Why I was not Born to Write: A Sea Full of Stories: chapter two

Ugh. Sorry. I know. It's been erratic. The Trophy Room is my emotionally abused partner, smothered with copyedited love for a few days and then burned with the cold shoulder of weeks-long silence while I google image search dumb stuff. But who shines their trophies every day anyway? Aside from champion gloat-mongers and glory-clinging wash-ups with way too much time on their hands? Nobody.

Although I've been tempted to tide you over with massive posts involving only pictures of dogs in specially made dog-strollers, I promised myself I wouldn't let this turn into a "Hey, check out this goofy shit I found on the Internet" kind of site. Which means you'll just have to put up with the unpredictable nature of this little nest, and convince yourself that things like using a new font is exciting, fresh stuff.

So. Let's get back to.... A Sea Full of Stories.

The second story in A Sea Full of Stories is "I am The Ocean," a brief autobiographical summary as told by the ocean. An ocean, however, who has evidently forgotten the billions of years and the momentousness of its tectonic shifts and the theatrics of its influence---that which is repeatedly funneled into tidy, facile metaphors for life in formats of straight-to-VHS---and now, blinded by the lure of a buck, is just like the rest of us: a bitch for The Man.

Sigh.

I am the ocean. I love my plants and animals.
The ocean is benevolent.

I made the fish for the divers to enjoy.
But would like to remind you that its creations are not for the good of the eco-system/ any other integral structuring of the world's delicate balance. No: Fish are for for entertainment purposes only.

I made the shells to sell.
And it has full license to hawk its goods.

Here we could insert an elegy for youth tarnished by the subconscious filters of media influence. Here we could lament that even the simplest, most natural, most ancient elements of nature can no longer be considered outside of the frame of commerce.

But actually? I have to side with my profit-oriented 10 year old slant. Because what is the point of sea shells, anyway? What purpose do they serve? Coming up with no good answer of my own, I did what every good thinker does: I googled. Here's what I found:

They are so neat to collect and put in your homes.

You can put them into your fish tank at home to make it look better and to give the fishes more places to hide.

You can put eyes and a mouth on them and make them look funny or mad.

You can get a boat and throw a net into the water to catch more of them. It is fast and easy.

Seashells are great for necklaces, bracelets, and ankle bracelets. They make you look cool, and it fits with all your clothes and your styles.

from "Seashells and their Many Uses", categorized under News and Society > Nature on Articlesbase, "a free articles directory" and written by some dude, whose name I will not print here, who apparently has also written articles, for the same site, such as, "A Bad Case of Diaper Rash Burns Like Fire," "Raging Fires in Australia and Many Other Places," "Most Cats Detest Water and Will Avoid it at all Costs," and "Dancing and the music of Yesteryear."

I wish I made that all up.

I made the sharks for some action.
The ocean cannot stress this enough: fish are for entertainment purposes only.

I have the murky pools for crabs to live in.
The ocean is a gracious host.

The waves for people to stop and listen.
And a poet.

I like to share the sand so the people can build big sandcastles.
And a slightly condescending benefactor-cum-overlord when it comes to providing a venue in which to watch humans build futile, temporary structures that it will later destroy with all of its cackling might.

My whole ocean is for everybody.
But generous nonetheless, despite its tendency towards weird, megalomaniac meta-reference.

Why I was Not Born to Write: A Sea Full of Stories: chapter one

My friend Vanessa (of Pizza Beard fame) recently said that she couldn't recall me having a penchant for writing when we were in elementary school. That's because I didn't have one.

Behold, A Sea full of Stories:

(See those 'a's? Total poseur 'a's. I never wrote
them like that but thought you were cool if you did.)

A Sea full of Stories is an anthology of marine-based shorts written in the 4th grade. It begins with "A Whale of a Tale."

Told from the perspective of Snowflake the whale, it's the heart-warming tale of--oh, wait. Shit, wrong story---this story isn't heart-warming at all.

Nope. The opening story of this collection is a gruesome first-person account of drowning at the hands---or fins, rather---of mega flaky friends.

