In the Swamp

            Hi there, reader, it’s good to see you here again. Of course, you already know me, so there’s really no need to introduce myself here. I’d shake your hand, but then again time and space being what they are I think we’re bound to run into a few little difficulties there. So let’s pretend we’ve shaken hands here, reader.

Oh, and reader? It’s good to know that you’re out there… I think I ought to let you know that. The work’s nothing without the welkin-eyed reader, as I’m sure somebody’s said sometime.

But to return to the matter and hand, the ol’ “Reading, Writing, and Apocalypse,” I think maybe tonight I’ll take a bit of a detour into some swamps, some marshlands. Most of the flora and fauna in this part of the mind are more than a little unsavory—mind the five-legged boar over there, it’s apt to charge if it’s provoked. Just stay calm, make yourself look big, wave your arms and make some growling noises. Aaaand… there you go, easy as that, the silly thing’s gone up its tree! Five-legged boars are pretty harmless creatures on the whole, as long as you know how to handle them.

But where was I, reader? Oh right, right, the marshlands. Well, as I was saying, the real estate’s not exactly the most pleasant, but there’s a few species of writers that tend to do a lot of their fermenting in these parts… sort of like the little caterpillar dealie where it has to like retreat back into itself for a while before it can break through the shell it’s made around itself. Whatcha say? Oh, you wanna know why they end up here of all the godforsaken places. Well, I’ll tell you reader, this species of writer’s a funny sort, clever, sharp as a tack when he puts his mind to it… too clever for his own good, is what his problem is.

Say you got a rubber band. Well, you take said rubber band and stretch it way out as far as it’ll go. What happens? Thing goes zipping all willy-nilly over the place and ends up knocking something over. Well, this sort of writer’s kind of like that, you see, with all this energy all stored up… but it’s all one-sided. You see because, it’s because he’s spent so much time reading and so much time studying that it’s like there’s whole worlds there developing in his head, that within a few years he’s gone so far into that world in his own skull that he loses his way a bit… it’s like he’s that old Greek with his labyrinth, you see, only he’s built the thing and then forgot the way out. By this time the silly old potential writer’s so locked up in his head and so just downright bored with existing that he starts doing things that he knows are bad ideas, just to like stir things up.

In other words, he’s got no common sense. Maybe it’s because he was never taught, maybe it’s because he learned it and forgot it later, maybe it’s because he loved his silly books so much that everything else stopped seeming real… but whatever the reason, he starts setting out to sabotage himself. It’s around this time he’s headed off to college, so he decides he really wants to shoot himself in the foot and goes and studies some damn fool thing like history or philosophy or whatnot.

So how’s he end up in this swamp? Well, for one because it sounds interesting, there’s all sorts of ghosts and witches and magic potions out here in the swamp, just like he’s always read about in all those books of his. And while he’s out here he’s bound to run into a witch or two, he’s bound to scare himself out of his mind once or twice after sipping on some magic potion, but if he’s true to his writer’s calling, eventually he’s bound to realize that he wasn’t made to live in a swamp. The lightning-bolt helps too, when it comes. But usually he’s got the idea well enough before the lightning-bolt strikes… the lightning-bolt is sort of an all-time low in the writer’s life, but it’s gotta happen so the writer learns not to take himself so seriously. His heart’s in the right place, after all. It just takes him a long time to realize that he’s been letting his mind drive him, instead of the other way around.

But once the lightning-bolt comes along, he realizes that he’s got to get out of that swamp if he’s ever actually gonna be a writer, and not just a potential writer. It may take him some time, but as long as he works on it steadily he knows he’ll get out eventually. He knows that the worst is behind him, and he’s learned the humility to admit that life still has much to teach him about the art of living. He hopes that life will prove to be an excellent teacher.

Well, that’s about all I’ve got to say about this species of writer. Well, we have gotten pretty deep into this swamp, now haven’t we? You wouldn’t happen to remember the way out, would you reader?