Month: December 2016

The Missing Spider

“Did you see the black widow?” my wife asked.

Not much of a question. Two lived by the front door for a while, one by the garage side door, one by the garage door and another out back around the patio. “Which one?”

“The one in the garbage can.”

“No.”

“I don’t know how you missed her. She’s right there on the top. She’s huge.”

I went out to check. It was cold and daylight. She barely moved, contrary to black widow habits when exposed to light. She wasn’t huge. I thought her on the smaller side. She was on the front lip, in a little trough. I don’t understand the trash can’s little trough’s purpose but that’s where she took up residence. Not much space for a web. I imagine insect traffic is pretty low there.

I blew on her to see what she did. She flicked a few legs in annoyance. I closed the lid.

It stayed like that for a few days. The weather grew colder. Snow fell. We saw the low twenties. Her legs grew drawn in. I wondered if she was dead, but maybe she was curled up for warmth. I blew on her. She barely stirred.

She was gone this morning when I took out a bag of kitty litter potatoes for deposit. I looked around for her but it was raining, a warmer day, at thirty-seven, but still cold in spider land. Maybe she made her way into the house. Perhaps she just descended into the trash can or one of the bags.

I don’t know. I wonder about her. I worry a little bit. Black widows seem to lead lonely lives. Maybe there’s a private social aspect that I don’t know about.

Sorry I didn’t take a photo of her. I could post it here and you could let me know if you see her. If you do think you see her, tell her I said, “Hi.”

She’ll know what you mean.

7

Today’s Theme Music

I probably posted this one before. Since it came out in 1988, it’s become one of my go-to songs for lifting my spirits and reinforcing my determination. But crank it up, sing along with Steve Winwood, snap your fingers, clap your hands, scare the cats and do a little dancing. You know, just roll with it, baby.

5

What Do You Want To Do?

Dying and suffering are two ingredients of the standard life. How you approach it may vary. It’s something I ask my characters as I interact with others in real existence and think of their situations.

One is George. The second is Tucker. The third is Walt.

Walt is dead. The other two are alive.

Tucker is a cat. He showed up on my front porch a few years ago as a one hundred degree heat squeezed the air dry and forest fires shrouded the valley with smoke. He was injured, sick and scared. Although we were dealing with two sick cats, we took him in. I searched for his people but didn’t find them. He stayed.

Tucker suffers from an auto-immune disease, gingivitis stomatitis. After being owned by cats since I was twenty, he’s the third cat I’ve seen experiencing this. It disturbs me that I hadn’t seen any suffer this until the last ten years. Tucker is the third.

His symptoms are that his body is itself, with the primary front in his mouth. Plaque rapidly builds on his teeth. His gums become inflamed, infected, swollen, and at the worst times, bloody. They cause him huge pain. The infections can spread to other body parts. They don’t know what causes this so they address symptoms. Anti-biotics treat the infections. Teeth are cleaned. Steroids are injected to counter the inflammation. They’re temporary measures. They want to remove his teeth. That may help some. It usually does, but it doesn’t always help the cat. They can’t give odds.

The steroids, though, have side effects. Those side effects killed two of the other cats. It was a long process.

Walt suffered from pancreatic cancer. It was acting fast. His appetite faded, and then his weight and energy. He never treated his cancer but he smoked some marijuana to ease his pain and encourage his appetite.

We live in Oregon. He went the right-to-die route. After following the law’s requirements, he acquired the necessary morphine pill. I was one of the two people he asked to witness his choice. The other was his daughter.

He made his choice and talked to his family about it. A date was selected. He said his good-byes. His family joined him on the selected day. It was over in less than an hour on one summer morning.

George suffers from brain cancer. Brain cancer is the latest problem that began a few years ago. In his sixties, he discovered he was suffering non-Hodgkins lymphoma. He beat that. Then cancer was found in one place. Then another. They were beat. Then it was found in his brain.

He began the fight. Stem cell replacement treatment was endured. You know the tale: drugs, side-effects, detached retinas, financial drain, many doctor visits, hospital stays and ambulance rides. He’s a shell of what he was, with little hair and a lopsided, melon-shaped head. He fights on. He has sworn to beat it. His wife doesn’t believe he can. She’s waiting for his death as he is not.

