W: LP: LG: FD: EHOS

EHOS= The Eternal Husband and Other Stories.

We have begun in our literary group to read and discuss a collection of novellas and short stories. The book is ISBN-13: 978-0553214444, a paperback by the same translators of the other works of Fyodor Dostoevsky that we have so far read and thought about.

Since I am not yet an educated man and have not the critical apparatus to write great intellectual essays on the significance of every aspect of a work to the overall field of literature, I am going to quote a passage from the preface of this collection of stories. This passage is about FD's use of dreams, et al, in his writing; everything is well put, check it out:

"Dostoevsky made very wide use of the artistic possibilities of the dream in almost all its variations and nuances. Indeed, in all of European literature there is no writer for whom dreams play such a large and crucial role as Dostoevsky." We must distinguish, however, between the dreamer and the dream, because dreaming takes two main forms in Dostoevsky. The first is the form of a reverie produced by the dreamer, who longs to transform the squalid reality around him inot something nobler, loftier, more beautiful. The dreamer is a fervent idealist, a great reader of German romantic poetry, but his consciousness is isolated and he usually ends badly. Reality triumphs. Yer the dreamer's aspirations receive a backhanded vindication: aesthetically he is right; art and sensibility are exalted in his person above the meanness of the world. The bubble of this sort of romantic dreaming, which Dostoevsky himself indulged in as a young liberal of the 1840's, was definitively pricked in Notes from Underground. There the dreamer becomes a far more complex and contradictory figure; his tone changes from sentimental idealism to bitter sarcasm, much of the sarcasm directed against himself and his own former dreams: "...to tell long stories of how I defaulted on my life through moral corruption in a corner, through an insufficiency of milieu, through unaccustom to what is alive, and through vainglorious spite in the underground--is not interesting, by God; a novel needs a hero, and here there are purposely collected all the features for an anti-hero..." Isolated consciousness has recognized its isolation. This recognition marked all of Dostoevsky's work after Notes.
The second form dreaming takes in Dostoevsky is that of an unexpected and intense vision, which comes to the dreamer in sleep as a gift or a final revelation, a 'living image' that awakens him to a truth he had not suspected or had not understood before. Such are Alyosha's dream of the messianic banquet and Mitya's dream of 'the wee one' in Brothers Karamazov. These are confirming, saving dreams. They have a negative counterpart, ultimately serving the same purpose, in the nightmares of Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov in Crime & Punishment, of Stavrogin in Demons, and finally in Ivan Karamazov's 'hallucination' of the devil.

More to follow as we examine the stories in this collection.

Personal Update: misc.

The academic year is now in full swing and even though I am not yet able to take classes for credit, I am continuing to study and learn. So here are my busy activities:

Religious studies:
Bible Study Fellowship (studying the Life of Moses)--once a week with homework;
Covenant Group (topical study on the nature of living victoriously amidst suffering)--twice a month;
Sunday School (Men's group, topical on how to cultivate a loving relationship with God and seek after holiness)--once a week plus verse memorization;
Personal devotions (exegetical of the Wisdom Literature and general Bible reading)--as time permits.

Towards writing:
Literary Group (currently reading the works of Dostoevsky)--twice per month plus the time to read;
Other Reading Projects:
Mostly recreational reading (mind candy)--currently reading Kerouac, Stephenson, PKD.
Blog entries.
Audible books.

Technical:
Not pursuing formal studies except Continuing Education credits for my electrical license--in October, WAC/WISHA rules and NFPA; in November, 2008 NEC.

For miscellaneous Philosophy: Peter Leithart's Blog

For current events: five minutes snatched here and there to surf the information ocean.

In all of this I must make sure to pay attention to my family and attend to prayer.

May God sustain me!

Social Philosophy: Comments on the US Gov't give-away to the banks & links

I had to make some comment on the breathtaking wrongness of recent events in government & banking in the USA.

It should have gone without saying that it is unconstitutional and morally wrong for the US Government to bail out the banks (who have shown themselves incompetent to be in business), but it must be that the Fascist Oligarchy masquerading as a Republic in the United States no longer feels the need to maintain the fiction of a representative democracy.

Here are links to the texts of the constitution and the bill of rights and amendments. I challenge anyone to justify from these texts where it is the US Government's place to bail out a bunch of banker assholes.

Keep in mind that I do not accept many of the decisions of the Supreme court after 1930. During FDR's administration we saw the advent of revisionism in law and novelty in the courts that were not justified by precedent in the previous 150 years of our Republic.

Let us have a word of prayer over the death of the noble experiment that was that grand republic known as the United States of America. Now it is a matter of time before religious liberty will be abrogated and the Christians will begin to suffer. May God have mercy on our souls.

