_The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian_

Deb, Hannah and I saw the movie together tonight, and we all enjoyed it.

The story worked (almost completely-- much better than many adaptations I've seen), and the plot turns and complications were believably managed. Even though it would have been more interesting-- in my opinion-- to see more development of the Narnian characters along with the action sequences (can a brother get an on-screen conversation between King Edmund and a Gryphon, pleeeease?!), the dramatic tension and the heroic responses to risk and danger were effectively conveyed. Good stuff!

I was impressed by the one obvious (there may have been others which I didn't pick up on) story "change" which involved a brief appearance of a previously dispatched arch-enemy (like I said: obvious), but I was very, very, very impressed by one significant storytelling choice which had been a concern since I heard that the books would be adapted to film.

This concern wasn't my idea, but I picked up the burden of it as soon as other critics and commentators pointed it out.

The issue? What could be done about Lewis' presumably fairly innocent-at-the-time choice to cast the Telmarine and/or Calormen with a more or less Arabic cultural framework to avoid any unnecessary or clumsy suggestion of racially volatile references to contemporary radical Muslim concerns?

The solution (at least with the Telmarines)? Go late-medieval Spaniard instead. I think it was a low-level stroke of genius. The Conquistador flavor worked perfectly as a counterpoint to Narnian culture, and the "conquering pirate" culture of the Telmarines fits nicely inside the whole historical spectrum of everything from the Spanish Armada to Cortez and friends.

I will wait with eagerness to see what others have to say about this nuancing of Lewis' original material.

The other ingenius allusion? The commercials and trailers show the "water-demiurge" figure, so this isn't really a spoiler ...

Think Neptune meets Moses and the Egyptian army at the Red Sea. I'll be eager to see the response to this part of the film, too. Will it be considered subtle and creative or heavy-handed and cliche? A case can be made for both perspectives, but I lean heavily toward the subtle and creative.

I'm almost glad that some of the early reviews were a bit mixed and/or downbeat about the film, because I came away feeling that it was much, much better than I had been expecting.

It was enjoyable to see, and it will be interesting and meaningful to see again.

On a totally different note: I was reminded of one of my favorite quotes from the book when it was used in the scene at the river as Lucy tried to engage a bear in conversation. After the action was concluded, "DLF" (is that an intentional distortion of "ELF"?) says, "Get treated like a dumb animal long enough, and that's what you'll become." Very, very true, and not just in Narnia ...

If it had been available, my newest blog would have been "Stark Reality," and the template quote would have been ...

"How can we ever feel the freedom / Or the flame lit by the spark
How can we ever come out even / When reality is stark?

That was a Wonderful Remark / I had my eyes closed in the dark ..."
--Van Morrison, "Wonderful Remark"

It struck me as I was doing my Monday morning run with my .mp3 headphones on.

I guess I'll have to just settle for having it here on "The Wildwood Light" as a reminder to keep my eyes open ... even in the darkness ...

Obviously, I have been "lost in the wild woods" much more than "in the light" on this blog in the past few years, but there's a chance I can spend more time here in the near future.

Hope so.

I got to sit in on an Introduction to Literature "tryout lesson" by a prospective faculty candidate today, and I was really blessed and encouraged and energized-- inspired-- by the experience. I felt a dynamic synergy between Whitman's "Spider" poem and a few quotations which have, for a long time, meant a great deal to me.

I'm collecting them together here because this blog is, for me, about "glimpses of grace," light in the darkness, path signs in the tangled underbrush-- light in the wildwood that is this life.

Today's light on the trail:

"I look back in wonder at the path which I alone could never have found,
a wondrous path through despair to this point from which I, too,
could transmit to mankind a reflection of Your rays.
And as much as I must still reflect You will give me.
But as much as I cannot take up You will have already assigned to others."
--Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

"'Man,' he said, then left a long pause, letting scorn build up in the cave like the venom in his breath. 'I can see you understand them. Counters, measurers, theory-makers. [...] Games, games, games!' He snorted fire. 'They only think they think. No total vision, total system, merely schemes with a vague family resemblance, no more identity than bridges and, say, spiderwebs. But they rush across the chasms on spiderwebs, and sometimes they make it, and that, they think, settles that!'" --John Gardner, _Grendel_, pp54-55

"A noiseless patient spider,
I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres, to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul."
--Walt Whitman, "A Noiseless Patient Spider"

