Twilight Party!

Perhaps you are familiar with the books and movie known as "Twilight." If you're female and below the age of 18 the chances that you know what I'm talking about are very high, but since I don't know of anyone who is female and below the age of 18 who reads this blog, I will attempt to explain. "Twilight" is about brooding, goth, teenage vampires and their whiny Dawson's Creek style escapades. Think of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but without the awesome. It's wildly popular with the Hannah Montana/Jonas Brothers age group and even among college age females. I think we sell more copies of "Twilight" - or the other 2 books in the trilogy - at Books A Million than just about any single book.

On Friday night we had the long-awaited "Twilight" DVD release party at our store. I and two other employees had to stay past midnight to distribute DVDs to squealing teenage girls dressed up in little outfits and uniforms that were somehow related to the books (I am blissfully ignorant of it all). We also had a doll of the main character, Edward, brought up to the front of the store to sit behind the registers where the waiting hordes of children could see him (my manager had posed him as if he was doing the robot). When the girls saw the doll they became breathless with excitement. "OH MY GOD, WHAT IS THAT? CAN WE TOUCH IT?"

"No, you can't touch it. That's a 150 dollar doll."

"I SO WANT THAT DOLL."

And the camera phones came out (I'm amazed at the number of girls below the legal working age who carry around cell phones). I remember reading somewhere about when the Beatles first came to the States, how the crowds of girls became so over-excited that some of them peed themselves. That's kind what this was like, only over a doll. I can only imagine what it would be like had the real Robert Pattinson been there.

There was a trivia contest also. The prize was a twenty dollar gift certificate. Each time a question was asked over the intercom, girls would come dashing over to the cafe desk - where answers were received - and would raise their hands like over-eager students, "Ooh! Ooh!" The winners of the contest used their gift certificate to purchase a dozen packages of Twilight Sweethearts. As I rang them up they admitted that they were a "little obsessed."

When it came time to distribute the DVDs the lines began to form around the register, where the DVDs had been brought out and put under guard (by me). I was instructed by my manager thusly: "If anyone touches those DVDs, you have my permission to shoot them. In the head." This was said loudly, so the waiting throng could hear. I armed myself with a stapler. The first girl in line put her phone down in front of me - it had an Edward wallpaper, and was counting down to the minute - 12:01 - when the DVDs would be released. I admit to getting a little antsy as we waited those last few minutes. I half expected the children to start jumping the counter and seizing them. It was like Rorke's Drift. At 12:01 I gave the signal and the distribution began. In a flash, the children had taken their DVDs and gone gallivanting into the parking lot, where high-pitched squeals of delight could be heard. "I'M WATCHING IT TEN TIMES TONIGHT BEFORE I GO TO BED."

When it was over, the store was trashed. We had to stay until 1:30 to clean up the place and make it presentable for the next day.

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Fr. Raphael Morgan, the first black Orthodox priest in North America. (Thanks to Fr. Christopher Foley for bringing this to my attention). Fr. Raphael was born about 1870 in Jamaica, and was known as Robert Josias Morgan prior to his ordination. Near the turn of the century, Robert came to the U.S. where he was ordained a deacon in the Episcopal Church (Robert may also have been involved with the AME, but I'm not certain about that). During this period he served several black Episcopal parishes in the South, including Morganton and Lincolnton, NC. He pops up in many places - Virginia, West Virginia, Delaware, and North Carolina. After having some doubts about the teachings of the Anglican Communion, Robert began studying Catholicism and Orthodoxy.

In 1908 he was deposed by the Bishop of the western NC diocese of the Episcopal Church for unknown reasons (I find this silence very fascinating!). After embracing Orthodoxy, but not yet being baptized, he traveled throughout the Orthodox world - Russia, Greece, and Palestine. For three years he studied under Greek Orthodox priests in the U.S. and then returned to Constantinople where he was baptized and ordained. He was appointed "Priest Apostolic to America and the West Indies" by the Patriarch of Constantinople, and was headquartered out of Philadelphia. But the trail, as far as I can tell, ends there. I can't find any reference to him beyond 1915. There is a refernce to him, apparently, in the 1921 edition of the Tuskeegee Institute's "Negro Yearbook," which is at the UNCG Library. I'm going to go take a look at that and see where it leads me.

