I don't know how he did it, but I have to see every movie M. Night Shyamalan makes.
I can't help it. You can't either, especially when the only other options are superheroes, supercomedians, or superskanks.
Lately though, I feel hopelessly enslaved to his bizarre whims and fantasies, like a parent forced to watch their child's terrible kindergarten plays and hang their horrible drawings on their refrigerator. I loved the originality of The Sixth Sense, loved being scared of nothing in The Village, and watching the plot come together in Signs. I hated Unbreakable because it was dumb, and Lady in the Water left me wondering what drug I had just taken and how much money I'd spent.
M. Night's sixth film The Happening settles into the hodgepodge of weird films nicely, without making a real name for itself or it's director. Deceptively tense and suspenseful during it's opening scene, the film fails to deliver any sort of dynamic and instead plods on, steady like a freight train, til the end. A crowded central park is suddenly and eerily filled with disoriented people who eventually begin to kill themselves. Naturally, the nation suspects terrorism, but when the events spread throughout the northeast the explanation seems much more difficult to understand. Groups of survivors begin to flock to each other seeking safety, and the typical disasters ensue as they flee the mob of blankly-staring, self-mutilating citizens of the northeast. Beware, paying full price for this movie will cause the same side effects. I think on the way to my car I saw a guy trying to slash his wrists with his ticket stub.
There are genuinely suspenseful scenes, and Shyamalan's knack for creating a creepy atmosphere out of literally nothing is in full force. I was genuinely on the edge of my seat a few times but never knew what I was scared of or for or about... Sometimes it was just because the wind was blowing or a tree swing was swinging way more that it should by itself. Don't get me wrong, I think it takes imagination and skill to create this ambiance, and I am aware and appreciative of the fact that sometimes the scariest scenes never really show anything at all. I don't need to watch some one's legs get sawed off to be scared. But this film fails to weave the terror into any intelligible climax and instead rambles on towards nothingness, without closure and without purpose, like a bizarre dream and not a nightmare. Without ruining the ending all I can say is that I left the movie the same way I went in: afraid of trees, afraid I wasn't "green enough", and afraid the earth was getting pissed at us polluting it and was probably going to do something crazy.
The acting does little to redeem the film's lack of energy, although the one-dimensional, over-the-top characters are likely Shyamalan's tribute to the casts of older horror movies - women in dresses and pearl necklaces and men with fedoras and three piece suits fleeing zombies clutching their pipes. Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel are obvious archetypes, very timeless and all-American looking, and just plain good old people from Philly. Wahlberg is the irritating long lost cousin of Beaver Cleaver and all but smacks himself and says "Gee golly!" as people die left and right. Zooey Deschanel, is simple and irritatingly emotionless, and only a handful of times shows enough emotion to ensure us she herself hasn't succumbed to the blank and suicidal stare of the bodies littering the landscape. A few times her own personality shows through, but her sarcasm and half-hearted Juno-esque delivery are lost in contrast to John Leguizamo's actual personality, a breath of fresh air amidst plastic cookie cutter characters.
The film's redeeming qualities are hard to appreciate without a predisposition towards classic horror films (specifically those of Hitchcock) and a willingness to let yourself get into the plot. The tight camera angles put the viewer right in the mob and subtly instill a sense of panic, the shots are simple and the minimal panning and camera movement make the film very classic-like. Even the little plot decoys thrown in (Wahlberg's mood ring, the crazy old woman) are reminiscent of Hitchcock's playful way of leaving the story very much inconclusive, and deceiving you into thinking a resolution is near.* I kept waiting for the little details to come together like they did in Signs or The Sixth Sense, and instead at the end of the film was left shaking my head and saying "Touche, Mr. Night, Touche," as I walked to my car feeling stupid.
I only wish I would've been scared more along the way to at least justify this ride to nowhere.
*See Hitchcock's film The Birds. They keep carrying around those dang lovebirds in a cage and in the end it had nothing to do with the story.
Random Tidbits:
- Green is supposedly the most stable color in a mood ring.
- If you missed Shyamalan's cameo in the movie and expected to see him, he was the voice of Joey on the phone.
