Rain on the Fourth Day of Christmas

Today the gift was being able to wake up in the dark to the sound of a soaking rain outside. The front was arriving at dusk last night. I went out into the park to look at the low grey clouds that were seeping across the sky in bands. The leading edge of the large front from the ocean. 

This morning I woke up before three and went to pray the Rosarry, and then came back and slept until past six o'clock, and lingered in bed until past seven, which seems scandalous. It was still dark. The rain was pattering on the roof, in metallic thuds from contact with drainage pipes. It is the night of the year. We are all supposed to be resting from the effort of the year. The true Christmas season. It is a time to trust in the safety of God to preserve us, as the baby Jesus was preserved in the cradle.

When I think of soaking rain, I now think of the trees and cacti that may tip over in the mushy ground, so I hope it is not a too-heavy-at-once situation.  Everything has a price, even the beautiful soaking rain.

Lucky Artist Boy

 

We went on an outing to Phoenix today, driving on the freeway towards downtown and getting off at Indian School Road to go to Arizona Art Supply. I had been there just a few days ago while Christmas shopping for Jessica. She had given me a list of art supplies she wanted for Christmas, with links to an online art supply retailer. I had felt uninspired to go there. I felt no joy, as I never do during Advent and the run up to Christmas. Instead I had decided to find the coolest old art supply place in Phoenix, which was easy to find, and find as many of the items there in person. I told the woman at the store in a way, she had given me the gift of going to an art supply store with a specific need to do so.

At the time, I found about half the items she wanted, and found what I thought were substitutes for the others. I also saw a portfolio carrier I thought she would like, as she totes a lot of paper things around for her drawing class. On a whim I purchased it, thinking she would be delighted to see the surprise. Instead it turns out that she couldn't use it. I had the receipt and said I'd return it. We decided to make it a field trip together, and today we went there as planned, driving down together and parking in the same parking lot, in the complex with the Goodwill, just off 51 on Indian School.

At first the clerk told me that portfolios were nonreturnable, but the manager overheard this, and came to register. She was pleasant and helpful, and as I was bringing it back with the tags on, they gave me my money back. Then we walked around the store for a while, and it was fun this time to linger and look at paper.  I used to draw and make pastel portraits in college, and I have gone through spates of drawing since then. It is fun just to examine the types of paper they stock. It feels so tactile.

Jessica found a bunch of supplies she liked. I told her to choose a few things she night not otherwise get, that were splurges. We went out of the store with well more in value than we came in with. The manager had chosen wisely.

Afterwards we drove the street in Phoenix to a old school hamburger stand, called Lucky Boy, where we had burgers and fries, eating them in the old school dining room amidst what appeared to be many regulars at the nearby tables. The neighborhood around is one with the classic midcentury brick bungalows that were so common. They are on the upswing in value and many have undergone renovations and improvements. The hamburger stand dates from 1951.

Such is what we did this year, on the Third Day of Christmas.

We Have Christmas Backwards

We have Christmas all backwards. Yesterday, December 25, is not supposed to be the end of the Christmas season but the beginning. Instead we have moved the celebration of Christmas, to the days and weeks leading to Christmas, which is supposed to be a period of penance, fasting, and prayer. We do the opposite of that, and then we wonder why it feels empty and unfulfilling so much of the time.

Then after Christmas, when we should be just beginning a twelve-day season of joyous celebration, we take down our decorations and go back to our humdrum lives. We live our barrenness after, rather than before. 

This is part of the general trend of reversal of all things Christian, especially Christmas. This year I went through the entire Christmas season and saw not a single mention of the baby Jesus outside of the few weak Christmas carols sung on the Great American Family Network, which split off from the Hallmark Channel specifically for cultural reasons having to do with same-sex relationships in their movies.  We have reached the triumph of a completely secular Christmas stripped of all its Christian significance. Our Christmas carols are now original pop creations of Maria Carey (its melody unsingable by anyone but someone with her talent), and the rather monotonous one by Paul McCartney. They aren't bad songs. They were humorous novelties when they appeared. Now they are the entire songbook, along with other secular modern ones. The ones referencing Christ is not diminished. They are completely gone from Pop Culture.

