I Knew Him, Horatio

Justice . . . of Course . . .

Tue, 02 Aug 2005 02:04:25 GMT

Why. Why do I do these stupid quizzes? I despise them, I do . . . Well, I suppose every once in a while one catches my mind as a good one, and this is one of those. Not that my score surprises me, though. I'm such a "justice" that I'm perfectly willing to look on impassively if someone perishes for their own stupidity — not gleeful, but in no wise disappointed, either.

You scored as Justice. Justice — with you is all that is fair and true in the hearts of men.

Justice

75%

Faith

71%

Fortitude

68%

Hope

64%

Prudence

61%

Charity

39%

Temperance

39%

The Seven Heavenly Virtues

Beginning 1984

Thu, 16 Jun 2005 23:29:18 GMT

meta-creation_date: 6/16/2005 19:30:01

I’m just starting to read 1984 for the first time in four years. It, Brave New World, and Anthem are the three politico-philosophical classics of my library. I own quite a few others answering to the theme, but as far as political philosophy (and Objectivism) goes, there’s just no topping those three.

Anyway, I just broke into the first chapter — about twenty minutes of reading got me almost to the end of the first “Two Minutes Hate.” The scary thing about it is that, yes, just like Winston feared, others more weak-minded than yourself may be taken in by dangerous diatribes. Only, it’s not Emmanuel Goldstein I’m afraid of . . .

I’d like to write a short piece on 1984, in the manner of an apologist: there are many out there, especially in my generation (college-aged), who have never been given the chance to think about political philosophy for themselves. They’ve been steadily fed a diet of collectivism, and honestly are innocent of the concepts of true freedom and personal responsibility. In effect, all they know is “we,” and someone must teach them how to say “I.”

Now, might I commend these three books to you, my discriminating reader? None of them will take more than two hours of your time; unless, of course, you count time spent pondering — then they’ll take weeks. Posted via Passage to Serendipity

Das Übergeek

Tue, 14 Jun 2005 07:33:04 GMT

meta-creation_date: 6/14/2005 03:33:24

For once, I feel like a true geek. You know, laptop maintenance is a whole lot different that tower/desktop maintenance. For one thing, you actually have room to work in a desktop computer. I’ve never been afraid of nuking anything inside a computer, and I’ve pulled and replaced a lot of hardware in my day.

Ever since I was a kid, my dad had me help with the hardware reviews, and by the time I was eleven or twelve, I was installing major hardware upgrades into testbed machines. He’d just come around when I had the installation and preliminary testing complete, play around with it a bit, and write the review (Macworld).

So being afraid to poke around inside a computer was a new experience for me. Well, for one thing, it was the closest quarters I’ve ever worked in: a vintage PowerBook Titanium G4 (TiBook). And it’s mine. There’s something much less haphazard about working on one’s own heart and soul.

This has been an emotional time for me anyway. My old hard drive (an 18GB Toshiba) just crashed, taking two months worth of files and downloads with it. This drive is a beauty (Seagate 100GB), and there was absolutely nothing that was going to make me mess this one up. (Sounds like dealing with women, doesn’t it?)

After a long and misguided hunt, I finally hunted down a Torx T8 bit. You’d think that it’d be more common, but nearly every set of security bits in my house stopped just shy — T10. Also, we just moved, so most of our stuff is boxed in the garage yet, which doesn’t help much in the way of making things easier to find.

I got the old drive out, and slipped the new little minx in its place, and away we go! There were some tense moments when I wondered if Disk Utility was going to see it or not (it did!), but I got it formatted in ten seconds flat, and now Mac OS X Tiger (10.4) is installing itself onto 4.7GB of my brand-spankin’-new disk space.

I feel much better now that I have bonded more fully with my machine. She may be old, but she’s a great box; and being a Mac, has plenty of spunk left. I just can’t wait to get back to Photoshop, web design (and none of this namby-pamby DreamWeaver or graphical editor junk! I like my text editor just fine, thank you very much!

Vive la Mac! Posted via Passage to Serendipity

In Defense of Certainty

Tue, 14 Jun 2005 03:39:55 GMT

Time Magazine has done well. In fine form, they’ve challenged one of the most easily-assumed certainties of our time: that certainty is dangerous. The last page, ninety-six, of the June 6^th, 2005 issue, is an essay by Charles Krauthammer, a regular Time columnist, entitled “In Defense of Certainty.” Krauthammer decrys the zeitgeist that “it’s trendy to be suspicious of people with ‘deeply held views.’ And it’s wrong.”

While more and more people are at odds with the beliefs of “evangelical Christians and traditional Catholics,” Krauthammer claims that to discount their opposition to popular secular views as theocratic is “nonsense.”

Now I am not much of a believer, but there is something deeply wrong — indeed, deeply un-American — about fearing people simply because they believe.

And it’s ironic that Americans are becoming more intolerant of what they view as deviant beliefs here on our own shores while preaching that Israelis should be tolerant of Islamic beliefs that demand their extinction.

But when someone takes the contrary view [to the secular view], all of a sudden he’s trying to impose his view on you. And if that contrary view happens to be rooted in Scripture or some kind of religious belief system, the very public advocacy of that view becomes a violation of the U.S. constitutional order.

What nonsense. The campaign against certainty is merely the philosophical veneer for an attempt to politically marginalize and intellectually disenfranchise believers. Instead of arguing the merits of any issue, secularists are trying to win the argument by default on the grounds that the other side displays unhealthy certainty . . .

The main thing that bothers me about folk of any political persuasion — liberal, conservative, or libertarian — is a predilection against rational thought. Whatever view is espoused, I much prefer it being backed up by evidence and reason than by liberal-bashing, religion-bashing, or other attempt to “win the argument by default.”

