Imagination, I discovered this summer, can be a powerful tool for one's self-evangelisation, and possibly for the evangelisation of others, but that was admittedly not something I personally discovered. 

I should clear up, however, exactly what I mean by imagination, however, because to a child reared on the Imagination-enhancing fare of television such as Sesame Street and Mr. Dressup, Imagination has the immediate synonym of "made up" and the immediate impression, therefore, is that one can imagine one's way into a stronger spiritual life through sheer make-believe.

This is not self-evangelisation at all, though it is possible.  Make-believe, however, is a sham, and does not cover the full breadth of the word "Imagination."  To "imagine" something is to "image" it--something quite different indeed.  It is true that I could imagine I am a good Christian, that I pray a lot, and have had mystic experiences of God.  I could also, without shaking the reality of my Catholic faith, imagine I was a vegetarian Buddhist who was pained upon squashing a bug, or I could imagine I was a hardcore, jihadist Mahometan--just as I could imagine as a child that I was a dyed-in-the-purple King.

No, the purpose to which I put of the Imagination of late has been more along the lines of what J.R.R. Tolkien called "subcreation"--but the subcreation of my own fictional future, a playing out of what would happen if I were to abandon my life as I vaguely expect and sincerely hope it is plotted out--a wholesale abandonment of my apparent vocation.  The effect, if I may describe it in a mere word, was devastating.  It is true, on the one hand, that this summer has seen all manner of minor vocational questionings.  On the other hand, it only the case that I have expressed dissatisfaction with God's stately pace at confirming my vocation.  Actually imagining what it would be like to live in a state that did not--indeed, could not--entail the vocation I'm grumbling about was shocking and opened my eyes to the reality of the fact that I far my minor fears of actually becoming a priest are trivial in the extreme next to my body-shaking horror of being unable to.

In this respect, the Imagination is a remarkable tool for one's own self-development, which is merely to say self-evangelisation, with the nuance that one speaks not only of the spiritual realm.  It need not only be let loose on vocational questions, but on all manner of questions.  This is, of course, the method of all the great philosophers, but as they concern themselves chiefly with logically contingent what-ifs in a practical manner, it seems fresh, for it deals here with what-ifs in an existential manner.

It is frequently dispensed wisdom that young people should slow down and savour their youth, the assumption being, of course, that youth do not realise the excellent thing they possess, and need to have it reinforced that they are living "the best years of their life"--a suggestion that I find frankly horrific.  If, at this very early stage, I am living through the best years of my life, even if it is true, I should not wish to know it, because if this is as good as it gets, then it all gets worse hereafter.  What is more, if this advice is given as the result of my complaining that life is not all that it should be at this young age, then you are hardly encouraging me at all by saying "it may be terrible, but it will get worse!"  That is not comfort, but condemnation to the expectation of ever-worse fates.

It is worth noting that the dispensing of this horrid advice often comes immediately after I express the sentiment that I shall greatly enjoy being an elder.  This statement, which reflects my long-held preference for being both mature and settled, seems to sit terribly in the minds of those hearing it who happen to find themselves at the very age I should like to be, and their reaction to my idealistic hope is made precisely because they do not find themselves living the idyllic life they presume I imagine.  Consequently, they deal me a double-blow of hopelessness, for they tell me that the world of the young, which I already know is flawed cannot improve with time--for what is more age but more time?--and then they reinforce it by telling me that, at their age, life isn't as good as it used to be.

With this in mind, I find it peculiar indeed that many mature adults of my acquaintance will aver, while still maintaining that some things were better in their youth, there is no way they would return to being young, that they value being wiser and elder over the dubious benefits of being young.  Given that my desire of not being young stems precisely from the same reasons they do not wish to ever be 16 again, I do not see how it is that would tell me not to take my youth for granted.  That is, it seems an absurdity to say that, living in what is apparently a poorer state of life, they would not return to their highest state of life, it were an option.  That is like a gourmet bemoaning that nothing in Edmonton can compare with the restaurants in Paris refusing to ever return to Paris, were the option available.

