Life of Pride
'Tis a new year, at least in Central Standard Time. Hello, 2007.
Staring out our back windows at the brown acre of hill and grass that separates our house from our neighbors', green tea in hand, I felt several key thoughts coalesce. First is the Common Man. Frank Capra was a humanist; he believed that man's being made in God's image means that he is in some small way divine. Each and every person is an individual with a purpose. Every person's opinion is valid, though it may or may not be sound.
In contrast, I have been prone to say that I
don't trust other human beings - or myself - because we have sin natures. I would assert this idea a bit smugly. Now, however, I am beginning to think that the truth is somewhere in between. God gave us the faculty of reason; we can use it and trust it to a fair extent. He has also given us talents. It would be ingratitude to deny them for the sake of false humility; they are to be invested and used. In the same way, all the men, women, and children around me have their own talents. To deny that is either to deny my own gifts as well or to claim that I am a different sort of creature from everyone else. I don't think all humans are good, but I do think we are all rational. Thanks to God's divine law at work in the world, the most "rational" behavior is also "good" behavior. People need people, and others like you better when you are "good." Only a very few people can get away with chucking the whole mess and trying purposefully to be evil.
Admittedly, the last few paragraphs lead off into several probing questions, which any readers should feel free to take up in challenge. I don't have time to answer them all at this moment, for I wanted to bring up my second thought: the depth and validity of happy endings. While various critics would challenge Capra's films, calling them "Capra-corn" for their happy endings, the common man at the box office loved them. Now, you can chalk this up to the stupidity of the masses versus the true artistic knowledge of the critics - but if, like Capra and now myself, you don't automatically assume that the average consumer is an idiot, you conclude differently. Perhaps the average consumer finds a truth in happy endings that the artistic critic has analyzed away. At any rate, even these days it is extremely unlikely to have an enduring box-office hit with an unhappy ending - even in a horror movie.
Why is this? The problem of pain is prevalent everywhere you look. Murder, suicide, sexual diseases... Yet still people want their endings happy. Is this mass escapism -
or does the common man find in the happy ending a realism deeper than the portrayal of suicide or death?
When I think about it, all of life is hope for a happy ending. We Christians know that the happy ending comes after death. Other religions have their own explanations. But this is why the actual fact of death so startles people when they meet it face-to-face for the first time. It seems out of place, a strange contradiction to the way they live, unless there
is hope beyond.
Suicide and unhappy endings do not match the attitude of a living, breathing audience. Those who have already died are gone and buried. If a man has lost all hope, he has already committed suicide. He doesn't turn movies about suicide into box-office hits. No, the audience is still alive because it hopes for something more. The happy ending keeps the energy of hope alive.
Besides, as a Christian I believe a happy ending is either the shallowest or the deepest possibility because of the very fact of the problem of pain. Life as we see it ends in death; pain is the line on either side of which the happy ending may fall.
If all goes well for the hero without serious difficulty, if he is absolutely faultless, the story is melodrama. This is a happy ending that falls shallow of the line of pain. Many comedies also fall short because their characters are purposefully too innocent or stupid to understand pain. Or, because the plotline only covers a short period of their lives, there is no need to touch on much pain. Tragedy, of course, bucks right up against the line of pain and can go no farther, no matter how the characters toss against their fate.
Then there is tragicomedy. In a tragicomic plot, something in human nature or in God Himself allows characters to truck on through and right on past the line of pain. And I contend that most of the classic stories of all time have been tragicomic. Heroes face real, impossible difficulties - and transcend, because they have to. I want to write stories like this.
Limbo-land's a funny place to live. It's like walking through thick fog. All you see is fuzzy whiteness. You have to trust that there's ground on which to step.
January 2nd, Tuesday, marks two deadlines for Master's programs to which I intended to apply. Dr. Farris scrambled and overnighted me recommendation letters. Dr. Hake's haven't yet shown up; not that they have to, it would have been a huge favor if they did. Since the mail doesn't run on Monday, if Dr. Hake's letters don't show up Saturday, I'm gonna miss the Tuesday deadlines. It won't be for lack of trying, and it's in that my peace lies. At this moment it is all out of my hands. Dr. Hake is out of reach - probably at home for the holidays, God bless him. The letters could be in the mail right now, or they could still be lying in his office. God knows. And I am thoroughly grateful to Dr. Farris for the trouble he went to, whether or not I meet my deadlines.
