The Works of Nick Hayden

 In a modern story, if things seem perfect, you know trouble’s bubbling beneath the surface. Partly, this is the drive of conflict in story, but I think there’s something more. As a culture, we have a sense of impending doom. My wife reads a LOT of young adult novels. Many of them are post-apocalyptic or dystopian. They all imply that man has failed in some way or that his success is illusionary.

Let’s look beyond the spiritual implications of not being able to perfect ourselves. Instead, let’s examine these false utopias briefly. They usual harbor a sense of futility, a sense that everything falls apart. Men are cogs in a machine or they live in unparalleled luxury with nothing to do or they gain a sort of false godhood that corrupts them.

We don’t understand perfection. Either it’s tainted or it’s boring.  If everything’s fine, it’s not a story. And if you try to drag out happily ever after, it bores us. Years of unbroken peace after war is best left to the imagination.

I think our problems with utopias is we don’t truly understand joy.

Joy is movement and relationship and awe. It’s not stagnant; it’s fecund and alive. Joy is the temporary “happily ever after” somehow transmuted into forever. It’s the momentum of conflict without the sinful struggle.

The Romantic poets tried to capture moments of joy. I think that’s the best chance we writers have–the moment. We don’t know how to stretch it out convincingly.

But God does. And he’ll show us someday.

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Photo: Tim Bouwer via Compfight

There’s not a word yet
For old friends who’ve just met.
-“I’m Going to Go Back There Someday,” The Muppets

I don’t cry often. The number of people who’ve seen me in tears is a single digit. But I have a distinct memory of trying to hold back tears as I was driving around a year ago.

I was listening to The Green Album, a Muppet-song cover album. (Yes, you read that right.)

I don’t know if you’ve ever listened to “I’m Going to Go Back There Someday,” but the rendition on the CD highlights the sense of longing and desire for a home we’ve not yet reached.

And those words quoted above struck me in my soul because my daughter had just been born. I didn’t know her, but I loved her. In a way I can’t quite explain, my longing for God met that gift of joy only hours old.

It’s her first birthday today. She’s full of smiles. Always. From the moment she wakes.

I still don’t know who she’ll be, but I know she’s been given to me for safe keeping. Of the many blessings a parent has from a child, one of the most important is the way she reveals what really matters in the world. Who cares if work goes badly or you have too much to get done? Not when I come home to this:

The years will go too fast. I’ve been told so. I can sense it. Most times, mankind doesn’t truly want eternity. An hour is long enough with most people. Love is the only thing that can make forever sensible.

Love you forever, Serenity.

Many eons ago (meaning late August), I started a little post about why I write.

And then I got busy.

This particular type of busy-ness makes it difficult to write, not because I don’t have some time to write but because I don’t have the space I need to write. My mind needs breathing room, an open area in which to play, time to fiddle and tinker. And, then, I can write.

When I’m stuck in these periods of life, I tend to forget what the purpose of writing is.

Luckily for me, we live in a link-happy web-world, and a Facebook friend posted a link to this wonderful article that touched on the ideas of beauty that helps fuel my writing.

Rather than trying to explain my reasons for writing anew, I’ll let an old story of mine do the talking:

“Listen to me, Celina. All the stories that are told and retold are done so because people desire the things that are in the stories, not the words themselves, but the things the words represent. You must understand that stories, in any case the ones people will listen to over and over again, don’t concern themselves primarily with food or sleep or money or such rather mundane things, except when the mundane touches on the great, the things that begin with capital letters or should: Love. Truth. Justice. Beauty. Honor. Peace. …”

Or from the same story, there’s this passage, about the need and power of story:

But it was not for Fred that the whole of Nephra rejoiced. While he was a fine young man—in some respects, anyway—his presence had merely sparked the tinder of their imaginations. To the citizens of Nephra, who would never leave their land, nor wished to, Fred symbolized the beauty seen in foreign places, the triumph of an unattainable victory, the importance of the word “hero.” He touched them in that same place as exotic glimpses seen late at night, terrible monsters that could not be defeated but must be, the innocence in the eyes of a girl rescued, the glory of one who does not understand how great he is—all these things: the hopes, dreams, and joys of the Nephran people. Though they themselves would never leave and were content with their place in the world, they still envisioned things beyond their vision, wonder beyond their comprehension and joy beyond their understanding.

Or, if I may steal from a different novel I had a hand in writing:

Modern man has lost his imagination. If a modern man sails across the sea, he knows what land he will come to. But as the sailboat departed slowly from the pier, I could not think as a modern man. The stars were bright above the white sails and gentle waves. No, when a ship sails from a dark, celestial shore, he does not land in Europe or China; he ends in a new world, in lands yet undiscovered. […] You can point the sailboat out to me as it sits beside the pier this morning. I will not believe you. I see the ship sailing to the unknown horizon – to Faerie-land, where men have adventures forever. And Jonathan is there, where every story is true. And though I am happy for him – I am irrationally happy – more than anything, I ache. I ache because I want to be there, too.

You are probably sick of my giant blockquotes, but that’s okay. See, my writing has, at the very least, the power to reinvigorate myself. And if it can touch me, maybe it can touch others, and that, you see, is the part of why I write.

I recently watched Studio Ghibli’s The Secret World of Arrietty. If you want a review, visit my wife’s blog. I want to highlight two aspects of the film that impressed me–its simplicity and its sense of wonder.

The story follows little people, Borrowers, who live in human houses and “borrow” what they need to survive. Little things take on immense importance. A cube of sugar warrants a night expedition. A pin becomes a symbol of coming of age and adventure. Drops of rain become a cascade of beauty. The cracks and crevices of a house become corridors of exploration and secrecy.

By boiling the world down to essentials, The Secret World of Arrietty imbues wonder into the commonplace paraphernalia of life. And I think this is the lesson.

You can shock your audience with convoluted twists and improbable reversals. But to touch them in the deep recesses, I think often we make things too complicated.

Simplicity of plot, of word choice, of image, of emotion–these foster a canvas ready for wonder.

It’s probably why children’s books and pulpy adventures stay in the cultural imagination for generations.