“If you want to learn how to write, stop listening to me and go away and sit down and write for three hours,” was exactly how my first writing class didn’t start this evening.
I could tell you about the fact that it started with me realizing I hate parking in busy areas, missing the start of the class after hiking three leagues from where I ditched my car in a (softball) field since Caza de Luz is no more car-friendly than Lady Dianna Spencer’s bodyguard. But that wouldn’t be the point. The point isn’t the excellent instruction from Austin’s pointiest writer. It’s that the medium needs the message.
In the immortal words of any of the seventeen billion blogs in the world whose author has just taken up poetry, here’s my first writing exercise. Now, the astute of you may have noticed that like Lego Bricks (remember there’s no plural of Lego) there are more blogs than people on the planet. And it’s those same poetry class goons like me that have more than ten.
Regardless, here it is, and bonus points if you get to the bottom and can guess the name of the exercise.
I’m the most uptight faux-hippy you’ll ever meet
I steal most of my best ideas – I always have. Even at school I would rip things out of James Bond movies to put in my stories. “But he got that from a film sir!”, “Shut up Miggins.”
At lunch today, Laura spoke about her friend – the one who pretends to be a hippy but is really uptight. Scientific by nature I try the theory that this person is me, and I view the rest of the day through that lens. I’m trying to figure out if the hat fits, and after wearing it for so long I think it does.
Example: I live in this nice environmentally sound, green, perfect neighborhood where no-one loses their temper and you drive your Prius to Central Market as it’s closer that Whole Foods. I like the idea, though sometimes not the practice. I want to buy an SUV as they suck gas and heck, did you not get the memo? There’s not going to be cheap gas forever folks. If you’re not driving the SUV now, you won’t get to tell your grandkids about it.
So there’s a public persona that I somehow feel obliged to maintain – I’m a green grocer, one who sells green dreams. Is it authentic? I’m not sure. Much of the time I’m driven by economic motives. Green doesn’t pay, unless you’re selling it.
So the hippie thing. I first moved to Austin and led the unemployed life of a starving artist. I wasn’t so much living the hippie trust fund life, I’d earned my own fund fair and square. And, like an underfunded trust fund kiddie, I squandered it while spending my days with people for the sake of the the experience and the relationships. I had a lot to give (time at least) and gave it freely and gladly. It felt nice to be a giver and get involved in things for their own sake.
As time went by, and the money dribbled away on adventures and skiing and travel, my focus
returned once more to earning more of it. Slippery little sucker, that money. You think you’ve got it in your hand, and you realized you’ve just got a fistful of scales from it’s tail, and it’s plopped back into the water and is laughing at you from the other bank.
As I moved back to the business of fish catching, I realized that my relationships were withering, and I was giving less. Less of my time. While I still have ideals that I eat organic food and shop at locally owned businesses, my personal economic reality takes the flight to value and my inconvenient ideals melt away. I shop at Walmart as needs must, my daughter eats refined petrochemical food products from brightly colored boxes, and I dream of my SUV.
My own internal salesman is the best con-artist ever. He thinks that the odd material possession will lift my mood, and finds incontravertable ways to justify my behaviour, so that I don’t have to. He’s the guy that tells me to toss the tuna can in the trash as it will stink up the recycling, and I feel confident that I won’t get caught, the only true crime. My self-help books tell me that I like to stay consistent with my self-image – it’s my way of preserving sanity.
And the more I think about it, the self-help books help the author. There comes my inner cynic to the fore, thinking about the common cents and the uncommon dollars of the situation.
The theory of a consistent self-image points to the fact that I really am a green parent. Then the other theory I have is that I’m shallow and selfish. And so the only theory that I can bandage these two contrary ideas (personas?) together with is the self-image that I’m a salesman.
Who wants to see themselves as a salesman? That must be a downward spiral into self-loathing – to wake up in the morning and see a self-proclaimed salesman in the mirror. Shudder.
So I think I must be doing it for the green dough not the green fields for my grandchildren.
“So why do nice things at all, if it isn’t in self-interest?” – pipes up my inner cynic. My innate devils advocate, who must surely be the devil’s cheerleader when contradicting my inner cynic, reminds me that I used to give, and to help people. When I had the funds.
So in all of this writing exercise, I’ve found a conclusion. I must focus on wrestling the slippery eel of money into my fisherman’s bucket for a while so that I may have the resources and time to help others. I certainly don’t feel I have either right now.
In a nutshell, me me me me me. Then once I’m funded, it’s you you you you you. I’ve got to get my fiscal mallards aligned before I can float everyone else’s boat. Though this goes against the principal of the go-giver – give first and ye shall receive.
I don’t want to be time poor, house poor, or pa poor, so I must work on winning back a good combination of time and money.
Onwards and upwards to class two. As in writing, not as in laser products.