A History of Lonely, Old Drunks

I am currently working on another short... but couldn't help but take a moment to reflect today on the tragic marriage between art and the real world. I stumbled upon something recently, locked away deep within -- a moss covered forest of old growth trees where the late afternoon sun pierces the canopy above with single rays of golden light. This is a world that has been hidden for decades now. It is a world that grows into new realities each time I visit. It is a world filled with wonder and with magic. It is a world where rays of golden light dance into the evening with deep, tearful shadows.

But this world is no arboretum. It is a hinterland, fenced in long ago in an effort to cope. And yet revisiting it, like I have done, has reminded me of the raw humanity that lives in this world. There are characters here, still feeling their way to each other... and in some cases away from each other. They are beautiful creatures that long to be known, to be touched, to be seen. And they are also violent monsters... monsters that are tragically caged in snarled shadows of their original design.

As a writer, this is a world that I long to explore... I think both because my own roots grow deep in the heart of this magical place and also because I recognize the universal nature of the humanity that lives here. What greater a world to share than the deep and mysterious world that we know the best... and yet I know to pull back the fir branches, to allow the light to flood into the furthest reaches of this childhood forest... it will not come without a price. There are things in this world that are fearful of the light. There are characters that prefer the fog, the shadows, the thick covering of the underbrush. To expose this world is to expose the places that I love... and much worse, the people that I love.

And so it is that the shelves that line my local Barnes & Noble Bookstore, like row after row of raspberry bushes, are filled with leather bound books, each written in an effort to shine light on the universal humanity that has filled the author's own secret garden. And the men, the women, that have exposed their hinterlands... putting them on display like arboretums? History knows them mostly to be lonely... old... drunks.