Natural Philosophy: James Clerk Maxwell

It goes without saying that James Clerk Maxwell was a genius. Because of my study of electricity and electromagnetism (admittedly at only the practical level), I was primarily interested in this scientist because of his mathematical work on electromagnetism. In examining his life and career, I have found that not only was he brilliant in many other aspects of physics, but was also a devout Christian--not something that today's scientists tend to like to acknowledge. I also like that he had an appreciation of poetry.

I don't know when I will be able to write more comprehensively about Maxwell's work, but I hope to examine and write about some of his work in physics at a later time. For now, let me just say that he is on my top ten list of scientists that I greatly admire.

A general statement about Maxwell's equations:

In classical electromagnetism, Maxwell's equations are a set of four partial differential equations that describe the properties of the electric and magnetic fields and relate them to their sources, charge density and current density. These equations are used to show that light is an electromagnetic wave. Individually, the equations are known as Gauss' law, Gauss' law for magnetism, Faraday's law of induction, and Ampère's law with Maxwell's correction.
These four equations, together with the Lorentz force law (derived by Maxwell), are the complete set of laws of classical electromagnetism.

ORP: KW Jeter’s “Noir” part 4: Conclusion

Rather than spoil the plot for the book "Noir", I just want to mention that the story goes on to deal with artificial intelligence and the nature of memory. Some parts of the last 10% of the book reminded me of Bruce Sterling's "Schismatrix" set of stories. Another interesting point made in an aside is that one major aspect of Noir is that betrayal is ubiquitous and self-destructiveness tends to come to many in the morally ambiguous world of noir; I shall have to read some pure noir type stories to test these observations. I notice that the Library of America publisher has issued some of the works of Raymond Chandler, so I have yet another pile of stories to examine.

King Solomon once said, "Of the making of books there is no end." This is great if you are a reader, but a bit difficult for an aspiring writer as everything that can be told has been told in one form or another. One should always continue to try. It seems fairly universal that every human civilization or people-group has a story telling tradition, so at least if you are a good story teller the people won't mind hearing the story again.

Social Philosophy: George Washington gives Farewell Address

Two hundred twelve years ago, our first president gave his
Farewell Address.



Here is George Washington on the danger and imprudence of political parties:

All obstructions to the execution of the Laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels, and modified by mutual interests.

However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government; destroying afterwards the very engines, which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.

Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind, (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight,) the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

It serves always to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.

There other good pieces of advice also regarding adherence to the constitution, not being entangled with the interests of other nations, etc. I invite everyone to read this address; I happen to agree with George Washington.

ORP: KW Jeter’s “Noir” part 3: Hoping this prediction for the Church doesn’t happen.

Here are a number of excerpts from a lengthy passage that is incidental to the story, but I thought a very controversial concept:

He turned away from the moldering stacks of papers, and looked over the bishop’s shoulder. On the terminal screen appeared a low-rez image of a stylized human face, without identity or gender. Then a dialogue balloon with tail, straight out of the ancient comic strips, and the words Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.
Mechanically, the bishop went about his pastoral duties, hand shifting back and forth across an old-fashioned clickpad, hitting the download-confession button on the screen and waiting as the communicant’s compressed file zipped over the wire. McNihil wondered where it went from there; maybe to the bishop’s storage unit, or passed along some fiber-optic trunk line to the Vatican bunkers. Surely nobody actually read or listened to these monotonous litanies of transgressions. Maybe the anonymity of the confessional booth was maintained by the wire terminating nowhere, the PVC sheath exposing bare metal at the end, connected to nothing, coiled or slackly dangling in the waste-flow conduits below the Gloss. Maybe, thought McNihil, that’s okay, too. A ubiquitous deity would be able to listen in the sewer as well as anywhere else.
The rest of the communion clicked by. On the terminal screen, the bishop moved the chalice icon over to the cartoon face’s open mouth, then the consecrated-host icon. A final tap on the blessing button—log off in peace—and the communicant’s face disappeared, replaced a split second later by the next one in the queue…
He looked away, over to the terminal screen. The confessional and altar-rail images had been replaced by numbers. Percentage statements, in a column headed TRAN and another headed CON; as he watched, the numbers following the decimal points shifted, TRAN going up to fifty-three, CON dropping to forty-seven.
“That’s the direct line from the College of Cardinals,” said the bishop as he scrubbed his fingertip. “Well, except that anybody really can log on and vote. The church has gotten very democratic that way. You have to change with the times.”
McNihil nodded toward the screen. “What’s the big debate?”
“Oh, the transubstantiation versus consubstantiation thing.” The bishop held his index finger close to his eyes, dabbing at it with the wet part of the rag. “It’s been going on for a while.”
“Yeah, I guess so. It was on the last time I was here. And that was years ago.”
“Well, the doctrine of the E-charist is a big issue. Personally, I think the consubstantialists are coming pretty connectin’ close to being Protestants; I mean that’s essentially the Lutheran doctrine of the Real Presence. To say that the body and blood of Christ are present ‘in, with and under’ the electron moving down the wires…” His voice had risen to anger, before he managed to calm himself. “I suppose you can see where I stand on the issue. I mean, it has to be transubstantiation. The electrons are changed into the holy substance, and the communicant is downloading the actual body and blood of Christ.” The bishop waved the solvent-damp rag in his excitement. “If that’s not the case, then really, it’d mean we were just connecting around here.”

