Essays in Idleness

Things are as they are, and will continue to be that way, as a wise man once suggested. He was trying to explain to a young commie (“liberal”) that, you don’t start with a plan. You start by apprehending a real situation. This, however, you have no hope of grasping, if there is some way you want things to be. Reality may include you, but its centre is infinitely outside. You do not control it. More than that: you cannot control it. (Things will happen, for which you hadn’t planned.)

You can play along with nature, which includes human nature, or you can go against it, and court disaster. Worse, you become essentially a criminal, as you take things that don’t belong to you — such as people’s independence, in the name of the Batflu, or whatever.

“I have a dream!” this Czech gentleman would suddenly exclaim, eyes (theatrically) shining. “And it’s a good one!” he would add.

Too, sometimes, he would hop into my office, proclaiming, “I am rabbit!” Or, hanging an arm from his nose, declare, “I am elephant!” Visitors to the office might fear that he was dangerously mad, but I knew better. He was the only fully sane one among us.

His point, in these latter cases, was that, paradoxically, he is not a rabbit; nor an elephant, depending on the occasion. He, and verily we, are not what we imagine. Rather we are what we are; and the more so when, thanks to self-examination, we begin to see ourselves more clearly.

For sure, the world is threatened by the dangerously mad. But these are not people who pretend to be rabbits, or even giant wolf spiders, as I once demonstrated to my smaller little boy. One might, if he wished, pretend to be something else. One might even be an actor, and play another person. But, within limits set forth in the criminal code, this is only our business. Or our director’s, if we are being paid. (They never pay us enough.)

Conversely, the dangerously mad have a rôle for you. And they seek the power to make you play it.

One of the reasons I greet the Left, with genuine and fully deserved loathing, is that they cannot comprehend this. They have a plan, “and it’s a good one.” If you get in their way, they will not only loathe you, but act upon it. They will find a way to punish you, if you hesitate. And you may get in their way, only by being who you are — a simple non-revolutionary; an attempted non-participant in their (sick little) schemes.

W. H. Auden presented this more eloquently than I shall ever do, in his poem sequence, Horae Canonicae. I am thinking especially of the section for “Vespers.” (Gentle reader should listen to it.)

Meanwhile, I shudder at the thought that Americans might be fool enough, to vote for the people who have a plan. And won’t even tell them what it is, until after the election. And could win it, only because they have succeeded in smearing the (essentially Arcadian) incumbent; and drilled all the young commies (“liberals”) to do as they say. (And they will make the adults pay their student debts.)

Now, go read my column in the Catholic Thing, if I haven’t depressed you enough this morning.

How marvellous the wind and the rain!

From my privileged window, I have been watching the menacing clouds approach from the west, promising to delete Mississauga. The rain, so far, is only a sprinkle, and I will pray for more, for torrents. The roar of the atmosphere seems to demand this: for it is suddenly tremendous. The spectacle is glorious, as in the old days when I could watch sunsets from my balconata. God, in His vocation as an artist, would never make two just the same. Each exhibited some feature of sublimity, seen never before, nor to be seen again. Praise Him. Praise Him from the belvederes and balconies.

The jackhammers have ceased. The neighbourhood is at peace, for a moment, as the jackhammerers lower their scaffolding hoists, from their self-interested desire, not to be blown off the building. The mounds of rubble, the half-demolished concrete stubs, everything — suddenly at peace. Perhaps the whole cosmic purpose of this progressive “creative destruction” was to remind me, today, what peace sounds like. It is a beautifully idle sound, when unnecessary work — work that is done only for money — is abandoned. And the modernist project, to replace everything that our ancestors built solid with the new, the cheap, the flimsy, the vile — comes to an involuntary halt.

For this modernist project is mostly “deconstruction.” In order to replace them with impermanent things, the permanent things must first be demolished. And this is, inevitably, a very noisy show, requiring jackhammers, buzzsaws, and explosives. But how magnificent: how blessed we are, when the modernist project takes a break!

Lord, in our humility we ask, that you thundering, destroy our destroyers.

One tries to avoid Twitter, Facebook, Tiktok, Instagram, and other filth of that sort. The challenge is often to suppress one’s curiosity, when it is being relentlessly teased. Sometimes the post might even be about you: addressed not to you, but to an electronic mob that is encouraged to form around you. Often a claim is made, which if true would “change everything,” although it is obviously not true.

