Month: December 2020

Desire Outside of Time

December 31, 2020 / / 0 Comments

In the moment of fulfillment—in the moment of joy, of play, of love—it is not so much that we feel time speeding by, it is that we do not feel the passing of time. What love and play have in common is that they both lift us up out of ourselves. They redirect our gaze away from our own interiority toward something beyond us.

But then as we become conscious that this moment will inevitably pass, that the time of departure draws near, then our experience of time is such that it appears to accelerate. The more aware we are of the ending, the faster time appears to pass. Again, it is a matter of desire. Although we may still be in the presence of that which we desire, its temporary quality—the looming horizon of finitude—renders the object both present but also soon-to-be-absent. While what we desire remains present to us, its loss now begins to color the experience so that our desire is once more activated, not for the object itself but for its permanence.

L.M. Sacasas, The Convivial Society Vol. 1, No. 19, “Desire Bends Time”

What’s interesting about this is that desire — while it “bends” time as Sacasas states — is tied to our temporal existence. The moment leading up to our desire, the moment of fulfillment, the moment after (the “time of departure”) are all due to our living in time. But what about that which is outside of time, i.e.: God?

As many a theologian would say, God is the fulfillment of our all our desires. And it’s precisely because He exists outside of time, and our uniting with Him in Eternity is also outside of time, that He satisfies us in a way that nothing earthly ever can. Once we have achieved the beatific vision, then there is no more “before desire” or “after desire.” There is only the fulfillment, and we never experience the “time of departure.”

The bending of time that Sacasas correctly observes re: desire, is precisely an effect of what lies at the very heart of what it means to be human. St. Augustine (I think) called it the “God-shaped hole.” We will always feel this bending of time around our desires because we will always be missing the one desire that is outside of time, the one desire for which we were made.

Winter memories

December 30, 2020 / / 0 Comments

36097I had a nostalgic morning. The snow and winter, seeing the woods and swamp behind our house covered in ice and snow, being on Christmas vacation: they made me think of winters at my grandparents’ house, playing HeroQuest and having imaginary adventures in the snowy woods, sledding and trekking through the silent forest. All of it made me want to leaf through old Dungeons & Dragons modules, and come up with characters to play and quests to undertake and treasures to discover.

I discovered the Ruined Tower of Zenopus the other day, and it’s precisely the right trigger for my nostalgia. Especially the example of play that’s provided. Takes me right back to my old MERP core book, with its example of role-playing, and the thrill I had when I first read it.

And now I really want to play an old-school adventure; something classic, with fierce orc tribes, creepy skeleton warriors, and a dusty, moth-ridden crypt. I completely understand the desire to create new and weird worlds to role-play in, but sometimes I just want the classic stuff. I want to climb inside an old Dragon Magazine cover and have an adventure.

The sin of acedia

December 29, 2020 / / 0 Comments

In popular thought the ‘capital sin’ of sloth revolves around the proverb ‘An idle mind is the Devil’s workshop.’ According to this concept, sloth is the opposite of diligence and industry; it is almost regarded as a synonym for laziness and idleness. Consequently, acedia has become, to all practical purposes, a concept of the middle class work ethic. The fact that it is numbered among the seven ‘capital sins’ seems, as it were, to confer the sanction and approval of religion on the absence of leisure in the capitalistic industrial order.

But this is not just to render superficial and shallow the original concept of acedia as it exists in moral theology; it is to transform it completely.

According to the classical theology of the Church, acedia is a kind of sadness (species tristitae) — more specifically, a sadness in view of the divine good in man. This sadness because of the God-given ennobling of human nature causes inactivity, depression, discouragement (thus the element of actual ‘sloth’ is secondary).

The opposite of acedia is not industry and diligence, but magnanimity and that joy which is a fruit of the supernatural love of God. Not only can acedia and ordinary diligence exist very well together; it is even true that the senselessly exaggerated workaholism of our age is directly traceable to acedia, which is a basic characteristic of the spiritual countenance of precisely this age in which we live.

from Josef Pieper’s On Hope

(via Jeremy McLellan)

Input Update 12/28/2020

December 28, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Reading: Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis

Reading: Atomic Habits by James Clear (This one was a Christmas present.)