"The inventory of philosophical vocabulary used in classical China to define this kind of 'knowing' tends to be one of tracing out, unraveling, penetrating, and getting through . . . to trace out the connections among its joints and sinews, to discern the patterns in things, and, on becoming fully aware of the changing shapes and conditions of things, to anticipate what will ensue from them." --Sun Tzu: The Art Of Warfare, pp56, 57, trans. by Roger T. Ames

"Do I dare disturb the universe? / In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions / which a minute will reverse."
--T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

"He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true wayfaring Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloister'd vertue, unexercis'd & unbreath'd, that never sallies out and sees her adversary ... [T]rue temperance [is that which can] see and know, and yet abstain." --Milton, *Areopagitica*

Never try to help God fulfill His word. [...] There is never any need to pretend
that your life is filled with joy and confidence; just wait upon God and be grounded in Him (Isaiah 50:10-11). [...] Do I trust at all in the flesh? Or have I learned to go beyond all confidence in myself and other people of God? Do I trust in books and prayers or other joys in my life? Or have I placed my confidence in God Himself, not in His blessings?"
--Oswald Chambers, _My Utmost for His Highest_, 1/19 reading

The trail? Today, it runs from Solzhenitsyn's despair to Chambers' quiet confidence in God by way of Eliot's attempt to overcome self-conscious timidity and interact with the universe in keeping with Milton's recommendation to "sally out" of my comfort zone-- to give my "cloister'd vertue" a good workout and make more and more meaningful connections between myself, my life, and the truth that is "out there" to be "traced out" in the real world-- in spite of the risks involved due to human frailties, especially the hubris all too prevalent in me which assumes too much wisdom, too much discernment, too much awareness of "absolute" truth.

What an amazing line, a perfect metaphor for a great way to live: "Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres, to connect them ..."

Seeking to connect the little bubbles of thought-- of truth "as best I can remember it"-- which, strung together well, form a bridge-- a path across dark canyons-- to take me a little "further on down the road."

It's wonder-ful to be on that path, that solid ground found in and on the Solid Rock ...

Words of wisdom from a former U.N. President who died on a service mission:

God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illuminated by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder the source of which is beyond all reason. --Dag Hammarskjold (1905-1961)
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"Wave on wave of life/ Like the great wide ocean's roll
Haunting hands of memory/ Pluck silver strands of soul
The damage & the dying done/ The clarity of light
Gentle bows & glasses raised/ To the charity of night."
--Bruce Cockburn, "The Charity Of Night"
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Check out www.hyperlit.blogspot.com for an updated and expanded version of the L460 Hyperliterature Links information. Thanks!

"And as I said to my son, 'If you wanted to volunteer
for fascinating, dangerous, necessary work,
this would be a great job to volunteer for--
trying to be a wide-awake human during a dark age
and keeping alive what you think is beautiful
and important." --Ventura/Hillman,
We've Had A Hundred Years Of Psychotherapy
And The World's Getting Worse, p237
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What is a Wildwood Light?

It's not exactly the deepest mystery vexing our collective mind, but here's an explanation for anyone interested:

It is a symbol of what a Christian can be in this world. The word-picture is borrowed from the imagery developed in song lyrics by Terry Scott Taylor (www.danielamos.com), and my own theory is that he owes his inspiration to for his metaphors to the work of C.S. Lewis, the classic hymn, "Church in the Wildwood," and, possibly, the writings of William Morris. This linkage of ideas might easily be dismissed as an inside joke for Taylor and Lewis fanatics, but I see it as an accurate way of viewing the who, what and how of following Jesus: The World is our own fallen, but still surprisingly lovely and loveable Earth. What once was a garden is now a brushy, scrubby forest-- still fertile and vital, but untended, undirected and unpruned-- a "wild" wood. The light is, first of all, God's Light-- shining in the Wildwood as a reminder that a Gardener was the designer and may still have specific, artistic plans for His creation. Secondly, the Wildwood Light can also be anyone of us who would like to "shine in the darkness" and help "make sense of the chaos" we find in this well-crafted, but overgrown, estate.

