Weird of Oz Reminisces: A Friend of the Imagination
When I say “a friend of the imagination,” I do not mean an imaginary friend. Shane was, and is, real. The only son of one of my mom’s dear friends, he loomed large in the first decade of my life, though I only saw him about once a year.
I’m sure that when you cast your mind back to that first, formative era — to the halcyon days of youth that began your journey and shaped its course in ways both obvious and subtle — you recall some friend or acquaintance who holds a special place in your own private history’s pantheon of important people. Perhaps he or she first introduced you to something — an idea or hobby or sport — that would prove to be a lifetime love, a lifelong pursuit.
Shane was one such person, a boy who unwittingly (and, perhaps to this day, unbeknownst to him) enriched my creativity and broadened my imagination. I can’t help but think his example had some impact on my career as a creative writer; it was, at least, one branch in the confluence of influences that brought me here to this moment, writing a blog for Black Gate.
Shane’s mom had grown up with mine but moved to California, so about once a year she and her son came to visit us in Arizona. These visits account for some of my earliest and fondest memories. To them I can trace important moments in the unfolding path I have followed. Granted, some of these imaginative leaps might have come in other circumstances had Shane never come from that faraway country sung about by the Beach Boys. There were many other seminal formative events, particular authors and movies (it is a time of life that is littered with such discoveries, naturally), but Shane happened to be the one who nudged my imagination along on almost an annual basis throughout my grade-school years, like a sensei who periodically appears and says, “All right. You’re ready for the next level. And this one is particularly rad and gnarly.” (Okay, I can’t recall if he actually used ‘80s surfer slang, but I think he did use some. We all did. It was in the air.)
Not long ago, I came across a copy of Jonathan Lethem’s second novel, Amnesia Moon. I was curious: Lethem’s best known for his recent work in mainstream mimetic fiction, but his early novels were science fiction and he also wrote an odd take on Steve Gerber’s already-odd character Omega the Unknown for Marvel Comics in 2007. More, between 2007 and 2009, he edited 
