Short Philosophical Musing

 

I used to think, influenced by the world, that Nietzsche was the polar opposite of Christianity. Now, I don’t think so.

Consider these quotes:

  

“Do you think that I count the days? There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.”

“You are – your life, and nothing else.”

“Everything has been figured out, except how to live.”

“Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.”

“Life has no meaning a priori … it is up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose.”

“Better to die on one’s feet than to live on one’s knees.”

 

These are the words of a man whose book I have behind me. I spent $20 of my slave wages on it seven years ago but have yet to crack it. This man’s thought was presented to me in several college courses, and I have had to write essays on said words for a grade. The man is a philosopher called Jean-Paul Sartre, and he is one of the founders of a school of thought known as existentialism, a philosophy that both attracts and repels me in equal measures.

The last quote, about living on one’s knees, struck me. I went to confession this morning. I spoke to a kindly old priest anonymously through a veiled window and listed my sins, in kind and in frequency (and often in embarrassment) and was absolved by a man acting in persona Christi. Then I went out in front of the tabernacle and did my penance and spoke internally from my heart to the Lord of the Universe, on my knees.

How utterly pitiable this man Sartre never encountered something like this. True, he lived through World War II in occupied France, a thing I cannot conceive, yet so did millions of others who survived, if only by the fact they fell to their knees before God. A man named Karol Wojtyla, who lived through World War II in occupied Poland, provides a perfect example of this.

But life is a mysterious thing, and so many aspects of it are not privy to us. Sartre allegedly had a death-bed conversion. And I may read Being and Nothingness, the book stacked in the pile behind me, at some undetermined point in the future.

 

Tsondoku

 

 

We’ve had some unions out west return from a two-week strike (and a couple of sympathy strikes) and I spent the morning taking care of that from my humble accounting end. I’m waiting to hear back from a couple of people and am otherwise caught up, if not slightly ahead of the curve, going into the final third of May. So I thought to myself, sitting here alone in my home office, listening to the lawnmowing going on in the park across the street, “This would be an opportune time to compose a short blog post.”

 

Only problem is, not much is going on.

 

Yeah, there’s politics (Trump), there’s religion (Leo), there’s personal familial stuff common to all families that I don’t go into here on this semi-anonymous site. We’ve had a crappy weekend, including tornadoes last night and predicted ’nadoes this evening, but so far there’s been no damage to house or property, save for a few extra leaves blown on my yard. I did go outside at ten p.m. amidst the wailing of the howling storm sirens, hoping to glimpse a swirling mass of blackness post-lightning strike, but did not save for some highly evil-looking clouds resembling a demonic claw reaching down to the ground in the southwestern distance. Brilliant streaks of lightning hurled from Zeus himself, smashing the ground with what must have sounded like an atomic bomb explosion to Oppenheimer and his bros, convinced me that it would be best to huddle inside on the ground floor with the family.

 

Then I turned my head and saw my On-Deck pile. These are books I’ve bought that I just haven’t found the time, energy, or circumstance to read. Like teachers appearing when you are ready for them, I find the same is often true with books.

 

Also, I’ve suffered all my adult life from “tsondoku,” if indeed that can be considered a form of suffering. “Tsondoku” is the Japanese word for collecting and accumulating books meant to be read at some uncertain point in the future. It is not neglect, but a weird kind of joy, knowing that there is always a book at hand, ready to unlock some corner of the universe for you, to thrill you, inspire you, inform you, change you, or merely distract you.

 

Here are some of the choice tomes sitting in my half-dozen closely situated On-Deck piles:

 

The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge (2002) by Michael Punke. The book which the beautiful and harrowing Leonardo di Caprio moved was based. Originally purchased January 2020.

 

The Thin Red Line (1962) by James Jones. Bought in March 2021 while I was still in the midst of my World War II tinkering.

 

Being and Nothingness (1956) by Jean-Paul Sartre. One day I’ll get to it, if only to beat the depression out of myself when I find myself blanketed in it. Bought back in October 2018.

 

The Winds of War (1971) by Herman Wouk. Bought August 2015 at a thrift store in Hilton Head for a buck or two. Pre-dates my World War II interest; I just always liked Wouk since I read him in English class in Middle School.

 

The Way of Kings (2010) by Brandon Sanderson. Bought in July of 2020. Trying to break into some non-nauseating modern fantasy in search of a compelling universe to fall into. Interesting but not addicting; I’ve tried it twice over the past five years but only got as far as page 70 on both attempts.

