What is it I want to write about? Is there anything I truly want to write about? I figure if I type it would be easier to figure out what I wanted to do. What do you think is currently wrong with you? What is wrong with me? That's a bad place to start. I guess what's wrong with my current lifestyle is probably a better place to start than what is wrong with me. We can write books on that. Okay. Here's what my current life looks like:
First, I work. There is nothing wrong with that. I enjoy the job. It's challenging, I see lots of room for growth and improvement--we can get into that another time--and it pays my bills. That is of course what work is supposed to do. Now, what is wrong with my life? I guess I'm a social incompetent. Although, 'incompetent' is probably not the right word. I am thinking more along the lines of loser. There's a nice 80's word for you: Loser. Explain why you're a loser. Again, you're asking me to espouse on too broad of a topic. I thought we were talking lifestyle only. Okay, now tell me about the rest of your lifestyle. You got through your job. What else is there?
I think that's one of the biggest problems. There is nothing more out there besides my job. I watch a lot of television. Probably at least 10 hours a week. Is that all? That's a good question. I think I'm a little scared to actually figure out the exact amount of time that I spend watching television. What else is there? I play video games. I'm currently stuck on Dark Age of Camelot, a MMORPG. I won't even go into describing it, but I've spent too many hours to count. More hours than I watch television, even. What else is there in your life'
Then there are my relationships. I have a few friends that I speak with. I have a collection of male friends: Shannon, Steven, Will, Scott, Chris, etc., and a pair of female friends: Jean and Nicole. There won't be a relationship there, but I like talking with them. It makes me feel like I'm capable of having a relationship (even if I'm really not--or so I keep telling myself in my depressed state).
Is that your entire life? As far as I can think, yes. I need to change something. Oh, and I go to a Jewish bible studies class for singles once a week. I had hoped to meet someone or at least have interesting conversations there, but I've mostly failed on both parts. The conversations are not all that interesting, and I have to occasionally force an argument just to amuse me (or feed my ego, which is the more likely story). As for meeting women, I think I almost met a nice Argentinean woman there. She's not from Argentina, but lives there currently. She was quite friendly, until I got her lost on the way home. It figures.
So where does that leave us? That's my life above. More or less compete. Of course, there's also my family back in the New York area. I love them very much, but while they're of course part of my life, it's a different part than I'm talking about here.
I was just distracted. I get that way a lot. I guess it's my short attention span, or maybe it's my 'boredom' syndrome. They say smart people are bored a lot. I don't think that's true. I think boredom is a sign of a short attention span. If you can concentrate on one thing and do it well, you wouldn't be that bored.
Is writing something you want to concentrate on? Why do you want to write? I guess ego is definitely part of it. I like feeding my ego. Is that all? No. I also like feeling, and writing, I think, might help me feel. What else? Also, writing might be like programming. Something I can lose myself in. When writing a story, I want to get involved. I want to escape, to be there, but at the same time, create something new. I get that now with video games. I get to escape the real world, live in a different, computerized world and figure out what makes it tick. That's what's interesting about those MMORPG I didn't talk about before. It's figuring out what makes those worlds work. I enjoy figuring out the formulas behind the fighting. How the group dynamics work. Not to mention, going back to the first point, the ego part. When I build my character up through the levels, I can look down on the lower level characters. That's not the real reason. I don't exactly look down at them, but I do feel a sense of accomplishment. It's of course fake, but, then again, what isn't a fake sense of accomplishment in this weird-weird world?
I left off the gym and basketball on things that I do above. That and reading and now hopefully writing as well. I guess those are things I have to start getting back into, all of them.
What are you proposing? I propose to write. Write like I like to write and not how I expect to do well as a writer. Don't worry about the fame and fortune. It's not going to come to you through writing. You have a career, and you're good at it. Let's concentrate on writing for you; to make you a better person. That's what it's all about. That's why we're here, to learn to be a better person. Now is your chance to learn. You can start here. It is so.
Strange dream. I was representing a woman client for what seemed the first case of my career in NYC—a friend or perhaps another law student. There was a basketball game going on that I was throwing penalty flags for (but I kept coming in and then leaving). The game—which was really football—turned on a bad call by one of the referees who wrote an article about the call.
I went with a group of friends to play outdoor basketball late at night in a park somewhere. I got there by train. I was then watching TV with people and a guy that looked like Tito from law school wanted me to be on his basketball team, but not tell anyone about it. I then was back in the outdoor court.
The first few courts started getting full as we arrived. We finally found a half court that wasn’t full. The court was full of puddles. I was shooting around and some kid started playing tight defense on me. I said, ‘what the fuck,’ and insulted him until he left. I then caught up to him and apologized. Then my alarm went off.
There were a whole bunch of girls during the dream that knew me. They kept asking, ‘what was I doing?’ I told some of them I was working as a lawyer. We went to a professor’s clinic to review the contract I had reviewed for that girl. The professor found all sorts of sneaky clauses that I had OK’d. I then went back and me and some people found some exceptionally sneaky parts. That was a strange dream.
I’m flying somewhere between Houston and Orange County on my way to visit Julie for her birthday. I’ve spent the last half-hour reading through old journal entries. You know what I discovered? I have a sick fascination with my own laziness. I spent pages and pages dwelling on my non-activity. I'd like to say to a narcissistic degree, but I’m not sure that’s true.
A lot has happened over the last year. I’ve successfully had a girlfriend. I’ve also written a pretty solid (for a first effort) short story. I’ve come to some terms with my personality and ego-defects—although we’re still in negotiations. I’m going to try to get back to my morning musings. Not that much good has come from it (as you can no doubt tell if you even glance through the previous pages). The only good—and it’s a big one—is that it forces me to rite. That’s something I’ve not done much lately.
Airplane to Newport Beach, CA | 2003.06.06 | Diary
What a day. Doug was finally terminated this morning. I’m not terribly surprised, but management could have done a better job of it. No matter. I’m of mixed feelings here. On the one hand, I respect Doug. He’s a great intellect; a brilliant attorney; and a fun person to work with. On the other hand (and this hand is huge and part of the reason he was finally let go), he’s aggressive and stubborn to the point of stupidity. He could have pulled back at any moment and taken a less aggressive approach. But that’s not him. He pushes and pushes, sometimes just to see its effect on other people, and when the shit finally hit the fan (to use a cliché), he had too few friends and too many well-connected haters. It’s a shame. He did the company well during his time here, even if he spent most of his time fucking around (at least in WesternGeco; during his previous five years he worked his ass off. How quickly they forget).
So where does that leave me? They offered me Doug’s job (at least a semblance of it). The catch: I need to move to Oslo to take the job. I’m not against the move, but it worries me. It worries me more than I’ll probably admit. But I don’t want to go through those reasons right now. I want to relax. Smile. And have a wonderful weekend with Julie. I’ll sit back and wrute something less controversial. Something relaxing that’ll help me prepare for a fun weekend. Fun. And relaxing.
Of course, I had another thought today. What if I give up on this whole corporate job and instead take a law firm job prosecuting patents from 9 to 5. I’d take a cut in prestige, but I would make more money and I could live where I wanted. The question is: which is more important for you and more importantly, why. I’d like to move to CA, but I’d also like to return to NYC. I’m not even sure how to weigh the pros and cons here. It’s only my future I’m thinking about. I’m also pushing thirty. I’m not sure how that plays into the equation. I don’t know which is more important to me at this stage in my life. It’s confusing to say the least. And there’s also this pretend writing that you’ve been trying to accomplish. How do you think that’s going to go? Are you even spending enough time with it. As Nicole would say, these are all good questions.
The way I see it, you’re going to have to come up with some answers soon. You’re going to have to weigh everything and make up your mind and go with it. I’m leaning toward Oslo, as I stated before. The power is what is driving me on. My job would be more interesting with that power. It would keep me busy and perhaps happy. New experiences, such as those found by living in a foreign country, can only help me grow as a person. My real concerns: darkness and depression—this is a serious concern for me. Tied closely in with that is the friends and families (and I’m not talking about the long distance plans). As I’ve showed adequately by my brief stay in Houston, I’ve not made much in the way of friends here. I don’t know if that’s going to change when (and if!) I move to Oslo, but if it does, it’s going to be very lonely. Before Julie, Houston was approaching unbearable. What would Norway be? Of course, I also don’t want to be scared of trying new things. I want to grow as a person and experience different things. I don’t want to look back and as a lot of what-ifs. Those are questions I would not be able to handle.
Damn, airplanes are scaring me again. I hate when I go through these types of periods. I think the rough turbulence on my way here put that idea into my head. Now it sits there, fermenting, and waiting for a strange movement or sound to raise the bile in my throat. Joy.
Money is also playing a role. I stress about it, but I like having money. Erik’s house is nice. That’s the type of purchase I think I would enjoy at some point in my life. I was thinking my first house would be an apartment in NYC. I’m not so sure anymore. I wish I had someone to talk about with these things. I guess Shannon would be the best person to talk to. He has no ulterior motives, unlike my mother or sisters.
This has been an interesting few weeks. Together with the Oslo job offer, I’ve been reconsidering my life. Today is Yom Kippur, and I’ve taken the day off to do additional contemplation. I have a few choices in front of me, and I’m trying to determine what, if anything, I should be doing with my life to make myself happier.
As a side note, should happiness be the measure you use to make your decision? As you’ve read in a few articles happiness is not a good measurement because it is a terribly relevant calculation. There is no empirical happiness. Something may make you happier for a short time and then fall into background noise. You have to be careful. This is generalized by the cliché, “The grass is always greener in the neighbor’s yard.” In your calculations, you need to keep this in mind. The right answer doesn’t, perhaps, maximize happiness. It maximizes purpose. The goal being, when you look back, you’ll feel like you’ve accomplished something that is important to you. That reflection would increase happiness regardless of how you feel about what it is you’re actually doing. Or something like that.
That was a bit off topic. So will this be: I’ve given up computer games thanks to a rather insightful discussion I had a while ago with my yellow pad about its meaning to me. I’ve done it before, but I think it’s time to do it again: this time, I need to give up television. I pretend like I learn a lot from television, but for the most part, I don’t. You can apply this to everything you do, even reading. Let’s focus on a comparison between reading and television watching. Out of the two, the NY Times magazine articles clearly teach me more about the world than any show on television. The same can be said about Scientific America versus the Discovery channel. Perhaps the only channel that I receive benefit from is FoodTV when it comes to learning. When it comes to entertainment, there’s certainly a difference. Television (and to a lesser extent) literature can move me—make me feel emotions, which I like. And both can certainly pass the time. As I learned by trying to listen to music, passing time is not the same as enjoying time.
So what is it that television is giving you besides killing time? Not much. Even the entertainment shows equate to killing time. The numbers of discussions about television I have with other people are not substantial. I have interesting conversations with Eileen about them, but I can find other things to discuss with her besides television. The only thing keeping from the ultimate decision is figuring out what I’m going to do with the rest of my free time. That was my problem yesterday night. I was sitting around trying to determine what I can do besides watch television. And, not surprisingly, I found nothing to do. I ended up at the same place: having nothing to do so I turned on the television. That’s what I’m trying (unsuccessfully) to avoid.
So boredom, or ennui to use a GRE word, is what’s keeping me scotch taped to the tube. I could think and write instead of watch television. What would I write or think about? Great question. It’s a habit you should get into. Or you can even work instead of watch television. Television is the same as music and video games: you use it to kill time. But time is too precious to kill. It’s not something you be wasting. Every second should be valuable. I’m not sure what it should be valuable for, but it seems important. You should be either increasing your knowledge or generating a product during your time. What about entertainment? That entertains you. A product might be improving yourself, e.g., going to the gym. So where does that leave you with television? What about movies and sports? Neither is useful.
I should be reading and recording my thoughts. I can use TheBrain or StickyBrain. I should be reading and recording my thoughts, becoming a better person. For what purpose is this? Entertainment purpose. This is what you enjoy. You enjoy doing things, not just sitting around. You enjoy using your brain. These are all things you can use your brain for. What about staring into space and sleeping? No reason to deny you those pleasures. It’s a good time for your brain to come up with new ideas. You should have lots of books open in front of you to different areas. You should be taking in new knowledge, increasing your store. This will give you something to do besides watch television. You will actually be doing things.
What about school? What are your feelings on school? Besides becoming a more “cultured” person, don’t you also want to actually meet new people? I ran into Tamer in Starbucks while writing this, and he told me a story of picking up girls in NYC. How many girls have you picked up there? I think one, and I did a shitty job of it. She was all over me on the train coming from upstate to the city, and what did you do? Nothing. Bullshit, crap, loser type of things. You are rather pathetic. Okay, let’s get back to reality. You can type and learn and read. What are you interested in? History? You have that big history book at home. Take it out and start working it. Why do you waste your time doing anything but what interests you? It’s really sad.
Going back to school: is that what you really want to do? I want to be more cultured. I want time to think about what it is I want to do. What better time than in school? I’m not going to have the time while working in law. Why not? Don’t you have the time now? Yes, I guess I do. But I also want to be immersed in the environment. I want to have nothing but learning and thinking. I want to think and think. What about spirituality? Sure! Why not? You’re not going to limit yourself to just what you’re studying. You have access (or will have access) to a great library. Why not take advantage of this? Write! Keep your thoughts organized. You will fall upon what you love. How can you not? It’s just not possible in the grand scheme of things.
Going to computer science is an interesting approach. But you are more of a Renaissance person (yeah right!). You should take advantage of that. You should expand your horizons, learn about lots of things. Keep track of what’s going on in the world and what has happened before. Imagine doing this every day for the rest of your life. You’d never be bored. You’d work out a system of recording knowledge and new knowledge. It’s not about the characterizing (which is something you love)—if you get stuck just doing that, then bad things will happen. You will find yourself endlessly reorganizing your old thoughts, or even worse, other people’s thoughts, but never coming up with new thoughts. That you should not do. You should keep thinking of both old and new things. If you limit yourself, you won’t be happy. Think of how happy this will make you. Why not do this? Religion? Absolutely. You’ll read books on that. And you’ll take detailed notes of topics that interest you. And besides the notes, you’ll also take notes on your thoughts. That’s where this is interesting. You want those two things to be the same. Your thoughts and others.
How are you going to do this? You’re not going to watch television. Only important news events will entertain you. Or if you’re with someone, then you can watch television. What about your taped show? Wasteful. Even Ruroni Kenshin? Even that. You know what’s going to happen. You can wait for the movie version of it.
What are you waiting for? Why not get started? I have a history book that will start. I will not watch television. I will reread some religious books, and I’m going to order some computer science books. I’m also going to finish studying for the GRE. And all will be good.
This is good stuff.
Man, I can’t wait until I can get started on this. You notice how much shorter this is than your other paragraphs. It sounds like you know what’s going on here. The question is whether you will be able to actually follow through with this plan.
Another interesting aside: I watched too many hours of Cribs, the MTV show that portrayed how “rich” people live. And, to the person, everyone had the same cars, the same interior decorations and the same toys.
Just some random thoughts I had as I was walking to my car after another terribly depressing afternoon of work. I need to chose one thing to be good at. My Jack of Many Trades is not working that well. If I want to be a phenomenal programmer, so be it. If I want to write, then write. If I want to start a business relating to computers, then you know the path to that. If I want to practice law, then practice law. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m a lazy man. I need to get over this laziness and choose something.
While I bitch and complain that I’ve not chosen anything, the truth is, I’ve not wanted to choose anything. I’ve taken the easy paths. It’s time for me to make a decision. To say: this is what I want to do, and I’m going to do it. And then follow through. Not program for a couple of days, and then get bored of it and stop. Or be dedicated to my law job, only to follow that with an afternoon of reading internet sites.
When I write, I need to plan more. I’m not good at sitting in front of a computer and imaging things. If I need to plan it out with someone else, then do that. But stop pretending to write on inspiriation, and then find that besides the inspiration, there’s nothing there. If I want to program, then I need to aspire to greater things (my biggest problem with programming). As for law, I’m not sure I could ever find the proper enthusiasm for that.
Lots of options. It’s time I stepped up and made a decision and actually followed through and did the work necessary to actually implement that decision.
That’s all I was thinking about (besides punching walls). This is Mork. Over and out.
And here I sit somewhere that isn’t work. And I’m happier for it. I was (am) terribly depressed today. I don’t know why. Not much different happened today, but just the thought of working or doing anything besides moping, is painful to contemplate. I can’t explain it, so I won’t even try. I just don’t want to do anything, especially anything that relates to work or school. What the fuck is wrong with me?
There’s a bible study going on next to me. Three black men, of varying age, with bibles out. I think it’s a good thing. It gives people something to talk about, some way to get into a discussion of ethics. Religion, in that way, is a positive force. It helps people relate to one another and discuss important aspects of their life.
My server is back up and running. I miss the problems and work it caused, but, like most projects, I’m happy it’s over. It’s probably because of the project, at least partly, that I am depressed. I don’t like things ending—well, I like the work ending. I like having things that occupy my mind, that give challenge me. Computer administration, for all its tedium and annoyances, at least promises a “reward” at the end. I’m not terribly interested in the reward, but the process and the striving toward the reward make it worthwhile.
Flaming red sippy cups pushing against the table and earth, pouring.
Maybe the huge dosage of caffeine yesterday before the gym has something to do with this terrible funk. I don’t really want to talk about it. I just wanted to mention it as an explanation for my…absence.
It's my birthday, and I'll cry if I want to, cry if I want to, cry if I want to. You would cry to if it happened to you. Okay, so there's nor eason to be crying today (besides that I'm turning 30--igh). That annoying song was just going through my head all day. It's now Sunday morning, the morning of my 30th birthday. Julie came to NYC with me, and we're staying in my mother's house for the holidays (and my birthday). Did I also mention that today was my birthday? And I have a pile of presents waiting for me?
So far, Julie's meeting my family has gone well. She's a little sick, which I'm sure is making her a lot more self-conscious than she would normally (or like to) be. But she's doing great with my mother. This should be a good day, barring any unexpected happenings.
I've been thinking about what I should post in my musings section. Obviously, I'll post extraneous thoughts that I come up with. But I was thinking more particularly if I should be writing my daily happenings, for example, should I discuss my week with Julie in NYC, my visits with my family, my hotel stay? Or should I leave those for asides, like found in my e-mails and letters, and instead concentrate on my thoughts and sharing my latest (or old and repetitive) theories on the world. (Julie has pointed out that I start many of these musings with either thoughts on writing or with complaints that I have nothing to write. This sounds awfully familiar in this case.)
I've come to realize that my life is not too exciting. A famous person (who I've since rediscovered as Benjamin Franklin), once said that you can either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about. Since I admit that I don't do very much that's worth writing about, for now, I will (try to) write something worth reading.
I finished my Grelko Story in the airport. I'm not terribly proud of it, but I'm going to leave it alone. I don't think it's going to benefit much from continued prodding. I'll instead move onto a new story, perhaps continuing my monsters story, or starting something completely different. I've spent too much time on what started as a writing exercise (when I first started writing short stories, my intention was to write--I forget exactly how many--a bunch, and try a different technique in each story). This will all be done while continuing to work on this site. I've got the basics down, but after long discussions with Chuck about his site, I have new ideas about improving this, and a new desire to fix the photographs section (even though it's going to take a ton of work and a ton of editing with Photoshop, something, I will admit, I am not looking forward to.
Breaking with my decision not to report on the uninteresting moments in my life (i.e., most of my life), I'm currently on my way to Dallas (through Houston) to spend the remainder of the week with Julie's family. I've enjoyed this past week more than I've ever enjoyed a birthday week (even though it is my thirtieth, a horrible birthday to contemplate), probably--or, more accurately, definitely--because of Julie. I won't get into what she means to me now (since it's something I'm not too comfortable discussing). On my way to NYC, I started drafting a poem I wanted to give her with her holiday gifts (gifts which are embarrassing cheap compared to what she presented me). I've decided to post the poem, even though I never gave it to her (in a way, posting it here is a cowards way of giving it to her). I don't think it's very good, and it doesn't even get close to expressing what I feel, or what I've been thinking, but I'll post it nonetheless with the usual warnings about me being a bad poet, etcetera.
Other than that, I have no new theories to share. I guess I'm not very good at following through with my plans, but that, I think, will take time. I'll post my vacation pictures when I get home. I'll also post my family pictures then, although I will slowly (but surely) be redoing how the photos work and how they're organized (always remembering that while presentation is important, it's the content that most people care about).
I bet you thought you’d escape without seeing something from me before the end of the year. You were wrong. Here it is. It’s now 10:34pm, and unless I get another phone call (I just got off the phone with my mother, who’s in Buffalo babysitting Orli), I’m going to tie some words together and see where it drags me.
I’m not much of a year-in-review type of guy. This has been an overall interesting year (I’ll let you define interesting). I’ve learned many things, fallen in love with a great girl, and changed a bit of what I am, making me a little happier in the process. But since it’s New Years time, and I don’t think I can continue with my resolution to stop eating beef (what was I thinking? I had a Quiznos sub for lunch, the meateater to be exact, and as I was eating I was thinking, ‘what the fuck was tunneling through my brain that made me think it was time to give up my favorite meats?’), I have to come up with some sort of resolution. I usually don’t do resolutions, at least not at New Years. I usually make life changes after my stew of worries and theories coalesce into an overwhelming brew that forces me to take some action (these are internal actions--regrettably, I’m not much of a political or take action to better society-type of person. That’s how I stopped eating veal, stopped playing video games, stopped eating at fast food restaurants, and stopped watching television (do you see a trend here?).
But I figured this New Years would be different. Now Julie (the aforementioned girl) has commented that my musings have tended to sound consternated (I too think of constipated when I hear that word). She’s right. I have been complaining and clearing my throat a tremendous amount in my writings, especially on the subject of writing. You have to remember, I’m excellent at complaining (and modest too). I practice often, and just like a comedian, I hone my act until the complaints flow nicely with the right twist of quirkiness.
Although I won’t give up complaining (I don’t think I could exist without it), I think the consternation about writing is getting old. How many times can I truly write about how much trouble I’m having writing? How painful it is? How much of a loser I am for not being able to do it? How if only I could sit down and write a story, my life would be different, and better, and there would be peace in the worlds, dogs would fuck cats, kangaroos would live without fear of those nasty koala bears, and all wars would cease to exist, because madmen would all be struck dead with a miraculous (and godsend) disease that only affects those that are insane and have an inkling for world domination.
From now on, if I have nothing to say, then I’ll say nothing, or I’ll revamp my pitiful existence or my unexciting day. I won’t endlessly discuss how difficult writing is. (It is, but the only way you’ll actually believe me is to sit down and try it. No use wasting my breath here.) I’m going to talk about all the terribly uninteresting things that happen to me. I’m sure you’re all excited to hear that I went to Burger King for dinner tonight. It was the first time I went to a fast-food restaurant in a very long time.
You see, in my mind (yes, yes, I know that everything I’m writing here comes from my mind; that’s obvious. And, yes, it would be better if I just cut out those three words instead of writing a ten line aside about how that is just stylistically awful. But I won’t), take-out should be divided into a three different groups: first, you have your fast food restaurants, e.g., McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy’s, Taco Bells, all the horrible places that I’ve foresworn. I must admit that I sometimes have wet dreams (okay, they’re not exactly wet dreams, because (a), I’m not sleeping at the time, and (b) I don’t wet myself, in either the piss-way, or the other more gross-don’t-talk-about-but-boy-does-it-feel-good-way. For me and many of my friends (stop laughing, they do exist, sort of, and not in my mind--well, not all in my mind), Wendy’s has the best hamburgers--there’s just something about all the grease they put on their food that is just downright, how does one say it, decadently delicious. Especially with a hangover, there’s nothing like a Wendy’s triple cheeseburger for coating a tender stomach the morning after a wee-bit too much to drink. Let me move on before my will power completely breaks and I head out the door. Wendy’s is open late, 2 a.m., I believe. Probably even on New Year’s eve.
Getting back to the quick foods, the second type is your sandwich shop. These are your Quiznos, Subways, and lesser known ones like Schlosky’s. I still frequent these places often, mostly because they’re healthier than fast food, just as quick, and I don’t leave feeling bloated and sick (usually--there have been way too many post-Taco Bell pukings for me to ever feel comfortable in that place again).
After those two categories of quick foods, there’s only a third, smaller category left: family style take-out. The most famous is my post-gym hangout (known as PG to those in the know), Boston Market, which for $7.04 gets me a half chicken with two sides. It’s conveniently located right outside my 24-hour fitness, so, no mess, no fuss. There’s also, conveniently located, an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet next to the gym, and when I say next, I mean it’s in the same driveway as the gym. The main driveway that leads to the gym (which, since this is Houston, is obviously in a strip-mall, in this case, the back of one, or at least the side, since it’s all the way down the driveway off the main road) passes right by the Chinese buffet. Usually, there are cars parked along the driveway, since they run out of spots in the Chinese buffet parking lot. Just so you know, there are plenty of spots in the gym parking lot. Besides Boston Market, there aren’t many stores that fall into this category. I don’t actually know of any others, but I like to think there are others that meet this criteria.
As I sit here, I’m trying to figure out where pizza falls in my three categories (that’s what you get for locking yourself into a number of categories, instead of leaving it open-ended, or at least editable--but just to show that I am fallible (yes, I know it’s hard to believe), I won’t change it. Instead, I’ll just put pizza into, let’s say, the first category. I haven’t foresworn it, though. Being from Brooklyn, it’s a criminal offense to not eat pizza (I can’t make these things up! Okay, I can and do, but that’s not the point).
That’s pretty much it. You have to search hard to find something that doesn’t fall into one of those three categories (the pizza example notwithstanding).
What does any of this drivel have to do with anything? Again, it has nothing to do with anything. It’s just the empty air swooshing around in my hollow head. These things I think about and these things you’re going to have to read about, since I’ve given up consternating about writing (at least 69 minutes from now—actually, it’s more like 36 minutes with all this editing I’m doing--shhh).
I just finished watching Chasing Amy, another excellent film by Kevin Smith. His stories are very real feeling, even if the acting always seems amateurish (it might be because of his direction). The movie was about three characters: the main character, a comic book artist, a woman he falls in love with, who happens to be a lesbian comic book artist with a dirty, dirty past, and the main character’s roommate, another comic book artist who’s trying to protect the main character from getting hurt. There’s a lot more to this story, but I don’t want to ruin it. The story is simple, but the dialog and the asides (stupid but simple asides) make it fun to watch. Kevin Smith also doesn’t torture the audience. There was a scene where it would have been very easy (and cheap) for the main character to think the lesbian was gesturing for him to join her on stage. She was instead motioning her former lesbian lover. A lesser director (and writer) would have stretched that misunderstanding and tortured the audience. I hate that. Kevin Smith played it short; he made it obvious and then moved on. That’s how it’s supposed to be done. There’s no need for a Three’s Company moment (boy do I hate those!).
I’m really looking forward to starting this next story. It’s going to focus on characters, more specifically an outrageous character, with an identifiable, defining characteristic. Something that’ll make him stick out. (I think I’ve said this already.)
Speaking of stories, I’m going to watch another movie now. They inspire me to write drivel, and inspiration is always good. As soon as I get over this damn cough and cold, I’ll be a much happier camper. My web site has come a long way in three weeks. I’m rather proud of it now. Just a few more pictures to post, and I think I’m going to put away the tweaks for a bit. Maybe I’ll actually concentrate on doing work at work (as if—where did that go? I loved hearing bitchy girls say that).
Happy New Years!
Here I sit. I’ll give you a couple of guesses where. Up to a few minutes ago, I was sitting inside, but a family came in, looked over the pretty much empty establishment, and decided to push together four little tables. The tables, of course, were right next to me, and I’ve since become convinced that they did this with the sole intention of annoying me. As proof of this, after they sat next to me, they began talking baby talk to their three year old. It was very endearing. They were asking her to use big girl worlds when she wanted to be picked up and placed on the chair. Her grandparents were very surprised at how big she now was and that she could sit in a big girl’s chair instead of a monster chair (they didn’t exactly call it a monster chair, but you know what I’m talking about).
Suffice to say, I’m now outside, mocha-less, listening to strange languages, smelling delicious cigarette smoke, and watching skateboarders ply their trade on ramps and stairs in front of a former restaurant across the strip mall (remember, this is Houston—everything is in a strip mall, even Starbuckses). I’m going through a bit of withdrawal right now, which explains a bit of my bitterness. After scarfing down a tall mocha, I’m feeling the need for more caffeine. I’m currently conducting a study: The last time I was here (Friday, I think), I ordered a decaf white mocha. I wrote three lines in my circus story. Today, after I ordered a caffeinated mocha, I wrote thirty lines. I’m thinking if I go back and order a second yummy, yummy mocha, I’ll be able to write even more.
I’m still a bit upset about losing my comfortable chair to the family. In a world run by me, such things wouldn’t happen. The entire Starbucks area would be mine, mine, all mine. I’d occasionally let strange and beautiful people in for voyeur-purposes, but they would be there by invitation only and would in no way violate my space. Doesn’t my world sound much better? (And, yes, I did go out and buy South Park season three on DVD today. I associate more and more with Cartman these days. One of the particularly good episodes is when he inherits one million dollars. He fulfills his dream and buys an amusement park. He doesn’t buy it because he wants to own and run an amusement park. Instead, he buys it because he wants it all for himself. “No more lines,” he cries. I sometimes—okay, often—feel the same way. Do you see how well I relate to cartoons? I wonder what that says about me.)
Now (continuing with my free association), I hate buffets for similar reasons. I’ve always thought the primary reason for my hatred was that I never got my moneys worth. You see I’m not that good of an eater. Whenever I eat at buffets, I feel that I don’t eat enough compared to my fatter (and better eating) neighbors. They’re getting their moneys worth (since the restaurant needs to make money and must charge enough so that they turn a profit when an average person eats there), and I’m not. While at Puerto Vallarta, I discovered another reason for my hatred of buffets. The hotel Julie and I were staying at had a breakfast buffet place that also served buffet dinners. We were rather tired one night (we went to downtown most of the other nights to eat dinner), and decided to try the buffet dinner, since our adventures with the hotel Japanese place were very unsatisfying (okay, we went downtown most of the nights except for the Japanese night and the buffet night).
The buffet was surprisingly good. What, I think, made it especially good was that there was no lines. There were three people waiting to serve us: the meat carver (which was the only downside, since the meat was rather dry), the waiter, and the buffet re-supplier (a truly awe-inspiring job). For almost our entire meal, all the foods in the buffet were all ours, ours, ours. Not until the end of our meal, did two couples (one of them with a monster) come in to spoil our wonderful dinner by forcing us to share the buffet. Thankfully, Julie was facing the buffet and ensured that we didn’t patron it until all the interlopers were seated and the buffet was all ours, ours, ours.
I’m sure you’re beginning to ask yourself, what does any of this have to do with anything? I’m glad you asked. Today I went to buy myself even more toys with some (almost all, actually) of my birthday booty. Knowing my enjoyment of all things electronic, a number of family members and friends gave me Best Buy and Circuit City gift cards of varying denominations (you’re all the greatest, by the way—not as great as Julie who bought me not one, but two digital cameras, but at least you now have something to live up to next year).
I’m happy to report that I spent almost all the gift money today. I’m beginning to wonder if I might be a wee-bit addicted to toys. As you surely realize (if you have, as I’m sure you have since how can you resist? read through all of my musings), I have an addictive personality, especially when it comes to collecting things. I started buying music for my iPod using iTunes not so much because I liked listening to music (which I usually do not), but because it felt great (in that, let’s not examine this too closely, kind of way) to own all music that I could possibly enjoy. I was the same way with Magic the Gathering playing cards (something I’ll one day explain in more detail). I think the absolute worse example of my addiction was comic books. I bought the first thirty comic books for Alien something-or-another. The comic books were awful and I don’t think I read one of them, but I wanted them all. I remember digging through my couches trying to find extra change so I could complete my collection. Sad, huh?
Getting back to toys, what was I saying? Something about addictions, I think. Yeah, after a little more thought, I’ve concluded that I’m not addicted to toys. I do have some problems (video games, television, comic books, playing cards, etc.), but I don’t think toys are a problem. I deserve them, and they bring me enjoyment and my mommy says it’s okay for me to buy things, especially thing that are mine, mine, mine. I’ve decided it’s time to start saving for an amusement park. All for me, none for you!
I hope you’ve learned something today. But now it’s time for me to get back to my story (it’s way too easy to procrastinate by writing these harebrained musings).
I’ve never gotten along well with my feelings. They dance at the edge of my vision and tease me. At times, they disappear for months only to reappear at unexpected moments. My wintry logic is useless in understanding them. My trouble extends doubly to the expression of feelings. I am incapable of telling others how I feel. I can talk for hours about the minutiae of my day, but when it comes to a simple statement about a feeling, my tongue expands and constricts my throat. This constipation is lessened on paper, where I have time to shape the words and submit them in a brief moment of courage.
As an example, I’ve never told my mother that I love her, let alone how much I love her (if you don’t know her, she is the best mother, ever), and yet here I write it, with much less difficulty if no less conviction. These troubles I understand at a superficial level. I usually give a nod to my father’s death when I was a boy and leave it at that. I don’t try to analyze these difficulties, and I certainly don’t attempt to remedy them.
I’m writing this while deliciously depressed. I get like this sporadically, but when I do, it inspires me like nothing artificial can. I hate to admit it, but I like this feeling. Mainly I enjoy feeling something, anything. There was a long period in my life (from around thirteen to twenty-something) when I suppressed all feelings. Now, when I am able to conjure feelings, it feels good. This includes depression and sadness. Does reveling in these bad feelings make me a horrible creature? It probably does. But that doesn’t lessen my enjoyment when I sit down with a clarity that’s lacking during ordinary moments. Perhaps clarity is the wrong word here. It’s more a feeling of openness than clarity.
I claim to be a sensitive person. However much this seemed to surprise past (and current) girlfriends, I believe that this claim is accurate. When I do feel, it is at such intensity that it debilitates me. (This sounds a lot more profound than it actually is.) My failures with my feelings are as good a reason as any for why most of my relationships were failures. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen a girl for more than a week. As Julie has told me many times since reading through my musings, I’ve lived a rather pathetic life when it comes to relationships. (It’s hard to argue with her on that point.)
While writing this, my emotional state changed (more like dissipated). I had problems organizing and writing these thoughts, deleting and restarting many times. I came here with the best of intentions, awfully tired, but ready for a large caffeine intake. I accomplished this with a grande mocha, which was my first mistake. I drank it too quickly and now I’m feeling nauseous and tired, not the best way to attempt such a musing.
What makes it even worse is a distracting guy. He is on a first date, probably a blind first date. He talks too loudly and is too expressive. He’s discussed his past three dysfunctional girlfriends (a huge misstep on a first date) and hasn’t stopped talking for more than 30 seconds at a time. I can’t think with him there. It’s too cold to go outside and continue writing there. At first, I thought he would turn her off and she would leave. She made some motions toward the door, claiming some sort of Spanish class. But she’s stuck around now for more than half an hour. How can she stand it? From my eavesdropping (although, it’s not really eavesdropping since he talks loud enough for people driving in the street to hear him), I believe he’s unemployed, having recently been fired from his last job. He’s also interested in Spanish, but his seventh grade Spanish skills make him incapable of stringing Spanish words together to form coherent sentences. I’m sure you’re as fascinated as I am by this important information.
At times, I feel my voyeur skills are detrimental. When I’m near an annoying person, I am unable to ignore them. I imagine telepaths have the same problem. I don’t think I’d want to have the power to listen to what other people think. Besides the obvious fear of hearing the foolish thoughts of other people (just look at how demented and malformed my thoughts are), the inability to sit quietly and think my own thoughts would be unbearable. (As I’m sure you know by now, I like my own thoughts very much.)
With all of that said, what I really wanted to talk about today (before my cleverness and confessions drew me in a strange and rather unexpected direction) was Julie. She has been depressed lately and I’m sure part of the reason is because of me. I’m beginning to understand that she wants more from me than I’m currently giving her. I care very much for her and it hurts me to see her that way.
I had other things that I wanted to say about (or more exactly, to) her, but thanks to caffeine mismanagement and a general wimpiness, I’m not going to say more. While most of my musings take a while to write, this one took a very long while. As I said before, when I’m talking about minutiae, I can’t type fast enough to keep up with all my clever asides. When it’s time to talk about something more serious, my joints tighten and drafting each sentence takes an eternity.
(As a happy conclusion, the blind date victim finally escaped and it is mostly quiet…with the exception of the two guys who just sat next to me. One is a high school student and the other is a University of Chicago alumnus who is interviewing him, probably as part of the admission process. Why won’t the voices stop?)
It’s been a while since I’ve had time to sit down and write something. Well, that’s not completely accurate: I did draft a couple of rather pathetic musings but I never posted them. They’re up now, but don’t waste your time. Inspiration has been an enemy of late.
I went to see Julie this past weekend. We had a good if short weekend. I took the buck ninety-eight Continental special, which left Saturday morning and returned Monday morning. The timing worked out well since Julie had to (like usual) work all day Friday and part of Saturday.
She reminded me (more than once) that I had not taken her to a fancy restaurant in a while. For some reason, she did not think our last trip to the Outback steakhouse counted. As you all should know, the Outback (as us regulars call it) is impressive. It represents the epitome of 90’s theme restaurants. Its decorum (if not food) is based on an American’s view of Australia. You’re greeted by kangaroos, cheap Australian beer advertisements (the beer is cheap, the advertisements are just tacky), maps of Australia (since restaurants in Australia, like the US, always have large maps just in case residents forget what their country looks like), boomerangs, and various other stereotypical Australian accoutrements. It’s a family-style restaurant with a fully stocked bar and is only open for dinner, clearly making enough money in the evening hours to remain closed during breakfast and lunch. It’s always crowded and there’s usually a wait, unless you arrive (as is Julie and my custom) after nine. And it does have food, steak to be exact, as its name indicates. It’s not exactly of the greatest quality, but it pretends to make up in quantity what it lacks in quality. It serves blooming-onions (an excuse to eat fried drippings and salt) and complimentary steakhouse salads (tasty greens with large and crunchy crotons and cheese; making me rethink Bart’s “you don’t make friends with salad” paradigm) and brown bread. Overall, a rather fancy place, at least in my mind. But does Julie consider it so? No. She’s under the impression that a cloth napkin a fancy restaurant does not make.
So, while in the OC, I took Julie out to Roy’s, which is a Hawaiian fusion restaurant (meaning fish cooked with Asian spices and a Hawaiian flair) we had originally visited during our Oahu vacation. When we went to Roy’s in Hawaii, we thought we were rather special. It is a bit off the beaten tourist path and the food was good (not the best Hawaiian fusion we had, but definitely top two). Then there appeared a Roy’s in the OC (the Roy’s had been there since Julie moved: when I say appeared I really mean we noticed it but I was too lazy to change the wording and instead decided to add this completely useless aside). I started asking questions when I saw one in Dallas. When I looked at the matchbook this weekend, I realized it had expanded way beyond Dallas into most of the major restaurant markets. It had become, like Morton's Steakhouse before it, a chain restaurant.
When I called to make a reservation on Friday (since Julie was too busy, or so she claimed, with “call” and “working,” whatever that means), the best time I could get was nine o’clock. As I said, we’re used to eating late, mostly because we make our reservations rather last minute. We arrived there and had to wait thirty minutes before we were seated. The food was sub-par, even the melted chocolate soufflé was unimpressive. No more Roy’s for us. We deserve better.
I’ve also somehow gotten sick again. On Friday before I went to see Julie, I felt another cold coming on (this is after my original cold that I acquired at the tail-end of my birthday trip when we were in Dallas—damn Dallas and all its evil, evil germs). I’ve been living off cough medicine and Nyquil for the last three days. I’ve also been sleeping a lot. For the past few months, as I’ve been working on this website (damn you Chuck!), I’ve gotten less and less sleep. I think that lack of sleep is finally catching up with me. The sickness (and meetings) has also slowed my gym goings. I hope to get back into it this weekend, health permitting. My first PTG (that’s post-trainer gym session for the uninformed) went well. We’ll see if I can keep it up.
At work, there has been an off-site meeting with my boss and his reports over the last two days (and tomorrow). It’s gone rather well, enabling me to escape the office and meet with colleagues that I rarely get to see. There has also been free food. For reasons that I don’t like to explore too closely, I love free food. I don’t care how low quality it is: free food just tastes better than food I have to pay for (I know this goes against my buffet theory—I have not found a unifying theory that reconciles the two).
The meeting today was rather informative, even if there was a facilitator present. For those uninformed in the practices of large corporations, facilitators are outside consultants who are brought in to guide a meeting. A few of the slides that taught corporate-speak and touch-feely management struck a chord with me. While it contained the usual sections on managing, handling change, and too many corporate buzzwords to count, I came to some striking realizations about myself.
I have a few notes of pages I wanted to get down today. I don’t think I’m going to get through it today. My headache, which I had attacked with three Tylenol before I came here, has reasserted it’s ugly head. I will continue this next time and go through some possible personal changes. I’m sure you’ll be waiting with bated breath for me to continue. Sorry for the tease.
My tickling throat swallows painfully. I crave a warm drink, but just the thought of braving the rain leaves me limp. My head floats somewhere between sleep and lethargy, and my body shivers. I swim against the current from the depths of consciousness and avoid the shores, deciding to tread the waters of the unknown.
Such are the thoughts that go through my mind upon waking from a sickness-induced nap. I am trying to avoid taking more cough medicine since I believe (without any proof) that the cough medicine caused my extreme headaches yesterday. A warm drink would be rather nice now. Is it wrong for me to spend so much time in coffee houses? If I cared what other people thought about my solitary typing on a plushy chair, I don’t think I’d go there as often—I’d also probably never eat alone in a restaurant or see a movie by myself. But I do, do, and do. I wonder what that says about me. Probably that coffee tastes good; restaurant food is usually better than the home-cooked variety; and movies are fun to watch in theaters. That and I don’t have much in the way of friends in Houston. But that’s okay. Who needs local friends when I have unlimited long distance and an endless supply of computer bits?
As I was saying yesterday before shooting pains in my head interrupted me rudely, I’ve done some rethinking about how I treat my work life. While I don’t usually go in for psychobabble (having long since convinced myself that all mental health experts enter their field with the intention of evaluating their own extreme mental problems and never quite succeed), I did realize some disturbing patterns that begin to explain how and why I have been behaving as I have over the last, oh, four years or so.
But first, I needs me some hot, chocolatey drinks. Okay. I’ve gotten that out of the way now. It’s decaffeinated (yes, I did end up staying up last night until three in the morning because of my tall mocha), and I bought a marble pound cake to wash down the coffee. I finally admitted to the coffee lady that I was not a student, and she now thinks that I just graduated. I couldn’t tell her truth. How would she believe me when I have such a young bearing, which I know is unfair to all those wrinkly people who share my age. Being immortal does have its advantages.
I’ve begun to notice that I no longer go to the coffee shop to escape the distractions and dreariness of my apartment. I just returned to my apartment after finishing my drink and cake. I’ve been going to Starbucks lately not as an escape but because I’ve craved the drinks. Is this the first sign of an addict? The sugar (and chocolate) is almost as bad as the caffeine. I’m going to have to give this more thought. Can I live without my fix? Why would I want to live in such a horrid world?
But I continue to digress instead of disclosing my revelations (I’ve gotten pretty good at these digressions). And here, yet again, my energy leaves me and I fail to answer the questions that I start with. Poking oneself to find injuries is not always fun, especially when you start to scream at the tender areas.
I now remember why Robert Jordan’s books are so good. I’ve spent a majority of the last forty-eight hours reading his newest book, a prequel to his endless Wheel of Time series. In the regular books of the series, Mr. Jordan seems to have lost focus, meandering through books where little happens and you question the point of his writing it (since all of his books are bestsellers, it shouldn’t be about the money anymore). The release of a prequel before the regular series is finished shows this failing. But regardless how useless the books are in moving the story forward they are all a joy to read. In reading “classics” over the past two years, I’ve forgotten what it’s like to stay up until four in the morning reading a novel. Mr. Jordan’s book brought that back to me. I fret at the length of his current book, the shortest of his shortest books by half. I know it will be finished in the next two days and I already miss it. This is the power that Mr. Jordan has over his readers.
As a writer, Mr. Jordan is adequate. His descriptions are not flowery and rarely clever, but his character and world building are phenomenal. You care about every character (and there are hundreds that are introduced and recycled through each of his books). The world that is created is very real and you feel like an intricate part of it as you live with characters as they face wars (both the political and male vs. female variety). You look forward to the beginning of every chapter to discover which story and character you will revisit, and you regret the end of the chapter when you have to leave the story and character, wondering when (if ever) he will return to that aspect of the story. You can identify geographic areas and political organizations. All successful epic fantasy novelist share (to a lesser or great degree) Mr. Jordan’s abilities in world building.
Besides reminding me of the joy of reading epic fantasy, I’ve had the opportunity to analyze Mr. Jordan’s writing style and what makes it work so well. Two themes permeate: the first is the viewpoint of the narration. It is narrated in third person. The narrator shares only what the character sees, thinks, and feels. This style puts you in their mind as well as first person, but allows Mr. Jordan to jump around to different character’s viewpoints without losing the sense of immersion. The narrator has no thoughts or feelings of her own. The reader is also given information that only that character would have, allowing you to learn about new aspects of the world along with the character.
Which leads into he second theme: how Mr. Jordan teaches the reader about the world and its inhabitants. Since his worlds focus on fantasy, there is a lot to learn. But the fantastical aspects of the world are only a small part of this slowly constructed puzzle. Information about who the characters are and what they believe, their interaction with other characters, the political intrigues, the different nations, and the geography are meted out in small bits. There is a special focus on the power structure between different characters. For example, Mr. Jordan spends an incredible amount of time discussing the different ranks and relationships between Aes Sedai (female sorcerers). The intrigues, politics, and ceremonies are similar to sororities. These power structures enable the reader to cheer when your favorite character (and there are many favorite characters) advances.
I enjoy reading Mr. Jordan’s books too much to not want to incorporate some of his techniques into my own writing. I’ve attempted (rather feebly) to write with third person single character narration. Both the OGG story (second author is me, in case you couldn’t figure it out) and the Grelko story are in this style. It wasn’t a conscious decision, but it something I want to focus more on.
For the most part, in my stories I don’t narrate the thoughts and feelings of the characters for a consistent purpose. Instead, most of the asides or internal thoughts are incorporated because I thought they were clever and would make the story longer. I’ve known for a while, but haven’t admitted, that I need to ensure that every paragraph furthers the story or the understanding of the world or characters. Cleverness in and of itself (usually) is not a sufficient reason to include words, no matter how well they’re drafted.
To have something to say, I need to understand and identify with the characters and the world. You see that in the OGG story: since the world is pretty much defined (from the Highlander movie, television show, and my discussions with Chuck, Scott, and Chris about the characters), I had information about the world and characters that I could disclose. That’s one of the reasons it’s my favorite story (it would have been even better if it was finished).
The slow disclosure of this information helps make the reading addictive. You want to know more about the world. For example, in my favorite fantasy epic (the first one I read), David Eddings introduces the rules about how magic works slowly. I don’t think I put down the book when the main character was learning about magic. I wanted to know as bad as the character did. This is what keeps you up late at night reading. That’s what I want to add to my stories.
I’m back. I’ve received messages from my Frequent Readers: both were terribly worried. Okay, they weren’t so much worried as disappointed. They asked, Why would you pretend to post often, even going as far as calling others out for not posting, and then turn around and not post at all. It’s a good question and I will describe the answer in sufficient detail to bore the lot of you (I was going to say “to tears,” but I’ll spare you the cliché—oops, too late).
Sit back, make sure your seatbacks are in their reclined and comfortable position, and prepare yourself. If the measure of a musing is the number of letters typed on the screen, then this one’s a doozy. If the measure of a musing is the amount of caffeine that I intake before sitting down to write, then this one’s a grande (that’s with caffeine).
To start with, as you noticed if you’ve read my last few musings, I’ve been in a bit of a rut. These musings have become less about what’s going on in my life and more about my writing, and lately my writing has been rather bad. I don’t write about my work life here, partly because this is a public website, but mostly because I deal with it enough during the day and I don’t want to relive each moment through this. Instead, I share my current thoughts and environments. I’ve written a number of musings on my Starbucks pals—pals might be too strong of a word. Except for the coffee girl who believed I was a student (I haven’t seen her in awhile), I avoid talking to the masses at the coffeehouses. (My entire conversation with the coffee girl consisted of her asking, “Aren’t you a student?” And me responding, “Why…umm…yes.” And her saying, “I thought so. Will that be decaf?”) The masses are not exactly beating down the doors to talk to me either, but I’m fine with that. I come here to write, not talk. If I wanted to talk, I have plenty of imaginary friends at home to entertain me.
At times, I’ve used this forum to share the broad strokes of my life in asides, usually as the first or last few paragraphs. And occasionally, like today, I sit down with the purpose of describing in detail what’s been going on in my life. But most of the time, I focus on my writing.
This is as good a time as any to come clean on the reasons I designed
sewcrates.com (this is something that I should have put in the
about section ages ago). First, I’m vain: very, very vain. I like reading my own writing and having others read it and comment on it (I enjoy the, Boy that was a great piece of writing, to the, That sucked! Don’t you know the word is “outset,” not “offset,” but both comments work for me—once my ego gets over the bruising, I actually prefer the latter (that’s the critiquing to those who get confused by the former/latter pair)) (notice the double closing parentheses).
Before I designed sewcrates.com, I started sharing my writing on a few websites, including Enter the Muse, but I didn’t like the comments I received. Not that I was looking for the aforementioned praise, but I was looking for insightful critiques and I wasn’t getting any. The thrill of posting a story got me back into writing again, and I thank those websites at least for that. But I decided the ego-gratification was actually hurting my writing. I ended up posting the story too soon just to fish for a comment or validation. This is something that still hurts my writing and something I will hopefully rectify by withholding the first draft (see below, way below).
Second, I wanted someplace to store my notes. Before I started this site, I explored a number of programs that promised to keep track of notes. You need to understand that my memory is not good. I have trouble remembering things that happened to me a month ago. Stuff that happened a year ago I remember when prompted with hints. Anything beyond that is fuzzy. When I visited Shannon this weekend, I forgot that he visited me in Houston two and a half years ago (I think he was on an interview). When he first mentioned that he had visited Houston, I thought, “What is he smoking? He’s never been there. I’m the good friend here, flying all the way to DC to see him.” It was only after I remembered a particular incident that I remembered that he had.
Shannon visited shortly after I moved to Houston and purchased my car. At the time, I was still learning to drive stick (I bought it because real men drive stick—don’t let wusses tell you differently—and, for the record, stick doesn’t give you more control over your car than automatic, it just makes you feel more manly as you manipulate the shaft). Shannon was showing off and parked my car inches away from the wall of my garage. (I still park the car three feet away from the wall, mostly because I can’t judge the front or rear distances. I really shouldn’t be allowed behind the wheel of an automobile.) When I started the car the next day, I let go of the clutch. Shannon had left it in gear (I didn’t even know you can leave it in gear when you parked) and the car jerked forward, denting the license place but doing no other harm.
Until I remembered this, I didn’t remember that Shannon had visited. After I remembered this story, I started remembering other aspects of his visit, including his disdain of Ruth’s Chris’s Steakhouse (high quality food does not impress his holiness—at the time I brought him there I had also forgotten that I had introduced him to the buttery goodness of this particular steakhouse in NYC). As you can see, my memory is bad. I’m not proud of it, but I have learned to accept it.
These gaps in my memory extend to academic- and work-related information. When I have information, my work product is rather good, which is one of the reasons I did so well in graduate school. My notes were specific and complete. To remedy my lack of an adequate way to store my home and work notes, I started trying out various pieces of software. I settled on The Brain. I used it for a few months, but grew frustrated with the lack of synchronization between my home and work computers, and my PocketPC. The Brain offered a web-based solution, but wanted to charge additional money. After forking over $70 for the original product, I was not willing to pay for a more complete solution. It was then that I decided to create a website to hold my notes. It wouldn’t be as fancy as The Brain, but it would hold the same information.
Third, I wanted a place to store my pictures and writing, someway to share them with the world. Like everyone who owns a website, I pictured that after I installed my website, millions of people would visit it. That hasn’t happened and I don’t expect it to happen. I’m not disappointed. The people I really wanted to share my thoughts with do occasionally frequent here, and that’s the important thing.
Finally, I wanted a presence on the internet. As a nerd, I felt it was my obligation (and right) to mark my digital territory (visualize: dog urinating on wall). I reserved the URL david.figatner.name and sewcrates.com for this purpose. (I had problems linking david.figatner.name to this site. One day I’ll fix that.) I now have a presence and everything seems right in the world.
The creation of my original website is an interesting story, but I’ll leave it for another time. In short, after the Chuck Inspiration (we’ll call that post-CI), the current incarnation of sewcrates.com came into being.
I’m sure Julie is asking where is the Julie section in the musing (she does word searches for her name and skips right to that section—and you think I’m vain). I’m getting there right now. I spent the last week with Julie. She had another one of her mythical one-week vacations. I describe the vacations as mythical because as an intern (she incorrectly refers to herself as a first-year resident, or an R1, but in reality she’s just an I), you’re supposed to work your butt off. Last year, the medical powers-that-be implemented, among other slavery-saving procedures, an 80-hour workweek. Since then, residents’ life, most especially Julie’s life, has become much easier. Julie has four, one-week vacations. While I think it’s despicable that tomorrow’s doctors are not going to have nearly the skills of today’s doctors, I’m personally grateful for this change. I wouldn’t see Julie half as much if her schedule were what it would have been in 2000. We also couldn’t go on all our exotic vacations (see the photographs section for more details).
Julie flew to Houston on Saturday night. She could have flown Friday, since she had Friday afternoon off, but she’s not a good planner. She also could have flown from SNA (which is ten minutes away from her home) instead of LAX (which is forty minutes away), but, again, bad planning. In the end, I had to wait an extra day to see Julie, a long extra day. My plan for the week was to work four hours days on Monday and Tuesday. Work had a different opinion. It dumped oodles of paper on my desk and I had to work full days while Julie stayed in my apartment. The good part is that Julie, who is incapable of staying in a messy place, cleaned my apartment (before you ask, my apartment was David-clean before she arrived, but that’s a completely different standard from Julie-clean).
We went to DC to visit Shannon and Max (and her 13 children and grandchildren—fish and birds, which you would have known if you remembered Shannon’s distaste of monsters) on Wednesday and Thursday. He is getting along as usual. We then went to NY for my Grandma’s ninetieth birthday and Orli's second birthday. I won’t get much into these visits. I've posted pictures of these events. Julie also created her second album with my assistance as sound engineer (and Sugar Daddy for buying all the expensive sound equipment). Ain't she great? My intention today (as if I have an intention in this poorly organized and much too long musing), was to discuss my new writing rules and Julie (always Julie). I’ll breeze over my trips to accomplish this in a reasonable five pages.
While waiting for Shannon to finish his treatments (his laser zapping of mostly female clients in search of the smoothest skin—I asked but he wouldn’t let me play with the lasers after-hours, in case you were wondering) on Wednesday night, Julie and I bided our time in a monster-infested mall. There weren’t many monsters in the mall, but every other store sold monster accessories. Everything a monster could possibly need (or, more exactly, everything that a monster’s parent would think a monster could possibly need). Shannon later told us that in DC, having children has become a sort of status symbol. The more monsters you leashed, the more important (rich, good-looking, powerful, etc.) you were to the rest of society. This is wrong on so many levels. As I was saying before I was rudely interrupted, while in the mall, we stopped in a bookstore and for $5.98 I bought Stephen King’s On Writing. It’s an autobiographical look at his career as a writer, including his advice to young and impressionable writers. Since I’m such a writer (or at least pretend to be one), I read it. It was a bit slow at parts, but overall it was a good read and I picked up some hints and validations of my current writing plans.
In brief, Stephen (since reading his book, I feel like I’m on a first name basis with him) validated my decision to stop watching television. I have now changed the rules for DVDs: I will only watch them on the weekends, leaving my weekdays free to focus on my writing. Before the vacation, I had been playing the Jedi video game rather often, even without friends (yes, this does get around my no-video game-without-friends-rule, but I made lots of excuses for this, such as, I needed the practice so Jason would stop kicking my ass when I played against him). Before the vacation and especially after Stephen’s book, I decided to curtail this and stop playing video games unless there’s a real, live friend in there with me.
Another suggestion he made was that to write well, you must read and write a lot. He recommended six hours a day, which seems fair to me. I calculated that I read and write an average of three to four hours a day, not counting work or internet sites. I’m going to try to increase that to six hours (I’m on my way with this musing, which I’ve been fiddling with for the past three hours, sad, huh). I’m also going to increase my reading intake. That’s one of the reasons I’ve decided to change my DVD watching rules. I’ve been spending too much time watching movies instead of reading. I’ve also gone out and bought an audio book on CD for my car. Now my five-minute trip to work will count toward my reading total.
Stephen discussed not overdoing the synopsis. When I thought about this, it made sense. I’ve been consternating and fighting the plot for my latest story about the lost mall child. Stephen’s suggestion is to pick a situation, a few one-dimensional characters, and let the characters and the situation tell the story. A plot will develop from their experiences, and the author will be pleasantly surprised by this development, which should flow better than if it had been meticulously planned. This is a good thing. I look back to my failed Grelko story for an example of too much planning. I became so obsessed with planning the details of the story that I lost track of what the story was about. In the end, I wrote the story more to just be done with it than to tell the story. The writing was halting and the characters undeveloped, pushed along more to get words on a page than tell the story. By having the characters tell the story, more possibilities will open up. In the end, the results are similar. Instead of planning the plot in an outline form and then writing from that outline, I’ll plan the plot in the form of the story. It might force me to rewrite parts of it after I discover a better plot twist, but that’s not bad. The more I write, the better I’ll become. It’s like the circle of life, only different.
