Last night I watched again Part I of Ken Burns’ Mark Twain. I think it reminds me of who I am as a writer. No, I am not being all big-head arrogant and full of myself. I devoured certain writers as a youth, consumed them whole. Charles Dickens was my first passion, followed by J.R.R. Tolkien, and then Mark Twain. Of all of them, Samuel Clemens is the most like me. He was from the Midwest, born and raised in Missouri along the Mississippi River. I am from the Midwest, born and raised in Iowa along the Iowa River. He endured hardship and tragedy as a youth, losing his little brother in a riverboat accident, and he dealt with it by humor. I endured a sexual assault from an older boy, and dealt with it by… well, you get the picture. We are alike, him and I. We both draw upon the place we grew up, the people we have known, and the events of our youth to create stories.
It is a pretty big responsibility to follow in his footsteps, and I will probably never live to see the success and the wealth that came to him. But I have a responsibility to the people I knew and the time that gave rise to me to tell their story. I need to build a network of stories that resonate the truth of existence that I have been witness to. A big responsibility… and I probably will not live up to it. But I have to try.
Being a writer is somewhat like being cursed. The words burn inside, needing to get out, needing to be heard. I have stories that need to be told, and they will be told, even if only to file away in the closet again. Like Mark Twain, I am good at feeling sorry for myself. And the Mickey part of me, the writer part of me, is just like Mark Twain, a writer persona, and not the real man himself. I am simply the container for something that has to exist and has to tell stories. It is not a bad thing to be. But the more I get to know it, the more I would not wish the destiny on others.
Forgive how sad and bunglingly boorish this post is. But sometimes there are thoughts I simply have to think. And as a writer, I am bound to write down the silly things that I think.
One must end the year on a note that is either upbeat or regretful. A heartfelt, “Meh,” just won’t cut it.
I have given you a picture Paffooney today of the tapestry created by the town of Rowan, Iowa for its centennial in 2002. I consider Rowan my home town. I was not born there, but it is the scene of most of my childhood. It shaped most of who I am and how I am and what I am. It is the scene of most of my fiction because that’s where the most valuable treasures of Truth are hidden, near the wishing wells of our youth. I keep it on my bedroom wall because, not only do Pooh and Fozzie like it to be there, it is a beautiful thing to look at and reflect upon. It keeps what is most important in my life in focus. I have a lot of physical pain from my six incurable diseases, and pain makes the focus blur at times. But pain is also the source of what wit and wisdom I have to offer. I will continue to contemplate and write and think and create… and draw. I will continue to post at least a portion of the results here. I do desire to make some money with my writing, but that is only a secondary concern. I am not really writing for the people who know me in real life. They already know me and made up their minds about me long ago. They might read this and that and recognize something of themselves, but they are not the ones I am speaking to at this moment. I am talking in prose to those who see my ideas for the very first time with new eyes, no preconceived notions about me. It is for them, the readers I do not personally know, that my magic spells are cast in words.
Catch a Falling Star 