Narcissus' Echo

Closure

2006-08-13T18:30:00.000-07:00

This blog began with the intention of writing out my sorrow, my frustrations, my confusion, my tears, my pain; and, 358 posts later, I believe it has run its course. Nick Cave is right, "There always will be suffering. / It flows through life like water." Despite that, "Sorrow has its natural end."

As such, there exists no reason to continue this blog.

A dirge for this final post:

Brompton Oratory
(Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds)

Up those stone steps I climb
Hail this joyful day's return
Into its great shadowed vault I go
Hail the Pentecostal morn

The reading is from Luke 24
Where Christ returns to his loved ones
I look at the stone apostles
Think that it's alright for some

And I wish that I was made of stone
So that I would not have to see
A beauty impossible to define
A beauty impossible to believe

A beauty impossible to endure
The blood imparted in little sips
The smell of you still on my hands
As I bring the cup up to my lips

No God up in the sky
No devil beneath the sea
Could do the job that you did, baby
Of bringing me to my knees

Outside I sit on the stone steps
With nothing much to do
Forlorn and exhausted, baby
By the absence of you

Thus closes a chapter in my life.

Thank you, readers and commentators, for the company the past year-and-a-half.

My voice has found a new home in another blog, Sandbox.

We are nomads, all.

Tsetchem leshalom.

5 May 1995 - 28 January 2005

2006-08-12T21:23:00.000-07:00

Fall in the Light
(Lori Carson & Graeme Revell)

It's in this moment, Hold on
When everything has come apart
It's in this moment
Right now
When it can come together

Raise your sights
What's there to lose?

Fall in the light

In all this trouble, Hold on
To the innocence with which you were born
There's so much struggle
Be strong
Find the faith you need to carry on

It's a long night
You're not alone

Fall in the light

Sweet air
It falls into place
Sun through the haze
Doesn't it feel a
Little like grace

It's in this moment, Hold on
When everything has come apart
It's in this moment
Right now
When everything - come together

Raise your soul
What's there to lose

Fall in the light

My reaction at the pump these days

2006-08-10T23:54:00.000-07:00

Dang!

2006-08-09T20:00:00.000-07:00

After cleaning and servicing my bike, I discovered that the crash bent my $$$ titanium handlebar. (The handlebar is perpendicular to the frame, and both bar ends are set at identical angles, but note that the tires are not vertical).

I remain amazed that I managed to walk away from it.

*Looks about for guardian angel*

Bolinas Ridge Trail Redux

2006-08-08T01:08:00.000-07:00

‘Summer is coming, summer is coming.
I know it, I know it, I know it.
Light again, leaf again, life again, love again,’
Yes, my wild little Poet.
(Lord Alfred Tennyson)

For the ride report, click on the image or here.

Grit

2006-08-06T04:48:00.000-07:00

'Received some troubling news from my doctor a fortnight ago: I developed some kind of metabolic disorder. Among other symptoms, it has caused my metabolic rate to take a dive. As a result, I have very low energy, little appetite, and suffer from frequent bouts of fatigue and depression. This explains my inability to embark on long epic rides the past month. By 6 PM of each day, I am pretty much done, requiring stimulants such as coffee or strong tea to get through the rest of the evening. As of now, I am still reviewing my treatment options with the doctor.

That said, this is not going to change the person that I have come to be--that I am. I am leaving at 5 AM on a 2-hour drive up to Olema for one of my favorite rides: the Bolinas Ridge Trail. Never mind that it is remote (and is mountain lion territory). Never mind that I am doing it solo (as usual). Never mind that it is rated "very strenuous."

I will not be among the hollow men: paralysed force, gesture without motion; heads full of straw.

I have climbed and descended mountains at dawn, in the blazing noon, at dusk, in the depths of the night, through rain, sleet, snow, and hail--while others lumber up and down steps in air-conditioned malls.

I will not hang up my bike and be a dancing ape on club floors.

Life should be lived full throttle, or not at all.

Because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars... (Jack Kerouac)

Hippie me

2006-08-05T11:18:00.000-07:00

From the archives:

Back when I had long hair (and was a liberal).

Cowards & Murderers

2006-08-04T17:35:00.000-07:00

Photos that damn Hezbollah

By Chris Link, Sunday Herald Sun

THIS is the picture that damns Hezbollah. It is one of several, smuggled from behind Lebanon's battle lines, showing that Hezbollah is waging war amid suburbia.

The images, obtained exclusively by the Sunday Herald Sun, show Hezbollah using high-density residential areas as launch pads for rockets and heavy-calibre weapons.

Dressed in civilian clothing so they can quickly disappear, the militants carrying automatic assault rifles and ride in on trucks mounted with cannon.

The photographs, from the Christian area of Wadi Chahrour in the east of Beirut, were taken by a visiting journalist and smuggled out by a friend.

They emerged as:

US President George Bush called for an international force to be sent to Lebanon.

ISRAEL called up another 30,000 reserve troops.

THE UN's humanitarian chief Jan Egeland called for a three-day truce to evacuate civilians and transport food and water into cut-off areas.

US SECRETARY of State Condoleezza Rice returned to the Middle East to push a UN resolution aimed at ending the 18-day war, and:

A PALESTINIAN militant group said it had kidnapped, killed and burned an Israeli settler in the West Bank.

The images include one of a group of men and youths preparing to fire an anti-aircraft gun metres from an apartment block with sheets hanging out on a balcony to dry.

Others show a militant with AK47 rifle guarding no-go zones after Israeli blitzes.

Another depicts the remnants of a Hezbollah Katyusha rocket in the middle of a residential block blown up in an Israeli air attack.

The Melbourne man who smuggled the shots out of Beirut and did not wish to be named said he was less than 400m from the block when it was obliterated.

"Hezbollah came in to launch their rockets, then within minutes the area was blasted by Israeli jets," he said.

"Until the Hezbollah fighters arrived, it had not been touched by the Israelis. Then it was totally devastated.

"It was carnage. Two innocent people died in that incident, but it was so lucky it was not more."

The release of the images comes as Hezbollah faces criticism for allegedly using innocent civilians as "human shields".

Mr Egeland blasted Hezbollah as "cowards" for operating among civilians.

"When I was in Lebanon, in the Hezbollah heartland, I said Hezbollah must stop this cowardly blending in among women and children," he said.

(Source)

8 video clips

2006-08-04T16:48:00.000-07:00

The Hezbollah maintain that they do not use civilians for cover or as human shields during the war, but these videos contradict their claims.

In fact, the Hezbollah do not stop at using homes, civilian infrastructure and vehicles, women and children for cover, they deliberately engage in operations that draw fire to UN peacekeeping troops as well.

From an e-mail sent 18 July by Maj Hess-von Kruedener (the Canadian soldier who lost his life to an Israeli air strike) to CTV.ca:

What I can tell you is this: we have on a daily basis had numerous occasions where our position has come under direct or indirect fire from both artillery and aerial bombing. The closest artillery has landed within 2 meters of our position and the closest 1000 lb aerial bomb has landed 100 meters from our patrol base. This has not been deliberate targeting, but has rather been due to tactical necessity.
(Source)

Look at the last sentence. Maj Hess-von Kruedener is obviously trying to say, without violatating the neutrality of UNTSO, that Hezbollah was firing from within meters of his post. Let me repeat, “meters,” and for days at that.

And check out this UNINFIL press release:

It was also reported that Hezbollah fired from the vicinity of four UN positions at Alma ash Shab, Tibnin, Brashit, and At Tiri.
(Source)

Put together, it is pretty obvious that Hezbollah is violating the neutrality of the UN positions by intermingling their forces around them. As a result, UN peacekeepers, some of them unarmed like Maj Hess-von Kruedener, are dying for it.

Open your eyes

2006-08-04T16:47:00.000-07:00

See Terror's True Roots

By Alan Dershowitz

The oft-reported mantra that "occupation causes terrorism" is false. Occupations, like Israel's presence in the West Bank, are often the necessary result of attacks by insurgent groups and terrorists - not the other way around.

History and contemporary experience make this clear.

First, Palestinian terrorism began well before there was any Israeli occupation. It started in 1929 when the grand mufti of Jerusalem ordered a terrorist attack against Jewish residents of Hebron, whose families had lived in that Jewish holy city for generations.

Second, terrorism against Israel got worse after Israel ended its occupation of southern Lebanon and Gaza, as these unoccupied lands became launching pads for rockets, missiles and kidnappings.

Third, other occupied people, for example the Tibetans, have never resorted to terrorism against innocent Chinese civilians, though their occupation has been longer and more brutal than anything experienced by the Palestinians.

Fourth, while it may be that a brutal occupation can increase the number of people willing to become suicide bombers, it is also true that no suicide bomber ever sent himself. They are sent by well-educated, affluent leaders like Osama Bin Laden, who do not live in occupied areas.

Fifth, Islamic terrorists have sworn to continue terrorism even if Israel were to end its occupation of the West Bank. They regard all of Israel as occupied.

And so, occupation does not cause terrorism. But terrorism does cause occupation and reoccupation. Israel would have left Gaza and much of the West Bank long ago if not for the fear of terrorism from that area. It never would have gone into southern Lebanon in 1982 were that area not being used as a base for terrorism.

If the international community cannot or will not protect Israel citizens against rocket attacks, kidnappings and suicide bombings, Israel will have no choice other than some limited and hopefully temporary form of reoccupation to protect itself. Nor will it leave the West Bank unless it can be assured that the areas it leaves will not become launching pads for increased terrorism.

Imagine what the U.S. would have done if Germany or Japan, which it occupied after World War II, persisted in attacking the United States from occupied or recently unoccupied areas. And Germany and Japan do not adjoin our country the way Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon adjoin Israel.

There is, of course, a difference between civilian settlements and a military presence in a hostile war zone. Regardless of what happens in Lebanon, Israel should begin to dismantle civilian settlements deep in the West Bank that have no military purpose. But it will be difficult to end completely the military presence - the checkpoints, the teams that search out terrorists, the network of electronic protections - without the assurance of an international force that will be at least as effective in controlling terrorism as the Israeli Army has been.

There has been far less terrorism from the occupied West Bank than from the unoccupied south Lebanon and Gaza. That lesson will not be lost on Israelis as they look to the future.

Dershowitz, a professor of law at Harvard, is author of "Preemption: A Knife That Cuts Both Ways."

(Source)

I don't see the Dalai Lama encouraging Tibetan Buddhists to strap bombs to themselves and blow up Chinese civilians in Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, etc. Do you?

Darwin Award Nominee behavior

2006-08-04T16:46:00.000-07:00

For some of the Lebanese civilians:

1. Vote for and support the Hezbollah, knowing full well they are terrorists that purposely target Israeli women and children while hiding behind the skirts of Lebanese women and children.

2. Proudly house and allow the Hezbollah to dig in in and around their neighborhoods.

3. Watch and cheer on as the Hezbollah push the Israelis into war.

4. Proudly watch the Hezbollah fire their rockets--aimed at Israeli civilians--from their own villiages and backyards with nary a complaint, and then sticking around.

5. Watch as Israel sacrifices enormous military advantage by dropping pamphlets warning of impending strikes. The Darwin fodder then ignore the written notice of imminent bombing.

6. Cry and complain as they are mowed over by the Israeli war machine and shout death to Israel and the US over the deaths of their loved ones from their own stupidity.

(Source)

Until then...

2006-08-03T20:28:00.000-07:00

A photo essay.

Thank you.

Good day

2006-08-03T01:38:00.000-07:00

'Took the top off and spent a few pleasurable hours tooling around the Santa Cruz Mountains:

After that, a little shopping at a local bike shop :-)

Descente cycling jersey. Front view. They really make great gear. Their Classic Chevron Pro Short, which cost me SGD$120 (US$76) in 1993, lasted 11 years.

Back view.
You gotta love Erik Cartman :-P

A couple CDs from the Jesuit Retreat House:

The psalm "Miserere mei Deus" is a prayer for mercy, contrition, and renewal. Since the 1630s, Gregorio Allegri's famous setting has been sung at dawn during Holy Week, while the Pope kneels in prayer in the solemn candlelit atmosphere of the Sistine Chapel. This contemporary version, recorded in the spectral grandeur of Osnabrück Cathedral, adds new material composed by Vladimir Ivanoff to the ethereal harmonies of the Osnabrück Youth Choir and the elegiac brass tones of the cornetto, recreating the mysterious beauty of this sacred classic.

i. Miserere Mei
ii. Et Secundum
iii. Amplius
iv. Tibi Soli
v. Ecce Enim
vi. Asperges Me
vii. Averte Faciem
viii. Cor Mundum
ix. Danza I
x. Quoniam Si Voluisses
xi. Tunc Acceptabis
xii. Sofferenza
xiii. Tunc Imponent
xiv. Danza Ii

The sublime tradition of Russian sacred choral music began with Byzantine chants and evolved to full harmonic magnificence in the later 19th century. In the great mixed choirs, earthly and ethereal voices join in ardent prayers of devotion and transcendent invocation of "Amen!" and "Alleluia!" Perhaps even more than its best-selling predecessor, this collection of choral masterworks by Rachmaninov, Rimsky-Korsakov, Komitas, Bach and others "sets the soul soaring beyond worldly cares."

i. Alleluia, Behold the Bridegroom
ii. Sourp Sourp (Holy Holy)
iii. Lord have Mercy
iv. The Mercy of Peace (Excerpts)
v. Komm Susser Tod (Bach)
vi. Serenade
vii. Grant Us This O LORD
viii. Our Father
ix. Gloria (Excerpt)
x. Peaceful Light (Kiev Chant)
xi. Praise the LORD O My Soul (Greek Chant)
xii. Blessed Art Thou O LORD (Kiev Chant)
xiii. Chorale
xiv. Amen, Alleluia

And a booklet:

Catholic Answers to Fundamentalists' Questions provides a basic resource for Catholics who are being pressured to account for their beliefs with respect to fundamentalism. It offers clear, accurate, and easy-to-read answers to many questions that sincere Christians ask about the Catholic faith. This new edition has been updated in light of recent scholarship--including references to the Catechism of the Catholic Church--and it accounts for the changing social, political and religious landscape of Christianity.

Among the basic areas of faith and practice covered in this book are Scripture and Tradition; teaching authority and the papacy; salvation; Mass and holy Communion; devotion to Mary and the saints; creation, evolution, and original sin; and the Second Coming and Last Judgment. A new section provides practical guidelines for getting along.

*smirk*

The Difference

2006-08-02T16:13:00.000-07:00

From Idan Gazit:

An old song for the times

2006-08-02T00:21:00.000-07:00

Neighborhood Bully

Well, the neighborhood bully, he's just one man,
His enemies say he's on their land.
They got him outnumbered about a million to one,
He got no place to escape to, no place to run.
He's the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully just lives to survive,
He's criticized and condemned for being alive.
He's not supposed to fight back, he's supposed to have thick skin,
He's supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in.
He's the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land,
He's wandered the earth an exiled man.
Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn,
He's always on trial for just being born.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Well, he knocked out a lynch mob, he was criticized,
Old women condemned him, said he should apologize.
Then he destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad.
The bombs were meant for him.
He was supposed to feel bad.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Well, the chances are against it and the odds are slim
That he'll live by the rules that the world makes for him,
'Cause there's a noose at his neck and a gun at his back
And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac.
He's the neighborhood bully.

He got no allies to really speak of.
What he gets he must pay for, he don't get it out of love.
He buys obsolete weapons and he won't be denied
But no one sends flesh and blood to fight by his side.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Well, he's surrounded by pacifists who all want peace,
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease.
Now, they wouldn't hurt a fly.
To hurt one they would weep.
They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Every empire that's enslaved him is gone,
Egypt and Rome, even the great Babylon.
He's made a garden of paradise in the desert sand,
In bed with nobody, under no one's command.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Now his holiest books have been trampled upon,
No contract he signed was worth what it was written on.
He took the crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth,
Took sickness and disease and he turned it into health.
He's the neighborhood bully.

What's anybody indebted to him for?
Nothin', they say.
He just likes to cause war.
Pride and prejudice and superstition indeed,
They wait for this bully like a dog waits to feed.
He's the neighborhood bully.

What has he done to wear so many scars?
Does he change the course of rivers?
Does he pollute the moon and stars?
Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill,
Running out the clock, time standing still,
Neighborhood bully.

(Bob Dylan, 1983)

Which Sports Car Are You?

2006-08-01T00:58:00.000-07:00

I'm a Lotus Elise!

You believe in maximum performance and minimum baggage. You like to travel light and fast, hit the corners hard, and dance like there's no tomorrow.

"Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.

Right on the bat, babyee!
In fact, if and when I get one, I am going to throw out the passenger seat so that I will not have to deal with the option of offering rides :-P

The Mother of All Disc Brakes

2006-07-31T16:00:00.000-07:00

Took these for crufty:

The new CalTrain carriages use disc brakes.

The disc rotors are gigantic.

Check out the size of the calipers. The brake pads are larger than my feet.

San José Grand Prix

2006-07-30T00:50:00.000-07:00

'Went to catch the San José Grand Prix. As luck would have it, we showed up early and unknowingly wandered into the paid section before the perimeter fence was completely erected, thus saving ourselves the stiff entry fee. :-P

A map of the course.

Formula BMW Cars negotiating the hair pin turn.

Formula BMW is the world's leading entry-level open wheel racing class. Held in North America, Germany, the UK and Asia, up-and-coming drivers, as young as 15 years old, are given the opportunity to enter motor racing in the high-tech FB02 race car.

These cars are very small and light (1023 lb / 465 kg), and are powered by a modified, ultra lightweight 156 lb (71 kg) BMW motorcycle engine that puts out 140 horsepower.

Close up. Each car costs about US$76,000. Top speed is 140 mph (224 km/h).

The race is held on the streets of downtown San Jose.

Now its time for the Champ Cars to get on the circuit.

Notice the Adobe building?

The Champ Cars are significantly larger, heavier, and much more powerful, with 750 horsepower, a 0 - 60 mph (0 - 96 km/h) of 2.2 seconds, and a top speed of 240 mph (384 km/h).

Exiting the hair pin turn. The cost of playing this game is a minimum of US$2 million each.

One of the cars failed to negotiate a turn and smacked into the tire barriers. Both sides of the front wishbone suspension structure snapped (look at the odd angle of the tires). The front wing also broke off. The cars weigh about 1565 lb (711 kg) each--plenty light for 750 horsepower.

I just had to take this: on the fair grounds nearby. The prices for food and drinks were total rip offs: $6 for a cup of lemonade, $8 for a beer, $6 for a hot dog.

BMW had the most impressive "tent."

Ford's publicity stunt: Ford SVT Mustangs, along with a Ford GT, driven by females round the track.

Close up of one of the cars.

A 605 horsepower Porsche Carrera GT on display.

Engine bay.

The rear suspension is really trick.

Historic Motor Sports Association cars getting their turn on the track.

Closer look.

One of the straightaways and the pit. There is a button on the steering wheel of each of the Champ Cars. Every car is equipped with one. Pressing it raises boost pressure for 60 seconds, giving an extra 50 horsepower. It only works once in each race. Thus, drivers can choose to utilize it aggressively, to overtake another driver, or defensively, to maintain his or her position.

Pit crew working.

Crew tuning the engine.

Check out the pictures of the RuSport Team.

Interesting sticker on the left.

A day at the races for father and son.

W... T... F...

2006-07-28T06:00:00.000-07:00

Imagine their production line.

Cartoon

2006-07-26T15:08:00.000-07:00

"With my sincerest Condolezzias"

This piece works on 2 levels:

1) the cartoon recalls the photographs of Israeli kids writing on shells to be fired toward South Lebanon.

2) "Condolencias" means "condolences" in Spanish.
And "Condolezzias"...

*chortle!*

Pictures

2006-07-26T15:00:00.000-07:00

Israeli girls write messages on a shell at a heavy artillery position near Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel. Photograph: Sebastian Scheiner/AP

How pictures can be so easily misinterpreted

The little girls shown drawing with felt markers on the tank missiles are residents of Kiryat Shmona, which is right on the border with Lebanon. And when I say "on the border," I'm not kidding; there's little more space between their town and Southern Lebanon than there is between the back gardens of neighbouring houses in a wealthy American suburb.

[ . . . ]

Kiryat Shmona has been under constant bombardment from South Lebanon since the first day of the conflict. It was a ghost town, explained Shelly. There was not a single person on the streets and all the businesses were closed. The residents who had friends, family or money for alternate housing out of missile range had left, leaving behind the few who had neither the funds nor connections that would allow them to escape the missiles crashing and booming on their town day and night. The noise was terrifying, people were dying outside, the kids were scared out of their minds and they had been told over and over that some man named Nasrallah was responsible for their having to cower underground for days on end.

On the day that photo was taken, the girls had emerged from the underground bomb shelters for the first time in five days. A new army unit had just arrived in the town and was preparing to shell the area across the border. The unit attracted the attention of twelve photojournalists - Israeli and foreign. The girls and their families gathered around to check out the big attraction in the small town - foreigners. They were relieved and probably a little giddy at being outside in the fresh air for the first time in days. They were probably happy to talk to people. And they enjoyed the attention of the photographers.

Apparently one or some of the parents wrote messages in Hebrew and English on the tank shells to Nasrallah. "To Nasrallah with love," they wrote to the man whose name was for them a devilish image on television - the man who mockingly told Israelis, via speeches that were broadcast on Al Manar and Israeli television, that Hezbollah was preparing to launch even more missiles at them. That he was happy they were suffering.

The photograpers gathered around. Twelve of them. Do you know how many that is? It's a lot. And they were all simultaneously leaning in with their long camera lenses, clicking the shutter over and over. The parents handed the markers to the kids and they drew little Israeli flags on the shells. Photographers look for striking images, and what is more striking than pretty, innocent little girls contrasted with the ugliness of war? The camera shutters clicked away, and I guess those kids must have felt like stars, especially since the diversion came after they'd been alternately bored and terrified as they waited out the shelling in their bomb shelters.

Shelly emphasized several times that none of the parents or children had expressed any hatred toward the Lebanese people. No-one expressed any satisfaction at knowing that Lebanese were dying - just as Israelis are dying. Their messages were directed at Nasrallah. None of those people was detached or wise enough to think: "Hang on, tank shell equals death of human beings." They were thinking, tank shell equals stopping the missiles that land on my house. Tank shells will stop that man with the turban from threatening to kill us.

And besides, none of those children had seen images of dead people - either Israeli or Lebanese. Israeli television doesn't broadcast them, nor do the newspapers print them. Even when there were suicide bombings in Israel several times a week for months, none of the Israeli media published gory photos of dead or wounded people. It's a red line in Israel. Do not show dead, bleeding, torn up bodies because the families of the dead will suffer and children will have nightmares. And because it is just in bad taste to use suffering for propaganda purposes.

Those kids had seen news footage of destroyed buildings and infrastructure, but not of the human toll. They had heard over and over that the air force was destroying the buildings that belonged to Hezbollah, the organization responsible for shelling their town and threatening their lives. How many small children would be able to make the connection between tank shells and dead people on their own? How many human beings are able to detach from their own suffering and emotional stress and think about that of the other side? Not many, I suspect.

