Thursday’s Theme Music

I greatly admire the late Prince (Rogers). Talented and creative, the world is better for his music.

I’d been reading about the 2019 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremonies. I didn’t watch anything but I recalled Prince’s performance one year. After watching the video of that again, I reminisced about his music. From that, this morning, I found myself streaming “Raspberry Beret” (1985). A song about teenage sex and a chance encounter that changed a boy, the imagery is evocative throughout the lyrics. It’s a story to music.

Its jaunty beat makes it an ideal walking song on a warming spring day.

April 4, 2019 0

Cliffhanger

I worry, is there too much dialogue? Is the story too obtuse? Is it too, is it too…arg.

I try to follow the muses as they flash their lights and urge me forward into the foggy writing night and a cocoon of dark imagery. Anxiety ripples through my torso. I want to ask the muses if they’re sure that this is the way, but you know that you dare not question the muses.

Peeking to either side to see what else could be there can’t be resisted but the muses have led me into a precarious wasteland. I feel like cliffs abut the path, and the path is growing narrow and precarious. I follow but I struggle with the catch the muses have clamped on me, a catch almost as beautiful as Catch-22‘s catch. My catch (for the characters) is that they need to remember to know what to do but if they remember, they can be tracked and dusted. (Dusted will be explained at another time, but use your imagination.)

Now all those characters are remembering and the protagonist, Anders, is freaking out, because he’s starting to remember, despite efforts not to remember, what happens when you’re dusted, and what this is all about. The others are coming, the trap is closing, and then, ‘lo, here’s a new fucking group running toward him from the opposite direction.

The muses gave no warning about them. In a panic, I wonder, who are they? What’s Anders going to do now? He was trying to ditch Jazmine and Petty because he remembers with growing certainty that remembering in one person is reinforced in another — memories beget memories — and that’s not good for here and now.

Pooh-poohing my worries, the muses wave their dainty fingers, dismissing my concerns. “We’re stopping for today,” they inform me. I picture them nibbling chocolate truffles. “We’ll pick up here tomorrow.”

It feels like, you know, I watched Avengers: Endgame, and here I am, waiting to see what happens. It feels like I’m watching Game of Thrones, waiting to be see the next death, the next twist.

Cliffhangers. Fun to watch, harder to write when the muses are guiding you on an organic writing trip.

Good day of writing like crazy in one sense, cause, hey, progress. We cheer progress. Mystifying day in another sense because of the questions created by this cliffhanger and the writer’s angst that it enjoins.

What happens next? Well, I go home to wait and see.

April 3, 2019 0

Lost in the Words

I pray for hope

I haven’t kept you too

long as I know that you’ll

always be the drink for

me and you, it always

seems like we’re getting lost in the

words can make a difference, especially how

they come and go through the spirals of

our changing lives and times because

what was once familiar has become

strange that I think of this now in

conjunction with where we’ve been and

where things have

gone are the expectations and

dreams are what keeps me

going for the goal that

I pray for hope.

April 3, 2019 0

Albert Said

April 3, 2019 0

Affloofuent

Affloofuent (floofinition) – to have a wealth of housepets.

In use: “With five dogs, seven cats, several aquariums, birds, turtles, lizards, horses, sheep, and goats, the Barnes children considered themselves affloofuent.”

April 3, 2019 0

Tuesday’s Theme Music

A bizarre string of songs flowed through this morning’s stream. A brief sampling is “Snoopy and the Red Baron” by the Royal Guardsmen (1966), the Bee Gees with “Massachusetts” (1967), John Denver singing “Annie’s Song” (1974 ), and “Cumbersome” (Seven Mary Three, 1996). The rest included a song by ELO called “Telephone Line” (1977) and that’s what I went with. It won because of the lines, “Okay, so no one’s answering. Well, can’t your just let it ring a little longer? I’ll just sit tight, through shadows of the night, let it ring for evermore.”

I always think, wow, that’s persistence. I probably wouldn’t stay on that long. I mean, I don’t have Phoebe’s stamina for waiting to be served. Nor am I living in twilight like the guy in “Telephone Line”. I’m just streaming songs forevermore.

To clarify a little, each song was actually triggered by something that happened in the morning. For example, I was marching the cats to their feeding area (sure), saying, “Hup, two, three, four.” That’s used in the Red Baron song. A glance out the window at the sun and light rain introduced “Annie’s Song”. (“You fill up my senses like a night in the forest,
like the mountains in springtime, like a walk in the rain.) A reflection on people being too rich invited “Cumbersome” in (“Too rich or too poor, she’s wanting me less, I’m wanting her more”). “Telephone Line” came by way of being on hold.

All that in an hour.

April 3, 2019 0

Looking Forward

Digging into his pocket, Chasm pulled everything out, dropped it on the counter, and took in the lifetender. Her neck and arms were lean and bare. Alabaster skin and sculpted coal black hair accented her blue eyebrows, green eyes, red pearl earrings, and brown lips.

Leaning forward, the lifetender watched Chasm’s discs take on green, gold, and silver. Her name holo said she was Kymeri and she was not available.

“You got something,” Kymeri said. Her long, flashing red fingernails raked the discs into order as their denominations came up. “Thousand dollar goldisc, a D, silver century, a wide array of greendiscs.” Her fingernails flashing gold, she tapped the individual discs. Each spoke its value. When she’d tapped the last greendisc, she clicked her fingernails together. Changing to green, her nail said, “Seventeen hundred sixty-seven dollars.”

Just short of a day’s pay, a reflection of the six hours Chasm had worked. “What can I get for that?”

“Night room, joy doll, two squares, dozen drinks, new clothes.”

“What would that leave me?”

“Depends on particulars.”

“Of course. There a budget package?”

Shaking her head, Kymeri said in a low voice, “You don’t want a budget. Get a deluxe, at least. You can afford it. Budget drinks are well liquor or piss beer with compiled food, and the clothes are plastic.”

“Can I budget and then upgrade the drinks to IPA? I don’t need many, maybe three bigs.”

Her fingernails flashing green, the lifetender said, “Okay, a budget room is a bed with a pop out commode, access to the ionizer, private sink, standing space and one chair.”

“Bedding?”

“Included. Joy doll?”

“No. Trade in for the clothes?”

The lifetender shrugged with a dispassionate scan over his black plastic-encased torso. “Your stuff isn’t much. Probably a ten.”

The negotiations were continued. When it was done, Chasm had spent eleven hundred. It scared him to spend so much.

He was ported into his pod. Soft white lights came on. No windows, one large monitor, doublewide bed, chair, sink, port token switch for the ionizer, and popout commode, as promised.

Squirming into the chair, Chasm guzzled his first IPA. Decent stuff, but most importantly, cold. Tension sloughed out of his shoulders. It’d been a good day. He’d found work and was promised more. He was off the street, had a clothing credit, two meals paid for, along with the IPA and water, and still had almost five hundred in discs.

Life was good. Kicking off his shoes, Chasm unfolded his laptop from his hip pocket and plugged it in to play some games.

For the first time in at least a year, he was looking forward to tomorrow.

April 2, 2019 0

Compufloof

Compufloof (floofinition) – housepet who is attracted to computers and other technological devices.

In use: “No laptop, iPhone, or smart phone could be set down and left unattended. As soon as they were, one of the resident compufloofs was on it. Even television, entertainment center, and DVR remotes were bait for their Golden Retriever. That compufloof had once collected them all, hiding them in a closet corner.”