Great fiction, like great men serve as inspiration for the rest of us. It feeds us the archetypes of our inner most passions, giving voice to the sometimes crushing truths we tend to feel only exist quarantined within the boundaries of our own head. Fairy tales remind us of the joy and terror we faced as children when the world was still fresh and full of mystery. Short stories and novels give us passage into lives not lived roads not traveled. We need the novel because sometimes the best way to lead us to the truth is to lie.
The longer we live, generally the less we question; why mess with what works? But once in a while I come across a book that reminds me why I have to write. A story that cuts me loose from the bonds I've strapped myself in through experience and shoves me out of my dark little room into the harsh sunlight, the reality that there is anyways more to learn. I may never write anything of great significance, I'm not a chess player, I don't construct my paragraphs as I would move a pawn always looking to the steps ahead. I'd like to believe I'm that clever or that disciplined but I doubt I am. So I offer up what I know and what I think I know in the way a mason builds a wall, one layer at a time. Perhaps when I am finished I will sit on top and look down and be pleased with what I have created, but we all know the nursery rhyme of what happens to those of us who spend their leisure time atop walls... let me just tell you about this dream I had instead.
I'm standing on the sidewalk outside of the local library in Pacific Grove where I grew up. The sky is black and above me the grey swirling clouds form a ceiling that boils over like cheap special effects from 1980s sci-fi films. There seems to be an strangely large number of people walking around in small groups for it being the middle of the night but at the same time it doesn't feel out of the ordinary. A flock of Canadian geese comes into view out of nowhere and though they are flapping their wings at a normal rate their forward movement barely taking them anywhere and not in the way you'd expect to see birds flying against a head wind straining to conquer the opposing force, they just flap and crawl along. Around their legs are over sized rings of rotating yellow LEDs that are suspended without being held by anything physical. This, of course strikes me as completely ordinary.
As I'm turning the corner of the sidewalk to enter the library somebody calls to me and I turn around to see a man in his 60's with wispy tufts of white hair clinging for dear life to odd parts of his head. He's dressed neatly in a blue collared shirt and and a maroon sweater vest and his hands are tucked absently into the pockets of his corduroy pants.
He's calm but his face is pinched with creases of concern and he says, "Did you hear about Jim?"
Without thinking about which Jim this might be I reply, "No, I've been kind of out of the loop."
"Oh, well he passed away two days ago," he mumbles still noticeably shaken by the news.
This news is at once poignant and useless to me since I still have no idea who white wisps is or why we are speaking about Jim so I offer up a standard line of condolence hoping to placate this old mans sadness and give me an exit from this increasingly awkward exchange. As if lightening had sparked from the heavens, wisps body straightens up and his face twists with rage as his finger fires up in line with my chest marking the spot he'd surely have shot me dead if he'd been armed and he screams, "Well maybe if you weren't such a pot smoking hippie living under a rock you'd have more of an idea what was going on around you!"
How did he know I hate hippies? "I'm a mother fucking soldier in the United States Army, you asshole," I yell as my shoulders square up and my fists clench ready to do battle with this sexagenarian son of a bitch.
"I am too!" His voice clipped on the verge of tears as he turns on his heals and runs away holding his hands like Mr. Burns from the Simpsons.
And then I woke up. Can you believe I was actually angry when I thought back on it. Well first I was confused then amused and finally settled back into mild discontent. I actually cared that someone had disrespected my profession. I'm not that guy. I'm so stubbornly independent that it usually takes blunt force trauma to get through to me but I think it's finally taken me. I think after really doing my job, what I signed up to do, caring for the casualties of war, I'm proud of it now. For years I felt like a fake and like I didn't deserve anyone's praise or thanks but I think I can hold my head up high as strangers shake my hand in airports and when I open care packages from Midwestern church groups (I'm still enjoying my back issues of Family Circle). And so fiction becomes fact and the roles we play turn us into what we are but seriously, how did he know I hate hippies?
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