Encounters with Strangers on the Upper East Side

Awe is what moves us forward. –Joseph Campbell

This is a field of play. This is a place where I explore the things in this world that amaze and inspire me. Given the dramatic and wondrous nature of this place, I never find myself short of such things. All you have to do is keep your eyes open and you’ll find plenty to wonder at. Well, at least that’s what I find to be true. So far my posts have focused on the fictional characters that I love and draw inspiration from. There are real people in the world who have just as much, if not more, to offer. Despite the fact that I am constantly surrounded by people, most of the time I get stories from the news or on TED. But every now and then I encounter a stranger who simply sits down next to me and shares an amazing story. It helps to be reminded that everyone has a story and most are worth taking the time to listen to.

The other day, I was out with my friend Ryan trying to find a drink to celebrate his birthday. We had heard about a bar on the Upper East Side that was supposed to have inexpensive happy hour martinis. It was Ryan’s birthday so I was humoring him. Martinis are not usually my friends. Anyway, we found the place easily enough but it was 3:00 and it was not going to open until 4:00. Ryan had plans for a birthday dinner and show with Trent, so we could not afford to wait. Instead, we started wandering the streets. For those who don’t know, Manhattan’s Upper East Side is not the best part of town to look for an afternoon cocktail. We‘re of a determined sort, however, so we persevered and found a place called Jacques. Past lunch and before dinner, the place was almost empty.

There was a couple at the bar when we came in, but it was not long before the female left the gentleman alone with his Cognac. Of course that meant he sought out Ryan and I for company. Now, most of the time when I find myself approached at the bar by someone a few drinks beyond me, my impulse is to get them to leave me alone as quickly as possible. This time, however, the circumstances provided the man an opening and Ryan and I found ourselves listening to the man’s life story. It did not take long for him to get our attention.

He did introduce himself, but I have forgotten his name. The rest of the story stuck with me. He was a man in his 60s, dressed in linen pants and a yellow button down shirt. There was a thin bit of grey hair on his head and an intelligent glint in his eye that was not entirely dulled by drink. Having grown up in Alabama, he moved to New York in 1968 after teaching water skiing in New Hampshire for a summer. His first interview in the city was with Esquire Magazine; he got the job. Three days later, or three days after he started, he was on a plane headed to a conference in Puerto Rico. A shy young man from Alabama just starting out, he looks for a place on the plane to sit. The only seats her finds available are next to the CEO, the CFO and the head fashion editor. Fate smiling? Maybe. Then he finds out that the fashion editor is from Alabama, too! What? Crazy.

From there, my new bar friend went on to run GQ Magazine for 20 years. He opened 17 offices around the world and started 20 magazines. He was there when Ralph Lauren got started and became famous; of course they were friends. Amazing. And he buried 9 staff members to AIDS during the 70s and 80s. Sad. We’ll just say he was a man with an interesting perspective on fashion, New York, business, success, life, etc.

Now, he and his wife have been unemployed for six months and cannot find jobs. This means they have to sell their apartment at 94th and Park Avenue with its 300-square-foot terrace that looks out over the East River and has a pond with statues and a reproducing turtle population. He didn’t get married until he was 49, so I imagine that’s why he didn’t mention children (though he did mention a nephew that works in the White House). Instead, he mentioned 6 rabbits that have the run of his place. He and his wife volunteer for the animal shelter on 110th where Ryan and Trent got Gatsby the Cat last year. He wanted Ryan and I to volunteer our time as well, to come by and walk dogs and play with cats and such. We were all for it. Too bad I don’t know anyone who could afford to take his apartment off his hands. He says it costs him $6000 a month just to wake up. Wow. Still, I picture he and his wife selling their apartment in the city to retire to some beach house in the Hamptons, or maybe Paris.

A fascinating and amazing story, even if delivered with a slight slur and distinctive odor. Of course, as most people do, he had words of wisdom to impart to us: the next generation. He seemed most worried about the danger of us spending our entire lives doing the same thing every day. It’s the most common mistake he has seen people make and he was adamant that we avoid such a trap. A worthy admonition, but not my favorite piece of his advice, nor his. What he kept coming back to and repeating was that we should surround ourselves with people who are smarter than we are. We should endeavor to go to bed every day smarter than we were when we woke up. And he told us that this is the best city in the country for doing just that. I love it. Everyone should be given this kind of advice, challenged to push their limits. Consider this post my way of paying it forward.

According to WorldAtlas.com , New York City has the world’s fifth largest population: 16.6 million people. I know I have a pretty serious ego, but even with a genius-level IQ, how many thousands of them out there are smarter than I am? Meeting this guy just made me anxious to meet all of them. I need to figure out how to find them and make sure I don’t mistakenly block them out or blow them off. Hopefully I don’t need to spend more time drinking martinis on the Upper East Side. Not the way I usually like to spend my Tuesday afternoons. But it is good to be reminded that they are out there, waiting to be discovered. I just have to be brave enough to find them and invite them to share stories with me. I certainly went to bed smarter than I woke up that day. May we all live lives that are full of such days!

New York in the Rain

Heroic Endeavors—Part Three: Return

“I certainly think Star Trek is an example of a science-fiction franchise that at its heart really possesses a sense of optimism and faith in humanity and I think those are things that are never more relevant than they are today.” –Zachary Quinto

Here we are in the final stages of the heroic journey and the problem is that we have passed the new incarnation of James Kirk. No doubt there will be more stories in this new series, but for now I will have to get creative when it comes to providing you with examples. Luckily, there are many other stories about Kirk to draw from. I’m going to use the movie Star Trek Generations to help me. Being circa 1994, it may seem outdated and those of you who have seen it will have to dig deep into your memory banks, but it has the pieces I need. I’ll be as clear as possible. These are the trickiest steps, yet. Make sure you haven’t missed Part One and Part Two of this series.

Return – 1. Refusal of the Return

Once the heroic quest has been accomplished, what remains is for the hero to return to the real world with his prize. Whether he has attained enlightenment, or has rescued the princess, or found the Holy Grail, it is then up to him to bring his trophy back and share it with the world. As in the beginning, when the hero didn’t want to leave his childhood sphere of relationships and connections, he doesn’t always want to leave the bliss found in the presence of grace. It’s a nice place and it is difficult to leave by choice.

Example: In Star Trek Generations, Kirk finds himself in a place called The Nexus. Guinan describes the Nexus to Picard as:

“Like being inside joy, as if joy was something tangible and you could wrap yourself up in it like a blanket. And never in my entire life have I ever been as content… None of us wanted to go. And I would have done anything, anything, to get back there… If you go, you’re not going to care about anything, not this ship, not Soren, not me, nothing. All you’ll want is to stay in the Nexus; you’re not going to want to come back.”

It is a place where the mind has the power to grant any desire and command time. It is the bliss place and while Kirk is there, he does not want to leave. He sees the chance to live his life over again and do everything differently. When Captain Picard seeks out his help, Kirk refuses to return to the real world with him.

Return – 2. The Magic Flight

If the hero does decide to return to the world, there are two ways it can go. One, he has the blessing of the gods. They have specifically commissioned him to take their grace back to the world and share it with humanity. In that case, his return is supported by all the supernatural forces and goes swimmingly. Or, if the hero has stolen his prize or tricked it from the grasp of the gods, then the return can look like a great chase scene. The hero tosses obstacles behind him to delay his pursuers. His allies attempt to block the path and give him a greater lead. We’ve all seen this play out. But the truth of the monomyth is this: to fulfill its promise, not human failure or superhuman success but human success is what we have to be shown.

Example: Let’s go back to the new film for a moment and consider the red matter as the divine grace our hero steals. Kirk teams up with Spock to steal the ship with the red matter and destroy the Nerada’s drill that threatens Earth. Then Spock flies off, leading the enemy ship to the Enterprise, while Kirk is rescuing Captain Pike—they all beam to safety. The Enterprise destroys the missiles aimed at Spock, he crashes the ship into the Nerada and thus a black hole is created which destroys the “supernatural” enemy. A very magic flight.

Spock In Magical Flight

Return – 3. Rescue from Without

But what happens if the hero maintains the refusal of stage one? Someone has to go get him. The journey is not complete until the hero re-enters, with his boon, “the long-forgotten atmosphere where men who are fractions imagine themselves to be complete.” He has to confront society with his elixir of enlightenment; he has to take the blow of people’s questions and resentment and inability to understand. If he refuses to do so, then the supernatural forces that have been helping him all along, will come to rescue him and set him back on his path.

Example: We’re going back to the Kirk in The Nexus (I apologize for the back and forth—I trust you can keep up). Kirk is enjoying the power of fulfilling all his desires, fixing his mistakes, healing his regrets. He doesn’t want to go back to the world where his life is coming to an end, where his glory days are past. But Picard needs his help. Picard persuades him to come back and make a difference in the world again. He persuades him to put himself at risk again to make the world a better place and save millions of lives, 230 million lives.

Kirk and Picard in The Nexus

Return – 4. The Crossing of the Return Threshold

Ah, another one of those thresholds! I’ll let Joseph explain this one:

“The two worlds, the divine and the human, can be pictured only as distinct from each other—different as life and death, as day and night. Nevertheless—and here is a great key to the understanding of myth and symbol—the two kingdoms are actually one. The realm of the gods is a forgotten dimension of the world we know. And the exploration of that dimension, either willingly or unwillingly, is the whole sense of the deed of the hero. There must always remain, however, from the standpoint of normal waking consciousness, a certain baffling inconsistency between the wisdom brought forth from the deep, and the prudence usually found to be effective in the light world. The boon brought from the transcendent deep becomes quickly rationalized into nonentity, and the need becomes great for another hero to refresh the word. How teach again, however, what has been taught correctly and incorrectly learned a thousand thousand times, throughout the millenniums of mankind’s prudent folly? That is the hero’s ultimate difficult task. The first problem of the returning hero is to accept as real, after an experience of the soul-satisfying vision of fulfillment, the passing joys and sorrows, banalities and noisy obscenities of life. The returning hero, to complete his adventure, must survive the impact of the world.”

