On Being from Boston: A Meditation Upon Patriot's Day

WBZ CBS News is finally reporting that they got the second suspect - "that knucklehead" (as the main announcer keeps calling him) who committed that bombing at the Boston Marathon on Monday. 

I'm sitting here, welling with gladness. The tragedies of this week that those two fools perpetrated upon the people of my city have been the catalyst for a minor emotional restoration for me.  It's reawakened my dormant sense of passionate attachment to this place, New England, my home.  

I've been sitting here today thinking how Boston somehow oddly belongs to me, even though I've never lived there.  It's like this: when I am away from home, very few people know where Maine is.  Hardly anybody's heard of New England.  Foreigners tend not to know all that much about the States. I usually have a slight problem when people ask me, as they often do, what part of America I am from.  

My simple solution: I always tell them I am from Boston. Often that draws a blank, too.  At which point I just say that it's sorta like New York, only wicked awesome. That last part's impossible to translate into French or Spanish, so I'll interject the English then fudge translate (bien chouette, demasiado chido, algo y nada como esto..) No way they could possibly understand, it always makes me laugh. 

Sometimes I'll add another incomprehensible line about Boston being the hub around all known creation radiates (le centre autour qui orbite tout le reste de l'univers connu, el centro acerca todo el resto del universo orbita - just watch the linguistic ginsu master, how I roll).. I get on a slight comedic bend, and crack myself all up while the person who asked stares at me wondering what's wrong with the crazy damn gringo.

Anyway, I am somehow actually in fact from Boston. Because as anyone from Maine will tell you, going Down East is coming from Boston. That's how you go to get there from here, across the Gulf of Maine.  

What's more, we were once politically - until 1820 - part of Massachusetts. And to this day Boston's teams - the Sox, Patriots, Bruins, Celtics - are our teams. That's called belonging to something in your blood and guts. From the sea and soil. Blood, salt and dirt.. Family. Boston is our town. 


In my mind's eye I see the skyline of the city shimmering up from the inrushing tarmaced horizon of I 93 flowing toward us, the very first time my dad and mom took my brothers and me into the city back in 1980. We sat in the backseat of the stationwagon, I utterly entranced by the mystical majesty of those two clusters of towers thrusting high into the hazy summer sky.

Dad took us to Jacob Wurth's by Tufts, where he hung out in his graduate school days at B.U. The fat white shirted mustachioed German waiters kicking sawdust as they brought us our platonically delectable bratwurst and sauerkraut..

It was a love affair from the very beginning. All the graceful intimacy of the town, colonial class of Fennel Hall and the golden capitol dome, with the Aquarium & Old Ironsides hedging the Harbor throwing off briny mist, to Fenway and the Charles so storied, all democratically regal..

Which is merely to say the horror of the week has been unrolling across terrain I know. Places I often inhabit in my dreams.  Boyleston Street. Cambridge. Kenmore Square.  

I'm still riding this train, see, after all these years.. Florida could never keep me:

Tonight I again find myself patriotically emotional in ways I haven't been in years. The last decade has been very harsh on my patriotic feeling. I'm still ferociously patriotic. This country, this land, is my home. These are my people. My heart's not going anywhere, even if I happen to be physically abroad. But these past years my heart's become pretty well bruised and cynical. The love's intact, but the adolescent magic was gone. I've come to know too much, have been repeatedly disappointed.  

But now tonight, on Patriot's Day, the anniversary of the shot heard 'round the world, the old ferocious emotion floods back.  

They finally got that knucklehead.  

Not even news of Lindsay Grahm spouting the now all too trite quasi- fascist Republican idiocy assaulting our precious constitutional tradition of due process, once again whyping his nasty southern ass with the Bill of Rights, like those jack booted thugs have been compulsively for the past twelve years now can damp my happiness.  

How was it that I ever allied myself with those assholes, thinking that they were somehow pro-life?  Like they actually care about the unborn. Was I an idiot? Was there crack in our water supply back then? Why doesn't Lindsay and the rest of his gibbering cracker horde just succeed again, and leave us Yankees alone? Why was it we fought so damn hard to keep them last time?  I have no idea.

Whatever. My contempt for them knows no end. They call themselves patriots. Cretinous fuckers. Go fellate some more bankers. Put their plugs in your gobs like good little kept catamites. I have no more patience for your bullshit.

The people of Boston just put you all to shame. This week has been a minor epic, I felt like I was watching the boys form up on the green again, staring down Gage's thugs with calm defiance. 

No pathetic would-be terrorist is going to scare us. They only succeed if they terrorize us. They failed.  

Their flag to April's breeze unfurled..

The character of free men is defined in the conquest of fear, see.


Two hundred and thirty eight years ago today, on April 19th 1775, the people of New England faced down the forces of a foreign tyrant, and won our freedom.  

Tonight we triumphed once again.  God Bless Boston.  God Bless America.  



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On the Criticism of Others

If we stop rejecting the criticism of others, be it justified or unjustified criticism, and see such criticism as profitable for our salvation, we will have gained a great spiritual treasure. When we gain the ability to see our own sinfulness, we see that even the good deeds we do are saturated with sin. When we have gained the humility that comes from embracing the criticism of others, we will see that we are unable to heal ourselves, but are entirely dependent upon God as our only source of healing.

