Mea Lesbia: Or How Not to Love.

Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love,

 Do not estimate the rumors of all the

 strict elders to be worth a penny!

The sun is able to set and to rise;

 We set with it that same brief light,

 And  night is as one sleeping perpetually.

Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred

Then another thousand, a second hundred  

Then even another thousand, at last a hundred

Then, when we have made the many thousand

We will confuse them, lest we know

Or lest those who are able to do evil know

Since the number of kisses is so great.

(If any one wants to call me out on the translation, feel free. You can find the Latin text at http://www.asc.upenn.edu/usr/rcardona/poetry/catullus/5.html)

Catullus is without a doubt one of the most resonant poets in the post-modern era. Vergil is trite, Horace is good but carpe diem has already been worked into the ground and none of us (save for athletes and those sundry others who wish to misquote the man, and use it as a false form of motivation) really want to deal with it any more; until we raise our glasses and say some carpe noctum or "eat and drink for tomorrow we die". The problem is we rarely ever die tomorrow.

Catullus, not waxing nearly as philosophical as Horace instead is proposing something much more down to earth. He speaks to his lover, telling her to kiss him, because when they use their mouths for talking bad things tend to happen. "Those who are able to do evil" in this work come out as spiritual numina, household spirits who demand compensation for all the good things done by them, every kiss, every spiritual favor, but Catullus' previous comments about night being an unbroken sleep make one skeptical of his belief in an afterlife, and as such we cant take his comments about superstition too seriously.

But I'm using metaphors to beat around the bush. Who in their right mind would think to call Catullus a good lover, especially in which his Lesbia in the series of a few short poems turns into ista Scelera (that whore) and even later becomes quadrantaria (she who turns tricks for a quarter). It would be patronizing of me to work all the way into how this is not a relationship we should model, but it is something that seems to happen all too often.

Some things never change. Indeed in our most Roman America Catullus cuts like a knife into our collective psyche, with "my beloved's" turning into "she's a whore" all too rapidly. Not to say that we are a nation incapable of love, we are a nation with shoddy motivations, and it's easy to see how a carpe diem complex can worm its way into a complex of instant gratification, the two are not so dissimilar.  This is the same cultural line which brings us to St. Augustine's lovely prayer of  "Da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo." (Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.") 

Instant gratification is also perpetual procrastination, and it is funny that we should use procrastination as much as we do in a carpe diem culture. (Pro Cras- translating to literally 'for tomorrow') The way in which we tend to ignore temporal realities when transitioning from Lesbia to Scelera best amounts to a kind of double think: for example.

"I love her, I have always loved her" = "Oceania is at war with Eurasia, Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia."

"I never loved that bitch anyway, my new interest is now the object of my love, and who I have loved forever."= "Oceania is at war with East Asia, Oceania has always been at war with East Asia."

We self impose this doublethink as a coping mechanism when we do not willingly recognize the nature and motivations of our interpersonal involvement. Catullus rings of this, though not nearly as much as thousands upon thousands of facebook relationship statuses. The thousands upon hundreds of kisses, the carpe diem mindset, the buy now pay later ethos all share in common their propensity to postpone the consequences and then rationalize them in to a non-issue. 

This is no way to live, or love.

Step forward: we hear

That you are a good man.

You cannot be bought, but the lightning 

Which strikes the house, also

Cannot be bought.

You hold to what you Said.

But what did you say?

You are honest, you say your opinion. 

Which opinion?

You are brave.

Against whom?

You are wise.

For whom?

You do not consider your personal advantages.

Whose advantages do you consider then?

You are a good friend.

Are you also a good friend of the good people?

Hear us then: we know

You are our enemy. This is why we shall

Now put you in front of a wall. But in consideration of 

           your merits and good qualities

We shall put you in front of a good wall and shoot you

With a good bullet from a good gun and bury you

With a good shovel in the good earth.

-Bertolt Brecht "The Interrogation of the Good"

Politics=Polarization

Excuse this remarkably illogical statement and allow me to qualify it. Politics in any broad context, specifically targeting capitalist democracies, has inherent in its creation the need for minority and majority, of which the majority will have a say that the minority cannot approach outside of activism and civil disobedience. It empowers a group based on a utilitarian principal that it is the most numbers voting for the most good that can be done for those numbers and those who dissent practically or ideologically are pushed to the margins.

