Behavior Modification 003

Having trouble with the Squarespace App; when I close it to go off to have another life elsewhere, the only way I can reopen the document is by rebooting the iPad, which always taxes my memory.  Ah well, technology!  And to think that I gave up my typewriter for a laptop.  I had an Olympia typewriter; my parents had bought it for me when I started college.  Somehow they neglected to include a spellcheck.  I typed my Master's paper on the Tempest on it, and the draft of my doctoral dissertation on 16th, 17th, 18th century formal verse satire: Joseph Hall, John Marston, John Donne (the John Donne also wrote 5 formal verse satires) , and Alexander Pope.  The subject was Images of Evil; it was a critical work.  Everyone before me had done the scholarly research, thank Goodness!  Thus, I got to write a critical analysis and talk about the poems' meanings, something I really delight in doing, yet.

The only bad aspect of the task was the volume.  One of my two best friends in graduate school, Bill Elkins who attended both UK and EKU, go figure, and who died on the operating table at age 62, wrote his doctoral dissertation on Hopkins' 7 "Terrible Sonnets. Thus  he had to study and understand, essentially, seven 14 line poems.  His paper was about a hundred pages.  I, however, with great youthful enthusiasm, chose 4 poets from two different ages, each with a number of much longer poems.  Hall and Marston each had a book of this kind of poem; fortunately, Donne wrote only 5 of them, and Pope rewrote only 2 of them, but then wrote an original poem in the genre which is a literary masterpiece, The Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.  My last chapter was an extensive, absolutely brilliant literary analysis of that poem, fun to think about, fun to write, though it took me three more summers to finish my dissertation, primarily because of my struggle with Hall and Marston.  And I haven't really thought about the beast since.  I should do something about that, maybe.

In any case, What interested me in this somewhat minor verse form was the way the satirists conceived of and imaged evil, especially since Pope took 2 of Donne's satires and rewrote them, so to speak, in the 18th century style and idiom, that is, heroic couplets (rhymed iambic pentameter).  "I am his highness dog at Kew;/Pray tell me Sir, Whose dog are you?"  "Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night;/God said, Let Newton be and all was light." "Oh hadst Thou, cruel, been content to seize/hairs less in sight or any hairs but these!"  Pope's The Rape of the Locke is one of the most delightful poems in the English language.  

I should close the document and save this writing, just in case.  Odd, I had another topic in mind when I started this paper earlier in the morning, Turkey Vultures in the Subdivision, as well as Pet Peeves, but "at my back I hear time's winged chariot drawing near."  Now that I think about it the chariot and the vultures go together, gulp.

"The grave's a fine and private place, 

But none, I think, do there embrace." 

Andrew Marvell, maybe.  One l or two I can't remember.  Iambic tetrameter.  I should quit before something dire happens.  Good morning. 

Behavior Modification CXLII

I discovered that it wasn't quite as late as I thought it was, and that my head didn't hurt quite as much as I thought it did.  Talking to mailboxes will have that effect on one, one what I am not sure at the moment.  Back to the stars.

On the way to Mass at seven Saturday night, we were driving west down the main street of Berea following, like the wise men of old, a very bright Venus.  When we got to the church, I looked for Mars above and to the left of Venus, thought I saw it for a moment, but no.  We were at church early since Mary was the lector (otherwise we get there just as everyone is standing for the first hymn; our less than punctual arrival used to embarrass me, but I have grown accustomed to it, and no one seems to notice anymore, not that there are many there to notice).  Since I still had time before the service, I went back outside to check the very clear sky once more. 

The sky had grown just dark enough in that brief time that Mars had come into view.  How delightful.  I wanted to ask the priest to take everyone outside before Mass because I imagine most people seldom look up and most do not know what is up there when they do.  The Psalm for the service was 147 with the fitting verse: 

He determines the number of the stars, 

    he gives to all of them their names. 

(qui numerat multitudinem stellarum /  

et omnibus eis nomina vocat.) 

The lines look and sound very fine in Latin too. 

Since Mary had to read, she couldn't join me, which was unfortunate since I had been trying to show her Mars for most of my life, it seems.  Either it is not there, or it is too faint, or the sky is cloudy.  Of course I hurried out of church after Mass, but Mars had already set.  Well, there is the rest of the month, one hopes, and the spectacular pairing occurs on the twentieth through the twenty-third of February when Mars passes Venus.  Surely one of those nights will be clear.  "The two planets pass each other on February 21 by less than half a degree," says my Abrams Planetarium Sky Calendar.

Ever since the other night when I was outside talking to Mrs. Henderson's mailbox, I have been thinking about the stars and the rich lesson they offer on the theme of appearance and reality.  Some ancients thought they knew what was up there; some knew they didn't really know, and were not so presumptuous to believe they did.  Looking at Jupiter that night and Saturday night too, I thought even then about the Medicean moons, so called, that Galileo saw moving with Jupiter.  I can't see them just standing in the street and looking, but I can see them when I bring my binoculars.  There are, however, we now know, many more moons around Jupiter than just those four.  Not only that, the universe is packed with stars that we can only see through those powerful telescopes like the Hubble, now in space.  The point is that what was hidden that night was so much more in my mind than what I was actually seeing, and what I was seeing was only a small yet brilliant image of what Jupiter looks like from a different perspective, with its hugh mass and swirling red spot, etc.  Given our failure to see and understand what is before us, we ought to exercise humility.  But we don't.  Given the way we behave we should be ashamed, but we aren't.  Given the beauty that daily confronts us, we should be in awe and give thanks.   But no one knows what awe and majesty are anymore.  If we did I suspect we would be constantly overwhelmed when we looked up.

