The University of Dallas isn’t really a place, but a spirit. Some want to say the spirit is that of critical inquiry, or that it stems from a vision of the one true Church. The truth might be simpler than that: it could be just wanting to share, trying to encourage the conditions where people can be confident, realize their potential, and bring others together.

It is “sharing” - the attempt to bring others together - that probably defines UD best, and all of us are familiar with Marilyn’s generosity and how deep it runs.

Which brings us to Collegium.  All of us are ambassadors for the school, and I don’t mean that in a “Collegium is better than everyone else” way. It is rather the simply obseved fact that I have seen all of you behave with dignity, work very hard to sing well, and make sure no one feels alone or left out. It is seemingly strange that “collegial” is a word so close to our very name, but it is fully in accord with UD’s spirit. We go through old books and all sorts of other difficult subjects in order to share with others what is priceless, at any given moment. A fundamentalist friend of mine once asked why we need any sort of art if we have Scripture. He was told that perhaps the Gospels are so short because God spent most of His time on Earth listening, appreciating the fruits of Creation.

But the fight against Plato or, to speak more clearly and for “the people,” the fight against the Christian-ecclesiastical pressure of millennia - for Christianity is Platonism for “the people” - has created in Europe a magnificent tension of the spirit the like of which had never existed on earth: with so tense a bow we can now shoot for the most distant goals. To be sure, European man experiences this tension as need and distress; twice already attempts have been made in the grand style to unbend the bow - once by means of Jesuitism, the second time by means of the democratic enlightenment which, with the aid of freedom of the press and newspaper-reading, might indeed bring it about that the spirit would no longer experience itself so easily as a “need.”

- Nietzsche, from the Preface to Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann

1. When we were in Assisi, there were many Italians along with us crossing themselves in front of the incorruptible remains of St. Clare, or slowly and meditatively walking through St. Damiano, trying to find that which motivated Francis to “rebuild” the Church (it was a crucifix, quite literally, that bent down and spoke, and is in a cathedral higher up).

This was an older Collegium group for the most part, and it was interesting to see the people they’ve become outside of school. The main unifying element was, I felt, a very intense Catholicism that takes the proposition Rome is the holiest city very seriously. The implication of Rome being holiest was spelled out exactly in a homily given in Florence by a University of Dallas graduate who is Cistercian and living in Italy. Accompanying those ideas is a moralism most inflexible:  the things that can be said we will all agree on. People who can recite copious amounts of Church history or teachings from encyclicals, Catholic mystics or reactionary publications loomed large in this crowd.

I don’t want to give the impression any of this is bad. Collegium is something I love dearly and I would like you to help me support. But if you’re more secular, and you encounter Collegium, it will strike you at first as strange. And I can’t say that it doesn’t strike me as strange, still - there was definitely a feeling of “I want to get married” pulsing through the various members of the group that was even stronger than when I was taking classes. There were many prayers said in front of relics, i.e. the severed head of St. Catherine of Siena, that made me wonder where the truth truly lies.

2. So that’s the group I felt I was with for the most part. If you ask around, you’ll get other answers about what happened, and more than likely told that my explanation is a strange one. People who carry their notebooks around everywhere, after all, don’t quite fit in.

Where did we sing?

• We didn’t get to sing for the Pope or in St. Peter’s or the Sistine Chapel. Yes, I’m bitter about this, even though I blame no one. This choir is marked by its liturgical function, and it does help maintain the sacredness of the Mass. To ignore what Collegium does is really a slap in the face to a heritage that worked hard to only give the absolute best to God.
• We did sing (”drive-by singing”) in San Giovanni (where the papal throne is), St. Mary Major, St. Paul Outside the Walls, the Sacred Steps, and probably a few others in Rome that I’m forgetting. We sang Mass at Santa Croce in Rome, I think - it was the church devoted to the relics of the True Cross, with the chapel of St. Helen. We sang Mass for a local parish in the city of Marino. We sang in the giant black and white striped gothic/romanesque cathedral in Siena, Santa Croce in Florence (in front of Machiavelli’s grave), San Francesco in Assisi, and had a really moving Mass in a church in Palestrina as well as a nearly 1000 year old Church in Rome near St. Mary Major.

