I can't stop listening to this. I've been playing it over and over again for weeks. That one climactic note....

It so bewitched me, that I had to look up who the violinist is: it's Hilary Hahn, which explains why it's so good.

I was surprised to learn that Hilary plays a Vuillaume rather than a Stradivarius or Guarneri. I guess whatever the secret is, Vuillaume figured it out too.

The last piece of the puzzle of my mind has finally been put into place. My daughter, the therapist (who also has the benefit of having known me her whole life), actually put me on the right track. It's a high-functioning form of autism. Along the same lines as Asperger's. 

So, it sounds like a lot: ADD, Tourette's, and ASD (autism spectrum disorder), as it's called these days. But the thing is, there is a very high comorbidity rate between all three: they seem to be somehow related. Perhaps (this is purely speculation) they're all actually manifestations of some deeper neurological developmental disorder.

I've spent my whole life wondering what's wrong with me. But now it all makes perfect sense. It all fits. I can't describe what a relief that is. 

Of course, there's the thought, "What if someone had correctly identified and treated this when I was a child?" Maybe everything could have been different. On the other hand, I probably wouldn't have been able to do a lot of the things I've done (or at least attempted to do) if I'd had that label put on me at an early age.

But that doesn't really matter anymore. Nothing I can do about it anyway. What I can do, is start to take control of and order my life with a much clearer understanding of who I am and what I need. And maybe begin to free myself from this constant guilt and self-judgment over why I'm not "doing more" with my life. Really, I couldn't have. It's so clear now.

I had the first actual procedure in my back. It's supposed to take six to eight weeks to take full effect, but I'm already feeling an enormous degree of relief. Not only from the constant, incessant, unrelenting pain, but it turns out that my insomnia was also neurological. I never had it until just after my accident, and then ever since. But both after the test blocks, and now as the permanent one takes effect, it's just disappearing. Those damaged nerves must have been sending continual distress signals that triggered an anxiety response in my brain, and never let me sleep properly. I was going to say two birds with one stone, but it's more like two dragons. That's one hell of a stone.

And here's something I've been dreaming about my whole life--a wish that I never thought would come true. I've located (if the genealogy I found is correct), the castle which was my ancestral home. And it's still standing. It's in use as a wedding and event venue.

Or, rather, castles:

Apparently, they had...erm...huge...tracts of land in the area between the Rhone river and the Italian and Swiss borders, east and west, and between Marseille and Lyon, north and south. But I believe the first one was their real home, as they are for generations listed as having been born in Pereins.

So, here's my new plan:

1) Start hiking again, and get back in shape, as spring comes and my back hurts less, and the medications improve my emotional state.

2) Go back for more treatments, higher up in my neck and lower down in my back.

3) Keep working with my therapy and medications, and the new knowledge of what's actually the problem, to find ways to live.

4) Save some more money, so I don't have to spend everything I've got on numbers 5 and 6.

5) Go to France. Visit these castles. See where my ancestors lived, and where I came from. Also, while I'm nearby and doing medieval-themed things, visit Carcassone and Toulouse. 

6) Walk the Camino de Santiago. What I'd really like to do is start at the chateau on the top and walk to the Camino from there, as if I were going on a medieval pilgrimage from my home.

7) Meet a French or Spanish girl. 

8) Never come back.

"As the rich rise in social esteem, the virtuous sink....the natural end of democracy is despotism."

-- Plato

We had to do two diagnostic test blocks before proceeding to the permanent ablation. Some kind of procedural requirement. After the first one, when the raging pain on the right side was gone for a while, I noticed the pain on the left side. Apparently, the other was drowning it out. So when I went back, he did both sides, and I spent a night and a day freer of pain than I can remember, or could have imagined was possible. I also slept much better. I hadn't fully realized how frequently I wake up and have to shift positions to try to relieve the pain in my neck. 

With both sides muted, I felt a strange pain in my shoulder, but it felt muscular: I think maybe I've had it clenched for 26 years.

