travel writing, of a kind...

I've never been to Key West before. Yes, I even grew up in Florida. So, I always wanted to see it. That's why it hurts me to say the horrible truth.

Key West blows.

There's nothing to be done. The food is bad to mediocre, the natives are rude, us tourists are stupid, the 'beaches' are boring, the Gulf's too placid, and, well, the place is kind of a...it's kind of a dump.

I mean, I stood there, at the edge of the world, and it was so *desolate* and *bland* that it filled me with a deep, existential sadness.

Maybe that's the attraction - I did run into a surprising number of tourists with French accents. Whatever - I'm from Columbus, Ohio. If I want desolation all I need do is drive down Hamilton in the snow.

Where was I?

O yes. Now I've seen Key West, and I want to flee, to head for civilization. Still, it has been an adventure, and that's what I was after in the first place.

I'm at the sourhernmost spot in the continental United States. 'It just looked like, more space.'

math is hard...

Had to stop at the bank for a minute on the way. While there I saw something hilarious: 1.01% on a ten year CD, *0.25%* on a twelve month.

How would I sell that I wonder. 'Well ma'am, you could set all your money on fire, or you could give it to us to manage.'

Like I said, hilarious.

news from the road part 1...

Stopped to get pancakes. It's a ritual.
*****
My legs are *not* so white they they reflect moonlight. I am rather luminous with the Uncreated Light, as are all Midwesterners.
*****
It's *raining* in the Keys right now. Like, what the hell? I'm sure the memo went out before I left.

'time time time'...

Oh, I'm in southern Florida. It isn't cold here.

This is the first step on a journey of a hundred thousand frequent flyer miles at the end of which I become an Official Old Person.

television on the road...

So, I just ran across this here show called *Girls*. It's hideous. I saw 5 minutes of it, and I hate everyone in it with a perfect hatred. In fact, like the *God Made a Farmer* ad, this show hates us, so it's only right that we hate it back.

Of course, *Girls* hates girls most of all.

a story begins...

This run of dialogue came to me as the opening of a story. We'll see where it goes. Any resemblance to real dead people is convenient.
*****
'You're not easy to find.'
(A pause) 'Didn't know anyone was looking for me.'
'They are.'
'And who are they?'
'Your father worked for them.'
'My father.'
'Yeah, your father.'
'My father's dead. Been that way for a while.'
'Yeah...I know. Hung himself did he?'
(A longer pause.) 'How the hell do you know that?'
'Like I said, your father worked for these people.'
'Doing what?'
'This and that. Nothing big.'
'So why are you here?'
'It's good that I found you.'
Silence.
'Your father, see, well, these people I work for, they figure your father owed them.'
'Owed them what?'
'A favor.'
'Let's say I believe you, which I don't by the way. The Old Man won't be doing anybody any favors.'
'Maybe he won't....'
Silence.
'See, it's like this, he owed 'em, so as they see it, you owe 'em too.'
(An even longer pause) 'Huh. That's about the stupidest damned thing... Just who are these people you work for?'
'That's not important, what's important is that I found you. It won't take as long the next time.'

I have the con.

acting my age...

For God’s sake you two, get a room. I’ll pay for it. Heavens.

And you kids, stay off my lawn.

I don’t understand the words to any of this music.

Where can I find really comfortable pillows?

Do my eyes look baggy to you?

My golf swing sucks.

Does anyone else have a knee that goes out when it’s cold outside?

Fucking bifocals!

No, I hear gray is distinguished on a man.

How long can a damned hangover last?

No, that’s a book.

Pull your pants up!

Take off that damned baseball cap!

And get . . . off . . . my . . . lawn!

a poem...

Lyric Time

The century yet adolescent
shows itself a prodigy - 
what firmaments have not been torn?
what old gods have been let loose?
Hold hand to hand as we may
our hidden blood will cry
havoc through our little, gleaming world
that stays against its only end.

a moment with Emily Dickinson...

     We have this from Emily Dickinson: 'Every bird that sings, and every bud that blooms, does but remind me of that garden unseen, awaiting the hand that tills it' (from a letter to Susan Gilbert, 1852, if memory serves the underlining is in the original). She wrote that ten years before the great flowering of poems in 1862-3, but it could serve as a concise statement of purpose for those weird and ambiguous lyrics. 

