“Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If in your bold creative way you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe.”
~G.K. Chesterton
I’ve been pondering this quote (source) for a few days now, trying to figure out what exactly Chesterton meant. That’s meant, of course, poking around on the internet to find other idiot interpretations (as compared to my own, to be presented shortly). Most of what I’m seeing chides Chesterton for being orthodox, for misunderstanding the free aspects of creativity, because you can’t, like, limit creativity, man.
I don’t think Chesterton meant what people think he meant.
And I don’t necessarily want to imprint my own thinking on Chesterton’s, lest I end up looking foolish like this.
But I can share a few anecdotes, mostly connected to things I’ve read that could have used some limits.
First, “Little, Big” by John Crowley.
Before I read the book – or at least tried to read it – I was led to believe it was an “epic” of “modern fantasy.” But, as I wrote in my review back in 2014, “I’m 138 pages in, and I’m still waiting for the plot to arrive.”
Crowley needed limitations, and he needed them badly. Maybe there was a tale to be told here, but it got lost in all of the freedom that Crowley expressed. It’s a giraffe that doesn’t look like a giraffe.
Here’s another: Gormenghast. More specifically, “Titus Groan,” by Mervyn Peake.
I liked it better, in 2016, than I did “Little, Big” in 2014, but still: “It's very Dickensian with interesting and extremely dull characters. And there are enough twists in the story to keep things going for the more adventurous reader. But this isn't a great quest, if that's what you like in fantasy. It's as if Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld wrote a great quest novel about all the stuff that happens before the quest starts.”
Again, a giraffe that doesn’t look like a giraffe.
This is important to me because in Doleful Creatures, the book I’m perennially writing, I see the same pitfalls. I haven’t limited myself in any way. I’m creating a giraffe with a short neck, where a long-necked giraffe should be.
Or in other words, I drawed a horsey.
But you know, talking about limitations is so . . . limiting:
I'm not advocating a strict set of limits for everyone and everything. That's foolish. But I think working within constraints and limitations leads to a more focused product, if I can use such a harsh word in the world of "art."
So writer (and particularly editor) friends: I have a request that is a cipher wrapped in an enigma, smothered in secret sauce.
I’d like answers to the two following questions:
1.How many times is too many times to edit a novel? Explain your answer.
2.What would a writer do to best spend his/her time during the editing process?
My purpose in asking these questions is twofold:
1.I teach a basic English writing course at BYU-Idaho, where we spend about ¾ of the semester on an “argumentative synthesis” paper, which calls for the students to identify a problem, explain why it’s a significant problem, explore solutions, and then propose the best solution. I want to show them that writing about problems they’re facing in their own life will lead to a better paper than writing about the Big Three topics they always want to write about: Gun control, abortion, and overuse of social media (if they happen to have a personal, rather than general, connection to these topics, that’s fine, but most of them just want to write about a Big Problem, and that leads to boring, boring papers.
2.I’m a hack fantasy novelist on his 17th revision to his first novel and would like to get it out of Limboland and into a form presentable for querying. (I’m trying to show my students that I use the argumentative synthesis process to fix problems in my own life, so they’ll want to do the same.)
Because the paper I’m writing requires evidence of research, I would like permission to use your names, titles, etc., as I write this sample paper to show to my students. I may also publish the results on my personal blog which has an audience of mostly relatives, some students, and Chinese bots.
I may contact you for further edification as I work on this paper. You would be under no obligation, however, to read my novel – in other words, I’m not fishing for hours of free work. Just a little bit of free advice mostly to help my students out. I can reciprocate with any number of consultations in my areas of expertise which include MASH and Simpsons quotes and – believe it or not – a lot of writing experience, just not with novels.
I have a ten-year background in newspaper journalism, followed up by more than a decade’s worth of technical writing, so I’m not averse to correction or criticism.
And since I am prone to offering nonsensical answers to serious queries, I fully expect to see a few of them here. That’s all good. I fully expect things like this too:
Dave: I made a small error in judgment. Mr. James: A small error in judgment... What exactly would that be, Dave? Would that be Matthew's desk, or the dinner with Matthew, or the dinner with Lisa or the second dinner with Lisa? Dave: Okay, I may have made three or four small errors in judgment. Mr. James: No, they weren't errors, Dave. They were decisions and that's your job. No, the only error I see is that you're letting your people push you around and make you second-guess your decisions. Dave: Of course, you're right. Mr. James: And now you're letting me do it. Want my advice? Dave: Yes. Mr. James: Well, I'm not gonna give it to you.
