Post 19

I went to Lake Bonny Park for this assignment, and I stayed there for at least 40 minutes.

Like stated in my previous post, I believe that there is something truly divine about nature…especially when reflecting on the Lord. Nature helps bring us down to Earth, clears our minds and puts things in perspective.

On Monday, I went to Lake Bonny Park with Lauren, Juliet and Brendan. We found the dock featured in a picture on the blog. We took time to look at the water and all the creatures around it. I remember seeing these lizards everywhere on the dock. It is just crazy to think about how many things exist outside of ourselves. And it is also crazy to think about our earth and God’s creation and how creative he is in making it.

One of my favorite parts of the trip was when the four of us took time to relax and reflect on the dock. We laid with the comfort of the sun on our faces and the soft breeze to cool us down. In the distance I could hear laughter. I could hear the wind. I could hear the brushing of the leaves. And it is weird how those simple things can affect one’s perspective and appreciation of nature.

Post 19

I thought that Mary Oliver’s poems from Thirst, were spiritually deep because it not only talked about the divine state of nature, but the importance of practicing solitude and silence. My favorite poem of the three we read is certainly “Six Recognitions of Love.” This is possibly because I feel like it focuses most on the importance of silence and obedience to God through it.

One of my favorite lines from the poem was “Then I enter the place of not-thinking, not remembering, not-wanting.” I believe that silence disciplines us to be patient and sensitive to God’s voice. But I also believe that silence helps us to simple just enjoy God and his creation. Silence provides an outlet for those words that ca not be spoken.

However, today’s culture has made it difficult to fully appreciate or even stand silence. We walk into a room, and for most, the immediate thing to do is to turn on the TV, iPod, stereo, computer etc. We have made it okay to ignore silence, which in turned has made it okay to ignore God’s sound. I am not trying to say that silence is the only place where one can soak in God’s presence. But I believe that silence is a divine gift from God that Mary Oliver highlights in her poems.

If we turn off all the noise that crams our minds and makes us feel too restless to truly think, we become numb to His spirit. I believe we understand ourselves and our place with Christ when solitude becomes a daily ritual in our lives. Silence is a discipline that demonstrates our obedience to God and I believe silence is crucial component when truly appreciating nature and it’s Creator.

“And we enter the dialogue of our lives that is beyond all understanding or conclusion. It is mystery. It is love of God. It is obedience.”

Post 18

Pass.

Post 17

When developing a short story, I have realized it is not necessarily the details of the situation or the scenery but rather how the character can be built up by not necessarily revealing his identity. After writing my short story, I realized it is important to leave room for the reader to imagine the character. If we are writing a short story such as “He had brown hair and green eyes. He dressed fairly well. He had anger problems that he had to see a doctor for,” it gives away the story and loses interest of the reader. However, I have also realized that details from the scenery and situation and such can contribute to the character development in some ways too. It leaves room for the reader to explore how they contribute to the development of the character.

In our small groups, we discussed each others short stories. They were all very different but all the same in some ways. We were all trying to develop our characters and some way. And all though are stories were not similar in plot they were similar in that we described our character without giving away their true identities. It is obvious that characters are somewhat limited to what we encounter on a daily basis: how we engage with others, individuals that we passionate about and have relationships with. However, that makes character development that much better.

In one of my previous posts I highlighted that we often engage with characters the same way we engage with people. This idea kept coming back to my head when trying to develop my short story. And even though I am not completely sure I accomplished this, I believe it becomes easier to write a character based story when you focus on this concept. Ask yourself “is this how I could interact with my character?” “If I was reading this story, would I be convinced that this would happen to me?”

Short Story

Who is he?

He glances at himself in the window --- long enough so that he can evaluate himself but short enough so that any bystanders or residents on the other side of the window cannot tell that he is starring at himself. He sees all the fast cars across the road, and equally feels as if he is moving just as fast.
“Who would have thought I would end up here…like this…after all these years?” he asks his friend.
His friend responds “everyone.”

Middle school was odd. But oddly felt as if it was a shelter being the small private school it was. Church was even smaller. The cliques formed in them the smallest. Yet, that was where he was --- sheltered: the perfect school, perfect church, perfect friends. Yet, something violent raged in his heart and demanded to be unleashed.

Maybe he unleashed whatever was stirring in his heart the day he broke Jacob Roding’s nose. His eyes were filled with fire but his face seemed so pure. People looked at him differently that day. He was no longer the short boy with perfectly cut hair and pressed khaki pants. He was the boy who punched Jared in the face. But it is hard to tell if he was feared that day. All that was recalled that afternoon was how he never unclenched his fists, even to raise his hand in class, and that his eyes never unlocked from the window that viewed that busiest highway in town.

He loosened his grip the day he realized he was in love with Chrissy Weaver. He grew his hair out because he knew she liked shaggy hair. He hung out with the same group of friends from church as she did, even though when he did he found himself clenching his fist again.

He loved playing with her hair; his fingers tingled when each strand ran through his fingers. And on the day where he said the right words to her, and her hair was exceptionally smooth, Chrissy and him decided that they should be together and all was perfect.

He had on that polo that had a spot of Jacob’s blood on the sleeve from the day he could only find words from his fist rather than his mouth. Jared’s face came to his mind when that fire came to his eyes again because Chrissy told him to stop being so “fucking rude.” He hit her so hard in the face that day that it got across every hurtful word he wanted to say to her. Well, at least that is what he wanted to do. He barely brought his hand out of the pocket of his wrinkled jeans that he was holding on so hard to. And he tried to convince himself he did not love her anymore, as she stood there looking deep into his eyes with so much pain. If you looked hard enough into his eyes, past all the fiery anger, the same pain could be found.

