12 September 2036

Dear Miss Palaminia,

Exactly three weeks ago today my foot came to rest upon a piece of ground that called out to me in a way I have never before experienced, and since that moment I have busied myself with the necessary task of creating a residence for myself, so that I might remain here throughout the fast-approaching winter, which I have been informed on more than one occasion is often quite harsh. And since it is my wish to remain here not only this winter, but for all of the remaining winters of my life, however many that proves to be, I have taken my task to heart, placing hands to dream, saw to board, hammer to nail, and for the better part of three weeks now, have measured and cut and pounded so diligently that it seems I have failed to take notice of several other aspects of this new life of mine that are taking place, some of them, apparently, under the very tip of my own nose, lying as close to me as a long, stone’s throw across the nearby meadow lake. I was informed by the woodsman named Jamb only yesterday of the nearness of this new home of mine to your own home. Apparently, Miss Palaminia, you and I are to be neighbors, or have been now, albeit unknowingly to me, for some three weeks, and if it pleases you to read any further, I should very much like the opportunity to correct my past oversight and properly introduce myself.

My name is Tomas Smollet. I have been told in the past that it is a simple name that belies my true nature, and that I am at heart a complicated man suffering the idea of simplicity in a complex world. Perhaps this is true, perhaps not. It is an interesting observation, to say the least, and a conclusion that you may, upon our ever meeting, arrive upon yourself. I will not, nay, cannot stand in the way of personal opinion. I will say, however, that given the proper time and the right frame of mind, I might convince someone willing to listen to my story that I am no more convoluted than the next man, which of course may be saying very little, depending upon the opinions you currently hold of the men you happen to know. You may very well hold all men in low esteem, at which case, I have already done myself more harm than good with the casual observations I throw about in this letter, but it would not be the first time in this life that I had undermined my own intentions. Far from it, in fact. But since I am on the subject of observations, I may as well make one more, saying that it seems that in so many aspects of this life --perhaps I might even go so far as to suggest that this is true of all aspects of life-- acceptance and understanding comes back time and time again to the delicate matter of first impression and personal opinion, which I have come to respect as perhaps this world’s greatest, and yet least understood, power.

Pausing for a moment with my writing, I might ask myself what kind of impression I myself might be making.  How am I doing?  What impression am I leaving on this new neighbor with these words of mine, these far too many observations and opinions?  A poor one, I fear, for reading back just now I fear that up to this point I have given you nothing about myself other than my name, that simple label handed to me by my mother at birth.  I have said almost nothing and yet have rambled on most excessively.

I have sometimes wondered if the world wouldn’t have turned out much differently if instead of using just a name, we would have evolved into the kind of people who were comfortable introducing themselves to one another with a tale or story or some description of some place we had been, some words showing that we had taken the time to notice something about the world around us and that we were now willing to share with another.  Names are such a brief attempt to label ourselves that they often sadden me when I think that what they really are is a label for our own impatience.  Our names are short either because we don’t have or don’t want to take the time to get to know other people, but perhaps even sadder, we don’t want to take the time to explain who it is we are, and so we condense everything about ourselves into that one small label.

Hello, my name is Tomas Smollet. 

See what I mean?  Reading that, what do actually know about me?  Do those two words, those two symbols actually mean anything?  No, of course not.  They mean next to nothing, and yet, we have come to rely so much upon this type of introduction, this exchange of names.

So having now filled these pages with absolutely nothing, I will simply say that I should enjoy very much the opportunity to walk around this magnificent lake that separates us --as I have no boat as of yet and am much too old for a swim of that undetermined length-- so that we might both be given the chance to share something of ourselves other than our names.  I shall continue to work on my home while I wait for your reply, and look forward to that day.  Perhaps the woodsman Jamb will be the deliverer of your message, as up to this point, other than the two times I have taken the time to walk into the village, he seems to be the sole source of news for this entire valley.  I am beginning to wonder, in fact, if he is even a woodsman at all, but rather some sort of old-fashioned town crier.  If he is, I have no doubt that he is the quietest, most tight-lipped town crier in the entire history of town criers, for I don’t believe I have ever met a man more short of words than Jamb.

I await your reply, and remain until that time,

humbly yours,

Tomas Smollet

“When we move, can we move somewhere warm?” the boy asked last night.  I thought he meant the house itself.  I’ve been lazy as tender of the fire and the house has been cold from time to time.

“Sure.  It’ll be warm.  Don’t worry.”

“Like Arkansas or Florida or California or someplace like that?” he adds, and now I know what he’s getting at.  Somewhere, as in somewhere else.

“Is it warm in Minnesota?”

