Merry Christmas from Jolly Old Saint Chesterton:
Gloria in Profundis
by Gilbert Keith Chesterton
There has fallen on earth for a token
A god too great for the sky.
He has burst out of all things and broken
The bounds of eternity:
Into time and the terminal land
He has strayed like a thief or a lover,
For the wine of the world brims over,
Its splendour is split on the sand.
Who is proud when the heavens are humble,
Who mounts if the mountains fall,
If the fixed stars topple and tumble
And a deluge of love drowns all--
Who rears up his head for a crown,
Who holds up his will for a warrant,
Who strives with the starry torrent,
When all that is good goes down?
For in dread of such falling and failing
The fallen angels fell
Inverted in insolence, scaling
The hanging mountain of hell:
But unmeasured of plummet and rod
Too deep for their sight to scan,
Outrushing the fall of man
Is the height of the fall of God.
Glory to God in the Lowest
The spout of the stars in spate-
Where thunderbolt thinks to be slowest
And the lightning fears to be late:
As men dive for sunken gem
Pursuing, we hunt and hound it,
The fallen star has found it
In the cavern of Bethlehem.
Saturday, December 24, 2005
Thursday, December 08, 2005
cause I'm a nerd...
...here are some first reactions to Narnia (mild spoilers follow), which I just saw the premiere of:
1. The griffins (my personal favorites) were much better done than in the BBC version.
2. The trees communicating with leaves was both hauntingly beautiful and better than any and all of the ent scenes in LOTR.
3. Lucy is the most adorable actress ever.
4. Liam Neeson as Aslan's voice was perfect. But I kept picturing Liam Neeson saying all of Aslan's lines and it was just...weird.
5. Did I mention the griffins were cool?
6. Adamson decided to focus on some things that I wouldn't have, the beginning and the river scene, for instance, were a pleasent surprise, though I do miss the silly flying Aslan from the BBC.
1. The griffins (my personal favorites) were much better done than in the BBC version.
2. The trees communicating with leaves was both hauntingly beautiful and better than any and all of the ent scenes in LOTR.
3. Lucy is the most adorable actress ever.
4. Liam Neeson as Aslan's voice was perfect. But I kept picturing Liam Neeson saying all of Aslan's lines and it was just...weird.
5. Did I mention the griffins were cool?
6. Adamson decided to focus on some things that I wouldn't have, the beginning and the river scene, for instance, were a pleasent surprise, though I do miss the silly flying Aslan from the BBC.
Sunday, November 27, 2005
105 freeway.
Were there pillars like these at greece,
At corinth when the hilltop worship spilled
Over into the marketplace? Will I, in a thousand years,
Find these tall monuments of utility, and think them
Reverent?
At corinth when the hilltop worship spilled
Over into the marketplace? Will I, in a thousand years,
Find these tall monuments of utility, and think them
Reverent?
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
home
Home is eating mint chocolate chip ice cream in front of an 24' flatscreen TV watching War of the Worlds with my dad and brother while my mom is on the phone with her sister, gabbing about thanksgivng guests.
Home is the beep, click, and whir of the old dial up connection, so different from the mobility of my laptop, the power chord of which I forgot to bring up north with me.
Home is country music under the articulated stars, diamond backed in black.
Home is a posterless bedroom, cold as I wake late in the morning.
Home is blueberry muffins for breakfast.
Home is the beep, click, and whir of the old dial up connection, so different from the mobility of my laptop, the power chord of which I forgot to bring up north with me.
Home is country music under the articulated stars, diamond backed in black.
Home is a posterless bedroom, cold as I wake late in the morning.
Home is blueberry muffins for breakfast.
Saturday, November 12, 2005
saturday
It is a lazy staruday morning, and I hear that up north the fog has come to templeton, that in my hometown, england's weather has settled like a blanket, coveirng the low buildings and oak trees and slow moving cars on the two-lane country roads. But I am further down the coast than they, and the bright sun has already overtaken my back porch, heating the metal arms of the deck chairs and the water waiting in the slinking green hose.
Plato says that there are three things, at least. There is being, there is becoming, and there is something in between, something which ever is and ever changes. He calls this the receptacle, the mother of the child which is becoming. Al Geier, the humblest scholar I've met, calls the first thing 'papa being'. It is the father who, with the help of the mother, makes becoming possible. Becoming, it turns out, does not have much existence of its own, for it is like the reflection of a thing in a mirror. Take away the reflected thing, and take away the mirror, and where is the reflection? Had it any being of it's own?
Perhaps the fog up north is bringing being to the low buildings and oak trees and the slow moving cars on the two lane freeways. Perhaps weather is an image of that third thing. Perhaps just outside my window, nature is being glorified.
Plato says that there are three things, at least. There is being, there is becoming, and there is something in between, something which ever is and ever changes. He calls this the receptacle, the mother of the child which is becoming. Al Geier, the humblest scholar I've met, calls the first thing 'papa being'. It is the father who, with the help of the mother, makes becoming possible. Becoming, it turns out, does not have much existence of its own, for it is like the reflection of a thing in a mirror. Take away the reflected thing, and take away the mirror, and where is the reflection? Had it any being of it's own?
Perhaps the fog up north is bringing being to the low buildings and oak trees and the slow moving cars on the two lane freeways. Perhaps weather is an image of that third thing. Perhaps just outside my window, nature is being glorified.
Friday, November 04, 2005
I saw...
...U2 this week. Amazing, of course, is what it was.
More on this soon, esp. for ellen's sake.
More on this soon, esp. for ellen's sake.
Saturday, October 29, 2005
Hitchock
Hitchcock's first movie in technicolor is an experimental film called Rope, adapted from a play called Rope's End. It is experimental in that most of the film appears to be one shot, and all of the action takes place within one room. Far from being boring or repetitive, it is a riveting thriller, even in this age of (need I say it?) explosions and car chases. The story is of two young friends, fresh out of the university who decide to act on their newfound ideas about an intellectual and moral elite. Unfortunately, acting on these beliefs means murdering their friend whom they believe that they are intellectually superior to. They hide the body in a bookcase and, in a bold move, invite his friends and family to a party in the same room that the body is hidden.
The movie replies heavily on dialogue--there is no music except for some brilliantly placed piano which is played by a main character. The plot thickens when the murderers teacher, played by the timeless Jimmy Stewart, shows up to the party and notices something is afoot. Stewart must soon face the horrible truth that his students have acted on the ideas that he taught them about the intellectual superiority of some over others and the illusion of traditional morality.
It is, perhaps, the clearest attempt at a refutation of Nietzchean ideals that I have seen in a movie, and Hitchcock makes a very decent attempt at an answer to the problem of the superman. Does his argument hold water? Watch the film.
The movie replies heavily on dialogue--there is no music except for some brilliantly placed piano which is played by a main character. The plot thickens when the murderers teacher, played by the timeless Jimmy Stewart, shows up to the party and notices something is afoot. Stewart must soon face the horrible truth that his students have acted on the ideas that he taught them about the intellectual superiority of some over others and the illusion of traditional morality.
It is, perhaps, the clearest attempt at a refutation of Nietzchean ideals that I have seen in a movie, and Hitchcock makes a very decent attempt at an answer to the problem of the superman. Does his argument hold water? Watch the film.
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
fountain of sorrow
So I've been listening to Jackson Brown lately, and came across this stanza:
When you look through love's illusions, there lies the danger
And your perfect lover just looks like a perfect fool
And you go running off in search of a perfect stranger
And the loneliness inside you grows like a fountain from a pool...
Fountain of Sorrows
Fountain of Life
You know that hollow sound
Of your own steps in flight.
You've had to suffer
And you've has to fight
But it's good to see
Your smiling face tonight.
In Charles Williams' Descent into Hell, there are many frightening evens and themes, but none so frightening, perhaps, as the constant unseen footsteps which all the characters hear form time to time. To Pauline, they are the steps of her doppelganger, her double, whom she fear more than death itself.
How often do we run from our selves? How often do we hide from the light, fearing it might expose our fear, our pain, even our self? But if only light can pain, only light can heal. Can life, perhaps, enself us? Can the light of honesty and love see through even disillusionment? It seems that the truest stories we get today are those tales of seeing though things, through innocence to experience and pain; through utopia to chaos and anarchy, through the smooth makeup of pretense to skin itself, and it is the skin which disappoints.
But what if we could looik further, pull back both layers and see the beauty and glory beyond even the meaner stuff of pain? Surely, some have said, if you struggle with problem of evil, you must also be true to the universe and wonder at the problem of joy. Which is at the base of things, which will fulfill? For surely there is layer upon layer of pain and joy, of beauty and chaos. On come now, you know the answer. You always have. It is your deepest desire and, for some, your greatest fear--that in the deepest relm of endless day light perpetual shines, in the end, on all.
