Photo by David Banuelos

Practical Ennui

The other night, I finally sat down to start working on the story which I promised you all last week. And you want to know something? It was kind of fun. I’ve been doing these columns almost daily for the past six months, and, though I like writing with such frequency, it’s not quite the same as focusing all my energy on a piece of fiction. With this blog, I can ramble on about whatever strikes my fancy, with no regard to what I wrote even the day before. But coming back to the same story day after day, worrying about continuity in events and tone, well, I’m more out of practice with all of that than I was with writing back when I reopened the Vaults in December. In truth, I’ve never really had to sit down and try to figure out how to keep a story going. Most everything I wrote before could most generously be defined as “Short Fiction”, apart from that poetry kick I was on for the better part of a decade. In all honesty, the last thing I wrote which was longer than a page or two was the novel I started when I was in the Eighth Grade (which I only did so that I wouldn’t have to be bothered with doing actual schoolwork). I’ve had a couple of friends tell me that my intransigence that year helped inspire an “alternative” track, and that there may somewhere be a copy of the babble which I penned so long ago. I don’t know whether I’d rather read it for nostalgia, or have it expunged from the physical world.

Then again, I still peruse the book my class made in the Third Grade, so I’d probably want to see it at least once more before I die. It was horrible, to be sure. I’d finished rereading the Dragonlance Chronicles, and thought that I was good enough to try my hand at fantasy. I drew some maps, and came up with a backstory which was, charitably, an homage of every tired and recycled trope of fantastic fiction that had ever come before. I was fairly proud of myself. But it’s hard to write with any sort of authority when you’ve only read about the things your characters are doing, and have not the slightest clue why coffee follows a night of drinking, or what drinking is even like, not to mention a complete lack of understanding of what hangovers are. I mean, I didn’t even start sneaking sips of my grandparents’ booze until my Freshman year of High School, and I didn’t get my first hangover until the first time that I drank Gin, nearly two and a half years later. I hadn’t gone out camping, or even built a fire. Hell, I wasn’t even allowed to play with knives, so the sum total of my experience with the swords which I was describing came from repeated viewings of Highlander. But I kept working on that book. Even after the school year ended, I kept plugging away at that story. My Grandfather took me on a trip that summer (mainly, I believe, to get me the hell out of the house, and give my Mom a vacation from me), and I packed my notebooks with me, and was writing every day.

I don’t remember when I stopped working on it, but I think it was at least a week or two before the school year started up again. By then, I was worried about taking Honors English, and hoping that maybe I’d have the chance (finally) to stop worrying about assholes and get down to learning. I should have known that High School would be just like Middle School, except all the jerks were far more practiced. And there was the distraction of the girls. By the time January had arrived, I’d all but given up. I was disillusioned with the entire experience of education, and my bi-polar disorder (still undiagnosed) was just beginning to come into its own. Don’t get me wrong: I’m thrilled that I never actually tried to get that piece of garbage published, but I’m still a little saddened by how easily I managed to give it all up. Looks like that’s not really a new development in the life of Mr. Batmart. Hell, the name Tex Batmart didn’t even come into existence until I had turned eighteen.

All of this cute, and, I’m sure, terribly informative, but if I can just take the tiniest of breaks from this ennui in which I’m bathing, I’d like to get back to my original point (hold on while I scroll up and try to figure out exactly what it was):

Yeah, I’m not sure that I actually had one. Writing is Hard, maybe? Or, I’m Wasted on Cross-Country? No, that was dwarves. Interesting digression: I think it was my Junior year in High School when the track coach approached me through a friend of my to see if I’d be interested in joining the cross-country team. He’d seen me (literally) running circles around one of his athletes as he’d been making his way around the track. I’d only been doing it because he was dating this girl who my friend was desperately in love with, and it was fun to show off and harass him. I politely declined the offer, as the Athletic Department was a bit more serious about their Anti-Drug Pledge than the Theatre Department or Debate Team, and I wanted to leave my options open. That, and I really didn’t relish the thought of intentional exercise. I rode my bike to school every day, and rode it home again (and due to the geographic peculiarities of the Island, I did indeed ride uphill both ways), not to mention walking almost everywhere else when I didn’t want to take my bike. But running for fun? What was the point in that? Plus, I would have probably had to give up smoking, and I’d only just started doing that for real (ah, back when every cigarette rewarded me with a Nic Buzz (and now I have another idea for a thing. Maybe I really will just go with Batmart Begins (not its real title), and just tie in all my old stories together like they were all on purpose), and I actually enjoyed smoking (not to mention that I looked 30% cooler) with my friends).

Photo by David Banuelos
If it wasn’t for that cigarette, I’d look like a total dork!