Hegel and Jekyll

I don't have much time left to write but I do have several aspects that I've never had in my writing before:

I have a title at the beginning of the piece rather than at the end. I'm not a title driven kinda writer at least, I haven't been up to this point. I write my "stories" and then when I'm finished I give that collection of surviving words a title. Always at the end, never at the beginning.

I have a subtitle; A voyage of excovery.

I have chosen a format...novella.

I have chosen a word range...between 7,000 and 25,000 words

I have a purpose....get this thing published

I've been sent this by Leamington Books which is run by an old ABCTaler who's very kindly agreed to do a little question and answer session for us as a fundraiser soon. They seem like a really lovely company, so if anyone has a novella knocking around, get submitting!

Submissions of Novellas

From June 1st 2021 we are accepting submissions of novellas. Our minimum length for this submission is 7,000 words, although ideally a novella will be 20,000 to 40,000 words.

Send us the full novella or long short story, as well as its genre and a few lines of description or introductory, to

 

ambrose @ leamingtonbooks.com

 

Mark your email subject line with the words 'Submission' and / or 'Novella'.

We'll take it from there, and we'll have contacted you with a response by September 2021.

I have a gimmick....compose this novella in public and change something about the past composition every day as I trudge forward with new content.

I have two characters so far.

Hugh and Haylen Guy.....a married couple in their fifteenth year of marriage. It is the second marriage for both. The masks and the gloves are off.

Hugh is brand new. Haylen is a recurrring character last seen as a waitress working the nine to five night/morning shift at Jay's Diner and overhearing a "conversation" going on between three acidheads peaking with clam chowder, coffee and seeking to mellow out with cheeseburgers. Perhaps you remember.

Haylen is also a participant in Thornton Krell's course in Metaphysiction which will begin the next day.

Here's something new about Haylen that you didn't know. She has a smile that is equal part welcoming and boundary setting.

We don't know much about Hugh but we know something about his smile. It rarely happens. A couple of Hugh's smile teeth are gone and the teeth that remain are in disrepair.

I have a couple of probelms right off the bat that I have to deal with before I go much further.

I don't know much about Hegel but I have an ex-student who has become a philosophy professor. I'm gonna send Dr. Kaye this text and see how he responds.

"Hey Dr. Kaye. I'm in the process of writing a novellathat I have titled "Hegel and Jekyll". The novella will describe a marital voyage of excovery. Can you give me a background of how the philosophy of Hegel might fit into such a story? OBTW. I plan on icluding your response as part of the novella if you don't mind."

Okay that's enough for now.

The novella has begun.

The word counter is engaged.

I'm gonna send my text to Dr. Kaye.

Drama is based around the essential questions:  who?  what? where? when? and why?

A novella must contain elements of drama amidst the ongoing revealation of content.

So now, we arrive at the first drama in the developing novella Hegel and Jekyll. Will Dr Kaye respond to my text? When will he respond? Where is he? Why would he bother?

 Of course this is a minor drama. 

The major dramas of Hegel and Jekyll  are these;

a) the voyage of excovery in the marriage of the Guys

b) will I stay with this project long enough to reach the 7,000 novella minimum limit?

3) will this novella get published?

Hitchcock said that the difference between drama and horror is this: if the story says that a bomb is located somewhere in the city that becomes a DRAMA. If the story says that there is a BOMB in your house and you can't get out and the bomb will explode in 15 minutes that becomes HORROR.

Or something like that

HORROR is more time conscious than is drama because horror is always imminent or happening right NOW.

Drama lingers.

Drama increases when a time limit is imposed. The further away the deadline, the less the drama.

The deadline for the decision to publish Hegel and Jekyll is scheduled for Sept. 1. 2021

On Sept 2....one way or t'another...this drama will end.

The words will stay

So in the meantime let's clarify, analyze, develop and reveal.

What should we call the symboloic ship upon which the Guys are taking their voyage of excovery?

Let's call her The Familiarity.

By now, everybody knows what she breeds.

Most married couples are aboard this ship most of the time.

We can exclude 90% of honeymooners but include 90% of everybdoy else.

We're sure of 50%  of everbody else because they tell us that half of all marriages end in divorce.

The divorce rate in second marriages is even higher.

When we climb aboard The Familiarity, we have abandoned the discovery nature of the Honeymoon where every discovery about out mate pointed to unlimited potential and lives happily lived  forver and ever.

On an excovery voyage, we are discovering/uncovering/excovering all of the behaviors, habits, foibles, idiosyncracies, dysfunctions and just plain assholeness of the person we've been stuck with on this shitty voyage forever and gaining insight towards making that husband/wife/fiancee/partner/significant other/boy friend/girlfriend an ex husband/wife/fiancee/partner/boyfriend/girlfriend etc.

Divorce and/or separation are the measures of success on board The Familiarity.

I can do better  without ya.

You're driving me crazy.

Sure enough Dr. Kaye responded promptly.

"Hmm... that sounds interesting! Very "dialectical" indeed! Can you tell me something about the plotline you have in mind? As you know from the story, Mr. Hyde (and I presume "Hegel" is the inversion of Hyde) is the "evil" character, which is interesting because... Hegel might be presumed to be the "professor"/clean cut, good on the outside character of Dr. Jekyll. The inversion is striking, if I understand what you seem to be doing... its showing that the professor is the "Hyde" character, which would immediately undermine some of the characteristic presumptions that folks may have about the "professor" sort of archetype. I am already rolling around in my mind about how the culture may have already shifted tides in the direction your story may take (perhaps?); which is that roles that have traditionally served as responsibility role modeling positions in our society have gradually eroded. It reminds me of this concept from the social philosopher Herbert Marcuse, what he referred to as "repressive desublimation" - which seems to be all around us these days. Repressive Desublimation is the idea that by taking away barriers to our subconscious drives the id can run free and by negating our higher faculties of judgment, and discerning critical thinking, people become more and more aggressive, desire-driven in motivations, and easier to manipulate. The "frontal lobes" shut off. This sounds like an exciting project, and please let me hear more when you are ready."

Yeah

Repressive Desublimation is a large part of the crew aboard Familiarity.

Aggression, desire driven motivation and manipulation take control of the steering wheel. The course veers away from discovery towards excovery...slowly, slowly slowly and then suddenly a new port comes into view. Contempt becomes the propellent.

Perhaps it would be helpful to know more about the "professor' the Hegel in the tale.

I'm gonna ship this whole thing back to Dr. Kaye. Hopefully, he can tell us more about Hegel and his heart rending pursuit of logic and rationality.

In the meantime, let's take a look into Hugh's closet.

Let's start with the shirts.

Hugh has 24 shirts iin his closet. Four of them are sweatshirts. Four of the remainng 20 are long sleeves. They range in size from 2x to 3x. 

Hugh considers himself a rich man.

He has all the shirts that he will need.

He has two pairs of jeans.

He shares this closet with Haylen who has a pair of shoes for every shirt that Hugh has. Her shoes are sensible. The highest heel is two inches.The size is 5 and a half. Once upon a time, she wished her feet were bigger so that she could have a wider selection of shoes.. She's never gonna step into those torturous high heels that she wore and wished for in younger days. 

"How would you like to wear those goddamned things Hugh?"

"How would you like to wear a goddamned tie, Haylen."

Hugh has one black suit hanging in the closet just in case there is a funeral or a wedding or he has to go to court.

Otherwise, the weather suits his clothes. 

Haylen has 60 items on hangers in the same closet.

She is also prepared for a funeral.

Or court

Or both

Flip sides prevail in excovery.

Both Hugh and Haylen Guy are well liked. No one would suspect their level of excovery. They are a happily married elderly couple. 

Individually they are business like, supportive, curious, challenging and flexible. They can operate step by step or friend by friend or doubt by doubt or dream by dream.

Haylen is the more sensual of the two, Hugh the more intuitive. Haylen is the more thoughful, Hugh the more sensitive.

Having been a couple for so long, they have encountered the content of life simultaneously...the challenges...the triumphs...the disappointments...the births..the deaths....the ongoing catstrophic non-linearity.

The problem resides in the collision of interpretations.

Collisions disturb balance.

Attributes are nudged, sometimes flipped.

Business like can become rigid.

Supportive can become hysterical.

Curious can become suspicious.

Challenging can become cynical.

Flexible can become undisciplined.

Rigid can become controlling

Hysterical can become addicted

Suspicion can become jealousy

Undisciplined can become self-absorption

Controlling becomes judgmental

Addicted becomes furious

Jealusy becomes paranoia

Self absorption can become solipsism.

It's all about balance which is hard to maintain upon the waves roiling Familiarity into misinterpretation.

They were 95 and 94 years old respectively when they walked into the lawyer's office. They had been married 75 years. The lawyer asked them why they had waited so long to get a divorce.

"We were waiting for the last kid to die. We buried her last week."

"She always thought we were happy."

How long do you hang on for the sake of the kids?

When are kids not kids anymore?

When do men become children.

In the case of the Guys, the kids were all grown up. The youngest was 40 but they had all moved away many years ago. Some were on excovery voyages of their own, unknown to Hugh and Haylen who got only the good news.

Don't want to upset Mom and Dad.

The kids had provided an ongoing dramatic distraction which brought Hugh and Haylen closer together as Mom and Dad. They were the problem solvers. They put the food on the table, the clothes on the backs, the love in the house. The house was full with the kids and the friends of the kids. The only time that Hugh and Haylen had privacy was in the bedroom at night where they would compare notes and prepare for the next onslaught of adolescent angst.

With the kids gone,the Guys had discovered that empty nesting combined with retirement weren't the solutions that society pretended them to be. Haylen subscribed to the "twice the husband, half the money" school of thought on Hugh's retirement. She had enjoyed the first segment of empty nesting when the kids were gone and Hugh was still at work,

When Hugh retired, he became an intruder..screwing up schedules, getting in the way and making messes.

And leaving the goddamned toilet seat up and pissing on the floor and leaving the light on in the bathroom.

At first the bathroom situation was an irritation that required a gentle reminder. The gentle reminders didn't work too well so naturally they became more abrasive. Abrasion didn't work either. Haylen was shooting for perfection. Hugh was far from perfect and his aim was getting worse with age.

He didn't mean to do it. He forgot sometimes.

Haylen would always remind him.

"You left the goddamned toilet seat up again."

Since it was a done deal, there was nothing Hugh could do except tap his forehead with the palm of his hand and vow to be more attentive in the future.

He was not always attentive.

After yet another burst of inattention, Haylen added a toilet seat slam to the equation.

She didn't even bother to say anything anymore.

She slammed that seat.

The only time she said anything was if the light was also left on. Then she would slam the seat and yell out "and you left the goddamned light on too."

Hugh wondered why he had to turn the light on in the first place...if it wasn't on he wouldn't have to turn it off.

Haylen insisted that the light be on.

"if you were the one who cleaned up this bathroom, you'd know why the light needs to be on. I want to make sure that you know where your pee is going instead of pissing in the dark and making an even bigger mess than usual. Turn the light on. Lift the seat. Watch what you're doing. Put the seat back.  Flush the toilet. Turn off the light."

Hugh tried his best but sometimes forgot something.

He would step into the bathroom and get a reminder

"did you turn the light on?'

He hadn't so he did and answered back

"Yeah"

And he felt like a child

Not like a man.

Both Hugh and Haylen were recovering Catholics. Hugh was the more indulgent of the two but Haylen suffered the greater familial hangover due to the judgement and fervency of her brothers and sisters, some of whom continued to go to Mass every morning.

Hugh and Haylen were both familiar with guilt. Hugh for feeling it and Haylen for assigning it.

Hugh was the anvil...Haylen was the hammer.

Eventually the anvil will break the hammer.

Eventually consumes a lot of time.

Time is temporal and so is punishment in the Catholic Church. 

Temporal punishment is bad but nowhere near as bad as eternal punishment.

If you're the anvil in eternal punishment, the hammer never breaks and every pound hurts.

Eternal punishment is Hell.

Temporal punishment is Purgatory.

If you're the anvil in Purgatory, the pounds don't hurt quite as much and eventually they will stop.

Hugh felt the same way about Haylen's ongoing inventory of his faults and inadequacies. Yes, they were undeniably true but they couldn't go on forever. How many times did he need to hear the same thing.

This leads us to the broken record.

When Haylen would start in on something, perhaps division of labor, "You don't do a goddamned thing around here. I do everything. How many women would put up with a husband who was so helpless etc" both Hugh and Haylen knew what accusations would follow and the order of the guilt assignment.

The broken record.

Maybe some of you have heard it.

Purgatory.

It didn't last.

The inventory consisted of venial sins rather than mortal sins

After such an expression, Haylen calmed down and everybody went on with whatever they were doing before the explosion.

Hugh did have a wild card.

In his days of practicing Catholicism, he had earned several plenary indulgences. According to the Catholic dictionary:

" A plenary indulgence is an indulgence that can remove all the temporal punishment due to forgiven sin. No one but God knows for certain when a plenary indulgences is actually gained, because only he knows whether a person's dispositions are adequate. One norm for such dispositions is that "all attachment to sin, even venial sin, be absent." If these dispositions are in any way less than complete, the indulgence will only be partial. The same provision applies to the three external conditions necessary to gain a plenary indulgence: sacramental confession, Eucharistic Communion, and prayer for the intentions of the Pope. If these conditions are not satisfied, an otherwise plenary indulgence becomes only partial."

When Hugh was earning his indulgences, he made damned sure that he had erased all attachments to sin by going to confession and receiiving Communion while earning his indulgences.

Hugh had dozens of 'em.

He was good to go and had been since his altar boy youth.

Haylen was kinda pissed off when she heard what Hugh had.

She wanted one of her own but because of her current excommuication, it was gonna be impossible for her to get one.

"Can't you just give me one of yours?" she asked.

" Can't do it, honey. If the ghost of Luther ever finds out that we made that deal we'd have a haunted Reformation on our hands."