Category: walking

Wobble Like Crazy

I’m back in the writing space following some unpleasant medical issues. In the last three days, I’ve averaged two thousand words each. It’s delicious to feel like I’m moving forward, no matter how word counts fall upon the writing spectrum in regards to their importance. I didn’t plan any word counts but they’re proof of something happening, a minor validation that I’ve been doing more than daydreaming.

After some arguing with the muses, me interrogating them to explain every thread, decision, and insight, and them laughing at me, I followed their instructions to, “Just write.” Some of the writing could be permanent but some of it might be delicately sculpted away or blown away with heavy explosives. Doesn’t matter. What I’ve written before during other writing projects may not help me this time. Each time that I write another novel, it’s a new adventure in learning how to be a better writer. I must write to have the material to shape, an interesting cycle. Write, edit, write, re-write, write, revise…where am I?

Well, I’m on the novel-writing spectrum. I slide along, following paths, retracing, forging new paths, falling off cliffs, and climbing back up. So it goes until there’s finally enough coherency for a novel to take shape, and then, finally, enough satisfying story in a reasonable order arrives, and then, at last, I pick a place where it can be comfortably ended with reasonable reward for readers who ventured through my thicket of words.

Can you say run-on?

I’m permitted a cup of coffee a day. I apply my allowance to my writing.

Illness is depressing, not because I have it, but because of its limitations. Bending down to pick up a piece of paper, scratch a cat’s chin, or put on my shoes and socks is slow and tedious and brings a measure of stinging discomfort. Walking remains uncomfortable and difficult, but not impossible. Of course, I have a history of rushing the healing processes. Press on, regardless, right? When I had a broken neck on Okinawa and wore a halo device, I pushed to go back to work and ended up dislodging that metal mother twice, sending me back into hospital. Anyway, I wobble around at a slow and careful pace, watching the ground to find the threads and seeds that the muses leave, then trying to parse their guidance.

Yeah, just write, baby. Stop critiquing, doubting, wondering, fearing, worrying, and questioning. Just get ‘er done. Pitter-patter.

Done writing like crazy for at least one more day. Sloshy, my drain-collection bag resting against my calf, is filled. Time to wobble on and empty him.

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Writing Interrupted

Ready for a rant of self-pity and exasperation? It’s all about me. Yeah, you’ve been warned.

So, sick. Nothing threatening like a terminal disease, just a trifecta of irritations, a head cold, the flu, and then a kidney stone. With each, I thought, this will pass, and then I prayed that the last one, the kidney stone, passed fast (which it seems to have done).

Three weeks mostly killed except for a few days when I caved to the obligation to defy my body, throwing ripples of confusion and discontinuity into my carefully constructed writing existence. I could little practice the rituals of writing, of  walking to clear my mind, establishing a mental framework for walling myself into a solitary zone where I coexist with word storms, of ordering coffee and sitting down to tap, tap, tap, forwards and backwards, creating and correcting, of staring out windows and trying to understand WTF the muses are trying to tell me.

Illness didn’t slow my inner writer and army of muses. Death might slow them down, but not minor illnesses. They came in waves, expecting to be released or entertained. That doing nothing routine was unacceptable, a position strengthened because my illness habits called for me to read, sleep, dream, awaken, and read, punctuated by episodes of eating, drinking tea, and the sickness processes that my body demanded in which it hurled things out. Nothing like reading to calm the writer, right? Wrong.

Perhaps, worse of all, was the limited coffee. My taste buds warred with the coffee’s flavor. Variations failed. Spiced herbal teas were substituted, but they’re not coffee, ya know?

All of that seems cleared away today. Did my walk. Got my coffee. It still doesn’t taste right, but I’ll work through it. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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Monday’s Theme Music

I’d not thought of this song – or heard it – in a while, but Kalliope mentioned it on another post, and naturally the song was sucked into the stream.

Here’s Vanessa Carlton with “A Thousand Miles” (2002), a good song to begin a week, and an excellent song to stream as you walk-about and wonder.

Weirdly, it always bothers me that she doesn’t cover the piano up when she’d done with the song and has gone back home in the video. I think it’s a statement, things are not finished, but my inner tidy guy thinks, it was covered when you started, you should cover it when you’re done.

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The View Dream

For this dream’s beginning, I was with a large gathering for a dinner in a big banquet room. The dinner wasn’t formal although the round tables were all covered with white table cloths, china, crystal glasses, and silverware. Everyone was dressed informally in jeans or slacks. I knew many people there as friends. I wasn’t staying, though.

