Train Ride to Encinitas

I'm on a train back to school.  High fog veils the sun, making delicate the way it spreads out over the water.  When the fog is high like this it makes the sun a drop of white-gold watercolor, seeping outward and melding into the clouds so that you know about where it is but not where exactly.  I'd like to paint that sun.  I'd like to paint the ocean.  I sit here sipping on tea and wondering how I will manage to paint the ocean.  The ocean is grey but it is the type of grey which is composed of a thousand shades of blue and ivory.  It's the ocean which reminds one not of summer and sandwiches but of seagulls and long skirts in the wind and holding hands.  I'm enjoying the tea but want to get off this train and run down to the water.  I want to call my friends and tell them to go to the water, because the day is beautiful and I'd like to give them a beautiful day.  I fell asleep at the station and dreamt that one of them traveled with me.  I almost wish he did, because he loves the sky and the water as much as I do.

Christmas Cups at Starbucks

I'm at a Starbucks in Encinitas right now, and I can't write too long because I'm supposed to be writing a story.  Funny how that's so difficult when there's a deadline (even a loose one) attached.

It used to annoy me when Christmas stuff popped up too early.  I always felt like it diminished my the excitement over decorations in late December when they'd been up since mid-October.  But today is the fourth of November, and my coffee is in one of those little red and white Starbucks cups.  When I saw the barista pick it up I wondered if stifling tears would be necessary.

Always I'm excited about Christmas.  For any of you who have seen the movie Prancer, Jessie's character all but IS me as a child.  I'm not rushing Christmas along this year; I hope it takes its time so I can celebrate it longer.  I don't even want to skip Thanksgiving.  I adore Thanksgiving--for some reason beginning to sing carols in November doesn't feel like it will damage Thanksgiving, like I always felt it would before.

Perhaps I'm more excited because home is rather far away and I'll be there come Christmas.  I do miss home, but not in a longing and sad sort of way.  I miss home in a way that makes me confident.  Home is right there.

There's a joke with my friends at school (specifically those who are over most every night) that we're all a family.  That's hardly a joke; the joke bit lies in our family name: Sheenerstapenkolousmansson. Obviously that's a fusion of our last names.  The 'ner' is me.  The friends who don't spend every single night at our house are the cousins with their own name which I can't remember perfectly at the moment.  I only got the other name by copying it out of a facebook conversation.  Needless to say, I've made some wonderful friends here.  I've only known them about two months and wonder if I'm forcing attachment, but I truly don't think so.  They're the type of friends I simply cannot imagine losing.  I pray I'm a good enough friend to never lose any of them, even through distance.  For any of you who remember this post, I definitely made the right choice.  I can't imagine being anywhere else.

Maybe I'm so excited about Christmas because we've never had a Christmas together.  Most of them have, but I haven't with any of them!

(Sidenote: suddenly I'm the only customer in this Starbucks.  It's kinda creeping me out.)

Whatever it is, I'm excited.  More than excited.  Have you ever gotten that weird feeling in your chest?  It's excited and almost euphoric, somehow both heavy and weightless, and even though you're so happy you almost feel a little unwell.  It nearly feels like being afraid.  It's the feeling you get when for a moment someone loves you.  It's the feeling you get when walking with a friend through cold weather, but your friend isn't cold because he's wearing a scarf you made him.    

May 20, 2013: A String

That which is the most real is also the most difficult to express.  Thus it is that, throughout history, artists of every sort have asked one question over and over and over again: what is reality?  Tangible things are hardly real at all, or, if they are real, it is only in a weak, helpless, whining sense of reality.  Who is to say that the eyes and the hands are trustworthy?  Sight and touch are but mere symbols.  What the artist needs is rapture--rapture, passion, revelation--this is the true reality.  

