Follow Your Dreams

I wrote this some time ago during a bout of writerly melancholy, between rejected novels three and four, I think, but who's counting.  It could be tagged as historical document as it refers to the use of actual mail and not in any way to Facebook, but such is its charm.  And so: An essay.  A tale of adventure.  A manifesto.  A rally cry.

We the unpublished – under-published – must frequently address why we have embarked on such a treacherous endeavor as writing.  Some of us want to be famous.  Some have no other skills.  All fall along the spectrum from inspired, to grandiose, to insane.  Most adhere to the hallowed maxim:

Follow Your Dreams. 

Saying the above statement aloud, or letting it flow mellifluously through our brains, ushers a warm, tingly feeling, similar to what Julie Andrews must have felt while dancing across lively hills in The Sound of Music.  We are possessed by heady visions of stepping into an aesthetic parade, gamboling to upbeat music down a storied boulevard as flower petals and blown kisses rain down on our bold, visionary pates.  Birds sing, the sun shines, and our clothes smell fresh and clean.  Butterflies are everywhere.

However.

Dreams are ethereal, evolving, unreal;  a dynamic conception of what life will be like under long-odds circumstances.  They are shimmering castles under construction, floating majestically in the air.  Dreams are wonderful to gaze at from a distance, a source of inspiration and resolve, but the real action is with the hardy, mercurial creatures who lead us through the oft-forbidding terrain along the way.  Like Sherpa trekking guides, they serve as translators between wild minds and tired bodies; grungy, wiry, odiferous, and short of tooth, only marginally fluent in our native tongue, urgently pointing towards the pinnacle of Everest as though tea, cookies, and the editors of The New York Times Book Review await us.  They scurry along forbidding synaptic paths, disappearing around blind curves, only to reappear on a switchback over our heads.  Thorny thickets are ubiquitous, as are deep holes, both natural and dug by villains, and attacks by large carnivores and disease-laden bugs.  There are rest stops and avalanches, scenic vistas and mud, rarefied air, sunshine, and storms.  Our supply list is scribbled in some odd dialect.  Thus, we tote heavy assemblages of items, from invaluable to useless, nourishing to past their expiration date.  Nonetheless, we lope along behind our Sherpa, breathless and a little afraid, damning ourselves for deciding to try such an asinine stunt.

Before embarking on our journey, it is apropos to articulate where we are going.  At a cocktail party, graduation ceremony, or in a phone conversation with our mom, we declare, as boldly as we can:  “I’m going to be a writer!”  Mom cries, then offers to send preemptive help.  Dad refuses to speak to us, and starts taking more naps.  Others in our acquaintance are in medical school, working in banks, teaching, or starting their own business.  We are writers…kind of.  We will either be relatively famous, the erudite assistant manager of a Starbucks, or homeless.  We brace ourselves for interrogation by gruesome, cranially-attached Siamese twins: 

Twin one, mostly harmless: “What do you write?” 

We look down, and feel ourselves blushing, deeply.  “Ummm….fiction?”

Twin two, the nasty one: “Really!  What have you published?”

 We clear our throat, adjust our turtleneck, paw the ground with our thick-soled shoe.  Does second grade count?  Love poems to girlfriends?  There was a letter to the editor that made it into print, a scathing rebuttal of proposed rollbacks in environmental regulations.   An English professor once handed back an essay (A-minus), commenting rather nebulously that we should write something someday.