Some Updates

I really don't know what to write, but it seems that some sort of information is in order. Accept therefore, in a forgiving manner if you will, this collection of thoughts impressed on my mind by the moment, the chief concern, or the unfortunate fact that I have been reading Romantic poets (ick!) for Brit Lit II since mid-January. I fear that they are having an effect on my mental and scriptoral style, in spite of the fact that I heartily dislike Romantic poetry. Ah well, ut Deus vult.

The weather is by no means "at the top of golden hours" (Wordsworth, I believe, speaking erroneously of the situation in France during the Revolution), but it is moody and warming. On Saturday my younger siblings exhibited more than a touch of spring fever, in which madness I gladly joined them. We went to the library with the windows all rolled down, a holiday in fact, and linked arms, singing, on the way back to the car with out books. I daresay people stared, but we couldn't help being happy.

The weather could not be more in accord with my mental and emotional state. Some days are a perfect blaze of sunshine, while others seem gloomier than the cold rain outside, but most are a mixture. We had spatters of snow the other day in the lands on either side of the River, and I have had my icy spells also. Never have I felt so perfectly divided; never have I been so unable to devote myself entirely. My feelings rebel against this state of affairs in every particular, but my will, which is I believe submitted to God, remains steady. Yes, and if it did not, I am sure the rest of me would fly apart.

I will give some details by way of explanation. Tomorrow morning I shall rise early and spend the day in Virginia, but I will be far behind on all the goings-on of the weekend, and indeed of most social activities, since these tend to begin at the same time as I leave campus... that is, in the evenings. I will drift from class to class, see my roommate and friends, but again have no idea of their hourly lives, whether physical, mental, or spiritual. Yet I will be there, and not at the office, and so will simultaneously fall behind on the in-jokes at work, the progress being made on the project for which I am chiefly responsible, etc. etc.

At 5 pm tomorrow I will leave school and come home, my second hour-plus drive of the day, and try to reconnect with the life that I left behind eight hours previous. I will have succeeded pretty well by 5 pm the next day, after eight hours spent at the office. But early the following morning (Wednesday) the process will begin all over again.

Every twenty-four to thirty-six hours I shift roles completely. In the one instance I am totally on my own for all decisions affecting what I do, where, how, and why. Not only this but I am a student, in a subordinate role to professors and in a quasi-professional role with my classmates. I must quote authorities and submit my arguments to scrutiny. I have the safety of knowing that someone else will check up on my thought process and ensure its veracity. Nothing I do matters much, because it is all a thought-experiment which will hopefully teach me to think.

In the other instance I am part of a household which will often make personal decisions for me, by the simple fiat which arises from all members working together to make the family schedule run smoothly. Not only this but I am a project manager, in a superior role to employees under me, quite thoroughly professional. No one else is assigned to verify my information, which is a frightening thought when one recalls that everything I do matters very much, because it is all being written down for the education of children across the country, and will be taught by their parents as fact. Thus if I say, "a simile is thus-and-such" it must needs be thus-and-such, or I shall have mistaught quite literally thousands of people. There is no comforting presence of a professor above my head, no safety net at all. "No, don't quote authorities to me," my boss said. "You are the authority now. Just write it." The effect was much the same as it would have been if she had said, "The Queen of England has died, and you are queen now. Just run the country."

And so I teeter back and forth, trying to bridge the gap by such paltry means as wearing the same clothing every day in both places, attempting to fix my mind only in the present, switching terminology, slang, and sublanguages as necessary. I try to ignore the increasing artificiality of conversations with friends at school---conversations which, because I am so much absent from the real life of PHC, have begun to sound like empty rituals which once had meaning and significance. "How are you?" "I'm well, and you?" "Fine, fine...." Whose fault is it? No one, no one at all is culpable. It is only a necessary thing, and a disheartening, bittersweet thing, to be a phantom where I once was flesh.

But it does not wound me at the deepest place; I am not heartsick. I only see that it is so, and am sorry, and wistful for a little while sometimes. Yet I am also sure that it is right for me to be in these circumstances, where God has placed me, and so go forward with a certain serenity which is unshaken even by the fear of fading from sight. I have had dear friendships, and dear friends, these three years and a half. I value them at their worth, as that of finest gold. But shall I complain of God's will and God's gifts in the present, and refuse to be comforted, because that which he gave me in the past cannot continue into the future? Foolishness! Senseless, heartless, faithless! Be silent, aching memories.

