Pick! Choose! U Must Select A Muse for This New Year but be carefull.. they are TRICKEY

[link—standalone]

It's 10:16 pm on the eve of the New Year. Sitting in my apartment with my beloved, drinking a St. Bernardus. This year, I learned a lot of things. I became more mature in my faith, more mature in my thinking in general; I'd like to think more nuanced. I certainly feel a bit older. There is a lot of unfinished business from this past year. Also a lot of things I need to start doing a lot of things. Here are my resolutions:

I think these are pretty lofty, but also quite manageable. All it takes is a bit of hard work, which is something I have a bit of a problem with. Please pray for me, whoever reads this blog.

I watched a Serial Experiments Lain essay the other day which was quite terrible. The topic was indoctrination and radicalization. I should have known by the title itself that it would be very biased, but I watched it in good faith and was sorely disappointed. There is something offensive about using a work of art as a jumping-off point to talk about a subject it vaguely touches on rather than actually delving into the text of the show and wrestling with its meaning. The video just took scenes from the show, summarized them, and then proceeded to talk about the most basic psychology of cults and specifically right-wing conspiracy theories of the 21st century. It was effectively just a propaganda piece. Propaganda is such a crass thing. It's a rapacious thing when applied to a work of art. It takes hold of the work and objectifies it just as a capitalist looks at the land as nothing but something to be exploited and afterwards discarded. The landscape of a work of art must be understood by its ecology, that is, its symbols. The flora and fauna of a work of art are the characters and settings that exist within it and work in a symbiotic fashion to give voice to a certain muse.

Muses are something that neither the modernist nor the post-modernist understand. A work of art is not reducible to the author's intent nor is the death of the author something to be wholly considered. Instead, artists work together with a muse. Every artist knows that his inspiration and choices for a work do not come solely from himself. If they do, they are typically lacking in substance or some transcendent quality that makes the work worth visiting. A good work of art always involves a muse and the best works typically even invoke them. The most fundamental works of Western literature: The Illiad, the Odyssey, and the Bible, all invoke muses. The first two invoking the gods of poetry, the latter being written by inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The invocation of the muse need not be explicit. The lives of the prophets themselves invoked the Holy Spirit's indwelling, just as our lives are pattern after the manner of a certain spirit; that is where pattern is derived from. Who is your muse?

That's all that's on my mind for now. I wish you all a Happy New Year! Let's all do our best for God's sake and for our sake and for the sake of our loved ones. There is always so much more we can do; especially in this age of distraction where our time is attenuated by devices. Let's abandon those devices and live more and more each year in the real world. God bless!

Sun, 31 Dec 2023 11:01:00 +0000

I Traveled For Miles On MY OWN 2wo Feet and all i Gots For It Wuz These 2wo Berries

[link—standalone]

 I'm sitting here on Yume 2kki, listening to the Frozen Glade track on loop. It's very soothing. I hope to explore my aesthetic interests in frozen landscapes more someday. This has been a rough week since I started the blog. A death in the church and some spiritual issues, but we are going to make it. If you are Christian and reading this, please pray for my church community and I.

 Right now though, I feel at peace. I'm really enjoying slowly working on this website. The guestbook is now open, so feel free to stop by and say hello! I need to do some more touch-ups on it, but that will come later. I've got lots of plans for the site. A daily church calendar widget on the home page, image gallery, and Psalter pages all to come hopefully in the near future. I oughta really get back to work though. I have a lot of studying to do.

 A few days ago, I went through a trek through some of the last remaining natural sites in my city. Beaches behind private property (still public, a strip from a park), a wildlife preserve, and an abandoned golf course. Familiarizing myself more with the local ecology. I harvested a spiny hackberry (C. Pallida) berry and suckled on it until it had no more flesh, and wrapped it in a wet paper towel for germination. I also harvested a strange red berry that I didn't recognize. It was growing in total sandy, saline marsh and beach conditions. I was totally amazed! It turns out it's a Carolina wolfberry (Lycium carolinianum). It's edible! It tasted like a sweet tomato. I feel very inspired to try domesticating a local plant someday. There are so many incredible plants here that we could be growing to feed people. So many opportunities for new flavors in Mexican cuisine. A bizarro world, alternate path for what this place should have been. I always think about that sort of thing. Definitely will be more updates on these ideas in the future.

 I had a lot of thoughts to record here I'm sure, but I forgot them all. That's all I have to say for tonight. God bless!

Wed, 20 Dec 2023 05:23:07 +0000

Saturday Night Musings

[link—standalone]

 Saturday nights should be times of reflection and prayer. I usually fall victim to overeating or distracting myself instead, but thankfully I started a blog! I feel more motivated to reflect now that I've gotten this up and going.

