I’ve been having tons of fun with my 3-D Home Architect program which I found at the local thrift shop for 50 cents. That’s the same thrift shop the WT assures me will have blue jeans my size – “We’ll make a day of it.” I’ve said it before: Were it not for thrift shops, garage sales, and church rummage sales I’d be naked in an empty house. But I have trouble dressing myself. Clothing is so… uninteresting?

 

To the grubby little city to the south today – incense and hair cuts. This will make it two weeks in a row I’ve visited shopping malls, but the grubby little’s shopping mall isn’t really much of one. That’s where one can get a hair cut on Sunday.

 

There was a song a few years ago – something to do with a spaceship landing and everyone getting hair cuts. Then there’s Beck: “I’ve got a devil’s hair cut in my mind.” Right, chief.

 

I like mine short – hair, that is. Women like me better when it’s long. Well, those who have expressed an opinion seem to agree. But I don’t feel right with long hair. I will never look like Peter Frampton circa 1975. Or any long-haired man. Fabio. Frampton looks better with it short today. I saw a recent picture of him - recently.

 

Jeans, yes – I’m down to one pair. I mean I’m down to one pair that will fit around my recently-acquired girth. I think it’s the result of clean living, not smoking and all. I started putting on weight when I moved into this cavernous place about one year ago. Good Lord, has it been a year?

 

The linoleum looks good, but it’s too big for the space I had in mind. I pulled the geezer’s old roll top desk into my library. Now, don’t get excited – the top’s gone. I’m using it to support my massive laser printer. And the drawers are the new home for my business stuff. I was spreading everything out on my kitchen table before – invoices, estimates, bills, and the like.

 

What does that last paragraph refer to? I’m cleaning out a house down the block here. I take whatever’s usable, discard the rest. It’s been an item here at the White Lodge for a week or two, and a large part of the reason I’ve been too exhausted to write much.

 

Months ago, back in June, I had posted something about the kids’ Nintendo game “Animal Crossing.” My post was really about my attitudes towards money, but I’m reminded again about that game. Here’s a picture to refresh your memory. You can buy things at a store run by a funny-looking squirrel dude named Nook and put them in your house. I’m a little like that in my life. This place is getting filled up with pretty things, things I fancy, junk that no one else wants. Old things.

 

 

Church last night. The WT agreed to take a Spanish girl to church today. She wasn’t happy about it. She thinks that the only reason people go to church is to look good in front of other people. I explained that’s not why I go. I think the conversation that followed qualified as a quarrel. I would that it were a particular kind of quarrel, but it wasn’t. It was comfortable, though. It was like being married, just for a moment.

 

It’s my boys who are getting hair cuts today. I don’t need one.

 

Last night, listening to Robert Fripp “Exposure” in the car, I felt stoned. Why? I remember driving around with my friends listening to that. The winter air isn’t really that bad. I’ve seen 45 winters. Living here in the Northeast most of my life has been spent in winter-like weather, ‘specially now I’m up here. I opened the window, let the crisp air blow in, listening to “Breathless,” which is really more a ‘lost’ King Crimson piece, from that album. I was very nostalgic, all teary and everything, but in a good way. We used to just drive around, smoke weed, listening to “Exposure.” There was no future yet. There was nothing but future, but there was no future for us, for me – can I speak for my friends, wherever they are?

 

 

So, what happens at mass is the entire history of humanity played out in a timeless way, no future, no past, only… reality. That’s what I see. No, it isn’t my opinion; it’s my experience. Just as my car is red is not my opinion. I see a red car. Last night it was every car I’ve ever been in, all kinds of colors. My friend had an Apollo. Once I was driving a ’73 Malibu on the Outerbridge Crossing and the hood flew open. Car full of people. That was a time. With that same car one night we got stuck on the BQE, right on the blind turn, elevated highway. You could look into people’s windows, see what kinds of things they had in there, watch them living.

 

I'm watched. There's someone watching me live, someone who sees the big picture that I can't see, past and future in a single moment. And I was created by Him. Not like my fictions, who reveal themselves to me almost as if they were real people - I don't know what they're going to do. I can't control them, even though I created them. Sometimes I hear "Exposure" and I think about how there is no roof on the house, no sky above, and I am out here on the surface where every bird of prey can see me. I have no secrets.

 

I need more coffee, and then I’ll be off. Happy day to you.

