Month: June 2016

And

And

Alone

In a coffee job

Sipping coffee

And

Thinking

And picking up the virtual pen

And opening computer files

And finding the threads of thought

That came out during the walk

And remembering

Where I left off

And calling out characters

And listening to their words

And writing their dialogue

And spinning scenes

And imagining the story

And organizing the flow

And conjuring plot arcs

And editing the words

And polishing the scenes

 

 

And falling into the book

And forgetting all other moments

And not hearing

Anything else

And not seeing

Anyone else

And reading

What I’ve written

And looking for

what comes next

Is the best part

And

There’s always more

 

 

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What Doesn’t Matter

Black lives matter.

All kids matter.

All children matter.

All men matter.

All women matter.

All peoples matter.

All actions matter.

All lives matter.

 

All pets matter.

All wolves matter.

All lions matter.

All animals matter.

All plants matter.

All fish matter.

All fowl matters.

All life matters.

 

All air matters.

All water matters.

All lands matter.

All energy matters.

All rights matter.

All freedoms matter.

 

All matters matter.

 

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Blueberry Picking

I’m excited, I’ll admit. Love fruit, and blueberries top my list. We have a local place where we pick organic blueberries and buy them for two dollars a pound.

It’s just outside the town’s southside, a ten minute drive. A hot cuppa coffee in hand, we leave about 6:30, me, my wife, and our neighbor, Barb. Barb and Walt introduced us to this habit about eight years ago, I guess. I have photos of the first year’s harvest. The morning air reminds us we’re in the mountains, and higher mountains are not far, providing nature’s air conditioning.

Arriving at the gate under the sprawling trees at the end of the dirt road by the creek, we wait for the opening at seven. Our car will probably be tenth in line or so, and we’ll sit, sipping coffee and chatting until the gate opens. When it does, the cars will be motioned forward, one by one, and directed to a parking space on the lawn to the right. Collecting our gear, we’ll move toward the next queue by the bridge over the creek.

Our gear is gallon jugs with cutouts in their tops. Besides it, we have buckets. Strapping them to ourselves with rope, belts or bungee cords, we wear the jugs and pick, then return to the buckets and fill them. We’ll do this for one to two hours on Saturday morning, collecting eight to ten pounds of berries. Affected by the weather, especially the moisture and heat factors, predicting the crop and harvests is difficult. You usually don’t know until you get there.

It’s a meditative practice. Out there with caws crowing, jays arguing, and woodpeckers hammering, the air feels scrubbed pollution free. A church-like ambiance shrouds the activities as the sun slips through and over the trees and mountains. Spotting deer strolling by or eating isn’t uncommon.

Then more people arrive. Children arrive. Daylight grows stronger. The air warms. Chattering rises. I eavesdrop on conversations about office politics, vacation plans, family updates, pending weddings, and ‘whatever happened to’ updates. I do a lot of thinking and some writing in my head.

About sixty people will be on the field by the time we leave, with others coming and going. It’s still meditative, reflective, picking berries in a swarm of living, on an early Saturday morning, in the mountains.

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Dream Conflicts

They came while I slumbered, stealing into or from my mind, leftovers, prophecies, or beginnings, mysteries to study with eyes open. We call them dreams, and despite centuries of co-existing with them, we’re not sure what they’re about.

I attach significant interpersonal meaning to my dreams. They tend toward the authentic, but with elements of illusions. For example, scenes switch instantaneously, dissolving without even the notice of doors opening or closing.

First up was a snowy town outside. There I am, out there, but this POV is first person. I’m experiencing it and can’t see myself. It’s night, the snow is falling and has collected. Ruts on the streets mark how long its fallen and its resilience. Vehicles can’t pass and they’ve abandoned the efforts. Illuminated by yellow streetlights, a steady wind blowing, people go where vehicles can’t.

There is a cry, followed by a call, “Cougars.” Excitement rising in their voices, children call out to their parents that there are two cougar kittens running through the snow. I see the animals, tawny silhouettes  dashing through the grayish yellowed snowscape. They’re not small but they are juveniles. Others want to chase them. I protect them. Unleashing a snarl, the cougars race off and disappear around a snow rutted corner and up a hill.