“Warm and cold,” I say.  “And don’t forget about the mosquitoes I told you about.  Swarms of them.  Swarms so thick they carry off most of the smaller children if they’re left outside unprotected.”

“Dad, I’m serious.”

“Okay, I’m sorry, that was an exaggeration.  Children aren’t carried away by mosquitoes, but they do freeze to death in the winter.  Lots of them.  Hundreds, maybe thousands, but it’s not all bad because of the ice fishing.  Frozen kids make great bait.  Northerns, I think.”

“Dad....”

“Maybe large-mouth bass, I can’t remember.  I’m not much of a fisherman.”

“Dad!”

“And can you blame me?  Baiting a hook with a little frozen kid, it’s kind of gross.”

The boy finally loses interest in my nonsense and goes back to playing music, telling me an endless stream of information that is almost easy to ignore.

“I have five different versions of Who Let The Dogs Out,” I hear him say.  He sings a couple of other variations, then asks me the time.  “What time is it exactly?” I tell him, for about the fourth time this morning already.  “Exactly, Dad.  I need to know exactly.” I tell him.

“Is that exactly?”

“Yes.”

“What time is it.... NOW?” I tell him, but he’s asked now so many times that the time has actually changed.  I start to worry that we’ll spend the next 60 minutes this way, getting nowhere.

“I’m trying to set my iPod, Dad.  I need to know exact.” He breaks into yet another version of Who Let The Dogs Out and I think, maybe we will move to Minnesota.  I could tolerate the mosquitoes, and besides, my son would catch one whopper of a bass.

It’s hard to write about change before it’s happened, and yet I’ve spent so much time thinking about it that you’d think it’d be easy.  A lot of time - years, in fact.  So much time spent thinking about it that many of the other things I should have been doing often fell to the wayside to make room for all the thinking.  I was consumed by thinking, which is almost funny when you think about it, except that it’s not.  It’s hard falling that far inside your own head.  Hard falling in, but even harder when it’s time to climb back out.

The short of it is this: yesterday morning sometime around 5 a.m. I climbed out of bed and wandered through the cold and darkness and somehow knew that I had reached a decision.  After the years of bouncing back and forth, riding the fence of indecision about this one big thing, I had finally decided - I would sell the farm. 

I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table, knowing for the first time that my days at that built-in table were now numbered, and as I sipped at the hot coffee, I tried to think of what this meant.  What does it mean to walk away from so many years of committment, so many projects and accomplishments and memories?  The table, for instance, was not just built-in to the house, but designed by me when the kitchen underwent a partial facelift several years back.  It would not be coming with us, no matter what happened, just like the artwork I’d painted on the kitchen walls would be staying behind.  Just like so many things.

I suppose everyone pours a part of their soul into their home, working hard to create and then maintain something that they hope will be an outward reflection of who they are as a person.  Why do we do it?  Why do we work so hard at it?  Could it be that our souls truly do struggle our whole lives to work free, desiring nothing more than a chance at expression, but then upon finding themselves trapped within the confines of our limited bodies, do what they can to create?  Is it our soul that guides and directs us, arranges pictures on shelves and art on walls, guides the paintbrush and marvels at the color as it grows and surrounds, engulfs and comforts, forces our hand to fluff the couch cushions, arrange our chairs so we are pointed in directions we don’t understand, or gently brush at the green leaves of some houseplant as it stretches for the sunlight of the nearest window?  Is it the soul that pours out of us and creates that thing we see and feel and know as our home?

Whatever it is that drives us to create, I can tell you one thing - it has pushed at me hard the last eleven or twelve years, and there will be much to walk away from, not just with the house and the acreage it sits on, but with everything it is and everything it has come to represent. 

Time has passed for me on this farm in ways that it has at no other place.  My parents lived here before me and have left their mark upon it and upon my memory.  It is here that I last saw my grandfather before he died.  We played cards in the same kitchen that I now sat in drinking my coffee --cribbage, of course, and he beat me soundly, as he always did-- and later that day we would all go outside and he would pose for me as any good, old Swedish man does, straight-faced and stiffbacked, while I snapped a few quick pictures.  My life has changed here, many times.  I lived here, then moved away, then returned again.  I witnessed my parent’s marriage fall apart in this house.  I have fallen both in and out of love under its roof, and have lived here both alone and as a married man.  I have been father to two children in this home and husband to three wives.  I have eaten Thanksgiving dinners here, listened countless times to the crunch of the gravel under the tires of my car as I pulled into the driveway, planted gardens and trees and family pets that didn’t make it, straightened fences and sat in front of the woodstove, feeling the heat roll off into the house.  The house fills me with memory, good and bad and forgotten, and I can’t help but wonder which of the memories will pack up and move with me, and which of them will remain behind.  Looking out the window now, I find myself staring out at the barn, thinking of what it means to me, what part of it can fit in a box and move across town.

