019.) I Can Finish What I Start, Really I Can. Part II.

(Part I - though Part I really doesn't have a thing to do with Part II)

Some people are connoisseurs of fashion. For others it's fine wine or profanity or potato chips in the shape of janitor's heads. As for me? I run after the simple project - which might be an odd thing to say given my half-finished writing workbook (I used to be ambidextrous as a child, am once again though I stopped using the workbook when I reached cursive), my pile of foreign language books I work through diligently for all of eight chapters before stopping (only to start again from the beginning because I've forgotten everything I've learned) - or the stacks of books I have leaning drunkenly all over my living- and bedroom (99% unread and yet I keep purchasing more, and the ones I do read? I start one, stop, start another and before I know it I'm juggling anywhere from three to five at a time). But a project has always instilled in me a kind of thrill, an almost perverse electric current of unbridled joy.

Most of these projects, enveloped by this quasi-lust reminiscent of mist around a haunted television island, hearken back to my school days - a fact whose irony is not lost to me (for I have always held a great disdain toward learning institutions for reasons both irrational and justifiable).

I suppose I delved into school projects with such passion because it was an escape. I wasn't the kid with the stable home life; however, I wasn't the kid who drank or did drugs or had sex. I wasn't a cutter. I didn't dabble in the dark arts or nurse an eating disorder. I didn't do anything, really. Yes, I had friends - but their motives were muddled at worst and possessed of raging sadism at best. I was far too depressed to do anything about that.

So schoolwork, much as I hated it (much as I could not for the very life of me understand it), allowed a reprieve from everything going on around me.

I cite the following, not only as evidence toward my burning insanity, but also as an example that one day I will complete those German text books - and the Living Russian record course, and the Marilyn Monroe photo collage, and the...

To the list (which is not complete, but a brief overview), which will not only highlight some of my finer accomplishments but remind me that I can do anything that I set my mind to.

• The Cow Book (not actually mine, but bear with me here)

The Cow Book was exactly as implied. A book entirely devoted to the cow, every picture drawn by my father (who could have rivaled Michelangelo and why he didn't pursue a career in art is beyond me). This book alone might explain my lust for lavish and meticulous projects. Sadly, the Cow Book vanished after my father's death in 1996.

• Sugar Cube Castle

Lying dormant for years, heretofore only seen in long, exuberant plays with winding plots soon forgotten, my desire was realized. It was the annual sugar cube castle competition. Going all out, my castle was complete with the tradition bulwark and turrets, yes, but also slitted windows for the archers, a working drawbridge, rolling green hills of that paper grass used in toy railroad set-ups and an orchard of fake plastic trees. All of the children's castles were then, for whatever reason, carried by the lot of us into the school's dark, dank, mold-smelling basement locker room - the very same locker room where we went for tornado drills; the very same, creepy locker room made even creepier when doing the duck-and-cover in the dark.

• Book Report I - R. L. Stine "The Dead Lifeguard" (I think. It is the only one that would make sense)

In order to complete this task I ransacked Big Lots. I came out with two flexi-pose female wrestling dolls and some sort of small Barbie Doll pool made of plastic. I filled the pool with blue-raspberry flavored Jell-o from the dented/nearly-to-already expired or otherwise outdated general store somewhere in Sheboygan County (where damn never everything in that store is $1). Once the Jell-o began to set, I stuck one of the identical twin dolls face down in the pool and the other I positioned at the edge of the pool, her pink bra and tiny cut-off jean shorts indicative to the beach environment in which the book takes place. What I actually wrote about the book I do not remember.

• Book Report II - Caroline B. Cooney "The Terrorist"

Another girl in my sixth grade class was also reading this book (the girl sitting directly across from me no less) and so we teamed up on the report. Really, the only thing I recollect is recreating the scene in which the main character's idiot brother accepts a brown paper package tied with twine, given to him by a stranger in the London Subway, and subsequently becomes the victim of a bomb. One of us read and the other, on the cue of "Boom!" (screamed by a plant in the audience), dropped dead to the floor.

• Book Report III - The Civil War (exact book forgotten because my mother got rid of it, but possible title could be "The Civil War: A History" by Harry Hansen)

I chose this book with the intention of creating a massive display of war injuries (the tome had an impressive catalog of not only every soldier who fought and died in the war, but also the destruction of war). My teacher wasn't very impressed, perhaps because she didn't buy my "Little Activist" routine (I was in fourth grade at the time). What I should have done was do a report on "Johnny Got His Gun" by Dalton Trumbo.

• Book Report IV: John Toland "Adolf Hitler" (the old two-volume, hardcover edition)

In a futile effort to understand a monster, I created a thorough report on this book (sans my typical comprehensive visual aid). I might have been in fifth grade at the time.

