Category: Thinking, thinking

The Spot

My long haired beast’s fur was matting again. Letting him sprawl on my lap, I began cutting, sorting, combing and unknotting lumps of fur. Working down his belly toward his tiny pecker, I discovered a black thing.

I could not tell what it was. It wasn’t a tick nor anything else I’d ever seen. It seemed almost like a dimple, yet something black stuck out, and the immediate area around it was discolored.

Calling to my wife, I requested the magnifying glass as Quinn waited and purred. I continued examining the space. There was something there. The horrible fear that wracks pet owners was swelling in me. Cancer. Disease. Not again! Not another! Not little Quinn.

My wife handed me the magnifying glass. She’d also brought a flashlight. Together we bent over and looked.

“What is that?” she asked.

I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t say what I was thinking. I was thinking, it looks like a small spacecraft has crashed into my cat’s belly. 

I know, I know, it must be something else.

1

The End

He liked to start his mornings with the paper.

Flipping open the pages, he hurried to the comics to satisfy his intellectual curiosity. Folding the section open flat on the American Maple table, he hummed a song he couldn’t name and dashed into the kitchen. From sound and habit, he knew Mr. Coffee had finished his task. A cup was poured. Half & Half paled its color. Two teaspoons of sugar were splashed in. It was gently stirred so as not to splash.

Next was cereal. “Always after my Lucky Charms,” he said, filling a bowl. Filled bowl, coffee, spoon and napkin were carried in to the waiting folded paper. He returned for to the kitchen for the milk. He used to carry them all in at the same time but that one time – he refrained from thinking about it. The milk had been hell to clean up. The imagined smell of souring, spilled milk took weeks to skulk away. Never again.

Seated, he took a sip of coffee. “Perfect.” He poured his milk over his cereal until it the bobbing cereal was at the bowl’s brim. Perfect.” Raising his spoon —

They found him with his face down in a bowl of warm, sour milk on mushy cereal. It looked like natural causes. Perhaps that would have been the end.

Except one person noticed the newspaper’s date said nineteen seventy. That discovery made everyone looked more closely at the interior decor.

It was just the beginning.

0

Final Post

This may be my final post; I don’t know.

I lost the argument. We’re moving out tomorrow. Going north. I don’t think it’s a smart idea and argued against it. Obviously, I lost. Yes, I already wrote that, didn’t I? I should edit it but it doesn’t matter, does it?

So, we’re going. One of our community’s rules is that we’ll stay together. We all agreed to the rules in the beginning. I argued that we need to adhere to them even if we don’t like their employment. We have safety and strength in numbers and are more likely to die if there are less of us, IMO.

We’re moving because the majority are afraid and Jeremy is persuasive. Water is low, food, all that, and it’s getting hellaciously hot. Last night, it never dipped below eighty-four. What do you expect? The world is hellaciously hot – and dry – but they think that it might be cooler and wetter up north. Nobody has come through in weeks, since those two young couples trying to get to Mexico. Jeremy and Buck believe it’s because it’s nicer up there so nobody is coming down here into the hot, dry land. Maybe they’re right. I think nobody is coming down here because they can’t or they’re dead. I mean, all that smoke that filled the valley was from fires, wasn’t it?

Well, at least the fires are out and the air is clear today. No smoke! Yes! That’s something positive. We talked about it this morning and decided it’s been at least three months since we didn’t have smoke in the valley. We still have coffee beans, too, if you want something else that’s positive, and only three died this week, with Meghan being the last.  We’ve packed up the vans, cars and RVs, and we’re taking the solar panels. You know I’m taking my computer, so you might hear from me again.

I think Meghan’s death really changed the argument. I won’t say this to anyone else, but I think they may have poisoned her for just that reason. She didn’t appear sick and her death was a surprise. But, most people don’t appear sick before dying. Someone might be poisoning all of us, for all I know. That would help the food last longer.

Wish I could hear something posted back from one of you out there.

Wish I had an internet connection and could actually post this on the Internet.

I wish…I wish…there are so many things to wish for now.

I’d begin with hope.

____

This was a writing exercise prompted by another’s post, what would you write for your last post. I needed a reason to write such a post, so I imagined a situation and let it flow. I honestly struggle with the idea that I’d no longer post. Writing helps me think, and posting boosts my sense of being connected to others. I plan to continue writing and posting for as long as I have the physical and mental means.

