Shame

Today I prepare myself to sit down and lose myself in Steve's meandering thoughts on writing.  Instead, I find him still pursuing his childhood, and therefore, stirring up my own memories.

I stayed with him through the movies and their inspiration, thinking I can address this later, I just want to read right now.

Then came the shame--his and mine following close behind.  I had to get a pen.

Stephen King's shame surfaced at the hands of Miss Hisler's unrhetorical question, "Why would (you) write junk like this in the first place.  You’re talented.  Why do you want to waste your abilities?" (49). 

He points out that he was 40 before, "he realized that almost every writer of fiction and  poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God given talent."  He continues, "If you write someone will try to make you feel lousy about it..." (50).

My shame came at the hands of the one who encouraged me the most, my dad.  I remember a conference that included belittling of my 'rapturesque' poetry-complete with someone rising into the sky (My mother played a lot of Jimmy Swaggert and Tennessee Ernie Ford) and not much positive to say about my second focus, issues of the heart (the most recent was John, the boy next door.)

I suppose that is when the ambivalence towards writing came in.  I was twelve.  What I had once embraced as mine, a place where I wondered on paper rather than through imaginary gateways into other realms, was seen and found wanting.  I kept those gateways open in my head.  No one could make judgments on what stayed inside, but on paper it never measured up to my potential--just ask my dad.

It was about this time though, my body broadened its physical limits.  Once content to play in the yard, I now found the potential of my feet and bike.  On the outskirts of Springfield, Oregon I would jump on my bike and ride closer and closer into the heart or walk down Deadman's Ferry road and lose my self in the quiet solitude of the Mackenzie River.  Out there no limits exited.  That world atlas I had pondered over for years began to take shape in my physical world, if only in watching rivers and roads make way into the distance and my mind traveling on with them.