Month: June 2016

Homage to the Stellar Queen

Two miles and 43 minutes, the coffee shop walk allows a surfeit of thinking. Today, with summer starting in the northern hemisphere, I thought of the Stellar Queen.

She’s old. I haven’t thought of her in a while. She’s so ancient in my relative life, that her original Word Perfect, PowerPoint and Paint files reside on five and a quarter floppy disks. They were transferred to three and a half inch disks, and then to a hard drive when I bought a tower Dell, in 1999.

The Stellar Queen was my first foray into science fiction. Orson Scott Card told how he liked drawing maps to stimulate his creativity. I designed cars as a child and planned to be an architect (or a rock star) so I took up designing the Stellar Queen on computer.

She was originally built by a patron of the arts who traveled the galaxies. The Lady (never named, and very mysterious) lives in an estate along the edge between the Central Plain and the Northern Mountains. A bio-dome hybrid class ship, the Queen’s bio portion is sixty-seven miles long by fourteen miles wide. Thinking in threes, she had three cities, three towns and three villages, three major climate zones (with many micro climes), and three rivers that flowed down into the Starry Sea, on the ship’s ‘northwestern’ side. One small town, Half Moon Bay, came to be on the Starry Sea, was based upon Half Moon Bay, California, where I resided for a while. The Queen featured a sun that rose in the ship’s east and set in the west, over the sea. It wasn’t a big sea, just large enough for waves, pleasure craft and some fishing. Just big enough for romance.

Three centers, for government & ship operations, markets, and education, were established, along with three wineries, three breweries, three ranches…et cetera. I began many stories about her. Murder on the Stellar Queen, Death Boards the Stellar Queen, Treason on the Stellar Queen, and so on. None were finished nor submitted. I still have them, though, in notebooks, in boxes, in the garage.

I still smile, thinking about the Stellar Queen, and I easily board her. Half Moon Bay on the Queen is a pleasant place to be, to sip wine or beer and contemplate the ocean and sunshine, marvel about traveling the galaxies, and think about the first day of summer in another year.

Time to go write like crazy.

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Numbers really don’t matter

Bottom line.

Jane Wilson's avatarBox o' Ducks

If you’ve lost one family member, or loved one, to gun violence, that’s the only number that matters.

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Promises

I awoke after a night of wild dreams, and dined on them as I rubbed the sleep away. Nothing nourishing was gleaned from the noshing.

Cats fed (first thing, other than some body functions – it’s in the cats’ contracts), meditation complete, I enjoy hot coffee and cool air with warm sunshine under a velvet blue egg sky. Energies are up, spirits are up.

They fertilize plans. Early morning yard work, writing (well, editing….), of course, some light housework…who knows what else?

This day is making some fine promises.

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Ford Wins LeMans

Ford won LeMans in 1966, and they won again today, June 19, 2016, fifty years later to the date.

When I was ten, this was important. The Ford GTs were the pinnacle of sports racing endurance cars, and one of the winning drivers, Bruce McLaren, was a racing driver I admired, so wow, Bruce McLaren, in a Ford GT, won LeMans. Groovy!

I don’t know where Dad was that year. Mom and Dad had divorced. I lived with Mom and my sisters in the Pittsburgh, Pa, area. Dad was in the Air Force, and I think he was outside of the United States. I think he may have been in Vietnam. My belief is fixed on Dad’s Ford Thunderbird. A turquoise hardtop convertible, that car was gorgeous. It was also sitting in my Uncle Pete’s garage in Penn Hills, Pa, alongside Uncle Pete’s white ’65 Mustang coupe.

Yeah, I was into cars.

Cars are what connect Dad and I to this day. When we speak, we chat about what we’re driving and what new car designs have, or are about to, come out. After the ’65 Thunderbird (or maybe ’66), he had a ’68 Thunderbird coupe, red, with a black landau top. He traded it in for a maroon ’74 Monte Carlo, but went back to the Ford Thunderbird, buying a white one in 1976.