     Consider this, from 1862 (Fr358):

     Perhaps I asked too large - 

     I take - no less than skies - 

     For Earths, grow thick as

     Berries, in my native Town - 

     My Basket holds - Firmaments - 

     Those - dangle easy - on my arms,

     But smaller bundles - Cram.

Tell me the singular perception of this poet did not take in a world stranger and larger than most of us could bear. What's more, dear reader, I have been convinced, all against my will (!), that this is at least in part the working out of her perhaps all unconsciously borne Calvinist heritage. (Blame Marilynne Robinson for this if blame you must.) 

banjo porn...

Here she is. I just find her lovely.

nothing to see here...

     Just sitting around, noodling away at this and that. I would like to write a poem, but so far all I have are two lines. A two line poem only works if it ended up that way on purpose. Of course, I did write several more lines. O how they flowed one after another. 
     They were bad, just bad. 
     So here I sit, noodling away at this and that, with two lines of a poem that doesn't want me to write anything more just yet. 
     A poet's life is one of toil and suffering my friends, toil and suffering.
     Played the guitar for a while earlier this evening. Beethoven I think said that the guitar is a miniature orchestra. This is true. I myself only have a handle on one small section of the woodwinds, and that's on a good day. Still, I love playing the thing. Or rather, the things - I have several, a twelve string, a classical, a steel string dreadnought, and an electric with three pickups. O, and I have a banjo that rarely sees the light of day, but is so beautiful that I can't part with it. 
     I'm a regular rock star.
     Dozed off for a minute there. Had a whole dream in about two minutes. I was hovering over a vast waterfall, looking straight down into the roiling water and mist hundreds of feet below. There was a certain vertigo, yet I did not fall. 
     Then I woke up. Should I go to bed I wonder? It's early you know.
     No, it's time for tea and some reading. 
     So ends the most fascinating post in the history of Blogdom.
     Peace out.

still not a movie review...

     What is Jewel Staite doing in Doomsday Prophecy, another godawful Syfy masterpiece? This just makes me sad. What's next? Ron Glass chasing bad CGI dinosaurs through an obviously fake Manhattan? Gina Torres using an asteroid to kill a five thousand foot long barracuda? C'mon people!

not a movie review...

     Ah, a Syfy original movie entitled End of the World.
     I love subtle foreshadowing.
     It's been on for about a minute and, yes, I can confirm that the End cannot come soon enough.
     Well.

yeah, I thought the Church Thing was over, but...

     I can't really attend a Presbyterian church of any kind. There are issues. Yet, this one on the north side is so alluring, the way a mistress might be alluring to a married man. Of course, we're talking about a very sober minded, exegetically profound, and homiletically eloquent mistress here, one who is fond of simplicity of dress and elegance of demeanor. A mistress, perhaps, who likes to read the more recondite works of the Reformed Scholastics, or the formally daring poems of George Herbert, while taking her tea. 
     In any case, I have a problem. Lutheran Life is such a drag. It wouldn't be such a problem if they wouldn't, you know, preach so much without having any idea of how to do it. Oh, and the Praise Band Collective's hold on the Missouri Synod grows stronger, and wider, every day. Really, tis true. It was a directive from the old president's office that every congregation develop some kind of hideous 'contemporary worship service'. This fit in with his desire to set folks like me ABLAZE! (tm) with anger and frustration.
     Of course, the OPC is not exactly a hotbead of traditional Reformed worship. You'll search long and far before you find a congregation that isn't at least planning for the time when they will drop several grand a year on a mediocre rock band whose leader has a soul patch. Grace OPC on our north side is indeed unique in this. 
     All the angstly angst here reflects what is a rather annoying problem. You see, the particular and peculiar contours of the Church Thing are determined by local conditions as much as anything else. Two hours in either direction and we'd have a whole different set of problems. I have to contend with a local ecclesial landscape that is blighted by Praise Bands, mainline manias of all kinds, and neo-Palamite convertitis. Hence my nearly decade-long wandering from place to place. 
     I'm not, really I'm not, looking for the Perfect Congregation And Communion. I just want to go to church, dammit. So while we're attending this here congregation of Missouri Synodians, awaiting from our Magisterium the latest directives for how to kill the faith of even more Lutherans, I really would rather go to this place where the sermons are damn fine, the worship is sober, and the people know their way around scripture. Is that really so bad?
     Is it?

odds and ends...

