> I have felt the flake of fire fall, miraculous and pentecostal
Perhaps surprisingly, this line reminded me of a quote from The Road by Cormac McCarthy (with the setting being the survival of a recent nuclear holocaust):
"It took two days to cross that ashen scabland. The road beyond ran along the crest of a ridge where the barren woodland fell away on every side. It’s snowing, the boy said. He looked at the sky. A single gray flake sifting down. He caught it in his hand and watched it expire there like the last host of christendom."
And elsewhere:
"By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp."
The tone is obviously more miserable than triumphant, but perhaps a journey that harks back to that beleagured new beginning you explicated so well in your recent installment on Purgatorio.
Hello John, It's been quite a while since I had anything to contribute to your comments section, but I am still reading each and every essay you post and as well, think of you often hoping you and your family are doing well.
This is off topic, merely being a response in regard to other comments particularly a reply wherein you express that you are considering reading "The Road"...
I know it is a prize winning, very well written novel with (perhaps) a bit of underlying theology, but the story itself, specifically certain plot points...well....
Certainly, it is none of my business, but I just 'have' to offer the same advice I gave my daughter:
It is vitally important to consider very carefully the sorts of materials which you allow your mind to 'ingest'. Some books, esteemed as they may be, contain such horrific ideas, of such utter ugliness. And you can never 'unsee' a thing once looked upon, which is especially true in fictional works, where the words are 'translated' into visual scenes within your own mind...
There are books which I wish heartily I had never even opened - the images generated are so disturbingly haunting.
I'm sure this seems a strange comment, coming from a virtual stranger, but I've been reading your essays and such since the early days of "Albion Awakening", so from my point of view it is as if I have actually 'known' you.
And, I have to say, John, you have seemed to me so very pure-hearted a person, that I can't help but feel...well...just, that there must be older, more edifying, less graphically disturbing books which you might read in order to gain perspective or "walk with" the sort of 'cross like' suffering many people live with. Here is one suggestion:
Perhaps you might consider that such biographical works may even be more 'suited to purpose' than fictional ones.
At any rate, forgive my pontificating - having reached an age well past 60, I find myself a fount of experiential knowledge from which none care to imbibe.
Hi Carol. Thank you very much for your wise, considerate and perceptive words. I deeply appreciate your presence here. No, on reflection I'm not going to read The Road. All being well, I'll have a new piece up by the end of the week where I look at some of these harder issues but through the lens of a book I've written about many times before. And that, as I think you rightly flag up above, will probably be the best way for me to go forward in this respect. Thanks agin and all the very best, John.
> It is vitally important to consider very carefully the sorts of materials which you allow your mind to 'ingest'.
Indeed, ironically there is a passage in The Road that makes that very point:
"Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that.
You forget some things, dont you?
Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget."
The Road is certainly a book that is more for tearing you apart than putting you back together. So I'm glad that you put forth the warning of what the potential reader would be getting themselves in for. Speaking only for myself, personally perhaps I needed to be torn apart by the message of that book in order to confront the horrific reality of existence, and by confronting it to be awoken to the simultaneous awesome wonder of this journey, and the responsibility we bear to respond to it somehow.
To cheekily return the favour, you may want to beware of a certain best selling and highly acclaimed book containing imagery of crucifixions, child sacrifice, and infernal torments among other horrors. But no doubt you have already read that!
As you illustrated with your alternative book recommendation, reality is replete with its own horrific images.
But let me say that I would happily drink at the fount of your experiential knowledge, so if you have any published writings, please point me in the right direction. :-)
Thanks Tim. I think Carol was trying to protect me in that, given my temperament, an encounter with The Road might work out badly for me. I think she's right - certainly for now at least. I've got a lot on in life and I've got to be really careful about what I'm reading and listening to - whether that's books, online articles/essays or real-world people. Maybe there'll come a time when, as with yourself, I'll need to be broken down and broken open, and I'll know which book to turn to then for sure.
So that's my sense, that she was saying the book wasn't right for me, not necessarily for others. It's horses for courses, I guess, and what's good for the goose might not be good for the gander, and any number of similar phrases.
I've still not got over reading Dostoyevsk's The Possessed, by the way,and that was 30 years ago!
Absolutely. I'm very thankful that Carol stepped in with that warning when she did, as I really should have included one myself. It did take me a while to recover from that book. Carol's wise caution about not being able to "unsee" things is itself an unsettling reality that deserves contemplation.
