Eighth House on the Right - On Tradition

Dear reader,

I have just finished a collection of prefaces by J. Frank Dobie and am working on a short biography of Oscar Romero, the martyred El Salvadoran archbishop, as well as The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin, a book required for a humanities class. Thus far it is only vaguely interesting; the Aboriginal concept of Songlines and Dreamings is very interesting, but the story at times feels more like a self-indulgent travelogue (i.e. "I did this, and I went there, and I ate this, and I think this") than anything resembling a true exposition on the Songlines, or even some sort of "meditation" on its meaning, modern application, universality, whatnot.

The Dobie book, on the other hand was endlessly fascinating. Given its format as an anthology of sorts - there's a reason it's called Prefaces - I could overlook its occasional redundancy. But in these pages, whether musings on the western art of Charles Russell and Frederic Remington, or the comparative merits of writers Andy Adams and Eugene Manlove Rhodes, or any other topic under the Western sun, Dobie never fails to evoke some essence of the departed Old West, to bring back, if only fleetingly, the smell of sage and the easy-like drawl of a contented cowboy. His reflections on the importance of the land and the need for historical and generational continuity particularly resonated with me. A quote of his struck me especially: "...carrying on a good tradition requires creative energy and is not accomplished merely through passive inheritance."

I have of late been thinking a great deal of tradition and its importance - my reading has conspired against me in this manner I suppose. The Songlines and the age-old traditions that define the Aboriginal mindset; Dobie's Prefaces and the traditions born of the land, and of the land's men; Michener's Covenant and its Afrikaners strengthened by tradition and history to the point of brittleness; even The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, detailing the decades-long coup-de-grace against the traditional relations between Church and State and the core concept of un foi, une loi, un roi. And more, stretching back even to Kirk's The Conservative Mind.

All of these books, coupled with my own experience, have led me to ponder Tradition and its role in our society, and in societies generally. There are of course the common answers - that tradition acts as a societal "adhesive", if you will; that without tradition and the common story that it entails, communities would not cohere; that, in large part, both individual and societal identities are molded by tradition. But is there anything more? What would lead Dobie to assert that, "carrying on a good tradition requires creative energy and is not accomplished merely through passive inheritance."? Why does Russell Kirk continually sound off about the "Conservative Imagination"? What could possibly be imaginative in the acceptance of an inheritance, passive or otherwise? What could possibly inspire intellectual or spiritual fecundity in the maintenance of a prefabricated patrimony?

More to come.

Yours,
Mr. Windsor

Seventh House on the Right - Something Quick

Dear reader,

I must apologize for the delinquency I have shown in the writing of this blog. A busy schedule, coupled with a half-hearted writer's block, have kept me from posting anything of late. Even now I can't really find anything to say - something of a novelty for me. So instead I'll post a poem that I wrote while in Germany. I'm no poet, but it's the closest thing to hand.

A Sun Now Rising

Beauty like flame fire-like
Burns up the sky:
Conflagrating ball of cool morning
Breaks the sleeping corn into
Long Shadows of the bright dawn.
Slowly we will awaken from the slowed rhythms of sleep, the
Rubato of the wide open mouths, and
Snoring-songs sodden with reckless affectation.
(Eucharist is dust lest it be tasted.)
Too long odorless, our maladies will fill with stench
Our nostrils and gag us to
Remembrance -
gag us to
Remonstrance -
with the blight
That crops close the long shadows
And sneers, and leers to mockery the
Conflagrating ball of cool morning
That fire-like burns up the sky.

Yours,
Mr. Windsor

Sixth House on the Right - On Patriotism

Dear reader,

There is a wall in my house upon which are hung the photographs of a line of unsmiling men. Staring down with dour, black-and-white eyes from their framed perches, they silently watch the comings and goings, the game-playing, the piano-pounding, violin-plucking, song-singing, and, on dark winter nights, the gathering of the Windsor family around the fire. They are my ancestors: Horace Simeon and John Horace, Horace George and Wilbur Cunningham, Wilbur Jr. and my own father are on that wall. It is perhaps a strange thing to do, this memorializing. I haven’t seen it in many other homes; indeed, many are mystified by this odd devotion to men dead and buried long since. But they are my ancestors, and, having grown up under their gaze, it seems not at all odd to me that my conception of patriotism should be so entangled with those patriarchal stares and the love of place, of country, that those stares enshield.

