Here is the greatest comic book ever made in the history of the universe. The very existence of this artifact justifies the medium of comic books, validates the career of Bob Hope, and raises the artistry of Leonardo to a new level. This is what the internets are for, this is why the Library of Congress has an archive, this is why printing was invented, this is why there was a Renaissance, this is why humans painted animals on the walls of caves at the dawn of history. What did we do before we found this image? And now with you I share it. Use it wisely, use it well.

Hold up your shield, brother Knight, and ward off that stiff wind that threatens to push us over. This rugged terrain beneath our feet makes for tough going, but we must stay at our post with our weapons at the ready and our unfashionable noseguards in place. Whatever happens, don’t let the enemy see you smile or frown. In fact, keep your mouth a perfectly straight line.

I mean literally, what is the thing that got inside of this California poet?

Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962) is not read much anymore, but I predict his work will make a big comeback in the next decade. I somewhat grudgingly admit that he stands out as one of California’s most accomplished poets, in fact one of the most important poets in American history. He was very popular in the early decades of the twentieth century, popular enough to land on the cover of Time. Classically educated and fearsomely intelligent, he brought the tough discipline of the great Western poetic tradition along with him when he perched in central California and devoted his life’s work to describing the spirit of California.

“Perched” is the right word: Jeffers imagined himself as a kind of hawk on a rock, sharp-eyed, predatory, inhabiting inhospitable regions, and living by taut muscle and will. Just look at the formal elements of his poetry. Without rhymes or meter, his poetry rumbles along in eerie lines that obey some inner logic which seems predetermined yet is impossible to forecast. Relentelessly serious, sometimes outright didactic, his authorial voice rings out like an unlikely cross between an Old Testament prophet and a manic Delphic seer. The Judaeo-Christian echo is natural enough, as his father was a theologian and Old Testament scholar. The pagan tonality was chosen and carefully cultivated, as Jeffers found a real kinship with the rougher edges of the age of Periclean Athens. He wrote long poems in an ancient Greek idiom, but he’s no Homer, and wouldn’t want to be. His long poems are more like some kind of central coast Sophocles, or (more on target theologically and aesthetically) Aeschylus at Big Sur.

Having made the grand tour of Western culture in its Christian and Graeco-Roman forms, Robinson Jeffers placed himself on the west coast of the United States and set himself to be the spokesman for the place itself. In an image that recurs in many of his poems, he thinks of the human race as having completed a “long migration” out of the East, across Europe and into the new world, across America to the very edge of the continent. From California, the final migrators look further west and see only their point of origin. Migration complete. This is the end.

And this “continent’s end” is where Jeffers perched to carry out his poetic vocation. He came here and opened himself up to whatever is, to hear it say its word to a humanity which had nowhere further to go. He built a rock cottage with a tower in it, and he waited for the spirit of the place to become manifest and audible.

He opened himself up to whatever is, and whatever is got into him and spoke. What it said, according to Jeffers’ transcription over the course of decades, is that it doesn’t care much for humans.

You’d have to see this worked out over the course of his poems, especially the long ones that try the reader’s patience with their gruesome plots and shrieky characters (Roan Stallion, Medea, The Double Axe, Tamar). But Jeffers also made helpful comments about his overall approach from time to time. He declared that his goal was “to present a certain philosophical attitude, which might be called Inhumanism, a shifting of emphasis and significance from man to not-man; the rejection of human solipsism and recognition of the transhuman magnificence.” This Inhumanism was, according to Jeffers, the proper attitude for humans, and was consonant with the way the rest of the cosmos felt about humanity. The basic idea is that the human race is a microscopic portion of the vast reality of the world, and anybody in the business of evaluating it should evaluate it as ranking rather low in the whole scale of things (a “sick microbe” as he says in one poem). This would be mentally healthy: “It seems time that our race began to think as an adult does, rather than like an egocentric baby or insane person. This manner of thought and feeling is neither misanthropic nor pessimist, though two or three people have said so and may again.”

