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.

February 13, 2013: The School Shooting Pivot Date

For your edification: February 13, 2013: The School Shooting Pivot Date

So it begins again...

The Iliad, I

Wrath - sing Goddess the accursed wrath
of Achilles, son of Peleus, which caused grief beyond
measure, hurled to Hades many valiant
souls of heroes, and made them spoils for dogs
and every sort of bird, as the desire
of Zeus was being brought to its fruition,
sing from when Agamemnon, son of Atreus,
Lord Protector of men, and god-like Achilles
first stood apart in strife.
                                               Which of the gods
threw those two together in strife to fight?
Apollo, son of Zeus and Leto, enraged
with the King, roused an evil plague
throughout the camp, so the soldiers were dying,
for the son of Atreus had spurned Chryses
the priest who had come to the swift ships
of the Achaeans, holding in his hand
the wreath of far-shooting Apollo upon a gold
staff and bearing ransom without measure
to free his daughter; he begged all the Achaeans,
but most of all the two sons of Atreus,
Agamemnon and Menelaus, marshallers
of the armies…

changes...

     This is the last post for Endlessly Rocking, Blogspot version. I have a new blogging venture entitled The Pebbled Shore, which will, if all goes well, be a new departure. Thanks to all for their support and good cheer as this simulacrum of the Original Endlessly Rocking limped to its end.
     Peace out.

     So, it's been quite a year...

odds and ends

    I feel like I've lost my way. If you find my way, please let me know.
*****
     The Romans are a great enigma to me. I don't really understand anything they did. Julius Caesar might as well be a quantum loop.
*****
     I find myself confronted by a new challenge: success, surprising and overwhelming success. As a sales rep, over the last year I have won awards, broken records, and earned more money than I imagined possible. I own a business with employees, including an administrative assistant. Why is this a challenge, you query? Good question...good question.
*****
     The Occupy protesters are mostly just tourists. They're fomenting a revolution for the hell of it.
*****
     Gray hair abounds - I rather like it.
*****
     Why o why must we insist that Shakespeare wasn't Shakespeare? What obsession with occult rumblings does this signify?
*****
     Do we really think the world will end in 2012? Should I set up my Roth IRA, or not? I need answers people, and my business adviser can't seem to help me.
*****
     Discuss: The NATO war in Libya was a counterrevolution.
*****
     It's already Black Friday, but then again, we know all Fridays are Black, as well as Good.

a great version...

William Shatner and Ben Folds give us 'Common People'...

stolen from facebook

Thanks to Tripp, Clifton, et al...

     Plato claims in his Seventh Letter that he has not and will not write anything concerning that about which he is most serious.  That's likely the key to all his works.

nothing to see here...move along...

     You know, the logic of hell really is impeccable.

well i've done it now...

     So, if you've got one of them Kindles, or care to get a Kindle App, you can now purchase my collection of poems entitled Songbook for the Mean Time.  Do tell all your friends.
     Really, I mean it, tell them...all of them.  It's okay, I'll wait...
     Peace out.

     Right now the sun is out, there's a warm breeze through the window of my study, and there is only distant thunder...

a poser...

     So, I look around and wonder, where's the revolution?

     Then comes the ineffable sadness...

a poem

The Hour

Now there's nothing left

of him love but scattered ash

aloft in a whirlwind - we
in the end raised a glass

and made timorous the night.

a poem, repeated here

Last Days


Handwork, breath-
work - wine
bread water oil -

promisory time
of icehearts thawed
fast

merton madness...

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

o so true...

no more waiting...

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

don't expect much from this...

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

waiting, just waiting...

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

happy day!

     This just arrived!  Delightful, just delightful.

just a naive thought...

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

complain complain...

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

marketing!

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

that's it!

     I admire John Calvin. His theology is often beautiful. But there's always a, well, a problem, something that's bothered me for over a decade. There's a fatal flaw in the whole, something that once you see it, sends the vision galley-west.
     I finally figured it out.
     The real problem with John Calvin is simple - he doesn't believe in the sovereignty of God.
     Yes, that's right, for all his majesty and glory and power and wrath and benevolence and grace and suchlike, God in the theology of John Calvin just isn't sovereign. There are strict limits on what he can, and can't, do, limits expressed in later polemic by unfortunate latinisms like extra and non capax.
     Mind you, this is no judgment on the piety or genius of the man, who by all accounts was indeed a great, if difficult, pastor. Still, perhaps it was that piety that caused him trouble. He wanted so to honor God, to magnify God, to defend God, if you will; he wanted to use great care, caution even, as he spoke of and for God, lest he offend the divine majesty and cause the people to stumble willy-nilly into idolatry. He was so careful, so cautious, so circumspect, and in that was simply faithful to his inheritance. Still, in the end, against all his intentions, he ended up positing real and stubborn limits to the sovereignty of God.
     Let me say it again - John Calvin doesn't believe in the sovereignty of God. He only thinks he does, and he thinks so very carefully and discreetly too.
     So, mystery plumbed.