Actually, this analogy sheds light on the situation, for the astute reader will realise that, while it is true that the gourmandery of France is incomparable, there is more to France than its edible parts.  Likewise, though there are incomparable elements of youth that maturity simply lacks, these elements are merely parts of the whole youth, and not its sum.  It is an accident of language, an equivocation, then to say that "these are the best years of my life"--they are, but only insofar as one limits oneself to narrow fields of relevance.

Of course, neither Edmonton nor Paris is the New Jerusalem, and while each has distinct advantages the other cannot, it will surely be admitted that it would be better than either city to live in the city that had both advantages and none of the disadvantages.  Likewise, just as a man should reasonably prefer to live in the New Jerusalem, he ought to prefer life after the Resurrection.  Perhaps this is what lies behind the injunction to not hasten along too quickly: since our elders know that no age, like no place, in this world is perfect, we should focus more on the joys of youth than its pains, since all too soon we will be old and if stuck in the habit of pessimism, we will be more likely to moan about the losses of maturity than to praise its advantages.  While this would be an understandable viewpoint, it is missing a crucial element that still justifies my preference for age over youth.  For you see, while it is true that both age and youth have their good sides and their bad sides, nonetheless, if we live long enough to have both, age will be closer to the ultimate goal wherein we have the advantages of both.  Just as the vibrant church of Edmonton is closer to the New Jerusalem than the forgotten church of Paris, so too is the experience of age and the greater passage of time closer to the Resurrection.  If nothing else has happened by the time I am 50, I shall at least be 30 years closer to the parousia.

If this blog were possessed of readers, it would undoubtedly be the case by this late date that someone would have scolded me for not having seen Transformers.  Perhaps, they would say, missing the second one is excusable since it has only just arrived in theatres, but to not have seen Michael Bay's first great epic by this date is unconscionable of me, and I should be ashamed of myself for speculating about such incredible movies without, first, having treated myself to the splendid task of watching them.

However, it is not merely the Transformers fans who would have cause to scorn my lack of culture, but the fans of most modern blockbusters, and that is to say nothing at all of any movie that fails to reach that popular standard, for I am indubitably more ignorant of indie films than I am of blockbusters, despite the vastness of that ignorance. 

The older I become, the prouder I become of this ignorance.  Possibly, this is the sedentary nature of ageing.  One likes to think, as change becomes harder, that one does not need to change, because one is quite all right already.  Certainly, that is a part of the issue here; as I age, I find myself with less and less inclination to involve myself in keeping up with popular culture.  But it goes beyond not merely wanting to--I do not think I should want to.  Nor, really, should anyone else.

I do not mean that movies are bad--though many are.  I mean, rather, that insofar as I do not watch movies, I am doing so for exactly the right reason that no one should: I haven't got the time. 

No one does, really.  It can be argued, perhaps fairly, that we need leisure in our lives, and movies are excellent escapes, modes of art that provide not only leisure, but ample food for thought.  Though this is true, I hardly think this is true of most blockbusters, which typically contain very little mental sustenance, but simply sugarly spectacle.  Ideally, a movie should provoke thought, should stimulate the creative mind, and perhaps also the rational one, but the computer manufactured images of comic proportions hardly provide this.  Just as there is a hunger for food, there is a hunger for mental escape, it is true, but just as there is nutritious food to satiate hunger, there are nutritious movies to satiate fantastic escape.  Typically, these are not the blockbuster movies.  Indeed, they are so rarely the blockbusters that one may be excused for not getting excited over any blockbusters, on basic principle.

In the Edmonton Journal this morning I saw a troubling article built around an interview with the girl who plays the girl in the new Transformers movie.  The article was troubling not because it was poorly written, for reporters, at least in the so-called Entertainment sections, still tend to put out a quality of representation of their craft.  Indeed, though I have heard it said on good authority that the average newspaper is written to the reading level of a Grade 5 student, nonetheless it has seemed to me that character pieces in the back sections of the paper often bear at least the broad lines, if not the vocabulary, of a more experienced adult mind--especially if they get to tote out something in support of the lastest anti-joyous philosophy.  Such, alas, was the case here.

Miss Fox was stated, if I may paraphrase, as saying that she enjoyed acting in the movie because she did not play a damsel in distress, but got to kick just as much butt as the male characters.  Ignoring the utter absurdity of a human woman taking on and defeating gargantuan, transformation, sentient robots from the depths of space, no matter how well trained, impressively skilled, or erotically sculpted she may be--for such an absurdity is no more absurd than any male character doing the same--there is a troubling note in Miss Fox's assessment of Transformers that troubles me not merely a little.

