mis padres

Let me tell you a little story...

Once upon a time, I was a kid.

I'm serious! Although now that time seems far removed, I once was young and full of life. Now I suppose I'm really nothing more than a cynical wash-up, driftwood on the shores of reality, debris cast off from the sea of life. But even when I was still an active youngster, there were several signs that I can look back on and see, if only in shadows, evidences of what I would become.

There were many times when shades fell over my childhood. I was very angry as a young man. I hurt a lot of people I loved very much, and I have always regretted that my relationships have been scarred, if not destroyed, by my bad judgement. These affronts to my closest friends hurt me almost unbearably as soon as I could see through the red veil of my own anger and into their eyes; but nothing I tried changed me as much as a return of the "favors" by girls I have known. Especially the ones I never hurt.

Still, these random stabbings of pain and regret served one very useful purpose: they gave me the fuel to express myself, not just emotions, but the very essence of my being. I started soft and sweet, as most writers in their early teens when the infamous "love-bug" bites them hard in the hormones. Poetry, sonnets, the whole nine yards all flowed freely from my gaping mouth and starry eyes; but with an increase of pressure and a little pain, truly great things began to flow and I began a series of elemental poems, one for each girl I had loved. In spite of the somewhat awkward subject matter, I was fairly happy with the way they turned out. But soon poetry could not express all that I felt; even free verse was too constrictive, and I soon turned to fiction as the best way to express the darker emotions that flooded my brain in my late teens.

Perhaps the best example of my darker works was Tales of Augelond, a fantasy I started in college. Though I didn't realize it at the time, this work directly corresponded to the schizophrenic tendencies that would become prominent only a short two years later, inspiring my work on Lucy's Curse. The work was never finished, however, because my parents found the half-finished looseleaf manuscript and promptly burned it.

Page. By. Page.

The first I heard of this was when I came home during my second, and last, semester of college. Needless to say, I was devastated at the senseless destruction of endless hours of labor and research. Depressed and disinterested, I let my grades slide, and dropped out at the end of the second semester.

I have, since that time, found several short sections of my original Tales, and plan to publish them here on this blog as I piece them together with what remains in my head. I hope you will read and enjoy these chapters as they resurface.

Sometimes parents can be...