Chartres bleues is a three-part novel I wrote in my late twenties. It tells the story of the emotionally traumatic consequences borne upon a young family through the selfish and immature actions of their frustrated father. American-born Gabriel, or "Briel," met, pursued and married the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen, Alsatian-born Regina, or "Reggie." Together the two dreamed of a simple life in which family and Nature would always maintain their highest places on their priority list. Unfortunately, eight years and two children (Gretel and Jasper) later, the original and true meaning of their oft-repeated governing maxim, "For the Good of the Family Unit," has become lost or distorted as they have succumbed to familial, societal, and economic pressures by allowing work and the acquisition of money and material things to ascend to the top of their lives' priority list. Corporate jobs in Reggie's father's Black Forest-based manufacturing business consume them both; they have become numb automatons--living controlled, prescribed and programmed lives like robots.
Briel is the first to crack--to try to break out. The damage occurs as he tries to do so as an individual, without consulting or involving his wife and family.
What is particularly interesting about Chartres bleues is the fact that I wrote the entire story from the first person perspective, so the reader reads along as if s/he were inside the minds of the protagonists, following the stream of consciousness of thoughts, sensory inputs, and memories flowing jaggedly, with the non sequitors, tangents, and interruptions that occur within the true flow of consciousness of people living in the world.
In writing this story, I was particularly inspired by William Faulkner's The Sound and The Fury and by the deep psychological perspectives used by F.M. Dostoevsky and J.D. Salinger. At the same time I had been quite affected and inspired by two books in which the author actually succeeded in teaching me rudimentary levels of foreign languages--James Clavel's Shogun and Umberto Ecco's The Name of The Rose. Thus, I tried to use increasing amounts of German and French whenever and wherever the protagonists entered into conversation with persons around them--especially with oft-repeated and increasingly familiar phrases and sayings.
The story begins with Briel's impetuously planned yet impulsive escape: Unbeknownst to his wife and small children, he takes a train Switzerland, hitchhikes into the Alps, and then convinces a dairy farmer to take him on as a laborer. Beset with constant reminders of the family he adores, as well as increasing pangs of guilt and remorse for his choice to leave, it does not take long for Briel to recognize the gross error he's made and then to try to get home in order to rejoin his family and make amends.
The plot thickens with the beginning of Part Two. At the end of Part One, Briel arrives home deep in the middle of the night. Always an expert at sneaking around without making sound, he manages to enter his own house without waking anyone but, just as he is walking down the short hallway to the bedrooms, he is side-tracked by the sight of his beloved 4-year old daughter, Gretel, laying in her bed, fast asleep, but with her blankets strewn around the bed and floor. Knowing how important it is to see his wife and talk to her, he decides first to enter Gretel's room in order to try to cover his beloved daughter whose iridescent blue eyes earned her the nickname, "Chartres blues."
Events unfold such that, as Briel is trying to clandestinely re-position the bed clothes around Gretel, she awakens and flings herself around his neck with such desperation and intractable force that he cannot leave without first laying down with her to comfort her back to sleep. And there they both fall asleep.
Part Two begins the next morning. The author's perspective has now switched to first person Reggie's mind. Reggie awakens without any knowledge or awareness of Briel's return. Her sluggish mind vacillates between anger, sadness and general confusion. When she enters Gretel's room with the habitual intention of awakening Gretel for the start of their day she is smacked full force with the sight of her husband and daughter asleep together in Gretel's bed. Her first reaction is one of adoration as the beatific vision of the two beings most dear to her, entwined in blissful sleep, floods her emotions. What's more: she knows how deep and profound is this special bond between the two, between father and daughter--that they would breathe for one another if they could. But then, suddenly, she is flushed with pain and anger at the recollection of Briel's betrayal, and now this: when finally he returns home he chooses to snuggle up with his daughter over his wife!
Reggie is beside herself with hurt and rage. Backing out of Gretel's room, she tries to calm her panicky mind, to come up with a plan of action. She decides to try to take the kids out--to pretend to start the day just as any other day. She knows that if she can just get the kids out of the house, get them to their day care, that she can create some time to think--she feels desperate to find some time to think--to try to figure out what to do in the face of these new event--of Briel's sudden reappearance.
With great effort, she manages to wake the kids and whisk them off without disturbing the sound asleep Briel. She drives off, feeds Jasper and Gretel at their favorite local bakery, but then, just as she is driving up to their day care provider, she is filled with rage and courage: "He may not return so easily!" she thinks. "He may not walk back into our lives as if nothing has happened! He must pay!" and then, "There are consequences for his cruel behavior! He must know what it feels like!" And, so, with a new resolve she drives off to a nearby international airport. Her new plan is to take the children to Briel's family's summer home in in the United States--in Northern Michigan. She knows that her head start will give her time to think, to plan further, but that it will also provide Briel with way to find them--that he will be able to figure out where to find them--which is what she wants--but not now--she is not ready now. Plus, she is resolved that he must know what it feels like--that he deserves to feel some of the pain of what that mysterious and unexplained departure feels like!
