A song reflects abstract emotions well
If deftly played by masters of the art;
If poorly, melody’s ungainly swell
Will rend the ear, when meant to rend the heart.
Medieval bards believed an evil chord
Diabolus in musica would bear.
If pregnant tones can vile birth afford,
They carry better perfect birth as rare.
My theme is holy love in certain terms,
A verse my heart would sing without a tongue,
My corpse will feed the chorus to the worms.
Though not a master yet, I am still young,
But angel, grace a troubadour in wing,
In time you’ll hear the host of heaven sing.
[8]
I just bought a myself a MacBook and am back online. It’s been about half a year since my last computer went missing, and now I get to see what I’ve missed in the Wide World of Webs. After a quick perusal I conclude this consists of:
About 25 pages of prozac and viagra spam on Coal, and several million homemade videos on Youtube.
~~
Summer impairs my reading faculty. The heat accumulates like vegetable matter in my brain, but I’ve snuck a couple of good reads in through the undergrowth anyway.
Mere Christianity is one of the heavily referenced ‘must-reads’ of thinking and unthinking Christianity alike. Most of my friends are surprised when I admit my ignorance of its contents. I was never in any hurry to read it, partly because it’s so popular, partly because of false impressions I’ve accumulated over the years – these may have been my fault, may have been the fault of it’s advocates, I’m not sure.
I’m finally reading it, and of course, enjoying it thoroughly. There are the obvious reasons for this: Lewis’ great respect for institutional religion, his insistence that talking about what is common to Christianity in no way pre-empts the need to go further along a particular path in searching for the truth (to choose a denomination, as it were, rather than limit Christianity to it’s Lowest Common Denominator, as if that were all that mattered), his 3 part discussion of the structure and functioning or morality, and return to the 7 virtues as a format for breaking down the demands of personal morality.
But the bubbles in the beer, for me, is Lewis as linguist’s adept use of language underlying every argument, and in the direct linguistic points he scores on appropriate occasions through the book.
Apologetics are often highly readable but linguistically coy, ignorant (in keeping with our culture), or lacking in precision. Lewis is readable, and terribly precise. One might contrast him with his literary and apologetic predecessor, G.K. Chesteron, who was precise, and readable, but not always clear (for the average reader, at any rate), partly because although he was linguistically precise, he was always shifting gears without warning: changing his apologetic audience or target from chapter to chapter, indulging his opponent’s philosophical views and their merits on one page before making an about face to show how deficient they are once you step outside of their fabricated borders, and so on. Unlike Chesterton, Lewis is the penultimate guide. Chesterton dares his reader to keep up with him. Lewis takes him by the hand and guides him along, step by step. Both have their place, but I now understand why Lewis is often recommended to young or new Christians, while Chesterton usually gets the more obscure, literary types.
I think a small study group that looked at books like Mere Christianity would be a riot. We could start with that, then move on to things like Chesterton’s Heretics/Orthodoxy, Bonhoeffor’s Cost of Discipleship, perhaps with a more advanced read, like Alistair MacIntyre’s After Virtue, thrown into the mix from time to time. If anyone’s interested, let me know. I might just get something started.
[2]
Kind of an Ode to Duty
by Ogden Nash
O Duty,
Why hast thou not the visage of a sweetie or a cutie?
Why displayest thou the countenance of the kind of conscientious organizing spinster
That the minute you see her you are aginster?
Why glitter thy spectacles so ominously?
Why art thou clad so abominously?
Why art thou so different from Venus
And why do thou and I have so few interests mutually in common between us?
Why art thou fifty percent martyr
And fifty-one percent Tartar?
Why is it thy unfortunate wont
To try to attract people by calling on them either to leave undone the deeds they like, or to do the deeds they don’t?
Why are thou so like an April post mortem
On something that died in the ortumn?
Above all, why dost thou continue to hound me?
Why art thou always albatrossly hanging around me?
Thou so ubiquitous
And I so iniquitous.
I seem to be the one person in the world thou art perpetually preaching at who or to who;
Whatever looks like fun, there art thou standing between me and it, calling yoo-hoo.
O Duty, Duty!
How noble a man should I be hadst thou the visage of a sweetie or a cutie!
Wert thou but houri instead of a hag
Then would my halo indeed be in the bag!
But as it is thou art so much forbiddinger than a Wodehouse hero’s forbiddingest aunt
That in the words of the poet, When Duty whispers low, Thou must, this erstwhile youth replies, I just can’t.
