| Deep Thoughts By Jack Handy: ~I think someone should have had the decency to tell me the luncheon was free. To make someone run out with potato salad in his hand, pretending he's throwing up, is not what I call hospitality. ~If you ever fall off the Sears Tower, just go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will try to catch you because, hey, free dummy. ~If you're robbing a bank and you're pants fall down, I think it's okay to laugh and to let the hostages laugh too, because, come on, life is funny. and now my all-time favorite: One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my little nephew to DisneyLand, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. "Oh, no," I said, "DisneyLand burned down." He cried and cried, but I think that deep down he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real DisneyLand, but it was getting pretty late. By me: This is a portion of my Multi-genre project from Christian Classics. Just some things I've been thinking about and contemplating lately. Feel free to read it... or not. I relate the episode of the maiden with the globe in Phantastes to the song “Chapter One” by Lifehouse. Both contain a story of something valuable being crushed and allusions to the wind. Also, the maiden follows the instructions of the song, “hold on to what you know, take your chances, turn around, and go.” Upon their first meeting, Anados takes a liking to the maiden, and she joins him on his journey. “We talked a little, and then walked on together in the direction I had been pursuing. I asked her about the globe she carried, but getting no definite answer, I held out my hand to take it” (68). The maiden then warns him not to touch it, “Or if you do, it must be very gently.” She allowed him to touch it gently three times but no more. When twilight comes, the maiden leaves Anados and meets up with him each morning the next two days. Each night, I can picture the singing maiden sitting alone, clutching her globe and singing, “All the stars are out tonight it feels as though I might/Make some sense out of this madness will it turn out right/Who's to say where the wind will blow?” The third day, Anados is overwhelmed with the desire to touch the globe and lays both hands on top of it. “I had not the heart to pull it away from the maiden, though I held it in spite of her attempts to take it from me; yes, I shame to say , in spite of her prayers, and , at last, her tears. The music went on growing in intensity and complication of tones, and the globe vibrated and heaved; till at last it burst in our hands, and a black vapour broke upwards form out of it; then turned, as if blown sideways, and enveloped the maiden, hiding even the shadow in its blackness” (69). Her reaction to its destruction shows that the globe was very precious to the maiden. She cries and pleads with Anidos and God to save it, but it is destroyed nonetheless. The black vapor that escapes shows that the globe held the maiden's shadow, which proves to be even darker than Anados'. I relate the direction the maiden's shadow takes with the line of the song, “Who's to say where the wind will blow?” After Anados breaks her globe, the girl “held fast the fragments, which I abandoned, and fled from me into the forest in the direction whence she had come, wailing like a child, and crying, “You have broken my globe!” (69). Both her actions in picking up the shattered pieces of the globe and her change in direction, going back the way she came parallel the song. “What happens when all your dreams are lying on the ground/Do you pick up the pieces all around/and if the world should fall apart hold on to what you know/Take your chances turn around and go.” Finally, the reaction of the wind and other elements after the breaking of the globe follow the same pattern as in the song. Anados says, “I followed her, in the hope of comforting her, but had not pursued her far, before a sudden cold gust of wind bowed the tree-tops above us, and swept through their stems around us; a great cloud overspread the day, and a fierce tempest came on, in which I lost sight of her” (69). The weather reacts in a way that keeps Anados from offering the maiden any comfort. As she wonders all alone back down the road, through the terrible weather, I can hear the maiden singing, “All the leaves are turning and the sky fades to gray/Strange our life coincides with the seasons of the today/Who's to say where the wind will blow?” I have often felt this way in my spiritual life. “Who's to say where the wind will blow?” God, where are you taking me; why are you taking precious things away from me? I have felt lost and without direction. However, often it is because I have been clutching onto my globe and depending on it to bring me satisfaction, when God is the only one who can satisfy. I have wondered off His path, carrying the globe until it bursts. Only then do I realize I am going the wrong way. Although it's painful, I realize my only choice is to pick up the pieces and return to Him. “I took the pieces, all black, and wet with crying over them, to the Fairy Queen. There was no music and no light in them now. But she took them from me, and laid them aside...When I woke in the morning, I went to her, hoping to have my globe again, whole and sound; but she sent me away without it, and I have not seen it since. Nor do I care for it now. I have something so much better: I do not need the globe to play to me, for I can sing” (181). “The sun crashes through the gray/I can find the strength to make it through the day.” Like the maiden, I have found that when I surrender these broken areas I have so tightly clung to over to God, hoping Him to fix them, He does so much more than that. He gives me light and strength and blesses me with something far beyond I could ever imagine. He places someone or something in my life that satisfies my soul far better than the old thing ever could have, “and I am so happy” (182). |