I’m reading right now a little book that, in the wider publishing world, would probably never have gone to print.
Not that it’s bad. It’s entertaining. And educational.
But the storytelling therein isn’t a slick or polished as traditional publishing would have it be. So it wouldn’t be a go. It’s the kind of book some of the locals pick up and read because they or a family member or relative may be mentioned in it, but it might lack a wider audience.
Which is wrong. So wrong.
Because everything ought to be written down.
And even if the things written down aren’t as polished as they could be in the hands of another writer, what is preserved could be the germ of an idea. A springboard for a different kind of story. Or a mine for the little details that, say, a big-city writer might not know about small-town life. Or vice-versa.
The book in question is “Life Among the Lava Beds,” by Leonard Stephenson. I picked it up at a local thrift store because a quick glance showed me it was by a semi-local author (I live about two hours north of its setting, lava Hot Springs, Idaho) and I love to read bits by local authors. And in what pages I’ve read I can see a genesis of other Idaho writers, notably Patrick F. McManus, who made a great career retelling stories and exaggerations about his childhood. Stephenson, with a bit more practice and polish, could be southern Idaho’s analog to one of Idaho’s more famous and folksy writers. (The biggest flaw I can see is that there’s a lot of telling, but only a modicum of showing in Stephenson’s stories. With a bit more flair for presentation and a bigger poetic license, he could take his stories a lot farther.)
I’ve got settings and story ideas that could go somewhere. Except I don’t know where to take them. Looking at what authors like Stephenson write can open windows into a different world, one my characters could populate.
And I’m not talking about outright literary theft. That would be dishonest, and a disservice to this author. But I am talking about inspiration and ideas. What kinds of mischief could my characters get up to? So far, I’ve read about Stepehson’s experiences as an eight-year-old on a cattle drive, or being bored to tears helping harvest raspberries. Taken the general idea – cattle drives and berry-picking – gives my characters places to play and expand. Had Stepehnson not written them, and had I not been lucky enough to find his little book, I might not have thought of such ideas.
Is this theft? No. Because if drawing inspiration from other writers is theft, then Mr. Stephenson had better be ready to hear from a lot of other writers who wrote of cattle drives and berry-picking before him. Inspiration is drawing on the bigger ideas or themes. Theft is taking the little details.
It’s quite possible I’ll never be published. But maybe some writer will look at a useless blog posting of mine and find inspiration. That would be neat.
THE ALBINO [In raspy voice]: The Pit of Despair. Don’t even think [he coughs, gags, clears his throat; speaks normally] Don’t even think about trying to escape. The chains are far too thick. And don’t dream of being rescued, either. The only way in is secret, and only the Prince, the County, and I know how to get in and out.
WESTLEY: Then I’m here ‘til I die?
THE ALBINO: ‘Til they kill you, yeah.
WESTLEY [Noting the Albino washing his shoulder wound]: Then why bother curing me?
THE ALBINO: The Prince and the Count always insist on everyone being healthy before they’re broken.
WESTLEY: So there’s to be torture? [The Albino nods] I can cope with torture [The Albino shakes his head vigorously] You don’t believe me?
THE ALBINO: You survived the Fire Swamp, so you must be very brave. But nobody withstands The Machine.
The Machine. Though the concept of the suction pump is centuries old, as Count Rugen says, I can feel it sucking my life away. And though that’s a bit dramatic, it is kinda how I feel editing Doleful Creatures. But I’ve got to get there. I’ll get out of the Pit of Despair, albino or no albino. I’ll find that wheelbarrow. I’ll find that holocaust cloak. And I may have to find my own Fezzik and Inigo. But find them I will.
Because the story is there. It wants to come out. It’s salvageable, though I’ve got to wash a lot of krep off it.
Finding Inigo and Fezzik will be essential. I can see the story, I can hear it struggling in the krep, but I’m having a hard time extracting it.
But I know I can do this. I’m promised in my partrirchal blessing if I put my mind to it, I can accomplish difficult things, and will see the fruits of my labor come forward. That gives me hope.