It is a shame that William Wordsworth is read as a Romantic poet.  Yet the shame does not lie in his romance--only in that he is nothing more than a Romantic.  A well known truth of higher knowledge is that, in order to achieve deeper learning in any field, one must first break down all barriers between oneself and the thing to be studied.  Barriers, though they are often built from prejudice and cowardice and stone, are not always.  They can be nothing more than unconscious assumptions.  They can be good, useful tools of categorization.  But, still, they are barriers.  What if, for a moment, one were to forget that William Wordsworth lived and wrote and even embodied the Romantic period of nineteenth century England?  For the “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” concretize more than a romantic grocery list.  Yes, there is the beauty and innocence of childhood.  Yes, there is the gentle, praiseworthy spirit of nature.  Yes the intense individuality, and yes the glorified feeling, and yes the quest for perfect serenity; but was Wordsworth this only?

What if “Tintern Abbey” were cracked out of its Romantic box, and set against something a little colder?  It would probably freeze at the edge of Realism, unless carefully, carefully a single work is

pulled out and coupled with it.  The temperatures could blend and mitigate, then.  If one pushes all Realism aside except for a solitary work, then he might just find a bit of purity, even Romantic purity, buried in the cold.  A white Pomeranian, for example.  

Then he moves further still.  He stumbles back upon hitting twentieth century Modernism--surely there is no romance here.  There are no eyes here.  

Never, never can a string be found which weaves through them all.  Never a string strong through William Wordsworth and strong through Anton Chekhov and strong through T. S. Eliot.  Never while the boxes remain intact, at least.  But what were these men searching for?  What were they trying to express?  There’s a reason the humanity of today reaches for classic literature when he needs to feel understood.

Reality.  Where, what, how is reality?  

         Until, the breath of this corporeal frame

         And even the motion of our human blood

         Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:

         While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,

         We see into the life of things.

Thus says William Wordsworth in “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” (Lawall 696-697).  

“The greater part of one’s time and energy went on business that was no use to anyone, and on discussing the same thing over and over again, and there was nothing to show for it all but a stunted, earthbound existence and a round of trivialities, and there was nowhere to escape to, you might as well be in a madhouse or a convict settlement” (Lawall 1498).  Thus says Anton Chekhov in “The Lady with the Dog.”

         The eyes are not here

         There are no eyes here

         In this valley of dying stars

         In this hollow valley

         This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms           

         Thus says T. S. Eliot in “The Hollow Men” (Lawall 2020).      

Is yet the string apparent?  Perhaps not at first glance.  Reality is among all things most static--most constant and reliable.  But then again, reality is among all things most transient.  Is the string tying together these great men the reality itself, or only the search and thirst for reality?

         And I have felt

         A presence that disturbs me with the joy

         Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

         Of something far more deeply interfused,

         Whose dwelling is in the light of setting suns,

         And round the ocean and the living air,

         And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:

         A motion and a spirit, that impels

         All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

         And rolls through all things  

         (Lawall 697-698).

“Tintern Abbey” is not a poem simply about nature.  It is about the soul of nature, which, for Wordsworth, is reality, or at least as close to reality as any human can venture.  Reality is the thing which “connect[s]/The landscape with the quiet of the sky” (Lawall 696).  Wordsworth clearly expresses that the truly real can, in the realm of tangibility, exist only in symbol.  Nature is this symbol.  Throughout the poem Wordsworth refers to the tangible world as “unintelligible,” “joyless,” and “dreary.”  This is the tangible world only, though.  This is not the essence, not the reality of humanity.  

         For I have learned

         To look on nature, not as in the hour

         Of thoughtless youth;but hearing oftentimes

         The still, sad music of humanity,

         Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power

         To chasten and subdue

         (Lawall 697).  

Humanity, at its center, is reality.  Nature symbolizes the true nature of humans, for what is more real and more inexpressible than human experience?  In the last stanza of his poem, Wordsworth turns from a general audience to a specific audience: his sister.  An ongoing debate amongst scholars is whether Wordsworth, here, is referring to his actual sister, or to nature herself.  Perhaps he speaks to both.  His sister takes on the spirit of nature--unspoilt and wild.  The true nature of humanity.  “Nature never did betray/The heart that loved her” (Lawall 698).