 

The Prophecies of Nostradamus (1973) by Erika Cheatham. Schlocky and non-scholarly interpretations of the prophecies of Michel de Nostradame. Bought in tandem with a better work in May 2023. I’ll get to it eventually. I enjoyed stuff like this as a kid and its always nostalgic fun to revisit now and then.

 

Plus about ten books on Catholicism, three on Buddhism, two Robert Ludlum spy hardcovers, a handful of science fiction paperbacks, four tomes on World War II (plus a fifth I want to re-read – but that’s an encyclopedia in itself), two books on the Roman Empire, and four more on philosophy. And those are the ones I can see. That’s about 35 books. Still have a couple boxes packed away in storage, so the total tsondoku Hopper has could range upwards of 60-70 books. I’ll have to consider these for 2026; this year’s all “booked” right up to New Year’s Eve.

 

Happy Reading!

May Mid-Month

 

What a hectic month it’s been!

 

Summer is here already in northeast Texas. Temps already hovering in the 90s. The days are lengthening, with darkness creeping up around 8:45 every night. My grass is growing with a vengeance after an extremely wet pseudo-spring. So I’ve been mowing every weekend, along with weeding, mulching, and hedge-clipping.

 

But it’s more than the outdoor chores that keep me busy. The wife had a short trip to Austin earlier this week, making me Dog Lord and Mr. Mom. I’ve been navigating a stressed-out Patch with her AP finals the past ten days. Little One comes and goes (and I’m the chauffeur), staying with us earlier in the month to interview and obtain a job at a day-care/summer camp place in town, and a few days ago moving out of her dorm with my help. We’ve been rooting for the Stars in the Stanley Cup playoffs and all the stress that entails. They’re the equivalent of the Eli-era Giants or the ’15-’16 Mets, alternately brilliant and abominable, and you never know which team’ll show up. Work gives me little reprieve, especially with the overload of traffic, traffic lights, and construction getting to it. About the only oasis of sanity in my life this month has been that cold NA beer in the shade before a freshly mown backyard. Oh, and reading.

 

I’m a creature of habit, and my lifelong hobby of immersive reading is no exception. Lately I decided to install a new habit – that of reading through the Gospels after every Easter. I did so a few weeks back, and am in the process of re-reading them a second time. With dedication you could knock out Mark in an evening, or the longer Matthew, Luke, or John in two or three days. Me, leisurely reading about a half-hour a night, found it takes two weeks to read through all four.

  

I also scratched off a bucket list item, The Confessions by St. Augustine. I found myself enjoying his incessant questioning (a trait I find in myself) and his spiritual awakening during the first half of the book, but found his philosophical musings in the latter half – on Spirit, time, form, creation – interesting but not riveting. I have come to the realization that I am not, at this stage of my life, interested in philosophy. Or perhaps other things are now more important to me than the love of wisdom, for I have found it – rather, it has been under my nose the whole time. Regardless, as I get older, my patience for non-productive activities is sharply declining.

 

But back to books. I think I have the rest of the year plotted out. Care to indulge me? OK!

 

I have finally returned to Tolkien. My plan is to read through his works within his story chronology. Starting with The Silmarillion (I’m already 30 pages in), then moving to The Children of Húrin, The Fall of Gondolin, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, then my battered copy of Unfinished Tales. With J.E.A. Tyler’s Complete Tolkien Companion at my side. The time is right, and I am right there. This should yield a fun, nostalgic summer for me. By my rough calculations, this will take me up to Labor Day.

 

September will bring, again, another turn for nostalgia. In the summer of 1989 me and a buddy read through Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It is possibly the funniest four-book trilogy I’ve ever read. I mean, laugh out loud funny. Have not touched it since. I picked up a single-volume omnibus an untold time ago (it might predate my children). It should be a quick read, and I should gulp down the whole thing in a month. This should make September a happy month, as it should be, being the month of my birthday and those of Little One and Patch.

