I set a fire yesterday in the woods behind Evergreen. Torched last summer's attempts at writing the Book. Everything that survived the fire (i.e., those things I did not throw INTO the fire) is what I'm keeping. For now. Until the next fire.
I tried explaining the whole concept to Jake, and I think I did a piss-poor job of it. There's a certain level of discomfort I feel when I talk about fires, spells, the woods, my Book, and matters of gods and goddesses, etc. There are only a few people I can really talk to about that stuff.
It's not that people are insensitive or whatever. It's not like Jake, or anybody else, is going to freak out, or misunderstand, or hate me, or call me mean names. I think it's just my feeling of imposing my own beliefs on other people; I just hate that. I don't like it when people tell me that "God" brought them together with so-and-so, or "God" told them to go back to college, or whatever. I don't like it when Jesus' name comes up in conversation, unless it's in the context of a conversation about the historical Jesus or some academic-like thing about the Bible. Thus, I don't want to bring my own spiritual stuff into a conversation.
So, usually, I don't.
Setting the fire, which I do about twice a year, is a sort of ritualized process of liberation.
...because I can do better than the writing I'm burning.
...because I HAVE done better.
...because if I let it sit in my house, in my space, it'll... it'll kind of ooze into my brain and my body and it'll hold me back.
Yeah, see, that sounds hokey.
Let's put it another way.
Lots of writers save all of their first drafts. And second drafts. And so on. I think that's fucked up. Why? Because, of course, it wastes space. And it humiliates me to read shit that isn't perfect. I mean, it's one thing to read the stories I wrote when I was like, eight, or the journals I kept when I was twelve. But the point of the Book is that it'll be perfect.
So, how to get rid of the stuff that's been revised? That is now basically useless?
I couldn't recycle it. MY work would be destroyed and then the paper would show up in some mortgage office being faxed to lawyers by a herd of old biddies with bad hair. That is beyond fucked up. And if it ended up in the landfill, it would just SIT there, among heaps of banana peels and broken electronics, and plastic bags... And that's fucked up, too. To destroy something as important as old pages of the Book, I've gotta at least show it some respect. And make sure that it cannot come back.
Remember the end of Interview With The Vampire? Where Tom Cruise jumps into the guy's car as he's driving, and says, "I assume I need no introduction"?
Yeah. I've had dreams where old pages of my book do that.
So, I kill them in a manner befitting something immortal and dangerous.
Which involves, but is not limited to, burning that shit.
It took a massive load off, at least emotionally.
Now, I can continue my work....
~Helena*