[more to come]

For anyone who's still reading: Here's an elaboration on

"Nothing worth havin'
comes without some kind of fight
Got to kick at the darkness
'til it bleeds daylight ..."
--Bruce Cockburn
«¤»«¤»«¤»«¤»«¤»«¤»«¤»

"Paraphrasing Francis Bacon,
one may say that superficial
and egocentric knowledge
leads to atheism,
while genuine, deep and objective study
leads to faith in God."
--Scientists Who Believe, p9
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IN THE DARK, I AM

in the dark, I am
in the dark, and alone
my water is mud
my bread is a stone

I have but one companion
only one listening ear
he feeds on my shadows
his name is Fear

I search for a comfort
for a place I can rest
I look for the One Who Created me
and Knows me the best

I've heard stories of Him
bits and pieces, since birth
they say He Brightens your life
Gives you some worth

I look for Him always
He's Elusive and Rare
I think He's There Waiting
Someday, Somewhere

I've come close a few times
it starts to get light
it gets gray all around
'stead of the usual, black night

but always just before whiteness
while my shadows still play
I see cold, evil eyes
blocking my way

If I just had the courage
to walk past that stare
I could join the Creator
live under His Care

but I go back to the dark
cold and alone
here with my Fear
my mud and my stone

--tms, 7/14/82

300-4-L460-x-311-80-3846
My Pseudo-Submission for Ryman’s Another One Along in a Minute (and my Project #1 for IUPUI/L460) has been moved to my Hypertext Literature Blog: www.hyperlit.blogspot.com -- You're welcome to visit it often!

Have you seen Geoff Ryman's hypertext novel, 253? Wow! Check it out: http://www.ryman-novel.com/ It's a great ride ...

"I finished writing and looked up.
Don Juan was staring at me.
He shook his head from side to side and smiled.

'You really write everything?' he asked in an incredulous tone.
'Genaro says he can never be serious with you because you're always writing.
He's right; how can anyone be serious if you're always writing?'

He chuckled and I tried to defend my position.

'It doesn't matter,' he said, 'If you ever learn to see,
I suppose you must do it in your own weird way.'"
--Carlos Castenada, A Separate Reality--
Further Conversations With Don Juan, p215

Good evening, and welcome to "Ideas That Sound Good 'til You Think About 'em For More Than a Few Seconds."
I'm your host, Tim Stark, and this is the first installment of this new segment of our new show, "The Wildwood Light."

I got the idea for "The Draft Board" [patent not applied for, but it's mine, ALL MINE!] while trying to write my L460 assignment this afternoon.
I imagined a character who was into a kind of writing which was a cross between the art of composing haiku and the craft of constructing cut-and-paste ransom notes.

He saw words and ideas as though they are enzymes and chromosomes, and he liked to string the same basic elements together-- as though it was conceptual DNA, and he was the helix-master-- in as many ways as possible before collecting another set. He'd read publications like "Outside" & "ESPN: The ..." & "Scenario" & "The Comics Journal" & "Cornerstone" & "Touchstone" magazines. When specific words struck him as significant-- protean and fertile, encompassing and encapsulating-- he stuck them to a page of his own design. Its surface was covered in Post-it™ note adhesive. He could organize the word sets on the framed field of sticky stuff in a quasi-monologue, semi-sonnet a/o neo-narrative, then title, date and number-code it. When it provided a certain sense of something right, he would then lay the seeded Draft Board [copyrights reserved, but what's the point, really?] on the photocopier and print out the text for a master/hard-copy of each version/string. Then, he could take all the semes off and start again. So many variations were possible within the constraints of these arbitrary boundaries. Possibly fascinating (might make a fun game, as an alternative to the poem-magnet sets found in so many PBS-related mail order catalogs these days ...) in a "but, why?!" kinda way ... chances are, our next episode will profile something even more merely-superficially-useful. Count on it!

"The inventory of philosophical vocabulary
used in classical China to define this kind of "knowing"
tends to be one of tracing out, unraveling, penetrating,
and getting through. . . to trace out the connections
among its joints and sinews, to discern the patterns in things,
and, on becoming fully aware of the changing shapes
and conditions of things, to anticipate what will ensue from them."
--Sun Tzu: The Art Of Warfare, pp56-57 translated by Roger T. Ames

[This is my day #13,713 -- give or take. How many days are you?]

I enjoyed my IUPUI Eng-Grad internship with Professor Helen Schwartz. I was one of her course assistants in the Spring '99 Semester, and I learned much about both the how-to's and why-to's-or-not-to's of the production and consumption of hypertext literature. As part of the course-work, I participated in the "final exam"-- a chat-room and forum-based exchange of essays and responses by all the class members. Here's my essay for that assignment. Professor Schwartz encouraged me to publish it on the web. It only took me about a year-and-a-half to get that done ...

"How Is It That a Collection of Ideas Become Valuable?"
Welcome to the information-neighborhood. Today, we're talking about how ideas become valuable as a result of being collected into groups. He uses a more war-oriented metaphor than I choose for learning situations, but J.B. Phillips contends, "If words are to enter men's minds and bear fruit, they must be the right words shaped cunningly to pass men's defenses and explode silently and effectually within their minds."

