Gull Hell

Our fifth graders took their annual trip to Longwood Gardens and Brandywine River Museum yesterday. In the afternoon, we took in a very interesting exhibit of Jamie Wyeth's, his unique take on the seven deadly sins by way of sea gull portraiture.

Like any good Wyeth, Jamie knows how to paint gulls after years of observing them by his island home. I've never liked sea gulls. Watching them sin makes things like anger and gluttony even more ugly. I wouldn't typically describe paintings of birds as intense, but these were. Most were appropriately disturbing.

One of the feature pieces that was most impacting is entitled Inferno. The scene of a flock of gulls around burning fire is recorded on a large piece of cardboard with mixed media. It's a chaotic and frantic scene that immediately evokes violent sounds and putrid smells.

Our tour guide explained the back story to us. On the island where Wyeth lives, a boy regularly travels from one beach to the next collecting trash, loading it into a rolling furnace, and burning all of it away. This of course attracts a flock of gulls who swarm and dive and fight for their own pieces of trash.

As I stood in front of the work and heard this story, I was quickly affected by how fitting the scene is. What is hell? It's swarm of birds, yelling and fighting, competing selfishly, every man for himself, so consumed with chaos, blinded to the fact that the thing they're fighting for is only a piece of worthless, discarded rubbish fit for burning.

How often do I find myself fighting over trash? CS Lewis is brought to mind: "We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."

Or, as Tim Keller says in this article, what makes hell scary is that it is simply getting what we want.

"The worst (and fairest) punishment God can give a person is to allow them their sinful hearts' deepest desire...The desire of the sinful human heart is for independence. We want to choose and go our own way. We want to get away from God--but, as we have seen, this is the very thing that is most destructive to us. Sin destroys your ability to choose, love, enjoy. Sin also brings blindness--the more you reject the truth about God the more incapable you are of perceiving any truth about yourself or the world...What is hell, then? It is God actively giving us up to what we have freely chosen--to go our own way, be our own 'the master of our fate, the captain of our soul,' to get away from him and his control. It is God banishing us to regions we have desperately tried to get into all our lives."

Wild Things: For Kids?

Since seeing the movie Friday night, I've been poking around at a few reviews, finding that many are agreeing it's not really meant for or appropriate for kids. And as I've talked to a few parents about how much I loved it, I'm wondering in the back of my mind if I should be endorsing it, or if I should be adding some sort of disclaimer, before they take the family out for a night at the movies.

And first, this makes me perplexed at our rating system. A PG movie is automatically assumed to be for kids and only kids. The trouble is, families have been conditioned to think that just because a movie is G or PG, it is meant to entertain the family rather than be discussed and discerned, and that's when they end up being disappointed (or disturbed) by rich films like WALL-E, UP, or WILD THINGS. And a PG rating also makes the vast majority of adults assume there's nothing worth pursuing on that screen, as if the only thing we're looking for in a movie is more provocative content. If we don't judge books by covers, why do we judge movies by ratings? If families or adults see this movie according to its rating, both parties with be surprised, not because it is inappropriately rated but because it is much more, or at least much different, than the average PG movie.

So let's get one thing straight, WILD THINGS is not meant to be viewed in the same way as CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS. If your child picks up on any of the meat in the movie, he might come home just a little depressed, a little distrusting of the world. The characters are not sweet and flowery and tidy and perfect and cute. They are a bit endearing, but only if you find a little bit of dysfunction endearing. And I wouldn't say it's a feel-good, fairy-tale sort of triumphal ending, either. The formulas for the typical PG movie will not be found.

Let's get another thing straight. If your children still like to entertain themselves with their imagination, they'll probably like the movie just fine. But that seems to be more of a rarity these days. WILD THINGS is reminding us of a nostalgic childhood where homemade forts--be it blankets or snow--were all the entertainment needed, before the time when movies became mindless babysitters and told us exactly what to visualize rather than letting words on a page cause images to unfold, before the time when chasing the enemy on your XBox became more exciting than stalking your dog around the house like a Serengeti predator. Stylistically, those reviewers are half-right in saying it's not for kids. What they mean is it's not for today's kids, they've been conditioned for something different from a movie. But it is for yesterday's kids, and that's part of why my young adult generation is so excited about it.

And maybe the biggest concern of all is the concern for safety and protection. Yes, that's part of a parent's job, but few would disagree that we're overprotecting these days. That's also what this movie is about. All of the emotions and circumstances are so real and universal and honest and accurate, without being at all inappropriate. While I respect the decision of a parent who feels their child is not ready for the movie, I simply hope that family will at some point find ways to appropriately approach, confront, and process the emotions that are a part of life, part of being human. I hope that ignoring a movie isn't a sign of ignoring the reality of life.

But of course, I'm no parent, so what do I know? And I say that with as much honesty and humility as I can muster. If I had kids, it's probably obvious by now that I'd love to take them to see this movie. And I'd love to come home and build a fort and hold a rumpus. But maybe that's what would turn my kids into little outcasts at school (a real and universal emotion that is among those addressed in the movie), and that's not what the average parent or child is looking for at the theater today.

So, if you're a parent, you might not want to take my word on this movie. But all of this was too complicated at the time to explain to the mother in church asking me, "How was it?"

Wild Things: Official Review

Erica warned me about getting my hopes up to high, which is a typical affair for most movies. I'm happy to say that Where the Wild Things Are pretty much met and exceeded every expectation I had.

Memories

Erica's been taking photos of each room before their dismantled. I've decided to give the most prominent memory of each room...

Dining Room: lots of meals with lots of different people, thanksgiving, birthdays, conversation...

Living Room: 30+ people in one room for film nights or laying on that couch and listening to records in order to unwind.

