March 28, 2006

• A Really, Really Ridiculously Long Explanation as To Why I Haven’t Written Anything Decent in About a Year

  
  

   

  
  

  

  
  

  When it all boils down to it, the majority of my life’s problems seem to be directly linked to the fact that I wore pigtails in the third grade.  These weren’t your typical pigtails, though. You wouldn’t find them on a freckly seven year old playing with her Barbie dolls in a sandbox.  My pigtails were meticulously crafted works of art at the time, inspired by those of Baby Spice, Brittany Spears, Amanda Bynes during her “Ask Ashley” era.  I wore my pigtails so high, so tightly on my head that if you took a guitar pick and strummed the most straining hairs, you could play “Purple Haze” with enough accuracy to round up a bunch of aging hippies and host your own private Woodstock.   I wore them so symmetrically that the part in the middle of my head was no longer a part, but a penetrating incision that would, over time, cause both sides of my head to split into separate plates and collide every time I attempted to finger paint or solve a math problem.  There is no doubt in my mind that prior to the Pigtail Plague of 1998 I was equally intelligent in all academic walks of life.  I could do long division with as much ease as drawing a self portrait.  Science class involved me waving one hand in the air, both hands in the air, standing on my desk all for the sake of answering a question, going up to the board to explain the theory of relativity. 

  
  

   

  
  

  Then fourth grade hit and all of the sudden life was a Disney movie of rainbows and frolicking centaurs.  “Pass the box of crayons!” I’d sing to my fellow chorus nerds as I twirled and drew pictures of my imaginary fairy friends.  Recesses became dedicated to constructing abridged versions of Annie and The Lion King and The Nutcracker.  I wore ballet flats to gym class, referred to Picasso as “one sweet dude”.  I was upgraded to accelerated chorus, downgraded to Special Ed. Math. 

  
  

   

  
  

  “Which box of crayons?” a fellow student would inquire, “The set of 25 or 90?”

  
  

   

  
  

  “What’s the difference?” I’d wonder, scratching my pigtail strangled scalp in utter confusion.

  
  

   

  
  

  After a few marking periods of undercover investigation, my teachers came to a groundbreaking conclusion.  “Daryl is…special,” they wrote under the comments section of my report card, “Clearly, she is a complete left-minded thinker.”

  
  

   

  
  

  Although at the time I was unaware that the term ‘left minded thinker’ was just another synonym for ‘borderline retard”, I still knew this couldn’t possibly be a good thing.  I knew perfectly well that only a year before I was a bright kid, an intelligent kid, maybe even a child prodigy had I continued with gymnastics.  Now, in fourth grade, I took on the appearance of a chubby, pre-pubescent Spice Girl on acid.  I could have blamed it on the curriculum, my life at home, genetics.  However, being that I am and will forever be failing science, I’ve always blamed it on the pigtails, the pigtails that basically split my head in two. 

  
  

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  Wearing White after Labor Day

  
  

   

  
  

  To make a long story just a tad bit shorter, the disappearance of the right side of my brain basically resulted in what I like to call Obsessive Chorus Disorder.  For some twisted reason, I figured nailing every singing solo at every chorus concert would be the most effective way to attract members of the opposite sex.  “Oh Danny Boy, the pipes the pipes are calling…” I would coo into the mic like it was a mating call of the wild, and the only male attention I’d receive came from my grandpa and his flashing video camera.

  
  

   

  
  

  Angry at the world, I’d spend lonely hours eating my feelings.  Love was replaced with Boston crème doughnuts and fudgecicles.  Happiness with cheese burgers.  Grief with French fries.  By the middle of fourth grade, not only was I into show tunes, but I was practically an ogre.  I was actually so large that the only things I could wear were oversized sweaters with matching leggings.  I’d never mix and match these outfits, either.  It was always a red sweater with red leggings, orange with orange, white with white.  Needless to say, The Fashion Police of my grade found ways to make fun of me in practically every color of the rainbow. 

  
  

   

  
  

  Red:  "See Daryl’s outfit?  That’s why tomatoes are considered fruits."

  
  

   

  
  

  Orange: "Hey!  Charlie Brown! We found him! We found the Great Pumpkin!"

  
  

   

  
  

  Yellow: "Big Bird called.  He wants his suit back."

  
  

   

  
  

  Green:  "Dreamworks claims you inspired their new movie Shrek."

  
  

   

  
  

  Blue:  “Oompa loompa doo padee doo…”

  
  

   

  
  

  You get the point.  I did, too, actually. I tried, really, I tried to fit in, blend somehow.  Never once did it occur to me that all I needed to do was hold back on the sweets and buy a sweater that wasn’t screaming “KICK ME, I’M MASSIVE”.  Instead, I coped with the situation in the only way that seemed logical at the time – I wore only white. 

  
  

   

  
  

  I did it because white is such a blank color.  A nothing color that people tend to disregard.  But for those few days when I wore only white, it wasn’t the Pillsbury Doughboy wisecracks that got to my head.  Those were expected.  It had more to do with what people like my mom said, my aunts, even some random boys in my homeroom.