A book is forthcoming on Fr. Raphael from St. Vladimir's Seminary, but I'm impatient when it comes to matters of history, and would like to find out these things for myself. I just get all crazy, like a bloodhound on a trail, and this is too fascinating for me to not look into further.

I wonder how Fr. Raphael was accepted. He seems to have done missions work in his homeland of Jamaica, as evidenced by some newspaper reports, and even engaged in dialogue with Marcus Garvey. Fr. Raphael took Garvey to task for what he perceived as his attempt to foment further racial division between whites and blacks in Jamaica. But what about in this country? I wonder how ethnic Orthodox would have reacted to a black man as a priest. This development, the conversion of a black man and his subsequent ordination to the priesthood, would on the surface seem to have been a good development for the movement of Orthodoxy into the South. But it took Orthodoxy still many more years to begin to move out of its ethnic enclaves in the South and into the culture, where even today it is still a very small blip on the radar. Thank God we have men like Fr. Moses Berry, who see dialogue with and connection to the southern past as being important.

Arabic Bibles in the South and other cultural blatherings

A fascinating note from an 1859 edition of the Southern Presbyterian review on a Georgia slave - named London - who copied the Gospels into English by way of Arabic script. Long before there were Eastern Orthodox Christians in the United States reading the Gospels in Arabic, Christian slaves in the South were making and reading copies of the Bible in anglicized Arabic:

The Gospels, written in the Negro Patois of English with Arabic Characters. By a Mandingo slave in Georgia.

At a regular meeting of the Ethnological Society of New York, on the 13th of October, 1857, a paper bearing the above title was read by W.B. Hodgson, Esq., of Savannah, in explanation of a manuscript in Arabic characters submitted by him to that society. The writer was a Mandingo slave, by the name of London, owned by Mr. Maxwell of Savannah. Besides these chapters of the Gospel, he wrote a book of hymns in Arabic letters, which has not been preserved. "The manuscript of London is remarkable," says Mr. Hodgson "in the use of the vowel points - harcat of the Arabic grammar. I infer that as London was accustomed to use them in making copies from the Koran, with the same reverential sentiment, he used the vowel points, in copying the bible of his adopted religion. Not having been instructed in English Grammar and Analysis, he could only write the words as their sounds affected his ear. Thus his vocalization was on this wise: - First chapter of John.

"Fas chapta ob jon.
Inde beginnen wasde Wad;
ande Wad waswid Gad,
ande Wad was Gad."

The thought of the Gospel being read and preached from an Anglicized Arabic transliteration at some fire-lit slave barbecue/prayer meeting inflames my soul. These words especially, because they are so pregnant with meaning, and have such a huge bearing on orthodox Christology. How did anyone convey to them what those things meant? It reminds me of the Ethiopian Eunuch encountered by St. Philip the Evangelist in the Book of Acts - he could not understand the Scriptures without someone explaining them to him, hence the need for some form of oral tradition, for the Scriptures do not interpret themselves.

There are other similar instances that occurred throughout the South. Mr. Hodgson, perhaps the South's preeminent Orientalist, collected many of the manuscripts written in Arabic by slaves. Another famous incident which predated the above manuscript, occurred in a jailhouse in Fayetteville, NC, in the early 19th century. A Muslim slave by the name of Omar ibn Said was arrested after fleeing from his master's plantation in South Carolina. The circumstances of Omar's arrest are interesting to me, for he managed to make his way across country to Fayetteville before being arrested for trying to enter a church to pray. Omar was a Muslim - why would he enter into a church to pray? My historian senses get all tingly when I think about that. Maybe the church didn't look like a church - maybe Omar thought it was a mosque? When you consider how barren so many Protestant churches look in this country, it isn't hard to imagine them being easily converted into mosques, or resembling mosques in the minds of tired, weary, Muslim slaves who have been on the run for days.