Truly horses for courses, as you said, and "a time and a season for everything".
And thanks for the heads up regarding "The Possessed". Thankfully, I'm somewhat protected from that by the length of my to-read list. :-)
May we all be likewise sufficiently in tune to discern the books for which there is a calling to be read by us at the right time, and to be at peace with the stack that we may never get to (and for which missing out on may be to our own benefit).
I'll finish with some wise words from Douglas Adams (in Mostly Harmless):
"Protect me from knowing what I don't need to know.
Protect me from even knowing that there are things to know that I don't know.
Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decided not to know about.
Yes, 💯 I'd only just add that The Possessed is a truly great book - one of the best ever written - and I'll always be grateful for reading it. It's formed my thinking and my outlook on life in so many ways. It's just the intensity of it and his no-holds-barted exploration of the evil that would (four decades after the book was written) erupt into public life as the Bolshevik Revolution. I don't think any attentive reader could 'recover' from that. But its worlds away from something like American Psycho, say, which I just found purely nihilistic and inherently pointless. Probably the worst book I've ever read
Just briefly, yes, regarding my initial intentions, you hit the nail with perfect precision in your reply above to Tim!
And, I'm thankful for the mention of your experience with "The Possessed", as I've been delving into classic Russian fiction and might well have stumbled into that one!
Actually, I've just finished a very good narrative poem by a 19th century Russian author, it's a quick read, here's a link to a free online version:
Thank you so much for expressing your perceptive understanding of my caution to John regarding "The Road"!! And thank you for quoting that surprisingly ironic passage from the novel - isn't it fascinating to find little synchronicities like that?
Yes, I have read the book you so cheekily 'warned' me about - I once set out to read the entire thing cover to cover and though claiming to have done so, will admit to skimming through a few sections, primarily all the 'who begot who' bits ;^)
I love the Douglas Adams quote!! I've not read "Mostly Harmless", so don't know the context in which the prayer is said, but It certainly seems something excellent to pray prior to one's forays into the internet!
To your final remark - alas, I have no "published writings" but am appreciably flattered by your inquiry!
What a dear man you are to write so kindly a response - such graciousness is very rare in this day and age.
I send my best wishes and reciprocated love back to your side of "the void"...
No, you were neither hallucinating nor going mad, though it does flag up, as you suggest, how easy it is these days forward something we've seen, read or heard and that we know we've seen, read or heard to simply disappear down the memory holes.
I've found out that in terms of copyright I can only use 850 words of Golding's in an essay like this. So I cut a few chunks out of both Free Fall quotes. I pared it right down, so much so that I can afford to put that beaitiful 'grey faces' line back in 👍
Ah, thank you, both for restoring the text and for the inadvertent public service of shattering the illusion of permanence that we tend to take for granted. :-)
(It reminds me of the more sinisterly ironic case where Amazon remotely deleted copies of 1984 from Kindles due to some copyright issue. Eek!)
Perhaps it is time to get serious about committing to memory those texts that we hold dear. ;-) Though memory, too, will pass. But it is memory through community that keeps these words alive. Perhaps this little episode is a microcosmic illustration of that principle in action.
Thank you for the work you are doing in keeping these beautiful texts alive in the collective consciousness!
Thank you. I appreciate that. Re The Road - that's a book I've always shied away from up to now for some reason. Yet (as you show) it's clearly good writing and it seems to have a strong theological underpinning too. So maybe it's time. We'll see. But I am looking to incorporate a bit more of 'the Cross' into these pieces. More consciousness, perhaps, of the seemingly intractable levels of suffering that some people live with. Not to wave it all away with a magic wand - as if I could - but to walk with them (like those 'grey faces') and accompany them and express some level of empathy and understanding. That would be a beginning, perhaps. There's no bottom to the mystery and depth of the Cross.
"It is clear that no autobiography can begin with a man's birth."
What a marvelous insight, that our own life story somehow begins in media res.
> I have felt the flake of fire fall, miraculous and pentecostal
Perhaps surprisingly, this line reminded me of a quote from The Road by Cormac McCarthy (with the setting being the survival of a recent nuclear holocaust):
"It took two days to cross that ashen scabland. The road beyond ran along the crest of a ridge where the barren woodland fell away on every side. It’s snowing, the boy said. He looked at the sky. A single gray flake sifting down. He caught it in his hand and watched it expire there like the last host of christendom."