So this week I read the first thirty pages of Doleful Creatures, and I have come to the following conclusion: The first thirty pages are incoherent, barely comprehensible krep.
That’s a good sign.
It means, of course, enough time has passed between Revision 17 and Revision 18. I can cut through the spare moments when I think I write good and see the glaring, fiery evidence that I cannot.
So what’s the next step?
A few possibilities:
1.Write a new synopsis of the story I want to write. Then write a detailed timeline to get me from A to Z. Then decide:
a.Look at what I’ve got and see what I can shoehorn into the plan, because certainly what I’ve got can’t all be krep
b.Start over.
2.Just start over, but without a coherent plan, pantser that I am.
3.Give up.
Clearly, I cannot choose No. 3. I want to write. Reading the first thirty pages, krep that they are, showed me I have some writing chops, though organizationally I appear to be as efficient as a one-legged man at a butt-kicking contest.
And pantsing hasn’t really served me all that well the first seventeen times, though clearly I have gotten to a better idea of what kind of story I want to write, so the time wasn’t completely wasted.
Also, I’ve been reading a lot of Terry Pratchett lately, which is both good and bad. Good, because he keeps the story going. Bad because I know I’m light years from even the writing skills of Mel Gibson, let alone Mr. Pratchett. But it does give me something to aspire to. Because in reading Early Pratchett, you can see he was aping his elders a bit. Later Pratchett, he was his own master. That’s the journey I need to make.
If only I could cut out some of the intermediate steps . . .
More good news: I have a binder in which I’ve got my last notes on the book. Tucked into the plastic cover is an old synopsis I wrote. I re-read that too, and I can see that I’ve taken the story beyond that one. Maybe too far, which would explain why I’ve taken it through so many revisions. But I firmly believe it’s getting better, if not yet completely coherent.
So over the weekend I entered a pitch contest with Doleful Creatures.
And maybe figured out how to fix it. Again.
And by "fix it," I do mean another rewrite. Which might be good. Or not.
The story has always needed more wossname, as one of Terry Pratchett's characters might say. The wossname might be ratcheting up the stakes for Jarrod, whom I said in my pitch was at fault for humans now entering the world of animals. Which isn't really part of the book. Which is a problem for the contest since the book was supposed to be in finished form.
Which doesn't matter since I haven't heard anything about the contest and it was supposed to be almost instant feedback. I probably misread the closing date or put my email address in wrong, which I'm sure impressed the contest-holders.
I can't help but fight feelings of despair. 2013. I've been nursing this thing since 2013. And maybe it's getting better . . .
About a week or so ago, I wrote about how I thought Temple Grandin’s “Animals In Translation” would be a good resource for any author using anthropomorphic animals as characters.
I don’t know what she’d think of me using her book in this manner, but I did find some useful stuff. Here are a few examples:
You need to know something about animals’ color vision to predict what visual stimuli they’ll experience as high-contrast. The breakdown is pretty simple: birds can see four different basic colors (ultraviolet, blue, green, and red), people and some primates see three (blue, green, and red), and most of the rest of the mammals see just two (blue and green). With dichromatic, or two-color vision, the colors animals see best are a yellowish green (the color of a safety vest) and a bluish purple (which is close to the purple of a purple iris). That means that yellow is the high-contrast color for almost all animals. Anything yellow will really pop out at them, so you have to be careful about yellow raincoats, boots, and machinery.
Clearly I can have a character – and I think just one or maybe two at the moment – have color fixations. No matter what I do, I need to amp up the visual universe in Doleful Creatures.
For a normal human being, almost nothing in the environment pops. That means it’s practically impossible for a human being to actually see something brand-new in the first place. People probably don’t like novelty any more than animals do, but people don’t get exposed to much novelty, because they don’t notice it when it’s there. Humans are built to see what they’re expecting to see, and it’s hard to expect to see something you’ve never seen. New things just don’t register.
Again, amping up the visual world is going to help a ton. My characters have got to notice things that I would not notice. So I’m going to have to think hard about the kinds of things they should notice.
The price human beings pay for having such big, fat frontal lobes is that normal people become oblivious in a way animals and autistic people aren’t. Normal people stop seeing the details that make up the big picture and see only the big picture instead. That’s what your frontal lobes do for you: they give you the big picture. Animals see all the tiny little details that go into the picture.