Cheers

8

Opening Doors

“Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things.”
― Pablo Picasso

This quote was on Ed Lehming’s blog post, ‘The Breach’, today. The quote’s truth stormed me about other endeavors besides painting. I’d been thinking about this last night without Picasso’s quote, so I love the serendipity. I’d been thinking about how I will have been working on something, struggling to learn, understand or achieve, and then suddenly, everything lines up like a solved Rubik’s Cube. I’d done it many times in my life, facing the need to learn something and then struggling until it happens.

rubix_cube

Writing fiction is probably the greatest stretch for me. This struggle to learn happens with different elements with fiction writing. Writing is thought of as simple by many. What’s there to do but write words and tell a story?

Writers, editors and good readers understand that’s a simplistic summary. Fiction writing requires learning multiple pieces that are often taken for granted because most people only see the finished work. We know better. Sometimes the lessons learned about pacing, characters, story-telling, voice and everything else needs learned anew when writing the next project. Contemplating that, I believe that each novel or story in progress has a moment when a door opens, and the scene being worked becomes a stepping stone to other things.

It doesn’t come easily. The challenge remains to muster the focus, apply the time and energy, and accept the patience needed for me to reach the door, find and open it. These elements of focus, time, energy and acceptance are typically thought of on a conscious level. I think they work better on a subconscious level. I let the needs seep down in. Walk away. Do other things.

Eventually, the focus, time, and energy finds the path to the door. That’s a glorious exciting epiphany when the door is suddenly there. Another challenge arises then to open it and see what’s on the other side.

Within this process is the beauty of acceptance, of letting it work, of being strong and bold enough to believe it will work. It takes time. This time and patience is invaluable coin. When it works and the door opens and I step through, I create a positive loop of knowing I can face problems and challenges, and overcome them. That feeds me confidence to try again, and again and again, and to keep going. More, though, my journey becomes richer, more joyful and satisfying.

It really is a beautiful process, these exercises in imagination and creativity called writing.

Yes, I know, it’s a messy post, all over the place. I’m exploring territory. Writing helps me map the terrain.

To all, have a good writing day.

5

Thinking

Tucker, one of the household cats, has a sweet quiet nature that hides multiple insecurities. He’s needy and anxious, shadowing my activities, sleeping on the desk beside me, seeking my lap. His other dominant trait is that he’s a fighter. He loves attacking and fighting other cats. They know this and avoid him but he’ll seek them out. So I end up segregating them. He often ends up locked up in the office. He has food, water, a litter box and windows. It’s a warm and cozy space, and the primary place my wife and I spend our time. Yet, he wants out.

He wants out because he has other places he enjoys sleeping in the other rooms, but he also wants out because he knows the others are out there. I frequently talk to him about all this as I pet him, explaining that I don’t blame him, because this is his nature. While explaining this to him two days ago, I experienced an epiphany about the part of the novel I was writing. It was a eureka moment.

I couldn’t help but think of this yesterday. I subscribe to Delancey Place. They post excerpts of non-fiction books. The featured book was ‘1666: Plague, War and Hellfire’ by Rebecca Rideal. The book excerpt was about Newton and his thinking on gravity, along with the apple falling from the tree to the ground.

“Whatever he was contemplating as he sat under the apple tree on this autumnal day was brought to a sudden halt when, above him, a stem holding one of the plump apples strained and snapped. The speckled red fruit thumped to the ground and, in a flash, Newton had a groundbreaking epiphany. It became clear to him that the fruit had been drawn to the ground because gravitation worked to pull things together and hold everything onto the Earth, and that its gravitation must extend beyond the sky, into space, and to the moon itself. Following where Galileo and Kepler had led, and Einstein would later follow, in 1666, Newton had started:

‘… to think of gravity extending to the orb of the Moon … and deduced that the forces which keep the Planets in their Orbs must be reciprocally as the squares of their distances from the centres about which they revolve …'”

Chuckling, I compared my contemplation with Newton’s. Mine pale by magnitudes, of course, but I love the natural comparison and realization about how our minds work to evolve insights and furnish ideas. So cool.

