What are you reading? #1- Laurie Mathers

The Journal of John Woolman and a Plea for the Poor
Paradise Lost (Modern Library Classics)
Reasons and Arguments

Blow by Blow by Detmar Blow

Blow by Blow: The Story of Isabella Blow

Readers of this blog and those who know me in person know that my imagination is captivated by the career of Isabella Blow.  She was and remains one of my most inspirational style icons.  When I recently had a little extra money, I purchased a few of the recently published books on the subject of Isabella Blow.  I chose to read Detmar Blow's biography of Isabella Blow first and I think it was the wise choice.  I was able to experience the book in a way I don't think I would have been able to had I read Lauren Goldstein Crowe's more conventional biography first, as this book was written by one of the characters in the conventional biography (or, more likely, ghost-written.)

Having spent the past year reading Milton, Shakespeare, and that crowd, the rhetorical style of the book was a bit like the frivolous uncle of a child, whose parents are draconian in their serving of only highly nutritious food, who takes the child out secretly for their first root beer float.  Although my Internal Pendant requires me to temper that enthusiasm by mentioning that there were at least two typos, a jarring lack of the Oxford comma at the proper places, and one instance in the book where Isabella was accidentally referred to in the present tense.  In contemporary slang, I would most likely characterize it as "a beach read" although a rather grim one.

The other issue I would take with the book is the inconsistent treatment of the subject matter as the forefront of the narrative.  Clearly Mr. Blow took great pains to research the early life of Isabella, most likely from her own accounts from their many years together and, by his admission, interviews with key figures in preparation for the book.  The second act, when Isabella Blow is at the height of her career and Detmar is her husband, also features Isabella although Detmar's first person arrives.  In the third act, as their marriage begins to feel the strain of her mental breakdown, the focus of the narrative seems to shift to Detmar (specifically Detmar's dealings with Isabella in the last portion of her life.)

The other criticism I would bring is that it seemed to me throughout that there was potentially enlightening information being withheld by the author possibly out of respect for the subject (or, possibly, out of still having to deal with the other survivors of the story) although I have no means by which to support that claim.  I do, however, strongly expect to find in the other biography more of a "warts and all" portrait of the couple and their relationship.  It is also probably not a surprising revelation that there are instances of opinion that may not be entirely objective.  I found it pushing the taste envelope that the major examples of specific negative opinion toward certain people's behavior is reserved for those no longer alive to defend themselves (notably Isabella's father and Alexander McQueen.  Although, in keeping with my defense of honesty, I am predisposed to not want to ever think ill of McQueen.)

The value of the book is in the love of the man for the subject as well as the bits of informal information gained from personal experience that we might not otherwise glimpse of some major figures of our day.  I smiled at Isabella's exasperation that Karl Lagerfeld would only shoot photos at night as he designed all day.  I loved the account of Alexander McQueen running to save his brawny Staffordshire Terrier from being chased by a Scottish Terrier.  I was charmed but not surprised to see that André Leon Talley comes off as one of the kindest people in the entire narrative.  Also of great value, I thought, was that the book could serve as a highly readable crash course in the history of contemporary fashion.

I would also mention Isabella Blow's remarkable ability to find new talent.  It was with some amusement that I read the section where other major figures in fashion journalism marvel at the quality and quantity of her discoveries.  It seems that Blow achieved this by leaving her office to go meet up and coming artists, attending senior class project shows, and even pulling people off of the street to end up in fashion shoots.  She seems to have gained this serendipitous ethic from Warhol.  And I don't mean an academic understanding of Warhol's artistic career.  I mean Andy Warhol probably turned to her one day when they were at a club or in a cab and said, "Isabella, here's how I find so many fresh new artists.  I go out."

The bare information in the first chapter poses the Richard Cory question, "Why would someone at the peak of their creative powers choose to end their life?"  Detmar's thesis seems to be that Isabella's eventual collapse started when she was five years old.  The inciting incident is the death of her two year old brother who her mother seemingly irresponsibly left in the care of five year old Isabella.  Isabella was called to the fence by a passerby and her brother fell in the pool.  The boy was her father's only male heir to his barony and the weight of the loss tore her family to pieces.  The study of family strife tearing an otherwise bright, creative, and successful person to pieces over decades was harrowing and, I daresay, had a touch of the universal appeal to it.

Although I do have my suspicions over the amount of responsibility placed on Isabella's highly dysfunctional upbringing.  Detmar went through a horrific experience and I found myself identifying with him throughout.  He had great difficulty in dealing with a harsh situation and I found his honesty over that refreshing.  He does not let the reader off the hook, just as he was never let off the hook.  In the end, he is one of the characters in the story who elicited the most sympathy and I doubt any further information from other sources could undermine that impression in me now.  

The third act boils down to a list of names of institutions and of suicide attempts.  There is a photograph near the end of Isabella with Bryan Ferry, both looking happy and prosperous, two of the more elite figures on the planet at the time.  The caption at the bottom directs the viewer to Isabella's right ankle.  Her leg is crossed and her ankle is showing beneath her calve length dress.  On her ankle is a nasty looking scar which, the caption informs us, came from her suicide attempt by jumping off of an overpass and shattering her foot and ankle bones.

I'm afraid that the end of the book does not give the reader much comfort or resolution, but there is a great truth in that.  It states outright the hopeless condition of one who is so seeped in their mental illness that they are entirely unwilling to take any action to help themselves and the utter helplessness of those who love them.  The book also highlights that even those who seem to be "on top" of the world have their places where they feel they failed, where they feel they were slighted, financial worries, insecurities, and all of the manifestations of fear and regret universal to humankind's existential dilemma.   That is why I would recommend the book to anyone and everyone.  It points to an existence where all of the success in the world doesn't really matter if there is no happiness and no peace.

English Traits by Ralph Waldo Emerson

I decided to skip the final few essays of Emerson and read his piece on aspects of the British character.  I will return to and comment on those final essays of Emerson, but I realized that I own all of those essays in at least two separate books.  I do not own Emerson's English Traits and I was on my third library renewal.

I initially expected a travelogue, but quickly realized that it is more of a fly-over of what the title suggests directly.  I assume the timing of the piece must needs be considered in any assessment.  It was published in a time where the intended audience would be people whose grandparents fought in the Revolutionary War and, unbeknownst to them, whose children would fight in the Civil War.  It strikes me as a strong possibility to assume that the book was intended to rebuild some burnt bridges between the two nations.  However, with the clarity of hindsight, the book is anomalous in two key points that are almost entirely absent from Emerson's Anglo-appraisal that are glaring to the modern eye.  Dr. Eliot would have been aware of these as well, so I'll add them to my list of questions for him that I am devising a way to smuggle with me into the hereafter.

The first is that the British had outlawed the slave trade over two decades prior to the book while America was about a decade out from outlawing that particular loathsome blot on our nation's history.  If memory serves, the closest Emerson even gets to mentioning this is the necessary inclusion of William Wilberforce and Charles James Fox in lists of great British men in recent memory.  I would have expected the most important issue in America just a handful of years hence would at least have been mentioned in the book, but I was mistaken.

The other topic I would have thought an American just this side of the Revolution would have made mention at some point about the British Empire.  This was written when the British Empire was in full swing and Emerson spends very little time on the subject specifically (although he does mention that the British tend to "take Britain with them" where ever they go.)  The book was published just a year before the Great Uprising in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh.  Most of you know of the wonderful book that my friend Anurag Kumar wrote on the subject.  I think that the exclusion of any talk on that aspect of Britain lends credence to my hypothesis that the book was intended to amend the general American feeling toward their motherland.  It is probably also worth mentioning that the apple did not fall far from the tree in this aspect of national character.  America is, itself, sort of an empire built on taking land by force and violence.