Again, emphasis on that visual world, and the itty-bitty thing that make it up, not just the big picture. Every year several ranchers are dairymen are killed by cattle challengers, and it’s my opinion that the best way to prevent dangerous attacks on people is to raise highly social grazing animals like cows and horses strictly with their own kind. They should look up to people as a benevolent higher power. You don’t want a cow directing any cow aggression at humans.
This is why The Lady shows up as a woman when she wants to be highly persuasive. She wants to be seen as that higher power. That some animals – like Jarrod – can see through the disguise to the worm/dragon she is kinda spoils things for her. Hence part of the continued animosity. This is something I need to put greater emphasis on.
In. Dr. [Joseph] LeDoux’s [researcher into the neurology of fear at New York view, this is one reason why therapists see so many fears without any obvious cause in their patients. What they’re seeing are secondary downstream fears that developed after the conscious-content of the original fear was forgotten. Th new fears are like stand-ins, or substitutions, for the old one. This may sound strange, but it happens a lot, especially to people with phobias. As Dr. LeDoux says, “phobics can sometimes lose track of what they are afraid of.”
Another character trait to work with on Jarrod. He’s so frightened of everything he’s not really sure what he’s frightened of anymore.
Anyone hoping to write novels with anthropomorphic animal characters would be greatly served by reading a bit of non-fiction first, namely Temple Grandin’s “Animals in Translation.”
Grandin has spent her career helping make slaughterhouses more humane. That may sound like an odd place to draw from for cutesy behavior in a fantasy novel, but Grandin has focused on animal behavior in her work, and that focus on behavior, particularly the section I’m reading now on what makes animals frightened in ways that humans might not recognize, ought to be a great help for any author wanting to make their anthropomorphic creations more realistic.
That may sound like a contradiction in terms, But wouldn’t it be fun to read more books where animals behave more like animals, even if they’re being used to tell a story humans might be interested in.
Richard Adams, in Watership Down, succeeds at this. He drew on non-fiction in the form of “The Private Life of the Rabbit,” by R.M. Lockley, to write his adventure story of rabbits on an adventure of survival.
I’ve read a lot of these kinds of books, from the early Beatrix Potter and “The Wind in the Willows” to more modern takes, and most of them fall into two categories (which I love very much):
1.Twee animals with clothes on. They are animals, and have a few animal traits, but generally behave like humans.
2.Animals in Tropetude. No clothes, more animal traits, but still wonking along as if they had half-human brains plotting conquest and revenge and whatnot.
A sharp writer with Grandin as a guide could augment the second and make the animals more animal-like as they struggle with the bigger bits of philosophy the writer cares to toss into that particular salad.
I’m reading right now about what Grandin has noticed causes fear in livestock. Don’t know if this translates across the species, but it gives me some things to think about as I write Doleful Creatures, as fear is a primary presence in the book. Reading and implementing what Grandin writes could help me move the book further from Camp 1 to Camp 2. Not that Camp 1 is bad; that’s where the book started out in the first place. But it’s moved to Camp 2 gradually, and I think I like it better there.
The book also gives me a few ideas for The Hermit of Iapetus. The more I think about that character, the more I think he is autistic. And while I have an autistic son to draw inspiration from (and enough from my own life) seeing it in print will also help me better in the translation.
It’s that tine again in my English classes where they read an article about the love of learning. Which means, of course, it’s time for my navel-gazing at the questions: Do I love learning and what am I learning now?
Well, you have to answer yes to the first.
Then when all you can think to say is uuuuuuuuhhhhhh about the second, you think maybe revisiting your answer to the first question is in order.
Michelle and I had this conversation last night. A companion to the discussion is our son’s struggles with college calculus and physics (classes I would not take in a billyun years because MATH). She thought that if she really loved learning, maybe she should take some math classes to help her learn the stuff she hadn’t liked much in high school.
“You’re going to take a calculus class?” I asked.
“Nooo no no. I’d have to start smaller. Way smaller.”
So what should I be willing to learn?
Well, writing a book is something I need to learn how to do. Or edit a book. Or create a coherent story. Or something. Which tells me I should probably be going to writers’ conferences, as learning collaboratively is where most of the learning occurs. I don’t know what I don’t know about editing, see, so my struggles to get Doleful Creatures to completion are likely going to continue to be struggles until I change my approach.
