I opened the window in my office, and moved my desk next to it. It’s hot outside, but there’s a gentle breeze that cools the air just enough to be comfortable when it comes through the screen. It’s quiet in my neighborhood today, except for a lawnmower up the street, and I can hear the occasional train go by, up near the river.
I read a story once about a kid who grew up in a small town, and slept with the windows open so he could hear the trains when they went by a few miles away. He worried that he’d be stuck in his town forever, and those trains represented freedom and a world that existed beyond the county limits.
I can’t remember the name of that story. Maybe I made it up. I’ve always wanted to tell a story about a kid who wants to get out of his small town, but can’t find his way. You know, like everyone else in the world.
Anne’s out of town, so I made a bunch of taco stuff on Monday, and I’ve been having tacos every night, because I’m one of those people who would wear the same thing every day if I could, on account of efficiency. Did you know that tacos were invented by the Dutch? Look it up. It isn’t true.
I had another audition, for a show that I love, playing a character I’d love to play. This is not a repost. It was yesterday. I didn’t suck, and now I’m trying hard not to let myself hope, but I’m secretly hoping.
I wrote 1300 words today, and finished with just over 15,000 on this story I’ve been telling for about a ten days. I thought it was going to be a 2000 word blog post or two, but it just kept on going, and now it’s looking like it will be a novella. It doesn’t have a title, but it’s set in 1983 (thank you, Stranger Things) so I call it 83 until I can think of a title. Here’s a little bit:
Until I sat down to recall this particular story, about this particular summer, I hadn’t thought about these guys, who I lost touch with over thirty years ago, in at least a decade. They are all frozen in amber at that age, during this moment of our lives. Stephen’s house has lots of dark wood on the walls, heavy gold/yellow/brown carpet, and an orange, conical, metal fireplace in the living room that looked like it was from some version of the future, imagined in the 70s. His television is big tube model, in a wooden cabinet with stereo speakers on either side. There’s a cable TV box on top that switches to ON TV and nothing else. His mom’s stereo takes up several shelves next to the TV, and she has a lot of record albums. Stephen only owns three that I can remember: Def Leppard’s Pyromania, Foreigner’s Four, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. They were all given to him by his older sister, who I’m now realizing was cooler than any of us thought when we were kids.
Some of that is true, most of it is from my imagination. This whole story is like that, and it’s been a lot of fun to write. I don’t know what I’ll do with it, or if it even works as a single narrative, but it’s something I need to do, so I’m doing it until it’s finished.
My dogs are keeping me company today. Marlowe is sleeping on the couch behind me, and Seamus is on the floor. Whenever I get up to refill my water or leave the room for some reason, he follows me, staying close. My dogs make me feel loved, and valued, and I allow myself to believe it is not just because I provide the food and walks.
I’m walking them every day, and running as much as I can. It hasn’t been that much, because it’s been really hot and something that my body hates is pollenating, but I’m getting about 7000 steps every day, and earning a small scoop of ice cream with dinner. I hit my target weight this morning, though I think I need to shave off one more pound to ensure that I stay here. Weight is just a number, and it really isn’t everything, but my scale is sort of like a score for me in my reboot, and I feel like I cleared a level today.
This story I’m writing is entirely fiction, but it’s based on real things that I did and real people I knew when I was a kid. It’s been a lot of fun to remember things the way they were, and then retell them the way I want to. It’s fun to think about kids I knew when we were eleven and twelve, because I haven’t thought about them in thirty years. Part of me really wants to step through time to go back to the summer I set this story in, so I can see the places I’m remembering and describing. Part of me wants to go back to those places right now, but I won’t, because doing that would tear apart the picture I have in my memory, and I want to keep it exactly the way it was.
I don’t know why it was important to me to start this off with the bit about my window, but it seemed relevant a little bit ago. Now it’s just a detail that ended up not being necessary.
But working with the window open is nice. I can smell flowers and wet dirt and cut grass, and it helps me to remember.
I wish time wasn’t linear.
Another enjoyable blog post. I’m really enjoying them.
