Category: Uncategorized

One Leg

One problem with growing older (which some like to call aging, a disgusting term, makes me feel like cheese), is that the manuals regarding this are so poorly written.

For example, I’ve learned through my years of training, practice, and experience, to put my shorts and pants on one leg at a time. Been doing it that way so long, I don’t remember when I started.

But in the last year, I realized that I always put the same leg on first, left leg, right leg, left leg, right leg. And that was causing my left leg problems because it trained a limitation into its motion and strength through this unchanging and repetitive motion. Drawing the garment over the first leg is easier because it begins lower, requiring less combo of bending and stepping.

Discovering this wasn’t an accident. A right hander, I began using my left hand to do routine things a few years ago. It surprised me how challenging it was to use the other hand to do things. Brushing my teeth with my left hand, my right hand stood ready to leap in and save the left hand. Conscious effort was required to lower my right hand and disengage it from the activity. In weird ways, the right hand, normally used, shadowed the left hand’s motions.

Wiping my derriere after my business was amazingly strenuous. My body was built to pivot, angle and balance in certain ways with that act and bucked against the mirroring process I was trying to follow.

These efforts and observations made me more mindful about all my activities and behaviors. I quit taking it for granted how things were done and forced myself to do the opposite with everything I did.

Some were more easily accomplished. In the past few months, as I painted trim and walls in the house, I came to tell my body and mind, treat your left side like it’s your right side. Surprisingly, that’s very effective. It’s like the mind heard the words and somehow rewired itself.

There are exceptions, and putting my clothing on with my right leg first is one of those areas. My left leg, in conjunction with the bending required to offer the pants and shorts to the leg, is troubled by the activity. I definitely have reduced mobility, flexibility and strength in that knee. Thinking about it, I’m not surprised, as I played sports, particularly racquetball, baseball and football for years. Everything was geared toward being right handed. But being aware and mindful about it, I’m addressing it and I’m confident I can make changes.

One leg at a time.

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Her Lady

Five foot eight inches tall, rumored to be white with short dark hair and perpetually wearing sunglasses, the woman behind the Stellar Queen was mysterious.

She was at least eight hundred years old, well-established because she’d lived on the Stellar Queen for that long. Such a long life on one ship leads to rumors….

I lived for fifty years as a child and man on the Stellar Queen, enjoying my second childhood on the ship after I initiated my Do-over, so I was always watching out for her. I was never certain I saw her. There were rumors….

Her appearance was challenging not just because she was rarely seen but also because she practiced genetic designing to shape shift, leading her appearance to often change, even becoming an animal, such as the panther that was claimed to live on the Stellar Queen, or one of the unicorns in the forest. At least, those were were the rumors….

The Stellar Queen was her baby, along with Doctor Jharun Pollux, great-granddaughter of Doctor Jerol Pollux. Doctor Jerol Pollux was the famous discoverer of the dark elements. The elder Doctor Pollux, a funny point to write, was but twenty-four when she made her discoveries a hundred years before her great-granddaughter’s birth. Jharun Pollux and Her Lady were said to be contemporaries in their youth, and struck up a relationship from that era. ‘That era’ was when space exploration and colonization began blossoming, thanks to the dark elements of the elder doctor’s findings, but it was almost three hundred years later that the two women began collaborating on the Stellar Queen’s design and construction.

Most critically for the Stellar Queen, Doctor Pollux incorporated power generators using asteridium, chiridium, and lumenirium. Asteridium was the black element most commonly used in starships for propulsion but Pollux used it with a small lumenirium core to create the artificial sun that graced the Stellar Queen’s bio-dome, rising in the east, and setting in the west.

Chiridium was the more interesting choice for the ship’s power. Chiridium, named for chi, after the life force, is rarer, more difficult to mine and control. Myths related to its name and Doctor Jerol Pollux’s comments about it, can never be put down. As a dark element, some say it’s a dark life force. Both Doctors Pollux laughed about that, but with its AI ship overseer, many inhabitants and visitors thought the Stellar Queen was alive. Majorities of people recounted stories and gave interviews stating that something different was felt as soon as you boarded the ship.

Her Lady never made comments about it that anyone ever recorded. As odd and intriguing as her eight hundred year life aboard the Stellar Queen was, her disappearance without notice when she left was equally intriguing. She only told Rei the baker, famous for his goods from Trudy’s Valley, that she was leaving.

