Remembering nothing - forgetting grammar
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'Hear Here' by Christopher Rice College played a trick on my mind in making me think I was smarter than I really am. And making me act like it too. Six years later, the effects of the Jedi mind trick have worn off, and I feel dumber than ever. But I remember knowing more than I do now, only I can't remember what I knew.
I can remember correcting grammar and feeling irritated at the world for not knowing it too. “Their” and “they're” and “there,” “it's” and “its” and where to place the stupid commas; those riddles and more had been cracked open like a greasy white egg and fried with ketchup, sexually good, and eaten right up. Swallowed whole. “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” by Lynne Truss became a bible for me to thump and mentally hump. Pride and ego rode shotgun on either side of my pretentious smile.
Then came the cosmic storm – the foreclosure, the debts, the divorce, the move of my own dumbass choosing, things that happen to everyone at some point in the soup of time. Children who get old enough to despise the poverty you wear like an old man's shawl, who refuse to speak to you again, a brain that dwells within a glass whiskey bottle, and a soul trapped in a rusted cage of small town despair – all particles in the storm, pushing and pulling from one gravitational force or another, until the commas and apostrophes are smeared off the board. Only a subtle whiff of rotten egg remains.
The indignant slap of departing cash still stings. I can see it down the road a few miles, carrying its hobo stick and thumbing for a ride to greener pastures, but the storm has settled and appears to be passing. The trick of higher education, my education, is a dead nerve, exposed and useless. I am at the back of the line. I have always been number thirteen.
I remember nuggets of Northern Arizona University, the pain of math, the way my calves got ripped from walking so much on campus, a wonderful day discussing how the world's intellectual point guards got aroused by “Citizen Kane.” But I can't remember all the rules of grammar, all the tricks to oil painting, how to write a hot lead for a news story, and how to tell when a painted red ball is brilliant or just lazy creativity.
Where I wrote with passion and security all those years ago, knowing I knew it all, and knowing nothing, as Bill and Ted said, now I write with scars and numbness. Knowing jack is a given. But I thought I knew a thing or two about sentence structure, and that has always been enough for ego to ride a white horse and tower over the little folk.
I fear words written, cognizant of failure lurking behind every click of the keyboard. Cheap bourbon won't cure it completely. The lash of life's lessons continue to whip at the writer's back, as it should, but the passing storm will vanish.
And, whether grammatically correct or not, a lesson will be learned from it.
'Hear Here' by Christopher Rice College played a trick on my mind in making me think I was smarter than I really am. And making me act like it too. Six years later, the effects of the Jedi mind trick have worn off, and I feel dumber than ever. But I remember knowing more than I do now, only I can't remember what I knew.
I can remember correcting grammar and feeling irritated at the world for not knowing it too. “Their” and “they're” and “there,” “it's” and “its” and where to place the stupid commas; those riddles and more had been cracked open like a greasy white egg and fried with ketchup, sexually good, and eaten right up. Swallowed whole. “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” by Lynne Truss became a bible for me to thump and mentally hump. Pride and ego rode shotgun on either side of my pretentious smile.
Then came the cosmic storm – the foreclosure, the debts, the divorce, the move of my own dumbass choosing, things that happen to everyone at some point in the soup of time. Children who get old enough to despise the poverty you wear like an old man's shawl, who refuse to speak to you again, a brain that dwells within a glass whiskey bottle, and a soul trapped in a rusted cage of small town despair – all particles in the storm, pushing and pulling from one gravitational force or another, until the commas and apostrophes are smeared off the board. Only a subtle whiff of rotten egg remains.
The indignant slap of departing cash still stings. I can see it down the road a few miles, carrying its hobo stick and thumbing for a ride to greener pastures, but the storm has settled and appears to be passing. The trick of higher education, my education, is a dead nerve, exposed and useless. I am at the back of the line. I have always been number thirteen.
I remember nuggets of Northern Arizona University, the pain of math, the way my calves got ripped from walking so much on campus, a wonderful day discussing how the world's intellectual point guards got aroused by “Citizen Kane.” But I can't remember all the rules of grammar, all the tricks to oil painting, how to write a hot lead for a news story, and how to tell when a painted red ball is brilliant or just lazy creativity.
Where I wrote with passion and security all those years ago, knowing I knew it all, and knowing nothing, as Bill and Ted said, now I write with scars and numbness. Knowing jack is a given. But I thought I knew a thing or two about sentence structure, and that has always been enough for ego to ride a white horse and tower over the little folk.
I fear words written, cognizant of failure lurking behind every click of the keyboard. Cheap bourbon won't cure it completely. The lash of life's lessons continue to whip at the writer's back, as it should, but the passing storm will vanish.
And, whether grammatically correct or not, a lesson will be learned from it.
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