1:44 AM
Oh dear. It came to me of a sudden that it was Friday, and I needed to find a form of protein that had not once bled warm blood. Purchasing fish was out of the question, as was buying cheese. Special items had had to be purchased this week, and food had taken the sharpest cut. It seemed I would be making due with onions and brown rice, until I opened the last cabinet door on the northern wall of the kitchen.
I love those moments in faërie tales when an ordinary mortal opens his door, looks under his bed, or enters his workshop to find a wonderful gift awaiting him. Something from an enchanted being--a gift that seems to defy Nature herself. Yet, as Tolkien pointed out, fae creatures are not supernatural, but uber-natural. My lovely present in the corner of the cupboard was just that.
I had bought the bag a long time ago. I thought I had used up its contents, but there were still plenty. I untied it and put my hand inside. They all maintained the same pristine condition as when they were purchased, multi-coloured and firm, waiting for the heat of boiling water to call them to life. The enchantress who introduced me to these precious morsels told me that they would the revive blood, ease the motions of the bowels, endow the muscles with energy, and even protect the heart. Unlike other foods that did such, these might be preserved for later and indefinite use.
Salting the water as it made to boil, I smiled. A staple of the poor and a component of my people's 'peasant meal,' this gift had finally come into its own as scientists and doctors justified the eating habits of their ancestors yet again.
Beans. I cupped a heap in my hands. The great white bean of the north, the gaily coloured lentil, the spotted pinto, the glossy, black turtle bean, and the ornately shaped garbanzo all ravished my eyes with their wondrous beauty and the promise of their wholesome endowments.
Of the three edible families of seeds, the bean is perhaps the most despised and the most cheaply purchased, while it is just as beneficial as its brothers: the nut and the grain. Yet, all three are great marvels. Grain emerges sprite-like, mixed with the grasses and reeds as if blown into being by the wind. Nuts drop wondrously from the tree though carefully hidden in their homely treasure chests. With beans, it is as though a troop of faërie were weaving their ways through the fields of man, generously gifting their purses on the stalks of green--fleshy pods housing wondrous food. And they are also more than food.
Though not of the Leguminosae family, other branches of angiosperm drop not merely from the realm of natural spirits but from the nebulous province of the divine. One such kind is the genus of Theobroma, the 'food of the gods.' It has passed through many incarnations: the exalted and the common, the dear and the cheap. Sometimes savoured merely for the quality of its flavour, it is also prized as a substance all on its own. However, it would be difficult to find someone who did not relish it in one form or another.
Once forbidden to women and children for fear of its toxic properties, it is now prized as a method of endearment to the fair sex and to littlies. According to taste, it may be mixed with peppers, fruit, sugar, or cream. It remains a substance of great personal leverage, though its beans are no longer used as currency. Ah, who can deny the power of chocolate?
Yet, how many of us gulp it down whole rather than wholly tasting it? Is even this exalted bean given its due?
There is another seed that some may argue exerts a stronger, even more enchanting hold. One often reaches for it on waking. When the fair leaves of t'e fail to dispel the fog of the drowsy mind or revive man's weary flesh, one turns to kahveh as the Turks name it.
This ought not ever to become mere habit. The ritual of taking Java ought always to begin with breathing, taking in the ground bean's heady aroma, the exquisite fragrance that will serve as incense for the flesh, itself a Temple of the Holy Spirit. If one chooses to dilute the brew with cream, milk, or sugar, they may, but the first sip should be at least be taken with one's eyes closed. Blessing its comforting heat and embracing its rich bitterness ought to accompany the gratitude one feels towards coffee as he regains the possession of his rational faculties.
One thing I have observed in my psyche at least (though I have reason to suspect it is the same for others) is that glimpses, whiffs, and tastes of the higher things help one to appreciate the lower. Attending a Tridentine Mass, complete with its rich vestments, beautiful setting, and bel canto choir always bestows on me a calmer disposition for the Novus Ordo, rather than instilling me with greater impatience. Having beheld the grandeur of Half Dome in Yosemite does not lessen my pleasure at the sight of a boulder swathed with velvet moss. Gazing on tigers, peacocks, and elephants at zoos did not ruin me for spotting my first red squirrel.