No one ever found that pain. Honestly, no one took the time to search for it. Which made him feel that he wished Chrissy would have just drove that car a little faster the day they got into that car accident together. She was dead. At least to him she was dead the day they both walked away from that accident. And to everyone else, his friends, Chrissy, Jacob, he was dead to them. His hands were too numb to clench that day. But his eyes still had enough strength to focus on the cars that flew beside him.

People did not hear much from him after that day. Except when Chrissy heard about how red his eyes had become. Chrissy just wanted to share her concern with a friend but somehow down the grapevine the red eyes turned into the supposed white powder seen on his nose. Before long his parents were digging though his unkempt room that, despite it appearance, always smelt like a fresh shower. They dug through his car, and the fire that was always in his eyes was identical to the fire raging in his father’s eyes that night his father tried to hit him. He pulled that knife so fast at his father that there was not room for him to have possibly processed what impulse he just made. Tears filled his mother’s eyes as he proudly walked out that front door into his broken into car. Secretly, tears were buried inside his too as he drove away from his home that night. He drove too fast that it did not provide an opportunity for those tears to find a way around that prideful fire.

The room he slept in now no longer smelt like that fresh shower scent it once was. The scent never lingered on him strongly, however, because he shaved all that shaggy hair off that his face revealed all his distinctive features. Often, when I imagine the seriousness of his face, it brings goose bumps up and down my arms.

Chrissy’s face often came to mind whenever he slept with his new girlfriends. He never referred to them as girlfriends. Something I never quite understood. So tonight I asked him why he does not tell me about his girlfriends, and why he did not talk about the night he pulled the knife on his own father, and what he was thinking the day he almost died in that car accident with the girl he claimed he loved, and why he never told me what exactly Jared Roding said that triggered that instinct to punch him straight in the face. And it was then, the time no one was searching for it, that the prideful walls fell and the pain found a way to escape. I did not want to see those tears but he let them fall. “I never wanted to be a disappointment. I’m stuck. I can’t escape” he proclaimed. And before one word could come out of my mouth, he was gone: inebriated, running down to one of the busiest highways in town, with the only comfort of the pills the rattled in the bottle in his pocket and the flesh of his skin. And I know I can not follow. So I wait.

He glances at himself in the window --- long enough so that he can evaluate himself but short enough so that any bystanders or residents on the other side of the window cannot tell that he is starring at himself. He sees all the fast cars across the road, and equally feels as if he is moving just as fast.
He collapses on the sidewalk before he could even cross that busy highway. He then finds himself laying in a hospital bed with only enough strength to clench his fist and stare directly out the window. His face looks so pure like it once did in his middle school days.
“Who would have thought I would end up here…like this…after all these years?” he asks his friend.
His friend responds “everyone.”
And he lies there, asking himself “who am I.” A question that neither his friend nor I know that we can not answer. I no longer can attempt to save him if I do not know him.

Post 15

“Who is involved, and why does it matter?” are two important questions when dealing with any literature. Characters play a crucial role in developing points of the story and the values of the author. The experience that characters bring must be observed “outside ourselves” in order to make “our world bigger.” In order for us to get anything out of characters we must have some level of curiosity that drives us to want to know them and understand there purpose. We are drawn to people the same way. We must hone in on this curiosity in order to get the full value of text.

So a major point which characters is to engage with them the same way we engage with people we encounter in person. In David St. John’s My Tea with Madame Descartes, the narrator uses a great deal of the poem to develop how Madame Descartes looks. We immediately get some idea of the characters without even knowing through things she has said. We often, and the majority of the time, do the same in person: we often get an overall idea of the person simply by looking at the them, observing their outward traits, and their gestures. And that is not way it is wrong to do so, because often times our first impressions are true to some extent.

However, we also develop an idea about someone through careful dialogue with them. We have learned this in class in our groups and our ongoing course dialogue. We have begun to understand how we will interact with people which in turns give some perspective on who the person is. The same goes with literary text. We often do not have the narrator bulking up a story, detailing the characters and their purpose. The interaction, the dailouge shared between the characters often does an adequate job to fulfill those means.

Overall, reading the chapter on Character and reading the poem has developed an important fact about literature: “we engage with characters as we engage with people.”

Post 14

Much of life is suffering. I am no means trying to sound empathetic or depressing. But it seems, even as Christians, that humans are continuously trying to work through suffering.

James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” effectively demonstrates this exploration for an understanding of the universal suffering. Throughout the story, the narrator is painting a picture of his brother who is in a continuous search for his identity. But in the process of explaining his brother’s individual identity, the narrator finds his own.

I feel that this is the case for most of us. Not that we should necessarily live through the lives of other people. But we do develop understanding on the things in life through other’s experiences. We learn from others testimonies, actions, and ways of life. Sonny’s Blues can be seen as double-narrative, in that when the characters in the story are getting one thing out of the story, we, as readers, are finding a purpose for it to apply to our own lives. I am even doing that now while writing this post. (Then is this a triple narrative?)

Music, like literature, serves as a means of communication. This theme is evident in the last few parts of the story. The narrator is illustrating Sonny’s confinement throughout the story. Sonny says he feels stuck in Harlem. But Sonny seems stuck in the many complexities of life. But it appears that he finds an escape but then again a connection through the music; a connection with his brother, a connection with his future, and a feeling of contentment through music.

The narrator made a promise to his mom to look out for Sonny; a promise that comes back to him after his mother’s death. All the narrator wants to do is provide a better life for Sonny. But maybe the narrator was trying to find something himself.