Autumnal Strange Unearthly Longings

 

In the hills on autumn evenings when
We seem to hear the horns of elfland blowing
And strange unearthly longings draw us in.

- Malcolm Guite (from a poetic reflection on Psalm 67)

The breezy winds are coming in from far away places, rustling the leaves that cling to the branches. Rainy season has left behind a slight feeling that there is a change in the air, however slow it may be, it is coming. It is drawing us in with the voice of the north wind.

These invoking words and images of faerie lands forlorn and places where the elf may dwell leave me aching for that which is deeper, more alive, more awakened to itself. Maybe that seems in opposition of the autumn season as the leaves fall to the ground leaving bare branches and after harvests are reaped the grasses change their bright hues to a toned down hay. But this is exactly what awakens in me the wonders. This kind of seasonal shift resonates with me in fostering more awareness of the imaginary, the inspiring, the myth and legend. This kind of feeling arises best where there are glimpses of where faerie might dwell. The thin places in this world that link to another place. It seems more possible as the land shifts and the trees change. There might be uncovered or revealed some ancient path or stone walkway that could not be seen before. Where does it lead?

Perhaps my imagination is getting carried away, or perhaps not. Maybe that is what we need from time to time. To lose ourselves in a story or myth. To be immersed in something bigger than ourselves, reminding us that even in the everyday there is a bit of magic that can be discovered. I am looking forward to these days ahead.

On Writing in Books

 

Squiggles.
Arrows.
Marks.
Underlines.
Writing.
In books.

Does the idea make you shudder? 
Or does it invoke interest and engagement?

I like to think that when we read we are in a kind of dialogue with the author. We are reading their thoughts, their story, and ideas, and sometimes I want to talk with them in the margins. I might agree and just add a note, or link it to something else I read. I might disagree, and write a counter point.

Or I might underline or mark a paragraph that I will invariably return to later. It makes it easier to find. I so often flip through books to re-read or just dip into, re-visiting my favourite passages to ponder or consider again. 

An example - Many people have asked me over the years why I do not just check out books at the library. That is a very simple answer with many layers. Because I cannot revisit them later whenever I get a sudden recollection of a passage, essay, or book I want to re-read. Because I cannot write in library books. Because I like to be able to sit at my desk and be reminded of a passage, stand up, search my bookshelves, and pull out the C.S. Lewis or Owen Barfield book I was thinking about (I literally just did this today). I will flip through that book and find the passage I marked 10 years earlier (and maybe re-read some sections). I do this so very often, it is the most natural thing in the world to me. This is why my home is a library. It always will be.

All these things are engaging with the book, the ideas, the author's perspective, and remembering what I read to a deeper degree because all of this causes me to slow down in my reading. Rather than speeding through a book, if I am writing in it, or even just underlining, I am reading more thoughtfully and slowly. Thereby retaining the information much more than a quick read would. It also means I will likely return to it again later, setting it to dwell even more deeply into my psyche. 

Side note - I know many people like to keep their books pristine, but to that I ask, why? Unless you want to re-sell them? I don't. For most of us, our books will not be kept in a museum, and if they are, it will likely be of interest to whoever reviews your books what you wrote in them and how you engaged with the books. What I would do to be able to browse through the library of C.S. Lewis to see what he wrote in his books. To me, it would be interesting to see what he thought as he read. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote and doodled on his everyday crossword pages (I know that's not books), which are now kept at the Bodleian Library and have been put on display in an exhibit to show his creative energies.

For even more engagement with books, I write out favourite quotes in my journal and commonplace book. But that is a digression as this is a musing about writing in the books themselves, to which I think I made my meandering point.

... And in the dark, still hours

 

...And in the dark, still hours, the world is soft and calm. The memories float like lofty clouds above yet within. The interior self is aloft in the sky with all the images of time, set into no line of a straight steady sense, but freely floating around the memories as the imagination takes the wind. There floats today's memory of 2009 both sad with loss and sweet with remembrance, as if it were last year, a short time ago. A time comes now in memory of the dark, sadness when the loss of Dad became a sudden, swift reality that filled us all with sorrow. But the memories now float freely detached from a particular moment or timeline as time is no longer necessarily in any straight line. It is just always. 

It is always there, sometimes close and poignant when the winds blow it near when some date or specific memory draws it. Sometimes it seems like something distant, but it never departs. Always held in the steady skies of God-created memory for our humanness to encounter. For deep utter loss is part of being human. And my mind can go so naturally towards it not because I try to, but because it is stamped in me, and these memories are always there. The winds just blow them this way at this time, for remembrance, deeply set in thankfulness for him.