Being the only source, naturally, more rumors arose. One rumor was that one of her shapeshifting processes was disrupted, rendering her a monster that couldn’t be fixed, and that she still lived in secret on the Queen. Others claimed that she had never existed, that she had not created the Stellar Queen, but that it created her because the woman who had begun the project had died before it launched. More quietly, it was suggested that perhaps it wasn’t correct to think of the Stellar Queen as two separate entities, but that they were one, yet another project of the great Doctor Jerol Pollux, and her great-granddaughter.

Imagination can be a wild, untamed creature.

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Dragon’s Lair

If you’re into winter sports and visit the Stellar Queen, you’ll want to teleport to South Point. Located in the Southern Mountains, South Point is at ten thousand feet (“So close, you can almost touch the sun,” the inhabitants claim – not true) and offers the ship’s best skiing, snow boarding and snow mobile adventures. Painting itself as the Stellar Queen’s Aspen, after Earth’s famous resort, South Point even has an annual film festival, Stardance, to convince you of their bonafide intentions.

Three miles from South Point (seconds via ship teleport) is Trudy’s Valley. Trudy, one of the ship’s original settlers, is long departed from the ship. She re-married (her fifth, although just her second male husband, but her second marriage since becoming a woman again) and moved with her husband back to his home world, where they opened an art gallery that features the Stellar Queen’s artists.  Trudy’s grandson remains in Trudy’s Valley, though. Rei’s awesome baked goods are considered the ship’s best, and many establishments in the cities and towns around the Stellar Queen promote Baked Delights from Trudy’s Valley. Rei offers savory and sweet goods. I’d kill for one of his dark chocolate drizzled raspberry croissants right now.

Also within spitting distance of South Point and worth a visit is Dragon’s Lair. Located on the Stellar Queen’s second highest peak, Petyr McSweeney’s original intention was to introduce dragons to the Queen. Dragons were big as part of the genetic creations movement sweeping the galaxies back then. But in a rare move, Her Lady exercised her veto powers. With sharply unambiguous verbiage, she clarified that the Stellar Queen would not be home to dragons or other fantasy creatures, declaring, “This isn’t a fantasy ship.” She does, however, allow unicorns to wander Her Lady’s Forest on her estate (the ship’s largest private holding).

Undeterred by that setback, Petyr instead established a brewery. Dragon’s Lair Imperial Porter is chocolate and vanilla infused. Powerful, smooth and heady, I can attest its worth imbibing from a perch in the Stellar Queen’s high, snowy mountains. Visit after sundown and gaze upon the stars.

Tell them I sent you and say hello to Petyr for me, but beware. Petyr used to terraform planets for human settlement and has a million and one stories, and will not hesitate to tell them. Still, he’ll keep your cup filled, as long as you’re willing to listen.

 

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Drift

I’m drifting this morning, unable to meditate, unable to determine why.

Fidgeting through home worries (animals under the house, egads), the cats (what can I do to end these small wars) and my wife’s health, I drift.

Thinking about the weather and the wildfires down south in California, I drift.

Contemplating the economy, housing market and POTUS election, I drift.

Recalling the Stellar Queen, which returned to me after lo these many years (there’s a book, there, Return of the Stellar Queen!), I drift.

Wishing for the ocean and a shore of spray, longing to smell the sea and hear its thunder, I drift.

Listening to the jays and the crows calling and arguing, and the neighbors starting their cars and driving off, I drift.

Recalling enjoyable companions and amber moments of my life, I drift.

Giving up on meditation (for now) I drift into the kitchen and make coffee.

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Homage to the Stellar Queen

Two miles and 43 minutes, the coffee shop walk allows a surfeit of thinking. Today, with summer starting in the northern hemisphere, I thought of the Stellar Queen.

She’s old. I haven’t thought of her in a while. She’s so ancient in my relative life, that her original Word Perfect, PowerPoint and Paint files reside on five and a quarter floppy disks. They were transferred to three and a half inch disks, and then to a hard drive when I bought a tower Dell, in 1999.

The Stellar Queen was my first foray into science fiction. Orson Scott Card told how he liked drawing maps to stimulate his creativity. I designed cars as a child and planned to be an architect (or a rock star) so I took up designing the Stellar Queen on computer.

