JAMES D. SANDERSON, AUTHOR

From Gandhi:

“Anger is the enemy of nonviolence and pride is the monster that swallows it up.”

“An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.”

“I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and nonviolence are as old as the hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could.”

“There are many causes I would die for. There is not a single cause I would kill for.”

“Nonviolence and truth are inseparable and presuppose one another.”

“Nonviolence is the weapon of the strong.”

From Martin Luther King, Jr.:

“At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love.”

“Peace is not merely a distant goal we seek but a means by which we arrive at that goal.”

“A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.”

“We have guided missiles and misguided men.”

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

“Let no man pull you low enough to hate him.”

From Joan Baez:

“That’s all nonviolence is – organized love.”

“The only thing that’s been a worse flop than the organization of nonviolence has been the organization of violence.”

From Cesar Chavez:

“There is no such thing as defeat in nonviolence.”

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NONOPPOSITIONAL NONVIOLENCE
“The minute you conquer the fear of death, at that moment you are free. I submit to you that if a man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.”

All through history people have opposed one another for a multitude of reasons and this has most often lead to bloody conflicts and wars, though it has sometimes led to nonviolent battles in which the protester has received violence without retaliating. Yet the Christian example for nonviolence is found in the life of Christ, which cannot be said to have been oppositional at all – except in-as-much as Christ opposed untruth. Non-oppositional nonviolence, then, might be said to be the whole hearted search for truth no matter what the cost of such a search.

Avoid falsehood no matter where it is found. Look through to the motives of others, and to the motives within. We must never deceive ourselves with high-minded thinking or those deceptions that allow us to act in self-righteous ways, while really only maintaining the status quo that we find most comfortable for ourselves. Never shy away from examining those dark places within us, for such examination will not make us darker, but purer, as the light of truth shines in.

The ideal of nonviolence is sometimes difficult to grasp but it is even more difficult to employ. Taking up the ideal of nonviolence, many wish to march and to shout slogans and to win immediate results in a world that certainly needs immediate change. At one time I myself believed that was what nonviolence was all about. Actions such as these attract the attention of others and bring fame and long-lasting glory to the activist. Taking center stage, the activist would even lay down his or her life for the glory of the cause. These actions are fast and noisy and quickly won or lost. Non-oppositional nonviolence, on the other hand, requires a much greater commitment. It is a commitment to love and peace and truth that often reveals itself only in quiet ways. It requires servant-hood to others and labor and humility. It requires the activist to live in such a way that his or her life will be an example for others. The glory is eternal and the action is neither won nor lost quickly. The action, in fact, is never complete.

We are all responsible for everyone and everything. The sooner we understand this the sooner we will understand the true underlying principles of non-oppositional nonviolence. The world cannot be neatly divided up. What happens to one person happens to all. What happens in one part of the world happens to the whole world. If a thing is right in one place it is right everywhere. If it is right for one race it is right for all. If it is false, however, it can never be right, no matter what weapons may be employed to uphold it. Only truth can be upheld by nonviolence because it requires the strength of the spirit. The spirit cannot support untruth.

Nonviolence is most effectively used, then, to feed children, to teach, to lead by example, to live simply and to promote sustainable communities where every member is given the opportunity to be happy and fulfilled. God created every person and everything. Together we must reunite the human family and live again in the garden as its caretakers.

For more writing about Christian nonviolence please go to http://www.jamesdsanderson.com

‘Sacred Are the Brave’ a collection of short stories about the nonviolent revolutions 1986-1989 is now available in Kindle. Each of the nine stories has characters who are just ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events and who must stand against some of the world’s most ferocious dictators with only the power of nonviolence. Get it today at: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007ECCGP4

Take a look and let me know what you think on my ‘Contact Me’ form. Thanks. Jim

The story is told that Ernest Hemingway wrote the ending of ‘The Old Man And The Sea’ twenty six times. When a reporter asked him why he wrote the ending so many times old Hem said, “I couldn’t get the words right.”

That’s it. That’s what the true artist struggles with. That’s what I’ve been trying to do my whole life. So, when I hear from readers that my novella ‘The Angelic Mysteries’ is very short, I cringe a little. Yes, it is not long. It was once a longer work and I have worked it down to the very essence of the story at hand. There are not long descriptions of landscapes or backgrounds of the lives of the characters or long rambling discourses of philosophy. There is, instead, a broken up but progressing series of events that lead the characters to a life changing decision. Much like my own life. Yours and mine.

