Case of the Nutty Blond

It is wonderful to take time out and enjoy the simple pleasures in life every once in a while. Consider my afternoon: The wind off the ocean is warm and moist. It is late afternoon, and the day is not so much lazy as unhurried. I am eating a bowl of chocolate ice cream while curled up on a comfy couch and am anticipating reading a good book as my thoughts wander and I consider how good it is to be young and in love!

Ok, so I’m making up the in love part, unless we are talking about the chocolate ice cream… or Matthew McConaughey. But I am not lying about the rest. So far the Cape and Ptown are proving to be ever more pleasant by the day. The other night a thunderstorm came in. It was well after sunset and I was able to watch the darkness be slashed by swords or devastated by sheets of lightning on the horizon; first in the sky, then reflected off the water. The thunder rolled in with the waves, softly murmuring of the coming storm as the air on the shore coolly held its breath. It was not a furious storm, but it made itself known, with grand thunder and intense flashes, testifying to God’s might. It was quite awesome!

I am also happy to say that I have only spent one evening in front of the boob tube (watching only the best: Law & Order), as the rest of my free time is mostly spent reading or at the beach when I am not at the gallery. I try to diversify my pleasure reading with both classical literature and the easier modern paperbacks. Earlier this summer I read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby, and have just finished Dean Koontz’s Cold Fire and Odd Thomas (Odd Thomas is actually the book I was referencing in the first paragraph, though it is finished now). Koontz is something of a guilty pleasure, but one cannot argue that he does indeed know how to use words to create memorable characters and scenarios. Plus, it is preferable to read a Koontz novel on vacation than trying to wade though Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame (what I will attempt next).

The thing I like best about fiction novels is they are all in some way reflections of the great Story that is the Bible, as J.R.R. Tolkein pointed out. As humans, we are aware that we are made to pursue truth, goodness and beauty (all of which can be found in Jesus) but after the Fall as we scattered we forgot about God, and we used stories to fill that void. Tolkein theorized that there are strains of truth in all stories—merely shadows of the true Truth of the Bible; for example, the popular use of the conflicts of good and evil. His friend C.S. Lewis expanded that even the darkest and most vile of modern stories highlight truth because they show how beautiful the hope and redemption of Christ really is. Think about it: God’s story starts “in the beginning” and also has a bad guy, but the hero over comes death and they are able to live happily ever after! Classic!

Art is meant to imitate life, and real true life has many dimensions, we have to admit. In fiction as in life, there are moral absolutes, or else we wouldn’t cheer for the protagonist most of the time. There are also times in fiction when evil gets the upper hand and it just is not fair. Unfortunately, life as well is not always fair. While Cold Fire was a moderately dark novel, it had a satisfactory ending whereas Odd Thomas had a lighter tone but at the end I was crying and quite upset at the author that things did not work out as I thought they should have. But how many times do we also whine “that’s not fair!!” in our lives as well? Justice does not always feel fair, and life darn sure is not always fair or just. The ending of Odd Thomas (and I am sorry for spoilers) felt about as unfair as Buttercup marrying Humperdink did in one of my other all time favorite stories, The Princess Bride. Like Peter Faulk says in the movie “Well who said life is fair? Where is that written?” The Dread Pirate Roberts expands on that by stating that “[l]ife is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” It is true: Loved ones die. Hard work still falls short. Love is unreturned. Shins get skinned. It does not make it suck any less, to be sure, but it is relieving when we quite fooling ourselves and others about it. In the book The Princess Bride William Goldman recalls his epiphany that life really is not fair and how knowing that somehow made the world a little clearer and perhaps a little better. Does God promise that life is fair? Not at all. But we are promised that God’s love endures and that following Him, while it will not give us a fair existence on this earth, we will be able to live abundantly. And that is a promise that feels sweeter than even my chocolate ice cream.