Will these fragments ever make a whole?

Yes I know, I haven't written a new post in probably close to three weeks, but the more I thought about it - and pushed my guilt away, actually - I realized that perhaps all those Wednesdays that came and went with me sitting at my computer - at some point during the day, but mostly during the night! Because after all summer is for being outside, isn't it?? - and not opening Blogger and writing a new post, I just wasn't ready to write a new post. And what do I mean by that? Well, it could go several ways. One, and perhaps the most obvious, is that I just couldn't plum think of anything to write about! Now sure there's always that ol' standby well in the back of my mind, where old ideas and shells of others ruminate, generally stinking up the whole place and irritating the fresh, full-bodied ideas huddled away from that mysterious black hole while they simultaneously try to muscle their way through to that breaking point where I snatch them up. But sometimes I guess I don't feel like dropping the dented and rusted bucket into that smelly well and just plopping something down, I want it to be something substantial, and that doesn't mean either that it'll necessarily be one of the 'full-bodied' ideas sitting eagerly on the edge, watching me move about here and there through the cracks in the sagging floorboards beneath.

And another reason why perhaps I choose to wait three weeks to write a new blog post, is that I was waiting for all those fragmented ideas holed up in my mind to make a whole. And ta-da! Here comes the explanation behind the title for today's post! Didn't think I'd get to it so quickly did you? Well, even I have the power to surprise, even myself sometimes. :) Well anyway, lately it's seemed - well lately is a loose word, let me tell you, it's really been all my writing life! - it seems that I no longer write novellas or even stories, somewhere along the line the all-important folder in Microsoft Word on my laptop demoted itself from the catchy Corrie's Stories - Corrie, by the way, is my nickname - to simply Story Thoughts. Oh yes, I know what you're thinking. "Story Thoughts?" I'd insert the confused face I use for Facebook chat but then I'd feel like my texting lingo - of which honestly, since I've gotten a phone with a full keyboard treat it like so and type out full words - is infiltrating my normal, civilized speak and thus would feel honestly freaked out as if I were deep in the troughs of Stephen King's book Christine, of which I am actually, and it's just as amazing as the first time I read it!

Oh dear, I just acted like William Faulkner in that torture-for-the-eyes-and-brain-book-to-read, Absalom, Absalom! where he inserts a dash and then takes off like 0he's whipping a horse with the same rhythm as his hooves beat half-circles into the ground, and when it stands beneath him trembling he realizes he left something unfinished behind, way behind, but he'll be damned if he remembers what it was, and he just shrugs his shoulders and continues, probably at a slower pace, promising himself he won't do it again, but then another idea creeps up on him greedily like a tantalizingly straight and flat road, and the whip raises again, the thought stopping dead behind him and the horse's rear lowers and dirt flies in its face.

I've forgotten how good it feels to ramble on my blog, truly I have. And perhaps this is exactly how Faulkner felt, and even though I'd like to snap his dusty bones in his grave for writing that horrid book, Absalom, Absalom! that I had to read for my English class last semester, I can kind of find common with him, but that common ground feels like reaching an agreement with the enemy on a lumpy, blood-spotted minefield.

Going back to texting-speak for a while, because honestly? I've been seeing way too much of it on Facebook these days, why do some people - and some of them are related to me, God help us all - feel they can use 'texting speak' when commenting? For instance, someone sent me a message on Facebook and usually where people use apostrophes in words like "i'll" and "we'll", they omitted them completely, leaving me to lean forward like an old woman and cock an eyebrow. I mean, really? Is it that difficult to insert a little apostrophe? If you take the time to write out the word to begin with, please insert the proper...oh shoot, I'm an English/Creative Writing major and I don't know what those things are called. I guess I should be saying "God help me" now right? Well, we're not perfect, so I guess I can't rant about my generation - and even those older than me - about using "texting-speak" when they should be using, good ol' fashioned English. Then again, I'm sure there are plenty of you that find it vexing as well. Now maybe I feel so strongly about this because I've never liked texting-lingo to begin with. I mean sure, I'll admit I overuse "lol" so much it's like a deer killed out on a busy highway in Milwaukee during rush hour, pretty soon it's lost its meaning and has become something along with the million other 'somethings' ground deep into that amused and cracked asphalt. But I would never go as far as to omit apostrophes so abbreviate words so much you have to sit there deciphering it like it's some damned code on Lost. Texting has killed the English language, and although I'm not really doing that much of my part to sustain it other than refraining from using 'texting-speak' in my own texts, and ranting about it here, I find it interesting how when something is invented to make something else easier, there's always a repercussion, sometimes building over several generations until we stand here today, scratching our heads while we read Facebook comments, or watch some teenager struggle to sign their name in cursive. Speaking of which, I won't even go there. Whenever I have to sign my name, my left-hand cringes and just tightens up so all I can do is write out my first name and the "D" in my last name and then scribble the rest in a vague line of ups and downs like the water line lapping against a boat, hinting at something.

Can one achieve hindsight within the same blog post? Because I feel like I did, just now, while my mind rummages over the multi-topic rant in the above paragraphs. But, I don't feel bad about, because like I said, it feels good to rant in my blog again, it's like sitting inside your car, the doors shut tight while you blaze down some long-dead country road singing screechingly to some song at the top of your lungs, perhaps beating the dust off of the steering wheel or the dashboard like its a slumbering, ancient relic of a piano and with just the right slap will come to life and pound the tune out with you in all the same awkwardness. It's a familiar place, a place where the seat is shaped like you, smells like you, and even bears the myriad stains of when you thought you could eat that meatball marinara sub from Subway on your break, or drink a McDonald's Frappe without it tipping over in the cup holder while you navigated those narrow, city streets.