Politics=Polarization

Global politics takes this to an extreme that encompasses all of the human community, although we can talk less here about the hegemony of the majority than the hegemony of the pocketbook. The battle lines tend to be drawn along these patterns of hegemony, and, as it has been since the advent of the Polis, according to the desires of the opposing hegemon.

What am I saying, and why the beautiful poem? In short, for I don't have enough time to be eloquent and thorough in my stance on this particular topic, I want us to question which side of the wall we are on.

In circumstances of opposing practicality and ideology there are always two sides, what tends to mark our opinion is which narrative of which side we hear. These narratives are essential to our understanding of our particular orthodoxy (for that term exists as much in the dialogue of a Capitalist Democracy as it does in the Vatican) and these narratives serve to set us on our respective side of the wall.

I find lightning to be quite an interesting metaphor for Brecht's "Interrogation" we strike violently on impulse (emotional perhaps, not electrical) and though lightning's volition can be called into question we can rest well assured that without both narratives from both sides being heard our volition is as questionable as Zeus's. Volition stems from deliberation which comes from clear reflection on opposing viewpoints and then, with all information in hand, moving forward with a course of action. But let us be clear that deliberation is essential and should be handled with a patient and prayerful diligence. 

For this to be possible there must be an honest exchange of narrative, which, if there is any practicality in these ramblings it is this; we do not know both sides when we do not make an active effort to seek these narratives in equality, nor can we expect them to be provided handily for us. Our process before volition should be careful and informed, diligent and slow, with clear grasps of all opposing narratives before moving forward.

Without the information necessary to deliberation our volition is that of a spark falling from the heavens towards a house. We know our destination, but we know not which side of the wall we're on.

On our Circumstances

Our Circumstances

Partire

 Hodie, 7:54am | Mutare Annotationem | Delere

The Lord didn't let me sleep last night, and though I find myself in that position all too often, sitting awake cursing what may very well be a developing problem, all I have found is that the words of the saints come trickling in too often in those times where I would otherwise be spinning in unconscienceness, oblivious to those revelations that the Holy Spirits inspires in our waking moments. 

Earlier this week I was sitting in the midst of seminarians looking over the word when a building inspector interrupted our bible study. He was trying to find out if the house that we were meeting in had suffered any flood damage in the rains that flooded much of this area just a week earlier. We told him no, there had been no damage, this house remained quite safe during the downpours and he stopped long enough to say this before he left. 

"I'm a believer," he began, in the voice of a working man, "and through all of this i've heard people ask 'Why did the Lord let this happen?' well, just because you love the Lord don't change the fact you live on a flood-plain." 

I have heard too many a prophetic voice from men who in no way see themselves as prophets. 

The joy of the Gospel is the joy of our accessibility to grace, the joy of a Lord who knows our experience from making himself a part of that experience. The word became flesh and dwelt among us, not just in the sense that He inhabited our world. He experienced the joy the pain the sorrow that all of us experience. He cried. He wept. He sweat blood in a garden so we could all know that he was among us. He did all this so we can know that to reach him, to encounter him we do not need to look to the Heavens and search scripture until our Greek is exhausted and our Hebrew is broken, no. To access him we look laterally, around us, in the experiences he knew then, and that we know currently.

I will never truly know what this means, but I can infer this much; we can access him. We can put our best intentions in a man who, fully human and fully divine, knows them all to well. He does not change our circumstances, but he enables us to trust in a strength that we alone CAN NOT know, and if we take that strength and squander it on useless endeavors of self fulfillment then we are not living up to the prophetic voices that surround us daily. 

On our own we are useless to our brother. We can do nothing. God made flesh expressed through our actions with HIS empathy can change circumstances. When we curse heaven we do nothing, we look outside, not at the salvation that is available in us and for us and for our brothers who need more that we are able to conceive. THAT changes circumstances, ours and our brothers.

We can die and leave everything that was useless and trivial behind as we rally a strength that we did not know, because it is not our strength. You can look around, call it the human spirit, call it the son of man, call it inspiration, call it devotion. We drink from many springs but the source is the same. 

The joy of the Gospel is that we can die, and through a strength we did not know, live again. We can live for our brothers, for this world that is consuming itself because it does not know what it needs. It does not know what it is capable of.

Call it the name that works for you, and know that we can move away from the flood plain.

On the continuity and linearity of time.