Reading: The Golem and Jinni by Helene Wecker

Listening to: Alice Coltrane, Reflection on Creation and Space (A Five Year View)

Listening to: Brian Eno, Thursday Afternoon

Drinking: Diet Pepsi (and too much caffeine)

Thinking about: My dream of working from home.

Today gave me a little foretaste of it. My husband watched the kids from about 11:30 to 4:00, with an hour-long lunch break in between (where I made the boys their sandwiches and cut up fruit), and I spent those three-and-a-half hours editing, listening to ambient music by Brian Eno, and drinking tea. I never felt overwhelmed by my work or unqualified or anxious or anything. I knew what to do, I knew I was good at what I was doing, and I knew that I could solve problems if I needed to. I was enjoying my work.

It was a much better feeling than the one I have when I’m teaching. When I’m teaching, I’m always second-guessing myself. I’m constantly anxious that I’m not doing a good job. I have a wicked case of imposter syndrome with teaching, and that leads to tons of stress and sadness. In theory, I *like* being a teacher. I like sharing my ideas about the world, about literature, writing, art, rhetoric. I like helping students discover their own ideas about these things. I like mentoring others, especially in their writing. But in actual practice, I find teaching — in schools, in the way we’ve structured secondary education — to be burdensome. I feel like it’s not the best environment for my talents. Managing and instructing lots of students all at the same time is an ill fit for me. I’m much better as a one-on-one teacher, or someone who works with small groups.

That’s why editing feels so natural and enlivening. It’s a lot like teaching — but it’s one-on-one, and it gives me space to really use my knowledge of language, grammar, and craft in a way that’s useful. I’m not a master of the writing craft (far from it!), but I have something to offer other writers, not least of which is my attention to detail. It’s always nice to have another pair of eyes catch typos, grammatical errors, and inconsistencies. I don’t feel like an imposter when I’m editing someone’s manuscript.

But with classroom teaching, I can’t spend my time just sharing my knowledge or mentoring students to improve their writing. Oh no. There’s the curriculum and the units and the lesson plans and the standards and all the stuff that has to be covered or else the students won’t do well on the SAT or AP exam or whatever. I’m much more of a “teaching is an art not a science” kinda person, but most secondary and elementary school administrators these days are convinced “teaching is a science,” and if we just have enough data and enough standards and benchmarks and evidence of growth, then we’re doing alright and kids are learning.

But this approach doesn’t gel with my instincts and personality as a teacher. I’m not particularly interested in benchmarks or even a curriculum. I’m interested in my students and their needs, and I know what knowledge and skills I can share with them, but for education to really happen, I need to be flexible and meet my students where they are, not where the curriculum says they need to be. I once told a colleague that my approach to teaching shares a lot in common with jazz. It’s improvisational. There’s a starting melody, a core theme, but around that theme, we might go off in various and digressive directions. I don’t like being wedded to “learning goals” or whatever because that doesn’t account for “X-quantities.”

Anyway, this is my long-winded way of saying that being an editor feels more like being an “educator” than my current job as a teacher does. Most likely, my failures as a classroom teacher are my own fault, but whatever the reasons may be, I know that I’m starting to feel much more comfortable in the editor’s chair. I liked working from home today. I liked reading a manuscript and writing down my notes and suggestions. I liked thinking of ways to help the writer’s prose sound clearer, more vivid, punchier. And I liked being able to do it all from home.

Do I need to have something to write about?

December 27, 2020 / / 1 Comment

I often tell my students that in order to write they don’t have to have “something to say.” Instead of trying to figure out what to write, they should just write, and let the act of writing help them discover their own thoughts. Writing is magical in this way. Even if we don’t have “something to write about,” when we put pen to paper and start writing, even if it’s just “blah, blah, blah, I don’t know what to write,” if we keep going, if we keep moving the pen, then eventually, our thoughts start to form, they go from being invisible to visible, from formless blobs into recognizable shapes.

This happened to me recently during a training session for 826Michigan. We had to write about a moment when we learned something, and I honestly couldn’t think of any such moment. I’m sure I’ve had many, but as I sat there in the midst of the training session, my mind was a total blank. I wracked my brain for something, anything to write about, but nothing was coming, and the timer on the computer screen was ticking. So instead of waiting for that “something” to appear fully-formed in my head, I just started writing. I wrote about how I couldn’t think of anything, of how I was sure I’d learned many, many things in my life, but no particular moment stood out, and on and on I wrote, very stream-of-consciousness. And then — as I’ve told my students so often before — suddenly an idea came into my head, as I was writing. The writing pulled the memory out of my head: a memory I NEVER would’ve thought of, even if I had sat and thought for hours.