So, perhaps the parents were not wise when they encouraged their children to doodle on the tank shells. They were letting off a little steam after being cooped up - afraid, angry and isolated - for days. Sometimes people do silly things when they are under emotional stress. Especially when they fail to understand how their childish, empty gesture might be interpreted.

(Source)

Meanwhile, on the other side of the fence...

What sort of leader are you?

2006-07-25T15:38:00.000-07:00

Props to Samurai Cat for the quiz:

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

It took me quite a while to clear the tears of laughter from my eyes :-D

I don't know the bit about pot smokers though, but it's a 110% right on the last part. Better to perish on a mountain than to be run over by some cell-phone-wielding-idiot behind the wheel of a SUV, or on a hospital bed with 10,000 tubes sticking out of you.

We are all going to die someday.
The least we can do is to die well and with some dignity.

Hezbollah

2006-07-25T15:16:00.000-07:00

Click on image for the photo essay.

Nulla res carius constat quam quae precibus empta est

2006-07-24T01:08:00.000-07:00

Nothing is so expensive as that which you have bought with pleas.
(Seneca Philosophus, De beneficiis)

Why I love dogs

2006-07-23T01:08:00.000-07:00

Mommy!

Aww... Come on! I did it.
You can do it!

You go, Flyboy!

OK, slow down! 'Getting a little tired here.

Taxi!

Ahhh... This one's taken. Find yourself another seat.
And, hey, while you're up, get me another cold one, would you?
Thanks!
*hic!*

err... *woof!*

Do not disturb.
Zzz...

Suicidal Squirrel

2006-07-23T01:00:00.000-07:00

Suicidal Squirrel's cousin, twice removed.

Heat wave

2006-07-22T03:38:00.000-07:00

Keno, a 2-year-old yellow Labrador retriever, helps water owner Nita McVickar's lawn in La Habra, Calif. (Mark Boster, Los Angeles Times)

Forecasts predict a high of up to 110 F (43.3 C) later today.

I am thinking of seeking refuge either in a library or by the beach at Half Moon Bay.

*sizzle*

Hinc illae lacrimae

2006-07-22T01:08:00.000-07:00

A friend sent me the following story the other day. Despite the inherent theological problems within it, nonetheless it remains a touching tale.

With the Sign of the Cross, the old monk Abba Joseph trapped in his cell a dark and miserable demon who had come to tempt him. "Release me, Father, and let me go," pleaded the demon, "I will not come to tempt you again". "I will gladly do that, but on one condition," replied the monk. "You must sing for me the song that you sang before God's Throne on High, before your fall."

The demon responded, "You know I cannot do that; it will cause me cruel torture and suffering. And besides, Father, no human ear can hear its ineffable sweetness and live, for you will surely die." "Then you will have to remain here in my cell," said the monk, "and bear with me the full struggle of repentance." "Let me go, do not force me to suffer," pleaded the demon." "Ah, but then you must sing to me the song you sang on High before your fall with Satan."

So the dark and miserable demon, seeing that there was no way out, began to sing, haltingly, barely audible at first, groping for words long forgotten. As he sang, the darkness which penetrated and surrounded him began slowly to dissipate. The song grew ever louder and increasingly stronger, and soon the demon was caught up in its sweetness, his voice fully lifted up in worship and praise. Boldly, he sang of the power and the honor and the glory of the Triune God on High, Creator of the Universe, Master of Heaven and Earth, of all things visible and invisible.

As the song sung on High before all ages resounded in the fullness of its might, a wondrous and glorious light penetrated the venerable Abba's humble cell, and the walls which had enclosed it were no more. Ineffable love and joy surged into the very depths of the being of the radiant and glorious angel, as he ever so gently stooped down and covered with his wings the lifeless body of the old hermit who had liberated him from the abyss of hell.

If we could all strive to be like the old hermit.

"I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love" (Mother Teresa).

Have a good journey, my friend

2006-07-21T15:52:00.000-07:00

Singapore Serf aka Knight of the Pentacles.

The light that burns twice as bright, burns half as long. And you have burned so very very brightly...

Ubi bene, ibi patria.

Requiescat in pace.

Reading list

2006-07-20T17:06:00.000-07:00

Update: added two excerpts to the first book.

Picked up a couple of books at the campus bookstore after Mass today:

Unwanted Wisdom: Suffering, the Cross, and Hope

The film, "The Passion of the Christ," raised anew the question: why did Jesus suffer such an excruciatingly painful death? For centuries, those afflicted with suffering have been counseled by the church to unite their sufferings to those of Jesus. This book asks the question how the cross of Jesus can be reimagined in such a way as to offer a path of hope rather than resignation. Drawing upon resources as diverse as Simone Weil, William Lynch, Dorothee Soelle, Karl Rahner, and Jon Sobrino, as well as the author’s personal experience of deep loss, the book explores the terrain of suffering, from the universal pain brought about by the loss of loved ones to the exceedingly indivdual imprisonment of mental illness and the global catastrophe of AIDS. The book also questions the extra burden of suffering put upon gay Catholics by the church’s teaching of life-long celibacy for homosexuals. Inspirational, intelligent, and globally informed, Unwanted Wisdom sends out a message of hope to all Catholics who've yearned to apply the wisdom of Jesus to their own personal suffering.

Professor Crowley is the chair of the Religious Studies department at Santa Clara University. I read medieval and renaissance religion under him. During that time, Father Crowley also became a spiritual advisor to me.

In reading this book, I hope to find the answers--or, failing at that, at least some direction--to the following questions:

What is the nature of grief?
Why is there sorrow in this world?

The heart seeks comfort, but the mind must be fostered too.

Two excerpts

Does the suffering that attends life in fact have any meaning, or is life itself simply a string of meaningless happenings, a final absurdity? And where is God in all this? Present? Absent? Wringing his hands? Does God even care? And, perhaps the most persistent question for me: Why the Cross? Not only what is the meaning of all this suffering that besets the human race, but why does this suffering, symbolized by the Cross, apparently lie at the heart of the Christian faith and its imagination? How can one possibly hope for a better future, or a future in a loving God, in the face of so much darkness--suffering compounding suffering, an endless chronicle of it? What would it mean to hope to believe in a resurrection from the dead--a triumph over and release from all of this?

[ . . . ]

There are times when the suffering that attends tragic reversal, both in one's own life or in the lives of others, forces upon us a wisdom that is not asked for, not even wanted. But that very wisdom can become a key to a joyful freedom, where one discovers all of a sudden, as if awakened from a long trance, that what once seemed very important simply no longer has any power over us. What ultimately matters, instead, is the joy that one discovers, as Francis did, when he kissed the leper, and the joy the leper discovered when, against all earthly hope, he was finally set free. In Messiaen's opera, the leper springs into a wondrous dance of joy. In the final analysis, we are, each and all of us, lepers--waiting to be kissed, yearning to dance with joy. God's accomplishment of this in us, entering into and working through our sorrows and sufferings, is the gift of what Ignatius called the "Contemplatio," the hope of faith fulfilled, not by us, but by God. Precisely by living in and going through our sufferings, we can in fact enter into joy--perhaps a quiet joy, but nevertheless real. The final hope of Christian faith is that this reality, the reality of joy born of suffering, may become good news for all the suffering world. (bold face mine 146-7)

I am attempting here an essay that combines the passion of personal experience with reflection upon the cross in some parts of the Christian theological tradition. [ . . . ] The goal is to arrive at a theologically grounded sense of hope in the face of suffering. This is a theology that hovers, as it were, at the intersection between speculation and spirituality, between the questioning of the mind and the yearnings of the heart. It is of personal provenance, but seeks to reach out to the suffering of others and ask not simply what Christian doctrine has to say about it, but how Christian imagination can function to help us meet the darkness of suffering in human existence.

[ . . . ]

In theological terms, I understand hope to be a theological virtue, a practice of faith the origins of which like in God's own self-gift, and the endpoint of which is participation in divine life. How, then, can people of faith arrive at a lived sense of hope within present moments of suffering, marked as these moments often are by a sense of hopelessness? The theological virtue of hope cannot simply be conjured up; it is not some heroic mustering of a "hope against hope." A hope against hope may simply be an act of desperation, or even a denial of what is the case about human life as we find it--a kind of Stoic resignation, or worse, a refusal to acknowledge what is real. Christian faith does not counsel such a form of hope. In the extreme, hoping against hope may become an expression of despair.

On the other hand, Christian faith does indeed recognize that life can be grim, and that the promises of God in Christ can seem very remote from life as we know it. The problem for Christian faith, then, becomes how to move from hope as promise to hope as living and realized gift, and doing this without indulging in either fantasy or idealism.

[ . . . ]

In the end, relying on Jon Sobrino's Ignatian-inspired theology, I propose a spirituality of the cross that includes three major moments: the relationship of the cross to the entire paschal mystery (including the enfleshment of the divine); the cross as an utterly real symbol--a symbol of the reality of suffering that cumulates in death; and the cross as symbol of hope. In the concrete, this hope is realized in living a faith where, in Sobrino's memorable image, people take one another down from their crosses of suffering. This solidarity is the historical realization of the promise of the resurrection itself. Such an eschatology offers a vision of God's future that is already being realized, for in mutual solidarity, human beings find themselves already rising, already being raised by God in the "practice" of resurrection. The path to joy through suffering of the cross is found by embracing those who suffer, going through it with them, and moving together toward the horizon of God. (bold face mine 10-6)

Never Let Me Go

From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day comes a devastating new novel of innocence, knowledge, and loss. As children Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were.

Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life. And for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special–and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together. Suspenseful, moving, beautifully atmospheric, Never Let Me Go is another classic by the author of The Remains of the Day

The wordsmith, Kazuo Ishiguro, needs no introduction. Those who cannot spare the time to read his earlier novel, The Remains of the Day, may choose to watch the *ahem!* fatally truncated movie adaptation. Nonetheless, Anthony Hopkins pulls off a terrific job as the repressed-but-always-dignified butler, Stevens: "our professional duty is not to our own foibles and sentiments, but to the wishes of our employer." Palpably tragic in its subtlety. If you want to know what regret means, read this book.

Picked up the following book from the Jesuit Retreat Center last week, and it has been an illuminating, albeit at times unbearably painful, read:

Is It Love or Is It Addiction?

Relationships that continue despite pain, emotional chaos, and disruptive impulsivity are addictive, says Brenda Schaeffer, a psychotherapist who knows her stuff and provides an excellent primer on the subject of love and love addiction. Especially if there is past loss or trauma, the resulting pain can make us uncontrollably attached to anyone who soothes that pain, even when this creates many other problems. Healthy love helps us expand ourselves and learn higher growth processes; the addictive attachment only distracts, stagnates, and frustrates personal development. . . . Is It Love or Is It Addiction? has helped many people find their way from the fear and distrust in poor relationships to the fulfillment in meaningful ones. Psychotherapist Brenda Schaeffer draws on common sense, compassion, and years of experience to provide tools for moving from addictive to healthy love.

An excerpt

Love relationships can be good or bad, depending on how they serve us. The questions we consider here are these: Does love addiction really exist? What is love addiction? How does love become addictive? How can something so wonderful become something that feels so bad? Is it love? Or, is it addiction? What is a healthy relationship?

My clinical experience of love addiction is that it is a reliance on someone external to the self in an attempt to get unmet needs fulfilled, avoid fear or emotional pain, solve problems, and maintain balance. The paradox is that love addiction is an attempt to gain control of our lives, and in so doing, we go out of control by giving personal power to someone other than ourselves. This attempt, then, results in an unhealthy dependency on others. It is very often associated with feelings of "never having enough" or "not being enough." This is because many of us did not get all of our needs met in an orderly way when we were children. Addictive love is an attempt to satisfy our developmental hunger for security, sensation, power, belonging, and meaning. Love addiction is also a form of passivity in that we do not directly resolve our own problems but attempt to collude with others so they will take care of us and thus take care of our problems. We willingly take care of others at our own emotional expense, or we attempt to control them to meet our needs at their expense. No matter how it plays out, we look to others to "fix" our fear, pain, and discomfort, and we tolerate or inflict abusive behaviors in the process. These others can include any important person in our lives with whom we (often unconsciously) hook up: a child, a parent, a friend, a boss, a spouse, a lover. Or, as in romance or sexual compulsion, it can be someone we don't even know personally. A key element of the unhealthy aspect of the relationship is how we feel when that person disapproves of us, disagrees with us, moves away from us, or threatens us. An escalation in dysfunctional behavior will no doubt occur when the love object leaves or threatens to leave us.

Love addiction may or may not include a romantic or sexual component. When the object of love is, or as been, the romantic partner, the stakes run high. What we witness daily in the news confirms that the more extreme cases of sex, love, and romance addiction can be lethal. Homicide, suicide, stalking, rape, incest, AIDS, and domestic violence capture the headlines. Love addiction can range from an unhealthy dependency sanctioned by society to violence and abuse abhorred, but never-the-less promulgated by, the same society. It is important to know that these are but degrees of the same problem.

[ . . . ]

The psychological seeds of dependent love, romance, and sex addiction are sown in early life when we experience overt and covert abuse from those we love. What starts out as healthy dependency becomes unhealthy. The roots of dependent love, romance, and sexual addiction are similar, and often overlap, but the addiction processes of each are unique.

[ . . . ]

Dependent Love

As a psychotherapist, I am acutely aware of how often my clients' adult love relationships exist in the shadow of early love experiences--especially childhood ties to parents.

[ . . . ]

Love and the Unconscious Mind

[Some] cases are sometimes referred to as examples of emotional incest. Over and over again, a child is invited to take care of the parents' feelings. Sometimes the invitation is overt, sometimes it is covert. The child often misconstrues this silent seduction as parental love. When the invitation comes from from the parent of the opposite sex, it is covert incest. The parent asks the child to be the surrogate partner. Such partnerships set the child up for a role reversal that later translates into dependent love relationships and confusion about the nature of real intimacy.

Behind each obsessive, often destructive, relationship--which we shall call addictive love--lurks a belief that such dependence serves an important purpose. To the unconscious mind, addictive love makes perfect sense; it feels necessary to survival itself. And to an addictive lover, even a pathological relationship may seem normal and necessary. As we understand our fears and the ways we use addictive love, they often lose their holding power.

[ . . . ]

Addictive lovers labor under the illusion that the dependent relationship will "fix" their fears. We will explore the many complex reasons that addictive love exercises a powerful hold over people and why it is not easily given up. [M]any people are drawn into it over and over again. But how do people get drawn into love addiction? The seeds of love addiction lie deep in our biology, our social education, our spiritual quests, and our psychological beliefs[ . . ..]

[E]ach person in an addictive relationship followed an individual road map leading into it. Finding out how love addiction makes sense to its victims is necessary in creating a road map out of love addiction and into mature love and belonging. We return to the puzzle: How does something that feels so good become something that feels so bad?

[ . . . ]

Our primary focus [...] will be on the dependent love relationship. It is dependent love to which the human condition seems to direct most of us most often. It is so common that we frequently fail to recognize it until it wrecks havoc on our love lives. (8-18)

A year before his death, the seriously-ill and persecuted David Herbert Lawrence penned the following poem:

Self-Pity

I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.
(1929)

An admonishment against apathy and despair, if there ever was one.

10 Great Things

2006-07-19T16:48:00.000-07:00

Ten great things about being Catholic

1. We brake for mystery

The word mystery has a particular meaning in pop culture. We may think immediately of detectives trying to solve crimes, or suspenseful movies with some monster hiding in wait for its next victim. Our basic assumption about mystery is that it’s something to be uncovered or resolved.

But the larger and more religious sense of mystery is of something that cannot be solved by human reason or even perceived by human senses. This is our first understanding of who God is—a Being infinite, eternal, and essentially unknowable by limited mortal minds. We can ponder religious mysteries but never come to the end of them. So we meditate on how God becomes a human being, how a virgin can be a mother, how a crucified man rises from the dead, or how one day, the last will be first.

2. God's story is our story

For all Christians, the Bible is the foundation of our faith. But it’s not a history book about how the world came to be, or stories of people from long ago. We believe God’s Word is alive, that these stories are bigger than history and truer than a mere retelling of the past. Catholics don’t look to the Bible to explain or replace scientific knowledge about the world. We accept these stories as the way ancient people shared what they were learning about the God who was leading them to become more fully human. They came to believe that the story of God is also the story of humanity, because our origin and life is in God. When we read the Bible, we find our own story written in its pages.

3. There's no cosmic even-steven

Without scripture, we might be forced into considering two rather distressing ideas about reality as we know it. One is that things happen in a random way and nothing matters or has meaning. As hard as that sounds, the other idea is equally unhappy: that God is handing out rewards and punishments according to a scale of justice that is coldly precise. Who among us wants to face perfect justice? But according to salvation history—another name for God’s plan as the Bible illustrates it—God’s desire is to save us, not to condemn us. Because we’re not good enough to face even-steven justice, God chooses to exercise mercy instead. If we seek God’s mercy, our sins are forgiven. This is why we call the gospel “the good news”!

4. In the common we find the holy

We have said God is unknowable, but that’s not the end of the story. God is beyond our comprehension, but God wants to be known by us. God created us out of love, and love always seeks to be closer to the beloved. So God reveals the divine presence and purpose to the people of the Bible, folks like ourselves—part saint and part sinner.

God also expresses the divine will in the ancient law of the Old Testament. Finally, God enters human history directly through the person of Jesus, who is Son of God and one with God in a unique way. In turn, Jesus gives us an enduring way to encounter his presence in what the church now calls the sacraments. In common things—water, oil, bread, wine, words, touch, a ring, a promise—we meet the holy presence of God once more.

5. Many roads lead to prayer

Prayer is primarily communication, and there are countless ways to do it. Some pray in silence, mindful of God’s presence. Others like to sing—Saint Augustine called singing “praying twice.” Some find themselves naturally drawn to formal prayers of repetition like the rosary or novenas. The Stations of the Cross, a walking prayer, reminds us that we’re all pilgrims on a spiritual journey toward our true home. Group prayer is often made simpler by using a ritual like the Liturgy of the Hours, also known as the breviary. The ultimate prayer of the Catholic community is the Mass itself, in which we celebrate the central mysteries of our faith: “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again!”

6. We have found the church, and it is us

The word church is remarkably broad. We use it to describe a building in which we worship. But it also refers to an authority that governs us—for Catholics, that usually means the Vatican, the bishops or other clergy, or the general body of people who are on the payroll of a parish office. Because we often speak of the church as something or someone “out there,” we have to consciously remind ourselves that we are the church, the Body of Christ. We are called by God and empowered through the gifts of the Holy Spirit to carry the presence of Christ into the world today. You take “church” with you wherever you go!

7. The body has many parts

All who are baptized are known as the “People of God,” according to church teaching. The People of God have a noble vocation to live out that identity with dignity and integrity. We are supported in that calling through the service of our church leaders—the pope who governs and coordinates the worldwide church; the college of cardinals who oversee broad territories; the bishops in their teaching office in each diocese; and the pastors guiding each parish. Add to their service the work of religious sisters and brothers, monks and cloistered nuns, missionaries, lay leaders and teachers, dedicated parents, and countless organizations affiliated with the church. All together, we are the hands and feet, the eyes and ears and voice of Christ in the world today

8. We hold a treasure old and new

Some Christian churches maintain that the Bible alone teaches us the will of God for the world. Catholics believe that the Bible is fundamental in revealing God’s purposes—and that God has made other revelations that are also compelling. Creation is God’s first and largest self-expression, for God spoke the world into being and then created humanity in the divine image and likeness.

Since Jesus told his disciples to “go forth, baptize, and teach all nations,” Catholics also view the church itself as having a role to play in expressing God’s will in the world. The teaching authority of the church, known as the magisterium, seeks to express God’s hopes for humanity in every new generation.

9. Church is a verb

We mentioned that “church” is not just a building but also a people. More perfectly understood, church is also something we do and not just who we are. Our vocation to “be” church engages us with a world in crying need of the presence of Christ. And Jesus wasn’t just present to people; he came to town and got to work teaching, healing, blessing, and giving hope to the hopeless. He spoke out in defense of the poor, the suffering, and the excluded. When we involve ourselves in works of justice, working to right the imbalance of power in the world, we are “being church” most profoundly.

10. We live as we believe

Being human naturally means making moral choices. It might seem hard at times, but it’s not rocket science. A Catholic morality is shaped by many principles, including the idea that human life belongs to God and not to us. This is why we take a moral stand away from abortion, capital punishment, euthanasia, genetic engineering, and all avoidable warfare. It’s also why we support fidelity in marriage, the welfare of children, and public policies that lead to justice and peace. As Jesus put it succinctly, “Love one another.” It’s still the best moral advice there is.

(Alice Camille, Vision: Vocation Guide for Catholic Vocations -- Religious Life and Priesthood.)

Quietude

2006-07-18T23:28:00.000-07:00

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls. (Mother Teresa)

On why we must fight fundamentalism

2006-07-17T20:54:00.000-07:00

Who owns Christianity?

17 July 2006

Not many people of moderate persuasion have much sway in the church any more. I was reminded why recently when the Episcopal Church did two important things: It elected a woman bishop to head the denomination, and it backtracked on appointing gay bishops. The first move seems Christian. Women deserve to hold church office as much as political office (one diocese, however, was so incensed that it voted to leave the church, and worldwide there are still Anglican movements that do not permit women to be bishops or ordained priests).

The second move was an act of cowardice because it did not reflect the ideals of love in Christianity and was motivated by reactionaries in the Episcopal denomination. Countering a long tradition of laissez-faire tolerance, the reactionaries have gotten tough and threatened to form their own church if gays are promoted in the priesthood. The worldwide Anglicans are more intolerant, upholding that homosexuality is forbidden, unnatural, wrong or an outright sin, depending on who is doing the disapproving.

You'd think that someone would stand up and ask a simple question: Who are we to condemn gays if Christ didn't? In fact, who are we to condemn any sinner, since Christ didn't? Christianity is about forgiveness, and for the past two decades, as fundamentalism swept through every Protestant denomination, moderates and liberals have been driven out, and were roundly condemned as they left. Along with them went tolerance and forgiveness, not to mention love.

Did Christ teach love or is that just a liberal bias? In the current climate, it's hard to remember, but one thing is certain: Once a tight cabal of fundamentalists takes over any denomination, Christ's teachings go out the window. The reversal of Christianity from a religion of love to a religion of hate is the greatest religious tragedy of our time.

Those of us who haven't been swept up in worldwide fundamentalism, which has corrupted Islam, Hinduism and Judaism as well, have been caught in a double bind. We can't join any sect that preaches intolerance, yet we can't fight it, either, because by definition fighting is a form of intolerance. To escape this double bind, moderates have stayed silent and stayed home. But that tactic failed. As healthy as it is to nourish your own devotion and faith, it's disastrous to allow extremists to take over the church, because the statehouse, the board of education, the Congress, and eventually the presidency are next.

