Random Things #1: Blisters and a Song

Since this post will be pretty random, I've started a line of Random Things Posts. We'll see how long it takes to get to 100, and then…I dunno, I can make a cake or something to celebrate.

I think I have too much time on my hands.

Anyway, I currently have a sense of both accomplishment and pain. Accomplishment because I've gone on to the next level of the cello, and pain because that next level is thumb position.

For those unfamiliar with the more obscure workings of the cello, thumb position is when you press the strings down with--you guessed it--your thumb. It's used to play things higher up on the strings, sort of like this:

Steven Sharp Nelson, my hero. If you haven't heard of him, YouTube the Piano Guys. You won't regret it.

My cello journey has led me to this book, which is currently the bane of my existence:

Don't trust how friendly it looks on the outside. It is evil.

You know that you've gone too far on an instrument when your teacher tells you that if your thumb starts hurting and turning red and you can feel your pulse in it, you should stop practicing. Fortunately the only hard part of thumb position is starting, because you need to get a callous on your thumb, which according to my teacher comes from practicing enough that you get a blister and start growing new levels of skin. Lovely.

That was probably way more information than you wanted to know, but now you have been warned. Steven Sharp Nelson may look happy now, but his thumb has gone through intense agony in the past. 

Anyway, I've practiced thumb position for probably a total of 5 minutes so far, so I'd better get on it. Those callouses won't make themselves!  :P

I've also been discovering Mumford and Sons, one of those bands that has been out there for a while but I hadn't really thought about or listened to much before now. I like how thoughtful their lyrics are, and even if I don't quite understand all of what they're trying to get across, the imagery is gorgeous. Mumford's voice is sort of rough, which might be annoying to some people but I like the air of sincerity it gives to the songs.

Their song "After the Storm" has become one of my favorites. If you haven't heard it, you should look it up!

What do you think of the song? And have you had any painful experiences with instruments? Feel free to share in the comments!

A Grief Observed...Observed

All right, now for this blog's first book review. Further up and further in!

A few days ago I read C.S. Lewis's A Grief Observed. It didn't take long, since it was 76 pages. I went into it knowing only what was on the flap, which declared, 

"Written after his wife's tragic death as a way of surviving the 'mad midnight moments,' A Grief Observed is C.S. Lewis's honest reflection on the fundamental issues of life, death, and faith in the midst of loss." 

Thus, I read the first-person-narrated book as autobiography. Lewis even mentioned something about what notebooks he was using to write this all down, which added more authenticity to the story. 

Well, fast-forward to a few days later at breakfast. (Or was it lunch, or maybe dinner? Meals tend to blend together.) In the midst of reading a book called The Riddle of Joy, a collection of speeches and essays about Chesterton and Lewis, I skipped forward to the middle of a speech by Lewis's former secretary, Walter Hooper, because I saw that he was writing about A Grief Observed. And I started laughing. 

The flap was wrong. At least, according to this guy's experiences with Lewis. The book was not autobiographical, and Lewis actually took pains to make sure that people knew that! He published under a pseudonym and with a different publisher than he usually used, but everyone still guessed it was him and assumed that the book narrated his personal struggles. 

He got letters from people saying that they knew he was the real author. According to Hooper,

"I don't recall anything which seemed to irritate him [Lewis] so much. The response which he dictated to me usually began, 'All right. So you know.' As he made clear in a number of his books, he found it annoying when people found it impossible to understand an author's ability to 'invent.'"

I thought that was hilarious. And how serendipitous that I discovered that right after reading the book! Poor Lewis must have rolled over in his grave when they published that front flap.

All right, moving on to A Grief Observed itself:

Isn't this a gorgeous cover? I like these reprints.

Now that I know that it was not an actual autobiography, a lot of the book's impact has faded. Its real attraction (at least to me) was the revelation that even a brilliant man and a great apologist had struggles and doubts. Much of A Grief Observed is the narrator wallowing in emotional and intellectual pain, trying to deal with his sense of loss as well as his doubts about God's goodness. 

I suppose the book, even as fiction, is interesting in itself, especially with what Lewis said about it (also taken from Hooper):

"'The structure of it,' he [Lewis] said, 'Is based on Dante's Divine Comedy. You go down and down and down. Then, as in Dante, when you hit bottom and pass Lucifer's waist you go up to defense of God's goodness.'"

Yep, that's the structure. There's a lot of despair and darkness in the book until the very end, when the author acknowledges that suffering is necessary for him to see his own dependence on God, and thus suffering does not contradict the goodness of God because God is allowing suffering for a greater good. At least that's what I got out of it from the first read-through. 

Did I like it? Why yes, yes, I did. (Thanks, Zootopia, for aiding my writing style.  :D ) It interested me, although more intellectually than emotionally. For some reason I didn't really "get into" it, probably because it was so short that I didn't have time to get into the narrator's head. But there were some gorgeous passages in there, and the depressing parts made me really appreciate those. At the end when the narrator finally came round I was super excited.

As a whole I think it's pretty good and it's worth reading for some amazing little quotes, like that monkey bars one.

