Sometimes it feels like 2020 jumped into the biggest truck it could find and ran over the population of the entire world. I had to think hard to even remember that there had been Australian wildfires, because so many terrible things have happened since.
But today (or yesterday, I suppose), we Americans celebrated the 4th of July. Hundreds of years ago, our ancestors willingly put their own lives in danger for the sake of our great nation.
There is no country like ours. It is unprecedented and, in my opinion, unequaled. Nowhere does opportunity exist like it does here. But it's easy to lose sight of that when it's all you've ever known, which is true of most of the people I know. Especially when debates are happening daily about how much of a place the government has in the private lives of citizens, and it seems like events in general are cancelled this year.
So here we are, on Independence Day, and there are no public firework displays. No giant picnics or concerts. No parades. Everyone is left to fend for himself. Do we Americans even care that much about celebrating this holiday if it's not handed to us on a silver platter?
Tonight I went to a cookout, where we ate good food that everyone had contributed and then watched $500 dollars worth of privately purchased fireworks be set off in a backyard. Over the mountains of upstate New York, we could see, but not hear, the colorful explosions of similar celebrations in every direction.
Then, driving home, there were fireworks all around. Some right beside the highway, some off across the river, or farther into the cities that we passed, lighting up the sky, in celebration and remembrance.
And I remember that what America has always been a symbol of is individual freedom, expressed and fulfilled on a larger scale by communities and governments.
Without the fireworks shows, there are still fireworks. Without the picnics, we are still together. Without the parades, we are still patriots.
Though the country may shake, we are still America.
Saturday, July 4, 2020
Saturday, February 8, 2020
Probably Not Worth Your Time
I just posted about twenty minutes ago, but I had a thought as I was reading my sister's old blog posts. She wrote for an audience. Which isn't a bad thing. There are two kinds of people, those who write for an audience, and those who write for themselves. (I'm not going to link my Maggie Stiefvater post here, but you should read it. Also, typing on a touchscreen is FREAKIN' HARD.)
I happen to be the other kind of person, the kind that writes for myself. As evidenced by the fact that I will spend hours working on blog posts that I know no one will read. Which sounds kind of sad, but doesn't actually bother me that much. It's here if anyone wants to read it. Besides, 1) I have enough vanity to believe that someday people may discover this blog and go back and voraciously read all the old posts, and 2) if somebody ever wants to get to know my brain really well, I'll just point them here. It's a treasure trove for that purpose.
If you're reading, thanks. I'm glad that you're enjoying this. Or hating it, if you're just reading it to hate something. That's fine too. And if you're enjoying it, I hope it is better for the fact that I only wrote it to understand things that I did not.
Goodnight.
I happen to be the other kind of person, the kind that writes for myself. As evidenced by the fact that I will spend hours working on blog posts that I know no one will read. Which sounds kind of sad, but doesn't actually bother me that much. It's here if anyone wants to read it. Besides, 1) I have enough vanity to believe that someday people may discover this blog and go back and voraciously read all the old posts, and 2) if somebody ever wants to get to know my brain really well, I'll just point them here. It's a treasure trove for that purpose.
If you're reading, thanks. I'm glad that you're enjoying this. Or hating it, if you're just reading it to hate something. That's fine too. And if you're enjoying it, I hope it is better for the fact that I only wrote it to understand things that I did not.
Goodnight.
In Which I Talk About Myself, and Too Much
So. There's a person I'd like you to know of.
This person is a girl, and she's a reader. She spent her childhood taking turns reading and running out her wild side, and the reading won out. Now she's spent years in her head, turning ideas over and over in her head, driven on by curiosity and a need to feel unique. A need to discover something that no one else has before. A need to have ownership of something intellectual, and to be respected for it.
She has friends, but she doesn't really feel comfortable with most of them. She loves her family, but she's a grouch, with a sharp sense of sarcasm, and it comes out most when she's with them. She's loved and accepted where she works, but she feels like she puts on a mask when she goes there, and takes it off when she gets home.
Because she doesn't feel like her life is at work. She doesn't feel like it's anywhere, almost. In fact, the only place where she feel like her life is legitimate and true to her, is at home.
Narrow, but deep. Bordered, but rich within. She's only comfortable surrounded by the same things she's always known and sees every day.
Physically, at least. Mentally is another story. She spends her days in her stories: taking them in through music, and movies, and shows, and books. And then, with much more pain, but satisfaction as well, she pulls stories out of her head as though they were knotted string on a sticky spool.
And she is content doing that; sometimes happy, usually restless, always thinking.
She philosophizes, because that's what life is to her. She tries to be better, but feels that she is not. She loves her friends and feels pain because she forgets they even exist, and feels pleasure because that pain is a writing tool, and feels guilt because she should be better than to use pain she's earned for pleasure.
