Let the Truth Run Wild

let the truth run wild

2011-07-13T21:43:00.000-04:00

once upon a time

2011-03-29T18:33:00.002-04:00

The point is not that she feels unsafe.
The point is that she once felt safe, and now does not.
And the point is also that she now feels unsafe because that which was concealed has been revealed.

memories?

2008-12-15T10:32:00.001-05:00

How reliable, do you suppose, are these thirty-nine memories?

http://www.robbyprenkert.blogspot.com/

happy birthday

2008-11-08T20:25:00.002-05:00

Dear Katylynn,

Someday, when you are an English major at Bethel College, and your professor says something goofy that embarrasses you in class, remember that he skipped his church league basketball game to attend your first birthday party, and cut him some slack.

Your most beloved Uncle

this might be interesting

2008-10-25T13:58:00.001-04:00

http://www.facebook.com/share_redirect.php?h=f5c0a4ea2fee357c4d852ab9e8b3e98a&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.xanga.com%2FRobbyPrenkert%2F679717485%2Fcoming-spring-2009.html&sid=31449854091

"Side Effects" by Steve Martin

2008-10-16T15:14:00.002-04:00

DOSAGE: take two tablets every six hours for joint pain.

SIDE EFFECTS: This drug may cause joint pain, nausea, head-ache, or shortness of breath. You may also experience muscle aches, rapid heartbeat, and ringing in the ears. If you feel faint, call your doctor. Do not consume alcohol while taking this pill; likewise, avoid red meat, shellfish, and vegetables. O.K. foods: flounder. Under no circumstances eat yak. Men can expect painful urination while sitting, especially if the penis is caught between the toilet seat and the bowl. Projectile vomiting is common in thirty per cent of users-sorry, fifty per cent. If you undergo disorienting nausea accompanied by migraine and raspy breathing, double the dosage. Leg cramps are to be expected; one knee-buckler per day is normal. Bowel movements may become frequent-in fact, every ten minutes. If bowel movements become greater than twelve per hour, consult your doctor, or any doctor, or just anyone who will speak to you. You may find yourself becoming lost or vague; this would be a good time to write a screenplay. Do not pilot a plane, unless you are among the ten per cent of users who experience "spontaneous test-pilot knowledge." If your hair begins to smell like burning tires, move away from any buildings or populated areas, and apply tincture of iodine to the head until you no longer hear what could be taken for a "countdown." May cause stigmata in Mexicans. If a fungus starts to grow between your eyebrows, call the Guinness Book of World Records. May induce a tendency to compulsively repeat the phrase "no can do." This drug may cause visions of the Virgin Mary to appear in treetops. If this happens, open a souvenir shop. There may be an overwhelming impulse to shout out during a Catholic Mass, "I'm gonna w*p you wid da ugly stick!" You may feel a powerful sense of impending doom; this is because you are about to die. Men may experience impotence, but only during intercourse. Otherwise, a powerful erection will accompany your daily "walking-around time." Do not take this product if you are uneasy with lockjaw. Do not be near a ringing telephone that works at 900 MHz or you will be very dead, very fast. We are assuming you have had chicken pox. You also may experience a growing dissatisfaction with life along with a deep sense of melancholy-join the club! Do not be concerned if you arouse a few ticks from a Geiger counter. You might want to get a one-month trial subscription to Extreme Fighting. The hook shape of the pill will often cause it to become caught in the larynx. To remove, jam a finger down your throat while a friend holds your nose to prevent the pill from lodging in a nasal passage. Then throw yourself stomach first on the back portion of a chair. The expulsion of air should eject the pill out of the mouth, unless it goes into a sinus cavity, or the brain. WARNING: This drug may shorten your intestines by twenty-one feet. Has been known to cause birth defects in the user retroactively. Passing in front of TV may cause the screen to moiré. Women often feel a loss of libido, including a whole octave lowering of the voice, an increase in ankle hair, and perhaps the lowering of a testicle. If this happens, women should write a detailed description of their last three sexual encounters and mail it to me, Bob, Trailer Six, Fancyland Trailer Park, Encino, CA. Or E-mail me at hot-guy.com. Discontinue use immediately if you feel that your teeth are receiving radio broadcasts. You may experience "lumpy back" syndrome, but we are actively seeking a cure. Bloated fingertips on the heart-side hand are common. When finished with the dosage, be sure to allow plenty of "quiet time" in order to retrain the eye to move off stationary objects. Flotation devices at sea will become pointless, as the user of this drug will develop a stone-like body density; therefore, if thrown overboard, contact your doctor. (This product may contain one or more of the following: bungee cord, plankton, rubber, crack cocaine, pork bladders, aromatic oils, gunpowder, corn husk, glue, bee pollen, dung, English muffin, poached eggs, ham, Hollandaise sauce, crushed saxophone reeds.) Sensations of levitation are illusory, as is the sensation of having a "phantom" third arm. Users may experience certain inversions of language. Acceptable: "Hi, are how you?" Unacceptable: "The rain in Sprain slays blainly on the phsssst." Twenty minutes after taking the pills, you will feel an insatiable craving to take another dose. AVOID THIS WITH ALL YOUR POWER. It is advisable to have a friend handcuff you to a large kitchen appliance, ESPECIALLY ONE THAT WILL NOT FIT THROUGH THE DOORWAY TO WHERE THE PILLS ARE. You should also be out of reach of any weapon-like utensil with which you could threaten friends or family, who should also be briefed to not give you the pills, no matter how much you sweet-talk them.

