writing

Every so often I click to check my LiveJournal UserInfo page.  At the top is a list of Friends.  Mostly it is full of relatives and close friends, but a few are people that I first met here and with whom I have had the opportunity to have a second point of contact. 

Also on the page is my Friend Of list.  I sometimes look at that ever-growing list and wonder who are these people who have decided that my journal is worth reading regularly.  On days when I’m feeling bored or clicky I sometimes browse through their journals to try to find out.  I did that just this past week.  I found that I’m not the only one with DVD player woes.  I found a fascinating discussion on the need for community in religion.  Perhaps the most surprising thing was the discovery that there are people who have me listed as a friend and don’t also have Howard listed.  This means that there are people here reading this entry who didn’t come via Schlock. I’ve had people tell me that my rambles were enjoyable, but somehow I still felt that whatever small fame I attained here was still mostly reflected glory.  Now I have proof that at least some of it was my very own little light.

One of the things I found in my journal rambles was a Writer’s Challenge.  This person challenged: “Describe a room so that the person who owns it is described without actually being present.”  That interested me so much that I decided to take up the challenge.

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I chased a purple rabbit through a hole in my backyard hedge this morning.  It was an odd experience because my backyard has never before had a hedge and usually the only signs of wildlife are deposits left by the neighbor’s dog.  Yet this morning both the rabbit and the hedge were there.

Beyond the hedge was a world filled with fairies, unicorns, centaurs, children lost on islands, and a secret valley full of bird-winged people.  The very landscape was strange; lush valleys sat high atop volcanos, and a river ran with liquid rubies.  It was completely unearthly … and totally familiar.  I used to live in such places before my mind filled with grades and SATs and mortgages and diapers and laundry.

I’d come home to a place I thought no longer existed.  All the strange and beautiful residents of those lands looked at me.  Eyes of every shade and shape studied me; asked me where I have been; wondered why I had abandoned them.

The answers I have to give are solid, reasonable.  They sit heavy in my hands, and their very solidity fades the worlds and people, who attenuate so far that the merest whisper of wind could blow them away.  Quickly I shift my solid reasons to one hand and reach out with the other to grasp at the mist.  I realize now that I need both.  I need to be able to fly on the wings of story and I need a solid place to land.  I’d forgotten, but as he did so long ago for my six-year-old self, that purple rabbit has led me through the hedge and taught me to fly.

Today is Lewis Carrol’s birthday, so many people are journaling Down the Rabbit Hole.  I wanted to join the fun.  The story above makes more sense if you know that the very first story I ever wrote was entitled “The Purple Rabbit”.

I recently saw an invitation to write and submit a story of 200 words or less.  I decided to undertake the challenge.

                                              Lost

            Alex had always been a very literal child, so his mother should have known better than to say “Go lose yourself in a book.”  But she had important guests coming and needed him out of the way.

            Alex obediently left the spotless kitchen, careful not to leave fingerprints on the gleaming banister. He went to the small section of shelf with children’s books all carefully lined up by size.  He looked through each book, carefully replacing each one on the shelf.  Mother didn’t like messes.  Finally he selected the one he wanted.  He liked this book, it was old and ratty, the pages weren’t glossy and the pictures had no angles, only curves.  Alex carefully turned pages at the corners as he’d been taught.  He found the perfect page.

            When bedtime came, Alex’s mother looked up from her lists and felt the silence.  Alex was nowhere to be found.  His mother remembered her words and ran to the bookcase. A single book lay on the floor.  She snatched it up and rapidly scanned pages for signs of her boy.  There he was among the Whos, joyfully singing with no Christmas at all. She’d never seen him so happy.