It is not a problem for me that the lead female character in the movie is not a damsel in distress, but the fact that--if my hasty reading of this article after the vastly more informative comics page over an early morning breakfast is accurate--there is, not really any damsel-in-distress in the movie.  It is possible that the weight of several hours and the hastiness of my reading, coupled with my desire to set the unsettling topic aside, have caused me to read too much into the issue.  I hope so, for a movie without damsels-in-distress is every bit as bad as a movie without heroes.

Indeed, it would be fair to say that Transformers, in its increasing number of cinematic representations, is well poised to be a symbol for the epics of our age, and if it is true as am being led to believe that there are no damsels-in-distress, then this is a most troubling fact.  It is troubling, firstly, because it is a bald-faced lie.  Our world is full of damsels-in-distress.  Distress, in fact, is the situation we mostly commonly find ourselves occupying.  To have no one in need of saving is the same as having no one in need of salvation, and beyond the unsettling theological implications of this position, it is patently untrue.  At some point or another, we are all helpless damsels in distress, chained down by the cruel dragons of the world, and we require the aid of the knight in shining armour to come to our rescue.

But, of course, the ideology that would do away with distressed damsels is opposed to true heroes as well.  Not only are we each, individually, good enough and strong enough on our own to be able to butt-kick ourselves out of danger is a delusional world of individual prowess, but the extreme in the other direction, the world says, is just as bad.  No one can be truly as good as the knight in shining armour.  Instead of St. George on his white charger saving the princess for God and England, he must be a sex-crazed anti-hero, either saving the damsel in order to elevate her beyond her mere victimhood or to further his own nefarious ends. 

In making this claim, the world would seem to think that white knights and distressed damsels are unreal extremes, pointed far to the left and right of reality--the reality of the self-sufficient anti-hero, but this claim to the Golden Mean is spurious, because instead of being extreme opposites averaged by the actual anti-hero, they are the same extreme, in different situations.  The opposite of the white knight is not the damsel, but the dragon, just as the dragon is also the opposite of the damsel.  Both the knight and the damsel are avatars of truth and purity, of innocence at its most ideal, while the dragon is all that is corrupt and wicked.  The anti-hero is not the dragon's anti-thesis, but the dragon in human form.  The Golden Mean is not to be some mid-point betwixt knight and dragon, but to be knight in situations of strength and the damsel in situations of weakness.  The damsel chained to the rock is not expected to performs feats of butt-kicking--because the whole point of the story is that she is incapable of butt-kicking at that point.  If she were an anti-hero chained to the rock, she would probably try to seduce the dragon!  Perhaps this might set her free, but this is a case of stooping to the dragon's level, not of rising to the splendid martyrdom of victimhood.

Hopefully, if Transformers is the archetypal epic of our age, I have misread it.  I certainly haven't seen it.  Perhaps, if the previews are an indication, I am looking for hope in the wrong characters.  Instead of criticising the anti-hero in Megan Fox, I should look for the hero in Optimus Prime.

I returned to work at the Archives to discover that the location is noticeably close to ground zero of a regular earthquake.  On a fairly regular basis the ground buckled and heaved, producing tensions on the Richter Scale that hover somewhere between just noticeable and not quite knocking anything off a precipitous ledge.  The stolidly practical man might point out here that I live and labour in Edmonton, which is notoriously far from seismic fault lines, as well as the trifling reality that the property I'm working on is a construction site of some busyness, given over and driven over by an ungodly number of assorted yellow and white construction vehicles.

To this hypothetically stolid and practical man, I must agree that there are causes to explain the phenomena, but I quite disagree that this means the tremors in the earth were not earthquakes.  What, after all, is an earthquake but the movement of the earth?  Earlier cultures, who certainly experienced their share of seismic motion in areas like Anatolia--Asia of the ancients--would hardly have defined an earthquake as the grinding or separating of tectonic plates, but the movement of the land.  If they were to ascribe cause to these unsettling occurrences the explanation given would probably have had more to do with the anger of the gods than any cause in the land itself.  Insofar, then, as modern man's two chief deities seem to be materialism and himself, it seems fair to me to define earthquakes as any movement of the earth caused by an angry god--be that god the sometimes personified violent being we call Mother Nature or the perpetually violent and veritably petty one styling himself homo sapiens, "thinking man."