The last important suggestion Stephen made relates to drafts and sharing drafts with others. This will have the greatest effect on my adoring fans (cough, cough). First, Stephen recommends that after you finish the first draft, you put the draft aside for six weeks before reading it again. This allows you to review the story with a different mindset, and lets the story percolate (my word, not Stephen’s) in your brain for a while. By the time you revisit the first draft, you’ll have more distance from the story. This should make it easier for you to cut your “darling children,” since the second draft should ideally be 10% shorter than the first. Besides not reading the first draft, Stephen also recommended that you not share the first draft with anyone else. This draft is a “closed door” draft. The only person you’re trying to please with this draft is yourself. Once the second draft is finished, then it’s time to share it with trusted friends (i.e., all three people who read this website), to get their honest opinions on the story and characters, the “open door” draft. I’m going to try this for my current story. Except for some thoughts on the direction of the story, you will probably not read anything for a while about my current story. I’ll keep you updated on where I am, but I’m not going to post any snippets until the second draft is finished.
I’ve also adjusted my writing schedule a bit to make more room for writing. I’m going to attempt to wake up early to write my story. You’ll be happy to hear that I plan to visit coffeehouses to draft musings in the evenings. We’ll see how long this lasts. Waking up at six this morning was difficult. What made it worse was that I only wrote three lines in my story. I’m hoping it’ll get better with time.
I did want to get back to Julie. I had a wonderful week with her. I forgot how much I love sleeping with her (get your minds out of the gutter, we’re talking about the actual act of sleeping now). She’s warm and quite squishy and fits rather well in most of my sleeping positions. She flew back with me to Houston yesterday before heading back to LA. Seeing her off at her gate was difficult, extremely difficult. I felt a ripping pain in my stomach when I watched her board the plane. I’ve never really felt that before. As I was driving back to my apartment, I missed her terribly. My feelings for her have grown over the past year that I’ve known her. I love her. I now can say that I know what love is. I’ve always known what familial love is, but not this other type. Where that will take us, I don’t know. But I felt it was important to say.
Starbucks is closing in five minutes. I think I’ve dragged this out long enough. If you’ve made it this far, I’m impressed. If you’ve just skipped down to the end then you should know that the Butler did it in the Pantry. I’ll try to be more regular with these musings.
I’ll try to stay up long enough to finish this musing. It’s been a long day. I spent a wonderful weekend with Julie and just returned on a flight this morning. Check out my Disneyland photos.
On the home front, I framed and hung up a print I ordered from exploding dog. Yes, I’m easily amused (or from the content, easily depressed).
I put my vacuum cleaner away today. This may not sound significant, but it is. A week from last Wednesday, I found two bugs on the rug near my bedroom closet. I squished them with my shoes and returned to washing and packing (I was traveling somewhere—I travel so much, I sometimes forget where I go). I didn’t give the bugs much thought, thinking that my housekeeping was to blame—even though my apartment was clean thanks to Julie’s visit a week before.
After I finished washing up, I found a few more bugs on the rug. The bugs were black specks with two translucent wings. I crunched these bugs and began scanning the rug for more. After rubbing out a few more, I looked for the first time at the rug near the wall along my bedroom window. Hundreds of bugs congregated on the rug and wall. This freaked me out. The bugs were crawling everywhere. I threw my clothes into bags and ran to complain to the building management. They identified the bugs as termites and indicated that they were having problems with them in the communal kitchen. They eventually (after much arm twisting and threatening fingers) promised to take care of the problem in my apartment by the next day.
When I returned from my trip, an exterminator had plugged the holes and placed poison in the walls. Maintenance had vacuumed my entire apartment and there was not a termite to be found. Over the next few days, the termites returned. After complaining yet again to management, they informed me that the termites would continue to appear for about a week as they died from the poison. They suggested I vacuum them up and offered me the use of the model apartment if I didn’t want to sleep in the same room as my crawly companions. I declined, and began my quest to eradicate all bugs. My weapon: my grandmother’s vacuum cleaner. I took pride in my hunts and upon entering my apartment after work, I went into my room, turned on the vacuum cleaner, and searched the rug for moving specks.
At first, there were many bugs to vacuum. I would return to my bedroom to hunt bugs every hour. After a few days, the supply of bugs waned, and I would consider a successful hunt one or two bugs. When I returned from visiting Julie, there were no bugs. I decided that the war of attrition was over today and stored the vacuum cleaner. It was a sad day. This isn’t my first time fighting bugs with a vacuum cleaner. I used this idea in an incomplete story (ignore the poorly chosen and inconsistent tense and dialogue to nobody).
Speaking of writing, it would be nice for me to tell you that the reason you haven’t seen any new musings in awhile is that I’ve been terribly busy putting the final touches on Lost Monster, my new short story. That was the plan, if you remember. I was going to work on the story but not share my drafts at my books on writing’s suggestion. So far, this has not happened—neither the writing nor the sharing. My writing has been infrequent at best. The drawing board for my story has filled up, but I’ve made little progress on the written story. My moods have been swinging and I’ve been visiting Julie. Neither is conducive to writing.
But I won’t waste time consternating about writing. I’ve agreed not to do that. My writing will come in time. While my synopsizing is much stronger, I still need to work out the kinks of transforming the synopsized story to the written word. What I need, in a word, is practice. I know I will get better at this step by doing it more. For now, I’ve written the first page of the story, and while the paragraphs are coming slowly, they are coming. I just have to continue drinking caffeine and writing.
I’ll keep you updated on my progress. Sleepiness has won. I had hoped to talk about a few other things, but they’ll have to wait until next time.
I had some additional thoughts I had to get out after I wrote the following musing. I couldn't sleep until I put them down. They relate to the website and my sharing of my thoughts and writings. I was thinking whether I should post the musing below. It's a bunch of crap about my story synopsis, it's not well organized, and it's certainly not good reading.
While staring at the ceiling and thinking, I remembered the real purpose of this website. While I enjoy sharing my thoughts and writings with friends and family and the random explorer, that was not my intention. I have written a number of musings with this audience in mind, but, in general, I am not writing for that audience. This website was designed to document my thoughts and ideas for me. It was not designed to be a blog or a diary. I don't want it to be that. There are times when my musings are just that, and that's fine. But I don't want to fall into a rut where I only post (and write) musings and thoughts that are designed to amuse. I will do that, but I want to cut the string and tell you that that's not always my intention for my musings.
I don't always share what I'm thinking or what I'm feeling. Sometimes I feel things that I just don't want to talk about. Other times, I think things that I have no desire to put down. I write when I have to or want to write. Sometimes I write to entertain. Other times I write because I'm angry or sad. Rarely (regrettably), I write to tell a story. And, at times, I write to update my life for you and me. The quality of the writing and the topic will usually tell you which category a musing falls into. I have to remind myself (and you) that I write this for me. (All mine; mine, mine, mine.) It is a selfish thing, but I'm comfortable with it. The most selfish thing I do is post it. Even if it's crap, it's sometimes nice to know that someone else reads it, listens to my inner demons and spurts of inspiration, even after I belittle them and tell them it's not written for them. Go figure.
For example, Julie asked me why I had not written about her in a while. It's not because I haven't thought about her, because I have. It's also not because I don't have feelings for her, because I do. It's because that's not what I wanted to write. I could write (and I'm sure she'd love to read) paragraphs on my feelings toward her. What I don't want to do is force those thoughts onto paper. I wouldn't force them in the sense that I don't think them; it's more not ready in the sense that I haven't written them down yet. That doesn't make any sense, but you'll have to believe me here.
Similarly, my mother gets worried when she reads some of my more depressing musings. I use this as an outlet for my feelings. I'm not suicidal (and have never been suicidal). I sometimes write dark thoughts and feelings, and as long as you remember that I'm writing them for me (and for the voyeurs in the world), you shouldn't worry.
Those last paragraphs sounded rather bitter. I just had to get this out. I'm not sure whom I'm angry with. I think it's mostly me. I don't want to filter what I say here. Sometimes the writing will be raw, and other times it will be polished. You don't have to read the polished stuff if it doesn't amuse you, and you certainly don't have to read the raw stuff. But I put it up here anyway. Just understand where it's coming from and what my intention is. These are my thoughts for me. Anything in addition to that is gravy, sometimes tasty gravy, but still gravy. You can eat the meat without it (by meat I mean photos, finished stories, and bad poetry).
Now, onto my bad musing:
I'm trying not to fall asleep. It's 1833 (that's 6:33pm in American time) and I thought I'd type a musing to try to stem the inevitable pull of the bed. I've been traveling since last Saturday, making my quarterly trip to Norway. With jet lag and a cold I picked up in Stavanger, this has been a horrid trip. My jet lag is wearing away, and my cold has been improving since I slept last night; I didn't sleep the previous three nights.
Since I've been unable to fall asleep tonight (it's past 0200), I figured I'd write down some of my thoughts. After I finish my current story, I want to start work on a longer story'the immortality pill. I want to use it to explore the genius: the dedication to an ideal, the no-compromise position that Ayn Rand explored in Roark. The conflict is between this person and living in society. Roark was able to live in society. Most geniuses are not capable of doing that. Peter Keating was not the opposite of Roark, like Ayn described. Peter Keating was weak. There are stronger, compromising people, who do things within the bounds of genius, and still work for society. They might not innovate, but they take the innovation and actual bring it into practice.
Steinbeck explored that in the introduction to part II of his book. He went through the single person has all the ideas, and society destroys ideas. Nothing creative ever came out of more than one person. Collaboration does not equal creation. Groups cannot innovate, they can only improve what has already been innovated (not sure what the difference is between the two). For the immortality story, the person trying to free the society is a Roark. He has teamed up with a Keating. Not sure how it's going to work'but my most cliché¤ thought would be that the Roark character is the insider who escapes after realizing that the society was falling into itself. His co-conspirator, when he gets back, is the Keating character. He changes society after Roark convinces him it needs changing. The Keating character takes the innovation and makes it a reality, with prodding from Roark, as well as planning and the spark of innovation. The Keating character is the only one that survives at the end, with a stash of I-pills.
This needs more development, but it's a good start. It's a good story to tell, probably more of a novel length, but we'll see how it goes. I just have to get back and finish my current story before I begin work on that one. I wish it was going better, but you know how it goes. Bad.
I'm going to try to get to sleep now. It's not going too well. Part of that is because of the stupid TV. The TV did help me'it, once again, presented the innovator/follower dynamic, this time in the person of a rock video director (the French one who did the Lego-video). He's obviously an innovator.
I am reading John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany, so far a wonderful, if religious, book. It reminds me of a lesson I have to remind myself while writing: reach the reader’s emotions. Irving’s book focuses on sadness, an emotion I’m intimately familiar with: It is my favorite emotion. (I won’t get into what that says about me.) Sadness reminds me of what I have and, more importantly, what I’m missing.
Eliciting fake emotions is worse than ignoring them. An emotion that is gratuitous—i.e., does the story no service—is useless. I read a story in The New Yorker a while back about the death of a child. The author interspersed two stories. In the first, a married couple was about to have sex when they received a call that a car hit their child while she was walking home from a friend’s house. The second discussed the history of asteroids hitting the earth, and the future chances of one destroying the earth. I cried during the story, but I felt like a fool. The author brought me to a brink just to push me over. There was no purpose to the first part of the story (unless you count the author’s weak allegory). In case you’re curious, the child died, but it turned out to be another couple’s child. The dead child had borrowed their daughter’s license to get into an R-rated movie. Cheap tears. That’s not something I want to achieve.
Who knew finding a seat in Borders would be such an ordeal? I usually write in the bucks of stars, but today I thought I’d be original and drive to Borders. I didn’t realize the difficulty that that decision would create. I’ve spent the last twenty minutes pretending to browse the audio book section. While I am looking for a new audio book—I finished The Da Vinci Code a week ago—I’ve already browsed Borders’ selection and found it wanting. I’m walking around in circles waiting for someone to get up from their comfortable, leather chair.
It took three full circuits for one of the readers to rise. I made my move when he looked around his chair for forgotten items. I found a particularly uninteresting audio book on the history of the communist party placed near his chair. After he finally left his chair (an ordeal that took another five minute), I looked left, looked right and leaped into his warm chair. Two other people were making the rounds looking for chairs. They made the mistake of browsing the history section, which is two rows away from the brown chairs. Suckers.
I didn’t take my computer into Borders. I’m writing these notes in my Moleskine, which I’m enjoying. (Obviously, I’ve since transcribed these notes and turned them into readable prose. Besides my poor handwriting, I don’t do much editing in my journal.) It’s nice to have something to write in whenever a thought strikes me. While it is awkward in my pocket, it is worth the slight discomfort.
I’ve discovered a problem with my Moleskine. Since I’ve given up consternating in these entries, I’ve found that the journal is the perfect place to pick up right where I left off. I’ve been focusing on inner dialogue, ignoring the more descriptive and clever writings. As I wrote in my journal after I realized that I spent the last five pages writing consternation about writing, “Now that’s hilarious.” I’ll share some with you:
I just need to fight through my disgust and write. It’s hard. I have a severe internal critic that depresses and stops me from writing. He reads my prose and ridicules it until I don’t see the use in continuing. The critic is not always wrong. He’s very good at identifying when I’ve written something particularly good. Regrettably, most of the time he takes my uninspired drivel and laughs until I have no choice but to give it up in disgust.
How do I silence my internal critic so even on my bad days I will continue to write (and not write these useless consternations)? If the demon wielded just words or thoughts, he wouldn’t affect me. But it’s more. He has the power to manipulate my emotional state. He makes me feel awful and useless about my writing and weakens my resolve to continue. In short, he depresses the hell out of me.
He needs a name. I will call this demon Carl. Carl is at the end of all my unfinished stories. He gloats in the middle of my musings when he senses my mind and focus wandering. Carl takes my pages of story notes and convinces me that I will never be able to turn those scribbles into insightful stories. Carl whispers into my ear that I’m too old to start telling stories; too old to rediscover the creativity I buried when I was a child. Carl’s idea of fun is to let me jack up on caffeine and then rip the words away from me, leaving me jumpy and full of energy, but no avenue to release that energy. Carl loosens my lips when I want to complain and bitch about writing, but then shuts off the spigot when I try to redirect the flow to storytelling.
Carl yells to anyone that will listen that I am not a storyteller. He points out that I’m not even much of a talker. I argue like an overpaid lawyer, but when I try to put those words into my character’s mouth, Carl stands on the top of my pen and wags his finger, telling me that I’m not good enough and the lines are flat. Even now, as I get to the end of this section, Carl is laughing and saying, ‘no more.’ I’m leaving this part and trying to come to some resolution. Carl doesn’t like resolutions.
Carl, let me write my crap! Let me write page after page of drivel that goes nowhere. I know it is bad writing. I know it is a bad story, but it is my bad story, and the only way I’m going to write it is to write through the uninspired and embarrassing sections until I arrive at the good sections. I’m not sure if I’ll ever get to them, but I have to try. I have to find quiet time, glue my ass to the chair, and just write. I have to battle Carl until ignoring him becomes second nature.
Once you name something, you develop power over it. Carl, I name you and call you out. I will stop focusing on my bad, useless paragraphs and keep going in my stories. Even if I have to cut ninety percent of my writing, it will be worth it.
Next up: the demon Lenny, the bringer of laziness and apathy.
I haven’t lost my love of the consternation. I should turn it into an art form. I sometimes think I have more skills in this area than I will ever have in storytelling. (You hear Carl in this, don’t you?)
“I’ve never met anyone as intelligent and yet so clueless. He can have the most insightful conversation and follow it up by doing the stupidest thing.”
Why are my emotions controlled by others? What am I seeking by giving up that control? I sit and wait and wait. Nothing happens. Even if it did, would it really change anything? That is the issue I have. I don’t want my emotional state—my well-being—ruled by others. What difference where I live or what I do fro a living? Why is the anticipation so painful?
So, I’m a doctor and I have a surrogate delivery where one woman is going to delivery 30 babies. There is another doctor who’s delivering another baby in the same room. My family is around, including my uncle. I forgot my camera so I run back and end up at my uncle’s apartment, where he’s cleaning his outside hallway. I pick up my digital camera, but the batteries are dying. I have only 15 minutes to get back to the hospital and I run. I stop in a grocery 5&10 but they’re out of AA and only have a huge battery left.
I start running to the hospital afraid now that I’m going to be late. I run up the stairs of a house, which I think I can cut through to get to the hospital. There is a father and son there and the father tells me that I can’t get to the hospital this way. I have to go down the street and turn left (away from the direction of his house).
I start running. It looks like I’m taking giant steps, but I’m moving slowly. The father yells something about making it for visiting time at 12, even though it’s almost 1 and time for me to deliver all the babies on a tightrope.
As I’m running in slow motion toward the hospital, another man runs past me at high speed and the son comments that it doesn’t look like I’m moving very fast. The phone rings and my dream ends.
Absolute silence surrounds genius. There are rarely crowds at the Menil collection's Cy Twombly Gallery, and today is no exception. Like many times before, I’ve come here for inspiration, and I'm greeted by the wonderful plaster smell, dead silence–punctuated only by murmurs of the ventilation system–and, of most importance, the art. Cy finds beauty and emotions in splotches of paint, scribbles, and writings (in a penmanship worse than mine).
I had an argument with my former (completely my fault) friend Greg while visiting Europe. We were eating dinner in Prague at a wonderful place that served a seven-course meal with alcohol for less than twenty dollars per person. This was back in 1999. At the table, Greg defended modern art, while I, never having understood it, belittled it, his arguments, and him. I’m a good belittler. It took me many years to appreciate art other than realistic, or surreal realistic art. I’ve since realized that what modern art tries to convey is pure emotion poured on to a page. It takes courage to draw such pictures. The artist risks society not understanding the scribbles and disparaging the work. See Roark in Fountainhead.
I was taken aback the first time I visited this gallery. As you can see below, the paintings are infantile scribblings. I was, however, affected by these scribbles, more so than I have ever been by art. I laughed uncontrollably at first before realizing what it was I was laughing at. I appreciated Cy's eye, the risks he took, and the emotions his paintings made me feel, something that I have since found in the work of many other artists I used to disregard.
I’ve reached a point in my writing where I’m not sure what comes next. I’ve been struggling through the starts and stops of a few new stories, but what I created has not been satisfying. It’s missing something—it’s missing the entertainment and emotional aspect that I’m searching for. It sucks to have an entire weekend free and spend most of my time moping and wandering aimlessly instead of writing.
My dedication to staring at a blank screen and writing consternations (similar to this one) in my Moleskine are still there. Thanks to my journal, I’ve spared you the worst of my consternations, but, lately, the pages have filled up with fewer synopses and new work, and more consternation. I have realized the importance of writing even if I have nothing to write. Just the exercise of staring at the blank screen helps me.
These feelings started after I finished the second draft of FBT. Instead of even finishing the edits for that story, I excitedly jumped right into my next story. I thought that was how it was going to go: every month a new story, and from these stories I would develop better writing skills in my quest to tell stories.
To run into another huge brick wall is very disheartening but expected. Writing is hard. When I’m flying through a draft, I sometimes forget that. It’s these walls that remind me. I just have to knock it down and keep going. Carl, Lenny, and Moe be damned. Visiting this exhibit is the first step. Thanks Cy Twombly.
I spent most of last week on vacation, visiting with Julie in Dallas and the OC. And as always, I had a wonderful time (even if I went a little mad on Saturday). I have been writing stories, or at least the outline for stories. I’m just about ready to start the actual writing on my next effort.
I’ve finished my first moleskine notebook dated from 4/25/04 through 6/26/04. Julie asked me yesterday what I did before I had the moleskine, and I honestly can’t remember. Having a small book in my pocket that I can use to jot down ideas or just pass the time is wonderful. I’ve spent a little time going through the first journal and typed in a few of the entries that were interesting. There are many entries describing the character and plot development of FBT, but it’s too voluminous and boring for me to type in. I’ve focused mostly on the non-plot musings.
I didn’t (and won’t) edit any of the musings from my moleskine. Consider them raw thoughts. Not always interesting, but it’s what I think and what I write. (I'm going to stop giving this warning. It sounds too much like an excuse for not editing...which it probably is.)
Is it antisocial—or worse psychopathic—to respond when someone had an accident in a rote way? I received a call this morning from a person at work informing me that her mother had been robbed. I responded, “Is she okay?” But the sad part is I didn’t really care. I just didn’t want to appear rude. I’m pretty sure this makes me a horrible, horrible person. But I did let her take the day off. Does that help?
Samer (Tamer's uncle) had wise words: When a couple goes through a rough time, it's more difficult on the people around them. While the couple may work it out, all the negative and hurtful things that the couple tells their friends and family about their partner remains. The friends and family remember the negative aspects and because they love the person. It takes them a long time to forgive the partner for hurting their friend. The couple may get back together with no problems--"a blowjob and everyone is happy."
Random Thoughts:
Poetry seems easier these days. It requires less concentration, less effort. Is that a reason to do something? because it's easy? Even now, I think of putting the pen down and uncovering oblivion.
Depression has been a stranger lately.
Titles create distance. Parents in public have problems dealing with non-parents. They're used to being the boss, and that changes when not dealing with their children.
Max is in awe of wealthy women. "Marry rich," he tells his friends. "It's a lotto ticket I can invest in."
Michael Chabon's "Spiderman II" disappointed me a bit. I'm not sure what I was hoping for.
Stories: You need to tell stories that interest you. You've been focusing on stories with a plot that you've come up with based on your past experiences. Why does the teacher not interest you? It does, but I want something to happen. Things rarely happen in your stories.
And the fat lady with polka dots slides into the row.
Book to buy: Maus (comic novel).
Story Idea: artist starting late in life; the anguish; is it too late to be crfeative?
Huge weights don’t usually sit comfortably on my shoulders. With my notice, I am relieved and scared. Change is always scary. If you accept that it is scary, then it’s easier to prepare for it. Move along, not much to see here.
It feels good to write again. I’ve been lax lately trying not to force the words. My mind has been spinning. Great divots have formed in my mind’s road. It’s anxiety. Besides headaches and mild depression, anxiety is the third on my list of mental disorders. It does create interesting times when it builds up and transports me to strange inner—and, if not locked away from people in a dark room, outer—worlds.
The anxiety of late has prevented me from sitting down for long enough periods to share my thoughts. I find airplane trips excellent for re-invoking the spirit and scribbling thoughts.
Writing has been hard lately—harder than usual. My mind is stuffed with everything that is changing around me. I don’t sleep well and I fluctuate between periods of extreme boredom and excitement, accented with moments of terrible anxiety. If anything, I want the change to happen quickly. I’m looking forward to it all: the new city, the new job, the new house, the new friends. But I know that I shouldn’t rush it. I should savor the process and use my free time to reflect on what has come before. As the Houston chapter ends, I find myself asking, ‘What type of person is leaving Houston?’
To begin, we must understand the person that moved to Houston. I lived in New York City from 1999 through 2001, catching the tail of the economic boom of the 90s. Even though I lived with Steven—someone who I greatly respect for his newfound philosophy and life choices—and hung out with him and his friends, I spent much of my time alone. This was mostly by choice. I wandered the majestic Central Park and the crowded avenues, soaking in the energy of this most wonderful of cities. I visited museums and people watched. I dated a bunch, but I didn’t find the right person. I met a few nice girls, but I was not good at dating. I tended to complain too much. It took me a while to learn that complaining and wooing do not work well together.
If that was all my life offered, I would have been contented. But I also had to make a living. During the weekdays, I watched the city from the 51st floor of the Metlife building, an eye-soar in midtown Manhattan built by the defunct Pan-Am Airlines. The view from my office consisted of the blue-windowed United Nation building standing guard over the East River, and the majestic Chrysler Building, a gothic, chrome-covered phallus. I was a skinny, first-year associate at a jacket-and-tie law firm being paid too much and knowing too little. What I did appreciate was unhappiness.
I want to complain about the job, to say that they worked me hard, kept me there for long hours, tortured me with passive-aggressive psychoses, stuck me in warehouses of boxes and made me stamp and organize documents for ten-hour days, taught me unethical billing practices—in short, drove me to such a depressed state that I hated falling asleep at night because I knew that I would have to wake up and work as soon as I closed my eyes. But I can’t complain. I was the real source of my unhappiness. I had an interesting job that I was unfairly good at. What I wasn’t good at was working.
The law firm was my introduction to real working. The glimpse of my future depressed the shit out of me. I think most people go through this at one time or another. They realize that their job is who they are, that they will be spending the majority of life working their job, with time off for good behavior and death. I contemplated escaping before I even started working. My attitude doomed me. I loved living in the city, but I didn’t understand work. I didn’t understand challenge. I didn’t understand what it meant to be good at something and accomplish something.
Because of the economic boom, recruiters contacted me almost as soon as I started. After the first year, they started taking me seriously. I wanted an in-house position. I wanted to work for a corporation and not bill hours and not work. At the time, I didn’t realize that it was really the not working that I was interested in. I was bitter because I was doing something I didn’t think I wanted to do. What made it worse was I couldn’t think of what else to do. I liked the money. I liked the lifestyle. The more I had, the less I wanted to give it up.
There were many law firm opportunities and few corporate opportunities, especially with my experience. Then a headhunter contacted me about a job in Houston, Texas. I wasn’t even sure where Houston was, but I sent my resume to anyone who said in-house in the pitch. The headhunter called me a few days later and told me the hiring manager was interested, but was very busy. The headhunter called again about a month later and again relayed the manager’s interest. I told him I was still interested and would wait. This happened three more times, with me responding each time that I was still interested and would wait, but I believed it less and less. He called me a fifth time and I began to tell him that I was still interested and would wait when he interrupted me. He said the manager wanted a phone interview.
The phone interview went well and Doug, the manager, flew down for a dinner interview in New York City. We had a wonderful dinner during which we discussed the law, philosophy, books, and intellectualism. At the end, Doug said if I give him three years in Texas, both the company and I would greatly benefit. When he wants to be, Doug is an excellent salesman. He is also a unique person, but I’ll get to him a little later in this narrative. My unhappiness had reached such a point that I wanted a change badly. But that wasn’t why I accepted the offer. It was Doug and the job that interested me. I saw a challenge and for the first time I thought about conquering it, viewing the job as more than just a way to make a living. It was the opposite of New York City: my feelings about the job and the city had switched places.
I took a few weeks off between jobs and traveled to Alaska for my first vacation. I had gone on plenty of trips before Alaska, but Alaska was the first time I let myself enjoy the trip. Even though I spent a week riding my bicycle up steep mountains, mostly by myself, I enjoyed every moment of it. I went to Alaska expecting to enjoy it, and I accomplished it through the combination of the beauty of the outdoors and my newfound attitude. I took many pictures, and I arrived in Houston giddy and tanned, still sporting my new attitude.
My flight to Houston from Alaska was delayed after Houston experienced the worst flood in 100 years. When the taxi driver drove me from the airport, he pointed to all the fields and highways that had been rivers only days before. Houston’s floods washed me in and I was caught in its flows for the next three years. At about the same time, Julie was celebrating her birthday. She tells me that she made a wish for me before blowing out her candles. It would still be more than a year before she would find me on the internet.
To be continued...
Time is escaping under the covers of stress.
I had hopes of working on part II of Snippets of a New Yorker Dragged Against His Will to Houston, but I don’t have the energy to reminisce and evaluate myself; besides, although I claimed last time that this is a perfect time to reflect on my last three years, I’ve not been doing much of that lately. Next Thursday, I leave Houston for good, a joyous thought. Once I start my real vacation, I should have time enough to reflect, evaluate, and ridicule, the usual.
I’ve been quiet here because my plate has been rather full. (To help explain the plate analogy, I just finished PG, my post-gym food, consisting of Boston Market. Today, I gorged myself on a quarter chicken chock-full of tasty dark meat covered by a deliciously greasy and crispy skin, mashed potatoes with brown, chicken gravy, and tangy, sweet coleslaw.) Besides visiting Julie, I’ve been organizing, cleaning, preparing for the move, relaxing, and saying goodbye to my few Houstonian friends.
Speaking of goodbyes, it’s strange how easy it is to say goodbye to a person you will probably never see again. I’m not talking about any of the friends that I’ve made in Houston—this means you, Tamer, Rebecca, Ella, Steven, Ari, Tuan, Carlos, and Natalia--who I will see when they visit me in Seattle (I originally wrote Houston but I quickly corrected this terrible Freudian slip). I’m talking about acquaintances that I’ve made throughout the three years I’ve been here.
One such acquaintance is my cleaning lady. During the last few months, I succumbed and hired a cleaning lady for my apartment. It turned out to be a rather a brilliant move. After her first visit, her husband called me. Her native language is Spanish and she is self-conscious about her English even though it is rather good. We spoke about scheduling, and I told him that I preferred a biweekly (i.e., every other week) cleaning schedule. He spoke to his wife for a few minutes and then came back to the phone. He told me that his wife would prefer come every week for the next four weeks, after which she would clean biweekly. I got the hint: my place was so dirty that it would take her that long to get it to a state where maintenance cleaning was possible. Obviously, I thought I was a much better cleaner than I actually was. The accumulation of three years of dirt cannot be wiped away in a week.
I was originally against the idea of hiring a cleaning lady because I can’t stand the thought of watching someone clean while I do nothing. I’m not sure what that says about me, but I think it comes from my childhood when my mother would clean while I watched television. She would walk in front of the TV often, blocking my view (which, in itself, may help explain my streaks of insanity). While I don’t remember what occurred during those cleaning/watching television moments, I’m sure, knowing my mother, it involved some convoluted guilt treatment, which trained me to associate being close to someone cleaning while sitting on my butt with bad. That is not to say that I ended up actually cleaning; just that I ended up not wanting to be near someone cleaning.
Getting back to the cleaning lady (I know, I know: I shouldn’t assume that the cleaning person is a lady, but I don’t know many cleaning men), I was reluctant to hire one because while I didn’t want to be there while she worked, and I didn’t want her to be by herself because of trust issues. Tamer suggested I hire his cleaning lady, who his brother trusted to watch his children, and I agreed. It’s been a blissful few months living in a clean apartment. We’re talking cleaner than Julie-is-visiting clean, or even Julie-is-visiting-and-she-can’t-stand-living-in-David’s-dirt-for-one-more-moment clean.
When I said goodbye to the cleaning lady and her daughter after she finished helping me get my apartment ready for the move (I didn’t watch her clean, I actually organized and Clean Sweep’d my apartment, throwing out years of accumulated junk, while she cleaned), I said goodbye, shook her hand, and knew that I would never see her or her daughter again. It’s not like I had much of a connection with either of them. After giving my keys to her the first time, I didn’t see her again until today--every other Thursday for the past few months, I came home to a clean apartment and rejoiced at the work of the silent faerie.
Storytelling has three types of characters: main characters, minor characters, and placeholders. This seems like a good analogy for real life. The placeholders are the people you see once and forget about: the cashiers, waiters, etc. The main characters are the ones who play an important part in your life. The cast may change, but when they’re there, they’re important people who, when they leave, affect you. Family, good friends, girlfriends are main characters in your life. Finally, there are the minor characters. They play a small role in your life, usually have names that you remember, but rarely stay long or affect you. I’m thinking the cleaning lady fell somewhere between a minor character and a placeholder, making it exceedingly easy to say goodbye. Or maybe it’s just that I’m a cold and cynical person.
My headache recedes today after a terrible headache-filled day and evening yesterday. I’m still in Houston, my last full day in Houston, actually. There are two possible causes for yesterday’s headache, nausea, and general sickness: the first is my last lunch, not getting up until after 11am, I didn’t eat until 2pm. While my eating habits have in the past caused headaches, they have not left me in the debilitating state I found myself in yesterday.
The more likely explanation (likely as in clever and therefore more interesting, but not in the least related to any scientific evidence) is that sleeping in the company of cardboard boxes caused my sickness. After packing my belongings on Monday, the moving company failed to tell me that they wouldn’t actually pick up the boxes until today (Wednesday). Cardboard has a particular smell. It’s a moldy, papery smell. (Obviously my creative juices aren’t flowing, since that’s the best I can come up with for a description.) After sleeping with my windows open yesterday, I woke up much improved this morning. I’ve since aired out my empty apartment, so tonight should be even better. If I can find some scientific evidence for the cardboard conspiracy, I can institute a class action lawsuit and makes millions of dollars in attorney’s fees.
The cardboard boxes have since left me, and my car has been reprocessed. Tomorrow, I begin my three weeks as a vagabond, both homeless and carless, relying on the kindness of Julies to see me through.
A sense of calmness and happiness descends on me during post-headache days. My former boss (not that boss), a man of little intellect and few insights, did supply a little perspective on my PH days, which went to show me that even the clueless, sans-intellectuals of the world have the occasional wise insight to impart, or now that I think about, can recall an insight of another and pawns it off as his own. Returning to his insight, he said that PH days (he didn’t use my clever acronym) were so good because they are a contrast to the terrible previous day. There you have it: Contrast.
I leave Houston tomorrow for the last time. I don’t plan to return anytime soon. The last three years have been interesting (I won’t define that word for you), but it’s time to make a break and start anew. Snap. I’ve fallen nicely into vacation mode. Most of my stresses have been lifted and I find myself gliding through the days. Regrettably, the last few days involved sitting around my apartment waiting for movers and packers to arrive or telephone, but, except for the deadly cardboard fumes, it’s not been too a terrible move. (Yet.)
The contract was signed for the new Seattle house. Take a look at the pictures. More details to follow. (Isn't it awesome?)
I’ve discovered that vacationing is not conducive to writing. I spoke about using all this free time to write. I spoke about how productive I was going to be during my month off. I spoke about how I would use this time to discover myself and review my past three years. What have I learned? I talk a lot. But here I am, with a week of time left to finish up a few writing projects. This is my introductory writing assignment and you should grade it on a curve because it is Monday after all.
As you may have figured out from my last posting, I entered into a contract to buy a house in Seattle. When I first decided to buy a house, more than a month ago, Julie (with only a little help from me) started looking through the MLS listings for houses in areas suggested by people who know the area. If you haven’t looked for a house recently, all houses are listed on the internet using a Multiple Listing Service, a computer database of properties for sale maintained by a local real estate board. They are searchable by area and price range and websites using the MLS provide pictures and a summary for each property.
We fell in love with a listing I will call the castle, which was one of the first houses we found--something that, if you ask anyone who knows anything about purchasing real estate, is a bad thing because it’s difficult to negotiate when you really, really want something. The castle is located in Seward Park, an area in Seattle near Lake Washington (which I guess isn’t saying much, because most areas are near Lake Washington). Besides the castle, Julie and I identified about twenty or so interesting properties in various areas, including Seward Park. Except for the castle, all of the properties were gone within ten days of listing on MLS. We clicked on the website every day (okay, twice a day), checking to see if someone made an offer on the castle, but it remained, as Julie likes to say, fated to wait until we arrived and purchased it.
After arriving in Seattle two Thursdays ago, Julie and I drove from the airport to meet our real estate agent, Mary Ann Beck from John L. Scott real estate, a wonderful and honest woman, who probably had her easiest sale ever, as you will see. After picking up my cousin Nancy, she drove us around the different areas in Seattle. Julie and I tried to pay attention, but we just wanted to see the castle. Mary Ann had planned to give us a tour of the neighborhoods and then show us the castle. After spending the last three weeks looking at photographs of the castle and trying to figure out which rooms the photographs depicted, we finally arrived at the castle to see it for ourselves.
As you can tell by the photographs (I’ll post more pictures once I settle in and have access to my own server again), the castle is unique. It’s not a Tudor, Spanish, or ranch style home. It defies classification, falling, perhaps somewhat broadly, in the modern category. The current owner built it on an empty lot in 1986; he planned every detail, from the garden to the two entrances and three skylights on the third floor, and did a wonderful job. When you walk up the wooden stairs leading to the house you find a peaceful, Japanese-style garden (the current owner, a former military and NTSB employee, used an Asian theme throughout the house, which was a strange choice since he’s not Asian and only visited an Asian country once). The garden, with a pebble pond and river cutting across it, is transporting. The pictures do not convey how peaceful and beautiful it is.
Once you pass the through the front door, you are greeted by a bright and open living room. The ceiling soars two stories to allow light to enter through the ten or so windows spaced throughout the two floors. A fireplace in the corner dominates the room; it’s chimney pipe rises three floors to the roof. When you close the door, an incredible silence descends over the house, broken only by the classical music that is pumped throughout the house, which is wired for multiple speakers in every room.
The castle consists of three floors, on the bottom floor is the living room, second bedroom, and second bathroom; on the second floor is the dining area, the kitchen, a small office, and a large porch; and on the third floor is the master bedroom, an office, the master bedroom, and another large porch with a Jacuzzi hanging off it. All the porches and most of the windows have views of Lake Washington. The castle is built on top of a hill, the highest point looking down on the lake.
But enough description: Most of you who read this will hopefully visit the castle and see it for yourself. Suffice to say, it’s one of the coolest houses I’ve ever seen. While some of the rooms are smaller and strangely shaped, and there is no covered garage, the views and peaceful feeling overcomes any deficiency.
Getting back to the story, after Mary Ann showed us the castle, we spent so much time looking at it that we didn’t have time (or, actually, want) to see other properties. After leaving the castle, we drove around for a bit while Mary Ann showed us different neighborhoods, and then went back to her office. We drew up offer papers that evening, but waited until the next day to put in an offer. The next morning, Mary Ann drove us around to a few more properties, but it was academic. Early that evening we put in an offer. After much pressure by the brokers, the seller accepted, we inspected, and negotiated, and all that’s left is the closing, which will be on 14 September 2004. Julie and I are terribly excited. The house is about eight blocks away from Scott’s house, and only a few miles away from Nancy’s house. Talk about cool neighbors.
After our successful house-hunting trip in Seattle, Julie and I spent last week relaxing and enjoying our respective vacations. We took a trip down to San Diego, bought a really cool Tim Cantor painting from his wife in their San Diego gallery. We plan to hang the painting and its corresponding poem on a wonderfully illuminated wall on the second floor in the dining room. On Friday, we enjoyed Balboa park and its museums. While I was a little sick during our trip, except for the drive back, everything was great. As I like to tell Julie, I’m like a wind-up toy that needs a little push to do anything. Once I’m marching along, I have a great time. But sometimes it takes a little shove to convince me to do something fun.
I’m sure you’re wondering what the musing title, “Building Tunnels Under the Sand” is all about. Before receiving an offer for the Seattle job (a job that was on the top of my list of most wanted jobs since I left school), I began formulating plans for escaping Houston. Plan B was my bum plan. I would leave my Houston job and become a bum. This was the all-else-fails plan and I spent considerate amount of effort planning for this outcome. I would live off the benevolent charity of Julie in Newport Beach. During the day, when I was not writing my best selling novel, I would dig tunnels under the beach to live in. Who needs a house when you can build tunnels, especially when we discovered that the houses near the beach went for somewhere between $1.5 and 2.5 million. This was a rude awakening when I contemplated taking a job in Southern California and commuting to Newport Beach.
I am a little disappointed that I didn’t get the opportunity to implement Plan B. I had already picked out the perfect green pail and shovel to start digging. Thankfully, there still are many toys and gadgets that I will buy for the castle.
I’m floating disconnected from everything. The world is far away and unreal. The world is floating, not me. I question. It’s the big question: is any of this real. Is this writing real, because if it wasn’t, wouldn’t it just change to appear real? Or is that the real questioning the real questioning the real?
Memories. They float next to the world; heck, they are the world. What is real but what you remember? There isn’t a now. The now is a moment ago and the thoughts, the thinking of a minute ago, becomes a minute ago. Are any of these changes real? I see friends but what are they? Perhaps that was the first time I met those people, or worse, not only have I never met them, but also I never saw them yesterday. Figments float around me like clouds swimming on the sky’s ceilings. Again, that now or a moment ago or never, but in--I was going to say the mind, but isn’t that subject to the now-moment dilemma?
Is Julie real? Did I spend two weeks wrapped in her arms studying her smiling smile? It seems far flying thirty-five thousand miles over an earth that floats around me pretending to exist in a moment only to become a stale record of a moment ago.
Welcome to Seattle; it floats and questions its own existence.
With everything going on I’ve been too lazy to sit down and write. I’m at my most eloquent, I’m beginning to realize, when I have nothing going on and I’m bored out of my mind. Of course, when nothing is going on, I have little to say. Go figure. A caveat to this rule is that my eloquence doesn’t last long when I move from the bored state to the fatigued bored state, the mind-numbing, won’t this whole-thing just end, moment.
With the right amount of caffeine I think I could change the world, perhaps a smaller world, you know the type, wet, with little fishes swimming around it, but still a world.
I was informed that my last muddled musing was so bad as to be funny. He (since he decided to post it privately, I’ll not disclose his name, although, if you’ve read this site more than once, you should be able to figure out who I am talking about since he’s the only male reader) compared the post to the pot-smoking scenes in That 70’s Show, where the characters sit around in a circle while the camera, in the center of the circle, spins from one person to another, all surrounded by a suspicious amount of smoke.
While I agree, I still posted it. I was sick of seeing the same front page on my website. Since I’m staying in temporary housing, I haven’t found the right moment to sit down and right. Most of that is because I’ve rediscovered the glories of television. How did I ever live without it, and will I sign up for cable once I get to the castle?
I’m getting used to writing these entries on airplanes. I’m flying back from Orange County to Seattle; the flight is an hour shorter than Orange County to Houston so I should be happy for small favors. I still feel rootless, living in temporary housing and waiting to move into the Castle, but this will pass, and I will find that groove, the one with the guiding sweet spot. For now, I’m content to float along, not in the disconnected space of two entries ago, but more in the searching desperately for the voice that has left me since I departed Houston.
I’ve been thinking about writing again, a step in a better direction. The desire is there, tempered by my focus on work and settling into my new life. I’ve been writing slowly lately, almost as if I was waiting for my focus to drop. I’ve been talking a lot about focus. With all of my distractions, it’s about the only thing I think about. I crave comfort and familiarity two aspects that have been missing.
I’m writing this entry on my TabletPC with the handwriting recognition. It’s similar to writing in my Moleskine without haring to worry about the transcription. The real advantage for me is the speed of writing. Typing 100 WPM has its disadvantages: if I have little to say, I end up saying it way too quickly I’m left with nothing more to type. Today, I have little to say with much time to say it. But this is how I always get back into it. Slow and steady.
Move-in day! It’s here. Movers are carrying my stuff up the 54 stairs (give or take two landings) and I’m playing moving bingo with the tags. So far, I’m winning except for my second couch, which is MIA (and it will hopefully stay that way so I can buy a bed to replace it in the second bedroom).
Update: my couch was found and safely delivered. It looks nice in the second bedroom and I’m rethinking the bed approach. On a downer note, my computer didn’t survive the move. This will delay (somewhat) the uploading of new pictures to my server. I’ll try to get some pictures up over this weekend.
Sorry for the quiet. I’ve posted a few paragraphs of writing (mostly complaining) that I’ve been hoarding before this one. My computer didn’t make it across the move, and while it is possible to add photographs and write on one of my three other computers, suffice to say, I haven’t done much.
As soon as my big computer is fixed and the boxes are herded out of the castle, I’ll post pictures, lots of pictures. And, yeah, I’ll get back to writing one of these days. I just need to find a new bucks of stars and some time to sit there and pound on the keyboard.
After writing and crumpling three times, I’m hoping for something more. As improbable as it sounds, with everything going on lately in my life, I find myself with little to talk about, and staring at this empty screen isn’t improving my confidence.
Ah, hell. I don’t know what I’m talking about. Since right before I moved from Houston, I haven’t been able to put down a coherent thought. First, the excitement of the move stole my voice. During the silence, I found that the longer I didn’t write, the easier it was not to write. It’s been more than a month since then, and I find myself here today: sitting on the campus in front of a frothing fountain trying to find my muse.
It’s a beautiful day in Seattle. The sun burnt through the cloudbank early in the afternoon, and the air is now clear and cool. I’ve rediscovered productivity at work, and it’s a nice feeling. I no longer wander the halls trying to thrash time until it surrenders, and I arrive at the castle. For the most part, I’m interested in what I’m doing and learning. As I’ve become more comfortable with working, I’ve discovered that next to a challenge, learning is vital to my happiness at work. If I find myself going through the motions, I grow restless and start looking for the nearest escape hatch. I searched for that hatch for about a year in Houston, and while I’m happy I found it, I don’t want to fall into the trap of always searching for the next hatch.
This entry took me a few days to put together. Most of my entries, even the longer ones, were written in one sitting, with a minor editing session after posting. Because of the effort it’s taken me to put down these measly five paragraphs, I put off posting this musing. But as I sit down, ready to espouse on some thematic and relevant thoughts, I find that I want to talk about unrelated items. My experiment at holding back the musing to create an organized essay failed.
Just a couple of stray thoughts I had this morning about improvement:
1. Stop interrupting people! Listen to hear what the other person has to say, not just to say something yourself.
2. Think things through and offer coherent statements; don't just argue for the sake of arguing.
3. Don't worry about impressing people. You'll either impress them or not. There's nothing you can do to help.
4. Worry less about cleverness. Refer to nos. 2 and 3.
I’ve found only spaghetti thoughts of late. Man, if I could only write something of value, but at least this last half hour has been useful. I need caffeine before I start on these hours. That’s what I’ll do next time: I’ll grab a cup of coffee and sit down and write. If that doesn’t work, nothing will. There are few distractions out here; I’m on a bench staring at the fountain, which smells faintly of chlorine. The sun reflects off the tiny waves that the spurting water creates.
Empty thoughts.... Man, is this what writing without caffeine does to me? I’m glad I’m doing this, though. Sitting down and reflecting for an hour on thoughts is important. While it might not be the best use of my time, it does keep the front page of this site fresh and new. And isn’t that what the world is all about: the chance to read my empty and terribly uninteresting thoughts? Now that was ugly.
Coffee really is the elixir of gods. Or was that beer? I forget. Either way, I’m sitting here with a tall Mocha and life is good again. This is usually the part of my writing where distraction sets in, and right on schedule, it’s ugly mug shows up. I’ve focused my life so much around my new job that the only thoughts that fly through my ears relate to work. Since I don’t talk about that here, I find myself with little to talk about. That’s where the yummy caffeine comes in.
The castle is doing well, if you were wondering. Besides unpacking and having the boxes carted off, I’ve not done much in the way of decorating. I’ve hung only one picture, and it’s in my reading room, which is rather funny because that’s the only room in my house with no furniture. I’m still not sure what a reading room is, but I know it’s something of a cross between a study and a hallway. I’m going to love writing on the furniture that will eventually inhabit the room: I’m thinking about plushy, old-school (think pipe smoking but without the sweet smoke, or pipe, or fire, or tobacco, or, you get the idea) leather chairs with matching ottomans and some small tables to hold the, yes, you’re getting good at this guessing, yummy caffeinated drinks. But for now, the picture hanging on the wall mocks me.
The last time I sat down with a cup of coffee to write I was sitting in the bucks of stars in Houston, Texas, lamenting my fate. Lamenting is not the right word. I wasn’t mournful about the change, it’s just that the change was all encompassing. I had trouble focusing on the writing, even with sweet caffeine scouring my veins. I’m still in the aftershocks of that change. While life is becoming more settled, my mind still races through empty corridors most nights. I’ve not had the free time, the free weekends, to sit down and evaluate everything that is happening. I’m not sure I even want to evaluate it. When you’re happy, it’s not always good to see what’s waiting under the covers. That made little sense. What I meant to say is that when you’re excited about a gift, it’s sometimes disappointing to unwrap it. That is, receiving a gift is sometimes nicer than the gift itself. Damn, now I’m babbling. I’ll move on now before I scare myself with my incoherence.
I’ve spent the last few days rethinking the inner workings of this site. I’ve started work on migrating my Linux/Apache/PHP server to an XP Pro/IIS/ASP.NET+C# server. I’m sure you’re asking yourself why. (I’ve tried to guess your thoughts a little too often in this musing. It’s a habit of mine. I tend to speak better when I have someone to bounce ideas off. The fact that you’re not actually there, well, at least not there when I’m writing this, is probably a sign of insanity. Hell, this whole aside is a sign of insanity and will be used in my commitment hearings. Your honor, I am sane. There are little people reading this while I write it. They’re even telling me what they’re thinking as I type. They’re my green, invisible, intangible, space-alien friends. Really. Yes, your honor, they are green. No, your honor, I don’t know how I know they’re green since they’re invisible, but trust me on this, they are. So you say I should follow these nice men in the white suits? Will they bring me more yummy caffeine? Oh, something better, you say? Egg-cellent.)
Anyway, as I was saying, I wanted to learn a new language (C#) and cut off my own head by trying to administer yet another un-administrable platform. I remember the weeks and months it took to set up my Linux box and get Apache and PHP to run on it. That fun is just starting with IIS. At least IIS supports C# out of the box. I’ve not made much progress. Two days ago, I thought I was actually getting somewhere. I went to sleep (too late, of course) having figured a few things out and with a number of possible avenues for development. When I plopped down in front of my computer yesterday, all that progress disappeared. I won’t bore you with the difficulties, but I went to sleep last night discouraged and lamenting (there’s the proper use of that word) my new website design.
Not that you will notice much of a change. Most of the external workings will remain the same (except for some minor, cosmetic changes). I’m focusing (for now) on migrating the internal workings to the new server, and redoing the generation of the pages and pictures. The impetus for the change, for those technically minded, was my frustration with PHP’s object-oriented design (actually, the lack of a good OOD). Of course, the opportunity to play with a new language and program again was another benefit.
Now that I’ve cleared that techno-babble from my mind, I can get back to the more important issues. Julie is coming up this weekend! She’s been traveling to Seattle often, which is a nice break from all my travels to Newport Beach. She’s in a tough rotation now, working nights in the OB (that’s the baby-delivery-thingy place) for the past few weeks, and that together with lack of sleep and her favorite fish dying yesterday, have left her in a rather strange place. But I’m sure my wonderfully planned weekend of sleeping and…umm…sleeping will get her back on track. Sleeping in the castle is exceptionally peaceful. You should try it one day (hint, hint: visit me!).
Getting back to her poor fish, her golden Japanese algae sucker jumped out of her fish tank the day before yesterday. When we first bought him (I’m assuming it’s a he, although with algae fish, you never can know—or, at least, I can never know), he was rather timid. He hid in the door of the taller Pagoda that made the fish tank look more like a city then a, you know, glass box. He grew from less than half an inch to more than three inches, and moved to the smaller Pagoda with the larger door. As he grew bigger and we added more fish to the tank, he became aggressive, swimming around quickly to protect his underwater domain. After Julie found him, she performed an investigation that would have made CSI proud. Julie now figures it was during one of his aggressive swims that he jumped up through the back of the fish tank. (She didn’t find a suicide note, but the neon fish stuck with their story that they were swimming on the bottom of the tank when he jumped.) Julie found the proud algae sucker the next day behind the fish tank. I imagine he was stiff and rather white. My only regret was that it was too late to fry him up. But don’t tell Julie that. She sees each fish that dies (and there have been many dead fish in her tank) as a personal failing. R.I.P., algae sucker.
I’ve babbled enough for one day. From the length of this post, one thing is clear: caffeine is a good thing, a very good thing.
In my never-ending quest to improve David (which will now be known as NEQID, pronounced naked—does my cleverness know any bounds?), I have attempted to squash each of my addictions, similar to what I’ve been doing to the spiders that have taken up residence in all of the Castle’s windows and occasionally sneak into the house and scuttle across the carpet before they find the unkind side of my foot. There are just some things that I enjoy more than others, and when I find those things, I end up doing them over and over again (and I’m not just talking about vacuuming-up bugs). It’s when I stop enjoying those things but can’t stop doing them that I force myself to take a closer look.
I last gave up television at the end of a marathon session of MTV’s Cribs. In the happy event that you’ve never seen this show, let me give you a brief primer: in 30 minutes, MTV tours two famous peoples’ houses. Think of a modern day Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous with jerky, 30-second attention-span camerawork, and overly perky famous people. MTV, similar to many basic-cable channels, has marathon days, where to fill time, or more probably to drive people mad, they repeat different episodes of a show continuously across the day or weekend. It was during a Cribs weekends that I knew I had a problem. I was lying across my couch watching Cribs when I found that I couldn’t stop watching it. It wasn’t that it was interesting: the famous people were demeaning and the houses all looked the same, with gaudy bathrooms, sporting TVs installed in the mirror; garages filled with the same cars and SUVs; and swimming pools with fake rock formations. I knew it was horrible and yet there was nothing I could do to stop myself from watching it. The best way to explain this is to think of the scene (in the book or movie) of A Clockwork Orange, in which the protagonist undergoes an experimental treatment to “cure” him of his evil impulses. The scientists pry open his eyelids with (from the movie) thin metal spikes, and force him to watch gruesome violence while under the influence of a nausea- and pain-inducing drug, with the hopes of conditioning him to be a less-violent person, or, more exactly, conditioning him to become horribly sick when he starts to perform a violent act.
It was in the fifth hour of watching MTV’s Cribs that I knew I had a problem. I don’t remember how I escaped, but I do remember that it took a tremendous psychic effort to press the power button on the remote control. I then flung it across the room to remove any temptation, peeled myself from the couch, and ran out the door. I jumped into my car and drove as far away from my television as possible. I don’t think I was fully dressed. The next day, I disconnected ReplayTV and cancelled my cable. Since then, I’ve not watched television in my house (I do have exceptions to my self-imposed television isolation, including DVDs and other people’s TVs), and I’m happy to report that the Castle, like the unnamed and unmissed Houston apartment after the Cribs incident, continues to be Cable-free.
These memories are a long-winded way of bringing up what I really wanted to talk about: my relationship with video games, and in particular, the online games that I play with Julie. Technically, these games are called Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (a horrible name), or MMORPG (okay, it just got worse), but I’ll call them More-pugs, because that makes them seem cuter. Before I describe what More-pugs are, let me tell you where I find myself.
Julie and I were playing the More-pug Dark Age of Camelot for the past six-months or so. It was working out well for us. Before we started playing, we would spend the evenings talking on the phone (remember, she was in California at the time, and I was in Texas). That’s when I had the brilliant ideas to revisit my More-pug addict…err…habit. The reasoning was rather sound: instead of spending all night on the telephone running out of topics to discuss, we would spend all night on the telephone, while we played video games and never ran out of any topics to discuss. Knowing Julie’s personality and her fondness for console video games, I thought it would be an easy sale. It was. Especially after I offered to buy her a new laptop to play the More-pug on (her old laptop wasn’t fast enough).
We started playing for a couple of hours a few nights a week and everything was good. Julie learned the game quickly and our telephone conversations benefited from discussions on the More-pug. The longer we played, the more we both enjoyed it. Our characters grew stronger, as they do in More-pugs, and we moved from fighting the computer-controlled monsters, which are fun but not terribly challenging, to fighting other players, which increases the difficulty and excitement of the game. Before I left Texas, we were playing about five times a week for two to six hours (the six hours was mostly on weekends) at a time. Especially toward the end of my stay in Texas, when my workload was almost nonexistent and Julie was working (i.e., mostly sleeping) nights in the hospital, we would spend most of the day playing our maturing characters in the More-pug’s world.
Then I moved. My computer was packed away and took a long and unsuccessful trip to the lovely state of Washington. Although my movers did a good job of moving most of my stuff (I had a much better experience during this move than the move from NYC to Houston), my computer didn’t make it. It would be easy to point fingers, so I will. The movers devised an ingenuous slide made from flattened garment boxes to send my packed stuff from my second floor apartment to the ground floor where they could then trolley the boxes to the moving truck. I anxiously watched them drop box after box down the slide and cautioned them that the boxes marked “Fragile” and “Computer Stuff” should probably be carried down and not slid down. I’m sure you can see where this is going. While I didn’t witness them sliding the fragile boxes down the chute, when I returned to supervise the box dropping, all the fragile boxes were on the ground floor and the chute was still in use. The move left three casualties: the face of my favorite clock, three dents in my stainless steal kitchen table, and my Alienware computer, loaded with the More-pug.
But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. I didn’t learn about the broken computer until after I moved into the Castle. When I first arrived in Seattle, I spent almost a month living in temporary housing while I closed on my house. During that time, Julie and I did not play the More-pug (Julie wasn’t allowed to play without me because of addiction concerns). After moving into the Castle, I immediately unpacked the computer boxes and tried to get my Alienware box running. The computer died before the bios came up, and the computer-store guy, after I brought it to him the next week, didn’t think it was worth fixing. His diagnosis: the motherboard died, and with it, probably the CPU. Because they didn’t make the motherboard anymore—the computer, while top of the line three years ago, hadn’t aged particularly well—I would be better off buying a new one. And buy I did! I upgraded all the parts except for the sound card, the peripherals, and the power source. It screams now.
After getting the computer home (safely) and installing the OS and drivers, I installed the More-pug. As I mentioned in my last post, Julie has been wading her way through a painful night-float OB rotation. She works all night, drives home while trying not to fall asleep at the wheel, and sleeps all day. I wake her up at 4:30pm to get her up and moving so she can rinse and repeat. As you can see, her schedule is not conducive to video game playing. Since I packed up my computer in Houston months ago, Julie and I have not played the More-pug.
I’m sure you’re asking yourself (or probably me, but we won’t get into the discussion of whether I’m talking to myself or little, green, intangible, invisible space aliens) what exactly is a More-pug and why do I spend so much time playing it? I was getting to that, hold onto your britches. The More-pugs, in short, allow its players to step into a different persona and interact with an environment that is very different from the world we live in. The new persona is called a character, and the player controls the persona’s appearance, name, dress, and abilities. Since the More-pug we play is based on a fantasy world, like what you see in the Lord of the Ring movies (or books, for those, like Julie and me, who are into that genre), our characters have the magical attributes and medieval fighting abilities of this world. As we play more, our characters become stronger, relative to where we start and the other people who play. For the most part, the longer you play, the stronger you become. The main difference between a More-pug and a normal video game, is that you share the world with thousands of other players. That is, Julie and I played with different characters played by people of all ages from around the world. I attempted (quite unsuccessfully) to recreate this in my short story Grelko the Giant Slays a Mouse. I’ll hopefully revisit More-pugs in another story and do a better job of conveying the excitement and enjoyment of these games.
Getting back to the More-pug, Julie will be finishing up her rotation on Monday, and we’ve been talking about whether we will continue to play. I’ve raised some questions as to whether this is a good use of our time; particularly looking at how much time we spent playing the game before I left Houston. I had almost convinced myself (if not Julie) that we would not return to the game, when I started thinking about all the new More-pugs that are coming out over the next month. As I browsed these websites, I felt the tingling of excitement as I read the descriptions of World of Warcraft and Everquest II. Here were two new games to play, new worlds to explore, and new monsters to keel.
