Category: Thinking, thinking

Beyond Politics

Beyond politics (like Russia meddling, Brexit, immigration, Black Lives Matter, #Metoo, refugees, and votes of confidence), I’m trying to follow other stories. They’re mostly natural disasters.

I follow the fires out west, naturally. These directly affect me via the smoke polluting the air. I’ve notice a normalization trend emerging. Although the AQI is unhealthy today, people think, “It’s better than yesterday.” They also go without masks because they didn’t feel anything from their exposure yesterday, last week, and last month. Many don’t seem to understand the long-term impact of breathing air loaded with particulates.

I’m following the Puerto Rico recovery because they’re humans, American citizens, and they’re suffering. I’m following volcanic eruptions and earthquakes in several areas, and flooding in the U.S. and India. Our technology allows us to visit disaster scenes. I’m not certain that this is healthy.

I’m following the job situation and housing market in the U.S. Many don’t recall that the way that unemployment is tracked was changed under Dubya in the early years of this century. The change created a rosier view of the economic. Unemployment is declining, they claim, but then note that real wages are slipping for most Americans, and most Americans can no longer afford a home.

I’m following generational differences. The latest generation hasn’t been given a name yet (perhaps that’s their name, temporarily – the Nameless Generation, a reflection of how unknown they are beyond the basics), and we’re still discovering Gen Z’s trends and tendencies. It’s fascinating to see how they compare with the previous generations in their buying habits and preferences. I encounter Gen Z regularly because they’re usually the ones working in coffee shops and restaurants. They seem just like you and I, but this is also a college town, and most of them are white and come from middle-class to upper-middle-class families. I don’t think they’re necessarily representative of the rest, but I don’t know where to draw the line.

I’m following space developments (no, not the space force, thanks), and the discovery of water and exo-planets, etc. Naturally, I’m also following some cultural develops. Some cultural news seeps into my awareness without trying. It’s hard to avoid it, here in America. I’ve also been reading a lot of interviews with authors, and essays about writing. (I’ve also been contemplating other novels to write. I can’t help myself.)

What about you? What are you following?

12

Today’s Theme Music

“Two drifters off to see the world, there’s a lot of world to see.”

Today’s theme music is “Moon River” from Breakfast At Tiffany’s. Why not? Based on Truman Capote’s novella, the movie was released in 1961. The song came out the same year. I was five, so I don’t remember much of that, but Mom loved music and movies, and she exposed me to these things. After In Cold Blood came out, I read it and then read other Capote works, including Breakfast At Tiffany’s.

The song and movie are an emblem of the times. Johnny Mercer wrote the song’s lyrics, and Henry Mancini composed the music. Those are some big names in that business. George Pepard and Audrey Hepburn starred in the movie, which was directed by Blake Edwards. Pepard’s character was gay, gay in 1961, and the world didn’t come apart. Hell, Capote was gay. Yet, now, a zillion years later, some in the world want to turn back time, back to the way things were. Did they forget that gays existed back then?

(*snark alert* Yes, I know, they haven’t forgotten, but gays and the coloreds knew their place, then, didn’t they, in this white mythical world where everyone was happy as long as everyone was kept in their place.)

What the movie was and what it was supposed to be, like the novella, like our times, and our memories of those times, depends upon your baggage. I thought that song was perfect in many ways, romantic, hopeful, and smooth, tidying up an image and glossing over deeper struggles. The song and movie came out right before the explosions of the 1960s. When we think of it, we don’t think of the grace of Breakfast At Tiffany’s and “Moon River.” We’re more likely to remember riots, demonstrations, the civil rights movement, protests, and the expanding Vietnam War. Really, 1961 was still part of the fifties.

Many sang or recorded “Moon River” but Mom liked Andy Williams, so that’s the version that I know best.

 

0

That Damn Dream

Had another one of those damn depressing dreams again where I was in the military. I’d been out, now I was back in.

It was just in time for a military parade and change-of-command ceremony. We were dressing in our Class A, or what is also called our service dress uniforms. I was behind, behind in knowing what to do, where to go, and when to be there. My hair was shaggy and needed to be trimmed to mil standards. I was racing to get my uniform pressed and check on my fruit salad, and worrying that my uniform was still in reg. Then I didn’t know where to go. I was running behind and people were both giving me grief and being supportive.

But they were leaving because it was time to assemble until I was alone, still scrambling. I still had to much to do, racing through a shower, getting the uniform on, and then checking the hair on my neck. You can bet, on reflection, I found it ironic that I was back in the military for a change-of-command ceremony. Changes are needed, I’m telling myself, or you’ll be exposed!

So much anxiety in that dream, a perfect exposure of the imposter syndrome.

Damn.

