My Triumphant Return... sort of

The very last sentences of my last blog post declared my intention to write soon and often. I'm ashamed to admit that that was three months ago. My excuse is that my house has terrible wifi -- so terrible that my laptop refuses to connect to it, out of principle -- and that our home computer is so slow and old that it is a pain to use.

Since I don't believe enough people read this that my not posting could be considered even mildly irritating, I'll spare the apologies. Mostly, I'm sorry for myself. I've been missing the opportunity to exercise my writing brain and the dedication it takes to keep up a regular blog.

I could again promise that I'll write regularly and often. But actions speak louder than words, even occasionally more than the written word. So, if you're reading this, keep coming back.

I am again back at Taylor University. I've been here a week and a half, so my return to the school did not perfectly coincide with my return to the blog. I've been busy. The good and bad thing about being part of such a wonderful community is that there are many worthy things in which to invest one's time. I had to pick one of the most time-consuming: theater. Being properties master means arriving before classes start and participating in theater boot camp. Really, "boot camp" translates to "reading through the plays for the season, hanging around with cool theater people, and working in the shop a whole lot." Thanks to the work of some wonderful volunteers, my props loft is looking a lot cleaner and may even pass fire code inspections. There's work to be done, but after stacking furniture, bags of fake snow, suitcases, more candles than any one theater could possibly go through in ten years, kitchen utensils, fake weapons, wine glasses, windows, ancient telephones, typewriters, bales of straw, yard decorations, and the paraphernalia of many shows past, I'm starting to feel like I know what I'll be capable of doing this year.

My other major responsibility is one that requires a lot from me as well, though in a different way. I'm discipleship assistant on my floor, a.k.a. DA. This means I lead floor prayer and generally look out for the spiritual well-being of the girls with whom I live. They are fantastic, strong, and talented people. I am hugely blessed to live with them and with the wonderful people of my dorm in general. I'm an introvert, but I will have no problem wanting to invest my time and care in their lives. But in that, I'm also going to have to focus on my spiritual growth, not just theirs. I love Taylor because I can see God moving everywhere. Still, it's easy to take that for granted. I can't just sit and watch what He does. I have to ask Him to work in me.

There is one other big project which I mentioned in my last post. I'm still planning to submit my novel, Void, to a publisher come February. To complete draft two, I decided I would participate in Camp NaNoWriMo, a summer version of the crazy writing dash that usually fills my November. I couldn't have picked a busier month to do it in, but I have a day and a half left and only 6,000 words to write. Then comes the revising.

I may have returned to the blog with my tail between my legs, but I came back to Taylor filled with hope and joy. I've already been stressed to the point of tears. I've already been too busy to keep up with my word count goals and other things. But now, everything's settling into place.

Pray for me, if you're so inclined. I'll need it. Pray for Taylor, for the endeavors of the students, and all the things God has planned for us for the year. The only thing I know is that I have a lot to learn.

An Everything Post

I've failed as a blogger for the last month or so. I plead busyness, though no one is accusing me but my conscience. So, here is an explanation of things that have been going on in my life, partly as a means to reflect and partly to organize:

• I was props assistant for Taylor Theater's last play of the season, Noises Off! I'll be replacing our current props master next year. The play was hilarious, crazy, and tiring, and being part of it taught me a lot about how theater is run. It's also making me anticipate craziness for next year -- I've got some organizing to do, and it will be a significant time commitment. I'm excited to see what I can come up with.
• For my professional writing class (my major), we finished book proposal projects. We were divided into publishing houses and had create and pitch a book. Since I had a finished draft, I was the author for my group. I had a great team to work with who did wonderfully on the marketing and business aspects. However, I had to take a long hard look at my NaNoWriMo draft and get some organizing done so I could include an outline, chapter synopses, and finished sample chapters for the proposal. Now I have a plan for actually finishing the draft, and my goal is to submit it to a publisher by my birthday in February next year. By the way, it's called Void. Here's the cover I made for it:

Four hundred years ago, an uprising threw down a selfish, near-immortal government. Now, it’s been replaced by the Void, a tyrannical empire that suppresses all advanced technology except for that which it keeps for itself.