When you look through love's illusions, there lies the danger
And your perfect lover just looks like a perfect fool
And you go running off in search of a perfect stranger
And the loneliness inside you grows like a fountain from a pool...
Fountain of Sorrows
Fountain of Life
You know that hollow sound
Of your own steps in flight.
You've had to suffer
And you've has to fight
But it's good to see
Your smiling face tonight.
In Charles Williams' Descent into Hell, there are many frightening evens and themes, but none so frightening, perhaps, as the constant unseen footsteps which all the characters hear form time to time. To Pauline, they are the steps of her doppelganger, her double, whom she fear more than death itself.
How often do we run from our selves? How often do we hide from the light, fearing it might expose our fear, our pain, even our self? But if only light can pain, only light can heal. Can life, perhaps, enself us? Can the light of honesty and love see through even disillusionment? It seems that the truest stories we get today are those tales of seeing though things, through innocence to experience and pain; through utopia to chaos and anarchy, through the smooth makeup of pretense to skin itself, and it is the skin which disappoints.
But what if we could looik further, pull back both layers and see the beauty and glory beyond even the meaner stuff of pain? Surely, some have said, if you struggle with problem of evil, you must also be true to the universe and wonder at the problem of joy. Which is at the base of things, which will fulfill? For surely there is layer upon layer of pain and joy, of beauty and chaos. On come now, you know the answer. You always have. It is your deepest desire and, for some, your greatest fear--that in the deepest relm of endless day light perpetual shines, in the end, on all.
Saturday, October 01, 2005
Wilder and Chesterton
Our town is a very interesting play. It was the first play my dad was in in high school. He had one line. It was "the stars are sure bright tonight". I always thought that it sounded like a dull, boring play, but I have found that Thorton Wilder, in less than a hundred pages, captures in short instaces the problem of living as immortal creatures in a physical, temporal world. I have two thoughts about this problem. The first has to do with that strange place where aesthetic theory and semiotics meet. My thought, or, more properly, question, is this: if we can take time learning and deriving meaning from art, and if art is, on the whole, the practice of making images of things in reality, then how much more may we learn from taking time with and paying attention to objects in reality?
But I feel like art is most times more intuitively meaningful than reality. Why is this?
Okay, second thought: Chesterton masterfully tackles this problem. At the end of The Man Who Was Thursday (mild spoiler ahead for those who care), Syme encounters the dance of common things, where people are dressed up as lampposts, dogs, mailboxes, etc. He says that long afterward it was the real things that reminded him of the dancing things, not the other way around. An interesting question emerges: can art remind reality what it is, or what it should be? Ahh, but this is a deep, confusing well. Let's return to Chesterton. In ManAlive, Smith suggests that perhaps God gave man a love for specific things both because heaven is a specific place and because eternity is easily the greatest idol. In Our Town, Wilder gives one a glimpse of eternity at the end, shows us the dead's view of the living. But the message is not so much that death shows us the worthlessness of specific things and moments, but that death shows us how much is in specific things and moments that the living miss.
Perhaps we are too concerned wiht the infinite, with a God who is the God of another world, another place, another time. It would be good to remember that God is the God both of heaven and of your sidewalk, that Christ is the Word upon which your hedges depend for existance, and that the Spirit moves and breaths with the sparrows in hiding in the Ficus and in the air that the ceiling fan circulates. A God who is so specific must be a great God indeed.
But I feel like art is most times more intuitively meaningful than reality. Why is this?
Okay, second thought: Chesterton masterfully tackles this problem. At the end of The Man Who Was Thursday (mild spoiler ahead for those who care), Syme encounters the dance of common things, where people are dressed up as lampposts, dogs, mailboxes, etc. He says that long afterward it was the real things that reminded him of the dancing things, not the other way around. An interesting question emerges: can art remind reality what it is, or what it should be? Ahh, but this is a deep, confusing well. Let's return to Chesterton. In ManAlive, Smith suggests that perhaps God gave man a love for specific things both because heaven is a specific place and because eternity is easily the greatest idol. In Our Town, Wilder gives one a glimpse of eternity at the end, shows us the dead's view of the living. But the message is not so much that death shows us the worthlessness of specific things and moments, but that death shows us how much is in specific things and moments that the living miss.
Perhaps we are too concerned wiht the infinite, with a God who is the God of another world, another place, another time. It would be good to remember that God is the God both of heaven and of your sidewalk, that Christ is the Word upon which your hedges depend for existance, and that the Spirit moves and breaths with the sparrows in hiding in the Ficus and in the air that the ceiling fan circulates. A God who is so specific must be a great God indeed.
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Theodicy
Which son does the father's will?
The tax collecters and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of heaven,
And I fear, as before, the shedding of flesh, the moment of death
When I learn how little the living really see.
I walk in daylight half-convinced, as one who sleeps among the stars
A paradox pair of half-singed legs ,
An uncommon fondness toward fire.
What joy in heaven at the turning,
Joy in heaven at the sidelong step.
But I wake half-convinced of faer-folk,
Eyes half-shadowed, fearing sight of
What I know exists.
She said softly I would have a vision
"Just you wait, and you will see the sights"
But I am blind, fair teacher, I am blind
I see not nor justice as I ought
Is it not us who are unjust?
It is not God who makes us suffer thus.
"This parable," he says, collared high in white,
wrapped long in green and gold,
"This parable is about us."
The tax collecters and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of heaven,
And I fear, as before, the shedding of flesh, the moment of death
When I learn how little the living really see.
I walk in daylight half-convinced, as one who sleeps among the stars
A paradox pair of half-singed legs ,
An uncommon fondness toward fire.
What joy in heaven at the turning,
Joy in heaven at the sidelong step.
But I wake half-convinced of faer-folk,
Eyes half-shadowed, fearing sight of
What I know exists.
She said softly I would have a vision
"Just you wait, and you will see the sights"
But I am blind, fair teacher, I am blind
I see not nor justice as I ought
Is it not us who are unjust?
It is not God who makes us suffer thus.
"This parable," he says, collared high in white,
wrapped long in green and gold,
"This parable is about us."
Saturday, September 24, 2005
I just saw Mr and Mrs Smith
There's alot of talk these days about violence: how it's bad, how it's the root of all problems. Heck, violence is almost as bad a word as sex used to be. And movies dont help, the glorify violence, it's true. Our modern fascination with huge explosions could be a problem as well. While traveling through europe, I had a tour guide named Dimitri who said he couldn't stand American blockbusters. Too big they were, too loud. He loved inderpendent films where the sotries were of common people--small stories, real stories.
I wonder about the first stories. Were they songs of violence, of the conquest of the heroes? Were they about the man, or just a man? Or woman?
You see, I think we will never be rid of the blockbuster. It's not only in our social consciousness, its in our blood, in our soul, in our nature. The hero? Yeah, we won't get rid of him.
I wonder about the first stories. Were they songs of violence, of the conquest of the heroes? Were they about the man, or just a man? Or woman?
You see, I think we will never be rid of the blockbuster. It's not only in our social consciousness, its in our blood, in our soul, in our nature. The hero? Yeah, we won't get rid of him.
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Life of David
So today I bought several books at Borders, one of which was Robert Pinsky's Life of David. Pinsky, who usually writes poetry or poetic criticism, has branched out and in his new book looks to be both biographer and bard of the great Jewish king. It looks like it will rule. Stay tuned for more in depth coverage.
In other literary news, Gaiman's new novel, Anansi Boys, the sequal to the amazing/disappointing American Gods came out today. Will Gaiman redeem the lackluster ending of his last novel? Only time and a good read will tell.
In other literary news, Gaiman's new novel, Anansi Boys, the sequal to the amazing/disappointing American Gods came out today. Will Gaiman redeem the lackluster ending of his last novel? Only time and a good read will tell.
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Dante
I attended a lecture by McReynolds on Dante tonight. I forgot how amazing he is. I was convicted by William's comment that the way of the poet and the artist is always the way of affrimation, never the way of negation, the way of word and image, not the way of black and blankness. I have tried the way of negation in poetry and have found it unsatisfactory. I just published a poem in the Symposium which I got some negative reviews on, and I think the main reason was that I was intentionally following a way of negation. I am convicted by Dante to follow the more traditional way.
But what to affirm? What not to affirm? That is the question.
But what to affirm? What not to affirm? That is the question.
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Nothing is sound
After a few listens I can say that the new switchfoot album is worth the wait and the money. Is it as good as their last album? The melodies aren't as immediately catching. Is it as good as Learning to breathe? The lyrics arent as unified or in depth. Is is as good as Legend of Chin? dream on, Legend of Chin will never be touched. Is it good? All signs point to yes. Is it different? Yes in that there are some new influences at play. I see some POD and Nickelback influences in the first song, some Audioslave in the third, and some Mutemath throughout. How intentional is this? I don't know. But the album is good and I trust Jon, Tim, Chad, and Jerome enough to know that the more I listen, the more I will love.