Just before leaving, I happened to look out a window. We were in either a high-building or a place on a high hill. I don’t know which. I chanced to go by a window. The window provided a gorgeous panoramic view of a bay with bridges. Calm indigo waters filled the bay under a perfect azure sky.

I raised the blinds to more fully see the scene, and then called to some of my friends, telling them to come see the view. Several came. We looked out on the sun-blessed world and remarked on the tranquil, peaceful curative that the scene provided.

I left.

I headed out across some fills and found myself traveling in parallel to a column of brawny men. Their garb suggested something out of an age one thousand years before. From what I gathered, they were planning some picnic or festival. Sometimes they chanted.

Encountering a man walking the other way, he asked me about where we were going, and why I wasn’t dressed like the rest. I told him with a smile that I was part of that group and that I didn’t know who they were or where they were going. I smiled as I said this, and then waved at the men, who seemed to have been following my conversation with the stranger. As I finished speaking, I said, “This is my turn,” and turned onto a path that ran perpendicular to their travels.

I followed the run through a field of short, tarnished gold grasses and came to an asphalt street. It was far from the intersection where you’re supposed to cross. A few others were talking about crossing the road but were unsure how to go about it. They began resigning themselves to going to the intersection so they could safely and legally cross.

I, though, decided that I’d chance it there. No vehicles were coming and the visibility was good, so why not? After crossing and reaching the other shoulder, I noticed that others had crossed with me. Then I saw a pair of police officers walking down the shoulder toward me. I suspected that they were going to ticket me or make a big deal about what I’d done but I decided that I didn’t care. I knew where I was going and didn’t want to be delayed.

Finding another sketchy path, I continued on my through another field of tarnished golden grasses.

The dream ended.

8

Movement

I move left and you slip right

down the stairs, bouncing and tumbling

through a night of

righteous indignation and outright

hopes for what could be

more optimistic than your simple

thinking that it’ll all come out

once we come to the understanding

that minute by minute, we’re

losing the way that moved us forward

and back we slide

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Pauses

They exchanged greetings, and then comments about their coats, hats, and smiles.

Then they went on, two strangers pausing to chat while they were walking through the falling snow.

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An Hour

9:35

The temperature was thirty-five F.

Dazzling sunshine streamed in through the windows.

Plans were made.

9:45 

Thick, glistening snowflakes tumbled down. Gaining momentum and volume, they soon curtained the landscape and smothered the ground.

10:15

It looked like a blizzard.

Plans were re-arranged.

10:30

Snow no longer fell.

Dripping sounds from melting snow filled the air.

10:35

Little snow covered the ground. Some still covered roofs.

Light gray clouds swarmed across the sky. Sunshine splashed through.

The temperature was thirty-five F.

Plans were re-arranged.

 

4

In My Neck…

In my neck of existence, back when I was a child, snowstorms meant listening to the AM radio to see if school was canceled. Snowstorms meant bundling up to go outside to play in this substance, to sled, build, explore, and experience. The storms meant returning home to hot tomato soup with a grilled cheese sandwich with a dill pickle, or a cup of hot cocoa.

Snowstorms changed our neighborhood sounds, forcing out the usual ruckus in favor of cars’ soft sibilant hissing, or a spinning whine as tires looked for a bite in the slick mess. Rhythmic chains, clicking studs, and the snowplows’ grinding blades broke the stillness, enhancing the ambiance.

The house was hot and the outside was frigid. Sunshine seemed hidden by infinite layers. Trees were starkly outlined, but cars and houses were buried.

Snowstorms made the day special as routines bent and fractured under the snow’s weight. Now I anticipate the snowstorm for days, hoping it’ll return some of childhood’s joys when the snow closes us in, but the storms rarely stand up to hopes.

At least, in my neck of experience.

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Friday’s Theme Music

Was singing to my cats yesterday, “I got the rockin’ pneumonia, and the kitty-cat blues,” a flex on the lyrics to “Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie-Woogie Flu”.

I don’t have the flu, but some respiratory issues associated with stagnant air, according to my self-diagnosis. It happened to strike when my energy was low, and I was slippin’ into my monthly trough of darkness and depression. Two days of rest was taken. My energy is better today. The stagnant air remains so I’ll probably be limited in my outside movement, unless I don a mask to filter the air.

Movin’ on, here’s Johnny Rivers’ cover of the song from 1972. It’s the one I know best.

BTW, love that little piece on the forty-five record label on display: “Use the Power. Register and Vote.” Sweet. Wish more people would use the power. That they don’t is not so sweet.

Cheers

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