Happy Holidays

By e-mail is sent me a link to Youtube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln01p1M2cH0



Given that Christmas was established around this time to suit the interests of the empire, to coincide pagan hollidays, not to actually coincide with the birth of Jesus, though it does celebrate that, and given that when I have to consider what is worse, commercialization of a season of holidays, or commercialization of Jesus himself, the holy, incarnate God, son of God, and Messiah, who lives, tell me, is it really that bad for them to say "Happy Holidays", or for stores not to include pics and adulation of baby Jesus?

Whether some huffy folks like it or not, nowadays other pagan holidays, just as in ancient pagan times, are celebrated this time of year, only without the unseemingly acts that marred some of them back then: it just isn't surprising that non-Christians would come up with their own holidays when millions of others make this a festive time because of Jesus, and being a Christian, it (that non-Christians exist) does not offend me. Merry Christmas to all, and happy holidays too.

Reasons not to Read

If you are a reader, it is hard not to have the time for it. I spent have expended years on buses with long hours at work, which occupies time quite effectively dominates one's time, and at the end of the day, came have come to understand why millions of boobs consider themselves too exhausted to do nought but watch the boob tube. (If you're wondering why I didn't read on the bus, try them some time: bumpy, liable to miss a stop if not paying attention, and if one dependent on them, you're liable to be sleeping on them as much as you're able. That's another consideration: you're less liable to miss a stop sleeping, which can be established as a very regular routine in which you wake at the right moments, than becoming absorbed in an activity like reading.)

I find it funny, however, that millions have eight to ten hours at work and thirty to sixty minutes to drive; It's still "funny" to me, however, that millions have, at the least semi-, regular hours--between eight and ten at work, and from thirty to sixty minutes drive time--yet profess that they are stretched to the limit between keeping up with activities necessary to life at home, and those of the workplace.  I was spending anywhere from twelve to twenty hours out, with several more for cooking and hygiene in, and hopefully--maybe-- sleep, when I considered myself so exhausted that I could honestly profess inability to do much beyond the basic essentials for living, tasks necessarily done for the job at home, and working on the job itself. Those days I got off early, I spent recouping for all those whose hours were so long that they were hazards to the health, and doing errands. Life was an endless series of labors, mostly just to maintain a job: it is still, in fact, but for a certain reason, I think will get easier. Physical labor is hard, but it's deadly without adequate rest. In it all I have even added aiding a great aunt with Alzeimer's to the mix, for which I have admittedly come close to losing my job (having moved so far from work before acquiring an auto, leaving little room for tiny, but consequential, unexpected issues to crop-up. Four hours of sleep also became one and a half to three, with four being best case scenarios).

The reason I think things will get easier, however, is that now I do have an auto. And now that I have an auto, I plan to get more sleep, so as to no longer burn so much of the candle, and from there to increase performance at work, because I have time to heal. After some period of recuperation, to begin reading again--heavily; not simply for information; nor, as Mortimer J. Adler would put it, simply for understanding; both are important; also, however, for productive ends--to learn practical things; nevertheless, I really desire to engage in reading for the first couple purposes, mostly the second. All that said, I was thinking of reasons that one might not read.

Reasons that one might not read:

1. As already mentioned, being too exhausted. I think I have studied Latin on the bus now for over a year, and I am only five chapters into a tiny little book, part 1 of three, I think, of the Oxford course. I purchased this book for a class at university from which I dropped out due to family issues requiring my leaving. The course was intensive, years ago (so I have forgotten most of what I studied only once in that class), and probably proceeded through five chapters in the first couple days. If you have ever been in a situation that you are so squeezed by circumstances that you hardly sleep, you probably know how it is to find oneself unable to form durable, long-term memories, at least for information unrelated to your immediate practical concerns (and even those might be insufficient to force the neurons to store anything).

2. Insufficient time. Fairly self-explanatory. I read plenty for amusement, even stuff I really wanted to remember and recall, also already explained. But this also includes expansion on what has been said: one might not merely be needy and pressed between difficult circumstances, but could be quite well off, yet required to fulfill other duties or responsibilities which demand one's attentions; in other words, "one has better things to do"; in the case of being needy, "one has more pressing demands".

