Thirteen Thousand Words

"The length of this document defends it well against the risk of its being read." - Winston Churchill

     I couldn't help but think of our 1,990 page healthcare bill when I read this quote, but that's not why I included it. I didn't feel like writing much today, so here's a few of my photographs instead. Considering the old Napoleonic adage, "a picture's worth a thousand words," I suppose you could say I've written thirteen thousand words. Perhaps, had we replaced our healthcare bill with pictures, we could have had the stack of printouts only be 1.8 inches tall instead of 9. I'm sure the environmentalists in the House of Representatives would have preferred that option. Oh well.

     The following pictures are taken with a Canon T3 and kit lens that I purchased back in September.

Sunsets are so entirely boring and cliché if you don't have a silhouette to throw over top of them. I got pretty lucky with this shot. The light and the natural framing did all the work for me.

An interesting brick facade that converted quite nicely to black and white. There's just a touch of photoshopping to correct a lens distortion on this particular shot. 

I had no idea what I was doing when I took this, but apparently a 1/200th second exposure wasn't enough to freeze the water droplets from the watering can, but a fill flash created sparkly refractions within the streaks of water. 

Taking pictures of people is hard for me, but once in a while the people will actually, somehow, end up in the right place at the right time... with the right aperture and exposure and ISO...

Following are a few Lego figure photographs. This first one is a representation of Sherlock Holmes' arch nemesis, Professor James Moriarty, from Conan Doyle's famous collection of mysteries. Holmes can be seen in the background of this photo. It was primarily an experiment with the water vapor from a humidifier. I found that it creates relatively convincing fog and smoke on this scale.

Robin Hood. The thieving protagonist of many an English legend. 

Prince John. The all around, no-good antagonist of many an English legend.

And finally, a representation of the Fiddler on the Roof. This picture is entirely backlit, and the sun is just a hole cut out of the orange paper. 

Thanks to all the people who's permission I did not ask before putting photographs of their animals or selves into this blog post. Lego men not included.

Relativity of Normality

"No one who can rise before dawn, 360 days a year, will fail to make his family rich." - Chinese proverb as quoted by Malcolm Gladwell

"Instead of being regarded, as it ought to be, as a matter of personal convenience and adjustment, it has come to regarded by many as if it were part of the essential morals to get up early in the morning." - G.K. Chesterton

     It has occurred to me in recent days as I have simultaneously been reading Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, G.K. Chesterton's Tremendous Trifles, and Glenn Beck's Being George Washington that "normal" is an entirely relative term. As are "morality," "education," and "success." I suppose it's no big break-through, and I know I've vaguely acknowledged this fact before, but the combination of isolation, great literature, and winter break tends to clarify things... while at the same time making me question my self worth.
     I counted. With the exception of a horse show three Saturdays ago, I hadn't seen, let alone spoken with another person my age for 22 days straight. Regardless of the freshness of the company, I can get somewhat senile when I'm around only adults for that long. Thankfully, tagging along on a business trip to Chicago solved that problem, but not before I began to question the solidity of the definitions of normality and success.

     How should success be measured? Could a low perception of my self worth be determined merely by an incorrect definition of success? Can going 22 days without seeing another teenager be considered normal, even if I am an only child?

     Malcolm Gladwell, in his book on the "non-randomnity" of success named Outliers, presented, (in his enjoyable way), a study conducted in 1921 by a man named Lewis Terman. In essence, the study concluded that children with IQs in the genius level were, later in life, divided into as many successes and failures as a grouping of people with entirely random IQs. This meant that a child of a high IQ had an equal chance of success in adulthood as a child of a low IQ. What, then, determined the success and failure of Terman's group of geniuses, or, for that matter, the success and failure of anyone? Poring over data collected throughout the duration of the study, the only unifying factor between all of the successes and between all of the failures was upbringing, family background, financial status, and social status. 

