Stay In Touch -Have I not proven to you that I Am in the saving sinners business? -Jesus
Saturday, December 31, 2011
You Carry the Cure In Your Own Heart by Andrew Vachss (Parade Magazine): The Zero 5.0laf - The Official Website of Andrew Vachss
You Carry the Cure In Your Own Heart by Andrew Vachss (Parade Magazine): The Zero 5.0laf - The Official Website of Andrew Vachss
Excerpt:
....of all the many forms of child abuse, emotional abuse may be the cruelest and longest-lasting of all.
...when it comes to emotional abuse, we are more likely to believe the victims will "just get over it" when they become adults.
Excerpt:
....of all the many forms of child abuse, emotional abuse may be the cruelest and longest-lasting of all.
Emotional abuse is the systematic diminishment of another. It may be intentional or subconscious (or both), but it is always a course of conduct, not a single event. It is designed to reduce a child's self-concept to the point where the victim considers himself unworthy—unworthy of respect, unworthy of friendship, unworthy of the natural birthright of all children: love and protection.
Emotional abuse can be as deliberate as a gunshot: "You're fat. You're stupid. You're ugly."
Emotional abuse can be as random as the fallout from a nuclear explosion....when it comes to emotional abuse, we are more likely to believe the victims will "just get over it" when they become adults.
That assumption is dangerously wrong. Emotional abuse scars the heart and damages the soul. Like cancer, it does its most deadly work internally. And, like cancer, it can metastasize if untreated....
The Mousetrap: Agatha Christie’s adult masterpiece - Telegraph
The Mousetrap: Agatha Christie’s adult masterpiece - Telegraph
Excerpt:
About to enter its 60th anniversary year, 'The Mousetrap’ is steeped in gentility. Yet it has a darker side, says Christie’s biographer Laura Thompson....
Excerpt:
About to enter its 60th anniversary year, 'The Mousetrap’ is steeped in gentility. Yet it has a darker side, says Christie’s biographer Laura Thompson....
The Book Haven | Cynthia Haven's blog for the written word
The Book Haven | Cynthia Haven's blog for the written word
[Excerpt: (In case you 'still' miss the point of the 'captivity of the dimensions of alienation'...]
....
[Excerpt: (In case you 'still' miss the point of the 'captivity of the dimensions of alienation'...]
....
What struck me about the poem was … hadn’t I read this before? It sounded awfully familiar. My search for the poems Vladimir Mayakovsky, the gifted and misguided bard of the Bolshevik Revolution....In an article in Poetry magazine, Hughes biographer Arnold Rampersad noted that during the most difficult days of the Great Depression, Hughes “had composed some of the harshest political verse ever penned by an American. These pieces include Good Morning Revolution and Columbia, but above all, Goodbye Christ. Here the speaker of the poem ridicules the legend of Jesus in favor of the radical reality of Marx, Lenin, ‘worker,’ ‘peasant,’ ‘me.’”
Friday, December 30, 2011
*Light-A-Lamp*: On Intersections Between Strong & Weak (A 2012 Musing)
*Light-A-Lamp*: On Intersections Between Strong & Weak (A 2012 Musing)
Excerpt:
An Intersection between Strong & Weak is actually between Sweet & Bitter. Two polar opposites. Two extreme roads, one narrow, the other wide. Two arrows, one bent, the other straight. Two diversions. Two different choices. Two peas in a pod, one dark, the other bright. Two separate lives. Two characters. Two split personalities. Two roads to take but only one choice....
Now, your own story will be different and more triumphant than Samson's,...
Choose strength. Choose victory. With one blow, defeat failure. Even if you failed at something in 2011, remember that the Word of God says, "For a righteous man may fall seven times and rise again," (Proverbs 24:16). Also remember the Word that says, "Through the Lord's mercies, we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning, great is Your faithfulness," (Lamentations 3:22-23). It is never the end of the battle until the victory is won. So dear friends, aim for the crown in 2012. It is yours for the taking. Isaiah 61 prophesied about Jesus saying, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon [Him], because the Lord has anointed [Him]...to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." Any year can be your acceptable year if you believe. 2012 can be your acceptable year. Because Jesus was born, you are free to take the victory. Because of Him, you can start afresh because of God's grace. Sin no longer has any hold on you because He bore your sins when he died on the cross. Because He chose to be strong for you, you can also choose to be strong today. And whatever you believe by faith will be yours....
Excerpt:
An Intersection between Strong & Weak is actually between Sweet & Bitter. Two polar opposites. Two extreme roads, one narrow, the other wide. Two arrows, one bent, the other straight. Two diversions. Two different choices. Two peas in a pod, one dark, the other bright. Two separate lives. Two characters. Two split personalities. Two roads to take but only one choice....
Now, your own story will be different and more triumphant than Samson's,...
Choose strength. Choose victory. With one blow, defeat failure. Even if you failed at something in 2011, remember that the Word of God says, "For a righteous man may fall seven times and rise again," (Proverbs 24:16). Also remember the Word that says, "Through the Lord's mercies, we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning, great is Your faithfulness," (Lamentations 3:22-23). It is never the end of the battle until the victory is won. So dear friends, aim for the crown in 2012. It is yours for the taking. Isaiah 61 prophesied about Jesus saying, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon [Him], because the Lord has anointed [Him]...to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." Any year can be your acceptable year if you believe. 2012 can be your acceptable year. Because Jesus was born, you are free to take the victory. Because of Him, you can start afresh because of God's grace. Sin no longer has any hold on you because He bore your sins when he died on the cross. Because He chose to be strong for you, you can also choose to be strong today. And whatever you believe by faith will be yours....
The Little Ones, the Poor and the Suffering
Fountain of Elias: The Little Way
Our Holy Father recently spoke of the Little Way of the Little Flower and recommends reading The Story of a Soul.
"Little Therese", the Pope continued, "never failed to help the most simple souls, the little ones, the poor and the suffering who prayed to her, but also illuminated all the Church with her profound spiritual doctrine, to the point that the Venerable John Paul II, in 1997, granted her the title of Doctor of the Church ... and described her as an 'expert in scientia amoris'. Therese expressed this science, in which all the truth of the faith is revealed in love, in her autobiography 'The Story of a Soul', published a year after her death"...
The Pope's entire catechesis on the Little Way is HERE.
"Little Therese", the Pope continued, "never failed to help the most simple souls, the little ones, the poor and the suffering who prayed to her, but also illuminated all the Church with her profound spiritual doctrine, to the point that the Venerable John Paul II, in 1997, granted her the title of Doctor of the Church ... and described her as an 'expert in scientia amoris'. Therese expressed this science, in which all the truth of the faith is revealed in love, in her autobiography 'The Story of a Soul', published a year after her death"...
The Pope's entire catechesis on the Little Way is HERE.
Καθολικός διάκονος: The invisible secret enclosed in the human heart
Καθολικός διάκονος: The invisible secret enclosed in the human heart
[HOPE]
Excerpt:
In his homily for the Twenty-sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year A), which he preached at Mass during his Apostolic Visit to his homeland in September, commenting on Matthew 21:32, which reads, "Truly, the tax collectors and the harlots go into the Kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the harlots believed him, and even when you saw it, you did not afterward repent and believe him," Pope Benedict XVI said, "Translated into the language of our time, this statement might sound something like this: agnostics, who are constantly exercised by the question of God, those who long for a pure heart but suffer on account of our sin, are closer to the Kingdom of God than believers whose life of faith is 'routine' and who regard the Church merely as an institution, without letting their hearts be touched by faith."
If neither optimism nor pessimism, then what makes communication possible? In his Letter to the Romans St. Paul wrote, "For in hope we were saved. Now hope that sees for itself is not hope. For who hopes for what one sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait with endurance" (Rom. 8:24-25).
[HOPE]
Excerpt:
In his homily for the Twenty-sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year A), which he preached at Mass during his Apostolic Visit to his homeland in September, commenting on Matthew 21:32, which reads, "Truly, the tax collectors and the harlots go into the Kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the harlots believed him, and even when you saw it, you did not afterward repent and believe him," Pope Benedict XVI said, "Translated into the language of our time, this statement might sound something like this: agnostics, who are constantly exercised by the question of God, those who long for a pure heart but suffer on account of our sin, are closer to the Kingdom of God than believers whose life of faith is 'routine' and who regard the Church merely as an institution, without letting their hearts be touched by faith."
If neither optimism nor pessimism, then what makes communication possible? In his Letter to the Romans St. Paul wrote, "For in hope we were saved. Now hope that sees for itself is not hope. For who hopes for what one sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait with endurance" (Rom. 8:24-25).
Ready When You Are, C.B.: Dakota's Favorites: My Dog Tulip by J.R. Ackerley
Ready When You Are, C.B.: Dakota's Favorites: My Dog Tulip by J.R. Ackerley
Excerpt:
Excerpt:
Two years ago, when I was walking my dog in Fulham Palace Gardens, we overtook an old woman who was wheeling a baby carriage. She was chatting cheerfully to the occupant of it, and it was therefore, perhaps, not unreasonable of me to be surprised to find, when I caught up with her, that this too was a dog.
My Dog Tulip by J.R. Ackerley is a love story. It's also a dog story, but it's not like other dog stories, nor is it like other love stories. Mr. Ackerley, who came to own Tulip, an Alsatian Shepard late in life, found in her an emotional bond deeper than anything he ever had ................
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Anecdotal Evidence: "What These Can Only Memorize and Mumble'
Anecdotal Evidence: "What These Can Only Memorize and Mumble'
Excerpt:
“Grandeur of Ghosts”:
“When I have heard small talk about great men
I climb to bed; light my two candles; then
Consider what was said; and put aside
What Such-a-one remarked and Someone-else replied.
“They have spoken lightly of my deathless friends,
(Lamps for my gloom, hands guiding where I stumble,)
Quoting, for shallow conversational ends,
What Shelley shrilled, what Blake once wildly muttered ....
“How can they use such names and be not humble?
I have sat silent; angry at what they uttered.
The dead bequeathed them life; the dead have said
What these can only memorize and mumble.” ~Siegfried Sassoon
Excerpt:
“Grandeur of Ghosts”:
“When I have heard small talk about great men
I climb to bed; light my two candles; then
Consider what was said; and put aside
What Such-a-one remarked and Someone-else replied.
