On Guarding Dreams & The Neverending Story

"Come, taste the rose-blood of all that never was, the spiced marrow of a spirited away." - S.R.

Do you believe in fortune-telling? Or how about psychics, and mystics, tarot, and palm-reading? Divining the patterns of stars and the mapping of birth charts and deciphering the story of a life before it's ever been written, or lived? Many times, a storyteller will graze the truth with their words, and it will make their tales more engrossing, more real, an adventure to be lived in by the reader for awhile. Sometimes, however, a storyteller will fashion a dagger, plunge it into the heart of reality, even through the guise of fantasy, and use the tip of the forged blade, newly inked, to scratch out the blood-red words that are so real that they are greater than truth. In the process of creation, they will have foretold something to come, a future that is yet to be, often with a warning and, if they have done their work so correctly, a means to avoid the traps and pitfalls that lead to such a landscape. And if such a future is absolutely inevitable, they will tell how to move onward in hope and in the certainty of knowledge – knowledge that magic cannot ever be divorced from the natural world, from whence we are born. If they've been so precise in their fashioning of daggers and words, they will say that in spite of that creature of darkness, with its tools of illusion to instill fear and powerlessness – that magic itself is innate within us, it is our birthright, and therein we may find that which can never be taken away, or lost; that magic is our inalienable power, closer to our bodies than our own breath.

I say these things because I've recently rediscovered my love for the film, “The Neverending Story”, which is celebrating its 40^th Anniversary this year. If you've not seen it, firstly: what the hell? And then, of course, I will beg you to go and watch it online, or buy a copy of it, and really take in not only the beauty of the film, a masterwork of 1980's fantasy, but then to prick up your ears to the deeper message inherent in the film – relevant as ever to the landscape of our modern world.

The film follows Bastian, a young boy, whom lives at home with his single father (his mother, it's implied, had passed away several years before) as he deals with school bullies, tardiness, and an interest in all the classic books of yore. He hides inside a bookstore to escape a vicious chase by said bullies, only to discover the eponymous book, The Neverending Story, sitting on the desk of the bookseller. He snatches it away when the man is distracted, and runs off to read the book from cover to cover. What ensues is a fascinating tale that blurs the lines of fantasy and reality, and calling into question where those lines might be, if there are any at all.

Fantasia, the world so-named inside of the stolen book, is disappearing. An unfathomable force is “uncreating” the land, a force which they have named “the Nothing”. Atreyu, a young plains warrior, and arguably the true main character of the film, has been tasked with finding the one person that can stop the Nothing, whom lives beyond the edges of his world. “I can't get beyond the boundaries of Fantasia!” he shouts, his voice echoing off the jagged walls of a black cave where a giant, wolf-like creature rests. The wolf's glowing green eyes grow wider, his teeth bared more menacingly, drawing satisfaction at every quake of earth or crumbling of rocks. We learn that his name is G'mork. He laughs. “Fantasia has no boundaries,” he says. “It's the world of human fantasy. Every part, every creature of it, is a piece of the dreams and hopes of mankind. Therefore, it has no boundaries. ” And therein we discover that Fantasia, the world within the book, where a myriad of beings are living out their unique and autonomous lives, cannot exist without human imagination because it quite literally is human imagination. But, what is not explicitly stated by the film, is that the inverse is true as well: the hopes and dreams of humanity, that which propel the world as we know it and staves off entropy, cannot exist without hopes, or dreams, without Fantasia.

G'mork reveals himself to be a “servant of the Nothing”, one that helps it to destroy all hopes and dreams. Atreyu asks him why he is doing this. And we are met with something that greatly went over my head as a child, but is extremely pertinent now more than ever:

Atreyu: “But why is Fantasia dying, then?”

G'mork: “Because people have begun to lose their hopes and forget their dreams. So the Nothing grows stronger.”

Atreyu: “What is the Nothing?”

G'mork: “It's the emptiness that's left. It's like a despair, destroying this world. And I have been trying to help it.”

Atreyu: “But why?”

G'mork: “Because people who have no hopes are easy to control; and whoever has the control...has the power!”