I think the last few lines are the most important to understand. There have been heroes making this journey throughout time. We know of some and not of others. But they come back and try to tell us what is true about ourselves. They try to tell us that we are all capable of this journey, that we all have this potential within ourselves—and we close our ears and ignore them. Most of us cannot accept that as possible. We call it myth. We put it on a big screen and call it a movie. We put it in a book and call it fiction. And then we ignore it as irrelevant to our own lives. That is our mistake.

Example: In the film, there is an energy ribbon that travels through the universe that acts as a doorway to the Nexus. This is the threshold Picard and Kirk must cross to return to the world. The Nexus also allows them to choose which moment to return to, so they are both masters of crossing space and time.

Threshold

Return – 5. Master of the Two Worlds

The hero has been blessed with a new perspective. He has seen beyond the scope of normal human destiny and been granted an awareness of the essential nature of the cosmos. His personal fate is now only part of the fate of mankind, the fate of life, the solar system, the atom. All of this knowledge has opened to him. He transcends personal ambition and stops resisting whatever may come to pass. He accepts the truth that there is nothing to gain or fear because all things are one. If that’s hard to grasp, consider this metaphor: just as an actor is always a man, whether he puts on the costume of his role or lays it aside, so is the perfect knower of the Imperishable always the Imperishable, and nothing else. That is the hero, whether in the state of perfect enlightenment or not, he remains at one with the imperishable force. The truth is that we are all at one with that force, we just don’t know it.

Example: After successfully returning from the Nexus and saving part of the galaxy, Picard ruminates on time with his first officer.

Captain Picard: Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives, but I rather believe that time is a companion that goes with us on the journey, reminds us to cherish every moment, because they’ll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we’ve lived. After all, Number One, we’re only mortal.

Commander Riker: Speak for yourself, sir. I plan to live forever.

Return – 6. Freedom to Live

The goal of the myth is to reconcile the individual consciousness with the universal will (The Force). Once the hero has completed his journey, he is able to recognize his own relationship with the passing phenomena of time and the imperishable life that is within everything. As Joseph says:

“The Self cannot be cut nor burnt nor wetted nor withered. Eternal, all-pervading, unchanging, immovable, the Self is the same for ever. The hero is the champion of things becoming, not of things become, because he is.”

It is tricky to explain these last pieces. They are deeply spiritual states of being that I certainly have not achieved myself. I have not passed beyond my own attachments to this world of duality where life and death are different things. I perceive change everyday. But the hero is beyond thoughts of permanence or attachment. He does not fear change or loss. He knows that nothing retains its form forever. Nature, the great renewer, is always making up forms from forms. Nothing perishes, it simply varies and renews its form. That is the lesson.

In the broad sense, what does it mean that we have “rebooted” the series? Our vision of time and events is altered because the mythology continues to grow and change. What came before is intact for all who experienced it and it is there for anyone who wishes to experience it in the future. But the great thing about mythological heroes is that they vary and renew their forms to teach us yet again what has been taught a thousand times. We see Kirk die to this world twice in Generations. But he lives again! The lessons transcend time and space. The stories are meant to grow and change as we do. Long live Star Trek!

Our Hero

Heroic Endeavors—Part Two: Initiation

Attention, crew of the Enterprise. This is James Kirk. Mr. Spock has resigned commission and advanced me to acting captain. I know you were all expecting to regroup with the fleet but I’m ordering a pursuit course of the enemy ship to Earth. I want all departments at battle stations and ready in ten minutes. Either we’re going down or they are. Kirk out. –James T. Kirk

In my last post (Part One: Departure), I described the Departure stages of Joseph Campbell’s heroic journey theory using examples from James Kirk’s story in the latest Star Trek film. This will be part two of three in which I will cover the Initiation stages. So without further delay…

Initiation – 1. The Road of Trials

The heading for this stage should give you the basic idea. The path is fraught with danger and pain. Obstacle after obstacle must be fought and overcome. The original departure into the land of trials represented only the beginning of the long and perilous path of initiatory conquests. There will be momentary victories, glimpses of the promised land, unretainable ecstasies. Anyone who undertakes the journey into the crooked lanes of the spiritual labyrinth will find himself surrounded by symbological figures, any of which may swallow him. From Campbell:

“The psychological dangers through which earlier generations were guided by the symbols and spiritual exercises of their mythological and religious inheritance, we today must face alone, or, at best, with only tentative, impromptu, and not often very effective guidance. This is our problem as modern, ‘enlightened’ individuals, for whom all gods and devils have been rationalized out of existence.”

Example: This should be a bit self-explanatory. All of the obstacles and conflicts that Kirk faces are his Road of Trials. Some moments include: the space jump onto the drill above Vulcan, Spock banishing him from the ship and exiling him on Delta Vega, provoking Spock so he could take command of the Enterprise, the fight on the Nerada to save Earth and rescue Captain Pike, etc.

Kirk's Road of Trials

Initiation – 2. Meeting with the Goddess

“She is the paragon of all paragons of beauty, the reply to all desire, the bliss-bestowing goal of every hero’s earthly and unearthly quest… She is mother, sister, mistress, bride… Incarnation of the promise of perfection… The soul’s assurance that, at the conclusion of its exile in a world of organized inadequacies, the bliss that was once known will be known again.” I think you probably get the point. The goddess in this stage is the Universal Mother, a source of desire but also a nourishing and protecting presence. But she also has a destructive aspect. Life and death are both necessary. The goddess is not meant to be greater than the hero, but she can seem to be beyond him at a certain point. She is part of what must be earned in the process of the journey. She is luring him, guiding him, motivating him to rise above his current state and achieve greatness. The meeting with the goddess (who is incarnate in every woman) is the final test of the talent of the hero to win the boon of love, which is life itself enjoyed as the encasement of eternity.

Example: This is my favorite example, because it’s pure symbol. Kirk’s goddess is the Enterprise. Often, ships are referred to using feminine pronouns. Scotty refers to the Enterprise as a “well-endowed lady.” But here’s an excerpt from the novelization that illustrates this point nicely:

“He only had eyes for one of them, its markings stood out clear and sharp against the ivory-hued metal and composite skin: U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701. He remembered the first time he had set eyes on her, unfinished, skeletal, with gaping holes in her sides where her multiple outer hull had yet to be completed. She had been striking then, awkwardly balanced within a web of construction scaffolding on the hard, cold plain of central Iowa. Incomplete and out of her element she had appeared ungainly and graceless, an adolescent starship. Finished and sitting in her service dock she was a thing of beauty. He could not wait to embrace her.”

Kirk Meeting His Goddess

Initiation – 3. Woman as the Temptress

Here enters a different kind of feminine energy. This woman is all about the desire of the flesh. She keeps the hero’s focus on the physical world and the pleasures to be experienced here. Not in a good way. This temptation distracts the hero from his quest and delays his success. “Not even monastery walls, however, not even the remoteness of the desert, can defend against the female presences; for as long as the hermit’s flesh clings to his bones and pulses warm, the images of life are alert to storm his mind.” Sometimes, once the hero has broken free of the spell, there is a feeling of revulsion that’s directed toward all the acts of the flesh, the acts of life. Then woman becomes a symbol of defeat and sin instead of life and glory. But this is a diminishment of her role. The hero must find a way to balance the goddess and the temptress, love and accept both as pure and natural.

Example: Kirk is a legendary lothario. He’s well in touch with the pleasures of the flesh, a consummate flirt. I learned from the novelization that it is Kirk’s affair with Gaila, Uhura’s Orion roommate, which allows him to “cheat” on Spock’s test, thus landing him on probation. Uhura is another temptation for Kirk, but she is the unattainable one.

Kirk with His Temptress

Initiation – 4. Atonement with the Father

The son must grow in to his birthright and take his father’s place. One cannot be reliant upon a parent’s nurturing or protection, nor can one suffer their judgments or punishments. The time has come for the hero to be fully his own person. This requires accepting the dualities of the father—vengeful and merciful, arbiter of justice and wrath. For the son, the father is a sign of the future task. For the daughter, he’s a sign of the future husband. The father can’t pass along the duties of his office to a child who isn’t ready. The son must be able to rule justly without motives of self-aggrandizement, personal preference, or resentment. This is the moment where the hero achieves a perspective on the tragedies of life and lets go of his judgment about them.

Example: Since his real father is dead, we’ll use the moments when Kirk rescues Pike from the enemy ship and then relieves him as Captain of the Enterprise, thus taking on the role that his father assumed just before he died.

Initiation – 5. Apotheosis

Boom. Hero achieves his godlike potential. He transcends ignorance, fear, change. Pain and pleasure do not enclose him, he encloses them—and with profound repose. God is love, that He can be, and is to be, loved, and that all without exception are his children. This is not a state that is necessarily meant to be maintained. We are still talking about a human journey. Some of us have experienced moments of illumination, moments of broadened perspective and understanding. But we don’t stay there. These moments are meant to be drawn upon later, reminders to us of what is possible to achieve. But this isn’t a way of functioning in the world on a day-to-day basis. Once the hero attains this place, the task becomes holding onto it as best he can. Reminding himself that the people he encounters are merely lost souls and that we all have this godlike potential, we’re just not all aware of it, or in the same place along the path. But the truth is that the sufferer within us is that divine being as well. We and the protecting father are one. And, that protecting father is every man that we meet. So the “hero does not abandon life—he perceives without the same ocean of being that he found within. And he is filled with compassion for the self-terrorized beings who live in fright of their own nightmare.” The agony of breaking through personal limitations is the agony of spiritual growth.

Example: I’m not sure Kirk has one of these moments during the course of the film. But there are two places near the end where a more experienced and level-headed Kirk is shown. One, after escaping from the Nerada with Captain Pike, upon observing a moment between Spock and Uhura:

“The briefest of glances was exchanged between the Enterprise’s science officer and its communications chief. No one noticed it but Kirk. Varying from the sly to the snide several suitable comments took shape in his mind. Ultimately he voiced none of them. Like lightning, maturity can strike anyone unexpectedly and at the most peculiar moments.”

And then when he offers assistance to the crew of the Nerada as their ship is going down. A show of mercy. Not exactly an apotheosis, but a sign of a broader perspective. There are undoubtedly more films to come in the series. I am sure he will get there.

