Not Enough
Earlier this week, my wife’s Aunt Paula brought over a recent Time magazine - the one with novelist Jonathan Franzen on the cover. She thought the article about him and the current crop of literary novelists would give me some insight, and I’d be a liar if I said that it didn’t. It was interesting to read that article while I’m simultaneously reading last year’s Pulitzer Prize winner - Paul Harding’s Tinkers - and last year’s National Book Review winner - Colum McCann’s Let The Great World Spin - is sitting on my nightstand, next in the queue.
But that’s not what this post is about.
Instead, it’s sort of about two other articles in that particular issue of Time, both op-ed pieces toward the back of the magazine that I read after I read the cover story Paula wanted me to read. The first was an analysis by James Poniewozik about the increasingly small regard we have in our society for facts. You know, those things that are pretty much documented and undeniable, but which somehow get denied when they go against what we WANT to believe. The second was Joel Stein’s take on our increasing insistence in America on mediocrity. You know, that false ideal which so many of us have: that we all should have an equal chance at something, when in fact, we all shouldn’t. Not unless we work for it, maybe have a talent for it, maybe get a little lucky. I will never have a good jump shot, so why would I deserve a shot at an NBA team? Or as Stein pointed out: I didn’t go to Yale or Harvard, so how could I ever expect a Supreme Court nomination? Stein’s main point is that, if you want something done, you want the best you can get to do it, right? You want your brain surgeon, your plumber, your babysitter, to be competent at the bare minimum, and at best highly skilled. So why are we settling for less than that so often in America?
The reason these two articles struck me was because they echoed trains of thought that I myself have had in the past several months. I’ve been frustrated watching people I regard as intelligent and well-read deny things that are blatantly true. And I’ve watched mediocre people function (poorly) in certain jobs while more skilled people languish in unemployment. And as I witnessed both circumstances, I began to ruminate and ruminate and ruminate over them.
Now, look at this page. Check out this blog. Flip through a few older posts. Did I WRITE ABOUT these things which I have been ruminating over? No. I left that to James Poniewozik and Joel Stein. But check this bit of irony: for the past several days, I’ve been flailing around in my head, trying to figure out what I was going to write about for my next post.
I didn’t want to follow on a novel podcast too closely. I didn’t think the details of my trip to Disney World would interest any of you. And while I may be obsessing about this whole P90X thing I’m doing, writing an entire blog post about it just seemed boring and redundant. Meanwhile, as I am considering THESE things for a potential post - and rejecting them - I’m THINKING ABOUT the same things as Poniewozik and Stein. The difference is, they’re writing about them and I’m not.
I’m just not. And I could be. I have this forum, and even though it isn’t Time magazine, it’ll do for putting down thoughts like Poniewozik’s, Stein’s, and mine. You know, for whomever wants to read them to read them.
So here I have another post, and really I have no point to it, other than to say: look at me, thinking big thoughts and spinning my wheels not putting them down for posterity.
Why am I doing (or rather, NOT doing) that?
I Suck At Vacations
I don’t know about you, but whenever I go on a prolonged trip away from my home and my routine, it only takes a couple of days before I’m ready to come back to the usual grind. I’m curious, actually, if anybody out there feels the same as I do when you’re “on vacation.”
Lemme tell you a little bit about it, and see what you think.
As many of you know, I don’t have an 8 to 5 go to the office dress in slacks and a nice shirt job. I haven’t had a job like that for 12 years - the closest thing was probably the stint I did at Cisco, where I had to log on from my home office at 8 in the morning and had to be available until 5 or 6 in the evening. But even then, I was at home, and I attended meetings in my underwear and blasted Beastie Boys sometimes while I worked. And then there were the years I worked part time at Maizie Hale PR. I had to go into the office at 10 or so and stay until 2 or 3, and I had to dress up a little. But that was part time, and most of the week I was doing my own thing. And I rarely had to deal with rush hour traffic.