This last weekend, he went to the hospital because his nose was constantly dripping and was worsening. Turned out to be brain fluid. All that treatment has made his bones and tissues porous.

This comes up in because of my wife’s statement regarding Tucker.

My wife has RA. She’s on treatment. It deals with her symptoms and relieves them with their pain, stiffness, sleeping, eating and thinking issues.

I’ve been resisting having Tucker given treatments. I’ve learned keeping him on a grain-free diet helps. L-lysine helps. But the steroid and AB do the best job, giving him a few days of relief.

My wife said, “Speaking as one who suffers pain, I want anything that gives any relief.” She, like George, has vowed to fight on forever. She fears side-effects.

But I thought, yes, you don’t want pain, but you’re still going to continue to endure pain as you fight on, planning to fight on until everything is gone and the disease claims you, and you die. The rest of us will also die from something, fight or no fight.

Her mother, too, approaching ninety, lives in an assisted living home. She can barely feed herself. Everything else requires assistance. Ambulance rides and hospital visits for new issues is a recurring quarterly event.

It’s a curiosity to me. I have no diseases and suffer no pain.I’m lucky as hell. That probably colors my insights. I think, why endure more pain to fight? Are you being selfish, living in denial, or living in hope that some treatment, or a new treatment will come along and save you?

I’ve been injured and sick. I do know pain. Flu, pneumonia, mono. I’ve had a broken neck, cut off part of a toe with a lawn mower, had injuries requiring stitches on my head (three times, three places) besides requiring stitches in my chin and ear lobe, and had a dislocated wrist that needed to be broken and reset, requiring me to wear a cast and have pins through my hand and arm.

I’ve seen what George’s fight does to his wife. He endures the treatments and symptoms; she experiences huge collateral damages, drinking more and more to cope, emptying bank accounts, selling their house, her life on hold.

I stand with Walt, myself. That’s probably why he asked me to be a witness.

That’s the theory for myself. But like many things, how we believe we’ll act and how we’ll actually act often have a gap between the vision and the execution.

4

Four Headlines

I dreamed last night that I read four headlines.

I was online on my laptop in my home office. The headlines were presented in online editions of major newspapers and websites. Each was on a different subject and included columns beneath them, with articles surrounding them, just like genuine articles. One article included a photograph. All the headlines carried good news.

I clicked on the articles to read more and began searching for greater information. But I realized that I was dreaming. These were from the future.

Then I awoke, completely befuddled about whether I had dreamed those headlines or that the stories had all taken place. I consumed time sorting the current date and the headlines and establishing that I’d dreamed all of that. With some amusement, I fell back onto the old idea, maybe those headlines were from the real world and this was the dream. That would have been great because they were pleasing headlines and stories.

Talk about your fake news. Now we have dream news. Maybe that’s how some fake news evolved; they started from nuggets of dream news.

I’m not revealing any of the headlines or their subjects. I don’t want to jinx them.

They were very good headlines.

3

Today’s Theme Music

Randy claimed he wasn’t racist. We believed him. “Some of my best friends are black,” he said. That was true. We knew them. But coming from Alabama, he said a lot of racist – and sexist – things. He was a genuine throwback, but he was genuine. Still, that didn’t keep us from getting indignant about his attitude, pissed off at him, and worried about getting our asses kicked.

That’s exactly what Rich said that night at the St. James Infirmary in Mountain View, California, around 1994. “They’re going to kick our asses.”

‘They’ were the black people who dominated the club and were having a great time dancing. Randy called the music being played ‘Black music’. He saw nothing wrong with that as we argued with him. “Play some white music,” he yelled whenever a song ended. That prompted a lot of heads swiveling our way and deep stares.

Eventually, the DJ said, “Would the gentleman who wants some white music please come talk to me.” Randy did. Randy got along with everyone. After he returned, he said, “They’re going to play some white music.”

