Revels in the Dark

There’s nothing better than a beginning.

The blank page. A new book. A movie just released into theaters. Meeting a person for the first time and shaking their hand. Moving to a new city. Starting a new job. Moving on to the next stage of life.

Because in the beginning, each of these things can be anything.

The blank page could become a drawing, or a story, or a piece of origami. Its up to you. A new book or movie could be a real stinker, its true, but maybe it will rev your engines a breath new life into you. A new person could be your best friend, your true love, your greatest rival, or anything in between. When you go someplace new, or start something new, for better or worse all that came before is left behind, and golden, limitless possibility lies ahead. A fresh start, something new under the sun.

I can’t think of anything more exciting.

Where have my keys gone?

As I get up to leave, I pat pockets, rifle through coats, and dig through yesterday’s discarded clothes, but they are not there. My apartment is only so large. The desk-top is empty. The couch cushions are innocent: they do not hide my keys this time.

At first, I search carelessly. But my searching becomes hunting, my hunting, stalking.

The keys are not the first victim. Since moving here, eleven socks, three shirts, two notebooks, and a remote have vanished into the mysterious corners of my home.

I flop down on the couch. Steam vents from my nose with my breath. I have things to do.

I only have three rooms. How can my keys hide from me in three rooms?

Maybe I missed them under the cushions. I throw the cushions to the floor. Did they get under the couch? I lift it. Maybe the clothes pile.

Maybe they’ve fallen down a hole.

There must be holes in my apartment. Holes from which greedy creatures with beady, glinting eyes squirm, hands grasping at my discarded things while I sleep.

But to where do they drag them?

To the earth behind the earth. To the tunnels that run underground to a thousand holes in a thousand apartments. Tunnels behind the grey buildings, and the blue sky, and the green earth, where dark shapes crouch over mounds of molding possessions and smile, wringing their hands.

My keys might lie with the glove of a Victorian gentleman, or the left sandal of an Egyptian housewife.

Or maybe the holes don’t lead to tunnels, but to the stars. Perhaps my keys float, tumbling end over end, in the azure and saffron gases of a nebula, or glow red hot in the warm and brilliant light of a star. Could they be hurtling through the black, coursing along with a pack of asteroids? Or perhaps they are still, stairing, awestruck as a glowing passes them by. Something all together beyond comprehension flitting through the void, and glimpsed only for a brief but wonderful moment.

What glens and dales of earth could they have slipped into? What forests and meadows? What times and epochs long gone from mind? What tales have they heard around dim campfires? What wonders could they have seen, falling down those holes?

I stand and pull on my coat. The door cracks and I slip out, leaving it just open behind me. While creatures from tunnels beneath the earth might slip into my apartment at night to steal my things, the friends of mine living in my building will not. It is time to go for I have things to do. As I walk, I wonder. And I think.

I would very much like to know where my keys have gone.

For perhaps I would like to follow after them.

I saw a post on the internet the other day entitled 100 theme challenge. A list of themes is provided in it and the goal (I assume, no rules were provided) is to write something involving each theme. I don’t normally get into this sort of thing, but it struck me as both a fun idea (and isn’t that what this blog is supposed to be about?), as well as an easy idea. The themes lend themselves to short formats.

But be warned! Since there doesn’t seem to be any rules other than produce a piece of writing based on the themes, you could get anything. I might decide to write a teleplay. Regardless of what I write, I will try to post one each day. If that seems to be a bit too much (I have a lot of other writing to do, and this doesn’t need to become a chore) I might make it every other day or three times a week.

I also have numerous side ideas that I want to write up that will start appearing interspersed with the themes.

I like writing. That's really what it boils down to. Stringing together words for the sake of the sound they make together, for the life they give me in their creation, and for the expression I would otherwise be denied. So I spend a good deal of my time at my keyboard. I work on short stories, poems, novels: whatever you can imagine, I've at least fiddled with it. But I have a problem with finishing things. I'll crunch my way half way or three quarters through a short story only to abandon it. There are about twenty fragments and twice as many ideas sitting around on my hard drive, languishing.

Lately, I've been considering how to fix this.

My problem is that I'm too critical. I want to much from myself and from my work. I want to be Charles Dickens, Stephen King, Cormac McCarthy, and Neil Gaiman all at once, and when I can't live up to what I expect from myself and my work I lose steam and let it drop. I'm stealing all the joy from the process. I've lost my inner child.

I also have a rule about my work: don't show it off before its finished, or at least before its gotten into a second or third draft. Its like peeking at a person before they've got their cloths on for the day. I would no more let you look at one of my stories before its finished than I would take one of my children out in public naked. I don't have any children, but you get the point.

The first joy in writing comes from the words themselves, the organizing of them, the sound and the texture of them. But you've only had half the fun if things stop there. The other half is sharing your words with others, hoping that maybe they'll enjoy them as much as you have. I haven't been sharing my words. I want to share my words.

So I'm going to revel. I'm going to dance, laughing, with words under a starlit sky. Whatever whim or fancy strikes me, I will pursue. And I'm not going to worry about how good it is or how many people will read it. There is a time and a place for that. But all work and no play will make Derek into an ax murderer.

Won't you join me? I hope you have as much fun reading my words as I will setting them down. And if the mood strikes you, set your pen to paper and let go. Now come and take my hand. The night is young and the stars are bright.