Borage!

As happens with borage, the ones from last year sowed themselves and came up sure as anything this year. You just pull up the ones you don't want and let whatever masses you want do their thing. I like them because of all the insects the flowers attract - especially honey bees. The flowers taste good too. I like to nibble on them. They're sweet.

I was concerned because while I saw different insects on the flowers, I didn't see any honey bees, or bumble bees. Usually they are swarming borage like gangbusters.

But I saw them out today, in spite of rainy cloudy weather.

It was a relief to see the honey bees.

I let the overwintered kale from last year go to seed in the hopes of collecting the seed. But I noticed as the pods dried (the immature pods are quite tasty if somewhat chewy, by the way) something was splitting them and taking the seeds.

Then one day I saw a pair of birds in the patch. One of them has a bright red head. I don't know what kind of birds they are, but they are nice. They look somewhat rare. And they really love the kale seeds.

Misc.

Summer! South west coast also means cool nights, generally. Hi southern Ontario! And no mosquitoes as one gets them in those other places. Hi prairies!

I particularly hate mosquitoes because mosquitoes particularly love me. I've been in provinces where mosquitoes proliferate, around the campfire, and literally, everyone else would be left alone while I would get eaten alive, in spite of repellant.

I thought it was pretty random of the mosquitoes.

*

I listen to Beethoven sporadically when painting. I listen to his piano stuff mostly when I do listen to him. Do you ever find...now, how does one put it? Do ever find the sheer - and I mean in a very physical sense - do you ever find...sometimes...the sheer tonal vibrations...to be...threatening to drive you insane?

That's when I say, "Alright! Time for Rachmaninoff!"

Is there any modern composer greater than that Russian genius? To people who say he's "overblown" I say: maybe it's time you should put away the Mozart and the Raffi and start listening to real music, yes?

*

Anyhow, LOL. Mozart was a genius. I'm JOKING. And I listen to Mozart. Not Raffi.

But as it turns out, two long years before Duck Dynasty was a glint in A&E's eye, that show called Swamp People was letting us see those Cajuns - whose ancestors were exiled from Canada - giving alligators' heads hefty doses of Cajun spice. By which they mean putting bullets into the heads of alligators. Ten times more real than Duck Dynasty, Swamp People, which documents the 300 years' tradition handed down from father to son, is still going strong, though I haven't watched any of the later seasons.

I hate to say it, but Duck Dynasty is sooooooooo fake. And that's saying it after all the expected fakeness of reality television is taken into consideration and accepted. Fakeness is inevitable with reality television, where unscripted life scripts itself. Or rather, where scripts are drawn from life as it is becoming aware of itself as a television show. But Duck Dynasty...holy crap - it's almost as lame as this blog.

That being said, a lot of Americans really like it. That's fine. I don't care to try to know why - just like with Croustillant Crème and Christopher West and "Save the Liturgy, Save the World" bumper stickers and Imperialism in general.

Though really, I do know. It's because of the characters. You gotta love them. I totally love Uncle Si and Godwin! They do crack me up.

Man, I love that show.

*

What's up with the white man's fear of immigration anyways? It's clearly nothing but the inevitable fruit of sterility - of deciding to not have children, but to have sex - and then if a child does come, then killing the child.

The fear of immigration is nothing but the fruition of this mindset, of this way of sterility. It doesn't mean you have to be the one using birth control either. You wonder if there are Catholics who don't use birth control and who speak against it but are secretly thankful for those sinners who do use birth control, even if they don't articulate it to themselves, amplified by the fact that they don't adopt. Self-satisfied and complacent, they enjoy thinking of themselves as the Remnant. Contracepted. Producing no life. The Remnant.

You notice how some Americans are all gung-ho about having their troops in other countries but no sir, no immigrants in their own country? Without the immigrants all your parishes would be getting shut down more than they already are. The white man is sterilizing himself out of existence. The white man thinks he can tame sex like the way he plans everything else. So many Catholics have bought into the world's commodifying commoditifying of sex. It's just another thing with a bar code.