Sleepy Musings

 

The weekend comes swiftly, almost sneaking up on me. I go to bed on Friday and suddenly it is there a moment later when I wake up. Isn't it strange how we have no concept of time as we sleep? Eight hours passes by and we have no feeling of that time as we slip into an unconscious state that leaves us totally lost in time. I wonder why and how we dream of wild, timeless spaces and almost unimaginable scenes that seem like they are from a fantasy or myth. Are we able to reach those levels of mysteriousness because we give up our consciousness? Then, we wake up forgetting it all. We do, after all, almost always forget our dreams upon waking.

It is fascinating to think about because the question of why we dream makes me wonder about God's intent when he created us and our ability to dream. It's not something we did, God gave us that ability. What an interesting thing to think about.

What should we do with our dreams, whether we can or cannot remember them? Dreams are sometimes used through Scripture stories of God speaking some important message to people through dreams. But how would we know if a dream is a message from God? I suppose there might be a strong, clear feeling. Similar to the idea of angels among us, how do we know?

It requires of us belief and faith that what God created was good, imagination to see the spiritual realm dwelling in our physical realm, and the open mind to the heavenly. If we shut ourselves off and say that the material world is all there is, we lose so much of creation that is not fixed to the material world. That person lives in a world of despair because the material world will diminish, pass away, wither, fade. But we long for more than that. We sense we are made for more than that.

Since we have that longing that cannot be satisfied here, therefore, as C.S. Lewis concluded in Mere Christianity we must be made for another world. If we view this all as a sort of training ground, it won't seem so bad here, but it leads to the better place where we really belong and were made for.

All these words came along because I was waking and wondering about dreams. I think I am just fascinated by the mind and the imagination. Our world and the spiritual world collide more often than we notice. They are features of being human that sets us apart from other living things. It is astonishing that God has gifted us these abilities, meaning we are not automatons who just rotate through tasks because it is innately given to us to follow. 

We have choice, and we occupy time creating things with the talents we have and imagining and wondering about things that are beyond us. 

I absorb books and ideas like a dry sponge. Yet I also have a keen desire to create. We all do, in our own ways. We just have to find out what gift is within each of us to create. Mine is words - stories, poems, word pictures, musings. I cannot stop that desire in me. It is always there.

Picking up Philosophical Crumbs

 

Let us call him a saviour, because he liberates the learner from his bondage, saves him from himself; a deliverer, because he delivers from bondage one who has bound himself, and no one is so terribly bound, and no bondage so impossible to escape, as that in which the individual places himself!

- Philosophical Crumbs, Søren Kierkegaard

I believe as a Christian I am called to follow in the more difficult way; the path that may not be the most popular. The more challenging it becomes the more I realize it is what Jesus taught when his footsteps clapped the sandy desert. It transcends thought and experience. He did not promise it would be easy to follow Him. But He is the Light and He is the Way. He promises to lead us. If we look deeply enough (we tend not to, as remaining at the shallow end seems more safe) we will develop the capacity to link into aesthetic and ethical insights whilst working through the challenges of being a Christian.

Kierkegaard was a genius, and his writings showcase his immense, deeply complex insights he pondered over as he intertwined Christian and Socratic intuitions and institutions. He had the talent of writing about it in a poetic, philosophical way. I feel muddled often as I read his words, as if my brain is running hard to keep up with his thoughts, but I always grasp something at the end of the section (crumbs?) which I ponder over for weeks/months/years to come.

Christians have to unlearn those accumulated interpretations that make Christianity all-too familiar, a matter of simple socialization from the cradle to the grave. Christianity has to be made strange. (from the introduction).

How eagerly I dip my toes into philosophy with Kierkegaard as my guide. He sets up the road into the strange land, and I read page after page like one entering a garden lush and overwhelming one cannot take it all in at once, picking up his crumbs along the way. His linking of the Socratic thinking with Christianity reminds me to look deeply into all things to find God's fingerprints. And in this passage I am moved by the simplicity of the paradoxical image he provokes of sitting with God in a posture of peace and conversation with each of us.

