Had a real dismal mood all mapped out to write about, about age and mortality and what could be the biggest joke of all. Then I read Anne’s post for the day.
And I can’t stop laughing long enough to gather back those dark clouds together into a properly somber and depressing entry.
The text of Confessions is written as if Augustine is writing to God, certainly addressing Him in an informal manner, meaning not in letter style, but more perhaps as a diary. Augustine plunges into his own past and his own soul in offering his sins, as well as explanation and seeking forgiveness for them. But he also shows an understanding of human nature in all this, which is likely the motivation for the writing.
If this were intended as a real "confession" to God, Augustine knows how to do it according to church rules. He can also just go direct to God by thinking. In other words, this didn’t have to be written down for his own purposes, or for God’s (who likely didn’t read it). Even if Augustine felt a need to write it down, and this I well understand, it would never have been published. Rather, it might have been placed on an altar and burned or the like. Obviously then, this was written with the intent of having readers.
The style concept then, was a conscious decision to make it appear to be a first person pov confession to the second person ‘you’ of God. Remember, Augustine was a literary scholar and teacher. This does shed light on the thinking of Augustine and the way this was beautifully planned out as a personal affirmation of faith, but in its revelations and discoveries, very relative to all men. Augustine, I think, being not only writer here, but a man of faith who has found a way to inspire others by sharing experience.
C’mon now, can you honest-to-God see four guys jamming at a roadhouse singing "vive Viagra!"
…not even my usual rush of opening paragraph. Just a title: Does Anyone Know When God’s Due Back?
I’m wondering if besides stress and stuff, the creative side of my mind has been confused by a bombardment of ideas while submerged in blue funk. Now that sounds like contradiction, but it’s not: ideas are not necessarily creative in themselves until they’re drawn out to their potential. A bunch of ideas floating like spit in a mouth-blown-up balloon are randomly unrelated. When the balloon pops–as it eventually will from all that hot air–you find yourself all wet. Cliches, cliches; so appropriate at times.
The desire to produce a film clip, an animation preferably, has absorbed the mental energy in learning, storing, recalling, etc. without any visible proof of value. Meanwhile, story hasn’t come through, seemingly lost in the corridors of racks of files of ideas.
But I suppose if my muse is merely lost in its bad sense of direction that’s better than having been smooched flat by a train.
Can’t help my dark side; I love this:
First cold morning reminds of classrooms, schoolyards. Another job opportunity on campus tempts, but I fear I am the laughingstock of HR already so I’ll let it be, lay low, retain some shred of pride.
A meeting with a friend in early afternoon will bring me back for just a brief hour or so. I get there less and less even as the campus grows with new rebuilding. Soon it will be completely alien to me and forbidden.
As I mentioned, the variety of characters, the different story paths were leading up to what the reader, as he learns more and more, comes to believe will be a momentous and telling part of the narrative. The mysterious and prescient Professor Woland’s performance of black magic at the local theatre has been built up by Bulgakov not for its action necessarily, but for anticipation of the unexpected, based on the characters and their actions leading up to thte stage event.
"Tell me, dear Fagot," inquired Woland of the buffoon in checks, who obviously had another name besides Korovyov, "have the Muscovites changes, in your opinion, in any significant way?"
(…) "Indeed they have, Messire," was Fagot-Korovyov’s soft reply.
"You are right. They have changed a great deal…on the outside, I mean, as has the city, by the way. Apart from the obvious changes in dress, there are now these…what are they called…streetcars, automobiles…"
"Buses," Fagot chimed in, respectfully.
The audience listened attentively to this conversation, thinking it was the prelude to the magic tricks. In the crowd of performers and stage hands backstage. Rimsky’s pale, tense face could be seen. (p. 101)
Lots of good stuff going on here. First, we realize that the professor, his odd sidekick, Korovyov, and the vodka-drinking black cat are real enough to be seen by the entire audience, something I was mentally questioning. This cracked me up: …who obviously had another name besides Korovyov.. That’s got to be one of the greatest authorly intrusions ever, as well as an hilarious comment on Russian tendencies in novel writing.
