Driving Through Sawmill Towns
By Les Murray
1
In the high cool country,
having come from the clouds,
down a tilting road
into a distant valley,
you drive without haste. Your windscreen parts the forest,
swaying and glancing, and jammed midday brilliance
crouches in clearings ...
then you come across them,
the sawmill towns, bare hamlets built of boards
with perhaps a store,
perhaps a bridge beyond
and a little sidelong creek alive with pebbles.
2
The mills are roofed with iron, have no walls:
you look straight in as you pass, see lithe men working,
the swerve of a winch,
dim dazzling blades advancing
through a trolley-borne trunk
till it sags apart
in a manifold sprawl of weatherboards and battens.
The men watch you pass:
when you stop your car and ask them for directions,
tall youths look away—
it is the older men who
come out in blue singlets and talk softly to you.
Beside each mill, smoke trickles out of mounds
of ash and sawdust.
3
You glide on through town,
your mudguards damp with cloud.
The houses there wear verandahs out of shyness,
all day in calendared kitchens, women listen
for cars on the road,
lost children in the bush,
a cry from the mill, a footstep—
nothing happens.
The half-heard radio sings
its song of sidewalks.
Sometimes a woman, sweeping her front step,
or a plain young wife at a tankstand fetching water
in a metal bucket will turn round and gaze
at the mountains in wonderment,
looking for a city.
4
Evenings are very quiet. All around
the forest is there.
As night comes down, the houses watch each other:
a light going out in a window here has meaning.
You speed away through the upland,
glare through towns
and are gone in the forest, glowing on far hills.
On summer nights
ground-crickets sing and pause.
In the dark of winter, tin roofs sough with rain,
downpipes chafe in the wind, agog with water.
Men sit after tea
by the stove while their wives talk, rolling a dead match
between their fingers,
thinking of the future.
-----
From Learning Human
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Be Newly Taxed and Be Newly Consuming: Problem Fixed!
If he were alive today, Jim Varney could possibly, possibly single-handedly "resuscitate" the economy through consumerism (for a little while at least) but since he's dead (God rest his soul) that option is totally out - know what I mean?
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Journey on the Fish
Journey on the Fish - By Max Beckmann
Max Beckmann really did "just want to paint beautiful paintings", but in that setting forth he could not bypass a whole lot of other sub-mysteries along the way; or what he - with that economical Teutonic thrust of his which he never lost - delightfully called, "certain last things."
Those "certain last things" cannot be spoken about with words (at least not in the way that painting demands; poetry is another matter). They cannot be explained. They refute and refuse explanation. And it's there where painting begins.
And later, the viewer comes along and sees the "afterward" of where the painting began. The viewer meets it with whatever means he has within himself.
This continually built communication (and no, it is not some "collective unconscious" or "collective consciousness") is part of what's so vital about culture. It moves and builds from generation to generation as silently as trees grow, or planets move. Or it is supposed to.
It is an objective freedom. Its removal from our lives is utter death for us.
The modern, or post-modern or whatever critic, looks at the above painting and thinks that Beckmann is presenting some puzzle or allegory. He thinks Beckmann is being too figurative, too obvious, and too coded. His critics criticize him for actually seeming to say something (oh no!) and then in the same breath criticize him for not saying enough.
Beckmann (who hated talking about his paintings) once responded to a reporter asking why he put fish into so many of his paintings:
"Because I like fish, both to eat and to look at. Also they are symbols." What do they symbolize? "Geist — spirit," Beckmann replied. "But the man who looks at my pictures must figure them out for himself."
It is interesting to note that the first thing Beckmann said as to why he brought many fish into his work is that he simply likes them - to eat and to look at.
That is a good response. We do, after all, eat fish. Why do we eat? To live; to have strength; to have potency. But these are "certain last things". As Chesterton implies through a character in The Napolean of Notting Hill:
"A man strikes the lyre, and says, 'Life is real, life is earnest,' and then goes into a room and stuffs alien substances into a hole in his head."
