obvious it is that Money needs us doing anything on Sunday but going to church and all that entails? You who want Community (whatever the hell that is), riddle me this - how would you like to have one day, just One. Freaking. Day., when everything is shut down and we worship the Lord of the Universe for our own good? Worship being, of course, that time out of time when He *serves us* and pardons us and gives us His Life so we might not be dead weight falling falling falling.... But you know all that. Might it also be meet and right that it be the Same Day for Everyone, so we're not atomized fragmented scattered to the winds? And how about it being the Eighth Day and all that archaic stuff the Fathers tried to teach narcissists like us, so Sunday it is? Why the f*ck do we want to mess with that?

     Money, that's why, and not our money, o no. I make a lot of money, but I don't make any of it on Sundays. I *spend* it on Sundays, spend it on those who make way, *way* more money than I'll ever see.

     Think Starbucks wants us to abandon them on Sunday? Love that New York Times Sunday Subscription? O, it's so cozy to sit around with our [insert insanely priced coffee drink] and read the different sections of the paper. Of course it is. You should get a gold watch from 'em when you turn 65, you're their best employee. 'But we spend Sunday with Family.' Good for you, blood and soil are the best really. Maybe you can watch sports, or talk about sports, or maybe there's a movie to see - hey, if we don't choose the HD version the price is lower. 

     But...but, we have to adapt, don't we? Yes, that's what we learn in every marketing program. This is how organizations survive. You think the Church is an organization, right? You're ambivalent about it, but that's the way it goes. Seminaries really do offer great Marketing Degrees I have to say.

     So, it comes down to the real Good News - batteries don't need rest, and they certainly don't need God. I, however, do need a mojito, but it's a working day. Some days I really do envy alcoholics.

what's your hobby now?

     Everything I read about the so-called 'Hobby Lobby' case makes me angry. It makes me want to turn over the tables in a rage and chase even my friends with a whip. You're all wrong, from the smug Progressives who are out to convince the world that 'Corporations' are evil (except Planned Parenthood and every single freaking Union that exists, but pay that no never mind), to those on the right who seem to think that this is a victory of some sort. It's about 'religious freedom' don't you know, and it is, which is precisely the problem. We lost, they won, which is why we have to sit in the corner and beg for scraps from SCOTUS. What's more, as I've said before to apparently an empty universe, all this ruling does is change the mechanism whereby the owners of Hobby Lobby, and everyone else, will continue to pay for the killing of children for convenience and profit. 

     And that's what it's all about folks. When are we going to stop using the other side's language, when will we stop accepting their terms and conditions for what only seems like a 'debate'? Stop for the love of God saying 'Abortion', would you? It's not 'Abortion', it's Killing Children For Convenience And Profit. Say that every time you get into this. Tell those who are 'pro choice' that they approve of the Killing Of Children For Convenience And Profit. They are complicit in the murder and disposal of human persons who are by definition helpless and at our mercy. We must say this clearly and without hesitation. We must be indifferent to their fine feelings when we tell them that it is they who hate women, they who hate children, they who have done all this in the name of power and money, for the killing of children for convenience and profit is big business. 

     Yes, it's existential decision time. There is Good, and there is Evil - what's it to be? 

     And I'm writing this on a blog platform owned by Google. Le sigh.

nothing of note...

     So, am I like the only person in the Western World who knows nothing about The Smiths? I see this Morrissey guy mentioned everywhere, people make memes out of his lines, and yet I have never felt the need to listen to anything by or about him. 
     O, and I note that according to Facetube, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria is trending, but I can't find anything on CNN. Weird.

gratuitous Chesteron-bashing...

     It is likely wrong to ban books, much less burn 'em, so all I can think of for Chesterton's is a $500 surcharge (that's a tax) on every new one sold in America. All used bookstores will have to report their stock, and will collect a $250 surcharge for every volume by Chesterton that they sell. Those who fail to pay these charges will be subject to fines of up to $10k, and sixty days in jail. There's little we can do to stop the private circulation of the books through friendly loans (though what friend would do that to another?). Perhaps we can set up collection centers where people can turn in all things Chesterton, no questions asked, and receive cash payments. 
     I think his childish books would be out of circulation in no time. Of course, we would need a place to store the resulting stockpile of bad books. I suggest we keep 'em at the Yucca Mountain facility, but I'm open to other options. 

let's all form a hermeneutic circle...

