Suitably irregular and haphazard posts to follow at the above link.
Thank'ee.
And, you know, it's not like I'm a perfectionist or anything, making this whole reconstruction thing even more time-involved... at least that's not a factor at all! >.>
The point is, it's not worth clinging to this skeleton of a blog. It's time for a change. That may mean a new blog; it may mean... I don't know.
But it was time for a change anyway. The blogging persona that I invented years ago as a freshman in high school was long, long gone before the link at the top of the page expired. The persona I conjured together as a nursing-student-gone-nurse is fading too. The self-description always said "happens to be," and all my "happens to be"-s are changing. Just now, I'm a child of God who happens to be jobless and planning a wedding and trying to decide what to do with the next two weeks. By mid-August, I will be a child of God who happens to be married to Daniel.
Of course, "happens to be" does not mean that being a nurse or being married are No Big Deal. Rather, there is a balance. I am not changing blogs/unblogging because I have Arrived Somewhere; I am not not changing because the change is insignificant. But I need some time for thought, and I need some time to talk about it with a Certain Fellow whose opinion is rather significant.
Expect another post. We'll take it from there.
P.S. I'M GETTING MARRIED!!!!!
When all my days are ending
And I have no song to sing,
I think that I shall not be too old
To stare at everything;
As I stared once at a nursery door
Or a tall tree and a swing.
Wherein God's ponderous mercy hangs
On all my sins and me,
Because He does not take away
The terror from the tree
And stones still shine along the road
That are and cannot be.
Men grow too old for love, my love,
Men grow too old for wind,
But I shall not grow too old to see
Unearthly daylight shine,
Changing my chamber's dust to snow
Till I doubt if it be mine.
Behold, the crowning mercies melt,
The first surprises stay;
And in my dross is dropped a gift
For which I dare not pray:
That a man grow used to grief and joy
But not to night and day.
Men grow too old for love, my love,
Men grow too old for lies;
But I shall not grow too old to see
Enormous night arise,
A cloud that is larger than the world
And a monster made of eyes.
Nor am I worthy to unloose
The latchet of my shoe;
Or shake the dust from off my feet
Or the staff that bears me through
On ground that is too good to last,
Too solid to be true.
Men grow too old to woo my love,
Men grow too old to wed;
But I shall not grow too old to see
Hung crazily overhead
Incredible rafters when I wake
And find that I am not dead.
A thrill of thunder in my hair:
Though blackening clouds be plain,
Still I am stung and startled
By the first drop of the rain:
Romance and pride and passion pass
And these are what remain.
Strange crawling carpets of the grass,
Wide windows of the sky;
So in this perilous grace of God
With all my sins go I:
And things grow new though I grow old,
Though I grow old and die.
-G.K. Chesterton, 'A Second Childhood'
I need to dust my bookshelves.
There's a good inch-and-a-half of space between the edge of each shelf and the row of paper vertebrae - an inch and a half that is now gray instead of the original cheap black finish. A quick sweep of my finger begins to restore the former glory; how quickly a few strokes of a damp paper towel would finish the job!
I procrastinate. I have procrastinated for longer than I care to admit. Dusting my shelves is not a big deal, and still I don't. The frivolous arguments abound. The shelves will only get a little dustier with time - it does not matter much - and anyway, if I wait until they are really dusty, then it will feel like I am doing much more by cleaning them...
Such thinking is humorous when applied to my bookshelves, but looking about me I begin to see where it creeps into the broader scheme of Life - that is, in how I invariably put off the housekeeping of my soul. There will always be dust gathering somewhere. Sin blights up and casts its shadow out from the corners. If I wipe it away, it comes back. If I clean now, I will have to see it dirtied again. So I don't. And as I leave my heart to be cluttered by sin, I believe no truth but a lie, the fear that maybe Jesus won't win.
Here is housekeeping hallowed as a calling and ministry. My eyes see futility in cleaning things that will only be cluttered again - but perhaps my eyes have grown accustomed to turning things backwards. The topsy-turvy truth in dusting is this: I am not made any more clean by wiping the same sins away again and again, and yet I am called to do so - not as one trying to make redemption effective, but with all the finality of a herald announcing the outcome of a duel ringing into my actions: redemption is certain.
Here is housekeeping hallowed as a calling and ministry. My eyes see futility in cleaning things that will only be cluttered again - but perhaps my eyes have grown accustomed to turning things backwards. The topsy-turvy truth in dusting is this: I am not made any more clean by wiping the same sins away again and again, and yet I am called to do so - not as one trying to make redemption effective, but with all the finality of a herald announcing the outcome of a duel ringing into my actions: redemption is certain.
Dust settles. Dust gathers. And I take my cloth and strike it away and say, nay. Yes, there is dust and filth that has gathered. Dust only happens because something has died. It ought not discourage me, then, that because sin has died there is dust. I will sing of the the triumph of redemption to my heart with the dishrag and the duster.
