The Prince and the Horse

There once was a prince who was greatly excited to one day rule his country. This ambition was not the sort that would lead to any violent usurpation, for the prince was devoted to his father. In fact, the prince spent much of the day pestering the king with questions. The prince wanted to know everything about ruling. When the king was busy, the prince spent hours perusing the volumes in the library, storing up knowledge in great heaps, hoping that one day the storehouses would be full enough for the prince to finally rule wisely.

And so the prince studied political histories, tactical manuals, works of heroic literature, great famous speeches, scientific journals, books of law. He could tell all about the great deeds of Achilles and the motions of the planets. Yet he could not help to imagine himself in every work he read. He was pleased to imagine those great speeches come from his mouth, the battle formations drawn by his hand, decrees sent out from his throne. All his hope was on the crown that he would one day achieve, that would be set upon the head more prepared for it than any it had known before. The prince was a young man of preparation.

He met a great many people at court, as princes are wont to do. He was kind, for he knew that it was best for a prince to be thought kind. He was most pleased when he found a courtier interested in his studies and quests. The prince was known then to dazzle and confound his counterpart, spilling out all the words his brain could recall, dousing the listener with the finest speech he could gather in a moment. Some found the prince’s speeches charming, while others made a note to avoid being thus captured in the future. The prince would walk away, thinking he had made a friend, but lie in bed that night bothered that he could not recall this new friend’s name. He would then go to his window, where he would look out at the planets and forget about all his knowledge, and feel quite alone. He wondered if his father ever felt this way, or perhaps his new friend.

Most upsetting were the days when he could not find his father to ask his questions, he did not feel home in the library, and no courtier wanted to listen to his speeches. On these days he took his horse out and cantered across the kingdom, until the thudding of the hooves against the pavement dulled the pangs in his heart. One day, after a good while at such a pace, the wind in the prince’s hair cheered him. He felt a whooshing, cold happiness running through him. He did not know what to do with this happiness, other than to make a speech about it. And so he dismounted his horse near the river and began to speak, to himself, or his horse, or no-one.

“O cold day, I didst begin you with a weariness of spirit. But my mind, newly invigorated by such a spirited wind, begs to exercise itself now, and so I begin. Forsooth—“

“Excuse me, your highness,” his horse intruded. “I don’t mean to intrude, but I have a question. Why did the wind make you want to give a speech?”

The prince, not knowing his horse to talk, was startled. Nevertheless, he replied. “Pay you no heed, my steed. You are but an animal and cannot penetrate the meaning of my rhetoric. You are my companion in rides and walks by the river, not in higher learning.”

“Forgive me sir, but I must confess that I hear you make your speeches daily, and for the most part, am able to follow them. They are quite erudite indeed, and full of subjects I am not familiar with. I spoke this time because you came upon a subject I know: the wind. What I want to know is why you would make a speech about it.”

The prince was puzzled. What more was there to do? “I confess that your question puzzles me. I am moved, and now continue in an exposition and exploration of the causes that moved me, the shifiting of the four humours within my soul, the poetical nature of the circumstances. It’s all quite easy.”

“Are these the things you discuss with your friends? Do they feel the same way about such things?” the horse asked.

“Well, I can’t be sure, because they don’t often talk back. And besides, I’m not quite sure I have any.”

“But your highness,” interjected the horse with all reverence. “I should hope that by now I should be one of your close friends.”

“But how?” replied the prince. “I spend a great deal of time with you, but you cannot even understand my simplest arguments of politics or philosophy. All we ever do is canter through the kingdom. What can we share?”

“We share the cold happiness of the wind. We share the thud of my hooves on the pavement. We share the songs that you sing, keeping time to my steps. We share the warmth of our bodies. We share the walk by the river. That is enough to make a friend with any less demanding creature.”

The prince had never thought such things. The horse began again.

“And from time to time, I would not mind listening to one of your speeches. So long as we may share the laughter of the ride, I am willing to call you my master and friend in all your temperaments. But know that you need not make speeches to make a friend.”

The prince considered all these things, and felt something well inside him that was far away from the storehouses, someplace much warmer. Then, he thought of something he could ask his friend. “Do you look at the planets at night, and feel quite alone?”

