Powaqqatsi

Since the release of Laudato Si' and the Amazon Synod, the film Powaqqatsi has come to mind every now and again. I can't help but say it was - as much as Koyaanisqatsi - prophetic.

"Powaqqatsi" is a Hopi neologism meaning roughly "a parasitic way of life". In Godfrey Reggio's view, if I remember correctly, specifically: the northern hemisphere vamping off the southern hemisphere. Yet it also includes generally the first world vamping the third world.

Take these words from Pope Saint John Paul II:

"So it is that Christ the Judge speaks of 'one of the least of the brethren', and at the same time he is speaking of each and of all. Yes. He is speaking of the whole universal dimension of injustice and evil. He is speaking of what today we are accustomed to call the North-South contrast. Hence not only East-West, but also North-South: the increasingly wealthier North, and the increasingly poorer South.

"Yes, the South — becoming always poorer; and the North — becoming always richer. Richer too in the resources of weapons with which the superpowers and blocs can mutually threaten each other. And they threaten each other — such an argument also exists — in order not to destroy each other. (...)

"Nevertheless, in the light of Christ’s words, this poor South will judge the rich North. And the poor people and poor nations — poor in different ways, not only lacking food, but also deprived of freedom and other human rights — will judge those people who take these goods away from them, amassing to themselves the imperialistic monopoly of economic and political supremacy at the expense of others. (…)

"May justice and peace embrace (cf. Ps 84(85):10) once again at the end of the second millennium which prepares us for the coming of Christ, in glory. Amen."

--Pope Saint John Paul II, Homily in Edmonton, Canada, Sept 17, 1984

Koyaanisqatsi, the first in the Qatsi trilogy, will always be my favourite over Powaqqatsi. I haven't seen the third. The first just had this non-stop kinetic...trance-like quality, but better it really gets you to re-see, to see anew how the technology of our world is so ubiquitous you simply can't see it for what it is. But just with images and music. Nothing else.

Powaqqatsi, though again just images and music, gets a little more tendentious (sort of the same reason why I'm done with Terrence Malick's films, post Thin Red Line), a little bit more formatted so to speak. Still, it has a quality of its own. The images and the music (which, as in Koyaanisqatsi, act as distinct overlays to each other, never the music as a harmonious accompaniment to the images) forming a whole create some really powerful moments.

There's this one moment early in the film where the camera is panning across a row of children's faces, in slow motion, and there's this one girl's face beginning serious, almost solemn, from the right side of the screen, and within a couple seconds by the time her face is on the left side of the screen, it erupts into a smile, and then completely explodes, again all in slow motion, into laughter. The first time I saw that it was like the flat screen evaporated and I was in some kind of communion. Film is amazing.

Here's a clip from the start of the film (the person who posted it for some reason flipped the right with the left of the screen):


Philip Glass - Serra Pelada (1988) from masalladel oido on Vimeo.


Here's another clip:

Powaqqatsi (Fragmento) from abZurdo on Vimeo.

Why does this mean Pope lose his peace when he gets pulled over a guardrail on top of vulnerable children? Embarrassing and Cringe-inducing!

Why won't this mean Pope allow a hundred people to share their slobber with each other via his ring hand? Disturbing and Ominous!

Why doesn't this mean Pope like having his 80+ year old hand torn from its socket by some boss-hogging woman? The mask is off!

Oh why won't he let us pay such radical homage to his office by forcing him over guardrails and sharing our slobber and tearing out his arthritic hand so we can show him how much more pious we are than he is?!

Yeah, who are the Ultramontanists?

Those who recognize the Pope is a human being, or those who are forever scandalized by the fact?

LOL

He's a veddy veddy bad man

Disney failed the Galactic Empire. That is all.

I submitted this to my spiritual director before posting.

He gave it the Imprimatur. So it's legit.

FYI

Refraining from stealing is not charity.

"Rogue One Is Still the Best Star Wars Movie of the Disney Era" --Caitlin Chappell

And that ain't saying much. LOL

It's funny, you know. I watched Rogue One, and right after it I watched Revenge of the Sith, which I had seen a couple times before, way back when. And oh my goodness, it was night and day.

I remember when I saw Revenge of the Sith in the theater, and in the first five minutes I was like, "Alright, here we go! Lucas finally has his shit together!" And that held throughout the entirety of the movie.

On the latest viewing I found myself especially appreciative of this exchange of dialogue:

Anakin Skywalker: "If you're not with me, then you're my enemy."

Obi-wan Kenobi: "Only a Sith deals in absolutes."

I had forgotten Anakin's remark that prompts Obi-wan's: "If you're not with me, then you're my enemy." This is the stance of the sectarian absolutist. He no longer submits to absolutes but has become a dealer in them. Which is the highest form of relativism.

