Character Exposed

"Does the plot determine the characters, or do the characters determine the plot?"

This is the question that has been posed to us for the last week or so.  We have been talking about, as you can guess, character.  I really didn't know what to write about, so I just tapped my head and let the sap run out.

What kind of characters do I most enjoy?  Why kind of plots do I most enjoy?

I enjoy characters that have depth to them.  I'm not referring to the depth that we talked about when we talked about round characters and flat characters.  A flat character can still have depth.  For instance, even the more simple-minded people have some qualities to reveal.  Perhaps another way to put it: I like to keep getting to know the characters throughout the whole story.  If there are thirteen installments in a series, I had better be getting to know the characters through the last few chapters of number thirteen.

I enjoy plots that have depth to them.  (De ja vu?)  So I don't care for the fact that this seems to be professionally correct answer, but I would rather the characters define the plot.  It just adds a depth to it, therefore the depth of the plot is mostly being determined by the depth of the characters.  But I also like for there to be outside forces at work, as well.  This is the part that makes me happy because I feel like it is disagreeing with the professionally correct answer.  I don't want the characters to be the plot.  I want, say, a natural disaster or a national political scandal or a race against the clock.  Just watching characters live their lives can get tedious.

I like for the plot to unfold to a more and more intricate setting, that reveals more characters and more about characters.  It's just a depth thing.

It's the kind of character I guess I am, perhaps the kind of book or movie in which I would be.  And this my character, continuing to reveal more about myself.  A character exposed.

My Madame Descartes

What an...interesting story "My Tea with Madame Descartes" was.

...I suppose I am to assume that David St. John, for having written it, must also be interesting...

Why, I don't even have a clue what this story is about and I think I've gathered some abstract insight from it all!

I couldn't help but think, Do I have a Madame Descartes, tucked away in the back of a ritzy hotel lounge?  Is my Madame Descartes, too, cloaked by a curtain of cigarette smoke, undiscovered and complex?  Innately beautiful and weathered by the world it's been exposed to?  And then, ...is she waiting to turn the table on me?
I loved the way Mr. St. John in his relative awkwardness, ended this piece of poetry.

"...I simply sat back, trying somehow/ To smile, to look worldly, desirable, nonchalant--/ My hands so self-consciously gripping the small cafe table/ Which Madame had so easily turned."

I am not claiming to have any idea what this poem means.  But I do know, on my first time driving the David St. John-mobile, that this is what it was like to sit behind the wheel:

I had journeyed so deeply within myself to find the illustrious Madame Descartes, and we ended up meeting in a shroud of smoke and with the intoxicated Madame, herself.  She behaved far differently from what I expected, told the stories that I had feared, but in far more depressed ways, and then she turned the table.

I had come here to get the picture of who she was, and yet she took my picture, and we both became aware of who I was.

I felt mildly uncomfortable, almost nervous about the way the situation was unfolding.  The rogue Madame of myself saw the need to see myself.  So, wait...I am an interesting subject.  That means that I am both subject to the world, and interesting...

For the price of having to reveal herself (which she really cared so little about), she got the opportunity to show the world what I looked like.  She revealed me...

Well played, Madame, well played.

"You will not live forever..."

As I contemplated what was on my heart, and of course tying it in to the literature of class, ...well I was drawing a blank.

I didn't feel as a passage from Joel was the ticket, so I started exploring the events of class yesterday.

We each took the book of Joel and wandered to different spots on campus, proclaiming to nature the passages that we felt a desire to share.  I think a lot of us, if not all of us, were new to this sort of experience, and so a spirit of uncertainty followed.

But I tried, anyways, and found myself slipping into it.  I informed the fields and burdened the Spanish moss with news of despair, but one memory fascinated me more than the others.

One of the rules of the blogging project is to tie the blog into a piece of the literature or dialogue from class.  My "tie" is to dialogue...between me and a tree.

Behind Valencia Hall, I had found this rather sagging tree, its limbs drooping downward in their old age and its leaves, none too enthusiastic, simply hanging there.  Holding up the branches holding up the leaves was all this poor, aged tree could manage anymore.

