Berry.5

Wendell Berry's own bourbon.

Halcyon

First of all, it is an African bird. Before that, it was the Greek myth of Alcyone, who was about to throw herself into the water to commit suicide when she learned about the death of her husband. The gods turned both of them into halcyons (the bird). Her father, the god of the wind, would make the wind calm for 7 days in the winter so that she could lay her eggs in a nest on the water. The halcyon days, then, are the calm days.

From the Oxford English Dictionary:

1390 GOWER Conf. II. 106 (Bodl. MS. 294) Hir briddes it..Of Alceon e name bere. 1398 TREVISA Barth. De P.R. XIX. lxxix. (1495) 910 In the cliffe of a ponde of Occean, Alicion, a see foule, in wynter maketh her neste and layeth egges in vii dayes and sittyth on brood..seuen dayes. 1545 JOYE Exp. Dan. Ep. Ded. (R.), Thei saye, that in the..coldest tyme of the yere, these halcions (making their nestis in the sea rockis or sandis) wille sitte their egges and hatche forth their chickens. c1592 MARLOWE Jew of Malta I. i, How stands the wind? Into what corner peers my halcyon's bill? a1631 DRAYTON Noah's Flood (R.), There came the halcyon, whom the sea obeys, When she her nest upon the water lays. c1750 SHENSTONE Elegies v. 22 So smiles the surface of the treach'rous main As o'er its waves the peaceful halcyons play. 1819 J. H. WIFFEN Aonian Hours (1820) 104 The brilliant halcyons..fluttering upon azure wings, appear Loveliest above secluded waters. 1867 Contemp. Rev. VI. 252 The alcyon sits her floating nest.
fig. a1649 DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN Poems Wks. (1711) 39/1 Makes Scotland's name to fly On halcyons wings..Beyond the ocean to Columbus shores. 1880 GOLDW. SMITH in Atlantic Monthly No. 268. 200 The halcyons of literature, art, and science were floating on the calm and sunlit sea.


My favorite is Alan Paton's use of "halcyon days" in Kontakion For You Departed, a memoir upon the death of his wife: "The halcyon days. I write of them with unbelievable longing to have again what one cannot have again, so that my desire to relive what cannot be relived begins actually to war against my knowledge, final and ineluctable, that it cannot be done. ... The halcyon days. And that means not only the sweetest days of life, it means also the days that cannot be lived again, except in memory."


The idea of a time of peace in the winter for the birth of a baby is strangely reminiscent of the birth of Christ and even of the Pax Romana (okay, I don't know if Christ was born in the winter).

Rudolph the Recycled Reindeer

Eco decorating? Goodness gracious, can't we understand that the best way to go green is not by talking about it? Isn't the point less stuff and not much, much more eco-friendly stuff? For instance, can't we have just a couple of Christmas decorations that we use year after year rather than faddish new "recycled" Christmas decorations? This is exhausting.

Quality Mnemonic

I needed to remember the number 837401573 and one of my [male!] friends suggested:

I want to have 8 children by the time I'm 37, but for this to happen, my husband will need a [good!] 401K. 4 plus 1 equals 5, and hopefully by the time I'm 73 (the reverse of 37), I'll be done having children.

This is priceless because it repeatedly cracks me up, plus I don't think I'll ever be able to forget this number. What a friend, Jack!

Demanovka

And another...

Demanovka

Besides Benedictine, this is the most wonderful drink. And it greatly increases one's ability to pronounce Slovak words. In fact, with Demanovka, I was able to pronounce even Slovak tongue twisters correctly.

To the Calvinists, Who, Like Gnostics, Think that God is Evil

Unde Malum

Where does evil come from?

It comes

from man

always from man

only from man - Tadeusz Rozewicz



Alas, dear Tadeusz,

good nature and wicked man

are romantic inventions

you show us this way

the depth of your optimism

so let man exterminate

his own species

the innocent sunrise will illuminate

a liberated flora and fauna

where oak forests reclaim

the postindustrial wasteland

and the blood of a deer

torn asunder by a pack of wolves

is not seen by anyone

a hawk falls upon a hare

without witness

evil disappears from the world

and consciousness with it

Of course, dear Tadeusz,

evil (and good) comes from man.