job interview: a fiction

2008-10-11T12:34:00.003-04:00

"Your education, experiences, and credentials are impeccable. We have been moved by your amazing life story. Clearly you are a person of compassion. It is evident from what you have told us that you have sensed the call of God upon your life to serve His Kingdom through full time ministry."

He pauses, as the the committee members shuffle papers or stare at their hands, awkwardly.

"There's just one thing."

"Oh," replied the candidate. "Is there a problem?"

"Well, it's like this. We think you lack one essential tool for serving in this position. But we were hoping we were wrong."

Wide eyed, the candidate interrupts the awkward silence. "Uh... I see. What is it?"

"Er... um... well, out with I guess. Do you have a penis, Miss Smith? After all, you realize, don't you, that a Senior Pastor must have one."

archetypes and basketball

2008-10-08T20:38:00.004-04:00

"Every trip is a quest," he tells them. "And the real purpose of every quest? Self-knowledge."

After class he walks to the locker, disrobes, dons sneakers and sweat socks, a mesh reversable jersey, baggy shorts. His purpose? Play basketball and win. Which he does, with less skill each passing day. This day, his teams win two and lose two. One game he scores 15 of his team's 21 points.

Returning to his office, he curses himself for growing old.

a historical fiction

2007-12-12T14:05:00.001-05:00

(Disclaimer: the names of parties involved in the non-fictional version non-fictional version of this situation have been changed in this fictional version to protect both the pathetically petty and the innocent. All local government officials, living and dead, are purely coincidental)

Dear Mr. Del "Woodly" Edmons,

We understand that your name was inadvertantly left off of the invitation list to our recent dedication ceremony for the newly installed toilet seat in third stall of the men's restroom (aministrative office building) on our campus. Our sincerest apologies.

On a happier note, we would like to invite you to a very special event on the campus of Beffle College. Actually, it's so especially good that some among us religiously observe this high and holy event three times a week during the noon hour. Would you be willing to grace us with your enormously dignified presence some noontime for a vigorous game of pick-up basketball? Please bring both a dark and a light shirt.

Professor Smit does have one important message for you, however. He says, "lace em up tight and don't bring no weak stuff."

Sincerely,

The Lunchtime Hoops Association of Beffle College

most idiotic letter to the editor of the week (F. Irene Keb of South Bend)

2007-11-22T20:41:00.000-05:00

Congratulations are in order to F. Irene Keb of South Bend, Indiana for her grand achievement this week. Though competition was stiff, she managed to write this week's most idiotic letter to the editor of the South Bend Tribune. While many of her competitors were equally bombastic or irrelevant or moronic or even mildly incoherent, none of them was able to match Ms. Keb's mastery of all of these (and then some) in less than a hundred words. Her letter is printed here in full for the edification of all.

