four people missing
Stories can spring up from almost anything, anywhere, at any time. Sometimes they spring up impossibly like those blades of grass rising out of the cracks in a sidewalk. They stand there, clearly misplaced, incredibly vulnerable, and yet perfectly at ease. Those blades of grass grow, I suppose, because the sidewalk is not a seamless, perfect totality.
Imagine that you are the manager of a subway line and that, knowing that knowledge is power, you decide to count your ridership. You count the number of people who descend into your subway and the number of people who exit. You figure that a week of this ought to give you a good idea of where you stand. But now imagine that one day the numbers don’t match: say, 113,987 enter and only 113,983 exit. Or rather, let’s be precise about it, let’s say that one day you counted 113,987 coming in and 113,983 leaving. What would you make of that?
Of course, it’s possible you’d make nothing at all of it, just ignore it without a second thought. But actually, that’s kind of unlikely. After all, you are counting for a purpose and the fulfillment of that purpose does depend on accuracy in your counting. So you’ll probably interpret the discrepancy somehow.
Here two paths open up. You can interpret the discrepancy as an error in your counting, figure that it falls well within a statistical margin of error and thus make nothing of it. Or you can confidently assume that you’ve counted accurately and that four people who entered didn’t leave the subway. That’s the crack in the sidewalk out of which a weed of a story can sprout and spread.
Who are the four? Are they four isolated individuals? Are they down there by accident or on purpose? Are they down there as a group? As part of a plot? But you might say: what are four people, lost somewhere in the labyrinth of the subway? What difference could they make?
Maybe you think that the story ends there. But reconsider. Can you ever ride the subway line again without looking around suspiciously, even for just a moment, at the guy with the baseball cap? Or the ordinary businesswoman? Are they among the four? You’ve begun to invent characters out of the regular flesh and blood human beings surrounding you.
Something like this happens in “Text in a Notebook.”1 Sure, the subway manager is probably paranoid. He takes the thread of an insignificant, chance occurrence and spins of it a whole fabric of possible narratives. But is the difference between he and I one of kind or of degree? What did I do after my marriage broke up? Did I resist the desire to make up a story that would explain it? What if I am interviewing an applicant for a job? I have the application in front of me that gives me the bare facts. I hear the applicant’s version of her own story. Later, at home, or with my colleagues, don’t I begin to invent a story that explains where this individual has come from, how she’s come to arrive at my doorstep and from there, how well she is likely to fit in at the office?
The point is, invention doesn’t belong only to psychotics, children, or writers. Invention is all around us, proliferating like weeds in the cracks spreading across the routine surface of our lives. You invent. Others invent. I invent. You are part of someone else’s invention, right now, even as you read these words. And perhaps I have become part of yours.
But it’s not just that we walk, talk, and breathe invention like the air around us. It’s also, at least as importantly, that our inventions have consequences as surely as did the invention of Victor Frankenstein.
Can I own up to mine? Will I acknowledge it? Will I care for it? Or will I invent with such carelessness that when my invention springs to life before my eyes – some long forgotten article I’ve published – I flee from it, sending it irresponsibly out into a world where it will surely wreak havoc?
Invention, in Julio’s universe, as in ours, cannot be avoided. Invention, in Julio’s universe, as in ours, produces real effects in the world, among them the spawning of further invention. The effects can be bad or good, destructive or healthful, sad or joyful.
We can’t guarantee the outcome, but nothing good will come unless we mindfully attend to the process of constructing it. This means also that when we are in a position to facilitate the invention of others, we bear the responsibility of creating conditions in which they can invent mindfully.
1 Julio Cortázar, “Text in a Notebook,” We Love Glenda So Much and A Change of Light, Trans. Gregory Rabassa (New York: Aventura, 1984), pp. 97-115. In Spanish: “Texto en una libreta,” Queremos tanto a Glenda [1980] Cuentos Completos/2 (Madrid: Alfaguara, 1994), pp. 349-359.n we are in a position to facilitate the invention of others, we bear the responsibility of creating conditions in which they can invent mindfully.