The Last Curse in the Box

February 1, 2014

You know the bitter little Greek story:  Pandora opens the box she shouldn’t (of course it is a woman; Greek writers didn’t care much for women, and Greek women couldn’t write about themselves, mostly, not being of enough value to bother educating) and all the woes that afflict human kind escape to torment folk, far and wide, but there is one curse left when she quickly shuts it again: Hope.  Ouch!

            Yet hope is the anchor, right?  The thing that keeps us going, and trying, and working?  A good thing?  Faith, Love and Hope are triad of belief.  Nothing that takes a long time to accomplish would happen without it – that is the simple truth.

            One of the literary agents in one of my useless writer’s guides says, “Never give up!”  But why do they say this, when they refuse to read any fiction that is not like all fiction already published, that is not another story of another son separated at birth from his father, or someone discovering how to make curry and love at the same time, or discovering themselves through travel?  Better yet, there is a funeral, and the family all meets at the funeral, and we discover… Or someone studies renaissance Florence and so creates a very unpleasant character to pavane through the streets of that carefully-constructed video-game town and do things that are not very important or even ethical…

            Non-fiction is much easier to sell, but why?  Surely the world of imagination should be at least as broad as reality.  Truth surely is stranger than fiction, but fiction tries to keep up, doesn’t it?  Why are the gatekeepers wailing that there are no blockbusters anymore when it is the unusual stories that catch the jaundiced public eye, that are the refreshing change from all the usual let’s-all-write-for-one-another literary conceits?  Sorry, that was a self-answering question.

            People are afraid to take chances, people figure nothing succeeds like success.  It’s fear of the Other, in its many shapes and forms.  Fear of looking stupid.  Ha!  How stupid is that?  Yet the Public knows a good story, a witty story, a true story, a kind story when it reads it, and then buys it over and over again.

            Hope is painful, hope is maddening, hope is like a weed: it just keeps springing up after being mown down.  Like a weed, we really have to root it out to kill it, and we don’t really want to do that, do we?  What is a weed, really, but a plant growing where it’s not wanted, so let’s transplant it, say Pandora was the savior of mankind, and stop being so darned smart.

            It is the first day of spring, Old Style; the cardinals are caroling from the trees and there is the smell of buds in the air.  *Sigh*  Let’s all be filled with hope, and the energy to make something fine come of it!