Mystics and Statistics

Plus: where I'll be 10/18 and why

Creatures, are objects in the world words spoken by God? Are they clues in a cosmic escape room, political propaganda for the Party of the Lost, or a prank played by a powerful man? (Is that last one the same as the first thing?) Or do I just suffer from delusion of reference?

Perhaps you have guessed that I just finished re-reading The Crying of Lot 49, the anarchoparanoid classic. It’s fun! It’s short and fun, you should try it. It’s about the feeling that you’ve fallen into a fold in the fabric of reality: a hiding place, a place for all the many activities you might want to hide, but the other people who hide there might not be your friends.

It’s bouncy most of the time, though there were passages that felt a bit too high-flown, a bit too careful not to say what they mean. Hard to complain, though, when there is a multi-page, extremely plot-relevant imaginary Jacobean revenge tragedy. I KNOW many of you sickos are standing outside THAT window all haha yes! yes!!

What I liked most were the similes in which every physical object reveals itself as a pattern, a design, a code. The streets as circuit board is a famous one, I think, but I liked this one better: “She couldn’t stop watching his eyes. They were bright black, surrounded by an incredible network of lines, like a laboratory maze for studying intelligence in tears.” That’s large, that’s an obtrusive simile, and it might feel overdecorated if not for the sinister little coda you get a minute later: “His eyes waited, at the centers of their webs.”

Jesse Walker reviews Pynchon’s newest novel for Reason. (An ironic magazine name in this context!)

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Clues to My Whereabouts

I spoke with Catholics in Ordinary Time on “celibacy, companionship, and faithful love.” Some things longtime followers will have heard many times from me, but you also get a glimpse of my softer side, lol.

On Wednesday, 10/29, from 8 – 9:30pm Eastern, I’m giving a presentation with the Without Exception Network on “starting better conversations in Catholic schools, especially ones that nourish the faith and witness of LGBTQ+ students.” Email david@withoutexception.net to reserve a spot and get the Zoom link. I’ll say right now that there’s one point in particular I want to make that I think is underappreciated even in the small subfield of people thinking about how to nourish the Christian faith of LGBTQ+ youth.

Before that, on 10/18, I’ll be protesting.

Last time I was all Matthew 25, the Holy Family were refugees too. And that is still very true. But this time my hometown is under occupation. Now is the time to call on the consciences of those who are enforcing a violent assault on our neighbors. In Florida ICE detainees are disappearing into the chaos of the “system.” In Chicago families are being raided in the middle of the night, their homes ransacked and their children zip-tied. Meanwhile on Saturday I had my first sighting of a parish bulletin board with the ACLU “If ICE Agents Show Up at Your Door” and tarjetas rojas pinned up beside the food bank info and Pray for Vocations posters. I am thinking about how Matthew 25 is an apocalyptic text describing the Last Judgment. So let’s all put oil in our lamps. I hope to see you there.

Now Playing

Leonard Cohen, “Democracy Is Coming (To the U.S.A.)” I think it would be a very good idea.

Junction of Highway 101 and I-280 in San Francisco photographed by Basil D. Soufi and used under a Creative Commons license.