Today we are at a cemetery in Calgary. It's the kind that doesn't have any raised gravestones. There is snow on the ground and it has covered all the graves nicely, thus we do not know if we are stepping on a dead person's head, or their tail, on their ashes, or on their stones.
It is to be our last meeting as this is the last chapter in your book.
Negotiating with the Dead
One time I had a conversation with my daughter about what different fascinations really mean. She was telling me how she found the furry movement to be difficult to understand and how it led to cruelty to animals. I told her that I thought that it was harmless in most cases. The furry had probably just got overly hung up on being a helpless animal like a squirrel or a bunny. They wanted to check out from the stresses of regular life and pretend to be a deer as that best represented their happy place.
Then we talked about werewolves and the shifter thing when someone goes from being a person to being a wolf. I told her that I thought it was a little different from the bunny thing. In that case, a person craved freedom, nature, and close family ties. They want to run with a pack.
Then my daughter turned to me and asked me what my thing was.
I replied that I had been a vampire in a previous life. I told her that the creepiest forms of vampirism ranged from treating other people like food (to be used and abused to feed the vampire's appetite) to necrophilia. I explained that I have the highest respect for other people's humanity and I have no interest in corpses. My interest in vampirism stemmed from an interest in death.
As an author, I rewrite the story of Persephone in my novel Kiss of Tragedy where I turn Persephone into a body thief who has found that stealing a drowned young woman's body is the best way to escape the Underworld and Hades. In that story, I hop over the lines between being dead and alive like hopscotch.
In my novel His 16th Face, I jump to a different challenge. How do we even begin to bridge the gap between being what we are now to becoming a god? Let's break it down into smaller problems and see how we can solve them.
I've always thought my preoccupation with the subject was merely my personal preference, and now you say that all writers seek to answer questions about death as that is the most pressing question on most readers' minds. How delightful.
Except, I am not concerned about my own death. I am not rushing to write things down to ensure some kind of immortality for myself. Having never experienced much popularity in life, it seems kind of hopeless to expect it after death.
And though what you wrote for the end of your book was so beautiful, I almost wept, I don't go down into the hole of the underworld to get the story like it already existed somewhere else and I am the medium that brings it into our world. I'm a religious person, and yes, Moses says at the beginning of the Bible that all things were created in the spirit before they were created in the fresh. Thus, spiritual instructions on how to make something like Noah's Ark and the Arc of the Covenant are not unheard of. Sometimes I write things that way--not the way I want to write, but the way God wants my piece written. The act is mostly reserved for when I am asked to deliver religious devotionals, which is not often. When I write my books, I find that spiritual inspiration is there for when I'm stuck, but most of the time, I'm building something intentionally. I mentioned in the beginning that I build a story with bricks and blocks. I'm making it on purpose. I'm not uncovering the blocks like an archeologist. I'm making the cement that creates the blocks like a builder.
In my dealings with God, sometimes he has a story he wants me to tell. When I share my testimony, I have felt Him pressing down on me to say what He wants everyone to hear. In those cases, I am not the author, I am the medium, like a little prophetess who says the will of the Lord.
When I write a book, I am more like His daughter, and like any good father, He backs off so that I can grow up by trying something, failing--using the garbage can he gifted me--and trying again. Because the story isn't just about whatever book I am writing right now. It's also about me. I hate to admit it, but the book might be nothing more than a byproduct of my growth, like I am an apple tree that blooms, bears fruit, and anyone is free to eat those apples since they would go to waste otherwise.
Perhaps the book created by my growth is meant to be a substitute for the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. You read the book instead of partaking of the fruit (experiencing the story through the protagonist) and in so doing, you learn about a particular pitfall that can be avoided. I've always thought that it was a pomegranate on that tree, the food of the dead. And that's what books may be. The dead give us books and we leave food on their graves because we cannot imagine what they want in the next life. I imagine that what they really want is for us to tell them a bedtime story because even in death, the dead still hunger for more knowledge.
I realize it's time for us to say goodbye and I cry because I can't help it. I'm a silly little thing. I've always thought I was a silly writer because all I want to is teach my little reader what a healthy relationship looks like. I write the Knowledge of Good part of the tree because literally, everyone has tasted the Knowledge of Evil part of the tree.
Now we're standing near the grave of my father. He has enjoyed listening to our conversation, and he's trying to hide his annoyance because he wanted to be part of the conversation. Just kidding, he wants us to quiet down and listen to him tell us all about death because we're clearly misguided in some way or another.
You remind me that it's not really goodbye. It's just a time to go there and come back again like a spirit going to get a body and coming home without one. Or like a person giving up their body to visit the Underworld only to one day pick their body up again on the way out. We will meet again.
Goodbye, Margaret. I have enjoyed our chats.
Stephanie Van Orman
Novelist
P.S. Write me a few lines sometime. I'd be happy to hear from you.
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