Arcadia Est Imperare Orbi Universo

Clearly, this morning I awoke in an alternate world.

I was jolted out of bed by my clock radio, having reset itself to a hitherto unknown station, blaring the discordant noise of a young man screaming the lyrics to the song stylings known as "heavy metal". It certainly had the same sort of effect one imagines plutonium to the brain might produce.

This was followed by a commercial, where a gentlemen who might have been Mr Gene Simmons earnestly addressed the listener as "dude".

On the way to the train station, I was overcome by the sudden realization - nay, epiphany - that the reason there weren't any ducks in the duck pond in Leadworth is because they were with Londo Mollari, nibbling him to death.

Twice, my train came to a gentle stop without a station in sight. Both times were in farm country. Presumably it had something to do with the cows. Or possibly ducks.

I don't know what any of this means, but I'm looking forward with some trepidation to the remainder of the morning.

On this day in 1828, the mysterious foundling Kaspar Hauser was discovered wandering the streets of Nuremberg. He died of stab wounds on 17 December 1833 in Ansbach, exactly 133 years before my birth.

What this all means, I've no idea.

Feast of Saint Theresa of Avila
Seattle

Dearest reader,

During my morning commute, I usually do the crossword puzzle in the venerable Tacoma News Tribune. It's usually enough to wake my brain, though they are not so difficult that I can't use a pen to fill them in.

This morning, one of the clues was "Ragamuffin". This immediately put a silly children's counting rhyme into my head:

Ragamuffin, ragamuffin
Hovel for a nest
Tell us now
Who is the best.

It's the sort of thing children use to determine sides or captains for ad hoc ball games and the like.

Except that I don't know whether it actually exists or I made it up.

Has anyone heard of this before?

The experience was made slightly more surreal when the words "hovel" and "nest" proved to be answers in the puzzle - answers I hadn't yet filled in when the rhyme occurred to me.

In other news, today is the feast of Saint Theresa of Avila, one of the great Doctors of the Church. In college I was once called upon to write three essays about her, one from a Marxist perspective, one from a Freudian perspective, and one from a Kierkegaardian perspective.

Needless to say, the sum of the essays was no where near the total of her life and work. I think the Kierkegaard one was the most ridiculous of all. I wrote it without notes from the top of my drunken head on an electric typewriter the night before it was due.

It was my best grade in the class.

Feast of the First Martyrs of the Church of Rome
On the Sounder Train, near Sumner, Washington

Dear and faithful reader,

I've been sleeping poorly, mostly due to continuing nightmares in which my son prominently features.

To take my mind from this troubled vale (and perhaps to entertain or excite you, my one faithful reader), I present some interesting links.

Jackson dies, almost takes Internet with him - best recent news headline

Carcosa intrudes: the astounding Amargosa Opera House of Marta Becket.

And speaking of Carcosa, here is an extremely interesting essay on Beauty and Desecration: explaining why "we must rescue art from the modern intoxication with ugliness". Just fascinating.

Yesterday being the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, I was reminded of a place I found beautiful: the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls. Nowadays, you can tour part of it without ever going to Rome.

Those who enjoy maps, or history, or the shady edge of myth may enjoy the Atlas of True Names.

Just when you thought the world could not possibly be any more surreal, here come the superheroes.

Speaking of surreal, go read a few of Greg Homer's book reviews.

And then there's the physicist trying to build a time machine.

I think that should be enough for now.

Dove milk chocolate wrappers have little sayings in them, meant to be romantic suggestions or thoughts.

This morning mine said "whisper in the dark".

Indeed.

This is the second one of these I've received.

Desperately in need of amusement, and, having found some things that amused (or amazed) me recently, I thought I'd share them in this forum with you, my one reader.

The deeply weird platypus is even weirder than you thought.

Gregorian chanting can reduce blood pressure and stress.

And finally, I recommend to you, my dear reader, this essay: C. S. Lewis and the Star of Bethlehem: Recovering the medieval imagination.

Try to get over the fact that Mr Lewis was a Christian, and this essay by Mr Michael Ward appears in Christianity Today. This essay is Important.

[T]he medieval universe was "tingling with anthropomorphic life, dancing, ceremonial, a festival not a machine".

