I Wish

            A cool breeze wafts across the porch. It carries with it the scent of the purple flowered bush next to the steps, sweet and tangy. It has flowered every spring, but only for about six weeks, when the flowers die and do not reappear until the following year. I wish I knew the name of it. I wish the flowers bloomed longer.

            I wish for a lot of things.

            It is bright today. Hot. But under the shade of my neighbor’s towering birch, it is cool enough on the porch. Cool enough to write, anyway. And think. Though only one thing dominates my mind these days. It follows me everywhere I go, lingers like a foul odor, does not allow much room for anything else. It is all I can do to go to work, and try, at least, for a little while, to forget that my life has changed forever.

            I glance over at the window where my cat has curled up on one of the many boxes that now fill my house. They line the walls and lay scattered across the living room floor. Books and kitchen things. Old files and memorabilia and photographs. Tools and Christmas decorations and things from my childhood. All packed away. The furniture is still there, but the shelves are empty.

The house is empty.

I am empty.

She left three months ago, and I still do not understand. I wonder if I’ll ever understand.

Last year was hard. I have wrestled with depression my entire life, but last year it struck in a way I had never experienced. I lost my job. I broke into hives. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Some days it was all I could to get out of bed.

It was hard on her, too. It is painful to live with someone with mental health issues, and last year must have been a nightmare for her. It is one thing for me to talk about the emptiness and loneliness inherent with depression, but altogether something else for our loved ones who are powerless to help. I had hoped that she would stay, counted on this year being better, but it was all too much, I think.

She deserves to be happy.

I would have fought for this relationship, done whatever it took to make it right, but sometimes we reach the end of our rope and must protect ourselves. We’re no good to the rest of the world if we’re miserable, and everyone deserves the right to be happy, no matter how much it hurts. No matter how much I hurt.

Love is not about me.

I take a deep breath and stare out across the street. Watch the leaves on the trees shift and sway in the wind. Love is not about me. I have said that a thousand times these past three months. I believe it, but it only helps a little. It certainly sounds right. Something you say to convince people around you that you’re being wise and kind and patient, when inside your emotions are a boiling cauldron of frustration and sadness and anger. When your emotions are desperately trying to escape so they can scream and yell and lash out, and all you have is this thin barrier, largely constructed of mantras and clichés and whispered hope, to reign them in.

Sometimes they escape. Sometimes I do not think kind things. Sometimes I am so overwhelmed I can hardly move.

She deserves to be happy.

I have always believed this. That hasn’t changed.

Pain of this magnitude is a great teacher, if we allow it. It gives us a mirror into our lives that we rarely see. And for a while, we can see ourselves from the perspective of someone else. I have stared into this mirror for three months, and it has taught me a great deal. It has also given me more wishes.

I wish I’d known she was so unhappy. I wish I’d been a better husband. I wish I’d been enough.

I sigh and put down my laptop. It is time to pack again.

Back inside, I pack two more boxes. The wedding photos are the hardest, but I see her everywhere. I remember everything, every story behind every book and nicnac and kitchen appliance. And every time I put them in a box, part of me disappears with them.

Tears slide down my cheeks. It feels like I have been crying for a long time. I know that one day the tears will stop, and that spring will come again and I will live without pain. I believe that, I just can’t feel it. Not yet. Perhaps not for a while.

Some days I think about our life together. Think about what I could have done differently. At night, I sometimes dream that we’re together, that I’ve made better choices and she is happy. Those mornings are difficult.

I do not believe everything is my fault, of course. I am not that arrogant. But I cannot control anything but who I am and the choices I made, and to focus on anything else is fool’s gold. The intent of pain’s mirror is not to cast blame or throw stones, but to check my thoughts and heart and actions.

Where did I go wrong? What could I have done better? What kind of person do I want to be going forward? Again, these are the kind of questions that sound like I have things all together, but don’t be fooled. No one “has it all together” when they lose the love of their life.

