I have been in conversation with Mr Nathaniel Hawthorne for some time now over 'The Scarlet Letter'. The writer has just introduced the setting of the story with a cheerful sketching of characters including his own around him for the benefit of the reader. It is quite lively indeed for I already feel that I know some of them or rather some people very like those characters at the Custom House in the old port city of Salem in America. This city is also nicknamed 'The Witch City' after the famous trials for witchcraft held in Salem and neighboring areas between February 1692 and May 1693. But I digress...
So as I said I have been in conversation with Mr Hawthorne and I am amazed with how 'on the same page' feeling I have with whatever he's had to say till now. The story is in its early stages with a lot still forming but here's a guy I am talking to beyond words and I like that. He's been expressing his frustration at not being able to weave a tale around a certain letter he's found in his new offices at the Custom House... something akin to a writer's block.
He says... 'it is anything but agreeable to be haunted by a suspicion that one's intellect is dwindling away, or exhaling, without your consciousness, like ether out of a phial: so that, at every glance, you find a smaller and less volatile residuum...' He then goes on to say something that was the clincher of the day for me. He expresses with lament as to how his offices at Custom House have given him a strong arm of the republic to lean on, but in bargain the strength of his own true character has left him and now he can at best be a good surveyor at the custom house and ceases to be a tolerable writer of poor tales and essays.
He points out astutely that many in his situation have had this enervating magic work on them and have lost this capability of self-support and held on to the struggle in a struggling world just about long enough for their own ruin. Once the spirit has been sucked out of them they are left to totter alone on life's difficult footpath in a vain hope that they may sometime be restored to its erstwhile glory.
What he has to say rings a bell and close too, for that is all I see happening in the world around me. One gets entrenched in the system, soon to find that all that was dear and close to you as a person once is lost somewhere in the struggle each day... and that you hold onto the struggle just about long enough to realize that the spirit has been vaporizing away and now there may be nothing left of it.
I have been living these feelings for the past some months now. I think it has been this valiantly desperate attempt of not losing my soul that made me quit the hellish job and glamor of being a consultant and to go on and be somebody in a smaller house rather than a 'personality' in so many others, none of which are mine.
I was not being able to get to Neverland for quite some time now and honestly it scared me a lil. So in an attempt to resuscitate the whole thing I have been watching 'Finding Neverland' with an almost religious fervor... this might sound crazy but I can watch that movie any number of times. I am in awe of James the playwright. A little in love with him too.
On another note I have laughed at Mr Hawthorne too because he feels so much burden and difficulty with a job that expects him to be at his offices for 3 and a half hours a day! I mean you've got to be kidding me dude! You are stressed with those hours? But I must not judge too soon... for all he may be saying, he's still managed to write this book and is a name to be counted in, in American Literature. His work is also known to have deep psychological complexity, which Wikipedia and I shall vouch for. And he is a good looking bloke as you can see in this picture here. He happens to be 36 years old in it. Cute isn't he?
So we shall continue to discuss the story and its characters, hopefully soon. Till then... a thought to leave you guys with. Have you ever wondered why a person who writes plays is called a playwright and not a playwrite? That's because the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder (as in a wheelwright or cartwright). Hence the prefix and the suffix combine to indicate someone who crafts plays. The fact that its a homophone with write is purely coincidental!
I shall leave you to your reflections now and would take your leave!
And yes! A very happy new year!