Jeffers also tried in his work to express “a religious feeling, that perhaps must be called pantheism.” He believed that “the world, the universe, is one being, a single organism, one great life that includes all life and all things; and is so beautiful that it must be loved and reverenced; and in moments of mystical vision we identify ourselves with it.” It was important for him, however, to distinguish this from traditional forms of pantheism which were always egocentric, tending to find divinity and reality within the soul, and illusion and transience in the outer world. For Jeffers, the exact opposite was true: “the outer world is real and divine; one’s own soul might be called an illusion, it is so slight and so transitory.” The natural world is so real that the I who beholds it scarcely deserves to be recognized as substantial.

Add me to the list of the two or three who have said that Robinson Jeffers the poet hated people, and that he hated people because he had accepted a finite god in place of the infinite, living God. He, and the local genius that got into him and found its voice through him, declare themselves clearly to be on the side of impersonal cosmic force rather than on the side of humanity. The poetry of Robinson Jeffers is unmatched among twentieth-century poetry for its vigor, vitality, and attention to the rhythms of nature. But the price he paid for his inspiration is too high. What will it profit a man if he gains the world but loses his soul?

Ambrose Bierce (born 1842, date of death an unsolved mystery) had a wit that could eat its way through anything. So universally sardonic was his imagination that there was nothing he couldn’t make fun of, and he proved it by making fun of the dictionary and all the words in it. For his Devil’s Dictionary project, he wrote bitter, triple-negative spoofs of everything from letters of the alphabet to political and metaphysical systems.

Just a half-dozen favorite definitions:

CARTESIAN, adj. Relating to Descartes, a famous philosopher, author of the celebrated dictum, Cogito ergo sum — whereby he was pleased to suppose he demonstrated the reality of human existence. The dictum might be improved, however, thus: Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum — “I think that I think, therefore I think that I am;” as close an approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made.

CAT, n. A soft, indestructible automaton provided by nature to be kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle.

CHRISTIAN, n. One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.

FUTURE, n. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.

PEDESTRIAN, n. The variable (and audible) part of the roadway for an automobile.

SELF-ESTEEM, n. An erroneous appraisement.

YEAR, n. A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.

Oops, that was seven. Hard to stop. Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary, like the devil, takes on many forms. Here’s a fun online version of it, but if you really like this stuff, I recommend buying this edition. For a compromise, here’s a cheap and less exhaustive edition (after all, how much acid can your stomach take?)

The greatest danger posed by the Devil’s Dictionary is that by reading it you will encourage your inner cynic. The second greatest danger is that you will turn yourself into a colossal bore (BORE, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen) at parties by quoting it (QUOTATION, n. The act of repeating erroneously the words of another) to your friends (FRIENDSHIP, n. A ship big enough to carry two in fair weather, but only one in foul).

Psalm 46:10 says: “Be still, and know that I am God.”

Perhaps you know a song with these words. You may even have a coffee cup with them on it, perfect for those laid back (but with caffeine mandatory!) quiet times. Perhaps you’ve seen images that try to capture the feeling evoked by the words:

A holy hush descends and these words call us back to a place of stillness, a place of quietness, the exercise of the spiritual disciplines of silence and solitude. What we need above all is to turn away, if only for a moment, from the hectic pace of modern life and spend some quiet time in the presence of God. There, in the silence, we can recollect the truth: God is God. He is sovereign. All our noise and fuss distracts us from attending to this one thing necessary, the quiet and passive recognition of God’s Godness.

All of that is true. And if reading my quick reminder of it in the above paragraph rings true for you, the right thing to do is to close your internet browser and go pray.

But if you’re still with me, or if you’re back, here’s my point: I’m pretty sure Psalm 46:10 isn’t talking about any of the things I just said. Taken on their own, the words “Be still and know that I am God” sound like “have a quiet time to reflect on God’s Godness,” but taken in context they’re pointing in another direction.
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I was just opining that the day of gigantic national parks had passed, that there are no new Yosemites to be set aside, and that today’s John Muirs would be well advised to find a new strategy. I should also have said that there aren’t any more Teddy Roosevelts to do the setting aside. If I’d said that, I ‘d have been even more thoroughly wrong.

