Gesu

Divine Mercy

So. A word: lest it seem that all we do is sit in courtyards and walk down charming alleyways. My internet connection here is spotty and slow, and so I have a devil of a time posting photos, and videos are out of the question. A good deal of that will probably have to wait until the return. But it will go up.

As for the food: I will indeed be writing about it, though I haven't done much picture-taking. It's been hard to find time to write anything extended, but we are taking notes, and will do some thorough posts eventually.

Yesterday was Divine Mercy Sunday. We attended Mass, said by Cardinal Bertone, at Saint Faustina's Church. It was packed body to body - I could feel every breath of the person in front of me. This painting is in the church. I took video, which will go up later.

Trevi Fountain at Twilight

We got a late start yesterday, what with the Walk of Shame, so after the Villa Borghese, all we had time for was a smattering of churches, the Spanish Steps, and the Fountain before we heard the call of the table...I would say we ate like gods, but the "like" seems to water it down...

Villa Borghese

Eucharistic Chapel, Santa Maria in Trastevere

I love how all the rich ornament serves to adorn the relatively crude 7th-century piece above the tabernacle...This was the church we visited while waiting for our room to become available at the Hotel Santa Maria. Also the parish church of Victoria, who gave us much helpful advice...

Walk to Second Hotel, aka The Walk of Shame, aka Tourista in Transit

Second Hotel - View from Window and Front

Courtyard, Hotel Santa Maria

Hotel Santa Maria

My feet on the cobblestones in the hotel courtyard:



A window above the courtyard. I like the fact that they're building a wall behind it...it gets at the layered character of things here...

Vines

The Wife had a headache from non sleeping on the flight over, but the sight of these hanging vines brought a measure of delighted relief. The vine behind yours truly is largely embedded in the wall.

View from Hotel Courtyard.

Arrival.

The fountain and church on the Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere; our hotel for the first night is just down the alley. That's The Wife with the umbrella. The rain stopped about half an hour after we arrived. We are very, very happy.

Rome.

The Wife: Hey! I'm not pregnant! Or nursing! For the first time since three months after we married!

Me: I'll start looking for tickets.

We leave early early Thursday. I'll try to post if I can.

Fail Again.

Brilliant. Your cover story is called "Fat & Happy." So, in your events section, you run a blurb for a workshop by the author of Fat No More, which reads: "If you've read our cover story this week, you now know that, for some people, being fat doesn't necessarily mean being unhealthy or unhappy. For the rest of us victims of mainstream notions of social desirability..."

And you run a blurb for a lecture by the irrepressible Mark Dery, a man who "was once a pimple-faced Jesus freak living in San Diego." His talk "takes you through his past and brings you to present San Diego - a San Diego he sees as still seeped in anti-intellectualism and creepy conservatism." That's a burn. Except the lecture is being hosted in San Diego. "Oh, Mark. Tell us again how anti-intellectual we are!" (Though the blurbist's use of "seeped" when I'm pretty sure the standard term is "steeped" might indicate that Dery has a point...)

Fail.

I dunno. Something about putting an ad that reads "Being Fat Sucks" next to a picture of some full-figured women in a story entitled "Fat & Happy" strikes me as...just wrong.

Easter Girls

Holy Saturday, Wisconsin and California

Courtesy of the Wisconsin Poet...

Snow Falls

On Wisconsin in cold, uneven textures –
Falls as if the mesh of gravity
Were to be sown into its recorded depth.

Midday brings a steady, if momentary,
Pulse to time’s white, insulated breath,
As if time too were merely falling

Instead of limned in linear horizons,
However softened by a cotillion of winter hills.
How many times the snow remarks

A world of windows and daylight
(Even grey, slated as the dawn that breaks
With our own ultimate leaving), and felled

Snow takes on the diffident proportions
Of shadow and light drawn in without lines,
Like a child’s art which has not yet

Learned to draw out a space’s middle,
A world between absolutes, where taut lines
Spell exact stanzas of color in black and white –

This, the way of snow that falls, fell,
Will ever fall, but felt as never coming back
And always and forever forecast for tomorrow.

*****

San Diego Poem

Tonight, the bluish TV screen warps into wine’s dark purple –
Each hollow figure head, explosion, each kiss or gun
Stretches its restless bandwidth as through a glass vessel.

I lie. Nothing is going on outside. A dog barks
That nothing in the moon’s language, although his archeology
Has long since been laid to rest: in Pharaoh’s tomb,

Concubines lace their necks with canine teeth. The dog
Capitulates; loses his place among the stars. Good dog.
And California is grateful for the Great Bear: desire dips

Down and plays out along the sky’s palm-strewn edge,
And for no such idea, the tall slender trunks ball up
Their fists of palm. Sunday prays to draw near enough,

To blunt the week’s point: Saturday’s milieu of flight and fight,
Of kiss and gun, of dogs and kings, of death and light –
The blue, drank as purple, distils into the rest of our days.

