500 Words- Day 20 (Innocence)

As part of my participation in My 500 words, I am posting what I write each day.

     The theme of the story is the truth that if proves. Even fiction proves some kind of truth. It can be something as simple as “good triumphs over evil” or “love conquers all”. When I am serious about writing something, I want to have a theme. When it was time to start developing my novel for this November, before I thought too much about what it would be about, before I even really tried to think of an ending, I felt I needed to know what I wanted to say. I needed my theme. And from what I had of the story, the theme revealed itself, innocence.

     The theme of The Snowdrop Princess is going to be preservation versus loss of innocence. The little girl in the story, from the beginning I have now, is innocent to anything in the world. She will be brought up by holograms, probably run by some central computer system. She will have one hologram, maybe created especially for her that will be her best friend. That best friend hologram will be The Snowdrop Princess, representing innocence.

     But what if prisoners of the state are incarcerated at this fortress? The government thinks that it’s empty of real people. They don’t know there’s a single little girl living there who was mysteriously dropped off as a young toddler, who spends her days running and playing with a hologram resembling a girl her age. I see conflict.

     For the past two days I’ve alluded to something else. Several years ago, I had a vision of a little girl, perhaps school-age, wandering around a smoke-swept battlefield littered with bodies. The girl isn’t disturbed by death. She closes the eyes of some fallen soldiers and searches them for any provisions. So I sat down and wrote something, first just pen and paper, where the girl is finally frightened off by wolves. Then I took a few days to sit and type up what I could.

It was an exploration. The girl was looking for food, but I learned that it was to take back to someone. Someone was holding her father hostage, compelling this girl to go and search dead soldiers on the battlefield. My story began the day she found a handgun. Acting on her father’s instructions, the girl took a single bullet and filed it down near the primer. (I asked an ex-policeman if this would happen). The girl took food and the gun back to where her father was being held prisoner by another man. This “bad man” as the girl thought of him, seemed to me some fugitive from the war, desperate enough to hold a father and daughter. The father was injured, sick and dying. The girl gave the pistol to the desperate fugitive, and later provoked him into shooting it. With the altered bullet, the handgun misfired, seriously injuring this bad man. He soon dies of blood loss. The  father also passes away. The girl, on her own in some dystopian wilderness, moves on.

That snippet came to me the other night. What if I could incorporate that into my story? I’ve been keeping it on hold for years, it’s not like I’m desperate to use it soon, ideas don’t really expire. But will this idea work for The Snowdrop Princess? Who is this girl? She’s too old to be the one dropped off at the fortress unless I change things up. Does she make it to the fortress years or decades earlier only to live and die and eventually be resurrected as a hologram?

Is she one of the criminals who is sentenced to the fortress?

There’s lots to think about and ponder. I’ve got just under two weeks to figure at least a few things out. There’s a chance this November novel could be little more than a convoluted mess. But with enough thought and planning, I might create something that shines.    

  

Welcome to the World, Kid

     I’ve cut 6 umbilical cords in my life. 5 times I’ve done it with scissors, once with a scalpel. The first time I did it, I said 5 words that were easy enough to remember so it’s what I said each time after. I fell into a habit. “Welcome to the world, kid” is pretty informal. But I was tired the first time. I didn’t have time to think much. I just kept saying it. Maybe if I thought about it I would have said something else.

There is comfort in knowing what to do and expect. In the first years of your life that’s how it should be. In your first few months when you have a need, it should get met soon. When you’re hungry you get fed. When you’re uncomfortable you get changed. As the months go by, you might begin to learn that your needs are not always met right away. That’s part of growing up. There is a lot to learn about growing up. It might start with the first time you are hungry and not fed right away.

Those tiny memories fade to the back as new experiences fill your growing mind. New tastes are everywhere as you explore with your mouth. Some things taste good and some not so good. You may learn that taste is just like the rest of the world. Some new things to see and hear are nice and some are not. The same goes with faces peering down at you. You might not know why you don’t like some of them and why you feel some are nice. It’s okay. Your mind is growing and learning.

