Good Curry

I found this story to be interesting and complex.  I'm not sure that I understand all of the details and what they mean, (in fact I am sure that I do not) but I enjoyed reading it, and I think that over time the meaning will come into view.  Here are a few thoughts:

The story of the house, and Sanjeev's courtship with Twinkle, seem to coincide in ways.  He seemed to have fallen in love with both of them without noticing the "little things" that he would later come to despise.  But it is those little things, the color-by-number saints and the Ten Commandments hand towel and the way Twinkle sometimes spits when she speaks, that will sharpen him and challenge him to become a better person - to love her for her, and not what she can do for him.

 Perhaps my favorite scene is this one:
"How did you make it?"
"I made it up."
"What did you do?"
"I just put some things into the pot and added the malt vinegar at the end."
"How much vinegar?"
She shrugged, ripping off some bread and plunging it into her bowl.
"What do you mean you don't know?  You should write it down.  What if you need to make it again, for a party or something?"
"I'll remember," she said.  She covered the bread basket with a dishtowel that had, he suddenly noticed, the Ten Commandements printed on it.  She flashed him a smile, giving his knee a little squeeze under the table.  "Face it.  This house is blessed."

It made me giggle, but it also helped me to see the fundamental differences in these two characters.  While Sanjeev is meticulous, organized, and seems to enjoy predictability, Twinkle has a "lai ssez-faire" attitude, is whimsical, and girlish at times.  (Some of her antics actually remind me of myself, and I'm not sure what that means.)

The characters say "or something" quite a bit in their conversations.  For some reason, this phrase makes me think of them as immature, not in a judgemental way (I say "or something" all the time), but I suppose I see them as young and vulnerable, like myself.  It would have the same affect if they had said the word "like" frequently. 

Sanjeev seems to be very concerned with his image.  The story describes him taking a long look in the mirror at his features that didn't seem so masculine.   I wonder if the "Christian paraphenalia" is a bother to him, personally, as much as it makes him worry what others will think.

It's interesting to me the way the characters express themselves.  Twinkle is searching through the house for "treasures" and trinkets, but I wonder if she's actually searching for more than that.  I think Sanjeev is searching, too.

There is a point in the story when Sanjeev wonders if he really loves Twinkle, but when he tries to imagine life without her, (it seemed to me more like a partial, passing thought) he feels "pangs" of anticipation and feeling.  His reaction is much different when Twinkle comes down from the attic with a statue of the bust of Jesus.  He doesn't argue with her.  Perhaps this is a turning point.  

"This is our house.  We own it together.  The statue is a part of our property."  This quote made me think of how, in relationships or marriage, two people are in a journey together, and even the things one wishes weren't there - little annoyances, differences of opinion, and room for growth - are part of the relationship.  They own those things together, and they can change both parties for better, or worse, depending upon which courses of action they choose.

This story reminded me that, sometimes people have to sit together for a while, blending their strengths, weaknesses and idosyncrasies in order to complement one another - sort of like different flavors simmering in a good curry...or something.

                          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUdmaXpuf8M&feature=related

The Problem of Darkness

Pain is a thing we try to avoid.  I don't particularly like to think about it, and yet it's there all the time -  in the eyes of my friends, in my own heart, and in the lives of everyone around me.  It seems like it would be easier to go on pretending as if it didn't exist at all, and run from the darkness at break-neck speed, hoping it never catches up with us.  I have learned that there is a more productive way to approach the problem of darkness, pain, and tragedy, which, as Professor Corrigan suggests in his essay, begins with approaching.  "Facing darkness is not pleasant or socially acceptable, but in this world where darkness is, the integrity of our hope depends on it."  Hope - what is that?  The kind of hope I'm thinking of I can't describe well in words.  I was displeased with the definitions I found on the internet, except for one, which comes fairly close: "hope against hope, to continue to hope, although the outlook does not warrant it."  Webster's 1828 American Dictionary of The English Language contained a few which I liked, "To desire with expectation of good, or a belief that it may be obtained," "To place confidence in; to trust in with confident expectation of good."  But my favorite is listed as not in use: "A sloping plain between ridges of mountains."  The hope is what connects two separate things together: sort of like our temporary life on earth, and Heaven.  But you can't arrive at hope, according to this definition, without climbing first.  In the same way, we cannot know the kind of hope God wants us to until we process, or "deal" with pain - and we cannot deal with it if we aren't willing even to turn around and look at it.  I have noticed that most of the encouraging Bible verses that I love all have to do with pain or problems.  "You have delivered my being from the depths of the grave," "You have turned my mourning into dancing," "Why are you downcast, my soul?  Why are you disquieted within me?  Hope in God..."  The Psalmist couldn't have praised God for deliverance if there had been nothing to deliver him from.  He now experiences and knows God in a new and deeper way than he would have if he had pretended there wasn't a problem.  As Professor Corrigan suggests, the point of processing darkness is not to meditate on the darkness itself, it is to open ourselves to healing, repentance, and a more "real" outlook on life.  "Real" is both immense suffering, and understanding that God is with us in the suffering, and that the suffering itself is temporary.  It's realizing problems in our society, while being able to reach others more significantly.  It's understanding that what we see with our physical eyes is only one plane of life, and there's another one we don't comprehend.  Real is that I'm tired and I have a lot to do, and there are angels in my room watching me blog.  Perhaps if we stop running, and turn around to face pain and suffering, we won't find a scary monster chasing us after all, but the face of our Savior, holding out His hand and gently asking us to walk up the mountain with Him.  

