You have got to be kidding me

!

:)

Love it.

I've been watching this old series of documentaries called Hands (go here at youtube) on Irish traditional crafts.

The series ran from 1978 to 1989. I came across it by chance algorithm, and after watching a good number of them without knowing anything about it, I can understand after the fact, why it is referred to as the greatest Irish TV series of all time.

This is some of the best film-making I've seen. Each episode has the same craftsmanship put into the film-making as the subject being filmed. And I think it's because the filmmakers honour the subject before the film - they linger with the subjects. The film is a bridge. The commentary has to do with the most interesting: how the things are done, how the things are made. Yet it's not "how to". It's about the people and their long traditions of work diminishing, yet not a whiff of preaching or the typical highly informed social commentary you get with today's documentaries.

Solid, down to earth. Intense focus, yet leisurely. The pacing is perfect.

Highly recommended.

Such a great film

Yep

Huh, never heard of St. Nectan before. A hermit. His head was cut off in Hartland, Devon. Then he picked up his head and walked back to his well. Only then did he drop dead. He lived for a time in a dense forest. Then he lived in a remote valley. Lived for a time in Cornwall above a waterfall, which is now called St. Nectan's Glen. I like him already.

Image from official St. Nectan's Glen site

Look at that, money really does grow on trees.

See what you learn when you listen to electronica/ambient/trance?

The dried ones too

The dried Kalamatas are nice and chewy and have figgy depth. They soften nicely in the cream.

Having the dried figs in cream is a substitute for the absentee fresh ones that I grow on the - thus far - five trees. They give tons of figs, and I'm a big dumb weakling when it comes to giving them away. I like doing that - that is, to people who actually like them. Still, I keep a ton in the freezer, but they don't last long. They all get consumed by about - what is it - the end of October? But at some point in winter, their memory begins to haunt me, and I resort to store-bought dried figs.

The dried ones with viable seeds are a completely different fig from the fresh. I like the fresh best.

At the same "farmer's market" store down from where I live that I buy the dried figs, they had "fresh" figs one time - from Brazil - and I bought two just to see how they compare with the ones I grow.

I must tell about those figs from Brazil. They were so insipid it was like eating snot. If that is people's experience of figs, then no wonder people say they're not fans. Not that I was surprised, though it did make me happy to know that the figs from the trees I grow are so superior in sweetness, flavour, texture, etc. that there is simply no comparing. I'm not tooting my own horn - I don't "grow" them - the trees grow them with the aid of light and water and heat and such. I merely tend. And talk to them.

I understand that they pick the figs before they have properly ripened, and figs do not ripen off the tree. All for the sake of shelf life, and shipping life. I'm guessing that they also "force" the figs by over-watering to make them super plump, which waters down the flavour (kind of like anti-Francis Super Catholics ginning up the culture of appearances). Picking figs before they have ripened is a crime. I committed this offense so many times - picking some of the first ripening figs too early - that it was only by having my own stupidity shoved in my face after something like the fourth year that I began to learn the art of long-drawn detachment that fig trees demand.

Did you know that someone under a fig tree is a symbol of prayer?

An Irreproachable Clemency

Old oak leaves, the wind of spring assays,
quit the boughs and skip like truants,
catching in crocuses,
strangers in the day.

They would hiss
in a brood of winter
tongues where they clung; but cut

and cast, now muted, they run
in silence of an abrupt release,
the more indelible for being late,
having no terms to negotiate.

Hello

St. John Vianney's Boiled Potatoes

They were so insipid!

It's almost like his real food was fishing for people, and the nets of his confessional were constantly tearing from the weight of the miraculous draught.

This notion about building some super Catholic culture is what's insipid. Like the notion about the Catholic Literary Revival. Oh, what happened to the Catholic Literary Revival? the people ask.

I'll tell you what happened to the Catholic Literary Revival. The Catholic Literary Revival was born in an artifice of self-consciousness, and being self-conscious, it died. And thank God for that.

Again and again, especially under Francis, I am made aware of how Christ operates most powerfully through the most humble species. Not "most humble" as in "more humble than another". Unworthy and broken. Worthy of damnation. A poor church. As in truly humble species - lowly, sinners. People are scandalized by the impact.

