I am Not British, But I am A Writer...

     Some days I stare at a blank sheet of paper and words flow from my mind like water from an emancipated dam. Other days, the creative outputs of my mind seem to be stopped up like a drain. It is times like these that frustrate me to no end. Writing comes as naturally to me as breathing, but everyone forgets to breathe now and then. I imagine that there is, in the caverns of my mind, two warring armies- each trying to lay claim to the stronghold village labeled "creativity." Whenever one side takes control of this unfettered land, production ceases, daily patterns become irregular, and cells are killed. The heads of the armies, those astute generals versed in every manner of warfare tactic known to man, then take it upon themselves, to storm the stronghold, lay waste to its devices, and sit fat and mirthful on the spoils of their plunder. Instead of taking it upon themselves to utilize the village and all its resources, these men pleasure themselves in the ordinary, in the dull nothingness that makes up their fruitless existence.
   
     This definition, a bit dramatic and perhaps verging slightly into the realm of the insane, is product of my innermost being. After all, I was conceived and birthed in the realm of the insane. My childhood, truth be told, consisted of fantasies- great battles waged on playgrounds and rice paddies, kidnappings and ransomings, the ship wrecks of great monoliths, headless creatures in the night, and the ever lingering notion that adventure lay just beyond the next curve in the road. My poor cousins and brother were subjects to my madness, and often found themselves serving as my skeptical knights or hapless steeds. We galavanted all over the California country sides, rapiers brandished high and aspirations matching the blazing sun. In school I was the girl who read everything. In the mornings, when eating breakfast, if I had nothing to read, if there was no book or literature before me, the cereal box was read. I had every word memorized on the Cheerios before the first week was over. In school my favorite subject was history. I passed every test with flying colors, and almost always procured the highest score. Recess was another amalgamation of my aberrant imagination. It is no wonder that so many of my "friends" stayed clear of me and my musings. They foresaw, within me, something not akin to them, something void of the normality so reigned in by society. Even at ten years of age they could see that I was cut from a different mould, a mould that begged an audience with the fantastical. After school I was shuttled home- the breeding grounds of my wild mind- and it is there that I would romp about the yards, shouting and fighting with phantasmal foes. I could also be found in one of the dozens of gardens, tending to the plants that I cherished and nurtured as my own. Even in high school I held a certain fervor for gardening. There was one scenario in particular I liked to enact whilst administering to the ground. I was a young, English girl captured by an Indian tribe and held captive deep within the jungles of wherever I happened to think of them at the time. I had been on safari with my parents and brothers, when we were ambushed. They were killed, but I was spared for the curious reasoning that I had seed packets on my person. This tribe was starving- their crops were failing terribly- and I was believed to be their savior. The plot was thickened every day, and when last I remember, I had fallen deeply in love with one of the young men but our love was put to test at the news of my impending execution for a continued decline in crop production. Yes, this is just one of the stories that I have yet to write. I used to think that there would be no way for me to channel these fantastic thoughts as an adult. I had this horrible fear that one day they would simply slip away, leaving me "normal." The very word makes me shudder. It was not until I wrote my first poem at age thirteen that I knew I could never be normal. People who are called to the extraordinary can never be ordinary. It's simply not possible. And to prove just how "not normal" I am, this entire post was written because of a block within my brain, and I have been writing this with a British accent for the entirety of the post. I'm not British, but I am a writer of the unseen and the abnormal.

“We’re past the age of heroes and hero kings. … Most of our lives are basically mundane and dull, and it’s up to the writer to find ways to make them interesting.”
—John Updike

“Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it’s the answer to everything. … It’s the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it’s a cactus.”
—Enid Bagnold