I started this “blog” just last week.  Part of its purpose was to take all of these fragments of my story, my life, and put them together as a larger story.  The other purpose was  to start writing again - something I haven’t done with any seriousness since high school.  I figured I’d write a chapter here, a fragment or character sketch there.  After awhile, I’d sum it all up and hope I’d have something.

I wanted to share this blog with my Dad.  He was a voracious writer, but he never finished anything he started.  But he was always writing something, always.  It was his obsession, his life’s work, and like his life, something he never completely followed through on.  A tragedy, really.

When I was 8 he bought me my first typewriter.  That was a defining moment for my life, one of the few such moments that my Dad had a purposeful hand in.  By giving me that typewriter, he gave me a voice and he gave me an escape.  Through writing, I learned to observe and criticize the world around me.  Through writing, I learned to expand my imagination and develop a lust for new ideas and new ways of thinking.  It’s amazing to think I can trace all of that back to a baby blue typewriter made of hard plastic, a symbolic gesture of a father sharing with his son.

Rest In Peace, Charles Burton Gilkison.  July 31st, 2008.