- The Einstein quote written on the chalkboard in the begining of the movie is not attributed to Einstein, or has recently been proved as a false quotation.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
The Lost Orchestra
When I was a little boy, I collected action figures. I had a lot of these things, maybe too many, but my mother likely reasoned that I needed my own collection of little plastic people to play with because my two younger sisters had enough Barbie dolls to populate an entire Barbie nation, complete with social tiers and caste systems, the majority of which were lower class citizens because they roamed the Barbie nation naked with terribly scissored haircuts and the occasional burn mark from when I was bored and decided to torment them.
I had G.I. Joes, Transformers, all the X-Men, Spiderman, Superman, Batman, Robin, Futuristic Spiderman, some weird action figures of unknown origin used mostly as victims of painful deaths by the real heroes, and a weird assortment of Klingon warriors from Star Trek (yes, Star Trek). Sometimes I wish I could go back to the time where I could derive hours of unbridled joy from creating epic battles fought under beds and behind couches with little plastic men. What is funny about boys this age with these action figures (I don’t think kids play with them anymore, but you probably remember how sweet it was) is that every kid almost always creates this kind of all-star cast of action figures. I never woke up from my nap, ate my cookies, looked at the box of action figures and decided that because today was Tuesday I would play with all of the Batman genre toys, since I had exhausted the superman genre the day before. Instead, I would pick through all of the toys, selecting the coolest ones, and make a team like Wolverine, Superman, Gambit, Optimus Prime, and have them fight everyone else because that combination of four people could probably have fought both world wars and won fairly quickly. I remember watching the cartoons and thinking how awesome it would be if all these different people combined forces, and made one big glorious ass kicking team. Sometimes I would be lucky enough to see a cartoon where batman and superman for some reason needed to help each other, and I don’t remember being happier than those short 30 minutes of cartoon bliss.
One summer I was a lifeguard at a pool, and since I sat on a chair for 8 hours a day staring at an empty pool I started to read books. Any book I could find I would read, sometimes in one day. I think I read the entire Harry Potter series in 2 weeks, partly because I was bored and partly because those books are actually really entertaining. I read one book called the Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien. One of the stories is about this sort of God figure, who created all these little elves and different types of people that we see in the Lord of the Rings movies. He makes them all musicians (this is a terrible paraphrase of the story, please do it justice and read it yourself) with incredible voices and talent, and puts a guy in charge of making this gigantic orchestra that is going to play this one song that is the pinnacle of all creation’s ability. It’s what the people were made to do, play music, all of them together, playing their little elf and hobbit hearts out, for the pleasure of the god creature. The god creature knows this will make him happy, because he will be able to see all the people he created at their best, making beautiful music, but also that all of the little people will be happy too, knowing they are playing music that is making the god creature smile.
The god guy, named Iluvatar, says “But I will sit and hearken, and be glad that through you great beauty has been awakened into song.”
Not long after the people start rehearsal and practicing, Melkor, the guy in charge of the orchestra starts getting cocky and selfish, and is pretty pissed at something, mostly Iluvatar. He starts sticking in his own little measures and crescendos and what have you, to kind of make the symphony his own and to grab a little piece of the glory in the symphony. He becomes so obsessed with stealing the show that he begins hating the very sound of the orchestra, and tries to ruin it. To make a long story short, he gets in big trouble, but manages to ruin the whole orchestra and symphony and now all the creatures that were made for making music are running around the earth doing all sorts of useless things, like making wars for no reason or killing each other and taking peoples food. Some of them still play music, but none of them play together because when they do they are worried about how good they sound, or that someone is taking the spotlight or being too loud or too quiet or too fancy, and forget that long ago they were supposed to all play together to make themselves and Iluvatar happy.
Therein lies the problem with this little fantasy earth the Elves and Hobbits and Smurfs live in. Its what the earth, the trees, and the sea all quietly lament, because they are old enough to remember what things were supposed to be like and how they were for awhile, and it hurts them to see how it is now. Nobody is performing their duty, the thing they were created to do, the thing they are truly amazing at. T
Tolkien’s story is pretty dead on if you ask me, as far as someone trying to sum up what’s wrong with the world. We were made for something, something that not only makes God look down on the world and smile, but something (the only thing) that will ever make us happy. If all those little elves and hobbits could just stop being selfish and remember what they were made for, all the other problems would be solved because the world would be doing what its supposed to be doing.