“They have spoken lightly of my deathless friends,
(Lamps for my gloom, hands guiding where I stumble,)
Quoting, for shallow conversational ends,
What Shelley shrilled, what Blake once wildly muttered ....
“How can they use such names and be not humble?
I have sat silent; angry at what they uttered.
The dead bequeathed them life; the dead have said
What these can only memorize and mumble.” ~Siegfried Sassoon
History of Reconquista against the Jihad in Spain (711 - 1492)
History of Reconquista against the Jihad in Spain (711 - 1492)
My Note:
Three and a half years of intense research have put together the pieces and assured me of what I have called: 'Captivity of the Dimensions of Alienation'. My answer:
'The gates of hell shall not prevail against My Church.' -Jesus
My Note:
Three and a half years of intense research have put together the pieces and assured me of what I have called: 'Captivity of the Dimensions of Alienation'. My answer:
'The gates of hell shall not prevail against My Church.' -Jesus
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Monday, December 26, 2011
Abbey-Roads: The enduring grace of Christmas.
Abbey-Roads: The enduring grace of Christmas.
Excerpt:
Christmas isn't about presents - or even receiving what you want in prayer. It isn't about the giving or the receiving, or the lack there of. It isn't about lights and decorations and greetings and parties or carols or religious or secular Christmas songs and stories. It isn't about delicious food and drinks and treats and sweets. It isn't about setting up a creche in front of the courthouse or insisting upon calling a tree a Christmas tree or wearing a button that says I celebrate Christmas. It isn't about family being more important than going to church on Sunday because Christmas falls on a Sunday this year. It isn't about all of those customs and traditions that have become ritualized and formalized or just trashed over the decades.
It isn't about me or my religious and political positions, nor my moral judgements, or even my social position or influence - low or high or in-between or non-existent. It isn't about who is for us or who is against us.
It is about love.
Excerpt:
Christmas isn't about presents - or even receiving what you want in prayer. It isn't about the giving or the receiving, or the lack there of. It isn't about lights and decorations and greetings and parties or carols or religious or secular Christmas songs and stories. It isn't about delicious food and drinks and treats and sweets. It isn't about setting up a creche in front of the courthouse or insisting upon calling a tree a Christmas tree or wearing a button that says I celebrate Christmas. It isn't about family being more important than going to church on Sunday because Christmas falls on a Sunday this year. It isn't about all of those customs and traditions that have become ritualized and formalized or just trashed over the decades.
It isn't about me or my religious and political positions, nor my moral judgements, or even my social position or influence - low or high or in-between or non-existent. It isn't about who is for us or who is against us.
It is about love.
Beloved,
let us love one another
because love is of God;
everyone who loves is begotten of God
and has knowledge of God.
The man without love has known nothing of God
and has no knowledge of God,
for God is love....
Next American City » Events
Next American City » Events
Excerpt:
Excerpt:
-
Recap: Open Cities 2010
Washington, D.C. Nov 03, 2010 - Nov 04, 2010Open Cities: New Media’s Role in Shaping Urban Policy is an annual two-day conference, produced by Next American City and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, that unites new media and urban policy’s top thinkers and practitioners. Through a series of panel discussions, presentations and networking opportunities, the conference discussed new media strategies for dealing with a variety of challenges, such as how to build an engaged urban citizenry, best utilize municipal data and develop cost-saving technologies or networks to improve cities.
Among other questions, participants asked:
- How do new media shape the public’s perception of cities?
- How is open data changing the way the public and government interact?
- How can ordinary citizens use technology to participate in the planning and development of their cities?
- Who is being left behind in terms of data literacy and access to information? - [Think about it.]
Joan of Arc: Joan of Arc’s 600th Birthday and the Significance of Her Birth on the Epiphany.
Joan of Arc: Joan of Arc’s 600th Birthday and the Significance of Her Birth on the Epiphany.
Excerpt:
In eleven days on January 6th of 2012 it will be the 600th anniversary of Saint Joan of Arc’s birth and there will be worldwide celebrations to honor Joan and remember the brilliance of her life. What a contrast, indeed, to the humble way that she entered the world as a simple peasant baby born in an obscure little town. No one among the few friends and family who were aware of Joan’s birth in 1412 would have ever believed that this little baby would grow up to lead the armies of France to victory and become on the most beloved Saints of God...
Excerpt:
In eleven days on January 6th of 2012 it will be the 600th anniversary of Saint Joan of Arc’s birth and there will be worldwide celebrations to honor Joan and remember the brilliance of her life. What a contrast, indeed, to the humble way that she entered the world as a simple peasant baby born in an obscure little town. No one among the few friends and family who were aware of Joan’s birth in 1412 would have ever believed that this little baby would grow up to lead the armies of France to victory and become on the most beloved Saints of God...
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Anecdotal Evidence: `With Nothing But New Words'
Anecdotal Evidence: `With Nothing But New Words'
Excerpt:
Seventy-three years ago this week, Osip Mandelstam was starving, sick and out of his mind in the frozen transit camp at Vtoraya Rechka near Vladivostok, where he had been transported for “counter-revolutionary activity.” He was a Jew, a poet and a citizen of Western Civilization. He was buried in a common grave and his brother was notified of his death three years later. We think he died Dec. 27, 1938.
Even before the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago was published in the West, the poet’s widow Nadezdah Mandelstam, in her 1,100-page memoir (published in English as Hope Against Hope, 1970, and Hope Abandoned, 1974), chronicled Stalin’s industrial-scale erasure of blameless people, among whom was her husband. During those years of putative détente,...
[Note: In other words, Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin were as evil or more so than Hitler and are the 'founders' of a repressive totalitarian ideology that is intriniscally evil. "You shall know them by their fruits."]
Excerpt:
Seventy-three years ago this week, Osip Mandelstam was starving, sick and out of his mind in the frozen transit camp at Vtoraya Rechka near Vladivostok, where he had been transported for “counter-revolutionary activity.” He was a Jew, a poet and a citizen of Western Civilization. He was buried in a common grave and his brother was notified of his death three years later. We think he died Dec. 27, 1938.
Even before the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago was published in the West, the poet’s widow Nadezdah Mandelstam, in her 1,100-page memoir (published in English as Hope Against Hope, 1970, and Hope Abandoned, 1974), chronicled Stalin’s industrial-scale erasure of blameless people, among whom was her husband. During those years of putative détente,...
[Note: In other words, Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin were as evil or more so than Hitler and are the 'founders' of a repressive totalitarian ideology that is intriniscally evil. "You shall know them by their fruits."]
Supremacy and Survival: The English Reformation: Newman on the Incarnation
Supremacy and Survival: The English Reformation: Newman on the Incarnation
Excerpt:
Merry Christmas! Blessed John Henry Newman reminds us for the "reason for the season":
With these objects, then, it may be useful, on today's Festival, to call your attention to the Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation.
The Word was from the beginning, the Only-begotten {30} Son of God. Before all worlds were created, while as yet time was not, He was in existence, in the bosom of the Eternal Father, God from God, and Light from Light, supremely blessed in knowing and being known of Him, and receiving all divine perfections from Him, yet ever One with Him who begat Him. As it is said in the opening of the Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." ...
Excerpt:
Merry Christmas! Blessed John Henry Newman reminds us for the "reason for the season":
With these objects, then, it may be useful, on today's Festival, to call your attention to the Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation.
The Word was from the beginning, the Only-begotten {30} Son of God. Before all worlds were created, while as yet time was not, He was in existence, in the bosom of the Eternal Father, God from God, and Light from Light, supremely blessed in knowing and being known of Him, and receiving all divine perfections from Him, yet ever One with Him who begat Him. As it is said in the opening of the Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." ...
Saturday, December 24, 2011
THE BLUE LANTERN: The Feast Of The Seven Fishes
THE BLUE LANTERN: The Feast Of The Seven Fishes
Excerpt:
From southern Italy comes a Christmas Eve custom: the feast of the seven fishes. I like to imagine seven fish feasting, something a little different. Seven is said to be a lucky number but not if you are number seven on a dinner plate. As a small child in coastal Massachusetts, I would walk beside my parents along the slatted wooden piers past the lobster troughs where diners at ocean-front restaurants could select their personal dinner. They admonished me not to touch because they lobsters snapped. I remember thinking that I would, too, if I were about to be boiled alive like some unfortunate creature in a Grimm fairy tale . But I'm not. I'm a vegetarian. "Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly..."
Excerpt:
From southern Italy comes a Christmas Eve custom: the feast of the seven fishes. I like to imagine seven fish feasting, something a little different. Seven is said to be a lucky number but not if you are number seven on a dinner plate. As a small child in coastal Massachusetts, I would walk beside my parents along the slatted wooden piers past the lobster troughs where diners at ocean-front restaurants could select their personal dinner. They admonished me not to touch because they lobsters snapped. I remember thinking that I would, too, if I were about to be boiled alive like some unfortunate creature in a Grimm fairy tale . But I'm not. I'm a vegetarian. "Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly..."
Three U.S. citizens killed in Mexico attacks - Yahoo! News
Three U.S. citizens killed in Mexico attacks - Yahoo! News
Excerpt:
Note: Roberto Bolaño along with Bd. John Paul II understood the 'Flamenco-ed dance and the Sonoran rattle'...didn't they.
Excerpt:
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Three U.S. citizens were among those killed when gunmen attacked buses in the eastern Mexican state of Veracruz, said a U.S. State Department official said on Saturday.
The three were traveling for the holidays when they and several other passengers on the bus were killed by gunmen on Thursday, according to the U.S. official and local media.
The incident was one of several that day in which gunmen attacked busses in the eastern state, a major oil export hub that has lately become a flashpoint for drug gang violence.
On Friday, the tortured bodies of 10 people were found in northern Veracruz, local media reported, as attacks in the region intensify between the Zetas gang and Gulf drug cartels.
==============Note: Roberto Bolaño along with Bd. John Paul II understood the 'Flamenco-ed dance and the Sonoran rattle'...didn't they.
We Are One: For many it is already Christmas Eve...
We Are One: For many it is already Christmas Eve...
