Riverhed.com

I haven’t been carrying my moleskines around lately, which is unfortunate; keeping them with me at all times was a habit I should have done more to encourage. I use them for such random, varied purposes, from jotting little ideas I have, or a single line of dialogue I think up, or using it as a journal for a few weeks and then abandoning it, only to return to it and decide to write about something else instead. They’ve been organizers, where I keep every little bit of important information at the time, to being address books.

Going through a couple of my old ones right now, I stumbled upon a couple of those little snippets of thought that I love finding in these things. Sometimes they transport me to the time I wrote them, or at least give me some vague sense of nostalgia, but at the very least I either think “Oh, hey, that’s great, I should use that for something,” or “man, that was fucking terrible, what was I thinking?” There’s even one page where I had written some stupid, out-of-context thought and apparently went back to it months later, crossed it out and put an arrow pointing towards it and a note that said “Thought it was a good idea at the time.” I guess being my own worst critic can be a good thing, but sometimes I feel like it paralyzes me when it comes to writing. Hopefully this blog can help me get over some of those fears. I’ve never feared the criticisms of anyone else, but the most disappointing feeling I’ve had as a writer is when I write something and look back at it and say “Man, that was terrible.” It’s more embarassing than being caught masturbating (especially when you’re masturbating to the writing of yours that you like).

So, for tonight, here are a couple little nuggets from the archives that I liked. There is no context, just loose ideas that I might use for something someday.

1:

I fantasize about yelling at my boss in jobs I don’t even have. Do you know what it’s like to be turned down or overlooked for a raise or promotion in your daydreams? It sucks, man, it really does.

2:

He was the kind of guy that wrote nice poetry to his girlfriend about putting rocks in his shoes so he would remember each step he took towards her and ruined it by later describing in detail the pus-filled blisters and blood-soaked socks at the end of the day.

3:

“If the world were black and white, would color cameras have been invented first?”

4 (from a journal entry when I was driving the buses on the Vineyard. I would write some of these down in the two or three minutes I had at a bus stop during my shift.):

Small, obnoxious kid goes into a frenzy, forcing everyone on the bus to listen to a rant about the entire story of the new Harry Potter, despite pleas from the other passengers not to ruin it. [It had just come out.] Continues anyway, visibly angering a teenaged girl with the book in her hands and a bookmark in the middle. Boy reveals that he is about to be shipped off to camp for a month. Passengers all cheer and applaud the missing parents and sympathize.”

—

Man uses the last two dollars on a $16 change card. I go to throw it away but he wants to keep it. For a scrap book. His used up, wrinkled bus change card.

—

Morbidly obese couple only passengers between Edgartown and Oak Bluffs, arguably the more scenic, if not the most, of the down-island routes. The husband asks, “so a lot of people come here, right? From all over?” When I say yes, the wife snorts and shouts, “WHY?” Their grunts, sweating, moaning and complaining about the heat, and the numerous stains on their shirts, combined with their utter ignorance will make me question my next piece of bacon.

And here’s a piece I wrote more than a few years ago that I just stumbled across in one of my old moleskines.

And so those days of subtle genius gone
Days spent fishing for leaves in the back yard
Full of hammocks and skinned knees, dew at dawn
And the dog has been missing since the sun went down

He bounds into view with the sun at noon
A strange creature with five legs instead of four
One dangles from his mouth, clearly not his own
And it will be used for walking no more

As blood stains the deck and drips from his mouth
It is a strangely beautiful nightmare
One that leaves a wanting for the waking
A curiosity for the mortal

Bent and broken at all the wrong angles
Flesh stripped away in no certain pattern
And no one will touch it save the dog and
Flies begin to materialize and feast

We three sit with our faces against glass
Groaning complaints of the sight and smell
And turning away is not an option

It stays for two days and quickly becomes
An average, common place sight
Like some everyday monstrosity

And when it leaves under cover of night
Reclaimed by some wandering creature
And no longer some scavenger’s bounty
We are forlorn and must look elsewhere for decay

And we are not disappointed, to say the least.