The Sun

Inside the modest home of a Pennsylvania family one girl laughs while another girl cries.

The walls of this home are painted a warm yellow color, and in the coldest week of January they remind you that the sun is still a contributing being. The house is warm, like its owners, and gathered here are a small group of people. Some are sitting in the kitchen at the dining table. The rest are gathered on brown leather couches in the family room. This group of people is watching TV, and on the TV is a television show about becoming famous in America. Some people on the show are crying while others are shouting for joy.

Perhaps the lack of sun is the reason why inside of this house one girl is laughing while another girl is crying. The girl who is laughing is named Alicia, and the one who is crying is named Taryn. Alicia is a girl with uncharacteristically large eyes. All other physical aspects of her are relatively commonplace, except that she has numerous tattoos that cover her left arm. Alicia talks sincerely, even when it has the socially awkward consequence of making her seem naive. She is one of the people sitting on the couch watching TV.

Taryn is sitting in the kitchen, and she is crying for no particular reason at all. She is thin and has short black hair. Next to her sits a brown eyed girl who is attempting to comfort her by gently rubbing her back. Across from them sits Seth Arnold, a male youth of moderate build, who is also attempting to comfort the girl, but with less success. Probably the reason why Seth is having less success at comforting Taryn is because he does not quite understand the reason why she is crying, or if there is really any reason at all.

"Do you want to go for a walk?" he asks. Unable to speak through her tears, Taryn shakes her head. The girl rubbing Taryn's back gives him a look of pity, as if she understands his good intentions but acknowledges an invisible but impenetrable barrier between the two.

Later, when they are alone in the car, she apologizes to him for being so emotional.

"I'm sorry that I cried back there," said Taryn. "I'm not sure what came over me."

"It's OK," was all Seth could say.

The car in which they drove home in was a sheltering beacon of light in the darkness. It was a cave in which you could hide yourself from the elements and yet still be able to see the beauty of the night sky. In this way it was more like riding in a glass locomotive with reclining seats. Here one doesn't even have to worry about driving- you surrender your safety to the expertise of the conductor. It's part of what you pay for. Besides, a train can only move on tracks anyway.

So Seth found himself imagining that the roof of his car was made of glass, and he puttered along well below efficient speeds while doing so. Instead of all the houses, he imagined open land in every direction. Spectacular vistas ran before his eyes. Taryn was in his thoughts too. After all, she was physically no more than two feet from him in the passenger seat. For Seth, he was crossing the bridge from one familiar place to another. But for Taryn, she had left the familiar to go on an adventure with him, and now she was heading back.

The truth is that Seth had brought Taryn that night as a kind of social experiment, and while others in the room were laughing, she cried. This is how it all happened:

Dinner was being served that night in the yellow house, and the promise of camaraderie and fellowship had drawn Seth out of a detached state that he had been in for several days. Seth and Taryn were students together, and is it fair to say that they enjoyed good times more than bad times, and it was for this reason that Seth had convinced Taryn to come with him that night.

Yet to his horror, he found her crying around all these people whom he happened to know but Taryn did not. She started crying right when the girl with the ridiculous tattoos started laughing at the ridiculous people on the TV show. Seth started to think of reasons why Taryn might be crying.

"Perhaps she has a sister who is ridiculous," he thought. But then he remembered that sometimes people cry for no reason at all, and he resigned himself to the fact that the reason why Taryn was crying was for no reason at all, which actually just meant that there was probably a reason why she was crying, but he just couldn't access it because of these crazy barriers.

It was only later on the car ride home that Seth stopped thinking about the reason why Taryn was crying and started thinking about the reason why the girl with the tattoos was laughing.

At one point in the night somebody asked her about her tattoos.

"This one is a compass. It's black and white now but I'm going to get it colored in this week."

"What color are you going to color it in with?" somebody asked.

"These little spaces here are going to be brown, but overall most of it's going to be gold."

On the ride home, Seth was thinking about the idea that her compass was going to be gold. He found out a year and a half later that his social experiment had failed, but he did not give up hope.

Twenty years ago on the desolate frontier of eastern Wyoming a man labors to hang a sign alongside US route 287. He is doing what men everywhere have done and will continue to do for thousands of years. Thousands of men hang signs alongside America's well-traveled roads, and yet for all these cases they are all strikingly similar. They are always nouns, and in this particular case the nouns that we are dealing with here are two very good ones- "espresso" and "internet."