Let's dissect (click to read):

1)

Not above freezing, not below freezing, but about below freezing. Good use of estimation: the tone has been set to ominous.

2)

Ideally, these names should be read in a slow, solemn voice for cinematic effect. All together now:

Ice.
Ice Hole.
Snowflake.
(pause)
I'm Snowflake.


3)

Haha, dumb whale. "Wer'e." He doesn't even know how to punctuate. And, if his only hope is a small breathing hole, which is getting smaller and smaller each day, and he's pretty sure that they'll all die, why the hanging around? But I will give him credit for explaining, in the midst of his dramatic narrative, that they're stuck only because of a freak aberrance of seasonal ice coverage.


4)

Whoa.


5)

Hmm. Let's turn to the illustration for help:

It's not clear why the Inuits are making holes in the ice, or why they're making 24 of them. That's a high number for what we can assume is an extremely tedious task. The larger of the two men looks appropriately pissed, while the other slightly bemused. Possibly because his ice pick resembles something else. In any case, it seems that they're either making holes for ice fishing or, as we might deduce from the events in this story, a strangely designed, needlessly labor intensive and drawn-out method for trapping whales who have chosen to loiter instead of heed the call of evolutionary survival instincts. Even when their skin is visibly swollen and bleeding.

6)

Cherishing the freedom of your friends, even when your friends are savages and leave you to die at the tenth hole? Snowflake, you are a true martyr. Albeit one who doesn't spell well and forgets to close his quotes.

What grad fish has to do with any of this, I'm not sure.

Killer Killer Whales

Yeah, so, that whole news bit about Telly the killer whale killing a trainer at Sea World today, and oh, having also played a part in the deaths of two other trainers in the past, therefore making him a three-time killer? Yeah. I so called that shit.

Remember?

Analysis of My Grade School Lack of Talent, Difficulties with Tenses/Why I Was Not Born to Write: Exhibit C

3) Thinking all it took was two factions coming to the brink of death to realize the irrationality and futility of war.

THE STORY OF THE HORSE AND THE DONKEY

(open in new tab to make big and read)

The Story of the Horse and the Donkey is a 3rd grade tale of two enemies turned friends in the sudden, terrifying realization of their own mortality.

Dixie and Dopey---horse and donkey, respectively---do not get along. The history of their not-getting-along is not explored; their battle sites unknown. What matters only is the magnitude of their not-getting-along, equivalent to that of man's mightiest conflicts: Punks vs. Goths; Creamy vs. Chunky; Us vs. Them. Horse vs. Donkey, it seems, is a hatred with no end.

One day, Dixie and Dopey cross paths. The mere sight of each other sparks hostilities:

Dixie: I, am stronger than you, because I, have stronger hoofs.
Dopey: Well, I can get very mad, because I am very stubborn.

With the age-old weaponry of self-aggrandizing claims, incorrect pluralization, wayward punctuation and conclusive logic in the loose form of threat, the barbs of this simple exchange ignite an all-out, balls-to-the-wall brawl. In short, Dixie and Dopey freak the fuck out.

Their fight ends with neither victory nor defeat but rather a vague, mutually agreed upon cease-fire and a synchronous signature of stuck-out tongues. They then slink away home and plot the other's death.

The next day, Dixie shows up with a machine gun and an army helmet on his head. Whether or not Dixie has a past in some kind of equine military service is unclear; where exactly horses go to procure machine guns we will likely never know.

Dopey---always the more minimalist, sophisticated of the two---shows up with a Rambo-esque cloth tied around his head and a knife.

According to the cover illustration of this story, which I had for a while but somehow lost, the two lean into each other bristling and brandishing their weapons. They're ready to kill.

Or not.

Just seconds later, realizing the beauty and sanctity of that aching ephemera known as life, they both lose their nerve. They're so overcome by this sentiment that they destroy their weapons with the thunderous power of their hooves and in unison—somehow choreographed in the way that small villages in Disney movies suddenly awaken in order to sing about current events—they declare, "Let's be friends!"

