I wanted to write a commentary on what is happening, especially in the US but haven’t been able to find the right words, a helpful angle. It’s one thing to voice one’s opinion but it’s another to write in a way that is not only reflective but opens up possibilities.
My last post – ‘The Fabled Night’ – explored how many narratives of an event can over time distil into one. These three stories continue on the narrative theme but in a more metaphorical way perhaps. I hope it will allow and encourage you to add, continue, shift the story, to play with it. Playing allows us to free ourselves to improvise different possibilities – a first step to finding common ground.
My first story ‘Stems’ (written in 2016) is about how from the same basic structures or themes, the same basic facts and events different narratives can emerge. In my second story, the tunnel is a metaphor for how we’ve enclosed ourselves with like-minded people… and ‘Cracked’ explores the dis-embodied, fragmenting experience of social media from which we must find our way to forgiveness and empathy.
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Stems
So while you’ve been telling your stories – wonderful stories that stem from fabulous imaginations – I’ve been sitting here knowing my turn would come and wondering how to fashion one from what’s left over. It’s like the grapes draped elegantly across the fruit bowl adorning the center of the table. You’ve each been picking them off, one by one leaving behind little tear-shaped seeds and those funny stalks that stick out every which way, bare and comical compared to the plump bursts of sweet-jelly-in-a-sack that you have ransacked with your fingers.
Let’s say that what I have to work with, to create something with, are the remaining stalks and seeds. I guess the seeds could become eyes on alien eyestalks or they could be set on the table and then the stalks could be… what? Sure, you could snip them up into short straight stems and carefully construct a neat little face around two seed eyes and a smile of seed teeth, but that would be a rather cheap solution, decimating individuality in favour of getting the task done. Too easy, like cheating.
No, I must come up with a good story, one that will not disappoint because it will have the droll, unexpected twists expected by our dear reader. Not the familiar tale of two children who are sent into a deep, dark forest, leave behind a trail of grape seeds, get lost and end up with a witch who burns odd-looking sticks… My mind must stretch further. Let’s see: it could draw out love amongst the grape vines in Tuscany – juicy looks and ripe kisses stolen behind a mask of golden leaves – only to reveal the arthritic fingers of the moneylender plucking away tender dreams. Maybe it could spin memories of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches we wolfed down in grandma’s kitchen before the alien take-over of insectoids with multiple appendages that consume fruit and nuts (including PBnJ) and leave behind tear-shaped droppings. Or it might worm its way through whirling parties of wine, weed and wanton sex while a virus travels the branching neural pathways of the brain, altering human thought.
You are impatient for me to settle on something, at least a start? I’m running out of time, you say.
Oh… at least a start.
Dame cracked the small bitter seeds between her teeth as she tried to decipher the note. The victim had been in a hurry, or freezing perhaps. Dame turned the crumpled paper upside down, sideways even but the scrawl remained a maze of lines as sparse and indeterminate as grape stems.
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The Tunnel
Victor marches through the Tunnel with assurance. The good thing about a tunnel is there is only one direction to go, unless you turn around. But progress is going forward not back. The weight of his gun around his shoulder feels good and his belt is packed with ammo. He is ready for anything. And he is not alone. His companions move with him, their voices ringing off the walls: This is a holy war. They are evil, that’s for sure. Thieves, perverts, murderers. We must stop Them from taking control. We must and we will.
Victor’s phone buzzes in his pocket and he answers it. His daughter: Dad. Turn around. Please! She doesn’t understand. Deep State has brainwashed her. He says, I’m fine. Join me. I’m doing this for you, for all of us. There is a heavy sigh at the other end of the line. Dad, you’re doing this for you, not for me, not in my name. Your war isn’t just–. The line goes dead. Monsters. She’s surrounded by them. She believes their lies and doesn’t see the truth because They cloak their perversions in darkness and secrecy. They laugh at their own Leader and call him a fool. But his Leader will prevail with his righteousness. This is a holy war.
He hopes she is not too deep in with Them. Last time she pleaded with him, she told him that the world was big enough to contain everyone and that it offered many roads, that taking the Tunnel was too narrow and led in the wrong direction.
A companion near him says, No one believes us, no one listens to us, but they will. Others echo the sentiment: They’ll have to once we’ve won. And we will because we serve the Messiah. They talk about fairness. You know what fair means? White. It means white, not black or brown or yellow or red. If you are fair, you are white. If we don’t fight, They will destroy everything our ancestors worked so hard to build. They will destroy the very foundations.
Victor is almost sure he can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Someone fires a shot which ricochets off the walls. Momentarily deafened, Victor bumps against the black wall. His hand feels wet. Even in this dry tunnel, the walls are wet, like the tear-stained face of a woman, his daughter. Others push past him and he glances back into the darkness from where he has come. How could she possibly expect him to turn around and go in the opposite direction, against his companions, pushing past every single one? He laughs at the thought, at the tunnel, at the ridiculousness of it all.
Hands on his ammo for assurance, Victor marches past the black stones weeping silently as if, after shouldering for centuries the earth’s lament of too much lost, they can no longer hold back.
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Cracked
How dare he! The devil… She picks up a ball of mud, adds some thorns and slings it at the shadowy shape behind the screen. Splat! Bullseye. In the eye. She waits smugly for his response. It doesn’t come. Maybe she’s made him think twice. These people. She’s glad he’s not a close friend. In fact she doesn’t know him, who he is, what he looks like. Not that she cares. He deserves all the spit and mud slung at him. It’s the only way to try to get through. She looks at the screen, waiting. Her heart is pumping with a mix of satisfaction and expectancy. As seconds pass, that sense of elation fades slightly. She notices that she can’t really see the shape of him anymore behind the wall of mud. What if that wall prevents any more from getting through? Maybe it’s like a thick skin. What a ridiculous shield! In this virtual world you can’t physically hurt anyone so what does it matter? With a surge of anger, she grabs a carved rock and throws it at the screen. Feel that! The explosive crack hits her in the chest. Stunned, she becomes aware of the silence. Silence of loneliness, of isolation. She puts on music which airbrushes its thumping beat and ropey lyric across the blemishes of her pain and desolation. She turns off the music. Better the silence. It’s real. Bitter… tears… spin… slow… stop. There’s a rainbow on her wall. She lifts her hand up to catch it in her palm. Gotcha! she whispers, then follows the invisible ray of light to its source, not from the window but from the screen. Her eye catches a pinpoint of light, a star shining through the mud. Using a little spit, her breath and her hand, she gently clears away the layers of dirt. Her screen has shattered, distorting him, the shadowy figure, into an abstraction that so barely resembles a human that, were she not aware of its original form, she might be forgiven her inability to recognise it as a person. She can’t remember the reason for throwing the rock, just the anger which is now as much an abstraction as the image on the shattered screen. How easily her anger made her violent. Thoughtful, she looks down and notices that her white top is full of tiny rainbows. Light is shining from the other side of the screen, from the side where that other person is, shining through the cracks. Smiling, she picks up her screen and turns it to catch a belated beam of sun shining through her window.
Olivia's Journal 