Czeslaw Milosz

Man is evil and depraved; therefore, God must be, too.

Too Late the Phalarope

The one luxury I allowed myself this weekend (okay, I admit, that's an exaggeration) was Alan Paton's Too Late the Phalarope. It is an exploration of the tension created when a particular society's laws (South African laws under apartheid) conflict with natural law. It reminds me of Huck's ironic self-condemnation in Huckleberry Finn for not turning in Jim, the escaped slave. This raises the question of the relationship between the particular and the universal, between family and friends, between one's language and place and people of other languages and places. This is the great question, I think, for communitarians and agrarians.

As for the best coffee shop in America, I think I can safely suggest that it is in Austin.

Weddinging

When I saw:

"7:00 Toasts
7:05 First dance
8:00 Toss bouquet
8:15 Last dance
8:20 Pass out rose petals
8:20 Goodbye shots"

on a wedding schedule, I didn't think "photographer"; I thought, "Wow. 'Goodbye shots.' That's a cool idea. Everyone does shots to honor of the beginning of the marriage. I'm down with that." Alas. Sadly mistaken.

Rant, Notably Not about Men, Or On Manicures

Manicures are a problem. A) They make you unable to properly use your hands. B) They aren't particularly pretty; actually, they look a little absurd. C) A real feminist wouldn't get them, I think.

Bells and Pomegranates

Exodus 28: 33 "You shall make on its hem pomegranates of blue and purple and scarlet material, all around on its hem, and bells of gold between them all around"

I've always wondered what the significance is of the pomegranate in the Old Testament on the hem of the priests' robes. It is interesting, too, that Mary is sometimes portrayed holding a pomegranate. (It is also a symbol for Armenia, representing, among other things, fertility.)

Mary holding a pomegranate reminds me of some lines from Ash-Wednesday: "The desert in the garden the garden in the desert / Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed." I'm convinced (wrongly?) that these lines, at least at one level, refer to Mary (the Lady of Silences) and her act of bearing Christ, who Eliot also refers to as the silent Word. The pomegranate is an interesting fruit because it is comprised of many little fruits, each surrounding a rather predominant seed. These fruits are held together in one.

Anne of the World

Japanese people, of all people, are evidently particularly enthralled by Anne of Green Gables (and have been since World War 2). As someone who is enthralled by Anne myself, I'm intrigued by their intrigue.

Here is an attempt to identify overlaps:

I see three points of resonance between Anne of Green Gables and traditional Japanese culture. The first one is the prominence of natural imagery in Anne of Green Gables. Every chapter begins with an evocation of the seasonal setting for the events in the narrative. This accords perfectly with the practices of classical Japanese literature. For example, the Tale of Genji, a work written by a woman around 1008 AD that has been canonized as the foundation of the Japanese literary tradition, builds every chapter around seasonal imagery in a way quite similar to Anne of Green Gables. [...]

A second factor for the easy acceptance of Anne of Green Gables by Japanese readers might be that Anne's character accords with the Japanese conception of a child's mind and character. Traditionally children were assumed to have magokoro, "sincerity of heart." Anne's purity of heart maintained despite the trauma and abuse she suffered as an orphan is in harmony with this conception.

The third aspect of Anne of Green Gables that resonates with Japanese culture is Anne's high moral standard in relinquishing of her scholarship at the end of the book to assist Marilla after Matthew's death. Her decision can be considered an act of filial piety, made all the more poignant because she is an adopted child. Adoption was common within the large multi-family networks of traditional Japan. To sacrifice an opportunity of one's own to take care of a parent rings true with all that is considered noble in traditional Japanese morality, and while an adopted child was expected to abide by the same code as birth children, there was a recognition that full and willing compliance with that code by an adopted child was a touching expression of moral character.

Prayer of Confidence

When we sit down at the cross formed by two ways

And must choose regret along with remorse

And dual fate forces us to pick one course

And the keystone of two arches fixes our gaze,


You alone, mistress of the secret, attest

To the downward slope where one road goes.

You know the other path that our steps chose,

As one chooses the cedar for a chest.


And not through virtue, which we don’t possess.

And not for duty, which we do not love.

But, as carpenters find the center of

A board, to seek the center of wretchedness,


And to approach the axis of distress,

And for the dumb need to feel the whole curse,

And to do what’s harder and to suffer worse,

And to take the blow in all its fulness.