There is an endless diffusion of details to be had in this world of certain last things. And not one thing is without an individual name that shows forth in some manner the infinite expansion of God's creation.
The man and the woman are made one flesh in marriage: on open space (to be gleaned by the sea and boat) two fishes fill the plane, and on the fish two people, careening to earth - or are they circumnavigating the roundess of the sphere, and thus going up? The man cannot look and maybe fears his own potency while the woman looks ahead steadily. They compliment each other. And in their hands, like a last meagre little flourish, we see a mask. But they are each other's masks.
They are holding each other's mask.
Certain last things.
-----
Those "certain last things" cannot be spoken about with words (at least not in the way that painting demands; poetry is another matter). They cannot be explained. They refute and refuse explanation. And it's there where painting begins.
And later, the viewer comes along and sees the "afterward" of where the painting began. The viewer meets it with whatever means he has within himself.
This continually built communication (and no, it is not some "collective unconscious" or "collective consciousness") is part of what's so vital about culture. It moves and builds from generation to generation as silently as trees grow, or planets move. Or it is supposed to.
It is an objective freedom. Its removal from our lives is utter death for us.
The modern, or post-modern or whatever critic, looks at the above painting and thinks that Beckmann is presenting some puzzle or allegory. He thinks Beckmann is being too figurative, too obvious, and too coded. His critics criticize him for actually seeming to say something (oh no!) and then in the same breath criticize him for not saying enough.
Beckmann (who hated talking about his paintings) once responded to a reporter asking why he put fish into so many of his paintings:
"Because I like fish, both to eat and to look at. Also they are symbols." What do they symbolize? "Geist — spirit," Beckmann replied. "But the man who looks at my pictures must figure them out for himself."
It is interesting to note that the first thing Beckmann said as to why he brought many fish into his work is that he simply likes them - to eat and to look at.
That is a good response. We do, after all, eat fish. Why do we eat? To live; to have strength; to have potency. But these are "certain last things". As Chesterton implies through a character in The Napolean of Notting Hill:
"A man strikes the lyre, and says, 'Life is real, life is earnest,' and then goes into a room and stuffs alien substances into a hole in his head."
There is an endless diffusion of details to be had in this world of certain last things. And not one thing is without an individual name that shows forth in some manner the infinite expansion of God's creation.
The man and the woman are made one flesh in marriage: on open space (to be gleaned by the sea and boat) two fishes fill the plane, and on the fish two people, careening to earth - or are they circumnavigating the roundess of the sphere, and thus going up? The man cannot look and maybe fears his own potency while the woman looks ahead steadily. They compliment each other. And in their hands, like a last meagre little flourish, we see a mask. But they are each other's masks.
They are holding each other's mask.
Certain last things.
-----
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Sunday, February 21, 2010
The Salvage Yard
Enbrethiliel's continued reviews of The Babysitters Club books has me all nostalgic. No, no, I never read The Babysitters Club, though there were plenty of copies lying around the house belonging to sisters. Though that in itself would be a fond enough memory.
No, just that it brings to mind my immersion in the "Alfred Hitchcock" Three Investigators books! Oh, dear Lord, those years beginning with grade five: The Secret of The Crooked Cat:
I actually picked this book to do a book report on (remember those?) and can still remember the point at which it was no longer a school task, scarily, not even remotely, but discovered that I could actually follow a story - on my own - and that I actually enjoyed it, way too much, as I started reading all the other Three Investigators books.
Those summer nights in bed, reading, but there in their secret headquarters hidden in the salvage yard in southern California with its secret entrances...Jupiter Jones, Pete Crenshaw, Bob Andrews...
Not much else to say there. And then Father Brown came along, later...