Of course, it is never a matter of merely having a clean inch-and-a-half. Cleaning the shelf would be sheer futility then; but having cleaned, one looks past the the edge of the shelf. In a way, it is brushed away with the dust, past distraction so one may see the rest of the shelf. There dusty hands may reach deep into tales ablaze with truth and glory and beauty, together woven into the story of a hope that does not disappoint. The books themselves ought never require much dusting.
I would with the beleaguered fools be told,
that keep an inner fastness where their gold,
impure and scanty, yet they loyally bring
to mint in image blurred of distant king,
or in fantastic banners weave the sheen
heraldic emblems of a lord unseen.
-J.R.R. Tolkien, 'Mythopoeia'
It was at times a frenzied race to finish the monthly quota, and between the completion of school and the initiation of full-time employment I am quite surprised that I read as much as I did. But the inclusion of old favourites made the task quite bearable: The Man Who Was Thursday kicked off the year as the epi-tome of Old Friends - no other book can shake my bones and be utterly comfy at the same time. I reacquainted myself with many others, including The Silver Branch (Sutcliff), Mere Christianity, Harry Blamires' Divine Trilogy, The Paradise War (Lawhead), Till We Have Faces, Emma, Lewis' Space Trilogy, Clouds of Witness (Sayers) and Beowulf.
In addition to books that I knew I liked, I tried to include a measured dose of classics that I would not read unless I straightforwardly decided to read them: Hard Times by Dickens, Blithedale Romance (Hawthorne), Jane Eyre by Brontë, The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, and The Last of the Mohicans. I interspersed lighter books with gravity: The Jungle Books (Kipling), Peter Pan, Wodehouse's Damsel in Distress, Patricia A. McKillip's Riddle-Master trilogy, Heartless by A.E. Stengl, and a bit of Conan Doyle's Holmes in the evenings to cleanse the palette.
But the list becomes more and more difficult to organize sensibly. I waded through One Nation Under Gods, a history of the Mormon church by Richard Abanes which was tremendous both in gore and length (but thoroughly diverting). I managed to swallow all three of Harry Blamires' Christian Mind series. I dabbled around with On Poetry & Poets by T.S. Eliot and gobbled up Towards a Christian Poetic, a volume on the nature of literature by an obscure fellow named Michael Edwards. The Song of Roland and Gawaine & the Green Knight joined Beowulf in the tales of Ancient Swashbuckling, while Killer Angels furnished a slightly more contemporary and rifle-ridden version of the same.
The list is winding down. Carl Trueman's Fools Rush In (Where Monkeys Fear to Tread) was just the right amount of heavy philosophy taken lightly. I reveled in Anne Morrow Lindberg's Gift from the Sea, for which my thirteen year old brain had not previously housed enough attention span. And of course, sprinkled throughout, there was an abundance of Chesterton: in addition to Thursday, The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond, The Ballad of the White Horse, The Everlasting Man, The Poet & the Lunatics, and Orthodoxy.
All this list-making is exhausting even in retrospect, and I confess that my stance on the next year is much more lax. I think it can afford to be - I am not bookworking as a full-time occupation at present - and anyway, as Abigail pointed out, one ought not always be cramming books down one's throat. I may trade the intentional reading out for a more intentional framework for writing; who knows? One does not have to make all one's plans by the first of the year.
There will be books aplenty in '13, and I have a fairly good idea of some of them: Signs Amid the Rubble by Lesslie Newbigin, The Gammage Cup, The Worm Ouroboros, and the remainder of Tales of Goldstone Wood. I have Andrew Peterson's Monster in the Hollows on loan from my younger brother. I mean to reread The Lord of the Rings and perhaps some of the broader Tolkien works. There are a few fat volumes of Flannery as yet uncracked, and some highly daunting "furren" works such as Anna Karenina and Les Miserables that I feel rather drawn to...
But who knows? I may think better of others over those tomorrow.
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| from pinterest [cropped] |
When I was perhaps as young as nine or ten, I attempted to read Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre to very unsatisfactory results. I had already pored many times over a severely abridged children's version of the tale, which contained many illustrations of an odd sort of watercolour-meets-oil surrealism. I was familiar with the skeletal plot, held in a state of mixed fascination and repulsion for the bland heroine and exaggerated protagonist-hero, and excessively bored with the 'real' version - which (to my young eyes) simply had more words mixed in.
Imagine my surprise when, picking up the book again after at least a decade of intentional avoidance, I found it interesting! My chief prior complaint had been against the bleakness and out-of-humor nature of all the characters - from dour Jane to wild Edward to hyper-Puritanical St. John. But I had been mistaken; lacking a matured sense of humor and probably an attention span as well, I missed quite a few of the bright spots and quips that the novel hides.
