Art Coma...

I stayed up til 3 a.m. yesterday, reading...actually, I think I probably spent like, ten hours reading yesterday...maybe not that much, but I read around 500 pages..and finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It really did confirm everything I said about it on Monday; it's the Chronicles of Narnia for me of now...indeed, I am sure I have not felt those sort of emotions since I finished The Last Battle (a long, long time ago). I can't really blame people that haven't read the books; like Narnia (this is a paraphrase from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe), if you have not been there, we cannot expect you to believe or know what it's all about...that's also an analogy for the Kingdom of God, but aside from that, while I think everyone should read Harry Potter, if they haven't, I don't expect them to want to by any measure. But I cannot understand, for the life of me, how someone could start and never finish...it's not really a matter of taste, to be quite honest...it's a matter of humanity....but so is the fact that I don't understand things about other people....indeed, that's always been one of the largest breaks between me and most of my family....well, all of my immediate family...the way they flippantly talk about, dismiss, and disregard even the greatest pieces of cultural significance is absolutely irksome to me...it cuts right to the core of what I am. I know I can be overly emotional, especially for a guy, and that's certainly got a lot to do with it, but I do attach a lot of meaning and value to great characters and great stories...it's just who I am...and in Harry Potter, lies the greatest of both realms. There's probably something about God in all of that, but I'm not sure what right now.

How I'm feeling right now is a feeling I encounter rarely but it's not at all unfamiliar...it's a sort of all-consuming, overwhelming catharsis mingled with joy. I kind of think it's the feeling of seeing your only daughter get married, or something like that...but obviously, I've no way to know....and I know it's tied into the end of the Harry Potter saga. Part of me doesn't want to admit it's over, but I'm glad it is and I'm glad it ended as it did....indeed, much like The Chronicles of Narnia, it ended on a train out of London bound for a magical world...which, in the case of Harry Potter, is much how it began too...in fact, you cold probably say that, essentially, that's how The Chronicles of Narnia began too (though you don't really see that in the book). But that's an aside...what I'm trying to say is that something happens to me, something, not altogether nice-feeling, but definitely good after the end of things like Harry Potter (or Kingdom Hearts, or the Last Battle, or Futurama, or Wuthering Heights, or Dancer in the Dark, or The Once and Future King...the list is long and varied)...Practically, it means I'm much more present here than I have been in months, because suddenly, I don't have the constant wondering of what comes next to distract me...indeed, I'm sure I'll be much more productive now. That being said, I'm not at all very mentally present today...the weight of a large epiphanisation, in Joyce's terms, rests upon me today. I know though, from experience, that the personal meaning I'll be able to glean could be years, even decades off...indeed, I'm still experiencing Narnia shockwaves today...mostly because of the name Lucy, but that's a story for next Thursday, perhaps. I'm not quite sure how to describe it...as I'm trying to relate how I relate to art (specifically of the literary sort, which even story-driven video games can be considered), which isn't easy in its own rite, I'm also trying to figure out how to show what that means to me as a unique person, a distinct soul....I feel like I'm failing, but that's unimportant. All it comes down to is that I'm a different, better, but altogether more like the me I was supposed to be, person now...and that really did happen through the experience of seven books by J.K. Rowling. I don't think it's the same for everyone...I'm sure it's not. But that's how it is for me...I better understand, today, Stephen Dedalus' attempt to understand the world through art....but I find the fatal flaw; he was (like his creator, like me until basically right now) obsessed with the aesthetics of it all....Harry Potter would be very much below him...but it's not about the aesthetics, not at all...those are quantifiable, studiable, gradeable...but that's exactly the problem. He speaks of epiphanies and he speaks of universals due to aesthetics..but the problem is the reliance of the universal. Perhaps aesthetics are universal, and the epiphanies from them...but even so, as such, they are shallow, empty epiphanies (much like how I'm ultimately dissatisfied with my I.S.....) True epiphany gains power because of a resonance in a work of art with the readers soul...there is something there for them, especially for them, and it comes from all of it, the combination of it all...it is in the characters...who they are, how they act...in the events, in that world...there's a resonance there, and that's where the true epiphany lies. The result is a realization, on the part of the reader, of more and more of his or her self that has always existed and is yet being discovered in step with God's plan. That is true epiphany and that is the true service of the arts....ultimately, it is why as boring as it can seem (and I really do mean that...it's true) The Bible is the engaging life-blood that it is...it might not be able to hold an attention span all that well much of the time, but the words of the Lord are naturally existent for the epiphanisation into the lives of the hearers and readers, and therefore, nothing else matters.

Alright...that's probably enough about all that for now....

I'm in the midst of another week with little to no Fund raising progress....actually, as of right now, my percent moved down thanks to a misunderstanding, on my part, of an undecided monthly gift...basically, what I thought was a decision was really just the first installment of many monthly gifts that can vary, month to month. Ultimately, it cold catch up with itself...but right now, it means I lost a percent. My prayer request, and you can join in, is that I regain that percent, and perhaps another, by tomorrow afternoon.

I must admit, it was a little weird and almost surprising, to wake up this morning and not have anymore Harry Potter to read...it's all kind of a dreamish blur now and part of me does wish I had awoke to an eighth book. But in any event, it has been a glorious summer, and it's a summer I will always remember as tied in with that book series....it wasn't long into the summer that I visited a thrift store with two guys I'm not really friends with anymore, and saw that the Chamber of Secrets was there...unfortunately, I didn't have the money on me to buy it. But I returned with my parents shortly after that, and did..I remember walking to the stores around town to see if they had the Prisoner of Azkaban before I had the ability to get to the library....I remember when all but one copy of The goblet of Fire was checked out, and it was some random, only-one-in-the-series-in-the-young-adult-book-section copy. I still don't know why they have one copy of one Harry Potter book in the Young Adult section...but it was exactly what I needed then.....I remember a long, probably alienating and overall ridiculously fannish conversation about Harry Potter with another IVCF staffmember at the regional staff conference....it definitely validated my feelings toward reading "kids books" all summer. And, as of right now, I mostly remember my life since Sunday...where, for 4 days, I did little but read...and have rarely been so satisfied in two books.

Okay, this post is too long and mostly useless for others to read...but I definitely had to write it.
-Zack

"What do I do with a love that won't sit still?"
-Vienna Teng