| Justice . . . of Course . . . | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Aug. 1st, 2005 | 10:04 pm | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Why. Why do I do these stupid quizzes? I despise them, I do . . . Well, I suppose every once in a while one catches my mind as a good one, and this is one of those. Not that my score surprises me, though. I'm such a "justice" that I'm perfectly willing to look on impassively if someone perishes for their own stupidity — not gleeful, but in no wise disappointed, either.
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| Beginning 1984 | ||||||
| Jun. 16th, 2005 | 07:30 pm | ||||||
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meta-creation_date: 6/16/2005 19:30:01 I’m just starting to read 1984 for the first time in four years. It, Brave New World, and Anthem are the three politico-philosophical classics of my library. I own quite a few others answering to the theme, but as far as political philosophy (and Objectivism) goes, there’s just no topping those three.</p> Anyway, I just broke into the first chapter — about twenty minutes of reading got me almost to the end of the first “Two Minutes Hate.” The scary thing about it is that, yes, just like Winston feared, others more weak-minded than yourself may be taken in by dangerous diatribes. Only, it’s not Emmanuel Goldstein I’m afraid of . . .</p> I’d like to write a short piece on 1984, in the manner of an apologist: there are many out there, especially in my generation (college-aged), who have never been given the chance to think about political philosophy for themselves. They’ve been steadily fed a diet of collectivism, and honestly are innocent of the concepts of true freedom and personal responsibility. In effect, all they know is “we,” and someone must teach them how to say “I.”</p> Now, might I commend these three books to you, my discriminating reader? None of them will take more than two hours of your time; unless, of course, you count time spent pondering — then they’ll take weeks.</p> Posted via Passage to Serendipity |
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| Das Übergeek | ||||||
| Jun. 14th, 2005 | 03:33 am | ||||||
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meta-creation_date: 6/14/2005 03:33:24 For once, I feel like a true geek. You know, laptop maintenance is a whole lot different that tower/desktop maintenance. For one thing, you actually have room to work in a desktop computer. I’ve never been afraid of nuking anything inside a computer, and I’ve pulled and replaced a lot of hardware in my day.</p> Ever since I was a kid, my dad had me help with the hardware reviews, and by the time I was eleven or twelve, I was installing major hardware upgrades into testbed machines. He’d just come around when I had the installation and preliminary testing complete, play around with it a bit, and write the review (Macworld).</p> So being afraid to poke around inside a computer was a new experience for me. Well, for one thing, it was the closest quarters I’ve ever worked in: a vintage PowerBook Titanium G4 (TiBook). And it’s mine. There’s something much less haphazard about working on one’s own heart and soul.</p> This has been an emotional time for me anyway. My old hard drive (an 18GB Toshiba) just crashed, taking two months worth of files and downloads with it. This drive is a beauty (Seagate 100GB), and there was absolutely nothing that was going to make me mess this one up. (Sounds like dealing with women, doesn’t it?)</p> After a long and misguided hunt, I finally hunted down a Torx T8 bit. You’d think that it’d be more common, but nearly every set of security bits in my house stopped just shy — T10. Also, we just moved, so most of our stuff is boxed in the garage yet, which doesn’t help much in the way of making things easier to find.</p> I got the old drive out, and slipped the new little minx in its place, and away we go! There were some tense moments when I wondered if Disk Utility was going to see it or not (it did!), but I got it formatted in ten seconds flat, and now Mac OS X Tiger (10.4) is installing itself onto 4.7GB of my brand-spankin’-new disk space.</p> I feel much better now that I have bonded more fully with my machine. She may be old, but she’s a great box; and being a Mac, has plenty of spunk left. I just can’t wait to get back to Photoshop, web design (and none of this namby-pamby DreamWeaver or graphical editor junk! I like my text editor just fine, thank you very much!</p> Vive la Mac!</p> Posted via Passage to Serendipity |
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| In Defense of Certainty | ||||||
| Jun. 12th, 2005 | 06:20 pm | ||||||
