Author: Jenny Sullivan

Thoughts: The Disconnect

We often try to apply the same principles to the words we find onscreen as to the words that are spoken face to face, even though we know there is a wide gulf between the two. The words onscreen are only a record of a thought once had. The message documents expression, but there is no real experience in the hard, cold display of text. Even so, we mistakenly try to glean meaning from it, to tear it to pieces until we have found the true self of the other in this little isolated fragment. But this is no more them, this is no more real, than the whispers of the world or the lists of exterior acts define our own vast ocean of self.

Presence is real. This is the realest thing there is, and there is nothing of it on the screen.

Many times we are waiting for the words to come as we would shape them, yet we are each our own in the words we would use. We must learn to grant the freedom of expression and of soul to the other.

Many times we are waiting for the phone to ring, and it does not. Yet why do we weigh ourselves down with projected rejection, simply because the other was not confined in our arbitrary, self-imposed frame?

Recognition and Existence

One of the greatest indignities is to be treated as though you do not exist. Being is the most fundamental aspect of life and of self, one that precedes and is presupposed by all other aspects. To be something (smart, beautiful, kind, fearful, lonely, weak) is first and is always to be. If someone tells us, then, that we are beautiful, smart, good or noteworthy in some way, we are gratified, flattered, affirmed, perhaps happy. But if that same someone lets fall the thread of our being after the words have ceased their echo, those former words lose their meaning.

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Light in Evening: Diane

This short story is the first post in a new fiction series called “Person to Person.” Read more about this series here.

The train station was located on the precipice of an open field. The field was not an ordinary field (at least to Diane, it was not). It was an ocean, teeming with colour and light, and probably life, somewhere deep, deep below the snow. For Diane, many things depended upon light and colour. The white sheet of field was animated by prisms of sun on its surface and icy glistening patches. As the sun began to slip irrevocably towards night, the colours became more dramatic: very like the pastel shades of pink and red that were somewhere buried deep in her suitcase. Yet it was unfortunate that this was the way it always went: the colours were most vibrant before they disappeared.

And the sun set so early in the winter. Diane had never been over-fond of darkness, which she saw as an end, or at least as a temporary absence. On that particular day, the approaching presence of dark (which she knew to be coming, though her eyes, drowning in the visual splendour of sunset, could not attest to the fact) was especially foreboding. For, once the landscape was lost to the sun, it would be lost to her as well. The train would have long since departed by the time the cycle of light started again.

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Casablanca

The movie “Casablanca” is a classic well deserving of its rank among the giants of film. It is imbued with a sense of timelessness, although fixed in a very specific place in time: that is, during the Second World War. Released in 1942, the film is set in a city by the name of (you guessed it) Casablanca, where masses of refugees seek the proper papers to flee the Nazi regime for the safety of America. The historical context of Casablanca is especially interesting because, as you can note from the film’s date above, the makers of this movie are not taking a retrospective look at the war. Rather, they are creating the movie in the midst of political turmoil and without knowledge of how the war would come to completion.

Against this historical background is the very personal, very intimate arc of the two main characters, the past and perhaps present lovers played by Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. This relationship between Rick (Bogart) and Ilsa (Bergman) is what detaches the movie from the limits of one particular standpoint in history and allows it to transcend its own time, reaching into our own with still relevant truths of love, desire and sacrifice.

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Places to Be

I entered quickly, through sliding doors that parted like a shining sea. The aisles were well-stocked with food, aggressively proclaiming freshness and appeal. For a moment I was stranded, adrift among the stands, which formed a maze winding to the end of the store.

But it was only a moment.

Some shoppers were consulting lists or studying competing brands intently. Others darted from row to row, accumulating piles of produce; others still were probing vegetables and fruits, in pursuit of that elusive unblemished product.

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2015 in Review

Although the dying days of 2015 are gone and 2016 is already a week underway, the New Year is still sufficiently new that I’d like to take a look back at the journey of jensul.ca so far and at what is next to come. I officially launched this website at the end of September and since then it has been up and running with approximately three to four weekly posts for 15 weeks.

I am so grateful to all of the people who have read any of the posts at jensul.ca and those who have subscribed to my weekly newsletter (if you haven’t done so and would like to, just enter your email address in the box at the top right of the site). All of the feedback I have received is so meaningful and encourages me to keep writing and sharing my thoughts in this forum.

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The Game

It’s hard to recall my first encounter with hockey. I have memories of watching the game when I was young. It was background noise then but in a comforting sort of way. My dad would lean forward, eyes focused on the screen, and I would glance up occasionally from my book to catch sight of the tiny figures darting back and forth from one end of the rink to the other. The rules were irrelevant to me (in other words, I didn’t understand them). I simply tried to follow the progress of the puck, though sometimes a black speck on the surface of the screen looked so convincingly puck-like that it prevented my fulfillment of this goal.

When my older brother started playing hockey, I became his number one fan. For the ten years that he played, I don’t think I missed a single game. In the early seasons, I was admittedly oblivious to much of the action on the ice. I arrived at the arena with my fully stocked bag of books. But even then, something about the rink was so alluring. I don’t know what it was about the cold hard bench or the loud echo of the boards, or the angry buzzer that announced each period’s end. I don’t know why I felt such joy as my voice blended with the other fans to give a rousing cheer, or why I waited so proudly for my brother to emerge from the dressing room after each game, his hockey bag draped over his shoulder. As my family walked to the parking lot, I had the honour of holding the hockey stick, and it was like a waving flag. I don’t know what it was, but somehow each little detail melded together until the rink felt like home and the game- the game was ingrained in my nature.

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Orientation

For this week’s Advent reflection, I want to do something a little bit different. It has to do with an “O Antiphon,” and if you’ve never heard of this before, don’t worry: because I hadn’t either until my brother recently explained what it was, and shared with me the beauty of these sung prayers. Antiphons draw on religious texts, and enter into the liturgy throughout the church year. Traditionally, from December 17th to December 23rd (the final days of Advent), seven special O Antiphons are sung. The ‘O’ is an invocation, a direct address made to the one who is coming: they all look towards Christ’s Advent, using different names for Christ from the Old Testament.

Here I have included the text of the O Antiphon for December 21st, both in the original Latin and in a translation found in poet Malcolm Guite’s book of Advent reflections, entitled “Waiting on the Word.” Whether or not you know any Latin (I myself am in the process of learning), I would encourage you to read it aloud or to yourself as best as you can, at least to hear the musical and prayerful sound of this ancient language. You can listen to my audio recording of the O Antiphon here:

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The Lost Art of Reading

There are few pleasures in this world equal to a good book.

I lean into my chair and fold back the cover. The initial pages pass slowly, as I become acquainted with the voice to whose thoughts I now have access. However, as the story accelerates, I am immersed in this new sphere: the colourful sea of vivid emotions and depictions of reality all contained within the book.

In reviewing the opening sentence of this piece, I wonder if I have chosen wisely. I described a book as a pleasure; reading is then by extension a pleasurable activity. This may not seem controversial, coming from a bibliophile, but the more I think about, the more I believe I have erred in my word selection. Reading is pleasurable, of course, but the word alone is insufficient to encompass the pursuit as a whole.

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