And the situation of the understanding, how precarious it is, poised at every moment at the edge of misunderstanding as the anxieties of guilt threaten the peace of love; how terrifying, because it is less terrifying to fall prostrate while the mountains tremble at the voice of the god, than to sit with him as with an equal, and yet it is precisely the god's desire to sit this way. (Philosophical Crumbs)

Drizzling Thoughts on Toast

 

Drizzling my thoughts like honey on toast. A long weekend awakens in me the desire and ability to get lost in between hundreds of pages. You might find me flipping page 59 over a bite of toast, and page 80 over the final sip of coffee. I take big bites of books, given the time. No nibbles here and there. But big chunks. Then, I sit back and think as my imagination expands beyond the walls of my tiny home. I live in no tiny space -- I live amongst the fantastical worlds and faraway places in all the books on my shelves. It is ever-expanding.

How glorious to get lost in books. One is never bored, and one is never merely entertained. Books require thinking and imagining. Creating the scenes inside your own mind whilst examining thoughts around the author's meaning-filled words. One is not a mere reader on the sidelines, but an active participant in the values of the words. Are they material and moral? Judging for yourself in your own conscious. Placing oneself into the story to gain perspective and ponder the view as the story progresses.

You can expect that an idea or perspective very different from your own will pop onto the page, and you will left to deal with it. You will be able to chew on it, weigh it, muse upon it. These are gifts that books can give us - we learn more about ourselves by reading. 

Piranesi

 

The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.

- Piranesi

The world needs more books like this. If I could, I would give a copy to everyone to read. And then a discussion would ensue, because this book warrants talking about. You cannot read it and not want to talk with someone about it. It is easily my top book of 2020. I already read it a second time a few months ago, and it made me love it even more.

I mentioned reading it in a previous post, but it really needs its own dedicated appreciation post, which I have been meaning to do for awhile. If you have not read it yet, I hope this will get your curiosity heightened enough to go get it!

I cannot say too much about the story without giving things away. I would not want to spoil a reading for anyone, because part of the deep enjoyment is discovering along the way, so I will keep it pretty general. 

Piranesi lives in a house, a huge infinite house that takes care of him. He loves the house, and knows that it provides food and shelter for him. He keeps busy every day by writing in his journal keeping track of the tides that rush through the different halls of the house. He explores the house, numbering all the halls and their details, he notes all the statues in the halls, he fishes down in the lower halls where the waters are always abundant. But he is mostly all alone. Isolated. Except one other man, whom he meets with once a week, called the Other. The Other has Piranesi working on projects and collecting data for him as he tries to figure out the secrets of the house. 

Susanna Clarke is a master author. She is one of the best in our modern day in my opinion. Every word, every sentence has deep thought behind it. Even the use of capital letters is very intentional. There is nothing frivolous about her writing. It has meaning. She pulls from past authors and myths and makes a tale all her own, yet leaving crumbs along the way that I love picking up. In this book, she is pulling many ideas, mainly from The Magician's Nephew, by C.S. Lewis, Saving the Appearances, by Owen Barfield, and short stories from Labyrinths, by Jorge Luis Borges. 

Piranesi thinks the best of what he is given, using everything the house provides. He appreciates the little things. He stands in awe of the albatross that flies into one of the halls (I hear lovely echoes of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader). He takes care of the bones of the dead he finds in the house. He finds meaning in everything. This idea stems from Owen Barfield's ideas on participation and how in human history we used to think that everything had meaning. We have lost that meaning (we no longer participate in the world in that sense) in our modern culture. Things are now just objects to be studied and taken apart to find out how they work (to learn their secrets), rather than appreciating and finding meaning in how they were made. This bifurcation of meaning and purpose in the world we live in is the difference between Piranesi and the Other. 

The house itself is an infinite labyrinth, and Piranesi lives there alone, seemingly. He doesn't think it is menacing, but he knows there are dangers and takes precautions, such as when the tides will collide and cause a massive flood. There are other dangers he did not prepare for that soon come, and when the Other starts to warn him, he tries to solve the puzzle. Some questions I began to ask myself - How does being alone affect him? Why does the Other only see him once a week? Is the house good?

I love this book so much. It explores many themes that provoke deeper thinking and discussion on choices we make, why we make them, how we relate to the world around us, how an antidote to alienation is kindness,  how we are beckoned into reality through sadness and great loss, how we can hold up a lantern of light against the darkness and see the good even amidst the evil of the world. 

Book Shop Dreams

 

Once upon a time I dreamed there would be an independent book shop in town. It was a dream that spanned many years, and it never came. Through college and beyond, I waited patiently for 10+ years. It never came. 

