A foretaste

Sitting with the family around a candle-lit table, singing carols and for a moment being, just like the rest, as good to the others as I could, I wondered if our momentary forgetfulness might be a foretaste of His eternal forgiveness.

Ignore / Zero In

So the zero-in line is:

Ignore evil, pretend it's not there - neither in your neighbour ("77 times") or in the Universe. Zero in on good and cling to it like mad (i.e. like a religious fanatic, the transformation into whom, through the Philosophers' Stone: Love, will be your top philosophical achievement )

The un-understanding is ours

Forget about women, my biggest philosophical discovery (refrain from clapping yet - the biggest so far) is that the un-understanding is ours; our quest to make sense of the Universe as it is now is futile: evil makes no sense, and evil is ours (and Satan's).

(...and the sire of gods and men spoke first. At that moment he was thinking of Aegisthus, who had been killed by Agamemnon's son Orestes; so he said to the other gods:

"See now, how men lay blame upon us gods for what is after all nothing but their own folly. Look at Aegisthus; he must needs make love to Agamemnon's wife unrighteously and then kill Agamemnon, though he knew it would be the death of him; for I sent Mercury to warn him not to do either of these things, inasmuch as Orestes would be sure to take his revenge when he grew up and wanted to return home. Mercury told him this in all good will but he would not listen, and now he has paid for everything in full."

The Odyssey, Book I)

Mori / The 'dying' fallacy

An elderly person tells me about one of her ailments after another and I'm thinking: if I do the same at some point, cut in and tell me 'Okay, I get the gist – you're dying*'.

*a major, major fallacy; there is no dying, there is death.

Death as a fallacy

Death is a fallacy.

Adam and Eve fell for Satan's lie (a lie is a basic fallacy) and this error produced a lethal conclusion.

Jesus resisted all fallacies and lives on.

The 18. Fallacy

18.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? 
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date: 
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; 
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st; 
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. 


- an obvious fallacy, unless not by the Bard, but by God

Democracy

Fucking* democracy.

*vide newspapers, among other Polish one.


P.S. The problem with the system is that it's irrational, by definition. There is no debate, no argument, no persuasion in democracy. They were there at the beginning of democracy, but the bloody system has destroyed them (because it had to, by its very nature).

Page Three

When we reached her austere room, she closed the door and pre-empted my questions.

'Father,' her voice was slow and decisive, 'I cannot offer you any explanation of what you've just seen except that some strange... some terrible things happened this afternoon in the nearby forest – none of them witnessed by myself or any other nuns. Because of that I... we... must show utmost caution...'

'Whose hair was that?' I interrupted her.

The abbess continued as if I hadn't said anything, '… about any conclusions. I hope you'll...'

'Whose hair was that?' I demanded again. The image of the nun's dead hand wouldn't go from before my eyes. She paused.

'I don't know. Some accounts, most absurd, have reached me, but they are so unbelievable that I won't repeat them to you. All of what I've heard is confused and none of it has come from sources worthy of any trust.' She sounded as if the case was closed; I didn't like it.

'I have every reason', she went on, 'to believe that sister Rosalie had gone mad before she died.'

'You mean before she was killed!'

'Father,' her voice changed, 'I am exhausted. Please come again tomorrow. I need rest now.' Just then a subdued shriek came from a distant room, startling both of us. I looked at the abbess to observe her reaction, but she regained her calm as quickly as she'd lost it. I noticed now she was very pale. 

'I will come back tomorrow morning', I said.

'Make it afternoon', she rose from behind her desk, 'I'll have plenty to see to before then.'

I crossed the threshold into the poorly-lit corridor and stalled with a gasp – right in front of me stood a dark figure. 'I'll show you out', it said and I recognised the voice of the nun I'd met in sister Rosalie's cell.

Outside, the carriage was still waiting, but the peasant didn't show any signs of impatience. He must have been properly fed and paid, while I was inside. Instead, he was all curiosity: 'Is it true, Father?' I was just about to ask 'what?', when a piercing shout reached us from within the convent, 'Diable!'

This was no time to find out which of us knew less about the matter. 'Let's go', I commanded. When we were some distance away, it came again – 'Diable!' The peasant lashed at the horses and we sped up. Then we heard it one more time, faintly: 'Diable!' We were going back down a different route, which was longer but smoother. There was full moon and I kept looking at it, but drew no comfort from its indifferent light. How I wished both the natural and man-made darkness could be flooded by sunshine now!

I was lying sleepless in my bed that night. The events of the long evening were taking their toll on my imagination. Why did the abbess behave the way she did? What was she hiding and why? Why did she decide that honesty wasn't the best policy, especially before a priest? What if there was a grain of truth in what the peasant had learnt? What if there were more than one grain? And if all of it was fantasy, what made people's imagination come up with dark tales of passion, weakness and death? I was tossing and turning. As I didn't know any answers to all those questions, I decided to think of what I knew: that our Lord Jesus Christ was born a man, died on the cross and saved us – and with that peace-giving truth I finally fell asleep. 