Hemingway also spoke about the words that are purposely left out of a work. He claimed they are of equal importance with the words that are left in. Such discipline does not lend itself to wordiness.

A reader would have to go a long way to find another novel as great as ‘The Old Man And The Sea’. It was specifically mentioned in Hemingway’s 1954 Nobel Prize award. Old Santiago had gone eighty-four days without catching a fish and he was now considered unlucky by one and all. Even the boy Manolin who used to go out in the boat with him was no longer allowed to go. He was sent out with other boats that had a better chance of actually catching fish. (People must be pragmatic in such matters, after all).

Somewhere along the line Santiago had become a simple and humble man. He dreamed of lions playing on the beach of Africa, and life has made a true saint of him. The large fish he was about to catch would make an even greater saint of him.

He had the heart of a turtle, this old man, which would keep on beating long after it had been butchered. When the giant fish took the bait, Santiago let him take the line for a while so he would have time to eat it, and would be deeply hooked. So deep, he hoped, that the hook would pierce the great fish’s heart. Instead, however, when he was hooked he began to tow the old man’s skiff far out to sea, steadily and slowly into deep water.

Here, in this simple tale, is all the suffering of a lifetime. All the greatness. All the destruction. All the tears. In the end, tired to the point of exhaustion, Santiago shoulders his mast like a cross and climbs the hill toward his shack. Several times he fell down and had to get back up again. There, in with the other garbage along the shore, is the backbone and tail fin of his great fish, waiting to be washed out with the tide.

This story, also, is the story of every writer who ever tried to write something extraordinary or great. The author is towed far out into the deep water, even against his/her will, and has to struggle with the work as one suffers with a fishing line heavy across the back and cutting the hands until they bleed. The author sheds the tears and implores all the powers of the universe to help in this one task alone: “Help me get the words right!”

Then, having suffered and labored so long, the author must send the work out into the marketplace along with the garbage and swill along the shore, waiting for it to be swept out on the tide of popular opinion. It doesn’t seem fair, really, and it is small wonder we see so many good authors abandoning literary fiction and embracing instead the ready money of genre writing. Perhaps greatness will be extinguished altogether. Readers will recall the day when great fish once swam in these waters, but no more…

That is the task that is before us, fellow authors. Fellow readers. Are we going to abandon that which is great? Are we going to satisfy ourselves with something less than the right words? I vow to you now, I will keep up the struggle for greatness, even if I suffer for it. (And at fifty nine years old I can assure you I already have). What say ye? Will you take up the challenge? Will you struggle and sweat and shed the tears that greatness demands of us?

I do hope you will.

‘The Angelic Mysteries’ available in Kindle now: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005HFA3K0

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This excerpt is taken from Chapter 23 of ‘The Angelic Mysteries’. It is Copyright © 2011 by James D. Sanderson. All Rights Are Reserved.

Daniel Allman and Sarah have been fleeing across Europe to escape the huge anti-angel Morton Toombs but here in Chapter 23 he finally catches up with them:

At last they came out on the Grand Canal. A boatman was standing at the ready. “Can you take us to Santa Lucia Station?” Daniel asked him.
“Of course,” the boatman replied. “I can take you anywhere you want to go.” The boatman pointed across the canal.
Daniel seemed perplexed. “I thought it was on this side.”
“No, my good sir. It is across over there.” He pointed again, as if they might be able to make it out in the darkness. “Step in; I’ll take you straight to it.”
“Very well,” Daniel said.
“Where are we going?” Sarah asked.
“We need to get over to the other side.”
“What’s wrong with this side? Going over there doesn’t seem right to me.”
“No? Well, unless you have a better idea, that’s where we’re going,” Daniel said. “We’ve been lost for hours.”
“I don’t know which way to go.”
“Just follow along, then. One way is as good as another.”
“This is the way,” said the boatman.
They stepped down into his vaporetto and a moment later they were off across the swampy-looking water.
“This place smells like hell,” Daniel remarked.
The boatman nodded sincerely. “These canals have become like swamps. They are like Styx itself.”
“Is that where we are?” Sarah asked him. “Are we entering the gates of Dis?” A black water snake shagged by in the silence. “Has he chased us into hell’s black capital?”
“Few return,” the boatman said.
“We’re at the gate,” she said. Red flames were reflecting on the walls of the buildings ahead. Toombs was on the other side, waiting for them.
“Welcome,” he said.
“You!” Daniel said.
“Weren’t you expecting me? Fallen angels are the first here. We have rebelled against Himself.”
“So you admit it. Sarah was right all along.”
Toombs laughed maniacally. “Right. Wrong. Makes no difference here.”
“Why have you brought us here?” Sarah asked.
“Ah, a sensible question. You have brought yourselves here, actually. I am here to conduct your tour for you. That’s all.”
“What if we don’t want the tour?” Sarah demanded.
“Don’t worry. You have nothing to fear, being here. Not yet.”
“What is this about?” Daniel asked.
“You have begun your inquiries. Now you must learn the truth.”
“Don’t follow him,” Sarah cautioned. “He knows nothing of the truth.”
“As I told you,” Toombs picked up smoothly, “there is no reason to hesitate. You have a free passage here. No one will detain you.”
Without another word on the subject Toombs turned and made his way up the street. Daniel followed him and Sarah tagged along after him. They were unable to resist his power which was drawing them onward. Wild birds were screeching somewhere ahead in the distance.
“Tell me, where are the other fallen angels?” Daniel asked Toombs.
“They are all above, on your good earth, doing whatever tasks have been assigned them.”
“What kinds of tasks are those?”
“They have tasks similar to mine.”
“What exactly is your task?”
“You still need to ask? It is just as your girl here has supposed all along. We have become very good at trapping these risen angels and bringing them back here.”
“What happens when they get here?”
“They are held in captivity until they come to recognize the true way.”
“The true way?”
“The way that leads to the great one – Satan himself.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Sarah interjected. “His words twist everything.”
“Quiet,” Toombs shouted. “Life here is not as she would portray it. This is a good place. A place of sensual delights. Unlike the sterile silence of her heaven.”
Sarah began to object again but the big man raised his hand and shouted, “Silence!” Sarah found she could no longer speak. “You have no power here.”
“What have you done to her?” Daniel asked.
“She talks too much. You have come here to learn, and learn you shall. You must decide for yourself. I think you’ll find that hell is very much for people like us. It is a place of power.”
“Is it all about power, then? I thought hell was about punishment.”
“Dantesque clap trap,” Toombs snorted. “Some are punished here. But not those who have power. We are Satan’s chosen.”
“You keep saying ‘us’.”
He gave Daniel a libidinous wink. “You too can be here, in the halls of power.”
Sarah grasped his arm between her two hands but Daniel pulled away brusquely. “And you say you have risen angels held captive here?”
“Only the ones who refuse to convert. Foolish, really. We all serve a master, do we not? What difference does it make which one?”
“But… I don’t see any of those captive angels around anywhere.”
Toombs stamped his foot. Daniel followed his eyes downward. “In the cement.”
“In the cement?” Daniel did not understand.
“We mix them in the cement we use to build our roads. None ever escape.”
Daniel was horrified. “So, we’re walking on them right this minute?”
“Don’t worry about offending them. It’s their punishment. Those who have risen so high must now lay there while we tread on them. Just punishment, don’t you think?”
“Are they never released?”
“Of course they are,” the big man smiled. “Some are released every day. They have but to pledge their allegiance to their rightful King, the Prince of Darkness, and they fly out of the roadway complete and unharmed. It’s quite a spectacle.”
“I can imagine it is.”
Toombs continued to lead the way. “Ahead here is the Park of the Suicides.”
Daniel caught his breath. It was from this park the sound of the screeching birds was coming.
“This is one part Dante actually got right. The leaves of the trees trap the souls of those who have committed suicide, and the Harpies eat the leaves.”
“Is my father…?”
“You father committed suicide, didn’t he?”
“Is he here?” Daniel whispered.
“He’s here. In one of these trees. But he doesn’t have to be, you know.”
“How do you mean?”
“Those of us with power can have things as we wish them.”
“You know what I wish…”
Morton Toombs cocked his head to one side. “What do you wish?”
Daniel caught himself and shook his head. “Nothing. It’s only that this has something to do with my dream. I don’t know what exactly.”
“A dream?”
“A recurring dream,” Daniel said. “In the dream I am confronted by two knights on horseback; a white knight and a black knight. The black knight is first. He charges his horse at me and lowers his lance. At the last possible moment I leap aside and, using my staff, pin his lance against the trunk of a tree, breaking it. The white knight then turns his horse and rides away.”
Morton Toombs nodded his head reflectively. “It’s a funny thing.” He motioned to the leaves of the trees. “All any of them have to do to escape is to desire it. But none of them ever does.”
“Because of pride?”
“I suppose so. But I don’t really know. Only they know, and they’re not talking.”
Just then a great pit began to open up at their feet. Sarah became frantic trying to pull Daniel back from the edge.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Toombs asked.
“This is far enough. I’m going back.”
“Oh, so you’ve decided have you? Don’t you want to see more?”
“I’ve seen enough.”
“That’s a pity, but there’s no going back from here.”
“I thought we were immune…”
“Who told you that?” Toombs asked. “Oh, I did, didn’t I? Well, I lied.”
“I want to go back.”
“Of course you do.”
The mouth of the pit opened up like the aperture of a giant camera lens. Daniel turned to Sarah. She needed no prompting. She was running already. There was a tremendous crashing noise all around them. The earth crumbled and fell away. Toombs’ laughter was in their ears. Toombs reached out and grabbed Daniel’s leg. His grip could not hold. His nails left a nasty scratch. Daniel and Sarah continued to lose ground, like ants in an ant lion’s trap.