If we stopped being selfish, stopped killing, stopped hoarding food and money so other people could eat and live, stopped being greedy, maybe the world would make God happy.
If we stopped worrying about our moral checklists, or the way some people run their churches, and just remembered that the world sucks because everyone is trying to fulfill themselves with something other than what they should, if we just realized that a relationship with God, taking advantage of the companionship and friendship he offers, we would be so happy that we wouldn’t need to fight in wars or scratch our heads about feeding the hungry and needy. We are people designed to spend eternity being friends with God, taking care of other friends of God. We are designed to play music that makes him smile, and instead we’re all wandering around playing our instruments in different keys, playing different songs, and some of us don’t even remember where or what our instruments are. It’s really sad.
But isn’t that what’s wrong with the world? We aren’t doing what we were made to do. I hate seeing the world in a crappy state, but most of all I hate seeing people who are hurting and alone. I’m convinced that’s the root of the problem of homosexuality and heterosexuality. Just because people are having sex outside of marriage with people of the same sex doesn’t mean they aren’t suffering from the same loneliness and lack of fulfillment that the straight guy who runs around sleeping with scores of girls does. We need to be looked down at from heaven and smiled upon. We need to know that someone, somewhere, is happy with us. Someone looks at us with a soul-piercing gaze that in one second sees every flaw and imperfection and still smiles. We try to accomplish it with sex or power or fame, or even downplay it by saying “All I want is to have a good marriage with someone who loves me, then I’ll be happy.” But it’s all the same problem. One lifestyle might look better but still falls short of what should be.
“We were meant to live for so much more…”
-Switchfoot
The Worst Day of My Life
The following story is completely true, written originally on June 6, 2007.
It's the night before the biggest test of my life. I am not tired at all, and all day I have either been bored or panic-stricken wondering if I'd studied the right things, studied enough, learned enough, printed the directions to the test, and a billion other things that flooded my head. I tell myself maybe it would be good to go over the review notes I have with test-taking tips from one of my professors. By now ADD (or ADHD) has progressed to near lethal severity, and I am only able to glean one bullet point from the first page I read (pay attention, this is foreshadowing):
"Don't expect everything to go well the day of the test"
After failing miserably at my study attempt, I reason that 9 is not to early to go to bed because getting plenty of rest has to be somewhere on that paper I read. I try, but I cant sleep. I take a shower for no reason.
Around 1 am I wake up like someone set my bed on fire. I am convinced I am late, and when I look at the clock I realize I still have a few hours. Now I'm nervous that since I am so awake now, I'll sleep through my alarm. I remember reading somewhere that if you get odd hours of sleep you wake up tired, and feel rested if you get even numbers. I start trying to count how many hours I'll get, then realize I've been counting hours for about 20 minutes, then start to panic about how that will affect my odd/even sleep ratios, and can't fall back asleep. I start thinking about medication classifications and that does the trick.
I actually wake up a few minutes before my alarm is supposed to go off and I'm wide awake. I take another shower for no reason. Make coffee. Get dressed. Warm up the car, even though it's June. Go over the directions. Get food. On the road by six. Everything is going perfectly, and I found enough change in the center console to buy a sausage McMuffin. It's gross.
It takes about an hour and a half to get to Columbus, and I finally find the right building and I'm actually a little early. There is one girl with a mustache in front of me in line and she is taking the NCLEX too. I didn't ask her, but she had the sort of unattractive physique and weird urgent walk that nurses have so I just assumed it. She has a little hospital keychain thing. Definitely a nursing grad. Probably already has a job.
The man at the desk smiles and asks me for my printed copy of my ATT. The paper I hand him apparently is not what I need and he stares at me. Somehow I'm not worried yet, because I brought a little piece of paper with a number written on it and I figure he can use wi-fi or something to look up my info and let me take the dang test.
