Desperate Search: (dis)Concertingly Staid

Desperate Search: 

Disconcertingly Staid

Part Two

i  want to be well. 

I want to tell you about my thoughts.

i want my thoughts to have resonance.

i want to see the world around me. 

i want to remember the world I've seen.

i want to analyze exactly what I  remember.

i want to add my individuality to the analysis.

i want to be both a part and wholly other.

i want to engage and be engaged.

i want to tell you more about The Revengers.

i want to prove to you its merit.

i want to show how the machinations of story require grace.

i want to inform you on how the grace card is like the force of gravity.

i want to explain how this relates to the ragtag band of Revengers.

i want to say that "Vengeance is mine," says the Lord. 

i want to rattle on about actors.

i want to dissect what makes a truly good actor.

i want to distill the person of Richard McGraw.

i want to contemplate his albums in succeeding chronological order.

i want to order my perspective on his individuality.

i want to see his uniqueness clearly.

i want to share this with you.

i want you to join Me. 

i want to mention Exodus, chapter 4, verses 22 through 26.

i want to portray the story as strange.

i want the answers to come without ease.

i want the answers to be hidden.

i want the answers to be worth the fight. 

i want to make a Questioner's Bible.

i want it to have verse by verse questions correlating to the text.

i want to start with the book of Mark. 

i want you to love Mark's eye as I do.

i want you to taste the enigma.

i want you to know that the word for enigma in Slovene is uganka, which sounds like an onomatopoeia to me. 

i want to share my reading of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian with you.

i want you to see it as I see it.

i want you to know that the story is spiritually vast.

i want you to see the limitlessness of the world created, the world imagined.

i want you to know that it is everything.

i want you to see the end of everything.

i want you to know that everything and nothing are mostly the same. 

i want you to still have hope. 

i want you to help me to understand Eyes Wide Shut. 

i want you to tell me if it's a reflection of 2 Thessalonians 2:7

i want you to tell me what 2 Thessalonians 2:7 is really referring to. 

i want you to know that Sufjan Stevens is a modern prophet.

i want you to feel how the baton was passed to Sufjan from C.S. Lewis.

i want you to see history's river.

i want you to paddle with me.

i want you to believe that The Crusades were really important.

i want you to agree with me that the past isn't as fixed as we like to see it as.

i want us to say that the past is not something to be tamed.

i want you to precisely know what I meant by that last sentence.

i want us to be fulfilling our purpose together.

i want us to be you and me. 

i and you and us: comrades.

i and you and us as comrades discovering the trillion pieces of the puzzle.

you and i knowing that the puzzle is the face of God.

In the last post, Dave Eggers and his 90's magazine Might was a topic of inquiry and approach. The idea was exciting and innovative, but in my perception I saw its fatal flaw from the first act. Perhaps Mr. Eggers knew this too. I learned this morning that Eggers has created another magazine since then, known as The Believer. Might, although it had great aspirations, buried itself in critique. It wallowed there. Perhaps additionally, and I believe this is the flaw (and our great pride) of the hipster aged intellectual, no destination. Things are looked at, adulated, adored even, and through this a great lens is put on the grocery carts of the world -- but what is missing is the collective -- the great sense of inclusion that can bind us together knowing that the grocery cart is everything because in it we can see and therefore chance to distill, dirty reflections of the God of the cosmos.  Might primarily seems like a failed concept because they labored hard in destroying the works of others. 

The Believer has this written about themselves on their website 

The Believer is a monthly magazine where length is no object.
There are book reviews that are not necessarily timely,
and that are very often very long.
There are interviews that are also very long.
We will focus on writers and books we like.
We will give people and books the benefit of the doubt.
The working title of this magazine was The Optimist.

There's much there to get excited about. Again I repeat, much. It is reminiscent of the speech Conan O'Brien made during his exit from The Tonight Show, in which he invoked the virtue of hope of cynicism, glee over sarcasm. The mag's wikipedia page opines that the creators of the magazine went forth in creation with the philosophical backbone of "the concept of the inherent Good." That's intriguing, no? 

I hereby propose that whoever would deem themselves as willing and able to participate, join me in the creation of our own magazine. Huzzah. 

Here's how I see it:

-We create a universe (the space of the magazine), in which we look at all the knowledge in the world. We have the freedom to look at everything that is or has been. We say that imagination too exists, in that ideas do indeed have a physical presence (neurons and brain signals and the like, you see). 

-We take the world entire as a vessel for coming to know God. Deeper and deeper. 


-We observe scientific phenomena, literary genius, exceptional sporting feats, and we search within those things for that which uniquely reflects a vision of God. 


-Because Man has been made in God's image, foremost among the efforts we make, would be to look at the individual, and to love them for how they have been made. 


-We create pieces of art along the way ourselves. These should not be free forming pieces of art --- we are not a journal of unattached artistic renderings --- but rather, pieces that enhance the experience of the magazine. For instance, one issue may have a soundtrack, an audible companion to the words on the page. This area of course, should be left vague, so as to leave room for later formation and evolution.


-We will charge a substantial fee to be a member of the magazine. It should not be cheap. Our pretentious magazine will not ever have an extensive fan base, but we'll force the play of the consumers passion by making them invest in order to partake. 


-This is a big one (and already foreshadowed): there will be no room for negative reviews and hollow criticism. We have not the time for such things. If we are interested acutely on the worship of God by the compartmentalization of pieces of matter and mind, then the best way to deal with dirt and crap is to ignore it. There are, inevitably, certain nuances and distinctions that can be made and will be, but as a general principle, the destruction of concept is not what we'll be in the business of doing. Let the others toil away in such self-deducting ventures. We will avoid the pitfalls of jealousy, envy, and strife by loving the lovely, not concerning ourselves with burying the already dead. 

-So, anyone got a title?

-Now, if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, -- each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. 1 corinthians 3:12-15

Shall we not build, so as to see our work endure, not because of our greatness, but because we fixed our eyes on the character and form of God? Shall we not do that in this way? With our hearts? With our minds? With our work?

that's it.

that's all i want. 

Goodbye.