So the difference between me and MOST people, I suppose, is that they have a set routine and a place they have to be every day, and having that pattern day in and day out probably gets to them, such that when they get their vacation time - those precious 2 weeks in the summer, those most excellent of days during the holiday season - they are more than ready to get away from all their stress, and either laze around on the beach with a few cocktails or spend some time hanging out with their family.
My thing is - the longer I stay on vacation, the more stressed out I get. I simply cannot settle into lying around all day on the beach, or going swimming whenever I like, and NOT doing the things I usually do on a daily basis. By the time a week has gone by, I’m cranky, lethargic, and ready to go home. And my stress is usually higher than it was when I left.
I think I’m this way for two reasons. First is that, because I DON’T have a routine imposed on me, I have to impose one on myself. I keep running lists of things to do, and I always, ALWAYS have something that needs to be done. These things include editing my current story or novel, updating this site, finishing client work, doing odd jobs around the house, and running this errand or that to make sure my household operates as smoothly as a household can. When I’m actively doing these things, and I can see the to do list disappear every day I feel good about myself. And let’s face it, doing things like that is just about impossible on vacation. Most people look forward to leaving stuff behind for a little while, but I thrive on all that stuff - it’s in my nature. When I don’t have a list of things to do, I feel sort of empty.
The second is that I am capable of taking little “mini-vacations” every day. If I wanted to right now, even as I write this post, I could get up and turn on the Wii and knock out a few levels of Mario, or a few gigs of Rock Band. If I wanted to, I bet I could give one of my friends a call, and we could either hook up and play a game, or swing over to the Tavern and have a beer. So I don’t feel the need to “get away from it all” that most people do. In fact, when I “get away from it all”, that usually means I have to leave behind all the things that I get to do on my mini-vacations.
I recently went on vacation with my family to Disney World, and that’s what’s prompted me to write this. While we were there, sure, we had a great time riding rides, eating expensive food (and not cooking!), swimming in fake volcanoes, and sleeping in. But every day that went by, I kept thinking of all the things I had to do at home. And when I got home, the stress that had been building up while I was away all but disappeared. After I post this, I’m going to go outside and mow the grass. And that will make me feel better than any poolside cocktail could.
That’s messed up, and I know it. But that’s the way it is.
I Have Returned, More Or Less Triumphant
First day in Raleigh, North Carolina. Second day in Baltimore. Third day in upstate New York. Fourth day back in Baltimore. Last day… home.
I had a great time, but I’m not going to say much about it, because I’m ready to get back to the grind. I have a novel to edit, a game to design (yep), and two children to entertain.
Plus, I want to share a short story with you next post, and I owe you a podcast.
Many thanks to: Aaron and Cecelia Tubbs, Janet Smith, Michael Buccheri, Zev Schlasinger, and Steve Avery. You guys rock!!!
Final Word: Aspen Summer Words
OK. I know I’ve occupied a few posts here with my trip to Aspen last week. I promise - just in case you’re getting a little weary of it - that this will be the last one. But you have to understand: while the trip last week probably didn’t change my life in any significant way (at least not yet!), it reaffirmed for me that I’ve been leading my life the way I ought to. And given the doubts that sometimes creep in when you’re a surface narcissist with actual “closeted” insecurities, as I am…. Well, affirmation will keep me going for another couple of years. For now, I have a renewed enthusiasm for myself and my work.
Elizabeth McCracken, my white hot teacher for my white hot class, reminded me of something that I sometimes forget. It’s both egotistical (what artist does not have a formidable ego, no matter how much he or she tries to hide it?) and self-deprecating - it reflects the attitude all true artists should have. “We are all genuises with a lot to learn,” she said.
And it’s true. If you don’t think I am BOTH things, then you can kiss my ass.
Anyway - last post about Aspen. And I’ve already said a decent portion of what I mean to say in this post, about how Aspen Summer Words stoked a fire that has always burned inside me but is always in danger of dying out. Here, though, are a couple of other things that it taught (or re-taught) me.