This is not true. He says I need another piece of paper. I ask him what I should do, and he thinks for a minute then says I can go down to Kinko's about 12 miles away and print it off my email account and bring it in. I ask if I'll be too late and he says he isn't sure, but it's worth a try. That is not as definitive an answer as I would have expected from someone who sits at a front desk of anywhere. They are supposed to say things like yes and no or go home now, not 'worth a try.'
I'm freaking out now, officially. The coffee and sausage are making my bowels do things I don't understand or enjoy and I have a headache and all I brought was a bottle of cranberry juice. I literally start thinking about how low my blood sugar will be and how that will impair my brain functioning and realize I am still staring at the man at the desk. He feels awkward. I turn for the door and head to Kinko's.
I get back on the highway, driving like a bat escaped from the depths of hell, cutting people off and I run a red light. At Linko's I sit at the computer and stick my credit card in, get on the internet and after 3 tries to get on to my email it isn't working. I call some people to see if it works from their end and it doesn't. Someone tells me the Cedarville servers are down. I spent $80,000 on that university, and the one time I need them they let me down.
I call the test center, they tell me to come back and pick up my driver's license that I apparently left on the counter, and the man says he doesn't think this is going to work out for me today. I feel like vomiting. He gives me the number for the NCLEX people and says my last shot would be to see if they can email it to another account. I call them while driving back to get my license, still running red lights with no regard for my lack of license, and a tech support phone guy of Pakistani descent cheerfully informs me that he can get me the information I need in as soon as 24 hours. I want to murder someone. I also want to know why all tech support places are staffed by people less than fluent in English.
At the test center I get my license and by now the guy feels so sorry for me he calls the NCLEX people and asks if they can send it to me sooner. Apparently the man who told me it would take 24 hours was an idiot and they say it will be in my mailbox within minutes.
Back to Kinko's. 2 more red lights ignored. Still haven't gone to the bathroom because somehow I feel this will ruin my chances of taking the test. Time is precious. I print it off and drive back to the test center and proudly hand it to the man at the counter. He looks at it and puts his head down. "This is ridiculous... this is the wrong one again. They sent you the same thing you brought in the first time."
He calls the NCLEX people again, gets a little attitude with them, which makes me feel better. They resend it. I decide Kinko's is too far away and ask if there is another option. We google a library close by and I speed over there, park in a handicap spot (I am above the law at this point), and run to the door.
It's closed.
At this point this story seems highly exaggerated, and I wish that in the past I had done a better job of being truthful and wish I hadn't built up a reputation of exaggerating because then maybe you would believe me when I tell you that every part of this story is true, down to the very last detail.
I bang my head against the window and try not to weep like a child. A woman runs up to the door and asks what I'm doing. Through the door I try to tell her my story and realize that I should just wait for her to unlock it. I retell the story, and she lets me in, saying she could let me in a few minutes early and tells me I can use their internet and printer as long as I have my library card.
I apply for the library card, and a man who looks like George Costanza with a ponytail hears my story which I have now told 4 times, and he looks at my drivers license and says I wont be able to get a library card with a new jersey license. I grovel and plead and he lets me get the card. As I reach to grab the card from the counter, he places his hand over it, and covers it with a sheet of paper about the guidelines and policies of the library. He proceeds to tell me smugly that I will have a small trial period for my library card and will only be able to borrow 3 books at a time and absolutely no DVD's. He knows my story but is just being a jerk. I want to break his glasses into his corneas but they are so thick I don't think I would have the strength.
Back at the test center, I hand the paper to the man (his name is Rob. We are kind of friends now) and I have to go back to the library again. It turns out I just printed off the same wrong thing from before and it was my fault. Oh well.
By now I know this small suburb of Columbus better than my hometown, and my handicapped spot is still open. Fate must be handicapped, because at the printing station I realize I am out of change to pay. I tear apart my car and find a single quarter, run back inside, give George a nod, and print off my thing. I get back to the test center and the mustache speed-walking girl who walked in with me is now finished her NCLEX, and is off on her merry way. It's 10:15.
