The Directionless Blog

I will admit I am having a hard time keeping this blog going. Mostly because I just don’t know what to write. That though I figure will be something I work out as I go along.
If you had asked me one year ago what my biggest problem as a writer was I would have told you that it was that I had no style, that I had a noticeable lack in artistic writing. I’m working on that now. The classes at FIU’s school of journalism have helped me a long way. The problem right now that I need to work through is that I have no discipline. I want to write, but I don’t want to put myself through the physical exertion of writing. An impossible want if there ever was one.
I’m not abandoning this blog. I have no intention to, but I do need to figure out what I am writing and why.

Who's to blame for who I am (1)

When I was about 10 years old I discovered while rummaging through the garage an old crate. Inside this crate were several old sci-fi novels. What I didn’t know at the time was that this crate was always meant to be mine. My uncle Mickey had moved away when I was much younger and had left behind his novel collection with the intent that I get them when I was older and could appreciate them.
The first novel I ever read was in that crate, “Han Solo at Star’s End.” Soon I would be reading Heinlein, Niven and Jose Farmer.
I read everything in that crate. Whenever my family would go up into the Blue Mountains so that my dad could manage the coffee plantation he owned up there, I would take several of the books with me.
It was escapism, pure and simple; it allowed me to take my mind off the fact that I spent every summer and Christmas holiday in a cabin in the mountains, no friends, no phones and no life.
So this is your fault Uncle Mickey. Even though you weren’t there to give me that crate of books in person, you have still left a profound impact on my life. I read to escape and now I write to return the favor.

How's my writing?

I guess while i figure out this blog thing and what i intend to do with it, i may as well post something from class (Writing Strategies for Journalism at FIU). so here is a piece of homework we had to do. This will give an idea of where my writing skills are at this very moment.

Grapefruit

Every childhood of my summer that I can remember was spent on the farm, a 60 acre coffee plantation, high in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica. I have many memories of coming home on the last day before summer or winter break and having only a few scant hours to pack my clothes and some choice possessions into my father’s truck so that we can leave for the mountains as soon as possible.

The farm itself, colloquially named “Coolie Barracks” long before it came into my fathers’ possession, was an hours’ drive from the city of Kingston and well beyond communication with the outside world. Unable to phone or speak to any of what few friends I had, I would spend my days reading old science fiction novels (taken from a collection I inherited from an uncle), building legos, and flights of fantasy as I walked the farm. My parents, having nothing new to talk to me about, left me in relative silence.

I remember that most mornings I would walk down from the main house toward the large, perfectly flat open field that my parents parked the trucks. The reason that the field was so perfectly flat, not to mention rectangular was that it used to be, long age, the site of the original main house for the plantation. All that remained of it now though was a massive two story stone chimney that stood obelisk like at the end of the field. On the opposite side of the field was a park bench sitting under a fir tree, and beside that was the reason I would usually walk down there so early in the morning, a grapefruit tree.

The grapefruit for breakfast is a simple concept once you wrap your head around the idea that in my childish mind it pretty much amounted to nothing more than a delivery device for copious amounts of brown sugar (to this day I find the American concept of white sugar odd). That’s how I would eat it, cut in halves and covered in brown sugar. It was very sweet, but with a slight bitterness.

While I ate in the kitchen, my legs dangling from the stool, my mother baked. She baked pies, cakes, cookies, macaroons, and other assorted treats. The house was always full of the smell of baked goods. I never understood until much later in life why she only baked here, in the mountains and never at home in the city.

My father, when not overseeing the workers on the farm or tending to his many dogs that he professionally bred and trained would usually sit out on the front porch, listening to the radio. He always listened to the same thing without fail as long as I could remember: political talk radio. He would sit there for hours at a time, leaning back in his chair, usually with Thunder, the one dog smart enough to be considered a house dog, lying loyally at his feet. “Morning,” he would say to me every day, his single word statement managing to be both greeting and question.

“Good morning,” I would reply back. Very few other words passed between us.

Words were not common here. My mother baked, my father tended to his livelihood and his dogs, while I was left to my own amusements. We each seemed to exist in our own worlds, living under the same roof, but not quite together.

Later in life, after high school, my parents separated. My mother made the decision to leave Jamaica, taking me with her. The farm days were over.

i wish I could say that I was surprised, but I had always known that was the way it was going to end. Those days spent in the mountains are happy memories to me, and have given me what I believe to be an appreciation of silence and serenity. Unfortunately those memories are also tinged with feelings of loneliness, and the knowledge that I saw my parents drift apart, barely speaking to one another, and distracting themselves with what they had at hand. I guess my memories of the farm overall good, sweet, sugary, but beneath that they are bitter.

The informal mission statement

I guess I should introduce myself, although the only people who will be reading this for now are those who already know me. But hey, you never know who may stumble across this, or who amongst my friends don’t know what I’m aiming to do here.

My name is Lawson (no first name necessary). I am Jamaican. Other than that I figured I would reveal more details about myself as I go on.

Why a blog? That’s a good question. I have always wanted to be a writer, but unfortunately as far as I can tell, I can’t write for anything. Miranda, my ever lovely and smarter than me girlfriend, has suggested that I start up a blog to force myself to write on a more regular basis.

So here I am. Hopefully this blog will become a place for me to express myself and get some useful feedback from my friends. Expect a cavalcade of madness, opinions about things I don’t have enough knowledge about to actually have a right to have an opinion about, bad fiction and worse grammar. Let’s see where this takes us, I guess.

Tada!!

Well here it is Ladies and Gentlemen, my very own blog. lets see how long it takes me to screw this up.

P.s. Love you Miranda.