obiter scripta

Obiter Scripta, no. 90

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Let mystery have its place in you; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the plowshare of self-examination, but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring.

— Henri Frédéric Amiel, Journal Intime

The Lady of the House knows a married couple. Each of them has a personal therapist, and then they have a marriage therapist for them both to see together. (I wonder if, when they have kids, each child will have his or her own therapist, as well as a whole-family therapist…) These are what we would call, in the idiotic parlance of our times, “privileged” people. The lack of any obvious problems is apparently itself a problem requiring professional consultation. It reminds me of pets who start chewing holes in the furniture or their own fur just to have something to do with their bored energy. If I may offer a rejoinder to Socrates, perhaps the examined life can be powerless to halt its own momentum. As for John Stuart Mill, how would he know what it’s like to be a satisfied pig?

Obiter Scripta, no. 89

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All you can do for your character in this day and age is to document the fact that you are not part of this day and age.

— Johann Gottfried Seume, Ausgewählte Werke Seumes

Gnostic posturing is an understandable temptation. Who wouldn’t like to imagine themselves free of the zeitgeist by virtue of their superior sensibility? But there is no escape from one’s own time, and ceding territory to the barbarians is cowardly. If you accept the blessings, you should endure the curses, too. You might as well have the audacity to set a good example, come what may.

Obiter Scripta, no. 88

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LADY CROOM: But surely a hermit who takes a newspaper is not a hermit in whom one can have complete confidence.

— Tom Stoppard, Arcadia, act II, scene 7

I have never subscribed to a newspaper, but I do check in with multiple blogs each day. What can I say? I’m more inclined toward pantheism than otherworldly asceticism. Just because I don’t want to interact with most people doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy observing them from a distance. The world, with all its folly and frivolity, still deserves some love, and as Lou Barlow sang, hypocrites like us deserve a little trust along the way.

Obiter Scripta, no. 87

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It is a curious fact that the artist who produced the most compelling and accessible vision of Christian humanism in the twentieth century was a multiply-married, luxury-loving, alcoholic atheist by the name of Robert Bolt. It is worth noting that he came to this choice of lifestyle after a strict Methodist upbringing. And I might add that not long after throwing off his Methodist faith, he became a card-carrying member of the Communist party. I am not sure what conclusion to draw from these facts.

But on a more serious note, I can say with a straight face that Bolt not only remained obsessed by Christianity his whole life, but also continued to think Christianly to the end of his days. He was what might be called a “flying buttress”—someone who remains resolutely outside the church, but who does a great deal to prop it up. In the divine economy, I suspect that there is a mansion in heaven for tortured Augustinian souls like that of Mr. Bolt, and perhaps in God’s mercy it has room service.

— Gregory Wolfe, Beauty Will Save the World: Recovering the Human In an Ideological Age

I’ve been leafing through Wolfe’s book again, as well as one by Daniel Ritchie. Recently, I revisited many of G.K. Chesterton’s essays, and I even held on to a collection of C.S. Lewis’s books rather than sell them as I originally intended. I enjoy the irony of me, an Epicurean, seeking out Christian writers as a refreshing, interesting alternative to the tiresome fundamentalist preachers of Diversity and Inclusion™️, but it’s a funny old world we live in. As Wolfe says earlier in the book, we can learn well from artists and thinkers who ask the right questions even if we disagree with their answers. That’s how it is for me — nine-tenths agreement is good enough. If Communism, a Christian heresy, can have fellow travelers, why not Christianity itself? Anyway, I appreciate the thought that there might be celestial lodgings reserved for us buttresses, but if I couldn’t be an ornamental hermit in heaven as well, I’d respectfully hand back my ticket.

Obiter Scripta, no. 86

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We live in a Babel of antagonistic tribes — tribes that speak only the languages of race, class, rights, and ideology. That is why the intuitive language of the imagination is so vital. Reaching deep into our collective thoughts and memories, great art sneaks past our shallow prejudices and brittle opinions to remind us of the complexity and mystery of human existence.

— Gregory Wolfe, Beauty Will Save the World: Recovering the Human In an Ideological Age

I’ve been working twelve-hour days for what seems like a month, at least. I’m not complaining, mind you. In fact, staying busy serves as something like an emetic. The mind is purged of the toxins of current events. I gaze upon the Boschian hellscape of the web with fresh eyes and think, Surely, there’s got to be more edifying stuff than this. And so I make a promise to myself that I will redouble my efforts to seek out the cracks which Matthew Crawford spoke of, the overlooked spaces where beauty and imagination can flourish. It’s been too long since I stumbled across any new and interesting blogs to read. I think I’ll start pointedly searching for some. Any suggestions?

Obiter Scripta, no. 85

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A transition from an author’s book to his conversation, is too often like an entrance into a large city, after a distant prospect. Remotely, we see nothing but spires of temples and turrets of palaces, and imagine it the residence of splendour, grandeur and magnificence; but, when we have passed the gates, we find it perplexed with narrow passages, disgraced with despicable cottages, embarrassed with obstructions, and clouded with smoke.