That is not to say that the novel is not dark and full of turmoil. But I have grown up, and the book grows on me. (I have also been through the depths of Wuthering Heights, which is dark enough to make molasses spark like gold.) And let's face it - parts of it are just plain funny. Several very competent film adaptations have been made of semi-late years, and despite their competence most of them don't do justice to the snark and spirit of this heroine - which is quite an irony, considering that so much of the time that wit is bent against the idea that feeling and humor cannot be mixed with quietness and principle.
So in the interest of a producing something under the influence of a head cold, I give you a few of the spots of Eyre that touched my humour. Alas; so many of them are situational and complex. I am particularly fond of the part where - well, but you shall have to read it and unearth for yourself these gems where they fall, fleeting and certain,
like sunlight scattered on the moor.
I deliberated a moment: my answer, when it did come, was objectionable:
'I must keep in good health and not die.'
'Don't trouble yourself to give her a character,' returned Mr. Rochester:
'eulogiums will not bias me; I shall judge for myself. She began by felling my horse.'
'Am I hideous, Jane?'
'Very, sir: you always were, you know.'
'I mentally shake hands with you for your answer, despite its inaccuracy.'
All that region [the kitchen] was fire and commotion; the soup and fish were in the last stage of projection,
and the cook hung over her crucibles in a frame of mind and body threatening spontaneous combustion.
'Little niggard*!' said he, 'refusing me a pecuniary request! Give me five pounds, Jane.'
'Not five shillings, sir; nor five pence.'
'Just let me look at the cash.'
'No, sir; you are not to be trusted.'"
I would always rather be happy than dignified.
'Justly thought; rightly said, Miss Eyre; and at this moment I am paving hell with energy.'
Though it was now dark, I knew he was awake; because I heard him
fulminating strange anathemas at finding himself lying in a pool of water.
'Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me - for you will not get it,
any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate.'
With that answer, he left me. I would much rather he had knocked me down.
*In case anyone is prone to needless sensationalism, this is not a racial slur; look it up.
Over the last several days, Jenny and Abigail and I have at intervals treated with a lively contempt various cliches of modern literature. One of the many mentioned was that of the hero or heroine discovering that he or she possesses the capacity to tame and ride a mythical monster, usually a dragon. I am not saying that in every case this cannot be done originally or sensibly; merely that it has become such a common occurrence that, at least since Eragon, few readers anymore will find themselves taken aback by this "twist" in the story.
What has brought us to this point, where the taming of a fascinating and awe-inspiring beast of fantasy and mythicality tempts us only to yawn? Has mere overuse of a concept stolen all thrill from us? Is such a thrill to be attributed only to the novelty of a thing?
I postulate - nay, I would assert the ways of God to men, and justify eternal Providence, but Milton has done so already; so I shall in my smallish turn assert that the extraordinary fails to be interesting because we have ceased to be interested. What is humorous and entertaining, original and earth-shattering about the interaction between a man and a dragon are not scales nor tails nor claws nor the number of Kelvins contained within the breath of the latter. If the beast is able to converse, then the conversation catches our fancies by telling the tale of Persons everywhere conversing, their foibles and follies and faults. If the beast is dumb and raging, it throws sparks very like a fulfillment of the dominion mandate, telling the tale of reason with love exerted over bestial force. But whatever the size or anthropomorphisms of the dragon, it is not the dragon - never the dragon - that fascinates. The dragon draws the edge of the shadow of truth the tale tells, but it is the man who is most fantastical.
Writers and readers alike, I venture, have lost sight of this, and this is why dragon-riders and all similarly fantastical things wind up so tediously written and tiresome to read. Throw a dragon in merely as a fail-safe to make a story fantastical ("add one dragon and a pinch of villainye"), and the story will be only as fantastical as a dragon. This is why our tales of dragons (along with our sappy romantic novels) reek of tediousness and sawdust when they should ring like bells. And if the writer cannot see beyond the mere trappings of fantasy to the fantastical nature of man, rendered twice-fantastical by virtue of both its fantasticality and its reality, then the reader will not. Some books, as one author put it, tell the truth about its characters, whereas others convey a picture of its author; if the author is bored, the story holds true. A thousand ridden dragons will only multiply the dullness factor a thousandfold.
“It is one thing to describe an interview with a gorgon or a griffin,
a creature who does not exist.
It is another thing to discover that the rhinoceros does exist
and then take pleasure in the fact that he looks as if he didn't.”
Ms. Rachel, over at The Inkpen Authoress, was kind enough to think of me and ask me a series of questions, a sort of interview-a-la-bloggue. There's nothing like a quiet little chat over tea, and this time I did most of the talking - which was perhaps a little over-stimulating for my dialoguical brain, but terribly fun nevertheless. I hope to return the favor and have her muse a little on my space here. She has a knack for asking questions, I'll say; I was quite tickled by the mental fare she gave!
