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[Note: I don't really know what that LJ Talk/Jabber thing is really about, but I decided not to hide the line. Let me know by e-mail if you think I might wish to use it somehow.]

--Bio--

I caught the last war eagle out of Atlantis. From my perch on one of his claws, I looked down and saw it slip beneath the waves. Later, from a boat bobbing on the water in the night, I looked back and saw the light of burning Troy shining up past the horizon. I escaped to the hills from the fall of Byzantium, and before that, from another hillside, I was a lone figure come back to look down at ruined Camelot.

After a while, it becomes familiar, a skill of sorts, perhaps a habit. Alone, looking down from the hillside, the storm clouds behind, only destruction in front. Look, turn, shoulder the burden, and go. The wind and the rain are much to be preferred now. Only the past is good, and there is no bringing it back.

I and my parents were raised by servants: on my mother's side, it goes back at least a couple of hundred years; on my father's, it's cloudier (which comes of tending to be on the losing side of certain national and international dustups). The difference between us and the merely rich is that in our case the servants weren't paid for looking after us. We received the care as our birthright.

Every so often, I find myself wanting to ask certain people, "Din't your momma nor poppa never turn to you over the suppah table and say, 'But dear, we are a warrior race and do not betray our emotions in the face of our enemies'?". True, my folks didn't say it quite that way, but the message was loud & clear!

What does one do after one has seen the elephants dance? After one has danced with them yet again? Kipling never followed up on that. Toomai could at least stay with them. What does one do when there are no more elephants?

Yes, the interests say both conservatism and conservativism -- I was in zone-out mode on first typing, and put in conservativism. Then later I saw it but there are a mess of communities and individuals that do it that way. (Some subtle distinction?) So I put in both. I think LiveJournal would benefit from some way to check things like that. (A spelling police for LJ -- HAL would quail at the challenge.)

I could have tried out for the role of the Dying Emperor in Dark Crystal, but I didn't have the warmth, youthfulness, charm, or good looks needed for the role.

An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth: No eye, no eye; no tooth, no tooth; no force, no force.