— Samuel Johnson, “The difference between an author’s writings and his conversation“

As the old saying goes, never follow your heroes on social media, unless you’re one of those weirdos with a clay-foot fetish. In his book Eric Hoffer: The Longshoreman Philosopher, Tom Bethell wrote:

After 1965, Hoffer became a public figure. Before 1934, he is a mystery figure. Will more information about Hoffer’s background turn up? That’s doubtful. There are signs that he was more than merely forgetful about his early years. In fact, I believe he was deliberately secretive. When pressed for more detail by journalists he would say he was confused or couldn’t remember much of anything. About later events in his life he had an excellent memory. Were there things he didn’t want us to know? One possibility that comes to mind is that he was an illegal immigrant to this country. But, again, I have no positive evidence. Did he really teach himself botany, chemistry, and Hebrew on skid row in Los Angeles? One can’t help wondering.

I don’t wonder. Honestly, I don’t care. His thoughts are interesting enough, floating free in the noosphere. I don’t need them to be anchored in biography to make them insightful or relevant. In fact, I wish more authors and thinkers today would learn to cultivate an aura of mysterious reticence. Or, at the very least, to seek treatment for their cerebral bulimia.

Obiter Scripta, no. 84

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Now, among the heresies that are spoken in this matter is the habit of calling a grey day a “colourless” day. Grey is a colour, and can be a very powerful and pleasing colour. There is also an insulting style of speech about “one grey day just like another.” You might as well talk about one green tree just like another. A grey clouded sky is indeed a canopy between us and the sun; so is a green tree, if it comes to that. But the grey umbrellas differ as much as the green in their style and shape, in their tint and tilt. One day may be grey like steel, and another grey like dove’s plumage. One may seem grey like the deathly frost, and another grey like the smoke of substantial kitchens.

…Lastly, there is this value about the colour that men call colourless; that it suggests in some way the mixed and troubled average of existence, especially in its quality of strife and expectation and promise. Grey is a colour that always seems on the eve of changing to some other colour; of brightening into blue or blanching into white or bursting into green and gold. So we may be perpetually reminded of the indefinite hope that is in doubt itself; and when there is grey weather in our hills or grey hairs in our heads, perhaps they may still remind us of the morning.

— G. K. Chesterton, “The Glory of Grey,” Alarms and Discursions

Purple was my first love, as colors go. “I heard that a lot of babies like purple,” my grandmother said when I told her. Within a few years, I had shifted my allegiance to green. My pediatrician gave me a lime-flavored lollipop after I said so. As an adolescent, I was concerned with trying to appear edgy and profound, so I started telling people that red, being the color of blood, was my favorite, even as I increasingly began wearing black clothes. At some point, purple and I got together again. Basically, I’ve slutted my way around the color wheel, but in middle age, I’ve come to truly appreciate the humble, autumnal greys (and browns, to a lesser extent). Still waters run deep; so do restrained colors.

Obiter Scripta, no. 83

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When I go through a shelf of books on a subject I begin with the thin volumes. Now and then I find a thin and a thick book by an author on the same subject. Usually, the thin book is of an earlier date; and it often turns out that in the thin book the author reveals what he knows and in the thick book he tries to conceal what he does not know.

— Eric Hoffer, Before the Sabbath

“Tell me your thoughts, not the thinking of your thoughts.” Is that an actual quotation? If not, it should be. I have to say, I find it generally disappointing to hear writers or musicians talk about their “creative process.” As Isaac Brock sang, “I guess all us snakes find our tails pretty damn tasty.” I’m fully aware that a finished artwork can, and often does, grow from banal origins. Analyzing those origins in detail, though, often produces a deflation as undignified as a whoopee cushion. Give us the transcendent result of your imagination, but leave the rest shrouded in mysterious silence, please.

Obiter Scripta, no. 82

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I cannot keep a record of my life by my actions; fortune places them too low. I keep it by my thoughts. Thus I knew a gentleman who gave knowledge of his life only by the workings of his belly; you would see on display at his home a row of chamber pots, seven or eight days’ worth. That was his study, his conversation; all other talk stank in his nostrils. Here you have, a little more decently, some excrements of an aged mind, now hard, now loose, and always undigested.

— Montaigne, “Of Vanity”

Two things: one, this reminds me of how I first encountered the word “costive” in one of Joseph Epstein’s essays. In context, he used it as a synonym for “reticent” or “taciturn,” and I’m always happy to find new versions on that theme. Upon looking it up, I learned that the primary use was in describing literal, not metaphorical, constipation, and decided I probably wouldn’t use it. I may well be full of it, but I’d rather not suggest it so vividly to my readers. And two, to paraphrase Dave Barry, “Some Excrements of an Aged Mind” would make an excellent name for a blog. Looks like the domain is still available if you’re interested!

Obiter Scripta, no. 81

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It is allowed that vocations and employments of least dignity are of the most apparent use; that the meanest artizan or manufacturer contributes more to the accommodation of life, than the profound scholar and argumentative theorist; and that the publick would suffer less present inconvenience from the banishment of philosophers than from the extinction of any common trade.

— Samuel Johnson, “Petty Writers Not to Be Despised“

“How’s it been for you guys?” we asked our frequently-seen grocery-store buddy. “It’s so strange!” he said. “People are thanking us! Is this how the troops feel? I mean, I just put beans on the shelf!” I remember once hearing a lawyer from one of the sub-branches of copyright law joke about how if he and his colleagues went on strike, no one would even notice, but if the garbage collectors went on strike, we’d all be dead of cholera within two weeks. Thank goodness for the non-glamourous keystones of society. As the saying goes, they also serve who only sit and work the register.

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