John, Author at Tacking Into The Wind

Shakespeare Sonnet 116

On the occasion of my son’s wedding. This was a civil ceremony which somehow troubled me greatly. I suppose I had nothing to worry over and this appropriately filled that all important slot in my mental life for a brief interlude from more mundane matters. I wrote the following email to finally and fully vent the pressures in my tumultuous, tormented soul. Weddings are not easy. This is true on many levels. It is an intensely spiritual event and can, if done with extreme care and attention to every detail bring a beauty of supernal light into a gathering of family and friends, a beauty that will endure and serve as a touchstone for those who follow us down life’s path. This wedding, the planning of which studiously sought, I perceived, to exclude any and all references to the sacred turned out to my everlasting delight and surprise to do just the opposite. Yes, it was intended to be merely secular, appealing only to the approbation of the state as the source of meaning for the ritual performed, but when Shakespeare took the stage all that went by the way. The email: Christopher and Amber,

At the wedding I didn’t get to make a toast for whatever reason so indulge me here instead, please. I am not sure what my toast would have been, probably not quite what you see here. The toasts that were made brilliantly balanced levity and gravity and would have been impossible to top and difficult to equal, most especially Amber’s dad. It seems early in my life it was all levity. Perhaps that explains why now it is all gravity. At any rate, here are some thoughts I would share.

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand’ring bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken. Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Ellen Weaver’s rendition of these words was by far the highlight of the wedding. Her voice in these immortal words brought eternal spirit into the very moment and transformed what would have otherwise been the merely secular into the sacred. So the two, Christopher and Amber, became one; a one centered everywhere, bounded nowhere. For that is the nature of soul, further evidence of which is the ability to “gaze steadfastly at stars which, though distant are yet present to the mind.” Love is the faculty of bringing that star, “ever-fixèd mark”, into the very heart of one, so from wherever the light shines, it shines from the heart. Love, “an ever-fixed mark…star to every wand’ring bark…not time’s fool..” untouched by chaos, time’s tumult, endures “…to the edge of doom.” As such it is evidence of an abiding spirit beyond mere material reality.

With Christopher, captive audience, en route to Pilot Point I gave similar voice to these sentiments, but my source was different. Our friend Plato’s thought was that love was a spirit too and that the creator, in need of a device, a vehicle, with which commerce could be carried between sentient life and himself, brought love into being. I pointed out to Chris that my own thoughts were that giving and receiving love, participation in love, actually grows love as spirit, as vehicle, and thus it lives, thrives. It shines like the sun and, like light, is attractive, drawing souls towards itself.

My benefactor said to me that doing good made doing good easier the next time a choice to do otherwise presented itself. I have come to see the wisdom of this and note herewith that you two, together, have done good and made it look so natural and with such eloquent and elegant ease that life for all that might happen to pass through your shadow will not be there eclipsed but attracted by your combined light will find their own light kindled and renewed. Love begets love. A simple mystery to discover, not a riddle to unravel.

Finally, understanding, for the secular mind, ever depends on being able to take measure, to find a dimension, a boundary condition. Note carefully that love, as discussed here, and this is likewise true of its cousins, truth, beauty, courage, meaning, justice and so forth, have no dimension, boundary condition. They are qualities of spirit and thus can’t be measured. Understanding of these, therefore, is not based on measure, on dimension, and to have it is to acknowledge the unfathomably deep mystery of life. Discovery of that mystery is the very action of the unknown and understanding is never complete thereof but instead ever new. I ask, does a waterfall ever change?

Dad

Reaving

I whipped the steel cable into position and catch the rope off round it.
An upward pull applied, the coil sine waves up the pole
and is caught with a guy knocker.
Between my feet a galvanized anchor eye
holds chain hoist hook,
my hands hold the cable and straight grip in bond.
Hook the grip with second hoist chain
and jack the handle.
Look up at the sun beams bouncing off the fog bank
falling on the city.
Maelstrom of light, poignancy so intense
atoms of perception separate into distinct entities
then coalesce again to the task at hand.

Road up the Mountain

yellow flowers
dazzling thick
hear a voice of
blue sky
crying out to the sun,
green forest!

hearing louder than sound,
seeing brighter than light.

i go to the center of things
and writing your name there
i am lost from the other
like oblivion hides in infinity.

the sight of your eye
in sun’s summer sigh
hides in noon’s highest sky.
as wind blows grass to shimmering life
a bird wings blue spirit in empyrean flight.

