#36 January Jottings

As months go ... for the speaker in T.S. Eliot's
Wasteland"--

APRIL is the cruellest [sic] month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow ... (1922)

Winters in London (the double-"l" gives the poet's expatriation away) are somewhat milder in temperature than than those in the poet's native Connecticut, but even more uncomfortable due to the island's inherent (gulf-stream) foggy/flaky clamminess (think Oliver Twist here).

Okay, he's making a symbolic point--in fact one of the clearest in that famously obscurantist poem. In an obvious thought-inversion of the Canterbury Tales' opening lines, the pessimistic speaker sees in nature's promise of renewed fecundity only disillusionment, as compared with the human world. Memory reminds him that budding desire has been re-deadened in the past, as perhaps a late April frost might kill off the new Lilacs. Can't blame the guy. T.S. Eliot was in a kind of "green-card" marriage gone bad in and around the time of the poem. No small thanks to free-loving philosopher Bertrand Russell, who had earlier bedded young Tom's terminally-neurotic English wife, Vivienne, who he admitted later was the poem's primary muse. (For a pop-version of this interesting story, Netflix 1994's Tom & Viv.)

But give me the unambiguous optimism of Chaucer's April, thank you. It's the linchpin of the Prologue, appearing in first few lines of the classic eighteen that I always had my students commit to memory by the end the term:

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes ... (c. 1385)

Here the sweet showers of April pierce to Eliot's dull and drought-ridden roots of March, and, by "virtue" of this, the spring rains will with absolute certitude engender those Lilac-flowers. As well as all the other tender crops, because Chaucer's warm west-wind's sweet breath will bring no frost. The clever word-choice of generic vertu bounces us easily into the human world, taken up the lines following those above. "Inspired" also are those spiritually dried-up pilgrims "from every shires ende of Engelond" seeking to get a virtue-fix at Canterbury Cathedral. A little holy water in the presence of the Martyr should do the trick. (St. Thomas still resides there, I'll bear witness, in a lovely effigy-topped tomb, easily accessible to the pilgrims who keep on a-coming, over 600 years later.)

So ... for want of a better segue in getting back to the point--and pace Mr. Eliot--Kalendis Ianuarius still has to be the mostest cruellest month of all. To body and mind. In fact, even in the lower-temperate zone of Mediterranean Rome, the early Latins found the 30 days or so of deep winter so unspeakably unpleasant that (in addition to the next 30 or so for good measure) they remained nameless in the Roman calendar for hundreds of years! Along with the "washing-up" month of Februarius, the name of the two-faced god Janus was a relative late-comer to the yearly time-keeping instrument that has ruled the West for ages. (more)
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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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#34 Six Quick Picks: Netflix 2008 Comedy Schtick Pix

Mostly unsung. And with a one year lag, allowing for Netflix availability. If you're a follower of this Blog, chances are you're sub-clinically addicted to that Mail-Order Miracle, and likely, moreover, to enjoy my favorites of 2008.

Hamlet 2 British very-funny-guy Steve Coogan as down-and-out expatriot H.S. drama coach directing his irreverent time-traveling take on the Bard. (Jesus C. in cast of play-within-a-movie.) Comedic trouble both political and domestic ensues. Formidable Catherine Keener and reliable Amy Poehler in support.

Burn After Reading Dark but hilarious Coen Brothers' spy-thriller-turned-upside-down. Gold-standard cast includes Clooney, Pitt, Malkovich, McDormand, Swinton. Enough said.

Tropic Thunder Offensive to the brink of off-putting, Ben Stiller's satire of Vietnam movies of Stone and Kubrick, and Hollywood every-which-way. Downey in black-face, Cruise unrecognizable. Jack Black, McConaughey, Coogan (again) in support. Nick Nolte almost steals the show.

Ghost Town If you can temporarily buy-into a Casper-friendly mis en scene, a warm-hearted story of misanthropic schlub Ricky Gervais' redemption with comic-cosmic implications. But down-to-earth funny. Always-believable Tia Leoni co-stars. Greg Kinnear and forever-under-used Kristen Wiig in fine support.

Yes Man Jim Carrey vehicle underrated because too much like an inverted Liar, Liar, his very best work. So what. Call it a sequel. Another self-absorbed schlub, Carrey "yesses" of himself into social an romantic salvation. Restrained-funny-Carrey movie with true-story-based depth. Worth watching if only for Zooey Deschanel's multi-tasked performance. Veteran Terence Stamp plays the "Yes"-Guru to perfection.

