Tag: Ordinary Grace

The Black Robin Hood Dream

Fade in to people speaking. It’s not a large group. I’m among them. So is a black guy. We’re sitting at tables in what seems to be someone’s home. I think we’re drinking wine and beer and eating.

Sadly, not having a black friend is an oddity in this phase of life. Few blacks live in Ashland, or southern Oregon. I have no black friends outside of Facebook and memory.

In the dream, we’re talking about Black Robin Hood. Apparently, a Black person is robbing rich people and redistributing the wealth to poor blacks. This group of people approve in the dream. We even declare there should be more, perhaps a nationwide group of Black Robin Hoods, stealing from the rich, giving to the poor.

Then there’s conversation about how such a person, or persons would be vilified and hunted. I put out in the dream, Colin Kaepernick just took a knee and look at the reaction. Agreement abounds.

I float into a conversational tangent. This would be a good movie or television show premise, Black Robin Hood. It could be modern, serious, or parody. We figure it’s already been done. Surely Spike has done it.

Then the Black guy says, “I’m Black Robin Hood. I’m the one who’s been stealing from the rich and giving it out to the poor.”

That totally stopped the conversation, and ended the dream.

BTW, watched a film the other day about Colin K in the SuperBowl, and the way he played in the post season that year. It’s beyond belief that some team didn’t pick him up.

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Truths, Re-discovered

I read a wonderful book during recent flights. ‘Ordinary Grace’, by William Kent Kreuger, won a few prizes since its publication. My wife recommended it to me. “It reminds me of ‘Peace Like A River’,” she said, a book we both enjoyed.

“Who wrote that?” I asked. We both came up with Leif and nothing else. We were in the car, without computers and the phone wasn’t picking up a signal, so we couldn’t look up the name. Finding the novel’s author was put on the to-do list.

Yes, ‘Ordinary Grace’ reminded me of ‘Peace Like a River’, but I also thought of some of Louise Erdrich’s novels, as well as ‘A Separate Peace’, by Thomas Knowles, and even Harper Lee’s treasure, ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’. Gorgeously written, it was beautiful story telling, the sort of writing that incites a riot of fears, envy and worry in me. I want to write novels like this, and after reading ‘Ordinary Grace’, I was afraid that I wouldn’t. I was afraid the current novel-in-progress (NIP) was a miserable failure.

After finishing the novel, I stewed while visiting with friends and family and suffering through the requirements of socializing. They say you’re not normal if you don’t socialize, if you fail to sit down and chat, making small talk or exchanging witticism and sparkling insights regarding movies, politics and the economy. Though I’ve lived sixty years, employing my tongue to make demands for food, answer questions, and make presentations and speeches, I remain a novice socializer. Contrary to some opinions, it’s not a choice I consciously embrace, but that’s an altogether different post.

When I was finally freed to sit down and write, I entered my NIP, prepared to revile it. Surprise instead comforted me, surprise that it wasn’t the miserable pastiche of words that I’d decided it was, because it came to me. After reading the opening chapters and correcting a sprinkle grammar, spelling and punctuation issues, I went away satisfied that I’m not the horrendous hack that I’d accused myself of being.

I continued to think about why I liked those books so much, what it was about their imagery, story-telling, pacing, arcs and characters that reduced my writing confidence. First, these stories all harkened to eras that I understood through living, television, movies or other books. That’s a helpful, useful advantage. Phrases and expressions of the times could be used without elaboration or explanation because we knew these things. 

Second, I recognized that I could love to read certain types of novels without being a writer in those genres. Third, I can create the imagery and other matters I regarded as so masterful. It is work, requiring more critical and ojbective appraisal of what I’ve written to refine, polish and improve.

Yet, another truth runs under the surface. Years ago, I learned about the window of five. Its application then was about approaching suppliers and customers, and viewing their requirements through five windows to develop deeper understanding and forge stronger relationships. I’ve since extended windows of five thinking into other realms, such as fiction writing. Without resorting to extensive diagnosis, dissection and explanation, it’s possible to utilize windows of five thinking to peel layers back and garner insights into novels.

The truth about these novels was their power to engage, involve and inspire me is intimidating because it was artfully accomplished. Regardless of the genre or author, my goal as a reader it to find books like these, because, in the window of five about what they bring to me as a reading experience, I escape now, and am transported to somewhere else. I’m moved by the characters’ experiences and I identify with their issues. I learn some lessons, often about myself and how I think and feel about different matters.

Those are also my writing goals. I want readers to be engaged in my novels, to become transported to somewhere else. I want them to be entertained, but I’d also like them to think, without me prodding them to think.

Through all this thinking, I end up where I began as a writer, wanting to write something that I enjoy, that others will hopefully enjoy. I need to satisfy myself first as a reader when I write, understanding that others’ enjoyment will depend largely on what they bring to the book, but that it’s my writing skills that will help them enter the book and live through its experiences.

I can’t say with authority that this is what it’s all about; I’m self-taught. I’m probably often profoundly incorrect about my conclusions. That’s acceptable. What’s required is to keep thinking about what’s been learned and to keep striving to learn more and improve. I will probably never been completely satisfied with anything I write, which can be useful incentive to encourage me to keep attempting to improve myself.

It’s a truth I lose and find, again and again.

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Strange Brew

I dreamed last night about the power of eight. That is literally and explicitly what the dream was about, no B.S. I remember all of this thanks to a cat.

I know that will surprise you.

