backing in

What's the obsession, the compulsion, with backing in? Go to a large parking lot, say a mall or a superstore, and voila! you are apt to see someone, typically in a big boat of a vehicle, a ponderous and ostentatious truckload of metal and chrome, stopping, pausing, and slowing up the works by doing a K-turn just so they can back into the parking space they have found. Sure, you can accuse me of my own solipsism, posturing an indignant attitude because said drivers are slowing ME, ME, ME. But honestly what's the point? It escapes me. They always seem to want to make a big deal of it, as if to say, "Hey, plebe, look at me. I not only found a space for my metal hull on wheels, I am ready to zip outta here, unlike you, you moron. I'm ready to go. A modern speedster firmly and sure-footedly planted in The Land of the Free and Wait While I Do This." True, no one has ever uttered one syllable expressing such thoughts, but I have a fertile, and febrile, imagination.

human touch

Not just any touch. Human. After today's healing service, at St. Paul's Cathedral, downtown Syracuse, I wondered, "Why does this move me so?" When the priest puts the oil of chrism on my forehead, and even more when her hands press upon the top of my head, I am moved. I am touched, literally and figuratively. Why is that? Is it out of a deep hunger? A longing for human warmth and connection? To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, in "Prufrock," it is that and so much more. But if I am honest, it is not touch alone. It is smell as well, though I can't seem to name any. (There was no incense, yet in some deep recess the burning wax of candles resonates, I'm sure. And bread, morsels of sacred bread. Isn't all bread sacred? In our family, as kids, back in Stamford, Connecticut, if we dropped bread from the kitchen table, where we dined, our custom was to pick the bread up and kiss it. Was the practice imported from Poland or Slovakia? I should ask my mom, 98.) So today, snowflakes touched my skin, or could have, this late in cruellest April, but they ain't human. My head will touch my pillow and find comfort there, but it ain't human. Which begs the rank and obvious question, "Am I human?" That is not as morose or as depressing as you might first think. Back in high school, Father Giuliani often said we had to be human before anything else, certainly before we could claim to be Christian (or atheist, for that matter). What is it to be human? You could make an argument, couldn't you, that the absence of touch, inhabiting the arid, monastic cells of the Desert Fathers, vacant of human touch beyond my own skin, my own fragrance, would pin me with the solipsistic label inhuman.

taking my digital temperature

I tend to be obsessed with taking my digital temperature. I often take it many times a day. And I can't seem to stop myself. No amount of willpower can prevent it once I yield to that fixation. It's not what you think. It's not a solipsistic medical obsession. It goes deeper than that. Taking my digital temp goes right to my soul. You think I am afraid of fever or variations in body temperature? No, that's not it at all. I told you, it's deeper than that. This solipsistic obsession is very modern, au courant. I go to CreateSpace, the self-publishing arm of Amazon, and check daily sales figures of my four self-published books. I allow myself to feel glum if nothing shows up or to feel cheerful, even elated, if I find a few hits, a few sales. I check similar data at KDP, Kindle Direct Publishing. I check sales of these same books in electronic versions, from around the globe. If I told you the highs and lows of these daily, even hourly numbers, you might find yourself rolling on the floor laughing. Or crying. (Don't we have Internet acronyms for these emotional outbursts?) But what of my own emotional outbursts, no, inbursts? What possesses me? What is this hunger? It cannot possibly be about money. The amount are laughably or cryably or pitiably minuscule. Is it approval or validation? What is this craving? What drives it? What emptiness am I trying to fill? What would constitute enough? And why would I want more after that? U2 sang, "I still haven't found what I'm looking for." I have to ponder the question before the question: why am I even looking? 

arriving at the ultimate

The signs say PLANET SELF STORAGE. I wondered: Where indeed is that planet where you store your self? Do you store your old self in hopes of finding a new one? I suspect it is a planet without a name, perhaps not yet discovered. If you store your self on this planet, is it like a pawn shop where you can get your self out of hock in exchange for a metaphysical fee? Perhaps I am wrong, and the signs refer to Planet Self, where everything but self is stored there, in bins and large portable containers waiting to be pried open as the performers do on those faux-reality shows. Old bureaus, photos, silverware, eight-track tape players, magazines, moth-eaten fur coats, 78 rpm records, diapers, corn husks, rusty fenders, baseballs, petticoats, linoleum, gold bars. But no self. Self is the name of the planet, and it is the only celestial body in the universe called Solipsism. No, that's a stretch. Then again PLANET SELF STORAGE may be a coded message, a preachment to get right with the cosmos, figure out whom to serve, what to keep, what to let go. Naw.

