Tag: writing

Sunday’s Theme Music

Sorry, but it’s sort of a quasi-politically inspired song again. (Wow, such a wishy-washy caveat and apology.) There’s also a writing angle.

Thinking about not just Trump but about life in general summoned John Mellencamp’s 1987 song, “Paper in Fire” to mind. I was thinking about aspirations and permanency and how often what people do amount to nothing or disappear like…well, like paper in fire.

And the days of vanity
Went on forever
And he saw his days burn up
Like paper in fire

Trump comes into this because of the vanity angle. He couldn’t govern and lead by getting legislation probably passed and put into place as law. Part of this was that he didn’t want to share glory. He wanted to be the one who was seen to originate the idea, to demonstrate his smarts. As he couldn’t, he instead used executive orders or chose not to enforce laws. Many of the executive orders meant almost nothing except to signal his desire, but others of them actively circumvented due process.

Much of what Trump seemed to be to appeal to his base. He loved their adoration. His actions and words were a reflection of that vanity.

Of course, Joe Biden intends to countermand Trump with more executive orders. This ends up in a cycle that creates a stronger executive branch to the detriment of the other branches, breaking the system of checks and balances. It becomes more dysfunctional and less stable and sustainable.

Of course, part of all this is the existential logjam that’s taking place in Congress. Democrats in the House pass bills, with partisan votes, but Republican McConnell in the Senate won’t bring them forward for action.

Beyond that, many of our individual dreams are like paper in fire. We diligently pursue them but they often come to little or no fruition, disappearing after we stop like paper in fire.

Sounds like it might be unhappy thinking. It’s not. We had our first snow dust this morning. Peering out at the cold scene with coffee in hand prompted reflection. Besides Trump and the US government, I also considered my characters and their motivations and dreams. They’re mostly in survivor or service roles even as unusual and unique issues impact them. In many ways, while they affect what happens in their world, their names will disappear like paper in fire.

So, there it is. Good rock tune with an Appalachian musical vibe. Hope you enjoy it and that you’re having a good one. Wear a mask, please. Cheers

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Wednesday’s Whickering

  1. Writing was so intense today. Been seeing this rainstorm for this shithole where my characters arrived. It’s a bleak, rocky place, no green, no insects or birds. There are dogs and people (and rats). I wrote the scene today, shivering behind my laptop as I imagined the cold, hard rain slamming my people. Had to pause and pace, and get more coffee to warm myself several times.
  2. Love that intensity when it happens, but it’s also a distraction. Too much writing energy builds up. Fingers and mind can’t keep up with the story-telling stream gushing out. My abs get knotted and my arms tremble. Nobody ever mentioned this at the writing conferences.
  3. Wife made this wonderful pumpkin doughnut muffins yesterday. Rolled in sugar and cinnamon, they’re like doughnut holes. Man, those things are mega excellent. Each time I go for coffee, I want to eat another.
  4. When I pause in my writing, I spy on my neighbors. They’re up to something next door. Don’t know what. He’s like that, though, quiet, rarely seen for several months, then, boom, the sudden center of crazy, with cars and peeps arriving, and things being carried back and forth, and slamming and thumping noises. He’s a nice guy but when I hear this things, my mind paints him as someone nefarious doing some devious misdeeds. Being a nice guy is always a good cover for being an evil genius.
  5. The cats and I took well to the hour fall back. I much prefer it to the spring-ahead hour change. Really rather do without either, though.
  6. Watching The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix. Really well done. The young lead actor, Anya Taylor Joy does an excellent job, but all are well-cast, and the production values are super. I’d not been aware of the novel. It came out in 1983, I read. After seeing the television show, I want to find the book and read it. It’s at my library, so I put it on my shelf. Didn’t want a hold. I’m already way behind my reading.
  7. Being behind on my reading is a constant thing. Reading stirs my writing. I enter this cycle of reading two paragraphs, write two sentences. Writing progress is made because this is in addition to my devoted writing period. Reading gets serious hampered. I’m eventually forced to focus on the reading and push to finish the book, which is a damn strange way to entertain myself, innit?
  8. I cut my hair yesterday. It’s the second pandemic cut that I’ve given myself. I think it looks good. Of course, I can’t see the back. I did what I could through feel. My wife is reluctant to cut it. I don’t know why. I have guesses but I’ll keep those shelved.
  9. Okay, got more coffee. (The pumpkin doughnut muffins were avoided.) Time to resume writing like crazy, at least one more time.
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A Hectoring Boss Dream