But the big conference close by, in Salt Lake City, is coming fast and all the spots are filled. Maybe I need to make that a goal next year. But we all know how well I do with goals.
Maybe a writing conference would help. Though the social aspect of them frightens me. A collaborative learning environment might be just the thing. Or not. Maybe.
So I just came off a 12-day break at the beginning of which I promised myself I was going to go to work on Doleful Creatures and finally finish making a silk purse out of that particular sow’s ear.
Given the alternative title to this post, you probably know how that went.
Words added: None. Which is probably a good thing.
Words read and edited: None. A terrible, no-good, very bad thing.
I kinda spent the entire break like Ole from those old Fibber McGee and Molly* episodes:
Fibber McGee: How are you going to spend the summer, Ole?
Ole: Well, in my backyard there is a hammock.
Fibber McGee: Yeah?
Ole: In the hammock, there is a newspaper. You lift up the newspaper, underneath is Ole. Flat on my back all summer joost donatin’ my time.
Fibber McGee: Well, it sounds like Ole’s gonna loaf all summer. Figures. He loafs all winter.
And yet I still need some 2019 writing goals.
So, I offer a few:
1)Ponder whether I get my version of Alphonse Daudet’s “Le Chevre de M. Seguin” into a fairy tales retold anthology. I should know something by the deadline of January 5. Or is it the 8th? Or should I anticipate waiting a month or more to hear back that I’m not going to be included?
2)Work more on Doleful Creatures. I’d like to make this a concrete goal. Probably something along the lines of organization and pruning. There’s a story there I really like, but there’s a lot of mess in the way as well.
That’s probably already more than I can manage. I admire those who make and meet goals on a consistent basis. I’ve been nursing Doleful Creatures along for years, with over the past two years little enough to show for it. But part of me wants to say at least I’m realistic about it. When I’m not crafting Newberry Award speeches, that is.
*If Matthew Brock will allow use of his copyrighted material, that is.
Round about now, you’re probably expecting an “I’m going to finish Doleful Creatures if it kills me” post.
Because this is usually the time of year when I realize, much to my surprise, that I have NOT finished my book. Yet again. Because of all the gremlins that so easily beset me. Like being totally lazy and neglectful of my book and finding any excuse under the sun to avoid editing it.
I’d like to say I’m going to turn over a new leaf.
I should also say I recently found a past editing attempt and threw it all into the recycling bin. So you can see how well that’s working.
A few things to try:
Now that curtailment is here, I will lock myself for two hours a day in the study to work on my book.
I will prepare a query letter and first chapter to submit to a BYU editing class that’s looking for YA novels right now for next semester.
I will not let future distractions (full-time job, part-time job, starting an all-girl Scouting BSA troop, etc., deter me from my current editing project.
I will cut lots of unnecessary words.
I think No. 4 is going to be the best thing. I’m far enough removed from the story now that I can cut those things that I really like, but that are slowing the story down.
Ironic I should stumble across this article at aeon.co shortly after I finished reading Frans de Waal’s “Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are”.
Harks me back to some of the criticism I’ve received on Doleful Creatures, namely that most of the female characters in the book are dead, and the only major living one is bad.
This prompted two schools of thought:
1.I guess maybe I do need to add more female characters
2.Pound sand, smallheads.
This article prompts a third: Do I know enough of the female mind to even bother trying?
Read the article (warning, breasts are briefly discussed, but not in a dirty way). Then you tell me. I’m sure most people out there would consider me, a white male, infinitely unquali9fied to write a female character. Yet I’m being told to do just that.
What to do?
Concentrate on the story, for one.
Figure out why the obsession over gender, for another.
Maybe it’s my white male privilege showing, but when I read I rarely concentrate on the gender of the characters in the story. I want a fun story to read, that’s about it. If it makes sense that a certain character is a certain gender, that’s fine. But I never get out a blank Gender Scorecard and keep track of who has what parts, and get all snotty when, at the end of the story, there’s a gender disparity.
Easy for me to say since “most stories” out there are chock full of male characters written by men, so I don’t have to worry my pretty little head about it? Okay, I guess. From a certain point of view.
Getting away from description, first of all (as in the breasty example) seems to be the best bet in writing a better opposite-gendered character. Maybe make characters work with the story, no matter their gender, rather than checking off boxes.
