Twilight Zone

Understand that I live in a town of some 20,000 simple country folk, one of many small such towns in Nebraska. Hastings is divided into two parishes, the one I belong to comprising most of the town proper, where St. Michael's parish on the west side of town is much smaller and is made up mostly of farmers and countryfolk. After a late night on Saturday (more later), I failed to wake up for the 11 a.m. Corpus Christi mass. I checked on the internet hoping to find a later mass somewhere nearby so I wouldn't have to go to the evening Spanish (a.k.a, mariachi) mass. No problem, St. Michaels has a 2:oo p.m.! It's important to note that this is my first mass since I've been back in town, and I've yet to unpack my shoes. So, I'm ashamed to say, I wore flip-flops to church. I figured I could come in a bit late and sit in the back, no one would notice.

It turns out that this mass was the ordination mass for a new parish priest, though I didn't know it at the time. I sat down in the back as planned, said my prayers, and idly started people watching (bad!). Double take. Is that Mr. Kelly? Yes.. and his wife and children. Well that's a bit odd. Uhm. Is that Mr. and Mrs. Dillon in front of me? What the... I look across the back of the church and see Dr. McArthur and Mr. Nieto. I start thinking back to my Frued and Jung readings and wonder what kind of psychosis is manifesting itself from out my twisted psyche. Then I notice that the celebrant priest looks like an older, fatter Mr. Kelly. Oh!

This was by far the weirdest mass I've ever been too (per accidens that is), and like the title of this post might suggest, I felt like I was in the twilight zone for the first five or ten minutes of mass. Mr. Decaen's brother is one of my parish priests, and he was cocelebrating. So my thoughts during mass moved from somewhat pious and focused to startled and distracted in wonder that so many TAC graduates and tutors (at least seven, I couldn't see who was sitting on the other half of the church) were collected in such a random place, and that had I not slept in I would never have known. Then I realized I was wearing flip-flops, and didn't want to make an ass of myself in front of these people. So I booked it as quickly as I could after mass. I also had to meet my family soon after, so I somewhat legitimized this flight to myself. Still, I feel like an ass for not staying a bit and congratulating Father Kelly and saying hello to everyone. It's very cool, but very odd that two of TAC's fifty-odd active priests are in my hometown in the middle of nowhere. Maybe a touch overkill?

As to Saturday night. I knew seeing old friends would be bad, but I really didn't realize how stupid and vulgar most people our age are. Even in the good old midwest. I hope I can avoid hanging out with them again while I'm here, but we'll see. It impressed on me very clearly that home is and never will be home again. I can't imagine not living near an active and intelligent community of Catholics again. And I really don't want to stay here any longer than I have to, which means that I'll probably be moving back to SoCal a.s.a.p. I was looking at the USC website, and discovered that they have one of the only bachelor programs devoted solely to classical guitar performance. The professors in this department are all accomplished masters, and I'd love to get in it. I'm not sure yet what the tuition is, how many of my TAC credits will carry over, and they take students on an audition basis, so I'm not sure how likely an option this will turn out to be. But I'm looking into it.

Otherwise, I'm having a good time golfing all day and catching up on some fiction reading. Right now I'm on Jules Verne's Mystery Island. Robinson Crusoe, the Swiss Family Robinson and Shipwrecked were some of my favorite childhood books, and this is supposed to be the exemplar from which all such books fall away. I'm sure we've all wondered at one time or another what it would be like if all technology and invention was stripped from us, and were left to rebuild by ourselves. This book satisfies that curiousity as well as your good old fascination with being stranded on a desert island. One of the members of this modest society just happens to be a brilliant engineer and natural scientist, who of course is able to recognize all minerals, flora, and fauna. Verne goes into great detail about all of these things, and how the basic inventions we take for granted can be coaxed from nature. Good practical book to read in case you ever end up crashing in a FedEx plane or somesuch.