Kafka’s axe

The first books I read were biographies. I was in the third grade. Because of a childhood disease affecting my left leg, I wore a brace. For a long time, I wasn’t allowed to go out on the playground for recess or lunch. I was an obedient kid, so when Mrs May left me alone in the classroom while she took her lunch break, I caused no trouble. I remember wondering one day, “How old will I be in the year 2000?” When Mrs May returned, I showed her how I subtracted 1944 from 2000. “Fifty-six, Mrs May. That’s how old I’ll be in 2000.” Mrs May was pleased.

She must have thought about me a lot. One day she said, “Timmy, would you like to visit the library?”

“What’s that?” I asked. The only book in my grandmother’s home where we lived was the Bible. I had no idea you could fill a whole room with them!

Mrs May walked me clunking along beside her down a long hall with a sharp turn to the right into a small room. It had shelves of books! On the bottom right shelf, I found biographies of Franklin, Washington, and Lincoln. I carried them home and became lost in their world. While it would take years to become a passionate reader, books began to open my mind to a larger world. 

My deep interest in books did not begin until the summer after my first year of college. James Michener’s Hawaii was popular at the time. I loved the sweep of this epic saga, from the early formation of volcanic islands in the sea to the early people to the depiction of island history through fictitious characters to the family dynamics, greed, power, and conflict. Then I read all 1300+ pages of William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, horrified by man’s inhumanity and a madman’s hold on his people. I read Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead, Barbary Shore, and The Deer Park, and all the Mailer I could find. His writing radicalized me. I began to understand injustice. At 19, I started to verbalize my new insights in our quiet home, including my love of stories. Arguments ensued.

When my parents had taken me to the University of Idaho campus a year earlier, they intended for me to earn a degree, return to Idaho Falls, marry locally, and practice law. But that was their dream, not mine. After watching me lie on their couch reading for hours, my concerned father confronted me one night over dinner. 

“Why are you reading all that stuff?” he exclaimed in bewilderment. “It’s just a figment of someone’s imagination!”

“Exactly,” I replied, smiling enigmatically with all the arrogance of a youth not yet a man. 

You see, I was separating from my parents’ world — and for a time from my parents, too. I needed a bit of arrogance to do that. I’ve learned that separation is an important part of the life journey. Especially for the young. In fiction, it’s called “the hero’s journey,” which, in his Hero with a Thousand Faces,” Joseph Campbell defined as follows:

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

As for me, I left for San Francisco. It was the infamous Summer of Love. I met no “fabulous forces” there, no “supernatural wonder.” I learned that humility is part of separation, too. And eventually, I won what I needed to win. Reading motivated me to strike out on my own and quietly nudged me to shape a new plan for my life. 

According to Campbell, this is a universal process. For me, I had to win something for myself that my parents couldn’t understand. Our story ended happily: we reconciled later. (Not all stories do, of course.) Was it through reconciliation that I returned with the boon I had won?

As I write today, I think often of a hero’s journey, of what we must leave, what we must win for ourselves, and how we must return. My kids did it. Neither Mac nor Jake lives a script I would have written. I’m proud of them for refusing to settle for my prescriptions. 

Franz Kafka

… once said: “A book must be the ax for the frozen sea inside us.” I’m still writing my story, still separating and returning. As I work on stories and on life, I hoist the ax. I let go of what’s inside. It comes out in words, and I am borne anew.