Not gonna lie . . .

             . . . this was a little tough. I simply had trouble getting through it and understand it. Maybe some of the sudden and unusual changes in time and situation threw me off. I read the story once threw, rereading a lot as I went (out of necessity), then I skimmed throw it once again, then I Googled the SparkNotes for it, which revealed a ton of things I hadn’t considered. But, rather than discuss what SN had to say about it, I’ll look at the three things that stood out to me.

            First, our unnamed narrator thinks, “It was what I was thinking and so it seemed to me he had no right to say it.” As brief as this is, and how far from pivotal to the story it may be, it jumped out at me. It hit me as an insight of something that I experience, but never noticed. I love when a text describes something I thought was unique to me, or was something I couldn’t express. But I’ve felt this way before.

            Second, similar in brevity, “My trouble made his real.” That’s neat. Forced sympathy. I mean, people can say they are sympathetic or feel sympathetic, but is being sympathetic different from feeling sympathetic? A lot of this story has ties to not understanding someone else, or feeling for them.

            Third, and this is probably most relevant as it pertains more the overall story: Music. I think that’s the key here, but I can’t explain how or why. Sonny wants to be a Jazz musician, and his dream isn’t without obstacles. But his visible struggles while playing piano at the bar change his brother’s perspective. The whole music scene was pretty cool, actually. The way music is described as communication is cool. And I can really relate to the contrast sensations between the performer and the listener. I’m confident that very few people, if any, will ever really feel the things I feel when I play music. Sure, other musicians feel equally high, but I mean to say that I couldn’t feel the things they feel either.

            I feel that I currently have little to contribute to discussion, but I’m absolutely stoked to hear the dialogue about this story, so I can get some literary clarity on it. I’m sure I’ll understand more of it quickly, and be able to jump in soon, but I’m a little off at the moment, I feel.

House of Cards

            I went to the Lakeview, Roselawn and Tiger Flowers cemetery complex for this fieldtrip, and I stayed there for some time, although I am not sure if it was quite 40 minutes or more as I was focused on my surroundings.

            I went to the graveyard at night, simply because thoughts seem louder in the dark. I figured the graveyard would feel a little bit eerie, but not much more. But, the very moment I started to look around, it really sunk it that all of these people have massively complex stories. They likely all left people behind when they died. Many of them are in Hell. Many people still alive are letting their memories agonize them.

            The most direct tie I made between the cemetery and A Grief Observed was the fading of memories, or the symbolic replacement of a person. The tombstones had small snippets and excerpts of a life on them. Assuming I die before Christ returns, I will one day have a symbolic stand to mark my life as well. Wild.

            In the last two chapters of the Lewis writing, several things hit me hard. Two things hit me the most. First were the painful requirements of God’s goodness. If God does not purify us by fire, He is not good. Suffering is the only legitimate way to become better. Like Lewis said, if He were not wholly good, He may relent before we are made into what we need to be. Praise God for His goodness, but fear Him for what it implies!

            Second was the house of cards illustration Lewis kept using. I believe my entire Christian faith is a flimsy and potentially useless in its current state. Why do I believe what I believe? Do I bend Scripture to mean what I think it means? Do I take the great commission of Christ seriously? Am I absolutely, completely and wholly wasting my life in a house of card while I ignorantly and arrogantly beg for God to knock me down? I’m afraid to consider these questions, and my fear gives me the answers.

            How terrifying is it to ask, but I do: God, please tear down my house of cards. Destroy whatever I’m allowing to hinder me from serving You as fully as You wish. Indeed, it is simple to ask for all the suffering and pain I need to become a new man, but it is much simpler to spend my life fighting the effects of the answered prayer, and resisting the call. Further I beg that I respond. I have no will to do this of my own, so I ask: Tear me down. Completely and seriously. Then give me the wisdom and bravery to be built up in you.

            

Woah.

            Absolutely phenomenal.

            Perhaps I’m not well read enough to judge, but I would venture to say C.S. Lewis is my favorite author, so I went into this reading with a great deal of interest and anticipation. Although it was not assigned, I read the foreword and introduction in addition to the first two chapters. This was a great help to me.

