It's about schadenfreude

I have to keep finding reasons to be hopeful about the Republican Primary this year. At the moment, the race looks to be shaping up into a situation where two talented Cuban senators will cancel each other's bids and leave the nomination in the lap of a man who should be the dictator of a third world country.

Oh, and the other option in the General will be either a criminal or a socialist.

The man of the hour, in my opinion, is Jeb Bush. Accepting that he will not be the nominee, he has bowed out for the greater good. If his followers have any sense, they will uniformly flock to Marco Rubio.

I have to admit, I understand the stalemate that the anti-Trumpers out there are enduring. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are so similar that it's hard to decide between them. We don't want to decide between them; two such talented conservatives shouldn't be fighting each other. Ultimately, I want one of them to win the nomination and the other one to be veep. It would be a like a conservative version of Clinton/Gore: two young guns, both christened by a grassroots movement of the party, galloping off to Washington to bring their vision of a better America to birth. Why can't we just have them both, and conquer Trump in a matter of days?

The fact remains that if we continue to have them both, we will have neither. Unless something turns the tide against one of them, and the victor capitalizes on his strength, we will have a nominee who is essentially a natural slave.

I want to go on record as saying that, if it came down to a decision between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, I honestly think that I would vote for the criminal just to spite the bigot billionaire. I think that, by then, I would be so consumed by fury and disgust that I would do anything possible to keep the Donald from the White House, just out of hatred.

That's the bitterest irony of the whole cycle: I am the victim of two conflicting threads of schadenfreude. I pray that I will not be put to the test.

On the one hand, like I said, I would do almost anything to keep the Little Tyrant from power. I hate everything he represents almost as much as I hate his religious self-obsession, and I would probably leave the Republican Party before I accepted him as the nominee. In fact, I think I would "burn it all to the ground" rather than accept the fact that the American people want him as their leader.

On the other hand, I realized a few weeks ago that I would have to go to Confession if Hillary Clinton were indicted for her obvious criminality as Secretary of State. The thought of her entire candidacy going down in flames, of Hillary and Bill prideful and unapologetic to the last, even when she was first photographed in the orange jumpsuit that she has deserved for so long, of the Democratic Party in chaos, led by an unhinged Socialist orator who has never made a difference in the Senate... well, it was enough to make me dance with glee. Uncharitable glee, you know, which is why I'd have to try hard to feel contrite enough to get shrived.

I have to say, it's hard to choose between the two. If both can be accomplished - if somehow the Little Tyrant can be brought down, shattered on the rocks of his own colossal pomposity, AND Hillary can be shipped off to prison - then I will be one happy member of the electorate. I will vote for a Cuban in the General and hope we keep the Senate.

If neither of those things happen, then I will prepare for a political Lent that will probably stretch for another two electoral cycles.

Please Lord, let one of the Cubans let the other win.

It's about having (or not having) a trustworthy sense of beauty

Two weekends ago, I was sitting on a patio in the sunshine. I had just attended Mass and eaten brunch, and was contemplating what to do with the rest of my Sunday. My companion at table was a very small and very articulate Polish undergrad, who is known as much for her philosophy as for her ubiquitous cigarette. 

I forget the exact train of our conversation, but it touched on movies, books, and movies adapted from books. I remember there was some mention of "Hail, Caesar," by the Coen Brothers, although I don't think it could have played that much of a role in the discussion because it hadn't opened yet. Either way, I probably made some disparaging remark about the Coens, who consistently under-perform their obvious talents. This remark occasioned a comment on her part:

"Thomas, sometimes I wonder about your artistic taste. I'm not sure I trust your sense of beauty."

Broadsided. 

The comment itself was made somehow more incisive by the fact that it was delivered in such a delicate little voice. I had no idea what she was talking about, because I generally-ahem-pridefully think I have at least a basic grasp of what looks beautiful and what doesn't. I must have conveyed my bemusement, because she blushed and quickly tried to dilute what she had said: well, maybe I didn't mean exactly that, because, you know, you read a lot and we sometimes like the same things, but I don't know whether I understand why you don't find certain things beautiful when they so obviously are.

It just came to me! I remember what I said that warranted her polite condemnation: I said that I thought G. K. Chesterton wasn't that good of a writer. I think he was a brilliant columnist, but he's hardly deep. When he is, it feels more like he's possessed by a sudden inspiration from on high, not by the organic working of his own talent. He's enjoyable, occasionally delightful, and now and then conveys real insight. However, because Catholics like to lionize their successful laymen, especially authors/artists, I think the devout readers of his work paint him with far too adoring a brush. (They'd use it to laminate Lewis with more comfort, but there's the enduring irritation of his having remained an Anglican in spite of all.)