We are told that they are friends forever. Fair enough---I too have become good friends with people I previously and for no good reason disliked. But I can't say that I've had the opportunity to say, "Hey, equine friend, remember the time we almost intentionally and quite brutally killed each other?"

The moment of truth.

Monkey Eating Eagle

Analysis of My Grade School Lack of Talent, Difficulties with Tenses/Why I Was Not Born to Write: exhibit B

2) Cop out endings.

Report: Snorkly the Dragon

(open in new tab first to make big and read):

Snorkly the Dragon is the dramatic tale of a young dragon who is aqua, has rough skin, big nostrils, and tremendously negligent parents.

One (stormy) night, Snorkly's mother "goes out with his father", leaving Snorkly unsupervised. Where the mother and father go, and to do what, exactly, is unclear, but either way, big mistake: in the middle of the night, Snorkly is savagely beaten and abducted by the island's resident sadist, taken to a cave "what looked like it had evil spirtes in it," and thrown into a tiger's den. (You can't call yourself the "worst dragon in all of Dragon island," after all, if your secret sadist cave doesn't have exotic animal holding pens/jail cells.)

Inside this particular den is a tiger prone to asking dumb questions. Like when Snorkly---likely bruised, bloody, and groggy as he regains consciousness---is thrown into the den, the tiger asks, "Why do you look so sad?"

Despite his dim wits, the tiger's pure feline brawn comes in handy: the bully, although having gone to the trouble of installing a tiger den inside his cave, is not quite the mindful jailor. By carelessly leaving the door unlocked, Snorkly and the tiger---who invites Snorkly to hop onto his back, "but not too hard"---escape to freedom.

They manage to find their way home. After this long and grueling night they arrive to Snorkly's mother, who does not seem to have noticed or cared that her only child was missing. The father---if he's even Snorkly's real father at all---is nowhere to be seen. Casually sitting up at what now must be dawn, the mother:

1) shows no reaction to her badly beaten son returning home astride an unfamiliar tiger;

2) still tries, however, to dissuade him from keeping the tiger as a pet before passively giving in, evidently dismissing the enormous food costs that a pet tiger might entail;

3) offers her son no medical assistance;

4) is unaffected by Snorkly's recounting of the evening's events, but at the mention of the cave, suddenly asks, "What cave?", which suggests she's either:

• a) unfamiliar with the terrain of her home island and flabbergasted by the possible existence of caves;
• b) actually quite interested in her local cave network and would genuinely like to know which specific cave; or
• c) knows very well which cave, and has perhaps visited said cave on one of the many occasions she "goes out with his father", but is now playing dumb to cover up possible involvement with nefarious cave activities/cave-based drug rings.

Strangely enough, she does not think to notify the authorities of a maniac child beater on the loose until her son kindly asks her to, at which request she displays a sudden, uncharacteristic take-charge attitude ("I most certainly will!"). Again, this could be in attempt to conceal her associations with caves and/or cave dwellers/dealers.

Shrugging off his mother's incompetent parenting, Snorkly then leads the police to the bully.

Apparently the sadist bully didn't care that his hostages went missing either. Maybe he was distracted. Maybe he was frantically refreshing his browser page in the final minutes of an eBay bid. Who knows. But it does seem that this blase, laissez-faire attitude is one that defines the national character of the island, a collective consciousness that's all ain't no thang. It even affects the police, whose response to a child beating criminal is only to incarcerate said beater until they had "learned a lesson and would never be mean again."

Okay, so the legal system is a little more lax on Dragon Island. Dramatic events garner no media attention whatsoever. No one seems too troubled with protecting the public from danger. The former headquarters of a psychologically disturbed dragon---which were, by the way "so yucky and spooky"---get turned into a "paradise place".

Hey, c'mon. This is Dragon Island. See that molester van? Booze Cruise Mobile! That ex-meth lab? Daycare center!

Man, Dragon Island just wants to party!

Trophy Break

Happy New Year!

Lots of good stuff coming soon. Promise. Just taking a little break to deal with establishing life in new town, etc.

xoxo
the trophy room.