She was originally built by a patron of the arts who traveled the galaxies. The Lady (never named, and very mysterious) lives in an estate along the edge between the Central Plain and the Northern Mountains. A bio-dome hybrid class ship, the Queen’s bio portion is sixty-seven miles long by fourteen miles wide. Thinking in threes, she had three cities, three towns and three villages, three major climate zones (with many micro climes), and three rivers that flowed down into the Starry Sea, on the ship’s ‘northwestern’ side. One small town, Half Moon Bay, came to be on the Starry Sea, was based upon Half Moon Bay, California, where I resided for a while. The Queen featured a sun that rose in the ship’s east and set in the west, over the sea. It wasn’t a big sea, just large enough for waves, pleasure craft and some fishing. Just big enough for romance.

Three centers, for government & ship operations, markets, and education, were established, along with three wineries, three breweries, three ranches…et cetera. I began many stories about her. Murder on the Stellar Queen, Death Boards the Stellar Queen, Treason on the Stellar Queen, and so on. None were finished nor submitted. I still have them, though, in notebooks, in boxes, in the garage.

I still smile, thinking about the Stellar Queen, and I easily board her. Half Moon Bay on the Queen is a pleasant place to be, to sip wine or beer and contemplate the ocean and sunshine, marvel about traveling the galaxies, and think about the first day of summer in another year.

Time to go write like crazy.

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Promises

I awoke after a night of wild dreams, and dined on them as I rubbed the sleep away. Nothing nourishing was gleaned from the noshing.

Cats fed (first thing, other than some body functions – it’s in the cats’ contracts), meditation complete, I enjoy hot coffee and cool air with warm sunshine under a velvet blue egg sky. Energies are up, spirits are up.

They fertilize plans. Early morning yard work, writing (well, editing….), of course, some light housework…who knows what else?

This day is making some fine promises.

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Ford Wins LeMans

Ford won LeMans in 1966, and they won again today, June 19, 2016, fifty years later to the date.

When I was ten, this was important. The Ford GTs were the pinnacle of sports racing endurance cars, and one of the winning drivers, Bruce McLaren, was a racing driver I admired, so wow, Bruce McLaren, in a Ford GT, won LeMans. Groovy!

I don’t know where Dad was that year. Mom and Dad had divorced. I lived with Mom and my sisters in the Pittsburgh, Pa, area. Dad was in the Air Force, and I think he was outside of the United States. I think he may have been in Vietnam. My belief is fixed on Dad’s Ford Thunderbird. A turquoise hardtop convertible, that car was gorgeous. It was also sitting in my Uncle Pete’s garage in Penn Hills, Pa, alongside Uncle Pete’s white ’65 Mustang coupe.

Yeah, I was into cars.

Cars are what connect Dad and I to this day. When we speak, we chat about what we’re driving and what new car designs have, or are about to, come out. After the ’65 Thunderbird (or maybe ’66), he had a ’68 Thunderbird coupe, red, with a black landau top. He traded it in for a maroon ’74 Monte Carlo, but went back to the Ford Thunderbird, buying a white one in 1976.

Then he took on Corvettes, buying and driving three or four of them, having them as a second car while his primary vehicle was a pick up truck or SUV. There was one break in all of this when he bought a Cadillac. (Dad in a Cadillac is as strange as me in a Cadillac.) Memory isn’t as fixed about those cars. I was an adult by then, separated from him by life. But like him, I was in the US Air Force and enjoyed performance and sports cars. My first car I bought was a 1968 Camaro. Returning from the Philippines, I bought an orange Porsche 914 and drove it from West Virginia to Texas and back. It was left for a Pontiac Firebird, which I sold when we left for Okinawa. Returning from there, I bought a 1985 Mazda RX-7. The RX-7 was my Corvette, as I ended up owning three of them, trading in my black 1993 Mazda RX-7 R1 less than two years ago, after owning it for nineteen years.

When I call Dad later today, he’ll ask me if if I still have the RX-7 and then remember that I traded it in for a Mazda CX-5. He’ll mention his step-daughter’s Corvette, which he helped her buy. We’ll talk about the newly redesigned Miata, and I’ll ask him if he’s seen the new Fiat 124, based on the Miata. Besides the way I look, walk and talk, and the color of my eyes, hair and skin, and my build, there is no doubt I’m my father’s son.

We are car guys.

 

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Sour Grapes, Writing Ed.

Yeah, it’s like, bleah. Like work. Ugh.

