Day: October 13, 2017

How It Goes

I’m standing down from my writing session.

I was writing an intense scene. I had to build up to it. Kanrin and some of his team are down on Kyrios. He has one hundred team members. They’re divided into five platoons, which is the corporate standard. He doesn’t take them all down at the same time. No, he was taking three platoons, so he can rotate platoons in and out. They’re coping with not having their nanosystems and standard technology, which forces them to live in a primitive manner.

Getting to the point that I was ready to write this scene took a lot of set-up. I had to determine which three platoons were down there. Some members were sick; which? They’ve built a small fort with one main tower, and four perimeter towers. (They were built on the starship, Epitome, and then ferried down in sections and put together.) Each tower is manned with two people; I wanted to know who was in each one. Then came the details of what was happening, what happened to whom, and who said what.

Besides that, their resupply vessel, with the replacement platoon, is overdue. A storm strikes; some are killed. Who? What do they do with the bodies? It’s emotional for them, too. They’re accustomed to people dying and then being resurrected/resuscitated/regenerated, and back among them in less than a day. It’s a black scene that’s the beginning of a dark period. So much of it is visible to me, but I have to endure the tedious business of writing it, word by word, comma by comma, period by — well, you get it. Then, whatever happens to each character must be documented in the bible, so I can easily reference these facts and keep true and logical.

Twenty-five hundred words were written, a decent session, but I’m spent. My typing posture working on the coffee shop’s table was poor; I was hunkered over in concentration, and I feel it in my neck muscles.

Time to stop writing like crazy, at least for now, although the writer knows, I’m going to continue writing in my head. That’s just how it goes.

 

0

The Fitbit Gait

I managed to walk eight miles on Wednesday. I was feeling pretty good about that. I generally do five on Sunday, six on four of the other days, and seven on two days. I find that walking in smaller periods, say, twenty to forty minutes at a time, helps me achieve my goals, so I that’s my plan. Eight miles was an impromptu reach.

That effort changed in my final hour. Somewhere in that time, my left Achilles tendon began expressing second thoughts. I pushed through it. Eventually, when you get old enough, some part of your body has second thoughts about going on. Although they manage to make themselves a vocal minority, I can usually push through. Seeing that they’re not stopping me, they then shut up.

Ah, not this tendon. No. It remained as vocal as a starving cat.

The tendon stiffened overnight. Yesterday was painful, especially up hills and steps. Only five and a half miles were achieved, and a flight less than the ten flights that were my goal.

The tendon remains troubling today. I’ve learned through testing that it’ll stiffen up when I sit for extended period, but flexing it when I first stand loosens it. Then, as I walk, it grows a little looser, although it remains a painful process. With a little grit, I can manage a slower imitation of my usual gait, but sometimes, when I’m first struggling with it, I’m moving like John Wayne in “True Grit,” pilgrim.

3

Friday’s Theme Music Re-do

This song, “Lawyers in Love,” by Jackson Browne, popped into my head while I was showering, so I’m pushing it out to you.

The song came out in nineteen eighty-three. Stationed at Shaw AFB in South Carolina, I’d gone to Myrtle Beach AFB for thirty days to fill a manning assistance request, turned around and went to Korea for forty-five days on the annual Team Spirit exercise, and then went to Tyndall AFB in Florida for the Command NCO Academy. That covered January through April.

This song came out during my first days at the NCO Academy. The lyrics stuck to me. I walked around singing them, driving others crazy.

But what fun, satirical lyrics:

I can’t keep up with what’s been going on
I think my heart must just be slowing down
Among the human beings in their designer jeans
Am I the only one who hears the screams
And the strangled cries of lawyers in love

God sends his spaceships to America, the beautiful
They land at six o’clock and there we are, the dutiful
Eating from TV trays, tuned into to Happy Days
Waiting for World War III while Jesus slaves
To the mating calls of lawyers in love

Last night I watched the news from Washington, the capitol
The Russians escaped while we weren’t watching them, like Russians will
Now we’ve got all this room, we’ve even got the moon
And I hear the U.S.S.R. will be open soon
As vacation land for lawyers in love

h/t to azlyrics.com

Listen for yourself.

0

Be Patient

…while trying to understand

…when asking for help

…waiting for food

…brushing your teeth

…while traveling

…when writing.

0

Catopox

Catopox (catfinition): An illness people use to call in sick or stay in bed, brought on by an unwillingness to disturb a sleeping animal. Originally associated with cats, the illness has been extended to include any animal.

2

Friday’s Theme Music

Volcanos erupting in Japan and Indonesia, threats of missiles being exchanged between the U.S. and North Korea, Black Lives Matter, voter right suppression, Russia-gate, white supremacists, gun control arguments, protests, the Weinstein scandal, war refugees, Pacific Northwest and California wildfires and destruction, the Hurricane Maria disaster in Puerto Rico, hurricane and earthquake disasters in Mexico, hurricane destruction in several other American states, plans to build a wall on the southern U.S. border, the President threatening freedom of the press, the Vegas mass killer….

Contemplating it all over coffee brought to mind Billy Joel’s nineteen eighty-nine song from “Storm Front,” “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” He covered the headlines from nineteen forty-nine, when he was born, until the year the album was released, but the fire goes on.

At least, it feels like it on this cool, autumn morning in twenty seventeen.

 

 

2

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