The Terrarium

Recalling a memory that came back to me as a dream…

It was back in Jr. High School.  It was after classes were through.  A bunch of us were in one of the science classrooms.  

Someone has brought a terrarium to the classroom.  We’re gathered around it to look inside.  There are two creatures currently alive in there.  

One is a baby rattlesnake.  It’s on the right side of the terrarium from where I’m standing.  It’s slithering about.  Going in circles.  Ever expanding circles.  Moving steadily.  Constantly.  Not going fast, but not slowing down.  As if there is no time in its world.  It will get to where it’s going when it gets there.  Its little black tongue is flick, flick, flickering out as it moves.  Its eyes are like a doll’s eyes.  Two shiny plastic spots, absent of emotion.  

As we watch, the snake begins to stretch itself out.  Elongating itself toward the left side of the terrarium.  Across the twigs and rocks spread out to make the terrarium resemble a little patch of desert.  Toward a half a styrofoam cup set into the sand on the left.  With a leaf of lettuce covering its entrance like a curtain.  

The rattlesnake stretches out like a piece of taffy, getting longer and longer as its tongue flicks, flicks, flicks in the direction it is going.

As it crosses the terrarium, the lettuce curtain begins to shake.  

This is from a little white mouse, the other occupant of the terrarium.  It’s barely visible, hiding in its styrofoam den.  Behind its lettuce curtain, which I supposed doubled as food as well as cover.  You catch glimpses of it through the gap between the leaf of lettuce and the edge of the cup.  

As the snake continues its glide, raising its head above the sand, the cup and the lettuce both are shuddering.  Moving as if a tiny desert storm is swirling about in the terrarium.  The snake reaches the lettuce leaf.  It flick-flick-flicks its tongue out, then pushes its head past the screen of lettuce.  

“SQUEAK!”  

I jump back from the explosion of motion that came with the mouse’s squeak.  I got a glimpse of the mouse bouncing off the plastic cover of the terrarium.  The cup and lettuce leaf are scattering, knocked away by the mouse’s sudden leap.  I see it land in the sand, halfway down the length of the snake’s body.  It scrambles to the other side of the terrarium.  It dives into a corner, into a little depression behind some twigs with leaves on them stuck into the sand like a miniature forest.  That’s as far as it can go.  It huddles there, the leaves shaking and trembling like the desert storm we saw before.  

The snake, now on the left, continues its glide.  It makes circles, counter-clockwise this time, on the left side of the terrarium.  Neither startled nor concerned.  Its little black tongue tasting the air with the flick-flick-flickering it makes.  

This dream came to me after something happened in the middle of the night.  

I woke up.  I needed to pee. This is a regular occurrence at my age.  Still new enough that I remember with longing regularly sleeping through the night.  

Hoping to fall asleep quickly once I’m done, I leave the lights off.  I slide my hands along the walls of my tiny bathroom to position myself.  With one hand on the wall, trying to aim in the dark, I let my roam as I do my business.  

From somewhere, push itself whatever screen exists being sleeping and waking, comes the thought, “What does it feel like to die?”

I shake myself.  I hear my stream splattering about in the toilet.  I’m awake now.  More awake than I want to be.  I wonder just where such a thought came from.  I can feel the darkness of the night, like cold, wet sheets clinging to me.  I can feel just how small the space is now.  

I take my hand from the wall to wipe my face and wave it in the air around my head.  Waving the thought from me.  I feel a shiver go through my body.  From the cold of the night, no doubt.  

Blog Reboot 3.0 (I think)

Hi.  I’m me (Erick Melton).  This is my blog.  

I’ve been doing this for a while.  Since 2005 according to the archive of entries on this site.  I started blogging originally because it was something I thought I should do.  I wanted (and still want) to become a professional writer.  Someone who spends their working hours writing stuff like stories, novels, scripts, articles and the like, things to read, and getting paid by people to do so.  

I went a while doing this.  Eventually I sort of ground to a halt.  I felt that I didn’t have much of anything to say and that there were precious few people who wanted to hear or read it.  

This may have been the precursor to a decision I made at the end of 2019, beginning of 2020, to stop writing entirely.  The specifics of my reason for stopping aren’t very clear to me at this point.  I remember an overwhelming sense of frustration couple with the thought that I was “too late” or had “taken too long” to make that dream come true.  So I stopped and focused on daily business.  

That lasted for about three months.  It was the time everyone was hearing about the Covid virus, and about three months before, in my part of the world, people were told to wear masks, restaurants were closing their doors, and I started doing my job from my apartment instead of the office.  Once I had started working remotely, and didn’t need to spend two hours a day in traffic going to then from work, giving me a lot more time on my hands.  So I decided to give writing a try, picking up a novel I’d written a rough draft with the intent of writing it and then trying to get it published.  

The novel became the first book in a fantasy trilogy, which made it necessary to plot out the story arcs of all three books before I started my rewrite (in order to make sure all the seeds I needed to plant in Book 1 for the other two books were identified).  As of the end of 2021 I had completed that task and with the start of 2022 I started to rewrite the first novel in earnest.  

Restarting the blog seemed a logical necessity.  A return of all the necessary tasks I had given myself to do when I first (and second, and third or fourth) set myself on the path to one day do this for a living.  

There is one thing that is different from the last time.  I have no idea what the point of writing a blog is.  I didn’t before either, but at least this time I know I don’t know and that puts me a leg on on my previous effort.  I think.  I hope.  

I went online and did a search of reasons to write a blog.  Here are some I found: 

To share a topic they’re passionate about.

To teach or share about a topic they have some expertise.

To express themselves.

To share experiences.  

To process their own thoughts; to learn by doing.  

To find like-minded people.

To confront fears.

To make money.    

With the exception of making money (except in the “some day” zone with my writing in general), I’ve posted blog entries that tried to do each of these things, or two or even three in combination.  But the reason for posting seemed to change each time it came to write an entry.  The blog itself was a catchall for articles and essays that were generated with the basic concept of, “this is something I feel I should do in order to achieve the goal I’ve had since I was a Jr. High School student.”  Put words on paper and buy groceries and pay the rent with the money I got for doing so.  

Well, since I know I don’t know the “REASON” for doing this, I am going to make finding that out as the reason.  So there.  I’m starting this journey without a map, an image of where it is I’m trying to get to, and a vague idea as to why I want to get there.  There are people in history that have discovered continents with less.  

The one other thing I will do is layout how I intend to proceed.  Sort of a contract, with you (whomever you might be) that is reading this.  A list of expectations I will do my best to fulfill.  

I am going to schedule for myself two postings per month.  The 2nd and 4th Sundays of the month (just did a quick check to verify that every month has a least four Sundays.  They do with one of them, October, having five this year).  

I’m going to write about whatever strikes my fancy, but I can tell you that the articles will generally come from the following areas of interest for me: 

Things I’ve written or am writing

Things I’ve read.  

Things I’ve seen. 

The languages I’m studying (Japanese, Korean, Spanish).  

The trips I take.  

The trips I want to take.  

Politics.

Baseball.  

The politics in baseball

The baseball of politics.  

People I’ve seen, met, or heard of that fascinate me.

I’ll make the postings about a thousand words (shooting for that “short and sweet” zone).  

I very well may, at times, use profanity.  But I will do my best to make sure that it is appropriate and necessary to convey what it is I’m trying to convey. 

I will be as honest and as accurate in what I write, and will note when something I am putting forth is based on speculation, memory, or is just something I think is the “way things should be.”  I will post any replies to my blog entries that are written in the same vein.  

That’s it.  Hope you come back and enjoy the show.