[9]
‘ku
Haiku haiku hai
Ku haiku haiku haiku
Haiku haiku hai
-An ‘04 era haiku by Tristan Sandulak, originally posted on andcuriouser.com.
More
[11]
Now that I’m back and settling in, I’m looking for parties interested in resuming something resembling the literature group (previously known as S-Club 7) that was formed last year. This kind of social mental stimulation is a must for me right now, as I’ve spent much of the last five months muttering to myself in a corner of a musty apartment. That’s not exactly accurate, but I certainly haven’t had large doses of intellectual discussion, and am feeling the effects of withdrawal. Viz. It feels like my braincells are evacuating a dying planet.
I’ll talk to some of you directly. Others who are interested and can be in Winnipeg once a week feel free to contact me. In all likelihood I’ll be turning many of you away – we only need about a half dozen members and, really, who wouldn’t want to be in this club? – so apply quickly. I’ll also be taking suggestions as to the future direction of the group. So far I’ve talked to only one former member, and he thought we should stay on the Shakespeare track, possibly resuming with “The Tempest”.
Other projects you may be interested in: self-taught latin. This is an informal affair between one of my housemates and I. Another person to meet with on a weekly basis may help our motivation. We’re just beginning.
Poker/Gambling night. Self-explanatory. We need more poker. Also, I will teach you a kickass Chinese card game. The other two are open to both sexes. For this one I’m thinking more of a male crowd, but if interest expressed by females is overwhelming, I’m always willing to throw the gates open.
And if you happen to be fluent in standard Mandarin Chinese, give me a call.
[14]
This is the next part in the manuscript I introduced a couple of posts ago. Don’t read it if you haven’t already read Hosea sees a cigarette. Keep in mind that it’s intended as a part of a much greater whole, and if it doesn’t all make sense at this point, that’s probably alright. Also, I’m posting this at 4:30am, and I may well be back to make corrections later on.
Enjoy
[17]
This is a mature content warning. If you click on the link below you will be faced with the ostensible beginnings of a manuscript that will probably never be completed. Don’t be sorry. It’s in good company.
The warning is no joke. The manuscript is written in a playful but slightly irreverant tone. It includes sexual content. It includes what may appear, to the undiscerning eye, to be blasphemy. It stinks of the awful stench of postmodernity – maybe even postpostmodernity.
But it was fun to write, and if I don’t post something soon Coal might die. The manuscript is like a noble hero rushing into the street to save a helpless child from a barrelling semi. Judge it charitably.
If you’re one of those who believes in strict moral boundaries in literature, you probably shouldn’t click the link. But can you resist your curiosity, cat?
I am a Terribly Alluring Link
Edit: I think the next instalment will surprise you.
I was going to talk about William S. Burroughs, who said “I’m forced to the appalling conclusion that I would never have become a writer but for [his wife] Joan’s death…”
Burroughs was a pot-growing opium-smoking swinger who had planned to be exactly that from a young age. He travelled the world and explored the criminal underground. He ran from the law, he partied, he impressed, he thought, he tried, and eventually, he wrote. He killed his own wife.
The story is that he was running from the law, which was after him for growing dope, among other infractions. He, his wife Joan Vollmer, and their child ended up in Mexico city. At a party one night he proposed to show off his sharpshooting skills with a William Tell act. Joan placed a glass on her head, Burroughs aimed, and shot her dead on the spot.
I was going to talk about Lucien Carr, who introduced Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Neal Cassady to each other. After a while he began to pull away from the beats and their mad antics, but not soon enough to escape disaster. Carr was apparently attractive – especially to other men, and there were plenty of swingers about at the time. Among them was a man named David Kammerer, with whom Carr wanted only friendship. One day when Kammerer’s advances were refused, he attacked Carr. Carr stabbed him to death with a pocketknight in self-defense, filled his pockets with rocks, and rolled him into the river (where the entire scene took place). A short while later he turned himself in to police and served a two year sentence.
I could go on in this vein. There is a dark side to the beat generation and their escapades that I sometimes forget about while reading literature from their glory days. But Ginsberg wasn’t joking around when he wrote Howl.
Nevertheless, Lucian Carr and William S. Burroughs aren’t what I want to talk about. What interests me is the beatific vision. What interests me are the broadest currents of beat culture, the art it produced, and the ecstatic depraved glory of holy fools, mad saints, and ‘angelheaded hipsters’.
[1]
When Charles Bukowski was 16, his father lost his job but still pretended to go to work every day.