We think in epochs, stages that are used to quantify and categorize the patterns  of our thoughts and actions both on a personal and social/historical level. Take for instance terms historians use to divide and distinguish between overarching historical periods. We can distinguish between the Medieval and the Renaissance, between imperial and republican Rome, between modern and post-modern movements and times. Academically speaking division is in many ways a necessary evil that must be accomplished to give historians and students of history an easy list of events broken down to fit into remarkably well divided segments on a timeline. And as with many things in academia it works well on paper, but it gives little to no conception of the actual flow of history, how events merge and shape each other long after their segment of the time line has ended.

How can this be so? It is still a line, continuous from the first recorded history to  the moment we are all now simultaneously experiencing.

To speak simply, we segment our own personal histories. Our youth, our college years, 20's, 30's, and onward until we reach retirement and eventually cease to be. This works well for us, to an extent, as a coping mechanism with which we effectually shelve our life lessons to be catalogued for later use and recollection. "Oh that happened in my twenties." Is a statement that has inherent in it the statement "But I don't act like that now." As if to mean that you are not currently who you were in your twenties or in High School, and that you do not still share the same propensity to make the same (or similar) mistakes. 

The same is true historically speaking. When we look at the actions perpetrated by our ancestors, to whom we can all trace our lineage in one way or another, we go to the shelf and say, "that happened in 1320." as if to mean that we are not the same species with the same nature and same propensity towards what our ancestors perpetrated. The line remains unbroken. None of us come from naught.

As with many coping mechanisms we use them as crutches that only seem to justify, not change our behaviors and mistakes, historically and personally. 

So I say let the line remain unbroken, and let us deal with what we are, directly and honestly.

A Thug in Da Pub

There are three words on which modern Hip Hop hinges, without which most of the radio fodder we know and love would fail to have been created in the way that we know and love. These three words are as follows: Thug, Club, and Love.

What these words are examples of is known in the academic poetic community as slant rhyme, which is a perfectly acceptable poetic technique, especially when one is working in a format, such as Hip Hop which hinges almost exclusively on the couplet. 

Slant rhyme, however, is not what I want to talk about. I merely (like most of the posts that will follow, no doubt) want to examine the culture that has developed around this poetic convenience. I want to talk about clubs. 

Now, let me specify. I do not want to talk about  how they are pits of shallow congregation and competition, or how the club aesthetic is remarkably demeaning to women, nor how it and the attitudes that surround the club scene are remarkably chauvinistic and reduce women to the level of spectacle suited for rampant exploitation.

If I wanted to talk about that this would be a long post. And I'm tired.

What I want to talk about is subjectivity and participation(namely political participation)in the contemporary club scene. 

Its important to note that in contemporary American culture there is a clear distinction that needs to be made between clubs and pubs. The word pub is an abbreviation of the "public house" which we yanks carry down from the English tradition of public eating and drinking establishments that were usually on the corner of every block providing the local residents with a place to go and (cheaply) eat, drink, and congregate.

Clubs, however, historically prided themselves on exclusivity and they become established in opposition to the "public" aspect of the public house. You have to earn the privilege of entering a club. Much in the way that dress code and appearance "earn" you entrance in to our contemporary clubs. (Unless you're a young lady, then your sex "earns" your way in to the club so they can get you drunk en masse and exploit your gender to get more young men to pay exorbitant covers in hopes of taking you home and further exploiting you.) 

I said I wouldn't go there... I lied.

Regardless. When you enter a club there should be two things you notice:

1. The music is obscenely loud.

2. The lighting is obscene.

Conversations are quite hard to have when music is overwhelmingly loud, as it tends to be in clubs. The only subjective activity that actively occurs is that of dancing in suggestive manners. Which our bretheren in the 1990's counter-culture proved can be political, but its political only if you mean it to be. There needs to be intention.

Would all the single ladies dancing for sexual empowerment and a clear meaningful exertion of their abilities and desires as a liberated woman put your hand up?

K. Moving on.

Conversation is essential to meaningful interaction. Clubs do not allow conversation. Clubs do not allow meaningful interaction.

K. Moving on.

Pubs, however, though they may have horrendous Karaoke nights (which still carries some remnants of subjective interaction) they do tend to foster conversation better than their dance-club competitors.

Not to say the conversations will be particularly enlightened. Quite the opposite, they are generally rehashings of cable-news opinion, but still, they happen. The potential for exchange exists, and potential is all that is required. They permit the exchange of ideas to occur. Thats what's important.

Though this is not a researched statement I would not be suprised to find that the vast majority of the major public movements of the last 400 years originated in some way from the public houses, precisely because the potential exists where the clubs, much as they historically have been, are bastions of complacency and stagnancy.