(I'm reminded of a funny story a friend told me about her Greek step-father. The family surprised him and his wife with a service to renew his vows at a Baptist church. Being raised Orthodox, he had his reservations when he first laid eyes on the church. "This is Christian?")

Or maybe Omar made no distinction between the two? Perhaps he was more "enlightened" in a sense than many Christians and Muslims in that one was as good as the other.

But I digress, back to our Muslim protagonist. Omar, while in prison, did something that I wish I could have witnessed - probably more so than many other singular events in American history - he began writing verses from the Qur'an, in Arabic, on the walls of his jail cell, much to the amazement of those who were there. Omar was in fact posting gris-gris on the walls of his cell, which was practiced among Africans as a means to ward off evil. Omar became a sort of celebrity and was purchased by a gentleman by the name of Owen from Bladen County. Omar lived with the Owen family for the rest of his life and was supposedly converted to Christianity, although to what extent he believed in the Gospel message is unknown.

There is reason to believe that Omar may have simply done so out of obedience to his master, while engaging in the Islamic practice of taqiyya, which is the practicing of Islam in secret when Muslims are subjected by non-Muslim rulers. Despite Omar's ambiguous relationship with Christianity, he did encourage efforts to Christianize Africans. I get the sense that Omar was not as dogmatic in matters of religion as his Christian masters. He saw the salutory effects of Christianity and Islam, and perhaps regarded them equally, seeing no theological contradiction in Mohammed and Christ (fittingly, there was a mosque named after Omar in Fayetteville). In this regard he came very close to what many southern intellectuals and divines held - that Islam was a faith that had foundations in reason, Biblical principles, and that it encouraged civilization. It had lifted Africans out of what they supposed to be barbarism and "gree gree worship," although Omar himself illustrates that Islam did not stamp that practice out totally. Although most would assert the superiority of Christianity, many would allow for Islam's place in a sort of scale of religious progress from barbarism to enlightenment.

For instance, Thomas Jefferson organized his books on religion thusly: works on paganism, followed by works on Judaism, Islam, and finally works on Christianity. I don't know for certain, but I'd like to think that Jefferson placed the crowning achievement - his translation (or rather redaction) of the Gospels last in that pantheon, in which all of the miraculous events of Christ's life were removed, along with His passion and resurrection, and Christianity reduced to the Christian System.

But I digress again (this is something which I am deeply interested in, so you must forgive me). The aforementioned Mr. Hodgson gave Omar an Arabic copy of the Bible, which still survives today, and is in the collection of Davidson College. The frontispiece can be seen here.

Omar refused repeated offers to return to Africa with the Colonization Society, and died in North Carolina in his 90s. He remains one of the most widely studied slaves in American history, and one of my favorite historical figures.

Omar looking fly in his pea coat.

A brief discourse on H.P. Lovecraft.

I'm interested in a lot of strange things, I can't deny that. Of late I've been reading H.P. Lovecraft. I admire a lot of Lovecraft's work, at least in terms of its creativity and antiquarian weirdness. Ancient cults, dream realities, dusty codices hidden and shunned by men. I love all of that. But what I find disagreeable about Lovecraft and his work is gnosticism. The Lovecraftian view of reality is almost wholly negative. Creation is evil and meaningless and the gods who rule over that creation are themselves either ambivalent about men or hostile towards them. For the characters who inhabit this world, the only means of escape is through a sort of gnosticism. They attempt to escape the created world to challenge the gods or seek out a reality that is free from the drab, meaningless earthiness of the physical realm.

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath may be said to have gnostic overtones, particularly in that it centers on an escape from reality into a dream-world where the protagonist searches for a beautiful city which the fickle gods have only shown him in fleeting glimpses. The protagonist, Randolph Carter, struggles with the gods of the world of men and the dream world so that he might attain to his gnostic vision of a heavenly city. But in a sense the story comes round to an affirmation of the beauty of "reality," with Carter coming to realize that the city he has seen in brief visions is in fact Boston. The saga of Carter, however, continues in other stories, where he ultimately devises a means to escape reality for the world of dreams through a silver key. But Lovecraft won't let his protagonist win, for in escaping he encounters the horror at the center of the universe, a place where identity is obliterated.

