Today's Word: Bloom

The radiance of the light rose from the terminal top, casting a cone of beauty and wonder up toward the ceiling, A shift in color matching the ambient noise it the room, until it shaped itself into tulips.

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I turned 33 yesterday. A quiet day by all accounts. It was an exclusive party, held by the members of the inner sanctum of Chateau Ryan. Ate until I got sick, and I felt all 33 years at once. I'm now back on South Beach, eating my pre-portioned meals from tiny Lunchable-for-adult boxes and from little pouches you tear open to reveal the morsel inside. Modern food rationing by choice! Assemble your own foodstuffs! Lego Lunches! All the rage.
But it's for the best. I need to be on some kind of regiment. Writing, eating, exercising. I've been drifting as of late, eating poorly and getting wrapped up in pixels. I feel (lapsed Catholic metaphor incoming) as if I need to be picked up and twisted, having all the grease and salt and procrastination wrung out of me until I return to my feet 15 pounds lighter and ready to churn out a chapter in one sitting. Maybe it's the idea of getting older, sinking into the irreversible swamp of being an "adult," I need to do something with my life. I give a lot to other people through my work, with my lovely wife, and in my writing classes. But now, surrounded by the sentinels of my bookcases at home and work, I need to do something to be included in that pantheon. I need to be published. I need some sort of permanence. Some people opt to have children to be their legacy; I'm having the biological urge to push out a novel, textual or graphic.

And like with a great many things, I have that determined look on my face, and I intone that it's time to get serious. Not a kid anymore. Even if when I sit down to write, I get spooked by inner demons, but it's time to move past it. A lot of those demons took up residence more than 25 years ago. Long enough, I reckon.

Besides, came up with some neat little touches for the novel and graphic novel project, things that could pay out, if I can line up all the little fragments into a greater whole. Imagine that old Monty Python joke about having a million miles of string, but it's all cut into three-inch segments. The grueling bit is tying it all together. But getting older, looking back on all the misadventures and accidental insight, you gather some body of knowledge to tell you (along with your loving wife, who has said it a million times) that "Yes, you can do this. Go on. You were born to do this." Suddenly, a pen shows up in your hand, and you are two, three paragraphs in. The icy voices cruelly calling you to stop before you embarrass yourself grow fainter, a modulation out of tuning range. You keep on, and before you know it, you smile, and you can't for the life of you figure out why. But, really, you know why. You've caught some sunshine.

So, here's to 33. An awkward mix of having the energy of youth and the inklings of mature wisdom, seeing the playfield ahead and having the razz-ma-tazz to charge the grounds.