I’m in a home with a friend. I know she’s a friend but she’s not anyone I know. She and I are waiting. We talk quietly. Coping with others’ illnessess, we’re sharing a spartan home while we visit them in the hospital. I don’t know who either of us visit nor what’s wrong with the others.

Awakening (in the dream), I walk through the house. I find my friend in one shadowy room, a chair with a blanket, a radio beside it, and a board game in a cone of light. The game is Monopoly. I’m quizzical. “I was playing,” she explains. “By yourself?” I ask. “Yes,” she answers, “I won two million dollars. I won it all.”

Going into another room, I sit on an old sofa and pull a blanket around me. Sitting on a small chair opposite, she motions toward me. I lean in. We tentatively kiss, and then kiss longer, but gently, and reach out to stroke each other.

An interruption breaks up the scene. I’m still with her but in another place. Daylight enfolds me. I’m a little confused. My house has disappeared, leaving only my bedroom items surrounded by a white picket fence and sitting on a large green lawn. Someone has stolen my house. It was children and young adults. Now they’re sneaking around, stealing other items, like my computer, and my bed and clothing. I’m angry but no one is around. I try learning who took my stuff, where it’s at, or the thieves’ locations, and how I can get my stuff returned. I complain to my friend but she’s distracted. Her patient has died. I’m sorry for her but then she is gone and I’m left to pursue collecting my stolen goods.

I’m in a small, older house with two stories where I believe the children have taken my goods. Young adults are present. They taunt me. I break up a chair and use one leg to threaten them. Some scatter but one smiles, bemused, arms crossed, dismissing me with insouciance that infuriates me. I poke at his chest and shoulder with the chair leg, issuing demands for my stuff, until he becomes uncomfortable. Swatting at the leg, he tries moving away but I keep him cornered.

Another young man watches and laughs. I turn to him, asking him what’s funny. We’re in a dining room. There is a table. He begins to dissemble. I threaten him more, then I begin hitting him with the stick, seeking an intelligent response, and I awaken.

 

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Liberated!

I’ve been mentally hemming and hawing, doing an aw shucks shuffle self-effacing, anxious shuffle off to one side, afraid of being in the spotlight, afraid of being ignored by the spotlight, and frightened that if the spotlight finds me, it will illuminate all my shortcomings, limitations and errors.

I’m a person of hypocrisies and conflicts, dreams, judgments, anxieties, hopes, optimism, and pessimism. I’m trying to let go, hang on, and move ahead. Ultimately, I have accepted myself as a failure. That’s important, and reassuring. And it’s a lie.

I don’t consider myself a failure (at the moment, although that can change in a moment). But without realizing it, that’s the crux of what’s bothering me the last few days. Publishing another book. Self-publishing, with all its baggage, an epub, with all of its connotations. Some of these perceptions are fossils I acquired in another era, and I know they’re not true on one level, but they’re hard to let go. But sometime yesterday, I literally said, “Fuck it.” I was speaking to myself, and allow myself to use such language with myself and around myself. So, “Fuck it,” I said. “Publish it. You’ve done your best. Will there be errors? Maybe. But maybe not. Will people like it? Maybe. But maybe not. But what will happen if you don’t publish? You will stew and fester and keep re-living the pro and cons of the possibilities. So, fuck it. Do it.”

I feel much better now.

At least, today.

3

Thrive in the Mud

Hello.

I am the middle person.

The average dude.

Ah, to clarify, the white, late fifties middle income liberal average guy. Black guys, young guys, white guys, females, Libertarians, Conservatives, Jews, et cetera, are all also average guys, the middle person, a consumer, partner/spouse/atheist.

Whoever I am, I’m stuck in the middle of the mud. Facts are being sucked into a heavy, gluey, clinging muddiness that traps light and squeezes out air. For example, search for results about the recent Board of Trustees annual report about the state of Medicare and Social Security in the United States. Refine your search to determine how solvent the system is, and even what is meant by the system. It’s surprising how the report’s points are spun.