‘THE ANGELIC MYSTERIES: A Novella’ is available in Kindle or Nook.
For more about this novella or the author James D. Sanderson see: http://www.facebook.com/jamesdsandersonbooks

Much of the background for ‘The Angelic Mysteries’ comes directly from experiences I had while hitch-hiking around Europe when I was younger. Most of the places I went then are etched indelibly on my brain and I drew on them heavily for the novella. Using that setting, I hoped to add a great sense of realism to aid the reader in suspending disbelief in other parts of the story. Of course some of those experiences did not make it into the work. One of those I would like to share now:
At dusk we set out by train from Barcelona. The compartment was jammed with merry-makers from many countries passing bottles of wine around. Empty bottles rolled and clinked together on the floor of the compartment. After a time many of us dozed off.
It was many years since I had first read Hemingway and by now I had read them all. Somehow I had gotten the notion that all great writers must attend the Running of the Bulls during the Festival of San Fermin in Pamplona. I don’t know why they call it the Running ‘of’ the Bulls, which makes it seem that the bulls run alone through the streets.
In the morning we stepped bleary-eyed from the train into the dusty dawn of Pamplona. Women were down at the river already washing clothes. We began to ask along the street about a place to stay. The town was packed with tourists, of course, but we eventually got a spare room in the house of a couple whose baby toddled around without benefit of diapers. The place smelled dusty and even the water from the tap tasted of dust.
The day was hot and dry. It was the first week in July. We spent our time wandering around, taking a meal at a little restaurant, and napping in the afternoon. That night the merry-making continued. Everyone had come to get drunk, it seems. Perhaps they were building up their levels of liquid courage. By morning people were staggering or already passed out in doorways and along the sidewalks. Those who were still upright began to line up along the street that would take the bulls through town to the bullring. The very bravest, the drunkest, or the most insane, formed a line nearest the place the bulls would come from. I will leave it to the reader to decide which I was.
We began to shake rolled-up newspapers and chant and call for the bulls. We didn’t have long to wait. The loud retort of fireworks set them off. We waited and chanted and shook our rolled-up newspapers and then the bulls appeared around the corner below us. The first wave of bulls are relatively tame, and lead the next wave – the actually Spanish fighting bulls – through the streets. They were very close and still no one moved. Each of us seemed determined to wait for someone else to run first. It doesn’t seem nearly so brave now.