Somewhere along the line, our western view of the universe changed from Mythopoeic to Mechanical. Fair enough; I like my electric toaster just as much as the next fellow.

But our mode of imagining the universe largely changed in the same way, and something vital and wondrous in our civilization died.

Or perhaps it only slumbers, and raises again its hoary head from time to time and shakes the rime from its beard. Or perhaps the whole idea of the universe as a metaphor for itself in anything but mathematics is irrational.

Frankly, I've sometimes found myth more rational than math, but perhaps that's just the way my imagination works.

Anyhow, read the essay. Then come back here and tell me what you think.

And, if possible, relate it to the platypus. And Gregorian chant.

Edited to add: Mr David Brooks writes an essay about the essay that pegs it.

It's warm and it's muggy. The kind of weather where jackets are shed and hats left behind.

It's also raining.

In the morning at my bus stop, there are three women who beg for change. They're never all there at once; this morning was the first time that I've seen two together.

They are three very different women. The oldest is an enormously overweight black woman with close-cropped hair. She typically wears brightly-coloured muumuus and oversized hoop earrings that dangle nearly to her shoulders.

The second is a thin, middle-aged Hispanic woman, hair coiffed and carrying a briefcase. She, like the first, is well-groomed (and professionally dressed). When they ask for money, you are always surprised.

The third is a twenty-something Anglo, stringy blonde hair, sweat pants and a dirty tee-shirt. Each time I see her, she has a different physical ailment. Once she had her leg in a brace. Most recently, she sported a freshly-broken nose with two black eyes.

As different as these women are physically, they always ask the same thing. They always ask for 75¢ to ride the bus. Mind you, the bus fare is $1.50, but they always ask for 75¢.

On several occasions, I've given them some change. On each occasion, the woman in question has walked (or hobbled) immediately to the convenience store on the corner and come out with a can of beer in a brown paper bag and a bottle of Pepsi. In each case, they've calmly sat back down at the bus stop and opened both, drinking alternately.

In one case, the woman in question thanked me for the bus fare while she sipped her Pepsi.

Needless to say, I don't give them change any more.

I've never seen any of the three actually get on the bus. Sometimes, they wander up MLK Ave. (always going south, the direction from which the bus comes), or they just stay on the bench.

It's like they took the same class or something.

All three of them wear sandals in all weather.

What brought this to mind was this: today two of them were at the bus stop. In the three minutes I waited for the bus, both the woman in the enormous lime-green muumuu and the woman in the charcoal grey suit asked me for 75¢.

As the bus arrived, the lime-green muumuu trundled south down MLK. The charcoal grey suit sat down on the bench.

Both wore the same type of sandals.

As I was getting on the bus, I had the distinct impression that they were the Norns, slumming in Tacoma.

So what was your morning like?

This story in the New York Times actually made me cackle with glee:

What began as a routine training exercise almost ended in an embarrassing diplomatic incident after a company of Swiss soldiers got lost at night and marched into neighboring Liechtenstein. ...

Interior ministry spokesman Markus Amman said nobody in Liechtenstein had even noticed the soldiers, who were carrying assault rifles but no ammunition. ''It's not like they stormed over here with attack helicopters or something,'' he said.

Remember, remember the fifth of November,
gunpowder, treason and plot,
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes,
'twas his intent
to blow up the King and the Parliament.
Three score barrels of powder below,
Poor old England to overthrow:
By God's providence he was catch'd
With a dark lantern and burning match.



And on a related note, happy birthday rhonan!

 

Comment with your username (or some other witticism) and I'll give you an honest compliment. Then post this in your journal and spread the love.

And if I don't know you, um, well...I'll do my best. Don't be surprised if some of them are a trifle... odd.

First seen at ladyeuthanasia but apparently widespread.

Anybody interested in a relic of the True Cross?

( Description )

This reading struck me powerfully. A note to myself.

( From today's Office of Readings for the Feast of St. Bartholomew )

Casilda (sic) of the Rising Moon

"A Tale of Magic and of Faith, Of Knights and a Saint in Medieval Spain"

Which of Henry VIII's wives are you?


this quiz was made by Lori Fury




It figures, eh?