Contrasted with Rogue One, some positive things were apparent to me about Revenge of the Sith that make it good:

-Not using music in every single fricking scene. Unlike Rogue One, which constantly employed swelling music to make up for its utterly grey porridge lack of rhythm in storytelling.

-Not using flashbacks, which nine times out of ten are leaden and labourious and add absolutely nothing to either story or character. Unlike Rogue One which is basically opened up with a flashback. Weighed down from the get go. All of this stuff is better left to be developed in the mind of the viewer as the film progresses and unfolds.

-Characters speaking in their own natural tone (relatively). Unlike Rogue One, with its characters speaking in the now ubiquitous severe gravel undertone while straining and sombering their emotions in every single fricking scene instead of actually acting.

The Mandalorian is enjoyable, but it's kind of basic.

The premise and bulk of the Star Wars universe, both in general and in specifics, owes its existence to Jack Kirby - a short, cigar-smoking, street-scrapping, Brooklyn Boy who produced his prodigious output in the basement of his middle-class house on a kid's drafting table while sitting in an uncomfortable wooden kitchen chair.

You know, that reminds me of something. Oh what is it now...something about how some other major studio owes the bulk of its existence to an unsung artist/writer while attributing it to someone else who was only responsible for a tiny fraction of it...oh come on, it's on the tip of my brain...oh yes, that's it -- Marvel Studios! Which owes its existence to...oh, who was it now? Oh yeah, that's right, Jack Kirby!

LOL

"Do me a favour will ya and stop watching Star Wars!" --Sir Obi-Wan Kenobi

Where is your Nazareth, your backwater.
Turns out after several detours
you do not know, have not known.
You have not much been there.

Yet it's your most native place,
this nowhere where Jesus goes with his grace,
not to your high altar where you count your earnings
while living from some proxy,
and formally identify with one
beyond uncertainty and dispute.

This the joy.
Jesus got there in you long before you. He took up his abode.
To your backwater Nazareth that Jesus goes,
like a basket baby in the river reeds,
a God Child in the hay seed,

bypassing everything, first taking every finicky reroute.
He got way in behind of you.
Long before anyone.
Bethlehem, Egypt, Nazareth,
Jerusulem, Golgotha.

Something broken in you
that you yourself cannot even reach
because your fallen nature prohibits it.
Jesus bypasses this and enters
to rest secure.

You did not call him down.
You did not synchronize with him
by the right kinds of symbols.
Your repentance does not earn his grace
but is itself a fruit of grace.

You can store brooms in the confessional
if you wish, nothing wrong with that.
Can still have confessions there, colloquial.
A broom won't listen to your conversation
and come up with search recommendations
based upon key words in your litany of sins.

Some people speculate that the workshop,
kitchen and bedrooms
were basically one single place,

or if they were somewhat separate,
it wasn't by much; it was all one home.

Where Jesus rested, he worked.
Hidden in his development.
Your Nazareth, your backwater.

Is Anti-Semitic Nationalism the reason behind the obsessive and incoherent lecturing on how the Holy Family were not refugees?

You know what this is

FYI

Rejecting the development of doctrine means that you distort teachings of the church, not that you abide by them.

This is one reason why absolutists are the absolute worst relativists.

Selective Ambiguity

Pharisees: "By what authority are you doing these things? Answer us. Because clarity."

Jesus: "First tell me, what was the authority of John's baptism? Because clarity."

Pharisees (after holding a conference): "We do not know. Because purity. Woe betide, we live in times of such confusion and ambiguity!"

Jesus: "Well then, I won't answer your dubia."

*

Neo-Pharisees: "By what authority are you saying these things? Answer our questions, which preemptively reject and implicitly skew your teachings. Because clarity."

Pope Francis: "First tell me, what's the authority of the teachings of my predecessors and the last council? Because clarity."

Neo-Pharisees (after holding a conference): "We do not know. Because restoration. Woe betide, we live in times of such confusion and ambiguity! Oh why won't you respect your office as much as we respect it!? Because trad!"

Pope Francis: "Well then, I've the peripheries to attend to. Because the Church. I can see you have your own answers (which are sadly erroneous, schismatic and fundamentalist) and I won't sit around watching you feast on your own dubia. That would be enabling. I give you over to the Lord's great mercy, and time to get a move on! Ah, look there, that young lady Greta is giving great witness to the church's ecological teachings!..."

xihuitl

Unlike the western European conception of blue as heaven/sky, for the Aztecs the colour blue - the hues encapsulated in the pigment Maya blue/turquoise - was fire. It was not cool, it was not azure. It was hot, the "center of the flame". It was the hottest and the purest flame.

Image source

Image source

Preciooouuusss!!!

