Or, By Bluff and Blunder?
Or, Compassion As Compass?
Or, Pin The Tale On The Donkey?
I'll stop with the subtitles, the alternative guides, and move to my central concern. Here are three quotations that I've probably offered before, but the last few days I've found them resonating alongside a certain ambition to craft a full-length narrative of mystery and adventure.
1. "But I had learned long ago that resolution by itself is not enough; we are what we do, not what we think and feel."
--James Lee Burke, "Heaven's Prisoners"
Here I am quoting from memory, but this is a quotation that sticks with me, that offers a rather pitiless ideal, which draws me in even as I want to bring or find more compassion than those words offer. "Resolution" in the first part of the sentence definitely means "completion" or "finishing," not merely "deciding upon" or "resolving to do." I think this quotation will help me to set up the conflicts in the "novel" I'm attempting to outline/frame.
2. Let's listen to my second-favorite ancient Greek poet:
I over-reached
And another
Bears the bother.
--Archilochos
trans. Davenport
I take that short poetic fragment with ruefulness, with regret in the tone, not triumph, though I can see the psychology that would exult in that way. I can see such, but save me and all of us from such, I say.
3. And the last of the triad, for now:
“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
--Maya Angelou
Fourth? Frankly, on reflection, I can see how all three of the quotations above spiral around each other, twining thematically into one threefold strand, and so further sayings may be called for. Somehow, the supposed opening line of my absolute favorite ancient Greek poet's lost comic-epic also horns in . . . .
"He knew many things, and all of them badly."
Homer, from his lost Margites . . . .
I'm quoting from memory again here, but I think you can see I don't plan to tell a tale overburdened by seriousness. And a fallible, flawed, but well-meaning character? Who wouldn't like a bit of that? I mean, aren't we constructed in that way ourselves, however we may aspire and resolve to do better?
And, that fourth selection just may be another way to say "Pin the tale on the donkey."