I had high hopes of describing what it was about More-pugs that I enjoyed, but it’s obvious I won’t get there tonight. I’ve written too much and said too little. I wanted to talk about my love of magic; the beautiful microcosm that More-pugs create, which allow the player to study the economics, player interaction, and community interactions; the sense of power and achievement (some of it false) that these games impart on the players; and the addictive force of these games. But, alas, such discussion will have to wait for another day. While these games are inherently addicting, they are also rewarding, and as long as Julie and I can control the amount of time we spend exploring their regions, we will probably continue playing them. It beats watching Cribs.
Yesterday’s musing left me unfulfilled. I opened the final paragraph by saying, “I had high hopes of describing what it was about More-pugs that I enjoyed, but it’s obvious I won’t get there tonight. I’ve written too much and said too little.” I was sitting on my couch when I wrote that and I felt my energy level dropping. I knew that if I didn’t finish writing and start editing, the musing would languish, but I also knew that by leaving the second part for another day, I was assured that it would never be completed. (See, e.g., Snippets of a New Yorker Dragged Against His Will to Houston (Part I) or any of my unfinished, and probably never-will-be-finished, stories.) How could I predict that the very next day I would write a follow up? In retrospect, I should have placed a “To be continued…” paragraph at the end. That way I would have at least one musing where the TBC statement was not a lie. The only explanation I can come up with for my sudden prolific writing is the sweet Seattle air. I doubt you’ll see this much writing once the sun drops behind what I’ve heard described as an endless winter cloudbank (that is, I heard described in my head as I was writing this).
And with further ado, here are more discussions about More-pugs—you remember: the cute little video games that Julie and I spend too much time playing when we should be doing productive activities, like reading and becoming better people.
I don’t have a good memory. I remember nothing before twelve years old or so, and everything from then through, let’s say, yesterday is rather fuzzy. What I do remember are my desires, and one of my earliest desires was to manipulate the world. I wanted to be magical. Part of the explanation lies in fantasy novels. I read my first fantasy novel at an impressionable age, and I went on to devour all the genre had to offer. (The first fantasy books I read was C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. After finishing the first book, I made my parents—think screams and tantrums and threats and all the sweet manipulations children have at their disposal—buy me the six other books in the series. I didn’t read past the first couple, but as I aged, I found other, more palatable fantasy series to fall in love with (and actually finish), such as David Eddings’s The Belgariad, a series that I read and reread until the covers and pages of the books started to tear away.)
What I loved most about fantasy books was the description of magic and the disadvantaged young boys (most of the early fantasy authors were men and had male protagonists, which left me with a skewed view of female authors and their abilities—but that’s another story), who grew up to wield powerful magic and manipulate the world around them. I wanted to have their powers and live in their worlds. I still return to fantasy books now and again, but to further NEQID, I’ve been reading many “classics” and “works of literature,” both of which, with the recent exception of Tolkien, hardly describe the fantasy genre.
I played a number of video games growing up, including arcade games and computer/console games. While I enjoyed them, I never became addicted to any of them. They were more like a puzzle to solve than an experience that I couldn’t get enough of. Even back then, the most fun I had was playing games that involved another person. The second player usually played against me, but it was a social environment. The Gauntlet arcade games come to mind, particularly with their four-player action and fantasy upbringing.
Of course there was much more I wanted to say, but that will have to wait for yet another day. The thoughts were there, but they were not completed and could not be completed. A large wall formed in front of me, and nothing I did would get past it. This is the most you’ll get from on this topic today. Sorry.
I’m exhausted. Tired. When I get this way, everything acquires a fuzzy tint—I’m not sure tints can be fuzzy. I’ll have to ask the judges for a ruling on that later. I stare at an object until its meaning disappears and I lose visual focus. Sounds stretch over time, so a door slamming reverberates off the walls and ceiling until I manage to blink my lids over my glassy eyeballs and I forget all about the sound. As I stare at these words on the screen, they flash across moments where whole paragraphs appear and disappear, thoughts rise and drop in flaming balls, until, until what? Until I spew my uncooked thoughts across my questionable sanity.
I’m sure there are some people who are going to read the above drivel and roll their eyes. How can he write this, they will say, and, more importantly, how can he post it and subject his defenseless readers to his poorly edited thoughts? Those are all good questions. And I have answers to those important, if feebly articulated, questions.
I had previously hinted at participating in the National Novel Writing Month or Nanowrimo, as it is disgustingly known. Because of some threats and belittlement, which I will discuss later, I now find myself in the position of having to follow through with this course. Nanowrimo is an event that occurs every November during which aspiring novelists (or others who are gluttons for punishment, or Type-A personalities who are always looking for a challenge, think of people who climb mountains—with or without oxygen, since there’s a difference in the risk or “commitment” level of the two—or run across the desert with thimbles of water) from around the world (the aspiring novelists, that is) attempt to write a 50,000 word novel to (1) prove to themselves (and others) that they can write a novel; and (2) ah, hell. I don’t remember. But those people over in Nanowrimo, besides selling out by writing books about Nanowrimo, have a good FAQ that discusses these very subjects.
The important thing to discuss, at least for this musing, is why I am doing it? and of equal interest, what have I gotten myself into? I’ll answer the second question once I get started. It’s hard to know how something feels until you are knee deep in it (that always brings up images of brave adventurers wading through a few feet of liquidly shit). As to the first, I’m doing it because I need some structure to prove to myself that I can do this writing thing. I’ve attempted to set deadlines for myself (see 2 week deadlines), but those have usually flown by with little to show for them. I joined Nanowrimo with dreams of returning to my school days, where procrastination was possible, but at the end, I always finished the project. (I was just too scared of authority to do anything but finish the project.) Those are the rational reasons. But there are more interesting reasons that are much closer to the truth of why I’m going to subject myself to this punishment.
First (this is a separate list from the last paragraph, in case you were wondering), thousands of other hacks around the country will attempt to write 50,000 words. How can I possibly live with myself if they accomplish this and I fail? I mean, really, I’m much better than them: better educated, better looking, and I have good grammar skills—think about it, I know the difference between which and that, and (and this is an important and) I have mastered the use of the parenthesis and em-dash, what more evidence does one need?
Second, I’ve already dug myself into a wide hole with slanted and slimy walls. After reading my last entry, Chuck, the inspiration for updating my website (you remember: no English Lit. major was going to have a better looking and functioning website than a Computer Science/Philosophy major with an impeccable eye for style and brains the size of—okay, I’ll leave that one to your imagination), told me how he had read about this November event many years ago and kept putting off participating because, and here’s where he got creative, time commitments, lack of dedication, general laziness concerns, hairstyle appointments, transporting in-laws to the airport, wasting his “good” ideas on a poorly formed writing exercise, Fall cleaning obligations, something he blithely referred to as “work,” and, get this, the rugs in his house needed shampooing in November. Shampooing! (In the off-event that said English Lit. major attempts to question the veracity of my summarization of said English Lit. major’s excuses, let it be known that he has, on more than one occasion, falsified any one of the following: e-mail messages, conversations over pizza, philosophical debates while drinking Sake in a dark forest, and words in languages other than English.)
To continue, after I received the aforementioned (there’s a word I see way too often and should be forthwith banned from the English language) message, I immediately responded by much prodding, belittling, and generally questioning the length of said English Lit. major’s manhood. Much to my chagrin, Chuck has picked up the gauntlet and signed up to participate in this year’s Nanowrimo. He will join in questing to write 50,000 words through November.
The trick to this contest is that quality is not important; only quantity is. Editing is frowned upon and the two to three (to five) hours spent each day should be used to produce new words, i.e., more words that further the story, not new words that will be reviewed by the various committees that decide which words will be added to the dictionary and which will languish in the depths of internet chatrooms and message boards. For example, as of this sentence, this entry falls in around 845 words (943 words, once I added some amusing asides and other useless words by the criminally inane editing), well short of the 2,000 words I will need to produce each day to have a chance at finishing at the 50,000 word count at the end of November. The 845 words (stopping the clock to perform some simple mathematics) took me about 45 minutes to complete. In all fairness, I spent at least 15 minutes editing this entry to make it readable to the consuming public, a practice which I will have to foreswear (way too many fore words today) to have a chance at completing the goal. At this rate, I will need to spend about two hours of non-editing writing time each day for 25 days to be able to say that I completed the quest; thus, I will have saved the princess, collected enough jewels to reunite the pieces of the magical staff—which will be used to vanquish (since killing will not be, in the case of magical creatures and evil POTUS’s, enough) the evil overlord that has thrown the previously peaceful digital world into chaos—and obtained the highest score on level four, the maze level where two dragons give chase through hallways that are strangely reminiscent of an age of computer games where all the walls of a level look the same.
But I digress. The real (real) reason I am entering this contest, and reason number three, if you were counting, is because of a promise Julie made (which she now tries to disclaim): she said, and I quote, “as soon as you write your first book, I will support you.” Without regard for what I just said (and with the understanding that I will swear, promise, stand up in court and in general deny what I am going to type), I’m not sure if those are the exact words that she used, or even if that was the message that she was trying to get across, but as I already said, I will stick with my interpretation of her words, since that gives me hope of a life of lying on the beach and drinking umbrella drinks. In short, she has given me the choice of living the charmed life of writing while she slaves away, poking patients and running around in her white coat with heart-listener-thingy-with-tubes-and-earpiece hanging over her neck, or continuing to run the rat race that has become my life. I think writing 50,000 words in November is a fair tradeoff to get closer to that dreamy state.
Julie now claims, after she made all the above promises, including swearing using a ceremonial knife that, in previously incarnations, kings had used to swear the allegiance of their countries (we’re talking countries here, not mere promises of support!), that I would be “bored” and not like the life of a restful, philosophical existence, where I would spend the day thinking and writing well-received (and best-selling) literature (those are her words, not mine, paraphrased words, but nonetheless, her words). To think, she thinks I would rather work at my dream job than spend all day pounding my head against a computer trying to squeeze out just one more creative thought or well-formed sentence. What kind of drugs is she on?
With all of that said, I did want to tell you, dear reader, what it’s in for you. You have taken this long, long journey with me, reading all my musings in the hope of getting inside my brain and understanding, however shallowly, what makes me tick. In return, you will have the grand opportunity to read approximately (on most good days, and, for my benefit, let’s hope most of the days are good) 2,000 words each and every day in November. That’s correct: not only will I write that many words, I will turn around and post them in the evening. I know you’re asking yourself how it is you could have lucked out. Just think of this as my little gift to you.
Now that I’ve dug myself an even bigger hole with my large fingers, let’s hope I actually do this thing. I was leaning toward telling a story about a simple woodcrafter who builds chairs for a local temple, a story that I had outlined when I first started writing again, but never started or typed up my outline, but now I’m leaning toward telling the Pink Sweater story. I always liked that story and here’s the perfect time to completely ruin the telling of it. I have two more weeks to think about what I will write about.
In all seriousness (and, yes, for the most part, almost everything I write, particularly in musing form, is a feeble attempt at humor, complete with exaggeration, sarcasm, and deprecation aimed at myself and others), I am very happy that Chuck has decided to join me in participating in Nanowrimo. While the Nanowrimo website offers plenty of forums to discuss the pains and aggravations of this marathon, I’m not much of a forum guy. I’d rather have a trusted few who cheers me along and share in my aggravation and pains. And, of course, Julies is going to be there. She’s already threatened all sorts of violence if I don’t follow through with my plans.
Now it’s just a matter of setting aside the time and actually doing it. I won’t bother presenting any excuses, but I will try to write longer musings from now until I start. Once I start, I will post what I write and show a progress bar toward my goal.
Yesterday, I attempted to drink Mountain Dew instead of a tall mocha and write. The result was a paragraph of saying nothing, followed by a long, unending silence. It took a tall mocha from my friendly, neighborhood “We Proudly Brew” Starbucks coffee outlet to get back into this writing thing. My experiment yesterday proved one thing: to complete this contest, I will have to drink lots and lots of Starbucks. Oh, the sacrifices that I will make!
Word count for today: 1,988. Not a great total, especially since it’s generally easier to write musings than fiction, but a respectful output for today. And, yes, just by writing this description of the word count, I pushed myself over the 2,000 word count: 2,033 (in case you were counting, and, no, I will not count again since I added this aside; okay, I will, but this is the last time, I promise: 2,061).
It’s me again. Did you miss me? My training for Nanowrimo continues with this entry.
According to my trusty calendar, I have 11 days before D-day, the day that it all begins: the start of my new life of luxury and relaxation. Oh, wait. I’m thinking of my retirement day. Wrong day. In 11 days the writing marathon begins, and with it the chance to prove to myself (I won’t say “once and for all” because I don’t want to either never write again if I fail, or think that I’m going to be successful as a writer if the writing marathon succeeds) whether I can dig down into places that “I don’t talk about at cocktail parties” and find the mental energy to write. I don’t know why that line about cocktail parties entertains me so much, but I use it often; more in talking than writing, but there it is. It’s paraphrased from Jack Nicholson’s final speech in A Few Good Men and refers to the quaint discussions found at Yuppie parties, where the topics range from the fastest way to get across town during rush hour to the terrible way that our country treats poor people, and what a shame it is, and, by the way, would you like a refill on your Sapphire Martini?
If I can find the energy and commitment to make it through the 25 days in November, then I think good things will happen with my writing. A huge wall for me is the fear of not finding things to write about. When I stare at the blank computer screen, I begin to doubt whether I have things to talk about, or whether I will end up repeating myself endlessly (which is sort of like that last thought, a thought I’ve expressed countless times before and will no doubt express countless more times going forward). My hope is that once I get over this hump and prove that I can write new (if boring and poorly edited) things every day, then there is this infinite well of ideas and thoughts that I can share and the blank page will no longer scare me. At one time I had started naming my fears. I can’t remember if the blank page was a Carl or Lenny demon, but it doesn’t matter. It is one of my biggest demons and something I try to fight every time I sit down to write.
I’ve spent some time thinking about what I want to write in November. As I said in my last posting, I moved away from the Chair story back to the Pink Sweater story. If you remember, the original Pink Sweater story is about a little girl who wants to be a writer (sound familiar, except for the little part, oh, and the girl part?). The little girl writes a story about a girl who finds/is given a magical Pink Sweater that grants her powers. The trick to the story within the story is that the girl is afraid to remove the sweater for fear of losing her powers. Eventually, her school refuses to let her attend until she stops wearing her ragged, smelly sweater. Hilarity ensues, and eventually the girl must choose whether to gain acceptance of her friends and family by taking off the sweater, or continue wearing it. The story worked on two levels: first, the fear of removing the sweater. Would she lose the powers granted by it? Is it worth taking the risk? And second, the weighing of the sweater’s powers against the acceptance of her friends, family, and school officials—i.e., if she could do great things with her sweater, is it better to accept the ridicule and be an outcast, or give in to the pressure and not do the great things. This, for me, is a common theme that I like to think about. It reminds me of Ayn Rand’s Roark and my former boss Doug.
But the Pink Sweater story part was a late addition. The main part of the story, as I originally outlined it, is about how the little girl gives the story to her teacher, in the hopes of her teacher validating her desires to be a writer. Weeks pass and her teacher give no feedback. The teacher finally discusses the story during the teacher-parent-student conference that the little girl and her mother attend. Her mother, however, has other plans for her daughter. She sees her daughter as a doctor or lawyer, not as a starving writer, and belittles her daughter’s attempts at writing. “It’s just a hobby,” she tells the teacher. “She wants to be a lawyer, and this is just a way for her to practice her writing. No, she won’t need information on any writing classes. As I said, this is just a passing fad for her.” The little girl sits quietly and, like the girl in her story, must choose between her mother’s acceptance and pursuing her dreams of writing.
As you can see, I gave this story some thought, but I never wrote it. I did start a few times, only to find myself at dead ends. It was a cute story, but I had problems with the little girl’s voice and providing the context for the family relations. In short, I grew bored with the concept. I have many notes on this story, but I won’t link to them since you probably wouldn’t follow the links. Another “twist” that I had synopsized (or skeletonized, as Julie and her doctor friends say) was the teacher, who, herself, was either a failed writer or failed administrator. It’s the teacher, at the end, who takes the Pink Sweater and finishes it years after the little girl grows up and becomes a famous oncologist. The ending the teacher chooses: something about the girl deciding to give up the sweater and becoming popular with the children and teachers who had once made fun of her. What good was the power of the sweater when you couldn’t get people to like you, she would think.
But what fascinated me more than the mother/daughter/teacher relationship, or even the corny ending, is the Pink Sweater story. I love the idea that the magical pink sweater would become worn and smelly, and the choice that the little girl (or any wearer of the sweater) will have to make to continue using its powers. The rest of the story is rather artificial, and its main character is an aspiring writer, something that is a no-no for most stories (mostly, I’m guessing, because there are so many stories about writers written by writers. “Write what you know,” is what they tell us. But what do we know more about than the horror that is writing? The best example of a successful writer-as-main-character story is John Irving’s The World According to Garp. I think I like that book particularly because Garp, the writer/protagonist, ends up living the good life: writing for a living, and not otherwise working. (Spoiler alert: That he dies a gruesome death at the end is unimportant. John Irving did a wonderful job of forwarding his philosophy that novels are just long obituaries—i.e., everyone dies in the end, and that’s as good as any place to end a story.) I don’t know why I keep returning to this dream, but you did ask about it.
A few nights ago, as I was lying in bed, thinking about what I had gotten myself into by agreeing to the Marathon (that’s the name I’ll use for it from now on—it makes it sound more athletic, like I’m competing in something that requires lots of spaghetti the night before), fighting down the excitement mixed liberally with fear, I began thinking about the story. As I said before, I initially thought about telling the Chair story. I even thought about a first line, which I recorded on my phone before falling to sleep. I listened to it about 30 seconds ago before erasing it. Of course, knowing my horrendous short-term memory, which is only slightly better than my long-term memory, I promptly forgot what it is I recorded before typing it here. It wasn’t a very memorable line: something about living a life of regrets (you should have heard my sleepy voice in the recording). I spent some time going through the Chair story in my mind and remembering the storylines I had developed. At the end of that exercise (or perhaps it was the next day), I discovered why I never followed through with the story. It bored me. If I could create great, memorable characters and an interesting town, then the story would be interesting. But knowing my experience and talents (or lack thereof), I didn’t think I would be able to do that, and I still don’t think I could do that. It just doesn’t seem my style. The story synopsis, when I thought about it, reminded me (give me a second while I find this on Amazon) of Richard Russo’s Empire Falls (wow, lots of book references today), which is about interesting characters in an interesting locale, and a moderately uninteresting storyline. His story is good (Pulitzer Prize wining, if that matters or impresses you) because of the interesting characters and locale. Without it, the story would be boring and painful to read.
So, I was lying in bed, thinking through the Chair story when I decided that I didn’t want to dig up my notes on it and tell that story. Even though it was well planned out (I think I had even written an outline of the major events and characters), it bored me. That’s when I started to rethink the Pink Sweater story. There were a few problems with that story. The most glaring one in my mind was that it was more of a children’s story. When you have a child as the main character, the sophistication of the thoughts can be limited. Looking back, that’s one of the reasons that I thought the mother or teacher would make a better narrator, but, of course, that creates problems as well. How could I tell a complete story from such a limited perspective? The main problem, however, is what I discussed before. The mother/teacher/little girl part of the story just wasn’t as interesting to me anymore. I was more interested in hearing about the Pink Sweater. But the story of the Pink Sweater was even worse when it came to characters and locale. It took place at a school and the main characters were the little girl, her parents, and the little girl’s friends and teachers. Not what I would consider the most interesting characters to live with (at least from an adult’s perspective).
That’s when the eureka moment occurred. What if instead of a little girl wearing the sweater, it came into the possession of an older person, perhaps an older male person. Perhaps, an older, male, cynical person—someone like, I don’t know, myself? (That is not to say that the main character is going to be me or have anything to do with me. It’s just his voice I’m talking about.) This started to come together with fighting the Carl Demon I discussed above: I’m pretty good with writing lots of stuff in musing form using this voice, but when I try to write fiction, I find myself limited by what I can say and how I say it. If I adopt this first-person voice (think of Chuck Palahniuk’s narrator, the same guy story after story) and use it to tell a story, a story about a pink sweater and magical powers, and rescuing damsels in distress (okay, perhaps the last part is going too far), then the words might flow more easily.
That’s about as far as I’ve gotten with this idea. I’m going to spend the next 11 days planning this story and arriving at a decent synopsis and characterization. What I do know is that the man with the pink sweater (MWTPS) is going to find himself with the same conflict between wearing the smelly sweater and taking it off. I’m thinking of an anti-hero scenario, where he wants to help people with his powers, but, first, can’t find where to help people (it’s not like you can just walk around and find crimes to stop), and, second, is ridiculed because of the pink sweater. His job (which I’m not sure what it’s going to be) will be at risk, as will his relationships. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
These ideas, which are swirling contently in my head, I will try to develop over the next couple of weeks. For now, I’m approaching the 2,000 word goal for the day. I’m thinking from Julie’s reaction yesterday that fewer and fewer people will read these long entries. I’m okay with that. I’m actually probably more than okay, especially once November rolls around. I’m not sure if I really want people reading the drivel (I’m using this word often lately) that comes out of my mouth…errr…fingers.
Word count before editing: 2,060, time before editing: 1 hour. Caffeination: Vanilla Coke and Tall Mocha. Word count after editing: 2,208, editing time: 15 minutes.
Today’s a tough, rainy day. I almost ducked out without writing, but here I am. Not so much wide-eyed and bushy tailed, but at least typing and trying to say enough to meet the day’s quota. (I don’t know how I’m going to get a real word count without including these asides about quotas and moods—you know, consternating about writing. I know, I know: it’s so rare and unexpected that I would do such a thing. Just as an example, this useless parenthetical is good for at least thirty or forty words.) The caffeine has only started to flow, and it might take me a bit to get into this.
I just returned from a wet golf outing. We walked around nine holes while the weather alternated between cold mist and freezing rain. Before driving to the course, we looked outside and seeing the rain assumed that the outing would be cancelled and we would bask in the warmth of free beer and the after-golf party food. The powers-that-be (and I’m still not sure exactly what they’re being, but I do know they weren’t being considerate in allowing us to stay dry) had other thoughts. From what the only real golfer on our six-some told us, golf, for golfers, was fun even in bad weather. He went on to say that there was little difference between golfing in the rain and the sunshine. You hit about the same, and it’s never as good as you were hoping. While I wasn’t too concerned about how well I hit, I was hoping not to stand out in the rain for two hours. I’ve been told that there’s no medical basis for the old wives’ tale that promises terrible, deathly sickness if you run around with a wet head in the cold. I’d like to present some anecdotal evidence against that: I’ve been coughing pretty heavily since returning to work after running around for two hours with a wet head on a cold, Seattle day. (Update: my cough has since gone away. I give credit to the cure-all that is caffeine.) As for my hitting (golf hitting, not general slapping-game skills, which are excellent, if you ever want to challenge me), I did take a couple of good whacks at the ball, but I don’t think I’ll be leaving my day job (or evening quasi-job—you know, writing) anytime soon.
I ended up leaving the golf outing early with a good excuse. My commuting buddy had a 4pm meeting. I missed all the yummy free food and drinks, but it was a small price to pay for getting back here in time to type. I was afraid if I put writing this off until tonight it would not get done, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
The golf outing was the first time I played golf since I was 9-years old or so. I am not counting mini-golf, or putt-putt, as it is not-so-affectionately known to those who play golf, because “real” golf can have no name-relation to a game where you shoot a ball into a clown’s mouth; and I’m not counting the driving range because that’s not much of a game. You just hit the ball as hard as possible in the direction of the guy driving the cart trying to pick up the hit balls. While it is a sport in some senses of the word, it’s certainly not golf. I don’t remember why we went golfing at the time, or with whom, but I do remember it was a short nine-hole course and I did not show the promise of a young, budding superstar. Remember, as a child, I wasn’t much of an athlete. I only grew into my lanky body late in college. I was a late bloomer, if you will. I think it’s the price that all of us immortals have to pay for being immortal. But I digress and reveal too many secrets. Except for the weather, the outing would have been fun. As it was, plodding through mud and dodging lightning bolts wasn’t much of a good time, but that might just have been me.
Julie is arriving tonight for the weekend. Yeah! It has been a long week for me, and I’m looking forward to relaxing with her. If you asked her, Julie would claim that her week has been longer, but I know better. She’s no longer on her hell rotation (you remember, the OB night-float where she would come home every morning more exhausted than the last one only to fall asleep and wake up less than eight-hours later and drag herself out of bed, kicking and screaming, to drive back to work), and I’ve told her that it’s time that she return to her normal state of happy-go-lucky, optimism, the you-know-that-large-flowers-will-grow-even-on-that-huge,-smelly-mound-of-shit-attitude. You see, it is my heartfelt belief that Julie and I cannot both be complainers. As a general rule, in any relationship there needs to be a complainer and complain-ee. It is like the cycle of life. If everyone, all willy-nilly, complains, then the cycle of life would stop turning and, well, you know, bad things would happen: death, destruction, John Ashcroft would get his own talk show, and the gods will be angered; we’re talking apocalypse anger. To avoid that unpleasantness, I volunteer to assume my natural role as the complainer. With that settled, Julie must resume her role as the complain-ee, i.e., someone who listens and provides sympathetic nods and sounds. It’s either that or the Early Morning show with John Ashcroft. I’ll let Julie decide.
I already warned Julie that I will continue writing the 2,000 words on Saturday and Sunday to warm up for the Marathon. Chuck has decided not to post any of his consternations or thoughts before the November start. Perhaps it would be better that way. My fear is that if I keep writing this drivel (and, yes, I will use that word in every musing from now until the start of the Marathon), I will wear myself out before I even start. But I’m lying to myself. The only reason I think it would be better to forgo this warm-up period is because I’m tired on this gloomy Friday. The words aren’t flowing like they have the last two days, and the caffeine hasn’t taken hold. There is a company party going on in the other part of the cafeteria where I usually write. One of the partygoers is giving a speech, which I can almost hear but not quite. I definitely heard a top-ten list, but he has since moved on. The speaker must be good because the audience roars with laughter at intervals, strumming my buzzing nerves. Ah, now there’s a second person talking. He’s obviously not as funny as the first, because the audience is only giving him polite chuckles, as if to say, “you’re not as funny as the last guy, but you probably have some say over my career, so I’m going to at least make an effort at appearing amused, or at least as amused as the girl next to me.”
But that’s enough of that. I’m going to pull myself through this low energy part and continue typing even if I have nothing to say. That’s what I’m here for: to try to learn to say something when nothing is happening. As for my lame excuse, one of my hopes after finishing Nanowrimo is to continue writing at least 2,000 words every day. The more you write, the better you write, and the easier it is to write. It’s like going to the gym: if you go every day, then it’s not a chore. But if you skip a day or a week, getting back into it is difficult. (I don’t even want to think how I’m going to go back to the gym after I’ve taken the last two weeks off.)
Sorry for the delay, but I had to leave the cafeteria. The noise level combined with my impending anxiety caused by the caffeine rush placed me a state that made it impossible to stay where I was. Now I’m in the lobby on my customary, evening cushy chair pounding away on the keyboard. I’ve gone back up and edited the entry. Now that the caffeine has kicked in, I was able to rewrite my previous thoughts to increase their breadth, length, and amusement value. I know I said I wasn’t going to edit, or at least try not to edit, but I want to make a revision to that rule: it is okay to edit if either (a) by editing you will significantly lengthen the writing; or (b) you’ve finished your writing for the day and feel energized enough to edit it.
You’re probably wondering if I have anything of importance to talk about today, or if I was just going to babble my 2,000 words away. I was leaning toward the babbling choice today, but I guess I should at least talk about my story. To recap, last we left our hapless hero, he was wearing a magical pink sweater. We knew nothing else about him, except that he was probably cynical and was telling the story about his sweater. I’ve already chosen the voice, as I indicated last time: it’s going to be told from the first-person perspective, from his perspective, that is. What I haven’t decided was whether it would be present or past tense, and why he would be telling the story.
For short stories, it is now acceptable to use the first person, present tense. While present tense would be the easier tense (since I wouldn’t have to explain why he is telling the story—it would be assumed that the reader would just be watching the narrator as he lived his life), my gut feeling, which will probably change many times before I start, and too many times while I’m writing, is that the story should be told in past tense, where the narrator is looking back over what has happened. That opens up two more choices: will the narrator explain why he’s telling the story, or will the reader not know the purpose of the narrative. There’s a term for all of these mechanics, but I’m not a lit. major. I do remember reading about all these choices with glazy eyes when I was trying to better myself by learning the mechanics of storytelling. (It’s now obvious, in retrospect, that all that studying did not amount to much.)
It will probably be easier to figure out these answers once I have a better handle on the plot and characters. Seeing as I don’t think I’m going to accomplish much today in the way of original ideas about the story—I’m finding that I do my best thinking right before bedtime, when I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, trying to see my story’s characters living their lives—I might as well organize the questions that I will have to solve before I sit down to write the story in ten days.
(Damn, ten days does not seem like a long time. Skimming through the message board, I’m reading posts by all these people who are excited about starting the storytelling. Hell, even Chuck, for all his screaming and bitching like a little girl—not that little girls bitch more than, say, little boys, but I did grow up sexist and it’s difficult to not make fun of guys by calling them girls or lay-off the fat jokes, but I am trying!—is excited about starting the writing. I’m more nervous than anything else. I know that the first few days will determine if I can move from writing 2,000 word musings to 2,000 word stories. And, yes, I’ve already accepted that the story won’t be up to my usual requirements for a good story. Hell, none of my stories have been up to my requirements. What I do know, however, is that it has to better than some of the unpublished (or, worse, self-published) shit that I’ve been reading from the aspiring writers that use Nanowrimo to further their writing skills. Damn, there’s my egotism again showing its scary fangs. I guess I shouldn’t make fun of those writers. Many of them are high school or college students who are trying to develop their writing chops. Imagine if I had done that while in school! But we won’t go there now. I can have a long, long discussion about missed opportunities and where I would be today if things were different. But as my good friend Steven has told me, if I had taken different paths, I would not be the person that I am today, and that would change everything, even my writing skills and desires.)
Okay. I got off track on that last paragraph. I did want to talk more about my story, but I have passed my quota for today and I have to getting moving. If I leave now, I might be able to get home and take a shower before Julie gets here. Here are some final thoughts that I didn’t get to: questions for the story: narrator’s name; what type of job; any relationships; and in general, who is this guy?
Writing time: 2 hours (some time should be taken away from that for ceiling staring and moving around waiting for the caffeine to kick in); Word Count: 2,178; Caffeination: Tall Mocha. After edit word count (including this paragraph): 2,257; Edit time: 20 minutes.
I’m writing this early and without caffeine. It’s obviously doomed for failure, but I figured I’d try. What’s the harm in a little trying, right? I attempted to dream about my book last night. I have been having luck staring at the ceiling before I go to sleep and imaging the characters and story. That is where a couple of days ago I screamed, “eureka,” (okay, screamed is not the right word. It was more of an internalized, boy, that would be an interesting twist thought) after discovering that the little girl with the pink sweater doesn’t have to be a little girl. (And a few nights before that, I dreamed about the Chair story and recorded the first line, which I promptly forgot after listening but not immediately transcribing. As I said before, you missed nothing.) (I was very close to erasing the last parenthetical during editing, but since I’m determined not to turn these musings/pre-Nanowrimo writings into edit-fests, I resisted the urge. While I am editing, it’s more to put down additional ideas I would have had when I first wrote, but for not being fully awake and properly caffeinated this morning. Of course, I won’t take any consolation from knowing that this aside, while completely useless in almost every way, nonetheless increased my word count for the day and moves me toward the less, and less elusive goal of 2,000 words. At least not much consolation.)
The ceilings in the Castle aren’t particularly entertaining, which gets my mind into the proper state for thinking about other things. If the ceilings were too interesting, then I probably would never think anything. It’s hard for me to sit down and just think. Even these exercises in writing aren’t real thinking. Thinking involves concentrating on following a series of thoughts through to their conclusion. While writing sometimes accomplishes this, for me, it’s more like I’m painting a series of understood—at least at unconscious levels—ideas with a palette brush. It’s during the pauses between typing that I find myself thinking, and if I don’t try to catch those thoughts quickly, poof, they’ll vanish. That’s one of the reasons I don’t do real thinking that often: The act of recording breaks the thinking spell, which leaves me without new thoughts to record, because the very act of recording stops the thoughts. That didn’t make much sense, and I’m not even sure it’s true, but there you have it.
Where I was going with this before I attempted to explain the act of real thinking was that yesterday I dreamed about the narrator of the pink sweater. I’m now waffling on whether to make the main character a young boy told through the eyes of his grown-up self. These seem like such silly questions for a Saturday morning. This is going to be one of those entries. So, if you’re bored already, I’d recommend putting down the paper (or pressing the back button or whatever link you usually use to escape this site, e.g., soap opera digest), and doing other things.
Wow, the consternations have begun early today. I’ll have to check, but I’m thinking this is a sort of record for me (it would have been a record if I hadn’t edited the last few paragraphs and added gobs of useless thoughts before the last consternation). One advantage I have found to writing everyday is that I find myself having little to talk about in my every day life. This is good. When there’s much going on in my life, I tend to focus my writing on those things exclusively, which lets my less interesting, but more important, discussions about my stories languish. As for the consternations, I don’t think I can do anything about them (wait, I keep forgetting that I’m an optimist now—happy thoughts! I’ll subjugate those evil thoughts to my will! Be gone, Carl demons! Damn, it didn’t work). When writing about nothing, or, worse complaining about nothing, I end up babbling endlessly for hours and hours, which may sound like fun, and may, if used correctly, pad my Nanowrimo story toward the 50,000 word goal, but in the end it pains me when I return to edit the babbles: Reading my babbles leaves me with too many questions about my sanity.
Julie woke up before I was able to finish writing this morning. She sat next to me on the living-room couch and stared at me until I finally gave up and turned off the computer. We just finished shopping in the Bellevue mall and we stopped by the local bucks of stars so I could finish my quota for today. I’ve just finished going back through the first part of this musing and completing the thoughts that I should have written this morning. Having finally run out of things to talk about, I’m finally at the point where some original thought about my story would be useful to get me past the halfway mark. Let’s see where this brings me.
One of the ideas I had this morning while taking a shower (another place where I can fully concentrate on nothing except the relaxing scalding water and the empty depths of my mind), was a physical cost for using the sweater’s magic. Most fantasy books that have magic usually include some cost for its use. Just like doing anything difficult in life has a cost: think of practicing incessantly for writing or any difficult feat, or the wrecking of the body for professional athletes. When something comes too easy, too many people do it and it becomes devalued and less interesting. Getting back to the shower, there was a book—I think it was called Thinner, although I never read it—about a person getting skinnier until he wasted away. I’m not sure if this was a horror or ironic (if that’s a genre now) story, but that was the main theme. It might have been made into a movie, which would be why I would remember it (I didn’t read it, and I usually don’t remember books I see in the bookstore or read reviews of). My weight has always been a problem for me. While most of the people around me struggled to lose weight, I would struggle to gain weight. At one time, my mother offered me significant amounts of money to break across certain weight goals.
Yesterday, Julie made comments about how I looked skinnier. When I don’t go to the gym, I tend not to eat as much (unless I’m getting lots of free food, which I will usually scarf down unless it’s buffet style, in which case I’ll eat it only if it’s high quality and clean), and I lose weight. I’ve not gone to the gym over the last two weeks because Scott, my Seattle-gym buddy, has been away. I’ve probably lost a few pounds because of that, and Julie noticed. She has since tried to withdraw yesterday’s comments, but the cat’s already out of the bag—I’m not sure which bag or what a cat is doing in it, but you know how much I love those clichés. Getting back to her comments, as I was showering this morning, I thought about my problems with weight and the narrator’s magic. As I said, magic is more interesting if it has a cost. The sweater’s magic already has a cost to the narrator, but it’s more of a cost created by his uncertainty, not the sweater’s price. The narrator can take off the sweater at any time and see what happens.
Whoa. I hadn’t even followed the main idea through to its conclusion. If the narrator doesn’t take off the sweater—I mean never takes off the sweater, not even to shower—he’ll probably have worse issues than a smelly sweater. Would he also be scared to wash it? How far will his psychosis go? The sweater, like the Lord of the Ring’s One Ring, will have a hold over its wearer. This hold is created less by the magic itself than by the thought of losing that magic. I’ve thought about this in a different context. Imagine if you had a winning lotto ticket. No, imagine it is the winning lotto ticket, the one-hundred million dollar ticket. What would you do to keep it safe? Would you leave it alone or stay with it at all the time? Who would you tell? Would you take a shower knowing you’d have to leave it lying on the sink for a moment? Would you hold it, risking ripping it or squeezing it too tight, or put it in your bag and hope it doesn’t fall out. These are the thoughts, and, more importantly, the feelings, that are going to go through the narrator’s head. It’s not too difficult to imagine how I would handle that situation: complete and utter paranoia comes to mind. But it should be interesting from the narrator and story’s perspective.
Finishing this thought, it’s going to be difficult for the narrator to do much once he gets the sweater on. In the beginning, before he understands what the powers of the sweater are, he might take it off. But after he fully appreciates what he has, he going to find himself in a tight spiral of fear. What he finds at the end might be what makes this an interesting story (I’ll leave it to you to define “interesting.”)
Getting back to my penultimate thought, the narrator will be getting skinnier and skinnier as he wears the sweater, as its magic uses more and more of his energy and body fat. He’ll probably start off more on the thin side anyway, something he’ll be self-conscious of (particularly his thin-thin wrists—where do I come up with this non-personal information? Oh, wait. This is all stuff from my life. Fuck.) Why wouldn’t he eat more or use the magic of the sweater to reverse the weight loss? Before I can answer any of those questions, I’d have to understand the nature of the sweater’s magic, something I know nothing about. I have way too much thinking to do between now and November 1. That’s nine days from now. I’m swallowing my fears and consternations now. I have to keep reminding myself that this is not high-quality writing that I’m planning to do. This is only first draft material. I’m going to throw whatever is in my mind on that day against the wall and hope it has something to do with the story. These broad strokes that I’ve been writing about the last few days are just a way to get some guidance on which wall to throw the thoughts onto. I’d hate to end up splattering the wrong wall.
I almost went back to the beginning to try to edit in the last 500 words. I don’t think that would have worked. Instead, I should continue this thinking and try to arrive at more ideas for the story. The narrator is going to need more people around him. I’m leaning toward him working as a salesman in a large corporation. I know something about corporations so it won’t be too much of a stretch. The sweater is going to allow him to get ahead in the company, at least in the beginning. Or perhaps it won’t. More details.
Why was he given the sweater? (There are so many thoughts I had while dreaming that I forgot to record. It’s good that they’re surfacing again. I hate losing thoughts. The book I’m reading now, The best American Nonrequired Readings from 2004 edited by Dave Eggers, has an introduction by Viggo Mortensen, from how he’s introduced, I assume he’s an author of some merit. He tells a story about how many of his notebooks that he had written poems and thoughts in while working and living in Africa were stolen. Out of everything that the thief took from his bag, that was the worst of it. He hated to lose ideas. I feel the same way. When I work so hard to come up with them, it’s difficult to see them vanish.) I had given some thought to his grandma, the person who gives him the pink sweater. (The sweater doesn’t have to be pink—I’ve been giving that a lot of thought as well.)
I imagine his grandma as a cranky person, who knows she’s cranky, but accepts that it’s a symptom of aging. She’s a smart lady with a high pitched voice who is full of wisdom that the narrator doesn’t accept. He likes her, but more because her cynicism reminds him of himself. I’ll have to develop that part more. But getting back to the grandma, she’s going to play an important part in this. How does she create the sweater and does she know what she’s giving her grandson? Why is she giving it to him? I don’t have any answers today. I don’t even know if the grandma angle is the correct one, but I want to give this more thought. She needs a motive. Everyone needs motives.
I’m losing steam. Luckily, the loss occurred at around 1,700 words, and I was able to pour out the last few paragraphs to push me over the 2,000 word limit. Word count: 2,060; Time: one hour in Starbucks and thirty minutes this morning. Caffeination: tall mocha. Word count after editing: 2,238; editing time: 18 minutes.
I’m starting this late with a headache. But I’m here and I’m typing. I’m in that wonderful place I mentioned briefly yesterday, where I have nothing to say about life. It’s wonderful because my hope is that it will prod my muse into talking about my story. That’s not completely true. I do have one thing to talk about: Julie is at the airport waiting to go home now. I’m becoming repetitive by saying this, but we had a wonderful weekend and I miss her already. It’s getting more difficult for me to watch her leave when she visits. In another year and a half we won’t have to worry about this anymore, but between now and then is a long time and, if you’ll excuse my pathetic word choice, it sucks. I miss holding her, wrapping my arms around her warm body and finding the crevices for my head and hands, like the grasping arms of the stuffed monkey that holds on tight. As I said, there will come a day where I won’t need such thoughts, but that day seems so far away, especially when I’m sitting alone in the bucks.
It has been nice writing every day. I don’t have to worry about trying to guess what day it is when I save the file (I name all my files by date). I just add one to the last day. I am beginning to understand what Stephen King in his book On Writing was talking about when he wrote about writing everyday. He once told reporters that the only days he took off were New Years and Columbus day (or something silly like that), but he was lying. He never took a day off from writing (well, at least until he a car hit him. Then he took days off, but that wasn’t by choice). Writing for me is becoming cathartic and easier. It’s not easy in that I can say something of value. What is easier is just writing my thoughts, putting words on the paper and not having to worry about simple things, like how do I want to say that, or should I even say that? Writing without editing (or editing following my newfound rules) silences my inner critic and more directly links my brain to my fingers, in the way that my brain is linked to my throat when talking.
My head has been delicate today. I hate waking up with the beginnings of a headache. I know there’s not much I can do with it. The best I can hope for is to turn over and go back to sleep and try waking up again. Sometime it works, but more usual, I wake up with the same or worse headache. Thankfully, by the time I arrived at the bucks, my headache had receded to a mere murmur in the back of my brain. As long as I didn’t move my head too fast or stare at the screen for too long, the headache has agreed to keep its distance. The problem with headaches, besides hurting terribly and ruining perfectly good days, is that they’re also unreliable. We’ll see how long this one keeps its promise.
I’ve been reading more of the Nanowrimo forums as of late. While my initial reaction was that they were filled by talent-free hacks, I’ve been reading through some decent writing that has forced me to reevaluate my quick judgments. That’s something I’m not good at: quick judgments. I’m awful when I first meet people. My first reaction, whether negative or positive, can almost never be trusted. It’s not the always wrong reaction, which would be easy to fix by just reversing my initial thought—you know, dumb person becomes smart, ala the great episode where George Castanza of “Seinfeld” decided to spend the day doing the opposite of what he thought he should do. That was the episode where he received a job with the Yankees and bedded a girl, or at least that’s what I hazily remember. It was a great episode, either way. Getting back to me, I’m wrong about half the time with my initial reactions and I find myself missing out on potentially good acquaintances or opportunities by judging so quickly.
There are some good writers participating in the Nanowrimo. There are also many, many students—you can tell them by their livejournal websites—who aspire to write and have many years to find out that there are many better aspirations. But I enjoy reading forums; I like understanding a community and seeing how people interact. I’ll keep reading the forums and trying to find inspiration there. What harm can there be in that?
I’ve cleared my throat enough for one day. It’s time I continued the planning of the story. Over the last few days, I’ve been making large, drastic changes, and I have a feeling that by next week (remember, the start of November is only eight days away—I’m having trouble counting days. Am I supposed to include today? Should I include November 1? Math, the number-math not the theory math, was never a strong subject for me), I won’t recognize the story I started to plan a few days ago. The little girl has disappeared, and the pink sweater is threatening to follow. I’m rethinking the themes and trying to find some hooks and new characters to introduce.
There, I found my goal for today. I’m not moving terribly fast toward my goal, and the caffeine, while lessening my headache (just while drinking it, regrettably), isn’t doing much to accelerate my thinking or writing. Therefore, I’ll choose a ridiculous goal and see how far I can push it. I want to create characters today. I’ve read that it’s the characters that actually push a story forward. I don’t know very much about that, since my characters, with the exception of Kem from Termite, weren’t memorable for me (I won’t even bother to ask what you thought of any of them, if you even remember any characters). But from what other writers, both successful and hack, say, when they let their characters go, they’re always surprised where they—i.e., the characters—take them. Before I can let them go do their thing, however, I need to sketch them and understand who they are, or at least, what they are.
The caffeine is fighting my headache and losing. My word count is hovering around 550 (before editing, of course), but I’m going to keep going. I don’t think anything interesting will come out of this typing but I made myself a promise to keep pushing through, even when nothing is coming. I’m good at the pushing—particularly if I’m pushing with no concerns for what pops out on the other end. I finished my coffee. We’ll see if there’s enough caffeine entering my bloodstream to keep me going toward finishing this musing.
I’m leaning toward naming the narrator Lenny, after my illustrious demon friend. I want there to be one exaggeration for each character, something I can point to and say, that’s so-and-so, you know, the guy with the limp. I’m hoping to come up with something better than a limp, of course. But I want to start working with something. Before I get to that, let me introduce more of the lineup. Lenny is involved with a woman, Karen, a tall, curly haired brunette. She is outgoing and. Yeah, that’s not working well. Nothing is working well, but I’m going to keep pushing. Bathwater and baby, that’s how it goes—I’m just swimming through the bathwater looking for the baby. My god, even my poorly wrought analogies are poorly wrought. Wow. Keep pushing, we’re at 790 words (again, before editing—I’m much better at going back through these musings and adding junk than thinking up the junk in the first place. That’s not necessarily a good thing. Original ideas, like the ones I was trying to describe yesterday, are hard to come up with. Filling crap in-between ideas, regardless of how original they are, are not difficult. It’s just not terribly productive either).
What makes Karen special? Why is she dating Lenny? Who cares? Talk some about Lenny’s job. Does he like it? What defines him? His love of something can define him. It’s not going to be his love of his job or his love of Karen. He’ll discover Karen later in the book, when she threatens or does leave him. I don’t predict a sane outcome for Lenny. He’s not going to do well with the sweater or the magic. Lenny will need friends. We’ll start at work. A Tamer character would be interesting. What exactly is a Tamer character? Do I even know how to create characters? I’m becoming pretty scared about my story now. Looking back at my poorly designed previous stories, none of them had more than two characters. Originally, the Termite was supposed to have four characters, but I couldn’t do it. I tried and tried, but ended up killing (okay, more like deleting than killing) the second two characters and leaving myself with two. My other stories were similar. Even in Grelko, my only multi-character story, none of the characters were fully developed.
Argh. My headache and doubts are filling up these pages with babble. What I need is more dreaming, more ceiling staring and sleepy mutters into my voice-recording phone. For reasons that I wish I could understand and fix, I am not good at developing ideas by writing. I want my characters to show themselves on the page. I want them to make choices and surprise me. I want, as I’ve read many times before, a character to change the plot and flow of the story in such a drastic way that I can’t believe it’s the same character that I had originally written. These are all wants and desires. I’m thinking their going to find themselves unfulfilled at the end of November, but I’m hoping to be surprised.
This has not turned out like I hoped, and I had high hopes on this headachy Sunday evening. I sit down with limited expectations but unlimited expectations. When I end up, like I usually do, at the end of these entries having said little and moved my story nowhere, I become discouraged. Don’t worry: this won’t stop me from continuing writing. It’ll just leave me disappointed, looking back on another wasted day where I could have written something of value but instead consternated for 2,000 words. One of the reasons I’m looking forward to starting Nanowrimo is because my consternations will not count toward my daily writing goal. I’ll instead have to write prose, create characters, and grant them breathe. Either that, or give up, and we know that I’m not going to give up. Particularly since Chuck would enjoy nothing more than basking in my failure. He has already proposed writing a script to compare our daily word counts. I’ll, of course, accede to his wishes, mostly because I know I’m a faster typist and at the least I’ll write more words in a day than he will. Well, hopefully. While I do type fast, seeing as I have a real job, I actually have less time to write than him. This is a great way to waste words: trash talk Chuck. I should have thought about doing this many hours ago.
I won’t bother writing another paragraph about not coming up with any original ideas or direction for my story. I’m close to fulfilling my 2,000 word count and I’ll leave it at that. Any words that I’m missing I’m going to capture by editing in a few words here and there. I’m not proud of my content, but I am proud of my quantity. That’s what it’s about for the next month and nine days: quantity. I’ll worry about actually saying something of value when I get done with this. I thank you if you’ve made it this far. I don’t expect it, and in all likelihood, the only people who will make it this far are those who scroll to the end to see if I am planning to say anything of value. For those that do (after searching for “Julie,” of course), I’m sorry to say that yet again I failed to say anything of value. But, boy oh boy, did I type a lot of words.
Word count: 1,957; time: 50 minutes; Caffeination: Tall mocha + Tea at Dim Sum; word count after editing: 2,092; editing time: 12 minutes (cut short because this bucks closes at 7pm on Sundays).
“I am the Clockman and I present you with a very most wholesome welcome to my shop. I carry clocks and timepieces from every known corner of the world, and even some from parts unknown but soon to be discovered—I have thought of revealing those parts and claiming the discovery for the Clockman, but in doing so, I would risk losing my exclusive supply of never before seen clocks. And that my dear sir never would I risk, for I deal in clocks, not in fame or discovery.
“I am here to fulfill any and all of your temporal needs. There are some visitors, perhaps visitors like you, who never realized their forlorn desire for the clock. The truth, if I may be so humble as to pretend to know about truth in this topsy-turvy world where every huckster claims to be an expert in that most inscrutable of currency, is that everyone, and I mean every last person, from the tallest, oldest gentleman, to the chubbiest, most eye-curling baby, what they all have in common is that they all must have a clock. And, as chance, the most welcome of all beasts, has arranged it, there is a clock, one clock, a solitary clock, the, if I may be so bold, the clock for every person, including you, my kind sir, my gentleman, my very most welcome patron.
“Please, follow me through these doors and prepare to see the world as you have never seen it. For behind this very entryway you will find my most wholesome of domains, and in there, in my most secret of secret places, awaits your clock. For I am the Clockman and it is my honor, it is my duty, it is my most virtuous of pleasures to welcome you, most gentle of sirs, to the Clockman’s realm.”
Carl stared at the strange, small man in the red business suit. He didn’t know what to make of him. He wore yellow stage make-up over his eyes and his huge smile, not augmented by any makeup, had not left his mouth during his speech. Two large triangular puffs of hair shot out from the sides of his head, as if orange flames were sprouting from his ears. His face, reddened from not seemingly breathing through his entire presentation, held a final, joyous expression, and lingered unmoving and expecting.
Before the Clockman appeared at the storefront, Carl had been about to leave. Hanging over the closed doors was a simple, cardboard sign with the words “Clock Store” painted in broad white strokes. No address was displayed on the blackened door, but Carl knew that this was the right place. It was just not what he had expected. But now that the Clockman was here and he had come this far, he wasn’t about to give up without at least looking at the clocks. And the Clockman, if nothing else, was a cheery, if outlandish, character—almost unreal in his dress and speech.
“How could I resist such a welcome?” Carl said as he walked past the outstretched arm of the Clockman, which led toward the darkened double doors that opened into the shop. Carl felt a deep ticking vibration as he touched the door handle. When the door opened, the hushed vibration exploded as thousands of synchronized clocks ticked.
Carl had moved into his house nine-weeks ago, which was a day short of exactly eight months since his wife had walked out on him to move in with her podiatrist. After unpacking his moving boxes in his new house, Carl embarked on decorating. In the settlement, he had received all of the furniture from their previous house because, she later admitted to him, the podiatrist, a Dr. Phut, a name Carl still couldn’t believe was real, had decorated his lavish house with furniture imported from Tahiti and Maui. Furniture that cost much more than the stuff that Carl was able to afford. But Carl loved his furniture because his wife had purchased it. He had given her everything he could afford during their twenty-year marriage.
When the furniture arrived, Carl positioned it in the same location as it had been in their previous home, which he had sold as a condition of the divorce. During their marriage, she had reupholstered all of the cheaply purchased furniture with a beautiful flower print made up of pinkish and yellowish pastel colors. He lovingly repositioned each couch, chair, ottoman, and table in the same position as it had been in their former home. He spent hours pushing and tugging the pieces until their placement was as exact as his memory could recollect.
During the unpacking, he had found that the clock that had hung above the fireplace was broken. It still ticked and kept time, but its face, a cloudy glass face covered in dark, embossed numbers, had cracked. He searched through all the stores and malls for a replica with no success. He saw traditional, wooden clocks, modern clocks that he still wasn’t sure actually told time, grandfather clocks, and clocks shaped as cats and dogs with tails wagging. While he admired some of the clocks and wished furtively that he could buy them, he knew that none could replace the broken clock. Not one of the clocks touched that part of him that understood what it wanted, knew what was right for him. He gave up, until yesterday, when he found the Clockman’s advertisement in the weekly newspaper. It read: “A clock for every need; a clock for every breed; a clock for every disgruntled, disassociated, disbelieving, dismembered, distended someone. 415 Grandfather Road.”
Carl entered the store and was surprised to find himself in a bare room. The walls were whitewashed and illuminated by spotlights hanging from the ceiling, but except for the door, there was no decoration, no table, and no clocks in the room. The loud synchronized ticking of clocks seemed to originate from deep behind the walls. The sound grew louder as Carl approached the middle of the room.
“Not what one would expect of the Clockman’s store. Eh, Mr. Peterson? As I said outside, there is a clock, one clock, for every person. Even for you, Mr. Peterson. However hard it is for you to accept. You, who spent an entire life serving another only to be stepped on, grinded into the floor—if you would forgive me my pun, I share and respect your private pain, but I am and always will be a salesman who seeks the pretty tongue to entice the deal—and now to find yourself here, at this moment, this particular second, when freedom has found you, freed you from all of your past. Not what one would expect, Mr. Peterson? No. This is exactly what one would expect, exactly what you should expect.”
The white door shut behind the Clockman, and the door’s edges disappeared, leaving only a smooth wall visible behind the short man. The Clockman curled his fingers around his chin and studied Carl with a slight tilt to his head.
“My name, how did you—“
“Would you suppose the Clockman, master of all timepieces, traveler and proprietor extraordinaire, would not to know his client base? The hows and whys and whatfors are not important, Mr. Peterson. What I offer you—and it is an offer that I give neither lightly nor unkindly—is another chance, an opportunity to free yourself of your demons, of your poor decisions, and your white knuckles that grasp the past as if its escape would be the death of you.
“There are clocks and then there are clocks, Mr. Peterson. Did I not tell you that when you first entered my store? I offer you a clock, the very clock that would release you from your pains and unanswered expectations. I do not ask much of you. I only ask that you choose, Mr. Peterson. I know what my customers want, better than they do. But I cannot choose for them. I am only the salesman, the messenger, the enlightened showman—if you would once again forgive my flippant descriptions—that present my clients with what they most wish. I only ask that you take what you want, and I hope, for your sake, that you understand and appreciate your truest desire before you take what is not yet yours. After I have given you all that I have to give, you may ask nothing more of me.”
“I do not understand. What are you talking about? Do you have my clock? Do you know the one that I need, the one that is broken and now needs replacing? I will not ask how you know and I do not care. Show me my clock, Clockman.”
The small man took a deep breath and his smile left his face. His red suit appeared brighter against the white and he pointed to the wall behind Carl. Two clocks hung on the wall, both ticking in unison. An unbroken replica of the cloudy faced clock hung next to a beautifully carved cuckoo clock, the same clock that he and his father had carved when he was a child. His ex-wife had been spooked by the small, yellow bird that flew out of the wooden door every hour, and had thrown the clock away the first week of their marriage. And there it hung, next to the clock that had been his wife’s first purchase during their marriage. Now that Carl looked closely at it, the cloudy faced clock was shoddy, probably purchased at a discount store. The cuckoo clock had taken him and his father over a year to craft, and had been their final woodworking project together.
“Time ticks, for me more than most people, Mr. Peterson. As I said, each person only has one clock. I never said that that clock was the same clock throughout that person’s life. Take your clock off the wall. I have no more charming words or pitches to prod you this day. Choose and go about, Mr. Peterson.”
Carl walked to the hanging clocks. He turned and watched as the Clockman opened the door and held it open. The ticking of the clocks behind the walls quieted until Carl could hear only the ticking of the cuckoo clock and the cloudy-faced clock. He reached toward the cuckoo clock and touched its finally crafted finish. He caressed the cool, metal finish of the cloudy-faced clock, leaving behind moist fingerprints. He opened the little door on the cuckoo clock and petted the small, yellow bird hiding behind the door. He traced over the large numbers of the cloudy-faced clock’s face.
Carl took a step back from both clocks and smiled.
“So, you have decided?” the Clockman said.
“Yes,” Carl said. He looked at the clocks one last time and turned toward the door. The Clockman stood aside as Carl passed through the doors into the unknown evening.
***
Short, short story idea: a conversation with a person who uses large words incorrectly through an entire conversation. The other person doesn’t realize the incorrect usage and is overwhelmed and impressed by the conversation.
That was a hard story to write. I think it would have been more interesting if I had discussed his relationship with his father at the beginning, but I had no idea where the story was heading in the beginning. Thanks to a short day at work, I spent many, many hours on this story. I spent a lot of that time editing (I know, I know, I’m not supposed to edit, but I was procrastinating actually taking the story somewhere).
I have two more days of training for the Marathon. The past six or seven days (maybe it’s less—I’ve completely lost count), have been the most productive writing I’ve ever done. Even if I don’t make it through the Nanowrimo story—and there’s a low probability of that; especially with all the smack talk that Chuck has been laying down—this has really inspired me to write more. The last three days in particular have shown me the difference between real writing and metawriting, as Chuck so aptly named. I definitely like real writing better. Can you believe my low consternation output for today?
I’m a little over my 2,000-word count for the day, so I’ll call this finished.
Word count: 2,065; writing time: lots, 3+ hours; caffeination: tall mocha (Tully’s)+Vanilla Coke; editing time: lots; after edit word count: 2,082.
“Did you finish your homework, Tommy?”
“Yeah, I’ll get it done later—just one more level.”
“Make sure you finish before going to sleep tonight, young man.”
“Mom, it’s the weekend. I have all day tomorrow to do it. It’ll get done. It always gets done eventually.”