“Sometimes. But it is a happy loneliness. Perhaps we can talk of it another time.”

The prince and the horse rode back to the kingdom, laughing and singing at the wind and the birds. The prince went to bed that night feeling many things. He still wanted to return to the library tomorrow, but even more, he looked forward to his afternoon ride with his friend. He looked out at the planets, still as deep and mysterious as any other night, but somehow less frightening and far. Then he went to sleep, thinking a little less about becoming king and a little more about tomorrow.

Une Autre Epoque

Sometimes people say that they feel they were born in the wrong time. You hear this from girls sighing at the end of a Jane Austen movie, just wishing that people still spoke so elegantly or dressed so well or knew how to court a lady. Those were the good old days. People had dignity then. Class.

It’s not so much the courting rituals that I covet. Certainly not. I consider myself fully appreciative of my modern freedoms: of dress, of speech, of study. Whisk me to a world with any kind of caste system, and I would flounder. John Locke runs through my veins. Put me in constrictive clothing and I get jittery and exhausted. I like people to say what they mean. Don’t give me the poetic runaround.

But there is something about a former age that I long for. There is a big part of me that mourns the Industrial Revolution, the Enlightenment. I feel at times that I am drowning in information and argument. Authority used to be in scripture, in hierarchy, in what one was told and what everybody just knew. Truth was looking up at the night sky and seeing pieces of heaven leaking through the blackness of earth’s blanket. God was physically up there, just far enough away, and all one had to do was to complete the work his or her role required and look up at night and know they were doing God’s work, and that they’d be with him someday.

Of course, there were myriad problems with this. When all people know is what they are told, they can be conned, they can be kept down. There is immense value into seeking one’s own solution to something, to equal opportunity. The monopoly on knowledge faded. Now everyone was responsible for figuring out the truth. It was a human responsibility, and the answer was found through experimentation, reason: human faculties.

And then the world exploded into more and more denominations, schools of thought, political parties. Separate groups, all claiming authority. This is what I mourn. The bright, affirmative concepts of “freedom” and “individuality” and “reason” lead to more and more divisions, people barking at each other. This is not the world as it is meant to be. Don’t tell me that it’s a positive, natural thing for me to be separated from my brothers and sisters by a sea of differing authorities and interpretations. My heart longs for unity. Not mindless conformity. But harmony. A sense of peace with one’s place in the world, with the piece of truth that everyone could grasp, a sense of community.

And now I am told we live in a postmodern age, where we can no longer bark at each other. We have been so divided for so long that we have given up. We can’t figure out who is right, so, everyone is. It’s not unity, it’s not harmony. It’s endless dissonance. Is it childish of me to want a resolution? I’m not hoping for utopia. I’m not proposing we join hands and sing “Imagine.” But there is something in me that aches for an authority. I feel that there must be real answers to the questions that everyone is trying to hack answers for. I admit that people are free, and that they should have the right to seek those answers. But I hate the divisions that those freedoms have created. And I don’t buy the dissonance.

Gosh, I must be religious.

Utopia (or, the worship service)

How easy it is to gather a throng and get them to sing. They come from everywhere, some eager, some grudging, but all end up in the same big room like a cathedral and look up at the same north star. Some start in with heart and gusto, and some feel separate and unsure. But the music plies them all, and there is a sway that sneaks in and stays. The music leaks into the lungs of them all, and slowly the air becomes condensed with the hopes and beliefs and good intentions of those hundreds. In the course of an hour, they have laid down their burdens and reservations and taken up with song.

And they believe that this song will change them and carry them through their days with this melody propelling their steps. They believe that their voices will have changed for singing this song, that their mouths will be from now on full of kind words they didn't know existed. They look around and see hands raised, bodies pulsing to this newly known rhythm. They see backs of heads; no faces, but how easy the faces are imagined-- joyous, benevolent, beautiful. In this room, there is a grace that makes everyone believe everyone else is beautiful.

Life makes sense here. One is alone, but surrounded, lifted up by this bright communal breath, full of sharp temporal understanding. The congregation is an ocean, united, crashing, making the same noise. A warm silence descends, and all pray, hoping and believing that their neighbors' prayers have the same voice, the one they sang the songs with.

