"...not because they tell is that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten." ~G.K. Chesterton. So here's a blog of dragons fought --my own, strangers', and yours if you would like-- of brave warriors found and kings in disguise, of savvy princesses and hidden treasures, and of all the ways the universe really is written like the story we wish it were. ~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~A blog by Kyrsten ~~~
Today’s the day! Our Horatio Nelson Fiction Prize is now open for submissions. Basically: we want to turn your not-yet-published manuscript into a book! A real, live*, breathing** book.
The thing about the spirit of our day is that we err on the side of relativism.
The idea that we create truth and meaning out of ourselves, or out of own souls, and the idea that there are no absolute truths or rights (except the absolute that there are no absolutes), these are both very popular.
It shows itself in art and how we critique it, government, religion, spirituality, gender, sexuality, and so on…
But we’re also so incredibly anxious for truth and meaning. We’re asking and asking. What is the point? What am I doing? Maybe if I do what I love, if I can finally get a job, maybe if I set concrete goals, maybe if I become a better person, maybe if I stop worrying and just have fun…
I can think of a dozen songs off the top of my head that are all about this, and what we sing about can show us our anxieties just as well as what we put in our sci-fi.
We are so desperate for the absolute truth that we deny exists that we latch on to something to be inviolable —whether it be a job, house, recognition of sexuality, right to bear arms, pleasure, tumblr saying exactly the same, all the things three paragraphs up.
Popular sci-fi site Tor.com (est. 2008) is launching a new book imprint called Tor.com: The Imprint and has posted new submission guidelines to help unagented authors propose their book manuscripts to the editors.
So I discovered this app called "mindly" today. It's a mind-mapping app for i devices. It's simple, and the little dots are pleasant colors. You can only have three maps at a time on the free version, but the maps are pretty big. Anyway, what mind-mapping does is help document stream of consciousness stuff. It's pretty great for figuring out where the plot of your story is going. I'm using right now to organize my creative nonfiction pieces for class. I'm not a visual learner, but being able to *see* how my writing flows together from subject to subject (and where it doesn't) is really helpful!
Things learned while putting cassia in my hair for the first time
I have too much hair
Cassia obovata smells a bit like matcha when it comes out of the package.
Once you add water, it smells like rooibos (red tea).
This is excellent.
You need more water than that. Seriously, add more.
I am a messy child. If I wind up putting henna in my hair I'll need to wear a trashbag and long gloves.
Pro tip for next time: put all the hair goop in a plastic bag or shower cap, then put head in and massage. Save so much time and mess, and you can use the shower cap/plastic bag while the goop sets in.
Embrace the alien look. Try not to think about that scene in the Anne of Green Gables movie where her hair turns green. From snot? That's how child-me remembers it...
Is this the greater thing, these gleaming lines of gold?
Every time I see that post about kintsukuroi, I think of that gorgeous scene from Lewis' Perelandra...oh, I know I'm not going to quote it properly, but it was all about how with Ransom's heroic intervention "this and not the greater thing has happened".
That the romance of undoing Earth's Fall was as beautiful, more beautiful than Venus never falling at all.
Or that each was totally unique and totally interconnected. The Oyarsa of Mars was the one to recc. Ransom for the job of Christ-figure, after Ransom and his abductors tried to invade his planet. Ransom, from the one fully fallen planet, was the one to help prevent Perelandra's Fall. Only a fallen human would recognize what the first two Perelandrans would be forfeiting for themselves and their children if they made the wrong choice, and only a human would be able to think like Satan enough to anticipate his actions.
It was a very confusing, very beautiful scene.
I guess I am coming around to the point that we all have struggles to wrestle through, yeah? Sometimes you think that "oh, so-and-so's never faced this. So-and so is going to make it, so-and-so has better thought-patterns, better support. I don't. I can't."
But we don't see everything. We don't always see areas where we're stronger. We don't always see areas where we're stronger for having faced whatever we've faced, or are facing, like fragile greenware turning to hard bisque in the kiln. Did you know that after a ceramic is fired in the kiln, it can't be turned back into clay again? It's fundamentally, chemically different. Bonded, transformed, stronger.
