A Catastrophic Reveal

Late February, 2013

Just made a reference in an email to a friend to the "full catastrophe," a favorite expression in Nikos Kazantzaka's novel, Zorba the Greek. It is a term that I had not quite understood when I read the book, what, thirty years ago? I was too young to realize exactly what Zorba was actually talking about, but I have carried it in me these many years, turning it over in the quiet moments in my life to see it anew.

In a few words, full catastrophe might be boiled down to living with eyes wide open. So much in literature, philosophy, religion points to the absolute need to wake up, look around; stop thinking, live. I have been getting these very messages quite explicitly in the last 24 hours from an old dream I'd written down (my own dead father sitting backwards on a church pew delivering this message); to a note from a friend; to some recent advice on writing; to my own recollection just now of dear old Zorba, bellowing out in the wild heat of his life: Opa!

So right now, I've got to scale my own fear, rise to the craggy peak and work there until this thing is done. This in fact is what it feels like to be so close and so far from completing Drum. It is a struggle more against myself than the actual story, a struggle to meet myself half-way. This is the idea, I think that I need to maintain. It has not been enough to maintain that "Jade is me"; this has been inadequate, inaccurate. To say that Jade's life is my own, or in some way parallels my own, does not articulate the entirety of her experience; in fact, it neglects Jade of her own experience.

Jade lives in her own world, and while she and I have some shared experiences, her life is her own. I need to make this much more clear, but what I am also struggling with is the fact much of the story is based on fact. So what? This, too, I need to let go of. What isn't based on fact? I'm telling a story, damn it. Stories come from authentic places in the human psyche. The story I choose to tell is not my own. It is Jade's story, and if her story overlaps my own, so be it.

I would also like to develop the character of Tran and to a lesser extent, that of the web-sleuth. These two characters are those supporting cast whose job it is to complicate and clarify Jade's struggle. To this end, these characters need to be more consequential, more of an electric force moving Jade to the brink. So this is something I need to work on in Drum.