Old World Swine

Signs in the Heavens

Some amazing skies I've seen lately. Unforunately, I had no way to record them for posterity.

The first was Thursday morning, when I saw the thinnest of crescent moons hanging over a the pre-dawn glow that spread low on the Eastern horizon. A crescent so slim and brittle one was afraid it might break in a driving autumn wind. The atmosphere was so clean and clear (so different from summer) that behind the crescent one could see very plainly the bulging form of the unlit portion of the moon, its solidity and roundness so palpable that it looked like someone had hung a Christmas ornament among the stars.

Then this morning I again became an accidental stargazer. Sweet Wifey had just left for the day and I was about to start my morning prayers. I have always struggled to keep any discipline and consistency in my prayer life, and having a routine is almost a necessity. When my schedule is disrupted or goes through major changes, my prayer life suffers for weeks. I am a creature of habit. I am also not a morning person. This particular morning (as with most) if I closed my eyes to pray, my brain assumed it was time to go back to sleep.

But I'm also a very visual person, and when my eyes are open for prayer, the world is full of distractions for me. So, I went to our big picture window to look out on the pre-dawn blackness of the woods, so that I would have as few visual distractions as possible. I was delighted to see the stars out and shining brilliantly in the pristine autumn air. Orion was clearly visible, even through the tangle of oaks with their remaining tattered leaves. If one has to be visually distracted during prayer, one could do worse.

Then I saw what I realized was a prodigy, but one routinely overlooked. I saw a man-made star, blinking its multi-colored lights silently across the heavens. The thing is, had any cave-dweller seen such a thing in ages past, it would have been some sort of apocalypse, a portent and a wonder. If I understand correctly, primitive people would often speculate that there must be heavenly beings or even men riding aboard comets and meteors. Here I was looking at a multi-colored shooting star, knowing full well there were people riding in it, and it hardly registered on my conscious mind as I sipped my coffee. How dull our minds must be, to see such a thing as mundane.

It reminded me of this quote by Ralph Walso Emerson, taken from David Zach's book of quotations called Worth Remembering;

If the stars should appear just one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore!

Hob-nobbing with Stars

I am a bit draggy this morning, and for just half a minute I forgot why. Then I remembered; last night, a most deliciously warm and breezy night - my daughter and I spent an hour or so laying in the grass and looking up at the cosmos. She saw the Milky Way for the first time a few nights ago, and has discovered the fascination of star gazing. Anyway, we went out to meet the Perseids meteor shower, with great success. I lost count of how many shooting stars we saw. I wish my eyes were sharper, though.

It was such a night as makes the unholy heat of the daytime very much worth tolerating. I could have curled up and slept very well in the grass. I think I almost did. It's what I imagine the nights in Eden were like.

People rarely see the stars, anymore. We have cut ourselves off from nature, put her at arms length, and starve for beauty and the whispered voice of God.

My daughter observed at one point that looking at the heavens reminds us of how small we are. I gently countered that we are not small at all, but are exactly the right size... as are the galaxies and the trees and everything else. It reminds me of this passage from Chesterton, and I'll throw in a couple more, for good measure. Next time I go star gazing, I'm going to bring these to read aloud, slowly.

"Humility is the luxurious art of reducing ourselves to a point, not to a small thing or a large one, but to a thing with no size at all, so that to it all the cosmic things are what they really are — of immeasurable stature. That the trees are high and the grasses short is a mere accident of our own foot-rules and our own stature. But to the spirit which has stripped off for a moment its own idle temporal standards the grass is an everlasting forest, with dragons for denizens; the stones of the road are as incredible mountains piled one upon the other; the dandelions are like gigantic bonfires illuminating the lands around; and the heath-bells on their stalks are like planets hung in heaven each higher than the other." - A Defence of Humilities

"...if we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse." - A Defence of Baby-Worship

"Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get round in front." - The Man Who was Thursday

 

(cross-posted at The League of Bearded Catholics)

Driving Force

photo courtesy of 1959ford.com

In the combox of this recent post on attending a local motorcycle show, reader cmatt comments;

There is a little bit of a retro-renaissance going on in automotive design, at least from the Amercian manufacturers. The Ford Thunderbird, the Dodge Challenger/Charger, the Camaro, all look back to the 50's and 60's that were the heyday for those vehicles.

