A Beggar’s Nightmare
The Beggar’s Nightmare
By: Dana Gioia
If wishes were horses, all beggars would ride
And gallop like squires through the green countryside,
But with nowhere to go, and no end in sight,
Still strapped to their stallions late in the night,
Jumping the hedge in the thick-grown park
As if demons pursued in the owl-haunted dark,
They will curse their fortunes with each hoofbeat
And beg to be beggars back on the street.
I was reading a lot of my old blogs on Myspace, trying to figure out what it is I used to blog about. It seems I was much more prolific back when I was employed. (Imagine that!) I always thought it’d be cool to actually have time to write, to take the time between jobs to work on something original that I wanted to see my name affixed to out in the Real World, on a bookshelf somewhere. In reality, I find my time taken up by so many different pursuits, whether it be gaming or catching up with old friends on Facebook, or reading a good book rather than writing one. Makes me wonder how I had time to do anything when I had a job, sometimes.
On review of my previous blogs, I didn’t really find a lot that was worth re-posting, but I’m thinking about putting up some of my original fiction, poetry, fan fictions, etc. I haven’t quite decided yet. This blog is supposed to be an experiment for me, to see if I can really say what I think and post whatever the hell I want. Sometimes I have trouble with making myself vulnerable by posting something I’ve written myself. I think I might dig out some of my old journals and see if there’s anything worth sharing. Sometimes I don’t even recognize the things I’ve written, after some time has elapsed. Perhaps this will give me the courage I need to re-focus and move forward with something I’ve always wanted to do: write professionally.
Nerds!
In our apartment, there are many nerdy things. Most of our the things we spend money on that isn’t earmarked for bills has to do with gaming. However, we are not simple gamers. We take things a little step beyond. I wouldn’t say we have verged into scary territory, or anything. We will leave that to the LARPers (Live Action Roleplayers…people who dress up as their favorite characters.) But in some ways, I even respect LARPing, because I know that those people are just nerds that express their nerdy love in another form than we do.
We have a high shelf above the cupboards that split the main area of our apartment in half. The cupboards are standard kitchen storage, but on the shelf above, facing out into the living room for the world to see, is our very proud collection of World of Warcraft figurines. Yes, you read that correctly: my husband and I collect dolls. We aren’t like the people who leave the items in their original packaging to retain value. We like how they look, and we like to display them in our house. The characters each have names, (which we sometimes quiz each other on to see if we remember them all,) and each represents a different race and class from the world of Azeroth.
Another supremely nerdy thing in our apartment is what we lovingly refer to as our “Nerd Wall.” This is a very large area of wall space which we have covered with poster art from various games and book series’ that we enjoy. These posters are collaged together in an organic, semi-haphazard way, so that games he enjoys are intermingled with games we both enjoy together. Obviously World of Warcraft features prominently, but there is also a large showing from other MMOs and PC games, such as Lord of the Rings Online, The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, Bioshock, Mass Effect, Fallout 3, DC Universe Online, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Red Alert 3, Final Fantasy, Dragon Age: Origins, etc. We are always adding to it, and I’m sure one day we will need more than a wall for our collection. (Even now the posters are spreading from one wall to the adjacent one.)
We’re talking about getting a book shelf just to put all of our video games on, because it seems we’re always looking for one we can’t find, and it’d be nice to keep them all in one place. (We’re not the most organized of folk either, but I tend to keep things a little better in order than my husband most of the time, and even he would admit that.)
Maybe sometime I’ll explore what it is that makes me have such a connection with some of these games. What do I get from them emotionally? How do they affect my life? Is it simple escapism from an otherwise mundane existence?
Beginning of a Blogger
When considering whether or not to even create this blog, I took a few things into account. Firstly, do I even have anything to say that is worth immortalizing or re-reading? Well…I suppose that depends on who is reading it. Sometimes I have interesting thoughts, and I’m rarely bored even when I have nothing to physically do, because I have a very active brain. I express myself well through the written word, so that isn’t a problem either. Secondly, I wondered what the purpose was for this. I suppose if I have something official like a blog that could potentially be read by others, I might feel more inclined to post to it regularly, particularly if I have no idea if it is being read or by whom.
I make no apologies for this blog. I have decided I need to have a place where I can voice what I think and feel without having to hide things from people. I consider myself to be an open book in a lot of respects, and I try to be as up-front, honest and forthcoming with people as I possibly can be. That being said, I know there are things that I keep inside as a naturally secretive person. I don’t know if it is valuable to even evaluate such things in the light of day, much less allow others to read and make value judgments on my thoughts and doings. I have imperfections just like anyone does, only I can be very shy about admitting them to anyone. I don’t think anyone has any illusions about that, least of all me, but I do think there are things that would make people like me a little less if they were general knowledge.
This is the place I will express what I think. I don’t care if it is never read by another soul, and will probably sometimes truly hope that it isn’t. But I also think there is some value in sharing yourself with people and making yourself vulnerable. I don’t really have any particular goal or agenda in writing this blog, only to have it, and update it, and maybe I will finally start writing things that others wish to read, as I’ve always hoped I would. I have this strange dichotomy within myself; I write things I want others to enjoy reading, and then I shy away from allowing them the chance.
When I was in high school, I wrote a story that was nearly 300 handwritten pages long. I even went so far as to carefully bind it with box tape to keep it all together. It was quite an achievement. I hid it underneath my bed, taking it out once in a while to read it again, and enjoying it each time. After a while, perhaps a few years, I started to worry that someone would discover and read it, and the idea so terrified me that I spent an hour systematically ripping up each individual page into tiny pieces and throwing them away. I still regret it to this day. So what if it would be considered little more than fanfiction in this day and age? I didn’t even know that such a thing existed at the time. I thought I had written something nobody else would ever care about or sympathize with, and was mortified at the idea that anyone would read it, and that I’d be ridiculed.
I’m sure you’re wondering, phantom readership of mine, what the topic of this little fic of mine was. What was subject of the very first written foray of any significant length of this soon-to-be “legendary” blogger? (Don’t worry…I’m laughing as I even type that. My tongue is in my proverbial cheek.) Well, I won’t lie…the story was about the New Kids on the Block. At the time, their popularity had definitely, decidedly waned, and I felt it’d been ages since they were popular. Perhaps their unpopularity had appeal for me, even then. I did rather fancy myself a rebel for a while there in high school. Didn’t we all? Nevertheless, I had a science book cover that had all their albums listed with every song they’d ever recorded, in order by release date in my high-school-girlish penmanship. It was my way of publicly declaring an affection for something unpopular as a passé pop band, even while an even deeper, darker affection for a very different genre of music was taking root. It wasn’t long before black Nine Inch Nails t-shirts and blue lipstick were part of my personal style. If only I’d known how popular my “edgy” musical predilections were, then.
It’s good that I can look back and laugh at it all. Now that the words are coming out, I want to tell stories of everything that has happened to me. Every little embarrassing and mortifying moment of elementary and high school. Every heartbreak and triumph. If I don’t stop myself, I could keep on blogging into infinity, and this would be less a blog and more one lengthy, autobiographical blog posting. But this blog isn’t just about me. If you stick around to read, you will see what I mean.