Everyone walks away. Their walk home is full of lovely thoughts, thought hard. And then one phone call, one errand, one item on the checklist shakes off the pixie dust; bugs crawl back in the brain, the callous on the heart starts itself over again, and where has Utopia gone?

Contra Mundum

The electricity of activism

Shoots through me, shoves out

Thrilling tears;

I think I am here

For such a time as this.

Hot anger hits my limbs

And I feel as if

the strength of ten has filled me up,

So I can rip the hearts

Of those who rip them from my sisters.

Cut me open, and you'll see

Justice-waters gushing;

Turn my body inside out

And I will rescue you.

But all I am is a soul in a sea,

Swept about, dispersing,

Tears melting in swirling mass.

"What villainy is this!"

Here I am, conta mundum,

Not yet knowing my enemy,

But railing all the same,

And mostly waiting for the dawn.

Forêt

Perhaps the central issue of my life is that I can't see the trees for the forest. I spend time looking down at the forest, contemplating it, drawing pictures of it. And then I spend far more time planning my point of entry, and then the path I will carve out once I get inside. Then comes the fear, the doubts, the frustration that I haven't gotten a handle on the exact shape and nature of the wood before me. I don't want to walk in until I understand.

Sometimes you just have to wander on in and look up at the trees that are right around you. You have to see the beauty in the veins of one leaf; and maybe that's what helps you figure out what you always wanted to understand about this big untamed thing.

Ecclesiastes 11:4, 6

He who observes the wind will not sow,
and he who regards the clouds will not reap...

In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good.

Sprout

I haven't written anything since I've gotten here. I've thought a lot of things, but none of them have been focused into anything productive or meaningful.

The truth is that, since I have been in college, I consider it an accomplishment to get out of bed. I'm proud of myself for getting through class. After a late night of work, I reward myself with a weekend full of sleep. If I can hold one conversation with a floormate, I consider myself socially adequate. It's like I've been sent back to square one.

It's such a reversal from high school. There, I was in control of my social world. I knew everyone and had many good friends. I could strike up a conversation with practically anyone and feel at least some comfort of history and understanding. I had been in the same school for 13 years, and I had become accustomed to the academic expectations. I was good at school. I was a leader in theatre and mock trial. I had a huge network of supportive friends and family in my life, available by car at any time. I've been living in a small world of known quantities for the last 18 years.

And in that environment, where pretty much everything was safe, I ventured out on artistic and spiritual adventures on my own time. I had a safety net. I knew which spaces in my life were for creating and branching out. But now, I don't have that. It seems like I expend all my energy on sustaining the fragile sprout of my new life.

Which, practically, means getting out of bed. Taking showers. Doing homework. Slowly, slowly making friends.

Still, ridiculously, I feel some weight of responsibility. I have never been able to shake the feeling that I ought to be doing something great and important. People have given me lots of advice about this through the years, along the lines of either "Yes, do great things! Go for it!" or "Stop thinking the world revolves around you."

So, basically, I've been living in my usual limbo between laziness and high aspirations. But the condition is hugely aggravated when everything around me is so foreign. The world is conspiring to keep me in my room. This is the first big change of my life, and I am definitely feeling stagnant.

But, ultimately, it's not about me. It's not about making something of myself. Maybe it's okay if it takes me months to get my feet on the ground. I'm not the team captain anymore. I'm not the "most likely to succeed." I'm just one lonely girl trying to carve out a place for herself. And I think that's an experience I need to have. I need to know that God sees me as valuable, even if I am just a lonely girl in the cafeteria with no accomplishments to her name.

Still, it hurts an awful lot sometimes. I miss everyone.

Luke 12:24

Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds!

Ceinture Noir

I’ve been cleaning out my closet in preparation for leaving. Of course, one anticipates poring over old photo albums and diaries. But one doesn’t necessarily expect to find an item as curious as a black belt in Taekwondo. I got it in eighth grade. Of course, it’s exactly the kind of thing that doesn’t mean anything in eighth grade. But I got it, all right.

