Insanity Comes Naturally: 2011

Christmas Poem

by G.K. Chesterton (whom did you expect?)

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.

Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.

A child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost---how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky's dome.

This world is wild as an old wife's tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening
Home shall all men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.

Read More 4 Missages | scribbled by Unknown

The Perilous Prosperity of Writing Ahead

[lighthearted nonsense]

Yorkshire’s loom lost a little of its pleasantry. “I am not a horse.” His words fell as stiffly as the lines of his neck and back prickled. “I am a stallion – meaning a great deal more pride, skill, patriotic spirit, and mostly (and mind you pay very close attention to this one) the complete and total lack of any ability on anybody else’s part to refer to me as a ‘horsie.’”

[homely horrors]

Just over Falcon’s shoulder, I caught sight of the fallen figure of a woman, limp as the white apron flung over her face. A white cap peeped out above the overturned apron hem, and under the sash her dress was homely and simple—a faded blue, except for a splash of scarlet-brown…

A heavy silence fell over the little group in the dingy greenhouse, broken at last by Falcon clapping a hand on Ceylon’s shoulder. “Well, my friend, you have got your murder at last.” He gave a caustic laugh.

The Hound said nothing, but sighed through his teeth with a hiss that spoke more than three or four pithy curses.

[fleeting introspection]

There it was, at the bottom of the tangle of his motives: the unswerving intent to do the right thing, whatever the cost, whatever the means. Only now it seemed to him that the rightness of any thing remained inextricably twined with the cost and means and motive; it was all of them and none of them at once. He longed desperately for his father to come back and slap him and tell him what he ought to do. Yet, in truth, he was terrified of what that might be. He was terrified of his inability to accomplish it.

All that blurred through his mind in an instant. For a half-a-moment, he shook with an indecision that struck him as feminine – but it was only half a moment. Then the feeling vanished, replaced by the familiar sense of knowing that if he did not set out to do the job – whatever it was – it would never be done. He stuck the much-disparaged green hat onto his head; perhaps it ought to have given him a pang, but he did not notice. The loaded pistol in Falcon’s coat pocket received a reassuring pat as he collected his feet and slipped down the stairs.

Is any of this certifiably usable? I don't know. That's the fun of it.

Read More 2 Missages | scribbled by Unknown

Writers and taggers and blogs, oh my!

[lawfully plundered at www.deviantart.com]

Jenny tagged me. I have beaten this dead horse long enough, I am sure, but here it goes again: another glimpse of The Brew. I mean to do a post very like this on my latest blight of a story, but I have not had enough time to spend on it and so this will have to suffice. If you are very tired of Falcon and company, I am sorry.

1. Who are the main characters?

Ingrid Brewster: writer and typist. Darjeeling Falcon: Government Investigator, and Ingrid's employer and oldest friend. Lady Jane Grey: The Woman Who Has Disappeared, thus creating a Case and a Plot and all sorts of conundrumish things.

2. How did you get the idea for this story?

It started with a whimsical idea of a falcon named Darjeeling, a hound named Ceylon, and a stallion named Yorkshire Gold. Then it turned into a series of silly tales involving animals who talked (all named after tea) and a girl named Jane. That story supplied a vignette or two and then stalled for many moons. But! On a day full of fate (and many other things which would be much more interesting to mention but entirely irrelevant), I was watching a hawk and trying to glean inspiration when the animals turned into people, and something entirely Other was born. That something entirely Other is... this.

3. What genre is this story?

It's how I write, that's what it is.

4. Describe your book in three thoughts:

Who knows more of mystery - the detective or the writer? No, what I mean to say is, forget the cigar ash, Holmes, and pay attention to the story. And keep an eye out for the barber; he'll be back.

5. The bit that describes an obscure piece of real life best:

Approaching (the house) at dusk on foot might have seemed gloomy and imposing to most, but I had done so many times before and the sight inspired fondness.On an impulse, I left the yawning drive and trotted across the lawn. The indefinite blue-black of the sky filled the very air and I, breathing it in, felt myself as much a part of this hour as an errant bat or the rattling frogs down by the lake.

6. The funniest line said by a side-character thus far:

I don't know about the funniest, but I find Darjeeling's mother rather amusing. I have good fun with her heavily-italicized lectures.

“I know you’re comfortable on the doorstep, Darjeeling, but some people can’t always be leaning on some wall or other. They’ve invented chairs for that!”

7. Your favourite piece of description:

“Yorkshire Gold, that’s my name a’right,” said the four-legged figure, looming above the little girl as cordially as any large creature in a dark forest can be expected to loom.

8. Your biggest fear in the writing of this story:

Paper cuts and carpal tunnel. Writing is a desperate, dangerous business.

9. Last full sentence you wrote:

The loaded pistol in Falcon’s coat pocket received a reassuring pat as he got to his feet and slipped down the stairs.

(Dum dum DUM...!)

10. Favourite character thus far:

York, bless his literary hooves! I can't tell you exactly why; that would spoil it. Suffice it to say he's one of those chaps who doesn't get the best lines but manages to burst in and do all the right things anyway.

11. What books have been written or have you read that are similar in style and flavour to your novel?

I'm afraid it's probably a shameless mixture of Sayers' Wimsey, Chesterton's Syme, and A.A. Milne's Winnie-ther-Pooh.

12. If it was destined to become a book on tape, who would you wish to read it?

Oh, bother! If I thought it was destined to become a book on tape, I would not write it. Seriously; I have a general apathy bordering on aversion to most audiobooks, but in this particular instance a man's voice reading Ingrid's perspective would be rubbish, and the idea of a woman reading any of the lads' lines is ridiculous.

Lady Jane thought this a rather silly reason

to insist on the one term over the other,

but four hooves seemed quite a large number to argue with

over trifles.

Read More 2 Missages | scribbled by Unknown

New Endeavors: A Dark and Hatless Night

A thick, wet wind beat against the pane of the front window of The Crown & Scepter, its fury matching the scowl on the face of the tavern’s only other patron. Mr. Nathaniel Haywood sat at the table in the window brooding over his mug of cocoa. He said nothing to me as I entered; he did not appear to notice me at all.

“Never had a gentleman ask for a cup of chocolate before.” The red-haired waitress lingering near Haywood’s table gestured to the mug before him. She laughed a little self-consciously, resting an empty tray against one hip and a slim hand on the other. “Not that that means much! I’ve just started this job three days ago. I didn’t know we had cocoa. ‘Twas Mr. Crown, the proprietor, who took it as an impertinence regarding the establishment’s cellars. I knew no better.”

