I know I have written about the ice storm of whatever year it was when I was young, how it rained – or iced – all night long and we slept on the floor in front of the fireplace. Dad was listening to weather reports on his battery powered short wave radio. Throughout the night the neighbors arrived to huddle with us round our fire. In the morning there was a layer of ice in the toilet. The sun came out. We found that only the cellar door would open for us, under the shelter of the back porch as it was, and with screwdrivers and chisels we managed in time to cut through the inches thick layer which coated the other doors. The inches thick layer covered the trees, every branch and twig. And, as there had been so far very little snow, the grass was still green, encased in slippery ice beneath our feet. It was almost impossible to walk, and our house stood on the top of a very steep hill overlooking the roofs of our neighbors’ houses, stacked like a honeycomb against the slope so that all had a view of the Bay. We looked down on the ice-covered rooftops, and over the sun shimmering prism of the treetops. The Bay was calm, blue, and not a bird flew, nor was there any sound except made by our profane voices as we gasped in wonder and struggled to find the missing words in vain.

 

With the sun shining we emerged, blinking, into Fairyland. That was the scene as I saw it. But, there was no electric power for two weeks thereafter. There were countless injuries, a few deaths. There was much worry, lost income. It was the sort of thing the radio would talk about. Yet, I knew nothing of that. I didn’t care one bit or wit. School was closed for nearly the duration, and the ice storm had seemed to happen solely for the purpose of creating this memory so that I might recount it for you today. And now listen to me: The calamities, disasters, and horrors of our grown-up fear-filled lives are sometimes the wonderful visions of Fairyland for the fearless. And children, not yet having been trained fully in the art of anxiety, may have that vision we have lost with our feet already buried in the graves we have dug with our numerous worries.

 

My grandparents were one of ten, one of thirteen, one of twenty. Their brothers and sisters died at birth, died in infancy, or were hanged by the British when they were teens. And now, when I was a child, those who remained were going, one by one, to join them. Coffin after coffin appeared before me, corpus after corpus, and each one I would be required to kiss. Grandma held on into my grown-up life, lived to be 95, but most of her generation made the crossing in their 60’s and 70’s – at least in my family. I remember the funeral masses quite fondly. They were a Fairyland too. Even now I smell the myrrh, though none is burning except in my thoughts.

 

When I look at the world I came from I see reality. When I look at the world I find myself trapped in today I see a relentless nightmare populated by terrified half-persons who wander blindly about in delirium, fearful of everything living, who spend their fruitless lives collecting garbage and scavenging through piles of things already dead for trinkets and baubles. I don’t know what they see with their eyes and deem it goodness. With my eyes I see sacks of decaying flesh in filthy rags rummaging through the muck, and deem it badness.

 

So, the ice - somewhere behind the ice is where I long to be. The world ends every single blessed day and yet there is never any cause for fear. Fairyland is now, or it will never be.   

My apologies if I have been abrupt in comment replies. Just to provide you with a window into the real lives of this blog’s authors, the preceding post which as you can see is merely a project playlist song controller was supposed to be accompanied – or to provide the accompaniment for – some writing. I never got to it because I am in a family situation, or a domestic situation, for the first time in several years. There are a few skills of time management I seem to need to re-learn. I have no idea how those of you who have families at home manage to write a blog.

 

Tonight it’s only Squabbler and me.

 

Oh and that music is King Crimson, which might qualify for the Saturday Night Blog Fever if that’s still going. I enjoyed that - posting a different artist every week, and maybe writing something about them. But when I learned how to embed music in the page I became quickly dissatisfied with having music only on Saturday. My son discovered project playlist. I started keeping a random song selection widget on the page featuring various artists so that it could be heard at all times. Perhaps it’s not quite so special anymore having a blog that can sing. But over time I would begin to forget to post music on Saturday because there was already music in the blog playing continuously.

 

But tonight I happen to have a specific artist playing. King Crimson. My experience has been that people either love ‘em or hate ‘em. And that’s from among those who have even heard of them. I’ve heard it called “head music.” The chances are someone calls it head music doesn’t care for it.

 

The other night I was listening to the Mahavishnu Orchestra, “Visions of the Emerald Beyond. My son was in here listening to Doctor Steele or Scroobius Pip, or whoever, and I let out with a “Holy Schmack! There’s nobody in the world plays this hard anymore!” I implored him to come in and groove.