Nothing runs smooth for me just now. Fortuna spins her wheel, and her changes change her changes evermore (Dante, Inferno). Yet I learn most when I seem to myself most unsteady, as indeed a Peter on the waves. Christ said, "Come." I say, "Amen, I am coming. And come too, Lord Jesus!"

But Seriously, Folks...

“Guys, I am completely ODed (overdosed) on the word ‘serious’.” – Mom
“Well, a serious man will speak in a serious vein. Seriously.” – Davy
“Are you serious?” – Casey
“Seriously!” – Davy
“AHHHHHHH!!!!” – Mom
"Whoa, slow down! I'm not getting all of this.... but quote books are seldom completely accurate." - Christy

::Mom and Casey gerbil about "serious" for a few more minutes::

“Okay, Christy! Thesaurus!” – Mom, calling for an alternative to “serious.”
“What did you call her?!” – David

“I’d just like to point out that the word ‘sad’ used to mean ‘serious’ in the English language. Okay: we have ‘grave, solemn, somber, stern, grim, severe, staid, and sober.'” – Christy
“Are you sober, Casey?” – Mom
“Hey!” – Casey

::Much laughter::

That's How It Goes...

So I'm walking out the door with Davy and a bunch of his friends last night, on my way to be dropped off at PHC for a couple of days, and I'm in a hurry, and there's stuff on the step, so I skip the step...

And twist my foot and land on it and fall down the rest of the stairs.

Net result: one sprained ankle. But I went to PHC anyway.

And now I'm at PHC with a sprained ankle, learning the deep and awful mysteries of crutches. ;-)

It's difficult, trying to start up a semester without being able to walk. Of course, at the beginning of last semester I couldn't speak (lost my voice due to a bad cold), and my first semester I came in all bruised up from a bad car accident. So, really, this is just par for the course. I should start treading cautiously during the last few days before school starts, clearly. :-)

However, I am back with my pond and my beloved roommate, and that makes up for a good deal.

But please do pray. It hurts, and it is hard.

--- Me

Floyd Knobs

So today I took a Tapestry order over the phone. I don't usually do this, because we have people for this (namely, Grace). But Grace wasn't in yet.

Parenthetically, I would like to note that it's awful for people named Grace to work at Lampstand Press, Marketers of Tapestry of Grace. She answers the phone like this:

"Lampstand Press, this is Grace, how may I help you?"

And she gets a lot of this:

"Oh, Grace, huh? As in, Tapestry of Grace?"

Of course, the caller doesn't realize that she (it's usually a she) isn't the first person to spot that particular funny coincidence. So... it's a good thing that Grace has a sense of humor. :)

Anyway, Grace wasn't in, and I am (thankfully) a Christy. So I just took the order and didn't have to take any quips about nomenclature. This lady was calling from, I kid you not, "Floyd Knobs, Indiana." Yep, it's a town. I went online and found actual pictures from Floyd Knobs.

Here is their elementary school, which we homeschoolers are putting out of business:

Apparently, Floyd Knobs is famous for goat's milk...

This has been your "Fun Facts to Know and Tell" post for the... whatever. Week? Month? Year? Enjoy. :)

Lampstand Quotes --- They're Back

Those of you who read my blog regularly last summer may remember these little sweet spots. For the rest, well.... I can't explain very effectively, and I won't apologize. You'll just have to deal with it. And laugh. Definitely laugh. ;)

“Here. Call up Charity and see where she is on the food chain.” – Mom, handing her cell phone to Christy.

"You know, our [communicative] life basically consists of taking reality and tweaking it for our own amusement." – Christy

“Clearly he needs roommates.” – Mom about Nate
“I’ve done my time with him.” – Davy

“Sam, your singing voice is questionable.” – Davy to Sam, who is barking along with the music.

::On David’s Snoopy shirt::
“Does that look like the shirt of a man who is ready to succeed in life?” – Mom
“Yeah!” – Davy
“That looks like the shirt of a two-year-old coming down the stairs.” – Mom
“I’d like to point out that two-year-olds are well-fed, cared-for, and generally happy people.” – Davy
“Yes Dave, but they are not self-sufficient.” – Mom
“So that’s why God made us to need helpmeets!” – Davy

“If somebody has to be a bottleneck, I will sacrifice myself on the altar.” – Christy
“Thanks. You’re a peach.” – Davy

Best Friends, Sundresses, and Digging Holes

"You're one of my best friends." Mommy said to me tonight.