Its bark is almost an ashy-white, the figurative hairs on its head, possibly.  I don't know what possessed me to do so (perhaps the role we had been asked to play), but I drew close to its trunk, read a dismal passage from Joel, and then whispered without a hint of emotion or care, "You will not live forever."

I wanted the tree to know that it would die, eventually.  I condemned it to death by pointing out its numbered years left in life.

I jokingly told someone about it when we got back to class, but I almost feel...I almost feel like I owe that tree an apology.

Strange, isn't it?...

"And the fig tree fails..."

Dear God,

While reading in the book of Joel, I found myself analyzing the passages for some connection, to make sense of its words, I suppose.

And then I got distracted.  This happens frequently and often births the most profound things to come from my fingertips as I type.  (Now, to say something is profound from me is nothing of a revelation for the nation, but a simple bit of knowledge or an "aha" moment to contemplate upon.  Thank you for those.)

One line spoke softly to me so as to get my attention.  It said, "And the fig tree fails," and instantly my mind went to my personal devotions.  It was a line we had shared just this morning while the sun was still rising.

Earlier this morning, when reading in Matthew, the author tells of Jesus being hungry and so walking up to a fig tree to retrieve one of its fruit.  But when he found it to have bore no fruit, he reprommanded the tree and told it, " 'May you never bear fruit again!"  And it withered away.  IT DIED! in a matter of seconds, because it disappointed Jesus.  And that's not even a point Jesus was trying to make.

His disciples, I can imagine, were standing there with their jaws to the ground.  The Bible gives something of their reactions, but I can just imagine it playing out in modern times like this.  "Yo, Jesus, that tree just DIED just now.  Like I've seen a few trees in my life, and NEVER  have I watched one die!  Like, how?"

And then Your awesome Son nonchalantly offers "[Ya know,] if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and it will be done.  If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer." Matthew 21:18-22

So, basically, every now and again, if Jesus asks in prayer, that mountain over there will just go jump in the ocean.  Wow!  What faith!

God, please, teach me to have just a tenth of the faith of Your son.  I am so impressed by His faith in You, and I desire to put all my trust in You in the same fashion.

Your humble servant,
Zac Smith

Conversation with Myself (short, extra post)

I had an interesting conversation with myself just now.  It went something like this:

Me: (Something about what I believed or thought)
Me: (I raised a good point, here, that questioned what I believed or thought)
Me: Oh, that was a good point.  Perhaps I don't believe what I had said, then.
Me: (Getting frustrated and laughing to myself) Well how do expect to win an argument if you don't know what you want to believe?`
Me: Oh, we were arguing? (Honestly apologetic)  I apologize, I thought we were trying to discover the truth.

"Unpoetic" as the title, which I am happy to report is not a real word =~)

*This will be my shortest post.  How do I know?  Because it will have only three hundred words total in it.

This afternoon at about an hour after Intro to Literature class let out, I was sitting in my room, reading for another class, when I felt it.  I'm not exactly sure what it was, but you bet your left femur bone I felt it.  I was FED UP with words!

The very aesthetic medium I loved the most, infuriating me!  They are so abused, misused, and manipulated that I have finally had it.  Why the need to be so funny, witty, or arrogantly charming?  Or, better yet, why the need to even be heard?

Forgive me, but I feel like being just a little unpoetic at the moment.  It all just feels like…like nonsense! …Am I allowed to feel that way?  C.S. Lewis, upon losing his wife and writing A Grief Observed, certainly was.  Who knew it was allowed?!  Are we not to be “correct” in our writing?

Does the old cliché not tell us that "actions speak louder than words?"  I mean, how often do we find God come down with a case of diarrhea of the mouth?  running on and on with His words.  But when God does speak, His words go down in hearts and history books forever.

And when He lets His actions speak for Him, well I dare say that's when He speaks loudest.

