Notebooking.
- page 1. properly re-establishing the s-notes. updated 1.25, 11:45p
updating along the BOTTOM .. where do I start?
.. in all the hub-bub, I’ve misplaced my fountain pen. I thought she’d gone rouge these past several days, but now I take responsibility and say she’s just lost & not necessarily run away from me. Therefore, I will be Notebooking here.. trying to replicate the tone & feel of my early substack days when I would choose the most significant topics of my day & reflect on them, bringing God into the mix — water to wine, living the mystical life, which is, in effect, just seeing God’s hand in the larger scheme of things.
What’s powerful about this type of writing, if done right, is that it’s a documentation of deeper thought that can be collected and reconsidered over time for deeper probing & future pieces.
I tend not to go back, but that’s changing bc I’m going through, entry by entry, printing each one. I’m doing this bc I’ve printed the last two substack posts & realize I write a lot. Up to 7 pages worth of stuff with images minimized. I then ask myself, what the hell have I been up to? where am I going with all this mental work?
I answer.. I’m growing comfortable having a public voice.
To which I respond.. stop being such a blasted baby & get on with it. You’re capable of professional writing, you’ve done it before.
Ye FOLDE >>>
Ye Book Horde
The boys brought in 4 giant rolling, Sterlite cases of books to fill in our 3 new bookshelves. I’m going to have to double-stack many of them, probably more towards the bottom for stability. Eldest daughter has her great fiction — composed of classics, poetry, science fantasy fiction, spiritual, and now scientific & historical non-fiction. Eldest son’s is similar, but has gone in the direction of a massive spiritual stack. Younger children’s are sparse. They’ve fed off the older children & my own traveling stacks around the house that appear from nowhere like ant mounds. Those need development.
Of all the books I said hello to last night, the one I was especially pleased to see was a used text on Gothic architecture — The Gothic Cathedral by Otto Von Simson.
I read the the Preface to my family after reciting our Holy Rosary, specifically because this line reached out to meet my acquaintance:
The cathedral, as we shall see, was designed as an image, and was meant to be understood as one. — Otto Von Simson, Chicago, Summer 1955
Of all the ideas I threw onto the page yesterday in my Mock Newsletter, when I picked up this book, I understood I’d left a glaring omission — the overarching theme of Right Order.
I’ve talked (and complained) about it since I’ve .. returned to online permanency since 2018.
Right off the top of my mind:
-Holy Right Order — is God the King of all my desire? or do I presume too much Y& give myself too much liberty? (yes)
-Right Order of Family — have I assume the proper place in my home? (yes, finally, I’m back home). am I re-establishing Right Order to combat the secularism that kills the human spirit — love, creativity, regeneration (precursor of reproduction/having children.. what an interesting thought), peace, hope thru surety & stability, Faith & belief in a kind & loving God — more specifically a loving, Eternal Father (is that holy relationship and a soul’s existence pointed to it?) (yes, curse you devil! o, you luxury & laxity & sensuousness of body! you will be tamed & conquered yet, you naughty thing!!)
-Right Order in creation - proper, good, nature
-Right Order conveyed in man’s creation - architecture, poetry, literature, visuals & photography
-Right Order in community - in the towns or parts of the city we live in, in the communities we inhabit in real life
-Right Order of mind, heart, & soul - v. disordered desires & habits. (aye, my Twitter habit.. I need to write up this habit to understand it, NOT to excuse it.. that should be interesting).
What’s the point of all this?
Immersion into nothing — the result of contented roaming to assuage my bitter teaching work & the continued lockdown in the fall & early winter— has made me forget the greater image I once had about roaming through & building up the city of my own soul.
I love the ideas of imagining, creating, constructing, forging, raw cutting, maintaining, mending, rebuilding — my soul in metaphor.
I’m going back to this. How it will fit in with a Wine to Water newsletter, I’ve no clue. I’m sure it will come to me. God will show me. :)
Surviving the next 8 years - Tia V.
I’m still writing at my desk across from Hugo’s like I used to before I quit teaching. He and I have these little vintage teachers desks sitting across from one another, like this scene from the Young Victoria, one of our favorite family movies:
Real photos of the real thing:
Another:
Work really isn’t a reason for spouses to be apart. It’s wholesome to be near your helpmate, and what better support..
Hugo still has the habit of having the radio on as a backdrop to his mental work. We both grew up with talk radio, I get what he’s aiming for (being informed + the usual), but these past several years, I’ve been on the road too silent.. despite the incessant talking I have in my. head that you see before you. :)
Any little bit of silence helps.
A moment ago, I asked him what the point was of even listening anymore:
I mean, it’s done, done. No more Election Day, no more January 6th, no more Inaugural Thing. We can’t do anything, what are we trying to accomplish? Now it’s just a hash and rehash of what we’ve already come to expect, we’ve been through this before.
At this, he turned it off.. very peacefully & content. No repeat of my where do want our mind to go? what do we want to immerse ourselves in? why? of the past 6 months.
My questions now are: Where are we going to go from here? What are we going to build up? How are we going to support the next generation?
And: we’ve been through this before.
