Coffee and Cathedrals

You know, I came here with plans to work off another juicy Dorothy Sayers quote. I've been reading a lot of her lately. School starts next week for me, and she's a good author for kick-starting the brain - not an easy read, per se, but nowhere near the brain-scrambling certain ancient Greek philosophers give me.*

Then I sat down at a new booth in a new coffee place. It isn't just a coffee house; technically, it's a restaurant with a coffee bar and a big beautiful silver espresso machine**, with bags of coffee lining the shelves.*** There's lot of semi-finished honey-colored wood, setting off antiqued clap-board walls, and massive windows, a rack of upside-down wine glasses hanging in the corner. The menus are in simple fonts, the furnishings are cared-for and rustic, like you might find deep in your grandparents' house.

I came in here a little tense from not knowing the area and trusting the wisdom of the all-knowing Google Maps, feeling a bit achy and tired from recent weather swings and allergies, and just a smidgen worn from moving to a new place where I barely know a soul. I've been here for fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. There are three, maybe four other customers in here, with a couple infants to boot. Usually, I dislike being in near-empty restaurants. This is pleasant, sort of like bobbing along in a calm lake.

Places are important. So are people, but the way a space sits, what fills it, in what order it is filled, these things matter. Spaces can impact attitudes. Sometimes, it's a subtle effect. I firmly believe the impact of physical spaces and locations is perilously underrated. Another coffee place I've visited was one sizeable open room, with chairs and tables arranged in the middle of the room in a big rectangle. Everything was visible from everywhere, and it all felt very public. It created a distinctly different atmosphere than this place, which has some high booth walls set to create the feeling of a little privacy, not the paranoia someone was always looking over your shoulder to your laptop screen.

If nothing else, think of a cathedral. A beautiful, Romanesque or Gothic cathedral, tall, marble, reaching for the heavens. Now think of the last few church buildings you've visited.

I'm not saying we should abandon the average modern church building, or that there is necessarily anything wrong with those structures. I am saying the architecture matters, the space matters. Craftsmanship matters. Someone deliberated and loved and cared for this space. It is not a feeling I find often, and it is a balm to the soul when I stumble into it.


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*I'm looking at you, Plotinus.

**Which, I've just been informed, is Italian, was the first of its kind to make it to Dallas, and originally priced around $18,000.

***The same kind of coffee used in my coffee house of choice in Waco, coincidentally. It's the little things.

Sayers; Words; Kim Kardashian

"At the present time, we have a population that is literate, in the sense that everybody is able to read and write; but, owing to the emphasis placed on scientific and technical training at the expense of the humanities, very few of our people have been taught to understand and handle language as an instrument of power." - Dorothy Sayers.

Sounds familiar, right? I can't pin down the exact date this essay was composed, but Sayers mentions the scarcity of eggs elsewhere, so I'm assuming this can be traced to World War II, or the period very shortly thereafter. We're talking sixty-five years ago. Now we live in a world with Twitter.* (I would love to get Sayers's take on Twitter. She possessed a biting wit bordering on and often traipsing into acerbity.)

Words have immeasurable power, but they are only tools;  they are not possessed intrinsically of any particular morality. The purpose toward which they work is dependent on the person utilizing them. As things stand, most people use words for trivialities. Most do this simply because they have never been shown or understood the forces with which they play. This, on the surface, is tragic.**

The possible implications are more terrifying. There will always be some people keenly aware of the power they can hold when they write or speak. Some of these people will have moral objections to using this power in a manipulative fashion. Some will not. Those in the latter category will not hesitate to run roughshod over people who do not recognize the power of words. These people will be flattered, inflamed, and manipulated, with little recourse.

I could really go on here and start rambling about words as symbols and the connection to real meanings and Forms and Plato.*** But I won't, because I cannot even begin to do justice to the topic in a blog post.

Thoughts?

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*I must confess, there is a Twitter account that perfectly encapsulates this phenomena of which Sayers speaks. The account contains the "philosophy of Soren Kierkegaard mashed with the tweets and observations of Kim Kardashian." It tweets jewels such as "Sunglasses & Advil... Where am I? Who am I? What is this thing called the world? How did I come here? ...last night was mad trill."

**It's like most college kids driving around carelessly in obscenely expensive sports cars they do not need and that their parents procured for them. This is not the best analogy, but the point's there.

***I do mean "rambling."

In which I remember I like school

I know it's time for school to start when my map directions read "Commerce St Crowdus", and I immediately wonder who Crowdus was and why the church canonized him.

