Old World Swine

Taking My Own Advice

It's been a long winter, already. The recent record snows, with their resulting snow days at area schools, have made for some strange weeks where time has seemed almost to stand still and the months are broken into uneven clumps, making it difficult to settle into a regular schedule. Deeply overcast skies have a way of magically turning entire days into protracted mornings, wherein the day just never quite manages to get going.

In addition, I have been more or less buried in work, for which I am grateful, but which monopolizes my time and yet rudely refuses to make me rich. I have spent a great deal of time - increasing amounts of time - with my head stuck in a computer, but have had less and less internet time available for such leisurely and enriching activities as reading or writing (blogging). I have been painting very little.

So, it was in a state of some mental fatigue and ennui that I stepped out onto our porch the other day (sixty degrees!) and somewhat guiltily sat down and lit my pipe. It was only a few minutes later that I was kicking myself for not doing it sooner, for failing to take my own advice. I had grown numb because I had forgotten to take time away from my work obligations for these humanizing pursuits... that is, sitting and smoking and thinking. Not thinking about things - problems -  as if to solve them, but contemplating things.

I contemplated the squirrels. I contemplated the rolling clouds, each the color of gun metal, but with a halo "like burnished bronze", and the pale turquoise sky behind it all. The setting sun was like a candle flame. One could look directly into it as it quivered at the horizon. There was the warm sound of wind in the bare brown trees. A wedge of geese honked overhead and a local hawk arced by me not ten feet away. I could hear his wings part the air, and could even discern a difference in the sounds made by the wing feathers of different types; some whooshing and some making a distinct whistle. He thinks he owns the place. The pipe was warm in my hand.

The effect of the whole scene was like being wrapped in a blanket... while having your scalp massaged.

While the spiritual value of work should not be forgotten, we are not machines. We need time to ease our brains and contemplate what God is doing in nature. I believe we NEED this dialogue with nature just as we need food and air. As many of us in the modern West don't get this proximity to nature in our work, we must take time away from our work to get it.

This is true for me, anyhow. Perhaps I'm a little odd, but I think not that odd. Do yourself a favor; pull your head out of your computer and take a walk. Is it cold? Wear a jacket. Rainy? They have special coats and boots made for that sort of weather, too, I hear. At least get out on the porch and leave your smart phone in the house (no cheating!).

"I Feel Young! I Feel Fifty!"

The title of this post is a phrase very familiar to the men-folk of our family. It was coined by George, a barber, in Anchorage, Alaska in (I'm guessing) about 1973.

Dick was my regular barber (I was by then 12, or so) and the proprieter of the establishment, and George - a wizened old native Alaskan, - played second chair. He was what they sometimes call "wirey", about five-feet-two, at least eighty years old and more often than not sported a wide grin. I remember him as being remarkably quick and energetic for a man of any age.

This particular day, my Dad led his gaggle of boys (3) into Dick's Barber Shop and ordered the usual - buzz cuts all around. He greeted Dick, then George "Hey, George! How're you doing, today?", to which George famously replied, "Oh, great... I feel young! I feel fifty!"

Today, I am fifty, and I am pleased and privileged henceforth to adopt George's enthusiastic mantra as my own. Turning fifty does seem almost comically and absurdly unreal for someone of my generation; the tail-end Baby Boomers. By the time I hit my teens (late in 1973), the Cult of Youth was rocketing toward its preposterous zenith, and the day when the only forseeable use for a middle aged white dude was as the butt of jokes. Stand up, blue collar guys like my Dad were set up as buffoons, a bunch of clueless Archie Bunkers.

So, it was with some great humor that I first observed in the wobbling hand held mirror an undeniable bald spot. It concerned me not at all, but struck me as unaccountably hilarious (we men do have it easier in the looks department. I mean, we're mostly sort of dull and frousy, anyway... what's a little hair loss?). It seemed a kind of cosmic joke. I don't know why, exactly. Maybe it has to do with the strange thrill I get driving by a graveyard... as if a chorus of murmured voices calls out, "Hey... we're waiting! Did you get the invitation? Okay, then. Bye! We'll see you soon." (and at this there are some laughs in the background).

Okay, then. I'm going to be optimistic and consider this the halfway marker. The fifty yard line. Even given that favorable forecast, I'll have to be busy if I'm to get even half the paintings done that I have in my head.

Thanks for all the good Facebook wishes!

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!

