A Beatific Dream

by Adam Mitchell Bernard Bond on 2 September 2010

How beatific dost Thou seem,
When I behold Thine unmarked grace,
The gen­tle curves that frame Thy face,
Thine eyes that with bright waters gleam.

How sweet and inno­cent Thy pose,
Thy womb borne up by sacred hands,
Thy son held fast, within Thee stands,
Whilst from Thee joy and glad­ness flows.

I share with Thee a stain­less bond,
That will our hearts unend­ing braid,
Into a sin­gle strand unswayed,
From fleet­ing fears fight to abscond.

With Thee I’ll seek to enter­tain,
A love that ever­flow­ing grows,
That my devo­tion to Thee shews,
That seeks to ease Thine every pain.

How beatific dost Thou seem,
How fast Thou hold’st me in Thy gaze,
And every bash­ful blush betrays,
Thou know’st my love, Thou art my dream.

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The Origin of Matrimonal Infelicity

by Adam Mitchell Bernard Bond on 2 September 2010

This is the first of what promises to be a series of care­fully reflec­tive com­men­taries on the works of Dr Samuel John­son, LL. D., in – one hopes – a form that is acces­si­ble to mod­ern audi­ences, who – for all their virtues – are not inclined to read at length some­thing writ­ten in the style of Eigh­teenth Cen­tury Eng­lish Lan­guage and Let­ters. While I admit that the com­mon opin­ion regard­ing John­son is that he wrote a sort of John­sonese – defined as a lit­er­ary style that is var­i­ously char­ac­ter­ized by pedan­tic eru­di­tion, Latinisms, heav­i­ness, pom­pos­ity, and obscu­fa­tion – John­son him­self never wrote John­sonese. The pil­ing up of rea­sons, the cumu­la­tion of argu­ment – set­ting off epi­gram against epi­gram – that mark Johnson’s lit­er­ary style are its dis­tin­guish­ing fea­tures. He is pro­found, but always lucid. The word – John­sonese – was coined by a man who had nei­ther the patience to read John­son nor the abil­ity to com­pre­hend him. Nev­er­the­less, most read­ers of John­son today will meet with a sim­i­lar impa­tience and will deny him a fair read­ing, a read­ing that offers one keen insights on any num­ber of sub­jects. I have there­fore decided that if John­son is not to be taken up by the masses and read that at least I might – with vary­ing pro­fi­ciency – dis­till his ideas that those who would by nature avoid him taste the ambrosial virtue of his thought.

Illic matre car­en­tibus priv­i­g­nis mulier tem­perat inno­cens, nec dotata regit virum con­jux, nec nitido fidit adul­tero: dos est magna par­en­tium vir­tus, et metuens alterius viri certo fædere castitas.

Not there the guilt­less step-​dame knows the bale­ful draught for orphans to com­pose; no wife high portion’d rules her spouse, or trusts her essenc’d lover’s faith­less vows: the lovers there for dow’ry claim the father’s virtue, and the spot­less fame, which dares not break the nup­tial tie.

Horace. lib. iii. Ode xxiv. 17.

Fran­cis.

There is no obser­va­tion more fre­quently made by such as employ them­selves in sur­vey­ing the con­duct of mankind, than that mar­riage, though the dic­tate of nature, and the insti­tu­tion of Prov­i­dence, is yet very often the cause of mis­ery, and that those who enter into that state can sel­dom for­bear to express their repen­tance, and their envy of those whom either chance or cau­tion had with­held from it.

John­son here admits some­thing that while hard is nev­er­the­less true, that mar­riage “is very often the cause of mis­ery,” and that those who are mar­ried fre­quently regret hav­ing entered into that state and envy those that are not so bound. While this is – espe­cially for those who hope to enter into mat­ri­mony with good will and open hearts – a painful admis­sion, it can­not be pre­tended that it is not a truth wor­thy of con­sid­er­a­tion. It is inter­est­ing that in the above para­graph John­son describes mar­riage as “the dic­tate of nature” and “the insti­tu­tion of prov­i­dence,” though else­where he is recorded as hav­ing said that noth­ing is more unnat­ural than the vows of mar­riage and that they per­sist only inso­far as the grace of God sup­ports them.

This gen­eral unhap­pi­ness has given occa­sion to many sage max­ims among the seri­ous, and smart remarks among the gay; the moral­ist and the writer of epi­grams have equally shewn their abil­i­ties upon it; some have lamented, and some have ridiculed it; but as the fac­ulty of writ­ing has been chiefly a mas­cu­line endow­ment, the reproach of mak­ing the world mis­er­able has been always thrown upon the women, and the grave and the merry have equally thought them­selves at lib­erty to con­clude either with declam­a­tory com­plaints, or satir­i­cal cen­sures, of female folly or fick­le­ness, ambi­tion or cru­elty, extrav­a­gance or lust.

John­son is here defend­ing women against the prej­u­dice latent in lit­er­a­ture – which until the mid-​Nineteenth cen­tury was chiefly the domain of men and thus sub­ject to their whims, as he describes in the fol­low­ing paragraph.

