Influences Part 1

One of the coolest things about writing a novel is being able to share my influences with people. And man, have I been influenced; there have been many, many hands that assisted in shaping my brain matter into the form it is now. The first influential book I want to mention, however, is a little bit unusual, in that it is not a novel but a "how to" book entitled "The Easy Way to Quit Smoking", by Alan Carr.

 

It's hard to explain the effect this book had on me, but it went beyond helping me quit smoking. The book did not so much stop one from smoking as much as it brought one to a mindset where one perceived of stepping away from the nicotine addiction as not only supremely logical, but easy and fun as well. My addiction to tobacco was not some moral weakness of mine, but a trap I had fallen into and could find a way out of, with simple step by step instructions. Its influence is apparent in my debut novel, in the way my protagonist feels imprisoned by various forces beyond his control. His eventual liberation is comparable to the elation and freedom I felt when I smoked my last cigarette. I really can't explain to you the joy I felt at that moment, a joy that has spilled over into many different areas of my life and stays with me to this day. The comparison between smoking and escape artistry will be even more obvious in my next book, tentatively titled Perchance to Dream.

The Silver Sea

Here is a short story I wrote many years ago. It is very short, only a page long. Actually it is a dream that I had, which I recorded as best I remembered it. Although it is a favorite of mine, I've never known anybody to appreciate it. Thus I release it onto cyber-space, hoping that someone in this grand universe of ours might see in it what I do:

The Silver Sea

About a year ago I had the strangest dream. I was sitting up in bed, reading a book of short stories I had acquired a while back but had never gotten around to reading. I had just finished a rather lengthy story but, not quite ready for sleep, flipped through the pages to find a shorter one. The very next story was only four pages, so I began to read. “My name is not important, I am one of many…” it began. It was the story of an old man, one who had lived a long full life of adventures and experiences. Much good he had done in his life and much had he learned, yet one thing still eluded him. His life, he knew, was incomplete until he discovered the answer to the question that had troubled him throughout his life. And so he set out upon the last and greatest quest of his life: a quest for the meaning of life.

His search led him through many adventures which I can no longer remember, but in the end the trail led up a range of many high, silver mountains. Within one of these mountains he discovered a cave. Entering the cave, he saw a woman dressed in white, there as if for no other reason than to await his arrival. Intuitively, the old man asked the woman if she could help him in his quest. The woman said nothing but led his gaze off to the side of her where a glowing horizontal line appeared. As they both looked at the line, it grew larger, as though it was a large flat screen that rotated until the old man could see an image upon it. It seemed to him to be a picture of the silver mountains that surrounded him, their snow-capped peaks a bright white. But slowly the picture began to move. The mountains began to rise and fall as though millennia were moments. The motion increased further until the old man realized that the mountains were waves of a sea; the snow-capped peaks were white caps reflecting the light of an unseen sun. The sea itself was the color of purest silver. But as the waves pushed upwards, the uppermost tips that reached for the sky were of a white that paled the silver.

“What is it that you show me?” the old man asked.

“It is everything,” said the woman

“Then what is the meaning of life?”

The woman paused for a moment, smiled, and said: “To shine.”

The man looked back at the lake, saw the water moving endlessly, waves leaping skyward. The upper peaks shone brilliantly as they reached towards the heavens, then fell back into the silver as new waves reached their peak. The old man smiled, because now he understood. And so he began a new adventure, a new life.

“My name is unimportant, I am one of many…”it ended. As I finished the story, I smiled too, in appreciation of the old man. After a moment, I flicked back to the beginning of the story to read it again. I stopped short, deciding to save the story for another night. I placed the book on the table by my bed, turned the light out, pulled the covers over me, and woke up. I sat up in bed for a moment, wishing I had reread the story, and wondering what other stories I might have discovered in that book.

Here is a little sample from my work in progress. It is still a little rough around the edges, but I wanted to share:

Perchance to Dream Sample

“Really, Dave? Really? You feel the need to go out of your way to give yourself the heebie-jeebies?”

“I was hoping for the willies, but the heebie-jeebies would work too, I suppose. Come on Mindy, don’t be afraid. I’ll protect you.” With that, Dave led Mindy down a leaf-blown path into the cemetery.

The cold evening air did indeed produce upon his exposed skin an effect that caused goose bumps, but the feeling was a pleasant one. Any change brings a certain excitedness, a certain expectation that wasn’t all that far from nervousness. But the alternative was to not feel anything at all. That was the difference between him and those lying so peacefully below them in their isolated little boxes.

“See, there’s nothing to be afraid of.” Said Dave in an overly paternalistic tone.

“I’m not scared by a cemetery, depressed is more like it. It’s like when I walk through a cemetery…I don’t know, it’s like they’re all children who were punished with death for the sin of growing old.”

“What?”

“I mean, they’re all just children, really. We tend to think of people who have died as being who they were in their last moments. But they were all young once, too. They’ve all got years for when they were born just like they’ve got years for when they died. They were all babies once, looked upon with envy by widows who remembered being young. And their only fault was having lived too long.

“We’re all just children, really” she continued. “Children without parents to watch out for them twenty-four hours a day. Nobody really grows up, they just find themselves with more responsibility, they become slightly more functional is all. They start pretending that they’re grownups and they do it for so long they forget they’re just kids. When I was young, I’d look at pictures of my grandma when she was my age and it seemed like people were made differently back in those days. But it’s just the superficial stuff, hair styles, clothing, the technological advancement of the camera that was used. As I get older, I see that people don’t really change. I look in the mirror and I still see the same person I’ve always been. I look at you and you’re the same kid I knew way back when.”