            Even in the foreword and introduction I found things I wanted to write about. Then, digging into Lewis’ own thoughts, nearly every page contained a message or quote that surpassed the one before it in its profoundness. The biggest struggle of this blog was how to avoid writing an extremely thorough essay. I could dialogue for longer than I choose to determine about this.

            For me, I suppose then it would be best to try and look at the biggest possible picture of what the text says then decide if I can find something more specific to write of. To scour the writing for all that struck me would consume far more time than I’m afraid I can spare. Maybe the best will remain in the front of my mind.

            Enough riffraff.

            Lewis is writing cathartically. This is something that I absolutely love to do. When I get confused or hurt about something, I write. I write, I think, and I dialogue. Indeed, writing, thinking, and dialogue fuel one another and lead to great discoveries, but I think writing might be my favorite. Lewis writes splendidly, and dialogues with himself to an extreme degree throughout the text, and it’s clear that he’s thinking. My personal experience with fleshing out hard issues through writing allowed me a glimpse into his despair, I feel.

            Still, I think one of the most haunting things about this reading is my realization that my glimpse into his despair is hardly even a glimpse. I felt a strange mix of desires as I struggled to empathize with Lewis. On one hand, I hope to one day suffer deeply so that I might fathom the heart of this man. But, on the other hand, if I understand him correctly, first hand comprehension is a dangerously high price. I don’t think I can hardly scratch the surface of a true understanding of his pain, and as much as I would like to, I don’t think I would like to.

            In regard to more specific thoughts . . .

            How true is it that our nearest and dearest are so easily forgotten? To try and create a clear mental picture of the ones I love most dearly becomes more difficult the longer I look at it. Just as Lewis says, it changes. I have the reality of these people around me to snap their image back into focus, but he didn’t. He had pictures yes, but as he says, no picture can ever capture a person.

           Honestly, linking this to another text we’ve read seems too easy. If you want grief, look at the book Joel. People are weeping and wailing at the blood, fire, smoke, darkness, and death all around. War is raging, the heavens are trembling. And it’s vividly painted, allowing us almost to observe it. How much more of an observed grief could you ask for? Still, I wonder how Lewis would have compared his own grief to the grief of Joel’s text. Would he have seen his grief as greater? Would have intellectually acknowledge the pain in Joel to be equal or greater, but willingly irrationally decided his was worse?  Would he have consider his less?

            Now, this is weird . . . I don’t do this often. But I feel a poem may be a better expression for my overall reaction, which I labor to articulate.

I inquire thus, not to taunt and boast, but for a taste of relief:

O, death, where is your sting? O, grief, where is yours?

Among the trials and pain in life, I consider this question chief.

What burning pain I feel from all sides, but cannot grasp.

What bitter facet of grief and death holds me tightest?

I escape the clutch of other pain, but I cannot this clasp.

Will one day I fathom truth about the life that ends?

I pray, God, not. I fear I would not stand against it.

Still, perhaps love is what the painful message sends.

Joel's painting

"Weep" "Wail" "A day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness" "The stars lose their brightness" "The sun will be turned into darkness and the moon into blood"

Painting

A blog about beautiful book's words being observed

     One might wonder what makes a literary work sound beautiful. After our last class period I was excited to write this blog because I felt like I really learned quite a bit. Or, more accurately, the little I learned was relatively profound.
     I have quite a bit of experience with rhyme, alliteration, consonance, assonance, and rhythm. As a songwriter, I’ve been playing around with these for years, and now I’m excited to be more aware of them as I write. I went back and read the lyrics from some of my songs, playing closer attention to these traits of spoken words, and found quite a few surprising instances. I won’t post my lyrics here and fill up the word count, but I will say, one of my songs had the i sound (both long and short) 29 times in a 63 word chorus. And I had never even noticed it until I was looking for it! And it’s one of my favorite choruses that I’ve written, so I wouldn’t hesitate to say that there’s a strong link there.
     Looking back at the book of Joel, I’m astounded by how many of these styles of writing are crammed into all of the lines (although not as much rhyme, but perhaps it was lost in translation). I find it interesting that while the whole book is full of repetition and variation, the parts that seem to hold the most, are the parts that I highlighted. Apparently the system works.
     I didn’t want to write a blog and fill it with passages from the book, but one captivates me enough to include it. “A day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness . . .” Oh, my goodness. I love this line. The repetition is obvious, but the picture painted is neat as well. This scene may not be appealing to everyone, but I feel physically relaxed when I imagine it. I despise sunny days if I’m not in the water, or if it’s not cool outside. I much prefer dark gloomy days, because for some reason I’m absurdly productive and creative on those days. This passage is beautiful to me in how it sounds and what it describes. I imagine some people, if not most, prefer sunny days, which makes feel like the beauty of this passage may be subjective. Subjective beauty in poetry . . . That’s an interesting thought in itself.
　
　
　
　
     Seeking sounds of similarity is surprisingly pleasing, but still not as amusing as squeezing out my own, however strained they are. =]