Next door to PLANET SELF STORAGE is ULTIMATE ARRIVAL. ULTIMATE ARRIVAL may be the key to the riddle of PLANET SELF STORAGE. Or else it's a merely a tease. Because down the street a bit further is the GEM. And the GEM may be the answer to all these conjectures, though I forgot what they are.

start here

The default for digital maps is me, or you. It all starts with me, the little pushpin showing my whereabouts, as a starting point. So Google Maps and all the others are saying, "The world really does revolve around me." Or you, as the case may be. Is this a good default? Does this make the world flat? Columbus would not have gotten very far with notion. Same goes for Magellan, Hudson, da Gama, and the other seafarers. So, solipsism finally wins the day. For solipsists. For me. Or you.

vacuum

My biological purgatorium event went fine, thanks.

You might infer, from the paucity, nay, the nullity, of comments to my posts that no one reads this, that these postings reside in a solipsistic vacuum, as it were.

You might think that, but, nay, it is not quite so.

I have data showing that people from all around the world visit this blog.

They may be mum, but, um, they're my mums.

beard sliver

fetishistically picking at his beard he suffered a sliver of silver whisker stuck in his forefinger, a minuscule bit of his own stubble that he had to extract by biting off (more than he could chew)

a metaphor in there somewhere

of solipsism and its hazards?

the SOL of the solipsist?

Solipsism, Exposed.

Today, Father Jim B., in a teaching before the Celebration of the Eucharist, quoted a phrase attributed to Martin Luther (some say it goes back to Saint Augustine):

incurvatus in se

This lusciously descriptive Latin phrase describes a life turned so inward upon itself as to exclude God and others: sin, by any other name (solipsism, if you prefer).

Discernment

Yes, I do get visitors to this forum, not a ton by entertainment standards, but typically a steady daily stream. (A steady daily stream. There's a seventh-grade joke in there somewhere.)

In the last several months, though, I rarely receive comments. (Is it a forum, really? Or more of a Monologue Echo Chamber?)

A. This is exactly what a solipsistic blogger gets and deserves. (After all, I rarely comment at other blogs, except during periodic comment-binges.)

B. So, do I eliminate the capability for others to comment?

C. Does doing so make this blog more pure?

D. Or does it miss the whole communal point of it all?

E. And are these questions merely fraudulent attempts to garner comments via a slightly veiled, though readily transparent, manner?


(Echo-echo-echo-echo-echo.........)

Nary a Solipsist Among 'em

According to The New York Times, the vogue pejorative term is narcissist, used to describe such wide-ranging folks as A-Rod, Madonna, Hillary and Bill Clinton, Jamie Lynn Spears, and Senator Chuck Hagel. Aw, c'mon. Anyone can be a narcissist, but it takes a special kind of narcissist to be a certified solipsist. Incidentally, in this image by Ron Barrett, from the Times's article, you'd have to erase "others" (well, everything else, too) to get to the level of solipsism that the Modern Age aspires to (by the way, something castigated today by the pope in Australia).

Remembering Buckley, and Me

Wm. F. Buckley, Jr. (which is how he wrote it), the patron saint of American conservatism, has died at 82.

For starters, I learned my favorite word, cited in the banner of this blog, and blogged about frequently, from him: I had read the words solipsist or solipsistic in his columns.

When I was in high school, in 1965, I wrote an admiring letter to Mr. Buckley, asking to meet him. I grew up and lived in Stamford, Connecticut, where he had a home (and where he died today), not far from my parish church. I got a return letter from him, typed in blue, as I recall, with a short note (long since lost), saying he was busy running for mayor of New York; here's my home phone number; call after the election. I did.

On the day of December 31, 1965, my father drove me to his house, on Long Island Sound. My older and younger brothers came along for the ride. As we drove into the driveway, I met Buckley outside his study, a garage (if I recall rightly) filled with books and papers scattered about; large horseshoe desk; old-fashioned typewriter (a Smith-Corona or Underwood or Remington). His son, Christopher, whom he called Christo, came up on a bicycle and WFB told him to tend to something or other. When I got inside the study, Buckley asked how I got there. My father. My father and brothers were waiting in the car; he insisted they come in.

He wore a sweater with his shirttail hanging out in back. ("Sloppy genius" was my father's stereotyped characterization.) I remember him casually smoking a cigar. He had had a reputation, among liberals (or more accurately among those who did not know him), as being condescending and churlish. The total opposite was true. He was gracious and charming. He made us feel relaxed and comfortable. Here we were, residents of a housing project, hanging out at Bill Buckley's on (early) New Year's Eve, for crying out loud.