The King of Kings

For Holy Saturday, Ernie and I take in a little DeMillian spectacle.

I had a cold...

...and it didn't so much help my poor voice as it made it sound just a touch closer to the voice that ought to be singing this song, with a proper country fiddle in the background, and maybe a little guitar. I wrote it ages ago, and even posted the lyrics on the blog way back when. My brother is largely responsible for the current melody, which I quite like.

Once again: Misfits was the last film for both Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe. Both were getting old for their personas, and both showed the wear of years. In the film, there is a scene in which both Gable and Monroe attempt to rope a horse in the desert. This song was inspired by that scene.

If anybody out there knows anybody who could do this right (ahem Luke Halpin & Friends), please let me know.

Remember, it's not the singer, it's the song.

Good Friday, Wisconsin and California

Faith at the Edge

"Finally, I asked, 'So, if this is so unreliable, what are my other choices?' She lit up. Her presentation of birth control options ended with such a glowing recommendation of the pill that I could have sworn she owned stock in a drug company. Somewhat numb, I took the bus home, clutching the list of birth control methods in one hand and the basal temperature chart in the other. Was this truly my only option? Somewhat desperate, I decided to do my own research. I logged on to Amazon.com and searched for a combination of 'natural' and 'birth control.' My heart leapt when the site suggested dozens of books. So this thing existed? And people had written about it? And then, I found the community I didn't even realize I was longing for - peer reviews...One reviewer said that every woman should read this book to understand how her body worked - another claimed to have used the method with success for over nine years. Nine years? I'd been led to believe that I wouldn't last a week and a half."

- Elizabeth Wirth, from "Like a Natural Woman"

Paul Scofield, RIP

Faith at the Edge

"Many of us, it seems, need the visceral unity of group worship, the shared symbols of 'organized religion,' the spiritual grit of religious discipline, the (at times) daunting authority of institution. I was afraid that if I tried to go it alone, I'd be tempted to take the path of least resistance, to create for myself a relationship with God, that, more than anything, pleased and reassured me. Worse, that allowed me to remain aloof and critical. My decision to proceed was not so much brave as it was desperate. I'd found something that spoke directly to the crying need within me and did so in ways that I could not command..."

- Paula Huston, from "The Sacrament of Matrimony"

Holy Week...

...and we wave goodbye to the Wisconsin Poet, who goes back to the bosom of his family. But before he leaves, one last excerpt from his book of Ancient Christian Writers. Here, from the Epistle to Diognetus, is a passage that I find rather beautiful:

"Christians are not distinguished from the rest of mankind by either country, speech, or customs; the fact is, they nowhere settle in cities of their own; they use no peculiar language; they cultivate no eccentric mode of life. Certainly, this creed of theirs is no discovery due to some fancy or speculation of inquisitive men; nor do they, as some do, champion a doctrine of human origin. Yet while they dwell in both Greek and non-Greek cities, as each one's lot was cast, and conform to the customs of the country in dress, food, and mode of life in general, the whole tenor of their way of living stamps it as worthy of admiration and admittedly extraordinary. They reside in their respective countries, but only as aliens. They take part in everything as citizens and put up with everything as foreigners. Every foreign land is their home, and every home a foreign land.

"They marry like all others and beget children; but they do not expose their offspring. Their board they spread for all, but not their bed. They find themselves in the flesh, but do not life according to the flesh. They spend their days on earth, but hold citizenship in heaven. They obey the established laws, but in their private lives they rise above the laws.

"They love all men, but are persecuted by all. They are unknown, yet are condemned; they are put to death, but it is life that they receive. They are poor, and enrich many; destitute of everything, they abound in everything. They are dishonored, and their dishonor is their glory. They are calumnated, and are vindicated. They are reviled, and they bless; they are insulted and render honor. Doing good, they are penalized as evildoers; when penalized, they rejoice because they are quickened into life. The Jews make war on them as foreigners; the Greeks persecute them; and those who hate them are at a loss to explain their hatred."

The Wisconsin Poet in Exile.

Three years...

...so once again, we tip one out for Chris Farley, and wonder when I'm finally going to man up and check myself into blogger rehab...

The Miranda Sonnets

So we had a party last Friday, and somewhere about three hours in, the Wisconsin Poet discovered that our guests knew a thing or two about Shakespeare. Off he scampered to fetch out Aegypta, his book of poems. These are the Miranda Sonnets - think The Tempest. And remember, these are cold readings. But still - worth sharing, I think. Especially since the Wisconsin Poet shares a first name with St. Joseph, whose Solemnity we observe today, what with the 19th falling during Holy Week and all. Enjoy.

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

Ernie and I dig in.