0

Change, Resistance, and Complacency

Writing science fiction, one area I end up studying and contemplating is change. I was happy to come across this Harvard Business Review (Walter Frick) interview with Tyler Cowen. Cowen’s newest book, ‘The Complacent Class’, addresses how America has become complacent and averse to change in recent years.

I’ve watched this develop. NIMBY – Not In My Back Yard – was the rallying chorus to battle many new construction suggestions. Property values and appearances take precedence over more pragmatic uses of land, usually in the name of property values, especially when one small set who don’t live in the area will benefit to the detriment of those living in the area and fighting the action.

Yet, we can see the concrete results in places like Oroville Dam. Oroville Dam was headline news during some of February as record rains struck parts of California. The dam’s spillway was opened but damage caused it to be closed. With water rising behind the dam, the emergency spillway was employed but the visibly fast erosion taking place concerned many. Fears that the dam was going to collapse caused mass evacuation. Many area residents were pissed because the water behind that dam in their back yard benefited others living hundreds of miles away.

Almost as an extension of NIMBY, Homeowners Associations (HOAs), have developed to protect individual neighborhoods and developments here in southern Oregon. A large part of that is the agreement to establish a new development is centered around having an open green space, or mini-park, as part of the development. That park, and the attendant common areas, need a management focus. Hence, the HOA is used. To protect property values, the HOA restricts changes and uses. Home owners are limited to what they can plant; fruit and vegetable gardens are generally off-limits, frustrating people who want to grow their own produce. Some common interest developments address this by creating a community garden.

So, from the economic and social ramification of residing in America in the early twenty-first century, to watching and thinking about politics, to imagining our future, Cowen’s book entices me.

______________________________________________________________

HBR: And all this is happening during a time when we see a lot of change in technology, particularly in IT and machine learning, and, potentially, artificial intelligence. How does that progress fit with your thesis?

Well, there is a lot of change, but it’s concentrated in some areas. Look at a classic 20th-century notion of progress: how quickly you can move through physical space. That hasn’t gotten faster for a long time. Planes are not faster. With cars, there’s more traffic. It’s actually harder to get around, and that makes the physical world less dynamic. It’s harder to build things in the United States.

The thing that’s much easier to do is sit at home and have all of life come to you. You speak to your Alexa or your Echo, and you have things be ordered. You use the internet. You watch on Netflix. It’s made us all much more homebodies, feeling we don’t need to change things, more comfortable in our consumption patterns. And obviously that has big private gains, or people wouldn’t be doing it. But there’s nonetheless a collective effect that I think is worrying when our physical and geographic spaces become less dynamic, less mobile, less intermixed. And that’s the America we’re seeing today.

Read the entire short, engaging interview at HBR.

 

4

The Curmudgeon’s Stream

My age is showing. As opinions and expectations calcify with age, I complain and whine about the changes, irritated with myself for doing it but unable to stem the tide. Writing about them might help ameliorate their frequency.