Still, there are rumors – rumors of an immortal prince biding his time, and rumors of a force mustering to overthrow the government once more.

The child leader Atom, rebel engineer Sel, and idealist healer Cade seek to change the world order again. Heading the secret Underground, they work to retrieve the technology that may bring back the ghost of the empire past.

            But what is Atom hiding? What is Sel trying to reconcile? And who is Valer, the Beast who may or may not be on their side?

•  I've been busy with classes, but I've also made time to be around friends. Have I ever mentioned here how much I love my dorm and the Taylor community in general?  There are wonderful people here, and I meet more of them every day. I may have a terrible time remembering the names, but familiar faces are cheering.
• Though I've published book reviews at Christian Book Previews and Church Libraries magazine, I'm officially going to be published in a book for the first time (not counting a poem in fourth grade before I even really knew I wanted to be a writer.) It's a devotions book from Livingstone, and I'll be pleased as punch to be listed as a coauthor along with several of my fellow professional writing majors.
• Finals are this week, and then I go home. It's really strange to think I'll be home in a week, though I'll be happy to finally settle into our new house months behind the rest of my family. I also need to get a job, so that will be on the top of my list as soon as I reach Iowa soil. However, I'm still focused on Taylor University, finishing classes, and marveling at how my freshman year has gone by so quickly. Expect more thoughts on that soon.
• The main reason I'm at Taylor is that I want to be in a place where God is the focus. In high school I wanted that environment very badly. Being here hasn't disappointed. I have a great church and have learned a lot about the Bible from studying it in a classroom setting. The joy that gives me led me to add a Biblical literature minor. I've been getting to know the Word better, and that's opening up all kinds of pathways around me and in my mind. I don't think I'm the one picking where I'm going, though. Thank God.

 The mechanisms that produce writing in my brain heat up quickly. After weeks of not writing, my fingers are itching to keep going. Though I've been busy, I love expressing my thoughts here. For anyone who actually stops by here regularly, this is a good thing, because you can expect new material soon. Until then, happy Internet traveling.

Swallowed Up In Victory

He sought to counsel and calm the despairing man by pointing out to him the man of resignation, and transform the grief that looks down into the grave by showing it the grief which looks up to the stars.  -- Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

One of my favorite Bible passages is 1 Corinthians 15. I latched onto it in middle school mostly because of the grandeur of Paul's phrases. I'm not sure I understood it at all for a long time. I know I'm still working on it.

I heard the famous lines -- "Oh death, where is your victory? Oh grave, where is your sting?" in a service memorializing Josh Larkin last night. I only met Josh once. I was in a friend's video she was shooting for class. Josh was picking songs for us to dance to. Since then, I'd seen him around, but I never really knew him.

It's amazing the outpouring of love I've seen at Taylor since his death. Now, I feel like I really know Josh, at least as most people will remember him. Strangely, in all the tears, it's also been a time of real joy and awakening. This week has brought me back to another time of joy and tears -- the death of my speech teacher, Mrs. Petrie.

I've been to funerals before, but they were quiet, family things where I didn't really know the person who died. Mrs. Petrie and Josh Larkin were different. Their memorial services were both a giant outreach into the Christian community. They placed me in the center of a mass of grieving people with their arms around each other. When those they loved spoke, the were obviously grieving. But I am amazed at how deeply and truly these communities -- the Blairsburg Missionary Alliance Church and Taylor University -- worship God in the face of death.

Mrs. Petrie was the most gentle and loving Christian lady I have ever met. Josh Larkin embraced the life he'd been given and loved everyone he knew. Death is an opportunity to give a long and hard look at a person's life. And they live on.

Mr. Larkin spoke to Taylor yesterday about the death of his son. There is a word I hope stays in use around campus: Joshian. That was a Joshian thing to do. We should all have Joshian love.

