A Few More Words on Reading "Day Lillies Elaine Neil Orr
Bits and Pieces from Image Journal's Glen Workshop, 2008 Santa Fe
"Sheer habit, they stand so close; one flesh, truth, metaphors, doesn't matter. They just know they are not complete unless they are touching.
Ah, but this new twist in the plot;
Something has shifted the gravity in the world. Everything appears the same to the individual eye, but try looking together, they cannot even find the same point on the horizon. Some-days they can't even find the horizon.
This "mis-seeing" , this seemingly incompatible dissonance in vision of late, has them wondering if they even occupy the same space on this earth, or even the same plain of existence.
It seems to be unfair for something like this to appear so late in the game; twisting and tangling what was the straight and effortless home stretch that belonged to them; should belong to them; hard earned after successfully navigating a road that had more than it's share of unexpected detours, ill marked paths, and a couple of near plunges down deep precipices that came close to cutting the journey short, or frightened them into abandoning it altogether."
Every writer knows that you never introduce a major conflict so late in the plot line. It just isn't done. And for good reasons.
Too dangerous; comedies become tragedies, or vice versa;
What has been so carefully planned, polished, edited and re-edited and is a hair's breath from being neatly wrapped up, tied up with a ribbon and ready to present to the world, whole and complete suddenly slips through the author's fingers and like a ball of yarn rolls uncontrollable, following only the tune of gravity- unraveling, shrinking, twisting, tangling and strangling everything that made sense, predictable probabilities, and any remnant of the illusion of control over how things should turn out when the author, the storyteller lets loose words and worlds by uttering that first word...attempting to tame something that refuses to be tamed, yet pretending that THIS TIME it will be different, this time the unexpected is expected so even surprises won't be a surprise.
Any writer knows that writing has more in common with life, and is just as dangerous. Plots won't be tamed and only a fool, or a bad writer approaches a story with any less fear and trembling than he approaches life.
The reckoning for each, without fail,will come. And the real character of the danger is revealed. It's not that the story, so close to being finished, proofed, and sent off to the publisher, by an impulsive whim to throw in one last plot twist has been ruined, made irredeemable flawed, but that the storyteller himself, has been challenged, tested; tempted, fallen and has failed or lost faith in the one thing needful to be a good, a true storyteller...knowing this one thing....that there is only one True Story and all stories are just a variation on this one True Theme. Every beginning made will dance toward the same Perfect Ending, but the steps of each dance is unique, some wildly winding and whirling, some even, predictable and some silent, still with movement that is barely perceptible. Yet in the end they are all the same, if True, will land in the same perfect place.
Unless one believes and is willing to dance to whatever music that accompanied every story, and follow it's lead until the closing cadence, then one must consider carefully before setting your hand, or voice to that very first Word. It is a choice to begin; and you may get to choose to shape, design, and mold it into an image as you please; or the only choice you get to make is to stay true to the sacred trust that goes along with uttering that first word- to journey to whoever the story lead-, a choice you may have to make 1000 times or more before the end...
...Resisting temptation, frustration, laziness, and pride and presumption that leads to neglect, and even abandonment; judging what was entrusted to you to be fatally flawed and irredeemable; smug satisfaction to think you can take "lessons learned" and just walk away instead of laboring to retrace steps, untangle knots, and recasting your preconceived, narrowed and limited vision of what you perceived to be "happily ever after"( which is another name for of Truth, Beauty, and Wholeness) into something that had not even existed in your imagination before you began.
"He stands on the outside looking in.
She stands on inside, and can't fathom the existence of an "outside"Too late, too tired, too much to ask to retrace their steps, to find that one place at the still point of the turning world where they can look out and see the same vision. So they still stand close, always touching, but somehow not complete. And it is just out of habit now. Soon, out of habit, they will forget what is missing.Soon."
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“
I was standing today in the dark tool shed. The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From where I stood that beam of light, with the specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place. Everything else was almost pitch black. I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it.
Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no tool shed, and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular carry at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, ninety-odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences.”
C.S. Lewis,
From: Meditation in a Toolshed