Confusion? Nah.

So, in the beginning, years ago, I thought it would be fun to write a book from a crazy person's point of view. I wanted my character to parallel his grandfather's journey of getting lost, so initially, I thought he'd just loose his mind. As the story developed, he loses his health first, fighting a mighty flu, and afterward, losing his mind by sickness induced psychosis. At the same time, as becoming sick, he losing a his last parental figure, his guardian after his parents died, who was also his employer. So, in one fowl swoop, he loses near everything. He of course doesn't know he's losing his mind and he's learning of his grandfather's story at the same time. As this progresses, he leaves his home for the wilderness, because he's crazy and think a mountain lion is going to eat him in his home. I hope that the story itself doesn't sound as totally far fetched as my description, but it is, and as the reader, I want to keep you guessing as to what is real and to what is not. The part I'm working on right now, he's trying to coming back from the wild because he knows he's in trouble from being boiled, burned, scraped up, bitten by flies, and starved. So, the mind set of this man is totally nutty, which I feel I can do quite well, but hey, people want a story they can read and understand, as do I so, I try to make it not too crazy by making the mind jumps seems logical. Any way, it was a bunch of research on the effects of the flu, psychosis, and starvation, and then I made Truman all of those things. Here's a snippet of him trying to build a fire near the end of the book:

By joyous luck there upon a river stone by the fire lay my fate, the opera glass. Soul sparks and rainbows burned within. I pocketed the prize and limped out of the canyon, through the willowy stream that cuts up at an angle that can be climbed by crawling over boulders. There’s no sun besides, so beginning fire was out of the question. All I could do is try to keep moving homeward. Upon the flats, the wind howled still and flakes turned to frozen pellets blasting away at my tattered skin. Vision so obscured, I crawled, bush to boulder, bolder to bush. Endurance, I told myself, endurance. Like that, I traveled for eternity -- bush to boulder, bolder to bush -- following my feet and hands for I haven’t found home in my heart. I knew not where I was going. Hope, once more was extinguished like any flame I once had. I sat leeward of a big sage. Mind emptying, slumber, body so cold it’s warm, and still a fly tearing bloodied patches of skin from my scratched, burned and boiled cheek.

I must have slept, because I awoke warmed. The snow had stopped, the wind slowed, and the clouds parted above me and beams flowed down like dreams. Quick to the lens I was. I’d already made a small stash of kindle just for this – I kept in my only pocket not ripped. Quickly, I piled it tipi-like and fumbled with the glass. My fingers. My fingers didn’t work. I couldn’t move them. Like a statues hands were mine. I could bend barely at the hand’s joint, but no further out on the digits. The glass fell to the ground and with both hands, gripping like clubs, I was able to grasp the lens and hold it steady in my palms. Steady enough. More firm, steady to light this fire, to light it takes patience, endurance. On my knees, with palms outstretched, I funneled the light, prayed the light through the lens. Not letting this moment pass means life, to not focus and let it slip away is death. Again, I empty my mind, traveled to the far reaches. I can do this. Focusing, passing the realm of slumber, I enter dream. High above a green field I floated belly down, sun to my back, and I see a dot edged with summer Cottonwoods in a sea of dry prairie grass stretching at all sides for hundreds of miles in all directions. Through the golden ocean runs a ribbon of green trees to the South. Descending from the clouds, a home appears, modest, within the shelter-belt. There’s neat rows, a garden I’d say. The decent is leisurely -- to the garden. The sun is so warm on this cool day. It must be late spring or early summer, and to my surprise, there’s a man working the garden. He’s a wide straw hat. “Who are you?” I call from my cloud. He turns his head and his face filled with smoke furls. They rose and burst when they hit the wind. A flame! Red glowing, growing, a flame! A fire. Fire! Life! I shall live, I shall live to see tomorrow.

That’s how it happened. That’s how I got fire. I know nothing of the day-vision, nor how I could not shake long enough to create a flame, but I’ve been tending ever since. Again, the wind rose, clouds regrouped, and the snow has recommenced. Like a horse, I keep my ass to the wind, to protect it still, I keep in the shadow of a Big Sage. With its help, I’m able to block enough wind to keep my flame fluttering. With much difficulty and tenderness this life is alive.

Sleep, though, is impossible.

Too, food seems distant,

so distant that I forgot

what the empty hole inside feels like.

I know I’m thinning, thinning quickly.

I can see my ribs draped in thin skin

covered in dried blood

from fall and the scrapes.

I don’t think about food.

I can’t think about food.

My body aches for food,

so I don’t have to think about food.

Lack of food will not kill me

tonight.

To sleep means the end of fire

which would mean a dark morrow.

I will not die --

I know this.

I have endured.

So I will not sleep.

Tomorrow, at break of dawn,

I know not where I will go, but I will survive.

I will simply follow my soul.