next stop: everywhere

I hardly ever watch television. There’s not even a TV in my house. But through a series of very unlikely occurrences there is one show that simply captured my heart (or hearts, if you know what I mean).

Doctor Who.

A British series about an ancient time-travelling alien who flies through space in a bigger-on-the-inside phone box; saving worlds, having adventures, meeting friends, and losing them. It sounds bizarre, but there’s a bit of the bizarre in me as well, so I like it. I mean, it’s wonderful. Okay, basically, I love this show. (I could talk a lot longer about its nuances, but as we joke around here… it’s not in the cards.)

The next instalment premiers on Saturday. And I, in all my Whovian splendour… will not be watching it.

Yeah, so that doesn’t really make sense. When I love something to the point of distraction, why would I choose to keep it at a distance? Because there’s a danger in distraction; a threat inherent in pleasurable diversion. I’m not really sure why I’m telling you this, but perhaps it’s because I still don’t understand it all myself.

I have this way of loving sometimes. There are a lot of passion-channels in my heart, and my feelings flow like sand to tip scales and power my days. I tiptoe like a tightrope walker trying to balance it all. Open a channel wide enough, and all the energy of my soul comes pouring through; the sand piles into dunes and the sea comes striding in with a roar. Sometimes I need that oceanic passion- that biggerontheinside vortex that sweeps me high and fast beyond the world. But sometimes… sometimes I need to calm my starstruck eyes and remember the world. I need to balance. It’s good to give passion the reigns on occasion, but it’s important to make sure it’s not wearing blinders.

People and causes, beliefs and ambitions… my passion has focused on many of these. There were the summer musicals which made me want to only ever be at practice. The tournaments that left me lonesome. The friends, the plans, the wishes, the wanderlust. But then there were the stories. Stories that fill and burst and grow and make me hurt inside. Stories that are alive. It began with The Chronicles of Narnia and imagining Aslan leaping out at every deer crossing. My mom read aloud to us and I listened with every single cell I possessed and sometimes after she had finished I snuck to the shelf and read ahead when she wasn’t looking. When we finished the series I bought my own set of the books and read from it almost daily for I don’t know how long. After that, it was The Lord of the Rings and pretending to be Elvish and writing my name in runic letters. I devoured the movies, the music, the Silmarillion, the Books of Lost Tales, and took dictation from recordings of Tolkien reading his work. Stories get inside me and never leave, never die. Peter Pan, The Borrowers, Cyrano de Bergerac, The Phantom of the Opera, Robin Hood…. I’m a writer, but I don’t write stories; they write me. I’ll bet somebody’s said that before.

Anyway, it’s kind of weird. I can cry myself to sleep over fictional characters because there’s a part of me where they’re always real. I write poems about them, I sketch them in my journal, I follow them to see what happens next. Doctor Who is a heart-pounding, heart-warming, heart-wrenching story; full of characters that are so alive a single glance can make me sob or soar cloud-high. Joy and sorrow are woven inseparable and it’s beautiful, awful, masterful. And so different: most stories see the characters through a few trials and suffering and pain, but you know that in the end, it’s going to be happy. Doctor Who sees its characters through some excitement and camaraderie and happiness, but you know that in the end, it’s going to be sad. You end up asking yourself the question asked and answered by the Doctor: “What’s the point of them being happy now if they’re going to be sad later? And the answer is, “Because they are going to be sad later.”

It hurts. It’s brilliant, but it hurts. And that’s why people like it- because it makes you feel. But for me, a few feelings are the few grains of sand that trigger an avalanche. And while it’s exciting to live so many lives, I don’t want to do it at the expense of my own. When the floodgates of my passion are let loose, when so much soul-energy pours down one channel, I forget. When I’m mentally travelling in the TARDIS, I forget to watch my baby sister grow up. While I’m musing over the significance of mysterious characters, I forget to study the people I see every week. While I’m saving worlds with the Doctor, I forget to save my own.