3. To visit old matter after resting old opinions or recollections. I once was part of a religious organization that turned out to be abusive, and commonly heard from former members that they had trouble reading the Bible, something--to put in a very simplified way--they believed to be true (or in a more complex manner that can be orthodox coming from some, or meant to conceal unorthodoxy from the mouths of others, believed to contain truth). Partly from the way it would evoke bad old memories related to horrible teachings built upon wresting the Bible, merely trying to read their holy book was itself another bad experience, and evocative of experiences they did not want to re-live. Advice from folks experienced in helping such folks out included i. putting it down a while and perhaps allowing all that material to receded from immediate importance and memory, and ii. reading other translations less similar to the ones they knew from involvement in that organization.

Besides avoiding recall of traumatic experiences and episodes in life, one might stop for a while to put aside current opinions and prejudices and revisit once wiser (or maybe not), more open-minded or less prejudiced; or there, to bring a more skillful discipline of reading, involving those other reasons, to bear on a text. E.g. one who reads proverbs without much experience in life, may not benefit too greatly. Similarly, someone who reads a work on epistemology can probably benefit greatly from becoming familiarized with the subjects involved in that work. Any kind of philosophical work is due familiarity with its allusions and assumptions; social commentary, with the phenomena involved, or which its author assumes to be rightly understood in a certain way, or that his audience probably understands in a certain way, and therefore does not explain to the uninitiated, requires one to recognize those assumptions. Also, prejudices, that is, understanding something in a certain way before engaging it, though usually present, and although those who recognize their presence, and who are decent readers  will work hard to "suspend belief" (so to speak), and step into the understanding of the writer bit by bit so as to read for to conceive of the real meaning of the text, and not for misconception, can have powerful influence upon understanding despite efforts and abilities, so removing from mind and attention those things which evoke them can cause their diminishment so as to engage a topic more freshly to achieve that goal of understanding in different dimensions, or from a new perspective new to the reader. Relating this to the churchy example above, many of the abused told of how they recognized that they were mis-taught the meaning or intent of a passage, and realized how that misteaching and mis-application could still filter into mind when reading some passage of Scripture; for this reason also did those who counseled them recommend other translations, at least to initiate the process of suspending assumptions about what they read, not to relegate formerly beloved versions to the discard pile.


4. ... I don't know that there is a fourth. Besides cheeky reasons or answers for parody, those above are quite broad, categorical reasons for the reader to stop reading which, I think, sufficiently exhaust the "good" reasons one might cease, at least for a time, to read.

Never satisfied: illustrating that proverb about man's insatiability...

The song's been out a while, but every time I hear it I think of the proverb, "Hell and destruction are never full; so the eyes of man are never satisfied" (Proverbs 27:20 KJV).

--"Gold Guns Girls" is the fourth single from Canadian rock group Metric's fourth studio album Fantasies..." [Wikipedia]

(Discovering that my cheap computer speakers don't hold a candle to the cheap workvan speakers while I'm at it: this song is somewhat trance inducing for the harmonies and softness, contrasted by the language and material.)

It's one of those verses which translated as that above betrays Hebrew idiom, appropriately so given, as we know, our hunger for spectacle, but by extension, signifying man's extensive and unending desires.

I thought on this, after hearing this song today, about said desires, their throbbing passions, and how not only are they turned to evil, though once they were good, now corrupted by our natures, and thusly turned to violence and harm, but that one could speculate of their greatness, that it evinces a glimpse of how great is the Creator who made their possessors--yet captives, and so also is evinced by their intensities, yet like all good things misused, become evil.

So the language appropriate, "Sheol and Abaddon", death and destruction, the wage or reward and eternal abode of all sinful. Many admire men just for greatness and intensity of passion (mindedness) and desire. There are aspects of which we deem worthy and admirable , but also the caveat of the nature of man's mind and wishes, because of his current nature, and the means by which he will attempt to gain ills(the one even freaked out simply by the divisive label "Chrisi; even that desired which is of itself good, he intends often only for his own misuse, and so corrupts in his heart before obtainment.

I mentioned good turned evil. I meant that: once a friend invited me to a Church small group he attended, and I remember the head of this gathering asking a rhetorical question (i.e. he intended to go there but asked and wanted some group participation points), that is, "where does evil come from"; "It's merely the misuse of good", I said, and then he continued as though the origin of evil were still a problem, "we don't really know where...", as if evil were some abstract and intangible, reified entity, not really knowing what to do with that answer or not wanting to do so, which after all may seem so simple.

But the sudden impulse to move on disturbed the buddy, "but wait, he just answered it...", his voice just trailed off in something of shock to the response. Do we not see it, though, in the very opening pages of Genesis, where the lovely and desirable and good become twisted to misuse, when the weak sex is deceived to disobey God's command. Do we not see it when the Man listens to his wife--which is not a bad thing in itself, but in that which leads to disobedience--which is, and in so doing, ushering in sin and death not only over them, but upon all his posterity? Desire and the desirable, loveliness and love, good for and good use, all wrecked by ill use.

