The Rotten Kingdom

Once we leave school, we only read what we want. Our reading life is a sovereign kingdom, with us as the benign but sole authority. We people this kingdom with the stories that please us. It is not always clear which stories will please us and which will not. We wander bookstores and Amazon, we listen to recommendations from friends, we wait for the next release from our favorite authors—but not until we meet the book in person, until we hear its voice and glean its narrative intentions can we decide if this is a story that belongs in our kingdom. After all, we are building this kingdom based on our own desire, on our own idea of good and bad, our own idea of right and wrong, of funny, of generous, of wise, of true, of hopeful, of scary, of sexy, of surprising. Why would we build our kingdom from what someone else calls wise, funny, profound, or interesting? For this reason, some stories must be set aside and left unfinished. To follow that story to the end is to live with it longer than it took to read.

I wish sometimes I was as disciplined with the stories I do and do not tell myself as I am with the stories I read and don’t read. I have a quick hook for the stories I read, not so much the ones I tell. I will tell a story for years and years without ever liking it. I will tell it to myself at night like the worst bedtime story ever written, a story without heroes, a story where nothing changes, a story where hope is a weak and comical candle against an indifferent wind.

I tell it, and the kingdom becomes muddy from rain. Now it is all clouds and wet winter and stalled busses and empty cupboards and boarded windows. Who rules this lousy place? This was never my kingdom. This is the world I built while I was pretending to be someone else, the one I left happily to rot after I found the stories I was meant to tell.