Fly away. Touch the sun.

[uberreiniger]

I don't often talk about books that I read here because no one here has read them and no one cares. But every now and then a book affects me enough to make it worth it. I just finished reading Them by Joyce Carol Oates. I make a point to read a "literary" novel every once and a while to keep my horizons broadened and I read a few pages of this one over at A&A's one day and wanted to know more.

All I can say is I cannot remember the last time a novel plunged me into a mood this black. If you want to read a book where, for 478 pages not one person has anything good ever happen to them or ever does anything nice for another person, then this is it. By that I don't mean to say it's a bad book. If it were a bad book I could dismiss it. But it's not. It's an amazing piece of literature and it's a book that makes you face everything about mankind that you'd rather not think about. I just barely keep those thoughts at bay much of the time as it is, so this novel's really done a number on me.

Right, so yeah. Enough of that. The play nearly met with disaster last night when our Lysander was in a car accident. I guess he has diabetes and passed out behind the wheel. He was unhurt and made it to rehearsal for the final act. Glad it wasn't worse.

I think another thing that's got me down is that LJ as a whole seems to be in one of its periodic upswings where everyone is venting their spleens of how Christians are the Bad Guys, or more often and even worse, the Stupid Guys. I don't know about you, but I would much rather be the Bad Guy then the Stupid Guy. And it's troubling because when you're raised a Christian, you get taught all your life that you're one of the Good Guys. Then you get out to find that no one sees you as the Good Guys; that you're viewed with suspicion at best, or at your best moments, as well-intentioned but clumsy children who don't know their own strength and "don't know any better." And it's not like we shouldn't see it coming. Christ said no servant is greater than his master, that the world will hate you because it first hated Him. But no one ever really prepares you for how to deal with that, day after day, year after year, for the rest of your life. Because that is what it means to follow Him.

Follow Him... yes, that is what I do. Haven't followed the other Christians for about ten years now and still fiercely hesitant to do so. Yet I still feel this overwhelming need to protect them, to speak up for them when no one else will. Because that's what Good Guys do for people, even Bad Guys and, as much as it may pain us, Stupid Guys.

Maybe I need to just not care as much.

Last night Mel and I talked about how people tend to focus on the negative in their journals and that's not what I want to do, so I'll conclude by focusing on the positives. I have love, I have friends old and new, I have roleplaying games, I have acting, I have writing, and a woman who makes wonderful tacos. Her tacos are fucking metal \m/ \m/ Put in that perspective, all the bleak prose and the snarky hatred of the computer world don't really amount to jack squat. And our Shakespearean comedy did not become a tragedy in the very real sense when it very easily could have.

For a fun time, try walking around a grocery store at night still wearing your costume from Shakespeare while the piped-in muzak is Avril Lavigne sneering about how "she don't wanna read Billy Shakespeare." I think it was Avril anyway. Sounded like her voice and the lyrics bore the sparking resonnance typically seen when her two brain-atoms collide inside the vacuum of her skull.

Comments

[deathbytamarind.livejournal.com]

Jesus' teachings are what Christianity should be. What Christianity is today is an insult to those who once followed Jesus and who still do. It's why I no longer consider myself religious, although I do recognize myself as baptized in the Christian faith.

[uberreiniger.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

[sravaka.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I wonder why "literary" usually is a codeword for bleak.

[uberreiniger.livejournal.com]

For me it just means "not genre fiction." Although I think it's a terrible deception, the notion that so-called genre fiction is not literary. Personally, I think it was started by bitter literary writers after getting a look at genre writers' sales figures.

[sravaka.livejournal.com]

Personally, I think it was started by bitter literary writers after getting a look at genre writers' sales figures.

Right, although a lot of the really good genre readers aren't all that real read either.

To be honest Uber, I am thinking of renouncing all literary ties too, but I should finish my degree first. I may write a sci-fi novel.

[uberreiniger.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't it be funny if someday we wound up sharing a table at a sci fi convetion, all our mighty thoughts and reasoning distilled down to the act of signing autographs for Inuyasha cosplayers?

[sravaka.livejournal.com]

Great fun that. Sci Fi, however, is the genre in which you can really be rebellious. It, as much as "literary fiction" or "spectulative fiction," is the genre in which you can cloak moral, scientific, and social ideas at one time and get people to actually read it.

If I wanted people to understand my philosophy, hiding it in Sci Fi is the way to go.

[uberreiniger.livejournal.com]

I completely agree. It is what is at sci fi's very roots.

[sravaka.livejournal.com]

How do you reconcile Jesus with Paul?

[uberreiniger.livejournal.com]

Not really that big an issue for me. Jesus was a god undergoing a form of divine enlightenment. Paul was just a man struggling to interperet his own thoughts on the subject. He was a very blessed man, a very holy man, but a man none the less. He had opinions, he had good days, he had bad days and all those things colored his writings. Moreover, his epistles weren't meant to be read by anyone other than the handful of individuals he wrote them to. Is there wisdom in there? Of course there is; great wisdom that's worth learning and practicing. Do I consider it "scripture" to be obeyed without hesitation? Not really. Christians use the fact that Christ chose him to be the "apostle to the Gentiles" to mean that Paul's words MUST be taken as scripture, but somehow I have a hard time believing that applies letters intended for no more than two or three dozen readers.

I think I got disillusioned with Paul growing up a Methodist. In my church they paid more attention to him than to Christ. If Paul reiterated something Christ said, then it basically just was added oomph. "See? He's got the principle backing him up on this one!"