We might also express Phillips' statement in another way:
aaaaaaa
bb
cc
dddddddd
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
fffff
gg
hhhhhh
Iiiiiiiiii
llllll
mmmmm
nnnnnnnnnnnnnn
ooooo
ppp
rrrrrrrr
sssssssssssss
tttttttttttt
uuuu
www
x
yyyy
,
''
""
.
<29 blank spaces>

These symbol "blocks" were stacked to make the words which made the idea Mr. Phillips wanted to communicate, and, in the same way, collected ideas, symbols and expressions become valuable by means of a personality's intentional, creative act. The "shaping" process is the "how?," but it requires a "who?," for it to happen, and that who is anyone and everyone and me and you.

Over the course of time and by the combined acts of idea-shaping by every personality to ever live, symbols-- including those alphabetical and numerical-- have been filled with meaning. Not all symbols mean the same things to all people, but they do have meaning, and we use them to make a constant flow of valuable ideas. This doesn't just go for fine art or "important" writings, we collect ideas about even the most mundane things, and, paradoxically, even these collections have value. Does it look like rain today? How many days now have I used this disposable razor? When did I put this ziploc of hamburger in the fridge? Did I leave the iron on when I left for work this morning? What did my boss mean by that remark about office restructuring? The personality behind the book of Ecclesiastes said it this way, "'Look,' says the Teacher, 'this is what I have discovered: 'Adding one thing to another to discover the scheme of things ...'" He was big on schemas long before there was any need to consider mourning "the death of the book."

Given the opportunity, each of us could use the letters and markers and spaces listed above to make our own "collection of ideas," and we might even find that we could form a message which had great meaning and value-- if not for everyone on the world wide web, then at least for ourselves. Linda Flower, in her College Composition and Communication quarterly article, "Cognition, Context and Theory Building" (October 1989), makes the point this way, "... as theorists and researchers, we inevitably, constantly, and energetically impose meaning and pattern on the data of experience. . . . Given enough time, people, including teachers, researchers, and literary critics, will always perceive patterns, of some sort, in anything." She goes on to say that the only remaining question about these constructions is whether or not anyone else will also see the same connections. Their value, though, is established regardless of whether or not they are considered significant by anyone else.

If you've ever hiked a trail, you've probably seen small stacks of stones called cairns. Grand Canyon guides have been known to point them out with a statement, "If you see at least three stones piled up on each other, you know for sure that it's a trail-guide and not a natural formation." Even three stones can be collected into a valuable idea. But only as the product of someone's "cunning" to shape them into a potentially life-saving statement. Simple? Yes. Valuable? Priceless!

This also illustrates well one of the reasons I believe in "Truth with a capital t": Even people who claim to believe in chance as the basis of life and meaning still live (including, to speak into phones, drive to Grandma's, eat at Joe's, claim copyrights, take photographs, shoot basketballs, choreograph dance steps, read textbooks, buy flowers for Mom, mow lawns, work overtime, hope for a raise and promotion, and make bank deposits) as though they believed the exact opposite! We all act like order and design and creativity are what make the difference in life, what produces meaning and value and purpose and satisfaction. Every creative act is also valuable, regardless of whether or not it has the appearance of order (a Jackson Pollack "splatter" painting has the surface image of chaos, but it can only be completed by a carefully planned process within a carefully constructed framework). Even a polemic against the concept of an ordered, designed universe is presented by someone who "got their thoughts together."

Ideas and symbols are made value-rich as they are collected by the intentional act of a personality (not just humans, for sure!), and these acts, no matter how mundane, are a constantly renewable resource whose market value is not diminished by their abundance.

We might be concerned about how we'll manage information in the new millenium and on the information superhighway, and we might be inclined to extend T.S. Eliot's sad question, "Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?" to include, "Where is the information we have lost in the proliferation of raw data?," but even on our most input-overloaded day, we'll still be creating collections of ideas which serve valuable purposes in our lives.

How?

Like the ultimate neighbor, Mr. Rogers, says, "By just your being you."

"He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true wayfaring Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloister's vertue, unexercis'd & unbreath'd, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortall garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat . .. . [T]hat which purifies us is triall, and triall is by what is contrary. . . . [T]rue temperance [is that which can] see and know, and yet abstain." [1644] --quoted from Milton's Areopagitica by Wayne C. Booth in The Company We Keep, p488