When we take notice of our own sinfulness, we will stop judging others, seeing in them the same pitiful state, and realize they are our kinfolk, and we are all journeying together, towards God. They can no longer hurt or offend us with their criticism, for we pity them, just as we pity ourselves for our own sinfulness, and we see them as our friends in this common struggle for sanctification and holiness.

The famous Russian abbot of the 50's and 60's, Father Nikon, was said to have told a spiritual child that once he sees his own sin, he will stop exalting some and belittling others, seeing everyone as his brother or sister. He will begin to love everyone as his co-strugglers.

- Abbot Tryphon

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Picture of the Day: Wiggly & Beany with Dad

I just got through sorting the pictures from the Easter weekend Kid's Passover Seder I was graced enough to be able to spend with my brother, his family & in-laws two weeks ago.

One of my favorite images from that weekend:

I have some thoughts about the assonances between the Passover seder and the mass that I'll put to pixels sometime soon.  One of the many essays I intend to eventually (someday) inflict on you my devoted audience of a dozen.  Belated Blessed Pasch, anyhow..



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"Everything in the World Can & Will Be Made Better, the Only Question is by Whom & How.."

Side by Side, review. A- , 4/5 *,  95% Tomato Meter.

This documentary is an interesting exploration of the current revolution in film making away from celluloid (photo chemical exposure) toward digital exposure.  It treats the evolution of the technologies, their respective strengths and flaws, and includes interviews with many directors and other people involved in film making, discussing the trend.

"Filmaking" has always been a somewhat insubstantial exercise, the "projection" of light through a film of chemical gauze; casting light, color and shadow on a blank wall.  The one substantial aspect of the experience has until now been the film itself, the alchemaic artefact that gave film it's material reality, gave it its "there, there."

Now, the industry is abandoning film for algorithmic traces on a silicon chip, fleeting ever further into insubstantiality, into ephemeral abstraction. There is more freedom to create greater fantasy there, they say. This is what progress is, in its lack of essence: slipping material bonds, consummating consciousness in a triumphant manipulation of and victory over matter, ultimately ascending to the point that we finally escape the constraints of matter altogether. Intellect and imagination slip their material bonds, and achieve gnostic transcendence.

So it is somehow oddly appropriate that Keanu Reeves - the star of Bill & Ted's Excellent Time Traveling Adventure (for isn't time travel one of the most fundamental subversions of this material space time continuum in which we are enmeshed?) and the Matrix Trilogy (one of perhaps the purest gnostic fantasies that Hollywood has yet graced us with) - is the auteur of this interesting documentary.  Fantasy land is becoming even more fantastic, and even less substantial than ever before. And Ted is there to report back to us upon progress's inexorable march.

Until the 19th Century humanity kept its artistic and intellectual record on substantial matter such as paper, plaster, animal skin and canvas. Camera film is is different from these in that light is not reflected off it, but rather through it. It is also more delicate than most of these more ancient media, and it poses more difficult challenges to archivists who seek to preserve it. In 1902 there was an international congress of film makers, who in the spirit of the French Revolution and the positivist tradition, came together to set an international standard for film, guaranteeing that film making and projecting technology would be universal and standardized, ensuring that all film shot from then until now would all be accessible using the same tools, the same industrial paradigms. 35 mm film is always 35 mm film, and can be fed into any projector manufactured to that standard in the last century.

In the 1970's and 80's however, video tape and computer imaging was developed. In the rush of technological development there has been much that has been produced that no longer can be viewed, because in that short rush of evolutionary change we now no longer have the tools to access some of the things created only ten to thirty years ago. Imagine trying to access information stored on a floppy disc, an 8 track or VHS tape. Not so easy, these days. Such technology is all too quickly obsolete and the information recorded with it now inaccessible.

Because now rather than  using film, or electromagnetic tape, or even paper, most imagery and text is being recorded on silicon chips, hard drives. What is the nature of this new medium? What are its weaknesses, its strengths?  In this film Sad Keanu

has found his voice, and while he gives quite a bit of time to advocates of film and critics of the dawning digital age, it's ultimately pretty clear that Keanu is proselytizing for the new order. It's hard not to be impressed by the power of the new technology.. Still, nagging questions linger.

For while it is true that the rush of technological advance has given us in some ways greater freedom - we can now watch movies on four inch screens that we carry in out pockets - it may be also true that we could be simultaneously eradicating our relationship with the past. The great paper libraries, archives and museums that used to be the main way we accessed knowledge and art - which meant interacting with the past, the authors and artists who created that record - are now largely obsolete, in that the record has been impixelated, recorded in magnetic patterns of 1's and 0's on an electric grid. It is both more immediate and manipulatable, while verging utterly insubstantial.

Is this new network more resilient than thousands of paper libraries - which while they can be burnt, can also be turned into samzidat? Is this new modality easier to censor and track?  Is knowledge and art now simply more accessible, or is it also more easily repressed, tracked and eradicated?  Is this brave new world an electronic tyranny like that of Tron, or an anarchic paradise like that in Avatar? Or something else, utterly different or something in between?

