And I Will Wait Forever, These Things Will Never Wash Away, And I Will Wait For You, Will You Even Notice?
--"Knocked Flat in the First Round", Karmella's Game
I'm working on a new idea unlike any I've done before. It came to me as I was reading Naomi Novick's wonderful Temeraire series involving the use of dragons as aircraft replete with military crews during the Napoleonic war. For some strange reason I made this leap about what it'd be like to be telling the story from the point-of-view of the dragons, who by many are seen as more equipment than living creature. I mean--I know it was the author's intent to bring up this very connection, but it occurred to me this would provide useful fodder for a story that's been gestating in my head for awhile.
Basically, ever since I read the Anita Blake series many years ago I've tried to invent a narrative of my own involving a summoner/conjuror, someone who can call forth all manner of beasts to do his or her bidding. Finally, marrying this idea with the one I thought of during my reading of Novick's work, I hit upon the idea of telling a story from the point-of-view of a conjuration, a creature whose life consists of being summoned forth to do a series of tasks and then ceases to exist once these tasks are accomplished. I can't even fully realize how you would tell an entire novel in such stilted episodes, but yesterday's post was my first stab at it. It wasn't written well, I know, but I wrote it before I got to talking some people where the heart of the tale shall lie. And in those conversations I hit upon the angle that very well may make or break the story.
I need to tell the story from the perspective of someone who is fully aware of the limited nature of his being. I need to progress him from that point to someone who ultimately questions whether or not he is, indeed, alive. Does the fact he has purpose actually give him some meaning? Or is having a purpose not enough evidence sustain the hypothesis that he is living somehow? The question if a life has to be both relevant to those around him and possess some purpose in order to be qualified as being a meaningful life is a way more fruitful proposition than telling the same old supernatural tale I love to tell.
After all, man's search for meaning is a story that's been recast and rebroadcast ever since man began writing. That's probably why the individual who told me, "You have to strike that in there, Eeyore. You positively must," is also the person who will be relaying the most advice to me in preparation for this next story.
She should know all about this search. She's probably lived it all her life.
----
When Breanne first told me she ran away from home frequently, I didn't think much of it. I'd run away from home a few times myself. To me running away meant escaping for a few hours, only to return before it got too dark outside. It was a bluff, a charade for the sake of one's parents in order to get them to back down. The idea was that they would be so worried about one that they would cave on whatever issue the argument which prompted the departure had been about. That was always the picture in me head when my friend would talk of running away the nine or ten times she'd done it before she met me.
Then I'd learned her idea of running away vastly differed from mine. When she left home it was fully with the intent to never return. She would tell me how as early as nine she would attempt to get out of the town limits just to be away from all the turmoil she felt was ever present in her household. She would tell me how she, when her parents began deciphering her usual trail leading away, would go to her friend Torry's house with sleeping bag in hand. There she would crawl unceremoniously beneath the house, beneath the porch, and just wait out till next morning. When she left home it wasn't a component of some grand scheme to influence her family; when she left it was to escape something I'd never experienced in my own life.
That's when I began probing the full details of her discontentment. That's when I started understanding the idea somebody could appear on the outside happy-go-lucky and carefree, but beneath be embroiled in a slow-burning anguish that many of us never experience.
She comes from a good home. Being an only child, it's not like she had to share the spotlight of her parents' affections with anyone else. She's just as intelligent as I am, she's always been popular, and, for the most part, she's lived in relatively good health. Like most people I was wondering what could drive somebody to act out in such a desperate manner. Like most people I didn't understand the concept of living in a gilded cage, as she succinctly put it.
It wasn't just the dance lessons, the incessant coddling, the constant talking down to her as if she were somewhat less than a rational human being. It was that coupled with the fact that she's always had an independent streak about her. It was the unhappy marriage of divergent opposing forces. It was akin to attempting to divert the river into a narrow bottle. It was a bad idea right from the start.