     We may have foolishly turned capitalism into a faux religion - the way we do with everything really - and we certainly tend to confuse capitalism with mercantilism, but to have a bunch of leftists with multiple degrees and all the cultural and economic power tell us how to make do with less in the name of 'justice' seems awfully suspicious. 

     Yes, as a class you now have all the capital; you have your private jets and your cars; you determine who gets to move up and who stays put. So, it's now time for me to learn that Leisure Is The Basis Of Culture, and I really should have a driverless car, and I really shouldn't worry about making money, o that's icky. Besides, now that you're in charge of my life you'll see to all my needs. You'll even make sure we only have to pay 10% of our income for the next few decades to service our student loans. To my ear you seem awfully determined that I keep to my station. I love it especially when you praise those who 'play by the rules,' rules that you have rigged in your favor.

     (And tell me more about how you're all 'change-agents' who seek justice. So you know,anyone who defines themselves as a 'seeker of justice' is a self-absorbed, lying ass.)

     Anyway, I'm just a little suspicious about y'all. I learned it from Marx by the bye - thanks for that at least.

noodling about secularism and suchlike...

     We're told that our culture is rotten with individualistic hedonism - or is it hedonistic individualism? - both held within a radically secular mentality. What if that simply isn't true? What if instead the dominant culture in the Post-Christian West is utilitarian, totalitarian, collectivist, and inherently religious? There are after all so many gods to choose from that one hardly knows where to start. It's likely this return to sacrifice and the sacred is what you get as Christianity recedes from view.

a poem...

Adieu

It was in a stand of old linden

   dappled with shadow and sunlight

      that I first found myself

         lost, alone, seized by mourning

as branches creaked in the wind.

   Later I climbed a high dune where

      no one ever strayed -

         once at the top I lay staring

into what seemed the Empyrean;

   suspended it shimmered beyond 

      all our labor, every loss
         borne in those chill days of Spring.

iraq mon amour...

     We seem to think that 'chaos' has erupted in Iraq. No my friends, an iconoclast, intelligently managed, and brutal revolutionary state is forming in the Fertile Crescent. ISIS is flush with cash and stolen weapons, hardened from fighting in Libya and Syria, disciplined by a purist ideology that gives ultimate purpose to every act. Re-education centers are up and running all over their new territories. They have a considerable network of social services, even as they set up a genocidal campaign against Shi'ites and Christians across the region. All of that, apart from their sheer skill and daring, makes them the most formidable force we've yet seen in that part of the world. In short, this is a revolution, not an 'outbreak' of wildling violence. To my mind, the most apt comparison is with the Khmer Rouge.

a poem, reprised...

Yet Another Fall



Of a sudden shadows lengthen,
leaves strain to fall just as swimmers
long to spring from their boards:
it’s all at once a new fall.
I’m working on a stranger’s roof,
the air tastes of asphalt and rain –
I’m up here on account of my fear.

The wood behind the house is dark;
time for me to go down, time
yet again to go home for the night.
Nothing’s diminished:  we’ll live,
if we live, through another
fall that comes to us unbidden,
so let’s stay among the falling leaves.

the nuclear option as it were...

     Why do students get their own governments at universities across the country? Shut it all down. They're worthless. Strip the schools of everything except engineering and the basic sciences necessary for the practice. The so-called 'students' have proven unworthy of self-government, and they have shown profound contempt for humane learning. So, it's time to take it all away from them. Private liberal-arts schools, like Hillsdale, shall, like the monasteries of old, maintain the great traditions of philosophy, politics, literature, art. Students there can indeed study mathematics and science, but within the larger context of the study of civilizations that nurtured such achievements. The remnant shall flourish in these scattered bastions, while the rest of the horde can plug into their cubicles and fight for the last Corporate Benefits Package.

a first impression...