"Yeah? When did you fall in love with me?" I teased, looking up from my set of garden blueprints.

"Oh, recently."

We laughed. There's a Chris Rice song out called When Did You Fall, and Mom has been having fun singing that question all over the office and house lately.

"I don't believe you really mean it about turning the backyard into a garden, Tisy."

"I'll prove my commitment by digging holes for the rhododendron hedge!" Quoth I, with feeling and pathos.

"Ooooohhh... that's commitment all right."

"Exactly. Now, where shall we put the fishponds?"

"Who is going to maintain these fishponds?"

"ME!"

"Uh-huh..."

And so forth. There's no one I enjoy giggling with more than Mama, and though the garden may not come out looking like this...

.....There's no reason why we shouldn't have one of these....


Charity wandered in. "Come snuggle," I said. She came, saw, and snuggled. "Do you want to help me dig rhododendron holes?" I inquired.

"You know, I was thinking about gardening. If I did I could wear my sunbonnet!"

Then Marjorie appeared. "Oh! I want to show you the dress that I'm wearing to the banquet on Saturday!" She vanished into Mom's capacious bathroom and reappeared, a vision in the blue satin dress that I wore to the same event when I was seventeen.

"Wow!"

"But what should I do with my hair?"

Daddy came up, and Mommy booted us (nicely) so that she could hang out with him (husband privileges. Hmphf.) So we egressed into my room, where I did up Marjorie's hair in one of those sophisticated dodahs that looks like it took forever but actually takes five minutes. Charity meanwhile glanced over my garden plans. We had been talking about making cotton (though I could be persuaded into muslin) summer dresses, and about how the dresses that fashion designers make these days are deplorably immodest, and how early we should start, and whether we three girls would want matching dresses like the ones that we had when we were little....

Burgee didn't get the vision---she still had the banquet on her mind. I expect that she will be properly enthused about the project sometime in mid-March, especially if she gets to listen to books read aloud while we sew. You must understand, gentle audiens, that in a house blessed with the most magnificent reader in the world---aka Daddy---sewing is never tedious. We simply pop him into a comfortable chair, keep him well-provided with ice water, and are superbly entertained while stitching.

Now, if only I could employ a similar method for gardening....

The first and most important thing is the privacy hedge: hence, rhododendrons. After that come the half-gazebo laced with fishponds, and then the hammocks, and then the patio under the deck. Mom says this is the year for the patio. I say huzzah. :-)

That's all from Lake Woebegone, folks. January is the perfect time to think about April.

Awestruck

I was thinking a little while ago.... could I compose a list of things that make me forget to breathe?

Here's a first stab.

1. The feeling I get right before the horse under me takes off over a three-foot jump.
2. .....and the feeling I get when I can feel myself slipping from the saddle.
3. The sea.
4. Going barefoot on new grass, for the first time in many months.
5. Those hours of a summer night spent sitting on the front porch staring at the stars, because I woke up and couldn't go back to sleep.
6. Hearing a stick crack when I'm in the woods alone.
7. Luna moths.
8. Heartsickness, the kind that hurts so much I can't think past my wish for oblivion.
9. Words fitly spoken or written---like apples of gold in settings of silver.
10. Scriptures, too many to name, each more precious to me than my life because I know what it is to be without them, or without the power of understanding them.
11. Jessica's Theme from the Man from Snowy River soundtrack.
12. Eyes full of love.
13. Hebrew hymns.
14. Moments, snapshots, postures or gestures or looks, that condense within themselves so much of pain, or longing, or tenderness, or joy, that I could stand staring at them forever.... and yet can hardly bear to look.
15. Lamplight on mahogany.
16. Fireflies in the shade of an oak tree, in June.
17. Light.

Presenting to Sarah: Chapter 4

"People aren't posting enough," my friend Sarah tells me. "I know it's holidays, but..."

But.

"Something must be done about this." I say it to myself, but what can I do? I'm not in a writerly mood just now. So I go and read Sarah's blog, catching up on all the posts I've missed in the last few days since Christmas and my job hit me like a ton of bricks between the eyes of an especially disoriented moose. I found a really funny story on Sarah's blog, all about Fancy and her mother, Wisdom. "That's neat," I thought, "but I can't write a story just now."

Then it occured to me...

Sarah has read the first chapter of a story, and she (along with all the other Smudgettes in the writing club) didn't much like one of my main characters.