1) That I am NOT past my prime. My friend Todd Wiley once asked me when I’d give up writing, when I’d decide that maybe I wasn’t going to go any further, when I’d admit that I’d hit the ceiling. I told him then that I’d never give up, that I’d always try to push things a little further. And I still believe that’s true. But sometimes, when I see a new gray hair or a wrinkle, or I count another birthday - either of my own, of my parents, or of my kids - I think, well, Will - you went another span of time and you didn’t make any forward motion. I’ll think maybe I’ve lost a little of my edge.
With limited exceptions (Emily Curtin-Philips, who is a mere 25 and Brittney Weber, who just passed 30), the people in my class were all roughly my age. And ALL OF US were still struggling with many of the same issues, the same limitations, the same barriers. As I got to know those people, got familiar with their genuises and their - for want of a better word - PROWESS, I realized that we are all capable, talented writers, that it is only luck and circumstance that hold many of us back, that with enough time (and we have time) and perseverance, we will always be able to move forward. We may never have a best-seller or win a national award. But we will not fail. We still have bright futures ahead of us.
2) That those ensconced in the old school system of publishing STILL resist the potentially new paradigms that threaten their way of doing things. Many of them still haven’t figured out what to do with the Internet, with social media, with the blogosphere, with new technology like Kindles and iPads. And so they actively discourage using these things to publish, promote, and sell literature. Now, this is NOT to say that ALL of them resist such innovations and discourage their use - far be it for me to make such a broad generalization. But either they were over-represented at Aspen Summer Words or an uncomfortable amount of them do. I’d actually be curious to know which agents and editors are actively trying to figure out a use for the new communications technologies as well as ways to apply them to their business models.
Still, for those who do resist, who can blame them? These things are becoming larger and larger threats to their well-being. They are the gate-keepers of what gets published - and though their system is flawed, subjective, and subject to manipulation and mistakes - it is a system that has more or less worked for many years. For them and for publishing.
That the gates might be rushed, the walls they’ve maintained might be pulled down: it’s scary. And who knows? Maybe they have a point. Because it’s possible that without them, we might have mob rule, and we all know that mob rule doesn’t work.
Still, I don’t think it’ll be mob rule. It’ll just be different. And they’ll have to adapt - we all will.
I am willing to; many of them are not.
Are you?
For the time being, as things either transform or they don’t, I’m prepared to work in both paradigms - I will try to get published over and over again “on paper”, and I’ll continue to work on this site and my social media outlets. Because of Aspen Summer Words, I’ve been refueled. Invigorated.
Watch me. I can do this for as long as it takes.
Aspen Summer Words, Days 1 & 2
As per my previous post, I’m here. I’m in Aspen, CO, at the first writers’ conference I’ve wanted to attend in a while (and as it turns out, my getting selected was kind of a big deal). Since I arrived last night and I only have one full day under my belt so far, this first official post pretty much has to be about first impressions.
And it occurs to me that you actually might not give a fuck that I’m in Aspen at a writers’ conference. Alright. Then I guess I need to make my little tale as interesting as possible. I can do that.
First, I’ll tell you something about flying into Aspen - something I didn’t know; it never even occured to me. Apparently, even in summer the gusts coming off the mountains surrounding the city make flying in next to impossible. I learned this because, after circling the Aspen 20 times, trying to get below the wind shear, my pilot gave up and took us back to Denver to refuel.
Second time, we made it in, and it wouldn’t have been unpleasant - just interesting - except that all the turbulence frustrated me because I couldn’t get a surface steady enough to write. I like to write on planes.
Also, I have an “unperturbable” stomach when it comes to motion sickness: I can read on a train, I don’t get seasick, I digs me some roller coasters.
The guy beside me on the plane: not so much.
My impressions so far fall into three parts.
