Something ... Anything
In an attempt to overcome the static friction that seems to be holding me in thrall and the general sense of ambivalence towards blogging in general, I thought I'd just start a blog-post and let my mind roam for a bit.
I've been suffering a general sense of creative malaise lately. That's not to say I haven't had a wide variety of topics on which to expound, and in a few cases - unleash a verbal army of rabid weasels. Rather, I felt a need to let a few things slide back into obscurity so I could get back to the orginal purpose of my blog: a vent for creative writing and an excercise in coalescing random thoughts into a cohesive pattern. Apparently, it gives me an opportunity to shake the cobwebs off my internal thesaurus as well.
We recently returned from a long weekend visiting my parents at their new home in rural Arkansas. This is usually a beautiful time of the year to visit the rolling hills at the foot of Ouachita mountains with all the fall colors to be found in abundance. I say usually, because on this particular occasion, monsoon season had decided to make a vacation trip to Arkansas as well. Still, it was a pleasant and peaceful visit, watching the rain fall while sitting on the generous front porch of my parents' home. The ride home, however, was about as stressful a trip as ever I have made in a car. We (read: I) decided to take the scenic route home - riding along the top of the Ouachita Mountain Range on the Talimena Scenic Drive into Oklahoma and then back down into Texas. Thick fog and heavy rains made the twisted mountaintop drive an excercise in eye strain, trying to discern the faint contrast between the yellow stripes on the road against a backdrop of complete white-out. Amazingly, we passed a number of hapless motorcyclists who either courageously or foolishly braved the same conditions on half as many wheels. I was greatly relieved to finally drop down below the fog line, only to be set upon by blindingly heavy rains that pooled on the poorly designed and maintained Oklahoma roadways. Hydroplaning is one of those concepts taught in most driving schools, but remains virtually an academic excercise on Texas roads. Not so in Oklahoma where it was a constant struggle to keep our aging Mercury Sable Wagon from sliding off the road or into oncoming traffic. I felt like I was piloting a jet-ski more than a nearly twelve-year-old land-barge. Eventually, we finally made it across the state line into Texas, where we missed an opportunity to take a break inside the comfortable and spacious visitor center by only 10 minutes. The rest of the trip was completely uneventful, and I collapsed into the recliner just as fast as I could pull my boots off.
I've been suffering a general sense of creative malaise lately. That's not to say I haven't had a wide variety of topics on which to expound, and in a few cases - unleash a verbal army of rabid weasels. Rather, I felt a need to let a few things slide back into obscurity so I could get back to the orginal purpose of my blog: a vent for creative writing and an excercise in coalescing random thoughts into a cohesive pattern. Apparently, it gives me an opportunity to shake the cobwebs off my internal thesaurus as well.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
We recently returned from a long weekend visiting my parents at their new home in rural Arkansas. This is usually a beautiful time of the year to visit the rolling hills at the foot of Ouachita mountains with all the fall colors to be found in abundance. I say usually, because on this particular occasion, monsoon season had decided to make a vacation trip to Arkansas as well. Still, it was a pleasant and peaceful visit, watching the rain fall while sitting on the generous front porch of my parents' home. The ride home, however, was about as stressful a trip as ever I have made in a car. We (read: I) decided to take the scenic route home - riding along the top of the Ouachita Mountain Range on the Talimena Scenic Drive into Oklahoma and then back down into Texas. Thick fog and heavy rains made the twisted mountaintop drive an excercise in eye strain, trying to discern the faint contrast between the yellow stripes on the road against a backdrop of complete white-out. Amazingly, we passed a number of hapless motorcyclists who either courageously or foolishly braved the same conditions on half as many wheels. I was greatly relieved to finally drop down below the fog line, only to be set upon by blindingly heavy rains that pooled on the poorly designed and maintained Oklahoma roadways. Hydroplaning is one of those concepts taught in most driving schools, but remains virtually an academic excercise on Texas roads. Not so in Oklahoma where it was a constant struggle to keep our aging Mercury Sable Wagon from sliding off the road or into oncoming traffic. I felt like I was piloting a jet-ski more than a nearly twelve-year-old land-barge. Eventually, we finally made it across the state line into Texas, where we missed an opportunity to take a break inside the comfortable and spacious visitor center by only 10 minutes. The rest of the trip was completely uneventful, and I collapsed into the recliner just as fast as I could pull my boots off.
posted by HeadCheese at Thursday, October 14, 2004
1 Comments:
Sigh ... everyone has their critics. Strictly speaking, *everything* I write here is "unprofessional" and based on *my* opinions and experiences, so we'll just have to agree to disagree.
I'm pleased to hear that you like my writing style and hope you'll continue to come back for more, but please understand that I have no intention of soliciting anyone's approval for what I write. It simply can't work that way if I'm to have the freedom to write creatively in the style you say you like. Not everything will be pretty, or clever, or frankly any good at all sometimes. The excercise is to exorcise - get out the thoughts bouncing around in my head, or simply write a line of text and see where it goes. When you always swing for the fences, sometimes you're just simply going to strike out. You get to choose which is which as a reader, but your strike-out may be someone else's homerun - and vice-versa.
• • • • • • • •
In any case, the Arkansas/Oklahoma story above runs about the same way as the return trip. I was so ready for it to be over that there really wasn't any sort of wrap up or clever ending - just physical and psychological collapse.
There are other stories from the trip that need telling - some cute, some wistful and some just a little heartbreaking - but I'm still trying to shake off this writer's cramp that has sunk into my psyche of late.
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