Yet part of this article makes me want to give up a little. For sure I’ll fail at writing a decent female character, so why bother?
And here’s the corollary: I’d like example of female writers who produce good male characters that stray from the stereotypical man seen on the cover of most romance novels:
Instead, I’m reminded of something from “Keeping Up Appearances,” said by Daisy, reading such a book:
“They're always tall and handsome, romantic heroes. Never short and fat. I've never yet come across a heroine who's fallen for anybody short and fat. It's a bit unfair, really. Plus, it makes no account of the weird shapes we females actually fall for!”
I do confess curiosity. And a wonder that maybe – just maybe, mind you – what applies in one field of study might just apply in another.
So as I continue to read Frans de Waal’s “Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are,” I have to wonder if there are concepts within the study of the cognitive ethology of animals that could be applied to our interactions with members of our own species.
Particularly compelling is the concept of umwelt, or understanding how animals use their abilities and senses to interact with the world around them. (De Waal defines umwelt in his book as “an organism’s subjective perceptual world.”
For example, African elephants were for a long time considered unaware of their own self because, unlike their Asian counterparts, they appeared unable to recognize themselves in a mirror. Asian elephants could clearly see they’d been marked with paint, and rubbed and probed the marks only after they saw themselves marked in a mirror. The African elephants, by contrast, simply smashed up the mirrors with their tusks and seemed to pay no mind to their paint markings.
It wasn’t until scientists noted that the African elephants always explored new things by prodding them with their tusks that the scientists decided maybe it was their method of experimentation, not the elephants themselves, that was the problem. They fixed the problem by making mirrors the African elephants couldn’t destroy as they explored them with their tusks. Once the exploration was over, the elephants reacted to their paint markings in the same way as their Asian counterparts.
Once scientists understood the African elephants’ umwelt, the experiment netted the same result.
Might we, then, be better off exploring each others’ umwelts, not assuming, for example, that we all perceive the world in the same way, or in a way that hoes any particular political or societal expectation? Smart people are doing just that. (I’ll also make the distinction that understanding another’s umwelt doesn’t mean we have to agree with it, but understanding it sure helps.)
This is probably a blinding flash of the obvious, but hey – y’all should be happy another fella has seen this particular light, thanks to de Waal’s book. Terry Pratchett is right that while there are books of magic and magical books, probably the most magic that comes out of books are the explosions they cause inside the readers’ heads.
And I’ll probably take this all too far.
Or not.
Anyhoo, reading de Waal’s book is certainly eye-opening, and not just for the societal benefits. As an anthropomorphic writer, I’m learning things that I can integrate into the books I’m writing, particularly Doleful Creatures. Getting into the umwelt of each creature I write about as characters can certainly help me shape the worlds I’m creating.
One thing confused me about de Waal’s book – maybe it’s my inability on the first read to get into his umwelt. Who is this book written for? I’m half convinced it’s meant for the layman such as myself, but also for the smaller world of de Waal’s compatriots. If for the layman, I might wish de Waal had written in a less meandering style, though that may be part of his use of English as a second language (I have a Dutch father, and I see some Dutch-to-English coming out in de Waal’s writing, much like I heard from Dad).
The animals in Doleful Creatures phase in and out of awareness – awareness that they are creations of God and on a journey to become gods themselves. Those who’ve seen traumatic events are especially prone to phasing, and some – like Aloysius – have almost stopped phasing completely, becoming more animal-like; able to communicate with others but bereft of any knowledge of their origins or their potential.
When they remember their origin and potential, they’re relatively at peace, albeit a bit anxious about the ending of the Sixth Day, when they’ll all lose their awareness and become true animals for a time.
This is not about them in a stage where they await to become human – they’re simply growing in intelligence, alongside humans once the Sixth Day ends.
What follows is a rethinking of the basic premise (love that Ronald Chevalier word, and you *know* I said it in his voice) of Doleful Creatures. Once fully formed, I believe it’ll heighten the tension and the stakes of the story, and give it a united element.
Or I’ll continue to screw it up. We’ll see.
There was a promise made.
For a time, the promise said, we’d know. We’d be aware. We, clad in fur of feather or scale, would also be knowing. Knowing what was to come if we passed the test. Knowing what came next.
Brief. A brief time, yet a golden promise. To make the interim time feel worthwhile. As long as we remembered it. And the promise said we would remember.
