Recovering the Lost

A lone goblin carries with it a fuzzy ball of fluff. After setting it down on a chair in an empty space, the goblin exits out a nearby door. His little shoulders droop as he goes, and with him, the door fades away.

Out of the darkness and silence, I arrive. I measure my steps carefully in my mind as I take each one. In spaces such as these, one must tread with caution. I approach the chair and nod. The last one did well, but the task remains undone. I place my hand on the head of what you now recognize as a stuffed bear.

"Welcome to my Teddy talk." 

I'm looking back at this blog now, and I wonder how I let it be so thematically hijacked by beer. It seems so... un-me. It was like watching a small train fueled by my passions forced to chug along. This was to be a testing grounds so that I could learn to make something and just let it go. It didn't work though. It became a production. I planned. I wrote in advance. I came up with a script. I gathered data. I fussed over format and details. Then I gathered more data. Eventually, I finalized something and posted it. It was all safe and controlled.

What it was, was wrong. It should be buried deep, but I refuse to delete it and start afresh. That would be the easy way out, like seeking amnestic bliss.
Instead, I leave it as a scar carved of words in a digital landscape, a reminder of the character built through the experience or at the very least a derelict to act as a warning.

The porpoise(sic) had been thwarted at the moat. The castle remained beyond, but I forgot so quickly to even look in its direction. I'm endeavoring to change that, again. And I think a manifesto of fragmented chaos and un-planning is in order.

I'm choosing to sketch a baseline in the sand as a vague jumble of rules:
The goal will be to post at least once a week something, on some topic, in which the content was written up in less than an hour and barely(read: not) edited. I don't have the luxury of time to not practice.

Too much was on the line in the past, and artificially so. I had aspirations of grandeur. I had hopes so high they were sucking in their own smog. Past me thought it was all clearly rational, like the square sides of a glass cube. I see it now for what it really was: a safe room of leaded crystal where everything played nicely and the wildness of the heart had no place.

We'll see where this leads this time. The foolishness of this momentary hopefulness may decide to fizzle out. Only time will tell.

"Thank you for coming to my Teddy talk."

I take the bear and place it on my shoulder. I hunch forward slightly and a series of clicks accompany the restructuring of my physical machinations. With a grin, the bear climbs into a seat that now juts from my back. A series of levers rise to reach his paws. The hiss of steam signals me to start, and like a humanoid chicken walker, I strut off into the night.

100 Weeks Final Entry

The gnomes have left. It's my fault though, because I sent them away.

Yes, I never completed 100 weeks of beer/cider. My emotions slumber on this. No pains of regret lance at me nor will I lose any sleep over its incomplete status. Other factors bother me more.

No, I didn't stop enjoying beer or cider. I have my own personal approach to alcohol which, apparently, runs contrary to the typical. I suppose never having explained that makes my indifference seem hollow. I do eventually plan to write it up, but putting one's personal philosophy out in the open is to place it naked before wolves. I'll hesitate a little longer.

Here are my reasons for stopping the 100 weeks of beer/cider:

I) A poor outlet for imagination. I became disillusioned with the need for a blog of this variety. I write six word shorts on Twitter and Facebook, submit -occasionally- flash fiction for publication, and in between school and work, I hammer away at my longer, not-likely-to-ever-be-completed tales. This blog was supposed to be engineered by fairies. Each one plucking and posting the best glimpses from an idle imagination's fantasy fragments. Instead, the greedy little gnomes took over.

The fairies need to reclaim their territory, but they are fickle.

II) Not feeling the need. When I want to know about a beer, I find out what my friends have thought about it, especially if they have similar taste. If they haven't had it, then I check Untappd, Beeradvocate, or Ratebeer.com for what the general populace thinks. I don't check some random blog that has only a couple dozen reviews(like mine!), and sorry Youtubers, I don't watch someone else enjoy the beer. In short, even I don't look at blogs for this kind of information. I'm a big hypocrite for writing this stuff because I rely on the Internet's data focal points for relevant beer information.

With regards to the fantasy genre though, the unique realms of each person's other worlds don't exist in the general. They exist, by default, as outliers.

III) It lacked a personal touch. I thought of turning this more locally minded. I could focus on reviewing local events, bringing my lens onto nearby breweries, and/or talking about what my little beer circle tried each week. However, I just couldn't get fired up about being a little reporter nor could I muster the brashness necessary to flaunt.

Instead, I simply stopped. Well, also, school made me very busy. Anyway...

What's next? Not sure, but I think while the goblins are away, the faeries will play. They've recently discovered fractals and keep trying to merge them with crystal snowflakes. I'll encourage them the best I can, but for now, they are still experimenting.

Fragment) Where's the Fantasy?

Who drank my...?

Where is the fantasy indeed! I seem to have let the gremlins get a little too happy with the inner workings of my blog. Though the machinations turn and matters of beer pour out in endless supply, I am disenchanted by not only a severe lack of fantasy here but a dearth of fragments.

... I took the memory and stopped it up in a golden vial. Then on a sullen day overcast and dire, I tossed it to the earth. Shards of muddled thoughts and misplaced dreams faded away in a twinkling mirth...

Glass. Significant objects in the world of fantasy are oft inclined to be made of this greatly fragile substance: glass slippers, a mirror, a pitcher etc. Be the reasons simply set viscerally at the core of the human condition or a subtle proclamation of the transience of human life, the image jars us. The clear hardness of it bespeaks of the infinite and the finite all at once, for "strike a glass, and it will not endure an instant; simply do not strike it, and it will endure for a thousand years." (Chesterton) 

'tis all