All Hallows Eve

The lingering warmth of the summer, the stillness and quite of a late night with not a breath of wind, the dark punctuated by the fog encased lamps. My yellow comforter under the stars, behind a hill, next to the woods, in the graveyard... sleep.

Pissed OFF AGAIN!
So I had a new experience two nights ago when someone attacked my intelligence, quite seriously. This person claimed that I couldn't keep up with him in thought, that I wasn't stupid, but that I really probably wouldn't be able to push through the hard work of rigor. This person found my friendship valuable for my spirit but my mind was really not that respectable. I had a great response! I wanted to prove the bastard wrong!!

My Historic Identity
The reinterpretation of the past is not a negation. How can I negate that which has formed my being? I do not deny my past but neither will I live for it. It exists only in so far as it exists within me. It is in my present that there is reality. The past and the people in the past have participated in my being, we have mutually identified in shared worlds. The worlds will change as the people come and go. My opinions and interpretations of my past world have changed and will change, but the formation of my being, the lessons learned, provide the continuity with now and with tomorrow.

So don't try to tell me I am being inauthentic. Don't tell me that I am being dishonest. I am alive in my present, what of it?!

For All You Mad Men
Last week I stumbled upon Thomas Mann's introduction to a collection of Dostoevsky's short stories. In the preface, called, quite ironically, Dostoevsky-in Moderation, Mann presents to us the mad men. Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, shown here as brothers in spirit, while acknowledged as "inmates of Hell," "criminal," and "diseased," Mann pays tribute and gives well placed reverence to these men who were sick so that we in some ways don't have to be.
I highly recommend the read to anyone interested in the human soul as it exists both spiritually and bodily. Mann exposes the intimate connection between the bodily reality and the spiritual reality of these men and how each shaped their kindred souls.
In order to tantalize, here is a short passage: "Disease... First of all it is a question of who is sick, who is insane, who is epileptic or paralytic: an average dolt, whose disease, of course, lacks all intellectual and cultural aspects-or a Nietzsche a Dostoevsky. In their cases the disease bears fruits that are more important and more beneficial to life and its development then any medically approved normality. The truth is that life has never been able to do without the morbid, and probably no adage is more inane then the one which says that 'only disease can come from the diseased.' Life is not prudish, and it is probably safe to say that life prefers creative, genius-bestowing disease a thousand times over to prosaic health; prefers disease, surmounting obstacles proudly on horseback, boldly leaping from peak to peak, to lounging, pedestrian healthfulness. Life is not finical and never thinks of making a moral distinction between health and infirmity. It seizes the bold product of disease, consumes and digests it, and as soon as it is assimilated, it is health. An entire horde, a generation of open-minded, healthy lads pounces upon the work of diseased genius, genialized by disease, admires and praises it, raises it to the skies, perpetuates it, transmutes it, and bequeaths it to civilization, which does not live on the home-baked bread of health alone. They all swear by the name of the great invalid, thanks to whose madness they no longer need to be mad. Their healthfulness feeds upon his madness and in them he will become healthy."

In short these two men are the "crucified victims" sacrificed for our more "sublime health."

Let us be bold.

Icons and Idols

I listened to a friend talk today about icons and idols. He proposed a definition of idol that I have heard him give before, but I found that it can apply to more then just pictures and crucifixes. "An idol is an icon that has stopped referring." An icon is a thing in the physical world which gestures, points, to God. This allows for almost anything to be seen as an icon. A tree, in so far as it points to its creator can act as an icon. Some Christians speak of the sacramental nature of the whole world and I think that in much the same way we can speak about a myriad of things in the world as icons.
But more specifically I was excited to think of the Bible as an icon. The Bible as icon, at this first glance, seems to exclude some of the problems that I have with the fundamentalist Christian approach to the Bible as the "Word of God". (A phrase that I think most properly should not be taken away from referring to Christ.) The Bible as icon can maintain the strong view that in those words we can find God's inspiration of individual men, as it were, a picture of God given by grace to us. But it avoids the problem of the Bible giving us some sort of power over God, a standard that we can hold Him too, something that we can go back to and say to God, "You owe us what you said."
But we must still remain cautious that we not move from icon to idol. In the same way that many fundamentalists have "a paper pope" we have to be careful not to allow the Bible to be an idol. We must always treat it as referring to/pointing to, a God who cannot be summed up on paper and in statements. He is beyond even the worlds of Christ which revealed the Father to a people in the world, in a context, within a view. God is beyond and above even His graceful revelation.