So its no wonder we have Christmas all backwards. People burn themselves out celebrating during Advent and then wonder why the magic isn't there. Our conceit is that the human soul (and body) can be re-engineered in arbitrary ways. Who cares if the celebration is beforehand? We are stupid I think. God will have His Advent from us, one way or another, just as He will have His sabbath, and his Jubilee. We can cooperate with that, our we can try to defy it, but the score must be evened out.

I personally am enjoying the second day of Christmas as I write this, and am thinking of what I will still give as Christmas gifts this year, up until Day Twelve. The world may have blown itself out during Advent, but I am just getting started being Christmasy.

In Which I Pay a Visit to the Ghost of Christmas Present

 

Yesterday we had a stay-at-home Christmas, as Jessica's stepfather was ill and we could not visit them at their home down in the RV park Mesa where they live. Although I regretted missing out on the fellowship of the day, I admit it was pleasant to "go nowhere" on the Feast of the Nativity, and to simply enjoy the stillness of the world as much as possible. It being Sunday, there were pro football games on as well, which made it particularly relaxed.

Twice--in the late morning and in the late afternoon--I went walking outside, making my way through the buildings of our complex, then crossing the street to new park and the undeveloped desert nearby, as part of my daily rambles there. On a normal day I would bring my stool and my book on quantum field theory, and would read a bit, and think about another paragraph in the paper I am writing. Yesterday being a feast day, and such an important one, I gave myself no such assignments but let my mind go where it wanted.

On both occasions, coming in and out of the complex, in the narrow little private streets between the three-story buildings, I could hear, at various places, the buoyant conversations of parties and get-togethers emerging from the upper floors, the voices and laugher coming from the windows and the patios. The temperature was pleasant. Few would need to keep the widows closed.

Hearing these groups of people was startling to me. I realized it was the first time since living here that I recall any such thing. Usually--in fact in all other times I go out walking---I never her these spots of laughter and merriment. Perhaps a single one every once in a while, but never multiple ones going on, sometimes overlapping if one stands in certain places.

At once, hearing them, I was carried away to memories long ago of living in communal areas---student housing complexes when I was a child in Iowa, and in later years, and especially in New York, or Europe---when such sounds were normal even when it was not Christmas. In such places one heard the evidence of human social interactions and fellowship from behind closed doors as a regular part of life, even on a regular weekend.

It was poignant to hear them now. It filled me with great joy, to know there were people inside enjoying each other's company, around our complex, and beyond. Yet my knowledge of the rarity of it made me conscious of its lack. It made realize how dead and lifeless this place is for the rest of 364 days of the year. It made me realize how isolated and isolating this place is, and how this true for most of America. 

The craving for fellowship is one of the features of Christmas. The night before we had watched the 1938 movie version of A Christmas Carol starring Reginald Owen (pictured above). It's a very short and fast telling of the story, and adaptation of a radio version that was popular at the time, and as such it leaves out various motivations for the development of the character Scrooge in his youth concerning the reasons he is miserly. Yet what is so obvious in the story is that is that it is his need for human interaction--conviviality and fellowship--that drives the story and his conversion during the wee small hours. It is his being able to overhear Christmas merriment in private houses, and feeling estranged from them, that lets me see what he is missing. 

How far we have come. I grew sad thinking about all the people across America and the world who were in fact alone on Christmas, and who would love to be at a party, at least acknowledged as alive, and yet were not welcome anywhere. All Scrooge had to do was stop excluding himself from other people's lives. How lucky he is, compared to so many today who have no idea how to come in from the chill and be welcomed. We have largely solved our problems of material want and depravation today. No one need go hungry for any length of time. Today our great lack is for the things that the Victorians considered natural and free, and available to anyone if they chose it---human company.

As I type this I am about to go on my morning walk. It is Monday, the day after Christmas. Today I will hear no merriment, and will not hear it for another year if are here again next year. I am so grateful for what I have. 