Were it not for the very real danger involved in earthquakes, it still seems likely to me that earthquakes would make us uneasy, for it is unthinkable to us that the earth itself should move.  We know, or we are told and so believe, that the earth is in perpetual motion, spinning on its axis, careening in orbit around the sun, which is herself in perpetual motion as we spin around the centre of galaxy, the whole conglomerate of which is hurdling away from the centre of the universe.  We know this, and yet the earth is to us the solidest of foundations.  It may actually move, but like the subjective philosophies of relativism, we prefer to only experience this in abstract principle and never with the harshness of fact.  All the same, the earth does move, and with terrible force when it does.  Although it gives a practical foundation to our daily physical lives, it can no more anchor it absolutely than a subjective philosophy can anchor us mentally.  Relativism, or any other form of subjective philosophy, is excellent for giving us a situational guide, but it is just as prone to startled movement but a greater force as the earth is, and no belief in the purely physical can any more ground itself than the purely physical can ground itself against force and motion.  As the earth itself could be moved by Newton and single lever, the most complex and intertwining of subjective philosophic systems could be moved by an argument grounded in objectivity.

Like earthquakes in Edmonton, such philosophy-shaking moments are rare, and so most of us go about thinking--if we think on it at all--that we live with our lives well-grounded, and one might be tempted to think this is good enough, since earthquakes are an unpleasant thing to experience, especially if they come with the force necessary to topple false temples and the statues of idols.  This is why, perhaps, we are told to build houses on rock rather than on sand, so that when the earthquake comes we will be better prepared to pick up the pieces thereafter.

People tell me that flight dreams are common, and indeed I know a number of people who admit to having had this particular dream.  I do not mean, of course, dreams about airplanes, or being in airplanes, which are something quite different entirely.  A dream about flying on an airplane would be a ghastly dream.  At best, it would be dull and quickly over, perhaps allowing a moment of thrill as the silver manmade beast broke from Earth's gravity, but no more.  At worst, it would entirely too full of turbulence, and security customs, and butting elbows with your neighbours, perhaps of being cramped for hours on end, never stretching your legs or breathing fresh air.  Such a dream would not be a dream at all, but a nightmare.

No, I mean a dream of flying unaided, like Superman, and probably this is Superman's most appealing power.  We envy Superman his other traits when life is bad.  When we cannot life something, we envy his strength; when we cannot find something, we envy him his laser eyes, but when life is good, we envy Superman his flight.   Although it would seem eminently reasonable to envy Superman the ability to soar across the skies when we are frazzled and need to get to the grocery store without tangling ourselves in the web of rushhour traffic, this is not when we want to fly.  Rather, we want to fly when life has allowed us enough calm to lay in the grass on a breezy summer day, when the white clouds marching east from the mountains like so many warships decked out in banners and cannon-smoke, inviting us to jump into the blueness of the sky with them, and rush away with them to terrible and victorious battles.

It is typical of the world that it is only children who seem to have the time to dream so, for what is good and wonderful and true is the world's greatest enemy, which it seeks to defeat not so much by outright opposition, for it knows it would lose that battle, but by devious underhandedness.  Joy, the world tells us, is alright, if you happen to like that sort of thing, and you really should indulge in it, if you have time, but there are really more important things to be about in the meantime, and really, that is such a childish sort of pleasure.  The world assumes, of course, that it is wrong to be childish.  It is wrong, of course, for children are themselves one of the great joys of the world, but it is to be expected that the world would insinuate otherwise, for the world's war on childhood is one of the great fronts of its war on what is good and wonderful in the first place.

For this reason, I am rather disappointed that I have never dreamt of flying.  For as it is certain in this lifetime that I will not of my own will take to the skies and soar, my only hope to experience it is in dream.  I am afraid, however, that my purpose in wanting such a dream would be foiled by my dream habits, for in general I completely forget my dreams.  Perhaps I have dreamed of flying for years, but have simply never been awake to recall it.

I wouldn't know.  In the meantime, I can still daydream.