"He's so arrogant!"

"He's a unbeliever, and a senior in public high school!" I plead. "Give him a break! He gets better, honest."

They all gave me skeptical looks. "I'll send you the rest of what I have written," I said. "Then you'll see." But in the rush of Finals I never did.

So Sarah, this is just for you. It won't make sense to anybody else, unless that somebody has seen the first chapter. It's not the next chapter, because the next chapter needs a lot more work. But it's an excerpt from a later chapter which will--hopefully--make you like my poor Burn better.

Chapter 4: All That Common Ground

Burn dragged himself home that afternoon in a state of Friday Buzz. The feeling was composed of relief, a sense of freedom, and weariness. It rasped his nerve ends. He wanted to eat, to start something, and to go to bed... though not necessarily in that order. He was willing to bump sleep up a few notches.

Burn shrugged out of his pack and left it by the door. His home was clean, inviting, and nicely decorated. Mom went in for French Provencal. She also kept a garden. Dad came home most evenings, seldom traveled, and yet managed to hold down a good job in his real estate company. He’d been top seller for five years now.

Occasionally, it occurred to Burn that he didn’t come from a dysfunctional family, didn’t have many cold wars with his parents, and didn’t suffer from the abuses of a workaholic father or a gadding mother. Oh, they had their family quarrels. Mom disliked animals of all types, and wouldn’t let Burn keep so much as a dog. He didn’t mind any more. Girls were more fun. But Mom didn’t approve of his girlfriends. She called them parasites, or worse.

“What do you see in her, Jean?” his mother pleaded, after speaking with his latest for five whole minutes at Burn’s track meet or basketball game. Burn would flatten his mouth and keep silent. The string of girlfriends kept growing, and he wondered. Did some part of him agree with Mom’s assessments?

Well, she won’t be seeing Jess.

Dad reasoned with her, but he had his demands too. Certain chores were to be done regardless of his son’s academic or social pressures. John Mayberry felt that mowing the lawn, weeding the garden, taking out garbage, and being involved in drama or music or tutoring at the school built character. Burn had ceased to argue with him. What did it matter? One more year, one more summer, and he would be off to Harvard, Duke, or Princeton. Bernard hadn’t decided which, but he’d been accepted by all three, and that was proof enough right there that he was special.

Special. Blessed.

“Mom’s Catholicism rubbing off again,” he muttered, digging a coke out of the refrigerator. Burn got a bowl of grapes and draped himself across the recliner. He’d always enjoyed the sweet, tanging burst of fruit in his mouth: clean passion. Mom said it was France in him. Dad only grinned.

There was nothing on TV, only reruns. The summer smash had ended, and its dying jangles rubbed him wrong. Burn clicked off. He saluted the empty tube with his glass. One of Mom’s rules; you don’t drink soda out of a can unless you’re camping or something. Originally, her insistence had rankled. What difference did it make? But eventually Bernard learned that he, like his mother, preferred crystal to aluminum as an under-taste for his beverage.

Maybe that was why he liked RP. Burn loved beautiful things, not the way a woman would, for softness or luster, but as a man, for simplicity, or strength, or sheen, or perfect curve. He cared for the burning colors of his room, deep red, blue like a sapphire bursting…

In Illyrion, he could create his thoughts and make them real, because so many other people were also pretending their reality with him, and that made the magic stronger. Burn considered himself a realist, but somewhere in his soul there lingered a strong belief in magic… or whatever. Something. Maybe beauty was what he worshipped. It would explain his affinity for girls like Jess, who had little else to offer. Bernard was not blind to that, but he seldom allowed it to trouble him.

Jess was like the RP girls, flawlessly beautiful, just as they wrote themselves. At the moment, there was a craze among them for red hair. That would end, and there would be another for blond, then perhaps black. He’d seen the cycles before. These girls wrote themselves up as perfection, which was false advertising, naturally. So? As long as they played the part well, wrote well, convinced their evening’s lover that theirs really were the reddest lips and brightest eyes in on the nets, nothing else mattered.

Burn rose and crossed the room. He set his glass down, hesitated, and then put it in the sink. That would make Mom happy. Bernard liked to please his mother, because she was a real lady and there were few of them out there. And this didn’t conflict with his happiness. It only took a few seconds.

