Maine Rodents

 

Porcupines everywhere "down east."

stikhar iz rossii

 

The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.

This present moment

 I sat upon the shore

Fishing, with the arid plain behind me

Shall I at least set my lands in order?

London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down

Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina

Quando fiam uti chelidon—O swallow swallow

Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie

These framents I have shored against my ruins

MacIntyre, Memory Eternal

 There are a handful of living thinkers that have made me re-think fundamental presuppositions that I held consciously (or not) for some time in my early life. Each, in his own way, a genius - but in particular a genius in re-shaping the conceptualization of an intellectual space for me. Until yesterday they were in no particular order, Noam Chomsky, David Bentley Hart, John Milbank, Michael Hudson, Alain de Benoist and Alasdair MacIntyre. We recently lost Rene Girard. Now MacIntyre is no longer with us. His precise analytics, pulling insights from thinkers ranging from Aristotle to Marx, was rarely matched in the contemporary world. The hammer blow that After Virtue was to so many of my assumptions and beliefs is hard to describe - my entire view of the modern project, especially around ethics, was undone. But it was also his wisdom about the human animal and what really mattered in terms of being a human being that set him apart.

A sad day for humanity.

To the servant of God, Alasdair, Vichnaya Pamyat': may your memory be eternal!

Fate and the Individual

 

Doing God's Work

This old, old technique of barrel curing tobacco in Louisiana - making perique - just produces some of the most interesting fig-meets-plum-meets-pepper tastes imaginable. Blend that with some bright virginias and there's something super special that results. 

Rarity

Rarely do I want to purchase every book a publisher puts out. But there are exceptions to every rule.

I bow to Denise Harvey publishers for their excellent work.

Merry Christmas

 C Рождеством Христовым! Славим Его!

 Some new books to read for the Feast.

Something to warm the body and delight the soul.

An Appalachian Nativity

Christmas is almost upon us and during the preceding fast this year I've been drawn to the folk sounds of Appalachia. America has real culture, its just been hidden from us.

This beautiful - and really, I mean beautiful - folk carol And The Trees Do Moan is about as soulful as it gets. I don't know who these people are, but holy smokes are they good:

In the valley of Judea,

Cold and wintry blown,

Christ was born one frosty morning,

And the trees do moan.

Darkened skies, and men a-stumbling;

High above there shone One bright star a-moving Eastward,

Where the trees do moan.

Herod and the ruling Romans Stately sat upon the throne,

Sent the soldiers out a-looking,

And the trees do moan,  and the trees do moan.

Mary took her little baby,

Set out all alone;

Down in Egypt land they tarried,

Where the trees do moan.

Jesus then became a carpenter,

Worked with wood and stone;

Nails he drove and cross-arms fashioned,

And the trees do moan.

There one day while in the forest black,

One tree he picked for his own,

A Christmas tree,

an evergreen one,

And the trees do moan, and the trees do moan.

Now I want to say the next one genuinely surprised me - an Appalachian setting of the Byzantine hymn God Is With Us. In the Eastern Orthodox Typikon, the hymn is prescribed for compline during Great Lent, but more to the point - used in both the Nativity and Theophany Vesper services for Christmas. 

I will let the music speak for itself, except to say this is absolutely haunting.

The original text:

God is with us. Understand, all ye nations, and submit yourselves: For
God is with us.
Hear ye, even unto the uttermost ends of the earth: For God is with us.
Submit yourselves, ye mighty ones: For God is with us.
If again ye shall rise up in your might, again shall ye be overthrown:
For God is with us.
If any take counsel together, them shall the Lord destroy: For God is with us.
And the word which ye shall speak shall not abide in you: For God is with us.
For we fear not your terror, neither are we troubled: For God is with us.
But the Lord our God, He it is to Whom we will ascribe holiness, and
Him shall we fear: For God is with us.
And if I put my trust in Him, He shall be my sanctification: For God is with us.
I will set my hope on Him, and through Him shall I be saved: For God is with us.
Lo, I and the children whom God hath given me: For God is with us.
The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: For God is with us.
And they that dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, on them hath
the light shined: For God is with us.
For unto us a Son is born, unto us a Child is given: For God is with us.
And the government shall be upon His shoulder: For God is with us.
And of His peace there shall be no end: For God is with us.
And his name shall be called the Angel of Great Council: For God is with us.
Wonderful, Counsellor: For God is with us.
The Mighty God, the Highest Power, the Prince of Peace: For God is with us.
The Father of the world to come: For God is with us.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: For God is with us.
Both now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen. For God is with us.
God is with us.

