gender!

So I just had a wonderful conversation with some friends and colleagues and more than ever, I don't understand gender. Please dont disragard the article below, just know I'm confused, not as to whether there is a difference between men and women, but as to what that difference is; Matt A of Mere Orthodoxy has some very interesting ideas. If only he'd release his new book and enlighten us all.

sex! (as in gender)

It seems unfortunate that equality of the sexes be as stressed as it is, not only in the Christian community, of which I am a part, but also in the culture of America at large. I say this with full recognition (can there be such a thing?) of the dangers of traditional patriarchy, and a slight bent toward a more liberal (though many who know me may not agree) view of a woman’s place in society after I have spent time with actual women, especially the exceptional women who I am privileged to be friends with, who hang about the University like queen bees about a single hive.

This being said, it is unfortunate not only for women that equality of the sexes be stressed, but also for men. Now I’ve heard the conservative drivel (and drivel always has more truth than we should like to admit) about the feminization of men, about how the feminist agenda (if there ever has been a unified feminist agenda) has, at its root, not equality and freedom as its ends, but instead, a male oppressing matriarchy. If this is indeed the feminist agenda, then I am sorely sorry to say that their agenda is self defeating; if presented with a game of mastery, men are of the sort to fight until they win or die—it would be much more beneficial and profitable to stick with the rhetoric of equality and freedom. If there is to be no master, if the game has no victor, then the men will truly have been beaten.

What will this state of the feminine victory look like? First of all, it will not be a physical victory. Men will still gravitate, in general, toward the more physically demanding vocations. What will change is motivation. If women can convince men that there is no real battle because there is no real difference between the genders, then women will have proved the modern theory that all gender conceptions are socially conditioned, even, perhaps especially that conception that gender is an illusion.

Here is why the social conditioning of gender equality will be harmful to culture: it will take away, as was said above, motivation in men, specifically that motivation that, in part, drove them to be virtuous and strong in the first place: the responsibility for another. If traditional gender roles, with man as the ‘head’ (whatever that means) fully disappear from the earth, we will see the male gender more demoralized and weak than ever. And if you give them enough visual and auditory entertainment, pornography, and other forms of virtual reality, then they will become ineffective members of society. Women truly will have any job, career, or lifestyle choice they want, but men will all have the same lifestyle choice, with one group of exceptions.

The exceptions are those exceptional people that the medieval world called monks, those who rejected culture in some aspects and matrimony entirely, and devoted all of their time to prayer and study. Conditioners beware: fear these men and women above all, fear that they will motivate men with traditional ideals. The swords and arrows of patriarchal man are vicious.

A note: Am I being fair to men, or am I dismissing all males as push overs? Why do they fly about, blown by every wind which promises sensual or intellectual pleasure or mastery? If what I say is true, are not men the weaker race? Yes, yes, we are weak and you women must help us. Do not tell us we are equal as genders, because some day we might believe it and stop trying to master you. We will stop trying to chase you, stop trying to build cities for you and tear cities down to take you back. Yes, we fall on our knees at every passing pleasure, but do not delude yourself. Remember the power of diamonds on such beings as yourselves, and you will see that all humans are weak in the presence of beauty, whether cheap or costly.

A second note: I do not understand gender, but I do induct that a gospel of equality and freedom of and between genders will lead to weak people. Men will stop fighting, stop working as hard, and women will not have the chance to make the truly difficult decision of whether or not to get married. In the end, there is only one feminist agenda, an agenda that is shared by the non-religious nuns of the modern and post-modern university and the low-class, nagging housewife—that of the motivation of men on the small scale and humans on the large scale. Let the relation of genders be a fight to the death, a fair fight which, Chesterton says, no man (or woman) should refuse.

Man and woman, myself and others, discover together what kind of things you are; do not conclude before you have begun to argue: for it is in the midst of battle that the soldier finds his virtue, his courage, his honor, strength, and love.

It's about time!

If you read my blog, you've probably been thinking I post almost as rarely as Miss Maltby (pun intended).

There is a very good reason for this: whenever I feel the urge to write, I work on a story that's slowly been developing for the last few months. In the spirit of this interactive, self indulgent, digital age, I have a question for my droves (5? 6? per month?) of readers. I'd like you to tell me without knowing anything about the story: Should I kill my main character at the end of the book?

Feedback please.

Complaining...

...I have noticed lately that many blog posts consist of complaining about practical circumstances on one's life. I apparently missed the memo that this is what blogs are for and so have decided to jump on the bandwagon before it's too late.

So, I ask myself, as the midnight hour slowly creeps by and my eyes begin to burn with sleep, what should I complain about? Well, I could complain about my nice silver car which was brutally smashed as it sat in its parking space on my street yesterday.

But I don't really want to complain about that: I felt bad for the guy who lost control of his old bug and slammed into me, plus the sun was so warm on the trees above the scene that the leaves glowed gold in the late afternoon.

But I suppose I do have something to complain about, come to think of it. Where in this good, green United States can a guy get a good cappucino? But even now, I can't quite complain. Starbucks cappucinos are, of course, mediocre; they do their job, but lack the higher subtleties of truly good cappucinos.

What of the cappucinos I can't complain about?
1. Pete's: Pete's coffee itself is quite good and thie cappucinos combine a velvet sweetness with a needed bite that's balanced quit well.

2. Seattle's Best: I haven't drunk their regular coffee, but their cappucinos are extrordinarily smooth. The foam is less like foam and more like an airy liquid...mmmm....

The conclusion? I don't know why we complain. do you?

Take THAT!

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

I saw...

...U2 this week. Amazing, of course, is what it was.
More on this soon, esp. for ellen's sake.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.