Offended

I am offended that Spanish is plastered on my television screen. This is America, last I heard, and English is our language.

There is a remote and an on/off switch. I use both of them. Refusing to watch programs and certainly not buying sponsor's products who allow this insult to continue.

Definitely a case of "if you don't like it, don't watch" and I do not.

Once again, congratulations. I couldn't have written a better example of how not to write if I'd spent a week.

telepathy

2007-11-21T11:57:00.000-05:00

"Papa, does it annoy you that I had three poopy diapers before noon today? Just wondering. You seem a little annoyed. My bum is sore."

- Syd

wisdom

2007-11-20T13:37:00.000-05:00

"Do your best, and forget the rest."

- Tony Horton, P90X

Rom. 12:2

2007-11-16T15:11:00.000-05:00

"Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible."

Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych

public speaking

2007-11-16T15:06:00.000-05:00

"At best, public speaking affords us the opportunity to impersonate our ideal image of our selves."

--Anonymous

A gut-wrenching work of bumbling mediocrity

2007-10-05T13:56:00.000-04:00

Foreword: Memo to the dean

Dear Dean Pleasures,

You are about to begin reading a dissertation called On The Wonder of Mentors Never Met: A Memoir of a Reading Life, by RCP. I want to say right off the bat, “Prepare yourself,” and “I encouraged this.”

Since most dissertations make an “argument” of some sort, you are probably expecting “argument” as you get set to plow through this one. Most dissertations also include an abstract—a little 300-word synopsis of the main argument. But you will not find one in this dissertation, because we both agreed that this little memo to you might serve that function and fit the overall ethos of the project far better than a conventional abstract.

The “argument” in this dissertation is not terribly profound or original. Simply put, reading good books can change one’s life for the better. Books have helped form R, the protagonist of the memoir. He narrates the story of how “book mentors” have shaped his life.[1] A book like this one might even become a mentor to its readers. As R suggests throughout, this book, through the process of his writing it, has become one of his.

As you read, you will want to watch for recurring motifs and ideas. As I understand the project, these ideas recur for a reason: because they are important to the overall impression he hopes to make on the reader. Here are the top ten themes to watch for (in no particular order of importance) as you read this work. Try teasing this much helpful information from traditional abstract.

Loss. The narrator of this story has lost his very best friend in the world, and this has altered the color of everything. Tragedy weaves its way through this narrative.
Redemption. Sometimes things come together for good. R believes that the redemptive work of God has woven itself into the very fabric of the universe; he has discovered glimpses of the redemptive in some seemingly strange places, like in books by those who claim they don’t believe in such things.
Mentoring. R gets by with a little help from his friends, some of which are books, some of which are not. Though this loving tribute is not exhaustive, one would have to be asleep while reading to miss that the central theme of this work is the impact that book mentors and other mentors have had upon his life.
Reading. It goes without saying that R likes to read. As his advisor, I know that he finds writing about what he has read an enormous chore, and yet through this chore he comes to conclude with some of his book mentors (Lewis, Tolstoy, the Christian mystics) that it is the “fire of suffering which will bring forth the gold of godliness.”[2] We suffer unto wisdom. R does, however, thoroughly enjoy reading and refashioning what he has composed. You will probably get the impression, as I have, that writing this thing was hard work. But, as he told me once in an e-mail, reading his own attempts at early drafts of its parts or of whole chapters or even the first draft of the whole began to give him more and more pleasure, especially as those drafts improved. He said he would much rather read what he has written than actually write it in the first place.
Rebellion. R has a love/hate relationship with his past. In part, he rebels against it; but in part, he also rebels against those who have rebelled against it, which leads him back to embrace it. He once told me that he woke up to Bob Marley’s “Soul Rebel”[3] virtually every morning while writing this dissertation.
Mysticism. R has confessed to me that he is a wannabe mystic, and that one of his narrators is a much more adept contemplative than he is. That is the voice you’ll hear when you read the “Letters by a Post-modern Mystic.”
Sports. R actually is an athlete, though I sense he feels something like regret that he is more athletic than mystical. I suppose we might as well add regret to the list of themes, as well.
The painfully obvious post-modernist device of the self-conscious or self-reflexive narrative. This work is narrated both in the first person and the third person. Hint: notice the use of italics. Those italicized sections are my favorites, I think, because he is at his most honest and transparent in them.
The unreliable narrator. Not many dissertations are written using this device, but let’s face it: all narrators are unreliable. It’s not so much that every teller of a tale always intends to be unreliable or misleading, but everyone is. Every sentence ever uttered leaves out a million other sentences needed to qualify the previous sentence’s intended meaning. There just isn’t enough time to clarify everything we mean to say. And so, our narrations end up being unreliable. That doesn’t mean they can’t also be true. But they are not the whole truth.
Hope. R never sheds his tendency toward optimism. When he expressed some worry to me about his work being so hopeful that it might be dismissed as “hokey,” I asked him where his optimism came from. He told me a story about playing in a college basketball game in which his team was losing 48-19 with about ten minutes left in the first half. And then they came all the way back and won the game. And then he said, “Did we win the game because my teammates and I possessed exceptional levels of hope, or did I come to have an extraordinarily hopeful outlook because we came back and won that game and more than a few others like it?”[4]