     At the start of John Drury's Music at Midnight: The Life and Poetry of George Herbert, we are given a subtle, brief analysis of the music of the delightful 'Love (III).' Hard upon this, however, Drury delivers this ridiculous twaddle: 

     'It ['Love (III)'] is the work of a man who valued common 
     experience, common sense, and courtesy so highly as to 
     collect 1,184 proverbs - at the same time a mystic for whom 
     the actuality of immediate religious experience mattered 
     intensely, and more than orthodox doctrine' (4). 

If Herbert did in fact value the 'actuality of immediate religious experience,' it was only because reality corresponded to orthodox doctrine. What's more, contrary to Drury's resurrection of the 'mild,' inoffensive Herbert, the poet and priest were at one in seeing sin at the heart of that reality, sin redeemed by of all things real blood shed by Jesus the Incarnate Son. Furthermore, Herbert was obstinately Reformed in the way he understood such matters. 'The Holdfast' and 'The Water-Course' both attest to this in the most vivid way. (I note as an aside their absence from Drury's index.) 
     As for the fundamental dogmas of the Church, allow me to note this from 'Ungratefulnesse': 'Thou hast but two rare cabinets full of treasure,/ The Trinitie and Incarnation:/ Thou has unlockt them both,/ And made them jewels to betroth/ The work of thy creation/ Unto thy self in everlasting pleasure' (l. 7-12). Certainly that is the unio mystica of much sixteenth and seventeenth century Reformed thought, with its provenance in the works of Bernard of Clairvaux, Augustine, and the via moderna of the fifteenth centuries. It is also fundamentally grounded in the lived reality as confessed in the Church's classical creeds. (I note, again in passing, that 'Ungratefulnesse' is likewise missing from Drury's index.)      
     So, at this point I'm left with a first impression that is mixed to say the least. First, Drury has a subtle ear, and thus his grasp of Herbert's music seems from the start both deep and helpful for the reader. Second, however, he seems to give us a tired, all too old Herbert, happily cocooned in his 'mild' Anglican Church, above such nastiness as controversy over orthodox doctrine and the right worship of the people of God. To my ear, this Herbert tilted toward contemporary concerns over 'living together in disagreement,' in a mildly irenic church that embraces all through 'religious experience' shorn in good Jamesian fashion of dogma, liturgy, sacrament, and argument, is a lie, and this makes me just want to throw the book across the room.

la la la la la la la la....

     Nothing to see here really.
     I'm hungry, but it would be unwise for me to eat anything.
     Then I remember, I'm unwise as a rule.
     So what should I eat? 
     Who now experiences such pangs:

     'This old moon wanes! She lingers my desires
      Like to a step-dame or a dowager
      Long withering out a young man's revenues,' Midsummer Night's Dream I.1.

     Returning to the question of what to eat this time of the morning, have you ever seen a rhinoceros in person? Ionesco was on to something there my friends.
     Where was I?
     She sits atop a slag-heap and calls us to account to the mercy of God.
     Wisdom has a hard life at the moment.
     Good thing I'm not wise. Never have been, never will be. It's almost a willful refusal, except that I don't remember willing it or refusing anything.
     The poorly loved are like orange blossoms killed by a late frost.
     With that, I'm off. G'night all.

insomnia mon amour...

     While I had the flu, I slept and slept and slept and slept. Now I'm tired of sleeping, yet I'm also tired. What fresh hell is this? How I suffer. Perhaps I should make a piece of performance art out of this nightmare. How much do you think I could make off a guy sitting at a desk roughly like this one, surrounded by books roughly like these, staring with insomniac eyes at a laptop roughly like the one before me? Maybe I should scatter some socks around - I hear things like that are big at MOMA and The Tate.

I believe that's Ἀληθῶς ανέστη...

     'The mystery of the incarnation of the Logos is the key to all the inner symbolism and typology in the Scriptures, and in addition gives us knowledge of created things, both visible and invisible. He who apprehends the mystery of the cross and the burial apprehends the inward essences of created things; while he who is initiated into the inexpressible power of the resurrection apprehends the purpose for which God first established everything,' St. Maximus the Confessor, Centuries on Theology and Economy, I.66.

