Writing the Hero

I stretch my fingers, touch my toes, and crack my neck before I get going at what I love the most. My joy begins at a table, sitting on a cushion that slides around as I wriggle about and in and out getting a cup of peppermint tea, a bite of homemade bread, or while the tea steeps, I stare at the stove, anything but mindless. I'm looking within, seeking the phrase to describe the thing only I can see inside of me. I'm not a weaver, but then again, I am, nor a knitter, painter, dancer or thespian, yet, words can form the cloth to fit any kind...ah yes, I'm a writer

Words weave yarns into hanging art. They make strokes on canvas leaving colours tamed by a gentle touch. Steps whirl as dancers bend and hands fling wide to complement a single actor, who tells a story on a stage to bring another's life to another's view, and as I toil, I grow in ways to do with the heart. When I'm spinning tales time disappears as the story tunnels and turns and finds its way into the light of a different day. I find myself within an expansion of thought, and become more than I was, never less.

If I'm sad the words are muted, if I'm happy oh they shine. If I'm tricky they become mysterious and I can barely bear to read them. Then there's the silence between the words. As I pick and choose I hear something between. or nothing, and sink to reverie until a story emerges from the quiet. Quick as that my pen spills worlds; their textures any grit. A few words turn them to the softness of a rainbow leaking prismatic beauty onto the sky. Once the rain of words stops and the brightness of inspiration sets, the arc fades, the page turns, and the story moves on. I direct my characters through events and emotions peculiar to each, and begin another chapter.

A couple argues about what to order for dinner, become breathless, then laugh at themselves. The man from the pastry shop brings food, but short-changes them. They run, catch, and chastise him, “Give me my money!” He offers a drink to repair his mistake and he's in his cups. Oh he's so drunk, and lets this slip: “My attic contains paintings by Rembrandt and Picasso, stolen,” and he whispers slyly, “From the Gemaldgalerie Museum in Berlin...and it only took seven minutes,” and they laugh. No one believes what he says, but it's true. The pretty couple live in a three story walk-up near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church...before the church was bombed in the war and it was just a beautiful church, and just like that, we're in Germany in 1936. I make this happen to anyone, anywhere, anytime, and bring their lives alive.

I must get the setting right so I go to to the ruined church. It makes me turn inward, become pensive. The broken building's message is anti-war. I stroll to a tiny pub that survived the bombs' blows. I taste beer that's pure, and eat wienershnichtzel in a bun slathered in sauerkraut, mustard, and roasted onions. I sneeze from the smell, and the thing I must do first is bite the wiener; it's far too long for its bit of bun. In a moment of rebellion against cliche, I say, “I have my wiener, and eat it too,” because I can, because I'm free. And here's something: as I create my story, I understand my world a little more. I become bold, I become, The Creator of All Things.

Emotion runs deep as the pretty couple make love, and in a hurried moment brought on by wild dancing, she gives birth, and now, that sweet baby makes three. They wail and laugh and find peace asleep in a soft bed, and I turn my attention to the dark side. Stories need conflict, and what better, than death. I chafe at such a final idea, still, as easily as day becomes night, I do something terrible, to someone, and they just...leave.

“Better there, than the real world,” I say, and add, “I rarely do the terrible deed. I don't like it, but...but...stories insist I expunge someone I've worked with,” and I do.

I've dressed them, given them a family, and asked if they'd like a pet, perhaps a cat? I know what foods they like, have it delivered for supper from a pastry shop near a corner on a cobbled street, illuminated by a cone of yellow lamplight, and with my little family's bellies fat and their feet up, with no consideration for Rembrandt, Picasso, or pastry chefs at all...BOOM...I blow them to smithereens, because now it's 1945 in Berlin. I swear, those characters insisted on being blown to smithereens. My stories must be accurate, so I wonder where smithereens is. Is it heaven, is it hell, is it something else? I give careful consideration to the word, but no one knows. It's just another beautiful word.

My family dies, and if they didn't they'd create such complications as no one can imagine. It's for sure the brother of the family, with a powerful need in the story, would have no reason to feel enraged about their demise, would never realize beliefs caused war, or think beliefs can change. He wouldn't be aggrieved, nor motivated to move his culture towards peace and love, remove the chains of the awful things they'd had, and even this: the Love Generation of the 1960s couldn't be born, for in my story, that monumental shift in beliefs began with our broken man, in shattered Berlin.

Without death the pages would fill with characters so one's elbow would stick in another's nose. No, some must go to make room for others. A world where no one died would be an unhappy place indeed. If men and women didn't, then cats and dogs wouldn't, or ants and fleas shouldn't, neither sharks nor bears too.