If only my dream had been as reasonable as my faith! The characters and images of the day stayed awake in my head, and now all was out of my control: I was at a ball and the abbess was dancing in a dazzling dress. A young man, an aristocrat of sorts, beckoned me. 'Isn't this what she wanted?', he asked as I followed him into a room with an extremely high ceiling and ornate walls full of large paintings. There I saw the dying nun, she was young now and beautiful. She stood in the middle of the room, quietly singing an old song, which I must have known but couldn't recognise. Her eyes were peaceful, but there were tiny beads of sweat on her forehead, which reflected the light from the ballroom. She raised her hand to wipe them off – and the blood and scratches and were still there. I turned around to ask who she really was, but the young man couldn't give me an answer – he was not there.

Politics

I used to think that politics is what happens when agreement collapses: discussing issues, negotiating policies and peaceful fighting for solutions. Now I realise politics is what happens when argument, or even communication, collapses.

Page Two*

As I watched the woman die, I was gripped by a powerful awe of life. The appreciation of my existence which I suddenly felt because of the death of that old nun seemed to surpass the feelings I remembered from my most exhilarating experiences. Then came a wave of questions and – oh, I am a man of little faith! - fears. I was getting increasingly powerless and vulnerable. What is life? How do we partake in it? What is the human body after the soul departs it? Do we die because the soul leaves the body, or does the soul depart the body because the body dies first? What if I have fooled myself in believing that there is a way I can hold on to life forever? And I saw my soulless body being buried under a layer of nothingness. 

I was ready to collapse on the simple stone floor and lie there speechless, overwhelmed by the profundity what I had just witnessed and of what I was – but how? - part of. Instead, supported by a nearly decade's worth of priesthood, I started a prayer and none of those present would guess what was going through my head as I was uttering words which were meant to be as much help for sister Rosalie's soul as comfort for those left behind in the small candle-lit room of the simple convent tucked into the side of an ancient forest at the outskirts of M. I finished the prayer and looked at the faces of the two - excluding the dead one – nuns who were with me in the small cell. 

The warm, elderly abbess, whom I knew and liked a lot, kept eyeing me with slightly unsettling regularity and the other sister, a stout middle-aged woman whom I hadn't seen before, had a face of a hardened soldier and I couldn't for the life of me tell what emotions went through her, if any, ever. I always found surprising the practicality and cool-headedness most women I knew could muster when confronted with extreme events, but there was something else going on here. Somehow, the nuns were more concerned with me than with the deceased nun. 'Come, Father, let's talk about the funeral in my office', the abbess made a move towards the door. 'Sister Thérèse is going stay here and pray a little more'. 

I turned around to give the parting look to the woman I'd just sent off to greater things and caught the eye of Sister Thérèse, who wanted to fake a delicate smile, but failed. She came up to the bed and wanted to push in one edge of the blanket covering that was hanging unevenly along the side of the bed. She must have moved the body a little and suddenly a limp arm dropped down and emerged from under the blanket. It was all covered in scratches and dry blood. The fingers were clutched tightly and from between them something stuck out. It looked like very short human hair - or clusters of an animal's fur. The abbess pulled me and said 'Let's go and talk in my office.' 

She gave me a half-commanding, half-pleading look. 'This is a difficult time for us. Very difficult', she added. I glimpsed once more at the hand whose fingers chillingly confirmed the mystery the nun's closing eyes had promised a short while earlier – and left the room. A door nearby closed quickly. The abbess led the way down a silent and dark corridor at the end of which a flickering light of a single candle was marking our aim - her room, where I expected the veil covering sister Rosalie's person and death to be removed. However, I was to be proven wrong.




*bloody good progress, isn' it  :\  Half a year after Page One : / (Yes, can I have your footprint in my backside, please?)

Regarding the simplicity

Regarding the simplicity of sex in heaven: whereas the very nature, and power, of human sex lies in its always being simple and pure (at least in a very local way here and everywhere and always in heaven*; well, if there is sex in heaven), it would be welcome if at in heaven the moves could – somehow; however, straightforward truth be told, it's not easy to see how – get more sophisticated thus becoming more worthy of Kant, or any philosopher for that matter.

*It's just struck me that even if God hasn't planned sex in heaven yet, it may be worth trying to talk him into this idea. I've got my philosophical work cut out now.

Prayer: Lord, if sex isn't part of your vision of heaven, please consider it. I'll give you my arguments later (well, you know them before I knew them; but I will, anyway). However, we** trust that whatever kicks you have in store for those who thanks to your love and their not being complete idiots will make it there, they'll easily beat, and possibly encompass, the best orgasms we can have, or imagine, this side of Plato.