But I guess, in my usual rambling, loosely-organized way, I'm coming back to the topic of today's post, which as always, bears a rhetorical question! Which conveniently happens to be in the title itself! "Will these fragments ever make a whole?" As a partial answer to that question - I know, I know, more fragments right? :) - while I was laboring against the wind and fighting the heavy, metal frame of my ill-suited mountain bike while riding out to a beautiful old, abandoned farmhouse I found (perhaps talked about in next week's blog post!) I thought about random metaphors I could use for different points I wanted to get across. Do I however, remember any of them? Of course not! It's like a radio dial spinning beyond your control - perhaps it never was in your control in the first place - in your car, offering up snippets of songs, screams, random laughter, serious political talk or any number of things, and whether you liked them or not, it would keep on spinning, that little red needle doing a dance across the numbers like it was performing a tightly choreographed routine and each step was a number on the floor.

I mean, it's not like I'll always have a pen and pencil with me to write the darn things down, you know? So why do they come to me? The feeling is sort of like rushing past in a vehicle and spotting and a deliciously dilapidated house sulking way back in the woods, and realizing you neither have your camera, nor have time to stop, and might never see the house again, and all you'll be left with then is a maddening wisp like cigarette smoke lingering in a bar long closed down, and even though the windows are gutted and the roof is a thinning scalp of shingles and beams, the building still retains its smells, although its not solid anymore, but like the wind that weaves between the things it has stilled, something that lays low in your mind, clinging to an invisible, mental spiderweb woven there by time.

Well, I guess there's your metaphors for you, although their not exactly the one's I thought about on my bike ride. But, like I said, it doesn't much matter, because I'll think about other one's anyway, as was just exemplified!

Perhaps its the whole 'no-fences' mentality I have towards writing my novellas that keeps me from finishing anything, or approaching any writing idea - whether it be a novella or a blog post! - with a solid frame already laid solidly in my mind like the deep-set foundation already marking its place in the ground, patiently waiting for the walls to press down around it. While I can remember whole houses I've spotted over the years and haven't seen in person for probably several, when it comes to sitting down here at my desk and writing on this laptop, stepping onto the first crumbling steps of another house, another world waiting beyond the threshold, I don't see a solid foundation, I don't even see a crumbling one. It might just be a distinguishing feature, a cigarette pulled away from the lips, an old Ford wagon ambling down a narrow country road while the driver listens placidly to the fields whispering back and forth to each other, or maybe it's a house itself, but it'll only be the decorative capitals at the tops of the soaring, two-story columns or a delicate three-story turret rising importantly above an equally striking but dilapidated Victorian. Each novella I write is like an unassembled stained glass window and somehow, without fences, without trails of lead, without a sturdy, richly-hued cherry wood, carved window frame, I have to put those random fragments of deeply-colored glass and fit them into an invisible frame, so when I write that last word, I can step back and find that it all fits. Of course, I'll have to make minor adjustments here and there, but as a whole it must fit, and look beautiful when the golden, full-bodied light of evening tumbles through it like a Friesians mane billowing in the wind, the wind itself seeming to get tangled in its silken depths and pulse within the black depths like sunlight sparkling beneath the gently ebbing waters of the coast.

See? Why was I so worried, and frustrated at that, of having random, juicy metaphors flitting in and out of my mind when all of those just came tumbling out? Anyway, I believe another one of the things that lead to me renaming that folder in Microsoft Word Story Thoughts is because when I start on one story, I may be standing solidly on that first step, but that doesn't mean I won't step off to do other things and suddenly...down this road and that, sitting in the hollow of a valley, or atop a balding hill will be another house, sometimes more tantalizing, sometimes more imposing, both are compelling to me. But again, it will be just a fragment, and obviously I have discovered that is all I need. Now, don't get me wrong, just as my heart goes out to any abandoned house I've stumbled upon, so do the novellas I've 'left-behind', so to speak, sit silently and waiting in the back of my mind, some gripping the edge of that well, others far from it, but none of them forgotten. I often thought it amusing and quiet peculiar that all of the characters in stories both new and old reside in one place...my mind. I like to think of it as all of the dilapidated farmhouses they live in - and believe me, they all do live in such houses! - all crammed onto a single country lot, forming one of those hideously added-on-to historical homes where the current owners and the several before them paid no mind to the house's heritage, to what the outside of it looked like even though they were gaining perhaps much-needed space on the inside. Now, granted, the particular old house I'm referring to, wouldn't undergo such monstrosities, after all I am an old house fanatic far more than probably even I realize! After all (I apologize for using that word again so soon!) most of my metaphors pertain to old houses don't they? Why do I feel like I have a knack for stating the obvious?

Well, there you go, if I may abruptly switch gears while you tighten your seat belt against the lurching of the vehicle around you and the grinding of the gears in your ears, that's what three week's of pent-up ideas will do to a person. I think the creativity outlet is smoking by now. Then again, it's better than not plugging into it at all, right? ;)