I had a really profound thought earlier today and I was just about to IM it to
The Lovely Jess and then I stopped myself and decided I'd save it for the blog since I've been hurting for subject matter lately. Did I jot down my profound thought or make a note somewhere to help me remember? Nope. Did I completely forget my profound thought? Yup.
Then again, there's a good chance it wasn't all that profound. And there's an even greater chance that if I did write it down, I wouldn't have been able to decipher my own handwriting.
Don't get wrong -- I actually kick ass when it comes to penmanship. That shit could be made into a font, yo. In fact, maybe I will make it into a font so and then I'll sell it Microsoft so that they can include it on all machines going forward. The one stipulation is that in addition to the shit load of money I'd demand, I would require that Comic Sans be retired and obliterated on all existing machines. Forever.
Yes, I get this worked up over a font. Deal. For you fellow haters (and people with equally low priorities), check this out:
Ban Comic Sans. I feel like I'm home when I visit that site.
But as I was saying... So, my handwriting is less than stellar when I'm hastily firing off a quick note to myself on the rather stingy dimensions of a Post-it. In fact, the end result looks like someone with a bad case of the shakes wrote it during an earthquake while in a moving vehicle. In other words, it's completely unintelligible... and just a touch frightening.
I went through a spell in college where I kept jumping out of bed at night because I truly believed that the most genius thought/epiphany/poem/ observation/great opening line of a future novel had just entered my mind and I had to hurry up and write it down before this bit of brilliance was forgotten forever. So I'd climb out of bed, turn on the nightlight and scribble away before finally retiring for the night with a satisfied grin and the firm belief that I had just put in motion the creative process that would soon make me a household name.
And then I'd wake up the next morning and most of what I wrote was illegible. And what wasn't, was mortifyingly bad and clearly the result of hallucinations due to sleep deprivation. I was always sufficiently embarrassed and felt like a complete and total tool.
However, I soon learned I was not alone in this morning-after shame and regret. In college, I took a class called Contemporary Literature. It was filled with fledgling writers and other artistic types. There were lots of goths and white kids with dreadlocks in that class, as I recall. We were all so very tortured, temperamental and sensitive. It was one of the few classrooms where the fraternity and sorority types were outnumbered and relegated to a corner in the back of the room. It was like my academic
Aldo's and it was awesome.
One of our assignments was "Howl" by Allen Ginsberg. The professor read sections of it aloud during class and we sat rapt in attention as he deftly moved from line to line reciting it with a hypnotic cadence. We nodded our heads as if each stanza was set to a cool jazz beat. I really did want to snap my fingers and go, "Cool, man, cool" at one point but I wisely refrained.
Instead, I sat with my classmates quietly listening and following along in awe. When the professor uttered the words, "who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish," the respectful silence made way for a chorus of exclamations and sighs, both of recognition and relief. Every single person in that room related. The professor stopped, looked up and said, "We all know what that's like, huh?!"
Yes, yes we did.
On those yellow mornings when I'd awake to stanzas of gibberish, I'd slap my head in humiliation and then crumble that shit up SO fast before burying it at the bottom of the garbage in the hopes that no other human being would ever EVER see it.
You know, I do have to wonder if embarrassing things like that somehow work themselves out of the trash during collection and all the sanitation guys sit around the break room reading the most choice snippets out loud to one another. We may not envy their line of work but I dare say some of them have had the last laugh. Identity theft scmidentity theft,
THIS is why the cross-cut shredder is my friend, my friends.
Labels: writing