The Beauty of Joel

            Before I share my thoughts, I must note something (which is a thought, I suppose). As readers, we were told to look for the "beauty" in Joel. Many of the passages that sounded beautiful aloud, were not actually beautiful passages. For example, "Awake, drunkards, and weep." is quite an undesirable image, but I consider it beautiful. Arguably, all things in Scripture are God's revelation, and God's revelation is perfect, and perfection is beautiful, but that isn't a flawless argument. What I would argue is that the ugly can be beautiful in its own way, perhaps by its potential contrasting, or its piece in a beautiful story. You will likely be disappointed if you ask me for more details, because I’ve not yet thought of a more eloquent way to express the point.

            Most of what I found to be beautiful was destruction. The wailing and weeping at the grand scale of horrors befalling the victims of wrath of God, an invading nation with teeth and fangs like lions, days of darkness and gloom. It’s difficult to narrow down what paints the most amazingly vivid pictures. Joel relates images, sounds, physical feelings, and more. A moon of blood, the King of Kings uttering truth, a quaking world. The description is almost overwhelming.

            But, what is most beautiful of all? Salvation: “. . . the heavens and earth tremble, but the LORD is a refuge for His people.” Ah, there it is. What is a refuge in a world of serenity and peace? Not beautiful. What is a refuge in a world of occasional sorrows and pain? Occasionally beautiful. What is a refuge in a Joel’s world of pure, unadulterated, all-pervasive, all-consuming terror, fear, death, and agony? Perfectly beautiful.

            I believe there is a great deal of beauty in the terror Joel paints in this story. However, the truest beauty, the beauty of the saving love, can only be fully admired in what seems to be the ugliest of scenarios. And that makes the hideous beautiful.

Rose covered bees.

            A Story about the Body cracked me up. I had absolutely no idea what I was getting into based on the headnote, so I was expecting a more “normal” story. As I read, I was enjoying the unique flavors in the story, especially since the author fit them into such a short story. I was even intrigued up to and through the double mastectomy, but once I got to the bowl of dead bees covered in rose petals, I found my face locked into a perplexed expression for a few minutes, even after I finished reading.

            I read the story to my friend, and he jested, “I feel like there’s gotta be some big moral. Is a bowl of roses, but it’s really just bees! Ya know? You see it, and it’s like, ‘Hey, sweet. Roses.’ but it’s really BEES!”

            I’m not sure if he quite hit the nail on the head, but it did make me think of the various sugar-coated things in the story: The bowl of bees covered in rose petals was clearly a well-thought out message from this woman. But what was she paralleling? Perhaps she considers this a satirical mirror to his behavior. Maybe she was enjoying his company, like roses, but when he walked away when he saw who she truly was, it stung like bees, revealing who he really was. I can see how he could disagree with her point of view. Obviously, since she had to forewarn him of her double mastectomy, her appearance was deceiving. Maybe he only thinks of her true image as the bees, and her façade as the rose petals.

            Upon further inspection, the headnote says Hass like to write and think about “the fullness and emptiness of things.” This is interesting, as it doesn’t take a very great stretch to see how all of these things are “empty” and “full.”

            I was captivated by both of these stories, and although they were both absolutely bizarre.

To The Grievous Denouement

            If anyone had been paying attention, fish could have been seen lazily leaping from the water to snatch a bug out of the air. The curvy stream would have appeared so tranquil that the only tell of its steadily flowing waters would have been how it broke into white bubbles around the gray rocks at its edge. Thick trees on one side of the bank kept the distant horizon out of sight, and bright orange flowers popped out of the water’s edge in contrast to the darker greens and browns of the other foliage. The scene would have been relaxing—if anyone had been paying attention.