Excerpt: Love these gift ideas:What I don't like about Christmas....those that are in such a rush they will run you down if you don't watch out. The screaming fits because somebody didn't behave just how they thought they should and you better read their mind. The impatience and frustration over the littlest thing not being perfect. Sticking to a miserable tradition because 'that is the way it was always done'. Faking feelings...faking greetings...faking hugging that isn't real. A person that didn't speak to me all year expects a gift and a hug. Are you kidding me? So gentle readers, I have had a lot to overcome to learn to love Christmas.
Excerpt: Love these gift ideas:
This time of year is hard for many abuse survivors. The Christmas holiday seems to be high with expectations. Words like 'forgiveness', 'love', and 'peace' were often twisted beyond all recognition and used to manipulate and emotionally abuse already battered victims. The child was held responsible for the 'happiness' of the adult at the expense of the child. Tolerance was unheard of. Perfection demanded and drama was the name of the game....
What I don't like about Christmas....those that are in such a rush they will run you down if you don't watch out. The screaming fits because somebody didn't behave just how they thought they should and you better read their mind. The impatience and frustration over the littlest thing not being perfect. Sticking to a miserable tradition because 'that is the way it was always done'. Faking feelings...faking greetings...faking hugging that isn't real. A person that didn't speak to me all year expects a gift and a hug. Are you kidding me? So gentle readers, I have had a lot to overcome to learn to love Christmas.
Go and Do Likewise, said Jesus
"Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves,
for the rights of all who are destitute.
Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy." Proverbs 31:8-9.
Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy." Proverbs 31:8-9.
“I believe God wants us all to live bothered by things around us that are not right….
Possibly the most important indicator of true religion is the desire to love and care for people who hurt." ~Palmer Chinchen
Anecdotal Evidence: `P Raises His Head, Fixes the Audience'
Anecdotal Evidence: `P Raises His Head, Fixes the Audience'
Excerpt:
“Age and physique unimportant”: Under the Czech communists – or Cuban, or North Korean, or any utopians – everything about the individual is unimportant. Reckoned by totalitarian logic, the collective, an abstraction, is the only reality; the individual, the only reality, is a pernicious abstraction. In Catastrophe, a stringent parody of theater and governance, the Director (D) and his assistant (A) manipulate the Protagonist (P) as he stands mutely on a stage. Until the final stage direction, he remains as malleable as clay in the sculptor’s hands, a motor to be tinkered with at the whim of the mechanic, “the engineer of human souls.”
In the play-within-a-play, A asks if P should wear “a little . . . gag?” D replies: “For God's sake! This craze for explicitation! Every i dotted to death! Little gag! For God's sake!”...................
Excerpt:
“Age and physique unimportant”: Under the Czech communists – or Cuban, or North Korean, or any utopians – everything about the individual is unimportant. Reckoned by totalitarian logic, the collective, an abstraction, is the only reality; the individual, the only reality, is a pernicious abstraction. In Catastrophe, a stringent parody of theater and governance, the Director (D) and his assistant (A) manipulate the Protagonist (P) as he stands mutely on a stage. Until the final stage direction, he remains as malleable as clay in the sculptor’s hands, a motor to be tinkered with at the whim of the mechanic, “the engineer of human souls.”
In the play-within-a-play, A asks if P should wear “a little . . . gag?” D replies: “For God's sake! This craze for explicitation! Every i dotted to death! Little gag! For God's sake!”...................
Friday, December 23, 2011
Pykk
Pykk
Excerpt:
And if the Gaelic theory is correct (and maybe there was a confluence, the fluff suggesting the direction the Anglicisation should travel in, perhaps the white fluff was an arrow pointing the way, eye and ear acting together since they're so close, biologically speaking, only a handshake apart -- I once stayed home from school because I had an earache that appeared also in a tooth) then the lamb in Lamb's Wool is not anything mammalian or woolly, instead it means an apple, and when we say "Lamb" we should think of something alive without legs, a cold round life held together by the same force field as the other kind of lamb, if the physicists are correct: held together by a field of energy that came into existence one moment after the Big Bang -- assuming they're right about that too. The Higgs boson particle will prove the existence of the field, if you want to call it a field, ...
Excerpt:
And if the Gaelic theory is correct (and maybe there was a confluence, the fluff suggesting the direction the Anglicisation should travel in, perhaps the white fluff was an arrow pointing the way, eye and ear acting together since they're so close, biologically speaking, only a handshake apart -- I once stayed home from school because I had an earache that appeared also in a tooth) then the lamb in Lamb's Wool is not anything mammalian or woolly, instead it means an apple, and when we say "Lamb" we should think of something alive without legs, a cold round life held together by the same force field as the other kind of lamb, if the physicists are correct: held together by a field of energy that came into existence one moment after the Big Bang -- assuming they're right about that too. The Higgs boson particle will prove the existence of the field, if you want to call it a field, ...
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Captivity of the Dimensions of Alienation: Part VI
from A Goodread: A Roadside Dog by Czeslaw Milosz...Comment: Antinomies…. October 24, 2000...In A Year of the Hunter, Czeslaw Milosz unequivocally writes, “Poetry’s separation from religion has always strengthened my conviction that the erosion of the cosmic-religious imagination is not an illusion and that the vast expanses of the planet that are falling away from Christianity are the external correlative of this erosion.” Road-Side Dog exudes this same consciousness, yet, interested only in Christianity, he fails to perceive that vast expanses of the planet have also left behind the Islamic, Hindu, Taoist, Confucian, and Buddhist religions.Like his contemporaries, Milosz is a child of dualities and contradictions, as he discloses in Unattainable Earth: “Sometimes believing, sometimes not believing, / With others like myself I unite in worship.” Though “loyal and disloyal,” he performs what is in itself an act of affirmation. One reason for such tensions must be his recognition that we are “In an intermediary phase, after the end of one era and before the beginning of a new one.” In another entry he writes, “There is only one theme: an era is coming to an end which lasted nearly two thousand years, when religion had primacy of place in relation to philosophy, science and art. . . .” Milosz recognizes the validity of his own honest doubts and the abyss of evil and historical calamity that is swallowing everything before it, yet he does so while continuing to “unite in worship.” Similarly, in “Lecture V” of The Collected Poems, the persona affirms “We plod on with hope,” and then allows, “And now let everyone / Confess to himself. eHas he risen?’ eI don’t know.’” It was perhaps these lines that led Pope John Paul II to say to Milosz, as he reports in A Year of the Hunter, “You always take one step forward and one step back.” In an essay in New Perspectives Quarterly, Milosz describes himself as a believer, while in A Year of the Hunter he refers to an experience in church on Palm Sunday as an “intuitive understanding that Christ exists.” These contradictions achieve their fullest expression in “Two Poems” in Provinces: The first poem celebrates earthly life and its values, while the second poem, “A Poem for the End of the Century,” bitterly, ironically recalls the religious past. Of these two contrasting poems, Milosz writes in a headnote that “taken together” they “testify to my contradictions, since the opinions voiced in one and the other are equally mine.” To highlight either side over the other would be a distortion of his psyche. Milosz conveyed his complexity to the Pope when he replied, “Can one write religious poetry in any other way today?” I have often thought of Virginia Woolf’s Mr. Ramsay in To The Lighthouse, ascending the island rocks, exclaiming, in one of the most poignant settings of modern literature, “There is no God.” Perhaps because Milosz perceives our age as an intermediary one, he finds it more possible than most poets to hold out hope for the future. His hope, though, as we have seen, is not naive, foolish, or unaware of the incessant disintegration. It is that of one tried by experience, who yet believes there are reasons for such a poem as “Thankfulness.” To give “thanks for good and ill” manifests a trust that transcends our usual human self-centeredness and that submits to the power of the mystery of being, a trust that acknowledges in another poem “They are incomprehensible, the things of this earth.” Such trust is also the prerequisite to finding “Eternal light in everything on earth.” Although from the viewpoint of traditional Catholic belief some might think such lines are suffused with vague gnosticism, accuse him of having fallen off from the faith, of “willing belief,” as he says of himself in The Land of Ulro, one must recognize the honest complexity of his commitment if one wishes to confront, as he has, the undeniable damage that has been visited upon all organized forms of religion and government during the modern era. In reference to religion, while recognizing the undeniable damage, Milosz has often expressed his skepticism and uneasiness with Catholicism. Although he seems to favor at times reversion to Catholicism, suggests he himself is a heretic, harbors the conceit of possessing the true truth among the great religions, he also writes of going “forward, but on a different track,” of a “new vision,” “a new awareness,” “new perspectives,” as in A Year of the Hunter: Why should we shut our eyes and pretend, rejecting theobvious, that Ancient Rome is again in decline, and this time it’s not pagan Rome under the blows of Christianity, but the Rome of the monotheists’ God? Since this, and nothing else, is the undeclared theme of contemporary poetry in various languages, obviously this conflict has already crossed the threshold of universal consciousness. . . . Perhaps . . . new perspectives will open up . . . .Milosz has worked more deeply with the spiritual dislocations of modern life than any other poet of the twentieth century since T. S. Eliot.[return][return]In regard to government, Milosz’s experience prepared him to understand where we have been and where we are going in a manner unique among modern poets. All the more eloquently rings his plea in his Nobel Lecture for sanity eventually to prevail among the nations of the earth:[return][return] We realize that the unification of our planet is in the making, and we attach importance to the notion of international community. The days when the League of Nations and the United Nations were founded deserve to be remembered.....This realization of the importance of international community can be found throughout his writings. Its source, beyond his own experience, was, by his own testimony, his uncle, Oscar Milosz, poet and seer, who predicted the “triumph of the Roman Catholic Church.” Narrow Catholic hopes aside, history, lower case, moves toward the vindication of both of them, as well as of all those who have stood throughout this century for the further development of international institutions through which the nations may cooperate for the protection of the weak and vulnerable, for the protection of the little ones. If “There are no direct lessons that American poets can learn from Milosz,” the fault lies entirely with us and the age of academic criticism that has almost strangled the life out of poetry. ~Frederick Glaysher http://www.fglaysher.com
Wuthering Expectations: Nothing, for here nothing was being heralded - Adalbert Stifter's Rock Crystal
Wuthering Expectations: Nothing, for here nothing was being heralded - Adalbert Stifter's Rock Crystal
Excerpt:
OK, here's a real Christmas story.
