"Take a Walk" by Passion Pit

I have been without Internet for the month of July--hence the dearth of activity here.

So here's a compelling music video that aptly complements Passion Pit's surprisingly ambitious dismantling of the American dream. It's worth your time and attention.

"Island Garden Song" by the Mountain Goats

So I just got The Coroner's Gambit. The nice thing about being addicted to the Mountain Goats is that with such an expansive discography alongside his still prolific album-almost-every-year production, I can pretty much count on listening to new stuff (and you can bank on having to hear it from me) for years to come.

Anyway. This song is marvelous and, despite sounding like so many other of his songs, it also sounds somehow completely different and unique. That's the beauty of the Mountain Goats. He only has about five or six different songs that he's written a hundred times each, yet every single one of them is unique. This, like so many others, is a treasure.

The whole life of the good Christian is a holy longing. . . . That is our life, to be trained by longing.

St. Augustine

We are essentially and ultimately desiring animals, which is simply to say that we are essentially and ultimately lovers. To be human is to love, and it is what we love that defines who we are. Our (ultimate) love is constitutive of our identity. . . . we are talking about ultimate loves--that to which we are fundamentally oriented, what ultimately governs our vision of the good life, what shapes and molds our being-in-the-world--in other words, what we desire above all else, the ultimate desire that shapes and positions and makes sense of all our penultimate desires and actions.

James K.A. Smith

Enter the deep places of our life and claim us for your purposes.

We would be more free than we are,

more bold than we dare,

more obedient than we choose

We wait for the gift of your large gift of life

that will wrench us away from death

to the miracle of Easter joy.

Walter Brueggemann

To you, O LORD, I call;

my rock, be not deaf to me,

lest, if you be silent to me,

I become like those who go down to the pit. 

David

A Summer Day Well Spent

I had breakfast at Bluegrass Grill and Bakery with my parents before I rode my bike into work. After clearing up a few final matters, I picked up some groceries at Whole Foods and headed back home.

There I spent a nice hour or so reading on the downstairs porch and drinking iced coffee while Alvin played in the yard. Then I met Sean and Ross at The Shebeen to watch one of the more exciting 49 minutes of soccer I've seen--the latter half of England v. Sweden in the Euro 2012.

Ralph arrived in from Quantico at the end of the match, and then we headed over for a delicious dinner at the McDermotts with Dawn and little Harold. We got to watch Phinehas take his first bike ride ever--the first of countless many, no doubt. For dessert we walked down to the Pop Shop in my neighborhood, which was closed, so instead Mom, Alvin, and I took a nice walk.

Ralph, Sean, and I closed the evening biking around Charlottesville--first to Zinc, which was closed for a private party, and then through the packed Downtown Mall, and finally to Backyard Cinema (or whatever it's called) to watch the first third or so of Alabama Moon--which turned out to be not so great.

So we snuck out early and biked back to the McDermott's. On the way we happened to run into the famed Robert Brandon Smith III, whom I had not met and who happens to be a fanatical reader of John Lukacs. We closed the night on the McDermott porch.

Great day--even with the little spill I took on my bike.

(click to enlarge)

I've really enjoyed knowing these little guys.

And my godchildren are pretty awesome too.

"And I thought, 'The world is our relentless adversary, rarely outwitted, never tiring.'"

Wow.

This: "He remembered that they were but flesh, a wind that passes and comes not again."

And this: "'You wrote that he had this or that person's throat cut,' he answered. 'But you neglected to indicate who sometimes did the cutting.'"