I go through all the security checkpoints that are totally unnecessary and sit down to take the test. My hands are shaking, I think I have an ulcer, and there is a circus in my bowels. Question 1 is about something I have never even heard of. I don't even think it was made up of real words. Maybe the Pakistani guy emailed me the Pakistani NCLEX because I was rude to him. Maybe I'm an idiot and just don't know anything. I raise my hand, ask to go the bathroom, and sit on the toilet banging my head against the wall trying to calm down. When I'm finished I don't wash my hands for 30 seconds, or for any seconds, because every nursing lesson I've ever learned is gone.
Instead of the test shutting off at 75, I get all 265 questions, the maximum number possible. I think I must have been borderline the whole way. I still don't know if I passed and honestly I don't think I did. This was the worst day of my entire life.
I want to sue Cedarville University, NCLEX, and the internet.
Note: Adrian in fact did not pass, and had to take the test again later. He passed. He is now a real nurse in an undisclosed location.
It's the night before the biggest test of my life. I am not tired at all, and all day I have either been bored or panic-stricken wondering if I'd studied the right things, studied enough, learned enough, printed the directions to the test, and a billion other things that flooded my head. I tell myself maybe it would be good to go over the review notes I have with test-taking tips from one of my professors. By now ADD (or ADHD) has progressed to near lethal severity, and I am only able to glean one bullet point from the first page I read (pay attention, this is foreshadowing):
"Don't expect everything to go well the day of the test"
After failing miserably at my study attempt, I reason that 9 is not to early to go to bed because getting plenty of rest has to be somewhere on that paper I read. I try, but I cant sleep. I take a shower for no reason.
Around 1 am I wake up like someone set my bed on fire. I am convinced I am late, and when I look at the clock I realize I still have a few hours. Now I'm nervous that since I am so awake now, I'll sleep through my alarm. I remember reading somewhere that if you get odd hours of sleep you wake up tired, and feel rested if you get even numbers. I start trying to count how many hours I'll get, then realize I've been counting hours for about 20 minutes, then start to panic about how that will affect my odd/even sleep ratios, and can't fall back asleep. I start thinking about medication classifications and that does the trick.
I actually wake up a few minutes before my alarm is supposed to go off and I'm wide awake. I take another shower for no reason. Make coffee. Get dressed. Warm up the car, even though it's June. Go over the directions. Get food. On the road by six. Everything is going perfectly, and I found enough change in the center console to buy a sausage McMuffin. It's gross.
It takes about an hour and a half to get to Columbus, and I finally find the right building and I'm actually a little early. There is one girl with a mustache in front of me in line and she is taking the NCLEX too. I didn't ask her, but she had the sort of unattractive physique and weird urgent walk that nurses have so I just assumed it. She has a little hospital keychain thing. Definitely a nursing grad. Probably already has a job.
The man at the desk smiles and asks me for my printed copy of my ATT. The paper I hand him apparently is not what I need and he stares at me. Somehow I'm not worried yet, because I brought a little piece of paper with a number written on it and I figure he can use wi-fi or something to look up my info and let me take the dang test.
This is not true. He says I need another piece of paper. I ask him what I should do, and he thinks for a minute then says I can go down to Kinko's about 12 miles away and print it off my email account and bring it in. I ask if I'll be too late and he says he isn't sure, but it's worth a try. That is not as definitive an answer as I would have expected from someone who sits at a front desk of anywhere. They are supposed to say things like yes and no or go home now, not 'worth a try.'
I'm freaking out now, officially. The coffee and sausage are making my bowels do things I don't understand or enjoy and I have a headache and all I brought was a bottle of cranberry juice. I literally start thinking about how low my blood sugar will be and how that will impair my brain functioning and realize I am still staring at the man at the desk. He feels awkward. I turn for the door and head to Kinko's.
I get back on the highway, driving like a bat escaped from the depths of hell, cutting people off and I run a red light. At Linko's I sit at the computer and stick my credit card in, get on the internet and after 3 tries to get on to my email it isn't working. I call some people to see if it works from their end and it doesn't. Someone tells me the Cedarville servers are down. I spent $80,000 on that university, and the one time I need them they let me down.
