Spirit Move Me

Note I wrote this almost two months ago and saved it as a draft. I was just talking to someone about music reaction videos, so I thought I'd finally publish this.

June 4 --- A couple days ago. I was indulging in one of offbeat pleasures, which is watching Youtube of Millennials and GenZers reacting to hearing classic pop songs from the 1960s-1980s for the first ever time---old standards that most of my generation would easily recognize, but which are completely new to them. There are multiple Youtube channels devoted specifically to this.

Before discover this a couple years ago, it's fair to say that I had burned out on the catalog of songs I grew up with to the point of avoiding listening to them, because they had worn such deep grooves in my mind, and also I could feel overtly the emotions they were meant to create it me, some of which I did not care to feel, and felt resentful they had been foisted on me that way.

But the Youtubers I mention are fun. The vicarious experiences of hearing old familiar songs for the firsts time makes them come alive again. I prefer it usually over the originals in most cases.

It all started because of a line from an old song that got stuck in my head: "whirling like a cyclone in my mind." Anyone deeply familiar with the 1970s pop catalog would instantly recognize that as being a line from "Could It Be Magic?", which was a big hit for Barry Manilow, who became a superstar during those years.

I decided I wanted to hear the song again, as it had been a long time. Since all old songs are on Youtube, it's easy to find them that way, just the recording and not even the music video. But instead of listening to it directly, I decided I preferred to watch a reaction video of it.

The young folk who make these reaction videos (almost always in teams--pairs or more) usually start with a spoken introduction where they talk for a few minutes before putting on their headphones. The song is often one suggested in comments to previous videos. We get to listen along with them as they experience the song for the first time, although sometimes they will say they recognize part of it (because it's been "sampled" by a more contemporary artist).  Often they have never heard of a song that was famous at the time. Sic transit gloria mundi.  

Their biggest challenge is Youtube copyright restrictions. They have to do tricks to keep from being dinged by Youtube for playing a copyrighted song. Almost always that means stopping the song one or more times while it plays, which can be frustrating if you know the song and it is about to come to a cool part. Often their videos get taken down anyway. It depends on who owns the song.

After I discovered these videos, I went on a huge binge of many different Youtube "reaction streamers". Then when I was sated, Youtube's algorithm kept showing me more suggestions for months on end until they finally quit. From time to time I go an a mini binge of watching some of these because they are so fun. My favorite team is probably the Rob Squad, which is a husband and wife (I think) who live in Oklahoma (I think). They have covered a lot of ground of pop music history and watching them react to most songs is a delight. 

"Could it Be Magic?" is one of those songs that I would classify as the cultural peak of its genre for its time.  There are probably ten to twenty such songs throughout that era that define a particular pinnacle of pop music artistry. There is nothing that can match "Could it Be Magic?" as a love ballad (maybe "We've Only Just Begun" by the Carpenters comes to mind). Manilow starts with a piano opening taken from a Chopin prelude and extends it with an original melody, first softly then building it up in intensity, in an attempt (successful I think) to write his own "Hey Jude" (itself certainly one of the "pinnacle songs").  It's weird to think of this playing on the radio across America in the 1970s, but that is the culture in which we lived.

From the first line, "Spirit move me...", the lyrics are mostly beautiful and stirring, occasionally sublime--- well maybe until you get the line about "high up where the stallion meets the sun."  But that's the 1970s for you. After all, we had macramé hanging on our walls and ferns next to the stereo. Note Donna Summer did a disco cover of the song, changing the first line to "spirits move me", which degrades the song to me, changing from something manifestly holy to something evoking a séance. I prefer the Manilow version that does the same invocation as Milton at the beginning of Paradise Lost "and chiefly Thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer before all temples the upright heart and pure..."

The instrumental bridge in the middle makes it one of those songs that seems to transport one to another dimension beyond time---both the past and some other world when one's storylines warp and bend beyond one's current reality. Manilow starts the song in tender softness, as I said, but at the end, he is practically screaming out the lines in passion, like he's trying lead his beloved to safety from a burning building  Nothing like it today. 

I remember when the song was popular on the radio and in the mall, etc. Being curious about timing, I went to Wikipedia and discovered that it was written by Manilow (music) and one of is frequent collaborators (lyrics) in 1970 but at the time Manilow was not yet a recording artist on his own. Three years later he released a version as a B-side with a radically different interpretation  (produced by Tony Orlando (of "Tie a Yellow Ribbon" fame) in a bubblegum style---OMG!). Thankfully they re-recorded and gave us one of the finest compositions of the time. The well-known version that hit number six on the Billboard Chart (only number six! what a time it was!) was released in June 1975, fifty years ago this month.

How many forty-nine year olds are walking around who were...?  Well, you get the idea.

Here is the usual link to the lyrics, for the lyrics challenged. 

And here is the Rob Squad video. 

Spoiler alert: they both loved it.  Such great body energy at the end as they sway.  Rob: "I'm not even going to call that a song. That's a masterpiece." 

Now I just have to avoid watching ten more of the reaction videos after this. Youtube notices when I do that and will push them at me.

Where is the road now?

While reading Vanity Fair today, I remarked on the route of the coach carrying Becky through greater London to reach Queen's Crawley at the of Chapter 7. 

We start in Mayfair at the fictional Great Gaunt Street, which is supposedly based on Hill Street.

the carriage at length drove away --- now, threading the dark lanes of Aldersgate, anon clattering by the Blue Cupola of St. Paul's, jingling rapidly by the strangers' entry of the Fleet-Market, which, with Exeter 'Change, has now departed to the world of shadows -- how they passed the White Bear in Piccadilly, and saw the deew rising up from the market-gardens of Knightsbridge -- how Turnham Green, Brentford, Bagshot were passed -- need not be told here.

Oh, but it must be told, musn't it? Else why else tell it to us? I dig into the route, some of which I already know from my knowledge of historic London:

1. Leaving the Crowley house on Great Gaunt Stree in Mayfair. We start smack in the middle of Westminster, which is the city within Greater London that is just upstream on the Thames from the old City of London.  The river makes a great bend to the south there, as one goes upriver. Right near the bend, in ancient times a small stream one entered the Thames, and as it did so, the stream split, making an eyot, which the name of a island formed in just this manner, by a river or stream splitting before it enters into another larger stream.

This island appears to have been a sacred place to the pagan Celts. It was at this island where the ancient Celtic road network crossed the Thames, or rather, the ancient Britons operated a ferry across the great river, allowing passage to the southern part of the island. Having conquered the island, the Romans had little use for this particular crossing. Instead they made their own, in the form of a wooden pontoon bridge down river, near the one of the last discernible hillocks on the north side of the river.

This bridge was strategic in that it allowed the Romans a short cut to the north side of the Thames estuary on the North Sea, and in particular to Camulodunum, the hilltop settlement of one of the most powerful Celtic tribes. It shaved several miles off the crossing upriver at the eyot. 

The Romans garrisoned the hillock and eventually it became a Roman city with walls and gates. This is what is meant by the "City of London"---the ancient Roman walled city. Within three hundred years, it had the largest Roman forum north of the Alps. The bridge apparently has continued to exist to this day, being rebuilt many times even through the Dark Ages, and is called London Bridge.  London was born Roman and the bridge was its primary purpose. The city was built to protect the bridge and secure the route northward.