“Gurov told himself that, when you came to think of it, everything in the world is beautiful really, everything but our own thoughts and actions, when we lose sight of the higher aims of life, and of our dignity as human beings” (Lawall 1495).  The innate dignity of humanity: strange, how something of Realism, when presented outside of its box, sounds so Romantic.  The title of Anton Chekhov’s short story, “The Lady with the Dog,” conveys the key theme of the story: depth concealed by complacency.  Reality concealed by perceived reality.  Chekhov tells the story as if not a word of it is of any importance.  A sizable paragraph near the beginning of the story illustrates what Gurov and ‘the lady with the dog’ learn about each other throughout their first evening together.  Chekhov tells where each character is from, their personal and business relations, what each thought of the weather that day, and that they really did not care about what they talked about.  Not until the end of the paragraph does the

reader learn what should be a most vital piece of information: “Further, Gurov learned that her name was Anna Sergeyevna” (Lawall 1492).

How is humanity important, if the name of the title character is presented only as an afterthought?  Humanity, in “The Lady with the Dog,” is dead.  Reality is swallowed up by superficial reality.  “The sea had roared like this long before there was any Yalta or Oreanda, it was roaring now, and it would go on roaring, just as indifferently and hollowly when we had passed away” (Lawall 1495).  For Chekhov, humanity truly exists in those uncontrollable, undeniable emotions and longings.  It exists in that which necessitates separation from superficial, perceived reality.  Throughout the story, Anna expresses a fear that Gurov considers her “just an ordinary woman” (Lawall 1496).  Gurov tries to convince himself that Anna is ordinary.  He asks, “Had there been anything exquisite, poetic, anything instructive or even amusing about his relations with Anna Sergeyevna?” (Lawall 1497).  The answer to his question, of course, is a yes within a no.  He also asks “What on earth are all these people, this orchestra for?” (Lawall 1500).  What is it all for?  The question of reality.  Wordsworth asked the same question, but came more easily to the answer.  Chekhov’s answer comes more slowly but is, at the bottom, identical to Wordsworth’s.  Reality is that beneath the surface--that which “rolls through all things” (Lawall 698).

T. S. Eliot begins with half the answer.

         We are the hollow men

         We are the stuffed men

         Leaning together

        Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

         We whisper together

        Are quiet and meaningless

         As wind in dry glass

        Or rats’ feet over broken glass

         In our dry cellar

        (Lawall 2019).

“The Hollow Men,” by T. S. Eliot.  At first Eliot’s work appears the most abstract when set beside the writings of Wordsworth and Chekhov.  But, far from being the most abstracted, it is the most clear.  Eliot writes to ensure no mistake.  Humanity is hollow.  Man is not even real.  “Shape without form, shade without colour,/Paralysed force, gesture without motion;” (Lawall 2019).  Reality is discovered through that which does not exists--through “death’s other Kingdom” (Lawall 2019).  Near the end of the poem, Eliot begins referring to “the Shadow.”  Shadow is often perceived as false reality; one thinks of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave.”  But, in Eliot, the Shadow is the thing of importance.  It is reality.  “Between the idea and the reality...the motion and the act...the conception and the creation...the emotion and the response...the desire and the spasm...the potency and the existence...the essence and the descent/Falls the Shadow” (Lawall 2021).  

Eliot’s nightmarish Shadow falls starkly against Wordsworth’s motherly spirit.  It falls starkly

against Chekhov’s separation.  There is no separation for Eliot, just empty space.  The string, though, is clear.  It has not even frayed throughout its journey.  

For a closer association, one need only look to nature.  She is obvious in “Tintern Abbey.”  

         Once again

         Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,

         That on a wild secluded scene impress

         Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect

         The landscape with the quiet of the sky.

         (Lawall 696).

But she is still there, in “The Lady with the Dog.”  “Not a leaf stirred, the grasshoppers chirruped, and the monotonous hollow roar of the sea came up to them, speaking of peace, of the eternal sleep lying in wait for us all” (Lawall 1495).