  
  

   

  
  

  “Why the hell are you wearing white after labor day?”

  
  

   

  
  

  Like it was a crime.  Like I’d committed unadulterated murder by wearing white leggings and a white sweater in the middle of February.  What in god’s name was I thinking wearing white after Labor Day?  What kind of sick, menacing creature was I turning into?

  
  

   

  
  

  The thing was, back then there was that little mob of Fashion Police to take care of situations such as that.  “Freeze! Put down the weapon!” they’d say to the boy clutching the plastic pocket protector, and the world was a better place.  But it seems as though we don’t have anyone looking out for us anymore.  Gone are the days when sex symbols wore pigtails. Gone are the times when wearing white in the winter got you a permanent reservation in hell.  Problems are bigger now.  Problems are harder to solve.  And I’ve had one tremendous problem for this entire year.

  
  

   

  
  

  The best way to understand this problem of mine would be to open up a blank word document and stare at it unblinkingly for seven consecutive months.  However, I’m pretty sure none of you have the lack of social life to pull that off, so the next step would just be to understand the color white.

  
  

   

  
  

  When I arrived home from camp I had just experienced the greatest summer of my entire life.  Two whole months of color war, excellent rice krispie treats and the beloved Lake Thompson.  All I wanted was to preserve it in the exact condition I had left it in.  All I wanted to do was take the lessons and memories of the summer and experience them over and over again as the air got colder and my workload increased. I stargazed when there weren’t any stars in the sky.  I walked around barefoot in the frost. It came to the point when I couldn’t find any other way to be happy. 

  
  

   

  
  

  This entire year has brought out my pathetic rebellious streak. I was wearing white way after Labor Day. I was breaking the rules all for the sake of preserving things that would forever remain in the past.  I figured that somehow I could live solely in the past but grow and mature at the same time.  I thought that maybe I was being smart by preserving, by keeping everything I’ve learned and experienced inside of me so that it could forever swarm around in my mind and give me a sense of false security.  But everything bottled up – all that did was weigh me down, make me too tired and preoccupied with my disorganized thoughts to even feel willing enough to stand up for some new experiences.  I’ve spent this entire year carrying around all my thoughts like a dead weight, so focused on keeping them perfectly preserved that I forgot what they were about in the first place.

  
  

   

  
  

  And that, kids, is white. Every color in the world mashed together, but none are reflected.  It’s a giant mass of blankness, a wad of dead weight. 

  
  

   

  
  

  I’m not trying to go psychoanalytical therapist on you.  There is no leather couch in my room.  I don’t wear ‘spectacles’ or compulsively take notes on the way you bat your eyes.  Granted, I do think too much.  It doesn’t mean I’m sick in the mind, that any minute now I’m going to burst into a fit of tearful confessions and threats of suicide.  I’m not suffering from acid reflux disease, diabetes, cancer.  What I’m suffering from, what I’ve been suffering from, what I’ve painstakingly endured every day for the past seven months, every time I pick up a pencil, a pen, a freaking piece of chalk – is writers’ block.  

  
  

   

  
  

  Writers’ block, in essence, is the gob of white on a writer’s palette of ideas.  By itself, it is nothing.  Alone, writers’ block is just the bottling up of a million different thoughts and ideas.  Swarming around, crowded, in a claustrophobic mind.  None can escape, none are reflected, and none ever reach the paper.  What is often mistaken as a lack of ideas is really an abundance of them, only the writer is too afraid of letting them out into the world.  Too afraid that they won’t turn out just right.

  
  

   

  
  

  And that is why everything I’ve ever written this year has been watered down.  The few pieces I did manage to post on this site were my ideas, stingily removed from my mind and mixed with that whiteness.  I would be aiming for a deep blue and end up with pale one.  When white isn’t acting alone, when writers’ block is blended in with what a writer is trying to convey, that deep blue, it goes pale.  It doesn’t stay true to the author’s actual thoughts.  It is shallow, forced.  Even as I write this entry, I can’t help but feel that I’m not expressing myself the way I want to be. 

  
  

   

  
  

  I don’t want to live like this anymore, carrying all this dead weight, an entire years’ worth of pressure on my back, weighing me down like a massive white sweater soaking in the frozen memories of what’s already happened.  I’ve just been too scared to let it all go, afraid that if I did I would loose it or, even worse, ruin it.  But it has finally occurred to me that the best writers do just that –write.  Not bottle every thought, memory, idea inside until they implode into blankness.  There’s only one cure for writers’ block, and that’s to just let it all out.  Whether it is illiterate psychobabble or aphorisms fit for Emerson, just get it on the paper.  Let it all out onto that white sheet of paper; cover it up until all possible blank spaces are filled with the raw colors of your mind.  Once I see those true colors on paper, I’ll know my mind has finally been relieved of writers’ block.  It is once I see my experiences as words reflecting back at me that I’ll know that horrible spell has been broken.  After all, even the best of us wear white after Labor Day.

  • 4:42 pm
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