When I Used to Write

When I was in the sixth grade, I fell in love with writing.

Unfortunately, that love affair (as a compulsive and ever-present desire) only lasted through my sophomore year of college. Every now and again, there would be glimpses of that love again - but nothing as it was before. Now, most of my writing tends to be somewhat "journalistic" as opposed to "creative," or "poetic." Most of what I write now has been condensed to one line (or one sentence...or one run-on sentence) about what my current "status," is. Or, more tritely, a one line zinger about your status.

But...I want to fall in love again.

What got me interested [in writing] in the first place was the fact that a teacher in a class I had (it was called ACE - but I never knew what it stood for; when I lived in Huntsville, it was called SPACE) really encouraged me to write. He encourage our whole class to write.

And to think.
And to dream.

It was one of the first times that I felt like the things that I could produce had the potential to be special - even if it was only to me. We produced a literary journal to sell to our other middle-schooled classmates.

As you might imagine, these were pretty hot commodities.

But, as I've already stated, what made this so much of a formative thing for me was the fact that my life was no longer ruled so much by what I could learn or experience by means of math and science nor was life so much about what I could gather from reading another's prose or poetry. Life meant that I could create with words (as opposed to LEGO's, or tinker toys, or plastic model pieces with plastic cement) and that I could manifest a world that was simultaneously other and familiar.

His name was Mr. Craft (I think his first name may have been "Bart," or "Barthlomew"...). He is one of teachers in my life who has really stood out - someone who helped me to sort of shake the snow globe that is my life and realize that there isn't just another side to the globe, but that there's a world outside of it too.

So if you've kept up - part of this experiment is as much about remembering who I once was as it is about telling you about who I am and who I want to be.