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.

Sabella

At that moment I fell in love with Sabella: as she set his clenched fingers to her mouth, drawing his footsteps after hers in spite of his shoulders withered back.

Right now her name is Sabella Cotter, but I might change her last name.

She's not being easy on me.  There's a lot to her, and she's just not going to show herself at once.  She's hard and cold and guarded and kind and affectionate and trusting.

“Stop the car.” Caleb said.

“What?”

“Pull over!”

I did, and before the key turned my friend jumped out.  I followed him.

We ran back the way we had come, turning into an alleyway.  Before us slouched a bundle of black wool.  Caleb knelt beside it, slipped back the hood to reveal a woman’s face.

“My God--”

“Hush.”  He eased the thin, still mouth to his ear.  A rapid instant later he had her in his arms and we ran to the car.

“How long?” he asked, in the back seat with the woman’s head on his knees.

“Just a few minutes.  Can she make it?”

He’d unbuttoned her coat, and now pressed his hand up and down her back.  “I’m trying.”

I don't know if her story will ever be told in the book.  Some of it will, at least, but probably not the entire story.  Caleb hears the entire story.  Evan, most likely, does not.

Sabella's parents are quite wealthy and quite distant; she was their problem child.  At fifteen she ran away with the guy she was in love with.  He, like most guys who would seduce a girl of fifteen, had no intention of marrying or taking care of her in any way.  He was abusive, but she loved him and is loyal by nature, and so took it for a long time.  Eventually she could't take more, and left.  She tried to go home, but her parents wouldn't take her back.  Thus she lives on the streets of San Francisco.

When Caleb finds her she is unconscious in an alley, having overdosed on some medication with the intent of committing suicide.  She is nineteen, at this point.  I don't know which medication.  Xanax (anxiolytic) has the exact side-effects, but is fairly difficult to obtain.  Prozac (antidepressant) has side-effects which would work though they are not exact, but is ridiculously easy to obtain.  Disgustingly easy.  My uncle went to the doctor for bronchitis and came home with an antidepressant.  Apparently his being a police officer was enough to demand one.  The only person to ever have trouble getting sufficiently strong medication is my father, who just happens to have bipolar disorder.  Go figure.  Anyway, Sabella is smart and knows how to get a hold of something, and attempts suicide.  If Caleb hadn't noticed her from Evan's moving car, she would have succeeded.

She came to slowly, rolling her head from side to side, extending and releasing her back.  Then her eyes opened, just tired, at first.  But shortly they turned confused.  Then remembering.  Then frightened.  Caleb cut to her side and knelt, whispering as he brought her into his arm and tilted her head toward him.  A little hand raised close, as if by weakness it could stay him, but he took the hand and pressed it, whispering while the fear in her eyes recoiled into blankness.  He stood; still I could not tell her age.

Sabella is five-foot six and on the slim side.  When she gets too thin the bones of her shoulders poke out rather noticeably.  Her hair is black when Caleb and Evan first meet her, but, naturally, it is a medium brown.  Her eyes are darker even than Evan's; when filled with water their pupils and irises meld together into unfathomable and beautiful darkness.

Sabella has a sweet voice, though not sweet in the way sweet voices are usually sweet.  It’s a rich, warming kind of sweet.  A low kind of sweet.  Maybe.  Really it has no tone, or else eddies soft as all tones rolled together.  If the whispers which swell along the ocean floor are low, then her voice, too, is low.

I recently shared a favorite film with some friends.  It's also one of Evan's favorites.

Tiny circle.  Sabella’s lovely hand sculpted a deep, tiny circle [on my friend's back].  She looked at me and I looked at her.

“Do you ever watch silent films?” I asked.

“I haven’t.  Should I?”

“I like them, but I like things like that.”

“What are your favorites?”

“That’s a hard question.  I was thinking of one called The Lodger when I asked, though.”

“What’s that one?”

“It’s a Hitchcock actually.”

“I didn’t know he made silents.”

“Neither did I, for a long time.”

