And God said, let there be light: and there was light.
And God, looking on the light, saw that it was good
This is, of course, Genesis 1:3
Aaaaaaand (drumroll please) also used, quoted, spoken in the most inspiring way by
a very special, talented, smart and gifted Starmaker with a smile that could end wars…
Good Omens, S2E1…
And tonight, when this special line is read in churches and ceremonies in Easter Night all over the planet, I know hundreds of GO-Maniacs, who will, like me, sit in the dark with candles in our hands in our church pew, surrounded by other humans, holding candles in the dark, with the biggest happy smile all over our faces, because, not only this history of creation is timeless beautiful and for some of us part of our belief in God and resurrection of Jesus Christ, thanks to a certain Story, two genious writers, a TV Show and a georgious actor, we now also connect these beautiful lines with one of the heartmoving beings ever written. And that makes me happy as a child. ☺️
And that is at least what believing in resurrection, transformation, creation, new beginning and new Life is all about. To share beautiful Stories, beliefs, happiness and hope in the coldest times. And even if things didn‘t work out for the starmaker very angelic, in the end, he mets the love of his life and rescues the planet anyway, and if this isn‘t an optimistic silver lining, I don‘t know, what is.
So, believer or non-believer, I wish your Happy Easter and a warming light in your hand and a Starmaker-Smile on your face.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
"Turkish students, marching in protest on the Bulgarian consulate in Istanbul to protest against the desecration of Turkish graves by Bulgarians in Rangard on Easter night, are halted with bayonet points, by Turkish troops as they approach the consulate."
- from the Kingston Whig Standard, May 12, 1933. Page 7.
I had 5 ☆s of Natsume and Sora already, so I wanted Tsumugi’s 5 ☆ whenever he got one so I could complete Switch...LOOKS LIKE HE TURNED OUT TO BE RANKING. Plus, his card looked really nice, I like Tsumugi enough and I assumed that his border wouldn’t be too high (which it wasn’t) so I decided to rank for him! I overdid it and ended up getting 3 copies. LOL. I actually spent less than a fifth of what I spent to rank for Wataru in Three Magicians and used less than half the daiyas too...Three Magician’s tiers were pretty brutal during the last 2-3 days, so I was expecting a rush at the end of this event too...But the tiers barely moved during the entire event. (at least in my opinion) Because of what I went through in Three Magicians, I was pretty shocked to find that the 5 ☆ tiers were so tame. Anyway, in total, I got 3 Tsumugis, 4 Shus, 3 Soras and 2 Mikas!
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Besides smoothness and eloquence, sir, it's necessary that every little line be adorned in all ways, to have flowers in it, and lightning, and wind, and sun, and all things of the visible world.
Heaven and earth and under the earth rejoice. The whole of creation celebrates. Only tell me, good sir, why is it that even amidst great joy a man can't forget his griefs?
This post is rather long but I hope you'll find it worthwhile. I'll start this off with a little anecdote of my own:
When I was in my senior year of high school I was taking a literature course with an English teacher who was so passionate about having us read good books that she instilled in much of our class the desire to go read books and plays that we knew nothing about, basing our desire solely on their being accepted as "good works of literature." It was in this way that I came to read "The Seagull," a play by Anton Chekhov, a Russian author and playwright who wrote in the late 19th and very early 20th centuries. I was telling a friend of mine in the hallway that I had just started the play when an English teacher I had had two years prior came darting across the hall, saying "Did you say you're reading Chekhov? I love Chekhov!" She then proceeded to tell me what I think is the single most important thing to know about Chekhov before reading any of his works:
Chekhov was dying of tuberculosis for twenty years (I looked it up; it's possible). As a result, he had a very sardonic outlook on life, in which the concept of daily life and the way many people chose to live it so frivolously was literally funny to him.
I don't know if I could have come to that conclusion on my own just from reading the source material, but if you go into reading Chekhov knowing that he thinks of life as a farce, you will see it plastered all over his works and it will open doors into the bigger ideas that he's really getting at.
