Night

Growing up in small towns and the country gave me a different experience of night than that which I am recieving here in the city. In small towns the only light that interferes with the night is a few streetlights. You can still look up and see the sky for almost all it is worth. And in the country, of course, you can see the whole thing. The yard light does not really do anything to dampen the night sky; and if you want, it only takes a short walk to be completely away from it. You find in yourself in complete, natural darkness. It can be very bright if there is a larger moon, or a sky full of stars; but, if it's a cloudy night, it can be so dark you cannot see much more than ten feet in front of you. The most intense is probably when it is in between. When a few clouds are covering most of the night's natural light, but there is just enough so that you can see everything poorly.
That is when the shadows are liable to sends chills from the base of your neck to the middle of your back, and the snapping branches and rustling leaves make your hair raise on end. Of course, you do not need to deal with any of this if you live in the country. You could just stay inside and ignore the sweat-inducing thrills there are to be had with a slow night walk; but that is not for me. I love them. I enjoy letting my imagination get the best of me. And I enjoy when I can get beyond the mere jumpiness caused by the darkness. Then is when you really find an appreciation for the night. Everything is the same during the night as during the day, there just is no sun to illuminate the landscape so clearly. That is why it is so wonderful. Because it takes away the simplicity of daylight. There is an excitement to be had in finding something secret, something hidden. And the most simple things can be hidden by the night, lending the commonplace a mythic quality.

Getting beyond my love of country nights, living here in the city for the past couple years has given me a contrasting experience with night. Well, living on campus had the semblence of a sort of small town night, even though if you really examined the sky you would find that it was being smothered by the conglomeration of city lights. However, living here in the duplex has allowed me to see that phenomenon at its strongest. When I walk outside at night, the sky is never dark, especially to the west; it is also so much stronger with cloud cover, which of course is because it catches more of the light. There are not enough trees around the area to lend their shadows to give the appearance of night. And so, outside of my door, there is a constant twilight haunting the city. I feel like it is a compound metaphor for numerous things in life, all of which are outside of the path of my thought; but, I know they are there. I feel them when I look at the twilight.

Versus

Some things have been brewing in my head; growing, coming to the surface of my consciousness for a little while and then disappearing back below, so that I will not remember the details when I try and tell someone about them. Hope fully if I start putting things down, it will come out in as close to its entirety as I can hope to understand.

The first is that of the difference between sympathy and empathy. At first glance in the dictionary they seem to be almost identical. I lugged out the old World Book dictionary, and this is what I found:
Sympathy: 1. a sharing of another's sorrow or trouble.
Empathy: 1. the quality or process of entering fully, through the imagination, into another's feelings or motives, into the meaning of a work of art, or the like.
It's an interesting thing. It seems that these are two different things. They both have a common end, to try and ease some other person's pain, but they take different paths. It is the difference of crying with a man, sharing in the outer, emotional instances of his woe; and that of crying FOR the man, attempting to share a deeper spiritual bond with him through the attempt to understand him. It's the difference in the answer when that person says that you don't understand. Sympathy says, "No, I don't." Empathy says, "No, but I'm trying to."
It is not that I think either of these is better than the other. I do not. It's just something to think about.


The other thing that has been on my mind is how (in general) I should look at the world. Whether it is better to be accepting of a harsher reality, or the belief in an ethereal ideal permeating the lives of men. Larisa clarified it (actually, spiritually objectified would probably be more accurate) as being the difference between focusing on either: the depthless depravity of man OR the endless mercy of God. It makes sense that way, but I still have more thoughts on the subject.
Exploring the different sides, I see positive aspects to both. I was watching the movie Secondhand Lions with my family last night, and during the build nearing the climax of the film, one of the uncles told the young boy something about that he should believe in the ideals of goodness in men, true love, and other powerful things not neccesarily because they were real, but because they were good. This line of reasoning is probably the strongest that line that get me to identify with holding to idealism. It is one that I had thought of, when I searched this topic before.
However, this morning, I remembered a little passage from East of Eden; so, I searched for it and found it.

" ' There's more beauty in the truth even if it is dreadful beauty. The storytellers at the city gate twist life so that it looks sweet to the lazy and the stupid and the weak, and this only strengthens their infirmities and teaches nothing, cures nothing, nor does it let the heart soar ' "

You can see how a novel with such things contained in its pages would enchant me. The statement above does not preclude holding ideals, but it does describe how an acceptance of reality can be the more helpful thing. It also describes something that I have suspected for a long time. That the definition of beauty as being a thing that pleases a person. That there is beauty in both the things that make one smile, and the things that make one frown. Even in that which makes the lips sit in a simple line. There is beauty in both the emerald canopies of a forest in bloom, and in the windswept skeleton branches of a dead forest with dirt for a floor.

Well, I guess I'll end this with the same answer. I do not think ones that much better than the other. It is just something to think about.

Well then

*sigh*
Well, sadly, my brother's basketball team lost; but, I got four books out of the trip (including an acting edition of The Crucible). So, now I have started Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes. We will see how the rest of break turns out. I just hope I get over this cold I have before I have to go back to school.