Behavior Modification CXLI

On Fairway Drive:

Mary and I left the somewhat secure confines of our home to follow our street around the bend in the road to the left to where the sky is visible.  Tonight the moon was full and magnificent (a few years ago I might have said the sky was truly awesome, but our culture has rendered that word useless except as a fairly meaningless expression of approval).  The moon was not only magnificent but Jupiter was exactly to the left of the moon making a stunning pairing in the night sky.  We watched them rise over the houses in the subdivision and over the golf course behind them.  The moon appeared to have a golden sheen, as in the image I found, and was stunning!  

On the other side of the sky in the distant WSW Venus was still visible in what was left of the setting sun's glow.  Mars is with Venus, a little higher and toward the south.  I could glimpse Mars from time to time, but primarily it was dim, and then it washed out.  There are, however, spectacular stellar events coming this month as Venus catches up with Mars and then passes the planet, around the end of the month.  On February 20, for example, Mars, Venus, and a sliver of the moon will all be clustered together in the western sky about an hour after sunset.

As I was standing on the road watching the moon and Jupiter, I was talking to Mary about Orion and Sirius which were very faint, thanks to the brilliant moon.  When she didn't say anything for a bit, I turned around to see if everything was all right and discovered that I had been talking to Mrs. Henderson's mailbox.  Mary was one lot down at the end of the cul-de-sac, far enough that she had not heard me holding forth.  I decided that if Mrs. Henderson's mailbox was going to maintain its lonely, Stoic silence, I should too.  And so I will now and take myself to bed.

Oh, sadly, we had to leave Simon, Schuster, Frollie and Dexter home, as there is no real standing quietly and looking up while we are holding on to the guys in the middle of the night in the middle of the road.  We've tried.  Needless to say, they were quite disappointed, but we explained that if the weather cooperated, they would get their walk tomorrow/today.   

Behavior Modification CXL

Schuster

The picture for the October 22, 2014 entry shows Schuster on top of the love seat, riding high.  Three months later, the consequences of his daily and nightly sleep fests have become evident: "The love seat is ruined!"  I am quoting Mary, of course.  Last night, as a matter of fact.  However, there has been a change to the structure of the love seat.  The little dog has spent so much time there that the pillow, which 3 months ago was firm, is now soft, and the little guy sinks down into the sofa between the pillow and the backing.  In fact I looked over once last night and Schuster had mostly disappeared down into, so to speak.  At least the seat is still the firmest seat in the house, probably because we don't sit there much.

More consequences, Angels and the Great Chain of Being

Mary and I still stop whenever we pass Schuster on the love seat to touch him, stroke his furry back, scratch his ear, rub his belly, kiss his head.  Angels, being purely spiritual creatures, cannot do any of that touching; Angels do not have the five senses that we humans do.  I hadn't thought of this for some time, but in Medieval and Renaissance thought, we humans were understood to be the link between the natural and the spiritual world in the great chain of being, the hierarchical order of reality that made up the world we live in.  Human beings are both flesh and spirit; dogs, for example, are purely flesh and blood; angels are pure spirit, as I said a moment ago.  

According to the Pseudo-Dionysius (Ha, I believe the real Dionysis was a first century Christian while the writer of the treatise on angels, the Pseudo-Dionysis, was sixth century), there are nine ranks of angels, each with a specific nature and function.  Edmund Spenser in the Faerie Queene referred to the nine ranks as the "trinal triplicities," a delicious phrase signifying three groups of three:  Let's see, there were the Seraphs, the Cherubs, the Thrones; the Dominations, the Virtues, the Powers; then the Princedoms, the Archangels, and the lowest group in the hierarchy, the Angels.  Love, power, and humility, among other qualities, characterized the orders; the lowest did not envy the highest, for example; the highest did not scorn the lowest.  Power: an angel's touch could unmake a world, or one of us, and the angels, speaking generically, were thought to move the heavenly spheres, of which there were also nine, the lowest being the moon.  Love is the most interesting quality of the angels,  for all of the angels are moved, or move, literally and spiritually, by love.  The purest and most powerful in that regard would be the Seraphim who are closest to God, and undoubtedly the most beautiful, the most magnificent, burning with love for God.  The Biblical sense of angels, I suppose, comes from Isaiah 6, and, I am guessing, Psalm 29.  Angels visit Abraham in Genesis and bring destruction down on Sodom and Gomorrah.  Luke gives us Gabriel St. Paul's letters also contain references, since he understood that we were battling Principalities and spiritual Powers way beyond our comprehension.  The Bible, in fact, is rich with references and images. The cultural climate we have inherited is much diminished, as we have become the great (though there is really nothing great about our imaginations) deniers (as in denying that there is truly a spiritual dimension to reality).  Today, our world view has no place for angels.

