Not To Write A Book
11.21.08
Khuk Khak, Thailand - Someday these entries will end, I know. Either I’m going to die, computers will fail, our star system will collapse from something into nothing, or I’ll just get tired of cranking out this stuff, which already occurs from time to time. Like, not write. And sometimes I haven’t anything to say, or I get to thinking, ‘who cares about what I’ve got to say?’ You know what I’m saying?
“Yeah.”
Like that one-way conversation you’re having with someone you’ve been around for far too long, at least, that day, and you’re talking, and they’re not listening. They ain’t heard a word you said.
“Yeah.”
And you might go away thinking later, ‘I’m not appreciated,’ and then something happens, like maybe a near-death experience or something less emotionally intense, and then that person, usually a friend or family member, or maybe an enemy, never a stranger, but always in relationship, however remote or intimate, might say something nice to your ears to hear.
But writing is part of what I do, and by extension, part of who I am. Not necessarily a compulsion, but rather, a desire sporn from isolation to communicate with the outside world, connecting with friends, as it were. We’re all writers.
You caught it, too? My computer did. ‘Sporn’ is not a word. But on this computer, you can ‘Add to dictionary’, so I did. It’s like, ‘spawned’…or ‘born’…together. Kao jai mai?
“Yes, I undersa-tand. You’re sa-toned.”
Is there someone else in the room, or is this guy talking to himself? Aren’t we always?
Does the stuff we forward to people say something about who we are? What we think is funny? What we think is important? What we think is inspirational or touching?
Just wanted to tell you this blog ain’t no book, but it could be, like a frog could be a prince. And if it…the blog, not the frog…does, you’ll have to read it from the earliest entries to the latest, unless you’ve been reading along, all along.
Then it makes sense. Because some of the later material relates back to the previous entry, or maybe even earlier, which could cause the casual pop-in reader to ask, ‘What the hell…is he talking about?’
Like Thunderclap, the tightrope walker, Lupe’, the sun dance bros, Jesse Jackson in Sherwood Forest, the Bob Hope Memorial Comedy Tour, and Manny. If you weren’t already familiar with these people, you wouldn’t know.
Besides, some of them haven’t been written yet.
So, it’s not a book. ‘Keeping Heart on Pine Ridge’ wasn’t intended to be a book, either.
It just happened. It began like these, a series or short essays, to you, and out of about eighty stories submitted, excluding Thunderclap and the Clone and all that anti-war stuff produced from the rez, forty-four were selected and compiled. I thought they (the publisher) could have included many more, you know, to give it some heft, but we kept it short and sweet and fun.
You sure can’t call it a ‘laborious’ read. I was thinking, like, ‘War and Peace’, and they were thinking along the lines of a comic book.
Well, a comic would produce a comic book, right? Jerry Lewis’ day job was a nuclear physicist. Comedy was just a sideline thing. You knew John Travolta was a pilot, right? Licensed to fly a jumbo-jet. Who really gives a shit? I mean, in your meaningful day-to- day world, do you really give a shit about what John Travolta is licensed to fly? C’mon.
Did you know I was almost a doctor? Had to drop out of med school…too tall. Point is, you could produce a comic book, and over here…over here you’ve got this whole ‘nuther collosal, big-ass THING going on, BIG TIME in the real 3-D world that’s your main thing that people don’t even know about. Yeah. Like, Jesus was a pretty damn good carpenter.
Do you know I love you, and I’ve had only one beer?
- end
