The Misanthrope

I’m not a people person, which is to say that I simply don’t like most people. Also, I came very close to buying a boat once so I could literally sail away from everyone and everything.

Here I am injecting myself into the character of Sam in my novel The Existential Awakening of One Particular Mexican Girl:

“I think I’m gonna’ save up and buy a boat when I turn eighteen,” I said, smoothly pivoting to more comfortable and unbloodied ground.

We could see the ocean in the distance from our perch at the corner of the veranda. The moon was sitting low in the night sky, its reflection, stretching out beyond the horizon, seemed virtually endless. At that moment I felt like I could have stepped directly onto that shimmering pathway and walked unimpeded into an infinite universe of endless possibility.

“I’d just sail away,” I mused, dreamily. “From everyone and everything. Chin on shoulder, eyes fixed on the shoreline behind me watching this world fade into darkness and disappear. Or not. I don’t like people, so probably I wouldn’t even look back.”

“You’re a misanthrope,” Sara said, nodding approvingly.

Maybe. But, if I’m being honest, I actually do like most people. Even though for the most part it’s true that I don’t want anything to do with them. Arm’s Length. I need that to be my epitaph. I like you, but please go stand on the other side of the room. Cognitive dissonance doesn’t have to be a bad thing so long as one is at least marginally self-aware.

Here’s Sam talking about his father:

I didn’t grieve him I think because I don’t know that I ever truly loved him. And I didn’t want to become him in the same way that I didn’t want to lose her. Maybe some things are inevitable. Sara told me once that she thought life was circular. That would explain the hopelessness. After that I just never figured out how to reconcile the loneliness. Maybe you can’t. Maybe that’s what death is for.

I was searching for something in this novel. There’s a certain rambling tone to the prose at times that I think is reflective of the inner journey I was on, sifting through conflicting emotions and poorly remembered memories as one would a box full of jumbled family photographs, testaments to lives lived out of order with no clear connection or conclusion.

I like the word wistful:

Does he still roam these hills looking for her? Or are they together now, the two of them smiling indulgently at my misplaced wistfulness?

Maybe the feeling of wistfulness resonates with me now because I’m getting older. One looks wistfully back on things fondly remembered, rather than forward, on things still to be experienced. The old want to be young again, the young don’t know what they want until they reach the tipping point, that moment when they crest the hill and turn to look back over their shoulder at what was. And by then it’s too late.

There’s a metaphysical thing going on in this book that I never saw coming, maybe I was too busy looking backwards.

In the moment that my grandmother died I became disassociated with my physical self. I was still present and conscious in my body, but at the same time my mind had moved sideways into a completely different dimension.

This is interesting. The notion that Sara’s mother was capable of some sort of metaphysical journeying, or astral projection came out of nowhere and I very nearly abandoned it before the ink had dried on that first sentence. What a bizarre thing to interject into the thoughtful character piece that was unfolding around this girl. It was just too far outside the image that had, by then, taken shape in my head as to what this story would become.

And, of course, those are always the best ideas. The ones that seem completely random and ill-fitted to the tale being told. I have an inner alarm that goes off in moments like this one, honed over countless years and hours spent hunched over my keyboard. Never quench the spark of inspiration. That’s a maxim to live by. If you do so often enough the muse will leave you, she’ll go looking for someone else, someone less uptight, more willing to follow along to those unexpected places where only she can lead you. This novel exists because of that one singular moment.

I spent every summer from the time I was twelve up until I turned eighteen with my uncle on his ranch in Fallbrook, just north of San Diego.

And these were the first words I wrote. I needed a piece to submit to a workshop. I liked my childhood growing up in the sunshine of Southern California. That was it. I had absolutely no idea what the story would be about. Couldn’t have imagined the journey that lay ahead, or that it would end up here, with me musing about a girl I hadn’t yet met but that would soon radically alter the trajectory of my life.

There’s a raccoon in this novel. I think about him as often as I do her. I know where he came from, but his arrival surprised me nonetheless. I won’t say too much about him, I think he would prefer it that way. Like Sam, Hamisch’s life was irreversably altered when he found Sara. And like Sam he was destroyed when he lost her.

I write organically. If it isn’t real it doesn’t get out onto the page. Because of that I love to read the things I write because they’re not constructs of my own mind. I’m simply a conduit. I give voice to those that can’t speak for themselves and the story tells itself. If the people are real all you have to do is follow around behind them and bear witness. Also, I’m not really a misanthrope, or I am, but maybe a reforming one? I don’t know. In any case, I’m glad I didn’t buy that boat and sail away. And I’m glad Sam stayed put as well. I think we both owed it to Sara. She needed us. Sam’s job was to watch over her while she figured it all out. Mine was to make sure she wasn’t forgotten.

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