I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day

This is by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Appearently, he wrote it during the Civil War, after his son was badly wounded in the fighting.

I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

I thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along the unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair I bowed my head
'There is no peace on earth,' I said,'
For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.'

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
'God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With peace on earth, good will to men.'

Till ringing, singing on its way
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

Sea of Glass

There were ice storms the day I flew home. It didn't stop the planes, thankfully, but it did create delays. First there was a small hour's delay at Pheonix, then in the air over O'hare (and they kept telling us, we may get to land within twenty minutes. twenty minutes would go by and they'd say the same thing) then on the runway at O'hare (becuase they didn't have a gate free. and they kept telling us twenty more minutes. ten more minutes.). But it was all not objectively very long, and the politely chatty wife of a businessman was sitting next to me and we chatted. After that was a couple hours waiting for the bus, a couple hours of bus ride, and about an hour of white knuckled driving over roads like long skating rinks.

At some point, on the runway, it occured to me that there really is no use in waiting for anything. Everything that we hope will bring us relief from our problems, when we get it, creates another set of problems.
-When we're kids, we think growing up will make our lives easier (maybe?) becuase we'll have power, but it doesn't; it puts us in a position to have to deal with a lot of crap. Because we have the power to.
-When we're single, we think that Finding Someone, or Getting Married will solve all our problems, but it really just seals us into dealing with our problems and their consequences in one particular situation. We hope it will grant us all our desires, but it only traps us with the fact that our desires often can't be fulfilled.
-When mothers have young children, they think their lives will be easier when the children grow older and they don't have to lull them to sleep at night and wipe their rear ends. When the kids grow older though, they start doing terrible risky and/or stupid things, and the mothers are wracked by worry that they can do nothing about. And they look back fondly on the days when they could solve all their children's problems by lulling them to sleep.
-When men have bad jobs, or bad bosses, or are just bored with working, they wish they could retire, relax, and enjoy life. But they forget that the other term for Retirement Home is Nursing Home. And a nursing home is a place where people who are no longer able to work sit around, pretend that Bingo is important because its distracting, and if they're lucky, get visited by their children for a few hours every other weekend.

I don't mean to paint a gloomy picture. I think that all of these troubles have a point, and provide chances to trust God in ways that we would get nowhere else. But it doesn't seem worthwhile to wait for the situation to change. That won't solve anything. We deal with the problems we have, and if we can do that, good. If we make a habit of just dealing with what we're given, we stand a chance of dealing with what we're given, and getting the good out of it. If we continually evade our problems, to chase after some bright future, we wind up at the end of our lives having done nothing. Isn't there a fairy tale about that? A boy with a silver ball and a golden thread? It would allow him to skip forward in time through anything he felt was unpleasent, but at the end of his life, he begged the fairy with tears to take the magic thing back and let him start his life again. Fairy tales aren't stupid, you know.

And I suppose by all those 'we' s just now, I can only mean 'I'.

At any rate. My grampa appears to be dying. He has been in a slow decline for years now, and has thought that he was dying, but in the last week he has taken a turn for the worst, and this looks like the last turn. He had cancer years ago, and it relapsed? came back? It is now spread in his bones all across his back. They have given him enough morphine to dope him up and let him sleep for the moment. My mum is helping my granma take care of him (she and he still live at home together) as much as she (my mum) can, and my sisters (and me) take care of our younger brothers as much as is needed. Which is not even different than normal. Nothing on the surface is really different. Except that he's dying- and it's kind of odd. I have spent my whole life, for the most part, in and out of his house, and, for the most part, with him.

I don't know how to explain the importance of this exactly. For the past few days since I got home the fields have been smoothed with ice. Whenever the sun comes out, it pours into them, till they become a sea of molten glass. Every tree and every dead weed looks like its made out of transparent fire.

That was the end result of all the delays. That was why I secretly didn't mind having to sit in the plane, on the runway.

Nonsense

Is this entertainment for you Gentlemen? This spectacle which arises before your very eyes, fools and wolves, diamonds pretending to be jades, and meres imagining themselves to be firm yet tender earth, avoided by all except the gullible. The real flask of character is yet unpoured, the real trial undrunk in its full. For time will crack the jar of the world and unleash meaning- which flows by various streams through air and earth, running, and pooling at last in the cup of the soul. This change has never been complete, and never, never will be. The jar is never as broken as we thought it was. The wolf becomes a jade to a diamond is a fish, and out of the strong, Gentlemen, out of the strong. We will ring in every change until the last, and even then. There are things that haven't tried us yet.

