Well every highway that I go down seems to be longer than the last one I knew about oh well. Thank you, Jack White.

My ears are ringing. I am am in in the library. Staring.

I've had somewhat of a creative writing spurt lately. Actually, my prolificacy has not been entierly due to my own free ambition. I wish it has been, that would seem more noteworthy and artistic to say - and it's quite in vogue to appear artistic these days. But maybe it's always been in vogue. Interesting. At any rate, all artists need deadlines, and for what it's worth, I've been writing for a creative writing class of my own this semester. This Spring semester. Spring. It's not Spring yet. Plenty of deadlines going around in there, in that class, which is helpful. Whatever it takes to get the pen to the paper, or the fingers to the keys, I suppose. Poetry had been sparse, and still is. I lacked inspiration as usual. There had been no new thoughts or feelings. It was time I enrolled in a creative writing class. And so I did.

Short stories were first on the agenda. Two and a half short stories later and I have fallen in love with writing again. My vision has been somewhat restored, at least I like to believe it has been. And I can imagine myself with ambition and purpose once again. But enough. This is all so superfluous, and I only wrote about this because I couldn't think of anything else to write about.

I am including some excerpts of my short story. The story is tentatively named, When the Seagulls Left. Here are a couple of separate paragraphs I have worked hard on. The story isn't complete yet.

***Will buried his bare, white feet into the warm, Californian sand. He felt its pulsing, primordial heat, and imagined himself feetless, which brought a smile to his freckled face. He stood there like that, by himself, in the white sand, feetless, for several minutes, wiggling his toes to feel the coarse grains pass between them, and moving his feet ever so slightly, one at a time, to watch the sand above them shift and change, creating tiny, new landscapes from tiny earthquakes. Will delighted in this simple act. He delighted in it to such a degree that it soon became a bore to him, like swimming alone in a pool quickly becomes a bore, even though the idea sounded grand to begin with. The sand had changed. It was no longer a comfort to him, a way to secure him precariously to the earth, proof of his residency. Instead, it had become a burden, a burden to his freedom, weak clamps around his bony ankles trying to render him inert, trying to keep him from the rushing tide that reached for him with every new surge. And he wanted out.***

***But despite the severity of her beauty, she carried herself with such charm and ease that any angle of severity was softened to a cat's purr. But was it the purr of some sleeping jungle cat perched high above in a broad, overhanging branch of a forest tree, Will asked himself. Did she have dramatic stripes to caution you of her claws, like a tiger does? She was enigmatic, a paradox embodied. A smiling moon. A symphony of sleep. The grace of a tornado. The sweet scent of the afterlife. Claws hidden inside a velvet paw.***