Here's a smidge of the interview:
What do you look for first as the mark of a good writer?
We could get into a lot of boring discussion on what makes a good this or that, but I have one initial step, a sort of litmus test, that I often find myself taking. That is, to turn to the back cover and read the brief biography of the author. If they're British and deceased, that's generally a good sign.
Thank you once again to Rachel! Take a look at her blog here (or above, for those observant ones), with the interview specifically here.
And so, having laboured all Labour Day, I shall tuck myself to bed and leave all airy, weighty matters for another day. "After all," said Scarlett, "after all - "
But that would be cliche.
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| courtesy of deviantart.com |
This piece features two of my favourite characters to play with from The Brew; because every misadventuring hero ought to have the acerbic wit of a spinster aunt to keep him steady.
I wrote this quite a while ago, which is funny because between the visit to the seaside and the aunt being named 'Jasmine' - well, there's a lot of facts from present happenings that seem to have insinuated themselves into my past. I thought it fitting. This is part of the backstory, which may or may not affix itself to the beginning of the actual plot...
In England, people actually try to be brilliant at breakfast. That is so dreadful of them!
-Oscar Wilde-
Archie’s maternal
grandparents had belonged to that incredible class of people who possessed so
much practicality that they were able to conjure deeper impracticalities in a
moment than any sheerly impractical person might have managed in a lifetime. They
named their first daughter Charlotte, a name equipped with a sturdy sort of
sweetness very like its owner, and in that they could hardly have been anything
but sensible. She grew up to be a very pretty girl, with dark eyes that housed
the depths of the universe and a mass of dark hair that might have easily
overrun a few lesser galaxies. As soon as all was deemed judiciously proper,
she fell as decorously into love as anyone of her sex can be expected to, with
a wealthy, titled, landed man of few remarkable looks and many remarkable
stories. Of course, she really married him more for the stories and less for
the titles and land, but her parents never suspected such an impropriety. She
settled at his estate in Steeple, and they did not name their first and only
son “Archie,” but he soon acquired the nickname after he went to university.
The younger sister
(the very aunt towards whom Archie was now bound for a visit) had a very
different story. Her parents in their great quantities of practicality had
somehow decided that the name “Jasmine” was altogether right and fitting, and
so she had grown up with nicknames like “Jazz” and “Rasberries.” (The latter
might have been her own fault more than her name’s.) It was not that Jasmine was a bad name; it simply did
not suit her. Somehow, the large eyes and flowing hair escaped her, and the
flat, pale-brown tones of hair and eyes never blossomed into anything beyond a
passing stranger’s thought, “Well, she’s not bad to look at…” She was as different from her limpid name in
personality as in looks. Pigment was not entirely culpable for a perpetually
shrewish look in her eyes, and she had a way of hissing “men!” like a curse
word under her breath which eligibles of said sex found quite off-putting.
Jasmine Upton’s
fate was therefore sealed: a spinster and the favourite aunt. It did not matter
to Archie or to her that she was the only
aunt; both lived in full assurance that, had the former twenty aunts, it would
not have been otherwise. She lived in her family’s comfortable estate in the
wooded hills of North Chelsea, only a few hours’ ride from the northwest
seashores.
The prospect of
visiting the seaside was enough to delight the heart of any young man between
the ages of ten and thirty, much less one living in the middle of Chelsea’s
flatlands, but there existed a kinship between aunt and nephew deeper than a
boy’s love for running out of doors. Such a bond sprang not wholly out of the
lofty estimation of the aunt in the nephew’s eyes. Archie had somehow borrowed
her unremarkable looks in spite of being the son of her more striking sister,
and out of this came a maternal instinct towards her nephew on the spinster’s
part. What was more, she discovered early on that the lad was clever.
Their first
breakfast of this particular holiday together contained such familial
conversationalisms as characterized all their dealings.
“Darjeeling—”
“Please, Aunt, my
friends call me Archie.”
“Your friends—whom
I have yet to meet, I might point out, though I have run into one or two stupid
collegiate babes-in-arms who blithered on as if they might have some claim to
acquaintance with you—may call you what they will. I, as your aunt, have not the capacity to be so disagreeable, and
may call you ‘High Supreme Lord Darjeeling Falcon’ if I so please.”
Archie tried very
hard to look displeased and failed. He settled for stuffing his face with
marmalade and toast.
“Now, Darjeeling,
what will you do with yourself after you finish this six-year spell of trying
your wits in the company of dolts?”
Aunt Jasmine did
not think much of the current academic system, but if that had ever bothered
Archie he had come to see things her way long since. He set his teacup down
carefully and fixed his aunt with a grave stare. “Thank you,” he said at last,
before returning to his breakfast.
She did not blink.
“You are welcome, of course, though I’ll thank you not to use my honest questions
as excuses for you to play the enigma.”
