This is a repost of Julie Herman‘s most recent b.read.crumbs post. I’ll be following her lead (as I so often do) in my b.read.crumbs post next week. We might have a theme running through the year. Let me know if you can spot it.

All scenes start with a character trying to exert agency–to use their ingenuity, determination, wiles, whathaveyou, to get achieve their desire. It would be a boring story indeed without scene tension. Without the scene tension of wanting/not getting right away/takes a bit of effort on the part of a character, it might be a pretty short scene. So the character tries to use their power(s), whatever those may be, and they must move an obstacle out of their way to reach that scene goal. (Okay, with me, lacking actual magical powers, it’s always persistence.
Our western society has tended to look on authority figures as being male. (Should have met my aunts before going that direction! They brooked no guff.) Those father figures and adult males were the Emperors of everyone’s lives. They were father, boss, elder statesman, mentor, gatekeeper. Someone who sat on the throne of life, directing traffic so we don’t have to. Life under that authority figure might not be exactly what we choose it to be, but it’s predictable. Which at times can seem pretty attractive.
It can be difficult to recognize the difference between inertia (unwillingness to seek change) and true contentedness with the status quo. I don’t much like change. (True story: inertia governs a lot of my actions.) But I also want to exercise power over my own destiny. So if I’m to do that, I need to recognize what makes me stand tall and lean into that to effect change in my own life.
Life can come at us sideways. (Can you say, 2020?) What do you do with that? Retreat into the arms of the Emperor? Let others dictate what should happen?

In tarot, this could show up as a reversed card, which I’ve always seen as a heads up to pay attention. When tension is thick and uphill, and you’re not quite sure you’re going to get what you actually want?
Coming back to 2020, that was the year my life took a lot of unexpected turns. I lost my father to the disease that came out of nowhere, and which changed everything for all of us. I became the oldest in my family of origin, which felt so wrong, because I sure as heck didn’t feel like an elder.
Perhaps we just need to look at times like these as interesting. Not in the Chinese curse kind of way, but as in, what is interesting about this situation. What can I learn here? A new skill? A strength that I can stand on going forward? That’s what our characters do when they hit the darkest hour. They take stock and make strength out of adversity. They move forward, through that darkness, into success.
I came out of 2020 even more introverted than before. Hard to believe considering I was voted quietest girl in my high school senior class. But I also stepped up a bit into the role of elder. Not in the I’m-in-charge-way, but in the I’ve-got-a-finite-amount-of-time-to-get-things-right way. Not that I’ve consistently gotten things right, I’ve missed opportunities that I would have liked to have gotten right, but I’m better at a lot of things. Forgiving, for one. Losing Dad helped me to forgive him for some of the things he did when he was in charge. Being in charge of him at the end of his life showed me just how hard that might have been for him to be in charge of me. In the end we’re all human, aren’t we?
So tension in our character’s pages is just reflecting the reversals we all get in real life. And in the end, they have the opportunity to get it right. Just as we do.
ONE GOOD THING: I’ve been reading about grief. There is a wonderful book that I’m inching through because it just keeps hitting home and I have to close it for a bit to process what the realizations mean to me. THE WILD EDGE OF SORROW: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief by Francis Weller.
BONUS GOOD THING: the new DUNE movies are so good. Dune was not my favorite of my youthful fantasy/science fiction reading, but these movies make me want to revisit the books. I learned this morning that the director, Denis Villeneuve, does not plan to finish the series. The second movie ends on a cliffhanger. I feel cheated. (Still see the movies, so good, but also maybe write the director on all platforms and let him know we’re waiting…for him to come to his senses.)
You can read previous issues of b.read.crumbs here.
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