There is always something behind the obvious. Always.

It’s what creates mystery and curiosity. If life were utterly transparent, many people would just check out. As Hamlet considers—do we repudiate the hurts and insults of life and take ourselves out? But what follows? That’s the stopper. There are times when ending it is not so bad an option. The meaninglessness. The madness. The who knows what? So why do we stay?

Because of what’s behind the obvious, which is either compelling and we want to discover, or terrifying and we’re not up to the risk. The Behind-the-Obvious is the dark and the light magic of life, the obsession for those who can’t resist and the bludgeon for those who are bled of courage and can’t act.

’m reading a wonderful book—Max Perkins: Editor of Genius by A. Scott Berg.  Perkins was the editor for F. Scott, Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe, among others. It’s a very intimate portrait of Perkins as he related to his writers and as he himself grew as a man.

It’s very revealing of who these men were in their day-to-day lives, their brilliances, struggles, rages, and elations and how Perkins, whom they respectfully and affectionately called Max, managed them. He was editor, mentor, psychiatrist, financial advisor, and a deep, deep friend. His belief in them kept them going. He inspired them to produce at their best.

It opened my mind to the realities they endured and I felt support by Max.

I’ve found it more than just worth the read.

I think every writer who writes fiction—i.e. not a journalist, reporter, or documentary writer—writes autobiographically. Where else does the content and imagery come from?

I’m working to finish an autobiographical trilogy—Leaving Home—and I can get trapped in thinking that story details have to parallel the events of my life.

Well today I was released.

Not journalism.

I had no problem in the first two books but hit a wall with the third—having to recount actual events. NO! I’m writing a story. Yes it’s about my life. But it’s first and foremost a story. I can build it how I want to make the story work.

What a relief!

The world is a mirror reflecting other mirrors.

Mirrors upon Mirrors.

I’m at Starbucks. I see a man with a pot belly. I think of Buddha. Not as a representation but as a justification for a redemption of the man’s pot belly.

Have you ever seen Buddha’s belly? It’s huge.

The man at Starbucks sits down with a medium cup of coffee and milk (I don’t know Starbuck’s jargon that describes sizes) and a pastry—perhaps the cause of his belly, perhaps not.

As I look around, all the men, including me, have potbellies except one, a football player type. We all mirror one another and are mirrors for one another whether we’re aware of it, or whether we like it or not. We are mirrors for all pot bellies around the world. Mirror upon mirrors.

I see my imagination as a field impenetrable to light, a black opacity up from which ideas, feelings, characters, stories emerge from my investigation and choice. They are immaterial, invisible, and they become as concrete and palpable as this chair I’m in, as the computer I’m using, as the figures that people my paragraphs and pages.