Seriously, though, I'm starting to miss writing papers - that building excitement when you finally ask the right question for your thesis. The silent cheer when you stumble across the perfect passage for your argument that you hoped existed but couldn't quite remember. The confusion and tentative self pat-on-the-back upon re-reading a cogent and artful paragraph you never recall having actually written.* I'm almost to the point of missing research and libraries and electronic databases, but not quite yet. I had a few bad semi-manic moments due to the sheer amount of time I spent in library cubicles last semester.

I think academia is stuffy and overblown. I also think the experiences it can provide, when managed well, are singular and extraordinary. It is a shame many of the books read in a well-rounded university education are only read in universities. It's all a matter of balance. Becoming too absorbed in academics leaves one incapable of dealing with real life, but there are many things discussed in academics that matter. Good, evil, beauty, love, friendship, ethics - these are important and need to be considered.

On a completely different note, I finally saw Dark Knight Rises. Selina Kyle and I would be friends. Good friends. Tom Hardy sold Bane, Alfred was good old Alfred, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Robin - well, I want one, please. Dadgum, he was adorable and driven and just...a good guy. And that "Rise" scene. And the army of cops. And the ending, really. I can't believe Nolan got away with that ending without excess sentimentality or triteness. Who writes like that?** *runs off to watch Inception again*


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*To borrow from Gaiman and Pratchett, in the back matter of Good Omens, oftentimes one's work starts to generate text on its own, with no authorial input.

**Wow, I just wrote a paragraph about Batman with no spoilers. I didn't know whether I could manage it.

Lands.

Well, it's been a while. The afternoon after my last blog post, someone broke into my car, taking my purse, wallet, and phone. It's taken a while to recover from that, and I'm still not mentally settled about it at all. (On the plus side, I had some graduation money that covered most of the costs of getting the car window and phone replaced. iPhones are pretty cool. Just saying.)

Relocating to a new city is rough. I've moved many times in my life, but this is the first to a place I've never lived, completely on my own. I know about half a dozen people. While I'm making a lot of connections, I simply haven't been here long enough to have roots. It's making me think a lot about both sides of it - the importance of having a few people you can trust, and the importance of having a healthy amount of self-sufficiency. We need other people. It's an inescapable fact, one I don't care for on some days. On the other hand, leaning on others to the point of codependency is unhealthy and one of my least favorite character traits.

I don't have much of an argument or point to be made here. I'm just a little spiritually beat up at the moment, and writing is therapeutic, hence this little disorganized snippet.

On the plus side, Doctor Who Series 7 is slated for September 1. Who's excited?

Lessons; ramblings; homicidal elves

I have a lot rattling around half-formed in my subconscious, but this weekend about killed me. I have not been this weary since my last round of finals. It's that heavy, stultifying exhaustion that clings to one's bones and throws a dark cloud over everything. 

Thankfully, it should pass soon*. I am completely finished moving to the big D now, in more than a few ways. While I have moved many times previously, this one has been easier and more difficult in many ways. True, I was only in Waco for two years, but they were important years. I fell into an actual group of friends for the first time. I became a little less socially clueless. I learned what it was like to have to work hard at school. I realized how important great books are, and how unimportant great books are. Perhaps most crucially, I started being okay with being me.** On the more painful side, I've learned some friendships simply aren't meant to last, and that forgiving people does not mean I have to remain in a state of friendship with them. Some people are jerks, and I can't change that. Such is life.

That got heavier than I was intending. Happy things. Kittens and rainbows. Series 7 of Doctor Who. Lamborghinis. Swimming pools.***

Oh yeah, apparently Peter Jackson's turning The Hobbit into a trilogy, drawing on Tolkien's appendices for material. Y'all heard that? My excitement and apprehension are evenly balanced right now. If anyone can do it, Jackson can. He'd have to. The outrage over a poorly-done or made-for-the-money third film would be catastrophic. Let's face it, some nut dressed as Legolas would try to take out Jackson with a bow and arrow while swearing vehemently in Elvish.****

This post didn't start with an infinite amount of immanent design, and what little organization there might have been is dwindling, so I'll just conclude here. Have a good week, everyone! 

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*Honestly, I think half of the raging headache I have is due to all the Clorox fumes I inhaled yesterday in the Last Great Apartment Cleaning. I know the upper back tension is due to the file cabinet I wrestled down a set of stairs.

**I owe a couple people beyond what I can repay for assisting on that front.

***It's 104 degrees here. I love Texas with the exceptions of the summertime and the high school football craze. 

****We all know it's true. Also, I am not saying anything negative here about someone dressing as Legolas. I went to a Dallas-area comic-con last year as Amy Pond. I would be, however, infinitely critical of someone dressing as Legolas with the purpose of assassinating Peter Jackson over a bad movie.

