Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis
“All things change, and we change with them.”Please note that this blog spans a broad period of time. The intervening years have brought many things into my life, including divorce and remarriage. As such, some older posts reference a relationship which is no longer active. In context, however, the portrayal is accurate.
For many reasons, I have chosen to let entries such as this one remain in the overall continuity of the site.
Woke up yesterday morning around 4 AM and lay there, thinking about war, ‘The Two Towers’, and what it means to be the little people caught in between the great and evil powers.
Thought about ‘Henry V’ and the story I’ve heard that Laurence Olivier deliberately made his version meta-heroic to help the war effort in England during WWII.
Thought about Kenneth Branagh’s version and the counterpoint it offers to Sir Larry and all his Technicolor finery: The sheer horror and tragedy of souls destroying each other in the mud and the rain. Thought about the boys being murdered and Harry’s rage, about Aragorn handing out swords to boys my son’s age, about getting my draft card when I was eighteen.
We have o great kings to lead us. Our leaders “have feasts off the backsides of beasts, they still think they’re the gods of antiquity” (to quote Elvis Costello).
And, again, I thought of Bertolt Brecht, ‘The Resistable Rise of Artutro Ui’ (a play I’ve been begging Sandberg to stage since the 2000 election): “The bitch that bore him is in heat again.” Brecht was talking about Hitler, but I have bigger fish to fry.
And I thought about apocalypse, riders and storms and coming wars and the desire I’ve had since 9/11/01 to see the whole fucking mess resolved, put to rest, and finished once and for all.
I thought about Tyler Durden, trying to force us back into a simpler life where what mattered mattered once again.
I thought about God, what I know and what I believe and what I hope.
And I thought about my friend, crying over war after seeing ‘The Two Towers’ on Sunday.
Listen: There’s a greater hand at work in this world. The kings and princes have their moment, but the shape of things is larger than their politics can encompass . . . and it all moves at the will of one who is greater than the petty gods they serve.
Much, much greater.
Whatever you believe, believe this.
And, after thinking on all these things in the dark, I got up, made some tea, and swept the snow from the walk.