As a Christian, I believe in God. I also believe in a broken world, which is as much a reflection of my faith as it is my understanding of humanity. We are not perfect. We make choices that hurt people. And we do it every day.

I do it every day.

And somewhere along the way, I made too many of these choices. Perhaps she made too many of these choices. And so we broke.

That doesn’t make me a bad person. And it doesn’t make her a bad person. It makes us both human.

I put down the third box and head back onto the porch. I scrub the tears from my face. I am greeted by the fresh scent of my little shrub. I wish she were here. I wish I could tell her how much I loved her and hoped for her happiness. I wish that my heart did not feel so empty.

I wish for a lot of things.

How Does Slavery Happen?

History

Like most fantasy writers, I've read a great deal of history. When you're trying to create your own world, you have to have some idea how our society evolved. Everything from language to weapons to indoor plumbing to marriage rituals. Unlike historians, who are forced to specialize, I've been able to pick through the human story depending on my research needs for my latest novel. It's been a roller coaster ride through the human experience, and for much of the last twenty years, it's been a fascinating trip. As poorly as we have behaved throughout our history, I've always been able to find find moments or events that displayed the best of human qualities. Moments where mercy and kindness and self-sacrifice were on clear display.

The one caveat to that was slavery. How was it that such an evil thing could be excused by ostensibly good people? How could a religion whose founder preached equality not only protect the institution of slavery, but help start a civil war over it? I'd read long ago that in the 18th Century, Southern Baptist churches would sell slaves behind the church following the Sunday morning service. The evil of that was -- and for a very long time remained -- beyond my understanding.

Worse, as far as I could tell through my twenty or so years of picking through the human scrapbook, it had always existed and had always been excused. My current novel was based on a slave society, and I was tasked with creating likable characters who didn't have an issue with the idea of human property. How the hell was I supposed to do that?

"People Are Sinners"

As I had no idea how such a thing could happen, I started asking my friends and people around me what they thought. How could decent moral humans could allow such a travesty to exist? The answer were predictable but unhelpful. Something along the lines of "people are sinners" or "people suck" or "people are selfish." Theologically, the notion of "sin" may or may not be true, depending on what you believe, but in every other way it was a useless answer. The similar but non-religious view, "people suck" was just as useless. Besides, the word "sin" had been so abused within the church and the surrounding culture that to repeat the mantra of sin as a reason for cruelty made it sound more like an excuse than a plausible reason. And it didn't answer my question anyway. How could a human look at another human in chains and consider them property? Civilization and human growth has never been linear, but the idea that slavery would somehow be accepted within the 21st Century seemed a great stretch.

Slavery Still Exists
Indentured servitude has always existed, in its most vicious form in the American South, the more formalized version in Rome, or the horrors of Ancient Egypt, the notion that certain humans are worth less than others is as old as humanity. One could look at the feudal systems in the Middle Ages, of Europe or China or Japan, for further examples. Now some of those societies did not operate as slave societies per se, but the effect was similar. Large swaths of a population with few (if any) rights, little or no money, and horrific working conditions.

It bothered me that I hadn't considered it earlier, but it only took a bit of research to realize that slavery exists today, in plain sight of the world, and no one (including me) seemed to give a shit.

The China Issue

Most items in the world (that's not an exaggeration) are made in China, where labor is cheap and oversight non-existent. Nearly every successful company has factories there, including Apple, who, like the others, has made its riches off the backs off the 21st century form of indentured servitude.

Foxconn is the largest employer in China, and a few years ago the media caught wind of how these "employees" were treated. To wit: 

"human rights organisations have gained insight into the gated Foxconn dormitories and highlighted some daily practices including full control over people’s working schedules, as well as their free time. Workers are prohibited from using certain devices, their rooms are raided, and if they are found to have broken any of the strict rules, they have to confess their guilt publicly.