See what happens when I am caught up at work? I plan ways to make myself crazy.
*****
Next week I head down to Key West for a few days. Right now it looks like I'll take Emily Dickinson and Marilynne Robinson along. Annie Dillard might find room.
*****
Let us dive deeper into the fideist abyss.
*****
Must have a look at The Miltonic Moment.
*****
Speaking of Milton, Paradise Lost I realize is one of the earliest works of American poetry.
*****
Again and again let us say, there is no problem of evil. Many offer it as an excuse for faithlessness. It is a weightless excuse.
*****
The century is yet adolescent
and already shows itself a prodigy

is there an answer?

     After all these years, how annoying to find myself drawn most strongly to the OPC congregation on the north side. Why is that? This deeply damages my calm.

     How much freedom is there in Evangelical Freedom? I wonder.

     I protest too much perhaps.

foolishness...

     I'm caught up with all my work. That has never happened, so I'm a little frightened. I have things to do mind you, but I'm not behind on anything. Nothing hangs over my head. Again, this has induced a kind existential dread I can't describe.

China is the new China...

     Remember when the Soviet Union was the 'Evil Empire' for pulling this kind of stunt?

bad Greek...

     Why yes, my Greek is terrible. I have to work for a living, and can't tend the Greek the way I'd like. It's a sign of the world's disorder.
     Or something.

old bishops in the house...

     Allow me to introduce you to the new Patron Saints of Endlessly Rocking.
     Well, they would be the new Patron Saints of Endlessly Rocking if we went in for that sort of thing around here. We don't. That would be very very wrong.
     So, here are three old bishops. First, we have Sts Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria. Cyril is the one with the hat. That's how he rolls. As he says, Πιλιδιον φορεσω διοτι ελευθερον σχημα εστι, (or something to that effect). 

And here we have St Augustine. He seems an affable fellow, don't you think?

Now, in addition to these three old bishops, Plato will stop by from time to time. Think of him as an observer, a pain in the ass observer given to irony and flights of poetry about how evil poetry is.

This will work out just fine.

more from Cyril...

     Something else from Cyril of Alexandria's Commentary on John, apropos of nothing at all:

     'There is nothing good in human beings, he says, which does not absolutely need to be given by God. It is right for creation to hear, "What do you have that you did not receive?" I think we must be satisfied with the measure that is apportioned to us and rejoice at the honors given us from heaven, and by no means stretch beyond them. We should not dishonor the decree from heaven, treating the honors ungratefully by a continual desire for something better, or fight against the Lord's judgments out of shame because we think it is not right for us to receive something less than what is more perfect.'

Benedict, how we'll miss you...

     I have yet to say anything here about the abdication of Pope Benedict.

     You have all been waiting, tense and afraid, lest you miss my important remarks. For that I apologize.

     Of the great Pope I'll say only this - he may be the last great public Lutheran theologian.

     Let the reader understand.

I've decided not to be irenic...

     A few minutes ago I came upon this from Cyril of Alexandria's Commentary on John:

     'Through all time, he "was" in his Father as in a source according to his own statement, "I came from the Father and have arrived." Therefore, since the Father is considered as source, "the Word was in him" because the Word was his wisdom, power, imprint, radiance, and image. If there was no time when the Father was without word, wisdom, imprint and radiance, one must confess that the Son, who is these things for the eternal Father, exists eternally. For how is he really the imprint, how is he the precise image, unless he exhibits the beauty of the one whose image he is, since he has been formed in relation to it?'

