The Pit of Pat

At one point, almost all my spare time was devoted to writing. Poems, short stories, plays - I wrote religiously. My electronic journal between grades 8 and 11 is monstrously large. War and Peace on steroids large. I won many awards for my poetry and short stories growing up, but it fell out of my daily habits and seemed miles away before I went on my trip to Oceania.

In the wilds of Stewart Island, as I was choking back the physical pain of the up-to-then toughest hike of my life, soaking wet with the halfway point not in sight, the desire to write reappeared with a vengeance. I had resumed reading by this point, and that had a lot to do with it, but my creativity exploded in that forest and the seed for a story was planted - one which had nothing to do with a lonely hiker but which had everything to do with a great adventure.

Once the floodgates were open, the ideas kept coming. Every town had a story to offer, and when they didn’t I would find one. I don’t know many hikers who would keep a pen and paper with them at all times, but I was one of them, and if I can write half of what I came up with in the bush, I’ll be extremely satisfied.

Of course now that I’m home again, things have slackened off. I was reading a book or two a week in New Zealand; I’m down to one or two a month. I haven’t even transcribed my trip details let alone started writing the stories I documented abroad, but even updating this page is a step in the right direction.

Before my trip, and even now I feel a little bad about books. That feeling of being tiny and meaningless you have when looking up at the stars is the feeling I have whenever I think about books. I am positively overwhelmed when I think of all the books I should and could be reading. Books leave very lasting impressions on me, and so I often avoid reading books when I would rather not be aroused to a specific mental state. Books are one of my strongest connections to humanity, which may be why every now and again I stop reading for extended periods of time. Mostly, as with a lot of important things in my life, I don’t make the time to read, which is sad, but thankfully correctable. My goal is 52 books this year, which shouldn’t be too difficult.

I accept that I am not above the occasional literary cliche, and have quite enjoyably immersed myself in Shakespeare, Dante, Edgar Allen Poe, George Orwell, J.R.R. Tolkien, Isaac Asimov, Sylvia Plath, Piers Anthony, Stephen King, Tad Williams, Michael Crichton, Koji Suzuki and Chuck Pahlaniuk. There are some elements of my personal collection which are perhaps less well-known, such as Patrick Suskind’s brilliant Perfume, Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides, and my beloved copy of H.V. Morton’s In Search of Ireland. I’m currently devouring all the Hermann Hesse I can find after being affected so dramatically by The Glass Bead Game. I’m also preparing myself for a Lovecraft immersion, which grew out of my memetically inspired Robert W. Chambers interest

My collection of books is fairly impressive, especially for someone my age who reads as little as I do. I have gone through phases where I have compulsively collected sociology and psychology text books, pre-teen romance novels from the 40s & 50s, anything by Bertrand Russell, books which are somehow related to the year 1967, introductions to modern art/music, Glenn Gould biographies, guides to living off the land, English poetry anthologies, Hammond organ instructional guides, political manifestos, synthesizer operation and theory manuals, and a few other oddities. I haven’t read half the books in my collection, they are being saved for what would amount to several months of rainy days once I have a semi-permanent residence somewhere. So relatively soon, I guess.