The abondonment of parental authority

The authority of the parent is a spiritual authority. As with all authority, it must be exercised with love, not control. It is for real: one does not need to try to be authoritative. Every parent is endowed with it; it is either being healthily exercised, or abused/neglected.

Parental authority is typically undermined by the parent's own reactions. Reactive parents do no good to their children. (That does not necessarily mean "high emotions". There are many families - I know some - where the mom will on occasion go ballistic emotionally and yet somehow her authority/love is communicated.) Parental authority is bolstered and made effective, in the best way, to the degree that it observes and preempts, and does not react. That is not to say preempting in some clever way, but preempting with a whole lot of love. What does that mean? Essentially the heart of the parent must become larger and larger. Just as you have made room for your children entering into life. In that regard, you do not have the final say.

God is pure act. He does not react. Children are traumatized by parent's bad reactions, never by their authoritative actions done out of love. You can know you are seeking control when you are seeking results. That way lies manipulation of your children.

Speaking to your children without puritanical hysteria about pornography, and what it really is, before they are exposed to it, or more especially, before they conceive of looking at it in the secrecy of their own thoughts, would be one great example of preemptive parental authority defeating evil and winning the battle for good.

In other words, a missing key in the battle against pornography is the healthy and prompt exercise of parental authority, made directly. Blocking access, removing the near occasion, "shielding" your children, is really nothing next to the power of your parental authority directly and openly talking to your children.

If you think your words to your children about pornography will have no effect against such a pervasive foe, or will harm them, you are extremely ignorant about the reality of the authority you as a parent have been endowed with. God does not give ineffective gifts.

I don't know how any parent today can conceive of not talking to their children about pornography as the best immunization. If you think about your responsibility as a parent, and the healthy exercise of authority that your children actually hunger for, how can a parent in today's world come to the conclusion that they don't need to talk to their children "in advance" about this issue?

I reflect back on certain times when my Mom said something one time, or my Dad did something one time - and these weren't huge moments, but just something they said or did - and how much I absorbed it, the degree to which it in-formed me. One thing is clear: parental authority is for real - a spiritual reality. It is not a style or a way of parenting that you choose, or take up or cast aside. Parental authority is an irrevocable spiritual reality. It cannot be ignored. Just think, God who is the author of all life submitted to the authority of Mary and Joseph. That's how much a reality parental authority is - and yet, somehow quiet. If you assume it with force, you are doing something wrong. If you abandon it, you are deforming it all the same.

Perhaps one could put it this way: you love your children undoubtedly, and the responsibility side of the equation of that love would be the role of your authority exercised for their happiness and well-being. That's what your authority is there for. And it helps to know that parental authority - genuine and benevolent - is desired by the children. It is a reflection of the benignity of the Author of life. Maybe some parents go wrong in thinking that authority = medicine, a corrective, when it is better to understand it as food. Health-giving food. And we know health-giving food is "the best medicine".

The simple acquirement of the belief that parental authority is an ontological reality can be enough, I believe, for families to get a bit better.

Anyways, did you know that majority-communist countries like Nepal are taking actions to ban pornography? I guess they - and not western nations - are taking up the torch because banning pornography is one of the items on the Communist Manifesto?

Chernobyl

I thought the HBO miniseries Chernobyl was very well made, and recommend it. Some of the Soviet/KGB stuff is Hollywoodized/sensationalized/fictionalized. The way things fell out was much more banal, bureaucratic, and not as sinister as portrayed, and there wasn't one solitary woman hero investigator, but several investigators.

Nonetheless, every episode had me, and I credit this series with making me understand how nuclear reactors work (basically) in a way that was gripping.

I think 'gripping' is the operative word in describing the whole series. I was heaving sighs regularly just to relieve the tension and creeping dread throughout. Film is the aesthetic experience of time; when it depicts nuclear energy gone wrong, it's a kind of horror that just gets to you.

Five out of five stars and two thumbs up!

You know something, I think Darcy was the greatest of the Christmas dragons. He just wanted to get presents for his friends, and the Christmas snow blessed his good will and his pure heart and put out the fire inside of him.

Anyways, one time I accidentally set a palm tree on fire. It went up so fast I was like, "Oh no - shit!"

Was hack Malachi Martin just riding on the coattails of William Blatty?

Gotta love the solid gold VIP currency that magically obtains 110% intellectual assent and total submission from the conservative right-wing trad crowd whenever a headline appears that begins "An Exorcist says..."

An exorcist says you say eh? Here's my s.s. code, my credit card, and every ounce of my credulity! I'm going to forward this to A BILLION PEOPLE! As for what the Pope says - send him the Dubia!

LOL

You do know that an exorcist is nothing more, or less, than a priest who does the prayers of exorcism right? While there are psychological/mental/past-history-of-personal-sin factors that go into deciding the suitability of a priest to perform this role, an exorcist has no more extra "power", or special anything, than every single other priest.