ORP: KW Jeter’s “Noir” part 2

Mr. Jeter has reached a skillful level in his writing; I was especially struck by his excellent powers of description. Check out this excerpt:

An Asian storm-front, edge leakage from monsoons on the other side of the circle, drizzled under his jacket collar. He thrust his gloved hands deeper into his pockets as a show of irritated impatience. He’d left a black Daimler do Brasil repro of a 1936 Mercedes-Benz 540K Special Cabriolet C, a one-off historic Sindelfingen design, hunkered down at the mouth of the alley, the machine a top-of-the-line product of the maquiladores on the other side of what had once been the Mexican border. They did good work in that arc of the Gloss; the vehicle’s finish, rubbed to a deep brilliance by the nimble hands of ten-year-olds, glistened as though it contained infinite space, as though a piece of the night sky complete with stars had fallen there.

Or how about this bit of description:

Downscale consumer goods, effluvia from the cheap-‘n’-nastiverse, glittering with an enticing pseudo-life. Which was already dying, even before the tiny microbatteries, lightsucks, and other power sources could be exhausted. McNihil looked at the bright things that he had carried down here, and saw them visibly fading, the little dancing figures hobbled in their paso dobles and quadrilles, slowing down and going inert in hunched-over postures, like a miniature galley of terminal osteoporosis.

Or how about this one side of a dialog:

“Regular enough,” conceded Harrisch. “It’s not just an issue of managing the corporation; you have to manage the customers as well. Which in our case is the world. Or at least the Gloss—not that there’s any other part of the world that matters. What some people at DynaZauber believe, is that if it isn’t L.A., it ain’t shit. That language is a little more colorful than what I’d use. But the agreed-upon principle is the same: the Pacific is the new Mediterranean. The omphalos, the middle of the earth. It has been for a long time. The great middle ocean, the navel, the solar plexus. Who cares what goes on in Kansas or Ulan Bator? I mean, if there is a Kansas or an Ulan Bator any longer.”

Social Philosophy: Comrade Palin (but I like her)

Here is a picture meant to be insulting, but I like the picture and I like Sarah Palin:

ORP: KW Jeter’s “Noir” part 1

Before I move on to Kerouac’s “Dharma Bums”, I thought I’d jump into KW Jeter’s novel, “Noir”. The book has been sitting on my shelf for awhile and since I have enjoyed the cyberpunk subgenre for some time since discovering William Gibson, it was time. I’m still on mind-candy mode in my reading projects before I get back into Dostoevsky’s short stories for my Literary Group for the fall quarter. Another thing that encouraged me to try this author is that when I was reading Philip K. Dick’s biography I noted that he used to encourage younger writers and KWJ was in a circle of writers that spent some time with him. Critical acclaim seems to be positive for Mr. Jeter, so I shouldn’t be disappointed.

The setting of the book is the semi-near future after the Pacific becomes metaphorically an inland sea do to trade, development of Asia, etc. The population has grown and the cities around the Pacific have become so huge that they run into each other and the Pacific Rim connection of cities all gloss together (and are called the Gloss). This story has all the elements of cyberpunk—huge intrusive Mega-corporations, large dichotomies in living conditions between the average poor person and the elite with their corporate minions. Add to this high tech, suspense, industrial murder and espionage, and mercenaries and—you get the picture.

Inside of this setting, the protagonist lives in a film noir world because of the simulation overlays implanted on his eyes. Since I like film noir, I am really digging this book, plus I like high tech and computers, so this is a cool book. The last time my time machine worked I visited 1932, so I like living in the fiction of that era sometimes.

ORP: Jack Kerouac part 6: Some final impressions.