And if you&rsqo;re going to climb up on a soapbox and declare right and wrong, shouldn’t you be certain about it? It worries me when people recommend and even demand public policy without being sure themselves of its efficacy. However, certainty carries with it certain demands, the most onerous of which is consistency. If you are certain of something, you may be expected to produce convincing arguments for any change of opinion you may have. That “weariness with the responsibilities and the nightmares that come with clarity — and the demands that moral certainty make[s] on us” is the driving fear of certainty. The innate laziness and unwillingness to think of humankind in general (for isn’t it natural, for you as well as me, to want ease and comfort?) is our great enemy and the cause of our fear of certainty.

However, those who came before us were sure of their cause, and their legacy certainly behooves us to strive for the same certainty.

You want certainty? . . . How about a people who overthrow the political order of the ages, go to war and occasion thousands of deaths in the name of self-evident truths and unalienable rights endowed by the Creator? That was 1776. The universality, the sacredness and the divine origin of freedom are enshrined in our founding document. The Founders, believers all, signed it. Thomas Jefferson wrote it. And not even Jefferson, the most skeptical of the lot, had the slightest doubt about it.

Time Magazine: “In Defense of Certainty” (mirror - plain text)

Apathy Online, June 11^th, 2005.

Posted via Passage to Serendipity

In Defense of Certainty

Sun, 12 Jun 2005 22:20:55 GMT

Now I am not much of a believer, but there is something deeply wrong — indeed, deeply un-American — about fearing people simply because they believe.

But when someone takes the contrary view [to the secular view], all of a sudden he’s trying to impose his view on you. And if that contrary view happens to be rooted in Scripture or some kind of religious belief system, the very public advocacy of that view becomes a violation of the U.S. constitutional order.

What nonsense. The campaign against certainty is merely the philosophical veneer for an attempt to politically marginalize and intellectually disenfranchise believers. Instead of arguing the merits of any issue, secularists are trying to win the argument by default on the grounds that the other side displays unhealthy certainty . . .

You want certainty? . . . How about a people who overthrow the political order of the ages, go to war and occasion thousands of deaths in the name of self-evident truths and unalienable rights endowed by the Creator? That was 1776. The universality, the sacredness and the divine origin of freedom are enshrined in our founding document. The Founders, believers all, signed it. Thomas Jefferson wrote it. And not even Jefferson, the most skeptical of the lot, had the slightest doubt about it.

Time Magazine: “In Defense of Certainty” (mirror - plain text)

Apathy Online, June 11^th, 2005.

Posted via Passage to Serendipity

Tomato Jam

Sun, 12 Jun 2005 04:11:48 GMT

meta-creation_date: 6/12/2005 00:12:47

One thing I always looked forward to when we visited the farm was Grandma’s tomato jam. It was always so perfectly-matched to a hot slice of fresh-baked bread or a piece of breakfast toast. I remember the first time my mom told me about tomato jam: I couldn’t believe anyone would make jam out of tomatoes! What would it taste like, ketchup? That was on our way to Minnesota one year, and shortly thereafter, I was pleasantly surprised. One slice, two slices, three slices, and more, were simply not enough.

Now, for some odd reason, Grandma’s tomato jam has been the only tomato jam I would eat on piece after piece of bread without even stopping to be full. It’s odd because I’ve had only a few other “brands” of tomato jam, and they’ve all been made by her kids, using her recipe! I think there’s a secret ingredient she’s not letting anyone in on . . . Posted via Passage to Serendipity

To Ride a Train

Sun, 22 May 2005 05:52:21 GMT

meta-creation_date: 4/5/2005 17:54:40

Someday I’d like to ride a train. The long, long train vanishing into the distance calls to me; the sound of its mournful whistle cuts to the very core of my being. A train is going away from; it is not going to. You leave things behind a train, and you may never see their like again.

In a train, there is much sorrow; and in that sorrow is joy. But the joy is not in the train: the joy is in the euphony of sorrow. A true sombre melancholy which pervades a train is the heart of all its joy. When those in a train are happy, it is because of the pure and silent peace true sorrow and bereavement of all brings.

When one boards a train, it is a step longer than any taken anywhere else: the last step of “here” and the first step of the unknown. Every step taken in that train is a step within a netherworld, and a step which does not exist.

A train is curious. It merely goes from “here” to “there” and back again, but while you are aboard a train, “there” comes “here” and “here” hastens elsewhere. The nature of “here” and “there” is as surreal as that of joy and sorrow, aboard a train.

What is joy? What is “here”? Or sorrow, or “there”? “Here” is sorrow, to many on the train; ergo “there” must be joy. But nature twists and turns as the tracks sweep smoothly, endlessly, over the country. And sometimes joy and sorrow get muddled up in “wheres” and “elsewheres”, and sometimes they fall out of the train and onto the gravel and are lost.

And oftimes the joy we sought, and the sorrow we sought to flee, we carry behind us, stored up safe in the baggage car, or perhaps in a sleeper . . . And the joy and sorrow everywhere are just as deep, and just as true, wherever you run or ride to. But the sorrow is more true than the joy, for where there is deep joy, there is deeper sorrow; and sorrow is the stuff of which joy is knit.

Originally written March 21^st, 2002. Posted via Passage to Serendipity

Classical Guitar Artists

Tue, 17 May 2005 23:31:26 GMT

meta-creation_date: 5/17/2005 19:31:16

Christopher Parkening
Robby Longly
LAGQ

Do you like classical music? Guitar music? Better yet, classical guitar? Jazz? You should check out the music of Christopher Parkening and Robby Longley. Of the two, Parkening has a bent more towards Spanish (Flamenco) and classical; and Longley, towards jazz and ethnic music.

