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I was deep in a digital funk yesterday. 

I’d created a Word document, which, after closing, I couldn’t reopen.  The file extension was beyond the ability of my Word program to open.  How the heck does that happen?  

Two hour’s work down the e-drain.

With a debilitating feeling of being hard-done-by, I donned my trenchcoat and went for a walk in the fog. 

A speech about “The Advantages of Adversity”, that’s what I’d lost.  How ironic!  All my first thoughts, my raw material, memories, facts, connections, a web of meaning—all vanished in the e-ether.  

Fresh air usually revives me, but on this especially funky day, every step marched me deeper into despair.  I’m going on a retreat, I thought.  Deep country, unplugged, that’s what I need. Since I’m a digital idiot, this kind of funk overtakes me not infrequently.  Uphill I trudged under a canopy of spruce into the foothills of Mordor, trudge, trudge, trudge… 

I enjoy climbing.  Peaked cap pulled down so that I can’t see the slope, I perceive the road as level.  It’s a little mental trick that never fails to thrill me. 

Unable to reference the incline, there is no hill, no hill working against me.  My organizm is working harder to walk, yes, but there is no hill trying to defeat me, no antagonism, no psychology of struggle, just the indisputable facts of physics.  It never fails, I feel quite unlike myself, as if I were on Jupiter under the influence of a more powerful gravity field. 

Moving about on strange planets takes me out of myself.

Suddenly, a thought out of nowhere: “The rewrite will be better.” 

Rewrites are always better. 

What just happened?  I knew immediately what had happened because I’ve been exploring it on this blog for years—our belief systems.  Good things happen when our “B.S.” outlives its usefulness.  My belief system (victim mentality) had been left behind at the bottom of the hill. 

I didn’t need it on Jupiter.

Wow—self-pity was weighing on me like an evil spell, which is what belief systems are.  They are strategies, structures, rules, biases, attitudes, fears, all the necessary limits by which we negotiate this gloriously superficial life on planet Earth.  When I shed the B.S., I became available to the truth:

My rewrite will be better.

Fictional protagonists, same thing. 

The best fictional characters are cursed with belief systems that are not so easily jettisoned.  The degree to which they hold fast determines the intensity of the drama.  Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca.  Listen to him: “I stick my neck out for nobody.” 

That’s the screenwriter telling us what every reader needs to know at the outset of a story—what’s the hero’s belief system? 

With that pitiful attitude, Bogey’s trajectory is set.  Events will conspire to undo his belief system.  Bogey will eat his words or we’ll demand our money back. 

Sure enough, the love of his life (Ingrid Bergman) shows up and ushers Bogey to the depths of self-loathing.  Remember the scene where she pulls a gun on him to get the letters of transit to America.  He says, “Go ahead, shoot. You’ll be doing me a favour.” 

He doesn’t care if he lives or dies.  Now he can jettison his belief system.  What good is a belief system if you’re on death’s doormat?  Ilsa notices him waking up, lightening up.  Now she’s in his arms.  Look at Bogey, he looks a little lost, but now it’s all flooding back, the noble guy he was at the start of the war.  You can see it in his eyes.  He’s catching a glimpse of the truth, who he really is. 

He’s rewriting his script.

The rewrite will be better! 

As we know, Bogey sticks his neck out as far as a neck can go.  He shoots Major Strasser, sacrifices his one true love, orders her to escape Casablanca with her husband so together they might bolster the Resistance against Hitler. 

And, look… there goes Bogart in his trenchcoat, walking into the fog, a living martyr.

Time for me now to man-up and rewrite this speech. 

(Btw… what the heck is a “docx” file?  Is it, like, some kind of curse?)