No phase of communications technology, since Gutenberg and his wretched printing press — which put all the educated scribes out of business, and made “fake news” available to all men — is so irredeemably toxic as our present phase — although there is promise that things will get worse. Yet as ever with “progress,” there are good things, too: tiny wee good things, floating in the stench and sludge. (In my naiveté, perhaps, I aspire to be one of those things.) The hounds of progress call attention to the little gleaming bits, whenever they can spot them. But the “net” damage, to our social and spiritual peace — to simple goodness and our capacity to think straight — is on an astounding scale.

Consider, if you will, the following “tweet” by a gentleman who signs himself “Pope Francis” — called to my attention by an Idlepost reader:

“Let us dream, as a single human family, as fellow travellers sharing the same flesh, as children of the same earth which is our common home, each of us bringing the richness of his or her beliefs and convictions, each of us with his or her own voice, brothers and sisters all.”

Perhaps the pope’s account was hacked, but as the sentiment expressed is quite typical, I’m inclined to think it was genuine. My correspondent points to what we might call “the problem”:

“This is straightforward, clear apostasy — not on one particular point of doctrine, but on the entire Gospel and Magisterium.”

Yet it is only one dose of the poison that is administered hourly, not only from the Vatican, and not only from Church functionaries around the world. And when prominent nominal Catholics, such as Joe Biden, can call faithful believers (alike Christian, Jew, and Muslim) “the dregs of society,” and extol the faithless glib — he doesn’t expect bishops to contradict him. Where are we when he, like the pope in Rome, can even claim to be Catholic, as opposed to dress-up Catholics seeking personal advancement?

Is it any wonder that, according to plausible surveys, clear majorities of Catholics in North America, and in each of the European countries, are willing to accept such things as abortion and euthanasia “on demand”? Or casually acknowledge the redefinition of “family,” from what it had been, time out of mind? Or are further willing to vote for parties that advance these causes? It is not that they are confused by political slogans, although they often are. They have been taught wicked lies by those they think are in authority.

This is more significant than the depravities in which our more liberal clergy are frequently caught. The abortions and suicides might happen anyway, in our present “cancel culture,” or “culture of death”; but turning the moral order upside down, perpetuates the darkness.

How are Christians to behave, when they are radically disinformed about Church teaching? Which is Christ’s teaching, now largely unheard.

Up here in the High Doganate, we are connoisseurs of instant noodles, and other sorts of “junk,” but tending towards the “comfort food” of everybody’s ancestors — who had to work in the fields and needed to pile on the carbohydrates. Of course, they had women to help them, in their daily chores, unlike the “gender-free” modern men, with whom I try not to be acquainted. Women who know how to cook “comfort food” were, previously, a gift of God. (The beer we could brew ourselves.) One could have children with them, and everything. But now I am wandering off topic.

Carbohydrates are the ingredients that make you not feel hungry, and their omission  from trendy diets helps to explain why, fat or thin, the average urban fashionista looks gaunt, as if he might have cancer. Nevertheless, my own consumption of these carbohydrates is not just to avoid that modern look. (See here.) My immediate object is to avoid fainting, when dashing out on the street to get away from the jackhammers. (Vide ante.)

Spaghettini might seem Italy’s answer to the Oriental invasion of instant noodles. It boils very fast. Like other Italian contrivances, however, it was invented long before any question was asked. But inquire, and one learns the Hebrews were doing it long even before the Italians (see Talmud); and the Wicked Paedia prattles about Berbers, so maybe the Romans took it from north Africa, while delending the Carthaginians. I am not a food historian, incidentally. Too, I sometimes break dried spaghetti stricks in two, which is probably against the law in Italy.

What can you make, quickly, with four or fewer ingredients, none of which is meat? I ask this question of myself more often on Fridays; but it is Monday morning, and I am already eager to get away from the jackhammers.

Now, in the High Doganate, we observe white trash principles of ingredient-counting. This is to honour the denizens of the “hurricane alley” down Georgia’s east coast. (That Natted State doesn’t even have a west coast.) Anything that comes out of a can or bottle counts as one ingredient down there, and “oleo” isn’t counted. (They fry like the French, but instead of butter, they use margarine, which is much cheaper.) I love the term, “white trash,” by the way; it is almost as much fun as “Paki.” The former, alone, once gave a nervous breakdown to a colleague on a newspaper I worked for. It leaves the woke, generally, in hysteria and confusion. (From childhood in Lahore, I consider myself a Paki, though not really an authentic one.)