Sunday, September 11, 2005
9/11
9.11
Yes, yes, it has been four years, and I hear that there is a threat on LA for tomorrow. The terror alert status is at yellow, which is elevated, and the man in the threat video was clearly anglo. I wonder just how far this will go. Will the terrorists unite, perhaps under a nation, perhaps under a religion? We all know that Islam has hostile tendencies, but then again, I cant hide the Christian scriptures which talk of Christ as a conquering king, a bloodstained warrior with a sword coming from His mouth. That’s right, His mouth. Talk about strange, talk about threatening, talk about intolerant. Intolerantly Intolerant. The phrase came to me today. I don’t see why we’re so worked up about Those ‘dang liberals’ being tolerant of everyone but ‘us Christians’. Of course they don’t tolerate us, we’re the intolerant! Intolerance should not be tolerated if toleration is the name of the game! When we call them on their ‘inconsistancy’ on their 'self-contraditction'. They’ll probably reply, ‘tell us something we don’t know; of course we cant tolerate you! Didn’t you learn anything about categories in those private schools of yours? It’s not that we hate your people, it’s just that your philosophy is antithetical to ours, so we disagree. Big deal.’ If only we could argue so succinctly. But we whine and moan and it’s only a matter of time before… A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another as I have loved you
Yes, yes, it has been four years, and I hear that there is a threat on LA for tomorrow. The terror alert status is at yellow, which is elevated, and the man in the threat video was clearly anglo. I wonder just how far this will go. Will the terrorists unite, perhaps under a nation, perhaps under a religion? We all know that Islam has hostile tendencies, but then again, I cant hide the Christian scriptures which talk of Christ as a conquering king, a bloodstained warrior with a sword coming from His mouth. That’s right, His mouth. Talk about strange, talk about threatening, talk about intolerant. Intolerantly Intolerant. The phrase came to me today. I don’t see why we’re so worked up about Those ‘dang liberals’ being tolerant of everyone but ‘us Christians’. Of course they don’t tolerate us, we’re the intolerant! Intolerance should not be tolerated if toleration is the name of the game! When we call them on their ‘inconsistancy’ on their 'self-contraditction'. They’ll probably reply, ‘tell us something we don’t know; of course we cant tolerate you! Didn’t you learn anything about categories in those private schools of yours? It’s not that we hate your people, it’s just that your philosophy is antithetical to ours, so we disagree. Big deal.’ If only we could argue so succinctly. But we whine and moan and it’s only a matter of time before… A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another as I have loved you
Saturday, September 10, 2005
Though September has but begun,
Though yester-days were clear and hot,
The clouds today foreshadow fall,
Fall and warm coffee-pumpkin concoctions at the corner café,
Browning palm fronds, the subtle bite of the California west wind,
And the first collected thoughts of the school year, the pathos
Of the eager teacher, welcoming the early evening an hour after bell-song.
Dust on windshields dampens, and though there are no drops of rain,
The smog is no longer the spry child that it was weeks ago; it slinks low
On the cityscape horizon, blends with dark rooftops, haunts attics
With old memories of the unshadowed sun.
The girl in the summer dress, all blue and slippery sheen, is underdressed.
The occasion calls for the thick of cotton, the long of scarf, the ridge of corduroy,
Calling consumer to remember that miles up and away in Big Bear
Snow will soon meet peaks, and we valley dwellers would do well to follow suit.
The green of neon announcing donuts is no longer the new life,
the spring birth, youth, but instead sprouts sprigs of holly.
Red is berry, red is nose, red is sash, no longer sun.
Though yester-days were clear and hot,
The clouds today foreshadow fall,
Fall and warm coffee-pumpkin concoctions at the corner café,
Browning palm fronds, the subtle bite of the California west wind,
And the first collected thoughts of the school year, the pathos
Of the eager teacher, welcoming the early evening an hour after bell-song.
Dust on windshields dampens, and though there are no drops of rain,
The smog is no longer the spry child that it was weeks ago; it slinks low
On the cityscape horizon, blends with dark rooftops, haunts attics
With old memories of the unshadowed sun.
The girl in the summer dress, all blue and slippery sheen, is underdressed.
The occasion calls for the thick of cotton, the long of scarf, the ridge of corduroy,
Calling consumer to remember that miles up and away in Big Bear
Snow will soon meet peaks, and we valley dwellers would do well to follow suit.
The green of neon announcing donuts is no longer the new life,
the spring birth, youth, but instead sprouts sprigs of holly.
Red is berry, red is nose, red is sash, no longer sun.
Thursday, September 08, 2005
Art
I attended this panel discussion in art last night, and it raised some interesting questions in my mind. First, what are those things in art which are analogous to ideas in philosophy? Are there artistic ideas? Not just ideas about art, but ideas that art discusses, asks questions with and about, creates, or even discovers? This question really interests me, because I'm really taken with the notion that there is truth that art deals with and discovers. What do you think?
Monday, September 05, 2005
ACLU
I suppose that I'm glad that the ACLU exists. In the past I've thought that perhaps they were the scourge of american democracy, but I suppose they're good for us just like the people forming militias in their basements are good for us. They are the extreme left, and if they didnt fill the shoes of non-sensical left-wing extremists, who would? Where would be the man who believes you should be free to do anything and everything you want? Now I'm not saying you should be or are that free, but I am saying: doesn't it seem appropriate that someone thinks a crazy thing like that?
I think it's the same thing with the rich. It's fun to make fun of the rich, to expose the outrageouness of celebrity lifestyle and Bill Gates' ridiculous extravigance. I very much agree that we should help the poor and that hard work is most often good work, but I also think that it would be a great loss to society if there were no mansions on hillsides, if there were (as John Mark Reynolds has said) no more silly ladies who owned 2000 pairs of shoes.
Extremes seem appropriate in most societies, don't they?
I think it's the same thing with the rich. It's fun to make fun of the rich, to expose the outrageouness of celebrity lifestyle and Bill Gates' ridiculous extravigance. I very much agree that we should help the poor and that hard work is most often good work, but I also think that it would be a great loss to society if there were no mansions on hillsides, if there were (as John Mark Reynolds has said) no more silly ladies who owned 2000 pairs of shoes.
Extremes seem appropriate in most societies, don't they?
Sunday, September 04, 2005
Disney
I have sucessfully watched both Aladdin and the Lion king today. Who knew Disney was so amazing? Their effortless blend of love and pain, kid story and adult drama, greco-roman and judeo-christian mythos is nothing less than brilliant. Do they know how good they are? Do they know they are the shakesperes of the 20th century, bringing the stories of the past to the ignorant populace of today?
Saturday, September 03, 2005
People should be continually learning
But instead they remain steadfast in their ignorance
People should be continually rebuilding
But instead they jealously guard their untouched brick-piles
People should be continually humbled by love
But instead they scream for quiet, beg for independance, demand no binding sentence.
People should be continually rejoicing,
But instead they write like flames against the hated fire.
Katrina, Katrina, what have you reduced us to?
Katrina, Katrina, what have you raised us to?
But instead they remain steadfast in their ignorance
People should be continually rebuilding
But instead they jealously guard their untouched brick-piles
People should be continually humbled by love
But instead they scream for quiet, beg for independance, demand no binding sentence.
People should be continually rejoicing,
But instead they write like flames against the hated fire.
Katrina, Katrina, what have you reduced us to?
Katrina, Katrina, what have you raised us to?
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
the problem with religions/cults
Yesterday in a stupor of boredom sprinkled wth slight interest, I did some web-based research on Rosecrucianism and Anthroposophism. Now, I know these may sound like made-up names, but I assure you, they are real sects which are alive and well today. I was set onto this little hunt because of two writers whose work I adore, namely Charles Williams and Owen Barfield, both of whom belonged to these fun little religious sects.
It turns out that Rosecrucianism is a mystery sect (you could place it in the general category of Gnosticism) which is derivitive from Christianity, as well as having ties to the Freemasons (who are, incidently, derivitive from Judaism). On the whole, I found my research to be unfruitful. Apparently the Rosecrucians' name is based on the word "Rose" and the word "cross"(crux in latin). So they like crosses with roses on them. I decided to dig a bit deeper. Apparently, the sect began in the 15th crentury with a monk who taught his ways to others, but then was killed, his teachings lost, and his short lived religious order demolished. But in the 17th century, it sprang back up again in Europe, and had many famous and devoted followers. including Leonardo Da Vinci (how unsurprising is this?) What did it teach? I found the information sparse and unfulfilling. The main tenants of teaching were something like this: a member of the Rosecrucian order has special knowledge, light and power to heal and help mankind. And that's about all. What is this knowledge? I'm not really sure they even knew. And so ended my search for Rosecrucianism.
