Journal # 04.26.15

These days stories need embellishment like farm-raised corn-fed fish. You can try and capture the minds and hearts of your immediate audience by relating to them the story of the latest tragedy on Highway 99. Good luck. Particularly if you cap it off with a stirring account of ripping off your receipt of gratitude. The dewy eyes around you have glazed like Krispy Kremes. The secret devils in the room are already lost in your recollection, having taken a turn into the guardrail earlier and immolated the shoulder, just to put us all down sooner and spare us the pain of the ordeal. Newspapers went into the fireplace a long time ago, for the same. So the wandering eyes of next weekend's guests would not alight on old expired news. No, these days stories need salt and pepper. Maybe a well-designed website with graphics and videos and ads for your favorite products. Don't count on being the first to relay any news. Someone already knows you got cancer. They googled it a couple days before your doctor told you. They also know the odds are in favor of you surviving it, because no one who entertains the way you do, ever dies young. When I say you, trust me, I mean me, too. God have I bored a room full of people. It happens. We get tired or scared or we prepare too carefully for our publicity stunts. Spontaneity is teeming with life. But we forget and (American) culture teaches us we must be prepared in order to succeed. Well what? Did you prepare to come out of the womb of your mother in order to live on earth? Did you align your head and neck just so? Sorry. Plans and river dams cannot defend us against the most spectacular moments of our lives. I think I will walk out of my house today without any story to tell, after sitting down to write without any story to tell, and let the story tell itself. What a concept.