May, 1972
The road up the mountain
Dawson’s farm, Harpers Ferry

Spring

The rite of spring
riot of blooms
rout of cold winds winters bane
shivering bones
clattering in dismal dungeons dark

Violets are gone now
and iris and lily
bluebonnets take the stage
peerless blue to shame a cloudless sky

Pretty pink primrose too
takes the eye and
pink petal’s secret promise folds
virgin thighs’ blissful path

See me touch me
feel me smell me-
please don’t pick me
let me cast seed and wither and die

I’ll be here every spring
past winter’s baleful fling
and if you fail to come again
my bloom our last visit will still contain

Of all I am the flowering sum
Pinnacle of the past
nadir of the future
purpose centered everywhere bounded nowhere.

Reflection

Reflection.

Meaning cannot be reduced to its expression.

The distillation of meaning, knowledge, truth, liberty, and the like, into formulae is ultimately impossible because these qualities, embedded in the real, are inexhaustible, ever renewing, ever in process of being increased. The mere attempt to express meaning GROWS meaning. Yet meaning, truth, liberty, etc., do not change in themselves. The fire of liberty remains fire, but grows brighter with action done in its service.

With the increasing illumination one imagines that attraction likewise increases and that correspondingly that “spirit whence issued forth of old…” this cosmic activity, smiles a little more at the unfolding of his intention.

Gathering of Eagles

I have been involved with this organization. They have a Texas component as well as national.

The past few days, during discussions with my new GOE associates some thoughts have been percolating and it seems appropriate that I should put them down here.

This is an answer to Why GOE?

To most of the people I have been talking to lately this might seem a dumb question. Well, maybe not. All involved in the germination of this project have an understanding on some level in their own minds as to Why GOE? Some of these are complex, some simple, some from the intellect, some from the gut. Here, briefly stated, is my thought.

The American people want, whether they consciously know it or not, to be intimately connected with the “real” thing, by which I mean something greater than themselves as individuals. Duty, honor, truth, courage, crowned by liberty. Those are “real” things in the deepest most spiritual sense. Given proper leadership people will weld themselves to action that will rekindle these.

Everyone remembers the image of Pres. Bush, his arm around a grunged up firefighter standing on a pile of rubble at the WTC. All easily recall what he said that day and how a special kind of energy ran forth from that moment and instantly crossed the nation and informed a national purpose with a very special resolve. Where I live seemingly every vehicle and home instantly sprouted American flags.

An image like the one of which we speak, of course, awakens in our breast feelings that feed on these sentiments. People were first filled with dread, anger, fear, yes, even guilt and self loathing. But with one image, one simple phrase, these instantly gave way to courage, duty, honor and the like.

We literally swell up when duty calls and we can, following our conscience, find honor in a courageous act that further enshrines liberty in the hearts and minds of all who will follow her light.

A terrible resolve went forth that day and the world trembled at the thought of coming retribution. But, alas, this resolve has waned at the same pace as a diminishing national leadership. In this leadership vacuum opposing forces have taken the stage and pose an existential threat internally as grave as the external threat from Islamofascism.

It is the need to counter this internal threat that is the impetus for GOE. GOE is an answer to a need that is in the air for this kind of renewal.

Absent adequate leadership at the top we, the people, must provide it from the bottom. Our very existence as a nation depends on whether an enduring and terrible resolve to advance the cause of freedom can be rekindled.

The fire burns low precisely because, bombarded with negative images and associated negative tag lines, people become bewildered, lost, purposeless. People respond to images. It is in the fabric of our society. We are oriented to and from what we see. The failure of our leadership is in their inability to sustain the propagation of images and POSITIVE tag lines contrary to the daily drumbeat of the mainstream, liberal, defeatist, essentially soulless enemies of victory over tyranny. These are the blame America first crowd. All are apologists for those external threats of Islamofascism, Communism, and the like. They will fight for nothing. And, essentially are nothing in their nihilistic, atheistic solipsism. Their highest achievement in life is a kind of banal or vapid political correctness. This and their guilt and self loathing as seen in their perpetual anguish for minority rights becomes the apotheosis of their self invention as multiculturalists. What is lost is allegiance to something greater than the self. There is no “greater than the self”. The self, for the moonbat, is centered everywhere, bounded nowhere.

