Charles De Lint - Memory and Dream

“But if it’s dangerous for them ...”

“Ma belle Izzy, it’s no more dangerous for them than it is for us. For all we know, that’s the way we come into being as well, but we simply don’t remember it. Maybe we were all no more than bits of spirit floating around somewhere and instead of checking out a painting, we got to decide whether or not we wanted to slip inside our mothers’ wombs.”

“But I’m not God,” Izzy said. “I can’t assume that kind of responsibility.”

“I’m not saying you are.”

“But how can I be responsible for them all?”

“That’s where I disagree with John,” Kathy said. “I mean, it’d be no different from how it works with us. You get born and then you’re pretty much left to make your own way through life.”

“That’s not true. We have parents to help us through the formative years.”

“Not all of us do.”

“You know what I mean,” Izzy said.

“Of course I do. But the difference here is that the beings you bring into existence are already mature.

Think of what John was like. If you want to play it safe, just don’t paint any infants or children.”

Izzy shook her head. “I don’t know ....”

“Nobody can force you to do it,” Kathy said. “I’m not trying to force you. But I do think you were given a gift and to not use it, to not give these beings a chance to live—the choice to live—is to abuse that gift. Not in the same way John says Rushkin does, of course, but it’s wrong all the same. Sure it’s a dangerous world out there, but it’s just as dangerous for us and we make do.”

“But why put anyone in a position where they have to risk that clanger in the first place? Don’t you think it would be better to just leave them where they are?”

“I can tell you’re not planning to have children.”

Izzy sighed. “It’s a consideration, isn’t it?”

But Kathy remained firm in her belief. “If they didn’t want to come across, they wouldn’t inhabit the bodies you paint for them. They make the choice.”

“But—”

“Then think of it this way,” Kathy said. “One of the reasons the world’s in such sad shape is that no one believes in magic or wonder anymore. The beings you bring across could well spell the difference between the flat, grey world that most of us see and one filled with actual manifestations of enchantment and mystery. Confronted with the results of your magic, people might learn to look up from the narrow field of vision that lies directly in front of them and actually see the world they’re in and the people they share it with. When that happens, maybe we’ll finally start to take care of it and each other better.”

“It still doesn’t seem fair to make them risk their lives like that for us.”

“It’s not just for us,” Kathy said. “It’s for them, too. You can’t tell me they don’t like it here, or why else would they choose to cross over? I’ll tell you this: I don’t think I ever met anyone so enamored with being alive as John is.”

Izzy couldn’t deny that. “Okay,” she said. “But that’s still an awfully big assignment you’re setting for me.”

“But one worth attempting. I can’t think of a better rationale to create a work of art. I don’t care what form one’s art takes, it has to be an attempt to leave the world a better place than it was before we got here or it’s not doing its job. And I don’t mean just making things that are pretty. I’m talking about confronting the problems we see and trying to do something about it. Trying to get other people to see those problems and lend their help. That’s why I write the kinds of stories I do.”

They left the argument unresolved. Izzy needed time to mend both her body and her heart. Her body mended quicker. Long after she was able to get about once more, she still missed John and was no closer to understanding why he wouldn’t come back to her than she’d ever been. He’d been so quick to read her heart before. Why couldn’t he feel her regret now? She’d made a terrible, terrible mistake. She knew that. God, she’d known it not ten minutes after all those horrible things she’d said had come spewing out of her mouth. All she wanted to do now was say she was sorry. She knew she’d always love him, no matter what he was, or where he’d come from. But she couldn’t tell him any of that unless he came to her. She had no way of reaching him herself.

In her worst moments she felt that he did know, but he still refused to return, and that was the worst feeling of all.

Biographies bore me. I don’t care how insightful a biographer is, no one knows what’s going on inside someone else’s head. Autobiographies bore me, too, because we lie to ourselves even more than a biographer does. Here’s what I think the bottom line is: if you’re looking for truth, try fiction. Oh, I can hear the protest already: “But fiction is even more lies.” This is certainly true. But I’ve always believed that the lies we use to make our fictions reveal the truth with far more honesty than any history or herstory or life story. So why have I started a journal? Well, it wasn’t my idea. Truth is, I was dead set against it.

I went into therapy after Izzy moved back to the island. It wasn’t Izzy’s moving away that sent me over the edge—that had been building up for a while. I’ve always had these bouts with depression; I hide them well, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Some mornings it’s all I can do to get out of bed and face another day. So it wasn’t Izzy’s leaving me alone in the apartment so much as it was that I didn’t have anybody around for whom I had to put on a cheerful mask. The thing with pretending you’re in a good mood is that sometimes you can actually trick yourself into feeling better. Without Izzy being there every day, the emptiness I’ve always carried inside me expanded until it threatened to swallow me whole.

So I thought I’d try therapy. Sophie’s been through it. And Wendy. Even Christy, though lord knows why he would have needed it, he always seems so confident, so self-contained. Still, I suppose people say the same thing about me. We’re back to masks, I guess.

Anyway, I went to see this woman that Sophie recommended, Jane Cooke, but it didn’t really seem to help. I’ve always been a talker. I’ll talk to just about anyone about anything—except about myself.

My sessions with Jane weren’t any different. After a couple of months of weekly visits, she was the one who suggested I start keeping a journal.

“You’ve already told me that anything anyone might want to know about you is in your stories,” she said.

“That’s true.”

“But there must still be things you feel a need to communicate, or you’d no longer be writing these stories. Would that be a fair assessment?”

“I don’t think I’ll ever have enough time to tell all the stories I need to tell,” I told her.

Jane smiled. “There’s never enough time, is there?”

“But the stories aren’t enough. I know people who use their writing as therapy, but I don’t get a sense of catharsis from mine. Telling stories is something I have to do, but it’s like the part of me that tells the stories and the part of me that’s always depressed are two separate people. The stories help other people work through their bad times, but they don’t do anything to help me.”

Jane nodded. “Do you keep a journal?” she asked.

“I never really saw the point in it.”

“Well, I’m going to ask you to give it a try.”