The prospect of feeling this way permanently is exciting. And a little bit scary, which is weird. I guess it's similar to how people feel when they're getting out of prison after a long time, or leaving their beds after a very long illness. 

 

Yes, I can. It's this "notice", and the bias, censorship, and propaganda that underlies it.

Silencing dissent is the halfway marker on the road to totalitarianism and tyranny. 

"Fixing the human heart is like fixing an automobile. You have to tear everything apart, and see what's important. Then you can put it all back together."

Heard that in a movie somewhere and it stuck with me.

C. S. Lewis - On the Reading of Old Books

C. S. Lewis: A Lost Chapter of Herodotus

How To Celebrate Christmas...Medieval Style!

It just struck me the other night how hilarious this is:

(me, on the left, ca. 1975)

You stay classy, San Diego.

Christmas is always a traumatic time. Every year, I make myself my favorite thing: a big figgy pudding.

But then these people show up at the door, hammering, yelling, making a god-awful noise, demanding figgy pudding. "Bring us some figgy pudding! Bring us some figgy pudding! Bring it out here!" I tell them to go away, to leave me alone, but they keep on, "We won't go until we get some!" In the end, I always have to give them the damn figgy pudding just to make them shut up and go away.

I said years ago that John Williams was directly responsible for my having come to love classical music, and that much of the best composing now is being done for movies. Anyone who disdains film scores as not being worthy to be included with classical music, I think must not have heard Joshua Bell play the theme from Schindler's List. But this was the one that captured my heart and my imagination, when I was just a boy; and here it is having reached its full potential, at last. One of the world's great violinists playing Leia's Theme from Star Wars on a Stradivarius.

Christian Marriage by C.S. Lewis Doodle

Charity, II. Love by C.S. Lewis Doodle

Chivalry

While I'm on the topic of things mediaeval, there are two other subjects on my mind, which rather interrelate.

First, this book I've been reading: 

Best book on knighthood and chivalry I've ever read. No contest. The author is thoroughly acquainted with and profoundly knowledgeable of the actual medieval texts, treatises, romances, and visual arts, as well as with modern history and archaeology on the subject, and draws his conclusions and arguments from them. No revisionism. No ex post facto ideological bias. No repetition of  "facts" that aren't facts at all, but long-perpetuated lies. Just superb.

Anyway, in the book I keep running across things like this:

"Loyalty is one of the greatest virtues that there can be in any person, and especially in a knight, who ought to keep himself loyal in many ways. But the principal ways are two: first to keep loyalty to his lord, and secondly to love truly her in whom he has placed his heart." -- quoted from the statutes of the chivalric Order of the Band of Castile

And this, in speaking of the Emprise de l'Escu vert à la Dame Blanche, (Enterprise of the Green Shield and White Lady) another knightly order:

"The upholding of the honour of womankind was the chief avowed concern of [this order], whose companions bound themselves for five years to the service of women, especially of the defenceless and disinherited"

When I read things like this, it strikes a chord in my soul that resonates everything within me. This is how life should be. I don't know how I got this way, but I always have been. Maybe the genes, or maybe something spiritual, from those ancestors I was talking about a couple of posts back got passed down to me. I think of what Gandalf said of Faramir, that somehow he had received something of the true blood or spirit of Numenor from across the ages. 

But these examples lead me to the other thing that has been on my mind. I watched a movie, recently which, when I started it, I thought, "Good Lord, a medieval movie in which the weapons, armor, clothing, culture, and other details actually look right!" And it was based on actual historical events. The movie is The Last Duel, if you happen to have seen it. If not, there are some spoilers ahead, though I'll try not to ruin the whole plot.

It's about a charge of rape brought by a knight against his former friend, on behalf of his wife, which ultimately resulted in the last judicial duel fought in France. In case you don't know, in medieval times, matters could be settled by single combat between the two parties or their champions, and the outcome was seen as the result of the Will of God as to who was telling the truth. We'll leave the discussion of whether that's any more or less fair or arbitrary and results in any more or less injustice than the modern court system to another time. (We can say, "Well, that's not justice, the best fighter is going to win!" But how about, "That's not justice, the best lawyer is going to win!"? Okay, I'm done.)

