Oh Hey
Not a day goes by where I don’t think about Alice and her adventures in Arcana.
Six months since the last blog post- a post that was downright dire in its implications. You’d be forgiven if you thought I forgot about this site, but I didn’t. The billing department certainly didn’t.
So if you read the last post you’re probably wondering how things shook out.
The truth is they’re still shaking out. A couple of those trains I talked about hit me. A few passed me by. A few were just things I’d imagined.
In most ways my life is still the same. In most meaningful ways, for better or worse, I am still the same which is both a relief and the biggest disappointment of my life to date. That’s not to say there haven’t been changes or struggles but to say that I’m still spinning my tires on many of the same old things. It’s a discouraging but weirdly comforting status quo most days.
The truth is I don’t have any good excuse to not at least clean up the last few pages I have left of Alice and get it out there. It doesn’t take much time or effort and I’ll feel better if that monkey is finally off my back. I may even feel more open to continuing her story if I finally reach the end of what I have prewritten and finally reach the stage where I can create new material again.
The weird thing about a story that you’ve been working on for half a decade is that year to year you’ll find yourself in very different places from where you started. For instance, I very rarely watch anime now and what little reading I do is largely in manga that are far removed from the stories that initially inspired Alice. Emotionally, I’m now many years removed from the frustrated salesman who jotted down the first few angsty lines of Alice’s story into a notepad document on his work computer. And many of the mechanical lessons I learned as a young writer have decayed with disuse over the years. This always leaves me feeling a bit awkward about sharing my written word. Be it lack of practice and polish or a stunting of internal resources after years of living a very small life I always struggle to feel I’m big enough to ask for people’s time with my words.
But as one of my closest friends has pointed out to me- like it or not, I create and unless I am doing that in some way or another I am bound feel and be less than what I otherwise might. So…I guess despite all the changes, create I must.
It is not without a bit of a knowing smirk that I mention that lately I’ve been reading Alice in Borderland. The story is about people trapped in another world who are forced to survive by playing deadly games. An overarching theme of each story is the question of finding meaning in one’s struggle. It’s a question I’ve struggled with a lot in the past six months. I don’t have any strong spiritual beliefs and most of the experiences people take for granted- love, joy, satisfaction, accomplishment- are largely abstract to me. Not to say I lack them, just that in most cases my experiences with them have been more complicated and confusing than they might appear in any story- call it a divergence issue. Point being that end of the day, the things that I’ve always been told should fill me up often leaving me a bit empty, like, is this really it? So I read this manga thinking to myself “yeah, I get that, what’s the meaning behind this experience anyway?”
A year ago someone who used to be important to me killed themselves. Truth is that by the time they’d done this we hadn’t talked for ten years. The last time they tried to reach out to reconcile I ignored the messages so when I heard the news of their passing I felt like there was a loose end there even as it was likely that I was a mere footnote in their life by the time they passed on. The news initially hit hard but in weeks and months it hardly lingered. But when the anniversary of the passing came about I was surprised to find myself filled with grief- not for things left unsaid but for what little seemed to remain of their memory even just a year later. I found myself disturbed, selfishly so- what will become of me when my time comes?
Which brings me back to Alice and the point of this winding monologue. I’ve always pointed back at my art, be it the bad movies I made or the live theatre that exists now only in memories of a dozen or so audience members- and said that is what will outlive me. At this stage in my life it’s far more likely that Alice will be what pulls the feat of immortality off. Not to say that I’ll be famous- just that at least folks will have something interesting to read at my funeral. That would be good enough for me at least. It beats an hour of people saying “he lit up a room whenever he walked in the door” (this has never happened).
So yeah, Alice. There will be more Alice, surely. I haven’t forgotten her. I appreciate those of you who haven’t forgotten either. I’ll meet you all back here in a bit and we’ll pick up her story again. Cool? Cool.
