|
Why I write...A Pirate’s Tale |
|
When I was in the third grade, we were asked to draw a picture of what we wanted to be when we grew up. I drew a pirate ship. Though I was commended for my creativity and ability to color within the lines, I was informed that I was supposed to pick a “real” job, and that I could not grow up to be a pirate. In hindsight, the thing that I find even more maddening than the fact that an adult who was supposed to guide me showed such disregard for my dream and discouraged me entirely, is that no one ever asked me why I wanted to be a pirate in the first place.
My first ship was a turkey-roasting pan my grandmother put in the kiddy pool in her backyard for me. Seems odd I know, but I wanted to be in the pool yet not wet at the same time (fear of water, oh the irony). She gave me a wooden spoon, which I used to smite my cousins when they splashed me or even pretended they wanted to board my vessel. It was my ship, and I was willing to duel to the death to keep it that way. (On a side note, my grandmother was the one who first called me wench and when she died, I was given that pan.)
Other ships eventually followed, including a refrigerator box that had a portal through which I could blast my unfortunate sibling with beanbags if he came too close. He took to ramming my ship with his mini big wheel, so while he slept I pillaged his bedroom and held his blanket hostage aboard my ship until we reached an understanding. When a bull confused my actual raft that floated on our stock pond as a dock, thus sinking it into the murky depths, I took to referring to him as “that scurvy bastard”, threatening to run him through. I am pleased to say we ate him soon after, I with much glee and steak sauce; there was no love lost between us.
During those corruptive years between childhood and no longer being “a mere wisp and a tomboy,” I changed ships as frequently as I changed my hairstyle. High school is swift kick to the groin. There is no avoiding socialization and I felt as out of place as white shoes at a funeral. A pirate without a ship is a sad sight, and though I tried to blend into walls and become invisible, people tried to interact with me. I was the strange quiet girl sitting in the back of the class. I was blunt when I did speak, and my refusal to conform to any of the social cliques was highly frowned upon. As hard as people find it to believe, I was pathetically shy. By then, I had lost my comrades from grade school and middle school. Their ship sailed one way and mine seemingly sunk off the coast.
At the beginning of my sophomore year, it would be recommended (nay, demanded) by my English teacher and school counselor that I take creative writing as one of my electives. Though I conceded, I felt at the time that they were simply branding me to make me more blatantly different. I can remember it taking every ounce of courage I could muster to read my first story for that class out loud, my paper shaking visibly, palms wet, and heart racing. I don’t remember the story being particularly good, but the comments were not negative. That class was one of the best things to happen to me, because even though there were 19 of us, once the door closed and our desks moved into a circle, we were all equal as struggling writers.
To be completely honest, there was a time in my life when alcohol and shallow trists filled far too much of my time to be creative (or even sane). I thought I was “expressing” myself through this behavior and that I was exercising my freedom, when in reality I was completely avoiding the fact that it was okay to be me and I had created my own prison on the inside of a rum bottle. YO HO HO!!! I became a pathetic slacker, and it was through my devil-may-care behavior that I became a parent at the age of 17. I never considered any option other than pulling my head out of my bilge hole. While it is true I walked away from a full writing scholarship due to this situation, it is equally, and more importantly true, that my daughter’s untimely coming into existence saved my life.
In the last 20 plus years, I have walked away from writing briefly to do different things, but I always return to the comforts of it. Writing gives me the power to say what I want to say yet remain oddly silent, and eventually it becomes the catalyst for finding my own voice to speak out loud. I understand that what I have to say is sometimes offensive to people, but that doesn’t frighten me, going back to a time when I was afraid to speak at all does. Writing set me free from shyness and self-doubt and made my ocean as vast as my imagination could make it.
Pirates (and yes I know they were criminals) were nonconformists and loved adventure. They were an eccentric lot that dressed flamboyantly, danced like dervishes, and lived life by their own rules. Writers are pirates in the way that they pillage their minds and the psyche of others for the truths of the heart they pen; addicted to the excesses of adjectives and creative ideas that become the treasures sought so fervently by others. Perhaps I am at last a pirate; my ship gently rocks on waves of cursive prose, and she cannot be sunk.
|
|
Pictures & Poetry Links |