“A man ought to keep a clear mind.” Nathaniel held fast to his terseness, obviously hoping the lady would take a hint.

“If by that you mean you ought to do so, why come to an establishment that serves alcohol in the first place?” she persisted. “Anyway, you don’t look respectable enough to worry about a few drinks.”

“Don’t I?” queried Nathaniel. “No, don’t apologize. I understand. I suppose I do look like a scoundrel. Believe me when I tell you, a year ago today, you would not have found me thus. I don’t wonder you find me quite the ruffian, seeing that I lack the indispensable mark of every respectable gentleman.”

She cast a doubtful eye over the dilapidated state of his coat and trousers and frowned. “That indispensable mark being…?”

“How can you ask such a question?” The man stared incredulously. “My head, woman! I lack a hat! Do not say you did not notice my hatless state! So!” He gestured from his empty head to the bare hat-peg beside the door behind him. “Why have I no hat?”

The girl laughed and threw up her hands good-naturedly. “I don’t know! Why have you no hat?”

“Stolen!” thundered Nathaniel, and the sky outside echoed with a resounding peal. He seized his mug and swallowed half its contents in apparent fury. The heat of it took him by surprise, and he choked desperately for several minutes. The lack of oxygen had its quieting effect on him, and, when he could breathe again, he continued more calmly. “Yes, someone stole my hat, in this very room. Truly, it made a beautiful hat; you could hardly not know it if you saw it. The body of it consisted of a green felt, softened by years of my silly habit of playing with it. It had a brown band with gold-brown feathers tucked in on one side. The brim gave just the right amount of shade, without falling too far over my eyes. And – the color suited me, or so some said.”

Here his voice faded wistfully into silence, and he stared out the window. Though he kept his back to me, I fancied I saw the bittersweet fondness in his eyes, reflected in the rain-soaked pane. Then he seemed to collect himself, cleared his throat gruffly, and finished. “In short, it seemed to me perfection embodied in a hat. It made me feel quite the gentleman. To even consider replacing it feels like betrayal.”

“Who stole it?”

“Some ill-favored idiot who frequented here at least once,” growled Nathaniel, suddenly glaring at his apron-wearing companion as if she had perpetrated the crime. “Once was enough. I know not who; I drank overmuch, and it happened as I slept in my chair. Your Mr. Crown said he did not know who had taken it. Some day, I tell myself, the thief will think I have forgotten and wear it. But I do not forget, and I watch and wait. I come every Tuesday, as I cannot come every night; ‘twas taken on a Tuesday, and so I have kept watch here the last fifty-two Tuesdays together.”

The barmaid thumped the table with her tray and snorted. “Fifty-two? Do you mean to tell me that you have spent a year waiting for a hat?” She winked at me sharply, and I felt myself ignorant of some enormous joke, as if I had put on my suspenders backwards and forgotten to laugh about it.

“I do not mean anything; I tell you plainly. A crazy idea, I suppose—fitting for a crazy man, as you must think me.” As the man spoke, I remembered the wet coat on my back and turned to remove and place it on the stand, but I kept stealing a glance or two at the pair, for they had taken my interest.

“Aye, I think you a crazy man,” laughed she, “but not for the hat. I will tell you why I think you mad. Here you sit, having waited for a year and perhaps preparing to wait another five for a hat to walk in here on the head of some bloke. Who knows? It might come tonight, and you would prepare for such a meeting tonight by filling your belly with cocoa!” The waitress tossed her head, and I wondered if the man had yet noticed how her red hair fell past her shoulders and her eyes held sparks of amber. “I would say that no drink on earth could muddy your mind any more than you have already muddied it. Stop your sulking, and have you a drink.” She seized her tray and spun back around toward the kitchen. “The house will afford you the first; after that, I cannot promise.”

Nathaniel sat a moment in silence. “Maybe she speaks rightly,” he said aloud to himself at last. “Better a little bravado than a dull mind; mine will not clear, anyway.” Then, as if with sudden resolution, he seized his mug and rose, tossing its contents over his back toward the open doorway—that is, towards me. Before I had time to recover, the tepid liquid hit the threshold floor at my feet, splashing cocoa all over my shoes and trousers. My hat, newly removed from my head, flew from my startled fingers and fell at the feet of the pretty red-haired barmaid, where it lay in a heap of worn green felt and golden-brown feathers.

An apology dead on his lips, Nathaniel Haywood replaced the cocoa mug on the table with a gentle click and turned from the doorway and the girl to the storm-filled window. A strange look of satisfaction came over his face. Only the eyes in his reflection remained bright with the great clarity of irony.

“Aha,” I heard him say.

Then he turned again to face me.

Read More 2 Missages | scribbled by Unknown

run and run as the rains come

I'm just home from work. It's late - or early, depending on how you look at it - and the last vestiges of my mind are very much awake. Driving at night in a spattering rain has a way of waking one up to things: the copper hues of streetlights off the wet pavement, odd images of ghost-cars between the settled mists... and a strong desire to put my shoes back on and head out into the fog and the downpour and just revel... if nothing else, I have at least all the impracticality of a writer

Yet in me, these impracticalities must still be coupled with the pragmatism of the nurse. My back hurts and I must sleep. Blustery nights are well and good for brooding, and for atmosphere, and for deep knowledge of the darkness of self and life - but there is more of redemption in the dawn, in the waking and looking forward to a new day. Tea and writing and reading and pondering and all of the above with even more tea... and after tomorrow comes Sunday, and that day will dawn brighter still.

there's thunder in the sunset's rays:
bluster, blunder, slate-and-fire,
spinning, giddy, grey-sky days
punctuated by the steeple-spire -

autumn leaves.

Read More 0 Missages | scribbled by Unknown

Lighthearted Scribbles and Metaphysical Whatsits

“Typewriter idle, Miss Brewster?”

I jumped, but it was only Falcon. For half a second, I considered being infuriated. He invariably stepped heavily up those stairs on the day when I needed peace, and then stole in behind me whenever I found myself in the midst of something foolish. Then I noted the worn aspect of his eyes, and I felt a twinge of compassion. I doubted whether he paid much attention to my silliness. I felt the vanity of my own ire, and softened still more towards him.

“Only waiting for you. Do you have something for me to draft immediately, sir?”

