"Vic" is a character from my novel, Charybdis in Pursuit. He is the character around which the novel revolves because of his sudden and mysterious suicide. To me, Vic represents a possible life path I, Drew Fisher, might have chosen due to a very real, transcendent, "out-of-body" experience I had while in college. Here's what really happened.
I was leaving our college library after a night of research, reading and study when, as I crossed the patio in front of our fine arts building, I was suddenly confronted with the vision before me of the night lighting of our entire city merging at the horizon with the equally colored and equally filling lighting of the perfectly clear, star-filled night sky. Because I could not discern a horizon, I temporarily lost my orientation and found myself freezing in my tracks, there, at the parapet of the fine arts building's patio, looking out over what seems to be an infinite, dimensionless nebulous (mass). My disorientation progressed to a point in which I become oblivious to my human body, to the ground upon which I stood, to any and all Earthly connections. All I could feel was silence and an interconnectedness, a "oneness" with all things. I remember my mind thinking that this "place" of self-less unity was "God"--"This must be God!"
This event imbued my consciousness--my being--with a new found heightened awareness. It was as if I had been struck with lightning and my circuitry had been cleansed and cleared for higher vibrations of information, for fuller perception, for more open awareness.
A few years later, I was awakened one night in the middle of the night by the clamor of characters in my brain insisting that I write down their story right now. Which I did. To life came Vic, Judy, Collin, Matt and Mr. & Mrs. Sandel. At the time of writing their story I saw none of the similarities to my own life (except for the fact that we chose the liberal arts college that I had attended and the time that I had attended as the story's setting). But, years later I was able to recognize the story for what it really was: It was a purging of a part of my being, of several avenues that my life might have taken had I made certain choices in my own life. Like dreams, each and every one of the story's characters represent an aspect of my Self. These might have been aspects of me that had been or were being actualized, or they may have been manifestations of my (perceived or imagined) potentialities, desires, or fantasies. This doesn't really matter because I strongly believe--I know--that these aspects of me are real and, thanks to Charybdis in Pursuit, they have all been realized and expunged from my "to do" or "what if" lists.
Vic Sandel represents one of the strong potentialities of the transcendent, "high" Drew Fisher. The "coming down" from such a transcendent high could have been difficult. It could have been disconcerting, disappointing, a let down. In his excitement, Vic rushed off to try to share his experience with another--with that human being with whom he thought he was so close, with whom he felt the desire to share his every thought, his every breath. And yet he could not get Judy to even remotely share his experience. He could see that, in fact, his experience--or something about him that had changed--was causing fear in his most-beloved. These two events coupled together, coming from his life's highest peak experience and then feeling the utter futility and frustration of unsuccessfully trying to share it with your most beloved "soul mate," had a crushing effect. He came crashing down into utter despondence. "Why go on living if the rest of life is going to be less than that God-Unity experience?" "What could the pain and drudgery of human life possibly offer to compare with those self-less moments?" "Would I just spend the rest of my life trying to replicate, relive or re-attain that place of sublime peace and calm?" "What is the point? What if the only place that I can find those feelings again is in the afterlife? If the afterlife is full of that state of transcendence, what fool would choose to stay here?" etc., etc.
At the time of writing Charybdis in Pursuit Drew Fisher did not have that kind of intimate partner with whom he would or even could try to share his most profound experiences. He had only himself. Which proved just right, for his Self had an answer to his questions, had an allegory to share, had a healing message to share with him . . . in the form of this story.
The other characters of Charybdis in Pursuit provided equally important messages for Drew Fisher regarding the choices one might make when faced with heart-wrenchng shock. In the story, Vic's father and brother get stuck in the "Who's to blame?' line of focus, only Vic's father does little to search for the answers to his question but instead chooses to look at everyone and everything that had anything to do with his dead son as possible co-conspirators. Thus, sadly, he looks at everyone with a little more suspicion, a little more disdain, and a little less trustingly than before. At the same time he is afraid to turn within for fear of seeing what he might have possibly contributed to the choice his son made to take his own life. And, of course, he is ashamed and self-conscious when in public for being known as the father of that "bright boy, Vic" who killed himself. All of the choices in behavior and attitude that Vic's father portrayed I could very easily see myself making.
Vic's brother, Collin, however, chooses to solve his "Who's to blame?" motivation to take the path of trying to find out why Vic might have made the choice he made. He attempts to recreate all of the patterns and circumstances that might have put Vic in a place where suicide might even be a consideration much less an active choice. He treats the "mystery" as one to be solved like a very complicated puzzle. He dives into his college studies, trying to recreate the course schedule and professor relationships and reading materials that might have contributed to Vic's evolution. He also tries to pursue a friendship with Judy, Vic's girlfriend, in order to clandestinely dig into her memories of Vic. All with the hopes of unravelling the mysteries of Vic's psyche.
Vic's youngest brother, Matt, all-American athlete, foregoes Division I athletic scholarship offers in order to attend the same small liberal arts school that Vic was attending. Feeling like he is being sucked into a blackhole of anger and anguish, Matt grasps for anything and everything that might help him feel closer to his beloved big brother, whom he idolized. He finds curiosity and desperation to be convenient tools that lead him to succumb to peer pressure to try numbing activities like heavy drinking, experimental drug use, violent sex, and party- and football-related brutality--all in the effort to distract himself from his pain. Matt's mislaid efforts to remain as close to his dead brother as possible run afoul, however, when he pursues a reckless and passionate relationship with Vic's willing but also desperate girlfriend, Judy. Judy's eventual wising up to the mutually self-destructive nature of their relationship and her successive breakup send Matt into an accelerated tailspin of desperation in the form of serious drug use.
Again, all of the characters in this novel speak to me. All of them have very real "lessons" to offer me. I could very easily have traveled down the paths I wrote about for any of the main characters that appear in Charybdis in Pursuit. The fact that I didn't is, I believe, due in part to the fact that I was able to "live" them through the writing of them. The effort and dedication I gave to the writing and dissemination of this story, I believe, was like my "Get Out of Jail Free" pass: I did not have to live any of these life paths because I wrote them for "others" to live. The same goes for any story, fictional or biographical, that I encounter: the characters and events and story of these books become "real" to me; I become a part of the worlds and minds and emotions of these characters--and their authors!--and "live"--if only vicariously, but, still, "live"--the stories that I read (or, in the case of film and television, watch on the screen). In the same way that Jungian dream therapy works, one can look at all of the characters and events of any story that one is exposed to as your own--as reflections of possibilities of choices your own soul or Monad might have made (but now does not necessarily have to since it just experienced [and possibly learned from] it in the "external" form that it just encountered).
The World is your oyster. The World is your World. The World is You! Vic, Collin, Matt, and Judy are me! And, as with any teacher who has affected my life, I am ever so grateful for their presence in my life.
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