Notes of a Wandering Mind II

Our kingdom is eternally incomplete. Its borders are never certain, the capitol never settled. Go West today, go East tomorrow. This city is a pilgrim city. You live in it by packing your knapsack and leaving.

The god-like Camus

This last weekend I spent obsessing over the god-like Camus for my thesis. He called himself an Absurdist, and one of the main themes in his writing is, naturally, the Absurd. When he talks about life being Absurd, he doesn't mean that everything is a crazy and nothing matters. He means that humans must live as if there is meaning, but that the universe is meaningless (or humans must live rationally and the universe cannot ultimately be captured by rationality). He seems to be saying that the best way to live in such a world is to continually be aware of both the ultimate irrationality of the universe and, at the same time, to continually revolt against that meaningless-ness in the creation of human meaning. The true temptation, in this world, is to be lured away from awareness of this disjunction between what is human and what is ultimate. This can be either by ignoring the irrationality of the universe and believing only the meaning humans create, or by ignoring human meaning and saying that everything is completely irrational. The point, for him, was to live in both, without letting go of either.

Camus and I live in different worlds and believe quiet different things, but I resonate to this. It seems as though there are similar incongruities in the world I live in. As a Christian, I want to do what is right, or to do the will of God. As a human I also know that it is always possible that I am mistaken in my understanding of what that is. If I let go of either, I will fail. Or to put it another way- Our knowledge of the world is always incomplete and indefinite, but we are constantly having to make definite actions. What gets you through? In my life, so far, it seems as though you just have to guess and act and hope for the best.

I lived in these thoughts like a body all weekend (or maybe they were living me). Tuesday or Wednesday I wound up holding Baby for Janelle (for about an hour?). She fell asleep in my arms. The question presented itself to me then, walking back and forth; how can this be doubted? How is any uncertainty possible? She smiled in her sleep.

I don't know how to resolve all this.

From Ash-Wednesday

"Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining

We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other,

Under a tree in the cool of the day, with the blessing of sand,

Forgetting themselves and each other, united

In the quiet of the desert. And neither division nor unity

Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance."

Empty Weekend

Yesterday Chelsea said something about the weather that was rang true. "I like the rain- its the constant cloud cover that gets to me" Isn't that the truth!

And in life too I guess. I could take disasters with definite limits a lot better than I can take this continual gnawing void. Now maybe I should be glad that I'm not having both!

Yesterday (and yes, this is where the title came from) was one of those days when every one disappears to study and the house hums with the lack of people. Maybe it's just growing up in a house with millions of kids, but large empty houses nerve me out. On top of this, on Friday, Josh officially dropped out of school and Karl got fired. Karl had apparently been planning to quite anyway, so its not objectively that bad, but its depressing. And now he's gone to Washington. And Josh... I guess... I guess. So close to the end. It seems such a waste.

I don't know if I'm justified, but I really feel like the muddy and tired surviver of some war. What's left is so little- the grand hopes we started out with, dispensed with one by one in our disasters. What's left? Only a handful of people, too scattered and involved in their own lives to even say goodbye to each other. I guess we are setting out into the real world. But if this is it's harbinger, the thought doesn't comfort me.

lots of vodka

"If we had remembered earlier our Father's house
Where we grew together, and that old kindness,
You would not be dying now, oh my sister, my spouse,
pierced with my sword in the battle's heat and blindness."

C.S. Lewis

Concluding Mythological Postscript

The Noface. I identify with him a lot. In the story the Noface is creepy and eats people. (Note to self: am I creepy and do I eat people?) If you pay attention, though, he simply seems to be mirroring the people around him. In the bad witch's house everyone is consumed with greed, and shows it by begging for the gold he can give them. If they accept his gold, he, well, consumes them. Greed for greed. He is sort of determined by the people he's around.

Despite this, I think he really is just looking for a good person (and maybe a friend?). When Sen comes along and is nice to him and wont accept anything from him (though he offers quite persistently) he follows her, and lets her led him back to the good witch's house where people aren't greedy and he doesn't have to eat anyone.

Anyway. I went to Halloween as the Noface. It was a wonderful costume to have because for once I didn't feel like I had to act. That was just how I felt.

Kaonashi; Noface

And just because I'm pretty sure no one is reading this (PARANOIA:exceptforyourworstenemies
whoreadingiteverydayandaregoingtousethisinformationtodestroyyou), here's about Iraq.

