In certain moments - in the midst of a podcast, book, or TV show - I discover my arid observations of life instantly overcome by an ocean of tears as witness of some serendipitous human connection that has taken place. In these moments, I am part of these connections. From the millions of other sides of the mirror that are not myself, I glimpse the meaning of being alive as one species. I can’t help but think, how lonely god must be.
In my youth, there was nothing I aspired more than to become a Great Novelist. I poured time and effort into style and rhetoric, planned plot progessions, and themes and characters. I started out a thousand times the beginnings and endings of my book, yet no Great Novel emerged as my teenage years passed by, and I went on with life.
Some two decades later, I now pour my heart - or at least those moments of it - into notes long and short, here and there. Working memory is so precious that when lightning strikes, I must etch each flash of thought into fine white sand: A phrase. An emotion. A description of an unrealized landscape faraway. Nothing is too trivial for my records.
When I sit down to explore my temporally interspersed thoughts after much time has elapsed, I often experience the joy of seeing these droplets of thoughts - miraculously - slowly collecting and gently rolling until the morning dew arrives and prose flows forth: sometimes a story about relationships, other times an expression of beauty, or a reflection of contemporarily society and politics. These fortuitous word connections make me think that one day, perhaps, I might become a Novelist with Something to Say.
The novel itself is not the end but only a vehicle. Before there can be a novel, the allegory must exist in the heart.