I trust this memo does not spoil all the magic of discovering these themes all by yourself as you read. If you are feeling right now like I have done what should be left up to you as the reader, just remember this little proverbial wisdom from Angela Carter which R scribbled on a little sticky note attached to a draft of a chapter he sent me early on in the process. “Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. . . .You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.”[5] I agree.
R has described a lot of the “re-writing” he has done in the pages that follow. Now I guess it’s your turn, Dean Pleasures.

You are about to begin re-writing a dissertation called On The Wonder of Mentors Never Met: A Memoir of a Reading Life, by RCP.

Sincerely,
Laura Sommers

[1] More on the topic of narrators below. Judith Barrington says the following about “the narrator” of a memoir. “The narrator is the protagonist of your memoir. It’s a term also used in fiction and poetry, and refers to whoever is telling the story. When thinking about your memoir or discussing it with your writing group (if you have one), you should always refer to the character who is you in the story as ‘the narrator,’ not as ‘I.’ Similarly, your friends or colleagues should refer to the protagonist of your story as ‘the narrator’ and not as ‘you.’ Although you are both the writer of the memoir and the central character in the story, they should be treated as two distinct entities. Thus, a friend could appropriately ask: ‘why did you [the writer] describe the narrator [protagonist] as a mouse on page three?’ (Not: ‘Why did you describe yourself as a mouse on page three’). Separating yourself as writer from yourself as protagonist will help give you the necessary perspective to craft the memoir as a story. It will also decrease the degree to which you feel exposed as others critique your work.” Judith Barrington, Writing the Memoir: From Truth To Art, 2nd ed. (Portland, Oregon: The Eighth Mountain Press, 2002), 25.

[2] Guyon, Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte, Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ (Beaumont, Tex: SeedSowers, 1996), 46.

[3] Bob Marley & The Wailers, “Soul Rebel,” Africa Unite: The Singles Collection, music performed by composers, Tuff Gong/Island Records B0005723-02, 1970, 2005, CD.

[4] This question about causation—did experiences like that one cause him to be hopeful or did the fact that he never gave up hope make it more likely that he would have experiences like that one— alludes to “Scholarly Frame III: Which Came First: How (My) Faith Shapes (My) Reading Shapes (My) Faith.” From time to time in footnotes throughout the project R continues the trend of self-consciously drawing attention to what he is up to. Other times he leaves the fun and magic of discovery to the reader.

[5] Angela Carter, “The Company of Angela Carter: An Interview,” Marxism Today, January, 1985, 20.

selecting a reader

2007-09-21T14:41:00.000-04:00

My perfect reader of this blog…
his name is my name, too.
Whenever he logs out,
you will likely hear me shout;
“There goes an artist without peer.”

http://www.xanga.com/robbyprenkert

talent borrows, genius steals

2007-09-18T15:28:00.000-04:00

Nearly a month ago he remembered the time when the rasta-looking old man offered him "good-for-the-dingles" pineapple one day on a north-coast beach in Jamaica. When he remembers something like that, he writes it down in a cheap spiral notebook he keeps in the canvas book bag that accompanies him everywhere. The day he wrote that in his notebook he managed to misplace that bag somewhere and to this day he has not been able to find it.