When Marriage Meant Something

 Last night Jessica (aka Ginger) and I continued our annual tradition of watching our favorite holiday movie, Christmas in Connecticut (1945) starring Barbara Stanwyck and Dennis Morgan. Every year that we watch it, my understanding and appreciation of the story deepens. We both have large parts of it memorized at this point. We always watch out for the scene with the cow that forces itself into the plot in order to bring the lovers together. It's one of my favorite cow scenes in Hollywood movies.

Each we notice new subtleties and details. Jessica noticed the that the box containing the mink coat that Barbara Stanwyck wears at the beginning of the story says "Sherwood Furs" on it. These are the kinds of things you notice when you have the seen the movie so many times. The mink coast is a simple of the kind of life that Stanwyck's character (Elizabeth Lane) thinks she wants at the beginning of the story, but which she happily discards once she has found true love.

So much of the joyous lightness in the movie comes from the character of Uncle Felix played by S.Z. Szakall (pictured above, trying to teach Barbara Stanwyck's character how to cook). He is the life force in the movie.  He literally stops the "bad wedding" for happening simply by insisting that music must be played (foreshadowed by the fact that we are introduced to him in his restaurant with no dialog but only live music, like a silent movie).

We have almost his entire dialog memorized at this point, and we wait for him to say certain lines. Even so, we still notice new ones. By the way, even Felix has a character arc in the story. He goes from having a poor relationship with cows to a good one. He reconciliation with the bovine force of happiness is parallel to the lovers coming together. One shadows the other.

The tightness of the story is impeccable. There is almost nothing wasted in the entire movie as far as spoken lines or visual shots. Everything seems to reference something else, an support the characters in the roles they have. 

As I watched the movie this time, I felt a kind of distance from it that I had never felt. Perhaps it is the fact that I have lost the last members of my family who lived through World War II as adults. That generation is gone, and with them, the whole era portrayed in the movie seems disconnected from our world. So many of the subtleties of the interactions of the characters would be lost on modern audiences. We have a whole generation of young people who have grown up without experiencing anything resembling courtship as it used to be. Moreover, even outside of the romantic drama in the story, there are many assumptions characters make in regard to behavior of each other which would be invisible to many young folk today. 

I believe this is more than "changing times." It is the fact that people in 1945 experienced nearly all their interaction with other human beings in person, or at most, over a land-line analog phone. The expectations of mutual behavior were generated by these in person, physical, interactions.  For a great many of us, and perhaps the majority of young people, now experience most of our meaningful interactions with each other digitally over the Internet.  We no longer have the vessel of expectations that people in the past assumed to exist, and assume would always exist.

It makes the experience of watching the movie much less rich and detailed for young people today perhaps, unless they specifically are interested in discovering how people in the past behaved in each other's presence---not just because they are young but because they have never experienced a world in which physical in-person interactions were how one negotiated one's expectations of the world.

One of the things Jessica noticed was the sympathetic treatment of the rejected male suitor in the romantic drama of the movie. He is not portrayed as a cad or a villain. His flaw was his blindness to the fact that he and Barbara Stanwyck's character are not suited to each other, and that she doesn't love him. He doesn't see this only because he himself has not experienced true love. He remains a gentleman in the movie right up the last scene in which appears, graciously escorted another married woman off to find her breakfast.

Another thing I noticed this year was that what I thought was a plot hole is not indeed a plot hole. When Stanwyck and Morgan (the lovers) are in the sleigh together, why can't she tell him that she is playing a ruse regarding the dinner she is hosting for all of them? The answer is because we don't want her to do that, as an audience. For one thing, she has indeed promised to marry another man, even though we know it is a sham marriage. We don't want to her break that promise and start plotting with another man, whom she really loves. She has to resolve that issue publicly and honorably by breaking it off with her fiancé (even though as a woman, according to traditional rules she has the feminine privilege to change her mind during an engagement, up to the last moment). Also, as Jessica pointed out to me, it would mean destroying the experience of the weekend for Dennis Morgan's character, who is a war hero. So I get why she has to silent there.

Eventually she will speak up, and all the issues will come out, and the force of love is restored. The movie works like a giant cosmic story machine to bring out the result. It is a fantasy of course, but one that captures, through art, the messy complexities of real life and courtship, which is never so tidy as to fit into a movie.