And one day you will learn the devastating truth that you are not the center of the world. It won’t dawn on you all at once. It may take a long, long time to realize that the big people in your life have other lives too. These other lives don’t have you as a part of them. There are big other lives of big people with work and meetings and big people talking on telephones. There are the long legs of big people standing around talking about things that are not about you and things you don’t even understand and you’re left to stand and look up and listen to big people and big words.

You slowly realize that there is a big world besides your own. It’s the whole wide world out there. It has loud things, barking dogs and rushing traffic. There are things you mustn’t touch and places you cannot run. Is everything out in the world bad? Will that clap of thunder hurt you? Can the wind blow you away? Is that man on the street with the cigarette and the scowl a bad man? Why do the bugs die when you step on them? Where did the cat go when he didn’t come home anymore? When Mommy or Daddy go, will they come back?

So hold someone’s hand when you’re scared, when you cross the street and when the wind blows so hard that you’re afraid. It’s okay to cover your ears when the noises get to loud. It doesn’t make the noise go away does it? But isn’t it nice to make the sound not so loud?

There, you see? You are learning a little about controlling the world around you. You can make it a little quieter. You can begin to pick and choose things. And then you are entering into a time in your life where you explore, not only your world, but your boundaries. How far can you go? How much is too much? What can you do and still be loved? It’s a time of learning, and it’s a time of frustration. Why can’t you eat all the toothpaste? Why can’t you walk to the ocean? Why can’t you hit? Why do you have to be nice?

And this difficult time won’t last. One day you will remember how good it feels to make people happy. One day you will want them to be friends, not just so they can like you, but because you now know that they need friends just like you. You will start to think about other people’s needs and feelings. And you will like knowing that you are helping others to be happy.

All your life so far, you will have felt love. It has grown from the day you were born when you felt loving hands on you and you loved the feel of your needs being met. Later, you loved seeing people you knew and doing things you liked. You loved affection and you loved to give it.

And eventually you learned to love in a new way. It is a love where you don’t just want what’s best for you, but what’s best for others, for the people you love. Sometimes that means you don’t get what you want, and it’s okay.

And all along from the day you were born and never stopping, you were made to be loved. You will be loved by your family, friends your creator. God made you for a reason. That reason is that He loves you very much. You will learn more about this as you grow. You will never stop learning about Him and His love.

But for now, sleep. Rest and grow. There is nothing in the big scary world right now that you need to know about. There are just two things in your world right now, growing and being loved. Welcome to the world, kid.

When will they ever Learn?

     My parents had record albums. I used to listen to only one side of them. I think that when first learned to use the record player, I put the side I wanted to hear face down on the turntable. I thought that it should be in direct contact with the apparatus that pulled sound from the black disk. The side that was face-up just stared at the spinning ceiling. So I ended up listening to side two of almost any record I played.

     I loved the twanging banjo of the Kingston Trio. The song “MTA” has a bridge where the banjo cheerfully strums. To me, everything is positive with a banjo backup. I sang along to the song “Billy Goat Hill” singing “I lit my log with a broken heart, I lit my log in the little green house that sits on top of Billy Goat Hill.” When my mother corrected me that they were singing I left my love, the song didn’t seem as fun. I enjoyed the idea of the singer, crouched on the floor of a little green house striking match after match trying to set fire to a huge log. It made more sense that leaving someone that they loved. Why would he do that?

     But the song that I thought was the funniest was Where have all the Flowers Gone? I even remarked to someone how funny the song was. The lyrics start out asking where the flowers have gone and the answer comes: “Young girls picked them, everyone.” The next verse asks: “Where have all the young girls gone?”  and is answered “Gone to young men.” Next verse, young men have gone to soldiers. Where have all the soldiers gone? Gone to graveyards everyone. When they finally ask “Where have all the graveyards gone?” the answer comes a capella: “Gone to flowers, everyone.”

