#60 "I Give the Mass." Continued His High Quarkness. "but Not THAT Kind."

[c.f. last post]

No, not related, etymologically. There's a great joke going around though: a Higgs boson walks into church and the priest says, "I'm sorry we don't allow sub-atomic particles." The boson parries, "But you can't have MASS without me."  hahaha. I love a good laugh because it's serious stuff literally, that I deal with down here, 24/7 times infinity--a real head- (if I had one) ache keeping all those other quirky quarklets (some officially monikered e.g. "strange" and "charm"  no kidding) in line, giving them mass, and a certain gravitas. Haha ...told you  This is why I affectionately refer to St. Peter of  Higgs also as Dr Higglety-Pigglety. The quantum scene is to my poetic ear (if I had one) a double-dactyl rumbling-tumbling surreal sort of miasmic musical maelstrom (ha) that even I/ME find hard to believe in.                                                                               

[1] But back to the point: mass in the hieratic sense derives from the Late Latin "Ite, missa est" which means literally in order "Go,  dismissal is" from the past participle of mittere, to put, to put out, to place, to go,  etc. (and cognate with so many other Latin borrowings like mission and mess, in the sense of meal – the putting-out and placing thereof). Did I mention that I dearly love Latin, my second language? Well, so the Ite etc. phrase means more loosely something like Go away, it's put-you-out time. Funny isn't it that the parishioners would remember the end of the service as if glad to be through with it, rather than the beginning or the middle or the whole. The poor peasants didn't understand a word that was being said anyway. But in the late Middle Ages with the usual linguistic forces of phonetic compression and folk etymology ( the sense of "massing" together) at work, the phrase became the single word mass, unrelated historically to any other usage. But I love folk, and their etymology, and massing-together is so sweet an idea to a sentimental Old Particle at heart, if I had one – haha, somebody please stop me – because there's a symbolic connection at least between the priestish mass and myself. We're both in the congregation business – aggregating, gathering together bunches of people massed together at these holy functions, like e.g. the "masses" showing up in huge quantities for Funny Hat Day at St. Peter's (pace Higgs) Basilica most famously on Easter Sunday.

[2] But for me, the original Matter-Maker, mass has in fact a much more ancient and pregnant meaning, if you will. Goes like this: Proto-Indo-European root into Greek "Massein" = to knead (massage is related), and then into the Latin noun masa, the finished product = a lump of dough. Interesting creational implications here of course. and even Eucharistic. Matter is another matter – ultimately coming from another Latin  borrowing: mater, and, hey, I'm sort of in the mothering business myself. One more thing and I'll shut up:

[3] As to mess, as in meal, repast, brunch, munchies, snack, etc-- it's like the biblical mess of pottage or modern mess hall or in the epigraph to this blog's fraternal twin Daily Mosteller Weekly (below masthead), which asks the reader pun-ishingly to sit down to a "mess" of memes and mummery. You would expect the form to be related to the mass-masa-maize lump-o'-dough family, but no. We're back to  the holy service once again with that workhorse Latin verb mittere, which means, we recall, to place or put out though NOT in this sense the parishioners, but rather a meal. Of course the Eucharist is in its own way a mess, and after church they could mass in the mess hall and maybe get a group massage ...

Our interviewee continued in this vein for some time, later extolling in particular the virtues of the old-timey Latin form of mass, even praising current practitioners like Mel Gibson and Antonin Scalia as among his favorites, reminding us that grammar school originally meant learning LATIN grammar back in the day (one simply KNEW English already, forheavensake), and that Anglo-Humans should return to the old practice of high-school Latin for everybody, and Greek in college. Modern languages--pshaw. After this lengthy divigation the Supreme Quarkman returned to the issues at hand::

However, jokes and etymology aside, there's a nice parallel here because I AM in the congregation/aggregation business. I get things together and afford them weight and quant-ity, so to speak ... and then let them go. There's a cosmic cuteness there--don't you agree?-- and I'm the guy-particle who does it, by God. My good friend Peter Higgs figured it out mathematically. Another old friend, Pythagoras, had it half-right when he said that mathematics gives you the key to the universe, but only after you humans bumped your heads and started counting things. Incidentally, isn't it weird that Pythagoas, the first great "bean counter" in history, hated beans and forbade his followers from eating them! But I digress. Sorry. My first interview after all. Anyway, for Peter Higgs Ph.D. my quarkhood just had to be there, somehow, either as a particle, or field, or maybe both at the same time. Also weird, but that's Quantumland for you. Kudos to the young man– oops, it was 50 years ago– who predicted me, and now the CERN people, whoever they are, confirming my existence in the Large Hadron Collider, whatever that is.. I understand that they actually have sparkly images of me in action, or I should say REaction, to some pretty painful neutron bombardment just short of the speed of light. Ouch.  One of Me only lasts a Godzillionth of a second, but they managed to get me in the picture. You should be able to detect a smile.

Higgs Boson Residue, Two Lines on Right

This reporter readily agreed with the painful aspect of his experience because I had spent some stock-still bombardment-time in an MRI sound tunnel while in terrible back and sciatic pain ... and could sympathize. I felt like a subHUMAN particle. So why was it, I asked, that he/it could "crack" a smile, as it were. And how did it feel personally to be a SUB-atomic particle, the lowliest of the low in the material universe, not up even to the atomic level ... a fortiori the molecular and above (using a little Latin to put him at ease).

