Ben Babbles
and Herman does not acknowledge.
Herman is at it again. He’s my inner writer, you see, and every now and again, he won’t let me alone. I suppose it’s because I’ve been spending all of my time constructing a website, and not writing. Herman objects.
You know, Herman ol’ buddy, it’s at least partly your fault. We started a novel last weekend, you and I, and you left me hanging once again. I got the protagonist through the storm and up into the beach, then realized that the place he had to be didn’t exist. And now he’s gonna have to move about a thousand miles on foot to get to the scene of the action, and we don’t know the terrain. This is not exactly the time of year to check out the northern tier of Canada. We don’t even know, for sure, where he came from. It’s just a glimmer in my brain, it was trying to sally forth and you weren't helping.
And no, you may not fucking interject. You just stay in there, and do your damned job. K?
You see, what I really wanted to do was to build my prototype to solve the energy crisis. I just happen to know it will work, and it will solve everything. I don’t even have to invent anything, I just have to pull bits of existing technology together and the world will be amazed. It’s so secret I can’t tell anyone what it is. If I get runned-over and killed tomorrow, it will never come to pass, the ice sheets will finish melting and you’ll all drown. Hah.
Then, too, I wanted to do photography. I purchased, learned to use and still own, four photographic enlargers. I developed real film with real chemicals, and printed both black and white, and color masterpieces. But then, digital photography came along. Great pendiferous pixelations with no depth, no range. So be it. Dew yore thang, I’ll find something else. I know those aren’t real words. It’s just an extension, an outreach, if you will, of my awesome adjectivinal perfluity. And if anyone knows about perfluitousness, it is I.
Writing turned out to be a wonderful release. The ideas I could never carry out, I can nevertheless imagine. You take this little idea over here and expand its existence in a very convincing way, then you take this unlikely thingie over here, twist it around, and it waxes believable. Then you extrapolate the original idea into a situation, turn it upside down and put the middle at the beginning. It’s a piece of cake.
People tell me it’s never a good thing to retire. They think everyone needs the structure of a daily job, which is actually only just drudgery and duty, and it will be missed so badly that you’ll retire and die. That actually could be true, for some. For myself, I just don’t buy it. I just longed for that sensation of the door hitting my ass on the way out.
I resolved that the first thing I’d do in retirement would be to fire Herman. Turns out, we’re actually inseparable.
“Then why won’t you let me say anything?”
Because people will think I’m crazy, that’s why. I don’t prefer to spend my retirement in a nuthouse.
“Shit. We won’t even live that long. Let me do the title, at least.”
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