I loved teaching Renaissance literature and being immersed in a world-view rich and substantial.  My only regret is that I was constantly aware of how little I really knew and how little time there was to correct that deficiency.  Though I haven't checked, it might be interesting to look up the Pseudo-Dionysis on the internet or the Great Chain of Being.  There were varying arrangements of the angelic orders, and though writers like John Milton knew the medieval sources, he tended to go his own way with their presentation.  His sense of their wonder and magnificence is mostly spot on, as we have learned to say.   Here, for example, is Adam in Book 5 of Paradise Lost calling to Eve to watch the approach of Raphael come down from Heaven to warn them about the presence of Satan in the garden; he comes like a second sunrise:

"Haste hither Eve, and worth thy sight behold

Eastward among those Trees, what glorious shape

Comes this way moving; seems another Morn

Ris'n on mid-noon; som great behest from Heav'n

To us perhaps he brings, and will voutsafe  

This day to be our Guest."  (307-313) 

I love Milton, but I suspect that the change toward modernity and the modern cultural climate is already evident  in Milton's verse, for Milton's angels are much closer to our flesh and blood reality than they might safely be, if we see the story as in any sense moving us toward a concept of reality that is purely physical.  That idea is only clear if you are standing in the twenty-first century looking back.  Dante's Angels reflect the Pseudo-Dionysis understanding; Milton's Angels reflect Milton's more physical grasp of the nature of all reality: Adam asks Raphael whether he can eat with them, and Raphael responds with a lengthy and somewhat pedantic explanation that involves revealing the principles at work in the universe, simply, yes: "For know, whatever was created, needs/To be sustained and fed" (414-415).  Reality in Milton, spiritual reality, is much more tangible than in Dante.  PL was published around 1660; Milton visited Galileo in 1608 (I hope), so he knew about the discoveries.  One of the consequences of that knowledge was to imagine a less clear distinction between the sublunar and the translunar realms, as had existed in Dante's time.  Angels visited Abraham in Genesis and ate; Milton provides an explanation of why that is possible.  In so doing he also, unconsciously or not, embodies the cultural changes taking place in the minds of people in the western world.

If I may, Goneril and Regan and Edmund in King Lear embody a similar cultural change.  For these very evil, wicked, vile characters, Reason is not a moral faculty; Reason is a tool for getting what you want, what you desire.  All three understand very well the moral dimension of Reason, but they understand it so the can use it to their advantage.  Of course a son and daughter ought to love and honor their parents, and I do sweet father, until you hand over your estate.  Then it is out into the storm with you! Lear, in a very ignorant manner for such an old man, equates matter with spirit and that is one of his terrible flaws; his foolish pride is another.  (There are more, of course; it is a very great tragedy).  Essentially Lear says, how can you not love me, I gave you everything?   To tie love to matter, to stuff, is to violate the spiritual universe we live in.  Isn't it?  Every parent must learn the disconnect there.  Once again there is a discernible movement in Shakespeare toward the world we have inherited, the world that now contains Auschwitz and gas chambers, atomic bombs and Hiroshima.  Edmund and the girls would not hesitate to kill the Jewish people if it provided a means to the power they desired; again, reason, for them, is only a tool, not a moral faculty.  When Reason fails to perceive spirit, the human race is lost for good.  

Some references for further reading: 

Want real fictional angels?  Try

C. S. Lewis,  The Great Divorce

 His space trilogy: 

Out of the Silent Planet 

Perelandra 

That Hideous Strength 

Dante, Hell-the angel who opens the Gate in Dis for Dante and Virgil!  Magnificent!

Each level of Purgatory has a governing angel, all worth meeting! 

Behavior Modification CXXXIX

Just like that, wiped out!  I know I had two items.  I can't remember either, at the moment.

Oh, having said that, one came back.  I was sitting at the table working on finances, when Mary came bursting in:  "Come see the moon and Venus!"  Well, I had forgotten that too.  I had made a note in my diary to check out the sky after sunset, and I had forgotten.  But Fortunately, Mary was outside and she looks up too.  I went immediately.  The sky was gorgeous.  The center of the beauty was Venus close to the newish moon.  There was only a sliver of the moon lighted by the sun, but the entire disk was illuminated by earthshine.  According to my monthly sky chart, Mercury was below Venus, but not visible to us.  We had to climb Mary's tree house platform to see Venus and the moon, but it was worth the effort.

Above Venus, and slightly to the south,  I could just make out Mars.  From our house the problem with seeing the sky in the west from our yard is the tree line.  The trees mostly block our vision of the western horizon.  While I was looking up, I remembered that when I first met Mary, she too liked the stars and was genuinely interested.  In my early experience, a girl who liked the stars was a rare find.

Mary said the WLEX weather man, Bill Meck, said the comet was visible near the Pleiades which was directly overhead.  We couldn't find the comet, but then my neck doesn't bend that way anymore either.  I also discovered that at night, on uneven ground, under a clear sky, I can hardly stand without falling.  Fortunately Mary kept holding me up.  

In the east, lovely Orion was fully visible and Sirius was just rising.  Jupiter was't above the horizon yet.  I think in a few nights both Jupiter and Venus will be above the horizon together, Jupiter rising and Venus setting, but both visible and certainly worth seeing for a bit.  As I said, the sky is gorgeous now; go out and look up: look to the east and look to the west.  The planets are fascinating, always.

Behavior Modification CXXXVIII

I've had Mary taking photos of Spenser, the proud father, surrounded by a few of his puppies.  Being the last person to get up in the morning, I make the bed, put up the decorative pillows, then arrange Spenser and the puppies (3 labs, 1 dachshund, and 1 Dalmatian, for the moment).  There are still more puppies in the closet and on the nightstand.  Puppy mania.  Of course, having to put them out each morning and remove them each evening may prove just too exhausting to continue.  Besides, Spenser bores easily, and Simon and Schuster have been giving me odd looks lately.