If people ever ask me how long it took to get it, I usually say two years. It was really more like a year and a half, but what are you supposed to say to people who are expecting a story of six years’ devoted practice, maybe ten? Their face falls the slightest bit, but they recover quickly, and, hoping to move onto something more fun, ask a question like “So can you do like backflips or anything?” And, with a grimace, it is “No, we didn’t really get into any fancy tricks like that, it was more like getting really good at the basics.”

“Oh, ok. Right. But if I went to attack you, you could injure me, right? I mean, could you, like, kill me?”

I smile to myself. “Well, maybe when I was more in practice.” As in eighth grade.

Then they ask me if I can do a trick, but unfortunately my skirt prevents me from showing off my killer jumping round kick. And then the subject is never broached again.

It’s a silly little scenario, but it leaves a strange taste in my mouth. It’s a joke now, but that’s just it. It wasn’t a trifle at the time. It may have been just eighteen months, but they were hard won. My body doesn’t listen very well, and it was one of the most trying experiences of my life. I have always been a perfectionist, and it killed me when I couldn’t break the board or get the move right. I wept through my sweat, and I learned to love my instructors even more than my beloved schoolteachers. And for all that, I was good, by fragile eighth grade girl standards. It meant the world to me when my instructors would hand me those belts—that I, a girl so easily conquered by feelings and circumstance, had become a conqueror.

And I never went back after they handed me that black belt. The thought brings a tear to my eye even now. I was done with it. I let it all slide down the tube of my memory. The moves and forms that came so easily to me have all melted out of my mind. The instructors haven’t. They remain crystallized, forever associated with certain mannerisms, sayings, kindnesses—the impressions left on the heart of a growing girl. If I saw any of them tomorrow at the grocery store, I wouldn’t know what do say. They wouldn’t remember me.

How many achievements in our lives slip away from us the moment we earn them? How many communities do we abandon, never to see those faces again? How many of us are merely nomads, migrating from place to place, putting all our energies into phases remembered only by mementoes found in moving boxes? Does everybody have a black belt gathering dust?

Sometimes I wonder if human actions are really just like taking photographs to put in a shoe box, where not everything is in order and a lot of things get lost.

Love and Motion

Why does love seem to squelch ambition?

Anyone who knows me knows that I am the first one to run after something, obsess over it, grasp at it. I spend more time dreaming of the future than I spend in the present. Get me started, and I will tell you of all the careers I could aim for, all the things I could study, all the places I could live, all the people I could meet. I sometimes feel as if I am trying to punch my way out of my own skin to get somewhere bigger to contain me.

And then I spend an afternoon in love. The fight in me deflates, pleasantly, until there is enough room inside me for something more than striving. Too much room, perhaps. I often feel dumb and airy in the presence of too much affection. Nevertheless, I feel somehow home. There is simply inertia-- lovely inertia-- so sweet that it is likely dangerous to dwell in. I think that God might have invented being in love to take people out of their plans and outlines and into the bursting present. For there is nowhere else to go-- why leave joy?

Of course, one cannot support this kind of thing. The feelings fade and life cuts in. And then you want somewhere to go. But what I wonder is if the place we are all trying to go is just that lovely inertia, where we don't want to go anymore. I have a feeling that this is not a proper way to look at life, and that striving is a rewarding and essential part of the human experience. But perhaps many people do not feel the same way. Perhaps most people spend their days and their sweat in hopes of a day that they will not sweat, or want anything more than what they have. Perhaps all people want is to be in love forever.

How happy am I to belong to a faith based upon an eternal romance! However, it is not a faith based upon inertia. It moves forward forever. But I believe there is a place for moments of happy paralysis. It is there that we understand the incommunicable. Maybe life is supposed to be moments of paralysis-- happy, sad, angry, confused-- followed by action and choice. There is rest and motion.

Medieval people thought that God was unmoving at the center of the universe. The most real and complete thing in the world didn't need to be moving toward anything. But I believe that God moves toward us to bring us to rest. There is a place for both.

L'Heureuse Ecrivaine?

I used to think I wasn’t built for happiness. I was a melancholy junior higher of the highest order, and whenever I happened to wake up happy, a shiver of disconcert came over me. What is this feeling? It feels excessive, silly, girlish. I was under the impression that, for serious artists, happiness was more of a bother than it was worth. Good thing, too—it never stayed for long. And so I kept churning out my dark poems and diary entries with the melancholic energy of youth.

