Feeling devoid of inspiration this late afternoon bleeding
into evening, I went looking for a source of writing prompts. What I found with the help of an omnipresent
search engine was something from Word Press.
Surprise it was a blog post that promised a prompt a day. Not a bad thing I thought to myself.
Scrolling through the list I found a couple prompts intrigued
me. One was write down what was the 11th
item on your bucket list. 11th
you say, well that was a no brainer. I
want to tour provincial parliament building in Manitoba or Saskatchewan or
maybe both. Another prompt that caught my attention was to detail your response
to a gift that brought out bittersweet memories. Too much of what I write is bittersweet. But
what would that bittersweet gift be, this was the intriguing question? Maybe it
would be a crumpled list someone found while cleaning out my old high school showing
what scholarship I might have been awarded had I not run naked through the
halls of that building. Maybe it would
be a menu of an old favorite restaurant long gone.
The prompt I settled on was, “When you started your blog did
you set goals? Did you meet them?” I am
at 647 posted items on this blog. Maybe,
just maybe, it is time to think about these questions.
My blog arose out of a friend urging me to write down some
of the tales I would tell sitting around the Beaner’s coffee shop on Ottawa
Street in Lansing, MI. Some of the
stories were self-effacing. Some of the
stories were profane, right up there with the telling of the Aristocrats
joke. Some were wry and involved the
suspension of belief, the never let the truth get in the way of a good story
kind of anecdote. I thought my friend might have a point. Some of the stories needed to be
captured.
Did I set any goals?
Yes. What were they? Well, that
is hard to say. I guess the main goal
that I had was not to create a blogsite and then just let it sit there
empty. When I started my blog all those
years back I surveyed a number of blogs that were on sites like the one I use,
Blogger. A great number of them started
out strong. There were months of
postings but then they just petered out.
I guess my main goal was not to let the writing die out.
Did I succeed? I
think so. There are dry periods with my
blog ...but I always come back to it. Right
now, my writing is in “on” mode. Funny
what happens when you disengage with Facebook.
Suddenly the words come back.
Suddenly the time to write the words reappears.
There was probably one other goal. There were about four
core stories I wanted to capture. I have gotten down three of four of
them. The piece about Blubbery Hill was
one. The tale about taking LSD on a
Baptist youth retreat was another. I
think I got both of these down pretty well.
A third one was to tell the story of the aliens in the high school
hallway. Got that down too.
One story has always eluded me. It was the one about the suddenly gay golden
glove boxer on many hits of LSD coming to kill me with his 9mm pistol. This one is really hard to set down. I mean the boxer kept selling the acid and
taking a hit each time he sold one. Then
he, um, went upstairs with one of my gay roommates and had an encounter. Apparently tripping balls was not the time
for this guy to explore his sexuality. He
decided a forceful response was required.
It involved a gun and kicking in my front door.
As I was hiding under the twin bed in the basement of that
big old Sears house on Lansing’s east side wedged between my lesbian roommate
and the initiator of the sex acts that led to the FREAK OUT WITH THE GUN that
led to my front door being kicked in I kept thinking I did not want my parents
to have to learn I died in a drug and sex fueled slaughter. But this is such a small sliver of the
story. Yeah, I have never been able to
catch that one on paper. Maybe I will
simply record a video of me telling the story and then post it. Could be way simpler.
Okay so did I set goals, yes. Did I meet them? Mostly.
I am good with that state of affairs.
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