On to Anthroposophism (anthropos: man; sophos: wisdom) I went, finding even less information there. Appearently A. was invented in the late 19th/early 20th centruty as a branch of theosophy. Its main tenants were something like this: an Anthroposophist has special knowledge, light and power to heal and help mankind. Futher, it develops out of theosophy, which encourages its followers to find and embrace the divine within them. How disappointing is this? Here, in the disappointement, I made a discovery:
All secret sects, cults, and religions may dabbl ein proclaimation of mysteries, unspeakable names and words, secret powers and illuminations, but in the end, they all proclaim this: that man is not only material, that there is something within him that bespeaks of divine things. Can we even say that at the bottom of all these mystery shrouded -isms we find one truth and one truth alone? Man has a soul. This, perhaps is what the hooded eliteare still stunned with, still conjure up alchemical fomulas and magic incantations to proclaim.
But I find that this fact is elementary to Christianity. In some strange leap in time and history,the first 2 chapters of genesis have overstepped, have outpaced, the lagging findings of all other religious orders for thousands of years. What one may learn only through criptic ceremony and dark declaration in the masonic lodge or the Kabbalan gathering, one may find plainly on the first few pages of the Bible, and even more deeply and really on the first page of the Gospel of John.
Oh that we may cease to conform to the elementary things of the world, the prinicples which long have reigned and goverened mens minds. For in one fell swoop a deeper mystery that even the inner divine light is proclaimed in genesis three: the great mystery of the fall. It is a dark thing too deep for most men to see, yet it is also bare and plain. And beyond it still, there is a Man whose glory once was revealed, and though they killed him, he proclaimed the greatest mystery of them all. Just read Collossians.
It turns out that Rosecrucianism is a mystery sect (you could place it in the general category of Gnosticism) which is derivitive from Christianity, as well as having ties to the Freemasons (who are, incidently, derivitive from Judaism). On the whole, I found my research to be unfruitful. Apparently the Rosecrucians' name is based on the word "Rose" and the word "cross"(crux in latin). So they like crosses with roses on them. I decided to dig a bit deeper. Apparently, the sect began in the 15th crentury with a monk who taught his ways to others, but then was killed, his teachings lost, and his short lived religious order demolished. But in the 17th century, it sprang back up again in Europe, and had many famous and devoted followers. including Leonardo Da Vinci (how unsurprising is this?) What did it teach? I found the information sparse and unfulfilling. The main tenants of teaching were something like this: a member of the Rosecrucian order has special knowledge, light and power to heal and help mankind. And that's about all. What is this knowledge? I'm not really sure they even knew. And so ended my search for Rosecrucianism.
On to Anthroposophism (anthropos: man; sophos: wisdom) I went, finding even less information there. Appearently A. was invented in the late 19th/early 20th centruty as a branch of theosophy. Its main tenants were something like this: an Anthroposophist has special knowledge, light and power to heal and help mankind. Futher, it develops out of theosophy, which encourages its followers to find and embrace the divine within them. How disappointing is this? Here, in the disappointement, I made a discovery:
All secret sects, cults, and religions may dabbl ein proclaimation of mysteries, unspeakable names and words, secret powers and illuminations, but in the end, they all proclaim this: that man is not only material, that there is something within him that bespeaks of divine things. Can we even say that at the bottom of all these mystery shrouded -isms we find one truth and one truth alone? Man has a soul. This, perhaps is what the hooded eliteare still stunned with, still conjure up alchemical fomulas and magic incantations to proclaim.
But I find that this fact is elementary to Christianity. In some strange leap in time and history,the first 2 chapters of genesis have overstepped, have outpaced, the lagging findings of all other religious orders for thousands of years. What one may learn only through criptic ceremony and dark declaration in the masonic lodge or the Kabbalan gathering, one may find plainly on the first few pages of the Bible, and even more deeply and really on the first page of the Gospel of John.
Oh that we may cease to conform to the elementary things of the world, the prinicples which long have reigned and goverened mens minds. For in one fell swoop a deeper mystery that even the inner divine light is proclaimed in genesis three: the great mystery of the fall. It is a dark thing too deep for most men to see, yet it is also bare and plain. And beyond it still, there is a Man whose glory once was revealed, and though they killed him, he proclaimed the greatest mystery of them all. Just read Collossians.
Saturday, August 27, 2005
late at night...
...the question, held since morning, is posed: Where is conflict in conversation? We find in that back and forth dance of discussion that only the foolish, the boyish, compete for pride, for winning the field, for the small, shiny prize of the victorious proposition. Instead, all competition is found to be an image of that piece of the conversational puzzle, that dialectic mystery which is living and learning together, that grand classroom where we war against our own ignorance, our sisters and brothers and selves being caught in the trap of bowing to false gods. damn the discussion that leads to pride. damn the pride that leads to closed ears. Oh God, may we actively listen, be productively waiting for the coming of meaning, that spirit never our own and never far from our ears.
What is meaning?
What is meaning?
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
poetry
If anyone is at all interested in contemporary poetry, POETRY magazine is a good place to become familiar with the territory. The latest issue is quite enjoyable. There are two new poems by Billy "I'm the only poet anyone reads these days" Collins, which restore my faith in american poetry. There is also a poem by Louise Gluck (am I the only one out there who thinks she's great?) where she makes fun of Robert Pinsky, a must for all you Pinsky fans out there.
In other poetry news, Gluck has joined Pinsky on the faculty at Boston U. As if I needed another reason to drool over their MFA program. Then again, UCI is only 20 minutes away from my house. What's a west-coast boy to do?
In other, much smaller poetry news, the poem I've been working on for months is finally finished, revised, and the new batch of copies from the Duplication Center will be in my hands later this afternoon.
In other poetry news, Gluck has joined Pinsky on the faculty at Boston U. As if I needed another reason to drool over their MFA program. Then again, UCI is only 20 minutes away from my house. What's a west-coast boy to do?
In other, much smaller poetry news, the poem I've been working on for months is finally finished, revised, and the new batch of copies from the Duplication Center will be in my hands later this afternoon.
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
genesis
How cool is the first book of the Bible? Very cool, I say. It seems to introduce every big story and idea that will play out for the rest of time. kinda makes you think God knew what he was doing.
Monday, August 22, 2005
Hope and L.A.
Saying goodbye is the rising onramp to the 91 East
At Manchester where the high and lifted lights
Cast a parking lot glow on the ramps ascending
And descending the concrete ladder of Los Angeles.
Heaven is just over the grey railing there,
Yes, we are on the edge of heaven. See the moon?
She's dolled up in gold just across from us;
She's our sister like never before--we sit
Side by side and watch those fireworks as they burst
Above the peaks of Disneyland. You could almost grab
The strawberry sparks and hold them in your soft hands,
Perhaps roll their prickles around on your palms,
Perhaps throw them back with a laugh, and then turn,
Like the world, like our sister the moon,
And snuff with a puff into shadow.
At Manchester where the high and lifted lights
Cast a parking lot glow on the ramps ascending
And descending the concrete ladder of Los Angeles.
Heaven is just over the grey railing there,
Yes, we are on the edge of heaven. See the moon?
She's dolled up in gold just across from us;
She's our sister like never before--we sit
Side by side and watch those fireworks as they burst
Above the peaks of Disneyland. You could almost grab
The strawberry sparks and hold them in your soft hands,
Perhaps roll their prickles around on your palms,
Perhaps throw them back with a laugh, and then turn,
Like the world, like our sister the moon,
And snuff with a puff into shadow.
Friday, August 19, 2005
The region of summer stars will remain the same
Throughout the year, mapped on molten, seething black
But whirling around the globe like a bundle of firebrands
Waved by a Medicine man around the tar-thatched sick-hut
On the outskirts of the village.
I only hope that we may live to see the dawn,
For the world's dawn is a pacific dawn, when the fire smolders
And tendrils of red surface on the waters, adavance and slowly
Take the rocky shore, scaling the cliffs, warming the redwood bark
And pooling into space, filling that primal void, that dancefloor,
With a waltz of light and shadow
Throughout the year, mapped on molten, seething black
But whirling around the globe like a bundle of firebrands
Waved by a Medicine man around the tar-thatched sick-hut
On the outskirts of the village.
I only hope that we may live to see the dawn,
For the world's dawn is a pacific dawn, when the fire smolders
And tendrils of red surface on the waters, adavance and slowly
Take the rocky shore, scaling the cliffs, warming the redwood bark
And pooling into space, filling that primal void, that dancefloor,
With a waltz of light and shadow
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
"Surely it's all connected," she said. "Surely the fantasy stories my parents told me as a child, the long reminiscence of my grandparents about the 20th century, the lessons of felt and feeling in the sunday school room, the grand and complex explainations of science I learned at those small and compact desks in high school, that historic train of philosophical thoughts as long as their thinkers beards, even the clothes I wear, the coffee I drink, the words on the billboard––they must be all connected, all on some strange and savy stage where they play, perhaps even unknowingly, their parts."