The barn, with its aged cedar beams and strong wooden floors, its large, open hayloft, and the manger that I have literally broken open thousands of bales of hay into, watching as the cows worked those long, dextrous tongues between the wooden slats, boards worn smooth from the constant rubbing, worn nearly away in some places by anxious tongues reaching out for the green, fresh hay, is capable of transporting me through time just by me stepping through its doors.  The smells of aged wood and fresh hay, machinery and tools oiled against the damp, gasoline and rotting grass trapped under a mower deck, dust and manure, all work to carry my memory not only forward, but back thirty years or more to another barn in another time, where as a boy I labored under so many of those same, exact smells, intensified in my memory somehow by the intense cold of those early morning Iowa winters, which made the barn a safe haven from the forty below air outside.  The smells and sounds would surround me as I went about my chores in the dark of morning, pushing between the warm bodies of the calves, separating and feeding while the milk was still warm, watching their frantic mouths pulling on the rubber nipples, froth dripping from their chins while I forked out the crap, some of it still steaming, then hurrying back through the intense, still air to the house, only to rush out again shortly later to catch the bus for school.  It is a barn, somehow, that is the pivotal point of so many of my old memories, and I am intensely aware, painfully aware perhaps, that it is a place that I will not be coming back to for a long time, if ever.  Time runs out on all things eventually, and there is a big difference between visiting a barn and in working a barn, and while I might still have time ahead of me for a visit or two, I can feel those days when I no longer work a barn fast approaching.

I know I’m not supposed to begin work on my NaNo writing until the stroke of midnight on November 1st, but rules be damned, I’ve begun.  The other NaNo writers in the Salem group can harrass me all they want, taunt me and call me a cheater, but I can assure them that it will fall on deaf ears.  It’s been so long since I’ve written anything that to hold off on any idea right now would be madness on my part.  It’s like the married man’s wife offering him sex.  Hey, when the opportunity’s there, you run with it!

If you’ve followed along here since the beginning, you know that I’ve participated in NaNo for a couple of years now, but always without success.  For one reason or another, I’ve never made it to the end of the 50,000 word monthly goal, and have, in fact, usually fallen far short.  I won’t promise anything different this time around, but have a feeling that things could turn out better.  I’m a different man than I was at this time a year ago, life has seen to that, giving me quite the mental beating over the last twelve months (my lack of writing here being one of the consequences).

I haven’t decided how much of this story I’ll post as I go along - maybe all of it, maybe excerpts, maybe nothing - I don’t know.  What I will tell you today is that the story is called The Constant Hand of Tomas Smollet, and will be written somewhat in the fashion of Tobias Smollett’s Travels Through France and Italy, as in the story will be told mostly as a collection of long, detailed letters, most of which will have been written by the books main character, Tomas Smollet.  I won’t give away much more at the moment, other than to say that the story’s letters all take place in a not too distant future, but have been compiled sometime in the mid 22nd century.  Why the futuristic tilt?  So I can have the chance to be prophetic, of course.  Why else?

Here’s an excerpt from the book’s introduction:

The Constant Hand of Tomas Smollet

An Introduction

It is safe to say that literally hundreds of books have been written of the chaotic upheaval experienced throughout the United States in the early 21st century, yet it is unfortunate, but as is often the case with historical writing, that only a small handful of these books prove to be backed by thorough research and well-documented facts, leaving the vast majority of them, while perhaps entertaining, amounting to nothing more than collections of second, third, and often fourth-hand accounts of the events that took place during that time.  There is the argument, however, and perhaps one worthy of reflection, that we are being hasty when we hold up one account of events over another and claim that it is the “more accurate”, for as the late British historian Denival Cromwell was fond of reminding us, “This pile of shiny marbles that we call “history” will forever be in need of constant restacking, and if there is but one historical truth, it is that the same, favored marble will not always rise to the top of the stack.”

So where then, you are doubtless asking yourself, does this book fall?  What is so different about The Constant Hand of Tomas Smollet that it warrants of you both your valuable time and money?  These are valid questions.

As editor of this book, it would seem that I should have a clear and precise answer to these questions, and that by not answering them, I should fail in my duty to properly sell you on the merits of the book, but it is my hope that you will find somewhere in yourself the desire to read further, and that by doing so, you will have the chance to answer these questions for yourself, which I assure you, is the only way this book can and should be approached.  Does The Constant Hand of Tomas Smollet contain truth?  Yes, certainly, but what those truths are should be something that you decide upon for yourself, and not have dictated to you the book’s editor.