The gods of Lovecraft's cosmology, like those of gnosticism, are malignant beings. Lovecrafts's gods do not draw near to men, but flee from them, so that they might cavort and dance on unknown mountaintops as they did in days of old when men were less adventurous and curious as to their nature. And those are the "good" gods. The bad gods, the "Other" gods are horrible to behold and go by titles such as "Nyarlathotep, The Crawling Chaos." There is nothing good about the gods or their creation; no benign king, no loving God, nothing of that sort. In Lovecraft's world men are pitted against the gods and the meaningless, dread reality which they rule over.

The "world," tangible reality, in Lovecraft's estimation, was something approaching evil, although he does not apply to it the same categorical condemnation that gnostics would apply to it. For the most part we find a certain ambivalence towards the mundane. In places his characters grow alienated from the "real" world - nothing seems fully real to them, but all fake, as if all of it were a veil thrown over some other reality. In "The Silver Key," Randolph Carter grows weary of the "earthiness" of his friends and acquaintances. Carter attempts a career in writing but fails because "the touch of earth was upon his mind, and he could not think of lovely things as he had done of yore." When Carter is transported beyond this world into the Other Realm by means of the Silver Key, he encounters a cadre of beings who are like ascended masters. Their leader explains to him that, "the man of Truth has learnt that Illusion is the only reality, and that substance is an impostor."

One gets the sense that Lovecraft was certainly a conservative in his view of history and society. His view of progress was, I believe, somewhat negative. He once said of the past: "The past is real. It is all there is. The present is only a trivial and momentary boundary-line." His racial attitudes weren't exactly enlightened - he even wrote a story that was based upon his horror at the non-white immigrants streaming into New York, which he imagined were coalescing into a sinister cult ("The Horror at Red Hook"). He was also an atheist, and rejected the notion that reality could be meaningful in the Christian sense. But neither was he a fan of science. It's clear that he dreaded the advance of science, particularly as it related to its pronouncements on the meaning of life. He viewed the theory of relativity as reducing existence to a cosmic jest. Stories such as "From Beyond" hint at a fear of what science might uncover and what was best left alone.

I wonder to what extent Lovecraft believed that life and reality were meaningless? Or was he simply reacting in horror at the movement of all human inquiry and experience (inexorably, as he perceived it), towards the belief that it was meaningless? I almost feel like Lovecraft's character's retreat into dreamworlds is a sort of personal defense mechanism. The only way to salvage reality, consciousness, existence, was to escape into some beautiful other world - such as the past, which was real, or dream-worlds where men might live by their dreams. But those other worlds were just as cruel. So ultimately, in Lovecraft's world, there is no escape.

Lovecraft's life, which was by no means wholly pleasant, helps to explain his outlook. His father and mother both suffered from some form of mental illness, and all through his life H.P. suffered from night terrors, which were often the inspiration for stories. He died of cancer, largely unknown and with very little to his name.

My favorite moment from all of Lovecraft's stories is from "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath." For an individual with such a negative view of the world, Lovecraft was inordinately fond of felines, and I also happen to enjoy them much more than hounds. Randolph Carter can talk to cats and is able to call on an army of them to save him in times of trouble. While being carried away by a group of toad-like horrors across the surface of the moon (if you need further explanation I can only suggest that you read the story), he cries out for the cats to come to his aid:

It was a stupendous sight while the torches lasted, and Carter had never before seen so many cats. Black, grey, and white; yellow, tiger, and mixed; common, Persian, and Manx; Thibetan, Angora, and Egyptian; all were there in the fury of battle, and there hovered over them some trace of that profound and inviolate sanctity which made their goddess great in the temples of Bubastis.

After a pitched battle, Carter awakes to a scene that made me laugh with delight upon initially reading it:

At last awe and exhaustion closed his eyes, and when he opened them again it was upon a strange scene. The great shining disc of the earth, thirteen times greater than that of the moon as we see it, had risen with floods of weird light over the lunar landscape; and across all those leagues of wild plateau and ragged crest there squatted one endless sea of cats in orderly array. Circle on circle they reached, and two or three leaders out of the ranks were licking his face and purring to him consolingly.