Initiation – 6. The Ultimate Boon

Gods and goddesses in the mythical realms are not meant to the be the end in themselves. They are guardians or bestowers of power. They have the elixirs of life, the creative fire, the grace of immortality to give the hero. What the hero seeks from them is their grace, the power of their sustaining substance. The gods can either choose to give the power to the hero who has overcome all his obstacles to reach them, or he may have to trick them in order to get it, as Prometheus did to Zeus. “When is this mood even the highest gods appear as malignant, life-hoarding ogres, and the hero who deceives, slays, or appeases them is honored as the savior of the world.”

Example: At the end of the film, James Kirk is made captain of the Enterprise by the threshold guardians—Starfleet Academy Administration—who were operating against him at the beginning. And Spock, who was his accuser, has become his friend and first officer. The Enterprise, his goddess, is under his command.

That’s it for the stages of Initiation. Think we’re done? Not yet! There’s still one phase left: The Return. I’ll continue next time…

Kirk as Captain of the Enterprise

Heroic Endeavors–Part One: Departure

Where there is a way or path, it is someone else’s path. –Joseph Campbell

The first time I read the above quotation my brain gave a hearty and resounding YES! I have never been one for following any kind of traditionally prescribed path. The idea that most people do something in a particular way has never seemed like a valid reason for me to do it that way. Guess I haven’t grown out of my rebellious stage, yet. I will do as Robert Frost suggested and choose the less-traveled road. We don’t need no stinking path!

And yet… And yet…

For many years now I have been fascinated by Joseph Campbell’s work on the heroic journey. Once I learned how to see the underlying structure, I suddenly couldn’t help but see it everywhere. And not just in fiction or mythology either. A few years back I wrote out my best friend’s personal heroic journey using the outline. He hasn’t achieved godhood, yet, so it’s not done, but he has time and the potential. We all have the potential. That’s kind of the point. It’s a path for everyone, as well as Christ, Buddha, Shiva, Frodo Baggins, Anakin Skywalker and Harry Potter.

Anyway, as I plan to spend a good deal of time talking about Campbell’s outline here in this blog, it seems appropriate to offer a kind of beginner’s course for those of you who are unfamiliar. In his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell theorized that mythologies from around the world and throughout history share a fundamental structure, which he called the monomyth. The monomyth has three main stages: Departure, Initiation, Return. Some classic examples of the monomyth that Campbell used to illustrate his ideas include the stories of Osiris, Prometheus, the Buddha, Moses, and Christ, although Campbell cites many other classic myths from many cultures which rely upon this basic structure. Here’s a snippet from his introduction:

“The whole sense of the ubiquitous myth of the hero’s passage is that it shall serve as a general pattern for men and women, wherever they may stand along the scale. Therefore it is formulated in the broadest terms. The individual has only to discover his own position with reference to this general human formula, and let it then assist him past his restricting walls. Who are his ogres? Those are the reflections of the unsolved enigmas of his own humanity. What are his ideals? Those are the symptoms of his grasp of life.”

Remember that myths speak in a symbolic language. They’re metaphors, not to be taken literally. I’ll be dividing this into three separate blog posts in hopes of making it accessible. And I’ll be taking my examples from James Kirk’s journey in the new Star Trek film because it’s fresh and convenient and I think it will make sense even if you haven’t seen the movie. So, we begin with the five stages of the Departure.

Departure – 1. The Call to Adventure

Fairly self-explanatory, the first step is to call the hero. Some event marks a shift in the unsuspecting hero’s life. This is the beginning of a transfiguration—a rite, or moment, of spiritual passage. When the passage is complete, it amounts to a dying and a birth. For the hero, his familiar life has been outgrown. It is time for him to let go of old patterns, beliefs, concepts, ideals, emotional connections, etc. Sometimes it appears as a blunder, apparently the merest chance, reveals another world. Other times, a herald may appear who calls the hero forth.

Example: Kirk gets into a bar fight and serendipitously runs into Captain Christopher Pike, who urges Kirk to get out of his own way and enlist in Starfleet.

Departure – 2. The Refusal of the Call

So, maybe the hero isn’t too excited about giving up everything he’s ever known in order to go on some dangerous adventure whose reward is uncertain. Joseph says: this refusal represents “an impotence to put off the infantile ego, with its sphere of emotional relationships and ideals.” But, not all who hesitate are lost. And sometimes, the refusal is about being unwilling to respond to anything but the deepest, highest, richest answer to the question of destiny.

Example: Kirk tells Captain Pike that he has no interest in joining Starfleet. As “the only genius-level repeat offender in the Midwest” Kirk is safe and unchallenged.

Departure – 3. Supernatural Aid

This is the wizard, hermit, shepherd, smith, Jedi, guide, teacher, ferryman, conductor of souls to the underworld. He comes along to give the hero amulets and talismans of protection so that he can complete his journey. Even to those who have apparently hardened their hearts, the ageless guardians will appear to get them on their way. Sometimes they even come along for a bit of the ride. Their purpose is to show the hero what he is capable of achieving, giving him the opportunity.

Example: Pike responds with: “Do you feel like you were meant for something better? Something special? Enlist in Starfleet… You understand what the Federation is don’t you? It’s a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada. It’s important.” Later, when Pike is leaving the ship under Spock’s command, he raises Kirk to second-in-command, helping him on his way to becoming captain of the Enterprise.

Departure – 4. The Crossing of the First Threshold

I’ll let Joseph’s words sum this stage up:

“With the personifications of his destiny to guide and aid him, the hero goes forward in his adventure until he comes to the “threshold guardian” at the entrance to the zone of magnified power. The first, or protective aspect of the threshold guardian: one had better not challenge the watcher of the established bounds. And yet—it is only by advancing beyond those bounds, provoking the destructive aspect of the same power, that the individual passes, either alive or in death, into a new zone of experience. The adventure is always and everywhere a passage beyond the veil of the known into the unknown.”

Example: Kirk’s first threshold is probably leaving the Midwest via shuttlecraft to join Starfleet, thus leaving his previous life behind. But, to use an example with threshold guardians, I’ll use the example of his journey to the Enterprise. He’s on academic probation at that point, so there are forces trying to keep him on the ground. He risks a great deal by joining with Dr. McCoy in a subterfuge that gets him on board. But that is the moment that he truly leaves Earth for space, the final frontier. Space is one of our greatest unknowns. But he is the bold adventurer and he has allies. Pike is on that ship.

Departure – 5. The Belly of the Whale

This is the point where we head deep into metaphoric waters. Remember the story of Jonah being swallowed by the whale? That’s where we get our heading. The belly of the whale is a symbol of the worldwide womb, which is itself a symbol of a zone of rebirth. It is a place where one goes to realize or remember one’s true nature. A worshipper passes into a temple to be quickened by the recollection of who and what he is, dust and ashes, unless immortal. It is a form of self-annihilation. “Allegorically, then, the passage into a temple and the hero-dive through the jaws of the whale are identical adventures, both denoting, in picture language, the life-centering, life-renewing act. No creature can attain a higher grade of nature without ceasing to exist.” Many times the hero is severely physically wounded at this stage, dismembered, even slain, scattered over land and sea.

Example 1: Kirk descending into the hall for a trial in front of all of his peers. He is accused of cheating, placed on academic probation, and stripped of his privileges. He is reminded that he is under the power of the Starfleet administration.

Example 2: A slightly more interesting and provocative example of this stage might be when Spock banishes Kirk from the Enterprise and exiles him on the ice planet, Delta Vega. This is a more complete separation from his world. He is alone and threatened by the great red crab-squid from hell. He finds refuge in a cave with a wizened elder who tells him that his place is on the bridge of the Enterprise as her captain.

That’s it for the Departure stages of the monomyth. I’ll leave you with that for a few days before continuing with the Initiation stages.

Chris Pine as James T. Kirk Before Joining Starfleet

Where to Begin? With the Bones

“This book is only my first step and above all a means of acquiring a voice, of making myself heard. What I shall have to say when I acquire that voice does not need explanation… I fully realize that I am a very green, very helpless beginner who has the arrogance of embarking, single-handed, against what many call the irrevocable trend of our century… I do not know of a better way to make my entrance into the battle. I believe that man will always be an individualist, whether he knows it or not, and I want to make it my duty to make him know it.”
–Ayn Rand, in a letter to H. L. Mencken about We the Living

Many times I have seen authors interviewed and asked where they get their ideas. Some of them know the answer to the question and some don’t. Some credit a divine and mysterious source that is as elusive as it is inexplicable. As for me, I can tell you exactly when and how Slave to Virtue began. In one sense, it began 10 years ago, but as I never intended to write a book about that experience, I attribute the inspiration to an episode of the FOX show Bones.

As a huge fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, I gave Bones a shot because of David Boreanaz who plays FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth. I kept going because I admire the Temperance Brennan character. Going back to the Keirsey temperament sorter, she would be a thinking type like me, but heavily sensation over intuition. That’s why the intuitive-feeling Booth is such a great complement to her character. But that’s a topic for another time.

In the first season of the show, in an episode called The Man in the Fallout Shelter, the cast gets quarantined in the lab over Christmas. It is here we first find out that Booth has a son that no one knew about.

“I have a kid, too. His name is Parker. He’s four years old. His mother wouldn’t marry me.”

It’s an intense and dramatic show, so my emotional reactions were heightened already, not to mention the fact that it was one of those Christmas episodes that are specifically designed to gushify the audience, but that one line had an incredible and unforeseen effect on me. One of the amazing things that fiction can do for us is to clarify issues that in our own lives are muddy and complicated. Because the feelings I have for Agent Booth are straightforward and easy, not remotely personal, I was able to react to that statement with nothing but compassion. That’s not something I had been able to do for the person in my life that could fully empathize with Booth’s feelings. Once the compassion was awake in me, it became increasingly clear that I needed to write the story of my experience. Initially, it was mostly about healing my own wounds rather than exposing them to the world. But I ended up somewhere else.