President Bush just created another gigantic state park, in the ocean. The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands National Monument covers 140,000 square miles, making it the largest protected marine area in the world. Jacques Cousteau’s son talked Bush into it with a documentary, and in order to get the territory preserved Bush invoked the 1906 American Antiquities Act. That act was put in place by Congress under, you guessed it, Teddy Roosevelt, exactly 100 years ago. It says

the President of the United States is hereby authorized, in his discretion, to declare by public proclamation historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest that are situated upon the lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United States to be national monuments…

I assume this is all intentional symbolic action from the White House: 100 years later, biggest marine preserve ever, famous conservationist, etc. Even if it’s unintentional, it’s pretty cool. So it turns out that in this one particular case, today’s John Muirs can stick to the old strategy, new Yosemites can be found, and there’s still a Teddy Roosevelt to get the job done.

Spinner dolphins! They are the only species that do aerial stunts without any training. They just leap out of the water and spin around in mid-air, naturally, whether you’re watching or not. They’re doing it right now.

John Muir (1838-1914) deserves the title of “founder of the conservation movement.” He found his voice at a strategic time in American history and was remarkably effective at getting land preserved. He invented a whole range of rhetorical strategies which captured the public imagination and persuaded politicians to take action. When Muir made a case for saving old growth redwoods, he held nothing back: He appealed to morality, religion, financial self-interest, aesthetic sensibility, concerns for physical and mental health, and national pride. Any argument would do if it would keep the ancient trees standing and the wilderness in pristine state. With a writing style shaped by his early immersion in the King James Bible (and a little bit of Plutarch, though his father worried about letting him read a pagan author), Muir wrote like a man on a mission. He even used humor:

Now some millmen want to cut all the Calaveras trees into lumber and money. But we have found a better use for them. No doubt these trees would make good lumber after passing through a sawmill, as George Washington after passing through the hands of a French cook would have made good food. But both for Washington and the tree that bears his name higher uses have been found.

What exactly was it that Muir wanted to accomplish? His major strategy was to persuade the federal government to set aside big sections of land as protected areas, national parks. His timing was impeccable: those decades around the turn of the century were excatly the right moment for a central government to grab wilderness regions and declare them public trusts. Fifty years earlier such a move would have been irrelevant, unnecessary, and unenforcable. Fifty years later would have been too late: much territory would have been destroyed or compromised, and the human cost to residents and industry would have been much higher.

Muir also found a chief executive who was ready to hear the argument and take action on a grand scale. Teddy Roosevelt doubled the number of national parks during his time in office, extended the borders of some of them, and brought about 230 million acres of American territory under public protection (as parks, national monuments, sanctuaries, reservations, preserves, etc.). Roosevelt understood Muir’s appeal and took up the cause himelf with characteristic zeal:

In utilizing and conserving the natural resources of the Nation, the one characteristic more essential than any other is foresight…. The conservation of our natural resources and their proper use constitute the fundamental problem which underlies almost every other problem of our national life.

Around 1900, the perfect strategy for conservation was to have the federal government grab land and declare it protected. Big man Roosevelt running big government USA sets aside big parks. Massive state parks and monuments (like the Muir Woods, which I got to visit a few weeks ago) bear witness to this being an effective and appropriate strategy for that time. Just after the middle of the twentieth century, the best way to conserve natural resources was for the will of the people to be made known, and the now cliched image of protesters standing between trees and bulldozers made perfect sense in its time. Public demonstrations got the voice of the people heard, and much urban greenspace has been preserved because of micro-movements of this nature. If John Muir were working in 1960, would he have hugged trees to show they are loved. No doubt.

What if John Muir were doing his work today? His fluid and flexible wit would surely not let itself get bogged down in strategies appropriate to 1906; there just aren’t any more Yosemites or Crater Lakes out there. Rainforests in somebody else’s country aren’t really candidates for National Park status, so that bag of tricks wouldn’t apply. He probably wouldn’t even get snared in 1960 strategies, marching and protesting and laying down in front of bulldozers. That strategy always leads to a deadlock: the will of the people is equally expressed by protesters and by the free market’s drive to development. The will of the people is on both sides of the bulldozer.