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Time Magazine has done well. In fine form, they’ve challenged one of the most easily-assumed certainties of our time: that certainty is dangerous. The last page, ninety-six, of the June 6th, 2005 issue, is an essay by Charles Krauthammer, a regular Time columnist, entitled “In Defense of Certainty.” Krauthammer decrys the zeitgeist that “it’s trendy to be suspicious of people with ‘deeply held views.’ And it’s wrong.”</p> While more and more people are at odds with the beliefs of “evangelical Christians and traditional Catholics,” Krauthammer claims that to discount their opposition to popular secular views as theocratic is “nonsense.”</p> Now I am not much of a believer, but there is something deeply wrong — indeed, deeply un-American — about fearing people simply because they believe. And it’s ironic that Americans are becoming more intolerant of what they view as deviant beliefs here on our own shores while preaching that Israelis should be tolerant of Islamic beliefs that demand their extinction.</p> But when someone takes the contrary view [to the secular view], all of a sudden he’s trying to impose his view on you. And if that contrary view happens to be rooted in Scripture or some kind of religious belief system, the very public advocacy of that view becomes a violation of the U.S. constitutional order. The main thing that bothers me about folk of any political persuasion — liberal, conservative, or libertarian — is a predilection against rational thought. Whatever view is espoused, I much prefer it being backed up by evidence and reason than by liberal-bashing, religion-bashing, or other attempt to “win the argument by default.”</p> And if you&rsqo;re going to climb up on a soapbox and declare right and wrong, shouldn’t you be certain about it? It worries me when people recommend and even demand public policy without being sure themselves of its efficacy. However, certainty carries with it certain demands, the most onerous of which is consistency. If you are certain of something, you may be expected to produce convincing arguments for any change of opinion you may have. That “weariness with the responsibilities and the nightmares that come with clarity — and the demands that moral certainty make[s] on us” is the driving fear of certainty. The innate laziness and unwillingness to think of humankind in general (for isn’t it natural, for you as well as me, to want ease and comfort?) is our great enemy and the cause of our fear of certainty.</p> However, those who came before us were sure of their cause, and their legacy certainly behooves us to strive for the same certainty.</p> You want certainty? . . . How about a people who overthrow the political order of the ages, go to war and occasion thousands of deaths in the name of self-evident truths and unalienable rights endowed by the Creator? That was 1776. The universality, the sacredness and the divine origin of freedom are enshrined in our founding document. The Founders, believers all, signed it. Thomas Jefferson wrote it. And not even Jefferson, the most skeptical of the lot, had the slightest doubt about it. Time Magazine: “In Defense of Certainty” (mirror - plain text)</p> Apathy Online, June 11th, 2005. Posted via Passage to Serendipity |
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| In Defense of Certainty | ||||||
| Jun. 12th, 2005 | 06:20 pm | ||||||
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Time Magazine has done well. In fine form, they’ve challenged one of the most easily-assumed certainties of our time: that certainty is dangerous. The last page, ninety-six, of the June 6th, 2005 issue, is an essay by Charles Krauthammer, a regular Time columnist, entitled “In Defense of Certainty.” Krauthammer decrys the zeitgeist that “it’s trendy to be suspicious of people with ‘deeply held views.’ And it’s wrong.”</p> While more and more people are at odds with the beliefs of “evangelical Christians and traditional Catholics,” Krauthammer claims that to discount their opposition to popular secular views as theocratic is “nonsense.”</p> Now I am not much of a believer, but there is something deeply wrong — indeed, deeply un-American — about fearing people simply because they believe. And it’s ironic that Americans are becoming more intolerant of what they view as deviant beliefs here on our own shores while preaching that Israelis should be tolerant of Islamic beliefs that demand their extinction.</p> But when someone takes the contrary view [to the secular view], all of a sudden he’s trying to impose his view on you. And if that contrary view happens to be rooted in Scripture or some kind of religious belief system, the very public advocacy of that view becomes a violation of the U.S. constitutional order. The main thing that bothers me about folk of any political persuasion — liberal, conservative, or libertarian — is a predilection against rational thought. Whatever view is espoused, I much prefer it being backed up by evidence and reason than by liberal-bashing, religion-bashing, or other attempt to “win the argument by default.”