She explained it to me thusly. It was never that she questioned her parents' love for her. That was never in doubt. She merely felt that she was smothered since her earliest years. She wasn't just told what to do; she was led hand in glove to the point where she didn't believe she had any options when it came to the schedule of her day. To her her mother assumed all decisions for her, from what she ate, to what she wore, to where she would be at all times. She didn't even know she had the option to act out until years after most of us grow out of this rambunctious stage, so complete was her mother's domineering mannerisms.
That's when the question of meaning began to flit in Breanne's head, she said. That's when she started the whole writing process to work through these ideas she was too afraid to tell her mom about. That's when she distinguished between having the talent or skill to do something--dance, be courteous, be graceful at all times, study, &c...--and the ability to decide when to do something. She started asking the deeper question of whether it's more important to be the fastest filly in the pasture if it meant having to be ridden or if was more important to be free of the pasture altogether. What good was having all these abilities and talents and skills that her mother was trying to teach her or have taught to her, when she had to show them off on command or, worse yet, to put them away when her mother thought they weren't of any use? She started feeling like the painting on the wall one appreciates from afar, but ultimately glosses over because it has no dynamic, no anima, no spirit behind the beauty. She started feeling like life should be more purposeful than being good at everything. Those talents should be put towards something with more personal meaning; the things she did should matter to her first and foremost.
Granted, my first stab at displaying my independence wouldn't have entailed hightailing it out of Sierra Madre, but we all act out in different ways. It's only after knowing her for so long that I realized Breanne's instincts tell her to get moving quickly in any direction the minute she feels threatened or cooped up. To her, the running was the important part not the where she was running to. To her, the display of choice was what mattered; it was the idea that she could survive out God-knows-where that she wanted displayed for her parents' benefit. She thought that when she didn't die they would have to finally acknowledge that she was capable of somewhat handling herself. Of course, when your daughter's nine it doesn't matter how courageous she might be, you're still not going to be kosher with the idea of her being outside all night by herself. They would find her and take her back. They would give her the lecture about how it's not safe. Then, they would proceed to try to wrap her up even more tightly.
A few months later she would just run away again.
In total she ran away some twenty to twenty-four odd times, the last of which I remember was a year after she met me, when she was fourteen.
They finally had to talk to her under her own conditions. They finally had to dig at the real problem that was troubling her. They had to concede that the only way she would ever feel purposeful and a contributing part of the family was if they allowed her the opportunity to contribute. She had to feel everything she did was by her volition and not because her mother expected it of her. When everything was decided for her, she felt like nothing more than an object to be displayed or utilized as everyone else saw fit. After the long series of talks she had with her parents, with me, and with other people who could help her see why she was so unhappy; she came to realize that taking control didn't mean acting out. Taking control meant being responsible too; taking control had to involve showing others you knew how to be an adult in the small things too.
It was difficult for me as well. I mean--my first instinct was to tell her to march straight back home whenever she would call from the road. Even at eleven or twelve I wasn't stupid enough to try making it through a night by myself in somebody else's yard. There were nights were I must've tried a half-dozen tactics to get her to return back, from threatening to call the police, to threatening to never to talk to her again, to plain crying in order to guilt-trip that I was scared of losing her. Nothing worked, not completely at least. There were a few times where I managed to at least get her talking to her parents on the phone. They would talk and eventually pick her up, but I could never quite get her to walk back. I suppose that was her display of defiance towards me.
There were plenty of fights where I called her out for being a stupid, little girl that wanted to be raped, killed, or worse. I still think it was a bad idea, but there were days I forgot how the important thing was to be a friend and keep her safe through these ordeals. I let her mistakes cloud my opinion of her. I would hang up on her because she wouldn't seemingly take my advice. I would abandon her out there, the one friend who treated her as something more than her parents would treat her... and I chose to do that to her. They weren't my most exemplary moments. If anything, I was just perpetuation the behavior, doing a bit of the running away thing myself. I thought I could scare her into taking me seriously if I bluffed her into thinking I was willing to walk away from her and her friendship. But to her it just put her defenses up even more. I was her last lifeline, when I would hang up on her she felt like she had no one else to turn to. That would only prompt her to even act more recklessly.