“But if you do it now, you won’t have to worry about it all weekend. You’ll be free to do whatever you want today and tomorrow—and I hope some of that involves you turning off the game and going outside.”
“Just gotta finish this level. I’m almost at the tortoise—he breathes fire from his two heads. He’s the greatest boss in this game.”
“There are only a few more days of autumn and then winter will be here and you’ll be cooped up in the house. Did you see the pile of leaves that your dad raked up? I’m sure he’d be awfully disappointed if you didn’t jump in it. Remember how many times he had to rake the lawn last year. And you blamed it on poor Paws! Poor Paws. Let’s see you say that three times fast!”
“Boris told me the trick to beating the tortoise. You have to draw one head off to the side of the screen and then charge the other one when you trap the head in the corner with the holographic transmitter. I finally found the transmitter—you wouldn’t believe where they hid it. It was in the room with the four zombies that I thought you had to survive by running through it, but it turned out you had to kill all the zombies or the transmitter wouldn’t appear. It’s just a matter of time before I find the entrance to the tortoise’s cave.”
“Speaking of Paws, have you seen that retched dog? I guess it would be too much to ask for you to walk him today. I remember a time when you played all day with him. You’d go to the backyard and throw the Frisbee back and forth for hours, and Paws would get bored before you did.”
“Mom, it’s hard to concentrate with you standing there. Ah. There it is! I knew it. They hid the entrance behind the green slime. The trick to the slime is to use fire to move it. You can’t kill it with fire, and if you attack it with weapons it divides in half and the halves grow to full size in no time. But if you place the fire just right, the slime moves out of the path and a door appears.”
“Just don’t forget your homework. I’m going to find Paws and take him for a walk.”
“Is your homework finished?”
…
“I’m talking to you, young man. Do I have to turn off the television to get your attention?’
“Mom! It’s almost the end of the show. You know, where they fight the final battle and the story ends—they tell you what happens. I don’t bother you when you’re watching your TV shows. Why do you bother me? It’s hard to concentrate on what’s going on with you talking all the time. My teacher said that understanding the plot and characters of TV shows were important exercises in learning to do good writing. I’m doing that right now.”
“It’s a commercial now.”
“See. This is why I need a TV in my room. You have a TV in your room and you can close the door and watch it when you don’t want us to bother you. If I had a TV, I could lock the door when I’m doing important things, like watching the end of the show. I’ll even pay for the TV. You know I have the money now.”
“And since when do you have extra money, Tommy?”
“Since Grandma visited two days ago. Shush. It’s back on.”
“She spoils you. And don’t shush me! I told her to stop giving you money. You’ll never learn the value of money if she keeps throwing it at you every time she sees you. I’m going to have your dad talk to her when he gets home. How much did she give you?”
“It’s back on.”
“So? I asked you a question.”
“I’ll finish my homework later.”
“What’s for breakfast?”
“Oh, it’s breakfast time now? It’s past eleven. Where have you been all morning? Sleeping?”
“You’ve always told me that sleep is important. Just last night you were yelling at me for not going to sleep, and now you’re yelling at me for sleeping too much. Which one is it, mom? You’re confusing me—you’re confusing my simple, simple mind.”
“You’re a comedian now? Sit down and I’ll make you some pancakes. Did you finish your homework last night before going to bed?”
“Blueberry pancakes, please.”
“The homework, Tommy, did you finish it?”
“I told you yesterday. I have all day today to do it. I only have three assignments. It’ll be done in an hour, two at max. Can you drive me to the mall when we’re done? I’m supposed to meet Boris at noonish. We have to buy Blood, Guts, and/or Zombies, part II. Boris finished the first part last night. After the tortoise, there’s only two more levels, and if we buy it today, we won’t get stuck with nothing to play.”
“Don’t you have hundreds of other video games to play?”
“We’ve beaten them all. It’s no fun to play the game once we finish it. Even you should know that.”
“Getting back to your homework, is it done?”
“What did I just say?”
“Did Boris finish his homework?”
“I’ll ask him when I see him at the mall. Do you have syrup?”
“We’re going to watch the movies your father rented in fifteen minutes.”
“Great. I just have to finish my homework first.”
“Are you feeling alright?”
“Yeah. I was thinking about what you said before I went to the mall, and I didn’t want to spend the rest of the night worrying about whether I was going to finish my homework. See. Here’s my finished math homework. I just have to finish summarizing this stupid short story, and my English homework is finished. That just leaves social studies.”
“I don’t understand. What did you do at the mall? Were you drugged? Abducted and cloned by space aliens? Where’s my son?”
“Mom, stop being so dramatic. Sometimes, what you say really gets into me, you know? So what movies did dad rent?”
“Do I have to search your room for drugs? Is that it? Drugs? Should I expect a phone call from the police with an arrest warrant for you?”
“Sheesh. Can’t a kid do his homework without his mother accusing him of illegal activities? Maybe I’m just growing up. You know, becoming a better person. I mean, really, mom, I’m going into high school next year. Don’t you think I’ve matured at all?”
“Did you accidentally kill Paws? Just tell it to me straight. I won’t hold it against you. Is Paws dead? Oh, no. Is Boris dead? Was he a victim of your drug smuggling?”
“Get out and let me finish my homework!”
“I love you, Tommy.”
“I’ll remember you said that.”
“We’re going to start soon. Your dad went to make some popcorn. Are all your assignments finished?”
“Of course they are. Remember when you were interrupting me before, claiming that I was abducted or something. I finished it just like I said I would. Do you want to see it? I can go get it if you want.”
“No, no. I trust you. I wanted to see if you needed any help or if you needed me or dad to review any of your work.”
“It’s all good. Most of the assignments were pretty easy. I now have the rest of the evening free to do nothing but spend quality time with my parents. This is a great night.”
“Okay. Now I know something is wrong. Spill the beans.”
“What could be wrong? It’s a beautiful fall day. The moon is out. My father is cooking popcorn. The movie is humming in the DVD player. My homework is all finished—but the social studies was harder than I thought. It took me three loose-leaf sheets to finish.”
“You’re setting me up for something. I’m sure of it. What do you want? Do you want that video game that Boris bought today? Do you need money for that?”
“No, mother. I’m going to borrow Boris’s once he finishes it. He plays the games way more than I do, and way faster. He’ll just bring it to class when he’s done with it. Can’t I just be happy with no other reason than I’m happy?”
“I’m sorry, Tommy. I guess you just can never understand kids.”
“I’m not a kid anymore, mom. I’m growing up now and you’re going to have to start treating me more like an adult.”
“If you keep acting this way I’ll have no choice but to do that. I’m really proud of you.”
“Did you brush your teeth?”
“Yes, mom. I even flossed and washed my face.”
“You want me to leave this light on for you?”
“No, that’s okay.”
“And the closet door, you want me to shut it?”
“I don’t care.”
“Then I’ll shut it; leaving the closet door open freaks me out ever since I was young. Are you sure there’s nothing wrong today?”
“Will you stop that? I’m not an alien and I don’t want anything. Can’t you just accept that I learned something? What, do you want me to tell you that ‘you told me so,’ is that what you’re waiting for?”
“I’m sorry, Tommy. No, of course not. Go to sleep now. I love you.”
“I love you too, mom. Close the door. I like it dark.”
“Sleep tight, and don’t let the bed bugs bite.”
“Boris? Phase one is complete. It worked like a charm.
“No, she doesn’t have a clue what I’m doing. So gullible. It was just like the book said. And with you?
“That’s great to hear. I know this is going to be too funny. We’ll compare notes tomorrow.
“Yup.
“Got it.
“Cool. Bye.”
I’ll have to apologize for that story. I had no idea what it was about, and after finishing it, I still don’t. It was more just an exercise in dialogue. As you’ll see with some notes I jotted down when I was struggling to get started, I didn’t have many good ideas. I just wanted to write filler, and I think I accomplished that. It’s filler with lots of clichés and bad dialogue. Okay. That’s enough of making fun of my writing. I’m going to have to read crap like this for the next month, so I should get used to it. Here are some other random thoughts from before writing this story:
When I have nothing to write I write nothing. This is one of those days. I’m sure you were expecting another story. I was as well but so far I have nothing and I was getting sick of staring at the blank screen. I figured once I typed a few words, others might follow and I might be struck by an idea for a story or at least an outline or something.
I have concerns about the story I’m going to start writing on Monday. I’m not sure I like it enough to write it for an entire month. I’m not sure if there are any stories that I like enough to write for an entire month. I hate these types of days. I had almost nothing planned for the day except some errands and writing, and here I find myself, with all the time in the world, a hot cup of Mocha and an empty screen.
After writing the above two paragraphs, it took me much driving around aimlessly looking for a good coffee house, returning home and watching movies, and eventually just giving up and writing whatever popped into my head (after taking a nap, of course) to write the story.
I sprayed most of my windows today to kill off the spiders. Scott told me that if I waited any longer, come spring, the spiderlings (I didn’t realize that wasn’t a real word) would hatch and I’d have thousands of little spiders running around my garden and sneaking into my house. That freaked the shit out of me, and I started killing off all my window guests. I’m not happy about it, but I know it has to be done.
That’s a wrap. Word count: 2,089; writing time: less than an hour of real writing, many hours of driving, consternating, napping…err preparing; editing time: fifteen minutes; edited word count: 2,125.
It’s been difficult to find the time to sit down and write. Yesterday was tough because of the ice pick that someone thoughtlessly hammered through my skull. When my head did finally clear up late at night, I was too tired to get up and start typing. Instead, I stayed in bed and tried to think through storylines for my wayward characters. I didn’t come up with many good ideas, but I did start to drift away from the idea of walking—it sounded too much like waiting in line to be very exciting. I went through the obvious possibilities, like the ninja assault, gratuitous explosion that kills one of them, the muggers with paint cans, but they all passed through my mind and quickly flew out the other side.
This was harder than I thought it was going to be. The next step will be to discuss these ideas with someone. I usually think better when I have a sound board to bounce ideas off. I just hope I have some ideas worth bouncing; otherwise, this is going to be a long and drawn-out process. But I won’t go there because of my new Nanowrimo-influenced positive attitude. I’m a great writer with incredible story ideas just waiting to be hatched in my thick skull—okay, my skull can’t be that thick or the ice picks wouldn’t keep piercing it and finding their way to my brain. Today, in case you’re wondering, has been better on the headache front. It’s still too early to declare it a P.H.D. (post-headache day), but all the signs point to the good (or some fortune-cookie influence statement like that).
I did decide that there needed to be an antagonist, which is a word I don’t use often enough. Thinking back to my other stories, I usually left that role for an inanimate object or a feeling—FBT: the termite rollercoaster; Grelko: the protag’s fear; TPS: evil sweater that turned out to be not so evil—or better put, I was never able to make evil enough to turn into a character. What I need, is a foil that creates conflict to push the story in some sort of direction. Of course, talking about an antag is just more meta-writing, but I thought it was important enough to put down, so there.
I’m not sure if I’m going to get much more writing done today. I’m going with Julie to meet her sisters in the city, and then we’re supposed to visit Eileen and her monsters (said affectionately, of course) for dinner with the rest of my family. If all goes as planned, I might not get home until late. That’s why I decided to use this time while Julie showers to get some words on the paper. As you can tell from yesterday (and probably today’s) entry, I am not setting a word count requirement. I do have a “suggested” word count of 2,000, but that may change based on obligations. What I won’t let happen, however, is for a day to go by without writing something. I’d prefer fictional words, but musings of a non-fictional nature might be all that I conjure up, and I’ll live with that. The important thing is to put words, no matter how short and insignificant, on the computer. I’ll bring some paper along with me just in case I feel inspiration driving an ice pick through my stomach, which sounds a lot more appetizing than through my skull.
Early, early, early. It is 3am Seattle time, and I’m sitting in Newark airport, waiting to board my airplane after a whirlwind two-day tour of NYC. My creative juices haven’t started flowing yet—they haven’t really been flowing for a few days now. My crazy jet setting and lack of scheduled sleep has thrown my head into a crazy land where, as I mentioned yesterday, ice picks are the chosen weapons of torture.
I thought about editing one of my older stories, but for $6.95 for internet access, I resisted looking one up, which was all for the best. I fell into this fun vignette:
So, this kid Charlie, I don’t think I told you about him, he’s a medium-sized kid, the one that sits next to me in the back of my Spanish class and pretends to shoot spitballs with an oversized straw. He got into this fight with Roger, the guy with the nose—a big kid, medium tall with lots of pimples. I didn’t see the fight, but Charlie was walking home with Eddie, and Eddie told me all about it. I trust Eddie. He’s strange but good at telling stories. Eddie is short and his nose always looks like it should be running, there’s always flaking red skin and other yucky stuff around it—now that I really think about it, I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen him blow it or any snot dripping from it. Maybe it’s a skin disease or some other thing.
Charlie and Eddie were walking home together after school. We’re in New York, I should tell you, Brooklyn if you want to get particular, and the day’s a good one. The sky is three-dimensional. Do you know those skies? It’s like looking into s holographic picture where you see depth even though the picture is on a flat piece of paper. Three dimensions are easy to see when there are clouds floating every which way, but that day there weren’t. It was just blueness, and the blueness was three-dimensional. As I said, I wasn’t there that day, but when Eddie told me about the weather, I knew just the day. How did anyone forget such a sky?
Now this Charlie kid, he thought he was pretty smart. He always had that attitude, like when you spoke with him, you’d think he was looking down his crooked nose at you. He was a cool guy once you got to know him, but the first time I saw him, and you should know I’m a nice guy, not judgmental or anything like that, the first time I saw him, I wanted to punch him in the nose. I’m not surprised that his nose was like that, all bent like. Some other guy must have had the same thought and popped him one. I wouldn’t blame that guy, but he probably should have given Charlie a chance like I did. You never know who the good people are until you give them a chance. I stopped acting on those initial itches because they got me into too much trouble. Charlie was a loyal guy, the type who would walk an extra blocks because you had an inkling, or layout some of his cash because you came up a few cents short for the weeks’ comics.
The weather that day was cold. I’ve now lived almost fourteen years next December, and, you probably know this already, but those three-dimensional skies, they only come out on cold days. Those blistering cold days, the ones where any exposed skin turns bright red and your breath looks like exhaust smoke from a car. The weather was cold, but Eddie and Charlie didn’t mind. They were walking home, talking about the kind of stuff that ten-year olds talk about, like movies and junk. I can tell you they weren’t talking about sports because Charlie didn’t know the first thing about sports. He was strange that way. Eddie knew a little about it, having played in little league and everything. But Charlie, I don’t think he ever played on a team. He’s the kid we always picked last in anything we played in the schoolyard. It wasn’t because we didn’t like the guy—I mean, some of us didn’t like him, but most of us thought he was cool. It was just that he was real skinny. Now he’s probably one of the tallest kids in class, but back then, he was ordinary-sized and skinny with wrists so small I could wrap my thumb and pinky around it. If I was drawing him for my comic book, it would take just a few hard lines here and there and you’d know right who I was talking about. That’s if you knew him.
I don’t even think he realized how skinny he was. I’m not sure he thought much about what he looked like. Just to give you an example, so you can have a better idea of what I’m talking about, Charlie wore these plastic braces. Eddie, Charlie, and I were once talking, and Eddie made this real funny comment. Eddie was like, ‘Charlie, you eat cream cheese for lunch?’ We were standing around and talking in the afternoon between classes. Charlie said ‘nah, he had pizza,’ which was a good choice because there were some real good pizza joints around the school. I’m talking high quality. They say it’s the water that makes the pizza good, you know Brooklyn water. I don’t believe they put water in pizza, so I think they’re full of shit, but I’m just telling you what they say. Anyway, then Eddie says, and this was funny, I almost peed my pants funny, Eddie says, ‘Then what’s that gunk between your braces?’ You see, Charlie’s braces always had this white goo around them. I never thought of it before Eddie said something, but it did look like cream cheese stuck there. Eddie said things like that. He was quick, that Eddie. But Charlie didn’t care much about how he looked so it flew right passed him. I was dying, though. That Eddie’s a funny one.
Charlie lived on Gravesend Road, right off the Avenue P. I don’t think he liked living much at Gravesend. Don’t get me wrong, there wasn’t a cemetery or anything there, although I guess that would have been pretty cool. Charlie always said that name it Gravesend because someone famous died there or something. It would have been cool if there was a dangerous curve with one of those 100-foot drops, but there wasn’t. Charlie always thought it might have been a shootout between the police and gangsters over prohibition. Charlie was into gangsters and knew the names of all the famous ones, including how they died or where they went to jail, and who caught them. But for everything Charlie knew, he couldn’t find a reference to what happened on Gravesend. I guess we just lived in a boring part of Brooklyn. Charlie’s block was cool because he lived right near a park. It wasn’t a good park like Bedford park or the schoolyard, but it was somewhere to hang out when we got bored hanging out in Charlie’s basement.
Now Roger’s house was a few blocks away from Charlie. He lived on Avenue R with his parents. Roger didn’t have any brothers or sisters and his parents were all over him. When I’d go to visit, and I only visited him once or twice when we were much smaller, his parents treated me great. Most other parents, my parents included, think friends are something you have to put up with, but only put up with for so long. They’re nice to us for a bit, but once you overstay your welcome or eat one too many times at their dinner table, they begin to drop hints like don’t you have your own home, what, your food is not good enough, get the hell out of here, stuff like that. But Roger’s parents, they couldn’t wait to feed me. Roger’s father was a husky guy. He shaved his head completely shaved and had these ingrown eyeballs, the type that you were sure would disappear completely, eye socket and everything, when he shut his eyes. His mother was a tall lady with a very long face, which she had unfortunately passed on to Roger. I remember her because she was quiet during dinner and wore a large amount of make-up. I’m not sure why, but most other moms didn’t wear make-up.
Roger yelled at his parents during dinner that night. I yell at my parents, plenty. I do, and I find I have to do it more and more as they grow older. It’s as if they can’t even hear me anymore. I hear old people start going deaf and senile, I just didn’t think it would happen to my parents so soon. But Roger, he yelled at his parents, not because they were nagging or bothering him or telling him to do something unnatural, which is why I yell at my parents. No, he was yelling at them because they didn’t get stuff just the way he wanted it. And his parents took it. They sat there all quiet like and didn’t say a word. His mother event tried apologizing but then he yelled at her for interrupting him. It was weird.
That night we ordered food from this place called Brennan & Carr, an old-style roast beef joint. Before joining Roger for dinner, I never ate from there. My parents didn’t believe in taking us out to dinner. Back then, we had to suffer with my mother’s terrible cooking except when we went on long drives usually somewhere far away. Now I get to go there frequently. My mother doesn’t cook as much anymore, probably because of that impending senility. Brennan & Carr has this great roast beef sandwich, but at the time, because I didn’t know better, I ordered a cheeseburger. The cheeseburger is not bad, but it’s not as good as the roast beef. For the roast beef, they dip the bun in this big vat of gravy, and then dip the roast beef in the same vat with a slice of cheese slapped on it. It’s delicious. So the one time I went to Roger’s house, his parents called ahead our order on the telephone, and went to pick it up. Roger ordered two roast beef sandwiches, fries, and an order of mozzarella sticks.
The food came in brown paper bags, with the sandwiches, fries, and sticks wrapped in the restaurant-grade tinfoil. Speaking of food, that tinfoil always reminds me of the grilled cheeses I now order from the various diners. While the roast beef from Brennan & Carr is good, the cheeseburger in those fancy tin wrappings, those are amazing. Roger’s mother brought the food to the table and his father took out the drinks and silverware. As his mother distributed the food there was a problem. Brennan & Carr only gave us three roast beef sandwiches, and both his parents had ordered one. You should have heard him screaming. It was like his parents had stabbed him or something. I thought his father was going to run away from the table and cry or something, he was that upset. My father would have backhanded me if I had said the things that Roger said. He didn’t curse, probably because we were still too young to know the good ones, but he called his mother a whore and his father a balding has-been. I sat there astonished. I would have taken notes and tried it on my own parents, but I knew better. Besides the back-handing, I’d probably spent the rest of the month locked in my room with my computer broken into tiny bits. I guess it had something to do with being an only child. Charlie and I both come from bigger families, I have a brother and a sister and Charlie has two sisters, and our parents wouldn’t put up with what Roger dished out.
Roger and Charlie live close to each other, and from what I knew, they were on and off friends. Some years in school, they talked, and I think I even saw them at the movies together. Eddie tells me this great story about Roger and Charlie—this other great story, not the one about the fight, which I will get to eventually. All three of them grew up together and when they were young, they were all good friends. When Eddie and Charlie visited Roger in his house, Roger wanted to play ninjas. Roger was always talking about ninjas and from what I saw when I went to dinner at his house, he owned a large collection of ninja weapons, like shurikens (the whirly ninja throwing stars), tzis (the three-pointed unsharpened knives made famous by Michaelangelo, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle), grappling hook and rope, and a few katana (ninja short swords). Roger also owned a crossbow. Now, I’m pretty sure that crossbows were not ninja weapons, but I think he made an exception because of its black color. So, Charlie and Eddie were playing ninja with Roger in his bedroom when Roger whipped out his crossbow. It was fully loaded and he swung it around, pretending to shoot Charlie and Eddie. Eddie saw right away that he did not want to play this game with a loaded crossbow, and he ducked behind Roger’s bed. But Charlie wasn’t that smart or maybe he didn’t realize that the crossbow was loaded, and he continued to throw his fake kicks and punches. When he got close, Roger shot him. The bolt hit Charlie’s leg. He was lucky that Roger hadn’t put on one of the sharp arrowheads that came with the crossbow. Even without the head, the bolt left a red, circular mark on his leg, a large welt that turned all shades of black and blue a day later. From what Eddie told me, they ran and ran from his house. His parents didn’t know what happened and they wanted Eddie and Charlie to stay, but Charlie and Eddie were running too fast to answer them. After that, Eddie and Charlie stopped visiting Roger’s house. I can’t blame them after Eddie told me the story. Roger has always been a little screwy, if you know what I mean.
After that incident, Roger and Charlie’s relationship took a turn for the worse. From what I’ve been able to make out, at first the relationship wasn’t bad. They weren’t friendly at school, but they didn’t seem to hate each other. Now, I have to tell you something about Charlie. He’s one of those guys who when they find something funny about somebody, something they can latch on to, like, you know, someone wears jogging pants all the time or has a large head, Charlie keeps the joke going. And going. And going. He just doesn’t quit. Someone like me would maybe say it once or twice and we’d get our laugh, but then we’d think of better or funnier things to say. I’m not saying Charlie was worse or meaner than other kids were. It’s just that Charlie really dug in on you. He found the weakness and then stuck his knife into you and started twisting it, all slow and painful, if you know what I mean. It wasn’t good enough to wound, Charlie was all about the torture. I can respect torture, just not repetitive boring torture.
Charlie started in on Roger’s nose. Roger’s nose was one of those rare characteristics that we didn’t talk about at school. It was so freakishly large that it was just too easy. Its width was normal and its proportions from the tip to the top would have been normal if Roger’s head was larger, but it wasn’t. The nose didn’t fit his face. It was huge, starting almost above his eyebrows and ending with a hook downward that covered the top part of his upper lip. When we were real young, we of course took our jabs at it, but that died off quickly because it showed a lack of imagination. To make fun of Roger’s nose was like making fun of the sun because it shined too bright. His nose was who Roger was and we accepted it. Sure, we’d say things like, the guy with the nose when we were describing him, but it was more like a characteristic, just as we’d call Peter the Chinese guy just so you’d know who we were talking about. But a few weeks after the night with the crossbow, Charlie started talking about Roger’s nose. Anytime Roger came up, Charlie would make a fist and put the thumb side of his fist over his own nose. It wasn’t an accurate betrayal, because, to be honest, Roger’s nose was larger than Charlie’s skinny fist, but we laughed. Charlie was careful to make the Roger nose only behind Roger’s back, but because everyone started doing it, Roger eventually saw it, and I’m sure it didn’t take him long to track down who had started it.
Charlie and I are both going to be comic book artists. We’ve known it for as long as we’ve known each other. Charlie is a whiz at coming up with new superheroes and writing stories and bubbles. Me, I’m more of the artist. I draw the frames with my trusty [special comic pencil] and ink it with my [special comic inker]. We try to get a comic book done every few month. This year, we hope to start publishing photocopies of the books to our friends and family. I don’t think we’ll make much money, but if it can help pay for our huge comic book collection and the ink and paper and all the rest of the junk you need to draw them, then it’ll be worth it. While Charlie mostly writes the story, he is particularly good at drawing caricatures. And this is what got him in trouble with Roger. He started drawing one of Roger, and I’ll admit it, it was pretty damn funny. He would start with a small semicircle, almost like a nose, and you’d think, sure he’s going to draw a pretty big sized nose for Roger, and the semicircle was big, but not huge. Then he’d draw a humongous second semicircle connected to the first one, and the nose would look tiny. The first time I saw it, I didn’t get it. But then he’d look at you, and Charlie’s face was thin, real thin, but he could make these strange, exaggerated faces, like pulling his lips really wide apart or separating his eyebrows and then crossing his eyes. He was always pulling stuff like that. So after he drew the two semicircles, he would look at you and his face would be calm, no looks or gestures or anything, and that would surprise you because you’d be expecting something. With his face expressionless, he’d bring up his fist to his nose to give the sign of the Roger nose. And then he’d start laughing. Once he started laughing, it sometimes took him a bit to stop his shaking enough to start drawing, but when he did, boy was he right to laugh. He put a dot in the small semicircle for the eye, a half-circle for the mouth, and a few sticks for the body coming out of the smaller semicircle. The huge circle is Roger’s nose! Damn, it’s funny even thinking about it now. But as I told you before, Roger couldn’t leave funny enough alone. He performed that drawing for just about everyone in the class, sometimes multiple times, and began putting it on all the wooden desks. Roger was bound to see it, and he did.
Roger isn’t much of a get in your face type of guy. He’s intense but he broods. He’ll start talking about someone for a while, and he might give that person nasty looks, but he’d be unlikely to approach him and start an argument. Part of the reason might be because he usually lost those arguments. He was not quick on his feet and except for the dingers he hit his parents with, which, when I look back are probably ones he’d been practicing for a long time, his insults always end up rather flat. Charlie, on the other hand, is great at insults. While he is repetitive, when he gets started and you get him off his stock material, he can really take someone’s eye out. Roger probably did the smart thing by not approaching Charlie in the schoolyard about the drawing and the Roger nose. Hell, even I, and not to be immodest but I’m quick on my feet, try not to get into words with Charlie where others can see us. It just always ends badly for his Charlie’s opponent. So Roger bided his time.
The rumor around school was that Roger had started taking karate lessons. It made sense with Roger’s love of ninjas.
***
If you made it this far, then I’m impressed. Thanks to the long flight and the early rising, I spent many hours trapped in airports and airplanes, and what better to do when trapped then dreg up some memories, manipulate them to make them more interesting, and turn them into a story. I’m still going strong, and only landing or hitting the end of my battery will stop me from continuing. Where was this creativity and inspiration when I was trying to write a measly 2,000 words?
After reading through it, I might drop Eddie and just put the narrator in Eddie’s place. I don’t think Eddie is adding much to the story, but I’ll let this first draft stew for a bit before I make a major change like that.
Here’s a gem I wrote after lunch today when all of the blood in my body pooled in my stomach. It’s an appallingly bad paragraph, but I couldn’t resist starting this musing with it:
Fatigue soaked dreariness encompasses my drying bones as I fight through a post-lunch food coma that’s decided that for now my brain and all of its messaging will stop moving and start sighing pitifully. Oh to complain most eloquently, that most virtuous of beasts, why do you avoid me?
I’m hoping the quality of my writing is directly proportionate (I guess which is different from indirectly proportionate, whatever that is) to the quality of the fire burning in my fireplace. Today I lit the perfect fire. Yesterday, the fire was weak, pathetic almost. I wasted tons of paper as kindling, but I didn’t place the wood properly and the fire burnt sporadically at best giving little light or warmth. The only good that came out of the fire yesterday was two partially burnt pieces of wood. I used those as the base of today’s fire along with a new log (wood side down, of course), added only a few pieces of newspaper as kindling, and I was rewarded with my best burning fire ever, the type of fire you only see in TV shows and commercials for Christmas carols. I tried to take a few pictures of the fire, but I think the excitement and the flash weakened the fire a bit, and it doesn’t look half as good as it did before I started clicking away.
Just as I was starting to get into writing my story, I receive an e-mail from Chuck, and in that e-mail he off-handedly mentions rereading some of the letters (see my archive section between 1995 and 1996) I wrote him when he first moved to Korea to get a feeling for what he was doing (by the way, Chuck, I have those letters under my bed in Brooklyn if you want copies of them). Suffice to say, I spent thirty minutes reading those older and horribly written—I’m not sure English was my first language—letters to search for inklings of my future writing voice. There are moments when I can almost see it, but then it runs away. Damn, I was a confused and sad individual back then. Now look at me: I have a purpose in my life, a love in my life, and a good job to support said purpose and love. Okay, enough of that, I have to get back to pursuing that purpose.
We return now to the streets of Brooklyn for the continuing saga of The Flying Toe Stomp.
Part I
Part II
Our school gym has a heavy, lingering polyurethane smell that overpowers you when you walk in, but fades into the background once you’re there for a few minutes, like the buzzing on walkie-talkies. The odor destroys your sense of smell for hours, ruining lunch if you are unlucky enough to have gym in the morning. Even opening the gym’s back doors didn’t help. If anything, when those doors are open—and they only open the doors when they fear that we’ll drop dead from the heat—the air outside the gym starts smelling badly but the gym air doesn’t change.
Charlie crossed the line with Roger during a morning gym period. The gym doors were open on an abnormally hot spring day where all you can think about was the heat and the impossibly slow moving clock. When you bothered to look around, and on days like that your body repays every bit of effort you expended in buckets of sweat, things looked wavy. Everyone acted out in class eager for the teacher to send them to the principal’s office since his office, like every administrator’s offices in the school, had air conditioning, a luxury they wouldn’t think of wasting on students. The teachers caught on quick, though. Only the most resourceful students could find an act that created enough anger in the teacher to send you to the office, but not enough to risk a long detention. Students overcrowded the nurse’s office and she ended up treating them in the hallways, painfully close but still outside her air-conditioned office.
Roger was playing his made-you-flinch game with Charlie during that gym period. We were standing around hoping the gym teacher would forget to come to class. The thought of playing anything on such a hot day was next to unbearable. Charlie and I were standing around and Roger joined us along with a few other kids. We were arguing about whether Mr. Gerling, our outsized gym teacher, was capable of speaking in full sentences or just grunts and explosions of words as he did during class. Roger jerked toward Charlie, his fists raised, and pulled back before he got close. Charlie took a quick step back and fell over. I’m not sure if Charlie was trying to get into his fighting stance, or just make sure that he was out of reach of Roger’s fists, but whatever went through his head at that moment, the result was he ended up flat on his butt in the gym.
The rest of the class gathered around Charlie and Roger and there were some catcalls and yells of “fight, fight.” Charlie remained seated for a while and we didn’t know what he was going to do. His eyes were watery and I was hoping for his sake that he wouldn’t cry. He surprised everyone, though, and instead of standing up, he slowly lifted his fist toward his face, his thumb inward, and formed the Roger nose. Someone chuckled and there were more cries for a fight, but to tell you the truth, I was disappointed. I expected more from Charlie. Charlie wasn’t done yet, however. He was far from done. Charlie removed his fist from his nose and lowered his arm slowly until both hands were behind him. He stared at Roger the entire time and used the palms of his hands to push himself up. He wiped off the back of his shorts and put his hands on his hips. Looking back, I should have jumped in and stopped him, but there was something fascinating about watching him work. His insults were a real art, if you know what I mean.
Charlie spoke quietly, and the circle of students closed in tighter. I think at that moment, Roger was having second thoughts. He didn’t want to fight Charlie even though we all thought that he would break Charlie in half like a fallen twig. It looked more as if Roger wanted to get out of there before Charlie started, but it was too late for that. There was no way that the circle of kids was going to let him get away that easily. That’s when Charlie said it. He said, and to this day I remember the words he used, he said, “Roger, your flinching didn’t knock me over. What you don’t realize—and I’m not sure if it’s because your acne sucks the essential oils from your brain or your greasy hair—is that when you jerk forward, your nose is at least five feet from your face. Even when you pull back, it’s too late.” There gym was dead silent. Even the cars driving on the avenue outside the school made no noise. We waited to see what Roger would do, what he would say. If I had the time to take odds, and I would have made a killing if I had, it would have been one to three that Roger would swing, three to one that Roger would say something lame, and ten to one that Roger would turn and run away. Roger started to say something, his face turning splotchy red and his mouth and jaw moving, but no words came out. Charlie stood in front of him and he made a fist and placed the pinky side of his fist on his cheek creating a reverse Roger nose to show us where Roger’s nose had hit him. We couldn’t stand it anymore and the entire class broke into laughter. Roger stood there and said nothing, his face turning redder until even the splotchy white parts stained red. The fight might have happened there if Mr. Gerling didn’t walk in. He barked, “laps,” or his indecipherable rendition of it, and we all groaned in unison and began running around the edge of the gym.
***
Argh! I spent too much time today editing instead of writing. I forgot all the lessons of the Marathon and instead of moving the story forward and getting lots of words on the paper for me to later manipulate, I spent the time forming and sculpting (I love that word) the first three paragraphs into beautiful but stale prose. I did catch a second wind toward the end, but I still don’t feel like I’ve found the voice I had during the first day’s writing.
I was playing with my website today, mostly making some internal changes to speed-up the generation of the musings and photographs, and I did a huge bad thing, because many of my musings just vanished. I’ve spent the last hour recovering them from my iBackup account. I am incredibly thankful for that $3/month backup site. My heart just about stopped when I rendered my website and half my musings vanished, poof, into the nether regions somewhere. I don’t have a very good idea of why this happened and I’m at the stage where I’m going to hope it never happens again (wishful thinking at its best). It might have something to do with some changes to the code or some minor maintenance I was doing with the directory structure. Enough useless worrying, here are some thoughts I had today:
It’s a merry, merry post-headache day, and I have the time and the energy to write and write and write. I’m not sure if you’ll see much of my writing, since I’m going to delve back into the editing of The Flying Toe Stomp, but if all goes as planned, I’ll hopefully have the story edited by the end of this weekend. I’m about a third of the way through and I’ve finished most of the interesting parts. I need to rewrite much of the remainder of the story because the voice and quality just isn’t there. Luckily, it’s always easier for me to rewrite when I have words in front of me and a good understanding of what I want to say.
After finishing my afternoon writing session, I took a walk to Columbia City, which is a few blocks long, with two coffee houses (not much of a surprise, this is Seattle after all), and a few galleries, bookstores, and restaurants. Columbia City is a cute area that reminds me of NYC, if you imagine NYC as three blocks long. While I did need the exercise—I haven’t been to the gym in two weeks now, and it’s not looking good, the gym, that is, I’m still looking as fit as a fiddle, a skinny fiddle, but a relatively healthy one—I did have an ulterior motive for my thirty-minute stroll. It seems I neglected to pay my water bill and the water company was threatening to shut off my water in the next few days. I’m the first to admit that I’m lazy when it comes to bills, which is why I automated most of my bill payments. I even signed up for automatic deduction for my public utilities, but that takes a few months to kick in. So, I trekked down to Columbia City to the community window, which as far as I have been able to figure out, provides a payment window for utilities, transit passes, passports. The friendly guy behind the three-feet of bulletproof glass told me that on Tuesday, the public utilities would accept credit card payment on their website. I was a week short of saving myself a long walk. But the walk was just what I needed to reconnect with myself.
I’ve noticed a tendency of mine lately to fill up my quiet time. I’ll be sitting, thinking about something, when disruptive thoughts will go through my head. I’m not used to being alone with my thoughts anymore. My writing over the last two months has been almost constant, and the time I would have spent thinking I now spend pounding away at the keyboard. This is not always a good thing. My thoughts turn repetitive and derivative, and don’t go much of anywhere when I don’t spend some time with OT (that’s original thought, for those of you who are not regulars—and, someone please tell Word to stop changing OT to TO!).
I could have driven to Columbia City, but I just don’t do enough walking in Seattle, especially now that winter is almost upon us. My car has many distractions: the XM radio, the phone, the navigation system, the terrible traffic. When you’re walking anywhere, it takes a while. Even somewhere you can drive to in less than five minutes might take twenty minutes to an half hour to walk. And during that time, I found myself thinking and enjoying just walking and listening to nothing. Every so often, it’s nice to reconnect with yourself. Yeah, it sounds narcissistic and it probably is, but it does help me in some strange way.
Voyeur
Little brown-haired girl eating a very large gingerbread cookie, head first of course. Her mother, black, straight hair, cut to her shoulders but just hanging there, looking almost greasy, although you get the feeling that it’s clean. She’s wearing black shiny shoes and no socks. She has a white long sleeve shirt and a blue puffy vest. The little girl is wearing a white sweater with jeans.
They’re discussing why Starbucks has holiday decorations that all look the same. The mother is drinking a coffee and the little girl is starting to get a bit wild with all of the sugar she’s eating, including a strawberry milkshake type drink. The girl asks about the decorations, and the mother tells her they’re not terribly Christmasy because there’s a giant decorating company that decorates all the Starbucks in the same way. She also tells her daughter about the other holidays that occur during December—and she adds that may be why the decorations aren’t all green and red.
They discuss Hanukah, and Kwanza. The mother quizzes the girl on what happens during Hanukah. They come up with a dreidle (tough word to spell), lighting of calendar for eight days. For Kwanza, which the mother describes as an African holiday, but the little girl didn’t know what she was talking about, he little girl has no idea.
Two ladies sitting next to the fireplace are discussing balls of yarn, which one of them brought bags and bags of yarn. One of the yarn balls on the floor by the little girl. The mother tells her daughter to give them the dropped ball, but the little girl doesn’t want to. She is scared. The mother does it for her.
The sugar is starting to drive the little girl crazy. Her feet are tapping and she’s unable to sit still. It’s either the sugar or ADD. They leave. (Okay, I was desperate to write something and nothing was going on around me.)
Today’s another great day to do nothing. After waking up late, I piddled around the Castle before venturing out into the gray afternoon. I took another long walk to Columbia City and after eating half a pizza, I returned to editing my story. Unlike some of my other short stories where I struggled to put enough words down to tell a story, in this one I wrote a lot and it’s been challenging to distill all of it into a coherent story. There’s been a lot of cutting, cutting and pasting, and rewriting, and I’m still only on the second page. I’ve slowed down a bit once I got through the first part where I felt I did my best writing. I’m still working through the middle part, trying to put it in order and breath a little of the voice into it. I still have hopes of finishing it tomorrow, but it greatly depends on how much effort I can devote to it.
While walking to Columbia City (as evidence of my terrible shape, my shins were soar from the walking I did yesterday—who ever heard of sore shins?), a realization knocked me in the teeth. While I pay lip service to writing, when I look back at the number of hours I spend on writing, and compare it to the number of hours I spend doing nothing or complaining about doing nothing, the numbers are staggering. That wasn’t my realization. I have spoken often about how much I complain and meta-write verses how much I actually write. The realization was that “the key to overcoming distraction is suffering.” It seemed much more important and groundbreaking before I look at it in all its glory through the light on the screen, but it does hold some truth.
Right before I delved into it, bam, distraction hit me. I fought down the urge to slam the computer and walk home. Night has almost risen, and I have a long walk ahead of me, but that’s not why I wanted to leave. I wanted to leave because the writing was becoming difficult, which was the suffering I was talking about. I felt the squeezing of my brain as I tried to get at my mental juices, and the squeezing was painful—not in the headachy way, but in the OT way. If I want to sit down and write for eight hours, and I do, I really, really do, I have to get over the pain of doing it.
It’s not always painful. There are days when I can’t type fast enough to get the words down. The first day I wrote TFTS, I was exhausted from the traveling, change in schedule, and waking up early, but when I started writing my brain flew out millions of miles in front of my fingers. It was great. When I wrote the next three days, however, that feeling vanished. For whatever reason, the words were stuck, and putting anything on paper was a chore. I fought through it and ended up putting enough down to start the edit, but none of it flew freely. I’m not sure if the reasons relate to my moods, the time of day, or the location of Venus in the heavens, but I wish I could figure it out. If I did, I imagine there would be less pain and more writing.
And here I lose out. I’m closing up my computer and heading back. I’m disappointed, but I do have a long walk—and it hurts, and I’m not used to the pain. I’ll finish this when I get home (hopefully).
The walk home was more difficult than I expected. The first half way fine, but when I arrived at the store and bought groceries, I realized how tired I was. I eventually made it home, thanks to a late blooming second wind and a blueberry smoothie. I’ve lit the fire and now I’m settling down for some more writing and editing. Not surprisingly, it started raining as I walked home: a light drizzle that I barely felt. I have spent the last few hours editing, so at least it hasn’t been a completely wasted day.
As I’ve talked about before (yeah, I looked but couldn’t find the link), when it rains in Seattle, my commute to work takes on nightmarish proportions—we’re talking the devil has risen from Hell, hide your children because he’s hungry-proportions. People—and I’m talking about those who wanted me to move and work here—told me that rain in Seattle was mild. Yeah, they said, there would be rain, but it would be of the drizzle variety. People don’t even use umbrellas here, they went on. The rain is that gentle. What they forgot to tell me is that when it rains, people forget how to drive. They decide that the normal 60 mph speed limit (which is ambitious, since most people feel more comfortable driving at a cozy 40 or so mph) drops to around 20 mph, causing traffic backups on each of the three highways I traverse to get to work.
I occasionally suffer road rage. I know what it is, I’ve felt it, and I’m disgusted with myself for succumbing to it, but it happens. After the red mist (I saw it described that way, so I can’t take credit) evaporates, I see how foolish it was. For the extra three seconds that my commute takes, I create all sorts of dangerous conditions, raising my blood pressure and turning what should be a calm, restful drive into a horror show. But, as you will see, I was completely in the right.
I take Rainer Avenue to the entrance of I-90 east on my way to work. At the entrance ramp, the highway flows through a tunnel under a hill and onto a floating bridge. Before entering the tunnel, the three lanes of I-90 east break up, with two of the lanes remaining on the left of a divider, and the third lane merging with the entrance ramp on the right of the divider. In the rush-hour traffic, the entrance ramp and the right lane in the tunnel are slow.
There is an unwritten (but highly effective) rule that controls what happens when the right lane of I-90 west merges with the entrance ramp. The drivers in both lanes are supposed to use the Zipper. The Zipper is the most efficient way of merging two lanes. When used effectively, the Zipper eliminates almost all traffic problems caused by the merger. It is the Holy Grail of driving. I hear, and this is only hearsay, that it cures cancer. For those who don’t know what the Zipper is (and if you don’t and drive, you should be ashamed of yourself), the Zipper is when cars use the every-other approach to a slow merge of two lanes. You let one car in front of you, and then the next guy lets one car in front of her, until you have an effective and highly coordinated merging of traffic. Lest you get confused, you should not use the Zipper in every instance of a merger. A prime example of a non-Zipper moment is an entrance to the highway. The drivers on the highway have the right-of-way and the driver merging has to wait for his opportunity. Unlike that situation, the tunnel merge on I-90 west can move efficiently when the Zipper is used.
I’m sure you see where this is going, but I will explain the details, since that’s what I do, explain things. I’m driving. The commute has already been a bit difficult because of the slow moving traffic on Rainer caused not by the Seattle drivers, but by large puddles in the right lane. The light-controlled entrance onto I-90 west is moving well, and I get through it with little hassle. I accelerate to the tunnel and I’m driving next to the right lane of I-90 west. Up ahead, the cars in both lanes go through a single-lane tunnel that leads onto the floating bridge. I watch the cars in front of me, marveling at the effective use of the Zipper, when it becomes my turn at the end of the dotted white line (the Zipper should occur at the last possible moment for it to be most effective), the car in front of me falls into his spot and I allow the car in the other lane to zipper behind him. I prepare to take my place in the Zipper, when I notice that the next car, the one that, if he understood the Zipper, would zipper behind me, is tailgating the car in front of me, not allowing me into the Zipper. The car is a small red Toyota, with an after-market two-pipe exhaust.
I think that maybe he doesn’t understand the Zipper. He is from Seattle, and I know that the drivers here are, to put it lightly, deficient. I pull my car up until I am driving next to the red Toyota and signal for him to move back. It’s clear that he does not intend to let me in. There are rules on the road, important rules, and this red Toyota, with his cheap exhaust, is breaking those rules, causing mayhem, destroying traffic patterns, threatening the very social standards that we must live under for society to function. I drive next to the red Toyota toward the tunnel, both tailgating the car in front of us, looking for an opening. I see red mist and I’m yelling at the guy, even though he can’t possibly hear me through the closed window. Finally, we reach the tunnel, and I risk either hitting him, or the tunnel wall, and I pull back. I slam my window with my palm as I let him pass, just to signal that he’s an asshole. I turn on the bright lights on my car and tailgate him through the tunnel, leaving a little distance to ensure that he can see my headlights in his rearview mirror.
As you can see, my reaction and the situation were ridiculous. Yes, the red Toyota should have abided by the Zipper. But what did I lose? We both ended up at the same place at about the approximately same time. It was just the principal of it, the principal and the road rage of the situation.
This leads me into my next story idea: the zipper story, slightly embellished, told from two competing points of view.
Serotonin levels are low this afternoon. It’s difficult for me to get over the hump to start doing anything. Do you know about that hump? It’s the barrier to entry for starting work. Think of it like inertia. You have a ball sitting on a hill waiting to roll down it, but it doesn’t. It just sits there. You give it a little push, and it starts rolling, building up speed, and everything is as it should be. That’s what I’m like: a ball, sitting on top of a hill, waiting for someone to give me a push.
Sitting down and writing this has started rolling. It’s been a slow day, and slow time begets slow time. But I’m moving now.
More notes on the editing of my story: I’m thinking of cutting out the middle gym scene. I don’t think it’s adding much to the story. Roger should be angry enough after the drawings and Roger nose, and the confrontation in the gym, while amusing, doesn’t move the story forward. It’s just a thought. The story is a bit long-winded now, and I’m looking for where I can shorten it. I’ll see how it reads without it and then make my decision.
I just sat through an hour and forty-minute commute. I don’t think I have much left in me to write today. I did manage to get more editing done on the story. I won’t make any promises (mostly because of my record with promises) but I’m still shooting to have it done this week. You have no idea how angry the commute made me tonight. It was the rain again, in case you were wondering. I don’t know what it is, but if it rains—and it rains a lot in Seattle—the commute turns from barely bearable to unnaturally torturous. I guess it’s all just fodder for my next story (that’s what I have to keep telling myself to remain calm). I’ll admit that part of it was my fault for driving into the gaping maw of the rush hour, but I can only take so much blame. I averaged six miles per hour over the almost two-hour commute. I’m now drinking a nice glass of red wine and trying to unwind. I’m not sure I’ll get there—unwound—but I’m attempting.
After I finish editing my story, I will get back to posting longer musings and story fragments. I’m writing a bit less than I wrote during Nanowrimo, and that’s worrying me a bit. It’s hard to do a word count when editing, but I need to figure something out to push me toward more time spent on this. I’m writing about an hour and a half a day, which is good, but I know I could do better. Dinner is ready.
Updated:
I've posted my Flying Toe Stomp story in the stories link on the top or bottom of the page. Yeah, I probably rushed posting it, and I'm not happy with the ending, but I've been spinning my wheels with it, and I wanted to start writing something new. I'll pick it up in a few months to polish it off. I'd appreciate any comments before then, but no rush.
I’ve drugged myself with a glass of wine and smelly cheese. I’m not sure which one provides the psychedelic effects, but I appreciate it. The traffic was a nightmare, but I won’t dwell on it. There’s nothing new or clever that I can say about it. I’ll just leave it at that. That.
I don’t have much to talk about today. I’ve claimed in the past that that’s a good thing, that without anything to talk about, I would focus on stories. I’m thinking you’re sick of hearing me talk about this, and I’m sick of talking about it. I’ve been asking myself where the clever David went, the one with the musings that made people laugh until they wet their trousers. While nobody has ever read, and nobody will ever read, any of my writing and piss their pants, I like to pretend. You can give me at least that.
That guy, I’m not sure where he went to, but I’ve been looking for him since the end of November. He disappeared, probably swallowed up along with his creativity during the Marathon. After posting my story last night, I reread my first real short story, Zaida’s Stars. I like that story. I can see areas of improvement—particularly shortening the storytelling that the narrator does in the second half—but it was genuine and the descriptions were good. I haven’t been happy with my last three stories. There’s nothing natural about them: they’re wooden and taste wooden. I need to find someway to tell a story without feeling that way about it. Ugh.
The following are random thoughts about nothing and written with no particular skill:
The steering wheel, cold beneath his hands, wasn’t moving. The car wasn’t moving. Nothing moved, not the cars around him, the trees off the highway, or the blinking yellow lights ahead. Everything was at a standstill.
Blue rockets shot into the sky. Clown cars completed the festivities.
Running to the third row, the man knew he wouldn’t find any open seats. The theater was packed and the previews already started. He was desperate. Janet, his girlfriend, was motioning at him to join her down near the first row, but he couldn’t bring himself to sit there. A date’s still a date if they sit separately. He wasn’t sure who should get the popcorn.
Flying cows. Why don’t cows fly as they used to?
Rail. Concrete. Signs. Buses. Aggravation. Rain. Puddles. Gasoline.
Insanity stalks me, and I’m letting her in. Who’s to say she’s bad? Who’s to say anything?
I’m sorry about that. I didn’t want to write any of it, but I did, and I posted it. Things can’t get much worse than this, right? Right?
Please don’t read this.
It’s a crooked, disjointed fire for a fine day. Dinner was good, work was good, the new wine was good, there’s not much to complain. Oh, sure, I could talk about the commute, but I won’t. I felt productive today. I didn’t finish as much as I would have liked, but the things I did get done I felt I did well. It’s a good feeling, this doing things well. The fire is really going today. I tried to give the logs more room to breath, and that seemed to have worked. Instead of just smoke and a small fire, I have huge flames. I don’t think there’s enough wood in there to burn for long, but it’s nice while it lasts. And it’s warm. The rain that blankets Seattle like a wet towel gives me the chills when I’m not careful. The fire chases that away lickety quick.
I planned to write a story about driving, but I don’t want to. It would just sound like an extension of my complaining that I’m becoming increasingly obsessed with lately. I’m sick of complaining. I want to find happiness again, calmness. With that said, I don’t know what I should write. I’ve been listening to a lot of PRI on XM radio, that’s Public Radio International on my car’s XM satellite radio. At the times I drive, there are many shows about artists. This evening, they focused on something Newman, maybe Randy Newman, a songwriter. I thought he wrote country songs, but they’re bluesy, and he combines his raspy almost-bad voice with incredible storytelling lyrics to create phenomenal, if not popular, music.
I have all this energy and nothing to say. I’m tempting to reach over and flip on whatever movie I’m in the middle of watching, but I’ll resist for a bit longer. I’m again having thoughts about whether what I’m doing is a waste of time. I have these thoughts now and again, and it’s not exactly a complaint, it’s more of a realistic review of my goals. I was concentrating on the law today, discussing it, reading case law, analyzing interesting legal issues. As I’ve found before, I’m good at this stuff. When I worked with Doug, we used to have discussion for hours and hours over good dinner and better wine about legal issues, and I enjoyed it. My thoughts come back to whether I’m wasting my time putting down these words. Whether, instead, I should be focusing on my career and the law.
Dreary discussions for a dreary day. I have to be honest with myself, something I don’t like to do too often. I want to be a great writer, but I don’t see greatness in any of my writing. I see a few interesting stories, but there’s nothing special about it, except that I write it. It was my problem with my poetry. I wrote poetry, but I couldn’t tell whether it was good or not. That’s why I don’t read poetry: I can’t judge it. There’s nothing there for me to know. The ones that rhyme or tell a story or have an interesting cadence, I enjoy. But it’s hard for me to tell the difference between the works. I’m not talking about judging a good work or a bad work, since that, for the most part, is subjective. It’s more about judging any work. If the grammar is good, hell, it must be a good poem. How can I create poems if I can’t even judge the value of other people’s poems?
One could respond that I should not be rating my own work against others. That if I like my poem, why the fuck should I worry about what others say about it. I agree with those people, but at the same time, I can’t stop asking myself about quality and, in particular, the quality of my own writing. I can tell you about good music or good movies or good books. Blah. That’s not a good argument. I know good writing, and I know good poetry, I’m just looking for an excuse. I talk with real writers, ones who don’t worry about what others think of their writing, and I can’t help but compare. I’m the Keating to the real artist’s Roark. I want to profit from art, not do art for the sake of doing art. What’s my real goal with writing? Become a best-selling author. And why do I want to do that? So I can live the way I want to live without working. Do you see the logic? Why do I like uniqueness? Because then others can look at it and see it. I don’t like it for its own sake. Or, at least, I don’t like it much for its own sake.
I’m babbling tonight. I’ve been babbling for the last few days looking for something, reaching to find something that remains out of reach. I’m going to write 2,000 words today for the sake of writing 2,000 words. I look for inspiration in my older writings, and I find nothing and complaints and, what’s that word I used, oh, yes, consternations. I guess that’s where I am today, in a consternated mood.
I tried to drink caffeine today, but my drug dealer closed before I could escape my 4pm meeting. I thought a jolt would get me moving—allow me to escape the drudgery that I find myself in on the page. I’ll have to wait until this weekend. Julie is coming up, and I’m excited to see her. I’ve haven’t held her in two weeks, and that’s too long, way too long.
My fire is cheery today. I like cheery fires. I wish I shared my fires mood, but I don’t. I’m closing in on deliciously depressed, which is a state I like to find. I don’t think it’ll last long enough for me to appreciate, but I’m hopeful.
I look all around me for distraction, and although I find much of it, nothing interests me enough to be distracted. Do you know how that feels to be surrounded by so much to do and yet to want to do none of it? It’s how kids are usually. They have everything in the world, twice as much junk as their parents at their age, but, just like their parents at their age, they don’t want to play with any of it or do anything. So much wasted time and effort being bored. I filled half my life with boredom. To think how I could have better used that time to do, well, to do anything.
The ashes glow red at the bottom of the fire. There are piles of ashes scattered on the floor of the fireplace. I’ll have to sweep them up eventually. It’s still burning, but the top wood is almost gone. It cracks and breaks apart, and I give it another ten minutes and it’ll fall and join the ashes on the ground, to smolder slowly until it burns out completely, ready to be fuel for tomorrow.
Extreme babbling today. Have I mentioned that? If I have, then that doesn’t matter much. I’m just trying to fill up space, make it to 2,000 words to say that I made it that far. It’s a goal, nothing more, nothing less. I won’t have achieved anything when I reach it, but, but I don’t know. I don’t know.
This is the emptiness I talk about. In my mind, nothing is going on. The gerbil turns and turns on his wheel, and there’s lots of smoke produced, but in the end, there’s not much to show for the energy use. Julie interruption, but not long enough to matter or deliver inspiration. Did you know that balancing a laptop on your lap is dangerous for reproduction? There was a published study that said that what I’m doing now, typing while lying down with the laptop on my legs and crotch, was dangerous for two reasons: first, the heat of the laptop raised the temperature of the scrotum and did bad things to the sperm, and, second, when a guy has a laptop on his legs, he tends to keep his legs closer together to balance the laptop, which, in turn, raises the temperature of the scrotum, and, I’m sure you see where this goes. I just thought I’d share this useless bit of scrotum trivia. There’s a funny looking word: scrotum.
Continuing with my random thoughts about nothing, since I’m only five-hundred words away from my silly goal—and, there goes the logs. I was close on the ten-minute prediction. The big pieces of wood have fallen to the ground and the logs are glowing red. They’ll cool soon and darken. The last log is still on fire, but I expect it won’t last long. Without the wood on top of it burning, the fire should go out soon.
I never did conclude about the writer vs. lawyer discussion I started earlier. I don’t really have any conclusions or comments about it. I don’t know how it ends up or where I go with it. I want to deep down in my toes create something. That was always my problem with the law and my job: I don’t create anything but paper. Why do I want to create? Good question. I want to create because it puts me back in touch with my emotions and lets me examine the world around me. Not as good an answer as a question. That’s what artists provide: a lens to look at life through. I’m not providing much of a lens. Sure, I write prose, some of it good, but I don’t use that prose to do anything or say anything. It’s a hack’s job I fulfill with those hope of others being suckered enough to want to read my hackness, if you will.
I could write another few paragraphs and fulfill my goal, but I won’t. It’s not because I’m a quitter or because the last three-hundreds words would be hard to get—remember, after the Marathon, three-thousand words isn’t hard for me to write. It’s more just because. You’ll have to take my word for it.
“How come all my clocks are broken?” That’s a good question if I ever heard one, and I’ve heard my share of questions. I almost went through the day without writing. It’s evening now and I sat down with Julie on the couch to write. She’s reading her fantasy novel. Besides video games, I addicted her to fantasy novels. She goes through stages where she doesn’t read, but with the vacations coming up in a week, she’ll get a lot of reading done. We’re heading to Taiwan next Friday. I’m excited to visit, if not the flight. When I went to the airport to pick up Julie, I remembered how much I hated to fly. There’s something depressing about sitting in a closed box for hours and hours with nothing to do but read and watch TV and write. I guess when I put it that way, it doesn’t sound too bad, especially with Julie sitting next to me to keep me calm and stop me from going crazy.
I liked the story I wrote yesterday. It’s raw and needs an ending and a middle, and probably a point, but the writing style was fun. I forced the short sentences more than the Brooklyn accent in the flying toe stomp. I liked that story as well, but I don’t think I did as good of a job editing it as I would have liked. The sheer size of it made it difficult for me to get my hands around it. While I liked the individual bits, I felt I missed on the story. I built up nothing, there was little conflict (outside the obvious one) and it didn’t end. The ending was more because I grew lazy than I couldn’t think of a way of ending it. I’m usually good at endings. When I get to it, the words come easier and I draw everything together. I failed on that one. I ended it in the middle of a thought and didn’t resolve anything. More for the next draft, I guess.
