For Public Consumption

Fellowship On The Road

2007-05-01T17:49:00.000-07:00

an article written for the Bethany Prebyterian Church newsletter

Reflective silence weaved around the eleven people gathered in the cozy living room of Dan and Anne Baumgartner’s Whidbey Island cottage. Before each of us lay a printout of the last seven verses of Mark 10—the story of blind Bartimaeus. We read through the passage, marking moments of resonance and words or phrases that caught our attention. The story contains many layers of meaning, as we found a few moments later when we broke our silence to share our reflections with one another. Undoubtedly the most remarkable moment is the miraculous healing of Bartimaeus. But as I read, I found my attention drawn to an earlier moment—Jesus’ decision, rather than calling Bartimaeus over himself, to send some members from the crowd to do it for him.

Earlier in the story, members of the same crowd had rebuked the blind man for calling out to Jesus. Yet Christ gave them a chance to redeem their previous lack of compassion by becoming bearers of a gospel. They are appropriately transformed. “Cheer up!” they cry to Bartimaeus. “On your feet! He’s calling you!” In the same way, God gives each of us the opportunity to bear Christ’s message of grace and love to one another, and reveals himself to us through the people he places in our lives. This is the blessing of fellowship.

It was this blessing of fellowship that I was in the midst of enjoying on that day several weeks ago as I sat reading Bartimaeus’ story. It was Saturday morning, and the eleven of us were gathered for a retreat organized as part of Bethany’s College Age Fellowship. Characteristic of the Fellowship, the participants ranged in age and place in life from college freshmen to recent (and not quite so recent) graduates, to college-aged people currently involved in some other pursuit. There were roommates and close friends and even a pair of sisters, but most of us knew each other casually if at all—at least, when the weekend began.

We spent a large portion of the retreat simply getting to know one another. There were conversations of varying depth and length—some lasting until three in the morning! We enjoyed the beautiful surroundings with early-morning runs and one-on-one walks along the shore. An impressive mountain of board games—including such classics as Risk, Pictionary, Scrabble, True Colors, and Pass the Pigs—provided additional fun-filled opportunities for fellowship. On Saturday afternoon the intriguing outdoor game of Slingball awakened some friendly competition among our members. Throughout the weekend we prepared communal meals, sang songs of worship, and prayed together.

Over the course of the retreat, I felt that I came to know my fellow sojourners on the island far more deeply than it seems possible to have done in such a short time. I feel a connection to the people I met there that is significant and lasting. This was, to me, a sign of God’s presence with us, His hand guiding our fellowship. The retreat was a blessing in a number of ways—the beauty of the surroundings, the peace of an escape from the city and its routines. But for me, the greatest blessing came from the chance to come to more deeply know some of my fellow travelers along the road, and to experience God through their insights, their individualities, and their abiding fellowship.

Horrific Butchery Story

2007-01-24T12:39:00.000-08:00

Commentary: The process of assigning myself a daily word quota was immensely helpful in jump-starting the novel-writing process, and allowed me to get a full first draft of about 200 book-pages, aka 70,000 words, completed in a matter of months. The one side effect of this strategy is occasional desperation when sufficient inspiration to fill the allotted words for the day fails to strike. Usually I was able to surmount this obstacle without causing any serious damage--with the exception of one particularly frightening day.

It occurred while I was visiting home for Thanksgiving, and still held high and optimistic hopes of reaching 50,000 words by the end of November. But it was much more difficult to find time to write while surrounded by my family and trying to spend ample time with them. Late in the evening on my first or second night there, I sat down to write my daily 2500 words. I was hoping to bang them out in the few remaining hours before midnight. And then, something terrifying happened. I could not think of what to write next.

I spent a long time staring at my computer screen, straining for some glimmer of an idea. Anything. Time ticked by, I was rapidly growing tired, and all I wanted to do was go to bed, yet if I didn't hit my 2500 word quota, my whole schedule would be thrown off and it would become increasingly difficult to reach my 50,000 word goal by November 30th. Eventually impossible, if I continued to procrastinate. So I sat there, grasping for a thread on which to hang my story.