 

There was in those days what was called “fusion” – jazz fusion, you know? Miles Davis had been getting into African music since 1949. It’s not like it was new. It’s marketing. Musicians will do what they want to do. The people who sell their records have to come up with a name for it.

 

So I broke out my Michael White LP, Coltrane’s “Om” – a few others – and just spent the evening putting it in my earholes.

 

But in rock music there was a very lively “fusion” movement too, only it was called “progressive.” Bill Bruford, the drummer for the classically inclined Yes, was a big fan of Mahavishnu drummer Billy Cobham. Bruford jumped over from Yes to King Crimson following the release of Yes, “Close to the Edge” in ’72. He joined Robert Fripp, John Wetton, and Peter Sinfield, and the net was cast for other musicians who didn’t happen to be completely pissed off with them at the time. They made four really good albums. David Cross joined them, with his violin. Crimson is a band that broke up after their first album, “In the Court of the Crimson King,” in ’69. They reunited for a second album the following year, and that established a pattern. Someone would say, “You know, Crimson broke up.”

 

“What - again?”

 

So these songs are all pre-’74, except for “Frame by Frame” because I love Adrian Belew’s plaintive vocals. Sinfield left in ’74, and I’m sorry but I never completely dug the 1980 redux. Belew is one helluva guitar player, but he can’t write a song if it spanked him. (I still buy their albums, of course. I rather like, “The World’s My Oyster Soup Kitchen Floor Wax Museum” off “Construktion of Light.”)

 

It was a glorious time. It was a time for virtuosity. The music was so full of paganini by the mid 70’s that it really couldn’t hold any more. Last year I saw Jan Hammer playing on one of those ‘good morning idiots’ network news programs. Amazing. Depressing. Everything becomes a Coke commercial eventually.

 

Do you remember thinking The Nice was just amazing? ‘Cause they were – first time you heard them. I guess the music marketplace is the boss when all’s said and done, and the “progressive” music had reached and surpassed a point from which there was no place else to go, commercially.   

 

 

 

 

Well, a number of streams have come together in the last few weeks. Different teams of climbers that approached the mountain from different sides, on different paths, have met at the summit. I’ve been rather busy. I’ve taken a step back and I’ve looked at the White Lodge from the outside. It’s cold out here, though. I didn’t want to do it for too long.

 

Last night – or this morning – somebody in a dream answered a question I did not know until then that I had been asking. I write this blog for any number of reasons I might tell myself, chief among these is simply that I must write, that I am driven by a power that is not my own to write. That just means I’m a writer. Writers know. We have secret handshakes and everything. But really I’m looking for where I belong. I’m looking for my people. I’m looking for my culture.

 

I play Fibber and Molly because they remind me of it. I can be very critical of anything that isn’t it. The funny thing is I don’t really know what it is. There is a place where there are people like me. (Yeah, I hear you say it has bars in the windows. Yuck it up - I can wait.) But there is such a place, and there are such people, and there are millions of them – of us.

 

That’s a word I use only for the sake of argument – us. But not in this case. In this case I mean it. I don’t have fellowship with this group over here, or that group over there. To them – to you – I use the word us as a weapon of irony. I’m a little bitter about how I really don’t belong.

 

So, the White Lodge is about me looking for my culture, among the many other things it may be. (And the ‘random thoughts’ category is perfect for this, really.) I told this to a person in my dream this morning. She said: “Your Church is your culture. Duh.”

 

Duh.

 

I suppose it is. From the moment my mother carried me home up until this day I have lived in two worlds. There is always a reality behind the appearance, and sometimes that reality appears. But I know it better than the things I can see with my eyes, or touch, smell, and taste. Well, here I should say that my senses are involved - especially in music – in revealing the place behind the veil. It’s where the doors lead. This place is full of doors, as you know. They change locations; the rooms behind them are infinite. The Squabbler has the keys. All of this contrivance of mine - it has a reason.

 

Where am I at home? Where are my people? Here I am an observer, a critic, a pain in the ass. A friend, maybe. I try to be. I keep hearing that my perspective is so different, that you love my way of looking a things. But I tell you there are millions of people who don’t call me interesting; they call me brother.

 

That’s one question answered. It’s a start, right?

 

I suppose that’s all I have to say at the moment.

I was watching a television program last night in which an interesting point was made. Fr. Mitch Pacwa was the guest on the EWTN program “The Journey Home.” He asked why there isn’t any good news provided by the News media in our culture, and then answered his own question. All the good news is in the commercials.