We had a very large group - 70-80 people, I think, nearly all of them singers - and so we had volume and tended to blare a bit. The strength of the group is that since we’ve all been doing this forever, we didn’t have to practice much to get or maintain a good sound, and in quite a few places we had a brilliant sound emerge from a section or two. Recordings I’ve heard of us made impromptu on this trip sound pretty awesome.

3. I hung around my little group quite a bit - Bill, Ryan, Barbara and whoever else wanted to tag along. Learned a lot about what’s happening on campus, how to elaborate the notion “God is being,” and parenting, respectively. Bill was an excellent tour guide for Rome, although when we were just walking through it, my imagination started taking over. It’s hard to read Virgil, Ovid, Augustine and see the Renaissance art and not start wondering what the spirit of Rome is, and how it relates to both the ruined and finished buildings. The Forum and Pantheon were genuinely exciting: my greatest desire at both places was insight into what greater thinkers experienced.

I spent a good deal on good meals. Boar with polenta; this “forest” scented pasta sauce with two sorts of mushrooms blended into it, one of the mushrooms being truffles; the tenderest, juiciest veal with this subtle lemon sauce that went great with wine.

One of the worst meals I had I paid too much for, but it was a time I spent learning. At that meal I sat with a few Collegium members who were really hurting, who were in pain because of failed relationships, career choices with unexpected consequences, and trying to explain that they had grown, but weren’t sure how it happened. They knew they spent more time listening than before, and were curious what the next stage, from wonder to talking too much to listening far more, would be. It felt like Collegium for the most part was in that “talking” stage, but these members were beyond that.

I just sat and enjoyed the bean soup and all its delicate, overpriced flavors and listened. I know more than anyone else that growing up alone will not solve one of the major crises of our time, that our humanity is so decayed we can only reject religion or embrace it wholly uncritically. Somewhere along the line we started seeing each other as objects, as means to ends. It is unclear how any of us, sacred or secular, could deal with an afterlife where social graces might matter that much more. I always thought the one thing God wanted from us was that we love each other as He loves us.

The Holy Trinity, with the Virgin and Saint John and donors

The classical elements are not superfluous. The hallway supported by arches suggests the Father is walking towards us, except He is holding the cross bearing His Son. The dove, the Holy Spirit, is between Father and Son, but approaches vertically as opposed to horizontally. Our eyes are drawn in both an opposite horizontal and vertical direction. Horizontal motion invites us to place ourselves with the patrons kneeling, or attempt to step beyond them.

The Holy Spirit descends, but we ascend: we see the family crypt of the patrons, then the patrons themselves. They are on the outside looking in, separated - made almost invisible - by the pillars. Mary is visible to all, inviting us to observe the crucified Christ. What motivates John is invisible: he is lost in contemplation. The vertical movement leads to a contrast between divine and human death. We know Christ will rise; we know we must die. We relate to God through God dying: God cannot be stepped up to. The patrons are as far as we can get.

2. The University’s Rome campus needs more books and computers. The former are necessary because teaching here, if I were so privileged, would be a nightmare without them: I would constantly say “hey, you should look at such and such a secondary source” and it wouldn’t be there. Specifically, they need books by UD professors and by teachers of UD professors.

Also - there are a grand total of 2 computer terminals on campus. Think about that for a second, if you don’t quite see a problem.

3. We were in Siena, Florence and Assisi recently - more on all of that later, but for now, I want to take note of the monument to Machiavelli in Santa Croce in Florence. The woman depicted holds his portrait atop books in her right hand. Her left grips scales lying slack (h/t Sean Lewis), with a sword in one scale (the blade is hidden) and a scroll in the other. She has not weighed both or either yet, and one wonders how that judgment resolved in writings unambivalent about unleashing power for peace.

