I’m really no good at adapting – “no one changes you” being the way my ex-wife summed it up – so it’s not a surprise that I’m having some difficulty living in Arizona. I went to a pizza place on Saturday without any cash, and asked for a nearby ATM. The voice of the guy in the pizzeria made it clear that it was a bit far to walk, but I like walking and wasn’t tired, so I walked – it was about a half mile, despite being on Broadway in the “heart” of the city – to the nearest bank. There was a walk-up ATM, but it was broken. So I went around back to the drive-through ATM, where three cars were already on line. So I got behind the last car, standing there. Two other cars came up behind me – giving the weird guy standing there a whole lot of room. I got my cash and went back to the pizza place. It was the third time that I’ve had to use a drive-through ATM on foot since I’ve been here. I’m perfectly willing to say that everyone else is crazy, and I’m the sane one.
Adaptation.
05-Feb-12Everything and Anything But Edifying.
05-Feb-12“This expression, ‘God’s world,’ may sound sentimental to some ears. For me it did not have this character at all. To ‘God’s world’ belonged everything superhuman – dazzling light, the darkness of the abyss, the cold impassivity of infinite space and time, and the uncanny grotesqueness of the irrational world of chance. ‘God,’ for me, was everything – and anything but ‘edifying.’” – Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
Saguaro.
05-Feb-12
Night in the Desert.
05-Feb-12
Feeling horribly contained by urban life here, I drove out of the city not really knowing where I was going and pulled my truck to the side of the road by a small shrine about fifty miles into the desert. I pulled out my sleeping bag and found a spot where the rocks were a little less sharp and laid it out there.
I was told by Tucson people that I would be left alone if I did this, and I would have no trouble with the police. This ended up being about as true as it can possibly be for me: during the course of the night I had to deal with police officers only three times. I will give them credit, though, that unlike Eastern police officers they seemed to have something more important to do than harass me, so they figured out that I was doing no harm and just left me there. But the general rule that it is very hard to escape the grip of civilization applies. In truth this gets me a little depressed. I’m sure I could have carefully researched a place to get away from civilization, but that would have depressed me only more.
My first choice of pull-off location was driving down someone’s driveway on private property, where my truck would be completely hidden, but the driveway had a large number of fresh vehicle tracks in the sand and I did not want to risk an encounter with a landowner in the middle of the night with a beat-up truck that could almost pass for Mexican in border country. Hiding the truck seemed unwise for the same reason: I figured it’d be better just to advertise that I was there and presume no one would bother with me. Anyway, my last visit from the cops was around nine p.m. and so I got a little peace after that. I had to deal with the cop-talk, of course, which always makes me want to contemptuously speak the truth: when I said I just wanted to sleep in the desert, I got the question: “And do what?” And eat pecans, I wanted to say. I had a bottle of lemonade and a bag of pecans with me.
It was a terrible night for stars as there was a bright moon that stuck around all night. I suppose I’ll have to plan more effectively to get some stargazing in. But I did have an impressive dream, worth the trip: I dreamt, without being aware that it was a dream, that a coyote came up to me and lay down on top of me, snuggling so close to my face that I couldn’t see him or move very well. He was quite affectionate and intended to be my pet. Then I heard the cry of a coyote in the distance, and then another in response, and another, and another. These other coyotes were hunting us: and both I and my new friend quivered in terror to hear their voices, that they were so close and surrounding us.
The dream is a good specimen of the coniunctio oppositorum in an archetype: here the coyote appears in both his kind and malevolent forms. This pattern may be the key to any mature understanding of God. Sullivan has a piece today about David Attenborough (a childhood hero of mine) and his uncertain relationship with religion; the conflict is put thus by Eric MacDonald:
[T]here could certainly be a god that was consistent with evolution, but that god would be, without a doubt, either evil and cruel, or powerless. And neither type of god would be religiously meaningful. This was Darwin’s problem. He realised, over the years, more and more, that the theory he had discovered was simply inconsistent with the goodness of god, and duck and dive as they please, no one has suggested how to make evolution consistent with a god’s goodness.
For “evolution” of course read “nature, as it actually is.” Reason may have some trouble reconciling these things, the horror and the joy of our existence, but our dreams do not: and if you start thinking of Abraham and Isaac, Jacob and the angel, Joseph in the well, Job, the Crucifixion, and many more such stories, they too contain the horror every bit as much as the joy.