First, I spent two months writing the story. I tried to keep it focused on the simple experience of a pregnant woman who does not want to be a mother dealing with a man who wants to be a father. I had intended it to be a short story, but I am stocking up on evidence that I’m not very good at expressing myself in that format. The first draft, done in June, was more than 35,000 words, already way beyond short story, at the far end of the novella standards and well on the way to becoming a novel. Here’s a loose guideline of industry standards for those unfamiliar:

Short Story 2,000-7,000 words
Novella 7,000-40,000 words
Novel 45,000-150,000 words

I was not aware of how far I’d gotten until September. At that point I was working on my revisions and adding in an entirely new character. It was clear then that the story was going to be much longer than I had originally intended (it’s at 95,000 currently). When I went back to look at these industry word counts last fall I realized that the story had become my first book. I should mention that I was already working on a book before I started Slave to Virtue. Symphony was supposed to be my first. But somehow, even though I’ve been working on Symphony for several years—I started it before I left Colorado—I never felt like a full-fledged writer until I realized what Slave to Virtue was. Something about having a draft, a full outline, a strong purpose and well-defined theme cemented the idea for me. Perhaps it was more that the end was within sight and grasp. It was an exhilarating and frightening feeling. But there was something else that helped me at the time.

I was rereading Ayn Rand’s first novel We the Living. I’ve read both Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead several times, but this was only the second time I had picked up We the Living. Here’s an excerpt from Leonard Peikoff’s Introduction to the 60^th Anniversary Edition:

“Not a single one of her stories pertained to Russia, which she hated. It was something of a paradox to her, therefore, that she set her first novel in Soviet Russia. Part of the explanation is that, having finally escaped to the United States, she had to get Russia out of her system.”

This passage resonated with me because, as I said, I had never intended to write a book about my personal background, either. In Ayn Rand’s foreword to the book she says:

“I want to say that We the Living is as near to an autobiography as I will ever write. It is not an autobiography in the literal, but only in the intellectual sense. The plot is invented; the background is not… My view of what a good autobiography should be is contained in the title that Louis H. Sullivan gave to the story of his of his life: The Autobiography of an Idea. It is only in this sense that We the Living is my autobiography and that Kira, the heroine, is me. I was born in Russia, I was educated under the Soviets, I have seen the conditions of existence that I describe. The particulars of Kira’s story were not mine; I did not study engineering, as she did—I studied history; I did not want to build bridges—I wanted to write; her physical appearance bears no resemblance to mine, neither does her family. The specific events of Kira’s life were not mine; her ideas, her convictions, her values were and are.”

I could sum up Slave to Virtue in similar sentences. This gave me a wonderful new perspective on my story and an overwhelming feeling that I was writing the perfect first novel for me. It was clear that it was the story that I needed to tell before I could tell any others. And it was tremendously satisfying to consider myself in the company of Ayn Rand. If Slave to Virtue is to be my We the Living, I will be proud and grateful.

Before I close this discussion of the story, there’s a few more things I want to say to fellow writers who are engaging in a creative discussion with their own personal history as I have done. Parts of the process are excruciating. It’s a bit like shoving a knife into a scar in an attempt to experience the original wound all over again. It’s brutal. In the end, I found it cathartic. But I also found that while my own wounds surrounding the history were healing, I could see with increasing clarity how many steps back I needed to take. Writers use the phrase “killing your babies” to describe the necessity of editing out your favorite parts for the sake of the story. I think this is even more difficult when you find yourself removing pieces of a story that’s part of your personal history. It’s a sad feeling when you cut an entire character from your story, a character based on someone important to you, a character that was a crucial part of your personal story. But these sacrifices are sometimes necessary when you respect the integrity of the story above historical accuracy. A fiction writer must have that kind of perspective.

Once the first draft was done and I felt like the necessary internal work had been done, I took several steps back and approached the story from a more objective distance. The story is the better for it. The Allyssa character remains very close to me. She shares my feelings about the situation, at the time, and also the wisdom I’ve gained from the time since. That the events of the story are not an accurate portrayal of what happened is irrelevant. The lessons learned are the same. The moral of the tale is intact and hopefully more widely accessible for people who are in similar situations. Stories benefit from a clear focus on what the core issue is. And to this day, a big part of the Slave to Virtue story is the necessity for compassion towards the father when dealing with an accidental pregnancy. And I owe that compassion to Seeley Booth.

David Boreanaz as Special Agent Seeley Booth

From Gabriel to Sylar: How to Create a Killer

“We’re all at war with ourselves—that’s what it means to be human.” –Sylar, It’s Coming

One great thing about being a writer is the imperative to create worlds to dwell in. We create characters to play with, talk to, fall in love with. The escapes that our audiences retreat to we get to experience twice; we are our own audiences first. I want to write stories about people that I think would be great to know because in the process, the characters become real parts of my life. Then I get to introduce them to the world.

Just recently, I became a fan of the NBC show Heroes. I quickly devoured all three seasons (more than once actually) and while Peter Petrelli is my favorite hero, I give Sylar the award for best part of the show. Watching that incredibly dark villain take shape was so much fun that I just kept thinking: I want one. I want to create a character who is that kind of wrong. I think playing with a character like that will be extremely fun, especially pitting them against my protagonist. There might be a sadist hidden in me somewhere.

So what does it take to create a character as dark and deeply disturbed as Sylar? We begin with Gabriel Gray, a shy, unassuming man whose apartment is filled with books. This speaks to a rich inner life, but perhaps a sense of isolation from the world. He has a talent for intuitively understanding how things work, which initially manifests itself as an ability to fix watches. In I Am Become Death, Gabriel explains: “If you can understand the complexities of a watch you can understand anything, everything, cause, effect, action, reaction.” But more than that, his “ability is not just understanding how things work, there’s a hunger that comes with it to know more, to have more. [He] couldn’t control it and it turned [him] into a killer, a monster.” The understanding alone was not enough of a power. In Six Months Ago, Gabriel tells Chandra Suresh that a part of him always wanted to be special:

“When I was a kid, I used to wish some stranger would come and tell me my family wasn’t really my family. They weren’t bad people, they were just insignificant, and I wanted to be different, special. I wanted to change, a new name, a new life. The watchmaker’s son became a watchmaker. It is so futile and I wanted to be important.”

One key moment is when Chandra responds by telling him that he is important. This is everything he wants to hear. There’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting to be special or significant. It’s a natural human desire that most of us share. We want to be important and to make a difference in the world. For so long, Gabriel found himself powerless to break out of his mundane life spent fixing watches. Then he learns that there are people in the world with amazing abilities and his talent for understanding also gives him the power to take those abilities from them. Unfortunately, he has to kill them, fairly gruesomely, in order to do so. (I am intentionally refraining from going in to the exceptions to that rule.) In an interesting turn, the first person Gabriel meets with a special ability doesn’t want it and asks him if he can make it go away. Granted, I’m sure he would have preferred to live, but I digress. Gabriel thinks the man is “broken” for wanting the power to go away. He “fixes” it for him. This is also the first time he calls himself Sylar.

Later, when he goes to Chandra to show off his new ability—telekinesis—he says: “I’m different now. I feel I’ve been given a chance to start over—new life, new identity, new purpose.” These are all the things he said he wanted. Even so, he does not immediately become a relentless killer of people with abilities. In the episode Villains, we see that he feels intense guilt and remorse for what he’s done and attempts to take his own life. He explains, “I’ve done something unforgivable…  A man had something that I wanted, but I took it at a terrible price.” That his suicide attempt fails initially looks like providence and a second chance for him to be a good person. It’s important to recognize that his vision of himself at this point is as a victim. He says, “I have a kind of problem. I guess you could say I’m like addict. I have this overwhelming hunger; I covet the abilities of others.” That Sylar sees himself as weak, as someone with an uncontrollable power, leaves him vulnerable to the malign forces that are plotting against him. They place the prey he covets within his grasp, and he falls, unable to resist the temptation. Sadly, he repeatedly finds himself at the mercy of people who want to manipulate him and is thus unable to find any lasting redemption.

It is the victim mentality that fuels the desire for power. He can never have enough power to feel complete because all of his worth is determined by others. He exists in a state of perpetual powerlessness. An incredible neurosis for someone so supernaturally powerful. But he is never fully in control of his own destiny. All of his attempts at redemption fail because they rely on approval from an outside source. So the best he can do is to feed his homicidal urges willingly because that gives him the illusion of control and fighting against them doesn’t work. I think that makes it easier for us to pity him when he says things like “I want to be a good person.”

Chronologically, all that I’ve outlined happens before the show starts. For the first half of the first season all we see and hear of Sylar are the stories of the carnage he is leaving in his wake. He is a bogeyman, killing and disappearing into the shadows. All we know is that his modus operandi is to slice off the top of people’s heads. We are led to see him as a vicious psychopath. That’s not far off either. He’s killed almost 50 people that we know about by the end of season three. And yet, the first time we get a good look at him is in a flashback. He is sitting at his desk in his shop with his special watchmaker glasses on, looking young and innocent, charming and endearing. (It’s no accident that he’s played by the extremely attractive Zachary Quinto; we do like our bad guys sexy.) The first thing he does is fix Chandra’s watch and then refuse compensation: an act of generosity. So, despite the terror he is causing in the present, we cannot simply write him off as a monster. Zachary said of the character: “He’s definitely somebody that has been overcome by a hunger and overcome by a pursuit for power and for importance that did start a little more innocuously than it evolved into.” He has also said:

“The sad part is he’s well-intentioned. He wants to improve his life. He wants to make a difference. He wants to matter. Through the process of realizing how to do that, he gets blinded and loses himself in the pursuit of it and goes a little crazy—a ‘little’ being an understatement.”

Again, in The Hard Part, he comes to a crossroads. Sylar has a vision of the future and believes he is going to destroy half of New York City. He reaches out for help. He says, “I understood it before: the killing. I had a reason: take what others didn’t deserve. It was natural selection.” But facing an apocalypse that kills half the city in an instant, he cannot grasp a motive. “They mean nothing, they’re innocent, there’s no gain, so why would I do it? What possible reason could I have for killing so many?” His conscience is still active and he sees innocence in the world. So how monstrous is he really? Can an entirely evil character conceive of innocence? Recognize it?