Back in the Freelance Saddle

Really marvelous pipe on the porch this morning. An idyllic morning, with the sun coming up and slanting through the tall oaks, but not as beastly hot as it has been lately. The churchwarden pipe I was smoking (that's a long skinny pipe kind of like they were smoking in Lord of the Rings) has taken a while to break in, but it now smokes beautifully. Definitely in the top 3-4 enjoyable smokes I can remember.

This was after morning prayers (The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary and some other prayers, via Corpus Christianum) and really put me in a proper frame of mind to tackle a day of freelance art.

I have a pile to work through. Plans to (possibly) teach in the public schools seem to have pretty well fallen through (barring some kind of miracle), but I have come upon a good source of reliable and not-too-taxing freelance graphic art work that is helping to take the edge off, financially... plus, I've been selling some paintings!

More as I get in the swim of things and the rhythm of the new school year. One big plus about being self-employed is that I can drop my daughter off at high school every morning. I enjoy every minute in her company. I'm also here for the dogs and, well... lots of other stuff that comes up. It's nice to be able to structure your own days. There's dignity in it. Have to stay on top of things, though. Wasted time is a monstrous thing.

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)

God Invented Weekends

I love being a Catholic. The photo above was not set up at all... just a collection of stuff that happened to be there this morning: my favorite pipe, some smoking paraphernalia, prayer book, Rosary and G.K. Chesterton coffee mug. Later tonight, I suppose I should take another photo, only there will likely be a glass of wine instead of the coffee.

There are hedges that need trimming, and half a hundred small chores that cry for attention, but The Boss jovially insisted I take the whole day off and drop by His House later to see him.

Sunday is also a great day to read all the poems Pavel Chichikov has sent through the week. Like a good meal, it takes a little leisure to give them proper attention.

Today (Sunday, July 11) is also day four of the Belloc Novena.

(cross posted at The League of Bearded Catholics)

Farmer's Market

Our local farmer's market recently expanded their operation to Saturday and now Wednesday mornings, so we have a better chance to make it down there to pick up some fresh local veggies and support our local growers.

The farmer's market is what it is. You won't find the selection that you would at a Mega Mart - no bananas or mangoes... which is kind of the point. You will find a nice selection f the stuff that grows seasonally in your part of the world. For us, right now, that means lots of onions, garlic, potatoes, tomatoes, turnips, herbs of all kinds, green beans, berries, squash, honey, sorghum, etc...

We got the fresh blackberries, above, and they were delicious. We also got some tomatoes that were not around long enough to be photographed before they were gobbled up.

Like I was saying, the only drawback is the narrower selection, but the benefits are many; very good produce, very little packaging (about as little as you like), very little transportation cost to move the product to market, local profit rather than corporate profit. If I can't grow my own (which I can't right now) I'd much prefer to give my business to these neighbors of mine.

Confirmation - The Hard Evidence

Okay, it might not stand up in court, but anyway... good, solid circumstantial evidence that my daughter and Bishop Anthony B. Taylor were both in the sanctuary very soon after the Confirmation Mass (they rightly discouraged photography during the Mass, and offered these photo ops afterward).

O Frabjous Day!

Huzzah! Our daughter is being confirmed tonight. Her confirmation name is Bernadatte. It is great to see her so excited about it. She really understands.

Celebration after Mass.

Tree and Leaves

Introducing the Totally Organic Leaf Removal System (TOLRS or "Tollers", for short).

I even recycle any cans and bottles the job requires, so... how green is my frikkin' valley? It's not only good for the environment, but it's about the best exercise I get all year. Okay, it's some of the only exercise I get all year, but... all the more important, for that.

I rake a heaping pile of leaves onto a big tarp, drag it into the woods in back of our property, and Nature does the rest, breaking the oak leaves down into their component elements, along with this year's Halloween jack-o-lanterns. There was a deer bedded down in the woods last time I was working, and she must have really liked that particular spot, because she would get up and snort and stamp around a little, maybe walk away a few yards, but she didn't bolt, even though I disturbed her a few times.

I know she thought I must have been nuts. You could practically read it in her expression, "What in the world are you doing, dragging leaves from one spot to another? Are you making a nest? Storing them for the winter? Do you plan to eat them?... what?!... you're not making sense."

I could only shrug inwardly, "It's an aesthetic thing. And the neighbors wouldn't think too well of me if I didn't clean them up. Sorry to bother you.".

There is a subtle, spicy aroma to oak leaves that I find lifts my spirits, and the weather has been amazing... a classic Indian summer. I'm very grateful to be out in it, and then there is a kind of physical poetry to the work itself that seems very life-affirming. I recommend it. It's a terrific sleep aid.