---

Into Great Silence, which we saw at SIFF last week, is ostensibly a documentary about the Carthusian monks of Grande Chartreuse.



I say ostensibly, because it is actually a great deal more and less than that. Like the lives of these monks themselves, this film is a meditation on silence. If you are looking for a typical documentary, with history facts and figures, a stirring orchestral soundtrack, and the earnest voice of Ken Burns or James Burke, you will, I fear, be sorely disappointed.

The film intead, documents in the purest sense. The camera follows the monks through the routine of their day and the seasons. They pray, they work, they eat; they do all the ordinary things you might expect a monk to do. But these monks do them in silence.

This film is two hours forty five minutes, of which there are perhaps fifteen minutes total of interview and dialogue.

Instead we hear the ordinary sounds of the world, sounds so common we normally don't hear them at all. In the darkened theatre, however, the shuffling of feet and the opening and closing of doors echo in the seats and begin to take on meaning beyond mere words. We hear the monks at chapel, chanting the hours. We hear birds in windblown trees, singing the days. And the bells, always the bells calling the monks and the audience to prayer.

The rasping sound of scissors cutting cloth was positively terrifying.

A handful of people in the audience couldn't stand the silence. They left.

The film is, as you might expect, intensely visual. We explore the faces of the monks as if they were the surfaces of alien worlds. Sometimes the camera will focus on an odd bit of the monks' world; the warm eggshell plaster wall of a room, the soft red glow of the tabernacle light in the darkened chapel, the stark white of snow, the intense green of the springtime garden.

At some point, it began to dawn on me that the film was not just a meditation on auditory silence, but also on visual silence. Silence isn't quiet by any means; there are always ambient sounds in nature because nature is alive and moving all the time. The silence we seek is the silence in our own heads and own hearts so that we may listen for God in the breeze.

In the same way, the world of these monks is visually silent. Set amid the stunning beauty of the alps, Grande Chartreuse is a world of stone and plaster and wood, of natural colours and shapes rough-hewn to human purpose. But if we think for a moment that this is a stark black and white and grey place of puritan sensibilities, the camera invites us to look closer.

Because in even the most basic things, there is a meticulous attention to detail that I found breathtaking.

Wooden floors are carefully inlaid in stately patterns. We catch a glimpse of a ceiling, painted with portrait cameos of long ago abbots. The seats in the choir are intricately carved.

And this meticulous attention to detail doesn't stop with the stately and the permanent. We see the monks exercise this intense mindfulness in everything they do, whether it's carefully fixing a hiking boot or measuring and cutting wood for the stoves or digging the snow from the garden. They are careful; they are methodical; they are living the hell out of the moment they're in.

What a contrast this was when we walked out of the theatre onto University Street in Seattle, with its cacophany of colour and noise. Every human projecting their lifestyle and image and style in what they wore and how they talked. Constant talk. Bright clashing colour. Jarring street noise. Everyone and thing projecting noise.

I was disoriented and had a hard time taking it in. Like I was stoned. It was just too much to process.

In fact, I rapidly discovered that the only way to function was to ignore huge swaths of it, to just not see the danger green dumpster in the alley or the constant crush of faces desperately trying to project their uniqueness.

I found I could only function in the city when I deliberately discarded that silence and mindfulness that we had just spent three hours cultivating. Ultimately, this film is not really a documentary about monks at all, but rather a damning indictment of the pace and frenzy of the modern world.

Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. (1 Kings 19:11-12)

In the Middle Ages between the Ancient Empire and the so-called Age of Reason, men of property and wealth typically took a motto to their arms.

In particular, the Holy Roman Emperors had some wonderful mottos. Charlemagne started it off with a particularly triumphalist bit, Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus triumphat (Christ conquers, Christ reigns, Christ triumphs).

Move along a few centuries to Otto the Great and you get Satius est ratione aequitatis mortem oppetere quam fugere et inhoneste vivere (It is better to die for a good cause than to flee and live without honour). A trifle wordy, perhaps, but a suitably noble sentiment.

From Konrad II we have the wise instruction Omnium mores, tuos imprimis observato (Watch the conduct of everyone, but watch your own the most), and Heinrich IV observes Multi multa sciunt, se autem nemo (Many know much, but no-one knows himself). Albrecht I has the pithy (if somewhat inaccurate) Fugam victoria nescit (Victory knows no retreat).

