Vessel Commentary

I'm about to post another story that I wrote almost a year and a half ago, but first, I'd like to comment on Vessel.

A few years ago, I was thinking a lot about romance, especially as it pertains to the young. I saw love as a rush to uncover as much about another person as possible--to dig into the strata of another human being in part out of curiosity, but also to fulfill perceived emptinesses within oneself. I wondered if such digging might uncover not the desired feeling of fullness, but might uncover a deeper emptiness.

Recently, I was mulling over those same thoughts, when I envisioned two people meeting each other on a crowded street. They are strangers, but within moments of seeing each other, they feel a deep connection. They rush through a crowd to meet one another, but, as they embrace, they recoil from one another, sensing something wrong. This is the central image of Vessel. When we fall in love, we not only expose or strengths to each other, but also our weaknesses. Perhaps beyond the inevitable posturing of being some two will find nothing.

But this is also a story about the flaws in our perceptions of others. It has been theorized that the human brain has a limited capacity to recognize other humans as people--that beyond a certain number of close friends and relatives, all others will be perceived as an indistinguishable rabble. This is an inevitable vanity of humanity, and it is one that has been often discussed in fiction (For an excellent treatment of the subject, read Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions). My intention in Vessel was to create a dichotomy between human and non-human, but also to betray that dichotomy in order to expose the foolishness of the whole thing. We are all human. To attempt to separate the sheep from the shepherds, the unaware from the awakened, is vanity. We all suffer.