You need not attempt to shake off or to banter off Romance. It is an evil you will never get rid of to the end of your days. It is a part of yourself ... of your soul. Age will only mellow it a little, and give it a holier tone.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

 

I want to change the subject. It’s been a few days since I’ve written anything, not just posted, collecting thoughts. In order to write I must have a few experiences to write about. My coffee is particularly good this morning. That may just have to do.

 

There is a movement afoot to have me impeached as president of the American Misogynist Society, Northeast Chapter. You know I hate writing about politics, though, preferring to write about the principles behind them. Nothing is perfect (except this coffee) when it comes to the way we collectively behave ourselves – the shove and push of all that free will, the power, the politeness. A friend of mine won his state Supreme Court seat on Tuesday. Woolly bully for him. More than a few would-be felons are pleased that he will no longer preside over the local court.

 

I wanted to write something about law, crime and punishment. I’m not a Law and Order conservative but a libertarian one. Yes, that means I take positions far from mainstream when it comes to society’s role in exacting consequences for human daffiness. One can no sooner enforce a ban on stupidity than regulate the process of falling in love, though we seem bent on begging all sorts of Authorities other than God to guide us, protect us from ourselves and from each other.

 

And speaking of Romance, that devil never sleeps. While I dream he does calisthenics to prepare for our next bout. And though he’s in better shape than I am, he is growing older too. My son was showing me you-tube-style videos yesterday depicting Darth Vader falling for a diminutive feminine creature much like himself, strange mask, armor, cape, and all, only pink. I’ve been feeling a little like various Star Wars characters lately. Not long ago I was convinced that I was becoming Jaba the Hut, and now I relate to Darth Vader falling in love. Well, I’m not – but if I were…

 

Just as long I never begin channeling Carrie Fischer we’re all good, right?

 

I woke up the other morning the father of two teenagers. Being the father of one teenager was bad enough, but being the father of two teenagers is just excessive. I know it was inevitable if I managed to not die year after year. Oh, what does it all mean?

 

Somehow I became involved in a conversation with a young woman I barely know telling me she wanted to have a baby before she grew too old. I said, “Well, I can help you there but it’ll cost you. It’s a complicated process.” I know I’m bad. In fact, it would cost me a great deal more. Once I adopted a kitten in order to impress a barmaid. There are lessons hard learned in this life: Never embark on a potentially 20-year relationship with any creature possessing claw and tooth in order to win the favor of a girl whose name you will forget.

 

Coffee’s gone. My work invites me lovingly to let the day begin – still without a subject.

 

My icon image never changes, by the way – that Blake. It reminds me that there is nothing I can write about – that is, if I had anything to write about this morning – that I wouldn’t want God to read. I want Him to be directly and actively involved in my thoughts, whatever they may be, and in our communication with one another, so that we may be guided and protected by the only real Authority there is. I respect no other authority, but I have been known to be polite and even to forbear from criticism because I also have my frailties, mellow as they may be.   

 

Do you hear “Vegetable Man” – Pink Floyd? It’s very funny.

 

Fibber and Molly will be along later. I’ve been doing a house clean-out for a fellow who has moved into an old folks’ home. I would call it “assisted living facility,” but for some reason I can’t say it without spitting. I want to keep the screen clean. But the geezer moved into the house in 1945, with his wife. She predeceased him by quite a few years. They raised a family there. Underneath a carpet yesterday I found a wonderfully preserved piece of area linoleum. I thought of Harlow Wilcox and Johnson’s Glo-Kote. I know that couple listened to that program and used that product. And that program was still running, although Pet Milk was sponsoring it by then, when they installed the carpet over the perfect linoleum.

 

Yes, I’ll just be taking that. I’ve got the perfect place for it.

 

Here’s the definition of the word “myth” from Webster’s On-line Dictionary. The most popular usage seems to be 2,b: an unfounded or false notion. That’s what is busted in “Mythbusters.” Apparently, they also verify some notions, proving they are not false.

 

But I’ve had enough TV for the year now. My ex-wife’s family watch an awful lot of it! (MSWord is prompting me to treat the word “family” as singular in that sentence, making it “watches,” but my style book tells me family is plural in this case.)

