Blood, Whiskey, & History

“You'll see him in your nightmares You'll see him in your dreams He'll appear out of nowhere but He ain't what he seems You'll see him in your head On the TV screen Hey buddy, I'm warning You to turn it off He's a ghost, he's a god He's a man, he's a guru.” — Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, “Red Right Hand” Thomas Shelby is a god. Not just of mine, but of many. They might not know him by that name, might even resist the implication that their adoration comes from a religious place, but doubt it not – the man is a god.  "Past the square, past the bridge, past the mills, past the stacks." Like all gods, Tommy Shelby never existed – in that he was never a flesh and bone person with a home address and farts that smell and shits that stink. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t real. He is real, alright; in the minds, imaginations, subconscious and even hearts of countless people. Do not mistake this dynamic for one of ordinary fandom. For sures, t...

On Winter solstice I observed Yule. For the first time, I had to bring my   celebrations inside; it was raining all night.   But the adjustment worked out beautifully; using the detachable top of my outdoor fire pit, I made a diamond of candles and lit them all to serve as a small fire. It was lovely to sit next to the Christmas tree, that most celebrated of pagan traditions that managed to survive into the present despite centuries of doctrinaire Christians trying to eliminate it, and contemplate continuity with the past.   Flexibility, I've learned, is necessary when going about developing your own rituals. In my earliest pagan holidays, I came up with elaborate scripts and lists that planned out the order of events and observances down to the last detail. But I’ve found that that generated more stress -- and frankly more stuff to clean up the next morning -- than benefits. So while I have kept the best aspects of my initial constructions, I’ve been trying to simplify ...

Nothing lasts forever. It’s a common saying, but I wonder how many of us really sit with this truth or allow it to shape our worldview. When I got my PhD, I had a huge party. One of the friends in attendance was younger than most of us, an undergraduate involved in activism who took political and philosophical questions seriously, and strove to give them their due. Like everyone else, he had a lot to drink that night, and ended up sharing some existential quandaries with us by lamenting how as religious claims were obviously not true, and everything eventually passes away or ends, and the universe itself is expanding and so eventually will be no more as far as we can tell, therefore — and here was the key phrase he kept repeating in despair — everything is dust. And then he threw up in one of the bedrooms.  Which is a reminder of why one should generally avoid 1) over-drinking, 2) existential questions which cannot be resolved or do not have a satisfying answer and, especially, 3)...

Last week we welcomed to our home a new member of our pack.   His name is Leon, after Leon Trotsky. He’s a mutt from the shelter, at least 3 years old, and an absolute lover.  For my partner and I, bringing Leon home is an emotionally intense and important experience. First there is simply the change — finding new routines, working to make sure Leon and Connolly (our other dog) get along, and adjusting to another person you don’t really know yet being present in the house.  Because a dog is a conscious being. I’ve long found it notable that the best English has to express this is “sentient being,” but that sounds so clinical and distant, and something as likely to be applied to some sophisticated robot in 20 years time as a creature that has been a constant companion of humans for millennia. So, I prefer to refer to dogs and other similar animals as people (as distinct from human), because to me, that’s what they are. As Carl Safina, one the author of one of my fav...

When agnostics and atheists speculate about why people believe in God or other supernatural systems, an oft cited reason is that without the comfort of the ultimate triumph of good and an afterlife, living would be too hard for many to bear. I suspect that this is true. Through sheer biological accident, I came into this world infatuated with everything in it, and while very prone to anxiety, very resistant to depression. (Yup, they are not the same thing.) That and the (also accidental) blessings of my life have equipped me to generally find life pretty fucking awesome. (Here’s hoping that general lucky streak never runs out.) But I’m very aware that this is not the norm and, many have been dealt the opposite hand, both in terms of disposition and experience. And I can never really know what others endure unless I experience it myself. So this has always seemed the best argument, in my mind, for laying off people have certain beliefs that do no apparent harm to anyone else, as unfound...

A year ago I decided to start practicing paganism. I began with researching Lughnasadh, and designed a simple ritual that I felt combined some aspects of traditional practice with my own invention in a way I was comfortable with. It was not my first time I acted on the desire to acknowledge an earth-centered holiday; a year or two back I had burned a small fire and sung a song on Winter solstice. But this was my first time coming to a ritual with the intent to craft a kind of practice for myself, and to do so consciously embracing some sort of paganism. Lughnasadh, 2020. So much researching, experimentation and exploration has happened in this past year. I’ve learned a massive amount about Norse and Germanic paganism, and began reading some of the best primary sources we have for this history. I began a book series — which for me, is notable because I rarely read fiction — to spend even more imaginative time there. I’ve learned to mark memories based on the full moon, and I’ve spent ho...

Blood, whiskey, and history. So why blood? It is important to emphasize at the outset that it is not because of any fascistic notion of racial inheritance or purity, as in the Nazi chant, “blood and soil.” As I’ve discussed, insofar as any of us inherit anything “from the blood,” it is a heritage belonging to every single human on the planet. To me blood means something very different. It represents some of the most delicious aspects of existence – whatever might be described as a passion. My experience of passion has been both one of the most difficult things for me to regulate in my life, and without question the side of myself that has come under the greatest scrutiny by the society I live in. I’ve conducted myself, I guess you might say, in a very unregulated way on many an occasion. This has not of course always been a good thing. The worst times were when I had anger I could not contain, and so said or did things that hurt other people. There were also times...