IVP - Strangely Dim

Ode to an Artfully Written Run-On Sentence

Today's entry in our Fortnight of Odes is inspired by Cory Doctorow, specifically his article "How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook." The whole article is great, but I'm particularly impressed with the following run-on sentence: "Maybe it's evolutionary, some quirk of the neocortex dating from our evolution into social animals who gained advantage by dividing up the work of survival but acquired the tricky job of watching all the other monkeys so as to be sure that everyone was pulling their weight and not napping in the treetops instead of watching for predators, emerging only to eat the fruit the rest of us have foraged." For another angle on the challenge of being chief monkey, check out my boss's recent blog post "Getting on the Bus."

And now for the ode.

Ahem.

He keeps going and going and going.
In the beginning, he wrote as if midsentence--
Articulating an afterthought,
Commencing adverbially.
One searches in vain for the verb that justifies
The capital at the beginning
And the period at the end.
And yet . . .
And yet I keep reading and reading and reading,
As though I've stumbled upon the treasure map of the Internet
Or of creation
Or of evolution,
As though my own genesis and apocalypse
Can be found and celebrated in this one sentence
With no beginning and no end.

Ode to Homonym Substitutions

We're nearing the end of our Fortnight of Odes, during which we've indulged ourselves in the creative process of crafting odes, defined according to Wikipedia as "a form of stately and elaborate lyrical verse." Today's ode recalls an early embarrassment in my career as an editor, in which a colleague used the phrase "homonym substitution" and I had no idea what she was talking about. I've since learned that its the replacement of the word you mean with a word that sounds just like it but carries a completely different meaning, as in the case of the word its (which should have been it's) at the beginning of this sentence.

Without further uh due, today's ode. Please snap where appropriate.

I ode my fodder sum money,
Sew off too work I went.
Be four I urned a Nick'll
My money awl was spent.
 
Butt don't dee spare four my sake;
Aisle make the money back.
I took ought an udder more gauge,
And I'm head Ed four the track!

Kudos to Motos

The odes are really starting to flow now that I'm not waking up at 2 a.m., so here, for your gasping pleasure, is yet another piece of my trip: Phnom Penh traffic. I can hear you asking, what is a moto? A definition, a photo, my ode, may help--but they can't give you the full picture. You really have to experience Phnom Penh traffic to imagine it. Even seeing it, I can't see how it works . . . But join me now, imaginative readers, in celebrating a perhaps heretofore overlooked mode of transportation.

Ode to Motos

Oh moto, you charm me:

threading through Phnom Penh streets
with grace and ease, your rubber meets
both cement and dirt, sidewalk and road
with ease and grace, whate'er the load
(you carry mattresses, balloons,
five men at once 'neath suns and moons,
or babies in their parent's arms,
papaya, ladders, rice from farms--
there's almost nothing you don't hold,
this, more than once, our team was told.)
Your riders drive with confidence
(and generally with less expense.)
You hardly ever have to stop
unless you see a watching cop;
at red lights you can simply slow
and weave amidst the coming flow
of traffic, people, ox-pulled carts.
Your feats did stop our sheltered hearts
more times than I can here recount.
For you, moto, respect did mount;
you're moving up among the ranks--

but I'll still drive my car with thanks.

Back from Camb-ode-ia!

Hi friends! I'm back from Cambodia and full of strangely dim thoughts to share from my trip. Thanks for your prayers; it was a wonderful, hard, eye-opening trip (as short-term trips are bound to be), and I am so thankful for the opportunity to go. God answered very specific prayers and both revealed himself and didn't reveal himself (which, of course, forces us to trust him more) in really cool and mysterious ways. You will no doubt hear (or read, as the case may be) more of my musings in the days and weeks to come. But for now, a week out from the twenty-four-hour trip home and still trying to catch up on sleep, I offer you my first ode . . .

Ode to Sleeping Through the Night

Oh peaceful slumber--this is bliss!
To rest one's eyes and thoughts and limbs
till sun's soft rays wake, like a kiss.

To not awake at two or three
but still be dreaming, deep, at five--
for nights this was my body's plea.

But now, join with me friends of mine
in giving thanks for night, for beds,
for eyes that stay shut tight till nine!

And for you fretful waking ones
who view the clock six times each night,
who've watched too many rising suns

May strangely dim thoughts clarify
as you keep tossing in the dark
and heave your angstful sleepy sighs

for jealousy of those who rest--
Know that you have my sympathy,
my kind regard, my sleepy best.

What's Updike?

Our friend Jeff Reimer got wind of our little experiment this fortnight and turned us on to John Updike's series of "Seven Odes to Seven Natural Processes," which according to the New York Times "seem late Audenesque."

