Philosophy/Religion – Page 7

May 12, 2014 by Dave Bonta

Teaching the catbird to sing

The single-mindedness of a heron in flight: its dangerous bill, coiled neck, and arrow-straight path. No thank you! I’m the sort of guy who whistles a tune hoping the catbird will copy it.

Ay, ay, ay, ay,
Canta y no llores,
Porque cantando se alegran,
cielito lindo, los corazones.

The small blue butterfly keeps circling and landing, circling and landing among the small blue stones of the road, as if searching for a lost twin. When a car comes along straight as an arrow, the butterfly tries the same randomized flight pattern it uses to escape from everything else, tripping the light stochastic. It survives, but not because of that.

In the Popol Vuh, the hero twins use magic tricks and theater to defeat the single-minded lords of death. Their lust for violence is turned against them, and they participate willingly in their own destruction for the sheer thrill of it.

I’ve been listening to the catbird’s inventions for hours now. Twice I thought I heard phrases from Cielito Lindo.

March 11, 2014May 30, 2016 by Dave Bonta

That old-time religion

(Lord’s day). Heard Mr. Mills in the morning, a good sermon. Dined at home on a poor Lenten dinner of coleworts and bacon. In the afternoon again to church, and there heard one Castle, whom I knew of my year at Cambridge. He made a dull sermon.
After sermon came my uncle and aunt Wight to see us, and we sat together a great while. Then to reading and at night to bed.

A poor
bacon, the church.
I knew a ridge.
We sat together
a great while.

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 10 March 1660/61.

February 24, 2014 by Dave Bonta

Why birthdays suck

Victorian-era card showing a kitten in apron carrying a birthday cake — The Victorians pioneered two things I hate: mass-produced birthday cards and LOLcats.

Birthdays are like assholes: everyone has one, and they connect us to unpleasant realities we’d rather not think about. But that’s not why I dislike them. I dislike birthdays because, in our culture, they are a time for those who are already privileged to feel as if they own a goddamn day on the calendar.

In centuries past, only saints had special days; individuals could participate in that specialness with a celebration on the day of the saint who shared their name. So you still got an annual celebration, but it wasn’t all about you — and its significance extended far beyond your own birth and death. And in a largely agricultural society in which the annual cycle of the seasons was of much greater relevance to people’s everyday lives, imagine how simultaneously humbling and exalting it must’ve felt to have been so integrated into the cosmic wheel.

But what do we have? An individualized pseudo-holiday, hyped by the greeting-card industry, whose effect is to simultaneously flatter and insult: it’s your special day in which you are special, but don’t forget that, if you just turned 30 or above, you are now well on your way to becoming old, unattractive and irrelevant. Oh, and here’s another shit-load of stuff you don’t really need.

That said, the blowing-out-the-candles thing is pretty cool. And the chance to make all your friends wear stupid little party hats. But it’s too bad we don’t bake symbolic objects such as coins and thimbles into the cake anymore. It must’ve been a real blast waiting to see which semi-inebriated celebrant would be the first to break a tooth.

(I’m 48. Why do you ask?)

February 7, 2014May 30, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Sitting

Called up by my Cozen Snow, who sat by me while I was trimmed, and then I drank with him, he desiring a courtesy for a friend, which I have done for him. Then to the office, and there sat long, then to dinner, Captain Murford with me. I had a dish of fish and a good hare, which was sent me the other day by Goodenough the plasterer.
So to the office again, where Sir W. Pen and I sat all alone, answering of petitions and nothing else, and so to Sir W. Batten’s, where comes Mr. Jessop (one whom I could not formerly have looked upon, and now he comes cap in hand to us from the Commissioners of the Navy, though indeed he is a man of a great estate and of good report), about some business from them to us, which we answered by letter.
Here I sat long with Sir W., who is not well, and then home and to my chamber, and some little, music, and so to bed.

My Zen: I drank with
a friend, then sat
long with a fish.

The other day I sat all alone
and nothing—no form,
no answer—sat with me.

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 6 February 1660/61.

February 1, 2014May 30, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Inferno

This morning with Mr. Coventry at Whitehall about getting a ship to carry my Lord’s deals to Lynne, and we have chosen the Gift. Thence at noon to my Lord’s, where my Lady not well, so I eat a mouthfull of dinner there, and thence to the Theatre, and there sat in the pit among the company of fine ladys, &c.; and the house was exceeding full, to see Argalus and Parthenia, the first time that it hath been acted: and indeed it is good, though wronged by my over great expectations, as all things else are. Thence to my father’s to see my mother, who is pretty well after her journey from Brampton. She tells me my aunt is pretty well, yet cannot live long. My uncle pretty well too, and she believes would marry again were my aunt dead, which God forbid. So home.