Thanks to Ario for introducing me to this poem: original here.

Sharks’ Teeth
Kay Ryan

Everything contains some
silence. Noise gets
its zest from the
small shark’s-tooth
shaped fragments
of rest angled
in it. An hour
of city holds maybe
a minute of these
remnants of a time
when silence reigned,
compact and dangerous
as a shark. Sometimes
a bit of a tail
or fin can still
be sensed in parks.

Comment:

“Everything contains some silence” is a proposition the speaker immediately challenges and resolves. How does “noise” contain silence? She puts this forth and argues that “rest” in the noise creates the “zest,” the very life of noise. Such rest comes in “shark-tooth shaped fragments:” each “rest” is a sudden ascent followed by a sudden descent, with an edge. In the airport and on the plane ride, while explaining this poem to two separate people, I used the image of watching live gunfire between soldiers and terrorists on television. The silence is the most awful thing, the anticipation of horror.

The speaker changes from “fragments of rest” to “remnants of a time” - “remnants” aren’t quite fragments, there may be a whole that remains after all, but it has left us. Those remnants, as well as the time itself, were/was “compact and dangerous” as a shark. There are at least two possibilities for this previous time: the meditative culture of the Middle Ages, perhaps, or a return to nature ala the “noble savage” (h/t Tony Janeiro). I’m sure we can think of more, but notice the movement of the object “compact and dangerous” - we look for the tail (end) or the fin (middle), and at parks, presumably, we are at the point of origin.

I’m packing for a trip as I write this. When I come back, the new year will have arrived and all will be at work again.

I think of you often. I love all my exes even though I talk to none of them, and there are many whom I love and have loved who I talk to sparingly or not at all.

I don’t talk to you at all. I have nothing to say directly, usually.

This is not the usual. For all I “know” - I obviously know something, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this - you could be married now, completely settled in your work situation, and best of all, independent and cared for by trustworthy friends. I couldn’t stand your friends because their drama was really one giant excuse to do whatever they liked. And then the drama became a giant excuse to do whatever you liked.

Blogging is thankless work. I am so grateful for the people who read my stuff, respond to it, promote it. Because really, what am I supposed to say? Am I supposed to say to my professors “yeah, I’m trying to get the school’s name out there, but it’s failing, so um, can i get some thanks?” Am I supposed to say that my stuff is better than 99% of the net? I may feel that way, but I know how I feel when I read people who write just as densely, and my head starts aching. Am I supposed to say my stuff is real scholarship? I don’t know I want to say that: as I work on the dissertation, I run into papers and books that are awesome, with exquisite attention to detail. The “jots and tittles” are taken very seriously by many academics, and I admit that for all my ranting about the academy, I want to produce something like that, which is why I’m writing a dissertation.

But here’s the thing about “blogging:” I’ve put myself out here, made my dedication to my work public, demonstrated I eat, sleep, breathe this stuff, and invited others to share my journey. And I’m not saying “I’m so great.” I’m not.

I’m saying I wish you were “here.”

We don’t need to talk, but I want to know you’re doing more than just playing horrible Flash games and saying dirty things on Myspace and Facebook. I want to know that no matter what happens to you, you’re growing, you’re getting the right people around you, and you’re being yourself in the fullest way possible and accepted for that.

I want to know that you’re happy being your best.

This is the New Year: my authority stems from my words alone, not what I do, not how much money I make, not who loves me. It stems from my words because of all the other opinions I’ve taken seriously and continue to take seriously.

I sincerely hope you’re happy wherever you are, because I know when you’re happy, you’ll spread your wings, if you haven’t already. The time we knew each other closely was hibernation for you, and I apologize that I couldn’t help you in any way. In many ways, you were and are a far better person than I am. It is entirely possible you do not need this exhortation.

But if you do need it, it’s here. I owe you for many of my best words and best thoughts - you were not afraid to be critical and loving then, and despite the fact this could easily make Jezebel’s “Crap Mail from a Dude,” I don’t want to be any less critical if a truly greater good can be effected.