Aspen Itself
I’d probably just bore you to tears if I went on too long about how gorgeous this town is. So just look at the pictures and let’s leave it at that. You get it. Instead, let’s talk about how I’m adjusting to the higher altitude.
Well, the humidity here is lower, and there’s not as much stuff that I’m allergic to, so my sinuses are more open than I’m used to. But while I’m finding it easy to get air in through my nose, I have to work harder to fill my lungs with the thinner air. This afternoon I tried to do some exercise that I often do in Atlanta, and I thought I’d pass out.
I didn’t, but I still may. The week is young.
The Conference
My own personal workshop is coming up tomorrow, but I’m not especially nervous about that. It will be as it will be: helpful or maddening. What I’m really worried about, strangely, is how I’m gonna come across critiquing my fellow writers. So far today was easy - I loved the stories we reviewed today, so I didn’t have to “be mean”. I don’t like some of the stories coming up quite so well, and I just don’t want to be an asshole. At least not any more than I usually am. Honestly, too, even though my critiques were kind, I think I’m already stepping on some toes.
In General
This will sound strange and sad and pitiful, but I’m just a little lonely. I’ve gone to conferences like this before, but I’ve never felt this alone. I’ve hung out with my peers alot, actually, but there’s something about the years of constantly having kids underfoot, a wife coming home or being home or sleeping in the bed beside me, and having almost immediate contact via phone or computer with all my friends that has made the times when I’m NOT with my peers or engaged in a lecture a little more difficult. I’m in my hotel room alone tonight, and I’m feeling a little forlorn. I miss my family and my friends.
So come see me.
Where I’ll Be: Aspen Summer Words
Here’s something I’ve done before - on lots of occasions - which I haven’t done in a long, long time: attended a writers’ conference. I just got jaded about them a few years back, for a number of reasons. One was that most of the people attending were genuine wannabes - old farts clambering for guidance on their memoirs, stay-at-home moms who imagined they were the next Dorothy Sayers, and hacks like me who imagined they could approach John Irving and Ian McEwan’s power over words. (I say most because there were some truly talented people there, and I apologize profusely for lumping them in with the hacks and wannabes.)
Another reason was that all these people typically spent the off hours - the time NOT spent in workshops and lectures - jostling for the attention of the scant few editors, agents, and published writers who deigned to show up at the conferences. And those editors, agents, and writers mostly acted like they really didn’t want to be there, which made all the attention they were getting that much more insipid and… sad. It was like watching blind puppies scramble to get to their mother’s teat.
Finally, although I personally got my foot in the door with a couple of agents at these things - off the slush pile and onto the desk, so to speak - I still never quite connected all the way. (Shout outs to Miriam Goderich, Adam Chromy, and Alan Nevins for the near misses. I really did appreciate your attention.) So I decided to stop wasting my time and money and stop going to writers’ conferences. Besides, I had two kids, and my ability to throw away an entire weekend like that simply diminished.
Here’s something else I used to do but stopped doing: critiquing other people’s manuscripts. I used to meet with a couple of local groups, and we’d trade the things we were working on and give each other support and constructive criticism. But as time went by, it just became a slog, and I started to get the sneaky suspicion that every critique I received from my peers was eerily similar to the ones I’d had before. Either I wasn’t growing as a writer or they were stuck on something I refused to change. Either way, they weren’t helping me anymore, and I didn’t feel like I was giving them my best insights and advice either.
And now here I am, fours days out from once again doing those two things which I haven’t done in a while: I’m going to a writers’ conference, this one in Aspen, Colorado, and I’m working on 12 other people’s manuscripts. Why? Because a few months ago I applied for a juried workshop at Aspen Summer Words, and I got in.
Now, I don’t know how “prestigious” it was to be accepted - how many people applied and how many didn’t make the cut? Still, I figure this workshop/conference has to be different, because we DID have to apply. And among the dozen manuscripts I have on my desk right now, there are some works of utter genius.