Even in Eliot is nature apparent.  

         This is the dead land

         This is cactus land

         Here the stone images

         Are raised, here they receive

         The supplication of a dead man’s hand

         Under the twinkle of a fading star.

        (Lawall 2020).

Throughout history the question of reality has been asked, and throughout history humans have looked to nature for an answer.  Is nature the embodiment of reality?  Is nature the space between the perceived world and reality?  Is nature a symbol of the reality which does not even exist as humans understand existence?  All for the same question really.  When the boxes are broken, the string remains and grows stronger.  Strong, steel string.  Maybe that is the answer.  What is reality?  Reality is a bit of string.        

    

                                                                                                                                     

Bibliography  

   Lawall, Sarah. The Norton Anthology of Western Literature: Volume 2. New York, NY: W. W.

Norton & Company, Inc., 2006.

Just Because I Said...

I've written two of the three scholarship essays I have to finish tonight.  The first, which I thought would be my favorite, only came out okay.  The second half is all right, but the first half is lame.  Not exactly lame, but I used a style and theme I've fallen back on multiple times.  The scholarship people won't know that I've written three other nearly identical paragraphs to the one they read, but I know it and think it's lame.  I rolled my eyes at the second question.  "Is there a generation gap?  What are the differences between your and previous generations?"  Ick.  Blech.  Do I really have to write on that?!

As if to spite me, the meager forty-five minutes I dedicated to the essay produced a little piece I love.  It's rather related to the New Colossus post I just posted.  Yes, I am mocking my word-repetition-annoyance again.  Hope you enjoy this little essay!

I am rather atypical of my generation, but this seems to allow me to look more objectively at my peers.  We are told that our generation is named ‘Generation Y,’ presumably because the preceding generation was ‘Generation X.’  Once, though, a teacher told me that I was not a part of ‘Generation Y,’ but ‘Generation Why.”

I do not see much of a generation gap.  Yet I do see something: a generation slide.  I come from a family who holds education and passion as two of the highest goals to be pursued.  Education gives us structure and support.  Passion gives us meaning.  What I see as generation lands upon generation is a downward slide of desire for education and understanding of passion.

For how can we learn, if we hold no inner passion for truth?  How can we strive for what we believe in, if we are not educated enough to hold beliefs?  If we have no education and no passion then we are left with nothing but that sick and solitary question: why?

The Lost Generation gave us prose and poetry the like of which has never before or since been seen.  The Greatest Generation gave us all they could possibly give.  The Silent Generation gave us understanding of contentment.  The Baby Boomers gave us belief in prosperity and the value of a few joining ideas.  Generation X gave us belief in a few joining voices.  Then there is Generation Why.  

Why can mean “why am I here? why is it all this way? why does it never change?”  Why can also mean “why do I care? why bother?”  This second bit is dangerous.  Why do we care?  We care because the bodies around us need us to care.  Why do we bother?  We bother because one second in time can make all the difference.

Things are very bad, now.  It’s just so hard to watch.  So hard to live with.  So why are we still 

living with it? That must become the true why.  Then the question is “why are you fighting?”, and our answer 

shall be, “to save the world.”    

A Battle Cry

This is the poem on the Statue of Liberty. I'd like it to be my official battle cry.

The New Colossus

Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Rather patriotic, isn't it?  It has all been so depressing lately.  I guess I just cannot understand why we are not really like this.  It seems that our highest goal should be to help as many people as possible.  That sounds pompous.  "I have, unlike you.  I shall be charitable and help."  I don't mean that at all.  I guess it just seems that it shouldn't all be this way.  It doesn't seem right that the destitute are also the most neglected.  

Everyday you learn of someone new.  The physically and mentally disabled.  The elderly.  Foster children.  If you are helpless, we will run you into the ground and roast marshmallows as you burn.

