Thursday, October 14, 2010

Odd Things

Portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson
Portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The very first time Robert Louis Stevenson handled a telephone was in the spring of 1880 inside a Magnolia Hotel in Napa Valley.

Stevenson would at a later time christen the experience, “odd thing”. You and I would have considered a similar phrase placed in his shoes. Imagine living in a city. And all that time, not even by a twist of fate, you are never offered the luxury of the telephone (which at the period in question was a fairly new invention). Now, here you are, smack down in the middle of man-forsaken-forest and voila! A total stranger presents to you a piece of civilization and suggests you speak with ‘a man several miles off among desolate hills’. To express it Stevenson’s own words. You find yourself chatting on the telephone for the very first time!

This famous author would adopt the occasion into one of his novels. In 1892, in his novel, ‘The Wrecker’, a character, Mr. Pinkerton asks “May I use your telephone?” This line is considered one of the earliest references to the telephone in a work of literature.

A telephone conversation on the edge of civilization was all it took to provoke a scene in a novel!

We all could remember, several instances we had a character in our stories dabble at a not-so-common scenario and the best we could do was fumble over a thousand little things that would feed the suspense and spark the vibes in the reader’s soul. Place those plots side to side with countless out-of-the-way situations we have found ourselves in. Can you recollect the multiple times you waved these off your mind like smoke in your eye? Think it’s time you start filling that personal journal of yours with these odd things?
You bet!

Keep your pen bleeding!


Akpan


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