Image source: http://threeinvestigatorsbooks.homestead.com/Crookedcat.html
No, just that it brings to mind my immersion in the "Alfred Hitchcock" Three Investigators books! Oh, dear Lord, those years beginning with grade five: The Secret of The Crooked Cat:
I actually picked this book to do a book report on (remember those?) and can still remember the point at which it was no longer a school task, scarily, not even remotely, but discovered that I could actually follow a story - on my own - and that I actually enjoyed it, way too much, as I started reading all the other Three Investigators books.
Those summer nights in bed, reading, but there in their secret headquarters hidden in the salvage yard in southern California with its secret entrances...Jupiter Jones, Pete Crenshaw, Bob Andrews...
Not much else to say there. And then Father Brown came along, later...
Image source: http://threeinvestigatorsbooks.homestead.com/Crookedcat.html
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
For your Lenten Observation
"Great things end; small things endure.
We must go back to where we were, to the point where you took the wrong turn. We must go back to the main foundations of life - without dirtying the water." --Domenico, the Madman
We must go back to where we were, to the point where you took the wrong turn. We must go back to the main foundations of life - without dirtying the water." --Domenico, the Madman
The Farmer's Wife
Take the plot of this film in one sentence and you will see how predictable it is:
A farmer becomes a widower and after wedding off his daughter (at the reception of which he realizes how lonely he is) he calls on his capable, dutiful and attractive head servant to help him make a list of prospective women to woo, each of them being either mannish, frigid, obese and/or wearers of hats that have too many flowers or scary feathers spilling off them.
Say that was not enough to tell you where the film is going, let's drop another hint: throughout the farmer's ordeals with rejection from these eccentric ladies he comes to sit dejectedly again and again in his chair by the hearth, across from which sits another chair, the chair his deceased wife used to sit in; and sitting in it now and helping the farmer with his ordeals and coming up with new prospective names is the capable, dutiful and attractive head servant.
But of course long before this moment we already know. We know within the first fifteen minutes - or even before that.
Then what is it that makes one want to watch the film to its end? This phenomenon in which a film transcends its own predictability, and does so without defying expectations, I touched upon in a previous post a while back. That post actually anticipated this present review, which I've only worked myself to finishing now.
The Farmer's Wife is a surprisingly endearing romantic comedy from Alfred Hitchcock. This is his only slapstick film that is a comedy through and through, and that isn't based in black humour - like The Trouble with Harry, though it abounds in double entendres and innuendoes. There is no other film in Hitchcock's oeuvre like this film; it stands alone, almost like a mysterious island that he never touched again - though there are techniques, motifs, visual structure and themes here that are recognizable throughout all his films.
But one can put it this way: if Hitchcock's silent era is removed even from his early period, then The Farmer's Wife, though a silent film, is removed even from his silent era. It's almost as if Hitchcock did this film just to prove that he could make a comedy, and a good one, then left it at that.
Through visual motif that outweighs the plot, the film speaks a word about marriage, and those things that are concomitant with it: death, loss, loneliness; and of course those other highly resonant things: kitchen tables laden with food, laundry drying by a fire, two chairs by a hearth.
A Hitchcock film is a rare one that doesn't make reference to marriage - usually in dread belief in its objective making of a man and a woman one flesh. He had a highly sensitive feeling for these things concerning marriage; not a perfect feeling, or an always moral feeling, but one that definitely was not indifferent to it.
The Farmer's Wife starts off with a short death bed scene. It is adroitly and swiftly handled; Hitchcock channels, with a few cuts, all the attending emotion of loss at the death of this farmer's wife.
We get the usual pastoral pictures of the farm. The handyman, Churdles Ash (Gordon Harker), who turns out to be the comedic foil, enters the house. Two beagles follow him up the stairs. We don't follow the handyman to the upstairs room, but the two beagles stop at the top stair, resting both their heads on the floor.
Then the handyman comes back down the stairs, goes back out into the daylight, where he looks up at the top open window whence a man is looking down. The man in the window sadly and slowly shakes his head at the handyman below who is frowning, and he turns away, presumably to do some farm work.