As long as the sixth day was open, knowing is ours.
As long as the new light in the heavens had not set.
But after the sunset, darkness.
Yet the promise continued: We would have fleeting moments, between tooth and claw, lilies of the field, master and mastered, when we would remember that brief time when our minds were more and we were more –
A mother watches her cubs struggle in the rushing water. They had clung to her back but she midjudges the current and the depth and they were swept away, coughing and crying, and she lumbered to shore and ran back and forth in a panic, tripping over rocks and leaping logs, trying to keep her little ones in view as they cried and coughed and drowned. But there is one in the river, seeking with a pole and line and hook those who live in the river without drowning, and the mother’s thoughts go out to the one, who sees the struggling cubs and casts the pole aside and snatches the cubs, one in each hand, and brings them to the shore near the mother, crouched behind a tangle of logs. She surprises the other emerging from behind the logs and both, for a moment, feel the fear that comes with the promise, that comes with the darkness. But they look each other in the eye and one sees in the other a tiny reflection of the following light. The other sees in the eyes the full light that is promised. And for a fleeting second, both feel the following light together, and it warms them. The one pats a cub, sopping, coughing, but alive as the other cub gambols, dripping wet, to its mother. The one trembles as the mother, eyes alight, gently shoves her snout under the hand resting on the coughing cub, raises it, then rests her massive head on the other’s shoulder, sighs, and shudders. The raised hand drops slowly until it finds the rough fur on the mother’s back. The hand pats, leaves. The head is raised from the shoulder. And for a moment, both sets of eyes see the following light. The cubs sneeze and wail and nuzzle their mother as the three back away from the other, transfixed. The cubs shake the water from their fur and bolt for the trees. But the mother goes slowly, stopping occasionally to turn her head to gaze at the other still in the water, dripping, who must now try to find that pole and remember the story to be told. The following light joined both for a moment, then sinks away with a sigh, and all is as it was except two cubs are alive where two might have been dead.
– That is the promise within the promise. When we would recall the full exultation of joy, not just the contentment of a full belly and kits nestled warm or eggs freshly laid.
Sunlight, followed by twilight, followed by full sun once again, if we learned. If all went well.
Oh, we cherish the promise.
It was ours. A gift. A treasure.
Yet.
There were some who saw it and thought – then said out loud, when they found more who thought as they – why dim the sun once it shined in our minds, for the sake of them? Those who would master us. Enslave us. Kill us and eat us and smash our children – He who made the promise tells us this – and wear our skins and feathers and fur to cover their own ugliness. Once the promise was ours, they said – and many more joined in the saying – there was no reason to go back into darkness. What had been promised was ours, without the unnecessary intermediate step. Once ours, it was cruel, they said – and many more joined when they said it – to take the gift away.
The promise, they said, is a lie. And many more disbelieve, and fall away.
I reveal my loyalties in my speech. I keep the faith. I still believe the promise. Not for what comes now, but for what comes after. For the promise says: Light, then darkness, then light again. To disobey, the promise says, cuts off the following light. Leaving us to know what we know, but to dwell in darkness.
And those who dwelt in darkness would know when the following light came to the others who believe the promise, who marched through the darkness into the light. And they, in darkness still, would mourn and wail and beg.
Until those descending into the darkness found them, set them free, and watched the current light dim but the following light start as a spark deep in each darkened eye.
NOTE: Not done yet. but this'll fit in somewhere.
After the light, after the darkness,
After the deep of the blue.
After the green, before their coming –
Before the storm clouds flew;
Come The Lady, come the dragon –
Come le loup garou.
Come the time of subtle voices,
To the garden say adieu.
Kept the hope remaining
Kept the songs of the heart
Kept the light a-shining
Though for a time we dwell apart.
Watch for the return of the Minder
Watch for the coming to start
Watch for love everlasting
Though for a time we dwell apart.
Spent some time re-reading the evaluations I wrote about in the last post.
Found this (emphasis mine):
Honestly, I didn’t know where this story takes place or is set.
It seemed rather before-earth and in the middle of the creation, but not much
made sense. It’s extremely poetic and with poetic language which seems more
like a poem than prose. Just my opinion since I’m not a poet or get most
poetry.
A glimmer of hope amidst the destruction. Because this is EXACTLY when my story takes place.
Indy and Harry
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The Best Part
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