I have met people who work harder. I have met people more lost. I have met people so stable they never have to worry about anything upsetting their world.
“I want to build something,” I tell my wife. “I want to see nothing and create something from it.”
I am starting to love the blank page again. The blinking cursor and the endless possibilities. I am realizing that I have always loved the blank page. Given or found I will put marks on it. I will doodle something. I will mark on it and create.
But as a part of a machine I am misplaced.
Another metaphor is; I am a sack. A bag. A tool used to hold things. Over the years, in me has been placed shit. I have been emptied and reused 85 times. Never satisfied, but forever stained with the material filling or that has filled me.
I have read that middle school is when a student will need to begin to use the study skills they gained throughout elementary school. That middle school is preparation for high school and high school preparation for college.
My cog didn't fit in the machine of the American education system either. I rebelled against math teachers. Rebelled against the static learning. I hated not being able to create.
“This is what is and nothing you can say or do will change that,” this bored me.
Grammar bored me to the point I never even spelled the word correctly until my Junior year in college.
Grammer.
It made more sense. I didn't care.
I care now, which saddens me.
My tool was reading. I read and read and read. I wrote well because I knew what sounded good. I never learned to wright by learning where things go. Commas are a pause in thought or point of emphasis to me. Periods are the end. What more was needed. I still don't feel comfortable diagramming a sentence. But a teacher came to me in highschool and said I needed to be in AP english.
She gave me a choice.
Yes, or no.
I said no.
My buddies weren't in AP English. The guys I played ball with lifted weights with wrestled with they fucked around in regular english while I read. Distracting from me. I could turn a blank page into a page filled with beautiful words or connected lines and no one would ever notice with them sitting next to me.
In retrospect what was in AP English was Alison Lastnameredacted. She scared me. Too pretty, the epitome! I walked away from her once afraid my mouth would fill with nothing and that nothing would insult her perfect brain and she would know I couldn't Solve for X.
The cross country team was in AP English. I said hi to a cross country team member once by giving her a friendly push. She flew across the room. When she recovered she yelled at me. I was embarrassed. I never talked to another member of her team again even to congratulate them on the three state championships they earned for the 4a conference.
I worked with a guy in eighth grade in an art class. My cog and his cog connected. I artistically directed us on a piece of plywood that had been stepped on by many sneakers. I saw colors and swirls and I wanted to fill it up.
We worked hard together.
He asked, “what?” and I told him.
At the end of the art period we were proud and would hide our piece in the corner of the room always excited to return to it.
One day we walked into class and it had been destroyed.
“Oh" the teacher said "I did not know you guys wanted to keep working on it by yourselves.” A group of girls saw patches of pink. ignoring the sneaker treads. I don't know who they were. I pictured the pretty ones. The Ap crowd. I never wanted to be a part of them, they had made what we created into a nothing. They had ruined our masterpiece. Taken our vision and destroyed it.
In another class my partner tried to hit one of them with a paper clip slung across the room with a rubber band.
He hit the wrong person and got expelled.
My cog collected dust almost never as part of a machine.
It worked alone.
It formed clay into figures and shapes in High school.
It ruined white canvas with splashes of color.
It covered blank paper with poems to my girl friend or stories of protagonists forever traveling, or pictures of heros and swords and dragons.
In the Army my cog earned bruises scratches broken bones and learned to fear and hate leadership. To love diversity. To see the world, bliss, exploration, the goal.
Between college and the Army I learned the hard way some mistakes are forever, and others lead to vistas so beautiful they whisper and that others go away and never come back.
In college I used my cog and discovered theatre was difficult in making the machine work without egos getting bruised or bored. I also discovered the blinking cursor and that it could help me develop whole worlds.
After college that same blinking cursor has done nothing but add to my job count. Resumes and interviews so perfect, attitude so dominate, so strong willed, a hate for direction and prodding and manipulation, loss after loss learned and relearned.
I realize my cog is under used.
I realize I need to discover its machine.
It may have been left out of some watch, unneeded when that machine was repaired, or its creator not needing it for time to tick by.
Sometimes spare parts can be used to create something else. Sometimes they collect dust in jars screwed to the underside of a shelf. What's my future?
I will let you know some tomorrow from now.
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