The film is divided into three segments: 1) the truth according to the husband, 2) the truth according to the rapist, and 3) the truth according to the wife; and then ends with the duel itself and its outcome. Which sounds very reasonable and good. Except....

Parts one and two were taken mostly from the historical sources, and are accurate reflections of the court records and other documents. Part three, however, by the filmakers' own admission, was pure fiction. It was, in their words, "original screenplay" based on what they thought the woman's view must have been. If they had had sources, to say what her view of the matter actually was (beyond her actual testimony, which is given in part one), then I would say, by all means, tell her story! But they don't. It's pure imagination. And the real problem is, it's written entirely from a modern, feminist perspective. It assumes, with absolutely no historical basis, support, or even hint (I checked) that she must have been unhappy and miserable in her marriage, that the husband would have been an insensitive and abusive boor, that he quite badly mistreated her the night she told him of the rape, that he was only concerned with his own honour and reputation in the matter rather than her honour and welfare, etc. Which would have been all well and fine for the movie, if ANY of it had ANY basis in historical fact or record. But no, it's all pure assumption on the part of modern authors who assume that must have been this way because all men are, after all, abusive, insensitive boors, and especially those violent, barbaric knights must have been.

Here, on the other hand, is a much more balanced view of the matter by someone who seems to have a grasp on what history actually is: https://alexabaczak.medium.com/the-real-life-last-duel-the-assault-of-marguerite-de-carrouges-ca0ca4eba592. Although she can't help slipping a bit of feminism in there too.

There actually are some points to be made about the difficulty which a woman faced in bringing rape charges (which was a crime punishable by death) at the time. But they fit into the weaknesses of the justice system of the time overall, rather than to some overarching misogynist conspiracy to oppress women. And really, it's never going to be easy, is it? It still isn't. There's always going to be shame, and humiliation, and scandal, and gossip. And to be just, a justice system has to use impartial methods to determine truth to its best ability, and the accused in any crime has to be given a fair trail, because there is such a thing as false accusation, as well as mistaken identity, etc. Even in a crime as heinous as rape, there has to be due process, because there's a chance that the man accused is not actually guilty. 

Don't take that as me defending rape or rapists: anyone who knows me knows how I feel about these things. Some of you reading this have experienced me acting on your behalf in exactly this capacity. I would have joined that order and made that vow. I'm just saying that this abominable crime is always going to be difficult for the victim to pursue justice, by its very nature. The perfect justice system would make it as easy as possible for her (or him), but medieval justice was not perfect. Nor is ours. 

And after all, what better justice could there be than the vile rapist facing the armed fury of the woman's husband or other defender, in front of her, God, and everyone they know? Death is the only punishment suitable for rape.

Anyway, back to the main point: the postmodern feminist assumption that all the men involved were guilty and complicit in the abuse and oppression of all women, patriarchy, etc., etc., blah, blah, blah. They seem to me to have terribly slandered a brave and good man based on nothing but their own presumptions and ideological agenda. But compare that assumption with the quotes I gave from the actual middle ages above. And these are not exceptions, they are the rule. Every man who joined that particular order made a vow to devote five full years of his life to aiding the cause of all women, especially those who had no defender or champion, i.e., widows, women whose inheritance had been stolen, etc. 

There have always been, and always will be, evil men. Until Christ returns. But there have always been, and still are, good men too. Yes, there was injustice in the middle ages. Yes, there was injustice against women. But there was injustice against men too. Yes, there still is injustice against women, some of it perpetrated by men. But there also still is injustice against men, some of it perpetrated by women.