So here I will suggest a Catholicized version of instant noodles. I’ve got it down to four ingredients or less. First, you need a good bottle of tomato pesto, from your Eye-talian grocer: that’s ingredient number one. Then, boil your spaghettini (about three minutes, and drain). Finally, stir together with too much of the pesto, and add generous dollops of (Canadian-manufactured) thick sour cream. My inner Paki demands that I add a wee spoonful of Naga pickle to this, even though it didn’t come from West Paki, rather from Bangladesh. But I am open-minded. Naga peppers are not for white people, I have observed; but hey, neither am I.

In less time than in takes me to put on a bat muzzle, I have an unambiguously delicious meal. That done, let me run into the street, for the jackhammers are starting up again.

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ITEM. I was going to write about the pope’s latest socialist encyclical today, but on mature consideration, perhaps it was best that I didn’t. It is more than 100 pages, and I’m told, incoherent even in the original Spanish. In the olden time, encyclicals were short and to the point, and what made them even better, they were Christian. The popes didn’t obsessively quote themselves, instead of Scripture; or try to avoid the word “Christ.” Good thing I didn’t allow myself to go on and on about this.

I do hope Mister Trump lives, and that he recovers fully. I do not mean this as a nice sentiment, for he is not in my circle of family and friends, so as a personal matter, I couldn’t care less. That’s not what our relationship is about. I try not to form emotional attachments to pixels on my computer screen. I view historical characters through a different lens. I rate them below characters in literature and art, as portals of experience and consciousness. And I put friends and family, even, below God. If this makes me, in the modern tabloid view, mean and insensitive, very well. Let me reach for my Browning.

Trump is, for the moment, historically useful. The moment must, inevitably, pass, but I don’t think he has completed his job yet. Those who say that the man is a vulgar oaf, might as well be complaining about Constantine. He could be “insensitive,” too; and probably worse than Trump who, according to my information, doesn’t drink or swear. (From a bitch who went to CNN, we learn that Melania swears, however.) Well, I was never on the town with Constantine, or for that matter, with another Roman emperor; I have no idea whether any of Geoffrey Monmouth’s stories are true. (He says Constantine was the successor to King Arthur. Other historians beg to differ.)

But the Constantine who founded Constantinople, arrived at a low point in Christian history, and left us at a high point. He broke the logjam of persecution, that had been turning our elites inwards, into hypocrites and heresiarchs. There were many later setbacks, but after Constantine, the lethal “political correctness” of the pagan Roman state was done for. Julian the Apostate could not bring it back. I do hope this Constantine died, after his own Batflu, truly in the bosom of the Church, but as a Christian I must hope this for everybody.

To my mind (and it is the only mind in the High Doganate, at least until tea), the significance of Constantine is not, as received from standard references, that he conquered, or changed the regime of the formerly anti-Christian empire of Rome. It was that by his conquests, he broke the logjam; cut the noose around all Christian enterprise west of Persia. (Or, Sassania, if you insist.) Now, Trump by comparison has a rather more modest task, but he has confronted our own “cancel culture.”

Is Trump a White Supremacist? Am I? Are you, gentle reader? It is worth pausing, to consider briefly what any accuser might mean by this. The conclusion must then be, that he has an ulterior motive, for the question itself is (if I may use current jargon) batshit insane. That is what we’re up against, now — people who will say anything — and we need Trump to do lasting damage to what we laughingly call the “deep state.” He cannot eliminate evil, of course; that’s “above his pay grade.” But at the moment we need him to do as much damage as possible, to an enemy that grows daily more explicitly Satanic.

“My pen is my harp and my lyre; my books [library] are my garden and my orchard.” Perhaps gentle reader has seen this on a sentimental greeting card. I did once, according to my memory; and the compacted, architectural idea of a “lyre garden” sometimes visits me in dreams. The words originate with Yehudah Halevi, poet and physician from the Hebrew “golden age,” in Iberia nearly one thousand years ago.

Today we call it “Muslim Spain”; and there is a great deal of academic bafflegab, dedicated to selling Muslim mediaeval tolerance — simplifying from a history immensely more complex.  The poet himself apparently said that he came from Christian territory, and came of age in Christian Toledo. He died a pilgrim to the Holy Land, then a (Christian) Crusader kingdom, and by legend at a gate of Jerusalem. (Although there is evidence for this, it is of course disputed by the perfessers.) Traces of his life could be reconstructed from worn documents and fragments that were in the genizot of a Cairo synagogue; within a little mountain of records going back to our (misnamed) “Dark Ages.” Materials from that storage house are now archived in universities around the Western world, thanks to the Imperialist 19th century.