I didn’t mean to sit down and complain today. I’m having a good day. I posted new pictures of Julie and my stroll around the park, which names my community. It was a beautiful sunny, if slightly cold, day. I nice relief from the rainy weather we’ve been having over the last week. I’m still adapting Julie to the cold. I told her today that I’m conditioning her, as you do with new fish you bring home before adding them to the aquarium. If you dropped the fish in the tank, the shock of the different temperatures may kill them. Instead, you put the bag in the water, and let the water temperature in the bag equalize with the tank over a half hour. I’m doing the same thing with Julie. I’m giving her small tastes of Seattle’s weather to condition her for the big plop, which is now a little more than a year away. Sucker.
I have a nice fire going and the candles burning. It’s a nice relaxing Saturday night. We ate bad sushi tonight. We’ve only been to one decent restaurant in Seattle. The other ones are good—better than Houston at least—but nothing to write home, brag, dance in the streets, etc. Man, my analogies or is that a syllogism or some other part of English that I know nothing about, are bad tonight.
I’m afraid I’m going to call it quits early tonight. It was nice to see Chuck post something again. He’s been a bit of a funk since Nanowrimo (while he pretends to be busy, we all know the truth). That’s what you get for writing something brilliant. Me, I didn’t write anything brilliant, so I don't have to worry about the after effects. Now I have to find inspiration. I’ll search tomorrow.
Writing e-mail cuts down my word count. I’ve noticed the trend. I’ll sit down to write a mail or two, press Alt-C, the word count button, and realize with utter dread the number of words I wasted on a private mail. Of course, it doesn’t take too much to remind myself that it wasn’t wasted. Correspondences never are. Without them in some form, the friendships fall apart. I’ve known countless people where I was sure it was going to be a long-lasting friendship, only to find that person gone from my life a few years later. You never know who’ll make the list. I’m good when it comes to keeping in touch with people, at least people I like. I feel as if I have a handful of very close friends, and not many acquaintances. I was never good at acquaintances. It’s the small talk. I don’t like the small talk because I rarely care what the other person is saying. This is only the case when I don’t know the person. If I know them, I do care, but when I’m talking to someone who I don’t know, what they say, unless it’s amusing or pertinent in some way to my life, flies in one ear and rapidly dissolves. I’m a bad person that way. When I tell people this, they usually respond, but David, how do you expect to get to know the person and make them your friend if you don’t put forth the effort? I wish I knew but it does happen—i.e., I have a few friends.
The reason the word count freaked me out is because of my theory relating to an infinite well of good ideas. I’ve heard it a number of times from different people. These people are never worried about running out of good ideas. There’s some place in them where these ideas well up, and while they’re at times surprised by the idea itself, they’re never surprised that they have them. My theory (and suspicion) is that that I have a limited number of ideas. I worry that if I waste them, I won’t get replacements. It should explain why I was concerned at the number of words I wrote in the mail. What if that’s all I had for the day and nothing else came out of me?
It’s the same concern I have when I mine my past for story ideas or characters. The definite trend in my writing is that stories based loosely on actual events usually come out better. I’ve only been alive for so long, and my fear is that I’ll run out of actual events to report on. My inability to recall most of my past doesn’t help me here.
That was a long break between writing the last paragraph and writing what follows. I had a pain in my head, and my wrists were hurting, and the moon was bright. I didn’t see the moon, but I’m sure it was bright. All of that convinced me that a small Seinfeld break would help uncork my creativity. The Seinfeld break only whetted my appetite for mindless distractions, and I found one when I sat down to play a first-person shooter, World War II simulation, named Day of Defeat. There was a time, and I remember it fondly, when I was terribly addicted to this game. It is a very old game, a mod built for the Half Life engine. The first time around, I played it an unhealthy amount. The last straw, which is similar to most of my last straws for my addictions, was when I spent an entire weekend doing nothing but playing Day of Defeat and eating packaged food. I don’t think I showered. After that experience, I uninstalled the game and, as is the only way I control my addictions, destroyed the installation CDs. So, yeah, I spent the last three hours playing that game. So what? You going to shoot me or something?
I can’t say I spent too much time thinking about what I was going to write. Surprisingly enough, watching Seinfeld and playing a game with the sound of explosions and gun fire didn’t do much to help my headache, which has built a nest in the back right hemisphere of my brain. I’m yawning pathologically now, so I’m thinking part of it is caused by not enough sleep.
This week is short. I’m leaving for Taiwan on Friday morning. Wednesday is chock full of holiday parties, and I think I have three meetings scheduled for the entire week. A relaxing time that should give me time to write. It’s still too early to edit any of my vignettes or short stories, and you know what that means: more meaningless short stories and vignettes are coming your way. I’m hit the beginning of my second page, and with nothing more to say, I’ll leave it at what it is, a pitiful display of musing for the sake of musing. Don’t you love it?
I woke up expecting a post-headache day. I should not have been surprised that I didn’t meet my expectation. I went to bed last night with someone pounding on my head yelling, “let me in, I know it’s three in the morning, but just open up,” and even when I did open the door, there was nobody there, probably some kids that rang my bell and ran away, only to return and do it again to see how long I would fall for the same trick. I thought that once I fell asleep, I would awake to a perfect day where the birds’ early morning chirping (there don’t seem to be any birds in Seattle for the record) and the sun, peeking behind the trees and snowy mountains, would wake me up with a slow request, more like the slight tap on the shoulder that you ignore until you decide that, yes, it’s time for me to wake up, but I’m waking up because I want to, not because you’ve been tapping me incessantly on the shoulder. It was more a gentle reminder than an incessant tapping. Do you know about what I’m talking? (Isn’t Word’s grammar checker wonderful? I would have written that last sentence as “Do you know what I’m talking about” if not for the squiggly green line. Now not only is it grammatically correct, it’s also pretentious.) But it was not to be. I was doomed to wake up with my head pounding and my daily prospects looking bleak.
That was before, and this is now. While my head is not painless, it is better when I don’t move it too much. I’m trying to keep it completely still for this moment. Ouch. I moved my head, the pain returned, and with it a need for distraction. I’m easily distracted without caffeine. That’s why I like caffeine. It provides a level of concentration that I don’t normally obtain. With it, I can spend hours typing away without distractions rearing their deformed heads. It’s been too long since I wrote anything remotely story-ish. I’m going to do that today. I just need to keep my head straight for the next hour.
I’m back. I thought I would be finished with writing my story by now, but distractions won out when I closed up earlier. I’m now sitting with my laptop in no-children position, eating peanut M&Ms and contemplating if I have anything of value to write. I have four M&Ms left, two blue, one green, and an orange or red—it’s hard to see in the low light. In the time it took me to come up with something else to write (which I still haven’t), I finished them. There’s no joy in Mudville—I ate the last M&M.
Inspiration continues to elude me. I’m lying down, trying to come up with something, anything, to say, but all I have in me is consternations and clock glances, neither of which will increase my word count or put forth anything worth reading let alone writing. But I’m typing, and that’s all that counts. After reading the Casey poem, my thinking has dropped into the cadence of the poem. It’s sometimes hard to break out of a poetic rhythm once you fall into it. I have the same problem with short sentences. If I start writing short sentences, when I edit them, I find myself slipping into a singsong rhythm. That should give me reason not to write short sentences, but I find myself strangely attracted to them. I have to make a conscious effort to breakup my prose into longer and shorter sentences. Part of it depends on what I’m writing. I remember stories where I tried to be verbose, sometimes insanely so—particularly when I was attempting to feebly imitate DFW. There are other times, the lady from Two and Eleven for example, where I purposefully filled the prose with short, stark sentences, to see how it would read.
Speaking of bad stories, I’m thinking of pulling up some of my older stories and seeing if I can work them into something readable. I’m sure even following my three-month editing rule, I can find a couple of entries of prose that have been languishing, unloved, for longer than three months. I’m thinking out loud, or its written equivalent—I wonder what that would be, perhaps in writing, which I’m not sure if there is a not in writing, writing, but now I’m just babbling incoherently—here. This might be a trick by my unconscious brain to force me to find a distraction. It does that. I might be sitting down to seriously write (as opposed to what I’m doing now), and my brain will, unknown to me, throw distractions that sound useful my way. For example, when I wrote the Mudville sentence, I, of course, went to the internet to find the name of the city in the poem, which, in its own way, led to me reading the history of the poem, and other useless sites with no bearing on what I originally went to the internet to find. Would that paragraph have been as good without that reference? Clearly. Particular since I thought the wording fit better than it ended up fitting, i.e., I thought the words might flow better in the context of the poem, but they didn’t. And now, my trickster brain wants me to look through old musings for relics of writing. I see through its childish attempts to distract me.
As another example, after heavy rains last week, my porch was leaking a bit into my kitchen. I first felt it while I sat where I’m sitting now, on my couch in my living room. The water, a slight drip making its way through a wooden beam, would hit the wall overlooking my living room, bounce off the wooden banister, and drip onto my living room floor. Some of the misting drops would make it to me sitting on my couch. (I know that doesn’t make sense, don’t bother trying to picture it. I somehow cannot convey images well. Julie told me that my attempt to describe Charlie’s drawing of Roger’s nose in my Flying Toe Stomp story was pitiful.) Suffice to say, after feeling the drips last week, I tracked down their source, found the leak in the wooden beam, and freaked out. After consulting my housing guru, also my brother-in-law, Julie and I caulked the porch this past weekend. Okay, she caulked and I supervised. She was unimpressed by my caulking ability and took the gun away from me early on in the process. The point of this digression is, I’m sitting here writing tonight, and I’m feeling drops falling from above me. Unlike this weekend, it’s been raining all day here, a product I’m convinced of Julie no longer visiting. If she came more often, I wouldn’t have to worry about the rain. As I was saying, I’m sitting here, typing away, and I keep feeling microscopic drops of water hitting my exposed skin. I’ve raced up three times looking for wetness on the wood, but each time I found nothing. It’s my brain distracting me from my attempts to write. Either that or I am going crazy. That’s a distinct possibility as well.
I’m going to give my brain the benefit of the doubt and try to find something worth editing for tomorrow. I might try to do some of it today, but I don’t think I’ll finish it. There’s another drop! I’ll be right back. It is official: I’m going insane. Dry as a, I was going to say the standard ‘bone,’ but seeing as I’m trying to be a better writer, I try to avoid clichés. And, besides, why are bones dry? Most of the bones I eat (and I presume are inside of me) are quite moist, or, at the very least, surrounded by moist tissue. I’m going to go with, dry as a Seattle summer. There has to be something for me to look forward to, right? Now, I’m off to search through sewcrates.com. I’ll let you know if I find anything interesting.
I’m not going to get to it today (because I’m a lazy, lazy man, as I’m sure you figured out eons ago), but I’m going to give a run at the two vignettes I wrote back in June, well past my three month limit. They’re not particularly meaningful, but I enjoyed writing them. At the time, I was high on caffeine and sitting on a train or plane going somewhere. I forget exactly where or what, but I’m sure it involved Julie in someway. I’m not saying I’ll get to it tomorrow, but when I find myself staring at the blank screen with inspiration a million kilometers away, I’ll remember that I posted the link in this musing, and try to turn those vignettes into more interesting ones.
That’s all from this side of the moon.
Depression strikes at strange times. I’m sitting here—I’ve noticed I do a lot of sitting since I moved to Seattle. I sit in my car for too many hours, at home, at the office, on the bed. Ninety percent of what I do involves sitting, and that sucks—thinking about how horrible I feel, how nobody in the world can feel as bad as I do, especially since the world doesn’t exist outside of my depressed self. I have little explanation for my state. Rarely do emotional states have explanations. It could have been something as simple as reading an e-mail this morning, or the drive, a bad breakfast, anything can set it off, and when it does, like now, it’s downhill from here. Nothing to see, please get your butt out of the aisle, and move along.
Distractions are difficult to find at work, particularly after I’ve surfed as much surf as there is out there to surf. I have rung and dripped dry the internet, and found nothing of value. Isn’t that how the world works? Nothing new, the same words repeated endlessly, mindlessly. These are happy thoughts for you. My day is rather empty. I planned to get a haircut, but the thoughts involved in making that plan a reality is too much for me to think about. Instead, I’ll sit here and wear out my tired fingers saying nothing in so many words.
For the record, since this is what this is, I felt much better at the end of the day. I had a long, interesting discussion on office politics with a colleague, and that lightened my mood. The caffeine helped, and by the time I left the office at around 7pm, with my disposition much improved, I felt better and less depressed. The following story and notes was pieced together throughout the day as my mood varied, and finished off after dinner, where I am now, sitting on my couch, in the childless position, typing away.
Notes: The story goes nowhere and gets nowhere. It’s a vignette about a writer, a passenger, and a pen. Here’s the original.
Traveling Pen
The writer glowers at the pen knowing it betrayed him. He attempts to finish the thought by pressing hard enough to make a ballpoint indentation on the paper, but no good. It couldn’t have failed at a worse time. “Inspiration oozed like black gold from my cramping hand as I busily scratched words in golden glitter across the small lines of my journal until this,” the writer writes aloud. His hand shakes uncontrollably as he holds the pen, desperate to write down his thoughts, which to his mind’s ear are clever and original and, a word he uses often but this time believes, publishable. The words escape and he never finds them. Don’t tell him, but the world doesn’t miss his words.
The writer picks up the pen, admiring its smooth texture and its black, clickable top with two holes on one side through which the white part peeks. Brown lettering marks the name of the drug, “Premarin Vaginal Cream in a nonliquifying base” in the medical speak that appeals to the Latin or medical student (but, surprisingly, not the spelling national champion since medical words, particularly the names of chemicals and drugs, are not tested in the competition even though medical conditions, which are found in most dictionaries, are). Next to the name in parenthetical, on the off chance that you might confuse the scientific jargon for informative words, is printed “(conjugated estrogens),” the two words in most people’s vocabulary but their meanings when placed together as foreign as a Japanese train station to a Westerner. The writer glances over the dosage, "0.625 mg/g," subscripted in black ink next to the parenthetical, never caring enough about mathematics or chemistry to understand its significance. He clicks the pen one last time and leaves it in the train’s seat pocket, believing, perhaps rightly or wrongly, that the pen deserves this transgression for the disservice it had done to him.
The writer imagines the passenger who finds the pen in the pocket. The passenger—the writer assumes it wasn’t found first by the train’s custodian, a younger man, he imagines, who collects the knickknacks he finds emptying out the train’s pockets and crannies, and displays them prominently in his apartment, like trophies from a safari hunt—finds the pen, and because he wants to start an intense NY Times crossword puzzle—and the passenger describes it as intense to himself, thinking of the Sunday edition, not the easy weekday one—and thinks what a lucky day because even though he bought the paper and planned, after finishing the politics, circuits, and local section, in that order—and he disregards the fact that the circuits section is a Thursday section and the Sunday crossword is a Sunday section since he sometimes gets confused by the days of the week, and, more frequently, the sections that correlate to the days of the week—he forgets to bring a pen.
The passenger gives an excited growl as he uses the pen’s point to skim the clues for an easy one. After finding the clue, “former NYC airplane building,” he excitedly counts the spaces in eight down and sees immediately that the answer has five, which matches the number of letters of the answer running, somewhat repetitively, through his head. The passenger tries to write a P in eight down and realizes much to his great chagrin that the ink does not run through the ballpoint. He manhandles the pen, and tries again, sure that the combination of clicking, shaking, and squeezing like trying to get juice from an orange or water from a rock in the biblical sense, will start the flow. The writer shakes his head at the thought, knowing, even without trying, that this wouldn’t happen, and it doesn’t.
The passenger scribbles circles at the top of the paper, pushing harder with an occasionally shake, until he rips the newspapers, now satisfied that the pen is dry and his thoughts of finishing the Sunday crossword thwarted, even though he accepts, down in the dank hemispheres of his psyche, which his ego buries after waking most mornings, that there are things stopping him from completing the puzzle that are more powerful than pens that don’t write. The passenger abandons the pen and puzzle to better people.
The writer sees this in his mind’s eye, scrutinizing the effects it has on the passenger and the pen, and leaves it for the passenger, knowing that if nothing else, the passenger’s story of the pen will be something he may share with others to brighten their days. The train lands and stops in the writer’s town, and he makes a mental note: need new pen for ideas, the brilliant type, which he forgets, the note, almost immediately as he wrestles with his luggage and notebooks.
***
Even after the editing, I don’t think I’ve changed much or made it into a story, but at least I can say I tried. And trying is half the battle (G.I. Joe), or is it, do or do not, there is no try (Yoda). Who knows, and, more importantly (I don’t know why I keep putting this asides, like “more importantly,” or “at least,” I don’t think they add much value, and they break the flow. Grammatically they seem correct, but stylistically there must be something wrong with the), who cares?
Throw me any comments about the vignette. I know it’s not much, but I want to polish it before I put it up in the stories section.
The weather has been wonderful today. Beautiful. When I drove in this morning, the mountains, which surround Seattle and the surrounding areas on seemingly all sides, were clear. Except for Mount Rainer, the Cascades and the Olympian were striking in their starkness. It has since clouded over.
Today started off a great day. My energy levels were high this morning, and I accomplished much. Lunch brought me down, which is one of the reasons I hate eating. My mood swings surrounding feeding times is extreme at times. I can’t explain it. I tried to correlate it to certain foods, but all food seems to effect me in the same way. I’m now tired and don’t want to think about anything. With that said, I’ll attempt to edit the second story after pen I wrote on that prolific day.
The internet is not working, and I could not pull down the story for editing. Instead of wasting this precious time doing nothing, I decided to continue typing, thinking that maybe if the gods are good, I can write something of value.
Instead of writing something of value, or anything for that matter, I came home, didn’t eat, and played video games after video games after video games. I’ve since uninstalled the guilty viral program that forces me to do its will even after I told it, no, I will not succumb to your addicting ways. Why am I so weak? I could have finished editing my story, but I didn’t. Instead, I spent the last three hours staring at a screen and trying to shoot people. It stopped being fun toward the end, but I couldn’t drag myself away. I wanted one more kill, just one more, and that would satisfy me. But, of course, it never did. I’m a weak human being.
I’m finally making dinner so I won’t starve. I apologize for the short entry, but that’s all I have for tonight. I have to eat and do things that don’t involve me sitting by myself in a little room wasting my life away. Thankfully, there will be no video games in Taiwan. Maybe I’ll get some writing done there, or, I hope, on the fifteen-hour flight. Igh. Just thinking about it gives me the chills.
I’ve discovered why I’ve been so easily distracted lately. (If you couldn’t tell, look at yesterday’s entry written in third-grade English.) I’m anxious about my trip to Taiwan tomorrow. This is a good anxiety, but something that’s keeping me from writing much or thinking straight. Long trips put me in this mood. The anxiety has to do with the flight. The length of it—around 15 hours last time I counted (they thankfully didn’t indicate the flight time on the ticket—depresses me a bit and makes my back ache in foreshadowing pain, but those thoughts don’t make me anxious. What does is the flying experience. I’m not scared of the plane crashing—although, I admit that I sometimes feel like Tyler Durden in “Fight Club,” when he’s sitting on the airplane, eating a sandwich, and imagining a mid-air collision of his airplane. I have those thoughts, but they’re disinterested thoughts, such as, I wonder what it would feel like if an airplane popped up out of the cloudbank we’re flying over and slammed into us. I would spend the next fifteen minutes staring at the clouds and trying to predict where the airplane would appear. I’m happy to say it never has. When the engines’ whines changes, particularly right after take off, when they just about turn off the engines to lower the noise output (for the neighborhood children’s sake, I’m sure—“What about the children, the children?”), after they get a few thousand feet in the air, my stomach does feel queasy, as it does with unexpected turbulence, but it settles down quickly, and I can go back to my reading or watching movies, or whatever else I’m trying to do to entertain myself in that torturous box.
My real anxiety relates to missing the flight. I wasn’t always anxious. I remember a time, and it wasn’t too long ago, perhaps two years ago, when being the cool and well-traveled individual that I was, I would arrive at the airport a mere thirty minutes before my flight. Thanks to my Continental Elite status—I was Platinum Elite, a very important elite status, indeed—I would sail through security and be the first to board. The ideal trip involved me getting to the gate just as they started to board the Elite members, which in case you forgot, I, a Platinum Elite person, was. Times have changed. I’m no longer Platinum Elite (the most important), but merely Gold Elite, still important, but not, why, I’m sorry sir, I didn’t see the Platinum Elite mark, please, come this way, and let me take care of your every need. But it’s more than just my oversized sense of importance that has fallen by the wayside. When I made the decision to stop being Mr. Cool, Important Traveler, I did it because the anxiety of getting to the airport and not missing my flight was wearing thin on me.
What broke me was missing a flight to London. I didn’t miss it because I was late (I wasn’t early, but I did arrive in plenty of time). I arrived at the airport with time to spare, parked my car, and realized, as I pulled my luggage out of the trunk, that I forgot to bring my passport. I drove like a maniac along Beltway 8 to my apartment in a feeble attempt to fetch my passport, and slammed into rush-hour traffic. There was no way I would make the flight. I flew to London the next day, but I was a shadow of the man I was the day before. No longer was I Super Traveler. I was, I’m sad to say, just another neurotic traveler getting to the airport more than two hours before his flight to keep my stress levels as low as possible.
The nervousness over missing flights and being cooped up in a small space for a long time has squished together to form a small pit in the lower-right quarter of my stomach. It’ll pass (and, no, not in the way you’re thinking—it’s not real, just a figment of my imagination), but for now, I need to deal with it and accept that I won’t do real writing and thinking.
Although I try not to do this, I have to apologize for yesterday’s entry. Glancing through it last night after I posted it, I realized how deformed and childish the prose was. I spent maybe fifteen minutes writing the words, and it shows. I was tired from all the video game playing and the distractions that had been filling my life. I’m not angry because of the poor writing—there have been many days where I, and at times others, have looked at one of my entries and asked me how I found the courage to post them—but more because I wasted precious writing time doing useless things. I admit I’m not perfect and, I think I had an acronym, let me check—no need, I remembered it—NEQID, in my never-ending quest to improve David, I have to point out where my failings are. I haven’t done much NEQID lately. If anything, I slid backwards by playing too many video games and not spending enough time on more important things.
Over the next ten days, I will do a lot of writing, reading, and spending time with Julie. I will hopefully have internet access, and will continue my daily musings—although, please remember that the time difference might confuse you (except you, Chuck, who will not be confused but more like happily surprised at my posting times). I think the time difference is around 12-15 hours, depending on which side of the states you swing. Until tomorrow, or whenever I end up posting my entries I write—and please let there be many—on the airplane.
Update: I finished centering and describing all our photos from Taiwan. Take a looksy.
Okay. It’s not much of a story, but I did try. The original idea was good, but where it went…I’m not sure I like where it went, but wherever it ended up (and I’m not even sure it ended anywhere near where it began), it’s a long and painful journey, sort of like a warped sewcrates.com entry (not that any of it is real in the sense that these are my thoughts—well some of them are, but they’re mostly bent or misshapen versions of my thoughts, which when I think about it, is what most of my fiction is). Without further ado or throat clearing or excuses, here it is.
wringinghair.com
***
A quick note as I started writing the story: Please, don’t start another story, paragraph, or sentence with a character sitting or staring. Please!
The original idea, which struck me last night, was to write a story about a writer (and then blogger when I gave it a bit more though) who stopped talking to people because he didn’t want to waste his clever ideas or thoughts; he wanted to save them all for his blog. Everything else in it is filler (DFW-influenced filler, to be more particular). But as I hinted at yesterday, I’m going to get back into writing vignettes or story pieces every day. What I’ve discovered is I don’t do well writing about writing. The only way I can tell a story is to write the story, and then rewrite it until I’m happy. To discuss it in writing (or meta-write, as Chuck penned) is pointless. Hearing the critiques of others is useful for the rewrite, but writing about writing or even detailed outlining is pointless. I’m still up in the air about character sketches, since they did help my FBT story, but we’ll see. What I want to do is move more of my entries into the Story category and less in the Writing category. You can think of the Writing category as the Meta-Writing category, and the Story category as the Real writing category, just for future reference.
When I read my old vignettes yesterday, I also discovered that the more I wrote stories, the better the stories became. The first few stories were decent, but it wasn’t until the end, the Chairs and The Clockman that I found my stride. I expect the same to happen this week, as I write try to find an interesting voice and a few nuggets that make up interesting stories. The real trick, I think, will be when I tackle stories that require more than one sitting to write. I seem to start strong, get lost the in the middle, and then finish strong. If I can find that comfortable middle then…this is all filler or meta-writing. It’s hard to stop once I get going on it.
What I said about DFW’s Oblivion yesterday, I take it back. I take it all back. He is a genius, a misunderstood genius, but a genius nonetheless. Some of his early stories in the collection were hard to get into (I found myself thumbing through the pages trying to figure out how many pages were left in the story—one critic said his first 60-page story read like a 100-page story, and I couldn’t agree more), but once I understood where he was going or what he was trying to say, they were great, some better than others, but all great writing and great stories, even if some of them didn’t finish by tying up all the loose ends. The DFW story I finished reading last night that produced this epiphany was written by a man who committed suicide—DFW embraced the dilemma of writing a first-person story by a dead person after his death—and what he does at the ending is meta-fiction at its best (which is much better and more interesting than meta-writing, which I do way too much of). So, to recap, DFW is still a god, not the god, but definitely a god, perhaps one of the lesser ones (yes, I quote that line from the movie “Groundhog’s Day” way often; I know). The Oblivion reviews say that his last story is the best one, so I’ll let you know how it is after I finish it.
I was optimistic about doing more writing today. I even left work early because, well, it’s the week between New Years and Christmas and nobody is there. I drove home, bought groceries, and was even humming as I pulled through my driveway (I’m exaggerating about the humming, I almost never hum—I’m exaggerating about the almost never part of humming, I do sometimes hum, but I don’t like to admit it). Then I took the turn behind my house too wide and my car is now stuck in three inches of soft soil and gravel, spinning its wheels foolishly—or at least it was as I dug myself deeper and deeper into the aforementioned soil and gravel. I’m now sitting on my couch so I assume my wheels are no longer spinning and digging the car deeper into the ground, if that, at this point, is possible. After calling my technical experts (thanks Eran!), I poured myself a glass of wine, only to find out that the wine bottle I opened a week ago was now vinegary. This has not turned out to be my night. I had thoughts of a roaring fire and a vegetable-laden dinner followed by hours of pounding on the keyboard. Now, I’ll be lucky if I can pound a few minutes before succumbing to my evil mood. Maybe I’ll use that to finish the story: evil mood. Now I’m humming. (Edit: I obviously found a little, okay, a lot, more energy to write after finishing this paragraph.)
Oh, if you can’t tell, I drank my first mocha in over a week, which is where all this is coming from. Tea is good and everything, but when it comes to real caffeination powers, there’s nothing like the bucks of stars. If only I could bottle that energy—oh, wait.
The car exploded. Its black canvas convertible roof flew ten feet in the air, the attaching metal arms splayed outward, as if the roof was preparing to belly dive onto the expanding fireball. The explosion knocked me to my knees and I covered my head with my arms. I felt the glass shards and metal bits bounce off me, stinging a few exposed spots, and I curled my head further downward. The explosion played backwards in my head. I watched the fireball explode silently, followed by a shockwave that brought with it the sound of the explosion, and then finally the blazing heat of the flames. No matter how many times I’ve been near exploding cars, I never lose my fascination.
I counted to three aloud, tasting blood with each word, and staggered upright, pulling my gun from its shoulder holster. When I searched the area, there was nobody around. But I didn’t trust it.
***
How’s that for a story? I’m too tired to write that story, and I didn’t like it. I’m exhausted. After succumbing to the tow truck, my neighbor recommended I remove four inches of gravel from my car park, and I’ve spent most of today shoveling gravel. So much fucking gravel. My neighbor told me that the previous owner recently laid down the five inches of gravel during this past summer. He voluntarily laid down the gravel. What was he thinking? Was he thinking? Sure, in the summer when it’s bone dry, it doesn’t matter how much gravel you have. But when things get wet and the lower rocks soak through, there’s no traction. The car spins its wheels digging little trenches in the gravel pit. What was he thinking? I think I shoveled enough of it where I feel that tomorrow I’ll be able to take out my car, but I’ll only know for sure when I try it tomorrow.
“Have you seen how work looks so much easier when someone else does it, and turns out to be much harder when you try it yourself?”
I wish I had more to say, but I’m about to pass out. I need to get back to the gym. I’m getting incredibly out of shape. Sorry for the caffeine-free entry, but I’ll try to do better tomorrow.
It’s a quiet day on the ranch. When I woke up this morning to rain, I was very concerned about my car. The gravel in the driveway is worse when the top layers become as wet as the lower layers. But for all my fears (and there are many of them, not all related to spinning tires), my digging paid off: my car hurtled at high speed from the gravel driveway. My neighbor’s theory on gravel depth was a good one. I still have to shovel the last fifth of the driveway to avoid having to accelerate to high speeds and risk being squished (or squishing) another car or pedestrian as I leave the driveway. But for now, unless I do something stupid—e.g., driving into the mounds of gravel I created while shoveling—my tires shouldn’t spin anymore.
Is it too early to think about summer and the dry season? I’m not going to complain (well, at least past the thought of thinking about the dry season) because it’s too easy and ordinary, and, for all the doomsayers, the rain in Seattle has not been that bad. Some are saying this is a dry winter. Since the winter is only six-days old, I’ll reserve judgment.
Tonight, I planned to light a fire and write for a few hours. My fireplace is real—not imitation gas—and it crackles, flares, pops, and perfumes the air with the scent of burning wood. Of course, with real fire comes responsibility. I have to clean the chute every few years and remove the ash that collects at the bottom of the fireplace. In the past, I used the fancy broom and sweeper, which came as part of the fire-weapon set. While gothic looking, the broom/sweeper combo is not practical, especially with the firedog (also known as an andiron, which are the technical names for the pair of metal stands, or in my case, connected metal stand, used to hold the logs in fireplace—aren’t encyclopedias wonderful?) obstructing the broom’s sweeping motion. While shopping for the gravel shovel yesterday, I took the opportunity to buy a few more things that I’ve been meaning to buy for sometime, including a wet/dry shopvac to suck up the ash. (I can’t take credit for this idea. Like the shoveling of the gravel, wiser and smarter people suggested it to me.)
With my plans to light a fire and write, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to test out the new shopvac. I opened the box and pulled out the 2.0 HP tiny garbage-can shaped shopvac. I didn’t find any instructions, but after experimenting, I reckoned which port the sucking tube plugs into—there are two ports, one blows air in and the other blows air out. I pushed the big green button and after ensuring good suction, I stuck the vacuum tube into the fireplace. For its small size, the shopvac sucked the ash effectively. I saw something on my peripheral, and when I turned around, I noticed that the shopvac was sucking the ash in the sucking hole and blowing it out blowing hole. Had I been thinking—a rare condition—I would have realized this earlier because both the open sucking and blowing holes worked when I tested the tube in each of them. The ash had blown out from the shopvac and filled my living room, forming a fine mist as one finds when walking through cloud flying clouds. When I realized what it was doing, I turned the shopvac off. The ash didn’t noticeably mark any of the furniture, but I was concerned about the air quality, fearing dreaded black lung. I’ll be sure to add checking my saliva for blackness, the early warning sign of black lung, to my list of daily medical tests.
After checking the box and finding no additional parts, I began to worry. I’m not much of a return-er when it comes to stuff I’ve bought. I do make the occasional exception when stuff is broken, but, for the most part, it’s rarely worth the effort for me to go to the store and return something. Yeah, I know, I’m lazy. What else is new? But I decided I’d make the trip tomorrow to exchange this $20 shopvac. Obviously, someone must have liberated the filter or other doo-hicky that stopped the shopvac from blowing out every time it sucked in (get your mind out of the gutter). Before it came to that, I opened the shopvac to see how it worked. Inside the plastic, garbage-can-like body was the instructions and filter. They need to put a huge sticker on the top of the shopvac for stop stupid people like me, something along the lines of, “open shopvac before attempting to vacuum or blow.” After following the simple pictures, the shopvac no longer blows when it sucks. The ash is mostly gone, and I can now cook dinner and prepare for an evening of writing, safe in the knowledge that the fireplace is once again ready for my use.
I started writing a story, but after dinner and the shopvac incident, I don’t have the energy to finish it. More likely, my sleep debt from jetlag has caught up with me. It’s barely 9:30pm, and I’m exhausted. Spent. Put an apple in my mouth, I’m finished. (Wow: that was terrible.)
As is my custom, however, I’ll post what I did manage to write. Originally, I planned to cut-and-paste it and finish it tomorrow, but what’s the fun in that. Besides, it goes against my policy of never being embarrassed to post all the crap I write. So, here’s my brief story for the day. It’s again an experiment with all dialogue and no description. While these types of stories are admittedly easier to write, for some stories it also flows better. I based it on my morning thought: “Categories of people that all look the same – the guy is categorizing them in a bookstore” and a late day conversation. I know, blah, blah, blah. (It’s sad when the meta-writing is longer than the story itself.)
The People Watcher
“What do you keep looking at?”
“Oh. What? Nothing. Just people.”
“Anyone in particular?”
“What? No. All people, I’m an equal-opportunity people watcher.”
“You’ve been staring at the one over there with the short skirt for the last twenty minutes. I’m thinking the unwatched people might start getting jealous.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“I don’t mind if you look at other girls, you know. More power to you, I say. I don’t want a firm leash on my boyfriend—at least not the proverbial one—the only thing I want is honesty. When I stop trusting you, I’ll begin to think that you’re looking for opportunities. That’s where I pull the plug. It’s as simple as that.”
“Boyfriend? When did this occur?”
“Getting scared yet?”
“I hadn’t noticed the short-skirted woman until you pointed her out. She’s a category F, Liza Manelli.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Since you’re starting to call me your boyfriend—”
“I never said such a thing. I was just talking about boyfriends in general. You haven’t reached that point for me, yet. You’re more in the, he hasn’t pissed me off and he brings me flowers, phase. If I didn’t like fresh flowers in my apartment, this would have been over ages ago, kiddo.”
“As I was saying, since you’re planning to start calling me your boyfriend, I feel it’s safe to reveal why I people watch.”
“There’s a reason?”
“...”
“Please, do go on. This has taken a fascinating twist. I like to categorize my boyfriends’ mental illnesses right upfront. That way I’ll have more reasonable projections for therapy costs.”
“Have you ever looked at a person and sworn that they look like someone else? Like, take all those celebrity look-alike people. Yeah, sure, some of them get surgery to change their faces, but even before the surgery, they looked like the celebrity, otherwise why would they even have thought about it? I’ve taken this one-step further.
***
Notes: People watching to learn what they talk about, say; Thinking about themselves; Why do you bother—interesting conversations; fodder for writing, nah. Fodder for joke telling? Even worse. Fodder for what?
I’m fighting jetlag. I know, I know, you’re asking yourself, ‘self, how can a physical specimen such as David possibly succumb to the effects of jetlag? What I’m trying to say, self, please stay with me, is that David’s tremendous constitution is legendary, and a man like him (as if there are any other men like him) could not possible feel jetlag’s ill effects.’ While I appreciate your widely held sentiment, the disappointing truth is that I have suffered from jetlag since my return from Taiwan.
Two nights ago, I was sure I licked the problem (it was cherry, in case you’re wondering). I fell asleep at ten o’clock and slept as a bear during winter, feeling revitalized upon waking. That feeling lasted until yesterday evening, around five o’clock, when fatigue jumped me in the back alley without warning. Sure, I should have known better than to walk in that alley alone, but I felt moderately confident, having the street smarts acquired in Brooklyn. I managed to fall asleep at a reasonable hour—around 9:30 PM—happy in my dodging another spiritual mugging. That sense of relief lasted up through midnight, when I shot upright in bed, my head pounding, and my brain telling me that there was no way I was going to get back to sleep.
There I am, in terrible pain on the verge of screaming. With few options left to keep my sanity (Julie was on-call and working away and didn’t answer my frantic call), I lugged myself downstairs and turned on the television. For the next five hours, I watched season 3 of Seinfeld. I’m not proud of it, but if not for Seinfeld, I do not know how I would have survived the night. I fell asleep again at 7:30 AM and slept to a respectable 11:00 AM. I’m hoping tonight will be better.
I won’t try to write anything more tonight. After getting a late start and working from home, I didn’t get a chance to jot down many notes and I have little to talk about now. I’ll hopefully grab a cup of coffee tomorrow afternoon and wow you with my weekend tales. This one’s a long one, three full days of doing nothing but being alone with my thoughts. I know it’s a scary proposition.
Fire cheers while caffeine invades me. I welcome them for this year’s final evening. Much happened for me over the past twelve calendar months: I moved from Houston to Seattle and began a new job, bought a castle and a car and learned the meaning of debt, wrote a novel (resisted disparaging the novel’s quality in a parenthetical), learned to write every day, and grew closer to Julie emotionally and geographically.
I’ve mentioned before that I wasn’t an end-of-year resolution type guy. I make resolutions when needed (see writing every day, no cable television, gym—okay, that’s a bad one), and I don’t feel a pressing need to make any today. Last year’s quasi-resolution was to cut down on consternations when I write. While I certainly did not cut out all of my consternations, the levels have dropped from a constant buzzing to an infrequent high-pitched whine. The more important part in that resolution was to write more quantity and quality, and while I’m still chasing the latter, the former is coming along nicely, notwithstanding the last few days of post-Taiwan recovery.
Distractions keep tempting me but I managed to beat them back with my small splintering stick. I didn’t think of much to write about in the day, another slow day in the midst of a slow week. But I have an idea that’s been bustling through my brains that I’d like to try to get out if possible. I turned it into the second poem. My New Year’s Eve consisted of watching “The Whale Rider,” a trite if big-hearted movie. I enjoyed it and it cracked a gap in me big enough to get out two poems. They’re not the cheeriest of subjects, and the rhymes and metrics need much work, but—I’ll stop making excuses and post them. Happy belated New Years!
Silence shadowed me throughout the day. It has been quiet, a day spent in contemplation of nothingness and all of its aspirations. Depression fell as a heavy cloak over my shoulders and I haven’t shaken it all day. For a holiday weekend, this is not going as planned—not that I planned much, which is probably part of the problem. After a “world-wind” vacation, during which every day we spent going some place or doing something, my adjustment to doing little has not been good. When I combine that adjustment with Julie Withdrawal, I’m bound to find myself in such a state. I keep saying that I hope it passes but it’s staying with me, and my dodging and moving left isn’t helping much.
From as far back as he remembered, which he admitted readily was a mere few years, Adabu was what people called “slow.” His thoughts came in a bunch with pauses as he gathered and tied together the bunch in his mind. It wasn’t until Adabu turned eight that he began to understand what people said about him. He had never noticed a difference before then, but, he thought wryly at the time, that’s to be expected if his slowness was as true as everyone spoke.
Nothing much goes through my life of note. I took a trip to downtown Seattle today to get out of the house. After waiting for the bus until five minutes before it was to show up, I had second thoughts. The last bus returned to my bus stop at 5:30 pm, and I didn’t want to be stuck downtown. The hour between each bus on the weekend wasn’t encouraging. I decided to drive and stayed barely an hour before driving home. I’m restless lately, with nothing new and nothing doing. My laundry is piling up and my dishes need washing. I can’t seem to find the push needed to get back into my routine.
I spent most of today working on sewcrates.com. Obviously, I spent little time writing this entry. Instead, I finished redoing the comments, making them editable and more robust, and I’m trying to develop a new style and masthead. I’m not going to post any of the changes until I’m ready for the drastic change. I have a few other improvements I have in mind that I want to finish before presenting the site. I’ve decided not to rewrite all the code. While I am planning major changes, all of the features that I would have accomplished with a rewrite I can accomplish readily enough with more minor changes. The only thing important is the end user’s experience. The underlying code, as long as it runs well and is easy to use, doesn’t make much of a difference. My only outstanding concern is the code’s aesthetics, something about which I spend too much time thinking. While working on the site over the next week or so, I’m hoping my muse finds her way to me. I know, I know, I don’t believe in muses: it’s all perspiration not inspiration. As I said before, I’m more concerned about my mood than my muse.
I’m babbling, trying to get word count and to desperate to care much. Laurence, oh Laurence, why do you drop the compass in the sand?
I broke a glass today in the Castle. This is the first anything that I’ve broken since moving in. The glass, a retro-style tall glass from Pottery barn or Pier-1 or one of those yuppie home-design stories which I frequent because I’m a self-acknowledged yuppie (although, as the years go by, I’m becoming more of an uppie than a yuppie)—fell from the counter near the sink. The glass wouldn’t have been there if I kept up with my dishwashing responsibilities, but this week’s low feelings and easy distractions lowered my home-front productivity.
If you’re not a klutz then you probably won’t understand how this could have happened. I’m in the kitchen, shaking out pills from my vitamin bottles. After visiting the doctor last week, he reminded me that I should take my one-a-day vitamins, and he suggested I try an extra magnesium pill for my headaches. (There is early research on the benefits of magnesium for migraines, of which my anecdotal evidence doesn’t support.) The magnesium pill consists of a dissolvable plastic-like capsule, the type you can unscrew and shake out the drug. The one-a-day vitamin is a green pill that tastes surprisingly good when sucked. It reminds me of the Flintstone vitamins I took as a kid without the grape flavoring. I haven’t tried to suck on the vitamin for long, still fearing that once I get through the outer layer, I’ll find an inner chalky core. One would think that the glass I knocked over was the one I used to swallow (or eat, as Julie says) the pills, but there’s a fatal assumption in that thought. As is my custom when I’m not in front of people who will judge me as a slob or uncouth individual or have second thoughts about drinking a glass of OJ from a carton that I had repeatedly slobbered, I drank straight from the carton, no glass necessary.
After I finished “eating” my vitamins, I reached over to the sink and my arm brushed the glass. What I was doing with my arm near the sink, I don’t know. The shattering glass destroyed all short-term memories before the crash as my brain focused on minimizing the damage and protecting my bear feet. My arm, as are most of limbs, can be spastic and uncoordinated. There are times when my body is a well-oiled machine, reacting to all stimuli with a precision that is scary. To borrow from my basketball lexis, at those times I am “in the zone” or “on fire,” where I can pluck a falling glass from mid-air and toss it back onto the counter without breaking conversation. This was not one of those times. After my arm knocked the glass, I watched it fall. It wasn’t a proverbial slow-motion fall, but I remember having enough time to think about the glass’s fall and why I wasn’t doing anything about it, like reaching out and making a spectacular catch. It could be that those thoughts occurred after the glass fell to the ground and shattered, but I like to think that I had those thoughts while it was falling and if I felt more coordinated, more in the zone, I would have snatched it before hitting the ground. The glass shattered and spread across the kitchen floor. I put on shoes, picked out the big pieces, swept up the smaller pieces, and imagined the shelf in my cupboard with seven large glasses.
This morning and afternoon, the weather in Seattle was as close to perfect as it can get during the winter. It was warm (for the Northwest), the sun shone, and the mountains were hazy but visible. On winter days, my neighborhood has a wonderful wood-burning smell. I took a trip to a local lunch, a small corner luncheon that is the only restaurant within a five-minute walk from the Castle, and was disappointed yet again. I keep going there with the hopes that they will improve the food, and create a dreamy go-to lunch destination, as I found in Wolfgang Puck Express in Houston (which was right next to my go-to bucks of stars) and the local diner in NYC (of which there were many near to everything—this is NYC we’re talking about). But it was not to be. The food again found me a bit nauseous and if not for the wonderful walk, it would have been a wasted trip.
During my meal (and my requisite bathroom visit), I finished the second-to-last DFW story. This was not a good story. It was painfully long and the ending was trite and disappointing. I almost gave up on it many times, and looking back, I wish I had. As I said before, the last story is supposed to be one of his best. I guess when you’re an experimental writer the very nature of experiments results in some failures. I just wish DFW had marked it as a failed experiment, learned from it, and crumpled it.
Story idea: philosophical discussion with a Rabbi—pay $20/hour to your favorite charity if I learn something and visa versa.
Today was another cold and clear day. Mr. Rainer (that’s Mt. Rainer to you) was hazy but visible from the lake. I took a long, cold walk around Seward Park, and on my way back, after getting lost and wandering the neighborhood for an addition thirty minutes, I realized that if my house were a bit higher or further into the street, I would have a view of Mr. Rainer. As it is now, I have to settle for the peaks of other not-so-big mountains in the distance. The visibility of the surrounding mountains has greatly improved with the colder weather, as have the stars. I didn’t even know Seattle had stars until this past week.
To survive the freezing temperatures (I’m not sure the exact temperature, but many of the puddles had a thin coatings of ice—very unusual for these parts), I dressed in layers. I wore a long-sleeve black shirt, a sweater over the shirt, my blue zipper-up work sweatshirt, hat, gloves, and scarf. While most of my body was quite snug—almost too much so, I attempted to regulate my temperature by taking off and putting back on my gloves many times during the loop around the park—my corduroy pants, which I assumed from my previous experience with corduroy in the 1980s would be warm, were the weak point. Halfway around the park, the backs of my legs started to itch, which is never a good sign. Except for the incessant itching, the walk was nice. I like to say that I spent much of it planning new stories or NEQID, but my mind was full of the rewrite for the website. When I’m stuck on a project, it’s hard to get my mind onto other things.
I set what I thought was a good pace for the walk, but I was behind a couple that would have none of it. They must have been a newer couple since when they entered the park, he, the guy that is, said, “And over here we have the northwestern ducks, better known in these part as the Seattlian-doe ducks, which are well known in this lake-front habitats,” and on, and on, in his most look at me, over here, hey, down here, damn it, I’m funny, very funny, now look at me, voice to impress his girl. She laughed and I somehow managed to swallow my bile. But no matter how much I increased my walking speed, I never caught up to them or got close enough to eavesdrop for additional not-clever clever remarks. They must have been super walkers or something. Halfway through the loop, when it became apparent that I wouldn’t catch them, I stopped for a bit to rub the backs of my legs. Looking back, I feel it’s now safe to admit that I stopped more to put the couple out of view than to relieve the coldness from my legs. I thought about running to pass them, until I realized that (a) I wasn’t wearing the right type of shoes, and (b) running makes me tired and I don’t like being tired. You’ll be happy to hear that with all the getting lost and freezing my legs off, I did manage to return to the warm Castle, and as far as I’ve been able to ascertain, I sustained no permanent damage.
When I first sat down to write this evening, I attempted to light a fire to ward the cold and fragrance the living room. The fireplace, like the couple before it, fought me. I stuffed wads of newspaper and junk mail under three well-placed logs, but there must have been something in the air because after the kindling burnt through, the wood didn’t catch. I let the embers sit for a while, hoping that something would catch, but it never did. With no fire, I gave up on writing, cooked a delicious dinner of lamb and steamed string beams, and washed all the dishes that had been piling up in the sink. I know that none of this is in the least bit interesting, but I needed to provide background for how I got through my funk. That’s right. I’m now funk-free. The funk gave me lots of time to work on the redesign of the website. In another week, I should be able to hit the switch and share with you all the fancy new whistles and bells. Besides the stylistic changes, I did go back to my original idea of redesigning the website from the ground up. The redesign reuses a lot of slightly rewritten code but I’m happy I did it. As I tried to explain before, it’s now more aesthetically pleasing to me, and isn’t that the important thing?
Continuing on my week of firsts—if you remember, yesterday I managed to break the first item in the Castle—last night (early this morning is more accurate, since Julie hasn’t been getting home until after midnight), I fought with Julie for the first time. We’ve had minor squabbles in the past, but they never amounted to much. When my doctor last week asked about girlfriend-produced stress, I told him that I didn’t have any, thanks to my long-distance relationship. That has all since changed. We fought for a few hours on the phone, which is not the best of places to fight. It’s easier to argue when you’re face to face and your facial expressions can portray the evil thoughts that are going through your head. Suffice to say I was wrong, selfish, and pig headed. I’d like to blame the late hour, the funk, the moon moving through Jupiter, the cold weather, but the truth is, it was all me. I wanted something my way, and I was angry when I didn’t get it. I’m like a petulant child at times, and even when I’m like that, it’s hard to break it. I get into a bad mood after something doesn’t go my way, and that mood permeates everything I do. We’ve gotten over it after cooler heads prevailed, but there’s a lesson in all of this. I’m not sure what it is, but something along the lines of Trust in Julie (TIJ). Now, before you ask if I’m writing this so I don’t have to sleep on the proverbial (not sure why I’ve been using this word so often) couch—forgetting even that we don’t live together or that my couch is very comfortable and in easy access to my movie collection and Netflix—I’m not. That’s why I write fiction: so I can lie freely.
And, moving past my week of firsts, I broke my second item in the Castle. My beautifully self-installed, perfectly centered and caulked, garbage disposal, which was my second house project—come to think of it, there hasn’t been a real third project, I am a lazy man—stopped working. I could understand if I jammed it—by all rights, it should have been jammed with all the crap that I throw down there—but when I turned it on today, it just buzzed. It worked the last time I used it a few days ago. I turned off the electricity and spun the grinding thingy with a fork. It moved freely, which moved my diagnosis from jammed to engine trouble. I’m planning to recheck the electrical connection I made when I installed it, and then I’m going to call in the garbage disposal folks and invoke my right of warranty. Either that or I’m going to not use it anymore and pretend it’s not even there. That’s probably more likely.
The Next Great Idea
You woke up late that morning. You wake up late often, but before you say anything, I know I need to stop constantly reminding you of this. Nagging is the word you started using with me, and believe you me, I’m not trying to be a nag, but I come from a family of naggers, and it’s hard to break with tradition. Plus, I can’t figure out how else to get you to do things. I swear there are times where you sit and do nothing when you know perfectly well that I’m watching and desperate for you to run some errand or complete a house project. I’d understand if you had something better to do, but you just sit there, and I’m left pulling my hair out, believing that your aim is to drive me crazy. Well, it’s working.
I’m sure you’ll somehow find it in that big watermelon that you call a heart to forgive me for reminding you of all of this again. You know how I sometimes get going, but since you seem to forgive my other failings after enough prodding, I figure it was worth the risk. Not to put too fine a point on the matter, but you might have had the Next Great Idea earlier that day and probably saved yourself a lot of hassle, but because you woke up late, it wasn’t until the early afternoon that you had it.
Our bedroom was freezing that morning after you turned off the heat before going to bed. You were on a conservation kick thanks to an over-inflated gas bill. You told the children that you were sick and tired of paying enough to heat a small town. What you probably don’t remember is that all three of our children came down with colds a few days later. While I can’t prove your energy-saving exploits caused the colds, I’m sure we both know, if only one of us will admit, it was a “contributing factor.” I skipped showering that morning because of the cold, snuck from the bedroom, and brought the children to my mother’s to thaw.
You breakfasted on warm toast and salmon cream-cheese spread and pretended as if the cold didn’t bother you. You wore your terry bathrobe and bear slippers, but you couldn’t fool yourself for long. With the children and me out of the house and before your toast was even toasted, you moved the dial on the thermostat from sixty degrees up to seventy degrees, and even cracked a smile when you heard the heating fan turn on. That smile sparked the Next Great Idea. It struck as ideas have a wont to do, when you were thinking about nothing, your mind drifting. You relived your play in yesterday’s pickup game, focusing on recounting all the great plays while conveniently forgetting the fouls and defensive breakdowns that led to your team losing and you sitting out the next three games. And then your mind shifted to the stack of work on your desk, but you fought that it down. I don’t know how you do it, and I wish you would teach me one day, but you have an uncanny ability to put responsibility out of your mind. The responsibility might explode a few days later in a frenzied anxiety-driven work, but for the moment, your mind blanks and you run around without a care in the world.
The Next Great Idea hit you so hard you sat down. Sitting down only made the idea sound better. You were desperate to work out the details, but you knew there would be plenty of time for that later. You contemplated writing it down, but you didn’t think there was anyway you would forget such an idea. It was that good.
***
Yeah, it is half a story that went nowhere fast. I don’t know who has sapped all my creative energy, but I’m hoping to turn the spigot back on one of these days. I know, I know, baby steps, all baby steps. (That and finish my website rewrite. I can’t sit for more than ten minutes without wanting to get up there and finish coding it.)
I don’t usually start writing with a title, but this time I did. I had what I thought was a brilliant idea this morning for a new story, and, as happens to me often, I forgot what it was. At the time, I remembered thinking to myself, this is such a good idea, there is no way I could ever forget it. And then I forgot it. I thought the forgetting itself, since it’s been happening to me often lately, was a great idea in itself to write into a story.
I almost started the story with “you are sitting there,” but remembered that I abhorred stories, paragraphs, and sentences that began with sitting or staring—call it the Marathon-influenced nightmare.
My fingernails grow too quickly. After two weeks of nail growth, my typing rate, especially on my laptop, slows. My nails don’t feel the keys as well as my fingertips. I’m sure it’ll take me another few days to remember to bring my nail clipper into the shower. I’m terrible with the clippings, and unless I let the shower drain take them away, I’ll end up with clippings all over my rug, which causes problems since I seldom vacuum it.
Write a vignette about one thing, spending the entire time on it—e.g., Tabasco bottle. Stylistic point: stop using e.g., i.e., and viz. until I learn Latin. I read a review of a biography in the New Yorker about a famous painter—after reading the review, I feel I learned enough about the painter not to read the biography—who gave an art class at university, and in the first session, after setting up a still life, told his students that they would spend the entire semester painting this one still life until it was perfect. They would then kill the painting, only to recreate it after it was dead. I’m not sure what he was talking about—most of his American students ran out in fear—but I felt if it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me. See how easily influence I am by reading stuff?
Immortality Pill: Guys are naturally shorter than girls are—how does that change the world.
This is a musing about why I’m not writing a musing today. Or that was the original intention. I jotted down words before heading home from work, but none of the words satisfied me. Okay, I’m putting it too lightly: all of the sentences, thoughts, and paragraphs I wrote were drivel, consternation followed by wasteful consternation, excretion thrown against the wall because I didn’t know what else to do with the shit I squeezed from my cheeks. I feared that I wasted all my clever thoughts and yummy caffeine on my colleagues at work. (My wringinghair.com story was supposed to be about this exact topic. While I think it went in that direction, by the time I got to the gritty part, ready to hammer home the thesis, I was out of energy, and all I had left was a final spurt of writing sufficient to tape on an ending. Like most of my stories, I based wringhair.com on an idea that is dear to me: if I waste my clever thoughts, will I have anything left to write about.) By the time I arrived home, I chose deliberately to play hooky from writing today.
October 18, 2004 was the last day I didn’t write something. Sure, since that time, there have been days where I’ve written a few short sentences in a few short paragraphs, and to be fair there have been other days (actually a month known as the Marathon) where I’ve written thousands of words each day. (I somehow resisted the urge to run upstairs and write a script to calculate daily average word count—my brain is focused singularly on coding the new site and its features. And before you ask, yes, I enjoy torturing you with hints about the redesign, knowing you won’t have a peek at it for another week. I’m that evil.)
The thing about streaks is that the longer they go on, the more pressure there is to keep them going. When the day comes around where I’m not able to write or don’t want to write, it’s going to be difficult to not write because of this streak. That’s why I thought today would be the perfect day not to write. I already wrote about a page worth of words, and even though I wasn’t going to post them, I would have the knowledge that I did write something, but I made the deliberate choice to break the streak. In that way, the bubble would pop and I would stop worrying about the streak, and instead I would focus my worries—I mean energies, energies!—on writing something of value, such as finishing my stories.
What I didn’t take into account as I left worked dejected was that, as is usually the case when I get home, I’m going to want to write. When you’re at a low point, and I was at a low point with the writing, you don’t think you’ll get better. You can’t imagine wanting to write again. That’s what lows do to you. They sap the desire and confidence that keeps you pounding away searching for something. They tell you, listen bud, you don’t have it, give up for the day. Lay down the pen and forget about it. There are plenty of distractions that are more fun that this writing thing. Why don’t you do some of them and leave the writing alone for the night. It won’t miss you. What you can’t see, as you listen to these internal words, is that it’s Carl talking. You remember Carl, the demon who has the power to manipulate emotional states, to make you feel awful and useless about your writing, and weaken your resolve to continue. You think that it’s your choice; that the voice is your consciousness. But it’s not.
After convincing myself that giving up the streak was the wisest action, I ate a light dinner. During dinner, I noticed something. My fingers itched and I wanted to write. Let me say that again, I needed to write. Thoughts blazed through my mind that I had to capture. I opened the computer and typed the first sentence, thinking I would post something to let people know that I was okay and that this not writing for today was a deliberate decision. That got me thinking. And as I swallowed my dinner without chewing, I knew that a few short sentences about why I wasn’t going to write today were not going to be sufficient. I needed to write. Here I was, about to give up on writing for the day, when it hit me as a rock thrown from the ground floor of a three-story building: writing about how I almost missed writing today would make a great topic. This writing is addicting.
I don’t think I could sleep without at least pouring out a little of what is in my brain. I’ve read about writers who need to write every day. They don’t write because of obligation; they write because they have to write. When I heard that, I scoffed at the idea. I thought, sure, I like writing and I want to write, but there are many days where I don’t feel like writing, and on those days, it’s going to be impossible for me to write anything. I went further and imagined the relief of not writing on those days, like the relief of not finishing my homework, knowing that while I might break rules and risk a bad grade, there are things more important than rules and grades.
I’m not sure if I’ve arrived at what those writers feel (mainly because I’m not a writer in the sense that they’re writers), but this evening, I felt an inkling of what I imagine they feel. I like referring to Stephen King telling interviewers that he wrote every day of the year except Halloween and Groundhog’s Day (I tell it with different holidays every time because I can’t remember which ones he used). He lied. He couldn’t not write on holidays just as he couldn’t not breathe on holidays.
Writing for me is becoming like that. It’s becoming a necessary habit. There’s a dialogue in the Talmud (how about that, I’m referencing the Talmud. You see, Hebrew school was good for something) about habit, particularly as it relates to prayer. The dialogue teaches that to find enjoyment in prayer, especially waking up early and praying, you must do it every day for at least three months. Even if you’re not a morning person, you cannot skip a day during those three months. What the Talmud promises is that at the end of three months, you will understand prayer, enjoy it, and ask yourself how you ever survived without it. It’s the same thing with writing. I’m almost at the end of my third straight month of writing every day, and while I can’t explain what it does for me, I know I can’t give it up or skip a day. Now, if only I can apply this three-month rule to something useful, like going to the gym or eating vegetables.