Time off is usually only used for rest as people regularly work shifts of 11 to 13 hours. Working hours are so long that people sleep in the factories when a new product is being released. Additionally, if targets are not met, lunch breaks are also cancelled. Days off are rare and trips home to visit family are only allowed once a year. This is particularly concerning as most of the workers are immigrants from distant provinces. They are usually young people who are not in a strong position to find employment in their home
regions. Some of them are attracted by Foxconn advertising campaigns. The largest group of Foxconn employees is between 18 and 21 years old although incidents of child labour have been observed."

And when the media began to expose how they were treating their employees, some changes were made. A few. One of those changes was a slight wage increase. Apple responded by going with another employer who did not alter the way they treated their employees, which allowed them to keep a larger share of its profit. In fact, if you're still buying Apple products after reading THIS report, then I'm guessing you've given up.

SLAVERY TODAY

Of course, slavery still exists in other ways. Women and young girls sold as sex slaves is a thriving billion dollar industry. The difference, however, is that the world (mostly) disapproves of that behavior and it is done illegally. The abuse in Chinese factories is different in that it is such a huge and entrenched part of the world economy, it feels helpless to even think about how it can be stopped. Sure, we can boycott Apple (which I will do from now on), but China produces so much product it feels like a pebble in the pond.

Much like the plantations in the American South, where slavery was a fundamental part of the economy, it is difficult to imagine what would happen to the world markets if we suddenly asked these Chinese factories to treat their workers appropriately and pay them accordingly. How would the markets respond? Would everything suddenly become expensive, or worse, would the markets crash and lead us into another depression? On a more personal nature, would we have access to all the things we have now if it happened?

A REPEAT OF HISTORY

In my quest to understand how to draw a character that lived in a slave society, a moral character who cared about others but turned a blind eye to a society built on indentured servitude, I didn't have to go very far. A fifteen foot walk to the bathroom to check the mirror. Like most of you, it wasn't that I didn't care as much as I couldn't do anything about it. And if I dwelt on it too much, I was struck by a weighted sadness, a helpless feeling that very much led me to the same response I'd recieved from my friends: "people suck because they're sinners."

But I didn't want to go there, because I knew that if I did, I was only that much closer to the devastation of apathy and the blindness that apathy brought with it. And make no mistake, it was and has always been that kind of blindness that led to slavery in the first place, the kind that left us with not only little regard for the pain of others but encouraged us to blame victims for their troubles, using words like "sin" and "lazy" and "undisciplined."

I still don't know what the answer is, but I do know the question. It's the same one they asked a Jewish Rabbi about two thousand years ago. Millenia have passed, and the question hasn't changed...

Who is my neighbor, Lord?

They are. We are. I am.

Steve

Writing is Waiting... As It Should Be

Some days I want to stop. Pack in the writing. Try something else. Something faster. The publishing industry has always been slow (an eighteen month wait between selling a book to a publisher and seeing it on the shelves is typical), but in a time of instant everything, it seems slower now. The option to self-publish is always there, of course, something I may attempt in the future, but even that doesn't eliminate the amount of patience required to be a writer.

To date, I have a novel (THE LAST ANGEL) making rounds among literary agents. A spin off of the first novel, (CITY OF SLAVES) is currently being read by my beta-readers. And I'm working on the first draft of the sequel to The Last Angel. (UNHOLY WRATH) It feels like an awful lot of plates to keep in the air, but it isn't the amount of work that I find wearisome, it's the waiting. The daily drag  of hoping that this is the day an agent or reader or magazine gets back to you, and that they like your work. I've sent The Last Angel to forty seven agents so far. I've had some positive responses, including a full manuscript request from an agency in New York. The return time on whether they'll sign me: three months. (Three months!?)

