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<\/a><\/div>\n\nWake up and live your life on your own terms, you are a king in your own kingdom, a god in your own universe.<\/i>\n<\/p>\n
\u2014 Bangambiki Habyarimana<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
We\u2019d been discussing life stuff. End of life stuff, actually. Wills and obituaries and eulogies and celebration of life arrangements. That kind of thing. The kind of thing I\u2019d scarcely thought about until a few years ago. A day may come when I have it all in order. But \u2014 as Aragorn might say \u2014 it is not this day. This day I have something different in mind. Related, but different.<\/p>\n
Because all this end of life talk got me thinking about what\u2019s most important about a person. How can we hope to capture the essence of a lifetime, a life, a whole entire person, in a few hundred words? A \u201cstandard comprehensive obituary\u201d is somewhere between two hundred and four hundred words. A eulogy is usually longer, between five hundred and a thousand words, \u201clasting approximately three to five minutes when spoken.\u201d Forgive me for thinking this is scarcely enough to do anyone justice. It\u2019s the time it takes to boil a kettle or microwave popcorn. (Note to self: add \u201cmicrowave popcorn\u201d to the menu for my celebration of life event.)<\/p>\n
Writing your own life summaries allows you to include more of what matters to you. Or at least get the details right. I\u2019ve attended too many funerals where the eulogy was factually incorrect. I\u2019ve drafted my obituary. Fran is working on hers. We intend to write our own eulogies. To that end, Fran\u2019s been reading a couple of books on the subject. I\u2019ll link them below if you fancy checking them out yourself. It\u2019s not simply a matter of including more detail, though. A timeline or checklist of achievements can only go so far. I\u2019m more than a list of things I\u2019ve done and places I\u2019ve visited. At least, I hope so. I haven\u2019t been many places or done very much. But what is that more than<\/i>? What is the me<\/i> that asks these questions? What will disappear when I\u2019m no longer here? And then it came to me. <\/p>\n
\nYour inner world is your own private kingdom. Your thoughts, memories, and feelings. Your stories. No one knows them as intimately and completely as you do. They\u2019re yours in ways nothing else you will ever lay claim to or own is yours. They are not just yours they are you.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
It\u2019s hardly original that our thoughts and feelings are private but my insight goes further than that. \u201cYour stories\u201d isn\u2019t just stories about your life. It\u2019s also the ones you imagined. Dreamed. Created. My mind goes to the short stories I wrote years ago. I\u2019ve shared some of them here but there are others few have seen and even fewer will remember. In any case, no one knows them as I do. They\u2019re part of who and what I was when I wrote them. Who and what I am now. Their characters are well known to me and well loved. Malcolm, Stitch, Devon, and Halt. Aleysha. Bill Stokes and the unnamed girl he meets in Wolvercote Cemetery. Josef Betz. Kai and Ellen of the Ylfe. At their best they exemplify traits I\u2019m proud to claim as mine. At their worst they display attitudes and behaviours I\u2019d be embarrassed or ashamed to explore in any other way. <\/p>\n
But if these are the inhabitants of my private kingdom, what of the kingdom itself? The tales play out at the intersection of objective reality and my imagination. Tynemouth Priory and Castle. Oxford. Leazes Park. A decrepit cottage in Mid Wales. I know these fictional settings as well as I know the corresponding locations in the physical world. I\u2019ve followed Malcolm and Stitch along the winding track that skirts the outer walls of Tynemouth Castle. I\u2019ve watched Stitch evoke her spells of protection against unwanted attention at her market stall, and Bill Stokes poring over his copy of The Lord of the Rings<\/i> in Maisie\u2019s Cafe. I\u2019ve climbed the hill to the cottage beside Jon (\u201cReally it isn\u2019t so much a \u2018cottage\u2019 as a two room hut but the word \u2018Cottage\u2019 seemed more homely \u2014 and Homely this little house certainly is.\u201d) and sat with the wizard of Berry Hill in the growing gloom of evening.<\/p>\n
\nIt was all Story. Patterns across the land and down the years. He sighed \u2014 and the sound fell upon the air with an Age\u2019s soft sadness.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
It was all Story.<\/i> Fran offered me a line from one of the books she\u2019s been reading. \u201cDeath steals everything except our stories.\u201d I looked it up. It\u2019s from the poem \u201cLarson\u2019s Holstein Bull\u201d by American poet, novelist, and essayist Jim Harrison. The poem records the death of a girl \u201cgored by the bull on her way home from school.\u201d It\u2019s more than a record, though. It\u2019s a memorialisation. It concludes \u201cShe\u2019s lived in my memory for sixty years. | Death steals everything except our stories.\u201d There\u2019s nothing new, of course, in the idea that we live on in the memories of those who outlive us. James Wrubel expressed it as \u201cNo one truly dies who is remembered. No one truly dies who is loved.\u201d <\/p>\n
