13 Tuesday Feb 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
I have decided to close this blog. I am also considering getting rid of my cell phone and closing my e-mail accounts. I have had enough of the cyber world.
As soon as I can figure out how to move the blog entries some place else I will be gone.
12 Monday Feb 2018
Posted in Catholic Life
Can you imagine the Blessed Virgin Mary driving the car pool?
She notices the driver worried and distraught from her perspective as the statue on the dashboard. She looks at the driver, smiles and says, “You be still. I’ll take over. Turn me around and then do as I say.”
Yes fantasy. Hallucination perhaps. And yet she is our Protectress. We still have to do the work, but she prays for us and with us when we ask her. She is as much my mother as my birth mother was. She is ever near.
She is my great strength when I beseech her aid as I face all of the temptations and distractions that work their way between Her Son Our Lord and me. I used to think that this notion absurd until I actually implored her aid. It’s not magic. The temptation is still there. Yet its power is gone. The yearning for a dubious comfort has left when the HAIL MARY leaves my throat.
Go figure
11 Sunday Feb 2018
Posted in Catholic Life, Exercise/ Fitness, Love and stuff, Sexual Identity
Tags
This is one of those challenges that puts my narcissism into focus. I have been living as half a person, waiting for my dormant sexuality to awaken and flower again, except that never seemed to happen, unless I wanted to destroy my marriage.
So I would live a vicarious sex life through various sex blogs, or watching pornography. I wondered if I would ever regain the intimacy that sexual pleasure with my wife would afford.
It never entered my mind that there was perhaps a “still more excellent way.”
Sex is pretty damned exploitative and self-serving, the way we pursue sexual satisfaction in this culture. Tear out the procreative motive and the exploitation is even worse.
I never thought I would be writing this. Please don’t think I am preaching at you. This is my choice, decision and perspective. I was simply trying to find happiness down a path I was not meant to walk.
11 Sunday Feb 2018
Posted in Big Business, Bloggers, Politics, Smartphones
So somebody was phishing and trying to get information from me. That’s bad. Then I consider all the information I give out and Google, among others, tracks. It’s called “Surveillance Marketing”. Google records all kinds of metadata about us that we innocently provide, legally, through those User Agreements that we never read. Then we get ads on our Smartphone pages from merchants we’ve used both online and/or brick and mortar. We become super-customers. We reassure ourselves that this isn’t creepy, or only just a little bit. Yet we know that this is merely Big Brother Watching Us version 2.0
The truth is the Internet is anything but anonymous, anything but private. Like God, the Internet never forgets. Unlike God, it never forgives. Whatever we put there, wherever we go, that click is always there.
The Information Age plutocrats, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Gates, etc. are all in bed with the politicians, so don’t expect your Internet privacy to suddenly be respected if these tycoons can make money off of you. They work campaign “contributions” into their cost structures.
This begs the question, “How do I go dark?” Will I have to end this blog, as much as I enjoy writing it? I feel like The Google people are digitally groping my “junk” and squeezing my ass every time I go online. And I’ve had enough.
09 Friday Feb 2018
Posted in Literature, Uncategorized
Tags
Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk. A convert to Catholicism after a somewhat dissolute youth, he chose the consecrated and contemplative life. His autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain is a classic of Twentieth Century literature.
I don’t think you have to be Catholic or even particularly religious, to find a big chunk of truth in this quote.
06 Tuesday Feb 2018
Posted in Politics, Relationships, Tolerance
How do we listen? What filters do we have activated at all times? When we hear or read something that raises our hackles, are we quick to decry what bothers or offends us, then dismiss the speaker or author as undeserving of our attention and respect? Do we consider a point of view that disturbs us to be as valid as our own? The person holding such a view may be unable to consider any other option. For example, a person may base a prejudice on a fear. That fear, unless dealt with constructively and lovingly, will continue to shape a viewpoint until the person holding that viewpoint abandons it. We can’t change the way other people think. Only those “other people” can change their way of thinking. Do we help or hinder that process by the way we react? Then again, maybe we are the ones where the change needs to occur. It is a disturbing paradox that our intolerance of intolerance may be precisely what perpetuates such intolerance.
Where did we learn to think the way that we think? If we consider ourselves open-minded, are we even aware when or how often we close our minds?
Hanging out with outlaws and outcasts is no big deal anymore. How do we assess the respectable people of this world? Do we give the full measure of respect to the worthy bourgeoisie whose tithes to the church where the AA group meets do more to keep the doors open than our relatively paltry rent does?
Contemplate how and why you determine a person’s worthiness.
04 Sunday Feb 2018
Posted in Literature, Politics, Sport
Tags
I am currently in my Non-Sports Fan Modality. This phase comes and goes over a lifetime. Last baseball season, when Yankee right fielder Aaron Judge had his breakout year, I got jazzed up about baseball again. That enthusiasm bled over into the NFL season. And then…
I had enough. Enough Takeout Pizza commercials, beer commercials, soft drink, car, truck, smartphone, diamond commercials. Get it? The enthusiasm bubble burst, like a North Korean condom.
