Hiding Your Inner Story

It has been given various names, which are conveniences to make sure we are aware of it, buzzing about us like a mosquito in search of her evening meal, assessing our suitability. An ocean biologist I know refers to it as The Tipping Point, by which she means the point where change becomes inevitable. At times I have thought of it as the moment when Sisyphus gets his boulder to the top of the hill, pausing to mop his brow before pushing it from its resting place, over the tip of the hill, whereupon it will begin to roll downward, gathering momentum as it goes. I am fond of the Sisyphus matrix because it so nicely represents what story does that it becomes possible to use it to illustrate how the entire personality of story is informed by where it is begun.

There are times also when I call it a defining moment, as in the moment when Romeo first approached, then spoke to Juliet, a moment indeed defining because those two kids were screwed from that point on, caught up in a vector of inevitability from which there was nothing to do but ride the momentum. True enough, stories can have more than one defining moment, but such events have in common the effect of gravity on an object extended out a window, then released to its fate. You could also equate that to a bug flying along, minding its own business, unaware of a vehicle with a windshield minding its own business on a highway, partners in an unintended destiny.

In earlier years, when one afternoon I experienced some now forgotten crisis of identity or purpose or both, I watched on TV a motion picture whose cast included a number of actors who, beyond the fact of their morbidly right-wing politics, shared a singular inability to get at and portray plausible emotions. The motion picture, The High and the Mighty, was in itself a defining moment in that it heralded the so-called Disaster Film (a story about some physical disaster as opposed to a story that was a financial and artistic failure). A commercial, non-pressurized airline flight from Honolulu to San Francisco. Nothing problematic about that. Now add the backstories of the principals to show the tension among them. Now add the revelation that there is one unanticipated passenger, adding weight and baggage issues. Add the fact of the pilot, reliable when sober, whose nerves are getting a bit rusty. Add a co-pilot still suffering from a disastrous landing in which his wife and son were killed. Add a heart attack to the pilot. Add a storm. Add an engine catching fire and the possibility of having to ditch in the stormy Pacific. Add the wonderful actor Robert Newton, cast as someone with a fear of flying in the first place. Add to that the navigator's stern announcement, We've just passed the point of no return. My crisis of identity or purpose or both was immediately caught out without a hall pass and was sent to the Boys' Vice Principal's office. (You'd think from all the times I was indeed sent to Mr. Engberg's office I'd have some sense of what was done to boys who were sent to the Boys' Vice Principal's Office. No waterboarding. No lectures. No emotional scars.) Point of no return sank into my psyche as the same kind of meme Dawkins spoke of when in 1976, he invented the concept.

The beginning of the story is a rush toward the point of no return; the ending of the story is the writer's literary equivalent of working quickly with watercolors, trying for a plausible and resonant image of a solution to What They Did to get out of the way of the descending, gravity-driven rock of Sisyphus, bearing down on them.

Simply put, we need these places to give us as creators the squirt of adrenaline necessary to look with concern at all the characters involved, having to face that moment of absolute helplessness before we begin to see a plan, some kind of a plan, which some reader will eventually remind us was not plausible. That encounter is another matter, which often comes after the story is accepted and published and for which we have somehow in some way grown beyond. It seemed like a good idea at the time, we can say to our critic, who is not at all satisfied, not as we are, because that critic, that memorable he or she is still caught up in a problem we have created but are no longer disturbed by. It is as though we have been yanked back into the past by our memory of an almost universal childhood moment involving a secret animal. Mine were small turtles, mice, ladybugs--nearly anything that could be kept comfortably in a small matchbox or Altoid tin. In some cases the secret animal is a dog or kitten or rat, or toad, or frog,fed with secreted table scraps and the ingenuity of the young. It might well be rabbits. No matter; the matter is that IT escaped its equivalent of This Lime Tree Bower Prison. It escaped and its presence was noted and you caught authority figure hell for it.

That was then; this is now. Our secret animals are our stories, kept hidden, serruptitiously fed and cosseted with loving concern. They are simultaneous comforts and dream spinners, visions of our inner selves reaching out to broadcast visions of love and adventure and comfort to others. But even now, as then, they will escape. They will get where ever they go, and eventually they will be noticed, which is, after all, the very wonder of them.

Rewards

Among the rewards of completing a crossword puzzle, say The New York Times Sunday puzzle

The sense of having restored a workable order to a small slab of Universe,
The sense of having competed with a designing intelligence,
The sense of having for a change made use of some arcane squib of knowledge,
The sense of having filled vacant spaces

Among the rewards of completing a short story:

The sense of understanding a tad more about your relationship to the Universe,
The sense of understanding what some of your feelings mean,
The sense of having been able to dramatize the way you feel,
The sense of having solved a puzzle,
The sense of having, for a moment or two understood time,
The sense of having been able to experience a feeling you didn't think you knew


Among the rewards of being surprised

The knowledge that you are neither so blase nor cynical as you had supposed,
The knowledge that there are things out there you hadn't anticipated,
The idea that you are a thing out there that has potential to surprise others
The awareness that surprises may be covered in surprising wrapping

Among the rewards of listening to music:

The sense of being suspended in time,
The sense of being suspended in feelings,
The sense of everything in the universe having a voice
The sense of you having a voice

Among the rewards of hanging out with cats or dogs:

The sense of having a self,
The sense of having a friend
The appreciation of instincts
The awareness of communication with another being
The value of another being

Among the rewards of a glass of cold ale

Ah!

Friends

SAM--short-haired domestic, black, white, gray. A gifted editor. Used to belong to interior decorator. Hated snow. Fond of Kitty-Queen chopped kidney.
MAUDE--short-haired domestic, black, white, brown splotch.
ARMAND--short-haired domestic, treasured at first because he looked like Sam. Liked to hang out on roof. Had mood swings. A mean drunk when high on catnip.
MADAM OVARY--his mother.
BLUE-blue-tick hound, black, white, brown. Extraordinary nose, lovely bawl-mouth.
EDWARD BEAR--her son. Had charge account at Brownie's deli on La Cienega. Once bit deputy sheriff. Experienced serious moods. Ringing chop on track. Resounding baritone on tree. Holds some kind of record for having been treated to steak sandwiches by various patrons of Mom's Italian Villa on Cota Street.
JEDEDIAH STRONG SMITH--also her son. Good strong bawl mouth, excited chop on deer scent, deep baritone on tree with raccoon.
MOLLY--four-parter, black with brown trim. Great swimmer. Liked to carry huge logs. Grew increasingly impatient with the five o'clock northbound passenger train. Tended to snore at writers' conferences.
NELL--Aussie Cattle Dog/Aussie Shepherd--tawny brown with black flecks. One of the most consistently happy dogs I have ever known.
SALLY--Aussie Shepherd, Aussie Cattle Dog. A control freak. Likes to bury croissant pieces.
Preternaturally intelligent, good communication skills. Mind of her own.