Rasmenia

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.”
- T.S. Eliot

*

The year of 2010 just didn’t go according to plan.

Then again, looking back, I can’t recall a single year of my life yet that has.  That’d just be spooky & weird if nothing unexpected happened.  Not to mention boring, eh?

For the two residents of the Rasmenian Nation, the year of 2010 began with chaos, anger & the frustration of international & cross country travel in the dead of winter.  Indeed, our last days of 2009 & first few days of 2010 were spent engaged in family squabbles, re-routed Greyhound buses & bumming around airports.  Oh… & I was fucking sick, choking on & snorting my own phlegm, which is just as sexy as it sounds.

But, we summoned every bit of patience we had & made our way There & Back Again.

So, we eventually made our way back home, back to land of baguettes & stinky cheese.  Things began to calm down, but I found myself dealing with the pissing & moaning of the occasional reader whose delicate sensibilities cause their rectum to tighten up & cause pain at any mention of the word “fuck”.  I don’t fucking get what the fuck that is all about, but in February, I found myself touting the benefits of the F-Bomb & taking Pride in my Profanity.

In March, we went Storming the Beaches of Normandy, taking a somber yet enlightening look at some of the WWII memorials & the Mémorial de Caen.

In April, we took a brief tour of the Mont Saint Michel & because it was absolutely necessary, I called Bullshit on Your Writer’s Block & no, I still don’t believe it exists.

In May, while Olivier & I were actually enduring some chaos from outside forces & that annoying thing people refer to as “real life”, there was still plenty of good shit happening – the number of rejection letters I was receiving was beginning to decrease, while the acceptances were increasing.  I owed a great deal of that to a teacher of mine from elementary school, so I decided to tell you all about how Mr. O’Donnell & the Old Yellow Paper helped to make a goofy little kid into a grown-up writer.

Okay, maybe "goofy, grown-up writer" would be more accurate.

As it does every year, June eventually came along & that’s when I went off on my tangent about how a couple of years spent living in Paris helped me to become a bit of germaphobe.

I got pissed off in July.  Right around the 4th of July, I saw a few Americans who were ignorant enough to mistake xenophobia & French bashing for patriotism.  Of course, this started me off on a lengthy & colorful rant directed at the French Bashers & their exposed ignorance.

The month of August is a time to slow down.  The entire country of France relaxes, most people are off on vacations & I was no exception.  But I did get to thinking about the real & surreal aspects of Paris.

September took a bit of a somber turn, but it was necessary.  It was time to purge all of the bullshit & bad times that had been smacking Olivier & me down.  It was time for me to vent a little bit about how 2010 wasn’t this fun & amazing year that we had planned it to be.  The year got off to a turbulent start, but it was the Cruel Summer that really knocked us down.

But staying down is for saps & cowards.  So we got back up & analyzed the Science of Dry Humping.

Then it was time for more ranting & finger pointing about my Misanthropic Expat Syndrome.

Before we knew it, it was December again.  As is now the custom, I was fucking sick, choking on & snorting my own phlegm.  Rather than making the big travel plans, hanging around airports & sleeping in bus stations, we stayed home in France.  Oh, & we finally published that book I’d been writing.

So… now what?

Even though the year of 2010 has been put behind all of us, its detritus still lingers.  I suppose that it will for quite some time to come.  While it’s fun to look back on some of it, I don’t want to dwell in it.  There are new stories to write, new books to get cracking on, new places to go, new things to make fun of & whole slew of pet peeves & bits of jackassery that I have yet to address.

If you’ve missed any fragments of the previous year, have fun going back & having a look.  If you’d rather read some of the fiction, then maybe you’d prefer to check out the book.

Otherwise, stick around. Even though the chances of my plans for 2011 going awry are rather high, I still plan on posting here with a bit more frequency.  No, not every single day, because… well, fuck that.  Seriously.

I’m sure that in many ways, this year will be much like last year – some of it will be good & some of it will be a bitch.  There will be the expected & the unexpected; more of the same & a bit of the new.  But the stories we’ll tell & look back on at the end of it all will be different…  those bits of detritus that stick to us that we’ll carry with us into the next one.  The real fun is in gathering those bits up.

Giddy-Up.

“What is a teacher? I’ll tell you: it isn’t someone who teaches something, but someone who inspires the student to give of her best in order to discover what she already knows.” -Paulo Coelho

“It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.” -Albert Einstein

*

I sat perfectly still in my seat at the back of the classroom, listening carefully as our teacher, Mr. O’Donnell, gave us our assignment: write a one-page essay explaining what you would do with only one day left to live.