"I'm afriad you may have missed the point, Ms. Thissland," Peter dryly replied.
"And what point may that be," asked Laura, head tilted, thinking, "unless...unless it is the point of life itself?"
"I'm afriad you may have missed the point, Ms. Thissland," Peter dryly replied.
"And what point may that be," asked Laura, head tilted, thinking, "unless...unless it is the point of life itself?"
Monday, August 15, 2005
Christmas
So I have a beef with all those santa claus movies, mostly because I think I actually take them seriously. I dont know how many Christmas stories have told me to keep the Christmas spirit alive in my heart for the whole year. Well, christmas movie, here I am, in August, and I'm feelin' it: that's right, the Christmas spirit! But you never told me what to do with it! Today as I sat under my beloved roof under an overcast sky and sipped my coffee from my favorite mug, surrounded by good friends just starting to stir at the dawn of the day, I felt the slow seeping in of Christmas warmth, Christmas cheer, Christmas rest, Christmas security: in a word, Christmas SPIRIT. I wanted to turn off the lights and light up the red and green bulbs, put on James Taylor's crooning voice and walk in my mind with the wise-men. But no, I didn't. Because it's not Christmas time! Either the movies are wrong or I am. Either the christmas spirit is supposed to be for any time of year, or it isnt. please tell me, Santa claus, wherever you are, the answer! Oh, sorry, I forgot. You only exist in my heart. I think that the problem with those movies is epistemological. If the Christmas spirit may only be found in my spirit, I reject it. If Santa Claus only lives in my heart, I reject him. But I have the sneaking suspicion that if the real saint Nicholas came along, it would be coal for us all.
Sunday, August 14, 2005
V is for...
I just finished reading Alan Moore's famous graphic novel, "V for Vendetta". (mild spoilers follow, for those who care) Story content aside, the book brought me to an interesting question: how human should your hero turn out to be? In "V", Moore never reveals the identity of his hero. He wears a mask throughout the entire story, and even when his time to fight evil is at an end and he passes on the tourch to another, he still does not reveal his identity, but instead tells his replacement, "you must discover who is behind the mask, but you must never know who it is". It ends up being a tricky way of saying that he wants his sucessor to find out on her own that she is to wear the mask after him.
So the question remains and plagues: why doesn't Moore reveal the identity of his hero? After all, the character is extremely interesting, one of the most interesting heroes in all of comics (Morpheus aside, for all you Sandman fans). So why not tell us about the man behind the mask? I'll wager a guess that I think most would come up with: whenever a secret identity is revealed, it's usually disappointing. The only time it's interesting is when you find out that a regular joe is actually a superhero: that peter parker is Spider-Man, that the effeminite Percey is the dashing Scarlett Pimpernell, that elwin ransom is the Pendragon of Logres, and that Jeshua the carpenter is Jehova the Almighty. But a revelation of the opposite sort is always somewhat of a let-down. You see this in many Mystery novels, where the situation is indeed mysterious, even magical, but then you find out why so and so was murdered, who did it, what their political motivations were, etc. It's always a let down, like the first time you heard exactly how a baby is made: no more elusive intrigue, no more rumors of storks from the east. Its a simple matter of zygote, chomosome, embryo, mitosis and time, and it sucks the every joy out of life. The elusive killer or the elusive hero, it makes no difference, always seem lose their charms in the end.
And perhaps this is why Moore has not told us who his hero was, because we would all breathe a sigh of discontented relief: we would know, but never discover. To reduce a man to his name, his birthplace, and his experiences is to miss the hero. Yet it is not the name that is the problem: a name is the most powerful kind of word in the universe. It is not the place that is the problem: locations are as foils to the monstrous mouth of eternity, and to swear alegiance is to tie name to place and heart to homeland. Finally, it is not experience that is the problem: experience, though it is, I believe, the most scarred of sacred words, is that story shaping force that moves our lives: it gives specificity to the eternal soul in a third and time-kept way beyond the name and place. No, the problem is our unmagical, surgical minds, that disect to know, and so nether know nor discover, the problem is our unreasoning minds that cannot see their selves for the brain-folds, and the problem is with our hands, which would rather grow more and more slack over time, who would destroy to know, debunk to discover, and tear down tradition and weep for their loss of all dance.
Let us create, let us think, let us love, and let the Hero, the God-Man himself (for that is what a hero truly is) show us that strange way: not all affirmation, not all negation, but that strange and gracious stumbling of a light encircled cross.
So the question remains and plagues: why doesn't Moore reveal the identity of his hero? After all, the character is extremely interesting, one of the most interesting heroes in all of comics (Morpheus aside, for all you Sandman fans). So why not tell us about the man behind the mask? I'll wager a guess that I think most would come up with: whenever a secret identity is revealed, it's usually disappointing. The only time it's interesting is when you find out that a regular joe is actually a superhero: that peter parker is Spider-Man, that the effeminite Percey is the dashing Scarlett Pimpernell, that elwin ransom is the Pendragon of Logres, and that Jeshua the carpenter is Jehova the Almighty. But a revelation of the opposite sort is always somewhat of a let-down. You see this in many Mystery novels, where the situation is indeed mysterious, even magical, but then you find out why so and so was murdered, who did it, what their political motivations were, etc. It's always a let down, like the first time you heard exactly how a baby is made: no more elusive intrigue, no more rumors of storks from the east. Its a simple matter of zygote, chomosome, embryo, mitosis and time, and it sucks the every joy out of life. The elusive killer or the elusive hero, it makes no difference, always seem lose their charms in the end.
And perhaps this is why Moore has not told us who his hero was, because we would all breathe a sigh of discontented relief: we would know, but never discover. To reduce a man to his name, his birthplace, and his experiences is to miss the hero. Yet it is not the name that is the problem: a name is the most powerful kind of word in the universe. It is not the place that is the problem: locations are as foils to the monstrous mouth of eternity, and to swear alegiance is to tie name to place and heart to homeland. Finally, it is not experience that is the problem: experience, though it is, I believe, the most scarred of sacred words, is that story shaping force that moves our lives: it gives specificity to the eternal soul in a third and time-kept way beyond the name and place. No, the problem is our unmagical, surgical minds, that disect to know, and so nether know nor discover, the problem is our unreasoning minds that cannot see their selves for the brain-folds, and the problem is with our hands, which would rather grow more and more slack over time, who would destroy to know, debunk to discover, and tear down tradition and weep for their loss of all dance.
Let us create, let us think, let us love, and let the Hero, the God-Man himself (for that is what a hero truly is) show us that strange way: not all affirmation, not all negation, but that strange and gracious stumbling of a light encircled cross.
Saturday, August 13, 2005
I'm having trouble...
...freedom and I are at odds. I face her, lady freedom, and I fear her. I fear what she might mean for my country. What are you, Freedom, and what will you do to my love? Will you love her? Will you let her die? I wonder whether America will long endure.
Thursday, August 11, 2005
pro-crastination
So I've been working on this poem on and off for about 9 months now. I've been working on the final revisions for the last few weeks, and today have decided to type our once again all of the newly revised poem. It's 10 sections long (a little over 20 pages) and I just finished the third section and have been, for the last 2.5 hours, done everything but finish typing it out. Writing is such hard work!
This brings me to an interesting thought. I was just reading Dr. Reynolds' blog where he answers some questions about Intelligent design. Some person had made the claim that scientific endeavor is unique in that only it performs research, and provides results that furhter our ability to manipulate the world around us to our own purposes. (On a side note, doesnt that explaination make science sound like alchemy? magic? witchcraft? but I digress). I have foudn that writing a poem takes alot of reserch time. I probably spent between 20 and 40 hours researching the subject of my poem before I really even wrote any of it. As for poetry making us able to manipulate the physical world to our purposes, I sort of doubt it. I think there is a poetry pendulum in my brain that swings back and forth between thinking poetry is useless drivel, and thinking it is the "unacknowledged legislator of mankind". (Shelly, for anyone who wonders)
What I think poetry can do, perhaps, is discover and reveal things about the world that may persuade us to change our purposes for it. It seems that scientific inquiry cannot do this: it can tell us how to manipulate, but never to what end we ought to manipulate. I realize the introduction of the word "ought" here would bring up the question: what, then, has ethics to do with poetry?" Let's sit with this question. Actually, you sit with it––I have a poem to finish.
