Twenty six letters and a handful of scribbles...

Myths.  Legends. Stories. Fables.  Folklore.  Alternate worlds, realities.  To access these, I needed only twenty-six letters.  Twenty-six symbols capable of infinite combinations, phonetics be damned.  Toss in some commas, periods, quotation marks and whatnot.  Stir vigorously, chew constantly, digest patiently.  Feed the muse, hungry beast that she is, always wanting more, craving more.  Describe my reading style in a word?  Insatiable.  My writing style?  Sensational.  But these are merely words; can they capture the entirety?  The Zen Buddhist shakes his head, says “the finger is not the moon.”  The semanticist nods gravely in agreement and states “the map is not the territory.” 

As for me, I say it’s like a Rorschach test, only, to figure out what the blot means, I ask, “should I look at the blot, or the empty space (negative space, my art teacher corrects)?”  The answer is both.  All.  None of the above.  What the hell, life is not a multiple choice test.  You want answers; become a priest, a scientist.  You ask questions; become a writer, and never stop asking.  What, you say, you can do both?  Well, good for you, then do it, don’t say it (‘Show, don’t tell.’  It’s a classroom mantra chanted by a Greek chorus in my head).  There are so many voices.  What to do with them?  Read. Write.  Listen, maybe they have something to say.

I sometimes wonder what it was like before I knew how to read.  Was my head quiet?  Were the voices merely gibbering and babbling, or had they invented some heretofore unknown tongue that was obliterated by literary convention?  I’ll probably never know; it’s been so long.  Personally, I blame a two-year-old’s insatiable curiosity; well, that and a plethora of Teaching Teddy tapes.  Not long after that, I wrote a book.  It was ten pages long, and had only one line, which, incidentally, appeared on the last page.   

 …And then the Castle died.

Such are the facts of my life that were you to sum them up they would consist only of the ellipsis before the finale, which, thankfully, has yet to come.