My husband and I were having a (very important) argument boiled down to “Motley Crue or Def Leppard” minutes before I read this blog post. The fact that Pyromania was one of the three records you remember your friend having clearly means that I was right. Thank you! (Enjoyed the rest of the post, as well).
Being right is less important ha ha sometimes than being happy, ha a ha!
Love it. You inspire me to write more!
I hope you get that part Wil, the 80’s also brings alot of childhood memories for me growing up in Panama.
Wil.
Every word of this was perfect.
Thank you.
What a beautiful text. The best thing about feeling nostalgic is what comes next, that is a sudden awareness of the present – thinking about all your loved ones who are around and who also care about you, looking at your dogs that are asleep by your side, getting that scoop of ice cream from the fridge, smelling the grass outside, and realizing that the world is still a nice place to live in. A different one, but equally nice. Or even nicer. Because you’ve planted seeds. Some that were left in the past but so many others grew into the most amazing, fruitful moments of you life so far. Some are still there, just growing. And you wait. And hope.
Hope gives us strength to keep moving forward.
Maybe it is a good thing that time is linear, after all.
Your posts are awesome, Wil, thank you for sharing your ideas with us!…
Sending you a lot of love from Rio de Janeiro. My husband and I are big fans.
Oh good Lord, I remember On TV!! I remember it so well being broadcast from Southfield Michigan in those days. We found ways to cheat it’s coding system. Great days and fun indeed. God bless.
Time is only linear when you’re looking at it. When you look away, it coils up and scatters like fireflies.
I’m going to meditate on this comment. There’s something important for me here.
I enjoy reading your writing so much Wil. I’m hoping that the writing you’re currently caught up in does indeed turn into a novella because I’d very much like to read it.
I was a senior in High School. You just described my basement, though we didn’t have that fireplace. And the stereo was in my room.
I had all three of those albums. Still do, on CD.
I also have all 3 of those albums. The CDs are gathering dust, long since ripped to FLAC on my server along with hundreds of others, many of which date from that era.
I find the parallel interesting between what you are writing now, and what Stephen King wrote 30 years ago, when he was feeling nostalgic about 30 years before that. (which you then got to portray).
I’ve always thought of time as the result of the speed we travel away from the center of the universe.
That passage about the trains sounds like something from Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes”, unless I miss my guess.
Best part of this post is the last two sentences. Unpretentious. Honest. Unexpected. And the last sentence makes you go back and reconsider aspects of the rest of the post.
I was listening to Foreigner Four earlier today, Wil. I had breakfast with Lou Gramm not too long ago.
When we moved to our new house in suburban Dallas in December 1972, I made my parents aware of something in the air: total silence. It was a new development, and we were among the first residents. We had moved from a 2-bedroom apartment over a garage behind the house where one of my father’s older sisters and her husband lived; just north of downtown Dallas. The serenity of suburbia – where our house backed up to a farm – was pleasantly surprising. It’s always the simple memories that secure a stronger place in our minds.
Good luck with the new story!
It might have been Winesburg, Ohio that you read. And you should read it anyway.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts, fears, insecurities and imagination with us. I love how you write. It always makes me feel like we’re almost having a conversation. Hard to explain. Anyway thanks.
I need more of your story. In one paragraph, you sent back back to my youth. I could feel the carpet, smell those records. I can’t wait to read more.
I enjoyed this post very much! Thank you!
Wikipedia gets a bad rap.
This from the Arrow of Time page:
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_of_time
Alls I knows is the past, present, and future have thus far provided an ample supply of tiramisu, basketball, and bikes, so I’m mostly okay riding this arrow all the way back to stardust… not that I have a choice.
The thing that always gives me a smidgen of joy is the idea that all activity on Earth (and elsewhere, of course, but I happen to be a resident of Earth, so biased) is preserved in an ever expanding sphere of electromagnetic energy. So, for example, we see a star die 100 light years away, it’s a window into that event from a century earlier.
Assuming someone or something out there has the ability to observe in minute detail this record, they can watch every exciting moment of my Tuesday Tournament victory over Bosconian, Satan’s Hollow, Ms. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong Jr., and Tutankham at the Ryan Family Amusement Center in 1982. Or all of the awesome backyard rolls I flawlessly executed in 1975 as Officer Jim Street, elite leader of my neighborhood Special Weapons and Tactics Team.