What I decided to finish with is the mostly unedited scribble that started me on this path today. Now do you see what I was talking about?
***
I didn’t use my caffeine well today. I can write reams (a word that doesn’t get enough use anymore) on the effective use of caffeine to further my creativity and writing. .
I thought about continuing The Next Great Idea, but I’m lazy, and I already wasted my caffeine burst. I’m going to have to concentrate to find something that will keep me moving forward in this writing thing.
Way too late for the caffeine to properly influence me. It’s now drowning through my veins, finding nothing of value.
Where to go with this? What am I after? Writing every day is complicated and I tend to say nothing fast. Here’s an idea: why don’t I talk about something that’s not internal. The only thing I talk about on this site relates to me, me, me. But isn’t that why I write this? If I wrote about other people, then I figure those other people should have sites where they talk about themselves, so why would I bother? This is very confusing. I’m going to stick to talking about myself.
Johnny, why did you come home so late? Why is my brain not working? Why is there nothing there? I don’t get it. I don’t get any of it. I’m confused and I’m worried about confusing other people. I have nothing to say and nothing worth saying. All this complaining and none of it writing. Why don’t I write something? Why don’t I say something? The consternations! The pain!
I can’t think of what to write today. I’m empty, drained, nothing here, please move on, nothing to see here. Ignore the bloody body, it’s meaningless. There’s nothing for you to worry about, everything is under control.
Green circles and brown arms. Polls and poles and Poles, is there a difference? What is their difference?
brackled backeries bownding bak baheyend breyeann
Nothing worth saying and nothing said.
I need a break. I need something to use to cool down and come to terms with nothing going on. Why don’t I find it? You’re a pig-headed fool, do you know that? Have I told you about it? If not, then I recommend it.
Where is the voice? Where is anything that’s worth saying? Why do I say nothing and say nothing poorly? The pain. The terrible, terrible pain!
Snow fell across the window. Steven tucked his covers into his neck and watched the snow. The large, impregnated snowflakes followed an unhurried path across his window, drifting from right to left. Some flakes stuck to the window and melted, the drops of water retaining the snowflake’s shape for a moment before coalescing into a larger drop and streaming down the window. Most passed soundlessly from his view. The snow formed triangular mounds on the naked oak tree’s branches outside his window.
From his bed, Steven could not tell whether the snow stuck to the ground. Sticking snow was important. On warmer days, the snow melted when it hit the ground, and schools did not close for wet roads. Steven heard his mother outside his room and closed his eyes. She opened the door and he felt her peak in. He remained motionless under the covers and waited. When the door closed, he opened his eyes and chewed his lower lip, biting tiny pieces off his skin. The thought of playing sick flashed through his mind, but he dismissed it. If it turned out to be a snow day, he would have wasted the act, and, even worse, his mother might believe him and keep him inside.
Steven stepped out of bed and wrapped the comforter around his shoulders and head. He dragged his feet across the rug until he could peak out the window. Leading away from the oak tree were two tracks in the snow across the garden. Mr. Henderson had already walked Kato. Steven tried to eyeball the print’s depth, but new snow had filled the prints.
He dropped the comforter on the floor and left his room. The house felt chilly and strangely silent. His brothers must still be sleeping. He walked by the kitchen, ignoring his mother’s questions, and went into the living room. He sat cross-legged on the red rug a few feet from the television, and leaned over and switched it on. It was tuned to channel 4 and he watched a reporter dressed in a heavy winter coat talk into a large black microphone. Steven hadn’t bothered to turn up the volume. Instead, he leaned on his elbows and read the blue ticker scrolling across the bottom of the television screen looking for his school, and found it: closed for the day.
Steven pushed the power button on the television and stood up by straightening his cross legs, pushing him upright and turning him around in one motion. He passed his mother in the kitchen, again ignoring her questions, and went back to his room. He pulled the window shade down covering the snow, and grabbed the comforter from the floor. He crawled into bed pulling the comforter behind him, and before his head plowed the cooling pillow, sleep found him.
***
The day tired me. It did snow a bit this morning, although it turned mostly to rain and ice. As I expected, my rear-wheel car did not handle the snow well, and when I arrived in my company’s parking lot, every time I turned my rear fell out from under me. Very fun. I’m heading to Newport Beach tomorrow night, and I’m excited. I haven’t been there in a while, and the warmer weather (and Julie) should warm my spirits. As I type this, the words keep shifting around. I watch as they fall from paragraphs, and the letters swing between the words, trading places as children trade baseball cards.
I finished watching “Laurence of Arabia” this evening. Thanks to the wonder that is Netflix, I’ve been catching up on classic movies that I never had a chance (or, to be honest, a desire) to see. I’ve found many of them overrated, but there are a few gems, and Laurence was one of them. Here’s a war movie that’s secretly a character story. Lawrence’s character (or oar-rence, as the Arabs call him) was beautiful. He was larger than life, flawed, and brilliant. The story was not a typical Hollywood movie, probably because it was based (I’m assuming here) on a real person, and I imagine they tried to keep it close to the story. (Why can’t they write movies like this anymore?) Unlike “Braveheart,” which I enjoyed when I first saw but later cooled on, there was meat and growth in Laurence’s character and story. Braveheart was a simple man’s Laurence. While Braveheart’s ending was sad, Laurence’s ending was tragic and beautiful. There was no, “you can take my life, but you’ll never take my freedom,” lines in Laurence. It didn’t need it. There were not tricks or twist endings, and yet the story felt new and original.
I’m babbling now. I’ll leave it at that. I thought after yesterday’s prolific (almost nonexistent) writing session, I would jump right back into this writing thing and find deep and insightful things to talk about. Obviously, I was wrong…again.
I’m at my favorite writing location: an airport. I’ve eaten, drank a minimal dosage of caffeine in Snapple form, and in another fifteen or twenty minutes, I will board the airplane and be on my way to Newport Beach.
The flight left on time, which is rather surprising for an Alaska Airlines flight. I bought my ticket with miles a few days ago, and, as usual when I buy a last-minute flight or fly standby on an earlier flight, Alaska printed an ‘SSSSS’ on my boarding pass. When you have such a marking, the security people hand search you and your belongings. I guess the theory is that terrorists will book their flights at the last minute to avoid suspicion. I don’t see the correlation, but I’m sure smart people decided on these security procedures. Or, at least, that’s my hope. The hand searching worked out better today, since I bypassed the longer, normal security line and went to my own special line. The security people seem friendlier on the special line because they know it can be a hassle. Me, I like the personal touch, and I’ve gotten good at lifting one foot and then the other, and holding my arms out to the sides. I feel like my flight is safer because of it.
I had an interesting dream last night. I don’t usually remember my dreams, and even when I do remember them when I wake, the dreams usually vanish a few minutes later. This one I remembered, well, sort of. At first, I wasn’t sure who I was in the dream. When I dream, I can be anyone, and it sometimes a bit to figure out which anyone I am. Sometimes, even when I look or feel like me, it turns out that it’s not me, like it’s a me, but not the me. I like to think of those me’s as coming from a different dimension where the me made different choices in his life. But until I figure that out, I keep an open mind—as open as I can manage when I’m trying to figure out what’s going on around me.
Some people dream vividly. They say they see and sometimes even hear things in dreams as if they were watching a movie or going about their regular life. That’s what they say. For me, dreaming is more like knowing about things than seeing them. I know that I’m looking at something, but I don’t see it. It’s not like a movie screen; it’s more like how I feel after I’ve watched a movie. I know what happened, and I can visualize it in my mind, but I can’t see the pictures again—at least not until the DVD comes out. In last night’s dream, Julie and I decided to buy illegal drugs and transport them across a state to make $40,000. We hid the drugs by powdering them on baked goods, such as cookies and cakes. Julie was an evil Julie, and I was a timid David. When we made a stop, I told Julie that I couldn’t take the pressure anymore and I wanted to get rid of the drugs before the police stop us. She laughed at me, but I do it anyway, the possibility of arrest becomes too great for me to handle. Hilarity ensues, and stuff happened, but the rest is a blur.
Multiple days: I’ve been putting this off, but I’ve known it for some time now. My one-day stories are not sufficient. While they’re easier to write, I don’t go deep enough to tell the story or get across the thesis. What is necessary is for me to tell stories that I don’t finish in one sitting. I need to find a way to jump back into my story a few days later and keep the writing going. This is a weakness of mine, and something I’m going to have to get over through more practice.
Thanks to my commute—which has been surprisingly easy this week, a huge change after a dreadful December caused (this is my theory) by Christmas shoppers and four old ladies who drive twenty miles per hour beneath the speed limit side-by-side, and five minutes in front of me during my commute—I spend many hours every day listening to my car’s XM radio. In the mornings, I tune to the comedy channel, which plays snippets of stand-up comics, which is all my brain can handle that early in the day. My evening (or afternoon) rides are better. I listen to XMPRI, XM’s Public Radio International, which has many shows I enjoy. Public radio on XM is better than listener-sponsored public radio on regular FM because there are no pledge drives; the monthly XM fees cover the public part of the broadcast, leaving me guilt-free and able to enjoy my shows without having to listen to pathetic pleas to support the “free” public radio.
One of the shows I enjoy on XMPRI is This American Life (or something that sounds like that). Before this show came on the air (a month ago or so), XMPRI ran incessantly an advertisement for the show, which almost convinced me to stop listening to the channel. While the XM music channels do not have commercials, all the talk channels have occasional commercials. Because XM is a relatively new technology, there are not many sponsors, and the sponsors they do have, which include advertisements for other XM shows and channels and GoToMyPC.com, which I never will thanks to their horrible commercials, tend to be repeated ad naseum. The commercial for This American Life explained that the show ‘unfolds more like a movie for the radio.’ Each show has a theme, and the host, Ira Gold, or something like that, plays interviews or stories related to the theme during the three acts of the show.
In the second act of today’s show, the host interviewed a Grateful Dead songwriter, who told a story about how he met a girlfriend at a convention, which was the theme for the show. (An earlier part of the show was about a professional dishwasher, whose mission in life is to work as a dishwasher in every state. He also writes a monthly article or magazine, which they claim is funny. The professional dishwaser attends a restaurateur’s convention, expecting to find the fat-cat boss’s he worked for smoking big cigars and planning the downfall of the common working man. He is disappointed to find that the restaurant owners aren’t evil. They are normal people who covet free food samples and plastic key chains.) The songwriter sees a woman at the convention he was attending (I think he was giving a speech or something) and there’s an instant attraction. He describes it as one love at first sight, even though he never believed such a moment was possible. While she’s younger than he is, they have a lot in common, including the fact that she’s moving into his apartment building in NYC. After a week, she gives up the apartment and moves in with him. A few months later, they both come down with a flu-like sickness. (At this point, I had no idea where he was going with this or what this had to do with a convention—it turns out very little.) He travels to LA and asks his girlfriend to join him because he has tickets to a concert. She flies to LA and they go to the concert. During the visit, she broaches the question of marriage, wanting to have his children. At first, it sounds like he’s going to tell us he broke up with her because he didn’t want children, but he surprises us by saying he agreed and started planning the wedding. She leaves on an earlier flight than he does because she has patients to see the next morning (she’s a psychiatrist). It turns out her flu had been eating at an artery in her heart, and while in the air, she has a heart attack. The flight attendant finds her dead when attempting to wake her up for landing. She was 30 years old.
I don’t know why I felt the need to share it, but it’s such a tragic and unexpected story that I felt it was worth a few words. My writing is rather stagnant this evening. The cramped seat in the airplane made typing difficult, and while I had things to say, I don’t feel as if I said them well. I guess I can’t be eloquent every day (or most days).
It is cold and rainy. As far as I’ve ascertained, it’s not supposed to be cold and rainy. I understand cold and rainy in Seattle—hell, Seattle invented cold and rainy, and I accepted that when I moved there. But here in the land of Disney (the other land of Disney), there should be no cold and rain. I’m going to write a very stern letter to the mayor when I return home requesting an apology and a coupon book.
We slept in and had an early lunch and/or late breakfast (I refuse to use the term ‘brunch’ because brunches involve buffets and cheap champagne mixed with orange juice, of which there were neither). After eating, we went to the nearby grocery store to buy Julie water and vitamins. Julie waits for my visits for the water purchase because she needs my large muscles to carry the water bottles from her car to apartment. As we searched for the perfect vitamin, we realized something. Flintstone vitamins, the chewable, yummy multi-colored children’s vitamins, contain the same or more of all essential vitamins and minerals than the standard adult one-a-day vitamin. Here I was, foolishly swallowing green pills, when I could be happily chewing a Flintstone vitamin. Flintstone vitamins should start advertising to adults. Knowing Julie’s pill swallowing aversion (you remember she’s a doctor), we bought Julie the Flintstone vitamins and a supplemental chocolate calcium one (you can’t expect Flintstones to cover everything).
After our successful vitamin shopping adventure, we braved an outdoor mall because, well, because what else is there to do in Newport Beach but eat and shop (and hold Julies)? Our thinking was sound: it was cold and rainy (have I mentioned that yet?), and nobody would be there because it’s an outdoor mall. What we forgot to take into account were umbrellas. Mall-goers, all smarter than us, walked around with these new-fangled instruments that they held over their heads to protect them from the rain in the outdoor parts. We looked into purchasing such a device, but its push-button mechanism intimidated our caveman sensibilities.
While looking through Barnes and Nobles Bookstores, I managed to knock down a display of five books, none of which looked interesting. Being the kind-hearted individual that I am, I looked down at the books, looked at Julie, and started whistling with my hands behind my back, walking away from the mess I created. A more polite and worldly man near the rack bent down to pick up the fallen books. When I looked back, his eyes shot dagger at me. I kept whistling and walking down the bookshelves with a clear conscious. I figure, if they’re going to overcharge me for books, they should allow me to knock down those same books where I see fit. It’s quid-pro-quo.
Even though parts of the mall were in the outdoors, by the end of our shopping adventures, our brains were oxygen deficient. I’m not sure I’ve shared with you my theory on the oxygen level in shopping malls—if I did, I’m going to do so again since that’s what I do: repeat myself incessantly—but I believe shopping mall managers purposefully lower the amount of oxygen in shopping malls. Their goal, and it’s a good one from their perspective, is to decrease shoppers’ inhibitions by lowering the amount of oxygen supplied to their brains. The less oxygen in their brain, the easier it is to convince shoppers to buy something they don’t need for prices they can’t afford. “I might enjoy that sequin dress,” a shopper might say in an oxygen-sufficient mall, “but look at that price tag.” When that same shopper visits an oxygen-deficient mall, she says, “Oh, look, shiny, must buy.” I bow to their genius, and wish to subscribe to their newsletter (Homer Simpson). How they lowered the oxygen level in an outdoor mall is beyond even my keen powers of explanation, but after we walked through the mall for an hour, we were drained. Instead of going to the movies (our original plan), we drove home and napped. Julie is still in there napping, trying to shake off her oxygen-deprived shopping experience, and her sleep debt created by working too many hours over the past seven days, including New Years. Poor girl.
We had planned, after finishing the shopping adventures and watching our movie, to go to the Banana Bread coffee house for a few hours of David Writing Time. Thanks to the nap, DWT is taking place on Julie’s recliner on a dark and rainy night, with only the streaming of water through the fish tank’s filter and the orange-hot light of the fish tank’s heater keeping me company. It seems the tropical fish aren’t used to the cold and rainy either.
My wrists have been hurting lately, probably caused by too much typing in awkward positions. Typing on the plane yesterday certainly didn’t help things. My wrists were near my chest as I tried to get those sentences out. I did want to get started on another story today, but I’m going to put it off for another day. It’s been easier for me to write diary entries than stories. I need to get away from that.
My mantra for today was, ‘I refuse to write anything that’s not story (except for the mantra).’ While I did manage to write something of a story, I’m still not in full story mode. I finally got back to the Castle after a long and miserable flight. I hoped to write more and do some editing of the story, but my headache during the flight killed those thoughts. When I arrived home, the Castle was freezing. I thought I’d save money by turning off the heat for the weekend. It’s now less than 50 degrees in here, and I’m freezing my money-grubbing butt off. I lit a fire in the bedroom, and I’m hoping it stays lit long enough to heat the bedroom so I can fall asleep.
Unnamed Story
Sandra exploded and then feinted. Thirteen hours later, she awoke with a terrible headache behind her right eye and nausea, which started in her groin and ended in bile in the back of her throat. It was always like this after an episode, and knowing the warning signs, she had prepared her room with the essentials. She upended the ibuprofen bottle on the bed sheets and separated four pills. She sucked the sugar coating from each pill and swallowed. As she sucked, her headache receded briefly. The sugar and drug floated in her stomach, churning the gastric juices.
Sandra placed a cooled towel over her eyes and rested on her back. “Lights,” she said and the lights dimmed and switched off. Her voice echoed in her brain, bouncing off her eyes and settling in her stomach. She managed to position her head over the pail before puking. She used the towel to wipe her lips and closed her eyes, silently begging for sleep to find her again. She swore silently to her gods that if they relieved her pain, she would never farsee again. She had repeated this prayer at the end of every episode, but for all her promises, she knew that she lied to herself and her gods.
She awoke ten hours later with a shadow of her headache. She ate a calorie bar from the nightstand and she reveled in the chewing motion. Her thoughts, which she had suppressed for what felt like days, formed in her head. She resolved to get started. “Kyle, are you there,” she thought.
“I follow the Prophet, our savior and guide,” Kyle responded.
“And through his everlasting truth, he brings us closer to what will be,” Sandra finished.
“Where have you been? I’ve been waiting for your call forever.”
“I warned you how long it would take before I went in.”
“Why didn’t you let me stay with you? I could have helped.”
“I told you before, Kyle. You could have done nothing. If you had been there when I awoke, your breathing would have driven me crazy.” Sandra reached for another calorie bar and unsealed a water bottle. “I’m starving. Buy me lunch and I’ll fill you in on what happened.”
The spaceport was busy that morning and Sandra waited an hour for transportation to the office.
***
Random notes I scribbled down: Tell the story of the prophet’s rise to power and minions. Insane and voices and powers. Told by a disciple. Teaches others his power. Gov’t is a monarchy – more of an empire. Desert? Arabs? Dune? Get away from that, but I like the desert angle. Prophet doesn’t hear voices, but thinks he knows what’s best for his people—a small sect. Downfall of the empire because of this rebellion. Empire held up by a religious force that is splintered when the prophet shows herself. Female prophet—Sandra. Downfall of gov’t, monarchy—king’s point of view and Sandra’s. King-Emperor is looking for the truth (he’s a religious empire) – Spaceports and different worlds; character story—unexpected twists. Why future? Present—altered present—altered past.
Story idea: (I’ve had this one before) the power of parents—when they’re with their kids, their kings and queens. But when they’re with the rest of society, they’re normal people who must give up their kingdom.
Random scribbles on the airplane:
It’s been a while since I’ve had to do this. The last time was on bad days of the Marathon. It’s now 10:23pm, and I’m typing this entry in bed. I’ve written a few paragraphs before now, but mostly, I’ve slacked off today. If you remember, today was supposed to be a continuation of yesterday’s The Last Great Idea story (how many times have I used words like that in my musings?). I’m sad to say that I’ve failed in the writing. I’ve not given up on it, but I’m just about at the point of admitting defeat for tonight and putting down thoughts that don’t in anyway relate to story. Be warned, the following paragraphs are nothing but excuses, consternations, and utter backtalk. If I were you—and I’m happy I’m not you because then I wouldn’t be me—I’d stop reading right now and accept that David has nothing of value to say today. I would—again, if I was still you—check back in tomorrow to see if perhaps he’s found whatever it was he lost, but I’d chalk up today as a It’s Not Worth Wasting My Time With David’s Pitiful Words day. But that’s just me. You do what you think is right because you always do. Don’t think I don’t notice that about you. And, yes, if you ask me, I wouldn’t mind if you took my words more seriously. I do occasionally have intelligent things to say. Really, I do. (My arguing with myself is becoming very, very sad.)
There are many reasons for today’s failure: the easiest is that today was a caffeine-free day. On CF days, I have to be particularly careful about how I use my time. On ordinary days (i.e., non-CF days), I have only a few hours of Inspiration Time. IT—which is probably not the best name for it—is time during the day where my spirits are high and I’m able to crank out OT and good prose. (Obviously, this, right now, is not such a time.) For me, IT occurs usually in the evenings from anywhere around five to whatever time I fall asleep. I’m not saying that every evening or every hour of an evening is IT; it’s just more likely to occur during that time. I’ll admit that part of the reason is because I’m not working. I’m sure if I managed to make millions and quit my day job (an aspiration which I enjoy dreaming and working towards, but of which I’m not convinced would make me happy if I achieve), I’d find more IT hidden in the earlier parts of the day. The only time I’m sure will never qualify for IT is the three to four hours after lunch. I don’t know what lunch does to me, but that’s the lowest point of my day. As soon as four or five in the evening rolls around, I find new wind. Before that, however, when my lunch digests in my tummy, I want to do nothing and talk to nobody. The Argentineans had it right with their siestas. I can’t tell you how productive I would be if I could nap during the day.
The lack of coffee was not the only reason for the failure. World of Warcraft, my newest addiction, is also a culprit. WOW is similar to my other VG addictions, only shinier and newer. Most of the times, Julie is home and we play together. We try to limit our time to one to two hours five or six days a week, Vacations and Julie’s evening shifts limits our game play even more. I’d like to say that the game has taken no toll on my writing, but I must admit there are days where I come home and all I can think about is playing WOW. Except for today, my addiction has not hurt my writing significantly. Julie is usually there to lay down the rules: no playing before 8pm, which gives me plenty of time to eat dinner (something I barely did tonight) and write my musing. Tonight, with Julie safely working, I was left to my own devices (a strange phrase, I’ll agree). Since I’ve switched characters to a vertically challenged warlock, I’ve been trying to catch up to a certain Amazon hunter’s level. By playing when I first got home instead of eating or writing, I’m a few levels closer to my goal, but many words away from my real goal.
Let’s see, what other addictions have I left out today. I did watch part of “Citizen Kane” on DVD, which is so far terribly overrated. Because of an uncomfortable scene involving Kane and his first wife visiting Kane’s mistress, I turned the movie off after fifteen minutes. That, therefore, shouldn’t count. I spent part of my evening helping Julie’s sister with one of her college paper. She goes to Har-vard. I miss college papers and classes. When you’re in school, you get feedback on everything you do: little gold stars collect in rows with your name on. In real life, you rarely get that immediate feedback. Anyway, the college-paper thing shouldn’t count either.
That’s all I have for today. I’ve met both shame and regret and I didn’t like the looks of either of them. I’m at a respectable 911 words, which I’ll leave it at and try again tomorrow. This writing every day is good for at least one thing: learning humility.
It’s another headachy day in the neighborhood, a headachy day in the neighborhood; won’t you be mine, won’t you be mine; won’t you be my neighbor. Hi boys and girls, welcome to another rainy Seattle day. Wow. That was terrible. That was beyond bad, that was, please, someone, grab a stick and beat me senseless bad. Before you blame the lack of caffeine (this is my second, unintentional caffeine-free writing day), I want it placed on the record that yesterday was caffeine-free as well, and while yesterday’s musing was brain dead and drivel, I didn’t have a headache. So, take that, you evil I don’t want David to drink caffeine zealots.
I still want to get back to the Sacrificial Lamb story, but I don’t think it’s going to happen tonight. It’s difficult getting these words out without having to think and write a story. I’ve decided to tell the story from both Esther’s and Fred’s point of view at the same time, interspersed, if you will, so you can watch Mr. Jenkins visit both of them and see their reactions. That’s the plan, at least. There’s going to have to be history between Esther and Fred, and flashbacks—I like flashbacks. I didn’t expect this to turn into a full-length story, but I’m not complaining.
Today was a good day at work. I don’t know why I’m such a sucker for compliments, but I received one this morning, and after that, my work output quadrupled. I should buy a compliments machine for my office. I imagine it with a large, red button, which I push every morning. The compliments would have to be different and heartfelt. I’d see right through it if I felt the machine was faking in any way.
Here’s a non-poem I threw down while in the throes of a keep my eyes closed because my head is pounding and if I move so much as an eyelash, my head will explode moment:
Dried beef flavors noodles of wool;
Razing forests of splendor across bedrocks of green;
Why they make him to ride the night?
Try of which to rinse the purple pus.
My eyes explode across vision’s stars;
Pained fingers tap pools of raisins.
Yeah, that’s what I think also. I’m going to call it an early night. I will find inspiration one day this week, and don’t blame me if it’s at the bottom of a cup of yummy caffeine with steamed milk.
I shaved this morning. My new job has a very casual dress code, and since starting, I’ve found myself shaving less and less. My facial hair didn’t start growing until I was unnaturally older. While in college, I could go months without shaving and nobody would be the wiser. Even in graduate school, weeks would pass without a razor touching my face. In high school, where I shaved a few times because I wanted to know what it felt to shave not because I had anything resembling facial hair, I was jealous of those who shaved. Those high-school shavers were mature men, where I was still a boy. What I didn’t realize until I left graduate school and “they” forced me to shave about once a week was that shaving sucks. The act of shaving, while annoying, isn’t the bad part. What is the bad part is the terrible razor burn I end up with after shaving. I have tried lotions, advanced shaving creams, the best razors known to mankind, voodoo, and ointments of all colors, smells, and shapes, and none of it stops the itchy bumps that break out on my neck.
This morning, facing the prospect of my facial hair growing itchy enough to drive me mad, I put razor to face in the dark shower. While I shave slow (I learned that from “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” and while it hasn’t helped the razor burn, it does make a lot of sense not to be ripping your face off at high speeds), I’m not a good shaver. I usually miss many areas, especially around my neck where I try to shave with the grain and not take too many strokes. Because Julie was sleeping in the next room and we have Tatami doors, which allow light to pass through the shaded parts, I kept the light in the bathroom off. When I felt I did an adequate job after peeling my sleepy eyes far enough open to examine my face in the mirror, I finished my morning routine, grabbed a banana and a pair of toast, and headed to work.
While preparing for my first meeting, I was in the bathroom (okay, I wasn’t preparing for the meeting in the bathroom—it was more that I had to pee before the meeting), when I saw myself in the mirror. What I saw, and I’ll share this with you because you, my reader, are some of my most trusted confidants, was truly horrifying. I had tiny patches of hair all over my face: the cleft of my chin, both sides of my neck, the two areas around my jawbone. It was by far the worst shaving job ever done. I spent the rest of the day walking around, talking to people, and generally trying to get the day over with, keeping my hand near my face to cover the area around my chin. Sure, I looked like a fool with something to hide. But looks, in this case, were not deceiving.
As you can tell, I’ve decided not to work on my story today. Actually, I did start rewriting a few paragraphs, but since they’re very similar to the paragraphs I’ve floated around the last three days, I’ve decided not to post them. I felt like I was posting things just to say I posted something, when I really wanted to continue working on it and not bore my reader with the same three paragraphs.
I’m heading to NYC tonight for a family extravaganza. Well, it would have been a family extravaganza, except my younger sister’s monsters got sick, and her family isn’t going to make it. Seeing how I already paid for our flight, Julie and I are heading to the city anyway. There were quite a number of phone calls over the last two days as we tried to figure out if the snowstorm (or Nor’easter, as my older sister calls it—I’ve heard nobody else call it that, including the professional weather people) is going to dump enough snow on NY and NJ to ruin our return flight on Sunday. After much debate and soul searching, Julie and I decided that we’re going to take the chance and fly to NYC. There were two main reasons: (1) Julie’s been stuck in the Castle for the past week with David visiting only after work, causing Julie to go slightly (and don’t tell her I told you this) stir crazy; and (2) I couldn’t get the hotel to refund my money. So, there you have it. I’m hoping the storm finishes early enough on Sunday to get us on our way back to our respective cities for work.
I’m expecting to find time to write this weekend, but I’m not sure if I’ll find an outlet to post what I write. I’m sure our lovely hotel has internet access—the question will be whether they charge me $15/day to use it. If so, I might have to hold off or find a bucks of stars somewhere (which isn’t difficult in the city). What might derail me, however, is the sub-freezing weather that they predict in NYC. I’m leaving balmy sixty-degree weather for NY. What was I thinking?
People talk incessantly about weather. I can’t claim to be different. Give me half a reason and I’ll start in on the minutiae of weather, be it rains of Seattle, humidity of Houston, Syracuse’s preposterous winters, Binghamton’s prominent cloud cover, or New York’s seasonal weather. The obvious reason people talk about weather is that everyone can relate to it. In small talk terms (and I forget the psychological terminology for it), it’s a way to get the conversation started. It’s common ground where people feel comfortable. Once you start talking about weather, you can use it as a jumping board to other topics of interest that are—arguably—more interesting, such as, “This is bad, but you should have been in NYC back in the '80s.” “You too? I know, I was there, wasn’t it awful,” and off to a conversation the lucky fools go.
But there’s another reason people speak about weather. When you’re stuck in severe weather, the weather itself becomes a visceral feeling, something that you have to share, like a terrible toothache, a massive headache, or a natural disaster. Today was a perfect example. Julie and I spent some (thankfully not a lot) of today walking the streets of NYC in brutally frigid conditions. The snow hasn’t arrived yet, but it should be here tonight or tomorrow morning. The cold before the storm has been terrible. Walking the last few blocks to return to the hotel from the apartment of Julie’s sister was a truly dreadful experience. My ears felt as if they were preparing to drop off, each stitch that held them close to my head unwound in silent protest, followed by my cheeks and feet, and just about every other part of me that did not contain at least four layers of clothing between air and skin. I haven’t lived in NYC in about five years, and in that time, my skin has thinned. When I move back here, it’s going to take me a few years to get used to these ridiculous winters.
I’m sure I’ll have more weather complaints tomorrow, when the snow starts, and I’m preparing to damn the weather gods if my flight is delayed. Damned, I tell you. Damned!
We took a redeye to Newark airport last night and arrived at around six this morning. The flight wasn’t terrible, and I managed to sleep a few hours on the airplane before waking up. I woke up to the sounds of the engines seemingly turning off. I flung the window shade open and tried to figure out what was going on. I studied the lights below, trying to ascertain whether they were getting larger, which would indicate a descent, and possibly an uncontrolled descent. I also tried to determine which direction the nose of the plane was pointing. All signs were bad. My fears ended abruptly, however, when the captain spoke into the intercom to indicate our descent. It’s strange how you study the tiny movements and sounds of an airplane when you’re on it trying to find signs of trouble, even though if there were trouble, you probably wouldn’t know it until it was too late.
Before leaving, my mother called to let me know she was picking us up at the airport in the morning. That’s how my mother does things: she tells you she’s doing them. Because I am who I am, I told her no. I told her we would go to our NYC hotel by taxi and sleep for a bit, and I would see her on Saturday and Sunday. She reminded me that the hotel wouldn’t check us in until later in the afternoon, and we could rest in Brooklyn until then. This sounds like a reasonable suggestion now, especially when I look back at what happened, but at the time, it sounded like mothering, and if I even smell a tinge of mothering, I dive headfirst in the opposite direction. Our flight arrived on time, and as I planned, we jumped into a taxi for the hotel. Seventy dollars later, we arrived at the hotel. We tried to check in, but they told us that check-in time wasn’t until 4pm. We asked if we could get in earlier, and the lady at the front desk said, “I’m not sure when because we were sold out last night, but I should have a room ready between now (it was 7am) and 4pm. Write down your cell number, and I’ll give you a call as soon as a room is ready.” Julie and I sighed, but went to find breakfast, braving the cold morning and finding a nearby bagel shop. When we returned, our room still wasn’t ready, so we lounged in the hotel restaurant and had a second breakfast.
When we couldn’t stand the modern décor of the restaurant any longer, we braved the lobby, and still the front-desk lady had no idea when a room would be ready. Since we arrived, we had seen at least ten people check out. We thought, surely they’d fix up one of those rooms and we’d have a room shortly. We decided to wait them out. We took up our seats in front of the gas fireplace (they didn’t pretend that it was a real fireplace, which I respected, having a naked flame dancing along a sandy bottom behind a glass wall), and braving the constant influx of cold air as the bellman opened the door for arriving and departing guests. After sitting there another hour, a new front-desk lady told us that they found a room and that someone was cleaning it; it would be another twenty to twenty-five minutes. We agreed because the thought of sleeping was too strong for us to do anything else. And face it: I knew we were powerless here. I whispered to Julie that I could clean the room in five minutes and we’d be sleeping in six minutes.
Forty-five minutes later, with Julie lying like a hobo on my lap in the lobby, our room was ready. This was more than two hours after we arrived. The moral of this story: had I accepted my mother’s ride, I would have saved $70 and sleep would have found us much earlier. Oh well. I guess the never-return-to-the-empty-nest-syndrome runs strong in me.
I need to voyeur more. I reread a pair of character sketches I finished a few months ago, and I realized that while I tried to throw down some notes on Esther and Fred, I didn’t draw enough detail to make the story interesting. Of course, I’m talking about this now because my story writing has stalled yet again. I have many hours and many cups of caffeine to keep me going today, so I have little excuse for what is happening.
While I’m wasting words with this commentary, I figured a bit of a break would be nice. I’m sitting in a bucks of stars around E. 44th and third avenue, typing away. The snow hit New York as predicted, and while it’s falling steadily, it’s not a blizzard yet. This might change as night falls. A few inches cover the ground, and it’s not supposed to stop until tomorrow. The weather has ruined my planned family outings. I’m still hoping the weather stops early enough tomorrow to head to my sister’s, but it’s mostly empty hoping. My hopes also revolve around a clearing tomorrow long enough for Julie and me to fly back to our respective homes. If not Sunday, there’s always Monday (or Tuesday).
I’d like to pretend that my energy level is high enough to write more, but I know the truth. There’s nothing left in the tank: nothing that a tall mocha and a shot of espresso can salvage. I was very excited before about writing, and I did manage to edit and pound out a few paragraphs of additional material for the Lamb story. But all of that has since died away. I think it’s the time. It’s around 2pm Seattle time, and my body has decided that it’s time to shut down. I’ve talked about IT before (that’s inspiration time for those not keeping up with David’s acronyms), and I’m squarely outside it. My stuck-ness at the point in the story is also not helping. I don’t know what it is about this story, but I keep coming up against walls that take forever for me to break through. Perhaps it’s the subject matter: I mean, really, how can I make work, insurance work no less, exciting? I’ve set myself a difficult task. I won’t give up. Partly because I know there’s a story there, and I can’t keep from turning SL from what was an awful attempt to a more decent story. It’s character building (that’s my character that’s being built. As you will see, Esther, Fred, Jerry, and Leonard are not building in any (cliché alert!) way, shape, or form).
To show progress, here’s the (slowly, very slowly) continuing saga of:
Sacrificial Lamb
Fred Sanders, an account manager on the third floor of Jenkins Inc., finishes his third cup of coffee. He studies the door for the fifth time in the last minute. It remains closed. He stands up, pushing the wooden chair behind him, and walks around the desk, taking a long drag from his cigarette. He faces the door, unsure whether to will it open to get it over with, or will it to remain shut. What he is sure is that his meeting with Mr. Jenkins will not go well.
Fred has been waiting for Mr. Jenkins’s meeting since early afternoon. Covering the table are empty coffee cups and paper piles. On a normal day, Fred would have cleared his desk by this time, his work finished for the day. This is not a normal day. He pushes one of the piles closer to the edge, trying to find the right balance between busy and organized. Fred walks around his desk, scattering paperclips around the piles, but has second thoughts and begins picking them up.
Two hours earlier in a different office on the third floor of Jenkins Inc., Esther Lamb, an account manager and one-time lover of Fred Sanders, waits in her office for Mr. Jenkins. Her desk is devoid of all papers. She hasn’t been able to work since Mr. Jenkins called her thirty minutes before. She was afraid he knew. This has been a regular fear since starting her affair with Fred. The affair ended three weeks before, but her fear reignites each time she sees Mr. Jenkins.
Mr. Jenkins sounds strange on the phone. Esther has known Mr. Jenkins since she married Leonard twelve years before. Mr. Jenkins was Leonard’s godfather, and after the death of Leonard’s father when Leonard was eight, Mr. Jenkins became a surrogate father in everything but name to Leonard. Ten years ago, after the great 1992 downsizing of the insurance industry, Mr. Jenkins gave Esther a job at Jenkins Inc. He had been good to her over the years, and she genuinely enjoys her job.
Fred drops the paperclips as the handle turns and the door opens. Mr. Jenkins stands there. He is a tall man and he makes the doorframe seem undersized. He walks as he talks, with measured steps, mechanically placing his heel then foot then toe on the floor. His three-piece suit is creaseless as if the day fears to ruffle him as much as the employees of Jenkins Inc. He wears glasses and hunches forward like he’s about to tell you a secret.
“Did I catch you at a bad time, Fred?” Mr. Jenkins asks. He doesn’t wait for an answer and closes the door. He walks past Fred and takes the chair behind the desk. He gestures toward the visitor chair. Fred feels an empty canyon forming in his stomach.
Fred sits in the visitor’s chair. “Please sit down,” Fred tells Mr. Jenkins, losing his voice toward the end. Fred has always had a good-natured relationship with Mr. Jenkins. He is the best account manager at Jenkins Inc. and Mr. Jenkins gives Fred leeway in how he conducts business. Mr. Jenkins leans back in Fred’s chair and leers.
“I’m here about Mrs. Lamb, Fred. I know all about it.” Jerry Jenkins is a direct man. He is sixty-eight years old and inherited Jenkins Inc. from his father, who inherited from his father, also a Jerry Jenkins, and a pioneer behind the reinsurance business. Fred had expected this, but he’s still surprised when he hears Mr. Jenkins say it.
Fred and Esther never expected to develop a relationship. Fred joined Jenkins Inc. sometime, somewhere, and for some reason. Make it stop, please!
I wonder what happens when snow falls into the ocean. No big snow piles, no dangerous driving conditions, no snowmen, no snowballs; what a waste. The NYC blizzard was rather wasteful as well. I’m sure all the children in the northeast were praying for the snow to hold off for a few days. Speaking about wasted snow, there was nothing worse than a weekend snow dump. But for twenty-four or forty-eight hours, there would be no school today.
My flight seems to be on time, which is more than I can say about Julie’s flight. Hers was cancelled, and we rebooked her on a later flight going to LAX, which is an hour farther away from her apartment than SNA, her original destination, but it gets her in tonight and lets her get back to work tomorrow morning. Lucky girl. I have a few hours to kill before my flight. I had hoped that writing would be in my picture, but as of now, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen. I’ll try back later, but no promises. I’ve been rather lethargic lately, and except for yesterday, where I had energy for an hour, squandered most of it on a family squabble, and ended up writing only a few paragraphs until my energy escaped, I’ve been rather low on writing energies. I know, I know: I need to fight through it. How am I supposed to do this every day, if all I do is complain and cut-and-paste the same story every day? I have no idea. But I’ll keep the words coming and hope to find something on the flight or before it to make this tolerable. What was that? Drink caffeine? Why, that’s a fine idea. I’ll take you up on that right now.
Yummy Snapple caffeine. I was hoping to find a bucks or fake-coffee house, but the closest one was closed. I’m now reseated and ready to start on something that doesn’t have Lamb in the title. How much can I take of whiny office drones? What, am I writing for Dilbert or something?
I’m staring at a blank screen thirty-five thousand feet over the earth. Well, the screen isn’t exactly blank but I am that high, literally. I keep hoping something will pour out; that these musings will turn into something more, but they continue to flap their hands and go nowhere. Since when do words fly?
I’ve been terribly nauseous on the airplane. Before boarding, I ate a Nathan’s hot dog, which I felt was outside my prohibition on fast food. I was wrong. I was terribly wrong. I keep fighting down puke from both ends, and the two peach Snapples I drank aren’t helping things. There are still close to three hours left on this flight. I’m sure I’ll survive somehow; I just thought it’d be a good time to tell you (another reason) why I haven’t written the brilliant story I promised. So many excuses. I’m getting good at these. Look for my dog ate my story, and I’ll get it to you tomorrow, coming to a theater near you.
I made it home, and the food poisoning (since that was what it obviously was) has run its course. I’m tired from the traveling and I’m off to bed. Julie hasn’t made it home yet, but she should be home in a few hours.
I meant to post this airplane drawing. As you can tell, I wasn't feeling good.
I was going to blow off writing. . .blah, blah, blah. But instead, as I prepared for bed, I decided to jot a few words. Today was a rather horrid day on the headache front. I arrived home early enough last night to find a full night’s rest, but with Julie traveling, and her flight delayed (after her original flight was cancelled), I wasn’t able to fall asleep until I knew she was home safe. She landed around midnight, and her shuttle ride home took her another hour. She called me at 1:30 am to belay my fears, which interrupted my sleep, but was necessary for my fragile mind. While she was flying, I freaked out and started imagining her plane crashing. I’m morbid at times, and I had to run downstairs and check her flight status on the computer before satisfying myself enough to try to sleep.
My head charged me for the lack of sleep by pounding all day. The weather in Seattle was perfect today, high in the 60s, sunny. After lunch, we played basketball for a bit on the local courts. This type of weather makes it difficult to miss NYC’s ridiculous winters.
I feel like I’ve been eating my own shit lately. Do you know that feeling? You keep mucking through the same crap in your head, and regurgitating it. I haven’t had an original thought in weeks. It could be I’m trying too hard. I’m sitting here, trying to find something to write about, but nothing is coming out. I’m desperately trying to hit the page mark, which will make me feel like I’ve accomplished something today, but we all know I’m fooling myself. This isn’t writing as much as consternating with no set goals and no promise of a better outcome. But here I am, typing away with nothing to say and no hope of saying anything.
New paragraph starts here. Some may see today’s entry as nothing more than a desperate ploy for word count. They may bring up the “word count whore” business and remind me that the Marathon ended many months ago. To those people, I would tell them that I agree. And yet, that doesn’t stop me from typing away and saying nothing and rather enjoying this nothing saying. What does that say about me? I’ll leave that one unanswered.
My hope is that with a good night’s sleep, I’ll wake up refreshed and ready to change the world, or at least write something that says something. The moon was bright tonight. The technically full moon is supposed to come tomorrow morning. I got into this discussion with a friend about the moon. We were trying to figure out what caused the shadow on the moon. I’m sure I learned about this in astronomy. While I won’t finish this story, speaking of astronomy reminds me of a funny story (it’s more sad than funny), and seeing as I’m searching for something to say, you know where this is going.
When I entered college, I thought about astrophysics as a career. I don’t know what pushed me in that direction, but I enjoyed books on the creation of the universe, and relativity, and stars, even though I never owned a telescope or studied the sky. It fit in with my ontological pursuits—i.e., my search for meaning in life in the metaphysical sense. I signed up for Astronomy 101 during my second semester. Like most introductory science classes, Astro 101 involved a lot of memorization and facts, such as (and this I remember from the first exam), how long would it take the sun to set when the bottom edge is on the horizon. I’m sure somewhere in the textbook, there was a discussion of the size of the sun compared to the horizon, and with some simple geometrical arithmetic, a relatively intelligent person would be able to figure out the relationship and guess at the multiple choice answer, but I’m not such a person.
Around the second week of class (this was before the first exam), I convinced myself that everything the professor was teaching I already knew thanks to my H.S. astronomy class. Looking back, Mr. Lloyd, my physics and astronomy teacher, was probably the primary reason I wanted to be an astrophysicist. This was before I started reading Scientific America, and my many books on relativity and other strange physics concepts. Mr. Lloyd was a great teacher, with wonderfully wry humor. I emulated him in my early attempts at humor (and, to be honest, some of my later attempts). Classic Mr. Lloyd: he asks a student to throw him a ball during a physics demonstration. He holds up his hand, palm ready to catch it, and the student throws the ball. He makes no effort to catch the ball—not even watching it fly past him—and the ball bounces off the blackboard. His face says it all: that wasn’t much of a throw. This might be one of those “you had to be there” moments.
Getting back to college astronomy, I approached the professor after class and asked him what I should do. I mean, here I was, a brilliant potential astrophysicist, stuck in an introductory class that was far beneath me. What did he suggest? What classes should I take? What extra studies should I do? How can I challenge myself with this terribly simple and (dare I say it) inane (for someone like me) material? We had quite a chat about my future, and I left feeling I had taken the first important step.
Most of the people in my first-year dorm floor did well at college. I didn’t learn how well until I started meeting more people outside of my dorm floor during my second semester, but if we had to calculate the floor average GPA, it would have been a staggering 3.6 or so. I told my friends about my astronomy aspirations, and they’re the ones who encouraged me to sign up for the introductory class. We had our first exam around the second month of the year. At this time in my academic career, I wasn’t much of a studier. I came from a high school where I got by not studying much and doing little to no homework. I breezed through my first semester college classes, mostly philosophy and computer science classes, and expected the same for my second semester classes, particularly astronomy. For the first exam, I read the first few chapters, but didn’t attempt to memorize. I didn’t even know what memorization was back then. Suffice to say, I did terrible on the first exam, ending up near the bottom of the curve.
What did I do? I dropped the class. Let me say that again: the astronomy prodigy dropped his introductory astronomy class. There would be no astrophysics in my future. What makes this even worse was that I didn’t tell any of my friends I dropped it. I pretended to go to class and kept up the lie the entire semester. I was afraid after I had built myself up as a potential astronomer, that dropping this class would seem—what’s that word again?—ah, yes, pathetic.
Seven years later (this is after graduate school), I’m flying back to the states after a whirlwind European tour, at France’s airport, I run into an actual astrophysicist. We spark up a conversation (he probably started it, since I’m not very social and rarely start up conversations with strangers), and as I’m talking to him, I realize this could have been me. But for Astro 101, I could have been an academic, traveling the world to different conferences, not about to make six-figures at my first real job. I don’t know if I regret my choices. I like where I am today, and Steven, a good friend, once taught me an important lesson. We were talking about our choices and I mentioned that I wish I started writing earlier, perhaps majored in writing in college and threw myself into it. He looked at me and said that I was crazy for thinking that. If I had followed that other path, I would be a completely different person and who knows what my writing might have been like. I learned important lessons from many people I met, and with a different path, I would have met different people, and I might not be the person I am today.
While it’s clear I wasn’t cut out to be an astrophysicist (at least one that does well in introductory science classes), I am happy with the choices I’ve made since then. During my senior year, I took Astro 102 to fulfill my science requirement. This time I took it with Shannon, my college roommate, and one of the people I lied to second semester. I managed to get a solid B+ in the class. By then, I learned a little more how to study. Shannon, a pre-med student, aced the class with an A. I don’t think he ever even went to class. Damn science majors.
On what should have been a P.H.D. (post-headache day), I find myself with a buzzing pain in my head. The pain stalked me throughout the day and followed me home. Today was moving day in my office. This is the second time since I started that they moved my office. The first time was to a nicer office in the same building. Today, they moved me to a different building. I’m sure there are good reasons for all these moves, but I can’t figure them out. It’s something they warn you about when you first start: they will move you, and move you frequently. I don’t mind it much since they don’t expect you to work too hard when you don’t have an office. The only problem I have is that they’re separating me from some of my colleagues. They called this moving day a “Starbucks” working day. I know about Starbucks days all too well. I majored in them at my Houston job.
I managed a few hours of work in the form of meetings and from the cafeteria, before I gave up for the day and drove home. I finished watching Oliver Stone’s “JFK,” which I enjoyed. I’m thoroughly convinced there’s a conspiracy surrounding JFK’s assassination. How could there not be? They made a major Hollywood movie about it, and Kevin Costner starred in it. Kevin Costner! He’s the same person who convinced me that in twenty years, the world will flood over and people will develop gills. I listened to the first hour of JFK commentary as a sleep aid. It didn’t work and I wasn’t able to nap (I hoped to empty my head). The commentary was interesting, but I decided not to finish it. Instead, I moved on to my next Netflixed movie, “Dr. Strangelove.” I’ve only seen the beginning, but it’s enjoyable. Wow. Rereading this paragraph I see how little I said and how many words it took me to say it. Kudos!
Writing has helped clear a bit of my head. I don’t think I’ve recovered from my trip home. I’ve talked before about my delicate constitution, and how even the smallest deviation from normalcy can throw me off-kilter. I’m sure that’s part of it. The abnormal weather in Seattle—it continues to be warm and sunny—isn’t helping things. Huge shifts in weather can cause havoc on my constitution. I’m losing count of all of my complaints and problems.
I find myself with nothing to write about. I once again waited until late evening to start this pitter-patter. I’ve spent more time working myself up to writing than writing. This has all been throat clearing. In a story (if I ever bother to write stories again), I would erase this, and you’d be left with sparkling and undeniable brilliance. But since I’m not there yet, and I have little else to offer, I’ll leave this here. I’m lying on my couch on the first floor, my eyes closed, my head leaning against the couch cushions searching for a position that will relieve the pangs in my brain. I’m hoping I’m recording these words because I haven’t looked up in a while. You know how you sometimes touch type and glance away, your cursor goes wacko, and when you look back, you lost your last three lines of text? Well, that didn’t happen to me. But it would have been funny had it happened. And I would have saved boring you for three more lines of text.
I think this rates as my shortest entry in a while. I’m comfortable with that. I had little to talk about today, and my head wasn’t clear enough to create anything. One of these days, I’m going to have the wherewithal to get something done. I know you don’t believe me, but it’ll happen, you’ll see. Until then, I don’t know what to tell you. I’ll continue to consternate, and you’ll continue not to read these musings. It’s all for the best (there, with this last bit of consternating, I pushed the word count into the second page and a whooping, hold on to your bonnet, 690 words. Amazing.
What follows is a mishmash of unedited and unorganized thoughts. I didn’t have a plan and it doesn’t have much coherency. I’m finding it difficult to concentrate long enough to form full thoughts in my writing. As work becomes busier for me, I have less energy left at the end of the day to write these entries. I had so much I wanted to say, and yet I said so little. The same problems haunt me with my storytelling. I find decent stories I want to tell, but not enough remains in me to put them down. Perhaps I’m going through a lull. I’ve gone through plenty of lulls, so this wouldn’t surprise me. I’ll hope for that and leave it at that.
There are times I question my ethical sense, my ability to do good against my doing good. Writing these words has been difficult. It hasn’t been difficult because my emotions stop me. It’s difficult because I don’t know how to express certain emotions in words. I pretend that all the writing I’ve been doing is helping me be a better writer. But what is a better writer? What is the purpose of this writing? I’ve touched on it a few times. There’s a superficial desire and there’s a deeper desire. The superficial desire is to “become a writer,” retiring from my day job. It’s bullshit. The deeper desire is to change someone; affect that person as I have been affected by others writings. That’s also bullshit.
I’m frustrated at how I’m saying this; it’s like chewing on tinfoil. I see what I want to express but it’s out of reach, beyond my talents. It feels like fakeness before I even type it, but I continue to type it, and I post it because that’s what I do: post things.
I’ve had a strange relationship with emotions. I don’t remember much from when I was young, and it’s difficult to know what I was like as a young child. I was a curious and intelligent boy. I was also a sensitive child. The sensitivity might have come from an overprotective mother or genetics. Either way, it’s who I am then and now.
My grandfather died when I was young. After he died, my father showed us his watch and explained that people die, but we must value each second that we live. I change what he said every time I tell the story because I don’t remember what he did say. I remember the watch and my father speaking, but I have no recollection of what he said. I want him to have said something meaningful. I have so few memories left of him that I want each of them to be special.
I cried when my grandfather died. I didn’t know him well. He didn’t talk to me much that I remember. He was blind when he died, an effect of his diabetes. He smelled like an old man. I remember that much. I didn’t even connect his smells with that of age and sickness, but I have a very good sense of smell, which, I have learned, is mostly a hindrance since there are many more bad smells than good smells. When my grandfather died, his passing changed me. Loss has that effect on everyone, I think. The first death, whether you’re five or twenty-five when it happens, it changes you.
Religion was the next to go. Religion is the answer to a question you don’t know when you’re first taught it. The rabbis instill rituals and beliefs in you before the question is put to you. But then it happens. Death confronts you and the hope is religion eases into place, providing a comfort between death and you. It’s an explanation for the unexplainable, the answer to the question that challenges every person.
Ethics has always been a strange word for me. When I first started philosophy, I had a cute differentiation between ethics and morals. I don’t know where I developed it (or stole it), but I thought I was rather clever when I shared it with others. Ethics are the rules that society (or religion or family) places on people. Morals are a person’s individual value beliefs, passed down through ethical teachings. There you have it. Now everyone can understand ethics and morals.
But this personal story, that’s not what I wanted to get out today. I wanted to share my emotional state, why these things effect me as they do, but I didn’t want to dwell on them. I didn’t want to drag memories up to dazzle you with my poor imitation of feelings.
What am I doing with myself, with my writing? How am I making a difference? Whom am I helping? Goddamn saints piss me off, if you must know. They’re out there, making a difference and looking down at the likes of me, puttering away my own life, searching and finding nothing but questions, and then not even finding the ability to put those questions to people who might answer them.
I’ve drawn since childhood. I remember spending hours hunched over paper attempting to create. Sure, most of my creations were derivative and their quality questionable, but that wasn’t why I drew. I was attracted to drawing for the same reason I’m attracted to writing: I wanted to create. I didn’t understand this desire for many years. It wasn’t until law school that I was able to put it into words. Law school scared me because I feared my job after graduating would involve no creativity. This thought depressed me terribly, which was strange because I never consciously though about creating. I imagined myself pushing paper, and dotting the eyes and crossing the tees of the others creations. (Tangential remark: I found a spelling of the American alphabet—not sure about its accuracy—and thought I’d share it with you: “ay, bee, cee, dee, ee, eff, gee, aitch, eye, jay, kay, ell, em, en, oh, pea, queue, are, ess, tee, you, vee, double-you, ex, why, zee.”) Thankfully, there’s more to my job than that, but the opportunities for creativity is limited. That is why I spend much of my time away from work writing and trying to create something. (Here is where you’d usually see my self-deprecating comment about my failures as a writer. I’ll spare you it this time, but I wanted you to know that I was thinking about it.)
As a child, I didn’t consider myself serious about drawing. I guess that means I never expected to turn it into a career. For a few years, I thought about architecture, but that was more of an answer to a question that never occurred to me. What did I want to be? Except for fleeting thoughts about game programming, I never wanted to do anything. I didn’t understand the need for a career, and the question never occurred to me. It wasn’t until the end of college that I thought about it. I don’t think my thoughts were coherent, but I remember raising the question abstractly. I remember one incident in particular. I was a senior, eating lunch in the dining hall, and discussing my future with a philosophy graduate student. I was telling him about my issues (viz., complaining): I was graduating from college, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Should I go to law school, graduate school, work? Where should I live? Should I move home? Work was as an afterthought because I thought it was obvious I would continue with school. School was all I knew and anything else would require thought (this was before OT became an important part of my vocabulary). I remember the graduate student’s answer. He was short with long blonde hair. Philosophy students fall into two categories: very cool and very geeky. I leaned toward the geeky category, but he landed firmly in the cool category. He was the type that wore black and had answers to questions you didn’t even ask but would if you thought. He told me, “Man, you’re in a terribly exciting part of your life. You have all these choices in front of you. You shouldn’t be scared, you should embrace the opportunity. There are few times in life when there is so much available to you.” Not much help, I thought, but I’ve passed on his advice to many college students who were at the same point. They probably don’t understand it, as I didn’t understand it at the time, but he was right. I should have been thinking about the possibilities and my choices, instead of dreading thinking. I let life carry me instead of carrying life. I’m happy with where it brought me, but looking back, I would have preferred to be steering instead of just going for the ride. For example, I based my decision to go to law school on my famous (to my mind) line: “when in doubt go to law school.” But that’s another story.
Getting back to drawing, there were times during my childhood that I drew often. I bought art books, colored pencils, and copied pictures from magazines, comic books, and photographs. I filled sketchbooks with these doodles and pictures. I had a moderate talent for copying, a talent that I found terribly limiting. When I tried to venture into areas that were not copies, I drew poorly. What I thought at the time was that I couldn’t draw without copying. What I didn’t realize was that all drawing was copying. Good artists draw the same thing enough times until they don’t need the subject in front of them to copy it. They make changes to the copies, but most of the changes are derivative. The art and creativity comes from the combination of different copies and the changes made to the drawing, whether the changes relate to the medium (e.g., modern art) or subject. It took me a long time to understand modern art because I didn’t understand this concept. When I think about it, I realize how slow I have been about many topics that I thought I understood.
I peaked as a child artist while painting a mural with Shannon outside our freshman dorm. It was an Elmore painting based on Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman’s fantasy novels. The mural was huge. While I was quite good at the sketching part (we created a grid on the photocopy of the painting and sketched the painting based on the grid), it turned out my hand was not steady enough to paint. I could pick out the colors and give instructions on blending, but for detailed work, I was terrible. Luckily, Shannon’s hand was steady—he should be a famous surgeon by now, but that’s a different story—and he managed beautifully the detailed painting. I did apply the Bob Ross method to create the happy trees and happy hills because it didn’t require a steady hand. It took us a year to complete, and we stayed in our freshman dorm an extra year to gaze at its glory. I wish I had a good picture to show you, but the best I have is a blown up photograph Shannon took and donated to my art collection. I’ll scan it in one day. Supposedly, the mural is still on the wall, nicely framed and surrounded by linen wall coverings.
What does this have to do with anything? Like most of what I write, these are mostly thoughts I come up with during the day to fill space when I’m procrastinating story writing. There is a purpose to this discussion, however. I downloaded the Adobe’s (evil, evil company) Illustrator, and I’ve been playing with drawings the last couple of days. I really like the program. It’s a bit complicated, but the complications provide power. And the best part about it (at least for me) is that steady hands are not required. There are a few “freehand” drawing tools, but most of the power comes from the vector aspects, meaning anyone with a good eye for pictures can draw. You don’t need manual talents—you just need to be able to figure out what would look good, and then combine the tools until you get there. I haven’t produced any great pictures yet, but I did a few drawings, and today I’ve worked through the online tutorials. I’m hoping to experiment more over the next few days.
I’m hoping that I can use some of the drawings for the redesign of my website. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been struggling, and at Chuck’s prompting (after he tore apart my two initial designs), I’ve decided to invest effort in original drawings. I have no idea what those original drawings will look like, and how they will work with the design of the website, but those are unimportant details. I’ll post some of my artwork when I produce something worth posting—oh, wait, that’s not how I do things here. Here’s the first picture I drew with Illustrator. It doesn’t use any of the power of the program (besides the obvious gradient), but I created it, and therefore I must post it.