Our only life is the body of Christ. And you cannot take the body of Christ into yourself while you contracept. You are, in essence, contracepting Christ. Just like you want the sex without the life that follows, so you take Christ - on your own grounds. You drink judgment upon yourself. You have contracepted your own parishes - drunk judgement upon your parishes. They are now getting shut down.

People do not believe in the world to come. So likewise, they don't believe in any generations to come - including immigrants.

*

The crisis in liturgy was already going on prior to Vatican II. Just read Ratzinger to find that out. Crisis of liturgy includes "pre-reform" times.

If that weren't obvious enough.

*

I've said it before and I'll say it again: life goes by like a bird flying past a window.

That's what a dying woman said on her deathbed. An old Italian priest I know repeated her words in his homily once.

"My life has gone by like a bird flying past the window." Those were her words.

If you think about it, if you live to be 130 years old, all what it takes is for you to be on your deathbed, and suddenly those 130 years are like a bird having flown past your window.

LOL. Death: that thing which only the Catholic Church can give you before it comes for you.

In dying before death comes for you: that is the only place you will find peace.

And it is dying to your entire old self.

It's scary.

We find new life scary.

*

One of the things I love so much about Pope Francis is the hysterical, banal hand-wringing from conservative reactionaries, sickened unto death with their own afflictions - to the point that they will actually say he is espousing Statism. LOL. It makes you think. It makes you say: well, what IS it that has got up their noses so bad? It's interesting. Holiness has that effect upon a man: it will reflect back to him his own faults with nary any effort.

*

Fukishima happened in what, 2011? And here we are in 2014...and...

this cannot be good

*

Blogs are so passé?

Time-Stamped

Fr. Angelo of Mary Victrix

is one of those teachers on the blogosphere whose comments in response to comments are worthy of posts in themselves.

I always learn at his blog. It has that particular Catholic stamp of richness and deepness that comes from thinking with the Church, rather than asserting that one knows what is good for the Church. And he is unafraid of the polemical propaganda of the red pill restorationists.

Take his comment from this post for instance:

Actually, that the N.O “theogically impoverished” is your personal opinion and not the teaching of the Church. So in your personal opinion does that make the N.O. valid and licit but not pleasing to God, or not as pleasing to God? And what does attending the N.O. in “good faith” mean? Does that mean those in “good faith” are in error, but unaware? Or uninformed, but following the postconciliar Church without knowing better?

And is theological impoverishment a numerical or qualitative problem? Is it that the signs (matter, gesture and words) are fewer or less distinct? Or that they are no longer capable of signifying what Christ intended in Instituting the Sacrament and Sacrifice of the Eucharist? In what sense does the N.O. not capture the fullness of Catholic doctrine about propitiatory sacrifice?

Are you sure that Christ does is not satisfied with the N.O. celebrated according to the mind of the Church, or that He is less satisfied? And I assume if you are, you would assert this as a matter of reason, and not divine faith? Or is it otherwise?

You can go on and on about the problems of abuse and the lack of faith, but that does not really answer the theological question at hand. And that is the real question, because it is the only one you raised. And the only conclusion you can come to is purely a personal opinion which neither you or anyone else can impose on anyone or expect to use as a policy to control the behavior of other people, especially those who do not and have never believed such things.

I certainly admit a legitimate range of opinion on the matter, as long as it is presented as purely non-authoritative opinion. The problem is when this is translated into slogans like “save the liturgy and save the Church,” or “of Mary and the liturgy there is never enough.” And it becomes more of a problem when it becomes the policy of a religious community, whose members are free to adhere to the teaching of the postconciliar magisterium and cannot have imposed on them the purely personal opinions that you hold. Indeed, they have at least as much right to resist such opinions, if not more, than you do to expect the toleration of them.