Paging O'Connor

Grace, not like the drip drip drip of water on a stone, carving a channel with imperceptible pressure, but like a big 'ol hunting knife, hacking through hardened growth to get at something soft and vital.

Faith at the Edge

"I don't remember anything else that was said that day. The presentations moved on to other subjects, but I was fixated on that one simple phrase, 'love is a decision.' I glanced over at my wife, who was sitting next to me and looking straight ahead at the presenters. Do I love this woman? I don't feel any love for her. Can I decide to love her? For a brief moment, I was terrified because I didn't know the answer. And then something occurred to me. If love is a decision, it follows that it is my decision. I can't control my feelings, but I can control my decisions. What had driven me to the despair of contemplating divorce was the perception that I had no control over the downward spiral of my marriage. But when this man described love as an act of the will, suddenly I wasn't looking for a parachute anymore. For the first time, I felt hope that I could pull our marriage out of its nosedive. As the presenting couple continued to speak and my wife continued to watch, I said to myself in silence, 'I will love her.'"

- Brian Pessaro, from "My Tallahassee Purgatory"

Faith at the Edge

"In New Orleans, even the smallest actions are infused with a sacramental quality, and the traditions of the city - Carnival, king cakes, St. Joseph's Altars - are so wrapped up in the liturgical year and Catholic tradition that they constitute a lived catechesis. When I moved north as an adult, I worried that my faith had been improperly formed, that it was merely cultural, intuitive, not intellectual enough. Now, I wonder if growing up in New Orleans wasn't the best way to absorb the mysteries of faith. Baptized or not, when you live there, you take in Catholicism with the wet, heavy air you're forced to breathe. We were taught by example the importance of ritual, symbol, and paradox. We lived in a parish, not a county. I'd never heard the words secular culture. It's a beautiful thing - now that I'm a thousand miles away, when I get homesick, I go to church."

- Jessica Griffith, from "After Katrina"

Day-Blooming Jasmine

Night-Blooming Jasmine

Everyone should have a personal philosophy.

"Use every man according to his dessert, and who should 'scape whipping?"

- Hamlet

Faith at the Edge

"While all this is well known, people forget one part of the Church's teaching on chastity, which comes in the last paragraph on the topic in the catechism. There she says basically that, with the help of the sacraments and sacramental grace, and the help of friendship, men and women living with same-sex attraction can and should attain Christian perfection. The Catholic Church looks at me as an adult and says, "You might live with same-sex attraction, you might even define yourself as a homosexual, but we think that you can and will be a saint." And that, I believe, is head and shoulders above what anyone else says on the topic."

- David Morrison, from "Gay and Catholic"

Literary Opportunity

It seems to me that, given the wealth of material written both by and about the man, a first-rate modern novelist could do a slam-bang job on a novel about Mark Twain and his obsession with building a better printing press. Or rather, paying someone else to build one. The man lost a fortune in investments. Surely some genius could wrangle a half-million dollar advance for a brilliant postmodern examination on a prolific author's drive to improve the physical production of words, a traveling lecturer's interest in the rapid the dissemination of ideas, a wealthy man's need to be even more wealthy set against his quest to see his dream succeed. Anyone? Anyone?

Movie Talk

"...and great films, with plots! Where you cared about whose ass it was, and why it was farting!"

- Private Joe Bowers, recalling the golden age of cinema in Idiocracy

Faith at the Edge

"A couple months ago, I ran into a bright young writer I'd met in the early days of Sexless. We had one of those great, electric conversations where two people who previously didn't have much to talk about suddenly find each other fascinating. But because he knew the stakes with me upfront, there was no question of him calling or somehow pursuing our modest chemistry. In that sense our interaction was much more human for being stripped of the sizing-each-other up that happens with a potential date or mate or lover. And it was more generous since we weren't thinking about how the other person could meet our needs. We were just taking each other for what we were."

- Anna Broadway, "Confessions of an Undercover Virgin"

Faith at the Edge

(Blankety-blank Blogger doesn't want to let me upload photos today...)

"It's been eight months since I made love to my wife. Eight months since the birth of our daughter. Sometimes there are tears of frustration. Sometimes, I take secret pleasure in a sexual purity that I haven't known since the fifth grade. The stains of my sexual brokenness, that I thought had been cleansed by marriage, can't hide any longer behind the sloth of the satisfied husband in bed. I lay awake at night hoping that this celibacy is not permanent, but that the chastity - my own properly ordered sexuality - might be. This isn't purity based on unknowing, as if my mind could somehow regain the innocence of my prepubescent past. Rather, it's the purity that comes when you admit that there are some corner's of the devil's hell that you still find overwhelmingly erotic, but still, once more, you decide to look away."

- Patrick Still, from "Porn and the Sacred Heart"

The Bender Report

Okay, last one. We had a little dinner party on Friday. As I said, we have a lot of help on these...



