Thursday, October 31, 2013

Zero Note, with Rockets and Chicken Pox

Greetings internet!

        I have had the itch to write recently after doing a bit of work for Boston's Weekly Dig, here and here.  I needed a platform to post things on my own, and as much as my computer likes looking at tumblr, it won't let me post to it there, no matter how many times I hit my browser and/or laptop with a hammer.  So I will be posting here and crosslinking it with my happy fun twitter feed @TheSagest.  Posts here will be mentioned there.  So if you're a fan of me in short form, maybe I can earn your attention in the long form.

          For those of you curious as to where this is going, I have an idea for an #AllHallowsRead story that I hope to put up before 11/1/13, then maybe I'll blog about my attempts to finish a long dormant mystery novel during #NaNoWriMo.  I might post old chapters, talk about my struggles with where I left it, and let you the world know how the new struggle goes.  Interspersed with that, could be any sort of update I feel might be fun to read, from reactions to TV and movies, to chili recipes, to thoughts on things that need to come out.  So like they used to say in the papers, watch this space!

         I remember the first time I couldn't write something.  I was either in kindergarten or first grade.  It was late winter/early spring.  I managed to get the chicken pox either right before or just after spring vacation.  So I missed a week of school on top of a week off of school.  When I came back (finally) scarred and not so itchy, there were all these new papers on the wall.

        The work in question was pretty typical for our age group.  There was a generic space scene taking up maybe two thirds of the page, with lines for a descriptive sentence or two to one side.  I remember a rocket ship, with portholes and fins, a cratered surface.  I don't think there was an alien, but I bet there was a shooting star (The More You Know tm).  T he kids who weren't an itchy fevered mess that week got to color in the scene, and then describe what happened... in their own words.  And I missed out. 

        I remember gawking at the work on the wall and feeling angry and cheated.  Somehow there was a school assignment that I thought would be fun (except the coloring part- adult Kevin hates the very notion of coloring something in to be critiqued, motor skill improvement be damned.  Kid Kevin thought it was a worse chore than penmanship.) and there was nothing I could do about it.  Of course adult me realizes that if I'd bothered to ask my teacher (Mrs. Lincoff or Mrs. Bouton) if I could participate, another blank copy would have been mimeoed, and all would have been well.  But there was something very intimidating about seeing all my classmates completed work already on the wall.  It felt like there was a contest and I'd missed the entry deadline.  So I read the work of the other kids, and suffered in silence.  I have thought about that wall, and the opportunity I missed, for going on thirty years.  This blog is an attempt to prevent that from ever happening again. 

        I have stories to tell.  I have things to share.  Now we both know where to find them.

Miscellany:

This blog post was written while listening to my Warren Zevon station on Pandora.  In theory, you can listen in here.

The photo I'm using for the moment was taken this summer at an event celebrating the return of the Twinkie.  Yes, I look like a huge dork in it.  I don't mind looking like a huge dork for free Twinkies.

The coffee that fueled this post (and the whole blog subscription process) was Charleston Coffee Roasters's Signature Blend.

If you read this far, and leave a comment, please don't comment about how you got tumblr to work on your PC.  This blog is my workaround.