It is curious how history is reconstructed. Marvellous things emerge from manuscript “middens” in unexpected places. Thanks to American soldiers, rooting the Taliban out of Afghan caves, treasures of other ancient synagogues were found. Their purchase by Israel’s national library represents a (discreet) avenue of trade between the two countries. The Jewish community in Afghanistan has been much reduced recently, from what it had been over fifteen centuries — to approximately zero. But as I learnt at firsthand in my rambling youff, there are Hebrew letters carved into mountain rock, north-east of Herat. These are relics from the prayers of travelling Jewish merchants, who came this way long-forgotten generations ago.

In his day, Yehudah Halevi also travelled widely. En route to Jerusalem he was encamped in the Jewish quarters of Alexandria and Cairo (then named “Fustat”) for extended periods. One did not need passports or identity cards in those days; only to risk one’s life. There were no trains or aeroplanes, yet with some determination, one could go anywhere that was known, by sea; and everywhere else with a walking stick. We seriously underestimate the cosmopolitanism of all worlds before our “modern” time.

Awakened, once again, by the jackhammers, from a dream in which I was in my lyre garden, I make my homage to this ancient Jewish sage. His works are recited by religious Jews today — much of his oeuvre is mystically religious — yet I know almost nothing about him. What an ill-spent youff!

While I love the man, I must admit Donald Trump is a bit of a savage. I’d hardly let him into a meeting of my Borborygmatic Society, and while I might follow him up a creek on a fishing expedition, my understanding is that he prefers golf. (All the real savages do.) I watched him “debate” a certain “Joe Biden” the other night, and he was true to form. It was a first round knock-out. I know the meejah didn’t tell you this, but I will, being an expert in pugilism, which I studied when I was an adolescent, for a while.

Those Lefties should listen to Michelle Obama. She understands. She said Mr Trump “did it on purpose.” He was rude and abrasive and constantly interrupting. He has a voice and presence that is intimidating, even at Batflu distance, and he wouldn’t give that little Biden fellow an even break. He was also able to out-cancel Biden’s sparring partner, a certain “Chris Wallace,” and make him eat his “rules.”

Not everyone has a taste for this — I certainly don’t — but that’s why Mr Trump is President. The electoral public is unpredictable this year; too many things have happened that they are not used to; but if Trump wins by the landslide I expect (minus corrupt mail-in ballots), it will be because, as usual, electors vote for the strongman. This has nothing to do with policy, alas. If, for instance, one consults the history of general elections, one will find that the taller candidate almost always wins. (This is why so few women make it to the top.)

One’s commander-in-chief is one’s leader in battle. When in battles, one prefers to win. Life is a battle, get used to it, cissies.

Too, the voters like Trump (the broad majority) because he doesn’t lie, at least not that knowingly. He blusters. He says things that are simplified until they aren’t quite technically correct, and he repeats these things over and over, but they aren’t exactly lies. Whereas Mr Biden, for instance, has been telling little whoppers, and repeating those, to a complacent meejah, for as long as he has been practising politics, i.e. since before he was born. I noticed his pants igniting repeatedly, because I know some of the facts he was openly contradicting. His curriculum vitae is a string of little fibs. He also makes mistakes, that are egregious, but that’s not against the law for a politician. The point is, Biden lies smoothly, and naturally, like a good Democrat.

Moreover, Trump is an entertaining stand-up comic, and tells lots of good belly-laugh jokes, including self-deprecating ones, that humourless Lefties just can’t understand. But normal people can.

Let this not distract us from the fact that Trump is, overall, brash, crude, and a bully. Putting on my old tinfoil hat as a hack prognosticator, I think that’s why he is going to win, even though the Merican public is in a mood, or perhaps because they are. Few are so foolish as to tell a pollster, or any other “progressive,” that they intend to vote Republican — there are costs involved — but there you go. I don’t believe the polls any more than I believe the Batflu numbers. (I do believe dead people are dead, however.)

