Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Thoughts in the dark

Been awake since just before 3 am. I made the mistake of saying how glad I was to be able to sleep through the night. Now for two days, I wake up in the dark.

I like Capn Jack Harkness a lot. A great male character. But his Torchwood crew are emotional morons, especially Gwen and mummy-faced Owen. I know these flaws create drama, but... Just sayin'.

My sister died 8 years ago today. Getting that call in the middle of the night was like being struck with thunder and having a limb cut off. Thomas came over and got me through it. Can't remember much except him holding me and me stuffing towels in my mouth so the crying and howling wouldn't wake the neighbors.

When groups assert that they are "equal" and want social and legal validation for it, someone should say to them, "So prove it, and we'll see." How many groups would fail? I can think of a few that have. "Equality" has become a trance.

The majority-minority game is way off now. Has been for way too long. As I continue to notice, the majority dances to the tune of the minority. All this stuff about gay marriage. For how many people?

On a rightwing site re an article against gay marriage, ran up against some really nasty stuff. Not the usual conservative behavior, but it does happen.

Who escapes their Zeitgeist? When I listen to the social justice Catholics carry on as if their current concerns and lingo are just good old traditional Christianity rather than the just-made-up soft socialism of post Christian Europe, I think of the Catholics of, say, the Counter Reformation, for whom the assertion of Catholic power through the state was second nature, too. Liberal Catholics are statists as well, but see themselves as the nobler part of a larger "human" coalition. God, could anything be more locally Zeitgeistish?

Half watched a flick called Voodoo Moon. Good Lord, what an incoherent disaster. Whoever wrote it and put it together...all the same guy, actually...was off his meds. Just drek. Even made terrifically sexy Eric Mabius unappealing. How do people get these things funded?

Speaking of funds, the world's, the country's and my finances are not looking good. My Own Private Big Fat Greek Financial Meltdown.  Makes the years when I was flush seem like someone else's life.

When I started out dating again in 2006, I wondered if I was still emotionally intact. Turns out I was, for better or worse. But I wonder again if chronic anxiety wears away the capacity to connect.

Or sleep through the night.

8 comments:

Dormiglione said...

Try a little tapioca before bed.
Works every time.

Anonymous said...

Also, perhaps helping my efforts in progressive idealism will help cheer you. For instance, I'm at work on a UCC-friendly translation of the Quran, but I'm at a loss how to translate Surah 4:34 so that it is applicable to gay marriage.

Since we know from liberal exegesis that Ephesians 5:22-31 means mutual submission of husband and wife on the strength of v. 21. This is easily extended in to mutual submission of partners in LGBT and hetero partnerships alike.

But how should Allah's inclusion of beatings for disobedience at 4:34 be brought up to date? Should we say that either partner is permitted to beat the other for failing to be obedient? This would be egalitarian and thus progressive. But since both partners are to be obedient to each other, presumably both partners are forbidden to beat the other -- after first having try'd to induce obedientness via admonitions, and then via ye olde withholding sex method.

An exit maybe can be discover'd from this impasee by noting that Allah seems to have reason'd to his original conclusion on this wise: since the man expends his substance for his wife or wives by introducing transcendence or excellingness, he is entitled to obedience from her or them, cf first half of this verse.

Can we conclude for our progressive agenda that the partner who contributes more to the marriage financially has the right to obedience from her or his partner? and the financially more dependent partner accordingly has the duty also of "guarding the unseen" (sc the richer partner's honour which for some reason isn't seemly and is kept unseen)?

OreamnosAmericanus said...

I do feel much better after reading that. Thank you.

Anonymous said...

'darb' the Arabic word for 'beat' in this verse evidently derives from DRBWN 'goad' js1861. (I suppose we ought often to see 'goad' in the English word God, and "a god" in the English word 'goad.')

I guess the Nietzschean method of goading is gelassenheit.

We can see this meaning 'goad' in other uses (from wikipedia) of 'darb' in the Quran:

1. To travel, to get out: See Qur'an 3:156; Qur'an 4:101; Qur'an 38:44; Qur'an 73:20; Qur'an 2:273

2. To strike: See Qur'an 2:60, Qur'an 2:73; Qur'an 7:160; Qur'an 8:12; Qur'an 20:77; Qur'an 24:31; Qur'an 26:63; Qur'an 37:93; Qur'an 47:4

3. To beat: Qur'an 8:50; See Qur'an 47:27

4. To set up: Qur'an 43:58; See Qur'an 57:113

5. To give examples: See Qur'an 14:24, Qur'an 14:45; Qur'an 16:75, Qur'an 16:76, Qur'an 16:112; Qur'an 18:32, Qur'an 18:45; Qur'an 24:35; Qur'an 30:28, Qur'an 30:58; Qur'an 36:78; Qur'an 39:27, Qur'an 39:29; Qur'an 43:17; Qur'an 59:21; Qur'an 66:10, Qur'an 66:11

6. To take away, to ignore: See Qur'an 43:5

7. To condemn: See Qur'an 2:61

8. To seal, to draw over: See Qur'an 18:11

9. To cover: See Qur'an 24:31

10. To explain: See Qur'an 13:17

Anonymous said...

You're welcome! ... We have met the enemy and he is future us.

Anonymous said...

And as we heard in Heidegger's genealogy, our future arrives to us from our past, or the ancestors split in order to send us a future.

Anonymous said...

P.S. Strange is the Quran for proposing among the methods of wife-control that men withhold sex from their wives (4:33).

In unpickwickian reality, this recommendation seems absurd. Unpickwickian man's greater eagerness gives women the negotiational advantage. ... Reminds me of the data that Jungians enjoy referring to, about pickwickian woman's far greater appetites for sex -- as suggested in pagan myths of various sorts, and in Shariah's nutty clampdown on women and girls: one mustn't let women and girls go about unsupervised by a male relative lest they give in to their lascivious urges.

Admittedly, Shariah also says that men are totally unable to resist the sex appeal of any woman out of chadors.

P.S. from 'A Dictionary of the Bible' by William Smith (1813-1893):
»With regard to the use of the veil [sc in the middle eastern countries, the 'orient,' including Palestine], it is important to observe that it was by no means so general in ancient as in modern times.

»Much of the scrupulousness in respect of the use of the veil dates from the promulgation of the Koran, which forbade women from appearing unveiled except in the presence of their nearest relatives.

»In ancient times, the veil was adopted only in exceptional cases, either as an article of ornamental dress (Canticles 4:1, 3; 6:7),

»or by betrothed maidens in the presence of their future husbands, especially at the time of the wedding (Genesis 24:65; 29:25) [cf then also the transparent veil worn by brides in Christian weddings even today; erotic mystique galore!],

»or lastly by women of loose character for purposes of concealment (Genesis 38:14).

»Among Jews of the New Testament age it appears to have been customary for the women to cover their heads (not necessarily their faces) when engaged in public worship.«

Anonymous said...

Admittedly, if womengirls are as desublimation theory exhorts them to strive, then burkhas are appropriate as per "loose character" requiring concealment. Desublimation can keep on trucking under a burkha.

Plato's Socrates you will remember form the Republic argues that truly virtuous men and women should exercise naked together in gymnastic education. Sc insitence on heavy cloaking really isn't semiotics indicating virtue.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...