Not that I'm complaining. I'm thrilled my work is getting some interest and I understand it takes time to sort through the thousands of projects, not to mention the time it takes to edit. But still, it's a grind. As a result, I go through the usual battery of writer-neurotic exercises: I'll never be a good writer, I think my work is pretty good, I've been doing this a long time and haven't had success, I'll never make it, my book is awesome, I'm too old, my sentences look like a lumber yard, these books will be bestsellers, I should have been a carpenter, etc...

This is not unusual. All writers (all artists) suffer through varying amounts of anguish when it comes to their work. Art is personal, and we're holding it out to the world to receive the praise or criticism or (worse) apathy, so it should matter. But again, this just makes it even more difficult.

Here's the thing though: writing is waiting.

Through the long haul of producing a first draft, the tediousness of scrubbing through a second and third draft, the waiting as we send the work to our beta-readers, the push through the final edit, the read-aloud edit, and all of that before the push to publish (self or traditional), where the waiting becomes even more intense. (And yes, it is very intense.)

When I was younger, I knew a lot of people who wanted to be writers. Many of them have given up. The process was too much. Too long. Why go through that hell when there were other noble aspirations. I understood completely, encouraged them in their new endeavors, and then got back to my latest piece. I've been writing for twenty years, and aside from a few essays in newspapers and a couple magazine pieces, I haven't had a great deal of success. Is that hard? Sure. But it isn't why I write. Every writer wants their work to see the light of publication, every writer wants to produce a best seller, and every writer wants to quit their day job so they can focus on their art. But that's not why I write.

Even the aphorism "a writer writes because they have to," misses the point. And in the process, makes writing sound like a chore. It's not. Hard work, yes. But not a chore.

I write because the agony of the wait is offset by the joy of my creation, and because it's the wait that produces that joy.

Think about it. How much would our work mean if we did it in one night? If our success actually happened over a weekend instead of a lifetime. How would it change us if we DIDN'T have to wait? And what kind of impact would it have on others?

Writers identify as writers when their worldview becomes an observatory, when we allow ourselves to be outsiders. Gradually, our scope widens, our empathy grows, and we begin to identify with people outside our original purview. This cannot happen without the growth and time that comes through the sometimes sluggish process of both creation and publication.

When I think back to those first days, young and eager to not only live the myth but be the myth, I really didn't know what I was getting myself into. I had no idea that it would be eight years before my first novel was accepted by a literary agent (unbelievable joy), and only six months later before the agent dumped me, and did so in the crushingly bland way of simply not returning my phone calls. No explanation. Nothing. (soul emptying) I had no idea that I would spend five years on a failed fantasy novel, and another two before finally hitting my stride.

And yet despite the disappointments, despite the weeks and months and years I've spent waiting, for one thing or another, I do not regret it. The process has changed me, changed me from the impetuous and judgmental young man that had no time for people who believed differently, people who were different. I have been forced for so long to see things through a long scope that it is the only scope that works for me now. I doubt very much that I would have such a healthy marriage without this change, doubt very much I could have spent twenty years as a special needs worker, and doubt that my worldview would focus so heavily on empathy. The waiting has done that. The years have done that. The writing has done that.

Maybe you haven't had as much success as you would have hoped. Maybe you've written a best seller and are finding it hard to reproduce your earlier success. Or maybe you're thinking your work isn't good enough, that you're not good enough, and that it will never happen. My advice? Keep writing, and enjoy the wait. You'll be grateful you did.

Steve

From Depression Towards the Great Unknown

(Have you taken the Monday Challenge? If not, check it out. Every week presents a new challenge. Something different. Okay, onto this week’s Monday Encouragement.)


As far back as I can remember, I’ve always been jealous of people who always seemed to be on the move. People taking trips and taking chances to go after life. People with the nerve and audacity to be bold in their life choices. For as much as I’ve pursued the dream of writing, I’ve always been hesitant when it comes to things like exploring a new city or travelling somewhere new. As I’ve worked my way through my thirties, it’s become even tougher to break through that mindset. I don’t imagine it will ever be easy.