</p> And if you&rsqo;re going to climb up on a soapbox and declare right and wrong, shouldn’t you be certain about it? It worries me when people recommend and even demand public policy without being sure themselves of its efficacy. However, certainty carries with it certain demands, the most onerous of which is consistency. If you are certain of something, you may be expected to produce convincing arguments for any change of opinion you may have. That “weariness with the responsibilities and the nightmares that come with clarity — and the demands that moral certainty make[s] on us” is the driving fear of certainty. The innate laziness and unwillingness to think of humankind in general (for isn’t it natural, for you as well as me, to want ease and comfort?) is our great enemy and the cause of our fear of certainty.</p> However, those who came before us were sure of their cause, and their legacy certainly behooves us to strive for the same certainty.</p> You want certainty? . . . How about a people who overthrow the political order of the ages, go to war and occasion thousands of deaths in the name of self-evident truths and unalienable rights endowed by the Creator? That was 1776. The universality, the sacredness and the divine origin of freedom are enshrined in our founding document. The Founders, believers all, signed it. Thomas Jefferson wrote it. And not even Jefferson, the most skeptical of the lot, had the slightest doubt about it. Time Magazine: “In Defense of Certainty” (mirror - plain text)</p> Apathy Online, June 11th, 2005. Posted via Passage to Serendipity |
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| Tomato Jam | ||||||
| Jun. 12th, 2005 | 12:12 am | ||||||
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meta-creation_date: 6/12/2005 00:12:47 One thing I always looked forward to when we visited the farm was Grandma’s tomato jam. It was always so perfectly-matched to a hot slice of fresh-baked bread or a piece of breakfast toast. I remember the first time my mom told me about tomato jam: I couldn’t believe anyone would make jam out of tomatoes! What would it taste like, ketchup? That was on our way to Minnesota one year, and shortly thereafter, I was pleasantly surprised. One slice, two slices, three slices, and more, were simply not enough.</p> Now, for some odd reason, Grandma’s tomato jam has been the only tomato jam I would eat on piece after piece of bread without even stopping to be full. It’s odd because I’ve had only a few other “brands” of tomato jam, and they’ve all been made by her kids, using her recipe! I think there’s a secret ingredient she’s not letting anyone in on . . .</p> Posted via Passage to Serendipity |
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| To Ride a Train | ||||||
| May. 22nd, 2005 | 01:53 am | ||||||
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meta-creation_date: 4/5/2005 17:54:40 Someday I’d like to ride a train. The long, long train vanishing into the distance calls to me; the sound of its mournful whistle cuts to the very core of my being. A train is going away from; it is not going to. You leave things behind a train, and you may never see their like again.</p> In a train, there is much sorrow; and in that sorrow is joy. But the joy is not in the train: the joy is in the euphony of sorrow. A true sombre melancholy which pervades a train is the heart of all its joy. When those in a train are happy, it is because of the pure and silent peace true sorrow and bereavement of all brings.</p> When one boards a train, it is a step longer than any taken anywhere else: the last step of “here” and the first step of the unknown. Every step taken in that train is a step within a netherworld, and a step which does not exist.</p> A train is curious. It merely goes from “here” to “there” and back again, but while you are aboard a train, “there” comes “here” and “here” hastens elsewhere. The nature of “here” and “there” is as surreal as that of joy and sorrow, aboard a train.</p> What is joy? What is “here”? Or sorrow, or “there”? “Here” is sorrow, to many on the train; ergo “there” must be joy. But nature twists and turns as the tracks sweep smoothly, endlessly, over the country. And sometimes joy and sorrow get muddled up in “wheres” and “elsewheres”, and sometimes they fall out of the train and onto the gravel and are lost.</p> And oftimes the joy we sought, and the sorrow we sought to flee, we carry behind us, stored up safe in the baggage car, or perhaps in a sleeper . . . And the joy and sorrow everywhere are just as deep, and just as true, wherever you run or ride to. But the sorrow is more true than the joy, for where there is deep joy, there is deeper sorrow; and sorrow is the stuff of which joy is knit.</p> Originally written March 21st, 2002.</p> Posted via Passage to Serendipity |
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| Classical Guitar Artists | ||||||
| May. 17th, 2005 | 07:31 pm | ||||||
