Where is my mind?

Where is my mind?

I spend a great deal of time, right now, sending query letters to agents. I live and die with each submission, each rejection ruining my day. But, I am trying to learn through this. I’m too emotional about it, that’s certainly a part. I could be more clinical in my choices and less precious in my appeals.

But evident from all of them, and probably a key point of rejection, is a lack of public-facing work. A blog, traditionally. For some, social media, X or TikTok. I have always favored privacy and notebooks. I like that a single object can hold years of (mostly bad) thoughts and ideas. But this must be public; it’s the “show your notes” of writing. But what is so eerie about it is the silence. I just shotgun this out into the void. I can curse, I can rant, in some ways its a beautiful thing. But it is terrifying for me.

What am I ruminating on right now:

As I work through the end of this novel, and (over)correct my pitches to agents, I have this persistent dream. It came out of the novel, became a daydream, and took on three-dimensionality in my subconscious. But it is an obelisk. Tall, but not monumentous. It is a place to demark a great happening, not a place to be visited. And carved into the top are two hands clasping. In my daydream, I had pictured this old photo of a cemetary. I think it was Catholic only. And right along the edge a gravestone rose almost perfectly parallel with the cemetary’s external wall. See, the Catholic grave was a woman who loved a Protestant man. And from the adjoining protestant cemetary, her husbands grave rose over the wall. And their hands, sculpted of stone over physical boundaries are intertwined in the space above. I picture those hands reaching out of the top. And then a crater of destruction. From right in front of me to the far horizon where the ocean is, nuclear glass and…nothing. Just a hole in the Earth.

It is probably inevitable for my mind, so captured by repetition and mental loops, to get caught on a topic so large as nuclear weapons. Somehow, in my mind, they were historical. Antiquated pieces of tech from the Second World War. Maybe it was the cultural consciousness of Oppenheimer. Maybe it was these Nuclear Bomb Survivors winning the Nobel Peace Prize. But the idea that there are strangers (to me, certainly) in the world with the power of nuclear weapons. I’m less surprised that they exist. It’s a flawed perspective, but it is hard to learn history this far from the first half of the 20th Century and not think of nuclear weapons as reasonable. A logical progression of warfare and technology. It is kinda pitched as the precursor to space and the resolution to the most terrible war. But there are embattled places in the world, whole regions at war where death and human misery are digging gashes into the very ground, that have nuclear weapons in their arsenal.

And I think the logic problem I’ve brushed up against is that we don’t think of nuclear weapons as an option. Most people don’t contemplate that Putin is within a handful of breaths from firing a nuclear weapon. We just can’t imagine it. It doesn’t make sense. Why would he do that? And the skepticism is well-founded. Mutually assured destruction reigns heavily in our minds. But on a long enough timescale, simply having them means they will be used. There’s not a decision that exists that a person, eventually, would not make. And for most of us, most of our lives, our decisions are small ripples in the ocean of humanity. But it only takes one leader, one time.

Ignore all the current world leaders. Ignore political affiliation, national identity, ignore borders and ideologies. Look broadly at humanity and tell me if, in your heart of hearts, you don’t think anyone would ever push that button. And I will believe you and envy your optimism. But as the lines of humanity trace into the tens of billions, it only takes one.

Now, normally this is where writer’s come in with a note of hope. And if I spent enough time with these thoughts, I would seek it out. But I’m not sure there’s an answer. I don’t know that there’s a solution that doesn’t involve ignorance as bliss. It’s Pandora’s Box and the great evil unleashed upon the world. It’s an idea, a great and terrible idea, unleashed upon the world. And there’s no killing an idea.

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