The Alchemy of Society
June 2, 2022 11:35pm
I entered the library to pick up Stanislaw Lem’s “Solaris” – an inter-library loan. A pudgy, 24-year-old man offers to help. He has a black stubble of a beard and steps from behind a cabinet to reveal a white pleated skirt and a lacy black top. I observe this with curiosity. What series of events led to this? Does behavior create assumptions about our overall approach to life? Would I likely have anything in common with this person? Should I call him “Miss”?
I have grown bored with people making statements in a relativistic world and so take the book and wish him a good day. As I leave, I wonder if his new persona makes him more comfortable in his world? I feel less and less comfortable in mine.
Slowly, slowly we are transformed by the alchemy of society. Tribes arise from the wastes of a moral, cultural, and intellectual desert; fifth columns intent on remaking civilization in their own image. Dismissed as an affectation of impressionable youth, these devotees spread a new faith, a catechism of destruction. Their battle-cry echos the theology of their puppet masters whose strings ensnare and confuse a generation. Finally bound by their own sophistry, they may yet escape, they may yet sever the knot they tied.
The Raw Wound of Awareness
June 3, 2022 7:53am
Life no longer affords me any brief respite from the constant consciousness of consciousness. The raw wound of awareness forever rubbing against the abrasiveness of passing time; a continual reminder of what has gone before and the decreasing fraction remaining.
And what did I do with that most precious treasure? Only let it sift through my fingers as though I was crouching at the crest of a dune in the Gobi dipping my hand into a substance whose surplus renders it seemingly worthless…. until – the last measure slips away.
Time and Fate
June 4, 2022 8:45pm
Estate sales today yielded a six-foot spud bar, a copy of Plato’s dialogues, a tool pouch, a nice 6″ Wagner cast iron skillet, and a like-new 12′ x 16′ tarp. As I unload these treasures, I wonder how long I could survive on a deserted island with only these items.
Afterwards, I dressed Rev War and we drove to the Jack Jouett house in Versailles, KY for a black powder demonstration. Jouett is the “Paul Revere of the South”. He saw Tarleton and 250 cavalry troops on a quick strike mission to apprehend Jefferson and some other Revolutionary leaders at Monticello, so he rode 40 miles cross country to beat them there and warn the rebels. If not for this action, the British would likely have captured Jefferson and the entire Virginia legislature. After the war, Jouett moved to Versailles, built a house and raised hemp, tobacco and 12 children on his farm.
Now about that time thing from yesterday. Time is 99% of the problem for the alienated among us. I can never quite wrap my head around the idea. I’ve been here 66 years but some (most?) of that was spent in a state of “unawareness”; I saw the surface of the thing but did not grasp the mystery….of life, that is.
I think by about 8th grade (13 years), I began to see that there was more to this living than a child can comprehend. As I got older, I slowly understood a little more but only within my chosen framework. When finally the framework collapsed at about 63, I began to see more of the truth of time and reality. And now? Now there is nothing to do but wait.
We control nothing and understand less. Anyone who claims otherwise has not grasped the truth of time and fate.
Turbulence
June 8, 2022 9:19pm
I sit on the barn porch on an evening that calls for possible tornadoes. The wind gusts maybe 30mph whipping the elms, maples, and cherry trees to a frenzy. But there are no dark clouds, no whirlwinds to inspire fear. Once we stood in the basement with the sound of a freight train outside. Looking into eyes that admitted this could be the end, we waited. But it was not on the ground and probably not a bad one. We lost only a play house built by the kids’ grandfather….and actually, I hauled that back to it’s place where it sat for another few years; but never fully recovered.
Anyway, I sit reading “Journey to the End of the Night” by Louis-Ferdinand Céline and by the end of the first page, I know this is a real writer. Above, birds are coasting on the gusts that swirl around me. I wonder at the skill of these aviators who risk life and limb to be flying in these conditions. The wind below is fierce but above, the clouds seem to be stationary. A cold front is moving in and the humidity which felt like the tropics earlier is now retreating. So, it is comfortable in my “dream chair.”
Earlier, I tried for the first time to split one of the 300-pound limestone rocks at the back of the barn. I’m close to starting the construction of the stone cottage and wanted to see what would happen if I drilled the holes and inserted the wedges I bought to split these rocks. The rock is softer than the concrete I’m used to drilling with the hammer-drill so it went pretty quickly and the rock split evenly along the obvious layers. I think this is doable….so it is time to begin this project.
Secrets
June 12, 2022 10:25pm
Our youngest daughter turns 31 today. She is in Greece on a business trip…..what a birthday!
I drove to Cincinnati Saturday to participate in a Brigade of the American Revolution event at the Sharon Woods Heritage Village. I did a flax demonstration and we all formed up for a little drilling and demonstration at the opening and closing. While doing a “show and tell” about our flintlock weapons, I was paired up with a couple that was from Louisville. After a few questions about where they had lived and high school and then elementary school, I realized this man and I had lived on the same street as children. We had not seen each other for about 56 years.
“Journey to the End of the Night” is good but not as good as I had hoped…. we’ll see where it goes but Celine’s experiences in Africa are reminiscent of Conrad’s and confirm our worst visions of colonialism and imperialism. What did I expect from this book? Someone to reveal the secrets of the universe? Those secrets remain the property of a jealous God who knows that to keep a secret, you must tell no one.