And if we do shatter? What then? Do you trace the gleaming spidered lines in the kintsugi bowl and tell the artist "it is worthless, it is broken"?
No, it is beautiful.
It is beautiful.
Can you imagine it without the gold, anymore? Look where the cracks have become shine and glory.
We have an artist who pours gold into our life-cracked soul-cracks. Who knows where all the pieces fit together, and how to make them gleam.
A Step Towards a Dream (I'm dreaming? Oh, thank God!)
So I bought More Than Meets The Eye #17 (Roberts, Milne & Burcham) today.
An actual comic book at an actual comic book store. It may seem like I’m freaking out about something tiny, which I am, but you have to understand: “Maybe I can write comic books” is the first “I want to be a ____” idea that I’ve had since before I graduated high school.
I’m a senior in college.
I’ve been absolutely terrified by my inability to dream up futures and goals for myself. Yes, I know it’s bad to hold onto them too tightly in case they don’t turn out exactly the way I imagined —I believe my God has more exciting futures up his sleeve than the ones I can come up with. But before he gave me this one, I was freaking out about it. It’s no fun (read: despair fodder) coming up against a blank wall when you try to look ahead.
My future-imagination is waking very slowly still. It’s been deader than dead for a while.
But you know how it goes. I know the plans I have for you…plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future…
I’m not as immersed in the professional writing culture as most of my fellow majors. And I don’t know much about the comic book industry either. But knock-out short stories read aloud in New York coffeehouses aren’t the only stories that need written, and that is encouraging. There’s a place for people to tell stories about superheroes and robots, too.
And the comic book? Definitely going to be what Mark Batterson would call one of my “lifesymbols”. Something to remember a providence by. In the words of Allie Brosh, “maybe it isn’t all hopeless bullshit”. And, yes, I know it isn’t all hopeless bullshit. But knowing a thing and taking it to heart can sometimes be very different things.
Maybe instead it’s a possibility. Maybe I was given a dream.
"Desire. Desire is a volcanic power. We may say and think we live by our beliefs, but at the end of the day, our longings shape our decisions more deeply than the things we believe to be true."
Can you be angry without being hateful? (On being angry, choosing to be a fool, and how cool conversations on tumblr can be)
Yes.
A reminder after I saw something on my dashboard about it:
If someone says something that you disagree with, if someone does something that disgusts you, it's okay to be angry. It's okay to be furious or disgusted. What you get angry about shows what you care about. Emotions don't exist on a love to hate scale, they exist on a love to apathy scale. Own that anger.
But in Christian circles (& I assume, Jewish? Someone please educate me here!), we have a saying "Be angry, and do not sin; ponder in your own hearts on your beds, and be silent."/"Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger..."
That is, do not use you anger to commit violence on another person, physically or emotionally. And don't let it fester. You may feel right in doing so. Someone getting what they deserve is good old fashioned justice.
But it's so easy to go overboard, to act without having facts. To play God and decide a person's fate on your own (or with a mob physically or emotionally behind you). To ignore the rule of law or bully on Anon in the heat of fear and anger and hate.That's a recipe for disaster, part of the explosive mixture that leads to deep resentments, deep hurts, and even, if taken to extremes, hate crimes.
The psalmist means that it's better to think before you respond right away. Resolve the reasons for your anger, and don't let it turn into bitterness. Get involved in fixing the things that make you angry! Every little kindness mounts up against injustice and bitterness.
I continue to believe very strongly in the power of offering mercy and grace where none is expected or deserved. In a social context, I believe that this undermines violence and shames the efforts of the perpetrators, and it's one of the central beliefs in Christian faith. But I do know that it is ridiculous, too. It's much easier, much more practical, to be kind to people who are "good people". Or who aren't bad people. Being kind to those who don't deserve the time of day from you is active idiocy. We sometimes say it is "the foolishness of God".
But if you can't offer kindness, I'd ask you to at least not encourage hate.
Even if you are dead sure you are right, and the other person is being an inconsiderate, ignorant jackass, you have the power to stop a cycle of violence and ignorance by your response. Ignore. Report. Debate.
Dialogue expands knowledge and understanding.
