No story, only soil.
What to do with passions with no narrative? When you are thrust back on belittled words like “feelings” or “emotions” to describe your fire or your ice, because the lack of a story to attach them to deprives you even of the use of metaphors — after all, those require something sturdy to anchor them to. I once shared a piece of music I loved with a friend. She sat back and said, “you must have had a terribly sad past life.” But I don’t believe in past lives. My life has not been perfect, but I’m nearly positive I’ve had it much better than most. And I’m not complaining. And yet. And yet it does feel strange, to feel without rhyme or reason; and to long for those deep, murky places where mystery meets your skin, runs down your spine, trails down your cheek. This simply being human, plants you in the world with roots already plunged so deep: and so we all fear and dream of dragons, without ever knowing what for sure they reference. They say ancient Easterners in...