. Spinning .

Upon making the discovery that my reading of Hurston, Munro and others only served to make me crawl back under the covers to read, it seems I stubbornly embarked upon the path of poetry instead of stopping to look about and replenish supplies to write. I suppose I was counting on the readers, the poets, friends and foes, my old English Professor, even the poor misled Googlers to politely put an end to my misdirected anguish.

But then, I’ve made a fool of myself before, and most of you I’ll never need to look directly in the eye, and with those I must I shall feign madness.

So rest easy, and you need not avoid my site. I at last remembered the training of the classroom and its purpose and have wisely muzzled myself. No more poems.

Compare the feeling of these words in another story of infidelity, as the Preacher finds his wife with another, to Hurston’s young lovers in “The Gilded Six-Bits.”

“He found them that evening
In a tavern in town
In a quiet little out of the way place.
And they smiled at each other
As he walked through the door
And they died with their smiles on their faces.”
(“Red Headed Stranger”, C. Stutz)

The difference is not only in personal tolerance levels, but in the knowledge that in one couple”s story the love was reciprocal.

How can you beat this, Willie singing Krisofferson:

“Freedom’s just another word,
for nothin left to lose,
and nothin ain’t worth nothin but it’s free,
and feelin’ good was easy, Lord,
when Bobby sang the blues,
Feelin’ good was good enough for me,
Good enough for me and Bobby Magee.”
(Me and Bobby Magee, K. Kristofferson).

Now we may all know, but are too polite to point out, that what I’d like to call artistic driven frenzy and passion of being is in reality simply neurosis driven by guilt and pressure. This self-awareness of my diagnosis does not preclude the continued “tapping at my chamber door”, and Edgar doesn’t help, nor does my self-imposed standard of maintenance.

Why is it that my weblog calendar must turn in number every red day to white to indicate a post? Will I die and go to hell if I miss and leave one red? I’ll never know because my obsessive need to leave a clean slate will surely not allow it.

The little ditty below was another fifteen-minute product of an addled mind that’s starting to think in verse. It’s horrid itself, and I love it because it has rhyme, both external and internal and in no particular order that fits. Though Emily would curl up in her grave, she’d at least have to smile a bit at my brazen flaunting of the rules.

Sometimes–or at least right now–the more I read truly excellent writing the more I am intimidated and reluctant in my efforts (thus, the green and yellow of the poem below). I think perhaps I’ll read mediocre-nay, really bad literature. Maybe human nature will react with “cheesus, I can do better than that!” to allow the nerve to put pen to paper (sounds better and more poetic than fingers to keyboard, which just ain’t got the same dramatic effect).

But until I regain confidence, I may indeed continue writing down what’s in my head and mark it “1st Draft.”
Then, when I am older and much wiser, more skilled and free of spirit, I shall go back and revise the many hundreds of opening lines.

There’s story going on everywhere–every moment of our life, and sometimes we’re lucky enough to notice.

All right, so this one’s not going to develop into anything as far as I can see, but it was something I noticed as I pumped gas into my car this morning, and it registered in my mind that I had filed away similar material on the subject. With this post, I’m clearing it out of my brain.

It seems to be a male trait to stick a finger in an ear and vigorously shake the arm, especially when seated in a car by oneself. I’m assuming that this is an attempt to clear the ear for improved hearing.

My question: Why doesn’t it work?

It all ties in, doesn’t it…the ideas that germinate from something overheard or read get stuck in the mind and bloom (or fester!) into narrative.

I am admittedly poor at poetry, and studied it with the thought in mind of its value to writing fiction—or anything else in longer form for that matter. But it seems that I have actually been writing some poetry—good or bad—and retained it in that form. Strange how some ideas, the words themselves, come into your head set up in the format they want to be. Opening lines from a story idea will enter my mind just like that—a sentence that sets a scene or state of character’s mind and leads into the story from there. Others come in prose, and try as I might to change them into a story, prose is what they insist on being, and I tend to let them live as they want.

Discipline, and skill—attention to the elements of form and process—could surely overcome this to produce a finished piece of work that retains its spontaneity without loss of inspiration, and would most likely leave me with a lot less “opening lines.” Every now and then a writer has to sit down and realize that his pretty words are something that he will want others to read and enjoy. A writer has to learn to let go of just a bit of self-pride and satisfaction to work a little harder at the details of the craft.

A writer has to remember that there are rules here too.