One name - several stories

In trying to write tonight, I came up with a name and just started typing. Sometimes that works for me and from out of nowhere a story will pop up and even I will be surprised where it goes. Tonight, however, was not that serendipitous of a situation. I had the name. I did the typing. Yet in a few short sentences I realized that I had nothing else to go on and the idea died. So I did what every writer would do...I gave up.

I deleted the sentences I typed and started all over. CTRL +A and Delete, the modern version of balling up paper and tossing it at the wastebasket. With a fresh start I wrote out the name and immediately another idea came streaming through my fingers. And again, it died after just a few sentences. I tried pushing it, tried coming up with the next sentence, the next word, the next letter. The harder I pushed, the more my creative juices dried up. Finally I chucked the story into that metaphorical wastebasket and started anew.

It went like that for awhile, until the frustration and draw of sleep began to diminish my desire to beat the block. I feel like I tried everything and nothing worked so maybe that means that I don't need to write a story about this name.

...or maybe it's going to be a great story but I just need to work harder at finding just what story little Benna belongs to.

Light

This is one find that made me very happy. When my old computer bit the dust, I realized that I had lost quite a few bits and pieces of writings. Oh, the big stuff I had saved on disks and flash drives. But the little things, the odd story that popped into my head one night or the half-finished conversation between two characters...those things I lost.

Which was why I was happy to find this story printed out and shoved in the back of a chemistry notebook. It's long, so I'm not going to post it all, but it has a different tone than a lot of what I write. It's a dark piece filled with hope. I don't know that it makes a lot of sense, but it certainly makes me feel. And after all, isn't that what good writing is all about?

Excerpt -
Not what I caused, mind you. I never cause wounds. I don’t hold the knife or the needle or the gun. I just whisper in the heads and in the hearts of those that do. A sibilant cheering section, a push to an edge that they were already nearing. Another told me once that we were just speeding up the process; that the children would destroy themselves with or without us. Lie or not, it makes my job easier.

It’s what I tell myself as I hear the blood slow to a trickle. Not my fault. Not my fault. If I pay attention, I can time the phrase to the whistling sound of their dying breaths. Not my fault.

Not my fault.

Not.

My.

Fa-

Across the room and with my eyes closed I know when it ends. Death is silence and silence is louder than one expects. It roars into the room and blankets it till I have to make a noise or go insane. I laugh.

There’s no malice behind it. No humor either.

I laugh simply because I wasn’t created to cry.

At what cost

Why do I always look deeper? Why do I persist and push and scrape all the varnish off things? Why can't I just look at the veneer and be satisfied?

I don't know the answer to those questions. I don't know why I'm like that. I just know that I am. I'm a pusher. I'm a fighter. I keep yanking and tugging and discovering more. I like to uncover things. No, not like. I desire to uncover things. It's a force within me. A curiosity that refuses to be sated.

It's not always a bad thing. That part of my personality makes me an excellent student. I dig without ending on whatever subject currently holds my interest. It's also a boon to my ability to teach myself new skills on a job. Give me a task that I'm not familiar with and I can guarantee you that I'll be able to do it within a day. It's not because I'm super talented or brilliant. It's because I keep looking till I uncover all the answers. I don't give up until I know everything.

But it's not always a good thing. Today I learned more than I ever wanted to know about some people. People that I respected. People that I loved. People that, I'm almost positive, didn't intentionally mean to come off so badly. I didn't want to know these things and now I don't know what to do with them. That's the other bad part about succumbing to this insatiable curiosity...there's no undo button.

Now I'm left with this feeling of regret. Regret that I didn't close my ears or change the topic. Regret that I didn't protect others from this knowledge. Regret that a secret, small part of me is happy to know this knowledge simply on the basis that it's knowledge. However bad, however sordid this truth may be...it is truth.

Does that make me a bad person? A weak one? I don't know. I just know that at the end of today, I don't feel like I'm a better person.

Therein lies the lesson. Knowledge can be won, but at what cost.

Found on a scrap of paper in the back of a travel journal. I'm not sure what I was referring to, although I have a couple of guesses. This find makes me a little sad. It stands as a witness, captured forever in the unenviable task of telling the truth about something painful but never seeing beyond to the beauty of growth. This piece doesn't talk about how I was changed by learning this lesson, or if I ever learned to weigh the cost against my curiosity. It never sees the resolution.

OCD and Doodling

All of my old notebooks are different. Some are full of school notes and assignments, some are full of poetry and fiction, a few are full of quotes, and a couple even have detailed diagrams of buildings and technology. But there are a couple of things that I've found in almost every notebook.

The first is doodles, which is a normal thing to find in a notebook. Along the margins there are flowers, balloons, clowns, mice and the occasional zombie. At times, I've written around these sketches and they are an island of art in the midst of words. I'm an artist at heart though and there are times when the margins aren't enough. They aren't big enough to satisfy my desire to draw. So there are whole pages taken over by artwork. A grinning snowman stands guard over a page, a waterfall cascades over two pages. A tropical scene, a stormy night, a ball gown, a race car all grace the pages in my notebooks. There is rarely rhyme or reason to the drawings. Just whatever I happened to feel like sketching on a particular day.

Secondly, I've found several charts for clothing. My OCD doesn't seem to manifest itself in a clean room or fastitodous note-taking. Instead it's focused on vacation clothing. I seem to plan out, by chart, what I'll need to pack and wear on vacation. The charts vary by size depending on how long the vacation will take. Some are for overnight jaunts, some are for two week jaunts, but most fall somewhere in the middle. Each day has a column in which I'll write down the shirt, pants, socks/shoe, and pajama choices. (There's also a giant U at the top of each column which stands for 'unmentionables'...I tend to be modest even in my ocdness.)

It's fun to go back and see try to guess which trip corresponds with which chart. The 8-day chart where I planned out jeans and sweaters must have taken place in the winter. The three day chart that lists bathing suits, towels and sunscreen obviously was a trip to the beach in the summer. But not everything is so easily deduced. One chart reminds me to bring "glasses, books, emergency flares" along with my charted clothing. Another has me wearing a parka and gloves on Tuesday and capris and a tank top by the weekend. I can't recall either of those trips or whether they were as exciting as the charts make them out to be.

Old notebooks, new blogs

In searching through my stack of notebooks, I found this written on the top of one page.

"tossing letters overboard
hoping you will rescue me
from this life of order
from all my responsibilities"

I can't remember when I wrote it or why, but it speaks to me today. I feel like I haven't been writing very much lately. A few journal entires, a blog entry here and there, the occasional email but none of that feels like writing. Hmmm, that word should stand out more. It needs to be italicized...writing. When I say it, that's how it sounds. Like it has an emphasis. Like it's a living thing that feels and breathes and, in my case lately, languishes and dies on its own.

This blog is my tossed bottle. I'm filling that bottle with my creativity and my desire and my talent and I'm just hoping that it's the catalyst to my rescue. That somehow it will save me and help me begin writing again.

Who knows if this blog will get me writing anymore than anything else lately. For all I know, 50 years down the line someone will stumble across this blog and this will be its only entry. Full of promise and newness but discarded like a penny upon the street. I refuse to feel guilty about that possibility. Whether the fate of this blog is to be discarded or cherished, I shall be content with either.

After all, you can't dictate where the bottle ends up after you toss it overboard.