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If Nothing Else


  If nothing else, have finished a lot of reading. Eight books to be precise with a good chance of finishing my re-read of Persuasion and of finishing the Elective Affinities. And of course, there has been much else, rather than nothing else.

The total stands at four fantasy novels (The Blade Itself, The City of Wonders, The Charnel Prince, The Throne of the Crescent Moon), one British ‘cozy’ style mystery (Sydney Chambers and the Shadow of Death), two philosophy (Gorgias, A Short Introduction to Art Theory), and one poetry (Lunch Poems).

Obviously not the final judge of a good vacation, but being as susceptible to the temptations of technological distraction as anyone, it is good to be in a position to be able to get some solid reading done. I’ll be on my own when I get back (my better half is staying in Thailand for a few months) and can hope to do some more reading when I return, but there is a certain feeling of accomplishment in plowing through a solid number of books.

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Wat Chang Lom


    

     
    
   
  

  

   

    Or Wat Changlom. I’ve seen it both ways. In either case, it is behind our hotel, the Legendha, through an unlocked gate and past a few mildly informative markers. But mostly, it is just there. I got up a little early to walk across and spent some quality alone time with history.

I walked a little further and found a homemade shrine, guarded by some frightened dogs.

   
   

   
  
   

   
 

  

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A Gift


My father gave me this book for my trip to Thailand: lightweight and interesting.

  

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Wat Sothorn


   
   I was brought here because khun meh had made offerings here so that we could get a house. Well, it worked. We need to come back and make a donation of five hundred eggs, but in the meantime, we got incense and oils. The oil I poured into a lantern for the health of a family member who is suddenly and frighteningly ill. The incense was lit at the lantern and small pieces of paper used to tie the three sticks of incense together. Those papers were used to wipe Buddhas coveted in gold flake. As pieces were picked up by the paper, you returned it by wiping them onto a different statue of Buddha. Later, we paid for eight dancers to do a dance, which, like the other actions, is considered a merit making activity, similar to lighting a candle or making a confession or reciting a rosary. I did a little bit, but then got uncomfortable. I was a tourist and didn’t want to disrespect deeply held beliefs by engaging in too much spiritual tourism, backed by respect but not by belief; just as a visitor to my church can partially participate, but the Eucharist and the sacraments are only for confirmed believers.

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Found The Perfect Book For My Trip


So I’ve been trying to figure out what reading material to bring with me to Thailand, besides the voluminous pulps downloaded to my nook.

I had been thinking about this Dover edition of Thus Spake Zarathustra that I bought in 2001 at Bridgestreet Books. And lo and behold, while unpacking, I found it!

Also while unpacking, I found this lovely hardback edition of Emerson. Positively perfect, except it is just too darn heavy. Nietzsche it is! Cicero is an outside contender, but Nietzsche holds most of the cards.

But now I need some poetry. In the past, I brought Wordsworth and he’s still my go to poet for this, but I’m hoping someone else inspires me. Tennyson would be great but I don’t actually own any Tennyson and I’ll be gone too long to use the library.

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Can’t Wait


Going back to Thailand I cannot wait. Absolutely ready. One hundred percent. Too much going on: buying a house, jam packed holiday season for my better half (she objects when I say that I ‘work’ for her; she prefers something like ‘help’ or ‘volunteer,’ but let’s be realistic, I’m an unpaid employee [so maybe the correct term of art should be that I ‘intern’ with her]), work stuff, work stuff, work stuff, family stuff.

Ready for a vacation. Ready to get away. Especially, knowing that it will probably be a while before I get away again. Logistics, and all.

Perhaps this is what adulthood is like, the constant, ceaseless nervous tension (I stole that turn of phrase about tension; I think from William Gibson; google it, I’m not your babysitter). Or perhaps it’s middle age. Did I skip adulthood and go directly to midlife?

Part of it is struggling, as always, with depression, which feels like a perpetual weight on your internal organs. Something is constantly pressing down on your heart and lungs and so they don’t work properly and you can always feel them about to fail and that knowledge of their being on that precipice takes your mind away from everything else and keeps you psychically crippled, after a fashion.

Let’s hope it’s the break I want it to be. I’ve downloaded several books to my Nook and are keeping them unread for the journey (mostly fantasy novels) and I’ll take some pleasure soon in picking out one or two physical books for the journey. At least one book of poetry, something worth re-reading. In the past, I’ve taken Wordsworth, for example. Perhaps this time I’ll bring Eliot or Shelley or Clare. And something else, something in prose. Could be a novel, but I’m inclined towards something non-fictional. While unpacking, I saw my cope of Elaine Scarry’s On Beauty and maybe I’ll bring that. It’s a little bulky, but perhaps if I put it away and don’t read anymore of it, Quintillian’s writings on the education of an orator. But probably not. Cicero might be better. Plato would be perfect, but I don’t have a compact copy of any of his books.

We shall see. Here’s a picture from Thailand, in the meantime.

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Midweek Staff Meeting – Think Of The Children!


“Reading always seems to be in crisis. Two and half millennia ago, Socrates inveighed against the written word because it undermined memory and confused data with wisdom.”

The intellectual center of the world used to be a Parisian apartment.

A brief history of reading as sacramental activity.

Enjoying Call of Duty on your Playstation? Thank Dungeons & Dragons.

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Monday Morning Staff Meeting – History


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Ancient Rome is relevant. Ancient Rome is not relevant.

What could we learn from the Britain’s Marxists?

Understanding national identity through poetry.

John Updike, the poet.

Buddha’s excluded middle.

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Seeing His Holiness At The Capitol


I wasn’t one of the handful inside the Capitol, but was one of the ticketed folks on the West Lawn of the Capitol. We waited (the gates opened at five am – though I was not there nearly so early) for him to arrive and watched his speech on the jumbotrons (bless you, Pope Francis for spending so much time on the need to abolish the death penalty!).

When he came out, he was a vaguely anthropoid shape, dressed in white on a distant balcony. The experience was not physical closeness, nor even the presence of the Pontiff, which could have just as easily been experienced with far more clarity on a television (and perhaps more enthusiasm; it wasn’t the most rabid crowd I’d ever been in). Rather it was knowing that this was an important moment and you were there. Like the days when we have gone to the White House, such as when Osama Bin Laden was killed or Obama re-elected, when we went not to change history, because history was already changed, but to be there, at a symbolically important location, at a symbolically important time when something important (and good) was happening. Such things are important, personally.