We hear this all the time: "Evangelicals" strike up conversations on sex and homosexuality, and point-out that sex is good, misuse--or use against its intent--is bad. Ancient Greeks understood this too, that is, that nature itself demonstrated an order to things, and deviation was a violation of the law.

But then we hear evil reified and entitied, rather than recognized as a potential qualification of any act, or synonyms such as bad, wicked, or ill, which is probably among the most appropriate due to the expression ill use, while evil perhaps remains viable for concordance, and ties to older, more obscure senses.

What gets lost is sight of why something is used well or to ill, and why that makes the use good or bad/evil/ill.

Unseen Rule

World's poor, among all
seek not mammon
renounce avarice
and do not whine
or their use of you
shall have no end
the powers that be
do not know them
whoever they are
their reigns last not
as long as appears
undone before

it is evident.

untitled poem

If I had a child

I would tell him that

information is

not wisdom, the wise

do not inundate

themselves, the deluge

does not carry them

as waves tossed by wind,

they do not follow,

seeking acceptance

or approbation,

by those who noise.

That knowing all is

not the essential

matter for acting

but rather gaps and

discriminating

consideration

are often better

for well-doing than

pretence to having

either sure command

or omniscience.

If any are interested in arcana and in Latin...

I liked Spanish, in fact quite a lot. I started studying Latin in school but had to leave, and unfortunately my Spanish has suffered quite a lot since--worse for me because I used a lot of the knowledge gained there to peer into other languages with shared features. My only contact with native speakers often consists of people with vocabularies almost totally unlike that which is taught in schools, so though semi- regular, it doesn't help much. To use the words of a Columbian I was talking to, "I can't understand the Mexicans".

On the bus, to and fro work, I've taken up Latin again. I plan on devouring it heavily and then to move onto its linguistic aspects and development through to various modern Romance languages (hello again Spanish!). Following is a poem of "Catullus" written to himself and to a woman he calls "Lesbia" (in an earlier section) after the nom de plume of the famed Greek, strong-willed, intellectual "Sophos" (who is, by that appelation, implied to be like the famed Greek personality). My own Latin isn't progressed very far, the book reading is a heavily altered version of this, but I liked to look up the originals. It also has traits by which I can explain why I liked Spanish for cross-language purposes: even being classical Latin, an artificial literary dialect developed and maintained despite major difference from the spoken language, and thousands of years old, one can spy the imperfect by knowing the Spanish version, "uentitabas"; another example of cross-language insighting would be the uses of subjunctive in Spanish to express the beginning of something, which once is known, can be seen in other languages as well, whereas the beginner thinks a subjunctive is just some hard formed fixed to tell of hypotheticals or oughts: the beginning of the scene on the mount in the beatitudes (i.e. in Greek) for instance uses the subjunctive this way, (though it's never well translated into English). How interesting it will be, I think, to grapple with Classical, and then move into the Vulgate and related literatures where nonliterary Latin was purposefully employed to be more accessible to the masses, and compare that with Spanish and other romances.

The poem reveals that, just as in the days of Sophos, and just as in ours, lovers dealing treacherously and abandoning their mate, and the longing and perhaps bitterness that arises in the abandoned, was just as much a tragic part of life as now. It is, in fact, one of the great "secrets" of Roman times, that is, people think all the women were just cloistered up and suppressed from doing anything, when in fact in the empire sex relations were not altogether different than they are now; if there were restrictions on the fairer sex, there was nevertheless a period the modern woman, raised on feminist values and expectations (even most who deny being one who don't realize the changes that have taken place socially in the last several decades and how even the assumptions are very different from what they were before), might not mind--except for the greater hardship of living due to less developed technology--visiting or dwelling in if it were possible.