The man in the window goes back to what's taking place in the room, and then there's the cut: we get the very still and composed shot of the head servant and a couple others around a bed and a woman in the bed.
The structure after this scene basically runs: the farmer gives a wedding for his daughter. The wedding we don't see, but only the distant bell swinging in a distant church spire and the joyful expression of the head servant in the kitchen, which informs us that the wedding ceremony has been completed. The ensuing wedding feast, which we do see, provides the frame for the farmer's deep loneliness in his widowhood; it gives us also the three prospective women, all in attendance at the feast, that the farmer decides to woo.
Next is the "courtships". Courtship is inaccurate since the farmer doesn't waste his time but simply states, after some rather saucy innuendoes ("I be coming up here like a fox to snatch away one of your fat hens!"), that "I be marrying again."
Suffice it to say, the three "wooings" provide the comedic heart of the film. After all those have failed, there is a peculiar fourth; a sort of last resort; a very beefy barmaid who at one point grabs the farmer by his arms and shakes him so violently that he is reduced to something like an over-boiled asparagus. (By the way, Jameson Thomas who plays the widower farmer, Samuel Sweetland, is expressively brilliant in this film)
But we don't see the result of this fourth "wooing" played out. Not yet. Hitchcock does something much more interesting and structural.
The farmer comes back home, and as he nears the open bottom window of his house he stops to listen to the handyman giving one of his rants to Minta, the head servant. The handyman goes on about how he can’t stand to see his master become so wretched, coming back each time like a dog with his tale between his legs, and so on.
Now, the farmer comes into the house with a beaming blissful smile on his face. Why, we are not really sure. Did he really meet with success with the beefy barmaid or is he just trying to defy Churdle's expectations and prove him wrong, if only for appearances?
Minta seems devastated as she backs behind the rocking chair and grapples and fondles the back and front of the chair with her hands.
But after the handyman leaves to do some work, disappointed that the farmer is going to be enslaved yet again, the farmer sits in his chair by the hearth - and he completely deflates. He has met with failure again.
Now Minta, being encouraged, starts coming up with new names, whether sincerely or not we don’t know, while the farmer scratches out all the names of the women that he had written on a pad of paper, and from whom he got rejected. He sits back in his chair and gazes into the empty chair across from him. Now comes the masterstroke.
Hitchcock overlays living images of the three once-prospective women on top of the empty rocking chair, like ghosts. Each one fades into the chair, shaking their heads, laughing in mockery, or however they acted when the farmer asked them for marriage. One after the other, as one fades out another fades in to take the other's place. Then after the third one fades out, we see the fourth one, the beefy barmaid, fade into the chair; and we see her as she acted when she was rejecting the farmer's proposal; the rejection which we never got to see. Genius.
Then comes the next masterstroke. When the beefy barmaid begins to fade out, just as her image is about to vanish completely, Minta, the head servant, in the flesh, real and present Minta, sits in the chair, still thinking distantly about some other names for the farmer.
And after a few gazing, half-comprehending beats, the farmer's eyebrows lift higher than Vincent Price's.
And then what happens next…well, I don't want to spoil the movie for you.
A farmer becomes a widower and after wedding off his daughter (at the reception of which he realizes how lonely he is) he calls on his capable, dutiful and attractive head servant to help him make a list of prospective women to woo, each of them being either mannish, frigid, obese and/or wearers of hats that have too many flowers or scary feathers spilling off them.
Say that was not enough to tell you where the film is going, let's drop another hint: throughout the farmer's ordeals with rejection from these eccentric ladies he comes to sit dejectedly again and again in his chair by the hearth, across from which sits another chair, the chair his deceased wife used to sit in; and sitting in it now and helping the farmer with his ordeals and coming up with new prospective names is the capable, dutiful and attractive head servant.
But of course long before this moment we already know. We know within the first fifteen minutes - or even before that.