“You needn’t feel sorry for me, Miss Brewster. The Inspector Hound and I kept late hours the last night; my poor mother struggled to rise at her usual wee hours this morning, because she would stay up to put the fires in their proper state after we were through jawing. There is something about this business I cannot shake…” He placed one hand on the desk. I watched as he moved the other in a sleepy gesture to his pocket and withdrew a paper. This went into the top right drawer with a sudden, fluid movement that belied his previous laziness. Perhaps it was simply one of Falcon’s mood quirks. He had been very particular about my not opening that drawer the previous day. But he never liked having his messes fussed with; it disrupted his organized chaos, he said, for someone else to impose their inferior idea of order onto it.

“Miss Brewster?”

I blinked stupidly. Apparently, I had missed something. “Sir?”

“I only asked whether you slept well last night. Shall I take that as a no?”

“I find myself easily lost in thought this morning, sir, though I fear I cannot attribute it to such cheerful causes of late entertainment as you and the Inspector Hound.”

“The discussion of a stupid case in a stupid town are hardly cheerful,” he said, and then frowned. “Are you often alone in the evenings?”

“Except when the suitors call, but they are always gone by nightfall,” I scoffed. “Gooseberry! Who would come to see me?”

“Mother and I have been remiss.”

“Rot. I do not have any means of entertaining you. I like being alone.”

“How utterly proper and obliging of you. You know, Ingrid, we talk but you never seem to tell me anything.” He drummed his fingers a few times on the desk, and then buried them into a stack of papers. “I need you to stop by Briarmoor.”

“Briarmoor, sir?”

The hand sent a few papers flying. “Yes, madame, Briarmoor! Why must you always call me sir? Why does no one in this infernal place know Lady Jane? One cannot speak to a sir! Most people cannot describe her face. Does no one talk to a titled Lady, just as no one seems to talk to their employers? Beard on my face, I wish the address sir had never been crafted! You infuse it with all the mockery of an enemy and still use it to turn on me the reproach of a friend. You would kill me with that word, I believe. Yes, Briarmoor! Madame! But I cannot call you Madame; it does not work. Marm! M’lady! I have no such dagger to use against you as the one you turn on me. I suppose the best I can do is – Miss Brewster.”

I pondered this barrage of tangled thought a moment. His mother must have continued her haranguing from the other evening. I chose a tactically evasive maneuver. “But you have no beard, sir.”

That touched a nerve. The silence that followed was decidedly injured. Finally, with a visible effort to speak in a manner lofty and detached, he retorted: “Speaking metaphysically, every man has a beard, rooted deep within his soul…”

He seemed to flounder, so I took pity on him and interrupted. “Did you have an errand for me, or are you not quite finished?”

“Yes! I am. Quite. Finished. Miss Brewster, will you go to Briarmoor for me, this afternoon, forsaking your typewriter and all the fascinating reports of the nothings this office accomplishes?”

“I would count the walk a pleasure. And—” I hesitated.

“And?”

“May I ask, sir – what exactly am I to do there?”

“Deliver a letter.” He reached for a piece of paper and scribbled absently for a moment. “For Twinings the butler. One of my devilishly clever ruses, Miss Brewster, but if anyone asks I’m trying to set the poor fellow at ease.”

“By which I gather you to mean, ‘wrangle a confession of his long-held and undying passion for the absent lady, the declaration of which has prompted her to abandon the household forthwith’?”

The pen ceased its scribbling for an appalled silence. Then—“Miss Brewster, do you think it wise to take what was surely a privileged opportunity to observe two of the greatest investigative agents at work and use it to taunt the one on whom (if I may be allowed to point out in all modesty) your whole career depends?”

I reached out a respectful hand and obtained the letter, which was by now dribbling its address all over itself. “If I were in the habit of using such a course of wisdom, sir, I should scarcely follow any of your advice, much less work for you in the first place.”

Disclaimer: Metaphysically speaking, Falcon really does have a beard.

Read More 7 Missages | scribbled by Unknown

On Unthankfulness.

I've been trying to look at people more when I talk to them.

Not in a stare-you-down or creep-you-out sort of way (I hope!), but I have noticed a lack of eye contact on my part with the people I'm talking to. It's not a hugely perpetual thing; I don't think it's because I lie to everyone, and I'm pretty sure it's not because I'm bashful. I suspect 'tis more a matter of self-absorption and habit. I've just gotten used to rambling into the distance, and I'm beginning to realize the value of ... actually interacting with people instead of vague horizons.

It really began to interest me, however, when I took that principle of staring at vague horizons instead of people and dragged it into my prayer life. Because if I do it some of the time with people, I'm pretty sure I do it most of the time with God. Again, it's not that I don't mean what I say. But what I say isn't worth saying, because most of the time it springs from an indefinite contemplation on the art of self-knowing.

I'm not asking for sympathy or a pat on the back. This is a horrible thing that I see in myself, and I'm repenting of it as such. There's no need to wallow in the agony of self-reproach; better to rejoice in the truth of redemption. But there - that's just the point. Ever tried staring at a mirror image of yourself and saying a prayer of praise and reverent awe to God? Ever tried being thankful to God whilst in a state of total self-absorption? Yeah. It doesn't work. (And I suspect it's stolen a great quantity of joy from my prayer life heretofore.)

I want to linger on that last one. Thankful. My prayers are often beseeching, often repentant, often wrestling - these are good and right parts of prayer. But I struggle to make them thankful. What keeps me from thankfulness? Is it not because I do not look at God when I am talking to him? Is it not because prayer for me is usually more about self-disclosure than basking in the presence of the living Christ in reverence and awe?

I say this knowing that tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day. There's an element of non-coincidence there; at the same time, if a thankful heart isn't sustainable on the ordinary days then all the howling horrors of the holidays certainly won't foster one. Yet the howling horrors are not to blame. If I were to pray, and think, and walk, and live, and work, and sleep with the face of God ever before me - in all of my conversations, but especially time in the closet for prayer - that life, that conversation would be a wellspring of thanksgiving and praise, unstoppable and unending in its current.

For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness,"

has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God

in the face of Jesus Christ.

-II Cor. 4:6-

And I am thankful.

Read More 0 Missages | scribbled by Unknown

twenty-three

The Lord is my shepherd,

so why do I feel wanting?

Why is life so daunting

if he's by my side?

The Lord is my shepherd,

so why is sin still taunting?

Why is guilt still haunting

me? God knows I've tried.

I've seen the greener pastures;

I've drunk from the calmer waters.