Perhaps civil society will solve the problem of religious extremism. So far it hasn't. America finds itself in the sad plight of being the world's most prominent secular society hijacked by sectarians. One can only hope that the church comes to its senses and regains its moral center. If that doesn't occur, the core teachings of Christ will be lost, for all intents and purposes, to this generation.

Deepak Chopra is the author "Peace is the Way," which won the Quill Award in 2005 as well as 41 other books. He is also the founder and president of the Alliance for a New Humanity, an international network of people from all walks of life who are networking together to see a positive change take place in the world.

(Source)

Solace

2006-07-17T19:28:00.000-07:00

This Alone

One thing I ask, is the LORD I seek
To dwell in the house of the LORD all my days.
For one day within Your temple heals everyday, our LORD!
Oh, LORD, bring me to your dwelling.

[MP3 clip.]

Hear oh, LORD, the sound of my calling!
Hear oh, LORD, and show me the way!

One thing I ask, is the LORD I seek
To dwell in the house of the LORD all my days.
For one day within Your temple heals everyday, our LORD!
Oh, LORD, bring me to your dwelling.

The LORD is my life and hope of salvation.
The LORD is my refuge, whom shall I fear?

One thing I ask, is the LORD I seek
To dwell in the house of the LORD all my days.
For one day within Your temple heals everyday, our LORD!
Oh, LORD, bring me to your dwelling.

(Lift Up Your Hearts, Volume 1, by the St. Louis Jesuits. More info.)

There is a longing within me.
I long to return...

Tennessee Beach

2006-07-14T22:00:00.000-07:00

Fairy Tale

2006-07-13T01:00:00.000-07:00

Some pics from the best post of the year thus far.

Entire photo essay here.

Thanks for reminding us of our passion, jorgemonkey!

Nihil inimicius quam sibi ipse

2006-07-12T09:06:00.000-07:00

A man carrying a very valuable vase was walking along a street one day when he tripped and fell. The vase slipped from his hands, smashing into a thousand pieces on the ground.

The man got up, dusted himself off, and, without looking back, calmly continued on his journey.

Some onlookers rushed to him and inquired why didn't he even bother to stop to examine the pieces.

His reply: "What has happened has happened. Even if I can glue the pieces together again, it won't be the same vase."

And he walked calmly on.

Shine On You Crazy Diamond

2006-07-11T13:59:00.000-07:00

[1946 - 2006]

Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun.

Pine Mountain Loop Ride

2006-07-10T15:00:00.000-07:00

A quiet ride on the 1st of July.

For the ride report, click on the image or here.

Ad Kalendas Graecas

2006-07-08T14:53:00.000-07:00

Hap

If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: "Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!"

Then would I bear, and clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased, too, that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.

But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
--Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan....
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

(Thomas Hardy)

This, this baptism of pain....
When will it end?
LORD, where is my salvation promised me?

Birthday Wishes

2006-07-06T00:08:00.000-07:00

Pine Mountain, Repack Road Ride, & a hike in the Marin Headlands

2006-07-05T06:28:00.000-07:00

A very warm day's ride.

For the ride report, click on the image or here.

---

As there was an hour before sunset, I managed to squeeze in a short hike to the top of Hill 88 in the Marin Headlands after the ride.

From the parking lot at Fort Cronkhite. Hill 88 is lost in the fog somewhere up there.

The road leading up. (Notice the little bunny on the lower right?)

There's a choice of a scenic dirt trail, or the faster asphalt road.

Point Bonita Lighthouse in the distance.

Close up.

The old fortifications of Battery Townsley lie beyond the trees.

Another trail paralleling the coast.

Climbing into the fog. Rodeo Beach and Fort Cronkhite below.

Climbing up the steps. This dirt section bypasses a collapsed section of the road.

A large section of the road disappeared in a landslide 9 years ago (hence the steps and dirt bypass trails).

Turning right after the stairs and dirt section. There is another short, rutted, dirt bypass after this, then it is all asphalt to the summit.

What it says.

Walking through a windy pass.

And foggy too.

Elevation 816 ft.

Junction: Wolf Ridge Trail (leading eastwards to Miwok Trail) terminates on the right; also on the right, leading northwards, is the portion of Coastal Trail descending steeply to Tennessee Valley. Both are closed to bicycles.

Final approach to Hill 88.

Elevation 960 ft. Summit of Hill 88.

Constructed in the mid-1950s, these structures used to be radar beacon platforms for the Nike surface-to-air missiles. Armed with nuclear warheads, the second generation Nike Hercules missiles were designed to take out several Russian bombers at once. When intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) were invented, these sites became redundant and were abandoned.

The Oozlefinch.

What's left today.

Thomas Sturm has an interesting blurb about this place:

There is always something special about visiting abandoned sites like this - filled with the ghosts of a past that is visibly slipping away, a steady reminder that nothing of our physical presence, not even concrete and steel, will survive for more than a few generations.

Mae has a a different take on this.

My usual lunch / snack / tea spot.

What it looks like when there is no fog.

On a clear day, you can see San Francisco, Twin Peaks, Pacifica, Fort Cronkhnite, Rodeo Beach, Point Bonita, and the Golden Gate Bridge from here, but there is also something special about hiking up here in the fog.

The temperature is a nice 57 F (13.9 C), much more pleasant than the 107 F (41.7 C) on Pine Mountain earlier.

The view on a clear day.

A final look around before descending.

This trail is open to bicycles, but the effort involved in carrying bicycles up and down the steep and narrow flight of stairs; the fact that the trail dead ends at Hill 88 with no legal way down other than the same path; and the short distance (under 3.5 miles); reduce bike traffic to about zero.

Signs on either end of the stairs remind cyclists to dismount.

The stairs.

Emerging from the fog layer and looking at Fort Cronkhite, my car in the parking lot, Rodeo Lagoon, Rodeo Beach, and the road leading down.

Final descent to Fort Cronkhite. Point Bonita Lighthouse is visible to the right of the tree.

Rodeo Beach at dusk.

There is a meditative quality to hiking alone in the fog. You continue to hear birds sing, bunnies and salamanders rustle in the shrubs, but a cotton-white haze prevents you from seeing them. It is all at once surreal, dreamy--soothing--and yet, a little worrying: now that you are not watching, is anyone watching you?

Hike conducted solo.

Unus non sufficit orbis

2006-07-03T22:00:00.000-07:00

One of a couple of books I picked up at the bookshop in El Retiro San Iñigo:

The back cover reads:

Spanning five continents and nearly five hundred years, this definitive, unvarnished history of the Jesuits captures their tremendous influence on both the religious and secular worlds, as well as the enmity and outrage their power frequently inspired.

Throughout history, members of the Society of Jesus, popularly known as the Jesuits, have been accused of killing kings and presidents, traveled as missionaries to every corner of the globe, founded haciendas in Mexico, explored the Mississippi and Amazon rivers, and served Chinese emperors as map makers, painters, and astronomers. Jesuits have been despised and idolized on a scale unknown to members of any other religious order; they have died the most horrible deaths and done the most outlandish deeds.

Whether they were loved or loathed, the Jesuits' dramatic and wide-ranging impact could never be ignored. By the mid-eighteenth century, they had established more than 650 educational institutions. They were also strongly committed to foreign missions, and they traveled to the Far East, India, and the Americas to stake a claim.

The Jesuits' successes both in Europe and abroad, coupled with rumors of scandal and corruption within the order, soon drew criticism from within the Church and without. Their power was seen as so threatening that hostility escalated into serious political feuds, and at various times they were either banned or harshly suppressed throughout Europe.

God's Soldiers is a fascinating chronicle of this celebrated, mysterious, and often despised religious order. Jonathan Wright illuminates as never before their enduring contributions as well as the controversies that have surrounded them. The result is an in-depth, unbiased, and utterly compelling history.

Again, this entry is no attempt at an exhaustive book review (or even pretends to be one). A handful of comments and a few quotes are all that can be offered. For a brief review, check out Austin Cline's sentiments on this book.

In 1521, serving military duty under Antonio Manrique de Lara, viceroy of Navarre, while facing French troops at the battle for Pamplona, a cannonball shattered Iñigo López de Loyola's right leg, badly injured the other, and the rest--as they say--is history. During his recovery, all he had to read was Ludolph of Saxony's Life of Christ and Jacopo de Voragine's Golden Legend with its saints. Loyola became inspired by the lives of the saints and a desire to emulate them grew in his heart. The next few years saw the former Basque warrior-nobleman undergo a startling transformation:

A night spent before the Black Madonna at the Benedictine monastery in Montserrat prompted Loyola to exchange his robe and sword for a pilgrim's staff and the rough cloak and sandals of a beggar. A spell at Manresa saw him begging, praying, fasting, and flagellating, allowing his hair and fingernails to grow to uncommon length, being treated to visions, and working on his Spiritual Exercises. The Exercises, on which Loyola continued to work over the coming decades, would emerge as the lodestone of a distinctive Ignatian spirituality--arguably one of the most impressive, enduring Jesuit contributions to the Roman Catholic tradition. (18)

Founded in 1534 by the Spanish nobleman Ignatius of Loyola, the Society of Jesus began with a dozen theology students at the University of Paris who made a vow to travel to the Holy Land to preach the Gospel to the Saracens--or, failing that, to offer their services to the pope for whatever missions he saw fit to propose. The latter turned out to be their destiny, and from the first the Jesuits were closely associated with papal power and Roman intrigue. Although Ignatius had not originally intended the combat of heresy to be one of his primary tasks, the intellectual and political climate of the times soon demanded it, and his followers proved to be formidable adversaries, winning back entire regions and even kingdoms (e.g. Hungary) to the Church. (Kirkus Reviews)

Whether loved or loathed, the Society of Jesus could never be ignored. It would disrupt the certainties and hierarchies of the Catholic Church, transform the intellectual, cultural, and devotional landscapes of Europe, and meddle in successive controversies of reformation, empire building, enlightenment, and revolution. The contest to adjudicate its history was always going to be hard fought.

[ . . . ]

For close on five centuries, Jesuits have maintained a turbulent, influential presence in world history--and not simply as evangelists, theologians, or priestly intermediaries. They have been urbane courtiers in Paris, Peking, and Prague, telling kings when to marry, when and how to go to war, serving as astronomers to Chinese emperors or as chaplains to Japanese armies invading Korea. As might be expected, they have dispensed sacraments and homilies and they have provided educations to men as various as Voltaire, Castro, Hitchcock, and Joyce. But they have also been sheep farmers in Quito, hacienda owners in Mexico, wine growers in Australia, and plantation owners in antebellum United States. The Society would flourish in the worlds of letters, the arts, music, and science, theorizing about dance, disease, and the laws of electricity and optics. Jesuits would grapple with the challenges of Copernicus, Descartes, and Newton, and thirty-five craters on the surface of the moon would be named for Jesuit scientists.

Jesuit missionaries would provide Europe with accounts of unknown cultures, with reports of new rivers, new stars, new animals, plants, and drugs--from camellias to ginseng to quinine--and a dazzling array of exciting commodities in between. Jesuit missionaries would locate the source of the Blue Nile, find land routes from Muscovy to China, and chart large stretches of the Oronoco, Amazon, and Mississippi Rivers. They would bring snuff, and the works of Aesop and Galileo, to Peking, coffee to Venezuela, and Kepler's laws of planetary motion to Indian astronomy.

Such success (alongside no few transgressions) has often bred resentment [ . . ..] Jesuits have never lacked enemies willing to depict them as king-killers, poisoners, or practitioners of the black arts. By Catholics and non-Catholics alike, they have been painted as purveyors of absurdly laxist moral advice, as sexual deviants, as avaricious scoundrels setting up secret gold mines and duping rich widows out of their inheritances. Self-styled champions of intellectual freedom have routinely characterized Jesuits as mindless automatons, unthinkingly loyal to their superiors. For those opposed to Roman influence they have been the pope's myrmidons, the sworn enemies of secular authority. While few have doubted the skill and verve of the Society of Jesus--its prowess in self-publicity, its ability to generate unique theologies and spiritualities, to train up, organize, and motivate its vast and versatile workforce--some have wondered whether such virtuosity was a blessing or a blight.

Reformation Protestants, eighteenth-century philosophers, and nineteenth-century liberals have turned against them. They have infuriated John Donne, Blaise Pascal, Thomas Jefferson, and Napoleon, and if they have sought to guard, define, and cherish their reputation--not least by doting on their saints and martyrs--others have tried to wrest it from their control. (8-10)

The 1540 "Formula of the Institute," a manifesto that formed the basis of the Society's foundation bull, talked of the "propagation of the faith" as a key Jesuit obligation. By 1550 this phrase had become the "defence and propagation of the faith." There was a world of meaning in this new word "defense." Confronting the type of threat to the church symbolized by the sack of Rome and embodied in the Affair of the Placards very quickly became the Society's business. It would also serve as one of the chief sources of Jesuit pride and self-identity. (26)

Jesuits would form the spearhead of the Roman Catholic Church's Counter-Reformation against the Protestants:

The Jesuit Edmund Campion, who would be executed in 1581 after a clandestine mission to England, [...] mock[ed] those Protestant "men in the world which drink blood as easily as beasts do water . . . and because the earth does not open up and presently swallow them down . . . think all is well." Both the Protestant and Campion were exaggerating, but both were right in ascribing vileness to their opponents; both were wrong in pretending that those opponents had a monopoly on such unsavory, if theologically sanctioned, kinds of behavior.

Al though some people managed to live through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries without having to face difficult religious decisions, many were not so lucky. They were expected to hate and avoid their confessional adversaries, and made to endure tormenting crises of conscience: crises involving a choice between the tenets of theological correctness and the other, not ignoble, duties to family, friends, and community, not to mention their own health, wealth, and happiness.

But the real world of the Reformation was also about those people who refused to live by the theologians' rules and who carved out compromises and solutions of their own. Reformation was about people who resented the tone of it all, who were annoyed that "religion is strangely metamorphosed into snarling," and that "a generation of tautological tongue men" had "brought too much gall to the pulpit and such a store of wormwood to the press, that hath drowned too many of us in the gall of bitterness." Above all the Reformation was about confusion: the fact that not everyone could quite see the obviousness of the choices put before him.

And if people were being prevented from living quiet lives in noisy times, if they were being urged to snap out of their confusion, who was responsible? One seventeenth-century onlooker had a suggestion: surely it was those most zealous and uncompromising figures at opposite ends of the religious spectrum, the Calvinists of Geneva and the Jesuits of Rome, each as unflinching as the other, "tail-tied together with firebrands between them."

Protestantism, according to James Brooks, preaching in 1553, was the "filthy sink" from which had emerged "all these tragedies which hath raged well nigh over all Christendom, out of which hath raked of late so many stinking, filthy, contagious heresies." Heresy was a fever to be cooled, excrement to be evacuated, humoral imbalance to be righted. The Jesuits, as the rhetoric often went on to say, were the spiritual physicians, dispensing the antidotes, the counterpoison, the purgative, the cauterizing agent, disabusing and disheartening Protestants and healing wayward Catholics. And as contemporary medical theory insisted, the best doctors always appreciated the full range of remedies and procedures--some gentle, others violent--at their disposal. (27-9)

In seminaries across Europe, the Society of Jesus would train priests (Jesuits and non-Jesuits alike) destined for careers on the front lines of counterreformation; their duty, as laid down in 1552, to "search out the hidden venom of heretical doctrine and to refute it, and then to replant the uprooted trunk of the tree of faith." Many of the first Jesuit missionary initiatives in England, Bohemia, France, Hungary, Germany, and Poland sought to take the battle directly to the Protestant enemy, to win back souls from Lutheranism and Calvinism and shore up the resolve of those Catholics most immediately at risk of falling into schism. (31)

Accounts of the furious exchange between the Jesuits and the Protestants are sometimes presented with more than a tinge of wit:

What the Protestants insulted, Jesuits promoted. Calvinists mocked the Blessed Sacrament--the consecrated bread reserved outside the celebration of the Eucharist; Jesuits displayed it to the faithful in forty-hour rituals, lighting it, during one such spectacle at their mother church, the Gesù, in Rome, with twenty-three hundred lamps and five hundred candles. Protestants grumbled about the Catholic obsession with saints; Jesuits made sure that students at their schools prayed before images of their impeccably holy predecessors whenever they entered their classrooms. [ . . . ]

Jesuits knew how to score a rhetorical point, and they did not always shy away from insulting their Protestant adversaries--routinely blaming them for the onset of plague, for instance. (32)

The Jesuits proved themselves to be formidable adversaries to the Protestant challenge:

It was doing all of these things, of course: adoring saints and sacraments was about articulating long-cherished Catholic spirituality and it was about rebutting Protestant innovation. Jesuits avidly endorsed both campaigns.

There must surely have been satisfaction in hearing a Protestant grumble in 1641 that "it is well known . . . that the Jesuits (the pope's best and dearest sons) have not yet troubled the world a hundred and twenty years . . . [but] what service they have done their master the pope, all men guess, wise men know, and all nations in Christendom feel to their pain, more or less." As William Crashaw continued just two years later, Luther and Calvin had made the "Romish Church . . . that scarlet whore" feel old, exhausted, and impotent: she had realized that "in this latter age her cup of abominations was almost drunk up and emptied even to the dregs." But then, in the autumn of 1540, the Jesuits had made their entrance, flying like locusts "out of the bottomless pit, to repair the ruins of the Romish state and to fill her golden cup up with a new supply of spiritual fornications." If Protestants were quite that cross, the Society must have been doing something right. (35)

In fact, so effective were the Jesuits against the Protestants that Pope Gregory XIII remarked to a member of the Society in 1581 that "there is in this day no single instrument raised by God against heretics greater than your holy order. It came into the world at the very moment when new errors began to spread abroad" (21-2). Speaking from personal experience, even today, fundamentalist and evangelical Protestants wishing to "convert" me, change their minds when they discover I am a Jesuit university alumni and attend mass there.

Being at the spearhead of the battle against the Protestants meant that more than a few of the Jesuits would end up martyred for the cause:

By most standards, the later career of Thomas Cottam, graduate of the English College at Douai and the Jesuits' Sant' Andrea novitiate in Rome, was something of a debacle. When he arrived at Dover in 1580 [...], the port officials were expecting him. A spy had made his acquaintance in Lyons and dutifully informed the English ambassador in Paris, who, in turn, had let his employers know that another Jesuit was planning a mission to bolster the morale of England's benighted Catholic community. Cottam actually succeeded in shaking off his pursuers but only by placing a fellow Catholic in jeopardy, and so, in service to conscience, he gave himself up. After spells of incarceration in the Tower and Marshalsea Prison, where he was treated to the delights of the rack and the "scavenger's daughter," Cottam was convicted of high treason on November 20, 1581.

Having watched three diocesan priests perish before his eyes--their innards ripped out and their limbs chopped off--Cottam was hanged on May 30, 1582. Astutely, those presiding over his execution threw his mutilated body into vats of boiling water, thus preventing any sympathetic bystanders from collecting the martyr's relics.

Elizabethan England was a perilous place for any member of the Society of Jesus. Suspected (and not always undeservedly) as political agitators, the "rabble of vagrant friars," reduced to traveling around England in disguise and under false names, would bear the brunt of anti-Catholic legislation. A dozen other Jesuit missionaries would perish before 1603, and though numerically modest, and for all the rows and rifts it provoked within the Catholic community, the Jesuit presence in England was always capable of scandalizing Protestant magistrates and edifying wavering Catholics. (29-30)

Trivia: exactly 426 years ago, on the 3rd of July, 1580, Queen Elizabeth I issued a statute forbidding Jesuits all entrance into England.

The requirements for membership into the Society of Jesus are biased toward the intellectual, and sometimes bear more than a passing whiff of elitism:

The Society had long had its ways, unusually lengthy and rigorous, of training its membership [ . . ..]

The Society's founding documents were replete with advice about who might best enjoy the privilege of becoming a Jesuit. Naturally, anyone who was married, or subscribed to erroneous religious opinion, or suffered from mental instability was ruled out, and unless absolute reformation of character had taken place, a person guilty of homicide or otherwise "publicly infamous because of enormous sin" was unlikely to have a Jesuit future ahead of him. It was important that a candidate be asked whether "he has any stomach trouble or headaches or trouble from some other bodily malfunction" since a Jesuit's life could well turn out to be physically demanding; and as well as concerns about "a lack of bodily integrity, illness and weakness," there were no doubts about individuals possessed of "notable ugliness." "Persons who have notable disfigurements or defects, such as hunchbacks and other deformities, whether they be natural or accidental as from wounds and the like," were at a disadvantage because such "obstacles to the priesthood . . . do not help towards the edification of neighbors."

However, such physical encumbrances could be confidently ignored if a candidate with exceptional talents presented himself. The guiding principle to be observed by those in charge of Jesuit admissions was that "the greater the natural and infused gifts someone has from God our Lord which are useful for what the society aims at . . . and the more experience the candidate has in the use of these gifts, the more suitable will he be for reception into the Society." Wealth and social status, it was averred (though this was not always heeded), simply did not matter; qualities such as spiritual vigor, an affection for the Society, a good memory, and a pleasing manner of speech most certainly did.

In the Jesuit scheme of formation as it eventually emerged, a two-year novitiate--of probation and spiritual instruction--was followed by the moment at which three simple, perpetual vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience were taken. At this time a decision was made as to whether an individual was destined to become a brother or a scholastic (intended for the priesthood--although express dispensation would always be required if, at a later date, a Jesuit aspired to any ecclesiastical dignity such as a cardinal's hat). For the scholastic, years of study in philosophy (three years as a rule) and theology (usually four years) lay ahead, interrupted by the "regency," usually taken up with teaching duties. Finally, the period of "tertianship" would arrive, during which an individual revisited more spiritual concerns, and spent time making the Spiritual Exercises in full. At this point, the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience were repeated, and it was decided whether the now fully formed Jesuit was to become a spiritual coadjutor or a "professed" Jesuit, who had the honor of taking the additional, fourth vow, of obedience to the pope as regards missions. It was from the elite, relatively small body of the professed that superiors were chosen.

Those who were chosen to be brothers, or temporal coadjutors, accounted for something like a quarter of the membership. This group--which, the constitutions meanly suggested, ought to be content with the equivalent of the Bible's Martha in the Society--worked as gardeners, builders, and cooks, but also included within their number eminent architects such as Peter Huyssens and Andrea Pozzo, an explorer like Bento de Goes (the first Jesuit to find a land route between India and China, via Lahore and Kabul), and the much-doted-upon Alphonsus Rodriguez, a lowly porter at the Society's college at Palma, Majorca, whose exemplary and deeply spiritual life would be held up for admiration by generations of Jesuits, even securing him canonization in 1888. (47-9)

But perhaps the most visible facet of Jesuits today is the role they play in education.