Understand, all ye nations, and submit yourselves: For
God is with us.

(If you haven't heard a slavic redaction of the Byzantine chant, another amazing setting from my friends at St Elizabeth convent in Belarus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7-Ph3lwbcI )

And one more: The World Is Old. Far less of that bluegrass spirit, this is just another example of high culture in a land that gets snubbed unjustly in much of America. Hard to believe, in fact inconceivable when you listen to these voices.

The world is old tonight,

The world is old;

The stars around the fold

Do show their light.

And so they did, and so,

A thousand years ago,

And so will do, my love,

When we lie cold.

The world is still tonight,

The world is still;

The snow on vale and hill

Like wool like white.

And so it did, and so,

A thousand years ago,

And so will do, my love,

When we lie still.

Whether you have come to understand that the Logos is the center of everything yet or not, these are surely carols that will be a balm for the soul.

Underground Americana

Mainstream label music is almost entirely so awful that it drives me to despair to hear most popular music these days - let alone realize it is willingly consumed by anyone. Here I offer three bands that are both a complete "fuck you" to popular music in form and function, but tie into something deep within the American cultural dna that makes them something special:

1 Grave Pilgrim, The Bigotry of Purpose. Raw riffing rock, barked vocals meditating on American and European history (plus other stuff). Tagline: chivalric violence and hideous cruelty. Best rock album of 2023 in my opinion. Best song, Rhiannon's Wake.

Their prior EP Molten Hands Reach West was just as good.

2 Panopticon, ...And Again, into the Light. Bluegrass meets atmospheric black metal on a journey through American geographies, old style anarchist complaints and the trials of life. Austin Lunn, the one man genius behind Panopticon, definitely uses music to exorcise his inner daemons (come to Divine Liturgy my friend to really get them out...). I have a lot of time for this guy. My favorite parts are the gravelly bluegrass ones, like....

Special mention for Panopticon's Kentucky. My forebears were coal miners. 

3 Pan-Amerikan Native Front, Little Turtle's War. Indigenous metal meditating on past battles in the bloody unfolding of the American nation. We probably can stop screwing over natives in this country now.

Also, their split Immortal Ceremonies: someone must have thought "go hard or go home" on that one.

The Turning of Lot's Wife

The Turning of Lot's Wife

Scott Cairns

Genesis 19. 23-26

First of all, she had a name, and she had a history. She was Marah, and long before the breath of death's angel turned her to bitter dust, she had slipped from her mother's womb with remarkable ease, had moved in due time from infancy to womanhood with a manner of grace that came to be the sole blessing of her aging parents. She was beloved.

And like most daughters who are beloved by both a mother and a father, Marah moved about her city with unflinching compassion, tending to the dispossessed as if they were her own. And they became her own. In a city given to all species of excess, there were a great many in agony--abandoned men, abandoned women, abandoned children. Upon these she poured out her substance and her care.

Her first taste of despair was at the directive of the messengers, who announced without apparent sentiment what was to come, and what was to be done. With surprising banality, they stood and spoke. One coughed dryly into his fist and would not meet her eyes. And one took a sip from the cup she offered before he handed it back and the two disappeared into the night.

Unlike her husband--coward and sycophant--the woman remained faithful unto death. For even as the man fled the horrors of a city's conflagration, outrunning Marah and both girls as they all rushed into the desert, the woman stopped. She looked ahead briefly to the flat expanse, seeing her tall daughters, whose strong legs and churning arms were taking them safely to the hills; she saw, farther ahead, the old man whom she had served and comforted for twenty years. In the impossible interval where she stood, Marah saw that she could not turn her back on even one doomed child of the city, but must turn her back instead upon the saved.

Analects 7:6

The Master said, “Set your heart upon the Way, rely upon Virtue, lean upon Goodness, and explore widely in your cultivation of the arts.”

Musk Ox

 Musk Ox is a fantastic instrumental chamber folk project from up in Canada. I recently stumbled on these guys and their guitarist Nathanael Larochette from some collaborations he did with the (now defunct, but often brilliant) Oregon-based post metal/neofolk band Agalloch. Here's a neat documentary on the making of their album Woodfall.

Another cool project is the acoustic spin off that Nathanael did from the last Agalloch album.