The problem isn't the color or motion

it's that I'm always there, where I've

needed these legs broken again and again,

still I forget the comfort of your discipline and

run from your rod and run from your staff

with sheepish dismay, though you've loved me through my past,

my future, and

even this indefinite present...

If the Lord fills my table,

then why does life feel hollow?

Is it so hard to swallow

that faith gives sight, not the sun?

But my God is good and mercy.

In hard pursuit he follows.

Though I flee, sick and shallow,

there's nothing I could outrun

(much less eternity)

Now I'm in the greenest pastures,

drinking from those quiet waters.

The problem isn't the blades or the molecules,

it's that I'm still here,

I'll always be here, where I

need you to break this heart, again and again,

lest I forget the ways that brokenness mends and

flee your rod and run from your staff

with sheepish dismay, though they make beautiful my past,

my future, and

this unyieldable present...

A leaky cistern is all I can give:

break it down and make it your sieve.

Crush the servant who hates to forgive -

kill me, I'll live, God, kill me; I'll live.

This broken cistern's all that I give;

smash this heart and make it your sieve.

Tear down this will that hates to forgive -

kill me, I'll live, God;

slay me or I'll never live.

Even though I walk through the shadow of death,

even though I walk: not an if but a when.

Even though I walk through the shadow of death,

in your house forever: not an if but a when.

Nota Bene: I am not a technical poet. As in most things, I tend to emote before I know what I'm doing. Ergo, critiques of that specific a nature will probably take me a few weeks to decipher, though I appreciate any input.

Read More 4 Missages | scribbled by Unknown

"The wit of your remark," he said, "wholly escapes me."

Last night I had the distinct pleasure of seeing one of my favorite musicians perform live. It was beautiful; the music was sufficiently loud, the artistry sublime, and the companionship (my sisters and some of my dearest friends) warm. Halfway through the concert, however, I was struck by a fierce desire: not for the experience to go on forever and ever, as I have sometimes felt before when I was younger and in the throes of some extraordinary experience of art or literature, but simply to be home again.

The experience itself was not tiresome, but I realized it could not be an end in and of itself. Such extraordinary beauty is no good if it only makes us dissatisfied with the beauty of the ordinary. The highest peak of a crescendo must in the end return to the sustained quiet of the melody, or it is simply another over-drawn high note.

Because the best sorts of beauty are the ones I distinctly do not plan. The best sorts of beauty are the ones I do not expect. I expected to go to that concert and see and hear beautiful things - and I did. But it was a glimpse of the beauty of this world as God has made it, and the full enjoyment of all the good gifts he has given to man - the rain he sends on the just and the unjust. There is a beauty better still. It is the beauty of the commonplace, the beauty of the million little ways that he shows his particular love for his children as they stumble about their everyday paths. They are the tremendous little things, the pinpoints of light that provide windows into a world that is still to come, a world that has been wholly renewed, if we will see them for what they are.

I am glad to be home.

     "I am going to Battersea," I repeated, "to Battersea via Paris, Belfort, Heidelberg, and Frankfort. My remark contained no wit. It contained simply the truth. I am going to wander over the whole world until once more I find Battersea. Somewhere in the seas of sunset or of sunrise, somewhere in the ultimate archipelago fo the earth, there is one little island which I wish to find: an island with low green hills and great white cliffs. Travellers tell me that it is called England (Scotch travellers tell me that it is called Britain), and there is a rumour that somewhere in the heart of it there is a beautiful place called Battersea."
      "I suppose it is unnecessary to tell you," said my friend, with an air of intellectual comparison, "that this is Battersea?"
      "It is quite unnecessary," I said, "and it is spiritually untrue. I cannot see any Battersea here; I cannot see any London or any England. I cannot see that door. I cannot see that chair: because a cloud of sleep and custom has come across my eyes. The only way to get back to them is to go somewhere else; and that is the real object of travel and the real pleasure of holidays. Do you suppose that I go to France in order to see France? Do you suppose that I go to Germany in order to see Germany? I shall enjoy them both; but it is not them that I am seeking. I am seeking Battersea. The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land. Now I warn you that this Gladstone bag is compact and heavy, and that if you utter that word 'paradox' I shall hurl it at your head. I did not make the world, and I did not make it paradoxical. It is not my fault, it is the truth, that the only way to go to England is to go away from it."

-G.K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles, "The Riddle of the Ivy"

Read More 5 Missages | scribbled by Unknown

Every 20-Years-and-274-Days-Old Woman's Battle (Lesson One)

Not that that title refers to anyone specifically, of course. It’s only that I’ve been thinking (a dangerous business, Frodo!). Ruth turns nineteen in just a few weeks. I meant to write something of this nature for her then, but our conversation this morning before work prompted a stream of thoughts that I feel sure will be lost if they are not captured now.

lesson one: do not hide

Quite simply, I was struck today by how well I remember turning nineteen. I think that’s perhaps the most beautiful thing about being spaced as closely together as I and my siblings are – especially with regard to my sisters. That is not to say that all of our situations are identical, but there is certainly a greater degree of sympathy available because nineteen is not so far from twenty.

lesson two:there are right ways to fight

Yes, I remember turning nineteen. It was almost two years ago – was it two years? – and I was contemplating a good few things, and a few good things. I had already decided that I was taking that spring semester off, but by the time the last week of January and my nineteenth birthday rolled around the thing was settled; enrollment was closed, and there would be no changing my plans. I had also made up my mind to spend the spring away at Grandmutti’s, going jobless and largely internetless into a place foreign in all respects except Mutti’s company. And a few weeks after I turned nineteen, I pierced my ears – something no one in my immediate family had ever done before.

Truly, my nineteenth birthday was marked by great changes, and I can’t say I regret any of them. Wonder where my life would have wandered without them, yes; wish I had done differently, never. My spring with Mutti was a much-needed stretch as well as a great refresher, and I needed to learn to know God as good apart from school. (I think I need not mention that I have never regretted the earrings.)

if you have questions, we can talk through the night

One thing that became most apparent in that nineteenth year – and especially in the first four months of it – was how essential it was (is) to know myself as Christ’s, first and foremost. All the things I had derived security from previously were not torn from me completely, but they were distanced in a way that very often felt like loss. And, as I slowly grew to realize, it would be loss – without Christ. Love is never enough without Christ, whether it is the love of a family living in your own house or three states away. It cannot be enough; it is not properly, completely love. And though the human emotions and mind may linger in a state of self-deception and find a variety of relationships and pursuits ‘enough,’ the soul will always return to hunger for the real deal. The mind will chafe and grow weary; the emotions flap about like a tattered pennant at the whim of an angry wind.