Part of that is my writer’s dream which has, for a long time, deposited me squarely in the category of starving artist. But a large part of it lies in my mental health struggles. I’ve battled depression since my early twenties, and there remain days when basic functioning is about all I can do, when stepping outside my routine or myself is a nearly insurmountable task. This past week, Canada celebrated Mental Illness Awareness Week. A number of people came forward to talk about their struggles, including perhaps Canada’s greatest athlete, Clara Hughes. (Medalist in both summer and winter Olympics) 

Her testimony, along with others, was well received by the public. For me, as one of the millions who struggle with mental health issues, it was a sign of our growing understanding as a society that some things (most things?) aren’t simple. That this notion we should just “pick ourselves up” or “stop focusing on the bad” simply isn’t the answer. Life is more complicated than that. And yet, we still hear, particularly from the idiots binary thinkers in many churches and mosques that mental health issues are merely the symptom of spiritual damage. It isn’t true, but it offers people a chance to fit everything into a simplistic worldview. These are not, generally speaking, horrible humans. They are often kind and sincere. The problem lies with the importance they place on the necessity of their worldview’s perfection.

Certain worldviews demand that they be correct in every way to function at all. We see this primarily in fundamentalist ideals, not just here in the West, but everywhere, be it Communist China or certain Islamic countries or portions of North America. We see these countries and populations go through great pains to control information, to provide all the answers to people about everything. People who suffer from mental health issues do not fit into these controlled people groups because there’s no place for them in this type of absolute worldview. In fact, most minority groups don’t fit into these power structures. Gays, women, minority races, people of differing faiths, the handicapped, none of them fit. However, having once shared this rigid worldview, I understand why they work so hard to control information and seem so closed. They are terrified that they will fall off the “belief cliff.” That cliff is steep, believe me, because once you leave behind a worldview that held every answer to every question, there is nothing to break your fall but the stones below. Sounds pretty terrifying, doesn’t it?

It is. I went through it, and in some ways, I’m not sure that I’ve ever fully recovered. Having everything explained simply, even when it was clearly wrong, made the world seem smaller and less frightening. I knew who God loved and why I was here and why we had pain in the world and why I was special and why certain cultures were evil. I understood all the spiritual intricacies, the “why’s” and “how’s”, as if I’d been given a secret guide map to the universe. In some ways, it was like being eight-years-old again. People were easy to define as good or evil. I didn’t have to worry about nuance. I didn’t have to deal with complexity. And most importantly, I didn’t have to deal with the Unknown.

And of all the things we’ll face in our life, perhaps the most terrifying, and the most human, is the Unknown. The understanding that we don’t know what we’ll be facing a year from now or what will happen when we die. We don’t know what our job situation will be like or what will happen with our kids or if we’ll ever have kids. We don’t know if we’ll be healthy or where our friends will be or if we’ll find ourselves in a loving relationship.

***

The desert is an overused metaphor, but it fits here. And it isn’t simply those who have fallen off the “Belief Cliff” who face the desert. At some point in our lives, each one of us will find ourselves looking towards the horizon and find nothing there but the shifting sand. We’ll be asked to walk across it anyway.

If you’re like me, and you’re facing the desert for the first time, you scurry back to your books and theories and turn on the hockey game. Nothing like the drone of announcers and the whir of skates and pucks to get your mind off such horrible things. Your next step is to wrap yourself in religion and religious indignation, spew great volumes of words on how easily we can “know God” and how our confusion can be easily addressed by following these few, simple principles. But somewhere in the back of your mind, that picture looms. You remember watching the sand shift in the breeze, the heat of the sun on your face, and the way the horizon shimmered as if you’d disturbed something sacred. Mostly you remember the vastness of it all, as if every bit of emptiness you’d ever felt had been poured out to create this space where the world had swallowed everyone else and left you alone. Out there, your theories and books and distractions didn’t work. Out there, you learned two things: the burning sand and the fallibility of your beliefs.