The book begins with Emerson's visits to a few major figures in England whose acquaintance he decidedly wished to make.  He gives an account of meeting Coleridge, Carlyle, and Wordsworth.  Carlyle meets with Emerson's greatest approval, but the other two reminded me of the advice from Jonathan Carroll of "never meet your heroes."  I suppose in controlled settings, a book signing for example, it might be nice to meet one of my own heroes in person, but I always think "What if I met Stephen Fry when he had a head cold?  Or Paul F. Tompkins when he was in a hurry?  Or Caitlin Kiernan when she hasn't had enough sleep?"  It's so easy for me to be off my game; I have to assume it's the same for other humans.  I fear that a bad experience with a hero might thereafter taint my perception of their work and, as I realistically don't really expect to ever be on "phone call at 3 am" terms with any of those heroes, I would like to preserve my sense of wonder.  I further fear that may have been Emerson's experience, at least with Coleridge.  Otherwise the section is a fascinating snapshot of the personalities of a few great men that we might not otherwise have.  That alone makes the book worthwhile in my opinion.

Emerson gives an account of sea travel that I found more riveting and interesting than anything in Melville.  Most of the rest of the book comprises aspects of the British character in chapters with titles like: Literature, Religion, Manners, Land, and Truth.  At no point did I feel he denegrated the English character.  In fact, I was pleased to find the tone throughout laudatory.  One of the chapters that occasioned great thought and conversations with Laurie was the chapter on the topic of Aristocracy.  Emerson notes the existence of a leisure class and the remnants of the feudal spirit in England.  It struck me as quaint that he intimates that this is not the case in America where one can pull themselves up from the mud to become the richest man in the world, simply by square dealing and honest, hard labor.  Little did Emerson know America would mutate into an oligarchy over the course of the next 150 years and that the wealth of nations would funnel down into the pockets of a few dozen men.  Careful where you wag that finger, Emerson.

Emerson devotes large portion of the work talking of the strength and heartiness of the British people, their honesty, their endurance and composure, and their great contributions to civilization.  He lauds their educational system and states that their top tier universities put ours to shame (specifically in the category of affordability.  I wonder what Dr. Eliot, being the paradigmatic Harvard man, would have thought of that part too.)  He ends the piece with an account of a bucolic visit to Stonehenge and the text of a speech he gave in Manchester.

In his speech, there was a moment that I found rather shocking.  He said words to the effect that just as a parent lives on in their children, England will live on in the great acts performed by its "child," meaning America.  I thought it was an amazingly gutsy thing for an American to say to a room full of Englishmen in the middle of the 19th Century.  I probably wouldn't have said it, mainly because, as Emerson himself points out, a great nation does a lot of good but any nation full of humans is inevitably going to do a few things that wouldn't exactly make their parents proud.  I should probably state that I love America and I love England, which is the only other nation I've spent any length of time visiting.  I would go back in a heartbeat.

But, I think for me, the most valuable feature of this book is that it attempts to lay out a national character in all of its parts.  It is sort of an anatomy of a nation from an outsider's point of view.  We currently live in a highly individualistic culture that may rankle at the idea of a national character, but I contend that they exist in every nation.  There are traits that distinguish one nation from another and we all have facets of our character formed by environment.  Becoming aware of this is valuable because one can seek to augment or overcome traits depending on what one desires.  More to the point, the study of the traits of other nations provides one with an opportunity to seek to foster some virtues in themselves that they like in others and, most importantly, reminds us that we are all of one race.  Seeking to understand other cultures and cultivating friendships therein bring us closer to world peace.  It is what it means to be a global citizen.

A word from our sponsor

Why the End of the World Matters

"Gee, that sign by the closed down carpet store looks serious!" 

"Religious fundamentalism is dangerous because it cannot accept ambiguity and diversity and is therefore inherently intolerant. Such intolerance, in the name of virtue, is ruthless and uses political power to destroy what it cannot convert. It is dangerous, especially in America, because it is anti-democratic and is suspicious of ‘the other,’ in whatever form that ‘other’ might appear. To maintain itself, fundamentalism must always define ‘the other’ as deviant."

-Peter Gomes, Harvard minister

The photo above is of a billboard about five blocks from my house.  I walked Schubert down there this blustery afternoon to snap a photograph of the ruddy thing.  I pass an identical one on my way to work every day.  Laurie passes a third in town on her way to work, similar, but, if memory serves, with some background art of an ominous dawn or dusk depending on how you look at it.  Laurie researched the website.  It is the product of a preacher named Harold Camping and, for those who have heard of him, that is probably sufficient information as to how serious one ought to take such a thing (if billboards next to carpet stores weren't enough of a clue for you.)  For the rest, the message of the sign is to report to the world the conclusion inferred from scripture by Mr. Camping that the world will end on May 21st and God will come and judge everyone.  By the way, the "WeCanKnow" is in reference to the remarkable hermenutical contortions for a man his age that Harold Camping applies to Jesus' teaching that no man knows when the end time will come.

I almost proceeded with this entry at this juncture without making clear that I don't buy a lick of this because it has never occurred to me for a split second to entertain the notion.  There is a book I flipped through a couple of years ago that contains a list of years from the late first century through somewhere in Star Trek time listing the people who predicted that the world would end on that certain date.  It is a very large book and the activity of skimming it, in my experience, quickly goes from humorous to depressing to pathetic.  It was especially notable to me that even many of the church fathers I had a modicum of respect for failed to resist the temptation.

Of course this is in keeping with the teaching in the Epistle of James where it is written that "Good, true, and virtuous religion is trying to figure out the date of the End Times in spite of Christ's admonition that no one can know that and, especially, using that deduction to scare the pants off of people."

There's a reason you don't remember that verse. Here's what James actually wrote, "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world."

Oh, maybe they're working from that story in the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus tells the rich young man that if he wants to be perfect he should sell everything he owns and use it to erect large, costly signs to scare people.

So, why would they do this?  The cynic in me would imagine that potentially someone has crunched the numbers and found that the amount of easy marks who would sell up and donate liberally to that ministry outweighs the amount who will NEVER give a red cent to the charlatan again after 5/21.  Or maybe it's a last hurrah for a preacher well into the closing moments of his own life's third act filling his storehouses for his own end of days.  Perhaps it is a ploy to get more people into the church (or at least sending money to Camping's ministry.  I am given to understand that one of his quirks is that the "church age" is over, so rather than going to church, people ought to sit at home and watch him on their television sets at 2 in the morning and send him money.  Instead of going to church) although personally, putting myself in the bizarro world where I would be duped by something like this, if I became a Christian over this, 5/21/11 would be the last day I would be a Christian.  There is also the off chance that the people responsible for the billboard genuinely believe it, which almost seems the saddest possibility to me.  That you search earnestly in weird ways, counting words or numbers or some strange pattern like an acidhead, and feel the information is so important that you have to get it out there, but the best you can do is have an old man in a chair talk about it with VHS quality film and purchase billboards next to a closed down carpet warehouse.

Of course, the world will end someday.  Astrophysicists assure us that we are statistically long overdue for a massive asteroid to slam into the Earth, destroying all life as we know it, and that it is unlikely, given the vastness of space and in spite of our advanced technology, that we will have much warning if any.  Modern astromoners also posit that the universal death is likely to follow the prophetic word of Eliot as everything continues to slowly expand away from everything else until the vastness of space is little more than a cold, dark void.