This is the enemy within. He is a statist, a fascist, but thinks, knows, those who oppose him are these things. Until he is utterly vanquished it will be difficult to face external threats.

Brief Exchange

Yesterday I read Aristides post Sociobiology and made a comment to which he made a reply:

John P. said…

…..

Wilson’s thought is rigorous to a degree that most of us never achieve and I am humbled by the reach of his intellect. My personal reaction is that one needs to appreciate the limitations of knowledge which I view as restricted by its contingency on existential matter. Knowledge can never be complete, all encompassing. No body of knowledge is ever going to fully and finally give absolute expression to reality. Like material things knowledge is limited to a participatory role. It may be so that whatever absolute truth, or beauty, if you like, exists is coextensive with all being but at the same time each instantiation of that truth or beauty conveys no meaning beyond itself because of the ubiquitous nature of the substratum. Thus it takes a leap of faith or “belief” to dig out the “metaphysical” reality.

To me and others before me the emergence and the appreciation of values such as consciousness, truth, beauty, wisdom, conscience, justice, liberty, love, courage, nobility, and the like are essential clues to the true purpose of life. These do not have an existence of their own. St. Thomas Aquinas, if my memory serves, characterized such entities as contingent on the existence of another. In this instance that would be mankind. My own thought, borrowing from LeComte DeNouy, is that these things are actually imbedded in existential matter and given the right set of circumstances come into being. Taking these into consideration it is not to subtle a leap of the intellect that these evolutes, fragile as they might be, nurtured by religious and philosophical traditions and, yes, political ideology too, are, as the ancient Greeks (Socrates) pointed out, mechanisms by which man has commerce with a divine reality. Or, to put it another way, they are facets of the divine by which G_d’s nature finds expression, and I might add, self awareness, through sentient beings. Life emerges from matter in order that the spark of consciousness will give rise to these divine qualities. I heard that the nuclear scientist is the atom’s mechanism for attaining self knowledge. Well, the universe perhaps is G_d’s way of seeing into his own nature.

Your insert regarding “…implications in the choice-migration to America..” provoked the thought that what is really at work in America is the evolution of the “Good” in a political mechanism that will tend to evolve and if it prevails impede the propagation of its antithesis, evil. Wilson, I suppose, might see this as mere tribalism. I don’t.

In a nutshell the Universe is self aware, operates heuristically in the sense that discovery IS the action of the unknown. And as far as Nietzsche’s void is concerned it is the great mystery of the real that out of nothing something does indeed come and passes back to its origin, the void. In a sense this accounts for the fact that knowledge can never be complete. How could you ever fill the void? Or, isn’t the void filled with every experience and simultaneously emptied? So, instead of taking the view that, as Samuel Beckett wrote in his “Waiting for Godot”, “They give birth astride graves, eh Didi?” one can alter the focus with a simple act of will. There is little reason not to rejoice in the fact that on the way to the void there is much to see and many wayfarers with whom to share the journey, such as Mr. Wilson.

1:04 PM

Aristides said…

John P.,

First, I’d like to thank you for your thoughtful post. In many ways your views mirror my own.

Nietzsche always claimed that the proper symbol for reason is Uroburos, the snake that inevitably twists back to bite its own tail. I think this is beyond any doubt, a consequence of the Void as both condition precedent and condition subsequent of being in time. As you noted.

But this is not so for finite things. Microcosms are immanently accessible to reason precisely because Genesis is already presupposed. It is true that knowledge, even of a microcosm, can never be complete; but it is also true that relevant understanding does not depend on completeness. This is a basic tenet of information theory, and a basic truth of the world. To be complete, a theory of cell division would have to account for quantum electrodynamics in addition to cellular and chemical phenomena. However, to be efficacious–i.e. to be known or cosmically self-aware, as you put it–it does not. Information can be compressed by dropping redundancy, and yet the signal still gets through. Cosmic self-awareness and its attendant actualizations still occur.

