In honor of Edgar Allen Poe's birthday (and my friend Amanda's)

I killed a spider in my bathroom five days ago, and I have not yet found the nerve to dispose of it.  The first day it was to make sure it was dead.  The second was to be extra sure.  The third was to be absolutely Washingtonian about it.  The fourth was to let him be a lesson to all his friends.  And the fifth (today) is because I just plain don't want to get near it. 

Instead, I am going to focus on celebrating Mr. Poe's birthday, which my friend Amanda-from-New-York also shares.  Bet you've never heard this one:

"Alone"

From childhood’s hour I have not been

As others were—I have not seen

As others saw—I could not bring

My passions from a common spring—

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow—I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone—

And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—

Then—in my childhood—in the dawn

Of a most stormy life—was drawn

From ev’ry depth of good and ill

The mystery which binds me still—

From the torrent, or the fountain—

From the red cliff of the mountain—

From the sun that ’round me roll’d

In its autumn tint of gold—

From the lightning in the sky

As it pass’d me flying by—

From the thunder, and the storm—

And the cloud that took the form

(When the rest of Heaven was blue)

Of a demon in my view—

Basically, I'm a big scaredy cat.

I have many fears, including but not limited to spiders, roaches, tornadoes, traveling in a car on a bridge over water, heights (this is a new one), and velociraptors.  But one other very serious fear for me is encountering a blank screen when I sit down to write.  It's a classic western stand-off.  The blank page says that it is better off without anything on it.  It reasons with me: "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."  Yeah, thanks for that, page. 

Some of the ways I've learned to combat this is to jot down some ideas or the first lines of something on a scrap of paper.  That way, I have something to immediately type up before the page can get a word in edgewise.  I also stumbled onto another process accidentally.  I once had to type up a poem for class from an author I admired, and even the physical act of typing those lines that I knew were great and seeing the words appear on the screen as I "wrote" them gave me courage.  It's hard to explain, but if I type a few stanzas from Edgar Allen Poe, I get an idea of what it's like to see myself type something good, and then it makes me want to tackle my own writing and be better at it.  That's one of the reasons I enjoy writing the entries for this blog. 

In keeping with the Halloween theme of the week, I thought a little Poe was in order.  Now I'll bet you think I'm going to post "The Raven."  That poem's pretty good, but I prefer "Annabel Lee."  It was the last poem Poe wrote before he died.  Many people assume it's about his wife, Virginia, who had died from tuberculosis a couple years before.  Poe said that the death of a beautiful woman was the most poetical theme to write about.  This poem gives me the wiggins.

Annabel Lee

It was many and many a year ago,

   In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

   By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

   Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

   In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love—

   I and my Annabel Lee—

With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven

   Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,

   In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

   My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsmen came

   And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulchre

   In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,

   Went envying her and me—

Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,

   In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

   Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

   Of those who were older than we—

   Of many far wiser than we—

And neither the angels in Heaven above

   Nor the demons down under the sea

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

   Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,

   In her sepulchre there by the sea—

   In her tomb by the sounding sea.