This post is just a quick heads up about what I’m about to do. I’m starting to get excited, feeling things I haven’t felt since I stopped attending conferences and stopped critiquing. I’m excited, because I have no idea what these people will say about my manuscript, and it’s kinda fun to be approaching theirs with a fresh eye and an enthusiastic heart.
So keep an eye out next week for my posts. I’ll be launching them from Aspen, and you, faithful readers, will be able to follow along. We’ll see if the puppies at the teat metaphor rings true once again, and we’ll see if I can get off the damned slushpile again. Oh, and I’ve never been to Aspen. So there’s that.
Sort of A Plug for Student Scholarship Organizations…
You may not agree, but I’m gonna start this post with a premise that I truly believe to be a statement of fact: the Georgia public education system is fucked. For whatever reason, as Georgia stares down the gaping maw of a budget crisis, it seems logical to the Georgia state legislature to target the already imperiled public education system with massive budget cuts, while other positively useless government funded projects and programs (useless to you and I, of course - not to the corporate interests which stand to make a buck because of them) continue to receive funding. I think I heard on the radio that the education system was the top target for budget cuts. Fuck if I understand why that makes sense. I guess Sonny and the Republican legislature figure that if they run the public education system all the way into the ground, there’ll be no choice but to privatize it – throw it to the wolves of “free enterprise”, make it into a way for rich people to make themselves richer rather than a program which serves to make the citizens of Georgia better, smarter, and more productive.
Anyway, I didn’t start this post to go off like that – but I sort of had to, to lay the foundation for what this post is really about.
It’s about a way I’ve discovered wherein I can actually divert up to $2000 of my tax responsibility to education, rather than let the pork ranchers in the Georgia state legislature use my money to further their ends. Now, granted, I’m diverting my $2000 to private schools, and that may make me a bit of a hypocrite. In my defense, though, there’s this: 1) I’ve already given up on public education in Georgia. I see no way to rescue it from the inevitable, but I do see this as way to rescue some of our children from the whims of greedy politicians, out-of-control lobbies, and yes – the bullshit called political correctness, because 2) the $2000 will go to a Student Scholarship Organization (SSO), which is a non-profit group that funds scholarships which specifically go to students in the public school system, enabling them to attend private schools when they might not ordinarily be able to afford it.
That’s right. Because of 2008’s House Bill 1133, taxpayers in Georgia can contribute up to $2000 to an SSO, which serves to fund scholarships specifically aimed at public school students who want to attend a private school but can’t afford it. They then get a dollar for dollar tax credit on their state taxes.
That effectively means all Georgians can all take $2000 of their tax responsibility – which certainly ISN’T going to education anymore – and MAKE IT go to education. It might not directly impact them – they might not know a child who will benefit – but at least they know where their money’s going, and at least they know that the somewhere is a good thing, a great thing for someone. In fact, when you make your $2000 contribution, you can actually designate the school you want your money to go to. It’s that specific.
Now, some of you may know that my children go (or will go in the case of Eli) to Woodward Academy, one of the top private schools in Georgia. Let me tell you how they will benefit from me diverting my money to their school.
They won’t.
At least not directly. The only students eligible for SSO scholarship money are those already enrolled in public school who want to cross over, or children who are just entering school. Eli WOULD be eligible under the auspices of the law, but Woodward simply doesn’t provide ANY scholarships to students K through 6. So the only way my children could ever see any of the money would be if I sent them to public school in the 6th grade and then put them back into Woodward. And screw that.
But, given the economic climate today, even Woodward is suffering some level of financial woes. Shit’s just more expensive, and the money isn’t coming in like it used to. So the way I see it, if I can give Woodward some money to use for scholarships, my $2000 will offset those expenses for them and allow they to free up money that MIGHT eventually help my kids.
