Ruminations on a Saturday Night

Saturday has become the most peculiar day of the week for me. In the morning and afternoon, it is the Sabbath--day of rest--to be spent in part attending church. So I learn about the Bible, something new inevitably as I am a neophyte when it comes to all things sacred and holy. Equally it is one of the few days, sadly, that I spend with my beloved Vivian, aka girlfriend; though I often spend most of the time flirting and whispering with Vivian, I also occasionally socialize with the regular coterie of the Martin brothers, Dave, Mark, and other folks. I attend, learn, eat, and piss as unobtrusively as I am wont. Who could ask for a better institution? It's certainly cheaper than university, and far more fulfilling in terms of self-esteem. Sure it has its flaws, some doctrine with which I do not agree , but I am able to maintain my usual shy, unobtrusive character while learning. I will be honest, the shy, unobtrusive character is part character, part ploy--there is a part of me that is still genuinely shy, but there is another side that is ambitious, verging on sinful avarice for knowledge and escape. Sometimes I think everyone's playing up the illusion, the usual Plato's Cave, Philip K Dick/Baudrillard simulacrum bit. Perhaps that explains my attachment to the fourteenth century--and newfound love for mysticism--as I learn about this period of turmoil: Black Plague, Great Schism, Peasant Revolts, to name a few. On the surface you can read 'mysticism' as a brand of escapism, misunderstand as it is by the secular sort, as evinced by my classmates in the Religious Drama and Visions course I am taking at York University.

This could be a bit of a stretch, but as I study 'mystics', both learned and vernacular, I find there is a connection to the ideas of China Mieville, a modern sci-fi/fantasy/gothic novelist, who coined the term "New Weird". Just google the words "Middle Earth Meets Middle England" and you'll see all about it. Mieville (and Moorcock earlier) has finally taken a stance against the trite, and static state of 'Fantasy' novels, of its Tolkienesque cliches. These sorts of things reek of the Oedipal anxiety of Bloom. As well, I should give due credit to the wonderful history book "From Dawn to Decadence" by Jacques Barzun--where I learned about the constant tit-for-tat vascillation that happens in the West. He brings up the concept of 'primitivism' (like Rousseau and "Emile") as this recurring idea which keeps popping up. It happened in the Renaissance, harkening back to the Classical Greco-Roman civilisation, Romantics harkening to the medieval ('medium aevum') period, both of which are imagined as idealized places. There's the neo-classical connection, or degree of separation (?). Unfortunately my knowledge of Modernism and Postmodernism is still a tad adolescent, er...nascent that I won't make a sweeping statement about those periods. Still it seems part of the human condition is about choosing between, or compromising 'progress' and 'preservation'--something I even see in the religious thought of the medieval period. A pinch of the old with a bit of the new. Or as I see it in terms of the medieval period: Augustinian/Benedictine vs. Aquinas/Scholasticism/Rationalism vs. Pseudo-Dionysian/Mystical vs. Grotesque/Burlesque. So much for binary oppositions. It's one way of rationalising things, but it isn't necessarily true.

Alright, take a breath. I'm done for the night. The alcohol has served its purpose, though I must learn to organise my thoughts. Goodnite.