[Special note: I am changing the nature of this blog to a different style of writing. I realize that it may not appeal to everyone, but I think it’s time for me to make a shift for several personal reasons, including the desire to do something new.]
I once had the idea that I should write a book, become famous and rich, buy a nice old rustic house in Bucks County, PA, and live the life of a prolific literary genius of sorts. Then I began to try to think up some clever titles and imagine my name on the front cover with an intriguing illustration. I further imagined that I would be asked to speak in college classrooms and in libraries on what it was like to be a best-selling author. Where did I get my ideas? How did I go about the craft of writing? What advice do you have to offer for those who wished to do the same thing?
Then another time I had the romantic thought of being the writer of classic, practically nonviolent mysteries, living in an old house on the coast of Maine, with the sound of the sea splashing with a loud, but nonthreatening roar against the ruggedness of the rocks. But there would also be a beach that I could walk along, kissed by the salty mist sweeping into shore, while I considered the plots and who-done-its of my next novel. Then in the afternoon I would sit on the front porch in my favorite cushioned wicker chair, my cup of tea on the somewhat rickety wicker table, and think about going into town for dinner to my favorite seafood restaurant.
Oh, yes. There was also the idea of living on a quaint old farm with chickens and horses and other forms of livestock, writing children’s books about wonderful childhood adventures like Timothy’s Front Porch in which, as Timothy played on the front porch of his house one rainy day, suddenly strange things began to happen: vines grew around the posts, weird jungle noises like the sounds that monkeys and parrots make came alive, and a man dressed up in a jungle outfit walked up the front steps and announced that he was being followed by a lion. Or Benjamin and the Pirates about a family on vacation in Lake George, NY and were at the Fort William Henry Museum, and as Benjamin looked through those binoculars they have there (the ones you pay 25 cents to look through) he sees a pirate ship coming down the lake, and he’s the only one who can see it, and no one believes him. There would be more to the story than that, of course.
Being a poet and living in a small New England fishing village along the Long Island Sound, maybe in Connecticut is also appealing. There would be a favorite coffee shop along the water, and a place to sit and think about my next poetry collection. The poems would probably be about the artistry of the neatly stacked stone walls in the country, the characters of people who lived in the village, the sights and sounds and smells of village life, the quirkiness of human interaction, and so on. I would write early in the morning on a typewriter (not on a computer) over the first cup of coffee, on the table on the brick patio in the back, just overlooking the garden.
Why all this? I haven’t the slightest idea other than these have all been the ongoing, albeit, occasional longings of the heart of my other self that exists somewhere deep within. Maybe my next life if such a thing is how it works. Or was it that it already has been?
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