The shrine was notable in that its front was lined with iron bars, to suggest a prison. This is absolutely the feeling I get being in a city, and as soon as I saw the shrine I knew I was going to be sleeping there. Here too is the conjoining of opposites.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IAhDGYlpqY
Language changes, and words take on new meanings in time, but this is an example of a meaning-shift a bit bewildering to me. I’ve seen it enough so I should be fine with it; but the word “religion” is being used to mean “everything I dislike about religion” or “bad religion.” Here in this Youtube video “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus” the speaker, after a list of grievances against the churches, goes on to state a series of propositions about life which in the aggregate would have no other name than a “religion.” I agree with the video’s speaker theologically, and I do think that Jesus’s attempts to reform Judaism are steps that are universally applicable to all religions. Still, to me this would be like Copernicus saying “I hate Science” because everyone around him subscribed to Ptolemy’s geocentrism. And this is a widespread phenomenon: people who entertain any number of propositions about the meaning of life and a Deity and a mode of life in accord with those propositions will still bristle at the term “religion.” A psychological complex like that, buried in the subconscious, is often enough to push a word’s meaning around. We’ll see what happens. I’m generally of the opposite tendency – if a thing is of ultimate importance to someone I am inclined to call it their “religion” – “art is my religion,” “pleasure is my religion,” etc., echoing Paine’s “My church is the world, to do good, my religion.”
Latin-teaching Blogging.
29-Jan-12Since I’m back in the classroom, I’m going to put up a few pieces about the nuts and bolts of Latin teaching, as I go through various topics through the school year. “Write what you know.”
Selling Toxic Bird Seed.
29-Jan-12This is a real pleasant item from corporate America:
On the same week Scotts Miracle Gro tried to buy an image upgrade by sponsoring the National Wildlife Federation, word has come out of a federal court that the company will pay millions of dollars in fines for selling bird seed it knew was tainted with pesticides toxic to birds.
Though the company had no comment yesterday, it pleaded guilty to charges that it sold 73 MILLION UNITS of tainted bird seed from 2005 to 2008. According to an article in today’s Columbus, Ohio, newspaper, the company continued to sell the bird seed “despite warnings in the summer and fall of 2007 from a pesticide chemist and an ornithologist, both of whom worked for the company.”
I have really got to stop being surprised by human beings. I find it just about unthinkable that high-ranking people in a large company would knowingly sell poison for people to feed to wild animals – millions of knowing units of it, no less. If I had a child who gave the old lady down the block poison to put in her birdfeeder, I’d be astonished at the child’s malice and deception. And he sure as hell would get punished. But this is adult behavior. And of course no one really will get punished. “Corporations are people,” as Mr. Romney says. And the “person” who did this therefore has gotten his $4.5 million punishment. Accountability is just about the only recourse we have, but it is meager shift for honor and responsibility.
Needless to say, the maker of Miracle Gro and a whole bunch of other lawn products might not be the kind of company gardeners and homeowners want to do business with anymore. The news that Scott’s has now become a major supporter of the National Wildlife Federation only taints the latter, I think.
This Just Doesn’t Stop.
26-Jan-12The headmaster of the Delbarton School has been accused of sexual misconduct with the school’s boys. There are multiple accusers. The (former) headmaster, Fr. Luke Travers, is a Benedictine monk and was headmaster of the school while I was there. He was slightly creepy, but it is only fair to say that a large percentage of priests are slightly creepy and you just get used to that in priests.
And here’s the kicker: the abbey was made aware of the allegations last June. So what did they do? They sent him to Virginia, and apparently did not tell anyone in Virginia about the allegations. While in Virginia he “said Mass to children,” visited a high school, etc. When news of the allegations rocked the school – a very fancy and very expensive all-boys school on the grounds of a monastery – the abbot called the actions – sexual advances during a confession – “a minor boundary violation.” When the abbot’s letter became in itself a story, the abbey went with the “mistakes were made” line. No responsibility, no honor, and hence no religion.
For those who say “this is just a few cases, it’s all been blown up by the liberal media, it happens everywhere,” the Catholic Church earns the same distinction over and over again, for administrative sanction of sexual abuse: in this case by simply shipping the accused off someplace else to be with someone else’s children.
I’ve had associations with two Catholic high schools. The headmaster of the school I went to ended up going to jail for possession of child pornography; now the headmaster of the one I worked for is accused of this.
Trying to Keep a Straight Face.
24-Jan-12Some classic Greenwald cynicism:
UPDATE: White House spokesman Jay Carney previewed President Obama’s State of the Union speech tonight as follows: “The State of the Union will be . . . about the central mission that we have as a country and his focus as president: Building a country and an economy where we reward hard work and responsibility, where everyone does their fair share, and where everyone is held accountable for what they do.” I find it hard to believe that they don’t cynically cackle in private when they come up with these things.
An image which is, admittedly, not too difficult to imagine. As far as reality goes, hard work is taxed more than profiting from ownership (income taxes vs. capital gains taxes). Those are the dominant modern American values, apparently.
The difference between me and Greenwald is that unfortunately I get seduced by talk like this. I evaluate politicians I like by what they say, and politicians I don’t like by what they do. So I say to myself, “Why, Mr. Obama, that’s exactly the kind of country I want too!”
Contraception.
20-Feb-12I’ve been far too busy to write or even think too much – the unhappy result of teaching – but thank goodness for Garry Wills, to express what his Church actually knows and believes.