  • Why the hell do smoke alarm batteries chirp and squeal at night to tell us we need to replace the battery? We need a smart detector that does not awake us at dark AM to tell us the batteries need replaced. I’m fortunate that I had a new one on hand and could immediately hunt down the offending detector and mollify the device.
  • Reminder: stop by the store and buy a nine volt battery to have on hand. Just in case.
  • Does anyone curb their wheels any longer? My information guesstimate puts the percentage of those curbing their wheels at less than ten percent. The observation and math process is simple, basically the product of scanning a line of ten cars and noting that none or one is curbed. Most have pulled over to one side and are rarely within two feet of the curb. It’s like they just pulled to one side, stopped, and left, and are not ‘parked’. That really annoys the curmudgeon.
  • Sling TV irks the curmudgeon. I pay the most for it, twenty dollars a month. It’s by far the most expensive of my streaming subscriptions. Yet, its controls and layouts smack me as the worse, and it’s the one most likely to freeze and fail to stream. When I press the button to do something on Sling, I count to ten while waiting for it to respond. That doesn’t happen with Fandango, Netflix, Hulu or Amazon, and didn’t happen with HBO or Showtime. The second worse behind Sling is Acorn, but its reaction time is half of Sling’s. Sling easily wins the ‘worst of’ award.
  • BBC America on Sling is really strange. It’s all about Star Trek. Seriously.
  • Snow has found us again in southern Oregon. A winter storm warning has been issued. It’s a fly on my nose kind of problem for me. I worry about the homeless and poor. Churches have formed an alliance to provide shelter on cold nights. Shelter is just a fraction of the problem. Food, hygiene, health, employment…sigh. Some I meet seem violently, defiantly insane. Others are struggling against poor decisions or fates’ whims. So many roam the streets, sit on benches and huddle beside buildings, and we keep asking, “What can we do? What can we do?”
  • Why can’t our cats get along? Meep and Boo both seem territorial and leery of each other, like the other is the instigator, and they’re only protecting themselves. Tucker is another matter, a cat bred by the stars to fight. He doesn’t posture; he stalks, ambushes and attacks. It’s exhausting dealing with separating and segregating them. The situation does not seem to be improving.
  • I’m pleased that our neighbors adopted Princess. A young gray and white cat, Princess began keeping on eye out for me. Whenever I left the house, she raced to me and begged for food. This, I was told, was because of her experiences as a kitten. I didn’t see her for most of the winter and wondered about her status. But when it warmed and dried, here she was again, alive and healthy, begging for food.
  • Our neighbors have now adopted Princess. They had a dog and cat when we moved in ten years ago. Each died. They replaced the cat, and when a car hit and killed him within six months, they swore, enough. And even though I’m a curmudgeon, I understand. Enduring the emotional loss is daunting. But I’m pleased that they decided Princess should move in with them, and that Princess’ original people agreed.
  • Princess certainly seemed happy. On the day I was told of her new arrangement, Princess was sitting in the neighbor’s yard a short distance from the neighbor. Princess didn’t race to me this day. After a few minutes, she wandered over for a visit but didn’t beg to eat. And when the neighbor retreated to her house, Princess headed in there with her. Seems like a good match, which pleases the curmudgeon.
0

“Here we go, beast.”

Writing a novel is often an exploration for me, a visit to new, uncharted realms. Sometimes I get a little lost.

I completed three chapters yesterday. They’d been written in parallel. One of them was part of the five chapters being written in parallel.

That’s how it is. The novel in progress reminds me of math involving nonlinear equations that I once briefly encountered. They involved solving simultaneous equations and polynomials. I don’t remember much more except it struck me as a fascinating way to encounter and express relationships and awareness.

Besides being nonlinear, the novel is asynchronous, part of the idea of asynchronous epiphanies that evolve throughout the novel, something borrowed from asynchronous learning and asynchronous computer functions. This sometimes gives me a headache. The novel is and is not chronological, an apparent paradox that adds a challenge to writing it, because it may appear chronological, and I naturally revert to thinking about it in terms of a chronological approach. (I imagine readers reading it, and asking themselves, “What?” And I laugh….)

All of this was born out of the ideas that something is possible until it’s proven impossible, the alienation and isolation that develops with technology and how it affects our personalities and thinking, colonization of other planets, and how often our thinking mirrors computer operations (or is it the converse?) and work on asynchronous levels. That gave a rise to thinking about how reality works, and the creation of the chi-particles. Chi-particles have imaginary energy and mass and travel faster than light. I also throw in some soap opera, just to keep it interesting.

Along the way with all of this, I keep playing with the ideas behind reality, as to whether we create it, or it creates us, or if it’s a symbiotic process that depends upon one another. Symbiotic may not be the right term. That’s supposed to apply to biological entities, but then I think, can reality as we experience actually be a biological creature, but then that diverts me back into notions of God and creative intelligence.

Anyway, finishing those three chapters brought me back up to a specific intersection of storylines that required me to bring other chapters and storylines up to date so all may proceed. That necessitated delving back into what has been written to re-calibrate and orientate myself and my characters. I needed to read what had already been written in specific areas and review notes.

Reading what was written turned out to be a surprising and rewarding journey. My writing and its characters, setting, and stories surprised me. They distracted me from my main task of figuring out what happens next, yes, but it was enjoyable to read material written months ago and find out that it’s decent writing. Of course, it’s my child; what else would I think?

Here I am now, re-calibrated and re-oriented, quad shot mocha in hand. “Here we go, beast,” I tell my computer. “Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.”

Five hundred pages done; how many more remain?