Really, we should all love like Christ. Mrs. Petrie exemplified that. I'm learning that Josh did, too. And because of the things I've learned, I can see what Christ's love looks like. I can strive to love as they did.

And I will strive.

For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”

“O death, where is your victory?

O death, where is your sting?”

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Art and the Rembrandt Project

When I was younger, I wanted to be an artist. I still do, in fact. Now, writing is my focus, but drawing and painting is something I want to come back to.

I haven't taken any art classes here at Taylor, so I feel out of practice. I've got a schedule worked out for my novel project, but maybe I should have one for art as well.

I do have one long-term drawing project. My sophomore year of high school, I was assigned to draw a 4" x 6" pencil portrait. This was the result:

I while after this, I started getting really interested in Rembrandt as an artist. I learned that he completed at least 40 self-portraits in his life, possibly as many as 90. I decided that I would make one self-portrait a year. I call it the Rembrandt Project.

My teacher pointed out that my eyes look somewhat dead in this one, but it made me think of this portrait of Rembrandt's: http://www.terminartors.com/artworkprofile/Rembrandt-Self-Portrait

 

 

My goal is to get them done before my birthday for a given year. I slacked off on this one and didn't finish it till the day before. Since I was rushed, I didn't notice until the very end that I had an extra finger. It's fixed here; I can't find the picture I took before I changed it.

For 18 years. I was actually sitting in the bathroom window on my floor when I took the picture.

I've drawn them all from gridded photos. I want to be able to draw without the grid. Someday, I want to do one in charcoal or oil paint. Currently I don't have the materials, and I'm afraid not even the time. I even worry that I'm not as good at drawing as I used to be.

But when I see a friend working on a project, I get excited. Interested. Jealous. I want to be able to sit and work on something I love for hours upon end for school credit. The only thing that's stopping me from doing it anyway is all my other schoolwork and projects.

And now writing is something else that gets me excited. I've always loved stories, and I know writing is what I want to do.

But am I cheating on writing with art? Sometimes I almost wish I could.

How I Lost a Kite but Regained My Childhood

How I Lost a Kite but Regained my Childhood

or

Dangling 20 Feet above the Ground

or

In Which two Ladders, a Tree, and a Carpet Brush become Well-Acquainted

My cousin sent me a kite for my birthday last month. Today was windy and lovely. It was time to release my inner child. It was time to fly.

The kite worked beautifully. I let out all the string and watched the tiny purple diamond hover above me. Seeing it brought to my mind Al Andrews’ words in The Boy, the Kite, and the Wind: “The eternal wind will outlast anything that flies in it.”

The eternal wind was very strong today. It snatched the pink plastic reel from my hand and threw it across the yard.

My first thought was “Maybe it will catch on the tree!” Well, fate was kind today; it caught on the tree. My kite continued to fly above it.

I breathed a sigh of relief. I am no stranger to tree climbing. Two things are notable about my childhood: I read lots of very big books, and I was sort of a squirrel-ninja. When I was three, I climbed the rock bluffs at Palisades State Park in Illinois and passed people who were climbing with ropes. In elementary school, I could beat all the boys to the top of the jungle gym. I loved nothing better than climbing to the top of a tree in a high wind and holding on. This would be a snap.

Well, first of all, the branches were too high for me to reach. Rather than trying to shimmy up and ruin my new pants, I decided I would use a ladder. It would be quicker, and I wanted my kite back so I could keep flying. But I didn’t know where we stored ladders in our new house. When I checked one of the sheds, I found an ancient wooden ladder barely holding together. I decided that for my purposes, it would do.

I leaned it against the tree and climbed up. It’s a tall tree, but has lots of slender branches. Most of them were placed so that they’d poke me but offer no support as I climbed. I had to pull most of my weight with my arms, which are about as thick as spaghetti noodles.

My first plan was to find where the string was tangled closest to the kite. I would pull the kite in, take it apart, and then tamely pull the string from the tree. It would be easy. I used to be able to climb that high when I was younger.