I need love. I need Christ.

I've been where you're going and it's not that far.

But it was not only the distance crossed that taught me; it was the getting there. There is a frustrating sort of beauty to having a secondhand, vaguely unreliable car – and that is, that either a road trip can set your teeth on edge and be a hideous disaster, or you can be thankful for every mile of new and beautiful countryside that is crossed without the car bursting into smoke and flames and flying off the road like the mythical dragons that color my Tolkien-saturated imagination.

it's too far to walk, but you don't have to run;

you'll get there in time.

To put it into another literary context: are you Eustace, or have you read the right sort of books? Are you Eustace? Are you going to be seasick over the potential disasters and all the little things that make you uncomfortable, bewailing the fact that rural Kansas and Illinois are really just boring? Or have you read the right books – do you even know what adventure and beauty look like? Does the apparent tedium of the scenic route simply press you to look even more closely for the glimmers of glory, the backwards forms of beauty, the crumpled creases of grace that spatter every mile of our lives? These are the questions that crossing great distances in doubtful vehicles presses one to answer.

lesson three: you’re not alone

It is much the same now that I am twenty (yeah, that day three-hundred-sixty-five days later doesn’t really alter much in the human soul). There is some distance between the things of my childhood that made me secure, a distance that is intended (I think) to make me look beyond the childhood-things to a source of security and love that outlasts distances of fifty or fifty-thousand miles. There is a Love that makes things of the present lovely just as it has made the things of the past. The tragedy is to love the things in either place better than Love Himself.

not to undermine the consequence, but you are not what you do

There is still, at twenty, the odd press to wonder where this road is going, wonder who and what and where lies at the other end. There still remains the constant temptation to slam my hand on the wheel because the vehicle is slow and unsteady, the constant lure to use the rearview mirror to look back at the Egypts where I have lingered. But this is the road I am on, these are the people I have been called to love, and if the going is slow it merely gives us all the more time to enjoy the here.

when you need it most, I have a hundred reasons

why I love you.

I don’t exactly know what I meant this to be; it threatens to be a lecture or a biography, and I didn’t intend it to be either. Whatever it is, I say it as a sister, joined to you by our parents’ blood. They say that blood is thicker than water, but there is another bond between us stronger than the shared blood of a sister, and it is both blood and water streaming from the side of the God-Man, like mercy falling from heaven itself. I suppose in the end this must become a prayer to the giver of such mercy, to the Life who took on death for us: a prayer that is wholly hope and wholly thanksgiving, that you and I will be kept, never loving the people or the rate or the scenery for themselves but always for the redemption we have known and the love we taste and the beauty that lies before us, because we are known by such a great Saviour.

Thank you, Father, for such a love and such a Saviour.

if you weather love and lose your innocence,

just remember: lesson one.

Jars of Clay, "Boys (Lesson One)"

Read More 3 Missages | scribbled by Unknown

Hospital Flowers (Windows in the World)

I do not remember when I first began searching for the sunset. I was on the road before I realized it had begun. My sister painted it into a picture for me once, and I believe that was when I first began to realize. The painting itself was nothing grand: a simple daub of watercolours depicting the silhouette of a girl on a hill against a flaming sky. It was a spin-off of one of the hills in my parent's neighborhood. I had watched many a sunset just so, many times.

But I stopped to look at the painting on its place by my door one day on my way to work, and that was when I realized how distant the sunset was. Fifty-some miles would take me to that same hill; it would not take me to the sunset. The impression of a day gone by - or a day foretold - in an artist's mind; it was not mine to grab. It was too bold and surreal - or perhaps it was too real, the grass on those shadowed hills surely too sharp for my soft and shadowy feet.

I seemed to shake, for just a moment, with a curious longing to expel myself through the veil of the picture frame and stand beside that girl and stare into the face of glory. The voice of Chesterton seemed to ring in my ears: whether it was hell or the furious love of God, I did not know...! But it was early in the morning, and the dim lamp in my room seemed to turn things black and white by turns. Only the picture burned with a maddening brightness, as far removed from my little room and the day ahead of me as eternity is from finite things.

Twelve and a half hours later, I stepped out of a side-door of the hospital and stopped exultantly to breathe of the autumn air. The gentle briskness of the dusk revived my sagging spirits. There was pine in the air; this particular side-door opened into a garden, which (sorry and shabby as it was) held enough charm for my literary mind to walk my body through as often as I possibly could. Thus it was, the cold air biting gently at my face and arms and the pine trees tugging at my nostrils, that I caught sight of the rosebushes. They were draggled and beaten down by the fires of summertime, but now it was autumn and they lifted their blossoms in sweet defiance. On an impulse, I grabbed one and carried it as booty to my car: a simple tea-rose, more wild than not, red and yellow mixing into coral around its hips. The colors burned in the twilight, like the lingering rays of the sun that had already set.

I sang all the way to my car, but the rose was limp and wearied when I reached home, and still the sunset-image mocked me from my wall. Under the lamp's baleful glare, the rose was a tawdry thing: cheapened, gaudy, the trinket of a silly child. I had given my heartsong for a thing that was now pale and dying. I threw the flower on my dresser and went about the business of sleep, dismayed and restless.

I found the rose as I hunted a rogue hair-pin down the next morning. I did not mean to stop at the door on my way to work, nor look at the painting, nor be bothered with flowers, but I retrieved it with a pang of sentimentality. It was dry and the thorns were still clinging up by the flower amidst the curling leaves. It was not the song of my heart the night before; it was a dead thing, a thing thrown away, with no charm except that of a thing given up for the past. But the scent of a rose is supposed to be sweet even after death, and as I sampled it with half a glimmer of regret, the painting caught my eye again.

Then I looked at the rose again, and I knew. It was as though a piece of the sunset-sky had dropped out of the frame and fallen into my hands. I thought I had found beauty in the rose that I plucked just outside of a door I had been walking through every day. But that rose had only been a shadow, an incompletion. Death had darkened its colours, burning the scarlet and gold of the watercolor-sunset all over its petals. It would never be the sunset, but perhaps there were windows and these things dropped through all the time, and the only way to lay hold of them was to let go.

Perhaps there was happiness in these grave emergencies, and happiness in knowing that the painting could be found by being lost. These colours were not so far off and foreign after all.

all along the way the road is paved

with little moments of truth.

Andrew Peterson

Read More 5 Missages | scribbled by Unknown

"It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key."