By the mid-seventeenth century they had a virtual monopoly in the role of confessor to the likes of the kings of France and the dukes of Bavaria, and although it was not part of their original brief, they were now a dominant force in the education of the Catholic world. This development, which inevitably meant setting up permanent educational establishments, rather diluted the concept of itinerant ministry so dear to Loyola and his earliest collaborators. But it also made the Society truly revolutionary: it became the first religious order of the Catholic Church to adopt formal education as a significant ministry.

The Society trained not only its own recruits but a sizable portion of the secular clergy of Europe. Colleges dedicated to training, among others, German, Hungarian, Greek, and English priests were placed in Jesuit hands, and it would soon become clear that locating an archbishop of Vienna not educated by the Society would be a fool's errand. In 1621, the first Jesuit-trained pope, Gregory XV, took possession of the papal tiara.

And there were the children (Catholic and even, on occasion, Protestant) who were taught in a worldwide network of schools and colleges, expanding from humble beginnings in Spain, at Gandía in 1546 and in Sicily at Messina in 1547 (the first institution primarily intended for non-Jesuit pupils, or "externs"), at an average of six new institutions a year by the end of the sixteenth century. Leaders of the Society had grown accustomed to turning down many of the requests to establish schools that came flooding in, and by 1600 there were fifty-six institutions in Italy and Sicily alone, seventy-seven in Spain and its overseas empire. In France, where Jesuits were teaching as many as forty thousands by 1630, figures as eminent as Descartes, Corneille, Bossuet, and Molìere would receive a Jesuit education, and although some of these men would be far from kind to their former teachers, those taught in Jesuit schools would also manage to provide the Society with more than half its novices.

[ . . . ]

Jesuit schools, although we should be wary of generalizations, sought to combine the educational advances of humanism--which included a reverence for classic culture--with the duty to produce pious members of Christian society. Students were obliged to examine their consciences, develop an interior spirituality, and attend mass every bit as they were expected to read Cicero or hone their skills in Latin metrics and prosody. In this decidedly Christian-humanist way, the Society set about training students to be good Christians and virtuous citizens, but it also strove to produce eloquent, elegant members of the secular world.

Jesuits wrote about the art of courtly wisdom; they sometimes employed dance masters in their schools to cultivate refined gesture and posture; and the popularity of dramatic productions and staged disputations amply testified to the importance afforded to rhetorical proficiency. There was a rejection of Machiavellian pessimism--Machiavelli was the sort of person to be burned in effigy, which is just what Jesuits did at Ingolstadt in 1555--and a confidence that a person could be eminently devout at the same time as being a successful politician or lawyer. (53-4)

I am not sure if Jonathan Wright covers it, but it would be interesting to read how the Jesuits superseded the older Franciscans and Dominican orders in the mission of education.

The next installment on this fascinating book would focus on the role Jesuit missionaries played in empire building and colonialism.

Trivia: 2006 is a Jubilee year observing, the 500th anniversary of the birth of Saint Francis Xavier, born April 7, 1506; the 500th anniversary of the birth of Blessed Peter Faber, born April 13, 1506; and the 450th anniversary of the death of Saint Ignatius Loyola, July 31, 1556.

An image

2006-07-02T23:54:00.000-07:00

The following picture (not mine) made me recall Auden's terrible poem:

Musée des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

(W. H. Auden)

Personally, I think the picture possesses greater pathos than Peter Brueghel's "Fall of Icarus".

Beware the company you keep

2006-06-29T02:06:00.000-07:00

Need I say, I told you so?

2006-06-26T16:33:00.000-07:00

And I have been mocked as a Luddite for my non-negotiable refusal to carry a cell phone...

Who's laughing now?

Cell phone signals excite brain: study

Mon Jun 26, 11:25 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cell phone emissions excite the part of the brain cortex nearest to the phone, but it is not clear if these effects are harmful, Italian researchers reported on Monday.

Their study, published in the Annals of Neurology, adds to a growing body of research about mobile phones, their possible effects on the brain, and whether there is any link to cancer.

About 730 million cell phones are expected to be sold this year, according to industry estimates, and nearly 2 billion people around the world already use them.

Of these, more than 500 million use a type that emits electromagnetic fields known as Global System for Mobile communications or GSM radio phones. Their possible effects on the brain are controversial and not well understood.

Dr. Paolo Rossini of Fatebenefratelli hospital in Milan and colleagues used Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation or TMS to check brain function while people used these phones.

They had 15 young male volunteers use a GSM 900 cell phone for 45 minutes. In 12 of the 15, the cells in the motor cortex adjacent to the cell phone showed excitability during phone use but returned to normal within an hour.

The cortex is the outside layer of the brain and the motor cortex is known as the "excitable area" because magnetic stimulation has been shown to cause a muscle twitch.

The researchers stressed that they had not shown that using a cell phone is bad for the brain in any way, but people with conditions such as epilepsy, linked with brain cell excitability, could potentially be affected.

"It should be argued that long-lasting and repeated exposure to EMFs (electromagnetic frequencies) linked with intense use of cellular phones in daily life might be harmful or beneficial in brain-diseased subjects," they wrote.

"Further studies are needed to better circumstantiate these conditions and to provide safe rules for the use of this increasingly more widespread device."

Medical studies on cell phone use have provided mixed results. Swedish researchers found last year that using cell phones over time can raise the risk of brain tumors. But a study by Japan's four mobile telephone operators found no evidence that radio waves from the phones harmed cells or DNA.

The Dutch Health Council analyzed several studies and found no evidence that radiation from mobile phones was harmful.

(Source)

Oh, there's no need to eat crow now. There's plenty of time, years down the road, as you await your appointment with your oncologist.

Cheers.

Inspiration

2006-06-24T23:54:00.000-07:00

'Was supposed to go riding today, in 77 F (25 C) fog by the Pacific Ocean, but for some strange reason, I was in too dour a mood to leave even for so alluring a ride.

Later, while cleaning my bike, I discovered this:

Hitting that pothole at 46 mph (73.6 km/h) did leave a mark after all. The rim is toast. I guess I should be thankful it didn't fail during the ride. That would have been one expensive cab ride.

So my bum mood is now twice bummed. Great.

Then, I stumbled upon Lee T. Lau 's photo essay,

and Chris Alef's excellent video, "Comfortably Numb to Young Lust," on Comfortably Numb, a 14.4 mile (23 km) trail in Whistler, British Columbia:

I'm infected again :-)
Pine Mountain, here I come.

Bolinas - Fairfax Road Ride

2006-06-19T23:28:00.000-07:00

Blue skies, endless blue skies and the open road.

For the ride report, click on the image or here.

Graduation Eucharistic Liturgy

2006-06-16T22:08:00.000-07:00

It is a privilege to be able to contribute to this special mass.

Inside cover of the program: the lyrics to a song by David Haas.

The presider is Father Locatelli, President of Santa Clara University.

The opening song. I love this song. It is one of those with just the perfect mix of happiness, ecumenism, and zeal. Each time I sing it, I can't help but smile so broadly that my eyes disappear.

Next page.

Sitting down and taking a break during Rehearsal #2 as the early birds file in.

A very beautiful song, "Irish Blessing," by Lori True. I cried when I sang this during my graduation. It has come to the class of 2006 graduating seniors' turn to cry.

Earlier, in the morning during Rehearsal #1, when the hall was empty, Greg dedicated this song to us. Awww... Greg!

The score. All of us teared as he played a piano solo and sang softly to us in that cavernous hall.

Greg, our lovable Choral & Music Director, and me.

Thank you, darlings!
You were all wonderful!
:-)

I'm going to miss some of you dearly...
Godspeed!

Baccalaureate Mass

2006-06-16T14:00:00.000-07:00

A quick update:

Just got back from Rehearsal #1 for the 4 PM Baccalaureate Mass later in the afternoon today. Gobbling down a salad as I type this. Rehearsal #2 (full dress) is in exactly one hour. I hope I can find parking close by. Walking 1/2 a mile (800 m) in formal attire in this heat will be rather dreadful.

The larger congregation made it necessary to hold the mass in Levy Center.

A closer look at the stage.

The stage.

We are on the JumboTron as well!

Speakers galore. Hear us roar!

The view from my perspective.

One of the altos. The numbers on her t-shirt are real, by the way. And you wonder why some of the parents of the graduating seniors are crying :-P

OK, time change into my black Italian wool pants, white Egyptian cotton shirt, and red silk tie. (See? I told you: I do dress up. You just have to give me a good enough reason to.)

Gloria in excelsis Deo!

Mollycoddling

2006-06-12T23:54:00.000-07:00

A wonderful surprise I found in my inbox this morning:

To all the kids who were born in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and no one actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter, and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because...

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scrap and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendos, or X-boxes; no video games at all; no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet, and Internet chat rooms. We actually had friends outside of myspace.com--we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth, got chased by bees, and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door, rang the bell, or just yelled for them.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

These generations have produced some of the best risk takers, problem solvers and inventors ever.

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.

And YOU are one of them!

CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?

Steepness (and a cute babe)

2006-06-10T19:28:00.000-07:00

What's a technical downhill?
And how steep is steep?

Well, the pictures say everything.

Control.

Confidence.

Peer pressure.

Faith.

Trust.

Wade Simmons, Committed.

View from the cockpit.

Rock and moss.

Rock and ladders.

Twin Arches, Amasa.

Sub Rock, Sedona.

Bartlett's Wash.

Bartlett's Wash II. This guy is 55 years old.

What happens if you screw up

Gentlemen, we have lift off!

Attempting recovery.

Unsuccessful! (Watches buddy tumble down the hill).

Females who also ride

Visualizing the line.

Going for it.

Another one.

Protective gear

Pressure Suit.

Crash Pad.

Elbow and Forearm Guards.

Knee and Shin Guards.

Kira hiking up with bike, all 112 lbs (51 kg) of her.

Mentally preparing for the downhill. (Her body armor is apparent under her clothes.)

Going for it. She's got more cojones than many men I know.

Mount Montara Ride

2006-06-08T00:28:00.000-07:00

A scenic ride on a misty Sunday.

For the ride report, click on the image or here.

Requiem for the People

2006-06-06T22:54:00.000-07:00

Requiem for the People, a new work by Santa Clara University Composition Professor Dr. Pamela Layman Quist, will be premiered by the Santa Clara Chorale, the Santa Clara University Choral Ensembles, and the Mission Chamber Orchestra on Friday, June 2, 2006 at 8:00p.m. in the Mission Church. This twenty-five minute work for chorus and orchestra was commissioned by the Santa Clara Chorale following an invitation from the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra to perform in the Dvorak Festival in Prague, Czech Republic.

“It’s a thrill to be premiering this marvelous work here and in Europe,” said Thomas Colohan, director of both the Santa Clara Chorale and the Santa Clara University Choral Ensembles, who will be touring with Requiem for the People later in June. “The work is sophisticated and gorgeous, and the singers absolutely love singing this piece. Dr. Quist has made a significant contribution to the choral repertoire.”

Starting with an accompanied soprano solo, Requiem for the People developed into an intricate, six-movement form inspired by personal events combined with the public tragedy of September 11, 2001. “Requiem for the People addresses a range of universal spiritual thought and human emotion, and I intend for this work to have meaning for a diverse listening audience,” explains Dr. Quist. “Each movement contains a dedication to a different group of people whose lives and deaths have held great significance for us in varying ways.”

An accomplished composer and teacher, Dr. Quist describes the compositional process as “a bit like describing why one decided to give birth to a child. Some creations are dreamt of and planned—some just happen. Both kinds are blessings.” In addition to her work at SCU, Dr. Quist co-founded the Walden School, a summer school and music festival for young composers. She received her education at the Peabody Conservatory of Music, and in 1984, received a Doctoral degree in music composition from Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Quist’s compositions from recent years include Revival for guitarist, Bryce Dessner (2004); Ice Dance for Clogs (2003); Rune for cello and piano (2000); Caelestis formam gloriae, a choral work with string quartet commissioned for Transfiguration Sunday (1999); and Dyad for oboe/english horn and piano (1998). Her most performed work to date remains the 1996 solo piano work Homage.

[ . . . ]

The concert will also include Mozart’s Mass in C minor “The Great,” in celebration of Mozart’s 250th birthday.
(Source)

To catch the premier of a new composition before it embarks on a tour of Europe! What a treat!

Program Note

Lyrics & Translation

The concert was held on a cool Friday night at the Mission Santa Clara de Asís. Conducted by the über-talented Music Director, Thomas Colohan, the power--and yet, agility and delicacy--of the 154-strong chorale was breathtaking. Soloists: 1 soprano, 2 mezzo sopranos, 2 tenors, and 1 bass. The main body: 23 first sopranos, 24 second sopranos, 28 first altos, 22 second altos, 9 first tenors, 9 second tenors, 21 baritones, and 12 basses.

As there is a very small chance that someone in Europe (who is also planning to attend the concert) is reading this, I will reveal the surprise at the end of Requiem for the People: at conclusion of the 5th movement, Benedictus, all 154 members of the choir leave the stage. They proceed to form a single line, encircling--and facing--the audience. All around you, you see them. Even the exits are blocked. The lights dim. There is a general feeling of being trapped, hemmed in.

The choir members--men in their crisp tuxedos, women in full-length dresses--uniform in their black attire, stand there, silent, sentinel, seemingly a wordless reminiscence of horrors past. The minutes tick by, but they do not move, smile, or say anything. A few people start hyperventilating.

Then, rising and falling in volume, they begin to mutter, whisper, hiss and rasp in otherworldly voices. One side would mute, letting the other side rise in volume, and then the process will repeat itself. These would have been easily dismissed as cheap theatrics if not for its efficacy in making your hair stand on end.

As the mutterings and hissing mercifully fade away and the lights brighten once more, the chorale, still encircling the audience, launch into the final movement with a crescendo:

VI. Agnus Dei

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi,
dona eis requiem.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi,
dona eis requiem sempiternam.
Lux aeterna luceat eis, Domine,
cum sanctis tuis in aeternum,
quia pius es.
Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine,
et lux perpetua luceat eis,
cum sanctis tuis in aeternum,
quia pius es.

Translation

VI. Agnus Dei

Lamb of God, who takest away the sins
of the world, grant them rest.
Lamb of God, who takest away the sins
of the world, grant them everlasting rest.
May the eternal light shine on them, O Lord.
with Thy saints forever,
because Thou art merciful.
Grant the dead eternal rest, O Lord,
and may the perpetual light shine on them,
with Thy saints forever,
because Thou art merciful.

We were blown away.

Some of the audience decided to call it a night after this, their emotional capital exhausted by the disturbing prelude to the final movement of Requiem for the People. Those of us who chose to remain after the intermission were treated to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "Great" Mass in C minor for soloists, choir and organ--which was doubly appropriate given that this year is the the composer's 250th birthday, and that the concert is being held in a church.

Mozart composed the "Great" Mass in C minor as a wedding gift for his wife, Constanze Weber. Constanze was a soprano, and this probably explains for the many soprano parts in this piece. In fact, when it was first performed on August 25, 1783 in St. Peter's Church, Salzburg, Constanze herself took one of the soprano solo parts. Sadly, Mozart died before he could complete the entire work.

The soprano solos were unbelievably gorgeous. In the first movement, the chorus open 'Kyrie' somberly, but is quickly followed by a soaring soprano solo in the 'Christe' section; the two then join together to complete the final 'Kyrie' portion of the movement. Later, there is a stunning duet for two sopranos and accompanying strings in the 'Domine Deus.'

The evening concluded with Professor Quist receiving a standing ovation for her composition. Her piece rendered all the more gorgeous by the wonderful musicians, of course.

Emotional leeches

2006-06-03T15:00:00.000-07:00

Rant:

There will always be all sorts of fallout from the end of a relationship. Thus, it is of no surprise that friends of the ex-couple will parcel out their allegiance in the aftermath. That said, however, it is a basic understanding that once one has chosen a side, one should expect none of the privileges of friendship from the party forsaken. But, oh no, there exist some individuals out there who expect to have their cake and eat it too.

Take the example of an individual by the pseudonym of "Z." Z was a mutual friend, made when I was part of a pair. We had a lot of good times with Z. When the relationship ended, Z chose her side by ceasing to respond to any of my emails. That's fine, and definitely within her rights. I bear no grudge for that.

Occasionally, Z would get into situations (like most of us do) and end up falling sick, and would then begin milking everyone on her address list for sympathy. For some unknown reason, even though I am deemed unworthy to deign a response from her, I qualify to be a donor of sympathy for this suffering creature. My charitable responses and outpourings of goodwill never garner a reply, but they must possess some value because my email address remains on her address list.

And so, I continue to receive the occasional odd email seeking sympathy. I am expected to pour out words of comfort and encouragement because Z has twisted her wrist, broken her arm, foot, funny bone, nostril hair, etc.

These are neither friends nor acquaintances. These are parasites--emotional leaches. Henceforth, Z and her ilk will be blocked as spammers from my accounts. I do not want to hear about how you were nearly admitted into the ICU because of that paper cut, etc.

If a real tragedy to you occurs, rest assured that I will get wind of it from traditional channels. E.g. the Obituaries.

Mount Tamalpais Ride II

2006-05-31T15:38:00.000-07:00

Memorial weekend ride.

For the ride report, click on the image or here.

Obesity Trends among US Adults between 1985 and 2004

2006-05-28T23:54:00.000-07:00

Definitions

Obesity: having a very high amount of body fat in relation to lean body mass, or a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 30 or higher.

Body Mass Index (BMI): a measure of an adult's weight in relation to his or her height, specifically the adult's weight in kilograms divided by the square of his or her height in meters.

Source of data

The data shown in these maps were collected through CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). Each year, state health departments use standard procedures to collect data through a series of monthly telephone interviews with US adults.

During the past 20 years there has been a dramatic increase in obesity in the United States. In 1985 only a few states were participating in CDC's BRFSS and providing obesity data. In 1991, four states had obesity prevalence rates of 15-19 percent and no states had rates at or above 20 percent.

In 2004, 7 states had obesity prevalence rates of 15-19 percent; 33 states had rates of 20-24 percent; and 9 states had rates more than 25 percent.

Citations

BRFSS, CDC.
Mokdad, A H, et al. JAMA 1999; 282:16.
___. JAMA 2001; 286:10.
___. JAMA 2003; 289:1.

PowerPoint or text-only (Adobe Acrobat) presentation of this data can be obtained here.

Courage, my dear!

2006-05-23T23:48:00.000-07:00

Sang for the Sacrament of Confirmation today. 31 Santa Clara students received their confirmation. Presiding was Father Gerdenio "Sonny" Manuel. Formal attire in the school colors was required (red, white, and black) on this special occasion, so I was uncharacteristically well dressed. For a moment, I actually considered wearing Primal Wear's printed spandex cycling jersey,

but decided that I might very well be crucified for it.

I must admit I was a little taken aback, even daunted, when I walked into the church: there were only 3 tenors (including myself) today. All the others were vastly more experienced than me (some are even music majors). Talk about pressure. I was tempted to come up with an excuse (e.g. sudden diarrhea, apartment on fire, appendicitis, etc.) and flee.

But I stayed--and had a great time. Once I realized that it wasn't about me, and that I was simply there to contribute to something infinitely greater, I relaxed--and sang.

And so, the small choir--all 6 of us: 1 soprano, 1 alto, 3 tenors, 1 bass--sang on that sunny, breezy, Californian evening. At times, I would switch to augment the bass. E.g. Veni Sancte Spiritus. As the mass progressed, it got even better: we sang one of my favorites, John D. Baker's "Litany of the Saints" during the "Laying on of Hands" ceremony.

After the mass, a number of people in the congregation actually came up and told us we sang beautifully. What can I say? Our Choral Director works his magic all the time :-)

What a glorious evening!

Thank you, darlings!

Postscript
300th post!

Meme: 24 random facts / things / habits about myself

2006-05-22T18:30:00.000-07:00

Tagged by takchek for a meme:

write a post with 24 weird facts/things/habits about yourself (not in chronological order)

~~Checking the statue of limitations in multiple countries is a lot of work, dude!~~ OK, here we go...

1.) Theater classes in college aside, apart from one role in secondary school (high school), whenever I am in a play, I'm always cast as a female. I wore size 26 skirts in primary school productions, and size 29 in secondary school plays.

2.) While waiting for NS (military conscription) after junior college in Singapore, I worked in a club, and had to dodge being groped by amorous gays on crowded Saturday nights.

3.) When I ride the CalTrain to San Francisco in spandex tights with my bicycle, I often get phone numbers hastily scrawled on scraps of paper, or business cards, thrust into my hands from men.

4.) I am not offended, neither do I fly into a homicidal rage when 2.) and 3.) happen. I am flattered (But I don't swing that way. Thanks.)

5.) When I was 9, while waiting at the bus stop outside my school, a family of stray dogs walked by. Being mischievous and stupid, I tried to startle them by stomping my foot and to scare them. The adult dogs were undaunted, but one of their puppies shied away from me, keeping her eyes on me and running to the road. She was promptly run over by a car. And then, a minute later, the wheels of a heavy truck crushed her head. A gentleman then crossed the road and dragged the dying animal to the median. He never said a word, but gave me this dark look of anger. The mother dog sat on the pavement, looking at her puppy for a long time. I can never forget that the puppy's tail wagging in the air, long after its head had been crushed. It still haunts me today.

6.) I was extremely rebellious in primary and secondary school. For example, in church, there were many times I had to swallow my gum when the form teacher turned around, spots my chewing and yells, "Ben! Are you chewing gum in church? Open your mouth!" So, I can tell you from experience that if you swallow your gum, you will not die.

7.) Due to 6.), I was caned more times than I can remember in primary and secondary school.

8.) I threw my first Molotov cocktail at the tender age of 11. The neighbors actually came running out.

9.) At the age of 11, having removed the sewer cover, I set my childhood buddy's brother's turd on fire. (You will be surprised what a bored kid can do with 2 liters of petrol (gasoline) and a disposable lighter).

10.) I qualified for the GEP program in Primary 3, but my Dad decided to keep me with the rest of the regular kids so that I will turn out normal. (Guess it didn't work, eh, Dad?)

11.) The first "big book" (more than 1000 pages) I read was Stephen King's IT. I was 9 years old. No thanks to Pennywise the murderous clown, my notion of clowns being happy, friendly creatures was forever destroyed. Later in the novel, when Beverly Marsh takes on all 6 of her friends, I became well acquainted with the word, "orgy." Boy, did the English teacher love me.

12.) I had an awful time learning the Chinese language in school. Some Chinese teachers would tell me I'm dumb, others would accuse me of being a sell out for doing better in English than in Chinese.

13.) Due to 12.), together with being bullied by Chinese-speaking pupils from the Extended (primary school) and Normal (secondary school) streams, I developed a lifelong rancor toward the Chinese language and culture.

14.) I hated English literature in secondary school. (I read every Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Tom Clancy, Jack Higgins, and Stephen King book out in the market though).

15.) I collected a bunch of relatively rare comics in my teens, all slipped between acid-free backing boards and in mylar plastic bags. Some of them: #1 to #67 Sandman, #1 to #48 Punisher, #1 to #80 Hellblazer (which the movie, "Constantine," is based on). All 1st edition, 1st print. Once, when a relative stayed over, he took some of them for "bathroom reading." That was when I first experienced what homicidal rage felt like.