That is irrefutable as far as I can hear.
     I remain obstinate in my friendship with St. Cyril, though so many have concluded that he is nothing more than an ecclesial thug. The evidence for that is rather thin, truth be told. Now, he is not particularly likable when he's not preaching, but then again neither am I. The fact remains that he proclaimed the Gospel, while Nestorius and his ilk drained it of its wonder, beauty, and power to save. It's not clear that they did so deliberately - I can't see that they were willful destroyers of souls, frothing at the mouth and eager to undo by force or guile all of God's creation. All the same they were in fact heretics, and Cyril was right to oppose 'em so relentlessly.
     In this he was rather like Luther. Luther held firm on the real presence of the Body and Blood of Jesus in the consecrated bread and wine in communion. This confession was itself ingredient in a complex of doctrines concerning the incarnation of the Son of God and the promissory nature of the Gospel itself. (Luther also held to a strict sort of semantic logic which influenced his reading of such simple copulatives as 'is'. I see no reason to find fault with this.) At various meetings between Luther and other reformers, the others would appeal to him to join them in a unified front against the Papacy. All that was needed for true unity and concord was for him to compromise on the real presence.
     You can see where this is going. The other reformers, supposedly so irenic, simply demanded a compromise that Luther could never offer 'em without unraveling the whole of the Christian confession. It's fascinating to me the way all those irenic reformers, like the heretics opposed to Cyril, sought only peace, peace, and were oh so conciliatory - as long as Luther compromised. In fact, the orthodox position on any particular doctrine has rarely been the true majority position. Cyril has been portrayed as a thug and a political bully because he refused to go along with an ever-growing movement of Christological error. Athanasius was sacked and exiled repeatedly as a disturber of the peace. Maximus the Confessor was martyred for his intractable confession of the two wills of Jesus by an Orthodox emperor and his patriarch because Maximus would not compromise in the name of unity and concord. Luther was opposed not only by the pope, the emperor, and the princes of the Roman Catholic Church, but had to stand apart from those who claimed that his recalcitrance was all that kept them from true unity in reform.
     Well, you get the idea.
     It's always thus. There are those even now who claim to seek peace, concord, and unity. They wish to be thought of as irenic, open-minded. Uncanny it is that the compromise must always be in their direction. One never hears an irenic Reformed leader publicly say that, while he doesn't understand the Lutheran and Orthodox confessions of Christ's person and work, and the concomitant confession of the real presence in the Eucharist, for the sake of unity and concord the Reformed churches of various stripes should compromise in this matter. In fact, since the Marburg Colloquy the Reformed have never once moved at all on these doctrines. No, the minority is expected to compromise, give up their confession, and fall in with the fold.
     That is what passes for peace ever and always in Church Politics.
     Lately I have been tempted in this direction. The ruins of the Church have made it damnably hard to know where to stand. What's more, I really do admire Calvin and the gang - even when they're wrong. For all that, wrong they remain. I cannot compromise, and I will grow ever more deaf to the call of those who claim to seek peace, peace, but only as long as they can set all the terms, and make all the demands. That is simply not the peace of Christ. It's just another worldly armistice, and we all know how fragile those are.
     So, the Church Thing, as I call it - that stressed out search for a place to stand - is indeed over, but there is no utopian ending to it all. The Church is indeed in ruins. Nonetheless, the Gospel has never changed. Baptism still saves, the consecrated bread and wine are always the Body and Blood of Jesus, and we are justified by grace through faith in Christ crucified.
     So, my wife and I are going to church again, every Sunday. I will try to deal with being another guy in the pews, though I don't know how long it'll be before I grow restless and have my tailor fit me for an alb. Indeed, neither of us knows what will happen, though I suspect things will get harder and harder.
     After all, the Praise Band Collective has agents everywhere.
   

take and read...

     The French translation of Fr. Schmemann's Journal has arrived from, well, France. As it's been several years since I did any sustained reading in French, this could take years for me to read. That seems like a fine thing to me.
     This one is not as cut up as the version published by St. Vlad's Press some twelve years ago. For that reason, it's 862 pages, not counting notes and suchlike. Still, the last line of the last entry by the dying Fr. Schmemann is the same, and is a word for all of us: Quel bonheur cela a été.

     'Here I cannot help but quote Stanley Hauerwas quoting Butch Hancock on this mess:  Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you’re going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love.' - Amy Laura Hall

     There is a mall at Bunker Hill.

     But of course there is.

     Why yes, as a matter of fact we are seeing The Who later this evening.

has to be said...

     Housekeeping isn't Robinson's best work. It's beautiful, but not always felicitous. How disappointing it would be if she had written nothing better.

     Time for something new. I need to be...discomfited.

There you go. The volume of Mrs Browning's poems is reasonably newish.

reading with Emily Dickinson...

