It had been a long dive looking at whatever wonders the reef afforded her visitors.

“She’s alive, you know.”

So the divemaster/ marine biologist said. “Coral is a living thing. The part we notice, at which we marvel, is but the skeleton, the frame, the architecture.”

We forgot the lecture the minute our eyes turned downward. As we descended to this magic place, our air, our life came from the bottles on our backs. We were just visiting. This could have been Eden, had God preferred fishes, turtles, anemones to pomegranates, tortoises, or bunnies. What would have tempted Eve in this Garden? What proscribed fruit would tempt her in the depths, to bestow wisdom upon her? Maybe sin comes easier on dry land.

We can be awestruck only so long before the scales reencrust our eyes and we return to the show between our ears. But for the moment, we were enlightened in the depth where the sun still cast her rays.

We began the trip home, to limitless air, to food, to wine, to bed. Upward, we swam, our fins propelling us. We had not been down too long, before the air we nursed from from those bottles would betray us at our joints.

We removed the neoprene armour, the glass mask, the aluminum carapace whose contents sustained us in our piscene reverie. We had our time and mortality returned, along with appetite and lust.

After the depths, her body was new to me again. Naked, in the shower, we cavorted, grabbed, suckled, pulled, tweaked. I reclaimed her as mine.

In that night we forgot the lectures, the speeches, the polemics from those we gave our malleable wills. Two became one, in hope there would be three. The same longing possessed by Abraham, by Sarah, in that tent pitched on the gritty earth of Canaan, was ours in that room in that motel.

Throughout the Nineteenth Century, China, in the waning days of the Manchu Dynasty, was systematically exploited, her sovereignty trampled on by the Western and. Industrialized Powers, Great Britain, France, Germany, Japan and the United States.

The U.S. thought in terms of trade and Christian evangelization. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of American missionaries who brought education, medicine and Christianity to China’s millions.

Well the Chinese can hold a grunge with the best of them . And all that Westernization, welcomed or not, hurt Chinese national pride. And we have payback, now. The Chinese have “invested ” for years. Wall Street made a lot of money selling our country out from under us

If the West could tamper with their sovereignty in the 1800’s, well the Chinese can mess with the sovereignty of Western nations here in 2020. When America is completely ravaged, our money worthless, our political institutions mere husks, our military in shambles, then perhaps when there is nothing left to steal, the Chinese will leave.

Maybe there will be a free and fair election in the U S of A again, but don’t bet on it. Whoever controls the election computers now control the outcomes. As long as the money holds out, we should be OK.

So I went to Confession yesterday. It had been almost four months. I’m not in the habit of doing sinful things,so it’s a rather boring session, were it not for sharing my catalog of impure thoughts.

My priest, my confessor, is a good priest. He understands the evil so rampant in our time and the challenge of striving for purity and virtue. I made my confession read my Act of Contrition, and did my penance. For 15 minutes, I was to sit before The Blessed Sacrament, present in The Tabernacle and contemplate the saying from St Faustiina.

“Jesus, I trust in you.”

The penance was what I needed. Trusting Jesus (God The Son) during this time is a challenge. We come to believe all problems are intractable. The world can work quite well without my good ideas (or yours too).

I brought my Russian Orthodox icons for him to consecrate. He did.This is the one for The Nativity.

I’ve been sitting around, lying about, cogitating, ruminating, and generally living in my head this morning. Lack of sleep can be blamed. And silence is a catalyst.

What’s up and why am I bothering you with my problem?

It’s the news. The News. No specific story is the cause. It’s the whole phenomenon A story grabs our attention, The JFK Assassination, Watergate, the Iranian Hostage Crisis, AIDS, Princess Di’s auto wreck, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The news makes us feel. Feel. We like that. And it’s a collective feeling. We all love/hate Trump together. Same as we do Biden, Hillary or Obama. We get to feel something. That is what The Daily Drama does, has done in the past, and will do tomorrow.

Did you ever stop to think that Christopher Columbus discovered a new part of Earth (for Europeans, Africans, and Asians, at least) and nobody knew anything about that discovery for years, unless they were a mariner, or merchant, or member of a European Court? There wasn’t a Nora O’Donnell or Lester Holt or Sean Hannity to tell the people that a discovery happened and what they, the people, should think/feel about it. The same could be said for the Fall of Rome, the Birth of Jesus, or the Battle of Tours. People did not know within minutes of those events happening, or years even.

But we have to know stuff, then feel happy, sad, angry, or right (smart) about our assessments. (“See, I told you this would happen.”) We follow The News for the Emotional Payoff and the self- validation of our intelligence.We need to know something New every day. And we need it to come all packaged just right. That way we can rev up the feeling machine for that feeling we need . It was like the way I operated when I was using. If I wanted a feeling I could have a glass (bottle) of wine or some reefer, or go have sex.

The News is a reminder that we aren’t dead. Yet. At least.

