The last few weeks have been epic in many ways –
historic, brutal, joyous, heartbreaking…
So many truly dramatic things have taken place that any
of them could well be fodder for fiction.
We had a prison break that involved an unrequited threesome,
and a three-week run – on foot, no less – through the woods and almost clearing
the border. (I could almost hear Tommy
Lee Jones begging, “Send me in coach!”)
A misguided young man walked into a church and opened
fire on the people, during Bible study, let him join them. He killed nine
people and, at his arraignment, each and every family member simply forgave him
for his actions.
Talk of what is racism and what constitutes heritage stall
even as a rash of church burnings revisit the South.
The highest court in the land settled the biggest civil
rights question of the 21st century, allowing same-sex marriage and
giving the LGBT community the same privileges and advantages that other
families are allowed.
The simple fact that couples that have been together for
decades no longer have to worry that if one of them falls ill, that family
members who may disapprove of their orientation can keep them apart when they
need each other most.
It’s little things like this that makes marriage a
social contract that protects all members in the family against petty
prejudice. (Please notice I kept it civil.)
The road to the next American general election is
already looking like a circus act, the kind generally written by Federico
Fellini and populated by the casts of thousands like a Franco Zeffirelli
production. It is funny and tragic, as well as heavily surreal.
There have been terrorist attacks, and unbound
individual acts of kindness and heroism. Shark attacks! Natural disasters!
Volcanoes erupting! Rockets exploding!
For weeks now, there has not been a single boring
moment. It's like the Universe is practicing yellow journalism on us.
Everything here may shake a character or a whole story
to the core. The Muse we all look for can be in the quotidian as much as in magical
moments. Being observant of the world feeds the artist within!
What’s feeding my own creativity? The idea that there
are parallel universes and they may interact at the quantum level. That’s
right: this week I find poetry and music and images of colors and textures and
the nuance of everything fueled by physics and cosmology.
This is partly the basis for one of my stories, and the
research alone is fascinating. The
writing goes slowly, but getting there is still a joy: the repercussions are endless.
The heartaches we have to endure as we live, they help
us grow, but just because their news (over)saturates every media outlet – from print
to broadcast to web-based – doesn’t mean we need to pour all of our emotional
or intellectual being into it. Excitement can quickly turn into something
monstrous and overwhelming.
The year 2015 will be one school children memorize in
future, just like the year 1492 when Columbus sailed the ocean blue. It has already
cemented its place in history. (What
rhymes with 2015?)
You cannot live it and analyze it at the same time, speaking
of quantum physics, so I look for magic in the minute to enhance my own writing.
I do, however, look forward to these events making their way into epic stories
for decades to come and changing the landscape of our storytelling because the
events of the last few weeks look like the foundation of a remarkable literary
movement once it catches on, you grok?
Child, history dropped the mic and walked away...
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