Think about the amazing opportunity we have with so many people of different countries, cultures, and religions on Tumblr. Learn. Teach. Get involved in changing what triggered your anger. Even small chips away at injustice, unkindness, and ignorance make a difference.
~Kyrsten
Want to discuss this further? I'm at More Than True, my more writerly blog, and Dream Alive, my more fannish one. I'm still figuring this out, here.
(Ahem. Those should totally be words accepted by spell-check.)
It's something I heard this weekend from Bryan Harrison, one of the pastors at my local church, that made me pause: What you get angry about can show you what you really care about.
But this one was the one that made me flinch: It can be a good sign. Apathetic people don't get angry. They don't get happy. They don't care.
I've always considered myself an even keeled kind of person. I like to go with the flow. I like letting other people lead sometimes. I am stubborn, but I do NOT like to seem that way. I don't want to cause conflict. (I'm an only child, for one thing --I didn't have to learn conflict resolution with siblings and peers right away).
Besides, I can adapt. I can be content.
...I think the definition of contentment that I've been running with is really apathy. Not caring enough to get angry. And there are some things worth getting angry about. A child being mistreated. Crime. You getting mistreated. Corrupt governments. Actually, the list is pretty long.
The Merriam-Webster Online definition of contentment is "the state of being happy or satisfied".That's a new one for me. I've assumed it's more ambivalent than that, a "take it or leave it" sort of feeling. Willingness, forbearance, patience, not...satisfaction.
There's a brick wall of fears that I've hit often enough recently to be worried: I don't know what I want out of life. And I think part of it may be because I've confused contentment and apathy. I haven't allowed myself to care about many things (fandom has helped, surprisingly, or maybe not surprisingly) intensely or long enough to be happy or angry over them, to be passionate or distraught. I've squelched it down, like somehow it's not okay to be upset, not okay to be enthused, not okay to have moments where everything is sunny and moments where everything is pointless. It's not like everyone feels that way sometimes, in every variation ever, right? Riiight.
By turning to apathy, I think maybe I've not been present in the moment as much as I've needed to be to understand myself --my own likes and dislikes. We humans like and dislike things. We run the gamut of emotions. That's what people do. It's okay.
I guess I'm asking you to join me in being willing to be satisfied in all situations and yet not being afraid to be engaged enough to be passionate. Do enjoy things. Do get angry about things. Please remind me to do the same.
Community (& just plain people, sometimes) takes courage
Last week, I was part of a group chat of fellow Young Wizards fans around the world. We chatted about the book series. Someone made up a horror story on the spot. We flailed about other shared books, and how Maglor Feanarion's life sucks, congratulated a few recent couples, and so on.
But mostly, mostly we ended up encouraging each other. It was a place to vent our frustrations and fears, and know that someone outside our immediate personal spheres (and yet still with some shared experiences) was paying attention, willing to advise if it fell within their sphere, and maybe felt the same way. The Lewis "You too?" theory of friendship never rang more true, I think.
It reminded me of something that I often have to remind myself of: Community is important. It's not the only thing in life, but it's important.
I'm an introvert. I forget this a lot.
I can entertain myself. I also don't like conflict, and where there is community, there's bound to be conflict eventually --differing opinions, people who annoy you...there's really no help for it but all parties practicing patience, love, and sound judgment.
Community stretches your comfort zone, and can encourage you in places you felt alone. But community can hurt, too --you're being vulnerable in some ways, sharing yourself with others, and that's hard. And people take time. I, for one, am very jealous of my time.
It's perfectly all right to be content alone, and don't mind people who tell you differently. But I also hope and pray that you have a few people --irl, Tumblrites, or both or other --whom you have common interests with, and whom you can share your thoughts and opinions with.
I hope, too, we can both learn the courage to be more open with people when we need to be. It's like trying to run through deep water, for me --difficult, frightening, and you're never going as fast as you want --but I believe that there are more "You too?" moments out there and waiting for us.
***
I highly recommend the Young Wizards series --I was given a copy of the first book in Jr. high, and it's made as much of an impact on my life (if not more) as Harry Potter. The author is One Of Us --she's here on Tumblr.
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