And so it’s all about balance, once again. Loving the stories but living MY life. In the words of G.K. Chesterton, “I am all for going to fairyland, but I am also all for coming back. That is, I will admire, but I will not be magnetised, either by mysticism or militarism.” And that’s why I’m taking a break from Doctor Who for a while. Learning what it means to come back.

home is

almost-healed blisters from chopping down trees with Andrew

cows play-fighting

walking barefoot in short-clipped grass and red garden soil

Anna browsing Pinterest

boys throwing pebbles at my window

dirty cowboy hats in the garage

all hands on deck in the garden with rakes

Dad “forcing” people to put their banana peels etc. in plastic compost containers

sudden spring and sneezing in hay

everyone sprawled out on the Lathams’ couches watching Phineas and Ferb

Sam owning everyone at video games

the bounce board

Mom wheeling Caroline around in the stroller in the afternoon

Alan poring over library books and lining them up across the living room floor

Noah helping me play Lego Batman

Josh going back to old subjects when everyone else has moved on to another topic of conversation

Imagine Dragons

“Guys don’t really like a ton of people. Girls are like, “I love everyone!!”" -Sam

lots of yelling. all the time.

borrowing Emily’s camera

random power outages

spotty cell phone service

bumpy dirt roads and radio turned up loud

throwing the frisbee

spontaneous dinner parties

Emily’s homemade bread

Caleb dancing to Gangnam Style

cuddling and tickling on the couch with Noah and Abby and Caleb

sunset light filtering over the hill behind Michael and Emily’s house

“I can’t wait until you make your pickles again, Grace.” -Anna

Alan eating too much peanut butter every morning

Caroline and Sam tickling each other with grass

baking scones

the way Alan screams with his tongue out when he’s hurt himself

Andrew wearing The One Ring on a chain under his shirt

Abby’s glass collection at the fort by the free-running course

that one piano app on Michael’s phone

“There are these magnetic mushrooms… but they go to sleep during the day so you have to give them a coffee bean..” -Michael

Josh and Andrew’s garden-dirty hipster shoes

medieval philosophy lectures and silhouette bookmarks

getting poked in the ribs

broccoli and cauliflower plants between the blackberry rows

crowding around Michael’s television watching the extended Lord of the Rings

everyone annoying everyone else

everyone loving everyone else anyway

hugs and head-kisses

us

white whale

I finished reading Moby Dick today. Sometimes I pick up a book and several hours later I slide it back onto my shelf, completed. It wasn’t like that with this monstrosity of a novel. (If there’s someone alive who’s read Moby Dick in one day, you’re doing it wrong.) Last September I found a beautiful online project commemorating the 150th anniversary of the book, which featured the book itself read aloud and offered a new chapter a day from “Call me Ishmael” to the epilogue. Each chapter was read by someone different, and the readers ranged from famous (David Cameron), to talented (Benedict Cumberbatch), to so bad that I found myself reading aloud in my best British accent to drown out the horrid monotony.

For as long as I can remember, Moby Dick has been sitting on a shelf in the living room, gathering dust and the sting of being adamantly and thoroughly ignored. You know how it is. “Oh, there’s Moby Dick,” says the would-be reader. “One Hundred and Thirty-Five chapters about the anatomy of the whale. How enticing.” And they push it aside in favour of something less… salty. This seems to be the general opinion about Moby Dick. When I tell people I’m reading it their eyebrows go up like a whale’s twin flukes and on their face is clearly written their fear for my sanity. And as long as I continue to use cetological analogies, that fear will probably persist. I can’t blame them, because when I was younger I twice attempted to begin reading the monolithic book and was unable to get past the first page. “Five Hundred and Twenty-One pages of THIS??” thought I. “Not a chance.” But with the discovery of the afore-mentioned website, I decided to give it another go. And, despite a few droning readers, I’m incredibly glad.

