What Just Happened?

So I stumbled across (unsure of how to appropriately categorize while maintaining anonymity)'s blog and spent hours, literally, catching up and reading all the comments. So, I'm quite fatigued, but since the read was oh so stimulating and my hosts made me watch "The Nativity Story" (in February?!) my mind is at least partially working, so why not blog.

We all know, or at least some of you know, that I simply cannot watch movies (films) like The Nativity Story. I refused to see Passion of Christ and The Da Vinci Code. Mainly because I have an open enough eye to get upset over themes, motifs, ways of representation etc but not enough perception or ?self-grounding? to be able to do much other than spin my wheels. Which, pretty much just ends up leaving me upset and frustrated at myself and the world. I try to limit it to at least one at a time. because otherwise I have a hard time refusing ice cream. and lets be honest, with my biases, if I'm not running regularly, I need to be refusing ice cream.

I'm still waiting on a good book. I have a large to-read list, obviously, but really no access to books. In this small conservative town the library is open for four hours three times a week over the middle of the day. I haven't even bothered to check out their selection. A term I particularly like that I came across while reading this blog was DIY spirituality. yes, I like it. Because, it so quaintly contains most of the people I've come across in New Zealand. And I'd be rude to say it's annoying, but it is fun to see such a direct relation between the cornucopia of DIY projects I've been helping all of these people with, and the DIY attitude they seem to let spill over into every aspect of their lives, including spirituality. I just realized, it's been a long time since I've been around some good ol' fashioned Catholics, not the new we're gonna thump our doctrines as insanely as fundamentalist Protestants. Perhaps it'd be nice. I gave myself credit while I was in Takaka, because in circling the main triangular block of the town several times in the rain upon arriving there, looking for my hostel, I noticed a nice looking Catholic Church. I think I entertained the notion of going to Mass, for exactly that, entertainment. So I didn't go, but I give myself credit for considering.

And I guess while I'm in a Religious Mood and we're talking Catholicism. I'm thinking now, of the one Catholic tradition, that I have a helpless affinity for: Eucharistic Adoration. Perhaps, it's because this ritual is so unbelievably blatantly pagan or what, but its just so strongly religious in ALL the myriad meanings definitions innuendos and EVERYTHING. the all inclusive religious term, Eucharistic Adoration is EXACTLY that. I love it.

For those of you who aren't Catholic (or Protestant but attended Catholic school) or for those of you who are Catholic but still don't know what Eucharistic Adoration is, I'll give a brief, lay Catholic's explanation.

The Eucharist (this is backstory) is consecrated and transubstantiated (actually transformed into) the body and blood of Jesus Christ (it was unleavened bread and cheap wine). Normally, the Eucharist is consumed by parishioners during the celebration of the Liturgy, i.e. Mass. but this special ritual is when the host, the body of Jesus Christ, is placed in this display case (monstrance) (not from monster, but latin-french whatever, of monstrare or montrer respectively, meaning "to show", think demonstrate) which is often gilded in gold, solar in theme and all shiny pretty and sparkly. It is placed on an altar in either the main church or off on a side shoot place, where basically, you just go a look at it for extended periods of time. You adore the Eucharist, duh. It's placed in the center of the solar theme, surrounded in gold and if you've got a creative Church group, probably has fancy lighting. Good Catholics probably pray the Rosary while adoring the Eucharist, but I like to just go sit there and look at the thing. Then I try to go on astral journeys and eagerly rush out of the room after an hour or so and think about what just happened. Did I mention, you adore the Eucharist whilst kneeling? Well, you do.

So I miss that. I haven't adored a shiny piece of gold in a submissive position lately, and I think, people need to do that every so often, at least I do.

(i got caught up over that last sentence on how to order the clauses "a shiny piece of gold" and "in a submissive position lately" because I thought it sounded confusing, as to which noun the prepositional clause referred, I or gold. but then I realized that a shiny piece of gold can't be submissive, so obviously the prepositional phrase is referring to me. Problem solved)


to be perfectly honest, i don't really know why all this Catholic stuff came up, oh, well i guess I did watch the nativity story tonight. And then spent hours reading a Jewish woman's blog. So nevermind, scratch that, I do know why it came up.

I get frustrated often with how much I don't know, and I actually feel a bit deceived (am I surprised?) by I'm not sure whom, the big amorphous S.? (society) oooooo, or wait, popular science? , actually I'm not sure whence this comes, but isn't there an assumption that knowledge is discovered? Its one of those phenomena that I'm cognizant of most of the time, but still submit to emotionally/psychologically, (wait, did I just define addiction?) Sorry this thought got SO lost. Let's start over and be straightforward and simple.

I feel deceived when I feel like I'm learning less and less the more I learn. is that clear? it doesn't seem quite fair. And yet, I know its (t)rue? or SHOULD? be true, that I learn less the more I learn, but something I still catch myself emotionally/psychologically submitting to, is this belief that the more I learn, the more I should know.

It brings me back to my love of my first book on the blog reading list. Voltaire's Bastards. Saul's big ticket point, in my opinion, is the big ticket, i.e. most important, is the co-opting of discourse (god damn it, he even talks about how we succumb to it ourselves as critics and academicians, and i friggin just typed co-opting discourse). His big ticket point, is that in this day and age of ideological Reason, Rationality and Science, that we no longer have the words, or mental space in which to stand opposed to the reigning norm. There isn't any way to say No! or This is Wrong! to the ideology of Reason, Rationality and Science. And we saw a little of that same dynamic with the Bush Administration. The attitude and 'discourse' of the Bush administration was very much the logical extreme of a broader Western dynamic: namely the lack of oppositional language. Instead of With Us or Against Us, Good vs. Evil, we instead have a polarization of Rational vs. Irrational, Reasonable vs Unreasonable and Science vs. Magic/Religion/Belief/Superstition (enlightenment vs medievalism) substitute your own favorite buzz word. And what's ridiculous further, is that we've associated those terms on the left side with Modern, which STILL, is equated with Good. And so, the big ticket point, was that there's no acceptable space for us to say NO! to something that may be Reasonable and Rational, but also downright Ridiculous, (well actually, things like ridiculousity are actually things I support), so let's change Ridiculous to Unethical. that's better.

Sheesh, I need to go back to school...
...or to bed, actually.


I hope you all enjoy reading this post as much as I'm enjoying the thought of you all reading this post.