Similarly, I learned to love the humble bean the day I was watching Babette's Feast. As the beautiful chef prepared a spread of Catholic decadence for the Puritan ladies so dear to her, my family and I for once indulged ourselves in the modern practice of eating a meal while watching a film. I remember our lunch still: the delicately buttered rice, the stir-fried cabbage and onion, and the beans standing in place for the meat (it had been a Friday).
As I watched the elderly inhabitants of Jutland gingerly ease themselves into the simultaneously spiritual and sensual meal the Frenchwoman had prepared, I discovered that I was called to enjoy my own present meal with as much gusto. Since that time I have attempted to be faithful in taking the opportunities for joy and happiness and wringing them to the last drop.
However, this does not imply a grasping of pleasures. The more I love chocolate, the less likely I am to buy it, for enjoying it properly takes so much of my strength. Two cups of coffee a day is an indulgence, and drinking more is appropriate only for a bacchanalia. To enjoy a feast requires a fast beforehand. As Miguel de Cervantes observed through the lips of Sancho: 'Hunger is the best sauce.' So between divine intervals, one ought to be content with the fae. Even as I prepare for a lunch of rice, beans, and carmelized onions, I wonder if I am possibly enjoying this too much.
Labels:
It is done! Our brethren in Vietnam need fear no further harm, for through their valiance and the intercession of the Vatican the apostolic nuncio of Hanoi has been restored to the Church. Deo gratias!
And now, alas only after further persecution and tribulation, the Holy See will at last appoint a permanent representative in Hanoi!
by Robert Burns
give an ear, give an ear,
Ye Jacobites by name,
give an ear,
Ye Jacobites by name,
Your fautes I will proclaim,
Your doctrines I maun blame,
you shall hear.
What is Right, and What is Wrang,
by the law, by the law?
What is Right and what is Wrang by the law?
What is Right, and what is Wrang?
A short sword, and a lang,
A weak arm and a strang, for to draw.
What makes heroic strife,
famed afar, famed afar?
What makes heroic strife famed afar?
What makes heroic strife?
To whet th' assassin's knife,
Or hunt a Parent's life, wi' bluidy war?
Then let your schemes alone,
in the state, in the state,
Then let your schemes alone in the state.
Then let your schemes alone,
Adore the rising sun,
And leave a man undone, to his fate.
If you are not scratching your head by the end of those verses, then you are either unacquainted with the sentiments of Robert Burns or bemused by some of the Scotch vocabulary. It also implies that perhaps your musical taste does not incline towards Scottish folk music. If you are a bona fide Scotophile though, then perhaps this song has always been a little bit bewildering and contradictory to you; it certainly has been for me!
Now, it is a requirement generally acknowledged that every true romantic who surveys Scottish history, or is of Scottish blood, that he be a Jacobite. Being of a Welsh, Irish, Northern English mix, I likely fall into the former camp, but that is enough for me and many of my ilk. On the other hand, Robert Burns was a Scotsman, a romantic, and therefore naturally sympathetic to the Jacobite cause. He even wrote a blistering poem about the Whig party's betrayal of Britain that leaves one no doubts as to where he stands politically (Awa' whigs awa').
But read the song above! It is scolding the Jacobites for engaging in warfare for the rightful king of the United Kingdom! One should be even more surprised that Scottish folkbands who embody the spirit of Scottish patriotism actually sing this song. Even one who doesn't speak braid Scotch knows the song is not exactly a Jacobite marching tune, so why do the sons and daughters of the Jacobite spirit adulate it?
Yet, resolving Robert Burns's conflict is not as difficult as it seems. One need only read the original Ye Jacobites by Name to understand that the poet was actually toning down the extreme anti-Jacobite, anti-Catholic, and anti-Highlander persuasion previously expressed. Whereas that song calumniates the cause by proclaiming it Satanic and ends with expressing the desire to see the Pope hanged (even though the Pope did not support the cause), Burns's version is simply an anti-war song. Whether the cause is just or not, the strife and grief of battle is not worth it. Adore the rising sun--live only for today and its simple pleasures, and leave a man undone, to his fate--the king was treated unjustly, but what can one do? Abandon him to his doom and get on with your life.