Today, in class, we discussed Lewis's analogy of his faith as a "house of cards" and a "card castle."  We broke it down and I was quite intrigued by it all.  But then I realized my favorite part was just listening.  Oh, how beautiful listening can be!

I shall finish this unpoetic blog with one last cliché: "Silence is golden."

This is my "extra blog."
I went to the Lakeview, Roselawn and Tiger Flowers cemetery complex for this fieldtrip, and I stayed there for at least 40 minutes.

I suffered mosquito bites, ant bites, sweat stains, and mild driving anxiety...and I was thoroughly interested. =~)

I reflected most of the time, sang a couple of rifts to comfort the silent, sleeping crowd around me, and read a few passages.  I even let a mental picture slip, one of Lewis standing over his wife's grave, contemplating his very same words that I read.  In a way, I suppose, I had touched Lewis.

This reminds me of one of the saddest thoughts I had while I was there.  A few marriage plots lay here or there, a husband and wife beside each other even unto death.  And yet, there was he in his coffin and she in hers.  In reality, they would never really ever be together again.  They would never know one another's touch and they would never even look into each other's eyes again, a sure place to find the love you love to love the most.

And then, as my trip drew to a close, I said goodbye.

A Message for the Living

I pulled onto Ingraham and into a strip mall parking lot to the right of the road.  My back already drenched in sweat from the less-than-adequate air-conditioning in my car, I stepped out, grabbed my bag, and slung it over my shoulder.  I stood up out of the vehicle and shut the door, my eyes moving to the lot across the road as I did.
Even in that second, I knew Tiger Flowers would be different from most any other cemetary I had ever been to.  I just didn't know why yet.  The green grass and rows of cement gave it the appearance of any other cemetary.
I looked both ways and then jogged across the road, no longer caring how my shirt was soaked or that I tend to walk (much less, run) awkwardly when I wear flip-flops.
As I slowed down and entered the small black frame of the entrance, I saw right away one difference in this cemetary that I had not ever seen.

I don't know that I have ever seen a cement casket, and I don't know that I have ever seen a casket not fully in the ground.  I definitely haven't seen a cement casket not fully in the ground, for sure, though.
And there was a sea of them!  So many cement caskets, they blanketed the grounds and gave it quite the eerie look.  I honestly didn't know what to make of it.
As time progressed, I somehow wondered further and further back.  I found myself reading more and more markers.  And then, to think, under each stone there is a face.  And there were people who loved that face, people who felt warmth in their heart every time that face turned a corner.
John Doe, was he a devoted dad that found joy in reading bedtime stories? a thoughtful husband who loved nothing more than romancing his wife? a teenage boy who had only begun to live?
As I read the dates on each marker, a pattern became apparent: almost every single person never even lived to see seventy years old.  I had always thought the average life to be eighty!  These poor people.
And even now, as the hours of the day grow dark and I am left with my thoughts, I find myself asking questions like who stood at that grave? that very same grave where I stood.  Were there friends that numbered as many as a hundred and fifty coming to say goodbye for the very last time to their comrad?  Was there an eight-year-old daughter who clung to who her father's grave while her mother, who had been reduced to a mess, broke down when she had no idea how to help Daddy's Little Girl go on without her best friend?
And what of this couple's grave plot?

A man's wife lies six feet beneath the ground, and is he plagued by thoughts of spiritual suicide, like C.S. Lewis after he lost his beloved?  Or is he even counting down the days until a date can be added to the other end of the dash on his marker?

IS ANY OF THIS FAIR?!

Now here is the part of my experience that is most important.  Just as I had begun to let my heart break for the hardships these people's families had to face, I glanced up.  I'm not really sure why, but I did.  And I noticed someone walking up the path, a pleasant bounce in their step as they came.  I began walking towards them and felt a smile grow within as I noticed the familiar face of a friend.  Monica and I crossed paths at sunny spot where no mournful-looking tree had casted its shadow.  And then not but a second later, we look up to see Matt off in the distance, as well.
And that's when it occurred to me: perhaps Lewis, in his dreadful state of mind, was surely right about one thing.  He questions the act of sugarcoating a mournful sympathy, even calling his faith in those situations simply imagination when he lost the person closest to him.
And it occurred to me.  I have wonderful friends.  I have a family who loves me and a God who absolutely desires me.  Who am I to pretend like I sympathize?

