Imagination

Imagination

    It's a funny gift of sorts, that of imagination.  Sometimes mixed in with creativity, imagination occupies the world of Willy Wonka and Harry Potter, Jules Verne and Guardians of the Galaxy.  There are screenwriters and authors who transport us to another world, a world of fantasy and science fiction, a world of crime and a world where all is well.  And for the most part, we are able to follow along in this "world," simply because of our own imagination.  Their world becomes our world, although it is also a world that is unique.  For even with their descriptive wording, a new version will soon emerge on the theater's screen, as well as in our head.  Sometimes a song will do this; but more often than not, it is the written word that brings us fresh characters and sceneries and lives...and it is all happening somewhere above our eyes, internally, and once again, something mysterious that works only with our imagination (for how else to explain a globular mess of "cells" producing such wonder)...it is our imagination making our imagination.

   Sometimes we are surprised at the imagination of others, when we finish a movie or finish a book or watch a play or view a performance.  When that happens, it is always a pleasant surprise.  And sometimes, we are simply puzzled, wondering what everyone (or critics and reviewers at least) "saw" in the work.  "A must read" or "a must see" sometimes becomes simply a "what???"  But sometimes such recommendations and reviews serve as a prod or an encouragement, a push to get us out of our usual comfort zone and try something new, even if we don't end up liking it.  Now admittedly, that loud hip-hop or metal group or that latest abstract art exhibit would be a hard sell for me...but for others, it might prove a breakthrough, a discovery just around the corner that we might have missed otherwise.

   Such was the case when I picked up the best-selling children's book by Cathrynne M. Valente*, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In A Ship of Her Own Making.  What a title, but not the first book that I would pick in a library full of reading.  But it was recommended and reviewed and before long, had made it to the world of which all marketers dream of reaching, word of mouth.  So I began reading it, a bit ploddingly at first, then a bit more open.  It was a jumble of new characters, a mix of unfamiliar names and appearances, well beyond lizards that talked and wizards that didn't.  And slowly, ever so slowly, a fun creation began to nebulize, to slowly take me away from the tiredness of the day and to lift me like a hot air balloon away from it all, to encourage me to look away from the ground and just enjoy the new place we were headed, wherever that might be.

   Here is just a sampling of this imagination at work, our little 12-year old adventurer finding herself destined for a series of unusual baths, something almost all 12-year olds dread: "This is the tub for washing your courage...When you are born," the golem said softly, "your courage is new and clean. You are brave enough for anything: crawling off of staircases, saying your first words without fearing that someone will think you are foolish, putting strange things in your mouth.  But as you get older, your courage attracts gunk and crusty things and dirt and fear and knowing how bad things can get and what pain feels like.  By the time you're half-grown, your courage barely moves at all, it's so grunged up with living.  So every once in awhile, you have to scrub it up and grab the works going or else you'll never be brave again..."

   At the next tub (for she has three baths awaiting from "the woman carved entirely from soap... (her face) a deep olivey-green castile, her hair a rich and oily Marseille, streaked with lime peels...(her belt) a cord of hard tallowy honey soap, her hands plain-blue bathing soap, and her fingernails smelled like daisies and lemons."), our young lady has to wash her wishes: For the wishes of one's old life wither and shrivel like old leaves if they are not replaced with new wishes when the world changes.  And the world always changes.  Wishes get slimy, and their colors fade, and soon they are just mud, like all the rest of the mud, and not wishes at all, but regrets.  The trouble is, not everyone can tell when they ought to launder their wishes.

   And lastly, says the golem, our youngster must wash her luck: When souls queue up to be born, they all leap up at just the last moment, touching the line of the world for luck.  Some jump high and can seize a great measure of luck; some jump only a bit and snatch a few loose strands.  Everyone manages to catch some.  If one did not have at least a little luck, one would never survive childhood. But luck can be spent, like money; and lost, like a memory; and wasted, like a life.  No bath can replenish luck that has been spent on avoiding an early death by automobile accident or winning too many raffles in a row.  No bath can restore luck lost through absentmindedness or overconfidence. But luck withered by conservative, tired, risk less living can be plumped up again--after all, it was only a bit thirsty for something to do.

   We are almost always faced with imagination, but sometimes our vision is just a bit blurred.  Words and doctrines and rules and beliefs sometimes dull concepts and freshness and originality. Governments and rulers, empires and emperors, philosophies and religions, all give way to a changing world, whether in a physical form or a mental one.  It is our imagination that frees the prisoner or our lack of imagination that becomes the prison.  And sometimes, all it takes is stepping out of our world into that of another...even that of a fairytale.

*If you're not familiar with this author, a good place to start is with her blog, a creative rant with credentials and a writer trying to elevate the craft for others.  Here's a small sample of her views on a few of the other authors apparently trying to rig the system to garner a few more awards: What’s shocked me, through all of this, and disturbed me even more than the fixing of the Hugos itself, is that the Sad and Rabid and Otherwise Emotionally Overwrought Puppies seem to have wholly lost their grip on the English language.  It’s deeply unsettling to watch writers denying that words have meanings.  YOU GUYS, WORDS MEAN THINGS. IT IS YOUR JOB TO KNOW WHAT THEY MEAN...For example, one of the new acronyms for “people we don’t like” is, apparently, CHORF, which stands for Cliquish, Holier-Than-Thou, Obnoxious, Reactionary Fanatics.  It truly floors me that people who are busy gathering their friends into a group that believes it is on the right side of God, calling names and yelling about how we need to go back to the old way of doing science fiction and colluding to fix an award can use that acronym for anyone other than themselves.  The DICTIONARY DEFINITION of reactionary is: of, pertaining to, marked by, or favoring reaction, especially extreme conservatism or rightism in politics; opposing political or social change.  How can this possibly describe the Evil Leftists such Brave Puppies must fight against?  You keep telling us you’re the best writers in the genre, and yet basic words and their meanings seem to elude you!...Conservative politics are supposed to be all about straight-shooting real talk.  So just say you used your clique (and probably some others) to do something you believed in, no matter what the cost.  You do not get to have your ballot and eat it, too.  You did this.  You have to face the consequences.