Two children are trapped on a mountainside during a blizzard on Christmas Eve. They are saved by a miracle, or by chance, or perhaps the series of coincidences that allow them to survive are themselves the miracle.
This is Adalbert Stifter's sweet, mysterious Rock Crystal (1853)...
Excerpt:
OK, here's a real Christmas story.
Two children are trapped on a mountainside during a blizzard on Christmas Eve. They are saved by a miracle, or by chance, or perhaps the series of coincidences that allow them to survive are themselves the miracle.
This is Adalbert Stifter's sweet, mysterious Rock Crystal (1853)...
In Rooms Like These
NEVER FORGET WHAT IT FELT LIKE TO LIVE IN ROOMS LIKE THESE:
GetReligion excerpts the discussion of faith from an NPR interview with David Carr, former Washington City Paper editor-in-chief and the author of one of the very best books I've read this year, The Night of the Gun. I'll write more about his book when I do my year-end roundup, but for now I'll just say that I found his comments on NPR characteristically relatable and down-to-earth and humbled. h/t Eve
GetReligion excerpts the discussion of faith from an NPR interview with David Carr, former Washington City Paper editor-in-chief and the author of one of the very best books I've read this year, The Night of the Gun. I'll write more about his book when I do my year-end roundup, but for now I'll just say that I found his comments on NPR characteristically relatable and down-to-earth and humbled. h/t Eve
Eve's Alexandria: Give Me Some
Eve's Alexandria: Give Me Some
Excerpt:
We were in sunny St. Ives in Cornwall last week, staying in the cottage of 'naive' artist Alfred Wallis (literally a stone's throw from Porthmeor Beach, pictured to the left). It was perfectly relaxing - lots of sun and paddling in the sea and reading and eating delicious seafood and long vigorous coastal walks. I could have stayed for another decade at least. But alas, back to the real world. It was very conducive to Orange Prize reading while it lasted. I polished off the whole 300+ pages of A Visit from the Good Squad on the train journey from Yorkshire (simply brilliant - why wasn't it on the shortlist?); and then proceeded to gobble up Emma Donoghue's Room ....
Excerpt:
We were in sunny St. Ives in Cornwall last week, staying in the cottage of 'naive' artist Alfred Wallis (literally a stone's throw from Porthmeor Beach, pictured to the left). It was perfectly relaxing - lots of sun and paddling in the sea and reading and eating delicious seafood and long vigorous coastal walks. I could have stayed for another decade at least. But alas, back to the real world. It was very conducive to Orange Prize reading while it lasted. I polished off the whole 300+ pages of A Visit from the Good Squad on the train journey from Yorkshire (simply brilliant - why wasn't it on the shortlist?); and then proceeded to gobble up Emma Donoghue's Room ....
Eve's Alexandria: Demimondaines
Eve's Alexandria: Demimondaines
Excerpt:
Now the English Protestant ladies' virtue is chastity! There are but two classes of women among them. She is a bad woman the moment she has committed fornication; be she generous, charitable, just, clever, domestic, affectionate, and ever ready to sacrifice her own good to serve and benefit those she loves, still her rank in society is with the lowest hired prostitute. Each is indiscriminately avoided, and each is denominated the same—bad woman, while all are virtuous who are chaste. Thus wrote the courtesan Harriette Wilson (1786-1845) in her notorious memoirs. .......
Excerpt:
Now the English Protestant ladies' virtue is chastity! There are but two classes of women among them. She is a bad woman the moment she has committed fornication; be she generous, charitable, just, clever, domestic, affectionate, and ever ready to sacrifice her own good to serve and benefit those she loves, still her rank in society is with the lowest hired prostitute. Each is indiscriminately avoided, and each is denominated the same—bad woman, while all are virtuous who are chaste. Thus wrote the courtesan Harriette Wilson (1786-1845) in her notorious memoirs. .......
Bifurcaria bifurcata: The First Infrarealist Manifesto
Bifurcaria bifurcata: The First Infrarealist Manifesto
Excerpt:
In 1976, when Roberto Bolaño was 23, 24 years old and living in Mexico, he drafted the first* manifesto of Movimiento Infrarrealista de Poesia, a poetry movement that inspired the visceral realism (or vicerealism) movement in The Savage Detectives. Along with other poets, Bolaño and Mario Santiago banded together to form and lead the infrarrealistas; their acknowledged stand-ins in the novel were Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima.
The manifesto was titled “Déjenlo Todo, Nuevamente” and could be found in original Spanish here....
Excerpt:
“It’s four light hours to the confines of the solar system; to the closest star, four light years. An excessive ocean of emptiness. But are we really sure there’s only emptiness? We only know that there are no stars shining in that space. If they exist, would they be visible? And if there are bodies that are neither luminous nor dark? Couldn’t it be that on the celestial maps, the same as on those of Earth, the star-cities are indicated and the star-villages are omitted?”
— Soviet science fiction writers scratching their faces at midnight.
— The infrasuns (Drummond would say the happy proletarian fellows).
— Peguero and Boris alone in a lumpen room having premonitions of the wonder behind the door.
— Free money.
In 1976, when Roberto Bolaño was 23, 24 years old and living in Mexico, he drafted the first* manifesto of Movimiento Infrarrealista de Poesia, a poetry movement that inspired the visceral realism (or vicerealism) movement in The Savage Detectives. Along with other poets, Bolaño and Mario Santiago banded together to form and lead the infrarrealistas; their acknowledged stand-ins in the novel were Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima.
The manifesto was titled “Déjenlo Todo, Nuevamente” and could be found in original Spanish here....
Anecdotal Evidence: `P Raises His Head, Fixes the Audience'
Anecdotal Evidence: `P Raises His Head, Fixes the Audience'
Excerpt:
“Age and physique unimportant.”
The stage direction is repeated three times, applied to three of the four characters in Beckett’s brief play Catastrophe, written and first performed in 1982. We never see the fourth character, Luke, “in charge of the lighting,” though he speaks two lines offstage. When I heard of Vaclav Havel’s death on Sunday, I thought of the play, dedicated by Beckett to the Czech playwright and dissident, then in prison. After his release in 1983, Havel returned the favor, dedicating his play The Mistake to Beckett.
“Age and physique unimportant”: Under the Czech communists – or Cuban, or North Korean, or any utopians – everything about the individual is unimportant. Reckoned by totalitarian logic, the collective, an abstraction, is the only reality; the individual, the only reality, is a pernicious abstraction. In Catastrophe, a stringent parody of theater and governance, the Director (D) and his assistant (A) manipulate the Protagonist (P) as he stands mutely on a stage. Until the final stage direction, he remains as malleable as clay in the sculptor’s hands, a motor to be tinkered with at the whim of the mechanic, “the engineer of human souls.”...
Excerpt:
The stage direction is repeated three times, applied to three of the four characters in Beckett’s brief play Catastrophe, written and first performed in 1982. We never see the fourth character, Luke, “in charge of the lighting,” though he speaks two lines offstage. When I heard of Vaclav Havel’s death on Sunday, I thought of the play, dedicated by Beckett to the Czech playwright and dissident, then in prison. After his release in 1983, Havel returned the favor, dedicating his play The Mistake to Beckett.
“Age and physique unimportant”: Under the Czech communists – or Cuban, or North Korean, or any utopians – everything about the individual is unimportant. Reckoned by totalitarian logic, the collective, an abstraction, is the only reality; the individual, the only reality, is a pernicious abstraction. In Catastrophe, a stringent parody of theater and governance, the Director (D) and his assistant (A) manipulate the Protagonist (P) as he stands mutely on a stage. Until the final stage direction, he remains as malleable as clay in the sculptor’s hands, a motor to be tinkered with at the whim of the mechanic, “the engineer of human souls.”...
First Known When Lost: R. S. Thomas On Christmas
First Known When Lost: R. S. Thomas On Christmas
Excerpt:
I choose white, but with
Red on it, like the snow
In winter with its few
Holly berries and the one
Robin, that is a fire
To warm by and like Christ
Comes to us in his weakness,
But with a sharp song.
R. S. Thomas, H'm (1972).
Excerpt:
I choose white, but with
Red on it, like the snow
In winter with its few
Holly berries and the one
Robin, that is a fire
To warm by and like Christ
Comes to us in his weakness,
But with a sharp song.
R. S. Thomas, H'm (1972).
Weasel Zippers » Blog Archive » New Saudi Textbooks Teaching Students How To Cut Off Hands And Feet of Thieves, Genocide Against Jews, Murder Gays…
Weasel Zippers » Blog Archive » New Saudi Textbooks Teaching Students How To Cut Off Hands And Feet of Thieves, Genocide Against Jews, Murder Gays…
Excerpt: [Refined 'scapegoatism'=Let's see how many people I can find to blame my evil on. Don't agree? Who is that 'kills' for the pettiest of reasons? Who is it that runs a 'multitude' of tyrannical regimes that 'enrolls and exploits' the poorest and most ignorant to 'kill themselves'? And who are those at the top of the money/political systems' "gigantic pyramids" the few, 'elitist', corrupt who play away the resources of everyone else 'below' them? And which system kills, abuses, mutilates women and children? And which system is rife with the sexual exploitation of women and children?]
I’ve completely lost track of how many times the Wahhabi regime has sworn up and down they got rid of these textbooks.
(Fox News) — Despite Saudi Arabia’s promises to clean up textbooks in the kingdom, recent editions continue to raise alarms in the West over jihadist language....
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
A Morning at the Shelter
Yesterday I visited a Catholic women’s shelter here in the Inland Northwest and I was overwhelmed by the experience. I have lived through a lot that would preclude my being shocked and sorrowed. What I realized, thanks to Mother Teresa, is that reality of “so few doing so much for so many with so very little.” I am profoundly cognizant of WHY she is a saint. She, however, is the first to say it shouldn’t take a saint to deal with what should be a common daily reality: loving our neighbor in need.
A steady stream of women wearily waged an emotional war through the below freezing temperatures, the landscape of dystopia and ‘megalopagus’, to stand in line. There weren’t enough chairs but it was warm. Each woman was silent respectfully patient with the two young women volunteers harried and hurried as each woman in turn was helped to fill out a form.
It is a frightening experience to come full-face with such overwhelming need. The room exploded emotionally for me. I had to leave. The frightened faces of the two young women said volumes.