Ode to Rot
To Evaporation
Ode to Growth
To Fragmentation
Ode to Entropy
To Crystallization
Ode to Healing

The Odes begin and end with God--

Der gute Herr Gott . . .
Faith is health's requisite:
we have this fact in lieu
of better proof of le bon Dieu.

--which is a nice place to leave you, our gentle readers, on this Thanksgiving Eve. We'll be back to our adventure in odes next week.

Ode to Brevity

Welcome to the second entry in the fortnight of odes! For fourteen days we're indulging ourselves in the creative process of crafting odes, defined according to Wikipedia as "a form of stately and elaborate lyrical verse." Remember--without an ode, we wouldn't have yodeling. Just something to think about.

And now, on to today's ode. Ahem.

I give thanks for the soul of wit.

Ode to Blogging

Welcome to the fortnight of odes! For fourteen days we'll indulge ourselves in the creative process of crafting odes, defined according to Wikipedia as "a form of stately and elaborate lyrical verse." It seems appropriate to begin such a fortnight with an ode to our own literary genre, the blog. Please snap where appropriate.

Ahem.

To all who share in great detail
Their mother's favorite recipes--
I pray thee, Howl!

To all who share their travels and travails,
Their politics and religion,
Their insights into the human condition,
The intimate details of their illicit romances--
I bid thee, Ever Onward!

Blog without limit!
Indulge your self-referential impulse
And I shall join with thee--
Align with thee--
Not once, not twice, but thrice weekly.

Looking for love in the stats counter,
Craving comments the way junkies crave junk--
I take my stand among my fellow bloggers
And declare that I am

Relevant!
Articulate!
Profound even in my prosaic ordinariness!

I blog, therefore I will not be forgotten.

Watching the Game . . . Controlling It

Lisa's going to be gone for a while. She and a "Strangely Dim Friend"(TM) are en route to Cambodia with a group from their church to train people in various aspects of publishing. For some reason, I keep thinking they're in Thailand, and so I am constantly tempted to quote the musical Chess. Sing it with me if you know it:

Siam's gonna be the witness
To the ultimate test of cerebral fitness

"Thank God," the American goes on to say, "I'm only watching the game -- controlling it." That would be me. Strangely Dim will return to its spiritual depth when Lisa returns.

Who Doesn't Love a Spoon?

In light of Dave's last entry lauding forks, I would like to speak for the spoons. It's true, you can't play games with other people's photos like you can with forks (a spoon, after all, makes a better door than a window), but Spoons as a game has, of course, provided hours of diving, arm-flailing entertainment at many a youth event, sleepover and small-group get-together through the years. And it's infinitely useful as a utensil. How else can you get the right amount sugar in your tea or coffee, or get your cereal (mmm . . . cereal) and milk out of the bowl, or get those last few grapes off your plate of fruit salad? A knife and fork, let's face it, just don't cut it.

Fond as I am of spoons, though, Dave's post and the Fun with Forks(TM) that inspired it came at a perfect time for me, as I'll be spending fourteen hours on a flight to Cambodia next week. (Did you know I'm going to Cambodia? I'm going to Cambodia next Thursday with a team from my church that includes IVP Likewise author and my cubicle-wall-sharer Elaina Whittenhall.) Fun with Forks(TM) strikes me as a better option for a plane game than, say, the aforementioned Spoons. I don't, after all, want to accidentally knock a few packages of peanuts out of passengers' hands and find myself having to spend the last eight hours sitting in the overhead luggage compartments for bad behavior.

Long flights aside, this trip--even before actually leaving--has been a gift to me. Elaina and I will be coleading editing seminars for Cambodians in publishing, so I get to use my love for words and books and the knowledge I've gained from my education and job to help others in their work of providing resources to help God's people grow. And in the months and weeks leading up to the trip, I've seen God's goodness in the clear, abundant ways he's provided what I need and more than I expected, not the least of which is his peace. In a year in which the spoons running low in the kitchen at work is enough to make me anxious and stressed out, I have felt excited about going instead of anxious about the details of the trip.

I'd love your prayers for my me and for my team--for God to have his way in us and through us and in Cambodia. And I'm sure I'll have stories to share when I return, so stay tuned and get ready to raise your cereal spoons in celebration of God's work. If you start to miss me too much while I'm gone, you can try out Fun with Forks(TM) to occupy yourself. (If you have a picture of me and a fork you can see what I look like in a Cambodian prison . . .)

Trick or Treat

How was your halloween? I dressed up as a RABBIT.

Christa and Dan get A's for effort in the ongoing Rabbit contest; they both pounced on me at 12:01 a.m., one by e-mail and the other by Facebook.

As for the rest of you: too bad, so sad. Have a happy November.

Coming soon to Strangely Dim: A Fortnight of Odes!