Two days since I posted the Spenser notice, and this morning I am almost out of energy.  The coffee is made; the dishes are done; God's in his Heaven, and all's right with the world!  Browning knew that wasn't true then; we know it is not true now.   

Besides the fundamental question that I have set my grandson (13) thinking about (why is there something rather than nothing), the other poser, as Huck would call it, is the problem of our identity.   We are tossed into the world so quickly, in a sense, that we never really stop to reflect on the oddity of our situation.  

In the first place we all know that something cannot come from nothing, and space is something too, a fairly terrifying something.  Imagine being with Beagle 2 on the surface of Mars (Ha!).  What stands between you and Earth?  Fairly empty space!  I get claustrophobic and have panic attacks just thinking about it.  So.  Once there was nothing?  Absolutely nothing.  Then matter and space just came into existence?  Try to imagine that.  We are living on a logical impossibility.

Of course, as the angel told Abraham and Gabriel told Mary, and Jesus told the disciples, with God all things are possible.   God in that case cannot be a being, like the Greek and Roman and Norse gods; he would have to be the source of being, quite a different pot of beans.  David Bentley Hart is quite good on the nature of God,  The Doors of the Sea, for example, or The Experience of God,  which I may have mentioned before.  Or, just never mind, eh?

Closer to home though, there is the problem of identity; there are just so many of us ("I did not know Death had undone so many!" said Dante in Hell, looking out over what I have forgotten).  Think how many are alive now, think how many have died even before we were born, and yet here we are, blithely teetering toward our own demise, pedestrians, sidestepping oncoming autos, staying out of Malasian airplanes, avoiding Islamic terrorists, rabid skunks, rabbits and bats, falling objects, and oncoming autos driving on the wrong side of the road.  

However we became who we are,  we are connected all the way back to the beginning.  There are no gaps in the chain of contingency, or being.  My mother's mother and father died within days of her birth, and yet, no surprise, she had them, and they had them, and so on all the way back.  

Of all the "insides" there are in the world or ever were or will be in this world, this is the only "inside" I will ever get to know intimately, from birth to death, with only one grandparent, my father's mother who died when I was six years old, Grandma Startzman.  Our minds depend on our brains, our flesh and blood.  So.  How did I land in this physical reality, born to these parents, at this time and day, 8 June 1940?  How? How did this happen that I am me and not some other?  I have no idea!  Having such an identity is uncanny, might lead one to think there is Someone behind it!

And, if this mind and soul depend on this flesh and blood, how can we "go to Heaven" when we die?  As I understand the Gospels and Acts, Jesus disappeared and then reappeared in a somewhat different body, same wounds, recognizable but also different, if I have gotten that right.  "Touch my hand and side, Thomas!" "Peter, a piece of fish, please."  Flesh dies, we are gone.  Buried, we decay, mostly.  Cremated, we disappear, mostly.  Resurrection?  For that to be, God must remember us, intimately know us, in order to resurrect us.  

If you think about that idea in the context of the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist, you might understand my hope; you know, these three, faith, love, hope. 

Well, it is now 5 a.m.  I am off to bed regardless.  You might also now understand why I sleep with my arm around Simon, sometimes, or Spenser.  Just snuggling against the dark, and against my ignorance.  I suspect I know only one thing worth knowing: "Jesus Christ is Lord."  Philippians 2: 5-11, especially.  

Behavior Modification CXXXVII

A strange day.  Specifically, everything hurts, and hurts in a different way.  I always find the things happening to my body quite fascinating, even when it hurts.  "Here, mark this pain.  You probably ought to write it down."  So I do, in a little "fat" Mead notebook, five and a half by three and a half, water resistant covers, 200 sheets, college ruled.  Amazon sells them by the bulk.  Everyone should have at least two.  I have at least ten!  

Neuropathy.  Twenty plus years.  I remember the beginning very well.  It's one of my favorite stories.  In my fifties when I could no longer run, I would go to the community pool and swim lengths or laps in the summer, for the deep end of the pool was roped off for such behavior.  I would drive down in my swim suit and canvas shoes, show my pass and enter, hoping and praying that the walrus would not be there swimming laps too. 

The problem with the walrus was that he was, well, large, and not efficient in his stroke.  Instead of bringing his arms up and forward and straight down beside his body, swiftly and efficiently, he would throw them out to the side and around.  If two people were swimming in the same lane, sooner or later their hands and arms would smack one another.  At first I would watch out for him so as to miss, but the walrus seemed oblivious to his blows.  Eventually I got angry and accidentally timed them to inflict as much damage as possible.  Well, I was just a kid then, and now I am somewhat ashamed of my retaliation, when I am not enjoying the memory.  I suppose my enjoyment of some of my sins may account for my present purgatorial suffering.  I have a severe peripheral neuropathy, but I do not have the illness that causes it, diabetes.  Two years of testing twenty some years ago, and the conclusion was that there was no discernible cause for it.  Well, now we all know, don't we.  The Bible says He is like a refiner's fire.  Hoo boy.

