Welcome, anyone who's browsing the archives. It's time for this story to fade into the past, so it's locked.
Long ago (so it seems) there was a little creature who wanted to be perfect in everything he did. The whole universe was a magnificent mechanism: everything worth knowing understandable, and everything understandable, his little mind could grasp. Mathematics was easy. Music too. And, he knew mountains of fact, from a small forest of books. The little creature loved to read. He was of course quite mad. Anyone could see it: he made few friends, just sat in the corner with his nose in a book; he must be terribly lonely.
Sqee. Squee. Feet pack fresh-fallen snow. Air so cold it tugs inside the nose.
Yet in truth, he was not lonely. To him, words lived, reached from the page, grabbing his mind. His eyes flew across the page; their flow swept him to other places more engaging than his own. In shadow, the Educators and Engineers worried. He was a transfer student, the son of parents who moved from Away. That itself was not unusual. This was not the taiga, vast potato fields, or resort town on rocky cost, but a suburb of the state's largest city. Immigration was common, both internationally and from other States. No, what was strange was that he was re-enrolling after two years of home school. From his file, they knew he had been an associate of a known troublemaker before and it must have worried them that the two had once again. Their power was limited. They were only effective if they could keep up the charade. Isolation was their greatest weapon. They could keep them isolated during classes and hope that was enough.
He turns to the warm south-east. Ice coating the bare trees burns white, ignited by the sunlight. It is a postcard picture, but the postcards never catch how it sounds nor smells--nor how fleeting this beauty is.
Surprisingly, it seemed enough--but how wrong they were. The two years of solitude had changed him. The Weathel and Trouble didn't play many games with the other children. They prowled around, like two hunters, and . . . talked. Two quiet unknowns, variables in the system. What was clear was that Weathel wasn't fitting in. He didn't color in the lines. He didn't color at all. Faced with drawing or writing or playing games, the normal role of the cog, he seized up. He avoided these things. He spread his wings, caught the wind of words, lost himself in other worlds.
Please forgive me. You must of course wonder why he came here. My story, my answer, is yet unfinished, but here is the first piece of the puzzle: Applegate's Animorphs was one of the worlds to which Weathel fled.
In the frozen land, on this still cloudless day, the sun's heat is almost shocking. The same sun that makes the ice coat a halo also loosens it. The fresh snow deadens the usual noises; only the falling ice, like rain, can be heard.
Long ago, the Weathel wanted to be perfect in everything he did. He thrived on hard answers, on right answers. But he was insane: in life not everything is red-or-white. Often, things are gray. Or so dark, you can't see anything. Often there are no wrong answers. At those times, he saw there are no right answers and was afraid. So he drifted along, saying nothing when he was not sure he'd be right. At times, rare times, he was so angry and frustrated that he would burst. Those times scared him most of all. They also caught the attention of the Engineers. And so, arrangements were made, experts were called. No doubt, even grants were written, the curriculum adapted. A therapist was brought in. And little by little:
Not a damned thing got better. Then the school year ended, he was promoted with meaningless fanfare from Preteen Holding-Pen to Young-Teen Holding-Pen. He became somebody-else's problem.
He comes to the edge of a lake, stopping on its pebbly shore. Few beaches in the state have sand. Even fewer are naturally sandy. The water is dangerous this time of year. Earlier, it was swimmable, and later it will be walkable, but before the ice grows thick it is a death-trap.
Utterly beyond the comprehension of the Engineers and Educators, a chain of events had been set into motion that might bring hope to the lost, frightened Weathel. There was a teacher in the system but not of the system. She had known him from his early childhood. She had two very intelligent daughters of her own and taught the accelerated mathematics program. In some way, she must have understood the loneliness, certainly more than he did himself. He did not need the math class. He was meeting the standards. He was not being left behind. But he did need somewhere to be successful and not bored. He needed a rock of sanity to survive what came next.
The long-lasting winter sunset has begun, throwing his long shadow northeast over the thin ice. He bends down, grabs a stone that fits his hand, and flicks it skittering across the ice.