What do I think is going to happen?  I don't know, although my experience in life so far has shown me that tribulations rarely, if ever, come in the forms that I was worried about.  They come in ways I have never anticipated, probably because the things I'd prepared for are things I'm prepared for.  And it is important to me to state that I don't know.  Neither does anyone else regardless of what they tell you.  I hasten to add that this is not the point.  I feel it is important to one's behavior and faith what they believe specifically.  I feel it is equally if not more important for everyone to know, to hold in their heart and strap to their foreheads, "I don't know."

One's view of the end of the world does matter, especially in religious circles.  For example, there exists a large contingent in American Christianity who take the view that we are currently in the End Times and that the current function of the church is to usher in the kingdom of God.  This means legislating morality and supporting the nation of Israel no matter what.  Their end times view dictates that behavior.  As for me, I remain vehemently eschatologically agnostic although I think John's Revelation as well as the end of the book of Daniel are cyclical and didactic.  I suppose that they very well may be more about types of things that happen throughout history or, perhaps, in the life of the individual more than pointing to specific events certainly written in a highly stylized, highly poetic manner.  I also think that they contain lessons for believers at any time in history.  But, most importantly, what does this mean to me, Paul Mathers, today, practically?  Also, why am I writing about this?

Well, I have another stop on our contemporary Christianity tour before I get to my answer to that question.  There is a highly popular pastor in Michigan named Rob Bell who writes books that I don't read.  I mean no offense by that.  They may be fine books for all I know, but, as regular readers of this blog are probably well aware, I find the tick of the existential alarm clock requires I turn my attention to the classics first.  Pastor Bell has a book set for publication very soon called Love Wins.

Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived

In keeping with the fine tuned attention to neoteric publishing style, Pastor Bell released a "book trailer" on YouTube which was met with the great contumely chorus by some of the theological elites in America.  But before I get into that, here is the video in question:



The theological elite community mentioned above seems to have inferred from Pastor Bell's video that he has become what is called a Universalist which, through the filter of the limited context they are choosing to apply here, means one who believes that everyone gets into Heaven when they die.  One of the most disingenuous was Pastor John Piper who simply tweeted "Farewell, Rob Bell" in response to the video in spite of the fact that Piper and Bell were never exactly rubbing elbows.  It is also worth mentioning that none of these critics have actually read the book as it is not yet available.  I did not get that from this video.  I have watched it several times and at no time does Pastor Bell state that he holds that position.  As far as I can tell, Pastor Bell is asking a lot of questions in the video, questions which I have been asking over the past eight months.

I come not to praise Rob Bell or to bury him.  I bring all of this up to draw a parallel.  At the risk of being overly harsh, there is a certain intellectual cap in religious circles above which it seems unlikely that the Harold Camping form of religious bastardization will not capture the mind or heart.  However, an intellectual debate over a point in theology which offers the reward of being smarter, more scripturally accurate and, therefore, in one's own estimation of better quality than another person is a form of the same bastardization that has the potential to appeal to those whose minds are a bit higher than wondering if one ought to stockpile food or which current world leader is the Antichrist.  I am not making an argument against seeking to be doctrinally accurate.

I knew, as soon as Laurie told me about it over the phone last night on my lunch break, that there will be people in the Harold Camping camp who will point to the horrible tragedy in Japan and say "See!  End times!"  It strikes me as crass a reaction as those who came up with conspiracies over the terrible events of 9/11/01 in order to puff themselves up with secret knowledge, even as others are suffering.  Eight months ago, my best friend died.  There was no comfort for me in my religion.  In that time I remembered every gloating statement made by a theologian over God's wrath and judgment.  Again, this is appropriating what is arguably (if you really believe it to be true) the highest tragedy in existence and using it as an ego boost.  Hearing the pietistic peanut gallery harp on Pastor Bell sent my mind instantly back to asking those very same questions in my own mind for almost a year now.

You do not take horrible tragedies that happen to people who are suffering terribly and make it about you.  Faced with horrible tragedies, compassion is the correct response.  Self-righteousness is the response of the craven.  Another thing that is explicitly expressed in scripture is that if one does not love one's neighbor, one does not love God.  Everyone is your neighbor.

The two mindsets I've mentioned in this post I mentioned in conjunction judiciously because both of them take their religious path and make it about a tangential issue which has nothing to do with what the path is actually about.  The Camping perversion is a little more overt, but the key problem over the Rob Bell kerfuffle is that the argument is over some passages of scripture which are purposely obscure (if you think you have a clear, mapped out vision of exactly what the afterlife is supposed to look like in our faith, you're thinking of Dante, not anything from scripture) applied to a book which people have not yet read to the exclusion of people who are genuinely struggling with these issues.  I think about the End Times and those passages of scripture and what they have to teach me.  The conclusion I come to is that, like all of scripture, they point to Christ.  In this case, to His return, His love for His people, and our communion with Him.  That is the point and, in light of that, those who instantly assume that the message "Love Wins" is heretical are not part of a religion I want to have anything to do with.

Religion is not about stockpiling food to the exclusion of the poor.  It is not about scaring people with End Times or Hell.  It is not about being the Rightest King of Right Mountain.  It is about living a virtuous life, helping those around you, loving one another.  It is about seeking to draw closer to God and know Him better.  I know that there are those who will probably wish to say "Having correct scriptural theology is seeking to know God better."  To which I say, in the depths of despair, alienation, and questioning, I have recalled the harsh words of every braggart theologian and they are the last place I would turn for any kind of comfort.  You turn to those who show love, compassion, and kindness in times of difficulty, which is most of existence.  That is why the bulk of the New Testament is geared toward encouraging that sort of behavior.

Everyone is going through very difficult times.  We need to be quick to reconcile, to love and show compassion.  Life is far too short for petty squabbles.  Everyone is suffering and everyone is dying.  The rare occasions where religion does not serve as an opiate, when it functions properly, is when it serves to comfort and unite people, all people, regardless of what they think, say, or do.  Those are the moments when God is present.

Judgment is for the Defense.  Court is adjourned.

Now here's a video of an asteroid slamming into Earth.

Me reading The Soul of The Wine by Charles Baudelaire

   

Birthday Wish List 2011

It's March, which means that I am about a month and a half away from being one year younger than Mozart was when he died.  I thought I might do a brief post of my birthday wish list if there are people who might care to get me a birthday present this year.

Of course, the major present I'm anticipating is the drawing or painting Laurie is working on of me as Bacchus to hang in my office.  Right, honey?

My current major project is learning Latin and so I think the only two books I would like to request are tailored toward that end.  The first is the Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible which I think would provide me with an excellent, life-long means by which to be continually immersed in the language.  It is also the key translation used in the west for almost a millennium of church history.  For those unfamiliar with the history of the Vulgate, it was a 4th century translation largely by St. Jerome for the purpose of a "common use" translation of the Bible (hence "Vulgate."  Means "common use."  Doesn't mean it's full of swears) in the age when Latin was largely the linguistic coin of the realm.  It was canonized at the Council of Trent.  It continued to be the common translation as the language itself died and access to scripture remained sequestered to the literate class (which is to say the clergy) through the Middle Ages until Luther translated the Bible into common German (arguably, in some circles, continuing until Vatican II in the 1960s.)

For my purposes, as I said to Laurie the other day, "In my project of learning Latin, I feel like securing for myself a copy of the Vulgate would be the key for keeping my Latin for the rest of my life."  And as fun as I'm sure it will be to read Caesar, Virgil, Pliny, and Catullus, the Vulgate is something I could actually see myself delving into daily and something I'm actually excited about.

The other Latin text is a bit cuter (and cheaper.)  Someone decided that the world needed a Latin translation of Winnie The Pooh.

That's all I have.  It's a short list with one expensive book in it.

Good Morning

Look what I woke up to this morning!  A package!

