Once again, I've been plagued by my blog. As it sits here empty in the vast tumultuous sea of the Internet like a dusty and dogeared Bible on a shadow-laden shelf in a musty library, I can't help but remember all the Wednesday's that have come and gone like an invitation declined again and again, yet it is always extended with the same brimming of hope in the eyes.
So here I sit on a Sunday night, with too many hours stretching ahead of me like a young boy with too much open road ahead of him and too much horsepower at the tip of his fingers, and I don't know what to do with it. But like I told one of my online friend's I was talking to at the time, I was debating between listening to my stations on pandora.com and writing something, and she told me...do both! So that's what I'm doing. I've forgotten that I can in fact, write while listening to music. They tell you that for concentration purposes you shouldn't try to do both at once, but I've known for a long time my mind in fact uses music not as a distraction but as a sort of white noise that some people use to fall asleep to. It acts like a thin veil to separate the world inside my head from reality, to separate the imaginary noise from the real noise. You get the picture.
But, I digress. What I really meant to talk about tonight is how I feel when rereading, or even just randomly tripping over a certain character, fictional town, or witty line in my mind while going about my day. Doing so feels like running into an old friend. There's a lot of things familiar about them, but yet there's something different. Is that's sort of different that only time can bring about, like moving away from your hometown and then coming back after twenty-some years, or maybe even just a few months. It's that perspective you gain, isn't it? When you're walking the narrow, shadow-dancing halls of that story, listening to the muted conversations behind the wooden, six-panel doors and watching that hallway bend, twist and curve out of sight, always wondering what's at the end, wondering if there is an end...you're as familiar with the story as your own reflection in the mirror. But take down all the mirrors for a few months, or twenty years...and then one day wake up and find them all there again, would you look at yourself differently? What would remain the same?
I've always been fascinated with how time affects buildings that have no one to tend to them, to keep the deftly twining hands of time at bay. I'm talking about abandoned buildings. I love how their wooden siding becomes smooth and rutted at once like slick river rocks. I love how each board shines a dull gray, stripped of paint slowly like sand scrubbing bones in the desert. I love how the many roofs of all those abandoned barns stay to sway inward like the backs of mares who have served well over their years and now live without a purpose, but are still loved. I've always also thought of this slow but obvious deterioration of abandoned buildings to be nature reclaiming the buildings themselves. After all, the materials - most of them - were wrought from nature. So nature is just reclaiming what is it's own. Perhaps in it's own way nature is showing mercy on the building, even though it may seem that in it's dilapidated state it's the opposite of mercy. But like the woman who stays with her abusive husband, few can understand it, or want to.
The way I write stories - or novellas, more specifically, is this: they usually start out as what I have dubbed Story Thoughts. Which are basically what their name implies, basically random thoughts springing from my brain and onto the paper where they cluster into a handful of characters, plots and trailing veins pumping to a heart that's barely there but living nonetheless. Once this is done and the imaginary becomes real - on my computer anyway! - it's up to me whether I want to strength that heart, twine more veins to and from it, and feel that blood tasting of the Oklahoma plains, or the wind-swept streets of my home state of Wisconsin, or the blustery cliff of a New England ocean side cottage. What often happens though, is I stumble upon a dry spot and have to clutch the heart with both hands, struggling to remember what it was that started it pumping in the first place, or another vein will come sneaking upon me, allowing me just enough of its sugary delight to get me interested. Then off I go on another story thought, until I'm tangled in a haphazard array of veins and hearts, each pumping to a different tune, each as familiar as my own heart, each connected to my mind in some way, to my everyday thoughts.
That may not seem very effective, devoting myself to one story, only to jump into the driver seat of the next shinier and faster convertible that comes along like a hitch hiker looking for that scraggly man with a heart more restless than the last, a guy she can never hope to tie down, but delights in the fact that she stole his stampeding heart for an instant, only an instant, but it felt like an eternity. But in my defense, such a writing style has brought about a plethora of ideas I don't think I would have gained otherwise had I stuck with one story until the end. Now granted, I know I've caused an eternity of dead-ends, like an abandoned house that some kids decided to paint but stopped at the second-floor, or that one new window on the third story that looks like a gaudy piece of jewelry on a homeless woman, out of place and almost indecent. But again, in my defense, all of those dead-ends bump against my consciousness like the open barn door banging against the siding until you run out to shut in it in the swirling, white noise effect of the blizzard.
I've probably digressed again, haven't I? But I've learned long ago that when I'm writing - whether it be another blog post or a novella - I'm like the packhorse trailing behind the cowboy's while my mind is the powerful, prancing Stallion ahead that commands attention and simply tugs me along, knowing I serve a purpose somewhere, but not caring what it is. Nonetheless, I'll tug on that thin and frayed rope I'm tethered with and attempt to steer myself back on track.
This blog post actually came about roughly a week ago when I, facing extra time on my hands, decided to reread one of my favorite novella's I started earlier this year. It doesn't even have a title yet, such is the fate of so many of the others. It's simply called Brick Farmhouse Story, because - and do I have to say this? :) - it was inspired by a brick farmhouse! And also, like so many other of the old houses which have inspired stories, I only glimpsed it for an instant but that instant was enough to paint a detailed picture upon my mind, and spring fictional characters and their stories on the windowpane of my imagination. Whether this speaks of a photographic memory, or just an intense love and passion for old houses I guess is up to you to decide, but that's how most of my stories come around. Anyway, while rereading this novella I had started, I felt myself being gently pulled back into the world I had created on paper and from a steadily fading and distorted mental picture in my mind of a silent and humble brick farmhouse. I felt that same excitement as the characters felt, and sometimes, if I'm far enough over the threshold of their world, new ideas to continue those final words dangling off the edge of another cliff of imagination will come to me, and I'll start another chapter, or continue a conversation, or maybe start something completely new.
It also feels good just to know they're still there, all those characters, and the worlds they live and breathe in. Waiting, watching and wondering...when I'll return. Now maybe, you wonder, how I can walk around in my own life with all these worlds and people all products of my imagination dwelling in the same square footage. And my answer is, it's all perfectly natural to me! And those of you who are also writer's can agree, I'm sure. Just like all the abandoned houses and farms that have caught my fancy throughout my life, it is a certain kind of beauty that only a few can understand, and appreciate. Every time I see those dilapidated buildings I feel the same excitement and fascination coiling through me like so much whispering prairie grass swaying and bending amidst its golden field. But there's always something different, something that time has altered with its deft fingers like the bare branches of a forest shaking the snow which lays upon them, or creating a new song with the wind that twines between them.
And just like the abandoned farm on the way to my great aunt's farm in Upper Michigan, I don't know when exactly I'll return to the many story thoughts and novella's I've started and stopped over the years, but what I do know is that they'll scrawl their name on another folder and file it away in that narrow and endless hallway of filing cabinets in my mind. The floorboards of my imagination and conscious sag with the weight of them, and someday they might even snap, but it feels good to have them up there, stored away. Are they in order? Probably not. But, I prefer it that way.
Little side note: The house pictured in this blog post is the house of the abandoned farm I mention in the above paragraph.
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