Collected Editions: The Great Divide
What, exactly, is “The Great Divide?” Sometimes, I’ve felt that there is something separating me from other people. It is nothing tangible. It is nothing visible. I know this, because I can walk in a crowd and not be identified by it. It is not stamped on my features, burned into my flesh. No one knows about it but me. It is a feeling that I have, an infernal impatience and boredom, with the banalities and drudgeries of daily life. Going to work at a job I detest, to make a buck, to pay the rent, knowing that I’m dying a little bit more every second, that I’m losing more hair, accumulating more wrinkles. I don’t want to sound like too much of a downer. Most of the time I can just make these feelings go away. I can ignore them. I can repress them. But the fact is, they are there in everyone, or at least everyone intelligent enough to have even one iota of self-reflective capability. We all deal with these feelings in our own ways. We have our vices, the treats we reward ourselves to counteract all of the things we have to do but don’t feel like doing. I have them too, like everybody else. I think what makes me different from other people is that the ticking of the clock is louder for me. I’m more aware of my time passing. It makes me frantic. Sometimes it’s all that I can do to control myself.
And that is The Great Divide. It is a gulf that I am on one side of, and everybody else is on the other. It is my awareness of my own mortality that I am unable to completely forget. While for others, it is buried down deep somewhere in their psyche, for me, it is right below the surface. And because of that, I feel that I can relate to those I love and care for very well…up to a point. Because of that knowledge and that morbidity I can never quite shake, in my mind, I am always destined to stand apart. I am never more alone than in a crowd.
But that’s okay. I’ve found something that makes it all worthwhile. I’ve found my purpose: writing. Without writing, without the ability to express myself through words, I can’t imagine what would have happened to me, or maybe I just prefer not to. When I decided, the better part of ten years ago now, that I was going to be a professional writer, my life was given purpose and direction. I know now what I am, and I know what I was put here for. Writing is my religion. The printed word is my sacrament. And my worship is a private, individual thing, as it must be, because of the gulf between myself and others that I’ve always felt. Yet I am able to share my writing, and by doing so, share my joy. I’m glad to do so, because while it is catharsis for me, it is entertainment for others, as are many forms of art. And I know there are people who enjoy my writing. They’ve told me so.
This is the fourth collection of my shorter works, and it is the best of them, so far. The first two never appeared online, and it’s probably better that way. I was still finding my voice, as indeed I still am, but the examples in those first two collections were generally more like crude exercises than real stories. The third collection, “The Lean Years,” showed vast improvement, (I think), on a number of levels. But several things have changed since putting together that last collection, two years ago. For one thing, I’ve become a paid author for the first time, actually seeing profit from my work from several sources. It’s not enough to live on, yet. But I’m moving in the right direction. And with each acceptance, with each new publishing credit, I’ve become more determined to succeed in my plan, that I am going to make my living through words, through stories. And I’m in New York. That’s a pretty big change. I’ve been a wanderer, a nomad in the five-plus years since finishing my undergrad. I think it’s time I settled down and stayed in one place for a while. And the city of my dreams, which also happens to be the cradle of the writing and publishing industries, seems good enough for me. And my big break is coming. I can smell it. I stalk it through the jungles of Manhattan like a big game hunter. It’s not far off.
Since 2006, my writing has been featured in thirteen different publications, four of which have paid me for my work. I guarantee it’s more success than any of the other members of my senior seminar at Pitt have seen. But even back then, I knew that I was going to make it, where probably all of them wouldn’t. It wasn’t because I was better than them. It’s because I was willing to work like a dog for my craft, it was because I was more stubborn, and it was because I was willing to be rejected a thousand times, because of that acceptance that came with the thousand-and-first submission. So I guess that’s another example of the division between myself and others; what I’m willing to do to become what I want to be, to fulfill my destiny, to support myself exclusively through my writing.
Of course, it is impossible for a writer to not leave parts of themselves on the page, and so it is that in certain stories in this collection, I can see that there are divisions between the protagonists and the other characters, though they may not necessarily be like the personal one that I describe. I think it’s another reason the title feels appropriate, though. Division is an ongoing theme in my work. Along those lines, there’s just one thing I wonder. I described writing as being my religion. In many religions there is the possibility for transcendentalism, and for ascendance to a higher plateau and level of being. Might not it be possible, then, for the rift I speak of within myself to one day be healed? Might I not be able to forget, or at least to reconcile myself with my own mortality, and in doing so, join the human race gladly, accepting those around me as my brothers and sisters? I have no idea. Maybe I make too much of writing. Maybe it’s just something that I do to pass the time, and maybe, even if I do make it some day, it’s not because of some grandiose “destiny” that I’ve envisioned for myself. Maybe it’s because of pure dumb luck, the only real defining force at work in the universe. I can’t answer those questions. All I can do is promise, as before, that this isn’t the last collection. The idea is laughable. I’m already compiling material for the next one. This is The Great Divide.
Steven Finkelstein
12/25/09