Reading War and Peace into the small hours. I don't want Prince Andrei to die again.

     I have a great stand-up routine with Werner Herzog as a contractor, but for the life of me I can't figure out what audience would take to it. 

reading Kant for the hell of it...

     Kant's Critique of Pure Reason makes sense as a Kafkaesque self-portrait. As such it is at once hilarious and terrifying. 

reading reading reading...

     Something from Sarah Coakley: 'In much recent Western theology, and more especially in feminist philosophy and theology, an anti-hero stalks: the Enlightenment ‘Man of Reason’. Can we not all agree in despising him? This villain has a number of characteristics. Cogitating, lonely, individualist, despising the body, passions, women and indeed all sociality, he artificially abstracts from the very dependencies he takes for granted: the products of earth, the comforts of family and friends, and — not least — the miraculous appearance of regular meals….'
     I have met him. His initials are IK.

notes from a commonplace book...

     ‘Here it is perhaps also worth raising the issue of what might be taken to be the unduly negative, the unduly dry and dismal, take on the apophatic I have been presenting. Have I not, with my simple insistence on what cannot be understood, on lack of insight, on questions that cannot be answered, missed the point of true apophaticism? Is it not itself bound up with contemplation? Surely denial and negativity are never employed for their own sake, and it is not a matter of a sheer blank, of simply hitting a wall, in thought and speech about God. Surely something much richer is gestured towards in apophasis: it is a response to excess, to God’s superabundant richness. Where is this, one might ask, in the account I have been giving of an apophatic trinitarianism
     ‘Richness, excess, this overwhelming quality of what we cannot comprehend should, on the view I am developing, be located precisely at the level of our contemplation in the Trinity, rather than at the level of contemplation of the Trinity. It is enough to acknowledge infinite depths that exceed our grasp in the Father who is contemplated through the Son – we do not need to look for such infinite depths and dazzling darkness in the very notion of three-in-oneness or perichoresis. And it is precisely because of the sense of excess and transcendence associated with contemplation in the Trinity that there ought properly to be, on the view I am exploring, a resistance to, a fundamental reticence and reserve surrounding, speculation on the Trinity,’ Karen Kilby, ‘Is an Apophatic Trinitarianism Possible?’ International Journal of Systematic Theology 12, no. 1 (2010): 65–77.

heading for that Big Rock Candy Mountain...

     Checked my email just now. Seems I've an E-Deposit pending from Somewhere. All They need is my e-signature, along with a few pieces of personal information handled discretely and professionally, and I can collect this windfall.
     So, why am I working today?

yeah, i'm all over the place this morning...

     Apparently there are those within what we call the financial sector who want to see a Democrat take the White House in 2016. That's the only reasonable conclusion we can draw. After all, if they wanted a Republican to win, they wouldn't be looking at people like Paul, Cruz, and Rubio. We need, after all, someone who can deal with the complex, delicate strategic challenges that define our time - Russia and Ukraine; uprisings in Thailand; a possible war between China and Japan; all of which tie up North Korea and Iran; changes throughout the Middle East as younger rulers take over; political and economic crises in Latin America. Need I continue the litany?
     Well, we can dare to dream. Maybe there's a culturally conservative, fiscally responsible, liberal-minded lover of chess out there in the Republican ranks who could be the guy. I doubt it. 

pop culture madness...

     See, this is what I'm talking about: I have never, ever seen an episode of The Bachelor. Yet, I can't read the news to see if anyone has found that missing 777 without learning about Juan Pablo. O, and that can't possibly be a real name, can it?

the Small Catechism is good for what ails you...