Well, after I had taken and given as many blows as possible and swam my 50 or 100 laps, I would leave, climb out of the pool, dry off with my towel, put my canvas shoes on and drive home.  One day I was walking out when I discovered that I did not have my car keys.  I looked around and didn't see them.  I always stashed them in my shoe and set the towel on top of them close to where I swam.  I do not remember why, but I decided to check the shoes, and there they were.  I had been walking on my keys and did not know it; I did not feel them.  That got my doctor's attention too.  He sent me to a neurologist in Lexington, who transferred me to another neurologist who specialized in neuropathy, who eventually sent me to a pain clinic.  No known cause.  How interesting to be sick in certain ways.  Hmm. 

The specialist whom I really liked reduced my visits from every three months to every six months since the visits had become perfunctory, merely holding patterns in a vast and cloudy sky.  When that doctor decided to give up his Lexington practice and return to his native Seattle, he and Frasier Crane, we both decided that since the check-ups were mostly routine, they could be handled as easily by my original GP, which is where I am today.  

Dr. Schloemer is sort of command central.  Every time I develop a new affliction, he sends me out to a new specialist: heart, two specialists, the second to put in the pacemaker, the first to check it regularly; I have outlasted two dermatologists (reoccurring rashes! among other things), and just had five precancerous spots frozen off my body; a bone specialist (for various problems, the last being a broken big toe, how humbling); a foot specialist, podiatrist, whom I get to see every three months as well; the latest addition is a very nice rheumatoid arthritis specialist with several new pills.  Command central in Purgatory, and then you die and meet the Boss!  Hoo boy!

Actually, when I started tonight, my main subject was going to be cheese, Sara Lee provolone.  We had been to Meijers in Richmond to stock up, our monthly grocery run.  We do not like it, but that is where the goodies are.  So.  Once or twice a month, sometimes after a movie even, we screw our courage to the sticking place, and go.  They sell half loaves of bread, how handy.  The deli sells Khan's baloney, the best, and Sara Lee provolone.  I bought eight thin slices of Khan's and three quarters of a pound of thin sliced provolone.  I make sandwiches: Klosterman's honey wheat, Kraft's Catalina poured liberally on the turned-up slices of bread, a slice of Sara Lee on top of the bread and Catalina, and Khan's baloney in the middle.  

What could be better than such a sandwich, a big chair to sit in, the evening news on TV with Brian Williams, a little black dachshund beside me, mooching my sandwich, and a refillable mug of that Ocean Spray cran grape (I bought 12 large bottles on this Meijers' run; I worry when the count stocked at home drops below 15). 

(Actually, several weeks ago I was eating such a sandwich in such and such a place while watching said TV show when the middle of the sandwich became unstable and shot out of my hand and stuck on the wall.  All that Catalina makes the middle rather slippery.  I looked for the middle on the floor first, thought Frollie or Dexter had gotten it when I couldn't find it down there, then discovered it stuck on the wall.  On the wall!  Like in a TV sitcom!  Simon helped me consume it though, and from now on I quarter my Catalina baloney provolone sandwiches, even though they still have a tendency to squirt out of the bread.) 

That is how I deal with the shopping: I think of the end result.  This time I unloaded and stored the 12 bottles according to dates.  We have polished off all the August, September, and October dates; this time we had about half and half between November and December, the first December bottles.  I wrestled the 31 pound bag of dog food into the downstairs laundry/storage room, along with two large cases of Bounty towels from Lowes.  I still had two full reusable bags of groceries and a gallon of milk to get up stairs.  Cleverly, I decided to do them all at once and save myself a trip.  I carefully lifted each container up three steps, moved myself up, and repeated the process until I had everything on the top step.  Then I picked up the milk, leaving the two shopping bags sitting on the top step, carried it into the kitchen and put it in the refrigerator.

 Next I started unpacking the 15 cups of Yoplait raspberry yogurt and 5 blueberry yogurt, having completely forgotten about the groceries on the top step.  Mary, in the front room started yelling.  "Where did Frollie get that cheese?"  I saw Frollie wrestling with the plastic package, trying to tear it enough to get the remaining 3 (out of about 15) of that wonderful Sara Lee cheese.  Mary grabbed the package and saved the remaining three slices and a partially gnawed bit of a fourth.  Dag nabit! as some ancient Western hero's sidekick used to say.  I yelled "Frollie!" just to make myself feel better, but hers was the most unkindest cut of all.  I had bought over three quarters of a pound.  Frollie stuck her head in the bag (or bullied Schuster into doing it) and took it out, presumably, since the top of the bag was so conveniently at dog level.  And it was my own stupid fault.  I left the bags and forgot them immediately, something I have a tendency to do, frequently.  

I cannot replace them either, at least not for a while.  I was so upset that after I had filed away the new yogurt containers (always raspberry, as much as the store has; blueberry second, for Mary likes them), I made myself a large BP and C sandwich with 2 mugs of cran grape and Fritos Scoops with half a jar of medium hot salsa.  Dogs!  Dag nabit, Frollie.  

Behavior Modification CXXXVI

Yesterday morning, about 3:30 a.m. I made a slight, well-intentioned miscalculation, at which point all Hell broke lose.

I had just finished the dishes when I noticed a can of cat food on the counter with a spoon sticking out of it.  Mary had apparently forgotten to feed the cat her late night meal before she went to bed.  Well, I thought, amiable husband and pet owner that I am, I can do that. 

Cat food is nasty!  Nevertheless I undertook the save-the-cat mission.  The cat was wide awake on the kitchen island behind me, and whining.  I would rather listen to ice freeze than Pinkie whine.  I got the food; I got Pinkie's food tray; I dutifully scraped a little pile of vile looking stuff into her tray.  She was pacing and whining now.  I set the tray on the island, at which point enter Simon stage left and Schuster stage right.