He did, however, stumble upon a blog entry entitled "Pineapple" which managed to quote his own journal verbatim. What other secrets and lies will the thief of his spiral notebook reveal to the world?

Pineapple

2007-08-20T09:21:00.000-04:00

He wears a wool cap of black and gold, red and green covering his dreadlocks, smiling, toothless. We make eye-contact; he pauses, displays the two whole pineapples he carries in a gunny sack, and offers the little baggy of freshly cut fruit for my approval.

"Pinapple, mon."

"Looks good," I tell him. "But no thanks."

"Pinepple. Good for the dingles."

On the beach in Ocho Rios, long before there was Viagra, there was pineapple.

MEMO: a fiction

2007-08-16T12:58:00.000-04:00

Memo

TO: Prof. Pranker

FROM: Dean Stimp

RE: Faculty Development Funds

cc: Prof. Paperclip; Dean Zerosinski

Your request for faculty development funds to cover your travel expenses to the North American Fast-pitch Association World Series in Iowa this August, while one of the most unique requests I've ever gotten, is probably outside what I would deem a reasonable use for such funds. I can understand what good playing a sport you love at a very high level does in terms of your morale as a faculty person, and we are proud that your play at shortstop and leading off for one of the favored teams in this tournament will represent our college well, but you are going to have to go with our blessing and not our financial support. This blessing is a significant one, considering you will be missing the final session of faculty retreat to travel to the tournament.

The Big M

2007-07-27T16:13:00.000-04:00

Lust_Control_-_The_BigM.mp3

He had forgotten all about this delightul little punk/thrash band and this happy little number until by some strange coincidence he read THIS and found himself searching for the song. Such nuance. Such subtlety. This, he thinks, is art.

escalation

2007-07-13T10:28:00.000-04:00

Bulla elbowed Phillip, who was holding him in the post area. Two times down the court later, Phillip punched Bulla square in the left cheek. Then Bulla hit Phillip on the head with a five-foot, inch-thick tree limb that happened to be lying courtside, breaking it into two jagged pieces. Phillip scooped up the smaller of the two and, as a matter of fact, the sharper of the two, and raced after Bulla to stab him. But the white man's paralyzed, slack-jawed stare must have been the most laughable image of the entire ordeal.

The Last Novel - David Markson - Books - Review - New York Times

2007-07-06T20:18:00.000-04:00

Crap. There goes my once great idea for a novel.

The Last Novel - David Markson - Books - Review - New York Times

55 words--a fragment

2007-07-05T09:35:00.000-04:00

A Very Young Woman With Tiny Horns

By the time the sun had set, Pablo had swept into heaping piles so many dead locusts that he almost overlooked the woman in the corner behind the derelict riding mower. She was a young woman, a very young woman, and almost beautiful save for the tiny horns protruding from her crown of golden hair.

first person

2007-06-27T13:44:00.000-04:00

You make me pose for these pictures when you know what I really want to do is play catch. So please, will you, please, pick up that bat and smack this ball to the end of the yard so I can go get it and bring it back to you so you can smack it again? And if it wouldn't be too much trouble, could you cool down the water in my wading pool and bring me a popsicle (purple, please) and maybe something to eat? Thanks.

Annals of National Security: The General’s Report: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker

2007-06-26T10:11:00.000-04:00

What truths do the fictions that the Bush administration propogates reveal that reality obscures?

Annals of National Security: The General’s Report: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker

Bush admits Iraq war unethical

2007-06-21T16:22:00.000-04:00

"Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical."

--George W. Bush, June 20, 2007

Read full story here

metablog

2007-06-21T09:38:00.000-04:00

"To write is, above all else, to construct a self. Only secondly is it to record ones history, to express feelings and ideas, to create characters, or to communicate with others"

--Deena Metzger, Writing Your Life

Another 55 word short story

2007-06-12T14:47:00.000-04:00

Enlightening Dinner Conversation

"I dunno, I don't think much of his blog. It's a bunch of quotations."