Why would Modern Man believe in angels? He does, of course, but only in a “poetical” way. He will not let his reason (and he does have some) close to this topic, and will go to the wall before he will confront it. This, paradoxically, might be seen as a favour to the saintly angels, who have this much in common with the fallen ones, that they don’t like to make a scene in public. They are content to be “influencers,” as it were.

This Modern Man can believe in devils, in a less poetical way, but needs to be in a spitting rage first.

In fits of harmlessness, he will believe in God. This is because anyone’s reason, once indulged, will tell him that the “existence of God” is irrefutable. But we draw the line at angels. From the moment they appear, we fear that we are being corruptly lured into “organized religion.” We might have to do inconvenient things, such as kneel.

And this is a paradox, for we are comfortable with everything else being organized. The bureaucracies we form are entirely angel-free.

Consider Michael, Raphael, Gabriel; and Uriel although he isn’t named in the Bible. Their presence isn’t vague. The prophets of the New Testament have no trouble with them, but neither did the prophets of the Old. Jews and Muslims greet them freely, and Christians too, of course; but Modern Man has issues. Yes, he will take them, but only as “figures of speech.”

As Wallace Stevens said, “Philosophy is the official view of Being. … Poetry is the unofficial view.”

My father, who was my model for the “good pagan” (a phrase I lift from Rosalind Murray, 1939), did not object to angels in the least. But he did not accept them in the way Thomas Aquinas did — as beings who will have to be carefully thought through. Papa did accept them as beings, however, until, I think, on his deathbed, he accepted them whole. For he was clutching a Benedict Cross, and that helps.

Today, we celebrate the Feast of Saint Michael, “and all angels.” Gabriel and Raphael used to have their own prominent Feasts, but the Church for Modern Man never tries to push it. We get them all over with in the one Mass. Convention, at least English-speaking convention, still almost accepts today’s Michaelmas as the beginning of term. I think it still is, in places like Oxford.

For all we know, we’ll need some angels going forward. (“Wokeness” isn’t working out for us.)

At least, I’ll say that, but I am a notorious reactionary. The Sword of Saint Michael is figurative, at some level, and at another level it is not. It is not something to praise, so much as something that Michael wields, with us figuratively cheering him on, or maybe sometimes cooperating. It is wielded against the evil spirits who prowl about the world, seeking the ruin of souls.

Amen.

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ANNIVERSARY. I started the “Essays in Idleness” precisely eight years ago, as part of my transition from a paid hack, to an unpaid one. Perhaps I should wish these Idleposts a happy birthday.

Over the weekend, during a holiday pause in the jackhammering of Castle Maynard, I had the honour of receiving a certain Mr P to tea, up here in the High Doganate. (The workmen are now on my very balconata as I write, armed with machinery to detach my railing.) A long-time reader of my obnoxious columns, when they appeared in a certain newspaper, Mr P assumed that I had perished when I disappeared from its pages. Only recently did he discover that I had not been “cancelled” entirely, and was still squeaking electronically, eight years now since I was removed from my last gigue in the Canadian meejah.

His politics probably don’t match mine, very closely, but I loved him on sight for other reasons.

Mr P is an Old Antonian. Like me, he attended St Anthony’s in Lahore, but as he is one full Metonic cycle older (or enneakaidekaeteris, if you prefer) — he was a live-in pupil before Partition. Whereas, I was a day-boy after that unfortunate event. He fled Pakistan, thus, when it was created (in 1366 of the Mohammedan calendar, 1947 on the Christian one). As they were not Mussulmans, it seemed to his parents to be the right thing to do. For Catholics, other Christians, Jews and Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, and most numerously the Hindus — half the country — were being “ethnically cleansed.” Whole trainloads of them were being massacred, as they attempted to leave.

Some stayed, however, and managed to keep their heads sufficiently down to survive, if not to flourish, in what was once their homeland, no longer under the protection of the British Raj. And yet to this day, Pakistanis exhibit a common heritage with others of the great Subcontinent, and traces of British rule.

I arrived much later, after the bloodied dust had settled, towards the end of the 1950s, as a wee tot whose father was teaching in the College of Art. As Partition was no longer discussed by the elders — in fact it was quite verboten — I was barely aware of it. Children have the luxury of imagining that everything was always as it is now, whether they live in a time of war or peace. That is why they are so conservative.

And while Mr P has never been back — he thinks of himself as coming “from India” — I have revisited the scenes of my childhood several times over the last growing number of decades.