     Thanks to the efforts of my long-distance friend John Halton and his gang, you can now find Luther's Small Catechism online without fear of Concordia Publishing House and its army of legal minions. While roaming our strange ecclesial world, I've returned again and again to this deceptively simple work. Anyone can grasp the Catechism in its essentials, yet there are depths to it that become clear only after years of reflection. So yeah and amen, I'm happy to see this. (Because I can't help it, allow me to quibble a bit about the use of that there NIV - we here at ER do not endorse it, like it, buy it, or otherwise go near it.) By the by, if you're over that way in Engelonde, the parish of Christ Lutheran Church is apparently in a mysterious Brigadoon world somewhere between, lessee, Orpington and Petts Wood, names no doubt made up by C. S. Lewis. Anyway, visit their site, study that Small Catechism, and have a fine morning.

Ah yes, values. Spare me.

another reminder...

What doesn't kill you can still make you wish it had.

     Just a reminder: Eo mens est imago Dei, quo capax Dei est et particeps esse potest. St. Augustine, De Trinitate XIV:11.
     It's important that we not forget that.

notes from a commonplace book...

Here we have the Knight of Faith, from Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling:

‘"Why, he looks like a tax-collector!" However, it is the man after all. I draw closer to him, watching his least movements to see whether there might not be visible a little heterogeneous fractional telegraphic message from the infinite, a glance, a look, a gesture, a note of sadness, a smile, which betrayed the infinite in its heterogeneity with the finite. No! I examine his figure from tip to toe to see if there might not be a cranny through which the infinite was peeping. No! He is solid through and through. His tread? It is vigorous, belonging entirely to finiteness; no smartly dressed townsman who walks out to Fresberg on a Sunday afternoon treads the ground more firmly, he belongs entirely to the world, no Philistine more so. One can discover nothing of that aloof and superior nature whereby one recognizes the knight of the infinite. He takes delight in everything, and whenever one sees him taking part in a particular pleasure, he does it with the persistence which is the mark of the earthly man whose soul is absorbed in such things. He tends to his work. So when one looks at him one might suppose that he was a clerk who had lost his soul in an intricate system of book-keeping, so precise is he.’

A shame Soren could never quite become such a gallant.

notes from a commonplace book...

     'Most of Donne's Songs and Sonets are composed partly in pentameters and partly in shorter or longer lines. . . . In all of Shakespeare's songs, to go no further, there is not a single pentameter line. It looks as if poets realized instinctively what it has taken literary critics much longer to see, that pentameter is different from other line lengths and that whenever it dominates a stanza or a poem, its strength and heft make for a significantly different kind of verse from that which we find in lyrical forms written in other line-lengths. . . .

     'Donne used the stanza of mixed line-lengths to combine feelings of very different sorts into poems of remarkably complex, often mercurial, tone. These different feeling proceed from the lines' different structures and the different relations between phrase and phrase that those structures entail. Usually the line of two or three feet will consist of a single phrase; the tetrameter is variable, but if it contains two phrases, it will often divide int he middle. The pentameter must be made up of at least two phrases or its single phrase must be developed with greater complexity, and it offers room for the more subtle development of an idea or an image. The constant movement that we sense in most of Donne's lyrics proceeds not only from his lively syntax and vigorously prosecuted images, but from the mixture of lines that in their very lengths convey feelings, and even attitudes toward experience, of very different sorts. These feelings and attitudes are not easily characterized, but, in general, the shorter lines tend to emphasize the quick, light, fast-moving, and relatively uncomplicated, even comic, exploration of a subject; the long ones tend to deepen, intensify, and complicate it, to slow it down and make it more serious, more problematical. So brief a summary seems much too formulaic. Obviously, Donne's lyrics do not change their tone abruptly from line to line. Nevertheless, again and again they broach in short lines a subject that at first seems frivolous but is gradually given amplitude and gravity through a series of more expansive pentameter lines, which, as it were, raise the subject to a higher level of serious meditation. See, for example, "The Triple Foole," "The Sunne Rising," and "Loves Infinitenesse,"' George T. Wright, Shakespeare's Metrical Art, pg. 323, n. 6.

reading the news...