Well, I also used to weigh about 50 pounds. And I also used to be a lot more flexible than I am now. And I also used to be fearless. At 19 years and about 140 pounds, some of the skinny branches just didn’t seem so friendly. I would have to stand on a branch less than an inch thick to reach the string. My better judgment told me no.

My next angle of attack was to get the reel. It was tangled on the farthest part of one of the lowest branches on the tree. It extended at about a 45 degree angle and was scattered with smaller branches that would make climbing difficult. The reel was at least 25 feet above the ground. I started up, but was dissuaded by all the poky little branches. Then I got a bright idea. I would find a better ladder, stand below the branch, and maybe be able to grab the reel with a long stick or something.

Well, my better ladder was six feet tall. I was not going to reach the reel from the ground.

Give up? Never. I wanted my kite, darn it. I put my game face on and changed into old jeans – something that never would have occurred to me to do when I was 6 – and started up the tree again.

I went back to plan A, but this time I had a weapon: a yellow telescoping carpet brush thingy we use to clean up dog hair. At its longest, the handle was about four feet. The brush made it into a long T. If I could wrap the string around the end, I bet that I could pull it in toward me.

Three different branches couldn’t get me close enough to use it. Carrying it made climbing much more difficult. I had to stick it somewhere above me where it wouldn’t fall while I climbed up to it push it forward again.

Finally, I threw it onto the tricky branch with the reel. It stayed, but I didn’t know how long it would. I had to get over there quickly to try, try again.

The kite danced merrily above. I could hear it flapping in the eternal wind.

When I was younger, I might have walked up that tricky branch like a monkey, using my hands and feet. Apparently the part of my brain that judges distance to the ground is more developed now. I scooted up that branch on my stomach, smushing all the smaller branches that were trying to poke me. By the time I got to the carpet brush, the branch was bent almost horizontal.

I was lying on a 2-inch thick branch 20 feet above the ground. I was fully visible from the highway running past my house. I was wielding a yellow carpet brush, and I was determined. I would detangle that kite reel. I would fly again. I would be victorious.

I held onto the brush as the wind tossed the branch about. The end could just barely reach the kite string. I succeeded in pulling the reel off one branch. Now the string was just tangled above it. When I tried to pull it down, it got stuck on little bud-bearing twigs. I pulled, but tentatively – if the string broke, the kite would probably work itself free and fly away.

Then I got the idea to tangle the string around the end of the brush and drop it. Maybe I could reach the end of the handle using something with the ladder on the ground. I very carefully flailed the carpet brush. When it looked good and tangled, I dropped the end. The whole brush fell to the ground. The string stayed where it was.

After scooting very uncomfortably back down the branch, I employed my next tactic. I climbed down the tree, down the rickety wooden ladder, retrieved the brush, and climbed up the steel ladder below the reel. I would throw the brush like a javelin. It would get tangled in the string, weigh the branch down, and allow me to pull the reel back to me. What could be simpler?

I don’t think most Olympians use telescoping javelins. On my first throw, the handle snapped closed with the throwing momentum and flopped to the ground.

I threw again. And again. And again. I put some spin on it. I tried throwing it with the handle collapsed and at its full length. Finally, the wind blew the flying carpet brush into the barn, where the brush broke off and the whole thing came down in two pieces.

From where I sit on the porch, I can still see my lovely purple kite flying, tail streaming, tugging at the tree holding it down. I can see the pink plastic reel dangling on the branch. I can see my failure.

I got scraped up and made a spectacle of myself to passing cars. I’m still picking bark out of my pants, and my feet are stained green and brown. I am kiteless.

But I spent an afternoon up a tree, just like I would have years ago. It’s a good day.

Peace, Love, Joy, and Dogs

Before coming to Taylor, the PA (equivalent to RA) on my floor emailed all of us, asking us to send pictures that reflected our decorating theme: Peace, Love, and Joy. I'm an artist, but I'm not very abstract. So I took some photographs of real things that make me feel peaceful, loving, or joyful. This was one of my pictures for Joy.