Published Road Lessons with Savanna this week. It acquired the attention an elephant bestows on an ant. Anxiety and conflicts arise. Depression. Acceptance, the need to be patient, the requirement to market the book. It takes time, I tell myself, and scream back, “Time? Time?” Because time, you know, stirs fear, impatience, anxieties, as I await time’s passage. Time can be a right cruel bully.

That’s my background moodiness as I return to copy-editing Everything Not Known today. A quarter million words, seven hundred plus pages. I have completed editing on seven chapters. 21,000 words.

Oh, boy. This is going to take forever.

Forever? Could you be exaggerating?

Trying to encourage myself, I say, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”

“Shut up, you moron,” I answer. “Keep your platitudes to yourself.”

I enjoy the novel, which is good, happy news, even, as it was written with me in mind as the audience. That’s the only audience I understand, so I kowtow to me and my taste. I’ve tried writing and editing to others’ preferences but their guidance, feedback, and input, is confusing and conflicting. So, responding with great insight and maturity, I replied, “Whatever,” and write for myself.

The snarky corner of me notes with withering contempt, “Who do you expect to read your book if you write if for yourself, you marketing moron?”

Ready for that query, I tell myself, “Good to hell.” So there.

Enjoying the novel does help copy-editing it, but this isn’t my favorite pastime, so I chaff, complain and offer childish whines about what I’m doing and most do. Intellectually, I know, yeah, this must be done, and this, too, shall pass, and other pithy, worn encouraging sentiments. Intellectually, I can see into myself and see all the nuances of living and existing irritating me and the ridiculousness of my complaints.Intellectually, I know enough of myself to know it’s part of my cycles of spirit, attitudes and emotions to drift into the dark side. I know I’ll emerge from it in a few days.

Intellectually, I know it’s all human nature.

Intellectually, I still tell myself to go to hell. Then I drink the coffee, take a deep breath, and play a game.

Then I go to work.

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I am One

Went  with the ‘I am One’ with everything meditation today.

Sometimes I feel rattled and unsettled, searching for something in myself. Personal matters gnaw me. The Orlando murders probably escalated my need. I’ve already been feeling disturbed and frustrated with the pending Trump nomination. From what I see of his supporters, (and recognizing that I’m minimizing and stereotyping them, which doesn’t help anyone), they’re shallow, hateful people, without solutions, but ready to attack anyone different from them. They see the world in black and white, and want to protect “what’s theirs”. Immature and bullying, a master of playground name-calling, Trump feeds their anger and fires up crazy dreams that he can be POTUS and change their shit. But their festering shit is inside them. No POTUS can change that.

My questioning of them makes me question myself. Some say, “Better Trump than Hillary, who is a lying capitalist thief,” and I think, What? Where do they get their information? She isn’t perfect, but I trust my information (probably as they trust their information, we’re into such a destructive, widening cycle), even if I keep challenging my information. Full disclosure, I’m a Bernie Man. I support Black Lives Matter and the Occupy movement. I support strong pubic education, a single payer universal health care system, feminism and the ERA. I support equal rights for everyone, period, and I want automatic weapons banned from civilian ownership in America. I despise the wealthy 1% and decry the trend toward consumerism, which drives misguided values into arguing things like, “Let’s not building affordable housing because it will pull down property values.” I can’t stand animal abuse. Torture sickens me, and it doesn’t worry. People who do things because they’re fearful worry me. So do people who quickly abandon their principles and critical thinking.

The ‘I am One’ helps calm, relax and restore me, returning me to my center of balance. I am One, I think, and then count the manner and items with which I’m one. I’m one with my future, present and past self, I am one with my physical, mental and emotional self. I am one.

Then I reach out to my surroundings, imagining myself one with my house — the walls, paint, wires, pipes, roof, foundation — and all its materials, and the furnishings. I extend myself out in ever growing circles, imagining myself as one with the surrounding yard, plants and grass, the trees, expanding to my town and its people, animals, and construction, reaching for the rivers and lakes, and the coastal waters, imagining myself as one with the sun and the seas, the moon and the star, eternity and infinity, and all the energies they encompass.

Many probably accuse me of being full of New Age woo-woo fuzzy gooeyness. And I laugh, and I meditate. (They stopped reading long ago, anyway.) Then, feeling restored and closer to being centered and balanced again, I go on. I don’t have answers, but I have a better sense of who I am.

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