I busted out a flash this morning, it’s either good or it sucks, how would I know. There are things that are fun to write, there’s things that are driven to be written, things written from the heart, from the groin, from the tips of the fingers. There are things that come to you in one solid piece, things that come in shards, things filtered through the cotton of your memory, things cooked over your intellect like a hot dog over sterno. There are the things you write because you are afraid of the repercussions if you don’t, and things you write because you are afraid that if you don’t sketch them now they will be lost forever. There are the things you write through paroxysms of silly, and things you write with the rigor mortis of sobriety.
There are the cherry flavored things that still manage to taste like skittles or mentholatum, the crunchy things that couldn’t sneak up on you barefoot in a cotton room, there are things riddled with cacophony and things you write that suck the air out of a room. And out of the muck there are a thousand thousand slimy things that crawl across your page and scroll down your cheeks. I could tell you what I think of yours, I could be honest or kind or cruel about, but I could, and here’s the distinction, be objective. I have no idea about my own flashes.
It’s not really a being too close thing; it’s a flash thing. There are only two reasons to weigh the merit of your own flash and one of them is you did it wrong. I know, I know, I know, I’m the one you got this from; There is no wrong way to do a flash. I’ll ride that wagon until the wheels fall off and sit on the stump board until it grows another pair or my bones are bleached white. You cannot write a flash wrong, however, there is no right way to weigh a flashes merit. The merit is in getting it out of your crazy skull and into the light of day. Aw, shit, if I’m going to use that analogy; you free a people or a person because of the moral justice you place on freedom. If you give them a speech about how they owe you a debt by using their freedom for good you’ve sucked all the free out and have left them with just Dom.
There are two reasons, well, two worth mentioning, for this entry;
- Misguided as it might be I think what prohibits many a would be flasher (heh, in the seventies people would run naked through crowds. It was called flashing and done by flashers) is the idea that their work will be measured against the body of flashes. Perhaps, but whoever is doing the measuring is the one contrary to the spirit of the flash, not the author. The author created, the weigher is tearing down.
- I’m avoiding writing about the real shit, the day to day. One of the prompts this week was something about a day in the life of the narrator. I think I actually made the sign of the cross and hissed an empty gesture for an empty room. It’s not that the prompt was wrong; it’s that I’m frightened of what might spill over. I’m not depriving y’all of intrigue and adventure by avoiding my day to day; it’s just pretty fucking weird in an I-could-put-my-finger-on-it-but-I’d-need-to-sterilize-my-whole-arm-afterwards kind of way. One day in the near future (I mean before I’m dead, the doctor gives me thirty years or so, I tried bargaining for some time off for good behavior, but he totally Tom Waits’d me “Aww there’s nothing wrong with ya a hundred bucks couldn’t fix”) I’ll sum it all up and you’ll look back and laugh and I’ll get all pissy and insist it’s not funny and you’ll laugh harder and I’ll threaten to take my ball and go home. At least I hope that’s the way it goes down, beats the shit out of “Oh you poor dawg! Do you need an asterisk Hug asterisk?” I really wish you’d stop saying asterisk; it was funny the first hundred times … heh. You know the bunny ear fingers for air quotes? It’d be funny to make balled up fists exposing the pucker of the rolled index finger to denote asterisks, mostly because they’d also look like little butt hole pantomimes.
So, yeah, if I go much further this entry will look like it has a structure; madness lies down that path. It starts with a structure and then you feel compelled to make a point and next thing you know someone gets an eye poked out.
And I’m spent.
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