One last thing: There is a very bad habit on the part of many in the Church today, whether progressive, conservative or traditionalist to confuse apologetics, polemics, politics and journalism with theology. Theology is not agenda driven and it only works well when it exercised in full communion with the Church.

The essential problem you are dealing with concerns the theological relationship between the sign and its signification, which are distinct. This distinction is the reason why, for example in the East the epiclesis can play a far more prominent role and occur after the Institutive Narrative. The sign is different than the Western Rite, but the signification is not, or at least, not so much. The relationship between these two things is neither purely physical nor mathematical. It is not like programing code. The relationship is metaphysical and related to the Institution of Christ and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. This is not a political question, nor is it going to be solved by the inside baseball of agenda driven liturgical ideology.

I totally agree that the liturgy, even the current one, may develop and be corrected and improved, but the problem cannot be lifted from its ecclesiological and metaphysical context. And it certainly is not going to be solved by bloggers and armchair theologians.

A feast of sanity is found at his blog.

Time-Stamped

Misc.

My rosary went through the wash, something that never happens. Being a sturdy rosary of sure copper linkage and wooden beads of a honey hue, it stayed intact. But to my horror the deep lustre which the beads had attained from over a decade of de facto hand polishing was completely stripped. Stripped as in Borax stripped. Because I add Borax to my laundry detergent. Because I like the stiffness it gives to clothes.

Back to square one.

Funny, I made an idol of my de facto hand polishing and I didn't even know it.

*

If statues and images of Jesus and Mary and the Saints are just dead wood and dead stone then the letters in your Bible are just dead letters.

Hah, right back at you.

*

Wendy's has fallen from a great height, I'm sorry to say. Their beef patties used to be thick and juicy and their fries chips were vastly superior to what they are now. Their burgers are not as substantial as they used to be - and oh, that is so annoying the way they put a huge chunk of whole lettuce leaf in the burger.

Take a cue from McDonald's and Burger King: their lettuce is chopped. McDonald's lettuce is more shredded, but Burger King does the lettuce the best. In fact, Burger King has the burger condiments down perfect (by which I mean the lettuce, tomato, pickles, onions and all of that). McDonald's burgers are nothing but sliders - all of them. A&W is great, but man the saltiness...wow. But seriously, no one can beat A&W's root beer milkshake. That is just awesome. And their onion rings are nice.

But nope, I will say it: of the fast food burger chains, Burger King's double whopper with cheese is the best. Better than what Wendy's now offers. And yeah, I'll take it over A&W.

Why?

Because the flame-broil.

And because of the general circumference of their burgers. The circle is wider. The others are not.

And this is Canada. We don't have White Castle. Yet.

*

How can people eat Krispy Kreme Crispy Creme Crispy Cream Croustillant Crème donuts doughnuts? Even Tim Hortons Tim Hortons' Time Horton's Tim Horton's' are disgustingly sugarfied. But Krispy Kreme Crispy Creme Crispy Cream Croustillant Crème is just...holy crap, how do you people even eat one of them, let alone half a dozen, or a dozen?

They are not donuts doughnuts. They are half-baked squishy sugar-flour somethings - with more sugar on top.

Don't think just in terms of health here, but what are doing to your palette? A palette actually needs to be developed. When you eat things like Krispy Kreme Crispy Creme Crispy Cream Croustillant Crème you are dulling it, turning it into a one-note monochromatic screaming little brat that refuses to eat real things - you know, like actual real donuts doughnuts.

Says the man who voted Burger King.

*

And who does the best coffee?

Me.

*

Stop it with the word "random". Random this, random that. Own what you say. Like, more than half the girls in church are like randomly wearing like nothing. It's like so random!

*

I'm not interested in any discussion about immodesty exciting the lusts of men or any other such thing. I would just like to say this, and I say it with sincerity. Ladies, girls, women: you do not have the right to come to church dressed like that. Take that and digest it. There is no difficult thing here. If everything you substantially change about yourself must have some babyish basis in a feminist justification, well then, yeah, you might want to try Hinduism - Hinduism in the western experience, without the butt-naked ascetics.