His solo stuff is great. Music about trees and such.

Silence, Again

Hesychasm as a path to transcendence

AI not I

The notion that what we call AI is somehow approaching a form on consciousness remains an absurdity: fantastical thinking by people who really ought to spend a minimal amount of time at least reading up on philosophy of mind. Generative AI fits perfectly into John Searle's Chinese Room (the main variation is probability replaces rules, which reflects the one major innovation of NLP over decades).

I don't mean to suggest the technology is not extremely useful - it is, and will become more so. But: reality check.

For the time being

"Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,
Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes --
Some have got broken -- and carrying them up to the attic.
The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,
And the children got ready for school. There are enough
Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week --
Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,
Stayed up so late, attempted -- quite unsuccessfully --
To love all of our relatives, and in general
Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again
As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed
To do more than entertain it as an agreeable
Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,
Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,
The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.
The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory,
And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware
Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought
Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now
Be very far off. But, for the time being, here we all are,
Back in the moderate Aristotelian city
Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid's geometry
And Newton's mechanics would account for our experience,
And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.
It seems to have shrunk during the holidays. The streets
Are much narrower than we remembered; we had forgotten
The office was as depressing as this. To those who have seen
The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,
The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.
For the innocent children who whispered so excitedly
Outside the locked door where they knew the presents to be
Grew up when it opened. Now, recollecting that moment
We can repress the joy, but the guilt remains conscious;
Remembering the stable where for once in our lives
Everything became a You and nothing was an It.
And craving the sensation but ignoring the cause,
We look round for something, no matter what, to inhibit
Our self-reflection, and the obvious thing for that purpose
Would be some great suffering. So, once we have met the Son,
We are tempted ever after to pray to the Father;
"Lead us into temptation and evil for our sake."
They will come, all right, don't worry; probably in a form
That we do not expect, and certainly with a force
More dreadful than we can imagine. In the meantime
There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair,
Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem
From insignificance. The happy morning is over,
The night of agony still to come; the time is noon:
When the Spirit must practice his scales of rejoicing
Without even a hostile audience, and the Soul endure
A silence that is neither for nor against her faith
That God's Will will be done, That, in spite of her prayers,
God will cheat no one, not even the world of its triumph."

Sophia

 

Memesis and Desire

"Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires." Rene Girard

Faixa Marrom

Mitsuyo Maeda > Carlos Gracie Sr. > Carlos Gracie Junior > Jean Jacques Machado > Eddie Bravo > Denny Prokopos > Alex Canders

Three Carols for Nativity

Three of outstanding carols for the Christmas season.

1 In the Dark Night

A traditional Ukrainian koliady (carol): this is just heart-rendering in its simple beauty expressed in the Ukrainian language. The theme of a bright light in darkness is particularly poignant as Ukraine itself is presently plunged into darkness by the war. This holiday, I wish for peace: among Ukrainians, with brother Russians, and for the world.

In the dark night, above Bethlehem, a bright star shined out, covering the Holy Land. The Most Pure Virgin, the Holy Bride, in a poor cave gave birth to a Son. [Chorus] Sleep Jesus, sleep my little baby, Sleep my little star, About your fate, my little sweet, To you I will sing. She gently kissed and swaddled him, She put him to bed, and quietly started to sing, You will grow up, my Son, you’ll become a grown-up, And you will go out into the world, my baby. Sleep Jesus, sleep my sweet little baby, Sleep my little star, About your fate, my little sweet, To you I will sing. The Love of the Lord and God’s truth, You will bring faith to the world, to your people, The truth will live on, the shackles of sin will be shattered, [But my child], on Golgotha, my child will die. Sleep Jesus, sleep my sweet little baby, Sleep my little star, About your fate, my little sweet, To you I will sing. Sleep, Jesus, sleep my sweet little baby, Sleep my rose blossom, With hope on You The entire world is watching!

2 The Cherry Tree Carol

An Old English carol based on medieval legends about the Holy Family. This version is rendered in modern English and accompanied by a simple harp (Anonymous4 does another version that is a cappella in Old English, but something about this short version with the harp is just pleasant to the ears and to the soul).

When Joseph was an old man,
An old man was he,
He married Virgin Mary
The Queen of Galilee.
He married Virgin Mary
The Queen of Galilee.

Joseph and Mary walked
Through an orchard good,
There were cherries, there were berries,
As red as any blood.
There were cherries, there were berries,
As red as any blood.

