can you tell what it is yet?
A drizzle-blurred Blackpool beach this end, *. Winscale '50s rain. Its towers barfing up cancer to keep the NW's mortality rates firmly in the relegation zone. I know Northern Ireland is just over the horizon, too; where they are blowing each others arms and legs off; apparently over details about the status of The Virgin Mary.
While we're at it:
Additionally, as I routinely-quip, Catholicism is an Italian Death Cult. It does conform to that description; it even has elements of cannibalism, and S&M, for sure.
Additionally, as a very young child, I used to imagine my soul was like a hand-sized ultra-white cotton-wool cloud, and that sins accummulated as dirty black stains on it.
Additionally, I found the idea that God could read my mind very disturbing. Trying not to have 'bad thoughts' made me have them.
Additionally, at my First Confession, I made all my sins up, as I couldn't think of any actual ones.
Additionally, to me, a priest is always a man in a dress.
Aditionally, the first woman I ever loved the look of was a nun.
Additionally, I stopped going to daily mass when they knocked the old church down in favour of a new '70s one. Before that, at the age of 8 or so, I was known as 'Holy Joe'.
While we're at it:
Additionally, as I routinely-quip, Catholicism is an Italian Death Cult. It does conform to that description; it even has elements of cannibalism, and S&M, for sure.
Additionally, as a very young child, I used to imagine my soul was like a hand-sized ultra-white cotton-wool cloud, and that sins accummulated as dirty black stains on it.
Additionally, I found the idea that God could read my mind very disturbing. Trying not to have 'bad thoughts' made me have them.
Additionally, at my First Confession, I made all my sins up, as I couldn't think of any actual ones.
Additionally, to me, a priest is always a man in a dress.
Aditionally, the first woman I ever loved the look of was a nun.
Additionally, I stopped going to daily mass when they knocked the old church down in favour of a new '70s one. Before that, at the age of 8 or so, I was known as 'Holy Joe'.
posted by murmurists at 10:41 am
10 Comments:
I was always a little pissed off at my parents for not giving me a classic religiously repressed upbringing (though they did compensate in many other ways ... I've got my full share of psychic disfunctions)- there's nothing like it for providing raw material.
Have you ever read 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'?
Oh yes, a death cult for sure - a transvestite priest practicing ritual cannibalism, praying to an icon of a dying man.
I always think that Christianity should be more accurately deemed the Pauline church - what a pity they don't seriouly adhere to the teachings of Christ.
Of course, all organised religion is death .... I always refer to myself as a Pantheist. I blame Blake.
I do like my Catholic roots on the basis which you suggest. I haven't read the Joyce you cite; though I've had it for about 10 years, probably. Blake is a good whippingboy. I love his bonkersness.
Re the look of nuns. It's a bit of a cliche but can we agree?
everything is permitted
i concur on the nuns.
I mean agree...
and the organised religion thing...yeah, it sucks, give 'em power, and whoops, apocolypse, for the prols anyhow...
a hand-sized ultra-white cotton-wool cloud.
kinda like this idea.
of course mine still glows with a dazzy blue whiteness, as I don't believe in sin.
there are no sins, only choices.
and on that note, are there really any choices? do we choose, or merely react, and then say we chose?
damn.
free will or not free will that's a bloody question...
Sin is a good thing not to believe in, Inc. Your Existentialism I generally share. I'm no God-botherer. Life is so fuzzy, though, isn't it? Our condition is that of never being totally sure of anything. We live with our betting and trying and our forge-ahead-regardless. It's that idea behind, say, Bladerunner: given life, but temporary. The made thing - the droid - gets to meet, and to kill, its maker. Being made temporary and with an indefinite span is a having a larf, isn't it? But as the maker in Bladerunner says 'we made you as good as we could'. So, freewill ... free will ... an oxymoron? Some function of DNA? - like giving the droids memories, so they function better. Are we given hope so that we don't squander our DNA and top ourselves before copulation? Is hope itself fictive? Rationally, it is possible to answer yes, given the tenuous and temporary nature of life, with its pain, its struggles, its mediocrities. But we are made to continue - and often at all costs. Vacillating between the two in some made video tennis game (bleep... bleep...) is the human condition, isn't it? A cartoon for the Gods or for the vaccuum of space? Either way, as Jim Morrison said, 'I'm gonna have my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames'. The last bit was sarcasm. But one can see his point.
I believe (or hope in the existence, to be more accurate)of something out there, or in here ... I take the Gnostic position, every man his own priest. If there is anything as a deistic entity anywhere, it is within. I always liked their idea of the blind idiot god.
But to to get onto really serious and important issues ... nuns, eh?
I take a guilty pleasure in the 'kinky nuns' film genre ... particularly that weird interzone between the arthouse film and nudie/exploitation continental films of the 70s.
I suppose the great Ken Russell's 'The Devils' is at the high class end of the genre - set design by St Derek Jarman.
'The Devils' - now you're talking, Anthony. A masterpiece. We have it on video. Oli Reed at his manly best. And what a cast. For me, it's Dudley Sutton who shines brightest, though. A somewhat Roy Kinnear figure; insofar as he was seemingly judged too weird-looking to play lead, but is a fantastic presence.
The nun thing was a quip, but a truism nonetheless. To begin by paraphrasing an episode of Ripping Yarns, 'the sooner the whole human body's covered up the better'. Well, I do find coverage more interesting than nudity. Nuns do this well, it has to be said. The rubber nun is a fetish mainstay, of course; and with good reason.
'Round here, it's dress for me, not strip.
To re-digress: Religion's an overwrought discussion point, of course. I think my own position is just that of not knowing. Intellectually, I have my views, of course. And I'm fully ok with the Godless universe. It feels more hopeful in many ways, than being judged. I always think, though - meeting St. Peter, etc. - I'd be able to argue my way into Heaven. I do have issues with God if there is one. As Derek and Clive said: 'Cancer. If I was God, I'd've left that one out'. Maybe, though, s/he / it was just doing the best s/he / it could.
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