     On reflection, I wonder just what's wrong with Russia's military action to hold their Crimean port and the surrounding territory. Have they moved to invade greater Ukraine? This is quite different from their invasion of Georgia a while back, and I'm not sure we should care that much. China and Japan, North Korea, Venezuela, Syria and Turkey, all seem more important. Just a thought.

notes from a commonplace book...

     Something from John Behr:

     'The affirmation, made by the Council of Nicaea and developed by Athanasius, that God is eternally the Father of his Son, means that in God there is a complete identity between nature and will; God does not first exist by himself, only subsequently to beget the Son. This identity of divine nature and activiety, and the claim that the Son is as fully divine as the Father, means, moreover, that the fivinity of God is fully revealed in Christ, so that "he who has seen me has seen the Father" (Jn. 14.9). That "in him the whole fullness of divinity dwells bodily"(Col. 2.9) means that there is no surplus of divinity beyond this revelation, awaiting discovery through other means. The divine nature is not a passive object for human thought attempting to comprehend what God "really is" in himself, for God has revealed himself as he is. This also has significant implications for understanding how theological language functions. Later in the fourth century, the Cappadocians, arguing against Eunomius, point out that God is not an object against which the adequacy of our words about him are somehow to be measured, bur rather that God is known in and through his revelation, which expresses what God indeed is, and within which alone it is possible to think and speak about God: "In thy light we see light" (Ps. 35.10 LXX),' The Nicene Faith, Part 1, pg. 17.

     How is it, that of a sudden Wordsworth doesn't bore me? I read the 1805 Prelude, and feel at home somehow. It makes no sense that I, as much an Urban Man as any you will meet, could once again as in my youth imagine happily being at liberty in what we call the country. 

     But of course it is the mind to which Wordsworth appeals, first, last, and always, the mind with its seemingly infinite capacity for perception and mastery. How much of this Kantian myth is the deliverance of study, and how much is just the inheritance of his age, remains unclear to me.

I am troubled by the thought that I have never been a Christian. 

Insomnia mon amour...

saganaki...

     The Greek genius - douse cheese in brandy and set it on fire. If you want to understand the Greek verb, or The Odyssey, or the peculiarities of Greek Orthodox life, reflect on the gratuitous, fleeting beauty of saganaki.

it's good to be king...

     The winter around these parts remains pitilessly cold. With that in mind, give a listen to this, from King Lear. At the last, Lear begins to discern the truth of kingship:

Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are,

That bide the pelting of this pitiless night,

How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,

Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you

From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en

Too little care of this. Take physic, pomp,

Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,

That thou mayst shake the superflux to them

And show the heavens more just (III.4, Quarto).

winter weather in winter...

     So they've named the latest storm 'Quintus.' I see. We need more than that to know what to expect from the storm. Is the full name Quintus Aemilius Lepidus? That's significant you know. 
     Of course, they could spare themselves a lot of heartache if they would just, you know, stop naming the damned storms. This is merely winter weather, with wave after wave of cold air moving down from Canada. We name hurricanes and typhoons because they are discrete storms. They have a definitive beginning, middle, and end; they can cause great suffering and damage, but for all that are relatively infrequent. These supposed 'winter storms,' on the other hand, are not at all discrete events, and to name them one after another serves only to create false drama for an already inane news cycle.
     It's still winter, the last time I looked, and we will as a result find ourselves subjected to winter weather. O, the horror.

a rant in two sentences...

     I'm rather tired of hearing about brain scans and their wonderful perspicuousness as windows on our true nature. 'Brain science' is phrenology with better pictures. 

a mystery...

     There is a bright yellow ball in the sky. It keeps disappearing behind the clouds as they move along, then it will suddenly reappear. I think someone somewhere keeps twiddling with a dimmer switch.

you know, there is such a thing as a stupid question...