There, at my desk in the far back corner, next to the little sink & the pencil sharpener, in front of the poster of Prince & the Revolution, I tried to contain my giddiness.  Sure, I had written boring essays for school before.  I had written some stories, too… but no one had ever seen any of those.

Hip, young teacher + 1985 = this hanging in the classroom

“That’s not all,” Mr. O’Donnell said from the front of the room.  “After everyone’s handed in their paper, you’ll come up here & read your story to the class.”

That last bit reigned my giddiness in pretty quick, but I was still excited.

I went home & wrote all about what I would do with my last day on the planet, where I would go & who I would spend it with.

A few days later, I sat in my little desk as my fellow 6th graders approached the front of the room & read their stories, one by one.  Some of them were sad.  Others were boring.  But, when one kid read his hilarious account of trying to commit suicide with a butter knife, I began to feel a little intimidated & a little bummed out that I wasn’t funny.

Then… it was my turn.  I stood in front of everyone & told them how I would fly to Venice, Italy & float alone on a Gondola, reflecting on my life while taking in every detail of the city.  To my surprise, Mr. O’Donnell stopped me every so often, saying things like, “Wow!  What a great line!”, or “Nice phrase!  Sorry, sorry… go on.”

Later, when Mr. O’Donnell returned my essay to me with the big red “A” scribbled across the top, he leaned down on my little desk, looked me right in the eye & said, “You really should think about being a writer, you know.”

Well… I did know, but until that moment, didn’t have anyone else who knew.  I had asked my mother a few months before if I could take a writing class at a local learning center, but was told that it would be a waste of money, as I had no special writing ability.

A couple of months later, it was time for 6th grade graduation, with the big award ceremony in the tiny gymnasium/cafeteria.  I expected nothing as I watched the other kids walking up to meet Mr. O’Donnell as he handed them certificates for perfect attendance & good grades.  I got sick a few times.  My grades were average.  I was just waiting for it to be over.

I was caught completely by surprise when I was called up to accept an award.  I felt special when, from his place at the podium, Mr. O’Donnell said that I was the only person to receive it.  He handed me the certificate with the little blue ribbon stapled to it.  I looked down & read it: demonstrated writing ability.

Artifact from pre-Rasmenian Era, c.1985

The years rolled on.  Somehow, I went from being that dorky 11 year-old kid & became a juvenile delinquent, writing bad poetry, smoking pot & reading Kerouac, taking LSD & listening to The Doors in between arrests & trips to jail or rehab.  From time to time, I’d take out that yellow paper with the blue ribbon stapled to it.  Things were bad, but I was going to be a writer.

Luckily, that was a phase – aside from the Kerouac & The Doors, of course, because they are permanently with me. As I became a mess of an angry, blue collar 20-something, I was writing.  Insecure about it, to be sure, but I was writing.  Was any of it good?  Not really.  At least, not by my current standards.  But, the desire – the need – to write was still there.  And I still had this piece of paper reminding me that I could.

There were long periods when I wrote nothing.  Eventually, I would open a drawer & looking up at me, reminding me that I should have been writing something – anything – was that yellow paper.  Echoing in my head, faintly, I would hear Mr. O’Donnell’s voice telling me again, “You really should think about being a writer, you know.”

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a couple of months, now & just hadn’t gotten around to it for one reason or another.  However, now turned out to be the perfect time.  I’ve had a couple of small publishing successes recently.  One of my stories is scheduled for publication in the latest issue of the literary journal, The Legendary.  Another one is scheduled for publication in Big Pulp in November.

Artistic validation is valuable.  It’s satisfying & is an excellent excuse to drink a lot of champagne.  Having someone read your words is even more valuable, more satisfying & is an even better excuse to drink champagne.

But… sitting here at the desk in my writing space, next to me is this piece of yellow paper that has lived among my most prized possessions for the last 25 years.  The blue ribbon is still stapled to it.  The ink has faded slightly & maybe the paper has gotten a little more yellow than it once was.

It still has just as much power as it did when Mr. O’Donnell handed it to that skinny little kid in the gymnasium.  No… that’s not true.  Its power has definitely grown.  This piece of paper helped to keep me writing & provided me with tangible proof that someone believed in my ability to do something.  All it took was for one person to believe in me.  Later, I eventually believed in myself.  Ok, it was a long while later because I’m fucking slow.  Shut up.

Regardless of how much – or how little – success I have as a writer, it doesn’t matter.  Well, it does… but only to a certain point.  Nothing I get from writing is going to be any cooler than this yellow piece of paper.

But, the more excuses to drink champagne I have, the better.