Vicky Christina Barcelona Woody Allen's best since Match Point, which had similar romantic complications, but here the filmmaker must set a record for sexual permutations/combinations thereof, only adding to the somewhat numb-inducing comic effect. (Sorry to say this, but it helps, too, that neither the Woodman himself or a surrogate, like Larry David, have any need to be in this film.) Melancholy-funny. Fresh, exotic/foreign venue, beautifully shot. Charismatic Javier Bardem and incandescent Penelope Cruz appropriately Allen-ized.

Satisfaction guaranteed. If you don't like any one of them, please feel free to send back by return mail.
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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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#27 Obama and THE Shaggy Dog Story

This is Bo, First Dog, Obama-family-wise. Not as shaggy as his master's AfPac speech last week, but 'twill do for illustration. I'll get back to more substantive analysis back over at the war-torn Daily Mosteller shortly, but gimme a break. His speech reminded me so much of a Shaggy Dog Story that I thought I'd "muse" myself over here and give you the classic original--which happened to show up serendipitously last week in the 22nd annual installment (haven't missed one) of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader! Here's his version:

A wealthy man lost his beloved, valuable pet dog, an incredibly shaggy dog, maybe the shaggiest dog in the world. The man took out a newspaper advertisement that read, "Lost: World's Shaggiest Dog. Large Cash Reward." A young boy saw the ad and wanted the reward, so he decided he'd find the world's shaggiest dog and return it. The boy combed his town, and the next town over, and the one after that, looking for shaggy dogs. He found some in pet stores and dog pounds, and they were shaggy ... but not shaggy enough. [At this point, BlogManFans, you can take the boy around the world, piling on the detail and repetition.]

Finally, after the 30th dog pound he visited, the boy found an incredibly shaggy dog. The dog was so shaggy that he tripped over his own fur, because it covered both his paws and his eyes. when he barked, you couldn't even hear the sound because it got lost in the dog's layers of fur. [A good storyteller could add example after example on this theme.] It was the shaggiest dog the boy had ever seen in his life, and there was no way a dog could be any shaggier.

So, the boy bought the dog and carried him all the way to the home of the wealthy man who had placed the ad for the lost shaggy dog. He had to carry him because the dog was so shaggy he couldn't see to walk properly. Finally, the boy got to the rich man's home and rang the doorbell. the man answered the door, glanced at the dog, and then said to the boy, "Not that shaggy."

Embellishment is all. Always pushing, Andy-Kaufman-like, the patience of your audience, begging them to stick it out for the grand finale, and then pulling the rug with an anti-punchline. (Hollywood recently made a whole movie, "The Aristocrats," with guest comics doing their versions of the same dirty joke, following the shaggy-dog template. Some of my favorite funny-men, but unwatchable.) The important thing it that it all end in complete bathos--low-down, disappointing anti-climax. Not humor for all tastes. My favorite is the first ever told to me: what I'll call the High-Lama of Ultimate Wisdom story. Severely elided version:

Unhappy man seeks meaning of life ... travels world ... many wise-men ... loses wife, family, job ... travels more world ... many more wise-men ... loses youth, money, health ... finally last chance ... shreds and tatters ... climbs to Tibetan Monastery high in Himalayas... wisest man in the world ... hundreds of years old ... "Father, what is the meaning of Life?" ... "My son, Life is a fountain." ... "What?! Why you *&#%$#@&! I've come all this way etc. etc. etc. and that's all you've got to tell me? ... shaken, the High-Lama replies, "It's not?"

Obama's shaggy-dog speech? Lots of narrative detail, embellishment--but bathetic in the end. No punchline. What starts out as an argument for "the strategy that MY administration will pursue ... " turns out to be not his strategy after all. It's no more than a Bush/Cheney "surge"--pure and simple. And it's not funny.
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#26 Mona Lisa's Pupillae

I was able to view Da Vinci's (see last posts) most famous painting "up close and personal" at the Louvre in 1973 while we were on our "Paris break" from one of those British-Isles-oriented, college-courses that I led overseas. This was before the museum began installing an ever tighter series of security barriers, including now a kind of plexiglass bubble-box that I must assume would keep the spectator at some distance--and optically interrupted--from the live surface of the world's most notorious near-anonymous face. Pity. Because ... if I had to view the original work in that constricted way for the first time, as others must do today, I never would have figured out what was so special about it.

For in those more trusting times--when you could actually hug a stone at Stonehenge--if you were a devotee of the divine La Giaconda, you had simply to LEAN (albeit awkwardly) over the conventional velvet-rope-and-brass-standard "barrier" lining the the gallery at a distance of about three or four feet from the wall. That is, if you manage to wriggle through to the front of the crowd. Not a problem for an aggressive Ugly American.