And elsewhere:
"By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp."
The tone is obviously more miserable than triumphant, but perhaps a journey that harks back to that beleagured new beginning you explicated so well in your recent installment on Purgatorio.
Hello John, It's been quite a while since I had anything to contribute to your comments section, but I am still reading each and every essay you post and as well, think of you often hoping you and your family are doing well.
This is off topic, merely being a response in regard to other comments particularly a reply wherein you express that you are considering reading "The Road"...
I know it is a prize winning, very well written novel with (perhaps) a bit of underlying theology, but the story itself, specifically certain plot points...well....
Certainly, it is none of my business, but I just 'have' to offer the same advice I gave my daughter:
It is vitally important to consider very carefully the sorts of materials which you allow your mind to 'ingest'. Some books, esteemed as they may be, contain such horrific ideas, of such utter ugliness. And you can never 'unsee' a thing once looked upon, which is especially true in fictional works, where the words are 'translated' into visual scenes within your own mind...
There are books which I wish heartily I had never even opened - the images generated are so disturbingly haunting.
I'm sure this seems a strange comment, coming from a virtual stranger, but I've been reading your essays and such since the early days of "Albion Awakening", so from my point of view it is as if I have actually 'known' you.
And, I have to say, John, you have seemed to me so very pure-hearted a person, that I can't help but feel...well...just, that there must be older, more edifying, less graphically disturbing books which you might read in order to gain perspective or "walk with" the sort of 'cross like' suffering many people live with. Here is one suggestion:
"The Elephant Man: A Study in Human Dignity"
https://archive.org/details/elephantmanstud00mont
(You can read it for free at that link.)
Perhaps you might consider that such biographical works may even be more 'suited to purpose' than fictional ones.
At any rate, forgive my pontificating - having reached an age well past 60, I find myself a fount of experiential knowledge from which none care to imbibe.
God Bless and keep you!
Carol
Hi Carol. Thank you very much for your wise, considerate and perceptive words. I deeply appreciate your presence here. No, on reflection I'm not going to read The Road. All being well, I'll have a new piece up by the end of the week where I look at some of these harder issues but through the lens of a book I've written about many times before. And that, as I think you rightly flag up above, will probably be the best way for me to go forward in this respect. Thanks agin and all the very best, John.
Hi dear Carol,
> It is vitally important to consider very carefully the sorts of materials which you allow your mind to 'ingest'.
Indeed, ironically there is a passage in The Road that makes that very point:
"Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that.
You forget some things, dont you?
Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget."
The Road is certainly a book that is more for tearing you apart than putting you back together. So I'm glad that you put forth the warning of what the potential reader would be getting themselves in for. Speaking only for myself, personally perhaps I needed to be torn apart by the message of that book in order to confront the horrific reality of existence, and by confronting it to be awoken to the simultaneous awesome wonder of this journey, and the responsibility we bear to respond to it somehow.
To cheekily return the favour, you may want to beware of a certain best selling and highly acclaimed book containing imagery of crucifixions, child sacrifice, and infernal torments among other horrors. But no doubt you have already read that!
As you illustrated with your alternative book recommendation, reality is replete with its own horrific images.
But let me say that I would happily drink at the fount of your experiential knowledge, so if you have any published writings, please point me in the right direction. :-)
Much love across the void,
Tim
Thanks Tim. I think Carol was trying to protect me in that, given my temperament, an encounter with The Road might work out badly for me. I think she's right - certainly for now at least. I've got a lot on in life and I've got to be really careful about what I'm reading and listening to - whether that's books, online articles/essays or real-world people. Maybe there'll come a time when, as with yourself, I'll need to be broken down and broken open, and I'll know which book to turn to then for sure.
So that's my sense, that she was saying the book wasn't right for me, not necessarily for others. It's horses for courses, I guess, and what's good for the goose might not be good for the gander, and any number of similar phrases.
I've still not got over reading Dostoyevsk's The Possessed, by the way,and that was 30 years ago!
Now there's a thought! Dostoyesky 😲
Thanks again and all the best,
John.
Absolutely. I'm very thankful that Carol stepped in with that warning when she did, as I really should have included one myself. It did take me a while to recover from that book. Carol's wise caution about not being able to "unsee" things is itself an unsettling reality that deserves contemplation.