I think we can see a more radical Jefferson in this letter, one who may have changed in some ways after holding the Presidency, but I’m not sure. What I am sure about is that this letter has a few strange elements I can’t quite put together, and there are many teachers of mine and teachers of my teachers who know how to navigate this far better. Leo Paul de Alvarez used to cite this letter frequently for the sake of contrast with classical thought.

Outline of the letter:

Paragraph 1. Jefferson doesn’t know “by what occasion” this letter came about, although he spends significant portions of it speaking of France, what changes he might like to see there, and matters of property. What is curious about this letter is that it sounds like political theory, but the word “practical” occurs everywhere. “Practicable” is a word which occurs in this paragraph, and seems to have set a standard which brought this letter forth.

Paragraph 2. Jefferson proclaims “Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another” is a question that has “never…been started either on this or our side of the water.” He does not dwell on why this might be the case, i.e. that using language means using an inheritance from the past that binds us in critical ways (cf. Heidegger, “Building Dwelling Thinking”), or that laws must be thought greater than us to be obeyed. He rather claims he can prove “no such obligation can be so transmitted.” His “self-evident” ground is “that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living,” and he begins making this evident by literally talking about the earth, or more precisely, the distribution of land after an individual has passed away:

“…The child, the legatee, or creditor takes it, not by any natural right, but by a law of the society of which they are members, and to which they are subject. Then no man can, by natural right, oblige the lands he occupied, or the persons who succeed him in that occupation, to the paiment of debts contracted by him.  For if he could, he might, during his own life, eat up the usufruct of the lands for several generations to come, and then the lands would belong to the dead, and not to the living, which would be the reverse of our principle.”

Paragraph 3. Jefferson declares “What is true of every member of the society individually, is true of them all collectively, since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals.” He then starts talking about an ideal generation, one that is born on the same day and dies on the same day, and asserts that when a whole generation dies, a whole society dies.

Paragraph 4.  There is no substantial difference between this “ideal generation” and generations as they occur now. We can use empirical data to track roughly when one generation was born and died, and we arrive at 19 yrs. as the “term beyond which neither the representatives of a nation, nor even the whole nation itself assembled, can validly extend a debt.”

Paragraph 5. It would have been possible for Louis XIV to go into debt so much that the whole of France could have been ceded to creditors in Genoa. Our “self-evident” principle about the earth belonging to the living, along with the expiration of debts every 19 years, allows us to say the French should not be kicked off their land, even with that amount of debt.

Paragraph 6. Our 19 year term makes it clear what one generation is doing to another when they rack up debt - they’re making the future literally pay.

Paragraph 7. “The law of nature” means “one generation is to another as one independent nation to another.” There is no moral obligation to take on the debts of one’s ancestry.

Paragraph 8. France’s national debt has an interest small enough that the payment of the debt is “practicable enough.” But since we’re talking about debts - contracts - wouldn’t the 19 yr. term, if applied, force people to be more rational? Borrowing would be kept within its “natural limits,” and the “spirit of war,” exacerbated by lenders’ inattention “to this law of nature,” would be “bridle[d].”

Paragraph 9. “No society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law.” The earth, which belongs to the living generation, is managed and goods from it are taken “during their usufruct.” The living are “masters… of their own persons, and consequently may govern them as they please. But persons and property make the sum of the objects of government.” “Every constitution then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right.”

Paragraph 10. France, at the time of this writing, “most especially” applies the “principle that the earth belongs to the living.” Land is affected, and that in turn affects the holders of the land, and that in turn affects the efficacy of the values those who hold the land have as well as property claims in the future.

Paragraph 11. Jefferson exhorts Madison to talk about this subject as regards “contracting debts.” It would be assailed by some as “theoretical speculation” [yes, that is redundant. The theoretical is speculative by definition in this blog], but if it accompanies the first law on “appropriating the public revenue,” it could prevent European excess and keep despots away. After all, according to Jefferson, giving the power to declare war to the Legislature keeps the Executive in line, unlike so many other countries.  The 19 year term keeps debt and reasoning that would indebt us indefinitely in line, and is more in accordance with reason, as opposed to relying on “English precedent” [which, of course, is where Montesquieu - not exactly an English name - principally argued from].

