Khan's Castle

Over the weekend, I finished the first two books of Osamu Tezuka's eight book set of Buddha graphic novels. Beautifully drawn in black and white, they follow Siddhartha's life using fictional characters to dramatize historical elements. I've enjoyed them quite a lot as well as found them enlightening -- imagine that -- with regard to life in India and so on. Very nice stuff.

At the gym, I'm beginning to move into the realm of a number of the other people who boulder there on a regular basis. I'm feeling younger all the time.

I've given some thought to my faith as a Christian lately and in an attempt to clarify my thoughts I've posted a description of it in one of my other blogs, Serpentinarium. Some will no doubt make something of the name vis-a-vis the Christian faith. Don't. I have a pet boa constrictor that I named my blogs for, that's all.

I do note this: Faith by definition is axiomatic and thus, essentially indefensible. That's why it's called "faith" and not "fact". Mine is just as indefensible as yours.

One silly off topic note: I put the period after the quote in that sentence up there. I know that's un-American, but it does follow European standards. Ever since I learned that, I simply can't put them inside, because it isn't logical that they should be. I'm quoting a word. The period terminates the sentence. They just don't go together in the above usage.

A friend told me something that cracked me up: She said that once she was reading Kafka while doing her workout on the stair machine and it didn't work out: She just felt like quitting.

Brilliant!

Lately, I haven't sat down and gotten focused to write much except emails to people; I notice when I write long emails I don't blog as much. I guess there's only so many words I have inside me. Who knows?

Since the climbing trip that I documented in here, I've continued bouldering in a local climbing gym and am encouraged by the progress. I'm able to perform problems now that I couldn't even make a respectable start on ten weeks ago. I do love the feeling of the movement in climbing. I hope to never be too old to get back to something fun.

Flute is progressing as well. I play most on the weekends, seemingly embodying the plight of the amateur musician: We practice when there are fewer people around to annoy. I'm at the point now that I can improvise a little bit with a record if it's in the right key. The fingering for some keys is just a bit awkward yet and so, for the moment, I stay away from them. A real plus for the flute is that it's easy take along when I travel.

Just finished Blankets, a graphic novel by Craig Thompson. It reviewed very well, in fact, one of the cover blurbs is from a Pulitzer Prize winner. It's a single work of almost 600 pages -- unlike many graphic novels that are published first as a series of comic books -- that tells a beautifully bittersweet story. I highly recommend it, especially if you've never tried out comics that are written for adults. It's an art form that, in the right hands, is a beautiful vehicle for story telling on the adult level.

Thursday, I finished reading John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany. It took me a while to get fully engaged with it, mostly because the descriptions are very detailed and I'm not a very fast reader. In the end, thought, I enjoyed it quite a lot. Owen Meany himself is a unique character in all of my reading. If you enjoy settling into a book and letting the immersion wash over you, you may like this book. I did.

In a different vein, I also recently read Frank Miller's graphic novel -- originally published as limited series of four comic books -- Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. I find that I'm really enjoying serious comic-style works. I've always loved comic book art, but the subjects were normally written for kids, and perhaps this one may be targeted toward teens or twenty-somethings, but I -- in my late 40's -- still enjoyed it quite a lot.

A while back, I sat across a room and listened to a dear friend describe a hurt, a suffering that followed him across decades that wasn't his fault. He told me, “I have always felt like something was wrong with me.” After talking a while longer, he looked at me and said, “It's hard to be human.” He wasn't angry that I could tell, but his eyes shown melancholy in the warm glow of the lamp in the middle of the night. There were many people outside, but the loneliness in the room was palpable and it broke my heart.

The next day, the unspeakable beauty of some music I heard made me weep: Clear soaring voices sang words I couldn't understand, but the melody and harmony spoke in their stead to my soul, gently enjoining me to see the world and the sorrows in it, to weep for the pain caused by me and to me, for things lost never to be retrieved, innocents that suffer the abuse of others, friends afraid to let friends fully into their lives for fear of losing them. And for the heart wrenching times when they do lose them. And perhaps even, for the joy of when they don't.

I know a boy that was laughed at for being himself. He was different.

I know a man that loves listening to sad songs that make him cry because he doesn't cry sometimes when he should.

I know a young woman who shed bitter tears about a love who loves her but left anyway.

I know a boy that gets punished by his father when he shouldn't.

I know a girl that gets the same.

I know a father that wonders if he can forgive himself.

I know a mother that hopes she can do the same.

I know this: We are all struggling up the same hill, falling, slipping, sliding and trying to get by. It is hard to be human.

God, please forgive us all.

To my friend who struggles to be human, I pray that:

I always enjoy Jay Nordlinger's column on NRO. Here he quotes John Stuart Mill as saying this:

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature, and has no chance of being free unless made or kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

I think there's a lot of truth to that and sometimes I wonder if my courage is up to that standard. I'd like to think so. I'm aware that at my age -- well beyond the military entrance limitations -- it's easy to be in favor of the war effort because others will be the ones going over there. Even so, if called, I'd go because I do believe in the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independance, the US Constitution, the Gettysburg Address and so on. Ours is a great country and worth defending.

Bruce Thornton writes an interesting article that talks about the USSR and draws parallels with the current state of affairs with the Islamists. One main point is that, for whatever reason, the Left, just as they did with the USSR, now often refuse to believe the Islamists own descriptions of themselves, even when back by concrete example after example.

Really makes me wonder...

Yet another killer column from Hanson, the key phrase in which is "The Europe that believes in everything turns out to believe in nothing". That single idea occurred to me the other day while thinking about religion, the 60's and other things, to wit, if you open up the definition of a concept far enough to be all inclusive, the definition ceases to be useful. At that point, the topic in question can't even be discussed because of definitional meaninglessness: Lines of reasoning turn to mush because the axioms and definitions they're based on simply won't support anything. All clarity evanescently disappears; everything becomes pure opinion. People then bicker, not discuss.

Sound familiar?

A couple odds and ends this morning...

A software vendor last week, in exchange for half an hour of my time, gave me an iPod Shuffle, although not the new little clip one, but the one about the size of a pack of gum. Very nice and I see why people like them. Honestly, given a power amp and speakers, you could do away with the home stereo and just use an iPod along with your computer. Of course, you could do away with the iPod and just use the computer, too.

A laptop I have at home just yesterday got utterly crushed by adware and even worse, as it turns out I think, a virus as well. Windows Defender did its best, but later WebRoot's Spy Sweeper removed a host of other adware widgets that Defender didn't get. The virus is still on there and not addressed by either product and so I have to work that out.

I don't think I posted on it until now, but my daughter got her black belt the week before last. She performed very well on her test, a 6th dan instructor saying after the fact that there was "never a doubt". I was quite the proud father. The six year journey on that path now complete, further training certainly a possibility, she's now free to focus on and finish out high school without that hanging over her and perhaps move on to other things.

Climbing, actually bouldering, at the gym has been fun lately, and after a little nervousness about my hands being able to take the punishment, the future looks bright along these lines. I took the kids and my daughter's friend to the gym Saturday and they had a great time. My 10 year old seems to have a real feel for it. My other daughter, the one with the black belt, is getting climbing shoes and a chalk bag for her birthday this week. I foresee a lot of fun for her.