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meta-creation_date: 5/17/2005 19:31:16 Christopher Parkening Robby Longly LAGQ</p> Do you like classical music? Guitar music? Better yet, classical guitar? Jazz? You should check out the music of Christopher Parkening and Robby Longley. Of the two, Parkening has a bent more towards Spanish (Flamenco) and classical; and Longley, towards jazz and ethnic music.</p> I’ll give you a quick rundown on Parkening, since he is my favorite of the two. Parkening is a born-again Christian, besides being one of the premier classical guitarists in the world. His metor, the great Andrés Segovia, said that Parkening is “a great artist—he is one of the most brilliant guitarists in the world.”</p> He is an artist, in the true sense of the word. For example, he only records any song once. He will practice until he’s good enough to perform it impeccably, even live; and then records a one-shot staging of it. Any mistakes are not edited out, as he feels this is dishonest: it goes against his artistic integrity. Still, his one-shot recordings are better than most other guitarists’ heavily-edited final cuts. At last, a musician who is also an artist!</p> The last group I’d like to mention is the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet. You like classical? Ethnic? Jazz? Anything unclassifiable? LAGQ is for you. They play classical guitar, restring their guitars with everything from piano strings to giant rubber bands with paper clips attached, and then play ethnic music which sounds like it was played with traditional instruments. Definitely worth your eartime.</p> Scraps, July 28th, 2004. Posted via Passage to Serendipity |
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| Straightforward | ||||||
| May. 17th, 2005 | 01:42 pm | ||||||
meta-creation_date: 2/19/2005 16:57:36 The boys were right, a teenage girl is quite a dreamy creature. It would be nice to be str[a]ightforward; we must be so alien to them. I was just reading through some of Laylock’s archived journals and re-found the above quote. I ran across it some months ago, but didn’t more than take mental note of the statement. However, it’s been running back and forth in my head ever since, like Hamlet in his nightshirt running behind dead Rosencrantz</a> and Guildenstern* In the course of one or two hours, I today have finally tracked down, for your perusal, the citation.</p> It’s as I always say (and have never gotten slapped for — and only seldom threatened), but it is still nice to be able to cite a girl as saying it. Yes, it would be nice if those lovely creatures of the female persuasion (and if you have read any of my previous entries, you know I am nothing of a misogynist), were “straightforward”. That’s a better way of putting what I want to say than simply, “I wish women made sense.”</p> There are philosophical implications to the desire for straightforwardness as well: honesty is to my life as words are to reading. Without words, there would be nothing to read; and without honesty, is there really anything to live? I could not live falsehood, and I cannot abide it in another.</p> Yes, a girl — of any age — is quite a dreamy creature, and so alien to me. However, I know that most of them mean well, and some few of them actually act on those intentions and do well. Straightforwardness may be too much to hope, but I can think of no other creature worth a little perseverance in the unravelling than a woman. Still, too much time unravelling is time spent unwisely; and I’ll not waste too much time unravelling many Knots by the Road.†</p> ***** * Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is an almost-silly play by Tom Stoppard, parodying Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Telling the story from the eyes of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two minor characters from the original play, Stoppard creates what is essentially marginalia and commentary on the content, times, and customs of and surrounding Hamlet. In as diverse an array of topics as the Law of Probability (sic “of Averages”), Hamlet’s sanity as well as anyone else’s, and the implications of being buried in a coffin (Would it be like sleeping in a box?), Rosencrantz and Guildenstern provide a sharp and intellectual comedy — rare in these days of easy see-and-forget drama and slapstick humour.</p> † Up from Earth’s Centre through the Seventh Gate</p> Posted via Passage to Serendipity |
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| Unsatiation | ||||||
| May. 5th, 2005 | 10:54 pm | ||||||
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meta-creation_date: 5/5/2005 22:54:39 Yours is a friendship I would die to keep, and I may.</p> To love and not be sated, but live pinioned as companion (with never more than simply enough hope to pin me down) might kill —</p> and in cessation of existence, my dying lips would breathe of thee.</p> Posted via Passage to Serendipity |
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| Thunder | ||||||
| May. 5th, 2005 | 10:46 pm | ||||||
