Into The Deep

I suppose you could call it reflecting, reliving, or reclaiming your past. I guess I’d simply describe it as reflecting on my life through my rearview mirror.

For many years I considered mind games such as ‘what if…’ and ‘but if not for…’ to be exercises in futility. They were simply excuses to ponder one’s history and guess what might have happened back where and when. It was nothing more than living in the past. Now I see it differently.

My most recent publishing effort, although not completed yet, proves a wonderful example of this. After a lifetime of dancing around the edges, I’m finally ready to release my first steps into the world of writing, some fifty-plus years after the fact.

This new career of mine as a writer began with a collection of poems written back in my dark ages; cold, confusing and offering but a glimmer of what might lie ahead. But even before those vernacular camping exercises, there were some tantalizing clues along the way.

Photo courtesy of Jerry Hoffman

The voices first came whispering to me in the early morning hours before the rest of the world was awake. With a satchel of newspapers strung over my shoulder, there were miles to trudge before breakfast. The parables came in music and song and words of wisdom that no one else had bothered to share with me. They spoke of wondrous things that filled my malleable mind of twelve with dreams of imaginary places.

The messages came through a salmon-colored transistor radio, one of the first to be sold in my town. In summertime, it hung from my shoulder and shouted great songs into my ears. During the bitterly cold winter months, it was buried beneath layers of clothing but with enough volume to etch through the layers and still reach my ears.

Photo courtesy of Jerry Hoffman

In a world devoid of parental guidance and direction, the words spoken carried tremendous weight. It was a world of someplace else. It was cool cars and hot chicks. It was love gone wrong and finding the girl of my dreams. It was us against them. It was a whole new world opening up right before my ears. It was a language that spoke to me. A language I understood while most adults didn’t.  I got it. They didn’t have a clue. I knew what cool was even though cool was out of the realm of my placid existence.

Photo courtesy of Jerry Hoffman

The words and music continued on as I grew and changed and grabbed hold of my vapid future whatever that was at the time. It carried me through grade school, high school, and beyond.

Now years later, I realize the words and music were all manufactured and manipulated and packaged for young minds made of putty and clay. They were singing the songs but few had actually lived the story. Yes, there were cars but they were rentals. They had the chicks but that never lasted very long. They themselves were more often than not fragile, broken and dysfunctional just like me. They brought forth their message but (figuratively speaking) died in the process. Welcome to the real world of rock and roll and music from our youth.

Literally and figurative, they are all gone now. They’re either dead, disappeared or sadly still trying to cling to some semblance of what they once were. What does remain is a body of work that still resonates within my soul. Even after knowing the reality behind the music’s creation, it still speaks to me. It still draws picture-stories in my mind. It still stimulates my imagination in ways that no other medium can. The torch-bearers are gone but their message remains.

Photo courtesy of Jerry Hoffman

There were a number of other events in my younger years that propelled me into what and where I am today. Those were life-altering events such as being accepted into Cretin High School, returning to the College of Saint Thomas, living abroad, getting married, starting my own business, and finally decided that in lieu of retirement I’d give writing a chance.

Perhaps it was Tinkerbell who stole that moniker from me not that long ago. Reminiscing on 80 years stumbling around this great planet of ours, I’ve come to the conclusion that there were a lot of things I never accomplished in my youth and growing up was one of them. Finding a stable home life like that of ‘Ozzie and Harriett’ or ‘Leave it to Beaver’ gave me a false impression of what ‘real home life’ was supposed to be like back then. It wasn’t to be part of my backstory.

Most of my youthful aspirations were never meet. I never traveled around the world on a tramp steamer or shipped out of New Orleans to cruise the Southern Hemisphere as a rambling vagabond.

My rambling around the countryside like Woody Guthrie was provided by Uncle Sam who limited my ventures to California, Louisiana and Virginia.

I never did the ex-pat thing very well. The first time around in Europe, my job in a Danish laundry didn’t leave a lot of time for exploring the countryside or other countries.  On my second venture East, I applied for work at the BBC but a Yank in London had a real uphill climb to be accepted there.

Mix an ISTJ (off the charts) with an ENFJ (Sharon is too) and what you get is an affirmation that opposites attract. Domestic life ensued and fifty-one years later I’m retired and busy with other things.

My youthful naïve dream of becoming a writer started in the early 70s with two typed up westerns which then took a hiatus for another fifty years until it finally became a real and new vocation and career for me starting at around age 65.

Now I write full-time, drawing on my imagination and anywhere else I can steal an idea. Perhaps it started with those transistor radio voices or cooking up poems in the rundown palace I first lived in independently. I guess it doesn’t hurt to still have a little youthful exuberance attached to the task of churning out storylines for my blogs, plays, novels, etc. Looking in my rearview mirror isn’t a bad way to see the road ahead.