     Terman's study was able to pattern the adults into three groups; A, B, and C. The 150 comprising top 20% were what Terman called the "A group;" the "true success stories." The middle 60% was the B group. These were the adults who were doing "satisfactorily." The bottom 20% were the C group. These were the adults "who had done the least with their superior mental ability." The data showed that nearly all of the successful adults had, as children, come from the middle or upper class; from families who raised them in concerted cultivation. This is simply a method of actively fostering talent through activities and organized lessons or instruction. It's the kind of childhood I had for roughly the first ten years of my life, and, to some degree, it still is my life; but not to the same extent. Somewhere along the way in my life, there was something of a paradigm shift; a prioritizing. It was not a shift however, if I can use the metaphor, in "getting up before dawn" like the Chinese, to Chesterton's appreciation for sleeping in. Rather, it was a recognition that "making your family rich" is not "an essential moral."

     But to clarify. I do not, in any way, think it is wrong or immoral to make money or be materially successful. On the contrary, it is good that we prosper in the work God has given us. Money is not the root of all evil. It is the love of money that is the root of all evil. (1 Timothy 6:10). 

     In moving away from the society of concerted cultivation and into a society of agricultural cultivation, it placed our family, once in the middle class, into a culture which is primarily the working class. It places me in the unique position where I interact with people on both ends of Terman's alphabetical spectrum. Unfortunately that usually implies large swings from low self esteem to a "too-high" self esteem. 

     I'm starting to realize that it shouldn't bother me in the least to know I may have more material potential than what my circumstances dictate. It doesn't bother me because I'm realizing that in the long run, material success is not that "standard to which the wise and honest can repair" to quote George Washington. What really matters when it's all said and done, is not material success or even fame. It's success in the Kingdom. It's relationship. It's discipleship. Sure it'd be nice to win a Nobel Prize in Physics, or see your own book on the shelves of Barnes and Noble, but here again, the kind of self esteem that is generated in success is essentially worth nothing in the world to come unless it is done to glorify the King and advance the Kingdom on earth; a very tough order, but never one to shy away from.

     If my goal is success in the world, I may be justified in my drop of self esteem. As it is, I have no cause to see myself as any less (or any greater) than the range of classes that my life is presenting me with. Why? Because my self esteem should dictated by my contentment in my current community, family, and lifestyle; not by comparisons to the lives of others. No longer should I dabble in comparisons as I attend the same online school as a television actor and a boy who's written a book on positional chess, before picking up fresh milk from the dearest working class farmers that live down the road. Contentment, and not comparison is the key to a healthy self esteem. Glenn Beck, in the authors note at the beginning of Being George Washington sums it up quite nicely as he places things in the proper perspective:
     "You're not going to be George Washington next week, or even next year. You may not, in fact, ever cross the finish line. But that's okay. It's the simple act of reaching for a standard that so many others will dismiss at unattainable that is enough to make a real difference. I can tell you unequivocally that being George Washington will be the hardest thing you will attempt to do in your life. But it will also be the most fulfilling and rewarding. Living a life of honor, integrity, and humility may not make you millions of dollars, or result in your name being splashed across movie posters, but you will earn something far more enduring: the lasting respect of those you care about most, and if that doesn't happen, well, you can always eat ice cream."

On that note, I'm off to eat some ice cream... perhaps with some other kids my age. I've officially decided that's normal.

Blinkingcursoritis

"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." - Ernest Hemingway

     Blin•king•cur•sor•itis: n. A neurological disease closely related to Writer's Blockosis in which those infected stare endlessly at the blinking cursor at the beginning of a blank Word document, email, or blog post, trying to think of what to say.

     I think I officially have this disease. In fact, I had to take medication just to write that last sentence. I hate medication. But that's beside the point if there is a point to be beside. In my case, the disease usually manifests itself when I'm trying to remember how to be creative, or when I have to make the first sentence of an argumentative research paper on ancient astronomy somehow sound interesting. If you've ever written a paper on ancient astronomy, you'll know why that's not as easy as it sounds. This is especially true if you're me, and you worry if you're sounding like a moose (however that's possible), or you place yourself in the shoes of Captain Nemo, the guy from 20000 Leagues Under the Sea, and wonder how he would handle the situation. In my case, by the time I've finished hypothesizing about how Captain Nemo would write a paper on astronomy, I will have ended up sounding like a moose anyway, and will have managed to slide, face-down onto the floor moaning, and without having written a single word.
While moaning for a while on the floor does tend to make things a little better, I'm going to play doctor here and prescribe a few things that have helped with my case of Blinkingcursoritis.