I'll take the second question first: technically I'm not quite a quark, since they discovered so many of us little buggers at Fermilab or Livermore or someplace North American, exploding the atom into all of those literally strange and plasmatic parts underlying everything that is or ever was even onto the Big Bang. They had to rename some of us undergirding the atom, which poor unsung Democritas, another old friend, discovered some 2500 years ago! I'm a big-banger, you know, from the very beginning of things. And remember, young man, I keep YOUR (M)ASS together. So I'm lately not a quark because of something or other, I don't know, but a boson. Nothing against the term quark – and I'll explain that in a minute –but I do alternatively like the very sound of  b o s o n. Pronounce it. How deep and masculine it is, and dignified, suitable for one in charge of massivity throughout the shiny parts of the universe. Sonorous. Nothing wimpy or tinny to the ear. Two great (un-morphemic) half-words as well: bow and son, the whole comprising deep-throated, low-back vowels. Nice.

But back to quarkitude: I don't mind being lumped with with those guys; they're terrific crazy twee things ...  fun to be with. I have, on the other hand, the weightiness of a proton or neutron, I'm told, all the better to throw it around and get these little Big-Bangers into a bonding frame of mind. Got to, in order to make things work, and let the graviton do ITS thing. And BTW I'm just crazy about Finnegan's Wake, though even I can't understand it. But I know enough to know that Murray Gell-Mann and his gang were right on track, and in probably a celebratory state, in naming all of us drunken and shaky maelstrom mavens after a phrase from the novel. The barman of the public house yells to a dipsodic regular, "Three quarks [quarts] for Muster Mark!"

 Since I forgot question #3, if there was one, I'll answer #1: Why am I smiling? Well, it's like this: as for the material, luminous universe, YOU'VE NOW GOT ALL THE ANSWERS ... right down to the singularity and the act of creation, a.k.a. the Big Bang. The subatomic quantum world is complete. No more mystery. Okay, y'all may need to deal with arcane problems like oscillating neutrinos etc etc and blah blah a bigger puzzlement afforded by those dread twins, Dark Matter and Dark Energy that seem to make up only the other 95% of the cosmos! But no more need for the SUPERnatural to answer the age-old question of how you got here. I am the answer. Here's the catch.[another smile] It's a terrifying but at the same time liberating idea that you humankind have reluctantly known in your hearts for a long time: you're on your own.

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#59 "Yes, Virginia," Says the God Particle, "'There Really Is a ME."

Hiya, kids Hiya! ... or as I should say, 'Yea and Verily,' to keep up godish decorum here for the doubting Virginias and Thomases out there. That's Me, Your Everlovin' Holiness, sort of on the lower left--where FINALLY, after 3 million years of evolution, the humanoid brain of one Reverend Dr. Higgelty-Pigglety, as I playfully like to call him as only I can, got it right. To My mind--and I've got the biggest one--Peter Higgs will go down as a PROPHET surpassing Jesus or Mohamed any day of My week! And you guys at CERN, whatever that means, CONFIRMED it ...  bless your hearts--I'm  a QUARK!"

Of course, Mr. Yahweh's first statement was in the form of sparky and blippy things transmuted somehow onto computer machines at the Large Hadron Collider, someplace European. The resulting interview is a mathematical translation of literally TRILLIONS of the sparky-blippy things into readable Latin prose, then King James English, and finally--

That's right. [said the Subatomic One] I'm one in a trillion, upon more trillions ad infinatum--just loves Me that Latin, by the way, though I don't speak it very well--but then who DOES these days?! Ha, Ha  Not my native tongue, as if I had one. Sorry. But to get all quantumy on you: I GIVE the MASS.  .............

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#35 The CaryTown Xmas Tree Again

Which has now been planted firmly in X = Unknown, La-La, and Illogic Land. Thanks to a Jan. 14 retro-vote by an Unenlightened town council of my next-door neighbor by only a mile, Cary NC. Loosely dubbed a "Community" and/or "Holiday Tree" since it was voted into the center of the City Hall lobby in 2006 (MM #31-32), it is now officially to be called the Cary Community Christmas Tree by a vote of 6-1. Two extra little words, making worlds of difference. And standing as a microcosmic example of the divisiveness and discord that organized religion inevitably brings to public life.

What was originally meant to be a kind of innocuous, inclusive, and not-so-very-official "Season's Greetings" kind of display, utilizing the universal nature-symbol of the Evergreen, and decorated with non-religious public-service announcements and commercial advertising from every quarter--this tree will next December be officially named an instrument of Cary's civic government, and officially identified as sectarian Christian. Councilwoman Julie "Religious-affiliation-unknown-but-bless-her-heart" Robison, evidently knew this was wrong, because she cast the only negative vote against the motion introduced by Councilman Don "Let's-call-it-what-it-is-and-make-Fox-News" Franks.

I have no transcript of the meeting, but if Ms. Robison's objections were discussed, she might have started with LOGIC. The Council chose to keep the warm-fuzzy word community as part of the tree's revised cognomen, and that's its semantic downfall. Juxtapose "community" with "Christmas" and the whole four-word phrase becomes self-contradictory, because by definition it excludes all non-Christian citizenry of Cary. And, as pointed out in those earlier posts, that means a sizable percentage of the "community."