Used books

Well, so much for my plan. I finished Cat's Cradle this morning, and once again I am hungry for something to read. But fear not, I have a plan. I am going to a basketball game this evening that my youngest brother is playing in. It just so happens that in the town in which the basketball game is taking place, there is a used bookstore where my aunt works. I think I just might stop by this used bookstore before the game, and if I am lucky I will find something unexpected and exciting to read. Otherwise, I did bring a few books with me from school (East of Eden being one of these) which I could delve into. However, I am addicted to used books, so, and addition to my collection of used paperbacks would be a happy thing for me anyways.

However, I need to take a shower, or we will be late.

Reading

I finished reading John Steinbeck's East of Eden last night. It could quite possibly be my favorite book at the moment. I suppose that may be natural after reading such a good book. The other good books in my past are forgotten for a while, while I bask in the immediacy and quality of the one I just finished reading. Even still, it provoked my thought in ways that I do not think fiction ever has before. It was a rare thing when I got through a couple of chapters, and I had not found some story or piece of thought that so intrigued me that I felt myself slipping away into a divergent focus on that individual thought. I must say it, it was a great book, and if you have not read it, do.

At first, I thought I probably would not read any more books over this break, but I have decided to fit one smaller one in between now and Sunday. The book I intend to read is Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, which I picked up at the library this afternoon. I think it will serve as a nice literary finish to my Christmas break. I started break by reading Ted Dekker's Showdown, in the middle read East of Eden, and finished break with Cat's Cradle. And I love Kurt Vonnegut. He makes me amused, and a little nauseous at the same time.

The future

While I was on a tour of the new Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, I experienced something quite interesting in the lobby outside of the Joe Dowling studio theatre. You see, the studio theatre is on what is (I believe) the highest accessible level of the building; and built into the floor was a glass pane. It was a strong glass pane, strong enough for all thirteen of us to stand on at once if we would have had the nerve. The reason we did not have that nerve, was because when you looked down, there was a fifty-foot drop down to the roof below. This being the case, I tried to stroll onto it as nonchalantly as I could, and (as a man should) peer downwards curiously, and unshaken by the height; while deep in my mind I felt a small chill run up my spine as I felt the winds blow past me in the couple of seconds that I fell towards that pebble covered roof. After having stood on the glass for a long enough amount of time (to prove to myself that I was not that afraid of heights), I casually sauntered onto the seemingly solid, non-transparent portion of the lobby floor; all the while secretly kissing the ground I now stood on).

I think that in our lives, we live in the present much like I was standing on that glass. You do it because it is a part of living. You cannot resist being, at least physically, in the present. I also think that we have the tendency to look on the future the way I looked on the stone-tiled floor. "Once we get off of this uncertain, unfounded present I will be happy. I will be content with what I have, once I am there, in the future." When, in reality, the opaqueness of the future-floor is really just an illusion. Once you get to it, you will look down and find yourself facing just as much uncertainty. Just as much fear. Just as much longing for that future-floor, that you tell yourself is the real thing. That the other times, when the floor was transparent, that those were flukes. But they were not.

We have to live our lives in the present, or we will not be living our lives. We will just be planning them. You have to let yourself revel in that uncertainty. I think that there is a certain aspect to life, that allows for you to take the things that you are uncertain about, afraid of, and confused by and be thankful for them. The interesting parts of life are not the ones without conflict. Maybe a lot of people just do not want to have interesting lives; but I suspect that most of them do. I know I do. I know that it is going to be hard, if my life really gets interesting, but in the end I think it will be worth it. At that point, it may even be fun.

Paper

I was reading a short story by Richard Connell this afternoon called "The Most Dangerous Game", about an aristocrat who hunts men for recreation on his own private island. Around half-ways through, I realized that I was not enjoying it as much as I think I would have if I had been holding it in my hands; ink on paper. Something about reading it on this screen just drains it of its life. It was like the difference between watching a movie in black and white, and watching it in technicolor. The technicolor is just a poor attempt at trying to recreate full sense experience, while black and white is a whole different world. But I digress. There is something about holding the book. Touching the pages, knowing that what I am looking at will not change, and just the simple cadence created by the turning of pages as you read.

Warming power.

A love-sick reverie resounds throughout my skull. It seems as a whisper, but affects like a blow. How could a few words tear me asunder, and in the same moment warm me to the very pit of my heart? I would have never thought it possible; that such a thing was real, would have been unthinkable before. Yet, now, it seems like it is merely the simple result of one the most natural of causal relationships. I have felt it, and I know that it is real. And now, that dream that skims the edges of my consciousness, but causes earthquakes in its travel; now, it is what I can esteem with hope, as I fall through the crude gates which barr the roads I will travel. Hope, that somewhere, such dreams can be reality.

Alive

When one is alive, you would think that that person would feel like they were alive. Such is not the case, Luke found out. The feeling of life comes only occasionally in the day to day life of a man, and when it does he can either let it slip by, or put it somewhere so he can remember it when he loses the sense of it. The feeling that all of the weight that keeps the furrows in your forehead strained against the troubles and choices you face, suddenly lifted like a string on a balmy spring breeze. The feeling that all of the obstacles and roadblocks that keep you from hoping have been driven away like the frost of winter; and that in their place, a flowing garden whose depth and width are only as small as the person who measures them. The feeling that whatever happens in the end, when looked back upon, you would not change what happened; you would not change it, because it is a part of you.