A Unintended Long Biographical Sketch of Fall Break and my visit to Zoë and Evan Ragland’s place. (Anyone not interested in my life, beware.)
So I spent Fall Break in NY City. Well, to be exact, I spent more of it in transit to and from Manhattan then I spent actually in the city but I don’t really mind. Stephen and I left at 4pm, an hour after we were supposed to leave, on Wed. October 8th and headed to Pottersville NJ, the home of his grandparents on his mother’s side. After the 2 hour stop in an unnamed Ohio city for dinner at Cracker Barrel, my first time use of “Fix a Flat,” the joyful realization that Wal-Mart was still open and that they would change our tire, and the 3 am stop at Denny’s for coffee, dessert, and a cigarette, we drove into Pottersville.
We had to pass all the yuppie “farms” which are really just huge mansions with rustic sounding names that the rich NY folk have established by swallowing up the real country side and replacing the 80 yr old farmers with their SUV’s, labs, and ranch/farm signs. We drove up to a white farm house, situated by the roadside with about 2 acres of land to the side containing a small apple orchard, chicken coop, and large fenced garden plot. The fence on the garden is suppose to keep out the dear, while the fence around the property is to piss of Lou, the new “kid” on the block, who plunked down a small fortune to buy the original old farm house and the land the three Herzog brothers grew up on and worked together all their lives. But from what I hear Lou deserves it, for screwing over the grade school educated, decent, hardworking man whose house is about all that he has left to him. So I cheered the fence inside and thumbed my nose and the new comers. (I ignored, of course, that my own life more closely resembles Lou’s then the old farmers. This allowed me to continue to romanticize the farm life in a similar manner to Tolstoy with his peasants.) The house is the one that Grandpa Herzog built for his bride before they married, and you can tell that was quite some time ago. The wooden stairs leading to the basement have smooth valleys, hollowed out by many footsteps. I thought that was cool but the most striking part of the house is the low ceilings. Before I even met grandpa I knew that he couldn’t be much taller then me. Stephen had to bend his head to go through the door ways.
After 4 short hours of sleep in the childhood bedroom of Stephen’s mother I rose to have lunch, the high light of which was the freezer pickles, that grandma had made. I have to get that recipe.
Stephen and I left soon after with plenty of time, we thought, to get to his 2.30 appointment at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan. But, that failed miserably. I have to start this part of the story with the caveat that neither of us have ever been to NY before, though really it doesn’t excuse our blundering around New Jersey roads for 3 hours thinking that we had already driven over the bridge to NY and had some how made it north of Manhattan. We didn’t actually figure out what we had done until we had spent an hour driving SOUTH though NJ. A tell tale sigh was the more frequent smatterings of corn fields that couldn’t possibly be anywhere near NY City. At 2.30 we stopped and grinned sheepishly at a rather rotund and extremely direct Orthodox Jew, who wouldn’t shake my hand, but was willing to explain to us that we were about an hour and a half south of the Seminary. (For all his gruffness he gave great directions, and blessed us in Hebrew. It was one of the first times I was disappointed to have to tell someone that I wasn’t a Jew.) So, we had to reschedule the appointment and keep driving. (Please note: Once we found the bridge bringing us into Manhattan we realized that the bridge we crossed before could never be confused with the one we were now on, but unless you have seen the monstrously huge Manhattan bridge the confusion is legitimately explainable.)
The next big story for the weekend was showing up at Zoë and Evan’s house in Patchogue, Long Island, and realizing that they were just as crazy about each other as ever. Zoë still runs to the door when Evan comes home, and still administers death threats in her love notes. Evan calls her shorty, kisses her quite often now that he can, and doesn’t seem to mind that she still takes 40min showers in their all PINK bathroom. (Which looks snazzy with their orange towels I might add.) The couple live on the second floor of a two story apartment complex consisting of one bedroom without a door and some really sweet wood floors. They were recently joined by two kittens whose nighttime romps and occasional potty spills require that empty appliance boxes be set in front of the opening to the bedroom. Their names are Shadrach and Abed-nego, despite the fact that one of them is most certainly female. In all, it is a pleasant place and I felt very honored to be the Ragland’s first house guests.
Zoë and I spent Friday at the Met and enjoyed hanging together like old times in Europe. We saw some great stuff, most notably: The Hand of God by Rodin, Madam X by John Singer Sargent, and a special El Greco exhibit. (Note the quote from the New Yorker.)
Friday was also an adventure as far as driving was concerned. The best part was probably when Stephen managed to block Fifth Avenue with his van and a bunch of furious taxi drivers went insane on their car horns.
Saturday was spent resting, as all good Sabbaths are spent. We took a short trip to the Atlantic and wandered on the white beach until sunset. It was great to see the sun actually cross out of sight into the ocean. Michigan can be so disappointing when it comes to sunsets.
We caught a movie that night, “Lost in Translation,” thanks to the recommendation of Metzger. Thanks, Metzger, great idea! It is definitely worth checking out but doesn’t have to be seen on the big screen so don’t worry if you already missed it. But if you can catch it you won’t feel like you wasted your eight bucks.
Sunday began at a Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, that runs the school where Evan teaches. I finally got to hear some New Yorkers read to me “The Word of the Lord” (pronounced with a heavy accent).
Stephen and I spent the rest of the day and late into the night wandering around lower Manhattan and decided to blow off my work and his classes so that we could sleep in Pottersville again instead of driving all night long. This afforded us a great night reading Thomas Mann in the orchard and a leisurely drive back to Michigan, highlighted by a stop in Dansville, Pennsylvania to eat at an AWSOME family like restaurant, the antithesis of a chain, and situated in a converted old barn. If you drive the 80 through Pennsylvania you must, MUST stop there.
That finishes the end of all my ramblings. If you lasted this long, thanks for being so interested.

“Holy Toledo” in The New Yorker by Peter Schjeldahl
“The glory and the problem of El Greco are the same: spirituality. No other great artist takes this fundamental, usually ineffable aspect of experience so literally, as an open secret. He does so in terms of strict Catholic doctrine, but with an energy that a person of any faith, or of none, may recognize. His art affirms spirituality-the awareness that glimmers at the headspring of consciousness, prior to thought and feeling- as the primary fact of life, always on tap. This jolts people into love or loathing of El Greco, depending on how they relate to the spiritual in themselves. Spiritual intimations trickle through all minds, however obscurely, and even while discounted or ignored. El Greco delivers them with a fire hose.”

Her bed, her pillow, her excited smile in the mirror. Did she, could she feel the way I do? Was it fresh, did she tremble, did his foot step bring the same grin? Her fiancé, her lover, her husband, and now… their son.

Angry and Pissed Off: After "8 and 1/2"
I live for them, they live for themselves, the shaft / what rot! I am the passive one, wedded, bedded, fucked. I don’t do I am done to.
No wonder they won’t have a relation to God as His bride. No wonder the Israelites were so often whores, living for themselves and dishonoring their Lord. You have to be in control, you have to be your own directors.
A Nun: maybe that is the way to go. By pass you guys completely.