Or the courageous Councilwoman might have based her objections in ECONOMIC reality. The lady with the Cary Chocolate Shop mentioned earlier (#32) surely knew it--"the holidays should involve everyone, not just those celebrating Christmas." The new nomenclature could give the impression and likewise offense to some that the town is exclusively a "Merry Christmas" kind of marketplace. Whereas ... Muslim money is as green as Christian; chocolate comes in brown and white; and the economic times are dark for for everybody.

In addition, Ms. Robison might have brought up what was probably the primary reason that the tree was originally given its RELIGIOUSLY neutral moniker. There is simply a whole bunch of Caryanders who aren't Christian. And because of these folks' most-often affiliation with the famously rich pickings of nearby Research Triangle Park--Tech, Bio-tech, Big-Pharma, etc.--they are among Cary's most prominent and well-off citizens. (Recall that the Indian community in Cary just completed one of the biggest Hindu Temples in the U.S.) Therefore, a tree festooned with angels, crosses, creches etc, might cause offense to these diverse peoples--or might not, but as good politicians let's not take the chance--as they pass to-and-fro around it in the center of the City Hall lobby, while going about their secular business on PUBLIC property, supported by their very own tax-money. Can you imagine the outcry if that tree, for example, were a Bodhi Tree?

Finally, and most important, "calling it what it is" is in violation of the LAW. Councilwoman Julie Robison might have pointed out that there could hardly be a clearer example of a government "establishing" a religion than the explicit motion in front of the Cary council on Jan. 14. "Fellow-councilpersons, especially you Mr. Franks, what is being moved here clearly violates the principle of Separation of Church and State guaranteed in the First Amendment of the Constitution"--she might have said. "We're clearly favoring one religion over any others in our constituency, and at taxpayers' expense." She probably said no such thing, of course. It would have been hard to go up out-spokenly against the presumptive arrogance of power associated with THE majority religion. She might even have put herself at risk of the accusation--not of being a Jew, Muslim, or Hindu, but worse--of being, heaven forfend and anathematize, one of the non-believers! (Whose numbers, by the bye, are far larger than all the non-Christian minority religions put together.)

However, if she were a part-time fortune-teller along with her duties as part-time CaryTown Councilwoman, Julie Robison might also have said the following, Cassandra-like, at that fateful Jan. 14 meeting: "Look, I know it's a coincidence, but I just had a vision that, two days from now, President Obama will address the Nation and declare Jan. 16 Religious Freedom Day, and make all of this clear to you. He's going to rely heavily on that pre-Revolutionary Champion of church-state separation, Virginia's Thomas Jefferson, and remind us of the Founding Fathers' very real, then-recent fears of religious meddling of any sort on the part of civic Government. I can hear his opening words now" ....

Long before our Nation's independence, weary settlers sought refuge on our shores to escape religious persecution on other continents. Recognizing their strife and toil, it was the genius of America's forefathers to protect our FREEDOM OF RELIGION, including the freedom TO PRACTICE NONE AT ALL. Many faiths are now practiced in our Nation's houses of worship, and that DIVERSITY is built upon a tradition of religious tolerance.

And so it came to pass.
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#33 More Xmas Spirit: Brit Hume

"Let's call it what it is--a Christmas tree," said CaryTown Councilman Don Franks (last post). A concerned Hindu, Mr. Franks doesn't want his tax dollars going to an obviously Christian display in his City Hall, despite the fact (no more than a ruse) that the centerpiece has been called a "Community" or "Holiday" tree since its inception. He will call for the practice henceforth discontinued at the Jan. 14 meeting of the town council.

Everything after the quote above is, of course, counter-factual, despite the fact that it should be the logical consequence of what Franks actually said. And what he meant: "Our religion is better than yours, so that what you have to say about us appropriating the mid-winter holidays is really of no consequence." If pressed, Mr. Franks would acknowledge that there aren't any other religions but his, anyway. True ones, that is.

Brit Hume actually said it. The Faux News reporter (a self-acknowledged "born-againer") was asked, as part of a panel discussion Sunday, How best for Tiger woods to come back from his late disgrace in the eyes of the known universe? He responded in his entertaining, fiercely dead-pan way,

The extent to which he can recover seems to me depends on his faith. He is said to be a Buddhist. I don't think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered in the Christian faith. My message to Tiger would be, "Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world."

Four little sentences that explain centuries of bloodshed in the name of Christianity. Asked later on "O'Reilly Factor" if he were proselytizing, Hume said No. As if "turn to the Christian faith" weren't an exact definition of the word. A perfect example of blind faith, coupled with bad. He's not only betraying a breathtaking ignorance of Buddhism, but negating it's validity altogether. Even if it provided no counterpart to Christian atonement, which it does, that's beside the point. We must presume that for Tiger Woods and his late mother Buddhism is TRUE, as divinely revealed by its Namesake. Just as would be the case for Brit Hume and his Christianity. "Brit, your religion is a bit short on the redemptive power of Nature. You need to turn to the Taoist faith, young man." Only the Jehovah's Witnesses at the door might be more repugnant to him.

Unlike the major Dharmic religions of the Far East (add Confucianism) mentioned passim above, the bedrock of Abrahamic religion--Judaism, Christianity, Islam--is EXCLUSIVITY. We have the One True Way. Join or die. Is it any wonder that the Christian Right in this this country--with figureheads like Palin and Huckabee--believe that any outright aggression against the Islamic world is justified according to scriptural prophecy. Of course, Muslims believe the same, only vice-versa.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Brit Hume's statement is the assumption that to be a good person--"a great example to the world"--you gotta have religion. That's exclusivity enough right there. But, more insidiously, only ONE will really do. Frightening. This means that more than two-thirds of the population of the planet are bad people.