     Emily Dickinson in 1862 wrote this to Thomas Higginson: 'You inquire my books - For Poets - I have Keats - and Mr and Mrs Browning. For Prose - Mr Ruskin - Sir Thomas Browne - and the Revelations,' (L404). Let's see, I just happen to have a volume of Browne's works right over there, and lo, he is indeed next to Mr and Mrs Browning, and a few inches away we find Keats himself. I confess that Ruskin bores me, even though he's essential not only for Dickinson but for Hopkins as well. What's curious is that reference to John's Revelation. Does hearing her mention that strange and wonderful work in conjunction with the strange and wonderful works of Sir Thomas Browne give you pause? It should. She's stranger and deeper than we thought, my friends.

opening Marilynne Robinson's *Housekeeping*...

     Housekeeping opens with a seemingly simple sentence:

     'My name is Ruth.'

Now, she did not say, 'Call me Ruth.' That would be too obvious. No, we get the simple declaration. I'll have more to say about that in later posts. For now, let's move on to the second, vastly more complex sentence.

'I grew up with my younger sister, Lucille, under the care of my grandmother, Mrs. Sylvia Foster, and when she died, of her sisters-in-law, Misses Lily and Nona Foster, and when they fled, of her daughter, Mrs. Sylvia Fisher.'

Well now, that's a tangle. Ruth maps out here a genealogy of a sort we should be familiar with, say, from the Book of Ruth itself (pay heed), or the opening of Matthew's Gospel. Let's work this out, for without clarity here, we'll be lost forever.
     We have Ruth, yes, and her younger sister Lucille. Right.
     First, they're 'under the care' of Mrs. Sylvia Foster, their grandmother (though Ruth refers to her as 'my grandmother', a curious singularity that will surely reveal its significance in time).
     Mrs. Sylvia Foster dies, as folks are wont to do.
     Then the two sisters pass to the sisters-in-law of Mrs. Sylvia Foster. These two, Misses Lily and Nona Foster, flee the scene at some point we have not yet encountered.
     After their departure, the two sisters pass to the daughter of Mrs. Sylvia Foster, one Mrs. Sylvia Fisher.
     I have kept their titles (Misses, Mrs.), for it is important to remember their relations.
     Next, we learn that the sisters remained through all this in the same house, the very house in fact built by Mrs. Sylvia Foster's husband Edmund. He is absent from the story because he 'escaped this world years before I entered it.' See how significant that 'Mrs.' becomes? She is long since a widow, and remains Mrs. Sylvia Foster. Because nothing Ruth says is careless or accidental, that surely signifies something important about Ruth's perceptions of the world of relations into which she was born.
     We immediately learn more about him, but my concern right now is with the precision of Ruth's delineation of her own relations. This precision will remain a particular, not to say peculiar, trait throughout the story she tells. What's more, that singularity, something dare I say that Ruth shares with one Emily Dickinson, will remain a key to her perceptions.
     So, we're just three sentences into the story, and already it has unfolded many strands of significance and beauty. We have learned much about Ruth. First, we know she has a sense of biblical grandeur about her. The story she will tell is subtly woven into the larger story of the Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, and all the mighty men, and all the more crucial dear reader, the mighty women of the old old story of God's dealings with his people. Second, we sense a canniness about her: we are seeing the world through the lens of a singular mind; here perception is, as Robinson will put it in an essay on Cauvin, akin to metaphysics.
     We still have 217 pages and many, many more sentences yet to hear. What will they tell us?

a short story...

An Incident

     A man stood on a street corner, shivering in the cold. Overhead the sky was by turns dark and light gray. The man held in his hand a briefcase, with his other hand he held his overcoat closed more and more tightly against the wind. He stood thus waiting for the light to change, waiting for the signal to cross over.
     He had been waiting for a long time.
     Just then he saw coming down the street toward him an acquaintance from long ago. This made him shudder. Still, the light would not change, the signal would not come.
     His acquaintance came closer and closer. The wind whipped between the buildings, the sky darkened, and still the light would not change. The man at the corner tapped his foot in his impatience, looked down at the ground. Closer and closer still came his acquaintance.
     Will the light never change? said the man on the corner under his breath as his acquaintance passed without so much as a glance or a word.
     The man on the corner watched his acquaintance grow farther and farther away. A look one might have read as resentment mixed with frustration passed over his face. He stood there, shivering in the cold, and as he watched his acquaintance disappear in the distance, the light changed.
     Still he stood, watching now nothing in the distance, as people pushed past him to cross the street. He stood and stood and stood, as again, after a time, the light changed. When finally he turned to look, it was once again red. Once again he could not cross over, once again he was denied.
     Damn! he said to no one in particular.
     He looked at his watch, clutched his overcoat more tightly, and stood on the street corner, shivering in the cold.

state of despair...

     As usual the president failed to mention his abuse of executive power; the dangers of ever increasing surveillance; the widening drone war, pursued without accountability even in our own airspace; a secret hit list that includes American citizens who can be killed; the widening spiral of despair which is at the root of our violence (*gun control* is a happy phrase - Chicago has draconian gun control laws, and its gun violence is growing exponentially); how the killing of children for profit and convenience is of a piece with an almost psychopathic drive to destroy other people's futures we see throughout the financial sector of the economy; how especially the drive to kill children who are conceived in horrific circumstances, as well as those with Down's Syndrome, reflects an atavistic urge to vengeance and purity; how all these things amounts to an embrace of Nothingness, or better the Nothing. Of course, the president is not the Pope, but I would like it if, you know, the guy had at least an ounce of moral insight and courage.

     I now want to find all manner of ways to use tranches in conversation. That I would liberally, and willy-nilly, use 'liquid' and 'illiquid' as modifiers goes without saying.
     Were I to write a decent poem using tranches, the world might just end.

why Peter was right, and we're wrong, about the Transfiguration...

     I'd like to descant for a moment on why I hate sermons about the Transfiguration of our Lord.
     In many western communions which observe liturgical calendars, today is indeed the Feast of the Transfiguration. It's also hard upon Ash Wednesday and thus the season of Lent. Priests and pastors in those communions which observe liturgical calendars feel compelled to connect this feast with the impending season of ascetical deprivation (otherwise known as 'giving up something for Lent'). This is a wise homiletical and exegetical intuition, but how to make that connection? 
     How fortunate that Peter is an actor in the pericope. 
     Peter, you see, is always helpful. In this case, after the great vision of the Transfiguration of our Lord, with Moses and Elijah in attendance upon Jesus, Peter says 'Lord, it is good to be here,' and then lays out his plan for how they could in fact stay right there for all time. It's a good plan. But Peter, dear reader, is universally supposed to be a rather affable moron. This is his homiletical and exegetical role. And thus he provides the perfect pretext for bringing Lent together with the Transfiguration of our Lord.
     It's simple. When Peter says 'Lord, it is good to be here', and then lays out his plan for how they could in fact stay right there for all time, we are supposed to find this an expression of his affable dimwittedness. The preacher will latch on to this, and say, 'Yes, like [dimwitted] Peter, we would like to stay on the Mountain Top [more about Mountain Tops in a moment], but alas, we must come down off the mountain and walk the valley of Lent.' Then there's some such nonsense about how God doesn't like it when we ascend to him, but comes to us in the thick of death and so on etcetera et al.
     Of course, that's precisely what God does, but I see no evidence that any ascent to him is forbidden us. In fact, he does seem to favor Mountain Tops for all the significant encounters in scripture. That we must in fact go back down the mountain has more to do with the fact that in our current condition most of us would in fact starve to death than with the character of God. What's more, the fact that God usually meets folks on the Mountain Top to send 'em on their way with a mission again has more to do with the condition of this world full of stiff-necked boneheads than anything else.
     What I'm saying is simple, that Peter was precisely right, it was and is good to be on that Mountain Top with Jesus. Perhaps in our haste to leave that Mountain Top, to go down into the thick of death and so on etcetera et al, we have missed something. Perhaps this haste is itself a symptom of sin and rebellion, the very sin and rebellion that renders penitential, ascetic fasts like Lent necessary in the first place. For it seems to me that this haste to come down off the Mountain Top manifests a desire to flee from the presence of Jesus, who is God incarnate, and get on with the work we've decided is important and urgent. 
     Note again that rarely is the season of Lent commended to us as a time of ascetic discipline with the end of clearing out the passions that keep us from fuller communion with Jesus. No, Lent is all too often commended as a time of action in the world. Indeed, we are encouraged to 'give stuff up' so's we can do more and give more to others. It is, to be sure, a fine and Godly thing to give ever more to the poor and the hungry of the world, but all this activist furor often becomes a fine way of shunning Jesus.
     Yes, my friends, Peter was on to something. Contemplative prayer; stillness in the midst of our panicked world; fasting in community as training for freedom; meditation on scripture; eucharistic devotion - these are the practices of Lent as much as if not more than the giving of alms to the poor and hungry. All the fasting and other mortifications are only there to open us more and more to our dependence upon ever closer communion with, and contemplation of, our Lord in whom and through whom we also have communion with the Father in the Holy Spirit. Lent is, in short, a longish practice of remaining right there on the Mountain Top in the presence of the transfigured Jesus. So again, Peter was precisely right, for there is nothing better, nothing we need more, than that. 