You know every one is saying that the war is a conspiracy or that it was a mistake in the first place, or that Bush is a nut case cowboy, and therefore we should pull out. I am willing to grant all that, but it doesn't seem like that means we should pull out. For the simple reason that once upon a time Iraq had a government that could keep civil war from breaking out and keep other countries from subjugating its people, and we destroyed it. It may have been an evil dictatorship, but it did the things any government is supposed to do. How can we think that somehow the chaos which will ensue if we pull out before they have a stable government again wont be on our heads? That's like 'freeing' an animal that has been trained to never ever eat food that isn't in its dish by tossing it out in the wild. It has the wrong training for survive in the wild and it will probably starve to death.

If we pull out before they can handle it, is there any reason why the shit (that will go down) wont be our fault?

Unless of course you think that this is all a scheme to control the oil and therefore the nefarious orchestrators of this plot mean us to stay in Iraq indefinitely. But I really must know- if the war is really about oil- why in heck are gas prices still so high?

Thou, Nature, art my goddess

All in all, this was not a bad day. I woke up on my own. The day was unhurried and pearly sunny. I got a decent amount of schoolwork done. And I got to read two acts of King Lear out loud with friends, and we all didn't hate each other- and it was a good time. And Kristen did the Fool awesomely. It wasn't the best day ever. It wasn't horrible.

As traumatic as everything can be, it is sometimes comforting to be reminded that the bare minimum of being alive is... a good thing.

notes of a wandering mind

I was looking over some of my notes from class today. Here are some of the things I found.


(This was from the beginning of the term. It reminds me a little bit of The Snowman, by Wallace Stevens, which is suspiciously hanging on my wall. The 'you' is actually me.)

Judge for yourself the silence you must live by
Live in, and live unending
This becomes clearer everyday
As it grows greater
It is more than an escape or an action
More than a solution
It's a mighty ocean,
That you drift into day by day.
For it takes you into itself
Like a gull in the distance,
And you, the silent one, become the soul of silence.



Later in the term.


I've cut myself afloat, and drift in pain
escaping the land, it's burning rain
it's rolling banks of smoke, it's smog,
it's corpses lolling, it's smoldering logs,
it's rubble unending, it's cables and trash-
by the edge of the sea I lashed a raft
and cut myself off from the life I shared
though I surely die here, I wont gangrene there.


At some other point- chronology uncertain.


Lost from flights and fights uncertain in which very
many souls have been withdrawn, and hid beneath their stones
to pass the time I dally with leaves and skulls and berry-
ozzing bottles, uncorked and dripping over bones.
And by a foaming cup I dull the babble
of the lying dead that despise their place together
blown by cold fear like a wind in eddying rabbles
each gibbering its proof that he still will live forever,
and he alone. Far through the trees, rooks
are shaken up into the sky, as old bells speak
of battles heightening in the ruins where once men took
their war with heaven out in brick to build a tower and a keep.
To this riddle an answer I'd obtain
do I desert those fighters most to go or to remain?

Yesterday.

The oldest of brothers blubbered-
but not over his brothers grave-
why can't I fail more freely?
whoever finds me might not like me,
and it's more than I can bear.

Pillar of Cloud

First. Tonight there was thick fog and low clouds. I saw this from the fire escape on the loft. Looking over roofs towards the campus, the fog was lit up into pillars of orange or yellow or blue, wherever there were lights. There was a game at the U of O tonight and the sidewalks were streaming with people, but all sound was hushed and drifted in from far away. Even the saxophone. A bum was playing the saxophone on the street corner, playing, I guess, to the passers-by and the fog.

Second. I looked back over the last few posts, and they don't seem particularly clear to me. It is too much work to edit them. I don't know if this will help.

The problem that has been bothering me the last few weeks is this. How do you forgive people who doesn't think they have a problem? I may not be actually dealing with this situation, but it sure seems like it. One tearful night after much dislike of God, I was forced to admit that you do, in fact, have to forgive them. This is probably painfully obvious, but it occurred to me that Jesus forgave people who were in the process of killing him. You don't get much more unrepentant than that. This was hard to argue against. This is also why Reid (Hoover)'s definition of Christianity struck me- not only because I expected him to be much more verbose than that.

Anyway, that being agreed to, I am still left with the problem of what to do. What does forgiveness even look like if the person doesn't think they need it? Do you embrace them as brothers who God is working on at a different rate and manner? Do you refuse to accept something blatantly wrong? Do you hide in a corner and wait for it all to blow over? What does love look like in a body? No idea.