Therefore, I am very confident in the prospect of ultimately understanding Man as Microcosm, even if we can never truly know Man’s relation to the Void. A complete science of man is possible, though it is only recently back in favor. What’s held us back is not the inadequacy of reason but rather an extremely daunting level of surface complexity which stems from the combinatorial capacity of the human mind and its manifest behaviors. Of course, Science needs to acknowledge its limitations, but it must do so without discarding its confidence. So long as its method emulates evolution–which is procedurally congruent to science–its confidence is justified.

But fundamentally you are right. Science can tell us that man, to avoid a cognitive phenomenon called despair (what Qutb called the “hideous schizophrenia”), must self-elect a submission to a particular metanarrative or purpose (i.e. get faith in the Kierkegaardian sense); and it can tell us that a society, once it’s lost or exhausted a unity unto which it collectively submits (its soul in a Spenglerian sense), will eventually devolve and dissolve and factionalize around the quest for power.

What it can’t tell us is a universally correct metanarrative, and the right unity. In fact, it warns against them because both history and evolution are complex non-abelian processes–neither predictable nor static.

White Doves

Four white doves. Three had pink rings around their eyes. Black eyes. One dove had a black ring around his. White doves, black eyes, blue, peerless sky. Spotless birds, and pure white, the frost white of a rose. A frost white felicity to shame the moon. And the abyss, the dark, dark deepness of the black eyes, jewels encircled, set in pink and black, standing on dainty pink feet in a little white church with a glass door.

The young lady opened the door and gently took one dove. I immediately had the sense that this God’s creature knew in some sense what was transpiring, its role in the unfolding of events this afternoon. There was only the flutter of the flags in the breeze to mark the time, a gentling backdrop to the sounds of grieving mothers, dads, sisters, brothers. The dove so gently held was paraded around the circle then a lady, Brian’s mother, I think, handed off the just folded flag, and carressing the dove to her breast she let it go with a tear and a kiss.

The bird flew straight away and immediately it’s three companions were set free. They quickly joined and flew, fluttering white sapphires in the peerless blue sky, circling the funeral rites below, and finding their bearing on the westering sun, they set off into the heavens, free spirits, liberated from the surly bonds of earth.

Rest in peace, Brian Kubik.

Laid to rest near Killeen, Texas.
August, 15, 2006
Died of wounds received in combat operations, Bagdad, Iraq.
He was 20 years old.
Patriot Guard Riders honored this American hero.

Take the gloves off

Here is a comment I posted on Tigerhawk.

When the U.S. fought WW II there was no “proportionality”. The Germans, the Japanese, the Italians are now our friends and allies to one degree or another. When we fought the “cold” war against the hegemony of the major communist states there was a measure of proportionality; yet, Russia and China, though not our friends in the same way as Germany, etc., are nonetheless involved with us in a more or less civilized way. As regarding the Korea and Vietnam wars, I would say they were more battles in the cold war than wars in themselves; and yes, we used proportionality in those conflicts. As a result we are still dealing with a major failure vis a vis North Korea. Vietnam, unlike states whose ass we properly kicked, is still pretty much an economic basket case whereas if we had used our full force then they would be much better off today; though I still claim we won that battle, just not decisively.

I think the problem with the current emerging world wide conflagration is that these people are so much different from us. We might as well be fighting aliens from another world. This is different from our previous conflicts in that these people are pre-medieval in their world view. We fail to understand what motivates them. We seem unable to accept that they don’t want something “from us”. They just want our destruction. One of their leaders said as much many years ago in a moment of candor.

We don’t understand them. We are doomed to failure because we do not “know” our enemy. Lacking this knowledge we have a difficult time anticipating his next act of aggression. In fact, I am not so sure we even know ourselves anymore. This is a failure of leadership as much as anything. But I will tell you one thing. I believe our enemy is human enough to have his will broken and to do this the blood, as foretold in the Bible, will have to run in the streets to the depth of a horse’s bridle. This can happen. Let them send a WMD into Tel Aviv or deal a major blow to America’s heartland again.

The Greek historian Herodotus, writing about the Persian wars of 490 and 479 B.C., quotes the Persian king Xerxes:

“I intend to throw a bridge over the Hellespont, and to march an army through Europe against Greece, that I may punish the Athenians for the injuries they have done to the Persians….I…will not rest till I have taken and burnt Athens….if we shall subdue them, and their neighbors….we shall make the Persian territory co-extensive with the air of heaven; nor will the sun look down upon any land that borders on ours; but I…will make them all one territory, marching through the whole of Europe…no city or nation of the world will remain, which will be able to come to a battle with us… Thus, both those who are guilty, and those who are not guilty, must equally submit to the yoke of servitude.”