Truly horses for courses, as you said, and "a time and a season for everything".
And thanks for the heads up regarding "The Possessed". Thankfully, I'm somewhat protected from that by the length of my to-read list. :-)
May we all be likewise sufficiently in tune to discern the books for which there is a calling to be read by us at the right time, and to be at peace with the stack that we may never get to (and for which missing out on may be to our own benefit).
I'll finish with some wise words from Douglas Adams (in Mostly Harmless):
"Protect me from knowing what I don't need to know.
Protect me from even knowing that there are things to know that I don't know.
Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decided not to know about.
Amen."
Yes, 💯 I'd only just add that The Possessed is a truly great book - one of the best ever written - and I'll always be grateful for reading it. It's formed my thinking and my outlook on life in so many ways. It's just the intensity of it and his no-holds-barted exploration of the evil that would (four decades after the book was written) erupt into public life as the Bolshevik Revolution. I don't think any attentive reader could 'recover' from that. But its worlds away from something like American Psycho, say, which I just found purely nihilistic and inherently pointless. Probably the worst book I've ever read
Hi again, John!
Just briefly, yes, regarding my initial intentions, you hit the nail with perfect precision in your reply above to Tim!
And, I'm thankful for the mention of your experience with "The Possessed", as I've been delving into classic Russian fiction and might well have stumbled into that one!
Actually, I've just finished a very good narrative poem by a 19th century Russian author, it's a quick read, here's a link to a free online version:
https://archive.org/details/demonthe00lermrich/mode/2up
The title is somewhat synchronous to the foregoing 'discussion' - but no worries, nothing graphic within!
With kindest regards,
Carol
Hello Tim,
Thank you so much for expressing your perceptive understanding of my caution to John regarding "The Road"!! And thank you for quoting that surprisingly ironic passage from the novel - isn't it fascinating to find little synchronicities like that?
Yes, I have read the book you so cheekily 'warned' me about - I once set out to read the entire thing cover to cover and though claiming to have done so, will admit to skimming through a few sections, primarily all the 'who begot who' bits ;^)
I love the Douglas Adams quote!! I've not read "Mostly Harmless", so don't know the context in which the prayer is said, but It certainly seems something excellent to pray prior to one's forays into the internet!
To your final remark - alas, I have no "published writings" but am appreciably flattered by your inquiry!
What a dear man you are to write so kindly a response - such graciousness is very rare in this day and age.
I send my best wishes and reciprocated love back to your side of "the void"...
Carol
I read this post on one another device the other day, and I meant to comment on this beautiful line:
"My yesterdays walk with me." (Golding)
But now I feel like I must be going mad, as I can't find it in the post.
Was I hallucinating or did this somehow fall down the memory hole?
It's back now 😊
No, you were neither hallucinating nor going mad, though it does flag up, as you suggest, how easy it is these days forward something we've seen, read or heard and that we know we've seen, read or heard to simply disappear down the memory holes.
I've found out that in terms of copyright I can only use 850 words of Golding's in an essay like this. So I cut a few chunks out of both Free Fall quotes. I pared it right down, so much so that I can afford to put that beaitiful 'grey faces' line back in 👍
Ah, thank you, both for restoring the text and for the inadvertent public service of shattering the illusion of permanence that we tend to take for granted. :-)
(It reminds me of the more sinisterly ironic case where Amazon remotely deleted copies of 1984 from Kindles due to some copyright issue. Eek!)
Perhaps it is time to get serious about committing to memory those texts that we hold dear. ;-) Though memory, too, will pass. But it is memory through community that keeps these words alive. Perhaps this little episode is a microcosmic illustration of that principle in action.
Thank you for the work you are doing in keeping these beautiful texts alive in the collective consciousness!
Thank you. I appreciate that. Re The Road - that's a book I've always shied away from up to now for some reason. Yet (as you show) it's clearly good writing and it seems to have a strong theological underpinning too. So maybe it's time. We'll see. But I am looking to incorporate a bit more of 'the Cross' into these pieces. More consciousness, perhaps, of the seemingly intractable levels of suffering that some people live with. Not to wave it all away with a magic wand - as if I could - but to walk with them (like those 'grey faces') and accompany them and express some level of empathy and understanding. That would be a beginning, perhaps. There's no bottom to the mystery and depth of the Cross.