16.) Habit: I like to wake up earlier than my girlfriend and spend the longest time admiring her sleeping so softly in her sleep.

17.) My preference towards the fairer sex is peculiar (and may offend some / many). I am attracted to women who are skinny, lean, even waif-like. Calista Flockhart is hot. Sarah Jessica Parker is pretty hot. Amy Acker is hot. Gwyneth Paltrow is ow la la hot.

That is not to say that I don't like athletes. Fit women who are lean are also hot. Maria Sharapova is hot. Niki Gudex is hot.

I am very intolerant of excess body fat. Jennifer Lopez is fat. Rosie McGowan, Drew Barrymore, and beyond (e.g. Ann Nicole Smith and the like) belong to the category of livestock. Moo! (That's especially for you, Vicky! Muah!)

18.) My weight ranges from 148 - 152 lbs (67 - 69 kg). In the picture of me in the profile, I am carrying 110+ lbs (50+ kg) of gear. There are 2 SCUBA tanks on my back, and one hanging off the left shoulder strap.

19.) In an effort to increase strength with endurance, lately I have been going about my daily activities with ankle weights. It's at 5.5 lbs (2.5 kg) on each leg now. Eventually, I hope to increase them to 11 lbs (5 kg) each. I only take them off to shower, bike, swim, or sleep. I do everything else with them: shop, go to the movies, attend mass, hike, drive, etc. I remind myself daily to be sure to first remove them before jumping into a lake or river to rescue a swimmer in distress.

20.) On my 2nd bicycle ride in USA, I was led up a 2800 ft (854 m) mountain by a schoolmate, who only said, "This is an interesting hill." When I returned to Singapore for summer vacation, I led a cycling buddy up a 700m (2296 ft) mountain in Malaysia, telling him, "This is an interesting hill." (Sandbagging is oh, so fun!)

21.) I made my rounds going from one Protestant church to another in my late teens. One of them was a crazy non-denominational church in Katong that exercised incredible control over its congregation. Members were not allowed to watch TV, listen to the radio, go to the movies, or associate with people outside the church. I left when they tried to make me give up my Metallica, White Snake, Iron Maiden, and Depeche Mode collection.

22.) I briefly dated 2 professors.

23.) I earned professional SCUBA certification before I obtained a driver's license.

24.) I have been in a ménage à trois.

*25.) Bonus entry. I do not like to attend weddings. I dislike them to the point of offering any excuse I can cook up. E.g. booking a last-minute liveaboard dive trip to the Catalina Islands so that I can say if I do not show up, I forfeit the US$600 deposit (which is true, by the way). I detest weddings for the same reason an ex-girlfriend sniffed at musicals--there is something unnaturally contrived about them. It's like being in Disneyland on Sept 11th 2001. "Hey, everybody! This is the happiest place on earth! Be happy!" Bah, humbug!

Another reason: with 43% of new marriages ending in divorce, why should I waste my time dressing up, shopping for presents, and wasting an entire day at a ceremony that has a success rate closer to a coin flip than some divinely sanctioned event? (Don't even get me started about diamonds. I have been researching on the diamond trade since 1999. You do not want to engage me on this topic. Trust me.)

That is why I rather attend funerals. At least there's a lower chance that the (late) guest of honor will pull a Lazarus on me and render the occasion meaningless.

No one is going to get tagged with this. Feel free to take the meme if you are sufficiently bored / exhibitionistic / finally accepting responsibility and possible incarceration.

El Retiro San Iñigo Ride

2006-05-17T20:00:00.000-07:00

Prologue

This will be a strange write up. It is a bike ride, and yet it is not. It's more of a pilgrimage of sorts, a trip down memory lane; and yet it is a journey, a journey of renewal.

'Decided to ride to El Retiro San Iñigo today. Covering 35 acres and located in the hills above Los Altos, El Retiro San Iñigo is a Catholic Retreat Center administered by the Jesuit Order.

Map of today's ride. 652 track points (blue diamonds) laid by the GPS unit.

TOPO!'s elevation profile.

A stone pillar with a brass plaque marks the entrance to the Jesuit Retreat Center.

Looking at the Santa Cruz Mountain Range. Skyline Boulevard runs on its ridge. I was somewhere up there on a previous ride.

A path I walked a long time ago.

And one that I remember well. It was cold. It was wet. In the depths of late fall.

Our Lady of Guatemala.

Closer.

Donated by the SFPD.

Flowers in bloom.

It is quiet.

You can hear the wind between the crunch of oak leaves under your feet.

Plenty of solitude for contemplation...

and meditation.

The Agony in the Garden.

Via Crucis. Figures are cast in bronze. In particular, the detail of the rope and bandages is remarkable.

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

On top of the hill: St. Robert's Hall.

When you search for me, you will find me;
when you search wholeheartedly for me,
I shall let you find me.

(Jeremiah 29:13)

On the 12th of November 2000, I returned to the Roman Catholic Church, and had my first Eucharist here, with Father Peter Filice (now the superior of the Jesuit community at Loyola High), Father Luis F. Calero, Father Harris, and Sister Ingrid Honoré-Lallande. This place is very special, very sacred to me.

St. Joseph's Hall, living quarters for retreatants. The rooms are austere. A bible, a crucifix, a bed, a writing desk, and a bathroom. That's it.

Close up of the mural.

I lived in the room on the far right for 3 days in November 2000. It was a silent retreat. That is, apart from a daily 30-minute spiritual counseling session with your priest, you do not talk to anyone except God. You do not bring your cell phone here. You leave it in the car. No radio. No CD player. No GameBoy. There is you (there is silence) and there is God.

Each day at 7 AM, before going for breakfast, I would walk up this slope to St. Robert's Hall in the cold for morning prayer.

Dining room.

Rossi Chapel.

Interior of Rossi Chapel.

Saint Ignatius of Loyola.

What is the specialty, focus, and distinguishing feature of every Jesuit retreat house? What is the Jesuit differentiator? The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius.

Sitting in quiet and contemplation in Rossi Chapel, retreatants are inspired by the stained glass window above the altar depicting St. Ignatius in the cave of Manresa, documenting his spiritual quest — a document that later became The Spiritual Exercises. What is frequently not observed is the Latin phrase across the bottom of the window: St. Ignatius Loyola, Exercitiorum Spiritualium Omnium Patronus Coelestis. Translated, this reads as follows: St. Ignatius Loyola, Heavenly Patron of All Spiritual Exercises. The Catholic concept of a retreat stems from these Exercises.

So what are The Spiritual Exercises and how did they come about? Born in the Basque province of Azpeitia in 1491, Iñigo de Loyola was a soldier and a man of the world, reportedly given to gambling and swordplay. Wounded defending the fortress of Pamplona against the French in 1521, he was sent back to the castle of Loyola to recuperate. Bored during his recovery, he resorted to the only books in the castle: one on the life of Christ and one on the saints. This experience was the beginning of his conversion and the beginning of spiritual discernment.

His search for spiritual growth continued, and by the age of 33, he had determined to study for the priesthood. In 1522 while on a pilgrimage, he stopped along the river Cardoner at a cave near the town of Manresa. Intending to stay only a few days, he remained there for ten months. It was there at Manresa that he began to document his spiritual experiences, a practice similar to the spiritual journaling that many do today.

Tranformed as he was by the experience at Manresa, he could not refrain from sharing this experience. While studying at the University of Paris, he directed fellow students for 30-day periods in the process of spiritual growth that he had developed at Manresa, the process that we now call The Spiritual Exercises. Eventually he and the five friends he had directed in these Exercises decided to place themselves at the disposal of the Pope for whatever he wanted them to do, not as a religious order, but as individual priests. It was not until 1539 that they decided to form a community. On September 27, 1540, Pope Paul III gave formal approval to the new Society of Jesus.

The Spiritual Exercises which marked the beginning of Iñigo’s conversion and which were the foundation for the Society of Jesus are still key in the formation of a Jesuit and still basic to the Jesuit ministry.

(William J. Rewak, S.J.)

Father Rewak is the previous Executive Director of El Retiro San Iñigo. Before that, he served as President of Santa Clara University from 1976 to 1988. He now teaches English at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

My favorite stained glass piece in the chapel.

At the end of the lawn, at the base of a slope, lies The Grotto.

Close up.

Roses, roses, and more roses.

Late in the afternoon, on the 3rd day, after the retreat came to a close, we had a mini celebration in the Rotunda. Father Calero's fingers danced on an old Steinway while the wind howled and the November skies opened up, pouring bucketfuls outside. It was surreal. (Photo credit: Father Thomas Bracco)

A long time ago, sitting here on a chilly autumn morning, I wrote in my journal:

One must be able to differentiate between hope and expectation: for hope is never disappointed, and ever self-renewing; expectation, on the other hand, demands fulfillment, or else despairs. "For hope we were saved . . .. [H]ope that is seen is not hope . . . [I]f we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience" (Rom. 8:24-5). Hence, in my relationship with my girlfriend, my parents, God, as well as attitude towards my future studies, I hope for the best — under the generosity of the Almighty — but expect nothing. Trust in the Lord, and he shall provide. "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want" (Ps. 23:1).

It is only through justification through faith that we — I — find peace (Rom. 5:1), the peace that I have so fervently and tearfully — desperately — sought, all my life. Now I come to understand that God has been preparing me all along, to be worthy of the measure of hope, which he has held in reserve for me, but first, I must pass through the furnace of suffering, before endurance becomes my mettle; out which character is forged; out of which is polished; and shining, finally emerges hope. It is this hope — true, tested, and triumphant — that shall never "disappoint" (Rom. 5:5), never fail.

Just as Jesus heals the blind man at Bethsaida progressively by stages, we must not expect healing from the Lord in one step, for we are to nurse and cherish this "hope" with "patience" (Rom. 8:25). All will come in good time; all we need is faith. — 9:45 AM 12 November 2000

It is thus fitting that, more than half a decade later, I return to this holy place on a sunny spring day for a bike ride, a hike, prayer, contemplation, reflection, thanksgiving, and even a friendly chat with the Executive Director, Father Tom Carroll.

On the 11.1 miles (17.8 km) back, I rode as if the hand of God himself was pushing me, averaging 20.6 mph (33 km/h). I could not ask for a happier birthday. Alleluia.

DATA

Total distance: cyclo-computer 22.1 miles (35.36 km) / GPS 21.84 miles (34.94 km) / TOPO! 21.85 miles (34.96 km).
Total elevation climbed: Altimeter 690 ft (210.4 m) / GPS + TOPO! 456 ft (139 m).
Temperature range: 54° F to 68° F (12.2° C to 20° C).
Fluids consumed: 8 fl. oz. of water.

Ride conducted solo.

Cutting or pruning?

2006-05-14T23:54:00.000-07:00

We sang Ubi Caritas tonight.

Such a coincidence. I was just humming it while making lunch earlier today.

Tonight's homily was especially relevant to me. One of the most painful emotional experiences in life is to be cut off from those who we care about; cut off from those who matter to us; cut off from friends, lovers, family, etc. It is a legitimate fear. The reason for being cut off are many, justified and unjustifiable. E.g. doing the wrong things, saying the wrong things, or sometimes, simply being yourself could very well be wrong. What then?

Every spring, the wisteria in the Mission Gardens go into full bloom. It is gorgeous to look at, and an incredible experience to walk under and amidst the violet petals. The fragrance is intoxicating. And yet, before all the flowers wilt and fall off, the gardeners prune them all away, leaving only the gnarly, twisted vines behind. Why? Because the gardeners know that if the wisteria is not pruned, next year's blooms will not be as bountiful and beautiful.

When we are hurting, how then, do we tell if it is from being pruned or being cut (off)?

Well, it all depends on where you are rooted--and if you still are--after the experience, isn't it? Sometimes the pruning is done for our good: the end of an enabling or emotionally-abusive relationship, for example; or finally having the breathing space--the freedom--to be who we really are. We should never be false to ourselves to retain friends or lovers. That is emotional and intellectual slavery. In this age of spineless relativism and duplicitous political correctness, it is more important than ever to possess the courage and moral rectitude to stand up for what we believe in, and stick by them, come hell or high water.

Mother's Day

2006-05-14T19:35:00.000-07:00

It's Hug Your Mama Day again! Hard to believe it has been a year. What did you do for Mother's Day? Did you send your mother a card? Made her breakfast? ~~Set the kitchen on fire?~~ Perhaps take her out to dinner?

Looking back, I think sons have it easier growing up with their mothers. With daughters, there are the inevitable conflicts of, "I can't believe you dare to wear that skirt outside the house! Get back to your room and change into something ~~less obscene~~ more presentable, young lady!" Or, "What do you mean you don't want to learn how to cook? Get your butt in the kitchen!" Or, "Why are you dating such riffruff?"

With sons, the only thing you have to worry about is learning to divide your attention and affections between your mother and your (serious) girlfriend so that neither feels left out. Unless your first name is Norman, last name, Bates, that's it.

Growing up, I made mom worry a lot. No, it wasn't clubbing (I found it immensely boring and meaningless after a couple of weeks) or the people I associated with. Rather, it was the places I would go and the solitude I prefer. While mothers are worried about their sons smoking, drinking, clubbing and mixing with the wrong company, my mom would be worried about me getting hit by a vehicle cycling around Singapore, Malaysia, or Indonesia, getting lost in the forest of Upper Pierce Reservoir (where I love to hike, bike or fish), Mandai, or drowning in some swamp or body of water. Every mother has to worry over something, I suppose.

These days, the only thing mom nags about is the need for me to be more presentable in my dressing. You see, if I wear my circa 1990 Eric Clapton Journeyman Tour T-shirt and jeans, I consider that presentable. That T-shirt doesn't have many wash cycles before it starts showing holes. You better be damn well touched if I show up in that. Anything more formal than that, you better be lying in a casket.

I fail to see the reasoning behind this FOB-ish race to be constantly dressed up. Oh, you are all decked out in Banana Republic, Nordstrom, Polo Ralph, etc. and you are going to... the mall (in the famous words of my ex-housemate, "What are you? 13?"), Starbucks, Safeway, Albertsons, the post office? This is almost as bad as the bengs that wear $2000 Versace pants and take the bus / taxi / subway.

Perhaps you might want to read up on how, in the days of colonial administration, students in Africa had to wear starched shirts, pants, leather shoes and ties in the heat and dust. Or how shorts and sandals continue to be banned in universities in a certain tropical-island-city-state. (Which begs the question: are you trendy, or are you really just dressed-up sheep?)

My saving grace? If you want to see me dressed up, come to the Mission Santa Clara de Asís on Sunday nights during the academic year. Mom has seen it and seems satisfied with that.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom :-)
Wish you are here to see me sing tonight...

Fundamentalism, conceit, and eschatology

2006-05-13T18:35:00.000-07:00

'Been reading Fr. Richard P. McBrien's 1344-paged tome, Catholicism (New Study Edition). Father Mcbrien is Crowley-O'Brien-Walter professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame. It is noteworthy that the book is printed without an imprimatur. A section of interest so far:

The Second Vatican Council, in the same Pastoral Constitution, appropriately viewed the crisis of modernization as a special opportunity for the Church. In the face of such developments, it is said, more and more people are raising the most basic questions about the meaning of life and raising them with a new sharpness and urgency: "What is humanity? What is this sense of sorrow, of evil, of death, which continues to exist despite so much progress? What is the purpose of these victories, purchased at so high a cost? What can we offer to society, what can we expect from it? What follows this earthly life?"

Fundamentalism

But not everyone shares the positive and even optimistic outlook of the council's Pastoral Constitution, Gaudium et spes ("Joy and Hope"). Modernity's most determined adversary is fundamentalism, whose face is both Catholic and Protestant, Christian and non-Christian. According to two scholars who have made the most extensive study of worldwide fundamentalism, religious fundamentalisms are "movements that in a direct and self-conscious way fashion a response to modernity" (Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, The Glory and the Power: The Fundamentalist Challenge to the Modern World, Boston: Beacon Press, 1992, p. 10). It is not that fundamentalists reject all of the products of modernity. They take full advantage of its remarkable achievements in transportation, communications, medical science, and the like. But they are antagonistic towards the values that seem to accompany these advances. One such value is the superiority of reason over revelation as a means of knowledge; another is the superiority of freedom over an imposed conformity of thought and behavior.

Not until modernity made inroads into religious communities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries did fundamentalism emerge as a major force within the churches, first within Protestantism, more recently within Catholicism, and eventually within Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and other non-Christian religions. The fundamentalists viewed religious modernists as carriers of the dreaded disease of secular modernism from the outside world. But the religious modernists were regarded as more dangerous than secular modernists because they could manipulate the community's religious symbols and practices from within.

Unlike religious conservatives who are content to keep modernism at arm's length while recommitting themselves to traditional teachings and practices, fundamentalists dig in their heels and fight back. "That is their mark," Marty and Appleby observe. "They want to reclaim a place they feel has been taken from them. They would restore what are presumed or claimed to be old and secure ways retrieved from a world they are losing. Fundamentalism will do what it takes to assure their future in a world of their own defining" (17).

Such a world-building endeavor requires charismatic and authoritarian leadership, as well as a disciplined inner core of staff and a large group of sympathizers. All follow a rigorous sociomoral code that sets them apart from nonbelievers and from compromisers within the fold. Fundamentalists set boundaries, name and investigate their enemies, seek recruits and converts, and often imitate the very forces they oppose. "Fundamentalism is, in other words, a religious way of being that manifests itself as a strategy by which beleaguered believers attempt to preserve their distinctive identity as a people or group" (34).

Thomas F. O'Meara, O.P., provides a description and critique of Catholic fundamentalism in his Fundamentalism: A Catholic Perspective (1990). Catholic fundamentalism, he suggests, is a corruption of Catholic values, especially of sacramentality. It sees the world as evil and dangerous, forgetting that God is its Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. It limits the manifestation of grace to the extraordinary and even the bizarre, forgetting that God is present to ordinary people, in ordinary situations of life. And it limits access to God's grace to a chosen few, the righteous within the larger community of the unrighteous, forgetting that God wishes to save all and has won salvation for all in the redemptive work of Jesus Christ (80-93).

Catholic fundamentalism has two forms: biblical and doctrinal. Catholic biblical fundamentalism, like Protestant biblical fundamentalism, interprets Scripture "literally" and selectively. But Catholic proof-texts differ from Protestant proof-texts. For Catholics, "You are Peter . . ." (Matthew 16:18-19) is the hermeneutical prism through which all else in the Bible is to be read. Catholic doctrinal fundamentalism interprets the official teachings of the Church "literally" (which is to say unhistorically) and selectively. Like worldwide fundamentalism, Catholic fundamentalism tends to be militant in style, and more antagonistic to the "enemies within" than to those outside.

The council's Pastoral Constitution urges a different approach. The Church's mission "to shed on the whole world the radiance of the gospel message, and to unify under one Spirit all people of whatever nature, race, or culture" requires that within the Church itself there be "mutual esteem, reverence, and harmony" and a "full recognition of lawful diversity." This imposes upon all members the need for dialogue. "For the bonds which unite the faithful are mightier than anything which divides them. Hence, let there be unity in what is necessary, freedom in what is unsettled, and charity in any case." (92-5)

Thomas F. O'Meara's critique and description of fundamentalism struck me in particular, not with Catholic fundamentalism (which I admit I have never encountered), but with the more common--and virulent--strain: Protestant fundamentalism. In my (limited) experience with a significant number of Protestant churches, in particular, evangelical types, O'Meara's words fit their practices to a T. They preach a world view of the physical realm as a constant battleground between good and evil, where, lurking behind every corner, is Satan ready to trip them, tempt them with sin, ensnare their souls, and cart them off to Hell.

Not to contribute any more to the existing schism, but I have two major problems with this doctrine: to the pastor and other church leaders, "Are you preaching salvation and grace, or are you marketing fear?" I must admit the "fire and brimstone" approach never did much for me. Secondly, such an approach, I suspect, subtly appeals to--and indulges in--an unacknowledged narcissism in the congregation. I.e. "Oh, look at me! I am so important--my soul is so important--that Satan himself has to brainstorm 24/7 to try and sway me over to his side!" Oh, the conceit! Sorry to burst your bubble, my liege, but, chances are, you are just a 9-to-5 Joe Blow or plain Jane on a planet with 6.5+ billion other humans. Even if the Devil, over-clocking his neurons, manages to sway you over to the dark side, you will never be in a position to inflict the type of harm and evil as say, Adolf Hitler or Pol Pot. The pinnacle of your criminal career--should you turn evil--is probably the ignominy of being tackled and handcuffed on "COPS."

Even then, Erik Cartman will receive more airtime in his 5 minutes as Hitler than you.

Oh, the sheer audacity of imagining God and Satan locked in one titanic struggle after another, in a bid for your priceless soul!

In your dreams, pal.

Get over yourself. You are not that important.

"Oh! I'm constipated this morning! Oh lawdy! The Devil is after me!"

"No, dumbass. He isn't. Eat more vegetables."

The other problem, not mentioned in the quoted passage, is the eschatological bent in many of these churches. Every Sunday, they close their eyes, and submitting to a tide of mass hysterics, sing about how this world sucks / blows, and they can hardly wait to leave this all behind.

Newsflash I: God created this world. It is not all evil. Do some good while you are down here, ya? Closing your eyes, wishing it, and singing about it isn't going to bring about your journey much sooner. ~~Crossing the street with your eyes closed might.~~

Newsflash II: This fixation with eschatology isn't anything new. It has been done before:

Christians in the 1st century AD believed the end of the world would come during their lifetime. Jesus in Mark 13:8 compared the end of the world with a mother's birth pain, and the image implied the world was already pregnant with its own destruction, but no one but God knows when it will happen. When the converts of Paul in Thessalonica were persecuted by the Roman Empire, they believed the end was upon them. However, doubt rose when as early as the 90s Christians said, "We have heard these things [of the end of the world] even in the days of our fathers, and look, we have grown old and none of them has happened to us". In the 130s Justin Martyr declared God was delaying the end of the world because he wished for Christianity to become a world religion. In the 250s Cyprian wrote that Christian sins of that time were a prelude and proof that the end was near.

However, by the 3rd century most Christians believed the End was beyond their own lifetime; Jesus, it was believed, had denounced attempts to divine the future, to know the "times and seasons", and such attempts to predict the future were discouraged; yet the End was given a date with the help of Jewish traditions in the Six Ages of the World. Using this system, the End was fixed at 202, but when the date passed, the date was changed to AD 500. After AD 500 the importance of the End as a part of Christianity was marginalized, though it continues to be stressed during the season of Advent. (Source)

Also, check this out: Timeline of unfulfilled Christian Prophecy.

Anyone remember the proclamations that the end is nigh around 1999? And then when it didn't, they came up with some crazy explanation that it is actually 2001 because of the way the years are counted. And then when 2001 rolled along, they all disappeared into the woodwork.

More here, from Encyclopedia Britannica Online.