more books...

     You know, I've never read Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. I know, right? So, I'm looking through past issues of The Emily Dickinson Journal, and I come upon an essay entitled 'Emily's Heathcliff: Metaphysical Love in Dickinson and Bronte', by one Gary Lee Stonum: 'In debating these questions [concerning Dickinson's understanding of love and her evocation of love in her poetry] we typically think first of the poet's actual or imagined experience rather than her reading. Yet reading was experience for her, so a number of letters and poems attest.' How then does Bronte's novel impinge on Dickinson's poetry, particularly 'I cannot live with You -' (Fr706)? 
     I have no idea, as I have yet to read the essay. I have yet to read the essay, because I have yet to read Wuthering Heights. Now, I did not avoid the novel, no, I've just been off doing other things. Well, those other things have now run me smack into the thing, so it's time to read it. Funny how things work, ain't it?

This is the good stuff.

revisions revisions...

Sometimes, you just have to accept reality.

*****

Refusal

‘...and there was no more sea,’ Revelation 21.1



The shore at day’s end -
I watch as the tide recedes;
seabirds wash and play
as the last sunlight fades.
I will not say farewell 
to the sea, not say at last
a desert is all there is -
if there is no sea all is lost.

     Looking at that poem entitled 'Refusal', it's clear that line eight is the weakest link. It has to go, but right now I can't replace it. Damn.
     See, see, how artists suffer.

a poem revised...

Refusal

‘...and there was no more sea,’ Revelation 21.1



The shore at day’s end -
I watch as the tide recedes;
seabirds play and wash
as the last sunlight fades.

Calcified fragments of a sand
dollar crumble, the sea
calm, a shimmering
lure as the winter flees.

I will not say farewell 
to the sea, not say at last
a desert is all there is -
if there is no sea all is lost.

reading...

     I find myself of a sudden possessed with a desire to read, ahem, in no particular order, Melville, Nashe, Browne, Donne, Dickinson, Tuckerman, Milton. This is in addition to Pushkin, Akhmatova, Tsetaeva, Musil, and Byron. Of course, those writers are not new to readers of ER, but to be suddenly seized with an urge to read, inter alia, Redburn, Pierre, Donne's sermons, Dickinson's lyrics, Tuckerman's Sonnets, Clarel, The Unfortunate Traveller, Religio Medici etc, and et al, is just, well, kind of weird I have to say.
     I like it, mind you, it's just weird, that's all.

another poem...

Another Memory

Night, the shock of thunder
hard upon lightning so close;

I could imagine some god
had barely missed our house -
a primitive, I lived fearless
in the presence of immortals.

a poem...

Refusal



I will not say farewell 

to the sea, not say at last
a desert is all there is -
if there is no sea all is lost.

It's been a hard week, my friends. Change is constant, demands relentless. In short, it's simply life. So, this evening is a short respite. Dinner, scotch, a book, and now home with some tea - all will be well, all manner of thing will be well, that is true. I will try to bear that in mind tomorrow.

morning agenda...

     Worked on a story this morning. I actually clocked 182 words, and most of 'em aren't completely ridiculous. That's not a bad haul as these things go.
     I also revised some poems. At the last, there was a bit of reading here and there as well.
     It's only around 6:15 or so. It's raining out there, and will be for about another hour and half. This is just one system that will go to form a monster storm later today. From what I hear, this could be The One That Kills Us All.
     I'm planning to take a nap then do a little work. If the world ends, please wake me.
   

just screwing around...

