Imagining Meaning

A Redneck Siddhartha is an exploration of both the inner and outer terrain of being here on this planet beneath the unflinching stars.  The protagonists are anonymous people who dive into the deepest questions of existence, compelled by their circumstances.  The exploration is an infinite one, for as one of the protagonists, Wu, states,

No matter what God you believe in, there is always a larger God.  No matter what name you call God, the name is always incorrect.

Each of the characters will be explored in future posts and you'll be able to ask questions of them.  There is JR, a cowboy in the southern Sierra Nevada whose Okie grandparents came to the San Joaquin Valley below the mountains during the Dustbowl.  He suffers from PTSD for a variety of reasons—war, family, culture.  At his lowest point he meets the two old men, Wu and Francisco.  Wu is a refugee from the Taiping Rebellion and Opium Wars in China, while Francisco is a former chief of the Kaweah Yokuts and an escapee from the slavery of the Spanish Missions.  The book is also an exploration of time and space.

Another of Wu’s observations is this.

If you can’t imagine meaning and redemption for yourself, then imagine it for another person.  In doing so, maybe the other person can imagine the same for you.  We aren’t here to judge each other, but rather to imagine success and meaning and redemption for each other so we can move forward on this path together.

Wu’s comment carries over to the point of this blog. In order for these characters to come alive in this world, it requires you to imagine their success and redemption, to imagine their meaning to this world.  If they are made real, then, in turn, they may be able to imagine the same for you.  By choosing to follow and share these characters with others, it may be so.