The danger of fixating on the endtimes is this: what happens when it doesn't end?? History is rife with examples of religious sects that, having predicted the endtimes, and discovering that it didn't arrive as promised, chose to bring about their own: Jim Jones with 914 of his followers in the jungles of Guyana ; the Japanese doomsday cult, Aum Shinrikyo, which decided to bring some of their fellow japanese citizens along with them by releasing sarin gas in the subway; 48 members of the Order of the Solar Temple were dressed in ceremonial robes, had plastic bags over their heads, and each shot in the head; other members were shot, poisoned or smothered; Heaven's Gate, the UFO cult, whose followers wore Nike shoes, drank cocktails of phenobarbital and vodka, and put plastic bags over their heads so that their souls could be picked up by the "mothership" hiding behind Comet Hale-Bopp; the list goes on.

You are here for the time being.
Make this world a better place.

And you can see them there,
On Sunday morning
They stand up and sing about
what it's like up there
They call it paradise
I don't know why
You call someplace paradise,
kiss it goodbye
("The Last Resort," The Eagles)

Cut and run? Or stay and rot?

2006-05-11T23:54:00.000-07:00

Best thread I've read this week:

WAAHHH! Mid Life Crisis

Ok. I'm 39, been at my current job for 15 years, so sick of it I wake up with a stomach ache, and so burnt out that I don't want to start another job and get in the same rut. What I want to do is get on my bike and ride away and escape for about 3-6 months, just riding around the country and sampling some choice mtn biking. But that's not the "responsible" thing to do.

What do you all think? Anyone ever been there? Anyone ever done it or done something similar? Any regrets?

By the way, I have no wife, no kids, no house payment, no debt (to speak of), so I wouldn't necessarily be leaving a trail of obligations unmet...aside from a girlfriend who isn't too keen on a 3-6 month walkabout...

Ease my pain! Let me know what you think.

-- Uruk-hai

There's a great line in Thank You for Smoking, where the answer for doing every--and any--thing is "to pay the mortgage." I've observed men stuck in dead-end jobs which they hate, but they stick with it, year after year, decade after decade, just to pay the mortgage, feed the kids, and keep up ~~pretences~~ appearances. And then, upon hitting the mid-life crisis, purchase a sports car and/or get a mistress. These are men who most sincerely pray that there's a heaven after this life (or a time machine), IMHO.

It is one thing if you enjoy sacrificing and providing, it is another if you do it out of obligation. But I digress.

The replies.

Godspeed, Uruk-hai!
Run, don't walk!

Flub. Repeat. Repeat.

2006-05-08T23:08:00.000-07:00

Well, last night's mass was a trip. One after another, things went wrong.

First, on the 3rd song, the choral director missed his cue from the musicians; not once, not twice, not thrice, but four times. Then, in the following song, one of the lead singers anticipated her cue and started a beat ahead of the rest.

Next, the officiating priest decided ad hoc to do away with a song*. Thankfully, our choral director figured that out and saved us from starting off in the wrong song.

Then, in one of the songs, I found out why eating a bowl full of chips and salsa, 5 pieces of chicken from El Pollo Loco, a serving of spanish rice, 2 servings of vegetables, 3 corn tortillas, and 1 liter of Coke is a bad idea 90 minutes before performance.

I.e. I burped and the mic picked up part of it

Argh...

* The song omitted was John D. Baker's, "Litany of the Saints":

Which was just as well anyway, given Murphy's presence last night, it just might have very well ruined my pleasant memories of singing the song.

Here's hoping that Murphy won't show up for mass again, for a long, long time.

Aural indulgence: Einstein on the Beach

2006-05-05T23:48:00.000-07:00

'Spent 3.5 hours listening to Philip Glass' monumental work, Einstein on the Beach on my system in the dark. What a treat.

Spanning 3 CDs, the 3 hour 20 minute 40 second recording is the score to the opera, which consists of 4 acts and is 5 hours long. There is no plot, no climax, and certainly no dénouement, but a montage of solfege syllables, recited numbers, excerpts from poetry and prose, and texts on general relativity, nuclear weapons, general science, AM radio, and yes, love. (Some info taken from Wikipedia)

Not for novitiates, Einstein on the Beach is quintessentially Glass, with its endless repetition. An acquaintance of mine detests Glass with a passion. "It's all nonsensical repetition. Anyone can do it!" he sniffs. But isn't that what our lives essentially are? They are repetitions. You wake up; you have breakfast; you perform your toilet; you leave for work or school; you do whatever you have to do; you come home; you have your dinner, perform your toilet, go to bed. Repeat. Repeat. Sure, there are occasional anomalies: you are born; you get baptized; you get sick; you fall in love; you get married; someone you care for dies, etc. These are the changes that we look out for, celebrate, or grieve over. Similarly, anomalies or changes are what Philip Glass fans look out for in his music.

For the music of Glass is not just mind-numbing repetition, there are subtle changes to the overall pattern in the repetition, between and within multiple layers of repetition. The fun is being able to spot the first note that is different. Maybe it is played in minor at this one section. Maybe he speeds up a little here and inserts an additional note. Maybe it is extended half a beat. Then, satisfied that you spotted the genesis of an eventual sea change, you sit back, content to observe it taking place. The longer the work, the subtler the change, and the larger the sample of repetition your memory has to work with. This, is the fun of Philip Glass' music. You have to use your head. I suppose it is far easier to listen to rap and have wet dreams about outrunning the poh-leez. (*koff!* *koff!* Did I just say that?)

Repetition also has its uses. It draws our mind into a pattern. Ever walked into a Buddhist temple and hear the monks chanting mantras? My mother studied with Yogis in India last year. They too, use mantras. Ever used a rosary? How many times do you repeat The Apostle's Creed, The Lord's Prayer, Hail Mary, Glory Be and O My Jesus? The late Dr. Stephen Jay Gould made the hypothesis of Punctuated Equilibrium, where the process of evolution is neither gradual nor constant, but rather occur by leaps and bounds, interspersed with long periods of unchanging repetition.

Repetition can be lush, foreboding or comforting too. It thus might come as a surprise to some readers to find out that Philip Glass is the composer for the movie, The Hours. But I digress.

On the other side of the coin, Glass' compositions also make unique demands upon the musicians:

Glass' parts make technical demands that the typical concert pianist may find difficult to handle. There's lots of repetitive finger motion over long stretches, with relatively little movement up and down the keys. Though it sounds simple in some ways, it can be exhausting over the course of an evening; Riesman once calculated that at each ensemble performance, he was called upon to play approximately 80,000 notes! He has, however, adjusted. "If I were to suggest exercises for preparing to play Philip's music, I'd just say the standard scales and arpeggios that everyone learns," he says. "But, really, the best practice for me has been to just play Philip's music over the years. The music itself is like an excersice [sic] because of its repetitive nature. It stays pretty stationary most of the time. The patterns tend to be four- or five-finger patterns, so the hand doesn't move all that much. I try to move the fingers as little as possible, to push the key down only with the force necessary to make it move, and no more. This is how I can keep it up night after night." (Source)

The last track on the collection, Knee 5, begins with Michael Riesman playing low bass notes on the keyboard, with 3 min 55 sec of women singing, "1, 2, 3, 4... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8... 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6," while two females engage in one-sided conversations, commenting on anything from getting gas for the car, wondering about their friends, to the state of their lives. These serve to form an aural backdrop of mundanity.

At the 3 min 56 sec mark, Professor Gregory Fulkerson comes in with the violin, playing a melody that repeatedly alternates between being pensive and romantic. Jasper McGruder (acted as the hotel clerk in "Malcolm X") comes in shortly after, orating the text of "Two Lovers" with a perfunctoriness that is almost ludicrous. His tone is similar to that of the announcer over the PA system in the TV series, M*A*S*H (younger readers, if you do not know what M*A*S*H is, ask your parents). Meanwhile, the women have stopped singing the numbers and switched to a sort of exultation very similar to the "Alleluia" sung during Eucharist. The ironic dissonance between McGruder's bored tone--which even seems disbelieving of the speaker himself--and the emphatic, quasi-religious chorus of the women at his every word, is just simply delicious in its palpability.

1 min 2 sec sample of this part. (MP3)

McGruder reads disinterestedly:

Two Lovers

The day with its care and perplexities has ended and the night is now upon us. The night should be a time of peace and tranquility, a time to relax and be calm. We have need of a soothing story to banish the disturbing thoughts of the day, to set at rest our troubled minds, and put at ease our ruffled spirits.

And what sort of story shall we hear? Ah, it will be a familiar story.
A story that is so very, very old, and yet, it is so new. It is the old, old story of love.

Two lovers sat on a park bench with their bodies touching each other, holding hands in the moonlight. There was silence between them. So profound was their love for each other, they needed no words to express it. And so they sat in silence, on a park bench with their bodies touching each other, holding hands in the moonlight.

Finally she spoke. "Do you love me, John?" she asks.

"You know I love you, darling," he replied. "I love you more tongue can tell. You are the light of my life, my sun, moon, and stars. You are my everything. Without you, I have no reason for being."

Again there was silence as the two lovers sat on a park bench, their bodies touching, holding hands in the moonlight.

Once more, she spoke. "How much do you love me, John?" she asked.

He answered, "How much do I love you? Count the stars in the sky. Measure the waters of the ocean with a teaspoon. Number the grains of sand on the sea shore. Impossible, you say? Yes, and it is just as impossible for me to say how much I love you. My love for you is higher than the heavens, deeper than Hades, and broader than the earth. It has no limits, no bounds. Everything must have an ending except my love for you."

There was more of silence as the two lovers sat on a park bench, with their bodies touching, holding hands in the moonlight.

Once more, her voice was heard. "Kiss me, John," she implored. And leaning over, he pressed his lips warmly to hers in fervent osculation.
(Copyright 1976 by Samuel M. Johnson)

Is Glass saying that, in post-modern society, the closest the average denizen can approach a religious experience is through romantic love? And even then, this attempt is but a tired repetition of an empty cycle that has been repeated time and again through the ages? (Try and ignore the glaring internal contradiction within the text of "Two Lovers").

I remember pissing off (one of my few talents) a classmate when I made the observance that everyone who falls in love suffers from the insufferable audacity of believing him or herself to be the first person to do so--and are the most ardent at it--in the history of the human species. She condemned me as "an evil, soul-crushing cynic." I am flattered. Like I care.

One only has to look at the manufactured romance industry. E.g. Valentine's Day. In Korea, there's a romantic occasion for every month. And don't get me started about diamonds. There is a big difference between the agreement of value between the majority and the agreement of perceived value between the majority. The former is legitimate. The latter is fraud.

How so? A simple illustration will suffice. My US$20 bill is but a piece of cotton-based paper. The majority of the people (and the US government) in USA attach a value to it. I take it anywhere and I will get approximately whatever US$20 in that geographical area buys me. As for a diamond. Try appraising it. Seriously. Now, it is appraised for X dollars. Now try to sell it. You will be lucky to get half of X dollars. What the majority agreed on is X dollars, but what you get is half of X dollars. And so, I stand by what I said earlier: schmuck.

Having examined the content, perhaps Glass is also poking fun at society through an implicit reference to structure and form in his composition. I.e. "Yes, my music is repetitive, but hey look! So are your dating and courtship rituals, marriage, coupling, and breeding patterns!"

The cynical side of me views all the awful proclamations by the male ("John") in "Two Lovers" as nothing more than puffing up a display of colored feathers on his chest to get her into the sack--again, something that has been done through the ages. (Hmm... a pattern, sense I... you thunk?) This is reinforced by my recollecting a part of T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland:

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
Out of the window perilously spread
Her drying combinations touched by the sun's last rays,
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest -
I too awaited the expected guest.
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare,
One of the low on whom assurance sits
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which are still unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
Exploring hands encounter no defence;
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one final patronising kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit...
She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
'Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over.'
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone. (215 - 56)

The attitude of the woman in the excerpt of The Wasteland matches the tone of McGruder's articulation of "Two Lovers." That Glass was deliberate to this end is moot (i.e. directing McGruder's tone). His impetus, however, remains contentious.

Palo Alto Baylands Ride

2006-05-04T23:01:00.000-07:00

Easy riding.

For a (very) brief ride report, click on the image or here.

Dietary choice (and responsibility)

2006-05-03T23:48:00.000-07:00

Noticed this poster on campus:

How is that an eating disorder?

Do you check to see what grade of gas you pump into your vehicle each time you pull up at a gas station?

So what is wrong with checking the fat, protein, carbohydrate, and calorie contents of each meal you consume?

What is wrong with weighing yourself each day?

It is a useful gauge in determining if you are adequately hydrated (thirst is a poor means of measurement).

While I probably can never maintain the unwavering discipline of professional athletes like

Lance Armstrong in achieving their rarefied fitness, I believe that the amateur attempt at mirroring their dietary lifestyles yields rich dividends in health and physical fitness nonetheless.

As for skipping a meal, it is sometimes necessary to do so when an inflexible deadline has to be met. I fail to see why anyone can't handle skipping a meal (unless you are hypoglycemic). It's not the end of the world if you miss a meal. You can live without food for more than a month. Get over it.

Snacking, eating fast food or junk food, and chugging sodas, are NOT normal or healthy eating habits. Paying attention to what you eat is NOT an eating disorder. It is an act of personal responsibility.

Remember the adage: "You are what you eat."

Limantour Beach Hike

2006-05-02T23:54:00.000-07:00

Prologue

22 April, 2006

It is 12:16 AM. The snorers are still here. They have reinforcements tonight too: a guy who moans and ~~talks~~ yells in his sleep, "Ahhh! I did you no wrong! DON'T KILL ME!" I can hear them even from the common room. Oh joy. I am seriously contemplating drinking 2 cans of Red Bull and driving 3 hours home now.

But I stayed. And so, I didn't sleep--at all--again.

---

The next day, I am too tired to attempt the Mount Vision Loop ride that I planned. Plan B is an easy hike along Limantour Beach and Limantour Spit during low tide.

1659 track points (blue diamonds) laid by the GPS unit.

TOPO!'s elevation profile.

No dogs allowed on the west side of the beach.

Heading west on Limantour Beach.

Two men playing frisbee on the secluded beach.

Equestrians on the beach.

Their tracks.

Heading west on Limantour Spit. Drakes Head is on the right.

A closer look at Drakes Head, as viewed from the south side of Limantour Spit (beach facing the ocean).

Something the waves washed up during a storm. It is more than 10 feet long and is made of cast iron, by the way.

The end of Limantour Spit and the ocean's entrance to Drakes Estero (see map).

Turkey Vulture feeding on a dead Harbor Seal pup.

Chimney Rock in the distance.

The inlet to Drakes Estero. The cliffs of Drakes Beach on the left, the cliffs of Sunset Beach on the right.

Why releasing balloons or carelessly disposing plastic bags is a bad idea. Marine Turtles cannot tell the difference between a plastic bag or the remnants of a balloon from...

a jelly fish. Plastic bags or balloon fragments end up clogging the intestines of Marine Turtles, and the poor creatures, unable to eat, slowly starve to death.

Fooling around a piece of driftwood.

Fooling around a piece of driftwood II.

At the very end of Limantour Spit. The inlet / channel to Drakes Estero is to the right.

Heading back east. Harbor Seals (Phoca vitulina) basking in the sun.

The desiccated body of an abandoned Harbor Seal pup.

Panorama of the northern side of Limantour Spit.

Drakes Head.

The promontories of Drakes Head.

Approaching Drakes Head.

Drakes Head as views from Limantour Spit. Less than 24 hours ago, I was standing on top and looking down.

Beach grass dominate the plant community. The grasses were introduced to the Pacific coast of the United States from Australia (but originally from the Mediterranean) in 1896 to stabilize sand dunes in San Francisco on the site that eventually became Golden Gate Park. Beach grass serves to retard sand drift, forming dunes parallel to the beach.

Notice that the roots of the beach grass are as long as the stalks. This helps it to hold on to the loose sand better.

Heading back

As there is 2 hours before sunset, I decided to check out that rock outcrop I missed on the Coast Trail Ride.

Coast Camp is crowded on this sunny Saturday.

This looks familiar.

An overgrown (illegal) trail.

The trail is more apparent here.

Final approach.

Deciding against a 30+ ft scramble to the top.

Location
Elevation: 332 ft
N: 38 degrees 1.041 minutes
W: 122 degrees 50.853 minutes

Looking at Coast Camp and Limantour Beach.

The view from the rock outcrop.

Coast Camp seen from above.

Sunset over Limantour Beach.

Epilogue:
Distance: GPS 11.55 miles (18.48 km) / TOPO! 10.72 miles (17.15 km).
Total elevation climbed: GPS + TOPO! 286 ft (529.3 m).

Bike Swap Meet

2006-05-01T01:41:00.000-07:00

Large bike swap meet in Cupertino on Sunday April 30, 2006.

There were some high-zoot items: e.g. a brand new fully-suspended Moots Cinco frame (MSRP $2750) going for US$2100, and a Specialized 2006 Stumpjumper FSR Pro full-suspended frame (MSRP $2200) going for US$999.

Other than that, unless you know how to build a wheel, most of the hubs and rims on sale aren't such good deals once you factor in the price bike shops charge for labor (US$55 to $65 / hour).

I scored a nice deal for the NOS Rockshox Judy FSX (circa 1996) fork on my vintage M2 Specialized Stumpjumper hardtail though:

The White Brothers Hardbody Cartridge Plus has a MSRP of US$125.
I got it for US$10.

Woot!

1 year

2006-04-30T15:36:00.000-07:00

Hard to believe it has been a year since this blog came into existence. Since then I have lost count of the number of ~~people I've offended~~ friends and acquaintances I've made.

Thanks, everybody!

Some stats

Over the last 365 days:

Number of blog views: 41641
Number of profile views: 2450
Number of posts: 286

Estero Trail Ride

2006-04-27T22:18:00.000-07:00

Bays, bridges, mud, and an epic.

For the ride report, click on either image or here.

Coast Trail Ride

2006-04-25T22:31:00.000-07:00

An easy, scenic ride in spring.

For the ride report, click on the image or here.

Oh my!

2006-04-24T23:28:00.000-07:00

We sang a new version of "Alleluia" for communion last night. This time, the tenors had a little fun. Check out our parts:

We also did two different versions of "I Know That My Redeemer Lives." It was really interesting how the song sounded somber and melancholic before Easter Vigil, and hopeful and wistful thereafter.

This is the simplified form. The version we used had individual parts for the sopranos, altos, tenors and basses.

Make way for Mountain Biker One!

2006-04-23T17:30:00.000-07:00

I'm back.
Here's a little ~~jeer at liberals~~ cheer:

Bush hits the trail in Angwin

By Carlos Villatoro, Register Staff Writer
Sunday, April 23, 2006 1:12 AM PDT

If Pat Patterson's car hadn't died Saturday, he never would have seen President George W. Bush whooping it up while he biked on a Napa County forest trail.

Patterson, the owner of St. Helena Hearing Aid, was leaving his home on Las Posadas Road in Angwin on Saturday morning when he noticed that Secret Service agents had shut down his street. He convinced the agents that he lived on the street and was making his way down Cold Springs Road when his car died.

He walked back home.

Looking for a rest, Patterson sat on a large stone near his front gate. That's when he heard the sounds of whooping and hollering followed by the sight of President Bush riding his mountain bike up a hill in nearby Las Posadas State Forest. Two Secret Service agents followed on all-terrain vehicles.

"I could hear him when he was cresting the hill saying "Woo hoo!'" Patterson said. "It's quite a climb. I'm sure he got his morning exercise."

Patterson said "I thought he was great. I was happy to see him. He's got a tough job."

Down the road from Angwin, in front of Meadowood Napa Valley -- where the president spent Friday night -- 300 or more protesters did not share Patterson's sentiments.

Demonstrators overwhelmingly opposed to the president's policies gathered at the resort's front entrance, carrying signs and hot cups of coffee. Most of the crowd had come to protest the war in Iraq, but others were there for different reasons.

"It feels like a slap in the face having President Bush come here on Earth Day," said Curtis Harding, 24, who grew up in St. Helena and lives in Sacramento. "I could go yell somewhere else, but people would think I'm crazy."

Harding said Bush's policies are harming the environment, and added that "when a bomb goes off, that has a huge, indirect effect on global warming."

[-ben: What is this guy smoking? Must be pretty good 420.]

New Tech High School student Cory Lustig, 15, expressed concern that the U.S. has not done enough to stop the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan.

"I would tell him that people are dying because of the choices he's made," she said.

Lustig, Harding and their many counterparts were joined by five Bush supporters on Silverado Trail.

"I can't say that I agree with everything that's going on, but by God I support my president," said St. Helena resident Walter Kuntz as he shouldered an American flag. "I'd say (to Bush) 'Thank God you are our president.'"

"We want to let President Bush know that he has support here," said Kevin Hangman, a Napa resident who carried a pro-Bush sign.

Hangman's son, Aaron, 15, said the president is "doing a good job."

Circus in town

A circus-like atmosphere permeated Meadowood's normally quiet front entrance Saturday. Protesters chanted everything from "Impeach Bush," "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Bush and Cheney have to go," and "Honk for peace." Protesters also sang John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance."

Jes Richardson, a resident of San Geronimo, made the trip to Napa along with an 10-foot, papier-mache statue of Mahatma Gandhi. Richardson used the statue at protests throughout the Bay Area, he said, as part of the Gandhi Peace Brigade, a group that opposes the war in Iraq.

"I am in Napa to open (Bush's) heart and basically have him look at this as a creation of peace," he said.

Jim Kerrigan, of Napa, paraded wildly in front of anti-Bush protesters holding a pro-Bush sign.

"I just want to piss them off," he said. "(They say) blood for oil, but how many people walked here? I would tell ... (Bush) 'Thanks for coming.'"

Several dozen officers from each of the county's law enforcement agencies were also on the Trail as part of the president's security detail. California Highway Patrol Sgt. Elfido Montez said that Friday's protest along the Trail was peaceful, and that he expected it to remain so Saturday.

A handful of news trucks from television stations throughout the Bay Area were also on the Trail, attempting to get footage of the president during his stay in St. Helena.

President's stay

Bush's motorcade left the resort around 9 a.m. Saturday for nearby Las Posadas State Forest followed by numerous black SUVs and vans, CHP vehicles and an ambulance. His motorcade exited Meadowood from its front entrance, sparking jeers from protesters, and went north along the Trail. From there the caravan made its way east on to Deer Park Road, en route to the park.

After biking at the park, Bush then returned to the resort, entering Meadowood through its alternate entrance. When he left Napa, he did so the same way he arrived, by way of presidential helicopter Marine One at Angwin Airport.

As he left Angwin around 1:30 p.m., about 35 supporters lined up near Pacific Union College to bid him farewell. Daniel Madrid, a Pacific Union College professor of international business, sat in a lawn chair holding an American Flag and wearing a flag-patterned necktie.

Earlier in the day Madrid took his two dogs for a walk at Las Posadas forest, when he was stopped by a Secret Service agent.

