This Morning

Went to church and it's a new interim pastor who seems like a decent man. I liked him and my family liked him.

I had to try not to laugh, with my shoulders shaking, not at him but my own personal inside mirth, when he said there is evil around us and we are in enemy territory, and people with _____ sins and it's so very true, and I agree, but as he was saying very close to us, in our midst, I snuck a look over at my mom, to get a rise, and then at her grim look, I couldn't stop laughing. Not out loud, I didn't laugh out loud.

What he said was very true though. His message was from Acts.

So anyway, yesterday I got the book Brothers Karamazov and I was lying outside in the sun reading the first part, the intro, and it was biographical, about Doesteovesky's life. I didn't know he had such a habit with gambling. He gambled almost his entire life, and was barely making it and writing from one book to the next, getting advances just to survive.

It said too that he "abandoned" some of his earlier ideas from his youth but I wonder how much of this was genuine or out of necessity, to survive and live outside of prison. Maybe, since he was freely traveling, his philosophies were genuine. He really loved St. Petersburg and wrote best while there, which made me think about how location can be so important to the creative process. You can be the same person as you ever were, and yet just living in a certain location can either bring out the best or the worst, or be dull for you (or for me, or for us, the artist in general).

And then I think, it's wrong then to say it's all about the person and not environment at all. Because the right environment is going to be helpful to the talents or inspiration. Maybe you could be the same person inside but almost dry up and lose personality or feel no motivation or inspiration for writing or doing work in one location, but in another location, everything is working together.

I thought this and his gambling was most interesting.

Then I also read his book was intended to be followed with a sequel! So we really don't know the end of the story. Which is incredibly exciting to think about and imagine.

I noticed in this book, an edition from 1960, that it says he died "less than 3 months later" after the book was published but on the wiki page someone has it written that he died "less than 4 months" later.

I don't know why, but the intro was fascinating all on its own. Doesteovesky first got his encouragement to write when he was young, and all his friends were so excited and told him, Guess? not "guard the gift" but "value this gift!"

I flipped to the end of the book, wondering what the end was like, and it was about this discussion of how in the end the dead would reunite and connect and someone talks about "I hope you are not offended at our eating pancakes."

??

They referred to a dinner for the funeral, and I guess eating pancakes there. So I tried to flip back and find another reference but I'll just have to read the whole book.

I then took the book back and put on a movie I've never seen called "The Boiler Room" and it starts out with this gambling room.

All of a sudden, I had this glorious juxposition of Doesteovesky and his gambling and then the modern life of gambling and Wall Street, from The Boiler Room. The movie was playing and I was getting coffee, and it just came to me. It was only a spark, but I was at least glad to feel something creative clicking, like a cricket. Thank goodness it's back there somewhere. I didn't allow myself to brainstorm, but enjoyed the brief flash of an idea and then let it settle and watched the movie. My favorite part was the father flipping out chips and the mother saying, "Are those drugs?" (funny) and maybe the part where he, "Seth", cries (interesting).

If I can get back into college sometime, there are so many things I want to do.