In a truly heartbreaking scene, Gabriel goes to his mother looking for answers and a way out. He expresses a desire to stop himself. Here are the two lines of dialogue that mark the moment when you think everything could have changed:

Gabriel to his mother: Maybe I don’t have to be special—that’s ok to just be a normal watchmaker. Can’t you just tell me that’s enough?

Gabriel’s Mother: Why would I tell you that when I know you can be so much more? If you wanted, you could be president.

(This is like that moment in Revenge of the Sith when Yoda tells Anakin to “let go of all that he fears to lose.” Less than helpful.)

As an audience member, you wish his mother could have told him what he needed to hear. It is clear to us that the life of a watchmaker would have been preferable to the other path laid before him. His mother had the chance to save him and instead put a condition on her love, planting in his mind the belief that he has to be special to be worthy. And not just special, her mention of being president is significant. Not only is it a position of global power, but one attained by winning a popular majority. The country must judge you worthy of that position, declare you valuable. External validation is necessary. So even if he could get to the point where he considered himself special, it would not be enough. That becomes clearer as the scene continues and he tries to show his mother that he is special and that he can do extraordinary things. At first, she is enchanted, but fear quickly takes over and she runs away from him. In the episode I Am Sylar, he tells how he felt in that moment: “I wanted you to die. The way you looked at me, like I was some kind of monster. I felt so small.”

So these are our keys. My philosophy for creating a character like this is take a whole person and start hacking away at them, sort of like Gabriel fracturing himself by creating the alternate persona, Sylar. How does a person respond when they don’t get unconditional love from their parents? How does a person respond when all their attempts at achievement gain them nothing? How does a person respond to feeling powerless? Or powerful? In a world that champions celebrity, people of significance and power, how does an unremarkable person leave a mark? If a person perceives himself as a victim, how will he take his revenge upon the world? How many times will a man attempt to redeem himself when every effort fails? If you strip away everything that someone cares about, how quickly will they fall to the dark side? What is it that keeps some people in check? What happens if you take those limits away? Where is the point of no return?

Let’s also use another one of Zachary’s insights into the character: “I would say we both have a desire to be valued. My desire to be valued is manifested in cultivating relationships with my friends and family. Sylar’s desire to be valued manifests itself… well, in a murderous rampage.”

That’s an amusing statement, but I think what’s most interesting is that it reveals how closely we can brush that dark side within ourselves. How far away is it at the beginning, at that moment when the choice is made? We all have the potential for good and for bad. What happens when we find ourselves incapable of forming relationships with people that will value us? How long can a person endure that kind of isolation? That the desire has the same root is what makes it possible for us to conceive of acting out the darker aspects of ourselves, even if it is only through fiction. Perhaps, hopefully only through fiction.

We all crave love and acceptance. It is easy to believe that the only way to get those things is by being important, special, setting oneself apart, by being different. Then, in the race for power and glory we forget what we were after in the first place. If a child is brought up to believe that the world is a dangerous place, a place to be feared, that everyone is out to get them, and that they will have to fight others to get what they want, that child will become an antagonist for the world. They will see the world as an enemy, an obstacle. Not hard to imagine them judging the world as wrong and themselves as righteous. Think of an arrogance based on contempt versus self-respect.

By exposing the inner workings of Sylar, I have given myself some building blocks to work with for my own character. I think what’s important to remember is that there are many moments in the series that compel you to feel deeply for Sylar. He is conflicted and lost, clearly deeply damaged. But it’s his inner conflict that gives him his humanity. And while he has moments of vicious cruelty and almost unspeakable evil, they are tempered by these moments of attempts at redemption. I think one of the most compelling things about this character is that he is not wholly evil. He is not just a monster. And perhaps what makes him truly scary is that he is recognizable as a man.

Sylar and His Mother

*If you have stayed with me this long, I thank you. Brevity is a skill I have not yet mastered.

Playing in the Promethean Fields

“A mighty lesson we inherit:
Thou art a symbol and a sign
To Mortals of their fate and force;
Like thee, Man is in part divine,
A troubled stream from a pure source”
-Lord Byron, “Prometheus”

I have recently finished drafting my first novel, so it is time for me to start putting myself out there and creating a presence. I must crawl out of my cave. This place will help me to promote my work and develop a readership as I begin trying to sell the book to agents and publishers. So, welcome to the launch!

This will not be a blog about me or my life. As a writer, I find my internal life far more interesting and worthy of circumspection. Or perhaps, more accurately, the way I internalize the things I find inspirational in my experience of the world is what’s interesting. So this will be a blog about story, the germination, the roots, the evolution, the actualization of story. I will pull apart the works that interest me so that I can forge tools for my own use.

I like the idea of using Prometheus as a metaphor for that forge. According to myth, he brought the creative fire of art and technology to mankind. He suffered Zeus’s wrath and a millennium of unspeakable torment in order to do so. Prometheus’s theft of fire signified his enlightenment of primitive men, rescuing them from the mental darkness of ignorance and savagery. That is the field on which I want to play. I want to be a participant in the creative world, one of the people who provide entertainment, escape, and sometimes insights that change people. I certainly don’t want to write anything easily forgotten. I want to create moments that will stick with my audience, as so many great writers have done for me. So this blog is going to be about how I mine the work of the people who inspire me and through a magical alchemy turn it to my own kind of gold. That’s what the tagline means by searching for the creative fire. Find it in others and it will ignite in you. What you do with it from there is entirely up to you.

I chose the name Promethean Fields because for me it invokes an image of place, a place that is a tabula rasa right now. I can fill it with anything that I want and invite others to dwell here as well. It’s a place where we can sit around the campfire and trade stories. Then what? What can we do with a story once we’ve experienced it? I will use it to fuel my own storytelling. But even more than that, I can abstract ideas and themes from stories in order to enhance my own life experience. I find science fiction and fantasy to be a virtual playground for philosophy and lessons about human natures. And the more I understand about human nature, the more able I am to create human characters that resonate. Here I can show you how to dig down into characters that ignite my imagination and show you how to use their motivations to create new characters. Not only do I use books, movies and television shows, I use the stories I hear from people I know, that I see on the news. All these things are tools and inspiration.

Something else that you will find here is an ongoing fascination with mythology and how it influences our lives and stories. In his book The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell talked about the universal underlying themes of myths and stories that cross the boundaries of time and culture. With his work I can wrap modern stories into a larger context and give them even broader-reaching lessons. The lessons we take from stories and apply to our own lives can help us to achieve greater things, reach higher and realize more potential within ourselves. The world-transcending deed of Prometheus follows Campbell’s nuclear unit of the monomyth: a separation from the world, a penetration to some source of power, and a life-enhancing return. So let’s go back to him for a moment. Hesiod’s works Theogony and Works and Days depict Prometheus as a wily trickster who deserved Zeus’s wrath. Later, Aeschylus revised the myth in his play Prometheus Bound. There, Prometheus becomes a heroic rebel and savior. Zeus is a despot, an embodiment of amoral power that rules without justice or mercy. This is an amazing piece of character evolution. Suddenly, Prometheus is a champion of freedom and savior of mankind. He gave us the celestial fire and taught us the arts and skills of civilization, raising humanity from primitive savagery to a place of greater potential, narrowing the gap between gods and men. The hero’s function is redemptive: by his half-divine nature, his glorious deeds, and his relentless pursuit of immortality, the hero uplifts humanity from its dismal condition and reminds it of its godlike potential. No wonder Zeus was mad.

We’re told that Prometheus could have escaped Zeus’s punishment by simply taking his gift back. But he had a free mind, a consciousness that could distinguish between absolutes of good and evil and he would not corrupt his awareness by conforming to Zeus’s demands. That act would extinguish the light he had brought to earth. In this respect, Prometheus’s intellectual honesty—a virtue—is the quality that occasions his suffering.

Aeschylus was certainly not the last to find inspiration in the Prometheus myth. In the Romantic period, his heroic rebellion against oppressive authority ignited the imagination of a generation being reborn into a new age unleashed by the French Revolution. Percy Bysshe Shelley, in his Prometheus Unbound, saw the suffering of the Titan as an image of the human mind remaining free to explore the universe and liberation despite a physical bondage to tyrannical rulers.

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To live, and bear, to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This alone is Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.

Percy’s wife Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley gave her master work the title Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. Her protagonist defies conventional moral limits in order to release the human spirit, attempting to take the power of god and create life. So what is it that we learn from all these stories that are connected to a single source? For myself, I see what power rebellion has to save us. You’ll see a healthy questioning of authority showing up as common theme in my work. I encourage everyone to question all kinds of authority. Make your own decisions about what you will accept and believe. Honoring your own truth is what will set you free.

That leads me to one final note about Prometheus and my connection to him: According to David Keirsey’s temperament sorter I am an ENTJ (though an extremely borderline extrovert.) Keirsey chose Prometheus to represent the Rationals (NTs). The Rational personality generally has little respect for authority, simply because it is authority. Our respect must be earned and we will willingly act against the majority if our internal moral compass points away from the mainstream. We question everything. I find Keirsey’s work fascinating and I think his book Please Understand Me is an invaluable tool for character development. It is so crucial to understand the different ways that people think, the different motivations people act upon, the wondrous variety of values possible in this world. Understanding others also has the added benefit of promoting tolerance. Bonus.

Gaston Bachelard, a psychologist from the University of Miami proposed to place under the name of Promethean complex all those tendencies which impel us to know as much as our fathers, more than our fathers, as much as our teachers, more than our teachers. I’m pretty sure I have that complex. And here is where I will share the treasures of my never ending search for knowledge through character deconstructions, plot analysis, drawing correlations to the monomyth, exploring personality types and more.

Finally, here’s a personal photo of Paul Manship’s sculpture of Prometheus that resides in the heart of Rockefeller Center, here in New York City. Funny thing, I had no idea this was Prometheus until I did the research for this blog. One of the great things about this city is how it can surprise you; it breathes story.

Prometheus at Rockefeller Center, New York City

*See my More Resources page for links to information about Joseph Campbell and David Keirsey.

*For more information about Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days
en.wikipedia.org/Hesiod

*For more information about Aeschylus and Prometheus Bound
en.wikipedia.org/Aeschylus

*A full copy of Lord Byron’s poem “Prometheus” is available at:
www.poetry-archive.com/b/prometheus

Symphony: Prelude

PRELUDE

Vivace e con brio

“Maestro Cates!”