Madrid said he often walks his dogs in the park and does a bit of mountain biking himself. He said didn't mind that he was not allowed to enter the park while the president was having fun.

"Some of them (the trails) are pretty rough," he chuckled. "I'm surprised he can handle that."

Bush's visit to California was not all rest and relaxation. From St. Helena, Bush flew to West Sacramento to tour the plant of the California Fuel Cell Partnership, a group of manufacturers that promotes hydrogen-fueled cars.

(Source)

Sojourn

2006-04-20T11:28:00.000-07:00

Back to where eyes gaze into infinity...

And hearts roam free...

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
(Endymion, Book 1, l 1 - 5)

I guess I'll see you when I see you.

Bill Cosby speaks again

2006-04-17T22:45:00.000-07:00

The courageous and politically incorrect Bill Cosby speaks again, this time on parenting, education and responsibility at Xavier University's Cintas Center on 13 April 2006.

As linked from Xavier University's website:

Cosby: Watch your children
Comedian tells crowd that parents need to be supervising

by Feoshia Henderson, The Cincinnati Enquirer Staff Writer

"Put a body on 'em."

Comedian and social commentator Bill Cosby gave that advice to a largely African-American audience during an afternoon parenting session at Xavier University.

Cosby, 68, said that means parents must stay involved in every aspect of their child's life - from friends to homework - to prevent family breakdown and out-of-control behavior.

Parents also should have a network of people who can help keep an eye on potentially wayward kids.

"These children need bodies on all of them," Cosby said. "If you're not doing that, then you should be ashamed of yourself."

Cosby spoke to a group of about 1,200 during the first of two free sessions at the university's Cintas Center.

He moderated discussions on parenting, education and social responsibility as part of a nationwide tour, "Call Out with Cosby."

He was part of a 14-person panel of educators, doctors, children's workers and other professionals.

The tour was Cosby's first visit to Cincinnati in five years.

Cosby said many parents know their children are doing wrong, but aren't doing anything to stop it.

"What's worse is how sedated you seem to be about making corrections," he said.

Cosby long has been an entertainment icon in American culture, but in recent years he's become a sort of social crusader.

Two years ago he drew ire - and some kudos - from African-Americans when he criticized black parents for their children's behavior and lack of education.

None of that anger was evident from the audience during Thursday's session, which was part comedy routine, part instructional, part church service and part upbraiding.

The afternoon also included a question-and-answer portion.

One 18-year-old got a shock when Cosby privately talked to him for nearly 45 minutes at the request of a local minister.

"He asked me, Where do I see my life in the future?" Rodney Lee, of Westwood, said afterward. Lee said Cosby told him he would help Lee get into college.

Beyond the Veil Christian Fellowship minister Sonny James, of Norwood, asked Cosby to speak to Lee near the beginning of the question segment.

Cosby called Lee down to the stage and then walked off with him for the remainder of the session. The other panelists handled the questions.

James said he'd recently taken Lee into his home, but Lee had lost focus and direction in his life.

"I know if anyone can speak motivation to him, it's Bill Cosby," he said.

Jill Thompson of West Chester, who was with her nephews David, 16 and Phillip, 13 - she declined to give their last names - said people need to put Cosby's words into action.

"Put the bodies on 'em. I loved that statement. I think that is something that is very concise, and people need to hear that. They need to not just hear it, but do it," she said.

But not everyone went away pleased. Kristi Williams, of South Cummingsville, was with her sons Kyante, 12 and Khaliek, 10. She said people didn't get enough specific instruction on how to take care of problems.

"We've heard (this) before. People in the city need help here," she said.

(Source)

The article (written by Feoshia Henderson), which Xavier University linked from their website is the tamer version though. A little digging reveals a more hard-hitting report of the same speech:

Bill Cosby's sermon: Stand for something

By Peter Bronson, The Cincinnati Enquirer Staff Writer

Welcome to the First Reformed Interdenominational Methobyterian Bapti-Catholic Church of Truth That Sets You Free. The Most Honorary Rev. Bill Cosby is in the pulpit with a message for Easter.

"We're letting Jesus drag that cross and we're standing there saying 'Isn't it terrible? Somebody oughtta do something.' We're standing on the sidelines. All we want to know is, 'You got time to fix my elbow?' "

He was just warming up.

"I can feel your guilt," he said. "I can feel your shame. But most of all, I can feel how sedated you seem to be."

The standup comedian who used to ask "Why is there air?" now asks much tougher questions and has answers that some people don't want to hear. "Dr. Huxtable" was writing prescriptions at Xavier's Cintas Center on Thursday, and his tough medicine was greeted with waves of applause from an audience of 1,200, 90 percent black.

I expected him to say something outrageous to rile up the Political Correctness Police who misplaced their sense of humor in the 1960s and can't spot the honest truth in a police lineup of bald-faced lies.

But it turns out that the most outrageous thing is what some people find outrageous.

Education: "If your child has never asked you a question about what he is studying, you are not protecting that child. And if you're not doing it, be ashamed of yourself ... I want someone to say to them, 'Where is your damn homework?' "

Dropouts: "The graduation (ratio) for black women to men is 70-30. I feel sorry and sad for all these highly educated females who are so intelligent and have no educated men to marry."

Drugs: "If you have heard a child say, 'I'm going to stop flipping burgers and go out and make some real money selling drugs,' did you stop that idiot and say, 'You don't flip burgers for the rest of your life. You do it until you can be manager of the burger-flipping place'?"

Parenting: "When are you going to challenge them about CDs full of vulgarity and profanity? ... When are you going to challenge them with, 'I want to know who your friends are before you leave this apartment'?"

Cosby asked foster parents, grandmothers, aunts and uncles who raise someone else's children to applaud, then pointed to the crowd: "There's your reality."

But some are too blind to see it. So they twist his words into attacks on the poor.

"Anyone who comes here is going to say he came out of love and concern," said Cosby's agent, Joel Brokaw. "He could be sitting at home enjoying his life, but he came on his own dime."

I guess some will say, "Aha, I told you so," pointing at the speck in the eye of the black community. Is there anyone who doesn't need Cosby's sermon?

And some are panic-stricken: "How can he say this after we have worked so hard to outlaw the truth as racist?"

Cosby's style was as casual and comfortable as his khaki cargo pants and baggy Xavier sweat shirt.

But the message from another speaker, Hamilton County Coroner O'dell Owens, was as sharp as a scalpel:

"I speak for the dead," he said. "And the dead say to me now, 'No more, no more, no more.' Say it to your young children."

It's too late for hundreds of shooting victims, sucked under in a flood of mindless violence that is lapping at the steps of City Hall, still rising.

But as we try to resurrect a better Cincinnati this spring, maybe Cosby's sermon is right on time. Let's hope.

That's what Easter is all about.

(Source)

This is not the first time the entertainer displayed the chutzpah to utter unpopular truths. In the same vein as his caustic observances made during a speech at the 17 May 2004 NAACP Convention, Bill Cosby made the following painful diagnosis to the survivors of New Orleans on 1 April 2006:

Bill Cosby tells New Orleans blacks to reject crime

By Russell McCulley

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Entertainer Bill Cosby urged New Orleans' black population on Saturday to cleanse itself of a culture of crime as it rebuilds from the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina last year.

Cosby, whose criticism of some aspects of modern African-American culture has stirred controversy in recent years, told a rally headed by black leaders that the city needed to look at the "wound" it had before Katrina struck.

"It's painful, but we can't cleanse ourselves unless we look at the wound," Cosby told the rally of about 2,000 people in front of the city's convention center.

"Ladies and gentlemen, you had the highest murder rate, unto each other. You were dealing drugs to each other. You were impregnating our 13-, 12-, 11-year-old children," he said.

"What kind of a village is that?"

Cosby sparked heated debate in 2004, when he criticized blacks whom he said were putting a higher priority on music and fashion than on education and morality.

(Source)

Think Bill Cosby has abandoned the poor in the Black community?

Read his response.

Read about his actions.

Easter

2006-04-16T20:48:00.000-07:00

'Arrived way early for the ~~7:00 AM~~ 7:30 AM practice and so I decided on a walk in solitude, in the Mission Gardens, in the quiet, in the softly falling rain. Rebirth. Renewal. Over a year has passed since the traumatic event that birthed this blog. Over a year of denial, hope, false hope, lost hope, anger, bitterness, purgation, exorcism, acceptance, forgetting; forgetting, yes, and finally moving on. Nothing lasts forever, not even pain, or bitterness. Nothing lasts forever, but Him. Praise Him.

Many, many memories were planted on this wisteria petal-strewn path. I have walked this path in grief. I have walked this path in fear. I have walked this path in seek of refuge, in seek of solace. And finally, I have walked this path in victory, with my friends and parents by my side.

Today, I walk this path in fond reminiscence, like a traveler who smiles as his finger traces his journey on a map.

My favorite spot for lunch during spring and fall. Bathed in the fragrance of flowers, the chirping of the birds, and the quiet of your breathing, how much closer to Eden can one get?

This morning, the choir stands to the right (where the music stand is located) side of the apse as the altar takes the center. That's one of our sopranos in the picture. [Shot taken from the apse]

Some of the men taking a break after the 8:30 AM service. That's the 11:30 AM service congregation (maybe they arrived early to listen to us practice?). The gentleman in the pink shirt is Father Michael Zampelli. He presided over Easter Vigil last night. It was magical. He's a charismatic figure and possesses a commanding presence. He also has an astounding bass (I suspect he can make window panes rattle with his voice).

I was wondering if my voice would last the services for the Triduum, and when it did, I wondered just how far I could push it and opted to sing for the 8:30 AM Easter service. After that, I was still feeling capable and so I decided to go for broke and sing for the 11:30 AM service as well. And I made it! (Though my voice is pretty much gone now. I.e. I sound like a poor copy of Rod Stewart.)

Our lead soprano was right, it was a "joyous marathon."
Thank you all, darlings!

Happy Easter!

Resurrexit sicut dixit, Alleluia!

Easter Vigil

2006-04-15T23:45:00.000-07:00

Tonight's service was sublime, august, ineffable.

When we sang John D. Baker's "Litany of the Saints," its haunting, chanting invocation, "Pray for us," made many people in the congregation cry.

Alleluia

This is the kind of experience that makes life worth living.

Good Friday

2006-04-14T23:43:00.000-07:00

As per tradition, today's service was bare: there were no instruments, no bells, no piano, just unaccompanied chants (which actually made it seem more difficult as faults are not so easily glossed over).

The Veneration of the Cross was touching. The laity actually voluntarily took turns to bear the weight of the heavy wooden cross in order for others in the congregation to venerate it.

I had a spot of fun when we sung the chant refrain for the Veneration. The refrain,

Draw near, O LORD, our God, graciously receive us.
Humbly we bow before you.

accompanies the choir master singing Psalm 22: 1-11.

Well, the refrain is sung in parts. As I was standing right beside the basses, and possessed the range to sing the second section in tenor or bass, I chose to alternate between the two each time the refrain comes up. The tenor on my right was giving me repeated looks that seemed to convey, "WTF are you doing?"

*grin*
*snicker*

Discovered that some of the choir members shared common interests with me: one is a mountain biker and another is an avid photographer. I guess we will have more to talk about from now on.

One event marred today's event though. I will not go into details. Those closest to me already know the details. As for the rest, I guess I'm "not in your circle," eh? (Or is it more accurate to say that you are not in my circle?)

I was fuming. I could have struck back harshly.

My ego was pricked. My defenses bristled. I was ready to fight. I was ready to summon all my learning, all my knowledge of hurtful words to hurl at this acquaintance who so dared disrespect me--for no reason, no reason at all. She clearly deserved it. Vengeance is mine.

But I didn't.

Then, during the long period of meditation in between our performance, I had the opportunity to reflect and think it through. Swallow the ego. Listen to what God is trying to tell you; what He is trying to show you, with a tiny sting--a small lesson--instead of a big, painful slap. Like a puppy falling down a single step learns to respect heights and edges. It may sting, but far better be it than falling off a cliff as the first lesson.

I am no Holly Roller, but I took it as a sign. I confided my turmoil to two of my closest friends last night: my dilemma; the temptation. Now I know my instinct--guided by reason--was correct:

Never pee where you swim.

Spirituality should never mix with amor.
Violate this rule and you will find the temple of your sanctuary in ruins when passion cools and romance fades.

You enter the house of the LORD for one reason and one reason only--to worship Him. Do not sully the consecrated ground with the base urging of your loins.

In His infinite mercy, I am spared the larger fall.
(One can read this statement in so many different ways).

Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto.

Holy Thursday

2006-04-13T23:00:00.000-07:00

Tonight's mass was wonderful.

At the conclusion of the mass, following tradition, as the altar was being stripped, we sung Pange Lingua Gloriosi, albeit ours was a hybrid version.

The hymn was written by Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225 - 1274) for the Feast of Corpus Christi--now called the Solemnity of the Holy Body and Blood of Christ. (Source: Wikipedia)

Here's a cheesy MIDI sequence of the hymn.

Pange lingua gloriósi
Córporis mystérium,
Sanguinisque pretiósi,
quem in múndi prétium,
fructus ventris generósi
Rex effúdit Géndium.

Nobis datus, nobis natus
ex intácta Virgine,
et in mundo conversátus,
sparso verbi sémine,
sui moras incolátus,
miro clausit órdine.

Praise our Savior's glorious body, which his blessed mother bore;
Praise the blood which, shed for sinners, did a broken world restore;
Praise the sacrament most holy, Gift of God we now adore.

To the chosen, for our healing, God's own Son the Father sends;
From Eternal Love proceeding, sower, seed and word descends;
Wondrous life, the Word incarnate, with the greatest wonder ends.

On that paschal evening see him with his chosen friends recline,
To the first law still obedient in its feast of love divine;
Love divine, the new law giving; gives himself as bread and wine.

In a word the Word almighty makes of bread true flesh indeed;
Wine becomes his very life-blood; Faith the living Word must heed!
This alone will safely guide us where the senses cannot lead.

Come, adore this wondrous presence; Bow to Christ, the source of Grace!
Here is kept the ancient promise of God's earthly dwelling place.
Sight is blind before such a glory, faith alone may see God's face.

Glory be to God the Father, praises sing to God the Son,
Honor to the Holy Spirit, bound in love; the Triune One!
Blest be God by all creation, joyously while ages run!

Thus did Christ to perfect humanity, in our mortal flesh he came.
Then he gave himself freely to a death of bitter pain.
As a lamb upon the altar, bore the cross that new life we might gain.

Tantum ergo Sacraméntum,
Venerémur cérnui:
et antíquum documéntum
novo cedat rítui:
praestet fides suppleméntum
sénsuum deféctui.

Genitóri, Genitóque
laus et jubilátio,
salus, honor, vitus quoque
sit et benedíctio:
procedénti ab utróque
compar sit laudátio.

Amen.

As I walked back to my car, an elderly lady exclaimed to me that tonight's singing was so beautiful.

for His greater glory

I smiled all the way back to my car :-)

Moving on

2006-04-11T23:54:00.000-07:00

I made a difficult decision today. I have been struggling with it over the weekend. I made it as painless and dignified as I could, but rejections, no matter how sugar-coated, never are. And so, I found myself returning to the center of my world, the Mission Santa Clara de Asis, on a rainy, windy afternoon (how's that for a pathetic fallacy?).

Today's 12:05 PM mass was conducted by Father Theodore Rynes. There is something inexplicably comforting and familiar in the sight of your professor as the priest officiating the Eucharist. Knowledge of the secular, guided by him, is now replaced by knowledge of the divine, channeled through him.

In his homily, Father Rynes talked about a book he recently read, William Styron's Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness. Styron is better known for his other book, Sophie's Choice. Darkness Visible chronicles Styron's journey through clinical depression. One line stood out in the novel:

The music that strains and breaks the strength.

Father Rynes interpreted it as one of the tenets in living life: the tests and toils of life strain us, and will eventually break us, but it is only in the act of living life to the fullest can we expend the strength that we were given--and, in the process, create the music which celebrates the passage of our lives.

I think of the notes on the music sheet that I struggle with every Sunday night. (I suck at note reading). They do not remain constant. They rise and fall, stretch and truncate, move to different beats. I often get confused. Sometimes I even flub up. Nonetheless, I try. I sing. We sing melody. We sing parts. It all melds together for a greater purpose in the end. ad majorem Dei gloriam.

Change may be unsettling and painful. It often seems unwise, even stupid, to walk away from that which is comfortable, easy--simple, but personally, to accept a fate of constantly being under-challenged reeks of complacency; and complacency is a form of sloth. I have more self-respect than that.

The Rock of Gibraltar.

---

Excerpt of an interview with Karen Armstrong, by David Ian Miller:

MILLER: It's often difficult to convince people that they are in the same boat. You know, in this country people are building gated communities. They are actively hiding from things they don't want to see.

ARMSTRONG: And that is antireligious. The Axial sages said you must see things as they are, that delusion was one of the major things that hold us back from enlightenment, from God, from Nirvana. So we cannot get trapped in illusion.

Small groups now have powers of destruction that were previously reserved for the nation-state. It is only a matter of time before one of them will get some sort of nuclear device. And a gated community is not going to help at all if that happens. It reminds me of the story of the Buddhist pleasure park. Do you know it?

MILLER: Tell me the story.

ARMSTRONG: When the Buddha was a little boy, some Brahman priests are called in to tell his fortune, and one of them predicts he will leave home and become a monk because of seeing three disturbing sights -- a sick man, an old man and a corpse -- which will so distress him that he will become a monk. And he will save the world from suffering.

And the Buddha's father is not thrilled with this career option -- he has more ambition, more worldly ambition -- so he creates a sort of pleasure palace and brings his young son up in this. And he plants guards around the grounds to prevent any such disturbing sights coming within a radius of the young man.

So the Buddha grows up in this fool's paradise for a long time, and finally the guards get fed up with this and they send three of their own number disguised as a sick man, an old man and a corpse past the [other] guards. The Buddha sees that, and he leaves that very night.

The point is that the Buddhist pleasure park is an image of the mind in denial. It's the gated community. It's the United States before 9/11, which was retreating into isolationist policies within the Bush government.

Suffering will always break in. And if you turn [away], it's useless. It will somehow break in because suffering is ubiquitous. And it will certainly go past these guards that the Buddha's father erected. It will certainly come through the gates. You can't block it out.

Karen Armstrong is a 61-year-old former Roman Catholic nun, who is recognized as one of the world's great religious historians, and has spent the last 17 years deconstructing the major faiths in scholarly but accessible books like "A History of God," "Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths" and "The Battle for God: A History of Fundamentalism."

Her new book, "The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions," details the evolution of the major religious traditions in the Axial Age between 900 and 200 B.C., a time of upheaval when four different philosophies took shape -- Confucianism and Taoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, monotheism in the Middle East and philosophical rationalism in Greece.

(Source)

Clarification (and an edification)

2006-04-10T01:54:00.000-07:00

All right, enough with the taunts.

Here's a free module in English 101:

ad·mi·ra·tion

n.
1 A feeling of pleasure, wonder, and approval. See Synonyms at regard.
2 An object of wonder and esteem; a marvel.
3 Archaic. Wonder.

Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.

admiration

n.
1: a feeling of delighted approval and liking [syn: esteem]
2: the feeling aroused by something strange and surprising [syn: wonder, wonderment]
3: a favorable judgment; "a small token in admiration of your works" [syn: appreciation]

Source: WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University

in·fat·u·a·tion

n.
1 A foolish, unreasoning, or extravagant passion or attraction. See Synonyms at love.
2 An object of extravagant, short-lived passion.

Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company

infatuation

n.
1: foolish and usually extravagant passion or love or admiration 2: temporary love of an adolescent [syn: puppy love, calf love, crush]
3: an object of extravagant short-lived passion

Source: WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University

I.e. admiration IS NOT A SYNONYM OF infatuation.

Hence, when I express admiration for certain people,... say, Natalie Portman as Evey Hammond, a certain soprano, a certain female mountain biker, etc., it does NOT mean I am infatuated with them, actively pursuing them, or even considered pursuing any sort of relationship with them.

I admire from afar. And I am content with that.

This is the way I personally look at it:

I admire the Ferrari 575M Maranello and Modena.
Does that mean that I am going to put them on my credit card?
Does that mean that I will purchase them outright even if I have the cash?

No.

Why?

I won't because I know ahead of time that I will not have the resources to support it at this point in time in my life. A US$6000 brake job every 8000 miles? A secure, covered garage to park it in? Bringing it in for detailing every month? Come on!

It's the same thing with females right now. I am not willing to spare or commit resources for a relationship right now. I am perfectly content being selfish in this regard. If I want to relocate out of state, or out of the country, or even the continent, there is only one person to consider, consult and negotiate with--me. If I want to stop what I am doing right now and spend a couple of years with the Hari Krishnas, I can just do it. If I want to renounce all my worldly possessions, turn celibate and become a Jesuit, I can just do it (actually considered it and have not ruled it out yet). If I want to take 2 months off during summer and cycle from the West Coast to the East Coast, the only considerations are if I am fit enough and if I have enough money. If I want to watch hentai all weekend... Lets not go there, eh?

There is no one else to consider or seek permission from. And I love it that way.

And so, I admire from afar. Nothing more.
I won't even accept it if it was handed to me as a gift, for all gifts incur obligations, said or unsaid.

I am also not interested in the drama and illogic that are staple in many relationships today. Fluctuating hormone levels must be a bitch, eh? (Oops! Pardon the pun! I said something politically incorrect. Politically incorrect but true). A diabetic must adhere to a regiment of medication to control her fluctuating blood sugar level. Why can't the same be said of certain individuals who turn into a hurricane or a typhoon once every month? Why must the guy "put up with it" and "accept it"?

That, and the utter crap that's force-fed to couples these days:

From a jewelry company:

MALE VOICE TRYING TO SOUND ALL AUTHORITATIVE: Gentlemen, do you know what's the most important single purchase in your life? It's not your car. It's not even your house. It's your engagement ring. A properly chosen engagement ring lasts forever. blah blah blah.

OK, some points:

Firstly, 48% of marriages end in divorce. Now, while it may be claimed that your engagement / wedding ring will last forever, your marriage won't: you part at death, and for many, much sooner.

Secondly, get your hands on a copy of a National Geographic magazine focusing on the diamond trade. You will be surprised just how common that rock on your finger is. The perceived scarcity is the result of a 100-year advertisement campaign to brainwash consumers into thinking that diamonds are a symbol of love and scarcity.

Thirdly, try and get your diamond appraised. Seriously. Go ahead. What do you have to lose? Ethically, an appraiser may not offer to buy the object he is appraising. It is a conflict of interest. So, go ahead. Check it out just how much your diamond is truly worth. Now think about the profit De Beers is making off your schmuck of a husband.

