and Words
Turn around
Look at what you see
In her face
The mirror of your dreams
Make believe I’m everywhere
Hidden in the lines
Written on the pages
Is the answer to a never ending story
Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah
Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.
In many times, I’ve told the story about my aspiration to write. To be completely honest, I can’t tell you if this calling started upon learning English, though chronologically that’s when it happened. Was it causal or merely correlational? My early reading expanded my imagination and horizons. It inspired me in the way that little else did. Thus, I started awkwardly at first in high school, though I don’t know if there’s any copy of that writing anywhere.
Years later, I kept an online journal in Geocities. I stopped writing in it, though it is also long gone now. There are some services that have mirrors of it on their servers, though I can’t imagine why. The vast majority of personal websites on Geocities were little more than garbage. If you search hard enough, you’ll find a shadow of that page.
Most recently, I started writing again on this page. I finally found a format which allows me to write comfortably; I pondered through what I may find for inspiration though in a way that I may be respectful to others. This blog embodies that spirit.
As the 1980’s unfold and I choreograph this romantic dance between printed words and the sweet tones of music, the musical artists of the era similarly mesmerize and inspire me. Limahl (the name an anagram of Christopher Hamill’s surname) released a single with the release of a movie. That single was “The NeverEnding Story”.
This song exists in that ethereal space between reality and make-believe. It takes us on a journey in fantasy with stars, clouds, and rainbows. It fills me with optimism and possibilities. If nothing else, it insulates me from the harsh realities of life, where I’m a perpetual outsider. I can almost believe that promise, “Dream a dream, and what you see will be.” In a quiet moment, I can almost believe that Limalh’s voices the verbal component to a wonderful, magical spell that heals my ailments. Though I realize that if I engulf myself in its magic, it really is that magical spell that need during its modest three and half minutes. I just need to believe.
The music from the song slowly ramps up at the start and ramps down at the end. If you played it in repeat, you’d almost forget that it’s not one contiguous song, indeed a never-ending story onto itself. I’m convinced that’s intentional and an artistic expression, but it’s subtle enough to endear me. Its modest bump in popularity from Stranger Things amused me.
Somewhere in my stack of books I have Michael Ende’s novel The Neverending Story. I do have aspirations to read it someday, though I won’t give myself a timeline anymore that will only serve to guilt me. The writer’s surname, close in spelling to the common word ‘end’, amuses me.
My dad kept a journal. Funny, I call him my dad, though I never spoke to him in English. He wrote in it when he was in China, possibly Hong Kong, long before I was born. He wrote in English; I think in order to improve his command of the language. The fact that he learned the language without having even the equivalent of a high school education amazes me.
I haven’t read it; I don’t really know why. Holding it fills me with guilt since I deprive my two sisters from the opportunity to read it. I tell myself that I’ll scan the pages so that we can all read it, but it’s a project that I’ve effectively put off for literally years. Maybe I fear that I, as his only son, will miss the hidden message that he wrote into those pages. Much like Luke Skywalker may miss the legacy of Anakin.
On an otherwise ordinary day in what could be one of hundreds of conversations with my wife, she plainly points out, “You write in a blog, much like your father wrote in his journal.” Though my voice screams in my head that this is merely coincidence, I fight the urge to resist. My dad was an exceptional chef, who modestly worked his way from Hong Kong, to Spain, to Puerto Rico. A decade later, I waited on tables and eventually became an engineer. Neither of those two professions are especially conducive to writing. How on earth did we get here?
She also points out that her father kept a journal during his stint in World War II. She muses that perhaps one day we can publish those words, hers and mine, and our fathers. Our collective stories, joined by our finding each other, our collective love like the binding that keeps the pages together, told from an origin that occurred decades before and thousands of miles apart. She calls it, The Tale of Two Fathers. I can only respond with a smile.
My dear friend once asked me, “Don’t you want children? You’d make a great father.” On one hand, I fight my implicit impulse to rebel against societal standards that push us into parenthood. I take her observation with a humbling gratitude and ponder about that answer. To make a reference to “Finding Forrester”, that question has the hallmarks of a soup question. I gave her a quick answer that popped into my head. As I thought about it more, I finally have a better answer.
First, I’ll take the defeatist approach. The idea of on our ‘leaving our mark on the world’ by means of our offspring is profoundly inflated. On average, by the time 210 years have passed, your offspring will be seven generations removed. Do the math, that person will genetically be less than 1% (0.5^7 = 0.78%) of your current self. Furthermore, the current world population is over 8 billion people, to assume that one person existing will leave a mark in the world is foolishly optimistic.
Next, I’ll take the optimist approach. By simply asking this question, she tells me that I’ve had an impact on her life. Our influence on people may be measured either deeply (greater impact, on fewer people) or broadly (smaller impact, on more people). Mathematically, both 12×4 or 3×16 will get you the product of 48. I have many great friends and have mentored many people. Though I often minimize my effect on them, they’ll occasionally tell me, “As I was doing X, I could hear Frank’s voice in my head.” I’ve impacted people with my wisdom, kindness, and often inappropriate wit.
And though I may not have offspring, I’ll still leave my mark in this world. It’ll look and feel differently, but it’s still there, nonetheless.
As I wrap my head around my father’s journal and my own writing, I can’t help but to see the parallels to our own never-ending story. This simple fact will either perplex me or inspire me; I choose the latter. My dad wrote onto physical paper, never knowing (or even believing) that his words will ever be read by others. Technology has transformed that for me. I press these buttons on a keyboard that sound a little too loudly and these words magically appear. In mere seconds, my words published around the world.
A chef of Chinese cuisine kept a journal in a foreign language, which he barely knew. Decades later, his son, a software engineer, starts to write in his (chronologically) third language. Both passionate and both inspired. You can choose to believe that there isn’t an enchantment cast on that tome, that the prophetic words from the song:
Make believe I’m everywhere
Hidden in the lines
Written on the pages
Is the answer to a never ending story
Are merely artistic and poetic nonsense scribbled into music. Or you may choose to believe that it’s kismet.