3

Of Plans and Reminders

Charles French had a post on Arrowhead Publishing a few weeks ago. Its subject was creating business plans for books. I’d come to a similar conclusion to his ideas on my own a few years ago as part of my quest for greater organization, but his ideas had greater depth than mine. It’s always good to find something like that and learn more.

But after reading his post, I continued along thinking I’d begun weeks ago about the need for larger involvement in the business side of my self-publishing efforts. And after reading French’s post, I realized that I’d conceived many of the needs and ideas required but had failed to execute.

I had the dream. I had an action plan. I wasn’t acting.

After considering that realization with irritation and annoyance with myself that ended with a stern lecture, I answered myself, with some plaintiveness, as the business persona of my being, I’m not given much time or energy for taking care of business. The writer gets the most attention and indulgence. That’s followed by the husband, friend and son. Then the human gets attention (for things like time off, socializing, partying and exercising beyond the daily ritual of decompressing), and the editor, leaving crumbs to the business person.

I agree, I answered. Part of this is because I don’t to do the business side. But accept it: it must be done.

Okay. What can we do about it?

Well, like writing in the beginning and everything else, it’s about allocating time. I’d planned to give these matters attention – that’s why I was annoyed – but permitted my resources to be diverted into other things, important things like killing time by playing computer games, reading books, or playing with cats. Just as I do for everything else, I need to structure recurring time in my life for the business side of publishing.

And it is a recurring need. Publishing and selling books is as dynamic as any marketplace. As an unknown with no name recognition trying to learn the business, I need to work harder, as hard as an athlete trying to make a team, or a writer writing a book. As I wrote in a post when I began thinking about this, I Will Do Better, my efforts are meager and weak. It’s shocking to realize that I wrote that in the middle of January.

Once again, I remind myself, intentions aren’t sufficient. Just as writing in the first place, exercising, or acquiring and degrees, focus and application are needed. I can’t accept that, oh, I did this, and now I’m done. No, this is very much trail and error. It should all be considered as a first draft. Sometimes the blurb written and used isn’t working. New venues for publishing, distributing, advertising and selling are always springing up. If I want to expand my sales, I need to expand my efforts.

Okay, but I already knew all of this. I wasn’t acting on them. This was a case of out of sight, out of mind. Just as I need structure to pursue writing my fiction, I need structure for selling it. Moving the business guy up in the order of priorities isn’t necessarily needed, either. Rather, I realized that I needed to remind myself that the business side needs to be attended.

So I jumped into my Google calendar and set up reminders. Do this, do that. Check this, check that. And I set aside time via reminders to research and read about the business aspect of publishing and selling my own work.

Writing, publishing and selling isn’t a destination. Just like life and living, it’s a journey to be embraced and taken every day. Recognize what must be done but recognize it doesn’t need to all be done at once.

But recognize, it must be done and keep going.

0

Another Volunteer

My mental writing garden is such a messy place. I’m a gardener way behind his duties. Books need advertising and publishing in other venues. Finished drafts that have resided in drawers for years require editing, covers, publishing. More books are planned, others in progress. I feel like I never write enough nor do enough. There’s always more.

But into this blow the volunteers, ideas that land and begin sprouting. I already have dozens of those sprouting as potential products. From a conversation last night came another.

We were at dinner at Pie + Vine (I had the pomodoro with chicken – excellent – with a glass of Chianti).  A blizzard was blanketing the Ashland evening. We thought we were done with that winter mess but it started raining – snowing – blowing between dazzling displays of sunshine earlier in the day. Now the snow had resolved to be serious. The temperature dropped and the white stuff stuck.

Another couple was with us. They were just back from Hawaii. The plan was to have dinner and catch up and then attend a preview presentation of the OSF production of ‘Shakespeare in Love’.  They were talking about properties in Hawaii and asking if we were interested in becoming a fractional owner in one. Then they began speaking about ‘the January tenants’.

OMG, ‘The January Tenants’. Doesn’t that seem like a natural title for a movie or novel? It could be black comedy, mystery, thriller, or a combination of all. How about a YA zombie combination of the rest? Such possibilities were exploding. My writer leaped forward to begin writing up a concept.

“Shhh, shhh, not now,” I told him. “I’m at dinner. I’m socializing. Besides, there are so many other projects ahead of you – get in the queue.”

He wasn’t happy.

Bugger him. Writers are rarely happy, in my experience. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

0

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