My brother Joe is visiting until Sunday. It sets something right for me. It feels better to have the family complete. I am also sleeping whenever I feel tired - 10 hours or more a night. The lung infection that crippled me with coughing for the first ten days of this break has finally gone away, allowing me to begin exercising again. This is a peaceful time. I am not
doing much; I am just healing - mind, body, and soul. Resting up for the struggle that will resume in a few weeks.
Makin' a MovieThe words are comin' back. Last night, on the way home from watching
Dreamgirls something clicked. The first several scenes of a potential movie version of "Delightfully Ever After," the story I intended to convert to screenplay over break, sprang to mind. The hours between 8:00 and 10:30 dissolved away as I rushed to record these first bits in "treatment" mode.
Will it ever become a movie? God knows. I feel so inadequate to the task. But if I don't try, I will already have failed, and I will always be saying, "What if?" after I graduate.
I see bits of it already. It could work. It really could.
Hello, world. Merry Christmas!
It is a strange Christmas here in MO. It was warm enough today that it could be October instead of December. Definitely no snow. Also, since my brother Joe is coming from CA in two days to visit, my mom decided to put off our full-blown celebration until then. Another one of my mom's ideas is that we don't do presents on Christmas - only on Thanksgiving. Effectually this means that we don't do presents at all, except sometimes. Holiday traditions are rather sporadic around our house in general.
Actually, I did buy presents for everyone, but I am saving them until Joe arrives. We are saving everything until then.
So ya, today doesn't "feel" special. Except it is so peaceful, with no phones ringing or deliveries arriving. And I
know it is special. There is this constant glow of thankfulness in the back of my mind. Every part of me is still so weary that, in a way, I am glad that Christmas this year is so unceremonious.
Edit: It got better. We all drove around the neighborhood and looked at Christmas lights and sang carols in the van. :) Now we are about to watch my DVD from the Chorale concert.
Family time, Rocky Balboa, and greatnessThis evening my family went all together in a pack to see Rocky VI in the movie theater. We are not a cool collective. Many of us dress in sweatpants and t-shirts, even when going to the movies. Some are tall and lanky; some are rather on the heavy side; some (me) lie in between. We wear glasses. And all the way to the theater in our blue, 15-passenger van we were vigorously arguing the merits of various
Survivor seasons. It went like this:
Frank: "Ozzy and Yul are the best. Yul especially. I like the last episode where he -"
Me *covering ears*: "Stop, stop! I've only seen up to episode four so far. I don't want to know how it ends!"
Mom: "All right, let's not talk about
Survivor any more."
*temporary halt, and then a little later*
Me: "But my favorite is season 10, with Tom the fire chief. I especially respect what happens in the last episode before the final 2, when -"
Chorus of voices: "We haven't seen season 10!"
Mom: "Let's not talk about
Survivor any more. We don't want to spoil it for anybody."
So no, we are not cool as a group. This used to bother me, until I realized how envious other teens truly were of us. We are together, and we love each other. Even my oldest brother, Ted, who had double pneumonia when he was 14, is still alive. I am so grateful to God for this. He has taught me in the last two years, through various means, that love is appreciating people how they are, not how I would like them to be.
I enjoyed Rocky VI very much. One of the most powerful moments is when Rocky tells his son (I paraphrase very roughly): "Life is brutal. Life will hit you harder than any person ever can. Success comes when you push on anyway." Sheer strength... or guts? I'll take guts any day, thank you very much.
The movie is also about knowing who you are and pursuing that without fear. Well, I'm a child of God, and I believe he made me to be a writer. Four years ago I stepped out on that belief and started a biweekly writing group with six other young women. We dedicated it to God with fear and trembling, because few of us had ever finished a story. Still, I never doubted that I could. I never doubted that I would. Now I have finished many stories - well over 150 pages of fiction. And now I doubt. I have a small measure of my own capabilities, and I have learned more of the world's literary history. I don't yet measure up. So there's a fear and a holding back that wasn't there before when I was blissfully ignorant. Do I toss myself 100% into writing and let myself fail at riskier stuff for a while so that I can learn? Or do I continue with "safer" stories that I know I can execute?
I'll know better once I have finished refueling my story this break through movies and books.
I discovered this evening that the Cohen Brothers ripped off several elements of their movie
The Hudsucker Proxy from Capra's
Mr. Deeds Goes To Town. I discovered this by watching the latter and finding unmistakable similarities to the former.
