First Blog Post (and Poem)

I write for me, but I go through the trouble of making it accessible, for you (and for me).

 

 Welcome.

 

 

Here, I will feature my work. I need to write, and I need to share. So here we are. Me sharing; you reading. Here we go. Isn’t this fun?

So, I used to play in a band. No, not a cool one. A high school concert band; not even the jazz band, I know. I played the trumpet, though. That’s one of the cool ones, I guess…

Anyway, the reason I bring it up is cuz I remember in between songs, at a performance the conductor would introduce the next piece. He would comment, he would joke. I remember thinking it was kind of self-indulgent of him, and kind of boring. However, I’ve come to really appreciate those interludes and their importance. I went to the symphony once, and they did the same thing. And in Disney’s Fantasia 2000, they do the same thing and its just part of the whole experience.

So, think of this blog as kind of a concert. I present my songs (pieces of literary work—might be a song, might be a poem, short story, excerpt of a book I’m writing, or might be an essay or personal narrative), and I preface with a spiel and we get to connect.

Now, like William Hung, “I have no professional training," whatsoever, although I took a lot of English and writing courses, I have some things published (which I will share on here, as we go), and I did write for a college newspaper. But, most of all… I AM a writer.

I remember this Hallmark movie (I love Hallmark movies, so you’ll surely hear more about them—not top-of-the-line literature, I know, but everybody eats at McDonald’s, so bite me), it’s a Valentine’s Day one with the gal from Suits, the dynamic redhead, Donna (Suits is my favourite show, and there will be more on that as my blog blossoms, to be sure). Anyway, in this movie (All Things Valentine), the Donna girl (Sarah Rafferty) plays a writer and she’s talking to someone else who dabbles in writing, and she says, “So, you’re a writer?” and the woman responds something like, “well, you know, I don’t know about that…” and then she says, “it took me a while to admit that I was writer, too.” I feel that. Although I’ve always identified as a writer, it kind of took me a while to admit how important (essential) it is for me to write.

So, I decided to be a good blogger and look up the quote. I didn’t even find it in the movie script, so maybe it’s from a different movie. The movie did have some good “writer quotes” however. Here’s one that fits: her friend offers to have dinner with her and she responds, “yes! Anything to avoid writing.” The friend responds, “Why would you want to avoid writing?” and she answers, “because you’re not considered a real writer if you don’t.” I remember my writing teacher in a UVic film writing class say that established writers are often very welcoming to interested students or individuals who want to learn more about the field. “Reach out to them,” he said, “they’d love to talk to you…anything to avoid writing, because one thing about writers is we love to avoid writing.” Well…I certainly identify with that! I don’t know if all writers are prophets, but I am sure many writers feel like the Prophets in the Bible, chased and hunted down by God, until they speak the words they’ve been given. Like Jonah, I’ve spent my days in the belly of the oceanic beast and I’ve been spat out on the shores of Nineveh or Dagobeh (pick your canon), and I’m reluctantly standing up to my post and speaking the words that are in me.

I did start a couple of blogs over the years, but I’ll consolidate the work onto here, as we go (one of them I forgot the password to *face palm*). But I am recommitting to writing AND sharing my writing REGULARLY (as in twice per week). Here goes…

So, my next piece needs no introduction (just wanted to say that—picture me in a tux in front of a live audience, its fun). Contradictions are something I like to play with. So, basically, I LOVE words. I always have. They fascinate me to no end. Wordplay. Grammar, etcetera, etcetera. Some rules I love, some I hate. Some I hate to break and some I love to break, and sometimes I’m lazy, but I’m working on that. I do love to learn more rules (not always just so I can break them, there are other reasons—I suppose explaining etymology and language has been a treasured party trick of mine). Anyway, so this FIRST piece (I said “next” before but that is wrong, guess I’m just starting en medias res), it’s a poem.

I think out of all that I write and aspire to write, at heart, I am a poet. Anything else I write, could be broken up into little building blocks, of poetry: words put together to convey a meaning, evoke an emotion…take you somewhere. As a child I would question my mother on her “expressions”/figures of speech. As an adult, I have been told I think very literally. Well, I do see distinct images with words, but now I also often see the word written in my head, as well (that makes remembering spelling easy, but learning new words a challenge if I’ve only heard them and been writing them in my head a certain wrong way all this time).

So, when my mum used what she referred to as and explained as “expressions”, I often knew, but was confused, troubled, tickled, and curious all at once. I wanted to assign literal meaning to them. One example is, she would often say “the other day…” before a story. Being the youngest at one point (middle of a family of 10 kids), I was often the subject, or in the story or knew it somehow or in part, in my younger days, so I was keen to listen for relevance, learning or the opportunity to correct (another one of my hobbies). I had assigned meaning to that phrase. To me “the other day”, literally meant “two days ago,” because yester day means one day ago, so naturally... So, then one day at age 4 or so, at the dinner table, my mum related an event that occurred three days ago, prefacing with the “expression”, “The other day…” and I perked up, “No, it wasn’t ‘the other day’, it was the day before that!”

Sometimes childhood (AND even adulthood) can be confusing, but also, amusing. So, let’s have fun with it… Here’s a poem about childish wonder, written as an adult (figurately, the other day).

 

 

 

Alfred Hitchcock

By Elias Orrego

 

Alfred Hitchcock has no belly button

Because he got it removed

Surgically

He felt it had no purpose

                          He thought they were weird

What a psyco

 

Is Disney really frozen?

                            When did Mandela even die?

 

Did man land on the moon?

Who invented pizza? Was it the Italians?

Or did Genghis Khan pull it out of his butt from the Chinese?

How soft must the Silk Road be?

How fast did the gold rush? Where was it rushing to?

Russian? Or was it Fascist? If a dictator is evil, how evil must be the one who actually wrote the speech?

 

Why didn’t she write anymore?

Orange you glad a woodchuck can’t chuck wood?

What happened to Fuzzy Wuzzy’s hair?

 

Is it rude to tell an inside joke at a backyard party?

 

Am I?

Driving you nuts? What kind of nuts?

Do they have a license?

 

If you had a license to kill would you use it on me?

 

Oh, oh

 

Seven…

 

Had a license to kill,

 

Because seven eight nine

 

Six needs to toughen up and get over it.

But I’m only five.

 

I don’t know what I don’t know. I only know

what I heard. And what I heard…

                  Sounds weird.              When you say it

 

Like that.