0

Tuesday’s Theme Music

Thought of this as I was walking today. Thought we could all use a mellow music break from the news about politics, death, wildfires, and other disasters.

Here’s Alanis Morrissette with “Ironic” from sometime last century.

0

A Rising Dream

When I awoke from this dream, I held the last scenes in my mind’s hands and thought, wow, that was empowering.

Only snippets of dream fragments come to mind now. I remember struggling and coping through a morass of frustration and weariness. I don’t know the specifics of that dream’s chapter, but then I started rising. I grew taller, bigger, and stronger. I knew and felt that in the dream. As I did, I took control, because up where I was, I could see how everything connected, and how the mechanics and leverage worked. Up there, I could tell others where to find answers or how to see things. I kept growing until I was a giant. Then I used my fingers to move and show things, and help others. The last piece was that I, as a giant, was showing a young girl where something fit. By that point, the world appeared to be an enormous periodic table to me and I told her, “Forty across, and eight down.” It was then I woke.

The dream wasn’t a great surprise. Just as I fall into dark airless abysses or find myself in caves or tunnels about every twenty-five or -six days, I find myself rising, too, feeling invincible and empowered. When the dark side comes down on me, I hunker down and endure. I’m grateful when the light side lifts me up, re-igniting my hopes and optimism.

0

Sunday’s Theme Music

Know these words?

We skipped the light fandango
Turned cartwells ‘cross the floor
I was feeling kinda seasick
But the crowd called out for more
The room was humming harder
As the ceiling flew away
When we called out for another drink
The waiter brought a tray

Procol Harum released “A Whiter Shade of Pale” in 1967. When I heard it, I thought, WTF? What are they singing about? What’s it all mean? Later, in my early twenty-somethings, out tasting libations with friends, the song made complete sense. It became then a song about feeling isolated and lost, not drunk or stoned, but confused and searching. I like that in music, art, and literature, I can find one meaning to what I perceive during one stage of life, and discover something vastly different at another point.

The other thing that I like is how some of these things pull me back to a very sharp point of a moment and feel it all again.

 

2

Rain!

Busy editing, I was startled when another coffee shop regular said, “Hallelujah.”

I looked up. “What?”

“Hallelujah,” she said. “It’s raining.”

I turned and looked out the windows. She was right.

Seeing it, I rose and went outside. Oh, the smell, the sound. The last time we’d had rain here in Ashland was July 15. Lightning that day accompanied the rain, starting many of the fires that issue the smoke we’re dealing with.

Lori came out. We laughed at the smells, sound, and sight. Rain! “Hopefully, there won’t be lightning,” Lori said.

Yes, my thoughts, too.

2

The Writey Sense

Ever read a news article that excites your writey senses and muses, a feeling that, “OMG, there’s a book that I want to write!”

That’s the writey sense, that internal mass that stays on alert to concepts, characters, settings, and ideas, looking for the next story or novel.

Just happened to me. I read a news article about a man who killed himself during a traffic stop. The police found a woman’s body in the trunk. I immediately flashed onto a title, “The Woman in the Trunk”. My inner writers and muses began marshaling scenes, including opening lines. I could feel the writing energy developing.

Despite the excitement (and the anxiety, what if I’m blowing off a great novel?), I had to tell them, sorry, not today. We’re doing other things, such as editing novels that are already in progress.

They weren’t happy.

0

Tunnel Thoughts

Mutterings of a harsh and mean nature whipped around him. All of it wasn’t about him, although that omniscient and omnipotent unseen ‘they’ kept forking him more than anything else.

Although he’d been going straight, a tunnel had swerved over him. Light became dark, up became down, and all became meaningless, a perfect mood, if you’re in an abused porta-potty — which he wasn’t, although, “in his mind,” quote, unquote, everything that he touched was shit, as was, in fact, everything that he’d ever done or had tried to do, and the world was hastening down the sluice, so, Good God, what’s the fucking use?

The obvious remained a quicksilver truth until he saw, damn, this is where I’m at. Make no sudden moves and keep your words to yourself. Be wary of the tunnel animals. They’re real and they’re not, but their teeth and claws are sharp. Keep going as straight as you can. The tunnel will swerve again.

It did, pouring him into sunshine on a smoked-filled day, letting him breath again, even though the air was polluted with particulates. Just been that time again, when he was going through a tunnel.

1

Killers

Emphysema, they told him. Eyes twinkling, he chuckled with charming nonchalance (gasping for air when he did), because that was his style, and because he already knew. “Tell me something I don’t know,” he said after the chuckle, although the panic in his gut said, “This is no joke.”

They put him on all that shit, and gave him oxygen to suck on, and advised him of the things that he must give up. He gave up the shit and kept the rest. Yeah, there was unbearable pain every day and hour, but it was the loneliness and regrets who were the killers.

1

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