I finished my day as I have for several months now, by praying The Rosary. Noncatholics and nonbelievers will wonder why I do this.

You may as well ask why I brush my teeth every day, or eat fruits and vegetables, or exercise. The answer is the same, to stay healthy. It keeps the vortex of negativity and nonsense in check, mostly.

I prayed it tonight with a friend in another city. We watched the Rosary prayed from Lourdes, site of the Marian Apparition, occurring in 1858, at the now famous grotto.

Christian, (Catholic) spiritual growth isn’t entirely about feeling. There is lots of thought involved, contemplating the Mysteries of Gof’s Love.

Growing up Protestant, I had John 3:16 committed to memory by about age 8.

For God so loved the world, that he gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life

Faith, choosing Christ, is not like winning the lottery, or a guarantee of success in this life. You could very well end up dead, as the faithful of Nigeria, Iraq, and even France, among numerous countries, have learned in our time.

My problems have not been solved. But explaining to a nonbeliever that relationship with God, (in all three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity), is not like having an invisible friend (or friends). This is where going beyond feelings enters in. Faith is about contemplation and actions.

I am tired. Bedtime.

There are certain advantages to waking up early, in a sleep-deprived state.

Actually, there aren’t , but I’m trying to be positive about it

I just listened to Maria Callas sing La Habanera from Bizet’s Carmen

Now Anna Netrebko is singing an aria by Donizetti. One of my secret pleasures is bel canto opera. This is all from YouTube. Moving on to Gounod and Faust, Netrebko again is holding forth.

Serenity is creeping back into my soul.

There is no plague.

There are no politicians, no pederast priests, no children kill themselves.

There is hope.

News I can watch before I start thinking crazy thoughts. You know, the kind of thoughts that will bring federal law enforcement to one’s door, if acted upon.

So I turned the news off. I’m back to watching The Russians at Church. There is beauty and reverence, plus magnificent choral music.

“But you told us already,” I hear you saying. And you are correct. But it bears repeating.

Some, maybe most of you, have the capacity to filter this fertilizer, but I don’t. So listening to the lovely meter of a Russian Orthodox homily, in a language I hardly understand, comforts me. The Russians. who lived in the fire of Communism for eighty years, find the frying pan of Putin, relatively comfortable.

So I’m going to chill.

Maybe some cartoons will be on the program tonight. Some reading, perhaps. Some beauty, balance, symmetry will be on the agenda. These are the things the arts, in the classical sense of the term, provide. I will consider Raphael and Michelangelo tonight, pass on Picasso and Chagall.

What I will be doing is repudiating the false promise of progress. Progress is the bait on the hook that we hit on. Who baits the hook is another question I will not explore tonight.

Last night , I woke up around  Three AM., stayed awake for three hours, then went back to sleep. That is not unusual. But when I awoke again around Ten AM, I had no idea what day of the week it was. And I really didn’t care.

Chalk it up to Covid-19.

Auden wrote in September 1, 1939 of a low mean decade coming to an end. Were it only a decade.

How much can the heart take? The swirling, all-surrounding drama doesn’t end. Ever.

We await the promise of The Manger yet again, as we have these many years.

He always comes.

And we are never prepared.

I was born ten years later,

In an alien land.

How could I possess even a tribal memory?

A hint that my yet to be formed heart could bleed at Brest, Minsk, Smolensk, Kiev, Kharkov, Orel?

St Petersburg froze and bled and starved while bearing its pseudonym.

As did Tsaritsyn.

God welcomes all His martyrs.

It had been awhile, since March? Who knows? I kept waiting for the rain while not only my throat, but my heart was parched.

Maybe you think you picked the right side in this fratricide. Maybe you think the wounds to your soul weren’t fatal, because there is no blood lost in this ersatz exsanguination.

Maybe it isn’t too late.

We have all lost wars.

And we have no monuments to our bombast and vanities

Whether our hair is kinky

Or straight.

I sleep at completely odd times. I sleep a little while, wake up,fritter away a couple of hours, sleep some more. This is, so I’ve heard what old guys do. And I will be 70 in approximately thirty-three days.Is that old?Not as old as Biden. Or Trump. Older than Buttigieg, by a lot.

So this stokes my anxiety level, particularly when the Federal Reserve is creating money out of thin air and I might have to get a vaccine made from aborted fetal tissue. Nothing like moral ambiguity, exacerbated by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. If manufacture of life-saving vaccines depend upon abortion providers and their, uh, “output”that is not an insignificant moral quandary. Tell me the pharmaceutical companies did not use fetal tissue in research, development and manufacture of the COVID-19 vaccine. Please. Tell me.

Well, anyway. Refocus. That is what The New Year is for.

The Old Year is where I am stuck. My car is on loan to my son, has been for almost two weeks. Now I am beginning to miss it. It will be back soon. I hope. It would be nice to get it back so I can resume doing stuff.

The current dystopia is beginning to feel comfortable. It fits like a old shoe. Mask at the ready? ✔ Socially distanced? ✔. Is there space available in the drug store? ✔ At least, when I’m home, watching old movies on TV, I can tell myself, “Things really haven’t changed all that much?”

They’re just things to lose sleep over.

I went to bed around 11:00PM. I slept three or four hours. I stayed awakr, watching a documentary on La Bellle Epoque, the period from 1890 to 1914, that described the cultural history of Western Europe and North America.

Almost decided to go back to bed, when I flipped the channel to cricket, (Willow) where Australia and India are involved in a test match in Adelaide. The Indian side has a 71 run leader over Australia. Josh Hazlewood is the #11 batsman and he is making a good accounting of himself.

I love watching these world class cricketers. They seem to be having a good time. Virat Kohli, captain of the Indian side, smiles readily, and maintains a pleasant banter with the Aussies. Understandable, I guess, he’s been competing against tbese Australian cricketers for years, in all formats of the game.

Cricket is part of the cultural glue, that keeps what was once the British Empire together. Remarkable, after all the tumult of the last century, that this game thrives. Cricket is a sublime mix of simplicity and complexity, so characteristic of all great sports.

I really should go back to bed, but, for now, there is no electoral fraud, COVID-19, Great (or not so great) Resets. Sensitive to my need to sleep, India just took the last wicket. At the end of the first innings India leads by 53.

Janet is on her way home. That’s another good reason to go back to bed.

Thank God for sport. I feel like the crap of the past year never happened.

This is The Mother Of All Industrial Films

It is a moving, loving depiction of fruit cocktail, as if Dole’s commitment to fruit cocktail was all consuming.

Who knew?