All Morgan Cates knew of those two words in that moment was that they were her cue to enter the stage. They marked the beginning of the performance and signaled the waiting crowd to applaud. But Morgan wasn’t aware of her reception as she crossed the stage and took her place at the podium. She gave a formal bow to the audience without really seeing them and then turned to face her musicians. In front of her orchestra, all else disappeared from her consciousness entirely. They were turned to her, awaiting her direction. With a lift of her head, Morgan raised her baton and in one unified movement the musicians lifted their instruments. It was the downswing of Morgan’s baton that heralded the burst of sound that suddenly filled the auditorium and enveloped every person in it.

Her deep auburn hair was pinned up off her neck and she was wearing a strapless evening gown that left her arms unhindered. The black silk dress was long and simple, a line of sparkling white gems across the top its only ornamentation. Morgan had chosen it for its simple elegance—a small bow to convention—and the freedom it gave her. She didn’t think of it at all when she was conducting. She didn’t think of how the sharp lights reflected in the stones dazzled the eye or how all could see the muscles of her shoulders and arms as she moved; she felt how tightly controlled each movement was. She was unaware that some glared and sat wishing for the traditional gentleman in tailcoat.

Concentrated fully on the music, Morgan spared no energy for the audience. She was consumed and felt like a virtuoso, playing the orchestra as a powerful instrument. The force of her focused will pulled the music from them to create the sound and the experience. The movements of her body drove the music as if she were dancing with the music itself. Her baton went from great sweeping gestures to small jerky movements while the audience sat hypnotized by the music’s fierce intensity. Through weeks of rehearsals, Morgan had mastered the group of passionate and talented musicians. Now, she brought the audience under her control as well. She knew how each note was engineered to play off the walls and ceiling of the auditorium to strike against the body of every man, woman, and child present; knew how each sound was meant to reverberate off the soul, inspire a specific emotional and physical response. She felt it and had she thought of it she would have expected everyone else to feel the same. She didn’t know that it was different for every one of them; none of it was shared.

This was Morgan’s favorite symphony, but she felt she was hearing it for the first time. She was at once fully inside her own skin—experiencing the physical sensations in her ears and veins—and an integrated part of each musician before her—playing every instrument. The piece was a popular classic, but she’d changed parts of the traditional arrangements to make each instrument’s part clearer and more distinguishable. She felt the new smoothness in the transitions, accomplished by her own knowledge of how each note had to be played by each instrument. She heard her sensitivity to the nuances of the music complement the particular acoustics of the hall. Morgan felt every note resonate within her as her every movement was answered by the sound of the orchestra.

Some of these sensations were familiar to Morgan. They had been there when she was conducting before. But on this night there was some new element that heightened the experience. As if all those other performances had been mere shadows of what was to come, whispers of what she was capable of. She didn’t know if it was because this was her favorite piece of music or if her new arrangements had made that much difference, but somehow the music enhanced all her senses so that even while she was fully concentrated on conducting, intensely focused on the quality of every note on every instrument, she was also sensitive to small details. Her consciousness seemed to have expanded so that she could hear with perfect clarity, smell the polish on the brass and resin on the bows, and feel her muscles working under her skin and the silk of her dress against her legs and back and breasts. At the same time, she was part of everything and wholly within herself. It was a transcendent ecstasy that shone fiercely from her bright blue eyes as her movements continued driving the music. Her musicians were roused by her intensity and played to match it, she pulled it from them, and they bent to her will.

As the music climbed to its climax Morgan felt every aspect of her being rise in answer. Her back straightened with the triumphant motif, her heart pounded, her breathing came labored and heavy, her skin flushed with heat and color—only her hair, still tightly bound around her head, seemed determined to remain in place. All else fell away in the presence of music filled with power and rapture. She felt as if her entire being was delivered into the hands of glory and joy. Her arms lifted the music to fever pitch, then slashed the air violently to cut off all sound. It was over.

Morgan stood breathing heavily, waiting for the final note to vibrate into silence. Then she looked at her orchestra and the world returned to her in great waves of sensation. Her vision lost its absolute clarity and she saw blurs of color as roses flew through the air and onto the stage. The rush of applause from an audience that had erupted from its seats was a harsh attack on her ears that had moments ago been filled by magnificent music. Now, there were people and a hall and a world beyond the stage again. The invisible cords she’d extended to each orchestra member snapped back into her own body, so she was left fully inside herself, and yet felt suddenly disconnected from the moment—past and future had returned. She saw the moment within the context of her life and turned to face the audience; her expression reflected an emotion that could be perceived as an almost inhuman look of joy or at the same time a fierce and defiant pride.

Slave to Virtue: Chapter One

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. –Ralph Waldo Emerson

I

It was her secret.

Allyssa Daniels was staring at her older brother Carter, as she had been for weeks, wanting to say it, anger and shame holding her tongue. She could not tell him. She had to tell him. There had never been anything she had felt she had to hide from Carter before and the pain of this new wall between them was almost worse than the burning shame. Almost. This could not be real. She could not face it. She had to face it. This was the same argument Allyssa had been having with herself every morning for weeks. She was not very good at this internal struggle between the truth and the consequences of speaking. She was always the one to speak the truth, no matter the cost. But suddenly the cost was too high, the cost was inconceivable. To admit what she had done, what she would have to do, that she could not deal with it alone, that she needed his help… The words had the power to change everything, irrevocably. These were words she could barely think to herself, let alone speak. And to speak them to him? How would he look at her? He was supposed to see her as strong and proud and beautiful. How could she reduce that vision? It felt impossible. Allyssa felt angry with herself for being weak. Nothing should be impossible for her.

Closing her eyes, Allyssa tried again to imagine running away in the middle of the night to return five months later when it was all over. There must be some way she had not thought of to deal with it on her own without telling anyone. Surely there was a secluded enough place in the world where no one would hear her screaming. That would be fitting. She deserved pain and punishment for her mistake. If Carter was ashamed of her once he knew, she deserved that, too. She knew she could not hide it from him forever, probably not even for very much longer. He was already throwing curious glances at her every time she came out of her room in baggy sweaters instead of her typically tighter and more revealing ensembles. She was not showing yet, but she was getting paranoid about it. Allyssa also knew that Carter noticed she flinched every time someone got close to her.

“What’s up with you?” Carter demanded, when she ducked out of his fourth attempt at hugging her that morning. He was not usually so pushy, but she was frustrating him and he was not going to let that slide.

“What are you talking about?” she hedged, not looking at him.

“Come here,” he demanded, holding his arms open.

“Seriously?” she scoffed, backing away from him slightly.

Carter growled and grabbed her, hugging her tightly. Ally felt the pressure against her stomach and tried to pull away.

He held tighter, “Stop it.”

“Let me go, Carter,” she snapped.

“No.”

“Carter Aaron Daniels,” she practically yelled, squirming fitfully. He ignored her and did not loosen his grip at all. “I don’t like it.”

“I’m sure I don’t care. You’re my little sister and I have eternal hugging rights.”

She could not help but smile at that. “Oh really? Mom and Dad give you those?”

“Yep.”

Allyssa heaved a resigned sigh and relaxed, waiting for Carter to relinquish his hold on her. He felt the fight go out of her and laughed, releasing her.

“See, now, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” he asked condescendingly. He was playing with her, but she could sense the frustration in him. They were extremely close and he did not like her shutting him out.

He was staring at her now with that same curious and concerned look in his eyes that had been there for weeks, getting slowly more intense with each passing day. How could she continue to hide from those eyes that saw right into her? Of course, he knew she was keeping something from him. Still he did not ask. Maybe something in him knew that he did not want the answer. She thought of how horrible it would be to have him finally confront her and ask, confirming her cowardice. She could not risk that. There was no time left.

“Carter?” she said. Her voice sounded forced.

“Yes?” His gaze became more intense.

“I…” she started, but she could not finish. She looked down, squeezing her eyes shut, wishing desperately that she did not have to say it. She felt miserable and stupid on top of the anger and shame. All these emotions were getting harder to keep from showing in her face and she knew Carter noticed that, too. It was no wonder he was always staring at her. Did he already know? Had he guessed? Was he too horrified by the idea to ask? She could not look at him. Her paranoia was obviously getting worse and now tears were stinging her eyes, threatening to betray her further. That was new. It was usually easier for her to keep herself under better control. She was slipping and the idea made her angrier. It occurred to her that the weight of having to hide the secret was becoming harder to carry than the thing itself. That seemed incredible and made it even more apparent that the time had come to speak. But even if she could accept that she could not allow herself to hide anymore, she still did not know how to force the words past her lips. How had something as natural as talking suddenly become so difficult? She was trapped on the threshold by a fear so intense that it paralyzed her. She had never felt anything like it in her life. Where was her strength? She cursed herself again for being weak.

“Ally, what’s wrong?” His voice was kind, warm, patient.

The tone and the words of genuine concern brought the tears closer to the surface and she had to swallow hard to keep them from spilling down her cheeks. The words she needed formed in her mind but she shied away from them again. They could not be true, not really, not about her. It was wrong. She was too smart to make such a mistake. When she did not speak again, Carter leaned toward her, trying to make her look at him. She heard the movement but did not open her eyes. She was starting to break and she knew Carter could tell. He would push the issue, now.

“Why can’t you tell me what’s going on?” His voice was still warm and soft, but she could hear the sadness and regret, too.

Ally realized that he thought she did not trust him and that thought broke all of her defenses. She had not even spoken yet and he was already in pain. That could not be endured. She could not cause Carter pain. She opened her eyes and looked at him.

He gave her an encouraging smile. “It will be alright, Ally. Whatever it is, we’ll make it right.”

She shook her head. There was no right in this situation. If things were right with the world she would be able to handle it all by herself without bothering anyone else. It was wrong that she had to burden Carter with the knowledge. Her thoughts drifted again to a safe and secluded field or forest. She was convinced that she could live through it that way and no one would have to know. There were natural cave formations all over the Midwest. Surely she could disappear into one when the time came. Somehow the picture of her screaming her agony into a dark emptiness was preferable to having Carter look at her differently for the rest of their lives. She also knew that it was just this kind of desire in her that made Carter say she was willfully independent past the point of all reason. Still, maybe she could keep the secret forever.