St Anthony’s is utterly transformed. The liturgical desecrations that followed Vatican II reached even to Pakistan, and the Mass is now celebrated in my old school chapel with tabla drums. (In my day, as in Mr P’s, they did it in Latin.) Too, he doesn’t remember any girls about, but by my time there was a girl’s section next door, behind what I remember as a forty-foot wall. (Fortunately, I had a little sister at home, so I was able to learn what they look like. Her Urdu was also more fluent than mine.)

In other respects, nothing really changes, and we could both fondly recall the kites (hovering vultures) swooping down to steal little boy’s lunches as they crossed the principal quad. Clever birds, they could judge from a distance which part of the boy was most immediately edible, and take it from his hands.

The character of the teaching, under Irish Patrician brothers and their hangers-on, had likewise not yet deteriorated. My papa sent me to St Anthony’s, even though I wasn’t a Cath-o-lick child, because it had a reputation not only for “toughness,” but for academic excellence. On the former point, I think neither Mr P nor I have much sympathy for the “survivors” of Canada’s Indian “residential schools.” Buncha whiners.

What fascinated me, was Mr P’s (very charming) demeanour. It is like an accent, formed in a far-off age, that you still have as an octogenarian. But it was not the voice, precisely, in his case. Within a minute I could tell he was a genuine Old Antonian, and had the dry humour of the classical Lahori.

This is what a person is: particular. As God intended, a whole species, within himself. He may be like an old tin can, that has been kicked around the world until it has acquired its distinctive shape. (A former girlfriend gave me this compliment.) No ideologist will be able to smooth him out. We are marked by our irreducibly particular histories, and this applies also to those lucky ones who “never went anywhere.” We are NOT “the peeple.” We are more than Black, White, or Orange. We have individual souls.

When an Elizabethan reads the phrase, “Musique of Violenze,” he will be thinking of a parley of string instruments. He might be expecting dances from the Arundel Part-Books, or a galliard by William Byrd. Perhaps a hot little number by Clement Woodcock (c.1540–1589). You know: viols, violas, violins.

Whereas, a wretched, half-demented Modern, like me, sees the word “violenze” and thinks of “mostly peaceful protesters.” And then of the need to lock them in with “often non-violent prison guards.” Or today, I listen to the anti-symphony of jackhammers, ministering to the balconies around Castle Maynard (what I call the larger complex within which the High Doganate is housed). The east side of this building now looks as though it had been facing the port, when Beirut blew up recently. Listening (involuntarily) to these instruments (the jackhammers), I pick up on accidental sequences, that are strangely “musical” — in the inverted way that, for instance, rap music is musical.

I own a little CD player — useless against this racket. (The tea I just poured is jiggling in the cup, and my other pottery rattles as if to confirm an earthquake.) It has been “recommended” that tenants wear earplugs, for the next few months or years, as a supplement to their Batflu muzzles. Who knows? Maybe they would make the difference, between mere skull-cracking, and permanent hearing loss? But CD earphones make no difference at all.

My taste in recorded music tends to be old; so old, that even the recording labels have gone out of business. It is hard to make money, I gather, when the late Steve Jobs is giving all your “product” away for free. To add subtlety to that argument would require a long and rather tedious Idlepost, so I will leave it until after I am dead, myself.

Pressed for time at the moment, inexplicably. But I thought I should do another quick howl, before I had lost the attention of all my gentle readers.

My correspondents must also be patient with me, if I have any left.

____________

FOOTNOTE, at a more optimistic pitch. In the land of the completely deranged, the half-demented man is king. (This may not be true, but it is encouraging.)

My Chief Texas Correspondent forwards an item from the Wall Street Journal. It documents an art exhibition in Houston, that includes a sculpture, carved, or more likely “shaped,” from bat guano. (There is a picture.) Except, though I did not think Texas deficient in bats, this medium had to be supplemented, with seabird droppings.

“Less is more,” was my first reaction. Always competitive, my CTC asks if Toronto can offer anything to match this mechanical-looking, batshit display. I hope to be defeated.

My own nocturnal reveries, last night, were on a topic not unrelated. I dreamt of Greek Terracottas. Specifically, I was haunted once again, by Tanagra figurines once seen in a museum at Alexandria, twenty years ago — until awakened by the jackhammers of the morning.

