Squinting Towards Armageddon
“I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.”
~ Flannery O’Connor
Before I set down the day’s thoughts, I want to express my humble gratitude for the many warm and supportive comments I received on my most recent post (the most comments I’ve ever received, in fact!). When I say “humble gratitude,” I mean exactly that. I am grateful for the kindness, but I am also humbled by the display from you, my readers who mean more to me than you can know.
I also wanted to say that I’m somewhat chagrined after re-reading the post, which I had composed at the end of a weary day. I suspect it sounded a bit whiny, and that was not my intention at all. I meant to express that I had been noticing that everyone seems to be tired and beaten down and burdened, and that I was feeling the strain myself, and less inclined to write blog posts or read others’ posts. But it seems that it came out with a “Poor me! No one’s reading my blog! I shall now fade into the mists of time…” tone. I will not edit the post because the sincere comments that it sparked are too important to me. But I am on the record as saying that I deserve to have the dogshit slapped out of me for whining here. I have every reason to rejoice, and very little reason to whine. So there.
***
Mrs. Orr and I sat out on the back porch last night until late, each of us with a dog in the chair with us, listening to the fiddle-scrapings of the crickets and watching the night sky. We have two old recliners out there, which we keep covered with tarps when we’re not using them, and they are the perfect porch perches. My wife has no trouble keeping Dixee on her lap, but I have more of a challenge with Jinx. Anytime I sit down in that recliner, he straightaway trots over and leaps up into it with me. I usually see him coming in time to move to one side. Once he lands, I shove him over between my legs and he curls up and lays his chin on one thigh, hitches a sigh, and settles in. Dixee usually lifts her head from my wife’s lap and lifts her trembling lip over her horror-movie of a mouthful of snaggled and missing teeth and growls at him. Just because.
Jinx has developed a new weapon in his arsenal, a weapon designed specifically for that little yapping grub called Dixee. Sometimes when she’s being particularly obnoxious to him, Jinx will stare down at her like a hawk looking at a hen, lift one clublike paw, and place it on her head or her shoulders and force her down onto the floor. You can imagine her outraged and melodramatic reaction. I find this technique hilarious in the extreme, and I have told my wife that it’s simply an example of Jinx putting the pimp hand on Dixee. Jinx likes this, and he styles himself Spott Dogg. He’s trying to convince me to buy him a gold chain in lieu of his collar.
Speaking of degenerate “rap” personalities, we heard recently that a rapper named Nicki Minaj has come under fire from her homegirls and homeboys and assorted lefties about something she said regarding the Covid “vaccines.” Apparently, all Minaj said was that people should pray before getting the vaccine, to make their own decisions, and to refuse to be bullied into it. But her cohort took this as a full-on “Don’t get the vax!” war cry, and they’ve piled on.
Neither my wife nor I had ever heard of Miss Minaj, so we searched for “best Nicki Minaj song.” The first song that came up had a video with it, and we clicked on it. For decency’s sake, I won’t mention the name of the song/video –you should thank me for my restraint — but I will say that we made it through about a minute of the song before we stopped it and sat in stunned silence. Somewhere off in the distance, a coyote howled…
See, that’s what curiosity gets you in the 21st century.
***
I mentioned our sitting out on the back porch last night. This morning, we took our coffee and read on the front porch. No trailer-park recliners out there, nosiree, because we have reputations to uphold in this part of the mountains. Just nice rocking chairs out there. While sipping and looking and thinking, I glanced up and saw something that’s been bothering me for a while now. There are two barcode labels on a couple of the rafters over the porch, left there by the workmen who installed the metal roof over the porch. I felt my fingers twitching while looking up at the labels, and determined yet again to get a stool and scrape those things off before the day is done. I am renowned in the family for my abiding hatred of bar codes and labels. If I see a bar code left on something someone has purchased, say a flower pot or a lawn chair, I have to remove it. I saw a girl with a bar code tattooed on the back of her neck, and the sight filled me with a rage far out of proportion to what I was seeing. So today, those labels will be scraped from the rafters, and my health will improve, and the harmony of the mountain air will be in balance once again.
***
The dogs let us sleep in this morning, and dawn had already broken before we were up and at ’em. I followed our regular routine, which is: let JInx out the front door so he can relieve himself while I let Dixee out the back door in order for her to do the same while one of us puts food in their dishes. I then let Dixee in and shut her in the kitchen because Jinx + Dixee In The Same Room With Food In Each Dish = Territorial Disaster.