***

So much is available for us today to know. Encyclopedias of knowledge stored on pieces of metal the size of a thumbnail. We can ask seemingly any question and get an answer in seconds. So much knowledge, and yet, we still know so little. And it’s this gap, this understanding that we will never have all the answers, or worse, that our answers are all wrong, where find the essence of humanity. Where we stand on the edge of the desert and realize that though ages have passed, the desert itself remains untouched, and that we all must face it at one time or another.

We can avoid it, or attempt to, by distracting ourselves with busy work and family stuff and a noisy life. We can ignore the memory of the sand burning under our feet and the questions that keep us awake at night. That’s our choice too. We can claim that such business is “melodramatic” or “artsy nonsense” or “just more excuses” not to be happy with what we have. As always, the simple answer remains tempting. But then, there’s a reason why war and hatred permeate our species. Why people of certain races or religions or gender or sexuality are persecuted and killed.

Unfortunately, it’s our love for the simple answer that drives us further away from our humanity. From the character that we hope to develop and the person we dream of becoming. It’s the simple answer that drives wedges between dissimilar people groups. That sees the world as a pre-ordered hierarchy and not a living sanctuary. And it’s the simple answer that denies us the terrifying but sacred ordeal of witnessing something much greater than ourselves.

The desert brings more questions than answers, but the implications of humility are so immense that they inevitably lead us on a new journey. They take us on a path away from knowledge and surety and move us towards wisdom and empathy. As fearful as it sounds, there’s something wonderful in the change, something wonderful in the comfort of embracing our humanity, of accepting our struggles and questions and knowing that we are not supposed to have all the answers. That we’ll never have all the answers. That whatever our lives are to become, they will never be perfect, and that’s okay, too.

I still struggle with depression. I imagine that I always will. Some days will inevitably be more difficult than others, and on those days I’ll ask for grace from my family and friends and feel the weight of discouragement cover me like a lead jacket. This matters because too often I read religious books or self-help books that promise a secret that will take away all your questions and pain. We get caught up in these ideas, and then come crashing down again when they don’t work, and when the pain remains.

The struggle of being human will always be there, I think, because it is the very thing that defines us. The question, then, is what to do. What do we do when we face the Desert? What do we do when life weights us down? What do we do when our dreams seem to have passed us by?

So many questions, and yet the answer, I think, is found only when we embrace the questions. When we embrace the difficulty of our humanity and celebrate it anyway. When we accept the path of the Unknown and continue to walk, knowing that the path is built for faulty steps, built to handle our errors of judgment and times we get lost.

People are inevitably going to tell us what they think about our path. They’ll tell us that we’re wrong or right because that’s part of being human, too. Just so long as we keep walking, remembering that we all face time in the desert, that we all ask the same questions, and that no one has all the answers. If we remember that, we can push towards the life we want with no regrets. And if we’re lucky, with just a bit more grace and empathy than we had when we started.

Much love

Steve

Looking Like an Idiot... Is a Good Thing

“No, you want to twist the wire as you’re coiling it. One hand over, one hand under.”

I was standing in a dimly lit theatre hall holding a fifty foot roll of speaker wire as Ameen tried, yet again, to show me how to coil the wire. Instead of simply curling it around my wrist and elbow as I’d done my entire life, Ameen was showing me how to do it properly. I could feel my face getting red as he patiently corrected the position of my hands. I’d played sports my entire life, considered myself reasonably intelligent, and yet here I was unable to coil a damn wire.

Our church had an unusual setup. Every Sunday morning we unpacked a huge trailer of equipment to convert an entire theatre into a church, complete with Sunday school classrooms and live worship. I’d joined the setup team, happy to volunteer, and completely unaware of my burgeoning exposure as a technical moron. Assigned to the main theatre, I hadn’t realized the volume of wires and speakers and sound equipment necessary to run a service. Normally I liked fiddling around with our television at home, hooking up the sound system and setting things up. And yet, here I was, having that sense that youo’re in way over your head. I hadn’t felt like such an idiot in a long time. Abstract concepts and philosophy? No problem. Writing, counseling, artistic conception? Great. Working with my hands? Um, not so much.