A twenty-first century conservationist who wanted to be as effective as John Muir would, I think, undertake a strategy appropriate to this era. He would bend all his wit and persuasiveness to make the case that the best interests of the free market are served by conservation. Instead of clouding the issue by striking faux-heroic anti-capitalist stances, John Muir 2006 would enter the belly of the beast itself. He would generate an unstoppable host of arguments proving that natural territories are more valuable than what can be developed on them. He would calculate the actual cash value of a tree or a forest and demonstrate in market terms that no rational capitalist could afford to trade this resource for another one. With Muir’s resourcefulness, he would probably itemize the cash value of a forest all the way down to the leaf. Is there a calculation that captures the way natural spaces appreciate in value while anything build on a developed space inevitably depreciates? Wouldn’t that be a magical equation to turn the head of any economist?

Instead of persuading a president (1906) or amplifying the vox populi (1960), John Muir 2006 would go up against the market itself and win as big as he did 100 years ago. But it will take some creative rhetoric, with statistics, dollar equivalents, and long-term extrapolations to get the invisible hand of the market to set down the chain saw and pick up the watering can. Many conservationists operate with a naive model of political economy and think they can keep their hands clean of market concerns. Equipped with a more realistic sense of the way the free market functions, wouldn’t it be nice if conservatives took the lead in conservationism?

Here’s one way to think about what Paul’s doing in Philippians.

Having prayed for the church in Philippi to “know which things matter most,” he calls them to re-direct their attention from What Doesn’t Matter Much to What Matters The Most. The argument form is basically “don’t look over there, look over here,” which is a hard argument to win. Consider a time when you’ve taken a problem to somebody for advice, and instead of solving your problem they have told you, “your real problem is that you are paying attention to this thing; instead, try just ignoring it and paying attention to something else more important.” Even when they’re right, it’s hard advice to follow.

In the ancient world, one version of this argument was the consolatio genre. Writing in the mode of consolatio (as Cicero, Seneca, and later Boethius did, for example), a writer would persuade his listeners to seek comfort in the midst of affliction by performing two actions simultaneously: avocatio and revocatio. People who were suffering needed to have their minds called away from (a-vocatio) the affliction (which gets worse the more you think about it), and called toward (re-vocatio) something greater and more fruitful. Avocatio plus revocatio produces consolatio: don’t think about that, think about this. (If you’d like to follow up with some real scholarship on how this ancient genre informs Philippians, here’s a good book, the one that alerted me to these categories.)

In the hands of hedonists, this argument could be pretty facile. Epicureans, for instance, used to argue that when you were in pain you should do a little hedonistic calculus and set your mind on future pleasure. Another way consolatio could go wrong is by being a mere strategy of escapism (though come to think of it, if you can’t use escapist literature in prison, where can you?).

In Philippians, however, Paul is doing something nobler. To begin with, he has identified something special as the highest good: the progress of the gospel. He is especially excited about the way the church at Philippi has shared his labor of spreading the gospel in new territories. With the gospel as the highest good, he freely re-interprets everything in his experience and assigns it to its proper place under the sway of the highest good. This is where, I think, Paul begins to marshal some paradoxes and shocking reversals. He’s not doing this just to be puckish or to be a paradox-monger. He knows he has a hard argument to make (”don’t think about that, think about this”), so he brings out some illustrations that turn the world upside down. If I had no sense of history, I’d say he’d been reading some G. K. Chesterton, because Chesterton was the master of these stunning inversions which forced his readers to consider his point of view.

Here’s how Paul works it out:

I pray that you would learn what matters most. Whatever is good, think about that.

What’s good? The progress of the gospel, that’s the main thing.

In light of that, everything you know is wrong. For example:

Here I am in prison. That’s bad, right? No, that’s good. It’s turning out to be good for the gospel.

