Pilgrims Dream: a Compendium

Here is a brief-as-possible summary of my work-in-progress, Pilgrims Dream. I'll put a permanent link to this post on the right side of the blog so it can be easily accessed. Though the basic outline of the novel is firm in my imagination, I may update this post as the story evolves.

I begin this summary at an auspicious moment: I am about to move to Prague, and my writing process is about to rise to a new stage. Now is a good time to clarify what I know, and I expect this post will help those who want to better understand other Lightning, Mirror posts in which I discuss Pilgrims Dream.


Cast of Characters

Pilgrims:
Heraclitus Walleye
Laura Cloud
Dudley Wundersprocket
Lux Nadarien
Orestes Herpetulian

Them:
17
Agent Grossberger
Agent Troutslop

Others:
Aleister Von Dirk
Sophia Aurora
Janglebell


Pilgrims: These five meet, by chance, in a coffeeshop in downtown Manhattan. Each has been driven to the coffeeshop by strange and magical sequences of events. Each has arrived in a moment that finds them absolutely open and vulnerable to any message of meaning that life might deliver. Through signs and wonders that speak to each pilgrim individually, they recognize that they are meant to embark together on a journey of discovery. Each is willing and able to temporarily leave their old life behind.

The Pilgrimage has no concrete goal: the pilgrims themselves must work out their purpose. The Pilgrimage is a secret convention, an underground form of life, in the Wittgensteinian sense: like Fight Club, The Pilgrimage is not to be discussed with those who have never been on one. Anyone who has ventured on a pilgrimage can intuitively recognize fellow travellers. A person may go on only one pilgrimage in his lifetime, or he may go on several. One is called to The Pilgrimage, as if it is desired by the very structure of the universe. The pilgrimage described in Pilgrims Dream will be Heraclitus' tenth journey, which is a record as far as anyone knows: he would be a legend if pilgrims openly communicated about their experiences.

Pilgrims Dream will take our group from the downtown coffeeshop to the unknown depths of the Amazon rainforests. Theirs is a quest in which they seek a recognition of achievement, though they have only a vague notion of what that achievement will look like; along the way, they will chase the mysterious blue flower, El Dorado, and a mythical, lost Indian tribe. They will follow where adventure leads.


Heraclitus Walleye has been on several Pilgramages. In his 40's. Born and raised in St. Louis, Heractlitus has travelled the world and become an unrooted drifter--working here before drifting there. Because of his lack of attachments, Heraclitus has developed an almost preternatural ability to respond to the opportunity of the moment. Conversely, Heraclitus' lifestyle has drained him, and he dreams of the day when he can settle, and rest. By virtue of experience, Heraclitus serves as guide for the others. He has acquired shamanistic abilities and psychological insights that allow him to better direct the mental/emotional/spiritual transformation that forms the essence of the Pilgramage.

Laura Cloud is recently divorced. Late 20's, early 30's. An art major in college, she lost touch with her craftsy side during her marriage. Her husband made a killing in real estate, and they rose into a lifestyle they could barely understand. Now that her husband has split and the life she never felt comfortable with is gone, Laura grieves, processes, and wonders how to fashion her own, individual, best-of-all-possible life. She is visiting New York as a tourist to recuperate and regenerate.

Dudley Wundersprocket is the owner/CEO of Loud Ties, Inc. In his 50's. He has previously been on one pilgrimage, which makes him the only experienced pilgrims besides Walleye. After Wundersprocket's first, he quit his corporate job in the garment industry and opened his own business. He runs Loud Ties as an experiment with democracy in the workplace, and he has developed a reputation as a mad genius. He is a big man with a good heart and a loving wife who isn't altogether happy with her husband's recent tendency to strike off without announcement on some vague adventure. He is in New York on a business meeting that falls through.

Lux Nadarien is a high school student researching colleges. She is brilliant, and learning. She cannot decide whether she would like to study physics or religion. She would like to study a fusion of the two, to discover & explicate a worldview in which all human perspectives are validated and respected. But what major would facilitate such a concentration? At the heart, Lux is a teenage girl about to grow up. She is visiting New York to check out college campuses, research various academic departments, & take care of admission interviews.

Orestes Herpetulian is a sanitation worker at the end of his rope. Early to mid 30's. He had worked as a pharmaceuticals rep before a crisis of conscience forced him to begin his life anew. He works in the Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island, otherwise known as The Dump. The Dump is populated by a Herd of mutated, gargantuan Dump Rats, with whom sanitation workers engage in armed combat. Herpetulian is at the point of Going Native, Colonel Kurtz style, by moving into The Dump and fighting The Herd--commando style--full time. He lives in a strange world. His visit to Manhattan was his way of seeing the Real World one last time before he abandons everything for the strange realites of The Dump.


They are a secret organization. They are global and powerful. Their exact nature is unclear, as is their purpose. (I want another title for this organization, in addition to Them. Perhaps T.O.P.: the organizing principle? I want an acronym.) They are an ill-defined context.

17 recruits Grossberger & Troutslop & initiates them into Them. He thus reveals that he can navigate The Agency--where Grossberger & Troutslop were employed--with impunity and recruit individual agents out of what should be the highest and most powerful secular authority in the world. Who is he? He doesn't even have a name. He is a post-modern Yoda training initiates for a Jedi that couldn't possibly exist.

Agents Grossberger & Troutslop leave their jobs at The Agency to work out, for themselves if no one else, the mystery of Them. Grossberger, especially, wouldn't have given the existence of Them a moment's thought, except he now appears to be working for Them. G & T want the Truth, which is exactly what they don't have. 17 never tells them enough, and they carry out their missions with faith that eventually they will understand the organization for which they work. They get into misadventures. Picture X-Files meets Laurel & Hardy meets Rosencrantz & Guildenstern. They are bumblers. Their mission is to locate the pilgrims when they meet--seemingly by chance and for the first time--in the downtown coffeeshop; G & T don't know why or what they are supposed to do. 17 takes them into a mysterious base located under the Fort in St. Augustine, where scientific (as well as occult) marvels & secret programs are revealed. G & T are then ordered to track down Aleister Von Dirk. Finally they are once again sent to monitor the pilgrims as they journey into the Amazon.


Others are minor characters of major interest.

Aleister Von Dirk is writing a novel called Pilgrims Dream. The main protagonists of his novel are the pilgrims who meet in the downtown coffeeshop. He somehow imagines a fiction that exactly mirrors a reality unknown to him. He lives in Prague.

Sophia Aurora is a night-walker, seen on the streets of Prague only under moonlight. She seems otherworldly. Heraclitus Walleye ran into her during his brief stint in Prague when insomnia struck him for several months and he took to walking at night. They develop a strange relationship, and Sophia gives Walleye a book that teaches one how to dream. Certain strange facts seem to indicate that Sophia Aurora is a vampire, but that's just ridiculous and impossible.

Janglebell is an anarchist pixie native to Manhattan.