Then he took on Corvettes, buying and driving three or four of them, having them as a second car while his primary vehicle was a pick up truck or SUV. There was one break in all of this when he bought a Cadillac. (Dad in a Cadillac is as strange as me in a Cadillac.) Memory isn’t as fixed about those cars. I was an adult by then, separated from him by life. But like him, I was in the US Air Force and enjoyed performance and sports cars. My first car I bought was a 1968 Camaro. Returning from the Philippines, I bought an orange Porsche 914 and drove it from West Virginia to Texas and back. It was left for a Pontiac Firebird, which I sold when we left for Okinawa. Returning from there, I bought a 1985 Mazda RX-7. The RX-7 was my Corvette, as I ended up owning three of them, trading in my black 1993 Mazda RX-7 R1 less than two years ago, after owning it for nineteen years.

When I call Dad later today, he’ll ask me if if I still have the RX-7 and then remember that I traded it in for a Mazda CX-5. He’ll mention his step-daughter’s Corvette, which he helped her buy. We’ll talk about the newly redesigned Miata, and I’ll ask him if he’s seen the new Fiat 124, based on the Miata. Besides the way I look, walk and talk, and the color of my eyes, hair and skin, and my build, there is no doubt I’m my father’s son.

We are car guys.

 

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Sour Grapes, Writing Ed.

Yeah, it’s like, bleah. Like work. Ugh.

Published Road Lessons with Savanna this week. It acquired the attention an elephant bestows on an ant. Anxiety and conflicts arise. Depression. Acceptance, the need to be patient, the requirement to market the book. It takes time, I tell myself, and scream back, “Time? Time?” Because time, you know, stirs fear, impatience, anxieties, as I await time’s passage. Time can be a right cruel bully.

That’s my background moodiness as I return to copy-editing Everything Not Known today. A quarter million words, seven hundred plus pages. I have completed editing on seven chapters. 21,000 words.

Oh, boy. This is going to take forever.

Forever? Could you be exaggerating?

Trying to encourage myself, I say, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”

“Shut up, you moron,” I answer. “Keep your platitudes to yourself.”

I enjoy the novel, which is good, happy news, even, as it was written with me in mind as the audience. That’s the only audience I understand, so I kowtow to me and my taste. I’ve tried writing and editing to others’ preferences but their guidance, feedback, and input, is confusing and conflicting. So, responding with great insight and maturity, I replied, “Whatever,” and write for myself.

The snarky corner of me notes with withering contempt, “Who do you expect to read your book if you write if for yourself, you marketing moron?”

Ready for that query, I tell myself, “Good to hell.” So there.

Enjoying the novel does help copy-editing it, but this isn’t my favorite pastime, so I chaff, complain and offer childish whines about what I’m doing and most do. Intellectually, I know, yeah, this must be done, and this, too, shall pass, and other pithy, worn encouraging sentiments. Intellectually, I can see into myself and see all the nuances of living and existing irritating me and the ridiculousness of my complaints.Intellectually, I know enough of myself to know it’s part of my cycles of spirit, attitudes and emotions to drift into the dark side. I know I’ll emerge from it in a few days.

Intellectually, I know it’s all human nature.

Intellectually, I still tell myself to go to hell. Then I drink the coffee, take a deep breath, and play a game.

Then I go to work.

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I am One

Went  with the ‘I am One’ with everything meditation today.

Sometimes I feel rattled and unsettled, searching for something in myself. Personal matters gnaw me. The Orlando murders probably escalated my need. I’ve already been feeling disturbed and frustrated with the pending Trump nomination. From what I see of his supporters, (and recognizing that I’m minimizing and stereotyping them, which doesn’t help anyone), they’re shallow, hateful people, without solutions, but ready to attack anyone different from them. They see the world in black and white, and want to protect “what’s theirs”. Immature and bullying, a master of playground name-calling, Trump feeds their anger and fires up crazy dreams that he can be POTUS and change their shit. But their festering shit is inside them. No POTUS can change that.

My questioning of them makes me question myself. Some say, “Better Trump than Hillary, who is a lying capitalist thief,” and I think, What? Where do they get their information? She isn’t perfect, but I trust my information (probably as they trust their information, we’re into such a destructive, widening cycle), even if I keep challenging my information. Full disclosure, I’m a Bernie Man. I support Black Lives Matter and the Occupy movement. I support strong pubic education, a single payer universal health care system, feminism and the ERA. I support equal rights for everyone, period, and I want automatic weapons banned from civilian ownership in America. I despise the wealthy 1% and decry the trend toward consumerism, which drives misguided values into arguing things like, “Let’s not building affordable housing because it will pull down property values.” I can’t stand animal abuse. Torture sickens me, and it doesn’t worry. People who do things because they’re fearful worry me. So do people who quickly abandon their principles and critical thinking.

