frenetic samples

There are books from which you can pick random excerpts and read them, and each excerpt is like a segment of an orange. It's self contained. You get something complete from each bit that you read. Novels are never like that and we don't want them to be. 

reading and writing

For most of my primary/ elementary school years, I hated school. But then, as time went by, to some extend in 5th grade, and then especially in 6th grade, I started to like school a bit more, because I got to do things that I enjoyed and found interesting. I liked a subject called 'themes', which was kind of about being creative. It was like a cross between English, social studies and art. We had a book and you would read a passage from the book and then answer the questions, and it was this that I really took to, but for me it wasn't about writing. It was more about designing the page with lettering and colors and designs. So, I would write the answers and then color in the page. 

I also started to get more into reading around that time. 

Our teacher was radical. He had the idea that we would work on a contract basis. So, at the beginning of the week we would fill in the contract with what we were going to do for each of the different subjects, and then, at the end of the week we would meet with him and discuss how we went and get his input about what to work on for the future. For me, everything else except 'themes' became like a side-gig and themes was my full-time job. I didn't really care about anything else. 

serenidipity

In general, I don't see many possibilities for myself, but at times I realize that there's no reason why exciting things can't happen. I'm constantly thinking about why they can't happen, but that thinking is distorted and I think it's characteristic of my old self so it's a thing of the past. 

There's part of me that wants to make a whole life out of loss and lack, blinded to the possibility of anything good. 

voacation

The best teaching is a balance of preparation and spontaneity. 

corporeality

What I really liked about Tiphaine Samoyault's biography of Barthes is the way that she weaves together the story of Barthes's life and his intellectual work and life and his contribution to theory, all together into a single story. 

It's a bit like what you get when you read Sylvia Plath's journals and letters. You're getting her masterful writing, but also, each letter or journal entry has a context within her life, so there's the story of her life along with the story(s) she's telling in her writing. 

the reverse alchemy of reality

Books get a sense of identity from not being what people think they are. Frankenstein is a good example of this. It's ostensibly a story about a monster but I think it's really more about humanity. 

The real monster or villain in Frankenstein is neither Victor Frankenstein nor the being he creates. Through the novel’s nested narratives, the reader comes to sympathize and identify with both of the main characters. The sense conveyed is that the tragedy is not perpetrated by malevolent individuals but rather by reality itself, and the tragedy is rendered all the more profound because it seems to arise as a result of impulses and enterprises that are positive. Frankenstein desires to learn and to discover secrets that will be of great benefit to humanity. His is an intellectual quest to discover new realms of knowledge and his motivation is essentially altruistic or, at least, not malevolent. He sees himself as being on this great scientific quest right up until the moment that he creates life, and then it turns into a nightmare. 

I think one of the major issues represented in Frankenstein is the way that, fineness and goodness held in one's inner world, become monstrous and malevolent when we try to squeeze them into the 'real' world. Something happens to these ideal good things when they are realized - made real. Intelligence is an example of this. People with higher intelligence are at greater risk of suffering from mental illness, simply because there's so much going on in their mind, which in abstract and ideal terms is good, but when it comes into contact with the realities of this world, can be destructive. 

We see it in religion as well. During Jesus's life on earth, the people who were most serious about religion and righteousness were the pharisees, but they were the people who Jesus criticized and rebuked the most. He said that they were far from God. Ironically, that was because they were so serious about being close to God. They had good ideas and even good intentions, but when those ideas were translated into the real world, the result was something bad. 

more than cosmetic

Sometimes I have wondered why the Bible doesn't have pictures. The basic Bible I mean. I know that study Bibles and Bibles with extra resources have images, like maps and representations of things the Bible talks about. The basic text though, is text. Words. 

I'm glad about that. It's like that for a reason. We're meant to engage with the text as words and sentences, and that includes the whole thing. 

'The Readable Bible' tries to make reading the Bible easier (that's their claim) by reformatting the text more appropriately and adding in charts and images and maps. They say on their website: "Reading the Bible is hard. We fix that." I think that's highly problematic. First of all, difficulty is not the enemy. The Bible ought to be hard. Yes, we can use commentaries and paraphrases and teaching and diagrams and maps, etc. to help us understand the text, but interfering with the text to make it 'easier' is verging on (maybe more) blasphemy. 

Some more text from the website:

If you find the Bible hard to read, you're not alone. Many people wish they read it more often. But let's face it. With page after page of plain text, the Bible is hard to read.

Until now.

That's not a Christian view. That's saying that, while it's good to read the Bible, it's understandable if you don't, because it's hard. That's not what Christians believe. They believe that the Bible is the word of God and that it's our spiritual food - that it's the 'bread of life' that comes from heaven. That's also what the Bible teaches about itself. Reading it is not an option, it's indispensable. It's part of having a relationship with God. Also, it's not that difficult. If you can read, you can read it. Yes, as you go, you encounter difficult and challenging parts, but that's good.