The white music that was played was one of our favorite drinking songs. We were in the military and we did a lot of drinking. We liked to gather in a circle and sing this song.

Randy passed away from cancer in 2016, sixty years old. He never changed, to my knowledge. But his Facebook page mourning his passing has a number of entries by black people from his church lamenting his passing. He was a character.

Here’s Meatloaf with ‘Paradise by the Dashboard Lights’, 1977. 

 

 

4

Writing a World Building Style Guide

Oh, yes. This is so true. I’d never heard this referenced as a style guide before. For me, it’s the bible, the background info to the characters, settings, plots and worlds. I’m pleased to learn others must keep a spelling and grammar guide as well. Cool post, and well worth reading.

Corey Truax's avatarCorey Truax

Bible_and_Key_Divination.jpgToday, I wanted to talk about style guides.  No, not the Chicago Manual of Style.  I’m talking about self-generated style guides that serve as a bible for your universe(s).  I’ve been working with the Human Legion recently, and I’ve spent some time organizing world buildings notes spanning multiple authors.  Different authors, writing different series, but in the same universe.

The solution, for me, was apparent — compile the notes and make a style guide to ensure consistency.  This was easier said than done.  Let’s talk about how to make one, what it can do, and potential information to keep within it.

A style guide, for those of you unfamiliar, is a tool to create consistency throughout a story, world, or universe.  It is tremendously helpful to an editor, because it will show them invented words, character information, and world background. We’ve talked about World Builder’s Disease before, a style guide…

View original post 1,026 more words

6

It’s Like —

I’ve been further defining the ideopat.

The ideapat is used as part of a telepathic process among the Travail Avresti Forus and Seth, and the Travail Favrashi Forus and Seth in my novel in progress, ‘Long Summer’. 

It’s more than telepathy. Calling it ‘telepathy’ demeans its full range. I felt, in order to be logical and consistent about its use in the arcs, character development and plot, I needed to further define and understand the ideopat.

First, within the ideopat is the phena. Phena is derived from phenomon. The phena is the emotional piece of the ideopat. To help understand it, I think of how drops of waters come together to form torrents. This is generally how the phena comes across on the ideopat. It’s a perception of separate processes and impressions aggregating into an over-arching view.

Generally; exceptions exist. In this way, I think of vision and human differences with their vision. The classic example for me is the ability to see a fastball and the ball’s movement through the air. Not everyone has that ability but some do, and that makes them special.

Good; that was a decent start.

After deeper thinking, I found this video a friend had posted on Facebook.

You can argue, as many have, about whether this is a vortex, and point out that some of the planets are in the wrong orbits, and whether this is true, but it stimulated my thinking. That’s why I’m sharing this. Seeing it, I thought, yes! This gives me greater insight into the ideopat and its structure and motion. There’s a position of recurring motion on one level that doesn’t take in the greater points of view about what’s happening within the ideopat. Beautiful.

The Forus and Seth can also use the ideopat to experience the world through one another’s. After some thought about the development of the skill and individual abilities, I decided that they would need to provide this aspect with a name. Eventually, I came up with sensta as the visual and auditory flows within the phena. As Travail Kidder mature, the sensta is the first aspect of the phena they experience. Their reaction to it guides their further development and direction. Some are overwhelmed. When that happens, they’re trained in how to close the sensta. Of course, closing the sensta to them closes the phena and the ideopat. So they can’t be Forus or Seth but must be named and become something else in the society.

Then I recognized that those for those with the wherewithal to know, the pentha is like an atmosphere, with richly developed layers.

That’s a brief insight into the pentha. In my notes, it takes up a few pages.

The pentha is just one piece. Next up was the ideopat’s true telepathic aspect. The Travail refer to this as the

Now, among this, a very few can perceive the mutex and the saiki. The mutex are the combined threads that make up the flows which become the exopatheia and phena. (Note: the Travail call the threads the sper.) For those who can perceive this level of the ideopat, it’s like seeing the results after white light passes through a prism. What others can only experience the pentha as the white light, they see the resulting rainbow. The greater the ability for them to perceive and segregate the mutex and spers, the more powerful their telepathic abilities. For the normal Forus and Seth, they don’t perceive the mutex and spers but know one another through exposure, repetition and ultimately, familiarity with others’ ‘telepathic voice’.