I call the test center, they tell me to come back and pick up my driver's license that I apparently left on the counter, and the man says he doesn't think this is going to work out for me today. I feel like vomiting. He gives me the number for the NCLEX people and says my last shot would be to see if they can email it to another account. I call them while driving back to get my license, still running red lights with no regard for my lack of license, and a tech support phone guy of Pakistani descent cheerfully informs me that he can get me the information I need in as soon as 24 hours. I want to murder someone. I also want to know why all tech support places are staffed by people less than fluent in English.
At the test center I get my license and by now the guy feels so sorry for me he calls the NCLEX people and asks if they can send it to me sooner. Apparently the man who told me it would take 24 hours was an idiot and they say it will be in my mailbox within minutes.
Back to Kinko's. 2 more red lights ignored. Still haven't gone to the bathroom because somehow I feel this will ruin my chances of taking the test. Time is precious. I print it off and drive back to the test center and proudly hand it to the man at the counter. He looks at it and puts his head down. "This is ridiculous... this is the wrong one again. They sent you the same thing you brought in the first time."
He calls the NCLEX people again, gets a little attitude with them, which makes me feel better. They resend it. I decide Kinko's is too far away and ask if there is another option. We google a library close by and I speed over there, park in a handicap spot (I am above the law at this point), and run to the door.
It's closed.
At this point this story seems highly exaggerated, and I wish that in the past I had done a better job of being truthful and wish I hadn't built up a reputation of exaggerating because then maybe you would believe me when I tell you that every part of this story is true, down to the very last detail.
I bang my head against the window and try not to weep like a child. A woman runs up to the door and asks what I'm doing. Through the door I try to tell her my story and realize that I should just wait for her to unlock it. I retell the story, and she lets me in, saying she could let me in a few minutes early and tells me I can use their internet and printer as long as I have my library card.
I apply for the library card, and a man who looks like George Costanza with a ponytail hears my story which I have now told 4 times, and he looks at my drivers license and says I wont be able to get a library card with a new jersey license. I grovel and plead and he lets me get the card. As I reach to grab the card from the counter, he places his hand over it, and covers it with a sheet of paper about the guidelines and policies of the library. He proceeds to tell me smugly that I will have a small trial period for my library card and will only be able to borrow 3 books at a time and absolutely no DVD's. He knows my story but is just being a jerk. I want to break his glasses into his corneas but they are so thick I don't think I would have the strength.
Back at the test center, I hand the paper to the man (his name is Rob. We are kind of friends now) and I have to go back to the library again. It turns out I just printed off the same wrong thing from before and it was my fault. Oh well.
By now I know this small suburb of Columbus better than my hometown, and my handicapped spot is still open. Fate must be handicapped, because at the printing station I realize I am out of change to pay. I tear apart my car and find a single quarter, run back inside, give George a nod, and print off my thing. I get back to the test center and the mustache speed-walking girl who walked in with me is now finished her NCLEX, and is off on her merry way. It's 10:15.
I go through all the security checkpoints that are totally unnecessary and sit down to take the test. My hands are shaking, I think I have an ulcer, and there is a circus in my bowels. Question 1 is about something I have never even heard of. I don't even think it was made up of real words. Maybe the Pakistani guy emailed me the Pakistani NCLEX because I was rude to him. Maybe I'm an idiot and just don't know anything. I raise my hand, ask to go the bathroom, and sit on the toilet banging my head against the wall trying to calm down. When I'm finished I don't wash my hands for 30 seconds, or for any seconds, because every nursing lesson I've ever learned is gone.
Instead of the test shutting off at 75, I get all 265 questions, the maximum number possible. I think I must have been borderline the whole way. I still don't know if I passed and honestly I don't think I did. This was the worst day of my entire life.
I want to sue Cedarville University, NCLEX, and the internet.
Note: Adrian in fact did not pass, and had to take the test again later. He passed. He is now a real nurse in an undisclosed location.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Dinner With A Liberal
I ate dinner with a liberal last night.
He was a very caring, compassionate, and humanitarian individual, well traveled, well read, well spoken, and knowledgeable about art and food and the sort of things that make you wish you were more cultured. Unfortunately for him, he was the only known liberal at the table and the enlightened conservatives who allowed themselves a glass or 4 of wine were feeling rambunctious and asked him how he could not support the war. He tactfully evaded the question, and instead chose to make a general comment on the tragedy of war altogether. In an effort to save him from the impending inquisition, I asked about his travels and which place left the most impact. He thought for awhile, and surprisingly forfeited the chance to lighten the conversation by telling me that he will never forget the killing fields of Cambodia.
