pattern-ity

okay. so i have established somewhat a pattern to all of my narratives. i think, what i seek to express, via narrative form, is a feeling/sense of depth and its associated resonance. so here's how this is accomplished (over and over) in my stories. it is a secret i stole from many other narratives, but most clearly from haruki murakami's "hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world."

create two storylines. the storylines should have some metaphorical tie to each other, but this is not necessary. in fact, at the outset, it is possible to utilize two strangers living two strange lives. the point is that each storyline has its own desired goal, and each protagonist within each storyline attempts to reach that goal through their own means; there is no direct recourse of one storyline to the other.

the storylines play off each other, often in subtle ways. for example, one memorable detail i recall from murakami's story was this: the librarian (the more poetic existence) sees the changing autumn leaves; and the "encoder" (the more "real" external existence) sees a poster advertising a certain region in japan, with leaves turning red in the fall...

the artful way (and the biggest complexity of writing such a tail) demands that the overall storyline and plot progress through the "bouncing off" and "informing" of one storyline to the other. it is not that you are creating simple vertiginous vertical ties ("moments of vertigo") between two parallel storylines... this is simply straightforward metaphor. you have to somehow add time to the element, so that as one storyline comes to a realization, or a small progression of the plot, this effortlessly reveals something for the alternate storyline...

the conclusion involves the two storylines colliding with and consuming and destroying each other; or, to put it in simple terms, two storylines enter, one storyline leaves. this is a structural necessity, i feel...

all of my stories have this general form. even those which ostensibly have a single storyline actually have an additional "layer" (this is usually provided through the incorporation of "dreams.").

i think of late i have been overly dependent upon dreams. dreams are a convenient narrative device, in that they can express the inexpressible, they can reveal symbolic ties, that you can't state overtly in normal "waking" reality. but dreams, at least in the narrative context, do have an end goal; like any storyline, they need to achieve resolution, which in the case of dreams, usually is the realization of their hidden meaning...

***

i'm having a hard time actually jumping in and writing. and for some reason, i feel an increasing reticence to speak. my opinions (my "mind") always seems to provoke reactions in strangers. like always. i'm not trying to be provocative... i wish people would see that i'm just a lost fish in a big sea; and that everyone is just a lost fish in a big sea. and if that's really true, then no one is really lost after all. the founding fathers who build pretend islands are the ones who should be drowned, not me.

drowning a fish is redundant. and fruitless.