 

The good news is there’s a sale at Penneys.

 

Often have I wondered why when there is so much more good news than bad news to report the News offers nothing but the bad? In my own life there are many events which occur, the vast majority of these being good. And in our world there are many events which occur, the vast majority of these being good. I have urged you to unplug yourself from these poisonous sources of entertainments which are devoted completely to telling you otherwise, devoted to telling you lies.

 

But the priest’s point had to do with our culture’s materialism. Where do we place our hope? In things. Surely we are extremely prosperous in this country, and that is good. Why are we so prosperous? We are so prosperous because we have a system of governance which, for the most part, does not interfere between us and the eternal and infinite Source of prosperity.

 

Many people around the world remain poor precisely because they live under oppressive governments. I’ve always written here in these pages that we have a moral obligation to free them, an obligation which it is the epitome of selfishness to ignore.

 

I’ve also written about the virtues of austerity. I have said that Christianity requires an austerity and a renunciation. But, by all means let this be our choice to make.

 

The American Revolution is unique among modern revolutions. When people invoke whatever spirits with the word revolution they are usually speaking of a completely Godless affair. Usually, they are among those who still believe that socialism holds some solutions to human difficulties. The Bolshevik Revolution was a Godless one. The French Revolution, while not being technically atheist, was a Godless one – in any event, anti-clerical. The sexual revolution was a Godless one. The American Revolution, however, is contained entirely in the idea that our rights come to us from God, and we are justified to replace any human government which interferes with that.

 

But, getting back to the original point, it is good news indeed that there is a sale at Penneys. I can’t say otherwise. In our culture the commercials are, as Fr. Pacwa pointed out, the only good news. They represent our only hope as a culture. We are reduced to that point of utter despair wherein the last remaining hope is in material things – our comfort, our happiness, our joy derived completely from possessions. I would add to this – and so many of the commercials offer the good news of mood-enhancing and pain relieving drugs – that we have hope from the lavish comfort of our bodies.

 

Our only remaining hope therefore, as a culture, lies in things which fall apart, money which is imaginary, and bodies which rot away entirely. We are bio-degradable. How nice for the Greens. But we place all of our hope in the material world, the chief character of which is death. Our hope is death.

 

This is why our culture is dead.

 

Now, the program also dealt with the point at which our world view began to change, to begin down the path towards the utter rejection of the transcendent/spiritual and subsequent embrace of the material/death. I think most people – many of you too – believe that human history began the day they were born. It didn’t. Religion has become, slowly over several hundreds of years, an entirely private affair. Even among many religious people today there is a prevalent idea that one’s relationship with God is strictly personal, with no connection at all to an objective reality. All objective reality involves things – physical sciences and so forth – while the transcendent reality is utterly subjective. This is a new development.

 

I suppose that one of the reasons I have always been a stranger to the culture, why I do not belong in it, is that I am not of this mindset. I don’t share this world view. To me, my Religion is entirely public. I also know that it represents an objective reality; that God is real, the material world is not. The appearance is not reality. And I’ve always had a very present awareness of my own mortality. Life is eternal. But material life is not – not in its apparent form. In other words, I’m going to die. I think that by having the other world view, the world view of the culture, everything which is important to them dies. I may be putting too fine a point on it, but I have declared such people are already dead.

 

But the good news is there’s a sale at Penneys.

 

Now, so much could I say about the real Good News which isn’t proclaimed in the culture, and which the culture does everything in its demonic power to suppress. (But I’ll take pith over eloquence this morning.) One of the ways it has been so successfully oppressed is by this view which declares it to be a subjective rather than objective reality. But I say there is nothing but objective reality in the person of the risen Christ, and while our goodies and gadgets are very nice, the real Good News remains good for all time. The goodies and gadgets end up in the trash.  

    

The older of my two children has been living here with me this week. This has been giving me something to do, so I’ve been doing it. That’s the explanation for my absence. If his move turns permanent I’ll probably figure out a routine for writing as time goes on. I am beginning to realize how much routine has played a part in creating a desire to write, and how when it is disrupted that desire or inclination vanishes for the most part.

 

Squabs loves the boy and they’ve been spending some time together. It brings him down to earth a bit. So, he’s been kind of busy too. Without his contribution anything I posted would be – well, it wouldn’t be The White Lodge.

 

So!