2. Aldersgate. The carriage containing Pitt Crawley, Becky Sharp, and the others going eastward, and enters the old City through the ward by this name. Aldersgate was one of the gates in the old Roman walls. It existed through medieval times as was the one used by James Stuart to enter the City as king after the restoration. It was torn down and rebuilt in 1617, damaged in the first of 1666, and finally torn down for good in 1761, over half a century before the events of the story. Nevertheless the name survives even today.

The carriage then passes Fleet-Market (presumably on present day Fleet Street in the City, named for the River Fleet, a tributary of the Thames) and the Exeter 'Change. Both of these had been demolished by the time Thackeray wrote his novel, as he himself notes. 

3. Picadilly, Knightsbridge. But, here's where the route doesn't make sense to me. Why did they go into the City of London, and then suddenly we are in Picadilly, which is back in Westminster? They have backtracked to the west. Then they are at Knightsbridge, which is further west in Westminster. (I have found memories of purchasing a beefeater teddy bear for my nieces at the Harrod's department store at Knightsbridge in November 2000.)

3. Turnham Green, Brentford. Now we are going further upriver into West London.

4. Bagshot. Finally we have crossed the Thames (where?) and in Surrey, the county south of London. This is an interesting little place. From Wikipedia, I learned:

Bagshot is a large village in the Surrey Heath borough of Surrey, England, approximately 27 miles southwest of central London. In the past, Bagshot served as an important staging post between London, Southampton and the West Country, evidenced by the original coaching inns still present in the village today.

Coaching inns for travel to the West Country? Now you are talking. This is interesting. The West Country includes Cornwall. At once I realize that were I to make a trip to Cornwall, I would, after arriving in England, stay several days in Mayfair perhaps.  One could officially begin the tour on the eyot in Westminster that was once sacred to the Celts, where their ferry once crossed the river. and where today one finds Westminster Abbey, which has been the location for coronation of the kings of England for over a thousand years.

Then I'd follow the route of Vanity Fair, going into the City, to experience the ancient Roman fortress that is now the financial district (located where the old Roman forum once stood), and the location of the great edifice of St. Paul's that dominates the river near the latest incarnation of the old bridge.

Then I go back upriver through Westminster, stopping in Picadilly and Knightsbridge, and passing through Turnham Green and Brentford before making my way to Bagshot. There I would stay in the night in one of the old coaching inns before proceeding towards the West Country.

Thackeray, in his whimsical way, indulges us with a nostalgia for the days of coach travel. By the time he wrote Vanity Fair, this way of life had vanished and been replaced within living memory by the rail travel. Aha! I say to myself. This is part of the core significance of the story---life before the railroad.  That is very interesting to me. Here is his description of the lost way of life:

Where is the road now, and its merry incidents of life? ..the honest pimple-nosed coachmen? I wonder where they are, those good fellows? and the waiters, yea, and the inns at which they waited, and the cold rounds of beef inside, and the stunted ostler, with his blue nose and clinking pail, where is he, and where is his generation? ....who shall write novels for the beloved reader's children, these men and things will be as much lengend and history as Nineveh, or Coeur de Lion...For them stage-coaches will have become romances -- a team of four bays as fabulous as Bucephalus or Black Bess. Ah, how their coats shone, as the stablemen pulled their clothes off, and away they went---ah, how their tails shook, as with smoking sides at the stage's end they demurely walked away into the inn-yard. Alas! we shall never hear the horn sing at midnight, or see the pike-gates fly open any more? 

It reminds me of the American nostalgia for the mid century road experience (i.e. Route 66 culture), one that was replaced by the coming of the Interstate highway system. 

The State of the Cornish Language

 What is the Cornish speaking community like?

I’m not sure how accurate it is overall to talk of “the Cornish speaking community” — there’s actually no settled community anywhere in the world where the Cornish language is spoken on a day-to-day basis as anyone’s primary language. There are families where one or both parents speak Cornish fluently and raise their children to speak it, so it’s spoken in the home and with friends and relatives who also speak it. But overall there aren’t very many people who do or have done this. And even if they speak Cornish at home, they’ll have to revert to English as soon as they go out shopping, or when they go to school or the workplace. There just isn’t (yet?) a permanent and self-sustaining community of speakers who can and do use the language constantly in every aspect of their lives, as can be done with Welsh for those who live in a majority Welsh-speaking area. So yes, the only people who can be said to be first language speakers of Cornish are those few who’ve been raised speaking it at home, but there’s really no “total immersion” environment even for them (except for an occasional day or weekend at a language event).

Learning Cornish will be a challenge. It is not the formal aspects of the language itself. I know enough Welsh and Breton to make it seem familiar out of the gate.

The biggest challenge comes the issue in the passage above. There are no geographic communities where one can reasonably expect to use Cornish throughout the day. Of course anything you do on the Internet will be in English, but that's the same situation you see with many other languages right now, which have official language status in nations with their own governments, armies and navies, and businesses that conduct business in that language. English is threatening all other existing languages that way. It wasn't in a position to do this before the Internet, but especially after social media, it is a trend that is accelerating, even in places like France.

Cornish is actually trying to return from extinction. Cornish speakers would love to have the problems of either Welsh or Breton, both which of are in a many better place than Cornish, even despite the longstanding attempts to wipe out the latter by the French government.  But Breton could disappear easily within another two generations and be where Cornish is now. Cornish may actually succeed because it already bottomed out, and has a dedicated community to revive it over time. The fact that anyone speaks it at all at this point is a great success.

But the goal is always to have a community---a town of some size where one can live one's life for most purposes, and which Cornish is the daily language. That means that when a truck goes down the street for, say plumbing, or heating and cooling repair, that the language on the side of the truck is predominantly Cornish.  This is the true dividing line being languages that are living versus ones that are now. Is there such a place as I describe? 

The key social dynamic for stability is whether mothers speak that language with their infants, and continue to speak it with them as they grow up. If this happens the language survives. When it stops, the language dies.

I have read that historians have noted that the Celtic loan words into English, which were acquired after the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Post-Roman Celtic Britain, skew heavily to the distaff---that is, words that would have been used predominantly by women. That means that the Roman-era Celtic British language (which would evolve into Breton, Welsh, and Cornish), hung on among women longer than men. It was conserving aspect of society at the time. 

I have a rather esoteric mystical theory about language learning that the ease of learning a language depends mostly on how many other people speak it. English is easiest. Chinese likewise is a very easy language to master simple sentences and conversation. It has nothing to do with anything about immersion. It applies even if. you are studying by yourself, with no outside help, from a book or tape course. Somehow the mechanism is not concrete in that sense. But it is. It's like the collective brain waves of everyone speaking that language make a sea of such energy vibrations that are tuned to that language specifically, and that it is easiest to plug into that when it is stronger, and harder when it is weaker. A language like Cornish will have a very weak signal, since at the moment I write this, there are less than a thousand people who speak it fluently. But that's probably enough, I think

The Island of Serendipity

 On Saturday it is my practice to attempt to rise early enough to hear the livestream of the Polish version of the Rosary at Lourdes. As opposed to the other daily languages (English, French, Spanish, Italian), they only do Polish once a week, early on Saturday.  Each one takes a half hour exactly and they go right after the other, except after French, when there a break until Spanish, as the French one is broadcast on television and features additional commentary and voice recordings of people calling in their prayers thanking the Holy Mother.