 

Myth:  

 

Function: noun

Etymology: Greek mythos

Date: 1830

 

1 a: a usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon b: parable, allegory

 

2 a: a popular belief or tradition that has grown up around something or someone; especially : one embodying the ideals and institutions of a society or segment of society

b: an unfounded or false notion

 

3: a person or thing having only an imaginary or unverifiable existence

 

4: the whole body of myths

 

I’ve been told that my perspectives are unique. I think that’s bloody obvious. Of course they are! I’m an individualization of Divine Substance, just as you are. But I understand by that statement what they mean is my perspectives are not normal. That may also be true. Definition 2,b does not occur to me when I think the word “myth.” Definition 1,a and 1.b is what first springs to mind. In the last post I wrote that a myth is more true than a factual account, and that it is the purpose of a myth to express a truth that cannot be expressed (or as well expressed) in a non-allegorical way.

 

An excellent example of using allegory to express the truth of something is the parables of Jesus. One might even say they are the perfect example. These parables – of which most of us can remember at least a few, whether we are religious or not – are the continuation and fulfillment of Biblical wisdom.

 

The entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is about Christ. The people who put the Bible together in the Fourth Century were Christians, after all. They would hardly have a non Christian document in their book of law.

 

On one of the few occasions I visited Question Stream I noticed the question “Why did the Roman Catholic church change the day of the Sabbath?” I found this extremely amusing because the answer is contained in the question. Genesis establishes the Sabbath Day as the seventh day; Exodus institutes it as such. A Roman would hardly decide to disobey God and place the Sabbath on the sixth day of his calendar.

 

Oh, my thoughts are all over the place this morning. But the Creation Story in Genesis was not original; it did not spring into existence when the Book was written. The story of God who is beyond space and time creating something out of nothing, the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden (or some derivation thereof), and many other particulars, existed long before the Book of Genesis was written down. The Creation Story one may easily imagine was the first story ever told, and people had been telling it long before Abram had his revelation of the one God, rebuked the pagan decadence of his own people, and fled into the desert, thus beginning the epic adventure of our culture.

 

Father Abraham, you may recall, came from a place called Ur. Every time members of his family decided to go looking for a wife God instructed them through Abraham to go back to Ur to find one. There were no Jewish people yet; they were being made right there and then. A race of people was being quite purposely created. Why? To provide a body for the Christ. The Chosen People were chosen for that purpose. There were other people in the world – of course there were. We can read all sorts of wonderful historical and allegorical stories about them in the version of the Babylonian Creation Story contained in Genesis. We can also read about them in non canonical histories. But the people who would become the Israelites after Jacob – the people we know as the Jews – were chosen by God to fulfill the greatest purpose in the history of the world, to fulfill the Word of God in the Person of Jesus Christ. As the whole of the Bible is the inspired Word of God the Person of Jesus is what it’s about.

 

John explains this rather well to begin his Gospel. The Gospel According to John is very ambitious. Instead of beginning with the start of the earthly ministry of Jesus, or with the birth of Jesus, he begins his Gospel at the beginning of Time. If he is indeed the same John who wrote Revelation it is easy to see how it is a continuation of the Gospel story.

 

Anyhooooooooooo, I know there’s an awful lot in what I just wrote for you to pick at, but this is a morning cobweb post. I just write whatever’s on my mind and let the games begin.

 

But, if I were to say that the Creation Story is a “myth,” I want you to understand that I am not saying it is untrue. I am saying precisely the opposite – that it is a whole rather than a half truth. I believe Genesis was written by God, by human hands inspired by God. As such, it is written in language which can be understood for all time ever, not merely in the historical context of the age in which it was written. That is to say, if it is written by God to Whom time is both limitless and non-existent, Who knows us better than we know our own selves, then it is written in a way we will always be able to understand regardless of whatever else we may also understand. (Or not, as the case may be.) In other words, the truth it contains is much larger – “more true,” as I’ve said – than can be expressed in any other way.

 

I don’t think God ever said anything that can only be understood in an historical context, for if history is forgotten by the children of God, and all our science and technology, our philosophies blown away like sand, the Bible will still be His Word, every bit as true as ever. If all of humanity except for a handful were wiped out, and many millennia later their descendants discovered the Bible, they must be able to understand what it contains. They could build a civilization on it. That would make an interesting Science Fiction story. It’s probably been done.

 

Do you think it’s been done?

 

So perhaps if I were to say instead the Bible contains mythological elements you would be more comfortable with the idea. Certainly, the parables of Christ are allegorical tales which He uses to teach us something about truth. People don’t seem to have any problem accepting that, but perhaps they haven’t quite made the connection. By teaching in parables Christ was continuing and fulfilling the tradition and manner of Scripture, as everything else about Christ must do, for all of Scripture is fulfilled in Him.

