It was four years ago and the author is seated twenty feet from where he is currently seated now at this precise moment in time space, pelting out the shapes and sounds that will form the anatomy of this blog--four years ago, when Barrack Obama was little known outside of the terra ferma of Illinois running for the United States senate. Four years ago when the United States populace as a whole, hungover from the heartache of 9-11, still believed that the purported possibility of weapons of mass destruction warranted the massive Invasion of Iraq by US troops which would later spawn innumerable causalities, international bruises bandied with emotional political welts on the global skin of this planet--a planet we still haven't learned as of yet how to share.
Four years ago when gas was, to put it mildly, cheap as fuck.
Four years ago when your avg. Ipod resembled the early NES pond scum-screened gameboy and was roughly the size of my outstretched palm. Four years ago when G-mail was sending out invites to recruit spam sullied yahoo accounts into the legion of frenzied googlized groupies. Four years ago when Brittney still wore her panties in public and the appellation Paris Hilton meant a five star resort you opted to stay at while touring France in lieu of a hostile. Four years ago when facebook and Myspace and Wikipedia were all cyber-embryos and Youtube had yet to be conceived.
Four years ago when nearly all of my daily literary rants were saved via hundreds of vestigial pre-school windowed shaped floppy drives and the (Shit, HOW pricey and how many scores of pages lost never to be recovered) Zip drives.
Before Katrina baptized the Big easy into a puddle of pain and loss. Four years ago, John Kerry was trying to lasso the political sway of the voting American cognoscenti. Four years ago to the day the quarter million lives snatched away from the the day after Christmas Tsunami were still living, still breathing, still here.
Four years of laughter. Four years of loss and failure. Four years of wondering who the fuck you are.
Four years ago when you were allowed to smoke inside bars. Four years ago when people recycled a lot less and the terminology "going green" meant that you were looking to score some pot. Four summers ago when I still busted my ass to make ends meet. Four summers ago when I just returned from a cursory tour of the highways of the Midwest, scurrying through the hallways of the prestigious Iowa's Writers Workshop, slipping autographed journals in which my work was showcased under the doors of esteemed faculty members and fellow writers I admired, before I found myself alone in St. Paul MN, looking at my literary mentor, Garrison Keillor, on stage.
Four years ago I was listening to the Yeah Yeah's and Liz Phair all the time.
Four years ago I was staying in the apartment with a aged Psychic who had told me three years earlier when I first entered his apartment for the first time to look around because I would be living there someday. Four years ago to the date when I blogged scribed the stanza's... "When the spotlight's illuminated cone captured her vibrato the entire audience (including her brother) fell in love. Is that why I left early and cried. Hoofing home, through the park late at night. So proud of her...wishing my father could have seen his daughter. Pissed off that the wound of death hasn't completely scabbed over. Raking up scattered leaves of family remorse sifting inside my chest, wishing I could set the crumpled heap ablaze and start new, which of course, will happen over time. Life isn't a unicycle (Thanks arya). Nor is it a motorcycle. Geez; my analogies are so lame and cheesy this morning that even my witticisms are subject to mold...."
It was four years ago when I started blogging, oblivious that this daily on-line dry erase board I chose one summer to employ as my creative kiosk would bless me with sprinkles of eternity, the feeling of oneness,the best moments of my life.
When you are kissed with comments of encouragement on a daily basis there is no end to what an individual will achieve. I can still see myself, four years ago, if I squint from where I am seated now. I can make out the back of my head, the pony tail (hair finally growing long again) like a honey-flavored handle sprouting out from the back of my skull--can discern the silhouette of my shoulders pivoting in exclamation and in joy as the fenestration of sentences spills open into a fellow bloggers pasture of words as my vision skis across a fresh paragraph authored by "lady Benz" or "mara-arya" where my lips, now as was the case four years ago, boomerangs into a smile.
Four years ago. The summer we swam with cycles, skinned lizards and doused demons with the narrative copper of our collected souls. The summer we danced in a single shared dream and were blessed enough to have the metaphysical skills of Ace to decipher them. The summer when growth was tangible and tinged with golden longing of all mankind.
Over the next week or so I'll try to resuscitate a few of the bloggs that I wrote four years ago but that were never posted. Writing (as a career, as a fiction writer) can be a lonely spiritual vocation at times. I look back at that summer four years ago not remembering a single blogg I wrote, but I remember with the gratitude of angels every reverberating vowel the twin hosts who invited me into this glorious gala fraught language and longing decided to share.
Four years. Shit!!!
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