Last week, we were arguing about the nature of experiences of the intellectus, or in layman's terms those timess when we feel a connection with the Beyond, such as we may receive when watching a sunrise or looking into the night sky (or my favorite, patrolling the parking lot of a mall!). The discussion soon darted to an important consideration: are these experiences the highest point of human life? One among us objected that man is a social animal, and hence it cannot be so since these are individual experiences. I posited that the best of these experiences is communion with God in the Eucharist, and mention was made of lovers gazing into each-other's eyes, an example from Leisure, the Basis of Culture, the book we were discussing. Still, we did not reach a satisfactory conclusion. Two days ago, though, the objection was set aside forevermore: I had one of those experiences as I listened to another's words.

Some individuals are saints. Some people are such saints that they walk the world like immutable suns. During the usual late night in the lounge (2 AM), I heard out one such soul. A self-described go-to person, she has saved lives by hearing stories and, like a priest bound by the seal of confession, securing them unconditionally. A consolation in dire moments, great-souled for her boundless compassion, she professes the helping of others- unto the saving of the world even, and I believe her- as her vocation. And almost one of necessity. As she said it, she lives with a severe insomnia and a tendency toward immoderate lengths of sleep- the only time she ever got to sleep as long as she wanted and wake up naturally, she slept 18 hours! For that reason, she invariably remains awake late into the night, awakening after only the briefest rest. Understandably the condition frustrates her, but as I pointed out, if she weren't up so late, she couldn't be the go-to girl. Ergo, the condition points to the authenticity of her vocation. Only in death will she be a beauty who has (having heard those in need out unto her last breath) fallen asleep, as we Christians say it.

Inspired, I wrote her a sonnet, which she simply adored. The title is a play on her name and a variation of a joke I made off of it: "You're pretty in lieu of... getting any sleep!"

Sonnet CXXVII- Bellelieu

Her soul is pretty in the lieu of sleep.
A two s'd Ulysses, she hears sweet songs,
Enticing stories of dramatic wrongs.
No hours close her eyes, no ropes can keep
Her from the sides of those who have a thing
To say, or still her lust to do the good.
The tempest sprays on every side, and would
Subsume her, and some others, were the swing
Of captainacy missing at the wheel.
Told everything, and trusted not to tell,
The secrets given this artesian well,
In time, are pacified by Jesus' heal.
His Blood absolves them, readying the balm,
That she may slumber, ocean dead, and calm.

She especially enjoyed the presence of Jesus, which I thought a stock reference, since she was working on a Bible paper! Moral of the story: if you are trustworthy to man, God will trust you with His goods as well.

In sad news, I learn that Taro Aso, formerly admired on this blog, is no longer the Prime Minister of Japan. I know little very little about his successor, Yukio Hatoyama, save that he's a member of the center-left Democratic Party, may not be so easygoing as his Liberal Democratic Party predecessor was. At least, according to Wikipedia, he comes from a family engaged in politics since the Meiji Era; ironically, his grandfather was a co-founder and the first PM of the LDP his party just threw out of power. Alas, the Catholic light of the East, everyone's favorite manga otaku, passes into political history. May he be sweetly remembered in the histories yet to be written! Shown below is one of a dozen gorgeous photos I found of him in an audience with our beloved Supreme Pontiff.



A few other interesting bits of data. The new Newman Guide is out. Once again, Assumption College hasn't made the list, but this place has only gotten better since I arrived in the late summer of 2007 (coincidence?), so maybe by senior year the Newman Guide pride will finally be ours. At least, unlike our rival Holy Cross, we are a Catholic and not a "Catholic" college.

Back in Paradise City, much has happened during the short time I've been away. In the mayoral primary, Northampton's longtime mayor, who shares my last name, came in a far second after city councillor and challenger Michael Bardsley. A change-up will be refreshing- our lackluster Mary Clare Higgins has been in office since I was still in elementary school- though I expect rather little from Bardsley should he go on to victory in November. Much more distressingly, though rather old news by now, three of Northampton's five parishes are to be closed, and one of the remaining is to be degraded to a chapel of my own St. Mary of the Assumption, the only one to be left intact. I knew our pagan city of lukewarm faith could not cling to all five forever, the heroic efforts of devoted church ladies and gents notwithstanding. But five to one in a clean sweep is awful! Gone will be the historic French and Polish parishes, their stained glass inscriptions a testament to the faith of the immigrants who built them. Ah, but for the days (basically until the post-Vatican II reforms from what I gather) when St. Mary's alone was so overflowing that a second Mass needed to be held in the parish hall below to squeeze in the overflow crowd. Back then St. Mary's had five priests all to herself, and Northampton had a Catholic high school; many of the pious elderly I mentioned above fondly remember graduating from St. Michael's School, whose attractive building still exists, in the late 1950s. What Northampton might have been, had it been taken over by Roman Catholics rather than lesbians and Castro sympathizers!

Finally, I can't resist posting the following image, an example of Platonism in manga! I showed it to one of my professors, and he thought it was neat too.