Hudsucker is one of my favorite movies, so this bothered me at first. Then I concluded that the Cohen Brothers' movie is still highly original, despite having borrowed shamelessly. I think I like it all the better for having discovered that Cohen and Cohen were Capra aficionados.
I spent five hours on Capra's voluminous autobiography today. Fascinating stuff. In those five hours I made it through only 120 pages out of 480. Boy, was it worth it. The man was immensely smart and gutsy, and the world he lived in was full of so much possibility in its desperate way. I think I'll relate just one little lesson of the many I've learned so far. One matter that's continually been on my mind for about a year now is the uncertainty of life. Not the uncertainty of my final destination, but how I'm supposed to get there. Five years ago everything seemed so obvious. One of Capra's comments rendered the matter clear. I don't have the book in front of me, and I don't remember where the quote was, but his basic jist was that the people happiest about doing a particular task are the utterly ignorant and the completely knowledgeable. Thus it strikes me that those who feel the most confident about all parts of life are probably ignorant humans and God Himself.
Over the past few years I've tossed around ideas for attending so many different grad schools - and for innumerable different plans of study. I felt so certain several times. Now I feel like a fool for feeling certain and being wrong.
The one unchanging bit of all this has been story-writing. Somehow, in some medium, I will be continuing to create stories.
Hahaha, life is crazy again. It's always so much more fun when things are utterly, bizarrely crazy. It's like this little
*zing*.
Basically, my mom changed plans on me two days ago. She doesn't want me to edit
Practical Homeschooling for a year, after all. She decided this some weeks ago, but she and my dad never quite made it around to telling me. So most of the deadlines for anything I might apply to have passed. There are still a few left, however. So, provided I can obtain recommendation letters and transcripts in time, I am applying to the following:
- MFA in Creative Writing at University of Virginia (deadline Jan. 2)
- MA in Journalism at University of Missouri-Columbia (deadline Jan. 4)
- MFA in Shakespeare at Mary Baldwin College (deadline Feb. 17)
Crazy, crazy. I also began my break's studies today. I visited the main branch of the St. Louis library network, a truly imposing edifice, and took out biographies on Frank Capra and several of his movies. I also am starting to refresh my Greek so that I can take Greek IV in the spring to round out my necessary 12 credits.
I found when I entered the nonfiction shelves to find the Capra books that they were shelved amidst a fascinating collection of literature on all things movie-related. I could spend months reading straight through those shelves. I want to know all that stuff.
Meanwhile, such dubiousness and wanderings as my mind has traveled these past few days! I was doubting myself about positively everything. I think I'm the sort of person who always needs a goal in order to move forward.
Wow, my home is messy and claustrophobic. We do our best, but there is nowhere to put everything when one's house contains ten people and all the materials for running a mail-order business. Right now my college stuff - and my sister's - is sitting in a pile in the middle of the living room. Every time I walk through I feel this overwhelming impulse to clean it up. Only I have nowhere to stash it. We have four girls sleeping in bunk beds in the one small room upstairs right now. My presence has, in fact, evicted my youngest sister to the living room couch.
On a larger scale, St. Louis suburbia is also claustrophobic. I have noted this before on my blog. If I leave the house on foot, I can choose between walking amongst sidewalk and houses, or heading out the other direction to stride beside the nearby highway. There are no relaxing grassy spaces within easy reach. One can find no solitude.
People say development and technology are good. We live longer and healthier; we own more things for the same amount of work. But we are more than bodies. I would argue that people nowadays are often mentally and spiritually sick. We exercise ourselves on treadmills and in the gym; we entertain ourselves with flat images on a screen. We work in offices, and we receive in exchange for our services money that never exists beyond the electronic realm.
The truth is that the adventures of the world are hard to see. I'm writing a story about this right now, actually. The further truth is that God is the source of all meaning and adventure in the world, no matter what shape the latter is in. God turns everything topsy-turvy and sends one on a rollercoaster.
- My mom made my dad promise when they got married that they would have no children. They soon became Christians. My mom wrote a book about biblical femininity that has influenced the lives of thousands, and then my parents proceeded to have nine kids.
- Some friends of my parents were influenced by them to become Christians. Because of this, the dad determined years later that he should enter politics. He is now our Rep in Congress.
As I found when I was home from December to August this past year, the escape from claustrophobia comes through one's interactions with God and man. A relationship with God renders work meaningful. Relationships with human beings lend meaning to the claustrophobia of suburbia.
