I was in awe when I first read Brian Arundel's short story, Things I've Lost. It was back in college creative writing. I noticed, of course the style that Arundel offered, as I was told. What he had to say was somewhat less important than how he said it, and that was why he was being studied. We studied Arundel's writing style, we were reminded that a writer writes, and that style is important. We were told that authors often imitate, that imitating is OK, and that plagiarism is not.

One day I set out to imitate Brian Arundel, and made my own list of things that I had lost. I attempted to utilize his flair, and his use of the list. I listed things in paragraph form that I had lost but was remarkably unsuccessful at even inventing a profitable generic form of his style.  I assume now that it is because Arundel is more at peace with himslef for having lost the items.  He knew where he lost them, knew when, I am surprised now, that Arundel could lose anything and suppose he might even smile when he loses something now.  That is not me, many of the things I have lost, I don't know where they went, nor why or when.  My writing about things I've lost offered cloudiness rather than clarity to the subject.   Something I was unhappy anout then. 

I guess that is why it is Brian Arundel's style and not my own. My own style is still in it's infancy, and while I could not successfully copy Brian Arundel outright I did, I believe, imitate his use of lists for the following albeit short story.

SUV, on a windy day. Crabgrass, and having to weed my yard. The web worms that ate the blooms off my tree. Halloween, not all my haiku's are good. Rainy Day haiku, no I didn't save up for this one. Wrote two Haiku's on typing haiku's, I like the rhythmic tapping of fingers on the keyboard, what can I say? I wrote a haiku about reading a story about Indians calling cotton "tiny lambs." A cloudy day, sunflowers, mesquite trees, swearing the Texas heat and Mosquitoes. No, the last isn't an excerpt from a David Allen Coe song. The kids getting off the school bus, Autumn, reflections, dancing children and Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize. I think Haiku is one of the easiest ways to express yourself in writing and that it enables one to get into the habit of writing. Id like to say all my haiku's are original works, however, I get the strangest sense of De'javu from my mesquite tree haiku. Like I perhaps, had read it somewhere before, and while looking at the mesquite tree in my backyard, somehow transposed the humor from another haiku into my own. Is this plagiarism? I don't think so.