Imagine approaching a house, stepping up three steps to the porch and going to the door. You rattle the door knocker to announce yourself. After a short wait the door opens and a lady looks at you through the screen. With a short exchange you make your purpose known and step back slightly as she pushes open the screen door, an implied invitation to come in. She holds her door back and you navigate the rise of the threshold, reaching back to ease the screen door’s closing.
The lady apologizes for the messy house as she leads you from the foyer through a lived-in dining room and into the kitchen. A girl child in a high chair is busy with a too-small spoon and a bowl of jello. She tells you the man you are looking for is in the back yard planting tulip bulbs. Outside the window you can see him on all fours, working the soil between the sidewalk and the house. With a universal nod and tilt of the head, Ann, her mane is Ann, she motions you let yourself out through the kitchen door. You step around and down, approaching the gardener. Without looking up he says, “Come on down and get your hands dirty.”
The lady apologizes for the messy house as she leads you from the foyer through a lived-in dining room and into the kitchen. A girl child in a high chair is busy with a too-small spoon and a bowl of jello. She tells you the man you are looking for is in the back yard planting tulip bulbs. Outside the window you can see him on all fours, working the soil between the sidewalk and the house. With a universal nod and tilt of the head, Ann, her mane is Ann, she motions you let yourself out through the kitchen door. You step around and down, approaching the gardener. Without looking up he says, “Come on down and get your hands dirty.”
When I sit down to write, whatever it is that I want to speak to, be it fiction or reality, instruction or persuasion it all falls into a category we call ‘Story’. It follows, by definition and by nature, that every story requires a Beginning, a Middle and an End. In the first two paragraphs I have put together a Beginning; creating a space in time with familiar imagery and plausible action. With each new bit of information the Beginning knits itself into an expanding backstory. Once enough puzzle pieces are in place the reader can grasp what is going on and follow the story track wherever it goes. The breach between the Beginning & the Middle is where the story takes off. Right here and now I am in that breach.
When the story is straight forward with familiar elements, getting into the Middle (plot) is easy. But sometimes (often) my story moves on a tangent that is neither easy to follow nor well received in my 21st century culture. So a suitable Beginning might call for a boring lecture on the shortfalls of common sense and the folly of of faith in long held myths. I struggle with it. Sometimes I identify with Chicken Little, not with her story but with the response she gets from her peers.
Without merit certainly but I put myself in league with Astronomer & Astrophysicist Carl Sagan. In 1990 when NASA’s Voyager-1 sent back first photographs of the earth from nearly four billion miles in space he coined the phrase, “The Pale Blue Dot”. Until then the very best satellite image of earth was of a massive sphere, too great to appreciate with only two eyes. Sagan went on to describe Earth as “. . . a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” Not that I belong in the same category with Sagan but we share that same sense of fragile awe and of feeling insignificant. Paraphrasing Sagan; ‘We are the residue from long ago exploded stars; breathing, sensing, replicating arrays of stardust.’
If, in my sample Beginning, I had addressed the lady at the door by name, asking where her famous astronomer husband was, and she replied, “Carl is out back planting tulips.” the brach between Beginning and Middle would have narrowed. I feel the need to shortcut the gap and hope the reader comes with me. My story speaks to Human hubris and how much we are like Stone Age people. Any paleolithic newborn magically transported (beamed up) to the 21st century with good parents and opportunity would prosper as well as any other modern child; same brain, same intellect (able to learn). That means we are no different intellectually than prehistoric hunter-gatherers. I’m afraid the glory of intelligence has been overrated. Our shared, dominant ‘Flight/Fight’ instinct has not been updated or demoted since they first started beating copper nuggets into spearpoints. Whatever gives rise to the notion of superiority comes not by way of divine intervention or ongoing evolution but by virtue of technology, accumulated knowledge and dietary advances over the last ten thousand years.
I don’t know why I am hung up on the ‘Righteous Human’ myth but I keep coming back to chew on it like a dog digging up a buried bone. People are compelled (we can’t help ourselves) to believe in some kind of a moral standard. Religion, Politics & Nationalism all meet that need pretty well. That must be it; I can’t help myself. Sagan among other heroes have known that and still find their safe fit in a human niche. When I roll out my story it rings of conspiracy theory and Chicken Little and I really don’t want to do that. I spend far too much time wrestling with ideas that only I care about. What I believe really doesn’t matter beyond me. Human hubris; Carl Sagan knew that riddle was probably insoluble but he took the high road; kindness, optimism and a gentle touch. If I make it a priority I could do that too. I don’t have to prove that I’m ‘right’. I don’t have to be ‘right’. Even if I am, what difference does it make! If I am remembered at all, by anybody, it won't be for a theory. Be kind, do what you can and trust things to work out, maybe not on the first try but keep trying, and gentle is not a weakness. Just the opposite.
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