Charles Said
The Dancer Dream
I heard violin music. It was a classical song. I knew it but I couldn’t attach a title to it.
With a personal POV like a camera was perched just over my right shoulder, I turned in search of the sound. The view around me was like I looked at the world through a misty gray light gel.
A woman came toward me, brunette, with creamy white skin, and large, dark eyes. Her hair was pulled into a tight bun. I could only see her from her bare shoulders up.
As she approached me, she sang, “I am here for you, I am here for you,” in a tone and rhythm that matched the violin tune.
Her eyes on me, she passed while still singing, turning away but then turning back to look at me again, still singing, with a hint of smile. I saw more of her. She’s dancing, I realized. She’s a ballerina, I saw, and then awoke.
Wednesday Theme Music
Thinking about music from 1974, the year that I celebrated my eighteenth birthday, I recalled “Smokin’ In the Boys’ Room”.
I like the song’s rocking simplicity of being in school, breakin’ rules, and our permanent records. Brownsville Station did it in 1974; Mötley Crüe covered it almost a dozen years later. Not bucking the normal status quo, the younger folks often prefer the Mötley Crüe version. That’s how it is, right? Newer equals better, or preferred. I, tsk, tsk, prefer the original. Not surprising, either; I’ve heard that from older people about things that my generation later re-interpreted.
(I like that cycle. Didn’t use to, but I’ve come to enjoy, admire, and respect it.)
But 1974 was the year I heard the song, my formative era, if you will, and all that I associate with it. That’s the year I graduated high school, became an adult, moved away from home, and joined the military, so I’m loyal to Brownsville Station’s version.
Let’s celebrate.
Flooftibule
Flooftibule (catfinition) – a cubby where cats like to sit to survey situations.
In use: “Samson settled on top of the fence corner as his flooftibule at the new house, making the space his own, as long as weather permitted.”
Our Twinkling Star
We’ve lost our twinkling star. It came (at last, we thought with some relief even as we mourned, because the last few years were so difficult for her and her family), but it came at last, a few weeks short of her hundred and first birthday.
We think and talk about the amazing person we knew, and all the things she did in the thirteen years that we’ve known her. She’d wanted to be a comedian when she was in her teens — that would have been around 1935 — and loved hamming it up for us, and we loved her for that humor.
She also loved ice cream, and family. If you wanted to fire up that twinkle in her eyes, just ask her if she’d like to have some ice cream.
She marched in parades for social justice and equality. She put her name on petitions for change. We thought about all the change and upheaval she saw in her hundred years, the wars that she witnessed, and the others that she lost through death, and wondered if upheaval isn’t our natural state.
She was such a cool, friendly, and happy person, but this is life. You meet people, and eventually one of you goes away, leaving the other to remember and wonder.
Tuesday’s Theme Music
This one came from a cat incident last night.
I’d settled in to read and watch television. I wanted to read, but I was tired, so I had the television on. The book, Lincoln in the Bardo, is an interesting and easy read.
Naturally two cats were staking me out, awaiting me to settle so they could leap up onto my lap and read with me. After they established territory and settled, one announced they were going to refund some cat food (and probably fur) with ominous upchucking sounds. Responding with swift panic, I shooed the little feline off my lap and sought something to put under him to catch his discharge. Once all the drama was over, I told him, “You almost dropped a bomb on me, buddy.”
That triggered memories of The Gap Band and their 1982 technofunk offering, “You Dropped A Bomb On Me”.
Catversation
Catversation (catfinition) – an informal conversation between a cat and one or more other cats, humans, birds, or other animals.
In use: “The feline struck up a catversation with the kittens on the screen, sniffing as he spoke, and looking behind the laptop to see if they were there.”
The Loops
The characters have become weary and cynical near the end of the Incomplete States series. I wonder how much they influence me and the converse. It’s an interesting loop on its own.
But of course I taste what they feel. It’s necessary. Regardless of my process, whether it’s all deeply in me and I’m mining the story, or it’s being fed to me or channeled through me from some other existence, as it sometimes feels (thanks to the power of focus and imagination), I taste the words, and they affect me.
Balancing the scales, writing and progress continues, and I’m enjoying it. It’s an empowering experience. (The end is nigh!) Thinking about it, it’s almost the opposite of the Doom Loop. It’s the Success Loop. (Weird that as long as I’ve heard of the Doom Loop, I’ve never thought about the Success Loop. I looked it up, confirming, yes, such a creature exists – of course.)
Like the Doom Loop, the Success Loop is a spiral. But where the Doom Loop takes you down (because you expect less, so you try less, etc.), the Success Loop lifts you up. You’re building on what you’ve achieved, adding success. As success is added, success is expected, so you work harder for that success. You learn to know and love the taste and feel of success, and the power and confidence that it generates.
The Success Loop is often a strong but fragile thing in a writer. Like a spider web, it has impressive strength for what it is, but like a web, it’s easily broken. If I’m an average writer and others are like me, we worry about not having enough talent, skill, luck, drive, energy, or time to be the writer that we think we can be, that we want to be. We’re always worried that we’ll fall short.
That’s not bad. Those worries anger and inflame me, often encouraging me, try harder, work harder, and do not give up.
The characters have become grittier as I come to the end. “I want to reach the end,” they tell themselves and one another. “This must be ended.” And they push, and push, thinking that they can succeed.
In this case, I know more than them. I know the ending. It’s been written. All of this action is the final bridge to what will be, what already is. What they do now will not affect their ending.
I think that with such confidence, knowing how I’m tricking myself. These are written words. They’re subject to change. Especially once editing and revising begins.
As a final loop, I wonder, has my ending been written? Is what I’m trying to write and achieve all for nothing because my destiny is established and sealed, and nothing will change it?
Maybe, but perhaps not. Perhaps there multiple loops.
Maybe I’ll leap onto one of those.
It’s been a good day of writing like crazy, once again. I’m hungry, the coffee is gone, and, man, my butt feels sore.
Time to go on to other things.
For now.