Check out the following excerpt (that summarizes in part, a March 2002 National Geographic article on the diamond trade):

Despite its elite status, the diamond, which can be found in abundance from southern Africa to Australia to northern Canada, is not the rarest of gems. With no intrinsic value, all a gem-quality diamond has to offer is the perception of its preciousness. As a symbol of eternal love, the tradition of the diamond engagement ring has become so pervasive that it's hard to believe that this is a fairly recent phenomenon. And an extremely calculated one -- the result of a marketing campaign developed at a time when the demand for diamonds had sunk to an all-time low and an increasing supply threatened the precious (as opposed to semiprecious) nature of the stones.

In 1938, nine years after seizing control of De Beers, in the wake of the Depression and with Europe bracing for another world war, Sir Ernest Oppenheimer found himself with no place to market his wares. Rather than risk a plunge in the status and price of diamonds, he sent 29-year-old Harry from Johannesburg, South Africa, to New York to meet with the N.W. Ayer advertising agency. The plan was to transform America's taste for small, low-quality stones into a true luxury market that would absorb the excess production of higher-quality gems no longer selling in Europe.

As Edward Jay Epstein outlined in his 1982 book "The Rise and Fall of Diamonds," N.W. Ayer saw the challenge as one rooted in mass psychology, meticulously researching the attitudes of American men and women about romance and gift giving. From this research, the slogan "A Diamond Is Forever" was born, launching one of the most brilliant, sophisticated and enduring marketing campaigns of all time. Without ever mentioning the name De Beers, the campaign set out to seduce every man, woman and child in America with the notion that no romance is complete without a rock -- and the bigger the rock, the better the romance. That men also now had a way to show the world how much money they made was an added bonus.

[ . . . ]

The slogan "A Diamond Is Forever" was also designed to convince the purchaser that although a diamond is a good investment, for sentimental reasons no rock should ever be resold. Given the continuous mining of new stones -- not to mention the half-billion or so carats that will never rust, break or wear out walking around on the hands, necks, ears and lapels of hundreds of millions of women -- the last thing De Beers wants is to have previously sold stones coming back onto the market.

De Beers has enough problems dealing with the oversupply of new diamonds. In the mid-1950s De Beers was overwhelmed by a flood of small diamonds pouring out of recently discovered mines in the Soviet Union. After nearly a decade and a half of convincing America of the importance of larger stones, suddenly the company needed to create a virtue out of the previously disparaged small diamonds. To accomplish this, De Beers invented the "eternity ring," a single, unbroken band of up to 25 evenly matched small stones. The ring was introduced in the early '60s as the best way to renew vows in the home stretch of a long marriage and the best way to wear diamonds without the ostentation of big stones. Today, the United States absorbs 50 percent of the world's diamonds, with an estimated 70 percent of American women owning at least one rock.

As it turns out, this ideal of perpetual ownership is a healthy delusion for the owners of all but the rarest and most expensive diamonds. Despite the illusion that it retains its value, a diamond can only be sold for less than its wholesale price, not what one would consider a good return on investment. (Source)

These are but some of the reasons I refuse to play this game. The most important purchases in your life are the money you spend on your education and your medical insurance.

If you want to taunt, at least observe some degree of accuracy in your word choice and grasp of simple concepts.

There, now you have successfully passed a module in English 101.
Go print out a "Certificate of Achievement" for yourself.

While you are at it, you might as well print out this instruction sheet--you might just need it someday (e.g. to stop the nagging and mind games).

Snapshots

2006-04-09T05:08:00.000-07:00

4:26 AM
Housemate just left for his new job at Las Vegas.
'Glad we made everything fit in your car : )
'Sure gonna miss you, big guy!
Drive safe!

Hunt some cougars!

---

A casual conversation in a cafe earlier during this week:

SHE: So, are you from around here?
ME: No, I'm from Singapore.
SHE: Oh, what did you come here for?
ME: College.
SHE: Oh, I see. What did you study?
ME: I majored in English.
SHE: I can see they did a great job. You speak beautiful English.
ME: *resists urge to demonstrate just how "beautiful" my invectives can be*

Note to self: Never argue with idiots; they drag you down to their level, and then beat you with experience.

Frankly, I don't know where these stereotypes come from.

Oh, I'm Chinese: I can barely speak English but I am so good at math that I mastered differential calculus before I could walk.

WTF? This social phenomenon isn't restricted to USA either. I had similar experiences while auto touring the South Island of New Zealand. At one restaurant in Dunedin, a cheeky patron actually asked my Dad if he needed the words on the board read to him. I wanted to sock the guy. My Dad read mechanical engineering in England, thank you very much!

Here's a Kiwi joke for you:

QUESTION: Why is the edge of a cliff the best place to fuck sheep?

ANSWER: Because they push bahhhck!

Now fuck off before I crack your skull with my volumes of the O.E.D.

Heaven

2006-04-05T23:37:00.000-07:00

As part of a series of preparations for the Triduum, the Mission Church Choir had a 1 hour 45 minute practice session for Holy Thursday tonight. I found myself next to the lead soprano. When she sung the descant in some of the songs (e.g. ubi caritas deus ibi est), it was so beautiful my eyes watered. Imagine yourself singing your part (being a baritone, I was assigned to augment the bass tonight. Ouch!) and having the equivalent of Charlotte Church singing soprano next to you. Except that our lead soprano sounds better: her voice has this "flutey" resonant quality to it. Believe me when I say her voice can make statues weep.

And, oh, she looks like Evey Hammond too.

What a treat.

All right, time to hit the sack--I only had 2 hours of sleep last night.

Sweet dreams.

Pope John Paul II remembered

2006-04-02T18:00:00.000-07:00

It's hard to believe that it has been a year since the passing of Pope John Paul II.

From the archives, here's a video tribute created from photographs from the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center at L'Osservatore Romano:

Click on the image below or on this link.

Pope John Paul II
May 18, 1920 - April 2, 2005

Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam

2006-03-29T17:54:00.000-08:00

After realizing that kyle's cheerful forecast is going to extend into the next week, I picked up one of the books featured in Amy Proctor's post, It's the Demography, Stupid. Thanks, Amy : )

This slim volume packs a potent punch. My experience of reading this book can be liken to that of a man, cold, lonely, and hungry in a forest, walking into a camp with a roaring fire, hot food, and warm hospitality--for both Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) and Marcello Pera share my disquietude with the plague of relativism and political correctness that has rotted family, society, academia and country. The people may protest en mass for free speech, but individually, they are stifled by the specter of political correctness. Afraid of offending the sensibilities of others, they do not speak their true minds. Afraid of hurting the feelings of others, they dare not assert or embrace clear and definite positions, but instead waffle around in a vague, wishy-washy dance of relativism--in delusional hopes that it leads to the utopia promised by pacifism and capitulation.

From the Executive Officer at CERC:

In May 2004, retired professor of philosophy and now president of the Italian Senate, Marcello Pera, addressed the Lateran Pontifical University. The following day, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger spoke to the Italian Senate.

The perspectives advanced by these two men dovetailed beautifully and their speeches, along with an exchange of letters between the two men, now comprise the small volume, Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam, just released from Basic Books

This is by no means a comprehensive book review. Nor is every passage deemed worth quoting included (not only would that be tedious, but possibly illegal). What is offered then, are sections salient to my peculiar affinities.

From the foreword by George Weigel:

"Crisis" is an overused word these days, but in the present circumstances of Europe it is, unfortunately, appropriate. Europe, Joseph Ratzinger writes, has become hollowed out from within, paralyzed in its culture and its public life by a "failure of its circulatory system." And the results of that hollowing-out are most evident in the unprecedented way in which Europe is depopulating itself. Generations after generations of below-replacement-level birthrates have created a demographic vacuum which, like all other vacuums in nature, is not remaining unfilled: the vacuum is being filled by transplanted populations whose presence in Europe is a challenge to Europe's identity, and could become a threat to European democracy. (viii - ix)

Marcello Pera's lecture, "Relativism, Christianity, and the West":

The thinking that currently prevails in the West regarding the universal features of the West is that none of them has universal value. According to the proponents of these ideas, the universality of Western institutions is an illusion, because in reality, they are only one particularity among many, with a dignity equal to that of others, and without any intrinsic value superior to that of others. Consequently to recommend these institutions as universal would be a gesture of intellectual arrogance or an attempt at cultural hegemony, imposed by arms, politics, economics, or propaganda. Moreover it only goes to follow that seeking to export these same institutions to cultures or traditions that are different from our own would be an act of imperialism.

[ . . . ]

One particularly revealing symptom shows the extent to which this mixture of timidity, prudence, convenience, reluctance, and fear has penetrated the fiber of the West. I refer to the form of self-censorship and self-repression that goes by the name of political correctness. "P.C." is the newspeak that the West uses nowadays to imply, allude to, or insinuate rather than to affirm or maintain.

We read and hear this newspeak every day. According to its dictates, everything can be compared and evaluated within the confines of Western culture--be it Coca-Cola with Chianti, Gaudí with Le Corbusier, Darwinism with intelligent design--and many comparisons can be made between aspects of Western culture and their counterparts in other cultures, such as hospitality, social customs, individual behavior, clothing, and so forth. Yet should one attempt to place in a hierarchical order these cultures or civilizations [. . .] or to simply organize them according to a scale of preferences, from better to worse, out pop self-censorship, prohibitions, and linguistic restraints. Consequently, as one can easily document in today's newspeak, whenever a culture lacks or flatly rejects our institutions, we are not allowed to say that our own culture is better or simply preferable. The only thing that politeness allows us to say is that cultures and civilizations are different.

To me this form of linguistic re-education is unacceptable. I reject it on moral grounds, which are the ultimate* reason for refuting an intellectual position.

*To whoever might take issue with my use of the word "ultimate," I would point out that we reject Nazism, fascism, communism, racism, anti-Semitism, and fanaticism not because they conflict with some logical theorem, or because they are empirically or scientifically false, but because they offend our consciences, contradict our deep intuitions about human rights, and violate our fundamental values. We reject them, in other words, for practical rather than theological reasons.

[ . . . ]

The world is filled concern but also with hypocrisy. Hypocrisy on the part of people who see no evil and speak no evil to avoid becoming involved; who see no evil and and speak no evil to avoid appearing rude; who proclaim half-truths and imply the rest, to avoid assuming responsibility. These are the paralyzing consequences of the "political" correctness (as well as intellectual, cultural, and linguistic correctness) that I reject. (3-7)

The section, "The Double Paralysis of the West," bears enough import to be quoted in its entirety:

After years of virtual or remote anthropology exercises conducted by philosophers and scientists to prove that cultures cannot be arranged in hierarchical order, the case of Islam is finally real, at hand, and ever present.

In 1992, a French expert on Islam, Oliver Roy, wrote that "Political Islam cannot resist the test of power. . . . Islamism has been transformed into a neo-fundamentalism that only cares about re-establishing Islamic law, the sharia, without inventing new political forms." As proof, he pointed to a long list of shortcomings and failures. Islam has not produced its own political model, economic system, autonomous public institutions, division between family and the state, equal rights for women, or community of states founded on anything except religion. In other words, he considered Islam a failure. Rather than open itself up to new prospects, "The Islamic parenthesis has closed a door, the door of the revolution and the Islamic state."

I wonder whether the thesis of Oliver Roy, and of so many Westerners who are thinking along the same lines, is true or false. If it is true, can one then say that the Western model is better than the Islamic one?

The response to the first question depends solely on empirical research and analysis. The response to the second question does not, mainly because it patently expresses an evaluation ("better"). At this point, it would be useful to make a preliminary distinction: the difference between making a judgment and making a decision; in other words, the difference between affirming a thesis--in this case a value thesis of the type "A is better than B"--and taking a stand, in this case a political stand of the type "follow A," "fight against B." The two questions are related, although not in a logical, deductive manner. To argue that the model of Western democratic institutions and rights is better than the Islamic model does not imply taking any particular course of action. One could say that the West is better than Islam and still tolerate Islam, respect Islam, dialogue with Islam, ignore Islam, or even obstruct Islam, clash with Islam, among the many possible stances. According to the old proverb, it's one thing to say, another to do. To rephrase this proposition in logical terms, there are no formal implications between "is" and "ought" (ab esse ad oportere non valet consequentia, as one says in Latin).

The dominant culture in the West, however, thinks the opposite, and reveals its prejudices through a major flaw in reasoning. It thinks that "ought" descends from "is." According to this way of thinking, if a person maintains that the West is better than Islam--or, to be more specific, that democracy is better than theocracy, a liberal constitution better than sharia, a parliamentary decision better than a sura, a civil society better than an umma, a sentence by an independent tribunal better than a fatwa, citizenship better than dhimma, and so forth--then he or she ought to clash with Islam. This is an error of logic that compounds the error of believing that our institutions have no right or basis to be proclaimed as universal.

The consequence of these two errors is that today the West is paralyzed twice over. It is paralyzed because it does not believe that there are good reasons to say that it is better than Islam. And it is paralyzed because it believes that, if it such reasons do exist, then the West would have to fight Islam.

I personally reject these positions. I deny that there are no valid reasons for comparing and judging institutions, principles, and values. I deny that such a comparison cannot conclude that Western institutions are better than their Islamic counterparts. And I deny that a comparison will necessarily give rise to a conflict. I do not deny, however, that if an offer to dialogue is responded to with a conflict, then the conflict should not be accepted. For me, the opposite holds true. I affirm the principles of tolerance, peaceful coexistence, and respect that are characteristics of the West today. However, if someone refuses to reciprocate these principles and declares hostility or a jihad, I believe we must acknowledge that this person is our adversary. In short, I reject the self-censorship of the West. (bold face mine 7-10)

A common point between Pera and Ratzinger in their lectures (and letters) is the moral bankruptcy--and consequently, physical paralysis-- that relativism inevitably spirals into. When one thing is as good as the other, there is nothing to stand for, nothing to fight for.

[T]he relativism that preaches the equivalence of values or cultures is grounded not so much in tolerance as in acquiescence, more inclined toward capitulation than awareness, more focused on decline than on the force of conviction, progress, and mission (which were once typical of Christianity, Europe, and the West). (34)

But do not misunderstand me, either deliberately or through distraction. I am not advocating a Western declaration of war or state of war. I am advocating something else that to me seems even more important. I am urging people to realize that a war has indeed been declared on the West. I am not pushing for a rejection of dialogue, which we need more than ever with those Islamic countries that wish to live in peaceful coexistence with the West, to our mutual benefit. I am asking for something more fundamental: I am asking for people to realize that dialogue will be a waste of time if one of the two partners to the dialogue states beforehand that one idea is as good as the other. (bold face mine 45)

Marcello Pera is non-Catholic and a secularist, by the way.

In "The Spiritual Roots of Europe: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow," Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI ) went from the accounts of Herodotus (484 - 425 BC) and the transfer of the Roman Empire capital to Constantinople (330), to the Reformation (1517) and the French Revolution (1789 - 1799) in twelve pages. And you thought the Enzo was fast...

At the hour of its greatest success, Europe seems hollow, as if it were internally paralyzed by a failure of its circulatory system that is endangering its life, subjecting it to transplants that erase its identity. At the same time as its sustaining spiritual forces have collapsed, a growing decline in its ethnicity is also taking place.

Europe is infected by a strange lack of desire for the future. Children, our future, are perceived as a threat to the present, as if they were taking something away from our lives. Children are seen as a liability rather than a source of hope. There is a clear comparison between today's situation and the decline of the Roman Empire. In its final days, Rome still functioned as a great historical framework, but in practice it was already subsisting on models that were destined to fail. Its vital energy has been depleted. (66-7)

The communist systems collapsed under the weight of their own fallacious economic dogmatism. Commentators have nonetheless ignored all too readily the role in this demise played by the communists' contempt for human rights and their subjugation of morals to the demands of the system and the promises of the future. The greatest catastrophe encountered by such souls was not economic. It was the starvation of souls and the destruction of the moral conscience.

The essential problem of our times, for Europe and for the world, is that although the fallacy of the communist economy has been recognized--so much so that former communists have unhesitatingly become economic liberals--the moral and religious question that it used to address has been almost totally repressed. The unresolved issue of Marxism lives on: the crumbling of man's original uncertainties about God, himself, and the universe. The decline of a moral conscience grounded in absolute values is still our problem today. Left untreated, it could lead to the self-destruction of the European conscience, which we must begin to consider as a real danger--above and beyond the decline predicted by Spengler*. (73-4)

*The obligatory reference here is to the following words of Erwin Chargaff: "Where everyone is free to play the lion's part--in the free market, for example--what is attained is the society of Marsyas, a society of bleeding cadavers."

We do not need to look far for examples to Chargaff's point: people piling upon each other with frivolous lawsuits; companies doing the same. Corporations gouging consumers. Consumers retaliating through software, music, video piracy, and even fraud. Where is that sense of "core values" which form the bedrock of one's existence and actions in life? Most of the time, all that is observed (and encountered) is the attitude of "Me! Me! Me! What's in for me?"

I must admit I am enamored by the manner in which Cardinal Ratzinger conveys his thoughts--he does not mince his words, and he saves the best for last:

The final element of the European identity is religion. I do not wish to enter into the complex discussion of recent years, but to highlight one issue that is fundamental to all cultures: respect for that which another group holds sacred, especially respect for the sacred in the highest sense, for God, which one can reasonably expect to find even among those who are not willing to believe in God. When this respect is violated in a society, something essential is lost. In our contemporary society, thank goodness, anyone who dishonors the faith of Israel, its image of God, or its great figures must pay a fine. The same holds true for anyone who dishonors the Koran and the convictions of Islam. But when it comes to Jesus Christ and that which is sacred to Christians, instead, freedom of speech becomes the supreme good. The argument has been made that restricting freedom of speech would jeopardize or even abolish tolerance and freedom overall. There is one major restriction on freedom of speech, however: it cannot destroy the honor and the dignity of another person. Lying or denying human rights is not freedom.

This case illustrates a peculiar Western self-hatred that is nothing short of pathological. It is commendable that the West is trying to be more open, to be more understanding of the values of outsiders, but it has lost all capacity for self-love. All it sees in its own history is the despicable and the destructive; it is no longer able to perceive what is great and pure. What Europe needs is a new self-acceptance, a self-acceptance that is critical and humble, if it truly wishes to survive.

Multiculturalism, which is so constantly and passionately promoted, can sometimes amount to an abandonment and denial, a flight from one's own heritage. However, multiculturalism cannot survive without common foundations, without the sense of direction offered by our own values. It definitely cannot survive without respect for the sacred. Multiculturalism teaches us to approach the sacred things of others with respect, but we can only do this if we, ourselves, are not estranged from the sacred, from God. We can and we must learn from that which is sacred to others. With regard to others, it is our duty to cultivate within ourselves respect for the sacred and to show the face of the revealed God . . .. (bold face mine 78-9)

What follows after the text of the lectures by Marcello Pera and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger is an exchange of letters between the two men.

From Marcello Pera to Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger:

Europe is infected by an epidemic of relativism. It believes that all cultures are equivalent. It refuses to judge them, thinking that to accept and defend one's own culture would be an act of hegemony, of intolerance, that betrayed an anti-democratic, anti-liberal, disrespectful attitude towards the autonomy of other populations and individuals. To a Europe that thinks along such lines, the word "spiritual" is palatable because it is so generic, as is the word "religious," because it is vague, obvious, and widely shared. The word "Christian," by contrast, is considered unacceptable, because it is an identifying adjective: appropriate, precise, and therefore suspected of arrogance.

[ . . . ]

I fear that Europe has not realized this. And thus, I fear that European pacifism, however noble and generous it may be, is not so much a realistic, mediated, conscious choice as a heedless, passive consequence of its angelic relativism. This is why I speak of the spirit of Munich, which has an additional irritant today. Namely, that relativism, after teaching that all cultures and all civilizations are equal, makes the contradictory insinuation that our culture and our civilization are worse than others. Hence, there has been a spread--especially throughout Europe--of a sense of guilt, of self-flagellation, of a need for forgiveness from which not even the Church is exempt, together with a feeling of smugness over the dangers avoided. That September 11 atrocity? Blame it on our own genocidal acts, says Chomsky. Suicide bombs? Our fault: We have reduced the Palestinians to desperation, says Saramago. And so on, accompanied by a crescendo of breast-beating. How can we restore realism to a Europe that thinks along such lines? (85-94)

With his trademark assertiveness (during his position as a head of Doctrine and Faith, under the late John Paul II, some of his fans affectionately dubbed him, the "intellectual pit bull of the Church"), Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger pulls no punches in his reply:

You and I are of a single mind in rejecting a pacifism that does not recognize that some values are worthy of being defended and that assigns the same value to everything. To be in favor of peace on such a basis would signify anarchy, which is blind to the foundations of freedom. Because if everyone is right, no one is right.

[ . . . ]

I would now like to say a few words about relativism. As I said at the outset, I am most grateful for all that you explained so carefully in your lecture, and I agree with you completely.

In recent years I find myself noting how the more relativism becomes the generally accepted way of thinking, the more it tends towards intolerance, thereby becoming a new dogmatism. Political correctness, whose constant pressures you have illuminated, seeks to establish the domain of a single way of thinking and speaking. Its relativism creates the illusion that it has reached greater heights than the loftiest philosophical achievements of the past. It prescribes itself as the only way to think and speak--if, that is, one wishes to stay in fashion. Being faithful to traditional values and to the knowledge that upholds them is labeled intolerance, and relativism becomes the required norm. I think it is vital that we oppose this imposition of a new pseudo-enlightenment, which threatens freedom of thought as well as freedom of religion. (bold face mine 107-8; 127-8)

Near the end of his lecture, Marcello Pera shares his disturbing prognostication:

A foul wind is blowing through Europe. I am referring to the idea that all we have to do is wait and our troubles will disappear by themselves, so that we can afford to be lenient even with people who threaten us, and that in the end, everything will work out for the best. This same wind blew through Munich in 1938. While the wind might sound like a sigh of relief, it is really a shortness of breath. It could turn out to be the death-rattle of a continent that no longer understands what principles to believe, and consequently mixes everything together in a rhetorical hodgepodge. A continent whose population is decreasing. A continent whose economy cannot compete. A continent that does not invest in research. That thinks that the protective social state is an institution free of charge. That is unwilling to shoulder the responsibilities attendant upon its history and its role. That seeks to be a counterweight without carrying its own weight. That, when called upon to fight, always replies that fighting is the extrema ratio, as if to say that war is a ratio that should never be used. (43)

Notes

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, was the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under the late Pope John Paul II, and has long been regarded as one of the most profound Catholic theological and spiritual writers of our times. His numerous books include God and the World, Introduction to Christianity, Salt of the Earth, and The Spirit of Liturgy

Marcello Pera, a professor of the philosophy of science at the University of Pisa, is president of the Italian Senate. He divides his time between Rome and Lucca in Italy.

Michael F. Moore is the official translator of the Italian Mission to the United Nations and the chairman of the Translation Committee of the PEN America Center. He lives in New York City.

George Weigel, a Roman Catholic theologian and one of America's most distinguished public intellectuals, has written over a dozen books, including the international bestseller Witness to Hope: The Biography of John Paul II, The Courage to be Catholic, Letters to a Young Catholic, The Cube and the Cathedral, and God's Choice. He lives in North Bethesda, Maryland.