When I went to call Jinx, he was sprawled in front of the door instead of being out rambling in the yard or the pastures. He came in, but didn’t want to eat. I tried to sip a bit of coffee before taking him for his walk, but he was pawing me and licking my ear and doing everything but fetching my boots for me, so I sighed and told Mrs. Orr that we were walkin’.
Halfway down the driveway, Jinx stopped among the irises and relieved himself. For forty-five seconds. I mean, I knew he had a good-sized bladder, but this was quite astonishing. The discipline of the spotted menace continues to impress. He had held his water all night, and continued to hold it even when I let him out first thing, and all because he wanted us to go for our morning ramble before we did anything else. And so we did.
These days, I have to put a leash on Jinx when we leave the house, because a young couple that inherited and refurbished an old farmhouse down near the highway have taken to walking their dogs on the gravel road, dogs much larger and more aggressive than Jinx (and obviously with the detestable pit-bull mixed in) and when the untethered Jinx meets the sweet couple with their two leashed beasts, it’s a tense thing. It’s happened several times recently, and always ends with me having to grab Jinx while he’s lunging and barking at two dogs who clearly want to end his days on earth, me trying to snap the leash on him, and muttering completely insincere apologies (after all, this is Jinx’s road, dontcha know?). There’s another neighbor, even farther down the road, who sometimes walks her dog as well, and her dog wants to throw teeth at the spotted menace as well. So, I leash the boy when we start from home. Once we’re out of sight of our house and up around the first bend in the road, I can see far in all directions. If there are no other dogs on the road, I say, “Halt,” which Jinx obeys, and I unsnap the leash and he rips right across the pastures or up into the cemetery and gallops at full speed, tongue hanging out, tail curved up over his back like a pennant, and soaks up the joy of the morning or the evening. Once he’s gotten his ya-yas out, we head back home, both of us resenting the leash but accepting it. One man, one dog, and a shared burden. Jinx is a consistent existentialist and reminds me that one can find meaning in suffering. I am a disjointed wannabe inconsistent Catholic and I remind him that there is always meaning in suffering, but it usually must be carefully mined. We like to start and end our days with a bit of philosophy.
Up on the ridge above the cemetery this morning, I found a great walking stick, a branch lying next to a stump. When I hefted it, I immediately liked the solid weight and especially how the top of it looked. The picture up above shows it. I called it my Dragon Stick, because it looks very much like the prow of a Viking dragon-ship. It should also come in handy should I need to club some upstart mongrel if ever my dog is attacked without provocation. I brought the Dragon Stick home and will take it with us on our rambles.
***
A friend of ours was recently hospitalized with toxemia and double pneumonia. He made the unfortunate error of burning some brush which had poison ivy in it, and he managed to inhale some of the smoke. Suffice it to say that this really played havoc with his health. We’re very glad he’s home now and feeling much better. I myself have a positive horror of poison ivy and its cousins, oak and sumac. I can break out in a rash simply by reading the words “poison ivy.” Did I ever tell y’all my poison ivy story? Remind me sometime and I will. Right now I don’t feel like reliving it.
But the point I was leading to with the anecdote about our friend’s hospital stay is this: he told us that he was tested for the China virus while he was in the hospital, and the result was negative. He said that the doctor’s face just sagged with undisguised disappointment when he announced that the Covid test was a no-go. So interesting. They were rooting for him to be stricken with the coof. They probably thought he might possibly be the first brick in the wall of bodies that they’re hoping to build in the hallways outside of the ICU. For now, there’s no wall of bodies. Wonder why that is?
Speaking of the dreaded coof, the Sundowner-In-Chief’s ridiculous-but-sure-to-be-enforced fiat this week (“Evrrybotty mus’ get vattinated…”) will definitely affect me. As in, I will certainly lose my job because I fall outside of the group who can, for now, skate by without getting jabbed. The die is cast. And it’ll be interesting to see not only how a man in his sixties is going to find a job in this day and age, and it’ll be interesting to see how long it is before I have to show proof of vaccination to buy groceries or renew my drivers’ license. And since it looks like the IRS is going to monitor practically all bank accounts and transactions, things are just getting sunnier and sunnier.
It’s an interesting feeling going to work these days. Very odd. Because now I know it’s not “if,” but rather “when” the sword will fall. I park beneath the little tree where I always park, the little tree I have come to think of as my friend, and I scatter crackers for the crows, and I whisper up into the saucer-sized leaves, Will today be the last day I see you?