1. Pray on it. Maybe it does have cliche connotations, but this is probably the best think you can do to work through a difficult few opening paragraphs. "Humble yourselves, therefore,  under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you." 1 Peter 5:6-7.
2. Listen to inspiring music. Classical is always good for important, critical, or analytical papers, Epica works for research projects, and period music is always the best choice for books or short stories.
3. Eat a cookie. Chocolate chip for maximum brain usage. I made that up.
4. Write a paragraph from somewhere in the middle of the work, or write a rough concluding sentence, then work back to the opening.
5. Outline. To use a metaphor, outlines are the dinosaurs in the natural history museum. Finished papers are the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. When everything else has decomposed, your outline should still be left. Make it strong.
6. Bang your head against a wall. It's scary how well this works.
7. Type a few dozen random letters and numbers, then backspace them all. It somehow feels constructive.
8. Come back to it. I have a really hard time with this one, but sometimes it can be best to let it sit for a while. Fresh eyes often times make all the difference.
9. Eat another cookie. Repeat, if necessary.
10. Start your work like you would start a fictional story. Dramatize your emails, hyperbolize your research papers, and enliven your newspaper columns. In some cases, it's easier to desaturate the drama out of a work to a realistic level than it is to work straight into that realistic level. 

So, the foregoing list is probably nothing new, but it's helped me get through a few tough papers this past week, and it's always a good excuse for eating cookies!

Turkey and Dolphins

"They began now to gather in the small harvest they had, and to fitte up their houses and dwellings against winter, being all well recovered in health and strength, and had all things in good plenty." -William Bradford

     

     Our family traveled to Indiana this year for Thanksgiving. It was a monumental feat in and of itself to assemble one entire side of my family and extended family for a day and a half. Add half-a-dozen grand-puppies to half-a-dozen cousins trying to work together in the kitchen, to me skipping around with a camera, to my aunt conspicuously showing off her felt turkey hat, to deep questions about the meaning of life, and you get dolphins. We debated hotly about the meaning of life, and even placed a Skype call to Australia, but the cousins and I officially concluded that dolphins are the meaning of life.

     On a slightly less aquatic note, this year's Thanksgiving was a great "second Succoth" for our family. Much like Thanksgiving minus the pilgrims, Succoth, or "Booths," is the Biblical festival that closes the traditional Bible reading cycle, and looks forward to the heavenly feast of Revelation 19.

Succoth is the final fall feast in the list of seven Biblical feasts, and it originates in Deuteronomy 16:13-15: 

"You shall keep the Feast of Booths seven days, when you have gathered in the produce from your threshing floor and your winepress ... because the LORD your God will bless you in all your produce and in all the work of your hands, so that you will be altogether joyful."

     It may even be speculated that the very first Thanksgiving was actually a modified version of Succoth. As we see from William Bradford's writings, he studied the Hebrew scriptures and language quite extensively, and we may assume that the original Thanksgiving on the shores of North America was a New-World spin on the Biblical harvest feast. Our family has been celebrating Succoth for several years now, and with every new Feast of Booths, it's given us a chance to look back toward the journey of the Hebrews through the wilderness, and forward toward the coming wedding feast in heaven.

     This year, our feasting and our reasons to be thankful were doubled with our trip to Indiana for the Thanksgiving holiday. It was great to see my cousins again, and even amid tens of dozens of card games, and late nights of Ping-Pong, we still managed to find the meaning of life. In fact, we even discovered that "nothing" is a theological impossibility, that all paradox is fundamentally literary, and that it is, in fact, possible to eat too much turkey. Dolphins, however, somehow remained the trump card to all discussions. Go figure.

Tree of Life

  "The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see." - Winston Churchill

     Movies don't have to be designed to entertain, and that's what makes Tree of Life stand out. It's simply not entertaining; and it's incredible. Watch Captain America and then watch Tree of Life like I did, and you'll get the two opposite ends of the spectrum in modern filmmaking.