And then, around fifteen, happiness began to trickle into my life like a blood transfusion, until my veins were full of something wholly different. And I didn’t write so much anymore, because, for the first time, life itself was more exciting than commenting on it or manipulating it with words. This is best exemplified in the lazy summers spent by Lindsay’s side at the park. What words could make those experiences seem deep or illuminating? They are what they are: blissful, but best kept alive in memory, which can convey their beauty far better than grasping words. Nobody wants to read a love story about two perfectly happy lovers. (Perhaps this is why I fail so miserably at love letters. Rather than tokens of affection, I view them as literature that fails to provide “tension on every page”. How ridiculous!)

Sometimes I will feel that my intellectual energy is spent in discussion. I get such a high from the exchange of ideas that I feel writing about them is like a one-sided conversation, more illuminating for me than anyone else. I would rather keep my head buzzing with idea-bugs than go to the trouble to catch one and examine it and write down my findings. This is why I love school so much. The buzzing. It makes me feel like I’m getting somewhere.

But the writing is coming back to me. At least I talk like it is. And I want to keep it that way. So, I’m going to have to find the place for writing in the life of an un-tortured artist. But I suppose if I can find something to cry about every day (and you know I can), then I can find something to write about as well.

Soundtrack

When I was little, I used to think that my mother's Walkman was absolutely magical. I could just put in a tape, wear the headphones, and be transported to Hollywood. The best was to walk or bike around with a song playing in my ear. If I just imagined the headphones away, the song came from the sky, lighting up the world with a melody wherever I chose to walk. It was a giddy feeling, with some power to it. The movie, of course, was about me, and my bike ride, which was of course headed toward someplace thrilling. But listening to that Walkman, I owned those movie moments.

Today I took another walk (think), and decided to bring my iPod along. The first song to come on the shuffle was a beautiful trickling song with a heartbeat that was exactly the right walking pace. And I was in a movie again, just like when I was five. The whole bit-- smiling at the neighbors, smelling the flowers, looking up at the sky and laughing. It was like I had just had a moment of conviction, or something grand had happened to me, or I had let go of a long-guarded fear. But I hadn't. I had simply woken up and taken a walk.

Films and plays can show music as integrated into life. Not only is the soundtrack integrated into the action of a film-- it can illuminate, even elevate, the action. Why is this grace afforded only to the lives that we invent in scripts? Why can't we hear the ominous cello under our darkest decisions or the swell of strings at our first kiss?

Perhaps it is because we only understand what is really happening when we view it from above. It is then that we can pick the perfect song to bring the moment its truth. Maybe music is a necessarily reflective activity; we make music to express something we have experienced, not something we are experiencing. Maybe the music will come with the moment when all things are new.

This is one reason why I love the movies.

Ces Francaises Ne Grossissent Pas

I just got back from a walk. I knew that one is supposed to think on walks, but didn't know what to think about, so my mind automatically began counting my steps. Naturally, that got boring, and I began thinking. Presto!

I think, in order to trick myself, I am going to start referring to it as "going for a think". I want to begin walking because I detest aerobic exercise, but still want a way to get myself up and out. Aerobic exercise is not thoughtful by its very nature. It takes the mind from the mind and onto the body. One's thoughts are caught up in pure muscle movement. I do not begrudge anyone this experience. It is likely healthy to become completely preoccupied with one's physicality every so often. However, so far, I have not found myself built for such exertion.

You see, exercise happens in my life every few weeks; furious, fitful exercise. It comes from the moments when I look in the mirror one too many times and realize that I am not comfortable in my own skin, and not satisfied with the hollow disregard I have for my body. Thus begins the obsession (the project). I chronicle my calories, reducing them ever lower, and crunch my way into tears, all for a matter of days, until I let the project screw itself while I eat my Kettle Chips. It's not about a healthy lifestyle change. It's about pure vanity and envy, which dissolves into anger, frustration and name-calling that I heap on myself. See how sinful and negative a matter of a few pounds can be! It is such a trap for women.