Terracotta is fired clay. Tanagra is (or was) in Boeotia — the magnificent countryside north-west of Athens. The habit of shaping figures from clay, for all purposes from funerary to toys, is of great antiquity, and followed the Greeks wherever they travelled. Then in the 4th century before Christ, Tanagra’s craftsmen became dominant in this trade. Their painted, clay, sculptural maquettes (most between four and eight inches high), were a marketing revolution. Whereas, through previous centuries, the figurines were what we instinctively call “archaic,” and brimming (to my eyes) with a religious spirit, a new vogue entered with the Hellenistic age.

Many of these “Tanagras” (I doubt this is a valid plural) depict elegant women, in their himations (light wraps), often under wide suspended hats that look devilishly fashionable. Others depict actors, from Menander and the New Comedy, or their theatrical masks. This is satirical caricature — enlarged expressive mouths and extravagant gestures; professional mourners weeping; naughty slaves and lazy boys. But the ladies show what we call “naturalism,” in its most subtle forms. Beneath the wind-caressed veils of their drapery, exquisitely creased and folded in the clay, one is aware that the women have human bodies. The artists hint at shoulders, waists, thighs. The faces are serene. These are Muses, but fully descended from the heavens.

Gentle reader may have called upon the “Lady in Blue,” at the Louvre in France. It is sure to be on the Internet. It still has faded colouring and gilding, and sweeps your head away. Those I examined in Alexandria were down to the clay potter’s slip with, at most, tiny flecks of paint adhering. But they were still devastating.

The city itself — long has it obsessed me — was Queen in its era. In several ways it is the first modern city, though without all our machines. The Ptolemies invented the academic, and sub-academic “cultures.” The Egyptian Quarter was our first ethnic slum. (The city was in the Greek linguistic realm; always “Alexandria-by-Egypt.”) Below the surface of what is now a sprawling Islamic conurbation, lie the jagged ruins of what once became the Roman “second city” — Cleopatra’s town, larger in population than Eternal Rome at times. It was that Empire’s principal wheat port, as Egypt was its bread basket. It offered thrilling juxtapositions of poverty and wealth.

Scrambled in the subterranean mush lies, reputedly, the tomb of Alexander the Great. The Pharos — the vertiginous skyscraper lighthouse, wonder of the world — still exists but only as a stub, no longer even an Ottoman fortress. An earthquake tumbled it; sea levels around it rose and fell. The Library of Alexandria was burnt out more than once; pylons were driven through what may have been its buried foundations, for a sparkling, UN-funded “New Library” — immense, but without books.

These ladies from that Hellenistic world — like stunning runway models from Paris, now twenty-four centuries in the grave. They stand at the beginning of our adventure in naturalism (between the “Sun Gate” and the “Moon Gate”); and at the rebirth we tumbled into, as the ancient gods were dying, or losing their credibility. As it were, we were being “reborn,” as orphans.

But then the jackhammers return, and even our latest irreligion is smashed and crushed to gravel.

The best love story I have gleaned from a correspondent, was about his marriage, nearly seventy years ago. He was fifteen at the time, and his bride was fourteen. Well, almost fourteen; for even in those days — in the rural hick Midwest — she had to exaggerate slightly. Neither was “properly” schooled. They met as near neighbours (only a few miles between their family homesteads). But he was already a man of means; had been working a couple of years with “beeves.” I bet he wasn’t a vegetarian.

I don’t give names or addresses of gentle readers — unless of course they are Democrats or Liberals — but lets call this man Fred. How he came to be reading the Essays in Idleness, might also be our little secret, except I will tell it. He reads Christian websites, sometimes, and one thing led to another. I noticed that he wrote English well, and could spell; there was a quote from Shakespeare.

Decidedly, the sort of character whom any progressive would smear on contact. Indeed, I tested this supposition by repeating Fred’s story to one of my more progressive friends (a schoolteacher) — who wrinkled his nose, and asked if Fred is “a Catholic or a pedo,” with that hard bigotry that is always looking for a soft target.

He isn’t Catholic, but I said he was. (I meant it with a small “c.”) Being misinformed gives schoolteachers pleasure, and who was I to deny this to the grim little fellow, childless and three times divorced?

Fred had, I think, nine children, plus two or three more (locals) by adoption. He and his wife were disappointed by the total, but as their grandchildren may be counted in the dozens, they have made it up. They were, by his account, very happy, still living in the house he inherited, though now somewhat retired from his beeves. One never retires, completely, he explained, the animals make such good company. But the people are even better, out there, and let us not forget the books. Both he and his wife learnt to read, young, and were avid consumers of novels, together, until recently, when she died.