So, the story line in Part Two follows Reggie as she makes these decisions--flying by the seat of her pants, changing her mind every five minutes, vacillating between emotional extremes, as she travels with two small children for an entire day, and then as she sets up life in an otherwise shut up home in the middle of deep winter, as she tries to explain to her children what it is she is making them do, why she is making the choices she is making, why they are not staying with Daddy, what she might do when next confronted with his presence.
Part Three, the listener might have guessed, brings the author's voice to the first person perspective of chère Gretel, the four-year old daughter. From the moment Reggie opens the door to reveal the shattered visage of her beloved father, we follow the events of the ensuing days through the limited mind, thoughts, and raw and tumultuous emotions of a four year old child. Bravely trying to be a "big girl" by suppressing the volatile emotions and extreme insecurities roiling within her, Gretel is constantly on edge, trying her best to hold strong, to not let the dam break as she puts all of her energy and focus into the effort of trying to make sense of her two 'adult' parents' choices and behaviors--she thinks that it is her job to try to help facilitate a healing, to repair the damage, so that they can all pick up where they left off, and, yet, eventually, recognizes the value of the proposal of a "fresh start"--the start of a new life in their beloved Northern Michigan.
Chartres bleues allowed me, Drew Fisher, a medium within which I could examine aspects of myself as they might have played out were I to have married and started a family at a young age. Yes, I could very well have fallen to the pressure to conform to the values of a consumer-capitalist life. The end result of having written this story is that I was presented with a way in which I could understand that I was simply not mature enough in my young twenties to handle any of the above pressures and demands. My relationship with my own self was not evolved enough to allow me to be effective or successful as a husband, father, or provider. At the same time, Chartres bleues gave me a vehicle with which to explore my own attractions to languages as well as a vehicle for my own experimentation with the writing conventions and tools of my own "mother tongue."
At this time I was quite inspired by many writers whom I had been discovering throughout my twenties--a period of my life that I call my "real" education because of the intrinsically motivated and valued learning I was doing by way of the time I was creating for reading and writing. Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Gogol, and Lermontov; Salinger, Katzantakis, Hesse, Heinlein, Clavel, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, Dickens, Flaubert, Sand, Eliot, Ecco, Scott and Bach. These were my teachers. Their characters were my heroes--and also my teachers. At this point in my life writing was such a joy. What I did not see until later was how cathartic writing was--how expressive of my internal evolution it was. Through writing my Soul was able to find expression, to be recognized and received, processed and embraced by the gradually opening, receptive, and expanding Ego or Personality.
While writing gave vent to the musings of my Higher Mind, it was only, of course, in ways that were immediately accessible and usable to the limited comprehension of my Ego. My teachers--the writers above and their stories and characters--were key assistants to help assuage my stubborn, fear-mongering Ego, to convince it that there were bigger versions of my Self out there--in here--that it was safe, it was okay, to take risk, to fail, to be laughed at and ridiculed, to let go, even to die--so long as one was just willing to try, to give life or a part of life your best effort--that the worst that could happen to one in any situation was death and death, I was coming to understand and believe, was but a shedding of a skin, an opening of a door to another world. I learned that taking risks--just as all my heroes did--brought on great trepidation (if one had time enough to think about it) but, at the same time, it also allowed for great release, great relief and for the possibility of great adventure and accomplishment. Without taking risks there was little chance of any of these rewards.
There existed (or, perhaps, exists) but one copy, one manuscript of Chartres bleues--and that copy does not rest with me. The computer from which I wrote and stored the data that is Chartres bleues has been discontinued, is defunct--the company no longer exists. So, there is little chance of this story ever the light of day again much less being rendered for you, here. Still, I am not bothered or troubled by this. Again, the story served a very valuable purpose for me on my path of ever-increasing self-awareness and growth. And that was and is enough. Besides, as the world falls further into collapse, art will only serve and survive if it can provide instantaneous distraction or escape from the toils and terrors of a self-destructing society. Mother Earth will most likely be destroying all residue of mankind as her weather/immune systems scour away all presence and evidence of her once parasitic invader. How art, creativity, and language must serve humankind now and for the foreseeable future is in forms that offer either tools that are helpful for survival or instead for tools that are helpful for death and dying. This latter is what I am trying to do: to offer you examples from my own life and the lives of my Over-Soul, Journeyman Paul, that might provide you with perspectives of life, death, and Truth to make these trouble times pass a bit easier--to make one's own demise and departure from this planet a little easier. Whether or not I succeed at this task is irrelevant. Whether or not you succeed at coming to terms with your own immortality is all that is relevant. Good luck!
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