"You can still see people's teeth embedded in the ground." He looks at the other people at the table. "Most people don't get off the tour bus. All you really see from the bus is enough I suppose, that huge mausoleum sort of thing, and by the time you drive up you know what it is."
I don't know what it is. I've never heard of the killing fields. Some of the older folks grunt as if they do, but I ask anyways.
"It's glass pillar filled with human skulls, a sort of monument like the holocaust museums. I had to get out of the bus though, see it myself. It was just surreal. You walk up to this huge enormous thing, stepping on the uneven ground where the earth was moved to cover mass graves of women and children but the skulls... There are hundreds of them. Those were all people... with lives and stories and they were done in an instant. It's an incredible and terrible sickening feeling all at once, like your brain can't accept it. It makes you doubt the existence of god, just knowing things like that happen."
My girlfriend pipes in at this point, her liberal bleeding heart was quiet and confined until now, she thinks she will embarrass me by aligning herself with him. She is truly moved by the story. "It doesn't make me doubt God," she says, "it makes me mad that humans can do that to each other."
Brilliantly done. A unifying comment. Somewhere in America, the hairs on Barak Obama's neck are standing. I'm halfway glad she didn't jump down his throat on blaming God for human suffering. There has been far too much wine for that debate, we'll save that for another day.
But another day probably will never come, this man is a stranger made a friend through food and drink and just like those things he will be gone in a few hours. Halfway glad a half hour later became halfway guilty. Guilty because that was a window in the soul of someone who has compassion, someone who sees something wrong and feels it, and I covet that sometimes. I am more guilty though, because I smiled when he said he doubted the existence of God; smiled the way you smile when someone says something you know is wrong but have doubted just as much as they have when you are alone and watching the news about some child being raped.
What frustrates me is that this man was and is so close to seeing the existence of God, he just has one piece wrong, one piece he can't justify, and he turns away. He cannot accept the existence of God because the world is evil and terrible. He agrees with my girlfriend, and to him nothing she said contradicts anything he said. But at the same time, where they seem to agree is the fork in the road, where he goes a very opposite direction. They agree that god has nothing to do with suffering.
God is the antithesis of death.
God is the antithesis of suffering.
God is the antithesis of the world as we know it.
And that is why I couldn't sleep that night. Because we agree, but disagree. Because that is why I believe in God. That is why I need Him, why I need Him not only to exist but to exist in a way that is intricately connected to why I exist.
God is the antithesis of me, and I need that.
I need God to exist, and I need him to fix me. I see suffering and death as proof of Him, the way hunger proves the existence of fullness and satisfaction, the way thirst proves quenching. Hunger pangs the stomach because the stomach is supposed to be filled, thirst burns the throat because the throat was meant to satiated.
The dull and sickening pain when suffering is seen, when death is seen, are powerful because every fiber of our being is racked with the awareness that something is wrong, that this is not the way it is supposed to be. We can feel and almost palpate a vacancy, a vacuum, where something belongs. Something better. Something big, but bigger now that we sense its absence.
Hunger, thirst, disease, all fool us with a power derived by accentuating the absence of the thing that is truly powerful.
I wish I could sit down with that guy again, and explain this to him, but as usual it takes me a long time to chew on things in my head and it is easier to write it than to say it, especially off the cuff in front of other people and especially when I hardly understand it myself. But I would like to ask him if it's possible that death is sad because life was never supposed to end, that seeing a mass grave hurts because we were supposed to see the earth move and wonder what would grow, not what was buried beneath it, and that God does exist because there just has to be something else... something else that long ago ingrained in us something Good. Something that moves us when we see its opposite.
I wonder if he could believe that loneliness pangs the heart because the heart was meant to be knit to something.
To God.
