Fragments from a Tuesday that should have been a Monday
Fragments from a Tuesday that should have been a Monday
[In my mind, it feels like this sometimes, but why anyone would deliberately put himself into such a place in the real world is a mystery of the universe]
C.S. Lewis, in Surprised By Joy, describes his father’s family line, and I cannot help thinking he’s talking about the stock from which I spring: “My father’s people were…sentimental, passionate, and rhetorical, easily moved both to anger and to tenderness; men who laughed and cried a great deal and who had not much of the talent for happiness.”
I was on public transport in a major city, sitting across from a group of four or five young people (early 20s, college students, I suspected from the fact that a few were wearing clothing bearing the name of the same school). They were clearly together—they got on the train as a group and sat down as a group, talked amongst themselves throughout the trip.
Each one of them, of course, had a phone with him or her.
At very frequent intervals, each regularly checked his or her phone, sometimes just reading from it, sometimes taking time to tap messages into it. It was a long train ride for me so, though I didn’t know how long they’d be on the train (their stop turned out to be one only a few minutes before mine), I started timing the periods when none of them were consulting phones to see how long they could go as a group without looking at them and instead talk among themselves or just sit quietly.
Forty-nine seconds was by far the longest such period, and the next longest was only twenty-seven seconds.
So, at no time during the 20+ minute trajectory did they manage even to go collectively one minute without a shot of the powerful drug that has addicted nearly the entirety of Western civilization.
I was banned from Twitter for a day this weekend because someone was talking about how torn up she was that, while in a Twitter fight, she accidentally misgendered the person with whom she was fighting.
I found it so hilariously ridiculous that someone could be so Woke that they’d be concerned about such a thing while in the business of trying to make someone else look stupid in an argument that I sardonically responded that I hoped the misgendered person was going to pull through and suggested perhaps the person who did the misgendering might consider self-flagellating for an hour as penance for her sin against the Woke gods.
This was, according to the humor-deprived Twitter Police, “promoting or encouraging self-harm,” which is right out.
Can they actually be so dumb as to imagine that there was any likelihood this person might follow my advice? And in any event, even if she did, wouldn’t such righteously motivated self-harm really be good for her, as it would be in payment for her transgression against Woke purity and so it would help her regain her elect status among her co-quasi-religionists?
Twit-ter, indeed.
The same day this happened, I read this article in the August issue of New Oxford Review, which suggests that all online activity is an endeavor in “sell[ing] yourself.” “Kill Twitter, kill the Internet, and join me in reveling in God’s good creation,” the article concludes.
I’m more than half-inclined to agree, especially regarding Twitter, but he’d better not say that on Twitter or he is in big, big trouble. Everyone knows the single biggest cause of Twitter admins jumping off tall buildings is mean messages from the Twitter masses sarcastically suggesting that true commitment to the Woke goals might require them to martyr themselves in that fashion.
(Can Twitter be killed? With what weapons? A white oak stake through the heart and a mouth stuffed with garlic, perhaps?)
“Such as thou art,
Sometime was I.
Such as I am,
Such shalt thou be.
I thought little on th’our of Death
So long as I enjoyed breath.
On earth I had great riches
Land, houses, great treasure, horses, money and gold.
But now a wretched captive am I
Deep in the ground.
So here I lie.
My beauty great is all quite gone.
My flesh is wasted to the bone.”
—Epitaph on the tomb of Edward of Woodstock, The Black Prince (1330-1376)
Rick Beato, who has a nifty YouTube channel in which he talks about music, reminded me of Joe Pass the other day.
I discovered Pass early in grad school, after a friend lent me the Virtuouso LP (the same one Beato described on the YouTube piece). I had the same reaction: jaw on floor. I remember reading some bio information on him at that time and being struck that he basically lost a decade of his playing career to drug addiction and related time in prison. He died in his early 60s, so we were cheated of a lot of years of his work.
I hadn’t listened to him in a long while and Beato has me binging now. Just a few things I found online from him.
My 7 year old thinks this dance he does at 1:20 is just the most entertaining thing on the planet. She may be right.
The simple beauty of childhood prayers.
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
So many nights in my youth were warmly blanketed by these plain but pure words of faithful petition.
This is the prayer I would pray if I were dying and I knew I were dying and I hadn’t enough time for the Salve Regina.