A couple years back I memorized the Polish version of the Lord's Prayer and the Hail Mary, learning them painfully syllable by syllable until it rolls off the tongue. Among other things, listening has embedded the sound and rhythm of. Polish into my brain so I pick out more and more of it over time.

This morning I got up earlier than usual and was out on the patio bringing up the livestream and remendered that before the Polish stream, they have been doing a stream from the Indian subcontinent, a language I do not recognize. The priest also speaks English. I know this because he is often the priest who leads the English version at 6 AM my time. He alternates with an African priest. Both have thick accents indicating their respective origins. 

When I saw the 5 AM version, it bothered me that I could not identify the language being spoken. Was it Hindi, or some other language of India, either Indo-European or Dravidian? This morning I listened particularly closely, trying to identify a reliable grouping of coherent syllables. One step at a time. The first words of the prayer came too fast for now, but there was a build up to the end of the phrase that sounded like "pengula lassi". I could hear it distinctly each time through.

Seeing what I could do with that, I went to ChatGPT and told them the situation. I gave them details on the broadcast and the apparent ethnicity of the priest. I asked AI to help me. It told me there are several chapelains at Lourdres who are from Sri Lanka. The language was probably either Tamil (a Dravidian language) or Singhala (an Indo-European language), or perhaps Hindi.

Then I gave ChatGPT that I thought it heard the priest say "pengula lassi" at the end of the first phrase. It said that was great information, and that said that meant it was likely Tamil. But the version ChatGPT offered me of the Hail Mary in Tamil didn't match up with that syllables well (transliterated of course---I can't decipher the Tamil alphabet). I was not satisfied.

Then I resorted to a plain old fashioned Google search to look up the Tamil text of the Hail Mary. Perhaps ChatGPT had a different version? I found this page. Bingo. Tamil text, transliterated, is given as:

Arul niraintha Mariyaa vazhga
Karther ummdena pengalukkul
Asirvathikka pettaval Neeray.
Ummudaya thiruvayattin kaniyakiya
Yesuvum asirvathikka pettavaray.
Archishista Marie Sarvaswaranudaya Mathavay
Pavigalaiya erukkira engalukkaka
eppoluthum engal marana nerathilum vendikollum.

The "arul niraintha" was going by too fast for me to to hear, but once I saw it printed, I knew that's what he was saying. The second line ended with "pengalukkul" which was almost exactly how I'd written down "pengula". But what about "pengula lassi"? Ah, it's on the next line. One think one learns is that one cann ot use the line breaks as pauses, but sometimes entire lines flow together. The beginning of one word sounds like it has been tacked onto the end of a previous word. Very common.

I suppose I will have to memorize this and learn it, as I have done for core Rosary prayers in...let's review...English, Latin, French, Greek, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Polish. At one time I attempted to learn the prayers in Vietnamese, as they do a Vietnamese Rosary at Lourdes on special occassions, probably when there are a country pilgrims from that country. One can watch the recorded broadcasts. It's good to have multiple ones because even native speakers pronounce things differently.  In any case I didn't succeed because I don't speak a word of Vietnamese, and so I was going on pure syllabic pronunciation as I heard it chanted. Yes, Vietnamese chants it, because it's a tone language. If I made an effort, I could get it. 

So I have yet to be able to do a non-Indo-European language. Tamil might be the best place to start. It's not tonal. Also it's cool to learn a language spoken on the island of Ceylon, which is what it was labeled on maps when I was a kid. I have learned that comes from Ceilão, the name the Portuguese gave the island when they arrived in 1505. Persians and the Arabs had called it Sarandeeb, which the same root as our word serendipity, and which itself comes from Sanskrit. Sri Lanka is the name of the island in Sinhala, the which is the most widely spoken language. The name in Tamil is இலங்கை, which can be transliterared as Ilankai. 

ChatGPT offered to make this chart for me, to follow the broadcast:

Tamil Transliteration	Phonetic (by ear)	English Meaning
Arul niraintha Mariyaa vazhga	Ah-rool nir-ain-tha Ma-ri-yaa vaazh-ga	Hail Mary, full of grace
Karther ummdena pengalukkul Asirvathikka pettaval Neeray	Kar-thar um-mu-dey-na pengaloo-lassi-rva-thikka pet-ta-val Neer-ay	The Lord is with you; blessed are you among women
Ummudaya thiruvayattin kaniyakiya Yesuvum asirvathikka pettavaray	Um-mu-daya thiru-vai-yat-tin kani-yaa-ki-ya Ye-su-vum aasi-rva-thikka pet-ta-va-ray	And blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus
Archishista Marie Sarvaswaranudaya Mathavay	Arch-i-shis-ta Ma-ri-yay Sar-vas-va-ra-nu-daya Ma-tha-vay	Holy Mary, Mother of God
Pavigalaiya erukkira engalukkaka	Paavi-gal-aya yeru-kira en-ga-luk-kaaga	Pray for us sinners
eppoluthum engal marana nerathilum vendikollum	Eppo-lu-thum en-gal mara-na nera-thi-lum ven-di-kol-lum	Now and at the hour of our death
Amen	Aah-men	Amen

Gone Girl on the Train

 My current stack of books in active reading include the following:

1. Vanity Fair, Thackeray

2. Year of Wonders, Geraldine Brooks

3. Selected Writings, Samuel Johnson

4. Potsdam: The End of World War II and the Remaking of Europe, Michael S. Neiberg

Books in my active reading as August 10, 2025

The one I am apt to finish next is Brooks. Johnson will take a while, but it is an anthology, and I don't want to rush the works of the great man. Like Vanity Fair is not something one rams through. It should be savored like a banquet until the moment that one is too eager to learn what happens next, and one's reading begins to accelerate to the climax. 

The Neiberg book is one I checked out from the Phoenix public library. The time period of history, the transition from war to peace in 1945 and the years after, is one that I am particularly fascinated with. 

Also there was actually a fifth book until last night, when I finished it. Last week I withdrew a copy of Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins from the little free library in the park. Last March in a similar fashion I had borrowed, read and returned Gone Girl, a book I thoroughly enjoyed on multiple levels. But I had thought Gone Girl was supposed to be about a girl on a train, so I got confused when there was no train. Girl on the Train is the same genre of the "disappeared girl" stories, which seems to be arguably the most impactful genre of contemporary fiction. I read it in less than a week, which is very fast for me.

Now I have read both. Gone Girl is by far the more sophisticated story, with a complicated villain, who fate leaves one in an ambiguous state. Girl on the Train borrows the technique of having multiple first person narrators, with chapters indicated by dates. Girl on the Train is a more conventional story but still works. Villain is a husband who cheats, and cheats on the person he cheated with, and batters his wives and mistresses, and lies all around. Easy to root against him when you find out who he is.  

I noticed a third book in this genre, set in Dublin, out at the little free library last spring, but it's no longer there, and I can't recall the title.

Just Dance (like its 2012)!

 

The venerable Wii remote used in the "Just Dance" app. Brings back fun memories.

Today is the 20th birthday of my twin nieces. It seems like yesterday they were rushing into my arms as three year olds and I was throwing them up into the air and catching them, something they made me do for years whenever I saw them, until they got too big.