Then what is it that makes one want to watch the film to its end? This phenomenon in which a film transcends its own predictability, and does so without defying expectations, I touched upon in a previous post a while back. That post actually anticipated this present review, which I've only worked myself to finishing now.
The Farmer's Wife is a surprisingly endearing romantic comedy from Alfred Hitchcock. This is his only slapstick film that is a comedy through and through, and that isn't based in black humour - like The Trouble with Harry, though it abounds in double entendres and innuendoes. There is no other film in Hitchcock's oeuvre like this film; it stands alone, almost like a mysterious island that he never touched again - though there are techniques, motifs, visual structure and themes here that are recognizable throughout all his films.
But one can put it this way: if Hitchcock's silent era is removed even from his early period, then The Farmer's Wife, though a silent film, is removed even from his silent era. It's almost as if Hitchcock did this film just to prove that he could make a comedy, and a good one, then left it at that.
Through visual motif that outweighs the plot, the film speaks a word about marriage, and those things that are concomitant with it: death, loss, loneliness; and of course those other highly resonant things: kitchen tables laden with food, laundry drying by a fire, two chairs by a hearth.
A Hitchcock film is a rare one that doesn't make reference to marriage - usually in dread belief in its objective making of a man and a woman one flesh. He had a highly sensitive feeling for these things concerning marriage; not a perfect feeling, or an always moral feeling, but one that definitely was not indifferent to it.
The Farmer's Wife starts off with a short death bed scene. It is adroitly and swiftly handled; Hitchcock channels, with a few cuts, all the attending emotion of loss at the death of this farmer's wife.
We get the usual pastoral pictures of the farm. The handyman, Churdles Ash (Gordon Harker), who turns out to be the comedic foil, enters the house. Two beagles follow him up the stairs. We don't follow the handyman to the upstairs room, but the two beagles stop at the top stair, resting both their heads on the floor.
Then the handyman comes back down the stairs, goes back out into the daylight, where he looks up at the top open window whence a man is looking down. The man in the window sadly and slowly shakes his head at the handyman below who is frowning, and he turns away, presumably to do some farm work.
The man in the window goes back to what's taking place in the room, and then there's the cut: we get the very still and composed shot of the head servant and a couple others around a bed and a woman in the bed.
The structure after this scene basically runs: the farmer gives a wedding for his daughter. The wedding we don't see, but only the distant bell swinging in a distant church spire and the joyful expression of the head servant in the kitchen, which informs us that the wedding ceremony has been completed. The ensuing wedding feast, which we do see, provides the frame for the farmer's deep loneliness in his widowhood; it gives us also the three prospective women, all in attendance at the feast, that the farmer decides to woo.
Next is the "courtships". Courtship is inaccurate since the farmer doesn't waste his time but simply states, after some rather saucy innuendoes ("I be coming up here like a fox to snatch away one of your fat hens!"), that "I be marrying again."
Suffice it to say, the three "wooings" provide the comedic heart of the film. After all those have failed, there is a peculiar fourth; a sort of last resort; a very beefy barmaid who at one point grabs the farmer by his arms and shakes him so violently that he is reduced to something like an over-boiled asparagus. (By the way, Jameson Thomas who plays the widower farmer, Samuel Sweetland, is expressively brilliant in this film)
But we don't see the result of this fourth "wooing" played out. Not yet. Hitchcock does something much more interesting and structural.
The farmer comes back home, and as he nears the open bottom window of his house he stops to listen to the handyman giving one of his rants to Minta, the head servant. The handyman goes on about how he can’t stand to see his master become so wretched, coming back each time like a dog with his tale between his legs, and so on.
Now, the farmer comes into the house with a beaming blissful smile on his face. Why, we are not really sure. Did he really meet with success with the beefy barmaid or is he just trying to defy Churdle's expectations and prove him wrong, if only for appearances?
Minta seems devastated as she backs behind the rocking chair and grapples and fondles the back and front of the chair with her hands.