The part that is depressing though is that we can never watch this global record as, of course, it is expanding at the speed of light (or whatever form of energy) away from us. If we never manage to travel faster than light, we can chase it, but never catch it. Looking over our shoulders long enough to catch glimpses of our past, but never to look deeply.
Makes me wonder why the Federation didn’t designate a special branch of starships whose sole purpose would be to fly from Earth as fast as possible to observe and record our past. It would be a never ending race and a never ending task. They could record and observe a time period, race ahead, and observe and record it again. Over and over. Passing planets, civilizations, but always just look back and focusing on our home world.
I like the idea that there’s an entire civilization out there watching me, and just me, pick my nose at age 11 at the back of Social Studies class.
We all ride that arrow.
http://dl9fvu4r30qs1.cloudfront.net/00/86/57f2934842989ef564d6c9e8f2fd/dr-strangelove.jpg
Sounds like the the sun outside is shining for you sir. And that’s something to smile about. Keep up the writing. Hopefully one day I’ll be able to read it.
Hell of a lot more relatable than Proust. Maybe I’m recalling all my friends and families houses from the 60’s on. Husker Du did a song called Celebrated Summer the never fails to bring back the the most difficult and most inspired time in my life.
You rock.
“I wish time wasn’t linear.”
Our bodies follow the arrow of time, but our minds move between past, present, and future freely.
That’s a really nice thought. Really, really nice. Thanks. 🙂
This is true.
if the story is set in a particular season of 1983, you could call it the ____ of ’83. or maybe circa 1983? or maybe [town name] 1983?
Nice post, Wil.
And you’ve reminded me of someone from when I was twelve. I never had friends like that again… 😉
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
You exist there.
I find myself checking my inbox first to see if there is s new post from you, then to see what else is there. You have the nicest flow to your writing, Wil, very nice.
Part of my brain will always feel like the past is a place that I can – and will – return to one day. When will I play on that mountain of gravel again (that google maps tells me doesn’t exist anymore)? … Got something in my eyes now.
Beautiful thoughts! Glad to know about your day Wil! I hope your story ends up as you want it to be.
Man, but you are a nostalgic dude. So am I, but the jury is still out for me as to whether it’s really healthy.
1983 was one of my favourite years. I was 22, and that summer my girlfriend (who later became the most wonderful wife in the entire world) and I spent way more days at the beach with friends, and way more nights out enjoying music, then we ever had before or since. And the music that year was awesome. 1983 was just…freedom.
Probably my analog to your 1983 was 1974. That’s the year I woke up from dreamy childhood and started paying real attention to the things around me, which was another, earlier kind of freedom.
When the whole (first) Napster thing was really rocking, the nostalgic me used Billboard’s charts to organize my digital collection by year, so that whenever I wanted I could step into the tunes of 1983 as I had heard them on the radio that year, or 1974, or any year since I first really began to notice music. It’s kinda ironic that living in the future on occasion allows me to better live in the past.
That’s funny. I thought of Ray Bradbury (as did Timothan, above), but I thought of him in the way that Kevin Seghetti (above) thought of Stephen King – that he wrote about a younger, more innocent time. Your setting especially reminds me of Bradbury’s “Dandelion Wine.”
Thank you for reminding me of a book that I remember fondly.
Smell the grass, Wil, and enjoy every bit of your olfactory hallucination!
You should hop on that train one day. Just a mid day ride to clear your thoughts. It is the most relaxing thing I do everyday. I pop on my headphones and open up the old time radio app and close my eyes. Let the golden era of radio storytelling clear my mind.
Wil
I have folks who tell me periodically that it is impossible to get to know some one through words on paper or the virtual version of such. I think they must be ignorant of history of humans & letters & real stamps that had to be licked & older versions of such communication. I think some folks express their soul in the 26 letter representations but most folks do not. For you and a few others the essential you is in the words, I mean a personality & a natural clean style. Getting long winded, I loved the short-lived show on sci-fi channel (I am boycotting the New spelling the sci-fi channel went to.) & especially the promos [we are for sure going to blow things up & such.] Your authentic voice has power and appeal when you write & in other endevears like acting. I read in,biographies of near misses that lead to actusl opportunities. I like your approach to acting that might be good for an approach to my,writing of ‘did not suck’ & ‘try not to suck’.