I still couldn’t coil the wire, but someone else had finally come over to help. Hours later, I was still shaking my head, long after we’d packed things up again. A damn wire? Really? The whole morning had been a bit surreal for me. My inability to perform such a simple task lingered much longer than I’d expected, and I was frankly surprised at how much it had thrown me, how incompetent I’d felt. I wasn’t looking forward to the next week, when I’d be forced to do it all over again.

Upon reflection a few days later, however, I realized that I’d made the right call in joining the setup team. Not only was I learning a new skill, but I was stretching myself, something I didn’t do as often as I had in the past. It was incredibly humbling, but I had enough self-awareness to know that if I stopped putting myself in uncomfortable situations once in a while, I’d become an insufferable shit.

Our society forces us to specialize. There isn’t a whole lot of necessity these days for the pioneer in an agrarian society that has to be good at everything just to survive. And if we’re to advance in our fields, the sheer volume of people and industry means that most of us are pushed into a niche. Everything else is done for us. Everything from food preparation to fixing things around the house.

It gets progressively more difficult as to take risks as we get older. We become more specialized and take fewer risks. We experience a certain confidence in dealing with issues with which we’re familiar, and generally choose to ignore the things that have the potential to be embarrassing. We define ourselves by our fears, by our dislike for certain feelings, and instead of growing and learning, we plateau. Life isn’t a journey anymore, it’s a treadmill. And as soon as we reach that point, bitterness creeps into our lives.

Feeling like an idiot sucks. But if we’re not willing to be embarrassed, we’ll never learn anything new. We’ll never understand this whole empathy gig, this whole idea about walking in someone else’s shoes because the only shoes we wear are our own. That makes it harder to appreciate other skill sets, and can lead to elitism and arrogance. When we try new things, however, that begins to change. Instead of being a permanent expert, we become permanent beginners. And while that may sound like a load of frustration, what it means is that every day is new again, that our posture becomes one of humility and grace, and that our life suddenly needs to be lived again.

If you have the opportunity, sign up for something that will make you look like an idiot. It won’t feel great at first, but if you push through, you’ll find your reward when it’s over. Even if it just means learning how to coil a damn wire.

-Steve

Empathy, Harry Potter and the Necessity of Fiction

28 Days

DAY 2

The sun is bright this morning and the birds seem louder, as if relieved by a day that promises to be both warm and bright. There is no wind, and the trees below the balcony do not stir. The distant roar of cars along the highway fades easily into the background.

It has been a while since I have found myself so involved with the characters of a novel. (one of my own) It is a strange and compelling experience, in that I am continually forced to view life through a different lens. I can't help but think that such an experience is a good thing. That said, you do not have to be a writer to experience other lives. You experience it when you read as well. I've often reflected on books like the Harry Potter series, on those who grew up with the novels and shared the lives of those characters. What a wonderful gift from J.K. Rowling, to give her work such depth that readers became lost in the story, to the point where they assumed ownership of it. I am certainly no Rowling, but I believe that this is the experience all writers are trying to give their readers. Something magical happens when we find ourselves in a new story, even if it is only borrowed for a time. It enlarges us somehow, and helps us see the blind spots in both our beliefs and ourselves. People sometimes ask me why I love fiction so much, or why I would write something that isn't 'true.' What I usually tell them is that fiction – story – is the only way people ever truly understand one another, because it is only through story that we are ever given a window into other people's experiences and what it means to walk in another person's footsteps. Without that understanding, without empathy, love is impossible. And without love, life really isn't worth that much.

-Steve

DAY 3

One of those days when the thought of any thoughts is beyond exhaustion. Will post tomorrow.

-Steve