LETTERS FROM HOME: SEARCHING HERE AND THERE FOR THE FICTIONAL YOU

Feb. 20, 1997

Dear Leslie,

A magazine story tells of wilderness trips down the Colorado River offering a New Age "Hero's Voyage" meant to deepen your understanding of your life's purpose. Strangers run the rapids together by day and at night sit naked together in a hot spring talking about their lives.

The Grand Canyon hardly qualifies as wilderness anymore, but wilderness is a flawless mirror. The wild strips away the protective camouflage by Nike or Christian Dior, engages you in conversations with bees, in the art of daffodils, the grace of trees, the insinuations of wind.

There is nowhere to go but here, nothing to think about but now.

Sometimes, the experience isn't pleasant. We discover our hearts of darkness. See "Mosquito Coast," "Apocalypse Now."

Sometimes the trip is like your days on Cloud Mountain, a surrender to the pleasure of being aware at every moment.

People on this hero's voyage first are asked to tell the story of their lives. Then they are asked to give a fictional account. It's the latter that intrigues me.

How would you make up your life? Whom would you choose for parents? Would everyone pick a childhood in Beaver Cleaverville?

I think many people would stay true to the circumstances of their lives but make different choices. In your fictional life, you practice the piano -- instead of pool -- diligently and become an accomplished musician.

You study more and watch less TV. You listen more and talk less. Give more, take less.

You react spontaneously to every new situation instead of falling back on the safety of yesterday's response. You know that habits are simply behaviors that made you comfortable in past situations. But now they are states of suspended animation, like Barcaloungers.

You make yourself available to people instead of pretending to be Garbo. The fictional you isn't afraid to love life just because death is part of the bargain. You accept that it's death that makes life precious.

You treat everyone and everything with respect, knowing that everyone and everything is a manifestation of God's love. That we are separated only by our belief in separateness.

I think of this fictional you as a potential you, the person all of us have the capacity to be. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to imagine ourselves in that way. The gap between the two is the difference between our true selves and the selves we so far have been willing to give to the world.

A few nights ago over dinner, the subject of scouting arose. DC was a Girl Scout who earned every badge her sash could accommodate. She likes learning how to dry wall, doing things herself. I barely completed any of the Cub Scout badges, much less graduate into the Boy Scouts. I liked to imagine doing all those things, building little boats powered by baking soda, learning how to tie a multitude of knots. But I never did them.

I was ashamed to admit to DC my lack of boyhood accomplishment. But more than that, agonized to be shown again the gap between myself and my fictional self.

I am convinced this recognition is necessary if our fictions are to become our reality.

If I had known back then how like a trek through wilderness is the soul's journey, I would have learned how to start a fire without matches.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.