Archie hastened to explain. “Thank you for
asking me what I meant to do with myself. Most people ask what I mean to do
with my degree, and I feel as though it ought to be some great, malleable
substance, which I may turn into a grand sculpture or a set of new drains. But
the depths of my organs (especially during breakfast) instinctively inform me
that my degree will be little more than a piece of paper for service, and while
I’m a dab hand at paper hats and boats neither
of those will do very well for keeping my head or my toes dry – let alone my
belly full!”
“Really, Archie,
if one didn’t know you were so clever one would think you fearfully stupid. Not
that I’m certain there’s a vast difference, mind,” she added, giving him an
ironic look over her slanted spectacles. She gave him those looks every now and
then, the sort that made him wonder if she were not fully capable of turning
him into a toad on a whim. The speculation struck him as delightful rather than
frightful. “My sister is not clever enough to be less clever, and her late
husband—God rest his soul!—had the same problem, and consequentially you felt
bound to outclever them both. Now, if I
had had the raising of you—”
“My dear aunt, if
you had raised me, you would find me insufferable. I count it one of the better
parts of my life that you did not
have a hand in my upbringing; it has made us so much the better friends.”
His aunt
contemplated the notion at the bottom of her teacup. “True,” she conceded at
last. “I shan’t pry into your future. I leave it to you to rush in where angels
fear to tread. Only tell me you don’t mean to go on dwelling in a state of
academia indefinitely. Academics are like narcotics, or perhaps the plague. If
you didn’t mean to get out sooner rather than later, I should have to disown
you, which wouldn’t put you off
terribly, but it would inconvenience me tremendously. A fate worse than
death, really,” her face grew as grave as Archie had ever seen it before: “I
would have to rewrite my will. I can’t stand the sight of my lawyer, much less
the sound; he grows more portly and dead-eyed and monologue-bound by the
century – not that Tetley & Sons isn’t a good firm, or the most lucrative
in the country. All the same, I’m glad you
did not study law.”
Archie absorbed
the statement and then selected the least irrelevant of all its contents as the
subject of his next statement: “I believe I’m graduating with a Tetley. He
studies law and complains perpetually about working for his father’s firm.”
For perhaps the
first time in his acquaintance with his aunt, she looked extremely anxious. “I
hope you’re not particularly acquainted with the boy!”
“Acquainted, but
there is little soul-sharing between us.”
“That’s a mercy,
then, for he’s certain to be a bore after a year at his father’s firm. That is
why you must never tempt me to disown you, for I don’t care to summon my lawyer
to my side ‘til after my flesh really begins to decay. And then, Darjeeling, I
fear you will have to suffer his presence, though I warn you to spend no more
time with him beyond the reading of the will. I’ve tried to make it a sprightly
document, but Tetley Sr. could make anything a frightful bore, and those things
are catching!”
“Do you mean, Aunt
Upton, that after ten minutes’ conversation I might find myself portly and
over-fond of the sound of my own voice?”
“I am quite
certain the latter is already true,” his aunt gave him a glare, the same glare
she had found effective in her youth at withering the hopes and self-confidence
of at least fifteen careless young men at once. Her nephew, she noted with not
a little pride, seemed to find the strength of such ire supremely amusing.
Still, she rallied her disgruntlement enough to add, “I don’t think there’s
ever much a chance of your being portly; the proportions of your paternal line
saw to that. Still, life is full of uncertainties.”
The conversation
was laid to rest after that, most likely due to the fact that Archie made a
point of eating two or three times his usual amount of morning feed. This did
not escape the notice of the aunt, who decided that persistent valor in the
face of an impending danger was one of his better qualities. She braced herself
for an entertaining fortnight.
October 28, 2005
Calvin comes limping into the garage door, crying pitifully, face streaked with a mixture of dirt, tears, and blood. (Churchill would be proud.) To any general assessment, he has just gotten into a big fight... one wonders what the other guy looked like.
His story?
"I sawed Greg flipping on the swing, an' I tried it, an' I did it, but oncet I falled!"
(And Ben choruses from the background: "He can do really good flips!")
I washed off his face - the bloody nose, bloody lip, bumped noggin slightly abrased - not to mention all the dirt in his mouth, nose, lips, and hair! Ah. And then he had to change his shirt, which was FILTHY disgusting...
April 09, 2007
"When you go to God in any duty, take your heart aside and say, 'O my soul, I am now engaged in the greatest work that a creature was ever employed about; I am going into the awful presence of God upon everlasting moment. O my soul, leave trifling now; be composed, be watchful, be serious; this is no common work, it is soul-work; it is for eternity; it is work which will bring forth fruit to life or death in the world to come. Pause awhile and consider your sins, your wants, your troubles; keep your thoughts awhile on these before you address yourself to duty." -Keeping the Heart
Today, I find it ironical,
that in an event I do not recall and a book I do not remember reading, two common practices (that of dealing with dirt and blood, and that of self-dialogical writing) would surface so strongly. I don't know why I kept those papers. It's kind of cool.