I've never been a fan of the Catholic steak and cigar/pipe and ale club. Love steak. Hate cigars/pipes (like cigarettes, sometimes, but not as habit). Love ale. But hate the club.

Never think you have a handle on what the Catholic culture is supposed to look like. I keep thinking about Pope Francis's phrase "the culture of appearances". I know how badly I can be a slave to it, all the subtle ways it insinuates itself into your life and how it can dictate to you who you are.

This means of course both being taken in by appearances, and putting up an appearance; and they always go together. Like Carnival. But the Pope said it best didn't he - that circus time is over?

I know he never said that, but I wish he did.

Lazarus and the Rich Guy. He was so consumed in the culture of appearances that he failed to really see Lazarus lying there. I sure as hell don't want that. A church sick from clinging to its own security.

What was that Narnia tale where the boy sticks his hand into the fire to break the spell that has been cast on him? I like the Temple of Doom version. "Indy - I love you!" Good old Short Round.

Anyways, some people erroneously think that fasting doesn't mean downgrading, as it were, the tasty potential of your provender. There is, according to this view, fasting and feasting, and never the twain! And if that is so, then what is abstaining from meat, but precisely that, on some level?

I remember how "Jansenist" was tossed around back in the Christopher West debate in the comment boxes. I deleted all the Christopher West posts some while ago, but I remember how one commenter remarked about St. John Vianney's boiled potatoes, and the other commenter Jansenistically hurled the accusation of Jansenism in opposition to this.

It's like people don't really care to see how far-reaching the life of the Church goes. They want everything nice and pat and "traditional" (which is of course their own imagisterium in operation).

But the nets are put to the utter straining point. Did Jesus tell the apostles that they needed stronger, more secure nets before He was to perform the miracle? No, He said cast your nets. What happened? Pay attention to these three things: the nets begin to break. The other boat comes over to help (that's a tough one for the wagon-circlers). Then the boats themselves begin to sink from the load.

I believe Pope Francis remarked somewhere about people seeking to control God's transcendence. They make a big stink about "weaponized ambiguity" and confusion and lack of clarity. Never hear of the obscurity of faith?

Clinging to laws. Fasting and feasting and never the twain!

Right, anyways, the Bishop that visited St. John Bosco.

He wanted to see if the padre was really all that was being said of him, and the soup that Bosco served him for lunch was so pallid that the Bishop went to a restaurant immediately after paying his visit.

LOL.

Then there's that one about St. Francis and St. Bernard. After begging they came together with their food. Bernard obtained some tasty items because of his good looks, and Francis said no, we're not going to have this food you were given because it is too good for us.

Imagine that. The lot of them! What horrible Jansenists!

By the way, did you know that the fellow friars of St. Thomas Aquinas had to cut a half circle into the table for his belly? Sounds so true!

But I know G.K. Chesterton is joking with him in heaven.

"Yeah, that fable they're telling about you is all good fun, but in actual fact, they had to get me out of my deathbed with a crane through the window. Beat that!"

Wishing all a veggy, veggy, veggy, holy Lent! (That's an inside Chestertonian wink)





So insipid and banal!






There we go! That's more like it!

You have to look closely

Click to enlarge

Took the photos some years ago.

Warm temps officially breaking the winter and I start looking forward to hearing them again at night.

In the bathroom the porcelain bowl,
if you care to note, is engineered
with curves, a tulip's sleek, nothing but curves:
where edges are, no edge, endeared

with bevel all, which is hospitable design.
Comfort, safety, to be not uninviting;
moreover functional, water dynamic,
to cater to the vortex on the flushing.

Work washes you.
Sloth is a glue.

Labour is light.
Lazy is blight.

One shakes the dust.
One forms a crust.

One is a forge.
One is self gorge.

One sleeps at night.
One is a kite.

In each other's eyes
they are both fools.

But as true as the sky
only one is a fool.

I've always wondered why people post pictures of seafood on Catholic social media whenever Lent approaches. Are you abstaining from meat throughout Lent or something?