Sacré bleu!  It's the books I'd ordered!

Très bien. I'm off to my armchair.

Let's All Write a Ballad!

Yes, I am still working through The Handbook of Poetic Forms in spite of the half-year's worth of simmering on the back burner.

Our next tasting of vinum daemonum is the variety known as The Ballad.  This is an ancient form.  Let's spend a moment unpacking the history of the form before we glide into composition.

Early ballads were folk songs, likely originating in the borderlands of Scotland and England.  Their subject matter would often include the supernatural or mythological, love, and heightened emotions (which is code speak for "probably someone dies.")  Here is an example from the folk/celtic/goth fusion band Faith and the Muse with an interpretation of the traditional ballad The Unquiet Grave:



Of course, there are examples in the evolution of the form of the ballad being employed for more exclusively social justice messages as American folk music enthusiasts are probably well aware.  There are variations on the form in the Western Canon, notably Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol (both of which I highly recommend) falling more in line with the "heightened emotion" subject matter.  Needless to say, the ballad in the literary form is not necessarily set to music, although it can be and certainly, as with all poetry, must needs be composed on the tongue.

I should also mention the hodiernal prevailing understanding of the ballad in popular music as a love ballad which may conjure up images of a stadium full of waving lighters or, more likely, the sort of song at a concert during which bathroom lines increase in density.  Often in popular music the understanding of the subject matter is simply distilled to love songs, however I would point out the Ballad of John and Yoko by The Beatles as a notable and well known exception.  I would also remind Nick Cave fans of his album of traditional Murder Ballads (and anyone who has never heard it, I would highly encourage to seek out that astonishing album with all speed.)

The traditional form is four line stanzas.  Lines 1 and 3 have four beats; lines 2 and 4 have three beats and rhyme.  Here is my modest contribution to the artform:

The Ballad of Frogs and Fate
By Paul Mathers

The Moirae, tired of their task
a-spinning yarns of fate,
and for a moment of respite
needed a surrogate.

By need they called the closest beast
to occupy the thing.
They gave some local frogs the job
to spin and cut the string.

The Moirae gone, the frogs spun out
two lovers at a lake
and planted in his jealous mind
a cuckolding mistake.

When he espied the kerchief that she
used to wipe her tears,
He thought it a gift from a beau,
confirming all his fears.

His rage deaf to her protesting
he pushed her in and down.
His hand firm on her pretty head
His true love he did drown.

Despairing of his loss of love,
a rock tied to his shin,
he bid the wicked world adieu,
and threw his body in.

The Moirae back, the frogs relieved,
as reward for their aid,
the Fates offered to send the frogs
where ever they would say.

The frogs went to the lake where the
two lovers bodies lie,
to wait for the two corpses to
attract a swarm of flies.

Paul Mathers reads Paul Mathers

After a Fashion

Laurie and I recently had a small, uncommon sum arrive which had the lion's share immediately thrown at our ravenous debt.  I appropriated an even smaller amount in which to purchase a few books that I've had my eye on for a while.

The first small set was Wheelock's Latin and accompanying textbooks.  I have made the declaration in the past few days that I am, at long last, going to go through with learning Latin, upping my commitment level by announcing it here as well.  My reasons are many: 1) My friend Christopher suggested it a few months ago and it has appealed to the part of me that 2) considers myself a Classicist, although I don't know Greek or Latin, which makes my Inner Critic murmur "ersatz Classicist" every time I apply that label to myself.  Laurie and I have talked about learning Greek together for about a year now but her current commitments prohibit it at present, which is fine because 3) I am given to understand that Latin is a lot easier than Greek.  4) I have a storehouse of Protestant guilt within me, ready to tap should Method Acting needs arise, over the years worth of atrophy my brain has suffered over the smattering of French and German that I so enthusiastically dived into in my early 20s. 5) Yet another in a seemingly endless line of "I heard a story on NPR" life choices.  The story in question here reported evidence that learning multiple languages could potentially stave off Alzheimer's/dementia, a disease which is one of my key phobias.  And, of course, 6) somewhere in my adult life I developed the strange kink of liking to take on huge, complex, multi-year projects.  Many at once and the headier the better!

The other set of books I ordered deal with the subject of the photo above.  The photo is of fashion icon Isabella Blow.  Some people don't know this about me, because I don't talk about it at nearly the length and detail that I talk of literature and art, but I am absolutely fascinated by the beau monde.  At the risk of putting too fine a point on it, I am of the view that beauty, style, and creativity contain visible echoes of the very fingerprint of God.  I am quite serious.  Sometimes people are taken by surprise that, as Laurie puts it, "he could probably tell you what Karl Lagerfeld had for breakfast this morning."  A slight exaggeration which illustrates my point.

(Half of a grapefruit and a demitasse of Arabic coffee, for the record.  Whenever he internally grumbles over his Spartan breakfast, he thinks of his closets filled with Hedi Slimane designed clothes and perseveres.  You must admire that kind of dedication.)

I should probably take a moment to establish what precisely interests me.  What interests me is, of course, enveloping the human form in art, self expression and bold individual style, as well as the psychological effects of "uniform" if you will.  The latter refers to the effect of one's clothes on a person's attitude and, indeed, their very life.  Which outfit will make me feel most bold: t-shirt and sweats OR pressed suit, Windsor knot tie, shined shoes.  I recall a Wodehouse story where Jeeves, with possible a wink of the satirical, urges a young man to go to a costume ball dressed as Mephistopheles in order to embolden himself to propose to a specific young lady.  Clothes do make the man.

It is entirely possible that I am uncommon in this regard, but I can tell an autobiography of my mind through the progression of my clothing style.  In high school, I had a most likely skewed estimation of what I imagined was Urban Haute Bourgeoisie in a time when I lusted toward that world (and missed the target terribly.  Looking back on photos of me in High School I now think, "bartender at a high end, touristy New Orleans bar or European hairdresser trying too hard to project the image of affluence or student at an elite art school who currently takes himself so seriously that he's destined to become something only tangentially related to the creative.  Like a party planner or something"), followed by punk, goth, hippie, an interlude of sort of Urban Haute Bohemian intending to project a general eccentric artist vibe, followed by what I now aim toward, sort of an intellectual, moderately well dressed proletariat aura more in keeping with "my place."  Usually with the accessory of a hat that, out of context of the rest of my outfit might suggest "golfer", but within the context of the rest of my outfit, if I achieve what I am aiming for, prevents people from being too surprised when I walk around whistling the Internationale.

Which brings me to the very strange side note of uniform.  Uniforms offer the advantage of being uniform (having worked with the severely mentally ill, I can report that a uniform is a very helpful tool.  Also that I find it remarkable how long a brain will still recognize uniformity and its significance) as well as the advantage of not involving one's personal wardrobe in the duties one is called upon to perform in the course of their work.  Of course, there is the disadvantage at times of encountering someone who is convinced that their position in life is elevated above the one in a uniform, however, I have found in those instances that as soon as the initial frustration wears off, one realizes that such behavior is the very model of déclassé and more a commentary on the sort of person the offending party have the misfortune of having chosen to be.

Isabella Blow was much like what I want to be, a beautiful person whose career mainly comprised pointing out beautiful things.  I do not feel the need to go into great detail about her at present as I undoubtedly have forthcoming book reviews on the subject.  But I thought I would highlight a few points about her by way of either introduction (for those unfamiliar) or of pulling this post together (for all of us) culled from the key bits of information that most people who know of her know about her.  I am included in this group, having only a "fly-over" knowledge of her career, just enough of a taste to know that I coveted these books.

