Quotes that Say Something


"Please, dad, get down and look. I think there's some kind of monster under my bed."

Life when seen in close-up often seems tragic, but in wide-angle it often seems comic. -- Charlie Chaplin

"And when the cloudbursts thunder in your ear, you shout, but no one's there to hear. And if the band you're in starts playing different tunes, I'll see you on the dark side of the moon." -- Roger Waters, "Brain Damage"


Jun 12, 2012

Pardon the Disappearance Please


          I've got electric light, And I've got second sight.
          And amazing powers of observation . . .
          I've got wild staring eyes, And I've got a strong urge to fly.
          But I got nowhere to fly to.
          Ooh, babe, when I pick up the phone, There's still nobody home.

                                        --  Roger Waters,  "Nobody's Home"


      As I watch this blank blog screen materialize, let me tell you, I did not mean to be off this grid for such a time. I have been away for about 18 days, and this actually amazes me. They have been full and at times difficult days. However, if I were to casually tell you that I have been busy working away, there would be some truth in that. If I were to tell you something else, such as I have been lost in thought at times and/or stuck on a story twist and a plot turn that is eluding me in my quest for the perfect sentence and the perfect paragraph and the perfect collection of original stories, there would be some truth in all of that too. What in the world could be more daunting than a blank screen which (as life unfolds) ought to be filled up with some pinpoint strokes and keystrikes of meaning? Truth be told, I have missed you. Yet I do not wish to show up at our occasional meetings empty-handed, like an ungrateful and uncouth dinner guest.

      Sometimes a piece of fiction, a story, blooms to life organically. It buds up through the gray cortical stew that is one's brain and begins to breathe its own existence as the keys to the keypad snap and clack, taking shape via the energy of inner dynamic forces: a lot like a child evolving with passion into an older kid. I used to believe that all imaginative pieces should come to fruition in another way -- and that would be: slowly assembled by referencing constantly a master plan laid out in note form outlines that had been sewed into place on stacks of papers or, alternately, by checking a few painstaking charcoal sketches at hand as if I were Dr. Frankenstein piecing his biological creation together in the vainglorious hope that someday it would rise, live, breathe, walk, and amaze the world as it trudges along in giant size. This then would probably be what went horribly off the rails with my very early collections of fictional scribblings (literally scibblings on yellow, lined legal pads long ago, slapped into 3-ring holders).

Einstein it is said once got off this good one -- logic will get you from A to Z most of the time, but imagination will get you everywhere.

The sloppy manuscripts made for slightly interesting backroad maps but they usually lacked the imaginative energies and character developments that bespoke of a life force underlying, straining and groaning to get out and wander in others' psyches. That and the fact that I was too young of an adult (read that: naive, clueless, and inexperienced) to take on such serious writing prospects at the time. No organic blossoming was at the time at play? Hack down the plant(s) and toss the dross away. There is my hard-won and humble motto.

      Besides a complicated and mournful business roundtrip to Washington, an uplifting legendary rock concert, one very funny live performace by the comedian Bill Maher, a presentation (by me) of national award to a long-time colleague at a big national whoop-de-doo, and some discomforting dental work, as the 18 passing daylights have quickly approached 19, most of my other recent time and mindfulness has been centered wordlessly on extending my research and reflections on the monstrous sexual abuse case caused by (the Rev.) Gilbert Gauthe in southern Louisiana that came to national light via the New York Times way, way back in the early 1980s. Why such a hideous and pain-riddled subject, seemingly so out of date? It appearsvery directly related now -- if only in my mind -- to the conflicts and crosscurrents that buffet colleagues and me almost every day in our continuing mission to try to get a few things done before retirement bells ding aloud.

      It is a far better thing therefore, I have surmised, to think about then write about highly sensitive, painful, argument-inducing topics by means of fictional metaphors and fantastical characters and angular plot lines than to tempt fate, let it all hang out in a public forum, by means of a prose tale that could rile powerful people up, those personages who clutch temproal powers hotly in their fists, and into a tizzy. But carefully it must be done. Tempers are extremely short, tolerance for honest truth is lacking, defenses are riding high, and well-intended forays into the land of clear disclosure are rarely greeted magnanimously, much less cheerfully, in today's repression-ridden institutions. I have been on the receiving end of wrathfulness one too many times in such contexts because I have attempted to say something 'like it is' to be willing to welcome a repeat of that process.

      So, laying it out again -- Sorry to have been away; please pardon the disappearance; I've missed you. I have been wandering over my keypad, and researching, and reflecting, and painstakingly writing away word by freakin' word, like an endodontist poking around inside a tooth that needs attention, on an original and hopefully (in the end) engaging and meaningful tale that here on my MonsterBlog carries a working title with the oddball term Seussical in it. (The story should not be named anything like that when it's done. If it is ever there.)

     Do you ever get the creepy sensation that something important to you will just never get accomplished? That you should throw it into the bloody bucket with your list of to-do's as dead on arrival? That you may as well declare with forthrightness that you surrender, and that the white flag needs to be waved to the world at large, because you see it just never will bloom in completion? Me too.

     So that's where I have been if the truth has to be told. Not a particularly happy or good neighborhood to set down in, if you ask me. I noticed for the first time today before I sat down to this that an amazing coincidence is afoot. It's about the house full of murky characters who live next door to where I reside. On their mailbox, out by the easement and the stone walkway, there is a family name embalzoned boldly by a tense and shaky hand. The clan name is Frankenstein. The letters are scrawled all over the postal container in a color that looks just like blood red.


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