And then it came. Out of nowhere, this rather strange image of an excursion my main character and his best friend took into a butcher shop when they were mischievous children who spent their free afternoons spying on the activities of their bustling city. I could use it to reveal the contrasts in their personalities--the girl as daring and scientifically-minded, the boy as more cautious and sociological. It would allow vivid description of the surroundings and events, which would produce a significant word-output. And mostly, it was an idea I could run with, and I didn't have anything else popping into my mind as an alternative, so I decided to go for it.

The story very rapidly degenerated into a gruesome, bloody, quite frankly revolting horror show which had absolutely no purpose and was a complete stylistic departure from the rest of the novel. There was no way on earth that I could actually include this scene in the story. And yet the words kept pouring out, I couldn't stop them, couldn't think of anything else to write about, and my desperation to meet my daily word quota compelled me onwards.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped, as if some strange quirk of an electromagnetic phenomenon had opened a fifteen-minute channel between my brain and that of the illegitimate and unlikely offspring of Edgar Allen Poe and Hannibal Lecter, and then snapped the channel shut once more. As I read over the section I had just written, I was left feeling physically ill. My immediate impulse was to delete the entire section, to save all humanity from the risk of exposure to such nauseating imagery. But my hand was stayed, by the relentless insistence of the internal taskmaster of my word quota.

"Look at all those words!" she whispered. "You can't possibly delete them! You neeeeeed them..." And, to my great shame, I succumbed to her serpentine temptation. Instead of sending those words to the purgatory of my laptop's recycling bin, where they belonged, I left them where they were, consoling myself to the betrayal by assuring myself that I would eventually replace them, assuring this by inserting into the narrative some overt commentary by the characters present at the moment of the flashback regarding the dismaying nature of the story's contents, and the nature of the desperation that had brought it into being. For some reason, this emerged in the form of an obscure reference to my favorite line in Nick Brown's play In The Drawing Room, written for the Infinite Monkeys Festival several years ago--a reference only I could possibly recognize and appreciate.

If you harbor any doubts as to the presence of literary justice in a universe where such a dreadful narrative could be allowed to persist, threatening innocent readers with exposure to its noxious mental poisons, allow me to assure you that I was properly punished for my crimes: First of all, the resultant guilt I felt for my complicity in the story's Frankenstinian creation kept me from writing another word of my novel for the remainder of the month, preventing me from reaching 50,000 words until late December, nearly a month after my initial deadline. In addition, out of fear of crippling my word count, I was forced to leave the horrifying anecdote in question in place until the completion of the first draft, and I felt its presence in my novel, whenever I remembered it, as a barb sunk deep into my soul.

And finally, the chance reference I whimsically made at the conclusion of the narrative has caused me, despite the fact that it is extremely unlikely that anyone else in the world will find the vaguest spark of value in it, to become so attached to it that I am now incapable of allowing the story to simply vanish, because it is only the existence of the story that gives a purpose to the existence of the concluding lines of dialogue. So as I prepare to revise my novel into its second draft, finally giving me the opportunity to strike this source of shame from the midst of my writing, I find myself unable to destroy it completely, and have instead been compelled to post it here in order to preserve it, thus exposing my most private and horrifying shame to the view of the public.

You are thus forewarned, at great length, regarding the following excerpt of writing. I will assure you outright that your life will be better off if you do not read it. However, I view it as part of my penance that my dire warnings will, if anything, most likely fuel the curiosity of anyone who reads them to view the horror they warn against, and that there is a part of me that is glad of this fact, that is so enamored of the last lines that I am eager for the discrediting of my image as a writer that the reading of the story will doubtless initiate just because it will facilitate their exposure. Writing is a supremely twisted pursuit; that's all I have left to say on the matter.

Without further ado, the excerpt:

* * * * * * *

“Code names,” Denis shook his head, handing the paper back to Will, who folded it and slipped it into a pocket of his suit. “And assessments. It’s like you’re a garbage spy, or something.”