The ‘I am One’ helps calm, relax and restore me, returning me to my center of balance. I am One, I think, and then count the manner and items with which I’m one. I’m one with my future, present and past self, I am one with my physical, mental and emotional self. I am one.

Then I reach out to my surroundings, imagining myself one with my house — the walls, paint, wires, pipes, roof, foundation — and all its materials, and the furnishings. I extend myself out in ever growing circles, imagining myself as one with the surrounding yard, plants and grass, the trees, expanding to my town and its people, animals, and construction, reaching for the rivers and lakes, and the coastal waters, imagining myself as one with the sun and the seas, the moon and the star, eternity and infinity, and all the energies they encompass.

Many probably accuse me of being full of New Age woo-woo fuzzy gooeyness. And I laugh, and I meditate. (They stopped reading long ago, anyway.) Then, feeling restored and closer to being centered and balanced again, I go on. I don’t have answers, but I have a better sense of who I am.

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In Tongues

I always enjoy Ron’s take.

Ron.'s avatarScrambled, Not Fried

He tried, but failed.

Almost all language had fallen away from him; falling away overnight, leaving him to make his way through the increasingly unfamiliar landscape with only limited and dwindling expressive resources.

Worse yet, though he could not immediately determine the extent, he noted with growing panic a similar falling away of his ability to comprehend both spoken and written communication.

The prospect of final and utter bereavement from what had always, up until even that very morning, provided him with measureless pleasure now completely overwhelmed and terrified him.

Not knowing whether the transformation would be finally realized over the course of moments or of years, each utterance, each sentence on the page took on the precious quality of air itself.

The fear of suffocation drowned him.

 ——|||——

Yet, instead of making the most of every opportunity to use either spoken or written language (as one might expect he…

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Intentions

Today is a sunny, drizzly, wintry late spring summer day, a rich day for meditating and harvesting nostalgia.

Such weather induces silence. The cats huddle for warmth, seeking places to stay dry and out-wait this weather. Children and adults find indoor activities. Less people prowl the neighborhood in cars, bikes and motorcycles. Nobody is cutting their lawn or trimming their trees and bushes. Few walkers and hikers pass the house. The birds become dormant on branches, indulging in their own weather meditation.Even the crows and jays aren’t saying anything.

With this quiet, I think of faded intentions and plans. I’m almost 60 now, and can pause and look back on what I thought would happen and what I planned, and compare it to what transpired. More, I remember insights that I planned to act upon and never did, words that I meant to say to people, feelings and emotions that were to be spoken, but never touched my lips. Time is an avalanche, and buries these moments. They may be our intentions but they’re subject to everyone’s timetable and existence.

Some people say this is summer, despite the calendar and the official start. Summer begins with some when Memorial Day passes, or June begins, or the schools let out. Whichever way you consider the season, as late spring, or summer, today’s air carries wintry odors and chills. It reminds me of Okinawa winters. Our tiny apartment, made of cinder blocks and lacking insulation, didn’t have any heater. We’d purchased a small electric heating tower to keep us warm.  Our family was me, my wife, and the cats. The cats were Crystal and Jade, felines that others surrendered for different reasons, that we took in. For a time, the family included Jade’s three kittens, too, but we found them homes.

Jade, a terribly smart and willful tabby cat, loved the heat and despised cold. She planted herself in front of the heater about six inches away. If you tried sharing her space, she’d bite your ankles until you moved out of her way. Mess with the heat and get the teeth. She’d make her displeasure known through her biting without moving anything except her head and mouth. The rest stayed huddled, keeping warm.

Such memories flooded me as I gathered my laptop and gear and packed it away to ‘go write’. We were in the snug, the small room where we do most of our living. The house is about 1850 square feet but we can usually be found within the snug’s hundred and twenty four square feet, reading books, on our computers, watching television, cats on the desk and laps. A small electric heater was on to combat the chilliness. The room’s thermometer claimed it was 69 in there but it didn’t feel that warm. It felt like an Okinawa winter. So the small electric heater was on because its more energy efficient than running the entire gas system.

