Storytelling sideways

I’m living in a tall, narrow room with little, three-eyed flies.  Crunch the spiders with the bottom of a glass slipper.  I’ve got a tendency to exaggerate, and I limp because of a fractured heart. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to dance.  This is life.  I try to have a good time.  Join me in the mania.

Alright, no more poetry.  I’m a proper writer with poise and structure.  A storyteller in sweatpants.  Working on an orange desk.  Drinking tap water and listening to hip-hop.  

That’s the thing about stories.  Everyone tries to make sense of them.  When is the last time your life made sense?  It’s a comic book.  You’re the main character and sometimes goofy kids tear out pages to make paper airplanes.

On the bight side, there are some constants.  Water.  You’ve got to drink it.  Wash your teeth daily.  Tell people you love them, but not just in word form.  TELL THEM IN CAPITAL LETTERS. Tell them twice in a row.  Give them love shaped like nothing at all.  Burp it in their face and if they give it back that feels good too.  I’m not sure about all the rules.

Sometimes the water is poison.  Sometimes love eats you whole.  We’re going to die anyway, so don’t go feeling sorry for yourself.  Fortunately, we don’t all go quietly in the night.  Some of us rip right through the sound barrier and scream at the gods.  Others die in outer space.  Others die stuffy hoarder huts.  Cats eat their lips.  And that’s a part of the story.  A little dramatic if you ask me.

So forgive me if i’m not “even keel.”  I don’t mean to be.  I don’t apologize for not blindly marching toward retirement.  I guess I’m a fighter after all.  Black-eyed, busted lipped, bruised and begging for more.  Why not?  Scars are better than postcards.  I guess that’s a personal preference.  

Don’t expect me to follow the rules.  I’m not telling you everything. I cut out the boring parts.  The parts where I’m banging my head against the same bloodstained wall. Not my blood.  I’ve killed the same spider twice while writing this.  That’s not a joke.  It’s not even part of the story, but it just happened.

See, I can’t explain it all. I’m not that kind of writer. You’ll have to take my word for it.

Poetic diversions, sipped out of a green bottle in a paper bag.  I haven’t lost control.  I simply don’t require control at all times.  The story doesn’t go beginning-middle-end. It’s not always going to be a chronological highlight reel.  This isn’t instagram.  The only filter here is your reading and comprehension level.  I’m not a writer, I’m a walking Rorschach test. I read slow and think fast.  It isn’t always pretty.  Sometimes the ugly way is the better option.

There’s a tendency to develop habits.  A little cyclone, synchronized with the hours of the day.  Daylight savings doesn’t provide enough disturbance.  Sometimes it takes a broken nose and a bail-bondsman and a beaver to change the direction of the stream.  It’s hard to tell what’s intentional and what’s chance.  And I’m not sure if recognizing the momentum is enough.  I know it’s good to stomp from time to time.  Make a little turbulence.

The story is about balance and scraped knees.  The story isn’t accepting awards.  If it accepts the awards, it has to accept the cunty remarks.  I don’t think the story needs to carry all of that weight.

I don’t want to make a perfect story, but I’m also not scuffing it up on purpose.  It’s the way my fingers and brain work together.  It’s the way this tall room and these three-eyed flies make my head work.  There’s no tradition to it.  They used a quill and ink.  Then they used ballpoint pens.  Then they made stories on a clunky typer, and then a computer.  This one is written with a stack of matches and a can of hairspray.