The Price of Solitude

Writing is solitary work. I have to be alone when I write. That doesn't mean that people are not around me when I write, I just don't acknowledge them. Much of In the Days of Lachoneus was written while I was commuting home from work on the Front Runner train from Draper to Farmington. The train has many passengers at rush hour, and I often sat next to one person and faced a second directly across from me. Yet I was completely alone.

Most days I would find an empty seat on the aisle on the upper deck of the second car behind the engine. I did not always sit in exactly the same seat, but generally in the same area. A few faces I recognized as regular riders. Most, however, always seemed to be new faces. I would find a seat and glance at those sitting next to and across from me. For my convenience and to my relief my fellow riders usually had put up their do-not-disturb signs: headphones and eyes closed. Everyone had a book, a laptop, or cell phone in their hands. If their eyes were not closed, they were riveted on the thing in their lap. Occasionally one or the other of my fellow passengers would acknowledge my presence with a brief nod, perhaps a wan smile, or sometimes just a flick of the eyes. Then the walls would go up, and I was left in my solitude to write.

Hour after hour, day after day, I rode in silence next to strangers who never spoke. They had no idea what I was doing, and I had no idea what they were doing. I might as well have been in Agent Maxwell Smart's cone of silence. I enjoyed the silence because I had work to do. Looking back now, however, it was eerie. It's how I imagine riding the subway in New York would be. People jammed together, breathing the same air, occupying the same space, yet all totally and completely alone, each entombed in his own thoughts and preoccupations.

It is a defense mechanism. When we are assaulted, we respond with fight or flight. We either strike back or we hunker down beneath our shield. A train car full of strangers put us all on the defensive. Occasionally a passenger would turn to "fight" mode. They would be loud and obnoxious or play music from a speaker instead of wearing headphones. Such fighters generally seemed to drive the rest of us into deeper "flight" mode. The atmosphere of the car would be filled with fear and uneasiness. Even the quick glances and furtive smiles for newcomers disappeared beneath a hard shell of concentration. When the obnoxious troublemaker left the train, the sigh of relief from the other passengers was palpable.

What a funny way to live! I recall one time, however, when I broke the pattern of crowded solitude. On this particular day, I had disrupted my usual routine of sitting on the upper deck. When I got onto the train at Draper I saw an entirely empty pod of seats on the lower deck, and I scooted happily into the vacancy. I had opened my laptop and found my place in my manuscript and was ready to start writing when we got to the next station. A young man boarded carrying a suitcase and a duffel bag, His lost expression caught my eye, and I motioned for him to bring his luggage over and use my spare room. He situated his bags, sat down, said thanks, and stared out the window.

My first inclination was to focus on my laptop and try to get a few more pages written. This man was not in the mood to talk. Yet I was strangely uncomfortable with this fellow sitting across from me staring blankly at the window. I ventured out of my cone of silence and spoke. I commented on his luggage and asked if he was coming or going.

My random question opened the floodgates for this young man, who desperately needed someone to talk to. He was returning to his boyhood home after having been gone for many years. As I listened to him, I heard the story of the quintessential prodigal son. He had left home as a teenager to get away from the stifling restrictions of his parents' lifestyle. He had traveled around the country trying various things. He had tried the wild life of hard living and had a difficult time making a go of it. He was living out of his car in Seattle when his car and all of his possessions were stolen. He made his way to Las Vegas, thinking it would be easier to find a job. It was there that he was mugged and beaten by an assailant with a lead pipe for the five dollars he had in his pocket. A police officer just happened to wander by the ally and noticed the scene. The policeman apprehended the attacker, but not before he had shattered the face and split the skull of the young man. My new friend had tears in his eyes as he spoke of the cop who surely saved his life. The scars on his forehead and cheeks, the greenish-black bruises around his eyes, and his wickedly crooked nose testified of the savage beating.

Having just been released from medical supervision, and with a few possessions donated by the local homeless shelter, he was making his way home to see if his parents would let him stay with them while he finished recuperating. He had learned for himself that his parents' life wasn't so bad after all. He was grateful that he still had one place he could go where he would be safe.

He finished his story just before we arrived at my stop in Farmington. He still had two stops to go to get to Clearfield and to see if the family car would be waiting for him. I told him that God had let these things happen to him to bring him home. He had been given a second chance, and he should not blow it. He said he was sure of it. He was not mad at God but only at himself for having put himself in a situation where God literally had to hit him over the head to bring him to his senses. I promised him that I would pray for him, which I did every day for several weeks.

I left the train that day having not written a single word of manuscript. The broken solitude was the price I had paid to help lift a young man in need.

