CARRY ON MY WAYWARD COLLECTION...

I talk to my inner lover, and I say, why such rush?
- Kabir
The Failure

It's a command, mostly in the military scheme of things, Carry on!, the way Lt. Jimmy Cross resolves to look after his platoon more seriously and dispense all things personal; with these two strong words to his troops - Carry on!- he sees them saddling up and forming into a column to get out of harm's way.

Tim O'Brien's great short story The Things They Carried tells the tale of an officer's personal struggles in the course of the Viet Nam war. In a sense, the two command words also identify with the title; The Things They Carried, after all, tells of the things the combatants carry in warfare: guns, ammos, tents, knapsacks, c-rations, fear, distrust of the white man, et. al or all things slumped in some huge backs and massive shoulders or some small hearts and smaller minds of soldiers - and for which the words Carry on! become part of the things carried, with the full weight of the command seeping its way to the backs and shoulders, hearts and minds, of soldiers so they can hopefully get out of the villages of Than Khe, hopefully out of harm's way, hopefully into safety and survival.

To carry on is to go on, to move forward, which as a term signifies the same driving force that brings a troop leader to remind his men they better keep themselves alive. Outside the arena of war, to carry on also means to live on and pursue the objective. In my case carry on probably measures the same weight as Lt. Cross' order, given the chances my writing is up to against my agent's bullets and any editor's bombs. And in the spirit of comradeship let me share my war and warfare if indeed they were and should be sharable: I have planned for a collection of 12 short stories entitled Tales From the Brown that was scheduled to have been completed (in initial rough draft) 3 years ago. Three years after schedule, all I could show up with are three miserable stories that even my closest friends had generous words for. "A hard read", one said, the vagueness clearer than the other's critique, "Pfffftt".

In my warfare, time is not the enemy. Work and health admittedly get in the way but they are not a veritable Than Khe. Carry On! has no bearing to my plants and trees, ledgers and memos, and any command to instill drive and pursuit should be targetted towards that which I wish, in all irony, to please get in the way. That is nothing else but The Idea.

Last night, I developed a game plan in my mind's war chamber. To Carry On! is to tell myself, by way of critical/creative command, that I have to heighten my sensitivity to everything I watch, see, feel, hear, experience, dream, and remember. The plan started at 9:00 last night, and for everyone's sake, comrades and seekers alike, here are the ideas I gathered. Read, critique, and say, for some noble undertaking... pfffft, which, for all I know, really meant As You Were, or worse, About Face!

Idea #1: TV Show Watched Last Night As Basis -

I rarely watch television and even more rarely do I see stand-up acts in any venue. But last night, Margaret Cho and her 'seriousness' froze me. She mentioned about a politician saying 'What we don't know kills us', like 'if we don't know about AIDS, we will die of AIDS'. Cho upped the ante against ignorance by giving her own personal motto, 'If I don't know it, I don't exist'. Carry on, I told myself, eureka disguising itself in two words, as I thought about some futuristic game show where each wrong answer calls for the disintegration of the contestant's key body organ.

Hmmm, short story, anyone?

Idea #2: Dream Dreamt Last Night As Basis -

Here's the dream: I was walking along a beautiful garden of pines and thick bushes when I decided to settle by the edge of a meandering stream to enjoy the tranquility of its water. I looked all around me, the blue sky, the greens, the lotuses and lilies floating on the stream, and I thought to myself why nature had remained good to us despite the hostile and indifferent attitude we sustained against her. While thinking this, I noticed some broad-leaved plants(probably water lettuce) floating towards my direction. As I was flat on my tummy and with my head inches above the surface of water, I recognized soon that atop the floating plant was a green frog. When the plant hit land forming the edge of the stream where I was, the frog was close enough to me for its damp snout to tip-touch my nose. I was amused by the sight and knew I had the beauty of nature in my hands (or nose for that matter). Suddenly, the frog's eyes grew and it croaked, ko-kak, ko-kak, ko-kak, and just as soon leapt to the water and sliced it with a beautiful plop. I laughed, stood up, and went to a nearby hut. While on my way to the hut, my eyes became watery and my nose got itchy. When I reached the inside of hut, I picked up a thick book in a rack by the door and the book's cover reads The Unabridged Book of Ko-kaks. I turned the pages and looked for the meanings of the 3 ko-kaks the green froggie croaked to me (I have no idea how I was able to distinguish that from the other ko-kaks; they're all ko-kaks) and when I got to that page I turned red with rage. There emblazoned in bold letters the meaning of the 3 croaks: a-choo, a-choo, a-choo!

Short story, anyone?

Idea #3: Article Read This Morning As Basis -

I picked up at the church premises this morning a copy of Sojourner Magazine which has for its cover the essayist and poet Wendell Berry. The cover article is an interview of Berry about his life in the country (All the voices that surrounded me from when I began to hear were all from this place, he said, affirming his legendary attachment to that small town in the Midwest.) One question thrown to him was his opinion on balkanism. He confirmed the presence of this growing tension between locales (most probably, his very own locales or in the adjacent) and opined that "we" (probably referring to them locales) were experiencing warrior civilization despite "our" capability for kindness and generosity. Berry continued to say that the only antidote he saw against this slowly growing tension was "imagination" to be able to fully understand the benefits of compassion, but hinting a pessimist voice with an outlook about the diffult business of being human. I have not heard of the term balkanism before but my guess was that this somewhat politically wrong term was derived from the ethnic tensions traditionally brewing between Balkan states, and if Berry's observation was correct, specifically about imagination serving as an antidote, then his optimist/pessimist view serves as one rich source even for one full length novel.

I can probably create more than one short story about this one...or, must I say first, short story, anyone?

(to be continued...)