I’ll give you a quick rundown on Parkening, since he is my favorite of the two. Parkening is a born-again Christian, besides being one of the premier classical guitarists in the world. His metor, the great Andrés Segovia, said that Parkening is “a great artist—he is one of the most brilliant guitarists in the world.”

He is an artist, in the true sense of the word. For example, he only records any song once. He will practice until he’s good enough to perform it impeccably, even live; and then records a one-shot staging of it. Any mistakes are not edited out, as he feels this is dishonest: it goes against his artistic integrity. Still, his one-shot recordings are better than most other guitarists’ heavily-edited final cuts. At last, a musician who is also an artist!

The last group I’d like to mention is the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet. You like classical? Ethnic? Jazz? Anything unclassifiable? LAGQ is for you. They play classical guitar, restring their guitars with everything from piano strings to giant rubber bands with paper clips attached, and then play ethnic music which sounds like it was played with traditional instruments. Definitely worth your eartime.

Scraps, July 28^th, 2004.

Posted via Passage to Serendipity

Straightforward

Tue, 17 May 2005 17:42:27 GMT

meta-creation_date: 2/19/2005 16:57:36

The boys were right, a teenage girl is quite a dreamy creature. It would be nice to be str[a]ightforward; we must be so alien to them.
— Dragonette (Laylock), March 17^th, 2001

I was just reading through some of Laylock’s archived journals and re-found the above quote. I ran across it some months ago, but didn’t more than take mental note of the statement. However, it’s been running back and forth in my head ever since, like Hamlet in his nightshirt running behind dead Rosencrantz</a> and Guildenstern* In the course of one or two hours, I today have finally tracked down, for your perusal, the citation.

It’s as I always say (and have never gotten slapped for — and only seldom threatened), but it is still nice to be able to cite a girl as saying it. Yes, it would be nice if those lovely creatures of the female persuasion (and if you have read any of my previous entries, you know I am nothing of a misogynist), were “straightforward”. That’s a better way of putting what I want to say than simply, “I wish women made sense.”

There are philosophical implications to the desire for straightforwardness as well: honesty is to my life as words are to reading. Without words, there would be nothing to read; and without honesty, is there really anything to live? I could not live falsehood, and I cannot abide it in another.

Yes, a girl — of any age — is quite a dreamy creature, and so alien to me. However, I know that most of them mean well, and some few of them actually act on those intentions and do well. Straightforwardness may be too much to hope, but I can think of no other creature worth a little perseverance in the unravelling than a woman. Still, too much time unravelling is time spent unwisely; and I’ll not waste too much time unravelling many Knots by the Road.^†

*****

* Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is an almost-silly play by Tom Stoppard, parodying Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Telling the story from the eyes of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two minor characters from the original play, Stoppard creates what is essentially marginalia and commentary on the content, times, and customs of and surrounding Hamlet. In as diverse an array of topics as the Law of Probability (sic “of Averages”), Hamlet’s sanity as well as anyone else’s, and the implications of being buried in a coffin (Would it be like sleeping in a box?), Rosencrantz and Guildenstern provide a sharp and intellectual comedy — rare in these days of easy see-and-forget drama and slapstick humour.

†

Up from Earth’s Centre through the Seventh Gate
I rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate;
And many Knots unravel’d by the Road;
But not the Master-knot of Human Fate.
— Stanza 36, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Posted via Passage to Serendipity

Unsatiation

Fri, 06 May 2005 02:54:03 GMT

meta-creation_date: 5/5/2005 22:54:39

Yours is a friendship I would die to keep,
and I may.

To love and not be sated,
but live pinioned as companion
(with never more than simply
enough hope to pin me down)
might kill —

and in cessation of existence,
my dying lips would breathe
of thee. Posted via Passage to Serendipity

Thunder

Fri, 06 May 2005 02:45:42 GMT

meta-creation_date: 5/5/2005 22:46:01

I hope it rains like this all night. I’d like to go to sleep to it.

When my soul to weeping turns,
a dull and pleasant gloom
steals o’er my soul; and there I learn
true pleasure from the pain.
When before I shunned it,
now I glory in the rain.

A thunderstorm is always nice, especially in light of the depressingly fair and even weather we’ve been having recently. And we’re in the thick of it: I was outside and watched a tendril of lightning pry through the air, touch the ground, and instantly embolden before losing all existance in twenty seconds of thunder. Blind and deafened, I exulted in the water and sound.

The rain that on my head she falls,
her fog that ’round me shrouds
the world in closer gath’ring walls:
these my muses be.
’Twixt all that sorrow tells me,
all but love soon palls.

A whistle of wind, catlike (in a stormy, caterwauling way) follows on the tail of the thunder. Such a wonderfully and duly depressing sound is ambrosia to my soul now: the strains of love unrequited and nearly-requited and even (dare I think?) unwittingly (“Spring Fever”-like) requited are wearing on me even among their pleasance.

The whisper now rides with the wind,
and my love shall surely mend.
I savour now the siren-song:
pariah’s right’s not lightly won.

Sometimes I wonder if I will ever have her. No matter, really. It is not the having her which is necessary, but the desiring — that nigh-on holy respectful worship of the Eternal Feminine^* embodied in her.

I shall hear what’s death to hear;
be succoured by the night.

*****

* By this, I of course mean the concept of the Woman as I regularly expound here. I consider myself one of the few of the old guard who still worship women as they deserve to be worshipped.