     Captain America was a WWII (I think) super hero movie with a science-fictional American Flag flying out front and some incredible special effects as bunting on the front porch. But it was fun. A Jewish professor makes a super-human patriot to fight a creepy red-faced guy with weapons fit for Star Trek. The hero sort-of dies, ending up in present day face to face with Mace Windu wearing an eye-patch. It made little sense to me, but the plot was predictable, the dialogue was as rich as a potato chip, the good guy got the girl, and wonderfully digital explosions were as frequent as prairie dogs in Nebraska. 

     This is what audiences want. Something that looks awesome and has enough feel-good quality to keep them in their seat for an hour and a half. Movies have much more potential. Film is a sorely unexplored medium in today's theological public sphere. Sure there may always be a subliminal (or liminal) agenda of some sort in all movies, but when personal interpretations can't skirt or avoid certain intentions of the writer or director themselves, there is a new level of idea sharing that takes place on a massive cultural scale. 

     Tree of Life is a movie that asks questions. It's a movie that leaves questions unanswered, but has closure and even a sprinkling of redemption. The film is an artistic presentation of the struggle between the way of nature and the way of grace. Jack, a man who'd name is mentioned only in passing, is a aging businessman in the present day, swimming through the fog of memory, resentment toward God, and questions left unanswered. Though he never directly speaks, and if he does, it is strangely inconsequential and intentionally muted, we feel the sterility of his soul through the dull frostiness of his home, office, and the wasteland of his thoughts. At the beginning of the film, we learn that Jack's brother, who remains unnamed, died at age 19. Jack is seen to light a small memorial candle in a small blue bowl before he leaves his home for his job in the city. Though not immediately apparent, I think that the two paths through life are represented artistically through the use of color. The darker, warm colors are often paired with the severity and selfishness of nature, while softer, cool colors are paired with grace. The candle in the blue container speaks to the proposition that the way of nature and the way of grace may not be mutually exclusive. 

     As Jack journeys through his memories of innocence, childhood, and adolescence, we see the representation of color as idea often presented through the environments, the light, and even the clothing in the story. Jack's childhood is torn between his fear of their father and the gentleness of his mother. At an early age, Jack is divided between hate, grief, and a desire to do good. Jack, as a boy, is emotionally tormented, and he struggles to find balance, but his questions to God remain unanswered. Jack's clothing continues to vary between warm and cool colors, while his parents' attires generally remain indicative of their initial paths in life. A stunning use of jump cuts and minimal dialogue paired with vivid composition and lighting ads to the juxtaposition of worldview. 

     Amid his recollections of his childhood, the adult Jack's mind flies to the beginning of time. In arguably the most incredible half hour of cosmic film since the IMAX Hubble Telescope movie, Jack attempts to find meaning in the creation of the universe. Apparently most of this sequence was created by pouring milk through funnels and troughs, filming it at an extremely fast frame-rate. Never before has spilt milk been so epic. Complex pairing of color in the cosmic expanses gives way to an injured dinosaur, lying on the pebbles of a green stream bed. In the first act of earthly grace, a predator dinosaur spares the life of the injured one. This is quite a testament to the innate quality of grace. The movie implies that the world was not created to run under the way of nature. The earth was created by grace and for grace, but the flame of sin kindled the selfish, self-consuming way of nature. 

     As a young teenager, Jack is given a chance to easily kill his father, but spares him. Gradually, Jack's father realizes his mistakes in his life and in his family and he begins to abandon the selfish way of nature.

     As an adult, we can still see Jack's tormented and whitewashed soul. The warm and cool colors of life have faded into the steel and glass of the company elevator. Jack returns to his thoughts, and is guided to the end of time where the earth remains a barren wasteland after the death of the sun. On a sandbar, Jack is given a vision of eternity. People from his childhood are walking through the sand on the beach, reminiscent of C.S. Lewis's "further up, and further in" of the Narnian paradise. Jack meets his both of his brothers, still presented in their childhood age. In a previous scene, Jack as an adult is seen with Jack as a child in a desert alcove. Perhaps Jack as an adult has parted ways with the Jack of his childhood. Perhaps the adult Jack has given up the way of nature and embraced the way of grace along with his mother, his changed father, and his young brothers.