This brings me to an interesting thought. I was just reading Dr. Reynolds' blog where he answers some questions about Intelligent design. Some person had made the claim that scientific endeavor is unique in that only it performs research, and provides results that furhter our ability to manipulate the world around us to our own purposes. (On a side note, doesnt that explaination make science sound like alchemy? magic? witchcraft? but I digress). I have foudn that writing a poem takes alot of reserch time. I probably spent between 20 and 40 hours researching the subject of my poem before I really even wrote any of it. As for poetry making us able to manipulate the physical world to our purposes, I sort of doubt it. I think there is a poetry pendulum in my brain that swings back and forth between thinking poetry is useless drivel, and thinking it is the "unacknowledged legislator of mankind". (Shelly, for anyone who wonders)
What I think poetry can do, perhaps, is discover and reveal things about the world that may persuade us to change our purposes for it. It seems that scientific inquiry cannot do this: it can tell us how to manipulate, but never to what end we ought to manipulate. I realize the introduction of the word "ought" here would bring up the question: what, then, has ethics to do with poetry?" Let's sit with this question. Actually, you sit with it––I have a poem to finish.
I am still wooed by simple songs
By several notes over and over.
Being young my dreams are large,
And my elders tell me they shall shrink,
Shrink like new shirts in the dryer,
Shrink like shiny new shoes in the rain, shrink
She said the word was not "pretty"
"Pretty is for flowers and clouds,
Not freeways". I noted the complexity,
The long, feminine curves, the pillars
Which call to consciousness parthenon, pantheon,
"Pretty," she said, "is still not the word,"
"Beauty," she again, "beauty may be the word."
I am still wooed by simple lines,
By concrete over and over.
By several notes over and over.
Being young my dreams are large,
And my elders tell me they shall shrink,
Shrink like new shirts in the dryer,
Shrink like shiny new shoes in the rain, shrink
She said the word was not "pretty"
"Pretty is for flowers and clouds,
Not freeways". I noted the complexity,
The long, feminine curves, the pillars
Which call to consciousness parthenon, pantheon,
"Pretty," she said, "is still not the word,"
"Beauty," she again, "beauty may be the word."
I am still wooed by simple lines,
By concrete over and over.
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
some wisdom from...
...jason Mraz:
Do you ever wonder what happens to the words that we send?
Do they bend? Do they break from the flight that they take?
And come back together again
With a whole new meaning and a brand new sense
Completely unrelated to the one I sent?
Do you ever wonder what happens to the words that we send?
Do they bend? Do they break from the flight that they take?
And come back together again
With a whole new meaning and a brand new sense
Completely unrelated to the one I sent?
Monday, August 08, 2005
love
So I just watched the movie hitch, which I very much enjoyed. it made the thrill of the chase so interesting, so irresisable, so magic, and, dare I say, epic? I do realize I'm saying these things aboout a movie whose soundtrack consists motsly of Hip-hop, but there you have it: the chase, the catch, the game-that-is-not-game was reenlivened onscreen tonight.
In other news, I miss disneyland. I started singing the "Yo Ho" song from Pirates of the carribean, and all of a sudden foudn myself longing for New orleans square, the tip of the haunted mansion jutting out above the trees, the music of the street performers, and that wonderful seafood pasta that they serve at the French market. mmm.
Also, Big Sur. I've been going there every summer for 17 years, and having just gone for a day, I can say that it was as amazing as ever. God made the Big Sur Coastline for people who want to be tormented with visions of heaven.
In other news, I miss disneyland. I started singing the "Yo Ho" song from Pirates of the carribean, and all of a sudden foudn myself longing for New orleans square, the tip of the haunted mansion jutting out above the trees, the music of the street performers, and that wonderful seafood pasta that they serve at the French market. mmm.
Also, Big Sur. I've been going there every summer for 17 years, and having just gone for a day, I can say that it was as amazing as ever. God made the Big Sur Coastline for people who want to be tormented with visions of heaven.
Thursday, August 04, 2005
Winter's Tale
I just saw A Winter's Tale, and excellent, semi-unknown play by the bard himself. It's half greek-tragedy, half raucous comedy: in short, a great time for all. On a side note, blogging has been scarce because I'm in San Diego. more to come soon.
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Warning:
What I am about to write will be sure to garner for me the label of nerd. I accept such a label gladly, and dont really mind being, or even being seen as, an academic. This said, I'd like to announce that I had a breakthrough in understanding Aristotle today. You see, in his poetics, he spends alot of time on tragedy and its elements and effects. He says that tragedy promotes katharsis in the viewer, that is, an experiencing and processing of their own fear and pain through the experince of the events of the play. Such an experience is cleansing and helpful for the playgoer. There is, I think, such power in dramatic catharsis that a play or movie that depicts pain, fear, and sorrow well can be one of the most helpful and real expeirences of our lives. There is pain below the grinning surface of the world, that we all seem to know below our smiles.
And so stories are judged, which tragedy as touching something of the wide and lonesome reality in which we live. Comedy is the facade, the clever mask that grins a fauxing grin. Comedy is the escape to smallness, the escape to an ordered, sense driven universe where falling off cliffs wont kill you and there is always a wedding at the end. Such things, I think, we take as true, and so, perhaps did Aristotle, for we dont find a treatment of comedy in the Poetics, and surely not a concept or power as great as catharsis that cemedy might do unto the human soul.
But today John-Mark suggested something insane: that the katharsis of comedy is that great force which stirs in you, if only for a moment, a recalling of a mirth filled self, the true and sinless self, a god-made self beyond the stars, or perhaps properly in the stars, dancing and twirling with pirhouettes of laughter. What if comedy was not a mask, but seeker of the truth deeper than our shame, our fear, or pain, a seeker of the inmost mirth of man? Then what would we believe about the world––that at its base and structure there is only pain? No, for that would be to mistake a thing for its parts, for it is pain that rips the canvas so that the stars shine through, and only by stripes are we healed.
And so stories are judged, which tragedy as touching something of the wide and lonesome reality in which we live. Comedy is the facade, the clever mask that grins a fauxing grin. Comedy is the escape to smallness, the escape to an ordered, sense driven universe where falling off cliffs wont kill you and there is always a wedding at the end. Such things, I think, we take as true, and so, perhaps did Aristotle, for we dont find a treatment of comedy in the Poetics, and surely not a concept or power as great as catharsis that cemedy might do unto the human soul.
But today John-Mark suggested something insane: that the katharsis of comedy is that great force which stirs in you, if only for a moment, a recalling of a mirth filled self, the true and sinless self, a god-made self beyond the stars, or perhaps properly in the stars, dancing and twirling with pirhouettes of laughter. What if comedy was not a mask, but seeker of the truth deeper than our shame, our fear, or pain, a seeker of the inmost mirth of man? Then what would we believe about the world––that at its base and structure there is only pain? No, for that would be to mistake a thing for its parts, for it is pain that rips the canvas so that the stars shine through, and only by stripes are we healed.
late nights
I try not to keep late nights, I really do, but I cant seem to go to bed early! Also, the silhouettes of the trees outside my window dont become meaningful until after 1am. What do they mean? I cant decide yet, but they are full and bristling at the top and they are trying to tell me something from the higher midnight air where the lights of the city are no so bright and the wind is cooler, almost frozen by the silver summer stars, wishing rest upon the frenzied heat of day.
Monday, July 25, 2005
louis hara
From "Manalive" by G.K. Chesterton
"Sir, -- A person answering to the rather extraordinary description required certainly went, some time ago, over the high pass of the Sierras on which I live and of which I am probably the sole stationary inhabitant. I keep a rudimentary tavern, rather ruder than a hut, on the very top of this specially steep and threatening pass. My name is Louis Hara, and the very name may puzzle you about my nationality. Well, it puzzles me a great deal. When one has been for fifteen years without society it is hard to have patriotism; and where there is not even a hamlet it is difficult to invent a nation. My father was an Irishman of the fiercest and most free-shooting of the old Californian kind. My mother was a Spaniard, proud of descent from the old Spanish families round San Francisco, yet accused for all that of some admixture of Red Indian blood. I was well educated and fond of music and books. But, like many other hybrids, I was too good or too bad for the world; and after attempting many things I was glad enough to get a sufficient though a lonely living in this little cabaret in the mountains. In my solitude I fell into many of the ways of a savage. Like an Eskimo, I was shapeless in winter; like a Red Indian, I wore in hot summers nothing but a pair of leather trousers, with a great straw hat as big as a parasol to defend me from the sun. I had a bowie knife at my belt and a long gun under my arm; and I dare say I produced a pretty wild impression on the few peaceable travellers that could climb up to my place. But I promise you I never looked as mad as that man did. Compared with him I was Fifth Avenue.
"I dare say that living under the very top of the Sierras has an odd effect on the mind; one tends to think of those lonely rocks not as peaks coming to a point, but rather as pillars holding up heaven itself. Straight cliffs sail up and away beyond the hope of the eagles; cliffs so tall that they seem to attract the stars and collect them as sea-crags collect a mere glitter of phosphorous. These terraces and towers of rock do not, like smaller crests, seem to be the end of the world. Rather they seem to be its awful beginning: its huge foundations. We could almost fancy the mountain branching out above us like a tree of stone, and carrying all those cosmic lights like a candelabrum. For just as the peaks failed us, soaring impossibly far, so the stars crowded us (as it seemed), coming impossibly near. The spheres burst about us more like thunderbolts hurled at the earth than planets circling placidly about it.
