Wednesday, July 11, 2012

KEY CHARACTER'S REFLECTION IN "TURNED LOOSE"

A reflective moment for Gil Stephens, a main character in "Turned Loose" and "Stringer":
Sunday, Gil Stephens mused. Loose ends hovering over the morning. The psych center stories. Helen and Alicia and the conflict he felt. The way he’s lurching around as he rises out of passivity to a more proactive creativity. Moonset outside on a light coat of snow, sky clear. First light and an occasional illumination from the motion sensor light on the cabin from a foraging animal passing by. The aroma of coffee, warmth of the pellet stove and the hum of its fan. The moment, the now that never leaves him, the way that awareness slips, disappears, returns, present. Spirit. The notion that each being, each entity unfolds the creative edge, a contour that to his spatial sense seems irregular, but what could he possibly know beyond what his senses allow to enter a brain with limited capacity. Now his eye and his nervous system’s adjustment to a new way of seeing he’s gradually getting used to, able to negotiate with as he moves through space. Gravities and orbitings and the cosmos unfathomable, as science struggles to understand. So much learned and yet to learn. The planet, its fragility, how temporal it is, the solar system too, so dependent on the Sun, itself doomed. His conversations, even prayers, with and to an entity he likes to think of as a guardian.
Then the philosophical world he’s had fascination with, the postmodern, perception, interpretation, cultural study, the political morass, more loose strands hovering. A passing movement behind him into the bathroom, the scent, the soft sounds, the touch on his back. The creak of the loft’s steps as another movement descends, breathing, touching, reaching for coffee, sitting alongside him as the other movement returns and does the same. How is it, this? All this, and just this, now?

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