Led by such a num­ber of exam­ples, and incited by my share in the com­mon inter­est, I some­times ven­ture to con­sider this uni­ver­sal griev­ance, hav­ing endeav­oured to divest my heart of all par­tial­ity, and place myself as a kind of neu­tral being between the sexes, whose clam­ours being equally vented on both sides with all the vehe­mence of dis­tress, all the appar­ent con­fi­dence of jus­tice, and all the indig­na­tion of injured virtue, seem enti­tled to equal regard. The men have, indeed, by their supe­ri­or­ity of writ­ing, been able to col­lect the evi­dence of many ages, and raise prej­u­dices in their favour by the ven­er­a­ble tes­ti­monies of philoso­phers, his­to­ri­ans, and poets; but the pleas of the ladies appeal to pas­sions of more forcible oper­a­tion than the rev­er­ence of antiq­uity. If they have not so great names on their side, they have stronger argu­ments: it is to lit­tle pur­pose that Socrates, or Euripi­des, are pro­duced against the sighs of soft­ness, and the tears of beauty. The most frigid and inex­orable judge would at least stand sus­pended between equal pow­ers, as Lucan was per­plexed in the deter­mi­na­tion of the cause, where the deities were on one side, and Cato on the other. CONTINUE BENEATH THE FOLD

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Twenty-​One Week Sonogram

by Adam Mitchell Bernard Bond on 28 August 2010

Jennifer and I were given the excit­ing oppor­tu­nity to see our lit­tle fel­low at the twenty week ultra­sound, which because of sched­ul­ing conflicts was held at twenty-​one weeks. He was squirm­ing and mov­ing around in there, peri­od­i­cally shak­ing his tiny balled-​up fists and kick­ing his feet. After an excep­tion­ally detailed set of images were taken — from bone mea­sure­ments to count­ing the lobes of the brain and the cham­bers of the heart — we learnt that Char­lie was exactly where he needed to be devel­op­men­tally. He was 13 ounces and about 10 inches long. He had all of his fingers and toes and his nose suggested that he might take after his father — much to his mother’s cha­grin. Alto­gether the event was reas­sur­ing and assuaged any con­cerns that we had been har­bor­ing. Coin­cid­ing with the sono­gram, I was able for the first time to feel him mov­ing inside the womb. Most recently, I placed my cheek against Jennifer’s belly and was smartly kicked in the jaw… three times. As we draw ever closer to end of the year — when Char­lie will make his grand entrance — I find myself filled simul­ta­ne­ously with joy and excite­ment, fear and trep­i­da­tion, and a gen­eral hazy state of con­fu­sion. …yet, for all the emo­tional ambiva­lence, I sim­ply can­not wait.

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On Truth

by Adam Mitchell Bernard Bond on 24 August 2010

Witnesses in the Courts of Law are asked to swear, affirm, and promise to give tes­ti­mony to the truth, the whole truth, and noth­ing but the truth. With Pon­tius Pilate, I rea­son­ably beg the ques­tion, “What is truth?” Is there an objec­tive truth that exists out­side of our per­cep­tions of the same? How can we iden­tify it if we are shack­led by the lim­i­ta­tions of that per­cep­tion? Is truth there­fore sub­jec­tive, since its object must nec­es­sar­ily be per­ceived and inter­preted by the indi­vid­ual? And if truth is rel­a­tive to him who per­ceives it, what value does it pos­sess? Can it be called Truth? Fur­ther­more, if we agree that all truth is rel­a­tive, then do we not by this admis­sion insist upon an objec­tive rule by which to mea­sure the same? A law of rel­a­tiv­ity? A uni­ver­sal rule that insists that there are no uni­ver­sal rules? But again, we can­not sim­ply assert that there­fore objec­tive truth must exist — for even in dis­miss­ing it we must appeal to some­thing exte­rior to our­selves — for in that appeal we are like­wise appeal­ing to our inte­rior per­cep­tion of the same? Is it really an end­less, vicious epis­te­mo­log­i­cal circle?

I — note well the first-​person, sin­gu­lar pro­noun in the nom­i­na­tive case — am con­vinced that when Samuel John­son stamped his boot upon the pave­ment in oppo­si­tion to Bishop Berkeley’s imma­te­ri­al­ism, he was in the right? The pave­ment is hard, grey, poorly laid, roughly hewn and obvi­ously so… or is it? By what stan­dard is it hard? There must be a stan­dard to gauge its resis­tance to plas­tic defor­ma­tion, must there not? And whose eye was con­sulted when it was deter­mined grey? Upon what cri­te­rion is it poorly laid and roughly hewn, and in com­par­i­son to what? What is it to be hard, grey, poor, and rough? There must be an ori­gin of such descrip­tive terms? For by them­selves they seem to be reliant on the per­cep­tion of the senses, which are — demon­stra­bly — eas­ily dis­torted. Alas, I was almost dis­cov­ered incon­sis­tent, for can it be objec­tively demon­strated that they are eas­ily dis­torted, or does the sub­ject per­ceive such dis­tor­tions over and against their “reality”?

