Fiction: An Imaginary Conversation
1. 'That was how they could control us, you see. Because we wanted things. Anything you let yourself really care about, they could find that out and take it away. And that was how they got in. Once they knew you wanted something, even the smallest tiny thing, it was over. They bent your mind until it cracked and you were gone. Hope - that was the weakness.'
'So you decided - '
'So I decided I had to be stronger than that, so they couldn't break me. I had to stop wanting anything. Not even to live, or to die.'
'And did you?'
'I couldn't completely, no. But I tried hard. Harder than most, I think. I tried to make myself invisible. An empty box. I'd see them coming, and I'd just blank my mind. Not look away - they'd notice that - but look right back at them, through them, knowing they couldn't see inside my mind and making myself forget that there was anything inside there to see. There but not there at the same time. And - they'd move on. Looking for the next one.'
'It must have been hard.'
'It was, but that was the easy part. After - that was when it got hard.'
'How was that?'
'Because I'd built myself this invisible box, you see. I had to learn to hope again.'
'And to fear?'
'And to let myself fear, yes.'
2. 'Where was God for you in all this?'
'God was something very small, fragile, very precious. Like a glow-star in the darkness. I had to hide it, couldn't let it break. I felt like I was much bigger than God. Carrying Him.'
'And now?'
'I'm... not sure. Part of me is still there. Part of me never quite escaped.'
'Are you angry at God?'
'I don't think I dare be angry, yet.'
'Because He might strike you down?'
'Because He might break.'
3. 'If you could change one thing about the world - anything - what would it be?'
'I don't think I can answer that question.'
'Do you need time?'
'No, that won't help... see, if I change anything, everything breaks. Is gone. Is no more. Like it never existed.'
'You'd not change anything about your time inside?'
'How can I? It happened. I happened. It's me. Can you unhappen?'
'Hmm.'
'I'd change it, of course, yes. If that were an option. But it's not, is it? Unless you have a time machine.'
'We're not necessarily talking about what is possible.'
'No, but we're talking about what's thinkable. Some things just aren't.'
'A world without - what you experienced is unthinkable? Some would say the opposite.'
'And yet they can say that, which means they're at least able to think about it. Me - take away my past, what's left?'
'Something you're running away from.'
4. 'And now?'
'And now I have to create my life, I guess. Whatever that is.'
'Why would you not know what your life is?'
'Because it's something that can destroy me.'
'I don't follow.'
'To be alive - to really be aware of who you are and what your purpose and mission is in this world - is to have a dream. To have something you really, really want more than anything else.'
'Ah. And that can be taken from you.'
'Not can. Will.'
March 5th, 2008 - 03:21
Why?
March 5th, 2008 - 07:29
I take my portion from Thy hand and do not seek to understand, for I am blind whilest Thou dost see, Thy will is mine whate’r it be.
March 5th, 2008 - 07:50
“Why?”
Why what?
March 5th, 2008 - 10:00
“Not can, WILL”
March 5th, 2008 - 11:16
And your question was…?
March 5th, 2008 - 13:50
And my question was: Why WILL it be taken from you? Why should it be taken from you? Does it have to be taken from you?
March 6th, 2008 - 12:26
3. “I’d change it of course, yes. If that were an option”…………..What would you have wanted instead?
March 6th, 2008 - 15:54
(Bearing in mind that this is, as the title says, an imaginary conversation, and neither the interviewer nor the interviewee are necessarily the same person as myself:)
‘Why do dreams die? Why does anything die? If we knew that, we wouldn’t let them, would we? So ‘why’ is a question without an answer. Here’s one for you: Why are you asking me questions that you know have no answer?’
‘Because I want to find out what you’re afraid of.’
‘No, you don’t. Because you’re afraid of it too. Nobody really wants to face their fear.’
‘Perhaps there’s nothing to be afraid of?’
‘Or perhaps it’s *nothing* that we’re afraid of. What do you say to nothing? To the void? Hello, void, would you like to eat my face? Kind of a one-sided conversation. So no, you don’t want to go there and neither do I.’
‘Some dreams don’t die.’
‘Name one.’
‘Friendship. Love.’
‘Friends change, move away. Love usually turns to breakup, if people even manage it once. Unless you’re arguing about abstract quantities that nobody can actually *touch*. I guess I can’t disprove you there. I’m talking about this world; the real world. Here, everything dies. Everything.’
‘And you want to die too? Is that it? Get the inevitable over with?’
‘It seems like it would save time, yeah. But I’m not sure I even want that. Even self-destruction would require being able to form a coherent desire.’
‘Desire, itself, is something you want.’
‘Right. But there’s nothing left to *see*, if you know what I mean. Nothing I can actually *touch*. The only things left to desire are abstractions, and they don’t help. I want a world I can believe in, that I can kick, that won’t be taken away from me. That can’t.’
‘And no such world exists?’
‘That’s what I’m asking.’
March 6th, 2008 - 16:11
In response to your second question: what I, myself, not the fictional interviewee, would have liked to have been different when I look back at my life:
I would have liked to have grown up without a religious, metaphysical gut-level fear of ‘the World’ as something that would invisibly and indetectibly steal or corrupt my soul if I strayed beyond approved boundaries even in thought. This fear has warped and cramped my life and spirit and is something I have to constantly, consciously battle every day.
A sense of freedom and possibility and just plain common-sense normality is something I deeply envy in almost everyone else of my generation. There’s a sense of connectedness and being-at-home here in my country which other people seem to take for granted, but which I as a second-generation resident of a heavily walled pocket subculture don’t have, and probably never will experience this side of the grave. I miss that.
There are other problems which New Zealanders of my generation face which possibly I do not, or at least face differently, and in the end I think we all have our own separate paths to tread which come from different directions to the same centre. So nobody’s life is really superior to anothers in the absolute sense; we’re all learning different lessons.
But that’s what I would have liked to change; and what still brings me to tears of more than just nostalgia when I look back at the 1980s.
March 6th, 2008 - 21:27
Are you sure “almost everyone in your generation” feels connected, normal, free and full of possibility?
March 7th, 2008 - 08:25
“Are you sure “almost everyone in your generationâ€? feels connected, normal, free and full of possibility? ”
Not in all senses, no. But in this sense, yes.