Still, I don’t feel despair. I do feel very weary, just weary of the world, because its evil and stench are as corrosive to my spiritual lungs as if I had inhaled burning poison ivy fumes. But weariness aside, I feel somewhat energized in my interior life as all of these insane things unfold each day. A faithful friend wrote me recently about the current world and spiritual situation, observing that a lot of this stuff “…reflects my working out my salvation with fear and trembling as we come down to the wire. I don’t know about you, man, but there really is something exciting about all of this.” I couldn’t agree more enthusiastically. There IS something exciting about this time in which we are living. For much of my Christian life, I have prayed for the grace to see things clearly, to have the lines between good and evil to be shown in stark relief. For so many years, there was so much “gray area” in my observations of the world around me and the choices I faced, I fretted about being unable to see and choose righteously. But nowadays? It’s very easy to see the evil that’s being forced on the children of God, and the clear choices. It’s also easy to see how difficult the choices are because all of those verses we all took comfort in, the ones where the Lord Jesus Christ promised suffering and trials to His followers, are suddenly writ large and right in front of our faces. If we choose the path of good, there is going to be great cost and pain. If we choose the path of comfort, of going along to get along, we will skate past much of the suffering. For now. But the eye of those who hate us and want our destruction never closes, never stops seeking a new way to tempt us to despair and to give up. Thanks be to Christ that the paths are now clearly marked, the lines are clearly drawn, the reality is stark and unmistakable. This is an exciting time.
***
My wife is a phenomenal cook, as evidenced by the inversion of my body shape over the years; where I once had broad shoulders, a flat belly, and narrow hips, I now have…well, you get the idea. And it’s of course all her fault, because a man shouldn’t have to be disciplined in his own home.
Mrs. Orr’s cooking skills are wide and deep. She is master of all of the classic Southern dishes: fried chicken, cream gravy, chicken-fried steak, fried okra, biscuits, banana pudding, you name it. And also master of Texas and Tex-Mex dishes as well. It is to her great credit that she never screws around with the traditional recipes. When I have encountered in restaurants the gentrified, bastardized, reimagined abominations presented as “new South cuisine,” I have been moved to a violence barely restrained. Placing a platter of pork chops in front of me that have been coated with couscous and sprinkled with the ground fennel seeds eaten and defecated by a civet cat in Cockroachistan is to take one’s life in one’s hands. Don’t mess around with traditional recipes. Just don’t do it.
She recently made me one of my favorites, and it’s not a traditional recipe. It’s a thing called hay & straw, made with pasta and ham and peas in a cream sauce. You can look it up; there are lots of versions of it out there. Richly satisfying and highly recommended.
I detest Keurig coffee machines and the brew they produce. I find them chemically-tasting and nauseatingly trendy. I’m lapsing into cantankerous here, but I simply cannot understand what’s so difficult about simply brewing a pot of coffee? And I don’t mean the kind of so-called “coffee” that Starbucks charges a day’s wages for, served up by some mask-wearing Trigglypuff. When did coffee stop being an adult’s beverage and become something hipsters quaff?
We buy most of our coffee at a store called Target, a place I would describe as a cleaner, brighter, more expensive Walmart with really good carts. It’s also the Land O’Karens. Back when the China virus first ramped up 18 months ago, Target was all-in on the signs on the floor and “Sir? Sir? You’re going the wrong direction down that aisle!” nonsense. Like everywhere else, they’ve eased up. Where was I? Oh, coffee. Yes, Target sells really good coffee at very reasonable prices. They have nice flavors like Southern Pecan and Vanilla Bean Creme Brulee and Hazelnut, which are not overpowering, but which simply temper the harshness of the bean.
We fix our coffee in a regular old coffeemaker, fancy enough to have a timer preset on it, but no other bells & whistles. The grounds can be used as good compost, too, something you could not do with a Keurig and its alien cups with their pierced tops and Stanley Kubrick vibe. My favorite coffee maker of all time was the cheap and battered old percolators my mother and grandmother used when I was a child, the kind with the glass bulb on top and the basket-on-a-pedestal inside. Watching the coffee come to a percolating boil on the stove, seeing the dark liquid flub up inside the bulb…that’s a happy memory. Someone gave Mother a percolator made entirely of glass one year, and it was really fancy and exciting (until it got broken, alas), but it never held the charm of the old percolator that weighed all of about four ounces when empty.
