The Other John Updike Archive
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The End?
2029, Christmas

The End?

41TR1NTKVSL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_disc in boximgresJohn Updike's Award

Paul

 

Updike Photos from Wikipedia

{in} this time of foreboding about the future of Western culture, it is crucial to identify and preserve our finest artifacts.                Camille Paglia

 

Dedicated to Patrick Joseph Moran, Genevieve Moran and to my wonderful wife Mary

 

White House

Thank you all for visiting The Other John Updike Archive. Special thanks to James Yerkes, Jack DeBellis, Jim Plath and the entire John Updike Society for their support and encouragement. I have decided that this would be an appropriate time to end this project. There are many more personal effects in this collection as well as unpublished and sensitive material, but I would be be risking copyright infringement if I were to persist. The thousands of photographs taken by this master of observation alone are priceless.

Of course my greatest thanks go to John Updike for taking the time to talk to me even when he was sick, and for his generosity. I believe that the intellectual output of John Hoyer Updike has something to say to all of us about faith, politics, independent thought and leading a fully actualized life.

The avant-garde art world increasingly struggles with trying to appeal to a jaded audience with the latest attire worn by the Emperor.  I hope to see the quiet trend of Kula Art develop. This is my feeble attempt to see the hand of a loving God at work within common, everyday and ordinary objects. That is the enduring legacy that this great artist and fellow spiritual traveller left for us. In the words of Warren Zevon when asked if he had learned anything from his diagnosis of terminal cancer: Enjoy every sandwich

 Paul J Moran December 15, 2013       

 

THE MODERN CHRISTIAN INHERITS AN INTELLECTUAL TRADITION OF FAULTY COSMOLOGY AND SHREWD PSYCHOLOGY.-John Updike

This was taken from his Remarks upon Receiving the Campion Medal which was bestowed upon him by the Catholic Book Club in New York City on 11 September 1997. It came from the lead essay in John Updike and Religion, edited by James Yerkes.

John said that the faulty cosmology was a literal interpretation of the first chapters of Genesis (a la Creationists.) The shrewd psychology was that St. Paul and St. Augustine had got it right. The Christian existentialist, Kierkegaard, has expressed this more recently as Man is in a state of fear and trembling, separated from God, twisted by the conflicting demands of his animal biology and human intelligence, of the social contract and the inner imperatives.

 

“there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock.people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.people just are not good to each other
one on one.

the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.

we are afraid.

our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners.

it hasnt told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.

or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone

untouched
unspoken to

watering a plant.”
― Charles Bukowski, Love is a Dog from Hell

 

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2029-Events:

#1- John Updikes final notes on St Paul, Judaism, and the foundations of Christianity to be released.

#2-  J.F.K. Assassination files to be released to the public.  

 

John Updike on the JFK Umbrella  Man conspiracy theory:6th Floor Museum

 We wonder whether a genuine mystery is being concealed here or whether any similar scrutiny of a minute section of time and space would yield similar strangenesses—gaps, inconsistencies, warps, and bubbles in the surface of circumstance.- JU

 

Also in 2029:                                          April 13  – The asteroid 99942 Apophis (previously better known by its provisional designation 2004 MN4) will pass within 30,000 km (18,600 mi) of the Earth, very briefly appearing as bright as 3rd magnitude. -wiki

  • Raymond Kurzweil predicts machine intelligence will be capable of passing the Turing test by this year.[2]
  • The digital time capsule A Message From Earth reaches its destination on the planet Gliese 581 c.
  • Intel predicts the performance of supercomputers to reach zettaflops scale.[3]
  • NASAs New Horizons spacecraft is scheduled to leave the solar system.
  • J.F.K. Assassination files to be released to the public. [4]
    • December 20 – The December 2029 lunar eclipse, the second of two Metonic twin eclipses, will occur. The first of the twin eclipse pair was the December 2010 lunar eclipse, occurring on December 20–21, 2010. The twin eclipses are separated by 19 years.

Pyxis Redux

The Sambucus bears its noble rot

Decanted of its fluent prize

Within the lair once called a hutch

A nascent cipher on the rise

The sangre flowing from a shoot

A ribbed vessel cried aloud

The claret spread around like soot 

On stone it fell and rose in cloud

Within this wood a cache was kept

A hoard of food for future thought

In grace like dew a garden wept

A new sarcophagus was wrought

A northward wall that stems the tide

Makes one last stand on lucky foot

And trips upon an awkward stone

Ensnared within that ancient root

 -Paul Moran

 

 

Do Not Open Until Christmas

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