When did it become every man for himself?  That's what makes the least sense.  Do we not understand that every footstep on the street corners, every pair of eyes staring blankly into the distance, every thinly sealed mouth is a life and soul just as real as the those we hold in ourselves?  Do we not understand that ten thousand were lost today means that ten thousand ones were lost?  That means a hundred thousand mothers, fathers, children, friends--to them one, the one, was lost.  And we move on.

What can you do, besides move on?  I don't know what to do.  I want to save the world, so I buy fair-trade coffee.  I catch a glimpse of soul, so I write a story.  I try.  I try.  But I don't know what to do.  I can't save them all.        

Wouldn't it be wonderful?  To have a lamp and a door of gold--to stand there, crying as loud as you can cry so all the world hears and all who need come running.  And you could take them all in and fix everything.  All people really need is to feel safe.  That's all.  Once you have that, you have everything.

So why have we aligned ourselves with self-service?  All for one.  You have to earn it.  How dare, how dare we command each other to earn it.  We cannot earn one second, one breath--earn it, we say, waddling along with lizards in our ears.

This Blog

Is a bit of a fail.  I enjoy writing it, but only because I get to gab about my stories.  Perhaps it would be good for me to post only finished pieces on here.  I can talk about the stories, but needn't post excerpts all the time.  I'm to the point with Dreams We Remember that I better not tell anymore!

Essays, complete short stories, an excerpt or stream-of-consciousness once in a while...the new purpose of Ink in the Rain.

Blurb on Orthodoxy and Dissertation on my Own Awkwardness

This could actually be classified as one blurb, but it is two paragraphs with two main points, so I'll label it as two.  My singular/plural sense is having a fit right now.  The first paragraph is an attempt to concisely explain why I am Orthodox.  Often I say, "my church is amazing," but when people ask why I can never answer.  So  I now have attempted a bit of an answer.  The second paragraph is an attempt to explain why I want to attend a Christian university.  Just for the record, I applied to one Catholic school (University of San Francisco--see that essay here), two Protestant schools (Seattle Pacific University and Westmont College), and am finishing the application for an Orthodox school I only recently learned existed (St. Katherine College).  So far I've been admitted to USF!

I don't know where I'm going yet.  USF looks amazing but is the most expensive.  SPU is, obviously, in Seattle: an enormous plus and rather huge deterrent.  I visited Seattle and fell totally in love with it, but it's just so far away.  I tried this being independent thing once: a rather miserable six weeks.  I couldn't talk to Matthew on the phone because I'd cry uncontrollably.  From Seattle, the fastest way home is a plane from Seatac to LAX, then a three to four hour drive.  The train takes two days.  SPU is also the only university I've visited so far, and I wasn't blown away by it.  By the city I was blown away, and the school seemed great, but I have this thing about being an outsider.  My dearest hope is that I'll visit one of these schools and immediately feel like I fit in.  But that is highly unlikely.  It must be my own perception, because I never feel like I fit in.  With my closest friends I often feel/act on guard.  I don't know why.  I'm rather afraid to speak, so I talk about anything and everything in an attempt not to appear totally freaked out.  Someone will say, "I like your outfit," and instead of simply thanking her I'll go off on how I was just out with my mom and I picked four things to try on and she picked one for me and the one thing she picked was perfect and that the only problem is that it gets shorter every time it's washed and so when I wear it now all I can think about is how short it is and that it could catch on my backpack, which would be so not fun.  My friend DOES NOT CARE.  And I know she doesn't care.  She cares in that she cares about me, but, really, come on.  I don't even care.  I'm really not obsessed with clothes.  I couldn't care less about clothes.  Winter is wonderful, in part, because I can wear a full length coat all day and not spend two seconds thinking about clothes.  But when you're a girl they're important, and a safe topic.  I have wonderful, amazing friends--but rarely can I let my guard down even around them.  Which is just weird because I used to be insanely extroverted and abnormally self-ignorant, and couldn't squelch myself if I tried.