Through that sleight-of-hand, that very artfulness,

Which will never make us happy anymore,

Let us, o queen, at least preserve our honor,

And along with it our simple tenderness.


Charles Peguy

Wikipedia delightfully calls Peguy a "devout but non-practicing Roman Catholic," which is actually a really sad bit--he never joined the Church as a result of family circumstances, but did adopt other many Catholic beliefs. This was part of the tension that he struggled with and felt deeply. There are obviously many elements of the dark night of the soul in this poem.

And a bit more:

Heureux ceux qui sont morts pour la terre charnelle;

mais pourvu que ce fût dans une juste guerre.

Heureux ceux qui sont morts dans les grandes batailles,

couchés dessus le sol à la face de Dieu

[..]Heureux les épis murs et les blés moissonnés... (for Ilana)

"In democratic ages, on the contrary, the duties of each to all are much clearer but devoted service to any individual much rarer. The bonds of human affection are wider but more relaxed."--Tocqueville, "Of Individualism in Democracies," Democracy in America



This worries me for several reasons: 1) It resonates with my own experience--it is easy to make many friends, but more difficult to properly serve them; 2) The question of caring for the elderly is relevant here. Not only are many children choosing not to care for their ageing parents in their own home, but many parents are refusing to let their children care for them as they age. We esteem a false and unsustainable independence that forces us to reject our condition of dependence. We deprive others of the privilege of serving and grandchildren of the seeing the responsibilities that family carries.

On the Elevation of the Eucharist

Numbers 21:7-9 "Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD, and against thee; pray unto the LORD, that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people. And the LORD said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived."

John 3:14 "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up"

A striking aspect of the snake story is that it is a snake that is lifted up on a pole to cure the men of snake bites. This parallels the need for the Incarnation.

Additionally, the difference between the Ascension and the Assumption is interesting and vaguely related. With the ascension that locus of action is in the person ascending. Christ is elevating Himself. Assumption, on the other hand, implies being acted upon. Mary was the first to be assumed--Christ elevated her in an elevation that we, too, can hope for.

Eliot the Agrarian (Or, Eliot with Tobacco)

Because the two, of course, are connected:

"The essential point is that agriculture ought to be saved and revived because agriculture is the foundation for the good life in society; it is, in fact, the normal life."--Eliot

"To many people nowadays, there is nothing complex about the moral issue of tobacco. They are simply against it. They will sit in their large automobiles, spewing a miasma of toxic gas into the atmosphere, and they will thank you for not smoking a cigarette. They will sit in a smoke-free bar, drinking stingers and other lethal beverages, and wonder how smokers can have so little respect for their bodies. They will complacently stand in the presence of a coal-fired power plant or a nuclear power plant or a bomb factory or a leaking chemical plat, and they will wonder how a tobacco farmer can have so little regard for public health. Well, as always, it matters whose ox is being gored. And tobacco, I am obliged to confess, is my ox." --Berry, "The Problem of Tobacco," Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community

The Green Fairy, The Green Goddess, The Green Muse, The Glaucous Witch, The Queen of Poisons

(Thanks Myrhh)

Guestblog: My Penetrating Insights into the Mysteries of Life

Taken from an email I received commenting on my recent reprieve from facebook:

I was searching for your Facebook.com site and couldn't find it. This could only be for a few reasons:

1) [deleted]
2) You were being stalked by a Facebook.com-lover
3) You were caught stalking someone else
4) You decided to focus all your "energies" on the blog that I still don't know about
5) Your roommate told you that you can only have a facebook.com site on the even-numbered months
6) Your computer broke and since you couldn't see your profile every 15 min., you asked your sister to delete your site because it wasn't going to be worth it if you couldn't be properly addicted
7) You added the "smell-application" and couldn't get your computer to stop smelling like your friends (needless to say, your friends don't shower "all that much")
8) Your roommate deleted your site
9) You decided that it didn't aesthetically accord with your cigarette holder (I mean, really, who could simultaneously have a cigarette holder and a Facebook.com site... Would Audrey Hepburn have a Facebook.com site?)
10) Your priest told you that it was in accordance with Vatican II, but that still didn't mean it was good for your health (according to the latest social studies released by the Vatican Council's document "Things that cannot Properly be Studied " (TPS reports)
11) Hegel would have had one
12) Kant thought it disobeyed the categorical imperative
13) TS Eliot thought it was narcissistic
14) TS Eliot was narcissistic
15) You were thinking about Camus' saying, "the most important question in philosophy is whether or not to commit suicide," answered in the negative, and decided to put this in the so-called 'concrete' realm by deleting your Facebook.com site
16) You were thinking about the second-half to Camus's saying (i.e., the most important question in political philosophy is whether or not to get out of bed) and decided that the next best thing was to delete your Facebook.com site
17) TS Eliot rejected you as a friend
18) You didn't think the form matched the content. I mean, how could your life be adequately expressed in such a medium?
19) Your sister told you that it was "gay" to have one at Oxford
20) You wanted to have only those so-called "artificial" friends that you can "contract" at the mall. You now no-longer speak to anyone except those whom you have met at the mall. Plus, you were worried about the pending difficulties when Facebook.com releases its latest application, "Mall Friends," and decided the only non-contradictory way out was to simply delete it.

If I were a bettin' man, I would put money on 1, 6, 9, 11, 17, and 20.

A Sympathetic Devil

There are elements of the Western in Don Giovanni. Or perhaps it would be the reverse--there are elements of Don Giovanni in the Western. Don Giovanni is on the edge of civilization; he cannot become part of it, really. It is not the pursuit of justice even outside of the law, however, that prevents his assimilation into the society. Rather, it is his own insatiable appetite for women. But there is something to love--his refusal to be manipulated by women, his swordsmanship and bravery (he scared away three men simultaneously in a sword fight), his daring. And in an world that is devoid of much passion and eros, this is an important corrective. The ending, however, is entirely fitting. It is the statue of a man he killed--the statue of a woman he wronged-who finally takes vengeance. Here we see a wonderful representation of the society as enduring through time and including even the dead. How appropriate that his punishment is through this father of the city. But I wonder if there isn't something Milton-esque about this, too--the devil ought to be in hell, but he ought to be an interesting devil.

Duchess-Nun

My first saint's day! Blessed Margaret, which I celebrated before my conversion and on which occasion I received cookies from my roommate's mother as she wanted to include me in their saint's day celebrations. Margaret was the daughter of a duke and the wife of another duke and the mother of three children, who she raised alone after the death of her husband. Subsequently, she became a nun and founded a convent. These saints are very interesting--the ones who were, at different times, nuns and wives and mothers. They got to live out different, complementary signs of the marriage of Christ to the Church.

Newspaper Ethics

"The very concept of news celebrates newness. The value of news, like that of any other commodity, consists primarily of its novelty, only secondarily of its informational value. ... [T]he news appeals to the same jaded appetite that makes a spoiled child tire of a toy as soon as it becomes familiar and demand a new one in its place." --Christopher Lasch, The True and Only Heaven

I read the NYTimes headlines in because my colleagues guilt-trip me into thinking that it is an important and responsible activity. The fact is, though, that people who complain that all news is negative are complaining about the wrong thing: I complain that the news exists, or, perhaps it is better to say I complain that people attend to it.

Kayne West, Stronger


Work it harder make it better,
do it faster makes us stronger,
more than ever, hour after
hour work is never over



Th-th-that that don't kill me
Can only make me stronger
I need you to hurry up now
Cause I can't wait much longer
I know I got to be right now
Cause I can't get much wronger
Man I been waitin' all night now
That's how long I've been on ya


Richard Lovelace, To Lucasta, On Going to the Wars


Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind,
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind
To war and arms I fly.


True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.

Yet this inconstancy is such
As you too shall adore:
I could not love thee, dear, so much
Lov'd I not honor more.

The juxtaposition of these two pieces indicates of a shifting conception of love, which is, in the more recent incarnation, lacking any transcendent basis and consequently bankrupt. It is the virtues that one engages in that make love possible, according to Lovelace. The narrator in the poem can only love a woman because he has properly ordered his commitments and loves honor and virtue. We can see that when those virtues are ignored and sex and only sex is central, there is no basis for respect and not possibility for love. The virtues are then replaced with cheap and ineffective imitations that only seek to reinforce the narcissism of lust--accomplishment and strength and patience and work and perseverance, but all in relation to his lust and not to anything outside of it.