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meta-creation_date: 5/5/2005 22:46:01 I hope it rains like this all night. I’d like to go to sleep to it.</p> When my soul to weeping turns, A thunderstorm is always nice, especially in light of the depressingly fair and even weather we’ve been having recently. And we’re in the thick of it: I was outside and watched a tendril of lightning pry through the air, touch the ground, and instantly embolden before losing all existance in twenty seconds of thunder. Blind and deafened, I exulted in the water and sound.</p> The rain that on my head she falls, A whistle of wind, catlike (in a stormy, caterwauling way) follows on the tail of the thunder. Such a wonderfully and duly depressing sound is ambrosia to my soul now: the strains of love unrequited and nearly-requited and even (dare I think?) unwittingly (“Spring Fever”-like) requited are wearing on me even among their pleasance.</p> The whisper now rides with the wind, Sometimes I wonder if I will ever have her. No matter, really. It is not the having her which is necessary, but the desiring — that nigh-on holy respectful worship of the Eternal Feminine* embodied in her.</p> I shall hear what’s death to hear; ***** * By this, I of course mean the concept of the Woman as I regularly expound here. I consider myself one of the few of the old guard who still worship women as they deserve to be worshipped.</p> The poem intercalated here was originally written on December 25th, 2001, and has been tentatively titled (though I in general despise titles) “Siren’s Rain”.</p> Posted via Passage to Serendipity |
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| Voices from the Gambia | ||||||
| Apr. 19th, 2005 | 10:27 pm | ||||||
meta-creation_date: 4/19/2005 22:26:03
So wrote Missionary Jim Entner on October eighth, 2003. It raises an interesting question, does it not? Why are so many lost, dying, and yet more devout than we who have the truth? Have we no care for their souls?</p> The Muslim has no Father God, since Islam teaches of an Allah who is a taskmaster: easily provoked and hardly appeased, capricious, even. We who know the true God, the one who loves and cares for the world, surely can be more devout worshippers of and witnesses for our God than they can theirs — don’t we have it infinitely better?</p> I read this prayer letter at Mission Prayer Band while at Pensacola Christian College</p> Posted via Passage to Serendipity |
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| Reposts | ||||||
| Apr. 9th, 2005 | 04:17 pm | ||||||
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meta-creation_date: 4/9/2005 16:17:25 You will notice entries occasionally (and more so currently, since I have less writing time right now) bearing a “Scraps” byline. These are re-edited and reworked pieces from my former set of Blogger-based weblogs. As a writer, I never see a piece as finished: my writings will be final only upon my death. Therefore, I welcome this weblog as a new venue for many of these older works. I hope you enjoy them at least as much this second time (or more, since they ought to be somewhat better). You be the judge: each byline links to the original piece.</p> Cheers! |
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| On Pied Pipers | ||||||
| Apr. 9th, 2005 | 04:08 pm | ||||||
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meta-creation_date: 4/9/2005 16:08:35 Music has a strange power, there is no doubt; and I think a pied piper is not so far off from reality. I’m listening to a Celtic song called “Seacht”. I know not from whence comes its strange power, but I find its odour permeating my mind. Its physical presence in the air around me exerts a strong, steady, and pleasant pressure on my skull.</p> Music has an odd way about it. I was getting ready for church, and sat down to listen to the song: it has me transfixed. It’s so relaxing I can feel my mind sloughing off all early-morning stresses and cares. I don't know how it’s working, or why. I don’t even understand Gaelic, so I have no idea what the song is about. (“Seacht” is too common a Gaelic word to facilitate finding the lyrics of the song online.)</p> And the moment is gone. I spoke and was spoken to, and am released from the spell. Such a strange magic . . . I do believe I would have followed such music the the very heart of a mountain. Scraps, July 28th, 2004. Posted via Passage to Serendipity |
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| To Ride a Train | ||||||
| Apr. 5th, 2005 | 05:54 pm | ||||||
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meta-creation_date: 4/5/2005 17:54:40 Someday I’d like to ride a train. The long, long train vanishing into the distance calls to me; the sound of its mournful whistle cuts to the very core of my being. A train is going away from; it is not going to. You leave things behind a train, and you may never see their like again.</p> In a train, there is much sorrow; and in that sorrow is joy. But the joy is not in the train: the joy is in the euphony of sorrow. A true sombre melancholy which pervades a train is the heart of all its joy. When those in a train are happy, it is because of the pure and silent peace true sorrow and berevement of all brings.</p> When one boards a train, it is a step longer than any taken anywhere else: the last step of “here” and the first step of the unknown. Every step taken in that train is a step within a netherworld, and a step which does not exist.