     If you're a Christian of some sort, and you still feel the need to wax profound about the Trinity not being in the Bible, or some such nonsense, then there's the door. We'll validate your parking on your way out. I'm frankly sick of the arguments. I've heard 'em over and over again for twenty-five years or more, and they don't impress me. 
     Further, nobody asks 'Say, I don't see the Trinity in the Bible. How'd you come up with that?', with a desire to learn from those who know what they're talking about. O no no no, dear reader, you can be assured that question is meant to demonstrate how intelligent, and pure, your profound interlocutor really is. You may assert that the Scriptures are all important - and really, everyone does that, from your most fervent free-will Baptist to that elderly monk on Mt. Athos - but the guy wielding the question is having none of it. Like Milton of old, but without either the courage or the learning, he has seen through the schemes of the putatively orthodox. He won't be cudgeled by the illusions we cherish. He's read a few passages in the Bible, and dammit, his proof texts outweighs yours. So vanquished, you can slink off with him to the nearest Unitarian coven, or better yet, sleep in of a Sunday without remorse. 
     I refuse to argue with these people anymore. I don't care about their questions. There is, by the by, no proof text that will trump theirs - the whole scope of the Scriptures leads inevitably to the doctrines of the Trinity, and to the classical Christological confessions, but this or that text can always be distorted in one way or another. So, apart from teaching them how to read in the first place, I see no way to talk to anyone who, while claiming to be a Christian of some sort, defies reason and the confessional authority of Scripture. I just don't have the patience for it. 

novels novels everywhere, or so it seems...

     It's apparently time for novels. This happens to me. I won't read novels for a long time then, bam, I start reading nothing but novels. 

     Note that I didn't say 'fiction.' This is not a pedantic distinction. There is 'fiction,' which is overrated, and then there is The Novel, which is a mysterious form. It's lineage has many ramifying branches, and yet there are only a few truly great Novels. I'm looking for them.

take and read...

     You really should head over and read Gabriel Marcel's The Mystery of Being. Go. Now. Don't dawdle. 

not a movie review...

     Last night I watched The Fountain, directed by one Darren Aronofsky. So, like, what the hell?
     Seems we should make peace with death the way the Mayans and Taoists and Buddhists and Old Timey Roman Catholics did...or didn't...or something.
     What the hell?

of asteroids and existentialism...

     Well I'll be - dear reader, I've discovered that here you can play a fairly authentic version of the classic arcade game Asteroids. Now, when I was a young man, say around 12 or so, I loved Asteroids. I even gave it a heroic backstory or three. Some days the brave pilots (you always lost some don't you know) were fighting to save the Earth from the ravages of a great storm of asteroids that would otherwise destroy the planet. Other days, my fleet of fighters found themselves having to blast their way through an asteroid field to get to their latest Daring Mission.
     Yes, I had an active imagination.
     Having just spent a few minutes playing the game, I realize the cold truth of it all. The square within which the triangular ship finds itself is in fact a prison, and the hapless pilots must forever fend off ever greater numbers of rocks in order to survive another few minutes. When one ship is destroyed, another prisoner immediately takes their place, until that group of inmates is eliminated. Then, the game resets, and others are sent to their violent doom.
     Thus, you see that when a pilot plays especially well, they are merely extending the meaningless loop of their Sisyphean imprisonment. Surely some of them realize the absurdity of it all, and turn the game into a suicide run. Others, seeking to make their own meaning from this mashup, will fight to the end for reasons all their own, wracking up more and more points, for the amusement of the doubtless millions who watch this for entertainment like the gladiatorial combats of old.

     So, the next time you decide, for the sake of nostalgia, to start this deadly game, remember that you will shortly be required to define life's very meaning, or lack thereof, by how you play and when you reach the game's end. Asteroids, indeed, is the ultimate existentialist entertainment.
      

Yes, every now and then I must remind myself that I'm a poet. 

something good in a bad law...

     Here is something to think about. I for one find the emphasis on jahbs in the whole pseudo-debate about the ACA to be depressing and beside the point. 

Pro: 'Just as I don't want men and women to be servants of the state, putting them in thrall to their employer for the sake of health insurance isn't my idea of a good society idea, either. Ideally, we would have a free-agent nation where more Americans are afforded the opportunity to pursue their dreams and exploit their God-given talents.'