And now, I come back to this: there are storytellers and artists that have, either intentionally or not, torn away a bit more of the veil for us. They divined for us through the book, and subsequent film, “The Neverending Story”. Sometimes we can see the golden light of the lands beyond the veil, and we know that there is actually is more “beyond Fantasia”, even if we can't see it. And sometimes when it is torn away, we are met with the truth of our own reality: sometimes it is like a beautiful hand proffered through the veil in earnest. Sometimes it is ugly. And with so many eyes to observe these earthly delights, surely, I cannot be the only one that sees, starkly, that something is amiss, unfolding in the world not like a series of events (though they are there, clearly, and undeniable), but rather like a vanishing.

The news comes, and its comes in a flood. Year after year, we toast to the New Year and we cheer on the birth of time, and hiss in the general direction of what has gone. We've seen in recent days, that sometimes that flood is literal. Heartbreaking. How many times can the human heart meet devastation, eye to eye, before letting go of the roots and branches, to be swept up by the Nothing? Fighting back against my own despair, along with my own physical and mental illnesses, sometimes I feel that I don't know how I cannot get swept away as well. How am I still holding on? What is it that tethers me to the ground, even when the darkness itself has a weight to it? When I am full of tears, I am frightened, and I feel that I cannot breathe?

What I know is that there will always be G'morks. They like to run things, campaign for office, and on the cult of personality, the persistent threat of “something worse” or finger-pointing at straw-men and those most vulnerable among us, they often win. There will always be the Nothing. It's insidious. Rather than crossing the land like an eraser of magic, it moves instead through people. I feel it sometimes. It laps at my heels. It's caught up in the blankets of my bed where I curl up, gripping the earth with each breath, waiting for it to pass. But, people have strings, you know. They can be tugged back by fierce and deliberate acts of love. The universe, in it's beautiful, ordered chaos, is always working toward balance. For every ugliness, there is an act of beauty. For every bullet, a flower cracks the crust, growing in defiance of poison and cement. We have to believe that the weight of every bomb dropped, and even one is far too many, somewhere there presses a greater love from the world.

Even you. Somewhere there fell a tear too many, somewhere a heart broke in two, and the numinous pulled you 'cross realms to bring you forth just as you are, right now, reading these words. Because your specific love, your compassion, the way that you tend the land around your feet, your thoughts and dreams and hopes, they keep the balance, they defy the Nothing, somewhere someone lives another day because of your kindness. Really. That's not an exaggeration. AND, IF NOTHING ELSE, IS THAT NOT MAGIC? G'mork and his ilk cannot revoke that through their rules and laws and actions of ill will. It is you. I say again to you: that kind of magic is innate within us, it is our birthright, and therein we may find that which can never be taken away, or lost; that magic is our inalienable power, closer to our bodies than our own breath. Hold that. Keep that close. It is a spark of the numinous given to you. It is the glimpse of the world beyond Fantasia, and it is yours. And it is defiance.

Beginning tomorrow, October 1^st (Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit!), Lissa Sloan begins her virtual book tour for “Glass and Feathers”, with several writers, artists, and creators interviewing her and sharing their excitement over this wonderful novel. On 10/10, I will be sending out an exclusive interview with Lissa to you all in celebration of the book release! Be on the lookout for that! And I am also hosting a giveaway of one signed copy of the book itself. If you're subscribed, you're automatically entered! Commenting on this post here will double your entry, and I will select one winner at random. So, don't forget to leave a comment and let me know your thoughts on the discussion today, and it also helps more people find me!

In the next few months, I will have another short flash-fiction story called “Damask”, coming out in the year's final edition of Weird Fiction Quarterly. It's about a horror writer that finds a mask that lets her time travel, haunting the years past as a ghost, and using it to become the villain in her very own tale of fright and mischief, not suspecting that her own antics might eventually turn against her.

I hope that you consider your magic and your very special and necessary place in the fabric of the world. It’s so difficult some days, but you are needed. Truly.

That’s all for today. And, don't you worry, I'll leave the candle burning for you.