And then there is the game itself. Sure the players are great athletes, but then figure skaters, swimmers, bicyclists, and distance runners are great athletes too. Just for starters. There simply comes a time when I get tired of the spectacular catches, explosive runs from scrimmage, timely interceptions, and other superlative adjective demanding feats. It is called overexposure, Sports Fans.
There are the Sermons and Statements, and Gestures. Football has always been associated with Mom, Apple Pie, and The Flag (High Octane Gasoline, too I guess). So when somebody has a beef with the Good Ol’ U S of A, I’m not surprised it gets expressed at a football game. Free Speech means that a person can express what he/she believes, it also means that I get to ignore them. You too. The ignoring is as important as the expressing. Maybe more so. For example, I’ve been a wishy-washy State Of The Union viewer through the last seven Presidents, going back to Carter. I don’t get a knock at the door from an FBI agent asking why I don’t watch (or care). You don’t either, I’ll betcha.
So this wonderful unique American institution, the NFL Championship Game will be…..
ignored by millions.
And that is perfectly cool.
03 Saturday Feb 2018
Posted in Catholic Life, Uncategorized
Two AM. At three-thirty, I will drive down to St Benedict for my Holy Hour, my time before the Precious Body of Christ, my time with Our Lord. I don’t really understand metaphysics. What I do know is that this time has been transformative for me. So I continue to give Our Lord this hour in particular every month.
It is not about good social policy, social justice, or helping the poor. But this time makes me a better Catholic, a better Christian.
Holy Hour makes a crack in the wall of selfishness that surrounds my being. Through this crack enters a serenity a peace. The serenity comes from knowing that I don’t have to change the whole world, just me. I can be a little more respectful, a little quieter, more accepting of the way people are, people like my wife or my children, for starters.
We want grand solutions to the problems of this world. We think these solutions to problems like war or intolerance or poverty can be constructed as if those solutions were Saturn rockets or polio vaccines. Maybe the grand solution is by losing, a little bit every day, that wall of selfishness. That selfishness is not only our greed or hunger or lust, but also our hurts and our pains that we use to separate ourselves from others.
By the way, none of that losing is easy. It demands a daily surrender to God.
30 Tuesday Jan 2018
Tags
Every once in a while, I think about getting a tattoo. On the back of this CD of Portuguese Fado music is
is this lovely picture of a bluebird. The tattoo artist would need to be skilled enough to render a complete image of this little bird. I think it would look great on my left pectoral.
29 Monday Jan 2018
Posted in Catholic Life, personal grooming, Popular Song, Sport
In my fantasy, I am drinking French roast coffee made in a French press pot with freshly ground beans. I am eating a butter croissant slathered with butter and fig jam. I am reading the New York Times at a leisurely pace in no hurry to do anything in particular.
In reality, I made the coffee, prepared the croissant, took the papers off the porch, sat in my “comfy chair” (imagine Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition), found the Mississippi John Hurt Delta Blues recordings on YouTube my friend recommended. As I opened the paper, I acknowledged to my innermost self that I have zero (0) interest in reading the paper. I am not going to spend this Sunday, damp, chilly, and rainy though it may be, getting agitated by current events. Why? I have a whole damn week for that. Shortly after Mississippi John Hurt finishes Sliding Delta and Charley Patton does Jesus Is A Dying Bed Maker, I go upstairs, put on starched white shirt, black trousers, hounds’ tooth jacket, black tie, and shiny black shoes. I’m going to Mass.
My soul needs it all. The time with God, sitting with my friend Madeleine, and watching the families together, especially the children. Unbeknownst to me, it is Catholic Schools Week, so the school children process in and sit together in the front pews. The children are wearing their school,uniforms, the boys with white polo shirts with the St Benedict Crest, while the girls wear the grey plaid jumpers. (Is it really 2018, not 1958?) The oft-satirized Drill Instructor Nuns are a thing of the past. The teachers are all lay people.
The Mass ends just as my back can take sitting, kneeling, and genuflecting no longer. Now comes the piece de resistence. We sing the beautiful Alma Redemptoris Mater for the recessional. Father Tony notes my buzz cut with approval when I shake his hand at the door. He gives my noggin a rub, a most friendly and welcome gesture. He is human. Whaddaya know!
Home. Then we take a trip to a pizzeria for white spinach pizza, then back home. Mrs CorC? has work. I take a nap, debating whether I really want to swim today, aching body and all. I go, complete 2500 meters. I’m glad I did. It means that my average is 5 workouts per week, 20 swims in 28 days. The pain is considerably lessened. Thank you, endorphins.
I am especially proud that I watched no sports this Sunday or the whole weekend for that matter. I have had enough. In my head, I hear Dylan Thomas read:
“I see the Boys of Summer in their ruin…”
It is over.
Instead I listen to Ella Fitzgerald sing Rogers & Hart songs. Such a voice, such delightful songs. I secretly long for a woman who loves Rogers & Hart and Ella as much as I do. That would be, well, perfect.
Simply perfect.
