Leaving Home/Going Home

Tuesday, September 3, 2013:

So, today I’m heading back to visit my dad in the hospital before driving to Portland to catch the train. Dad had a turn for the worse yesterday but was pulled back after it got a bit iffy. It is so similar to what happened to Bon Bon: medications reacting… his sodium levels got too high and this affected his brain function... his heart almost gave out too. At 92 years his system is delicate… his spirit still strong… who knows how much longer the inevitable? The Heart of Compassion does.

            I sat by the fire pit with my brother in-law, Gary, yesterday evening. He’d been splitting and stacking wood for the winter all day and all day I had been parsing sentences: chopping and stacking them too.

My novel, Adriane, is coming into a cohesive form of its own volition. What started out as a rogue elephant is becoming tame. Of course, I never want it to make too much sense because life doesn’t make all that much sense. But I do feel as though, when I read others' works, that there is a point to it all even if the point is blunted and obscure.

By point, I don’t mean that I am preaching anything or trying to make a point, but rather that the characters in my story, flawed as they might be, are rarely villains; even though what they do to each other is often villainous. I am changing the story to each character having chapters in which they are speaking in first person singular. I am doing this because it drives me to find in my heart compassion for each of them no matter how despicable they might be. Admittedly, some are unredeemable, with deprivation rooted so deeply that they don’t have a chance to make things right. While some have a golden spot in their hearts in spite of the poor judgment which leads them into catastrophic consequences of their actions. They too are not heroes, or heroines, so much as they are ultimately human.

My novels are like Jungian dreams: all the characters are the dreamer. I believe it was Andre Gide who said that the artist is capable of the most heinous crimes but does not commit them out of knowledge of consequences… both personal and social... or was it compassion? I suppose that is to say it is because he was aware of his karma and not because murder can be trivialized into a faux pas against society. Karma is a vibration... a series of wavicles crashing of the beach of our intentions, on which we surf, using the boards of our actions.

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