Ironically, if Tiger Woods had been even a minimally GOOD Buddhist, he wouldn't have gotten into his particular sort of trouble in the first place. The path to nirvana is undertaken first and foremost with the elimination of PASSION--the craving, visceral/material kind that can only lead to SUFFERING. In fact, I've just stated the first three of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, in so many words. Did Tiger have a little too much Golf, or other passionate pursuits, on his mind to give these basic precepts his full attention?

Can't resist:

Tyger, Tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
(William Blake)

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#32 The CaryTown "X"-mas Tree II

No, not that particular use of the letter "X"--continuing from last post--because we'd be right back to the sectarian exclusivity of the Jesus-god. In fact, one of the shibboleths indicating that somebody is making so-called "War on Christmas" is the supposedly disrespectful use of "X" in the place of "Christ-" in the compound word. Amazing. Even most of the half-educated would know that this "X" has something to do with the Greek letter Chi, the first phoneme in (transliterated) Kristos, and has been a legitimate abbreviation for centuries. No, I'll plump for the mathematical "X"--and explain in a minute.

The original Tree in festive question was meant to be inclusive. "Cary is a diverse community," understated Mayor Harold Weinbrecht on the local TV news channel this week. Nonetheless, Councilman Don Frantz wants to un-diversify the "Community Tree" or "Holiday Tree"--this is what made it all the way to Faux News--at the next council meeting:

Don added that his "request seeks to call Cary's trees what they really are--'Christmas trees.' Calling a Chistmas tree a Holiday tree is like calling the Jewish Menorah a candelabra. A Christmas tree is a Christmas tree [except when it was called a Hanukkah bush by my Jewish friends of old]. In our efforts to not offend anyone we have succeeded at offending nearly everyone." (Cary Citizen 12/22)

By "nearly," Councilman Frantz must mean every single non-Christian in Cary whose tax-moneys nevertheless go to the city hall and that Tree in the lobby. But I'm sure he didn't ask them. Okay, I forgot, he's just lying. We'll, "what they really are," are NOT exclusively Christmas trees, historically or pre-historically--if you've been following my last several bloggings and floggings in that area. Not to rehash, but the evergreen-tree symbolism is inclusively for EVERYONE UNDER THE SUN, so to speak. It's for anyone on the planet who can point with renewed joy to the mid-winter sky at Solstice. At least one (obviously tax-paying) citizen of Cary understands this instinctively:

... others argue the switch would leave some people out. "It's a community Christmas tree," Cary resident Melanie Williams said. Williams, owner of Chocolate Smiles Candy Factory, said the holidays should be about involving everyone, not just those who celebrate Christmas. "We don't want to lose the essence of all the different holidays celebrated," Williams said. (WRAL News 12/24)

And that "essence" at this time of year is the Winter Solstice, the free and democratic largesse of Mother Nature, not to be held hostage by one sect or another, though the Christianists never seem to give up. So let's for fun keep the "X" in Xmas tree, but thinking of it in the mathematical sense of "variable" or "indeterminate," encompassing the "parameters" of celebration possible within the context of the triumph of the Unconquerable Sun. How about Light, Love, Joy, and, yes, "Community"?
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#31 Case in Point: the CaryTown "X"-mas Tree

Along with embellishments of holly and magical mistletoe--the only plant that blooms in winter--the stand-up evergreen tree of fir or spruce is THE icon of the Winter Solstice in temperate climes. Here's what the sun can do, and will do again, once it frees itself from these last three months of captivity in the bonds of night. "Look ... gather 'round and see for yourself the power of the invincible sun residing in this tree that never dies in winter," you might hear the ancient Iberian priest preaching to his celebrants on the chilly Salisbury Plain. "Light the bonfires!"

The conifer of whatever variety pictured above lit some unwanted fires of controversy when it came to light, ignited by some critical-mass or other, that its official name was to be changed to "Community Tree" from its original "Christmas Tree," or from the Grand Compromise, "Holiday Tree." Made national news. By that I mean Faux News, as part of its perennial efforts to inflame the rabble about the self-dubbed "War On Christmas." Sitting only a couple of miles down the road from my digs in SW Raleigh, Cary NC is a big-small town that makes national news in one way only: it's annually in the top five of the most livable small cities in the U.S., according to Forbes, Business Week, and such like.

The town fathers went too far this time, though, claim the protectors of Christendom. Well, the tree has been up annually since 2006 and always referred to as the Community Tree. The network reporters got that wrong. But its true that there ain't no Christmas about it, nor anything holiday-specific holy. If you could get close to those "decorations" hanging from its branches you would see that they be not angels or elves, menorim or nativities; they are dangley notices of up-coming city events, baubley messages from civic and charitable organizations, and tinsley corporate logos. When the Council voted to put up that tree in the middle of the tax-payer-funded, city-hall lobby, they made sure its purpose was to be completely secular. No sectarian ornaments allowed.

