Saturday, July 07, 2018

Birthing Day

Today is my birthday, or my anniversary, or whatever days that mark the creation of something such as me. I am sure that I share this birthing day/anniversary with a lot of people, places, or things, but that doesn't concern me overmuch. My creator, such as he is, is snoring away in the next room cuddled up to some playmate that isn't quite Nichole Kidman, but given his lack of money, talent, and good looks is quite the catch for him. He won't be awake for another hour or so, and when he wakes up it will just be to see his football team lose a match that he knows they are going to lose, but refuses to accept it. I call him my creator, because I was his idea. I was inspired by a buddy of his that is long since faded into the mists of history. My creator is the major contributor to me, he asked some lay about friend of his to help, but that friend is even lazier than my creator, and has managed a minimal of content. No shame in it, it is just a bit of a disappointment.

The major flaw, and he has a lot of them, of my creator in relation to me, is one of neglect. If I were an actual child rather than an idea, he would have the Department of Children Services called on him, and I would be taken away and given to a "nice" family who would love me and give me the attention I deserve. But as I am just an idea, not a child, I will languish here, content with the indifferent attention granted to me on the rare occasion my creator feels the need to stop by with his "brilliant" ideas. They are few and far between, but I guess I shouldn't complain too much. He does the best he can (or so he says) with the limited talent he has (on that point we can both agree).  All of his failings are not his fault, he sometimes thinks of quite exciting and clever things for me, but the demands of his "real" job, and sleep (sleep being the culprit most often) get in his way of writing them down. I'm aware of many a solid contribution to me that have disappeared in proverbial smoke because he passed out from life before he could put it in writing.

He lies there in his empty bed (well not at the moment but more empty than not), and composes lines that sometimes make him cry, and thinks to himself "I need to remember this, this is actually good." But, sleep claims him, and the idea, such as it was, is lost to history. Sometimes,. when he is very, very lucky, he will remember it and manage to overcome his inertia to contribute it to me. It is rare, but it has happened. The idea for me to take control today was his, he even managed a couple of lovely sentences to contribute, but then got distracted by his playmate, and forgot them. Such is the fool I have to suffer.

I am 12 today, 12 years of struggle for ideas to write down, struggle to remember them long enough to write down, struggle with the grammar Nazis that correct every little mistake made (and he makes a lot of them, here and everywhere) while not bothering to read the content for the sake of its own worth, struggle to keep the everydayness of it all out of here, and the struggle not to slander anyone that would be of a disposition to sue him back into the stone age. There are at present, several story lines in his actual life that would make for lovely stories, but sadly or thankfully, depending on your point of view, he lacks either the talent or the courage to put them here for the world to see and decipher. He isn't the greatest wordsmith in the world by any stretch of the imagination, and sometimes he likes to use the word "cunt" a bit too much, but after so much neglect, one sometimes hopes for any type of attention, even if it isn't exactly Proust.

Another failing of his, is that he has read Proust, and a whole slew of others that are actual wordsmiths, people that made their actual living by their pen, and are on the shelves of any bookstore worthy of the name. He tends to overlook the "50 Shades of Grey" type of books, books that were seemingly written by, and for a audience of mouth breathing, knuckle dragging, cavemen that only recently began to comprehend that fire is, in fact, hot, and focuses instead on the classics as his standard by which he measures himself. That standard, impossibly high for most writers, is the one which he wishes he could obtain, and when (unsurprisingly) he fails, considers what he wrote for me to be "dross" one of his favourite words. 

I suppose that, as yet unmet, standard does keep a lot of shit off my pages, but I am pretty sure that it keeps somethings that are by the actual standards by which he should be measured, quite worthy of a read or two.  A few people, some of which have opinions that he values, have told him that he is, in fact, a writer, and a good one at that. He usually shrugs off those comments, and has his own ideas as to the motive behind them. He is more than likely wrong, but there is a stubborn streak in him, that you may have noticed if you have ever been around him for longer that 45 seconds, and he mainly refuses to accept these compliments.

However, for better or worse, he does put me "out there" for the world to see, and pick apart or praise depending on the person, and I would suppose in today's world where everyone is offended by everything, that takes some measure of courage, or stupidity, sometimes the two are easily mistaken.  This anniversary of my birth will, like many others, have its share of disappointments, and its moments of grief, but there are signs for a positive future for my creator. Time, that tricky thing, passes only in one direction, forward, and the disappointments or grief suffered or yet to be suffered, have in them the germination of ideas that he can use to provide me with more content. He is of the opinion, and others share it, that his best writing, using the term very broadly indeed, happens when he is sad. He has, on occasion, tried to write whilst happy, and sometimes it has worked, but in the main, sadness seems to equal creativity for him.

Much like my creator manages in 95% of the additions he adds to me, I have forgotten several themes that I wanted to address in this post. I suppose that is to be expected as I am not really anything more than the sum of his parts, but it is still a bit of a disappointment, this post didn't turn out as expected, and some of the best lines slipped out of our collective consciousness before I could get the piece of shit computer that we use for our writing to actually work. A lot of swear words and anger can take the place of pretty, creative, butterfly like sentences in an hour of IT work for which I/he are ill equipped to perform. I will bid my massive readership of 4, maybe 5 adieu for now, safe in the knowledge that this anniversary, for me at least, will not be my last.


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