 Today I woke up late and conversed with some friends. We spent a lot of time watching Serial Experiments Lain. It's an incredible show, and like all incredible works of art, it's incredible because it's accurately giving visual flesh to a specific moment in time, the current moment. When something is prophetic, it's not just that it sees into the future as if time is something purely sequential. It's more like seeing deeper into an image, the imprint of which is already there. You can recognize patterns by their mere implication. The artist, with the help of a muse, is able to do this in a mysterious way. The current moment of the budding and blossoming goddess is upon us, and it seems the whole world is turning upside down, but I'm not afraid. There is nothing inherently evil in femininity. Anything that is ridden by Christ becomes sanctified. There are giants of this age already taming spirits recently emerged. Look forward to an eventual fleshed out analysis of the show!

 I chanted at church today as well. I'm not sure if I should feel bad about this, but I like when a church building is empty or at least sparse. I also like few chanters. The second mode vesperal hymns are beautiful. Today, the following festal hymn really moved me:

O saints, when your limbs had all been crushed, ye were cast into the bosom of the sea; but a higher and more powerful command guided you to moor in the calm haven of delight, because ye sank the wickedness of the serpent in the deep abyss. O wise Martyrs, intercede with God that He grant peace and great mercy to our souls.

 What depth of meaning, what beauty! In the midst of the chaos of murder, the crashing waves of mighty affliction, they are whisked away to a peaceful port. By this double inversion, the abyss is turned on its head, and is itself mutilated. The saints image Christ in this way, who as in Psalm 73,

didst divide the sea by thy strength: thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters.

and,

brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, and gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness.

 Nautical imagery appeals to me lately. I wonder if it has anything to do with my recent interest in fishkeeping. I am the proud caretaker of a Betta fish named Eduardo. Named by my wife. He is a joy to watch.

Beautiful Betta fish with a blue body and red fins

 I was just watching Fruits Basket. I've never seen it, event though it's a classic of the era of anime I grew up with; well, a bit earlier. It was hilarious to see all of the animation tropes, and the utterly schizophrenic editing style. It made it 1:1 into every Newgrounds animation and middle school girl personality of the early 2000s. What an innocent time to be alive. Although the tragedy of 9/11 had already happened, the effects hadn't fully manifested. It was a ghostly time where the peaceful past lingered on, echoing off the walls, becoming increasingly faint as the years passed by. Watching it, I can only think that this is something that is made and enjoyed during peacetime. It's so absurd. The eyes of the main character are humongous, saying to the world give me all your light.

Tohru with ghastly eyes

 Whenever any character expresses emotion, they morph into a tiny homonculus of that emotion. I know it's a cartoon, but something about it seems even more kooky than the contortions of Loony Toons characters from the 50s and 60s. Maybe it's the juxtaposition with the mild and more grounded setting of early 2000s Japanese school drama. As many cringeworthy personas that style of media brought forth, I think it's good to remember peaceful times. Times where melodrama and happy go-lucky cutesy feelings don't seem so unrelatable. By holding within us the simple spirit of a child, we can always seek out innocence. Maybe I'll write more about that soon, but now seems as good a time as any to end my night.

Sun, 10 Dec 2023 Midnight

The Final Penultimate Inconclusive Racked Up JACKED Up Essay on Modern Tech

[link—standalone]

Hello! I’m finally posting on my blog after creating it over a year ago. Not sure why I’ve become interested in it now. It’s probably because my life is a bit more stable now, at least externally. Internally, I continue to be mostly disordered. I can’t recall a single moment in my life where I felt truly organized. As such, this first post will just be a scattershot of various thoughts, feelings, impressions, and hopefully, a landmark on my journey to becoming a more structured person.

Firstly, it’s quite clear to me why I’m so disorderly; technology plays a large part. I was among the first children to be introduced to the world of portable screen entertainment. I can hardly remember most of my childhood after I received my first handheld console at the age of six. Mostly everything from the screenless life of that period has become a blur. This could be unique to me, however, since it seems many other people remember their childhoods. What makes something memorable, I wonder? Initially, it would seem that something extraordinary imprints itself on your memory and nothing else, but of the few things I do remember, some of them seem totally mundane. I remember, during childhood car rides, seeing certain buildings that are no longer standing. I remember being in a room of the church I grew up in which was no longer there by the time it seemed to have implanted itself in my mind as a nostalgic memory. Now that I think of it, a lot of the more mundane childhood memories I have involve buildings, structures, and spaces. There must be something of an architect in me, thought I don’t have the talent of drawing.

