Featured Author ~ SS 2018
Cameron Mitchell is a Calgary based writer, currently studying English and History at Mount Royal University. He is a lover of books and thoughtful conversation
Lost to that Dark Void
What is a story’s soul? What goal do fictional inflations of bland actuality fulfill; why
insist on pursuing an imaginary world drawn from but distinct of our own?
Now, this instant, a child’s birth occurs, a start to a story. A boy or a girl? Unimportant.
This distinction is artificial, amounting only to an inflammation of basic humanity. Individuality
is an upshot of amalgamating random but intrinsic biological facts, artificially cultivating
particular traits thought of in a kindly light.
Story, a human construction, follows particular forms and pathways, manufacturing illusions
of physical worlds.
An illustration of this: our child, only just born, starting a story. Watch through infanthood and
childhood, a growing path of a young human. Basic instruction in functions, how to walk and
how to talk. Young companions playing football and Action Man, or lipstick and doll-housing.
Bumps and cuts abound, for this is childhood, introduction to our story, to all story.
And now youth, originator of adulthood. Watch: continuing growth and maturation,
biological and psychological both. Sad losing of incorruptibility, a path intrinsic to
bridging childhood and adulthood. This is its form. Alcohol and drugs, partying and
copulation. Adoration and romanticism of a basic kind. Sorrow and anguish. Angst,
pain, hard growth to form full individuals from black ash.
Adulthood. Our child is grown, not a boy or a girl but a man or a woman. An
illumination of mind and body occurs as our grown individual grasps forms and
pathways that act in shaping all human story, factual and fictional. In this adulthood,
our child will try to find individuality. Conflicts abound from all ways, pounding and
lashing, and as our child hunts for distinction, a sad truth is now crystalizing: distinction
is an untruth, for all must follow a rhythm, a story which is intrinsically artificial. This
insight is crushing. But our grown child will slog on, forcing an ignorant psychological
backdrop. Happy living. Or, possibly, that angst of prior will maintain, maturing into
a cynical outlook, a grim submission to monotonous story.
Adulthood surging with a tidal might towards a conclusion. Wilting body and mind,
loss of functions prior a simplicity. Anguish, just as in youth. Only now this is anguish
of a caustic kind, crushing our grown child. A slow, sliding drop into a black void. A
void that will finish all story. Shall our child go into that dark void with happiness
or with sorrow?
And now this story’s final paragraphs. As in our living world – as with all story – ours is bound by
limits. Just as it has a start, it must find a finish. Story is an artificial construct, as is our world; both follow
paths, forms, to touch a conclusion that must always occur. Upon this story’s closing words crossing your
mind, it will stop. This story simply isn’t, passing onto that black void.
This as with all story, as with humanity. All humanity, all story, follows as prior shown or
variation of such.
Story’s goal is to mirror an artificial futility in traits abounding all humanity. An individual – such
as our child – may act autonomously, think as an individual, but all stay bound by pathways intrinsic
to actuality. All story, all individuals, and all our living world occur bound by matching and limiting laws;
art is intrinsically vain, humanity sliding towards that matching black void.