Everyone is always telling you to do these things, "Tell us about yourself". I've been doing it for years now and it still makes me uncomfortable. It feels like I'm on a game show reading off a predetermined script to fill time between commercial breaks. It feels like I'm describing someone else or an idealized version of a person who isn't me. It's odd and foreign and worst of all it's completely and totally boring. No matter how interesting I am or what I have accomplished or people and things I have encountered when I write it all down on a screen it comes out like the eulogy of a glorified bean counter. Not to disparage anyone who counts beans, seems a worthy profession in some respects.
I guess I could start with some things I'm not. I'm not humble, in fact I never have been. Even when I was nothing and had no idea what I was doing for some reason I was proud of myself. I'm not bland. I have a very exciting life and it's because of the amazing family and friends that I have the pleasure of being around. I'm not ungrateful. I'm thankful for every breath and every step. I'm not idle. I live like a machine that feels tremendous guilt for every moment at rest.
This is probably a good time to put some vapid quote from a person who died a long time ago when the world was completely different. But I'll refrain. Instead I'll write some useless chatter that I wrote a long time ago that unearthed itself deep within the wells of my subconcious.
Years passed and I figured it was long enough that the heat would die down in a section of the roost. The fox was keen on these hens. He had a brood of his own and when he needed the energy more than ever the fat stink of chicken shit filled his nostrils with every single passing second he spent near this farm. I leveled my rifle onto the railing of the porch. Part of me wanted to scare him away. His nervous pacing back and forth an indication of just how desperate he was. I knew he would return though and the sustenance that I sought in my own life would be threatened by him. I treated this interraction as his trial. The last chance for him to walk away unscathed. He began to dig near the fence and I pulled the trigger. Watching his form slump against the hole made me realize that this fox was just like me. Diving into hell face first in hopes that on the other side of this one blockade I would be greeted with an unforeseen richness. My time would never come either and I would die in the same way, slumped over in the dirt bearing my teeth toward bastard luck.
My name is John Ralston. I make art, I write, I build, I eat, I breathe. I grew up near the beach in Virginia and currently reside and operate in Baltimore Marylard. I have envisioned a grand future for myself, but have retreated its expectation to more realistic ideas. I wish to have the capability to accomplish what I'm capable of and occasionally recline. Nothing more.