Under Joshua’s
Shadow

Author’s Notes
A fictional story blended with multiple themes and intersections of nature, psychology, religion, philosophy, and mysticism contribute to the novel’s linear, yet rich plot filled with symbolism, and abstract higher meaning — if higher meaning exists. Afterall, it is a dark romance novel. The dark themes are essentially a nod to the 20th century psychological perspectives on the human condition post-World War II. That said, I am working on a sequel that attempts to reconsider that perspective. There are variable levels of introspection among the two main characters, Tom and Joshua. In different forms of liberation, one character reclaims his spirituality, while the other discerns it. Characters dig deep or reach beyond themselves as they experience budding needs, grief, floundering sense of purpose, and fleeting transcendent experiences, only to be held back by laws of nature which remind them of their human tolerances as topics of faith and doubt intermingle among denial or ambivalence to stay or let go “without a shadow of a doubt.” There is a lot of subtext, symbolism, and motifs in the novel. Character development is not always central to the plot. Instead, the plot also unfolds among allegorical images like biblical names, plants and animal symbolism, or Jungian archetypes. I find it enjoyable when readers share with me their own web of meaning through motifs they personally identify with. For example, without giving too many away, water is a classic motif throughout the novel. I thought about the traditional use of water from literary readings when water represented a metaphor for turning of tides or rising and falling. I also contemplated the use of water from slave narratives and how water could both contain and set free as in the stories about crossing a river to escape slavery. In biblical terms, water was used to represent the source of life and spiritual cleansing. Whether character development exists among symbols and archetypes, it is important to understand character development is a more complex and interconnected experience. While writing this novel, I thought a lot about literary theory I learned in my literature courses at Chaffey College and the University of LaVerne. Concepts for how to organize and understand the context of literature for better understanding of nature and life, but literary theory also makes one aware that complete understanding is not possible because there is always more to experience and learn. When I considered traditional concepts like basic exposition, I wanted to both conform and break away from it to produce a contemporary novel in which characters experience life in a multicultural and multidimensional modern reality. Because exposition, in a traditional sense, should naturally lead to conflict before characters experience change or transformation, I attempted to utilize Plato’s ladder of love, but I did not perfectly use Plato’s six levels of ascent, instead I explored the levels of ascent with nuance as character fear and faith intermingled between levels. That said, I mostly did heed to Plato’s sense of logical exposition in building a story environment and spatial continuum. However, linear versus multi-connected realities do compete for space in my novel, yet I structured a story that made sense, with minimal use of foreshadowing, flashback, excessive narrator interference, or jarring surreal shifts in scenes. You will notice an omniscient narrator usually chimes in at the end of each chapter rather than throughout the story. But human dreams are a major theme in my novel, for they represent subjective moments of consciousness, so there is an intersection between a Platonian order within the landscape of the story along with a modern humanist character perspective about subjective states of mind. For it is through subjective states like dreaming, lines between reality and imagination blur as characters define what they wish or see for themselves. Juxtapositions between characters and events represent competing interests, duality, or contrast between oppositions, and you will notice polarity reinforced in scenes about mountain altitude(ascent/descent), earth & sky, seasons, liquids, day & night, to more ephemeral images like light/ shadow, color, temperature, such as when Tom wakes up in his bedroom on a chilly autumn morning. Such conditions are not necessarily binary, as hierarchy in nature is gradient or it ebbs and flows. In other words, I was attempting to feel what is in the middle of states and worlds. In a world where religion says God is in nature and scientific precepts say nature operates on alternative terms, neither side explains the exceptions or the outliers, so while religion has angels to visit earth and nature has birds to miraculously flee the earth, characters are left feeling the gaps, as religion does not need this world just as nature does not need existential meaning to survive in it. Yet, it between these concepts, gravity is always pulling or pushing on everything at once, and characters evolve within that singular gravitational vortex –a sort of Prometheus flame mastering something to find a way out from darkness inspired by the light of sublime moments like whimsical pink sunsets, orange full moons, sparkly stars, and shiny orange dragonflies to escape the confines of man-made systems. Yet ironically structure or a built-up story environment, which Plato emphasizes as stability, ultimately serves as memory, but my characters grapple with what they remember from the past and what they fear of the future. The question alludes to my characters, do you burn down memory for change or transformation, or must one carry memory into the future? There’s a give-and-take in a relationship. When thoughts of ‘we grew apart’ or ‘I can’t handle this’ feed the mind, then characters need to discern if choosing to commit involves not only choice, but self-change and sacrifice. Does choosing love involve rejecting the memory of landscape or does it involve building upon it? Do you cling to your partner while you ignore the past, or do you accept them in order to grow together? Thus, shared space is anchored between lovers who grow in the solidness of earth where deep rooted unspoken insecurities remain hidden in the dark depths of the earth, yet growth can still bloom at the root. But what happens when anxiety turns to anger and love is uprooted? This is a metaphoric question of course and Plato believed a good story needed guidance according to his rules to support real world ideas. Plato would not have approved of my poetic attempt to link emotions to natural phenomena. For Plato, linking such emotions and unfounded concepts would destroy stability. But the metaphor is a representation of what happens when lovers continually test weaknesses within the relationship. Likewise, weather plays a role in my novel as a way to show how natural pressure impacts contentment. Hence, weather is a representation of systems like religion which can exert power over people. Plato believed in absolute truth and beauty, yet he could not consider, from our moder perspective, how truth and beauty can be depraved by states of anxiety, grief, poor esteem, or an overthinking sensitive bleeding-heart yearning for the past. Perhaps Plato was right to believe that a beautiful song should always end on a high note, yet in reality, lovers will continue to test each other’s self-worth all the way to the bitter end or worse question their own worth, as characters seek truth comparing their incongruent relationship dynamics from totally different frames of mind when love requires closeness and communication. In the pursuit of building closeness, in two different geographical settings, characters forgot earlier promises and fears. Ironically, the highest love between lovers does not grow from a forgotten promise or fear of being judged — love ironically remains and grows from memory which accepts the individual as a whole. So, in spite of the dark romantic undertones, such as bloody scenes throughout the novel, the use of dark tones makes the reader feel the tension between past and future, attachment/salvation (judgment) and integration/liberation (self-wholeness). Thus, deviating from Plato’s sense of order (convenient for the dominant culture) allowed me to accommodate two gay characters with their own personal dynamics apart from the dominant straight rules, to arrive to their own truth and beauty on their own terms, which was Plato’s ultimate goal. Now, to influence character development, so despair would not anchor them down, evolving intuition pushed the plot forward and liberated the characters. But intuition cannot fix everything, so I certainly did not aim to have the novel solve all problems or answer all questions. Each character poses variable degrees of agency on their own terms to learn how to love their inner landscape just as much as they admire their outer landscape. Inevitably, characters swim in a sea of over-the-moon moments or dusty regrets in search of companionship as if love offers a transactional guarantee when it’s found, but the characters privately know, they only find themselves at the end — only after the guarantee had expired. Characters do possess self-aware identities and life history. It was my attempt to write a story apart from the typical queer male genre often about coming out within a landscape of sex, drugs, and rock-n- roll in replace of a story about queer spirituality. Therefore, sexual identity is not used as spectacle; it is used to enhance intimacy separated by walls of incarceration within the context of individual growth and partnership, and how the two interplay within that separateness. Individuation or transformation can break but it does not necessarily mean love is broken. It simply requires more mending and healing — a sort of restorative justice for love. The question is, in this novel, will justice prevail?