The three years of young teen holding pen flashed past as a nightmare. The mercilessly sarcastic teacher: first year. The insane horse lady: third year. Storming out of art class: second year. Maybe. Pity grade from that teacher: D-. Hours-long year-end assemblies in the gym: first, second, and third year. Homeroom teacher committed suicide, maybe: second year. Voice changed, offered choice to sing alto (hah!) or leave the chorus--then pulled out of class by Sarcastic Teacher and encouraged to quit on the exact same day: first year. Staring at a blank piece of paper, trying, trying, to make a story come to life, first year. Pity grade from that teacher: D. He swore he would never right again. Yet some of the memories were strangely funny, or even good. Kicked out of center-for-grieving children meeting for being a child, then walking 45 minutes home on a beautiful spring day: second year. Hanging out with the tech/science/film club: third year. Belting out Cat Steven's "Here Comes My Baby," in a rich baritone to a full auditorium including the choral teacher and sarcastic teacher: third year, a priceless moment. World-building with friends at lunch, crafting the beginnings of the "wildweathel" screen-name: third year.
The stone alone marks the end of a dashed trail.
Weathel caught hold of three foundations of sanity: the math teacher, the music teacher--another in the system and not of it--and finally summers with Trouble. Trouble had a cottage on a lake, four hours from their home, and there Weathel could take a break from being a cog in the machine. They swam in the lake, and paddled a canoe and spent long summer afternoons walking and talking with Trouble, or reading, or firing air guns and illegal explosives in the quarry down the road. At night the pyrotechnics would come out as the bats crawled out from under the metal roof and they painted with fire and cooked flesh and, in short, they lived. His world was no longer red and white, but also blue and yellow--and even green.
He smiles and turns, scans the horizon. Perhaps he will head home.
Three years previous, he had been an eerie stoic. His rage at the stupidity, his fear of creativity lay bottled up nearly of the time. But during those later years, with Trouble and in the Pen, Weathel discovered something new stirring. He learned how to smile. He learned, to his surprise, that he didn't nearly smile enough. He realized that Old-Teen Holding-Pen would be more of the same--no, it would be worse. The freedom he had enjoyed to study mathematics and technology on his own would disappear. Music, too, would become an intense competition. Lost in an even larger sea of humanstock, the Engineers would be able to separate him further from Trouble--and they wouldn't show poor Weathel, son of a trouble-maker, friend of another troublemaker, student of a third troublemaker, clearly in need of their help to become a good little cog; they would not show him any mercy. Understanding this, comprehending little, he screamed he wanted out.
Suddenly the forest is alive with small gray birds: flitting from tree to ground to tree, searching the cones for seeds. His muse sparkles impishly: "Praise God! The sky is full of tits!"
So, Weathel got out. He left the system behind: the gears and grants, the disciples of Dewey and Marx, the Fabians, the Engineers, those who hope to build a world of living human bricks. He found another system: one of gears and papers and even the odd Engineers, true enough, but the machine was not entirely mechanical. Accidentally at first, he began to plant roots: he joined the math team, because it seemed the right thing to do. There he met people who were indeed smarter than he was, and faced challenges he had to work to overcome. He tempered his precociousness with humility. He struggled through homework--not because it was hard, but because it was endless. His second year, he began to debate. And, his second year, he achieved a great victory, when--having forgotten Applegate, he met Elliot.
Then he realizes that they are, unfortunately, not tits. They're too large and the heads are all gray. The bills are orange. When they perch, they look like small fat robins, feathers puffed against the cold. Not tits, then. Juncos. Snow-sparrows. He remembers the substitute from when the teacher killed himself. He was no engineer, no utopian. But he loved birds, and though the carefully-machined students mocked him for it, though the wanderer had no use for the information at the time, he sat at the feet of the master and learned. Red-wings. Orioles. Goldfinches. Bluebirds. Two species of tits--neither of which can be these birds. The other blue birds: swallows of tree and brick.
A circle. A line through the center. Another line parallel, tangent below. The code for a 'D,' 'nearly' a failure. Weathel had seen that symbol four years prior, had sworn to never do anything wishy-washy creative again. He was almost steadfast in that promise. He had only lapsed once and wrote a few songs, songs without words, songs he would never publish. They didn't count, right? But then, in his second year at School-on-Ocean, the assignment came. No wrong answers. No right answers. "Intertextuality." Shades of blue and yellow, nor red nor white. The blank yellow page, and college-ruled blue lines rose in his memory. A symbol: a circle and two lines. He didn't even like Elliot's The Wasteland to begin with. The spirit of Weathel moved over dark possibilities, rippling and waiting below, mocking his indecision. In short, he was afraid.
He watches the sparrows dig through the litter. He wonders why he is so reminiscent today, why their mad dash for food seems so amusing. A drop of melting ice falls on the back of his neck. He almost laughs.