The reason is obvious--though never admitted by those interviewed about the "controversy"--and makes good business sense. An inordinate proportion of Cary citizenry is non-Christian. And they pay taxes like everybody else. Because of its proximity to the esteemed Research Triangle Park--chock-a-block full of high-tech industry, bio-medical corporations, etc.--Cary, besides having its own home-town version of same, attracts bunches of smart-ass Yankees and other foreign types. Who want the suburban life style and short commute that this "most livable" of small cities provides. And some of them are Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and worse: not religious at all. In fact, for example. the Hindu community of Cary just this year completed one of the largest and most opulent temples to their faith in the whole of the United States.

So, in spite of the fact that the Town Council has agreed to consider re-"Christening" the tree, literally, at their meeting on Jan. 14, they really had it right the first time around. They succeeded in putting the "X" back in Christmas. (more)
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#30 Dark Days and SAD III--Xmas

Here's the third "celestial calendar" I visited some four decades ago, when, as I mentioned earlier (MM #5), a bumptious American tourist could still wander the sacred precincts freely, and give the stones a hug or a kick, as the spirit moved. (Much as one could in those days lean over the velvet ropes at the Louvre, and stare unhindered at Mona Lisa's lovely eyeballs (MM #26). Located also on the Salisbury Plain, this one, called Woodhenge, was a stone circle without stones, nor even a henge--i.e. a "hanging" lentil affair upon two standards, as at Stonehenge, at least from what survives. Ironically, those stubby stone pillars in the picture are just sad markers of the post-holes where the original wooden ones, long decayed away, would have been. Otherwise, its a pretty-close, poor-man's rendition of the doubtless royal and aristocratic Stonehenge, just as is the perhaps more "middle-class" stone version at Avebury, in last post. I'm sure, however, that the Winter Solstice festivities were enjoyed in equal measure regardless of location, or status of the revelers.

Dating from the Iron Age, these and other prehistoric stone and wooden circles in the British Isles and across northern Europe attest to the extreme sun-dependency of these planter and pastoral cultures. And the festivals associated with them show clearly just how important it was to boost everybody's spirits--especially the not-insignificant proportion of the Seasonal Affective Disordered (not to mention the "sub-syndromal") amongst them--when the terrestrial/celestial clock-circles marked the happy circumstance of the Winter Solstice. Light the bonfires! The long, dark days were over: the sun had proved itself capable of once again lighting the earth for the important agricultural seasons to come. At least for one more year. Sol Invictus! The Unconquered Sun.

After all, midwinter festivals are historically THE most widespread and persistent annual publicly-oriented event--in whatever guise--celebrated around the planet, in those latitudes where the change of seasons and the disposition of the SUN is of such (literally) vital importance. At base, it's a secular (strictly:"of-the-times") exultation of NATURE, of its solar equilibrium in this case, much like paying homage to the important equinoctial turning-point of Easter--still retaining its pagan-Germanic namesake, Eostre, goddess of the Spring, by the way--no matter the RELIGIOUS overlay. No matter who is doing the appropriating.

So, just as Christians are stuck with the the fertility icons of egg and bunny at the annual celebration of Jesus' death, they've got to put up with yule logs and evergreens, gift-giving and wassailing, at the anniversary of his "birth." And it's their own fault. Or at least that of the early Roman Catholic church. The irritating mantric complaint about "putting Christ back in Christmas" is an historical oxymoron. He wasn't there in the first place, and his non-existent Biblical birthday was NOT celebrated (Easter was more important, and had an historically confirmable date), UNTIL it was clear to the the Church Fathers that the Roman variations expanding on the late-December event--Sol Invictus day, the 12 days of Saturnalia with Juvenalia thrown in, etc. (the latter is how KIDS got into the whole thing)-- were all celebrated throughout the Empire by then, and simply not going away. Even though the Empire had been recently and officially Christianized.

The last straw was Mithras entering the picture. Popular especially among the Roman legions (I saw a bas relief of the god on a visit to the Housesteads outpost at Hadrian's Wall, in the north of England), this hot Persian deity was rooted in ancient Zoroastrianism, and his cult was growing. A warrior god-son who was miraculously and motherlessly born of Ahura Mazda, Divinity of LIGHT, and whose rituals included blood sacrifice--this guy had a lot going for him, Christ-wise, and more. He was also a SUN-GOD. And one easily associated with the established Roman god, Apollo. The annual holiday of his birth? Dec. 21, the Winter Solstice!

Too much competition, to ignore for very long. Taking over ALL of the Roman Empire's midwinter festivities in the name of Christ--principally targeting Dec 25, Saturnalia, that orgy of potlatch and potation--was, no question, a stroke of genius on the part of the Church Fathers, now acting for the official State Religion. Changed the Western World. But they couldn't change the quintessence of this "solar-powered" holiday exulting in the wonders of the Natural World. The New England puritans, for example, weren't fooled. For them, this un-Biblical Christmas-thing had to be pagan. Everybody was having entirely TOO MUCH OF A GOOD TIME. Consequently, it was a CRIME in them parts to celebrate it, for a couple of centuries. That's because they knew the "true meaning of Xmas"... didn't they.

So, to all the SAD and not so sad, Happy Winter Holidays!--the way they were forever meant to be celebrated. Above all, Lux Esto!--"let there be light"--and plenty of it.
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#29 Dark Days and SAD II--Solstice

So the statistical consensus (from various Psych-Assoc. sources) is that we've got about one in five people suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder--a critical mass--anywhere and everywhere across the temperate zones of the planet, who would come down with more than the ordinary blues. Plus a lot of other "normal" folk not feeling too happy about the cold, diminishing days and endless nights, either. And it's all been around a long time, too, probably since around the beginning of agriculture, some 10-15,000 years ago.