But after the handyman leaves to do some work, disappointed that the farmer is going to be enslaved yet again, the farmer sits in his chair by the hearth - and he completely deflates. He has met with failure again.
Now Minta, being encouraged, starts coming up with new names, whether sincerely or not we don’t know, while the farmer scratches out all the names of the women that he had written on a pad of paper, and from whom he got rejected. He sits back in his chair and gazes into the empty chair across from him. Now comes the masterstroke.
Hitchcock overlays living images of the three once-prospective women on top of the empty rocking chair, like ghosts. Each one fades into the chair, shaking their heads, laughing in mockery, or however they acted when the farmer asked them for marriage. One after the other, as one fades out another fades in to take the other's place. Then after the third one fades out, we see the fourth one, the beefy barmaid, fade into the chair; and we see her as she acted when she was rejecting the farmer's proposal; the rejection which we never got to see. Genius.
Then comes the next masterstroke. When the beefy barmaid begins to fade out, just as her image is about to vanish completely, Minta, the head servant, in the flesh, real and present Minta, sits in the chair, still thinking distantly about some other names for the farmer.
And after a few gazing, half-comprehending beats, the farmer's eyebrows lift higher than Vincent Price's.
And then what happens next…well, I don't want to spoil the movie for you.
-----
I checked at youtube without hope to see if the film is on there, and - would you believe it - somebody posted it! For some reason though the music is completely different from the version I saw on dvd. The music on the youtube version is unfortunately rather boring. The music on the version I saw was amusing and was made fit to the scenes.
I checked at youtube without hope to see if the film is on there, and - would you believe it - somebody posted it! For some reason though the music is completely different from the version I saw on dvd. The music on the youtube version is unfortunately rather boring. The music on the version I saw was amusing and was made fit to the scenes.
-----
Image source: http://www.hitchcockwiki.com/wiki/Lillian_Hall-Davis
Feast Day of the Holy Face
I'm republishing an old post from Febraury 24th. 2009:
THE GOLDEN ARROW PRAYER
May the most holy, most sacred, most adorable, most incomprehensible and ineffable Name of God be forever praised, blessed, loved, adored and glorified in Heaven, on Earth, and under the Earth by all the creatures of God and by the Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. Amen.
Eternal Father, I offer Thee the adorable Face of Thy Beloved Son for the honour and glory of Thy Name, for the conversion of sinners and the salvation of the dying. Amen.
After receiving this prayer, Sister Mary of St. Peter was given a vision in which she saw the Sacred Heart of Jesus delightfully wounded by this "Golden Arrow" as torrents of graces streamed from It for the conversion of sinners.
REPARATION PRAYER
Eternal Father, turn away Thy angry gaze from our guilty people whose face has become unsightly in Thine eyes. Look instead upon the Face of Thy Beloved Son, for this is the Face of Him in Whom Thou art well pleased. We now offer Thee this Holy Face, covered with shame and disfigured by bloody bruises in reparation for the crimes of our age in order to appease Thine anger, justly provoked against us. Because Thy Divine Son, our Redeemer, has taken upon His Head all the sins of His members, that they might be spared, we now beg of Thee, Eternal Father, to grant us mercy. AMEN.
AN ASPIRATION TO THE ETERNAL FATHER
TO BE FREQUENTLY RECITED DURING THE DAY
ETERNAL FATHER, we offer You the Holy Face of Jesus, covered with blood, sweat, dust and spittle, in reparation for the crimes of communists, blasphemers, and for the profaners of the Holy Name and of the Holy Day. AMEN.
PRAYER TO REPRODUCE
THE IMAGE OF GOD IN OUR SOULS
Our Lord told Sister Mary of St. Peter that the Image of His Holy Face is like a Divine Stamp which, if applied to souls, through prayer, has the power of imprinting anew within them the Image of God.