I don't care about "the subject". The issue, insofar as to "what to wear to church", has in my opinion been largely sidetracked by talking about modesty. It has derailed the main point.

As to the wearing of those articles to church...let me repeat it, and this isn't me talking here, but the Church: you do not have the right. Go to Rome if you want to find that out.

Let me repeat it a third time: You do not have the right to come to church dressed like that.

Think about that for a span of five minutes straight, if you can. Notice where the emphasis in that statement lies. It does not start with "the modesty issue" and its concomitant "Well, real modesty begins in the heart and the intentions..." discussion/debate.

It doesn't mean burka or ankle-length dress or anything you wouldn't naturally wear. Dress casual if you want. If it's not cooking out, I'll typically throw on a cashmere or something with long sleeves or a light jacket over the t-shirt.

That's the general rule. General coverage: good. Purposely designed to reveal either by exposure or tightness: bad. Really, it's not hard. Do you not own a mirror?

Life is short and every little thing we do with it has immense consequences. The Church's consecrated spaces where Christ in the Blessed Sacrament abides should be a no-brainer.

Snatched

I went down on my hands and knees to catch the little bird that was hopping along but was not flying. Surely it was injured. My intention was to pick it up and give it to B. to maybe nurture and keep out of harm's way; this would at least be something.

The difficult part wasn't catching up to the bird, but cupping the hand just right around it. You feel how delicate the body is and you immediately hesitate to grip because you think you are going crush the bird; in which case the bird gets away because you don't have him tight enough.

Then there was a moment when the bird let me pick him up; from there he walked along my hand, arm, shoulder. I cupped him again in my hand.

Later, I thought: if even the momentary docility of a little bird gives to a mere man such delight, then what must be the delight of God when we let Him snatch us up and do with as He wills?

B. said to me it was a baby nuthatch and she's been watching them being fed by their mother at the bird feeder; at which point the bird suddenly flew, away and up to the feeder. Though not before leaving a little white parting gift.

The delight of seeing the bird's flight - tenuous but sure, the flight of a baby: my only thought was thanks that the bird could fly and that it was not injured after all.

And later: if the flight of a little bird from the hand of a mere man gives to him such delight, then what must be the delight...

Based on Georgian Ancha icon of the Savior.

Achievement

Time was ever dripping, spilling, leaking
through a fractured basin
that some began to mend, cork and caulk.
To a degree they found success; but then
the volume being pent,
burst the bandages.
Widening hairline fissures
time gushed out in rapid torrent.
And now everyone stares frightened
at the draining.

Chichikov

I NEED A CRISIS
By Pavel Chichikov


The dragon crawls from the cave for a smoke,
The air inside is stagnant, dense,
He needs to clear his head from sleep
And a dream he had that made no sense

He dreamed the gold of his golden pile
Had turned to straw and then to powder,
Had left him writhing on the floor
With a need for something to devour

The dragon shook his scaly fringe
And came to see a real nightmare,
Suppose the price of gold had failed?
It gave the worried worm a scare

Who would want to find his cave
To steal his horde and battle him?
There’d be no princes he could eat,
A dragon could grow cold and thin

I need a crisis, said the beast
To send the price of gold aloft,
Then from each nostril grew a flame
Because the dragon swelled and coughed 



The Poetry of Pavel Chichikov

Oil Painting

Title: Perch

Medium: Oil on canvas paper

Size: 12 in. x 16 in.

Happy Father's Day...

...Papa Francisco!

Happy Father's Day to our Holy Father!

 

 

 

  

 

 Loved by many of your children.

 Though some of your children have Daddy Issues.

But that's to be expected in this day and age.

The Zeitgeist retains a grip on some part of our hearts.

