Everywhere one looks, there are signs of ignorance and indifference. What about that film *Two Weeks Notice*? Guaranteed to give sticklers a very nasty turn, that was -- its posters slung along the sides of buses in letters four feet tall, with no apostrophe in sight. I remember, at the start of the *Two Weeks Notice* publicity campaign in the spring of 2003, emerging cheerfully from Victoria Station (was I whistling?) and stopping dead in my tracks with my fingers in my mouth. Where was the apostrophe? Surely there should be an apostrophe on that bus? If it were "one month's notice" there would be an apostrophe (I reasoned); yes, and if it were "one week;s notice" there would be an apostrophe. Therefore "two weeks' notice" requires an apostrophe! Buses that I should have caught (the 73; two 38s) sailed off up Buckingham Palace Road while I communed thus at length with my inner stickler, unable to move or, indeed, regain any sense of perspective.
"Part of one's despair, of course, is that the world cares nothing for the little shocks endured by the sensitive stickler... We are like the little boy in *The Sixth Sense* who can see dead people, except that we can see dead punctuation. Whisper it in petrified little-boy tones: dead punctuation is invisible to everyone else -- yet we see it *all the time*. No one understands us seventh-sense people. They regard us as freaks...
"On the other hand, I'm well aware there is little profit in asking for sympathy for sticklers. We are not the easiest people to feel sorry for. We refuse to patronize any shop with checkouts for "eight items or less" (because it should be "fewer"), and we got very worked up over 9/11 not because of Osama bin-Laden but because people on the radio kept saying "enormity" when they meant "magnitude", and we really hate that. When we hear the construction "Mr Blair was stood" (instead of "standing") we suck our teeth with annoyance, and when words such as "phenomena", "media" or "cherubim" are treated as singular ("The media says it was quite a phenomena looking at those cherubims"), some of us cannot suppress actual screams. Sticklers never read a book without a pencil at hand, to correct the typographical errors. In short, we are unattractive know-all obsessives who get things out of proportion and are in continual peril of being disowned by our families."
from Lynne Truss's _Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation_
P.S. - I cannot remember the little codes for underlined or italicized text. On top of that, my cheat button has been missing for some time. Can anybody lend me a hand?
J.K. Rowling impresses me as an author, but she may be underperforming. It would be interesting to sit down and chat with her concerning motivation and literary intent. She sets up some great paintings of grace and then leaves them all unfinished! The "good guys" are all seemingly divided between the really good people (like Albus Dumbledore) and the small-minded, often bitter people (like Dolores Umbridge). There are MANY opportunities for people in the first camp (like Harry) to reconcile or forgive people in the second (like Draco Malfoy), especially since they often share similar hurts and a common enemy; it certainly would prevent lots of forthcoming pain.
Somehow, HP #5 came across as preaching the value of self-control more than grace. But I guess grace is hard to come by in wartime. (The word "supernatural" comes to mind.) And most authors suffer from the misunderstanding that it simplifies the dramatic picture. They confuse grace with resolution, I reckon.
We had our second break-in last week, which means two things:
(1) St. Elmo neighbors should keep an eye out for robbers.
(2) I'm not blogging as frequently due to a missing laptop.
This is a bummer because I'm travelling almost every weekend from now till Christmas (it feels like that, anyway) and would really like a laptop to keep me company on my travels. Guess I'll be reading more than usual. And writing the old-fashioned way.
about time that you owned up
to not knowing what to own,
where to look for ownership
and instead working out
your own annihilation.
stop it.
come home.
come back to the place
that makes claims on you,
demands of you history
and a sense of location,
testifies to your destination,
your unknown inheritance.
Age is a funny phenomenon. I can't remember much before I was eight years old, but I do remember always feeling very old, as a kid. It's only today that I really find that odd, since today I really considered age for the first time.
I'm 22, and the weird thing is, I feel younger now than I ever have before: fresher, more faithful. Can anyone explain this to me? Maybe it comes from the fact that the Spirit of God is bringing his people to greater depths of childlike trust. I'm enjoying the feeling, but I wonder if it will continue. I have friends aged 30 to 50 who are all feeling old. Worn out. Faithless and underutilized. Dryer and less capable than earlier in their lives.
...
miracles begin to die around thirty-two,
so I've been told,
and this parabolic maximum looks better
from the approach
than from that exalted ground itself.
will i too decrease
and follow the setting sun, making room
for younger trees
and brighter greens, and will my tresses grow
beautiful and dry?
autumn is a season of growing dependence,
of failing roots,
of breathtaking glory and of running sap.
such prospects intimidate
my summer time heart, for miracle trees receive
only four seasons.
HD was a little dismayed after using my bathroom last Friday night. "Bob," she said, "bathroom reading is meant to be light. It's meant to be something you can pick up and glance through for thirty seconds or so."
The books in my bathroom at that point were:
God's Peoples: A Social History of Christians (Spickard and Cragg)
Third World Economic Development (Michael Todaro)
Future Grace (John Piper)
As it turns out, she was worried about my digestive health. I took her words to heart and replaced them with Maniac Magee, Poems of Yeats, an Amy Tan book, and two shorts by Graham Greene. I guess I just always associated bathroom reading with heavy business. But I'm open to suggestions.
Tonight I sat and read on a couch, with remnants of Frances sighing in through the curtains. Then I cut open a dark, wheat baguette and smeared butter and ricotta cheese on it. Then I cut up some front-yard basil and sliced some tomato, threw on some garlic, and tossed the whole thing in the oven. (I learned this trick from HD.)