Mediaeval Life Documentary

This is, I think, the most interesting and informative documentary series I've ever seen. The number of skills and crafts which they demonstrate is astounding. I'm especially impressed with the lady scholar, who in addition to being extremely knowledgeable, has mastery of an incredible number of practical ancient skills. I was disappointed to hear her repeating the old "medieval people didn't wash" fallacy (see here for the truth), but that's the only flaw I've seen so far, and have learned a LOT. And I'm only halfway through the series.

Something deep in my soul longs for this kind of life: the simplicity, the order, the rhythms, the harmony and balance, the closeness to nature, the earth, the seasons, the suffusion of God throughout every aspect of daily life....

Genealogy

A long time ago, I developed an interest in where I came from. Like many Americans. Most Europeans don't seem to share this--nor Asians, Africans, or Indians, judging from the ones I've known. They pretty much know what they are. 

But we Americans always have this question...we know that at some point, our ancestors immigrated here, and we know that our surname is of a particular nationality, but beyond that, there's always this unknown.

So when I was a boy, we had had this tradition that we were French, of course. And there was a coat of arms which was supposed to be associated with our family. But that's all we knew.

My father wasn't really that interested, but my uncle was, and he began to research it, way back before the internet. By the early days of the internet and the advent of the first message boards where disparate researchers could share their findings, he had found our line back to the immigration to America. We were Hugenots, it turns out, French protestants who had settled here after being forced to leave France by the edict of Nantes, and had come here, to Virginia. And there it stopped, for a long time. My uncle died, and there was no more information.

But then, in the early 2000s, after much searching, I finally found another trail. And it led back from our ancestor who had come here to a knight named Sir Richard du Pré, who had been awarded a fiefdom in Artois, on what is now the French/Belgian border, in 1437. And there it went cold again. 

I had always suspected that Sir Richard was either English, the name being Norman, or Burgundian, as that region was under Anglo/Burgundian control at that time, this being during the hundred years war. But I couldn't find anything else, other than a transcript of the trial of Joan of Arc in which a Richard du Pré was listed as sitting on the panel of judges. But it didn't seem that that could be him, as the one was a knight and lord, and the other was a cleric. A relative, maybe. Anyway, for a long time that was it, and I lost interest, distracted by other things.

At one point, by accident while researching something totally different (medieval military subjects), I came across a site which had digitized the English records of the hundred years war, and on which you could search for your ancestor's name. I did, and found Sir Richard, and indeed he had served on the English side, under the famous captain Sir John Talbot. Which confirmed my suspicions that he had been either English or Burgundian, but didn't help with finding his ancestry.

But a few years ago, I was at my brother's house, who had become rather obsessed with the genealogy thing, and he mentioned that he had come across a site in French which he couldn't read, and asked me to take a look at it. I did, and lo and behold, finally found possible records of Sir Richard's father, who was Burgundian and lord of Pereins, near Lyons, which matched up with what we had found many years before in association with that coat of arms, that there was a connection with Lyons. And, fascinatingly, one of his ancestors, or rather the brother of his ancestor, was the first grand master of the Knights Hospitaller:

Raymond du Puis

 And then I found his father, and then his father, etc., all the way back to 775, to a man called Aznar d'Aragon, who was the count of Aragon (which wasn't yet a duchy) and duke of Gascony, which is the border region of France and Spain on the Pyrenees. And I found this picture of him:

Aznar d'Aragon

Weird, right? Apparently, the gene for those eyes has somehow lasted down through all these centuries and millennia, and is still the most identifying feature of our family. It was like something in an old movie, where some American inherits an old castle in England or Scotland, goes there, walks in, and finds a picture of himself. In case you don't see it, here' one of me in which you can actually see my face, for reference:

There the trail ended again, for some time. It was surprising and intriguing, because he was said in some sources to be of Basque origin. But that was it.

