Imagine Your Imagination . . .

"Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last you create what you will." -George Bernard Shaw

Since I was a little girl, I have loved stories. I think my fascination derives from my mother's bedtime readings of such classics as The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Winnie the Witch. Our family bonded over the impossible worlds of star destroyers, warp power, and fantastical magic. Rather than telling us to grow up, my mom encouraged us to believe in things outside of ourselves.

And none of us have turned into violent serial killers or whatever.

The cynicism that arrives with each birthday has forced me to consider this world more. It's easy to start from scratch and make everything the way you want it to be in a magical land with clouds for pillows and skittles raining from the sky, but to find the good in what surrounds you and use that to imagine this world as something else . . . that takes some real imagination.

While in high school, I fell in love with literature. Not just with reading, but with the tortured artist and the wide-eyed idealist and the incurable cynic. Stories are found everywhere. Stories are found with no real effort. Pick up a newspaper or magaxine, turn on the tv, look out your window, walk past a conversation, enjoy a piece of art: these stories are found anywhere you look.

To take a story and develop it . . . to have an entire generation identify with your telling . . . to unveil meanings beyond the mere facts . . .. These skills are how literature sweeps me away by.

Before I was told that I probably wouldn't cut it, I wanted to be a writer. In fact, just the other day I found a letter I had written when iw as 14 to my 19-year-old self. I had sloppily inquired if I had yet published a series of fairy tale parodies I had been working on. While it is still a buried desire of mine to be a published author, I am not tempted by the prospect of publishing a much loved and much read popular book that holds no value beyond a mildly diverting story. (You know I'm talking about Twilight.) I don't want to be well-known or highly paid. I have my editing career ahead of me for that. As a writer, I want to change someone's life.

I want to help someone like me. I found my answers through literature. It helped me ground my beliefs to the reality around me, and it helped me to sympathize with others and consider individuality. My heroes are long dead writers, most of which as still not acknowledged as giants in their own time. However, their impact was on the small scale that keeps the world from imploding in on itself. I mean, if individuals aren't strong, what holds up those lofty ideals? Nothing.

And we individuals do what we can to keep the world on our shoulders.


The Poet: A Fragment

WHERE'S the Poet? show him! show him,
Muses nine! that I may know him!
'Tis the man who with a man
Is an equal, be he King,
Or poorest of the beggar-clan,
Or any other wondrous thing
A man may be 'twixt ape and Plato;
'Tis the man who with a bird,
Wren or Eagle, finds his way to
All its instincts; he hath heard
The Lion's roaring, and can tell
What his horny throat expresseth,
And to him the Tiger's yell
Comes articulate and presseth
On his ear like mother-tongue.
-John Keats


Maybe I'll post something original next time.