She hoards the diamonds she finds in her own mind, and expects people to know she's rich. She feels her mind has too many pieces for them all to hold together.
And...shocker. This girl is me (as if that wasn't obvious all along).
The reason I've described myself in such dramatic terms is that it tends to be how I think. I have a tendency to wallow in dramatic generalizations about myself. It's quite pathetic really.
But it points to something true about myself. I've spent my life discovering reality through the lens of books. And books, while good and lovely and useful, work not by describing all of reality, but by taking conflict and condensing it into a digestible form. Words are meant to be a translation of truth. I happen to speak and write in English; it's the only language I understand (with the exception of a wee bit of Spanish). So when I'm talking about compassion and kindness for someone who doesn't deserve it, I make some sounds with my mouth that people understand as mercy. And I spell it that way when I write it out, putting those lines and curves and spaces together like that, because everyone else knows this system that we use to express ideas.
But the idea of mercy existed before English did, and all the forms and systems and rules that we use to judge whether something is "correct" work not as truth, but as a carriage for truth.
Does that make sense? Language is the tool, not the craft.
And it's very useful, and it can be used very beautifully; and by beautifully, I mean well, as in it efficiently and accurately communicates those amorphous ideas that swim around in minds, so that when I say, "Your hat's hold on your head is tenuous," you understand that I am saying that your hat is coming off of your head, and that I am giving you advice, or possibly a warning, and also that I have some measure of competency when it comes to vocabulary.
And when I said efficiently up there, I didn't mean you only say the barest amount, or use the shortest words. Look at the example up there: I took over three times the amount of words to explain what I had said than to actually say it. I used the words I used because they conveyed exactly what I wanted to say: no more, but also no less.
That's efficiency. It's getting the right effect for the proper price. And of course, the only way to know what the proper price is, is to know the market. And that's why having a good grasp on how to use your language tools is important.
But I digress. Like, all the time. But specifically right now.
So, me. I read book people more than I read real people. And book people are condensed and effective. They confuse us, but only when they're calculated to (if it's not calculated, we say that their book is a Badly Written Book). They are supposed to be condensed, in order to convey a deeper message about people and circumstances. We're supposed to fill in gaps in our heads, and most of us are quite good at this, and have no idea we're doing this.
Unfortunately for me, it is possible to read so much that one believes that book people are the full, expanded thing, because one doesn't have many real full, expanded things to compare them to. And that's the boat I've found myself struggling to get out of.
The trouble is, you have to get the boat to shore, and then you have to actually step onto the shore, which isn't nearly as relaxing as the water. And then you have to trust that you can walk away and come back from time to time, and the boat will still be there and working.
Because, to be honest, sometimes it isn't. But boats also tend not to be very livable long-term.
This metaphor has kind of gone overboard (I hope I'm not throwing you in over your head; I can sea how it's easy to drown in all these ideas).
Well. (That's a deep subject.)
OKAY. WE ARE GETTING BACK ON TRACK NOW.
What I've been trying to say this whole time is that it's easy to confuse the tools for the craft. So the way I described myself up there is, in a way, my attempt to understand who I am. It's me trying to take all the pieces and condense them into a few manageable ideas.
But I am far from manageable.
So what I said up there is truthful to a degree. But it's certainly nowhere close to being the whole truth.
And in the spirit of being truthful, even the tone is deceptive. It paints my life as rather dramatic and intellectual and intense. And my life may look like that from certain angles. But I was describing it as though I felt that way myself, and I don't feel like that at all.
In fact, words I would use to describe my mental state more than half the time are as follows:
Muddled.
Clotted.
Cobbled.
Overwhelmed.
But imagine if I wrote like that. It would look like this:
have to-Alexa and Max would but (fountain pen ink) not Ranger and Erica------->future (2 years?) [what song] {Wythin} I need to clean my room=disaster | please stop eating, Anna - where did my papers--goodness, I didn't know we had doughnuts {RIVENBARK}--> Theodore was the original source of my genius, I'll never [melancholy shift] get that back //// just keep writing - belltower? (flower?) [[thought you had my back [lack, sack, hack, rack, track, TRACK], our trains on the same track]] <--too plebeian. (snob) [is funny] (dirty room)) LET'S WALK [where to go?] loneliness is my lot in life [Britta and Jo?] [tired of driving
And that would be exhausting, and it may communicate something, but it's not easily digestible. It's also not fun (that was the hardest writing of this entire post, by far. I've been sailing).
So instead, I've been trying to use the gifts God gave me to put something out there worth somebody reading sometime. My ability to analyze. My strange sense of humor. My flair for the subtly dramatic (boy, I hate describing myself in those last five words).
And I guess something else, maybe. My desire, if not talent, to be vulnerable. To make myself understood.