Then Mary spoke to Joseph
So meek and so mild:
"Joseph, gather me some cherries,
For I am with child."
"Joseph, gather me some cherries,
For I am with child."

Then Joseph grew in anger,
In anger grew he,
"Let the father of thy baby
Gather cherries for thee!
"Let the father of thy baby
Gather cherries for thee!

Then Jesus spoke a few words,
A few words spoke he:
"Let my mother have some cherries,
Bow low down, cherry tree."
"Let my mother have some cherries,
Bow low down, cherry tree."

The cherry tree bowed low down,
Bowed low down to the ground,
And Mary gathered cherries
While Joseph stood around.
And Mary gathered cherries
While Joseph stood around.

Then Joseph took Mary
All on his right knee,
"My Lord, what have I done?
Have mercy on me."
"My Lord, what have I done?
Have mercy on me."

Then Joseph took Mary
All on his left knee,
"Pray tell me, little Baby,
When thy birthday will it be?
"Pray tell me, little Baby,
When thy birthday will it be?

"On the Sixth day of January
My birthday it will be,
And the stars in the elements
Will tremble with glee."
And the stars in the elements
Will tremble with glee."

As Joseph was a-walking
He heard an angel sing,
"Tonight shall be the birth time
Of Christ our Heav'nly King."
"Tonight shall be the birth time
Of Christ our Heav'nly King."

"He neither shall be born
In house nor in hall,
Nor in the place of Paradise,
But in an ox's stall."
Nor in the place of Paradise,
But in an ox's stall."

"He neither shall be clothed
In purple nor in cloth,
But in the bare white linen
That useth babies all."
But in the bare white linen
That useth babies all."

"He neither shall be rocked
In silver nor in gold,
But in a wooden manger
That rests upon the mold."
But in a wooden manger
That rests upon the mold."

As Joseph was a-walking
And an angel did sing,
And Mary's child at midnight
Was born to be our King.
And Mary's child at midnight
Was born to be our King.

Then be ye glad ye people
This night of all the year,
And light ye up your candles
For his star it shineth clear.
And light ye up your candles
For his star it shineth clear.

3 Georgian Alilo

If you get some Georgians together for a holiday there will be singing (also, alcohol in my experience). I can't understand a word when they do, but its pretty cool.

Since Georgian is such an interesting language, I list here the lyrics / transliteration / translation from comments:

ალილო და ჰოი ალილო და ჰოო alilo da hoi alilo da hoo Hallelujah Hallelujah ქრისტეს მახარობელნი ვართ ქრისტეშობას მოგილოცავთოო krist’es makharobelni vart krist’eshobas mogilotsavtoo We are heralds of Christ wishing you a Merry Christmas ოცდახუთსა დეკემბერსა ქრისტეიშვა ბეთლემშინაო otsdakhutsa dek’embersa krist’eishva betlemshinao On the twenty-fifth of December, Christ was born in Bethlehem ანგელოზნი უგალობენ დიდება მაღალთა შინაო angelozni ugaloben dideba maghalta shinao Angels sing praises to the highest of the house ეს რომ მწყემსებმა გაიგგეს მივიდნენ და თავანი სცეს მას es rom mts’q’emsebma gaigges mividnen da tavani stses mas Pastors heard the good news and they went to worship Him. ვარსკვლავები ბრწყინვალებენ ანათებენ ბეთლემსაოო varsk’vlavebi brts’q’invaleben anateben betlemsaoo The stars are shining, Illuminating Belém! შორი ქვენიდან მოსულმა მოგვებმა ძღვენი შესწირეს shori kvenidan mosulma mogvebma dzghveni shests’ires Coming from distant lands, The magicians gave Him a gift ქრისტეს მახარობელნი ვართ ქრისტეშობას მოგილოცავთო krist’es makharobelni vart krist’eshobas mogilotsavto We are heralds of Christ wishing you a Merry Christmas ოცდახუთსა დეკემბერსა ქრისტე იშვა ბეთლემშინაო otsdakhutsa dek’embersa krist’e ishva betlemshinao On the twenty-fifth of December, Christ was born in Bethlehem

While Christmas is properly celebrated on January 7, being an American, I'm stuck with this weekend ending the season. Fortunately I am not stuck with the commercial music/dreck that American culture imposes on the season: the 12 days of Christmas until Epiphany/Theophany are still a good time to continue to enjoy this fine singing with all that behind us.