When once you're close enough, then comes the surprise. It's not the smile. It's all in the EYES. Okay, it's the eyes in conjunction with the smile. But here's the enormous difference between viewing the painting in an art book or on the TV screen and viewing it in person: you get to see the dots of her eyes, so to speak. The PUPILS.

For one thing, the actual portrait is larger than you might imagine: somewhat over 2 ft. x 3 ft.--big enough to see all of Da Vinci's detail, if viewed from a reasonable, fairly close-up distance. Now in the small photo of the painting above--and however/wherever else you are most likely to see it--her eyes come off as sort of unfocused brown and white. (A blue-eyed Italian lady might have been a different story.) Our little black lens-apertures are missing from view. They're simply below your threshold of perception, under these second-hand circumstances.

Even so, there's no doubt she's looking at you; Leonardo positions the irises just right, binocular-wise. He didn't study Anatomy for nothing. But in person, it's the pupillae that will effectively bring about the irresistible BOND between her eyes and yours. They take the woman's gaze, locked with yours, to another level of intimacy altogether. That's the secret to her fame, I believe. For those who have seen the real-life "Mona Lisa" under the formerly ideal conditions, her "look" becomes more than a casual glance: rather, it's a penetrating, philosophical, kind of Sartrean le regard. As if she knows something about THE YOU standing there--the painter, the viewer, whoever catches her eternal eye--that might be better left unknown. And knowing that ... she smiles.
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#25 Da Vinci Vindicated

Thought I'd better bring out the original, after shamelessly exploiting his "Vitruvian Man" for rhetorical purposes over in the Daily Mosteller. And it gives me a chance to recount an encounter with Leonardo, some 35 years ago.

First of all, it's an evocative piece of work. No wonder the drawing has been redacted/exploited for all manner of logos by myriad health/fitness/science entities like Blue Cross and Sky Lab II--though usually stylized and decidedly non-gender-specific, unlike the original here. Setting aside the artist's always interesting homoerotic subtext in almost everything he did--q.v. especially the Da Vinci Code conundrum about the ambiguous male/female figure at "The Last Supper"--this piece is a fascinating blend of art and science, or at least pseudo-science. It's the thought that counts.

And no man ever thought so much about so many things as Leonardo, as we all know. In fact, it got in the way of his work, more often than not. No greater "Renaissance-Man"; no greater procrastinator. My hero. All told, his greatness rests on a very small number of actual accomplishments. This one, though, is particularly interesting because it's an overt attempt to resolve, through his art, that persistent conundrum of his age: New Science vs. New Humanism. He was trying to humanize science here, and vice-versa. We know from the drawing's footnotes that he was faithfully following "scientific" guidelines for perfect human proportions, laid down by the Roman architect Vitruvius. (The artist had already been forced to study the "New Anatomy"--people were finally carving up people in the name of medical science--by his first teacher, and we can see it in those macabre "muscle-and-bone" sketches of his, which were nonetheless well ahead of their time for accuracy.)

All this went along with the optimistic Renaissance notion of the perfectibility of man. "Drawing" upon a countryman from the classical period, Da Vinci used the architect's questionable geometrics to construct a human figure of ideal proportions. He was serious:

For the human body is so designed by nature that the face, from the chin to the top of the forehead and the lowest roots of the hair, is a tenth part of the whole height ... from the middle of the breast to the summit of the crown is a fourth. If we take the height of the face itself, the distance from the bottom of the chin to the the underside of the nostrils is one third of it; the nose from the underside of the nostrils to a line between the eyebrows is the same; from there to the lowest roots of the hair is also a third, comprising the forehead. ["Mona Lisa?"] The length of the foot is one sixth the height of the body; of the forearm, one fourth; and the breadth of the breast is also one fourth. The other members, too, have their own symmetrical proportions, and it was by employing them that that the the famous painters and sculptors of antiquity attained to great and endless renown.

Leonardo even tried to crack that ancient chestnut, "squaring the circle," in his drawing above, and supplemented in the following:

Then again, in the human body the central point is naturally the navel. For if a man be placed flat on his back, with his hands and feet extended, and a pair of compasses [think of the bygone, I assume, grammar-school chalkboard-compass--a giant one!] centered at his navel, the fingers and toes of his two hands and feet will touch the circumference of a circle described therefrom. And just as the human body yields a circular outline, so too a square may be found from it. For if we measure the distance from the soles of the feet to the top of the head, and then apply that measure to the outstretched arms, the breadth will be found to be the same as the height, as in the case of plane surfaces which are perfectly square.

Perfect nonsense, of course. But it seemed to make good art. How about the perfect face ... the perfect "enigmatic" smile? (more)
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