What is The Karlin?

What is the karlin? Well...let's start from the very beginning...a very good place to start...when you read you begin with A, B, C; when you talk about the Karlin you begin with summer and Sunday afternoons on the porch.

One Sunday afternoon I was sitting around my porch with some friends discussing the fact that Karlin (with a K) is not a very common name (especially for a boy) and that my friend was writing the great american novel. I thought to myself, wouldn't it be cool to be mentioned by name in some really famous book. It would be the ultimate inside joke. So I asked her if she could insert me as just a little side character, or even just get my name into the text somehow. She said that she would try and I thought that was the end of it.

A few weeks later we were spending another Sunday afternoon on the porch and my friend mentions that she worked me into the manuscript as a non-descript blacksmith or something of the sort. She seemed very excited and pleased to have gotten Karlin into the book. I found that I was also very pleased. This got me to thinking; if getting the Karlin into one book brought such joy, why not put it other places and spread the Karlin goodness? This girl's brother happens to be in an amateur heavy-metal band in the area. I asked if he could just work a little Karlin into the lyrics or background vocals somewhere.

We started to speculate where else you could put a little Karlin and spread the joy. School children and college students everywhere write untold amounts of essays and short-stories and are always making up characters and names for things in these papers. Why not just make Karlin one of those characters in each paper or essay? Millions of pictures are drawn and photos are arranged and a little Karlin could be on a background sign or scratched in the sand or Photoshopped into a cloud. When you finally figure out how to insert a little Karlin into your work there is a strange little thrill and a sense of satisfaction that goes through you and it seems to improve everything around you.

What is the Karlin? It is whatever you need it to be. It is the blacksmith shop in the great american novel, it is the bop-bop, and du-lang of the next platinum album. It is the tatoo on the Caribean pirate and the label on the pitchfork of the American Gothic. He is the perfect example in your next sermon and the comforting inside joke in your next coversation. When you see it or hear it or just plain feel its presence it makes you smile if only for a second. And if everyone in the world smiled for just that second, that's over four billion seconds of happiness that everyone could use. So the next time you have opportunity to create, try adding a little Karlin and make the world a happier place.

Try it and you will see.