I am still trying fathom what happened. What I know basically is that those forced to the ‘margins’ of our pretentious, King Midas illusory culture wed with an empty socialistic institutionalized society are bursting the seams of already overloaded services. Those trying to reach out and touch and help someone are also screaming inside for help to fill unbelievably deep, critical, life-threatening needs of those who come for aid. I have before me a very ‘thick’ resource book for someone who finds they are cast out and destitute to find places of service. It terrifies me that so many wonderful people are out there trying to reach across that dark, widening gap but it is not enough.
Each person, each one, in the Church must get involved now. If donations are the only thing you can muster then do it generously. But the sick, the old, the homeless, the young, families, and the unemployed need ‘people’ out there each moment working to help.
For some reason I can see Mother Teresa, St. Vincent de Paul and St. Therese firmly nodding.
Monday, December 19, 2011
Look At The Stars!
Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!
O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!
The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!
Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves’-eyes!
The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies!
Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare!
Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare!—
Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.
Buy then! bid then!—What?—Prayer, patience, aims, vows.
Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard boughs!
Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-with-yellow sallows!
These are indeed the barn; withindoors house
The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse
Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows.
O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!
The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!
Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves’-eyes!
The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies!
Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare!
Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare!—
Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.
Buy then! bid then!—What?—Prayer, patience, aims, vows.
Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard boughs!
Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-with-yellow sallows!
These are indeed the barn; withindoors house
The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse
Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows.
- Gerard Manley Hopkins, Selected Poetry
Oh, Marriage
Apparently there's a PEW poll (like Gallup, survey research) that is showing fewer Americans are getting married.
And who can blame them? It's so hard to accept people for who they are, to love them anyway. Love can be a thankless job.
Post excerpt from 'Everyone Needs Therapy'
As the Spanish poet, Lorca, said: "Ay, ay, ay, ay........"
In 1960, 72% of all adults ages 18 and older were married; today just 51% are, a record low.Sustaining marriage does seem like an impossible goal for many people, and getting married, a risk so many just won't take.
And who can blame them? It's so hard to accept people for who they are, to love them anyway. Love can be a thankless job.
Post excerpt from 'Everyone Needs Therapy'
As the Spanish poet, Lorca, said: "Ay, ay, ay, ay........"
On Failure
Comfort Those Who Mourn: Failure
We must understand the ambiguities of our own beings. We must tolerate paradoxes and that spectrum of ambiguities in our living being. This, my friend, is the Cross. In humility we must stay there, at the Foot of the Cross…for we live After the Fall.
"How much does it have to hurt, how many people have to be victimized before we, as the human family, face and deal with the 'invisible war' claiming so many lives?"
Ezekiel 34:4:
"You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally."
=============
St. John of the Cross esteemed tenderness as one of the characteristics of true sanctity. In this world ravaged by the worship of force and violence it is a true fruit of humility and the love of God.
We must understand the ambiguities of our own beings. We must tolerate paradoxes and that spectrum of ambiguities in our living being. This, my friend, is the Cross. In humility we must stay there, at the Foot of the Cross…for we live After the Fall.
"How much does it have to hurt, how many people have to be victimized before we, as the human family, face and deal with the 'invisible war' claiming so many lives?"
Ezekiel 34:4:
"You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally."
=============
St. John of the Cross esteemed tenderness as one of the characteristics of true sanctity. In this world ravaged by the worship of force and violence it is a true fruit of humility and the love of God.
Orwell's Picnic ~: What else is art good for?
Orwell's Picnic ~: What else is art good for?
Excerpt:
Excerpt:
In Western societies, particularly in the post-colonial Anglo nations, we are suffering a terrible crisis of self-understanding. One of the things that struck me the hardest when I finally went back to England as an adult was that the English seemed to have forgotten how to be English. They have forgotten who they are. The older ones seemed to remember but appear to have learned to be ashamed of it. It was a very strange thing and I marked it at the time as a terrible evil. A society that doesn't have a self-understanding, doesn't have a sense of who and what it is, can't be one that will survive for long.
One of the things that art does, particularly painting, is to help define a cultural identity. For obvious reasons this is especially true of Italy. I'm still working my way around Vasari's Lives of Artists and it is clear that the world of painting for three of the most important centuries of art were utterly dominated by Italians (as we call them now).
But if we want to know who we are, how we think of things, how we see the world and what it means to us, painting is obviously the most direct and simple means. I think if the English were to revisit their artistic heritage, there would be great gains in re-establishing a solid national identity...
Truth and Identity
[The abbess at a well-known Benedictine monastery related that it is only in the crucible of suffering where God chooses to reveal to us who we are. In Torah therapy there are three basic relationships that are the foundations of our being in relating to God and the world around us:
---there are those with whom we work and interact with in our outer culture
---there are those closer to us: siblings and close friends
---the most important and defining relationship, however, are our parents
What I have discovered is that all of these and how we view ourselves must be incorporated in the truth that we live After the Fall. This is no trite statement of challenge. There are critical, deadly reasons the enemy through Bultmann and de Chardin's heresies tried to dismiss the Garden of Adam and Eve as myth. If it is myth then sin doesn't really exist. This results in the fundamental denial of our very being as that which is created by God. I guess I was just too stubborn to ever believe that idiocy which required way more 'faith'. Each of us is a created, unique daughter or son of Almighty God. The enemy hates that fact.
After the fall as descendants of Adam and Eve we bear the effects of that rebellion within ourselves as 'fallible' and subject to death. Adam and Eve were clothed by God from the beginning. From the beginning the enemy has challenged our 'world view'. Hilary White is right: We have forgotten who we are.
The modernism(s) thrown at us are just variations on the central drama in that Garden that always whisper the lie: 'God didn't REALLY say that...did He?'
After the Fall sin crouches at the door for each human being at every moment. We sin. That sin affects not only us but everyone. God as man died on the Cross to save us from sin. If we deny the true beginnings we deny reality within ourselves and in all that occurs in the world around us.
No matter who our earthly parents were they are embedded into our being which makes the rising misogyny and child/woman abuse an ungodly aspect of our world today. The family is the PRIMARY spiritual and human responsibility for each man and woman. Each man is called to be a spiritual leader and lover of his own family. He will be called to account for that which he does or does not do for his wife and his children. Did he love his wife as Christ loved the Church? Did he take the spiritual leadership of his sons and daughters leading them to God and reflecting that relationship in his daily life? Did she love her husband and her children? Did she build a nurturing home?
Although Carl Jung refuted Christianity he did point out one important spiritual concept in discerning a true shepherd in the Church. As the story goes a Christian leader was extolled to him as being unbelievably righteous and upstanding. No fault could be found in his leadership. The man was introduced to him. He asked to visit his home and meet his wife which was granted. In that visit Jung discovered the great sickness and evil in the man. Who in your world is forced to carry your shadow, your anger, your guilt, your madness, your perversion of truth?
Many, many wives, and children, become the scapegoats of males who hate women, who refuse to grow up and take the spiritual leadership of their families, who blame their wives for the emptiness and miseries in their souls and in their children. The basic evil of men not growing up is that of leaving their family members unprotected against attacks against each family member's soul. Just because a man doesn't agree with that assignment, like it, or rebels against it doesn't mean that the destruction won't take place---for generations. Instead of 'building up', cherishing, loving and protecting their wives and children, I find in ALL the families around me the men of the families denigrating, mocking, hating and resenting any helping of others in the family, berating women, and in many ways neglecting their wives and children. In every home I have lived in I find lying, pornography and violence.
Women are anointed by God for tenderness, love, mercy and nurturing. They are pro-creators of life itself. Bd. John Paul II not only respected women but recognized women are gifted with great wisdom in love and mercy. That gift can be destroyed with denigration and abuse, especially sexual abuse. As women are forced into a more 'sex object', demeaning role in our culture, their gifts too are forced into the background. Great, great harm and wounding occurs in the family because of this. Eros is a fundamental God-created gift of love and in its proper, protective place engenders life itself and great creativity.
There is no answer for each of us until we deal with our own father and mother in wisdom, love, forgiveness and truth. There is a profound reason for The Holy Family. There is a reason Jesus Christ, God-Man respected, cherished, loved and honored Mary, His Mother. And Scripture states that God is the 'father' of all the 'families' of the earth. We don't belong to just one small, tiny group. We are 'members' of many generations that we will meet, hopefully, in Heaven.
'What else is art good for? It is the gift of creativity. It is a gift of God who is calling out to us in our woundedness. We cannot be healed or be a beacon of hope until the 'fundamentals' of Truth are established. I cannot walk away from reality to establish some illusory spin which will only collapse.
"If the foundations are destroyed what can the righteous do?" We must flee to the foot of the Cross.]Sunday, December 18, 2011
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Chicago Boyz » Blog Archive » Remembering Spain
Chicago Boyz » Blog Archive » Remembering Spain
Excerpt:
...anyway, Mom sent us an awesomely lavish gift basket from this place, La Tienda – the foods of Spain, and we went through the basket and the catalogue enclosed with happy squeals of recognition. We came home from Spain twenty years ago last October – after living in the city of Zaragoza, while I was assigned to the European Broadcasting Service detachment at the air base there. Which wasn’t an American air base, as we reminded people with tactful delicacy; it was a Spanish air base, and we merely rented a small, pitiful portion of it, a few discreet brick buildings and a scattering of ancient Quonset huts, ...
Excerpt:
...anyway, Mom sent us an awesomely lavish gift basket from this place, La Tienda – the foods of Spain, and we went through the basket and the catalogue enclosed with happy squeals of recognition. We came home from Spain twenty years ago last October – after living in the city of Zaragoza, while I was assigned to the European Broadcasting Service detachment at the air base there. Which wasn’t an American air base, as we reminded people with tactful delicacy; it was a Spanish air base, and we merely rented a small, pitiful portion of it, a few discreet brick buildings and a scattering of ancient Quonset huts, ...
Exposing Liberal Lies: No Blob of Tissue!
Exposing Liberal Lies: No Blob of Tissue!
Excerpt:
..................The Duggars' Friends and family converged to help celebrate the life that would have been.
The ceremony apparently included hundreds of attendees. While some might see the family’s actions as a bit odd, others would revere the notion that they valued the life so preciously that they sought to commemorate it.