He was a very caring, compassionate, and humanitarian individual, well traveled, well read, well spoken, and knowledgeable about art and food and the sort of things that make you wish you were more cultured. Unfortunately for him, he was the only known liberal at the table and the enlightened conservatives who allowed themselves a glass or 4 of wine were feeling rambunctious and asked him how he could not support the war. He tactfully evaded the question, and instead chose to make a general comment on the tragedy of war altogether. In an effort to save him from the impending inquisition, I asked about his travels and which place left the most impact. He thought for awhile, and surprisingly forfeited the chance to lighten the conversation by telling me that he will never forget the killing fields of Cambodia.
"You can still see people's teeth embedded in the ground." He looks at the other people at the table. "Most people don't get off the tour bus. All you really see from the bus is enough I suppose, that huge mausoleum sort of thing, and by the time you drive up you know what it is."
I don't know what it is. I've never heard of the killing fields. Some of the older folks grunt as if they do, but I ask anyways.
"It's glass pillar filled with human skulls, a sort of monument like the holocaust museums. I had to get out of the bus though, see it myself. It was just surreal. You walk up to this huge enormous thing, stepping on the uneven ground where the earth was moved to cover mass graves of women and children but the skulls... There are hundreds of them. Those were all people... with lives and stories and they were done in an instant. It's an incredible and terrible sickening feeling all at once, like your brain can't accept it. It makes you doubt the existence of god, just knowing things like that happen."
My girlfriend pipes in at this point, her liberal bleeding heart was quiet and confined until now, she thinks she will embarrass me by aligning herself with him. She is truly moved by the story. "It doesn't make me doubt God," she says, "it makes me mad that humans can do that to each other."
Brilliantly done. A unifying comment. Somewhere in America, the hairs on Barak Obama's neck are standing. I'm halfway glad she didn't jump down his throat on blaming God for human suffering. There has been far too much wine for that debate, we'll save that for another day.
But another day probably will never come, this man is a stranger made a friend through food and drink and just like those things he will be gone in a few hours. Halfway glad a half hour later became halfway guilty. Guilty because that was a window in the soul of someone who has compassion, someone who sees something wrong and feels it, and I covet that sometimes. I am more guilty though, because I smiled when he said he doubted the existence of God; smiled the way you smile when someone says something you know is wrong but have doubted just as much as they have when you are alone and watching the news about some child being raped.
What frustrates me is that this man was and is so close to seeing the existence of God, he just has one piece wrong, one piece he can't justify, and he turns away. He cannot accept the existence of God because the world is evil and terrible. He agrees with my girlfriend, and to him nothing she said contradicts anything he said. But at the same time, where they seem to agree is the fork in the road, where he goes a very opposite direction. They agree that god has nothing to do with suffering.
God is the antithesis of death.
God is the antithesis of suffering.
God is the antithesis of the world as we know it.
And that is why I couldn't sleep that night. Because we agree, but disagree. Because that is why I believe in God. That is why I need Him, why I need Him not only to exist but to exist in a way that is intricately connected to why I exist.
God is the antithesis of me, and I need that.
I need God to exist, and I need him to fix me. I see suffering and death as proof of Him, the way hunger proves the existence of fullness and satisfaction, the way thirst proves quenching. Hunger pangs the stomach because the stomach is supposed to be filled, thirst burns the throat because the throat was meant to satiated.
The dull and sickening pain when suffering is seen, when death is seen, are powerful because every fiber of our being is racked with the awareness that something is wrong, that this is not the way it is supposed to be. We can feel and almost palpate a vacancy, a vacuum, where something belongs. Something better. Something big, but bigger now that we sense its absence.
Hunger, thirst, disease, all fool us with a power derived by accentuating the absence of the thing that is truly powerful.
I wish I could sit down with that guy again, and explain this to him, but as usual it takes me a long time to chew on things in my head and it is easier to write it than to say it, especially off the cuff in front of other people and especially when I hardly understand it myself. But I would like to ask him if it's possible that death is sad because life was never supposed to end, that seeing a mass grave hurts because we were supposed to see the earth move and wonder what would grow, not what was buried beneath it, and that God does exist because there just has to be something else... something else that long ago ingrained in us something Good. Something that moves us when we see its opposite.
I wonder if he could believe that loneliness pangs the heart because the heart was meant to be knit to something.
To God.
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