Fangirl, meet Fanboy

One of the things my boyfriend and I marvel at most is how many things - specifically stories - we're mutually passionate about and how they led us to meet and get to know one another.  There have been several moments where I just have to shake my head and smile at how much fun it is to appreciate stories together.  So I thought I'd share a few of those moments.

(Key: S=me, M=him)


The day after we met, he was perusing my blog...
S: Oh, I apologize in advance, there's a LOT of stuff on my blog about Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hiddleston, because I'm a huge fan of them both.
M: Well... how could you not be?

Discussing "important life questions," such as, favorite Avenger?
S: Can I choose Loki?
M: *smiles* Samara, I'm so glad you're a Loki girl rather than a Thor girl...  Deeply dynamic, understandably pained characters like Loki are precious to good stories, for them to last with you.

We were chatting with some of my family and...
M: I just love Patrick Stewart.  I met him at Comic Con last year.  Patrick Stewart is my [gestures to me] Benedict Cumberbatch.

On our first official date, we arrived at the restaurant early. So he pulls out one of his flutes and plays me "Concerning Hobbits" - from memory. 

During the craze of the Ice Bucket Challenge...

S: Ooh! Benedict did the Ice Bucket Challenge :) 

M: [watches] Haha - has Hiddleston done one yet?? 

S: Yes! [sends it to him] 

M: Brilliant!

He is a wonderful Trekkie, and also a huge fan of lions. The other day I find this on FB. 

M: Lion's log stardate 08271.4: I have encountered a new and intriguing life form called the Beautiful Girlfriend. My investigation may require all my attention. 

We read one of Matt's favorite books and now we're reading one of mine, Pride & Prejudice. It is completely new to him & he is "flipping loving it." Last night he was live-texting me his reaction to Darcy's proposal at Hunsford. Below are snippets of our conversation: 

M: [Sends a photo of the "In vain I have struggled…" line] Wut. :D Like, wow!!! Yes!! C:

S: Hehe, Matt are you developing a mancrush on Darcy? It's totally ok...I won't be jealous! 

M: I mean I... Well, yes, in fact I'm quite over Wickham and have put on my Team Darcy t-shirt... 

[a few minutes later] 

M: Shut. Down! 

S: Looks like someone ain't Team Darcy 

M: Not in the least... 

[a few more minutes] 

M: Oh my gosh that was the best fight I've ever read. 

 

These are just a few of many moments where I've been really thankful to be in a relationship with this Fanboy :) 

Next Steps

Have you ever told yourself that this thing you love is just a side thing, a hobby, something you will only love amateurly? And then one day you woke up and realized that all along it was the thing?

Well, I have.

If you've read much of anything I post on here, you know I can boil down quite a few of my favorite things to stories, narrative, adaptations, novels, films, that sort of thing...  Last fall, I began really wrestling with what these passions are for and how they might all fit together.  Graduate school had been weighing on my mind for some time - but grad school for what exactly?  Somehow, I didn't think, "I just really love stories - will you let me back in?" was going to cut it for a personal statement. But, there were times sitting at an office desk when I couldn't help but whisper to myself, "I don't belong here..."

When I finally did allow myself to believe that maybe I could actually pursue this thing I love so deeply, it became clear that going back to school was the necessary step.  So I entered this marathon of applications, I put a label on what I want to research - "transmuted adaptation" - and I started asking for a lot of help.  After a very grueling application process, a lot of prayer, too many vague posts, and anxiously waiting...

I am very excited to announce that I am returning to school this September. I will be pursuing a Master's in English and Film at Oregon State University and, thanks to their generous funding package, I'll also be teaching English composition.

Thinking about graduate school makes me feel like I'm returning home and that I'm venturing into some wilderness all at the same time.  And I'm so excited!  Though I try again and again, stories matter more to me than I can articulate.  So for the next two years, I'm going to give myself to stories, to the power of a classic novel told in a new way, and to inspiring others why we need to keep reading these narratives.

I am going back to school.