Then for the first time, speechless Weathel remembered to breathe. He inhaled--"inspired" is a better word--images: a dry, red, sandstone arch. Lightning striking a tree. A city at night, a few lightning-strikes there as well. An abandoned, ruined abbey. A rooster. Then, he spoke three images: a dry red land where voices whisper. A faith abandoned prophesying of a gathering storm. Blessed rain falling, amid terrible destruction. It was a retelling of the last book of The Wasteland: hoping for rain yet fearing the thunder. Weathel finished explaining the symbolism, then fell silent at the head of the class. They were probably just tired, and a bit bored, but even if some were surprised, none were possibly as surprised as Weathel--no, now Wildweathel. School-on-Ocean, second year, Wildweathel receives a grade on a creative assignment: 'A'.
The mad little snow-sparrows dash through the forest, picking through the fallen cones. In a few minutes they are gone. The sky burns gold and red and purple. He continues, breath freezing in the air, now thinking of home--at least the idea of home.
From that time, Wildweathel knew he was alive, wonderfully, fearfully alive. From that time, Wildweathel knew he was sane, or at least sane enough to know that he had been insane before. But Wildweathel had all but forgotten his friend, Trouble, the friend who helped him begin to live, the friend who was still trapped in the world of gears and grants. The Engineers tried to fix Trouble. Trouble, in his boredom, tried to fix the Engineers right back. In the end, they failed miserably, and declared Trouble a failure. Trouble didn't waste time arguing. Just like Weathel, Trouble got out of the system. From that time, Wildweathel realized he had let his friend down.
He reaches a stream, and turns upstream. Ring-billed gulls stare at him from the opposite bank as he passes.
The next spring, Wildweathel was at School-on-Ocean, walking from one building to the next, when he saw a sudden movement through the door glass. A large bird swept across his vision. He stepped outside in time to see several gulls mob the bird: a white and brown bird with hooked beak and a rust-red tail. "Cool," thought Wildweathel. "I've never really seen one before." Then, Wildweathel began to remember.
It is almost dark now, but he takes a moment to sit on the simple dam the holds back the small, ice-covered lake feeding the river. He admits that he's still lost. Perhaps another night bivouacked. Perhaps he might go a bit further today.
Later that spring, Wildweathel discovered recreational insanity. His sister encouraged him to audition for School-on-Ocean's musical play. He found himself singing a small, but technically challenging part, and simply hanging out and laughing with the fun loving, extroverted cast and crew. He abandoned his self-consciousness, went a little crazy, and in that way became sane. Then, Wildweathel finished his last year and a half at School-on-Ocean, and began to wander. But still he wonders what, in the end, happens to Tobias and the rest.
He rises, then notices a light in the forest. Yes, he will continue a bit further tonight. He lights his lantern and sets out through the undergrowth, following a deer trail at first, then turning off into the bramble. It slows him--eventually he gives in and cuts his way through. On the other side he skirts a frozen pond and so arrives at a small, but cozy-looking, cabin. The lights are on inside and outside, illuminating a sign which reads "Richard's," but he hesitates for a moment. Stepping forward, under a large awning he notices a library. K. A. Applegate. Unable to resist as the memories flood back, he begins with "The Discovery," more or less where he stopped and does something he hasn't done in a long time. He reads through the long night and well into the next day, with hardly a break until, in "The Beginning," he reads: "Chapter 18: Tobias," and his heart nearly breaks. Gathering his courage, he finishes the last book then takes a look around. His eyes catch on a note: Animorphs Audio Book Project.
Intrigued, he steps to the door.
"...and welcome to the loonie bin, funny farm, happy..."
"...welcome! Here's you strait-jacket. Let me know..."
"...random leprechauns. Try and steal their gold, and see..."
"Yay! New members! Because we need more insane people..."
Wildweathel stared across the damp snow. Sane? Insane? Who could tell. Perhaps it didn't matter all that much. He turned and opened the door:
I blink as my eyes adjust from the harsh blue light outdoors to the soft yellow glow of old-fashioned propane lamps. As usual, I feel a bit shy, but I force myself to relax. I look up and left at nothing, letting my muse come to me. I speak a verse:
Though, in mind, I know, 'tis new to me
In heart, I feel I have come home
I feel a strange urge to tell my story--strange because I never have before, not even to myself, not a full narrative. The place seems welcoming enough. What do I have left to lose now? I have the snow, the lake, the sunset, the thunder, but I can only lose them if I am afraid, if I choose not to care. I give in.
I tell the story.
Then, I look around and ask, "So. Am I crazy enough to stay?"
