Christmas is over, unless you are Russian Orthodox. To the Russians it hasn’t even started yet.

Every year of late, I feel like I’ve flunked Christmas. No tree, lights, presents. I have no motivation for any of that.

So there you have it.

“When the times get weird, the weird turn professional.”– Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

We went to Williamsburg today to get sandwiches at The Cheese Shop, a Williamsburg fixture that’s having to discontinue sandwich-making due to the pandemic-induced labour shortage. I’ve been to Williamsburg many, many times, but today, I sat outside in a chair and felt like an alien, neither outer space or undocumented, but a stranger. In my own world.

There were people walking around, all dressed in fundamentally the same kit: jeans or khakis, plaid flannel shirt, collegiate, school or club Tee-shirt, and fleece vest, that would again proclaim their identity group. And there I was in my red and black buffalo plaid flannel shirt, jeans and L.L. Bean deck shoes. I was dressed to blend in, except for my black City of Manchester Tee-shirt, with Manchester spelled out on the St George red and white cross, like the flag of England.

There was a tasteful Santa Claus, dressed like some proper Victorian Santa, walking about chatting with the Volk, a busker playing Christmas carols, tunes, and ditties on a tenor sax, children dressed in conformity with whatever adult, parent, grandparent, or Auntie who brought them. Finally there were the dogs. They were top of the line dogs, French Bull Dogs, spaniels, terriers, and retrievers. These were dogs that cost more than what I got from Social Security last month.

I said to myself, “This is not my world.” I care not a fig for any of this. This well-crafted money pit is not my world, Much as I love history, tasteful decor, pleasant domestic and public architecture, and a well-thought-out town plan, this isn’t my world. It is a silk rose, a masterpiece of artificiality, worth seeing but totally forgettable

Maybe it’s because Colonial Williamsburg oozes Rockefeller money, like road tar on a hot day, is why I dislike it and by extension, those who flock there. This is not my world any longer. And not conforming to the materialistic, superficially intellectual culture merely represents another variety of conformity. No piercing, tattoo, haircut, beard or nonconforming attire will validate my individuality.

This is over one hundred years of a rootless cultural paradigm, a world of money, titles, prestige and accolades, that survives to attain and retain power, in whatever cultural milieu it spawns next. Conservative, Liberal, godly, godless, patriarchal, anarchistic, heterosexual, Queer, binary, non-binary. What counts is whether one holds power. There’s a straight line from Nixon to Obama to Buttagieg. And what matters is whether you distribute the money or order the killing. God help you if you’re one of the schmucks getting defunded, dismembered or killed.

It is a Wednesday, a Wednesday when Recycle Man comes to our little community in his big green truck. I remember Kathleen Turner’s character in John Waters’ Serial Mom. I don’t think anyone in my neighbourhood would kill me for not recycling, but I can’t be absolutely certain. So my recyclables go out .

Last night, I decided that this would be the Wednesday when my paper clutter would be recycled. I accumulated a paper grocery bag filled with direct mail solicitations from every charity known to the American people, from St Jude’s to the Salvation Army. I recycle this stuff frequently, but if I fall behind ever so slightly, it’s as if my home needs a paper enema.

I sat in my chair, removing my name and address, the plastic windows in the envelopes, and any other unsuitable things. It took the whole evening to toss out this crap, but around Eleven PM, I took the bag out to the green wheeled Rubbermaid refuse container in front of my residence.

Upon completion, I decided to vacuum whatever areas of carpet lay exposed in my downstairs. Eventually I went bed and slept until pain woke me up.

I could say more. I could write about the chicken and leek soup I prepared in the slow cooker. What I write about in the sleep-deprived darkness of pre-dawn, is what I do to take the edge off my loneliness.

That’s not all that unusual, is it?

Chastity, not the fetishized condition written about by sexual deviants and their equally deviant controllers, but a state where one chooses to live without any form of sexual intimacy, is what I’m talking about?m.

How many sexual “experiences” can you have, in both numbers and variety? What do they mean? Most likely., nothing, after the fluids have been expended and the climaxes have been reached. The exception is an ovum being fertilized and a child conceived.

There is less a philosophy around sex than an ideology. The dogma of orgasm reigns. Sex becomes a mere autonomic pursuit.

But what if you looked upon your fellow human beings as persons who exist not as a sexual partner or potential sexual partner?

Chastity may exist as the touchstone to true intimacy. That would require that we reject the sexualized culture of our time.

I don’t know. Maybe I should be the last person to talk about this.

In the coming weeks, if the Russian / Ukrainian border tensions continue or escalate, we will read a story and watch video of a looming conflict between these two nations and some talking head, Chris Cuomo’s replacement, will tell us that Western Civilisation itself, is imperilled. Somebody wants America to be Ukraine’s tag team partner. Never mind Russia and Ukraine have a long history of rivalry both within the Russian Empire and the Soviet Era. The cultural links between the two nations are deep, most notably the Orthodox Church. The political roots of the Russian state are placed in the soil of the medieval kingdom of Kievan Rus.

The Madison Avenue propagandists will decry the plight of “plucky little Ukraine”, to sell yet another foreign entanglement, and Vladimir Putin will be the next tin pot Hitler for our consideration. And somehow Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr will be the next Churchill.

Absurd? You bet. Expensive? Without doubt. Bloody? Yes, if it comes to that. And Russia, facing American intervention in their homeland, will fight with a ferocity we have not seen since Iwo Jima and Okinawa. This has catastrophe written all over it. If you think your Congressional Representative actually cares, write them. Maybe enough people in both parties will see this for the disaster it is.

I have been awake nearly two hours, watching shows on YouTube and now, trains. I just watched a freight pulling both refrigerator cars full of orange juice and empty refuse containers. To CSX, it’s all freight, tonnage.

As a culture, we define ourselves as much by what we discard as by what we manufacture. And this train is symbolic of our endeavours. All of what we make is ultimately waste. We even have come to delight in disposing of our waste. Recycling is the apotheosis of garbage. Technology has turned our civilisation into little more than a metaphorical digestive tract, as goods progress to garbage.

In 2019, a significant portion of Notre Dame Cathedral burned. The building was now a structure rendered to waste. The cathedral became a husk, the outer shell of a moribund idea, that there should be, and that there exists space dedicated to the worship of God. We lost a sense of the sacred at about the time of the Protestant Reformation. Today, the faithful must fight to preserve Notre Dame as a sacred space, proclaiming the Gospel (“good news”) in its art and architecture. To the secularists, the Cathedral’s purpose as a sacred space disappeared when the cathedral burned, The renovation plans proclaim not the Christian message of the Redemption of humankind through the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ, but the narcissism of humanity. It’s all about “us”, don’t you see? Notre Dame must be transformed into a shrine to the cult of human experience.

The Cult of Experience has as its central rite, the attainment of orgasm. Sex was once about procreation and bringing life into the world. Ultimately, sex was how human society continued. Now sex is about orgasm. “Did you come (“cum”), i.e. experience orgasm? “ is now the governing principle of sexuality. Orgasm has replaced salvation as the existential quest of humanity. The triumph of narcissism is crystallised within that inquiry about orgasm. Pleasure now trumps survival. And Truth. And Beauty. And God.