I just got to see them two weeks ago. We had dinner together, at the invitation of my sister, their mother. Then I got to see them again a few days later in Estes Park, at a horse show where they were both riding in a jumping competition. It was a lovely time.

Today I got up early so I could I be the first ones to text them on their birthday. They both replied enthusiastically to my birthday wishes by text. I figured they would be off with their boyfriends doing young people things and maybe have a party at my sister's house of some kind.

Just a few minutes ago, as I was thinking about them, I was scrolling through my Youtube feed and something uncanny happened. The algorithm decided to suggest the video an old obscure pop song from twenty years ago, one that I only know because during one of my visits (I want to say it was July 2012, over their birthday that year) was one of the songs that my nieces liked to dance along with, with their "Just Dance 4" Wii app in the basement of their Westminster house. The app is one where you hold the Wii remote and try to perform the dance moves you see on the screen, being performed by cartoons outlines of dancers, and it tallies up the score based on how well it thinks that you performed the moves, and you get bonuses if you do it especially well.

It was the first and only time I ever danced with the Wii. They were old pros by then, even as seven year old and had to show me what to do. I was tremendous fun to dance with them that way. 

I had never heard the song I mention before that day, or heard it since then. But today of all days the Youtube algorithm decided I needed to be reminded of the song. Here the original is below. The lyrics are in Spanish and impossible to understand, so don't bother. Some of the syllables are just nonsense sounds. Evidently it was massive hit in Europe and much of the rest of the world, but it didn't make much of a splash in the U.S., which is why I probably had never heard of it before that day in the basement. I learned all this from the Wikipedia article about it (link).

Just imagine the 47-year-old me doing those hand flutters that culminate in that pose with the hands on the front and back of the head, trying to shimmy my knees at the same time, alongside two seven year old girls bouncing up and down with the music doing the same thing. Very, very good memories.

Edit: Ha! I think I might have found the Just Dance video itself. Beautiful memories. One of the best days of my life. Now you can dance along too, if you dare. Hope you like a flamenco rhythm. The colored hands of the dancers are the ones in which one is supposed to be holding the Wii remote.

From Wikipedia:

"The Ketchup Song" is about a young man named Diego who enters a nightclub. The DJ, a friend of Diego's, plays Diego's favorite song, "Rapper's Delight" by the Sugarhill Gang, and Diego dances and sings along to the song, imitating its chorus with Spanish gibberish.

"Aserejé" is, therefore, a meaningless word, with the chorus "Aserejé, ja, de je, de jebe tu de jebere ..." being a somewhat incorrect imitation of the Rapper's Delight's "I said a hip-hop, the hippie the hippie to the hip hip hop

The song is quite an ear worm and can drive you crazy if you hear it too much. If you dare, here is the original music video, which is what popped up in my feed today, unleashing this whole memory stream. The dance moves of the young women in the original are more sophisticated than anything one has to do with the Wii, but the Wii is more fun. Nothing wrong with fun.

Y la baila! Y la goza! Y la canta!

(And the dancing! And the fun! And the singing!)

Inside the Beehive Chapel

Standing before the open gate of the compound of Mary Undoer of Knots, I paused a minute to take in the beautiful vista of the buildings and the forested mountain ridge beyond. 

Just as it was the first time seeing the gate open, it was the first time I'd seen people in the compound. What looked to be a family with teenage sons was crossing the short footbridge to the octagonal wooden chapel. The structure had the unique and pleasing appeal of appearing old in design yet recent in construction. 

Without lingering further, I crossed the gate opening, happy to finally be inside the compound after four times staying in Summerhaven. It was not quite yet four o'clock, so I took a few minutes to explore the compound, poking around the outdoor shelter structure, which turned out to be dedicated to veterans of the various branches of the armed services. I connected it to the fact that I'd seen Gene wearing a military service cap. It also explained why one could hear "Taps" playing each evening from the compound.

Then I inspected the small wooden residence, which turned out to be a guest cottage that rentable by single people or married couples (as I would learn from the website). Then I crossed the footbridge to the chapel. I went the long way around to the entrance, as it turns out, and tried to go what amounted to the side door, which I opened and immediately found Father Martin standing on the other side in his priestly vestments. He recognized me from the day before by name, and then directed me further along to the front entrance.

There on the downhill side of the chapel I found what was obviously the front entrance, as the doors were wide open and one could see inside, and hear the singing. I wondered if I had come late, but it turns out this was preliminary activity of some kind, which probably has a name. This kind of thing is typical in Orthodox services, which can be long and ongoing. The idea is that people come and go during a longer liturgy, and in traditional parishes, one stands the entire time unless one is to weak to do.

At the door I was greeted by a woman whom I correctly identified as Catherine, the wife of Gene, who had identified himself the day before as "Catherine's husband." She was wearing a lace headcovering pinned to her hair. She greeted me with a happy smile, and handed me a small stack of items, including the current week's bulletin as well as a hardbound book of the Divine Liturgy with a rainbow of colored ribbons dangling from various pages, telling me that they would indicate various places that would be called out for us.

I stepped forward from the tiny vestibule all the way into the chapel, which was even more marvelous from the inside than the outside. The small structure was already crowded with about fifteen people sitting the plastic chairs that were set up in three rows of with a central aisle.

Along the sides of the chapel were wooden seats, separated from each other by small partitions as one sees in a traditional church. All of these were filled on either side. There were also plastic chairs around the back wall, and I quickly found one of the last ones available there and took a seat, gazing around the room, and upwards through the layers of the beehive structure to the top, where a round icon of Christ looked down on us. Around the walls were icons, and directly above our head was a octagonal metal ring structure for lighting.

It was only after sitting that I noticed the baby carriage next to me, which contained not an infant but a small black dog, which greeted me by licking my hand in a friendly manner. The woman on the other side mildly rebuked her pet, but I indicated it was no big deal, all the while hoping that in fact it would be no big deal during the service (it wasn't, and the dog was very well behaved).

In the back, past the wooden partition that separates the main part of the chapel from the inner sanctuary where one finds the altar, I could see Father Martin in his vestments waiting to start. 

Across the aisle from me I recognized Gene. He was standing at what I would later learn is the analogion, a wooden lectern with a steep slanted surface on which books or icons can be placed, and usually with a small lamp, so that one can read while standing up. He was singing, and several members of he congregation were singing as well, from the same book I had been given. I due course Gene called out a ribbon color and page number. I opened my book and found the page. I attempted to sing along from the music. As I did so it brought back a flood of memories of being in my college choir in Salem, attempting to sight-sing music on the first try. I was terrible at that, having had little training. Almost everyone else around me, seemingly all the baritones, knew how to do it. The music majors could pick up a piece of music and sing it correctly in rhythm and pitch right off the bat. The guys who knew how to play brass instruments like the trumpet were the best, since sight-singing is not too far off from how one makes notes on a trumpet.

To me this was, and still is, a mysterious skill that seems outside the ability of my mind to understand. I college, I learned my parts by going to the piano rooms in the music building on my own and plunking out the notes one by one (at least I could do that).

Now forty years later, I wondered if I could do any better. The music snippets Gene was singing was small repetitive chants, sometimes with the same words but in a different sequence of notes each time. Trying to follow him I lapsed into the same frustration as in college, but then I decided just to switch off my worry. I decided not to worry about figuring out the pitch but just listen to everyone else and try to jump into the note along side them. So I was always listening to everyone else, just trying to sing in tune with the guys around me.