"All this may have driven me mad: I am not sure. I know there is one angle of the road down the pass where the rock leans out a little, and on windy nights I seem to hear it clashing overhead with other rocks -- yes, city against city and citadel against citadel, far up into the night. It was on such an evening that the strange man struggled up the pass. Broadly speaking, only strange men did struggle up the pass. But I had never seen one like this one before.
"He carried (I cannot conceive why) a long, dilapidated garden rake, all bearded and bedraggled with grasses, so that it looked like the ensign of some old barbarian tribe. His hair, which was as long and rank as the grass, hung down below his huge shoulders; and such clothes as clung about him were rags and tongues of red and yellow, so that he had the air of being dressed like an Indian in feathers or autumn leaves. The rake or pitchfork, or whatever it was, he used sometimes as an alpenstock, sometimes (I was told) as a weapon. I do not know why he should have used it as a weapon, for he had, and afterwards showed me, an excellent six-shooter in his pocket. `But that,' he said, `I use only for peaceful purposes.' I have no notion what he meant.
"He sat down on the rough bench outside my inn and drank some wine from the vineyards below, sighing with ecstasy over it like one who had travelled long among alien, cruel things and found at last something that he knew. Then he sat staring rather foolishly at the rude lantern of lead and coloured glass that hangs over my door. It is old, but of no value; my grandmother gave it to me long ago: she was devout, and it happens that the glass is painted with a crude picture of Bethlehem and the Wise Men and the Star. He seemed so mesmerized with the transparent glow of Our Lady's blue gown and the big gold star behind, that he led me also to look at the thing, which I had not done for fourteen years.
"Then he slowly withdrew his eyes from this and looked out eastward where the road fell away below us. The sunset sky was a vault of rich velvet, fading away into mauve and silver round the edges of the dark mountain ampitheatre; and between us and the ravine below rose up out of the deeps and went up into the heights the straight solitary rock we call Green Finger. Of a queer volcanic colour, and wrinkled all over with what looks undecipherable writing, it hung there like a Babylonian pillar or needle.
"The man silently stretched out his rake in that direction, and before he spoke I knew what he meant. Beyond the great green rock in the purple sky hung a single star.
"`A star in the east,' he said in a strange hoarse voice like one of our ancient eagles. `The wise men followed the star and found the house. But if I followed the star, should I find the house?'
"`It depends perhaps,' I said, smiling, `on whether you are a wise man.' I refrained from adding that he certainly didn't look it.
"`You may judge for yourself,' he answered. `I am a man who left his own house because he could no longer bear to be away from it.'
"`It certainly sounds paradoxical,' I said.
"`I heard my wife and children talking and saw them moving about the room,' he continued, `and all the time I knew they were walking and talking in another house thousands of miles away, under the light of different skies, and beyond the series of the seas. I loved them with a devouring love, because they seemed not only distant but unattainable. Never did human creatures seem so dear and so desirable: but I seemed like a cold ghost; therefore I cast off their dust from my feet for a testimony. Nay, I did more. I spurned the world under my feet so that it swung full circle like a treadmill.'
"`Do you really mean,' I cried, `that you have come right round the world? Your speech is English, yet you are coming from the west.'
"`My pilgrimage is not yet accomplished,' he replied sadly. `I have become a pilgrim to cure myself of being an exile.'
"Something in the word `pilgrim' awoke down in the roots of my ruinous experience memories of what my fathers had felt about the world, and of something from whence I came. I looked again at the little pictured lantern at which I had not looked for fourteen years.
"`My grandmother,' I said in a low tone, `would have said that we were all in exile, and that no earthly house could cure the holy home-sickness that forbids us rest.'
"He was silent a long while, and watched a single eagle drift out beyond the Green Finger into the darkening void.
"Then he said, `I think your grandmother was right,' and stood up leaning on his grassy pole. `I think that must be the reason,' he said -- `the secret of this life of man, so ecstatic and so unappeased. But I think there is more to be said. I think God has given us the love of special places, of a hearth and of a native land, for a good reason.'
"`I dare say,' I said. `What reason?'
"`Because otherwise,' he said, pointing his pole out at the sky and the abyss, `we might worship that.'
"`What do you mean?' I demanded.
"`Eternity,' he said in his harsh voice, `the largest of the idols -- the mightiest of the rivals of God.'
"`You mean pantheism and infinity and all that,' I suggested.
"`I mean,' he said with increasing vehemence, `that if there be a house for me in heaven it will either have a green lamp-post and a hedge, or something quite as positive and personal as a green lamp-post and a hedge. I mean that God bade me love one spot and serve it, and do all things however wild in praise of it, so that this one spot might be a witness against all the infinities and the sophistries, that Paradise is somewhere and not anywhere, is something and not anything. And I would not be so very much surprised if the house in heaven had a real green lamp-post after all.'
"With which he shouldered his pole and went striding down the perilous paths below, and left me alone with the eagles. But since he went a fever of homelessness will often shake me. I am troubled by rainy meadows and mud cabins that I have never seen; and I wonder whether America will endure. -- Yours faithfully,
"Louis Hara."
"Sir, -- A person answering to the rather extraordinary description required certainly went, some time ago, over the high pass of the Sierras on which I live and of which I am probably the sole stationary inhabitant. I keep a rudimentary tavern, rather ruder than a hut, on the very top of this specially steep and threatening pass. My name is Louis Hara, and the very name may puzzle you about my nationality. Well, it puzzles me a great deal. When one has been for fifteen years without society it is hard to have patriotism; and where there is not even a hamlet it is difficult to invent a nation. My father was an Irishman of the fiercest and most free-shooting of the old Californian kind. My mother was a Spaniard, proud of descent from the old Spanish families round San Francisco, yet accused for all that of some admixture of Red Indian blood. I was well educated and fond of music and books. But, like many other hybrids, I was too good or too bad for the world; and after attempting many things I was glad enough to get a sufficient though a lonely living in this little cabaret in the mountains. In my solitude I fell into many of the ways of a savage. Like an Eskimo, I was shapeless in winter; like a Red Indian, I wore in hot summers nothing but a pair of leather trousers, with a great straw hat as big as a parasol to defend me from the sun. I had a bowie knife at my belt and a long gun under my arm; and I dare say I produced a pretty wild impression on the few peaceable travellers that could climb up to my place. But I promise you I never looked as mad as that man did. Compared with him I was Fifth Avenue.
"I dare say that living under the very top of the Sierras has an odd effect on the mind; one tends to think of those lonely rocks not as peaks coming to a point, but rather as pillars holding up heaven itself. Straight cliffs sail up and away beyond the hope of the eagles; cliffs so tall that they seem to attract the stars and collect them as sea-crags collect a mere glitter of phosphorous. These terraces and towers of rock do not, like smaller crests, seem to be the end of the world. Rather they seem to be its awful beginning: its huge foundations. We could almost fancy the mountain branching out above us like a tree of stone, and carrying all those cosmic lights like a candelabrum. For just as the peaks failed us, soaring impossibly far, so the stars crowded us (as it seemed), coming impossibly near. The spheres burst about us more like thunderbolts hurled at the earth than planets circling placidly about it.
"All this may have driven me mad: I am not sure. I know there is one angle of the road down the pass where the rock leans out a little, and on windy nights I seem to hear it clashing overhead with other rocks -- yes, city against city and citadel against citadel, far up into the night. It was on such an evening that the strange man struggled up the pass. Broadly speaking, only strange men did struggle up the pass. But I had never seen one like this one before.
"He carried (I cannot conceive why) a long, dilapidated garden rake, all bearded and bedraggled with grasses, so that it looked like the ensign of some old barbarian tribe. His hair, which was as long and rank as the grass, hung down below his huge shoulders; and such clothes as clung about him were rags and tongues of red and yellow, so that he had the air of being dressed like an Indian in feathers or autumn leaves. The rake or pitchfork, or whatever it was, he used sometimes as an alpenstock, sometimes (I was told) as a weapon. I do not know why he should have used it as a weapon, for he had, and afterwards showed me, an excellent six-shooter in his pocket. `But that,' he said, `I use only for peaceful purposes.' I have no notion what he meant.
"He sat down on the rough bench outside my inn and drank some wine from the vineyards below, sighing with ecstasy over it like one who had travelled long among alien, cruel things and found at last something that he knew. Then he sat staring rather foolishly at the rude lantern of lead and coloured glass that hangs over my door. It is old, but of no value; my grandmother gave it to me long ago: she was devout, and it happens that the glass is painted with a crude picture of Bethlehem and the Wise Men and the Star. He seemed so mesmerized with the transparent glow of Our Lady's blue gown and the big gold star behind, that he led me also to look at the thing, which I had not done for fourteen years.