So Robert Burns is innocent of Whiggish leanings, but this still does not explain why a group of patriotic folk artists would call themselves 'Jacobites by Name.' Why do the ardent believers in the lost, just cause, na Fir Dileas, express a liking for this ditty? Historical and biographical facts cannot explain this, but irony can.
Far more subtle than sarcasm, irony can only be understood in context, as it is more an observation than a statement spotaneously created for amusement or mockery. E.g., if a fictional mouse were to say to another fictional mouse, 'You don't know how to live like I do,' as one does in the children's book, Poppy, one would not know how ironic that statement was unless one knew that he was killed by an owl in the very next sentence.
Knowing of Burns's true sentiments, and knowing the ignominious content of the original song, leads one to believe that there must be irony in his poem. He accuses Jacobites of scheming? Was it not the group that later became the Williamites who schemingly separated James II from his daughter to raise her a Protestant? Who plotted to suplant their lawful king with the foreign William of Orange? Who were the real traitors here?
Burns also implies that if men would only relinquish their cause, they could have happy fruitful lives. Really? Was that the case for the Irish after James was deposed? The Catholic King's accession to the throne had brought relief to the suffering inhabitants of Ireland. It was not simply the Scottish Highlands that stood by the king.
Not only then was his cause a source of unity throughout the United Kingdom, it was also ecumenical. The Williamites were venomously anti-Catholic, whereas one need not be a papist, just a patriot, to support Jacobus Rex. After all, the greatest of the Jacobite generals, John Graham of Claverhouse, was an Episcopalian.
Therefore, the insults penned against the Jacobites in this song are completely laughable and since Burns was not an imbecile, they must have been meant to be taken this way. Even his pragmatic advice at the end of the song cannot be taken seriously, as it was not practicable. A man cannot enjoy the beauty of the sun or the simple things in life if he is starving to death. Rack-renting led to such conditions as these as did the recusant taxes inflicted on Catholics who refused to attend Protestant services.
I do not know how many have sat down to analyze the song in order to discover its irony, but the fact is that parsing is not necessary. Poets and Authors are not scientists who must be read with a formula and always in a straightforward fashion. They can of course adopt that mode if they wish, and they often do.
Yet, as if by the magic that inspired him, the author can also inspire and bewitch the reader, drawing him into the same mind that the poet was drawn into when he was inspired. Socrates likened the poet to an iron ring magnetized by a loadstone, who in turn magnetized his interpreters and his audience in the same manner. In such a moment of possession, it is possible to understand a man and his intent, even without hearing the tone of his voice or beholding the expressive visage of his countenance.
Though it is the first day of summer, the Polish temperature has been marvellously clement. The air is sweet and breezy, and the sky a glorious, marble dome of swirling greys, blues, and creams. I feel a bit guilty enjoying this sort of weather as it threatens rain, and Poland has suffered enough from flooding. So I pray that the sky gives way to sunshine, and that the Polish election places a patriot at the helm of her courageous, fragile barque.
M thoughts dominated by these concerns, I strolled down Nowy Swiat today towards the Presidential Palace. There was the wooden cross, now decorated with rosaries, erected in memory of the dead in Smolensk. There was the mass of votives burning before it. Only not all were burning. The brief drizzle of mist that had wetted the ground had put out the flames uncovered by the little brass steeple housing the other candles. There were thirty extinguished candles laid out in the form of a cross.
I knelt down, and spotting the fragments of some matches, attempted to light them myself, whispering a few prayers for the election's results. I succeeded only in getting ash under my fingernails while the candles I lit quickly went out in the breeze, and the matches were reduced to hot charcoal.
A minute or two into this sisyphean task, I glanced to the left and saw a soldier's boot. I felt a brief rush of adrenaline--the sort one experiences when his passport seems to be lost or a large dog lunges at him from behind a wire-linked fence. It dissipated quickly, especially as the guard only smilingly said: 'Pani swoje spódnicy będzie brudna jeśli klęczeć na chodniku.' I smiled back at the handsome young man and indicated in my poor Polish that it didn't matter if my skirt got dirty, as it was grey and nothing would show. Still I gave up my task of lighting the candles and left, feeling a little silly at how much fear tends to well up in me at the sight of a soldier or an officer.
