My subconscious does not have my saniy's best interests at heart. Of course, I've never been of the opinion that my subconscious has a heart at all, and I don't think it even has its own interests anywhere handy. I think it just chucks things at me to see how I'll react, like some sadistic scientist. It gets irritating every now and again.
Thus we have Porah, the Tamer of the Drums. Just when my creative juices seemed to be completely occupied, I have to find time and energy for this. I mean, I have a collaborative short story going on (collaborations, I've found, are honestly more draining than solitary endeavors; you have to have a clue about where you're going with a train of thought, because somebody else has to understand and expand on it), I have a revision that is mired in about the same place as the original was (which is bad, because I get wordy when I'm mired, and wordiness is what the revision is trying to fix), I have a sequel that needs a thickening plot (no one likes a watery plot, in my experience), and then I get saddled with some seventeen-year-old kid who thinks he can tame the spirits of his ancestors. Ha! I say. Ha!
It's not like I was trying. There I was, minding my own business, enjoying a presentation on the various cultures of Polynesia. No harm in that, right? I was just watching. But that's not what my subconscious was doing. Oh no, it had to work while I was at it. Next thing I know, some BYU-H student started beating Tongan drums with tasseled sticks and my subconscious brought out the inspiration catapult. "He looks like he's trying to tame them, like they are wild creatures," it said. I gritted my teeth and pointedly continued watching. I would not reach for something to write on. I would not. "Maybe he believes them to be inhabited by spirits of the departed," it crooned. I didn't even glance toward my mother's handy bag full of writing implements and pieces of scratch paper. Lastly, as if I didn't know what it was hinting at, it named a main character. Loudly. "PORAH!" it screamed. That was it, then. Concepts can be forgotten, they can slip away--even willed away--as easily as wriggly fish, but characters are forever. They can change, they can evolve, they can even run around plotless (the equivalent of stark nekkidness, in my opinion), but they are never forgotten.
And thus I am here, writing about a drum made from a sea turtle's shell. Soon I'll be writing about a very strange funeral, and then I'll be describing things in terms of touch, taste, smell, and sound, because Porah will be blind.
It's no wonder the Housing Department of the High Council of Krys has trouble. People move in without any plans for their future. Porah settled in when all he had was a wooden drum and a pair of loose, baggy pants. Stupid vagrant characters. Hobos, the lot of them!
