In the Labyrinth

From the Archives: David Foster Wallace on Art, Writing, Life and Work

Years ago, I posted in the wake of his suicide, quotes from a commencement speech he gave at Kenyon College in 2005. And they are as timely today as they were then. 

"Because here's something else that's true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things -- if they are where you tap real meaning in life -- then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already -- it's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power -- you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart -- you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on....

...Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom."

Building a Skeleton Out of a Basket of Bones: Bordertown WIP

The Bordertown stories, which now seem destined to move into a single novel, are throwing out so many narrative strands that I can barely get them threaded together before having to unwind them to allow for another configuration. I have been writing this in the exact opposite way I usually work by having first a strong opening, a solid draft of the ending, and then a hazy sense of the middle. It's a skeleton with a skull and feet first, and then write down the spine to connect the two parts. 

But this time...it's like someone threw a skeleton (of what I am not sure) into the air and all the bones, big and little, landed in a heap. So, here I am putting together the pieces. I have been writing down random sentences, not sure yet who is saying them or why they matter. And every time I write a few paragraphs and then walk away to take the wet clothes out of the washer and put them into the dryer, there are ten other possible directions the following paragraphs can take before I return to my desk. It's crazy. 

What the hell am I writing? Yet, for not knowing how it will come together, I am comforted by the fact that it feels organic and right; alive and determined to speak its mind. So many characters are clamoring to tell their stories. But at this point, it's like a Child Ballad, where often all you have is the most dramatic moment of a much longer story -- after all who the hell knows why Lord Randall's lover was so pissed off at him that she chose to poison him and his dogs over lunch? -- we never learn the reason, there is no back story to weigh down the tragedy, only the dying Randall answering his mother's anguished questions about where and with whom he had shared his fatal last meal.

 So...trying to put these moments together -- and honestly, not even sure of the order. I'll keep collecting them, like cards in a deck until I have a full house.

She wouldn't decay, not like the rest of us. She was Blood. Her Elvin body would return to nature, into lichen, moss, wood and dark soil. She had already begun to change, the veins beneath the pale skin of her arms bleeding green. To cover her with the shroud was a crime. To leave her here unattended was a crime. To tell anyone I'd seen her would jack me up in the worst way. "Who left you here?" I asked the girl, wanting to shake her alive again. I stood, making the only decision I could. I had to find that halfiing and ask her into what sort of hell she'd gone and dropped me. And why me?

*****

Farell Din, his back to the bar felt their presence before they spoke. He was drying a mug and wished to continue, so as not to have to turn and face them.  He heard them though, arguing. "Faite gor mohan flea?  Nah, grifted mach noile." To him it was gibberish, but to them it was a language of their own. He turned, not liking the chills up his spine at the sound of their words. "Nock. Dina," he greeted them, knowing their difference only by the color of their hoodies, red for Nock, black for Dina. "What will you have then? "  They started talking fast and at the same time, forgetting in their urgency they were still using their twin-speak. He set the mug down hard on the counter. "Plain speech," he ordered. The chills had turned to shivers. "A sylph is loose in Bordertown," Nock said. "She's gathering the great stones"-- "and she's taken Charon," Dina finished. Farell steadied himself, a hand gripping the edge of the bar. "And whose fault is that?" he asked. But neither would answer.

*****

Ryder staggered on his feet, blood from his broken nose dripping over his chin. He held his fists up, dug his feet into the ground, as ready as he could be for the next assault. They were watching him, taking his measure, three of them, wolf and fox masks tied to the back of their head; gloved fists with claws. They barked at him, then howled, and he braced, feeling the weight of the stone hidden in his pack. Don't fuck up, he told himself, repeating the first rule of the dojo. But it was too late for that advice, he thought as he blocked a strike to his head and countered with a hard punch that split open the wolf's lips and cracked teeth. I'm already in too deep.

*****

The bar was exploding with hardcore metal, the notes breaking out of the guitars like jack hammers. Rocket tore the song out of his ragged throat, and the throngs leaped to their feet, pounding and roaring with him. Nock stood in the middle of the deafening noise. She loved it, because the terminus stones beneath her feet awoke to the sound, shrugged and lifted up, buckling the cobblestones of a backstreet alley. They murmured and shuddered beneath the thin veil of concrete and the dancing crowd stumbled, drunk and ecstatic. Someone flicked on a strobe light, and Nock saw her, standing on the far side of the dance floor, her palm pressed against the wall to feel the vibrations. Caught in the pulse of silver light shards of mica gleamed on her granite skin. Their eyes locked, a cold smile on her face and Nock screamed as the room tilted, grinding as it turned on itself, changing shape as it moved, pressing falling dancers into new corners as it folded and refolded.