It's all a show, of course. But it's supposed to reveal something deeper.
What a ride this has been. I have a feeling I've done even more rambling than usual, and I'm not quite sure what I've even said. But hopefully there's something good up there in that mess of words.
It's been fun anyhow.
A parting note: the patterns, the truth, the forms, make no sense without God. This would all be a whole bunch of gibberish without my King. There is no commonality or basis for reality without him. So I know I didn't say much about that, but seriously. Think about it.
Also, I NEVER edit these things before posting them. I don't read it or anything. I just decide I've said what I want to say and hit the publish button. So you're welcome.
This person is a girl, and she's a reader. She spent her childhood taking turns reading and running out her wild side, and the reading won out. Now she's spent years in her head, turning ideas over and over in her head, driven on by curiosity and a need to feel unique. A need to discover something that no one else has before. A need to have ownership of something intellectual, and to be respected for it.
She has friends, but she doesn't really feel comfortable with most of them. She loves her family, but she's a grouch, with a sharp sense of sarcasm, and it comes out most when she's with them. She's loved and accepted where she works, but she feels like she puts on a mask when she goes there, and takes it off when she gets home.
Because she doesn't feel like her life is at work. She doesn't feel like it's anywhere, almost. In fact, the only place where she feel like her life is legitimate and true to her, is at home.
Narrow, but deep. Bordered, but rich within. She's only comfortable surrounded by the same things she's always known and sees every day.
Physically, at least. Mentally is another story. She spends her days in her stories: taking them in through music, and movies, and shows, and books. And then, with much more pain, but satisfaction as well, she pulls stories out of her head as though they were knotted string on a sticky spool.
And she is content doing that; sometimes happy, usually restless, always thinking.
She philosophizes, because that's what life is to her. She tries to be better, but feels that she is not. She loves her friends and feels pain because she forgets they even exist, and feels pleasure because that pain is a writing tool, and feels guilt because she should be better than to use pain she's earned for pleasure.
She hoards the diamonds she finds in her own mind, and expects people to know she's rich. She feels her mind has too many pieces for them all to hold together.
And...shocker. This girl is me (as if that wasn't obvious all along).
The reason I've described myself in such dramatic terms is that it tends to be how I think. I have a tendency to wallow in dramatic generalizations about myself. It's quite pathetic really.
But it points to something true about myself. I've spent my life discovering reality through the lens of books. And books, while good and lovely and useful, work not by describing all of reality, but by taking conflict and condensing it into a digestible form. Words are meant to be a translation of truth. I happen to speak and write in English; it's the only language I understand (with the exception of a wee bit of Spanish). So when I'm talking about compassion and kindness for someone who doesn't deserve it, I make some sounds with my mouth that people understand as mercy. And I spell it that way when I write it out, putting those lines and curves and spaces together like that, because everyone else knows this system that we use to express ideas.
But the idea of mercy existed before English did, and all the forms and systems and rules that we use to judge whether something is "correct" work not as truth, but as a carriage for truth.
Does that make sense? Language is the tool, not the craft.
And it's very useful, and it can be used very beautifully; and by beautifully, I mean well, as in it efficiently and accurately communicates those amorphous ideas that swim around in minds, so that when I say, "Your hat's hold on your head is tenuous," you understand that I am saying that your hat is coming off of your head, and that I am giving you advice, or possibly a warning, and also that I have some measure of competency when it comes to vocabulary.
And when I said efficiently up there, I didn't mean you only say the barest amount, or use the shortest words. Look at the example up there: I took over three times the amount of words to explain what I had said than to actually say it. I used the words I used because they conveyed exactly what I wanted to say: no more, but also no less.
That's efficiency. It's getting the right effect for the proper price. And of course, the only way to know what the proper price is, is to know the market. And that's why having a good grasp on how to use your language tools is important.
But I digress. Like, all the time. But specifically right now.
So, me. I read book people more than I read real people. And book people are condensed and effective. They confuse us, but only when they're calculated to (if it's not calculated, we say that their book is a Badly Written Book). They are supposed to be condensed, in order to convey a deeper message about people and circumstances. We're supposed to fill in gaps in our heads, and most of us are quite good at this, and have no idea we're doing this.
Unfortunately for me, it is possible to read so much that one believes that book people are the full, expanded thing, because one doesn't have many real full, expanded things to compare them to. And that's the boat I've found myself struggling to get out of.
The trouble is, you have to get the boat to shore, and then you have to actually step onto the shore, which isn't nearly as relaxing as the water. And then you have to trust that you can walk away and come back from time to time, and the boat will still be there and working.
Because, to be honest, sometimes it isn't. But boats also tend not to be very livable long-term.
This metaphor has kind of gone overboard (I hope I'm not throwing you in over your head; I can sea how it's easy to drown in all these ideas).
