Category: walking

The Process

He had his talismans, his gold-plated 2001 quarter, the pen with which he’d written the first short story he’d ever sold, once lost, but then found in a box of memorabilia, and his tumbled and polished lapis lazuli. With those in his pockets, he processed his mental checklist. Keys, money, wallet, computer, backpack, sunglasses. Donning his coat, he gloved up and left the warm house for the cold, sunny day.

Squirrelly grey clouds marbled the sky’s blue arena. Sidewalks squished with remnants of last night’s rain. He walked fast, shifting from thoughts of cats, wife, social engagements, and news to his stories, drawing up where’d he stopped, what he’d planned since then, and where else he might go, considering the scenes and words like they were night stars.

One mile he walked, warming up over the twenty minutes, two as the land dried out under the sun, reaching the coffee shop in less than thirty-eight minutes. Warmth, conversation, and music percolated inside the small, modern, glassy place. Weird, it didn’t smell like coffee.

He knew many faces but spoke to no one but those needed to get coffee. After ordering it, he set up his computer at a table and powered up. Documents were opened. Internet connections were made.

Hot, black coffee was sipped. Words and ideas were contemplated again. Setting the coffee down, he raised his fingers over his keyboard.

Time to write like crazy, at lease one more time.

3

A Day Without Writing

I didn’t write write yesterday. I had a full schedule of other activities planned. Yes, it’s rare that I take a day off writing. I think there are usually six days a year that I don’t write, and they’re usually sick days, travel days, or holidays. Might as well face it, I’m addicted to writing.

When I say that I didn’t write, I mean that I didn’t sit down with computer, crayon, or paper and pen. I wrote, but it was all in my head. I’ve noticed before that not writing and breaking out of my routine to do other things stimulates my writing. Same thing happened yesterday. I was writing fast in my head.

After getting home close to midnight last night (and with over twenty-six thousand steps on the Fitbit), I had a lot to write this morning. The writing session was one of those intense, fast-paced, and focused affairs that I so love, one where I take one or two gulps of hot black coffee as prelude to the process, and then unleash the muses. An hour or two later, butt sore and with half a cup of cold coffee still available, I stop, spent like a marathon runner.

It’s been an excellent writing week. Having discovered that simultaneous submissions to agents are now considered normal (yeah, you probably all knew that already, didn’t you?), I’ve submitted Four on Kyrios to six agents. I’ve taken my writing approach to procuring an agent. With writing, I write and press on, and with agents, I submit and press on.

Meanwhile, I’ve jumped into a new novel-writing project, April Showers 1921. As always, it’s great fun here in the beginning, when ideas spin like polished, multi-faceted gem stones, letting me think about all the possibilities. Often, though, as I contemplate the facets, the muses say, “Here, we’re going this way. Come on.”

That’s how it’s been. I’m not arguing with them. Fools argue with muses, because mortals always lose any argument with a muse. That’s just fact. I looked it up on the Innertubes, and found a Youtube interview with Shakespeare about it, so you know it’s true.

Now, though, I’m at the après writing juncture that requires me to stop. Don’t really want to stop because it’s been great but I know that I’m finished for the day. Other things remain to be done, my energy is shifting, and my body is saying, “Excuse me, but can we move? Would it be possible to bend and stretch, reach for the sky, stand on tippy toes, and all that?”

Sure, body. We’ll go do some of that. Time to stop writing like crazy, for at least one more day. Just let me gulp down this cold coffee and we’ll get out of here.

Waste not, want not, right?

3

Color

Red, white, and yellow peered out from the covers of foggy drizzle and gray sky, an aberration among the bare trees and stolid grave markers, calling to him out of their difference. Swinging that way, he strode past the long dead, eyes mostly on the colors, finding a small, cheery snowman in the decorations of poinsettias, daisies and lilies, along with a petite bluebird of happiness.

Reaching the stones, he stared down at them for a few seconds. He’d expected recent deaths, but none of those were recent. Grandfather and father, side-by-side, born seventeen years apart, had died in the early nineties. Grandmother – “I’m just taking a little nap” – was born in 1929 and passed in 2006. She was the most recent.

Son and brother, never forgotten, had been born the same year as him, 1956, but the dead man had preceded him by a few months. Son and brother had passed in 1974, the same year he’d graduated high school, the same year that he’d joined the military. He noticed son and brother was exactly eighteen years old when he died.

Nothing told him about their lives and deaths, nor why the graves had been visited, or who visited them. A recent windstorm had knocked some of the flowers over. Water filled the fake plants’ pots. He emptied the water, set everything upright, and arranged the flowers.

His journey was resumed, nothing learned. It was just a little color on a dreary winter day, a short break in the accumulation of miles.

0

My Thing

Many others question

what I do and why

they pour their negativity into my heart

the things they say could make me cry

were I a lessor person

and cared what they thought

these people whose dreams and emotions

are like toys that they bought

I do my thing no matter what

I do my thing no matter why

I do my thing through the pain

I do my thing in the rain

I do my thing and search for answers

I do my thing

and that’s just it

I do my thing

1

Battering Dreams…

The last two nights’ dreams have battered me. Tempestuous and often shocking, they uncovered memories, eroding the foundations of my confidence, prompting A.M. shakiness.

In one dream, my wife and neighbors had killed another neighbor. He was married to one of the neighboring females. I didn’t understand why they’d killed him nor why they were unconcerned.

The police rounded them up. My wife and neighbors had skinned the body, though. As I heard it, they planned to eat the man. While I struggled to clarify what I heard, they cheerfully entered the police station. They weren’t being arrested. It turned out the police had already arrested one of the perpetrators for the crime, but now my wife and neighbors were picking him up. He was being released. I didn’t understand how or why.