“I'm sorry,” I say as I wield my weapons, “It's for a good cause.”

Writing isn't all wine and crackers around the pool, no, no, it's mouldy cheese and mouse eaten bits around a tank leaking filthy water. Such muck gives me no pleasure, indeed it shocks me to the core, and yet, it happens, and it's not only me. I watched a movie called The Tomorrow War. They killed seven and a half billion people, yet the hero lived to the end. I looked at that one closely, wanting to learn.

There he was, hugging his wounded daughter as their ocean platform creaked and tilted under the enemy's relentless onslaught – though how the cruise ship on fire went careening into the platform to hasten the creaking and tilting, wasn't clear. But that's movie logic, and if they need to bring down a platform, why there's a cruise ship!

Where?

Right there!

Alright! Put the thing on fire and send it careening into the platform.

I make a note: when they ask me to script The War After The Tomorrow War, remember to develop the ship a little better...and hope that part doesn't hit the cutting floor.

The ship hits the hero's platform. It tilts, and the hero and his daughter tumble towards the sea. With flames and ashes all about and groans and pops from tearing steel, the hero desperately holds his beloved daughter's hand. It's slipping! She swings over the final drop. The toothy jaws of the alien snap just below as one of its tentacles wraps a length of bent steel. The hero's grip slips, the alien's too, and the beautiful, battered daughter falls to the flaming sea, even as the ravenous beast falls too, still seeking to chomp the woeful lass's tender, but tough, body. The alien's still hungry!

The hero is unburdened by the need to save his daughter, for she will die. Watching his daughter to the end, he falls towards the burning water. He's saved by a flash of blue light as the world bends his way, and the clock in his time machine hits the allotted moment for him to return to his own time, only a little singed. He drops a few feet and onto his face on the floor of his world's war room. And it was exciting.

But more, the way it played out was interesting. The movie world used the ship to bend the world towards the hero, like I used the bomb to bend the world of Berlin towards my aggrieved brother. I notice a synchronicity of situation between those made up worlds, and the real one.

I, I realized, live in a world that bends towards me. A cruise ship all ablaze won't come to turn the world my way, but an advertisement for a cruise line, seeking a writer, might. As I thumbed through a magazine I had no intention of buying as I moved ever so slowly in the check out line at Overpriced Foods, I might see an ad looking to hire a blogger. How odd I saw that ad just when I needed work! I could apply for the job, and it's a miracle, I start making money writing articles about how to enjoy two weeks in a tiny cabin on a rolling ship, with a partner with diarrhea contracted from chicken enchiladas made by the lady from the barrio, that the partner, in a devilish moment of spontaneous adventure, bought from a street vendor in the beautiful tropical town. And it tasted good. My article tells the cruisers to have patience, the drug Lomotil, and plenty of toilet paper, on hand.

Or this: writers are allowed to eavesdrop to get material for stories, so I'm eavesdropping on a pretty couple with a small child, eating at the WannaGetBig restaurant, in Berlin, and hear about a course on how to sell stories, which has me written all over it. I'm not good at selling stuff, and I take a note. I go, and learn, and start submitting tales all over the place. Whether I'm accepted or rejected doesn't matter much, I'm doing, and I'm growing. This subtle bending of the world my way happens again and again. I just have to watch for it.

The world's not worried about aliens. It's concerned with expanding human beings so their hearts grow, and with that, the world grows. It happens through my ability, and is why I was counselled, “Do what you love to do, and you can't fail.”

When I write, the world thinks: he's being natural, and says, “Him, I'll help.” I show the world I care by using what I have, and the world cares back. It's advantageous to have a world helping. When I catch it bending my way, I must act, be fearless in the spontaneity required, and then, I am the hero of my own story.

In a moment of doubt I wonder if the story of every hero I write is really about me. But then, logically, if the world bends my way, it must bend the way of every person. Indeed, I build characters by observing people, I walk in their shoes, and am astonished at the heroic nature of their existence. My heroes aren't just me, they're anyone and everyone, and everyone's a hero. I'm so relieved.

I craft tales of good and bad, my eye always on advancement, success, knowledge; all things, in truth, I want for myself. My words are a brush splashing a palette from violet to red, placing steps I dance upon, telling stories of heroes and those who pave their way. I weave these things onto a stage that looks a lot like the world, and with every tale of such things, I grow within my heart. Yes, I'm a writer. I observe people and wonder, which hero are you?