When it was ready, I poured myself some apple juice and sat on the kitchen floor with Ani DiFranco. She actually sat on one of the cabinets and sang to me while I ate, on the floor. It was relaxing to hear somebody else tellling me stories while thinking about the next chapter in my own.
My friend Ani has lots of issues with being a woman, given the way the world sometimes works against her gender. We talked it out and both of us decided it we liked her better as a woman. And me as a man. And it would never work out.
I feel decidedly calmer.
Today I expect to finish a Graham Greene story made for film: The Third Man. Very enjoyable and written with a healthy sense of scene and visual storyline. The story takes place in post-war Vienna. When I read it and listen to certain piano music, the walls of Chattanooga don't seem so close and overhwhelming.
Isn't it odd how we long for someplace OTHER? I say that little word "we," thinking that I am not alone in this occasional hunger for someplace where the people are more interesting, our job is more fulfilling, our neighborhood is more exotic, money is easily had, sin is less of a problem. I'm not sure if I'm surprised at how often we think along these lines, or at how infrequently... But all the same, the folks I respect the most try to live their lives as if their current milieu is or is becoming that certain someplace. What does THAT require?
I am suddenly afraid. The music has ended. The Viennese cinematic scenery has faded, and so have my romantic thoughts about living in Chattanooga. I'm afraid that if I try to live like those lovely, community-minded people, I will eventually be consumed by this place. I mean, isn't it important to keep poking one's head up from the dense fog of place and look around to somewhere else? What if I pour myself into this community while I'm here and it soaks me up? Will I have more to give, later on, somewhere else?
This is the point, of course, where I normally give myself a stern talking-to about walking by faith and avoiding overanalysis. And normally I stop thinking on the meta-level about anything at all, for about 24 hours. But I need something more substantial than a thought-patch for this leaking hull. I need to grasp the importance of faithful living even in the daily, detailed investments of my life: Romano's Macaroni Grill, my housemate, my next-door neighbors, life at the RP, college buddies, long-distance loved ones. Chattanooga is not a prison, but an investment ground where I plant and water my relationships with gospel-living. The next investment field will no doubt look different, but my confidence in future investments lies not in ME but in future grace from the Lord. Isn't that what we sing about? "...and grace will lead me home?"
Yeah. My thinking needs a shift, not an avoidance pattern that focuses only upon the positive. Taking every thought captive is harder than I thought it would be, at 22 and without immediate prospects for international travel and exotic ministry opportunities. The fear, I suppose, is that I am (or am perceived as?) dead in the water. But I'm not. I'm learning from those aforementioned lovely ones. I'm reading. I'm praying. I'm earning money. That is enough for now, simply because the Lord gets to teach me obedience. And I get to learn, background music or no. It has to be enough.
Culture shock (the re-entry variety) + leaving academia + working for an hourly wage = some kind of identity crisis along the lines of a mild post-partum depression. I'm beginning to comprehend the importance of words like Abiding. Deferment. Significance. Abundance. Content. Waiting. Faith. Hope. Love.
Sometimes people write just to see it all down on paper. Sometimes people write in order to think. I often write when I am lonely, writing for fellowship. Seeing it written and understanding it thoughtfully are great kick-backs, but they're bonus options. When I write things -- not back burner things, mind you, but the real stuff -- I can hear the words as well as see them. I can taste them and am not lonely.
It is as if I am wrapped up in wool and sipping a warm beverage on a chilly front porch while a good friend and habitual introvert spills his eloquent guts. The words spill out into the space between us and my ears swallow them whole like a vacuum cleaner or a boa. I am not alone because the three of us are there: myself, my friend, and the essence of what is being said. The story kind of uncurls and billows around like smoke, different from the words, something I would never swallow because it is the third person of our secret crew.
And the words are good, because introverts sit on thoughts until those thoughts are ripe. All I have to do is make consistent eye contact and keep sipping. Oh, and I must not pay too much attention to myself. When I do, the porch fades and my hand stops scribbling the delectable words. I come to myself and realize I'm alone. And wanting company.
I'm going to go write something. Something good.
Two friends came over this weekend, and we had a blast. They left yesterday morning between 2:00 and 2:30 AM, which means I have three precious days to catch up on blogging before starting my job at the Macaroni Grill (trendy, Italian, casual dining concept). ...but there's too much to say. I guess I'll write down a question I'm thinking about today and write more later.
Prelude to the question: So I just returned from a bargain grocery adventure in East Ridge, TN -- one I didn't plan on having. It was nice, despite the spontaneity, and it filled my finely-tuned senses with lots of delightful Tennessee texture (ruty cars, fake tans on white people, loud kids with accents, Asian food markets, used car lots, obesity, crumbling asphalt, smiles). It seemed odd to me to think of some polished, pro-Covenant admissions people hanging out in this context. And it seemed an equally odd juxtaposition to place the characters I rubbed elbows with this afternoon in the rarified atmosphere of higher education and cultural engagement up on campus. But I spend time in both, a regular Renaissance man, I guess.
I've been wearing a lot of hats the last few days: looking dressy for job interviews, looking inconspicuous for cleaning with BEST, and looking shabby and comfortable for shopping at the East Ridge Save-A-Lot store. Each "look" went with a particular set of people who all live in my city. I was wondering about those people - how life feels and looks and tastes, etc to those who have lived here forever.
And I asked myself: What would it look like to intentionally refuse to elect just one particular environment or slice of Chattanooga community? In other words, what would happen if some group of folks decided to have significant relationships and transact significant business in ways that transgressed the economic, educational, racial, geographical and ecclesiastical lines that criss-cross Chattanooga?