Melville’s book is a labyrinth, a sunken shipwreck glistening in divers’ torches, a hedge grown carefully to form a maze. The problem with reading a labyrinth, a shipwreck, a hedge maze, is that it takes so long to reach the centre, the treasure, the way out. 135 chapters there are, and not until chapter 133 do we meet the whale who lends the book his name. On the way, Melville takes us on innumerable different tangents; we study the history of whaling, the boatmen of the Erie Canal, the meaning of life in abstract, differences between species of whales, the life story of the ship’s carpenter, what happens if you fall asleep at the tiller, and, yes, the anatomy of the sperm AND right whales. The book is a maze. Ah, but the book is AMAZING. You see, we’ve become so obsessed with Destinations and Results that we forgot the excitement of exploring along the way. We push and prod our stories to fit the Perfect Story Arc and we start to think it’s the only way to go. We don’t remember that there’s a Character Development Story Arc and a Let’s Confuse People For Fun Story Arc and an Epic World Creation Story Arc and more. Each serves a different purpose and each is valuable for a different reason.

A one-legged captain with a soul, he says, that is a centipede. A mate torn between two loyalties. A ship that tows its wake around the world in search of a white whale.

It’s so hard to choose between pointing out the masterful plot points and allowing you to read the book yourself and be surprised! It’s absurd how many people have not read this book and yet think they have a decent grasp of what it means. I would love to cast all mistaken opinions overboard, but there are two reasons why I am not going to do that. One, it is very difficult to claim to be “right” about this book. There are many possible interpretations and that’s the beauty of it. Two, because you should read it yourself! Spend a year at it if you have to. It’s a masterpiece full of fabulous ocean analogies and characters as multi-faceted as the waves. It is a book of ardent belief, much of it contradictory. (In fact, it really feels as though Melville just sat down and wrote the whole thing from start to finish without bothering about continuity of opinion. That’s not the case, though; he wrote multiple drafts of it before he was finally satisfied. So the contradictions are purposeful and rather spectacular in the way they tug at your mind and pull you into bouts of thinking.) It’s a work of art; a study of humanity and madness; a celebration and a condemnation of the sea.

This is one of my favourite chapters. It’s only a few minutes long and it’s read by Benedict Cumberbatch (who, for those of you who aren’t familiar with him, is a phenomenal actor with a rich voice). You should listen.

lighthouse

>>My little brother smashed some clam shells and their mosaic devastation made me stare. So I wrote a word-song.

Sea shells, stained glass
tower windows lie cracked
salt breath, long grass
Cracked paint, rust chain
hauling driftwood in the rain
pale sky, old face

Waves fight moonlight
do you believe in love at first sight?
dangerous fog nights
Sweeping warning
victory in mourning
last stand, roar sea

And a lighthouse clinging to a rock
Sprayed fierce with the sea it mocks
Never rests until your ship comes in
And it expects the silence that you say
It just asks that you stay away
And the sea sprays salt and sand and wind

Ship’s bell, wet ropes
mate shouts, no one knows
all hands, no hope
Captain sees first
welcome sight in light verse
wheel grasped, ship turns

Calm sea, no land
step on deck to look again
find home if you can
Winter, Spring, Fall
do you believe in love at all?
telescope, one call

And a lighthouse clinging to a rock
Sprayed fierce with the sea it mocks
Never rests until your ship comes in
And it expects the silence that you say
Knowing you are far away
And the sea sprays salt and sand and wind

Someday, anchor
leave your ship in harbour
slow train northward
Sea shells, stained glass
tower windows lie cracked
salt breath, long grass

Cracked paint, rust chain
hauling driftwood in the rain
pale sky, old face
Tide out, tide in
wash your heart, begin again
look up, breathe in

And find a lighthouse clinging to a rock
Sprayed fierce with the sea it mocks
A broken light at watchful rest within
And it expects the silence that you say
It just hopes that you’ve come to stay
And the sea sprays salt and sand and wind

