Careful with those stories of yours

Your predictions are not telescopes. They are cudgels.

Careful with these stories, now.

The ones where you predict the future.

Where you let the dark bricks drop in place

—that are not dropping in place—

because you have seen the truly terrible ones that truly have become the present and the past.

Careful with that.

You are good at making scary stories, stories that disable you, stories custom-built to freeze the child within you.

But you are as bad at predicting the future as I am.

We rhyme with the dramatic sweeps of world history in ghastly childish patterns. We don’t predict commonplace time. We don’t model the whole arc of human thriving and drudgery. We won’t predict beige. We will predict blood red.

We will predict Julius Caesar, John Kennedy, Adolf Hitler. We won’t predict a boring, safe outcome. You won’t remake all the obscure stories of unknown people.

Your stories of the future are breaking you. You dream into existence the biggest tale you can know.

You accrue evidence, picking select bits from the litter around your feet.

You are somewhat right.

Your imagination is making terrible stories and you can’t help but move your body in time with them, mimicking your own imprisonment until you are truly imprisoned.

You are preparing a fiery I Told You So for me. I rueful grin from your prison cell for those whose stories, maybe just as false as yours, are not as potent.

Joel Barker is the author of Clear and Sane: The Craft of the Green Paintbrush. He has time to chat with you.