If a tree falls in the woods, will it be framed?
Click, click, and click. Pen cap on, pen cap off. I have a hard time hearing the professor speaking at the podium. Passive mass facing the active individual. Fine, you can all go ahead and call it an author reading, but I know what’s really going on here. Belch out the info and the little birdies will swallow it down, only to vomit it back up again. A slightly different form, but consisting of the same properties. It starts to get pretty disgusting after six years of it and wow, I can’t help but notice what people are doing with their hands. I think it’s the shape of this room, and where the chairs are. I’ve always preferred circles, personally, and I hate that I actually love being here. Where else would the anti-academia academic belong, but in academia? The only place they are free to express and have someone care enough to argue. Ironic, kind of.
Still clicking my pen, and between technological issues and my complete and utter inability to turn off the voices in my head, I catch about every other sentence or less. Oh, that image of the old man was super chilling. The description really got to me, and awesome, now it’s metafiction! One of my faves. Should I write another metafiction story? Maybe the character doesn’t like what I’m writing, so he journeys through the strange world of fiction in search of his creator, entering different writing realities…one of structure and form, another of genre, of plot, of absolute chaos and creativity. He/she meets other characters of mine etc., until finally I decide to write myself into the story. So we can meet. That’s sort of dangerous, though. I’ll be pretty vulnerable as a character, being subject to the same rules that they are…I could get hurt, and revenge could be a bitch, but I think I owe them that much. He/she would probably want to ask me questions like “why am I here?” etc. He/She will ask why they suffer, and I’ll tell them, “for entertainment,” even if it’s a half-lie. He/she will point their finger at me and say, “You! You are the one that did this to me!” and point down at their ambiguous genitals. Me as a character will look at him/her in disgust and say, “No, no! Listen! It wasn’t me. I didn’t do that. I’ve been framed!”
“Framing is important to our understanding,” says the professor at the podium.
But is it? I hate framing. It’s so freaking expensive. The only reason my art pieces cost three-fourths of what they do is because of the framing. It does make the piece look better, but sometimes I feel like it’s a bit overrated. Maybe a little too much emphasis is placed on it? I mean, for me, it is more of an afterthought. I don’t pick the frame before I create the art piece, so why would I do that with my writing? I mean, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to know the size/shape I would need to create the piece in order to not pay an arm and a leg for custom framing, but I think that is as far as I would go. A very general idea, but anything past that blocks my creativity. That way I pick the style/color of the frame to fit the art instead of the other way around. But, to each his own. Is this already framed? Did I trip, fall and frame this? Ugh.
Still clicking and I think the girl next to me is getting annoyed, and crap, what did he just say about experiment? Every novel is an experiment? That’s a cool way to look at it. Haha, they all think I’m taking notes. I guess I sort of am, just not in the way they think. Are they thinking? Just write it down to see what happens…
Applause.
Pen cap on, pen cap off. Cliquey, these things are so cliquey. I never know what to do at these things. Who to talk to or what to say. And the sad part is that no one else does either. It’s this room, blocks my sociability. I’ll leave the room and find someone to talk to. Cut the bull, really talk and hey, there’s Josh. And we’re talking. He gets it. Writers coming to see writers but what do we all do after? Two students approach with new autographed books in hand and five minutes pass and I’m walking to my car. Brushing the snow off of the windshield and thinking about what I will write when I get home.