One Bibliophile's Calendar

A time for every book under the sun
Or rather round the sun.
Different months call for different books;
A read for every season.
January is an amalgamation -
unfinished books from the prior year,
gifted books, bettering books.
February offers more choice:
What would you like to read?
March is best for modernism.
before marking her demise on the 28th
read some Woolf, and get into Eliot
before the "cruelest month."
April showers... mean sit in and read,
dive into that series, you have the time.
"Spring" for a re-read romance and
May-be find a way to "read out of doors."
June - despite the sun and celebrations,
your series is still making you feel "bibliosocial."
Summer is a time for sci-fi or short stories
or a good Shakespeare comedy.
If, in July, you can carve out a vacation
or just a rare quiet, sun-filled day,
binge-read a new author.
August is for finishing.  Just how much
can you finish before the re-start?
Sun to fog - September is transition
New routines, new books assigned in school
or cradled on suddenly-longer commutes.
At long last: Fall, the reader's utopia.
And Fall means fantasy.
For October - books, scarves, glasses are in vogue,
the bigger the book, the better.
Fantastical wanderings lead into November,
reifying characters and locales in our mind's eye.
Gothic is also good - Jane Eyre feels right
in a stormy or cold December night.
Then the holidays come, and with them,
re-assessed goals, another push to finish,
a search for the Word to make us real.
So we keep reading, keep becoming.

Stories

teach us how to love

and swallow sadness,

find light in darkness,

 turn away from despair.

Crafting and grafting us

into a plot much bigger,

much smaller

than our own.

They remake us

like their protagonists,

from coward to courageous.

Each story that passes

through our hands,

through our minds,

is a gift

wrapped up inside words.

 "Hello, old friend

and here we are,

you and me

on the last page."

Where they end

our hearts break or smile,

crying from tragedy or delight.

But then, our next page.

While their story ends,

our journey is only mid-way,

another chapter,

a new gift.

Top:  Nurse, Young Man, Kiss-a-gram

Below:  Old Man, Journalist, Hero

"We are all stories in the end..."
- The Doctor

"The end of a matter is better than it's beginning."

- Ecclesiastes 7.8

“If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars?"

- GK Chesterton

"It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer."
- Samwise Gamgee

  

“Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving.”  

- Madeleine L'Engle

"You were my new dream."

- Flynn Rider

"There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die...that we may appreciate the enjoyments of living."

- The Count

[HitRECord]

"Though truth is heavier than fiction,

Gravity lifts as the projectionist rolls tape.
And it makes us brave again"

- Sleeping at Last

"Ender is making it possible for the others his age to be playing in the park." 

"And Jesus died to save all men, of course." Graff sat up and looked at Anderson almost sadly. "But we're the ones," Graff said, "we're the ones who are driving in the nails." 

I'm reading Orson Scott Card's First Meetings, a collection of short stories in the Enderverse - including the original "Ender's Game" as it appeared in 1977 as a 50 page story.  It's so fascinating having first read the 1985 novel to approach this. 
Comparatively, this feels very in media res, but with surprising depth, making it very apparent that Card had already begun his complex world-building.  This makes me wonder if this is, perhaps, the best way for an author to enter their created world in sci-fi or fantasy.  Composing a short story would force the author to establish the mythology, history, and projected future while also presenting just a fraction of that story to test the waters.  Well, that's what I'm wondering, anyway.
Being shorter, things are much more direct - such as the lines above - but they are also profound.  Not quite a re-read, I'm still moved by earlier decisions - knowing the ramifications later on.  It's funny actually - I've read abridged versions and then later full versions of novels; I've read parallel novels; but this is the first time I've read the condensed version after reading the expanded story.  I suggest trying all three if you can at some point.  It's a marvelous exercise in narrative choices.

Ok, enough rambling.  Happy Thursday.

Ok... Rear Window - mind-blowing film & I'm now fascinated by the idea of diegetic narrative (which is a repetition by translation, though not of connotation). Also, thinking on how art benefits from self-imposed restraints by the artist. So many have gotten rid of those restraints, and their art obviously suffers. 

More to come. 

News-flash:  I love narrative!

Seriously - the past year, being out of school, has made me fall more in love with narrative than ever before.  I still can't articulate how awed I am by the power God gave us when He decided, "they will be story-tellers." 