All day, I have been analyzing that ridiculous, but habitual reaction, and my thinking returns again and again to one fact. These uniformed men are tools of the State, and my life is worth something to the State per accidens, not per se.
For those who have not had the pleasure of Porphyry or Aristotle, let me explain. Per accidens relates to properties inherent in a thing because of what it is, but they do not make the thing to be what it is. Example: a crow is black. All crows are black, but that is not what defines the nature of 'crowness.' Man is featherless and is made to walk on two legs, but the quality of having no feathers and requiring a pair of feet is hardly an apt description of man's nature.
Per se properties are those that separate things according to the qualities that define their nature. Frogs are separated from fish not because of their four limbs, but because of their amphibious nature. Man is classified as different from other animals not thanks to his upright stature or his nakedness, but because he is rational. It is therefore extremely disconcerting that some accidental property one possesses for a temporary amount of time is all that keeps one from being branded an burden to the State. It is a deadlier condition than being a criminal; after all, how many criminals are executed?
On March 22, 1984 circa 20:00, I became a legal member of the human community. I now had a right to life, and the State had an obligation to protect me. Yet, up until that moment my life was in the hands of two individuals. If my mother and father had decided they wanted a little more time after getting married to start having children, if they had not been natural parents that welcomed life and were willing to sacrifice for it, if there had been no love in their hearts, then I could have been dead before that spring day in March.
The Supreme Court of the United States would have left my fate entirely up to my mother. My mother however is a woman that has long campaigned against that abominable allowance of the law, and my father is a man who reveres all human life as sacred. I live at their behest; one from the generation of survivors.
Yet, I am not safe yet. As Terry Schiavo's murder has shown the world, one must retain full possession of one's faculties to have recourse to 'justice.' Should I lapse into a vegetative state, I can expect to be treated like a vegetable.
Assuming I escape the privation of my faculties of mobility and speech, decades from now, I may find myself aging in a world that has come to the logical conclusion of its principles. Where abortion abounds, euthanasia must follow. The men in uniform who are charged to protect me now may very well be overseeing my death one day.
I don't know. One really can't be sure, but perhaps that little, irrational start at the sight of an officer is the intuitive feeling that given the right circumstances, I can't trust him with my life. I can't trust the State.
Episode III
Horatius left Katrina per usual with his palate satiated and his mind pleasantly cushioned in the exquisite femininity of her company. ‘All that is best of pert and sweetness! How could I prefer another for marriage?’ Though e'en now, he did not see her as his last love.
How he could he ever wait for a last? One's mind may be filled enough with text or the stomach with eating, but Horatio knew all too well that the desire for hunger itself would come to wake him, and he then must need find succour again.
He found no flaw or deficiency in Katrina's company, indeed in mind she was alert. In taste, original without trite notoriety or servile attentiveness to fashion's whims. Her heart was passionate and virtuous, and this must be a woman's quality, if she is to have any. And her ear, ever attentive to holy vespers, provoked the sweet reminiscence of childhood. Horatius slapped his thigh heartily. Aye! He was ready to bid adieu to Ráichéal.
Riding with increasing speed down the slowly dwindling paths of town, as swift as his stomach would permit, Horatius was soon beyond the hamlet. He cast a glance behind to make certain that his poor valet could not have pursued his course. With a smile, the hard master entered the overhung bosheen.
All was black within the wood, the moon waned dull and her starry handmaidens were entangled in the serpentine branches. Yet, Horatius's horse plodded its well known course, hardened to the routes branching away from any road of man and deaf to the distant howls of wolves and suspicious murmurings of wind and water. The cawing of a raven wed with the cooing of doves hailed Horatius as he finally entered the glen.
A great stone crowned with laurel trees and moss overhung the diminutive cottage, what little of it that stood above the earth. An opening in the canopy of trees revealed the moon shining beauteously upon the hollow. Not regarding the knocker, Horatius imperiously entered the rounded, green door of the ivy choked dwelling.
Lavender, rose, and musk encircled the cavalier as he footed the earthen floor of the dim abode. Lights of emerald, magenta, violet, and cobalt danced along the floor from some occult source, and Horatius waited until they alighted on the basement's trapdoor.