Hmm, MangaFox stole back the image, so just go here :

http://img03.dc.us.mangafox.com/store/manga/1194/05-026.0/compressed/0045.jpg

Though the Great Tray Revolt failed to materialize (we did not seize the day as we might have- though a good article by a pro-tray SGA colleague should be out as of today), the Student Government Association is off to a very good start this year. Besides that my committee, Policy Review, is forging ahead with its initiatives at an impressive pace, the element of whimsy, rare but necessary to every truly happy and harmonious body politic, is not absent. Most notably, we have arranged for a dancing-procession into Taylor Dining Hall tomorrow, based on a popular You Tube video, to encourage freshmen to run for SGA. Rich existence verily, though I loathe the idea of the original. As I tried to explain to the organizer of the event why pop music, no matter how fun and proper to one's frivolous moments, has no place in the celebration of sublime and sacred matrimony, I came up with an aphorism which expressed the general principle at hand:

The lights are good, except when they obscure the stars.

Restoring the holy to itself is a labor and a full time job; hoisting the worldly to the level and the improving light of the heavens is a still harder task still. Aside from the writing of a few poems which I do not feel like posting, I have been keeping at it by virtue of those constant insights which impregnate existence with meaning, and more still laughter. For the most part, these arrive in my mind as fanciful ideas or associations. Two of the best (since I
am not in the mood to reflect on today's lecture on John Rawls, and I fear the political science and philosophy I am engaged with are somewhat above the rabble) are:

The Society of Future Church Ladies: Aware of the "need" for a female counterpart to the Pickwick Club in the realm of ideas, and inspired by the piety of several young women on campus, I "founded" the society for a few lady friends who, I reasoned, are the future of that breed of church ladies who are the backbone of every parish. [Though probably older, whoever this example of femininity is she fits the bill quite nicely. One of the "members" resembles, maybe more in manners than in appearance, Rozen Maiden's Suiseiseki, above.] They were rather fond of the idea when I informed them of their membership (all that's required is being seen at daily Mass, by me, at least once, and being of course a Catholic in good standing). However, besides the activities they could organize in a Catholic community with a Dickensian imagination- frequent homely crafts events, young womens' book clubs, and dance-offs upon the sending-off or returning of the Pickwick (or dare I dream ~) Club from its adventuring, which in a Catholic context would include advertising for traditional Catholicism and promotion of the home community- they haven't much to do right now. Obsessed as I am with it, a few days ago I "presented" their honorary leader with their official theme song- what else- Ali Project's "Seishoujo Ryouiki", or "Domain of the Holy Girl", though the lyrics are perhaps not a discourse on Christian holiness.

Back to Taylor Dining Hall. I am sure Taylor made an important contribution to Assumption College, the facility is due for a timely rename. I was thinking: in light of Socrates' proposed alternative "punishment" to drinking hemlock- getting free meals for life in the Prytaneum- we should rechristen Taylor the Prytaneum, since, like students basically get fed for free by their parents as a reward for pursuing the life of the mind. At right is not the (old) Prytaneum, but what Wikipedia says was the site of Plato's Academy. I'm glad AC's classrooms aren't so cramped. Not as impressive as the School of Athens, but just as satisfying.

At last I have a few minutes to write... something, that it may be known, especially by my parents, that I live still. This semester is busy beyond belief; the weekend waits before me like a mirage,



during which time, I can only hope, there will be time for those precious comics which read right to left (oh, can't wait to read Rozen Maiden volume 6!). I am, I find, such a jovial and laughloving person that, to fully savor my classes, I must always preserve a delightful moment or two from an anime or a good joke or anecdote in the back of my head to prevent boredom. Last semester it worked marvelously- may this year prove the same!

Not to say my courses were absent amusing moments in their own rights. Of all places, my Biomedical Ethics class has been witness to some big laughs of late. And we are discussing arguments on abortion! Somehow, extraterrestrials keep finding their way into our conundrums on the worth or expendability of children in the womb. Writes one supporter of legal abortion:

In searching for such criteria [for the definition of personhood or what makes one morally human], it is useful to look beyond the set of people with whom we are acquainted, and ask how we would decide whether a totally alien being was a person or not. (For we have no right to assume that genetic humanity is necessary to personhood). Imagine a space traveller who lands on an unknown planet and encounters a race of beings utterly unlike any he has ever seen or heard of. If he wants to behave morally toward these beings, he has to somehow decide whether they are people, and hence have full moral rights, or whether they are the sorts of things which he need not feel guilty about treating as, for example, a source of food.

She goes on to concoct arbitrary criteria to determine whether an individual is morally human. Yes, there would be something wrong about killing other intelligent life (though still not so wrong as killing members of one's own species, whom we must naturally give first priority). However, the writer later "highly advanced, self-aware robots or computers, should such be developed [God forbid]" to her list of the morally human, and I would never accept them. The pure artifice of man or a hypothetical other intelligent race can never rival the works of our Creator has made. Sorry IG-88.

As I noted in class, the introduction of aliens into the argument when we don't even know that other intelligent life exists tends to reduce the sense of humanity's sacredness as a species and his special place in creation. Furthermore, she does not even consider that, supposing there were another race she would consider persons, that fact does not immediately devalue human or alien fetuses. Since writers who like this type of argument always come up with their own criteria for personhood, virtually all of which would exclude those in comas or even the sleeping from the college of persons, if we abstracted from the immediate issue of the morality of abortion, the logical conclusion would not be a clean division into persons and non-persons, but a graduated scale of moral worth. There would be some we could kill in good conscience, some we need merely not kill, and some (ethicists chief among them) so important they'd deserve their own body guards or security detail. If either we or ET desire a sensible standard for the "morally human" (hate that phrase) without loopholes, the best option remains "from conception to natural death".