exercise in reality

He saw it suddenly; a pale and frightened ocean, stabbed with verdant daggers from above. It was the biggest thing he’d ever seen, but it had never been this big before, when he walked across the field smashing the thistles and hoping to flush quail from under some patch of crumpled weed. Only now, lying on the tractor seat, grasping leather with sweaty hands, head flung wildly backwards, could he see the bigness of the sky. It seemed that he saw it with eyes that weren’t his own, with a mind he didn’t know; the vision rushed into his body like an undiscovered galaxy into a black hole of open-mouthed surprise. And it made a new universe inside him. Lying upside down, red in the face and hair like hay sticking down through cracks in the loft, he forbade his eyes to blink. He opened his mouth to breathe the sight. The black hole filled and turned supernova. BAM, he knew. He saw and he saved the sight. Up he bounced like a thunderclap all magnificent. The tractor lurched when he jumped off the seat. And he ran, ran, panting, saying to the world, “I know you. You hid from me but I found you!” And the hills ran under him. At the foot of a tree his feet stopped pounding, but the explosion inside him reverberated like the stroke of midnight. Grasping hardy trunk with shaking hands, he climbed the old wizard until he reached the hollow where he stowed bullet shells and petrified wood like a magpie. Frantic with excitement and drunk with discovery he twisted and tossed his head backwards and tossed the world off its feet. Grass grew the ceiling, sky ate the floor. He clung desperately to the branches lest he fall through leafy under-canopy and fall forever. For a long moment he allowed himself to be deliciously frightened with a fear that was very real and yet called him master. And then he was up again, climbing down and running again, hearing his new world calling. He went to flush it from the bushes like the quail. He rushed to uncork all the wine in cellars he once thought were ceilings. He raced to unearth the earth. He ran to turn the world upside down.

life, the books in verse, and everything

You know when you’re stopped at a red light and you’re singing along to This Is Home or drumming the piano part from something by Michael W. Smith and for some reason you glance at the person driving the car next to you? And she’s wearing a snappy cardigan and biting her lip trying to make sure the windows are rolled down evenly and you just think- hey. We would be friends.

Or maybe you’re in the 10-items-or-less line at Walmart and it’s 10-people-or-more longer than the lines at the other registers and the guy in front of you is waiting to buy two bananas and a composition notebook. And what a coincidence, because you’re holding vanilla wafers and a package of pens.

You probably have so many friends you’ve never met. I have. I see them everywhere, but mostly I see them at book stores  Half-Price Books is my favourite (along with a musty little shop in Boston) because, well, it’s half-price, and because they sell the tried and true books (which sometimes have train tickets belonging to someone named Hanson stuck inside). I spend too much money there. And while I’m shuffling along, head aslant, looking through the works of Ray Bradbury, I see shoes to my right, shuffling like mine. I glance. A glance is usually all I need to tell. And he’s thumbing through the Tolkien section, brow knit, wearing argyle, looking thoughtful. I go back to my Bradbury, grinning. Found another one. That’s two today, because I’m also counting the girl who walked in earlier and exclaimed to her friend, “It smells so good in here!” Yes it does, new favourite person. And I want to buy everything they have.

There is so much, so much to read. So many words to make you think and feel and rejoice and hurt inside. I was wondering how I’ll find the time. I need a lifetime. But that’s what I have, if Jesus asks me to wait for Him. Maybe He’ll bring me home soon (and that would be the greatest joy of all). But if I stay, if I remain a sojourner, there are treasures for me to find and maps for me to follow and wisdom and peace and happiness for me to chase. So I buy the books. This time I found a gorgeous hardcover copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, “What’s Wrong With the World” by G.K. Chesterton, a biography of Margaret Thatcher, “The War of the Worlds” by H.G. Wells, a book on the art of writing by Bradbury, and a Latin-English dictionary. I was looking for the Vulgate, but that quest has proved more difficult. Quests do that.

If my name was Wordsworth
could I be worthy of the words I clutch?
If I was called Caesar
would they render to me the worlds I touch?
If I was christened Crusoe
could I leave to explore those lands alone?
If my name was Churchill
could I use my words to make them bold?

Oh, life. Everything good in this world is merely a breath, but those are breaths of fresh air. Life is a vapour and there is not one happy thing in it that cannot also make you sad. But sad is happy for deep people. Sometimes. There’s the sadness of dusty antiques and memories long forgotten by everyone but you and empty diners and books well ended. There’s the sadness of the Doctor’s goodbyes which hurt so illogically you can’t even watch those episodes without sobbing, which is ridiculous because it’s not even real. But there’s also the sadness of letters returned and dreams that you killed and driving home crying because you know. And it hurts. It hurts because you’re alive. So I live the life and I smile the joy and cry the tears and I drink the tea strong. I say the hellos and I whisper the goodbyes and I pray the prayers and I set my spell-checker to UK English.

