Remember, my pet
Nobody else will believe
If you don’t believe
Today’s Theme Music
After thinking through dreams and writing a post, I found myself entranced with a song’s opening lines:
I just wanna stay in the sun where I find
I know it’s hard sometimes
Pieces of peace in the sun’s peace of mind
I know it’s hard sometimes
Yeah, exactly. Some days I just wanna stay in the sun. Today’s music, ‘Ride’ from Twenty One Pilots.
I Remember
I remember the day we couldn’t set the water coming out of the faucet on fire. That was just the start.
Little Stevie had made the find. He came out and said, “I can’t set the water on fire.” Daddy said, “What are you saying?” I looked up from my texting to see if Stevie was joking, and then texted, ‘St says water won’t catch fire’. B, S and J all sent back ‘OMG’ and shocked emojis. ‘Really’ we all texted and texted ‘LOL’.
“The water won’t catch,” Stevie said. “I’ve been trying for like five minutes.”
Daddy snorted. “You must be doing it wrong, son.” He chuckled the way he does when he’s acting superior. Without looking up from her iPad, Mom said, “Go check on it, Heath.”
“Okay,” Daddy said. “Pause the movie for me, would you?” He stood up, stretching and groaning while Mom paused the movie. I followed Daddy into the kitchen. He was instructing Steve like he was a little kid, which he is, he’s just six, but it pissed Steve off, and Steve was saying, “Give me the lighter, I’ll show you.”
“I got it, I got it,” Daddy said, holding up the lit lighter to the faucet and turning on the water. The water didn’t catch. “Huh,” Daddy said. I laughed. “Shut up,” he said. I laughed again, and texted what had happened to my friends. They all sent LOLs.
Daddy bent down to the running water. “There’s no smell.” Standing up, he yelled, “Bev, the water won’t catch fire. And it doesn’t smell.”
“What?” Mom called back.
‘Water doesn’t smell’ I texted.
Turning off the water, Daddy went into the other room with me and Stevie. “Kid is right, the water won’t catch on fire,” Daddy said.
The earth stopped shaking and the wind fell still. Daddy froze in like mid-step. I tell you, it was unnatural. Then the rain stopped. All of us looked up at the ceiling and listened. “What’s that noise?” Mom asked.
“That’s it,” Daddy said. “There isn’t any noise.”
“You’re right,” Mom said.
I texted, ‘It stopped raining’. Nobody responded. ‘Hey’ I texted.
It was so quiet. Little Stevie said, “Mama, I’m scared.” Tears sparkled in his eyes and gobbed out and down over his cheeks. He’s such a babby. He moved to Mom and held onto her legs. I wanted to do the same but I’m older. I’m supposed to be cooler. “Stop being so clingy, Steve,” Mom said. “Honestly.”
We went to the windows and looked out. The rain had stopped. Weird. Mom’s iPhone rang. “Barb,” she said, meaning, Barb, her sister. She answered it. “Barb. Yeah, it stopped here.” She said to us, “Barb said it stopped raining there, too.”
Aunt Barb was about five miles away, out in the new subdivision by the mall. She lives above a Trader Joes. It’s really cool.
Daddy’s phone rang. “Dan,” he said, meaning his friend, “Dan.”
“Hey,” Dad said into his phone. “Big D.”
Dad calls Dan Big D because he’s a little guy but he has an important job. He’s a store manager but he’s talking about going into politics. Daddy says he should. I don’t know about that. Big D means Big Douche to me.
“I was just about to call you,” Daddy said to Dan and Mom said to Barb, “And Stevie said the water won’t catch on fire. No, Heath tried, too.”
Daddy said, “It’s not raining here, either. When is the last time you remember that happening?” I checked my phone to see if anyone had texted me because it hadn’t made any noise. Mom said something else to Barb on the phone and laughed.
“Why isn’t it raining?” I asked. “It’s June. It always rains and hurricanes in June.”
“Thank you, miss obv,” Daddy said as I finished, “Well, what’s going on?” As if they would know.
Mom said, “Come on, everyone, something is wrong. We better turn the channel and see what’s going on.”
“But I’m watching Caddy Shack,” Daddy said. To Big D, he said, “Yeah, it’s the new remake. Yeah, I’m watching it again. Yeah, it’s better than the last remake. I think it’s better than the original.”
Mom said, “It’ll still be there, Heath.”
“Okay, okay,” Daddy said. “Dan says he has CNN on and there’s nothing on it.”
Mom picked up the remote and flipped through the channels. Nobody was saying anything about this. Nobody was texting me either. ‘Hello’ I texted. ‘WU@?’. Nothing. I checked my signal. Five bars. ‘WTF’ I texted. Mom was looking at her iPad and talking to Barb on her iPhone but she said to us, “I don’t see anything on the Internet, either,” like the Internet would be able to tell us anything.
Then it started raining again, and we all sighed, because it sounded normal again. Then my phone pinged. My friends started telling me what was going on. It had stopped raining at their places, too. Mom was talking to Barb and Daddy was talking to Dan, and he started watching Caddy Shack again.
I remembered it all because it was just last week, either Monday or Tuesday, or maybe Wednesday, one of those, I don’t remember which. Steve came out with a flaming glass of water to show us and I could smell it clear across the room, which made me feel better.
It was good having it all back to normal, but for that one day, everything was so weird.
A Vicious Compulsion
A question often asked between writers is, why do you write? Strangely, I don’t encounter it from non-writers. Non-writers seem to understand that I’m a writer. Writers (and potential writers) want to understand why.
The flip answer is that I must. I’m compelled by nature or desire. Sometimes I think it’s an escape and an addiction. Writing about other characters, worlds and situations permits fight from my life blues. Those are shallow answers.
In truth, I follow a few cycles. One cycle is that I enjoy reading. Reading entertains and educates me. Reading fertilizes thought and wonder and introduces me to new mysteries and solutions, and helps me keep growing. Reading is enjoyable, and I admire writers that can tell stories. I want to emulate them. So that cycle is that I read and I want to be like those who wrote what I read, so I write, and then I read more.
The second cycle cascades from that first cycle. The thought, that would be an interesting story initiates the second cycle. Headlines, images, comments, trends and observations all trigger that simple five word thought engine.
‘That’ is often just a concept, though. Behind the concept are complicated questions to link it all together through words. The questions are about characters, motivations, situation, setting, and dive into emotional and logical issues of the story, and then dealing with the novel challenges of pacing, structure, arcs, climax, denouement, along with grammar and punctuation, and ‘truth’. The story must be truthfully told in that it must be faithful to the premise created and the established parameters. If I’m going to lie to the reader to create an ending, I have to establish early that I’m lying. This is the gospel that I developed as a reader who was disgusted after discovering the writer lied to me, or left something out, or didn’t really end the story.
All of this requires thinking. Gosh, I love thinking, especially the abstract thinking embraced in the promise of, “What if…?”
It’s this process that compels me to write. Once a character merges into my thinking, and their situation and setting evolve, it’s difficult to just dismiss them. I prefer embracing them and asking all the questions about them and what’s happening, pursuing them until this mystery is resolved and told in a story.
I suppose I can think through those things without writing it down or typing it up. (In a Steven Wright aside, why do we ‘write down’ but ‘type up’?) To put that another way without the distraction of those expressions, I suppose I can think through those matters without recording outcomes. Perhaps this is where the compulsion actually begins, to add the answers to these questions to the stories being told.
Sipping coffee, my preferred stimulant, and reflecting anew on the process and compulsion, I grasp how I see it as a painting. I grew up drawing pictures, sketching and later painting, breaking off from career paths involving art because everything I created was too mundane and traditional. Now I can glance back and understand that I was impatient and restless. Whereas I should have attempted new directions, I merely stopped and sought other creative avenues. In writing, though, I’ve found the challenge to improve and find new directions to be invigorating and stimulating, puzzles to be solved.
In a sense, puzzles summarize what it’s all about for me. I enjoy Sudoku and logic problems, and when I was employed or in the military, I enjoyed solving problems, and organizing processes. Writing envelopes all of these facets for me.
After that writing and thinking, then, I come back to the kernel of my personality that I tried denying, that I write because I must, because I need a creative outlet. Were it not writing, it would need to be something else.
It is a compulsion.
So here I am, at the computer again with my QSM, ready to write like crazy…one…more…time.
A Writing Cat’s Advice
The doors will open
If you remain persistent
and scratch enough.
Today’s Theme Music
Getting ready to write? Or do anything else? Sometimes you need your mojo.
Time to get that mojo working. Maybe Muddy Waters can help. Sing along with the chorus – “Got my mojo working.” Feel free to move around and dance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gNs-29s-0Q
Get your mojo working. Go write, edit, whatever, create a better life.
A Writing Cat’s Advice
Sometimes, you’ll be moved
to interrupt their slumber.
Let them sleep, my pet.
Twelfth Night
A friend gave us tickets to Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s ‘Twelfth Night’ as a thank you gift.
We attended the play last Sunday night. It was updated to take place in 1930s Hollywood. That premise seemed a little thin at times, as characters were still called the count and the jester, and the studio was referred to as a land. Overall, it was well acted and enjoyable…for as much as I paid attention. For as the lights dimmed and the play began, I thought, “What does Handley’s imagination look like?”
Almost everyone (future studies estimate over ninety percent of people) in the future have an augmented memory. The augmented memory has a variety of options available. One of them includes creating an avatar of your external memory. This presents you with the opportunity to talk to your memory about your memories and life. Your memory can also be a memorable companion, so you’re never alone. You always have your memory, which is useful in space.
Madison Handley, however, went a little further than the norm. Although she embodied her memory as an avatar, she also embodied her imagination as an avatar. Thus, she and her memory played with her imagination as well as her friends when she was young. But, as her mother warned, “Someday your imagination is going to get you into trouble,” her imagination caused trouble and Handley took the fall. (It is her imagination.) After that day arrived, Handley banished it. Now her memory is requesting an audience for her imagination on its behalf because her imagination has some suggestions to help Handley out of her current situation.
All of this led to the standard use questions about the character. As I developed the background to this while at the play, I thought of other imaginary characters and the troubles they caused. A movie was semi-recalled. It seemed like it was in the 80s or 90s. The imaginary character was green and male. They had disappeared, but now they were back.
That’s all I could remember. I thought I would google it sometime but didn’t get around to it. Then, today, while thinking about the imagination and shaving, I remembered, ‘Drop Dead, Fred’, Phoebe Cates, Tim Matheson, Marsha Mason, 1991. Then, remembering those sudden details, I searched for confirmation on the net. Yea, verily, I was correct. The movie only received 9% on Rotten Tomatoes, so I wondered, why do I remember it so well?
All of this cogitation, delays and results – the process – amused me. Took a while of circling but the memory finally landed.
Now back to my novel. I still don’t know her imagination’s appearance but I believe that will come. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
Today’s Theme Music
One heart, so many ways for it to be broken. When it breaks, you think, “That’ll teach you. You should learn your listen. I’ll never love again. I’ll never trust them again. It’ll never be the same again.”
The broken heart comes from believing and trusting in something or someone – a cause, a hope, a dream, a love. When your heart breaks, the pain echoes through time and fiber, never truly healing, but scabbing and developing scar tissue. Even then, sometimes you conclude, “I’m over it,” but when you let yourself consider your broken heart and its circumstances, you discover, “No. I’m not over it.” And you wonder, “Will I ever be over it?”
I’m a walking classic rock stereotype, so here is Led Zeppelin’s ‘Heartbreaker’.
Hungry Today
My wife and I are on day eight of the ten day green smoothie cleansing fast. I’ve modified mine for my writing needs, permitting myself my mochas. Purists will be disgusted that I’m allowing myself sugars, milk, coffee and chocolate. I accept their umbrage. My weakness humbles me. I’m disgusted, too. But I need to write and this is part of it. That’s a shameful confession.
Other than that, I’ve been dealing okay with the smoothie fast. We are allowed raw vegetables, nuts and seeds as a snack on it. This is my third time this year doing it with my wife. Three days were endured the first time (for me, while she went for forty-one), five days the second time (she went for ten). Now I’m going for ten with her. It’s been cool so far but suddenly, today, I’m hungry. Pizza, sandwich and pastry visions are torturing me.
Meager strength comes from recognizing this is my choice. I’m doing it to support my wife. She suffers RA. Foods create imbalances, and imbalances cause flares of pain, inflammation and stiffness. That’s just the surface stuff. Other things are happening under the skin, heightening stress and anxiety, because we don’t know what will manifest itself next.
It’s cleansing for me, too, and I need cleansed. I’ve had a typical American middle-aged diet of too much processed food for too long and celebrating too frequently and too much. Then I erred and ate the same thing everyday. That is not actually good. Although my breakfast meal of choice was organic oatmeal with walnuts, and blueberries or other fruit and berries, that extended diet (I followed it for over a decade) caused digestive problems. My body needs variety to stay balanced.
Of course, it’s bizarre and ironic but appropriate that we have people starving elsewhere, searching for anything to eat to sustain themselves while we pursue this smoothie fast. Appropriate because this is the state of the world, isn’t it?
Ironic, too, that I write about having the same diet everyday and sit here, drinking my customary quad shot mocha. Not ironic, but pathetic, yes? The day may change but the saboteur is often me damaging myself despite my self-awareness. And damages aren’t limited to what I eat and drink, but thoughts born of low self-esteem, waning self-confidence and worldly weariness.
So I’m hungry, hungry for change. The fast and those cravings are symptoms of a deeper malaise. Author, fix thyself. Continue reading “Hungry Today”
Michael Seidel, writer 