As I was walking out, unsure of why things happen the way they do but thanking God for the blessings He's poured out on me, one of the very last grave markers caught my eye.  It was a woman's name, and she had lived around eighty years.  Even though my time was up and I was long past ready to go, I knelt down to read the inscription at the bottom of the stone.  I repeated the inscription in my head so that I would at least remember the gist of it.  I looked into it, and read into it thoroughly.  It had been meant for me!  Even after I thought my experience was over, I had stumbled upon this last piece of the puzzle--the puzzling thoughts I had been troubled by.  Thank you, God...it was the perfect ending to my revealing adventure at Tiger Flowers Cemetary.

*The inscription's gist (and yes, the inspiration for the title): "A message for the living Psalm 91" [ Go read it, if you like =~) ]

Not Your Typical Bonsai Tree

I have decided to put the intellectual aspects of my literary encounters on hold for a pressing issue.  It's quite the literary emergency!  And I am being melodramatic, by the way!

Let me unpack this issue for you.  Today was an epic day:  my favorite author, Ted Dekker, released his third and final book for this year, Immanuel's Veins.  Now there seems to be nothing askew with this situation thus far, correct?  Well that would be so, were it not for the four or five other books that I am already reading!

As it is, admittedly, I am not adequately comprehending the materials I've been assigned for my classes this semester.  I strive to understand and retain what I read, but when I read a chapter of one and then a section of another, and then multiply the conflicting information by two or three times, I am at such a loss for recalling that information that I find myself rushing to the end of each piece of literature at all costs.

I wish you only knew my lack of management skills!  So many minds are full of compartments and storage bins and filing cabinets, and it is only a matter of how well people organize information into these systems.  But mine is full of doors and tunnels and stairwells.  What am I to do with a wealth of information?  I put them in piles against the wall in as orderly a way as possible, but it gets to be a bit frayed at points, and quite inefficient.  Do not get me wrong, though, I have come to realize that God gave me a mind to explore, to dive deeper into, and in which to lose myself.

So it is with quivering boldness, as it battles the reluctance it desires, that I announce my beginning of a new book tomorrow, Immanuel's Veins.  Each of Mr. Dekker's books speak to me in my mental residence, and it was said in Encounter Chapel today that "a teacher is going to teach you what's relevant with your life at that time."  Mr. Dekker is constantly teaching and challenging me.  I am going to strive to finish with excellence all my other materials, but I am going to burn out if I am not thoroughly intrigued along the way.

God's calling on my life is most likely waiting for me in the arenas that pique my interest, and I have mistakenly cut myself off from these things.  My greatest fear for God's will for my life is that I will be the bonsai tree in "A Work of Artifice," who "could have grown eighty feet tall," but was pruned away by reasoning and logic and all other things that wish to teach me how to successfully stand nine inches.  It may sound absurd for me, being a bonsai tree, to proclaim that I will one day stand eighty feet tall, but it is also probably absurd to begin reading a fiction book amidst the morass of my college assignments.

I am NOT your typical bonsai tree!  But that's okay.  I wasn't made to be... =~)

Our own Special Place...

My eyelids drift apart from each other and I find myself awake--an accident, I assure you.  The ceiling fan keeps spinning lazy circles above my head.  I could lie here and watch it for another few minutes of the rest of my life, but I suppose I should get up...Here we go, then.

I eat something for breakfast, and I am fairly sure it doesn't taste bad, though I am not sure if it does taste at all.  I brush my teeth and pull a shirt and a pair of pants from the closet, maneuver them onto my body, and step outside the front door of my apartment building.

Subcontiously knowing it to be the cliche yet correct thing to do, I take a deep breath.  It fades into a sigh as I take in my surroundings: the fuzzy gray hue of the sky seemed to be dripping into the dull haze of the rooftops above me, giving the corridors of concrete about me a dark, monotous look about them.