Paragraph 12. There is no news in this letter, for there has been no occasion.

Comment:

When I was at Rutgers, what bothered me most was the criminality hiding underneath “we’re all cool, right?” I remember seeing groups of people who had no business being in school pick on others in any way they could: one of the worst examples in my mind was a group of potheads, all failing out of their classes, who were housemates with a friend and got him, through very serious-sounding house meetings with all sorts of thinly veiled threats, to put bills they racked up in his name. They weren’t above stealing anything they wanted, and the only thing differentiating them from people you’ll meet at bars who’d be happy to stab you for five bucks was that they were stoned or playing video games most of the time to get to the bar. I’ve run into the latter sort of “outright criminal” before [boyfriends of exes find newer depths continually], and I always knock on wood before I travel, because I like to explore, and am very susceptible to running into those sorts and being taken in just long enough.

Libertarians and anarchists always irritate me because they don’t take this sort of awfulness seriously. The former would probably go so far as to argue that what I’m calling criminality is some kind of survival trait, and they’re more fit to reproduce. Karl Maurer used to say this wonderful thing in class about how there were people in life that were like “bubbles in the champagne:” without them, it isn’t clear life means a heck of a lot. Somehow I suspect those “bubbles” would find themselves “popped” if anarchism were taken more seriously.

Right now - even though I haven’t worked through the stranger parts of this letter, and I could be very wrong - no less than Thomas Jefferson is irritating me. He employs the difference between “natural right” and the “law of nature:” the failure of “natural right” to “oblige” means that whatever it has to say about justice is useless. The “law of nature” is all that reigns, and the term “natural right” drops out of the letter entirely in favor of “right” simply, as the “law of nature” drops out for the sake of “force.” He understands enough to reduce the political problem to a merely practical one. We recall, of course, that “natural right” properly speaking is the question of whether anything is just independent of our saying so.

He understands, and he reduces, which leads me to think the man who was implicitly carrying out “give me liberty or give me death” in authoring the Declaration may not entirely understand. He may just know the terms for the test, given by his teachers Bacon, Newton, Locke.  Excellent teachers, to be sure.

And yet he assumes he has a oneness of mind with Madison. This I find most strange: if I were Madison, I would have thrown this letter in the trash. Does Jefferson understand at all that property protections are about letting people keep their heritage, be the caretakers of it? The problem with Bourbon France was that it alienated the people from the things dearest to them: the glitz of nobles and clergy took away from genuine pride in the nation, and worse, genuine piety. The reason why religious freedom matters is so that disgraces like St. Bartholomew’s Day cannot happen here: that was not faith, that was savagery.

But this letter may be far more nuanced than I’m letting on. Take note of Jefferson’s use of the term “usufruct” in paragraph 2 [quoted above] . Usufruct means you can do what you like with the goods produced by a property as long as you don’t damage the property. “Natural right” may oblige in less effective but more important ways. In paragraph 9, “they [the living] may manage it [the earth] then, and what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct.” We could be uncharitable and tie Jefferson’s reduction of thematic numerology into empirical science in previous paragraphs to this; we could say that usufruct has been reduced to the power people actually wield - if the property is damaged, after all, they can’t get what they want. But again, the term could have dropped out altogether.

Still, it remains to track the term “justice” in this letter. There’s only “just,” and it occurs in paragraph 8: a “wise and just” nation declares that they cannot contract more debt than they themselves, within their own lifetime, can pay. Nevermind that some nations have had to save the world, and incur enormous burdens doing so: Jefferson’s notion of justice here seems to be the joking one in the Republic, where, when Glaucon gets his city in Book 4, Socrates identifies the guardians with the courageous and the wise, and everyone else with temperance perhaps, and then goes and looks for a class that is just. Since they can’t find a just class, Socrates declares that justice is “minding your own business.”