                  I think this piece is very important.  I think of it when I pray about these subjects.  This man's interpretation is especially significant to me.  He doesn't seem as if to say, "This piece is so famous!  Look at me!" but rather, "Listen carefully."  He savors every phrase as if it's a kind of prayer full of mixed feelings.  The beginning, climax, and resolution make me think of this process.   

Choose Wisely

In my last blog post, I discussed "getting to know a text" as described in the essay, Active Reading of Literature.  "Who knows?" I wrote, "they might even become your best friend."  Sometimes they don't.  The Bible says to choose our friends wisely, and just like you are influenced by the people you "hang out" with, I believe you will, sometimes slowly, become like the literature you read, the movies you watch, and the music you listen to on a regular basis.  There are obviously things we need to become aware of without letting them affect and influence our lives, and to me, this short story was one of them.  I think of it as more of an acquaintance, I suppose.
    The story opens with four characters, Mel, Terri, Nick, and Laura, sitting around a table drinking gin.  What began as a casual conversation about love eventually turns into a sort of impromptu soul-search, of which Mel was the primary instigator, I felt.  Several quotes stood out to me: "There was a time when I thought I loved my first wife more than life itself.  But now I hate her guts.  I do.  How do you explain that?  What happened to that love?  What happened to it, is what I'd like to know.  I wish someone could tell me.  Then there's Ed.  Okay, we're back to Ed.  He loves Terri so much he tries to kill her and he winds up killing himself."  Mel then goes on to say that if something were to happen to one of them, he thinks the surviving party would eventually love again, and that their original love would become a memory, "maybe not even a memory".  He called it both a terrible thing and a good thing - a kind of "saving grace."  I know what Mel is talking about, but I still don't think he's hit the nail on the head quite yet.
     I feel as though these characters are talking about love as if it's as free as the wind, and no one really knows where it comes from or where it goes.  It's easy to feel that way sometimes.  But I think that love, real love both romantic and otherwise, is a choice, kind of like faith.  If I get married, I'm sure that sometimes I'll not "feel" as though I love my husband, but that isn't the point.  Sometimes I sense God all around me, and sometimes I feel as though I'm totally by myself - that isn't the point either.  There are things that you choose to do, like praying and putting other people first, that have feelings associated with them, of course, but even when those feelings seem to be missing, you still do them.
   Regarding the second quote I described, I do understand Mel's point.  How do you love someone with all your heart, and when they die, you move on?  Some people can't.  But for those who can, does that mean that they didn't really love the first person, or that they don't love them anymore?  I don't think that love turns into "not even a memory", if it was real.  I think it transforms into a different kind of love.
   Lastly, about Ed.  As I stated before, there is a difference between "feeling" and love.  The kind of "love" Ed had for Terri seems more like an abusive infatuation, as if he needed her for some purpose.  If he truly loved her, I don't think he would have tried to kill her.
   By no means am I saying that if you love someone, you will always be nice to them or never make mistakes.  There will surely be disputes that end up deeply wounding both parties.  But the essence, the foundation of love is striving to be patient, kind, and persevering - willing to accept the worse end of the deal.  Like the man who visits his alzheimer's-stricken wife in the hospital every day even though she doesn't know him anymore, or the military wife who waits for her husband even though she isn't sure he's coming back, or Jesus on the cross.
   I didn't come away with much from this story.  The vulgar language was distracting and offensive, and I didn't need to read a detailed tale about an automobile accident in which an elderly couple was severely injured and a nineteen-year-old man was killed.  It made me feel sad for a while, and I did ponder some things, but lost love, the essence of love, and people dying are subjects I think about a lot.  I don't feel as though I have learned.  This work isn't the kind of friend I'd call for help or encouragement.  It isn't even really one that I'd like to associate with on a regular basis, so I suppose I'll tip my hat and walk on.