Obviously, though, I have no trouble whatsoever while writing!  I just hate being so trivial.  Words should not be wasted on useless discussion.  Light discussion is fun.  Useless discussion is what I blabber as I run away: I adore the person but can't really speak.

Seattle is far because I will probably never totally fit in anywhere.  I'm a bit awkward around my dad.  I can be awkward around my brother, but he always pulls me out.  I'm rarely awkward with my mom or nana: only when there's some contention building between us.  They call me on it, I bawl my eyes out, and then we're better.  Seattle is terribly far.

That's why I wonder about St. Katherine College.  I do feel awkward at church, but sometimes less so.  I went camping with the college group once and had an amazing time.  I even made an idiot of myself (We climbed up a steep, slippery hill and my shoes had negative traction.  One of the guys had to push me up.), and still I felt absolutely comfortable.  St. Katherine's is just outside of San Diego, which is unarguably south of SLO county.  Not the direction I want to go.  But an Orthodox school: maybe I would fit in a bit.  I worry that I'd be thought a heretic at a Protestant school.  Bad North County memories, I guess.

Then again, I have excellent friends, and am awkward with them.  There's no reason to be.  They're all amazing.

I like the idea of USF.  It's north.  It's in San Francisco, which my mom describes as the Seattle of her youth.  You know I've never actually explored San Francisco?  I've been to Chinatown and Giants' games twice, and to the Legion of Honor once.  Other than that I've only driven through.  
          
I grew up in a modest city on California’s Central Coast, so my family visited San Francisco at least once a year.  Often we merely drove through on the way to see relatives in Novato, but once in a while we’d bustle through Chinatown or attend a Giants’ game.

Evan and I have much in common. Although he clearly grew up in SLO, not Atascadero. If no one else, I'd have Evan and Caleb and Sabella and Anna in San Francisco.

Catholicism is closer to Orthodoxy than Protestantism. At least a little closer! Or maybe not? I don't know. We do watch quite a bit of EWTN (the Catholic station) in my household. We watch EWTN, PBS, and Turner Classic Movies. Didn't know how familiar everyone would be that last station! Did I ever mention that Evan is a big classic movie guy?

How about Westmont? I'm terrified of Westmont, but keep hearing that it is a highly intellectual school. By applying, though, my mother and I earn a day in Santa Barbara. Totally worth it.

Do you want to read my blurb(s) now? You better! Thanks for suffering through all that.

 

My family was Chrismated into the Orthodox Church just over two years ago.  Before that we were Protestants, but rather odd Protestants.  We never quite fit in.  We jumped from church to church, desperate for a place where God was the focus, not us.  All is empty without God.  How empty, how utterly empty, is all the world when faithful gather at the cross’s very foot, and yet still look only at their own faces.  As we began attendance at the Orthodox Church it grew ever clearer that we were in the right place.  To friends I describe our Orthodox family as being the way Christians always describe themselves, except that they never breathe a word of themselves.  

I grew up in a Christian elementary, middle, and high school, but then progressed to the local community college.  My beliefs are solid enough to remain unmoved when a biology teacher attacks “those religious people” or an English professor rolls eyes at a poet’s obvious faith.  But dearly, dearly do I miss the assumptions.  My faith is never irrelevant to the subject at hand.  Even if Christianity is discussed in neither the religious nor the non-religious classroom during a given lecture, the unspoken assumptions make all the difference.  If the assumptions do not correlate with my faith, then every word must be questioned.  Always must I be on guard.  Is this true?  Can I believe this?  We are taught to question all we learn anyway, but when the assumptions acknowledge God at the center of every answer, then the questions actually get us somewhere.

Application!!!

I'm rather wretched at adhering to essay topics.  Always I think I'm adhering, but often, at least in the eyes of normal people, I am not.  Here is the question on the "Common Application," sent out to University of San Francisco, Seattle Pacific University, and Westmont College.  St. Katherine's College has a different application.


Please provide a statement (appr. 250-500 words) that addresses your reasons for transferring and the objectives you hope to achieve.