"He's doing that on purpose. His blog is about intertextuality. All blogs are; his is just more aware of the fact."

"Intertextuality?"

"Every text builds itself as a mosaic of quotations, every text is absorption and transformation of another text."

"Oh."

55 words - a story

2007-06-11T11:16:00.000-04:00

Love in a Time of Tooth Decay

Simon liked gooey, fruity candies. Tropical flavored Starbursts. Green apple Airheads. Skittles warmed in his pant's pocket. Tonya preferred her chocolate chilled. Refrigerated candy bars with almonds or peanuts. Neither flossed regularly. The toothache both woke up with that Tuesday morning brought them together in the dentist's waiting room. And they lived happily ever after.

www.xanga.com/robbyprenkert

Semi-truck takes man and wheel chair for ride

2007-06-08T10:31:00.000-04:00

PAW PAW, Mich. -- A 21-year-old man was taken on a wild ride Wednesday afternoon when the wheelchair he was in became attached to the grille of a semi-truck and was taken four miles down a highway at about 50 mph.

Can you tell us your name and what happened?

My name is Ken. Is there a bathroom anywhere nearby?

We'll get someone to check on the bathroom for you. Can you describe how you got yourself into this predicament?

I assume you mean how I ended up taking a wild ride in front of this semi down the Red Arrow Highway and not how I got myself into my more general predicament--the wheel chair--in the first place. If you want that story, it's a good one and someone ought to write a book. I'm sure it would bring you all to tears and make you want to support Jerry's kids or something. I suppose what you want me to say is that I was simply crossing the street here from my nature walk along with my caretaker, Joyce--say hello Joyce--when I found myself lodged in the grille of this semi-truck. It's like something from a bad b-movie, isn't it? But there's much more to the story than I'm sure you actually want to hear or report.

Such as?

Well, let's just say sometimes accidents happen and sometimes what appear to be accidents aren't really accidents at all. Have you seen "Jackass, the Movie"?

Are you suggesting this wasn't, in fact, an accident?

Make of it what you will. It was kind of like a ride at the fair. You can quote me on that.

If this wasn't an accident, was the driver in on the prank?

Who said anything about a prank? Aren't there more important things you should be reporting in the newspaper? I suppose this will now make the national news, which reflects poorly on us all doesn't it? We've got genocide in Sudan, we've got a never ending war in Iraq, we've got the Cubs winning four of their last five and the NBA finals and you want to report on a highway wheelchair ride in Paw Paw? Why not stick to important things like Paris Hilton's jail sentence? I mean, I can see it now... "National Attention to Man's Weel Chair Adventure Draws Oprah and Letterman."

I sense a tone of irony in your voice. I hadn't realized the handicapped were this sarcastic.

I hadn't realized that media persons were this perceptive. I have a few things I would like to say to the world, now that I have your attention. My fellow Americans, I want you to remember three things when you think of Ken, the guy who got his wheel chair stuck in the grille of a semi-truck and ended up taking a four mile carnival type ride down the Red Arrow Highway in Paw Paw. First, I want you to remember that semi-truck drivers are people too. Sure they drive giant death machines and pump countless tons of pollutants into our air, but they have important things they deliver us across country like highly flammible fuels and cancer causing pesticides. They just wanna serve you. Second, I want you to remember the importance of getting the potholes filled on all of your roads. I was just one big pothole from doing a pretty serious face plant out there today. Call your local and state officials and remind them of the importance of smooth roads. Third, and finally, I want you to remember that the handicapped are capable of biting irony. The news media is not. Too often you have looked to the handicapped for sincere and inspiring stories of overcoming the odds. And by and large we have played along. Today, you have witnessed another inspiring story of a handicapped boy overcoming incredible odds. Send cash contributions to the Ken Henderson foundation, care of Ken Henderson to see that these inspiring stories can continue to be told. Thank you.
www.xanga.com/robbyprenkert

freedom from the facts

2007-06-05T21:10:00.000-04:00

The autobiography I had been writing was organized around certain events in my life that either a) mysteriously matched the experiences of characters in great books or b) happened to occur at a time when I was reading some novel or story and made some connection or personal application giving me the tools to deal with my immediate reality. About 175 pages in, I got stuck. It seemed I'd run out of interesting facts to share about life, and facts are everything in autobiography. So I went to work looking to live some more and to read some more, hoping to find or even manufacture more material--more experiences of literary characters that matched my own or instances in novels that I could connect with and apply. I read and I read. One morning a couple days ago I read these lines.