Now just how do those words strike you? Do you see them in a positive light? Did you immediately understand the nature of the relationship between those two words? Why were these particualr nouns chosen over thousands (if not millions) of other perfectly single and available nouns in the English language? Why not "espresso" and "coffee" or "internet" and "computers?" I'm asking a lot of questions. This is where our character Jamie comes in.

Jamie is a human being in black and white ink. He exists for our purposes. Actually he exists for my purposes. I created him just now. And right now I have but one purpose- I am trying to write a good short story. He allows me to accomplish my goals by becoming the metaphorical embodyment of my philosophical ideas. He is my puppet, and he does my bidding. God allowed me to create him, just like God is allowing me to write this short story right now. But he stands on his own too, you know, only its in black and white.

But you and I were given a good set of crayons for our birthday, and we really owned them, and we stored them all the way up there in our heads, and we called them up whenever there was black ink on a white page. But when we were children, we did not know how to just color on the page. We colored the doors and the walls also. And so color was everywhere, and color was indistinguishable.

And so it is with Jamie. We can't really tell whether he's contained to the page or whether he sprawls out to cover the door and the walls too. But he's there somewhere, and when he looks at this sign as he is driving by that says only two words, "espresso" and "internet," he is confused.

"What would cause a man to act in such a way as to labor himself with the process of constructing a sign with such odd nouns printed on it?" thought Jamie. And what's more- the nouns were printed directly adjacent to each other with no other contextual information given. Jamie thought to himself, "How is it that I am supposed to understand the meaning of these two words printed right next to each other?"

Apparently what they were was the representation of particular services rendered at a specific location. So, for instance, if somebody wanted espresso, they would stop at this particular concrete building underneath the sign. Likewise, if somebody wanted to use the internet, they would also stop at this building. And if it so happened that a particular somebody happened to want both "espresso" and "internet," well then, today was their day. But, as Jamie found out, this place offered many more services than simply "espresso" and/or "internet."

For it was winter in Wyoming, and when Jamie went inside he found himself immediately surrounded by warm air. So the place could have put a sign next to "espresso" and "internet" that said "warm air." He also found bathrooms in which he could relieve himself. Thus they could have added another sign saying "service of going to the bathroom." There were tables to sit at. Jamie wondered why they did not put up a sign saying "service of comforting yourself by sitting."

What other wonders this place could have put on their sign! They could even have had a rotating sign that would switch in the summer to say "cool air," for nobody wants warm air in the summer! And besides, this fabulous establishment had a large air conditioner bolted to the side of the building. Jamie was impressed.

And yet he wondered- for all of these spectacular services, why did they choose "espresso" and "internet" to be the ones that would be displayed on their sign next to US route 287? Was it perhaps because they wanted more people to stop there? Why would they want more people to stop there? Perhaps they would make more money. Why would they want to make more money?

Jamie couldn't answer this question himself, but he was fearfully timid of asking the generously occupied employees working in the concrete building. "What am I to do when I do not know?" Jamie wondered. The question was simple enough, and honest. In his brain, he began to weigh all of the possible options for the sign on this magical old gold-plated scale. In the center of the scale was a perfectly round ball. The ball remained in the center as long as the scale was balanced. But whenever Jamie would consider one of the reasons why the builder of this sign chose to put "espresso" and "internet" upon his sign instead of something else, the scale would start to lean one way or the other. As a consequence of this, the little ball would roll in perfectly incremented degrees in the opposite direction, creating a sort of diagonal pendulum in which things were both equally balanced and yet unbalanced at the same time. As soon as Jamie became convinced that he had found one word which was, for some reason, more worthy to be placed on the sign than the words "espresso" and "internet," the little blue ball would direct his attention to an equally plausible word or phrase on the other side of the scale. And the scale had a lot of trays- there was one for each of the possible words or phrases that could have been written on the sign: the service of satisfying thirst, the service of reading (the building had some books and newspapers), the service of meeting new friends, and on and on and on. Jamie had this crazy inclination that one of these words or phrases must be more worthy than the others, yet the little ball never seemed to remain in the center. Ultimately he decided that their either must be something wrong with the scale, or else he was not using it correctly.

Jamie spent so much time weighing all of these options that his car soon skidded off the road. He awoke from this dream state and realized that he was now well 50 miles past the sign above the concrete building next to US Route 287 in eastern Wyoming.