We have chosen the gift of heat
and a pit fine and full.
The first time it is good, though wronged
by my over-great expectations,
as all things are.
I cannot believe in a dead God.

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 31 January 1660/61.

January 29, 2014February 4, 2014 by Dave Bonta

Gospel

This entry is part 6 of 91 in the series Toward Noon: 3verses

Five below zero.
The stream bank is garlanded
with flowers of frost.

The dogmatic drone
of a single-prop plane,
its cross-shaped silhouette.

The sky is blue as a bruise.
My lungs ache
just from trying to breathe.

January 27, 2014May 30, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Made

Within all the morning. About noon comes one that had formerly known me and I him, but I know not his name, to borrow 5l. of me, but I had the wit to deny him.
There dined with me this day both the Pierces and their wives, and Captain Cuttance, and Lieutenant Lambert, with whom we made ourselves very merry by taking away his ribbans and garters, having made him to confess that he is lately married.
The company being gone I went to my lute till night, and so to bed.

Within me, one
that had formerly known me—
but I know not his name.
(I had the wit to deny him.)

We made ourselves
by taking away art.
Made to confess,
I married the company.

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 26 January 1660/61.

January 11, 2014January 11, 2014 by Dave Bonta

Things to do with human bones in the Neolithic

Deflesh them with bone knives.
Let the wolves and ravens deflesh them.
Gather them into skin bags and bury them under the hearth.
Feed them beer.
Dig them up every fall and dance with them.
Dig ditches around them so the uninitiated cannot get too close.
Build mounds over them so the otherworld can ascend and be closer to us.
Organize them by size and type.
Rearrange them into new, mash-up ancestors.
Break them so they will not follow us in our dreams.
Suck out the marrow so their spirits will protect us in our dreams.
Burn them and place them in jars of clay decorated with rows of pits, as from missing teeth.
Erect stones around them in a circle so they will remember us who stand in the light.

November 22, 2013November 23, 2013 by Dave Bonta

King’s Cave, Arran

On the west coast of Arran, quite near Machrie Moor, are a series of sandstone sea caves, formed by wave action when the sea level was higher than it is today. One of them is full of petroglyphs, some of which date back to the Iron Age if not before. It’s called King’s Cave — one of many caves around Scotland alleged to be the one where the fugitive Robert the Bruce famously observed a spider persisting in trying to attach its web to the slippery walls, and so resolved to be similarly persistent in fighting for Scottish independence. Continue reading “King’s Cave, Arran”

November 21, 2013November 22, 2013 by Dave Bonta

Paul Kingsnorth on being a dark ecologist

I just finished an essay called “Dark Ecology” in Orion Magazine. This guy Paul Kingsnorth thinks pretty much the way I think. And the essay is particularly worth mentioning since I’ve just been blogging about the Neolithic, which, as Kingsnorth reminds us, was something of a wrong turn:

Hunter-gatherers living during the Paleolithic period, between 30,000 and 9,000 BCE, were on average taller—and thus, by implication, healthier—than any people since, including people living in late twentieth-century America. Their median life span was higher than at any period for the next six thousand years, and their health, as estimated by measuring the pelvic inlet depth of their skeletons, appears to have been better, again, than at any period since—including the present day. This collapse in individual well-being was likely due to the fact that settled agricultural life is physically harder and more disease-ridden than the life of a shifting hunter-gatherer community.

So much for progress. But why in this case, [Spencer] Wells asks, would any community move from hunting and gathering to agriculture? The answer seems to be: not because they wanted to, but because they had to. They had spelled the end of their hunting and gathering lifestyle by getting too good at it. They had killed off most of their prey and expanded their numbers beyond the point at which they could all survive. They had fallen into a progress trap.

Do read the rest. I especially agree with his five suggestions for how one might cope, what one might do. He sets it up this way:

If you don’t like any of this, but you know you can’t stop it, where does it leave you? The answer is that it leaves you with an obligation to be honest about where you are in history’s great cycle, and what you have the power to do and what you don’t. If you think you can magic us out of the progress trap with new ideas or new technologies, you are wasting your time. If you think that the usual “campaigning” behavior is going to work today where it didn’t work yesterday, you will be wasting your time. If you think the machine can be reformed, tamed, or defanged, you will be wasting your time. If you draw up a great big plan for a better world based on science and rational argument, you will be wasting your time. If you try to live in the past, you will be wasting your time. If you romanticize hunting and gathering or send bombs to computer store owners, you will be wasting your time.

And so I ask myself: what, at this moment in history, would not be a waste of my time?