Moving; Faith; Power Cords of Death

Well, my computer is being recalcitrant again and not connecting to this coffeeshop’s internet. I find this vaguely funny, considering I set up the router in my new apartment not three hours ago. However, I do not possess the appliances (or skill set) to whip up a mocha in my apartment, so the trip was worth it.* 

As you might have gathered, I just moved. I’m starting grad school this fall in Dallas, which is the only major city in Texas in which I have not previously lived. It’s been a crazy summer. So far, I’ve put 5,000 miles on my car, played two Ultimate tournaments, shot a lot of .9, had a record number of good conversations, survived a near-miss with electrocution,** and fished a segment of utility knife out of my disposal.***

Ha! There you are, internet!****

I did have a point behind all that rambling. It's been a rollercoaster summer with all kinds of terrific days and stupid mishaps. Some days were so unexpectedly terrific I felt like I had an aureole of happiness sort of emanating from my person.***** Other days involved things going wrong that were so simple I didn't think they could have gone wrong.******

It was a lot easier to trust God on those good days, the days where the sun shone and I all but skipped along with Disney bluebirds chirping around my head. I felt like trusting and believing. Those other days with headaches and sleep deprivation entailed a lot more choice. I may not have felt like trusting or believing, but faith has no purchase in feeling. Sometimes we just have to suck it up and plow through and know things will turn out how they're supposed to, even if we don't exactly understand the end game. 

I realize this is something that's been said/shared/written about a million times over, but that's been my last week. How has yours been?

Edit: I'm not sure about the clientele here. The barista is currently explaining the very basics of Lord of the Rings to a vacantly giggling customer, because she's heard of The Hobbit movie and has no idea what it's about. Not to mention the chick wearing a transparent lace top over nothing but a bra or the other girl in gratuitously short shorts and heels. I realize I drift toward intellectual snobbery at times, but where do these people come from, and will you join me in a period of collective mourning for society? 


Then again, this chair is really comfortable, the mocha was superb, and cute-guy-in-the-button-up looks a bit like Tahmoh Penikett, so I'm okay with that. I would come back here.

Oh, good, I did get a nice nerd reference in there. I was worried for a moment I was slacking off.

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*What cracks me up is the magazine clipping by the register. It was clearly written by someone older with little grasp of popular technology, because the article mentions "a lot of twenty-somethings absorbed in their Dells." I see a lot of glowing half-bitten apples. I feel like a PC pariah.

**This occurring five minutes after I signed my lease, of course. Sadly, as things popped, and sparks flew from the dryer cord, and I backpedaled away, all I could think of was this: http://xkcd.com/616/. 

***Seriously, who with three firing neurons drops crap like that down someone’s disposal?

****Thank you, cute guy in the button-up for providing the password. You win.

*****It's a sort of warm, peach-colored light.

******I'm looking at you, dryer cord, you wretch.

Summer Soldiers and Sunshine Patriots

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value.” - Thomas Paine


The last day has been whirlwindish*. I walked through my parents' front door for the first time in two weeks to find out my uncle had a heart attack yesterday morning. I'd been expecting that call to be about my grandfather, who's been suffering from Parkinson's for over a decade. As details emerged, I found my uncle, through recognition of pre-heart attack pains, had known what was about to occur. He'd taken aspirin and promptly dialed the ambulance for himself.** They're considering placing a picture of him near the encyclopedia entry on "prescience." At the moment, he is relatively stable, and doctors are debating whether to insert more stents in his heart or go straight to bypass surgery.


It has been a sobering and humbling 24 hours that's seemed twice as long. People I expected to get in touch didn't, and people I contacted out of desperation for more intercession called and prayed over the phone. I've learned a few things. Scares have a way of doing that. They strip away the effluvia of life, the stupid, petty things we deem necessary until the raw shock of the unexpected clears our vision***. They certainly possess the power to force us to evaluate our bases. On what do we depend, do we stand, do we presume shall remain firm beneath our feet?


Scares tend to make one either shut off or completely vulnerable. I don't much care for being vulnerable. The act of being open entails far more trust than I often feel comfortable giving. That's okay sometimes; people cannot always be trusted. It's when I have a dearth of trust in God that the problem starts. Trusting people is risky business, to be sure, but it is sometimes necessary.


I am so thankful for the people who immediately began praying and have continued, and will continue. The simple act of telling someone you care and are involved means so much.


I don't know a better way to conclude than to quote an old song: On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand, all other ground is sinking sand.






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*Shut up, Chrome, I know it isn't a word your prosaic dictionary accepts. I'm a writer. I can make up words if I so deign.
**Yeah, he's a pretty cool uncle.
***'Effluvia' is such a good word.