Actually, superficial readings of text and presumptions brought to it have, in the post-advent world, obscured these facts, even when knowledgeable authorities on history, Christian or otherwise, have tried to dispel such myths. Or put another way, bad apologetics by ignoramouses meant to accomodate secular and modernist tastes have betrayed known and valid history (lied) in the name and service, supposedly, of truth. All the more comical when when pretenses are made about politically incorrect passages in Scriptures about women not to offend the feminists in the audience of "believers", though to be fair many such preachers just don't know better, having received misinformation from commentaries perpetuating traditions of commentaries. It's for such reasons that many of the schools now considered the "Ivy League", e.g. Harvard, were founded, such that ministers would not be unlearned and so err. In such cases as un-pc passages of Scripture on women and how they've been popularly mishandled, just a glancing, cursory course of Latin which introduces one to the culture of the first century empire (in my case, first through Oxford's slim little course volumes), or a course dedicated to that culture, could dispel many myths though it might reduce the numbers of congregations and effectiveness of growing those numbers since, after all, what is Christian, genuinely Christian, is now truly and deeply offensive in our societal environment. E.g. rather than appearing to her ego some day, telling a woman about Christ, fail to tell her all about how God loves her and she's a princess and instead speak of wretchedness and adultery and you'll probably get slapped. I remember a group effort of friends putting out fliers on Valentines day telling girls how wonderful they are and how God loves them and the positive responses, but understand now from the context we live in and how those would be taken by the usual American narcissist that it should have made me wince.

Catullus 8

Miser Catulle, desinas ineptire,
et quod uides perisse perditum ducas.
fulsere quondam candidi tibi soles,
cum uentitabas quo puella ducebat
amata nobis quantum amabitur nulla.
ibi illa multa cum iocosa fiebant,
quae tu uolebas nec puella nolebat,
fulsere uere candid tibi soles.
nunc iam illa non uolt: tu quoque inpote,
nec quae fugit sectare, nec miser uiue,
sed obstinata mente perfer, obdura.
uale, puella. iam Catullus obdurat,
nec te requiret nec rogabit inuitam.
at tu dolebis, cum rogaberis nulla.
scelesta, uae te, quae tibi manet uita ?
quis nunc te adibit ? dui uideberis bella ?
quem nunc amabis ? cuius esse diceris ?
quem basiabis ? cui labella mordebis ?
at tu, Catulle, destinatus obdura.
--From, The poems of Catullus By Gaius Valerius Catullus, Peter Green. 

<url of the above link for printing purposes: http://books.google.com/books?id=4qsYinaVXQ8C&pg=PA52&lpg=PA52&dq=catullus+obdurat&source=bl&ots=9CZW6a0T-O&sig=xGwQQvexhphJPrDqyijQYftkVRI&hl=en&ei=yJhVTbXQDZH4swO5jPWtBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CD0Q6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=catullus%20obdurat&f=false>

Reviving "Seva" as "Sevacious"

Some time ago I wrote a poem which among other things utilizes several old[er] English terms now obsolete from usage as a means to revive them as "The Sciolist" desires. Of course, given I'm no famous poet, that could take a while, with some unknown means of that poem actually reaching broad circulation), and given the older forms and plays in the poem, I don't know that it's the best course for such resuscitation's. I wanted to make yet another link to "The Sciolist's" page with the list of terms he's seeking regeneration for, and then suggest a way to revive a suggested word that I did not poem, "seva". The proposal is simple, relying upon analogy of sound and tacking-on an ending, -acious . Savacious already has a ring in common with words like salacious, spacious, etc., and -acious words aren't unusual in English, e.g. vivacious and so on, and just Googling it turns up results showing that people already are willing to tack it onto unusual places (often for cheesy marketing purposes), though sometimes with much less tact than the sound of this combination (e.g. "Audi- acious" ). See also -ous to understand that the combination of word and part that I'm about to propose for "emotional intelligence" is something probably very acceptable to modern society, especially when applied to women, which I say given the text given by Harper in his proposal for the word,

SEVA - As a noun, it meant "mind, heart, spirit," but with a sense of perception, of knowing through the heart. It could serve as a word for the concept we fumble at with words like "emotional intelligence" or trivialize with phrases like "women's intuition."

though I'm unsure why he says this concept is "trivialized" when it's said to be a quality commonly or significantly noticed about women.

One might propose sev-i (pr. "say + vī" or "say+vee") but that's too close to "savvy", which merits remarking that perhaps the baser connotations of "salacious" might ruin "sevacious" as well: the sadder since the denotation of "salacious" is "salt" (i.e. "wise"), and where the "spicy" connotation of sexual perversion came from I can only guess as misuse (esp. given that salt is not spicy). The real point to "salacious" is that too much or too little salt, and something is ruined, and the wise are "salacious" because they understand this and how to apply. Pulling back from digression though, the combination not only allows for the word's revival as an immediate adjective, but also as one for state of being by simply tacking on "-ness" ("sevaciousness") another pattern common to modern English norms.