This is true, and from what I have seen the auto manufacturers have done a good job adapting the forms of the old designs to the modern market and updated technology. They are adapting to the market by making model hot rods for the Generation That Never Grew Up.

This does, I think, indicate something.

It seems to me that the current malaise in car design is a reflection of a broader loss of vision in American society as a whole. Who are we now? Where are we going? We don't know. In such a philosophical climate, a little aesthetic nostalgia might be reasonably expected. As we cast around here and there looking for significance, we inevitably look to the past when we don't know where else to look.

That might also help to explain the endless parade of Hollywood re-makes, and the unavoidable resurgence of clothing styles from past decades. One week the Eighties Look is in, next week it's the Sixties. You see it in products and home decor... the faux antique look. Shabby chic.

Auto design, in particular, seems to demonstrate this sense of being all "at sea". In the beginning, cars were, not surprisingly, designed literally as horseless carriages, but the realities of the new technology soon made this approach impractical. Advancements were made quickly, and auto design as a distinct concept really took hold. It was driven not only by technology, but by a fascination and a love for the very idea of technology. Technology as almost a spiritual force, the zeitgeist. Auto design became the flag-bearer of the Industrial Revolution, but was still tempered by the Victorian love of beauty and order.

Then came the wars, and America as a Superpower, the top of the heap. Unrivaled in the world. One feels this palpably in auto designs of the period, especially from 1950 - 1960. Car design was simply bombastic, unbridled by either practical concerns or good taste. One can see that the country that manufactured, say, the 1959 Impala (top of post) was brimming with piss and vinegar... and testosterone. My gosh, those cars were just fun. Like your own personal Disney ride.

Then, as the American life was increasingly designed around the auto (hello, suburban sprawl!), things began to change. For one thing, owning a car became not a luxury or a thrill, but a dull necessity (except, notably, in the cities). This meant that car design had to increasingly to take into account the economic needs of the common worker. Design had to be simplified and pared down. To keep costs within reason, cars were no longer designed primarily to be beautiful or fun, or for high performance, but to be easy to manufacture. Cars began to be designed more and more to accommodate the assembly line processes that made them affordable.

Of course, this was Henry Ford's idea from he beginning; Keep it Simple. Stack 'em deep and sell 'em cheap. But he was quickly outpaced by the other automaker's flair for design and innovation, which Americans were increasingly demanding. Ford made the auto a possibility for every family. With prosperity, cars became a fashion statement, but as the family car became an absolute requirement for modern life, Henry Ford's approach reasserted itself, in spades.

After the first oil shortage in the 1970's, cars were designed to be not only cheap to manufacture and cheap to buy, but cheap to operate. This was the absolute nadir of car design. Wobbly tin boxes with tiny motors and the cheapest appointments, totally devoid of beauty or imagination. I give you the Ford Escort;

We have recovered a good deal from that which marked the depths of our most prosaic and uninspired period - essentially the Disposable Car. We have again timidly embraced curves. We have flirted here and there with chrome. We have sought inspiration from the Muse of the Computer Age; The Nissan Cube looks like some nameless piece of PC hardware... a wireless router or external hard drive.

Altogether, though, there is no longer any discernible, unified, driving force behind auto design. What we see reflected in the cars we now drive is nothing so much as the continued fragmentation - the balkanization - of American life.

Who are we? Where are we going? We don't know.

Old Steel

There is something about these vintage motorcycles that goes beyond mere nostalgia - the sentimental wish to return to something like one's childhood.

The lines of these old machines just seem to me more human, somehow. In the beginning, cars and motorcycle design looked to the past for inspiration. Then came a period of purely pragmatic development (form follows function), and then a period which looked to an imaginary future.

What shapes the design of such things, now?

These pictures are from a vintage motorcycle rally in Bella Vista, Arkansas last Saturday, June 26th, 2010.

Happy Spring!

Spring is here, Spring is here,

Life is skittles and life is beer,

I think the lovliest time of the year is the Spring,

I do... don't  you? 'Course you do!

- Tom Lehrer

Warning... Annoyingly Content

Snow!