The poem intercalated here was originally written on December 25^th, 2001, and has been tentatively titled (though I in general despise titles) “Siren’s Rain”. Posted via Passage to Serendipity

Voices from the Gambia

Wed, 20 Apr 2005 02:26:43 GMT

meta-creation_date: 4/19/2005 22:26:03

The piercing voice breaks the stillness of the evening, disturbing the solitude. The noise was startling at first, then distracting, as other voices chime in.

Is it an announcement? Some sort of singing? Chanting? The loudness of the P.A. system make it sound like it’s right next to our compound, but it is coming from the village mosque, over one kilometer away.

The voices continue. Concentration is difficult.

We ask: “What is happening?” “Oh, perhaps a ‘teaching’ for a special holy day; or maybe recitations for someone’s marriage or death. It’s in Arabic. Difficult to know what they are saying. Get used to it; happens often.”

The voice returns. It’s still dark. It is 5:30 AM! “It’s a call to prayer:; the first of three over the next hour, each coming from a different mosque. We try to sleep; but we think . . . If they are praying, why aren’t we? We who claim to know the Living God and call Him “Father”.

It’s early Sunday morning: voices of children come drifting into the compound. They seem to be reciting verses and singing songs. What a beautiful sound! Is it a Sunday School class?

“Yes, in a way. It’s the boys and girls attending classes at the nearby Koranic School going through their recitations and praises to Yallah.” We long to teach them about Jesus . . .

A weekday afternoon: we hear the sound of singing. We go outside. A vanload of men passes by on the road, amplifying their songs as they drive through the town. “It’s a men’s retreat. A Muslim version of ‘Promise Keepers’.” We pray: “May it someday be a Christian group.”

Evangelism and training go on almost daily in our village here. But we are not part of it. We are the “outsiders”, the “unbelievers”. How we wish this very religious atmosphere could be one of true worship — not only of God, but of His Son, the One Who came to be the Saviour of the world, the One they do not know.

So wrote Missionary Jim Entner on October eighth, 2003. It raises an interesting question, does it not? Why are so many lost, dying, and yet more devout than we who have the truth? Have we no care for their souls?

The Muslim has no Father God, since Islam teaches of an Allah who is a taskmaster: easily provoked and hardly appeased, capricious, even. We who know the true God, the one who loves and cares for the world, surely can be more devout worshippers of and witnesses for our God than they can theirs — don’t we have it infinitely better?

I read this prayer letter at Mission Prayer Band while at Pensacola Christian College Posted via Passage to Serendipity

Reposts

Sat, 09 Apr 2005 20:16:50 GMT

meta-creation_date: 4/9/2005 16:17:25

You will notice entries occasionally (and more so currently, since I have less writing time right now) bearing a “Scraps” byline. These are re-edited and reworked pieces from my former set of Blogger-based weblogs. As a writer, I never see a piece as finished: my writings will be final only upon my death. Therefore, I welcome this weblog as a new venue for many of these older works. I hope you enjoy them at least as much this second time (or more, since they ought to be somewhat better). You be the judge: each byline links to the original piece.

Cheers!
— Sehrgut

Posted via Passage to Serendipity

On Pied Pipers

Sat, 09 Apr 2005 20:07:50 GMT

meta-creation_date: 4/9/2005 16:08:35

Music has a strange power, there is no doubt; and I think a pied piper is not so far off from reality. I’m listening to a Celtic song called “Seacht”. I know not from whence comes its strange power, but I find its odour permeating my mind. Its physical presence in the air around me exerts a strong, steady, and pleasant pressure on my skull.

Music has an odd way about it. I was getting ready for church, and sat down to listen to the song: it has me transfixed. It’s so relaxing I can feel my mind sloughing off all early-morning stresses and cares. I don't know how it’s working, or why. I don’t even understand Gaelic, so I have no idea what the song is about. (“Seacht” is too common a Gaelic word to facilitate finding the lyrics of the song online.)

And the moment is gone. I spoke and was spoken to, and am released from the spell. Such a strange magic . . . I do believe I would have followed such music the the very heart of a mountain.

Scraps, July 28^th, 2004.

Posted via Passage to Serendipity

To Ride a Train

Tue, 05 Apr 2005 21:54:40 GMT

meta-creation_date: 4/5/2005 17:54:40

Someday I’d like to ride a train. The long, long train vanishing into the distance calls to me; the sound of its mournful whistle cuts to the very core of my being. A train is going away from; it is not going to. You leave things behind a train, and you may never see their like again.

In a train, there is much sorrow; and in that sorrow is joy. But the joy is not in the train: the joy is in the euphony of sorrow. A true sombre melancholy which pervades a train is the heart of all its joy. When those in a train are happy, it is because of the pure and silent peace true sorrow and berevement of all brings.

When one boards a train, it is a step longer than any taken anywhere else: the last step of “here” and the first step of the unknown. Every step taken in that train is a step within a netherworld, and a step which does not exist.

A train is curious. It merely goes from “here” to “there” and back again, but while you are aboard a train, “there” comes “here” and “here” hastens elsewhere. The nature of “here” and “there” is as surreal as that of joy and sorrow, aboard a train.

What is joy? What is “here”? Or sorrow, or “there”? “Here” is sorrow, to many on the train; ergo “there” must be joy. But nature twists and turns as the tracks sweep smoothly, endlessly, over the country. And sometimes joy and sorrow get muddled up in “wheres” and “elsewheres”, and sometimes they fall out of the train and onto the gravel and are lost.

And oftimes the joy we sought, and the sorrow we sought to flee, we carry behind us, stored up safe in the baggage car, or perhaps in a sleeper . . . And the joy and sorrow everywhere are just as deep, and just as true, wherever you run or ride to. But the sorrow is more true than the joy, for where there is deep joy, there is deeper sorrow; and sorrow is the stuff of which joy is knit.