The Hallway: watching Wes dressed as a huge robot having to walk down sideways and playing fetch with Banjo the cat (can you spot him?).

Guest Bedroom: tucking in nieces and nephews, especially the time it was all three nieces in one bed.

The Bathroom: haircuts, always too late at night, majority of which almost ended in divorce.

The Office: Recording hymns, Combovers, and practicing with Kyle for our gig at Wired.

Kitchen: In my mind, the hardest room to leave behind. It wasn't much of a kitchen, but it somehow always ended up being the place where everyone would congregate, I guess mostly because we were cooking there and there happened to be six chairs in it. It ended up being more comfortable--or maybe I mean comforting?--than the couches in the living room. Eating at the round white table was always nice, especially during summer with 1 or 2 friends when both windows were open, the overhead fan was on, and the only light was the string of Christmas lights. It was the closest thing we had to a porch, and it wasn't a bad substitute by any means.

On Home

So we're in the process of moving. If you only keep tabs via this blog, you might not know the full story. Erica's parents purchased a foreclosure in the next town over. Ton of space, price was right, but ridiculously laid out. They completed gutted it, reconfigured things, and Erica's has been doing most of the work bit by bit for a few months now.

The plan is: we move in and rent from Erica's parents until we leave. Why bring the chaos of a move into our lives? I'm not completely sure, really, but it will put Erica maybe 20 minute closer to work, which will help. It will put in the same town as our church, making us more a part of the community and allowing us to host a high school Bible study in what we've been calling "the big room." And it doesn't sound like much but it's probably the biggest perk: a dishwasher and washing machine.

So, the house isn't exactly finished, but we've told our landlord we'll be out before November 1st. That makes for a crazy few weeks, packing up, moving, getting settled in an unfinished house, creating Halloween costumes, and preparing to host a band in "the big room" on the 31st, and in the meantime not forgetting about full-time jobs and graduate homework.

We just started packing up a few days ago, and that's when it started to hit me. I don't really want to move. I don't like moving. This is home. I like it here. It'd be easier to stay. I hate the look of empty cupboards. And all the while the obvious thought is ringing in my head: we have to do this again, in a much more extreme fashion, next year!

But why is it, I wonder, that all of our favorite movies feature road trips? What is it about long journeys and the simplicity of owning nothing except what can fit on your back or in your car that we're so enamored with? Is it just the irresponsibility we're so taken by? Or just the good music? Or do we cope with the labor of moving by constantly moving, so that we never have to face the side effects of uprooting? And why do we admire the people who move away from home and scoff at the people who live in the same town all their lives?

Surely some people are more able to handle moving than others, but I'm just wondering, are we really meant to move? Sure, staying put allows you to accumulate STUFF all too easily, which is what I'm hating most right now, and that might be one of the best arguments for never sticking around long enough. But things like relationship...community...fellowship...and even to a certain extent responsibility and commitment and loyalty and hard work...I believe we're wired for them. Can they be attained when you're moving? Sure, people on road trips experience all sorts of wondrous things, but what are they missing? I'm beginning to think we're wired for home.

OK, I can admit it, I'm thinking too hard and getting a bit melodramatic. And this type of stuck-in-the-mud thinking is what makes me boring, what makes the counselor we've visited say I'm the brake pedal and Erica's the gas. But I'm just thinking that when we worship the people who leave home or refuse to have one, we've got things just a bit out of balance, no?

And maybe it's moreso the fact that most couples can't wait to leave their first home; the inconvenient hole-in-the-wall with all sorts of horror stories that have been endured simply for the cheap rent. We've lucked out for the past four years with cheap rent and plenty of quaint space to host our friends. That's not easy to leave, at least not right now.

Don't worry, I'm excited to go to France. But I'm mostly interested in making France home as soon as possible.

Making Plans for the Wild Things

from Terrible Yellow Eyes

Plans are underway to see WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE on Friday night. I half-jokingly said to someone today that I've been waiting five years for this to happen, but when I stopped to think about it, it probably has been five years at the very least from the time I first heard it was in the works. I was excited from the moment I first heard, and the excitement has only grown since then.

Also from Terrible Yellow Eyes

Another reason why Halloween will be extra happy

Here's some more LAKE publicity, since they're set to come to our livingroom on Halloween.

This song is insane. I'm not sure how in the world they pull off this bizarre breed of light-easy-listening-elevator-jazz-dance-pop, but they totally do, and I can't wait to get my groove on.

kite

totally flew that kite, mostly as an act of rebellion. loved every minute of it.
...and I love how these photos turned out like a dream.

wind

It's a wonderfully windy day today, and while I get super excited on days like these, I found that other teachers get equally scared.

Personally, I couldn't wait to walk outside to lunch, but most other teachers were giving heavy sighs and making remarks of paranoia. "Should we really be going outside? Will we be OK? Is it safe?"

All the while I never got a clear answer on what there was to be so scared about. I guess it's all the old trees on the campus, one of which had a limb down (and the entire tree was promptly chopped up a the close of school), but other than that, why can't we get out and enjoy a little wind?

I mentioned to one coworker that I couldn't wait to get home and fly a kite. "Oh no," she said, "not today!!" Hmm. Would it be better to wait for a day that isn't windy? That doesn't make much sense to me.

So while everyone was fretting and grumbling, I spent the entire day singing along with Page France in my head:

I believe in windy days when everything gets blown away, please let me be blown away, I promise you I'm not afraid...

Good News

You, us, costumes, candy, and....LAKE!
Mark your calendars.
October 31st.
Happy Halloween, indeed.
This will be a housewarming party, too...we're moving the extravaganza from the apartment to the new house in Hellertown.
See you there!!