I recently read an article on Relevant called "Why Christian's should Read more Fiction."  Excellent article! A few favorite bits:

I’d like to make a case for the imagined stories, the ones that can throttle our hearts and challenge our biases, and for the fictional characters who, if we get close enough, can become real...
The writer takes the chaos of what he sees, and does his best to weave a unified story that is somehow reflective of that experience. And it’s not necessarily his message or theme that is his offering of what is beautiful. The story itself is the offering. The story is the prayer...
We shouldn’t overlook the power of stories, both real and imagined, to move us, break down our walls and send us out wanting to love more...

I get all "jump-up-and-down-in-your-chair-excited" when reading this article.  Over the weekend, I was with extended family, all of whom were asking, "What's next for you?" or "Still thinking of grad school?"  And yes, yes it's still a thought.  But it challenges me to think, what comes after the summer?  What comes after this particular season of my life?

Then, today, my boss took me out to lunch and we spent most of the time comparing notes on books.  "Count of Monte Cristo - one of the best endings ever!" "Oh The Road was good, but terribly depressing..."  "Oh, you should get the goodreads app - it'll track your books and lists for you!"  "Julian Barne's, Sense of an Ending - now there's a brilliant take on memory and fiction..."   And there I am.  Coming alive, again, when immersed in a conversation about narrative. 

I have few specifics on what "career" I should pursue (I think I'm a bit too stir-crazy / "artistic" / hippy for a traditional "career"), but I know I need to be surrounded by and immersed in narrative. 

Basically, I need to find a job where people will pay me to read and discuss good books!  Does that position exist?

Questions

Ours is NOT a blind faith. 

"The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith is the firm foundation under everything which makes life worth living.  It's our handle on what we can't see."

Or according to the Amplified, faith is "the assurance (the confirmation, the title deed) of the things we hope for, being the proof of things we do not see, and the conviction of their reality."

So faith is not the absence of intellectual engagement.  Rather it is a stake in the invisible.  The soul's confirmation of an unfulfilled promise.

Christ didn't require that people shut off their minds, only that they quiet them and be open-minded enough to think in new ways.  To consider "re-birth."  To try "casting their nets" on the opposite side of the boat. 

In literature, there is a profound phenomena called "the suspension of disbelief."  A homo sapien, a being defined by rationality & creativity, can choose to abandon what they know of reality to enter and enjoy a story with fantastical components.  In this way, children fly to Neverland on fairy dust and a happy thought.  In this way, superheroes fight off aliens, toys come to life, and halflings save a distant world.  We are able to enjoy and even engage rationally with these narratives when we hush the voice that says, "That could never happen."

Faith acts in the same way.  But rather than reading, listening, or watching a story unfold, rather than merely "identifying" with a character, Christ invites us, dares us to enter the narrative for ourselves.  To suspend our disbelief and walk with a conviction of the reality that we hope for.  Like the best novelists, He has crafted a narrative we can trust - but not one devoid of questions.  There may come a day when we think "I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened." There are, like in so many of our favorite stories, times when we wonder or question or even doubt.

And yet this is faith to.

We choose to believe "It isn't what it is" - that there is a deeper magic.  But we also choose to engage with the narrative and the Narrator deeply enough to ask the haunting questions.  For in seeking the answer, in wrestling with the Angel, in crying out with anguish, like David before us - in these moments faith is made real.  We draw nearer to Father.  We discover our real name.  We exchange the "title deed" for the Promised Land. 

Wednesday Creatives: Sleeping at Last

Who couldn't use some inspiration on hump-day?

Currently enjoying one-man-band Sleeping At Last.

And do not miss their "500 miles" (as seen on Sincerely Yours)

Also, check them out on noisetrade.

Here's la chanson du jour:

Darkness will be rewritten

Into a work of fiction, you’ll see

As you pull on every ribbon

You’ll find every secret it keeps

The sound of the branches breaking under your feet

The smell of the falling and burning leaves

The bitterness of winter

Or the sweetness of spring

You are an artist

And your heart is your masterpiece

And I’ll keep it safe...