Tuesday 20 July 1999
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Last night as I went to bed, there was a thunderstorm to the south,
out at sea. It was eerie and beautiful. It was so far away that I only
heard the echo of the thunder, a subdued rumble, and only saw the
reflections of the lightning. Lots of it, lighting the wall of my
bedroom like a flickering, enormous, blue candle flame. I felt so good
just lying there tucked into the bed and seeing the shifting flicker on
the wall and listening to that deep sound, like I was a kid again and a
strong, caring father was watching over me as I went to sleep.
I guess I should talk to a psychiatrist about my semi-subconsious "son of the thunder god" complex before I start doing something really inappropriate. Like throwing lightning bolts or something... ;)
Tonight, about quarter past ten, it started to rain. Seriously rain. I
looked out and it was going wild. I put on a pair of trousers and went
out. It was awesome and then some. Just when I thought it could not
rain any harder, it rained harder, and then it did it again, and again.
Like as if it had not rained for three years and a half, and really
really REALLY needed to rain NOW. The road turned into a river while I
walked - a strange feeling - and then I walked into the forest. It was
like entering another dimension. It was half dark there already, and
the sound was different. The forest seemed to absorb the rain at first,
though gradually the small stream started to grow. I turned around and
heard a weird sound, a deep thrumming vibration. Quickly I walked out
of the forest and found that the rain had broken. It was falling now
like a soft, thoughtful caress; while I walked home, it faded to a
whisper. And then darkness fell, in a matter of minutes, and with it
silence.
I've told stories to myself for as long as I can remember, though I don't know how far back that is. Probably before school at least. In my early childhood, I had no control over the stories, no more than a baby that pees as soon as you've put on a new diaper. (Ouch, I almost wrote "new diary" there...) Anyway, it was more like daydreams, except that pretty soon I stopped daydreaming about me and started daydreaming about heroes I identified with. My first and perhaps greatest superhero was Snoopy. Yeah, you may laugh, but Snoopy was my hero. I remember how angry and devastated I felt when my brother (cruel git that he was) told me that Snoopy had been shot down by the Red Baron. I could not quite believe it ... but my brother understood English and I did not. For as long as that lasted. Still, over 30 years later, I find myself whistling the Snoopy tune in more elated moments. I was not very good at internalizing thoughts. Despite being a fairly bright kid otherwise, I depended heavily of speaking out loud. In fact, I think I learned to read silently years before I learned to think silently. In particular, I had problems with making the stories without speaking out loud. I spent much of my childhood alone, and not least because alone I could tell myself the stories I wanted to hear. Later I would start typing them instead. It was like the story was in a flux as long as it was within my head, unspoken. When spoken out or written down, it became sort of fixed, more real (in an unreal way, of course). This is still so with me: Stories branch and bend in my brain, only when they hatch to paper do they take their final book-like form. (Actually, few of my stories make it to paper now: They end up on floppy disks or zip drives instead. But I depended heavily on my typewriter for years.) In the very latest years, I write a lot less fiction than I did. Not that I ever published anything before either - it was for myself mostly. I had a little ongoing story on YouthNet a few years ago, but that's mainly it. Anyway, I think that the time I spend playing roleplaying games is subtracted directly from the fiction writing quota. So in times where I've playing lots of Daggerfall, there has been next to no writing. This makes sense, as fantasy is my preferred fiction and also my favorite games. Magic, and lots of it, or at least technology that can not be distinguished from magic. Weird creatures, and humans with weird ways of thinking. I don't finish things, though. I don't play my roleplaying games through to the end, and I don't finish my novels either. I write for a while and then I stop. I've been writing a kind of science fiction story the last few days, in a fake diary form, but I know I'm not going to actually go anywhere. So I've not put it up on the web, like I thought I might do. I still may, but probably not. I'm like that guy who started to build a house and after he'd laid the foundation he found that he could not finish it. Except I go on to lay new foundations all the time. You know, it's a good thing I'm not into that there relationship thing... Love and stuff like that.
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