It seems like someone ought to write a poem about Bukowski where roughly 2/3 of the lines begin with the word “Bukowski”, like Allen Ginsberg’s America.
Bukowski your father was a pill that walked and talked
and did nothing to relieve the headaches.
Bukowski he got lodged in your throat and grew arms and threw you out.
Bukowski will you ever write a publishable poem?
Bukowski you give all of us hope.
You deliver letters and bleed out your ulcer.
You lost your virginity to a 300 pound woman when you were 23 years old.
Bukowski, you had a choice: deliver these letters or starve.
You must be starving, but at least your beer gut keeps you warm.
Bukowski, you are old and creepy looking but your mother smiled, so maybe we understand your smile.
Bukowski, we thank you for your fine poems, and excuse the other ones.
Bukowski don’t you know? You died in 1994, not 1955 or 1992 or any time in between.
Enough of that nonsense. Just to be clear it was written on the fly and I make no pretensions of having achieved anything remotely poetic. I just really wanted to pretend, even if only for a moment, that I’d come up with the voice Ginsberg used when he wrote America. Of course, that poem is self-reflexive (the word is intentional) and has real content. This is just tripe.
Hopefully it inspires you to navigate away from this page and check out some Bukowski.
~~
Speaking of Allen Ginsberg, you ought to be told that what this post is really about is me putting off a much more substantial post (including words that actually mean something!) about the Beats. I’ve been meaning to write it for over a month now. Hopefully that’s up soon.
~~
A Fun FYI: Buck65 cites Bukowski as not only a source of inspiration, but the person he’d most like to sit down for coffee and chocolate bars with. The song The Floor, which appears on Secret House Against the World is an adaptation of Bukowski’s poem, “a smile to remember” (see link above).
Buck (Richard Terfry) also says that Mikail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita is his favourite book, and Vladimir Nabakov his favourite author. Meaning he has an uncommon palatte but good taste nonetheless, which is reflected in his music.
~~
Recommended Reading: Three Oranges.
China is full of products that look basically familiar, yet would never be found in the NA market. For instance,
Ice Cream is a hot commodity here, and cheap. The Red Bean popsicle I just finished cost about 12Cdn cents. That’s the same flavour as Red Bean bubble tea, for those of you who enjoy that kind of thing. Last week I had a green pea ice cream, which was surprisingly good, while indeed tasting something like peas. At McDonald’s, the latest pie flavour is Green Bean, which, some random Chinese guys I met assure me, is also very good.
While tea is far more popular than coffee, coffee flavour is everywhere. In ice cream, in cookies, in cola. Now that I’ve seen Coffee Cola I’m a little surprised there’s no American equivalent. It’s a caffeine boost and a half.
Now, given all the amazing experiences I must be having in China, you’re probably wondering why when I finally do return to the blogosphere I waste my time talking about bean flavoured ice cream. Good question. I hate mass emails so I haven’t written any yet, but I am getting a bit tired of writing, so I adapt here a passage recently emailed to a friend.
As for China, I’m in a situation where everything is new and interesting and if my friends were here we could talk and talk without end. But because there’s so much and it’s all experience based, it’s hard for me to write about it. I really haven’t given anyone a firm idea of my impressions so far. All I can say for now is I don’t regret coming out here, though I do miss many things about home, and this apartment can get kind of lonely sometimes. Overall, it’s a fantastic experience. I love trying to communicate with these people – with only the smallest threads of language to connect us. I love watching the city from my 19th story window in the middle of the night, walking through the square, eating foreign foods. I keep thinking that I should be keenly aware of my solitude here, but I don’t feel it as poignently as I’d expect. I haven’t figured that out yet. I’m not sure if it would be healthy for too long, but 6 months isn’t bad. Perhaps once I’ve become accustomed to life in China I won’t have the distractions I have now.
That said, if there are particular things you’re interested to hear about, ask specific questions – probably by email.
As for this blog, I truly hope to get back to its central purpose soon. Right now I’m spending a lot of time adapting to my new job, but I’ve also been plowing through Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, and have much to say about that, not to mention Alistair McIntyre’s After Virtue. When tired of ethics, I sift through the fool’s goldmine of mid-century Beat literature. I finished Jack Kerouac’s On the Road a couple of weeks ago, and have enjoyed Allen Ginsberg’s poetry in particular since. If anyone has anything to say about the Beats and their legacy, that is a subject I would love to explore with you.
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