The Zeitgeist allows wiggle room of all kinds;

lets us roam about in our fantasies,

our fantasies fueled by the internet

that we are in the truth,

that we know,

that we don't need a father.

But the Zeitgeist keeps a hold of one precious part;

and we find docility and humility hard.

We all have issues.

"But it would be a grave error to think that a father and mother can do nothing to form their child to grow in the grace of God. To grow in age, to grow in wisdom and to grow in grace: this is the work Joseph did with Jesus, to help him grow in these three ways, to aid his growth.

"Dear brothers and sisters, Joseph’s mission is certainly unique and unrepeatable, because Jesus is absolutely unique. And yet, in his guardianship of Jesus, forming him to grow in age, wisdom and grace, he is a model for every educator, especially every father. St Joseph is the model of the educator and the dad, the father. I, therefore, entrust to his protection, all parents, priests — who are fathers — and those who have an educational role in the Church and in society. In a special way, I would like to greet today, being fathers’ day, all parents, all fathers: I greet you from the heart! Let’s see: are there any fathers in the square? Raise your hands, dads! Look, there are many fathers! Best wishes, best wishes to you on your day! I ask for you the grace to be ever closer to your children, allow them to grow, but be close, close! They need you, your presence, your closeness, your love. May you be for them as St Joseph was: guardians of their growth in age, wisdom and grace. May you guard them on their journey: be educators and walk with them. And by this closeness you will be true educators. Thank you for all you do for your children: thank you. Best wishes to you, and a happy fathers’ day to all fathers here, and to all fathers. May St Joseph bless you and accompany you. Some of us have lost our dad, he has passed away, the Lord has called him; many in this square do not have their dad still with them. We can pray for all the fathers of the world, for the fathers living and deceased, as well as our own, and we can do it together, each one remembering his or her own father whether he be living or dead. And let us pray to the great Father of us all, the Father. An Our Father for our fathers: Our Father.... Best wishes to fathers!" --Pope Francis in his General Audience from March 19, 2014

Misc.

I still have not read Tolkien's translation of Beowulf just published. I haven't even ordered it yet. I know I'm going to like it. Lo! I've always liked the hard alliterative translations. The problem with Heaney's is not that he made it too Irish or too anything. The problem with what he did was that he took a poem that is audible and aural, in the sense that its written words have their reason in the prior context of being heard and spoken - even if the poem is going to be read silently, and turned it into the contemporarily visual, replete with the contemporary obsession with enjambment and the contemporary embarrassment over alliteration. In other words, by "contemporarily visual" I don't mean "visionary". I mean the modern regard for a poem as it is looked at on the page. So.

The contemporary obsession with enjambment - its consistent use on par with previous generations' decadent use of alliteration - and the contemporary embarrassment over alliteration is an ironic thing. It is ironic because enjambment, in its large-scale contemporary use, is ten times more artificial and contrived than what moderns think alliteration is supposed to be. Enjambment came as a result of necessity and happily it struck a certain beauty that exists between the aural meter and the visual line (break). Its employment today, by the thousands of poets in Poetry Magazine for instance, is a decadent museum artifact that has changed in being removed from its living context of necessity, and employed after the fact; and people are oblivious to how quaint they're being - far more so than any Victorian.

Some might say, "But Beowulf is nothing but enjambment all the time!"

Not so. Because Beowulf is not written in a line-by-line meter. In other words, it is not syllabic meter. Syllabic meter is line-by-line meter: so many syllables to a line, which becomes line-by-line. Beowulf has lines, but the lines are not decided by syllable count. The more I think about it, the more I realize that Tolkien was correct to translate it as "prose".

The end result of Heaney's is a poem whose hard edges have been softened. Beowulf is a poem in which the words are a sort of combat. The words don't positively make combat, or fight with each other, but they retain that belief in word which leaves a word at face value. And the combat exists in our - the readers - coming to terms with word. Poetry should "purify the dialect of the tribe": a poem should be the tribe speaking in its own language in such a way that it is discovering its own language for the first, within the crucible of the poem. Such that entering into it every time necessitates this rediscovery, this regaining, this remembering.

