The Story

The Story

I couldn’t tell anyone about the story. I saw it as too fragile in its trembling tenuous beginning, only the spark of an idea. The idea was too delicate and somewhere inside I thought it was too perfect to exist, would crumble and crack upon exposure. That was the nature of perfection I thought and it was something I thought often about, spent restless nights wondering upon. All my ideas seemed perfect without execution. I thought if only I was an idea I could be perfect too. So that’s why I was terrified of exposing the idea, of seeing its flaws. I knew I should tell them everything but I could not bring myself to tell them this. I had an idea if only inkling and that was the best feeling I knew of. Inside my head there was scratching, scrabbling the idea moved relentlessly, yearning for its freedom. I tried to slow it down, keep it apace, let it out slowly but it wanted to surge, to flow, to surround and suffocate, to consume and become me. Obsession gave pure purpose. Obsession respected time, regarding it not just as space to be filled. Obsession believed in never stopping at mere amusement or distraction. Obsession was a type of pleasure. Obsession made identity disappear. Part of me wanted to give up, to collapse helpless by the idea but I knew he mustn’t, for then it would be obvious. I mustn’t.  I was getting better after all, that’s what the doctors said and everyone seemed happy about it, so I should keep them happy right?

I wanted to write about an author. It’s easier to put yourself into characters, become lost in one’s own territory where you could invent the landscape. It’s easier to write when you could relate. You could spend lifetimes exploring yourself, make a thousand characters and still not find you. You could wholly immerse yourself in the story that way. That was why the main character would serve two purposes. It was easier to write about yourself, thereby facilitating your own immersion in the story and second that was exactly what I wanted to write about happening to the character making it doubly easier for me to write about, for the creative process. The character, the man I was writing the story about would be writing a story. The idea was that my character should have the intention of writing a story that when read, the lines between fiction and reality would start to melt away. My character would crave to make the distinction between reality and art slip seamlessly away, which was also my intention in writing the story itself. Indeed that was the best form of art, art that made you forget it was art, art that fed upon you, art that required so much of your attention you felt as if it was digesting you, that it was taking you, that you were becoming it. That it had taken your now, that it was your now. Yet most will be able to draw themselves back, re-establish the distinction, step back from what was and carry on with the daily but this was not what I wanted to write like. I wanted to write something that had life in it so that it was inseparable, something without ending because in art a good ending defies the meaning of an ending, it stays with you, a good ending never ends. So I was writing about a character who wanted to do the same thing. The character was mirroring my pursuit but the character was unaware he was being used for the exact thing I was trying to achieve. A problem emerged then if I was writing with the purpose of blurring others reality and doing so by writing about a character with the same intention, how could I keep my characters reality intact in the process of writing it? The problem frustrated me, how could I literally keep my character sane and have my character achieve his aims? The problem felt like a physical presence blocking my way. I incubated the problem and continued writing; it would come to me surely as one thing comes after another.

 The words became like dominoes, tipping one after the other, blending together into line into pattern, one brought about the next and so the solution came to me. Why did I need to keep my character’s reality intact in the process of the character writing his intended masterpiece. They would become their masterpiece. They would suffer for their art. They would have hallucinations and delusions. Their art would invade and infect their very life. The character in my story would start to see the characters in his story as if they were real, would be unable to tell the difference. The characters the character invented would harass and follow him, keep him awake force the character in the story to keep writing the story to stay true to his intention. Yes I thought, that was what was needed in the story, a dream and then pain. The pursuit of perfection and the pain that comes in the process was needed, not the resolution of happiness and completion of the intention. For happiness was difficult and tedious to express although beautiful to live. Pain was difficult to live but was beautiful when expressed. Fuelled by my idea, I stayed up into the night writing, writing about a character plagued and tormented by his creations, a character sleepless and bent on a dream and I too became sleepless and bent on a dream. After writing for hours, deep in the night I collapsed asleep amongst my work.

There are three different pills and you must take them once a day, that’s what they said. They’ll slow you down, they said.

But where did the days go, I was still writing, when did one end and another begin? I was still writing.

Why should we slow down?

There’s not enough time to slow down.

I didn’t finish the story. I became the story. I’m not real. I’m a character in a story, a character created by a writer. I’m writing from the hospital now and they’re trying to tell me, I’m real, that this is real, and that I’m not in a story. But I am. I tell them that the writer will finish the story soon and that they’ll see, the ending is coming and it’s a good ending and like I said good endings only end on a page but not in the mind.

It’s a story like this one.