Art Ross - Outside Reading 2, "The Eighteen Inch Journey"

The Well - Written by JD Gravitt

The Well is a short essay written about the progression and difficulty of life. The writer explains how he has been to this "place" many times before and pays attention to the wells; the deepest wells are the sweetest. Young men all around him work and dig for years to have their wells rival that of the old, deep men. He also talks about the water, "should you taste of [the old men's] wells, you would swear it is the sweetest water" but "many pilgrims come in a state of exhaustion and gulp the water, never tasting a thing."

I love this imagery. It reminds me that Story and Myth don't come easily. They must be mined, like fine gems. There is so much richness in Myths that is hard to understand and like digging a well, the best way to dig is to just get in there. If you contemplate all the time you can plan the sweetest , richest well, but it will never happen until you start digging.

Myth takes the same work. Outside of the story Myth is an abstraction like Lewis says in Myth Became Fact, we can talk about it but never really drink it water. When we are in the story Myth becomes real, we take on water like a sinking ship. The best part is we can come back as often as we want and enjoy the water over and over again - the older the well, the fresher the taste and bigger the reward.