Quotes:
--"What is Shaw doing among the homicides?" (Gotta track that -- book from 30s on Fascism, noting Shaw's enthusiastic support.)
--"The individual is derived from the collective." (Gotta track -- arguably the most elegant statement of totalitarian philosophy; certainly the clearest I've seen. Might be from Mussolini's My Autobiography or from something by Giovanni Gentile under his own name (vice Mussolini's). We think of Italian Fascism as relatively mild in practice; nonetheless, the philosophy is the clearest in its totalitarianism; as such, the Left has shied away from confronting it: too uncomfortable; too embarrassing; again: too *clear*.)
--"Tribulation is good for the soul." (A saying almost universally known in me kidhood and yout', even though said somewhat ironically. I include it here only because it doesn't show up in Google. That's incredible! Am I using some odd variant, and a slight change would show me thousands of hits?)
--"The streets are awash with tears, if we could but see them." (Source unknown, might even be moi.)
--"There are two sides to every side." (moi, as far as I know)
--"Don't say that I'm against super highways. Say, rather, that I'm against paved roads." (moi)
--"Life is a tangent wave." (moi)
--"Actually, life is a ballistic trajectory; it might be interesting to do some scaling between that and the tangent wave." (moi)
--"Conscious, vertical, an mobile." (moi -- In response to the question, "How are you?")
--"The upper classes and the lower, there's some good in both of them. But the middle classes are all cant and vain pretension." (Can't find this anywhere. I thought it was from Chesterfield, but someone even mentioned Castlereagh or Canning.)
--"The upper classes have duty to guide them, the lower classes have necessity." The middle classes used to be trapped by both; now, tolerating neither, they make do with ambition. (I think the quoted part is from someone, but might even be from moi; the unquoted part, I think, is more likely from moi.)
--"Life is beta version, released prematurely." (moi)
--"You don't have to know much, you just have to know more than everybody else put together." (moi)
--"Conscious, vertical, and mobile." (moi -- in reply to the quesion, "How are you?")
--"I may not always be right, but I'm never wrong. (It's a matter of being willing to say 'I don't know,' a lot.)" (moi)
--"In New York City, life is cheap, but it's expensive." (overheard)
--"Heart shall be bolder, harder be purpose, more proud the spirit as our power lessens! Mind shall not falter nor mood waver, though doom shall come and dark conquer." The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, Beorthelm's Son, tr. J.R.R. Tolkien, 1966 (from The Battle of Maldon ~991)
--"To be truly multicultural is to be able to quote Marx and Freud in Spanish. To be truly multicultural is to object to the term 'Latino' and to insist on 'Hispanic.' To be truly multicultural is to include Brazilians under that heading." (moi)
--"Oh, and to change anything that says 'Brasil' as an obvious misspelling." (moi)
--On film: "Reality, I get free on my doorstep; fantasy, I'm willing to pay for." (moi)
--"Everyone likes a good snowstorm; it takes a connoisseur to appreciate the subtler virtues of freezing rain." (moi)
--"An ideologue is someone for whom other people's obedience of the law is proof of conspiracy to avoid prosecution." (moi)
--"Those who are self-absorbed cannot be self-reflective; those who are self-obsessed cannot be self-aware." (moi)
--"There is always a *reason* for failure. There is never an *excuse*." (moi?! I am convinced these are the words of a Nazi villain in some B flick, but I was surprised I couldn't find anything on Google. It *so* sums up the Party enforcer who stands behinds the ideologues and the party-liners.)
--"If everyone thought like you did, war wouldn't be any fun at all!" (moi, from me misspent yout' -- For wider use, "war" can always be replaced by "rape," "torture," "mass murder," etc.)
--Large, Important, Resonant Voice, With Every Word Clearly Enunciated: "Hate The Enemy!" Small voice from back of the hall: "But who *is* the enemy?" LIRVWEWCE: "Don't Cloud The Issue." (moi)
--"You are weak and inefficient. We shall destroy you." (another line from untraced WWII villain)
--"The Machines Are Our Friends. We Must Always Obey the Machines." (This *cannot* be moi! I'm convinced it's from 50s SF, but I can't find it yet on the Web. It may be a variant. Orginally, I used it ironically. Then I started *preaching* it when dealing with technophobes, overy self-indulgent software types, and people who were just sorta lazy about what work they were willing to but expected computers to save the day all the time.)
--"Don't think: Act. Don't talk: Shoot. It's the American way." (From a 60s bumpersticker -- Originally, I was quite smug: Of course, we may *seem* that way, but we are so thoughtful and willing to discuss things. Then this, too, I started *preaching* -- when I went back to DC after a hiatus and was dealing with people who endlessly agonized over everything or who just dragged out discussion out of sheer willfulness.)
--"Eat the crust first." (moi -- But it's not unique to moi; lots of kids recognize that eating the crust first makes the rest of the sandwich almost like dessert; but it's like society and lots of parents are repulsed by the obvious benefits. Their point is not eating the crust for its presumed benefits, nor waste not want not, nor whatever. Their point is to show they're good little drones and willing to punish themselves just to be drones.)
--"The world screams out beauty and harmony, but most people seem to be blind and deaf. And the consequences of that blindness and deafness are reminders that beauty and harmony are not all we have to deal with."" (moi)

--Has no one ever noticed that this is the Hobbit Hymn, so to speak? It's in both the 1940 Hymnal and the 1982 Hymnal:

I know not where the road will lead
Words: Evelyn Atwater Cummins, 1922
Music: Laramie

I know not where the road will lead
I follow day by day,
or where it ends: I only know
I walk the King's highway.
I know not if the way is long,
and no one else can say;
but rough or smooth, up hill or down,
I walk the King's highway.

And some I love have reached the end,
but some with me may stay,
their faith and hope still guiding me:
I walk the King's highway.
The way is truth, the way is love,
for light and strength I pray,
and through the years of life, to God
I walk the King's highway.

The countless hosts lead on before,
I must not fear nor stray;
with them, the pilgrims of the faith,
I walk the King's highway.
Through light and dark the road leads on
till dawns the endless day,
when I shall know why in this life
I walk the King's highway.

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