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.

war and rumors of war...

"'For instance, do you see this chunk of land, washed on one side by the ocean?  Look, it's filling with fire.  A war has started there.  If you look closer, you'll see the details.'
     "Margarita leaned towards the globe and saw the little square of land spread out, get painted in many colors, and turn as it were into a relief map.  And then she saw the little ribbon of a river, and some village near it.  A little house the size of a pea grow and became the size of a matchbox.  Suddenly and noiselessly the roof of this house flew up along with a cloud of black smoke, and the walls collapsed, so that nothing was left of the little two-storey box except a small heap with black smoke pouring from it.  Bringing her eye still closer, Margarita made out a small female figure lying on the ground, and next to her, in a pool of blood, a little child with outstretched arms.
    "'That's it,' Woland said, smiling, 'he had no time to sin.  Abaddon's work is impeccable....  He is of a rare impartiality and sympathizes equally with both sides of the fight.  Owing to that, the results are always the same for both sides'," - The Master and Margarita.

renewal...

     Before any renewal can take place, we must first take account of the pseudomorphosis suffered by the Western Church's culture and ethos. This pseudomorphosis is the result of the haphazard introduction of elements alien to it's holistic, realist, anti- rationalist approach to the unity of worship, theological reflection, and practical works in witness to the Kingdom that has come and is yet to come.  Just thought I'd mention it...

total war to end all peace...

     So, it seems there's an 'Obama Doctrine' by which one can discern whether a given war is or is not justified.  Wars, you see, should mean something; they serve lofty moral purposes and advance History toward its fulfillment, or they lack justification.  War is, if you will, aspirational.  This implies of course that one ought to be reluctant to wage war over oil, water, fishing rights, or anything so pedestrian. 
     This is a reiteration, and in some ways an expansion, of the doctrine of 'Armed Humanitarianism' that has been orthodoxy since at least the First Gulf War.  Recall that we were in a life or death struggle with a tyrant who was 'another Hitler' - one must always fight Hitlers [Stalins get a pass, as do Francos, but pay that no never mind].  What's important is that the conflict was cast in humanitarian terms - a ruthless dictator had given vent to his expansionist fantasies by invading a sovereign, peaceful country, one moreover that was not only smaller physically but possessed of no means of defending itself against such 'naked aggression'.  It would fall the to the US and its allies to protect that nascent 'New World Order' aborning in the wake of the Fall Of Communism, by liberating Kuwait.
     Recall as well that Bush Sr called on the Iraqi people to rise up and throw off the shackles of oppression.  In the doing they would find an ally in the US, an ally moreover with F-14's and stealth bombers and highly skilled special forces at its disposal.  Well, the Iraqis rose up, and we abandoned 'em.   
     Allow me a digression here.  I remember hearing that the cease-fire accord worked out between the Coalition and Iraq required the Iraqis to refrain from using 'fixed wing aircraft', while allowing the use of 'rotary winged aircraft' (respectively 'airplanes' and 'helicopters' to the nonelect).  This was hilarious inasmuch as we had destroyed most if not all of the 'fixed wing aircraft' the Iraqi military had, in good Old Soviet Style,* more or less buried in fixed bunkers.  Even more delightful is the fact that 'rotary wing aircraft' are perfect for suppressing demonstrations and strafing villages and providing air support for mobile infantry and internal police units.  Give that a thought. Here ends the digression...
     So it was that the Iraqi regime used its rotary wing aircraft and its remaining Republican Guard troops and a rabble of police to suppress and then destroy the opposition.  It would take some time to set 'No Fly Zones' over northern and southern Iraq.
     I mention that little adventure because it points up the limits of idealism in warfare.  There was simply no way we could have intervened in the Iraqi uprisings because, despite their common target - Saddam - the leaders of the various factions were quite at odds with each other, and would have most certainly fought a civil war in the absence of the Brutal Dictator.  Thus, we would have found ourselves willy-nilly embroiled in a mess from which there was no escape.**
     I also recall that there was then, as now, opposition to our adventures in the Persian Gulf.  You could find pockets of protesters all over the campus where I lived and studied.  Their most determined argument was that the First Gulf War was no war of liberation at all.  Indeed, to these protesters and their sympathizers, all such rhetoric was a cynical ploy.  No, this was a war for oil, plain and simple.  The geopolitical status quo in the Middle East had to be maintained at all costs:  the US had been nearly crippled by the OPEC oil shocks of the 70's, and we were determined that never again would our access to oil be threatened.  That it was in this case threatened by a Brutal Dictator was a happy accident, allowing the administration to cast its naked power-grab in the rhetoric of liberation, law, and justice.  That we abandoned the Iraqi people to the tender mercies of the Republican Guard once we had 'liberated' Kuwait only confirmed this dire reading of events.  All this was summed up in their most common slogan of opposition - 'No Blood For Oil'. 
     Simple, eh?
     It's obvious in hindsight that the First Gulf War was in fact a war about oil, and a war about liberation, and a war about restoring 'National Pride'.***  So it is with most wars, which are largely creations of accident and mixed motives.  What's interesting in the context of our current military adventures, and the stir over the 'Obama Doctrine', is the extent to which we've only inflated the humanitarian, idealistic rhetoric with which we define our objectives and our justifications for war, while we grow ever more oblivious to the often sordid reality of actual warfare and its rationalizations.  From Bosnia and Serbia, to Somalia, and on to Iraq (again) and now Libya, our wars have been for the most part framed as humanitarian interventions.  Especially since the Clinton adminstration, more and more we have made warfare an idealistic venture.
     Of course, this is nothing new - consider the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the American Revolution and then the Civil War (which was really a second revolution), World War I and the Russian Civil War.  In fact, here we've run against a feature of late modernity in the West.  Warfare came to be understood not as a regrettable, but intractable, feature of fallen human life, but as an exceptional evil that could be extirpated once and for all.  Most often, the current war was to be the means of finally eliminating all war, either because rational humans would finally see how brutal war was [in order to impress the lesson, we had to wage war without restraint], or because the Elect would finally have eliminated those opposed to History, and thereby eliminated the Cause of Conflict.
     Thus the wars of modernity have been exceptionally cruel total wars, lacking all real distinction in theory and in practice between civilian and combatant, torture and interrogation, tactical necessity and vengeance.****  Most of 'em have been civil wars (one could include here even World Wars I and II), and nearly all of 'em have been at least in part driven by an Idealism of one kind or another.  What's more, almost all of 'em have been conceived as the Last War, the one which will usher in a secular Peace. 
     What my friends with their posters denouncing 'Blood for Oil' didn't see, and couldn't see without this historical perspective, is that it's actually far better to fight a war for oil than it is to fight one for some lofty idealism, whether the goal is the liberation of the oppressed or to creation of a Perpetual Peace.  A war for oil, or some other tangible thing over which there is a dispute, can end, you see.  A war waged for the sake of peace, or justice, or some other intangible ideal, will, by definition, never end.  There are always enemies of the ideal who refuse the call of History, and it's all to easy to go from a humanitarian mission (defending civilians, for instance), to a full-blown massacre of those who refuse to be saved.
     To return to the 'Obama Doctrine' - in requiring that wars 'mean something', that they serve lofty moral ends, our dear leader has simply been the latest to give voice to the ideal of Total War to End All War.  That he has further expanded the executive power to wage war without congressional oversight is only logical - the Leader, as a manifestation of the Will of History, must have unfettered freedom to wage war for the sake of peace anywhere at any time. 
     So it is that we have come to a rather odd and horrible impasse.  Whatever our particular pieties, for us war is not a rather pedestrian part of fallen life, to be at best ameliorated and limited through law and religious obligation, which would imply prudential reasoning and public debate and quaint formalities like declarations of war and the like.  No, for us war is at once an absolute evil and the means to its own elimination.  We are trapped in this contradiction, and possibly doomed to total war without end.  How, or even if, we can get out of it, remains to be seen.  If we do free ourselves from it, I suspect that a first step will be to realize that war is not a means to liberation, justice, or universal peace, but is merely a manifestation of fallen human violence, to be restrained, regulated, and if need be endured, this side of the Final Resurrection.*****