I very nearly posted a brief announcemnet that blogging might be halted indefinitely on account of a likely repeat of the horrid ice storm that left us without power for days last year (please pray for those for whom this, again, is a reality).

As it turns out, there was less ice than was feared in our area, but an abundance of snow that continues to fall more heavily every hour. There is turkey chili in the crock pot, the teapot singing on the stove, and plenty of wood for the fireplace. We are well stocked up on wine and beer and food... and pipe tobacco.

I don't know what heaven may be like, but on a day like today, simply withdraw sin and death from the world and it is beyond my feeble imagination to think of anything much better. But then, we know that heaven is not only better, but better by orders of magnitude... infinitely better; more varied, more interesting, more beautiful. Here the grace of God operates in disguise, but there we will know it fully, without foggy, intervening layers or perception.

As St. Paul sad;

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. - 1 Cor. 13:12

But for now...my, look at it snow!

No Words

I went walking in the snow, yesterday, with our Border Collie, and we were very quickly joined by a neighborhood mutt, a lovely yellow Lab mix with a black snout. She was very sweet and friendly, and went with us the whole mile around our circuit.

To our (leashed) dog's chagrine, the lab was the picture of joy and freedom, tail erect, bounding ahead of us, snuffling in the snow, then leaping away like a deer. She ran four times as far as we walked.

It bothered me at the time that I was not a poet, and therefore could never find the words to describe the vital playfulness of that dog, or the feeling of walking in that snow between the white sunlight and the blue shadows of the trees.

Then I thought that part of the joy of heaven must be the kind of communication we will enjoy there, direct and unencumbered by the brain or barriers of language and vocabulary. To us, these things are bridges, but they are also, oddly, barriers.

I've been trying to tell my daughter about heaven, lately, because she asks what it is like. When I try to get across the idea that we will all be praising God all the time, she doesn't get it. This doesn't sound all that interesting or pleasant to her, right now. I can see the problem, and I can see why she would not be the only one with the same objection; talk about the same thing all the time? That sounds dreary, especially for, you know, eternity.

People naturally object to the idea that citizens of heaven will only, ever be talking about one subject, even if it is God. But the truth is, there is only One subject, even now. We just don't see it. We think that when we talk about the beauty of a landscape, or how great the soup is at the Italian restaurant we found, or the friskiness of a puppy, that we are talking about something besides the glory of God. Our minds are fragmented and broken into little compartments, and so we see the praise of Christmas fudge and good beer as quite distinct from the praise of God. And so it is, but not like we think.

God is the source and the maker of every kind of good thing, and when we praise any good thing, we are talking about some facet of the genius and handiwork of God, whether we know it or not.

Yes, we will do nothing but praise God in heaven for eternity, but this will be anything but dull. Most of us at present have only ever had the chance to see and appreciate an infinitesimally small sliver even of our own world... and we will have all of the New Heaven and the New Earth to explore, then.

Pope B16 Talks to Artists

How do you get an invite to something like this? Meeting with the Holy Father in the Sistine Chapel. Wow.

Indeed, an essential function of genuine beauty, as emphasized by Plato, is that it gives man a healthy “shock”, it draws him out of himself, wrenches him away from resignation and from being content with the humdrum – it even makes him suffer, piercing him like a dart, but in so doing it “reawakens” him, opening afresh the eyes of his heart and mind, giving him wings, carrying him aloft. Dostoevsky’s words that I am about to quote are bold and paradoxical, but they invite reflection. He says this: “Man can live without science, he can live without bread, but without beauty he could no longer live, because there would no longer be anything to do to the world. The whole secret is here, the whole of history is here.”

Read the whole thing, if you get a chance.

(Hat tip to reader Jim Janknegt, via Facebook)

Here They Come a-Caroling...

Ignorance & Want

I wouldn't ordinarily post on anything related to Christmas this early in the year... goodness knows, I've just now put the yacht into dry dock and hung up my seersucker suits. But I see in the news that the garn-teed Christmas blockbuster A Christmas Carol came out this past weekend, and is making big at the box office, though not as big as some studio execs had hoped.