Originally written March 21^st, 2002. Posted via Passage to Serendipity

Funerals and Poetry

Thu, 31 Mar 2005 04:50:43 GMT

meta-creation_date: 3/30/2005 23:50:45

Now, you have to understand something of a writer and an artist. Something of the melancholic temperament in general. But, the idea first. I’m at work, and just got a labwide email that an employee’s mother died. It contained the death notice from the Augusta Chronicle:

AUGUSTA, Ga.- Graveside services for Mrs. M__ D__ D__ of 1229 __th Street will be held 11 a.m. [date removed] at Mt. Olive Memorial Gardens. Survivors include a daughter, V__ D__; two sons, G__ E. D__, R__ I. D__; three sisters, R__ H__, O__ S__, B__ D__; four grandchildren and one great-grandchild; a host of other relatives and friends. The family will receive friends from 7-8 p.m. today at the funeral home. G. L. Brightharp & Sons Mortuary, 614 West Avenue, North Augusta, S. C.

The message sparked an immediate, odd compulsion to attend the graveside service. Then the idea: “These notices are in every newspaper everywhere. Whenever I want, I can go to a funeral.”

Like I said, you have to understand something about an artist. My attraction to a funeral is not flippant. I’m not going to crash a party. It’s not dark (I don’t subscribe to the “Goth” subculture), or a fascination with death. It’s merely a writer’s need to absorb real-life circumstances as experiences upon which to base his interpretations of life; for a writer has the responsibility — not that I necessarily agree with this situation — given him by those who do not wish to interpret life themselves, to provide an interpretation of life and its circumstances.

I have been blessed by not having funerals come into my life often on their own. My maternal grandfather, a distant friend Michael — years after I knew him — an elderly lady from my church, and two friends of my parents whom I hardly knew are the only funerals I have ever attended.

So don’t think it strange if a sombre and reverent stranger shows up at the graveside of one of your friends or loved ones, paying his respects to someone he never knew. He is merely experiencing the human condition, and is a “scout” of sorts for all whom his work will reach. He is a writer.

Scraps, July 26^th, 2004, while working at a lab near Aiken, SC.

Posted via Passage to Serendipity

Rappaccini’s Daughter

Wed, 16 Mar 2005 04:59:55 GMT

meta-creation_date: 3/15/2005 23:09:54

“We die by degrees,” and she is hastening the process. Since I have become once more trusted (that is, trusted to have no romantic intent), all those things we once were and once we had are reappearing in our friendship — all those things which once I was sure meant love. It is, to use a cliché, an exquisite pain and a torturous pleasure: a joy which must be borne and a sorrow to which I cling.

She is trying to kill me. No, she has no inkling of what she does; but just so surely as if she were gradually dosing me with arsenic, she is withering my soul.

I could easily run. I could easily leave her company and live a bright, colourful, and dissatisfying life elsewhere and elsewhen. But to do that would be worse than to show myself not a man: it would be to impose upon her the knowledge of her actions’ full import. Before me is on the one, suicide; and on the other, her indictment, her guilt. So help me, I cannot be the one to destroy her fragile conception of how easily problems may be set aside: I must slay myself. But, oh! what hands to slay me, and what lips to kiss my soul an eternal farewell. I would rather die by her hands than live by any other’s.

To remain is to allow that fatal arsenic, that lovely purple venom from this Rappaccini’s daughter, to innervate my being and gradually entangle me in such a Muse’s web of death that I be both unable and unwilling to resist sure destruction. To leave is to cause the shadow of such a fate to pass before her eyes and awaken her to the dread power held within them.

Nay. I shall gaze into these twin pools of despair as long as I am naïvely bidden so.
I fall. I sink. I drown. Posted via Passage to Serendipity

Treading the Untreadable Waters

Mon, 21 Feb 2005 04:27:14 GMT

meta-creation_date: 2/20/2005 23:26:53

I was just talking with one of my roommates, B__, and he really straightened me out a bit. You see, another of my roommates, A__, and I get along in exactly the same way that best friends do not. I had been feeling quite self-righteous about it, because for the first five weeks of this ten-week internship I had been making quite a few overtures to him. We never really clicked, though; and I even get the feeling he resents my asking him if he had a good day.

Now, B__ told me that we as Christians do have an obligation to reach out to those which are different from ourselves, and not just sequester ourselves with those who think and act like us. I thought I had that covered, so I became defensive (though I don’t think I came across that way). I started talking about how I’m not like that, and I get along with almost everyone, and I reach out to people that are different. Really, I do. I brought up an example, a girl named K__, also on this same internship, with whom I get along famously — you couldn’t find two people who disagreed more on highly significant issues.

That satisfied him, and he then said, “Well, sometimes we just have to learn to know when to shake the dust off our shoes and move on.” About then is when I finally gave in to the Holy Spirit’s conviction, I started thinking.

“I’m thinking, maybe I ‘kicked the dust from my shoes’ a little too soon.”

He started mulling that over, and we talked a bit more. Then he said, “You know, we have Divine protection. We can tread on waters others can’t. That gives us a bit more of a responsibility.”

You know, it does, doesn’t it? That’s something I don’t think about nearly enough. I think God’s had enough of ivory-tower Christianity.

Scraps, July 27^th, 2004, while living at an apartment in Aiken, SC.

Posted via Passage to Serendipity

Embrangle

Mon, 21 Feb 2005 04:10:55 GMT

meta-creation_date: 2/20/2005 23:10:25

Embrangle: \Em*bran''gle\, v. t. [Mid-17th Cent.: em- (L. “in”) + brangle (obs. “to shake, squabble” > Fr. branler “to shake”]

past em bran gled
p. part. em bran gled
pres. part. em bran gling
pres. sing. em bran gles
noun em bran gle ment

v. t. 1 arch. make more complicated or confused through entanglements; confuse or entangle

v. t. 2 arch. confuse, perplex, or entangle somebody or something

Webster's Second New International Dictionary (1913) cites:

I am lost and embrangled in inextricable difficulties. —Berkeley.