But I did notice that if I ceased carrying about pitch but instead focussed on the rhythm---quarter notes, half notes, etc.---I was fairly decent and being able to read how long to hold a note. 

Also I noticed that I could scan the notes and anticipate when the line was descending to the root note at the end of the phrase and could hit that note on my own when we got to it. It reminded of a trick in language learning I had figured out along the way. One of the most difficult aspects of language learning for me is the listening. Even if I can communicate in a foreign language, it can be very hard to understanding anything anyone is saying. 

This has been a long frustration of mine, especially with French, which I learned to speak in high school through great diligence of practice with grammar and repetition. But for the life of me, I can barely understand anyone speaking French in a full speed conversation even to this day. Hanging out with friends in France back in the day, I could tell them anything I needed to say, and they would understand, but when they spoke to each other, it was always a big blur and I could infer from context at times, but not always. I would try to understand each sentence, and maybe I would get the first couple words, but my mind could not keep up after that and each sentence would descend into a confused jumble in my head

As such I was always looking for the trick that would allow me to make the mental shift to understand languages. The Internet, especially Youtube, changed everything At some point recently, I made a breakthrough. I realized I had it backwards, literally. I realized that one should not attempt to understand by following each spoken sentence in a linear fashion. Instead one should focus on attempting to pick out and understand the last word of a sentence, and working back from there. Somehow this produced much better results and was far more relaxing and less frustrating than to try to understand each word as it was spoken.

Fortunately I was spared the burden of sight singing because after the service started--promptly at four byt the tolling of the bells outside---Catherine came inside and stood on my right side, in front of a small bench that was obviously her usual perch by the door. With her nice alto voice in my ear, I found it easy to stay on pitch the entire service. And there was lots of singing, and page flipping from ribbon to ribbon, with page numbers called out by Gene.

Mary Undoer of Knots

 My hike was vigorous and rewarding to the point of making me remember entire aspects of my being that I had suppressed. Awakening neglected aspects of physical movement was like turning on the lights in darkened wings of a building that had been shuttered for years. 

As such I was on quite a high as I trudged back up hill to the hotel, past the clumps of parked cars of day visitors and then finally into Summerhaven. It was noon. I'd been gone three hours and had improvised approximately five miles.

"I need to do this again on a regular basis," was the thought that occurred to me. I don't think I'd had as good a hike since our last trip to Estes Park in 2022, when I did my usual roaming in Rocky Mountain National Park. 

My return left me plenty of time to relax and get cleaned and freshened up for the Divine Liturgy at four.  Jessica had been watching Wimbledon during my entire absence, as she is big fan of tennis. I spent the afternoon on the balcony, where it feels like a treehouse, reading about Samuel Johnson's childhood and his formative single year at Oxford. He was a very angry youth, I learned, resentful most of all because of his poverty. 

At a quarter to four, I left and went down the outdoor stairs and followed the path to the ground level at the street, then walked down about a hundred yards on the new sidewalk there to Upper Goat Hill Road where one sees the sign for the shrine, which they put up last year. From there I trudged up panting a bit until I reached the place where it levels off. I saw the cars parked on the side of the street where usually there are none. I had told Father Martin about having come to this spot outside the metal gate to pray the rosary, looking out over the houses and green hills on the opposite ridge. From that spot, one looks down into the compound, which consists on the left of the small chapel which is an octagonal structure (a very Byzantine design), a wooden beehive like the forest churches of Russia and Scandinavia. Atop it was an Orthodox cross. with the diagonal beam. Like all residences on the hill, it was on cement pylons to cope with the stope. The beehive structure was rimmed by a wooden walkway, and it was connected to the rest of the compound by a pair of narrow wooden footbridges.

Across the footbridge in the main part of the compound was what looked to be a small two-story residence in the same style. To the right, and further up the slope, looked to be some kind of large picnic shelter or ourdoor ceremonial structure. This was as close as I had seen it in years past. 

Now for the first time, the gate was unlocked and open.

On the Arizona Trail

 I woke up on Saturday morning, our second full day at the lodge, with a sense of excitement at the days plans. Not only had I resolved to attend the Divine Liturgy at Mary Undoer of Knots, and practically promised to do so,  but I had glorious plans to go hiking.

Each time coming up to Summerhaven, I had made it a point to walk down the main road through the rest of the village for about a mile until it dead ends at a national forest fee entrance where there are picnic grounds and several trailheads. The picnic grounds are usually full of people on day trips from Tucson, and there is little parking (parking is the great premium in Summerhaven---the lodge room comes with free but not guaranteed parking).

But the most hiking I had done was hardly any at all, in all my visit. Just walking down the hill to the fee entrance and coming back up had satisfied my curiosity so far, perhaps additionally following the trail down the creek briefly before turning around.

This year I wanted it to be different. I seriously needed a good hike. I felt disconnected from my body in a disturbing way. Last summer I had felt like I was rotting inside in the heat, especially when stricken by the vertigo and balance issues. I had done one serious hike recently, in the McDowells, and had tortured myself by overextending myself to the point of endangering my life (given how many people die each year). Now I was up in the pines, in a cooler environment. I yearned to get outside and feel my legs moving.

I left after breakfast, walking out of the hotel with my REI light day back, and with a flask of water. The amount of water one uses depends a lot on the temperature and heat. The day looked to be cool, with dark grey clouds covering the sky. Good hiking weather.

I started heading down the hill on the main road, but instead of going all the way down to the fee entrance as I  had in previous years, I forked off onto a side road up the mountain that supposedly led to another trailhead, according to a sign. I wanted to explore it.  It took about twenty minutes to wind my way up through the residential area to get to the trailhead. As I always do I scrutinized the map at the entrance euntil I had a sense of the entire route, and then took a picture of map with my phone.

It was a glorious hike. The route was narrow and rocky winding up further until it leveled out in an area that was still recovering from a fire years ago. As such it felt like being above the tree line in the Rockies. In fact, the whole experience brought back to me the feeling of an alpine hike, the kind I had not in years. It made me realize how deficient is the desert for satisfying my soul that way. It's not just about the heat and the sun. It's about something deeper, and I could sense I was experiencing something my soul had starved for.

It felt almost awkward, humiliating to come to this realization. What a benighted life I had been living. I felt years younger all at once, as if my life had been interrupted and was now resuming.

It was also a magnificent test for my new barefoot hiking shoes. I had ordered them almost two months ago but had not worn them until a few days ago. Instantly I discovered that they were a key to recovering core strength I had lost last year. They gave me back an ability to feel the ground with my feet in a way that radiating up my legs and body.  The gloom I had felt for a year, at least over that, disappeared when I was on the trail. I could tell my core was still not as strong as it was, but I knew it was just a matter of time and effort to recover further. 

Overall, I loved the shoes, at least when I was on a smooth trail. The shoes are not ideal for trails with lots of rock, however. For one thing, if one steps on a jagged rock edge, one can feel it directly on one's feet. Likewise it is quite possible to stub one's big toe on a rock with these things, as I discovered at one point. Were to look for the idea hiking shoe, I would adapt these ones with a slightly thicker part in the middle of the sole, and maybe a thickened part for the big toe. Meditating on this as I hiked, I thought of the hardcore ultralight trekkers, mostly young of course, who hike the Continental Divide trail and such in shoes that are basically sandals. This is to save weight on one's feet, so one does not use up strength and calories lifting the weight of a hiking boot over and over.  For myself, I need more covering--perhaps a little bit more than the shoes provided.

