Tonight marks the third year that this blog has been running. It was three years ago that I posted "Justice", and it is strange to think so much time has passed. Last year, I spoke of the characters that dominated the year. I suppose the same is true of this year, such as with the button-nosed stranger and the daughter of Athena, but it is less so the focus now than then. Recently my poetry has become rather nostalgic, reminiscent of times past. But before I discuss the year, I will first make an announcement that perhaps I should have made sooner.
The other night I received an email from the editor-in-chief of Stache Magazine, which is what they have come to calling a 'blogazine'. It is entirely online, and for the December-January edition, the theme is nostalgia. That being said, the email was informing me that a poem of mine will be included in the upcoming edition. The poem is titled "The Window Illusion", and you will not find it among my posts here. However, once the magazine is published, I will post a link to it along with another poem on here. Because it is an online magazine, it should be easily accessible for everyone, and it is also free, so there is little reason why it should be a problem. But I have gone on long enough about this. This is about the year, not the past few weeks.
The year began with a hypothesis. I was experimenting with myself, to find an answer for myself. It was inspired by the novel "Atonement" by Ian McEwan. You see, I was in an exam for one of my English courses when I read an essay question on the novel. The professor was asking for us to show how Briony (the narrator and a character within the story) fictionalizes the world around her. It was at that moment that I nearly screamed eureka. It was simple, but solid. This was the instant that I came to realize the way in which I fictionalized the world around myself, especially women. Then the experiment began. I wished to see the level at which I can fictionalize a woman, and the effects that it has on me. It is both with excitement and painful horror that I report that my experiment was a success. I found that I was capable of convincing myself emotionally, while knowing it was all a lie, that I was truly taken by the button-nosed stranger. It was similar to the obsessions reported in the past, although I was fully aware that it was completely fictional. Then came Frankenstein, which provided me with a way to view what I had done, resulting in "Who is the True Monster?"
From there, I can only claim that the year went in one thematic direction. It moved to the departure, the inevitable goodbye that was to result from my leaving for university. My time in Aylmer felt incomplete, as if there was a world of work to do. I attempted to calm those passions with Camp NaNoWriMo, and music pertaining to goodbyes, such as Eppic's "Consider This Goodbye" and Zach Sobiech's "Clouds". But none of the restlessness went away until it was about time to leave. It was then that I finished the first draft of "The Beginning of The End". I was stunned, having felt as if the novel could have gone on forever. But with its completion came the readiness to leave the place I had called home for so long.
University was not about wanting to go home. I rarely missed home, although it was often on my mind. One does not live somewhere for all one's life and simply forget it in two months. Rather, my mind found a completely different environment in a different part of the province. My writing habits transformed. My room had morphed into a place which I did not wish to remain in. The isolation of my old home had been lost to the open nature of my new one. Instead of writing late at night alone in my bedroom, I wrote during the day, or at least, prior to eleven thirty at night, in a public space where many people I knew came and went as they pleased. There were more distractions there, but sometimes I would simply forget that the world existed. I would become so engulfed by the story that I would not notice anything outside of it. But I have gone on long enough. The night grows tired, as I do. Now I wonder what may come out of the year to come. Until next time,
-Zero
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