Ruins and Writing

July 1, 2021 9:32am

I often have these visions or ideas for my writing but I go on thinking and they are forgotten. While mopping the floor this morning, the phrase “ruins of illusions” came to me and I stopped to write it down…and here it is.

As I thought about the phrase, I felt it applies to the future of the United States so here’s the elaboration on the theme…..

“Living among the ruins of illusions decaying in the soft, encompassing vegetation and choking vines of another age.”

I will use this somewhere….by now, perhaps you’ve already read it in an earlier post! Or maybe it will appear later….everything here is subject to change….the editor can’t make up his mind.

Now back to the mop!

Carlyle, Science, Soul

July 4, 2021 9:15am

I’m still reading Sartor Resartus as though it were a fine sipping whiskey – very little at a time with frequent pauses to reflect and savor the brilliance of Carlyle’s mind.

I return to the skipped introduction for greater understanding and read this by Charles Frederick Harrold – the editor:

“The old tradition of the mystics, of the life of the soul as more important than any possible manipulation of matter, no longer enters so intimately, as it once did through the church, the daily conduct of life.” – Charles Frederick Harrold.

Harrold, in 1937, attempts to explain to a generation becoming increasingly converted to the theology of science, the inner life of the believer of 1836 and the broad influence of these values in society. Readers who have sought the divine will understand Sartor Resartus much better than those with a totally secular world-view. I am cut from the same cloth as Carlyle but with almost 200 years of additional science, a greater understanding of the physical universe, awareness of evolutionary forces, knowledge of the geologic past (with its shape-shifting continents and multiple extinction events) all leading to Nietzsche, my soul is in a bad way – the collateral damage of intrapsychic conflict between what is and what should be. Between reality and some mystical, verdant land of blue oases and purpose falling with the palm fronds that mark my path. No Messiah, I just wish, like Carlyle, to walk with him toward the new Jerusalem but then find myself crucified on the cross of science and left to hang forever between heaven and Earth.

Balkanization of the Psyche

July 8, 2021 8:36am

The humans see themselves as discrete individuals each with very well defined interests, characteristics, and behavior. Once, they were much more homogeneous; they were parts of very large groups that shared similar political and moral ideas. As society became more complex and human behavior crossed into new frontiers, the sense of any larger community waned and people gravitated to small groups that shared similar world views. Some of these groups defied conventional mores and as this diversity became accepted, the constraints on morality and ethics became increasingly blurred until there was no agreement on right and wrong and laws weakened and disappeared – the humans each became more isolated from those in other groups and even from those of their own “tribe.” Eventually, the Balkanization of the psyche was complete and there was no longer any “brotherhood of man.”

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Another quote from Thomas Carlyle:

“Besides, I have under all my gloom, a genuine feeling of the ludricrous; and could have been the merriest of men, had I not been the sickliest and saddest.” Thomas Carlyle – letter to John Stuart Mill.

This reminds me of Gustave Flaubert writing that the act of shaving seemed ridiculous and made him laugh at himself.

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And now, for something totally unrelated…..

And so he concluded that his life- his entire existence was an experiment to see how an autonomous entity, faced with the prospect of meaninglessness would react to the unresolvable paradox.

Good and Evil

July 9, 2021 8:15pm

I have written that our every thought and action moves all of creation between good and evil. I no longer believe that (like Conrad) but just now, I read this passage in Sartor Resartus:

“Not a Red Indian hunting by Lake Winnipic, can quarrel with his squaw, but the whole world must smart from it….” – Thomas Carlyle

So it seems that my observations are 200 years late.

(and I wonder if the thought above had anything to do with James Fennimore Cooper who had published several of the Leatherstocking Tales prior to the publication of Sartor Resartus. I seem to have read that those stories were very popular among Europeans at the time.)

Kayaking on the Kentucky

July 12, 2021 7:08 pm

We paddled from just above lock #4 to Buffalo Trace distillery, had a meal, took a tour and did a tasting…..all under a threatening sky and even a little light rain. Nice trip. Going through the lock was interesting and Buffalo Trace is always a good time. The most remarkable part of the trip involved the two young women who each managed to fall in the river – one while getting in a kayak, the other while exiting a canoe. Both were way too heavy and had difficulty getting out of the water. One did manage to climb out on the ladder provided but the other would not let go of the dock to grasp the rungs of the ladder; she was very afraid. Finally, the guide had to jump in and try to boost her up on the ladder. She eventually managed to get out but I had to wonder if either of them would think about their ability to save themselves if it had become necessary to get out without assistance. Many will die when the zombie apocalypse occurs because they will not be able to walk a half mile or navigate anything more difficult than a crowded grocery aisle.

Antonio Rivas

July 14, 2021 9:45am

Painter Antonio Rivas on boredom (recounted by Norman Lewis):

“Here, the sickness from which all people suffer is boredom. There is nothing in their heads. They bring up a single child then they settle to await death. In uneventful lives they will go to any extreme to create an incident. The husband murders a stranger. The wife seduces a priest.” He shakes his head, and adds “fourteen black petticoats hide the most sensual of all bodies.” Norman Lewis quoting Antonio Rivas.

Reminds me of Virginia Woolf’s comments about Marcel Proust’s writing. ‘Oh, if I could write like that!’ I cry. – Virginia Woolf.

I think that some of us know that these attempts to escape boredom only exacerbate its effects and instead we choose to accept and examine this pervasive companion on our boring journey through life.