But the audience is confused–and here, the reader has a bit of an advantage, having learned a bit of these characters in the first one hundred pages. The professor seems not to be pulling rabbits out of a hat but rather more interested in talking about society, politics perhaps. There’s got to be more entertainment–dangerous entertainment–brewing here and the reader may bring the experience and fantasy of his own knowledge to enhance the scenario.
Me, I see the theater doors slamming shut, locking. The lights dim to total blackness and there, on the stage, the professor stands alone in the spotlight…
Why does everything have to become a racial issue? In Connecticut, activists are claiming that the Cheshire home invasion is getting more media attention and law enforcement as well as Governor Rell are only paying attention and enacting new laws that the activists have been seeking only because the Cheshire family killed was white. If they’d been black, or if this had been inner city rather than suburbia, much less would have been done in the coverage and the aftermath.
No, I don’t think so. I think the fact that two men entered a private living space of a family at three in the morning, terrorized them for six hours, beat the father and left him in the cellar, raped an 11year-old daughter, raped and strangled the mother, tied the 11 year-old and her 17 year-old sister to their beds and then set the house on fire knowing the three still alive were likely to die in the fire, well, I think that’s what’s shocked the town, the state, and the nation. And, the fact that the two men responsible were parolees is likely what spurred Governor Rell to institute legislation regarding parole.
In New Jersey, four students in Newark were lined up against a wall, robbed, and shot execution-style in the head. Three died, one young woman survived gunshot wounds and stabbing to aid police in identifying the men who attacked them. The victims were aged between 18 and 20, just starting out their lives, planning on college. The men who killed them were looking for money, ended up with very little. And three young people are dead for a couple dollars. The victims were black, but what does it matter–this too was as horrifying a crime as what was done in Cheshire.
Senseless murder of good people, black and white doesn’t matter; these crimes are getting the attention because the victims were innocently going about their lives with no expection of their lives ending in such violence that day.
Any life lost, especially in such a way at the hands of another, is traumatic and sad. The number of victims in these two cases, their ages, their innocence is what creates more attention.
Personally, I don’t care if they were purple, they didn’t deserve to die like that and I am heartbroken and grieve for their families.
Despite what some adventure loving readers may claim, the novel that becomes a literary classic always has some kind of carefully considered plot. It simply is not the main priority of the narrative.
In this novel, where much is implied and more is inferred, there is still a basic plot. Though Bulgakov adds the interesting elements along the way such as the inclusion of the confrontation between Yeshua and Pontius Pilate in chapter two, and he kills off one of the two main characters as introduced in the first chapter, the story still follows a series of events that reaffirm a purpose while advancing the story through additional characters and details as well as action.
Berlioz and Bezdomny are in a public square discussing a poem the latter is to write about Jesus Christ–>a strange man (Professor Woland) joins their conversation and makes odd predictions–>the first of which comes true as Berlioz slips on the train tracks and is decapitated–>Bezdomny panics and chases Woland–>Bezdomny loses his quarry, loses his clothes, ending up wildeyed at a meeting house of literati–>he is taken away and institutionalized–>meanwhile, the dead Berlioz’s roommate is approached by Woland and transported out of the area after confirming his appearance as a master of black magic at the local theater–>Woland takes over the dead Berlioz/missing roommate’s apartment. Etcetera.
By now we’re suspect of Woland–is he indeed the devil? He has extraordinary powers and he’s certainly up to no good. Plus, he knew Pontius Pilate himself. On top of all this, a very interesting story in itself, Bulgakov is giving us a metaphorical Russia, much as Voltaire’s Candide is a tale that necessarily hides in satire the author’s version of his own country and times.
Truly a book of many levels, and that is where Bulgakov excels; skill in interweaving the characters within a fairly simple adventure that becomes complex as the paths open up and veer into new directions. Yet we know that they all lead to an endpoint, planned out just as carefully.