Then the word of the Lord came to me: "Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Like these good figs, so I will regard as good the exiles from Judah, whom I have sent away from this place to the land of the Chaldeans. I will set my eyes on them for good, and I will bring them back to this land. I will build them up, and not tear them down; I will plant them, and not pluck them up. I will give them a heart to know that I am the Lord, and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart.
-Jeremiah 24:4-7
don't stop the madness,
don't stop the chaos,
don't stop the pain inside of me:
do whatever it takes to break my heart,
and bring me to my knees.
-Tenth Avenue North-
(these paragraphs are not chronologically or necessarily connected in any way)
He looked at the little weapon, shining with all the marks
of carefully crafted deadliness. It had been gifted him when he took his oath
as an inspector, and he had sworn to use it in the service of bringing
criminals to justice. “I have taken vows to my King, Inspector," he said a
little hoarsely, and the words (though certainly true) seemed to smell a little
like a long-dead thing coming from his mouth. “I am bound by duty to carry it
in the pursuit of justice, for a little longer at least.”
It was one of those mornings where, upon waking up, things
were plainly Not Quite Right. Nothing so innocuous as everything being Totally
Wrong - just the slight off-set to the way things Ought To Be, like a sentence
that presents an otherwise grammatically correct front amidst a blur of
Moderately Unsettling Misapplication of Otherwise Acceptable Standards of
Grammar. Even when Nurse poured the milk into Lady Jane’s tea, though she
poured exactly the proper amount and neither a drop more nor less, she seemed
to be pouring it backwards. The perplexing indefiniteness of the Not Quite
Right state of things only contributed to the state of things, and by the time
half-ten had come Jane was beside herself with that worst sort of anxiety that
knows neither cause nor effect, but does quite well at being there nonetheless.
She gave him a look in her good-natured manner of disapproval. “I’m glad you didn’t rush to my rescue,” the reply conveyed not a little relief. “Such a scheme, if it didn’t get all the wrong people killed, would at
least have certainly gone straight to your head—which would have been an unhappy
ending enough for any night.” And then, quite unexpectedly, she buried her face
into the lapels of his coat (which she was somehow now wearing) and began to
cry.
"A sentence is but a cheveril glove to a good wit;
how quickly the wrong side may be turned outward!"
-Twelfth Night-
Clever, clever. I know.
There is a part of me that is inclined to dispute that such a thing as writer's block exists at all - or at least, that it is a phrase tossed around too often without any clear meaning. It seems doubtful whether or not that part of a person which makes them a writer (if such a part exists, and one is not merely writer) can be somehow temporarily cut off from functioning. If I may tediously make an analogy, the mark of the mother is her deeply-rooted share in the affairs of her household and its members, and though the household would surely fall apart if the functional acts of caring for the house and its occupants did not take place, she does not cease to be a mother when she sits down for five minutes' rest.
Similarly, I suspect that what makes one person a writer has more to do with his share in the literary and less to do with the actual, functional part of setting words onto paper. The latter is important, of course, but it is not complete. Back to the tedious analogy, one does not say a woman has "mother's block" in those moments when she is too disorganized and weary to decide what needs to be done next. One may say that she is being lazy, or that she does not possess the skills to maintain her home, but those are very different things than saying that she is "blocked." Put in those terms, the idea of a "block" seems a very passive sort of excuse.
(Here one gets a little too close to treading on one's own toes for comfort... )
Taking the role of writer to mean something closer to one who has an appetite for words literarily set to paper than one who has an appetite for literally setting words to paper, I then suspect that nine times out of ten when the word "blocked" leaves my mouth, it is not only a passive excuse but something unduly blamed. If a writer has merely ceased to produce words, it does not necessarily follow that a full block has set in. Now, if a writer ceases to write and read, and simply mucks about in a stew of mediocre thoughts and reality television, then I suppose he may fairly refer to his whole writing self as effectively blocked. But, once again, a little change in habits will quickly fix that, without trusting to the return of fickle inspiration. He may turn off the television and begin to read again, trusting that his appetite will return shortly.
I fear I have set my thoughts toward a conclusion on my Unwritingness that is more to my own shame than anyone else's. I have read, but I have little more to show in writing from the last three months than a few scraps of sentences far-flung among my many battered notebooks. And yet I have not simply been too busy to look at my sundry Word documents of ill-promise; I can recall several instances over the last few weeks, at least, where I spent quantities time scrolling through them and ... for what?