But I have wondered more often about seafood being the traditional fare on days of penance, like Fridays. It is a discipline that can be changed. In Europe, bakers were not allowed to use butter during a certain time (I think it was Advent) and had to use oil instead. And then this was later overwritten. I wonder if the Pope should issue a binding declaration ruling that fish and all seafood is now meat, along with all the other meats, and must be abstained from on the days appointed, like Fridays.

If the Pope decided that seafood is too easily a luxurious dish - very often way over and above typical meat dishes - and not in the spirit of penitential observance, and he changed the discipline so that days of abstinence were more like "flatbread and hummus days", and no longer "fish days", can you imagine the traditionalist reaction?

Restaurants that have developed business models on reaping the benefits of Catholic Fridays over the century would be lobbying all kinds of ideologues. People in New Orleans would burn effigies of Francis in the streets. Conservative venues like First Things would burn every drop of midnight oil churning out imperious essays that teach as doctrine mere human precepts. The keepers of holy tradition would go nuts - all because they could no longer have fish tacos, breaded prawns, fried calamari, sushi rolls, shrimp gumbo, deep-fried fish and chips and lobster tails with clarified butter for their Friday penitential observance. They would explode with holy outrage.

But we have been called to make a mess.

Journalists who have a line to the Pope should really posit this question to him. If any journalists who get to ask him questions on airplanes or wherever are reading this, or you know someone, maybe it would be a good idea to ask Pope Francis: "Do you think with the abundantly luxurious forms of seafood in the world, that it would be a good idea to change the discipline of abstinence to also include seafood as meat?"

Go to it. Lets get it done.

Down with Feb and the Dark Ages!

Hooray March and the realization that your winter coat is getting a little too warm!

In the middle of January I stopped at the bottle depot with returns and there I saw a forsythia in bloom.

There it was, in the middle of January in yellow blooms, and I thought to myself, "Well now, that sure as hell doesn't look like Global Cooling to me!"

*

I am so happy Pope Francis is visiting Japan this year. The bulk of my youtube viewing over the past several months has been Japanology stuff, bonsai, carving up of various fishes, all the amazing art and craftwork, stuff they do so well it's just completely out of left field. Like one film I watched on how they make charcoal. The sound the charcoal made when they clinked it - it was like the sound of metal it was so pure.

It is unfortunate that the western experience of Japan was initiated by effeminate prints exported in the 19 century, which sort of dictated what the aesthetic of Japan was, which it isn't. And it is not perfectionism that defines them, but attention. With attention is life and virility.

Japan is also very Laudato Si. There's something about the fact that they are the one country to have been attacked with nuclear arms, and also the problem of Fukushima.

*

Oh look, the Fascists are here to claim Western Civilization and teach you about the Edenic Paradise that existed before the Fall that is the Enlightenment. Huh, imagine that.

*

Been listening to a series of lectures while driving and at one point the prof repeats that stale chestnut about how "Jesus wasn't nice." And I'm thinking to myself, "What in the hell are you actually saying? That Jesus was a jerk?"

I am so tired of these blasé half-baked Fascistic pyrite turds that get passed around in Catholic circles like the common cold.

Remember when Fr. Corapi would say that O.L. "wears army boots"?

Right.

And St. Lawrence said turn me over, I'm done on this side.

Yeah. Not likely.

And St. Paul was "knocked off his horse."

Wasn't on a horse. Nor was he metaphorically "knocked off his horse" - as in his "high horse". This gives very short shrift to Christ's powerful revelation, powerful in mercy, and to the full weight of Paul's conversion, Paul who said, "Who are you, Lord?"

That and the fact that he was standing on his feet and fell down has in it the true drama of that instantaneous conversion. He fell down. He fell down prostrate, or on his knees. He wasn't "slain in the spirit".

But good luck with all that I guess.

*

Speaking of February, the television networks were doing their due diligence to show Groundhog Day end to end as a repeating marathon the same day of that superstitious observation, so I watched it when visiting my sister and brother-in-law while dinner was being prepared.

The last time seeing the film was long ago, and I remember sort of disliking it, but not totally disliking it, when it first came out. But I was an adolescent then, and Groundhog Day is, for all its screwball lightheartedness, a film only adults can really appreciate. There are quite a number of nuances and nods I recognized in the most recent viewing that had me enjoying the film.