Well. (That's a deep subject.)
OKAY. WE ARE GETTING BACK ON TRACK NOW.
What I've been trying to say this whole time is that it's easy to confuse the tools for the craft. So the way I described myself up there is, in a way, my attempt to understand who I am. It's me trying to take all the pieces and condense them into a few manageable ideas.
But I am far from manageable.
So what I said up there is truthful to a degree. But it's certainly nowhere close to being the whole truth.
And in the spirit of being truthful, even the tone is deceptive. It paints my life as rather dramatic and intellectual and intense. And my life may look like that from certain angles. But I was describing it as though I felt that way myself, and I don't feel like that at all.
In fact, words I would use to describe my mental state more than half the time are as follows:
Muddled.
Clotted.
Cobbled.
Overwhelmed.
But imagine if I wrote like that. It would look like this:
have to-Alexa and Max would but (fountain pen ink) not Ranger and Erica------->future (2 years?) [what song] {Wythin} I need to clean my room=disaster | please stop eating, Anna - where did my papers--goodness, I didn't know we had doughnuts {RIVENBARK}--> Theodore was the original source of my genius, I'll never [melancholy shift] get that back //// just keep writing - belltower? (flower?) [[thought you had my back [lack, sack, hack, rack, track, TRACK], our trains on the same track]] <--too plebeian. (snob) [is funny] (dirty room)) LET'S WALK [where to go?] loneliness is my lot in life [Britta and Jo?] [tired of driving
And that would be exhausting, and it may communicate something, but it's not easily digestible. It's also not fun (that was the hardest writing of this entire post, by far. I've been sailing).
So instead, I've been trying to use the gifts God gave me to put something out there worth somebody reading sometime. My ability to analyze. My strange sense of humor. My flair for the subtly dramatic (boy, I hate describing myself in those last five words).
And I guess something else, maybe. My desire, if not talent, to be vulnerable. To make myself understood.
It's all a show, of course. But it's supposed to reveal something deeper.
What a ride this has been. I have a feeling I've done even more rambling than usual, and I'm not quite sure what I've even said. But hopefully there's something good up there in that mess of words.
It's been fun anyhow.
A parting note: the patterns, the truth, the forms, make no sense without God. This would all be a whole bunch of gibberish without my King. There is no commonality or basis for reality without him. So I know I didn't say much about that, but seriously. Think about it.
Also, I NEVER edit these things before posting them. I don't read it or anything. I just decide I've said what I want to say and hit the publish button. So you're welcome.
Wednesday, January 1, 2020
Hello New Year
True to form, I already started this post earlier, on New Years Eve, didn't finish it, and decided what I had written wasn't really worth keeping anyway. So I erased it all, and started again on a blank page on this first day of the year, and of the decade.
In a way, it seems kind of symbolic. We've been told, and maybe we actually believe, that the New Year is a time of change. Of improvement, and even of starting over. A time to shed the things in your life that weigh you down, and to carry on without inhibition. Because it's the new year. And new is somehow...different.
But of course, I've always had trouble seeing the passage of time as an indicator of any kind of practical change. I wrote a post about that, many years ago on my birthday. I talked about how numbers simply quantify time, they don't define it. The river keeps on going; it may be flowing past different mile markers, but you could move the mile markers and the river would be the same old river.
The mile markers aren't special because they make us come farther. They're special because they remind us of how far we've come.
2019 was a strange, dramatically subdued year for me. I look back and it seems at first glance that I've accomplished absolutely nothing this past year. I still have no idea what I'm doing with myself. I'm still struggling with many of the same sins. I have fewer friends than I did twelve months ago.
It's only when I look long and hard at the last mile marker that I understand just what this year has meant in the grand scheme of my life.
There are many things that I could look at and point to and say, "In at least some small ways, this thing has changed me."
I have a job. I have several new stories that I will someday finish. I have a nephew, the sweetest little three-month-old who loves to smile at Aunt Anna. I have ideas for things that I want to do. My room is a little bit cleaner than it was the other day, and will likely continue to improve. I say likely, because I've decided that that is worth my time, and so I will not simply hope for a cleaner room; at least not without then walking back into the house of action and getting to work.
But one of the most important ways in which I've grown is in how I take pain. I'm not good at pain. It's just so uncomfortable. But this year I've learned that there are things that I can't control, and I've learned to accept the consequences of these things. I cannot overrule God. And while this sometimes leaves me feeling lonely, it also helps me see that I can live, and I can live well, without many of the things that I didn't think I could lose.
I don't know what the coming year holds. I don't know a lot of things about myself and about my life. If I'm being honest, there's some apprehension doing its rounds in my heart. There's so much left behind.
But look--there's so much river ahead.
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