Following the event, Amy Duggar, the family’s cousin, created a stir when she tweeted a note and picture commemorating Jubilee’s life (she later deleted the message). It read, 'RIP precious Jubilee Shalom Duggar! Can’t wait to meet you someday, thank you Lord for giving our family peace.' ..........
Excerpt:
..................The Duggars' Friends and family converged to help celebrate the life that would have been.
The ceremony apparently included hundreds of attendees. While some might see the family’s actions as a bit odd, others would revere the notion that they valued the life so preciously that they sought to commemorate it.
Following the event, Amy Duggar, the family’s cousin, created a stir when she tweeted a note and picture commemorating Jubilee’s life (she later deleted the message). It read, 'RIP precious Jubilee Shalom Duggar! Can’t wait to meet you someday, thank you Lord for giving our family peace.' ..........
Paul Davis On Crime: Are We In A New Golden Age Of Crime Fiction?
Paul Davis On Crime: Are We In A New Golden Age Of Crime Fiction?
Excerpt:
Tom Nolan writes about a possible new Golden Age of crime fiction in the Wall Street Journal.
The private-eye novel, for instance, the hardiest of American detective-story forms, had another fine season, thanks to exciting books by both veterans and newer writers. The lone investigator uncovering nasty truths and righting wrongs has proved as appealing as the cowboy hero; and he (or she) has survived longer than the cowpoke by adapting to change: in technology, in literary technique and in job description. ....
Excerpt:
Tom Nolan writes about a possible new Golden Age of crime fiction in the Wall Street Journal.
The private-eye novel, for instance, the hardiest of American detective-story forms, had another fine season, thanks to exciting books by both veterans and newer writers. The lone investigator uncovering nasty truths and righting wrongs has proved as appealing as the cowboy hero; and he (or she) has survived longer than the cowpoke by adapting to change: in technology, in literary technique and in job description. ....
Friday, December 16, 2011
Christopher Hitchens death: In Memoriam, my courageous sibling, by Peter Hitchens | Mail Online
Excerpt: [h/t Books, Inq.]
[Respectfully: I ask that you pray for his soul and for his grieving family.]
[Loss: Peter Hitchens, right, describes his relationship with his late brother Christopher, left, as 'complex' but adds the pair got on better in the last few months than they had in 50 years]
And I have spent most of the day so far responding, with regrettable brevity, to the many kind and thoughtful expressions of sympathy that I have received, some from complete strangers.
Many more such messages are arriving as comments here. My thanks for all of them. They are much appreciated not only by me but by my brother’s family.
...............Much of civilisation rests on the proper response to death, simple unalloyed kindness, the desire to show sympathy for irrecoverable loss, the understanding that a unique and irreplaceable something has been lost to us. If we ceased to care, we wouldn’t be properly human.
So, odd as it would be if this were a wholly private matter, I think it would be strange if I did not post something here, partly to thank the many who have sent their kind wishes and expressed their sympathy, and partly to provide my first raw attempt at a eulogy for my closest living relative, someone who in many ways I have known better – and certainly longer - than anyone else alive.
Brotherly love: Peter, left, and Christopher, right, play in the sand during a holiday in Devon in the fifties
We both knew it was the last time we would see each other...
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2075133/Christopher-Hitchens-death-In-Memoriam-courageous-sibling-Peter-Hitchens.html#ixzz1gkfCJwdc
Coming together or moving apart?
Here is another installment in my research of the 'dimensions of the captivity of alienation':
From:
From:
Daniel Kopala-Sibley, Doctoral Candidate, McGill University
Source: Kopala-Sibley, D. (2010). Coming together or moving apart? Separation and fragmentation within psychology. Psynopsis: Canada’s Psychology Newspaper, 32(1), 33.
Many of us entering academic psychology did so with broad, if not lofty, goals. We wanted to understand the human “mind” as comprehensively as possible. But hasn’t that been the ideal of psychology since Plato, to comprehend the human psyche as a whole? In the past century, however, it seems to me that our discipline has become divided, some might say fragmented, even, into increasingly narrow specializations, and the ideal of comprehending the ‘whole’ seems both lost and impossible. Indeed, philosopher Gilbert Ryle argued for the “abandonment of the notion that ‘psychology’ is the name of a unitary inquiry or tree of inquiries” (Ryle, p.305, 1949).
This is potentially dangerous. Psychology may become so fragmented that researchers risk no longer being able or willing to see the discipline in a comprehensive, purposeful manner. This arguably places our field at a critical time in its development: at what point do we attempt to tie various sub-fields together? Equally important, especially for graduate students, is the question of whether a successful career requires ultra-specialization.
New graduate students aiming for a research career quickly learn that success requires finding some minute, understudied problem, and becoming the go-to person on that subject. Perhaps this contention is accurate; the days of the grand theorists, who sought to understand human nature, really are over and graduate students are condemned to pursue a hyper-focused sub-discipline of psychology.
To say this is not to fall into a “renaissance-man syndrome” in which we foolishly believe we can know or understand all that psychological research has to offer. Attempting to synthesize the many ideas within psychology requires collaboration between a variety of disciplines; it does not require knowledge of the entire field on the part of one researcher.
Some researchers, however, are looking to big theories to tie together a wide range of empirical evidence. For instance, Tooby and Cosmides’ evolutionary psychology has been praised for its ability to explain a wide range of human behaviours. Indeed, it attempts to “assemble out of the disjointed, fragmentary, and mutually contradictory human disciplines a single, logically integrated research framework” (Tooby & Cosmides, 2005, p.5)…
Another View:
The recent article and buzz about the decreasing use of psychotherapy by psychiatrists (http://www.healthexperiment.com) is further evidence of a social shift away from relating to others as people. Our use of torture as a nation, the "axis of evil" language from our government, and the increasing psychiatric view of symptoms as reflections of neurons and chemicals suggests that we may be in a social withdrawal from being able to face and bear the pain of human experience. The Austen Riggs Center' s Eric Plakun speaks for the tension in psychiatry between two models of treatment: biological and psychological(http://wkim83.wordpress.com ) . He argues that they must be integrated for a full picture of our patients. Shifting away from the area that psychoanalysis has so carefully developed of listening to others with disciplined empathy runs the risk of losing the embedded set of values about the significance of the individual life.
You've GOTTA read this!: Monsters of Men - Patrick Ness (Audio)
You've GOTTA read this!: Monsters of Men - Patrick Ness (Audio)
[Seems an appropriate headline for today. Now I just need to find a good line about that 'ostrich' behavior.]
[Seems an appropriate headline for today. Now I just need to find a good line about that 'ostrich' behavior.]
Sheila Fitzpatrick reviews ‘Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’ by Liudmila Saraskina · LRB 11 September 2008
Sheila Fitzpatrick reviews ‘Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’ by Liudmila Saraskina · LRB 11 September 2008
Excerpt:
Excerpt:
Most of all, though, I warmed to Solzhenitsyn. What a fighter! What an incorrigible conspirator, and how infectious the enjoyment he got out of it! (His exclamation marks are infectious, too.) What a sense of theatre and timing! How unshakeable in his belief that he was always right, regardless of the occasional 180º turn! What a subverter of other people’s pieties (sometimes even his own)! How wickedly good at puncturing the self-regard of the intelligentsia! What a master of black humour!! What a polemical style!! ...
[For me Solzhenitsyn was a defender of the inalienable rights of each human being to BE. He never bowed to the chaotic, random evil octupus wood-chipper machine of socialism which reels the young and the poor in with the fishing line of immorality and rebellion. He laughed in the face of that vacuous empty pomposity with its red penchant for the blood of innocents which still scream from even the tiny pebbles ground in its monstrosity. No one was able to destroy the giftedness of his intellect which he humbly submitted to the use of his Creator for 'our' defense. He is still a hero to me, a gift given in the beginning of my university days. His rarefied view clarified everything.]
Excerpt:
Excerpt:
Most of all, though, I warmed to Solzhenitsyn. What a fighter! What an incorrigible conspirator, and how infectious the enjoyment he got out of it! (His exclamation marks are infectious, too.) What a sense of theatre and timing! How unshakeable in his belief that he was always right, regardless of the occasional 180º turn! What a subverter of other people’s pieties (sometimes even his own)! How wickedly good at puncturing the self-regard of the intelligentsia! What a master of black humour!! What a polemical style!! ...
[For me Solzhenitsyn was a defender of the inalienable rights of each human being to BE. He never bowed to the chaotic, random evil octupus wood-chipper machine of socialism which reels the young and the poor in with the fishing line of immorality and rebellion. He laughed in the face of that vacuous empty pomposity with its red penchant for the blood of innocents which still scream from even the tiny pebbles ground in its monstrosity. No one was able to destroy the giftedness of his intellect which he humbly submitted to the use of his Creator for 'our' defense. He is still a hero to me, a gift given in the beginning of my university days. His rarefied view clarified everything.]
Monday, December 12, 2011
Marks in the Margin: American Resistance Heroine
Marks in the Margin: American Resistance Heroine
Excerpt:
In the late fall of 1943 Virginia D’Albert-Lake and her husband Phillipe were contacted by a local baker in the town of Nesles, France where they were living at the time. He asked the couple if they would come to his shop to meet some strangers.
Virginia was a young American teacher who met Philippe d’Albert-Lake in 1936 while traveling in France. Philippe was from a family of substantial means with two apartments in Paris and a home in Brittany. They were married in 1937 and moved to a small cottage in Nesles, north of Paris....
Excerpt:
In the late fall of 1943 Virginia D’Albert-Lake and her husband Phillipe were contacted by a local baker in the town of Nesles, France where they were living at the time. He asked the couple if they would come to his shop to meet some strangers.
Virginia was a young American teacher who met Philippe d’Albert-Lake in 1936 while traveling in France. Philippe was from a family of substantial means with two apartments in Paris and a home in Brittany. They were married in 1937 and moved to a small cottage in Nesles, north of Paris....
