The wonder

— Oh my god, Martha, that Kelley Eskridge is throwing up words on the internet again.
— I know, George. Go get a bucket and a mop.

Incoherence alert: I don’t really know how to talk about wonder, which is a hell of a thing for a writer, but there you go. Sometimes things are bigger than words.

Today is not about wondering, not about the verb of it all. Today is about the noun, when wonder turns from questioning into an answer. Isn’t that the coolest thing, to get a blast-your-soul-open answer to a question you didn’t even know you had? Or to meet an old answer anew and find it has the same power to move you? That is the wonder of stories, for me. I read, and when it is good, whsshh, there I go into the story; and inside it I find a place which is also inside me. Perhaps it is a part of myself I have never before seen in the light. Or maybe it is an utterly familiar internal space, one of the places of dancing or thorns or nothing but sky. You know those places. We all have them. We explore them through our own experience, and through the stories we tell each other. Stories open doors inside us where we find ourselves.

So before the guy gets here with the mop, let me point you to the source of today’s holy shit, stories are amazing meditation on wonder. There’s a guy named Mark Oshiro who, among other things, reads and writes about it. And Mark is the Best Reader Evah in my opinion right now, because oh my god he is all about the wonder of it all. He blogs about each chapter of the book as he reads it, and he does his best to avoid being spoiled about the book before he reads. So he’s coming to it fresh with a critical mind and an exuberant heart. Mark Oshiro comes to reading ready for joy, sorrow, fear, hope and love. Ready to find the world in a book.

And right now he is reading — for the first time — The Lord of the Rings.

So do yourself a favor and go share the wonder of that. (Follow the links back to the Chapter One post and work your way forward).

I am enjoying it so much that I actually find myself saving the posts as rewards. I want to reach through the internet and give this guy a hug for loving stories so much that he gives himself to them and finds the wonder.

Because wonder is good, my friends. To be astonished into sorrow or joy. To go on a journey with people who aren’t real except they by god are, aren’t they? Isn’t that part of the magic, this ability we have to make them come alive inside us? Story is real, it is, it is, I don’t care what people say because I know. I have lived so many of them. I am stuffed full of Frodo and Sam, Morgon and Raederle, Gil and Rudy, Harry Crewe and Aerin, Candy Smith, Travis McGee, Jack Reacher, Johnny Smith and Danny Torrance and Stu Redman, Jack and Stephen, Hazel and Fiver, Alexander, Ged, Mia Havero, ‘Glory’ Conway, Lazarus Long, Aud and Lore and yowsa, just you wait for Hild…

Edited to add: And not just books: the novels of television and the novellas of film, whose people also inhabit me: Mal and Zoe and River, Buffy, Al Swearengen and Trixie, Stringer Bell and Bubbles, Ripley, Sarah Connor, Ree Dolly, Raylan Givens… Oh my goodness, it’s crowded in here. But somehow there is always room for more. (end edit)

And then there are all the stories of my own that tumble inside me like the surf. I am deep and restless these days with story, teeming with characters that only I have met, moments that only I have known, that are every bit as real to me even though they are only mine. So much of what story does to us is private, don’t you find? Almost inexplicable.

And there you go, I just took 650 words to not explain the inexplicable. Ah, well, incoherent for sure, but you know what? I will let it stand, and perhaps do better some other time. Or maybe just let the stories I love speak to me, and the ones I write speak for me. And I think it’s time to take a trip with Tolkien again.

Thank you, Mark. Thank you all who share my love of story. Enjoy your day. Go read something wonderful!