The Shamen in the Story

I am not the skin you will soon be in (more like the Iguana on Charls’s shoulder, peering) and I have seen enough not to envy you that. Believe me, in a moment, when I am gone, and you are poured into the mind of Charls, things will change.
The old man, if I met him, would call me snake charmer. I want to see what happens in the end. Of things we cannot see we want to hear.

“Who is this old man? Is it Charles or Jack?”
“Can’t tell ya Golem, not yet. But at least one of them is you.”
“Don’t jive me man.”
“Don’t talk Golem. This is a story of mysticism. Dialog can only screw it up.”
“You’ve got to learn to talk. Some people, when they read a book, only read the dialog.”
“Now, where did you hear that?”
“I’m not as dumb as I look.”
“I don’t think I can understand, or even comprehend, a person who’d skip through a book and only read dialog. I can only imagine someone who is illiterate. Get back in the plot before you mess the whole thing up.”
“Plot is supposed to be a vehicle for story.”
“Golem, your brain hasn’t been created yet. Shut up.”
“It’s just that I started out life innocent and now you guys are making me into a villain. I can’t put it all together. I’m a loveable little kid, and now, just as I make my entrance, everyone is telling me I’m a psychopath.”
“That’s a part of the story Golem. You were a loveable innocent kid, and society created a psychopath out of you. Just read the story and we’ll talk about it later.”
“But if I am a fictional character in a book, how is it that I am writing the book?”
“You were too young once to write a book. Someone had to do it for you. Of course, when you grow up, you’ll write on your own — maybe I’ll go along with that. A line or two at least.”
“No way Jack, the story’s mine.”

Frenzy finds us; it is near. Often nearer than we think — a lot to bear.
Patience, faith — words some don’t hear. But people who believe in people find in their fear, an answer that improves the souls that are not separate. If you could ask Charls what he has learned so far, he might answer that he has learned to listen and hear, and to see what it is in others that they feel, or fear or love. The path is long and tortuous and torturous, things he did he would not have done, yet things done cannot be undone, and the story can only be written as it has occurred. He had no wish to make something that looks bad look good. The parts of the story that are ugly are here. It is in this sea of ugliness and beauty that can be seen what beauty is. Who is it that said that truth is beauty and beauty truth?
Yet, he’s seen a child of one grimace at ugliness with fear. It is not something learned. The soul knows what is ugly and what is beautiful at birth. Do we have something in us at birth that tells us what is true and what is a lie?

Gold does not find you when you pick up a shovel. It does not walk out of the mountain, or float in the stream and take your hand, and exclaim that here is where the golden things lie. It is not a spellbinding thing, this search for the pot at the end of the rainbow. The story is in the looking and in digging a lot of holes and in finding yellowish things that in the end are tin. Diligence makes it right again in the end — we hope, pray, prey. People are looking to find what it is that is not right in the world. Charls has been searching for an answer.