Heaven, Earth and Men

I don't know why people hate walking. It only takes a couple of years at most to learn to do it perfectly, and we pretty much do it for the rest of our lives. And if for some reason we can't do it anymore it gets us hell of depressed for at least a little while.

So yeah. Up with walking, people.

So I pick up the ringing phone. Caller ID shows a name that I figured was Greek. The heavily accented voice at the other end of the line asks about the apartment for rent. I don't have an apartment for rent.

Now this happens all the time. Some dork landlord somewhere in town misspelled his own phone number on his "For Rent" posters. Every once in a while someone calls us to rent a place. We politely explain the mistake to these people and that's the end of it.

But not this time. The guy on the other end of the line apparently understood what I told him, but he didn't seem to believe me. In fact he seemed to be getting angry.

Then it dawned on me.

"This guy thinks I pretend not to have an place for rent because I'm racist and I don't want a Greek guy in my building."

I tried to explain it again, but that was a pretty dumb idea. What was I supposed to say? "NO I'M NOT A BIGOT I JUST DON'T HAVE A BUILDING OK BYE. NOT RACIST! BYE! I LOVE GYROS! BYE FOR REAL THIS TIME!" and then hang up? So I just hung up. This is one of these situations where you just can't win.

I've been following that show on NBC, Raines. That's unusual for me, I don't generally care much for fiction series on TV for a reason that I haven't bothered to examine yet. I read that some aspects of the show are cliché, but it doesn't bother me as much as it might; I watch so very little of that kind of program that's it's all new to me. Anyway.  If you don't know what the show is about you probably won't get what this post is about. That's cool. I don't have a readership. You don't even exist. So google it up or something, you non-existent audience member, you. No offense.

(So I'm writing to myself? Feel free to see any parallels to the subject at hand.)

The main character in Raines, played (I want to say "fabulously", but it feels wrong; what has the English language done to this word?) excellently by Jeff Goldblum, is a cop who investigates murder cases. The hook of the show is that this policeman sees and has discussions with the dead people he's trying to "help". They're apparently not ghosts or anything supernatural; instead, they're figments of his imagination, and he acknowledges them as such. They never tell him anything he doesn't know already, and they look like his mental image of them at the time. For example, in the latest episode, he investigates a young artist's murder. When he learns that he's part of a drug-dealing street gang, he starts seeing him with a submachine gun in his hands. You get the picture.

Looks I wound up explaining the premise of the show anyway. Huh. Figures I once wanted to be a teacher. No way to escape one's vocation, eh?

The reason I bring this up is because I realized that the process in which Raines visualizes the victims is, in essence, exactly the same way the reader of a novel imagines the book's characters. A reader gets an initial impression of a character, only detailed as much as the writer intends, and this impression may or may not be accurate. However, it becomes refined as the book goes on and further details the character's backstory, actions, mannerisms, preferences, physical appearance and such. It's a gradual process, and to me a very interesting one. Try this at home: next time you read a book, pick a main character and try to imagine what he or she looks like, how he or she moves and speaks, etc. Do this after every chapter in which this character is involved. When you're done, compare your final impression of the character with your first. Is it the same? Did it change over the course of the book and come full circle? Is it different? Were you completely wrong at first? Completely right? Did the author intentionally mislead you for effect, only to reveal the truth later? Was there more to the character than you had first assumed? Less? Did you start or stop liking him or her at a particular point? Why?

Human instinct (some would call it animal instinct, but I'm not taking sides in that debate) tells us that making snap judgements about new elements in our lives is a good way to ensure our continued survival. This doesn't seem to have much to do with writing novels, but it's in fact a crucial part of the process of telling a story. You have to expect your audience to imagine things about your world and your characters that you haven't told them to imagine, and you have to decide when and how to break these impressions, or even if you want to break them at all.

That's probably the kind of stuff they tell you in creative writing classes and such. Man, I'm glad I'm figuring it out by myself. It's much cheaper that way.

One day, about three years ago, I stepped on the scales and saw that I weighed 313 pounds. I'm 6'3 and naturally built large, but that was still a lot heavier than I was comfortable with. Since then I've lost 55 pounds. I thought it was going to be difficult, but to my surprise it really wasn't. In fact, it hardly took any effort at all.

I didn't follow anything you could call a diet, and I didn't undertake any particular exercise routine. I eat just about everything I used to eat before, only a bit less of everything. People see how much thinner I've got and all say they admire my willpower.  The compliment is nice, but it's kind of underserved. Do I have more willpower than the average fatso? I can't tell. How do you measure willpower? I just take smaller portions, and realize "hey, I'm not hungry anymore", and stop. I sometimes stop in front of the pantry in the middle of the afternoon to grab a chocolate cookie, but I take one instead of three. It's not like I'm resisting KGB interrogation. I'm still in control of my limbs; if I don't want a second helping of cake, I just, you know, keep my arms at my sides and tell myself that this is sugar I won't have to sweat off. It feels good. It's just like physical exercise, except that I don't have to actually do it. That's freaking awesome.

Hell, I had been fat for 20 years, and I never even bothered to try getting into shape because I was surrounded by fat people who constantly complained that losing weight was difficult, painful, and sometimes impossible. That sucked. Maybe that's why we have that problem in North America now. People are so convinced that losing weight is a pain in the ass that they can't convince themselves that efforts will have results.

Meh, that's probably just a small part of the problem. I'm beginning to talk out my surprisingly firm buttocks here, so I should probably just stop typing for today.