Started off with great hunks of a couple of outstanding cheeses - a creamy blue (rochefort?) and a double cream Brie of some sort. (Well, we really started off with Pimm's Cup, but who's counting?) The cheese was the occasion for the pink bubbly. The BV Pinot Noir served as place holder until we were ready to sit down for the primo: pappardelle with a pink shrimp sauce. The rose served us well. The Viognier that followed accompanied baked sole over potatoes, tomatoes, and onions - outstanding. Final nibblings (no dessert - a Friday in Lent, after all) were joined by the Poppy Pinot. After that...it was a lovely party.

Star Wars

Ernie and I feel the power of the dark side of the Force.

NFP and You.

Found this while going through old photos...

Faith at the Edge

"I was supposed to be glowing, excited, and anticipatory. But I had never before felt so out of control. Friends of mine, due the same month, giggled and exclaimed over their babies' first kicks. When I felt my baby's first kick, I felt squeamish and even a bit repulsed...I had chosen this. I had asked for this. I wanted this. Then why was it so foreign and creepy? The fact was that nothing in my life had prepared me for pregnancy. I simply had not been taught that my body was made for childbearing. Even as I write this, it feels like a betrayal of my gender."

- Elizabeth Wirth, from "This is My Body"

The Bender Report

I probably won't keep this up - surely we are giving scandal somewhere, and I honestly wouldn't want to do that. But I do want to note the delightfully international flavor of the proceedings. Pimm's Cup from England, tequila from Mexico, vodka from Austria, Prosecco and Campari from Italy, and a French Pinot Blanc.

Faith at the Edge

"If I, as my children's earthly father, use penance to build up goodness in them, how much more will our heavenly Father use penance to shape us into the sons and daughters he wants us to be for all eternity? That's what many people don't understand about corporal mortification. When I offer up my suffering from a cold shower, it's out of love, not fear. It's not at attempt to punish myself in order to dodge God's wrath. It's my way of asking him to transform me into the son he wants me to be."

- Brian Pessaro, from "I Scourge the Body Electric"

The Bender Report

Keep in mind we have a lot of help on these.



"Poetry gives us knowledge. It is a knowledge of ourselves in relation to the world of experience, and to that world considered, not statistically, but in terms of human purposes and values. Experience considered in terms of human purpose and values is dramatic - dramatic in that it is concrete, in that it involves a process, and in that it embodies the human effort to arrive - through conflict - at meaning."

- opening of the Preface of Understanding Poetry, Third Edition, by Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren (pictured above).

The Zoology of the Body

The Wisconsin Poet has made it his Lenten resolution to do daily spiritual reading. Like the Ancient he is, he has taken up Ancient Christian Writings. This morning, I got a taste of the Epistle of Barnabas:

"As to what Moses said" regarding dietary restrictions, "Moses spoke in a spiritual sense. 'You shall not eat the hare.' Why? Do not, he means, be a pederast or like such people, because the hare grows a new anus every year, and their number is proportionate to their years. But 'neither shall you eat the hyena.' Do not, he means, be an adulterer or seducer, or like people of that stamp. Why? Because this animal changes its sex every year, and is now male, now female. But he also abhorred 'the weasel.' Rightly so. Do not, he means, be like those people who, we learn, through lecherousness do with their mouth what is forbidden; and do not associate with debauched women, who with their mouth do what is forbidden; for this animal conceives through the mouth."

It begins.

Faith at the Edge

"From this vantage point I looked back at writers like Camus and Sartre, who accurately portrayed the excruciating loneliness and alienation of modern times, and saw their work from a new perspective, as description rather than prescription. They had confronted a new reality - the death of God in the world - without illusions, and asked the right question: How was man supposed to live with his newfound freedom? By taking the radical ideas of the modern era to their logical conclusions, they showed that life without God was absurd. And so by convincingly giving flesh, through their art, to what a world without God would be like, they unintentionally showed that only an uncompromising, radical Christianity could heal the existential wound that afflicted modern man. this is what Pope John Paul II meant in his 'Letter to Artists':

'Even in situations, where culture and the Church are far apart, art remains a kind of bridge to religious experience...Even when they explore the darkest depths of the soul or the most unsettling aspects of evil, artists give voice in a way to the universal desire for redemption.'"

- Angelo Matera, from the Introduction

Wild Turkey Hunting.

The Wisconsin Poet arrives today for an extended bender, er, visit.

Feeling Blue.

Surely somebody has already made this joke/comparison...

Outstanding

As a member of The Great Whore mentioned in Revelation, aka, The Catholic Church, I am troubled by McCain's cozyness with Pastor Hagee. Thanks to the Hollywood Farmer for the tip.

Rio Conchos

Ernie and I marvel at Jim Brown's physique.