At last someone moved and we all turned and ran. We took three steps before the first wave of bulls was upon us and we dodged as best we could those horns that could carry us away to the infirmary or worse. But the bulls were intent upon getting up the street and we came away undamaged. In fact they seemed little concerned with us at all.
Things became serious with the second wave. They also seemed little concerned with us except inasmuch as we got in their way. As they came up even – we were running with all our might, indeed, with all our might – a black bull stumbled on the cobblestones and fell heavily in the street beside me. I stopped, not knowing what to do. The bull regained its footing and now, cut off from the others, became dangerous. He swung away from me. A man on that side caught hold of the awning over the doorway and pulled himself bodily up and out of the way of the horns. I don’t know what superhuman strength he called upon to accomplish it.
The bull swung his head back toward me. A man just in front of me caught his eye. He charged. His right horn caught the man in the midsection, in the stomach, and slammed him mightily against the wooden beam barricade that blocked that side of the street. An astonishing fan of blood splayed out into the dust. The man dropped where he had stood and people on the other side of the barricade pulled him under. I turned and ran back down the street the way we had come. The bull proceeded up toward the bull ring, attacking any and all who got in his way.
I found Nancy in the crowd. She hadn’t been able to see, but heard someone shouting a man was gored. It wasn’t me, I informed her.
Somewhere in the thick of the crowd someone got the notion that the bulls were coming again. A moment of panic seized them all. The crowd surged with a mind of its own. Nancy was knocked to her knees.
The bulls, apparently, are not the only thing to be feared in Pamplona early in July.
Until next time I remain…
Yours, Jim
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PSYCHE REVIVED BY CUPID’S KISS
During my first visit to the Louvre in Paris, in the early 1970’s, I became transfixed by a certain statue. It was Antonio Canova’s neoclassical work ‘Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss’. I couldn’t believe the impression the softness of the white marble made upon me as I gazed at that winged son of Aphrodite meeting in a kiss that most beautiful of women – Psyche. I can still see, in my mind’s eye, the lightness with which Cupid descends upon her, supporting her with his left arm across her breasts and his right cradling her head. How her arms reach up for him. How their lips are only the merest moment past touching together. He has awakened her lifeless form. She is his!
The tale of Eros and Psyche has always fascinated me. An old woman tells the tale in the second century AD ‘The Golden Ass’ by Lucius Apuleius. It is the story of a most beautiful girl named Psyche who has caused envy and jealousy to grow in the goddess Aphrodite. Spitefully she calls upon her son Eros, or Cupid, to use one of his golden arrows while she sleeps to cause the girl to fall in love with the vile creature she will place there when she awakes. (Because of the arrow’s magic, she will fall in love with the first one she sees).
Cupid himself becomes invisible as he surreptitiously enters her room so no one will be able to see him. He intends to scratch her shoulder with his arrow but she awakens and looks directly into his eyes; seeing through his invisibility. Cupid is so startled he scratches himself with the arrow instead and falls madly in love with Psyche. When he reports what has happened to his mother, Aphrodite is enraged. She places a curse on the girl, so that she will never be able to find a husband for herself. Cupid, for his part, refuses then to use his arrows. No one falls in love. No one marries. No one has children. The earth begins to grow old.
At last Aphrodite relents and lets Cupid go to the girl. The story has many more twists and turns, but the part that intrigues me is the coming together of the earthly and the divine. The material and the spiritual. The two aspects of humankind. Together they have a daughter – Voluptas – the goddess of sensual pleasures.
I always wanted to write the story anew, but could never find a way to do it. I wanted to capture Eros reviving Psyche with that divine kiss. But how does an artist express such a theme in a new way? Whenever I outlined or sketched out a plot it either sounded like the same old story retold, or was so far from the original as not to make any sense whatever. That was the state of things until, one day; I came upon the idea of a man meeting his beautiful and now earth-bound guardian angel. If such an arrangement could be made in a very realistic way… say, being forced to travel together, they might just fall in love. They might just bring heaven and earth together in a very real and believable way.
Yes!
That was the first moment of ‘The Angelic Mysteries’.

It doesn’t seem like so long ago when I was young and my dad was in business for himself as a house painter and Marmaduke came over every so often to visit us. I always looked forward to seeing Marmaduke. He was a college guy and he had big plans and he always handed me one of those match sticks that was made of cardboard and asked me to split it with my thumb nail. Then he’d tell me to take each side between my fingers and hold the thing out in front of me. Then he’d tell me to say ‘Vroom’ ‘Vroom’ and when I did he said, “Hey, what have you got there, a motorcycle?”

He did it every time he came over and I guess it was a little bit silly, especially looking back at it now, but I admired him so much I didn’t care.