It was a pleasure to sink into such thoughts. I followed the trail over several ridges into the official wilderness area and then took the fork that led down a gorge to exactly the fee entrance I was familiar with. The last section coming down the gorge is officially part of the Arizona Trail, which crosses the entire state south to north. It felt gratifying to hike a bit of it.

Then I walked back up the main road, as I normally would do, until I was back in Summerhaven at the hotel. It felt glorious--a great thing to do as part of the Fourth of July. But it made me realize that I have to do this on a more regular basis, this kind of hiking. The desert doesn't work for me, for various reasons. What to do?

Additional Notes: 

1. These are the shoes I was wearing---the Hike Caspians (link). I think I ordered size 11.  Besides the issues above, which can be remedied perhaps by ordering a different shoe, I noticed the toe box felt constrained on my right foot, where years ago I developed a mild bunion from wearing hiking shoes that squeezed my toes. I am forever in a quest to find shoes with ample room for my toes. The only trial shoes I found that would even come close were Salomons, which I worn for years, although they are still not wide enough in the toe box for me.

The Hike Caspians here sadly suffered a little bit from that. All that design and you are still squeezing my toes, just a slight curling of the middle toes on my right foot but enough for me to notice and be bothered by. This is despite the fact that everyone now says "we have wide toe boxes." Why is it impossible for anyone to actually believe and execute this? 

2. At one point, back between the ridges in the wilderness area, I managed to lose the trail. Somehow I thought I was supposed to scramble up a rock incline. When I got to the top, I saw what could possibly be the trail and began following it, but skeptical I made made the wrong choice. Not wanting to scramble back down the incline, I saw on a fallen burn log and rested while I admired the view of the wilderness and the top of nearby Mt. Lemmon (the actual mountain, that is), topped by an astronomical observatory from the University of Arizona. 

My patience was rewarded when several groups of hikers came along on the trail in the direction from where I'd come, talking loudly. They did not see me but I listened as they passed, and sure enough they did not follow me up the rock incline but proceeded along the trail below me. I noted where they passed and saw I could recover the trail easily without reversing course. 

Every good hike somehow has a moment where you think maybe you screwed up in a way that has put yourself in danger, even in a mild way. A hint of that feeling is like salt on a meal. It is useful to remind oneself of one's essential fragility, and that the elements and nature can be unforgivable, if one does not have proper respect for them.

3. At another point, I detoured off the trail, accidentally following a blind spur that came to a dead end at an overlook after a hundred feet. There I found, amidst the grassy brush, a small spring in the form of a tiny pond only two feet in diameter, and the marshy outflow going down the hill. There is something so beautiful about discovering something like that spontaneously.

4. If I were going to scold myself over anything it would be lack of preparedness for rain. I had a wool cover, but nothing impervious to rain. By the time I was ascending, dark clouds were rolling in. Realizing my stupidity, I began mentally preparing for the miserable experience of being caught in the middle of a downpour. Fortunately it never came. What really surprised me was that as I was coming down the gorge, with this mental preparation in mind, I saw folks casually hiking up the gorge from the trailhead at the fee entrance, dressed in the skimpiest of clothes. I may be stupid enough not to have packed rain gear but I'm not that stupid.

Meeting Father Martin

 Besides the rain clouds and the rain on the first night, one of the delightful twists of this first (second year in a row on the Fourth) was that I finally able to make a visit to the shrine of Mary Undoer of Knots, which is a tiny Byzantine Catholic compound hidden in the trees on the hillside opposite the hotel. The broadasting of the bells is a pleasant sound through the pines when one is at the lodge.

It has almost never been open, except by special appointment. This year was different. While waiting for the parade to start, I spotted, from our balcony, a man taking a seat in a folding chair on the opposite side of the main road. He had a long white beard and was wearing black robes. Instantly I knew he must be associated with the shrine, so I scurried down out of the hotel and crossed the street, approaching him as he was talking ato another man sitting beside him, who was wearing a military service cap.

I introduced myself (I can be quite social when I want to be) and asked if he was with the shrine. He said yes. His name was Father Martin. His companion introduced himself as "Gene, Husband of Katharine" although there was no woman present. I would later meet Katharine, and learn that the two of them are local residents who provide the secular organization of the shrine. Father Martin comes up part time. I told Father Martin how I'd been wanting to visit the shrine but was unable. He said that there was a chance the next afternoon for the Saturday afternoon Divine Liturgy. I believe this was the first time they had had the Liturgy there during any of my previous visits. It felt like the shrine was coming up in the world. I told Father Martin I would see him there, on the next day. I also conveyed to him that I was not Catholic. I had been to (western) Catholic masses, and to an Eastern Orthodox Divine Liturgy (most recently in Modesto last. year), but had never been to the Byzantine Catholic version of the Divine Liturgy. 

It's essentially the same liturgy as the one used by the Eastern Orthodox, deriving from one created by St. John Crysostom. The difference is the Byzantine Catholics are, in fact, fully ni communion with the Pope and part of the Catholic Church, but are allowed to contine to use the Eastern Rite. So they are sort of a hybrid missle ground between East and West. All this I knew. What was strange was to find such a parish in, of all places, the community of Summerhaven. To my knoweldge there were no other religious congregations on the mountain. You had to make the long drive down to Tuscon for any of that, juust like you do to fill up your gas tank and buy groceries beyond the general store essentials. Everyone worshipped down in the valley---except the Byzantine Catholics. All Catholics by the way are allowed to go the Byzantine version, and the next day I would meet some of them, as well as other tourists and looky lous like me.

Escape from the Internet

 Back from our three-night trip to Mt. Lemmon, specifically the Mt. Lemmon Lodge in Summerhaven. Driving up the mountain this year brought the trip of thunderstorms that had descended on the Tucson area on Thursday afternoon. It was a new experience to drive up the mountain with darkened rain cloods. We got rain overnight---a downpour that woke me from my sleep.

The next day, Friday, was the Fourth of July and the main activity was watching the parade at noon. Our room on the third floor of the lodge was pretty much the idea place to see it, if you were not down on the road. I took videos of the parade with iphone, both from the balcony and the road, which I played on my podcast that evening, sharing them with my viewers, because I had not much else prepared.

I had to do my podcast from down on the lodge patio balcony, with people at tables nearby. The wifi in our room on the third floor was terrible. I could barely get any connectivity on my phone using my data plan, and the wi-fi was hopeless. It was actually nice to have a break from connectivity.  I managed to read the entire intro to Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings, which I had brought at the last minute as leisure reading, taking it off Stack U of my newly designed alphabetized stacking system for my book in the ga

Samuel Johnson

 His literary career seems to divide naturally into three stages. Up to 1749 [age 40], he is the desperately poor, bitter, Grub Street journalist. The great works of this stage are London and The Life of Savage. From 1749 to 1762, he wins and consolidates his position as moralist and lexicographer; the monuments of this stage are The Vanity of Human Wishes, the three series of essays (Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler), the Dictionary, and Rasselas. The second stage is concluded by his reception of a pension. This radically altered both his way of life and his way of writing; it made him into the figure we know from Boswell, the ‘Great Cham of Literature’ (in Smollett’s phrase), and the greatest recorded talker of the language. The works of this stage - more relaxed, sprawling, colloquial —are the edition of Shakespeare, the Journey to the Western Islands, and The Lives of Poets. Through all three stages, but very sparsely in the first and in much the greatest mass in the third, is a stream of letters, prayers and journals, which ought to be regarded as no less part of his work than those writings which he printed.

From Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings, Penguin Classics, Preface by Patrick Crutwell

from Google:

Samuel Johnson's Dictionary, Grub Street was “originally the name of a street in Moorfields in London, much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems; whence any mean production is called grubstreet.” The term was a metaphor for the commercial production of printed matter

wikipedia:

Moorfields was an open space, partly in the City of London, lying adjacent to – and outside – its northern wall, near the eponymous Moorgate. It was known for its marshy conditions, the result of the defensive wall acting as a dam, impeding the flow of the River Walbrook and its tributaries.

Ah, The River Walbrook. I studied this. I love the ancient rivers of London. The Walbrook was a stream that ran through what became "The City of London" (which itself was the old Roman garrison that was fortified with walls). London began as a Roman occupational fort to dominate the local Celtic presence. The Walbrook emptied directly into the Thames. The Walbrook was used as a fresh water supply. By the Industrial Revolution it became an open sewer and was bricked over. If I returned to London and needed something to do, I would retrace its ancient route.

I wrote about the Walbrook during my London history posts in 2016.  (link)

https://theticketcollector.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-thames-freezes-over-london-late.html

Zang on the Fourth of July

Hat to Mr. Silverstein, for inspiring this post.

Scottsdale, about to leave for Mount Lemmon Lodge in Summerhaven, Arizona

First you drive south on the Interstate (technically East on I-10) to Tucson and pick your way through the north part of the city on local roads for a half hour until you get to the edge of the city at the base of the Catalina Mountains. There is a single road that continues past there and it begins slowly winding up into the mountains past the ample saguaro groves that poke out from the rocky terrain. One goes up and up winding slowly with vistas of the city at pull outs. Then the saguaros trickle off, as it is too high in altitude for them. Climbing further, one sees down the cliffs to the ravines and rock formations. One is usually passing bicyclists in groups either climbing or descending. 

Finally one reaches the trees. All of a sudden one is in the pines. It feels like coming home each time. There are national forest picnic grounds and trail heads where cars are gathered, their occupants presumably on the nearby trail. One continues climbing and finally at eight thousand feet, six thousand above the valley floor (and at the altitude of Estes Park), one finds signs of civilization. There is a turnoff that goes to the top of the mountain proper, but following the road takes you into the community of Summerhaven, where the most prominent landmark one enters is the fire station, a reminder of devastating fire of twenty years ago that almost burned down the entire community, and from which the not-yet-regrown patches on the mountain are still visible. There is a restaurant, and a few gift shops. One continues past a small group of nice cottages for rent, somewhat amusingly called the Mount Lemmon Hotel, and then at last one reaches the Mount Lemmon Lodge, rebuilt only a few years ago after the historic century-old original burned down in the aforementioned fire. The new one looms above the road. Across the street is the general store which is the heart of the community at this point, and which is also worth a visit. Further down, if one were to continue past the lodge, there is a pizza/cookie restaurant with outdoor seating, and going further one could leave the thick part of the community and eventually dead end at a trailhead that leads into the gulch.

When I first came to Tucson while swinging through Arizona in 1989, my uncle told me about Mt. Lemmon and how by going up it, it is as if one goes north a thousand miles to the Canadian border, in terms of ecosystem and climate. It is probably the best known example of what they call a "sky island" (there are evidently such things in the Sahara too). I was intrigued, and years later, in February 2013, when I came through here on my own while vagabonding in the Bimmer, and visited my uncle again, I made sure to go to the top where I snowshoed at the ski resort there---the furthest south I've ever snowshoed. 

I haven't been up in winter since then. I told Jessica about it, and after our first visit, she eagerly makes reservations as much as possible, including for the Fourth of July two years running, as soon as they open up. Last year we had the corner room on the 3rd floor which allowed the best viewing of the 4th of July parade.

A front came through last night here in Scottsdale. I thought it would be a dust storm and I cleared off the patio and brought the rice paper screen and my library books inside, as I keep them out on the table there. Dust storms can be a menace here, and can be hazardous to health. Instead we got rain and it smelled fresh this morning as I drank my coffee.

It might rain while we are up at Mt. Lemmon. Evidently they got a bunch last night. The streams really flow and it feels like heaven when they do, but even if they don't it will be lovely. I will sit on the balcony outdoors and look across at the mountain, seeing the houses hidden among the trees on the steep hill, and the onion dome of the Byzantine Catholic chapel of the small compound of Our Lady Undoer of Knots, the bells of which are rung on a daytime schedule. I will fantasize as ever about what it would be like to live up here. I'd probably never want to go down to the valley floor. But of course there are dental visits.

Sunspot Peak Next Month

 The idea that somehow shifts the earth's magnetic field strength may be contributing to the kind of experiences I was mentioning in the last post seems at once both silly and yet intriguing. There is a subculture of people online who discuss this rather obsessively, with the basic thesis that every so often and periodic intervals on the scale of thousands of years, the earth's magnetic field undergoes a rather disruptive change, part of that being a temporary decrease in the field strength. 

This barely scratches the surface of the topic, as I learned while exploring it several years back. Since then the idea has gone from niche-fringe to being less niche but still fringe.

One should note that the magnetic field of the earth is what keeps us (that is all life on earth) safe from solar activity. Next month is projected to be the peak of the eleven-year cycle of sunspots. Maybe I'll blame everything on that for the time being.

Disorientation

The last few days I have only an acceleration of a sensation of being adrift in time, in some liminal place, in an unfamiliar world. The world does not seem to make sense, I want to say. But what does such a statement mean. Did the world ever "make sense"? I can't claim that it ever did, yet somehow it has always made sense enough to navigate with a rational expectation of outcomes based on one's choices and behaviors. Lately I feel less of that. But what do I know. I'm barely following the news lately, not because I'm repulsed by events, but because it only adds to my disorientation.

If it was just me, I'd just assume I was going mad, but I know that many other people are feeling the same way. There is a sense of dread floating around, not just about the present moment, but about people's lives, especially among the young. This last part to me is the real kicker---that so many young people have expressed a feeling of hopelessness about their lives. As a young person, I never felt hopeless about my life, even in the midst of severe emotional pain. I always felt like the future would be better somehow, and that my problems were transitory. The world would go on, and I would find my place in it. I never felt anything like the way these young folk talk about their lives. Every aspect of life that marks the transition to adulthood feels broken---education, courtship, marriage, careers, housing. 

Something is clearly way off. Everyone feels it in some way, I think. It feels as if so many things that used to tie us to the old world, which for all its faults felt relatively stable and predictable in the big picture, have been taken away that none of us can mentally absorb what is taking place and where we are going.

Liminality

Is "Outside Over There" an example of a liminal space? I'm referring here not to the Sendak book Outside Over There, but to the place that is mentioned in the book, that Ida falls into. That's a question worth pondering. 