To speculate--we don't seem to be genetically protected from diurnal fluctuations, and the concomitant winter light-deprivation that plays havoc with the moods of some of us--sapping energy, dulling concentration, disrupting sleep--more often than others. Not surprising, since our genetic origins are equatorial. But it didn't seem to hurt our adaptation to the higher latitudes as we spread out of Africa, at least when we were hunter-gatherers. As we settled in as planters and harvesters, however, the movements of the heavens--especially the sun--became much more a life and-death matter ... and depressing to think about at certain times of the year. "But let's DO keep watch scientifically, with big rocks," you might imagine a proto-tribal-elder saying, "and when the sun STARTS to regain its dominion over the night ... we'll have a big party."

Humanum genus ludi. We're party animals. Now isn't that the real reason why there are so many prehistoric stone circles (and the vestiges of wooden ones , too) scattered about the European countryside? I like to think so. For, like them, the Big-Daddy of them all, Stonehenge, was above all a place for the identification and celebration of the great Solstices (lit. "sun-stand" from L. sol + sistere/stitium), especially the one around Dec. 21st. The "heel-stone" outside the main circle of the Stonehenge triliths is specifically and perfectly aligned, from the proper vantage point, to showcase the midsummer sunrise (MM #5) and the midwinter sunset to their best advantage, so that that there could be no mistake about when the festivities should begin. Now, the astonishingly (sorry) sophisticated arrangement of concentric stones of various sizes and at various distances allowed the "Iberian" builders of 5000 years ago to make other astronomical calculations, too, "observatory"-wise, like the ones to be made vis a vis the nocturnal sky. But the daytime "star" of the show twice a year would be "Sol Invictus," as he would be known by the Romans in his midwinter incarnation.

And the mid-winter party at Stonehenge and other megaliths (like Avebury above) in obvious solar alignment, on and about the sacred Salisbury Plain and beyond ... was the big one--truly a salutary bit of luck for the chronically SAD among the attendees. Some clever archaeological detective work confirms this. Excavations of ancient encampments nearby these sites show that the holiday occupants "pigged-out" in DECEMBER. Literally. That's when the growth-pattern of the teeth and bones of these slaughtered animals puts their time of death. Love it.

Along with the porcine victualizing and liquid wassailing (no doubt), we know there was the ancient equivalent of light-box therapy--BONFIRES--alight everywhere around the hilltops and countryside. Still done today by the "new-agers" who gather Druid-fashion at Stonehenge for the Winter Solstice. The symbolism is obvious, besides a good way to keep warm. The weakened Light-of-the-Sky is about to regain its health and vigor--the days will be getting longer now--and a little homeopathy in the form of the Sun's earth-bound avatar of fire couldn't hurt.

No doubt, too, these primordial Europeans--surviving almost surely and solely as the uncategorizable Basque people of today--were practicing some sort of religion in association with their midwinter festival. They were annihilated by the invading Celts, and their Priests imposed Druidic rites upon the sacred days and places of their predecessors. Stonehenge was very handy, and became the ecclesiastical center of British Druidism. (For centuries it was thought that they built it.) And then came the pagan Romans. Same thing. Though not much into primitive megaliths, they had their own Winter Solstice festivals of Saturnalia and Juvenalia that easily merged with and superseded the Druidical. But by the time the Romans left occupied Britain in 410 A.D., there had already been another morphing of the astronomical holiday. The Romanized Celts had become Christian. (more)
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#28 Dark Days and Cosmic SAD-ness

As in Seasonal Affective Disorder ... ness, that is. It's a condition inherent upon certain sun-dependent, sentient beings living on any rotationally-tilted terrestrial planet, located in the "Goldilocks" zone between its star and the cold, deep-space darkness. In any solar-system you might name. Certainly true for Earth. Peoples around its temperate latitudes have resorted to various home-grown nostrums for the winter doldrums over the millennia--Christmas, for one-- to dose the annual ailment ... with varying degrees of success.

Guess what?--for the most part THEY WORK, at least for the suicide rate. Let's get the you-know-what, somehow-ineradicable "urban legend" out of the way first. In the face of hard statistical evidence, on the books for decades, most everybody believes that more people kill themselves during the Christmas holidays than at any other time. The exact opposite is true. For one thing, studies show that suicide ratios take a dip over any and all of our public holidays. For another, they decline most in the month of December. But so pervasive is the myth that a number of years ago, as I remember it, NYC radio stations agreed collectively (for real) to ban Tom Waits' neat-but-down-beat "A Hobo's Christmas" from the airways, for fear of increased self-murder among the homeless. Moreover, completely counter-intuitive is this depressing fact: highest suicide rates are in the spring months. (For a hilarious Onion take on the whole bogus notion, click here.)

So why don't depressed people--especially those with congenital SAD--kill themselves more often during those dark and ever-shorter days between the often angst-ridden Thanksgiving and Christmas. Nobody knows for sure, but here's my theory. Whether happily or reluctantly, families and friends tend to gather together for these holidays, and thus provide a kind of ready-made support for the chronically/clinically depressed among them. But more than that: Who, no matter how down, would want to be mortally to blame for spoiling the festivities? "Mom, Uncle Harry just shot himself under the Christmas tree. Got blood all over the presents." Just doesn't happen. And I guess the statistics show it.

