At Year’s End

The outside world is a drape of velvet rain right now. As I write, my wife is reading in her chair, the page illuminated by the grey light coming through the porch window to her left. Jinx is in the back bedroom, a spotted comma on the loveseat, and Bluebelle is sitting like a stone sentry on the back porch, watching the squirrels and birds in her yard. annoyed and agitated but not yet ready to commit. Dixee is snoring in her little bed at my wife’s feet. And me? I am here in this quiet room of muted light, thinking my thoughts and chewing a cracker and poking at these manufactured keys with my stiffening fingers on a damp day in this diseased and puzzling age. But I am a grateful man, grateful especially at this hour that things like staying up tonight until midnight and watching some pool of pus called “a New Year’s Eve Celebration!” on television means nothing to me.

I will say, however…speaking of television…if any of you have the RFD TV channel, they will broadcast the Tournament of Roses Parade tomorrow. The other tv networks will show the parade as well, but their offerings will be full of stupid banter, a focus on double-entendre and vulgarity, a woke atmosphere, and the most repulsive collection of illiterate and inarticulate ree-tards you’ll see outside of a Presbyterian general assembly. The RFD TV network does it right. Their broadcast is very much like what the major networks used to do back when I was young. Just a quiet and dignified commentary on the floats and bands. No boom-boom, no political asides, no gyrating, no sophomoric jokes. Just a suggestion for your late morning hours.

***

My mother tongue is polluted and dying, and we all know the reason why.

It’s distressing to see how people read nowadays. How rarely. How shallowly. How un-perceptively. And because people don’t read, they don’t know how to write. I don’t mean “people” in the sense of Everyman. I mean “people” in the sense of those who have college degrees, those who are PAID to write.

Those whom my people still trust. I wish I could hook an IV to all those I love, an IV of pure, weapons-grade Gell-Mann Amnesia antibodies, and pump some stomp-down common sense into them. But I can’t.

It’s common to hear complaints about the inability of most people to distinguish between “to,” “two,” and “too.” But my current hate fixation is the aversion to the word “led.”

I suspect that the arrival of the rock group Led Zeppelin, with its clumsy hard/soft, black/white, up/down contrasting play-on-words, caused the general public to arrive at the conclusion that “led” is not a real word, but merely a cutesy bastardization. And so now we are forced to endure news articles and even scholarly abstracts by PhD students with sentences like “We have been lead to believe that the factors previously indicated…”

I am tempted to plead with people to read, to familiarize themselves with the tongue of England which my people commonly employ. But then I remember: we are a land (not a nation) of idiots. There will be no more deep reading. There will be no more progress. Some things have been irretrievably lost. We will sink to the bottom of this dank pool, like lumps of unintuitive lead. The silent mud, the realm of winter-sleeping fish and tadpoles, is our destination.

***

During this Christmastide, I have listened to many hymns, carols, and songs. As an ex-Protestant, I can say with glowering authority that the Catholic church will never be surpassed in terms of the beauty nor sublimity of her musical compositions.

For the Protestants, I will merely observe that they have not a single extant hymn that would not be improved by the addition of an occasional Earth, Wind, & Fire-style “Yow!”

If you’re going to reject authority, beauty, and tradition, then reject it with gusto. Hmm? Hmm? Bring in the meerkats and the mushrooms.

***

I just finished a book that I’ve been reading, in dribs and drabs, for a long time. Berlin Diaries: 1940-1945, by Marie Vassiltchikov. [First Vintage Books Edition, 1988] “Missie,” as she was known to her friends, was a White Russian princess living in Germany under the Third Reich. She apparently had intimate knowledge of the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler and was at least somewhat friendly with many of those who conspired to kill Der Fuhrer. Watch the movie Valkyrie, with the smarmy Tom Cruise for further, albeit distorted, details.

Most diarists miss the mark badly. Missie did not. Her day-to-day recollections of life in WWII-era Germany are precise, poignant, and powerful (I sounded like a Presbyterian pastor there, didn’t I? With my ham-handed alliteration?). She describes here the prison conditions endured by her friend, Adam von Trott, who was incarcerated for his alleged part in the plot to assassinate Hitler.