Until now!

A few days after Pressed opened, I had to drop in one evening to browse for the first time in a little independent book shop in my town, a few minutes away from my home. My heart soared at the prospect. Ideas flashed through my head of meeting here with friends and family. Of having a little bookclub here. Of getting a coffee and sitting down to read a new book.

It looks small, you say. Sure, the shelves are not full and the selection is limited, but it is a book shop! It is a celebration of all things bookish! It promotes reading! Open the door and the scent of coffee and books greets you with all the possibility of cosiness, which is the best thing in my opinion. Browse the different sections and delight in that. There is plenty of seating - tables and chairs, sofas, etc.

This is a massive accomplishment for the bookish. I have fiercely advocated for a book shop here, in my quiet and patient way of telling friends and acquaintances, whilst at the the same time harboring a dream of having my own book shop one day (only in my dreams, really), all the while holding onto the hope that one day this city would reach a level of bookishness that adhered to the guidelines of requirement to open an independent book shop. 

Here we are, rendering the requirements met, and I hope that it sticks around with great success, filling up these shelves with more books as more people realize the joy of reading. Maybe they will even have to add more shelves for more books!  

I am just so glad you are here, Pressed!

Cultivate Self-Learning

 Cultivate self-learning. 

When I first started reading Dante's Divine Comedy many years ago (10+ years), I had no real knowledge of what it was about (other than the basic journey through hell, purgatory, and into paradise), and much of it went over my head. I had purchased a used copy of all three books in one in a used bookshop in Providence, Rhode Island on a visit there after college. I knew it was a book I should read at some point, so I read it. It sat there in my heart lingering with images and questions. Then a year or two ago I picked it up again to start to re-read all of Dante's Divine Comedy. This time I read Dorothy L. Sayers's translation and I listened to talks about it and read books on Dante along the way. My understanding and depth of reading since those years after college reached a deep appreciation and I caught more references, but still miss so many. 

And yet...the more I read the more I saw how reading this text from the 1300's connected with my life in a myriad of ways everywhere I turned. Dante showed up in the other books I read, he was discussed by my favourite writers, and his Divine Comedy was creeping into the tight spaces between lines of stories I had never seen before.

It is true that one book leads to another. This happens to me constantly. It is a thing of beauty I could never set-up myself.

Ask the deep questions and then read to find out more. Watch talks/lectures, listen and hear ideas. Ponder and keep reading. Let your own discovering guide you. God is there too, and soon you realize what you hear along the way is reflections of His own voice through echoes of others in their study and writing. A deeper truth is being portrayed. 

Be patient with it. Reflect and let the truth indicate itself.

Read the books that challenge you. They are usually older, more nuanced, more detailed (sometimes they feel like a paradox I know), and they are worked out with intelligence, heart, and grace. If something offered is as simple as a 1, 2, 3 step procedure, be skeptical. 

Do not expect an immediate answer. Sit with the questions and then live them. 

Look for the wisdom and the context in which the words are being written or spoken. You will find more answers as you go along in your self-study than you even knew you were asking about. That is the marvel of reading.

Choose to See Beauty

 

Choose to see beauty.

It is as simple as noticing the morning's slanted light streaming into your eastern window. The range of tones shift by the minute as the sun rises. It is a beauty we get every single day. Even amidst clouds. Sometimes it is even more beautiful with light reflecting off and through the clouds.

All it takes is your attention. Seems like a very easy thing, yet it is not. These days our attention is extremely valuable and it is being sought by much louder things of the world. And it is distracting and difficult to escape. Our attention means money for companies. Our attention is for sale. Meanwhile, the quiet beauty does slowly and patiently what it was made to do.

Often the most beautiful things take time and require patience of us. But that need crisscrosses with the mentality we possess that we need it now. We want to buy or see that thing immediately. We want an instant friend without any depth. These things buy our happiness for a short period and then we grow bored or ready to cast it aside and do it all again. Unwilling we are to let something come in its time. 

When we allow ourselves to sit quiet. Just sit there and muse. Or don't muse. Let your voice quiet down. Let the noise of the world fall to the background. The voices of others telling you what you should be and what you should do. Let God speak into the quiet spaces. God gives us our gifts and direction, but we need to listen to hear it above the voices that shout for us to follow. Instead of following the crowd, it takes much more effort to listen to what God is directing and to follow Him.