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Romantic Impressions
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This impression came to me as I was listening to some Argentinian tango music, and gave new reality to something a church friend, whose family is from Argentina, talked about how it was the most European of South American countries, but the Argentina she knew of is a lost world — the country and the people are still there, but inflation and other factors have made a drastic change.
(This is what I remember from a couple of sources; it is not the result of research, and is not intended to be taken as such. It is listed here as a romantic impression from a historical situation whose full details I do not understand.)
Europe has more the symbolic meaning of home to me than does America, and a piece of Europe in the beautiful land of South America bears some of the romance l'Engle conveys in A Swiftly Tilting Planet. Its loss — the lost world symbol, or lost home — be it Atlantis, Ynes Avalach, Arthurian England for me, Gone With the Wind for many Southerners, and still other symbols for people of other backgrounds — is tremendously powerful, and those places live on as a memory inside people's hearts even when they are only a memory.
Another facet is that my sense of self (my personal feeling? my experience of a universal human emotion?) is in someone from a lost realm. There is not too much external evidence that would suggest this — my high school has its own culture, and I can't go back there, and my excursions into Malaysia and France cannot easily be repeated — but the country in which I have spent the bulk of my life is still the same country and has not changed with any particularly great violence — a society that embraces change will be more altered than one that tries to preserve traditions, but there is a strong continuity. Perhaps it is a part of adult nostalgia for a romanticized childhood — as Calvin put it, "People who are nostalgic about childhood were never children — but the symbol holds resonances for me, and is reflected in other works as well.
Two people are sitting in a cafe full of people, talking. That is what can be easily seen. What is less easily seen is that they are færie nobles, an invisible minority and representatives of a lost world.
This is a part of the powerful romance captured in the online book excerpts for Changeling: the Dreaming. It bears a romance of a lost world, but it also captures something of those who, because of their intelligence, have minds more different than most people would dream to imagine before having encountered them. It also represents, as well as genius, Christians in naturalistic academia — and probably other things as well.
In a Hollywood action-adventure style, there is a hero wielding two shortswords, or two small automatic weapons (the visual symbol varies). It is in the midst of an intense battle, but under the surface of all the chaos there is stillness, control, and peace.
This one may surprise those who know me, and know that I am a pacifist and consider glorified violence in movies to be a significant problem. Why do I include it?
In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a second rate treatment of first rate issues, Pirsig talks about being in Quality (the idea of Quality being similar to the Chinese concept of the Tao, as the book notes). He explains that this relaxed, peaceful state is not only found in meditation; it can be found in racing or heavy combat. I have not experienced this in sparring, but I believe it exists, and there is a powerful impression of a person who is in a situation of sheer chaos and hostility, but the chaos outside the person does not bring chaos within.
In a room, a college girl dashes through, being eagerly chased by a college boy, who is asking a barrage of teasing questions. There are some adults who are in the room, and they continue on — one of them calmly sipping his tea — without anyone raising an eyebrow.
One of my friends, Ashley, has voiced emphatically that she doesn't want to get married and is not domestic. It's not that she doesn't like men — she enjoys men a great deal, and can sit down at a table full of men and not feel self conscious at all. She just wants to be single.
At one point, she was spending a lot of time with one guy in particular, and the two of them started to sit together at Pooh's Corner (a group of people who meet to read children's books aloud).
I waited for a good moment, and then put an arm around her shoulder and said, "So, Ashley, when are you sending me a wedding invitation?"
The look on her face was classic.
(I'm glad Ashley's such a good sport.)
I enjoy picking on those people who are close to me, especially girls and women. It's a form of affection. Picking on can be mean-spirited — but need not be. I've heard people telling children "Don't pick on people who don't fit in," but not (except by silence and possibly example) acknowledging that picking on someone in the right way, under the proper circumstances, can be part of a close bond.
Inside the glass wall, touch is important, as are teasing, tickling, horseplay, and the like. I don't think that these are the most unusual things inside the glass wall — only that they play a part of the picture; they are part of the Nest.
In a classic Far Side cartoon, there is a layer of stacked clowns hovering above the earth's surface. The caption reads:
The Bozone Layer: Shielding the rest of the universe from the earth's harmful effects.
This cartoon is funny, but in the way hackers call 'ha ha only serious' — it describes a truth. Our world is fallen — which means not only 'sinful' as positively understood, but at times positively goofy. I am a part of this, too — I do not see my own absurdities, as I don't see my own blind spots, but from all the ridiculous things I have seen in others, I would be quite surprised if I was somehow exempt from this pervasive human law.
There is a peace that comes from the recognition of this absurdity, especially after trying and failing to make it go away. It is easy to hold an unstated belief that "If I only try hard enough, I can fix this — and if I can't make it all better, I'm failing as a person." The freedom and peace come from realizing that the absurdity is innate and out of our control, that it can perhaps be made better through our influence, but that if we try our best and it's still positively looney, we can live with ourselves.
The Son of God incarnate did not cause the outrageous things of his countrymen to snap to where they should be; he attacked the absurdity tooth and nail, and his countrymen killed him. That at least should help us to accept that God doesn't expect us to make the world anything near a perfect place: we should try to better it, and be at peace when our imperfect efforts achieve more imperfect results.
There is a hero who is powerful and respected, and has a fall — he is disgraced, his name made a laughingstock, and he is exiled in a wasteland — and forgotten.
In the wasteland — slowly, imperceptibly, not noticed by anyone — he slowly regains his strength. Nobody expects when he returns.
Perhaps the oldest recorded example of this impression is Samson's story, but I was not originally thinking of that. I was thinking of what I hope part of my own experience to be.
I am in a wasteland now; I am not where I thought I would be five years ago. And I cannot tell the future, to confidently predict any glorious return. But I am in a sort of Sabbath, regaining my strength, refocusing, having lost certain things, and learning how to use other strengths to best advantage. The romance appeals to me; while 'education' commonly describes a first ascent to effectiveness, and 'experience' the slow refinement of skills as one works in the field, I do not know any single word to tell of regained competency after a fall. This image describes it, and it describes what I am trying to do now.
Espiriticthus: Cultures of a Fantasy World not Touched by Evil
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Romantic Impressions
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