“It does kind of remind me of my excursions with Kendra when we were little.” Will had described their missions of concealed observation to Denis in a previous conversation. “Did I ever tell you about the time we got caught by the meat merchant?”

“Not yet.”

“It was horrifying, at the time, although it makes a hilarious story in the retelling. Kendra wanted to know a little more about the way the various animals were put together. I was pretty content in my ignorance, to be honest, but I wasn’t about to admit to Kendra that the thought of watching the limbs get torn off a cow made my stomach slosh in uncomfortable ways, so when she said she had found a back way into the butchery I put on an excited face and followed her along towards the market. We slipped in a doorway intended to receive deliveries, and I do mean slipped, because there was a pool of something quite unpleasant and foul-smelling that sent my feet flying out from under me and straight into Kendra. So then we were both covered in who knows exactly what putrid fluids, and I was ready to turn back, already knowing I’d be facing some pretty pointed inquiries from Father when I got home, but Kendra was committed to seeing the mission through, so we kept on creeping down this dark hallway until we could hear the dull intermittent poundings of a heavy knife.

“We crouched down behind this pile of… remnants… and Kendra is poking around with a stick she found somewhere, trying to identify organs, and I’m just trying to hold her still and keep her quiet so we don’t get caught, and at the same time keep my own churning insides where they belonged. And then the chopping stops, and we hear the meat merchant walking out to the front of the shop to make a sale, and Kendra pops up and walks straight over to the table, where some poor creature is split wide open and half-emptied. And suddenly she’s elbow-deep in it all, tracing the digestive tract or I don’t even know what, happy as anything. And I’m trying to get her to come back so we don’t get caught, but I can’t call too loud or the merchant will hear, so I see her stick on the ground next to me and I hook something long and wet onto the end of it, and wind back to fling it at her, but just at that moment the merchant suddenly reappears in the doorway behind Kendra, and I flinch and misjudge and my dripping payload soars straight into his face. And he roars and grabs out and his fingers close on Kendra’s arm, but she’s so slick from whatever we slipped in back in the doorway that she slides right out from his grasp and we tear back down the hallway and out into the daylight, and ran straight out the city gate half a mile to the river and jumped in, to wash away the evidence of our mischief.”

“What a terribly gruesome story,” Denis said, staring at Will with shocked horror.

“I know. It’s just that we need to get another 1150 words in today, and with no real idea where this story is going beyond a vague sense of conspiracy and kidnapping, it’s kind of like shooting fish with a melon baller, if you know what I mean.”

“No clue,” Denis answered.

“Well, pointless, and pretty messy.”

The Novel--Aborted Opening Chapter (Third Attempt)

2006-11-11T01:34:00.000-08:00

Waste Please: Take Three
I. The Secret

Will lost the dearest person in his life two weeks before his ninth birthday. But he remembered that day not for the shock, and then sorrow, and then drastic changes in the pattern of his life that had followed—although each of these had been significant. In his mind, it stood out most clearly as the day he had discovered the secret about himself, that secret that had scared him so much, he didn’t dare tell anyone about it, not even his mother. He had almost told her, in that moment when the realization had suddenly tumbled into his young awareness and he had stared at it, startled, wondering what he should do. But a glance at the tracks of tears still shining on his mother’s cheeks, at the usual graceful strength of her tall form curved in despair, had whispered to him that now was not the time, and a moment later his new gift warned him that the time might not come for many years. Might never come. So Will remained silent.

Later, in the dark silence of his room, he tried to pinpoint the moment understanding had fallen. He had been pulled out of class early that afternoon, the first hint that the day would hold something out of the ordinary. But what? Will had wondered, as he cleared off his desk and placed books in his satchel. Am I in trouble? He could not think of anything he had done wrong recently, at least not that he was likely to have been caught in. Does Father have need of me for something? Or perhaps Mother has returned from the Far East. But why should she call me home early?

