There are
times when I write stories that are filled with massive destruction and chaos.
I create worlds of utter devastation and ruin where society has broken down to
its most base elements. I usually have one or two survivors trying to climb
their way through the broken landscape in a vain search for the remnants of
humanity. Most of those stories don’t end very well for the characters and they
usually wind up in a continual limbo of morbid ruination.
When real
life causes epic destruction I can’t help but feel like a fool. I feel a little
shame for so casually discarding so much of my imagined worlds in hellfire or
tragedy. The real world is far crueler than my imagination could ever be, but
at least in my imagination no one actually has to suffer. I still get a tinge
of shame when I carelessly drop a building on a fictional character that was
just looking for their dog amid the broken spires of the old town church. It is
curious how I can so easily imagine it but when the real thing happens, I’m at
a loss to really grasp the true echo of the destruction.
I’m in my
cubicle, casually sipping an ever cooling cup of coffee, feeling a slight chill
from the overworking air conditioner vent positioned right above me, wondering about
lunch in the back of my mind, and only slightly concerned with the real world
devastation occurring all the time. It’s natural to have some disconnected
feelings from events so far away and without any real personal interaction.
I’ve never been to Oklahoma .
I’ve never been involved with a Tornado. I live in the Mid-West and tornadoes
are a possibility, but in Chicago ,
it’s an extremely rare possibility It’s unlikely one would ever touch the
ground in the city.
I feel for
the lives lost, the utter loss of everything ever had in this life, swept away
in a freight train of wind. I sympathize with the families, however I cannot
empathize. I’ve never been through it. I’ve never had everything precious to me
in the world taken away in the blink of an eye. It must be a purely singular
hell. I could imagine it however. I could write a character, standing on the
stoop of what used to be his house. I could imagine his heart beating wildly in
his chest at the realization of his life’s work is now a pile of rubble. I
could imagine the tears stinging his eyes and streaking down his dirty cheeks,
creating a clean line down his face making him look like a the photo negative
of a mime. I can imagine the ripped tee-shirt he wore to bed. I can imagine his
thoughts swimming as he searches for an explanation from somewhere, from God,
from anything and finding nothing. I imagine him sitting down on the concrete
stoop and burying his head in his hands.
I can
imagine it all. I just can’t imagine it being real for someone. That’s the
problem with fiction. I can create and mold without any regard for reality and
no one gets hurt. Nature, however, is not a good writer and lacks any
imagination. Albeit nature is creative in its fury, it is without imagination.
That’s not to say that nature has any particular personification, like a grumpy
old giant man, swinging his cane across the Great Plains ,
complaining that the music is too loud. Nature does what it does because that’s
simply what it does. It creates and destroys, in a never ending cycle.
I’ll stick
to fiction but try to remember that somewhere, someone might have had to go
through it and they may not have come out the other side. So I’ll pray and I’ll
hope for the best. But I’ll go back to writing about the aliens attacking and
hell bubbling up from the depths of the Earth and riding the train mourning for
love.
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