My ancestors were deeply concerned with service to their country and to their local communities. Although they never held prestigious positions or wielded great power, they exemplified the idea of true patriotism as inseparable from dutiful service. When war came, they joined the armed services to defend the freedoms they loved so dearly. When peace returned, they came home determined to cherish and sustain in peacetime what they had defended during time of war. They built roads, farmed, lead local churches, and served on local and regional committees. All of this they did not in anticipation of big parades and ticker tape, but because, in the end, they loved their country in a deep and substantive manner, with the conviction that true freedom breeds responsibility.

This sense of responsibility has been instilled in me, in large part by the example of those ancestors. Their vigor in the defense of their country has been touted, has been held up as a model, by my family. Along with long reading in the history of the United States, it was, and is, through their encouragement and direction that I have come to care so deeply about patriotism and the need to serve and strengthen my country and the ideals upon which it is built.

So often, patriotism is viewed as some sort of disembodied spirit that moves us, with the help of patriotic music and grand and pompous ceremony, to a state of nationalistic fervor that, given rest and a glass of water, will quickly subside. The raising of the flag in the crisp and bright morning, the singing of the anthem at sporting events, the pop and boom of fireworks on Independence Day: these elicit a swelling pride and a thrusting forward of the jaw. But once the flag is raised, the anthem is over, and the last sad embers have fallen from the sky, the excitement and the wonder and the bombastic pride sink back into an ignored dormancy. If this is the form of patriotism we accept as real and substantive, then we are left with a twisted and confused conception of what it is to truly love one’s country. True patriotism is about service. Those unwilling to serve, those who, once the party is over, do nothing to better and advance the interests of their country suffer from a strange illusion, an illusion that, if general among the populace, can only lead to disgrace and a deep-seated apathy.

Yours,
Mr. Windsor

P.S. What's more American than peppermint tea?

Fifth House on the Right - On Writing and the Dangers of Being Victorious

Dear reader,

I should, I suppose, issue some sort of apology to you concerning my failure to post anything of note (anything at all, really) for well over two months. Not that I was suffering from a dearth of material - there was plenty to write about. It was simply a matter of distilling it into prose; and, quite honestly, I was a bit apathetic. Apathy is not conducive to good writing. You can write, certainly, but you cannot write well, you cannot write clearly, lucidly.

Writing clearly is hard even for the most diligent of writers. There are, of course, those moments when the words fall quickly into their proper place, when they fit together like so many puzzle pieces. You sit back and marvel at the rightness of it all, at your own supreme literary mastery. The next paragraph is usually crap. In fact, most of my paragraphs are crap (no comments please). I feel sometimes as if Syntax has marshaled all its forces and arrayed itself in formation, readying itself to summarily slaughter my feeble, shuddering ideas. Sometimes words just written seem to leer their own inadequacy at me. Solution? Don't try to duke it out with syntax. You will lose. But losing isn't so bad - try winning, it's awful.

Winning, historically, is actually a fairly dangerous proposition, and strangely so. Winning is fun, obviously, and a great deal of pleasure is inherent in the whole idea of being victorious. Sometimes you get money, or become famous, or become revered even: one need simply look at Nelson after Trafalgar, Washington after Yorktown, Grant after Appomattox, Wellington after Waterloo. Spoils or no, you still get to rub your opponent's nose in the dirt. And whichever way it comes - being better, smarter, stronger, faster, or dumb-luckier - it's fun to wallow in victory. But therein lies a danger: complacency, for consolidated power often seems like invincible power to the wielder of that selfsame power.

On the flip side of complacency is a chest-pounding ambition that "o'erleaps itself". But examples of that are plentiful enough, I need not expound.

