Nothing Gold Can Stay

“There was a stairwell, and there was a group of writers, and there was a college called UCSD, in a town called San Diego. It was the end of the world...”

I suppose I can be forgiven for borrowing from Kander and Ebb. It’s appropriate, in this nostalgic mood I’ve found myself. I don’t think they’d mind, really. If they’d have been there, they’d have loved it, too.

I was a newly minted high school graduate, getting the highly-unofficial-tour of campus from an old friend who had already been there a few years (who shall be referred to, for the sake of prudence, as Daar). I had already taken the official orientation and amused myself at the Stewart Collection of Corporate Art (yes, I’m editorializing here) that was sprinkled haphazardly around campus, a fragile effort by the esteemed fathers of the university to state “We gots culture, too! Just look at our competely non-funtional life sized marble statue of a drinking fountain! Pause to admire the grandeur of the blue nylon netting cutting a jagged line through the eucalyptus grove! Oxford’s got nothing on us!” Though I will admit the imitation-Stonehenge was kinda cool. And it was there that Daar proposed that I should see something “really cool”. So I followed, finding myself in a building stairwell, filled top-to-bottom with writing. Not graffitti in the traditional large-scale, vaguely-Gangsta sense, but real writing. Poetry. Stories. Conversations. The occasional bit of art, from the serious to the silly. It was the sort of thing that couldn’t be taken in as a whole, but in small bits, these varied and miraculous jewels of script, signed with strange pseudonyms. Flute. Psymon. Silver Ring. They had their own code words for everything – the campus patrols (Yellow Jackets) and, more importantly, themselves. There were, I found, known as the Peeps. There was a culture and an etiquette that went along with the writing there. In those walls, friendships had been formed, loves had been found and lost. I was enthralled. I could have spent hours there, days even…

And soon enough, I would. Summer turned to Fall, bringing me to campus full time. I would spend every spare moment there, in those wells (as I had discovered, in my explorations of campus, there were many). Probably more spare time than I should have, perhaps, but soon I picked up a pen of my own and joined the ranks of writers past. The walls had remained untouched for a few years. I was writing alone. Some of my first efforts (including a damn good version of The Scream, I must say) had been lost almost as soon as they were created, as I hadn’t discovered the magic of Permanent Markers. Still, I was content to write my bad poetry in the shelter the anonymity of the Walls provided. But then, towards the end of November, something magical happened.

Someone wrote me back.

I was awestruck. Beautiful, spidery, and wonderously female writing, answering my clumsy hand. Funny thing is, I met the writer, Nightwing, within minutes (literally) of this discovery, commencing one of the more interesting nights of my life, in which I was introduced to H.P. Lovecraft and some of the better artists of 80's era Goth ;). Soon enough, there were others, and even a few of the old-timers began making an appearance. The Walls were back in business. New tales joined the old. I fell in love, twice and in the space of months, on those walls. It was a delicious experience, in part because it was illicit (no one’s really supposed to write on walls, are they?), and in part because, in those days before texting and constant facebook updates, we could keep up with our circle of friends in ways that wouldn’t dreamed up for many, many years. I found myself drawn there several times a day, a foreshadowing of the Blackberry-addicted masses that would follow in later times.

The first paint-over was unexpected and tragic.

And an annoyance. After all, my clumsy attempts at asking out the woman who would later become my first wife had just been painted over! I would have to work up the courage to ask her out in person. Soon enough, it seems, we had worked out a bit of an unofficial arrangement with the university. Though it was never put into words, we found by experience which wells were free for our use, and which weren’t. In time, people came and went. I left university for various reasons. Nightwing departed not long after I did. Dark Hand (my first wife) would hold down the fort for three more years, introducing many newcomers to the wells. In time…things changed. New Peeps came and went. The administration began painting over the efforts of these newcomers, and tragically, even painted over the oldest wells, those we thought would have been perpetually spared as some small monument to who we had been. But like all the good and bad in life, nothing lasts forever.

Nothing gold can stay.

It’s been twenty years. Time passes so slowly that you don’t even notice it, creeping upon you like a thief, stealing things here and there, small things that you don’t even notice at first until you’re left with an empty house and a set of keys. I suppose that, in the grand scheme of things we should appreciate what we have while we have it. It shouldn’t matter that my words, or hers, or his, or theirs, are lost forever under a sea of white paint. That they existed, even for a brief flash of time, should give us comfort. That we could build a world of our own, crafted of ink and paint, in a sea of post-adolescent madness, is a great accomplishment that few can claim. But still, I miss what it was, and could have been.

Auf wiedersehen.

- Ian Werther

http://www.planetmind.net/peeps/

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=4402866498

Post-script - I should note that, for those readers who know me now, that the above is written out of respect for a period from my past, and in no way implies that I don't like the life I have now - indeed, while it has some serious challenges, it is in many ways much richer and more fulfilling that the life I was living then. Just sayin'.

On Writer's Block

Once upon a time, there was just paper and a pen. No keyboads, no bright shiny monitor, no cpu fan whirring along with the music from your ipod. Just a single-hand interface on a permanent surface. They used sand or a razor blade for the mistakes, and later something called White-Out, which smelled something akin to burnt rubber tires. A line struck through the offending passage was an acceptable if not completely ideal alternative. Cut-and-paste simply wasn’t an option unless one wished to, well, cut and paste. It was low cost and the ultimate in portable – it didn’t need batteries and could be taken anywhere. It could even be used in candlelight. The only problem was the page itself. It liked to stare. It was very confrontational, this page. It would stare, white and unmarred, challenging the operator to write something profound and, preferably, soon. Many have stood for years in front of the page, the page glaring back and demanding tribute. It was the downfall more than one great writer, this page, and no doubt why so many of that profession turned to alcohol as they cracked under the pressure.

Then we invented computers.

Now, the writer’s task was so much easier. Paragraphs and chapters could be shuffled back and forth like a deck of cards. Backspace replaced White-Out. There was spellcheck. We could, we were informed, pour Jack Daniels down the drain and rejoice in the marvel that technology had presented us. Nothing could be further from the truth. For you see, the page was still there, blank as ever. Worse still, the page now had a buddy. He was known as the cursor. He was more impatient than the page, who sat Buddha-like and waited for the emptiness to be filled. He was very impatient, this cursor, he liked to blink in all his foot-tapping glory as the writer struggled to find something, anything to make him stop. Liquor store profits skyrocketed.

I suppose in the future some great mind will invent something for truly helpful for those of us who produce the written word. Perhaps they can solve the age-old problem of writer’s block and pull the great opening lines from our head and present them to us on a silver platter. Perhaps the great struggle between writer and page will cease and there will be love, harmony, and understanding. Maybe even world peace.

Until then, pass me the scotch. ;)