All of this does NOT mean, however, that there aren't about 20% of us Americans--millions of folk--walking the streets during that post-Daylight-Savings-Time period with the worst down-in-the-dumps feelings of the year. And medically/scientifically it has to do with the light-deprivation attendant upon the shorter and shorter days leading up to the Winter Solstice, coming around again, happily, this Monday. (There it is, above, incarnate in the sunset over Stonehenge. Compare the Summer Solstice sunrise scene in MM #5. They seem to be about the same. I wonder why, he mused.)

Now if you've really got SAD bad--about 6% of the U.S. population--you'll need anti-depressants at the very least, and bright-light therapy, in the very worst event. There was a TV news segment some years ago where a severely seasonally-disordered fellow had to sit in front of a light-box one or two hours every day during the winter months to ameliorate his condition. It did. (And I couldn't help be reminded of the Prologue to Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, which I often taught in rotation with others of the Freshman English novel du jour. There, the basement-bound narrator-protagonist floods himself regularly with thousands of 100-watt bulbs, with power stolen from Con-Ed, in a attempt to cure himself of his own kind of dark depression--a metaphor for a black man attempting to become visible in a white-dominated society.)

Then there are the other 14%-- the ones, like me, who have the milder Subsyndromal Seasonal Affective Disorder (no kidding)--or, to acronymize: SSSAD ... like air escaping from a tire going flat. (more)
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#23 "Milky Way," Bunuel II

How could Bunuel NOT be the founder and chief practitioner of surreal cinema, considering his earliest credential: An Andalusian Dog (1929)? It was co-directed by Salvador Dali, of all people, and they both have roles in the film. A curiosity of film-making in it's infancy, it's nonetheless revolutionary in its imagery--Freudian symbolism to the core. No discernible plot (a murder is there somewhere), but rather it assails us with a series of nightmarish scenes invoking the flow of the unconscious. Ants are crawling, death's-head moths are perching, and sea-urchins are urching about in all the wrong places. At one point, and for no discernible narrative purpose, the distracted "husband" of the film hitches himself to a heretofore-unseen grand piano with two rotting donkeys inside, attached to which in turn are two trussed-up and bewildered priests dragged along behind. Cut. A blind detective appears fitfully to seemingly piece things together. Impossible. That gives you a gist--and I didn't even mention the (most) notorious image of a woman's eyeball being slit open to the tune of a cloud passing over the full moon. Don't rent this one. Rather, re-watch with pleasure Hitchcock's thriller, Spellbound, where G. Peck and Dr. I. Bergman try to make more sense out of Salvador Dali's dream-sequence imagery. Yes, he collaborated.

And speaking of Hitchcock, also avoid Bunuel's two films with leading-lady Catherine Deneuve: Belle du Jour (1967) and Tristana (1970). Though Bunuel was not quite as obsessed as the American director with icy-blond heroines, the auteur's choice of Deneuve pretty much ruins these movies, as Kim Novak and Tippi Hedren almost did for Hitchcock's post-Grace-Kelly efforts. (Sorry ... love Hitch, but never quite Birds and Vertigo.) Award-winning but a bit overrated in my view, Bunuel's films with Deneuve about repressed sexuality in hypocritical bourgeois society might have been okay but for her terminally repressed acting style. Showing us, as the old Hollywood saw goes, a range of emotions from A to B. Then again, it might have been the scripts. Too earnest in the satire, without enough comic grotesquery.

Herewith, then, are my six must-see films of Luis Bunuel, without undue critical baggage--he was one of the great critic-haters, by the way, because of the cretinous reception often given his more "serious" (i.e. non-commercial) films--in chronological order:

• An Andalusian Dog (1929). Okay, so I take back my earlier comment. Everybody should spend just 16 entertaining/excruciating minutes with this infamous and influential almost-movie but once in their lives. Compare: David Lynch's Eraserhead.
  

• The Exterminating Angel (1962). Upper-class guests arrive twice at dinner party. Servants inexplicably leave. Guests discover they can't, though there are no physical barriers preventing them. Hilarity ensues. Spend several days (or weeks?) trying to figure out their pseudo-problem, eating leftovers and starving to death and dying of disease. Meanwhile, a pet bear and some sheep escape from hostess' bedroom. Sheep killed, grilled, and eaten. Idea to sacrifice host to alleviate situation. Commits suicide instead. Finally figure out they can leave after all. Survivors attend funeral mass in nearby church, additional real-live sheep following them in. We hear gunshots in background as police shoot down working-class rioters who had been gathering outside the mansion-house throughout the movie. Perhaps surreal is not a strong enough word. Compare: Lord of the Flies (1963).
  

• Simon of the Desert (1965). Based on 5th-Century Saint Simeon Stylites' supposed son, the pillar-sitter has denied all natural, human desires for 6 years, 6 months, and 6 days. Hilarity ensues. Satan, in the form of the luscious Spanish actress Sylvia Pinal (she was in three by Bunuel, including Angel above), tempts him unmercifully but apparently unsuccessfully in several guises and scenes of fleshly lust. (It's a scant 45 minutes, owing to two other directors dropping out of two other projected "acts" for the film.) Suddenly, in the final scene, we are magically transported to a swinging 60's discotheque, where we find Simon and Sylvia in modern dress, and now somehow a couple, talking and flirting, enjoying their drinks, and watching the carefree patrons dancing to the music of a band called "Radioactive Flesh." Humanity will out. Compare: Monty Pyhon's Life of Brian.
  

