Greetings and Salutations
In a world overridden with pointless cyber minutae, I add more. It's not so much because I want to, but because I need to. As children, we dream and play, creating whole universes from spontaneous thought. As we grow up less and less time is allowed for free thought and the structure of the world begins to take hold. We lose that sense of play, replacing it with the expectations that come with needing to be a 'functioning" member of society.
I never stopped playing. Up until I was 25 I played vividly both in my head and in life, taking steps to become what I knew I was. Then at 25, a series of events forced me to 'grow up' very quickly, and I put playing aside. For many years I tried all the combinations I saw my contemporaries use to become adults. I chose a career, I got a steady job, tried graduate school, had a steady relationship. Then one day it all fell apart in spectacular fashion. Broke and unemployed, without a direction in sight, I made the decision to regress. To go back to my early days of carefree play. It was during this time, listening to my Chumbawamba album-the first CD I ever got-- I remembered the joy of creating, of doing of being free. And that's when it happened: i caught the tiniest glimpse of a story and that story was La Belle Schwarze.
It's taken me nearly a decade to come to terms with who I really am, and I owe a lot of it to this novella. That try as I might, I'll never fit the mold, I'll always be a 'player,' dreaming up new worlds and tales that bring a little something to no one or everyone. I'm a deeply private person who's motivations will remain close to my chest, but there's nothing that makes me happier in this life than seeing my fellow brethern honor their truth. Whether it be pain, joy, gratitude or shame. We are human and every day we need to remind ourselves of that gift of free choice w've been granted. Because by doing that, we can take that next step to whatever or whoever our younger selves wanted us to be and in turn become a true participant of society.