Okay, I can handle that.  Simon gets to lick the icky can, Schuey gets to lick the icky spoon.  Each performed admirably.  I dropped the cleaner spoon and cleaner can into the left-over dirty dish water. 

As I turned around I saw that Simon and Schuster had gone to the kitchen door to be let out.  At FOUR am.  With Simon who does not always like to go out, it is best to take no chances.  Besides, he barked twice which brought Dumb-ass Dexter into the kitchen, along with not-so-fearsome Frollie.  Mind you, Mary has been sick for a week and asleep for several hours.  Dumb-ass Dexter starts to bellow to be let out (he is a beagle!).  The Vivint alarm had been set.  I got out my clicker to disarm it before an unfolding cacophony could take place.  The clicker light turned red, contact, I threw up the lock bar to get the door open and stop the dog noise, when all Hell really broke lose.  Dexter bellowed, the dachshunds barked, the Vivint alarm decided, apparently, that the door had not been properly disarmed before being opened, so it went off in the most annoying way possible, even though I had sent the correct disarm code into the keypad, on my second attempt.  At which time Mary woke up.  A loud speaker phone voice from the bowels of our house (that's downstairs, by the lower level front door) announced that she was so and so from Vivint (that is way the Hell out in Utah!).  I yelled to the speaker downstairs that I was coming.  She said take your time. (Oh sure.  The cops are just minutes away.) I hobbled down the stairs, gave her my name and the correct password.  She thanked me, told me to have a good day or something, and signed off.  Mischief managed.

Mary emerged from the bedroom: "Are we having fun then?" she pleasantly inquired.  I just glared at her and swore, swore that I would never again feed that darn cat wet food in the middle of the morning.  

By that time the dogs were back in the house, Pinkie had retreated to wherever Pinkie retreats when chaos threatens, and Mary and I wrapped up the situation and went to bed.   

One thing I like about Webster, or Spenser (two esses, like the poet), is that he never desires to lick nasty cat food cans or go out to do his business in the middle of the night!

Oh Lord!  The wind has picked up and I swear something is moving on the balcony one wall away from where I am sitting.  There were two very loud thumps, and footsteps.  Thank God the system is armed, and there are two wired doors between me and big loud Whatever!  And a snappy, alert young lady in Utah!

Behavior Modification CXXXV

I wrote a paragraph Saturday night, sat and looked at it for a while, deleted it and went to bed.  I seem to be following suit tonight.  I have done the dishes, eaten my apple (tonight, a piñata, with salt), looked at the blank white screen for some time.  A number of ideas manifest themselves, but none I feel like developing.  Oh, woe is me.

And now it is Monday night, actually Tuesday morning, the thirtieth, already 5 days past Christmas.  In two days (I have the feeling it will happen before I finish this sentence) 2014 will have ceased to be.

Christmases at my age exist in my mind like a pack of Tarot cards, there are major images and minor images, and I can almost shuffle them mentally.  The images contain children, first one, then two, then three; various later images contain various creatures, almost always a dachshund who loved to rip open paper packages and race mindlessly around the room, always the same room for we have lived in the same house for 42 years.  

Actually looking at the images, the memories, made me realize that the first images had no creatures, for when we moved into the brand new house we had built, we decreed that our two dogs, Biscuit, a long-haired dachshund, and Lancelot, an old English sheepdog, were to stay outside.  Both dogs were messy.  The house was new and beautiful.  We loved them both as much as we have loved any of our dogs, yet we made them stay outside.  Every time I think about that decision I wish we had not made it.  Our third dog, Hollie the Collie, stayed outside too.  I guess it seemed normal by that time.  Now it seems a  deficient decision and brings tears, as well as the realization that the past is or at least seems to be fixed.

Shuffle the deck and see the children change size and shape and the dogs move inside, Fritz and generic Buster, the runt of his litter.  I think the Brunners paid us to take him!  Then Mary's big cream colored Labrador, Max.  (I used to call him "Fathead"; he should have bitten me; instead he came happily; he was a good dog, and I loved him too.)    

When the children were small but growing, I am frequently on the floor clumsily assembling things we had gotten them for Christmas, like the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars.  I was as excited as they were.  We had He-Man's Castle down there one year too, and I watched the TV show with them after school from time to time.  Well She-Ra was hot!  Goodness.  I never get away with anything!

Sometimes part of Christmas would involve carting presents to northern Ohio where our parents lived in Tiffin.  The last Christmas celebrated in Ohio was the year my mother was in the hospital and very sick with cancer.  Johanna was just over a year old but she could walk, and I remember her walking across the hospital floor to my mother's bed.  My mother died in a nursing home a month later.  Her funeral took place at the end of January in a terrible northern Ohio blizzard.  After that, my father always came down to Berea to be with us here for Christmas, and he becomes a delightful part of the images, for a while.  He died in 1989.  Oddly, I remember Mary's mother being here frequently, but I can't see whether she was ever here for Christmas.  Surely she was, though I can't tell for certain.   

Forty some years of Christmases.  I can look back; it never occurred to me to try to look forward, with good reason, I think.  The second I try now I see only someone missing, primarily myself, which suggests that that is an ignorant thing to do.  This year, after all, was delightful, almost perfect.  We were eight adults and two (grand) children; we all had a good time together, enjoying one another's company; moreover, I got the best presents ever.