Another example: I have an impeccable religious pedigree. That’s good, right? No, that’s bad. Pure skubalon, in fact. Doesn’t matter one bit. Might even get in the way.

Again: Feckless folks are preaching Christ for lousy reasons like envy, just to hurt me. That’s bad, right? No, that’s good. Because, like I said, the gospel is going forth no matter what’s in their motives.

A big one: To do the work of the gospel, you have to behave like a slave and take a place at the bottom of the social hierarchy. That’s bad, right? No, that’s good. Have this mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who became obedient to the extremes of shameful death, for which reason he has been given the highest name.

Paul follows this “everything you know is wrong, we’re through the looking glass now” strategy pretty insistently in Philippians. It’s the back-and-forth that’s necessary to jolt his readers into a new way of evaluating everything. The only place he seems unable to do the inversion trick is when he tries to figure out whether death is good or bad. Looking at it from the point of view of the gospel, neither his life nor his death seems clearly better. Death is better for him (go be with the Lord), but contination of his life and ministry is better for the churches. Paul doesn’t achieve mere stoical indifference, but he does reach a serene objectivity regarding his own destiny.

Philippians: Read it standing on your head.

Here is the latest song by Terry Scott Taylor. He played it at a small concert last week and I can’t get it out of my head. He’s written dozens of songs that show him to be a Californian with deep roots in this region which seems rootless and placeless, and I know he’s been reflecting on the Californian mythos more intensely in the past few years. His 1998 album John Wayne (named for the Orange County airport) was subtitled “Orange Grotesques,” for example, and his 2000 solo album was about the Avocado Faultline. But in this latest song, “Broken Like Brooklyn” from the soon-to-be-released Lost Dogs Album The Lost Cabin and the Mystery Trees, Terry has set himself the task of thinking about his native California from a long way off: from New York. Having given himself that assignment, he has fastened on the perfect way to carry it out: by pondering the Dodgers’ move from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, and singing from the point of view of a New Yorker who feels the dislocation deeply. California’s big with myth in this song: not only do rivers get lassoed as in tall tales, but the Rose Bowl gets filled with guacamole! And an east coast soul yearns for the golden land of California boosterism, where everything’s new and big and unsullied. Instead of deflating California hype from within, this song draws you in to the melancholy of the western dream and makes you feel the whole country’s midcentury complicity in it. It also manages to make me nostalgic for a New York baseball team I have never cared about, and links it back behind the twentieth century with the “trolley dodging” line.

I make no guarantees that these lyrics are perfectly accurate, but I wanted to be the first to break the lyrics of a new Terry Taylor song on my blog. So here’s what I heard of “Broken Like Brooklyn.”

Once I dreamed I was Ponce de Leon
I’d grown so bitter and cold
You whispered, “Baby, I am Eureka
Without any redwoods or gold.”

So together we packed up the Airstream,
With Pepsis, Pall Malls, and Moon Pies
We lassoed the San Joaquin River
And I went along for the ride.

I dreamed faith was our precious cargo
Determination our boat
We sailed straight on through troubled waters
And around the Cape of Good Hope

Then we dressed ourselves in fringed buckskins
Having leveled that brownstone of ours
Beneath the Palos Colorados
We slept ‘neath a blanket of stars

Woke up broken like Brooklyn
The year the bums left
In the Bronx on a cold day
While our boys tan out west

Now we fly over junk yards and factories
Denny’s and transient hotels
Above the churches and bars and video stores
Black smoke and slaughterhouse smells

Touching down in the golden Sierras
We ate spinach quiches grown there
I wove a crown of boysenberries
Through your lemon-scented hair

While girls in bikinis and snow skis
In the desert cashed in their chips
Then filled the rose bowl with guacamole
We took our clothes off and went for a dip

Thought that we might go trolley Dodging
After reading a policeman his rights
Then we followed the Duke of Flatbush
And scaled the Boyle Heights

Woke up broken like Brooklyn
The year the bums left
In the Bronx on a cold day
While our boys tan out west

Always broken like Brooklyn
After losing the best
Old sunbleached bleachers and pennants
Stole the hearts from our chest