"Then he slowly withdrew his eyes from this and looked out eastward where the road fell away below us. The sunset sky was a vault of rich velvet, fading away into mauve and silver round the edges of the dark mountain ampitheatre; and between us and the ravine below rose up out of the deeps and went up into the heights the straight solitary rock we call Green Finger. Of a queer volcanic colour, and wrinkled all over with what looks undecipherable writing, it hung there like a Babylonian pillar or needle.
"The man silently stretched out his rake in that direction, and before he spoke I knew what he meant. Beyond the great green rock in the purple sky hung a single star.
"`A star in the east,' he said in a strange hoarse voice like one of our ancient eagles. `The wise men followed the star and found the house. But if I followed the star, should I find the house?'
"`It depends perhaps,' I said, smiling, `on whether you are a wise man.' I refrained from adding that he certainly didn't look it.
"`You may judge for yourself,' he answered. `I am a man who left his own house because he could no longer bear to be away from it.'
"`It certainly sounds paradoxical,' I said.
"`I heard my wife and children talking and saw them moving about the room,' he continued, `and all the time I knew they were walking and talking in another house thousands of miles away, under the light of different skies, and beyond the series of the seas. I loved them with a devouring love, because they seemed not only distant but unattainable. Never did human creatures seem so dear and so desirable: but I seemed like a cold ghost; therefore I cast off their dust from my feet for a testimony. Nay, I did more. I spurned the world under my feet so that it swung full circle like a treadmill.'
"`Do you really mean,' I cried, `that you have come right round the world? Your speech is English, yet you are coming from the west.'
"`My pilgrimage is not yet accomplished,' he replied sadly. `I have become a pilgrim to cure myself of being an exile.'
"Something in the word `pilgrim' awoke down in the roots of my ruinous experience memories of what my fathers had felt about the world, and of something from whence I came. I looked again at the little pictured lantern at which I had not looked for fourteen years.
"`My grandmother,' I said in a low tone, `would have said that we were all in exile, and that no earthly house could cure the holy home-sickness that forbids us rest.'
"He was silent a long while, and watched a single eagle drift out beyond the Green Finger into the darkening void.
"Then he said, `I think your grandmother was right,' and stood up leaning on his grassy pole. `I think that must be the reason,' he said -- `the secret of this life of man, so ecstatic and so unappeased. But I think there is more to be said. I think God has given us the love of special places, of a hearth and of a native land, for a good reason.'
"`I dare say,' I said. `What reason?'
"`Because otherwise,' he said, pointing his pole out at the sky and the abyss, `we might worship that.'
"`What do you mean?' I demanded.
"`Eternity,' he said in his harsh voice, `the largest of the idols -- the mightiest of the rivals of God.'
"`You mean pantheism and infinity and all that,' I suggested.
"`I mean,' he said with increasing vehemence, `that if there be a house for me in heaven it will either have a green lamp-post and a hedge, or something quite as positive and personal as a green lamp-post and a hedge. I mean that God bade me love one spot and serve it, and do all things however wild in praise of it, so that this one spot might be a witness against all the infinities and the sophistries, that Paradise is somewhere and not anywhere, is something and not anything. And I would not be so very much surprised if the house in heaven had a real green lamp-post after all.'
"With which he shouldered his pole and went striding down the perilous paths below, and left me alone with the eagles. But since he went a fever of homelessness will often shake me. I am troubled by rainy meadows and mud cabins that I have never seen; and I wonder whether America will endure. -- Yours faithfully,
"Louis Hara."
Half-blood Prince:
That's right, I was one of those poor american consumers who stood outside of Borders at the stoke of midnight last week to pick up my reserved copy of the new Harry Potter book. As I read it, I wondered whether it was worth the 45 minutes in line and 17.99 that I paid for it. really, waiting in line was a great experience: the full, orange moon was low on the horizon, and the girl in line next to me was interested in philosophy and religion, so we had a good talk. She seemed to think it funny that I thought all truth to be unified. But the night I bought it is not the point of this post. What is important is last night, when I finished reading it. I have to admit I had my doubts as I read through it: the romantic subplots were juvenile and barely redeemed themselves even after the book was over; the writing was inconsistant, sometimes with amazing dialogue and sometimes with the most plodding prose I've experienced. But Rowling is not good at beginnings or middles of her books (though she's getting better at exposition). Rowling is known for stingers at the end, and she delivered better than she ever has on this one. Im still a bit stunned at the end, and it's been almost 12 hours since i put it down. Read it. Rowling just may have outdone herself, and set us up for a truly great 7th book.
Sunday, July 24, 2005
home
The waning moon had a tail of cloud tonight
As we stepped carefully in the darkness toward
An understanding of home, ad understanding
of when to hold on and when to let go.
Hope bent the screen door for want of looking up,
And on several occasions more than my two eyes were blurry.
How is a soul moved? we asked
And where in words lies self?
And when before the dawn of thought
Did my love for home begin?
As we stepped carefully in the darkness toward
An understanding of home, ad understanding
of when to hold on and when to let go.
Hope bent the screen door for want of looking up,
And on several occasions more than my two eyes were blurry.
How is a soul moved? we asked
And where in words lies self?
And when before the dawn of thought
Did my love for home begin?
Saturday, July 23, 2005
1 am
..is a quiet time.
My fan tries in vain to suck the cool air form outside
Through my closed window curtain into my warm room
and I can no longer hear the traffic outside.
The hot night has slowed the cars,
Perhaps even melted the rubber of their ties to the thick asphalt,
itself gummy, itself maleable even in the faux darkness
Of a Los Angeles nighttime.
My fan tries in vain to suck the cool air form outside
Through my closed window curtain into my warm room
and I can no longer hear the traffic outside.
The hot night has slowed the cars,
Perhaps even melted the rubber of their ties to the thick asphalt,
itself gummy, itself maleable even in the faux darkness
Of a Los Angeles nighttime.
Thursday, July 21, 2005
when i was young...
...my favorite poem was Lonfellow's "A Psalm of Life". This was partly because my father told me that it was my grandfather's favorite poem, and after saying this, would quote the last stanza with tears in his eyes and a crack in his voice. After reading the poem for myself i realized that he quoted it wrong usually, his meter unbalanced, his memory blurred. But when he spoke it I felt a truth passed from father to son over two generations: a strange truth, with meaning more in the sound and the incantation perhaps than the words themselves. It ends:
Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate,
Still acheiving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
what is this last stanza calling me to do as a son, as a man? Is it simple or complex? more basically: is it one or many?
What is the will and how does it act?
What is the soul and where is its will?
It has left me like memories written and forgotten;
Oh that we had heeded the king when he rebuked the god!
Then would my memories stay within me,
Here at my heart to act into speech.
And what is speech but the clothing of thought,
Or the moving image of idea?
Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate,
Still acheiving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
what is this last stanza calling me to do as a son, as a man? Is it simple or complex? more basically: is it one or many?
What is the will and how does it act?
What is the soul and where is its will?
It has left me like memories written and forgotten;
Oh that we had heeded the king when he rebuked the god!
Then would my memories stay within me,
Here at my heart to act into speech.
And what is speech but the clothing of thought,
Or the moving image of idea?
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
science: a false mistress?
I'm a little worried about science. This has come out of some discussions lately with my friend ben. we both have degrees in philosophy and haven't taken a science class for about four years, so the conclusions that came out of our discussion should be taken, I belive, iwht a grain of salt. That being said, I think modern science is terrifyingly dangerous. I think this because whenever we talk about how we know or percieve or behave, we automatically want to go to the physiological explaination of thse things. Once we find that explaination, we stop and think ourselves wise. Scientific findings about the physical world masquerade as complete explainations, as holistic answers, and I fear if I and we are not careful, they will gorw so large as to blot out the stars and all we shall see is the unreal cosmos of material interaction and lose sight of all that is not matter. It looks so much like truth! and it is true, usually, as far as it goes. But God save me from its snares: its experiments, its control groups, its data and its polls. Tie me to the wall of uncertainly before I follow it down the raid to a shadowland of seeming sense!
craft.
I was talking with ben today and realized that I may not have a unique talent. I dotn have something that I and only I am good at. I dont think I mind this. In fact, it is a bit comforting to think that I can be insignificant and normal and so live a quite life, not having to stand in front of kings, the one and only master of my craft. I can find a woman, get married, raise kids, teach them about Jesus, and so do my small part in the great and eternal kingdom. It is comforting to know that I will not change the world. It is encouraging to know that in knowing that, I may just change it yet.
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
andreia
So I was talking to keith today about fear. What is fear? What, conversely, is courage? The greek word for courage is "andreia", which can be translated as "manliness". Surely this is different than "manness", right? In the dialogue Laches, Socrates talks about the relationship of courage to knowledge. Is courage a type of knowledge? In the dialogue, Nicias says that courage is knlwedge of the fearful and hopeful. hmm... more on this later.
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