Some Persistent Desire For What Is Still Possible

I wrote the following inside a card I am giving to a new kindred friend (the card is sealed so I am recalling to the best of my ability): You know I know things. Also let’s not forget my untamable imagination. And then the dreams, the galaxy of answers and questions. Yet, despite all that, I could have neither dreamt nor imagined nor even consciously wished to have had our paths cross. So much we don’t know.

Of course that was just an extravagant way to begin describing the gratitude I feel for having this individual as part of my life now.  I seldom bring people I consider good friends to my ‘inner circle’ of friends, but when I do, I make sure they understand, not my expectations, but rather my way of ‘giving’. That being said, I don’t think twice before amputating anyone orbiting near my core due to certain principles that I uphold.  Perhaps that is indeed passing judgment? I don’t know; I don’t think so. The Universe is a better arbitrator, I let go because I don’t want to judge.

I digress.

I have been thinking about what I wrote ever since. Did I really not know? Do we know our deepest wishes but then forget? Is it a forgetting or a giving up?

Who sells the imitation experiences? Does it matter given it is me who fell for the cul-de-sac of faux dreams manicured by a reality that never fit me again and again? Have I been conned enough times to have forgotten the original desire?

I have been gathering material in my head for my first novel since 1996. It was in 1996 I said I have to tell this story. It would be in 2006 in South Africa when I began writing it. It would be in 2008 I realized it was much bigger than me. And it has taken a life of its own since and hence it is still incomplete because of what I have thought it is supposed to be.

This ‘it’s-supposed-to-be‘ has to be the devil with a fire-tongue I tell you. Not only when it licks you it burns but it puts to char any possibilities that can possibly manifest that are beyond you.

But what is beyond you is really beyond you. Nothing will stand in its way, not even you! Here we are again: the fierce tango of the legs of freewill to the music of some Mystery.

I don’t experience “writer’s blocks” with writing. That being said, it is not without challenges. My work-in-progress manuscript keeps showing different sides, a mannequin who tirelessly wants to display new clothes. That being said I am grateful all the mannequins (the main characters) remain the same. They won’t budge. They are bigger, stronger, and sometimes even more real than what I can perceive. So that is good to know, it is not in vain, they will be permanent imprints for whoever decides to hear their story.

It’s-supposed-to-be is a dancing devil that seduces when love comes, when we write, when we draw, when we embark on anything new! When the very knowledge of the fact that it is something new ought to shake us and move us out of the way with a siren: Please move out of the way or don’t step in yet. This is new tar on an old road.  No matter our memories, expectations, hopes, fears, this is really all happening for the first time! But It’s supposed-to-be is such a mischievous dragon that some even allow the fire-tongue to kiss a new born! My child is supposed-to-be this or not this.

What we create—stories, art, experiences—are like children too. They have a mind of their own. They will disappoint. They will not live up to your expectations. They out live your expectations! They want to go explore places you fear for their safety. They don’t want to go the college of literary awards. They end up with the dean’s list of literary honors despite skipping all “must-attend” workshops. They need to be bailed from the jail of giving up. They change with every read. You look at what you thought you created and it stares back at you with eyes that are your DNA but don’t see what you see.

But like children, our creations, do come from some miraculous bio-chemical yarn that is indeed beyond dreams, imagination, wishes, memories, expectations.

Or maybe, just maybe, they are indeed a product of our merry-go-round dreams, our imagination that is reserved for the solitude of an indigo breeze, our wishes that spill to the ocean-sized ears of the Universe even without articulation, memories that are not quite how you recall, and expectations that are not really expectations but some persistent desire for what is still possible.

It matters not where they come from because it is definitely beyond what it’s-supposed-to-be. That doesn’t mean without intention. After all, intention too is strand of all the aforementioned…

But when you relentlessly come to the beginning again and again and again despite all that you have forgotten (which is a nice way of saying all that you have had to let go despite your fair attempts) to create from that space of what is still possible, an offering for some understanding, you begin to realize you knew all along because you never gave up.

So if I could write inside that card again, I would write: But of course, nice to have you in my life! I was wondering when we would meet given I never gave up which is not to say I haven’t let go of all that was merely a veneer of what I needed.

I share the following excerpt below because a sperm and an egg really are fragile yet they create something that can change the course of so many lives. They don’t come together with a suppose-to-be agenda but it-is-what-it-is formation of all that is still possible. An inevitable result of probabilities. And it is no different when we create art or live or love. So much we don’t know. So much we know. Something quite beyond what it is supposed to be.

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From the “Introduction” of Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders

“I think…that I would rather recollect a life mis-spent on fragile things than spent avoiding moral debt.” The words turned up in a dream and I wrote them down upon waking, uncertain what they meant or to whom they applied.

[…]

As I write this now, it occurs to me that the peculiarity of most things we think of as fragile is how tough they truly are. There were tricks we did with eggs, as children to show who they were, in reality, tiny load-bearing marble halls; while the beat of the wings of a butterfly in the right place, we are told, can create a hurricane across an ocean. Heart may break, but hearts are the toughest of muscles, able to pump for a lifetime, seventy times a minute, and scarcely falter along the way. Even dreams, the most delicate and intangible of things, can prove remarkable to kill.

Stories, like people and butterflies and songbirds’ eggs and human hearts and dreams, are also fragile things, made up of nothing stronger or more lasting than twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation marks. Or they are words on air, composed of sounds and ideas—abstract, invisible, gone once they’ve been spoken—and what could be more frail than that? But some stories, small, simple ones about setting out on adventures or poeple doing wonders, tales of miracles and monsters, have outlasted all the people who told them, and some of them have outlasted the lands in which they were created.

And while I do not believe that any of the stories in this volume will do that, it’s nice to collect them together, to find a volume for them where they can be read, and remembered. I hope you enjoy reading them.

Neil Gaiman
On the first day of Spring 2006

Dreams are reality at its most profound and what you invent is truth because invention by its nature can’t be a lie.  ~ Lonesco

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