For my part, “I” am con­vinced that while truth is often sit­u­a­tional — not rel­a­tive, but cer­tainly not (at least, as we are able to appre­ci­ate it) absolute — it is also objec­tive. When try­ing to iden­tify such truths, it is use­ful to check my expe­ri­ence against the expe­ri­ence of mankind in part or as a inte­grated whole. Assum­ing that I am even a remotely ratio­nal crea­ture, such expe­ri­ence must nec­es­sar­ily be inter­preted sub­jec­tively. It is my duty to attempt to iden­tify those ten­den­cies within mine own mind that might com­pro­mise the truth that I am seek­ing and to sub­vert them. I would like — and here we are speak­ing of some­thing flim­sier than rea­son — to believe that I am not the final arbiter, the begin­ning and the end of “my” cre­ation, the per­ceiver that holds all things in exis­tence. Since I can­not empir­i­cally test whether or not my senses are faith­ful com­mu­ni­cants of objec­tive real­ity, I can never be absolutely cer­tain that there is an objec­tive real­ity, but I’m a gam­bling man and I am com­fort­able in assum­ing that it does exist and that I see it as it is, though through a glass and darkly. CONTINUE BENEATH THE FOLD

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Artifice

by Adam Mitchell Bernard Bond on 7 August 2010

The damn­ing ev’dence did con­spire,
To rout me from prefer­ment, earned,
That I might nailed upon a pyre,
In merc’less flames be swiftly burned.
For I pro­fess con­vic­tions which,
Should they be happ’ly thus detailed,
Would scan­dalise that whor­ing bitch,
Who drove the staves, my soul assailed,
I’m not the man they heaped with praise,
I’m not the mask which hides my face,
My heart is naught as my sly face por­trays,
I’m not a saint, but wicked, sick and base.
There’s much that I believe but will not speak,
But never will I wit­ness to a lie, the falsest creed,
My will is plagued by doubt and floun­ders, weak,
And in the nave upon the floor I bleed.

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The Bell’s of Bishop’s Cleeve — A Fable

by Adam Mitchell Bernard Bond on 7 August 2010

In a quiet unkempt meadow in the Cotswold Hills there rested a house. Whomever was respon­si­ble for its con­struc­tion — and that fig­ure is lost beneath the swell of his­tory — had fash­ioned it of that rather ubiq­ui­tous yel­low lime­stone that is every­where seen in that part of Glouces­ter­shire. It was only a league and a half north­west of Bishop’s Cleeve — an afternoon’s jour­ney if the horse was very slow, the wag­gon very heavy, and wag­goner drunk with lethargy.

On a dew-​drenched morn­ing when all the world is silent — save the unprin­ci­pled gos­sip of song­birds — one might detect the Mat­tins tolling of the nine bells of the vil­lage church, where — should one able to hear it over the damned chit­ter­ing thrushes, war­blers, swal­lows, terns, sky­larks, and plovers with their end­less scut­tle­butt and prat­tle about His Lordship’s mother-​in-​law and the unseemly drunk­en­ness of Vicar Holling­berry as par­o­died by a rather cheeky Wag­tail of the “clerically-​arrayed” vari­ety, not to men­tion var­i­ous lewd con­spir­a­cies to pil­fer the granges — Ahem, but where was I?

Oh, yes, one might just hear the divers pedantries of the eso­teric art of Cam­ponol­ogy, with its Stead­man Dou­bles, Triple Bob Majors, and Cam­bridge Sur­prises. (I’ll tell you what’s sur­pris­ing about Cam­bridge, it’s not Oxford… much to its dis­ad­van­tage.) But I digress. The bell-​ringing is of the utmost impor­tance, for the very cadence of the bells is said to vibrate through the fir­ma­ment and enliven that which is inert and grant speech to even the lowli­est of crea­tures. I know it sounds like twad­dle, just bear with me, I’ve been com­manded to write a fable by some­one whose law is more immutable than God’s own: the old woman in my bed, as it were.

Ahem, some of the older folk whis­per of with­craft and sor­cery, and they might be right, but still oth­ers (who incom­pre­hen­si­bly dis­tin­guish betwixt and between such things) talk of an old race of “Britons” that dyed their pagan flesh like Ori­en­tal silks and who could speak to the stones, the trees, and all man­ner of crea­ture. What con­nex­ion have the bells to these long-​dead, painted men? I haven’t the faintest notion, but no one ever said that folk leg­ends were nat­u­rally coherent.

What? Pbbf­flli­itt! I don’t know!? Maybe the bells were cast from arti­cles of sac­ri­fice and idol­a­try with the residue of some pagan magic still in them, — or per­haps they effect an indis­cernible vibra­tion that excites nat­ural processes as yet under­stood by men, — or it may be that its all horse­feath­ers and poppycock!?

I’m a spin­ner of tales (with an hen-​pecked agenda) not a tire­some drudge who labours over ency­clopæ­dias — so hold thy tongue, quit chat­ter­ing, and let me press on! CONTINUE BENEATH THE FOLD

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