Pecking without promise - that is how I would describe ventures into my stories of late. Opening a document with the intentions of scrolling to the end and moving forward, and somehow always finding myself lost in a sentence somewhere in the already-written portion, chipping away towards some ideal of perfection as if that sentence were the only sentence in the story. I have not written very much, and still I could spend hours in editing. I write, but I do not move forward; surely this is classifiably blockage.
But I have gone too far in the paragraphs beforehand to leave it at that, and I begin to think (uncomfortably) that "writer's block" is simply another name for a far less excusable condition. If I look at my so-called block, I find that lack of inspiration cannot be blamed. Too often I am unable to write because the story might not be good enough for me to have written it, and unable to read because I do not wish to be still and contemplate the fact that someone else might be God. There - behind every tale of my writer's-block woe - there it is. When I am blocked, it is merely that same unbelieving pride that felled humanity, now speaking in me: "I am only a writer when I put something forth, not when I receive." This same pride must make something of itself now, must write the story now, must not be called upon to wait and to listen. Not having something to say cannot be a divinely-granted privilege to be still and know that He is God. I must be allowed to write; I must be allowed to produce; I must be allowed to follow my Christian calling and construct something worthy of my own approval...
And I wonder if, buried in all this dissection of distasteful negativity, one might find the true calling of a Christian writer: beyond simply not writing smutty books (though this is important), and beyond even the production of excellent writing with beautiful themes of truth. I do not deny the value of clean, excellent, meaningful writing; I think I must deny its wholeness as a calling. They are but a handful of words from one sentence in a story of which I am not the author. To treat them as the most important sentence, and to spend a multitude of hours editing and re-editing my presentation of symbols and themes as though it were the summary of my calling as a Christian writer - as if I, who have been given everything that is anything, must somehow forge my own worth when it comes to my craft....
What is the job of the Christian writer? Is it not to spy the roots of unbelief and pride which (though dead) still linger in the fiber of who I am as a writer and not wall myself off from the reality of them with red herrings of a supposed "block?" Can I call myself a 'Christian' writer if in the act writing I persist in seeing falsely, forgetting that in all things literary or otherwise I am called first and foremost not to do something for God, but to revel in the works of another on my behalf, and so kill sin and love Jesus? Is this not the true calling of a Christian (writer): more than sacrifices and burnt offerings, more than dedications in the front of books naming the name of Jesus, and far more even than stories that depict Christian values and redemptive themes in an excellent manner?
In a job that is often centered on mystery and imagination and the ability to produce catchy, exciting things, it is all too easy to fall back on the folly of Digory's Uncle Andrew and proclaim that "ours, my boy, is a high and lonely destiny." Pagan writers and movie-makers, believing this, have produced plotlines exalting people with similar destinies, and these are the tales of our generation: thousands upon thousands, tributes to the bent nature of twisted selfishness and blind anarchy that seem to ever only ape greatness and never reach the mark. The self-made writer with his glorious 'Christian' calling may evade such follies in writing, but in being he joins Uncle Andrew and the pagans. What if he gains a whole book, and loses his soul?
Let us be as kind as we can. Let us take this Christian writer with his brash ideals and aspirations of Christian writing, and set him alongside the sons of Thunder, asking it be given him to sit beside Christ in glory. And then the trouble with a self-made destiny becomes clear. The flaw is not that it is too high or too lonely; rather, that our self-conceived destinies are bound too close to the earth by the weight of sin, and so too crowded by sins and miseries. We cannot be high or lonely enough. It is not within the powers of our imagination or creativity to transcend such a weight as the pride of unbelief - not when the desire to do so originates in that same pride. The Christian writer has only to bind Micah 6:8 across his forehead and about the doorposts to his heart, and then be still and know that Christ is God. Because then Jesus will certainly turn and ask if this bold scribe is ready to drink of His cup, as indeed it will be given to His own to drink: a far higher and far lonelier destiny than anything dreamed of by Uncle Andrew or the pagan storytellers or the sons of Thunder, telling the tale of foolishness that shames wisdom and weakness that shames strength.
"But indeed, words are very rascals
since bonds disgraced them."
-Shakespeare-
Do you remember the times spent in hunger,
the soul-spots that nothing could fill?
I made breakfast with my youngest brother;
he laughed when the eggs took a spill.
Do you remember the era of long nights
that churned out despair like a mill?
We used the old tales for starlight;
the bright moon was spun on a quill.
But surely you think of the grey times,
the dark, fruitless days with no sun?
I recall filling teacups with sunshine,
my dishpans as battlefields won.
Habakkuk 3:17-19
He came back.
After that brutal Friday, and that long, quiet Saturday, he came back.
These many years of waiting will only be a sentence in the story. This long day will come to an end, and I believe it will end in glory, when we will shine like suns and stride the green hills with those we love and the One who loves. We will look with our new eyes and speak with our new tongues and turn to each other and say, 'Do you remember the waiting? The long years, the bitter pain, the gnawing doubt, the relentless ache?' And like Mary at the tomb, we will say: 'I remember only the light, and the voice calling my name, and the overwhelming joy that the waiting was finally over.'
