Dreams of Wind, Sand and Stars.

In contemplating my future life I find I almost have too many options, too many possible avenues and variables that I can’t choose between, much less control. I could live so many places, meet so many people, have so many occupations it is easy to get dizzy in the perspective of it all. However, when I sit back and think honestly about the kind of life I want to lead, devoid of anyone’s input or expectations, I always come back to a bright and rambling future, led between borders and always giving in the wanderlust that has plagued me from birth.

Recently I read the book Terre des Hommes (or Wind, Sand and Stars) by Antoine de Saint Exupery, and it renewed in me the desire to simply get into a plane and fly over the vast Sahara. The romantic life of a pilot seems to call to something roaming and rowdy buried deep within me, something that tells me to not stay put, to see it all. Perhaps it is the fiery blood of my immigrant ancestors, or maybe just a precocious knowledge from very young of that which is out there to be seen, explored, experienced and understood. That’s why on especially drippy days like this April 1st, I stare longingly out my window as I always have, feeling chained to the earth, seeking solace in the stories of those who have gone before me, flying out into the diamond-studded night horizon, seeking themselves in the haze above the earth.

Shockingly Shocking: the Idea That Changed the World

I am currently in an European literature class that is run in such a way that as students we dictate the flow of the discussion with input, rather than refereeing on the part of our professor. The other day, having just read Camus’ The Fall, we were discussing the idea of charity and self sacrifice. Most of my fellow classmates, when discussing the end of the book, where the narrator chastises the reader for not rescuing a woman from plunging to her demise off of a bridge, expressed that they wouldn’t save the woman if she intended to kill herself.

This may not sound shocking to the common ear, but I attend a Christian university, and so it was in fact appalling for me to hear, as self-sacrifice is supposed to be the hallmark of the Christian life. I may be an idealist, as I am with many things, but for a group of Christian students, well versed in theology and philosophy, to not understand the very nature of what it means to bear the name of Christ seemed to me an indicator of a sever sickness in church’s, let alone the world’s understanding of the Christian faith. I am in no way insinuating I understand this concept better than the next person, it just brought to mind a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

The cross is not random suffering, but necessary suffering. The cross is not suffering that stems from natural existence; it is the suffering that comes from being Christian. … A Christianity that no longer took discipleship seriously remade the gospel into only the solace of cheap grace. Moreover, it drew no line between natural and Christian existence. Such a Christianity had to understand the cross as one’s daily misfortune, as the predicament and anxiety of our daily life. Here it has been forgotten that the cross also means being rejected, that the cross includes the shame of suffering. Being shunned, despised, and deserted by people, as in the psalmists unending lament, is an essential feature of the suffering of the cross, which cannot be comprehended by a Christianity that is unable to differentiate between a citizen’s ordinary existence and a Christian existence. The cross is suffering with Christ. (from Discipleship; 1937)

Love is sacrifice, and we are called to love all people, without question. It is an impossible feat, but one we are called to all the same.

 

Coffee, Guitars, things. stuff.

Last night I attended Emerson Coffee House, which is basically a bunch of my fellow students performing songs (original and otherwise) for a room full of over-caffeinated college students. Many of the acts were delightful, as it is always delightful to listen to the words someone deems necessary to put to music and share with the rest of the world, for better or worse. One particular musician with exceptional talent in both song-writing and performing sang songs of longing and love that resonated particularly with me. However, not by way of shared experience. Rather, it seemed they confused me because I could not relate any of my life experience to what he was singing about with such passion and style. I found I had way of sharing what he was feeling when he wrote his songs, even then as he sang them, experiencing over again what he once had.

This got me to thinking about how I don’t know if I am capable of the emotion that my peers sang about with such wisdom, or lack thereof. The concept of knowing how to love has never been one that has puzzled me before, but I couldn’t help but feel like it is an area of knowledge regarding the human experience that I am lacking in. So I wonder, how do you go about loving? I’ve always equated it with sacrifice, but perhaps that isn’t so after all. More and more I am beginning to see maybe it is about letting yourself be known and willing to know another, on every level humanly possible. Perhaps, as with most things I have it all wrong. Time will tell I suppose.

Knowledge

As for me, all I know is that I know nothing, for when I don’t know what justice is, I’ll hardly know whether it is a kind of virtue or not, or whether a person who has it is happy or unhappy. -Plato

Été

The endless rain of Seattle wears on me when I begin to think of that which I have to look forward to. It is pictures like these that make me long for barefeet, summer dresses and warm breezes:

 

 

We are making our rotation back toward the sun! Oh what days await our enjoyment.

 

 

 

 

 

The Little Sparrow {La Môme Piaf}

Whenever I am feeling quite banal, which is a momentary flaw that happens to us all, I like to listen to Edith Piaf. Something about her sorrowful honesty and powerful voice heal that part of me that tells me I am normal and unimportant. Her vibrant and passionate vocals evoke a kind of glamorous romance to colour my moods; if I am feeling sad she makes me feel as if my melancholy were justified by some grandiose understanding of the fate of mankind, and if I am happy she makes me feel elated and elegant, like a I belong to some fashionable yet eccentric world.

Obviously, before I began learning French, I could only guess at what she was singing about, but most of the time her ability to translate emotion to song was so transparent that my guesses at the meaning were usually correct. Even when I was younger I would listen to her and feel as if I was some powerful, emotionally mature woman who had suffered much at the hands of love and understood what it meant to be a woman, I was so over-dramatic.

Yet, while listening to Edith it’s all right. She lends you her sorrow to help you understand life as she does. There is a scene in La Vie en Rose, a biopic about her life, where and interviewer asks: “If you were to give advice to a woman, what would it be?” “Love.” “To a young girl?” “Love.” “To a child?” “Love.” I think this perfectly captures the way her music makes you feel, who it makes you feel you can be.

All this to say, if you have not lost yourself in the elegant honesty of The Little Sparrow, such must be remedied immediately.

La Lumière Se Fane

The sun only becomes a marvel when it is no longer common, as with anything else. The darkness and melancholy of winter has set in, no longer improved upon by the expectancy of the holidays. All we may now look forward to is a axis rotation toward the light, a distant memory from the seat of a land where it doesn’t much shine in the summer months to begin with. Though quite inconvenient to the jovial aspects of existence, the winter provides a special allowance for brooding, otherwise scorned as self-indulgent gloominess.