Thing #1- I can't write poetry. The other day I went to my place of work to hear a family friend's band play. They're called Moon Music, two women and one man, playing keyboard and guitar, and harmonizing perfectly. I went with my parents and we sat right in front of the band, and they were wonderful. Mrs. Wicks (our friend) dedicated their version of Country Roads to me and said good luck in England and my face got red. It was the most beautiful version of Country Roads I've ever heard. Seriously, I am going to have to film them singing it sometimes because it was just lovely. I was sitting next to this guy who would shout loudly after each song 'great job! That was just great!' and stuff like that, clearly a fan who follows the band. They let him get up and play bongos with them for a few songs.
After Mrs. Wicks announced I was going to England for school he asked me what I was going to study. I said writing and he launched into this whole thing about how he used to teach creative writing and now he works with song writers. He was saying how musicians are also creative writers and I agreed.
"Your right," I said, "because songs are poetry."
"Exactly!"
"I envy song writers. I can't write poetry."
"What you just said was poetry."
"That I can't write poetry?"
"That could be the start of a song."
"Hummm."
So anyway, here is my poem about how I can't write poetry, inspired by the random guy I sat next to in a Döner shop on a chilly Friday night.
Poetry is hard.
It makes my brain palpitate
like rain headaches do.
It's a Haiku. Is it sad that I had to look up how many syllables were in each line of a Haiku? I knew it was something like 5,7,5, but I was not sure. Wikipedia says they usually have some seasonal reference in them, thus the rain, but it rains all the time, so that's not really seasonal. Oh well. It's the best I can do. I think I should keep my day job (hahah) and I don't think my Moon Music groupie buddy would be impressed. So it goes.
Thing #2- I like writing stories. I have had all sorts of ideas in my head for all the stories I have, but they are all over the place and I can't seem to make sense of them. I decided about a month ago that I'm completely scraping this book length thing I wrote in 2007 about a suicidal Frenchman and am going to rewrite it completely different. It was originally set in Rome (such a bad idea! I was only there for 11 days!) , now it's set in small town America, all the characters that Truly (the heroine) used to be in contact with via e-mail will now be prominent characters, Truly's character will be completely different, and so on and so forth. I'm so excited about this idea that I want to start writing it right now, but I think I'm going to just outline it and save it for next November's NanoWrimo. Henri (the suicidal Frenchman and title of the book) is used to waiting.
I have also been thinking a lot about my Capstone story from school, Skye. That project was only supposed to be 40 pages, my story ended up being around 70. AND the story was not over. I really need to finish that story. I know what is going to happen next, but no idea how it's going to end. However, that's how I like it. I love just going with a random idea with a few specific ideas of where the story is going, but with no clear ending in site. That way the story usually decides where and how it wants to end, which is so fun. I had just shed a little more light on a character I was excited to explore when I had to end the story for the sake of the project. Now I want it finish it!
Lately I've also been dabbling in flash fiction. That and magical realism are my two favorite things right now, and I have so many tiny ideas floating around in my head that I need to get down before I explode, but here I am just writing about writing and not actually WRITING. How frustrating I can be.
Thing #3- I like winning. WVU's basketball team is in the Final Four for the first time in like 50 years, and it's very exciting. I have had to watch the games at work since that's always where I am, and every time they win another I get all excited and tell everyone in the restaurant 'my team just won!!' Then people question me and say, 'your team?' as if I can't call it my team. COME ON. That's why you go to a college with good sports, so you can have a team to support that will always be yours. Because let's face it, sports fans enjoy going to games and enjoy when their team win because it makes them feel good. When your team wins it makes you feel in some way superior, even though you are not the one who won. But your team won, making you a winner. Why do sports fans get so jazzed when their team is winning? Because that means THEY are winning, each individual person in the crowd wearing blue and gold or whatever color their team is, each person cursing out the ref or shouting profanities at the other team, they all feel like winners. The actual team is doing all the work, but by supporting the team and loving them and shouting and painting their faces and wearing head to toe school colors and by burning couches and dumpsters and getting wasted and waiting in line in the rain for hours at the crack of dawn for tickets, the fans get to enjoy the win as if they were the ones playing. All those school spirit things I just mentioned, those are a lot of work (especially not getting arrested for burning a couch, I can imagine that's a lot of work); I think sports fans deserve the satisfaction of a win as much as the actual team does. Man I love college sports. Let's GOOOO Mountaineers next Saturday! And forever till the end of time!
Thing #4- I have an awful memory. I had a really great thing #4, but then I forgot. I am at a coffee shop right now, and I got up to order a muffin and I was at the register and thought of the thing, and it was really good, but then I sat down and started writing my Haiku and completely forgot it. Lamesauce.
Thing #5- I'm going to die alone. HA, so that sounds way more depressing than I meant it. I'm just saying that I had another encounter with the older weird men who seem to be unexplainably attracted to me. He comes into the restaurant from time to time and we always talk about books. This is cool and all, but a few weeks ago I was sitting at a table hanging out with Renee and he came in again. I had just gotten off my shift and I was sitting at the table across from the register totally zoning out, not wanting to go home quite yet but not having anything to do, so I just sat there waiting for Renee to show me a dress she bought herself the other day. It was sort of busy so she had not gotten a chance to go get it yet when the book guy came in. We chatted again as usual, he asked what I was reading and I asked him, same old same old. BUT then he ordered his food and decided he was going to sit at my table and continue to talk to me. I was not planning on staying much longer, but then I was trapped. He is this 40something balding guy in the scrap metal business who is divorced and has a son. Typical. I feel like we talked for about an hour, about nothing exceptionally interesting, but it could have been like 20 minutes. He remembered things about me that I did not even remember telling him from our other conversation a month ago like my name, that I like writing YA Lit and that I went to someplace like Rutgers (that insulted me a little. WVU is SO not like Rutgers. I did not even remember his name. It felt like we talked for an hour. I managed to get into the conversation that I had somewhere to be (which was actually not a lie) so finally he lets me go, but not before giving me his card. He gives it to me and says "call me if you ever want to do something stupid." I don't even know how to respond to that.
So he leaves and Renee asks me "did you know him?" This happens a lot. I get cornered by some guy and Renee always asks "do you know him?" and the answer is always NO. So whatever, that's that. He does not come in that often, so I'm not really worried about him. I need to get out of Loudoun County I think.
Thing #6- January 26th 2010 was the first anniversary of the rekindling of this blog, and I totally let it slid on by me. I was planning on doing something cool, like a picture montage blog from my year of blogging, or a 'best of' sort of thing, but it's almost April, so I think the moment has sort of come and gone. Oh well, better late than never. Happy birthday blog! You've been swell; I have really enjoyed writing you the last year. Here's to another year and hopefully a handful of new followers!
~major7th