My eldest son and his wife bought me a facsimile edition of the traveling, hand-made St. John's Bible, Gospels and Acts. A copy of the original has been at the Berea College library this year, and the book is impressive.  J-D and his wife, Erin, came early to give it to me before the frenzy started, and that was just the right thing to do.  I have been reading a chapter or two each evening before going to bed; the print and the illustrations are exquisite; being able to read it while realizing how it was made is quite moving.  

I also received two enormous boxes of my favorite snack food, Welch's fruit snacks, 40 packs per box.  Oh my.  I had three packs earlier, and since Simon was sitting with me at the time, I had to share; he seems to like them as much as I do.  If I don't give him one from time to time, he gives me the stink eye, which coming from a dachshund is not pleasant.  

The third gift was a trilogy, William Shakespeare's Star Wars by Ian Doescher, illustrated.   

Han:  A chance for new beginnings we have made, 

          Directing hearts unto the rebels' cause. 

          These are the star wars we have fought and won--

           For now our battles and our scenes are done. 

Prithee, I say, tis an odd and humorous thing, quite entertaining. Or, "--Beep, meep." as R2-D2 frequently says.

Some might find my wife's present, my last, a strange gift to give to a grown man, and an old, but no matter how old I get, there is something in me that delights in stuffed animals.  Perhaps it is my unrealized feminine side, or my inner child.  In any case I have a number of small stuffed puppies.  Some are next to my bed, about five or six there, and the rest are looking down at me from my closet shelf, another eight or ten.  They are too cute for words, almost. I have two dachshunds, three labs, cream, chocolate, and black, a beagle, a golden retriever, a Dalmatian , etc. etc.  I got most of my pound puppies from Cracker Barrel, one at a time.  My wife has frequently given me "the look" for getting yet another one, however.  However, this Christmas she saw one at T. J. Maxx and could not resist. Oh joy! She bought me a stuffed animal, the best stuffed animal ever.  I had her take a picture of him before I started tonight, and that is the image that goes with this entry.  I love him.  I tried to name him Wagner, but Wagner kept coming out Webster, so Webster he is.  He looks like a Webster.  (Or maybe a Spenser, 2 esses, like the poet?)

Webster also looks real; he sits on my pillow most of the day, usually.  Schuster was back in the bedroom two days ago barking at him.  Every time I come into the bedroom, Webster startles me for a moment into thinking he is a real dog.  Well, he is real, no doubt about that.  And now, best Christmas ever: books and fruit snacks and Webster from my wife!  Who would have thought it?  

Behavior Modification: CXXXIV

Christmas 2014.

I found another potent quotable that fits the day perfectly, at least I think it does.  After all Christmas is a Christian holiday, sacred day.  The passage I came across is in an article in First Things, a Catholic journal, entitled "Strangers in a Strange Land" by Charles J. Chaput, archbishop of Philadelphia.  Responding to his discovery that in Canada "In just fifty years since Quebec's 'Quiet Revolution' of the 1960s, an entire Catholic culture has collapsed," the archbishop clearly states his theme:  "In the developed world, more and more people of faith, people for whom God is the anchor of their lives, people who once felt rooted in their communities, now feel like strangers, out of place in the land of their birth."

The first thing he does is clearly define "the purpose of our lives" as "the privilege of knowing, loving, and being loved by God; of serving his people and being his witnesses.  That's the real story of the world, the narrative we belong to.  Only God is God, and God is good.  And God's goodness invites us to remember three things.

One:  We're  a people of worship first, and action second. That doesn't excuse retreating from the world, nor is it an alibi for quietism.  But for Catholics, there's no real Christian political action, no genuinely Christian social service, unless it flows out of the adoration of God. [wow!]  Romano Guardini said that adoration is humanity's instrument of truth.  It's the safeguard of our mental health and integrity.  Adoration breeds humility, and humility is the beginning of sanity.  Adoration grounds our whole being in the real reality: the fact that God is God, and man is his creation.

Two:  There  are no unhappy saints.  Pope Francis says, 'A Christian without joy is not a Christian.'  Joy is the mark of a person who has truly found God.  Chesterton [one of my heroes] wrote that joy is the 'gigantic secret' of the believer.  He said, 'Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial.'

Three:  We're in the world but not of the world.  We forget that at our peril.  Henri de Lubac wrote many years ago that when the world worms its way into the life of the Church, the Church becomes not just a caricature of the world, but even worse than the world in her mediocrity and ugliness."  (January 2015, pg. 26)

Fundamental human things: adoration, joy, and in the world but not of the world, like Christ. 

Christmas 2014

Behavior Modification CXXXIII

Quite a string of letters for 133.  

Well, I got to page 151 in Hart and nodded off several times, decided to quit, have an apple, do the dishes, and go to bed.  I tend to buy 5 or 6 of the dependable kinds, gala or golden delicious, for example, then I buy 3 of kinds I don't know, like piñata, honey crisp, ambrosia, etc.  I like choices.  Since we did Meijers two or three days ago, I am well stocked.  Yesterday I had a honey crisp (excellent); today I am all out for a golden delicious, though I discovered that it needed salt.  I love putting apples on salt though my doctor might frown.  