At any rate. I really wish that all the problems in my life were resolved and that life was all fluffy and pink, but there's no point in even saying that. One time, Nigel Cottier, my German teacher, tried to illustrate German humor for us. He said that in Berlin, the situation maybe serious, but it's never hopeless. In Vienna, the situation may be hopeless, but it's not serious.

I think I may be Viennese at heart.

(on the error-os arrow-boy)

yea, lord, your power is great.
with all the wind of fortune you fill the sails of endless ships
you carry them each to disaster for you carry
each to the wreck of self on the toothed shoal of another
be the teeth hidden by waves or bare
with the bodies of sailors lodged and rotting in every cruel gap.
be the shore beyond inviting or disdainful

lord, your power is mighty
for you turn the wheels that grind the world's grist
you scatter the chaff of desire like filth upon the ground
you have gathered of us seeds unspeakable for your flour
you scatter our lives like filth upon the ground
you grease your turning stones with blood that we weep
and call carelessly for more grease

the mills of the gods grind slowly
for they grind exceedingly fine
the bread of the gods gives life
life to some other world
we don't live there

lord, your fires are exceedingly white
and the heat of them has melted great dross away
him who is made of dross is destroyed
and he who has metal is changed beyond recognition
beaten by blows into the shape of another's purpose
made worthy to live a life he would not have chosen

we are the seed you crush, we are the chaff you throw away
i submit me lord to your power for i can do no other.

I see with my human eyes oh lord
the seething hungry rocks your winds have driven me to,
I see oh lord the the shore
so lovely with unstomachable fruit.
if I am to be destroyed by your flames
work the bellows lord and let them tower
if my life can give life to a world I can't live in,
make your bread, and feed the world of your choosing



"Oh love that fires the sun, keep me burning"

Last Night

Rather late last night I walked into the kitchen, and discovered Reid sitting alone. He was listening to music on the big speakers, and just seemed quiet. On a whim, and from a long train of thoughts that I didn't mention, I asked him what he thought the essence of Christianity was. Ridiculous Gutenbergean question that that is. After protesting a little bit about the unfairness of the question (perfectly justified), he went all quiet again for a while.


In the end he surprised me He just said mercy. Then after another pause he gave a long definition involving merit and ability and it was rather a run on sentence and I wasn't surprised anymore. But it was food for thought. The mercy part.

Sad Clown

This was a crying sort of night. It came after a gnashing-of-teeth sort of day. I spent most of the evening in Tuesday Night Class On Wednesday, and helping a bunch of freshmen cook things in the kitchen. They all wore aprons. It was so cute. I like them. And also in the coldest, most people-less places I could find. Because acting happy sucks.

'Say how's the weather, so I look out the window
To brighten my soul, but I can't control the rain
That keeps falling
Smile on the outside that never comes in
A comedy, mystery, irony, tragedy
So I scream "let the show begin"'
(Jars of Clay)


Fortunately it was rainy, cold, and dark in Eugene today, so I had the right backdrop.

Its so weird. It's not at all easy to admit you aren't God. But it solves sooo many problems. Except I still don't know how I should treat the people I will be sharing the universe with tomorrow morning. That bothers me. But I think (now) that I will live.

"Peter Pan will save me."

Note

On the way back from church today, I saw a yellow house. Calling it a yellow house might mislead you. The truth is it was a yellow house with sun shining around it, and clouds smeared above it. The clouds were so high and thin that they sharpened the blue. There was also wind, which is important because the lawn had gone wild and was all restless. A tree in the front yard was restless too, and leaves were scattering from it one by one. In the driveway an old man and and old woman were sitting in lawn chairs. They were watching traffic and you could telling even from the car that they were laughing and talking. They both had white hair, mussed up in the wind. That's what kind of house I mean. It was sitting in all this, and was bright yellow.

Seven

I just saw the movie Seven with Karl and a couple other people. I would like to point out the fact that though most of the people who watched it did so because Karl decided to watch a movie, Karl left before it started and didn't come back. Ha. Ironical world.

Seven was pretty disturbing. I had never seen it before. Through a fog of disturbtion that hasn't quiet settled yet, I think I think it was a good movie. The killer pointed out that people treat horrible things as normal or innocent when they are apathetic and cease to care what's good and what's not. This plus the fact that the old cop had spent the whole film wondering whether he should give into the apathy of the general public and (apathetically) quite his work (this being the 'bad' option). It makes me think that the film makers were in some sense agreeing with the killer. And even agreeing with his method (disgusting murders aside); they did what he was trying to do. They made a shocking spectacle that, possible, would make you reassess your normal life.

