Plough Lines

Upcoming Thunderstorm While Plowing

“For sale: baby shoes” is a classified ad.

“For sale: baby shoes; never worn” is a story.

It’s Hemingway’s, in fact.

*

“The king is dead” is a news bulletin.

“The king died, and the queen died of grief” is a story.

Better yet, “The king died, and the queen and her lover died in each other’s arms.”

Or, “The king died, and the queen and his brother are being sought for questioning by the son.”

Now that’s a story.

*

Why?

*

Stories ought to be terrible, in the best senses of the word.

Not “This traffic is terrible” but “Ivan the Terrible.”

Not “This broth is terrible” but “This chocolate is terrible.”

Because who in the hell cares about broth?

*

But they aren’t just terrible.

Or rather, they’re terrible because of some things.

Why the second entry beats tar out of the first in each and (usually) every case is they harrow our souls. A little bit anyway. And they do that because first, we can connect with them; so then, we can feel and think about them; and finally, we may even change. A little bit anyway.

We want to know what it’s about, how it went down, and — crucially — what will happen. We will be there when it does. Now we’re paying attention. Finally. That’s all he needs.

*

“All hat, no cattle” is a too-well-known saying.

Making “All wretch, no vomit” so much better.

*

The allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thought, to serve as an example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good. Andrei Tarkovsky

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent

Can We Tawk?

Comedienne Joan Rivers’ catchphrase was, ‘Can we talk?’ with all that that entails — its rhetorical nature, the Jewish thing, an implication that at least one of the parties will be better off for having done so … Like God. T’other day a priest spoke of ontological remembrance, the immediate and ongoing memory of past-present-future

Read More »

Hide and See

Something lost, Dallas Willard said once, might yet be very valuable. One’s car keys for instance. He was speaking somewhat in the context of salvation, if I recall … the general point was calling something lost doesn’t mean it’s not wanted — quite the opposite. Yet it remains … until finding its way out or being found

Read More »

Greater Love Blah Blah Blah

Do we doubt locals thanked them for their service? I’m not equating the two. They were wrong; glad we crushed them. Only noting it’s likely they thought as much about such things as we do, which is to say not much. German citizens who believed their leaders, loved their country, watched their sons get on

Read More »

Dark Eyed Life

According to @CitizenScreen, doing yeoman’s* work daily on Twitter* relative to the Golden Age of film, today is the birth date of Mabel Normand, Hedy Lamarr, and Dorothy Dandridge — Normand: New York, 1892 Lamarr: Vienna, 1914 Dandridge: Cleveland, 1922 — which makes for coupla at least interesting, if not compelling or fascinating at the

Read More »

Random

Not Free

During the Cold War there was a list of countries and their level of freedom. It still exists but we pay less attention to it.  I recall three categories — very free, free, not free — and I remember ratings were based on politics, economics, and so on. So too in man. We are very free, free,

Read More »

Shock And Ow

I’ve had many exchanges over the years where my statement about something was taken as surprise at the event rather than what it was — which is anger over human inaction facing it. Having worked 1.75 teenage males through the household over the last dozen years this has often been a thing one or the other has

Read More »

Forget What?

Today is the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Poking around, I found this short item, from the Fictional Newswire New York (FN) — Eleven years after the World Trade Center attacks here in September 2001, most haven’t forgotten … they just don’t know why they were supposed to remember. “Uh, I’m pretty

Read More »

It’s Not Gonna Be Me

First thing I noticed anew this year watching It’s a Wonderful Life was how happy George Bailey was to be going to jail. He celebrates it, as he bursts through his front door to be greeted by a bank examiner, a journalist, and the sheriff. If those three “walked into a bar” it might not be

Read More »

Related

Dance With Who Brung Ya

We’re observing Columbus Day with doughy, deep-fried donuts dusted with powdered sugar. It’s hard to hate old Christopher when M makes zeppole. But we are supposed to hate him, we’re told. We’re told, I say! We’re told he to do so because he was a bad man — he was a very bad man. The

Read More »

Missing Dinner

The common phrasing phor life today offers one and sundry the common counsel, Live, Laugh, Love. Jesus responds — preempts if you prefer it precise — with semi-characteristic frankness Love Love Love I say semi-characteristic since only half the time is he blunt, while the other half he’s maddeningly opaque — like the dork in high

Read More »

True Romance

Mentioned last week the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, a term used in film to refer to a female — not a woman, mark you, but a girl or perhaps female, depending on the level of [im]maturity — who exists in a story not for herself, more deeply not as a Self, but only for the

Read More »

Dark Eyed Life

According to @CitizenScreen, doing yeoman’s* work daily on Twitter* relative to the Golden Age of film, today is the birth date of Mabel Normand, Hedy Lamarr, and Dorothy Dandridge — Normand: New York, 1892 Lamarr: Vienna, 1914 Dandridge: Cleveland, 1922 — which makes for coupla at least interesting, if not compelling or fascinating at the

Read More »