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Thoughts on a Saturday morning

You know, I got up this morning with a plan to write a post about something. Nothing specific, I just figured I was due to write a post, which meant coming up with a topic of something I WANTED to write about. Nothing comes to mind. I’d rather work on my fiction, which means working offline and nothing to post.

But then I said to myself, “Hey, Self, what if you just share a few thoughts from this morning, just because you can. Not that anyone’s going to have a whale of a time reading that, but it’ll be good. Go on, do that.”

So here I am. Of course, when I said that to myself, most of it wasn’t in English, but in a slurry of words, feelings, impulses, visuals that all form the picture of what I was expressing to myself.

Thoughts are weird, sometimes. I’m going to slap some headers on these thoughts, so you don’t get confused.

On Sibling Squabbling

The boys are giving each other the stink eye. They argue a lot. They know better than to do this verbally on a Saturday morning when peace is our inalienable RIGHT, so they are arguing with glaring eyes as one passes by the other’s room. I wish, as I often wish, that they would realize how much better siblinghood is when you treat each other as your best friend. Cricket has been making more effort lately to put an end to the bickering they have wrapped themselves up into like some kind of hateful burrito, but Monkey’s dragging his reluctant feet.

On Pain That May Not Be All That Bad

This morning he’s literally dragging his feet as he goes to the bathroom. Says he hurt his leg and can’t play soccer this afternoon in his game. Could be true. It’s also possible that he’s exaggerating the pain like you’d call a paper cut a gaping wound caused by the clawing swipe of a monster that lives under your bed. So this means that I’ll have no choice whatsoever to test this out by saying that since his leg hurts so much, he’s going to have to relax on the couch this morning with a good book, or color, instead of running around outside playing. You know, because we don’t want his leg to hurt, and he’s got to heal…

It’s entirely possible his leg will be cured in 10 seconds flat. Seen it happen.

On Cartoons

I miss the days when Saturday morning cartoons were all just perfection. One after another, cartoons that were completely worth watching. Loony Toons, Transformers, Thundercats (the ORIGINAL, thanks, not the newer version that lacked all the charm of the original), The Real Ghostbusters, Scooby Doo, and so on. I realize there are a few good ones now, but you have to hunt for them in a way that wasn’t necessary before. So sometimes, if I’m willing to let go of the laptop for an hour on a Saturday morning when I feel I should be writing, I’ll load up classic cartoons from my own youth. A lot of those shows are available, which is great, but something is missing. Something is missing when you can’t simply turn on the TV and fiddle with rabbit ears antennae to get a good picture and watch these shows, even though if we want to be true to my own childhood, very little would actually be captioned.

On Writing

I DO plan to work on my fiction. That’s where the magic happens for me. Fiction is playtime. It’s hard work, sometimes frustrating when it seems like all my words are sick with cliches, but ultimately I love writing fiction more than writing anything else. Fiction is when I get to create the world. It makes you feel powerful, in a way. Instead of telling the stories of things that happen to me or others, I get to craft the story, and that can be a joy. Even the process of editing my work feels this way. Taking a paragraph that I feel is flat, stale, cliche, unimaginative, and turning it into something that wakes my mind up is fun. Just plain fun, even when it’s work. Sounds complicated, I think.

Enjoy your Saturday. Write down your own thoughts, live your own joys.

By J. Parrish Lewis

J. Parrish Lewis was born and raised in Maryland. In his youth there, he and his brother had many adventures in the dogwood forests near his home. His nostalgia for these adventures has strongly influenced his characters, their relationships, and their perspective on the world they inhabit. He moved to California’s coast to earn his degree in communications and now lives with his family in the San Joaquin Valley. Lewis is profoundly deaf and uses American Sign Language to communicate. He enjoys hazelnut coffee, captioned movies, and walking his dog.

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