I SALUTE THEE, I ADORE THEE, AND I LOVE THEE, OH ADORABLE FACE OF MY BELOVED JESUS, AS THE NOBLE STAMP OF DIVINITY! COMPLETELY SURRENDERING MY SOUL TO THEE, I MOST HUMBLY BEG THEE TO STAMP THIS SEAL UPON US ALL, SO THAT THE IMAGE OF GOD MAY ONCE MORE BE REPRODUCED BY ITS IMPRINT IN OUR SOULS. AMEN.
Thanks to: Catholic Tradition.
Also check out: The Holy Face Association.
Saint Veronica,
THE GOLDEN ARROW PRAYER
May the most holy, most sacred, most adorable, most incomprehensible and ineffable Name of God be forever praised, blessed, loved, adored and glorified in Heaven, on Earth, and under the Earth by all the creatures of God and by the Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. Amen.
Eternal Father, I offer Thee the adorable Face of Thy Beloved Son for the honour and glory of Thy Name, for the conversion of sinners and the salvation of the dying. Amen.
After receiving this prayer, Sister Mary of St. Peter was given a vision in which she saw the Sacred Heart of Jesus delightfully wounded by this "Golden Arrow" as torrents of graces streamed from It for the conversion of sinners.
REPARATION PRAYER
Eternal Father, turn away Thy angry gaze from our guilty people whose face has become unsightly in Thine eyes. Look instead upon the Face of Thy Beloved Son, for this is the Face of Him in Whom Thou art well pleased. We now offer Thee this Holy Face, covered with shame and disfigured by bloody bruises in reparation for the crimes of our age in order to appease Thine anger, justly provoked against us. Because Thy Divine Son, our Redeemer, has taken upon His Head all the sins of His members, that they might be spared, we now beg of Thee, Eternal Father, to grant us mercy. AMEN.
AN ASPIRATION TO THE ETERNAL FATHER
TO BE FREQUENTLY RECITED DURING THE DAY
ETERNAL FATHER, we offer You the Holy Face of Jesus, covered with blood, sweat, dust and spittle, in reparation for the crimes of communists, blasphemers, and for the profaners of the Holy Name and of the Holy Day. AMEN.
PRAYER TO REPRODUCE
THE IMAGE OF GOD IN OUR SOULS
Our Lord told Sister Mary of St. Peter that the Image of His Holy Face is like a Divine Stamp which, if applied to souls, through prayer, has the power of imprinting anew within them the Image of God.
I SALUTE THEE, I ADORE THEE, AND I LOVE THEE, OH ADORABLE FACE OF MY BELOVED JESUS, AS THE NOBLE STAMP OF DIVINITY! COMPLETELY SURRENDERING MY SOUL TO THEE, I MOST HUMBLY BEG THEE TO STAMP THIS SEAL UPON US ALL, SO THAT THE IMAGE OF GOD MAY ONCE MORE BE REPRODUCED BY ITS IMPRINT IN OUR SOULS. AMEN.
Thanks to: Catholic Tradition.
Also check out: The Holy Face Association.
Saint Veronica,
pray for us!
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Up and Out
Do the unreached stars record our pains,
eat them in a twinkling, still-staying,
resuming as before to flame?
Was the lidless night so made
for this, that up and out
are ages on ages
built for us to gaze,
and our lifetimes here, mere twinklings,
that a single star - of them all - winks at?
eat them in a twinkling, still-staying,
resuming as before to flame?
Was the lidless night so made
for this, that up and out
are ages on ages
built for us to gaze,
and our lifetimes here, mere twinklings,
that a single star - of them all - winks at?
Movies that people love but which I hate
Movies that lots of people love but which I love to hate. You can play too. I have come up with five so far but feel this list is going to expand in future posts. Each title has to include an alternative choice of your preference, an alternative to the popularly loved movie that you hate.
So here are the first five:
1. Good Will Hunting
As much as there is going for it in the relationship between Williams and Damon, I just hate the humanism of this film. I hate how the math problems, the world of numbers, are not detailed even just a little. I hate the inexplicable scenes like the friend jerking off in the baseball glove and Affleck covering one of Damon's interviews and a bunch of others scenes. My alternative choice: Searching for Bobby Fischer - the best boy genius movie of all time.