You have got to dig this impression of humanity as Sal and Dean and Stan drive down to Mexico City:

…driving across the world and into the places where we would finally learn ourselves among the Fellahin Indians of the world, the essential strain of the basic primitive, wailing humanity that stretches in a belt around the equatorial belly of the world from Malaya (the long fingernail of China) to India the great subcontinent to Arabia to Morocco to the selfsame deserts and jungles of Mexico and over the waves to Polynesia to mystic Siam of the Yellow Rove and on around, on around, so that you hear the same mournful wail by the rotted walls of Cádiz, Spain, that you hear 12,000 miles around in the depths of Benares the Capital of the World. These people were unmistakably Indians and were not at all like the Pedros and Panchos of silly civilized American lore—they had high cheekbones, and slanted eyes, and soft ways; they were not fools, they were not clowns; they were great, grave Indians and they were the source of mankind and the fathers of it. The waves are Chinese, but the earth is an Indian thing. As essential as rocks in the desert are they in the desert of “history.” And they knew this when we passed, ostensibly self-important moneybag Americans on a lark in their land; they knew who was the father and who was the son of antique life on earth, and made no comment. For when destruction comes to the world of “history” and the Apocalypse of the Fellahin returns once more as so many times before, people will still stare with the same eyes from the caves of Mexico as well as from the caves of Bali, where it all began and where Adam was suckled and taught to know. These were my growing thoughts as I drove the car into the hot, sunbaked town of Gregoria.

And here is an excerpt from the final paragraph of the novel, “On The Road”:

So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars’ll be out, and don’t you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old,…

Personal Update & LtbWS: Including a picture for my brother.

This picture goes out to my brother who has been doing Asian studies.

I'm really liking the scheduling feature of blogger; while I was really busy with work I was able to post entries that I had written up in advance. I noted that on my brother's blog, he had embedded the playlist.com player so that his blog could stream audio while people read it. I may do this but my problem is that in the brief time that I took to search for music I didn't come up with much of a selection of classical music (like I indicated, I didn't spend very long looking). I am still looking for a solution that just allows me to stream music from my own library (but I may have to create/buy a website in which to upload the library and then link from blogger). Sam thinks that I should just make a myspace account and upload some songs there. I'll have to look at their limits. But I would like to have the most creative flexibility, so I may go with the website.

BTW, here is a picture of the inter dimensional gate that I used to go back to 1632AD on Earth <;)>

ORP: Jack Kerouac part 5: Can you be nothing?

How about this picture of someone perfectly assimilated into the Matrix:

She spoke of evenings in the country making popcorn on the porch. Once this would have gladdened my heart but because her heart was not glad when she said it I knew there was nothing in it but the idea of what one should do. “And what else do you do for fun?” I tried to bring up boy friends and…Her great dark eyes surveyed me with emptiness and a kind of chagrin that reached back generations and generations in her blood from not having done what was crying to be done—whatever it was, and everybody knows what it was. “What do you want out of life?” I wanted to take her and wring it out of her. She didn’t have the slightest idea what she wanted. She mumbled of jobs, movies, going to her grandmother’s for the summer, wishing she could go to New York and visit the Roxy, what kind of outfit she would wear—something like the one she wore last Easter, white bonnet, roses, rose pumps, and lavender gabardine coat. “What do you do on Sunday afternoons?” I asked. She sat on the porch. The boys went by on bicycles and stopped to chat. She read the funny papers, she reclined on the hammock. “What do you do on a warm summer’s night?” She sat on the porch, she watched the cars in the road. She and her mother made popcorn. “What does your father do on summer’s night?” He works, he has an all-night shift at the boiler factory, he’s spent his whole life supporting a woman and her outpoppings and no credit or adoration. “What does your brother do on a summer’s night?” He rides around on his bicycle, he hangs out in front of the soda fountain. “What is he aching to do? What are we all aching to do? What do we want?” She didn’t know. She yawned. She was sleepy. It was too much. Nobody could tell. Nobody would ever tell. It was all over. She was eighteen and most lovely, and lost.

ORP: Jack Kerouac part 4: Vignettes from the road.

Following here are a few passages that show other facets of life on the road, and some other miscellaneous passages for flavor:

That night in Harrisburg I had to sleep in the railroad station on a bench; at dawn the station masters threw me out. Isn’t it true that you start your life a sweet child believing in everything under your father’s roof? Then comes the day of the Laodiceans, when you know you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, and with the visage of a gruesome grieving ghost you go shuddering through nightmare life. I stumbled haggardly out of the station; I had no more control. All I could see of the morning was a whiteness like the whiteness of the tomb. I was starving to death. All I had left in the form of calories were the last of the cough drops I’d bought in Shelton, Nebraska, months ago; these I sucked for their sugar. I didn’t know how to panhandle. I stumbled out of town with barely enough strength to reach the city limits. I knew I’d be arrested if I spent another night in Harrisburg.
Cursed city! The ride I proceeded to get was with a skinny, haggard man who believed in controlled starvation for the sake of health…

Suddenly I found myself in Times Square. I had traveled eight thousand miles around the American continent and I was back on Times Square; and right in the middle of a rush hour, too, seeing with my innocent road-eyes the absolute madness and fantastic hoorair of New York with its millions and millions hustling forever for a buck among themselves, the mad dream—grabbing, taking, giving, sighing, dying, just so they could be buried in those awful cemetery cities beyond Long Island City. The high towers of the land—the other end of the land, the place where Paper America is born.

