A Quick Game of Blog Tag

Way, way back on 12/19/06 Inspector Lohmann tagged me and I failed to catch it until now... the rules state that I have to state five things most people don't know about me:

1) I saw my first dead body when I was 8 years old. The man had been shot in the head on a street I was riding my bicycle down. He had been shot because he had walked into a liqour store with a pair of scissors and stolen a bottle of alcohol. He was running down the street when the store owner shot what he stated was a warning shot... it hit the man directly in the back of the head. I remember being most disturbed by the act of people scooping up his brains and washing the blood away. It was a first moment of doubt in my otherwise secure, childish worldview--are we just effluvium, destined to be washed down the gutter, and scooped up into the trashbag.

2) I used to talk to angels when I was a kid (or perhaps they were demons?). The fact that no one else I knew had similar experiences was a bit disturbing to me (was it me that was messed up or those that couldn't see these things?) Now I'm not really sure if they were angels because I was cloaked in religious dogma... could have been fairies for all I know--I mean they both have wings ;) This led to me being a very shy, quiet kid. I mean other kids can be cruel (and I wasn't a big kid), so you don't exactly tell them about stuff like this unless you want to become a target for every pint-sized sadist in the neighborhood. This is why I became a writer at an early age, it was a way to talk about it.

3) When I was a kid (5 - 12) I was a seriously devout Christian who believed it was his mission to save others and to better understand my mission I decided to read the bible, word-for-word, front-to-back; I did this seven times (complete with notes, question, arguments and annotations in different colored pencils, and referencing of concordances and encyclopedias). Eventually, I lost my faith because I would attempt to ask questions of adults in church about the inconsistencies I would sense in my readings--they would avoid/ignore/chastise me--made me very angry and hurt. The vaccum of that faith-based certainty opened up a vast (w)hole inside me in which I can hear storms howling until this day. So, because I sensed lies in my former faith, I set about studying as many other beliefs as I could so that I could learn their truth(s) and their lies. I never truly believed in one thing like I did when I was kid--while I don't regret losing that innocence, I do have to admit, there is a lot of security in blind belief. A toast to chaos, confusion and creativity! Having lost my faith I also went from being a very painfully shy kid to this wild, crazy, confrontational teen/adult. I didn't give a damn what anyone thought anymore, my nihilism made me fearless in fighting for what I believed was right. I lost this recently because of some traumatic events in my life... became that painfully shy kid again for awhile (he never really left)... searching for my passion for life...

4) I compulsively make lists of things when I am stressed/anxious (blogging anyone?). This became a big problem when I wrote my MA thesis and was working on my PhD thesis. When I was a kid I was obssessed with music and would stay up late into the night making lists of everything I could find out about the artists I liked. I was a walking encyclopedia of musical knowledge. So from religious scholar to music scholar... then when I lived on the streets as a teen I would study books on personality/psychology/philosophy so that I could learn to operate in different environments of people. I would make charts of my underground tribe/organization and map out the personalities of the people we engaged in our daily business activities--their weaknesses and strengths.

5) I had 14 volumes of diaries, mostly written in code that I developed myself, that were lost when I was living on the streets when I was in my early twenties. It was supposed to be the basis for my first novel (or series of novels).

OK, who should I tag?

Camels Back and Forth

Coffee House Studio (Rainbow Demon's post pushed me to expand my original post)

Dr Menlo

El Oso, El Moreno, El Abogado (any, or all three)

Hotel Room Nudes (Good to see someone else is getting their mind seriously messed up by Hal Duncan's novel "Vellum: Book of All Hours"... actually I'm a third into the newest one "Ink")