Writing A Story

 

We don’t always want the world to know the details of our real story. We leave hints just for the fun of it-to see if the determined, the curious, the conspiracy theorists, can follow the tortuous trail we blaze through the thickets of our minds. We prefer to elaborate tales of the non-sequitor.

We seek less dangerous stories to tell. We let our mind go loose among our flotsam and jetsom. There are mysterious, jagged zig-zags of electric-nano-energies trickling between the cellular protuberances of our brains. Random variances flow though our cellular landscapes, the minute geography of the material between our ears. We seek material for musings.

The truth is, we ourselves don’t know where we are headed. All we know is that we are on a journey we have begun to somewhere down the road. We will come to various endpoints. If it is interesting, we extend the trip. If it is boring, or we tire, we bring it to an abrupt end. Then we go off on another tangent. We may come this way again.

The story may not end here-we may come by to repair and mend. Indeed we are always mending. Sometimes the ultimate path follows a much different trail from the one we originally forged. We are the masters here –we call the shots. And we are dictators-we answer to ourselves alone. No explanations. (Unless we are married.)

The wonder of it is that some of us need that blank page so we can have room to elaborate our imaginations. No matter what is happening in our lives, (it may be the most pedestrian,) some of us need a space where we can imagine the unimaginable. Sometimes we come here with an idea, but often we come with just the thought we have something in our gut that we want to express. It may be amorphous for us, without shape or definite direction, but something is buzzing about in our mind that needs, demands, expression.

 

Sometimes we worry at it like a dog with a bone-somehow dissatisfied. We tweak this, we tweak that. If it gets better, we let it rest awhile. Sometimes-rarely, we are too much in love with our own words-so we let it rest. Sometimes we scrap it all and start over.

 It may be just indigestion, but soon enough it finds expression on the blank electronic page. Can it be worthwhile, nevertheless? The reader will ultimately judge.

We often seek to mold complexity out of simplicity. We seek the simple redolent with meaning, intimating other layers of thought that may escape the idle glance. We need it to demand the attention and contemplation of a potential audience. That is the business we are in.

We seek to distill essences present in minute quantity yet rich and brimming with meaning. Occasionally we come across a small knot of an idea in the mixture, a small nugget of gold among all the dross. I fantasize there are such nuggets available to us in our musings.

Then we have the beginnings of a story we can tell.

Whatcha think?