Sometimes, though, the danger isn't complacency or ambition: it's fatigue. Take, for example, the First Battle of Manassas (Bull Run to you Northerners). The Southern forces had won thanks to the arrival of a somewhat tardy Confederate brigade - the Union forces, scared spitless, had hightailed it back to Washington. Disorganized, shocked by the intensity of the fighting, startled into a recognition that war is in fact a real, cruel, bloody thing with no stirring soundtrack, the Confederate forces made no move once the Federals were routed. Thomas Jackson, however, that day benighted with his nom de guerre "Stonewall", pleaded for permission to pursue the Union army and, hopefully, attack them in a stunned and disordered Washington. His request was refused repeatedly by equally stunned Southern commanders whose dreams of quick, bloodless triumph in the name of States' Rights and Southern Belles seemed quashed. They were worn out. Examples of such victory-fatigue abound: Grant after Shiloh, McClellan after Antietam, Meade after Gettysburg. Each time the victorious army hung back, plainly tired.

There is yet one more danger in victory: the frightening realization of your own power to destroy.

Yours,
Mr. Windsor

P.S. Rooibus

Fourth House on the Right - On Sisters

My dear, dear reader,

You may not have realized it, but I have a sister, a younger one, nine years old. And, believe it or not, I love her something fierce - I suppose that is to be expected, though. At the same time, however, she manages to be the most exasperating of creatures. I try to help and she makes faces at me (the raised upper lip, crinkled nose, and squinty eyes is the most common one). I provide an answer for her homework - and she doesn't want my answer. I tell her that, sorry, but no, I cannot play ping pong, air hockey, Monopoly (yes, I taught her Monopoly to indoctrinate into her the wonders of capitalism), doctor, face-painting with you - sorry, but I have homework, I can't read to, with, or at you - and she "humph"s and stomps out of the room. Which led me to wonder - what is it about sisters that is so frustrating? If you expect me to actually be able to answer this question you're crazy. Nevertheless, I have to write about something, so here goes.

The first possibility is that sisters are deliberately out to get their siblings, that they enjoy, indeed savor, their ability to drive them up a wall. They plot it all out: how will we get them this time? And how fast will we have to be to escape the flying pillow? I imagine these sorts of questions bandying about in the brain of my own cute, adorable, and positively wicked sister. Maybe there's even a sort of congress for sisters - maybe they unionize behind our backs - maybe all that Monopoly hasn't paid off after all.

Perhaps I am being too harsh. Maybe they just can't help it, they are constitutionally unable to withhold from themselves the pleasure of our frustration. Maybe that crinkled face is meant only to hide a wicked little grin.

But perhaps I am being too harsh. Maybe they don't necessarily enjoy, but rather are compelled by the state in a very Harrison Bergeron-ish way.

But perhaps I am being too harsh. Maybe they just evolved that way and have absolutely no control over themselves - it's just biological.

But perhaps I am being hypocritical. Maybe they just respond out of their own exasperation. Could it be that I am the one causing all this frustrating morass of frustration? Surely not (wink)!!

Yours,
Mr. Windsor

P.S. When dealing with sisters I recommend plain black tea. Sisters are such interesting phenomena in and of themselves that your mind won't be able to handle anything more than plain jane tea.

Third House on the Right - On Snow, Emerson, and Jazz Pianists

My dear, dear readers,

Despite my gratitude for the resultant snow days, I was a bit disappointed with the quality of the snow that fell. It was dry and powdery, impossible to really work with. Snowball fights are pretty lame when you can't get the snow to pack into anything resembling a legitimate snowball. Nevertheless, I appreciated the snow, even if only to walk in it. One of my favorite things to do after the snow has stopped coming down is to go out and walk through the freshly fallen snow. I'm not sure I could explain it, but I get a great deal of pleasure from simply walking through fresh powder, the deeper the better. Snow is winter's only redeeming feature.