Earlier Excerpts from the WIP: Bordertown Born and Bred Roots,  Charon Introduction

 

Art Credits: Flavia Pitis, Craftmanship  and Isaac Pelepko, Study of Antonia's Hair

© 2017 Midori Snyder. All fiction passages in this post may not be reproduced without the express and written permission of the author.

What Does A Hero Owe to the Fantastic?

Many years ago, I wrote the short story "Vivian" for Martin Greenberg's Robin Hood Anthology. My take on the well-known tale was to imagine the complications of a man trying to be heroic, but unable to do it alone. This is in the spirit of behind every good man there is someone else making him possible. So what does Robin owe to the fantastic? How does he manage between wanting to be that hero and knowing that when he does becomes successful, it comes at the price of another. My intention was not to dishonor the Robin Hood narrative, but to explore the possibility of a more complicated story beneath the surface of the legend.

"Give me my bent bow in my hand, And a broad arrow I'll let flee. And where this arrow is taken up, There shall my grave digge'd be."                                                                                             — From the "Song of Robin Hood" 

Robin gritted his teeth and raised the longbow. He nocked his arrow, the grey goose fletch drawn back beside his ear. His gaze followed the curve of the animal's chest, imagining the shaft penetrating to the heart. The doe snorted as a breeze stirred the branches of the tree above and water droplets sprinkled her head. She shook, startled and then caught Robin's scent. The two knuckles that held the bowstring back dug deeper into Robin's cheek as he willed himself to remain steady. The doe withdrew behind the bush, seeking cover. Robin stepped forward to keep his target in view. Beneath his foot a twig snapped a loud warning in the wood. Within a heartbeat the doe leapt from her hiding place and fled.

Cursing, Robin swerved his body, trying to track the rump of the fleeing doe as he let loose his arrow. The hopeful twang was silenced abruptly as the arrow thudded harmlessly into a tree.

Robin hung his head and groaned. Sweat chilled his temples, darkening the curly hair. Damn the greenwood! he swore in frustrated rage. It had turned against him, willing that he should starve from lack of game and freeze with the cold damp of a harsh winter. He looked up angrily and stared out at the black and grey trunks of the wintery trees. The leather-brown leaves of the oaks shivered dryly in response.

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Adrienne von Speyr on the Feast of the Assumption

"Thus, the Assumption, the distance and difference between heaven and earth are as bridged over and obliterated for the Mother. For she who who is now received by the Son into heaven is none other than she who received him on earth from heaven; and as her way expanded more and more, starting with the Son's conception and going all the way to her present reception into heaven by the Son, so this reception also expandsto its highpoint in the Son's conception by her. The two high points intensify one another and neither direction can be designated as the definitive one: from earth to heaven or from heaven to earth. It is an eternal circuit between God and man, heaven and earth, spiritual world and material world: a circulation also between Mother and Son. For, as the Mother had once said Yes to the Son and everything to do with him, so today the Son speaks his great assent to the Mother. This assent is divine and immeasurable and gives the Mother's assent its whole heavenly limitessness. As long as the Mother was in the world, she was as limited as any human being, and she had to bear those limits in mind whe she tried to work the Son's cause. From the moment of the Assumption on, she receives the power to be able to do what the Son's wills, without limits. She knows no boundaries except those we on earth set against her work. Only our No can hold back her eternal Yes. "  (Handmaid of the Lord, Adrienne Von Speyr,  translated by E. A. Nelson, Ignatius Press, 1985)

And this  lovely fragment from G. K. Chesterton's "A Little Litany": 

"…Star of his morning; that unfallen star
In that strange starry overturn of space
When earth and sky changed places for an hour
And heaven looked upwards in a human face."

 Art: The Assumption by Guido Reni in 1617.

Bordertown Excerpt from WIP: Charon

“How much do you want for it?” she asked.

“What do you have to barter?” I said, knowing full well the answer. She was a halfling, pretty enough with one green and one yellow eye, a few years younger than me maybe. She was dressed in a blue hoodie, not made here, but crafted into something local with stitched birds and flowers covering the back. She had snagged me coming out of the Ferret, and as usual it was the top hat covered in soot that marked me. Now, here we were, squatted down in the alley behind the Ferret, the thump of music pushing out of the walls, negotiating a trade over something hard and hurtful.