Kendra raised her eyebrows at him from across the classroom, and he gave her a helpless shrug. She was wondering whether he would still be able to meet her after school as they had planned, and of course he did not know. He gave her one of their old hand signals, the one meaning, don’t wait for me, take care of yourself. Her forehead wrinkled in concern, as that sign usually had the negative connotations of a plan gone awry, so he flashed her one more, a sign of reassurance: it’ll be all right. Will hoped his optimism was warranted.

Bidding farewell to his teacher, Will followed the messenger sent to escort him as she turned and led the way out through the square and into the marketplace. But she knew nothing of the reason for Will’s summons—this was obvious from her failure to patronize the boy with overly excited half-hints, as she would have done had the reason been a good one, or to peek with curious fascination at him from the corners of fixed-forward eyes, were it bad. Instead she made idle small talk over her shoulder as they picked their way through clusters of shoppers on their way towards the dusty roads of the residential district.

Will could tell by her haphazard comments that she was unaccustomed to the company of children; she did not know what sort of responses to expect from this boy of nearly nine, and was thus not disturbed by his lack of any. This left him free to make his own observations of their surroundings without being compelled to respond to hers. It was the Day of Craft, and pottery and textiles were on display on platforms and table in open-air booths. Shoppers jostled as they perused the colorful wares, and Will recognized many whose faces and even some whose names he knew, but as usual his small stature kept him for the most part quite literally below their awareness. A well-dressed man slipping out the doorway of the Port Authority caught Will’s roving glance, and in the mutual jolt of recognition Will got his first hint of the pit soon to open up before him.

The man was a neighbor and family friend who sometimes joined Will’s family for dinner, especially when his mother was home from her travels, because he had some sort of financial interests abroad. Will didn’t fully understand them, except that they caused the man to seek his mother’s perspectives on the state of certain troubled areas. But there was something in the quick shock with which he noticed Will in the bustling crowd that suggested he had been thinking of the boy before he saw him, and the flicker of apology that followed it, as though he felt he should say something, but wasn’t sure what, or how to do so at this distance, warned Will that the circumstances behind the messenger’s appearance were to be feared more than he had previously guessed.

But the messenger walked on, oblivious, giving Will no opportunity to glean further information from the man, who hurried off in the opposite direction. They soon arrived at Will’s front door and he rapped once, stopped in the act of returning the messenger’s curt nod of farewell by the sight of his mother’s stricken face as she swung open the door.

She swooped onto him with a desperate embrace that was like the clinging of a shipwrecked sailor to a plank of wood, pulling him to he so tight it was as if he had been pulled inside of her, could feel her very heart breaking. And in that moment he somehow knew that his father was gone. Not dead, not as far as his mother knew anyway. But he could feel, in her grip, the hole left in her by the knowledge of his father’s absence. This thought filled him with fear, because his mother was not one to make mistakes or hasty assumptions, and if she believed his father lost, then Will was left with no choice but to believe that it was so.

But this fear was pushed aside by the alarming realization that this information was coming to him, not by any close observation of his mother’s external movements or expressions, but by a direct experience of her internal state, which he had somehow been caught up in the midst of. He found himself, suddenly, wandering in the cavern of her thoughts, barraged by the whirl of her emotions, aware of her awarenesses, experiencing the pressure of his own body held against hers. The landscape was disorienting in its unfamiliarity, even more bewildering for the turmoil it was that moment engulfed in. He had lost himself in his mother, and he did not know how to get back to the surroundings he had never even realized he was accustomed to until he had been torn inexplicably from their midst. His body stiffened with the shock, pulling him back into his own head, and awakening his mother to his presence.

“Will,” she said, stilling with enormous effort the trembling in her voice. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

Exhausted from the storm of confusion and fear he had just emerged from, Will responded with automatic obedience.

“What is it, Mother?”

“Come inside.” She released his small frame, held him by the hand as she rose and drew him into the house, shutting the door behind him. He followed her in silence to the inner room, where she sat him beside her on the cushions. She looked down into his eyes, smoothed his hair with a gentle hand and wiped away the tears he had not even felt course down his cheeks. “I have frightened you, my child.”