#2 son is using my car while he works on his own vehicle. No biggie. I drive infrequently thanks to the plague. I won’t miss it. Still, I just can’t get in my car and drive off, as I always do. J’s car is available for me. She works at night.

But enough on that. These times are exhausting. Maybe things will change. Who knows?

I am just burnt out.

There will be Christmas soon. Plague Christmas. However that turns out to be.

How can it be that I want to sleep, need to sleep, and yet I fight its onset desperately?

I awoke around three AM., thinking I would fall back asleep. But, no. My mind shuffles through a familiar array of topics: sex, war, God, politics, food, love,

I put my clothes on, make coffee. J is at work. I miss her. I ponder the regime change in the US. Biden’s healthcare advisor, Ezekiel Emmanuel, is a throwback to medical “ethicists” from the Third Reich. Most worrisome. .

Rich people want whatever it is they want. They expect to get it, They can pay politicians to do their bidding . If they want to enslave the world, they will hire public relations advisors whose job will be to convince us of the advantages of slavery

Dark? Yes.

Joe Biden never said “pussy” on a hot mike in an unguarded moment. Therefore he must be a friend to all things that warm the Progressive’s heart.

Good Luck, Comrades.

I woke up. Almost three AM now. I had a Seinfeld DVD in the player. And I woke up. Just thinking.

Over-thinking, more likely.

A new season is about to begin. Winter. I like Winter, the cold, the warm clothes, the heartier foods, like soups and stews.

I got to thinking. Maybe when Spring comes, I shall have a container garden, with tomatoes.

Just a thought.

J is at work. She works nights during the Christmas shopping season. Coupled with how they re-stock the shelves due to the pandemic, she has plenty of night work. Of course, there is little room for us. Us. What does that mean when a couple is over 65? The nest has been empty almost fourteen years. And the dogs died six years ago.

I miss the dogs. I give treats to the neighbourhood dogs when their owners say it’s OK.

Why is everything so serious?

Even now, at Three AM, we are testing the Emergency Alert System. Testing out to see if we’re ready for the really serious. Apparently we are.

Meanwhile India and Australia are playing an ODI in cricket. Some like limited overs cricket. Some prefer test matches. A test match has that timeless quality. People with time on their hands can spend five days playing one match. So out of phase with the Twenty-first Century. But India and Australia are playing each other. And we get to see sport from a different perspective No basketball, ice hockey, American football. There are spectators in the stands.. Socially distanced, but there nonetheless. The Aussies have a formidable run chase, but the Indian bowlers aren’t giving them much to work with.

Today the recycle truck drives through the neighbourhood, picking up the recyclable detritus of our lives. That means I have to get the stuff to the curb when Dawn breaks.

Content Warning: Theological Discourse.

He was the brother of St Peter. He was martyred on the X shaped cross that now bears his name, that cross which is a fixture in many a “kink dungeon”.

30 November is the day The Church remembers, celebrates, his martyrdom at The Holy Mass. In Bob Fosse’s film, All That Jazz, the character modeled on Lenny Bruce (played by Cliff Gorman) quips, “To Catholics, death is a promotion, man.” Kind of a macabre thought, but we deal with the paradox of “losing” one’s life to “find” it, as we grow as Christians.

Jesus talks about walking away from family, friends, our “old”lives. In the Old Testament, the prophet Elijah chooses Elisha as his successor, while Elisha is out ploughing a field with 12 yoke of oxen. Elisha slaughters the oxen and boils the flesh in a dramatic gesture of leaving his old life. All St Andrew had to do was give up casting his net for fish and become a “fisher of men”(meaning human beings).

The first season of the Christian year, Advent, began yesterday.. We commemorate the season with a wreath and four candles, three violet, one rose coloured. We sing lovely hymns and chants Creator Alma Siderum, O Come O Come Emmanuel, to name two.

The “Social Justice” advocates, informed by so-called “Liberation” theology put an emphasis on righting the wrongs perpetrated upon the weak and politically powerless. There is a collectivist emphasis to this perspective of Jesus’s message of Redemption and Salvation., It suggests we can ignore our inner and very individual rebellions against God, (our tendency to sin).

The error is that somehow, “good” social policy can get us off the hook personally. Seeking the Kingdom of God takes a back seat to cleaning up this earthly kingdom, the kingdom that is ultimately Satan’s.

Dying to our selfishness and narcissism is neither easy nor fun. We have many diversions and distractions to keep us entertained. We can rationalize horrific behavior that keeps our self-centeredness in place. But our self-centeredness is what keeps us enthroned, as the major deity in our personal universe, not as humble servants in God’s.

from Caesar Augustus that the entire world should be counted.” St Luke 2:1

I keep debating whether to close the blog, but something, an event, a feeling, a book comes to mind and I know I need to keep going.

Right now, I am watching Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe, a serialized story shown at the movies in 1940, about a superhero, Flash Gordon, who thwarts the evil plans of Ming The Merciless. The story is formulaic, with Flash bouncing from one harrowing deadly situation to another. No sooner is one threat extinguished, than yet another existential threat materializes.

