I've decided to alternate between writing related blogs and
spiritual/cultural related blogs, as part of my at least one blog a week
New Year's Resolution. So this is my first writing-related blog and
it's on the need to edit things out, and my struggle with a particularly
difficult passage.
My MC is suffering from depression at the
start of the novel, and much like Dostoyevsky's The Idiot - I want to
describe this but without actually being depressive.
So I'm just
going to post the excerpt below. I definitely want to take out most of
this, if not all of it, but the part at the end where he has the
epiphany, I like that part a lot. It may have to go with the rest, but
I'm trying to think how to cut this drastically but maybe still keep
part of it. And then I laugh at myself, because - I don't necessarily
want to give up this passage FOREVER like suicide, but do want to look
at the underlying causes for its melange and maybe rehabilitate it so as
to be productive in the society of the rest of my novel...
For the rest of the summer, Robert explored the forest and
the sea, never wandering very far, feeling as if he were turning into some kind
of hermit or mystic, the kind of person who claimed all the mysteries of the
universe could be found in a single leaf fallen from a single tree or some such
nonsense. Until now, he had never put much thought into such things. Now, he
wondered if mystics were failed children like himself, left behind by a world
which had become so interested in progress, in the new and extraordinary that
it could never seem to be satisfied with the everyday and close at hand.
While brooding and not wondering what his friends were up
to, because he knew they were having stupid and random fun, Robert read
articles on his paper. While reading one of many articles, while alone in his
home Robert found out that although it was no longer possible to die, it was
still possible to fall into clinical depression. And that was what seemed to be happening to
him. According to the articles, he should look for some help. But, he did not
want to. He really did not want to talk to anyone, and that seemed unfair.
Robert sat on his porch, in the midst of a warm and sunny
day, not a cloud above, the air so clear that barely a wisp of breeze moved.
The world felt beautiful, tranquil – and dead. It was a lot like how he felt
inside.
Like everyone in the world, he had been given his paper as
soon as he was old enough to read, which had been three years old, because –
his parents told him – he had been a bit slow. Most kids started reading long
before then. That was the year before he had started school, when he was
four. They had showed him how to use it.
He could still remember sitting with his mother on the sofa, her hair falling
over her arm, brushing it as she showed him where to press, how to navigate the
menus. From this handy device, he could access all kinds of information.
He was even able to look up things like “parents leaving”
and “twelve years old” and almost no one had written anything about it. That’s
how unusual it was. Out of billions of people, he had to be the oddball, the
one who experienced some freak occurrence almost no one did anymore, although
formerly when earth was new, people had. But that was completely different. And
as for recent incidents, the few stories he had found, it had been a mutual
decision and was mentioned only as being sad, too bad they could not stay
together.
What he did find out was that people who were all alone, had
no hobbies, and had lost touch with the outside world and one another were
liable to fall into clinical depression. As far as Robert could make out, this
was because God had designed people much like rocks, such that a person in
motion tended to stay in motion, but people at rest tended to stay at rest.
After a while like that, their physical bodies became used to stillness and
their emotions became damaged and then before very long it was difficult, if
not impossible, for them to do anything.
He even tried to say that out loud, to be funny. “People in
motion tend to stay in motion, but people at rest tend to stay at rest.”
But it was not funny. There was nothing funny about this at
all. Apparently it was a fact of their human bodies that if people were alone
for too long they became sad and lonely and felt cut off. There were even
groups of people talking about this, support groups. But that would have meant admitting
he had a problem.
And this was not Robert’s fault. So instead, he sat on his
porch, biting his lip, running his fingertip across the paper and feeling its
smooth surface.
Clinical Depression.
In a way that alone made him feel a little better. There was
a name for it, and as it said near the bottom of the list of symptoms, it meant
he might have “suicidal thoughts.” He had not had any before this, but now he
did. In fact, that was the best way to describe. Here he was, in the perfect
world, no more sin, no more death.
And he wanted to die. Robert wanted to die.
He wanted to scream out to heaven, wanted to tear down his
house with his bare hands, wanted to be able to express what was inside of him
in some kind of immensely self-destructive manner. Why wouldn’t God let him
die?
Robert sat on the porch, put down his paper, and really
thought about that. Everyone thought eternal life was a blessing, a really
great and super thing. But what if it wasn’t? What if for people like him,
hopelessly stained by something that wasn’t even his fault, for something that
was done to him, it was a punishment. God would force him to live what that
mark on his soul forever. In fact there was no if. It was happening to him
right now. “I want to die,” he said, half-expecting an answer, for a voice from
heaven to shout, ‘No.’ Nothing happened and the silence was worse. The silence
was God’s way of saying He, or She, did not care. Robert’s prayer was not even
worth listening to, let alone responding.
“I. Want. To. Die.” He said it again, louder. There was
still no answer. “I want to die!” he shouted.
There was not even anyone close enough to hear him. It was
summer. Swan was virtually deserted and would be for the next month. “I want to
die. I want to die. I want to die.” He said it over and over. There was still
nothing, no response, only silence.
Not even a hint of breeze stirred the warm summer day, as if
the world were holding its breath, waiting to say something. But there was only
nothing. Not a whisper of movement. Nothing.
“I really mean it,” he said. And then, he thought he felt –
something, as if a tiny voice were speaking into the dry and barren day. It
might have been just his imagination. It was not a sound. But he thought he
felt someone say, or convey without words, the briefest of answers. Just two
words seemed to capture the answer he felt brushing against his mind.
“I know,” the voiceless voice seemed to say. And then,
nothing.
Robert went very still, as if suddenly afraid the slightest
movement or action would break the moment. He was even afraid the voice might
be about to kill him, to take him at his word and kill him. And, if so, he
hoped that he could explain first, could maybe work out some terms of agreement
wherein he got to do a few things more before he died. He held his breath,
afraid even to breathe, until he could not take anymore. He exhaled, harshly,
breathed in again, then said, “Okay, maybe not right this second.”
To his surprise, the sound of his own voice and the tension
he had felt for a brief second actually made him laugh. He had actually been
afraid that maybe God was listening and might kill him. And, okay, that was
weird and surreal. But, also, oddly enough, funny.
End excerpt. This passage needs help. I don't want to put a bullet in it and let it die..
And on a practical
note it's better not to 'leave' an institution but reform it from within in
large part because as history has shown - if we do not deal with our problems
today, they will come up again and again. It's an illusion to think a
completely different church would be any better. In fact it would just be a
matter of time.