And I read and write the words.

non-communist manifesto

A while ago (10/9/12), I got this idea from The Art of Manliness. (which is weird because I am not a man. but I can be okay with weird.) I do my best to live by it. I fail, but I try. And honestly, life is not even about success. Life is about the trying. I’ve been planning to print it out and frame it in my room so I can see it every day because it’s easy to forget. But today is the first of a new year, and this is who I want to be.

Personal Manifesto:

I will put others above myself, knowing that greatness is found in service.

I will serve, not out of obligation, but out of love. In my service and my sacrifice, I will emulate Jesus who did as much and more for me.

I will not view myself as entitled to any good thing, but remember that each day is more than I deserve.

I will not speak ill of anyone out of senseless annoyance.

I will be kind rather than clever.

I will walk with open eyes to see the beauty all around me and I will praise its Creator.

I will use the talents God has given me to bless others and bring Him glory; I will not allow them to gather dust due to fear or apathy.

I will not make decisions designed to put myself in the spotlight.

I will surround myself with depth and wisdom in literature, films, and friends; I will not be trivialised by this culture.

I will not be deceived by the ideals of the world. I will not look for happiness in money, fame, men, opportunities to do what I love, or any of the desires of my fleshly heart. I will seek and do the will of God and remember that real happiness can only be found in the center thereof.

I will do all through the strength of Christ, knowing that I am too weak to win my battles alone, but that He has already won the war.

Other plans for this year include:

Taking a class on Latin

Intensive reading (my list is so long that I don’t have time to post it)

Selling my art on Etsy in partnership with my talented sister

Saving all my money for future travelling adventures (i.e. England…)

Volunteering at a local pregnancy centre

Coaching speech and debate and chaperoning my sister at tournaments

Running

Writing every day when possible (“You must write every single day of your life… You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads… may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.” -Ray Bradbury)

There’s a really fantastic quote by Hemingway: “Courage is grace under pressure.” I’ll probably be writing that on my arm a lot this year.

baby sister

Image

resurrect

There were ships

oh, and there were ships as well

each herself a well

seeping sordid men

each her boats were buckets

dipping out the crew

a harbour of shouts

eating up the night

Fly away: and with you, I.

We will find a way to die

To the ships, to the shouts

and the sea will come alive.

three wishes

Hello, Stonehenge!

I haven’t written in a while and the words aren’t sliding right. My flow of consciousness is a frayed string and words are beads that don’t quite fit. The string needs licking. The bead-words need coaxing. Come on, recalcitrant vocabulary. Here, boy.

I have legitimately never before thought of my vocabulary as one entity in possession of a gender. That was weird.

But anyway, skybound audience, I thought you might be interested in my dreams. Don’t psychoanalyse me, if you please. Keep all that Freudian nonsense to yourself. I don’t mean my night-dreams, when the heater’s on and the computer’s on stand-by and the Cheshire cat hovers at subconscious cross-roads, telling me that it doesn’t very well matter which road I take, since I don’t very well know where I want to go. No, I mean my  “unfulfilled ambitions”. Of life, you know. Wendy said hers is to write a great novel in three parts, about her adventures. Mine also include writing. And lots of stairs, actually. I just noticed that tonight.

1. My number one Most Exciting and Dearly Beloved dream and ambition is to own a bookstore in Boston or Britain; a bookstore with an upstairs apartment where I can live and write books or articles or poems or anything verbose.

2. My number two Almost-As-Exciting and Beloved ambition is to live in a lighthouse. With a massive library. And write books, etc.

3. Also, I want a corgi.

As far as fulfilling these ambitions go, I lack only, eh, about 7/10ths of a fortune.

Sometimes I feel like a hitch-hiker without a backpack.

Here’s a thing, though- I wasn’t meant to have everything I want. (hey, how about that!) Man does not live by bread alone, and Grace does not live by travel and libraries and songs alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

“For when dreams increase and words grow many there is vanity, but God is the one you must fear.” Ecc. 5:7

Let’s have adventures everywhere. But especially? Let’s have them here.