The Vow I Refused To Take

 

Yesterday I finally got through the trauma of sending out my Christmas cards this year. It should not be a trauma, because I find great joy in sending personal communications to others. It's a trauma because, as I explained, in previous posts, in brings up an awareness and reflection of the things that separate me from others, more than at other times of year. The trauma is all in the build-up to writing personal notes, reminding me of what I can and cannot say to them, lest I trigger some anger in them. I have no need to discuss politics with them. Among the Christmas cards I receive, which are few, there are often sly references to politics--the kind of tests that Lefties send out to others to ping them, to make sure they are on the same page about everything in the world. We all still hate Trump, right? 

I got only one such comment this year, a reference to the "crazy people out in the Arizona" from someone on the East coast. I would never dream of engaging back with this. I love the person who sent it, even though he is a friend I haven't seen in many years, and who lives with another man in what society now widely recognizes as a conjugal relationship.  

I like to address the envelopes of my Christmas cards with formal titles of people, like Mr. and Mrs., etc. whenever possible. What do I do in this case? I use the abbreviation of the plural of monsieur.  I want to believe my friend is flattered and humored by this, in a fun way since we were both in French class together in high school. My French classes back then spawned many relationships I still have, albeit loosely. At Threadfest in Southlake, my friend Kelli Phillips introduced me as someone she met in the same French class. 

I would never dream of imposing my personal beliefs on my gay friend in a Christmas card, or any other venue. He would never know my beliefs on this unless he asks me point blank. I would have to tell him, and it would probably lead to the end of our friendship. So I enjoy the friendship while I still can. One day he will find out, perhaps soon, and he will perhaps cease the friendly back-and-forth we have.

I would try to tell him that my belief is that acceptance of his status as being in conjugal relationship with another man is something I extend to him as a personal courtesy to him. It is a case by case basis. I do not believe it is something that society as a whole needs to be forced to acknowledge, the way it does for a man and a woman. I've never heard anyone else express it quite like that. It took me a long time to work that out in my mind. 

Five years ago I went to a wedding ceremony between two men that was held in the Lan Su Chinese Garden in downtown Portland (pictured above). Jessica and I flew back to Oregon. He was one of her medical school colleagues, and graduated with her. I always liked him. 

I was horrified during the ceremony. The actual vows between the two men seemed like an afterthought. Instead they had us, the audience and attendees, swear a vow to support them as a married couple. 

This is bullshit, I thought at the time. You invite people and then make them take a promise? This is not the way it is supposed to work. It is a mockery of a wedding ceremony. I refused to mouth the words and kept my mouth shut during the vow, even as the audience members tried to outdo each other with their enthusiasm to shout "WE DO!!"

I was insulted and angry at my hosts for this stunt. I felt like I'd been swindled. I resolved it was the last gay wedding ceremony I would ever attend.

Such are the things that swirl in my mind while writing Christmas cards. As for my friend who received the card, I have nothing against him, and even let slide the political comments he makes that tell me that he assumes I am also a liberal who agrees him.  I pray for him--not because he is gay, but because he is my friend, and I wish him nothing but happiness and joy sincerely.

The marriage at the Lan Su Garden in Portland didn't last. They went their separate ways shortly afterwards. Of course so do marriages between men and women these days, but the whole thing seemed like a joke, with the point of it being getting us all to say that vow like we did. 

New Year, New Thoughts

Reflecting on the things I write about in this blog, I realize I cover many of the same themes and points over and over. I suppose it is like climbing a mountain, on a circular path that winds around it, much like in Dante's Purgatorio.

I hope that each time I come around to the same points and themes, my understanding and compassion for others has increased a bit from the last time. I hope I put away some of the wrath I have felt, and able to understand God's mercy a bit better than last time.

One of the reasons I do not want to be a well-known blogger is that I would feel beholden to a consistency as a public figure. Here in these pages I can write the same laments and insights over and over, and there is no consequence. I am a work in progress, slowly molded. Next year, God willing, I will write about some of the same things.

Over the past year what I did notice that was new was that my last liberal friends have found it increasingly difficult to tolerate my presence in their lives. All of this, I assure you, is due to their heightened awareness of my convictions, which only comes by their direct questions to me. The fact that I do not back down in my beliefs, but calmly try to explain my point of view has enraged them even further. 

All of this I see as a sign that we have gone to another level in the Culture War.  I expect to lost all of them by the time it breaks. So long as I keep my relationship with God, then I will feel joy through it all.  There is nothing they can do to shake that. I think they have realized that, and that's what drives them nuts about me. In the end, the only recourse for them is to shut me out of their lives, and forget they knew me.

But I will not forget I knew them. Even if they send my Christmas cards back with an obscene scrawl over them (I am half expecting that), it will not matter. I will still love them. I meant to do this, I know, and my conviction of this only grows with time.

What will I be writing about next year, provided I am still writing this blog? Who knows. I keep writing here because it is the surest way to get thoughts out of my head, that are swirling around. If I write them down, they make room for other thoughts. This is why I write. I have to.

With my new physics blog, I can empty my mind from rational scientific thoughts, of which I have many lately. But really the way to do that is to write something for a peer-reviewed journal. This is what I am also doing today. Or trying to. It's a lot harder than these notes, in a way, although there is nothing personal in them. They are supposed to be he opposite of personal. A different challenge. By next year this time I hope I have left all my current physics thoughts in the dust, because I will have written them down, and new ones, completely foreign to me now, have taken their place.

Sending Christmas Cards Unironically

 Today my goal is to send out the rest of my Christmas cards for this year. It's a bittersweet task, not the least of which is that I have to remove names of people who have died. That's pretty much the only reason I take someone's name of my list. In the case of my liberal friends, I still send them cards, with the best of wishes for them. It is all sincere. I do wish them the best, whether they agree with me on politics. I know in most cases, this sentiment is not returned. To some of them, they will see my card and become enraged. This is partly because my cards this years are explicitly Christian, with a depiction of the Nativity and a religious message inside. For some, this is all it will take, to send them into a rage. So horrible is the Christian message to them. I don't know who will react this way, but certainly some will. I try to say something extra in each card that is reflective of the personality of the person receiving it. In the case of people who are hostile to Christianity, I even try to say something supportive of their politics which is sincere on my part. 

The virtues and goals they express for the world are things I can usually agree with, even I disagree about how to go about them. I realize some of them will see this as snarkiness on my part, or a trick. They can't believe that I can possible wish them peace and joy, despite our differences, perhaps they would wish only an "F-U" to me, or a "please go away and die, I can't believe you are the same person I once knew, etc." None of that matters to me. In fact, I know it is part of the challenge on my part, to love and respect them despite ur differences, with one of those differences being whether to love and respect the people you disagree with. 

That we are so far apart on this last point is poignant, because it is my experience that liberals, if they sense you disagree with them, seem to believe that you simply haven't gotten the message yet. You need to be informed that you are wrong, and then you will change your mind.  They don't understand that I already know how much we disagree, that I understand where they are coming from in many respects, and yet I still believe what I believe. 

Most liberals I know, when I meet them now, are ready with a story about something that happened to them recently which demonstrates just how stupid and ignorant Christians are, and how obnoxious they are in the public sphere. They always have a personal incident to tell me about. They are eager to share it. Bless their hearts. I love them for that. I love them all still. I do wish them joy and peace in the new year. It is a test for me to maintain this, knowing how they feel. I will say nothing to them that needs to be unsaid later, even if there is no later, which is probably the case.  Sending Christmas cards, as I've said, is civilization itself to me. Even if I am the last one, I will do it.

Coldest Days of the Year

 December in Arizona is the coldest time of the year, just as June is the hottest. As I kid I remember reading this in a book about weather. It surprised me, because it aligns well with the actual solstices. In the middle of the country where I grew up, the hottest and coldest times of the year do not align with the solstices but are offset by weeks. The hottest time is in July or August. The coldest is in January and February. Not so in the southern regions, like where I live now. I still fascinates me that in December we experience the coldest times when the days are shortest, as they are now.

The last few years, since 2018, I have had a daily schedule which has me getting up as early as 4 AM, sometimes earlier. These last few weeks, I have found myself sleeping in until 6 AM, even later. It feels so decadent to me to wake up at 6 AM now, as if I've slept away half the day. Not in my wildest dreams could I imagine keeping the hours I did when I was in college, or graduate school. 

It's easier to sleep in when the sun is so late in rising. Also lately I have waking up in the middle of the night, and after an hour or so of wondering if I should just get up and start my day, then falling back asleep until late in the morning. One day I slept almost until 7 AM. It felt scandalous to me.

This week it has been particularly cold, some of the coldest days we have had since we moved to Arizona. It got down into the Thirties last night. The rabbits are fluffed in their fur.

Of course one cannot talk about the weather lately without it becoming political quickly. How they have ruined the small talk we used to be able to have, at least about this subject.  If I talk to a liberal friend or family member, I expect any remark about the weather to be greeted with a sermon regarding the need to institute a world government in order to control our behavior. So I avoid even talking about the weather. If I get the sermon, I usually play dumb, as if I didn't understand them. I do this kind of thing a lot for the sake of the peace of the moment. There is no reasoning with such people. We know that all evidence must support their point of view. If it's hotter than normal, colder than normal, or just too normal---it all means the same thing. World government, ASAP! 

In the near future, it is possible I will doing a streaming show on Rumble regarding the War on Science, which I recently began writing about, as part of my comeback as a physicist. The comeback feels in full swing. I feel my thoughts pulled to particle physics a lot lately.  There is a part of me that knows there is no changing people's minds, unless they want to be changed. If I focussed on that, it feel lousy. One could despair. As always, I think to the future. I think of the generations to come, and the legacy we leave them They will have to pick up and carry on after the world-destroying utopian tantrums of madness that people are falling into lately (see the previous post).  They will wonder how we let it all happen. They will be very angry that they were deprived of the normalcy that we got to experience in our youth, from Baby Boomers on down, and then turned around and said "yes but now we need to dismantle all that, because we know better." 

We at this moment can help them rebuild by leaving behind as much truthful evidence of our convictions as possible, so they can start from a higher state than if they had to start from scratch. 

The Other Matt

 Is that clear to you now? (clip starts at 12:37).

I was speaking on the phone today with a friend about how it is important to narrow our focus in regard to our contributions to the world.  We must focus on the things that we alone know we can do, while we on this earth. If we do this, others will step forward to do the things we thought we had to do as well. Matt Walsh reminds me of that kind of thing. He says things I would feel the need to say, in the way he says them, if he were not there to say them. I can delegate that to him, and instead focus on the things peculiar to my talents. This kind of emerging specialization is something I am fascinated with, as we continue to win the war, by the Grace of God. We are finding our niches, that are our particular contributions. 

America deserves Kamala Harris to be President, just as it deserves France to win the world cup again.

Dear Fellow Hypertraditionalist

"The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” G.K. Chesterton

 Everyone I know and whom I also respect, and with whom I can laely find fellowship in any way, has some aspect in their personality and soul which can be called hypertraditionalist.

It reminds me of the movie The Village directed by M. Night Shyamalan. I have to discuss it with a spoiler here.

The story is about a group of present-day Americans who, scarred by personal trauma in their lives, collectively retreat into a "living history" past compound in teh woods, completely cut off from the outside world. It is like some fantasy island Amish adventure that lasts the rest of ones life. The movie implies that this retreat into the traditionalist past arises from the wounds the characters have suffered in the present-day world. As a viewer, one is motivated to feel pity for them.

I like the premise in the movie. Perhaps the wounds I have suffered in my own life are the reason for my own  hypertraditionalism. But I don't want any pity because I think we are all of us suffering those type of wounds because the outside contemporary world, instead of the being the baseline reality of sanity and normalcy by which things should judged, should itself be regarded as a soul-mangling hellscape designed to shatter out minds and bodies into splinters and lead humanity into darkness.

At the same time I write this, I make my living doing advanced tech projects, and I am using the Internet to communicate to you, my dear reader out there. 

