Well, it’s unofficial, but true, I’m chillin’ like Hilary Clinton back in my hometown; And to be honest, I am so happy in My Own Private Idaho.
Life really is stranger than fiction.
It might sound sad, I feel like I left a part of my childhood behind, and I’m gonna pick up the pieces, leaving no stone unturned, and write a book about this lost kid on his way home.
I don’t know if I’d want to be here for the rest of my life, stuck halfway between the past and the future, but I think everyone should revisit their adolescence at some point in their life.
Conan O’Brien shared about how when he goes back to New York, he remembers memories he’s had on random street corners. And being back in town, it really is like going back in time for a brief second. Seeing where it all happened. Feeling it too.
I don’t know if everyone’s adolescence was as impressionable as mine was. Willa Cather, a Great Woman of the Great Plains, whose story did not end there, said, “Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.”
I’m just recollecting what it was that led me to become a “writer”… at age 15.
This summer, I am working under the Oguz Erdur Residency Fellowship, in which I will be writing the novel I’ve needed to write since I was 16…as well as get to take care of an illustrious lemon tree and two royal cats.
I knew back then I needed to say what happened, even though all of it hadn’t even happened yet.
And I’m not here to say I know every crevice of every human emotion, explanation, or experience, but I know this one very, very well.
And I hope I know how to say it well, the way it deserves to be told, for both my sake and someone else’s.
In my second novel, Carolina, Colorado, California, there is a part about a relationship between two characters. Of all the people in the world, whatever they say, those two people have a unique relationship that is between them to understand, and only for them to know.
And, not that anyone cares, but if people have conjectures about who I am, or why I am the way I am, they can talk all they want. Anyone can tell their version of my story, but nobody can tell your story like you.
P.S. Good News for My Mentor: This book will lead to great success, which will benefit him and bring him worldly recognition from doing what he does best – nothing.
Ben Bonkoske 