20181103.0430

One thing that occurred to me to write about while I was in the shower, and which I am pleased that I am able to remember, is myself. Arrogant as it sounds, it also lines up with conventional writerly wisdom--write what you know--and memoirs and testimonials pervade reading and publishers' lists; I've also been thinking about putting together some kind of retrospective for a while (and not only because tomorrow is what it is). It thus makes sense that I would spend a bit of time relating things that have happened to and around me. Some of them might even be entertaining or edifying, although perhaps I stray too far into arrogance for tolerance in making such a claim.
However justified or not it may be for me to tell the stories I have lived and seen, though, I do have at least a few. Some of them, I've already put out into the world, whether by telling them on a stage in front of drunken graduate students or putting them into print in one collection or another. Of some of them, I am not at all proud; in one example, I made a joke that punches down, far too literally. It's been more than a decade since I did it, to be sure, and I was not as I am, but I probably ought to have known better then; I certainly do now. And there are others that expose my faults more directly, though I know I am a fit target for my own work (offering another reason to write about myself).
There are only a few stories in which I take pride because of what I do in them, and most of those are briefer and less detailed than those which give me pause to recount. Having caught a knife--and it was a hell of a catch, certainly--somehow takes less telling than having come to throw one or drop one, even though it is a far better thing to have done. Having given a good performance now and again seems to admit of less discussion than having faltered and failed at one. But I know that my life has been of limited scope; I am not among the mighty. My successes and failures have been small, really, and small successes make for small stories.
Small failures, however, seem to make for decent telling. I suppose it is because stories of them serve to humanize their subjects; we all have our little foibles, and I imagine that they take up more of our thoughts than is good for us. Stories of them might well serve as a way to build common ground and rapport; they speak to commonalities in ways to which many may well relate, and without the hyperbole that abounds in too many places and serves to deaden quickly senses of wonder and perspective. How fortunate it is, then, that I have as many stories of small failures to tell as I do; having common ground seems it would be a good thing.