I worked off of a different translation (Pevear and Volokhonsky) from the link above, so any slightly-off quotations can be attributed to that.
Beginning the story, the narrator (whose identity we never really learn) waits at the shore of the river for the ferry to come and take him across the river to the Easter festivities and celebration. When the ferry comes, driven by the monk Ieronym, he gets on board and begins to ride. Interestingly, the first two descriptions of Ieronym that Chekhov gives us (aside from his monk garb) are that the ferry (along with Ieronym driving it) looks like a gibbet in the dark, and that he "curve[s] himself into a question mark" before pushing the ferry off. We'll come back to this later.
As they ride, the narrator remarks how beautiful the "illumination" of the fires across the river is, and Ieronym replies in kind, though it is clear that his enjoyment is hampered by something. The narrator plays along, asking Ieronym why he seems upset, and Ieronym tells him that his friend and fellow monk, Nikolai, died that day in the monastery during a Bible reading. The narrator tries to disengage from the conversation, "shamming a monkish tone" as he speaks with Ieronym, but Ieronym goes on to tell the narrator what was so great about Nikolai: his talent for writing akathists, hymns of praise, saying "You'll be amazed if I explain it to you."
The narrator is confused, asking "So it's really difficult to write akathists?" Ieronym replies enthusiastically, telling him how difficult the construction of a good akathist is and how effortlessly and delicately Nikolai was able to write them, talking the narrator through one of them and pointing out the delicacies therein.
Intrigued, or maybe just feigning interest really well (it's hard to know, but I suppose that's part of Chekhov's farcical life-view), he asks if Nikolai's akathists were ever printed, but Ieronym points out that no one was really interested in or truly appreciated his akathists (well, except for Ieronym), mainly due to his young age, and that to print them wouldn't have made sense. Ieronym notes that now that Nikolai is dead and he is stuck manning the ferry all night, there will be no one to truly appreciate the beauty of the akathist at mass later that night. He implores the narrator to try to admire it when he hears it, telling him "You'll be there, sir, try to grasp what they sing; it will take your breath away."
As they reach the far bank, the narrator leaves the ferry and heads into the church. Sure enough, just as Ieronym knew would happen, when they sing Nikolai's akathist he sees bright smiling faces, but not one of them has they breath taken away by the beauty of the hymn because they don't understand it the way Nikolai and Ieronym do.
Upset, the narrator leaves and tries to find Nikolai's grave. Though he fails, he considers the failure even better, as it prevents him from tarnishing his idealized image of the great man.
He returns to the ferry at the end of the night, along with several other passengers to find Ieronym still manning the ferry, having missed the festivities and akathist. The narrator ends the story commenting on how Ieronym looks longingly at another one of his passengers, searching unfruitfully for a trace of his deceased friend.
The theme of this story that I find to be most important is the idea of deeper understanding and appreciation. Through Ieronym we come to see how great of a monk Nikolai must have been, even though he was seldom recognized even by his fellow monks as such, and certainly not by the people at mass. The narrator comes to mourn the loss of such a great artist by a chance run-in with the man's great admirer, but we cannot expect that too many others were fortunate enough to gain such an appreciation.
Now that Nikolai has died, the continuation of his works is left to the lowly Ieronym, and by Chekhov's initial descriptions of Ieronym looking like a gibbet and a question mark, we are left to wonder if such great work is doomed to obscurity, if its chance at greatness is dead, or if there is hope in the narrator and Ieronym to share its greatness rather than grieve its conclusion. The dark mood on the river during the ferry ride leads me to believe that the man's accomplishments are doomed to fade away, but the bright illumination of the church and festivities on the banks may suggest otherwise.
So what does this mean for us as readers? Does it mean that we are all mindlessly glossing over deeper beauties in life or is it a plea for us to look for beauty in places we wouldn't think to find it?
At this point a clever reader might be asking if this story is in some way a self-referential ploy to get readers to try a little bit harder, or even if this very blog post is a cautionary tale trying to portray why it's important to appreciate important works.