 

                                                               A serenade

How You Read

I remember engaging in "active reading" in another one of Professor Corrigan's classes, English Composition II.  I suppose you could say that that was my preliminary knowledge about this essay.  I thoroughly agree with the concept of engaging with the text, although it was somewhat foreign to me at first.  I think my favorite part of this essay was this paragraph: "Since you, the reader, are just feeling your way around the material, you cannot expect to take much meaning from it at first.  You and the author do not know each other yet.  You might consider the analogy of a couple's first meeting on a blind date, or of college roommates meeting for the first time."  This essay suggests that, just like a relationship with a person, we give our relationship with the literature time to settle in and grow.  It reminds me of a certain music theory lecture.  My professor used a play on words as he was talking about "engaging with a piece".  If you were really engaged to a person, he said, you would be excited to learn all of the details about them.  You wouldn't say, "Oh, I'm kind-of tired today, and I'm not really concerned about you and all of your details."  Often I've judged a piece of music as boring or irrelevant to me, but when I hear it many times and come to expect certain sounds, the overall meaning sinks in and I can relate to it.  (It may even become one of my favorites.)  The same applies to literature - until you learn the details, you don't really know it.  And we can't really judge something, or someone, we don't know.
    "What you get out of what you read is determined by how you read."  This sentence means more than one thing to me.  We have already discussed how our life experiences impact "how" we read something, that is, what message we interpret and how we think it applies to us.  What you get out of what you read depends on how you go about reading as well, like the active, annotated reading this essay describes.  By paying close attention to the details, we can get to know an author or a piece of literature.  Who knows?  They might even become our best friend.
  

Meet one of my best friends!

A Literary Profile

The earliest memories of my literary journey begin when I was five, reading A Little Princess, The Secret Garden and the Bible with my mother and snuggling up with my huge stuffed dog to read books like Little Chick's Breakfast, Make Way for Ducklings, What Would Jesus Do?, Lile the Friendly Crocodile, and the Beatrix Potter series by myself.  As I got older, I enjoyed books with interesting words and sweet morals.  I liked old books, and enjoyed looking at pictures of people from different time periods.  The literature I experienced in junior high and high school include Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pride and Prejudice, and The Iliad.  I also loved reading books about architechture, art, music, and the biographies of composers.  Perhaps the most personally influential literature I encountered was the poetry I read during my senior year of high school.  Four poems affected me the most, I think: To a Waterfowl by William Cullen Bryant, Love by George Herbert, Daffodils by William Wordsworth, and A Psalm of Life by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  To be sure, I didn't understand them completely, but within these poems I felt that there were certain truths and concepts that I could grasp.  They each came at a time when I needed them, and I found them to be very encouraging.  My most recent discoveries, which I am reading little by little, include Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis, Little House on the Ozarks by Laura Ingalls Wilder, Let Me Be a Woman by Elisabeth Eilliot, and Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior In Company and Conversation by George Washington.
      "An artist's work grows from a lifetime of experiences, thoughts, and emotions; no one else can duplicate them exactly.  Works of art hold many meanings.  The greatest of them seem to speak anew to each generation and to each attentive observer.  The most important thing is that some works of art come to mean something for you, that your own experiences, thoughts and emotions find a place in them, for then you will have made them live."  This is a quote from my Art Appreciation textbook called Living with Art by Mark Getlein, and it reminded me of Professor Corrigan's essay, Literature Is a Thing You Do as Part of Your Life. Professor Corrigan says, "...true art draws people more deeply into reality.  One reason for this is that literature is about life.  Life experiences inform a person's understanding of what they read, and what a person reads informs their life experiences."  I feel that literature, art, and music are all elegant forms of communication which, when we take part in them, can help us to better understand each other, ourselves, and mostly importantly, God.  It's the "doing" of literature, the "how" I can take part in it that I am excited to learn more fully.  I would like to know how to paint a short story and interpret a difficult poem.  Just like finding the hidden meanings in a painting or discovering something special in a piece of music, I want to know how to discover the author's meaning and apply it to my own life - in other words "making it live."

Here is a piece that was running through my mind as I was thinking about these things