• Book Report V: J. K. Rowling "Harry Potter and the (whatever it was)"

A not-so-complete departure from my norm: reports on books dealing with death. The class was broken up into teams. Maxwell, Heather, Eric and I were in a group. I believe it was Eric who had the ingenious idea of filming our reports. We went to my house for the movie making.

Maxwell taped Heather and me asleep on the floor (the camera lingering on my ass for reasons I'm still not sure on, maybe it was just big compared to Heather's). Heather walked through the jungle. Eric was not there that day, I don't think, and if he was I can't remember what he did. As for me, I stepped into my role as Severus Snape (the Alan Rickman character the object of my long, deep dark desire - a character who in the book never fails to bring about images of Trent Reznor, and I will never forgive J. K. Rowling for killing Snape off). In charge of the camera, I used my magical powers (and seamless control of the power button) to turn a stuffed tiger into a crystal turtle paperweight.

• Unknown/half-forgotten video project:

All I remember is Brittney's farm (the same Brittney with whom I did the report on "The Terrorist"). It was autumn and I'd neglected to bring a jacket. I sat in the cab of a pick-up truck, my hands frozen even cradled to my chest, Niles sitting on the sleeve of my favorite blue sweater.

I remember standing in front of the camera at the farm, talking at the lens while the horse behind me suddenly decided he needed to pee.

• The Great Egg Drop

Because I could not procure a live chicken, I had to do the next best thing. Place the egg in a marshmallow-filled canning jar. Wrap canning jar in paper toweling and pack in well-padded box. Slice open thumb when retrieving the unbroken egg, the glass jar having absorbed all of the shock.

• The 8th Grade History/English Co-Production of the Salem Witch Trails

I played Tituba, slave to Reverend Samuel Parris's family and the one who was pointed at by the collective finger. I was laughed at, either because my skirt was too large or because I was a skinny white girl (in an all-white school) playing a black woman. But I had the last laugh. Not only was I in the play, playing a rather pivotal role (which was also disgusting; the racial and religious scorn of the Puritans) - but I also helped to build the sets.

• King Cluck - A Group Effort

Like King Tut only a store bought chicken. We loved that thing. We rubbed oils on his headless body and we wrapped him up mummy-style. We placed him in a shoebox sarcophagus. Because the science class was learning about decomposition, we buried King Cluck in the small forest beside the school (the idea being that we'd get back to him in a few years' time). And then some punk kid dug him up shortly after the burial ceremony.

• Disease!

The same year as King Cluck, same 7th grade science glass, we were each assigned to a report on a bacterium or virus. It was supposed to be random. My soon-to-be one-date boyfriend pulled "ear infection" from the chip bowl.

The gods smiled down upon me: I got "Ebola".

• Archeology Dig in Small-town Wisconsin

The teachers all pulled together and got a truckload of dirt shipped to the playground. That mound was almost as tall as the middle school building. I toiled away at the dirt pile for days under the searing, soul searching sun (thank you, Life of Agony, do you have any idea how much I love you?). I didn't find a damned thing.

And my moment of shining glory:

• The Presentation on Your Person of Choice

Chris McCandless would have bummed me the hell out, so I ran to the teacher the day, almost the very moment, she gave out the assignment. In one gasping breath I demanded more than asked her, "Edgar Allan Poe. Is Edgar Allan Poe taken? Give me Edgar Allan Poe!"

So I got E. A. Poe, my favorite author (don't let the blog name fool you).

I lived in the library during the length of that assignment. My visual aid was a grainy photo on craft board, interesting and thought provoking but not the coup de grâce.

My presentation was a complete, unabridged biography of my literary God. I used a pack and a half of college ruled index cards I picked up at the local hardware store (the kind that smelt of that sweet hardware store scent and came in the giant economy packages of 100). I shoved every single, solitary fact about Poe down my classmates throats. I'm sure I even had the number of pores on the man's face written down somewhere.

I gave a full reading of "The Tell-Tale heart".

The teacher was none too pleased. She said it was too long and relatively boring and that I should not have been so excited (to have overdone the presentation as I did).

Of course, there was the moment I graduated from high school as well. That sort of proved that I wasn't as stupid as I though I was, that I actually could accomplish something greater than a presentation on a dead writer.

There are also the signs I make at work which take me half an hour to complete (two days the last one I did, which was on a piece of ply board and painted white and red). And the catalog furniture around the house that I put together (in the end, I always eat the instructions out of blind rage). And, of course, the books I'm writing.

So, yes. If I have the passion I can do anything I want. I can finish what I start.

I can talk to a sodding tattoo artist. I can hand him a paper bag and say, "Here. To protect your fine, fine lines from those dastardly swooning bodies you must surely trip over on a regular basis".

I can get published (Edit 09 November 2009: I will be getting published. A short story at least, with which I won first place for at the America's Haunted Roadtrip Ghostwriting Contest).

I can dye an elephant pink with purple polka dots and name him Fred.