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Don’t Try Me To Try The Moon - Part 2 of 3

© Wayne Lankford

Another idea that nobody else would suggest to me was to rewrite a classical novel updating it to the present day and giving it a metaphysical twist. I had spent a full year and wrote eighty thousand words when I decided maybe that wasn't the best idea I ever had. If you ever decide to blow your brains out, forget the gun. I got the real deal over here in a desk drawer, hand written on nine yellow legal pads. It's called, "Moby Dick, From the Whales Perspective". I need to further warn you that this opus contains a bunch of dream sequences and at some point, I even couldn't keep it straight, what was actually happening and what was really a dream. I figured because it was all pure fiction that it didn't really matter anyway. But then I never reckoned that I would start to receive subliminal messages from between the yellow spaces where the words were written and the blue lines that were pre-printed on the pencil pads. For some reason I can't seem to throw the thing away nor can I even open that drawer where it sleeps. Yea, I'm sure it's asleep.

There were years spent in smoky barrooms having philosophical discussions that turned into divine inspiration and I churned out the lyrics by the wheelbarrow full to country and western songs. Maybe you remember, "You can't get a Dead Man Drunk", "This Land Is Not Your Land So Get The Hell Out!" "They Can't All Be Million Sellers" and everybody's favorite, "Incest Love". I was drowning in a sea of negativity. I thought myself a serious writer and the world was full of contemporaries who were just as serious as I and untalented as I was but who were making a living at it. In those days, by day, all day long, inside my cubicle at my straight job, my ideas flowed like burning lava, or maybe it was plastic vomit, while at the same time I analyzed corporate financial statements to supplement my earning as an artist. I scanned the annual reports looking for a poorly explained anomalies, solvency, efficiency and profitability ratios out of the norm. I pounced on a financial weakness like a lion on a gazelle. "Assets are disproportionably centered in inventories and accounts receivables. Inventory turn is sluggish and day's sales outstanding are three times the norm for this industry. Debt is heavy in relation to worth. The above slowness reported by creditors is noted, and an unbalanced condition prevails. Further analysis is differed until more recent and representative figures can be obtained." Yes, I was chained during the day to an ore which I pulled in unison with the rest of the Brooks Brothers suited twenty-five year olds dreaming of freedom above the shifting decks and beyond. That was a time in my life when the thought of Mountain biking had never even occurred to me. Life was passing me by.

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