General background for this dream didn’t particularly coalesce. I was somewhere with others, inside a building, busy on a project. It seemed to be about indexing things, but I’m not sure.

This man (vague and indescript in the dream, except he was white), came along and demand to know what I was doing. Without allowing time for me to answer, he told me to get busy, then told me he wanted me to write an ad for him. Annoyed, I attempted protesting and explaining that I was working on something, but he was pushy as hell. He was also the boss and very successful, so I allowed latitude for that.

Settling down, I started to work on the ad for him. For this purpose, I picked up a pad and started writing in red ink.

Red ink wouldn’t do. He shouted at me, “Who told you to use red ink?”

Pissed, I replied, “No one specified any ink, and you didn’t say not to use red. What color will work, then? Blue? Black? Purple?”

He shoved a narrow notepad at me and a black pen. “Use this.”

I moved away from him to find a new place to write, settling on my knees at a low table, but he followed, trying to peer over my shoulder and see what I wrote. The pad he’d given me was full of writing. The pages were lined and everything was handwritten. I flipped through pages, looking for white space, while complaining to him that he’d given me a full tablet.

I finally found clean pages and started writing, but he hectored me. “What are you doing? What are you writing?”

I began explaining, “I’m writing an ad for you,” but he interrupted. “I want you to write me an ad for a person who needs help for a four-year-old.”

“What kind of help?”

“Doesn’t matter. Just get their attention.”

I kept starting to write, then he’d interrupt me. I’d move, find another page to write on, and begin again, and he’d interrupt me. I don’t know how many times it happened but I reached the point where I was ready to tell him, “Fuck off,” and leave it all behind.

But the dream ended. He was such an annoying asshole.

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This Sunday

Sunday morning started with the usual Sunday morning white man with cat issues, which is replying to the demand, “Feed me, feed me, feed me, and get these other cats away from me,” in surround sound because I have three of them. They didn’t care that we’d fallen back an hour, clock-wise, here in ‘Merica. Their clocks weren’t affected.

Eventually, the beasts were fed, watered, and released back to the backyard wilds, freeing me to be me. I slid to the computer. That’s when the morning took an oomph turn. My mighty HP laptop wasn’t connecting to the net. Everything else in the household was connected; why was I selected for this cruel honor.

Something about the machine was off. Memories of being a younger person and working on my cars were awakened. I started car life with a 1965 Mercury Comet sedan. Forest green and automatic, a lively 289 V-8 was under the hood, as we said in those days. It was a stoutmobile. She’d run.

She was like my first girlfriend. I learned to do things, and did the standard stuff, from gapping and replacing plug and points (and all the wires) to brakes, muffler, and shocks, and all the fluids and fuses in between.

I think, because of that car, I’ve always since tried to fix things myself. Tried is a key verb in that sentence. (Is it a verb? I don’t know. I used to know these things.)

Details of what I did and the results will be avoided. No need to restore my stress levels by recalling those excoriating details. I worked on the computer for hours, returning it to connectivity. Doing so demanded a need to run recovery, a Microsoft Windows 10 process that’s not as nice as it sounds. Lots of personal files were removed (yeah, they said that wouldn’t happen, and they were wrong), along with apps and programs that I’d installed.

I had back ups of files, and MS does have some file recovery stuff. Eventually, though, I had almost everything. For some reason, I lacked the bible for the latest novel in progress. Don’t know what happened to that doc.