You can get quite a look into the personalities of these men through the mottos they chose, from Charlemagne's bombast to Konrad's caution.

But then you have Friedrich II.

Good old Friedrich, who has the dubious distinction of being the only person ever excommunicated by the Pope upon returning from a successful crusade. (I will note in passing that Friedrich negotiated the return of Jerusalem to Christian hands without a single battle being fought, which was generally not the way things were done in those days.) He is the only Mediaeval monarch to write a book (On Falconry). He spoke at least eight languages, and he was literate in Latin, Greek, and Arabic.

And what was the motto of this Mediaeval Stupor Mundi?

Comluriuum thiorium ego strepitum audivi (I have heard the wind in the fig trees).

I have heard the wind in the fig trees? Fig trees? What the hell is that supposed to mean?

The lame excuse given by modern historians is that this wistful saying recalls the Emperor's youth in Sicily.

I'm not buying it. Charlemagne's motto wasn't "The Seine scintillates in the springtime". Lothar II didn't opine "My, the cowbells in Bavaria sure are melodic" under his coat of arms.

So what's the deal?

For the record, I'm thinking of adopting "Jefferson never finished Monticello" as my motto. Can anybody put that in Latin?

I was walking past Wright Park, with its dark green trees and quasi-victorian statuary, while the snow fell in swirling ragged clumps around me. (Let those who have eyes, see.) The plaintive, melancholy chant of a throat-singer filled me, thanks to the magic of iPod. (Let those who have ears, hear.)

A startlingly pure and beautiful moment.

Even with the sound turned off, it would have been arresting.

Cars, buses, people mad-dashed all around me, bent on their destinations, impervious to the world and indifferent to the moment.

City of Angels? More like City of Shoggoths.

http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_3529716

Los Angeles officials were still scratching their heads today over what caused a mysterious black goo to burble from streets downtown, forcing the evacuation hundreds of apartment dwellers.

A Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman said investigators had yet to identify the "black tarry substance" more than 24 hours after it erupted at Olive Street and Pico Boulevard. ....

Who can get me samples?

Well, this was brought to my attention this morning.

Go ahead, click on the tiny little image of the cover picture for the enlarged version. Take a look at the man on the cover.

Nah, it's just a coincidence.

Not what I would have picked, but I'll go with it. As I often say, "words create worlds", perhaps this is truer than I suspected.

You are The Magician

Skill, wisdom, adaptation. Craft, cunning, depending on dignity.

Eleoquent and charismatic both verbally and in writing,
you are clever, witty, inventive and persuasive.

The Magician is the male power of creation, creation by willpower and desire. In that ancient sense, it is the ability to make things so just by speaking them aloud. Reflecting this is the fact that the Magician is represented by Mercury. He represents the gift of tongues, a smooth talker, a salesman. Also clever with the slight of hand and a medicine man - either a real doctor or someone trying to sell you snake oil.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Snow today. School was cancelled, but time and newspaper deadlines wait for no man. I'm at work, though I'm hoping to wrap up in the next hour or so.

I just saw the most amazing trailer.

The movie is a documentary, filmed in a cloistered monastery of the Carthusian Order. There are no words. No interviews. Only silence, the ordinary sounds of movement, and chant.

I found it breathtaking.

Break's over; back to work.

Edited to add: The film was reviewed by Variety, and is apparently going to be at Sundance in 2006. Here's hoping for a distribution deal...

Remember, remember the fifth of November,
gunpowder, treason and plot,
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes,
'twas his intent
to blow up the King and the Parliament.
Three score barrels of powder below,
Poor old England to overthrow:
By God's providence he was catch'd
With a dark lantern and burning match.



And on a related note, happy birthday rhonan!

 

My cat is licking his own shadow.

It seems like that should be a portent of... something.

"You see the animals crawling on the ground, swelling and then exploding," German conservationist Werner Smolnik told AFP news agency.... The site - which has been dubbed "the pond of death" - has been closed to the public.

Source

Mmm. Exploding toads.

Today on the way into work, I saw a huge white rat rooting around the bushes. But this is supposed to be about what woke me up last night.

( Dream )