I exist on this Earth solely in service of the pen. I cannot any more cease to write lest I cease my heart beating.
I once took an etymology course. This is, of course, the history of language—its roots, tributaries, offshoots, rapids and slow eddies. The professor remarked that we, as humans, thought in a mode akin to pictures on a screen, only later attaching our symbols of reference to them.
This thought never contented itself on its throne. It crashed about my mind, in every drugged or sober moment. This thought, years in my past, would not admit that it was but a pauper.
I always silently remarked to myself that it seemed I thought, not in pretty pictures, but in words. English words. The words of my language, my tongue.
When a muse came to light on my shoulder, I was never at a loss at describe the vision. There was no vision, just a stream of words I knew beautiful.
A writer never sleeps. Even on my daily walks, I am often absent from consciousness, narrating a storyline woven with characters, plots and spectacular fantasies. In the little sleep I acquire—but three hours on good nights—my dreams are often not visual in character. Again, I narrate to myself episode upon episode, hour upon hour of fiction and prose.
In grammar school, I dreaded English class. I doodled on the paper. I did not draw; I doodled. My artistic hand never developed. The classes were long, boring, odious tedium.
I enjoyed nothing save for spelling bees at which I excelled. Peculiarly, I could not see the word in my head. I could hear it. I could take up a finger and trace it in the air. But I could not see it.
Towards the finale of my state-sponsored grammar school extravaganza, I was enrolled in the tutelage of the most amazing English teachers one could wish for. These brilliant souls, at a public institution of brainwashing? Little word short of Providence will do it justice.
The first of these, Piranha Bitch, after her convoluted Polish name and temperament, pounded grammar into my dense skull. If any assignment was not one hundred percent correct, it was redone, many times orally, at the mercy of the class, until it was perfect.
Later came Printer, after her Germanic surname. Her class ran in a discussion format, leading me to finally appreciate the English word, both written and in discourse. After that year, I took up poetry.
It began as all terrible mistakes end: in teen angst poetry. Two years of solid practice, writing every day, ignoring classes, homework, the law, friends, relations, family and dismissing the notion of God himself corrected that flaw.
Then, I began to write.
Before the completion of high school, I was apprenticed to two more blessings on the English language. These last two teachers taught literature. They gave me eyes to critique and marvel, to be inspired by the art of others, not of oils or carved marble, but of ink glyphs on paper.
Armed with cynicism, my Moleskine and pens, I wrote. Any writing at all, it would not stop. Whether I spoke or brooded, always twisting in my head were the sounds, the particles of words, the puns, the dance of sentence after sentence unrelenting.
I confess, I am terrible at Scrabble.
This is only for wanting to adore a perfect word laid before me, not for lacking vocabulary. I’ve often been accused of reading the dictionary, even by my own love, my girlfriend.
I confess, this is not without truth to it.
The dictionary—in that same etymology class that so stoked my thoughts—was revealed to me as a liberal fountain of verbiage, ever-flowing in plenty.
I am tempted to favorably compare writing to sex, but the girlfriend would have my head for that blunder, I am sure. She really is that amazing in bed.
English was not the only language to capture my flighty interests. Foreign languages, the further obscured by time, the better. Were they slightly more accessible to modern beings, I would certainly study the Tocharian dialects.
My attention was not limited to natural languages. Artificial languages in the form of Esperanto, Quenya and Sindarin held months of my time hostage.
But more than any artificial tongues prior, the languages of computers clamored for use. With my humble beginnings of a Commodore 64, I began the long journey of learning one language after another.
I am often heard to remark, although not strictly in truth, that I was required to take English as a second language in school, for my native language was C++.
Later, the promise of a new medium presented itself in the person of the Internet. Here, I could have my say, essays and snippets, all linked together in a web more intricate than spun by the arse of a spider.
The people, not satisfied with only a new medium, created a new format. The weblog, or blog.
I stepped into this revolution with a passion, authoring blog after blog without regard for my wanton excesses of bandwidth. None of these was to succeed, for I lacked the stamina to return, daily without interruption, to any particular child of my fingers.
However, as years passed, I acquired the scars of age and patience. Hair dyes came and went. Bleached and teal, purple and black the carousel spun. The gauge in my ear slowly grew, keeping pace with my curling locks.
After all, every writer needs something to toy with when he is on the verge of an idea, the cusp of a lexical climax.
A storyteller never sleeps. Even in the furthest leagues of my dreams, I delight in linguistic treasures, savoring them as truffles or as a young boy savors the pages of a discovered Penthouse magazine.
Upon waking, I spring to my pen or my keyboard, to stroke or tap the latest pent up flow. It is as inevitable a requirement as breaking to urinate.
Thus, you have it. My literary sperm.