“I don’t have much,” she mumbled. I could tell the hand in her pocket was closed tightly around something, the last bit of value she had to give.

“Show it,” I said.

She pulled her fist out and tossed the contents on the ground. By the light of the Ferret’s kitchen window, I saw how little it was, but I said nothing so as not to shame her. Broken bits of jewelry, a coin so rubbed down I couldn’t tell what it was, a few beads of swirled glass, and a hump-backed shell, speckled like an egg, with a row of teeth down the middle. My hand hovered over the shell and the girl flinched.  I sure could trade that up, as cowries were as precious here as they had once been in the World.

It was tempting, but I moved my hand away and heard the sigh. I couldn’t take it from her, even if it meant I’d go hungry tonight. She’d already lost too much. Instead, I chose a silver ring that was missing its stone, and when I looked up, she gave me a weak smile.

“Where is she?” I asked. The smile vanished.

“The old textile warehouse, off Soho. Second floor, back room.”

“How long has she been there?” I stood, stuffing the ring in my pocket, wanting now to leave.

“I did what I could,” she said, scrambling to gather her stuff and rise. She put a hand on my arm. “Really I did. But she was already gone when I got there. So I don’t know how long…”

“Ok, I got it from here,” I said and moved away from her. “What’s her name?

“Fela,” she whispered to the ground.

 “Do you want a mori?”

“I got nothing to trade for that,” she answered.

“On the house,” I said. “I’ll find you when its done and bring it to you so you don’t forget her.”

I walked away quick-like so I wouldn’t have to listen the sobs I knew were coming. I was used to that. Death never seemed as real to them as when our trade was concluded. A ring without a stone for a body without a life.  

 

"Charon" © 2017 Midori Snyder. All original fiction on the post may not be reproduced without the express and written permission of the author. Art Credit: Sibylle Peretti: "Suicide Notes." For more information on this extraordinary artist, please visit her website here. 

What Cocteau Is Teaching Me About Writing

I am the sort of writer who likes to know the end of a story first, and have a narrative road map along the writing way. But I can't do that with this Bordertown story/novel/novellas? I have no idea yet how it will come together and I feel like Belle arriving at the Beast's castle, where the way is dark and perlious -- but those human arms holding up the candelabras, cast a small pool of light, leading to another pool of light, pushing her towards...what?

Another hallway, with huge windows and curtains blowing inward, the moonlight making stepping stones on the floor.

I think I am writing a Bordertown noir though I am still not sure how these separate stories will come together: a girl who either predicts or creates the future by painting grafitti on the walls, while her twin shifts the terminus stones beneath Bordertown to move it like a cosmic tortoise until one stone goes missing, threatening stability of the city; two gangs that come together to create their own martial arts with a unique Bordertown dojokun and plan a tournament of styles; an unknown girl found deceased in a warehouse, and the undertaker, himself a teenager trying to unravel her identity and return her to the right world. What sort of beast is waiting at the end of this story?

 Ok...I think I am being waay too dramatic! I write moments, just let them happen, and then all day, they steep and somewhere in the middle of washing dishes, driving to the store, walking along the desert washes, or in these early pre-dawn mornings I keep, another candelabra lights up and I move in that direction. Good or bad, I have to trust that somewhere in my brain (or maybe my heart) that I already know the whole story. 

Last Lines and Cool Captains

Near the end of the novel, The Pirates of the Levant by Arturo Perez-Reverte, Captain Alatriste finds himself the highest ranking survivor of one of three ships that are battling for their lives against the Turks, who out-gun, out-cannon, and just sheer out number the Spaniards. There is a hasty meeting of the remaining "commanders" from the three ships, to determine whether they should surrender, or fight to an honorable death. One of the comanders is an aristocrat, and he wants surrender -- mostly because he knows he will be well treated and held for a high ransom. The rest -- will be slaughtered or suffer life as a galley slave, chained to an oarlock. But the decision must be unanimous in order for all three to equally maintain their honor. Captain Alatriste, knows full well the horrors that would await them if they surrender, and makes the only decision a seasoned soldier could make: fight to the end and die with honor. For the aristocrat, such a display of fortitude is new. So we get this brief, sardonic moment:

"He was from the same caste of Spanish aristocrats, although this highly inelegant situation had tempered his arrogance--it's always best to talk to noblemen, Alatriste thought, when they've just been punched in the face..."