Marks in the Margin: Doctor to the Resistance
Marks in the Margin: Doctor to the Resistance
Excerpt:
We lived in the shadows as soldiers of the night, but our lives were not dark and martial. . . There were arrests, torture, and death for so many of our friends and comrades, and tragedy awaited all of us just around the corner. But we did not live in or with tragedy. We were exhilarated by the challenge and rightness of our cause. It was in many ways the worst of times and in just as many ways the best of times, and the best is what we remember today. Jean-Pierre Levy
Few Americans participated in the French Resistance, a movement that will always represent in my mind the epitome of moral courage. I wrote about one here. Although I imagine there were others, the only one I am aware of is Dr. Sumner Jackson. These are individuals we don’t want to forget.
Jackson’s various roles in the Resistance are described in Hal Vaughan’s Doctor to the Resistance: The Heroic True Story of an American Surgeon and His Family in Occupied Paris. Sumner Jackson graduated from the Massachusetts General Hospital in 1919 and soon thereafter joined the British Royal Medical Corp as a field surgeon during the First World War. Once America entered the war, he was enlisted by the U.S. Army Medical Corp to serve at the Red Cross Hospital in Paris. It was there that he met his wife, Toquette, a French citizen who was a nurse at the hospital then....
Excerpt:
We lived in the shadows as soldiers of the night, but our lives were not dark and martial. . . There were arrests, torture, and death for so many of our friends and comrades, and tragedy awaited all of us just around the corner. But we did not live in or with tragedy. We were exhilarated by the challenge and rightness of our cause. It was in many ways the worst of times and in just as many ways the best of times, and the best is what we remember today. Jean-Pierre Levy
Few Americans participated in the French Resistance, a movement that will always represent in my mind the epitome of moral courage. I wrote about one here. Although I imagine there were others, the only one I am aware of is Dr. Sumner Jackson. These are individuals we don’t want to forget.
Jackson’s various roles in the Resistance are described in Hal Vaughan’s Doctor to the Resistance: The Heroic True Story of an American Surgeon and His Family in Occupied Paris. Sumner Jackson graduated from the Massachusetts General Hospital in 1919 and soon thereafter joined the British Royal Medical Corp as a field surgeon during the First World War. Once America entered the war, he was enlisted by the U.S. Army Medical Corp to serve at the Red Cross Hospital in Paris. It was there that he met his wife, Toquette, a French citizen who was a nurse at the hospital then....
Paul Davis On Crime: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Almost Perfect, But For The Politics
Paul Davis On Crime: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Almost Perfect, But For The Politics
Excerpt:
Andrew Roberts at the Daily Beast likes the new film version of thriller writer John le Carre's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, but he dislikes the anti-American, anti-west politics...
Excerpt:
Andrew Roberts at the Daily Beast likes the new film version of thriller writer John le Carre's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, but he dislikes the anti-American, anti-west politics...
Saturday, December 10, 2011
The Reading Life: Maxim Gorky: Two Great Short Stories
The Reading Life: Maxim Gorky: Two Great Short Stories
Excerpt:
Gorky did not simply observe the poorest of the poor in Czarist Russia, he lived among them for many years.
Gorky (1868 to 1932-Russia) was orphaned at age 12. He went to live with his grandparents. His grandfather beat him regularly. He ran away from the jobs he was given as soon as he could. From age 21 to 26 the "tramped" all over eastern Russia, working at the roughest of jobs and sleeping where he could and eating what he could. This experience radicalized Gorky and by age 30 he was supporting the causes of Marxist revolutionaries. Gorky was taught to read by a cook he met and became an extreme autodidact in the literature of Russian and in anti-Czarist political writings. Gorky became a journalist and ended up being arrested numerous times. In 1902 he met and became a life time friend of Lenin. He led a tumultuous personal and professional life, scandalizing even his fellow revolutionaries with his womanizing. He left Russia for a time to seek a warmed climate for health reasons but returned when Stalin invited him back. He became kind of a pet of Stalin (a dangerous position!). Stalin endorsed him as the voice of the people. Long story short, he died under clouded circumstances, some say killed by the head of the Russian Secret Service because Stalin feared what he might say about him...
Excerpt:
Gorky did not simply observe the poorest of the poor in Czarist Russia, he lived among them for many years.
 |
| Gorky with Stalin |
Gorky (1868 to 1932-Russia) was orphaned at age 12. He went to live with his grandparents. His grandfather beat him regularly. He ran away from the jobs he was given as soon as he could. From age 21 to 26 the "tramped" all over eastern Russia, working at the roughest of jobs and sleeping where he could and eating what he could. This experience radicalized Gorky and by age 30 he was supporting the causes of Marxist revolutionaries. Gorky was taught to read by a cook he met and became an extreme autodidact in the literature of Russian and in anti-Czarist political writings. Gorky became a journalist and ended up being arrested numerous times. In 1902 he met and became a life time friend of Lenin. He led a tumultuous personal and professional life, scandalizing even his fellow revolutionaries with his womanizing. He left Russia for a time to seek a warmed climate for health reasons but returned when Stalin invited him back. He became kind of a pet of Stalin (a dangerous position!). Stalin endorsed him as the voice of the people. Long story short, he died under clouded circumstances, some say killed by the head of the Russian Secret Service because Stalin feared what he might say about him...
Wuthering Expectations: The pure aesthetic sensation of cruelty - the humane and inhumane Machado de Assis
Wuthering Expectations: The pure aesthetic sensation of cruelty - the humane and inhumane Machado de Assis
Excerpt:
I want to look at one more Machado de Assis story before setting him aside for a while, another of his at least sixty masterpieces of world literature. It is Machado’s clearest statement about human cruelty. No one is in favor of cruelty – no, perhaps Céline and similar authors are in favor of cruelty – but many are indifferent. The narrator of The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (1881) is indifferent, and not just because he is deceased. Machado can seem indifferent, or even cruel; “The Hidden Cause” is a cruel story...
Excerpt:
I want to look at one more Machado de Assis story before setting him aside for a while, another of his at least sixty masterpieces of world literature. It is Machado’s clearest statement about human cruelty. No one is in favor of cruelty – no, perhaps Céline and similar authors are in favor of cruelty – but many are indifferent. The narrator of The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (1881) is indifferent, and not just because he is deceased. Machado can seem indifferent, or even cruel; “The Hidden Cause” is a cruel story...
“Brave New World Is Our Idea of Heaven” — A Passage from Michel Houellebecq’s Novel The Elementary Particles | biblioklept
“Brave New World Is Our Idea of Heaven” — A Passage from Michel Houellebecq’s Novel The Elementary Particles | biblioklept
Excerpt:
...This is exactly the sort of world we’re trying to create, the world we want to live in. “Oh, I know, I know,” Bruno went on, ... [Sadly, very true.]
Excerpt:
...This is exactly the sort of world we’re trying to create, the world we want to live in. “Oh, I know, I know,” Bruno went on, ... [Sadly, very true.]
Anecdotal Evidence: `Buying Groceries Instead of Buying Dreams'
Anecdotal Evidence: `Buying Groceries Instead of Buying Dreams
Excerpt:
A quick pass through the campus “bookstore” where I purchased two hooded sweatshirts as Christmas presents, was, as always, dispiriting. The book department consists of six shelves of publications by faculty and staff. Some are heavily technical, and I’m not qualified to judge their worth. The one title I’ve actually read was written by a friend but I can recommend it without bias. (In conversation, the author has described the Fugitive poet Donald Davidson, who figures in her Vanderbilt chapter, as “a stone-cold racist.”) The rest, having bypassed remaindering, await pulping.
Just that morning I had read the excerpts from Bohemia in London posted by Mike Gilleland at Laudator Temporis Acti. I had never read Arthur Ransome but was intrigued enough to get the book from the library. It’s the first American edition, published in 1907 by Dodd, Mead & Company. I found the passage in “The Bookshops of Bohemia” where Mike left off, and resumed reading:
“There is something more real about this style of buying books than about the dull mercenary method of a new emporium. It is good, granted, to look about the shelves of a new bookshop, ..............................
Excerpt:
Just that morning I had read the excerpts from Bohemia in London posted by Mike Gilleland at Laudator Temporis Acti. I had never read Arthur Ransome but was intrigued enough to get the book from the library. It’s the first American edition, published in 1907 by Dodd, Mead & Company. I found the passage in “The Bookshops of Bohemia” where Mike left off, and resumed reading:
“There is something more real about this style of buying books than about the dull mercenary method of a new emporium. It is good, granted, to look about the shelves of a new bookshop, ..............................
Friday, December 9, 2011
Sonoran and Chihuahuan Rattles
Ciudad Juarez
My life’s fate is cast with this infamous place and its people. I have no pleasant memories of it. Most of the memorial frames cast through wire fences are limned by fragmentary shots of poverty and dark smog. In the torturous streets of my history there is only a strange fear and dread of being there at all. The random, chaotic traffic was less fearsome than emerging to throngs of poverty players clutching and grabbing at me. I grew to mistrust all perception there because it was difficult to tell who was really poor and who was playing scams to get more money.
I remember weeping beneath the huge crucifix staring out the dust stained window at the stripped, hilly, arid landscape dotted with ‘tent neighborhoods’ of the very, very poor. The broad well-lit superhighways of ‘el norte’ leeringly mocked the plight of these ravaged peoples. However, the massive villas of the very rich Mexicans who were even less tolerant or caring than those across the international bridge became more of a challenge to understand.
It is not easy for me to incorporate all of this. Because of those dear to me whom I love the vacuous easy referendums by those in the USA, who so easily toss aside the writhing realms of the Chihuahuan and Sonoran deserts as unimportant, has been utterly stripped from my being. Only those with much love and wisdom can justly move or dwell within its borders or comment on its life and death. From outside its borders strangers view it as an alien place. The ‘Sonoran rattle’, too, is an infamous blight in the belly of North America. Its fences are many and varied. After half a century of being entwined in the history with great sorrow for its people my view has re-emerged in a fury at the violent upheavals exploding because of evil’s unchecked in-roads.
“When Bolaño came to London early this year for the English publication of By Night in Chile, he was already very ill from a longstanding liver complaint. Despite this, he was still talking non-stop of the many projects he was involved in, including a mammoth novel provisionally entitled 2666, already more than 1,000 pages long, that dealt with the murders of more than 300 young women in the Mexican border town of Ciudad Juarez, another novel, and a new collection of poetry…” ~ Nick Caistor, ‘Obituary: Roberto Bolaño’, The Guardian, 17 July 2003
One Angry Daughter
One Angry Daughter
Excerpt:
I choose
To live by choice not be chance;
To make changes not excuses;
To be motivated not manipulated;
To be useful not used;
To excel not compete.