I fear I have never taken a quote so far out of context. And to top it all off, I am almost late for this. But, well, you know what they say...

(In case you don't know, by that I mean, Better late than never, and better almost late than late. I can't remember anyone ever saying that, but I'm sure someone said it sometime.)

Well! I have had a pebble of a story rattling around in my brain for quite some time now (or perhaps that rattling sound is 'gainst the hollow'd walls of an empty cranium; who knoweth?)... at any rate, it is sufficiently beyond me to prevent my writing much of anything, much less that story itself. I blame it on Dani. It's been five weeks, I think. Yes. And still it eats up each waking hour... always writing, never written... (addendum: the "pebble of a story" is not this story; 'tis not The Brew. That would be too easy by far...)

And so I fall back on Beautiful People, and the character-based questionnaires in an attempt to distract myself. It has been a while since I said anything about my tea story, which still lives but only as an inert and idle plaything. I blame that on the marked lack of tea in my life the past few weeks.

beautiful people: lady jane grey

Lady Jane belongs to that odd variety of characters upon whose existence a story depends absolutely, a fact which is only apparent because of her marked absence from the plot itself. I have yet to bring her into a single event in the timeline of the story (even in my mind). All she has done is not be there, and still she manages to bleed personality all over the silly thing. I know her better than any of my other characters simply because of that. I have discovered more of her story and ideals through not writing them than those I am actually writing.

do they have any habits, annoying or otherwise?

Lady Jane is in the habit of disagreeing with her brother, which he finds annoying. She is also in the habit of gardening, which the gardener finds annoying because she is better at it than he is, and which Lady Jane finds annoying because she has terrible allergies. And she has a habit of rejecting William Taylor's proposals of marriage, which (no doubt) vexes him terribly. As far as usual habits go, she has a habit of being orderly in that kind of way that most people call disorder, but if this annoys her butler he never mentions it to me.

what is their backstory and how does it affect them now?

Jane grew up with nobody around but a nursemaid, and then later a governess. Her constant company apart from that (before she was old enough to know what was proper) consisted of the Taylor children, the nieces and nephews of her governess. Her general state of isolation did not vex or weary her; she took to it as naturally as a fish to water. I think it could be rightly said that she did not become, but was born something of a hermitess (despite the companionship of the Taylors in her childhood and a fine education at a school full of sweet, friendly peers) and cares very little for the society or companionship of others. And as for the Taylors, she sees little of any of them except for William on occasion, and I'm afraid she despises William for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with their separate classes (most of which he deserves). Prior to her disappearance, she exhibited an independence which some might call heedless and headstrong in anyone of a lesser class.

how do they show love?

Jane, if you'll permit a bit of repetition, is a hermitess. She is not often in the way of showing love - that is, she is not full-out affectionate. She demonstrates her affections for her household staff by allowing them to work for her; she does not need them, and would (by her own nature) rather live completely alone. Apart from that, if you meet her on the streets and she likes you, you probably will not realize it immediately, and may never do so unless she has some opportunity of doing you some good later.

how competitive are they?

While the people of her day certainly do climb ladders in society and play sports and engage in other pursuits that necessitate competitiveness for success, Lady Jane has none of these in her immediate context. She is, quite simply, successful by virtue of her existence and character. She has never vied for the affection of a man or a human being; she has never had to, for it was either owed (and given) or unwanted. She is not into making money; she has enough to live comfortably by. She does not need to exalt her station; she has one of the highest places in the country, and she is not flamboyant enough to render herself insecure. Perhaps one might call her politically competitive... she is thoroughly, and perhaps violently, passionate about the good of her country and its people, but in a way that is so foreign to my own pseudo-democratic state of mind that I still do not quite know what she is about. She does not give herself to a system of government or a political party or a cause; nevertheless, she has put all her eggs in one basket, so to speak, and beyond that it is not for me to say.

what do they think when nothing else is going on?

Lady Jane is one of those proud, odd souls who can look back on the moments of decision in her life and know she did rightly without pang or suspicion of self. Mostly, she likes to look at the edge of the forest just under her bedroom window and wish it were not so far removed. Perhaps that is her only regret.

do they have an accent?

Jane has the moderate, polished tone of a well-bred Englishwoman (I cannot put a regional name to it; I do not know enough). I can best describe it by saying that her voice is neither fussy nor dull, and she speaks with more strength of conviction than outright passion.

what is their station in life?

The title Lady Jane speaks rightly of nobility. She is from a family of a higher station in society, though not older, than the Falcons. The title itself is not worth very much at all; lords and ladies in Chelsea usually fall amidst the rest of the families of property (Darjeeling could probably go about as Lord Falcon, if he cared to), but somehow the Greys managed to attain to greater prestige. Here the details are vague and probably intentionally obscured, but her mother married twice and Jane has a half-brother, and the few people who know that much attribute it to that second marriage.

what do others expect from them?

That depends on whom you ask. The general populace expects a bucketload of enigma, with a lot of scandal underneath to provide fodder for speculation. The butcher and the grocer expect their bills paid on time with no fussing, which they get provided the produce is good. Those with political and economic interests other than the butcher's and the grocer's prefer her to remain in her corner of the world (she would be useful in society, were she not so unhelpful).

where were they born, and when?

Lady Jane was born in Steeple, Chelsea, being the daughter of Lord and Lady Grey, who held (and still hold) a little less than half of the profitable property in the area. This took place thirty-some years before our story begins. The historical timeline of the land of Chelsea is as of yet very vague and unknown, and so a specific date would do you almost as little good as it would me.

how do they feel about people in general?

Lady Jane never knew her parents. She thinks often of them, and finds (contrary to popular occurrence) that their shadowed faces do not convince her of her own anguish or bitterness, but a simple curiosity and satisfaction. She sees enough to know they were people, and she knows enough of her station to realize she might not have known them as such if she had met them. Individually, she does not seem to feel about anyone; that is, she anticipates true and proper sentiment and acts on it without bothering to languish in a state of feeling. As for people in the broadest general, she loves her country, but not with the usual sort of patriotism; she will not stand up and thunder out passionate pleas for the good of the people. She is not interested in causes; she is a strange blend of reserve and hearty disdain for the impersonal. If she has ever loved anyone, it is but one person, and that with a fierceness of will and action that most people mistake for a lack of intention altogether.

suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Read More 4 Missages | scribbled by Unknown

Sailing in the Storm

Hey, you.

