Truth in Writing

The students in English 1010 are working on their personal essays, which means personal essays are also constantly on my mind. I just had a conversation today in which I confessed that I believe that, in general, people are cruel, selfish, and petty. I wish it wasn't the case, but I have an unfortunate (and undoubtedly prideful) view that the average person is mediocre, and mediocrity breeds pettiness. People do not aspire to be great, to transcend this mortal coil, to create beauty and wisdom and fantastic thought, they....

But then something catches me off guard. It's a thought I hadn't expected, although I've heard it before. The thought is this: of all the essays I read, I can't help but feel for every single writer. I feel a connection, some slight touch, like the spark of electricity jumping between two wires. Even for the briefest moment, we touch, like strangers in a crowd who brush together and then feel our eyes meet. And for everyone, even for the kids who only want to write about how cool that game was, or for the ones who have to be there and can't be bothered to treat me like a person, I can't help but feel a little sympathy. A little compassion.

Writing is beautiful in that. More than any other medium, it transmits pure thought. It places me into the mind, the experience of the writer. Rather than capturing the objective truth, it captures one person's truth, one particular person's imperfect memory rather than a completely factual recollection of the past. And in that imperfect memory are housed all the fears, all the hopes of a real person. If a person misrepresents a situation, leaves out the things they fear or mourn, their own actions they wish they could forget, that is beautiful, because I can feel even in the absence that shame, that guilt, that grief. If the writer admits it, embraces it, presents it to me like a gift upon a cushion, it is beautiful, because, no matter what it is, it is so wrapped up in heartbreak and truth that I can't help but pity them. Even the ones who don't see how thoughtless, absurd, or even cruel they were implicitly admit their childishness, their lack of understanding, and I can't blame that, because they don't know what they did.

If we could all write and all read, all come to understand our own thoughts and the thoughts of all others, to live not in their shoes but in their minds and memories for the space of even a few brief pages, how could we ever have war? How could we allow poverty, misery, suffering?

(And then there are those who walk in and say, "I hate writing. It's so pointless." Bastards.)

American Writer

We need a reality TV show about writing, to make writing edgy and cool. It should be a reality-based contest to try to find the best writer among a gang of colorful characters. There could be the rebel who never wants to accept criticism (I'll use to be verbs if I want to, that's just my style!), the lovable one who can never get it quite right (oh, I thought haiku was 7-5-7!), and the misfit who struggles to fit in with everyone else (no one appreciates my sonnets about death!). Just imagine the hilarity when people from the street cue up to come write for the celebrity judges, who tear apart their cliche-riddled personal essays! The tears when we're getting close to the finish but one of the characters is still trying to wrap up the climax of a short story! The thrill of listening to the final product each week and calling in for our favorite piece!

I'd be happy to help produce the show, TV people. Just drop me a line.

The Kings Cross Bogan rolls 20s

I played in the worldwide D&D Day game today. Near the end of the game, I decided to stop trying to play a character and just go a bit crazy. The first thing I did was, when I used an ability called Sword Dance or something, I said that my character shined her (yes, I got stuck playing the girl) sunrod into a globe of glass while she danced with her sword, all Saturday Night Fever. Later, I quoted the Kings Cross Bogan by saying, "I will call on my fully sick boys!" and I rolled a 17 to hit with my daily attack. Next, I used an ability called Booming Blade, and went "chk-chk BOOM" as I used it, and rolled a 20. Critical hit on the chk-chk BOOM? Very appropriate.

Sometims, I blog about nothing at all.

Relevant to My Interests: The King of Elfland's Daughter

"No spell indeed!" she hissed. "No spell indeed! By broom and stars and night-riding! Would you rob Earth of her heirloom that has come from the olden time? Would you take her treasure and leave her bare to the scorn of her comrade planets? Poor indeed were we without magic, whereof we are well stored to the envy of darkness and space. ... I would sooner... give you a spell against water, that all the world should thirst, than give you a spell against the song of streams that evening hears faintly over the ridge of a hill, too dim for wakeful ears, a song threading through dreams, wehreby we learn of old wars and lost loves of the Spirits of rivers. I would sooner give you a spell against bread, that allthe world should starve, than give you a spell against the magic of wheat that haunts the golden hollows in moonlight in July, through which in the warm short nights wander how many of whom man knows nothing. I would make you spells against comfort and clothing, food, shelter and warmth, aye and will do it, sooner than tear from these poor fields of Earth that magic that is to them an ample cloak against the chill of Space, and a gay raiment against the sneers of nothingness."


So speaks the witch in Lord Dunsany's novel The King of Elfland's Daughter. I am a dreamer at heart. My favorite book, as I have attested time and again, is Michael Ende's The Neverending Story. Dunsany's novel touches on many of the same themes: the slow waning of wonder and magic from the world of humans, pushed back by rational thought and the gradual wearing down of time and worldly concerns. The description is wonderfully unbalanced: Dunsany spends paragraphs describing the way sunrise creeps over a forest, or goes into deep detail about the wonderous splendors of Elfland, of which no speech can tell, but gives us very little to characterize the major characters in the story. Often the vital actions of characters are glossed over in a few lines, while the folly of minor characters gets entire paragraphs. The reason for this is obvious: the theme, not the characters, is paramount. The story itself, the wonder and beauty of it, is much more than the sum of what the characters do. In fact, the characters are frequently at the whims of the setting; Elfland itself is as much a character as any of the elves, humans, or trolls.

In the modern world, it is almost not worth mentioning that we deride fables and fantasies and hold up dull, mundane things as what we should direct our lives to. This novel is fantastic perhaps primarily for what it manages to do with the richness of its language and story: mock the common world, with its short-sighted people and its daily toil, and extol the beauty of fantasy.

What more is there for me to say? Don't expect a fantasy adventure in the modern sense. There are no towering heroes or mighty deeds here. The only phsyical fight is over by page 24. The conflict in this novel isn't person to person, or even hero to monster, but the clash between two ideals: reality and the imagination.

As Padraic Colum explains perfectly in a quote on the back of my edition: "Lord Dunsany is that rare creature in literature, the fabulist. One can hardly detect a social idea in his work. There is one there, however. It is one of unrelenting hostility to everything that impoverishes man's imagination."

To Be A Hero

Maybe there's something to be said about all of us based on what heroes we most look up to. Some people see their mom or their soccer coach as their hero, for bravely driving a minivan and cooking pancakes or selflessly encouraging good self esteem and sportsmanship.

And some of us aim for something a bit more epic.