The cats then lift Carter up and leap back to earth, with him securely held within their host like a kind of furry cocoon.

Lovecraft's work is worth reading for fantastical moments like this.

Up next on my reading list is a collection of the works of Flannery O'Connor. I think I'll have a lot to say about her also.

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Came across this today, and it's interesting because Philip K. Dick was not only a science fiction author who dealt with reality and perception, but he also became a full-on gnostic late in life. He believed everything that he wrote was communicated to him through the Holy Spirit to reveal that the true underlying reality of all things was the Book of Acts, and that it was in fact the year A.D. 50, but that somehow Satan had fooled us into thinking that it was the 20th century. Dick's beliefs may have been inspired by chemicals, though.

Parker's Back

I went to my first Lenten service Thursday night, Great Compline with the Canon of St. Andrew of Crete. It's the first time in a while that I've been to an Orthodox service where I didn't know what I was doing. Here a full prostration, there a full prostration, everywhere a full prostration. I had some neck pain last week, and it's still a little tight, so doing the full prostrations was a little uncomfortable.

Not knowing the order of things I kept missing the full prostrations, and had to catch up with everyone else. Bowing repeatedly and saying "God have mercy on me" and "God cleanse me a sinner" so many times was overwhelming. I was amazed at how long and penitential the service was. It's certainly one of the more humbling services I've been to, because you spend a good deal of it with your face flat on the floor. It's something that is so out of character for our society; people don't bow in the outside world, but here in this church people are bowing to each other, kissing each other, and putting their faces on the floor in supplication and reverence before God. My favorite part, besides this physical expression of humility and reverence, was when we went down the line and asked everyone to pray for us: Mary, hosts of angels and archangels, John the Baptist, Apostles, Prophets, Martyrs, and then all of the American saints - with all of the American places they are associated with - Brooklyn, Minneapolis, Alaska, etc. It is at once otherworldly and distinctly non-Western, but also rooted in all of these American localities.

The new header image is just something I'm experimenting with. The image, which was painted by Barry Moser, is based on the Flannery O'Connor short story Parker's Back, which I've linked to here - in part - before. It's the story of southern couple - who might be described as hicks (which I mean in the most loving way) - and their tortured relationships with each other and God. O.E. Parker, who is obsessed with tattooing his body, searches for the one tattoo that his puritanical wife can't possibly ridicule. He's essentially a godless man, who has been running away from God all of his life, despite marrying Sarah Ruth. While at the tattoo parlor, O.E. has an encounter with the Living God in the form of an icon of Christ, which he feels drawn to. He has the artist tattoo the icon on his back and returns home to display it to his wife, confident that she can't possibly mock an image of Him. But Sarah Ruth exclaims that it is idolatry. "He [God] don't look. He's a spirit. No man shall see his face." She drives him out of the house with blows yelling, "idolatry! I don't want no idolater in this house."

I have an affinity for this story because I feel like O.E.

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Yet another "Star Trek" trailer, featuring still more angst and...crap. I wrote about this a while back. To me it's blasphemy. This trailer has nothing memorable in it; there's nothing but a blur, nothing that my brain registers as meaningful. Increasingly, films have become little more than fluffy, gratuitous candy. The trailer offers an abundance of artfully executed CG scenes, but for me this sort of thing is like a display of raw, unnecessary power. Hey! Pay attention! Look! Here's some whirring, blinding shots of something whizzing by at a high rate of speed! Did you see that? A zillion lasers are shooting out of that ship! Oooh! A planet is imploding! And so on and so on. I can just hear J.J. Abrams pitching this to some executive, "And then DOOSH! The ship is hit by all of these warheads and it goes KABLAM! DOOOOOOSH!"