Rain

July 16, 2021 11:51pm

The rain is beating on the windows. Falling like it has a million times before and each drop a billion billion water molecules that rose independently and coalesced into larger and larger droplets high above the earth – until they fall to the primitive ground or the windows of a 25-year-old house in the suburbs. And how many times have these same molecules joined before in the 4 billion year history of the planet? And do they share memories of their fateful cycles? Do they recount the terrifying fall from miles above through the cold and dark….only to be dashed upon rocks or leeched into the dry cracks of thirsty earth? Or are they split by the lightening only to be reformed later in cycles as old as the universe and as new as the morning?

Gardening and the Sun

July 21, 2021 9:48pm

Tonight for dinner, every thing we ate came from the garden: Green beans, tomatoes, beets, corn, squash, potatoes and for dessert, blackberry cobbler made from berries from our own patch! The blackberries are abundant and juicy this year; for a while, we were eating blackberries at every breakfast and lunch followed by a cobbler for dessert at dinner. I think tonight was our fourth cobbler. There is no end in sight to all these berries; I finally said I would pass on the fresh berries at every meal but I still eat the cobblers with ice cream!

There are so many berries, I got out my wine equipment, picked 18 pounds of berries, bought yeast and sugar and we started crushing the berries up to make three gallons of blackberry wine. It took about 15 cups or eight pounds of sugar to get the specific gravity to the point where we should be right at the border between dry and sweet wine. The primary fermenter is sitting behind me in my office and I was beginning to get a little concerned that I wasn’t hearing the air lock. I rocked the fermenter pretty vigorously for a few minutes and now I hear the air lock bubbling about every 10 seconds so those little yeasts are working to convert that sugar to alcohol and CO2….which is what is bubbling through the air lock. You use the air lock to keep O2 out of the reaction during fermentation.

This wine story reminds me of a graduate level chemistry class I once took. There were only five or six of us in this class and on the night the syllabus said the lecture would be on fermentation, the instructor showed up with several bottles of wine. He presented the lecture and then we opened the wine and proceeded internalize the lesson. In short order, we completely understood the magic of fermentation. Best class ever!!!

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Today as I tilled the garden in the summer heat, I noticed all the flowers swaying in the breeze which was just making the temperature bearable. We have flowers all over the place, thanks to my wife, and they ARE beautiful. I look at them every day but don’t really see them….this is unfortunate and is something I should correct. Too often lost in abstractions, I fail to notice the true beauty all around us.

It has been extremely hazy here in the Ohio Valley for a couple of days. The meteorologists say it is caused by the wildfires out west. But the light is also affected by the changing seasons. While it is still mid-summer, we’re now 30 days past the solstice and sunset at this latitude is approaching the 9pm barrier. I track this sort of thing on some websites and can tell you that our latest sunsets begin on the solstice and continue until July 2. During this 11-day period, the sun sets at 9:10pm at compass heading 301°. These factoids remind me that although, in another life, I taught Earth Science to 9th graders, and thought I understood the motions of the Earth, it wasn’t until an architect friend mentioned a test question he posed to his college students, that I began to think a little more about planetary motion.

Here’s the question: A rectangular house in North America, sitting on the 38th parallel and situated so that one side is facing geographic north never experiences direct sunlight on that northern side – True or False? Explain your answer.

Shortly after this discussion with the architect, I was sitting on the deck of the house we owned then. It was a fall morning out in the country and the sun was just coming up. It rose at the base of a telephone pole and I watched its movement relative to the pole and understood an aspect of earth science that, until then, I had never noticed.

The Earth reveals mysteries if we spend some time actually observing them….but we modern humans, with our houses, lights, and social media, are too busy to just directly experience, in quiet solitude, the gradual changes that occur during a sunrise or sunset.

Heavy Seas

July 27, 2021 8:40am

My soul has been suffering a raging storm. Lashed by gales of doubt, swamped by heavy seas of disbelief, my vessel heaved on crests that show a dark and ominous horizon and then dropped in a free-fall of angst into a narrow trough that threatens to leave me on the sea floor, pursuer of something Godly.

How did this all begin? A timeless universe, extending forever….why is there something and not nothing?

There should have been nothing.

1:06pm

So I’m in the garden driving 8′ fence posts next to some indeterminate tomatoes that are growing out the top of the 5′ cages. Then I use baling twine to tie the vines to the posts to keep them up out of the way. The smell of the baling twine takes me back to the farm. I loved every thing about haying – cutting , raking, baling – even stacking it on the wagons and again in the barn. It was very hot and difficult work but at the end of the day, you could see the physical results of your labor.

St. Francis and Balance

July 28, 2021 9:05am

OK, some of the previous entry was…..a bit much. Let’s give St. Francis, the optimist, equal time with this beautiful prayer:

“Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is error, truth; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy. Grant that i may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. for it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.” Francis of Assissi

Library Trip on a July Afternoon

July 28, 2021 1:42pm

The telephone rings and a voice informs me my interlibrary loan has arrived. I drive to town to pick up “The Man Without Qualities”. It is a typical July afternoon the Ohio Valley – oppressive heat and humidity topped off by a milky-looking sky. The lady at the desk smiles and says, “this has a quick turn around but you can renew it. Have a great day.”

“You too,” I reply

I return to the car noting again the uninspiring sky which looks like one big slate colored cloud. Corn is in bloom and the view over the river bottom reveals the rank and file of the deep green plants soaking up the heat and humidity. The air is so wet you wish your lungs could wring it out before it reaches your alveoli.

At an intersection, a concrete truck comes to a slow stop while the drum continues its slow revolutions in lock-step with the planet across which I drive on a late July errand.

Back at home, I open the book and read this from the dust jacket: “The Man Without Qualities” stands alongside Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past” and Joyce’s “Ulysses” as one of the three literary masterworks of modernism.”

High praise! We’ll see.