“Just sitting quietly, on the verandah, with your books and each other, and maybe a beer and a pipe, is God’s plan for the early evening, and the sunset of your life.” Grandkids will be somewhere, playing in the dirt.

Fred’s philosophy of marriage is, to marry your childhood crush. She should be pretty, but not too much, or she might grow vain. The important thing is, she should laugh at your jokes, and know how to cook. His wife was a fabulous cook, and taught all his daughters. Good plain wonderful “comfort food,” everything turned just so. The years pass, and you grow together, “in the Christian way.” And if you lose her, it is only for a time. Fortunately his kids would never put him in a nursing home, which is truly “the end.”

He has one son who turned out bad, however. Went off to the city (a large town, by contemporary standards), and fell in with troublesome sorts. Became a lawyer. Didn’t marry until he was thirty, and then just abused the woman until she left; she was a fool for marrying him. He’d already wasted ten years “dating” one victim or another. No woman was good enough for him: he’d been to a college. Godless, he specialized in evicting people.

Every good-sized family produces a black sheep, unless it doesn’t. Or often the black sheep is an only child — spoilt rotten. But he met an only child once, who was a saint. “You get what you get.” And anyway, you have to love them, you don’t have a choice.

There are two candidates for President of a neighbouring country, which will have a general election in six weeks and one day. They are, “Trump,” and “Not Trump,” respectively. There is tremendous enthusiasm for both candidates, though only one of them is a living biological entity. There may be others running — a rumour says one of them is named “Joe Biden” — but no one cares about the “also rans.”

Should “Trump” be elected, there will be violence and chaos. Should “Not Trump” be selected instead, there will be chaos and violence. This will increase the longer it takes to reach a definitive result, which, given the existence of some tens of millions of eminently disputable “mail-in” ballots, could take several years. The candidate, “Not Trump,” has been indicating that he will not accept the result if he loses. He accuses the other candidate, “Trump” (who is incidentally the incumbent), of secretly intending the same, and says the military should be ready to remove him. This used to be called, “high treason.”

While one candidate is associated with numerous specific policies, the other is quite vague. This may have something to do with his not really existing — except in the imaginations of the deranged. The opposite of what “Trump” says or has been doing, is promised, but this produces policies that cannot be coherent. Were I a Merican elector, I might vote for the negation of a negation, on the principle that two negatives makes a positive. I would describe myself as “Not ‘Not Trump’.”

This, while I oppose almost all of “Trump’s” policies — although not necessarily in their contexts. For instance, even I would call the zapper robots, on a criminal mob; possibly with even more alacrity. However, I wouldn’t be so willing to spread cash around, to strangers.

Frankly, I think “Trump” is a spendthrift liberal, and dangerous because he’s a fairly honest man. While I’m not an opponent of the rule of law, which he seems to favour, he accepts massive intervention by the state, which has been consistently counter-productive, not only recently, but through all time. I would recommend that “Trump” take counselling from me, on how to do nothing. A great deal of trouble is created by politicians, who feel neurotically compelled to take action of some sort, after foolishly listening to “do something” counsellors.

But even were he to come round, I fear he has done too much already, and thus inspired his opponents to do the opposite, to our perdition. Let us take the “Batflu crisis” as an isolated example. His predecessor had much more success with Red Chinese viruses by doing almost nothing about them. It is seldom that I praise Mr Barack Hussein Obama, so delight in the opportunity to make exceptions. I admire him for many things he didn’t do; or was stopped from doing. Though from the things he did, he made “Trump” inevitable.

I have many friends in the Natted States, and feel sorry for them. But not, perhaps, as much as I feel sorry for myself, just having to watch, and in view of the fact that we have poorly defended borders. I cannot currently foresee that any of this will end well. I’m almost beyond blaming individuals, or even democracy, which gave vast hordes of irresponsible people not only the right to vote, but encouraged them to try it.

By the time this is over — probably a long time off — many even of them may wish to return to the only political system that works. I refer, of course, to hereditary monarchy. Yet even that fails, sometimes, when nature provides us with a monster, and his aides are unable to contrive a riding accident for him. For symbolic individuals can be useful, but we also need a stable, theocratic order, in which morality may be loose or tight, but what it is won’t be frivolously debated.

Perhaps this is enough for a short Idlepost.