"Every man has within his own reminiscences certain things he doesn’t reveal to anyone, except, perhaps, to his friends. There are also some that he won’t reveal even to his friends, only to himself perhaps, and even then, in secret. Finally, there are some which a man is afraid to reveal even to himself; every decent man has accumulated a fair number of such things. In fact, it can even be said that the more decent the man, the more of these things he’s accumulated. Anyway, only recently I myself decided to recall some of my earlier adventures; up to now I’ve always avoided them, even with a certain anxiety. But having decided not only to recall them, but even to write them down, now is when I wish to try an experiment: is it possible to be absolutely honest even with one’s own self and not to fear the whole truth? Incidentally, I’ll mention that Heine maintains that faithful autobiographies are almost impossible, and that a man is sure to lie about himself. In Heine’s opinion, Rousseau, for example, undoubtedly told untruths about himself in his confession and even lied intentionally, out of vanity. I’m convinced that Heine is correct; I understand perfectly well that sometimes it’s possible out of vanity alone to impute all sorts of crimes to oneself, and I can even understand what sort of vanity that might be" (Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes From Underground).

This was the inspiration I needed. What this was saying was that an autobiography need not be entirely free from lies. I was perfectly free to make things up. At least I think that's what this was saying. At any rate, this is what it was saying to me.

I keep a blog, as well. A few minutes ago I stumbled upon another blog by some guy somewhere in Indiana who claims, and I quote, "all blogs are fiction." He seemed to suggest that each blog entry begins with the creation of a narrator. I think he may be on to something. I had been confused about this in my autobiography. You see, all along, I had been thinking of the "I" in my book as actually me--the author. But the "I" is, in fact, just the narrator I've created to tell a story. This truth has set me free.

I must, since I can't write dead Dostoevsky (or his narrator), send this blogger a note thanking him for setting me free from the prison of writer's block and the hell of facts.

forty minute jog

2007-06-03T21:32:00.000-04:00

Typically, he jumps rope a few minutes before stretching and then taking his jog. He runs for a set number of minutes, then turns around and retraces his steps along the country roads of Baugo Township. Today's set number of minutes was twenty; he turned around at a nondescript point in between a corn field and a soy bean field on C.R. 22., and ran home again. That makes a forty minute jog.

Normally he does not rifle stones at the back windshields of passing cars, but the wildly grinning wiseguy showing off for his girlfriend made the mistake of pretending to swerve at him just as he -- this minding his own business jogger -- happened to be passing a gravel driveway. He saw it coming; made eye contact with the driver, even noticing his goatee. Of course the driver had no intention of actually hitting him, just a hardy-har-har near miss for poops and giggles, hoping to get a flirtatious smack from his girl in the passenger seat.

The jogger was already bent over and grabbing an egg shaped rock as the back bumper of the blazer whizzed past him, missing him by a foot or two. The driver could not have known that he -- this shirtless jogger -- had pitched in the minors for a couple years and was known for having "a lively arm."

An egg shaped rock traveling at 78 mph (had his arm been warmed up, it might have been more like 90 or 91, had it been warmed up and ten years ago during the middle of baseball season, 95 maybe) thrown at an SUV traveling at 40 mph in the same direction but with a 30 or 40 foot head start doesn't have the force to smash through the rear window of said vehicle. But it has enough to get the attention of the driver. That is, if the thrower of the rock has an accurate arm.

What might have followed had this former lively arm also had pinpoint control is anybody's guess. This toss, like far too many others in his too short career, was just a bit outside.

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