I know you're tired. In fact, I know you're exhausted. And I know that life just feels like a battering of assignments and tests and hours put in here for school and hours put in there to pay for the hours you put in for school, and meeting this person and talking to that person and worrying about this other person... yeah, I'd say I know Anna's life pretty well.

And I know that sky looks threatening, and the boat is the last place you want to be. I also know why.

Yes, I know the secrets of the minefield, of the storm, and I know the secret of your heart: you're not terrified of craziness and explosions and being exhausted from an excess of work. The reason the minefields terrify you, the reason you and so many others stay away, is because you're afraid you won't feel anything, and you hate being bored.

Wake up. The peril is not in the obvious hazards, the literal bullets, the schedule that wings by in a blur. The danger is in the landscape that never changes, the ground that never seems to ascend or descend, the monotonous plodding that grows more maddening with every step.

Peril is everywhere, but especially in the mundane. The thing that makes the minefields dangerous isn't the mines; it's the fact that you can walk them and never know the mines are going off all around you. That you would dive headfirst into the teeth of death and experience salvation and still - still! - shut your eyes to the beauty of the reality of what God is doing because it is too small for your backwards, twisted mirror-vision to detect, too boring to tickle those itching ears, too even-keel and ordinary to rock the emotion-springs of your heart.

This generation is obsessed with feeling things, and you are no different. So easily entertained by news stories and television shows and musical numbers by popular bands that bellow angst and candied-happiness and troubledness, the never-ending lie that life is what you feel, and you have to feel something to know your life. Meanwhile, we scorn things like marriage or simply being a full-time daughter or being a blue-collar laborer for the next twenty-plus years because... well, to dress it up and put it in as close-to-the-truth and disgustingly false way as possible, a Christian is all about risk, and I don't feel like I'm risking anything in any of those boring commitments.

That's why you won't get into the boat when the storm looms overhead. It's not because you're afraid of sinking. It's because you don't want to risk finding out that the storm isn't be all that it's cracked up to be - or, rather, that you're not all you've convinced yourself you are. Dan Haseltine hit the nail on the head when he sang: I have no fear of drowning; it's the breathing that's taking all this work. The terror is in not in going down with a blaze of glory; the terror is in finding your first squall to be a few mere ripples, and that even those are enough to keep you hanging over the rail puking your guts out for a lifetime. The terror is in realizing that it doesn't take an epic gale to reduce you to the dust that you are.

Yes, there are minefields, but they aren't guts-and-glory. They're the stupid little things we have to do every day to be the people God has called us to be and love the people he has called us to love. They're the myriad of insignificant little conflicts where our life is on the line, and we have to surrender it. And that's the danger: the searing heat of the blast doesn't get any closer to us than when we are totally unaware of its presence. There is peril in the mundane, and it is that we do not know the fires are singing the hairs on our necks because we cannot feel them. We cannot feel because we are bored; we are bored because we would rather be secure than have our ordinary things threatened. Take my life, Lord; create a World War - just don't take my routine, don't take my schedule, don't take my secure little corner of the world, my idols of the thousands of insignificant places where I can feel self-sufficient... give me something grand to feel, something I don't care about so all these little things can still be mine to me, and never yours, never surrendered...

Are you disgusted enough already? Then forsake this gluttony of experience. Feelings are all very well and good in their place, but it's faith that's meant to be your eyes now. To say that life is boring because you don't feel the battle is to fall asleep in the face of an epic gale, even as we shake in our rubbers at the tiny ripples. Yes, that's you. It's good to feel foolish and know ourselves to be dust. Throw yourself on the grace of God. That grace is the only reason you may have faith to see the goodness in being small, in being foolish, in being secure in the greatness and wisdom of Almighty. Are you going to puff up yourself in the face of such great grace and wisdom and strength, protesting that your eyes can do better without the faith he gives so freely?

Come on, soul; you know you were bought with a price, and there's nowhere for you to go but the path grace forges. Let's clamber aboard this vessel and leave the oars behind. We can weigh the anchors of pride and self-sufficiency and unfurl the sails. Let's leave the wheel unmanned; the rudder's broken anyway, and my compass always forgets which way to point. We don't need to use the stars to divine where sovereignty drives us: you know it means us to go further up and further in, and "sovereignty" isn't just a nice word. It works. No, it doesn't feel like a thundering charge up the waterfall into glory yet - this is a Far Country, and we are still plodding, but the beauty of the mundane is that there are always glimpses, and the tragedy is to miss them.

So come on, you. That sky looks doubtful enough for sailing; what are you waiting for?

That's what the promise is for.

Read More 2 Missages | scribbled by Unknown

That's What the Promise is For.

The stranger approached me as I stood contemplating the barbed-wire fence. It was an old, sagging affair, flapping in the greying dusklight like the tattered shreds of a war-banner. Its gangly belly brushed the short brown grass in several places. I had been trekking through these hillsides for some hours (or perhaps years; I had long since forgotten) until the fence brought me up short. It seemed too disheveled and humble for all the legends. I halted and stared more from surprise than reverence.

And then the stranger had come. As strangers in tales were wont to do, he spoke first.

“You don’t want to go in there.”

I faced the fence, not him. “It would be nothing to climb over it.” The difficulty of keeping the unspoken question out of my voice was almost too much. “’ Look—here, and here,” I began to stroll down the length of the fence, pointing out points that were so low I (even I!) could have safely stepped over it without lifting my hem and not torn my skirts.

Then I halted, for there was one part of the fence lacking in wire altogether. It must have been the gate, or rather the entrance, for it was merely an empty space. One of the posts bordering the entrance bore a simple red and white sign, with this admonition:

DANGER: MINES.

I turned to the stranger for the first time. His back was to the sunset; I could not see his face. “Is this it? Is this why I am not to go beyond the fence?”

I fancied I saw something of slyness play over the grey-blue hollows of his eyes. “Did I say you should not go in there? An exact quotation, I believe, would be you don’t want to go in there—a statement wherein the emphasis, my dear literary girl, lies not on the going, but the wanting.”

“The wanting?” I scoffed. “The sign would have done well enough what you and your shallow sport with words aim to do—if you are to be believed.”

The stranger ignored the last statement. “Would it?”

“Of course! Who wittingly and willingly walks into a minefield?”

He stood without motion so long I thought perhaps he had turned to stone. At last, he said but a single word: “Many.” And then, two more: “You would.” There was another pause. “You have traveled far, but not (I trust) from a cave. You knew there were mines here.”

“I have heard of the minefields, of course, but I did not expect them to be so loosely bordered—nor so clearly marked.”

