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.