next to the toffee tree

Some of the kids in one of my ESL classes at school call me “Tomato” or “Mr. Tomato”, since that delicious red fruit masquerading as a vegetable sounds similar to my own name, Thomas. And, I have to say, it is a much better joke than anything my lower level classes have managed to come up with. Tomato-Thomas: sometimes my brain definitely feels like a tomato, not that it is brimming with lycopene and is an excellent source of vitamin C, more that it sometimes just feels mushy and soft inside after a few hours of explaining grammar rules and trying to decipher Korean. The deciphering Korean part is especially hard. I don’t know Korean.

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And you know, “maybe” is a very important word. Not only in the sense that we usually use it (or I usually use it): trying to express some uncertainty, almost synonymous with a lack of commitment and an expression of doubt, but also in the sense of maybe as possibility, of potential, of budding existence. 

A few weeks ago I watched one of my favorite movies of all time, Chariots of Fire, for what must be about the 11th or 12th time. (I went to a boarding school when I was a young, and we were allowed to watch one movie once a week, and, well, selection was limited. I have also seen The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking and The Miracle Worker 11 or 12 times, and I don’t remember those films fondly). It was the first time I had ever shared the brilliance of the 1982 best picture winner with Ruth. And it really is a brilliant movie, or at least I think so, for all kinds of reasons; it has a fantastic musical score, it’s beautiful to watch, and the actors properly disappear into their various characters. 

The story is about a group of track athletes competing in the 1924 Olympics; men who do their training runs in their suspenders on the Scottish moors and show up to races around cobblestone Cambridge courtyards drinking champagne and smoking cigarettes in long stemmed cigarette holders. It is about Britain, the world and the Great War, honor and pride and nationalism, desire and the depth of hunger, faith and doubt, belonging, the other, sacrifice and tradition and some combination of it all – it’s about self-knowledge, about maybes.

When I was younger I thought the movie was, on the whole, pretty boring. My friends and I would wait in eager anticipation for the scene when Eric Liddell is knocked down jostling for position around a turn, running in an exhibition race against the French. But the Scot springs to his feet and chases down his competitors like a “wild animal” as the watching Harold Abrahams says, to win the race in his distinctive face-raised running style, collapsing at the finish line, our hearts nearly bursting along with his own sitting in our plastic chairs in the school cafeteria.

The characters in the movie are all on journeys of self discovery; they want some affirmation of their identity. Abraham’s drive to the finish line is motivated by his desire to be accepted as the “Cambridge man” he already is in spite of the contempt he perceives from the class he wishes to join due to his Jewish heritage.  He protects his self-defined identity as the fastest, the best, a winner, a star; he runs out of emptiness, out of a desire to have the identity he has conferred upon himself affirmed by others in the glory of the Olympic winner’s circle, the British flag rising above his head.

Liddell’s identity is defined by his fierce Scottish Presbyterian God, a God who does not find pleasure in football on Sundays or the running of Olympic heats. Yet his God is one that fiercely Is. This is no God of Rilke that waits quivering to be called into existence by a worshiper. This is a God who calls, a God that calls messengers to China, thundering and heavy, One that gives speed and strength to swiftly moving legs and feet on a dirt track in Paris. Abrahams runs out of some haunting hunger, out of some fear that what he has known as himself is not actually true, that it may not be. Liddell runs out of some sense of fulfillment, of pleasure, at being called, at being named, known. While he lives in the radical existential fact that his life is not his own, that he himself is forever unknown and undefined by himself or others, his trust in his calling, in the name given him as a son of God, lets him run out of joy – because his God so strongly is, he may-be.      

My boarding school classmates and I would rush outside in the warm south-Asian evenings after the movie had finished, running races on a scrubby patch of lawn and each taking turns being the one to get knocked down and chase down the others, falling, gasping, our skinny little chests heaving, at the finish line. Called inside, we would trudge up to our dormitory rooms, red-faced, panting, energy rushing out through every finger and toe, feeling something of the pleasure of God that Eric Liddell said fell on him when he ran, face lifted up.

well, i think i might be back, with a new song (under Music – tell me what you think of it), some videos you might not have seen before, and i guess a light wind, very fresh, is begining to stir…again  

who is this a picture of?

is it me?

look closer, and you might find another man, who like me, can run really fast.

from dictionary.com:

a tun

1. a large cask for holding liquids, esp. wine, ale, or beer.

2. a measure of liquid capacity, usually equivalent to 252 wine gallons.

i know that cement isn’t a true liquid (but in fact a fluid) that being said, however, i have artistic licence. isn’t wine gallons so much more poetic than pounds? pounds make me think of jenny craig commercials; wine gallons make me think of dark peaceful places.

p.s. i do know spelling and proof reading are not my strong points. but i’m human and i want the public to embrace my pain as they read. the pain that is planted and grown in a little boy when the barrage - oh the barrage! – the continual barrage of 13 out of 20’s in red ink as the teacher kindly wanted to show us how we had “improved” over an entire year of weekly spelling tests. 

do i dare tread into the heart wrenching realm of communicating skills and the 35 out of 100’s on our proof reading tests?

this is the last post that i will write for awhile, a long while, maybe months, maybe longer, maybe forever. i’m tired, uninspired, and if there isn’t a world ready to accept the ostrich man and the poignant expressions of a possessed tractor, there won’t be one waiting for a three year old girl running into a burning house. but before i go, i will clear up one mystery, the name of my blog. it comes from the c.s. lewis novel “the magician’s nephew.” in it, the two main characters (children — digory and polly) embark on a mission from Aslan (the God figure) to retrieve an apple from the garden at the end of the western wild. after one nights travel, the children and their mode of transportation (a flying horse named Fledge) rest. digory then realises that they have nothing to eat and the following scene ensues.

….

Polly and Digory stared at one another in dismay.

“Well I do think that someone would have aranged something about our meals,” said Digory

“I’m sure Aslan would have, if you’d asked him,” said Fledge.

“Wouldn’t he know without being asked?” said Polly.

“I’ve no doubt he would,” said the horse (still with his mouth full). “But I’ve a sort of idea that he likes to be asked.”

….

they are not completely without food though, polly has nine toffees in her pocket. polly and digory each eat four and the ninth they plant in the ground. this takes some explaining. the children are in a newly created world, a fictional genesis chapter three world if you will. and in this new world on the very first day there was an instance where a metal bar was thrown to the ground and the final result was a full grown lamppost. using this knowledge digory plants the final toffee. the toffee tree does not instantly grow, however, and the children decide to get some sleep.

….

When suddenly Polly sat up wide awake and said “Hush!”

Everyone listened as hard as they could.

“Perhaps it was only the wind in the trees,” Digory said presently.

“I’m not so sure,” said Fledge. “Anyway – wait! There it goes again, by Aslan it is something.” 

The horse scrambled to its feet with a great noise and a great upheaval; the children were already on theirs. Fledge trotted to and fro, sniffing and whinnying. The children tip-toed this way and that, looking looking behind every bush and tree. They kept on thinking they saw things, and there was one time when Polly was perfectly certain she had seen a tall dark figure gliding quickly along away in a westerly direction….

“Wake up, Digory, wake up, Fledge,” came the voice of Polly, “It has turned into a toffee tree. And its the loveliest morning.”

….

and this is where we live, or “where life happens”. on a mission (one that we were sent on mind you) travelling through dark nights with dark figures that lurk and glide, seeking to destroy.  and lovely mornings. mornings where we have the chance to fight back and take back. all, while trying to understand the One who sends such strange and wonderful gifts as a toffee tree.