The RiGiD Imagination

Northrop Frye, The Secular Scripture, page 36:  "The imagination , then, is the constructive power of the mind, the power of building unities out of units.  In literature the unity is the mythos or narrative; the units are metaphors, that is, images connected primarily with each other rather than separately with the outer world. 'Reality,' for Stevens," (Wallace) "is whatever the imagination works with that is not itself.  Left to itself, the imagination can achieve only a facile pseudo-conquest of its own formulas, meeting no resistance from reality. The long standing association between the words imagination and fancy may suggest that the imaginative , by itself, tends to be fantastic or fanciful.  But actually, what the imagination, left to itself, produces is the rigidly conventionalized."

This is the ocean of stories.  Our rigid imaginations taking us back to the same story, the same boring old plot.  (It makes me feel a little bad for Derek Walcott, the bold quote that is.)

What is most interesting here, I find, is the fact that we must draw on real world experience to give our imagination the set of tools it needs to engage in a fanciful fancy.  And here's the thing-- it's easy to retell the truth.  So creating a story from what would seem like nothing, though it is the embedded truth from reality, is actually a process that engages a mind further in a fancy.  To not tell stories that aren't true would mean never engaging in a day dream again, or never being put in a day dream from a story again.  This is the reason I tell and listen to stories that are untrue because I enter a state of mind that is peaceful and my own that can be found nowhere else but in stories.  Stories are a fanciful meditation that draw me away from the mundane.  It seems simple and short, this post but I feel it makes a point, at least for why I choose to be a part of unreal stories.  (and in the best ones you get to notice the reality the author pulled from their life to fancy)

BLIBBITTY BLOBATTY BLOO

Book Two

Life for Edmundo and Rosa was a dream of ecstatic love, and it seemed to go on forever, even though it was only a week long, before the war started.  The Nomadic Midgets of the East, along with their ogres and wolves, and their leader, Montiago the Questionable, an old pirate of the sea; now he pioneered in his massive coach towed by eight black horses, calling himself a Land Pirate.  The people of the East were upset with the monarchy of the West because they were taking over all of the agave land, and not allowing the East to have their traditional carnivals in the Circle Top Woods, where they sang and danced under a tender moon. 

            The Midgets trampled through towns in agave country and came upon Edmundo and Rosa’s farm.  Their only weapons were their beauty.  The clans of midgets captured them both as they ran from their burning house.  When bound and chained, the midgets pointed in awe and the leader with red face paint, heavy eyes, and a mohawk exclaimed, “Look at!  So pretty she be, must take, for Montiago’s sake will we.  Leave him.  The gods’ view be dimly grimly if him we skin.”

            Edmundo sat in his own tears turning the ground beneath him muddy and he watched Rosa fading away to the horizon, but heard her shout, “My love, don’t doubt, I shall spread my love flower for none but you!”  Edmundo was overwhelmed; his life was never his own doing.  He could not stop his sad eyes from pouring out his loneliness.  It made the mud grow and deepen.  The mud hole began collapsing upon him but he was bound and too sad to care.  As he sunk down to his neck, he screamed in a melodious tone love, “If I ever make it out of here alive, I will find you Rosa!” and he was submereged.

Here's a wave

Ahh, I believe I have found the purpose of my blog... if we are learning about a body of stories that turns over and over on itself, why not just do my best to enter the world of telling completely naive stories?  In doing so am I closer to the intrinsic flow of the class? Good or bad here ya are...

Book One

Edmundo was a regular Mexican boy, in a time long forgotten, where he lived with his mother and father on an enormous agave farm, in the very center of the country.  However, one of his first memories was the day he was taken away by the monarchy of the West, and his parents were put to work on their own farm.  The monarchy favored the plant for tequila, and since the queen couldn’t have a child, the King of the West, when going about his military campaign, ordered his men to bring back the fairest child in the land.  He traveled by a grand coach and, before his travels, the escort game him new fancy beaded clothes that shined in the pure Mexican sun.  But when he arrived at the castle, he was only allowed to move about eight of the rooms, and was rarely let outside.  For twenty long years this went along.  Although confined, Edmundo was given the finest of educations in the arts, and history.  Famous Westerners were always stopping by the castle to mingle with the royal family, so he didn’t grow up a social outcast.  Many people marveled at his beauty in the town, his smile was brighter than the reflection of the sun and sea, but Edmundo was chaste and always had been.  Sure he dreamed, very beautiful women often came to the castle for the royal orgy once a month that lasted three to 8 days where wine was spilled and pigs were roasted, and tequila served was during.  Edmundo was never allowed to take part.  He had never been treated bad, just virginally.

One day during a party, Edmundo was allowed down to the main hall when all of its chandeliers were sparkling to play the guitar and sing ballads.  He told a story of a rose that grew strong in the desert and was picked by a desperado.  The desperado gave it to his sweetheart and it stayed alive long after he was gunned down.  As Edmundo put his guitar down, his eye was drawn to a fresh figure in the back of the hall smiling.  There stood a girl in a simple dress with a red flower stitched into the lower left side, and the top cut barely showed her bosom line.  She had red lips and a body of likeable proportion.  He glided across the floor snatched her up and ran down to a coach to drive away.  Rosa, Edmundo’s new girlfriend, was so enchanted by his beauty that she couldn’t and wouldn’t move and didn’t mind being taken away in the arms of this harmonious stranger.

“Where is your home?  For I shall take you there in this caravan to wed you and bed you.  I have been kept from my family and a life.  And you are beautiful.”

Rosa practically melted at his words.  “I am from town in the heart of Mexico.  I can tell you the way.” 

They rode off into the sunset towards her town.  Once they were out of reach of the castle and the sun had yielded to the stars, they passed a fountain that exploded as they went by, and Edmundo finally became a real hombre in his stolen coach behind the willow tree.  They traveled to Rosa’s village and started an agave farm, where they were beginning to live happily ever after.

Arguments for and against the Ocean and one for nothing

1.  When a child is born, there is an angle of cyclicality:  Experiential dawning light, and the descent of the "experiential dawn"--we live we die.  But, as a child the first form of communication, and education arguably, is oral.  We simply, by nature it seems, are storytellers even in casual speech.  As nature emanates cycles upon us, it revolves to resolve that the stories we first created (and later of course write) would be cyclical in nature.  This is why we reuse and recycle stories.  The ocean we drink from, the entity it is, whether intellectually created or not, owns powers of hypnosis.  Isn't any form of entertainment a hypnosis? where time seems skewed? a state of mind elevated from regular altitudes? just like reading a book? or listening to music or a story?  having a drink? and the long flowing thoughts that stream like a questionmark? just like the fictional body of water?  The reasons for fiction is to keep a flowing entity alive and sanity.

2.  Real people and stories are more concrete to this world than that of fiction.

3.  Have you heard the phrase, "What's the moral of the story?" Enough said, unless you don't like morals.

4.  I like me a good story.

5.  Non-fiction sells waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than fiction.

6.  If perceptive experience is the single truth a being can truly know, then unless a perfect replica (I think I have to say in that particular time and space, as of now impossible) is made, everything ever told from experience is keeping us farther from the truth.  Just for kicks you could say that an idea exists in a physical being.  Is that idea outside the realm of this universe, perceptive spectrum perhaps, but the entire void?  Is all fiction true because it was created in what most people would call a physical mind, then truth is false and falsities are truth?  Perhaps we just shouldn't care about it.