If you haven't an accessible visual memory of what I am talking about, I would highly recommend you immediately browse Google Image Search, or possibly a few moments worth of YouTube diversion, on Isabella Blow (her real name, by the way.  She was married to Detmar Blow who, architecture buffs will correctly guess, is a descendent of the architect Detmar Blow), Philip Treacy (sort of the last man standing in this story, if you'll pardon the spoiler), and especially the incomparable genius of modern couture, the tragically beautiful discovery of our tragically beautiful heroine, Alexander McQueen.  Their mixture of the Apollonian and Dionysian sensibility are very much to my taste and, I think, a necessary balance for great art.

If I may indulge my maudlin side ("sure, Paul, why stop now") and employ the metaphor of a rose, the very millinery she was remembered for wearing served as both an expression of beauty and, in her own words, a deterrent from the ubiquitous Continental kiss in the circles she inhabited.  To draw in with the beautiful even while repelling spatially.  Sadly, that also calls to mind her well-known, aggressive and eventually successful suicidal tendencies, terminating in her drinking weed killer.  Reportedly among her last words were "I'm worried I didn't take enough."

Much like Richard Cory (Truman Capote also springs to mind as he was the darling of the "beautiful people" of his day and yet poisoned himself to death over a much longer period of time), one is left to wonder how someone who seemingly had so much, was at the height of her career, an aristocrat, beloved by many, paid for creativity, could get that low.  I imagine what she had was nothing compared to what may have been missing.  Or rather, circumstance is not what really matters in this life and will not save you in the end.  What one does with circumstance, I would imagine, is more the point.  But I don't presume to have a definitive answer to this right now.  I would hazard a guess that it is one of the answers I'm looking for in this reading side-project.

Be Drunk by Charles Baudelaire

Winter Light

 

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in.” -Robert Frost

There is a term in some religious circles being tossed about which I have heard referred to as either dechurched or the equally neologistic unchurched.  I am given to understand that they mean "one who retains a form of the religion in question, but has untethered themselves from any orthodoxy, denomination, or, to put it simply, church."  Some will "church-hop."  Some will attend very small home gatherings.  Some will go out into the woods of a Lord's day morning with their Bible in hand or a mind toward prayer.  Let me make two things abundantly clear right here at the beginning: 1) I am not here to disparage anyone's chosen spiritual walk and 2) I am not, myself, "unchurched" (leaving that dangling at the end of the paragraph anticipating an inevitable "however.")

However, I have great apprehension over involving myself in any group of fellow believers at this point in my biography.  Since just shy of a year ago now, Laurie and I endured a series of trying episodes wrapped in the Gordian world of spiritually abusive, right-wing fundamentalism.  In the face of such predicaments, I came to reassess my faith.

In that time I read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, who, as most of you are probably well aware, is an outspoken atheist and this book a sort of atheistic apologetic.  I read that book at that time because I really did want to scuttle my faith.  I wanted to have nothing to do with Christians because of the abuses I'd suffered at their hands.  I bring this up because my interaction with the text was sort of holographic of the entire issue I've been wrestling with.  Dawkins, in my reading of him, had two major key points to the book and a conclusion.  It went something like this: 1) Religion is a highly destructive force in human civilization, likely having caused more harm throughout history than good.  Religious people are capable of horrible things and often exhibit the behavior of the ostrich when faced with the option of viewing reality or the depths of the sandbox.  viz., 2) The evidence that Darwinian evolution is an accurate representation of the history of biology is overwhelming.  Therefore Dawkins' conclusion is: There is no God.  I spotted the hole in the logic immediately.  What if all of that is true, but there still is a God and a Gospel.  The two do not necessarily lead to that conclusion.  It is entirely possible that religious people are horrible and destructive, that Darwinian evolution is accurate, and that there is also a God.  Dawkins failed to write me a permission slip to write off my religion and I am left to reconcile my beliefs with the difficult experiences.  And that is where I still find myself.

I'm writing about this aspect of my experience in this manner to armor both myself and the general public from the specific personal abuses we've observed and suffered (also, hoping against hope that I am not calling down those same evil, bastard Christian forces down on my head again by mentioning them again, eschewing accepted wisdom in these matters and throwing everything I learned from H.P. Lovecraft to the wind), but I would stress that almost every one of said abuses were some manifestation of Dawkins' two key points.  Church came to be, for me, like a job where the boss micromanages and yells at you all the time.  The society around you dictates that you have to keep going and you know that, when you do, you are going to get abused.  And so you exist in this world as a sort of Purgatory.

Why is it thus?  Because the church is full of humans.

Left to my own devices, I would go back to attending Quaker meetings.  My experience there is an earnest group of people set on living out the fruit of the spirit through social justice and attempting to do good in this world.  I swallowed the lie for years from the mouths of men that there are vast doctrinal problems in modern, unprogrammed Quakerism.  Now I see that loving mercy, justice, goodness, peace, and equality and living consistently with those values is far better doctrine than hashing out at which point in pre-history God ordained the Elect or some such pedantic nonsense.

Also, with any homogeneous group, there is the issue of diversity.   In this case, I am not only speaking of diversity in types, but also diversity in ideas, the ability to question, explore, learn, grow with and from others.  In my particular area of space-time, it is the norm in the mainstream or fundamentalist branch of my religion for the common parishioner to assume their fellow congregant subscribes to a conservative political worldview.  This has never been the case for me.  I am not just a liberal, but I would probably be more accurately called a Leftist.  Possibly an extreme one who is only being slightly hyperbolic in stating that Trotsky may have been a bit too conservative for my taste.  I think that a mind toward shared resources, the abolition of property to a large extent (certainly the abolition of avarice), and the common goal of building a great society is not only consistent with Christian scripture, but consistent with any person seeking to be virtuous.  Being in a large group of people of differing opinion is not in and of itself a bad thing.  If it is in an anthropological or free exchange of ideas situation, it can be a wonderfully rewarding and broadening experience to converse with and peek through an alternate reality tunnel.  This has not been my experience.  When you presume upon the homogeneity of your group and denigrate any different point of view or type, anyone who is of that type and has not expressed it yet will most likely keep their mouth shut and feel terribly unwelcome.  That is largely the story of me and Christianity.  It is not just politics.  I also don't hate, dislike, or think there is anything wrong with homosexuals.  I am fairly convinced that the evidence does, in fact, point to the veracity of the Theory of Evolution and the antiquity of the universe.  I think that there is a great deal that all religions could learn from one another if they allowed for an open dialogue with hearts of loving-kindness and respect.  Also, I find myself most likely becoming an Annihilationist (one who believes that God is not a torturer and that life without Christ being death literally.  As in, the unbeliever simply dies instead of eternal torment in the afterlife.  I am not willing to argue this point and have absolutely no interest in theological debates, so please extend the basic respect of not commenting with pistols blazing over anything I am saying here.  It bothers me enough that I even have to have that fear in speaking honestly about my spiritual walk.)  To secular eyes, these may not seem like extraordinary statements, but I know that in most of the churches I've attended there are at the very least a contingent, if not the consensus, that people who think that way should not be allowed in the door.  In fact, I once had a church leader tell me, years ago when I was more sartorially immature, that I wasn't welcome in his church simply because I was wearing a Jerry Garcia t-shirt.  He wasn't even the pastor.  This may have something to do with the irrelevance of the church in modern Western civilization.  The loud and the bully within will not even permit a fellow believer if they do not lock step.

