“Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying, streams like the thunderstorm against the wind.”
-Byron

"...like unfolded flowers beneath the sea,

Like the man's thought dark in the infant's brain,

 Like aught that is which wraps what is to be,

Art's deathless dreams lay veiled by many a vein

Of Parian stone; and, yet a speechless child,

Verse murmured, and Philosophy did strain

Her lidless eyes for thee..."

 From Shelley's Ode to Liberty.

Edges once sharp now fade,
the shadow of details
from a scene recede,
and the high tide of sleep
ripples over dark eyes
as the sloth drifts
through blue veins
covering muscles
and tying down limbs;
gravity's concern
suddenly noticeable
and suddenly strong.
Fantasy overtakes
reason's talk,
grips slacken
and the heart's beat
loudly balks;
blood now becomes
a lazy river.
Air pours freshly
into porous lungs,
widening and rising to meet
the heart's march.
Slumber filters thickly
the imaginations
and encloses
the world around;
places fade too far to touch,
people and sound
come and go
in the story line
of a drowsy mind.

About This Place . . .

There are many blogs in this vast digital library of our time. So I should probably let you know what to expect here; why this blog exists, what I plan on talking about...


I shall start with the title I have given this place.


The Life Like Story, that title, will provide you with most of the information that you will need to know about this blog. I picked that title out of my fondness for literature, the incorporation of that wonderful art into my life and from the view that life is like a story; each person a character in a long running epic, each scene, each action that goes on, part of a larger plot. 


So, you see, the title is different from the way those words are most often used. It is not in the manner of a story being life-like but, rather, life being like a story.


Though, be not mistaken that I am here only to go on about books and the work of words! No, oh no. That is but one piece of this puzzle. This place will also be the mouthpiece for observations on the little-seen scenes; those cascades of voices, those fragile but endlessly tangling threads of plot, actions and people each seen in the mind of a writer throughout the production that is known as life.


I have often wondered if maybe this life is the life of a story; that maybe this has all been written. 


That wonder is why this is here, and that is really why I am here.

A Hard-Won First Post

The first post is one of the hardest. Like a fresh notebook. Before you is laid the white space of obligation.


I guess I have performance anxiety.


Thankfully I have gotten to the point where the first page in a notebook is an enjoyably exciting step. As if someone had put before me a new chapter in the book of life. It is there for the taking, waiting to tell whatever it is I wish to say.


After that first step, momentum takes over.


Now a first post in a blog is a much more singular event than the first page of a notebook. The notebook, usually, is just one of many to come. Of course I could be the irresponsible father of countless blogs. In that case, maybe the first post wouldn't be so bad. That is not the case, though, and this first post for The Life Like Story was a tough one, born out of many drafts.


From here, the momentum, the writing, will take care of itself as long as I do my part. Which is to write. And to think. And write some more...


So I guess from this first post I re-learned what I 'knew' before; when in doubt of what to write, write.


Of course I learn that lesson over and over again with writing. To work with those ever present notions, which are sometimes stronger and other times weaker, of what to write, of why to bother. Those little notions take tiny bites but they gnaw persistently until you feel it deep within your chest; that growing sense of 'doomed to fail' what's-the-point-of-it-all-ism.


In the end, that is what makes writing precious to me; what went into it. The feeling it takes to write, the need to muster an intensity of focus upon your words. The sheen of pride and recognition often stems from the hard-won nature of a creation. And when a writer gives the beautifully dictated voice of their soul and mind, which is no doubt hardest of all dictations, the legend persists of the toil, tears and torture that wrought such beauty from a feeling, thinking being.