Beginning

It’s taken me quite awhile to get this far. And by this far, I mean a single line after two days of trying to figure out how to make this blog look somewhat coherent and well thought out. Spoiler: it isn’t. Not yet, anyway, and not until I decipher the inner machinations of this format and begin sharing more of my thoughts and ideas and stories. It turns out that WordPress, while remarkable, isn’t as flawlessly easy as all the pros make it out to be. Now I’m even more impressed by professional blogs.

Back to what I want this blog to become: some new fiction, but also a lot of old that I plan to unearth, re-edit, add and subtract–mostly subtract, I’m sure–and hopefully deem worthy of blog publication. Provided that the writing is not too embarrassingly poor.

Also, since it’s a blog, I cannot avoid the nonfiction aspect. I always tell myself that I dislike writing nonfiction and quickly discover that it’s a lie I tell myself, for some reason.

Speaking of nonfiction: a bit about me, lest someone’s reading this who doesn’t already know me.

I’ll begin by sharing memories and thoughts that I’ve never before shared. That always seems like a recipe for success.

I remember quite vividly the first time writing truly excited me. It began with a girl, as most good stories do. At least I think it began with a girl…

I recall writing short stories beginning in 7th grade. Possibly 8th. Or 9th? I don’t have a particularly strong memory when it comes to fifteen years ago, but I’m going to guess 7th. Mostly, I wrote stories for and about my friends. I recall a bizarre piece of fiction I ingeniously called “The Supreme Ruler of the Finger Necklaces”–shortly after discovering the Lord of the Rings far too late in life, and the movies rather than the books…I know, I know, but I promise I’ve read the books since, the Silmarillion, Tolkien’s short stories, and listened to multiple podcasts, so I’ve made up for it–in which I inserted my friends, including a girl I was madly in love with.  I stress madly, for at the time every other girl might as well have not existed. Strange, and beautiful and refreshing, pure and unfiltered and unmarred, when I reflect back upon it now–young love and how overwhelming and new it feels. But being a foolish and far from matured young man who bottled up every emotion then and for the next seventeen years, I could never reveal such a secret to her. I’m pretty certain she knew, or eventually ascertained the truth. She was and still is quite bright.

As I said, most good stories begin with a woman, and it was then I discovered that people actually enjoyed reading what I wrote. They laughed. They shared. They even thanked me. For something I wrote. Something I created. I didn’t know it then, but that would be enough to hook me for life. Perhaps that was even more important than finding my boyhood love returned by the beautiful heroine of my story.

I recall another event with equal clarity. The same year–7th or 8th or whenever–in which I wrote a fiction piece even I found incredibly strange and very much science fiction, despite that I didn’t even read science fiction at the time, other than “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”. I cannot recall the title, or even the premise other than a box filled with nothing and everything, as well as a man and lone red dot floating in a white expanse…and suddenly the title springs to mind as I’m writing this, as if it wanted to free itself.  “The Parallel Isotopes of Unforgiving Kindness”. I have no idea what the title means and am somewhat certain it never meant anything. Anyway, the rest of the story is short.

A peer who was considered popular–I was not and such things seem important in grade school–asked to read the story I had been writing in math class. (what else is math class for?) I timidly agreed, and to my shock, he didn’t only read the entire story in rapt attention, but he insisted it was incredible and tried to get his friends–other popular peers–to read it. They didn’t pay him any attention, and he insisted a bit more, before surrendering.

It didn’t matter if anyone else ever read that story. His excitement and genuine enthusiasm touched me more deeply than few things have in my life, to the point that I remember this moment more clearly than most memories. He wasn’t even my friend, just a peer and someone I occasionally spoke to, but he left a lasting impact on my life. A beneficial crater. Some day I’d like to thank him for something he surely doesn’t remember and see the confused look on his face. Some day I’d even like to devote a book to him, at the very least to remind readers about the power of a single moment, a single phrase or word, and how that moment, even if insignificant to you, can change lives.

I set to writing this entry with no plan and am quite pleased to where the writing has guided me, to what seems like fundamental truths and pivotal moments of change in my life, the roots that have grown into more than a dozen books–most unshareable and laughably bad, but that’s writing–and many other shorter pieces of various forms. Before sharing some of my writings, both new and old and newly old, I wanted to share a bit of myself. I hope I performed adequately. I want this blog to be personal, but far more polished and less melodramatic than my last attempt at a blog, three or four years ago and what feels like another,  more pitiful me.

Thank you, life. Thank you for teaching me much needed lessons and opening myself again.

And thank you, reader, for reading, and although very few will grasp the reference….

Stay awhile and listen.