Here's my essay (!):

All I ever want to do is write.  I guess that’s not entirely true: I also love to read, scratch on my violin, talk with friends, walk aimlessly about some place I have never been or never veritably noticed.  Still, give me the option of spending an entire day with only a cappuccino and a pen, and I will be at my happiest.  

Then again, to write about the world, I must know a little something of it.  I must learn the way we were and the way we are and the way we are becoming.  I must learn what in the world is good and write of it.  I must learn what in the world is wrong and write to heal it.  I must learn to truly see, and hear, and touch the world.  I must learn to climb up--to reach out my hand, and grasp those reaching for mine so that we may climb up together.

My most obvious reason for transferring is to further my education.  I hope eventually to earn a master’s degree in English, and perhaps even a doctorate in English.  My mother taught English to junior high students and, even though I resisted it for years, I did inherit her need to share the wonder of stories made and stories to be made with anyone I meet.  When I begin an essay with a quotation, it is not because we are supposed to begin essays with quotations.  It is because my mind swirls with what I want to say and those who, having allowed me to commune with them in the great realm of ideas, have said it better than I ever could.  So, then, I do hope to follow my mother and become a teacher.

I hope to achieve immense learning at University.  But I do not mean for my learning to be solely in books, though I clearly am all too eager to immerse myself in the writings of yesterday and today and tomorrow.  I hope to learn about the people in the world from the people themselves.  I hope to learn about their needs and learn how to meet them.  I hope to learn where I fall short and learn how to be pulled up by another.  I hope to learn the problems which need solving and learn how to solve them.
All I want to do is write.  I want to write what I know.  I want to write my questions.  I want to write of friends.  I want to write of strangers.  I want to write that which springs from my own soul and that which I do not understand.  I want to write of the old, and of the new, and of that existing only in turning minds and low whispers.  I want step into the world with clear eyes and moving feet and open hands and bleeding pen.  This is why I want to attend University.

Real Things

    Today I'm writing about real things.  Or unreal things.  Or why it is that unreal things are, so often, the closet we can get to real things.

    Do you ever read fiction that is more real than anything you've ever seen or heard or touched?  You don't know why it's real, and yet the world brightens because you finally know something that you've known all along.  The feeling of separateness leaves for a moment, because someone understands what it's all about.  Someone understands that everything is either meaningless or essential.  There is no in between.

     And then you want to share it.  Try to tell people.  Try to write a blog post about it.  But there is no answer.  Most try to get it.  They'll nod, furrow their eyebrows.  "Yeah, I see what you mean."  Try and  try again to explain, but then it leaves you.  You think you still have it, but it's gone.  Or someone goes off on it quite academically, and you're so excited until finding the spark in your eye missing in your companion's.  "Yes, yes a bit like that, but not exactly.  More this way."  But the spark never comes.  Maybe it wasn't that great after all.  So simple; everyone knows that.  You pick up the book, sad and enlightened, but as the words climb up through your fingers your heart begins once more to race, and that invisible hand comes around your shoulder.  You weren't wrong.  It's right here.

     I meant this to be a rather lengthy post, but my subject limits me.  I can't explain what I say.  I keep trying, but find myself exhausted.  Falling asleep on the keys; it's not even noon.

    I find real things and I must write about them.  I must give Afton his voice and let him speak for me.  I must remember Meadow and the tight embrace she gave me--I must remember so that I can write her a story about real things.  About why she is real.  That real things are never understood.

     Then I can't write about unreal things.  Suddenly essays are incredibly hard.  My sentences are choppy.  I've no flow between ideas.  I sound half-asleep.  Wandering.  As if I can't write directly.  All must be inference.  I try to be conversational, but none care for my conversation.  The assignment is to be self-revealing, but I'm not vulnerable in the right way.  My self isn't worth revealing.  I used to be a "good writer," and so without really trying I could do well on assignments.  Now, if I don't try, I'm hardly coherent.  There are little pockets of care: groups of two or three sentences which sound like me.  But so quickly they drop away.  Not fade, not step: drop.  A bubble of over-zealous passion, forcing it's way up through my tired and whitewashed blabbering.