“Then you have heard, I suppose, of the stipulations imposed on those entering.” His voice took a definitely mocking tone.

“Stipulations? I have been taught the way things are,” I shrugged. “To enter the minefields, you must enter two at a time, or not at all.”

“Two at a time, by the gate,” now his tone slid softly about the ever-deepening dusk, with an almost fragrant quality to it. The contrast with the bitterness before was frightful. “And not just any two, eh? That is your problem. You have said it yourself; the way things are, and not a stipulation. Because if they were stipulations, it would be simple; if they were stipulations, you would climb over the fence. But the way things are cannot be changed; the way things are leave you hopeless—drifting along a tired old fence—and why?”

My voice sank with the slope of the nearest strand of wire. “Because I am only one.” The words seemed to catch at my fingers like the flailing barbs at the strands of grass, needling and shredding everything they touched.

The stranger took a step forward, a swift movement that startled me into a clumsy step backwards, but he only went past me and laid a gentle hand on the sign. “Danger: mines.” His voice became gentle. “Believe me: you are in no danger of the going, of the crossing over. But what of the staying? Is not the wanting a mine itself, planted deep in your heart, threatening to explode with each hasty step?”

I had no answer. He continued: “Stipulations—or the way things are—whichever word you call it.”

“I think—” I faltered.

“You think!” scoffed he.

He blinked again, and I felt so foolish I was temporarily muddled. “Do you pretend to know more than I?” scoffed he, and there was that blink. It was almost hypnotic: like a cat entrancing a mouse. I was the mouse; I was sure of it. “Do you know who I am?”

I knew the answer to that question. “No.” Then, suddenly, I had it, like the thunderbolt following late on the heels of the lightning strike. “No, I do not know you at all. You are the stranger—and very clever for such an unknown, but you know what they say about talking to strangers. Oh! You are very wise and cunning; in fact, you remind me of an owl, especially when you blink. But I was brought up on the best sort of children’s books, and I seem to remember an owl who looked very learned and turned out to be a fool. I think perhaps you are that sort of owl. And I—well, to be sure, my size in comparison is more a sparrow than an owl, and I’m sure I haven’t half the brains of a sparrow. But again, that depends on the sorts of books one reads. The ones I know seem to place things very decidedly in favor of the sparrow.”

“Sparrow?!” he laughed. “Sparrows do not live in the desert. They travel in flocks about cities and eat crumbs that wiser birds know to leave behind. You, my dear girl, are in the desert, with a great minefield bound up inside of you. You would be in a minefield either way, but this is the one you must walk—and walk it (as you say) alone.”

The words chirped in the lingering silence; the crickets had fled years ago. Again, I felt my companion must have turned to stone, and my stomach with him. I seemed the only living thing in a world of rock, and a stone stranger sent to mock me for it.

And then I heard a voice, faint but clear enough to rise above the roaring silence of my stone heart and my stalwart companion and the crickets who were not there. The voice trilled like a poet, thundered like a prophet, sang like a minstrel, riddled like a bard, bellowed like a herald; it was each of these entirely and none of them at all. It was only my youngest sister’s voice, lifted high in what seemed a glorious epiphany of truth: “Anna! It’s dinner-time!”

My eyes jumped from the dry grass at my feet to the stranger by the gate, but he seemed not to have heard. Whichever one you walk, you must walk it alone.

Rhetorically, the moment for answering had long since passed. But this was no mere game of rhetoric. I lifted my head. “What do you mean?”

Then he looked at me, and now that the sun was no longer behind him I could see his face. He blinked a trifle owlishly, and I felt the question was stupid so I asked it again. “What do you mean?” I said again, frowning at the two lumps of gatepost and the stranger standing between them. He opened his mouth to speak, but I continued hastily: “Did I say I could not cross the fence because I was alone?”

“The stipulations—”

“Did I say I was alone?!” I squeaked desperately, wishing for the voice of man so that I might thunder back with equal volume, but determining to stick to my point this time, however unimpressively. He gave me that superior gaze and I almost felt silly, but that had never stopped me from talking before, and it seemed foolhardy to break with tradition at a moment like this. “I am sorry; I am sure the particular nuance I have in mind is too slight for a proper literary mind to divulge. It was almost too much for me, and even then I only thought of it because of the dinner-call.”

There! I had done my best to be enigmatic, but he still looked less confused than I felt. I plunged ahead. There was no sense in caring about making sense now. “I did not say I could not enter because I am alone; I said it was because I am only one. I did not say I was alone.” I repeated the last sentence with stubborn pride, putting my hands on my hips as I did so (I could not help it!). “So! There is this sign, and it says there are mines and there is danger, or (as you have inferred) there is danger to be had in the mines. All that is drawn from this side of the fence, where it seems this side is life where one must be alone, and on the other side a sort of half-life with the threat of explosions, and the best to hope for is a sudden death either way. But perhaps we have forgotten to look through the darkened glass; perhaps we have taken it for a mirror, and the reflection reads backwards. After all, the sign faces outwards, speaking not to those who are about to step on the mines, but to those of us who will not risk them at all. Danger.”

I stopped and drew a breath, feeling giddy with the words and the dusk and the memory of the trumpet-sound of my sister’s voice. “And you! A veritable signpost yourself—you would have me find myself alone, with a heart ready to explode but safe. Safe! Wherever I walk, I pray to God it does explode. My heart is good for nothing else, just as this barren field is no good for a crop.” I kicked pensively at the draggled grass beneath me. “But maybe things will grow here, after the days of explosions and fires and smoke. Maybe if we forsake the mirror, the glimpse through the darkening glass will reveal this side is death, and the best we have to hope for on the other side is the explosion, and after that a sudden life.”

I did not give him another glance that evening as I turned and made my way away from the fence. The gate would have to wait for another evening. I had received a greater summons already; I was late for dinner.

Read More 6 Missages | scribbled by Unknown

Christmas Poem

The Perilous Prosperity of Writing Ahead

Writers and taggers and blogs, oh my!

New Endeavors: A Dark and Hatless Night

run and run as the rains come

Lighthearted Scribbles and Metaphysical Whatsits

On Unthankfulness.

twenty-three

"The wit of your remark," he said, "wholly escapes me."

Every 20-Years-and-274-Days-Old Woman's Battle (Lesson One)

Hospital Flowers (Windows in the World)

"It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key."

Sailing in the Storm

That's What the Promise is For.

The Blind Leads:

The Authoress

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