I don't remember all of the conversation. At one point I said something, perhaps about the newly approved use of English in the Mass, and Buckley was on the phone, speaking Spanish to a secretary mentioning a magazine article, and Buckley, um, pontificating, stark blue eyes twinkling, eyebrows dancing: "The Church is never more glorious than when she resists the zeitgeist." The maid brought coffee. We drank it, even my younger brother, not quite 9 years old. (My brothers and I were brought up as tea drinkers; Mom's influence.)

My father, a lifelong Democrat, told stories of World War II. Leyte. The Philippines. My younger brother made a pun about Leyte and lady. My father mentioned something about Joe McCarthy (and not something all that positive), and WFB reached to a bookshelf and pulled out a copy of his "McCarthy and His Enemies," inscribed and autographed it (in red, no less!), and handed it to my delighted dad. (To tell you the truth, I never did read the book, which sits in my bookcase a few feet away. I really did not have an open mind about the snarling McCarthy, then or now. My father, not particularly a book reader, did read it.) Was my father stealing the show? (Only now do I ask: was Buckley teaching me a lesson in filial piety, one later ignored in The Rebellion Years?)

I, a seminarian and liberal-in-waiting, engaged in a playful debate about the use of English in the Roman Catholic liturgy (Buckley wanted to keep Latin in the Mass, of course). He said his "mind was slowly cringing shut" on the issue (as I was reminded by my older brother tonight), and he challenged me to write a book in defense of my position. (I never did.) (Buckley was a lector, in English by the way, at nearby Saint Mary's Church, in Stamford.)

We went home, and were late for dinner. I felt bad for my Mom. Here we were, waltzing in all high and mighty. Dinner was probably cold.

It wasn't how I planned it.

Several years later, I saw Mr. Buckley in Bloomingdale's and managed to chat with him. He seemed to remember me.

I remember him.

Requiescat in pacem.

In Latin. Or English.

Or the language of the heart.

Chasing Climaxes

From the narrow vantage point of one solipsist (i.e., The Laughorist), the closing scene of "The Sopranos" final episode demonstrated both brilliance and courage on the part of David Chase. The scene takes place at a New Jersey diner called Holsten's (having lived in Jersey for 10 years, with two children born in the Garden State, I must confess to harboring very fond memories of those joints). The hypertense tableau is set, with all of the Soprano family poised to sit down and eat, all in one place and at the same time. This is itself a rare event for any family (nuclear or otherwise) in America, as ably demonstrated by Steven Spielberg in the opening scene of "E.T." You might say, the Sopranos are in a Tension Envelope (as I have blogged several times before). In the words of the summary provided by HBO:

Tony is the first to arrive at Holsten's for a family dinner. He sits in a booth and plays a song on the jukebox, watching the door. Carmela enters and joins him, asking about his meeting with Mink. He tells her Carlo's gonna testify and she takes the news with a sigh. AJ arrives next, complaining about the more mundane tasks of his job but quotes old advice from his father: "Try to remember the times that were good." Meanwhile, Meadow struggles to parallel park outside. Customers come and go - a shady looking guy who's been sitting at the counter enters the restroom. Finally parking the car, Meadow runs inside to join her family, just in time for dinner.

But of course the summary cannot convey the electric fear pulsing through this ordinary moment. As viewers, we expect the whole family to be sprayed with bullets, or at least Tony, or for him to be arrested. Something. We crave some spectacular climax. The bell at the door rings; SCREEN GOES TO BLACK. (The bell at the door, reminiscent of Thomas DeQuincey's essay on the knocking at the gate in Macbeth.)

Many, if not most, fans and ordinary viewers feel cheated by this anti-climax, this impotent lack of climax, this "nothing" nonending. But this David-Chased climax of the quotidian, this climax of the ordinary, is perfect because it's like a Chekhov slice of life. This is it. That's it. Just see it, folks, with all its laden possibilities.

Did I lust for and expect the Big Bang Bada Bing Climax? Sure. But here's why I like what Chase did:

1. The cut to BLACK was so abrupt it was like experiencing the shock of a hit (if indeed they were assassinated; maybe they weren't).

2. It was like death itself (I know; I can only surmise) in that it was the rudest of interruptions. You want to say, "Hey! Wait! I'm not finished here. Something's wrong with my freakin' TV. Hold it. something's wrong. I'm not ready for this." Which is more or less what we want to yell at Death anyway, eh?

3. I'm not likely the first to observe this, but wasn't David Chase obviously echoing T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men (1925) with:

"This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper."

4. C'mon! Aren't most climaxes more ordinary than extraordinary if you're really honest? (I freely expect a veritable chorus of satiated and panting readers to shout: "Speak for yourself, buddy!")

5. Isn't life really not as tidily wrapped and explicitly resolved as we have come to expect through supermarket novels and conventional (American) dramas, at least as depicted in television series and movies?

Plus, isn't life