*Does anyone remember that the lighting ground war of 1991, was a miniature version of that great Apocalyptic Battle on the eastern European plain between Soviet and NATO forces which had long excited the fantasies of generals and game theorists on both sides of the Iron Curtain?  For what it's worth, it proved that NATO would have beaten the Warsaw Pact in any conventional conflict, but that's another story for another day...
**Sound familiar?  Indeed, from the wars in the Balkans to Iraq to, now, Libya, we have more and more entangled ourselves in civil wars.  Of course we take sides.  To decide which 'side' to support, we seem to rely on some sort of divination that allows our Leader to ride the Dialectic of History...
***A local television station loudly proclaimed that we had won our Greatest Victory and had exorcised the Ghosts of Vietnam.
****This has much to do also with the expanding totalism of the Modern State, but that's a topic for another day.  Furthermore, let no one imagine that I conjure here a golden age of peace - people found yet cunning reasons to kill one another.  I do assert, however, that there was a greater sense of realism regarding war before the modern era - a counterintuitive theorem to be sure, the proof of which I leave as an exercise for the reader.
*****This is why those who truly practice nonviolence are also realistic about the persistence of war as a feature of fallen history - by their refusal to fight, coupled with an acceptance of martyrdom if needs be, they are signs of the Kingdom that has come and is yet to come.  At the same time, there is a way of warfare that has been all but forgotten, one that can often be in defense of the widow, the orphan, the oppressed.  Consider the fatally flawed film Tears of the Sun, wherein a Navy Seal commander makes a sudden decision to stay and protect a ragtag gaggle of refugees who would otherwise be killed in their land's fratricidal civil war.  This is not an act moved by idealism, or a desire to rid the world of war - this man has seen enough to know that is impossible.  Of course, there is a massive air strike at the end and American helicopters come to the rescue, and we also find that they have unintentionally defended the 'rightful' president of the war-torn African nation, all of which undermines the moral center of the story.