I am reading French Women Don't Get Fat. I know-- trendy diet book, right? And, like, 7 years past the trend. But I think-- hope?-- it might change my life. It actually has somewhat of a spiritual significance, or at least reasonably drawn parallels. Most diet books are "plans", with direct instructions on what and how much to eat on which certain days before reaching this or that level, eliminating some food groups altogether. Then there is the exercise plan, where one must plough away for pledged hours at the gym. These plans are easy to see as legalism. Spiritually, legalism kills-- try to stick to the letter of the law, and you will find yourself either cheating it, becoming self-righteous, or falling off the wagon entirely. No one can thrive under it.

So, Mireille Guiliano's book does away with plans. In fact, it does away with lots of things. There are no diagrams, prescriptions, or pictures. Just stories, principles, and wisdom. Much like the way that Christ did not teach his followers exactly how to behave with rules for situations x, y, and z. He simply gave them parables and principles to live by.

It is a small miracle that I simply do not want to refer to myself with stinging epithets about my looks. Normally, that's how I motivate myself. Fatass. But this is a whole new world. A positive world. A world where I want to eat good food because it is good, and savor it in a smaller portion-- not scarf down fries and cry about it when it's over. Where I can go on a long walk and enjoy it for its own sake, not pound away my guilt on a machine. I can look at this "diet" as a new way of living, not a way to justify or escape from a guilt-ridden state-- just as a life in Christ is a way of living for His joy, and not of achieving self-righteousness.

No, I'm not saying that French Women Don't Get Fat is the gospel of diets. There are probably better plans, and maybe things won't work out for me. But I'm having a happy revelation for now. And now it's time to make some dinner.

Projects

Having just finished watching "Julie and Julia," I have been thinking about life in terms of projects. In the film, both Julie and Julia find themselves feeling restless and stifled by their lives, with loving husbands by their sides but no personally fulfilling goals. So, naturally, they get some, and a movie takes place. The plot follows the course of each of their projects-- the excitement at the start, the strain that sets in, wondering what was so important about the thing in the first place. The motivating undercurrent of purpose. The thrill of successes small and large. The film ends as their projects culminate in recognition and joy.

But what happens when the project is over? What do you do when you spend years working on something, and then it ends? There aren't a lot of "projects" that I've followed up to satisfying conclusion, but if you consider the culmination of a project as the ending of a a phase of life, then I can speak from some experience.

Rehearsing Les Miserables, for instance. That show (like nearly any) was made out of the tears, sweat, and blood of the cast. Initially thrilled to be cast as Fantine and to have a chance to bring the material to life, I was dismayed when rehearsals began to grow more and more stressful. But on opening night, when we sang the final notes of the show and the audience leapt to their feet, I was stunned with the sharp happiness I felt. It came again on closing night-- the hot, sweet tears of culmination, achievement, and finality. Both were moments that I will take with me forever.

But, as such, they probably constituted a few hours of euphoria amidst months of ups and downs. And the day after closing, I was listless and airy as a ghost. The project was over. The moments had passed. I would have to find something new to occupy myself.

And so I have. I have rediscovered the desire that I have within me to create. I have begun work on my musical. There is another project. There will always be another project.

My life can be positively measured in projects that I obsess over. Determining my religious denomination. Writing this or that novel. Getting the perfect college scholarship. There is no time when I am not engaged in some kind of quest.

There is a moment in Julie and Julia where Julia's husband is about to finish his last assignment for work. He sighs, "Then what do I do?" What do we do? What do any of us do? Is life just one project after another? And if it is, is it about that joyful terminus, or is it about being immersed in a goal? Is it about the goal or the journey? If it isn't about the goal, then what is the point?

I'm not really despairing of questing. There's nothing that's going to stop me from it. But it just intrigues me to think that we are all hard-wired to be striving to finish a project-- but the projects never end. It is not as if, once we finish one particular goal, we will be able to put everything down and relax. We won't. We can't. It isn't that whoever dies with the most toys wins. If we could live forever, we would keep finding new tasks.

All of this leads me to the joyful conclusion that we were made to seek and to be satisfied-- eternally. What a joy it is, to know that our God supplies both for us. He is gracious enough to grant us joy and peace in the end, but he is big enough that we may run after him and plumb the depths of his truth and wisdom for all eternity. It is as C. S. Lewis wrote of the new kingdom in "The Last Battle"-- once they got there, they all had a great desire to run. But they never got tired.