When I got home I ate everything in the icebox. My aunt got up and looked at me. “Poor little Salvatore,” she said in Italian. “You’re thin, you’re thin. Where have you been all this time?” I had on two shirts and two sweaters; my canvas bag had torn cotton field pants and the tattered remnants of my huarache shoes in it. My aunt and I decided to buy a new electric refrigerator with the money I had sent her from California; it was to be the first one in the family. She went to bed, and late at night I couldn’t sleep and just smoked in bed. My half-finished manuscript was on the desk. It was October, home, and work again. The first cold winds rattled the windowpane, and I had made it just in time.

__________________________________________________________________

When daybreak came we were zooming through New Jersey with the great cloud of Metropolitan New York rising before us in the snowy distance. Dean had a sweater wrapped around his ears to keep warm. He said we were a band of Arabs coming in to blow up New York.
--a little prescient isn’t it--


And, here's some other good lines:

We went looking for my New York gang of friends. The crazy flowers bloom there too.

…I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.

At dusk I walked. I felt like a speck on the surface of the sad red earth. I passed the Windsor Hotel, where Dean Moriarty had lived with his father in the depression thirties, and as of yore I looked everywhere for the sad and fabled tinsmith of my mind. Either you find someone who looks like your father in places like Montana or you look for a friend’s father where he is no more.

Too many of us fatherless children are always looking for a good father. (Some people are truly and physically orphaned, but some of us are psychologically orphaned by dysfunctional fathers. I think the solution is the ultimate non-dysfunctional father--God, but it is difficult as one needs faith to see the presently invisible.)

ORP: Jack Kerouac part 3: On Law Enforcement

You don’t have to be merely rebellious to know how anti-freedom creeps and how the wrong sort of people gravitate toward law enforcement. In this next passage the main character has taken a job as a policeman to earn a little extra money so he can go back to writing. The job was to protect the facilities of a worker’s barracks for contract laborers getting ready to go overseas for a long time. This passage examines the personalities of the lesser law enforcer (like our TSA or mall cops).

Quote:

They were always sitting round on their asses; they were proud of their jobs. They handled their guns and talked about them. They were itching to shoot somebody. Remi and me.
The cop who had been an Alcatraz guard was potbellied and about sixty, retired but unable to keep away from the atmosphere that had nourished his dry soul all his life. Every night he drove to work in his ’35 Ford, punched the clock exactly on time, and sat down at the rolltop desk. He labored painfully over the simple form we all had to fill out every night—rounds, time, what happened, and so on. Then he leaned back and told stories. “You should have been here about two months ago when me and Sledge” (that was another cop, a youngster who wanted to be a Texas Ranger and had to be satisfied with his present lot) “arrested a drunk in Barrack G. Boy, you should have seen the blood fly. I’ll take you over there tonight and show you the stains on the wall. We had him bouncing from one wall to another. First Sledge hit him, and then me, and then he subsided and went quietly. That fellow swore to kill us when he got out of jail—got thirty days. Here it is sixty days, and he ain’t showed up.” And this was the big point of the story. They’d put such a fear in him that he was too yellow to come back and try to kill them…The old cop went on, sweetly reminiscing about the horrors of Alcatraz…The other cop, Sledge, was tall, muscular, with a black-haired crew-cut and a nervous twitch in his neck—like a boxer who’s always punching one fist into another. He rigged himself out like a Texas Ranger of old. He wore a revolver down low, with ammunition belt, and carried a small quirt of some kind, and pieces of leather hanging everywhere, like a walking torture chamber: shiny shoes, low hanging jacket, cocky hat, everything but boots. He was always showing me holds—reaching down under my crotch and lifting me up nimbly. In point of strength I could have thrown him clear to the ceiling with the same hold, and I knew it well; but I never let him know for fear he’d want a wrestling match. A wrestling match with a guy like that would end up in shooting. I’m sure he was a better shot; I’d never had a gun in my life. It scared me even to load one. He desperately wanted to make arrests…
End Quote.