“No, Mother.”

“Yes, Will. No need to be ashamed. I am sorry, I should have left more time to compose myself. I am still…quite upset. I was not thinking when I sent for a messenger to retrieve you. But, I am glad you are home.” Her hand, which had come to rest on his shoulder, tightened, as if to keep him from slipping away. He did not move, held her gaze steadily. I am here, Mother, he told her silently. Her grip relaxed.

“Will, your father went out to the Temple this morning. Beulla Otrida saw him passing, he told her he was going to consult the Thinkers, that he should be back by midday. He entered a Meditation Room under the observation of the Keeper, Gillan Journam. Several hours later he had still not emerged. Gillan became worried. He went to knock on the door, noticed it was unlatched. It would not have been so were your father within. He found your father’s charma on the floor, but there was no sign of him in the room. He has not returned. He has vanished, Willem.” Her chest shuddered compulsively, but her lips, pressed tight, expelled no sigh of breath.

“But what makes you certain he will not return? It seems to me there could have been some urgent matter, something the Thinkers revealed, that needed tending, that Father could have slipped away to do so without speaking to—”

“I’m afraid it is unlikely, my dear one. Ioseppa is not the first to vanish from a Meditation Room. There have been others. The Authorities have kept it quiet, hoping to protect the sanctity of the Temple in the minds of the people, but several others have… gone… in such a way. Charmae abandoned, door ajar. It was explained to me. They are still unsure what becomes of these people but, as yet, none have returned. The first to disappear has been missing three years. Turann Genni warned me it was best to accept, that he has seen others broken by the dashing of hopes they held on to for too long. We must be strong, Willem.”

Will nodded, numb to emotion. The experience of entering his mother’s emotions had left him out of touch with his own, or maybe there was simply too much to deal with in this moment. He reached out and squeezed his mother’s hand, and the contact opened again, to him, a path into her mind. But this time he was not forcefully pulled into her; rather, he saw it as an opening before him, through which he could choose to step. He peered in curiously, saw fears springing up like fires faster than his mother could put them out, although from the safety of his own mind he could not tell exactly what they were, and he did not dare re-enter because he was still not sure he could control his return to himself. He edged back, and this was the moment he had considered telling her of the strange connection he had experienced, asking if she had felt it, too. But he had decided against it. Instead, he had spoken admiringly.

“You are strong, Mother.”

Her lips stretched into a half-smile, although her eyes remained unchanged. “Thank you, Willem. You are a brave boy. I must go out and speak with some people, there are arrangements that must be made. Would you like me to send for someone to stay with you? The Beulla, perhaps?”

“No, thank you, I’d like to be alone. I will go up to my room.” He stood, bowed to his mother, withdrew from the room and climbed the ladder into his bed. He lay curled, staring, unseeing, out the window, pondering what had happened to him. He could do it again, he knew—the second time, as he had held his mother’s hand, he had sensed mechanisms, paths… It was all very confusing. He wondered whether all people had this gift, whether others had explored the landscape of his mind before, without his awareness. Surely it was an invasion, to enter the thoughts of another, especially if they did not know you had been there. Perhaps he was some sort of monster, to have done so, to his own mother, in her time of grief. Perhaps he would be taken away for punishment, or for study, should someone find out of his ability. Will vowed never to do it again.

First Full Day of Writing

2006-09-27T12:47:00.000-07:00

Words of Encouragement

Today is your first day. Of course you will be battering your head against a twenty-foot thick wall of stone and mortar. You yourself built this wall. It will take time to dissolve. So batter away, my child. Remember you must unplug the floodgates you were forced to seal so you could get on with the rest of your life for so many years, you must allow twenty-one years worth of bad ideas to pour through before the wine distilled beneath them, the diamonds created by the crushing pressure of their weight, can emerge into the light. Accept, with freeing joy, the truth that everything you write this week will crash and burn. That is what this week is for. It is the first week. Train your brain, your body into the rhythm of this new, this impossible, this unnatural life you have the blessing to pursue, but do not question whether you are right to do so, whether you are cut out for this promethean task. Prometheus enlightened man, yes, but how did he pay? Daily his liver torn from his body by birds, all talons, beaks, sharp eyes, stiff feathers. You are at the liver-eating part of this story—for you that comes before the fire. This perhaps does not sound as encouraging as this collection is supposed to be, but don’t forget: his liver grew back every day. Head, wall, batter. You’ll make it through eventually.