</p> A train is curious. It merely goes from “here” to “there” and back again, but while you are aboard a train, “there” comes “here” and “here” hastens elsewhere. The nature of “here” and “there” is as surreal as that of joy and sorrow, aboard a train.</p> What is joy? What is “here”? Or sorrow, or “there”? “Here” is sorrow, to many on the train; ergo “there” must be joy. But nature twists and turns as the tracks sweep smoothly, endlessly, over the country. And sometimes joy and sorrow get muddled up in “wheres” and “elsewheres”, and sometimes they fall out of the train and onto the gravel and are lost.</p> And oftimes the joy we sought, and the sorrow we sought to flee, we carry behind us, stored up safe in the baggage car, or perhaps in a sleeper . . . And the joy and sorrow everywhere are just as deep, and just as true, wherever you run or ride to. But the sorrow is more true than the joy, for where there is deep joy, there is deeper sorrow; and sorrow is the stuff of which joy is knit.</p> Originally written March 21st, 2002.</p> Posted via Passage to Serendipity |
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| Funerals and Poetry | ||||||
| Mar. 30th, 2005 | 11:51 pm | ||||||
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meta-creation_date: 3/30/2005 23:50:45 Now, you have to understand something of a writer and an artist. Something of the melancholic temperament in general. But, the idea first. I’m at work, and just got a labwide email that an employee’s mother died. It contained the death notice from the Augusta Chronicle:</p> AUGUSTA, Ga.- Graveside services for Mrs. M__ D__ D__ of 1229 __th Street will be held 11 a.m. [date removed] at Mt. Olive Memorial Gardens. Survivors include a daughter, V__ D__; two sons, G__ E. D__, R__ I. D__; three sisters, R__ H__, O__ S__, B__ D__; four grandchildren and one great-grandchild; a host of other relatives and friends. The family will receive friends from 7-8 p.m. today at the funeral home. G. L. Brightharp & Sons Mortuary, 614 West Avenue, North Augusta, S. C. The message sparked an immediate, odd compulsion to attend the graveside service. Then the idea: “These notices are in every newspaper everywhere. Whenever I want, I can go to a funeral.”</p> Like I said, you have to understand something about an artist. My attraction to a funeral is not flippant. I’m not going to crash a party. It’s not dark (I don’t subscribe to the “Goth” subculture), or a fascination with death. It’s merely a writer’s need to absorb real-life circumstances as experiences upon which to base his interpretations of life; for a writer has the responsibility — not that I necessarily agree with this situation — given him by those who do not wish to interpret life themselves, to provide an interpretation of life and its circumstances.</p> I have been blessed by not having funerals come into my life often on their own. My maternal grandfather, a distant friend Michael — years after I knew him — an elderly lady from my church, and two friends of my parents whom I hardly knew are the only funerals I have ever attended.</p> So don’t think it strange if a sombre and reverent stranger shows up at the graveside of one of your friends or loved ones, paying his respects to someone he never knew. He is merely experiencing the human condition, and is a “scout” of sorts for all whom his work will reach. He is a writer.</p> Scraps, July 26th, 2004, while working at a lab near Aiken, SC. Posted via Passage to Serendipity |
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| Rappaccini’s Daughter | ||||||
| Mar. 16th, 2005 | 12:00 am | ||||||
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meta-creation_date: 3/15/2005 23:09:54 “We die by degrees,” and she is hastening the process. Since I have become once more trusted (that is, trusted to have no romantic intent), all those things we once were and once we had are reappearing in our friendship — all those things which once I was sure meant love. It is, to use a cliché, an exquisite pain and a torturous pleasure: a joy which must be borne and a sorrow to which I cling.</p> She is trying to kill me. No, she has no inkling of what she does; but just so surely as if she were gradually dosing me with arsenic, she is withering my soul.</p> I could easily run. I could easily leave her company and live a bright, colourful, and dissatisfying life elsewhere and elsewhen. But to do that would be worse than to show myself not a man: it would be to impose upon her the knowledge of her actions’ full import. Before me is on the one, suicide; and on the other, her indictment, her guilt. So help me, I cannot be the one to destroy her fragile conception of how easily problems may be set aside: I must slay myself. But, oh! what hands to slay me, and what lips to kiss my soul an eternal farewell. I would rather die by her hands than live by any other’s.</p> To remain is to allow that fatal arsenic, that lovely purple venom from this Rappaccini’s daughter, to innervate my being and gradually entangle me in such a Muse’s web of death that I be both unable and unwilling to resist sure destruction. To leave is to cause the shadow of such a fate to pass before her eyes and awaken her to the dread power held within them.</p> Nay. I shall gaze into these twin pools of despair as long as I am naïvely bidden so. I fall. I sink. I drown.</p> Posted via Passage to Serendipity |
