Forgotten Thoughts

When I was but a boy, I loved reading. My greatest heroes were not basketball stars or football legends, movie celebrities or historical tacticians of some distant violence. No, my heroes were fabricated from imagination, mine and others, and I sought them out in each of their worlds: Narnia, Lord of the Rings, the Boxcar Children, Ender's Game, Taran Wanderer. It should not be surprising, then, realizing that I desired of my future not a successful sports career, or being a film artist or superhero, but to be an author, a definer of story.
Even in my youth, I recall car rides where I invented the catch line the protagonist might say that would catch the villain off guard, shredding his schemes and administering justice; or that perfect phrase that captures the heroines heart; or that aha! moment where the mystery is unraveled, the culprit's elaborate plans falling apart in the face of sherlockian rationale.
I wish, even now, I could have seen those phrases. The mind of a child has immense power, and I suspect that while they might have been unformed, even those trivial lines, in the eyes of a child, contained much magic.  Writing innovation might arrive at any point, and I've learned one must be wary, always possessing some tool for inscription at all times.  Who knows when that character's motivation will be illuminated, sitting in the back seat of a car on the road to nowhere? Or when the opening hook of a story falls neatly into place, or the denouement crashes into your mind like a hurricane of hammers - what if you have nothing to remember these ideas with?
You think, I'll just remember them all later, sometime when I'm at ease and writing in the safety of my home. But will you remember then? Hours later and life impeding? I suspect not. Even today, I imagined some fantastic lines in the car and neglected to set them into a device or notebook of some kind. Now, I sigh at the loss of creativity this world will never see. I'm no titanic author, not now, but my words, to me, still possess much creative merit, however unformed. It is like the cooling of the earth, formless and void. Eventually, I'll put everything into place: plants, seas, life. Every time I forget, the world never gets to experience a dodo bird or a rhinoceros. It may never know, but I'll never see things the same without.

Voyage of the Dawn Treader

I'm not much of a television person, and I suspect visual media mattered little in my psychological bloom.  What captured my interest most was literature.  As a child, my heroes were not like Disney princes or Star Wars' jedi, but characters like Ender Wiggin, King David, Benny from the Boxcar Children, and the Stainless Steel Rat.  I wanted the kindness and loyalty of Sam, or the wizard powers of Gandalf; the bravery of Peter Pevensie, or the charismatic wisdom of Ged. I expected, given my literary earnestness, I'd develop into a hero, not vapid like the beast-slaying princes of movies, but honest and true, as Taran Wanderer or Peter Pan.

I was wrong.

Biblical literature is full of fantastic stories, many of which may surprise the most conventional, conservative Christian.  One of my favorites is the story of David and Michal.  King Saul requests that David produce a hundred Philistine foreskins as dowry for Michal's hand in marriage.  David, pleased with the arrangement, kills two-hundred Philistines and returns with double the endowment. I'm not even certain whether I should be impressed, or disgusted, surely.

Would that I were such a hero! (Though I suspect such a prize, currently, would not garner much approval in American households) David's faithfulness to God is astounding - why is mine not so?  As such, I've dedicated fifty days towards a fast of my own, a fast in faithfulness and, perhaps, a desperate prayer. Let the games begin - or, as Sherlock might say, the game is afoot.

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.
~Yeats

As the sun rises, and my journey ambles from night into day, perhaps this is the tale of:
Voyage of the Dawn Treader.