"Literal" Genius

November 14, 2009

            I just spent a few hours with my nose deep in Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis again. I always get a whirlwind of strong emotions when I read his work. One part of me becomes so excited and desperately wants other people to read it too and see what I see. Then another part of me is sort of discouraged, wishing I was able to sort my thoughts just the way he does and communicate things clearly and in just the right order. Still, another part of me is challenged and inspired with a desire to search deeper, learn more, and understand more. The simple lies people say to diminish Christianity and its worth have holes all the way through them and I’m tired of not challenging them.

            Sometimes it takes a book to get me out of the world I think I’m in and into the world I actually am in. They often help with the reverse effect as well.

            Words remind me of architecture. It takes a specific design, a sort of “city planning”, to put them in just the right order for the right effect of power and meaning. You can say all the right things, but in the wrong places, they are maddeningly unhelpful. A city with all the greatest places you could ever want to go, but no direction of how you get from one place to the next also becomes quite useless. Unfortunately, I personally think I focus so much on one particular space at a time that I forget about the connections and in afterthought, they become difficult to link. Less purposeful anyhow. That little gift has also been transferred to my language skills. I really have to work at thinking about how to plan out what I say, so I tend to just not do it. I jump in and rely on my spontaneity and hope that things make sense and come out clearly. And if I am confusing, I hope that people just see it as a quirky sort of circumstance of a vivacious personality spinning out of control. That would only be the optimist’s perception of me. We all find more pleasure in well-designed spaces that are so easy to navigate, you don’t even have to think. And I think words can truly ring beautiful when the context has been so carefully chosen, it is unmistakable. But for me, I want so badly to be able to say things that cause constant epiphanies in peoples’ heads and I have such a sense of personal inadequacy about being able to actually do that, that I just keep quiet instead. How quickly I forget that the message I so desire to communicate is not dependant on my literary or verbal abilities at all. Still, I can’t help but want to improve them.

            And so, today, I took a break from arranging and designing spaces and decided to focus a bit on an overlooked art that I appreciate. Writing. It’s just a shame that I’ll end up being critiqued and graded on the first more than the second.

…a sneak peak at my latest, very “still in progress” project…