And as you will see, should you continue reading, the classification of this book is no easy task, for the collection of letters, when taken as a whole, cover a vast variety of subjects which cannot be readily summarized.  The collection is as much mystery novel as it is historical reference, just as it is as much autobiography as it is, believe it or not, prophetic guidebook.  In his letters, Smollet discloses much about his own personality, writing with an apparent openness that reveals both his strengths and weaknesses, offering the reader a unique . . . .

It of course goes on and on and seems to want to never stop, as introductions so often seem to do.

22 August 2036

Dear Mr. Danielson,

As promised when I left on this journey of mine some five months ago, I am now writing to let you know that I have arrived at the destination you and I discussed at such great length the winter before my departure, and to further inform you that my journey here was as we both suspected - long, arduous, and filled with many obstacles, all of which threatened constantly to bring my travels to an abrupt and unfortunate end. Yet the determination to succeed in this endeavor swelled within me with every step I took which brought me closer to reaching my goal, and despite my growing years, or perhaps in spite of them, my perseverance seemed stronger than ever to accomplish what I had set out to do, and this determination and perseverance, combined with more good fortune and luck than I believe I have ever experienced in life, and more, it seems to me than any one man has a right to experience or even bear witness to, helped me to reach the end.

I should enjoy very much sharing with you some, if not all of my travel adventures, but will save the telling of those long and rambling tales for another day. I suspect that once I begin to settle in to my new surroundings I will have the time for those stories, but for now we let’s allow them to better work their way into my memory. Much of what I have to tell is still much too fresh for a proper retelling, and would no doubt be nothing more than a long, bland, uninteresting list of dates, times, and places, which neither of us is either interested in, nor has the time for. But given a proper rest, the many events of these past five months will surely reveal to us whatever perspectives and truths they now hide, for it is only through the passage of time that any story can reach full stature, which includes, as you and I both well know, the addition of any proper “embellishments” that help serve in its telling.

What I can and will tell you is that I have, in fact, arrived, and while I have only the freshest and earliest of my impressions of this place to share with you now, I feel I must do so, for isn’t it often our first impression of something, whether it be an event or a place or even a person, that will form for us the entire basis of the relationship? And my first impression of this land is this: if all of the discussions that you and I had before I left had gone on nonstop the entire winter (many of which seemed to go on that long, if I recall correctly!), and had those already overly long, New England winter months dragged on so that they lasted not just through winter, but through both Spring and Summer, and perhaps even through Fall itself so that there was, in fact, no change in seasons whatsoever, I fear we would not even have begun to come close to visualizing the possibilities that lie in what I can only begin to describe as a timeless place. Yes, my friend, you have read my words correctly! Timeless! I know not what else to call this feeling I have, other than timelessness, and have struggled since the moment I set foot in this valley to come up with some explanation for this feeling of mine, some way of conveying to you what it is that I am experiencing, for I assure you, it is like no other sensation that I have experienced in all my long years.

This place promises to be, my friend, not only everything that we had imagined, but much more --so much more!-- and after being here only for a few short hours, I found myself fearing that I had waited too long to make this journey, and that there would not be enough good years left in this body of mine to last long enough to grasp the entirety of this place, and yet, I also found those same fears fading the longer I remained, and the further into the valley my steps took me, the more the fear began to dissipate, until finally I had walked so far in that the fear was gone completely, and it was at that place, and at that moment, that I resolved that I had truly arrived at the end of my long journey.

I should like to go on at greater length, but find that this tired body and mind of mine are desperately overdue for a nap, which I will take as soon as this letter finds its way into an envelope.  I have yet to discover any means of posting my letters from this place, although yesterday, just before arriving here at this final destination of mine, I did happen upon a genial, albeit somewhat quiet woodsman, whom I was able to gently question, after introducing myself, regarding the general layout of the area.  The woodsman introduced himself only as “Jamb”, and I am unsure if this is a nickname, his first name or his last, and hope to be given another opportunity to find out, if for no other reason, simply to satisfy my own insatiable curiousity.  I was able to learn from this curiously named woodsman, however, that there was a small village not ‘half a day’s stride to the north’, which was the way he phrased it.  I suspect, however, that the half a day’s stride the young man spoke of was one taking place on his young legs, not mine, which require a bit more time to get from here to there, perhaps the better part of a day, so as the day is already growing long, I will wait until tomorrow morning before beginning my walk in the direction the woodsman has suggested.

I will write again soon and tell you of the things I see and the people I meet, and hopefully, if I have the sense to keep my wits about me, will be able to spew forth more upon the page than simply emotional blather, which I seem to have done here this afternoon. 

I remain yours in spirit, tired but soon refreshed,

Tomas Smollet