P.S. --

I do recommend the film. It was refreshing to see a movie that espoused finding your own interests and what gives you a joie de vivre, and not giving up on those things. Most chick flicks will tell you that the solution to your problems is to find a man. This story showed that, even after finding a wonderful mate, there is more of life to be plumbed.

Infirmity

I have always imagined that I would one day contract a serious and obscure disease that would require much tending to and severely impede day-to-day life. Maybe I thought this was romantic in the style of Gothic novels where the heroine always contracted consumption. Why is that even romantic? Perhaps because of the idea of people weeping about you or being nursed by a noble, handsome man. It taps into the ideal of the fragile woman. I think most women want to be fragile sometimes, even if they won't admit it.

But of course I understand that chronic illness is not romantic and that it is on the whole quite horrible. I being it up because I have felt quite ill since I woke up with my European jetlag. I feel dizzy, too warm, stuffed up, and completely at the mercy of convulsive coughing fits. It is as if some gooey substance has infiltrated my head and left me with little will or intelligent thought. And so, I've excused myself of quite a lot. Of course nobody can expect anything of me, I think; I'm sick. It's only a few days. But what of those who feel the weight of sickness all the time? How must they live?

And a lot of me thinks that sickness is a legitimate excuse for a lot of things. But it also makes me think of how much we can excuse due to infirmity of some sort-- and what we call infirmity. I notice myself excusing my actions based upon the fact that I'm tired or PMSing or just having a bad day. Every day has its own infirmity, its own handicap. And if there isn't one readily available, there really is always something to fall back on: depravity. I'm only human, of course.

But that's exactly it. If we didn't have some kind of debilitation, then there would be no failings to excuse. Well, perhaps Adam and Eve are the exceptions to this principle. Because they were not fallen, their sin was entirely without rational excuse. But so is ours. We were given the gift of life and freedom by God, and we squandered it. There is no excuse for failing him daily.

These are just some thoughts that come to me about my own expectations for my behavior. Should I have different expectations for myself based upon circumstances? It would seem so. But one can see how far it can be taken. Today, I'm sick. But next week, I'm also sick-- just in a different sense. There is always infirmity. But Christ died to bridge that gap of weakness for us. So now, we can get out of bed.

(In a philosophical sense. In reality, I'm probably going back to bed right now.)

Je commence.

I almost always start journals with some kind of disclaimer (to myself?) about how I probably won't really write in it, leading to some kind of general self-depracation. From there, I move into some sweeping statements about the colour of my life at the moment, perhaps with a bit of back story to give context to "where I am" at the moment. Then, I identify some defining issues of my life that I inform the "reader" that I will be predominantly dealing with, including some relationships and some internal issue I am working out. Lastly, I put forth a few petitions to God to forgive me for my vast self-centeredness and other failings I have idenitified over the course of this, the initial entry of diary X.

So, in my disturbingly self-aware style, I am going to dispense with all that, simply for the reason that I would be aware of it while doing it.

The funny thing is that I have always written diaries as if someone other than myself were going to read them. Scratch that-- I have always written diaries as if everyone was going to read them, albiet after my death. You see, I was going to become a famous novelist, and they would posthumously compile my early writings into a volume that would inspire professors to write biographies about the vastness of my genius. I used to be obsessed with child prodigies. Strangely enough, I lost interest when I missed the deadline to be classified as one.

But one thing that I take away from that obsession is the interesting point that there is really no such thing as a writing prodigy. Certainly, children and teenagers can have an unusual level of astuteness and a knack for phrasing. But there is simply no such thing as a profound child poet as anything aside from an accident. Writing is an art that absolutely requires a depth of human experience. They say to write what you know, and how much can any eighteen-year-old know? It is a thought at once depressing and encouraging. No matter how hard I work, I can't acquire the profundity of someone much more mature and experienced. But it is wonderful to know that my writing will mature as I do.

If Jesus Christ is the incarnation of the Word, then we would do well to note how deeply words are tied to the experience of being human. So I will try to write some things, because I am alive.