And on the subject of unjust law enforcers, check out this passage (remember this takes place around 1947-8 in Virginia):

Dean went to sleep in the back and Dunkel drove. We gave him specific instructions to take it easy. No sooner were we snoring than he gunned the car up to eighty, bad bearings and all, and not only that but he made a triple pass at a spot where a cop was arguing with a motorist—he was in the fourth lane of a four-lane highway, going the wrong way. Naturally the cop took after us with his siren whining. We were stopped. He told us to follow him to the station house. There was a mean cop in there who took an immediate dislike to Dean; he could smell jail all over him. He sent his cohort outdoors to question Marylou and me privately. They wanted to know how old Marylou was, they were trying to whip up a Mann Act idea. But she had her marriage certificate. Then they took me aside alone and wanted to know who was sleeping with Marylou. “Her husband,” I said quite simply. They were curious. Something was fishy. They tried some amateur Sherlocking by asking the same questions twice, expecting us to make a slip. I said, “Those fellows are going back to work on the railroad in California, this is the short one’s wife, and I’m a friend on a two-week vacation from college.”
The cop smiled and said, “Yeah? Is this really your own wallet?”
Finally the mean one inside fined Dean twenty-five dollars. We told them we only had forty to go all the way to the Coast; they said that made no difference to them. When Dean protested, the mean cop threatened to take him back to Pennsylvania and slap a special charge on him.
“What charge?”
“Never mind what charge. Don’t worry about that, wise guy.”
We had to give them the twenty-five. But first Ed Dunkel, that culprit, offered to go to jail. Dean considered it. The cop was infuriated; he said, “If you let your partner go to jail I’m taking you back to Pennsylvania right now. You hear that?” All we wanted to do was go. “Another speeding ticket in Virginia and you lose your car,” said the mean cop as a parting volley. Dean was red in the face. We drove off silently. It was just like an invitation to steal to take our trip-money away from us. They knew we were broke and had no relatives on the road or to wire to for money. The American police are involved in psychological warfare against those Americans who don’t frighten them with imposing papers and threats. It’s a Victorian police force; it peers out of musty windows and wants to inquire about everything, and can make crimes if the crimes don’t exist to its satisfaction. “Nine lines of crime, one of boredom,” said Louis-Ferdinand Céline.
End of quote.

How many incidents like this one happen in Podunk towns all across America to this day?

ORP: Jack Kerouac part 2

Since I am far from being a literary critic, and in fact I am only an avid reader of books, I would recommend a quick google search on the internet or a trip to the library to find critical in-depth analysis of the works of literature that I comment here on this blog. So, I will just quote a number of passages from “On the Road” and give a brief commentary on the story. One of the most well known quotes from this story captures in a few lines the mindset of some of the characters in the ‘beat’ world.

Here it is:

They rushed down the street together, digging everything in the early way they had, which later became so much sadder and perceptive and blank. But then they danced in the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”

And then there is this inadvertent confession from a passage about a party after an opera show in the Rockies above Denver:

The night was getting more and more frantic. I wished Dean and Carlo were there—then I realized they’d be out of place and unhappy. They were like the man with the dungeon stone and the gloom, rising from the underground, the sordid hipsters of America, a new beat generation that I was slowly joining.
End quote.

From what I’ve seen of the use of the metaphor of the underground man by Dostoevsky and the hint of it in this passage, there are many ways you can go up from the underground—to totally shed morality and burn out, to suffer the indignity of life and hope to be regenerated, or in despair curve inward and be frozen. The path is wide and it is so easy to go aside from the way. I remember the generation before mine that was the next devolutionary step from the beat generation. The line from the song went, “Is it better to burn out or to fade away?” I am beginning to see that if you burn out on yourself, you just die. Now if you burn out for God, for truth, for eternal life, you won’t die or fade away.

ORP: General & Jack Kerouac part 1

After the arduous journey through Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, I was a ready for a mental break. And since I am addicted to reading, I thought I would move on to some mind-candy or relaxing reading.

I finished Di Filippo’s Steampunk Trilogy with nothing spectacular to report except the three short novels were entertaining and I did increase my vocabulary a bit as he uses some 19th century words in his stories.

Along this same genre, I read a good novel last spring by Jay Lake entitled "Mainspring", which was a good yarn and had an interesting approach.