My problem with eating a big apple at 4:30 a.m.  is that I started reflecting on my day.  Why is there something rather than nothing?  Why did Schuey poop on the stairway rather than in the yard before our walk today?  He got excited, they all did, I immediately took him out, he number oned immediately and ran back onto the deck. I called him to me off the deck five times; each time he would run to the front where I was, turn around, run back to the door.  I gave up and let him in.  Big, and I mean big, glistening, stinky mistake.  I was downstairs struggling to zip up my jacket (everything is contrary in my universe, especially buttons and zippers, knives and forks, spoons, soap.  The list grows.). I looked up.  "Sh..t" I said or yelled.  It was.  An ontological surprise of a different order.

In any case the apple led me here, to the iPad.  I forget why, exactly.  In any case here I am.  Before we left the house today> haircut, bank, flower shop< I had showered and was getting dressed.  Pants were on, long-sleeved T-shirt was on, went for the socks.  Besides color coding, I have two categories: thin in places but wearable, and, nice.  I picked out a pair of nice charcoal gray socks.  I noticed a dry leaf on the floor and something else.  Ever mindful of mess, I picked it up and whatever the other bit of detritus was.  Took it to the bathroom waste basket, went back to the bedroom to put on my socks.  No socks.  I checked the bed which is where they should have been.  No socks.  I went back to the dresser, opened the drawer again, no socks.  I went to the dining room just in case I had gone there for something, and forgot.  No socks.  I checked both baths. No etc. etc. etc.  I began to panic.  I went to the closet next to the dresser to check my laundry basket just in case I had really lost it, them, whatever.  I bent over to search the dirty laundry and my socks swung down and hit the right side of my face!  They had been on my shoulder the whole time!  Good night sweet prince!  May flights of angels carry me to my rest, for now. Memory, how I miss Thee!

Not having an editor on these statements, I notice that I overlook things.  For instance, I just noticed that I was "struggling downstairs," which made it sound as though I was struggling to get downstairs which I do sometimes; this time, however, I was downstairs struggling to get my jacket zippered.

The good thing about this kind of writing is that I struggle, Ha, to get things said clearly and precisely the first (or second) time.  One of the biggest problems is pronouns.  Our tendency is to sprinkle them liberally throughout a text.  When I am writing about this, or that, I know that I am writing about this, or that; God only knows whether a reader will, unless the referent is clear: this dachshund, or that dachshund, Simon, or possibly, Schuster, the little stinker.

Well, it is Christmas Eve.  I hope everyone has a blessed evening, a blessed night, a joyous day tomorrow, and a delightful and blessed year to come.

Behavior Modification CXXXII

"...the fleeting shock of 'ontological surprise'": when "One realizes that everything about the world that seems so unexceptional and drearily predictable is in fact charged with an immense and imponderable mystery" ( pgs. 89 & 88 in my kindle edition).

I am currently reading David Bentley Hart's excellent philosophical and theological work called The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss.  Sitting outside J. C. Penney's last night, waiting for Herself, allowed me time to read for an hour.  Hart, an Orthodox Christian, is dealing with the problem of being, the mystery: why is there something rather than nothing, especially in the face of the "world's absolute contingency."

"The question of existence...How is it that any reality so obviously fortuitous--so lacking in any mark of inherent necessity or explanatory self-sufficiency--can exist at all?" (90)

I thought I would let someone else talk today.  His book is not really an easy book; I am on my second time through which I can tell by all the highlighted passages.  If one is willing to read slowly, attentively, and carefully, one will find it immensely worthwhile.  His discussion of the meaning of "God" is alone worth the price ten times over.

Back to the mystery: further to illustrate the idea Hart refers to another writer:  "The American philosopher Richard Taylor once illustrated this mystery, famously and fetchingly, with the image of a man out for a stroll in the forest unaccountably coming upon a very large translucent sphere.  Naturally, he would immediately be taken aback by the sheer strangeness of the thing, and would wonder how it should happen to be there.  More to the point, he would certainly never be able to believe that it just happened to be there without any cause, or without any possibility of further explanation; the very idea would be absurd.  But, adds Taylor, what that man has not noticed is that he might ask the same question equally well about any other thing in the woods too, a rock or a tree [or a Carolina wren] no less than this outlandish sphere, and fails to do so only because it rarely occurs to us to interrogate the ontological pedigrees of the things to which we are accustomed.  What would provoke our curiosity about the sphere would be that it was so obviously out of place; but, as far as existence is concerned, everything is in a sense out of place.  As Taylor goes on to say, the question would be no less intelligible or pertinent if we were to imagine the sphere either as expanded to the size of the universe or as contracted to the size of a grain of sand, either as existing from everlasting to everlasting or as existing for only a few seconds.  It is the sheer unexpected 'thereness' of the thing, devoid of any transparent rationale for the fact, that prompts our desire to understand it in terms not simply of its nature, but of it's very existence." [91; the reference points to Richard Taylor, Metaphysics, 4th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1992), pp. 100-103.  Hart's book was published by The Yale University Press, 1913.]. I highly recommend Hart's book, though it does require care and close attention.  Hart has another excellent book on the nature of evil, following the destructive tsunami  of 2004 that took "a quarter of a million lives":  The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? a much shorter work but quite profound.  His title comes from Job 38: 8-11.  Any thinking person might want to read Hart's wise consideration, his theodicy.

"...the highest vocation of reason and of the will is to seek to know the ultimate source of that mystery..."   (151, The Experience of God...)