Ramble: to wander around in a leisurely, aimless manner.

The more you read what I write, the more you'll see how much my mind likes to ramble.

Sometimes my photos have no rhyme or reason when it comes to what I'm going to write about but this one was part of a Black & White photo challenge I participated in and I like the play of shadows and light.  So here it is.

When I was a senior in high school I took a Creative Writing class.  It had been my life's ambition to be a writer and I always dreamed I had a best selling novel buried somewhere deep inside of me.  I had an old Underwood typewriter, circa around the turn of the last century, that I banged away on until my fingertips were literally numb from the effort it took to push the keys down hard enough to print on the paper.  I remember the very first thing I wrote that someone made a big deal about: a poem about being sick at home for two weeks when I had the hard measles when I was 8 or 9 years old.  My teacher was so impressed she pinned it up on a bulletin board. I guess she thought it was funny!  It gave me my first taste of excitement in knowing someone liked what I wrote, even if it was only about measles, haha!  But it ignited the love of putting words down on paper and hoping others would see life through my eyes.  Not that I have a unique way of seeing things, but being able to externalize the things I internalize has always been very therapeutic and cathartic to me.  I am not a very articulate speaker and I never learned the art of chitchat...but give me pen and paper in the old days before computers, or a computer keyboard today, and the words come out of me like a dam bursting.

I digressed.  Stay with me.

It's funny how that Creative Writing class affected me.  I don't remember much about the teacher so in general she didn't influence my desire to write but one thing she taught me was a style of writing called 'stream of consciousness'.  I felt like that was a gift given to me because it's been the way I've written ever since and fits me to perfection.  I never have a clear idea what I'm going to write about when I sit down at my desk.  Most times I have no idea at all.  But when I look at the empty screen in front of me it's like my fingertips take on a life of their own and away I go.  Fortunately for me I'm a very fast typist so my fingers can keep up with what's streaming through my mind.  I 'write' what my mind 'speaks'.  It's the conversations trapped inside of me until I can release them here.  Weird, I know.  But it's the only way I know how to do it.

Do teachers even have a clue how much they can encourage or discourage a student?  I had another teacher in my junior year who taught English.  She was good.  She hammered away at our brains and challenged us. I looked forward to going to her class, which couldn't be said about most subjects.  School in general bored me to tears.  She and I never spoke much to each other.  She was as reserved as I was shy.  But she knew her stuff.  We read "Death of a Salesman" that year and we had to write a composition about any character in the book we wanted to.  I chose one of the sons.  She wanted us to go into detail about their personality, how their attitudes and choices affected their lives.  I put myself into the mind of the son and wrote a pretty lengthy piece about him.  After we'd handed them in and she'd graded them, she passed them back to everyone and as she did she gave a scathing lecture on the lack of everyone...except for one...who'd even remotely followed her directions.  Then she read the paper written by the student who did.  As she began I realized it was awfully familiar...it was mine!  She never embarrassed me by saying it was me who wrote it, but as she came to the end she looked at me with a very piercing gaze and I knew she was well pleased. That also fueled the inner fire to write.

Now I just write for the pleasure it gives me.  I don't care if anyone likes it or not.  I don't want "reviews".  If you like what you read, please come back.  If not, move on to a blog you do like.  I'm not trying to entertain you.  All I'm doing is 'talking' to whoever wants to 'listen'.