One of my favorite sayings is the Turkish proverb that goes, "He who tells the truth should keep one foot in the stirrups." Speak the truth, and somebody will want to crucify you. In today's world, unpopular opinions are labeled "hate speech." Discourse and debate has been replaced with violent protests.

Writing is a dangerous activity, at least if you do it right. If you do it honestly. Write the truth and the world will retaliate. In an ironic way, this can even be an effective barometer for how well you're doing your job.

I have written with total honestly and, on numerous occasions, met with a backlash. The world is threatened by any hint of honest truth. Most recently, somebody actually called the police on me for writing. Not for the content of what I wrote, so much, and not for bad grammar (not the GRAMMAR POLICE), but for the mere act of writing.

This happened a few days ago. I was feeling a need for alone time in which to write, and so walked over to a nearby park. A woman and her little kid were on the playground, but I figured that tuning them out would be easy enough. I sat in the gazebo, at the picnic table furthest from the playground. Sat with my back to them and began writing.

The words came and my creativity flowed and I felt at least somewhat productive. I had pretty much forgotten about the woman and her kid (a girl of about 9 years old), until they finished up at the playground and walked by the gazebo to the foot path. The girl said something I didn't catch, but I did hear, quite clearly, the mother say to her, "Well, you can report him. Here, we'll do it on the way home." At which point the girl started dialing her cell phone.

It sounded like the mother was encouraging the kid to report me to the police, but that didn't make any sense. I was sitting at a picnic table writing and minding my own business.

Even weirder was how CASUALLY the mother spoke those words. They walked without hurry, and so obviously were not afraid of me. They didn't cast backward glances. It was a bright, sunny day in a public park and I was doing nothing but writing in a notebook.

I tried to tell myself that I had misheard or, more likely, had misinterpreted what I heard. There was, after all, simply no reason for the mother to encourage the kid to "report" me. Of course, if I were to ask them about it, if I were to question them in any way, then that would only justify their behavior.

I thought about getting up and leaving, but decided no: I was doing nothing wrong, and now that they were leaving, I'd get some precious alone-time for writing (I have the strange habit of seeking alone-time in public places, as ironic as that may be).

So I sat and kept writing, then wondered whether the police would park and walk through the park, or drive along the foot path. And as soon as I wondered this (ask and it shall be answered), along comes a police vehicle, driving up the path. It didn't stop because, hey, all I was doing was sitting at a picnic table writing, and besides: nobody else was even in the park. But I've passed through this park numerous times before and have NEVER seen a police car patrolling the park like this.

I knew he was there because the kid, prompted by her mother, "reported" me, but it goes deeper than that. Strange things tend to happen when my creativity flows. Or when I feel I am "onto something," catching a glimpse of something like a flash in a mirror, when I am uncovering a bit of truth.

It really is like the world doesn't want me to dig up this truth, and so it lashes out, it defends itself, because this stuff happens, over and over again. Not when I am just cranking out the next scene of a story so much, but when I connect with something powerful, deep within my psyche. My creativity revs up and attracts drama like metal shavings to an electromagnet. I write, and the people around me become inexplicably upset. I write, and my phone rings with some urgent matter I must attend to. I write, and weird shit happens.

I said before that the cops were called due to my activity of writing, not the content of what I wrote. But that is probably not entirely true in the strictest sense. Sure, neither the mother or her kid had any notion of what I was scribbling in my notebook, but maybe the content of it, the psychic power behind it, moved them to act as they did.

And I know that sounds like lunatic paranoid delusion, and maybe you're thinking that Mom and her kid were maybe right to be suspicious of me. But I think I'm onto something here, and will continue to use my writings to probe for deeper and deeper truth. And will always keep one foot in the stirrups.