April Journal

Not much posting this month. First and foremost, busy with life. Secondly, and quite frankly, exhausted. And a close third is, well, I’m finding it hard to re-attain the New Normal. Er, the Old Normal.

I finished my night-time/weekend job, tax preparation, twelve days ago. It was a crazy hectic April up to then. I worked every day but one. Now, I didn’t mind it, per se, because I like this job for some bizarre perverse reason. The big stressball part of it was family life, especially now that Patch is doing all sort of travel soccer things – practices, extra practices, and games. Little One still has band on Mondays. And the wife has her 80-hour job in the Big Apple, which necessitates all sorts of logistical pretzel bends to get everyone everywhere they need to be, as often as possible.

Last year at the end of tax season the Mrs. and I went to Sanibel Island for four days. Didn’t do that this time around, so I don’t have the clean break I did back then. Instead, I had one evening off to myself (Wednesday the 19th). I savored some Chinese take-out, since everyone else in the house dislikes Chinese take-out and caught up on some DVR’d TV. Later, I read a book. Yeah, that was my recovery from tax season.

Since then it’s been one thing after another.

I chose to read two dense books (a biography of Napoleon and a history of the Orthodox Christian Chruch), so I’m kinda slogged down in a literary sense. I’m also finding it difficult to get myself back in to some sort of shape. Haven’t worked out since December, and lived off pizza from the pizzeria next to my tax office for the past three-and-a-half months. I guesstimated that I ate 13 pizzas over the course of tax seasons. That translates into ten pounds on my belly.

I suppose I should mention I did quite well this tax season. I tripled the number of returns I did (up to 132) and quadrupled the dollar amount of revenue I brought in (up to $33,000). So my bosses are happy with my performance. Next year with some more certs and tests under my belt, I should make some decent money doing it.

Since tax day I’ve been nonstop: a trip to the dentist, a garage sale, two soccer games, two soccer practices, two trips to the movie theater (a subject for an upcoming post), and a team dinner Dutch-style to cap off the whole tax thing. All I want is about three days in a row – evenings, I should say, as the day job is still the same as it ever was – three evenings in a row where no one is demanding anything of me, I get a little bit of peace and quiet, and I can make some headway through that Napoleon book!

Some nebulous posts on deck (I write them in my head in the shower, then forget them when I’m actually at a computer) –

Hopper’s two nights out at the cinemaplex

What the heck is up with the interest in Orthodox Christianity?

Oh, yeah, more problems with the Catholic Church

What the heck is up with the interest in Napoleon?

A toe-in-the-water review of a new TV series I’ve been watching

The Literary On-Deck circle

And more!

I’m thinking of attempting a post-a-day in May, like I used ta two or three years ago. Might be fun. Certainly should not be stressful. I think lately I think every post should be the Mona Lisa of posts, and this perfectionism tends to make me tend not to write. Well, the post-a-day philosophy cures that. A few nights ago I randomly perused some stuff I wrote years ago and I enjoyed the irreverent, light-hearted, weirdly or downright humorous elements in the little posts I did. Might try to recapture that coming up.

Anyway, come back tomorrow! It’ll be like déjà vu all over again!

Rowing Toward ...

How shall I spend my new free time? Hmmm.....

Mulct

Verb.

1. To deprive (someone) of something, as by fraud, extortion; swindle

2. To obtain (money or the like) by fraud or extortion

3. To punish (a person) by fine, especially for misdemeanor

Noun

4. A fine, especially for a misdemeanor

What an odd, fascinating word!

According to the dictionary, mulct derives from mul(c)ta, a Latin word meaning penalty, especially pertaining to loss of property.

Why is it on Hopper’s radar this evening?

Because I stumbled across it during my current read, a recent biography of Napoleon Bonaparte. Immediately flashing lights went off inside my head (no, this was not an epileptic episode), and an imaginary klaxon wailed far away, something reminiscent of air raid sirens across the British countryside three-quarter of a century ago. And that was it! That was the link! Three months earlier I met this odd word for the first time – while reading Crusade in Europe, General Eisenhower’s memoirs of the Second World War.

So my most recent acquaintance with the word exemplified itself as definition #3, as done by Napoleon to certain rare miscreants in his Army of Italy. The earlier occurrence was definition #1, tallied in a long and evil list of Nazi crimes by a grim and gritty chain-smoking Western-reading pre-presidential Ike.

Mulct.

Zuckerberg and Rand

So I caught a little bit of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg being “grilled” before Congress on the news this morning. (Note: I’ve been grilled harder by my grade school librarian for returning that dinosaur book a day late.) What immediately came to mind was Ayn Rand. Would any Ayn Rand character – Hank Reardon, Francisco d’Anconia, Howard Roark – would any protagonist from an Ayn Rand novel choke back tears and grovel before a room full of self-important blowhard bureaucrats?

No! They’d sooner go bankrupt and back to the bottom of the pile before they knelt in submission to inferiors, completely self-assured that before long they’d be back at the top, claiming what is and was always theirs. There would be no goofy-haircut blubbering from such a man.

I’ve read in various places that testosterone levels in our contemporary male population have been waning over the past few decades. Whether true or not, can we at least agree that masculine, manly virtues have been on the wane in our culture, at least in the public sphere? I pray we can reverse such devastating trends before we’re overrun by enemies who truly want us to kneel in terrible submission.

The Journey and the Destination

Bear with me … tax season’s over in a week, then I’m free to read and write and read and write, and read and write some more!

Might even do a post a day for May for old time’s sake …

Confronting a Cliff

“Let go over a cliff, die completely, and then come back to life — after that you cannot be deceived.”

– Zen proverb

Catholicism under Francis ain’t cuttin’ it. What shall it be, then? SSPX? FSSP? Eastern Orthodox with the Philokalia?? Zen???

Dunno … but I sense something stirring in the waters of my psyche of late. Tax season ends in twelve days. Then I’m cleaning my room top to bottom, my writing desk top to bottom, my garage top to bottom (and setting up a gym). After that, I’m cleaning my mind, top to bottom, with one of the aforementioned brain scrubs. For sanity’s sake.

Pound This

“A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.”

― Ezra Pound

My only encounter with Pound was with his Cantos some fourteen or fifteen years ago. I recall being alternately drawn yet repelled by them, and ultimately decided to put it on my Acquisitions List. Remarkably, throughout the years, I have never encountered this massive tome of poetry in any used book store. Must mean something, I assume. After all, browse any Religion section of a used book store you’ll find dozens of books by tired dissidents – but consider yourself lucky if you find an Aquinas or Augustine. Now, not implying that Pound was / is spiritual meat, just that the Cantos must be valued by their owners out there in the world.

This quote just punched me hard in the gut when I came across it this afternoon.

Have an antidote which I’ll offer up tomorrow …