 

I can’t wait to get my hands on that linoleum. This afternoon I’ll be going over there with the White Tornado. I’m hoping we can get it through the door without cracking it.

 

Pray for me. I could use the prayers, and you could use the practice. 

When the Talking Heads released their album “Fear of Music” I was in my first (and only) year of college. That was in ’79, the same year I opened my first checking account. I still sometimes write 1979 on my checks. (cheques? When was that dumbed down – I mean, simplified?) The album contained two songs about life on the road, on tour, in a band: “Cities,” and “Life During Wartime.” I don’t know why that makes me think about mythology, but it does.

 

In “Cities” the band’s singer and lyricist David Byrne croons in his voice-breaking way, “Do I smell? – I smell home cooking. It’s only the river, It’s only the river.” And the refrain is: “Find a city – Find myself a city to live in.”

 

That was a good album. It helped me to come to the realization that I could write a song. What Byrne was doing in those days was new to me. He wrote about images, then freely associated. For instance, London is a foggy city so dry ice suggested itself to his mind. On-stage smoke machines used dry ice. He sang, “Look over there – a dry ice factory. Good place to get some thinking done.” None of his references were too oblique to follow, but a few of them were a bit of a stretch.

 

I wanted to write like that because it was modern, I thought. I arrived with “Nefar and Fenrocia,” my epic story about another world. The world I wrote about was never the same world I drank my coffee in. I hated “Nefar and Fenrocia” suddenly. But others loved it. They were sick of students trying to write like John Cheever. Along I come, my major influences being H.P. Lovecraft, Mervyn Peake, and John Barth believe it or not. Well, I had a professor who dubbed me “the mythmaker.” He said I wrote mythologies. “The Lord of the Rings” by J.R.R. Tolkein is a mythological story. In a similar way I wrote mythological stories.

 

The whole idea of a mythology is to express the truth about something which cannot be as well expressed in any other way. When we think of the word “myth” today we are usually thinking of it in a strictly materialistic sense. I had the pleasure (?) of watching a television program on Sunday called “Mythbusters” on the Discovery Channel. The Discovery Channel I have discovered, by the way, discovers absolutely nothing. Of course the definition of the word “myth” is the strictly materialist one on the program “Mythbusters.” As the name implies, a recurring cast of characters, or show hosts, put to the test certain myths – like, Can you get pregnant by washing your underwear along with your boyfriend’s? OK, that’s an absurd example.

 

Hey, wait a minute – can you?

 

But you readers are the TV watchers. You can tell me what that program is about. What I got from watching it was that we (generally-speaking, the “we” being the culture) equate a myth with a lie. A myth is something untrue. There was no such person as Zeus, the Greek god who ruled over Mount Olympus. Greek mythology is factually untrue. We know that. But what we have forgotten is that there is a great deal more to truth than mere facts.

 

“Myth” is a Greek word. Certainly the mass of ancient Greeks believed their mythologies to be factual accounts if they gave any thought to it at all, but they still called them “myths.” Ancient people didn’t give a monkey’s ass about factual accounts of anything. Their thought paradigm was different than ours is. The histories they learned were the expressions and the foundations of a belief which could not be adequately expressed in a straightforward re-telling of factual events. They also made ripping good stories.

 

The White Lodge is all about “mythologizing” my personal life, my experiences, my memories. Of course there was never any person named Sister Midnight. Who cares? My mythological retelling of events associated with the person or persons who inspired the character of Sister Midnight expresses not merely factual truth but the real truth. By that I mean the truth of a thing is never wholly material. Our parent culture (to differentiate it from our “popular” culture) is founded on a whole rather than a half truth. We also have mythologies which express the truth transcending the material world of atoms and molecules, and our history is made of these – that is, our collective soul is there expressed. Hence Art, hence Music, hence Poetry, hence… culture. There is no such thing as a strictly materialistic culture. Such a thing would be a non-culture.

 

And that is precisely what we see on television, or at least on the Discovery Channel.

 

But in college – in my first year which I stretched into four or five by simply hanging around without thereafter taking any classes – I wanted to negate, forget, and disavow the title of “mythmaker.” I wanted to write about the truth. I had no idea I already was.

 

What does that have to do with the Talking Heads? Absolutely nothing! It’s a free association.

 

Happy day to you.