Eventually, I would call back and concede the best I could do for her is be somewhat there for her when she would get scared underneath that house or when she started to worry that her parents wouldn't want her back. The best I could do is comfort her because there was no talking her out of staying away until she felt it was time to return.
As it got older it got easier. I started to worry about her less. It was a little bit because I'd been through the exercise so many times, but it was mostly because I understood a little more about what it meant to be her. Her parents would call me and I'd act as an intermediary. I'd relay some of what I thought Breanne was riled up about and since I wasn't their son, I think I could explain more effectively than she could. I didn't have to yell to get my point across. They could hear her words better through my mouth, I guess.
----
Whenever I talk to her these days, she sounds like a person. She sounds a lot different than the girl that was always minding her manners with me on the phone. She's always been confident, but these days she sounds more assured of who and what she was. There's a focus behind that confidence; instead of coming off arrogant and boastful like she once did, she sounds quietly proud of everything she's doing. I think that's the difference between someone who knows how to do something and someone who knows why they want to do something. Before she was just some finely crafted instrument that somebody else had to guide; now she's both the surgeon and the scalpel, both the captain and the ship, both the rider and the horse.
Before she used to talk about what she would do when she got old enough to decide for herself about a great many things. She used to dream of the days of driving herself around, of taking the classes she wanted to in college, of the days she did things because she found enjoyment in them and not merely because her mother told her she ought to learn them.
The best example of this I can find is how she stopped going to dance lessons when she was twelve. She stopped going because it was becoming too much like work for her and she didn't want to lose the joy she found in dancing.
She gave up dance lessons, she says, so she would never have to give up dancing.
That's what I mean when I say she now understands what it likes to do something because somebody else is telling you the value of it and doing something when you've already discovered the value yourself.
That's the difference between running away to solve your problems and being able to run away because you've already got all your problems solved beforehand.
That's the difference between being mostly dead inside to finally finding that spark of life.
Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers
I'm working on a new idea unlike any I've done before. It came to me as I was reading Naomi Novick's wonderful Temeraire series involving the use of dragons as aircraft replete with military crews during the Napoleonic war. For some strange reason I made this leap about what it'd be like to be telling the story from the point-of-view of the dragons, who by many are seen as more equipment than living creature. I mean--I know it was the author's intent to bring up this very connection, but it occurred to me this would provide useful fodder for a story that's been gestating in my head for awhile.Basically, ever since I read the Anita Blake series many years ago I've tried to invent a narrative of my own involving a summoner/conjuror, someone who can call forth all manner of beasts to do his or her bidding. Finally, marrying this idea with the one I thought of during my reading of Novick's work, I hit upon the idea of telling a story from the point-of-view of a conjuration, a creature whose life consists of being summoned forth to do a series of tasks and then ceases to exist once these tasks are accomplished. I can't even fully realize how you would tell an entire novel in such stilted episodes, but yesterday's post was my first stab at it. It wasn't written well, I know, but I wrote it before I got to talking some people where the heart of the tale shall lie. And in those conversations I hit upon the angle that very well may make or break the story.
I need to tell the story from the perspective of someone who is fully aware of the limited nature of his being. I need to progress him from that point to someone who ultimately questions whether or not he is, indeed, alive. Does the fact he has purpose actually give him some meaning? Or is having a purpose not enough evidence sustain the hypothesis that he is living somehow? The question if a life has to be both relevant to those around him and possess some purpose in order to be qualified as being a meaningful life is a way more fruitful proposition than telling the same old supernatural tale I love to tell.
After all, man's search for meaning is a story that's been recast and rebroadcast ever since man began writing. That's probably why the individual who told me, "You have to strike that in there, Eeyore. You positively must," is also the person who will be relaying the most advice to me in preparation for this next story.
She should know all about this search. She's probably lived it all her life.
