I'm Lit...
Today I ran across a site of all kinds of literature from the UK online. Mostly it's a pile of short stories from various genres with no apparent linking theme.
After all of the years separating me from late teenage readings, I find now that I can still live through them in a very real way. there's something so easy to connect to... characters ascribing to their mundane lives tales of glory and daring-do. I cannot shake the feeling that this describes my life and the lives of most around me; irrelevant but for the value we give it.
But our lives do have meaning to us, and people we meet have relevance. It must be so. We matter inasmuch as we can limit our worlds to something we can grasp. What happens at 5pm in Prague is not a reality to me. It's a faith conviction that there are people in a place with that name, that there is a 5pm on their clock, and that they also have a purpose other than being occasional and improbable characters in my own play.
Hmm, but then again, Could God be so great that we all get our own play? In fact we are Hamlet in Hamlet, and unbeknownst to those who help us or plot against us this is totally our show and we're the only character that matters? Limitless numbers of solo plays, entirely focused on individual characters, lived out in simultaneous moments outside of time, each given complete relevance between its own two covers. Perhaps only I exist this time out, but in another's story there is a facsimilie of me that is only a role concocted to flesh out their singular play. And the one who said goodbye and was no more really is no more... no more unless I choose to re-create what was created for me... to re-encounter and force the author to alter the person slightly so that I can perceive a reality necessary for me to function. So then there would only be people in Prague at 5pm inasmuch as the author is trying to make my story more interesting... to create the flora and fauna necessary to allow me dynamism.
Can I really matter so much? How is it that what I do or don't do can possible matter? The stars above speak of a universe so magnificent in its scale that my piddly decisions and activities cannot really register on the cosmic richter scale. I think Margaret Adams uses the analogy of the termite... to the planet Xelcron-VI do the relative actions of a termite or a Ray really matter more than the other?
I will wake up, shower, get dressed, work a bit on a paper that 0-1 people will ever read, but I will pretend that it matters... I will get coffee and wolf down some Raisin Bran. Then it's off to class. Later will be chapel, then perhaps a jaunt to the gym. And then what? then the author will need to throw some character my way. I will perhaps apply for a job. More characters will be created. The author will need to flesh out a desk clerk... perhaps one with a bad attitude so that the annoying girl in class can play the part... and then there's the sleeping security guard, who is truly homoousios with horizontal rest since he cannot be other than the Sleeping Guard, and his role will pay tuppins to a cameo actor looking for his big break in Hollywood... and who will interview me? I surely need to cause an interview so that the author can create a rounded character for me to interact with. And I'll meet these forms around me, and I'll hear their names, and they will BE after that, in a way they were not before. Adam named them all; mine come pre-named so that I can do other things.
Yes the author bids me to co-create. The more co-creating I can do, perhaps the more I can attribute to my life value... maybe I'll even drive up the price of my book to those who read about it on Xelcron, and they can appreciate the names of the characters, and the feelings and thoughts of one who could not share them in life, but only in lit. Hamlet lived his life but it was penned for me, and he enlivens me while I continue to give him value, and I hope that I can be likewise penned, and my menial success and failures will be the center of someone's sight, if only for a hundred or so pages.
Wow... what senseless babbling.
night :-*
After all of the years separating me from late teenage readings, I find now that I can still live through them in a very real way. there's something so easy to connect to... characters ascribing to their mundane lives tales of glory and daring-do. I cannot shake the feeling that this describes my life and the lives of most around me; irrelevant but for the value we give it.
But our lives do have meaning to us, and people we meet have relevance. It must be so. We matter inasmuch as we can limit our worlds to something we can grasp. What happens at 5pm in Prague is not a reality to me. It's a faith conviction that there are people in a place with that name, that there is a 5pm on their clock, and that they also have a purpose other than being occasional and improbable characters in my own play.
Hmm, but then again, Could God be so great that we all get our own play? In fact we are Hamlet in Hamlet, and unbeknownst to those who help us or plot against us this is totally our show and we're the only character that matters? Limitless numbers of solo plays, entirely focused on individual characters, lived out in simultaneous moments outside of time, each given complete relevance between its own two covers. Perhaps only I exist this time out, but in another's story there is a facsimilie of me that is only a role concocted to flesh out their singular play. And the one who said goodbye and was no more really is no more... no more unless I choose to re-create what was created for me... to re-encounter and force the author to alter the person slightly so that I can perceive a reality necessary for me to function. So then there would only be people in Prague at 5pm inasmuch as the author is trying to make my story more interesting... to create the flora and fauna necessary to allow me dynamism.
Can I really matter so much? How is it that what I do or don't do can possible matter? The stars above speak of a universe so magnificent in its scale that my piddly decisions and activities cannot really register on the cosmic richter scale. I think Margaret Adams uses the analogy of the termite... to the planet Xelcron-VI do the relative actions of a termite or a Ray really matter more than the other?
I will wake up, shower, get dressed, work a bit on a paper that 0-1 people will ever read, but I will pretend that it matters... I will get coffee and wolf down some Raisin Bran. Then it's off to class. Later will be chapel, then perhaps a jaunt to the gym. And then what? then the author will need to throw some character my way. I will perhaps apply for a job. More characters will be created. The author will need to flesh out a desk clerk... perhaps one with a bad attitude so that the annoying girl in class can play the part... and then there's the sleeping security guard, who is truly homoousios with horizontal rest since he cannot be other than the Sleeping Guard, and his role will pay tuppins to a cameo actor looking for his big break in Hollywood... and who will interview me? I surely need to cause an interview so that the author can create a rounded character for me to interact with. And I'll meet these forms around me, and I'll hear their names, and they will BE after that, in a way they were not before. Adam named them all; mine come pre-named so that I can do other things.
Yes the author bids me to co-create. The more co-creating I can do, perhaps the more I can attribute to my life value... maybe I'll even drive up the price of my book to those who read about it on Xelcron, and they can appreciate the names of the characters, and the feelings and thoughts of one who could not share them in life, but only in lit. Hamlet lived his life but it was penned for me, and he enlivens me while I continue to give him value, and I hope that I can be likewise penned, and my menial success and failures will be the center of someone's sight, if only for a hundred or so pages.
Wow... what senseless babbling.
night :-*
posted by Roland at 10:06 PM
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