I think it was Pedendang who said that you are the best writer on these boards, Rac. She is right. You are the best, because you have mastered the incredibly difficult art of describing the sort of change that goes on all around us without us even noticing it.
I tend to remember certain things from the past (and completely forget others), and it has happened several times when I bring something up that another person looks at me with disbelief. Surely what I just said can't be right. Surely things can't have been so different five years ago, ten years ago, twenty years ago. Surely people can't have reasoned and reacted so differently back then.
Change is going on around us all the time. Sometimes something monumental is taking place, and then we notice, of course. We most certainly notice. But other, smaller, subtler things are changing too, and we don't notice. Or we notice them for a while, and then we forget that things weren't always like that, and then we stop noticing. And suddenly we are other people than we used to be, and we don't remember how it happened, and maybe we don't even remember that we weren't always the way we are now.
You have that sort of multi-layered understanding and the kind of beautiful writing skills that allows you to let a story unfold where things change so slowly and subtly that neither your characters nor your readers necessarily pay attention to the changes. We are just swept along with the slow current. And suddenly things are different, and we can't say how it happened, even if we try. That is because you told us your story so subtly that we didn't notice the underlying flow and direction of it.
But occasionally you give us a small reminder, as Dr. Friskin was allowed to do in theis chapter:
“It takes time, Superman. I wish I had a better answer, but it takes time. You've taken an important step, but there's still more to be done.”
Yes, it takes time. But things have changed already, and I think the pace of the change is speeding up.
This is so beautiful, Rac.
Ann
