Monthly Archives: December 2020

Reading, Writing

Expository weight

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Photo credit: Sergey Zolkin @szolkin, Unsplash

Once again tonight, I have nothing to review for you. This book I’m reading, which I mentioned yesterday, continues a slow read. I’ve figured out the reason – it’s longer than a federal regulation. I bought it assuming it was an ordinary World War II thriller, but it turns out to be more than 500 pages long – an epic. And although I remain interested in the events, I don’t think there’s enough story here to support that much expository weight.

It’s also a reproach to me as a writer. Because as I continue working on the new Erling book (still haven’t come up with a title), my word count is lower than I think it should be – like butter spread over not enough bread, as Bilbo would say. People expect epic fantasy books to run at least 80,000 words or so nowadays, and I’m not sure I can make it that long. I don’t want to just pad the story, but I’d rather not disappoint the reader either.

I have the idea my prose used to take up more space. Maybe I’m a victim of my own efficiency.

Goofing

Finding Yourself: You Alone Are the Way

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It’s the season for believing. The magic of Christmas is all around us, if we will believe in it. Friends, punks, readers of all ages, what we need more than anything is to believe in ourselves.

Trust yourself. Work to know yourself.

To know the you that is the real you.

Not what others tell you about you, but only what you tell yourself.

Because you are the way.

When Jesus said, “I am the way,” he was roleplaying with his disciples to show them what they should believe about themselves. Each one of us is the way, the truth, and the life. Each of us can repeat Jesus’s words for ourselves.

No one can choose your path for you. You are the way.

Look at yourself in the mirror and say, believe, speak into existence, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me.”

No one can choose your path for you, especially not your parents, friends, experienced leaders, school people, therapists, or well-meaning uncles.

They don’t know the real you or your way. You are your own way.

You may ask why I bring up Jesus’s words if all you need to know is yourself. For those who find comfort in Christian things, wise and self-satisfied thought-and-feeling leaders, like myself, need to find ways to make Jesus’s words say what we want.

Plus, it’s Christmas. The babe of Bethlehem did not speak at the time, but the sentimentalism we feel in Christmas can inspire us to believe anything. Don’t you agree?

(Between you and me, a quick read of the gospels will show you the primary message is that you’ve got this. Jesus knew, like so many of us do today, that you are all you need to be you.)

Banish the hesitation you may have about what you are able to do, and do that thing you long to do. Believe you can, and you can.

Do you believe in Santa Claus? He will be real for you.

Do you believe in mansions? Minecraft awaits.

Do you believe you’re a fish? Man, yeah!

You brought yourself into existence by your own mighty will and now you’re the awesome fill-in-the-blank you are today.

But who am I to tell you anything? You don’t need my words. You have your own.

Your way. Your truth. Your life.

Until it’s over and you return to the dust from which you came and your words waft away like a fume of stink.

Music, Religion

‘Mitt Hjerte Altid Vanker’

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Wrote a sizeable chunk of text for the next Erling book last night, and today I’ve been working on what I think might be a clever piece for The American Spectator Online. Which left me little mental capacity for fresh ideas for posts. You know me well enough to guess what that means, especially during Advent: Sissel with a Christmas song:

This is one of Sissel’s most popular Christmas numbers, original a Danish song, done here in a concert in Iceland. The title means, “My heart always lingers,” and if you’re interested in an English translation, a kind soul in Norway has provided us with one here.

I note that the translator, judging by the coat of arms on his profile, seems to come from the island of Karmoy, my ancestral home.

Non-fiction

Reject History or Embrace It Blindly?

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Alan Jacobs’s new book, Breaking Bread with the Dead, looks like a good read for the winter months ahead. Kevin Holtsberry reviews the book that’s subtitled, “A Reader’s Guide to a More Tranquil Mind,” calling it “sorely needed.”

Our polarized culture seems to offer two competing visions of engaging with the past. The defilement perspective views history as “at best a sewer of racism, sexism, homophobia, and general social injustice, at worst an abattoir which no reasonable person would even want to peak at.” Its vision is limited to the now. What matters in this moment is all that matters, and it judges the past accordingly, throwing most in the ash heap.

Another perspective approaches the past as a unifying, idealized, almost sanitized, source of universal values and character traits. This produces a reverence for the past that is also locked into the present: “To say ‘This text offends me, I will read no further’ may be shortsighted; but to read a ‘great book’ from the past with such reverence that you can’t see where its views are wrong, or even where they differ from your own, is no better. Indeed, in foreclosing the possibility of real challenge it is worse.”

Rather than either of these views, we should read history expecting to be challenged. Heroes, leaders, and all manner of influential people were no less human than we are. Their sins may have been egregious, but would we have made the same ones had we lived in their day?

Poetry

‘And Some Seed Fell’

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I’m making slow progress on the book I’m reading, so no review today. I’m not sure if the book is long, or if I’m just reading it slowly (a disorientation sometimes found in reading e-books). There’s this strange sense that, though I’m interested in the story, I’m not making very rapid progress with it.

I wrote a poem. As I’ve said before, I don’t consider myself a very good poet (and this one was written off the cuff). But I think it’s obscure enough to challenge the reader.

And some seed fell
On a gloomy place.
O’ershadowed by 
The cliff’s hard face.
The roots reached down,
The ground was dry,
And looming rock
Warped out the sky. 
That plant no flower
Would ever know
And on the breeze
No seed-stuff blow.
A little drink
The dew might give,
And sunlight blink
Enough to live.