Navel Gazing 3: The Book In Me…
The third probing question in Em’s interview was…
On your “Who? Why?” page, you mention that you’ve always felt you had a book in you and the ability to write it. What would that book be about? Fiction? Non-fiction? If you finally started writing it today, what would it be?
During the final years of my incarceration with the Great Northern Saltmine Corporation, I began making notes of all the things that I felt were slightly askew, inhumane, blatently screwed up, illegal, unethical, immoral, funny strange, funny ha-ha, horribly annoying, wasteful, mean spirited, or just flat-out wrong. In a short time, the list had grown to a size and severity that I became nervous at the thought of being found out. Slowly, an idea emerged: write a book. The working title was Confessions of a Corporate Pervert. For obvious reasons, this would have to be done under the cover of night using a pseudonym and a team of good lawyers, or after my departure from the company, which was not in my plans.
Though I had risen to a highly visible position of corporate-level responsibility, my personality, ambitions, and moral fiber did not meet the accepted definitions during that decade as the company had undergone upheaval at all levels. Between the inmates that had risen to or past their levels of incompetence and the ousider cowboys brought in to whip the bottom-line into shape, with no regard to the value of human lives and loyalty, the place had become a living hell for those of us who believed in working hard, being honest, and playing fair. I no longer belonged. I was a pervert. A corporate pervert.
Following my pardon, I grabbed my golden parachute pay and headed back South where I belonged. From time to time I tried to collect and organize my thoughts, to actually start putting together a manuscript. In retrospect, it was probably too soon. My wounds were still fresh and raw. Just thinking of the hell from which I had escaped sprinkled new salt into those open gashes and I recoiled quickly from the task. Perhaps it could still happen these many years later, but I’ve lost my zeal for the mission.
On moving to the Nashville area in 1986 I bought a house sitting on about six acres outside of town. The house was small but big enough, my style (open, rustic contemporary, lots of glass), and was secluded enough that I could not see another house, nor could they see me. If I wanted to tiptoe through the tulips nekkid, no problem. ‘Cept I had no tulips. I loved it. It was me. I soon discovered that on the backside of the property there was a well known cave. Every now and then there would be a couple of genuine spelunkers knock on the door wanting permission to enter the cave. They always took garbage bags and brought out the refuse left behind by previous visitors who were not so considerate. As enthralled as I was with owning a cave, I never ventured further than the opening, which was a twelve foot vertical shaft about three to four feet in diameter reaching down to the first shelf where it met a horizontal crawl space that took you to the big room. Once I was scheduled to go with some friends but decided to have the flu instead.
Being an avid sci-fi buff all my life, I started conjuring up a story based on the cave. It would be set in current time, and all of time, since it involved multiple, interacting parallel universes. Unlimited, onion skin layers of existence in time, held together, yet separated by, the smallest fractions of a second.
I’ve been thinking about this for nearly twenty years now, and have a great deal of the detail worked out in my head, but nothing committed to paper. Could I write it? Perhaps. Will I write it? Probably not. As I said in that same Who? Why? page that gave Em the impetus for the question, …not enough time, not enough money, and too distracted with getting from one end of this bitchin’ life to the other. But if I were to write a book, that would be it. The writing I do here is therapeutic, a cathartic cerebral disgorgement. It affords me the opportunity to exercise the small amount of creative talent I may have without absorbing me for extended periods of time. This is my book…
8 Comments so far
And this is a very good book, filled with thoughts and reflections on a very interesting existence. But the sci-fi books sounds pretty interesting too. If you ever do publish. I’ll definitely buy a copy. Even in hard cover!
Winston, you have a gift for personable storytelling and a knack for a sudden jump sideways to keep it lively: ‘corporate pervert’ is classic. I had to blink.
And it’s a classic, Winston, your book that is,
I couldn’t agree with you more Winston….THIS is your book. And a wonderful one it is. I think it’s a best seller.
To me, that sounds like an interesting concept for a book. Books are written one word, one sentenece, one paragraph at a time. Just start. Don’t commit yourself to writing a lot, just begin. You never know but in a few years of a minute here or there to write, you just might have it.
I enjoy this book very much. I’d even buy it.
(Dig the Sci Fi and to an earlier post, I’d rather wade in horseshit too.
Yes indeedy.
I too was a corporate pervert (weren’t we all?).
But the corporation was Siemens.
Now it turns out THEY were the perverts
Stu
PS: There is already a corporate pervert book.
It is about 3 years in a cubicle at Amazon.
It is called “21 dog years”.
And it is boring.
So the SciFi on the ‘Cantor-dust’ structure of time sounds a better book. Go for it!
Winston, get down in that cave and start writing.
In the unlikely event that you don’t feel like writing when you get there, bring a copy of The Wind-up Bird Chronicle with you. Much of it takes place at the bottom of a cave, and you won’t believe what goes on down there. Just might get the juices flowing.