His eyes suddenly fell upon an older gentleman walking towards him on the shoulder of the road. He was gaunt and unshaven and his backpack was well worn. He knocked on the driver side window, and when Jamie rolled it down, he said "Can you believe me if I tell you that all I want you to do is drive?"

II

Jamie Loghorn was the son of Michael Loghorn, an actuary in the town of Pinedale, Wyoming. Michael was a shrewd man who, by a vigorous process of self-education, sought to escape the poor, agrarian lifestyle of the frontier for a more lucrative, town-centered life. His Loghorn ancestry had farmed the Pinedale valley for over three generations. In his youth, Michael had criticized what he saw to be his family's opposition to change; they were slow to adopt new agricultural methods, choosing instead to farm the old fashioned way. In time, Michael became fearfully ashamed that some townspeople viewed his family as "backward." This gave him an unquenchable desire for the knowledge of his day, and he put his mind to the task of study for hours at a time inside their lonely whitewashed house.

The irony was that, perhaps because of his attachment to the land, Michael merely exchanged a highly rural lifestyle for a moderately rural one. And in terms of his occupation, he had merely exchanged one marginally reputable trade for another. For three generations the Loghorn family had depended upon the local farmers who conducted much of their business in the town square.

Pinedale was a town of about 500 at the base of the White Ridge mountains in Western Wyoming.

the new year looms like a burnt out lightbulb, and after returning i find the dissonance of the city less and less avoidable. the days come about like spurts, and i find myself traveling from home to work to practice to work and then to home again. there are moments of enlightenment- beauty in volunteerism, peace in beauty. then there are moments of self-realization, like when an external perception of yourself suddenly becomes consciously accessible.

right now, the small town west is embellished, but ive been believing lately that there's actually something there. the silence counts for a lot, in my book, at least, right now. Eliot says we must go through what we are not, and i am most certainly not a smalltown boy. i say this now with some envy, but the direct object swings on a pendulum, and the scales always find a way to level out. the skyscrapers are next to the mountains. the ghetto is next to the ivy league.

we seem mysteriously unable to discern the proper emotions when approached with the reality of a winter's night on the frontier. for there is fear, deep fear; the openly desolate is cold. the juniper knows, somewhere inside of its frontier DNA, that its destiny is a mere two feet, so it crowds in numbers, in disproportionately concentrated distribution, across the landscape, but is dwarfed so that you can still see the awful curve of the earth above its human-less edges.

the mountains loom. the darkness gathers with the ice. fear is proper. and it drives me to a joyously desperate hurrah; that here, fear is the beginning of understanding. so i shout out loud, hoping desperately that my sounds may extend beyond the borders of this wheeled metal and glass. the fear is what gives me the joy. the contrast is like that of the moon with the mountains; in the bitterness of the winter, it is only the illuminated snow on the mountains that gives me light to still distinguish mountain from sky, tree from plain, road from earth.

The road north out of Granby lead me into the mountains, past the Continental Divide, and down finally onto a snow-covered high plateau.

The view was painfully beautiful; possibly the most beautiful stretch of 100 miles I have ever driven. It was one of those times in which I was fully conscious that my eyes were vigourously engaged in filming a movie of memory: first the eyes take in the colors, then the mind transcribes them deep into the subconscious. Here, the sensations were so strong that no camera was needed to provide insurance against the thought that the landscapes which surrounded me in that instant might not be permanently recallable to my future dream world. Memory alone was sufficient to convince me that the beauty of what I was experiencing was not a dream.

On my journey towards Jackson, Wyoming, the sublime feelings with which i brushed paths with true redemption and encountered the very essence of the divine soon gave way to a paralyzing psychological fear. Despite the sunny weather, the dashboard thermometer soon plunged into the single digits, and the desolate road (on which I encountered approximately one automobile for every 15 minutes of driving) soon became completely covered with a glossy layer of ice. As the high winds swept down the plain, I felt the car slide eerily across the double yellow numerous times. Speeds were lowered. My concentration was heightened. I wrestled with the god of loneliness for more than an hour. He knew I was coming(our appointment was long overdue), and he waited for me on that snow covered plain. "You're not allowed to bring anyone," he said. So the passenger seat was empty, and the radio was off.

And then, after much perseverance, I pass again into the mountains. This time, however, I descend. The temperature rises, the snow disappears, and I soon find myself in another tremendous valley. This valley, however, does not threaten me. The roads are black, and the town of Laramie, Wyoming lies visible 15 miles in the distance.