Anyway, those are my two cents. You should read it and let me know what you think! Or if you've already read it you should still let me know what you think. Or you can write a post of your own on it! Looking at you, Meredith.   ;)

I should probably give you a content warning too. As usual with C.S. Lewis's books directed at adults, it's clean but it has some references to married love. It's not explicit but it still isn't stuff for younger readers.

I'll let Hooper finish off:

"It should be emphasized that Lewis never said that A Grief Observed was autobiography, and he told me that it was not. This does not mean that he didn't grieve over the death of his wife. He may have grieved more than is recorded in A Grief Observed. But that is a story which may never be known, and which is perhaps none of our business anyway."

The Advantages of Cleaning One's Room

I cleaned my room yesterday!

Okay, I know that's not the most interesting thing to write about. But this is serious room-cleaning we're talking about here: completely rearranging the furniture, vacuuming the floor, repositioning books on bookshelves and accessories in drawers, and so on. This took six hours. Well, that's including YouTube/snack breaks and guitar breaks.

Yes, I snack while watching YouTube…for the sake of efficiency, of course. It goes rather like this:

At least that's what it would look like if I had someone with me to toss me food. So all in all I probably only spent four hours on my room. But still, that's a pretty big milestone for me, since cleaning my room is only an annual thing at best, and usually I leave the furniture where it is and just work until I can see the floor.

Why am I telling you about this? Well,

1) It's my blog, so I can write about pretty much anything I want.
2) It reminds me of one of my favorite essays by G.K. Chesterton.

Before I talk about the essay, I should preface with the fact that I'm a huge fan of G.K. Chesterton. For those of you who are unfamiliar, Chesterton was a ridiculously prolific English author in the late 1800s and early 1900s who wrote everything from fantasy to detective stories to newspaper articles to apologetics. He's known for his paradoxical statements, wordy writing style, and frequent tangents.

Anyway, he has this one essay called "The Advantages of Having One Leg." It's actually from a collection called Tremendous Trifles, which is where I got the name for this site.

The essay is public domain by now, so feel free to look it up if you're up for a difficult read with some bits in it that I can only assume are 19th century pop culture references. It's good, though. If you like it you'll probably like the rest of GKC's writings, too.

His main point seems to be that temporarily hurting one leg made him appreciate his legs more. It's like when I get a cold and I realize how nice it is to be able to breathe through my nose. Ok, that was kind of a gross example, but you get the picture.

He moves on from the isolation of one leg to the isolation of things or ideas in general:

"To appreciate anything we must always isolate it…if we wish to see what a house is it must be a house in some uninhabited landscape. If we wish to depict what a man really is we must depict a man alone in a desert or on a dark sea sand."

And his conclusion:

"All surrender of life, all denial of pleasure, all darkness, all austerity, all desolation has for its real aim this separation of something so that it may be poignantly and perfectly enjoyed. I feel grateful for the slight sprain which has introduced this mysterious and fascinating division between one of my feet and the other. The way to love anything is to realize how very much otherwise it might have been."

What does this have to do with cleaning my room, you ask? And why must this post be so long?

Well, when it comes to GKC I tend to ramble. Sorry about that. As for cleaning my room, moving my furniture and wall decorations around and seeing my familiar things in an unfamiliar order made me realize how amazing my room actually is. I just needed to look at my stuff from a different perspective.

For example, I was getting really bored of my Van Gogh print because it was on the same wall for ages, and today when I saw the last rays of sunlight shining on it (since I had moved it to the wall by the window) I realized (or re-realized) how gorgeous the painting is:

Isn't this awesome? I have a thing for Van Gogh. Probably because of that one really sad Doctor Who episode, but still.

To conclude, Chesterton writes,

"This world and all our powers in it are far more awful and beautiful than we ever know until some accident reminds us. If you wish to perceive that limitless felicity, limit yourself if only for a moment. If you wish to realize how fearfully and wonderfully God's image is made, stand on one leg. If you want to realize the splendid vision of all visible things-- wink the other eye."

And if you wish to like your Van Gogh thrift shop find, clean your room. Apparently that's how it works.

On Saints, Disney, and Pope Francis

Today's the feast of St. Junipero Serra!!! *cue streamers and confetti*

I've got to admit that I know barely anything about today's saint, but from what I've heard he sounds like a cool guy. In the 1700s St. Junipero Serra founded a lot of missions for Native Americans, particularly in California (he's called the "Apostle of California"). That's pretty neat in itself, but what really sticks out to me is something that Pope Francis wrote about him:

"Father Serra had a motto, which inspired his life and work, a saying he lived his life by: Siempre adelante! Keep moving forward! For him, this was the way to continue experiencing the joy of the Gospel, to keep his heart from growing numb, from being anesthetized."

Being the shameless animated movie lover that I am, when I read "keep moving forward" a choir began enthusiastically singing in my head and my mind's eye very helpfully showed me this:

Meet the Robinsons, anyone? All right, if you haven't seen it, you should watch it. It's hilarious, and highly motivational. 

Anyway, I think both Disney and Pope Francis are definitely right. I know from experience that when I, for one, dwell on the awkwardness of the past, it becomes more difficult for me to be joyful and to connect with other people, and to realize how amazing life really is.  My heart becomes "numb," as Pope Francis put it.

Here's to a new month, a new day, and…er…an un-numb heart!

Siempre adelante!