Con: '"The real problem is not people who are working only for health insurance no longer have to work because now they have health insurance. The problem is that as the subsidies for ObamaCare phase out, you're imposing implicit marginal tax rates that are very high. So if you make an extra $1,000 — and you lose your subsidy — that's a big cost. And that's a big disincentive not to make that extra $1,000. And what that's going to do is to put extra pressure on people not to advance in their careers, not to work full time, and to kind of stay where they are. And that, I think, is a very serious flaw in ObamaCare."'

a reminder...

     You know being passionate isn't a good thing, right? (Hint: passions are not feelings, though they can stir up some feelings.)

     And...cue the silence.

it's working!

     In the last couple of minutes, we've gone from one hit on the day to six. That's viral marketing my friends. Welcome to the future!

a gratuitous post to drive traffic...

     As you may or may not remember, I obsess over the stats for this little blog. I seek to drive ever more traffic my way for the sole purpose of providing an inconsequential frisson whenever I see the hit counter in virtual motion. So, in an attempt to lure people to ER under false pretenses, I will now pad this post with anything I can think of that's trending at the moment.
     No, Samuel L. Jackson is not Lawrence Fishburne. I thought we settled that a long time ago. 
     I don't care what Richard Petty says. The Sochi Olympics are not a total embarrassment for Danica Patrick. She could so win the luge if even half the field showed up for the race. 
     Speaking of the Winter Olympics, Russia's fake Potemkin Village has drawn the posthumous ire of Catherine the Great. She's going to have Putin's head just knicked right off. She's also pretty pissed about the lurid coverage of Philip Seymour Hoffman's death. 
     As always, it's a poser - how did Homer write the Iliad and the Odyssey while eating all those donuts? The Odyssey is so obviously the work of an older man, and yet you'd think the donuts, not to mention the daily diet of whole pigs and beer, would have killed Homer in his thirties at the latest.
     Like I said, it's a poser.
     And what's with Robert de Niro? That's all I'll say about the once great actor.
     Moving on to more important matters, do you really think Katy Perry is a witch? a worshipper of Satan himself? Is it not more likely that she is just a nitwit? Go for the simplest solution if you can, dear reader. Wield that razor at all times.
     Well, I think that'll about do it for now. I look forward to the quintupling of my traffic within the next half-hour. That would mean at least twenty-five more hits. 
     Success is a giddy thing, o yes it is.
     

you need to know this...

     Say you have impressively overslept. Let's assume that you start the day as a result many hours behind schedule. Well, there is only one thing that can salvage this afternoon my friends. Yes, that's right, it's time to make biscuits!

notes from a commonplace book...

     I've heard that there is an excess of individualism in the modern west. Don't you fall for that. 

     'How were bourgeois values inculcated? In a discussion of the requisites for social stability, John Stuart Mill gave principal emphasis to the need for "a system of education, beginning with infancy and continued through life, of which, whatever else it might include, one main and incessant ingredient was restraining discipline." The key to stability was the subordination of individual interests and whims to the needs and ends of society. Although formal schooling was only a modest part of Mill's wider vision of education, western Europe had achieved through the institution of compulsory primary education almost universal literacy by the end of the century, and it is generally agreed that secular schooling, which was inclined to play down religious training and stress civics and national history, was a major instrument in developing national pride and loyalty. Socialization was also furthered in the second half of the century by a newspaper ress that became available and geared to a mass reading public. Compulsory military service, the idea of a "nation in arms," a cry harking back go the revolutionary wars at the end of the eighteenth century, this, too, made a contribution in France to the socialization process. But most important in the process was the general breakdown of individual self-sufficiency in a mass industrial society, in which the division of employment and labor became the hallmark, and in which the individual came to be enveloped by the institutions and instruments of the state - the schoolteacher, the tax official, the gendarme, or the justice of the peace. The arm of the state was becoming longer and longer and more embracing, and the agens of the state were essentially middle class, whether of a higher or lower echelon. They embodied the middle-class notion of virtue. Thus, most soldiers functioned within the bourgeois world, but so too, of course, did most strategists and military leaders. The Channel ferry that bore George Sherston (Siegfried Sassoon) to France "was happily named Victoria," Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age, pg. 186.