     As I write and read and drink, I'm listening to Rush on this here iPhone thingumabob. All my people have Apple things so's we can all be synced one to another.
     That's not really community, but if I mentally squint, it sure feels like it.
     By the bye, the folks at the local Orthodox Presbyterian Church are surely friendly. My wife has taken to the place already.
     I'm doomed.

     It's time to revisit Annie Dillard for the first time in some ten years.

     I'm reading Cauvin, William and Henry James, Jan Potocki, Pushkin, Tsvetaeva, Marilynne Robinson, and this occasionally annoying but really helpful scholar named Belden Lane (aesthetics in Reformed theology and the like). Really, I don't know what's come over me.
     It could be the scotch. Do they cotton to scotch in the Orthodox Presbyterian World?

more books and such...

     First, we have a clutch of essays by one Belden Lane. Look closely - we have an essay on Calvin, one on Jonathan Edwards, and finally a piece on marriage in Puritan thought. (For the record, I first read the piece entitled 'Spirituality as the Performance of Desire: Calvin on the World as the Theatre of God's Glory' some twelve years ago.)

We also have some new books.

Oh yes, it arrived today.

not quite a change of heart...

     Lately I've been much impressed with this fellow named Jean Cauvin. He writes well, and has much to say. In the past I tended to be a bit dismissive of him, but perhaps that was a mistake.

a sudden change of plans...

    Now I have to spend time with Luther and Erasmus. Shakespeare might join us.

a brief note on Erasmus...

     Erasmus to my ear is a great Renaissance writer, like Cervantes or Ronsard or Montaigne or even Rabelais. He has wit, daring, and a fine style. He is not as deep as those (and others), but The Praise of Folly, Pope Julius Barred from Heaven, and the Epigram Against Pope Julius are small masterpieces. Had he not chosen to accost Luther, whose chops in logic and exegesis were superior, we would remember Erasmus as a respectable member of that distinguished company. Instead, in his ill-conceived and hastily dispatched Diatribe he exalts Roman Magisterial Authority in a manner I can only call fideist, all for the sake of defending the dubious philosophical and theological construct known as 'free choice'. It's just sad.

taxed and taxed again...

     There is a caste of shamans who interpret the Tax Code. I've employed one.
     Think about it for a moment - he studied an occult text in order to divine its meaning as applied to my circumstances. This text is central to our religion and is therefore sacred. He did not call himself a priest. He did not call himself a rabbi. He was at all times calm and never lapsed into a trance or a manic state.
     He did however speak in tongues.
     I wrote him a check. A laborer is worth his wages.
   

     It's been a while since I've mentioned that Richard Dawkins is a nitwit.
     Nothing he says or does could ever threaten anyone's faith in anything at all.
     Can we please start ignoring him, as well as Daniel Dennet, and all the other New Atheists? I mean, the older atheists are usually so much more interesting.

insomniac noodlings number 1,234,987...

     I'm sleepless.
     It's all this thinking, you see. There are still a few decisions laying around the offices, and at some point I will have to do something about 'em.
     For one thing, I will probably postpone the GMAT. It could slip into limbo altogether.
     What to do with my corporation during a fallow time, that is another question crucial and confusing at the moment. There will be no revenue. I can, of course, throw money into it as investor capital, but that's a different kettle of accountants dear reader.
     It is difficult to come to grips with all I need to learn this year. It is difficult to come to grips with change.
     In the end, that more than anything else keeps me awake.

preparing for tax season around here...

     The relations that hold between tax brackets and tax rates are occult and weird.
     One can be in the 25% tax bracket, and only pay 18% in taxes. We never hear about this in all the ritual argument over taxes.
     Should congress raise taxes on people like me? I'd have to say yes, there's nothing else to be done.
     I will, in turn, do everything I can to shelter income. That's the game in the Big City.
     What's more, all increases will apply only to taxable income over a certain threshold. The relations that hold between taxable income and earned income are also occult and weird.
   
   

superwhat??

     So, it seems there's a football game later. The wife had to remind me of it. She knew who was playing, and why.
     Meanwhile, I'm like all into Thucydides today.
     We sure are weird.

an update...

Dammit, I'm keeping the company.
Uh, now what do I do? I know, I'll wait for an infusion of capital by Warren Buffett.
If nothing else, I'll take The Indefensible.
Peace out.

on second thought...

     Perhaps there's a way to keep the company after all. This will require much thought.
     Thinking hurts.