I choose self-esteem not self-pity.
I choose to listen to my inner voice,
Not the random opinion of others.
I choose to be me.
Excerpt:
I choose
To live by choice not be chance;
To make changes not excuses;
To be motivated not manipulated;
To be useful not used;
To excel not compete.
I choose self-esteem not self-pity.
I choose to listen to my inner voice,
Not the random opinion of others.
I choose to be me.
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Trains
The moon’s a shiny dime.
Shut your eyes and you will hear
The Doppler shift of time...
.....
Tomorrow will be kinder.
Here comes a freight train nosing west,
Pulling the dawn behind her. ~A.E. Stallings
Shut your eyes and you will hear
The Doppler shift of time...
.....
Tomorrow will be kinder.
Here comes a freight train nosing west,
Pulling the dawn behind her. ~A.E. Stallings
“Winter-Time” — Robert Louis Stevenson | biblioklept
“Winter-Time” — Robert Louis Stevenson | biblioklept
Excerpt:
To warm my frozen bones a bit;........
Excerpt:
“Winter-Time,” a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson:
Late lies the wintry sun a-bed,
A frosty, fiery sleepy-head;
Blinks but an hour or two; and then,
A blood-red orange, sets again.
Before the stars have left the skies,
At morning in the dark I rise;
And shivering in my nakedness,
By the cold candle, bathe and dress.
To warm my frozen bones a bit;........
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Winter's Wall
Blood flows red, ne’er blue, tho’ darker shades staining years
Cadenced pulse, crashed waves, evergreen sappings pummel fears.
Cryin’ blue, stone gray, crimson tidals drenching earth.
Powdery mists softly kiss dew forms stilled from mirth.
Winter white cloaked mule and deer, ancient brick-stone wall,
Celebrates punctured arch gate, time-limned in stone’s fall.
Flecked granite, limestone, gneiss-ed lining, in blood strewn
Gentle tears, frozen, borne through terror, sculpted, hewn.
Vibrant, leaves, lively coursing veins, betray held hues;
Autumnal swirlings, wild wisks, thrilling life imbues.
Sleeping forms silent ‘neath soft moss, save single cross;
Memories, soul tunes, tender, marking sorrowed loss.
~9/22/10
Marks in the Margin: The Third Place
Marks in the Margin: The Third Place
Excerpt: [Oh, yeah. Tertulias~]
“Conversation is a crucial thing in Spanish culture. Writers, artists, poets and philosophers, intellectuals in general used to join ever day at the cafes to talk around a drink about the human and the divine and to try and arrange the problems of the world. This habit is called tertulia. German philosophers used to think first then write. Spanish philosophers use to talk, and then, if it works, to write. For the Spanish, talk is a form of thinking.”
Imagine a place where you went each day to chat with your friends, to write, or simply get away from everything and spend a quiet afternoon reading or brooding.
In his book The Great Good Place: Café’s Coffee Shops, Community Centers, Beauty Parlors, General Stores, Bars Hangouts and How They Get You Through the Day, Ray Oldenburg refers to these settings as Third Places, informal gathering places away from a person’s home and place of work. He discusses the German beer gardens, the English pubs, French cafes and the American tavern. ....
Excerpt: [Oh, yeah. Tertulias~]
“Conversation is a crucial thing in Spanish culture. Writers, artists, poets and philosophers, intellectuals in general used to join ever day at the cafes to talk around a drink about the human and the divine and to try and arrange the problems of the world. This habit is called tertulia. German philosophers used to think first then write. Spanish philosophers use to talk, and then, if it works, to write. For the Spanish, talk is a form of thinking.”
Imagine a place where you went each day to chat with your friends, to write, or simply get away from everything and spend a quiet afternoon reading or brooding.
In his book The Great Good Place: Café’s Coffee Shops, Community Centers, Beauty Parlors, General Stores, Bars Hangouts and How They Get You Through the Day, Ray Oldenburg refers to these settings as Third Places, informal gathering places away from a person’s home and place of work. He discusses the German beer gardens, the English pubs, French cafes and the American tavern. ....
Monday, December 5, 2011
Detectives Beyond Borders
Detectives Beyond Borders
Excerpt: [The 'w']
A guide to Roman excavations in Lisbon pointed out the 'ood supports that underlie many of the city's buildings. A hotel keeper in Porto told me 'i-fi was available in the room, and she wasn't talking about stereo...
Excerpt: [The 'w']
A guide to Roman excavations in Lisbon pointed out the 'ood supports that underlie many of the city's buildings. A hotel keeper in Porto told me 'i-fi was available in the room, and she wasn't talking about stereo...
Ghost of a flea: The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick
Ghost of a flea: The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick
Excerpt:
Sceptics say that, while most of what PKD wrote is now admired as insightful, prophetic and astute, these metaphysical writings mention God, so they can be dismissed. No doubt they were prompted by temporal lobe epilepsy or some similarly traumatic neurological event.
The trouble is that the Exegesis
doesn’t read like that. It reads like a clever man trying to come to terms with the world around him, a world that he had always distrusted, and that gave him reasons to distrust it.
Excerpt:
Sceptics say that, while most of what PKD wrote is now admired as insightful, prophetic and astute, these metaphysical writings mention God, so they can be dismissed. No doubt they were prompted by temporal lobe epilepsy or some similarly traumatic neurological event.
The trouble is that the Exegesis
doesn’t read like that. It reads like a clever man trying to come to terms with the world around him, a world that he had always distrusted, and that gave him reasons to distrust it.
First Known When Lost: "Houses Will Build Themselves And Tombstones Rewrite Names On Dead Men's Graves"
First Known When Lost: "Houses Will Build Themselves And Tombstones Rewrite Names On Dead Men's Graves"
Excerpt:
Perhaps this shifting sands business is not a one-way street...
The following poem by Andrew Young (1885-1971) is about a sandy place in the north of Scotland.
Culbin Sands
Here lay a fair fat land;
But now its townships, kirks, graveyards
Beneath bald hills of sand
Lie buried deep as Babylonian shards.
But gales may blow again;
And like a sand-glass turned about
The hills in a dry rain
Will flow away and the old land look out;
And where now hedgehog delves
And conies hollow their long caves
Houses will build themselves
And tombstones rewrite names on dead men's graves.
Andrew Young, Collected Poems (1960).
The fate of the townships, kirks, and graveyards was, according to the Forestry Commission of Scotland, sealed by the great storm of 1694. In later years, a forest was planted to arrest the sands. Much of the forest was felled during the First World War to provide framing and duckboards for the trenches. The trees have now grown back. So, who knows what might happen? ...
Excerpt:
Perhaps this shifting sands business is not a one-way street...
The following poem by Andrew Young (1885-1971) is about a sandy place in the north of Scotland.
Culbin Sands
Here lay a fair fat land;
But now its townships, kirks, graveyards
Beneath bald hills of sand
Lie buried deep as Babylonian shards.
But gales may blow again;
And like a sand-glass turned about
The hills in a dry rain
Will flow away and the old land look out;
And where now hedgehog delves
And conies hollow their long caves
Houses will build themselves
And tombstones rewrite names on dead men's graves.
Andrew Young, Collected Poems (1960).
The fate of the townships, kirks, and graveyards was, according to the Forestry Commission of Scotland, sealed by the great storm of 1694. In later years, a forest was planted to arrest the sands. Much of the forest was felled during the First World War to provide framing and duckboards for the trenches. The trees have now grown back. So, who knows what might happen? ...
Everyone Needs Therapy: My nervous breakdown, not yours
Everyone Needs Therapy: My nervous breakdown, not yours
Excerpt:
Somewhere in the Stuff That Makes Us Sick section of this blog, we talk about how there is no designation, nervous breakdown, in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The DSM defines episodes of depression, all kinds, mania, too, and an entire nosology of dreadful symptoms associated with anxiety. But the syntax nervous breakdown is nowhere to be found.
It is most familiar to the generation that relates (really relates) to Mad Men (the TV show). In the fifties you had to have one to get attention for feeling mentally ill.
We omit it because it is defined by better differentiated disorders. Yet, that perfect storm of anxiety, panic, blinding fear, and catatonia, an inability to communicate well, a feeling of shutting down, symptoms of several Axis I disorders all rolled into one isn't close to feeling healthy.
And it happens to many, if not most of us, and for some people, it happens at the worst of times, the beginning of a new job, the birth of a baby, making a wedding, graduating high school, college, moving away or moving toward. Certain diagnoses are more likely to manifest at certain ages.
There's never a good time, is there?
If it is ubiquitous, and symptomatic of some type of mental illness or a combination of disorders, then perhaps the stigma about the nervous breakdown isn't about misunderstanding or unfamiliarity, rather it is born of a sense of dire helplessness in the face of the collapse of another. Not knowing what to do, wanting to help and not knowing how, we displace our anxiety, judge, blame the victim....
Excerpt:
Somewhere in the Stuff That Makes Us Sick section of this blog, we talk about how there is no designation, nervous breakdown, in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The DSM defines episodes of depression, all kinds, mania, too, and an entire nosology of dreadful symptoms associated with anxiety. But the syntax nervous breakdown is nowhere to be found.
It is most familiar to the generation that relates (really relates) to Mad Men (the TV show). In the fifties you had to have one to get attention for feeling mentally ill.
We omit it because it is defined by better differentiated disorders. Yet, that perfect storm of anxiety, panic, blinding fear, and catatonia, an inability to communicate well, a feeling of shutting down, symptoms of several Axis I disorders all rolled into one isn't close to feeling healthy.
And it happens to many, if not most of us, and for some people, it happens at the worst of times, the beginning of a new job, the birth of a baby, making a wedding, graduating high school, college, moving away or moving toward. Certain diagnoses are more likely to manifest at certain ages.
There's never a good time, is there?
If it is ubiquitous, and symptomatic of some type of mental illness or a combination of disorders, then perhaps the stigma about the nervous breakdown isn't about misunderstanding or unfamiliarity, rather it is born of a sense of dire helplessness in the face of the collapse of another. Not knowing what to do, wanting to help and not knowing how, we displace our anxiety, judge, blame the victim....
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