I like your writing style; my positive opinion on that & $4 will buy you a cheap beverage. The old saying was that & 50 cents would get you (was worth) a cup of coffee.
I must back off the exercise today perhaps for a week because ha Ha my right leg can not be android-like detached & left on the couch at home so, rather inefficiently, my whole body must rest. I might put my restless energy into my hobby of writing, I might do the backwritimg organising today. The whole back burner stories & written character sketches & detailed outlines is not my approach but I might try for it today.
Best wishes for you & yours today & this week!
Sincerely
Easylyn
Monticello Mississippi
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the past, and my childhood. Sometimes I hear trains, and I remember how I lived near Chicago, and I remember feeling cold, and I start to panic and feel like I can’t breathe. Watching Stranger Things pulled me into that feeling as well, so it had an extra element where I felt completely unsettled.
I’m not exactly sure why, and I’ve been feeling like I need to work through those feelings. Something like this might be the way, so … thanks.
The window is ALWAYS relevant. Trust me. I’m a writer. 😉
Can I be jealous that you are eating tacos everyday?
This is beautiful, sir. Really well done & evocative- both the excerpt and your post. I’ve been a reader of your blog for about a year now, but I’ve never commented (I’m shy, y’know), and I’ve felt a bit guilty about that. I stumbled into my new main obsession (gaming) through you & tabletop, and I’ve gotten a lot of enlightenment & enjoyment out of reading your thoughts here. So yeah, figured it was time I chimed in, added my voice to the chorus. I appreciate you an awful lot. Please keep doing what you’re doing.
This post reads like you’re still in the narrative headspace that good fiction so frequently demands. I really enjoyed it, especially since I just came inside after watching my daughter and her friends play up and down our street. As you say, they shone like the sun. Keep up the good writing.
We’re watching Dark Matter and your name just showed up in the opening credits. I didn’t see it because I was diving into my buffalo chicken tenders delivery, but my husband said “Guess who’s on the show tonight?” I automatically said “I’m guessing Wil Wheaton.” He said “Yes!” I’m now really stoked to watch this episode. I’ve been ambivalent about the show but now that you’re on it, it seems more legit.. We just finished watching the first season of Stranger Things and if they don’t cast you in season two or subsequent seasons, (of which I hope there are many) well that would be just crazy. I hope they did though cause that would be amazing. I haven’t read your blog in awhile cause life happened. But your writing is awesome and when you’re on shows it makes them better. Im looking forward to more of both.
Ah! I’ve thought that too. Wil should absolutely be in season 2 of Stranger Things, I thought that right after I finished watching it and was thinking ahead to the second season.
It’s post like this one you should read aloud for a Radio Free Burrito.
Beautiful stream of consciousness — and the window was wonderful — you used it to loop back around which gave closure and made the meandering path of the flow meaningful. Stream of consciousness works well like that – like a daydream with a comforting and familiar ending. I hear you about dogs. My little buddy was having a shoulder problem today so I took him to the vet for a look-see. Love that little fart. He has Zero malice, 100% love, and constantly lives in the moment. The little dude. He’s aces.
Me, too! There’s nothing I’d like more than to step back into the 80s. But at the same time I don’t want to ruin them by replacing my memories with realities.
“Part of me really wants to step through time to go back to the summer…”
And now I have an urge to re-read Heinlein’s “The Door Into Summer” for the first time in… hell, must be over 40 years.
When I sat down to write my novel I didn’t expect it to end up being 850 pages long I just wrote from my heart & let my gut tell me when it was finished. You should do the same Wil. Don’t worry about whether or not it will end up as a story or novella or a novel just write until it is all out on paper. It is awesome so far & you are too. 🙂
Mr. Wheaton, I think you’re terrific. My advice would be to remember your divinity: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/excelsior