We are obsessed with political melodrama in this country right now, with Good and Evil changing polarities like the alternator on your Plymouth Fury. Each month seems to come with its new episode, foreign intrigue, graft, collusion, plague, impeachment, more plague, more corruption, more graft, more foreign intrigue, more plague

Yada. Yada. Yada.

The political atmosphere has a superficial moral clarity akin to that of professional wrestling.

We even have billionaires wanting to conquer the world, who have allied themselves with “dark” forces, specifically the People’s Republic of China. It is a totalitarian police state that dictates family size, religious practice, and free exchange of ideas. The billionaires have powerful computational devices that can record almost every human activity, from where you buy your groceries to what contraceptive method you use, or don’t use. (If I’m exaggerating, it isn’t by much).

Now, of course, we have to play along with the billionaire oligarchs, because they stand for progress and couldn’t possibly harm us, since they wear nice crew neck sweaters and want the whole world vaccinated. We could have the first “business casual” police state.

They always expect their counting machines, observing machines, recording machines to work, as if their binary code will always be comprehensible. We fully accept the omniscience and invincibility of the high tech connected digital monolith. If Gates, Bezos, Dorsey, and Zuckerberg end up ruling the universe, it will be because we allowed them

Does anybody really think the codes and software and algorithms will live forever? Perhaps I should ask if anyone has a Beta-max© machine they could sell me. Or if they can receive an analog signal on their TV. Did you get your Sears Fall and Winter Catalog for this year?

To get you thinking, whether you want to or not, consider this. Why is one megalomaniac better than another? Adolf Hitler on the one hand, Bill Gates, on the other.

Good Public Relations and cheap dope help. Seriously. As long as you’re happy, what are a few million (or billion) dead people?

So said a staff officer in the Reichswehr of Wilhelmine Germany in 1914. He was assessing the alliance with the Austro-Hungarian Empire with whom Germany marched to war after the catastrophe at Sarajevo. Some leaders could see the looming disaster relentlessly unfolding, as events became uncontrollable.

The American political scene changed, irreversibly, in 2016. It cannot be reset. The American people are now chafing under the impediments to their freedom. A Christmas lockdown will be ignored, pandemic be damned.

Right now, some of the finest trial lawyers in America are building a case of ballot-tampering and electoral fraud against the Democratic Party and its Presidential/Vice-Presidential Ticket. It is a complex and yet simple case with computer fraud, and good old-fashioned fraudulent illegal voting.

Faced with a loss attributable to electoral fraud in 1960, Richard Nixon folded. He let Kennedy get away with it. Donald Trump, love him or hate him, is NOT Richard Nixon. He is not conceding yet, because he has not officially, legally lost.

The cases will go through the courts. Trump could fail. And there, available to public and Congressional scrutiny is the abundant evidence gathered that is the substance of Trump’s case. That evidence will not disappear. It will be entered into court records. They will be the millstones around Biden’s and Harris’s necks. Biden and Harris will have problems governing if their legitimacy steadily erodes.

Assuming Biden takes the oath of office in January, he will be a President propped up by the Bad Guys of contemporary America, Wall Street moguls that strip Americans of their jobs and dignity, high tech plutocrats from Silicon Valley, a legacy broadcast and print media, increasingly discredited and ignored. Add in Marxist street gangs, like Antifa, a threat that Biden fails to censure.

Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. has rapidly diminishing mental capacity. Kamala Harris, his Vice President, was chosen for her superficial qualities, her sex and race. Fifty two years ago, Nixon chose Spiro Agnew for the superficial strategic reason of coming from Maryland, a Border State. Border State pedigree was considered important in the political calculus of 1968.

We know how things turned out. The festering mess of Watergate caused Nixon’s downfall. An unvetted Spiro Agnew resigned when his corruption surfaced. The Watergate cover-up was the crime at the core of Nixon’s reelection, kind of like the doctored algorithms, dead people voting, and illegal vote counts of 2020.

What will Congressional Democrats, particularly Senators, do when a weak, demented President attempts to govern? If Biden proves himself to be the marionette people think he is, the Democrats will abandon him.They will see Biden’s puppet masters are the universally disliked plutocrats, Big Tech, Wall Streeters, the modern day robber barons, those villains of pre-World War One America. These characters care not a whit for American sovereignty, or American workers. What prudent politician wishes to be shackled to those corpses?

Washington D. C. is a de facto court, in the mold of Versailles, or Constantinople. The courtiers, i.e. politicians, lobbyists, military officers, civil servants, engage in intramural intrigues that are repugnant to most Americans. Donald Trump was the yokel whom the courtiers had to answer to. And they hate him because he is not one of them.

What the Democrats don’t get is that Trump is a champion of a broader movement, that will endure after Trump leaves the scene, whether in 2021 or 2025 or 2029. The American People don’t want the globalist visions of Bill Gates, The Clintons, George Soros, Mark Zuckerberg, or most significantly, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of The People’s Republic of China.