But, returning to those original two points, I found myself holding all of these bags, but still incapable of disregarding the truth of the Gospel.   So, this is where I find myself after all that we've gone through in the past year.  I find myself still a believer in the path I set out on over a decade ago, but now I find myself decidedly on that path as Paul Mathers the individual.  My hope is to find a congregation in which the love of Christ is a reality made manifest in the lives and actions of the congregation.  I also hope for a pegasus that will fly me to a magical castle made of gumdrops.  But I believe that one ought to strive to do what is right, be a person of virtue, and live a good life in spite of the odds being stacked against one.  It puts me in mind of that bit of verse by Vachel Lindsay:
I am unjust, but I can strive for justice.
My life’s unkind, but I can vote for kindness.
I, the unloving, say life should be lovely.
I, that am blind, cry out against my blindness.

And later:
Come, let us vote against our human nature.

The Pre-Emerson Show

Hi.  Remember me?  First, a little housekeeping on the cusp of the early spring recently portended by a New England rodent.  At long last I will admit publicly that circumstance and my heavily neurotic inability to cope with same has left me in a pronounced case of the mean reds over the past year.  I had recently noticed on my medical insurance package that I can be reimbursed up to a certain amount for psychotherapy!  Which appealed to me greatly until I realized that the certain amount would only cover about six weeks of talking.

Long time readers may have noticed the evolution of this blog into pure literary criticism with occasional interior decorating updates.  This is largely, not to pick at scabs, due to a group of fundamentalist religious fanatics whose principle applied doctrinal quirk is vicious behavior, who Laurie and I ran afoul of about a year ago.  Subsequently, I deemed it prudent to grow stingy with personal details in my online life.  Also, my current work hours make writing, socializing, and anything aside from animal survival, difficult.

Recently, I've noticed the virtual and vacant leather couch potential of my blog.  I have also been turning over in my head for some month the words of a friend of mine who suggested I write whatever I feel like in spite of anticipated peril.  Add to that my recent ear-bending toward the Transcendentalists and the Quakers and you've got a characteristically circumlocutory way of warning you that sometime in the very near future it is my intention to write a bit about religion on this blog.  Specifically, sorting through the rubble of my own.

So, I'll be brutally honest and admit that in most of these books in the Harvard Classics series there is a point where I'm sold.  Before that point, in my head I'm usually struggling with maintaining interest, I read very slowly because I'm not yet hooked and am still frittering away my reading hours reading Beartato comics until I hit the hook.  After I find that point, however, I am hooked and begin devouring the book (not literally.)  With Ralph Waldo Emerson, this came with this quote, which was what I was meaning to post in the first place.

"Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those which are sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil. Friends enough you shall find who will hold up to your emulation Wesleys and Oberlins, Saints and Prophets. Thank God for these good men, but say, `I also am a man.' Imitation cannot go above its model. The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it, because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator, something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's. 

"Yourself a newborn bard of the Holy Ghost, — cast behind you all conformity, and acquaint men at first hand with Deity. Look to it first and only, that fashion, custom, authority, pleasure, and money, are nothing to you, — are not bandages over your eyes, that you cannot see, — but live with the privilege of the immeasurable mind. Not too anxious to visit periodically all families and each family in your parish connection, — when you meet one of these men or women, be to them a divine man; be to them thought and virtue; let their timid aspirations find in you a friend; let their trampled instincts be genially tempted out in your atmosphere; let their doubts know that you have doubted, and their wonder feel that you have wondered. By trusting your own heart, you shall gain more confidence in other men. For all our penny-wisdom, for all our soul-destroying slavery to habit, it is not to be doubted, that all men have sublime thoughts; that all men value the few real hours of life; they love to be heard; they love to be caught up into the vision of principles. We mark with light in the memory the few interviews we have had, in the dreary years of routine and of sin, with souls that made our souls wiser; that spoke what we thought; that told us what we knew; that gave us leave to be what we inly were. Discharge to men the priestly office, and, present or absent, you shall be followed with their love as by an angel." 

More soon.

John Milton after paradise

There are two shorter pieces by John Milton which round out the set of his poems in English.  They are Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes.  The former is the spiritual and intellectual successor to Paradise Lost, so essential that separating them into two pieces almost does them a disservice.  Revisiting my earlier, slightly embarrassing comparison of John Milton to Allen Ginsberg, one does not read Howl without reading Footnote to Howl.  Neither ought one fail to read this conclusion to Paradise Lost.  The latter work is a stage play in verse comprising the last day of Samson's life.  I shall start with that piece because I, and I daresay Milton would most likely agree, feel that the last word should go to Paradise Regained.

Samson Agonistes, while a compelling piece of theater (one that I would probably produce if I ever had a windfall large enough to fund my pipe-dream of The Chico Classical Theater Company.  You might even get away with an Evening with Milton: Act I: Comus, Intermission, Act II: Samson Agonistes.  They're only about 40 pages each), struck me as a fairly transparent metaphor for Milton himself in winter.  As I mentioned before, Milton was a vocal and prominent Puritan with leather patches on the arms of his coats from all the elbow rubbing he did with Oliver Cromwell's political elite.  Milton shrewdly went into a little more than retirement and a little less than hiding in the country after the restoration of the monarchy.  Milton was blind.  Milton famously had difficult relationships with women, possibly exacerbated by what modern eyes would find a "low view" of females.  Also, he was reported by his peers, even his sympathetic ones, to have been a difficult man.  His first wife left him after one month of marriage, returned, gave him two daughters, and died.  His daughters had a difficult time being around him.  His second wife died almost 20 years before he did.  Add to this the view of chastity that Milton once held in his early life (as seen in Comus) and his later, apparent view of male superiority (as seen in Paradise Lost) and it's not difficult to connect the dots to the scenes between Samson and Dalila (sic).

As blind Milton dictated these later works, it's difficult for me to refrain from imagining him laying on a leather couch while a bearded analyst writes it down on a notepad.  Samson talks about the curse of blindness, Samson is in a state of humiliation in the country of heathens, Samson's woman has betrayed him, Samson is impotent, infirm, and powerless.  Of course, then, there is the finale of going out in a blaze of glory, a hero's death, mixed with the elevated tragic figure (which Milton, in the introduction, made sure to point out is elevated, classical, and heroic.)  All of which would sound like hubris on Milton's part were it not for the delightful fact that the verse is masterful and absolutely sublime.  In other words, a lot of people can go around saying they are the greatest poet in the English language, but only one person isn't going to look like a fool when they say it.

Initially, I had assumed that Paradise Regained would deal mainly with either Christ's crucifixion and resurrection or the Second Coming.  Instead, the poem deals with Christ's temptation by Satan in the wilderness.  It is a microcosmic signpost pointing to the holographic defeat of Satan in the Son of God.  Indeed, one could make a credible argument that Satan is the main character in the Paradise series.  It certainly ends up being a story of his defeat and, I think, this later work should lay to rest any scholarly speculation of Milton's sympathetic view of Satan.  Sadly, that is not the case.

I think the piece also establishes the answer to a question we may have had at the end of Paradise Lost: Who is the protagonist in this piece?  Regained establishes Christ as the cosmic protagonist.

Milton employs his strong ability to flesh out stories from scripture.  The more cynical in their traditionally minded view of theological rhetoric might accuse him of eisegesis.  I, for one, was a little surprised at the near omission of the parts of the story where Christ counters Satan with scripture quotations (if memory serves, only employed once in the poem whereas thrice employed in the Gospel account.)  This did not bother me so much, however, because the point of Christ's supremacy and Satan's defeat is in no way compromised and, more importantly, it is an intensely beautiful piece of poetry.

It has been a long walk with Milton.  I've profited a great deal from it.  In the end, I think, for the time being, and like so many great authors who I admire, I think that Milton is, indeed, one of the, if not the, greatest poets in the English language.  I am also glad I will never have to go on vacation with the man himself. 