***
We naturally have paid some attention to what’s going on down at the Texas border in Del Rio, with the mestizo (and Haitian!) people queuing up under the bridge, awaiting their entry into the country that used to be the United States of America. Even the so-called “conservative” newscasters take the same tack as all the others: “Look at the poor masses yearning for freedom and opportunity. Yes, they’re illegal, and yes, they’re going to cause problems, but…we’re mad at Biden because he’s allowed these people to be put in the position of suffering down there at the border.” Well, now, that’s not really true, is it? It is in fact quite dishonest. A normal man looking at this situation does not think, “Those poor people.” What a normal man thinks is “I don’t want them here.” And why would he? I know for me, the Social Security into which I’ve paid since I was 16 years old is not going to be there for me to draw on, because it’s going to be looted to pay for the lifestyles and benefits of these vibrant blessings who will never pay back into the system from which they will reap so much. But the churches, most notably the Catholic Church, keep beating the same dirty drum and proclaiming what great blessings these people will be. God keep us safe from such blessings.
***
I’ve been compiling my own list of my favorite blogs and hope to soon have a blogroll up on this site. I have found some of my favorite blogs and favorite people by clicking on links from other folks’ blogrolls, so this is something I’ve been remiss in. I used to have up such a blogroll, but took it down because I kept having problems with many of the links, and I got tired of the whole thing. Administration is not my long suit. But I do hope to put up a list soon, and I hope y’all will take a look at the sites, because they’re all good ‘uns.
***
I talked to an elderly gent on the phone yesterday, and during the conversation, he was looking for something in the room where he was sitting. His wife has fairly advanced dementia, and she was in the room with him. He told me that he couldn’t find what he was looking for, and then he said to his wife, “Turn on the light, mother. Mother? Can you turn on the light? Thank you, sweetheart. Thank you so much. Okay, I’ll be done in a minute.”
Hearing the tenderness in his soft, drawling voice as he spoke to a woman who can no longer recall nor enjoy so many things of their lives together made me grateful yet again for the remnant of decent and gentle souls that are out there in this world. Lord God, be merciful to them in this awful time, and lead them into Your peace.
***
They finally tore down General Robert E. Lee’s statue in Richmond, one of the most beautiful works of art I have ever seen in person. They cut it into pieces and carted it away, and they dug out the time capsule from the base and replaced it with some package of obscenity that I won’t spend a second thinking about.
Like all Southern boys, I grew up adoring Lee. Later in my adult years, I came to see his gentle determination not to continue the war as a guerilla as a mistake. I came to believe that Lee was an example of noble intentions being blinded to reality. Looking at the world around me now, I wish General Lee had told his warriors, “Let’s make ’em pay, boys. Go back home and melt into the mountains and the fields, and keep your power dry, and make them pay.” But he didn’t, and history cannot be undone.
It can certainly be rewritten, though, can’t it?
One of the Confederates who wanted to continue the fight was the ferocious cavalry commander named General Nathan Bedford Forrest. When asked after the war who he thought was the most remarkable figure to arise on either side of the war, Robert E. Lee replied, “A man whom I’ve never met, sir. His name is Forrest.”
I was looking at a photo of General Forrest the other day. His statue (and his remains and those of his family) have already been removed and disinterred and hauled off somewhere, to the glee of those cretins who were so harmed and frightened and disenfranchised over the years as they were forced to pass beneath the bronze gaze of his likeness.
But the photo of Forrest, the best known one of him taken during the War Between the States, held my attention for a long time. I had been thinking of the crumbling world and the sinister doers of evil in this country, and my heart was troubled. I looked and looked for several minutes at Nathan Bedford Forrest’s picture.
That gaze. That relentless, ice-eyed gaze. I felt him speaking to me through the void between us, and he was challenging me. Not quite mocking, but not gentle at all. HIs stare showed me all the things I am lacking, but it also pointed to the way in which I might be able to make up for those things.
Look into the faces of the generals who “command” the military units today. Feckless, weak, pandering, smug buffoons who will betray and lead their troops to slaughter and then abandon them if it means a cushy political seat or lucrative consulting job after they hang up their cartoonish uniforms. Then look back at Forrest. Do you see the challenge in his eyes? Do you hear the sound of the saber leaving its scabbard?
For me, I am not afraid of this age. Weary, yes. But completely unafraid. Oh, I worry about the effects of this current wickedness on my family, on my friends. But for me, I take inspiration from my patron saint, The Maid.
“I am not afraid,” she said. “I was born for this.”
Do you hear the steel in those words, the words of a pious teenaged virgin? Hear those words in your head right now. Hear them. Then look back up at the photo of General Forrest. Do you hear him?
I am not afraid, either. I’d just as soon draw the saber now and throw away the damn scabbard. But I am an old man, and I probably won’t get my chance in this age. Fair enough.
Jinx is snoring right now. He’s bored by all my posturing and pontificating. Wise dog, that one.
~ S.K. Orr