[elvinborn.livejournal.com]

Focusing on negatives is easier. the writing is more sensational. And it's good to vent. Thus I try to look at at least one positive thing in every situation. Even if I have to reach for it. Makes the world a much happier place. /random babble

[uberreiniger.livejournal.com]

Focusing on negatives is easier. the writing is more sensational.

Yeah, that's basically what Mel and I came up with. I like the way you write. Your journal always brightens my day.

[elvinborn.livejournal.com]

It's a disease we get from the news media. We gravitate toward the accidents. Watch NASCAR for the wrecks. Slow down to look when we see fires/crashes/ambulances. Nobody ever has a special story about how some kid is a crossing guard, or the sky was absolutely beautiful and children were outside playing disorganized sports. If it doen't have a nail-biter disaster hook, nobody wants to tell it. But it seems that everybody wants to hear it. /rantlet

I'm glad my lj brightens your day :) that brightens my day

[rob-rants.livejournal.com]

LMAO, well mine hasnt been negative, mines been absent :P LOL
as for the walking around in costume, try being in fest garb (yes WITH the tights) walking into a convience store at 75th and holmes.
talk abouut getting looks.

[uberreiniger.livejournal.com]

I've gone out garbed before 'cause what's the point of owning the stuff if you don't wear it? I don't do tights, though. I'm all about the baggy trousers :)

[rob-rants.livejournal.com]

i fight myself damn near daily tooth and nail NOT to grab my thigh high bucket boots out of the closet and wear em around. damn it i LOVE those boots. I think if nothing else ill start wearing them down to the coffee shop. They already wonder about me LOL

[uberreiniger.livejournal.com]

If I ever find where my crimson velvet cape is packed away I'll come out and join you!

[darkemoone.livejournal.com]

Them is so, so depressing. Good book, though.

With Christians... man, that's a hard one. I know so many people who are so venomously anti-Christian that sometimes it's hard not to be influenced by it. For me, it's really just the fanatics (of ANY religion, although, I've had my worst experiences with Baptists) whom I fear. I just can't handle blind faith and rampant recruiting/conversion movements.

[sravaka.livejournal.com]

I feel you, I am Christian nuetral, but there are days when that's a hard thing to maintain.

[uberreiniger.livejournal.com]

Baptists are above and beyond the worst offenders of the major Christian groups. Easily the loudest and most destructive voice in the Protestant Christian cause.

Glad to meet someone else who's read Them. I'm the kind who wants to discuss whatever he's read. I've got to admit I was very impressed in the way Oates was able to pull a very gripping and believable climax into existence at just the moment when I was sure no climax would come. Loretta was probably the character who disgusted me the most. Because I have known people like Loretta, I have seen the children they raise.

[mellifera.livejournal.com]

I see a lot of ugliness and hatred coming from the Christian side of things, and I will not apolgize for being critical of that. Perhaps these things are not what Jesus would have wanted his followers to represent, but they do. And they do it in his name. If you want to be angry, be angry with them.

[uberreiniger.livejournal.com]

I do and I am. There just comes a time, though, when you get tired of you and the people you've known all your life being called to task for the actions of people you've never met. You get tired of being picked on. I didn't ask for this brutal legacy, this albatross around our collective necks. I know it's there and it's not going away, but it gets darn heavy sometimes. And I don't understand why so many in the faith welcome it so gladly and accept it so unquestionly. Or how they can so supremely condem every one and everything and remain blind to the fact that their way just isn't working and that their world is collapsing beneath their feet.

I don't blame you for feeling the way you do, you or anyone else. I just wish the world didn't have to be like this.

[mellifera.livejournal.com]

All I can advise you to do is not take everything so personally. Don't see an attack on Christianity as being an attack on you personally.

As far as the whole thing about Christians being hated by the rest of the world, I personally think that's something that's being misused and misquoted. It's difficult to feel sorry for people who feel that they're being unjustly hated when so many of them promote hatred of other groups.

[act-3.livejournal.com]

I want to apologize for being so vehemently anti-Christian. It's a bit too easy to be because in our political climate, the word "Christian" is synonymous with a lot of unsavory things: religious fundamentalism, censorship, gay marriage bans, pro-Life movements, etc.

But that's not what an actual Christian is. You know that. You aren't like that.

The Christianity of today is a perversion and has been warped - just as it was during the dark ages - to serve the motives of those in power. It is used to justify backwards sensibilities and a fear of change when none of these things are inherent to the faith. It's my understanding that Christ preached tolerance and love. I wonder where all that's gone now.

Take a look at the rampant moralism going on now. Look at the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas scandal. It's okay to run over grandmothers with a stolen car and shoot police officers, but having essentially harmless, poorly rendered, badly simulated sex (admittedly the sucking noises are pretty funny) is what pushes this game over the line? What the fuck? Look at our television for crying out loud. Our society is backwards.

It's unfortunate that an essentially benevolent at its core religion has to bear that burden.

I apologize because I know I've offended you in the past. I understand where you're coming from and believe it or not, I do have a couple of Christian friends. But the sad truth is that you're in the minority, and too often the religion is being used to justify ignorance.

God, as you understand Him, gave everyone the gift of intelligence. The remarkable gifts of thought, of reason, of the ability to rationalize and comprehend things on our own. The ability to just think is a marvelous, stunning one. Why would He give us this gift and expect us not to exercise it?

[uberreiniger.livejournal.com]

That's an amazingly profound way of expressing it. You've put it all into words far better than I've been able to. Very sincerely, I thank you.

[rob-rants.livejournal.com]

beautifully said.
but then again i think extreamists in ANY form are dangerous, be they left wing, right wing, christian, muslim, or anything else. Any extreamist has their mids closed to thought, and in agreeing with you, was that why we were GIVEN brains?