I ask myself, what is the price of my daily choice to live and write in solitude? How many around me, even with their do-not-disturb signs in place, are hoping someone will take a moment, take a chance, lift the cone of silence, and speak a friendly word? How many prodigal sons and daughters do I share the train with everyday to whom I give nothing more than a glance, a nod, and a weak smile, hoping they will ignore me and let me stay in my shell?

Perhaps God will give me a second chance, too.

Beginning at the Beginning - not very original, but it's the truth

The school year had just begun, and I was in seventh grade, my first year in junior high school. English class was first period. It's the first day of a new class with a new teacher in a new school with a lot of new kids I had never seen before. Yikes! Who wants to relive that memory again?

But something amazing happened in that class. Mrs. Upham asked us to write an essay on any topic we wanted. The only guidelines were that it had to be two pages long, and it had to express an opinion. What could I possibly write about that I had an opinion on? That was a puzzler! Puzzler? That reminded me of the Riddler, which reminded me of the Batman TV show, which was a weekly staple in my house. The idea of a superhero TV show was great, except that I wanted it to be a serious show about serious characters and serious crime-busting. To a seventh-grader who took his superheros seriously, the campy Batman series, with Adam West in the title role was, well, silly, not serious. 

I had a topic on which I had an opinion. I wrote two pages about how ridiculous the show was, with the phony fight scenes that were punctuated with comic-book animations of Wam! Blam! Powy!, which covered the real action. All I needed now was a title. My best friend and I share a contempt for the show, although we never missed an episode. My friend's dad had once made a comment about the show. He said it should have been titled, "Fatman and Bobbin the Boy Blunder". That phrase stuck in my head, and it sounded so cool that I knew I had to use it in my essay. So I made it the title.

Mrs. Upham gave me an A on my writing assignment. It is always encouraging to start off a new class with an A. 

But then a couple of weeks later it was Back to School Night for the parents. I accompanied my mom and dad around the campus. We showed up at our designated time for my first period English class. When Mrs. Upham finished talking to another set of parents, she turned to me and asked me to introduce my parents. She then said the most marvelous thing. "Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong, your son shows a real talent for writing." She showed them my essay with the big fat A written in red across the top. "The title of this essay is exceptionally clever. David obviously has an ear for alliteration." I had never heard the word "alliteration" before. "I think he should think seriously about writing more. The school is starting a journalism class next year. I would like him to sign up for that class."

From that moment on, I knew I wanted to be a writer. I signed up for the journalism class, and I began to learn to write. I was in journalism for my last two years of junior high school and all three years of high school. In my senior year I was co-editor-in-chief of the Lakewood High School newspaper, along with co-editor Mimi McBride. (I had a crush on Mimi, but I'll save that story for another day.)

Another great influence on my writing life was my ninth-grade English teacher, Mr. Garvin. Most of the students dreaded Mr. Garvin's class. He was dry, humorless, and strict. But I loved his class. He taught me to write a term paper, research, take notes, organize my thoughts, outline, and edit. He also had an expansive vocabulary, and I thought it was totally cool to know words that no one else knew. I learned tremendous lessons from Mr. Garvin.

The other man from whom I learned much about writing and even more about decorum and organization was Mr. Eisenberger, my journalism teacher throughout high school. He was a pronounced conservative with graying hair and a debonair mustache. He wore a tie and a three-piece suit to school every day. He encouraged us to read the Christian Science Monitor as the pinnacle of professional journalistic expertise. I learned the Five Ws of the lead sentence of a good news story. I learned to write headlines, layout a page of newsprint, set type by hand, run a line-o-type machine, and meet a deadline. More importantly, I learned from Mr. Eisenberger how to work on a team and lead a team. 

All of that was many decades ago. Mr. Eisenberger passed away many years ago. The last time I saw Mimi, she and her husband owned a seafood restaurant in Long Beach, California. I have not seen or heard of Mrs. Upham since I left Bancroft Junior High School in 1969. I went by Mr. Garvin's classroom once while I was in high school just to tell him what an excellent teacher he was.  Yet I have never forgotten the influence these people had on my life.

I have been writing ever since that first day in Mrs. Upham's class. I did not pursue a journalism career, I tried teaching for a brief period, but ended up in software development and project management. Though I do not write for newspapers, I have written thousands of pages of technical reports, project status reports, and business requirements documents. I have written volumes of personal histories and journals. I published an article in a software business journal and a fiction short story for children. I have also written hundreds of pages on various religious topics. All of this preparation has finally brought me to point where I am ready to tackle a novel.

Funny to think that it all started with a simple, innocent act of plagiarism in a seventh grade English class. I have been trying to live up to Mrs. Upham's expectations for fifty years.