Keep Your Cliff’s Notes, We Want the Whole Thing Gone

Citizens, we of the Collective challenge your pallid notions of story. “Should’ve” is no more than “didn’t” writ large and shouted down to drown out your fear of failure.

Write what calls to you. Sing your heart’s song, and if the notes you strike stand beside the bars let them. Convention is gathering to wait silence’s fall. Break your bones for ink. Scrawl with mad abandon on the walls and they will crumble to dust.  Build cities of light, lust, and ether where they stood. And kiss your creation goodbye on the instant it’s born.

Every story starts in medias res. The figured wheel turns and we see the revolution in part. Let a thousand errors bloom! Ride into the guns of staid tradition. Fall on your face and stand up laughing at all you’ve learned.

Drive your cart and plow over the bones of the dead. Yesterday falls that tomorrow may rise. Teeter on the brink of that vast mad abyss, and should you fall know that the bottom rises to greet you.

Sasha, Pass the Apple Mash

Citizens, life is not always pretty. This world is full of faded colors, gas station bathrooms, and lopsided flower arrangements.

But we of the Collective do not consider this criticism. A world of relentless perfection would be a wax museum, lifeless and disturbing in its monotony. What is Marilyn without her mole, and who denies that Cindy’s mark made her?

Perfection leaves no room for other pursuits. No time for making ties from tinsel, siphoning water with pasta, or singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” in Portuguese. Who would dance the wind in spring renounces perfection and embraces the off-kilter rhythms of the organic.

Imperfection is the crescendo of the human symphony. We are the missed note, the dropped beat, the dog in the tutu. Our tainted selves give richness to everything we touch. 

So center yourself to the left, lean into the sun, and let the shade find you living brighter. Practice your strident staccato with the crickets of the field. Chase what you are with every step.