----
When Breanne first told me she ran away from home frequently, I didn't think much of it. I'd run away from home a few times myself. To me running away meant escaping for a few hours, only to return before it got too dark outside. It was a bluff, a charade for the sake of one's parents in order to get them to back down. The idea was that they would be so worried about one that they would cave on whatever issue the argument which prompted the departure had been about. That was always the picture in me head when my friend would talk of running away the nine or ten times she'd done it before she met me.
Then I'd learned her idea of running away vastly differed from mine. When she left home it was fully with the intent to never return. She would tell me how as early as nine she would attempt to get out of the town limits just to be away from all the turmoil she felt was ever present in her household. She would tell me how she, when her parents began deciphering her usual trail leading away, would go to her friend Torry's house with sleeping bag in hand. There she would crawl unceremoniously beneath the house, beneath the porch, and just wait out till next morning. When she left home it wasn't a component of some grand scheme to influence her family; when she left it was to escape something I'd never experienced in my own life.
That's when I began probing the full details of her discontentment. That's when I started understanding the idea somebody could appear on the outside happy-go-lucky and carefree, but beneath be embroiled in a slow-burning anguish that many of us never experience.
She comes from a good home. Being an only child, it's not like she had to share the spotlight of her parents' affections with anyone else. She's just as intelligent as I am, she's always been popular, and, for the most part, she's lived in relatively good health. Like most people I was wondering what could drive somebody to act out in such a desperate manner. Like most people I didn't understand the concept of living in a gilded cage, as she succinctly put it.
It wasn't just the dance lessons, the incessant coddling, the constant talking down to her as if she were somewhat less than a rational human being. It was that coupled with the fact that she's always had an independent streak about her. It was the unhappy marriage of divergent opposing forces. It was akin to attempting to divert the river into a narrow bottle. It was a bad idea right from the start.
She explained it to me thusly. It was never that she questioned her parents' love for her. That was never in doubt. She merely felt that she was smothered since her earliest years. She wasn't just told what to do; she was led hand in glove to the point where she didn't believe she had any options when it came to the schedule of her day. To her her mother assumed all decisions for her, from what she ate, to what she wore, to where she would be at all times. She didn't even know she had the option to act out until years after most of us grow out of this rambunctious stage, so complete was her mother's domineering mannerisms.
That's when the question of meaning began to flit in Breanne's head, she said. That's when she started the whole writing process to work through these ideas she was too afraid to tell her mom about. That's when she distinguished between having the talent or skill to do something--dance, be courteous, be graceful at all times, study, &c...--and the ability to decide when to do something. She started asking the deeper question of whether it's more important to be the fastest filly in the pasture if it meant having to be ridden or if was more important to be free of the pasture altogether. What good was having all these abilities and talents and skills that her mother was trying to teach her or have taught to her, when she had to show them off on command or, worse yet, to put them away when her mother thought they weren't of any use? She started feeling like the painting on the wall one appreciates from afar, but ultimately glosses over because it has no dynamic, no anima, no spirit behind the beauty. She started feeling like life should be more purposeful than being good at everything. Those talents should be put towards something with more personal meaning; the things she did should matter to her first and foremost.
Granted, my first stab at displaying my independence wouldn't have entailed hightailing it out of Sierra Madre, but we all act out in different ways. It's only after knowing her for so long that I realized Breanne's instincts tell her to get moving quickly in any direction the minute she feels threatened or cooped up. To her, the running was the important part not the where she was running to. To her, the display of choice was what mattered; it was the idea that she could survive out God-knows-where that she wanted displayed for her parents' benefit. She thought that when she didn't die they would have to finally acknowledge that she was capable of somewhat handling herself. Of course, when your daughter's nine it doesn't matter how courageous she might be, you're still not going to be kosher with the idea of her being outside all night by herself. They would find her and take her back. They would give her the lecture about how it's not safe. Then, they would proceed to try to wrap her up even more tightly.
A few months later she would just run away again.
In total she ran away some twenty to twenty-four odd times, the last of which I remember was a year after she met me, when she was fourteen.