• The Milky Way (1969). Two Beckett/Stoppard-like vagabonds (Peter and John) are on a pilgrimage along the ancient road to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, traditionally following the direction of the galactic band in the sky--hence the title. Starting out hitch-hiking on a modern French highway, they step in and out of a panorama of religious history stretching from biblical times to the present. Sometimes they participate in the theological debates and confrontations--trinity or not; free will or predestination; universal salvation or damnation--other times they witness or dream about them. Or the anachronistic scenes are simply intercut without apology.The cast of characters they/we meet includes Jesus getting advice from Mary on whether he would look better without a beard; the Grand Inquisitor digging up a dead saint and burning the body for posthumous heresy; the Pope standing before a firing-squad of anarchists (bizarrely prescient); the Marquis de Sade debating God with his bound concubine. All in good fun. Really ... or sur-really, if you will. At the end of their odyssey, the pilgrim pair resort to, and cavort with, two harlots plying their trade around St. James Cathedral--seeming to fulfill a prophesy, given at the beginning by a God/Death figure, that they will conceive anointed children of some kind. Compare: Coens' Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?
  

• The Discreet Charm Of the Bourgeoisie (1972). As in Angel, Bunuel again employs the conceit of the dinner-party as a key to the facade of conspicuous consumption lived by the middle and upper classes. This time, though, it's in reverse: nobody ever gets to consume. In a comic series of unfulfilled expectations, lunches and dinners are planned, even sat down to, only to be interrupted--and here's the satirical thrust--by complications as mundane as crass forgetfulness to a military coup. We see beneath the specious good life and good manners a panoply of political intrigues, international tensions, financial chicanery, adultery, drug-dealing, murder, and a demented priest. Compare: Robert Altman's Shortcuts.

• The Phantom of Liberty (1974). Bunuel's favorite. Narrative structure turned upside-down into Freudian free-association and determined purely by chance connections between one character or one scene to the next. Most of them comic, some tragi-comic. And then forgotten. His most "existential" film. Randomness rules the universe, but, as a result, we are rewarded with total free-will, or some phantasm thereof. One theme throughout: Humane Morality is all we can count on to withstand the depredations of chance and circumstance. Defies summary, so I won't try. It has to be the most dashingest-of-expectations movie ever made, and yet--in spite of, or because of that--one of the most thoroughly entertaining. Compare: nothing like it.

But in that vein, Myriad Readers, do yourselves a favor and rent/watch Woody Allen's favorite of his own making: The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985). Or re-watch it, as I did the other night. I feel sure that Luis Bunuel would have approvingly watched the Woodman's surreal satire several times over ... had he not died two years earlier.
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#22 "The Milky Way" a la Luis Bunuel

That's the English title of Bunuel's La Voie Lactee' (1969), my favorite of all his films. Our little excursion last time into the surreal world of cosmology and the fate of our titular galaxy reminded me of the film, only one of a surreal corpus that most often deals with cultural apocalypse, but always with cosmic overtones. And the ones I'll recommend are, moreover, shamefully funny.

His very last film, That Obscure Object of Desire (1977--I'll use the English titles hereafter) had just played on one of those 300+ movie channels, and I had just become infested with several strains of flu-virus--one of which could have been swinish, since I often bought fruit from a Mexican market around the corner--and, accompanied by multiple-orificed catarrh, laid me up and down for about six weeks. Bunuel kept me company, along with reruns of Scrubs--that highly entertaining TV sitcom which has a nice Bunuelian mix of fantasy and reality for comic effect. Obscure, which I hadn't seen, was disappointing ... not good medicine. So, with a little help from Netflix, I tested my very positive recollections of the auteur-director's earlier work that I had seen, along with some others, to see how they all matched up.

But first, if you're unfamiliar with Bunuel, or have seen only the Academy Award winner The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972--Best Foreign Film), think Coen Brothers. While as far as I know they haven't publicly acknowledged any influence--as have David Lynch and Kubrick--their Raising Arizona, Lebowski, Oh Brother, and especially Barton Fink could have been made by Bunuel. I'm convinced, for instance, that most of the utterly surreal last half of Fink--from and including the murdered woman the hero finds next to him in bed--is a warped dream-vision of a guy with writer's block ... or maybe not. The Coens' movies rely above all on almost total unpredictability--unexpected flashback and forward, startling occurrences and disturbing imagery, fantastic dream-sequences that may or may not be dream-sequences, grotesque characters, inexplicable cut-aways, and crazy plot-lines that become, more often than not, befuddlingly lost to the audience altogether in the course of the movie. Great fun.

And that's also Bunuel at his best. What sets him apart, though, is his abiding social conscience. Informing all the outrageous funny-business is SATIRE. Main target: the hypocrisy of the middle-class. And secondarily that mask of justification for bourgeois lust and greed: ORGANIZED RELIGION. In Bunuel's case, given his own background and the backdrop of his movies, that means Roman Catholicism. Sect doesn't really matter--any dogmatic creed would have served his purposes (likewise, Bergman naturally chose high-church Lutheranism). How effective was his social satire?--at the end of his Spanish period he was lucky to escape the Fascist/Catholic-dominated country of Generalissimo Francisco Franco (who's still dead, by the way) with his life. Repatriation to Mexico didn't keep him out of trouble, but it did eventually lead to some of his greatest films. (more)
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