Even without that self-serving incentive, I see the opportunity to take $2000 of my tax obligation out of the hands of the current state legislature as something I can get behind. Fuck me if that isn’t a Tea Party-ish sentiment, but since the current Georgia legislature is mostly comprised of good old boy Republican clowns, why not? When they start spending my money on things I approve of (like putting money back into the public education system, like funding public transportation, like maintaining wildlife preserves statewide), then maybe I’ll let them have the $2000.
It’s ironic that the same state legislature who’s mis-spending our money in a wanton fashion is the same one that passed a bill which actually allows us to take money out of their hands…. The only trouble I see is that, if enough of us participate in HB 1133, then a lot of money will get diverted out of an already tight budget. But that WOULD be an interesting experiment, wouldn’t it?
For more information on SSOs, and in particular, GOAL – Georgia’s leading SSO - visit http://www.goalscholarship.org/
The End Of ‘Lost’, How Writing On The Internet Sometimes Sucks, and My Apology To Chris Cornell
I watched The End last night. The end of Lost, that is, which was appropriately titled… ‘The End’. I tend to watch television either by streaming it (like I did Lost, like I do The Office), or by watching it when it comes out on DVD. I can’t commit to sitting in front of a television for any length of time, so that’s just how I do things.
I tell you that because searching the Internet for ABC’s site last night was how I ran across a review of the Lost series finale which prompted me to write this response.
As tempted as I am, I’m not gonna cite the web site which posted this review, because the critic there doesn’t deserve any attention via a link from me. Basically, his review sucked - in a highly ironic sort of way, as I’ll explain - and hopefully, if he doesn’t get attention, he’ll just dry up and go away. That level of uninspired hyperbolic rhetoric is exactly the sort of thing which gives writers on the Internet a bad rap - people see garbage like that and can then rightfully say that the web is full of basement-dwelling hacks. And it’s critics like this guy that make it difficult for people to sieve through all the nonsense and find the cream of what the Internet can offer.
Why was his review ironic? Because he claimed that the last episode of Lost was “lazy writing.”
Now, I’m not going to say that it was the most inspired final episode of a TV series ever - I’m gonna go with the majority of critics and say the last episode of Newhart holds that distinction (with St. Elsewhere pulling in a close second). And I’m not gonna say that it was the most heart-wrenching one either - that belongs to Six Feet Under and maybe M*A*S*H. But it was damned good, bringing together all sorts of disparate elements in a satisfying and (almost) complete way. It left me speculating about what each of the survivors (and yes, there were some - exactly 14 by my count) would do after he or she got back to civilization. Or didn’t, considering that Hurley, Ben, Bernard, Rose, and Vincent the dog probably stayed behind.
The irony here, of course, is that the review by the critic in question was indeed… lazy writing.
He kept telling us that the episode was “anticlimactic” and “bad storytelling” without tangibly demonstrating what he meant. He kept insisting that there were soooo many questions still unanswered - enough to fill pages, in fact. But he did not offer a single example. And he cited the demise of this season’s main antagonist (Locke/The Smoke Monster/The Man In Black) as being contrived - although if you were paying attention, you knew that when the “light” was out, the powers that kept Smokey and Jacob alive all those millenia were rendered inert. So not only is our reviewer’s writing “lazy”, he’s also quite possibly a lazy viewer. Since Lost was a show which demanded a lot from its viewership, it becomes apparent how this critic might still have questions.
Finally, a bit more irony to close out this post: I’m sitting here, a basement-dwelling hack (OK, I’m not in a basement; I’m in my office) criticizing a critic for something that I have been guilty of myself. That’s why right now I’m compelled to apologize to Chris Cornell, lead singer of Soundgarden and Audioslave.
In 1999, Cornell released a solo album called Euphoria Morning. About that time, I was writing for a little Atlanta rag called The Atlanta Press (formerly called Poets, Artists and Madmen), and I was asked to write a music review of Cornell’s solo effort. I blasted it.