He snagged his pack from the hall and went upstairs. There was a sleek black lamp on the desk. Click – light brought out deeper shades of red-amber in the paint. Such richness usually motivated him to write… unless he was extremely tired. Friday Buzz didn’t amount to that.
The computer on his desk was black, too, and powerful. Not morbid by temperament, Burn found that black with pure lines held his fascination, probably for the same reason that he loved his mother’s crystal, or grapes, or intense colors. Clean passion. They were purity and profundity and life and meaning.

Meaning what? It was a question Burn always dismissed.

The flatscreen hummed to life. It displayed a scene from some Fancy-File program that had caught his attention years ago; of a woman, almost a girl, with black, lustrous hair and a peasant’s red blouse beneath her dark bodice. She leaned out the tavern window to speak to a handsome man below, mounted on his horse. Burn could sense the man’s frustration, dressed for a journey, leaving his sweetheart.

But it was the woman who kept this picture on his screen more frequently than any of the others in his vast files. She held her hand out to the man, pleading with him to stay, and there was so much sweetness in those dark eyes: sweetness… an increasingly rare quality. There had been a poem attached to the picture, all about moons and wind and a landlord’s daughter, and the highwayman; an old poem that mattered little to Bernard, though he liked its drumming cadence. Ah, but the woman! His mother was such a woman.

And Jess was not.

“Don’t make ‘em like they used to,” he muttered, angry for some reason. Burn touched the screen and another file bloomed beneath his fingers. He selected a scene of ocher-colored glass flattened by desert winds, and keyed it to show on the desktop. There. If they didn’t make them like that any more, what was the point of looking?

He pulled up a dictionary file. What did that weird femmie mean by calling his nickname “quaint”? Burn found the definition… and snorted with laughter. Old-fashioned? Yeah, right. She had wits, maybe, or at least sarcasm. She was also Monday’s problem.

Whenever Burn didn’t want to think about something, he’d assign it to another day. The History grade is Wednesday’s problem. Dad being mad about my breaking his power saw is Saturday’s problem. Dumping Sarah is Friday’s problem. How long ago was Sarah, anyway? Four girlfriends back? Five? Why didn’t his interest last longer?

Under his fingers, the flatscreen shifted to an internet program. Burn always thought of it as reaching out and finding the end of a rope, one that had mysteriously come loose from his great ship of fantasy. You catch hold and swing it back down to the deck, feel the salt wind in your hair, take command…

Magic. The nets were magic, and he could play them like a skillful wizard. Wizard? The word tumbled through his consciousness, collecting old memories and dark baggage.

“Why don’t you join us?” Gorgeous Marisa had asked the question, dressed in black, looking up at him out of silvery-dark eyes. Burn always noticed eyes.

“Sorry babe, not possible. My rents would have a fit.”

“But you believe in magic, don’t you?” She’d whispered it up at him, and her eyes drew him, but not like the landlord’s daughter. A fine chill ran down his spine.

“Do I?” Burn grinned down at her.

“There’s a meeting on Thursday. Midnight, behind the school. Oh please, Burn, you could be so much more with us…”

He’d gone. He’d been sickened by what he saw. There was a dark side and a light side to fantasy. White magic or black magic, or, some believed gray magic. Burn didn’t know the right terms, but, if you made magic synonymous with power, there were good ways and bad ways to use it. Burn preferred the clean stuff, though he wasn’t averse to dabbling in black waters, provided they sent pleasure through his senses and didn’t leave an obvious stain. Yet, overall, keep it on the nets. Real magic was too disturbing... if there really was a difference between black and white. Maybe this, like everything else, just wound up looking gray.

I’m a good kid, Burn told himself, angrily. I’ve got good parents and a good home. I’m talented. I’m somebody! I might mess around, but that’s part of growing up. It’s called exploring, for the information of all those freaks out there who are afraid of it.

It was a good day to be at sea. Burn zipped through page after page, reading the latest postings and making a mental judgment of each. Most were terrible, which left him smug. One or two passed muster, and Burn started tracking files on them. He wanted only the best in his guild… whenever they got around to making it. And how exactly was he going to work that out?
Monday’s problem.

On the popular Illyrion board, Burn ran across another new bit of writing. His brows rose at the number of viewings it displayed. Over seventy people had looked at this particular piece. That was more than even his work usually drew. Five replies had been made to it, all in the last twenty-four hours. Burn touched the screen again, and sat back to read.

The Shadow Proves the Sunshine

The shadow proves the sunshine.

Just think about it. Then think about the Gospel. Then think about it again. Then... worship.