It is because of men like Jefferson and Madison and Hamilton I can do philosophy, and will continue to do so. The truth is not simple - it is difficult even to accept when found, and pursuit of it creates enormous debts, ones that make our current national debt and economic crisis look very small.

Anyway. Point is, if I’m quiet and you want to hear from me, contact me. I want to get in at least 3 more blog posts before I go - there’s an important topic or two that I think might be nice to introduce -  but no guarantees. I’ll have lots to say when I’m back.

I dwell in Possibility -
A fairer House than Prose -
More numerous of Windows -
Superior - for Doors -

Of Chambers as the Cedars -
Impregnable of Eye -
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky -

Of Visitors - the fairest -
For Occupation - This -
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise -

Comment:

“Possibility” is a “fairer House than Prose:” it cannot be the fairest of dwellings because it is possibility, after all. “The fairest” is reserved for visitors to this House, or even, given the ambiguity the dashes create, the activity she engages in: “The spreading wide my narrow Hands / To gather Paradise.”

The “House” is peculiar. Compared with “Prose,” we are tempted to think that it is poetry itself, with Dickinson addressing us as poet. I think that interpretation holds, but I really hate “the theme of this poem is about poetry” line of thought generally, for this reason: a clever reader can make any poem to sound like a comment on poetry. Still, Dickinson mentioned “Prose,” and that implicitly brings up the theme of poetry.

But she doesn’t talk about poetry explicitly - rather, this “House” is open to the air in two ways (”numerous of Windows,” “Gambrels of the Sky”). When you add in the mention of Cedars, you wonder if this is a House at all. Prose might actually be a House, trapping thought. The imagery here reminds one of the forest as Cathedral, only “Gambrels” is a term specific to a barn’s roof. Using that term, she’s discounted any formal religious imagery.

We wonder about the House as natural. Poetry is still a House, of sorts. That it has more Windows allows more light to come in, but also allows the occupant at any given time to see more.

The doors are “superior,” as they are “impregnable” as Cedars are: you can’t see through them. The end of Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms” has the protagonist looking out at another building, and seeing in the windows what’s going on in each of the different rooms. Each thing happening in each room is starkly different from that happening in any other room. Possibility means choice - when you make a choice, other possibilities are closed to you. The difference is between the “Chambers” (within) and the “Windows” (without): one must choose how to see, and while choices are not necessarily final, one choice does mean another can not be acted on at the same time.

The problem of human vision causes our speaker to muse on what is above: “an Everlasting Roof.” There is a viewpoint which sees all.

But what’s funny about the sky is that we see it, too. The “fairest” Visitor might as well be an angel - it is the visit to possibility which makes one “fairest.” “This” is parallel with “Prose” in the first stanza: whereas Prose was a static House, the noun “occupation” strongly implies a verb, and we are given a distinct description of an action: “The spreading wide my narrow Hands / To gather Paradise.” “Spreading wide” implies wings, but what fascinates most is the “wide”/”narrow” duality: the Hands, by themselves, are narrow. “Spread,” they’re wide.

This is not a poem necessarily about poetry when all is said - it is a poem that uses the idea of the speaker as poet to make a point about the nature of thought. Thoughts are possibilities: each one implies a perspective. To dwell in possibility seems impossible, since to keep every thought alive all at once is impossible. Hence, “not-prose,” not merely thoughts stated as propositions, but something more social, and something ultimately mystical. A way of communicating that brings the audience to places you stood, and lets them see as you did, and lets them discover for themselves. The speaker actually is dwelling in possibility: the divine does indeed flow from the natural.

Before that, she was one of the few people who consistently linked to my writing and she always had - and still has - many decent, thoughtful things to say. So I definitely want to give as many thanks as I can here, and I strongly encourage you to check out her flickr - her photography only gets better each passing moment - and her Etsy. If you know anyone that might be interested in her work, please feel free to spread the word, and please do leave her feedback if you find her work interesting.