Random Thoughts: Thousandth Post edition

• One thousand posts! That is a lot of random thoughts—because they're all random thoughts, really. Whether blogs remain in existence for another thousand of my posts or not (we are all at the mercy of our hosting services, after all), I'm pretty sure I'll still be writing little snippets of ideas down somewhere for as long as I can. It's the way I make sense of life.

• Speaking of writing snippets of ideas down…do you ever feel like the more you hear others talk, the less you have to say? Sure, sometimes I have the urge to defend a position or refute an untruth, but many times even the thought of that seems too exhausting (and futile). I think it's partly that there are so many contentious opinions coming at me from all sides (and I've deliberately retreated from some of that as I've seen ill effects from it)—but it's also the long-standing problem (even in journal-writing) of fearing sentimentality—and what others will say of it. I have to remind myself that there is beauty in true sentiment—great beauty—and I don't want to lose that just because I get caught up in this "ironic" age of ours.

Anyway, this article by Dan Hitchens, "The Limits of Irony," speaks to some of those ideas. He quotes David Foster Wallace, who observes that

for recovering alcoholics, pathetically unironic and gauche expressions like “one day at a time” can make the difference between life and death. [And] Wallace [also] advised: “The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness,” even when that truth has become a cliché which “we all know.”

Hitchens continues, quoting another modern writer:

one result of modernism is that “generation after generation of poets have had confidence in their place undermined. They therefore lose authority and feel they can say less and less until they say so little that no one wants to listen to them at all.”

It's hard to balance humility, and an awareness of how much you don't know, with that loss of "poetic authority" he's talking about. I don't want to think myself out of writing altogether. It's easy to be annoyed with a writer that asserts too much glib knowledge, but I gain so much from reading other people's thoughtful musings, even at the very times when they aren't sure of themselves! And think of the loss if none of us dared write at all!

• On the topic of truth and clichés "we all know," I've also been thinking lately about the types of truth which are inexpressible in words and only found through experience —but which can, once the experience is gained, be reinforced through words. I mean the types of things people say—"the time goes so quickly"—or the scriptures you always thought were so simple—"wickedness never was happiness." There are so many things like that, which I read and thought hopelessly obvious or trite when I was younger—but which I hear and feel as profound truth now. For that reason, I loved these lines by poet Derek Walcott:

…I have come this late
to Italy, but better now, perhaps, than in youth
that is never satisfied, whose joys are treacherous,
while my hair rhymes with those far crests, and the bells
of the hilltop towers number my errors,
because we are never where we are, but somewhere else,
even in Italy. This is the bearable truth
of old age…

Ah. Yes. I do feel like in some ways "I am never where I am" anymore—although I do try to "live in the present" when I can—but my current thoughts and worries and wonderings have such an influence on how I experience life. Although over the years the duties and routines of daily life have changed only slowly for me, if at all, I feel so different inside than I did ten years ago! And at the same time…not different at all. If that makes any sense. :)

• Here's a great little quote I came across, by then-Elder Russell M Nelson:

Sister Nelson and I have occasionally taken leave from an engagement saying, “It’s time for us to go home now and see what our children are doing and tell them to stop.”

I can relate.

• Some funny things said around here lately:

Sebastian referring to Edgar Allan Poe's story "The Cask of Amontillado" as "The Armadillo Society" 

Goldie exclaiming with surprise and delight at the grocery store, "Oh! Tiny avocados!" (They were limes.) 

Conversations with Teddy: 

Teddy: Daddy, did you catch that fish?
Sam: No, we just got it at the store.
Teddy: Yes, the store didn’t want it, so they asked if we wanted it, and we said yes we did! 

(Later, Teddy referred to that same fish as "a big plump of salmon.”) 

"Mommy, I’m still kind of mad, but not mad enough to do ‘hhuh!’ [mad huffing sound] or anything. And now that you hug me, I’m not mad at all.” 

Me: Teddy, do you think those pants might be too big for you?
Teddy: No, they’re just too long, and they keep falling down. 

"My nightmare was really short. I just thinked about a monster and then—done."

• And for good measure, here's a lovely Catholic lady talking great sense about marriage and motherhood, and how the very difficulty and the sacrifice of self they require, open the way to a better life:

The reality of a “state of life” (marriage is one, religious life is another) is that it, how shall I put this, curtails our scope of action for the purpose of a greater good; it’s precisely service to our fellow man (and child!). By necessity we must be curtailed! There is no other way to do anything of value! As long as every choice is open to us, we are in the condition of not having chosen. When we choose, we by definition limit the scope of what we can do — yet, paradoxically, we find our true creativity. If we seek creativity up front, we get personal destruction. Really creative persons — artists — know this. The form gives the real freedom. 

You are probably waiting for me to quote G. K. Chesterton, so here you go!

"Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense, every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else… Every act is an irrevocable selection and exclusion… The artist loves his limitations: they constitute the thing he is doing." 

I think we could also say, “Every lover loves his limitations: they constitute the possibility of love.”