mysteries and change, oh let it flow!
One summer Hugh and I went, more or less by accident, to a burlesque show. ... It was great fun. A series of pretty young girls came out on stage and danced while removing their clothing. I was filled with envy not so much for their lovely bodies as for the way they could twirl the tassels on their breasts: clockwise, counterclockwise (whiddershins!): it was superb.
Towards the end of the performance, one stripper came out who was a little older than the others, possibly a little beyond her prime. But she had a diaphanous scarf in her hands, and she twirled and swirled this about her as she removed her clothes and Hugh remarked, “She’s beautiful.” It was only she, of all the strippers, who gave the audience a feeling of mystery.
If we accept the mysterious as the “fairest thing in life,” we must also accept the fact that there are rules to it. A rule is not necessarily rigid and unbending; it can even have a question mark at the end of it. I wish that we worried more about asking the right questions instead of being so hung up on finding the answers. I don’t need to know the difference between a children’s book and an adult one; it’s the questions that have come from thing about it that are important. I wish we’d stop finding answers for everything. One of the reasons my generation has mucked up the world to such an extent is our loss of the sense of the mysterious. ...
One of my favorite theologians is Albert Einstein. He writes, “The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not, who can no longer wonder can no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed out candle.” ~ Madeleine L'Engle
The mystery, the wonder. And ultimately, even after all my rantings about truth and learning, this is what always brought me back to reading. It’s what the best of fantasy and science fiction has ultimately embodied for me. The discovery of places no one has ever seen before. And if we have seen them before, we’ve never seen them like that. Mars with flowing rivers and lapping lakes. A people living adrift on the ocean on immense rafts, pole-jumping from one to the other. From such grander images to the despair of a stowaway ejected to space, because otherwise the unyielding laws of physics would render impossible the ship’s safe return to port.
But with mystery, change is inherent, and we as a people have grown to dislike change. It disrupts our world, it makes us see things in ourselves we’ve never seen before, because we’ve never reacted thus. And so our reaction to mystery tells us something about our selves too.
And that too is what I want in my writing. With all the truths I want my readers to find in my stories, that I want to be able to create in my stories, ultimately, I want them to put my book down, stunned, reeling, and wondering. I want them to have the same wonderings I do and - for a moment, to channel dear Horton whom I will play on Saturday - the same thinks I do. And to go beyond that. I want them to take my thinks and wonderings and leap into the void with their own tangents.
Tangents. I will follow this one, because it is related (they always are, even if you don’t know it) This is why I love tangents so. Why I love the singer, the writer, the speaker, the teacher who goes off on tangents, who riff, who scat and jazz on, because they are thinking unthought thinks, and making new connections between old and new ideas and memories, taking a tune down a new path.
Wynton, old friend, look, there you are again.
It is mystery in action, it is exciting to watch, a joy to listen to and a thrill if you can follow it.
And so with all the truths you discover and pursue, all the scaffolds you erect around you to keep your walls standing and your area of security and control intact, do remember to let the dust be and go running with Moley.
Towards the end of the performance, one stripper came out who was a little older than the others, possibly a little beyond her prime. But she had a diaphanous scarf in her hands, and she twirled and swirled this about her as she removed her clothes and Hugh remarked, “She’s beautiful.” It was only she, of all the strippers, who gave the audience a feeling of mystery.
If we accept the mysterious as the “fairest thing in life,” we must also accept the fact that there are rules to it. A rule is not necessarily rigid and unbending; it can even have a question mark at the end of it. I wish that we worried more about asking the right questions instead of being so hung up on finding the answers. I don’t need to know the difference between a children’s book and an adult one; it’s the questions that have come from thing about it that are important. I wish we’d stop finding answers for everything. One of the reasons my generation has mucked up the world to such an extent is our loss of the sense of the mysterious. ...
One of my favorite theologians is Albert Einstein. He writes, “The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not, who can no longer wonder can no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed out candle.” ~ Madeleine L'Engle
The mystery, the wonder. And ultimately, even after all my rantings about truth and learning, this is what always brought me back to reading. It’s what the best of fantasy and science fiction has ultimately embodied for me. The discovery of places no one has ever seen before. And if we have seen them before, we’ve never seen them like that. Mars with flowing rivers and lapping lakes. A people living adrift on the ocean on immense rafts, pole-jumping from one to the other. From such grander images to the despair of a stowaway ejected to space, because otherwise the unyielding laws of physics would render impossible the ship’s safe return to port.
But with mystery, change is inherent, and we as a people have grown to dislike change. It disrupts our world, it makes us see things in ourselves we’ve never seen before, because we’ve never reacted thus. And so our reaction to mystery tells us something about our selves too.
And that too is what I want in my writing. With all the truths I want my readers to find in my stories, that I want to be able to create in my stories, ultimately, I want them to put my book down, stunned, reeling, and wondering. I want them to have the same wonderings I do and - for a moment, to channel dear Horton whom I will play on Saturday - the same thinks I do. And to go beyond that. I want them to take my thinks and wonderings and leap into the void with their own tangents.
Tangents. I will follow this one, because it is related (they always are, even if you don’t know it) This is why I love tangents so. Why I love the singer, the writer, the speaker, the teacher who goes off on tangents, who riff, who scat and jazz on, because they are thinking unthought thinks, and making new connections between old and new ideas and memories, taking a tune down a new path.
Wynton, old friend, look, there you are again.
It is mystery in action, it is exciting to watch, a joy to listen to and a thrill if you can follow it.
And so with all the truths you discover and pursue, all the scaffolds you erect around you to keep your walls standing and your area of security and control intact, do remember to let the dust be and go running with Moley.