All of which is to say, I would still prefer to live in a wide-open space. :)
I was planning to do nothin' for a few days, and I think I'm managing that just fine. I slept yesterday afternoon from 2-5, last night for nine hours, and this afternoon for another four. I have a nasty chest cough from the cold I started last week (last week? was I at Christy's surprise b'day party only a week ago?), so that helps to tire me out as well. A broken-down wreck, that's me.
Actually, I have until Wednesday to finish the stories I was supposed to be writing this semester. So I should probably spend the evening working on those, if I can make my mind wake up. Then perhaps I can bake cookies and mail them the rest of the week. I always bake and mail cookies over Christmas break.
Otherwise, my main goals for this month are to gain back a little bit of lost fitness and to turn a story into a screenplay. I am seriously intimidating myself with my intention to make a movie at PHC next semester. What am I thinking? What do I know about movie-making, anyway? I know how to write a screenplay, but as to turning it into the actual creation - I am a
tabula rasa. I still think I ought to try it, however. I know that I will always feel regrets if I do not. It just means that I will need to rely on many other people's expertise. eeks!
So hello world; nice to see ya! This month is gonna fly!
Home again. Picking up the scattered pieces and growing experiences of a semester. It is all a little overwhelming. I've been looking forward to this time of security and warmth for a few months now, 'cause it's
scary out there in the world without people who love you unconditionally. Funny how it took me so many years to notice this. Anyway, I have several things I would like to accomplish over this break, but mostly I just want to sit back and enjoy. I am so much better at doing than enjoying. Like the difference between Mary and Martha.
It occurs to me that life is altogether a gift. This struck me yesterday evening as I was driving through West Virginia in a red-gold sunset that was so beautiful it made me cry. God creates a new sunrise and sunset every morning and evening simply as a gift. There is no "practical" reason for such beauty. He is saying to us, "Look at what I have done! Aren't I skilled? This is proof that I can take care of you." The message is as tangible as words.
Life in general is the same. Why should we exist in this form when we are going to spend eternity in another? What is the purpose, the practical reason for inserting this little "blip" into our existence? It's not to punish us with the problem of pain. It is a gift. He intended it to be absolutely gorgeous, but then we misunderstood it the same way we so often ignore the sunrise and sunset. Now, thanks to the Fall, bad things happen, but life in general is still a gift. It has everything we need to become who we need to be.
I just wish I understood. I think perhaps true romantic love would help me fumble a little closer to understanding, because then I could draw parallels in my limited temporal fashion. Every once in a while I have caught a glimpse or two, but it always fades. Like the sunset. And by now I don't expect that my appreciation of a sunset will compel it to remain.
Well, here 'tis. Monday afternoon. My bad finals are over; all I have left is Economics and then a motherload of story writing. The weather outside is lovely for December 11th, which helps, even though I am standing in the scanner booth in the dining hall and looking out from inside at people playing volleyball. I couldn't play anyway because I am sick, so I am content to watch.
I was feeling very unhappy earlier today, due to a final, but I have little reason to complain, all told. I am enjoying people, even if I am not enjoying my tests. I am learning how to rest on others much more than I ever have before.
Curious how that is. I had to learn to trust in God with everything last semester at home. Now I am translating that over to other people. Earlier today when I was feeling so bad, I was praying to God desperately for help. Normally, I then feel comforted and safe and able to keep going. This morning it felt like He was saying, "No! You're not getting it from me this time. You have to go talk to person X." So I talked to person X, and now I feel so much better. But it was odd, because it has never happened that way before.
I trust that God is using every little detail of what is happening in a neat, big story that has implications far beyond what I can see. I will need the lessons I am learning for some particular purpose.
I told some people tonight that I couldn't wait to graduate; that I wished I was graduating at the end of this semester. I'm not sure why I said that. I wasn't trying to lie intentionally, but that's what it was. The funny thing was that only an hour before, in the middle of Chorale practice, I'd been tearing up over the sudden wave of nostalgia that hit me - the knowledge that in a few short months this is gonna be all. No more undergraduate education.
I think I deny it when I am truly vulnerable to someone or something. I love PHC. There. I'll just say it. I'm delighted that I'm not graduating this semester, 'cause I still have loose ends to tie up. And people to serve. Sure, I have more possibilities for pain here. I'm feeling considerable pain right now for various reasons. But this fire refines me.
I just wish I hadn't said that. Why did I say it?
