What's Shocking?

At the First Things blog On the Square, (recently revamped, happily, to include a much wider variety of voices, but, sadly, much less Richard John Neuhaus) R.R. Reno responds to Michael Linton's interesting but ultimately unconvincing proposal of a theological interpretation of Andres Serrano's infamous "transgressive" photo, the title of which I won't reproduce here.

Reno's entry resonates powerfully with my experience, and is a testament to the incendiary cultural moment to which we are just now beginning to arrive. The transgression of the establishment is boring. The subversion by the elites is tired. De Sade died almost two centuries ago; isn't it time we buried him?

Reno writes, and I would echo him: "The avant-garde today is to be found in piety and love." His students are "shocked by self-discipline, piety, loyalty, and love." This is my experience as well, but only when a professor allows his students to be shocked. At least in my English classes, far too often there is a disgracefully dismissive flippancy from teachers towards representations of the highest forms of human achievement in literature, which preemptively shields the student from the shock of these truly radical ideas.

In the 21st century, joy is new. Caritas is revolutionary. It's past time for the inauguration of a new avant-garde and the burial of the old guard. But what, after all, will the new one look like? That's what I'm eager to find out.

Our National Parks: Joshua Tree

I recently had the pleasure of spending an uncharacteristically cool Southern California weekend in the Joshua Tree National Park. Located just east of Palm Springs, this large park is located in an area where two deserts meet -- the Mojave and the Colorado Desert (which is itself a part of the Sonoran Desert, extending deep into Mexico).

While at this dry I took some digital photographs, some of which I'm going to share here in a totally achronological manner. I also took some old-fashioned photographs, but they're still gestating within their plastic womb. By the way, may I just say God bless the people at Blogger for their photo upload function, which drastically simplifies what was once a long and tedious bore? I may, and I will!

[I should note that all of the following are from the western, Mojave half of the park. This is where the joshua trees and crazy rock formations are. The Colorado half got kinda screwed over in the interesting sights department (although the cholla cactus garden was great)). Also, following the presentation there will be a Q&A session in the comments.

Clearly, this picture, of 49 Palms Oasis, is the wrong one to begin with. Palms were not characteristic of the area, only growing where there's a relative abundance of water, usually nestled at the base of a shaded valley like this one. Can you count all 49? This was in the middle of a hike that I was in a rush to finish before the sun went down, because a sign said the parking lot closes at sunset.



This here is Skull Rock, and I hope you can see why, but it was difficult to get an angle that fully captured its cranial character. I encountered it twice -- once in the daytime when I was expecting it, and once, in the darkness of wilderness night, lit up by my headlights, just after spooking and being spooked by an owl on the side of the road, when I thought I was miles away from it, driving down the wrong road looking for a place to sleep.



I found this gentleman at the top of Ryan Mountain, pondering the difficulties that arise when one is alone on top of a mountain with a camera. How will one ever be believed?



The obligatory "sunset in Joshua Tree" photo. Here's a question for the philosophers: were cameras made for sunsets or vice versa?



This is a pretty typical sight in the park: giant piles of rocks. Overall the landscape kept reminding me of Ettinsmoor, that part of Narnia where the giants are rumored to live.



Here is one of us little people after climbing to the top of a rock with all kinds of gear and probably about a mile of rope -- which was rather funny because I climbed to the same height in about five minutes by the locomotion of my own four limbs -- on a different mound of course.



Here is the silver chariot without which this adventure would not have been possible at all.



And I leave you with this shot of the iconic joshua tree, one of the first I took upon entering the park. If you click on this photo you can see that the tree is actually part of a forest -- one of the odder forests I've seen, where trees are spread out with yards between each one, to better compete for water.