Back on the topic of technology, much has been said about it. We know certain technologies have detrimental effects on developing minds. This has been well observed. I find it pointless to even expound upon that. It feels tiresome to bring up points that have already been brought up and are well attested. I saw a video today by Fr. Josiah Trenham on gun control, and he brought up some classic points on how guns are not the source of the violence problem, but people’s unrestricted passions. This is true, but with certain technologies, it seems they themselves are actually the problem. Thinking back on the times I’ve held a gun, I’ve never felt any particular desire to end somebody’s life, but immediately upon sitting down at the computer, I’m transported into an entire world of distraction and disorder, often without my noticing it. People have called weapons of war “killing machines,” and that is a fair appraisal of what they are for; but they are not machines to invoke the desire of killing, just as stoves aren’t machines to invoke the desire of eating. Modern technologies, however, are desire machines. This may be a point I’m stealing from someone else, but I can’t recall who. Almost every point is stolen anyway, it often feels like nearly everything has been said. Regardless, the Pandora’s Box of electronic entertainment is something we obviously are not equipped to handle. There is an order of magnitude more problems generated by a machine that induces the desire for something compared to a machine that just facilitates some action. Desire itself is such a subtle action that it hardly passes for one. Especially in the mind of modern man which perceives every thought as springing from his own psyche, and himself as a passive listener, and sometimes even, doer of those suggestions.

I’ve observed the behavior of young children lately, and so have many others, to be like animals. I believe that the degradation is something like this: Millennials are children, Gen Z are babies, Gen Alpha are animals. If you observe the worship of Millennials, it is typically directed towards nostalgic media franchises from their youth. The show “Arrested Development,” a sitcom which first aired in 2003, contains adult characters who exhibit the immature selfishness of children; its title is fitting. Such a term is also fitting for the Millennial generation who are often, as many have observed, perfectly content with shoving complex political analysis into the tiny box of Saturday morning cartoon narratives. What else could be expected from such a coddled generation with the totally oblivious baby boomers as parents and grandparents? Gen Z fared worse, being raised in a way I described at the beginning of this post. Technology has become the teat that we suckle on for sustenance. We are inseparably attached to our phones. I personally have gotten rid of my smartphone, and I’ve experienced much personal growth from abandoning it. Whenever a group of young people feel themselves to be in a period of awkward silence or just any sort of boredom, the smartphone comes out of the pocket. Whenever there is any anxiety, they rush to the computer to ease their suffering. This is like an infant rushing to his mother when any slightly unfamiliar thing happens, to be nursed and consoled. It’s an absolutely sickening thing when objects are treated as persons of authority. We all have, after thousands of years of Christianity, developed a sickened reaction to idolatry; even this is now going away. With Gen Alpha coming up in age, they are like total animals. Many cannot read, they scream profanities, are unsupervised, throw objects at people, and are exposed to the most base ideas before they learn how to tie their own shoes. They protect their metal mothers even more stridently than do their older siblings, acting like wild dogs protecting their source of food.

It’s quite telling that this animalization of mankind is accompanied with the proliferation of media including anthropomorphic characters. The disgusting trend of sexualization of minors that was borne out of the anime trend in late 2000s (and still continues) has now given way to an even more absurd development of the increasingly popular sexualization of imaginary anthropomorphic characters. The power of modern technology over the minds of human beings, however, is like that of a soul to a body. When we believe enough that we are sick, we can become sick. In like manner, there are scores of young people on Tiktok who act as animals, wearing fox tails and imitating cries and mannerisms of beasts. It is often asked whether life imitates art or art imitates life. This is an improperly posed question. The work of the Pageau brothers, mostly drawing from Christian Patristic sources, has shown that the relationship between spirit (forms and ideas which inspire art) and matter (the sensible portions of the piece of art media) is as follows: spirit is the organizing principle of matter, and matter gives body to a spirit, thus instantiating it in the physical space. This is the fundamental operation of all things in a fractal manner. With these desire machines having been made our gods, (for what is a god if not what you constantly pay attention to and form yourself around) we are the matter to whatever spirit or spirits are emanating forth from these machines. As servants, our lives, will imitate their artifice, and their intentions are manifested as degradation of the human form from wizened adult down into dumb animal.

I have a lot more to say on this subject, probably, but I’ve exhausted my thoughts for now. I had other things on my mind which I’d like to write about in the future, namely, the Holy Cross, the Tamaulipan Thornscrub and the ecospiritual, and music as a weapon. It looks like despite being utterly incoherent internally, I managed to squeeze out something legible and fairly concise instead of the scattershot I imagined this would be. This must be what was on my mind the most today. Thank you all for reading, it won’t always be this serious and essay-like. I think whatever comes out will come out. Maybe I should be more structured like, one essay a week and various thoughts every few days in the interim. I’ll adjust to what works for me and then stick with that pattern more diligently. Have a good day or evening or night, whenever you read this! God bless.

P.S. Lately, I think my site is kinda ugly. I’m gonna fix it before the end of the year.

Thurs, 7 Dec 2023