Then, just recently I came across by accident, while researching something else, again, information on Aznar's origin. It seems he wasn't Basque after all, but Frankish. In fact, it goes back to Clovis, King of the Franks, and then back to Merovech, for whom the Merovingian dynasty was named. Which would explain the family's rocky relationship with Charlemagne and the Carolingians: if they were descended from the Merovingians, they would have a beef with them, wouldn't they? Anyway, super-ironically, Merovech was king of the Salian Franks, who lived in a territory of the northern Rhine in what is now...BELGIUM. lol. Guess there was a reason I felt so at home there. And liked their ale so much.

Clovis I

So, at this point we're reaching the end of what's even possible to trace, as the Franks didn't keep written records in these times, and all we have is what's recorded by Romans. And at this point, history begins to blend with mythology. But it seems that Merovech's father was Clodio, the king who first united the Frankish tribes and established a quasi-independent kingdom in Belgica and northern Gaul:

Clodio

I mean, this is crazy, right? Or am I imagining it?

Anyway, Clodio's grandfather was a Frankish dux (leader) called Marcomer who invaded Roman territory in 388. And that's as far as it is likely ever to go. But I'm satisfied. I think I can say that I know where I came from. Marcomer, if he led an invasion in 388, would have probably been born sometime between the 340s and 360s, and that's not bad for being able to trace one's ancestry. Of course, none of this is absolutely certain or provable at this point, but the pictures make me think there really might be something to it.

Marcomer

"I've got the makings of a great writer in me, but I'll never become one because I'm too erratic and lazy to really try and keep on trying."

-- Robert E. Howard

"Truly I know that this is so"

[that God is just and if Job is suffering, it must be for his own sin]

"But how can a man be in the right before God?

If one wished to contend with him,

one could not answer him once in a thousand times

He is wise in heart and mighty in strength

--who has hardened himself against him, and suceeded?

--he who removes mountains, and they know it not,

when he overturns them in his anger,

who shakes the earth out of its place,

and its pillars tremble;

who commands the sun, and it does not rise;

who seals up the stars;

who alone stretched out the heavens

and trampled the waves of the sea;

who made the Bear and Orion,

the Pleiades and the chambers of the south;

who does great things beyond searching out,

and marvelous things beyond number.

Behold, he passes by me, and I see him not;

he moves on, but I do not perceive him,

Behold, he snatches away; who can turn him back?

Who will say to him, 'What are you doing?'

God will not turn back his anger;

beneath him bowed the helpers of Rahab.

How then can I answer him,

choosing my words with him?

Though I am in the right, I cannot answer him;

I must appeal for mercy to my accuser.

If I summoned him and he answered me,

I would not believe that he was listening to my voice.

For he crushes me with a tempest

and multiplies my wounds without cause;

he will not let me get my breath,

but fills me with bitterness.

If it is a contest of strength, behold, he is mighty!

If it is a matter of justice, who can summon him?

Though I am in the right, my own mouth would condemn me;

though I am blameless, he would prove me perverse.

I am blameless, I regard not myself;

I loath my life.

It is all one; therefore I say,

'He destroys both the blameless and the wicked.'

When disaster brings sudden death,

he mocks at the calamity of the innocent.

The earth is given into the hand of the wicked;

he covers the faces of its judges--if it is not he, then who is it?

My days are swifter than a runner;

they flee away; they see no good.

They go by like skiffs of reed,

like an eagle swooping on the prey.

If I say, 'I will forget my complaint, 

I will put off my sad face, and be of good cheer,'

I become afraid of all my suffering,

for I know you will not hold me innocent.

I shall be condemned;

why then do I labor in vain?

If I wash myself with snow

and cleanse my hands with lye,

yet you will plunge me into a pit,

and my own garment will abhor me.

For he is not a man, as I am, that I might answer him,

that we should come to trial together.

There is no arbiter between us,

who might lay his hand on us both.

Let him take his rod away from me,

and let not dread of him terrify me.

Then I would speak without fear of him,

for I am not so in myself."

"Why, then, do you serve him, if he continually denies you justice and makes you suffer so?"

My suffering or happiness, justice or injustice, life or death, is rather beside the point. I serve him because he deserves to be served. I serve him because he is God.

I am not the center of the universe.