Personally, it's not one I'm all hopped-up to see. Dickens' A Christmas Carol has been interpreted so many times, and there are so many versions that I already enjoy, that one more just isn't of much interest unless it offers to bring something really unique and special to the table. As I'm not one who is normally bowled over by special effects as such, I'm just kind of ambivalent about this new Robert Zemeckis movie. I haven't seen it, though, so there's always a chance I might change my mind.

One of my favorite versions is a couple of major epochs behind in terms of animation technology, but is one I still find stunning in many ways, simply because of the expressive artistry.

The one I'm talking about is the Oscar-winning, animated version directed by Richard Williams, and executive produced by Chuck Jones (though you might never guess it), released in 1971. I remember seeing it as a boy on a black and white television, and I was absolutely dumbstruck by the artwork.

Williams and Jones and their team of animators made a tremendously beautiful film by forgetting about making a pretty or a happy-Jingle-Bells-y kids' film. They stripped all the modern holiday fluff from the more stark passages of Dickens' tale and let it be itself, and yet brought their own interpretation to Dickens' powerful visual metaphors. I only wish that it was longer, like feature-length... instead of being only 28 minutes.

Much of the film is more or less conventionally animated, but many scenes appear to make full use of the most basic drawing tools, exploring the raw emotive power of charcoal or pencil. I only recently re-discovered this animated version, and was almost disappointed that it was in color. I may just go to the MENU button on my TV remote and turn off the color, if I can buy a copy on VHS.

Meanwhile, you can watch it on YouTube, which I consider to be like a promo for an eventual DVD release. It is also available on VHS through Amazon.

"Famished Nature Will Be Avenged"

The name of this post comes from C.S. Lewis' book, The Abolition of Man, which you really should read. Really. It's short and pithy. Go and read it right now... I'll wait.

Okay. Now that you've read the book, the phrase I highlight is taken from a longer paragraph, wherein Lewis, speaking on modern education, rejects the program which says that all values and sentiments are subjective and therefore meaningless;

The right defence against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes. For famished nature will be avenged and a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head.

It is the reality of "famished nature" that I have been thinking about, lately, the idea that we were created by our Maker for a life of experience and relationship and freedom, and all the risk that entails. We were made to comprehend beauty, to drink it in, to acknowledge it and give thanks. We were made to find out things, to thirst for knowledge and truth.

As G.K. Chesterton put it in his beautiful book Orthodoxy;

The thing I do not propose to prove, the thing I propose to take as common ground between myself and any average reader, is this desirability of an active and imaginative life, picturesque and full of a poetical curiosity, a life such as western man at any rate always seems to have desired. If a man says that extinction is better than existence or blank existence better than variety and adventure, then he is not one of the ordinary people to whom I am talking. If a man prefers nothing I can give him nothing.

It strikes me that the culture we have created for ourselves, by accident or design, has become un-poetic to a degree that is positively anti-human, effectively satisfying our animal appetites, but denying our deepest longings.

We are very concerned with having plenty of everything, and to spare, but we have also grown averse to hard physical work or discomfort, and so in making nearly every kind of thing we now opt for the easiest, most efficient and soul-less method of production possible; that is, the factory. As a result, we have individually forgotten how to do and make a myriad of simple things that virtually all our ancestors did and made. We instead pay slaves to make things for us, and if you think that is an overstatement, you might want to find out a bit more about production methods and labor practices in China.

In addition, we have become so obsessed with safety as a social value that we now hover around our children with antiseptic wipes and prohibit home-made snacks for classroom parties (got to bring everything in a factory-sealed cellophane pouch!). We have worried the old, fun tradition of Trick-or-Treat practically out of existence, on the mythical ground that it is dangerous.

We all crave Life, Truth, Beauty and Unity, but we are apparently willing enough to trade in all of those intangibles, if we can have certain guarantees in return.

We long for meaning and beauty, and yet we design our common culture to be soul-crushingly drab and prosaic, predictable and safe and inoffensive in every respect. That's what we now pay our leaders (political and otherwise) to do for us, and we get mad when they don't deliver. Hang the intangibles... we want everything now, and we want it cheap, we want it safe, and we want plenty of it so we don't have to worry about running out, even if we are a bit careless and wasteful with it.

But "famished nature will be avenged".