     I guess I must find something to care about.  Something real when it all seems unreal.  Curdie or Psyche or Sam in the false brilliance.  It's still there.  Not hurt, just a bit harder to find.

     This reminds me of a truly wonderful experience I recently experienced.  That was me making fun of myself: I can't stand it when I repeat words, yet do it all the time.  Anyway, I recently visited an art house.  The owners of the house, both artists, turned their entire home into a gallery.  Many of their works had religious influences, from quite a number of religions.  In one corner of the house was what I think is most clearly described as an altar.  It held candles, incense, and small statues of Jesus, Buddha, and a few others.

     Just typing that freaked me out a little.  It feels weird to capitalize "Jesus" and then capitalize "Buddha."  It feels weird putting "Jesus" in quotation marks.  Not that I hold disrespect for religions other than my own, but    I cannot separate myself from what I believe.  The Buddha shouldn't be anywhere near Jesus.  But that's just me; a personal struggle.  As you guessed, I'm sure, an altar dedicated to both Jesus and numerous other gods would completely unnerve me.  But I heard something.  That doesn't usually happen to me; I'm not one who often receives revelations.  But this was the most wonderful experience.  I heard, very clearly, I'm still here.  It didn't matter that the statue of God was displayed as equal with all these others.  He was still there.  I didn't need to protect Him.  He will always be right there.

     My goodness.  Thank you, this has been stream-of-consciousness blogging.  Wow.  But a post about real things has to end with God, doesn't it?  That's what this is really all about.  It's what this is all about even when we don't know or don't acknowledge it as so.        

   

     

   
   

   

Essay Contest -- Fourth Place

                                                                   In the Midst

It is more customary to isolate and analyze a specific period in one’s life after the period has passed. But there is something to say for what one thinks and feels during the period. We cannot misjudge our feelings in the midst of feeling them.

“But I won’t rot, I won’t rot. Not this mind and not this heart, I won’t rot.” This line, from Mumford and Sons’ “After the Storm” (from the album Sigh no More) is my prayer for my father. He won’t rot. Not his mind, not his heart. He cannot rot.

A therapist, after learning of my father’s duel diagnoses of mental illnesses, told my mother that a brain tumor has a better prognosis. He would be better cold on his deathbed than going through life blinded and burned.

“And I will die alone, and be left there. Well I guess I’ll just go home, or God knows where. Because death is just so full, and man so small. I’m scared of what’s behind, and what’s before.”

What’s behind is twenty years. Twenty years of my father and mother more in love with each other than seems possible outside of fiction. Twenty years of my father writing love songs far past the realm of love songs. Twenty years of my mother running outside to greet him and twenty years of him carrying her back.

But twenty years of turmoil. Twenty years of my father recoiling from his wife’s affections. Twenty years of not knowing if a word will incite laughter or wrath or ice. Twenty years of begging God that this is the last time: that tonight Daddy will come home.

Before is a double diagnosis: bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder. This helps. At least it makes sense. But it will never go away. Medicine and therapy can help, but the disorders will always be there.

No one understands. My mother should be her own woman. She doesn’t have to take this. They say they understand, but they don’t. They hate seeing her hurt. So do I. Fervently, fervently I hate it.

But she sees my father. She sees the strong arm beyond the crippled stub. She sees the deep, rich eye beneath the cloudy haze. “I saw exactly what was true, but oh no more. That’s why I hold. That’s why I hold with all I have. That’s why I hold.”

Not his mind. Not his heart. “And I look up. On my knees and out of luck, I look up.” Please bring him home. Please make us his home. Death is empty. Death is nothing. And though we are small You, Dear God, are great. And that’s why we hold. That’s why we hold with all we have. 

“But there will come a time you’ll see, with no more tears. And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears. Get over your hill and see, what you’ll find there. With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair.”