So maybe Heaney's translation is too Irish. LOL. Though, in Heaney's translation it's not so much like the poem fell into the hands of someone deeply immersed in the music of Ireland, but of Wales. That wasn't an insult. I like Dylan Thomas.

And no, I don't dislike Heaney's translation. My prior excitement over it has fizzled though, and I realize there was always something essential lacking, and this lack comes down to talking about it as a translation. It is an example that language is not just language, and it says something about the assumption that in spite of transitions away from a poem's forms to other forms, the essence of the poem will remain. It won't. The language of poetical form is intrinsic to what is essential in the poem, for the outer forms were the means by which the scops grasped and wrangled with the essential, thus they are the lenses which one must dispose oneself to, which becomes a question not of phonetic pedantry (or innovation), but of disposition.

I don't regard Heaney's as top of the list for Beowulf translations. It is its own kind of artwork. Yes, he "made a masterpiece from a masterpiece", but his masterpiece does not get the reader close to, into, what makes Beowulf a masterpiece.

*

One of the things I love so much about Pope Francis is the surprise. I don't mean the surprise of him, or of anything he does or says (though there is that too), but the surprise that seems to be ushered in with his pontificate, of seeing, together with his pontificate, aided and headed by his pontificate (not isolated from it), the continuation of the life of the Church and the facets of her truth and beauty and goodness that are ever ancient and ever new.

From that afternoon on March 13 when my boss said to me at work, "Well, we have a new Pope! Pope Francis the First [as was the mistaken wont of folks to say]. From Argentina!"

And as I drove home from work, overwhelmed with joy so that I could hardly get my breath and like my mind was both stunned and drunk with gratitude to God for His Reality, I kept saying, "YES! YES! Of course! Francis! Renewal!" And the sense of freshness as I drove...it wasn't fake; it was something like scary new life coming from an ancient well. The newness and sense of renewal were already dawning on me before even laying eyes on this new Pope!

And now we see how the labours of his two predecessors (and three and four and five...) show forth their reality, their depth, their meaning; that their labours were not in vain, that their labours were not isolated. All continuous and always revealing, revealing some new aspect that is ever new and ever ancient.

I think a Pentecost is blowing through the Church revealing new treasures, ever ancient, in the midst of much grief, chaos, misery, and darkness of sin.

But I think these Pentecostal winds have a dual nature. They bring new life, but they simultaneously shake the chaff.

*

What is taking the Red Pill but deciding that you have sealed yourself from all error and that all error lies exterior to yourself?

Good luck with that.

*

Here is a strange reality that certain bloggers of the Blogisterium prove over and over again: when a reaction to something is isolated enough and forceful enough, the reaction actually replicates what it is trying to push against.

*

Over-sized sunglasses: ladies, stop it. Really, just stop it. Getting old. Real fast. You totally make me ROFL.

*

There's a stupid cat that likes to come into the backyard every once and a while because - as far as I can discern - he thinks I dug up the garden bed nice and crumbly to be his own personal litter box. Though I have no evidence to prove this. I have noticed over the years that simply having a garden is an invitation to creatures; and I've learned not to fear this.

So I say "stupid cat" in the kindest sort of way.

As for pests such as slugs...now then, I use words that should not be written - or spoken.

*

God gave Saint John Paul the Great a pontificate for 27 years. God Gave Pope Benedict XVI a pontificate for 8 years - short but intense and concise in fixing (fixing as in affixing, not "repairing"), among other things, the liturgical traditions of the church; one could say he assured the inner liturgical workings of the Church. While John Paul the Great's pontificate was spreading the Divine Mercy and evangelism and ecumenism.

I think the timelines are a good indicator to us about how much time one should focus on certain aspects of the life of the Church.