2. The Spider Man movies
Don't get me wrong; I do kind of like them (except for the third) because of Sam Raimi's direction, but not enough. There's something sterile about them. I don't like Toby Maguire or Kirsten Dunst. I don't like the scenes in which May gives her wise lectures to Peter. And the second Spider Man…it wasn't that great. My alternative choice: Darkman
3. Titanic
You knew this one would be on here. In the words of my friend Bryan: as soon as I saw Leonardo Dicaprio in the back seat with Winslet and crying on top of her, he was irredeemable from that point on. My alternative choice: Big
4. Batman: The Dark Knight
I confess I made myself like this movie when I saw it in the theater. Then I watched it on dvd. Yikes. This film is so ludicrously stupid it beggars description. Scene to scene, how the Joker gets from one locale to another and how he manages to set everything up the way he does (getting himself in with the police officers to assassinate Gordon to planting someone with explosives in his belly and hijacking the two ferries and on and on) is stupid even for a comic book movie, especially for one that has such pretensions of seriousness. My alternative choice: Either the first Batman (not Burton's) or The Phantom or The Shadow. Tough to come up with an alternative for this one.
5. The Shawshank Redemption
Kidding, kidding, kidding. Relax.
The real 5. E.T.
I remember the talk about E.T. when I was a kid. And I remember one of my older sisters taking me and my brothers to go see it at the theater. And I vaguely remember thinking to myself that this was the most boring thing I had ever seen. Okay, the bike ride escapade at the end is cool. And you know, I still don't think this movie is all that great. My alternative choice: The Goonies - or if you want the alternative to have to do with aliens, then Explorers (minus the aliens)
So here are the first five:
1. Good Will Hunting
As much as there is going for it in the relationship between Williams and Damon, I just hate the humanism of this film. I hate how the math problems, the world of numbers, are not detailed even just a little. I hate the inexplicable scenes like the friend jerking off in the baseball glove and Affleck covering one of Damon's interviews and a bunch of others scenes. My alternative choice: Searching for Bobby Fischer - the best boy genius movie of all time.
2. The Spider Man movies
Don't get me wrong; I do kind of like them (except for the third) because of Sam Raimi's direction, but not enough. There's something sterile about them. I don't like Toby Maguire or Kirsten Dunst. I don't like the scenes in which May gives her wise lectures to Peter. And the second Spider Man…it wasn't that great. My alternative choice: Darkman
3. Titanic
You knew this one would be on here. In the words of my friend Bryan: as soon as I saw Leonardo Dicaprio in the back seat with Winslet and crying on top of her, he was irredeemable from that point on. My alternative choice: Big
4. Batman: The Dark Knight
I confess I made myself like this movie when I saw it in the theater. Then I watched it on dvd. Yikes. This film is so ludicrously stupid it beggars description. Scene to scene, how the Joker gets from one locale to another and how he manages to set everything up the way he does (getting himself in with the police officers to assassinate Gordon to planting someone with explosives in his belly and hijacking the two ferries and on and on) is stupid even for a comic book movie, especially for one that has such pretensions of seriousness. My alternative choice: Either the first Batman (not Burton's) or The Phantom or The Shadow. Tough to come up with an alternative for this one.
5. The Shawshank Redemption
Kidding, kidding, kidding. Relax.
The real 5. E.T.
I remember the talk about E.T. when I was a kid. And I remember one of my older sisters taking me and my brothers to go see it at the theater. And I vaguely remember thinking to myself that this was the most boring thing I had ever seen. Okay, the bike ride escapade at the end is cool. And you know, I still don't think this movie is all that great. My alternative choice: The Goonies - or if you want the alternative to have to do with aliens, then Explorers (minus the aliens)
Saturday, February 13, 2010
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