Days One Hundred Thirty Two to One Hundred Forty: Fairy Tales and End of Days Fail

If you look at the dates on the entries you'll notice that it's been a while since I last blogged. That doesn't mean I haven't been keeping up with my Good Madness. On the contrary, it's been surprisingly easy to keep up with despite being busier with travel, a heavier work schedule, and an upcoming move. But while it's not too hard for me to actually sit down and create, what has been hard is convincing myself to take the time to chronicle it.

You wouldn't think these blog posts take that long, but they do. Because not only do I type out these explanations, but I also have to upload pictures, embed videos, etc etc. It takes a good one to two hour chunk out of my day, depending on the breadth of material I have to cover. Technically as I am writing this it is day 159. That's 28 days to cover. I'm not going to do it in one blog post... I'm going to break it up into several smaller ones. And you don't have to read it all unless you want to. Because, let's face it: just because I create something every day doesn't mean that every day's creation is any good. Sometimes you surprise yourself. Sometimes amazing things pop up seemingly out of nowhere. But sometimes it's all just garbage. We'll see what this crop holds...

Day 132: I wrote a poem from the point of view of a character (his name is Darius) in the "House Between Worlds" story I'm working on. It contains spoiler-ish material, though, so I won't post it here. (Not yet.)

Day 133: I had a dream about a giant pumpkin, so...



Day 134: There was a fairy tale I wrote when I was younger. Probably around 7 years old. It featured a boy and a girl and a magical golden cape that transports you to another world. The boy and girl had to rescue these weird magical forest creatures from the curse of an evil magician. The original version was probably about 100 words long, written and illustrated on a stapled booklet made of striped green-and-white computer paper from the super-old printers at the hospital my grandmother used to volunteer at. Well, that story's been wandering around in my head a bit lately and I thought it deserved a fuller retelling, so I started work on that and got about halfway through.

Day 135: This was a cool one. I was doing some errands, and a conversation I'd had with somebody about myth came to mind. It made me think of the Joseph Campbell's Monomyth, which, if you're unfamiliar, is basically a cyclical pattern that almost all major stories or myths follow in some sense. The conversation I'd been having with my friend was about the part of the hero's journey where they must descend into the "cave" or "depths" before reemerging to fight the final battle and win the victory. We'd been debating about literal versus figurative examples of this. A figurative example would be a character perhaps descending to emotional depths of despair before rallying and heading toward the climactic scene of the story. One literal example, however, was Pinocchio, who literally descends into the stomach of a whale to save Gepetto. It's only after this that he goes on to achieve his quest of becoming a Real Boy.

Anyway, that's a long discussion and probably put you to sleep unless you're a fan of literature classes. But, the long and short of it is that I was thinking about these two things and started humming, and a song came out. I call it "Pinocchio's Lament," and the idea is that Pinocchio is basically complaining to Jiminy Cricket (his conscience) because the process of becoming Real is difficult and painful and he's beginning to think maybe he should just give up. I'll post the lyrics below. I'm in the process of coming up with a piano accompaniment, then I'll record it as a proper song.

Jiminy
Criminy!
Won't you just
Leave me be?
I'm tired of hurting so much.
And pain's all you get
When you dare to care
Honestly,
I'm tired of hurting so much.

Conscience and consciousness
All of it leads to this
Terrible pain that I feel.
So let the world go on as such
I think it's just too much
To ever expect me to be something real.

Jiminy
Criminy!
Won't you just
Leave me be?
I'm tired of hurting so much.
And pain's all you know
When you try to grow
Honestly,
I'm tired of hurting so much.

Knowing the right and wrong
Won't make a better song
When it's been sad from the start.
Of all of the lies I tell
I lie worst to myself
To think I could ever change my sad splintered heart.

But Jiminy,
Criminy!
You won't give up on me
I'm tired of hurting so much.
But it seems that to feel
is what makes someone Real...
And the best way to heal is to love.

Day 136: There's a song I wrote a while ago called "A Strange One, She." I'll post the lyrics below. Anyway, the first recording I ever did of it was an eerie, slow kind of song. But driving home at night, I was trying to keep myself awake and started belting it out in this loud rock and roll version. A different melody, and a lot faster paced.... but it sounded cool, so when I got home I recorded it. Haven't made it into a video yet, but when I do I'll post it.

Day 137: At work I made a poster for my "No Passport, No Problem!" event about the USA. Only after I made it did anyone bother to tell me we weren't making full size posters for individual summer reading programs, just flyers. So yeah... an afternoon wasted, but at least I get to count it as my Good Madness for the day.

Day 138: Had a fantastic inspiration for a 13 Days of Halloween story, which includes these words: To be killed by malice or compassion, which hurts the worst? In the end it all comes out the same.

Day 139: I wrote this blog post in response to Carrie Ryan, author of The Forest of Hands and Teeth trilogy, coming to speak at our library.

Day 140: The world was supposed to end today, but it didn't. As a joke, I set my clothing out on the lawn to stage my own "rapture."