Now, so you don’t think I’m a complete slacker on my story, I did write one line:
“Lucille, don’t abandon me now.”
Fancy, huh.
It’s been a difficult day again. If you lived in Seattle, you wouldn’t know that the Groundhog saw his shadow. The temperature reached into the upper sixties under a cloudless sky. As often happens with changes in the weather (or air pressure or clocks or anything, really), I felt awful. I can’t blame it only on the weather. I woke up with a slight headache, which blossomed into a full run-for-the-covers-the-pantry-is-empty during a two-hour lunch meeting. Do you know that feeling where you’re sitting somewhere and feel like you’d give anything to crawl out of your own skin? When people say they are “bored to tears,” they usually don’t think about what they’re saying. I don’t use that cliché lightly. I have cried many times because of boredom, and today was no exception. As I leaned forward in my folding chair trying to drown out the monotonous drone of the voices, I was struck by terror. There are things I dislike, and there are things I hate. Listening to something that is not interesting, not educational, not challenging and not in any way useful for a long time is one of the things I hate.
But enough dwelling—well, actually that’s not enough dwelling. I wish I could continue dwelling because I don’t have anything much else to say. I didn’t do much creative thinking or planning for this entry. The last few days have been productive. Yesterday, for the first time in a while, I finished my entry before dinner and found myself wandering the castle, not quite sure what to do with myself.
I’ve spent the larger part of this evening watching the last hours of the making of The Return of the King’s. I enjoy bonus parts of the DVD to an extent that I’m embarrassed to admit. I don’t know what it is about watching creative people suffer and achieve, but I any DVD I own, I have at least watched the bonus parts, and probably listened to the commentary tracks. I think I feel that by watching, I will find inspiration or hints into my own creative activities. It hasn’t happened that way yet, but I’m always hopeful.
I’m afraid that’s all I have for today. Continuing to further my Lucille story by five words every day, here are today’s:
Cini had lips that disappeared when she smiled.
Today is another short entry for a short day. I’ve been breezing through my writing the last couple of days, not finding much to think or talk about. Today is no different. Work has been inconveniently busy and I haven’t had time to think of much to write during the day, which leaves me grasping at nothing for the evenings. I am going to get back to my space story. I don’t know exactly when that will happen, but I do want to write it. I just need to find another catch that will ignite my inspiration. That’s how it usually works: I’ll become lukewarm on something until I see it from an interesting angle. The angle will get me excited and I’ll get back into it and this time hopefully finish it.
Blackness of the unpleasant kind saturates my mind. Righteousness. Wrongness. Everything is happiness. There are beats on the trees and lights on the pillows. Skinned bunnies, that’s rabbits to you, make their way across Australia’s plains. Whatever happened to the trees? Sawed away and replaced by stone. What is this world coming to? Green bows tied onto the arms of peasant women who wash feet not their own and eat corn fed to swine. What happens in a world that lets so many with so much, step on so many with so little?
Speaking of materialism, I bought a new cellular phone today. I’m a kid when it comes to certain things—usually things that can be found in Best Buy. I didn’t need a new phone since the one I bought five months ago works fine. But a number of my colleagues were showing off their shiny phones, and I became jealous. These colleagues are not as technologically savvy as me, and certainly not as cool as me. Twenty minutes after seeing someone with the phone, he barely knew how to turn it on, I ran out to the store. I timed it perfectly: I had thirty minutes before my meeting to get there, buy the phone, and get back. I made it with three minutes to spare. When I make the decision to buy something like this, I become very excited and anxious. Once I know I’m going to buy it, something overcomes me and the need increases tenfold. Before, I might want it, like I’ve wanted this phone for the last month or so. The desire does not become encompassing until I’ve made the decision to get it. Once that decision is made, I become anxious, afraid that maybe the store won’t have it anymore or I won’t make it there before it closes, or the world will end before I get my grubby hands on the current item of desire. This is the same feeling I have when a new video game comes out and I decide to purchase it. Before I make the decision, I’m fine. I’d like the game, but I don’t need it—the deep, heart-felt, if I don’t get it I’m going to die, need. But once I make my decision, the gates open and I shoot out the door single-mindedly.
I feel a bit better than yesterday. I woke with an inkling of a headache that I fought all day. I succeeded in keeping it at bay, even during my one and a half commute home thanks to an accident between the second and third highway. If my smartphone had been properly set up, I would have seen the accident on the traffic map and avoided it. Okay, that’s not true. If it had been set up, I would have known about the accident and bitched and complained about it, knowing that I didn’t have the directional sense to avoid the accident. Stupid phones.
You’ll have to excuse my excesses, but I’m a wee bit drunk. Julie and I went to a new Asian restaurant where a friendly waitress recommended sake. I’ve never drank sake that wasn’t warm. The warmth helps kill the terrible alcoholic aftertaste of bad (i.e., cheap) sake. What I learned tonight was that good sake is chilled because it doesn’t need the warmth to kill the taste. (I think most alcohols would taste better warmed—especially the terrible vodkas and scotches.) Sake wants to be drunk in its natural cooled state. There are three levels of sake. I won’t try to remember the name of those three levels because I have problems remembering words in languages other than English—when I think about it, the truth is I have problems remembering words in all languages including English. It’s not just words, but directions, places, faces, and names, oh, and dates. That should cover most of my memory problems. Getting back to dinner, we ordered second-level sake, which was quite smooth, almost water tasting, and left a nice taste in my mouth when I finished. Toward the end of the bottle, the alcoholic aftertaste kicked in and it was difficult to finish, but I’m thinking the top-level sake—which I plan on drinking next time to test its smoothness—will be better. The waitress claimed that the higher-quality sake was so smooth it was dangerous. My middle name is danger. (Wow, even in my drunken state I realize that wasn’t funny.)
We also decided that we weren’t going to sit around this entire weekend and shop and eat (which describes most of our weekend up to now). We went to REI to buy hiking gear to head out to a hill tomorrow and resume our hiking ways. When I was working with Doug in Houston, I hiked often and became a member of REI. For those of you who have never frequented (or heard of) REI, you’re missing out. It is a sporting goods store weighed heavily toward outdoor activities such as camping, hiking, snowboarding, and biking. It’s run as a non-profit organization, or coop, where you buy a lifetime membership and share in REI’s profits to the tune of a refund of ten percent of your purchases at the end of the year (all depending on REI’s profits; or some such system as that—I’ve never actually seen any money back, though). It’s very complicated. The thing that makes the “owners” of REI brilliant is how you can never go to REI and spend less than $300. I’ve shopped there before for my various hikes, and each time I’ve bought too much equipment. Even if my tendency was not to buy the highest quality—which it regrettably is—there is no way of escaping without spending significant money. We both bought hiking shoes, socks, and a backpack for tomorrow’s excursion. Our plan is to try a light hike, knowing that I’m in terrible shape and can handle only so much walking before falling over.
That wasn’t our only shopping. Julie bought me another painting for the Castle, a belated birthday gift (very belated!). It’s a beautiful print by a French artist, and I’ll post a picture of it hanging in my bedroom or living room (depending on where it looks best) when it arrives in a few weeks.
I’m reluctant to mention our other trip. As I mentioned yesterday, I purchased a new smartphone, and one of the features of this coolest of cool phones/PDA/all-around-great-device is the built-in music and video player, and camera. To accommodate the large memory requirements, there is room under the battery for a small, mini-SD card. I bought a 512 MB card at Fry’s, the Wal-Mart of electronic stores, which they decorate with fake ancient Greek statutes. Okay, I should admit up front that I ended up buying two cards, but I’ll get to that in a moment.
The card costs around $60, and when we returned to Julie’s fancy car, I ripped open the plastic box. They usually make the plastic boxes difficult to open to stop would-be-shoplifters from removing the memory cards and sticking them in their pockets. This plastic box was surprisingly easy to open. As we’re driving off, I fumbled with the memory card while opening the back cover of my phone to insert the card. Mini-SDs cards are tiny. The one I bought came with a sleeve that turned the Mini-SD card into a regular SD, which is about the size of a postage stamp. The Mini-SD card is about half the size and thickness of the regular SD card. As I tried to remove the battery from the phone, the Mini-SD card and SD sleeve slipped from my grasp and fell into the left side of the passenger seat. After fishing out the SD sleeve, Julie and I spent twenty-minutes trying to locate the Mini-SD card. As I said, the Mini-SD card is tiny, and where it fell, it was impossible to see or get your hand near. We gave up and Julie drove me back to Fry’s where I bought another memory card. After concentrating to avoid another spasm, I successfully installed the memory card into the phone. My total cost of clumsiness (or retarded-ness, as Julie called it): $60.
We rented a few movies for tonight, and I’m off to watch them now.
It came to my attention that yesterday I misstated facts relating to sake. I admit that I did no research in coming up with those facts, and further admit that all the misstated facts were used to further my theory, and obtain “cleverness,” a state of writing in which the reader says (usually to themselves, but in the ultimate case to others who are around them when alone or in a crowded library), “boy, this guy is good. I didn’t see that coming. He’s really on to something; he must be, he’s terribly clever!” While I’d like to apologize for my improper use of facts, I won’t. I’ll stand by warm sake being warm because it hides the alcoholic taste, and cold sake being cold because it is pure and doesn’t need to hide behind the heat. While I do believe my job is to educate the less fortunate that read these musings, the reality is that few people read this, and even fewer expect to learn something. Therefore, I find myself free to make up facts that amuse me and further my ridiculous pursuits. As to the “academic” who reads my musings, he should stick to writing theses on the advantages of warm sake, and leave the impressing those who know nothing about Asian culture to people like me.
Speaking of ridiculous pursuits, I watched a biography on The Biography Channel on Arnold the Goverorator. Remember, I was in the OC this weekend, where my TV watching is allowed and even encouraged (we took many pictures of our sandy hike, which wasn’t terribly sandy nor hike-like, but we’re getting back into “exercising” slowly so as not to wound our tender bodies). The amazing thing about Arnold was his drive. He decided to become a movie star in America at a young age. It wasn’t until he saw a Mr. Olympian become a movie star (albeit a terribly unsuccessful one who starred in Hercules) that he figured out how to do it. His first step: become the best bodybuilder in the world. His next step: use his bodybuilding championships to rocket him to stardom. His plan was simple and beautiful. Here was a poor farmer’s son from Austria (his father was a local constable and not a farmer, but the narrator kept referring to Arnold as a poor farmer’s son, so who am I to argue?) with the true American dream.
How did Arnold accomplish it? Tenacity. I’ve complained lately about distractions and lost focus. I pull my mind in too many directions to accomplish much. Even when I’m writing, I find myself writing to get it over with instead of writing to accomplish something. Even now, as I sit in the airport waiting for my flight away from the wonderful Julies and back to rainy Seattle, distractions tempt me. The Super Bowl (not sure if that’s one word or two words, which is how little I know or care about it) is on the television at the bar; and a family begs me to watch them. They’re interesting, but not voyeur interesting.
I’ll use the gym as an example of my motivation. There was a time when I went to the gym almost religiously. While in Houston, I discovered that I’m an external motivator for certain activities. I used to think that all my motivation was external, but I’m not as sure anymore. I can write these entries every day based on what is mostly an internal motivation. Sure, there are people out there rooting for me (and some ruing the day I decided to write every day, waiting in the wings for me to make a mistake and swoop down in glorious righteousness to exclaim my failures to the world), but I end up writing this for me. That other people read it helps me, but in the end, if it were about them, I wouldn’t write this every day. The gym was a different story. I liked how the gym made me look and feel, but I knew that I couldn’t do it myself. I could go there a few times a week, but my workouts, when done alone, were never sufficient. I would grow fatigued or bored or hit my disgustingly low pain threshold, and give up and go home. I paid a personal trainer to keep me going. I didn’t need their encouragement so much as their being there. I thought at first that it was either not wanting to fail in front of them, or how much I paid them for each session that kept me honest. But when I look back, it was more than that. I just needed a little push and a schedule. Or something like that.
When I moved to Seattle, I thought I’d be working out with a friend and neighbor. It worked in the beginning, but we’ve slowly gotten away from the gym. I’m not saying he’s unreliable so much as the two of us together are unreliable. I am as much to blame as him. Any excuse I found, I used to get out of the gym. To round out this example (well, it turned more into a tirade than an example, but stay with me here), I’m going to try this week to self-motivate myself to go to the gym. I’m not sure how well I’ll do or how long I’ll last, but because of NEQID, I have to try, otherwise what type of person would I be?
Here I am again, looking for ways of distracting myself to stop writing. McDonald’s is enticing me to break my vow against fast food, but I’m resisting, barely. A cheeseburger would be wonderful now. Julie and I went for sushi before I left, but the sashimi we ate left me hungry. There must not have been enough carbohydrates to keep me going. I will resist the evil call of fast food, but I wanted to remark on the toll that it exerts on me.
A young girl in a red jumpsuit and pink Puma-style sneakers is sitting on a chair across from me holding a bag of McDonald’s as a bum holds a brown-bagged liquor bottle. She’s munching away at the French fries, her front buckteeth biting each fry in half before she inhales the potato goodness.
Getting back to my original theme, I’ve begun to examine my wasted free time. I’ve asked myself the same question: how can I waste free time? Isn’t that the very nature of free time: it’s free, and anything you do during that time, including but not limited to playing video games and staring into space, doesn’t ruin the free time since by its very nature and definition it’s free? While all of that’s true, I think that every free moment I should be doing something that is (a) fun; (b) beneficial; or (c) contributing to NEQID. I should take an accounting of each day and look back at what I accomplished. Perhaps a list is in order. These are thoughts on a tiring flight.
Story idea: frustration and conflict. I used to love conflict, looking for any opportunity to unsheathe my sharpened knives and unleash them on unsuspecting persons. That has changed slowly over the years. I still don’t shy away from necessary conflicts, but, rather, I find great distaste and frustration in most conflicts. Listening to Julie’s friend discuss the trouble she’s having as a female surgery resident welled up in me a great unrelenting feeling of powerlessness and anger; or, in other words, frustration. I want to bottle and share that feeling with others through a story. I thought about fitting it in my current story, perhaps as Jake realizes the fall of his society but is powerless to do anything about it. But I’m not sure if that will work.
More interesting than the following silly words, I posted the pictures from this past weekend.
I’m still in bad form for this writing thing. Yesterday’s travels took a bit out of me and I’m recovering. I haven’t looked back at my entries for the last couple of weeks, but I have a feeling that if I did, they would lean toward filler. Creatively, I’m drained, and today will be more of the same. I jotted a few notes down during the flight yesterday that I’ll try to expand to fill at least a page before calling it a night.
I remember when I spoke about not wasting any more time; using my free time to better myself, or some such bullshit like that. While my words were rather weak, I was genuinely inspired by Arnold’s biography. Today is an example of why I’m incapable of that type of output. After a busy day of work, I feel there’s nothing in me for writing. Sure, I could have written before I watched more of Zoolander (a surprisingly good Ben Stiller movie), but distractions found me, and I’m not sure my output would have been much better before the relief of distractions.
My problem (one of many) is that I keep looking for the magic bullet that will allow me to write. I realize, of course, that there is no magic bullet, but I keep searching for it. I tell myself that if I find it, I’ll have all the energy and dedication I need. If only this were true. For the record, I didn’t make it to the gym today either. My dedication lasted up through the step of making it happen.
I’m still stuck on this story. I know I’m spending too much time thinking about it and not enough time writing it, but I can’t find a time where my energy and desire are both at high enough levels to write more of this story. What else is new? Staying with the decline of the city-state, I wanted to bring in the concept of how modern media has changed the way countries act. If you view how people in most democratic countries view wars, you begin to see a certain distaste of violence. (This is not a bad thing, just an observation.) The older the civilization, the greater the distaste. I can see the ends of this: a pacifist civilization that abhors violence. Taking that to the extreme, a civilization that is not willing to defend itself is in decline.
That’s what happens to Jake’s society. It’s why the ghost ships are paid off instead of fought against. Fighting and innocent deaths shock the people, and they’re willing to do much to appease the aggressors. That wasn’t my original idea. Let’s take a look at that twist: What if a civilization developed where people were not shocked by the killing of innocents. The treaties that govern most of the world’s “developed” countries state that the countries should not target innocents during warfare. But that wasn’t always the case. Look to the bombings in WWII, particularly of London and Hiroshima. Bombing innocents was part of war: if you weakened the infrastructure enough, people would not fight—or at least that was the theory, which failed in London but worked in Hiroshima.
A country (or civilization) that does not follow that rule has a certain advantage over a treaty-abiding civilization. It’s decadence in the form of aggression over a pacifist civilization. This brings to mind The Simpsons Halloween episode where Lisa wishes for there to be peace on earth and all of the people destroy all of their weapons. Two aliens land on the planet and with a pitchfork conquer earth. I’m making little sense today; don’t think I didn’t notice.
Story Idea: “I am the last lastname,” I said with the conceit of a young monster, sure in my own special-ness. “That is ridiculous,” my mother responded and went on to explain all the other lastnames in the world.
Theme: Difficulty of listening to others speak; embarrassment for them but not e.g., radio hosts.
Even at it its lowest setting, my laptop’s screen blinds me; each time I check a word, the screen sends scorching pain through my head. I’m not sure what attacked me today, but after lunch, a headache began forming in the nether regions of my head. Well, I guess I do have an idea: the cold weather and lack of sleep. After spending the weekend in warm Newport Beach, I wasn’t prepared for Seattle’s terrible cold. I was underdressed and spent too much time outside today. When I combined that with a late evening yesterday, I created a monster, who decided to play handball in my head.
After returning home from work, I bundled myself under the covers and took a nap to try to fight off the cold and headache. I woke up fifteen minutes ago still in pain but resolute to write. I thought my nap would take me through the morning, but it hasn’t; at least it hasn’t yet. The light still hurts my head and I have little to write—luckily, that’s never stopped me before. I’ll type with my eyes mostly shut and see if I can crank out a few more paragraphs before calling it a night.
I purchased my Caesar salad dinner at PCC, my local supermarket. Before moving to Seattle, I disdained organic food, mocking it by saying that I preferred my food inorganic. While I still believe the organic food movement is silly—particularly how far Europe has taken it, where genetic food has become a bigger deal than organic food—there are some types of organic food that I’ve grown to prefer. The meat and fish in particular seems to taste better; although that might be the result of a higher quality of meat and fish instead of a difference in the chemicals that are used to raise the meat. PCC is located in the perfect location from my house. I can walk there or stop when I return home from work. Convenience and familiarity is all important. The only thing it doesn’t have is decent toiletries. Who wants to use recycled, gray toilet paper? And don’t get me started on the all-natural toothpaste.
What I do like about PCC is the yuppie setting. I’ve been planning the yuppification of my neighborhood, and it revolves around the PCC. I’m the first to admit that I prefer the type of stores that come with raising the scale of the neighborhood—well, most of that preference relates to the increase in real estate price, particularly the Castle’s real estate price. Where I live is overdo for such a transformation. The first step: open a few more coffee shops within walking distance. Many of the commercial properties in my neighborhood need to be torn down and replaced with yuppie shops. There are whole yuppie industries being ignored besides coffee.
Getting back to my salad, PCC packages small, ready-made salads in plastic globes. They usually offer a choice between Caesar, garden, or Greek. The garden and Greek salads are more expensive, since they sell the salad based on weight. I’ve purchased the Caesar salad in the past for a dollar forty. I was surprised when I bought it yesterday that the price went up to three fifty, around the same as the other types of salads. After opening it and eating half of it, I figured out how they did it. The salad itself isn’t terribly heavy. It consists of lettuce, croutons, and shredded cheese. To add to the weight, PCC added a lemon wedge to the salad. While I’m not against lemon in my Caesar salad, I am against the wedge when I pay by the weight. An experienced salad bar eater would know never to put a lemon wedge in a salad when paid by weight. Sure, if you paid by dish (such as in a Mongolian barbeque place), a lemon wedge is appropriate because of its size. It’s the same as salad dressing. Sure, it might taste better, but you’ll be paying through the nose for it.
All this babbling has helped clear my head a bit. I need more sleep, and I’m going to look for it now. Hopefully, when I wake up tomorrow, today will be nothing but a bad, salad-filled dream.
I’ve realized that these words fall on the ears of family and friends. I’m okay with that. I never expected an army of readers. Looking at the latest statistics of blogs, there are tens if not hundreds of millions of bloggers writing their daily thoughts. Mine are no different. I splatter them on a blue page and believe it is for my own sanity that I do this. It’s a rather depressing thought.
Occasionally, someone actually reads these words. It’s usually a family member and they’re sometimes moved (a bit to the left, I’d imagine) by some of my words. As Julie likes to say, it’s like a little window where she can peek into my little head. I appreciate that I can say some of these things well. I don’t think I write much of value, but if you piece together my thirty-minute pieces, you begin to know me. Now, if only I was interesting, I’d really have something.
Of course, the real reason I write these musings is because I want to tell stories, and I’ve convinced myself that this is the first step. Well, not this part. This editorializing and musing about nothing, this isn’t the first step; it’s a first step toward the first step. My thought process was simple: if I sit down and write every day, eventually I’ll write story (like eat meat or sing song). Simple. It hasn’t happened exactly as planned. I’ve written a few stories, but they’ve been dull. After a reasonably good day yesterday, today was blah. I don’t have a headache, but I traded a clear head for low energy. As I mentioned a few days ago, I’m going to find a chunk of time where I am headache free and energy plenty. But that is not today.
I’m not expecting to have an epiphany writing this. I’m writing these words because in my blah state, these are all I’m thinking. I won’t try to bore you yet again with further thoughts on the story that wants to go nowhere and take its sweet time getting there.
Work has been sucking my creative juices. I’m enjoying what I do, but I find that when I’m done, I have little left. I’ve complained about this before. My mother suggested I save my writing for the weekends, since I usually have more to say then; or for when I travel, since then I always have more to say. That doesn’t help in my plan to be a better writer or write. This writing is fun. Notice the short sentences and small words. I’m rather proud of this uninteresting voice. Fun with small words. There, I’ve come up with the title. Now, I need to fill a few more paragraphs with fluff, and then I’ll call it a wasted day, at least on the writing front.
Maybe I should stop trying to tell stories. I’ve had this thought often. I wouldn’t stop writing, since I enjoy this writing thing; instead, I’d talk about something meaningful. Maybe make a difference in the world. World peace. Safe environment. Healthy whales. You know the important things. Who am I joking, that wouldn’t last. Instead, I’ll continue to suffer for my art, saying little and taking many words to tell you about how little I say.
I did write a few notes on that boring story before. As is my custom, I’ll share them. They’re as uninteresting as all the rest. Wake me when I tell a story. This other shit is boring the crap out of me.
Who is telling the story? A person from our time? A person from their time? There are two types of stories: the perspective is the difficult part. I want to share this wonderful world (which doesn’t exist) with the reader. But for them to understand it, the narrator needs to explain it so they would understand.
So many fucking questions and so little writing!
We meet Jake through his protégé, Cini. She’s starting her first day on a Planetship. Jake isn’t broken yet. He’s still optimistic that things will work out well. If it weren’t for the evil committees, they might. The failure to make decisions. The political doubletalk becomes the way of life. Nobody promises anything and nobody does anything. Pilots are not so much pilots and fixers. When something goes wrong, they need to be nearby in case a decision has to be made. A decision almost never has to be made, but what else would people do?
Starport Vandry. Even the name, Starport, was a misnomer. None of the Planetships that left from one hundred thirty miles above Zeitgeist left the solar system.
Here's a sample of the mascot I've been working on for the new sewcrates.com. I don't think he'll fit, but it was fun to draw him.
The original sketches: 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5
It’s a wonderful day in Seattle. It started cool and foggy (I know you’re not interested in this weather report, but I’m going to give it anyway), and by three, the sun was out and people were playing soccer in the grass. Seattle is spoiling me for winters. The weather here is seasonal, with brilliant moments of seasonal relief. Evenings are another story, with the frost on the grass most mornings with heavy fog caused by the drastic change in temperature. We’ll see if this continues through the weekend.
Julie was thinking of visiting this weekend. I wanted to see her, but she’s on call on Sunday night, and I thought it ridiculous for her to fly here tonight and return Sunday afternoon to work that night. She agreed (only this morning) that it is ridiculous. I would fly to her, but I have this no flying two weekends in a row rule; mainly because of my weak constitution. I didn’t recover from last weekend’s flight until Wednesday, and I can’t bear ruining another week. Julie will move closer one day. I wish it was sooner, but “distance makes the heart grow fonder,” or something silly like that.
The exhaustion of flying reminds me of something I once read. I think it was in one of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker books, where he wrote that the further you fly away from home, the more stretched you feel, as if there was a spiritual umbilical cord connecting you to your birthplace. I know I’m getting this wrong, but flying does something to me. Even short trips, such as the two hours and change from here to Julie, exhausts me more than jogging for two hours (okay, maybe it’s not that bad, but close). I think I use “but” too much. Maybe it’s not possible to use “but” too often, like you can’t use “is” too often. I’ll have to give this some thought. Talk about useless asides.
Even as I write this, I think of people I can call to distract me from finishing. Luckily, after calling, none of them was not home, so I’m stuck typing away, sipping yummy caffeine with my feet on the desk examining my fancy new hiking shoes (there are plenty of pictures of them in the last photo shoot). I had hoped to tell a quick story. I’d love to finish the Lucille story one of these days, but I don’t think I’ve developed it enough, and every time I start, it fizzles. I want to give it more time to bake and then decide whether to go for it, or throw it aside. With much further ado, here goes nothing.
Walter finished his hotdog in his second bite. He wiped the mustard from his lips with the heel of his hand and without thinking wiped his hand on his pants. He held two bags: one holding electronic goodies he didn’t know he needed before he bought them, and the other filled with chocolate chip cookies for the drive home. He examined both bags and realized that he was missing something. His wife never sent him to the mall unless she wanted him to buy something, and that something was never goodies.
He stared down at the brown tiled floor and tried to remember. Walter wasn’t a good shopper, and if given the choice, he would have preferred to spend Sunday lounging in the living room with his feet on the ottoman and his finger on the clicker. Walter knew he was easily distracted but this was ridiculous. He sat down on a wooden bench and watched the legs of people pass by him, looking longingly at the shapely ones and following them upward to judge other parts. As a group of men in blue and gray business suits passed by, with a sickening feeling he remembered what his wife wanted: dress shoes.
On Friday, his wife was going to drag him to the wedding of one of her friends, and his wife was sick of his holey shoes. He didn’t think there was anything wrong with them, especially after he super-glued the broken leather straps encircling the shoes. Sure, there was a hole in the sole, but the hole wasn’t visible unless he put his feet up, and he promised his wife that his feet would remain flat on the floor at all times during the wedding.
Walter was a sneaker man. He wore basketball sneakers to work, and before marrying Margaret, couldn’t remember owning a pair of shoes. Walter was conscientious, and kept a pair of black sneakers in his closet for times when the dress code disallowed the white type. He wore shiny shoes for his own wedding, but he rented them, and felt it was a small sacrifice to marry a woman like Margaret. After Margaret moved into his house, his black sneakers disappeared under mysterious conditions. Walter’s only clue was a neat note he found where he stored his sneakers. It read, “Donated to a needy busboy.”
Walter found a mall directory and began skimming through the possible shoe outlets. There were a bunch of shoe stores, but he knew they were overpriced. If you only sold shoes, his thinking went, you had to mark them up to make a profit. Department stores didn’t have that problem, since they sold other things, such as socks and belts, which could offset the cost of the shoes.
***
Okay. That was the best I could do for today. There was a plan for this fun little story. I’ll ruin it for you by sharing that plan:
Synopsis: Man goes into a shoe store to buy loafers for a retirement party. The salesperson is a beautiful woman, who goes out of her way to help him. She pushes him toward two pairs: the first is a relatively inexpensive shoe, but she can’t find a size that fits him. The other is an expensive pair, and she finds the perfect shoe. He doesn’t want to spend that much on shoes, but she convinces him, and he buys it. He builds up the courage to ask her out, returns to the shoe department. He tries to ask her out, but she interrupts him, asks him if he wants to buy another pair, and when he says no, she blows him off, walking away before he can even ask. He returns the shoes, citing “irrevocable differences” (the term for divorce—I forget it) with the shoes, and walks out.
Looking back at the synopsis and story, I have either to remove Margaret, or change the plot. I like Walter, and he doesn’t seem the type to cheat on Margaret. That’s for tomorrow, I guess.
“The artist creates for himself. If others like it, then that’s a bonus.” So says Christo or Jeanne-Claude (not sure which one—it was the woman of the French duo), who unveiled their exhibit, “The Gates,” in central park. I don’t usually talk about stuff in the news because I know there are enough people out there who do that and do it well. I thought I’d share the quotation with you. While I’m not sure if the millions of dollars they spent on the exhibit were worthwhile, it was their money and who am I to judge? What it did do was make me nostalgic for NYC. I miss the energy of the place, the bustling, and, most of all the walking. When you walk, you have a great opportunity to people watch and think. I walked in Seattle to my weekend coffee shop today, and the ten-minute walk got me thinking about my story. Walking in Seattle is nice, just not NYC nice, which is relaxing and energizing. My thoughts from the walk went nowhere, resulting in more babbles (see below). But I’ll get off this NY topic before I depress myself.
I spent most of today lounging around and getting nothing accomplished. I finished watching “Diner,” which was a surprisingly good movie. I’ve put a bunch of the writer/director’s work on Netflix (you can tell this is an exceptionally lazy day by my failure to get off the couch or search for the name of the director). I also watched “Garden State,” including all the extras (I still have to watch it with the commentary, but I’ll save that for another day). This one I bought after seeing it in the theater when it came out. It’s a great, nontraditional story, and I highly recommend it.
What I didn’t do (until now) was write anything. I guess the save it all for the weekends doesn’t always work. I’m thinking there’s always tomorrow, and I have a plan: wake up early and drive downtown for early morning coffee and writing. I’ll bring my plug and spend the whole day high on caffeine and deep into my writing. Think of the tens of thousands of words I’ll be able to churn out! Okay, so that probably won’t happen, but I can dream, right. That’s what they (i.e., the WASPs) built this country on: dreams. (I should write greeting cards.)
After starting Atlas Shrugged, I’ve decided to relegate it to bathroom reading. While I enjoy Ayn Rand’s themes, she’s too obvious. Her characters are all one-dimensional, and either “good” (as she defines good) or not good. There are no average people, just great people and everyone else. I can see how her philosophy generated a less than savory following (of which, I imagine, there are plenty of people who form committees and fail at the “original thought” notion that was the point of her stories). Even with the comparisons to L. Ron Hubbard, I still think her books are good.
After Julie gave her judgment on yesterday’s drawing (good, but it looks like you’re trying too hard; maybe you should go back to your colorful monsters), I’ll be trying again. I have been working out some design elements, and those are working better than the mascot. It’s amazing how Adobe Illustrator can make an average artist look talented. I’ll share that talent one of these days.
That’s about all I have in me. I won’t make any more excuses. Instead, I’ll try some of that newfangled caffeine tomorrow and see if it gets my juices churning (actually, I’ve heard churn is bad—flowing might be the more appropriate cliché). Until then, here are the notes I thought of as I walked to the coffee shop. I keep hoping it’ll be good, but it never is. The coffee shop, that is.
Babbles from walk:
Scribble, scribble, scribble. Las Vegas of scribbles. Mall—makeup salesperson. Walter is buying for his “girlfriend.” Choose prettiest saleswoman. She smelled of peaches dripped in used army boots. Terrifying but who cares attitude. Selling him perfume for the girlfriend, but really just hitting on her. Where’s the story? The shoe lady had a story. “Shoe Lady”
“I bet you hear this all the time, but what’s a lady like you doing (insert original comment here)?” She sells expensive shoes to men—or is it ladies? No, has to be men—this is about the wiles of a woman the weakness of a man (until the end). Is he a slob? Or good at what he’s trying to do. He can’t be too suave or too married. His relationship status is unknown and the reason he’s buying shoes is unknown. Start in the shoe store and end there. No introduction, no lead-in.
“Excuse me, I’d hate to ask this if I were wrong, but do you work here?”
And a duck-thing that didn't turn out like I imagined.
I’m flat again. I need to raise my register a few frequencies. I did make it to coffee this morning, but I didn’t get much writing done. This rut is lasting longer than I thought possible. I’m thinking of all different strategies, but I know the one that will work: suck it up and stop consternating, which is easy to say, hard to do. Enjoy today’s bullshit.
The shoe store was empty when Walter entered. He walked along the walls examining the displays, cursing himself for forgetting to bring dress socks to try on the shoes.
Walter was a small man with a full beard. People say his beard looked unkempt, but he trimmed it daily, looking for the rugged mountain look that his father achieved honestly and without effort. His father, who grew up near the Tennessee Appalachians, moved to New York City after marrying to raise his family. While his father loved his upbringing, he felt in the modern world people from those parts, as he called them, were at a disadvantage, and he wanted to give his children the same advantages as the more cultured city folk.
After years of scowling, Walter permanently wrinkled his forehead, which hunched over his eyes, giving them a deep-set and dark appearance. When people looked close, Walter’s bright grayish eyes amazed them. Walter was wearing a brown ski cap with no top, like a tube for his head. His close shorn hair spiked through the top.
Walter wore a thick gray sweater with a high collar, and black corduroy pants; he enjoyed the swishing sound his pants made when he walked. He wore thick socks and big shoes. The shoes in the store were more formal, wingtips and tuxedo shoes.
After walking around the store for a few minutes, he found a few that might be acceptable.
***
Finding emotion after coldness. It’s not an every man story. Look for distractions to hide behind. Stop thinking about failure. Thinking about it will only bring it about faster. I have nothing.
What if I construct a story and think about all the parts of it? It won’t work. Constructed stories never work. Write it and then look at the pieces and put them together at the end.
Am I wasting my time putting these thoughts down? There’s conflict between talking and writing. Return to that simple story about writing words. Conflict? Combine that story with the chair story? No. Refer it to a blog? Why not. What about your aborted shoe story. Leave it and accept my inability to write a story that involves more than one day of writing. That’s not completely true. It’s true for my current mindset. When did I get away from concentrating for long times on writing? When I began to force myself to write every day. That’s BS: my life has gotten more anxious and I need to return to simpler and edit and think. I keep saying this as if it’ll mean something. I need to return my focus. Caffeine can’t be my only problem. I know work is more complicated and requires more concentration; I have to accept that and get beyond it. I don’t have original thoughts. One of these days I might.
Angst and emotion. Find the connection and write. Nothing occurs and there is no release.
Today's monster:
I’m sitting here, staring at my keyboard thinking about what the fuck I should write today. I haven’t come up with any answers. Nothing exciting happened, and I’m starting to feel the after effects of caffeine and flying. I drank enough caffeine to give me a buzz, but I wasted the buzz by talking to colleagues. I didn’t write much during the golden period, and I’m now struggling. Maybe I need to draw more monsters.
***
Rachel wasn’t happy when found what she was looking for by the men’s bathroom. A metal filing cabinet lay on its side, the drawers opened and papers scattered around it. There was nobody near the cabinet, and when she glanced down the surrounding hallways, she found nobody. They must have tipped the cabinet and ran away. Why would they drag it here just to tip it over? This had to be what was making the noise before. The first dragging bang, and then the crashing bang. But why this cabinet and why here?
Rachel chewed her hair and examined the cabinet. I have work to do and I worry about this prank. Rachel walked back to her office and sat in front of her computer.
Today's Monster:
And some failed experiments: 1, 2, 3, and 4.
I’ve been giving this much thought and I need a break. My writings have disintegrated into ramblings. I’m going to take a little time off from writing. If I write something then I’ll post it, but I won’t force myself. I will post Wednesday when I vacation with Julie in Paris. Here is what I jotted down throughout the day:
Green aliens over bread slavered with butter. Where is my knife? Oh. The knife…I don’t even know what you’re talking about anymore. Where is the platter of celery? Ties for hamburgers of the eights in the street.
Telly Tubbies tried to take to the tricycle. Pink wires winded together on the monitors base. I have to find my feelings again. I’ve lost them and it’s affected my writing. I don’t know what I’m sharing anymore. It’s angst. WHAT?
There must be something here. What is there here? His hair stood up in the back of his head. The buzz has hit me and I’m sitting here looking to people watch, but none of these people interest me. WHY?
There is nothing rise in favor of brown green yellow and the red purple looking forward Chinese green tie and chairs of the raised through the night of trying to see the last of many pioneers; and who am I to know where is the rest of the great of last and not trying to see.
There’s nothing I want to say and no way of saying any of it. That’s my problem; that’s always my problem. I don’t understand why I complain and bitch, and don’t share.
Today is the last.
I want to write something but it’s like picking corn out of my brain. Words and just words.
My mind enters a strange state. My shoelace unties and I kick it. Short thoughts and observations cover drawings for a picture’s worth of words. What good is this medium in today’s era? Lives rate the orchids’ lifespan. Why do we wait, and whom do we know?
I wake confused, unsure of my identity and location. I walk in socks over sandals. Sand seeps through the porous cloth into a world between toes. Life is bite-sized truths collected and pooled for universal understandings. These observations without explanations, poems searching for prose. They tell nothing but the words, sculpted. When your painting of an orange is middling, why not squint and paint boxes. What skill is there in middling? What skill is there in abstract?
In the time before, I thought the boxy orange a thing of last resort, a hack’s rendition of a photo-realistic orange, nature by way of poor-man. In the time after, I see what I missed. Not everyone reaches for the boxy glasses. It takes much to see little than to see all. Anyone can look but who can see. And once they see who can share.
Long words are lost on the minute world, where each minute must find differentiation from the next. Discourse is lost, replaced by witty words wrapped round white walls. When failure looms, rebel. When stuck in a box, tear it to pieces and dance in its shower. Who claims the tunnel’s light is the end? There is no escape until you cuddle with darkness. Nobody fears caves or boxes. Everyone fears escape.
I cut the mundane with a scalpel sharpened on the wit of the world. I waste words on stories of happenings.
I planned to write an explanation for my new design. I’ve since decided against it. It is what you see it is, and I’d rather spend my time foolishly saying other things.
Julie told me she’s enjoying my new style of writing. She claims not to understand some of it, and that’s fine by her because it means the writing must be insightful. I don’t agree with the premise that cryptic writing assumes deepness, but I’m enjoying not translating my thoughts. It feels raw and somehow more valid. Julie also said that my other writing, particularly my stories, read forced, as if I pounded my thoughts until the point of dilution. Okay, that last part was my editorializing on her comments. I told Julie that I’m not trying to write cryptically. If anything, my style results from laziness in writing understandable words.
Ticks and life are hard to pick up with wooden sticks. I gallop against time, and lose. I’m writing against the clock because it’s almost deon-dong wan-gee time—we have to play before Julie runs off to sleeping work. Sickness doesn’t wait on the sun. Speaking of daylight, an unnatural spring tumbled over Seattle this past week. Today, sunny, fifty-degrees, finds me sitting in an old coffee house, a hard-chair, art-supply-smelling remnant of the hippy movement. I love it: the checkered floors, green walls striped dripping red near the ceiling, cups of oil-based pastels and crayons in the artist’s corner. No two chairs match, the tables and floor are slanted, and the coffee tastes of sweet milk. The furniture stays where the last patron placed it, and industrial-noise pumps over ratty computer speakers. The paintings on the wall are for sale but look drawn by ten year olds and framed with construction paper. Christmas lights border the windows. Even the name adds significance: “Lottie Motts.”
The caffeine ran its course leaving me with less significant words. My redesign addicted me this past week. I spent most of my time coding and designing, staying up late most evenings. I was glad to post it this morning to rid myself of it. I spoke before how certain projects dominate me, leaving me in a constant excited state unable to concentrate on other tasks until completed. The Cornflower Blue redesign epitomized that state.
I’m sneaking writing time. I’m in the bathroom and I place my laptop on the sink while I pee. A man next to me shakes and zips. He washes his hand and I mind him through the mirror near the door. I daydream that he takes my laptop and runs for the door. I see myself chase and catch him. Why do heroic scenes and planned outcomes occupy my mind? I believe cowards dream of rescue from cowardice, and heroes dream of an end to heroics. My laptop is wetter for wear.
My house is a mess. Dishes caked with fish parts and breadcrumbs line the counters, and scattered laundry creates obstacles to bed. The impulsion to clean escapes me. I’m anxious about my trip to Paris on Wednesday. My mind winds tight with all I have to do. They squish me in a plane for ten hours, but I do not care because my anxiety withers in Julie’s grip.
I’m writing words and I don’t know why. I fail even in refusing. I gave up only to succeed on each subsequent day.
I finished watching “Dances with Wolves” tonight. I’m not sure what to make of this movie. It was too long, and I didn’t think much of Kevin Costner’s acting, particularly his voice-over diary reading. I appreciated the abrupt ending more intellectually than emotionally. It didn’t provide the closure that I hoped to find after a three plus hours movie, but no ending would have satisfied me given the nature and honesty of the story. I went in expecting the worst, thought I found it as I drudged through most of the movie, and ended strangely satisfied with the experience. With a better director (Kevin Costner directed and starred), it might have felt more polished, but it also might have lost its rawness. What it did provide was an appreciation of the Native American culture, and a desire to understand and experience their simple life, filled with hard work, family and friends, and satisfaction. It’s not a wonder that the white women abducted by Native Americans refused rescue.
Sleep waits for an early day.
A morning meeting found me outside earlier than usual. While I hate the pain of waking before the sun does—it feels as if someone is yanking a taut rope tied to my soul—the early hour gave me the opportunity to enjoy a cold, sunny Seattle morning. What I love most about these mornings is frosted grass. I never saw frosted grass before moving to Seattle. At the beginning of winter, when I first spied the phenomenon, I commented to my friend that someone must have spent all night sprinkling fertilizer on the grass. He stared at me attempting to understand what the fuck I meant, and laughed and told me about frosted grass. Dew forms during the warmer day, and when the evening’s bitter cold descends, the dew freezes and forms frost on the grass. The frost crawls up the individual grass blades, forming icy snowflake armor.
While frosted grass is beautiful, there’s more to my enjoyment than its looks. I derive incredible (and probably unnatural) satisfaction from stomping on frosted grass. Each step provides a most satisfying audible and physical crunch. I would stomp all day if my scheduled allowed it. It’s similar but more satisfying to popping bubble paper. When the sun chases the shadows off the icy grass, the frost melts leaving wet and boring terrain. I contemplated a musing with nothing but odes to frosted grass, but realized that such an entry would entertain only me, and leave my adoring public yearning for more.
Today feels of Friday. Technically, it’s a Tuesday, but I fly at 9:04am tomorrow, making today a spiritual Friday. I’m eager to see Julie and start our Paris vacation. I’ve been to Paris only once, and that was for a two-day work trip. I spent one day wandering the streets, outdoor markets, and river; the fancy restaurants intimidated me, but the street-side baguette vendors more than made up for my lack of fancy dinners. With Julie claiming to speak French, I should do better with the fancy restaurants this time. The weather report promises cold (Wed-Fri: Snow or Rain, upper 30s; Sat-Sun: Partly Sunny, lower 40s), which means we’ll spend much of our time inside—but when that inside involves museums, coffee shops, and French bistros, I shan’t complain (I didn’t even realize “shan’t” was a real word. Encarta defines it as a contraction of “shall not,” and doesn’t deprecate it).
I read that Martha Stewart was reading Bob Dylan’s latest memoir. I respect Martha Stewart and believe that if her name were “Mark Stewart,” she wouldn’t be in jail. I’ve started listening to Bob Dylan’s music on satellite radio, and I’ve become intrigued. I like music that tells a story, and Dylan’s music seems to do that. I decided to buy an album. Buying music for me online is always a mistake. I usually don’t listen to the music I purchase; instead, it collects dust on my computer or high-fi system (now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a while). As I browsed the music collection, I purchased other albums that will remain silent on the computer. It’s so easy to satisfy my collection desires by clicking a button. I’ve spoken of this addiction before. I buy the music more to complete an imagined collection of “good” music, than for listening. It’s similar to my purchase of comic books to collect rather than read (this was when I was younger—I’ve so far resisted the urge to start up that collection again). I need help, serious help.
I had a wonderful phone conversation with my mother during my arduous commute home. I speak often with my mother, but we don’t always talk. I know that “speak” and “talk” are synonyms, but I’m defining a difference for sake of illustration. While we physical speak often (too often—she is a Jewish mother and if she had her way, we would talk all hours of the day), the conversation doesn’t always move beyond small talk. Frequently this is my fault, as I’m abrupt with her, not because I don’t love her—because I do—but because as a man (or at least someone who plays a man on stage), I want to find my own path and show that I’m not reliant on my mother. It sounds petty and probably is, but it’s an emotional response. Every few weeks, however, we talk about something real, and those conversations are very good.
During our conversation today, we talked about a topic dear to my heart: my story writing. My mother, as a religious reader of sewcrates.com, something only two other people can claim (for good reason), has watched me struggle with my story telling over the past year. She provided advice today, which as always was good, but this time I might accept. She thinks I should stop forcing myself to finish writing stories. Instead, I should write and when I reach a point where the writing is no longer working, I should put it aside and come back to it later with a clean view. She sees when I grow frustrated with my writing, and the frustration comes out in the telling. It does me no good to dwell everyday on a story that isn’t working. I should put it aside, and similar to the problem you “sleep on” to solve, return to it with a fresher outlook a few weeks later.
I’ll use my failed attempt at the science fiction story as an illustration. I spent so much time thinking and dwelling on this story, that my writing became constipated (a close relation to consternated), and for all my ideas, I couldn’t translate them into a story. Using my mother’s advice, I should have put aside that story, and returned to it a few weeks later, with a clearer mind and a less blocked psyche. I’m going to try this technique. I’ve been searching for a way to tell stories, and nothing else seems to work. Maybe more downtime in the writing process will help.
My mother also tried to convince me that editing with a pen—you know, those long, slim devices that spout ink on the remains of trees—and placing drafts in folders (I’m not sure what those are; I understand folders in computers, but she was describing a sort of “real” folder that stores papers), will enable me to put aside the story and return to it at a later date. I tried to explain to her about these newfangled devices called “computers,” but the large words confused her. Suffice to say, I’ll continue with my electronic editing, although I will continue to write in my Moleskine when inspiration clobbers me.
While I’d prefer to keep discharging useless thoughts, I must pack. The next time I post, I will be jet-lagged in Paris, preparing for a wonderful vacation with a beautiful girl, and four friends I haven’t seen in a while.
The baristas know me. If you’re not a coffeehouse regular, you might now know what a barista is. A barista is the giver of vivacity, the dealer of happiness, the maker of coffee. Unlike the instant or drip variety, there is an art to making coffee, and this art involves grinding, tamping, extraction (timing is very important), steaming, and blending. I’ve thought hard about buying an espresso machine for the Castle, and I’m still of two minds. One says go for it, David. We’re talking coffee, whenever you want it without having to leave the sanctity of the castle. Think of the high-quality espresso you’ll serve with dessert during dinner parties. The other says, think of the possibilities (and likelihood) of overdoing it. Think of the expense and the cleaning responsibilities. And, for the record, you’ve never even had a dinner party.
The barista punches in my order when it’s my turn. Tall mocha with whip, she says. I hand her payment, she smiles, and I slide to the delivery deck. She starts the steamer and heats up my milk. How are you doing, I ask and divert my eyes. The thought of a conversation becomes too much. I realize I should have thought about that before speaking, but it’s out there. She answers, Good, you? She tamps the grinded coffee beans and starts the espresso machine. I decide against the conversation and stay silent.
I’m babbling incoherently, because I gobbled down a tall mocha for the first time in four days, and the sugar and caffeine took to my system too fast, overwhelming my powers to understand and write coherently.
The exterminator is drilling holes and injecting poison into the castle as I write. Poison drips along the outside walls, almost as if essential juices were leaking from the Castle. He expects the ants to die over the next three to four weeks, and you know what that means: I have another month of ant hunting. What joy! I know you’re questioning the sport involved in hunting ants, especially since the carpenter variety that infests the Castle moves slowly. I’ll outline the (substantial) challenges: (1) lugging my chosen weapon, the vacuum cleaner, up and down the stairs between the different levels of the Castle; (2) positioning the suction devices (either the hand held or under the push part) to suck up the ants when they run for the little crevices; and (3) remaining calm when a flying ant (the proto-queen) darts from nowhere and almost hits me in the head.
I spend too much time writing about silly happenings. Did you know that in Seattle, Chinese restaurants have the highest incident of cockroaches? (And here I thought nothing good would come of the carpenter ants invading the Castle.) It’s not because the Chinese restaurants are dirtier, it’s because the Chinese restaurants import their vegetables from places where there are cockroaches, such as the east coast. I wanted to convey that bit of trivia to prove a point about writing. If you’re anything like me (and I hope you’re not for everyone’s sake), you would find that fact more interesting than, say, writings about the broken aspects of my personality. Now, that fact alone is interesting but not story-worthy. Additional research and a story based on the tidbit might be interesting. (I imagine a Chinese restaurant owner trying to explain his cockroach problem to long-time customers. “Oh, no, bug-ologists come here and eat. I told bug-ologists put sign in van so customers not confused. A-okay, no problem.”)
I know research would help me write just as personal experiences help—which is why I try to experience something interesting everyday, instead of sitting around and playing with my toes. I know from experience that television and movies are bad sources. I’ve been watching them for years and except for poorly thought out plot points and characterizations, nothing has worn off on me. I once thought of actually researching using books. Do you remember long ago when I had this idea for writing a story about goblins based on the experiences of Native Americans? I went out and purchased a few books, and I haven’t touched them. The length and time I’d need to read them overwhelmed me. I’m a bad researcher.
Let me qualify that statement. It’s not that I’m a bad researcher; it’s more that I’m an indifferent, lazy researcher. I’ve been thinking of hitting the books again. What’s keeping me away is a concern: after devoting all this time to researching and planning, what happens if I sit down to write and nothing comes out, like what happened with my science-fiction story. I need to give this more thought (in other words, I’m too tired to continue writing).
I’m at the airport preparing for another long flight to NYC. Actually (since I should start telling the truth instead of lying and then apologizing), this flight isn’t terribly long. It’s a five-hour overnight flight, which sucks because if I’m able to sleep, they wake me after a few hours for landing. The return flight is longer, weighing in at over seven hours. Do you see my dedication to visiting NYC? I put my own comfort and back at risk.
I keep opening and closing my laptop, thinking I have something to say, and then realizing I have nothing. I want to spend my airport time twiddling away by writing clever prose but nothing is coming out. Many things came out the other end after a day of terrible eating, but I won’t get into those details.
I had this brilliant idea earlier to write a fictional diary, to make up stuff when, like today, nothing goes on in my life. Obviously, I didn’t get very far with that idea. I sit here uninspired much. I’ll skip the standard riposte: yeah, I know I should spend this time writing stories instead of consternating about how I have nothing to say. This is going nowhere fast. I hope to have more to say as my visit to NYC progresses.
In flight: I slept an hour and spent most of my time reading. I complained the other day (as if I do anything but complain here) that I haven’t been satisfied with the amount of reading I’ve done lately. When trapped in an airplane, it’s easier to respond to that complaint. While I am tired (it’s now 2am right-coast time, and close to 5am left-coast time)…I have no end to this sentence. I am tired and I should sleep, but I’m not. I’m waiting until I can get into a bed before I re…I’ll try again. Typing this has made me tired. Very tired.
I made it to Brooklyn. Now it’s time to sleep. (It looks like the website is working. I was going to "fix" it yesterday, but Julie stopped me, afraid I'd break it and complain and worry about why I can't post.)
I’ve spent the last hour going through drawers and papers in my old room. It is one am in NY, and I’ve not done a good job acclimating myself to this time zone. My many earlier naps certainly didn’t help in this regard. I decided to go through my old papers (and not sleep) in the hopes of finding letters that Chuck wrote me when he first moved to Korea. I promised him some time ago to send copies along of this very interesting time in his life. (Sorry, Chuck, I’ve only located the first letter you wrote me. I’ll eventually find the other ones—it’s a mess in there.) I posted my side of the conversation a long time ago—which are not nearly as embarrassing as the Sara letters.
As I went through the papers, something became rather apparent. I’ve been thinking over the last few days about memories. Austerlitz has convinced me that remembering childhood especially after traumatic events is important for the psyche well-being of a person. As I’ve mentioned countless times, I’m not very good at memories, both the long-term and short-term varieties. Part of my problem, especially with short-term memory, is due to a failure of concentration. I hoped that research would enable me to remember gems from my childhood, which I would use—as I try to use everything not bolted down in my head—as fodder for my stories (yes, I know, I focus too much on storytelling and bore you with my pathetic attempts).
Do you know what I realized during my search? Well, I assume you don’t since you weren’t there and I haven’t told you yet; it was more of a rhetorical question, if you will. I found that I led an ineffectual childhood. As I read my old papers, from a printout of all the e-mails I sent during college, old papers, letters I received, and pictures, I realized one thing: I remember most of my childhood. The thing about it, however, is that it was a rather ho-hum childhood. I did few exciting things, never rebelled, and never took a chance. It’s sad when I look back at it. I don’t know what I was wasting my time with (besides the countless hours I spent watching television, programming my computer, playing video games, and reading), but it’s clear what I wasn’t doing: I wasn’t living.
I don’t know what I expect a childhood to contain. Perhaps I idealize it from what I’ve see in movies or learned from speaking to others, but when I look back, I see years of wasted time. I had no direction, no desires (except for an unfulfilled video-game designer dream—which failed more from lack of follow through because of laziness than anything else), and no courage.
Damn, I’m being hard on myself. It’s just that I hate boring people, and when I look back at little Dave (I can’t believe I called myself that—the “Dave” part, not the “little” part), I see a monster with no dreams or desires or fulfillments. That started to change through law school and especially when I arrived in Houston. I always thought of myself as an old soul, someone who didn’t need the clothing of childhood because I outgrew it in the cradle. What I’m beginning to understand now is that I wasn’t an old soul; instead, I was a scared soul who was afraid to experience anything.
I’m drinking coffee late on a school night. I made it to the city after a day of monsters. I posted the pictures for our fun day in the park. After checking in to my hotel, I walked over to the Starbucks near my old apartment. When I lived here, I never stopped in here. I believed coffee houses, and Starbuckses in particular, were the devil. Now, I live in them.
I’m sitting here, trying to concentrate while three wanna-be-actors sit and scream at each other. I’m listening but I don’t want to. They’re gone now. Two overweight actors and one thin one. The fat guy just returned from a shoot in Baltimore where he played a cockroach for an east coast exterminator commercial. They have “a call” at 7:30pm. I’m not sure what they’re being called for, but I have a feeling it’s they’re not on call for trauma like Julies.
I forgot how hard it is to write 2,000 words in a day. I made it (when you include this bit of editorializing), but I need to get back into it. I’m off to a diner to eat a quick grilled cheese before heading back to my hotel room for a few hours of talking to Julies and then sleep.
I said before I might pay the price for drinking coffee so late (relative to NY time, I mean) in the evening. I am paying the price as I type. It’s now 11:20pm Seattle time, or 2:22am New York time, and I have to wake in about five hours and half hour (even typing that doesn’t look correct; I need a ruling, is it “a half hour,” or “half hour.” Julie has been trying to convince me of her Chinese way of dropping the indefinite article for a while now, and since I’ve seen it in print, I might be willing to give in if I can verify).
The view from my hotel room is rather spectacular. If I were a few rooms over, I’d be looking straight down Times Square. As I sit now, I see many large buildings and the lights of Times Square. I’m on the 39th floor of the Sheraton Towers on West 53rd street and 6th avenue.
I’m going to try to get a few hours of sleep so I can at least say I tried when I’m nodding off in class tomorrow. If I didn’t have such a delicate constitution, I wouldn’t have to worry about these things. First a boring childhood, and now this, how will I ever survive? (Yes, thanks for all your comments. I know my childhood wasn’t that bad, and I know that most childhoods are just as inane and useless as mine was. I was expelling exhaust. Stop taking everything I write so seriously. It’s as if you’re all nervous I’m going to think worse of myself than I already do. Trust me that would be almost impossible.)
I’m doing it again. I’m drinking coffee early on a school night hoping not to pay yesterday’s price. Last night, I slept fitfully, not falling asleep until around five in the morning. I took catnaps from five until I woke at eight. I’m not sure what to blame. I have so many targets: yummy caffeine, television (mmm…how do I live without television?), beautiful view from the hotel room, time difference, general desire not to attend class (it was worse than I expected).
An apology: When I wrote yesterday’s tidbit, I intended it to end where it ended. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but writing longer stories with plot circles is outside my talent. I did spend time debating how to end it. While the “ending” is ambiguous, it does offer a bit of hope (not the hook that Chuck hoped for).
The caffeine fights my fatigue and loses. I need more sleep. I plan an early dinner and normal (for east coast) sleep.
Enough of this babbling, let’s see where my story instincts fail me today. It didn’t take me as far as I had hoped. I might continue this story—when I find energy and can figure out where to take it. I had hoped to hit 2k words today, but even counting last night’s incoherent babbles, I’m not breaking 1k. I’ll accept failure today.
You guessed it. It’s 2:26am and I’m not sleeping (this is becoming a 2am habit). I did fall asleep around 1am after I called Julie and she stayed on the phone until I became sleepy—I’m such a child some times. Speaking of monsters, less than thirty minutes after I fell asleep, I awoke to a baby crying in the next hotel room. The baby cried. And cried. And cried. And…you get the image. I think I might have slept the night but for the crying. As if on cue, the baby just started up again. I admit to liking children, well, at least some children, mostly the quiet ones. Since this one is not quiet and it’s not a relation, I’m happy to report that I don’t like it. I haven’t seen it, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s ugly, with buckteeth and a head that’s too big for its body. My suspicion, which is more of a slinking than sneaking suspicion, also foretells that it has huge bug eyes, and perhaps a horn. Not just one horn but two yellowed horns with red poke-a-dots (okay, that can’t be how you spell that word but I’m too tired to check). Its parents probably don’t even realize how scary their child is. I guess it’s better that way.