Quick note

Just a quick note to tell you that I've started yet another blog.  This one is entirely for photographs that I take.  Just as the poetry professor or art teacher inevitably dabbles themselves, among my enthusiasms is photography.  I don't have any lofty aspirations in the form, but it's something I enjoy and thought it might be fun to have a place to house my own photos.

So go check it out, follow it if you'd like, and enjoy!

http://thefirsttenthousand.blogspot.com/

Paradise Lost by John Milton

Rarely, but occasionally, I set before myself something so huge and grand that I shudder at the prospect of having to employ words due something so great, especially to attempt to cram it into the length of one blog post.  I will state outright here at the beginning that this will not be a satisfactory post on the piece that I've just read.  In retrospect, I could have broken Milton's Paradise Lost into sections and talked about it that way, but afterthought is a cruel tyrant to those of us locked into the illusion of linear time.  Instead, I thought I would do a brief fly-over of the text, highlighting a few points of interest in hopes that it may serve as a catalyst to other readers, but mainly focusing on what the work meant to me.  I shall tell you up front that it is a work, like so many so far in this series, that has changed my life for the better.

John Milton was a Puritan in the days of Cromwell, but also lived into the Restoration (in a bit of entirely understandable fear if I understand correctly.  One of his famous and arguably injudicious political tracts was a defense of regicide after the beheading of Charles I.  This provided him with a bit of apprehension when the monarchy was restored.)  I wrote a bit about young Milton in the post about his early works.  Paradise Lost is Milton at the full height of his power and maturity.  It is, in fact, the work that transcends his legacy from a great 17th century scribbler to one of the, if not the highest watermarks in the history of the English language.  And, yes, coming out the other end, I can attest that this is, without a doubt in my mind or heart, entirely the case.  It is, quite simply, one of the finest pieces of literature ever written.

Paradise Lost is an epic poem retelling, well, a lot of things, but primarily focusing on The Fall from the book of Genesis.  It also spans some pre-history and, in some jarring later passages, peeks in on the times to come (I had a chilling, unexpected meta-fiction moment of seeing myself in the book) and beyond.  A few points of interest are that Milton dictated the poem, being entirely blind at the time of composition (a fact which his detractors used against him.  "Look at how God has judged Milton by striking him blind!"  Which Milton, I am told, turned on its head with the interpretation that he went blind from seeing too much truth for a pair of fallen eyes to handle.  Well played, Milton!)  Also a major point of interest, this was the first non-theatrical poem in the English language which did not rhyme.

One of the major take-aways I have from Paradise Lost is on the subject of faith and, specifically, my struggle with same.  There was a scene in particular, the scene where Eve approaches Adam with the fruit, where I was suddenly struck by an aspect of the story I had never considered before.  When Eve presents Adam with the fruit, he sees that she has not died from eating the fruit and, in fact, may have some great, new knowledge from having eaten.  He misinterprets the information before his eyes, discarding the faith he once had.  I very much thought of the disciple Thomas and Christ's words at the end of John's Gospel, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

And certainly also Abraham and Isaac came to mind, as well as Noah.  All of which I think Milton would appreciate, if not anticipated.  I have to say that one of the more troubling aspects of belief for me is what can sometimes appear as being called upon to 1) never question the belief and 2) don't believe your very eyes.  I have never, and I daresay probably will never, be satisfied with those two versions of faith.  I think that seeking knowledge is always good and that we ought to seek answers to questions.  I also think that we should refine our beliefs to constantly get closer to truth.  In some variations of the Judeo-Christian faith that I've encountered in my experiences, this is a subject of great discomfort.  Occasionally, I find that it is rejected without question.

But I think it's a misunderstanding of faith to believe it calls for eternal hiding of one's head in the sand.  I think that true faith cannot be shaken by further knowledge of the truth because it does not conflict with truth in any way.  A phrase I find myself repeating often is "Solomon sought wisdom and pleased the Lord."  Which is an idea I think I lifted from Thomas Browne, which I think may question whether or not Milton would have agreed with me in this.  Although I would hasten to add that his presumed acceptance is immaterial to what I'm about to put forth.

Milton, I think, provides an unexpected way of seeing which illuminates my point.  Adam beholds Eve while presumably, not to be coarse, the fruit is still making a progress through her guts.  As I said, she is not dead, she's talking about some snake that said it ate the fruit and now had a human level of consciousness, and she too seems to have some new knowledge about her.  All of which is true, but the conjecture which follows is false.  Adam chooses to run with the inference that the words of God are false when it is entirely possible that both may be true at the same time.  The lesson I draw from this, and don't miss this, for me and for everyone else, the one I want to shout from the rooftops, is that Christians (I daresay all of humankind as well, but I speak to Christians here) would do well to walk around with this phrase in the forefront of their mind and the invisible (or spoken!) preface to any statement of belief that issues from their mouth: I COULD BE WRONG...

Of course, I could be wrong about any of this being Milton's intention to relay such a relativistic and doubtful message.  To that I would say three things.  First, Milton also gives Satan some solid arguments about divine tyranny which he never really answers.  This is not to say that Milton sides with Satan by any means, but Milton does not shy away from a refreshingly honest stream of doubt in the piece.  It is probably needless to say that I side with C.S. Lewis in rejecting outright the suggestion that Milton was at all sympathetic to the character of Satan.  That is a common reading in contemporary literary criticism.  I found this to be a gross misreading of the piece and, frankly, entirely unhelpful in understanding or gleaning anything useful from the work.

Which brings me to my second contention.  People of faith need to accept the existence of doubt in others and within themselves.  I say this as one who previously bought the line that a person of faith must never show a moment of doubt and in this past year when everything came crashing down on my head, it nearly ruined my faith.  Doubt is there.  That's why it's called faith.

And third, taking a completely different tack, even if I am completely at sea with the interpretation of the passage I posited above, I am by no means alone in possibly reforming Milton in my own image.  Upon first reading, I was shocked by what appeared to be Milton's view of women.  He seemingly outright advocates the patriarchal subjugation of women in several passages in ways that horrified my modern eyes.  But the professor in the Yale lectures performed a very creative set of gymnastics in an attempt to rescue Milton from some of the more regrettable beliefs he may have held.  The professor, if I understood him correctly, put forth a theory (unclear if he held it himself or if he was just offering one different interpretation that exists with scholars who adore Milton otherwise) that those passages express Adam and Eve through the eyes of Satan and therefore, in Milton's view, the manufactured inequality in the sexes is infernal in origin.  I wasn't buying it for a moment until he took it a step further.  He suggested that in the Garden it was clear from the text that the two are entirely equal in every way.  There is nothing suggested in the text to give reason for the natural superiority of the male.  Then, suddenly, there is a seemingly arbitrary hierarchy imposed, almost an aristocracy of gender, based upon nothing.  Given such an imbalanced, unnatural, and arbitrary view of the sexes, and given a social order entirely void of reason, a Fall is inevitable.  Therefore, the Fall of humankind stems from an inequality.

Which is a reading of that portion of the text that I really like.  I would love to get behind it and for my own personal purposes I think that I do.  Although one immediately wonders if one could get in the time-travel phone-booth and bring Milton into that classroom what the man himself would think of such a hypothesis.  Still, regardless, I find it is a reading which has merit in its virtue (although possibly not a virtue shared by the author.)  I too include it in a hopeful attempt that this one facet of Milton will not dissuade anyone anywhere from reading him.

