*Note: Posting late due to computer error. The following took place… yesterday sometime**
The blog is not working right now, so I am putting this into a word file. It has me thinking about the way we write these days—how everything is filed away into one cubby or another and all of those files get stored and occasionally some are lost to history. It is really no different than when we wrote down notes on strips of register paper or the tiny spiral notebooks that fit in our pockets. We have changed the tools time and again, but the problem of central locality; the problem of easy access and mobility has never been solved.
I believe I’ve forgotten more stories than I’ve ever published. I presume the best ones—the ones that floated on the edge of my psyche like a temporal Pluto for years before being forgotten or ignored; downgraded into meaninglessness—I believe those stories are the worst casualties. Is there truth to the theory that everyone has one great story in them? What if that one great story is born on a shredded napkin and a quick lunch break at Village Inn. What if that napkin gets destroyed in the wash? Does that one great story die with it?
I’ve been sick the last day or so, and this is the first time I am full aware of what I am writing (yesterday’s waiver included). I suppose such illnesses make me widely introspective, hollowing out every nook and cranny of my being for some small form of understanding or intentionality. I am, of course, trying to find some purpose in my words. I am always searching for a type of immortality brought only by language and the persistence of a tale well told.
I wonder, twenty years from now what will be the stories we tell in school?