Well, not quite. But you couldn’t say my review was glowing, and although I can’t say that my review is the reason the album had somewhat lackluster sales, I feel really bad because A) most critics really liked the album and B) the reason they liked it was because it’s fucking good. At the time, though, I wasn’t impressed, and I was lazy - I didn’t take the time to listen closely enough to it to notice the Jeff Buckley influences, or Cornell’s genuine efforts to separate his sound from Soundgarden’s.
In the ensuing years, I’ve given Euphoria Morning a few more spins - including one last Monday as I was driving my son to his grandparents’ - and I am increasingly impressed by the both the music and the lyrics Cornell penned. And so it is, I hang my heavy head in shame and I offer a sincere apology to him. Chris, I’m sorry. Your solo record is really quite excellent, and I was wrong to be so lukewarm to it 10 years ago.
Now, if only the Lost critic would follow my example.
Dead Bodies In The Attic
A decade ago, my wife and I bought a house. An old house. An old house in desperate need of some “fixing up” as well as a good, thorough cleaning. The process of cleaning up said house and making things just the way we want them continues to this day - but that shit’s boring to hear and boring to talk about.
This shit, however, is not.
At one point, after we’d had the house about two years, I finally got around to climbing into the eaves and cleaning all the crap that was in there out. The upstairs is a nicely finished place, and it has two doors, one on each side, which grant you access to a sizable space under the roof. Basically, I have two attics - one on either side of my office space and my wife’s big ass bathroom. Back then, however, the attic/eaves spaces were filled with junk leftover from years of previous tenants, and it was up to me to start pulling all that crap out and disposing of it.
I told a few friends and relatives my plans for that day, and more than one of them made this joke: “Be careful up there. Look out for dead bodies.”
We laughed. Ha ha.
Hours later I’m up there with a giant black trash bag, picking up shredded insulation and cracked ceramics - stuff like that. Then I reach over and grab this jar which is resting on one of the crossbeams between wall studs. I hold it up to the light to get a look at it, and this is what I see:
And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly what you think it is. Not the corpse of some murdered Fortunato, but a dead body nonetheless - a desiccated five- or six- month old human fetus contained in an air tight specimen jar and left in my attic for who knows how many years.
Needless to say, I immediately had to call my wife and tell her what I’d found, and naturally, it freaked her out. When she came home later I showed her the fetus and we both speculated on how it got there and debated about what to do with it. This was all just before Halloween, and after I told a couple of friends about the fetus, they offered to keep it at their house - they wanted to put it on their mantelpiece and make it a “conversation piece” at their upcoming Halloween party. Now, while Aida (the wife) INSISTED that I did somehow find a way to get the tiny body out of our house, she wasn’t too keen on my friends putting it on display.
In the end, I stuck it inside an out of the way cupboard in the basement and called the police.
The first officer arrived about an hour later and knocked on the door. I’m guessing he’d gotten the code telling him what to expect, but that code wasn’t entirely accurate, because when I showed him the jar, he jumped back and said, “What the heck is that?”
Minutes later and another officer was at the house, and now THEY were debating about what to do. I’m guessing that if I’d found a skeleton or a stash of crack or a pile of child pornography, they’d have known what to do with it. But a dried up fetus in a jar?
Minutes after that and there were five police cars parked in front of my house, and the Sergeant on duty was sitting at my dining room table, staring at the jar, while the little person inside it stared back. Finally, he took a deep breath and said they’d have to take the fetus with them - that they’d open an investigation, make a few calls, find out where the baby in a jar came from.
It has been eight years since they took the body away, and we haven’t heard a peep. I suspect that the baby went into the evidence room (after probably circulating around the police station), and that it’s there on a shelf even today, right next to the Ark of the Covenant.