Comments in this vein spurred on my Polish friend to blast my taste in art and my sense of beauty. I was politely offended, of course, and did my best to degrade the conversation by poking fun at everything she said. This was probably ignoble, but given that I had just been confronted by so unexpected an enemy, it was my "fight" reaction. After I had pushed back a bit, we came to a compromise statement: She was unsure whether my appreciation for beauty had any rhyme or reason to it, because many things I said I liked jarred with things I said I didn't like.

That is a "j'accuse" worth thinking about, and in more ways than one. Is there a pattern to my tastes? And perhaps more importantly, should there be?

The obvious answer to the first question is yes, and the obvious answer to the second is that such a question doesn't make sense.

People are pattern-making beings. We're largely patterns ourselves, for heaven's sake. Biologically, we exist because of a consistency of behavior on the part of genes, cells, antibodies, gut flora (kom-bu-cha!), neurons, muscular reactants, etc. As far as choices are concerned, we thrive insofar as we are able to create and implement patterns of behavior that accord with our natures. Intellectually, we require patterns to understand even the simplest ideas: recognition is largely a function of repetition. 

The world of art/beauty is also subject to this law of pattern. Monet's "Water Lilies" are beautiful insofar as one is able to step back far enough to see the full shape of the painting; da Vinci's "Madonna of the Rocks," pleasurable enough on first viewing, takes on greater glory when one can spot and comprehend the intense geometry he worked into the composition. A negative example: critics who view Jackson Pollock's work may gush about its importance, its relevance, its audacity, its challenge to the onlooker, its defiance. Nobody looks at "Autumn" and says "beautiful" with a straight face.

So yeah, duh. Art is about patterns pleasingly done, so of course someone will have a pattern to the art he/she likes and dislikes. This also cuffs playfully at the second question: should we have a pattern to our likes and dislikes? Should gravity affect you when you jump off a cliff?

But! Just because there's a pattern to something, doesn't mean that it has to be simple. It doesn't even have to be generally comprehensible. So the second question really becomes: Should someone's taste in art be guided by a simple principle, easily understood by his cigarette friends?

I don't think so. I mean, it doesn't necessarily have to be that way, and I think that if people are honest with themselves, they'd admit that trying to live by too simple a pattern stunts them in critical ways. Religious fundamentalists are a good example: just look at their adult children.

I think that the most important patterns in our lives are the ones we understand the least. Take the operations of cellular dynamics: we know an awful lot about how our bodies work, but we are only able to contemplate one particular thread of the tapestry at a time. Looking at the entire work of life in even a single cell, all at the same time, would break a veteran viewer. Can you imagine holding the pattern of all the activity in the human body in your mind at one moment in time?

Can you imagine holding the pattern of world economics in your mind all at one time?

Can you trace all the vagaries and loop-de-loops of a campaign race for city council, let alone for the Presidency?

Can you imagine contemplating the pattern of give and take in a romantic relationship, all the interplay of attraction, desire, guilt, fire, sorrow, and sacrifice that play out between even the most mundane lovers?

Can you imagine yourself looking squarely at the ins and outs of God's working on a soul through grace and the Sacraments?

This is what God says to Job when he speaks out of the tempest. You don't even understand yourself, boy. How can you possibly understand me?

...OK, so, descending from my poetic vein. Appreciating beauty is natural to us, and like every pattern that comes with the Model-T Human, it's not as explicable as we'd like it to be.

That's why I think I can hold views about art and beauty that sometimes seem to be at variance. Just to take an example: I dislike Lorde's "Magnets" and love Tove Lo's "Habits (Stay High)." Both are songs about complicated love, and both are sung by talented songbirds. But in the first case, the lyrics, which are pretty foul, are uninspiring and dull. There's nothing beautiful in them: it's art, "not of the heart, but of the glands." With "Habits," the lyrics are also pretty rancid, but what a difference there is! The sheer depth of loss they convey is illustrated and gilded by the overcompensation of dirt the singer packs into them. She's trying to shock us, and herself, away from realizing how horribly empty we are, now that the one we love is gone and won't come back. 

Just try this trick: imagine Tove Lo singing "Habits" while running from an image of the crucified Jesus. (But I am NOT advising you to watch the music video, whatever you do.)

At the same time that I love "Habits," I hate most everything else about pop music. I prefer singer/songwriter fare, as well as chant and plainsong. Polar opposites that these are, I still believe that there is a pattern to what I like and dislike. Music that speaks to authentic suffering, real love, true experience, is music I enjoy.

Bluntly, then: as far as I can tell, art is beautiful insofar as it accords with reality. And reality is bigger, messier, murkier, and more dangerous than we can understand.

So there, Polish-philosopher-smokerchick-friend. Do I have a pattern to my love of beauty? Sure. Is it simple? Nope. Should it be?