Some of the rhetoric of the enemy is a mere echo of these sentiments.

Three hundred Spartans, at a mountain pass at Thermopylae, fought to the last man against Xerxes’ army. In the valley below, the Greek army used this precious time to prepare to do battle against the invaders. The Greeks prevailed.

In a sense, Israel now fills the place of the Spartans giving the U.S. time to get its act together for the next chapter in this sad tale of which the current events are but a foretaste. God bless them for their service to a seemingly indifferent or even hostile human race. I for one, wish they would take the gloves off. Hell, I wish we would take the gloves off.

Temporal Tectonics

When the dismal light of the darkened sun shall sink deep into the depths abysmal of the eternal night, verily: when the sleep of terror shall fall upon all creation, verily: when the sound shall no longer echo, aye: when thou art lost upon the sea of blood, of tepid tepid blood, verily! Verily! then will I be awake, awake anew! and ascend, ascend over ocean, rock, mountain, continent, away away, covered in scarlet wings, and seek me a sea of burning gold, and drink and devour the sea will I, oh, drink and devour the sea will I! Hali, G. V. Desani

The middle east circa July, 2006

If you have your ear to the ground and are in possession of a particular sensibility you can detect a certain tectonic shift in the march of time. The landscape has been slightly altered and the ebb and flow of events follow the slightly different contours of the terrain. The infrahuman forces of embodied evil, the satanic in nature, the death cult that is Islamofascism, collides spectacularly and openly with the life enhancing element again. Millions of souls are in the thrall of this metastasizing evil incarnate. They sacrifice their children as suicide bombers knowing subliminally that their opponents’ moral sensibilities recoil and tend to acquiesce to their demands just to make them stop their barbarism. “They give birth astride graves”.* And in the brief moment that life’s potential is folded into the cold eternal night they rejoice clutching and holding dear the darkness of their perverted god as it snuffs out the potential for apotheosis. The world has seldom seen more blatant flowering of evil. And the Israelis, having done, as their name implies, battle with G_d and joined forces with him, now, as in the recent past, are again at the spearhead of a world civilization teetering on the brink of a darkness void of the light of truth and liberty, the warmth of love, the sweet voice of understanding and knowledge and wisdom. My heart cries out for victory, for clear eyed leadership willing to take up the sword of righteousness and join battle with and utterly dam up and contain and destroy this tide. Never in the history of the planet has the choice been so clear. This is the eschatological unfolding of the apocalyptic flower of human history. This events the ultimate destiny of humanity’s total devastation or doom. You had better be on the right side for the sake of your immortal soul and the light of G_d seeking expression therein. Make the wrong choice and it is like trying to get to the west by going east. You can never arrive at your destination and merely tend to a certain direction.

The spin of planet earth in the infinite darkness of space allows a daily rekindling of life by the light of the sun. How far north from south on this very lighted thing we call home? The pole pins us to the firmament giving direction to all movement. Hence purpose and order. How far east from west? Infinity? Latitudinal alignment of destiny provides an infinite regress. A journey in this aspect is never completed. Opposing this is the Longitudinal path. Go far enough in this direction and you end up heading in an opposite direction. It is a function of spin. Time, too, has a spin. As time travelers we need to orient ourselves Longitudinally in time. Otherwise we can never fulfill our destiny, achieve true understanding of life’s meaning. If we loose this struggle with evil man’s opportunity to discover and properly align his efforts with truth as such will be set back thousands of years to the time when god’s were appeased through such things as child sacrifice. Remember the bible story of Abraham and his son Isaac? He is on the mountain, close to G_d, about to sacrifice his son in an act of worship when G_d stays his hand. This is a pivotal point in the evolution of man and Israel is the focal point. Compare that with the Islamic culture that still sacrifices their children. Not hard to see the choice here, if you are in possession of a particular sensibility. Can you find Polaris? Choose poorly and succumb to the long dimming of the light of truth in service of a dhimmitude in a perverted theocracy. This will be our lot as we find ourselves constrained to hopelessness and slavery.

* “Waiting for Godot”, Samuel Beckett

They give birth astride graves, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.

And from Macbeth:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more