When your sins are absolved in the sacrament of confession, you receive the same power of exorcism. It is the power of Christ, not of any merely human person. As for special insights "because the demons said this or that", for every exorcist there's a hundred other priests who could give you the same insights from all the stuff they hear in confession.

There are priests who have used the ritual of exorcism to commit sexual abuse, just as there are priests who have used the sacrament of confession to commit sexual abuse.

So yeah, the whole fetishistic wandering exorcist-celebrity thing...it's, uh, how does one say, ill-advised.

Why common good capitalism?

Yeah, just the common good, thanks. I don't need it several times removed.

The common good is a more concrete reality than the GDP or the Stock Market.

GDP and the Stock Market have become little more than superstitious time delay/expiry dated advance lotteries that conservatives idolize a hundred times more than ancient Aztecs running their lives to complex astrological patterns. Like the enlightened shamans ruling the lower class, the conservatives warn that if any of this very complex system is ever undone (don't sign those climate pacts!) it will spell absolute ruin.

The Pope recognizing like a sane person that there exists complex marriage situations, with a view towards regularizing and reconciling - screw that! Time to get on board with the Restoration bitches! Oh what's that? Change the economy? You naive little underling! The economy is vast and complex the likes of which you hardly understand! Remove one thread and the whole thing will spell ruin for all!

LOL

The common good is also more specific and local in its end, whereas the others uproot and homogenize.

The common good is also more lasting, definitive, stable, whereas the others can disappear tomorrow, are amorphous from day to day, and are ever volatile, like those whimsical pagan gods who one day are benevolent and the next day demand your children's blood.

Unknown Prisoner

This remains some of the most spellbinding singing I've ever had the pleasure of listening to.

Those little scraps of paper

Vincent [Pallotti] had a hatred of waste - whether of time or of material things. He used to carry a book with him so as not to waste time while waiting for anything. On one occasion a young priest had received a letter and was about to crumple it and throw it into the fire. Father Palloti stopped him and had him tear off the portions of paper which were not written on and put them into a basket. The young priest obeyed unwillingly, thinking that the effort was really a waste of time. When he had finished, Father Pallotti noted that the basket was full of paper - as indeed it was - and he asked the young priest to find one of the men who collected such scraps. The man came and paid about 10 cents for the basket of scraps.

Then Father Pallotti and the young priest went to pay a visit to the Hospital of the Holy Spirit. On the way, Father Pallotti stopped and bought a box of crackers with the coin. At the hospital, there was a great sinner in bed 15 of one of the large wards; he was dying. Whenever a priest would come near him, he would foam at the mouth and utter all manner of blasphemies. On being told of this man, the two priests first went to the chapel to pray for the man's soul, for, as our saint said, "God is all-powerful and wishes the salvation of this man more than we do ourselves."

On entering the ward, Father Pallotti went first and visited with a number of other patients. When the man in bed 15 began to rave and blaspheme, he noticed that no one was paying any attention to him, so he closed his eyes. Quickly, Father Vincent went to stand by his bed. When the man opened his eyes, he saw the priest in the act of blessing him. He opened his mouth and began to curse again, but before he was well-started Father Vincent slipped one of the crackers into his mouth, saying gently, "Eat, my son, it will do you good."

The man had to stop to chew the cracker and swallow it, giving the priest time to say a few words. When he began again to curse, the priest repeated the same maneuver, time and again.

At last divine grace conquered and the man began to weep. He made an act of contrition and Father Pallotti heard his confession. As the young priest held the candle for Extreme Unction, he heard the dying man say over and over, "My Jesus, mercy! Jesus, Mary and Joseph, assist me in my last agony!" And so he died with expressions of the deepest penance. Father Pallotti then turned to the young priest and said, "There is a soul saved and gone to Purgatory...you see, my friend, of what use were those little scraps of paper."

--from the life of Saint Vincent Pallotti, Modern Saints Their Lives and Their Faces by Ann Ball


But the sacraments are being replaced with recycling! What are these newfangled ecological sins I'm supposed to care about?! Think about the souls! - the souls! The faith is being assumed into a syncretistic new paganism!

He Presides at the Worship of Idols! is the hot new Answer the Dubia!

Keep it up!

Because it just keeps getting dumber and dumber.

Does anyone find the traditional Amazonian facial markings on the 'pachamama' relief carving to oddly echo the two scars made on the face of the Mother of God in the icon that is today venerated as Our Lady of Czestochowa? Perhaps it's like one of those little inculturation opportunities.

By the way, it's not an idol.

A superimposition remains a superimposition. The Christian faith however does not remain under the human and societal effort of imposition. And what you have done is made it into just one worldview among other worldviews - even if those other worldviews were removed, or superimposed upon.