Another memorable dream had people secretly plotting to kill a wealthy, powerful family. This dream took place in faded green light. Little was clearly seen beyond silhouettes. The powerful family — husband, wife, and three children — was being betrayed. A missile strike was being planned to take them out.

Learning about it, I furtively warned the family. The covertly relayed that they’d been suspicious and thanked me. I kept an eye on them and the man betraying them. I saw him on a telephone, on of those big and corded push-button desk phones that were popular last century. Sneaking up, I overheard him telling the killers to call off the strike because I’d warned the family.

He noticed me spying on them, so he hung up and I left. Coming around later, I heard him on the phone again, telling those on the other end to wait to launch the missiles until he called them. He wanted to kill me at the same time so that I couldn’t cause them trouble. The missiles were launched, but then recalled.

Another dream was about powerful rains. Heavy charcoal clouds thickened overhead, and then pouring rain shuttered visibility. Rain sluiced off roofs and overflowed storm drains and gutters. Torrents filled the streets. Pedestrians and drivers were freaked as cars and feet splashed through fast, rising water. The water rose until where I walked was a turbulent lake. The lights dimmed under the rain’s relentless pounding.

However, caught in the rain myself, I tried reassuring everyone. Telling them not to worry, I kept saying, “It’s just rain. Don’t worry. This will pass. We’ll be fine.” I couldn’t find anyone to stop and listen to me.

Then memories were uncovered of things others said about me. It was a miserable version of “This Is Your Life”, asshole. Bitter things I’d heard, things that I hadn’t realized that I learned about later, as people spoke behind my back.

Awakening, I realized how much of this is because I’m on the cusp of achievement and decisions that prompt reflections and fears, all around writing and publishing, sharing my work, baring my efforts to others, and being fearful of exposure as an untalented poseur.

A long walk on the way to write pacified much. Thinking about the dreams, I realized that in each, I was never personally affected. I was witness, observer, and bystander, relatively unscathed by the swirl around me. That took me to conclude, this is about emotions and uncertainty. Writing it out now helped me navigate my fears and struggle free of my negative energy, at least momentarily, make some decisions and take some actions.

Time to write and edit like crazy, at least one more time this year.

0

Fitbit Progress

Reviewing my Fitbit YTD, I found that I’ve walked over twenty-eight hundred miles, averaging 7.85 miles a day.

I was wondering about it today because as I went to walk, part of me whined, “Do we haft to?” in its best three year old voice. “Can’t we take the day off?”

With a grudging grimace, I imitated Mom and said, “Let me think about it.” That quieted the quitting part of me while I checked my numbers. I hadn’t done that in a while. Yes, I check daily to see what I did the day before. Once in a while, I look at the weekly total. I always have a general feel for how much I’ve done without getting into details, but I don’t really look at the ongoing cumulative numbers.

After checking the numbers, I felt pretty good about my average and agreed to the partial day off. We’ll see how it goes tomorrow. Maybe with an extra cup of coffee in the afternoon, I can make up today’s shortfall.

 

4

Friday’s Theme Music

More weather dictated theme music. I’m planning to dress, looking out the window, checking the temperature and forecast. Hey, fifty-one, windy as hell, but sunny. So, I’ll be walking in sunshine.

It was an easy jump in the stream to Katrina and the Waves and “Walking On Sunshine” (1985).

2

The Change Dream

Alone, I was coming down into a valley, leaving forests behind me. The end of an exhausting journey, I’d been walking through the mountains for a long time. It’d been stormy and chaotic up there. I’d been drenched to the skin through my clothes but now I was dry. Even though it was almost the day’s end, it was warmer down here in the valley.

Mountains edged the broad, green valley. A wide river wound through it. The sun’s final beams pierced the clouds in a space where the mountains were lower. Clouds still loitered but there wasn’t any threat of a storm. It was an idyllic, calm scene.

Weary, I slowed to regard the valley, although I still walked, not really thinking of anything but which the direction I should take and my next steps. With that happening, the sun winked behind clouds and mountains, making it instantly chillier. Past the clouds, stars began making their entrances.

Hearing a thunderclap, I started and turned to my left. A huge purple wave raced across the valley, It had a sole peak of amplitude that seemed about ten stories high.

Shock and alarm bolted through my me as I struggled to get a handle on the wave. I was thinking, “What was that?” I answered myself, “It was a wave. Yes, but why?” While I answered, the wave reached the valley’s far end and burst. A white flare arced into the night.

It was the wave that exploded, I thought. That’s a good thing, I decided, smiling to myself. Wasn’t it? Yes, I felt. It meant a big change had taken place. Not sure what had changed, or how, confidence surged into me.

I resumed walking, looking forward to the future.

The dream ended.

0

Thursday’s Theme Music

I awoke with Outkast’s “Hey Ya” streaming in my mind, but another song replaced it. The lyrics, sung by a woman went, “He’s the last of the secret agents, and he’s my man.”

I thought, was that Nancy Sinatra? Sure sounded like it to my brain. Thinking about Nancy granted permissions to stream “These Boots Are Made for Walkin'”, followed by a duet with Frank Sinatra, “Something Stupid”. Hearing Frank made the stream believe it was okay for him to join in, so I heard “Winchester Cathedral” and “Fly Me to the Moon”.

I’d decided I was becoming a basket case, which opened the ports for “Basketcase” by Green Day, followed by “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”. Thinking, enough, I went through a little of “Enough is Enough” by April Wine, followed by “No More Tears” (Streisand/Summers).

By then, I knew that it had been Nancy Sinatra streaming “Last of the Secret Agents” (1966). I never saw the movie, btw. Anyone know if it was any good?

0

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