Reading old files slowed the process. Oh, there was The Soul Stone written years ago, never submitted nowhere. I read and enjoyed its first pages, along with Spider City, Everything Not Known, Everything in Black and White, and some stranger works, and the first draft of the self-published words, like the Lessons with Savanna series and Returnee. All still there, waiting for me to turn my attention back to them and do something more with them.

Not on this Sunday, though.

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Monday Miscellany

  1. Dreamed that I was concerned about a young cat. Young, I was busy working somewhere. Constantly watching over it, I kept worrying about it having food, enough to eat, and being safe. In an odd moment in the dream, as I turned to go down a hallway and check on the cat, I thought, the cat is me. Strange dream moment. The entire dream had a quality of peeking into a different version of my existence.
  2. In the same dream, interspersed with my concerns about the cat, my cousin, Rick was planning to take me to meet his son, Danny. Like a recurring gag, Rick would appear and ask me when I was ready to go. I’d be blank: “Go where?” Then I would remember, “Oh, that’s right, to go meet…” Then I’d blank on the name and he would supply, “Danny.” Once best friends, I haven’t seen this cousin in over twenty years. We drifted into different directions, as they say. He had a son who I’ve never seen. I don’t recall the son’s name. He divorced that young woman within months of her giving birth to his son. I don’t know what all this means.
  3. An Uber self-driving car has killed someone. Uber isn’t being charged. Thinking, shades of Isaac Asimov, I conjured a story where a person is set up to be killed by a self-driving car.
  4. My wife was reading about “Death Wish” coffee. She thinks it might be a coffee that speaks to me. She reading aloud some hilarious Amazon reviews. “I bought this to keep me alert and focused at work. By my second cup I no longer needed a keyboard or mouse, as I was able to control my computer directly by thought. By the third cup I could hear colors and smell sounds. After my fourth cup, I decided to burn off some of the excess energy with a quick jog, and ended up finishing the Kessel Run in 11 parsecs flat!” Another: “Dear Death Wish, I just tried your coffee after receiving it the other day. I always start my day with about 4 cups so I thought, “Eh, why not”. After about the 3d cup I decided to start that kitchen demolition I had been wanting to do. But I forgot to turn off the water beforehand. Then I thought, “Eh, I always wanted an indoor pool”. Then I thought I should cut a hole in the roof to accommodate a skylight for the pool. Everything is going to plan but I need more coffee now. I need to start on installing the diving board.”
  5. Some serious crazy is seeping out of the GOP. Renea Turner calls herself “Trump in a skirt”. (I wonder if she grabs men by their peckers?) A woman who ran as a write-in candidate against Ohio Governor Mike DeWine in 2018, she declared herself governor of the state because she’s decided that DeWine overstepped his legal authority. She’s been implicated in a plot to kidnap and prosecute Gov. DeWine. This is at least the second such plot against a governor revealed in the last thirty days.
  6. We heard about twenty-three year-old Ryquell Armstead this weekend. Who is he? A professional running back with the Jacksonville Jaguars, he’s been out with COVID-19 the entire season. Quoting ESPN.com, “Armstead has been hospitalized twice and has suffered from a variety of complications connected to the virus, including significant respiratory issues, and has been hit harder than some expected.” That’s the issue with COVID-19: you don’t know how it will affect you. He is Black, and we know that Blacks are more susceptible, but he’s also young, and a trained athlete. It’s scary what the virus can do. He’s expected to recover and play next but the obvious caveat is that he was never expected to be out this long and have the complications that he’s experienced. As former New Jersey governor Chris Christie discovered, having COVID-19 can be a painful and exhausting experience, even if you survive. He, who did not wear masks all the times, is now a convert and urges, “Wear a mask.” I agree.
  7. My fiction writing continues to come along but it’s fitful process. As noted before, I miss the structure I created with my routines. I also miss the solitude said routines created, along with the stimulation caused by casual contacts. But I persevere because I’m stupid that way, and the tale that I’m discovering continues to entertain me. Time passes so swiftly each day, though. I find myself wondering what happened to the hours. Got my coffee, though, so it’s time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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