Another one from the hippo notebook. This one is dated 1/82. Which would mean I was sixteen. A junior in high school. The hippo notebook is a bound paperback, a Quillmark. The cover, an off-white patterned with a brick red hippo motif (the icon-like hippos alternately right-side and up-side down), is lightly padded. I did not want to put anything in it that wasn't finished so I wrote poems or stories on looseleaf notebook paper then copied them carefully into the hippo book, handwriting as neat and legible as I could make it. I had a four-color ink pen and didn't use the same color twice in a row. I remember getting angry with myself when I made a copying error. I wanted to write a series of poems/stories about a fantasy land, like Oz or perhaps like Carl Sandburg's odd Rootabaga Stories -- I remember Sandburg's stories mostly for their strangeness, how many did I ever read? The stories didn't have to share characters, I decided. But they all took place in this magical land overseen by a blue & yellow sun. I wanted them to be inventive and fun. Sadly, as it usually does, my imagination disappointed me. What I was writing wasn't inventive enough, was more work than play.
Typing this old poem I flinch, am embarrassed. It's so ... not good. Not that I haven't read worse. Sure. I've written many poems not this good. And I've read (or stopped reading partway through) many poems or stories by other people that I think worse. I embarrass too easily, maybe. I was no prodigy. Though I was praised for my writing since I was little it always seemed to me there was someone better. There always is, yeah? Does that bother me now? Hm. Maybe it doesn't, really. Best best best. What's that?
OK, Sundy, cat who's been yowing at me and tapping me to get my attention, I'll play with you a minute.
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