“What's it about?”

“Jack the Ripper.  Sort of.  I guess that’s not exactly a nice topic.”

She laughed again.  Softly.  “Not exactly.  But you like the film, so it must be good.”

“It’s slow at first.  Almost like the editor drank too much before work.  But then you find that what you thought all along isn’t true, and the guy you thought the villain is actually a hero--which is nice because even though he’s set up to seem evil you can’t help but like him.  And at the end there’s some really great symbolism, and a love story throughout the whole thing.”

Caleb started suddenly, apologizing.  Sabella crossed her arms over his chest and asked why.  Why, Caleb?  Because you relaxed a moment?  Relax again.  Relax again.  He had, laying only half-conscious in the bend of her arm. Yet his breath heaved wildly.  That was when I first realized how the dark terrified him.  Even more--even far, far more than the scathing light did the dark terrify him.  The woman’s magnificent eyes looked at me and I stretched out a hand to take my friend’s.

“What made you think of it?” Sabella asked.  “That film, why did you think of it?”

“You remind me of the daughter.”

“Do I?”

“I always liked her.  She’s gentle and comforting.  And lovely of course.  You remind me of her, anyway.”   

The scenes I have 'finished' are lame because Sabella is making herself a great deal of work.  I can't seem to write her right.  I think working with me a bit is the least she could do.

If you haven't seen The Lodger, by the way, you really should.  Don't watch the talkie--the story is different.  Apparently someone recorded new music to go with the silent version, which I hope is excellent.  The music on my copy is just so wretched.  There is no way it was actually written to go with the film.  It ruins the story for Matthew.

Matthew is my musically brilliant younger brother.  Who grows taller every day.  Who is incredibly thin.  Who is painfully shy.  Who is one of the best people in the world.  Hmm.......

I'm going to show you a photo from The Lodger simply because I can.  So there.

AW!!!!!

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.

Recalled

Remember this little sentence?

[Caleb] was a young man at Telson’s: locked away from the sunlight so he would age faster.


Yeah? So?

“Anna,” I said.  He stopped.  “Anna’s in the living room.”

I felt his heart pounding through the hands holding mine.

“She didn’t die.  She’s been in that house all along.  I found her.”


What are you getting at?


"I don't know anything." [Caleb's] clenched jaw twitched; his eyes looked rapidly round at nothing at all. "I don't even know how old she is."
"You were seven."
"Yes."
"You're twenty-five now."
"She was three."
"Now she's twenty-one."
"Twenty-one. She doesn't remember me."
"I don't know."

Twenty-five minus seven? Twenty-one minus three? Eighteen years.

'Buried how long?'
The answer was always the same. 'Almost eighteen years.'
'You had abandoned all hope of being dug out?'
'Long ago.'
'You know that you are recalled to life?'
'They tell me so.'
'I hope you care to live?'
'I can't say.'
'Shall I show her to you? Will you come and see her?'
The answers to this question were various and contradictory. Sometimes the broken reply was, 'Wait! It would kill me if I saw her too soon.' Sometimes, it was given in a tender rain of tears, and then it was, 'Take me to her.' Sometimes it was staring and bewildered, and then it was, 'I don't know her. I don't understand.'

Yes, Anna's story is absolutely one of being "recalled to life," as the phrase is in Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities. The time span, even, is eighteen years. I'm not telling you this because I don't think you could figure it out. I'm telling you because it was entirely unintentional. I didn't see it until a week ago. Apparently my brain wakes up during a two a.m. shower.

I didn't add the Telson's comparison after noticing my own theme. Oh no: Telson's was already there. Evan compared Caleb's workplace to Telson's bank long ago.

Isn't that weird? And kind of awesome? I only wish it had been intentional.

If you feel like ditching this blog in favor of Dickens, I can't say I blame you. In fact, I encourage such action. My excerpts against Mr. Lorry's dreams: yeah, I better get started on that revision thing. Leave this blog. Go read some Dickens and come back in twenty years. Or eighteen, if you want to be all poetic.