The concept of liminal spaces emerged in video games where glitches or modifications to the imaginary world of the game allow one to pass through boundaries that one would not otherwise be able to cross, and one might get stuck in a half-baked place with just walls with no features, that auto-generate endlessly as one explores them, without any way back to the normal world of the game. 

The lore of the internet contemplates these spaces as being reflective of a real experience on the spiritual plane, one we just happened to discover by video games (or artists and poets before them). 

Of particular importance is the idea that any creature that one encounters in the liminal space is probably not your friend. This is typical in video games, and also in the dream I racounted. One traverses a liminal space in dread of encountering another being, I suppose. One finds comfort only the faces of familiar people, and even then one must be sure of their identity, which can be counterfeited.

Facets of this we see in Sendak's work. Ida is alone. She encounters other beings but they are non-human and less than benign. Her resolution is to find, and rescue, her lost baby sister, at which point they can both return from the liminal space, apparently by following a river, which is very interesting, because rivers are a good way to find one's way out of the woods when lost (not always foolproof becuase they might disappear into a cave or an impassible gorge). 

The Best Word for Sharing

 Our---that was was the word of the day from Mr. Oliver's The Dictionary Story as I was about to head out the door for work this morning. The short definition indicated it was the best word to refer to sharing.

It felt both appropriate and highly comforting to have my eyes land on this. The night had given me troubled dreams before I awoke at 3 am, of being in what has come to be called liminal spaces. If you don't know what that means, it's a meme that has arisen in social media derived from gaming (video games that is).

There's a wikipedia article about it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liminal_space_(aesthetic). Underlining here is mine:

In Internet aesthetics, liminal spaces are empty or abandoned places that appear eerie, forlorn, and often surreal. Liminal spaces are commonly places of transition, pertaining to the concept of liminality.

Research from the Journal of Environmental Psychology has indicated that liminal spaces may appear eerie or strange because they fall into an uncanny valley of architecture and physical places. An article from Pulse: The Journal of Science and Culture has attributed this eeriness to familiar places lacking their usually observed context. A pillar of liminal spaces is the absence of living things, particularly other people, with the implication that the viewer is alone; this lack of presence is characteristic of spaces that are "liminal in a temporal way, that occupy a space between use and disuse, past and present, transitioning from one identity to another."

The aesthetic gained popularity in 2019 after a post on 4chan depicting a liminal space called the Backrooms went viral. Since then, liminal space images have been posted across the internet, including on Reddit, Twitter, and TikTok.

My liminal space in dreams is usually a concrete stairwell, perhaps leading to parking garage. Last night it was a large industrial facility with concrete hallways and many doors. It feels similar the Backrooms, described in the passage above. Something else was there, something perhaps malevolent, and I was fearful of it, but it my dreams I sought to yell at it, unseen around the corners of hallways,  as one would confront a bear in the woods.

The vividness of the dream left my somewhat dazed, perhaps. It took me longer than normal to wake up. I sat on the porch for almost forty minutes before I bothered to make coffee. Even driving into campus just now, my mind felt slow.

Our---the cooperative experience of an activity with another person. The feeling it engenders is the opposite of the liminal space, which is experienced as a frightening solitary experience. Even before I knew about this concept, I understood it through dreams, where I would be with other people, or another person, and they would disappear and I would be alone, wondering how to reconnect to other people, or find someone who I lost. Something about that feels fundamental to my experience of life.

The idea that there is an our to the experience of America, as I mentioned, is something that now feels elusive, as I mentioned in a previous. Perhaps some interesting thoughts will emerge today, as the day wears on, and the fog of the liminal spaces clears from my mind.

Explain

Right before I left for work today, I went out the patio to tidy up. On the little round table are stacked all my books, under the shade of the rice paper screen. I rearranged the stack so it looked more stable. At the last minute, I noticed my copy of the The Dictionary Story by Oliver Jeffers. I flipped over the front cover, thinking to myself, "what's the word of today?" and amidst the dictionary entries inside the front cover my eyes land on explain. I read the definition, which I did not commit to memory so I can type it here, but here is space for it later when I get home:

[placeholder definition of explain in The Dictionary Story]. 

Or if you own a copy, just fill it in there on your own.

The Big and the Small

 Monday morning. Another work week ahead. I'm about to drive into Tempe and park in my usual spot. Every day that passes lately I feel something akin to a great grinding of gears of the machine of civilization and history, as if everything is in the midst of a giant shift, a tectonic evolution of all of society, not just in America, but around the world. I have two modes lately---one where I focus on this, and one where I ignore it. I try to live mostly in the latter because it would drive me mad to constantly focusing on the former. I can't keep them both in my head at once.

Even the politics of the moment, and the events of the drama of war and conflict, seem like small details that pass. Why focus on them? Something huge and bigger is underway. Some people see it and talk about it. I feel mostly like a helpless actor moving along with the crowd. Aren't all of us that way? No sense in having anxiety about it. There is no stopping it. If I can keep my wits about me, then I will be of help to others.

Living as a Character in the Story of America

 For much of my life, I saw my own life in terms of being cast as a character in the story of America. America was idea that was a story, a narrative, one that had been going for centuries, and to be born into it when I was, in the mid 1960s, was to enter that story and be a part of it---the building, the struggle, the evolution of something ongoing and continuous, that everyone knew existed, and everyone found some sort of place within it.

It hit me a couple days ago that I no longer feel like that. I no longer feel as if my life is part of the story of America. What does my life mean in terms of that story? I don't know what America means now, so how I can play a part of it? 

It used to be so clear, that no matter what happened, the story of America would go on. Certainly the government of the United States will go on for the time being. It is part of fallen era that we see America in terms of its government, which is just a superficial structure on a nation. What is the "American nation" now? What is the "American people"? Is it anyone who happens to be here? But what is that in terms of continuity. Does the past get a vote?

The Great Disorienting

 It's been hard to write about anything here lately. Somehow I lost the bead of thought I had going, I suppose. But it is more than that. I feel profoundly disoriented in a way. Maybe it's the heat partly, but the days come and go with a strange sameness that feels anything but normal.

The news. It's the news. Of course it's the news. But it isn't the news. Not like we would say in the old days. Oh, did you read the news today? Can you believe it? My mind is abuzz with it all! I lie awake at night thinking of it!

That was how news used to work, the normal times before. But it doesn't feel that way to me anymore. For one thing we know much of the news is a pageant meant to tell us a story. It has always been that way, perhaps, but in the old days the story was mostly coherent and made sense to us at each passing stage.

Now we are aware of the depth of the pageant, and that changes our perspective in a fundamental way. It's as if I don't know the ground rules of reality in the world anymore. I feel as if I am in a world that is unfamiliar to me, trying to make sense of it without outdate rules, as are we all. This means this. That means that. 

So I go about my daily life, walking through a familiar, comfortable sameness while feeling utterly unable to frame my life within a larger story, because I don't know what that larger story is anymore. My greatest solace is knowing that I am not the only one feeling this. To know that others are feeling this kind of this makes me feel in league with them, in our giant disorientation.

Will the world settle back down into anything resembling what we used to call normal times? That is truly hard to tell, and I am the last person to make a guess. Most of my guesses about the future are very wrong.