As far as where I think the baby came from:
It was in a specimen jar, the likes of which you see in biology classrooms and research labs. Also, several of the previous tenants in our house had some association with the medical industry: one worked for Johnson & Johnson (we also found a case of very old, very nasty KY Jelly in a filing cabinet in the basement), a couple were nurses. I think that one of them stole the jar from a classroom or lab as a joke or on a dare, then stuck it in the attic to hide it, and then forgot about it. I think it was probably filled with formaldehyde, but that the formaldehyde evaporated somehow in the extreme heat that Georgia summers can generate in the attic of an old house.
None of my friends and relatives make jokes about me finding dead bodies anymore.
Here’s a couple more pics for your viewing pleasure:
The Little Corner’s ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY!!!
That’s right. One year ago TODAY, I posted my first blog post at this URL - after years of altogether resisting the idea of blogging. Don’t ask me why I resisted - I know why, but that’s a story for another day. Just suffice it to say that, despite my initial resistance, I have not regretted a single moment that I’ve spent writing and sharing with my readers over the past year.
Which brings me in short order to YOU. After a year, all I can express is a genuine heartfelt gratitude to every one who comes to this site, especially those who come on a regular basis. Over the past year, the traffic at www.willkenyon.com has steadily increased. I have more and more unique visitors, more and more page views, more and more hits. And my SEO/tracking software does a good job of weeding out the bots and spiders, so I know that most of the traffic is real people.
Thank you, real person, for making my site the (qualified) success that it is.
A couple more things and then we’re finished for the day (and again, thanks for stopping by). First, allow me to briefly wax philosophical about writing….
In the many years since I decided that my calling was to write words, I have realized that writing is, in fact, TWO things. By turns, it morphs from the one into the other and back again - and my (qualified) success has increased as I came to this realization.
Foremost, writing is an art - a high art. (Duh. Right?) I think the only art which is higher is music. (And I believe THAT because I believe Kurt Vonnegut’s quote regarding his epitaph: “If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC”.) As noble callings go, I’m proud that I chose this one and that I’ve been able to do it for several years. I am an artist, thank God.
Secondly, though, writing is a product. OK - not all of it. Some of it is personal and - as good as it might be - not meant for general consumption. But for many of us who decided to follow this particular Muse, our writing IS a product, meant for consumption by as many people as will consume it. To that end, we must create work which will attract readership. It must be entertaining and provocative, engaging and meaningful - or at least approach those things. And to continue gaining readership, we must continue to produce. Writing more material not only makes us better writers, it also gives us more product for you, the reader, to enjoy.
I hope my “product” is enjoyable. It must be to somebody, or I’d have hung up my hat a while back. On this site as well as my career….
OK. Enough philosophy. Let me now share with you some choice offerings from this site. MANY of you are relatively new to it, so you might have missed a few of my “greatest hits” - and some of you old hands might have forgotten or missed a certain post way back when. So here are some highlights - ten of them (ten’s always a good number, eh?) for your (hopeful) enjoyment.
FYI, I compiled this list by looking at the hits and page views on or around the date I posted each post. I “tweaked” the list by trying to spread the high points over time (naturally, newer posts will by default have higher numbers than older because of the increase in traffic, but I wanted to be fair to some of those older posts). Here goes:
Not A Christian Nation. Never Were. (wherein Will puts a quote from his President back into context)
Creeps and Assholes (wherein Will takes a look at the two kinds of people in the world)
Will’s Mini Beerfest (William likey the beer)
Advances In Technology (acknowledging the power of communications technology in my life as well as my business)
Zombies of South Beach (scary!!!)
Conquering Venus by Collin Kelley - A Podcast Interview with the Author (thank you, Collin!)
Defining Moments from High School (wherein Will tells you a little bit about himself)
Where Do Poems Come From? (etiology of a poem and a bonus piece of poetry!)
A War Between States: Novel Podcasts (I wasn’t sure how this podcast thing was faring, but hits and visits seem to slide upward around each podcast. This link will take you to the latest compilation of all the podcasts.)
Ah, Hypocrisy (wherein Will pisses off half of South Alabama)