I was also disappointed with Ralph Waldo Emerson. Having never read anything of his, I approached his work with some anticipation. That anticipation was not merited. His writing is beautiful, that is sure; however, I couldn't help but get the sense that Emerson skimped on philosophic clarity for greater literary effect. And in some sense, Emerson was not a philosopher at all. Perhaps instead he could be called a "moral teacher" or an "exhorter to virtue". Regardless of what he is called, I would have appreciated from him something more than vague phrases about our connectedness, the honor inherent in physical labor, or the necesity of learning from a gloriously beautiful nature. Why should I give a hoot about my connection with the man on the street if he doesn't give a hoot about me? Why should I engage in harsh physical labor if I can pay somebody else to do it for me? What does nature, beautiful though it is, provide for me other than the resources I can extract from it?

Emerson's view of the importance of the individual is intriguing, however. He returns often to the individual as the essence of the whole, that is, as a distillation of humanity. A human, thus, is complete within himself - he need no other to tell him how or why a thing is done, or what the truth is after all. (Sounds like Thoreau: "One man and the truth constitutes a majority.") The laborer becomes Man Laboring, the scholar becomes Man Thinking, etc. What Emerson does not (or at least hasn't yet in my readings) resolved is why the Individual is so important within his Transcendental framework.

On a lighter note, I have discover Oscar Peterson and Red Garland, two marvelous jazz pianists. I am enjoying their work immensely.

Yours,
Mr. Windsor

P.S. When listening to jazz piano I would drink darjeeling or, if you're the greener type, some oolong, a happy medium of black and green tea.

Second House on the Right - Religio-Sensualism

My dear, dear reader,

Benjamin Disraeli was a British Prime Minister in the late 19th century. I share this with you, not to bore you with trivia, but to provide some context for a quote of his that I recently found: "Every religion of the beautiful ends in orgy."

At first glance, this quote seems rather strange - humans are, in general, fond of beautiful things. We are attracted to them out of some sense that beauty is fitting, providing some intangible benefit to our senses and our souls. Thus, it would seem odd to assert that a "religion of the beautiful" would end in orgy. For that matter, what the heck is a "religion of the beautiful" anyway? Is it worship of beauty? Is it some sort of lust for beauty? Or is it simply the idea that the traditions and rituals of any given religion can gild over that which is commemorated until it is forgotten? It seems that any of these could apply, the result is the same.

Clearly, any time a religious group focuses their worship on the consecrated thing rather than on that to which that thing is consecrated, the group loses sight of its purpose. The craze for that which is material that soon follows could, I suppose, be called orgy. Ultimately, this craze turns into a sort of religio-sensualism.

An example of what I mean is in order. Let's take the example of sex among young people in the church. Statistically, young people in the church are equally likely, if not more likely, to engage in some sort of sexual activity as those outside the church. In itself, this is nothing to marveled at - all humans have similar biological instincts. The difference, of course, is that young people in the church are consistently given talks, books, pamplets, lectures, and videos about abstinence, purity, call it what you will. Given this, one would assume that at least some of this teaching would wear off on young people, that there would at least be a marginal difference in the statistics between churched and unchurched. This is not the case.

Perhaps the main reason for this phenomenon is that the church, especially charismatic churches, are giving their youth mixed messages. On the one hand, young people are inculcated with the idea that, to be truly Christian, physical discipline is essential. And scripturally, this injunction is sound. On the other hand, youth are told to throw off inhibitions so that they may more fully experience - and that is a key word, experience - the workings and movings of the Holy Spirit. In youth services, a spiritual sensualism is encouraged: one must feel the presence of God, one must experience some state of religious ecstasy. I am not condemning this, how one worships one's Creator is highly personal. I am, however, arguing that, if the church truly wishes its young people to be sexually pure, it must clearly delineate between physical discipline and spiritual freedom. And it must be sure that the "spiritual experience" does not become an end unto itself, that the beauty of a spiritual encounter does not replace the beauty of that which was encountered, that a beautiful religion does not become a religion of the beautiful.

I must apologize to my (few) readers for this excessively lengthy and depressingly somber post and its rather specialized message. I suppose it was a cloudy day in the Cul-de-Sac.

Yours,
Mr. Windsor

P.S. For cloudy days, I recommend darker teas: Earl Grey, Irish Breakfast, even a little English Breakfast are good choices. I would strongly urge against drinking herbal teas on cloudy days, although chamomile is occasionally acceptable.