(That is quite an artistic way to use the word. Even as a word heretofore unfamiliar to me, it doesn't sound in the least out of place . . .)

I hate MSN, I hate Encarta, I hate Microsoft, but for some odd reason, I found this list of 10 Words You Simply Must Know on Google. Tenth on the list, after the leader, “defenestrate”, and following “cullet”, “pellucid”, and others, lay a beautiful archaic word: “embrangle”. Needless to say, I quickly looked up the etymology (I refuse to use “Google” as a verb) online, and made a long-pondered decision in a moment's time to expose this word from one more (albeit small) venue to the minds of the world.
Public, educate thyself. Posted via Passage to Serendipity

The Gryphon Tea Room

Sat, 19 Feb 2005 22:31:52 GMT

meta-creation_date: 2/19/2005 17:32:45

The first things to note upon entering are the high ceilings, classic dark wood decorations, and shelves displaying antique plates and glasses. Housed in an adapted turn-of-the-century pharmacy, this tearoom is an ideal size: large enough for a crowd, yet small enough to offer privacy.
— TeaMuse

The Gryphon Tea Room is one of the better, and more useful, tea establishments. Though, as the cited review goes on to state, the “high art of a classic tea service etiquette” is not there, the Gryphon is not attempting to be classic. It is through and through an art establishment, but the art in their service is of a different kind than the classic. It is an art of facilitation: an atmosphere in which a writer may sit, undisturbed, and think. The Gryphon is a place to live and breathe art, rather than to experience art.

As an artist (a writer in particular) I appreciate the way The Gryphon is conducted. No, it is not a place for the uninitiated in British high tea to become educated; but it is a place for those who know what they want — who know their own art — to find a convenient location to mull and ponder.

Scraps, July 29^th, 2004

Posted via Passage to Serendipity

Straightforward

Sat, 19 Feb 2005 21:57:01 GMT

meta-creation_date: 2/19/2005 16:57:36

The boys were right, a teenage girl is quite a dreamy creature. It would be nice to be str[a]ightforward; we must be so alien to them.
— Dragonette (Laylock), March 17^th, 2001

I was just reading through some of Laylock’s archived journals and re-found the above quote. I ran across it some months ago, but didn’t more than take mental note of the statement. However, it’s been running back and forth in my head ever since, like Hamlet in his nightshirt running behind dead Rosencranz and Guildenstern* In the course of one or two hours, I today have finally tracked down, for your perusal, the citation.

It’s as I always say (and have never gotten slapped for — and only seldom threatened), but it is still nice to be able to cite a girl as saying it. Yes, it would be nice if those lovely creatures of the female persuasion (and if you have read any of my previous entries, you know I am nothing of a misogynist), were “straightforward”. That’s a better way of putting what I want to say than simply, “I wish women made sense.”

There are philosophical implications to the desire for straightforwardness as well: honesty is to my life as words are to reading. Without words, there would be nothing to read; and without honesty, is there really anything to live? I could not live falsehood, and I cannot abide it in another.

Yes, a girl — of any age — is quite a dreamy creature, and so alien to me. However, I know that most of them mean well, and some few of them actually act on those intentions and do well. Straightforwardness may be too much to hope, but I can think of no other creature worth a little perseverance in the unravelling than a woman. Still, too much time unravelling is time spent unwisely; and I’ll not waste too much time unravelling many Knots by the Road.^†

*****

* Rosencranz and Guildenstern are Dead is an almost-silly play by Tom Stoppard, parodying Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Telling the story from the eyes of Rosencranz and Guildenstern, two minor characters from the original play, Stoppard creates what is essentially marginalia and commentary on the content, times, and customs of and surrounding Hamlet. In as diverse an array of topics as the Law of Probability (sic “of Averages”), Hamlet’s sanity as well as anyone else’s, and the implications of being buried in a coffin (Would it be like sleeping in a box?), Rosencranz and Guildenstern provide a sharp and intellectual comedy — rare in these days of easy see-and-forget drama and slapstick humour.

†

Up from Earth’s Centre through the Seventh Gate
I rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate;
And many Knots unravel’d by the Road;
But not the Master-knot of Human Fate.
— Stanza 36, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Posted via Passage to Serendipity

“The Garden”, by Ezra Pound

Sat, 19 Feb 2005 04:54:46 GMT

meta-creation_date: 2/18/2005 23:55:14

Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall,
She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,
And she is dying piece-meal
To a sort of emotional anæmia.

And round about there is a rabble
Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.
They shall inherit the earth.

In her is the end of breeding.
Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.
She would like some one to speak to her,
And is almost afraid that I
Will commit that indiscretion.

*****

“The Garden” holds out, “like a loose skein of silk”, the wealthy and wise whom Pound despised, to be soiled by contact with what is less delicate, and in his view, of more worth. Those “sturdy, unkillable infants” who would inherit the earth deserved the earth, since they were the “very poor” generated by the years of privilege which had bred this exquisite, bored beauty.

“In her is the end of breeding.” Yes, we all know that Pound was opposed to any sort of elite. However, the picture of her we see is one of a woman truly deserving of our contempt. Lest we feel justified in loving or allowing the wealthy (in the which case, her mere station — which was Pound’s cause against her — would not be enough to prejudice us against her), Pound ensures that wealth is coupled intimately with a character innately disturbing.