The world started losing its color about a year ago.  Those memories are so vague, though I feel this empty pang in my gut, so I can only know that it marked the largest torrent of pain to ever tear through my life, taking with it what meant the most in this world to me.  Now, life is only to be seen in blacks and whites.

I catch glance of a pub just up the road and reluctantly decide to venture over there.  As I walk in, my nose is filled with the pungent stench of stagnet sorrow.  This is how identify it as my world.  I sit down at the bar beside a glum looking fellow and signal for the bartender.

"What will it be today?"

"Surprise me," I remark, somewhat perturbed that he decided to bother me with such a trivial detail.

"So what's wrong with you?"  I turn to the gentleman next to me and ask.

"Anymore?  What is it that isn't wrong with me?"

I give him a second to wallow in his pity before continuing.

"Anything in particular, today?"  I offer, quickly losing my patience for another person's problems.

He turned to me, now with tears in his eyes, and whispered the words, "I woke up today, just like any other day, and began to think about her.  Only...I couldn't remember what she looked like!"  And then he let it out.

I turned to the window of the pub and looked out: people walking by, not really sure where they are or caring where there going.  So this is life, lived in grief anyways.

I had already gotten used to it.

"I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief...At work, at the club, in the street, I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they'll 'say something about it' or not...Perhaps the bereaved ought to be isolated in special settlements like lepers."

-A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis, pages 10-11

The Dagger that Stabs Us...

Love is a common word in today's language.  What a shame...I mean to say that it's a shame that we make common the most rare of gifts to come by in this short lived life.

I mean think about it.  Think about every relationship in which time has been invested, emotions have been shared, memories have been made.  I would venture to say that only the fewest of these--only the most select few--would be worthy of being called "love."  So is it wrong to use it so fleetingly?

In Raymond Carter's "What We Talk About When We Talk about Love," all four characters (the term character, here, meaning both a role in the given story and an eccentric) imagine different meanings of love.  The character Terri finds appreciation in the abuse she suffered from a previous lover, while the character Mel rambles on that everyone has loved several people and that it doesn't matter if anyone was to lose a love.  I have to, absolutely have to, believe that Carver's characters are wrong.  Dead wrong.

 When it comes to that one person, that one person that God is, even now, preparing my heart to fall madly in love with, when we get to know each other...  Where we've spent so much time with each other, that when I look to her eyes and they meet mine, and I know instantly what they're saying, just because...  At the age of eighteen, I hardly know what love is and yet, by simply imagining that I might have that beautiful and one-of-a-kind woman to look forward to, well that just makes waiting worthwhile.

Love is the dagger that stabs us.  I know very little about how the body works, and even less about weapons.  But when I was young and my mind was filled with endless safety information, I remember someone once said that, if a knife or some other sharp object were to sink through my skin, not to pull it out, that for the time being I would be fine.  They told me that it was when the knife was pulled out, that that was when I would start to feel it.  My heart would desperately keep pumping but I would begin losing the very essence that kept me alive.

Perhaps, if love is the dagger that stabs us, we are still fine.  The dagger has now become apart of me, and I am alive.  Perhaps it could also be applied in the coined saying "love hurts."  I can only imagine that some moments would be worse, and some better than others.  There would be moments with hurt and pain, but there would also be those precious few seconds of life where I see, more clearly than ever, that I have reason to sing praises to God for being alive and having the opportunity to still be apart of this knife and know what living really is.  This knife, this dagger, has then taught me to truly appreciate life.

It is then, sorrowfully, only a truly hurtful situation when love is removed from me.  When the dagger is gone and my life source begins to leave me, with it, then I have reason to fear.

Most wounds heal, eventually.  But it would not be without its cost.  Every day I would have that scar to wake up to.  I would still be able to vaguely remember the feeling of its presence.  And that memory that, at one time in my life, I truly knew what the gift of life, so hard to keep hold of, really meant: well it was love...