     As jack leaves his office building, he looks around and smiles.

     The film ends with a wavering orange flame. Perhaps a stinging reminder of the fallen world we live in. 

Simplicity

"A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit, and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?" - Albert Einstein

     Einstein couldn't exactly be called the master of simplicity. A few sentences of General Relativity is enough to give you a migraine for a week. But it is an innate quality of the human psyche to desire order and clarity, even though the fallen state of matter tends toward chaos. Maybe this an aspect of the eternal tug-of-war between light and darkness; between good and evil. I think the notion of simplicity resides on a number of psychological and spiritual planes. Perhaps it lives in the single beam of light shining through a crack in a dusty barn, or the minimalist composition of a tree on a winter horizon. It can exist in a deep sigh or in the closing of the eyes. It can exist in a day of hard, fulfilling work and in the trill of a piccolo in a symphony. Perhaps it lives only in memories, or in the pages of a book. It can reside in the wind, rolling through the hills, and the whinny of a horse in the early morning. But what is chaos? Chaos can be seen in the crawl of congested traffic or in the adrenaline-affected thoughts of a terrorist. Most obviously, it's the state of my room's floor right now, or a day of nonstop, unfulfilling activity. 

     Lay the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle into their box and then shake the box. The puzzle will not put itself together. The same is true of Legos. Shaking a box of Legos in hope that they will build an airplane is an obvious waste of time. It takes a conscious and motivated mind to create order and wholeness from chaos. The chaotic state of the world is the unfortunate reality of sin. A world largely without holiness is a world without order; a world largely devoid of simplicity. 

    Simplicity is not just a fact of certain events or instances. It is not limited to austerity or to rest. Simplicity is an outlook. In a world full of nonsensical numbers and the endless pursuit of meaning, Einstein found simplicity in a bowl of fruit and a violin. We have the ability to consciously observe and appreciate things in their simplest forms. Maybe it's the steam off of a cup of tea, the laugh of a child, or the satisfaction in a completed task. We should endeavor, not to deny reality or over-simplify to black and white, but to recognize the beauty of the simple things in life.

Oranges and Elephants

"Suit the action to the word, and the word to the action." - William Shakespeare     

     No word in the English dictionary rhymes with "orange." "Orange," therefore, is a special word. On a half-intensional quest for interestingness, I did a little etymological search on the word "orange" in the Oxford English Dictionary. If the OED were an ordinary, bound dictionary, its thickness might rival the height of the Empire State Building. Fortunately for me, the online school where I take a couple of my classes has a privileged access to the online dictionary database. Convert a book the size of the Empire State Building into bandwidth, and you suddenly realize why everyone else on the cafe wifi just lost internet access.

     But I digress. Suffice to say that "orange" had quite the etymological history, much to my satisfaction. The word comes from the original Sanskrit phrase, "naga ranga." The phrase literally means "fatal indigestion for elephants." The origins go way back to the Biblical story of the Fall. The Malaysian peoples of ancient times had created a story based on Genesis, but with an elephantine twist of their own. Allegedly, it was the elephant, not the human, that stumbled upon a beautiful, fruit-laden tree in this Malay story. Tempted by the fruit on what happened to be an orange tree, the elephant committed the first sin of gluttony and ate them all. Then, on the spot, the overindulged elephant exploded. Dozens of years later, a man stumbled upon the fossilized remains of the exploded elephant, and found many orange trees growing in what had been the elephant's stomach. "Naga ranga!" the man cried. "What fatal indigestion for elephants!" The phrase was eventually translated into English as "orange" via Persian, Arabic, regional Italian, Portuguese, Middle French, and Anglo Norman.

     For one of only a few English words without rhymes, "Orange's" etymology is certainly one-of-a-kind as well. Also one-of-a-kind, is my appreciation for crazy stuff like this. I was going to draw a picture of an exploding elephant to complement this post, but I thought better of it. You're welcome.

Thanks to the OED and westegg.com/etymology