Am I Cut Out to Write Fiction?

I write best in the form of an essay or a journal entry—in a kind of reflective, philosophical, direct-address-to-the-reader sort of tone. The creation of character, the invention of setting, the supple clay of fiction feels strange, awkward in hands used to chiseling into the marble of pure hard intellectual ideas. Well, this is natural. I have spent the vast majority of my writing life crafting essays and journal entries, I have filled one, two dozen notebooks with musings, ponderings, observations. Whereas my forays into fiction have produced a few fitful, half-filled spiral-bounds and a small collection of largely unfinished plays. All this implies two things: (1) I am well set to flow forth with non-fiction-type reflective, philosophical stuff, which there is certainly a market for in newspapers, magazines, and theological and self-help sections of the bookstore, and (2) if I put as much time into working on fiction as I have to date put into more concrete literary endeavors, it stands to reason that I shall see improvement as marked as that between my first and my most recent journal entries, between third grade book reports and college research papers. I think age has not bolstered those writing abilities nearly as much as experience, and so I cannot despair at my fiction-writing abilities until I have given them as much attention as I thus far have allowed to those forms of writing in which I currently feel quite confident.

Character Development

It is a dangerous sign, I think, that the sole empty page in my book of writing ideas is the one marked, in hope, with the heading, “Characters.” I created this page fully aware of the fact that characters are the driving force of plays, novels, screenplays—of life. I believe in the value of human beings, the truth that only that which is personally relevant is likely to be internalized by a reader, an audience. I believe that our purpose in life is to relate to, to support, to give ourselves in love to, the people around us. I collect quirks, I revel in the individualities of the children of God I encounter. But I am too caught up in my own mind, the ideas I want to get across, the self-centeredness of my approach to life, and so in my ideas and writing do not often give birth to characters. As a result my fiction itself is often stillborn. I find it difficult to translate the uniquenesses of the people I meet into inspiration for complex characters, and I fear that if I do not address this weakness my writing will remain flat and unimpactful. It feels so backwards to me to start here, without a plot or theme, and yet it should be out of love for the characters, and not desire to make a particular point, that I begin a story. Perhaps in time these things will fall into place in harmonious simultaneity; in the meantime, at the moment, as evidenced by that aforementioned ominously blank page, my agility in creating character falls far behind my abilities in other areas of literary invention. So, here is a place for me to practice the process of fictional portraiture. I warn any stumbling across this document that, especially at first, I anticipate rocky footing. Bear with me. Or don’t. What is important at this point is that I bear with myself.

Ginger Jack

To describe Jack Westmore, it was only fitting one should begin by describing Ginger Jack. Everything began with Ginger Jack—he was this ideal human who seemed to float along prophetically just ahead of That Other Jack (as even he had by now come to think of himself), making his subsequent arrival anticlimactic, redundant. Ginger Jack was funnier, more adventurous, better-looking, more outgoing, slightly better off financially but quiet about it, and he had some really cool and unusual pet. The Other Jack didn’t know what kind of pet that was, but he was sure somebody would tell him soon, despite the fact that any time Ginger Jack was brought up in conversation with him—which was frustratingly frequently—he did everything in his power to deflect the inevitable laundry list of virtues to follow. This began with subtle attempts to change the subject, but quickly degenerated through reasoned requests, bitter protests, and self-pitying pleas into loud babbling streams of nonsense yelled over his shoulder as, fingers wedged in his ears, he scurried as far as possible from the offending and persistent individual.