I'm sure thousands of sophomoric essays have been written about the film, and I have no interest in reading them. Murray's character Phil, certainly goes through the gamut of the seven deadly sins before trying to escape - that is, seek redemption. I was taken not so much with the enormous number of good deeds that Phil builds up to, but the keen level of attention and timing, down to the second, that this demands. I think the words of Ned the insurance salesman are key in this regard: "We-eh-eh-ellll! Watch that first step - it's a dooooo-zy!"

Ned is actually the key to Phil's redemption. He is the one character Phil dislikes the most and wants to get away from the most. So obviously Ned is there telling Phil the way out: "We-eh-eh-ellll! Watch that first step - it's a dooooo-zy!"

Exactly. Watch that first step - it's a doozy. It's the first step that Phil must realize. The first step is adventure.

But thinking about the film afterwards I realized that the premise cannot stand without all the characters in the film becoming in some way unreal. They become only objects for the aim of Phil to finally get it right. He can hit them, insult them, seduce them, steal from them, whatever, without any temporal consequences (beyond the one day), so even his seeking redemption is self-centered. Of course, the premise is just that - a premise, a screwball comedy: let's set it up and see where it goes. Still, it's certainly not a reflection of Christian redemption, or the Christian understanding of the eternal and temporal consequences of sin. For the film doesn't even have the temporal consequences.

Still, this very reduction of others, and oneself, to unreality, is the very picture of sin and what it does. Interesting that one of the selfless things that Phil comes to doing that makes for his redemption is the making of art.

What is perhaps an unintended hang-up of the premise of Groundhog Day is a deliberate and conscious point in Tarkovsky's Solaris. Our unrepentance makes us the center of the universe, which is a lie, and because of this, even our loved ones become merely our consciousness of them. We do not actually love. Our failures of attending to someone's reality becomes the "reality" we live, repetitiously - and this is hell. And we are doomed to the repetition in the very effort we make to expunge ourselves of it.

Groundhog Day makes that going back again and again an actual what-if reality scenario. It's a screwball comedy.

Solaris is much more truthful: you can't go back. Going back is precisely the doom of hellish repetition in which no one is real, including yourself, when you do not accept what you have done and what you have failed to do, and repent before your father. This is shown frankly, boldly, yet not preachingly, in the film's final shot, which is clearly reminiscent of Rembrandt's The Prodigal Son.

Yet to repent is to turn back, or turn around, or simply to turn. What is this paradox? Unless you turn back and be converted, you will be doomed to eternally revisit your sins and folly. Unless you turn back, you cannot go forward.

Another memorable film that belongs in the same arena as Groundhog Day and Solaris is Scorsese's After Hours. This is a dark comedy not as lighthearted in touch the way Groundhog Day is, but it is light in touch for a Scorcese film. Almost two decades now since viewing it, and I still remember the nightmarish slant Scorcese is able to give to certain mundane details, such as a set of keys dropping down from an apartment window like the approach of a train, and the equally unstoppable horror of an overrunning toilet.

Like Phil, Paul cannot escape from his own nightmare predicament, which is downtown New York late into the night, without any fare to get back, being pursued by a mob, and met at every turn with some new obstacle to prevent his ever getting back to his home and work, until he gives himself to the point of forgetting himself.

In his case, this means putting his last bit of money into a jukebox and slow dancing with a lonely woman in a seedy bar at something like 4 o'clock in the morning. Only when he has done this, giving up all his efforts to get out, does June, the woman he has danced with, encase him in a full body plaster cast, which hardens. He gets taken by the mob that has been searching for him, and ends up rolling out of the back of their van, whereupon the body cast shatters, and he stands up on the stairs of his workplace with the rising of the sun. A new day. A new man.

Three films that would make for an interesting marathon viewing.

*

Today's Communist denies Communism of the past.

Says it wasn't real Communism, or it wasn't Communist enough.

Today's Fascist appropriates Fascism of the past.

Gives a slight dismissive smirk and says I'm not that caricature of the past.

*

Each according to their kind.