In the dream, I was in a class with others but not a classroom. I don’t know who the others were. Someone unknown was explaining that the power of eight shapes everything. Basically in a ‘Matrix’ reveal, I was shown how streaming digits make up reality. Then we were told, “If you can find the power of eight in the numbers, you’ll unlock the power of creation.” Then, as we all talked and looked, I grasped that within the threads were sequences that added up to eight. As I realized the implications and began bubbling with the thrill of knowledge, I began showing them to the rest of the class and elaborating on the instructor’s explanation about how to see and capture the power of eight. As example, I explained, laughing, “Like this one.” I captured a sequence. “That’s eight hundred thousand dollars.”

At that point, whiskers, licking and kneading awakened me. Quinn the Black Paw was hungry. The food in the bowls didn’t suit his mood. It didn’t matter that it was oh dark A.M. Resigning myself the power of the cat, I fed him, and then used the opportunity to pee and ponder the dream.

I was pretty much at a loss about what it meant then. Like, what was I supposed to do? Take a pill and find an eight? Returning to bed, I resumed sleeping.

The lessons about the power of eight continued with further dreaming. They were explaining how the power of eight was part of a balance. But now, instead of being in a class room, I was standing atop stairs. Others, like my wife, accompanied me, but they were incidentals. Dark, dark, dark cheery red, these steps were worn smooth. Like contoured hillsides of rice paddies, they extended in either direction, leading down to something that I couldn’t see. In fact, the only other thing seen was a blue grey sky.

I knew I was to go down the stairs, and I did. This was a learning expedition, and I felt pretty good about the whole thing. My wife and a few others accompanied me. At the bottom was a land, and people who…well, they identified themselves as the common people. They explained I was to kill two of them.

That shocked me. It could not be right. But no, they were comfortable with my intentions. I’d done it before and others did it, too. They liked the way I killed them, demonstrating empathy and kindness when I did. Besides, they told me, I often gave others gifts. Which was true, I remembered then, as I absorbed it all. On the way down, I’d left and given packages as gifts.

Then, my instructions were to return to the top of the stairs and resume my lessons in the power of eight. I returned to the top of the stairs and awoke, confused.

What in the hell is the power of eight, and how am I supposed to harness any of that dream information in this real existence?

At that point, I wanted to return to dream with instructions to myself to provide further explanation. But sleep eluded me. Instead, I thought about my recent state of mind.

It’s been that time of month, when I’m coping with my darkness. Essentially, my darkness has a mission statement that I’m to feel so depressed and miserable that I question, why the hell am I even alive? Arriving in this depressed state, I become all, J’accuse: Thou art a shite writer writing shite fiction. Nobody wants to read the hot sloppy piles that you write, so why do you torture myself with this pursuit?

I know, intellectually, I’m coping with an emotional state that affect huge swaths of population. None of that really helps. I’d been reading to manage it. In the marvelous way that the world works, I’d come across a T.C. Boyle interview and a John Scalzi post. Both helped bolster my resistance to quit.

Boyle’s post was ‘Writing Advice from T.C. Boyle’, in which he provided five points to help you keep writing. His second point:

2. The .357 Magnum. The second tip goes (if you’ll forgive me) hand-in-hand with the first. In recognition of the fact that all writers are manic-depressives, alcoholics, drug-addicts and fixedly specialized degenerates, it’s always helpful to keep a loaded pistol on your desk, perhaps located conveniently beside the ballpeen hammer, depending, of course, on the size of the desk. This acts as an aide-memoire, a spur to creativity and, of course, the ultimate solution to writers’ block.

The other post, by John Scalzi, was Rejection. He closed:

In the meantime, I’ve already sent a query off to another agent. You can’t sit around moping after a rejection, you have to rush into the arms of the next rejection. Because who knows? It might not be a rejection at all.

Heartening words, the words that every writer embraces, the essence being, who knows when you’ll get your break? It’s a strange brew where writers reside. As other writers have written, we’ve developed good taste about what we like to read, and we’re attempting to envelope that good taste in what we write in a difficult and often lonely, and solitary endeavor. And I, being of low self-esteem and a person who eschews attention, struggle with writing and wanting attention for what I write against being a solitary creature who is pretty happy writing in his isolation. It’s a messed up, strange brew. And again: I know I’m not alone.

I told my wife about my dream this morning.  She suggested I hunt down meanings for the power of eight. Doing a web search, I came across Christine DeLorey’s website, Creative Numerology. She’d specifically written about ‘The Power of Eight’.

Reading her post reinforced my understanding of the dream. Frankly, I was startled by having such a dream and then discovering such explanation on the web. I’d wondered if I’d read about the power of eight before, and had simply regurgitated previously required knowledge.

I don’t know. My wife’s book club met last night. Their book in discussion was ‘Ordinary Grace’. As always, they investigated the author, William Kent Krueger. They’d discovered some good interviews with him that she shared with me, where he discussed his frustrations with writing novels and trying to become published. I mentioned that’s what writers, including me, are always seeking, that perfect strange brew where the good taste that we’ve acquired through reading is blended with the good taste we infuse in our writing, but also with the good taste that civilization displays by finding and reading our work. It’s a very, very strange brew, and none of us are sure of the exact ingredients.

But my wife closed, “Well, you can’t stop writing. Writing is part of the Perfect M. Writing is your drug, and it keeps you balanced.”

M is my private nickname, BTW, to clarify. I began using that initial to sign things like a zillion plus years ago and she adopted it as her term for me. But she’s right. I write because I need to write. Everything else is just the strange brew of being.

And now, since it’s the song that I sang to myself while walking down to write, here’s another shot at today’s theme song: ‘Strange Brew’, by Cream, 1967.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3cELfFjXvY

 

 

 

 

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