After I finished the Steampunk Trilogy, I decided to move back into the 20th century, and got started on my copy of the Library of America edition of Jack Kerouac’s “Road Novels”. The first novel in this collection is the beat classic, “On the Road”, which turns out to be a rollicking journey through the seamy underside of post WWII America. I don’t endorse the author’s subject matter, but he did have a relaxed style of prose I enjoyed and that makes the story a bit more readable. His style must have been influential, since I was reminded of this style in some aspects of the one Thomas Pynchon novel I have read so far. The overall mood of the story might be considered depressing by some, but I felt a real sympathy for what the spiritually lost go through in life. The yearning search for meaning, purpose, truth was so compelling especially as I consider how I have been saved from such a meandering life. And even in my halting walk on God’s trail, I have had some acquaintance with the feelings of the author. Perhaps it is my melancholy personality, but I actually enjoyed the novel, and since I grew up as a military brat, I have become accustomed to the wandering. Reading the novel made me want to go on a road trip, but alas the tyranny of responsibility keeps me tied down. Perhaps this is why the protagonists in so many stories tend to be young. If you aren’t killed by wild youthful exuberance, you finally settle down and become enslaved to the matrix.

Here is my prose poem reflecting some of my feelings:

In my gilded cage, safely trapped in space and time, handcuffed to the privilege of responsibility, I can only take comfort in my sacred chains that protect me from my peripatetic desires. In my circumstance of static providence, I still hope for the wonder of wandering the bright paths of mind’s geography. In the way of the word, I will rejoice to travel without moving. Thus will I embrace the dream and thank God for all writers.--JRI 2008

I once cursed the second’s slow pace, now I cry at the unwinding of the years.

Picture of Jack Kerouac

W: LP: LG: FD: BK: Ivan's talk with the Devil & conclusion.

Toward the end of book 11 of Brothers Karamazov, Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov begins to suffer guilt for desiring his father's death and so begins to descend into madness. In his madness he hallucinates his alter ego as the person of the Devil. The following passage is reminiscent of CS Lewis' book, "The Screwtape Letters" (this is the Devil speaking):

"Oh, I love the dreams of my friends--fervent, young, trembling with the thirst for life! 'There are new people now,' you decided last spring, as you were preparing to come here, 'they propose to destroy everything and begin with anthropophagy.

--Reminds of Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal"--although he was being satirical

Fools, they never asked me! In my opinion, there is no need to destroy anything, one need only destroy the idea of God in mankind, that's where the business should start! One should begin with that, with that--oh, blind men, of no understanding! Once mankind has renounced God, one and all (and I believe that this period, analogous to the geological periods, will come), then the entire old world view will fall of itself, without anthropophagy, and, above all, the entire former morality, and everything will be new. People will come together in order to take from life all that it can give, but, of course, for happiness and joy in this world only. Man will be exalted with the spirit of divine, titanic pride, and the man-god will appear. Man, his will and his science no longer limited, conquering nature every hour, will thereby every hour experience such lofty delight as will replace for him all his former hopes of heavenly delight. Each will know himself utterly mortal, without resurrection, and will accept death proudly and calmly, like a god. Out of pride he will understand that he should not murmur against the momentariness of life, and he will love his brother then without any reward. Love will satisfy only the moment of life, but the very awareness of its momentariness will increase its fire, inasmuch as previously it was diffused in hopes of an eternal love beyond the grave'...well, and so on and so on, in the same vein. Lovely!"

Notice the lying tactic of the Enemy of our souls, to make us forget about the great judgment.

In book 12 of BK, we have the trial and the author cleverly creates excellent speeches for both the prosecutor and defense attorney and some great and lofty things are said and alluded to, but in the end Dmitri is sentenced for a murder he did not commit and the real murderer hangs himself. Ivan is left at the end of the story descending into madness and the only one of the brothers who survives with the least damage is the youngest who is sustained by faith in God. The story ends with plans being made to help Dmitri escape while he is being transported. Some things are concluded and the love triangles resolve themselves and the youngest, Alyosha, looks to be the only one without a love interest (which he doesn't need, sustained as he is by his faith). The book was dense and multifaceted, but worth struggling through.

A picture of Alyosha:

W: LP: LG: FD: BK: The Struggle

A little later in the section of Brothers Karamazov quoted in the last entry, Dmitri goes on to discuss or confess with his brother his internal struggle regarding enlightenment ideas & faith. From biographical accounts, this seemed to be a struggle that Dostoevsky fought with himself. Here is a piece of prose that captures this internal conflict:

Quote:

“You see, before I didn't have any of these doubts, but they were all hiding in me. Maybe I was drinking and fighting and raging, just because unknown ideas were storming inside me. I was fighting to quell them within me, to tame them, to subdue them. Brother Ivan is not Rakitin, he hides his idea. Brother Ivan is a sphinx; he's silent, silent all the time. And I'm tormented by God. Tormented only by that. What if he doesn't exist? What if Rakitin is right, that it's an artificial idea of mankind? So then, if he doesn't exist, man is chief of the earth, of the universe. Splendid! Only how is he going to be virtuous without God? A good question! I keep thinking about it. Because whom will he love then--man, I mean? To whom will he be thankful, to whom will he sing the hymn? Rakitin laughs. Rakitin says it's possible to love mankind even without God. Well, only a snotty little shrimp can affirm such a thing, but I can't understand it. Life is simple for Rakitin: ‘You'd do better to worry about extending man's civil rights,’ he told me today, ‘or at least about not letting the price of beef go up; you'd render your love for mankind more simply and directly that way than with any philosophies.’ But I came back at him: ‘And without God,’ I said, ‘you'll hike up the price of beef yourself, if the chance comes your way, and make a ruble on every kopeck.’ He got angry. Because what is virtue?--answer me that, Alexei. I have one virtue and a Chinese has another--so it's a relative thing. Or not? Not relative? Insidious question! You mustn't laugh if I tell you that I didn't sleep for two nights because of it. I just keep wondering now how people can live and think nothing about these things. Vanity! Ivan does not have God. He has his idea. Not on my scale. But he's silent.”

W: LP: LG: FD: BK: Freedom & Redemption

In book XI of Brothers Karamazov, as Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov begins to realize that he will probably not be acquitted of the murder of his father, and though it is plain that Dmitri did not do it, he declares to his brother Alyosha in almost poetic words his resolve and expectations. His words touch upon the universal desire of humanity for freedom. (At the time of the writing of this novel, Russia did not have capital punishment for murder, only very long sentences of confinement at hard labor in Siberia, a kind of living death.)
In the following words the use of the term "wee ones" refers back to a strange dream Dmitri has and is a term the peasants use for babies or small children.

Quote:

"All people are 'wee ones'. And I'll go for all of them, because there must be someone who will go for all of them. I didn't kill father, but I must go. I accept! All of this came to me here...within these peeling walls. And there are many, there are hundreds of them, underground, with hammers in their hands. Oh yes, we'll be in chains, and there will be no freedom, but then, in our great grief, we will arise once more into joy, without which it's not possible for man to live, or for God to be, for God gives joy, it's his prerogative, a great one...Lord, let man dissolve in prayer! How would I be there underground without God? Rakitin's lying: if God is driven from the earth, we'll meet him underground! It's impossible for a convict to be without God, even more impossible than for a non-convict! And then from the depths of the earth, we, the men underground, will start singing a tragic hymn to God, in whom there is joy! Hail to God and his joy! I love him!"

Unquote.

And to paraphrasingly quote CS Lewis, "Joy is the chief thing, anyone can get happiness from a bottle of Port".

With Joy that is from God, you can endure anything.

Personal Update: 2nd Home Project 2008 pictures

With old siding removed


New backing


Vapor Barrier (& one of Sam's friends in foreground)


New Siding


Prep for painting 01


Prep for painting 02


Prep for painting 03


Painted

Personal Update: Home Project & Work

So, I used up the last of my PTO (paid time off) to take the 28th, 29th, & 30th of August off (these were the last three work days before Labor Day weekend). I'll post pictures later, and I will explain why I am going to be sparse in the number of entries over the next few weeks. We wanted to repair the siding on our house on the Southwest & South side of the house (the side that gets all the weather--sun, wind, rain, etc.), so we removed the siding (T1-11) and replaced it with 'oriented-strand' board siding ($20 per sheet vs. $35 per sheet for T1-11). Everything went well until we got to the last 3/4ths of the South side where we discovered that the contractor that built the house had not put on any backing or vapor barrier on the outside wall. We opened the wall and saw just 2x4 studs and insulation, so we had to buy twelve sheets of treated 1/4 inch plywood and then install the vapor barrier before we could side. So we finally finished siding the house and got everything ready to paint by Saturday evening just before the sunlight ran out. I had to break the sabbath and spray-paint the house after morning church service. But after all the hard work, we got to relax at our Labor Day church picnic. Tuesday (Sept. 2nd), I took down the masking, and finally laid down for a nap to get ready to go to work that night and just as I laid down I got a call from work to come in early so I got a 2.5 hour nap and went in to work early. I've been working twelve hour shifts from that night through tonight and through the weekend and into next week. The blessing is that the extra money will make all my creditors happy (& the gov't.--a la taxes).
I have more to post on Brothers Karamazov and other subjects once all the work slows down to a mere eight hour day. At least Sea-Tac Airport will have all the runway lights on new regulators in the new lighting vault.

So another time it will be...
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Neue Ansicht

Gute nacht everyone.

PS Sam just celebrated his 16th birthday!