Muddiness exists around any subject where facts can be distorted, dis-proven or disregarded. Politics are catalysts to create hyper states of distortion and disregard. It’s a sweet place for writing because this is where creativity ferments. Too often, I try to logically explain a fictional situation, or characters’ positions and actions, trying to establish that they do this because of this, ergo, they will do this next. That’s essentially how I think. I keep trying to break out of that for myself; I over-analyze information. Vacuums are the worse, generating a need to create information that makes sense in the vacuum, and then over-analyzing that information that I created.

But I want characters who are different from me, and different from most, characters (and situations) with a WTF aura that entices readers to press on turning pages. Sometimes that means abandoning ‘my’ logic while establishing ‘their’ logic. To me, their logic is frequently mired in emotions, how they feel about matters, rather than what they think about it.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t have emotions about things, but that I temper, stifle and throttle those emotions (most times) so that I can react intelligently and rationally (all the while reminding myself not to over-intellectualize and compartmentalize). But yes, I have angry, frustrated and bitter WTF!? reactions to too, too many issues and items. Some of them, like other drivers, are enormously petty. I call this ‘drivism’, the tendency to look down upon other drivers because they don’t drive like me, which automatically means they’re not as good as drivers.

This is exactly where such logic lies. Brexit, Trumpism, even racism, sexism and about a dozen categories of other -isms are reminders that sometimes, to create a character’s narrative, I need to step out of my zone. First, think about what I would do. Next, think about what the normal person and the average person would do. These may all be the same, or not. Then decide to have the character do something perhaps by doing the opposite, and then explore those results. It can be head-spinning but it may also be liberating. After a time, I become sufficiently immersed in the character and situation that less and less of these exercises are required.

Okay, that was the fruit of my meditating and walking today. Time to write like crazy, one more time.

Let’s take it from the top.

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Myth & Hyperbole

Walking today, I returned to the Stellar Queen in my mind.

Things changed after Her Lady disappeared from the ship’s scene. You’ll notice that I don’t say that she died or departed; I don’t know but that she was ‘gone’. Rei claimed she left the ship in secret, but what’s one person’s view, especially the view of a baker? How did he get to know Her Lady so well, the people wanted to know?

Remember, too, this was still the Integrated Age, when body and electronics were blended with marketing, security and privacy to create a web of existence. Marketing and security bees traveled the ship. Her Lady hadn’t wanted them but had agreed that it was Her People’s ship. A bare majority of its half million population wanted the bees, so they were permitted. While the bees weren’t greatly popular, they tracked people’s movements. When Her Lady disappeared, attention was naturally directed to the bees.

But Her Lady had no records, as the Security Director knew. “Her Lady was above that, too,” she said. “There are no records of her existence or movement for any time, nor any place, during her entire life aboard the Stellar Queen.”

Although many professed they shouldn’t be surprised, given who she was and her penchant for secrecy and privacy (a vote via the ship’s Galeb revealed that 77% could not pick out Her Lady’s image from a group of five), most were surprised and even outraged. Suspicions began nibbling and lurking. Perhaps the Security Director and Rei had entered a nefarious partnership and removed Her Lady to assert their own power. A majority rebutted that as absurd but the rumors persisted, especially after the turn of problems on the Queen.

First was an outbreak of killing disease, followed by the ship quarantine to manage the disease, and The Revelations. The Revelations were still being discovered when ship equipment malfunctioned. Worse of these events was the ship’s sun, Surya (named for the benevolent Hindu sun god who rode through the sky in a carriage), which suddenly became Surly Surya, rising fifteen degrees higher than planned in its first malfunction and resisting input, before finally cooling but stalling in the sky. Becoming a dull orange, it hovered over the Majestic Plan and Snow at its high noon summer position, an angry glowering ember. “The heat had been bad,” Wallander said, “but I’d rather it than this endless day with an ugly sun. It seems like a dangerous omen for us. Perhaps this is the end for the Stellar Queen.”

Nobody argued against his observation.

