Help!

Yes, you, Staci.

I feel lined out, sort of boxed in.

How, you ask? There's usually thin black lines cordoning off this column that must be (I have to blame something) preventing my brain from crossing creative lines and engaging in any sort of productive writing thought.

Can you help a guy out, Staci?

Please?

Before I move on, let me back up for my Lifeprints readers and introduce Staci. Staci is a graphic artist who works here at The Herald and helps me with the nuts and bolts of the Weekender layout.

Say hello, Staci.

(She's waiving, no not really.)

Staci pastes in the Lifeprints logo with the colorful dude about to get smushed by the big foot and puts those thin, black lines on the side or end of this column space. Any way, I was thinking (mistake one) that it's time I grew up and eliminated those reigning-in lines (probably mistake two, but I'll chance it) and shoot for the writing open range style.

No beginning line, or ending line. Hey, I need to get hip, cool, rad, get with the flow of another direction. Skipity skip. Bling a bling.

I need to, well, listen to the advice “they” give and start thinking outside of the box, explore my horizons, drift with the wind, flow off the page…Be a free bird.

So, Staci, take the lines away that are fencing me in. Pencil them in for someplace else. Let that Rafterthoughts guy get boxed in, but I'm gonna be free. I've got to be me. Home, home on the range…

There, the last line just above. See it! The last one! Thanks, Staci.

But, wow…but, oh my, does it seem breezy here?

Drafty, perhaps?

No, Staci, I didn't say dafty, drafty, as in an old two-story house without insulation.

Wow, it's sort of weird without the line on the bottom or edge to stop me…Oh, my, how awesome this feels! It's like the words keep flowing like a river or a perpetual motion car with no brakes on an oval track or that figure eight laying on its side or an annoying chain of barking dogs hitting both high and low notes from midnight onto daylight when you're inside the house trying to sleep but can't because the sound grates on your last nerve because you don't have the thickest pillow in the world to hold over your ears or the low throbbing pain that never lets up and just goes on and on and on and on and on and on

Help, Staci, bring it back! I guess I actually need to line out! I need a place to stop! I need an ending to go with the beginning! Please!

Thanks.

Whew, there it is, just below. See it? And what a lovely line it is!

I guess lines give boundaries-a beginning and an ending, knowledge of what is just far enough. Maybe I had better forget what “they” say-whoever “they” are-and keep thinking inside the box, line it up and stay with what works, for me at least.

What's that Staci?

I should try coloring outside the lines?

Maybe next time.