“Seriously?”

“Well, you’ve changed obviously. But you’re the same, too. It’s like you’re the same person, but drawn by a different artist. When you were young, you were drawn by a cartoonist, but now you’re more of an oil painting. And when you’re old, it’ll be more like you’ve been drawn by a fine pencil, all thin lines and shadow.”

“I think Picasso drew your brain.”

“Shut up. I’m trying to be introspective and you’re being childish.”

“Yeah, but the idea of children being punished for living too long is a little unnerving. I mean, it awaits all of us. Me, you, every single person we know or ever will know is going to die, and there’s no alternative, no ‘maybe not’. There’s nothing between ‘it’ and us except a little bit of time, and that cushion is getting smaller every second. One day you’re going to wake up dead, and that’s it.” He paused, and then started to recite some lines of poetry:

So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

“My grandfather used to recite that to us. He had to learn it in grade school, and he carried it around inside his mind for the rest of his life. I used to think it was a poem of defiance, like “rage against the dying of the light”, but it’s not. It’s an acceptance of death. All these years I thought my grandpa was being a tough old codger, but he was saying we should welcome death. I don’t know how that makes me feel.

“Fuck death.” Said Mindy, out of nowhere. “Fuck him. He’s a little girly man and he better not try fucking with you or me.”

“Yeah, fuck him.” Dave repeated. “It’s not about inevitability, it’s about the attitude.”

Dave’s hand found Mindy’s and he squeezed it hard. Despite the conversation, he felt unexpectedly, thrillingly alive. Death defines life. One can walk around in a daze, not even realizing the life that’s bubbling up inside at every single moment. But when the reality of death hits, so does the reality of life. He felt not only his own life force but Mindy’s as well, felt the flow of all the existence that was all around him. He felt powers bigger than himself playing through him, and it had nothing to do with anything supernatural. No, whatever it was was exceptionally natural, though it was immensely powerful. And as much as he tried to believe his will and mind were captain of his ship, he knew he was only dimly aware of the forces that moved him. To feel part of the greater whole made the idea of death less real, as though his body was but a storage space for the life that flowed through everything. Life was a cosmic force, and his human form was merely a tide pool that had managed to trap a tiny fraction of an ocean. He wanted to share his thoughts with Mindy, but found that holding her hand was sharing enough. He was alone in his thoughts even as he was together with her. But his mind was sharing something bigger than just another person at the moment. He wondered if Mindy felt the same thing, but found no way of broaching the subject.

He felt as though he were atop a mountain at that moment, looking down on all that was. Doing so, he could see himself and the foolish, small ways he often looked at life, trapped as he was in his small single self. Although he rejected much of modern-day life, he couldn’t help but seeing things through the prism of his times and environment. He was more a sheep than he would ever be willing to admit. Things that moved society moved him as well. Ego, petty concerns, insecurities. He was a character in a play written by someone else.

“Something’s coming, Mindy” said Dave, with an ominous air.

“Where? I don’t see anything. Are you trying to scare me?”

“No, I mean something’s coming to shake us all up. We’re all edgy. We’re scared. We sense something, like animals sense an earthquake. We’re all living in an artificial environment, and something outside the little fishbowl we’re living in is about to knock over the table it’s sitting on.”

The Amazing Morse is my debut novel and is now available on Amazon Kindle. It is a story about magic and the supernatural, but it is also a novel about the Twenty-First Century and the idea that even with all of our technology and information, we can still be blinded to the truths of the human condition. In the same way that the glow from city lights obscure an entire universe of stars from our view, so too can our technology blind us from our place in the universe. The novel can be found here: http://www.amazon.com/The-Amazing-Morse-ebook/dp/B0099YXY2Y/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1347836505&sr=8-1&keywords=james+rozoff

If we have one safe haven in the world, it would be the safety and comfort of our beds. When we turn off the lights and drift into sleep, we are free from all of the external stimuli that is constantly demanding our attention. So it is as though our most sacred of sanctuaries have been violated when we are disturbed in our sleep. Worse yet is when the terror strikes from within. We all have nightmares, but Night Terror is neither a nightmare nor an awakened state but another realm of consciousness altogether. But what we imagine in our dreams can effect what we do in the outside world.

The Blinding Light of Science

     We look back at the beliefs of people in olden times and scoff at their ability to believe in the silliest of things. Elves, ogres, krakken, all of these things were believed to be real by many. In the time of Houdini, the spiritualist movement was in full bloom. Millions attended séances, convinced that they could speak to dead loved ones. Spirits talked to them by way of "spirit rapping", disembodied voices, or by taking possession of the medium and using her to convey their messages to the living. We find it hard to believe people could actually put their faith in such things. Yet never do we wonder what future generations will think of our beliefs and convictions. We, too, are blinded by the biases of our age. We believe unquestioningly that science and technology are always forces for positive change, that it is the greatest folly to try to hamper the technological advance. We are blinded by science, unaware that, as Albert Einstein said, mankind with technology is like a child with a razor blade. In our rush to embrace the knowledge that science brings, we have discarded the wisdom that past times knew. There is no room for morality in the laboratory, no discussion of good and evil. Thus we allow demons to do their work under our very noses, unaware of their presence until we are at last confronted with the truths we have so long denied.