Muse On Napkins

The last $100 Bill hit the table like a Queen settling down for a checkmate. I couldn’t believe it. $20,000 sitting in front of me in stacks of benjis. I don’t know if it was the kombucha or the mood of the room, but here was the sum of people’s resources converging to further a dream.

I don’t know where else to start after that dramatic opening to this entry, but I’ll take a crack at it. You know how you often say, “When you see a need, meet a need.” I even wrote it on the inside cover of this little black book. It’s story time.

So hear you go, Dad. Let me tell you in my preferred medium, how I came into 20k.

You ever think about how a seed is technically dead? No life to it. How odd, right? However, when the seed meets water, it finds new life. In a way, it is how I feel right now. What I thought was dead now has new life breathed into it.

It all started in the back of a tavern with an Old Fashion and a napkin. You know the place, right off Main, a short jog east of downtown right before the bridge.

It is the same place where Cam, Bet, Mags and I began meeting every Monday evening during our High School years. Ol’ Doc Andy with his stroke stricken right arm would let us sit back in that corner, out of the eyesight of the usuals. You know, since we weren’t twenty-one and all. We would ask for those cocktails, what do you call ‘em, kitty something or others. The lemon-lime soda with the candied cherries on those tiny plastic swords are delicious! We’d order cheese curds too while we spent the night with our ideas jotted down on anything willing to borrow our thoughts. Our narratives would whisk us away to faraway lands as we bounced dialogue off each other’s souls. Moments lingered as the night went on. Time was our friend, until it wasn’t. Each Monday lasted for a week and sometimes only a night.

Then it hit us faster than any conjured idea of the mind as one gets settled into a hot shower.

What are we doing with all of the words we write?

All of the drama driven by our desire to discover a deepening of soul. To us, life wasn’t in the living, it was in what we created to live through. The mortality of our imagination arrived with curious abandon. College came and we went our separate ways. Growing up. Growing older. The future we wrote about was upon us.

And it was not what we envisioned.

Without an answer to our question, we went our separate ways. Each holiday break from school, we would rendezvous at that tavern. I told you about our meetings, you loved hearing about the different stories we wrote while at the tavern. As much as each of us tried, our attempts to publish anything got met with polite scorn. We lacked a platform or following. Our stories had obscure details of characters without a specified target demographic. Humanity is our demographic! All we want to do is set hearts on fire by the infinitude of possibility!

Who wouldn’t want that kind of adventure?

Certainly, we did, but the success never came. At least we had each other. And in the worlds created by our words, we found our escape. As you’ve said time and again—though I’m pretty sure you borrowed it from a movie you told me about—but it goes like this, “there is nothing more infectious than an idea.” I don’t know when we decided to grow up, but the idea came on a weekend when discussing life after graduation. You haven’t pressured me and for that I am thankful, but I don’t have a job lined up.

But maybe I do, now.

With no local community college or career center, we thought it would be a good idea to create our own! We may not know much about adulthood, but we know words. And when leveraged for the right reasons, words have positive power. In our travails, we discovered an impetus for people and the way of their words. Many don’t know how to wield them. In our experience, they carelessly throw them about. Often times they’re aimed at other people. Words were meant to raise the water for all the boats. Like water to the seed, so is the right word to someone who is down. Instead of waiting for others to validate our skills and experience, we decided to go for it.

What, exactly?

A movement.

We will train and develop more affluent people. We want to help students, job seekers, and companies tell better stories. Maybe along the way, we will write our novels and help someone write there’s. Who knows?

I didn’t have my little black book with me that night of our dream-like idea, so I am capturing it here, now. For the record, I did save the napkin!

On it we wrote, “Dream Center.” Ok, so it’s not very original, but it’s a start. We had a working name and zero monies.

We needed,

seed money.

Little did we know what Doc was up to something. We went into the tavern to dream a dream and scheme it into reality. Sitting on our table was a gift wrapped box with a card on the top,

“To: Our Favorite Dreamers

From: Those Who Want to Dream Again”

I texted Cam, Bet, and Mags about the surprise and the urgency to open it. The mystery was intoxicating. It felt different, you know? Like the difference between the kind of expectation you have at a White-Elephant type gift exchange versus the announcement of how much money was raised in a silent auction for charity. One is “meh” while the other is, “The number is going to be so much higher than any I would guess.” This mystery box had that vibe. Whatever was inside it was going to obliterate and embarrass any guess.

When the others arrived, we jumped in. Upon opening it, we didn’t know how much was in there but the sight of Mr. Franklin’s face incited us to yell out in disbelief! We quickly shushed each other as we couldn’t hide our jubilee. We peaked around the room divider to apologize to Doc and the others. What we saw is a thing of movies.

Doc and the usuals were staring at us with smiles on their faces. They each raised a glass, lemon-lime with candy cherries skewered by tiny plastic swords. We couldn’t believe it, but they did, and they poured gasoline on the fire of our dreams.

We were without words, just smiles and our tears.

It was a holy moment, Dad.

A group of aspiring writers at a loss for words. I guess that’s the point though. Words are just words until we put flesh to them.

For the past eight years, Doc and the usuals slowly added cash to a jar. Doc never asked us about our writing, but he listened.

They all did.

Apparently, we weren’t quiet guests. And to think we thought we were hidden back there! Those people, those wonderful people were convinced that some day they would know when to gift us that money. The four of us are quiet now as we write out what happened. What a crazy story! I look forward to talking at length about it whenever you come home. It’ll be a few weeks before you get this, so I will try and keep it a secret. This is my favorite writing book, so please don’t forget it when your deployment is over. Thank you for supporting me and my dreams. In the meantime, we’ll be looking for a place in town to launch our Dream Center!

Love you,

Your Son