            But Job was not paying attention to any of those things. What captured his attention was his throbbing headache and ringing ears. Every time he wiped away the blood rolling down his face, he would look at his red hand in disbelief before cleaning it on his shirt. The airbag had done its job of protecting his head from blunt impact with the steering wheel and left him instead with tender friction burns on his face. Ironically, his bleeding forehead came from edge of his car’s roof, a credit to his haste to escape the vehicle in his confusion immediately following the crash. The cracked radiator drooled its fluid onto the hot engine block, releasing curls of steam from beneath the now crumpled hood. The stinging smell of vaporized coolant is what captured Job’s attention.

            Job had spent a few minutes catching his breath and coming back to his senses before calling emergency services. Now he sat on a large boulder underneath the same tree he had just wrapped his red truck around. Though his feet rested flat on the ground, his elbows on his knees, and his face in his hands, he was not at rest. He took his face out of his hands, and replaced it with his chin. He looked at his vehicle and tried to convince himself that his life was not over. “At least I’m still alive,” he told himself. He couldn’t bear to keep looking at the mangled truck he had so suddenly introduced to the only tree along the roadside. He glanced down at his blue jeans and tan boots, covered in dirt from the day’s construction work. His plain white T-shirt was now smeared with blood in addition to the usual dust and dirt.

            The sirens of emergency response vehicles came faintly into hearing range, and Job tried to reassure himself, “No worries. No worries. It happens to the best of us. My life is worth more than this truck. This is just a lesson learned. I’ll never text and drive again.” He felt sick, but tried to remain relatively composed. He stood up suddenly to take a deeper breath, leaned his head back, and drummed on his thighs as he paced in small circles. The sirens remained faint in the distance. His phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out and looked to see who was calling. It was his fiancée, Sarah. He took another deep breath. Talking to Sarah was lately bittersweet for Job. He loved her, but not exclusively. Recently, he had been spending time with another woman, Madison, and he had been questioning his feelings towards both girls. He took another deep breath and flipped his phone open, “Hello?”

            “Job, where are you? Are you not taking me seriously?” Sarah asked in an irritated tone.

            “No, I’m sorry, I am. It’s just that—and please, don’t be too alarmed—it’s just that I had an accident in the truck on the way over, and I’m not sure I can make it anytime soon.”

            “Are you kidding me?” she snapped. “You have no idea how serious I am, do you? You think I’m kidding. You think this is the time to make up some bullcrap response about why you aren’t showing up? You’re probably just with that Madison whore, aren’t you?”

            Job sighed. Sarah knew about his friendship with Madison, but not his promiscuous behavior with her. She didn’t like Madison as it was, and Job certainly didn’t relish the thought of her discovering the truth about their relationship. She wasn’t sure, but she figured accepting his recent marriage proposal would be enough to ensure Madison would be out of the picture. Lately though, she felt like even engagement hadn’t been keeping the two apart.

            “Sarah, no. It’s not like that, I promise.” Job hated lying to Sarah about his faithfulness. He wasn’t sure how to go about correcting his relational problems. After all, he was in love with two women and the only thing causing him a problem was their jealousy. Job liked to think of jealousy as his biggest pet peeve. “I couldn’t be more serious, Love. I know we’ve been going through a rough patch, but I would never lie to you about something like this.”

            “Whatever, Job. Don’t even. You’re such a hypocrite. I saw David one time, like, a year ago. You freaked out, Job. But now you seem to think it’s a free ticket to screw around.” Sarah hung up before Job could respond. She liked to think of hypocrisy as her biggest pet peeve.

            He took another deep breath and leaned his head back in frustration, letting his arm drop from his ear to his side. When Sarah and Job had started dating a little over a year ago, Sarah had spent the night with her old boyfriend, David. Job had become hysterical when he found out about it, threatening David’s life. It took Sarah several weeks of effort to quell Job’s resentment and reassure him of the loyalty of her love. This event had played a large part in Job’s hatred of jealousy. When he thought about his response to Sarah’s infidelity, justified or not, he didn’t like how he had acted.