**I assume there is at least one more person praying with me now; hopefully a fit*** woman.

***doesn't matter, actually; if she's fit for heaven, she'll be fit then.

In Heaven*

His vision (as to the general idea, not necessarily the details) of sex in heaven might be right, but Saraceni's, and the ancient Greeks', notion that Aphrodite wasn't quite free to please and be pleased may have been wrong

To reiterate:

The Sadducees were wrong about resurrection and wrong about the way they wanted to cast doubt on this idea of God's. Jesus spoke and we know there will be resurrection and there will be no husband or wife in heaven, and whoever makes it there will be like angels. Except for the bodies and a philosophically justified expectation that in the most fundamental way we should remain the way we were conceived in God's mind and made in the beginning: male and female.




(One solution that would make sex in heaven less likely would be a dramatic change in the original creation, in which I don't believe, but which could possibly be suggested by the passage from Genesis quoted above: 'God made man [singular] in His own image [singular]: male and female'. How about a merger of the two aspects of human nature in one person, just as they are - according to one possible interpretation of the fragment - merged in God? Then again, we believe in one God in three persons. Whatever the answer, let's just hope that if there is sex in heaven doing it will be easier that doing philosophy about it on earth).


*On the Question of Sex

An Erect Penis (of a Band)

A few years ago, in a restaurant in Warsaw, I was sitting opposite a very sensual and smart female student and next to a (just a guess) sensual*, very smart and published Dominican friar. We were talking about free will and Undeterminism, which the girl fallaciously denied. A few years later, walking down Clare Road, South Wales, I was thinking of prostitutes, murmuring Roxanne and putting the tender finishing touches to my response** to that girl and it struck me that if there has ever been a band that was like an erect penis, it's the Police.

* 'Well, my vow binds me only till I die', he answered when I pointed out that yes, Jesus said that there will be no husband or wife in heaven, and whoever makes it there will be like angels, but there is sex outside marriage too.

**which will discuss, among others, those moments that we all experience when the whole stake rests on the point of the moral needle and we, somehow but truly, can tip the balance and put on the red light to death and the green light to life.

Mona Lisa

Mona Lisa - I know what she's on about. More soon. (No, seriously - this time I mean it*.




*Really)

Old Indians of Zakopane

I bet some old Indians of Zakopane must have predicted we'd have a beautiful Spring this Winter. (Who knows, later we may* have an awful Winter this Spring).

(*but bear in mind I'm not an old Indian of Zakopane).


Bottom photo: Janek Skarzynski/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

City drinking

I was browsing (somewhere in Warsaw) through the business section of an outdated newspaper and a historic drop of the Nikkei seemed the most interesting thing that happened to me that evening. A few hours earlier I had started somewhere in the well-lit, presentable city centre in search of God knows what and after finding nothing I ended up in one of those obscure bars in one of those obscure residential parts of Warsaw that for some smoke-obscured* reason always fill me with hope of a thrilling, eventful future. I should have begun contemplating going back home, but wasn't ready yet to give up on the hope, so I ordered another pint. It didn't bring about any thrills or events, but made the aesthetically unappealing surroundings a better place. Alcohol is such a reliable ornament that after the first gulp (of the last pint) the horrible choice of pictures on the walls started to look intriguing, if not happy, and the tacky tables assumed a sophisticated modernist air. I put down the gripping old story about chronically failing Japanese economy and lit up a cigarette, one of those I'd quit a week or so earlier and through the smoke I noticed someone beautiful sitting at a table across the room. Either because of the grey mist around me or a general, city-induced confusion I couldn't for the life of me tell whether it was a woman, a demon or just an angel.



*probably doesn't work, but I'll leave it as it is for the time being.




(Illustration: I'm sorry I've lost the author, but one day I'll find her, I will...)

The Corporation Road Situation

(Mine. I mean the photo, God permitting; the rest - his)

She was approaching me down Corporation Road. The street was busy, but I focused. She was old, short and ugly. There was something repelling about her and the small mongrel that accompanied her. It was one of those dogs that may - and sometimes do - make you think that Satan really hijacked creation and whenever you overcame your fear and prejudices and showed trust, the beasts always* proved you right. It was as good a moment to lose faith as any. But I didn't. I persevered and wanted to establish an eye contact to give the woman - or myself - a chance. I zeroed in, but the original sin intervened. I couldn't say - and perhaps never will be able to - whether she looked at me, at the kebab shop on her right or at the Vauxhall on her left: she was cross-eyed.




*more little faith:  even if always, it's always so far; and I bet only always in my case - and I may have been hijacked by Satan, at least for the time being, God permitting. (I meant God permitting for the time being, not not God permitting hijacked by Satan**.

**but then again, what isn't God permitting?)