I shall die hidden in a hut In the middle of an alder wood, With the back door blind and bolted shut, And the front door locked for good.
Elinor Wylie, Prophecy
I worry about newspaper columns more than I should, I suppose. The truth is, I keep expecting someone to tell me to shut up, but I don’t want to shut up. I want to write more columns.
That hasn’t always been so.
Not long after I joined the staff of the Monroe County newspaper in the previous century, I was tasked with writing an introduction column. It turned out to be clumsy prattle, and I had no wish to write another one.
But after I was promoted to editor, the City of Forsyth held an essay contest in which local students were asked to explain what they would do if elected mayor.
So, I also decided to write an “If I Were Mayor” essay as a column.
It was sarcastic and somewhat silly, but the feedback was positive.
So, I wrote another one.
Pretty soon, my columns became a regular feature. That has continued to some extent with the Lake Oconee News.
I’ve always believed my column writing method was faulty, and I never felt like I had much in common with syndicated columnists like Dick Yarbrough.
I basically sit down in front of a computer, stare at it for a minute, and say, “Kick the tires and light the fires, Big Daddy,” as Harry Connick Jr. told to Will Smith in the film “Independence Day.”
But I have not always approached writing in such a cavalier fashion.
Once upon a time, what I produced was far from the light-hearted fare I usually produce in this space. My stuff was downright gloomy.
In those early days, I considered myself a fiction writer and had a few illusions (delusions?) about what makes a successful writing career.
I just wanted a modest flat above a seedy bar where I would scratch my existential broodings into a spiral-bound notebook with a No. 2 pencil. Let Stephen King write the flashy bestsellers on his Macbook. I would toil in obscurity like an old Jedi Knight living in obscurity on Tatooine.* (FYI: In those days, I was an insufferable liberal who hated Republicans in general and Ronald Reagan in particular.)
I once wrote a short story about an elderly gentleman named Van who lived alone in a New York tenement house on the Lower East Side. I will summarize the tale.
You’ll have to apprehend a meaning on your own.
Now, Van was plagued by heart problems, so he rarely went out. Instead, he sat in a pink Queen Anne chair with a pencil in his hand and a spiralbound notebook in his lap.
Every day, almost from dawn to dinner, he scribbled in his notebook until it filled up with words, and then he’d go fetch another notebook from the closet.
After several months, a stack of notebooks two feet high sat beside his chair.
On Christmas Eve, as snow plunged New York into a white sea of silence, Van’s son, Paul Isher, visited him.
Paul gave Van a small box wrapped in paper with snowmen on it. Van tore away the paper to find a Timex watch inside.
“Takes a licking and keeps on ticking,” Paul said. “Just like you, old man.”
Tick, tick, tick. Relentless time marches on toward inevitable oblivion.
Van shook off the gloom the gift seemed to conjure and decided to change the subject.
“I’m almost done with my life story, and I want you to read my notebooks,” Van said, pointing at the stack.
“Maybe later,” Paul had said dismissively.
The gloom returned.
And with a flourish of scarf and overcoat, Paul left Van’s flat, the door closing behind him as he waved farewell.
The snow began to fall harder, and most of New York was now buried in a sarcophagus of ice.
Van picked up the notebook on the top of the stack and opened it to the page where he had stopped.
He scribbled two words: “Maybe later.”
Then he picked up the stack of notebooks and took the elevator to the ground floor. He walked outside into the blowing snowflakes and made his way to the rear of the building. He tossed the notebooks in a green dumpster. Then he went back upstairs and drew the iconic “Kilroy Was Here” meme on the wall in his kitchen with his pencil.
The End.
Most assuredly, it is a tale written in a minor key.
That’s what reading too much Franz Kafka will do to your brain. I’m lucky I didn’t wake up one morning to find I had been transformed into a cockroach.
Selah.
* Fifth consecutive column with a Star Wars reference.