            The sirens were getting closer now—too loud to allow a proper phone call—but Job didn’t consider that as he tried to call Sarah back several times. Sarah wouldn’t answer the phone.

            Job refocused his eyes to study the emergency vehicles, now coming into clearer sight down the road. As he listened to Sarah’s voicemail message once again, he noticed that there were no other trees visible near the road in either direction. He dropped the phone back into his pocket. He had been texting with Madison during the drive to Sarah’s, and found it beyond upsetting that he had managed to drift off the road into the only menacing tree for miles.

            The ambulance pulled up to the scene, and produced a man who appeared to be the same age as Job, maybe 28, with an emergency first aid kit. Job sat back down on the boulder as the EMT approached. He introduced himself, quickly asked Job about any symptoms he might have been experiencing, and began to clean the wound on his head. A police officer pulled in next to the ambulance, but instead of getting out, kept his engine running as he made a phone call from inside the vehicle.

            “Well, I must say, you did a good job of catching the only tree out here.” The EMT needled, as he started wrapping Job’s head in a bandage.

            “Yeah, thanks,” Job said. “I was just thinking about that myself.” He felt his phone vibrate. He quickly pulled it out, hoping it was a call from Sarah, but it was not. Madison had sent him a text message. Job hadn’t finished the last message he was writing to her because of his encounter with the tree. He had asked her if she would be free later that night. She had told him that she wouldn’t. He opened the new message but had to read it several times for it to register, “Actually, Job . . . I don’t think we should hang out for a while. Maybe ever again.” Madison’s words seemed unreal to him. He wanted to hang his head in frustration, but the EMT hadn’t quite finished dressing his wound.

            He hadn’t been sure what to do with his relationships lately. He loved Sarah, and he did want to marry her, but he loved Madison, too. Sarah seemed to love him back but always accused him of seeing other women, especially Madison. He had finally become frustrated with these accusations, especially since they were accurate, and decided to propose to Sarah, hoping it would terminate her obnoxious suspicion. Madison wrote him again before he could think of how to respond, “I’ve been seeing another guy. Don’t text me again. Sorry.”

            “That should do it. Hang tight for just a minute.” The EMT’s words brought Job’s focus back to the bandage now tightly wrapped around his head. The paramedic peeled the blue latex gloves off of his hands, clicked his first aid kit shut, and walked back to the ambulance. Job reached up and felt his bandaged head. His fingers traced down his face and ran through his thin brown beard, no longer wet with blood. He looked up at his truck once again.

            “No,” he said to himself, “no, this can’t be happening to me. Madison and my truck at once? I need to talk to Sarah.” Job felt as though he was losing his composure. His heart began to beat faster, and he felt a rush of sickness pass through his body. He tried to control his breathing and reason with himself. He finally decided that if he had been having trouble by loving two women, then Madison’s disloyalty was simply the hand of fate pushing him towards Sarah. He was, after all, engaged to her. He felt more confident as he tried to convince himself that this only seemed so bad because it was stacked on top of his wrecked vehicle. If Sarah wouldn’t answer the phone, he would text her. He would tell her the truth about everything. He was done playing around. Maybe the crashes with his truck and with Madison were just what he needed to check him back into reality. He looked back down to his phone and wrote Sarah a message that spanned several individual texts, “Sarah. I love you. I need to tell you how sorry I am. I had been seeing Madison for a while, but we’re done for good. I know it may be hard for you to believe me, but I swear. I’ll never be able to love anyone but you. I really did crash my truck, and I’m sorry I couldn’t make it over right away, but I’m more sure than ever that I will spend the rest of my life with you.” As Job sent the message, he felt his heart slow down as relaxation washed over him.

            He stood up, feeling strangely relieved. Looking down, he chuckled at his situation and kicked a pebble. It scooted several feet away. He slowly meandered toward it and kicked it again. Sarah really was the girl for him. For the first time, rather than acting sorry about Madison, he was sorry. He caught up to the pebble again, now outside the shadow cast by the wounded tree. He kicked it again, a little harder this time, and watched it fly through the air and land in a nearby stream. The pebble made a satisfying “ploop” sound as the water catered to its arrival. Job put both hands in his pockets and walked to the water’s edge. He felt a sense of symbolic awe with his ruined truck behind him, and such a beautiful scene in front of him. He surveyed the bright orange flowers, popping with contrast out of the darker greens and browns of the other foliage. He felt as carefree as the fish leaping out of the water. His truck didn’t matter. His head didn’t matter. Madison didn’t matter. He had Sarah, and that was all that mattered to him. His phone vibrated again. Sarah had sent him another text, “Don’t be sorry. We needed to talk. I’m with David . . .”