I don't know. Where were you when God created the heavens, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

It's about that wizened lady I once encountered in New Mexico

A few years ago, my older brother had graduated high school. He had been accepted into a college on the west coast, and the whole family was delighted by this: Dad had told us that we would all get to drive out to California to drop the first kid at college. This wound up, incidentally, becoming a tradition: whenever one of the kids went to a new college, one at which we hadn't previously had a graduate/student, it was into the Big Van with us. In this manner, the younger kids have gotten to see both coasts and a heaping helping of the heartland.

On this particular trip, our first college voyage, Dad had it all planned out: we would go to California via the south-western desert and return by the lunar landscape of Nevada. Our trip led us through Albuquerque, which many of us would later become familiar with in "Breaking Bad." That first time, all we noticed was that Duke City had only one central street - Yale - and only one interesting section of town. It was the Old Town, the one which had once been a Pueblo.

After we'd left, and entered the honest-to-God barrens that confront anyone who wants to one day see the ocean, we didn't often stop. We took things slowly, though: the Continental Divide, which raised us closer and closer to the arid severity of the desert sky, was not kind to the Big Van. At last, when we'd been kicking around together for a few hours and the Van was wheezing like a geriatric olympian, Dad brought us to a stop.

Anywhere around there, you were likely to be surrounded by canyons and arroyos. The highway in that particular place was no exception: you pulled off the road onto a ledge that overlooked a drop of at least a hundred feet. Perched on the edge of the cliff, there were several umbrellas. The shade they cast was precious, and was fraying at the edges from the brilliance of the sun. As we pulled to a stop, we looked out and could see people sitting in the shadows. There were a few other cars there, and every now and then people drift from one patch of darkness to another. They looked like raindrops sliding down a windshield.

We got out into a baking oven. The heat had already consumed every twist of moisture in the air, in its lust, and it met our exposed skins with passionate advances. Right away, I had the double feeling of revulsion and delight: I had never been to a place like this before... but then again, I had never been to a place like this before.

We dispersed from the car in tight groups, clinging to the shade when we reached it. The people under the umbrellas turned out to be vendors- Native Americans, mostly women, sitting in lawn chairs. They had blankets spread out before them, covered in trinkets. I went out to the edge of the cliff and looked into the desert; when I turned around, most of the family had moved on.

The lady under the umbrella wasn't looking at me. She wasn't looking at anything, actually. Her face was lowered, and her eyes were resting on her lap. Her clothes were nondescript and looked like the desert. Her hair was gray, where it might instead have been a shocking white. People approached her and looked at the flotsam she had on offer, which was mostly arrowheads and jewelry made of wire and turquoise stones. They were all probably hand-made. She didn't look up at them while they perused, and no one made any move to buy anything. For all she was concerned, the window-shoppers were not there. The lady was alone in the high paint of the barrens.

To my knowledge, she never saw me, and I never met her eyes. But while I was there, watching her, I was struck by the situation. This woman was old, not quite as the hills, but certainly old enough to be my grandmother. This was not what her dignity demanded of the world; she had deserved better than this. I looked at her blanket and her hand-made baubles. Now that I have the words to say it, I think back to her, and I say to myself: "If anyone wants to see what prostitution really looks like, here it is." What she was showing could easily have been the treasures of her people, something precious to her, history and myth and the sap of her ancestor's bones, distilled into blue stone and wrapped in copper wire to be hung amid the white folds of the white necks of those who never knew what it was they had done to this woman and her people.

As I said, she never saw me. I didn't have the words or the thoughts, then, to realize anything; I just looked at her, and she looked at nothing while she waited for the sun to go down around her, as it had already done around her world.

After a while, we judged that the Big Van was probably rested, and so we piled back in and made our laborious way up several hundred more miles of twisting desert back roads. We eventually made it to California, and my older brother and I got lost on the highway in the middle of a traffic jam. We went north from there, to a town at one remove from the arterial freeways of the golden state. North from there, into a mountain pass, we made our way at last to a shining emerald of a campus, a watered oasis in the middle of rolling hills silent in their shabby splendor, crisp and umber and drought-defiled. There we were, on a lawn of which a country club would have been proud, looking at the native land around, behind, and above us. Dry it was, dry indeed, and old.

Beneath the splendid grass, there had once been a burial ground for the Indians, which was only discovered when the college made overtures to the earth to shift out of its way. Meaning no disrespect to the bones, the administration had a medicine man come, in all his painted glory, to remove the remains. He said he thought he'd probably gotten them all.

Bones can be very small, though, and how can you detect them from the surface? It's possible that some, perhaps only some small ones, endure there, down where the dirt is one with the surrounding hills and forms a single, golden, patient, quiet whole.