In her “exquisite and excessive” boredom, the woman meandering through Kensington Gardens is a commentary on what the elite had become by Pound’s day. While fortunes were built on foundations both good and bad (the oppressive foundations of wealth predictably dwelt upon by Pound’s contemporaries), they eventually became self-existent entities of a being entirely separate from those who owned them. The elite became no more elite by right and by labour, but elite by mere descent. The woman is not a victorious, worthwhile producer of wealth, but merely an end user of her parents’ and grandparents’ work. She is our decadent.

However, hate for its own sake is never so strong as a justified disliking. Pound never gives us a woman to hate, but rather, nearly an inamorata into whom we see too much to allow us to act upon our love. We feel appropriate and unbiased in condemning her decadence, since we are acting contrary to the strong drawing power she has upon our emotions (hence, contrary to our surface bias): we cannot be reacting unjustly, since we are in love with our beautiful, silken, “end of breeding”.

She is also described as emotionally anemic. Herein, I think, is Pound’s reason for ascribing a greater worth to the “sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor”. Pain produces emotion, and if she is both worthless and without emotion, one might deduce (subconsciously, of course) that those who possess emotion are inherently of greater value.

So he destroys, in an act of beauty, a moral segment of society by its association with her problems. “The Garden” is, regardless, an act of beauty.

The image of the silk blowing up against a wall is pregnant, somehow, with a power which only grows the more familiar the image becomes. At the first, I was able to read swiftly past it, noting in the first stanza nothing more than “ . . . Kensington Gardens . . . dying . . . emotional anæmia.” However, upon successive readings, the opening image rose in my mind to the point that, before remembering even the garden (though that is second), this poem comes to my mind as a white drapery of silk being held (off-camera) so that it hangs next to a river-stone wall of about six feet in height, and perpetually blowing, caressingly, against the smooth stones and grey mortar.

The “exquisite and excessive” boredom is that carried by generation upon generation of women who are familiar with the sound of men’s hearts shattering. The sound, after so long, does not produce in her any more the thrill it once did, and indeed, she secretly wishes both to hear and to not hear the faint cry of one more. Her beauty, though, precludes any hope of her not hearing such a cry.

The tense thoughtfulness which is fondly thought to reside in such unattainable women by the men who worship them is present in her desire (at least from the man’s perspective) to be spoken to, and in her fear that he of all men will be the one to do so. Pound must have felt at least a twinge of desire for this woman whose class he detested and feared, and in whose “breeding” he saw no purpose. Only one who knew the allure of an exquisitely bored woman — of the challenge it would be to demolish that willful boredom — would know her fear.

And, in the fourth stanza, written in the margins only by the imaginations of those who have known and loved such women, her fears are realized; for I know that the indiscretion must be committed. “I will commit that indiscretion.” Posted via Passage to Serendipity

A Note to the Hunters and Acolytes of Women

Mon, 14 Feb 2005 04:06:23 GMT

meta-creation_date: 2/13/2005 23:05:48

Standard wisdom suggests that women marry men expecting them to change and find they don’t, while men marry women expecting them not to change and find they do. There must be a trick, then, of prognostication required in choosing a wife. Find someone whose character and personality will allow permutations you can live with, and marry them.

Standard wisdom also suggests that, since you cannot find perfection, search for one whose faults you can live with. (Indeed, my mother has told me that, like not joining the perfect church, if you find the perfect girl, don’t date her: you’ll spoil her. Contrariwise, if I find the perfect girl, there will be no stopping my taking a fair shot at her.) However, since at some point, the girl to whom you are married will no longer be the girl you married, you must not only find someone whose faults you can live with, but with whose possible and probable faults you can as well.

We’ve got it tough, haven’t we? (Though I imagine the ladies have just as difficult a time of it.)

*****

Few men worship women anymore; I suppose that, as I am in many other things, I am one of the old guard. I received a response to my piece, “All Things Feminine”, which contained the following: “Women are beauty, and they deserve our worship.”

Not only are they beauty, but there is something else in the feminine which is worshipable, yet ineffable — undefinable.

However, finding a woman worthy of worship, worthy of my consecration and expense as a votary at the temple of SHE — this is hard. How much harder will it be to find one who will maintain her deity for my lifetime? Posted via Passage to Serendipity

“The Tragedy: La Dame aux Camélias”

Mon, 14 Feb 2005 03:31:17 GMT

meta-creation_date: 2/13/2005 22:29:11 from Baby Bell and Other Poems
by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
etext

La Dame aux Camélias, —
I think that was the play;
The house was packed from pit to dome
With the gallant and the gay,
Who had come to see the Tragedy,
And while the hours away.

There was the ruined Spendthrift,
And Beauty in her prime;
There was the grave Historian,
And there the man of Rhyme,
And the surly Critic, front to front,
To see the play of crime.

And there was pompous Ignorance,
And Vice in flowers and lace;
Sir Crœsus and Sir Pandarus, —
And the music played apace.
But of all that crowd I only saw
A single, single face!

That of a girl whom I had known
In the summers long ago,
When her breath was like the new-mown hay,
Or the sweetest flowers that grow;
When her heart was light, and her soul was white
As the winter’s driven snow.

And there she sat with her great brown eyes,
They wore a troubled look;
And I read the history of her life
As it were an open book;
And saw her Soul, like a slimy thing
In the bottom of a brook.

There she sat in her rustling silk,
With diamonds on her wrist,
And on her brow a gleaming thread
Of pearl and amethyst.
“A cheat, a gilded grief!” I said,
And my eyes were filled with mist.

I could not see the players play:
I heard the music moan;
It moaned like a dismal autumn wind,
That dies in the woods alone;
And when it stopped I heard it still, —
The mournful monotone!