I seems we are about to find out.

A few closing thoughts concerning Keanu: I remember when I used to dismiss guys like him (or Brad Pitt, Orlando Bloom, Leonardo DiCaprio, etc.) as being somehow unserious. Feminists complain about how women's voices and pov's tend to get discounted. Try being a very pretty boy. That seems to me an even harder row to hoe, in terms of being taken seriously, somehow.  Handsome man is not the same as pretty boy - most of them get discounted, sneered at.  If there's a Tiger Beat spread of you out there,

where you've been "lucky" enough to tap the collective libido of teenaged girls, you are finished. It's far, far worse than being a Playboy centerfold. No adult - male or female - is ever likely going to take you truly seriously again. Pity Justin Beeber and the Jonas Brothers, because when they hit their late twenties no one will ever pay attention to them again, and they won't know what to do about it. Expect to see them dishing to Dr. Drew on celebrity rehab in about a decade or so. That's how we treat our idols. Ours is a truly profane and irreligious society.

But wait.. Maybe not. Keanu is running counter the rule, here. Giving reviewers at venues such as the New York Times a reason to pay him respectful attention.. What is this?  Perhaps beauty, character and intelligence are not mutually exclusive. As much as we ugly people may find it hard to accept, beautiful people may occasionally be serious and smart, too.  Keanu has gone a proven it can be so, with this film.

Well done, Keanu. Bravo. Thanks for feeding my head. Now go do it again.



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Pictures of the Day: Mercy Sunday, National Shrine of Divine Mercy

I drove a couple hours south yesterday, down to the National Shrine of Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.  That's right where Massachusetts meets New York, about 20 minutes from the Vermont border.

It was cool and blustery, but there were 15-20,000 other pilgrims there with me. The crowd was heavily Latino, Pilipino and (this was a bit of a surprise to me) there were many black folk there as well.  Most of them were Haitian or Caribbean, but some were Afro-American as well. A good third of the people there were probably speaking Spanish or Tagalog. I was quite amused and pleased by all of it.

There was a mass in the afternoon, but I arrived late because - after departing not giving myself quite enough time - I got briefly lost (a difficult feat with a GPS, but I still somehow managed it) trying to find a gas station with diesel along the way, and then took well over a half hour to find parking and walk a half mile up the hill to the shrine. I arrived just in time for the consecration, and decided to spend an hour and a half in line to confess while mass concluded. There were a few hundred of us in line, so they came and gave us all communion while we waited, granting us dispensation to receive before confessing if we needed one. We were singing the Chaplet of Mercy as we stood there. It was beautiful.

There were over a dozen priests hearing confessions in Spanish and English, and (I thought this was great) one of them was the local bishop. My confessor was a Franciscan of Primitive Observance from Boston, who wear grey habits and scraggly beards (like the Friars of the Renewal, Fr. Groeschel's group) but are probably even more hard core.

(No, edit that, they are more hard core. Follow the link there - they have little to no web presence beyond their wikipedia page, which states that the Franciscans of Primitive Observance live a strict observance of the Rule of St. Francis. They do not carry money, and rely on the donations of individuals to pay for their needs. In their houses they do not utilize modern appliances and seek food door-to-door in the neighborhoods in which they live. The FPOs live a mixed contemplative and active life, spending considerable time in prayer each day in the chapel, as well as time in the community. The FPOs do not wish that details of their penitential life be widely known, living by the Lord's admonition to "pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly" - Matthew 6:6.)

(Not mine, I stole this image from here.)

This fellow seemed very unimpressed by me at first, but I shot my mouth off in fine form, and he came around, stroking his beautiful beard, saying "hmm, I think that was a pretty good confession.." 

High flattery, that. I was pleased. I often wonder how it would be to confess to Christ himself, or one of the apostles, Augustine, Francis, Ignatius, Dominic or Padre Pio.. I got the next best thing, yesterday. That alone was worth the drive.

We were joking that with the wind and rain we were chalking time off purgatory whether we received the indulgence or not. One of the conditions of the indulgence is detachment from venial sin. I am not even sure what that means, precisely, and I've long since decided that I will be very happy if I am received into purgatory. I really do not understand why people used to be so obsessed with suffering there. I want that. To be there would be a great joy, because it means that you will see God. Right now, all this suspense and uncertainty is really terrible. To suffer for the sake of love is what we are meant for, and it is a beautiful thing.. I'm just too much of a sloth and coward to do it very well here. So, let me do it then. Please.

I never got to see the icon in the formal shrine, that charming gothic chapel that you can see in the image above here, because they had closed it by the time I'd confessed. You can see the line there filing into the chapel, there were thousands of people filing through after mass to venerate the icon.

I did spend a while in one of the tents they had set up for adoration, after they had removed the monstrance but had left an icon, though:

A truly great day. I'll be back there later this spring when there's less of a mob scene, to see the chapel.


Today, incidentally, is the Annunciation. A significant feast in my mythic universe. I've got a bit that I'll post tomorrow on that. It needs a bit of polish, and I'm not really up to finishing it off it tonight.. Until tomorrow, then.  



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