They finally had to talk to her under her own conditions. They finally had to dig at the real problem that was troubling her. They had to concede that the only way she would ever feel purposeful and a contributing part of the family was if they allowed her the opportunity to contribute. She had to feel everything she did was by her volition and not because her mother expected it of her. When everything was decided for her, she felt like nothing more than an object to be displayed or utilized as everyone else saw fit. After the long series of talks she had with her parents, with me, and with other people who could help her see why she was so unhappy; she came to realize that taking control didn't mean acting out. Taking control meant being responsible too; taking control had to involve showing others you knew how to be an adult in the small things too.
It was difficult for me as well. I mean--my first instinct was to tell her to march straight back home whenever she would call from the road. Even at eleven or twelve I wasn't stupid enough to try making it through a night by myself in somebody else's yard. There were nights were I must've tried a half-dozen tactics to get her to return back, from threatening to call the police, to threatening to never to talk to her again, to plain crying in order to guilt-trip that I was scared of losing her. Nothing worked, not completely at least. There were a few times where I managed to at least get her talking to her parents on the phone. They would talk and eventually pick her up, but I could never quite get her to walk back. I suppose that was her display of defiance towards me.
There were plenty of fights where I called her out for being a stupid, little girl that wanted to be raped, killed, or worse. I still think it was a bad idea, but there were days I forgot how the important thing was to be a friend and keep her safe through these ordeals. I let her mistakes cloud my opinion of her. I would hang up on her because she wouldn't seemingly take my advice. I would abandon her out there, the one friend who treated her as something more than her parents would treat her... and I chose to do that to her. They weren't my most exemplary moments. If anything, I was just perpetuation the behavior, doing a bit of the running away thing myself. I thought I could scare her into taking me seriously if I bluffed her into thinking I was willing to walk away from her and her friendship. But to her it just put her defenses up even more. I was her last lifeline, when I would hang up on her she felt like she had no one else to turn to. That would only prompt her to even act more recklessly.
Eventually, I would call back and concede the best I could do for her is be somewhat there for her when she would get scared underneath that house or when she started to worry that her parents wouldn't want her back. The best I could do is comfort her because there was no talking her out of staying away until she felt it was time to return.
As it got older it got easier. I started to worry about her less. It was a little bit because I'd been through the exercise so many times, but it was mostly because I understood a little more about what it meant to be her. Her parents would call me and I'd act as an intermediary. I'd relay some of what I thought Breanne was riled up about and since I wasn't their son, I think I could explain more effectively than she could. I didn't have to yell to get my point across. They could hear her words better through my mouth, I guess.
----
Whenever I talk to her these days, she sounds like a person. She sounds a lot different than the girl that was always minding her manners with me on the phone. She's always been confident, but these days she sounds more assured of who and what she was. There's a focus behind that confidence; instead of coming off arrogant and boastful like she once did, she sounds quietly proud of everything she's doing. I think that's the difference between someone who knows how to do something and someone who knows why they want to do something. Before she was just some finely crafted instrument that somebody else had to guide; now she's both the surgeon and the scalpel, both the captain and the ship, both the rider and the horse.
Before she used to talk about what she would do when she got old enough to decide for herself about a great many things. She used to dream of the days of driving herself around, of taking the classes she wanted to in college, of the days she did things because she found enjoyment in them and not merely because her mother told her she ought to learn them.
The best example of this I can find is how she stopped going to dance lessons when she was twelve. She stopped going because it was becoming too much like work for her and she didn't want to lose the joy she found in dancing.
She gave up dance lessons, she says, so she would never have to give up dancing.
That's what I mean when I say she now understands what it likes to do something because somebody else is telling you the value of it and doing something when you've already discovered the value yourself.
That's the difference between running away to solve your problems and being able to run away because you've already got all your problems solved beforehand.
That's the difference between being mostly dead inside to finally finding that spark of life.
Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers
Labels: Breanne, identity, Karmella's Game, meaning, relevance
posted by mojo shivers @ 12:04 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home