The Lehtrerstrasse prison, a star-shaped building erected in the 1840s after the design of London’s Pentonville, consisted of four wings, one of which — a military jail — was administered by the Wehrmacht, while two others were taken over by the Gestapo for political prisoners. Most of the 20th July plotters were held there.

Conditions, as described by surviving inmates, were harsh: four walls; a bed on which it was forbidden to lie down in the daytime; a wooden stool; a small wall-table; in the corner, a w.c.-like contraption for which the guards furnished scraps of weeks-old newspapers; no pencil or paper; no books; no newspapers; no walked in the courtyard; no view of life outside.

The guard consisted of regular prison officers, themselves closely watched by S.S. men who were mostly Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) repatriated from the East and inured to brutality through fighting partisans in Russia. The cells were cleaned, meals distributed, and shaving kits passed around by trusties — Jews, other political detainees or Jehovah’s Witnesses. With the exception of the latter, who, because of their ethic of non-participation, mostly refused to help their comrades in distress, these tries were often the sole link between the prisoners and the outside world.

From dusk to dawn the cells remained lit — unless Allied bombers were overhead. While the guards fled to the cellars, the prisoners remained manacled in their cells, many of them perishing when one of the wings were hit. Curiously, several survivors have testified to the feeling of peace they had among the falling bombs — the only time they were not watched.

Among the inmates (themselves often believing Christians) there were several clergymen. By bribing or otherwise securing the collusion of guards, the Catholic padres where able even to take confession and give absolution: a trusty would bring the former in a closed envelope and take back the latter, together with a consecrated wafer, in another envelope. Thus, despite solitary confinement and the rule of absolute silence, a web of Christian solidarity was spun which even the Gestapo was helpless to break up.

Compare this to all the gutless clergymen who closed the doors of their churches in rapidly obedient compliance to Caesar in the last year. Hirelings all.

***

Our back yard is a tarp of moss, a sheet of green, a stretch of emerald. We enjoy it, and we walk on it with respectful, aware shoes. Jinx enjoys sniffing the moss, like a Presbyterian pastor I used to know, an overgrown boy who would smash his face into patches of moss and inhale deeply. I always suspected this was an effeminate affectation, like so many of this seminary boy’s other antics, but who knows? Perhaps he really did get a certain odd pleasure from inhaling the scent of green forest moss.

But I don’t think he did. So much of what he said and did in the years I knew him was phony, staged, artifice, show, performance. Why would something as beautiful as an affinity for verdant moss give him a pass in my mind?

Ah.

***

We watched a movie the other night, Red, which was about an elderly man whose dog was killed by the sociopathic son of a callous rich man. We enjoyed the movie, difficult to watch as it was, and talked about the terrible phenomenon of parents who are more devoted to being their children’s buddies than being their parents, mentors, and guardians. I remember reading somewhere a statement by someone who admonished, “Don’t ever let your children behave in such a way that you dislike them.” I strongly believe there are many, many parents out there who dislike their own children. They allow their children to be little monsters because they are too weak to do the hard work of consistently disciplining them. They are too blind and slothful to notice that no one likes their children and that no one wants to have them over to their homes or be around them for more than a minute. They are blind and stupid, and they don’t realize that they do not love their children — they merely fear them. They fear that they aren’t and won’t be their children’s best buddies. They don’t realize that they any sentient being can be their children’s pal, but that only they can be the parents.

Nauseating.

***

The year is over, and all around me is the stink of fear. The fear of death.

Tomatoes and potatoes are high in potassium…beware! Meat is high in cholesterol…don’t eat it! Plastic has poisons in it….repackage all your food!

When did the folk of this stretch of land become so effeminate? When did we come to believe that prolonging our mortal, fleeting lives was the ultimate priority? We are a country of weepers, snifflers, mask-wearers. The males rub conditioner into their deliberate beards, and the females push their lips out into fish masks while they take photos of themselves to impose on strangers.

Oh, come on, Anno Domini 2022. Come on and strike that match. There’s nothing here except gasoline-soaked kindling.

All lang sign.

~ S.K. Orr