Prying up the haven's barricade, he descended with intrepid haste, though he was taken aback on the last step as a brief, flaming haze of ochre sprouted at his feet and burned up through his nostrils while venomously stinging his eyes.
‘What's this?’ he hacked, ‘Am I greeted with the colour of a coward?’
‘Yellow ’tis the colour of a liar as well,’ a low, soft voice answered within. Horatius blinked once more, before he beheld Ráichéal’s form bent over her porphyry table. Her dark, green eyes were bent intensely upon a scroll, whereon she was illuminating her alchemical runes.
‘I hath never lied to thee,’ the libertine answered indignantly. ‘'Twill be not hard to bid adieu to this sullenness.’ He added in his mind.
‘There are more falsehoods than those of the tongue,’ she answered, finally standing aright, ‘And I don’t suppose thou hast come to contemplate the Mysteries or dissertate on philosophy.’ She folded her arms beneath the long drape of her scarlet, velvet sleeves, looking as stern as an elongated statue atop a cathedral’s portal.
‘Garbed in red?’ Horatius teased, seeking to avoid her gauntlet, ‘The liturgy's colour is green, and thou hath always dressed to match the altar’s cloth.’
‘Perhaps this is the day of a martyr? The one for whom I was named perhaps, since it is the day of mine own birth as well? Perhaps thy attendance at the hermit's Mass would have afforded thee this knowledge, if it had so concerned thee.’
‘Ráichéal– ’
‘I am not interested,’ she shrieked at last, ‘Indeed, I know already why the Basilica has long claimed thy fickle attendance. Well, art thou come to me thyself of thy wedlock plans?’
‘For sooth, I didst not think that thou stirred far enough from thy woods and glen to know such matters,’ Horatius found himself sneering in spite of his intention to be magnanimous. His scorn did kindle the wrath welling up through her eyes, orifice, and every window into Ráichéal’s being. There was a cry more horrible than her ravens, and she leapt like a tigress for the man’s throat, claws outstretched.
The warrior easily disarmed his attacker by clamping her wrists together and wrenching her aside so that she came off her feet.
‘Such an unseemly fit ill suits thee, woman.’ he coldly spake. She struggled a while more, all dishevelling her long, dark hair in her rancour. A few moments more, and he felt the tension slacken in her hands, and so released her.
‘So go then,’ she suddenly said in broken abandonment and pulled herself to her feet as feebly as a maimed bird. Horatius watched for another outburst, but she only glided away. She would go back to her scrolls or elements, then. But all his predictions she thwarted and instead turned aside to her inner sanctum. Falling onto her couch stuffed with heather, she fell to weeping as easily as a sweet dairy maid and as silently as a high noblewoman.
So frustrated in his musings, Horatius could but stand dumb and still. Did he truly know the woman within? He thought he had learned well of her bardic lore and craft in alchemy, of her angry passions and mental discipline. But this weeping he had not seen, and he was nearly unnerved. What had she been hiding? Was there some other secret this soul still held for him?
The scent of lavender teased him into deeper thought, and the jewelled hues of this cool place were reborn with their former charms. He followed her to her mournful couch.
‘Ah, Ráichéal, weep not! And send me not from thy sight, for thy tears have won me back, and I would fain not depart from thy company!’
A long groan escaped the distraught woman, as she raised herself on one arm. ‘I destroyed myself in loving thee. All that is left of my heart is thine, even if thou doth choose to partake of another's.’
‘Ráichéal, thou must know that my heart—’
‘Dost thou have one?’ she asked with a curious twist of a dark, arched brow, her eyes settling on the left of Horatio's breast. ‘A soul thou doth have, with reason and passion complete and a body for sooth, but dost thou have an organ called “heart”, or doth the surplus of passion and spirit rush thy blood about?’
‘Ráichéal,’ Horatius groaned, unable to meet her eyes, ‘Take me back, I beg this of thee.’
She caressed a leaf of ivy dangling from her wall. ‘Did I not already say that I must?’
About Me
- Jacobitess
- Warsaw, Poland
- Domine, spero quia mundum vicisti. Lord, I trust that Thou hast overcome the world. Panie, ufam, żeś pokonał świat.