In the town of Laramie, Wyoming there is a cafe called Grounds. It is next to the University, and it has internet and a bike rack. There is where i sit writing this, en route to Jackson, Wyoming.

inside of the new todd m. beamer student center is a tile floor. its colors are are all shades of grey, yet it demonstrates a remarkable sparkle under the colorless light, so remarkable that one half-expects to encounter the facility's fastidious janitor groveled over with a container of baby wipes, diligently scrubbing off every casual scuff left by the formal-hating pubescents that scour the halls.

the sparkle of the place is not limited to the floor: the walls are a newly painted beige color with a broad red stripe down the middle, and there are chairs and couches clustered around coffee tables, much like the waiting area of a doctor's office. the doors, too, seem to follow this theme: large, square doors evenly separated down a generously wide hallway. the symmetrical bathroom doors have clearly marked signs for Men and Women.

this is the newest building on campus, and yet it is constructed with brick that is eerily similar in hue to those buildings adjacent to it that are several decades old. on one of the interior walls there is a mural in which is inscribed, "he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." the quote is that of Jim Elliot, a 1950's missionary who was murdered in the Amazonian rainforest by the Ecuadorian villagers who he was trying to evangelize.

buried in one corner is a cafe with bars instead of tables. it is late and night, and several clean looking girls are casually talking to the lone employee behind the counter. there is an l.c.d. screen mounted to the wall which displays the 150th anniversary of the college and commemorates it with a verse: "One generation will tell of your works to another..."

in its spotless architecture, the place brought to my mind two other places, all with similar cultural associations despite being in comparatively distant parts of the country.

the first is this place in a town called Gap where we once played a show. right in the middle of rural lancaster county stands this daunting complex bordered on all sides by miles of flat, open farmland. with huge parking lots and inviting street lamps, the place looks as if it was built in the suburbs but then packed up and dropped at random somewhere in the middle of podunk lancaster county.

the Family Center of Gap contains a cafe, gymnasium, several lounges, as well as offices for services ranging anywhere from music lessons to financial consulting.

at the entrance, the reflected light off of the glistening tile floor directs your attention to the walls of a long hallway on which are mounted somewhat awkward photographs of local children and adults of all ages engaged in numerous activities like dodgeball and music. it is clear that some of the children have mental and physical handicaps.

the second place is the Biblical Learning Center at Philadelphia Biblical University, which, to use their own words, "was constructed in 2001-2002 and has 19 state-of-the-art classrooms." there is a lounge on each floor in which several unornamented chairs are clustered around a large lcd tv. in between classes, students are capable of grabbing the latest headlines while simultaneously telling horror stories about their upcoming finals. there is also a newly renovated coffee shop that attempts to emulate the architecture and atmosphere of modern american and european cafes, yet is still unable to escape the feeling of a overly sterile cleanness.

the third place is Christ Community Church in my hometown of West Chester, PA. i remember when we first went to visit. my first reaction as a child of about 10 or 11 was that the place looked and smelled much like a doctor's office. the same tile floors and square doors, the same long, wide hallways, the same coffee shop-esque youth-rooms designed to draw in the crowds.

i was talking with a friend tonight in the new todd m beamer student center. he said that the architecture of the place was too safe. thats what made me think of these other places.

"that's why the sex feels so dirty," he said, referring to the dirt.

there is a cold silence in the drive, and it is warm. but you cannot tell...you cannot tell whether that contented solitude you feel is a rare moment of prelapsarian happiness or a aberrated defense mechanism. for the elusive feeling wears the mask of both courage and fear, hate and love, good and evil, contentedness and holy discontent.

a child will ask, "which is right?" and i will say, "love, my dear, and peace." but peace cannot be the highest good, for we do not say "peace" to our starving brother. we feel ill at ease until we stick our own hands into his mouth, then watch silently from afar as the heaving slowly ceases in degrees of time unmeasurable to us.

between these strands exists a continuum, of which we are perpetually struggling to define, and yet we can afford to delay no longer. we act. we live, and we love. and most of all, we stop thinking.

and then, like a fairy tale, the snow starts falling in that childisly nostalgic town precisely at the moment in which you arrive for the second time.

Miles driven today- 760 (Downingtown, Pennsylvania to Wheaton, Illinois)

Favorite Find- The Low Anthem, Tiny Desk Concert

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvyREQwc7qQ