Tomorrow (June 13) the sun will reach its northern-most angle (59°) and the earliest dawn of the summer (6:17am – for my location) occurs. If this sounds counterintuitive, you’re right but around the solstices these changes each day are very small and not the same for sunrise and sunset…. that is, they are not symmetrical. By the summer solstice on 6/21/22, sunset will be 4 minutes later (9:10pm – for this location) and that will be the longest day of the year. Even though the sun rose later each day beginning June 14 the changes in the sunset were greater – becoming later, outpacing the sunrise changes and resulting in the longest day on the solstice. Seems strange when the earliest sunrise is 6/13 and the latest sunset is 6/27! Note that the solstice occurs just about the middle of that period! Anyway, enjoy the lengthening days because we soon head back the other way.
If you are interested in Earth Science/planetary motion, check out these web sites:
Sunrise and Sunset Change to your city!
SunCalc Change to your address
The Mills of the Gods
June 16, 2022 10:24am
Here, just East of Louisville, KY, the heat has infested every thought and action. For days the temperature has hovered just under 100 and the humidity makes it feel like you’re breathing a solid. Still, we work and walk our two miles. The heat means that trips to the blueberry enclosure leave shiny footprints on the crushed grasses…the hissing of summer lawns as Joanie said. The garden dirt is powder, and we could use rain. The tomatoes look good…. I have made a concerted effort to sucker all the plants for the first time and I’m liking the results. We are getting lettuce, squash, and zucchini out of the garden now. I picked raspberries yesterday and the blueberries are close. Blackberries are still a few weeks away, but it looks like a bountiful crop. Last year, we had so many blackberries, I used the last 21 pounds to make wine which turned out pretty well.
The FED raised rates 75 points yesterday and Biden threatens the oil companies if they don’t increase production. It looks increasingly like no one is steering this vessel. We may be very glad we have a big garden when the dust settles.
If you could create your own personal reality, what would that look like? How would your design reflect your particular wish for fulfillment? Would you finally achieve your vision?
As I continue my journey down this dusty old road, I wonder more and more if it isn’t enough to say that in the end, we are relieved of the burden of consciousness, our true heaven just the peacefulness of oblivion. That’s not so bad once you are able to give up on the dream of meaning, fate, and purpose. No, you were once dispersed elements brought together in the certain probability of infinite time and space to believe you had a destiny – a destiny of the spirit – but in the end, the elements return to their origin and the dream of a spirit is extinguished in a cold universe. Then, you may sleep peacefully for all eternity. Or at least until next the Gods fire their forges and set their mills to grind. Then, in rote repetition, elements now purified of your memory aspire to life – to consciousness again – and the cycle begins anew.
Louis-Ferdinand Celine
June 20, 2022 9:35am
Louis-Ferdinand Celine served in WWI, traveled in Africa, lived in the United States, and worked as a doctor in Paris. How many have experienced a fraction of that life? The vast majority of humans lead lives that were predictable and boring from the start. Each soul thinking that the life it leads is new and exciting. We pass all the milestones of maturity and experience believing that only we have felt this and enjoyed that and understood all. An objective observer watches us tread the same path as billions before us; our sad little journeys occurring on a backward little planet at the edge of an unimportant galaxy in the tidal pools of the universe.
And this is what Celine learned from all his varied life experiences: our lives are nothing but grasping for food, pleasure, and the fulfilment of our genetic imperative – to survive….and, if you are lucky to have enough – of everything, your day will still come, and you will submit to the same fate as all those grasping for the material things that you enjoyed.
So, enough negativity for today??? Who reads this crappy journal anyway? Not many actually! Well, it could be worse! Imagine the conversation between Celine and Emil Cioran….now that would be the ultimate in nihilistic negativism!
Are You Entertained?
June 29, 2022 8:34pm
How many times will your pain scream out? How many deaths will you die while yet you live? Constant anguish settles into numb silence and acceptance of the dull inevitability of fate. So, in these doldrums of the passionless life, we endure. Let there be entertainments to stimulate the mind!
I am working on the rock house whose footer was first dug in the fall of 2018 and poured in 2019. I went to Lexington today to pick up the only 48″ damper I was able to find in the whole region. Jody laid out the firebox when he was here Sunday. I made some adjustments but should be able to set the floor of the firebox tomorrow. Some “entertainment,” huh? Laying brick and stone in 90 degree weather! A fun time is had by all.
The Big Goal
June 30, 2022 10:18am
If you identified the single most important goal of your life, what would that be?
If you pursued that goal with great determination, what other facets of your life suffered as a result?
Did you sacrifice relationships on the altar of your idolatry? Did you give up a little of your integrity to advance your career, to make a little more money, to satisfy the lust for material things?
Or was your obsession more ideological or perhaps even spiritual? Was being “right” more important than love? Were you so inflexible that friends and family abandoned you in the end? Was it worth it? Do you now reflect on that chosen path and suffer your isolation with equanimity? After all – they were all wrong and only you were privy to the great truths of life – right? Alone in the fortress you constructed to protect your pristine visions of morality, you sink deeper into the poisoned wail of your soul when in the last and darkest hour, a doubt creeps into your hardened heart.