another test

Testing line breaks in the new blogger

     to see if it still makes sense to post a poem here.

 This is only a test.

something something handmaid's tale...

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

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

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

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

or,

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

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

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

venus calling...

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

a thought...

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

karma karma karma...

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

war and rumors of war...

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

i'm begging you...

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

it's been a while...

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

graven images in the commons...

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

a poem revisited...

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

Song



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

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

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

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

this inspires my inspirational inspirations...

     Found this on Facetube.

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

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

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

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

a poem...

Untitled

I want to meet my father Avraham the wandering Aramean,

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

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

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

How to recognize the Voice of the One who happens

along if not by those imperious commands - 

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

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

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

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

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

time for math...

This is excellent.

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

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

i hear the humanities are dying...

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

'o the humanity!'...

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

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

reading the news...

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

let's try this again...

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