We negotiate the ways in which we can be hypertraditionalist, each one of us. We are part-time actors in our various living history museums, whether they are located in four walls, or in the words we speak and the manners by which we treat others, and raise our children. It can be in the way we seek health and relief from pain. Above all, it can be in the way we worship God,

We are each of us conserving something we think needs to be conserved. We have appointed ourselves the conservators of this piece of the shattered landscape of the world, because someone needs to do it. We are glad when we see others step forward to be conservators in their own way. We have no jealousy but rather relief when we see others come to join us, and work with us shoulder to shoulder.

We know the culture as a whole is not with us. It seeks to demonize us, and destroy us, even with a soft voice on the radio mocking us. Even when they can find anything overtly wrong with us, we know they will lie about us, making up any accusation they think might stick with others.

We do not begrudge those who desire to live in contemporary mores without our perspective, but so often we see that this is accompanied by a willingness to believe the lies about us, in a bad faith manner. IT suggests to us they simply hate us, and want us to go away and vanish. They do not want to extend the courtesy of live and let live to us to us, but must force our submission to a great paradigm in which all things traditional must be seen as pitiful, like the characters in the movie I mentioned.

I feel sorry for them. Perhaps they are just one trauma, one bad scrape with the world,  from joining us. To me, it feels as if we are the lucky ones. I have felt great joy after embracing this knowledge about myself and others.

For those of you out there fighting the good fight, acting in your living history way, I salute you with Christmas joy. Let this be my Christmas card to you. Know that many of us are deeply grateful to see that you are with us, even if we never speak or see each other.

I am Anti-Woke

One of my guiding stars of late in the Culture Wars is Paul Chato, a Canadian who made a long old-school career as a Hollywood executive, and now gives us the perspective of his years of wisdom. I thought this video was particularly watershed in terms of telling us where things are at the moment in Hollywood, whose new cultural products I have largely abandoned, but which remains part of my thinking about the world in a big way. Among other things it is important that we see the situation at large in perspective, despite any short-term political gains and losses.

Rendezvous in the Park

 I have certain thoughts that I entertain only in park. As I walk along the path by the pond I see them up ahead like a friend waiting to meet me, sitting at the picnic table. I sit down and begin conversing. Some of the thoughts are technical, like the chapters of the physics book that I carry with me. Some are personal, and my life and people I have known. It depends on the weather. On rainy days it will be more reflective. Today the rain stopped, and we had cloudy cool skies with enough sun to keep from being chilly. A good days for physics. A good day to use the ramada in the park to test the chapters of my quantum field theory book. I get all the chapters correct easily, but miss on a few subsections. They are in the advanced chapters, where the advanced material has not yet entered a deeper understanding in my mind.

Coming and going on the path, I usually peek into the Library, to make a daily audit of the comings and goings of the titles, adult and children in nature, on its two shelves. When I pacing around in my thoughts in the ramada, I sometimes catch the red box of the Library out of the corner of my eye, as it sits along the path, and I my mind processes it as a person.

The puffy clouds over the mountains remain, beautiful with grey and white textures, casting luscious shadows on the mountains just below them. The clouds are reflected in aching clear splendor in the bond as one walks along the path.

It took me several minutes of pacing in the ramada, and sitting at one of the picnic tables with my book for several more minutes, to realize that there are now four metal picnic tables in the shelter instead of two. 

My old friends, those thoughts that wait for me, distract me, it seems. Meet me in the shelter, I tell them, as I leave my apartment. We will talk about quantum field theory.

The Darker Type of Verdant

A few days ago we got soaking rains. A front came in. The skies grew overcast. The heavy drizzle was chilly and the nights were cold indoors, requiring space heaters. 

When this happens, a mist comes over the McDowell Mountains, darkening them under the blanket of grew puffs that shroud their summit, like something out of a fantasy story. The shadows below the clouds draw out the green of the vegetation, and it turns from the sun-faded succulent green to resembling jungle tree tops. That is, you can't tell the difference between the low Sonoran vegetation and what might otherwise be the treetop canopy of the Blue Ridge of Pennsylvania, or the Coastal Ranges of Oregon.