Obama’s administration is just a recent memory. I keep referring to him because Biden’s Admin is just a continuation of progressive policy: centralized statism, shrinking economy.
The American Dream died during his long 8-years. Hugo and I were in the middle of forming our family when the Bush’s recession of ‘08 hit with high gas prices that led to Stimulus I, which did nothing to spur growth for the next 8 years. Shovel ready? Nope. Just political pay-offs, the same as we’re seeing now with these trillion-dollar covid-relief packages, another term for “stimulus.” No one seems to remember, though, I’m not sure it’s mentioned anywhere.. nor do I care to monitor the airwaves & watch for it. It can all go to hell, as far as I’m concerned.
The Obama years is when the gig economy took off. Corporations and business laid off full-time employees in droves, replacing them with contractors, overseas labor, and freelancing “free-agents.” Millennials graduated from college, couldn’t get jobs, gave up purchasing homes & cars, lowered their job aspirations & began walking to work. Stick construction became popular, built within the city for cheap housing, because the wealthy still needed a source of service labor.
We’ll go through this again, with most of the government support for a lagging economy going to segments of society that’ll guarantee votes.
What’s a family to do?
Minimize, save money, look for property, grow the family, see about making a business on the side that older children can contribute to. Nurture industriousness, cultivate hope, keep the warmth & love of the home central to ward off despair.
Exhalt quality of life of quantity of things and possessions. Save money where you can, as often as you can. Buy used, be humble. Nobody knows, nobody cares, everyone will be going through own kind of struggle.
How Covid 2020 figures into all this, I haven’t thought about.. I’ll go to Hugo and we’ll talk about it. People are already used to minimizing & generic-izing their lifestyles, but I worry about despair.
We need to unhitch our dependence on from bigger, better, and more and nurture resilience amongst us — friends & families. Peace in the little things, chugging along to realize permanent, long-lasting, meaningful dreams that will stand the test of time.
Just some thoughts.. “Tia” is the Spanish word of “Aunt” — and I’ve found myself speaking to friends in my mind with this older-sister tone when I’ve noted hints of despair at what’s to come.
I’ve always wanted to be called “Tia.” Only about 4 people in my life call me this, so.. we’ll see if it’s a persona I want to adopt when spotting despair & wanting to route it out. We’ll see.
Yes, I said persona. Political crap, I don’t want to address. I don’t want to make addressing this permanent. This is a test run to see if I want to keep going on along this vein.. to find a way to be helpful.
[offline]
More Books for Ye Book Horde [back online]
This came in today to add to the stacks: Giorgio Vasari’s The Lives of the Artists a contemporary of Michelangelo & Leonardo da Vinci.
From Julia & Peter Bondanella’s Introduction:
At his death in 1574, Vasari enjoyed the respect and admiration of his patrons and peers as a skillful architect, an accomplished painter (even if subsequent generations would share Michelangelo’s doubts about his inspiration in this field), and faithful courtier and servant of the Medici family. But his greatest gift to posterity is his magnificent historical work on the lives of the major Italian artists of the Renaissance.
I want to know what made these masters think, how they lived, how they thought, how they loved, why they created, everything.
Why?
God has be back in the home for a reason, dearest. He has secured our future for the time-being with Hugo’s work (glory to God, always), and now it’s time to reflect & renew.
First — I hate most media. Not just the news, but crap movies, dung literature, pointless propaganda, and illicit, valueless thought. I’m sick of my kids’ exposure to it. My full-time work as a teacher interfered with my holy work of cultivating creative thought in my own children, their public school education only filling in for half-measures. We did our best, we see gaps — especially in the creative arts — and now it’s time to really hone their capacity for visualizing & creating, arresting consumption of media that kills independent thought.
Now I see God’s hand in this. For years, I’ve been a teacher who worked against the grain and inspired independent thought in her students. Now it’s time to bring this to my own children, breathe true life into their souls despite the dreariness they see around them — distance learning, archaic learning systems, other people’s agenda to thwart their agency.
Dearest, our holy life is under our belts. We all posses the language and nurture & support it within our little cloistered community here at home. Now to make the dream, conceive, build, make connection — to create that culture here at home, not for us now, but for our children’s children, all our progeny.
Sanctity isn’t something we keep under a bushel. Even if it’s imperfect, it’s mean to be shared, gift in Love to our neighbor. Pure consumption of the culture ties us up in hive-mind thought and does nothing for the individual soul, designed by God & destined for something unique & special to be given to the world, outside the self.
So, I’m done with this.
There will be a lot of trial and error, a lot of experimentation, a lot of seeing what works, with my own family leading the way. I’m just the facilitator who exposes, shows possibility, then gets out of the way.
This is my defiance, my counter to those who want to steal the souls of my children and those who come after them.
I’m a thinking teacher.. it’s time to develop some God-inspired curriculum to learn to create the way God does, through his people.. and those who came before us.
Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam, 1.25.2021
in Love,
your veronica
I know Whom I have believed, and I am certain that He is able to guard the trust committed to me, against that day; being a just Judge.
2 Tim. 1:12
O Lord, You have probed me and You know me; You know when I sit and when I stand.
Ps 138:1-2
-Introit, Sancta Missa, In Conversione S. Pauli Apostoli