But here’s the kicker: Even though I tell my students about this phenomenon, about how writing IS thinking, and that we don’t have to wait until we have something to say, that we can just start writing and let ourselves think on the page, even though I preach this over and over, I STILL end up forgetting it when it comes to my own writing, to my own craft. Physician, heal thyself!

For a long time now, I’ve wanted to start blogging everyday, but as you might see if you scroll down through this page, I have not been particularly successful at reaching this goal. There are spurts here and there, where I manage to write for a few days in a row, or nearly. But then there are huge gaps. Weeks. Months. I backslide continually. And then I always resolve to get back on the horse and try again. Which is good, in a way. But despite my best intentions and resolve, the thing that trips me up is that I don’t know what to write about. I come up with schemes (“write a poem everyday for thirty days!”), but they never work. I’m afraid to write those thirty poems because most days, I don’t know what to write about. I don’t have anything to say. So I don’t put my fingers on the keyboard because I don’t have any ideas. It’s the same problem as the one I had in that training session: I can’t think of anything. My mind is blank.

But what I’ve missed is the simple, true fact that writing IS thinking. I don’t need to have anything to write about. I can just write. I can write and let ideas come as they may, and in that act of writing, I will discover what I have to say. Just as I’m doing right now. When I sat down at my computer this evening, I had no idea what I would blog about, I only knew that I needed to blog. If I was going to make “blog everyday” a thing, then I needed to do it. Not think about it, not wait for an idea, not even try to come up with an idea. I simply needed to start writing.

Metaphors: Writing as rambling, wandering. Writing as discovery. Writing as a physical act, not just a mental one.

And here I am, blogging. Writing. I tell my students all the time, “To ‘essay’ means to find one’s way.”

(I stole this quote from Barb Rebbeck and my high school AP Lang teacher).

I need to remember my own advice.

I’m gonna sit right down and write myself a letter

December 22, 2020 / / 0 Comments

I lonely mailmanwas reading The Lonely Mailman with my kids the other day, and I started getting wistful about letter-writing.  I used to have a pen-pal when I was in middle school. He was Italian and lived in a city outside of Milan. We traded letters and sent each other pictures. He even sent me a mixed tape once! It was always so exciting getting his letters in the mail.

Honestly, getting letters and packages in the mail might be one of the best “ordinary” things we can experience in our lives. The mail comes six days a week, sure, but usually it’s junk or bills. But when we get a birthday card from someone, or an unexpected present, there’s always so much joy upon opening the mailbox and finding this small surprise. Think about why there are so many mail-order subscription services these days. And why people still subscribe to magazines. Getting stuff in the mail is fun. And getting a letter — a real letter, not just a card — from a friend or family member or pen-pal is a particular treat. It’s something wholly unique, and written in someone’s own hand, and bearing their own news and greetings. It’s marked with the stamp of care and time — the time it took to write, the care with which it was written. It really is a great act of friendship and love. In The Lonely Mailman, we see how precious such letters can be. Every creature in the woods is moved to a deeper friendship and understanding due to the letters they receive (I won’t spoil the surprise ending, though).

My other favorite letter-writing story is the one from Frog and Toad. If you don’t remember it (or haven’t read it), it’s basically another sweet tale of friendship, where Toad laments that he never gets any mail. Because Frog is his best friend, he decides to write Toad a letter and mail it to him. Unfortunately, Frog chooses a turtle to deliver the mail, so it takes days to arrive. But when Toad gets it, he’s  overcome with joy and gratitude. Getting a letter from a friend lets us know that we are loved.

I think I’m going to start writing letters to people again. Not sure who exactly I’ll write to (maybe my mother-in-law who lives four hours away), but I want to give it a try. I want to have the thrill of receiving something special in the mail, and even more importantly, I want to give someone else that thrill too. I think about what a world it would be if we spent more time writing each other letters, instead of emailing or texting or whatever. It might make us more charitable. Maybe more thoughtful. Definitely more connected.

Original header artwork

Copyright 2015 Chloe Bensinger

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