The stone will be rolled away for each of us.
May we wait with faithful hearts.
-Andrew Peterson, album insert;
photo courtesy of deviantart.com, #LaVieDeBoheme.
If you have not had the pleasure of listening to Andrew Peterson's music,
especially Resurrection Letters, Vol. II,
I strongly encourage you to do so.
You may find it and many other gems at:
“Preparing to sacrifice myself to the imbecilic causes of society,” replied Archie, his face like that of the man who discovered hope’s sepulchre. -Beginnings
Their eyes met, and he found no sympathy in the other’s gaze, only a singular earnestness and clarity of understanding. The look was like the statement that followed: “A providential stalemate, I call that. Not that there is nothing to be done about it; rather, you have no excuse for sulking.” -The Brew
“That is a novel idea—if by novel you mean no less than a hundred of them, all written by over-imaginative females and no longer selling well.” -Beginnings
“Peace in small things and small steps - not just patience, girl, but peace. You must seek it not only in the calm in a squall, but also in the soaring wings of the symphony that's meant to light up your ears when all the songs of your life clang like water torture. Not a maelstrom of emotions, nor even refuge from the same in tedium: peace. He gave it to you - entrusted it to you. If you are unhappy, it is because you have buried it when you should be spending it. That bed of dirt beneath which you have hidden it, all your sensations of normalcy and control - that is not peace. Yet peace is yours; you cannot live without it, and you cannot get it without breaking the sod of a well-ordered facade. Are you unhappy? Small wonder! You might as well bury your kidneys and then wonder why you feel wretched." -Unknown
To the solitary man trudging along the dim road, the figures of farmers and herdsmen could be seen slowly plodding from their doors, bringing their wearily blinking lanterns and offspring in tow. -Beginnings
“I do not deny that,” Falcon ran a hand across his face and flung it up in a gesture of surrender. “In my defense, I have always intended strictly—strictly—to avoid taking advantage of the situation, but what of such a defense? Can I deny that by such intentions I have very effectively gone about paving a road to the very hell of hells? I cannot, nor would I. A fool I may be; better a fool than a coward ingrown on a diet of lies.” -The Brew
His schedule he kept meticulous; his living quarters could not have looked more untidy if the four walls were removed and their contents deposited haphazardly in an alley. The person who rented him the room regularly wondered if the latter event might not constitute an improvement. -Beginnings
“How does one know one’s mind in these things?” The words, finding no suitable exit point through ink, burst from his mouth as he flung the pen across the dismal blank page of half-an-hour’s struggle. “I do not mean that I do not know what I want; I know that perfectly well, with maddening specificity. But to know my wants; that is, to know not only what objects they turn towards but also the comparative rightness or wrongness of the same, whether in them I am deceived or perverse – to weigh them in such a balance with accuracy before action – that is another thing.” -The Brew
“You speak very surely of divine whatevers.” -The Brew
And so Archie walked and let the lad ramble on about his girl and his girl’s frightful father and the rigmarole of their courtship. The perpetually plaintive edge to the other’s voice rubbed Archie quite the wrong way, and he began to progress beyond mild irritation to genuine dislike. ‘I shall wring his neck presently if he does not stop for air soon,’ he thought after a desperate quarter of an hour, but his own courtesy and the gradually accumulating lack of breath on Teddy’s part interceded for a peaceful ending, and Archie found himself clapping his unsullied hands together and saying to a thoroughly living Teddy, with a carelessness that betrayed nothing of the relief he felt, “Look, there’s the college church ahead of us. Good old Belleek, I say!” -Beginnings
“It's your damned pride. No, don't flinch; I'm swearing truly, not vainly. You can ignore what I say in a fussy mock-up of scruples over my language, or you can be instructed by it. Your pride is damned - either it was crucified two thousand years ago and you will keep on killing it, or it lives with you and is waiting to be damned with you. Either way, it's your damned pride, and it's got to go. Take it off, with all your frugal morals and petty expectations. They don't suit you now, and they certainly won't wear well in eternity. You must learn to dress for that, you know, and of course it can't be with your own things - that's why the damned Pride has to go.” -Unknown
The only stop where he did not get off was Derby, and that from principle. Derby housed Belleek’s rival college, and while Archie did not care much about the rivalry he was fond of his few irrational scruples, as some men are fond of cigars. So he spent the time on the train with his upturned nose in a third-rate paper, amusing himself with the state of politics among the ignorant. -Beginnings
Currently Writing:
Summary: A raggle-taggle tale of... something. Romance, children's fairy tales, and the misadventures of a detective all thrown together into one cup. Let steep 3-5 minutes. Cream and sugar, according to taste.
Progress: 22,346 words
Status: In-Progress
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