I have been told that I write well, a fantasy that I don't actually subscribe to, and that ability must make the inside of my mind a wonderfully horrible place. The latter part of that statement I can attest to. The inside of my mind can be both horrible and wonderful, usually the horrible just shades matters, and I write dross that would only do a slightly intellectually challenged 4th grader proud. That is, for the most part, entirely my fault. These words that I put down "on paper" are my own. Formed and fashioned in the factory of my own limited intellect. On occasion I quote from my betters, and my writing improves, but in the main these horrible blog posts are my own to take blame (or more rarely, credit) for.
Perhaps the biggest problem that my mind, and therefore my writing face, other than a lack of imagination and talent, is the fact that it is very jumbled inside of there. There are random thoughts, or lines from some book, song, or poem that I hear and immediately begin to weave a few lines around that should, if I were to apply myself, turn into a blog post. There are piles of them, there are blog posts to keep me busy writing away for the next six months, if I only had the willpower to write them down, and flesh them out. There are situations that I encounter almost daily that could, with some application, turn into lovely stories, or at least lovely for someone like me.
It is very difficult for me to separate my "real" life from the things that I write down in this blog. Not every blog post has a real life inspiration, after all I do have an imagination, but a fair amount of them are usually, however obliquely, about someone I know, or something I saw or did. It is a very personal failing of mine that I mostly lack the imagination to make this separation. The real, day to day, life I live isn't at all exciting. It mostly consists of me hoping to be somewhere else, or for it to be either earlier or later in the day, or (mostly) for me to want to take a nap. I am tired of the everyday routine and want a life of romantic adventure, but sadly the rent is due, and the bills have to be paid, and wandering off to Mexico in search of lost treasure doesn't seem feasible to a fellow in my situation. I have inhabited many bars in my time on the planet and I have yet to meet some leggy, blonde Femme Fatale that needs rescuing from some brute, and will sweep me off into some Casablanca type adventure where I get to dodge secret police, and make witty wise cracks in the face of danger, and find my fortune in unmarked 100 dollar bills.
My adventures are much more mundane like trying to walk in the park without being run over by some dipshit playing Pokemon while driving their car in some intimation of Mr. MacGoo. Sure it is dangerous, but the only remarks I get to make as I dodge out of the way, are not exactly Bogart like in their wittiness. Comments about their mothers fornicating with turtles of the same sex might sound clever, but to the dipshit driving off they aren't even a blip on their idiot radar. Most of the time they don't even see how close they have come to taking away my mother's pride and joy, i.e. me. If that isn't enough adventure for me, then there is always the weekly drive to Kroger that usually leads to at least three near death experiences. James Bond just has to worry about Odd Job and his lethal hat. Try dodging a distracted Granny in a 1997 Cadillac at 8:30 in the morning. That, my friend, takes skill.
These fantastic car dodging adventures are sandwiched around having a real job. A job that I don't feel that I am particularly good at, but which remains necessary in order to keep me in beer money. The fact that the job makes me want to drink, and thus require more beer money is just an added bit of (American) irony. This job does take up a fair portion of my day, and it is not something that throws romantic adventure my way on a daily basis. Body and soul do need to be kept together, and unless I've some rich dowager aunt that has escaped discovery, and that wishes to make me her sole heir to some oil baron like estate, this job will be the means to keep body and soul together for quite a while longer. In theory, I should just forget escaping to the Anti-podes to become some god-king to unwashed savage natives, and get better at my job. Give it more of my time, more effort, maybe pay someone to shout slogans at me whilst I wander around the halls of my office in order to encourage me to be the best at this job anyone can be.
In theory that is what I should do, but it seems that if I were going to do that, I would have done it by now, and not wait for some random day in hot as balls August to make this major, life changing decision. In reality, what is more likely to happen is that I will continue to sleep walk through the majority of my days, and try to figure out some dodgy way to make a fortune, steal a leggy blonde, and run off to the south of France, where she would probably leave me for the cabana boy. But, at least I'd have a pool, so I'd have that going for me. The real reality, the one that I am going to attempt to actually bring to fruition is one where I actually give this blog the attention it needs. The title, which made sense at the beginning before I wandered off on a tangent, is about the jumble of ideas wandering around in my head that never somehow manage to make it to print.
This is a very personal failing of mine, and with each unwritten idea it gets worse. There is a post on bridges that I have mostly written twice, and forgotten three times. There is the 2nd part/half of Fortress around you heart, that must needs be committed to paper. There is the ongoing saga of Ladislaw, and not Allison that I need to explore within the bounds of the confidentiality agreement that certain people insisted upon me signing. There is the further story of what happened when someone kicked open the door numbered 6, and what happened on the inside of that flea infested place that lead to even more trouble for everyone involved, well except for the dead guy. All of these and a few more, need to be unjumbled (see a new word), sorted out, and written down for all the grammar Nazis of the world to correct. Gives them something to do. Helps distract them from their own miserable existence, and gives them a sense of both purpose and superiority. Watch this space, but do so with the caveat that I have been trying to do these things for almost a year. However, hope spring eternal, and who knows maybe the romantic adventure is more fun to write than to live. One can only hope.