This is Kandy. Kandy's a Bernese mountain dog. My family had her for about five years. She was one of those giant dogs that thinks she's small enough to sit in your lap. She made an excellent pillow, and if you spent any amount of time loving her, she'd love you forever and ever.

I'm an animal person. My mom is a veterinarian technician, and I've worked at two vet clinics walking dogs and cleaning kennels. We now have two dogs and a cat at home, and I love both dogs and cats. The special thing about dogs, though, is how much they love people. They may be stupid or smart, obedient or ill-behaved, pretty or scraggly, but a dog that's been well cared for almost always loves its master unconditionally. Kandy was excellent at that. On a bad day, there were few things as comforting for me as sitting down next to her and giving her a big hug. She was a good dog.

But now she's gone. I've often complained that the worst thing about living in a dorm is you can't have a dog. But I think the worst thing now is that I won't be able to hug her when I go home for spring break.

A sparrow can't fall without God seeing, so His eye is probably on the great big lumbering Bernese mountain dogs of the world, too.

I sing because I'm happy
I sing because I'm free

His eye is on the sparrow,

And I know He watches over me.

The Problem with Poetry

I recently got to attend a poetry writing workshop outside of class. It was pretty simple; we read some poetry (Dylan Thomas, T.S. Eliot, Stanley Kunitz, and Wisława Szymborska), discussed a few elements, wrote, and then read aloud and critiqued each other's poetry.

The conclusions I drew from the exercise were this: if I want to write more poetry, I need to read more poetry. Consequently, I pulled my Sonnets of William Shakespeare and a book of Charles Baudelaire off my shelf to be looked at more closely. I've also been recommended quite a list by an extremely literate acquaintance. Second, and less concrete: the problem and beauty of poetry is that it's very subjective.

The poem I wrote for the workshop is short. I don't think it's high literature, but I enjoy it. It's called Hopeful.

The poet seems to live on paths
Places behind, at hand, and places ahead
While everyman simply wanders past
in fear, blind to poetry in "dead."
With hearts in rapture, some sing of heaven
While darker tongues, they mutter of hell.
I walk along with clearing vision
Where I go, my voice will tell.
My heart lingers like the others
But is quickened by the dreamed-of things.
Change my path? You cannot offer
Hopeful's heart the dreamed-of wings.

I got some good feedback. People asked about word choice, fiddled with meaning and viewpoint, and in general it was a very positive experience. There's only one problem: I like it the way it is. Maybe I'm just ignorant of devices and meaning in poetry. I certainly don't know much, but I do enjoy reading it, and I'm very analytical. I was probably one of the most vocal in critiquing, but I tried to be positive and helpful. I hope the other participants were impacted as positively as I was.

But there are many different styles. I like zany, quirky poems with abstract meanings, but I tend to be more impressed with structured poems with a sharper focus. I like dreaminess. I like unusual phrases. I like a great many things, but it's hard to define what makes a great poem for me, and  what I think is great certainly won't sit well with everybody. My abovementioned literate acquaintance doesn't care for T.S. Eliot, but The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock is one of my favorite poems.

Also, poetry is personal. You may be writing for an audience, but I feel like poetry is more reflective of self than many other forms of writing. Hopeful says what I want it to say. Changing it might make it more accessible to others, but it is really for me. This is why criticism can hurt, in writing in general and poetry in particular. It's a piece of one's self that's been nursed and painstakingly built into existence, or else blindly dashed off in a surge of emotion. Either way, unless you're really just looking to make it better by whatever standards the literary gods that be have put forth, I don't think it's meant to be changed for the sake of being someone else's "better."

I analyze literature. I declare some things to be better than others, and some agree with me. Some of what I say may even may be true. But the really personal aspects of literature? I don't think those can rightfully be declared good or bad. And that is my problem with writing poetry. I write it for me, for amusement, for crystallization of thought. Maybe something great will come out of it someday. But the truth remains that where I am -- writing poetry for myself, unattended by an audience to determine what is good and what is bad -- workshops like this will be interesting, but always subjective. I think that's what I like about poetry, actually.