Lady Marchmain

More Hudson River School

Ernest Lawson,Springtime on the Harlem River

Ho hum.

Divorce squabbles are worse than marital ones. Take it from me.  Each partner wants to solve the Great Injustice--in his own mind, anyway. 
And the acrimony is much, much worse.  There's more stress when you are living a lie and can't get out of it because of your masochism, codependence, pride, whatever. And when you have to give a sizeable chunk of change to the person you most hate in the world (me) it is positively infuriating--I can hear the blood vessels bursting all the way in Ohio.

I'd rather live by myself anyway. I love my temporary little house.

God help them, poor things. My therapist told me that when one gets older one reaches a stage called "integration"  when one looks back on life and comes to some conclusion about whether or not one was the person one wanted to be. Hee hee hee.

The Scholars

 Bald heads, forgetful of their sins,
 Old, learned, respectable bald heads
 Edit and annotate the lines
 That young men, tossing on their beds,
 Rhymed out in love's despair
 To flatter beauty's ignorant ear.

 All shuffle there, all cough in ink;
 All wear the carpet with their shoes;
 All think what other people think;
 All know the man their neighbour knows.
 Lord, what would they say
 Did their Catullus walk their way?

-- William Butler Yeats

If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.
Gilbert K Chesterton

It's like May already  here. And this town is so relaxing.  

I left grad school because I hate,hate,hate calling non-physicians "Dr",  the students treated me as if I were invisible, too much of a Christendom atmosphere (a fascistic Catholic college in Va)(things like skirt length police) The reading assigned is ridiculous--too too much too soon--The teachers are inaccessible--  that being said I had  a wonderful Aristotle professor who really should be a SJC,he is so good.

I don't like reading Greeks without being able to use my Greek and Greek Math--Oh well. Mostly it was the atmosphere-- as friendly as one was to other students the more futile it was.  There were of course some very nice kids--very very nice.

Anyway, I am almost  phobic about reading now. I met a guy with a PhD once who never read a book in the 20 years after he got his doctorate because of the  huge quantity of books he had to read in school. Besides,anyone who had Ton MacDonald will remember the delightfully slow way we read passages, and the deeper understanding we got because of that.
And  he listened to us, too.

Anyway I am a terrible elitist--

 

new quotes

If one does away with the fact of the Resurrection, one also does away with the Cross, for both stand and fall together, and one would then have to find a new center for the whole message of the gospel.

Hans Urs von Balthasar

The (Christian) "doctrines" are translations into our concepts and ideas of that which God has already expressed in language more adequate, namely the actual incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection”

C.S. Lewis quotes ( Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live (John 11:25).” “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (1 Peter 1:3).”

Solitary Easter

Happy Easter everyone.  The incontrovertible and undeniable fact of the resurrection is here once again, and there is no getting away from it. I have trouble, in my scrupulous soul, recognizing that its supposed to happen to me as well.  I always fall into the trap of thinking I am  somehow capable of redeemng myself, thus sparing
God the enormous trouble.  So today, in my helplessness, I am trying not to take hold of the reigns and drive the whole thing off the track.

Depressives like me think we caused our own depression and are responsible for ridding ourselves of it. No dice, however. And Easter is hard for me, not because of the Easter part,but because it is all too good to be true when you're down here in the mud. But it is,anyway,too good. It will all be a surprise, a magnificent surprise. I read a lot about the Second  Coming and the redemption of the created world, which seems to be the whole point of the thing. Remember Heaven,  Christians, and keep your eyes on the prize,not on making some little ersazt paradise on earth. This is the world of the perishables.

On that odd note....