The mind boggling twist is that the young cop, the only person other than the killer who is firmly against evil, turns out to be one of the sins as well. And in a way, this is true to life. No matter how good anyone tries to be, they are going to wind up committing vileness. It's the warp and woof of our natures.

The main thing that makes me dislike this movie is that it's world is limited to these select truths. The world is a twisted screwed up place, all people have sin, and apathy is wrong, all that I can agree with, but there's more to life than that. There is a way out of sin and out of the corruption we exhale that is more than burying your head in the sand.

I read the Brothers K this summer and got obsessed with it, so I'm going to throw a quote at the problem without explaining myself anymore.

"'You take too many sins upon yourself' mother used to weep. 'Dear mother, my joy, I am weeping from gladness not from grief; I want to be guilty before them, only I cannot explain it to you, for I do not even know how to love them. Let me be sinful before everyone, but so that everyone will forgive me, and that is paradise. Am I not in paradise now?'"

So maybe I think this isn't a good movie? hm. It could be applauded for getting the situation right, but it also implies that there is no solution, which I don't think is true. Which is worse? Telling an outright lie, or telling a misleading truth?

Good or bad, I know this is not a movie I would watch for fun. Or again, anytime soon.

Subterfuge

Ask them what your name is.
Do whatever they say.
The darkest subterfuge, the deepest secret lie,
is in you asking;
they wont understand that they didn't tell you.

The Knight Whose Armour Didn't Squeak

Of all the Knights in Appledore
The wisest was Sir Thomas Tom.
He multiplied as far as four,
And knew what nine was taken from
To make eleven. He could write
A letter to another Knight.

No other Knight in all the land
Could do the things which he could do.
Not only did he understand
The way to polish swords, but knew
What remedy a Knight should seek
Whose armour had begun to squeak.

And, if he didn't fight too much,
It wasn't that he didn't care
For blips and buffetings and such,
But felt that it was hardly fair
To risk, by frequent injuries,
A brain as delicate as his.

His castle (Castle Tom) was set
Conveniently on a hill;
And daily, when it wasn't wet,
He paced the battlements until
Some smaller Knight who couldn't swim
Should reach the moat and challenge him.

Or sometimes, feeling full of fight,
He hurried out to scour the plain,
And, seeing some approaching Knight,
He either hurried home again,
Or hid; and, when the foe was past,
Blew a triumphant trumpet-blast.

One day when good Sir Thomas Tom
Was resting in a handy ditch,
The noises he was hiding from,
Though very much the noises which
He'd always hidden from before,
Seemed somehow less....Or was it more?

The trotting horse, the trumpet's blast,
The whistling sword, the armour's squeak,
These, and especially the last,
Had clattered by him all the week.
Was this the same, or was it not?
Something was different. But what?

Sir Thomas raised a cautious ear
And listened as Sir Hugh went by,
And suddenly he seemed to hear
(Or not to hear) the reason why
This stranger made a nicer sound
Than other Knights who lived around.

Sir Thomas watched the way he went -
His rage was such he couldn't speak,
For years they'd called him down in Kent
The Knight Whose Armour Didn't Squeak!
Yet here and now he looked upon
Another Knight whose squeak had gone.

He rushed to where his horse was tied;
He spurred it to a rapid trot.
The only fear he felt inside
About his enemy was not
"How sharp his sword?" "How stout his heart?"
But "Has he got too long a start?"

Sir Hugh was singing, hand on hip,
When something sudden came along,
And caught him a terrific blip
Right in the middle of his song.
"A thunderstorm!" he thought. "Of course!"
And toppled gently off his horse.

Then said the good Sir Thomas Tom,
Dismounting with a friendly air,
"Allow me to extract you from
The heavy armour that you wear.
At times like these the bravest Knight
May find his armour much too tight."

A hundred yards or so beyond
The scene of brave Sir Hugh's defeat
Sir Thomas found a useful pond,
And, careful not to wet his feet,
He brought the armour to the brink,
And flung it in...and watched it sink.

So ever after, more and more,
The men of Kent would proudly speak
Of Thomas Tom of Appledore,
"The Knight Whose Armour Didn't Squeak."
Whilst Hugh, the Knight who gave his best,
Squeaks just as badly as the rest.

~ A A Milne, Now We Are Six 1927