What if the Count were true or false?
I did not care, not I;
What if Camille for Armand died?
I did not see her die.
There sat a woman opposite
With piteous lip and eye!

The great green curtain fell on all,
On laugh, and wine, and woe,
Just as death some day will fall
’Twixt us and life, I know!
The play was done, the bitter play,
And the people turned to go.

And did they see the Tragedy?
They saw the painted scene;
They saw Armand, the jealous fool,
And the sick Parisian queen:
But they did not see the Tragedy, —
The one I saw, I mean!

They did not see that cold-cut face,
That furtive look of care;
Or, seeing her jewels, only said,
“The lady’s rich and fair.”
But I tell you, ’t was the Play of Life,
and that woman played Despair! Posted via Passage to Serendipity

Never So Glad

Sat, 12 Feb 2005 21:38:04 GMT

meta-creation_date: 2/8/2005 15:05:00 Never So Light

Tonight has ended one of the most profoundly influential chapters of my life. The grand test of my philosophy of relationships has ended. Results: inconclusive, but promising. While I did not succeed in beginning a long-term dating relationship, I was quite successful in maintaining a mutual trust and friendship with all admitted.

My philosophy of relationships has developed into one of honesty, in which other concerns sometimes get lost. Two points of honesty (and nine of roguery) I require in relationships. I write my own rules by which I abide and expect to be abode by, which doesn’t usually go over too well — most people don’t like when you write your own rules for an established game. However, when my rules fail, I merely take it as a sign that this is one more girl who’s not the one for me.

*****

The first point of honesty is premise. To me it has always seemed silly and a little dishonest the excuses which suffice to meet someone. Merely standing behind a girl in line, or having a class with her (even if you sit across a room of a hundred and fifty from her) are excuse enough. To me it has always seemed to say, “I have a right to meet you because we registered for the same class.” Usually the girl believes him, and he begins — on what I would consider a false premise.

I have no right to meet someone based on chance circumstances like classes or queues or daily schedules. However, it seems to me a great loss that an excuse is required in the first place.

Meeting someone without excuse or premise states, “I want to get to know you,” an admission most are quite unwilling to make. However, honesty demands just such an admission, if that is indeed the intent. An excuse says, “I’m meeting you only because I have to,” in some form or another, reneging responsibility for the meeting.

I had been told that C__ was the one girl on campus (PCC) anyone could walk up to and say, “Good morning, C__. How have you been?”, and receive an unquestioning, “I’ve been doing well, thank you. How about you?” Of course, I didn’t believe it. I’m much too used to girls who would be frightened by something like that.

However, I was convinced to try it. One Sunday after the morning service I caught up with her as she walked back to her dorm. As I caught up with her, I realized that at some point I had started believing that it would work: that she would answer as predicted. It dawned on me all that such an answer would indicate about her, and hence, what kind of person I must have believed her to be — my kind of person. She answered verbatim.

If that’s when I met her, the following Thursday is when she met me.

First, let me say that girls, and really, people in general, can be divided (Yes, everyone divides the world into categories. I’m no different on that count.) into three categories: specifically good, specifically bad, and neutral. Only the first group is really worth anyone’s time.

So I ran into her after chapel and chatted with her about the sermon. (Dr. Carl Stelzer, Dean of the Division of Bible, and one of my favourite preachers here at school, had spoken that morning. His sermons are never weak surface glazings, but deep, thought-provoking exegeses.) Though I wasn’t consciously intending so, the conversation was, in a way, a test — which she passed.

*****

The second point of honesty I require in relationships is one of process. I don’t like the silly charade most people put on. There can be a guy and a girl who like each other, and know that the other likes them, but nothing is spoken. In fact, they will pretend, and even state outright (which is a lie), mere friendship. I suppose they just aren’t mature enough to interact in a social setting with any admitted feelings between them (which doesn’t excuse the lie).

Eventually, when the guy decides the time is right, he’ll climb out of his trench, stand in the no-man’s-land waving a white flag, and hope she comes out of her trench rather than simply shooting him from where she is. How much easier would it have been to never pretend “friends with no intentions” than to have a façade which must be admitted to at the last?

So, having met C__ honestly, with no pretense, and nothing to make her think that mayhap I just wanted to be friends, I proceeded to get to know her on a likewise honest basis. (Now, I never came out and said it, since that would have been an indication that I was intending to act immediately, which I wasn’t.) To try to ensure that I wasn’t communicating “just friends”, I acted as obviously as I thought was within decorum. She always received special treatment at my hands. For example, when I would join the group outside the dining hall: “Hey guys. Good evening, C__.”

*****

The Following Day

So ends one of the most profoundly influential chapters of my life. Strange, isn’t it? I’ve dated (S__) once before, for about a year and a half — not much longer than my pursuit of C__ lasted: S__ had orders of magnitude less of an effect on my life and how I live it.

Now, the lightness has in some measure worn off. I am left with a friend — something with which I thought I would never escape. She proved her continued friendship (now on the tenuous pedastal of Plato — Hemingway said that “Women made such swell friends. In the first place, you had to be in love with a woman in order to have a basis for friendship.”) today, and I now have that to cherish as I go on alone.

The time has finally come for me to live by what I speak. I am complete in myself, or so I say. Her presence had polarized me, and now, in her absence, I find myself pointing, compass-like, towards any who seems able to fulfill my expectations. Once my oscillations have completed, I may drift, again a perfect neutral sphere, whole again in myself, and again with all of myself able to meet and meld with another, not demanding my completion from her, but on equal terms.

I will play by my rules. I will not lie, and I will not apologize for it. Here I stand. I can do no other. Posted via Passage to Serendipity