But one step past all of this, on the very highest level of ability, those that can see sense and see past the pentha, exopatheia and mutex, and find the individual spers and follow them back to the actual person where they originate. This psychic representation is called the saiki. This is so far beyond the skill levels of most that a majority of Travail Forus and Seth don’t believe they exist, that those who thought they’d seen them in the past must have been imagining them. So the saiki is dismissed.

But Travail Avresti Forus Ker has developed the ability to perceive the saiki. He’s not only seeing the saiki of the Travail Forus, but also the Seth and the rest of the Travail, not just his race (the Avresti), but the other races as well. He’s even perceiving the saiki for the Humans and then for the Monad.

And most interesting and frightening for him, he can see the saiki of death. That makes him wonder: is there a saiki for life as well?

And then things really start getting interesting for him.

After that, I set about writing the limitations and further defining the exceptions.

Most of today’s writing session was devoted to fleshing this out and documenting it. I only actually wrote a thousand words in the novel. A few hours have passed. I still had half a cup of mocha remaining when I stopped writing. Just finished that as I wrote this post.

It’s been a good day of writing like crazy.

 

 

7

Distinct Memories

I have distinct memories of three dreams last night. I’ll not torture the net with many details.

I do want to ask Hugh Laurie why he came into my dream.

There were five of us present. We were all in pale white hooded robes, doing some fantastic wizard stuff, when I made some cutting observation that it was all being staged. It was fake. Upon those statements, the action stopped. The lights went up and the robes fell away, revealing us as common, average humans in pants, shirts and shoes. And yes, we were on a sound stage. And yes, one of the other players was Hugh Laurie. He was in charge. Sneering at me after we were exposed, he said, “Thanks for ruining the magic.”

Revelations were the general themes of the three dreams. In one of the other dreams, I was being taught how others reacted to hypothetical situations and what they did to cheat and achieve better results. This was being done in a high school. Classes were going on but I was part of a select adult class being taught this particular subject. We were using the students’ results as study materials.

The students had written their homework and test answers on strange materials. One was written on a metal locker with a black marker. I had to bend down to read it. I sharply remember another was written on a box of Wheaties. (I was amused by that detail, as Wheaties was my go-to breakfast cereal when I was young.) They had neat writing. It was in blue ink, with a pen, cursive, down the side panel, around the ingredients and nutritional information.

They were writing about what they would do if they were given a speeding ticket. This person had written on the Wheaties, ‘I would eat the ticket!’ That made me laugh. Others and I discussed our findings, marveling and joking about how creative these young people were. I was beginning to think in new ways, I realized. Our instructor then appeared ‘off dream’. They announced that we were ready to begin our next stage of training using the knowledge acquired from this exercise when I awoke.

There is so much more but the prospect of remembering all those details exhausts me. Then I would probably fall asleep and dream more. It’s like my own version of Catch-22.

7

Meet and Greet: 12/10/16

Reblogged on WordPress.com

Source: Meet and Greet: 12/10/16

Danny has offered writers and bloggers another chance to meet and connect over on Dream Big. I hope you take the opportunity to see what others are offering.

Enjoy the writing, create a vision and pursue the dream. Cheers

 

0

Today’s Theme Music

I wanted something lighter today. A favorite parody is ‘My Cubicle’, a take-off on James Blunt’s song, ‘You’re Beautiful’, 2004. The parody probably emerged within two years. I always had an office. However, my team and a lot of friends worked in cubicle warrens, and my wife was an office manager and HR manager. Between them, I received a daily infusion of irritations and frustrations with cubicle working. I once visited an enormous Air Force office space that had been converted into cubicles and was appalled. Of course, I think cubicles are better than those enormous open spaces of rows and columns of desks and filing cabinets that provided no privacy. That’s just my sense of it because I never worked in one of those, but only knew of them through visiting, television shows and movies.

Anyway, turn it up and sing along. I hope it provides you with a laugh.

2

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