A Sound of Sheer Silence

When I was in high school, I went through a period where I was obsessed with Napoleon.  There has never been a historical figure before or since that has captured my imagination in the same way.  I read multiple biographies, did a fairly deep dive into his campaigns, even for a brief period thought I wanted to join the Army and become an artillery officer in emulation of Le Petit Caporal .  And while I would not characterize myself currently as "obsessed," I still retain a weird amount of Napoleon knowledge.  I listen to the (outstanding) Age of Napoleon podcast  recreationally and have developed Opinions on various commanders of the period and their relative competencies.  Some guys are Civil War Guys, some guys are World War II Guys; I'm a Napoleon Guy. Now, some might say that I felt a kinship with Napoleon because he and I are firmly on Team Short King.  And I would be lying if I said that had nothing to do with it.  But that's not really the ...

1. A couple of weekends ago, I went to the Columbus Gay Pride Parade.  The main parade route goes up High Street, and I live a couple blocks from High, so I gathered the folding chairs and walked to the parade route to reserve a spot for myself, my fiancé, and some friends. You will likely be surprised to learn that Columbus, Ohio has one of the largest gay pride parades in the country.  Stonewall Columbus announced a total attendance (participants and spectators) of 700,000 people.  I am not sure how they calculate that beyond a basic estimate, but the actual parade portion took close to three hours to fully pass by our location toward the end of the route, so I have no reason to doubt the big picture number.  To be fully transparent, I don't have three hours of parade in me, no matter the content or circumstances, so we abandoned ship around the 2:45 mark.  Plus, I had ribs to cook for dinner, and anyone who has done that knows it is a lengthy process. I saw a...

1. Faith is a very strange thing, at least in my experience.  People report experiencing "the loss of faith," which I take to mean that they had this thing called faith (however they understood that concept) at one point in time, but then at some later point in time no longer had it.  Under that definition, I have never experienced any loss of faith.  There has always been this thing, this presence, this sense of something that is far beyond me, and far beyond the collective us.  That has never waivered, never gone away. What has changed, and changed fairly radically, is understanding  of that presence.  There have been periods of my life where I have believed to understand that presence in rather clear and explicit terms.  And there have been other times where, despite the continued and sustained presence  of the presence, I feel like I have no idea what it is, or what it means.  For folks who believe that the proper orientation to this inch...

As a game, Traveller is best known for its character creation system.  Most games, modelling themselves off of D&D , build out the character as it is at the time play begins.  In other words, character creation determines how strong the character is right now , what abilities he or she has right now .  Traveller , instead, pioneered the "life path" system.  After rolling up some basic stats, the player moves the character through a series of "terms"--four year chunks of time starting at age 18 in which the character takes on a particular job and develops new skills and abilities.  At the end of each term, the player making the character rolls to see if the character is promoted within that career, and rolls to see whether the character is allowed to continue in that career into the next term.  If the character is kicked out of the career, or wants to go pursue something else, they have to roll to see if they qualify for the new career--otherwise, they h...

Everyone has their thing.  Mine, more or less consistently since I was 12 years old, has been tabletop rpgs.  For those not familiar, the best known (and first) tabletop rpg is  Dungeons and Dragons , but there are thousands of similar games out there.  The basic concept is that all of the people playing save one take on the role of a protagonist character, usually one that the player has created.  The remaining person (known variously as the "gamemaster," "dungeon master," "storyteller," and a host of other titles) defines and plays out the rest of the world--the environment, the other people in the world, the antagonists, etc.  Imagine a play or a movie where the main characters, instead of being given a script, were allowed to improv everything their characters do, and the script writer responds in real time in reaction to the actions of the main characters, and you have some idea of what a tabletop rpg is or can be. As I said, tabletop rpgs got their h...

For extended portions of my adult life, I was celibate.  For a period of about three or four years, while I was exploring becoming a Roman Catholic priest, this was part of an intentional program--I was "voluntarily celibate," or "volcel" to use the term that has become popular in the Discourse.  But, for the rest of that period, I would have rather not been.  So, most of my adult life has been spent as an "incel." Now, as it turns out, this is no longer true.  And, truthfully, it is great .  I would not go back to the way things were 18 months ago for any amount of money.  But that is only tangentially related to actual sexual activity.  Sex is fun and nice and makes me feel like I am desirable and powerful and that is wonderful.  But far, far better is lying in bed, fully clothed, with someone I love in my arms, talking and laughing.  If my choices were sex every night with a different woman and no sex but cuddling every night with the woma...

On Sunday, I had a visit with a man that I got to know during my time with the Dominicans.  He was enormously supportive of me during that time; in fact, he was the most supportive member of the Dominicans, all told.  I will always be very grateful to him for his kindness and support in my early 20s.  He was a couple of years ahead of me in formation, but he entered the Order older (after a complex and convoluted process), so he is a good 15 or so years older than I am.  He is, at his heart, a good man who cares deeply for the people around him.  He is also someone who takes great joy in being a priest, and he truly puts his whole self into that role. And yet, every time I see him, I come away very sad, and this time was no exception.  While he loves being a priest, he has not found the support among his fellow Dominicans that he hoped for, a fact that he admitted to me on Sunday.  This is to some degree a function of the fact that (as he also acknowle...