            His phone made an equally satisfying “ploop.”

Oh, Sanjeev.

            Sanjeev is a 33-year-old graduate from MIT, where he studied engineering. His height is nothing unusual, his cheeks carry more fat than he would like, though his build was average, and his eyelashes are long—both features he isn’t overly fond of. His parents had arranged for him to be introduced to his now wife, only four months ago. They beseeched him to marry her, and he consented. Now, moving into to a condominium with his wife, he is struggling to determine just how he feels about her. Certainly their parents had played a major role in the two of them marrying so quickly, but it was hardly arranged, and the proposal had been out of his own free will, however strongly influenced.

            Sanjeev works at a firm where he has his own secretary, as well as a dozen employees working under his supervision. In fact, he is currently being considered for the position of vice-president. With such prestige surrounding his working position, and his extreme concern for how people feel about his appearance and the appearance of his house, we can assume that Sanjeev rarely dresses too casual. Further, Sanjeev likes fine music, and he enjoys reading the liner music along with it. This, as a generalization, also indicates a person of distinguished style.

            From this story, much can be inferred about Sanjeev. Nearly every action and statement could be analyzed to tell us something of his psychology, but rather than this, I find it more important to point out a few of his more prominent traits:

            • Pragmatism: Sanjeev doesn’t see much sense in the useless, although he is biased in his definition of what is useless from time to time. His pragmatism is seen throughout the story, but one example is when Twinkle finds the vinegar with the statue of Jesus, he doesn’t have much to say besides the obvious and logical things from his position: Check the expiration date, and throw the statue out. He isn’t interested in examining the statue for himself, nor is he excited by the unexpected acquisition of vinegar.

            • Compassion: Sanjeev can certainly be cold or harsh in how he feels about things. But, when he is upset, he usually keeps his calm. For example, when he told Twinkle he was going to trash her Virgin statue, he did so very calmly, and only after he took a breath to calm himself. After he upsets Twinkle, he is so upset with himself that he actually feels physically ill.

            • Precision: Sanjeev is an engineer, and the type of guy to mark unpainted spots with post-it notes. It seems safe to assume that he is a precise man.

            • Calmness: As described in “Compassion,” solidified in “Tolerance.”

            • Tolerance: Sanjeev is irritated greatly, and by a great number of things, but he does well at keeping his composure. At one point, a snarl from Sanjeev is described as unfamiliar.

            Sanjeeev makes it very clearly known that he is not a Christian. I imagine this means he holds dearly to his Hindu faith, and it likely influences his behaviors. Still, in addition to his engineer’s mindset, I believe one thing influences his behaviors most of all: The opinions of others. There are a plethora of examples in this story where Sanjeev demonstrates concern, arguably insecurity, about how other people view him.

            In an interesting contrast, he seems to feels a bit superior to others, considering himself more logical and efficient. He shows a very interesting mix of attitudes towards others from irritation to caring.

            One of the most important flavors of the story is love (isn’t it always?). Sanjeev wonders about his own love for Twinkle, and the definition of love in the first place. Twinkle is beautiful, and he claims to love her, but he wonders who he is reassuring when he says, “I love you.” There are a lot of clashes between the two, even minor ones: Sanjeev want a wife that can cook an impressive meal for him and for company; Twinkle makes a meal haphazardly and isn’t even sure how much vinegar she used. Sanjeev can’t stand the “senseless” Christian artifacts cluttering up his home; Twinkle seem enchanted by them. Still, my guess is that the Sanjeev doesn’t love Twinkle, but his unconscious awareness that he is falling in love with her, but confuses and astounds him.

            I could sift a great deal of other things out of this story, but I won’t. The most difficult part of this was keeping it small. I can make assumptions about nearly every sentence here, but that would result in a blog significantly longer than the story itself, and that doesn’t seem prudent.