We come to the close of this little blog series, wandering and roving through the fields of wonder. “We all — in the end — die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.” I mentioned it through fiction, David wove in strands of narrative nonfiction, and now Stephanie shares in reflection by a poetic all her own. Join our conversation over at her blog today.

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We all are born into the middle of a story, infants hurled howling into a plotline and expected, like a cat, to land on our feet.

It is in life as in literature: the reader is thrown into the middle of the story to engage our immediate interest and stir our curiosity, in what is called in media res—Latin for “into the midst of things.”  In media res is The Odyssey, the opening scene of which reveals Odysseus captive on Calypso Island, and then backtracks to the beginning of his journey, circling back to this event in chronological order. It’s Paradise Lost, the epic which unfolds out of a fallen angel’s monologue in the lake of fire at the end of the world. It’s William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, which startlingly begins, “Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting.” 17 syllables, and we are hooked.

In writing, in media res is refined literary technique. In living, it is often brute survival.

Keep reading at Stephanie’s blog, here.

We continue the series begun yesterday, with David, Stephanie, and myself.

Yesterday, I shared fiction, today, David reflects with haunting narrative nonfiction, as Stephanie so well described it, “A true story of dying in media res, and how the living can provide the last chapter of an unfinished story.”

Let David words wrap you up …

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He went there every fall, with his dog, to a little garage in the mountains. Around it was a plot of land with young pine trees. He would go out every morning to check on all the saplings, make sure they were supported, growing up. It’s where he went to reflect, and while he wandered between the trees, the dog would run and play in the fields.

He was divorced, and he loved that dog. But one year, she got sick, and he had to take her for emergency care in the town. But she couldn’t be helped. The dog died abruptly. And the death pushed him over the edge.

He left the forest and drove home, “worse than a drunk,” he described it. When he got home, he took a bottle of pills from his bathroom, swallowed most of them—then right before it killed him, he called for help. He couldn’t do it. He wasn’t ready for his story to end.

After two weeks of intense treatment, he got put on medication. Something for his depression, something else for anxiety. He had a bad thyroid, and his emotions would fluctuate more than most people.

But he started to stabilize, and after a while, he decided to simplify his life and move on: sell some things, give away money, volunteer for a local politician. He even started going to church, and after two years of that, he decided that he was going to be a missionary.

Keep reading this beautiful work over at David’s blog, here.