uberreiniger (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
uberreiniger) wrote2005-08-03 09:15 am
uberreiniger) wrote2005-08-03 09:15 am
Entry tags:
Fly away. Touch the sun.
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.
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.
no subject
no subject