LITERATURE & WRITING (and Reality!): Breaking Rules

I’ve always been a rulebreaker–operating just this side of the law.  But there are three things one must understand about rules and flaunting them before they open themselves up to the breaking:

One should understand the purpose of the rule and live it a while; one should see the flaw in the rule, even in its sense of restriction; one should seek a path that coincides with purpose yet does achieves it in a different–maybe even better–way, and follow it with pizzazz.

McCarthy’s disdain for punctuation, Marquez’s interception of reality by the mind, Faulkner’s stream of consciousness that mimics more the nature of thinking, and hyperfiction that brings freedom from the jail of bookcovers.

In life as well:  Being discovered by the HR man working late–to his dismay because he thought I was on overtime, though it was my practice to go and punchout at five and return because I had to follow protocol.  The rules were changed for all executive secretaries in answer to this problem I’d presented and we were all given promotions and raises in answer–and taken off the timeclock. 

Rules don’t always open up to accommodate the changer, but sometimes if we’re lucky, it will open its doors to the change.  Recently, to produce something good by flying in the face of convention: a project for an institution.  Then to its benefit the law flies in to accommodate it.  Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose; but if something good has come of it, the mission has been accomplished.    In competitive archery, I’ve shot against the men in their division rather than take home a dumb trophy every time since there were so few women archers.  I came in second once in Pennsylvania then and was I proud!

In Ethics we find that morals may change with society and generation.  But there is a crossroads where the savage nature undergoes a tempering that is well, unnatural to that nature.  In firming down, writing up and publishing laws to prohibit, for example, the hunting of your meal in your backyard, there is a tradeoff offered by the packaging and selling of meat by others–and only they are allowed to hunt (?!?) exclusively for mass distribution to the un-hunters.  But that’s against man’s very instinct–although it serves its purpose by providing meat in a more convenient and ensured manner.  All you need instead of bow and arrow or a club now is slim green sheets of paper known as "money."

Something like hyperfiction breaks established rules of writing and reading; and yet, it follows man’s more natural instincts in seeking information or entertainment in reading. 

Limited by our minds and yet unlimited to the creative corners in them.  In literature and in life, know the boundaries well; and if there is good reason to circumnavigate or fly above them, and you can do it well and see a benefit ahead to others, go ahead and fly!