He was watching her carefully and he could tell she was trying to pull away from him, again. He gripped her shoulders and kept looking into her eyes. “I get that it’s bad, really bad. You’re the bravest person I know so it’s got to be bad. But I can’t help you if you won’t tell me what’s going on.”

There was a note of helplessness in his voice and that was hard for Ally to take. She had made her strong, protective older brother feel powerless. How could there continue to be new depths to this misery? She could not keep plunging deeper. Speaking it, defining it, making it known had to help. And yet, a part of her did not care, did not want anything that would help. The black hole of her cave was cold and lonely, but it was safe and within her control.

Sensing her slipping away again, refusing to let her this time, Carter gripped her shoulders tighter and shook her gently but firmly. “Tell me.”

“I’m… I’m…” she stuttered, then she took a quick deep breath and forced herself to spit out the word “pregnant.” She turned away from him.

“Oh my god, Ally,” he breathed. He moved quickly to pull her into his arms.

She expected to feel relief, but it did not come. The word hung in the air like a smug adversary that had just defeated her. She curled against Carter’s chest, seeking the solace that he offered but finding nothing. There was no peace for her. The awful truth was that she was not as strong or self-reliant as she wanted to think she was. She was being forced to recognize there were some things she could not do alone. And no, she could not be at peace with that. She listened to Carter’s heart beat and felt the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed slowly.

Carter stayed quiet, absorbing the news. The worst was past for the moment because she had finally spoken the words. The words he had been dreading thinking for days but that had been coming unbidden to his mind with increasing regularity, insidious suspicions that he did not want to face. It did not matter now. His little sister was in trouble and all that mattered was reassuring her.

He held her tight against him for a long time, stroking her long, dark hair. “It’s going to be ok, Ally. Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be fine.”

Slowly, very slowly, Ally calmed. She sought out the blankness in her mind that she had been so carefully cultivating, a wall of black that blocked all she could not face. But the word was on the outside now, taking shape, refusing to be imprisoned again. She felt revolted by it. She could not relax, but she settled into a less desperate tension. Maybe, if she could just let Carter take it for a moment, just a small reprieve. He was the only one she could pass it to. No one else could be trusted to see her so vulnerable.

Carter felt the change in her body, still held against his, and his arms loosened, though they kept her close. “Thank you for telling me,” he said softly.

He pulled back a little to look down into her face. This was bad, he knew that, could feel the barely contained panic in her, but they could face something known. The unknown had been hanging between them for so long. His bright, proud sister had slowly been replaced by the cowering, frightened creature before him now. The changes had been slow at first, the way she had stopped meeting his eyes, then stopped looking at him altogether, or any of her friends, until she spent most of her time alone, avoiding any form of contact. Each day had scared him more than the last, the fear icy in his chest. But she had finally made it past whatever barrier had kept her silent for so long. Things would get better for her now. He would make sure of that.

“Let’s go sit down and talk,” he said, leading her to the couch in the living room.

She did not resist, but her movements were heavy. It felt good to sit down, to ease into the lush cushions. The couch felt warm and safe, especially with Carter there, still holding her close, still directing things. But she knew she was not safe. The word, now spoken, now named and known outside of herself had become an almost physical presence that she could feel following her like a shadow; it was a smirking shade in the corner of her vision, mocking her weakness.

“Have you been to a doctor? Had a test?” Carter asked the requisite questions, already knowing the answers. He was not surprised when she shook her head: No. “How far along are you?” He was worried about the answer to that question because he knew how long she had been acting markedly different and feared how long it might have taken him to notice.

“Four months,” she mumbled. It was easier for her to answer if she focused on the words and not their meaning. The shade laughed, pleased.

Carter had been steeled to control his reaction but a frustrated hiss escaped him anyway. He wanted to yell at Ally for waiting so long, for being stubborn, as usual, but he knew she could not take that from him right then. Most of his frustration was with himself for allowing her to hide. He should have seen it and confronted her sooner. He had failed her when she needed him. He would not do it again. He nodded an acknowledgement and did the math. It led him to a name he did not want to face, so he asked, “Who?”

Allyssa squirmed uncomfortably, “Nathan.”

Carter nodded again. That was bad, but he put further thoughts on that subject aside. “Does he know?” Ally shook her head, lapsing back into silence. “Anyone?” She shook her head again. He sighed sadly and squeezed her. She was tough, he would give her that. Stubborn, but tough.

They both sat in silence for awhile, feeling the weight of the problem hanging over them. Carter looked at the problem objectively and knew the right answer, but he wondered if Ally had been able to think that far ahead. Ally was still trying to get back behind the wall in her mind, but she seemed to have built it without a door this time. She was trapped on the outside where her secret had been spilled, trapped with the shadow imp teasing her with malicious laughter. She started to get restless.

“Ok, Ally, let’s figure it out,” Carter encouraged, rubbing her arm soothingly. “There are only three options in this situation and you’ve already run yourself out of time for the first one, so all you have to decide is whether or not you’re going to keep it.”

The idea of a choice was hard for her to conceive. There was only one option for her. “I can’t keep it.” She said it softly, but her tone was assured. No matter how shameful that truth was, it was the only future she could see living through.

Carter took it in without any measurable surprise. It was what he had expected her to say.

Even on the few occasions when Ally had come out of her denial long enough to consider her situation, consider the life forming inside her; she had never considered keeping the baby and raising it herself. The idea was ludicrous. She was still full of righteous judgment against the rising numbers of idiot children raising children even though it was pathetically hypocritical of her to consider herself so much smarter than them, above them. She had even less reason to have been so stupid. She was not a hormonally charged teenager anymore. Her twenty-first birthday was the next day. She had no excuse for this mess. Regardless, there was no way she was going to keep it and doom them both to a life of resentful mediocrity. It did not matter how offended her sense of responsibility was. She thought she could live with that on her conscience. There was only so much punishment she could accept for the indiscretion. There had to be someone in the world who would be thrilled to take the thing off her hands. But even that thought was aggravating because it meant involving still more people, telling them, asking them for help. Ally sighed heavily and looked at Carter. There was no judgment in his eyes, only sympathy and concern and love. She could not take it. Some strange sadistic part of her wanted him to look at her with disappointment and disgust. It was what she deserved. But he simply looked like he was weighing the wisdom of bringing something up.

Ally forced herself to calm down and prepare for an actual conversation about the situation. She made sure her voice was controlled as she asked, “What is it, Carter?”

He smiled. “Have you thought about who you might want to give it to?”

Ally tensed. She was suddenly terrified that he was going to offer to raise the child for her. Her breath caught in her throat and she could not speak for a moment. She would have to see it all the time and live in debt to her brother for taking on what should have been her responsibility and endure the shame of that forever. Ally tried to breathe.

“No,” she choked out. “Have someone in mind?”

Carter was frowning at her, confused by her reaction, afraid he had gone too far and too fast with the conversation. Gauging her expression, he backtracked, “Ally, if you don’t want to talk about this now…”

“Just tell me who, Carter,” she snapped nervously. Her hands were shaking and she started wringing them together in her lap.

Carter hesitated for another moment before he answered, “Josh and Natalie Taylor.”

Ally knew the shock registered on her face. Of course, she thought, she should have expected that. More than that, she should have thought of it herself. It had been just before Christmas, not two full weeks ago, that their mother had told them about the Taylor’s situation. They were long-time friends of the family that had been trying to have kids for years. They had tried everything there was to try and just before Christmas had found out their last hopes were gone. Modern science could not give them children of their own. Ally felt a sudden connection to them, though she had not seen them since she was a child. She imagined they must feel angry about being unable to make their dreams come true on their own, that they would have to rely on someone else’s generosity. Ally could empathize. And, she could give them what they wanted. It seemed like such a perfect answer that she immediately started thinking of the baby as theirs.

She looked at Carter, “Perfect.”

He was relieved that she saw it the way he did and he smiled at her. He had already managed to make things better and that helped to ease his guilt a little. At least the terrified look had left her eyes and there was a glimmer of hope there now. But he wondered how long it would last. There were still five months ahead of them.

Ally was watching his face. Now that she had seen the answer to her problem, she could relax a little and see more clearly. This was a good path, one that Ally felt certain she could travel with relative ease. Working toward an end where Josh and Natalie got to experience some measure of joy from her trauma was doable. Good could come from this. That idea seemed preposterous, but possible. The shadow in the corner quieted and stilled, but did not leave. Ally knew Carter was continuing to think down every possible path, his mind working out plans and contingency plans and plans within plans. She smiled fondly watching him. They were a lot alike. But it occurred to her that she had burdened Carter with her secret and that was not fair. She could not expect him to endure living with it as she had been doing for months when he had done nothing to deserve it. She would have to tell more people. Ignoring the unease the idea inspired in her, she spoke calmly.

“I’ll tell Lucas and Simone tomorrow at dinner,” she said, breaking his train of thought. Ally smiled wryly, “They’ll need some excuse for why I’m not drinking to celebrate my birthday and New Year’s Eve.”

Carter smiled in response to the new determination in her voice. “If that’s what you want, Ally, you know I’ll be there.” He did not ask when she planned to tell their parents, or Nathan.

The Distinct Heart

The Distinct Heart

You slept late because last night was difficult. As you strain against the sheets you remind yourself that all will be done by the end of the day. You take deep breaths and begin the day. You move through your morning routine – brush teeth, shower, dress – with little conscious effort, but when you reach for your make-up, you meet your eyes in the mirror. Fully knowing what you must do today, you wonder if make-up is appropriate. The one in the mirror knows too much and threatens to lead you into deep thoughts you can’t afford. Staring her down, you apply the mask. You know you feel better when you look better, and the more your face is a mask, the less you will reveal – foundation, eyeliner, shadow, powder, mascara and lipstick (nothing too red).

Though you have no real appetite, you eat breakfast because you have been told to do so. “It’s better for you to have eaten a good meal.” The food is tasteless and it makes you angry that you must eat it anyway. As an empty act of rebellion you leave your plate half full.