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| Treading the Untreadable Waters | ||||||
| Feb. 20th, 2005 | 11:27 pm | ||||||
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meta-creation_date: 2/20/2005 23:26:53 I was just talking with one of my roommates, B__, and he really straightened me out a bit. You see, another of my roommates, A__, and I get along in exactly the same way that best friends do not. I had been feeling quite self-righteous about it, because for the first five weeks of this ten-week internship I had been making quite a few overtures to him. We never really clicked, though; and I even get the feeling he resents my asking him if he had a good day.</p> Now, B__ told me that we as Christians do have an obligation to reach out to those which are different from ourselves, and not just sequester ourselves with those who think and act like us. I thought I had that covered, so I became defensive (though I don’t think I came across that way). I started talking about how I’m not like that, and I get along with almost everyone, and I reach out to people that are different. Really, I do. I brought up an example, a girl named K__, also on this same internship, with whom I get along famously — you couldn’t find two people who disagreed more on highly significant issues.</p> That satisfied him, and he then said, “Well, sometimes we just have to learn to know when to shake the dust off our shoes and move on.” About then is when I finally gave in to the Holy Spirit’s conviction, I started thinking.</p> “I’m thinking, maybe I ‘kicked the dust from my shoes’ a little too soon.”</p> He started mulling that over, and we talked a bit more. Then he said, “You know, we have Divine protection. We can tread on waters others can’t. That gives us a bit more of a responsibility.”</p> You know, it does, doesn’t it? That’s something I don’t think about nearly enough. I think God’s had enough of ivory-tower Christianity.</p> Scraps, July 27th, 2004, while living at an apartment in Aiken, SC. Posted via Passage to Serendipity |
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| Embrangle | ||||||
| Feb. 20th, 2005 | 11:10 pm | ||||||
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meta-creation_date: 2/20/2005 23:10:25 Embrangle: \Em*bran''gle\, v. t. [Mid-17th Cent.: em- (L. “in”) + brangle (obs. “to shake, squabble” > Fr. branler “to shake”]</p> past em bran gled p. part. em bran gled pres. part. em bran gling pres. sing. em bran gles noun em bran gle ment</p> v. t. 1 arch. make more complicated or confused through entanglements; confuse or entangle</p> v. t. 2 arch. confuse, perplex, or entangle somebody or something</p> Webster's Second New International Dictionary (1913) cites: I am lost and embrangled in inextricable difficulties. —Berkeley.(That is quite an artistic way to use the word. Even as a word heretofore unfamiliar to me, it doesn't sound in the least out of place . . .)</p> I hate MSN, I hate Encarta, I hate Microsoft, but for some odd reason, I found this list of 10 Words You Simply Must Know on Google. Tenth on the list, after the leader, “defenestrate”, and following “cullet”, “pellucid”, and others, lay a beautiful archaic word: “embrangle”. Needless to say, I quickly looked up the etymology (I refuse to use “Google” as a verb) online, and made a long-pondered decision in a moment's time to expose this word from one more (albeit small) venue to the minds of the world. Public, educate thyself.</p> Posted via Passage to Serendipity |
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| The Gryphon Tea Room | ||||||
| Feb. 19th, 2005 | 05:33 pm | ||||||
meta-creation_date: 2/19/2005 17:32:45 The first things to note upon entering are the high ceilings, classic dark wood decorations, and shelves displaying antique plates and glasses. Housed in an adapted turn-of-the-century pharmacy, this tearoom is an ideal size: large enough for a crowd, yet small enough to offer privacy. The Gryphon Tea Room is one of the better, and more useful, tea establishments. Though, as the cited review goes on to state, the “high art of a classic tea service etiquette” is not there, the Gryphon is not attempting to be classic. It is through and through an art establishment, but the art in their service is of a different kind than the classic. It is an art of facilitation: an atmosphere in which a writer may sit, undisturbed, and think. The Gryphon is a place to live and breathe art, rather than to experience art.</p> As an artist (a writer in particular) I appreciate the way The Gryphon is conducted. No, it is not a place for the uninitiated in British high tea to become educated; but it is a place for those who know what they want — who know their own art — to find a convenient location to mull and ponder.</p> Scraps, July 29th, 2004 Posted via Passage to Serendipity |
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