0

Dream Vehicles

Normally, thinking of dream vehicles, I fill my mind with sports cars or interstellar ships.

But I recall Quinn of the Black Paws jumping on me last night. He’s only eight pounds but is very adept at targeting and hitting my bladder. So up I went to use the can, with a chatty Quinn accompanying me. Sometimes I think he does this from boredom so he’ll have company.

The sleep interruption let me recall a dream fragment. I was outside, in bright sunshine, on a sidewalk, beside an asphalt parking lot. In the parking lot, parked close by, were cars as shiny as silver mercury. I don’t know what makes, models, etc, but all were sleek, new and exotic in my brief glance, and glittering with reflected sunshine that seemed so amazingly bright that my eyes, even behind sunglasses, were pained.

All of this was experienced as a close, personal POV, like a camera following me, but not from a first person point of view. I, in light colored shorts, a light blue shirt and sandals, light warm breeze blowing my hair, looked at the cars and guffawed, remarking, “Ah, my dream cars.” I was pleased.

And leaving the john and remembering them, with Quinn flying his bushy tail ahead of me as he hurried down the hall, I thought, “I get to pick the car for my dreams.”

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Turbulence

Bounced around the spectrum yesterday and today, pissed off at the world, frustrated, tired. Buckle up, I’m in for a bumpy ride.

I’m not certain which spectrum I’m addressing. The spectrum of happiness, satisfaction, or self-actualization. This could just be a broader spectrum, the ‘life’ spectrum.

Reading others’ blogs and posts, I see many battling similar conditions and why not? How many billions of humans live on Earth right now?

The best way to describe it is that I feel out of sync, with rough energy that escapes my control. Feeling this, coping with it, I wonder about cause and effect. Maybe it’s boredom, or weariness with routines of food, people, drink, habits. Is it my diet, I ask, thinking through it, searching for the food or drink that may have poisoned my spirit, or perhaps I’m experiencing a nutritional deficit or chemical imbalance. Is it hormones from my time of life, month or year? Maybe the world is just too much with me of late, and I’m suffering news fatigue, or digital fatigue. Would I be this way, I query myself, were I richer or poorer? If I was richer, could I escape myself by booking travel to a island somewhere, or someplace ‘fun’, or use shopping therapy? If I was poorer, would more critical concerns distract me?

I don’t know. I can play those games and search for answers but this is an emotional condition, not logical, not a product of intelligent thinking, but a product of emotions. What triggers these emotional switches, and why is it so much deeper now? I ponder the birthday aspect, coming up on one, and whether the stars, moons and planets – or other energies we don’t know – afflict me, conjuring up Twilight Zone and Outer Limit scenes of aliens, ghosts or Gods toying with me. It’s all in bright, fuzzy black and white.

Meditation and affirmations help. Don’t know how dark I’d be without them. I’ll go walking. Walking, with its combination of distracting my thinking and emotions, but also stimulating me with the chemicals the physical activity produces, will help. It will give me time to be by myself, and that may just be the issue here.

I want to be alone.

For a while.

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Sliding

I’m sliding along the spectrum of emotions today. The spectrum itself is on a fulcrum. The slightest shift tips it sliding one way or the other.

Some are wild slides. I slip from depression to elation to bitterness and frustration, zing zing zing. Exhausting, but I’m older, experienced in my mind and body’s ways, and have some sense this will pass. Last night and the early morning both had me sliding toward the spectrum’s darker end. Self-pity and regret stifled my breathing. Reading helped me out.

I’ve not been reading much, I thought, then corrected, I’ve been reading non-fiction and news, but not fiction. So I retreated into The Signature of All Things. I started reading it a month ago. I added new books to my tower of reading and realized I needed to finish Signature before permitting new reading. A book of a woman reaching understanding of herself and heartbreak, the novel enabled some quiet reflection and delivered new insights into me and my existence.

I believe this mood will pass, recognizing it for one of the more prolonged types of funks that sometimes shroud me. They’ve always passed before, prompting speculation about what sort of guarantees that provide (none), but it does give some expectations, and helps me stay upright as I slide along.

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