And of course there is the pointless "updating" of the universe's image. "We all have the iPhone that does more than the communicator," said Abrams. "I feel like there's a certain thing that you can't really hold onto, which is kind of the kitschy quality. That must go if it's going to be something that you believe is real." Why would I have to believe that it is real? Or want to? It's Star Trek. And that kitschy quality is what makes it great. A great thing about Trek in (most of) its incarnations has been its restraint - its wonderful lack of over the top pretensions when it came to imagery. Sure, there is some cool imagery associated with Trek, but nothing like this. What about some acting? A compelling tale? Something that requires us to use our imagination? Not a bunch of jumped up, hyperactive Dawson's Creek silliness.

Oh, how I loathe "modern audiences."

I stumbled across this today: Vladimir Putin is regarded as the reincarnation of the Apostle Paul by a heretical sect of Russian ascetics. Fun. The icon is amusing:



Of course, the Orthodox Church does not believe in reincarnation. Nor is there any likelihood Putin will be made a saint. Stranger things have happened, though:

I find the content of the second image much more agreeable.

Politics and "art"

I have been accepted to Ole Miss for my PhD, and I have accepted their offer. A $10K assistantship and a tuition waiver. Ole Miss comes with the high recommendation of two of my professors and my friends. I am familiar with and highly regard the work of two of Ole Miss's Southern History faculty - Ted Ownby and Charles Reagan Wilson. And it is the home of not only the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, but also the Southern Foodways Alliance, whose publications have been a great inspiration and resource for me, particularly as someone who has written about southern culture and southern food culture.

Oxford is a quintessentially southern town, and is considered by many to be the "Vatican City of Southern Letters." I'm excited about living/working/researching there, as well as absorbing the Deep South culture. Moving down there will be a challenge, and I'm only just now asking around within the department for anyone who may be looking for a housemate/flatmate.

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I'm always bothered by engagement in politics. There's something impolite about it. I bring this up because I've been in a bad state of mind ever since Obama was elected - and it hasn't been this bad since my time in college when I was enthralled by politics. I think my state of mind may have something to do with my southern-ness. In the South, particularly before the Civil War, there was always a preference for "rounded edges" in public discourse among southerners. It just wasn't polite to spoil social interaction with talk about something so mean and divisive as politics. Of course, some historians, like the late (and certainly great in many respects) Clement Eaton, would have taken this mentality as evidence that the South was totalitarian and stifling - that it had no public discourse on political and civil matters. It did, but it was couched in anonymity. Letters to the editor were published under creative pseudonyms. Articles in magazines on politics were published under the first initial of the author. Of course, it was obvious to many who this person was, it simply kept it "polite" and semi-anonymous. Public discourse was not only polite, but because men had honor, and had to protect that honor from slight, it was always best to keep things as circumspect as possible.

In our society we don't remove political discussion from everyday life, but let it seap into everything, and that bothers me. How loath I am to discuss politics with people, not only because I know that it poisons one's perceptions of others, but because it's not conducive to any sort of humility. When it comes to politics I have to be right. I'm always right and you are wrong. There's no mercy in it whatsoever. I like to think that antebellum southerners believed this - that there is no mercy in politics, and that it is best kept in its place in human interaction. I think this was exactly their understanding, if you take into account their opposition to the elevation of the market to the essence of society.

That said, here is something to poke fun at all of the misplaced Obamadulation: Bad Paintings of Barack Obama. Click on each image to see another. My favorite:


Is this Obama/Scarface, or is it Obama as a plantation owner? I remember seeing a picture as a kid called "Alex Haley's Revenge." It was a black man sitting on a greek-revival collonaded porch on some anonymous southern plantation, dressed in a searsucker suit, mint julep in hand, relaxing in a rocking chair. The problem with all images of Obama is that they are all hopelessly poisoned by all of the stern, plainly socialistic imagery, or with absurd comparisons to Lincoln, so that none of them come across as being genuine in any way. The problem with this picture is that he clearly looks like some mafia don, or a drug dealer of some sort. Or a model. Relaxing by his pool, or watching as his latest shipment of coca is delivered in a Russian helicopter he bought on the black market.

You might be able to argue that making politics so public and open results ultimately in art like this.