"I say! You just can't say, 'You want to know', you know": On the Circumlocution Office in the Mind, Earthquakes and Cyclones and "Society"

Some people's minds, and maybe their hearts, are like the Circumlocution Office in Little Dorrit, my favorite book-read it at least four times and maybe five. Their minds are full of anxiety, useless information, fluff. They only want what the employees in the Circumlocution Office want-power, a comfortable income, status and a pension. In the older version of the movie, the 1988 interpretation, (I saw it in a special showing in 1987 in London), one sees the millions of folded, ignored documents falling under the weight of gravity and years of neglect, eaten away by water, wind, and fire. The piles fall, slowly, sliding into waste. The photos here are from the 2008 BBC version. But, I also want to write about sensitivity, paying attention, sensing earthquakes and cyclones. The silent, grave-like inertia of the Circumlocution Office is connected to the movement of earth, sea, sky, and our civilized world. 


This week, several earthquakes have occurred in Europe, in Italy, Greece, Norway and a small one in Ireland. Now, I knew there had been an earthquake before it was on the news in Ireland. I do not know why I knew, but I have been through a sizable one in Alaska , and my cats knew it was happening before we did. In Alaska, the walls of my apartment were going one way and the floor another. Days of aftershocks occurred as well.  I also experienced one in Illinois, which cracked my fireplace in the living room in 2004. Maybe I am like a cat in this regard, as my parents who were visiting me slept through it. I woke up,  heard it coming, like a wave on the sea, rumbling in, and felt it under the house, rush through the earth like the wave. Yesterday, I looked at the ceiling to see if the mini-chandeliers were moving, and I listened for the rumble. Nothing. But, I knew something had happened at about 1:00 AM, I knew it slightly before the time. This was one of many I detected in my life, the first being in Iowa, yes, Iowa, in 1968. I was in a bank at the time, and I saw the walls moving. Some people did not notice. I notice these things. Iowa, Alaska, Illinois, Ireland, there is probably no place in the world which has not experienced at least minor earthquakes.


I have also been in places where many tornadoes occurred, as I grew up in a tornado belt area. In one week, we experienced five tornadoes in north-west Iowa. One man died in a town where I was living, as he was picked up by a tornado and flung a half-mile away.  And, I was in Mississippi and New Orleans after Katrina, and personally saw the devastation.  I was living in Ealing when the great British Storm happened in 1987. I woke up just before that hit and told my husband we were going to have a tornado. He laughed at me, and said England did not have tornadoes, and fell back to sleep. Hundreds of trees fell in Ealing that day. But, as horrible as cyclones, hurricanes and tornadoes are, there seems to be something really uncanny about the earth moving. One can, if one has warning, get into a cellar or place of safety during a tornado, but in an earthquake one stands in a door jam, hoping for the best. In Alaska, my son, holding Puddy the cat, and me, holding Vladimir the cat, (after we caught them), stood in an apartment doorway for several minutes. If it had been worse, there really was no shelter.



Why some people are more sensitive to these things before or during, if the natural movement of the earth is mild, I do not understand. Some are more sensitive, that is all. The sensitive ones would not work in a Circumlocution Office.

But, the reason for these ramblings is that I want to make a spiritual connection to sensitivity about things around us. I am surrounded by people in denial about the economic situation in Europe. They believe in fairy tales told to them by bankers, politicians, even priests. I am surrounded by people who cannot see the decline of the West, the breakup of European countries, or the coming persecution of the Catholic Church in America, or the moral bankruptcy of this Millennial Generation. I am surrounded by Catholic people who plan ahead for holidays next year without any thought of their souls, the souls of their spouses, children, parents. They are living as they always have, and cannot see or sense that their lives may change drastically in a mere few months. They do not want to see. They are drunk with power or comfort or stupidity. They are drugged with complacency or fear. They are caught in a cultural inertia. They are caught in the Circumlocution Office.

The times are not "business as usual". I do not think we have had "business as usual" since before 1973. We are in crises in most of the levels of culture and civilization which marked the downfalls of hundreds of nations before us. Like those who cannot feel the earthquakes coming or sense the tornadoes, it is, as Christ said, They did eat and drink, they married wives, and were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark: and the flood came and destroyed them all.
Luke 17:27.

I am not a Cassandra. I am a realist and an idealist at the same time. My idealism rests on the Revelation and Teaching Magisterium of the Church, on the Three Persons of the Trinity. I do not read false prophets or follow the many, even local, Irish seers. I do not follow the Internet prophecy sites. Many are liars and cult leaders, as I wrote about in one of my first postings. These unscrupulous people make money out of the weak and the desperate. I am neither weak nor desperate. However, I can sense the signs of the times. Christ and His Church make up my ark. One of my lady friends whose mind is a Circumlocution Office said to me, "You are hard on yourself." I responded that, as Christ said, in Matthew 11:12 from the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away.


Those who do violence to themselves, that is, fast and pray and die to self, will see the Kingdom of God. Christ challenges us to leave the Circumlocution Office of our minds and heart and become simple, like children, like Little Dorrit.


In the meantime, responsible adults must work hard to try and stop the tide of religious persecution and the loss of freedom. Some bishops have made strong statements against the present administrations war on religions-specifically the Catholic Faith, this week in the States. Many of these statements are on blogs on my blog list to the right. We need grass roots reactions, practical and spiritual. Both passive, complacency and drunkenness are irresponsible responses. Some of us can fast and pray. I dedicate this posting to the four women, and a man I know who said recently to me, "Don't talk to me about such things. I do not want to know." Their minds have become the Circumlocution Office. Their minds are full of information, some good, some useless, but they do not want to know. They are not free. They are like those in the Marshalsea Prison, who cannot see reality and do not want to do so. Their minds, like the minds of William Dorrit, Fanny and Tip, are full of self-pity and complete selfishness. Their minds, hearts, souls are trapped in "society".  Society has become their guide, their god. Little Dorrit is free, in mind and spirit, which is the appeal of her character. She is also completely selfless, loving and kind. She is a free woman in or out of the prison. Unlike all the others in her family, the prison has not tainted her mind, which is one of the paradoxes in the book.

Another phrase in Little Dorrit, is "Nobody's Fault". Misery, poverty, stupidity, lies, madness, and even murder, are "nobody's fault". Those same people who do not want to know blame everyone else for their problems. If we tolerate evil in ourselves, we shall overlook evil in others. Now, we see the logical consequences of this toleration of evil. I hope and pray evil has not won the battles we now face, although Evil has lost the War. The same people who do not want to know, do not want to know their own sin and play the victims, as do Little Dorrit's family members. Sin is never their fault. They do not want to know about themselves, others, the times, society. They are imprisoned in their own minds and hearts. They have lost the sensitivity to feel the earthquakes and cyclones. And, they will be swept away, sadly, unless they come to their senses and become free again. They are caught up in their own Circumlocution Offices.