Being bold

A task I set for myself looms closer and closer, and I am terrified to do it. It's a simple enough thing: an interview. I've interviewed enough sources to be familiar with the process and know what makes for good material. I'm not quite yet at a point where I can be casually confident enough to pick up the phone to interview someone without stalking them and their work in every way possible.

This limbo paralyzes me with fear. What if she thinks I'm the most idiotic person she ever spoke to? What if she loses her temper and hangs up half-way through? God, what if she asks me if I know the first thing about narrative before she hangs up?

The questions refuse to stop. On the one hand, I want to kick myself for signing up for this. On the other, I refuse to criticize one of the few apparently sensible pitches I made. And so, I am terrified of talking to a writer as another writer.

I think there are two kinds of people who 'get the job done'. There are those who know too little to be afraid, and are enthusiastic enough, determined enough, to just do it, ignorant of what they know not. And there are the battle-weary folk, who've been there, done that enough times to know that eventually it will all fall into place. I stand somewhere in between: too aware and too inexperienced to be fearless. A little knowledge is certainly a dangerous thing, especially when you are the one holding it.

One by one, the stars fade.

Two monks were charged with chronicling the nine million names of God. No one knew what would happen when they completed the task. At the end of their mission, there was no more being to the world: No ideas to conquer, no understanding left beyond the nine million names. And as they watched, the stars began to vanish from the night sky.

I watch the stars fade and dim in these patterns, and think perhaps we have chronicled all there was to this little corner of the universe. I have counted the 9 million names of God to make this work, and now all there is this waiting, this watching the stars dim, this wondering of what universe I must learn to live through next.