I found the end of the piece absolutely sublime.  The Progenitors are being expelled from the Garden.  I jokingly told Laurie that the mean, harsh, Puritan God finally shows up when Adam is given visions of the enormity of the fruits of his actions in the future history spanning before them like a freshly banged-out universe.  At first it almost seems like lemon juice in an open wound, almost a cruel act of torture to show the shadows of all of the evil to come on this wretched planet to our Pandora.  But, there is a through-line, there is a hope to look toward, and there is the tenderest of mercies expressed by that same God, once again illustrating my earlier point of not misusing facts to extrapolate in the false direction.  The through-line is the hope of the savior to come and in that perhaps grandest of all these visions that did appear, Adam, like us, finds his rest.  Like a hologram of all of existence, the terrible experience reveals itself to be a remarkable comfort in growth.  The hope gained, even when going through destruction, is to be found in the core attribute of all things divine: Love.  In this moment, Adam is, indeed, all of humankind.  The piece is called Paradise Lost, but it doesn't end nearly as badly as the title would suggest as next we look forward to our penultimate Miltonic poem Paradise Regained. 

In which I throw out a few more photos for the illusion of maintaining this blog

For want of any real blog-worthy material, I thought I might indulge in one of my photo updates.  The video above was my accidental discovery of the video recorder function on my new camera while attempting to take a still photo.  If I'm not mistaken, it is the first time I've ever uploaded a video onto the internet.  In it, you can see what Ginger and Lil' Chompy are like if you were to look at them on our couch for approximately 1 second. 

Napoleon was kind enough to pose for a piece I'm calling Cat Owner's Nightmare.

 But the real news of the week is our new dining room table.  You may ask, "Didn't you have a dining room table already?" 

Funny thing about that.  As all glassmakers know, one of the interesting properties of glass is that even a very sturdy, well made, and heavy piece of glass tapped just in the right spot with the right force will break or shatter.  Anyone with the most rudimentary eduction in slapstick can probably fill in the rest of the story for yourself.  I would add that I was always on the fence about that glass table anyway.  It was nice, well made, and slick to be sure, but there was something in the design that always struck me as being dated specifically in the 1990s.  This modest mahogany piece is a bit more timeless in my eye and, I daresay, more copacetic to the established flow of our home's decor.


 

der Jahresanfang

This is what a wild party at my house looks like.

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." - Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act II, Scene II

Daybreak on a new year always puts me in a reflective mood (as does illness and, at present, my white blood cells and a rhinovirus are going at it like Aias and Odysseus.  The good news is, at present, smart money seems to be on my white blood cells, but the war has not yet ended.)  I thought it might be wise to seize the blessing of my weekend falling at the advent of 2011 and devote the time to a bit of assessment and, if I might be so quotidian, resolution.

I've noticed a new trend of people having "a word" for the new year as a focal point.  My waggish side wants to respond, "My word for 2011 is: Mozart."  Which is true in a way, but not exactly in the spirit of the experiment if I understand it correctly.  As trite as pat and simplistic goals may seem on the surface, in playing with the concept in my brain, I stumbled upon a surprisingly valuable truth.  While bantering more humorous ideas for "my word" around, The Tiny Psychoanalyst that lives inside my brain spoke up and said, "Your word for the year should be 'peace.'  It's what you lack."

That would be scanned.  I recalled a conversation I recently had with someone who told me that they would like to see me have more confidence and, when they said that, I was instantly aware of exactly to what they were referring.  My compulsion for precision (and, I'll admit, desire to be loved) often leaves my confidence floundering.  The other night I said to Laurie, "You know, 2010 was not a good year, but I feel like I'm a better man for it."  Which is also true, however, I think I find myself at the end of a year of "sledgehammering" where my paradigms have been shattered.  Now it is time to rebuild.

I realize that I lack the peace I used to have.  I think somewhere in the years following what I now can see as my injudicious drift from Quakerism, the Existential Ticking of my Quietus Alarm Clock has drowned out the Still, Small Voice.  The result is a very neurotic, panicked, hypochondriacal, anxiety-ridden man.  I need to find peace.  I need to infuse myself with peace.  In doing so, I think I will be able to exhibit the confidence, joy, and compassion that befits a virtuous life.

So, How does one obtain peace?

1. Be silent.  Listen more.  Observe. Get out in the wild and other calm spaces so you can fill yourself with with it and bring it back within you when you have to return to urban places.  One of the primary reasons for the persistent illusion of the triumph of the boor and the bully in American culture is that the boor and the bully are loud about it.  The good are content with peace and quiet.  I used to have a history book written by a Quaker professor about the "peace times and cultures" in history in response to the overwhelming trend of human history being a chronicle of violence.  It was a terribly, delightfully boring book.  Join the Good.  Be more quiet.

2. Love everyone unconditionally.  While I am unapologetic in my hopelessly Western theology, there is a concept in Eastern traditions that I find quite beautiful (more than one, actually, but one that specifically speaks to my purpose here.)  It's the concept of the Buddha nature which is, if I understand it correctly, that potential that is within everyone to become enlightened.  Therefore, the most crass, brutal, violent, greedy, pig-headed, lecherous dolt you meet has the potential for perfect enlightenment.  This appeals to the "all created equal" American in me.  It's also a doorway to finding love for everyone individually.  This one actually isn't one of the common manifestations of my problem (except when I'm driving.)

3.  Work on one's faith.  Providence is still in play regardless of how much I feel like a rat in a sinking life-raft in the middle of the sea.  One way to do this is to focus on the blessings one has and the needs that have been met in one's life.  Another is to face each turn in life with gratitude.  On a very basic level, I would point out, no matter how bad life gets, it is still life.  In other words, optimism is the domain of the victorious.  There is always a way.

4. Nolite te Bastardes Carborundorum.

I have other goals for the year as well.  In the Harvard Classics reading series, I would like to reach Cellini by the end of the year, but find that an absolutely unreasonable goal as it is over 20 volumes away.  Especially as I imagine I will take a few "breaks" from the series or, at least, not read the series exclusively until I complete it.  I think more realistically I will be reading the volume of fairy tales around this time next year (or possibly Cervantes.)  That suits me fine.  It's looking like the primary function of gaining a Harvard Level education through this series is more a financial advantage (savings on tuition) than anything to do with less time and energy.

I find resolutions involving the nouns and verbs of our lives (job goals, possessions, body work, etc) tend to butt heads with the unforeseeable mutations required in life.  While I do have some goals in those categories, I shall spare my future self the embarrassment of stating them on public record.

I would like to spend the year stuffing my senses with greatness in hopes that greatness is what will come pouring back out of me, but never to the preclusion of virtue (I am of the camp which believes that seeking wisdom where e'er She may be pleases The Lord.)  In short, I want to continue to grow and strive toward being a better human.  Should the Moirae apportion a good year or a bad one matters little really so long as one is able to grow and maintain one's hope of home.

An extraordinarily photo-heavy Christmas post.

 

I thought it might be nice to post many, many photos from Christmas here at the Mathers house.

Here's Laurie with many food item gifts.  She received a lot of food item gifts.  I received a lot of beverage item gifts, mainly orbiting the spheres of coffee, tea, and wine.

My folks were in town and Tony joined us for presents and the Christmas meal.

I received the complete Jeeves and Wooster television series. I should mention that the obvious exclusion from these photos is the brand new digital camera that my parents gave me.  I suppose I could have worked something up with mirrors, but there are no photos of the camera itself.

A "french press" style coffee maker.

A pair of Freudian slippers.  That is to say slippers made to look like the head of Dr. Freud.

My toes operate the tongues.

I bought a ring for Laurie.  Gold and amethyst.

Laurie also received a cookbook.

Karina made a quilt for Laurie.  Some of the patches are from Laurie's mother's clothes.

Tony and Karina bought me a tea set.

I also received a wine aerator.

And we mocked nature at the expense of poor Schubert.