We’re spoiled, I think, remembering back to those days of Okinawa. But sometimes it’s good to be spoiled.

I wish everyone was.

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The Iceberg

Friends this week asked about my writing, or, actually, about my book, or books. Writing and the many projects are so much like icebergs, revealing a little topside but mostly submerged from sight and awareness. Limited progress and activities are exposed on this blog and FB posts but there is generally so much more.

I have two books out. Another is in the publishing machine. That’s the iceberg’s tip. Another book is completed and in editing and formatting. We’ll designate that the water line. I sort of track those more in depth on Booklife but even that is just the water line and above. Below that, another ten books are written. Some have been edited and revised. All need copy editing and formatting. A spreadsheet has their progress.

But at greater depths are the many novels in progress on computer, in notebooks, folders, and realms of paper. Many, many more exist as notes on concepts, ideas and characters. Some of the notes are written. I’d say thirty percent are written notes. The other notes are sticky pages in my mind. There are short stories, plays and screenplays, musicals, novels and series. There are always many things to write.

I used to spread myself out and work on several pieces in parallel. Now I focus on one and write like crazy. Then I revise, edit and polish one. And then I publish one.

Not as much fun in many ways as plunging into creativity’s cauldron and letting all these ideas flame into being. But the trudging, one at a time process, results in more tangible progress.

Whichever way, it’s always about writing for me, and writing like crazy. Time for that, once more.

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Missing Work

I used to work. I left IBM at the end of 2015. I’d worked for them for about fifteen years. It’s about fifteen years because they included the time that I worked for other companies that IBM acquired. It’s like Matryoshka dolls. Inside my IBM career are my careers at ISS and Network ICE.

None were really careers. That’s the polite, modern terms for my employment episodes. I sort of miss the employment. If not missing it is zero and missing it is one hundred, I miss it about 27.6. I can assign percentages to that 27.6 rating.

60% of that number is missing the paycheck.

18% is missing the health benefits.

12% is missing the routines.

5% is missing the work.

5% is about missing the people and/or teamwork.

It’s sorry that it breaks down like this but my job had morphed into something bureaucratic, with few challenges, over five years ago. While a member of several teams, what that meant in practical terms was that I sat in on calls and listened 96% of the time, speaking 4% of the time on those calls. Calls accounted for about 30% of my work week, so I listened a lot, spoke little, and spent most of my time alone, reading and answering emails, analyzing problems, planning solutions, writing summaries, and entering information in various systems.

While working there, I no longer received pay raises, or miniscule raises, because I maxed out the amount for my band and geographic area years ago. I did receive a small bonus every year, and the reminder that I was fortunate to have a job in these tough economic times in America. Resource actions, where people’s employment was terminated, were regular, and it wasn’t surprising to find someone I worked with was no longer with the corporation. My morale wasn’t very high. 0-100, I’d put it at 11 when 2015 began. That’s where it stayed for my final year.

But I miss that routine, sometimes, of getting up early and calling into somewhere. I felt most connected then. I worked remotely, that is, from my house, almost three hundred miles from my campus. I visited ‘the old campus’, in Beaverton, Oregon, once. My team was based in Atlanta, Georgia, in the Eastern US time zone, while I’m in the Pacific time zone, a three hour difference. When they started the day at 8:30 AM, I had to call in at 5:30 AM, a dark and cold time in Oregon’s winter. I hadn’t seen any team members for a few years.

I enjoyed the routine of rising and plodding through the dark house, dressing, going into the office and turning on my equipment. Getting on the calls, I’d announce myself, check emails for critical matters, review my lists of things to do and my deadlines, and then listen to the call as I fed the cats, did things around the house, and made and ate breakfast.

It’s lighter now, on summer’s cusp, in the mornings. Because I’m an early riser, I find myself up at 5:30 on many days. It’s a hard habit to break, but I can accuse the cats for some of that early rising. And sometimes, I need to pause and remind myself, there is no work computer to turn on, no emails to check, no meetings to call into. There’s only me and the cats, and the day awakening outside.

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