In my short story \u201cAnd Men Myrtles\u201d the author JRR Tolkien lives on in the ritual observance of fans who gather each year at his graveside. Bill Stokes\u2019 wife Joan lives on in the time and energy he devotes to maintaining her plot in the same cemetery. But these acts say more about the mourners than the mourned. The most passionate devotee of Middle-earth will never know what that realm, its peoples, their languages and lives and stories and relationships meant to Tolkien. Bill knew nothing of his wife\u2019s inner realm \u2014 her griefs and fears and secret pain \u2014 as she bore the degradation of cancer with stoic grace. His devotion to her grave is the product of unresolved guilt at having failed to save her. Guilt of a different kind runs through my unpublished novella \u201cPlaying at Darkness.\u201d <\/p>\n
\nHalt cleared his throat but Stitch spoke before he could intervene. \u201cThere was a girl called Stella once,\u201d she repeated. \u201cA long time ago.\u201d Her voice held no trace of emotion. It seemed to Malcolm that she was reciting words she had long ago and many times rehearsed. \u201cThere was a boy too. I\u2019ve no idea what his name was.\u201d A pause, so that he thought she had finished speaking. \u201cThey weren\u2019t very nice.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\u201cBy some she is remembered,\u201d Stitch declares on another occasion. That\u2019s true but it\u2019s not enough. As awful as the girl and boy were they were nonetheless queen and king, respectively, of their inner kingdoms. In death they became part of Stitch\u2019s story and Denny\u2019s and Halt\u2019s. Of Malcolm\u2019s as he learned the horrific truth of how they died. Of mine as the tale\u2019s author. But their inner realms ended as surely as ours will end. They weren\u2019t very nice.<\/i> Beyond being gored by a bull the girl in Harrison\u2019s poem is remembered only for being unable to read or write in seventh grade (\u201cShe was \u2018simpleminded,\u2019 we all said.\u201d) and for not being a virgin. How, we might ask ourselves, will we be remembered? What accident or quirk will sum us up when our inner tales are lost? <\/p>\n
All this might seem bleak but I find it empowering. I have scant agency in the physical world. My inner realm will be lost when I die but while I live it is mine to explore. To navigate and tend and order. Writing is a way of sharing my domain, akin to publishing an atlas of my lands. A travel guide to my kingdom. It\u2019s not the first time I\u2019ve attempted this. Inner landscapes have been a recurrent theme in my writing. An early example is my poem \u201cWhat happened to the Lovetrees?\u201d <\/p>\n
\nAnd through my lands you softly came; exploring scenes
you\u2019d once conceived as if amazed at what a little time
had wrought: found shadows cast about my heart by
trees formidable. I wished you would by some judicial felling let the summer in, but I lay impotent
as mountains and could only watch you turn
dismayed, a little disillusioned,
to some fresher view.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\u201cErratic Whernside\u201d is a horror story notable only for being the first reference in my writing to mental illness. Jordache is a psychiatrist, Eric Stone his most perplexing patient to date and \u2014 spoiler alert \u2014 his last. <\/p>\n
\nJordache crested the ridge. Before him stood a rough sphere of dark grey stone. Five, maybe six, feet in diameter. Slowly he walked up to the rock, then around it. It was deeply fissured as if by aeons of rain, wind and frost, crowned with grass and tiny flowers. This, then, was the object of Eric\u2019s obsession.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Inspired by the 3D computer graphics program of the same name \u201cPoser\u201d explores the boundary between inner and outer realms and the exercise of power within each domain. <\/p>\n
\nShe had spent the last weeks revisiting her favourite haunts, as if for the last time. It might well be so. In a little while she would climb the steps out of her garden: set her feet upon a path that would take her further than she had ever journeyed before. Perhaps never to return. She loved this land but in the past year she had exhausted its secrets. It was her realm but she had outgrown it.\n<\/p>\n
One part of her realm she had not revisited, though she could not fully purge it from her mind. It was a region like none other in her demesne: a region mazed in enchantments. Protected from invasion and escape by a forest of thorns, their savage spears sheathed in clouds of crimson flowers.\n<\/p>\n
Within the bounds of that little realm a man languished endlessly, lost in the bitterness of unsatiated lust.\n<\/p>\n
It was a pretty defense.<\/i>\n<\/p>\n
The Lady rose and with a last look about her climbed the steps that led out of her garden. Turning to her left beneath the trees she set her feet upon her new road. Beyond the forest she had glimpsed the Mountains.\n<\/p>\n
And beyond the Mountains lay the Sea.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
I\u2019d hazard to say the tale is well-written but it\u2019s not an easy read, even to its author. Especially to its author. But perhaps that\u2019s the way with the stories that matter most. <\/p>\n
Afterword<\/h3>\n
What I\u2019ve gained most from the idea of my inner world \u2014 my thoughts, memories, and feelings \u2014 being my own private kingdom is just how potent, beautiful, majestic, hideous, and extraordinary that kingdom is. I owe it to myself to explore it as fully as possible while I\u2019m able to do so. To paraphrase Rwandan writer and blogger Bangambiki Habyarimana, to wake up and live my life on my own terms. <\/p>\n
Further Reading<\/h3>\n
Having the Last Say: Capturing Your Legacy in One Small Story<\/a> by Alan Gelb <\/p>\n
Yours Truly: An Obituary Writer\u2019s Guide to Telling Your Story<\/a> by James R Hagerty<\/p>\n
Collected Poems 1977\u20131984<\/a> by Martin Baker<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n