The smell of rain is delicious to breathe. I think about people I've known, that I've lost along the way, to the world. Do you think we would be friends again? I want to ask some of them. I wish I could give them blanket amnesty from words we might have exchanged in haste, confusion, and anger.  

 Advent. The world yearns for deliverance. Today I went shopping for Christmas cards. They are not easy to find, the boxed set. I went to four places before finding them at Barnes and Noble, where there was a small selection. Hardly anyone sends mail anymore to each other. I call myself the last letter writer. Letter writing is civilization, and when I go, so will go civilization. I don't want that to be true, but at the moment it seems that way.

Going through the selection, I examine only ones depicting the Nativity. Of the more than fifty choices of design on the tables, there are perhaps eight that qualify. They are all abstract representations. One apparently shows an empty crib. No baby Jesus.  Another makes sure to show the Holy Family as People of Color. I don't mind the color of the figures but I hate feeling like I am being lectured to by a Christmas Card. 

In a couple cases I notice the cards do not depict the Nativity per se, but rather depict Nativity scenes in front of churches.  That is, we see a contemporary rural church in the snow and in front of it is a creche of the Holy Family, alone and unobserved in the snow. We experience the Nativity as simulacrum several times removed form us, and thus not a threat.

I want to choose a design with animals. Animals are important in the Nativity. Disappointingly, none of the cards depict cattle, except one of the simulacrum cards of a modern creche. So in the card, it is supposed to be a fake cow, and it is not even clear that it is a cow.  You will never find a painting of the Nativity form the Middle Ages or Renaissance that has animals that does not have an ox or cow.  The absence of cows on these sets of cards speaks volumes to me.

I think about the people to whom I will send cards. The box has fourteen yards. I will use all of them I hope. Do I have Mark and Laurie's address in Reno? I hope so. I certainly want to send them a card.

There are people I would love to send a card to. I wonder if I could get away with it, without angering them? In some cases, the Nativity scene would be enough to trigger them. 

Amnesty. Just tell me somehow you want to be curious about each other again in an innocent way. That what's I'd convey to them. 

My last living connection to Oregon, who is the only person in that state who will certainly be among my addressees, is a guy who used to be the Poet Laureate of that state. In met him years ago when he taught one of my English classes as a young visiting professor-poet. I sent him a postcard from Edinburgh this summer, because I knew he was leading a tour there later that summer, as part of his professorial position where he nows teaches in Portland.

He and I probably have many differences in how we see the world, yet he is my brother. I treat him as such. He emailed me after my postcard and said he wanted to be in contact. So now I send him my highest caliber of thoughts on a regular basis and wait for his return. It is playful. He sent me pictures of a specimen in a museum in Scotland, after he took his tour there in August. It is a bronze axe head dating from Antiquity. He himself found it, when he was a boy, climbing on Arthur's Seat, the great ancient mound just downstream from Edinburgh on the Forth. He gave it to the museum, and finally he had come back to see it.

It was beautiful to receive the gift of his correspondence. It is hard to have a conversation by email. It is no substitute for the way people used to communicate by mail. I have thought a lot about this, and why it is so. The bottom line is that digital-only communication has destroyed our culture.

It's hard to imagine the type of intimate communication we used to have with each other, that we no longer have, because nobody has it anymore.  We are living broken disconnected lives, stewing in resentments from afar, believing we are in contact with the entire world at once because we can see their names and pictures on small LED screens we carry with us everywhere.

We don't even hear each other's voices on the phone anymore. The analog phone system, where you could hear each other breathing during the pauses, no longer exists. We hear only dead digital pauses now, a simulacrum of the sound waves that used to be carried continuously from our lips to another'e ears by the means of copper wires. Our voices are now converted into ones and zeroes, and our messages are wrapped in the boxes of email applications, surrounded by the hoopla of color of websites and such. We don't have the paper to ourselves. We can't write important long things to the edge of the page, our handwriting becoming a scrawl because we cannot keep up with our thoughts. None of that type of communication exists anymore.

The world yearns for more  Childhood is broken. Courtship is broken. Marriage is broken. Work is broken.  I am writing this to you because I know you feel it too.