I was thinking about a Salinger short story and while fanning through its Wikipedia so a benign suggestion written is how it’s for the veterans. For the veterans it was written.
Which is certainly how the short story goes. It captures the distance felt and enacted through the war machine, same as a parting ravine between citizens and dog-tags. Debuting in 1960 as a final scroll laying it to rest, maybe. What if it wasn’t written?
It is said that some think in vague images and flashes while others navigate through wordstreams. The wordbearers are amusing in their tendency invoke Law or other strings as Absolute. Despite it being man-made, and tattered all the same when the barbarians make the majority.
The imagemancers probably are the ones who mold the world, seeing as words are often a post-facto signpost. That is, there are worlds and things coming which words can’t describe. New ones have to be written. First perhaps as slang, but inevitably designated an official entry. And that which can’t be described can only come through those who see the flashes and bring it to reality, maybe.
I’ve not run into many imagers in my life, but of those known so they may be a little spacey. Hopping from stillshot to stillshot and forgetting the history in the process, or that we’re supposed to meet at noon. Of those few so at sunset I find myself as the witness, transcribing their movements as they carve out the New Present, shielding the moment from the seawinds before my eyes get all bleary. This isn’t to say I’m purely in the wordy faction, but maybe this is a hopeless protest.
And this isn’t to say that wordys are entirely the courtiers toward our Imager Order – but, if I may submit, a more pivotal role. For as one follows the footprints and rearranged seashell smiles so one could recognize how fragile their moment is. Watching the petals dance for the bouquet of a beach wedding until swallowed by the waves. They may open portals, but the beauty also dissipates so quickly. Rising night to claim its fragments.
Salinger’s short story sustains the veterans’ closing portal and plants the flag so that we won’t forget. Where his Words scaffold and inject into the collective consciousness what would otherwise be a single dewdrop of a day, of a life, inevitably devoured and forgotten. Thousands upon thousands of beach weddings, but they’re all to be buried unless one summons the footnote in ancestry.com, future generations willing to preserve.
The emperors are ultimately beholden to the historian, and the worldmovers are always beholden to the one who could articulate what actually is happening. To where some are more of a puppet as the writer injects mythos or scandals – to where everything is up for grabs, and how we look around is but a prior fiction now written into fact. How else will I know to panic unless the newscaster says it’s time to panic? 30 seconds to nuclear midnight they emphasize!
This is happening, or this did happen – without such casting the moment withers away. We ultimately stabilize, reinforce and daily see everything through words. Newspaper rituals or social media scrolls or rapid message updates to form our walls.
In this sense, words are awfully dangerous – if you keep reading the same things, they get sturdier and sturdier until they tower over you, same as medical diagnosis. Oh well, the more interesting part is wondering what’ll be written into a best-effort semipermanent existence next, broadcasted as the new patch notes – memetic shifts to reorient our sensor-deprived surfing.
We can update the prompt to a more honest and direct calling. Not “what is happening” but “what do you want to happen?” – shaping the lives of the worlds to come.