"After communion, there will be two second collections, so actually a second and third collection."

Unbelievable. What is the logical conclusion of all this? 15 plus collections after every service. A reduction of the service to a number of collections in a row.

My Ideal Day in DC

If I were a tour guide in DC, this would be my ideal Saturday tour:

Saturday morning would include enjoying the market at Eastern Market (including pixie eggplants and asian pears) and browsing the [remarkably overflowing and fire hazard-ish] books at Capitol Hill Books. From there, we would visit the Library of Congress and my other favorite interior in DC, the National Building Museum. We would end up at the Freer Art Gallery, which is charmingly situated and so small as not to overwhelm. I believe in the Old Ebitt Grill, particularly the vegetable sandwich, which uses breaded eggplant as the outside of the sandwich! And also Murkey Coffee, and particularly the jasmine green tea. We would spend the evening in Old Town Alexandria, walking by the water.

La Forêt

During a walk by my creek this afternoon I

realized that marriage should be like these trees:

first growing seperately and then growing

together toward the light.

By Myrhh, Guestblogger

I'm struck by this passage in First Samuel about Hannah, whose womb has been closed by the Lord:


Therefore Hannah wept and would not eat. And Elkanah, her husband, said to her, "Hannah, why do you weep? And why do you not eat? And why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than ten sons?"


Would you ever have expected such a loving response from an Old Testament husband? I mean, what a sweet and understanding thing to say. On the other hand, husbands really are different from children, so maybe it's not quite so understanding. But still very loving.

The sun set; the dusk fell on the stream, and lights began to appear along the shore. The Chapman lighthouse, a three-legged thing erect on a mud-flat, shone strongly. Lights of ships moved in the fairway--a great stir of lights going up and going down. And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars.

"And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth."


He was the only man of us who still "followed the sea." The worst that could be said of him was that he did not represent his class. He was a seaman, but he was a wanderer, too, while most seamen lead, if one may so express it, a sedentary life. Their minds are of the stay-at-home order, and their home is always with them--the ship; and so is their country--the sea.

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness

Two points: A) Marlow's line is beautiful. And it makes me think of suburban shopping malls--they are dark in a deceptive way. Just as Marlow's comment about the dark places of the earth was preceded by comments about the lights emerging in the darkness, and the light-of-sorts of the town really being a type of darkness, so shopping malls appear to be quaint, well-manicured areas for civilized people to love and linger in. In reality, though, they depict an apparent satisfaction that masks a deep problem, a pretty veneer of plastic over the uncontrollable problems of nature. Only a people with ill-formed notions of beauty would see it there.

B) And connected to the previous point, it is necessary to be wanderers, and not ones who are at home with their wandering. One's home is not the ship. The ship is a temporary place. The primary problem is (A) that people aren't wanderers--they are content, rather, with a sedentary life. The second problem is that when people wander, they wander as a vocation. The point of wandering is eventual rest.

Unity

As a Coleridgian myself, it is hard for me to ever admit of a circumstance in which unity and coherence is not the highest goal. One must admit, however, that there might be a circumstance in which unity is not, in fact, the greatest good.

One thing that Lincoln is quite good at is focusing the people and keeping them on task: "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in" or "It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain." It is interesting to compare this with popular responses to more recent wars, in which it seems evident that people are not willing to claim a cause that is higher than life--a cause that they are willing to die for. It seems that here the unity toward which Lincoln encourages the people is entirely fitting--it is a unity of purpose, a singleness of mine to achieve the objective that they set out to achieve.

The murals above the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural in the Lincoln Memorial are also telling. For instance, one depicts justice and law, which is somewhat ironic, given Lincoln's apparent distaste for the law. Another mural depicts immortality. What is it that is immortal? Lincoln? I think not. The Union? Come now, is the nation partaking in the wine of the Eucharist? And how beautiful, the mural that shows the angel of Unity bringing together the North and the South in order that all manner of arts and philosophy will be allowed to blossom! Clearly, the agrarian South could not, by its backward lonesome, manage to produce art. Surely the industrialization of the North is necessary to allow for that.

Fabulous Things I Heard on the Radio

Jesus deletes your sins like files from a computer.