Well, neat. Some early morning weeding in the vegie garden and around the shop where threatening vines and waist-high crabgrass discourage entrance. Picked yellow squash and cucumbers of course, a tomato and some bell peppers with pointed ends unpunked-in the way they are supposed to be. The beans I think, are a lost cause. They’re in the ground too long, hung up by bad timing with the weather, never fully maturing before they shriveled up and died.
The man and I shot some arrows around the backyard. He had to find me a lighter weight bow since I haven’t shot in quite a while. A recurve, at 40 pounds (pull) worked fine, and drawn back fully at my length it shot as good as ever a heavier longbow in my heyday. Strutted proudly with the knowledge that some skills don’t go away, carrying a leaf I nailed right in the heart.
And down in back, beyond the peach trees bending with the double burden of their fruit and grape clusters intertwined among the branches, we spot the pear tree and oh, a couple…wait, look–there’s loads! I pick a half dozen of the largest that the deer can reach and so can I.
A good day, celebrating, praising nature, life and bounty in the Holy Church of the Backyard.
"Fuck" has been added to your list of banned words.
What is it with these idiots, as if yeah, sure, everybody’s going to hit that hot website to f_ck those hot cute chicks, or enlarge their p_nis to do it. Or buy prescription drugs through some offbeat comment on a weblog, or go to Wal-mart (yeah, that’s right, Wal-mart seems to be in on this comment spam too! One more reason not to shop there.) Or even read anything these half-wit nasties leave behind.
Sometimes I really dislike people in general. But I get rid of my own ill temper by typing all the bad words I can think of into Typepad’s Banned Words and IP list. That’s fun because you hafta type in all different ways, like f-you as one word or two, caps, spaces, etc. By the time I’m done I feel a lot better.
Oh and yes, out of a special e-mail account I keep for just this purpose, I do e-mail the commenters and have noticed that sometimes they are legit accounts. I hope that if they do get the message, they feel like the morons that they are.
The feeders are empty, he says.
I just filled them this morning, I reply.
The lower one too? he asks. The male cardinal is sitting there chirping for you to fill it.
Tell him to go to the other one, I say.
He is silent for a moment. ‘Tell him to go to the other one?’ By now he’s laughing. At me, I think.
Yes. You’ll notice that the sparrow who used to fling the seed onto the ground doesn’t do that anymore since I told him not to.
Oh. Okay, he grins and as he leaves I know he doubts me.
What more can I say?
Focused on writing voice this morning, Augustine’s and others mentioned in weblogs around the way. It brings me to awareness of a mid-August summer day here in New England and what it sounds like, what it says.
Nowhere else is this language spoken exactly such as this, having its own colloquialisms in twirps and hums and an underlying buzz that says the sun is hot, no breeze to cut through and diffuse the scent and touch and taste and sound of this near end-of-summer day.
Augustine, on the death of someone very close to him, a boyhood friend:
‘Grief darkened my heart.’ (Lam. 5:17) Everything on which I set my gaze was death. My home town became a torture to me; my father’s house a strange world of unhappiness; all that I had shared with him was without him transformed into a cruel torment. My eyes looked for him everywhere, and he was not there. I hated everything because they did not have him, nor could they now tell me ‘look, he is on the way’, as used to be the case when he was alive and absent from me. I had become to myself a vast problem, and questioned my soul ‘Why are you sad, and why are you very distressed?’ but my soul did not know what reply to give. If I had said to my soul ‘Put your trust in God’ (Ps.41:6,12) it would have had good reason not to obey. For the very dear friend I had lost was a better and more real person than the [Manichee] phantom in which I would have been telling my soul to trust. Only tears were sweet to me, and in my ‘soul’s delights’ (Ps.138:11) weeping had replaced my friend. (III.9)
One intriguing statement here is "as used to be the case when he was alive and absent from me." Of course, the preceding phrase, "nor could they tell me ‘look, he is on the way," defines the difference. That difference is what fascinates. Is "away" so very different than "gone" but for the possibility of reunion?
Great single page listing of resources for writing at Internet Resources. I’m bookmarking and adding this one to the Spinning site so others as well as I can find it.
When I ever write again.
If I ever do.
(Thanks to Lifehacker for the link.)
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology