James gazed with slight entertainment as Annie rested in chair with book upon her lap.
“What did you decide?” he asked.
She looked out the window, a waxing half-moon with silver halo in autumn night sky.
“I haven’t,” she answered. “I just can’t get into it…”
He thought to one of his favorite quotes, reciting as best he remembered, “If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen. And I here make a rule—a great and lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting—only the deeply personal and familiar…”[i] He thought on, making light of her plight, having experienced many of same. “Maybe it isn’t your story. What of it is familiar, or is it all foreign—or unwanted. Maybe we don’t so much need stories that are alien and take us away from what we know, but ones that help us better see and understand our familiar.
“I believe each have a time and place,” she countered.
“You’re right,” he assented. “I’m just saying: it’s your time and your mind, and art isn’t universal. Some stories speak. Some don’t, and each is different to all, and can touch even us differently when we encounter them in age and life’s moment. There’s nothing wrong with letting a story lay for a while, or for good.”
He looked to the sky and the silver moon, light delicate and fair in open night sky, crystal halo from cold not yet descended onto earth but holding still in high portending winter that would come.
Annie looked to the book, turning it over examining cover more than consideration to content of its heart. She did not like what she had found.
“What kind of story are you looking for?” he asked.
She looked to the moon as well, high cirrus blowing slow across, faint veil expanding halo-frame. Thinking still, eyes moved to lit candle on table beside chair, flame carving deep into heart with thin-held walls melting ever thinner as heat and light shone through. That was what she wanted, one that burned deep, erasing walls and hide for spirit to shine through.
Annie smiled, “A romance…one that makes me feel and show a little brighter…”
“Then find and try another. Don’t burn out trying to make sense of a story that isn’t yours.”
Looking at the candle, its flame and walls appeared to glow more brightly at the speaking of his words. Smiling, warming, and feeling melt and thinning of a wall, she lit and shone the same.
[i] John Steinbeck, East of Eden