     To my young mind, that was hilarious. Those flowers will never be found. The singers will run from the young girls to the young men looking for those flowers and eventually end up in graveyards, whatever those are, only to find out that those young girls have picked them. When will they ever learn?

     I miss having a little mind that didn’t understand too much. I don’t remember the day I learned what a graveyard was, or when I finally realized that the song wasn’t funny at all, but sad and ironic. But there came a time that I listened to the song and wasn’t amused at it. Understanding doesn’t always bring joy.

     Loss of innocence was part of my life, just as I think it’s part of everyone’s. Whether they came suddenly or not, there is a heartbreak in learning some things.

     These losses of innocence create character and can define who I am. Understanding of folk songs is little compared to a fallen role model or disappointment in something believed in. Those things happened to me too. Some of those things still ache once in a while. I will be including them in my spiritual inventory.

     Even though I miss having the naïveté that I used to have, I appreciate what I have now. It’s not a full understanding of how everything is, but a gradual realization that I am still a little clueless about some things and have more to learn. I hope that is a grain of wisdom growing in me. And in answer to the question of the song: When will they ever learn? I hope for me it’s each day.

Read the signs and Grow Wise

    

I stood and stared at the little sign.  It was the only thing on the wall to read and there was nothing else to look at.  But even if there had been a fire engine blasting past, my 11 year old mind still would have been mesmerized by the message printed.

PLEASE DO NOT THROW

BUTTS IN URINALS

     I was intrigued by the image I had of someone in the men’s room.  Perhaps all the stalls were full.  He would drop his pants and turn sideways to the wall.  A few practice swings with an anxious count up to three.  Then with a little jump he would fling his posterior into the urinal.  My young imagination conjured someone walking in moments later to see this poor soul evacuating where he had thrown himself.  The newcomer would say “Hey, can’t you read,” and point to the sign.

     I finally brought my dad into the men’s room to show him the sign.  He told me it meant cigarette butts. 

     Oh.  Throw butts in… oh.  I got it.  Throwing cigarette butts into the urinal made a lot more sense.  But the erroneous image I had was considerably more entertaining.  Sometimes it’s more fun to not know the truth and carry on, if not in blissful, at least in amused innocence.  Sometimes when faced with the truth I back away like it’s a draft of cold air first thing in the morning.  I would rather be warm under the covers and dream of what isn’t real.  You might think that I don’t accomplish a lot living in denial.  And I will step forward and say that denial is an unhealthy state to remain in.  But I also can get a lot of writing done.

     I started My Roadwalker blog on May 11^th 2010 with an entry called Navel Gazing. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to accomplish or prove writing a blog.  But I likedto think that I’m a writer and that something writers can do.  I wrote a lot about myself and a lot of stories from my past.  The early entries may be good stories, but I had not found my voice yet.  I don’t like how they’re written. I wish I could go back and re-write a lot of them.

     Less than a year ago, Prajna encouraged me to write more about what God was doing in my life.  That is when my blog began to take a more spiritual turn.  Some of my favorite blog entires are there.  But for each time I hit it out of the park there are several more grounders, and even some swings and misses. Sometimes they are self indulgent. Sometimes I wince at how much proselytizing I was doing.  I never wanted this blog to read like that.  All the while I was living in this blissful and amused ignorance that I had a blog read by people around the world. 

     But I am aiming too high.  The truth is obvious.   Roadwalker is a writing exercise.  I love to write.  This blog is a discipline that I do and then, just for fun, I share it.  Keeping track of my pageviews, I learned that all of my readers from Russia come from a spammer that leaves URL’s for people like me to click on.  So much for a worldwide readership.  I know I liked it better when I didn’t know the whole truth.

     I am going to back off on the proselytizing.  I am going to continue to post Roadwalker every Monday.  But it is part of a writing regiment that I keep to because writing is my hobby.  It kind of hurts to admit that.  The innocent image is a lot more fun.  But the truth is the right thing.  This is post number 175.  Thanks for sticking with me.