 

For my October/Halloween “horror” reading I am going to (re)turn to Stephen King. Yes, he has morphed into a loathsome and cringy troll with his leftist politics, much like DeNiro. However, just as I can (barely) watch a DeNiro movie with the man’s clueless second-hand embarrassment not affecting the performance (the Mrs. and I watched Heat a few weeks ago), I am hoping to re-read King’s magnum opus It with the same bit of authorial dissociation. It was one of my favorite reads as a teen/twentysomething, when I was in my horror phase. I read it last in 1987, and, like The Lord of the Rings, it holds a lot of nostalgia for me. I remember where I was during various portions of the novel. I have not read any King in over twenty years, so I am testing to see if I can still enjoy his writing, specifically It on a second reading. I think it might be a blogworthy topic.

 

My Thanksgiving reading will return to Dickens. About a dozen years ago I listened to about an hour of The Pickwick Papers during my commutes back and from work. I soon realized that the serialized novel required the printed page to be fully enjoyed, and put it on the Acquisitions List. Well, last weekend I found an aged, absolutely beautiful hardbound volume in my local library, and this thousand-page tome called and cried out to me. This is what I will read in November and the early part of December.

 

Finally, I have a neat SF paperback from the fantastic Robert Silverberg, of whom I recently blogged about. It’s called Roma Eterna, and is an alternate-history pastiche of novellas that falls under the most classic of alternate-history scenarios: what if the Roman Empire never fell? The cover boasts a scenic view of a Roman city-scape, stone and marbled columns and arches and all, with a rocket ship launching off in the distance. I was instantly hooked.

 

Well, that’s what’s up with middle-aged Hopper. Negotiating the stresses of life with his simple enjoyments of the printed page. Along with the grooved record and the electrified guitar, the walked path, the lifted weight, the – oh, enough of this. Enjoy!

 

Pope Leo XIV

  

Well, that was completely unexpected.

 

We have the first American-born Pope, though he holds duel citizenship with Peru, where he spent a large amount of his time. Didn’t know anything about him, though I did hear his name come up (negatively) in a podcast I listened to last week.

 

Last night I listened to half-a-dozen “hot takes” on the new Pope, formerly Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, age 69. He does have a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from Villanova, which is a personal plus for me. Indicative of a logical, rational mind as opposed to a touchy-feely emotional one. However, he does hail from Chicago, which has been under the thumb of the extremely liberal Cardinal Cupich for the last 11 years. He was also appointed to head the Dicastery for Bishops (which recommends priests to the Pope for bishop positions) and has had a close relationship with Francis over the past 18 months. Though I have heard credible reports that they did not see eye-to-eye on every issue and Prevost was not afraid to make his opinion known.

 

Coming out on the balcony in the red papal regalia as well as taking the name of the extremely anti-modernist, anti-socialist Pope Leo XIII were both nice signals to the traditional minded. However, I am not unaware that such signaling might not actually telegraph actual intent, especially in this day and age where it seems most of the Church hierarchy is hell-bent on changing Catholic teaching to, er, non-Catholic teaching, in a phony spirit of “welcoming” and “dialogue.”

 

The greatest secret about your host Hopper is that he is a closet optimist. Thusly, I am hopeful Pope Leo XIV will be a pendulum swing toward normalcy from the mess that Francis made. He could start by removing restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass. He could also quash all this “synodal church” nonsense, though he has been on record in the past as supportive of such disingenuity. At this stage, it’s impossible to guess true agendas. After all, many were fooled by Francis for the first several months of his papacy, including myself. I renounce such gullibility going forward (thanks Lavender Mafia, for poisoning our childlike faith in the Church!)

 

From what I’ve gleaned from traditional to centrist sites (I can’t suffer to hear the take of liberal Catholic podcasters and such, life is way too short and precious for that), Prevost wasn’t the worst pick (that’d be either Tagle or Parolin) nor was he the best (Sarah, Burke, or Pizzaballa). He’s somewhere in the middle, probably a little left-of-center. But the thought is that many cardinals, either suffering from Francis fatigue or realizing that Francis pushed too hard too fast on his re-imaging of Catholic teaching, opted for a man who could stabilize and possibly unite the one billion Catholics throughout the world. My gut tells me it’s the latter, that they need a man who’ll institute change slower but more securely, and that perhaps an American pope might tamper down the protest from traditional American Catholic news media. That he was elected relatively quickly (on the fourth ballot, I believe), demonstrates that he was acceptable to both types of Cardinals. We’ll see.

 

Despite being that closet optimist, my official position is one of strict neutrality. Let the man show us who he is by his actions. Until then, he has my respect and prayers due to the office he holds. May he prove me wrong and be truly worthy of the Leo namesake.