High noon – time to go. You check the mirror again – avoid meeting your eyes – and suppose that you look put together. Outside the sky is a clear, spring blue and the air feels soft and warm against your skin. A smile almost reaches your lips, then you turn to see him approaching and you remember. This day is difficult for him too. Take a deep breath and let him come to you. He is forcing a smile. You turn away. It helps that he is trying, that he is here, but you cannot smile at him.

He can tell that you don’t have anything to say, that all has been said between you, and so he remains quiet. You are grateful. In silence you both climb into the car and welcome the distraction offered by the road. Your destination isn’t far. You keep your eyes out the window, focused on something beyond yourself.

As anxious as you are, you arrive before you’re ready. Though you have been warned to expect them, there are no protestors outside and the path to The Clinic door looks easy. There is no one here to chastise you and you’re disappointed. It must not be the popular issue this year. As you approach the door slowly, he takes your hand. Not sure if you are receiving support or offering it, your grip tightens.

Inside all is stark and white and sterile. Your eyes absorb everything in a glance – The Receptionist behind the 3-inch glass, The Electronic Door with remote-access locks, The Stairs that lead somewhere unseen. You try to keep a straight face as you tell them who you are – appointment confirmation, identity verification, and a stack of paperwork. They send you up The Stairs.

The Stairs lead only to a mundane waiting room lined with uncomfortable chairs. Benign pastels attempt to break the monotony of the walls. Tables are covered with dull magazines. You sit down and he watches you fill out the paperwork – name, address, phone number (check whether or not they can identify themselves when they call), date of birth, SS (serial) number, allergies, date of last period, sign (away your soul) and date. Filling in the blanks doesn’t take as long as you want it to. You stare at the black and white pages, then walk down The Stairs to the Bulletproof Receptionist. She’s distracted when she sends you back up to the waiting room.

There are other people in the waiting room, but they’re quiet. You felt better when you had something to do and didn’t have to look at them. When they meet your eyes – looking for communion or understanding – they don’t look long and do not speak to you. Seeking a familiar face, you turn to him and he tries to make you laugh. He wants you to smile, but the laughter is out of place and you look away. The Others are looking at you strangely.

Your name comes out of a speaker on the wall. It’s time to go through The Door. He isn’t allowed down there so you reassure him with a smile as he squeezes your hand. You go alone. The Stairs have grown longer and there is an infinite pause before you hear the electronic clicks of the Remote-Access Door, released by the Bulletproof Receptionist. You expect another world, but it’s only a white hallway. You walk to the end, turn left, and wait again. The waiting room here is small, but there’s only one Other here. She doesn’t look up when you sit down. There’s a red Gameboy on the table next to you, but you don’t pick it up.

A woman steps into the doorway and says your name as if it is a question. She’s smiling and overly friendly, but you feel more at ease with her. She tells you that she needs to do an ultrasound. You nod your head stiffly – struggling to keep a calm demeanor as she leads you to the bathroom. You have to empty your bladder before they can begin. The bathroom is small and close, but you’re alone and almost relaxed for a moment. Washing your hands, you look in the mirror – the mask is still in place. Before your eyes meet you turn off the light and stand in darkness. Immersed in the peace of oblivion, you forget it all for an instant and breathe. Back out to face the Smiling One again.

She places you on a cold metal table. You take deep breaths as she manipulates her machine. Several minutes pass and she apologizes more than is necessary, briefly losing her smile. She pulls up your shirt and exposes your stomach. Though it’s pointless to want to hide here, you know you’re past the point of hiding, but you still feel self-conscious about baring your stomach. She isn’t affected as she squeezes a cold, clear gel onto your stomach and begins pushing it around with a round, gray instrument attached to The Machine. She tries to put you at ease by making conversation but you’re distracted by the idea of what’s on her screen. Then The Beating starts. What she’s looking at has a beating heart. What’s inside you has a beating heart, and now you can hear it. You close your eyes and shiver. Your breathing is labored. Tears threaten and you start getting anxious, but you will not cry. Today is stoic strength – you cannot waver. You want her to finish. You want release. The room begins to close in on you as the Tell-Tale Heart beats against your conscience.

She’s satisfied and cleans your stomach. It occurs to you that there’s a picture now; a picture of the Tell-Tale Heart exists now. Thankfully, you’re not given time to dwell on the idea because the Smiling One tells you that It is 12.1 weeks old. Your mind shifts to the memory. It was New Year’s. The image of his face above you leaves you feeling warm and uncomfortable.

She’s letting you go now – sending you back to him. You see the picture on her screen as you leave the room. The Tell-Tale Heart is all indistinct black and white lines inside an unfinished circle. The world turns black and white and indistinct. You follow the sterile hall back through The Door and up The Stairs as you fight to breathe.

He is still there. Color returns to the world in a rush as the memory continues to play – the heat, the feel of him, the movement, the rush. You feel faint as you sit next to him. He’s checking your expression and asking if you’re all right. You nod your head. You’re relieved that he is here, with familiar eyes filled with love – or sadness. You feel his pain. You are his pain. He takes your hand and you focus on that sensation, blocking out all else.

It’s difficult, but at least today has a clear purpose. Each step is mapped and meaningful to the goal. You feel as if you’ve stepped onto a moving sidewalk. At odd intervals there’s the chance to escape, but no will to do so. Your will was abandoned at the threshold. Your choices have brought you here. The choices made that night, in the moment – the weeks of fear and uncertainty, followed by the weeks of dreadful certainty and confusion – to the clarity of the decision that brought you here. You feel that it’s important to recognize your part, but you can’t feel the weight of that recognition. Not yet, not as you sit here waiting for the end.

He has to rouse you when the intercom sounds your name. It’s time for The Interview. You must convince Them that you know what you’re doing and won’t kill yourself tomorrow. You go back down The Stairs, through The Door, and into The Hallway where you’re ushered into an office. You sit before a desk, facing a doctor with a clipboard. He asks if you have any moral conflicts with what you are about to do. Your head screams What kind of question is that? You say no, because that’s the right answer. Because the father is upstairs, the doctor says that they will ask him the same questions. You keep your expression cool as you wonder what difference it makes. You wonder if you will ever ask. You know you won’t. There will be no more questions between you after today. More than one thing will be left for dead in this place.

Alone again, your memory flashes back to the night that you told him about the pregnancy – about your choice. The two of you were walking back from dinner. It wasn’t far before you stopped suddenly and said it. The words that had been building for weeks spilled out, irrevocable. The sidewalk was dark and cars rushed past. Now the red brake lights of the passing cars are what’s most vivid. As if even now, you deny the meaning of that moment and refuse to feel it. As he held you that night, you believed that your combined will could make it go away. But here you are, and the look in his eyes hasn’t changed – still love, still pain, still a resignation to the inevitable. You see him standing at the counter now, handing over cash.

Once The Transaction is finished you’re sent back for blood work. A nurse sits with you – the needle pierces your skin and the vial fills with blood. When that’s taken away for testing, it’s replaced with a portable IV that’s taped to your arm. The IV would let you move around, but you don’t. You sit and wait for someone to tell you the next step.

The nurse comes back with four white pills. You must put them next to your gums and let them dissolve there for half an hour. Then you must wait two hours for them to take effect and soften your uterus. Then The Procedure will start. You nod and do as they tell you. They send you back upstairs – through the looking glass. You wonder if you’ve finally reached the point of no return.

Back in the waiting room, he is reading. You recognize his favorite book; the one he’s read a dozen times. You envy something so familiar. You haven’t brought anything to do and you know that his book comforts him. You look around at The Others, but none look up. If they do, you find it hard to smile – you don’t know the appropriate expression. Somehow knowing you’re all the same makes you feel worse. He turns to smile at you and you try to relax by reading over his shoulder.

The longer you sit there, the more anxious you become. Fear begins to breed in your mind and you feel your composure slipping. You’re afraid – that it will hurt, that it won’t, that it won’t work, that it will, that you have made the wrong Choice. You feel the urge to run, but at that moment he takes your hand. It’s too late. The fires of resentment burn in you as he sits calmly reading. “Knowing it’s right doesn’t make it easier.” That’s what he said the night you told him. “The right choice is always the hardest, that’s how you know it’s right.” You rage silently as chills set in. They said the white pills had side effects – headache, nausea, chills. Your fear and discomfort make the hours crawl.

When you hear your name you have calmed down, or perhaps just grown tired. You walk down The Stairs and through The Door for the last time. They guide you into The Operating Room and hand you a paper gown. You take off your clothes and put it on. There’s a chair in the middle of the room. It has metal stirrups that you know will be cold.

A man enters and introduces himself as The Candyman. He’s the perfect anesthesiologist. His company is peaceful. You begin to feel calm and your fears quiet. You smile at him as he injects something into your IV. You had forgotten it was there. He holds on to your hand as Others come in to the room. You keep your eyes open, but don’t look at Them. They go to work between your legs – their alien instruments penetrate you – an uncomfortable pressure makes you cringe. The Candyman squeezes your hand and smiles at you. You focus on him, concentrating hard on him because it’s easiest.

You feel little of The Procedure and it’s over quickly. The Tell-Tale Heart has stopped beating, but your conscience still feels it pounding. You’re told to get dressed.

The Candyman stays to help you. Your legs feel strange when you stand up and you’re forced to lean on him as you put on your clothes. When you’re ready, he leads you into a room with four large leather recliners. The girl from the Gameboy room is lying there with her eyes closed. They tell you to relax for twenty minutes, recover. The chair is comfortable and tries to lull you to sleep, but you think of him waiting upstairs and stay awake. There’s no need to prolong the day further. Recovery will not happen here.

Two plastic bottles of pills – Doxycycline and Ergonovine – are put in a paper bag along with a month’s supply of The Pill. All the evidence that is left is handed to you in an intentionally inconspicuous package. You listen intently as they explain the pill regimen you’re to follow for the next few days. You nod that you understand.

They bring him downstairs and through The Door. He comes into the recovery room with a nervous smile. You let him help you outside to the car that’s already been brought to the curb and sink down into the passenger seat. You tell him that you feel fine and stare out the window. The sun is close to the horizon now. The day wanes. Now you can rest.

– THE END –