Two hours ago, I slumped lazily in a chair, unable to wrench myself away from the enveloping cushions in order to make the 15-minute trek back to my bed. Now, when I know full well that I ought to be waking up in 7 hours, I can't seem to tear myself from a keyboard that in any other context would probably be considered a dreaded instrument of "work." If I could explain to you the paradox that is the writers mind, I would.
Not that I really consider myself to be a "writer." I never have been one in the past, and most of my writing--that is, practically all of it, besides the odd birthday poem or journal entry--has been school-mandated and academically focused. True, I have been a full-time English student for almost five years now, and I've always been told that I'm fairly decent at what I do, but it was never because I was interesting, or remarkable, or--God forbid, the term I've shunned for all these years--creative, whatever they might have said. I could analyze a novel, but there was no way I could write it, just like I could sing an aria but couldn't have come up with the story behind it.
I don't know if the appearance of a blog is an attempt to change this--or, better yet, if it's an admission of change. I still don't think I'm a writer in the strictest literary sense, but, for some reason, I'm up writing when by all accounts I ought to be unconscious.
I was reading from an old book of children's literature when I got the idea for the title. This was an old book, mind you, not just I-found-it-on-my-parents'-bookshelf old, but rescued-from-an-antique-shop old. While this fact may not add anything to my story except to demonstrate to you my hipsterish aspirations and somewhat-whimsical-if-pretentious delight in very old things, for some reason I want you to know that it was no mere web page or classroom anthology, but a real book with real pages that I was really flipping through. And as I flipped through those real pages with their musty old-book smell, I found "The Walrus and the Carpenter." And because I still haven't grown out of Lewis Carroll (and I doubt I ever will), I read it. I'd been toying with the idea of creating a blog for a couple of weeks, but I had no title; but as I read about how the Walrus told the Oysters that they would talk "of shoes--and ships--and sealing wax--/Of cabbages--and kings--" I thought that I had finally stumbled upon one. Since Of Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax didn't seem to have the same ring to it as Of Cabbages and Kings, I went with the latter.
Well, I'm not the only fan of Carroll out there, apparently. After I'd scribbled my title on a corner of a recently-returned and yet already coffee-stained assignment sitting, neglected, on my desk, I came back to it this evening (that is, this morning, far later than any reasonable person would think about starting a blog) with the intentions of finally gracing the internet with my inspiration of a title. Of Cabbages and Kings, I typed, with the glow of having thought myself truly clever. But as I typed the same into the next box for a blogger.com domain name, the little box stubbornly showed me a small red X. I looked woefully at the screen for a moment, and after several seconds of waiting for the X to change to a beautiful little blue check mark, I decided to try again. No variation of the title proved unique; even all of the inventive acronyms I could think of elicited the same red X, except for one that would probably get me fired from most schools if the administration found it. I was forced to use my name; naturally, I had to use my middle initial to make even that work.
27 times. Googling my title came up with no fewer than 27 blogs titled Of Cabbages and Kings. An odd choice, in all reality, given that the Walrus's conversation ended up with the mass genocide of an entire clan of pearl-producing aquatic creatures and that most bloggers are really pretty predictable in the topics they discuss and the way they discuss them. But, gosh darn it, it was my idea, lovingly ripped from none other than the pen of Hodgson himself! And so I decided to use it anyway, and if people think I'm a cliche literary fool for it, so be it.
I am not usually a writer; but when I am (I drink Dos Equis) I will use this blog bearing my name and perhaps the most overused literary quote in all of blogdom. So, if you feel like joining me in this conversation that may very well go anywhere (and, let's be honest, that's simply the blogger's way of excusing himself to only ever write about his own life), please do, because otherwise it's going to be a very boring conversation. Hopefully you will fare better than did the Oysters.