Marmaduke always had a story to tell and of course I don’t remember most of them now. He really liked my dad and they hit it off well in spite of the difference in their ages, just as I hit it off with him in spite of the age difference between us. Maybe Marmaduke just hit it off well with everyone, I don’t know.

One time Marmaduke came over with a record album to play for my dad. It was one of the first albums by Bob Dylan – I don’t remember which one. I listened in and I could tell my dad didn’t really get it about Bob Dylan but I did. After a while my friends were listening to Bob Dylan and they didn’t really get it either. I tried to explain it to them but they still didn’t get it. Then after some more time went by everyone was listening to Bob Dylan and they really got it about him. I think I must have been one of the first people to get it about Bob Dylan and that was because of Marmaduke.

Another time he came over he had a roll of paper under his arm and it was plans for an amusement park once he rolled it out, all laid out like it was ready to be built. It was a project he had done for a college class but then he started to take it seriously and thought that he might actually build it and he’d make a bundle of money. He asked my dad if he’d like to invest some money in it but my dad just shook his head sadly and shrugged his shoulders and showed the palms of his hands.

“Sorry, buddy, I can’t do it. I’ve got kids to raise.”

I don’t know if the amusement park ever got built. I don’t remember there ever being a new park being built around that part of Southwest Michigan. Probably not. That’s how things go, really. There are a lot more ‘probably nots’ than there are ‘probablies’ in the world. As least that was true where I came from.

Anyway, I ran into Marmaduke years later and he didn’t mention the amusement park or anything like it. He worked in a record store as I recall. He still like Bob Dylan but there was a lot of other music he liked too. That was after my dad lost his business and went out to Arizona to live in a school bus.

After we had gotten past our greetings and smiles and back slapping and answering, “Say, where is your old man anyway?” and “How is he doing?” Marmaduke said, “I’ve got a story to tell you, Jim.” And he proceeded to tell me about this man he knew – Daniel Allman – who met a woman who believed she was an angel. “Honest to God,” he said. “They traveled around together and I’m not lyin’ he said they were being chased around Europe by a huge anti-angel. An anti-angel is one that comes from hell according to Daniel. And their job is to catch or kill the good angels.”

And the more he told me the story of this Daniel Allman and the girl, Sarah, the more I knew I had to write it all out and that is the story that is ‘The Angelic Mysteries’ that is coming out August 18th this year.

I don’t know whatever happened to Marmaduke after that. I never saw him again. I do know what happened to my dad and all the rest of it. But I guess that will have to wait for another time.

Copyright 2011 by James D. Sanderson All Rights Reserved.

I first read ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ by kerosene lantern light in a cabin in the wilds of northern Michigan. The lantern sat in the middle of the kitchen table and my brothers read ‘Sports Afield’ and ‘Outdoor’ magazines and as we read shadows played upon the dark walls. The cabin itself was made from sections of an old army barracks that my father and I had hauled up one weekend on a flat trailer pulled behind a borrowed truck. Outside in the dark as we read the wind blew acorns down onto the roof with a nobly sound and it was then, somehow drawing a connection between the tall dark forest of the north and the infinite deep waters of the Gulf Stream, that I knew I would be a writer.

Santiago, the old man of the story, had gone eighty four days without taking a fish. Many years have passed for me since first reading that opening line. And, like the old man, I have had little luck. A couple of minor works were published, but that was long ago, and the two good things I have written now go begging for a publisher. But, also like the old man, I would rather hone my skills than depend upon luck. In that way when the big one comes along, I will be in the place to hook it.

It has come along and I have hooked it and now, like old Santiago, I know I will suffer for it and pay my life into it and struggle with it until the greatness has been landed. Nothing else, now, is of any significance. Even to write here, now, would be a waste of time if I was not also thinking through what I will do with the greatest story I have ever been given; and the greatest story I ever will be given.

In college my professor predicted I would be a great writer and I have spent much time since then trying to live up to the promise, with little material success. But now that I too am growing old I know that material success has little meaning in itself and that once his fish was landed and he had paid the price for it, it would all be stripped away and he would be left with nothing but a bare backbone that would lie awash in the water along the beach, and the tourists would identify it with a very different fish. It would be tempting to shrug and say fatalistically, “such is life,” and give up on the whole mess.

And I would give up, too, if it were not for the greatness that is calling from the deep waters too far out from land. I, like Santiago, know that I will go there and bring in the big fish, no matter what the cost.