I’m going to try to go to sleep now. I’m thinking the hotel bed is too soft. It’s a specially designed “sleep bed,” with an extra soft pillow-top mattress, and pillows that might as well be made of cotton candy for all the support they offer. I have another full day of classes tomorrow, and I have a feeling that if it’s anything like today’s, it’s going to be a wearing day.
My colleague and I bought tickets to see the play “Democracy” tomorrow night after our class. I don’t know anything about it, but it’s a play, it’s off-Broadway, and I’m looking forward to it—assuming I can stay up late enough to watch it. (And, yes, that does mean I know something about it. I lied. Deal with it.)
Okay. This time I’m really going to sleep. I’m not joking this time. That is, unless the monster starts up again. In that case, I’ll smother myself in the cotton-candy pillows. There are probably worse ways to go.
(I realize my entries are becoming shorter and shorter, and I’m abusing the topical posts. But look how nice they’re organized. I like organization; it’s like collecting, only less expensive, and I can do it repeatedly, and change it on a whim. So take that, you evil, judgmental baby-hating reader!)
I love New York. I’m not just saying that because I saw it on a t-shirt. When I think about it, I don’t love the entire New York state or even the entire city (which includes the five boroughs). I appreciate parts of it (like Sheepshead Bay and Brooklyn), but I love Manhattan, the New York, NY postal address. I only lived here for two years after finishing graduate school. I lived with Steven in a one and a half (I’ve returned to the land of proper grammar—thanks for slapping me silly, Chuck. I’m not sure what I was thinking listening to Julies. What do doctors know of grammar?) bedroom. I still had not discovered NEQID and I was the cold and rational David that didn’t understand art. Because of that, I never explored the nether regions of the city, a mistake I hope to rectify one day. But even ignoring all the artistic possibilities New York had to offer, I loved living here.
It’s almost a cliché to speak of the energy of the city, so I’ll spare you my analysis of its amorphous force. In sprawled Houston, I experienced a type of convenience where the blocks of strip malls carried all possible manner of franchised shopping stores to fulfill even the grubbiest consumer’s needs. While there are all manner of stores in New York, these stores are not as convenient. When a New Yorker goes grocery shopping, they usually have to carry their groceries a few blocks to bring them home (the lazy ones, eg, me, could also have them delivered). The amenities of New York are more refined: the arts and transportation systems are wonderful. When I lived here, I didn’t own a car. To get around, I walked, rode the subway, or hailed a cab. When I walked, which was often, there were so many different routes, that the scenery never bored me. Every block was full of unique stores, interesting architecture, strange people. The people watching opportunities were plentiful. Whether strolling parks or sitting in outdoor cafes in the warm months, or riding the subway or sitting on hard chairs in coffee houses (they don’t offer leather chairs probably because they don’t want to chase sleeping homeless people from their stores) in the cold months, a strange person who would make the perfect character in a story was never too far away. Of course, when I lived in New York, I wasn’t a “writer” yet. My people watching, which I did much of even then, was purposeless but still fun.
Like most places, there are downsides to New York. New York is a place that you could love as a student or a grownup with money, but dislike as a middle-class person. It’s a city where everyone is in a hurry and the streets are crowded in the middle of the night. It’s a city where there are extreme temperatures a few weeks every year. It’s a city where you fall asleep not to the sounds of frogs and crickets, but to sirens, screeches, and drunken dissertations. It’s a city where people live in heights reserved for trees, and trees live in prisons of parks. It’s a city where if you’re not fast and aggressive, you’ll get pushed over; but it’s also a city where if you fall, someone will pull you erect before bustling away.
Every time I visit, I feel the pull of the city. I want to walk its wide avenues, wander its museums and parks, and wait in line for its shows. In short, I yearn to grow up in New York.
I was wrong yesterday when I described the show we went to see tonight. “Democracy” was a Broadway show. The show was a historical drama set in West Germany after the ruling counsel (controlled by the United States) relinquished control to an elected West German government. It followed the leaders of that government, which included an East German spy who became the chancellor’s assistant, through the fall of the Berlin Wall. As a historical work, it was quite good. I learned about an era that I (and most people) never gave much thought to. All the male actors (similar to the government of the time, there were no female actors) were excellent. The problem with the play, however, was a lack of conflict. There was much political infighting, but there was little suspense or tree conflict. The spy’s story also left little doubt. The play was enjoyable to watch the actors and learn about the history, but overall it left me unsatisfied. I wanted more. I wanted real characters face with a real dilemma. One would think that governing a war-torn country that’s building itself from the ruins of defeat would provide many opportunities for conflict. When the actors took their bows, I clapped for their performance but not for the script.
I slept well last night. Around midnight (New York time), I conked out. I would have slept the entire night had a certain disfigured baby not started screaming at around 4am. I have this theory that if you run to a baby every time it cries, you condition it to cry every time it wants you to run. There are times, of course, where you have to go to the baby—it might have a dirty bum (igh) or hunger or be uncomfortable or be twisted in its blanket. But most of the time, especially during the night, it cries for little reason other than it wants you to run. Following through with my well-schooled baby psychology, it would be best if the parents not to run to the baby every time it cried. Even withstanding the aforementioned, I know nothing about babies, but it seems my hotel neighbor shares my lack of knowledge and implemented the no-run-baby experiment the last two nights. When the baby started to cry at 4am, there was no response, no rocking, no coddling, no (please!) walking with the baby to the ice machine. Instead, the baby wailed and wailed until it cried itself back to sleep around 6am. (Either that or the parents were sloshed in the hotel bar—I should have called social services to have the monster removed; why do all my good ideas occur after the fact?) By the time the monster gave up, I managed to sleep only fitfully for the last couple of hours before it was time to awaken.
Speaking of awakening, my alarm went off at 8am, leaving me with plenty of time to shower and pack before heading to Newark airport for my 11am flight. The taxi took less time than I expected, and I arrived by 9:30am, leaving me ample time to check in, eat breakfast, and wait comfortably with no suggestion of anxiety. The thing about 11am flights is that if the flight leaves, for example, at 2pm and not 11am, arriving at the airport for the earlier flight time means you’ll sit around for many hours. I somehow did that. I always had an inkling that the flight left at 2pm, but when I spoke to evil Julies last night, she said that that didn’t sound right. How can it leave at 2pm if you arrive at 5pm? The answer, of course, is that there’s a three-hour time difference, which turns what would be a three-hour flight into a more realistic six-hour flight. This was all lost on me late last night, and when I checked the calendar on my Phone That Is Smarter Than Me (PTISTM—I have to work on that acronym), it agreed with Julies (I’m not sure how that happened). It worked out for the best, however. I now have many hours to write, check e-mail, and perhaps even work before I get on the plane. Once on the plane, my plan is sleep, read book, catch up on magazines, relax.
I was thinking about the gym and I came to this great realization: the thing about the perfect body is that the body was never meant to be perfect. There, take that evil gym! Of course, if I worked out to have a “normal” body instead of a perfect body, I’m not sure if that argument would work. Look at Bruce Lee! For all his perfection, he still died young. Ergo, I shouldn’t work out. (It’s like a mathematics proof: lots of steps are skipped because of their obviousness to any PhD-toting, small-headed, beady-eyed, pocket-protector wearing genius.)
I should trap myself in strange places with internet more often. When I have fewer distractions and no escape, I write more. (We won’t speak of quality since that is always an empty discussion.)
The last time I was in Newark airport, I grew famously sick by eating Nathan’s famous hotdogs. During that flight back to Seattle, I vowed never again to eat hotdogs, and especially not Nathan’s hotdogs. I just finished lunch at Nathan’s. I don’t know what it is about comfort food, but I’m a sucker for it. While in New York this time, I visited a diner twice for a grilled cheese sandwich. I have tried many times to duplicate this sandwich at home and failed. It’s amazing how every diner in New York cooks the same tasting grilled cheese sandwich. I have a nagging suspicion that the secret sauce is the use of lard as the fat during grilling. I’m trying not to dwell on this any more than is necessary, however. I’m also hoping that I won’t suffer for my poor lunch choice. The jury is still out on that question.
Did you miss me? I made the executive decision (I consider all decisions pertaining to and made by me executive because, really, it’s my life and—okay, this aside has become tremendously silly. I’ll end it here because I don’t think in my current state I can redeem it) to not write yesterday. When I woke up yesterday morning, I felt decent after a good sleep. But as the day wore on, my travels caught up with me, and my mental health decreased until pathological yawning and a sleepiness-induced headache overtook me. I left early from work yesterday, drove home, slept, ate, talked to Julies, played video games, and slept.
That was yesterday. Today, I have the pleasure of reporting, I felt well enough to go to the gym. Yes, you read that correctly. I went to the gym with a colleague who might turn into my next workout buddy. My original workout buddy, a classmate from graduate school, turned out to be a flop. During my first two months in Seattle, we commuted to work together and went to the gym three times a week. Afterwards it became apparent that I was destined to (a) drive through traffic in the non-HOV lanes; and (b) lose fifteen pounds of hard-earned muscles. While my potential, new workout buddy lives on the other side of the pond (that’s someone who lives across the lake in the Redmond/Kirkland/Bellevue area outside of Seattle), he seems more reliable than my original workout buddy. I’ll let you know how this goes. Although I’m tired (you can probably tell by this barely intelligible entry), my body feels good, and the fatigue is more of a muscle weariness instead of my more usual bone weariness.
This is the first weekend that I have to myself in a while. While I’ve enjoyed my travels over the last four or so weekends, it was past time for an idle, David-time weekend. I’m hoping to hit the coffee houses and write, sleep in, and renew my oomph. A fire is burning cheerily in the fireplace after a slow start. The papers I use for kindling lit only the right side of the log and it took 15 minutes for the fire to spread to the rest of the logs. This is the first fire I’ve had in a while. Today has been a bit cool, and when I came downstairs to my living room to stretch out and throw some words against the wall, it was a bit chilly, which got me thinking about the fire. It’s now toasty in here. If I only had an apple, it would be like old times: me, sitting by the fire, writing, eating an apple.
I’m hungry now, stupid apple thoughts. I think I’ve almost won in Castle verse ant battle. I found one dead proto-queen ant and one crawling worker ant on the third floor today, but the frequency is certainly decreasing. I expect a zero- ant day soon. I’ll miss the little buggers when there’s no more of them. At least I’ll have their family members trapped in my vacuum cleaner until next Wednesday night. Look at the new David, always looking on the bright side.
I thought this entry was already much longer than it is.
Some notes on the Wailing Baby story: The name of the woman is Annie. She’s a renowned therapist with issues, which ties in with my theory about mental health professionals: it takes a certain sickness to want to hear about other people’s problems. I believe people who have serious issues seek others like them to help them in the hopes that they won’t have to face their own problems. Ain’t I full of great theories?) I want to write a short vignette about Annie and her history. I’m thinking of dropping the neighbor I put in at the end of the story. I have a few ideas for where to take the story, but we’ll see what happens when I flesh out Annie.
I based Annie on a woman that sat in front of me on my flight from Newark to Seattle. Before the plane finished taxiing, she pushed her seat all the way back, and she didn’t put the seat in its upright position until a flight attendant asked her to in preparation for landing. I half expected her to lean back after all the attendants sat down (I had one guy do just that). I’ve explained before my feelings on people who lean their chair all the way back. Luckily, Continental, a much better airline than Alaska, has more room in its coach chairs and I was able to write most of the Wailing Baby story on the airplane. The only thing I could see of the woman in front of me was her frizzy hair, which she kept puffing with her hands. I wished her all sorts of illnesses, and then figured I might as well memorialize her in my story. (She fit the character: someone who didn’t care about what her neighbors thought or felt.) The idea for the story, of course, came from my sleepless nights in NYC when my neighbor’s baby cried most of the night. During my sleep-induced hallucinations, I imagined that it wasn’t a baby crying, but a tape recorder. This is just an example of the strange things that go through my head.
I’m feeling on the edge of a sickness this morning. It started last night, I think, when I left the gym wearing only a t-shirt. I wasn’t cold (even though the weather had cooled considerably by the time I finished), but as I drove home, I felt a tickling in my throat. The tickling swelled to an ache when I went to bed. I woke up this morning cold with a soar throat. I’m dressed in three layers of clothing on a drizzling Seattle morning, sitting in Lottie Motts. The coffee is better today; the barista sketched the leaf design in the foam, which is the sign of a good cup of cappuccino or mocha (at least aesthetically). The music selection is not as interesting as last time. It’s a bit distracting, but the genre changes every song, and most are light or dull enough to ignore. The barista selected a “This American Life” CD for entertainment. It’s an interesting episode about superpowers. The thing is I don’t want to listen to it. I’m trying to concentrate and it’s terribly distracting. Luckily, the coffee house began filling up, and the murmur of conversations—all, regrettably, too far away for me to hear—drowned out the radio program.
In my eavesdropping of the barista, I heard that Lottie—who I assume is the Lottie in Lottie Motts—might be selling her artsy coffee house. This might be disappointing, particularly since I just found this place a few weeks ago, and I might have to return to the bucks of stars, not a bad place, but a place without personality, the McDonalds of coffeehouses, if you will. (I’m not sure if it would be disappointing since, while the coffee was better today, the music selection was annoying and the place smells faintly of cleaning supplies. This same smell dominated the NYC diner where I ate those delicious grilled cheeses last week.) I’m heading to downtown Seattle tomorrow morning for a larger coffee house with hopefully a better selection of music and a tolerable odor.
I’m not feeling especially energetic even after the caffeine jolt, but I’m going to fight through and try to write. I need a nap. The caffeine has run its course. I think it was a weak dose, since I haven’t had a shot in a while, and this one barely affected me. Either that, or my sickness dulled its effect.
I’m back at the Motts. I considered going to a downtown coffeehouse, but failed when I realized that last time I forgot to program my car with the address. The Motts still smells of cleaning solution, but I found a comfy chair, although these aren’t your bucks of stars comfy chairs. They’re old and in a prior life were probably leather, reading chairs. Now a ragged, corduroy-blue throw cover covers up their (what I assume is) decrepit cushions. A two-year old blonde girl sits in an undersized orange chair and colors on the table in front of me. Her father, an artsy relic with a tiny patch of hair under his lip, which screams for me to pull it out violently, watches her scribble and build a bridge with crayons. Yes, I am a bit bitter. I’ve only started drinking my coffee, and even after wearing my sick sweatshirt to bed last night, I woke up a bit sicker than yesterday.
The coffee is again exceptionally weak. I hanker for real caffeine. I’m not sure if this will keep me going long enough to write anything.
The regrettable-artsy man found a friend in Joe, the inspiration for Annie’s father. Joe has a one-year old, which, thankfully he did not bring to the coffeehouse. The regrettable-artsy man made this comment, “I’ve heard it said, and I’m seeing it more and more, ‘when you have a child, the days pass slowly and the years pass quickly.’” They continue to stand over me and talk about their eighty-year old grandparents and their children’s parties. I care little about either. They’ve moved away, and the regrettable-artsy man put his Indiana Jones hat on, which I take as a good sign of his impending exit. I’ve made my move to the corner comfy chair, which has good proximity to the outlet, which is missing the faceplate. It’s not time to plug in yet but I hate the anxiety of just thinking about running out of juice. I’m seeing my anxiety growing as an issue in my life and I’m not enjoying it.
The smell and bad music is overwhelming me. I’m concerned that if I go home, I won’t write, but sit around and do nothing all day. I’m going to try to stay here for a bit longer and squeeze my essence juices onto the page. It’s not working. I’m thinking the mocha was more of a bad hot chocolate than a caffeinated drink. I’m going to head home and hope that I pick up the computer later. I hate to do this, but nothing is happening. At least I’m feeling a bit better after the warm (mostly un-caffeinated) drink.
Oh, and by the way, I’m beginning to realize that David time isn’t great. This has not been as relaxing or fun a weekend as I planned.
I am writing this entry in bed. It is early for sleep, barely seven thirty, but my back and stomach aches set off by unwarranted coughing drove me here. I don’t have much to talk to—not that this has stopped me over the last days from senseless and short writings—which is why I’ve decided to edit and reedit all my sentences to confuse my readers’ (yeah, I thought about spelling it “reader’s”) sensibilities with overly masticated sentences.
I complained over the weekend about the water-downed crap that Motts served in lieu of caffeinated drinks. Today, I reintroduced my body to life-affirming and yummy caffeine processed and packaged by the bucks of stars. My virus-infected body didn’t grasp its significance, and decided to use the excess energy to power fits of coughing instead of, say, opening creative canals to let my wit and wonder gush over the select who frequent sewcrates.com.
I am still disappointed with my creative output during David Time (DT) this weekend. For the last four weeks, I’ve looked forward to DT, a time of introspection and inspiration, which, I assumed, would raise me (and, more importantly, my writing) to a more enlightened sphere of existence. I imagined drawing upon the silent reservoir of experiences and bringing forth fonts of well-conceived constructions (or, as I tried to describe it but couldn’t find the right context, sugarplum faeries anointing my head with their tiny magic wands). Instead, DT simultaneously depressed and impelled me to levels of boredom I’ve not seen in years. I broke a cardinal rule of NEQID and played video games by myself for hours. I’d like to divest myself of all responsibilities and direct blame at my illness, but that would give my illness too much credit.
Speaking of sicknesses, did I mention I’m still sick (this is where the audience offers a spontaneous and heartfelt “aw,” or, more likely, a “stop fishing for sympathy already and get on with it”)? I thought after last night I would not need to wear my sick sweatshirt (which has amazing healing abilities, +3 CON for those familiar with the aspects of devil worship), but I woke up sicker this morning. After a shower and quick breakfast, I felt well enough to head to work—I would have lost my gourd if I stayed home sick. My head feels stuffed, similar to the deplaning effects where sounds dampen and the world acquires a distant guise.
This is where the steam leaves me. Yeah, I should go back to breaking stones and attempting to make sense of the tape recorder baby, but I forgot where I placed the momentum for that story. I have a feeling I’ll locate it one of these days. Either that or I’ll keep amazing you by writing words that say nothing. And you thought this was a talent reserved only for politicians. (Wham. Who said I don’t have talent for political blogging?).
My pronouncement of the end of the ant infestation, I now see, was premature. I worked from home today because of the delivery of Julie’s gift to the Castle: a beautiful painting that is now hanging the bedroom. While working, I vacuumed up many proto-queens. They are more active during the hot daylight hours. This is why I haven’t seen them earlier: the days have been colder, and thanks to too much traveling, I haven’t been home much during the daylight hours. I forgot how warm Castle becomes when the sun blazes in the afternoon. The three floors act as a chimney, directing the warmth to the third floor, which becomes unbearably warm quickly.
My sickness is almost gone. I’ve been saying that for the last four days with little truth. My congestion has lessened, and only a dry throat and popped ears remain. Any day now I’ll pronounce my sickness gone, only to renege a day (or two days, thanks to a writing-free day yesterday) later.
I’ve returned to the bucks of stars, having given up on the Motts. It’s cool in here, with normal music and a neutral smell. The coffee was bitter and buttery; the characters are less artsy and more exciting. My words are almost gone. I barely managed more than 500 words.
I have tickets to a Sonics basketball game, which I will attend (I bought a fifth of season tickets, and I haven’t been to one game all season). Julies arrives late tonight for the weekend before she flies to Taiwan and then China. She’ll be back next weekend. Isn’t she a dedicated Julies?
My words are forced and distant today. I’m seeing two styles of my writing: the conversational and the distant. I don’t always mind the distant. My best imagery comes on days like this.
Julie and I met Shamin, Julie’s psychiatry-doctor friend, for dinner and drinks last night. After we finished dinner at a wonderful bistro in Freemont (I haven’t even begun to explore the areas of Seattle), we went to a club downtown to listen to a jazz quartet. We went to this particular show because the leader of the quartet played cello (yes, a very strange instrument for a jazz band), and Shamin plays cello with a more traditional group.
The quartet was, well, interesting, in the weakest sense of that word. We thought individually all the players were good, but the selections were very modern and more disturbing than entertaining. The combination of saxophone and cello didn’t work for me. Both instruments play in the same range, and when they played the same notes (which they did often), the resulting sound was disappointing because it covered up the beauty of the individual instruments without creating a better sound.
Much of the music they (or, I think, the cello player) wrote was abstract. While I’m not much of a music aficionado, I do try to listen and understand composition. I think the potential for great music was there but they missed it (at least for me). For example, they played this piece called “Inner Turmoil.” The sounds were unexpected and daunting, but while there was much turmoil, there was no arc, no attempt to resolve the turmoil or explain its presence. Because I enjoy stories (in writing, movies, and music), when a song exhibits naked, unchanging emotions, I grow bored. Perhaps I’m overanalyzing it, but the song (and by extension the band) while challenging, left too much on the table.
I did have a point to this story: I’m beginning to think of my abstract exercises in that manner. As I continue to reach into that reservoir, I’m seeing that I should use it as a place to experiment and exercise. I have to remember that it is never in and of itself interesting. The interest comes with what I do with what I find buried in its midst.
Exercise: Throw phrases onto a page and cultivate what sticks without mistaking the residue for actual writing. It’s an exercise in excess, or, more particularly, new material for discussion (of the internal, I’m-really-not-an-insane-person type). When I’m throwing the tidbits onto the page, there is no rush, no editing, and no worries. All of that occurs afterwards.
My green banana leaked a sticky, viscous substance this morning in my car. I’m still not sure what it was, but I decided not to eat the banana, which was probably a good thing, since the peel ripped apart in strands, and the strands started dancing when I tried to peel it.
Rejection tastes like burnt chocolate. I figured I’d be devastated. I’m not. So, you don’t like my writing. So, you think that I have nothing to share and no talent to share it. You might be right but fuck if I care. “You’re not good enough to play on this court, son. There’s the kid’s court over there, take your short shorts with you. Now get.” You have no idea what those words do to me. You expect me to crawl up in a corner and roll myself into a small ball. But I’m not one of those people. I don’t believe in corners and I don’t believe in balls.
Here’s the story: I shared this website with a friend at work whose opinion and intelligence I respect. While speaking with a mutual friend today, I mentioned, in passing, that I had to write tonight. He made a face. He figured I’d already spoken to our mutual friend about my writing, which I had, in a way, since weeks had passed and she never commented on it. I’ll call her tomorrow to find out the details, but the gist of it, according to him, was that she was glad I was a talented lawyer. This is all hearsay but probably accurate hearsay. Still, I’ll wait until the horse speaks.
On a happier note, Julie finally turned the corner on this writing thing. While she’s not ready to support me financially—she claims I’d become a house rodent, not working and wandering around bored—she has been talking more openly about her thoughts on my writing and actually encouraging me to write. I really appreciate that. I know I suck but I also know I’m working toward something in me that tingles from the point of my head to the trim of my big toenail.
Try as I might, lead knees keep me from rising off the steel-infested ground. The loud clamors of righteous monkeys proclaim the apocalypse upon us, for righteous monkeys always worry about such things. Why do I insist on rolling balls uphill?
Meaningless words pass the time before sleep. “Yuk it up now for tomorrow waits, crouched beneath the hedges, ready to spring at the notice of a moment.” I hate those damn tomorrows and their silly hedges.
The cold weather has again chased away the ants. I found one this evening, but as I swooped with my wadded-up toilet paper to capture her, she scurried under my big-screen TV. As I lie here, typing senseless words to cover senseless thoughts, I keep looking over to my TV, hoping that she surrenders her waiting game and peeks out of the darkened crevice beneath the TV. The toilet water awaits her.
My renewed interest in the gym is about to end. My new gym buddy won’t work out (oh, the puns just kill me!). It’s not that he refuses to work out, it’s that our schedules and interest don’t coincide. We had the let’s-be-friends talk today. It was mutual. What that means, however, is that chicken-legs David is here to stay for a bit longer.
It’s too early to sleep. I’m out of Netflixed movies, which means I have to find other pursuits to pass the time. With Julies in China, I have to entertain myself. Waiting out the ant isn’t gratifying. It would be if I knew she didn’t escape up and over the wall behind my TV. They’re sneaky, these flying ants are. If I knew she was still there, I could feel as if I might win this contest. As it is now, I have a feeling she somehow managed to burrow a hole through my rug and into the nest that I’m sure swarms beneath or above my house.
I’m going to call it a night. “The time, doctor?” :32pm” I did more editing of wringinhair.com, but I’m stuck cleaning up the first part instead of finishing the second part. I do that when I don’t want to actually write. I’ll reedit the same parts until I suck all life from the prose. Not that there was much life to begin with. I’ll rewrite the second half hopefully tomorrow. It’s been a while since I’ve edited and proclaimed a short story finished.
I’m having trouble writing the essay I spoke about yesterday. I know I should be spending this time writing instead of consternating about my troubles, but I can only stare so long at poorly formed paragraphs before feelings of dejection overtake my fragile psyche. That and today is caffeine-free, never a good omen.
After a rather prolific day writing yesterday, today was slower. Julie left a few hours ago, and she’s on her way back to California after two-bookend weekends in Seattle during her whirlwind (her term, not mine) tour of China and Taiwan. I parked and walked her to security because she had to check her two large suitcases. It’s always harder to watch her leave from there because the pain lasts longer. Better to rip the bandage off and be done with it. The Castle is now empty and I don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t want to think about my cold bed or empty heart.
After spending the weekend in different neighborhoods in Seattle, Julie and I decided that as long as we’re in Seattle, there’s no reason to move away from the Castle. While there are some cute neighborhoods with better access to dining and coffee houses, any other house we bought would pale compared to the peacefulness, architecture, and views of the Castle. I doubt the cuteness of other neighborhoods would last long. Even the best contains only five or six blocks worth of interesting shops. I keep trying to force Seattle into my mold of New York. I have to accept that this is not New York, and I will have to drive places, find culture spread throughout the city, and accept that neighborhoods contain only a few blocks worth of interesting shops and restaurants.
I have nothing else to say. I didn’t have much to say to begin with, but after cutting my nails (long nails make typing very difficult), I felt I should say something. I decided not to bore you with more chronicles on my essay writing. It’ll come or not over this week. I can rehash it after the verdict is in. Instead, I’ll post what little I’ve written of this non-essay musing, and mope around the Castle. In spite (or perhaps because) of all its peacefulness, the Castle is a wonderful place to mope.
Life is about emotion. Write about what you know. Write about life.
The setup. The conflict. The emotion. The fall.
So much more that needs to be said before I get there. Characters the reader needs to fall in love with, then the knife, the retched wound. That’s what I want to share. How do I share it? How do I say?
Zealotry is for whiners.
She lived. She fell in love. He fell in love. They loved. She died. Anguish. Angst.
Zealously.
I keep thinking about terror. I’m exhausted today. I woke up too early and went to sleep too late. And yet here I am, ready to write something that’s probably not worth writing. I do that a lot, this writing without knowing about what and not knowing its worth. Who needs worth when caffeine struggles against exhaustion? I have three hours of battery time left and I will use almost none of it.
Righteousness rises over the horizon. I like important-sounding words to rise places. Is it rise or raise? Word seems to think it is raise, but I’m not so sure. Where’s Garner when you need him? Answer: he’s at work on my desk with a folded-over sticky note stuck into a page in the A section. I’m working methodically through his Modern English Usage as part of NEQID. On second thought, righteousness isn’t a terribly important word, and it doesn’t sound important, it looks important. I’m waiting for it to hit, for me to brush past these useless thoughts and move on to a too-short piece on nothing.
I feel it.
It’s gone now. It was there for a moment, but now it’s not. A lady sat in the bucks of stars wearing a pair of pink low-heeled shoes, and I thought, this is it, inspiration at its finest. This lady will spark the deluge. And then not. It does that, disappearing when I think I have it, the inspiration. It makes it worse when, as now, I sit here thinking it’s just beyond reach, if I could just lean that extra bit, when, in reality, it’s not only out of reach, it’s out of mind.
Bowlers rise and unite for there are times when even bowlers consider bowlers athletes.
The chocolate is good but I don’t know if it’s going to keep me going today. Life has zipped past me this week. Oh, wait, it’s only Tuesday. Dagonit. (Wow, where did that sound come from?)
I left the bucks, and I’m now sitting on my couch. I edited the above in the spirit of good-humored-crazy talk, and now I have to edit the rest of the stuff that I belted out sometime between arriving home and sitting here in the dark fueled by an apple. Is there a more perfect fruit than the apple? Yeah, I know something can’t be more perfect, just like someone can’t be more pregnant. What’s your point?
Darkness clouds the Castle. Well, almost darkness. The sky is still blue, so I guess we’re still a few moments away from real darkness. Well, almost-real darkness since I live in Seattle where it never gets country dark. I’m babbling now. Let me get back to editing my other babbles before I find myself in that senseless circular editing, where I comment on my edits and edit those comments, only to comment on those edits. You see where that could lead me. (To think what I could have done with this prolific evening if I only applied myself to non-musing babbles.)
I lied about not commenting on the comment. It’s now dark-dark, the sky is black except for the horizon, which is grayish because of the city lights. Everything is quiet. That’s not true. Cars drive by down the Castle’s hill, and my Xbox, which is holds “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” on pause after I finished watching it (the movie provided part of my inspiration for Beautiful yesterday). I should probably turn it off. Oh, and the hard drive on my laptop is clicking. It doesn’t usually click. I wonder what it’s doing. Okay, enough not commenting on the comment, I have to get back to editing the not writing.
“And so the article discussed Bush’s bulldozing of social security in such a way that literal tears came to my face.” “Not figurative tears?” “Oh no, these were real tears, tears of laughter and ridicule.”
Tangents are the lifeblood of the short-attention spanned. Seymour was a tangent.
Flattened. People left my neighbor’s house. He must have had an event or something. I never have events. It’d be nice to have an event because then people would visit me.
When did you get home? Awhile ago. You were busy, so I didn’t want to disturb you. You never disturb me. Then why do you get all pissy when I interrupt your tv watching? I don’t get pissy. Try saying that when you are pissy, and you’ll have a change in your tune. I don’t even play tunes.
My mind won’t focus on anything tonight. I can’t find the hook. I started another essay about shaving. I figured, with all that research out there on this internet thing, I didn’t actually have to learn to shave; instead, I could just write an essay about what I planned to do when I got off my lazy ass and read all the internet articles and tried to shave all traditional-like. The funny part (in the essay) would be that I would have tried none of it. It would all be hypothetical. You get it? Hypothetical! Clearly, I haven’t made much progress, or I would have splattered it against this thing to show off my brilliance. I’m okay with that—the not progressing thing. I’ll get to it or not.
Today was an early morning, which might explain some of these random thoughts. Not that my normal thoughts aren’t random, but today’s are particular out there, otherworldly, wishing I could say something meaningful but accepting that although the caffeine can give me energy, the focus has to be pulled from deep within my guts and yanked up through my throat to be spritzed onto the page. I didn’t realize “spritz” wasn’t a word. I wonder where I learned that from.
I’m leaning more toward this research thing. It hasn’t actually helped me in any of my writing, but I feel that if I could incorporate it into my thinking, I might actually have something to say. Now, if only I could find the time to research and write. I barely have the time to put these silly words on the page before I have to sleep, work, and drink coffee, which are, of course, all very complicated and important activities.
I felt it was time to start a new paragraph. I read this somewhere, but it did ring true: like sentence length, a writer is supposed to vary paragraph length.
I made that last one short to demonstrate the principal. I guess the fear is that the reader will become bored if all the paragraphs are of a normal length. You could take it too an extreme and write really long paragraphs like DFW or not even use paragraphs like that last author I read, W. G. Sebald, an award-winning author that I didn’t get (I notice I don’t get many great authors—I think it has something to do with my public education).
This has degenerated even beyond my measly powers to edit it into writing that makes a bit of sense. More monkey writing—I’m trying to coin that phrase, for those who wonder what the fuck I’m talking about. Think back to those million monkeys on typewriters, and you’ll get the picture.
It’s sometimes nice to write like this. I know I’m not saying anything, but not to worry about saying anything, it’s a relief, you know. It’s a whole bunch of nothing with extra whipped cream. I think whipped cream might be one of my favorite food groups. I like mochas, but what I love about them is sucking the whipped cream off the top. I hate when I’m too late and the whipped cream melts into the mocha. What a waste! I try to arrange my coffee buying so I can immediately take the top off and suck off the whipped cream. So yummy.
Okay, that’s enough. I could go on like this for hours, but I know nobody made it down this far. Hell, I’m not even going to make it this far in the editing process. It’s too painful.
I’m really going to post it. Right now. Stop trying to distract me. My problem is that I’m enjoying the freedom in just writing and knowing I’m going to say nothing. Just typing whatever comes to my mind. You know, using the word just a lot, and the words a lot a lot. You get the picture?
I write this lying in bed, wondering who stole my day. Inspiration struck me at strange times today, and because of that, this is the first opportunity I’ve had to write. That’s not completely honest: I wrote a few bad paragraphs in an aborted story this afternoon; and instead of writing when I returned home (with plenty of opportunities), I spent the evening watching 28 Up, the fourth segment in what must have been the first reality series on television. The series explored the statement: “Give me a child at seven, and I’ll give you the man.” It’s a rather brilliant concept (brilliant in the English sense of the word).
The producers chose thirteen English children of diverse backgrounds, and filmed their stories and thoughts every seven years, starting when they were seven. I finished the fourth film, the aptly named 28 Up. The premise of the documentary has held up rather well. The thirteen followed the path laid out by their economic class and intelligence. It’s interesting how much is decided when you are so young, and how hard it is to break away from where you grow up. In many ways it reminded me of . . . the book’s name escapes me, but it’s about genetically forcing people into groups: alphas, betas, gammas. My only complaint with the documentary is that it grows repetitive when watching it chronologically. The producers used clips from the earlier episodes to show progressions, which if you’ve seen the earlier episodes becomes rather repetitive. As an elementary sociological experiment, however, it provides keen insights.
(Do you see why I can’t write essays? Instead of explaining the keen insights or explaining things beyond the basic plot points, my head grows heavy and I throw clichéd and trite statements onto the page. One of these days, I’m going to attempt to apply original thought to some of these thoughts. Though I’m afraid if I do, the world as we know it might end.)
This week somehow sprinted past me when I wasn’t looking. It wasn’t until I brushed my teeth this morning that I realized today was Thursday. When I brush my teeth, I usually walk over to the full-length window in my study outside my bedroom (which is outside my bathroom). The window provides a view of the lake, the park, and on clear, cold days, the mountains. As I mindlessly brushed my teeth and gazed over the rainy lake, I saw that my neighbors across the street had put his garbage can out for pickup. I thought this weird, since the garbage trucks only pickup on Thursdays, and today clearly wasn’t a Thursday, it was more like a Tuesday or Wednesday. I figured that my neighbor was probably out of town for the rest of the week and wanted to ensure his garbage was removed. As I brushed the lower left quadrant of my mouth, I looked closer and saw that other neighbors had put out their garbage. At this point I grew suspicious. I decided to check my cell phone for the day. I figured once I ruled that out, I could consider my budding conspiracy theory based on my neighbor’s obvious jealousy of the Castle.
My cell phone put to rest any conspiracy theories, and I began hustling to get ready before the garbage trucks passed my house without taking away my overstuffed bag of garbage, which included two weeks of sucked-up ants (I forgot to empty the vacuum last week). There’s a lesson in here somewhere. I’ll let you know when I figure it out. And don’t you worry: I beat the garbage truck, and my house is now garbage-free. That is, except for the boxes and bags scattered in my second bedroom and storage room. The pile has been growing since I moved in, and one of these days a hauler will haul it all away. With my sister and mother visiting soon, one of those days will have to be soon, or they’re going to be mighty uncomfortable.
When at work, I always try to buy my mocha before the Starbucks-brand coffee stand in the cafeteria closes. As I tried to juggle my schedule and meetings to fit in a visit to the stand, I remembered that I had decided today would be a caffeine-free day. When I woke this morning, after the garbage scare, I realized that I’ve had yummy caffeine almost every day this past week. In a test of my will, I made the satisfying decision to forgo my mocha and, more sadly, whipped cream. I am happy to report that today was a caffeine-free day. And I appear no worse for the . . . I bet you were thinking I was going to say wear. Well, you’re wrong. I like to surprise the reader, so, today, I appear no worse for the, oh hell, wear.
As part of my weekend explorations of Seattle, I visited Wallingford. This neighborhood, like most Seattle neighborhoods, consisted of a few commercial blocks along a congested avenue lined with shopping and cafes. I ate lunch at a weekend-breakfast place, and sat at the bar watching the short-order cooks. The grill chef—his stubbles length led me to the belief that he used the same razor on his head and face—served the finished plates to the counter, yelling “Alisa Please,” “Tim Please,” and “Samantha Please,” to pick up their respective dishes. I thought of many awful jokes about waiters from the Please family, or the Please Restaurant, but I resisted sharing them with you (well, sort of). The mushrooms in my delicious omelet must have been funky to sketch such absurdities in my Moleskine.
Besides the grill chef, there was an omelet chef, and three kitchen helpers, who chopped up the vegetables, prepared the toast and batters, and washed the dishes. They all wore the white chef shirts and checkered black and white pants that seem standard in kitchens. I wonder who started that. The restaurant smelled of frying butter, and because one table was in the bar area, the hostess asked everyone she placed on the waiting list if they were over 21. The waiting time for all patrons: 10 minutes regardless of how many people were waiting.
After lunch, I walked through Wallingford before settling on a Tully’s coffeehouse as my morning writing place. Tully’s had a nicer sitting area than the next-store bucks of stars. While I would have preferred a non-chain coffeehouse, the choices were slim. I wrote random warm-up thoughts, bad stories, and complaints, all of which I’ll post separately.
I spent the late afternoon in a quaint teahouse with a variety of tea choices and convenient electrical outlets and wireless access. I drank Hantou Dawn Oolong tea, served by the owner, a white man with wild black hair framing his baldhead, and thick, black eyebrows, which jutted out an inch on both sides of his head. He had a definite tea fetish, and served the tea with an almost-religious deference. He was chatting with the customer in front of me—a chat that resulted in me waiting an additional fifteen minutes before ordering my tea—about a former employee at the teahouse who moved to China and married a Chinese woman he met in the first Chinese restaurant he visited. I’m not sure if that was fate or desperation.
While at the teahouse, I tried to organize my thoughts, but my mind, still rattled from a caffeine overload, bounced too fast for me to grab onto. The tea was very tasty, but the service confused me. They provided two teapots, one full of the tealeaves and hot water, and the other empty. I poured the tea from the first teapot into my cup using the strainer. After drinking the whole teapot, I realized by watching my neighbors that I should have strained the tea into the second teapot, and poured my cups from there. At least I reckoned that they gave me an oven mitt to cover the teapot while it steeped.
As I drank the tea, I realized that the caffeine was too much after my morning mocha, and my mind soared miles ahead of the rush. I was comfortable with that, but I knew I’d need to organize these thoughts eventually, and the thought of picking through and finding gems was disconcerting.
After riding out the explosions, I drove home, and stopped at a shady carwash. The owners were adding to the twenty-year old carwash a barbeque shop and barbershop. For twenty dollars, they hand washed my car, even cleaning the inside of the rims, an area that hasn’t felt a sponge since I bought the car. Even though it rained halfway through the carwash, the interesting characters that worked or just hung out there made it a worthwhile stop. It’s nice to occasionally the corporate culture and find such neighborhood places.
Today is another coffee-free day. I’m not sure why I feel the need to report continuously on my caffeinated state. I think it’s like the weather, an innocent statement to start the conversation, or at least explain why my writing is short or bad (not that my writing is ever short or bad).
As part of NEQID, I’ve been thinking a lot about concentration. Even as those words left my fingers, I felt the pulls of distraction, as if someone tied a rope to my . . . okay, I’ll spare you that imagery . . . and forced me to click Internet Explorer and romp through the blogosphere. For all their talk about content written by millions, there’s rarely anything good on.
My stomach’s imagination runs rampant. Who rises in the evening to understand its gurgling? Its anger streaks across unknown landscapes and I wonder if I ever knew its brethren. Clarity of mind hides and thoughts of a family of cows raised without a bull haunt me. Succor.
Wires send signals over wireless avenues. Sleep waits for me but when I join up with her, she laughs and waves me off. What do you think you’re doing here, she’ll ask, a brightness covering her smile. I’m trying to sleep, I’ll respond, as if my answer is not obvious to an incarnation. You are not ready for sleep. You have yet to accomplish much, she will say. I’ll nod in disagreement but she’ll regard my statement and dance off to pester other wild flowers.
Say what you will about closed eyes, but they tell you much about the insights of kindness. Forgiveness is a virtue of those comfortable in their own skin with their own ideals about what the perfect person is, and can forgive those who fail to reach those exalted heights. For one of the steps up is to look down and forgive all that are below. How else can you achieve bliss?
I’m feeling empty. This morning I was depressed about everything. That passed. This evening, as I try to write, I look at the empty words and quasi-depression returns. I’d like to say it was a delicious depression, but if I did, I’d be deluding myself. As I attempt to write parts of stories, I feel a terrible inability to say something. I look back and wonder what value the words have. They are repeated words, words said a million times as filler for something more meaningful. I know I’m consternating and should suck it up, but it’s difficult when I write such words, and when I don’t know if any of my words will ever have meaning. I want to reach beyond this medium, to find someway of saying things that is special for me.
You know that feeling when nothing you do or say is adequate. That’s where I am now. Where every word I write bangs me over the head and I wonder what the use is.
A few stories are spinning through my head, and I’m trying to grab hold of them. It doesn’t provide much of an excuse for my poor output, but I’m hoping a weekend in California will open my clogged pores.
I know, shut up already and write something. I’m getting to that.
I’ve been quiet lately. Today will be another quiet day. I started drafting a story yesterday, but my mind has been on other things. Bad things. Namely, video game things. Julie and I have been playing World of Warcraft (WOW). We started playing only a few hours a week, and that slowly built to over ten hours a week. And then, miraculously, we stopped. Julie went off to China (without David, who’s not bitter, not bitter at all), and, after not playing for a couple of weeks, I felt my addiction shrink away like ice cubes kept too long in the freezer. I didn’t want to play. The thought of running the rat race in video game land was gone. NEQID was upon me, and I was a bigger, better person. I used my time to read and write more, and even started keeping the Castle clean.
And then the unthinkable happened. I received an innocent looking email from Erik, a friend from graduate school. It was short and it said he was going to do it, he was going to buy WOW. I had spoken about WOW to Erik before—well, actually, I had spoken to him about Dark Age of Camelot, WOW’s predecessor, and he seemed uninterested. He played video games, but they didn’t involve much online action. He scoffed at my descriptions of MMORPG, thinking only children played such games. So, when he told me about buying WOW, I thought little of it. In truth, I felt bad for him because I knew he would grow addicted as all players do. I was beyond my addiction at that point, shaking my head knowingly at a friend about to fall.
The email chain then expanded to include our mutual friend Will, who I didn’t even know played video games. Erik had somehow convinced Will to buy the game. Will hemmed and hawed, but eventually bought it. He spent the first couple of days struggling to sign in (we had to teach him to turn the computer on before trying to run the game), and in two days, he, too, was addicted. That’s when plans within plans started forming in my brain. Evil plans. Plans involving me reentering the gaming world with Julie at my side, to join Erik and Will in spreading mayhem.
We exchange many emails over the last few days, some describing strategies for working together, others trash talking about respective penis sizes (from what I was able to gather from the conversation, Will, although short in height, towers over Erik in that department). Long email exchanges passed the time at work, and we agreed to log in at 8pm tonight to form the ultimate four-person party and keel (that’s David-video-game speak for killing) unsuspecting mobs (video game monsters).
So, you see, I’ve had a lot on my mind lately, with planning for the video games tonight, and leveling up my character (and Julie’s) to the agreed tenth level. I think once we start playing regularly (assuming this works out), I should get back into my normal writing schedule with fewer distractions. At least, that’s my hope.
I’d write more, but it’s almost 5:30pm, and I have to get home and mentally prepare for tonight. Oh, hell, who am I kidding? We’re all going to be rearing to go way before 8pm tonight. We’re addicts after all.
My brain’s gears grind and squeak relentlessly through the night, almost as if the mechanic forgot to replace my oil during an oil change. I spend what should be my sleep time replaying past video games, recalculating virtual moments in vivid, bright flashes of intense and inane concentration.
I go to lunch with Julie’s family in Dallas. A fortune-teller lady, an old friend of Julie’s parents, joins us, and grabs my wrist to read my palm. She doesn’t speak English but Julie translates. She has a grandmotherly look but I don’t like her because Jennifer, Julie’s younger sister, is her favorite, and I’m partial to Julie. I forget most of what she says—partly because I don’t believe much in fortune telling, and partly because I have a bad memory—but I remember she says I spend too much time thinking, and not thinking in a good way.
We stand near the water-cooler and Larry discusses a new lawnmower. I mention that I am procrastinating calling a gardener to take care of the Castle’s garden. Larry looks at me as if I’m from Mars. He says gardening is one of his favorite activities because it gives him a chance to get out of the house and perform mindless, satisfying, and guilt-free work. He says I’ll understand when I’m an older family man the satisfaction inherent in mindless activities.
My mind is constantly in motion. I’d like to say that it spends its time pondering big and important questions, formulating theories about life’s deeper meaning and my place within that meaning. I’d like to say that it spends hours forming logical arguments about topics of interest, thinking through the building blocks and tying them together with anecdotal yarns. I’d like to say that I have some control over my mind’s activities; that I can direct it to the questions that interest me, and focus its attention on working out particularly knotty issues that make up my life. But I don’t. None of it. At best, I can show it the direction I want it to go, and hope that it will get there, eventually. As it is now, it spends most of its time spinning in the dirt and rerunning embarrassing, stressful, or poorly actuated moments. I’m recast as the hero with at times tragic results.
My friends, Julie, and I played video games for a relatively fun two and a half hours last night. Toward the end, my head started pounding and I knew I was in for a bad night. As I discussed above, my brain has problems getting past too much concentrated effort, especially if that activity occurs in front of a computer. (This isn’t an issue with writing. If anything, I feel more rested after a long writing session, and while my mind may dwell on a plot or characters, or a particular nasty turn of phrase, it never does so in an anxiety-filled way.) As I tossed and turned in bed last night, I thought of giving up the video games, something I’m sure The Nameless One would welcome. I’m not willing to go that far (just one last drink, I swear), but I am going to try to further limit it by playing only when Erik, Will, and Julie can find available time. This should decrease my video game time to around four hours a week—a good, in my mind, amount of time to waste on a fun if unproductive hobby.
I find myself again racing against the clock to write this musing. I think the time pressure helps me concentrate. When I think about it, there are three things that help me concentrate: (1) yummy caffeine; (2) time pressure when I have something to say; and (3) being locked away somewhere (e.g., airplanes) with nowhere to go and nothing to do.
I’m looking forward to Julie’s visit this weekend. After this weekend, however, we’re not going to see each other for a very long month. We’ll next see each other when we celebrate Julie’s birthday in June (chief—i.e., to remember her birthday, I use the mnemonic I learned in The Memory Book: CH=6, F=8, and vowels are ignored, reminding me that June 8th is Julie’s birthday) with a trip to Vancouver.
I’m going for a fitting for a new bicycle on Friday. I might attempt commuting by bicycle to work a couple of days a week. It’s an hour and fifteen minute ride to work, and a forty-five minute ride home (thanks to the hills). I might have to build up to it, but it’s a goal for the summer. I figured if I bicycled to work, then I wouldn’t have to go to the gym—not that I’ve been going to the gym lately. But I did take a long jog a couple of days ago, and even though my legs still hurt, I felt great. Driving home today, I came up with an even better reason for a bicycle commute. With a beautiful Seattle day, I was stuck in an hour and a half worth of traffic on the way home. In other words, I would have made it home faster if I had bicycled. And, yes, my commute was very angry, as I yelled at the cars around me, and Julie, who decided she didn’t want to talk to angry David today.
I just drank the last few drops of orange juice. I opened it a few weeks ago, and as I upended the carton, I realized that the orange juice had begun fermenting. It wasn’t the pleasantest of experiences.
As part of our monthly “Wine Down” at work, Larry (the colleague I spoke about above) brought his hot-air balloon. We inflated and tethered (pronounced teh-thered, not tea-thered, as I thought) the balloon, and Larry took people up for a forty foot flight. I was in charge of the main rope that attached the balloon to his car. I was an important person. Below are some pictures of this event.
The inside of the balloon when I went for a ride.
Leonard standing next to the tow rope that was my charge
Larry, the Balloon Master
I’m exhausted. I spent the day working myself into a lather about the new bicycle. Have I mentioned how obsessed I become before I buy a new toy? After test driving (test cycling is probably the more accurate term) a number of bikes, I fell in love with one but somehow resisted buying it—I convinced myself that I needed more time to research and speak to Scott, my local biking hero. (I’m still not sure which word I prefer: ‘bike’ or ‘bicycle.’ ‘Bike’ makes it sound either more manly (“look at that guy on the Harley with the big-boobed chick”) or more childish (“Now, Charlie, get your bike and put it into the garage). ‘Bicycle’ makes it sound either sporty (“Lance Armstrong, on his bicycle for his last Tour de France, is sure to be talked about as the best bicycle rider in history”) or old-fashioned (“Looky, looky, the whole gangs here: we have Audie on the unicycle, Rupert on the bicycle, and Konrad on the tricycle—look at the size of the tricycle’s wheel; isn’t that amazing?”). I’m going to have to give this much more thought.)
Getting back to the bike, after work today, I headed back to the bike shop (notice that they don’t call it a bicycle shop, or do they?), and plunked down my credit card to make the purchase. For those interested in this type of stuff, the bike is a 2005 Litespeed Firenza with an Ultegra 9spd (18 gear combinations) package. As is my curse (or weakness or advantage, depending on which way you look at it), it’s a fancy bike, lightweight and built for speed. I spent thirty minutes picking out all the necessary biking gear (it’s amazing how much gear I buy for my hobbies). I bought and installed the bicycle rack on the back of my car, a very time-consuming process, and spent the entire drive home staring into my rearview mirror to ensure that my sparkling new bicycle didn’t try to run off into traffic.
After arriving home (and a quick run to the PCC for fuel), I took the bike for an hour ride. It was glorious. Sure, the bike shorts made my already chicken-looking legs look, well, chickenier, and I couldn’t for the life of me get used to the shoe clips (note to self: when breaking at the bottom of the hill, disengage the clips before coming to a complete stop and tipping over), but the speed (according to the trip computer—a necessary biking accessory—I topped out at 32.4 mph, road 10.4 miles over around 50 minutes (I forgot to turn off the computer, so I don’t have an accurate time), leaving me at an average speed of 12.4 mph.)—what was I talking about? Oh, yes, the speed, when I got myself going, was amazing. Now, my numbers are not incredible, even for a first ride, but, remember, I’m working toward my goal of riding to work, a 30-mile commute, in about 1:15. I’m still a wee-bit off that pace.
The ride would have been perfect except for the ending. A huge hill (it’s actually three hills with large spikes sticking out of the concrete and Hun warriors chasing me and poking my legs with big pole arms) leads up Orcas Avenue from Seward Park to my street. After riding a wide circle along the lake—not the entire lake, just a small piece of it, at a point of which I turned around and retraced my steps—I made it back to the park, switched to the lowest gear, and cranked up the hill. I made it around three-quarters of the way up before I gave up. That was a mistake. Had I continued pedaling and fighting the hill (and the Hun warriors), I would not have had the horror show that was my attempts to get my feet clipped back into the pedals on an incline. It took me many false starts and countless slipped shoes before I managed to finish the hill. I’ll beat Orcas. It’s just a matter of time. It’s quaking in its mountainous shoes as we speak.
I’m not sore yet. I figure it’ll hit me tomorrow or perhaps the next day. It doesn’t matter much. Assuming the weather holds, I’ll continue riding during the evenings and weekends. I love goals. I would post pictures of my new bicycle, but I’m too comfortable (and lazy and tired) to get my camera. For the record, it looks sort of bike-y.
Switching gears (do the puns ever end?), many people have commented that my writing has been suffering as of late. Julie believes that physical activity will get me back into the swing of things. I’m hoping she’s right, because I’ve been frustrated over the last week. I doubt I’ll get much more writing done today, but I’m hoping this week I’ll put a few words together and post something substantial.
Very tough day today. My head weighs a ton and keeps falling to one side or the other. I tried to sneak a nap in during work today, but it didn’t do much to alleviate the pain. I’ve been a bit low on energy lately, and the combination of a feeble attempt at bicycling and video games yesterday (not at the same time, thankfully) wiped me out today. I’m trying to survive the rest of the day. I see a warm bed in my future and lots of sleep.
It’s difficult trying to write a story. I haven’t written original text for a while, and, if you hadn’t noticed, lately I’ve been constipated with writing in general.
Today was good. Even outside of my writing, I’ve been rather low and depressed lately. Yesterday was a low point. A headache jumped on top of the depression, and beat me until I agreed to crawl under the covers and lie still. As I side note, over the last few months, I’ve managed to decrease the frequency of my headaches. I’d like to think that yummy caffeine fixed my head. (It’s either the caffeine or the fatty foods I’ve been eating, or perhaps it’s the video games. Those are the only reasonable explanations.)
When I spoke to Julie earlier, I tried to convey how good a day it was. “Today’s a PC day,” I told Julie. “PC? What are you talking about?” she asked. “You know, PC, a day after I have a headache. Wait, that can’t be right,” I said. “Did you have another brain fart? It’s P.H.D., Post-Headache Day. It’s sad when I can remember your pathetic acronyms better than you.”
But enough Julie-deprecating humor for one day. I wanted to write something today since the day is going so swimmingly. While my mood and head-state hasn’t been great lately, my worst offense has been my lack of sitting in front of the screen and suffering. Without suffering, how can I call myself an artist? Okay, I don’t believe that I have to suffer to create art—but I do believe that for me, the initial stage requires much suffering to get moving. Once I get over that initial bulwark, my writing may flow (or I may suffer for hours writing words like the ones above). Either way it’s time for me to stop babbling about me and start babbling about some other guy in some other place.
After suffering for an hour, I don’t have much to show. After thinking up the idea, I couldn’t find the conflict or the characters or the setting: So much for telling a story today. I did try and I suffered greatly, if that’s any consolation. I’ll try again tomorrow, and then the next day, and then the next day until I get this right.
Update: After I posted, I wanted to write more. I didn’t have much in mind, so I will pound out words in the dark. It’s weird typing in the dark. The screen is so bright that everything around it appears black. That’s not all I wanted to say. What else did I want to talk about? I’m heading into that nowhere zone, where I have nothing to say but I want to peel more words and show off their gooey guts. It’s way past my bedtime. I apologize for wasting your time with this inane entry.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. This has been by choice. I decided to take time to regain my energy and refocus my efforts. It has been refreshing to have days pass where I didn’t think about writing. I’ve fallen asleep not worrying about writing but instead dreaming of stories.
I’m not sure how long this silence will last. When I have something to say, I’ll post. I wanted to let people know I’m alive and well, and happily applying NEQID.
My hands burned. Flames rose from the tips of each finger and the skin glowed red in the darkness.
Blank pages scare me again. What is there to fear in words? I pretended that I was looking for inspiration over the past week, when really I was hiding under the covers or flipping buttons trying to avoid perspiration. I’m back now. I’m not sure why, but here I am, pounding out words in the hopes that some of them make sense and say something. My fingers are tired from all the video games. It isn’t from the writing.
I need to find a place to lock myself in. Silence and no escape is what I need. Wow. A little time off from writing and I find it difficult to form full sentences. I’ll persevere and keep at it, at least until I give up. That’s how failing always works best for me.
I didn’t mean to sit down and start babbling. I had hopes of telling a story that’s been tunneling through my head. This feels like that first day of Nano last year, when I sat in front of the computer, and felt I had wasted all my days of planning and agonizing over the story outline. I have nothing to say and I think I should give up before I hurt myself.
I’m trapped at work, thanks to a terrible traffic night. The traffic here has been bad lately. It’s partly because of the weather and partly because of the three slow old ladies that drive at the front of all traffic jams.
I have nothing. I’ll try this again at home without the temptation of video games (for today).
I’m home and I’m waiting for perspiration to take over.
I would have written more, but it was video game night (and, no, it isn’t video game night every night), and we didn’t finish up until 10:30pm. Of course, I could have written earlier, but by the time I got home (after another one hour commute—this traffic is killing me), I was too excited with the prospect of keeling defenseless monsters. The last two play nights have been difficult for our motley crew of four, however—we’ve tried to beat the same dungeon, and failed both times. Being the lead-headed fools that we are, we’re going to give up and try a different quest next time, and come back to the dungeon when we’re more powerful.
And I have no idea what I’m doing with all these George anecdotes. I didn’t have a plan when I sat down yesterday, and I still don’t. I’m throwing stuff out there to see if anything sticks. I watched George Lucas’s THX1138 before writing the yesterday’s post, which was probably why it was disjointed and avant garde.
I’m sitting here, wandering the web instead of pushing words. I’ve begun to ask what is wrong with me. This is a rhetorical question—I don’t want to know what you think is wrong with me. I was asking myself the question during my pre-writing period. As an early warning (I’ve been told to drop these warnings and get right to it—but this is a necessary one), this is going to be a strangely long musing. I’m trying to get back into these long, everyday writing thing. What follows is my reasoning and random thoughts I’ve used to build enough words to call this a successful day.
The caffeine seethes through my veins, and I’m feeling better about myself. I don’t know what it is I will write (if I end up writing anything), but I wanted to start pushing the words onto the paper and seeing if any of them will cooperate. I like that phrase, “pushing words.” It’s like I’m a drug dealer. I wonder who the user is in this scenario.
There’s a fruit can on the table. The tab broke off without the can opening. Nobody wants to drink it now. There was a week where every orange juice can in the refrigerator wouldn’t open. The tabs would rip off before they’d break the open the can. It was a frustrating week and I had to drink cranberry juice to get my vitamin C requirements. I would bend the tabs vertical and leave it in the refrigerator in the hopes that the juice man would see the cans with the broken tabs and replace them. He did, eventually. Either that, or I lifted up the tabs on all the broken ones.
Why write? What’s the purpose of it? I know I keep asking these inane questions; it’s just that when I sit here, and I think about these things, I begin to question writing’s worth. I throw out three paragraph vignettes and I wonder what they’re worth. Here goes another.
Experimental, shemerimental. I’m so sick of this bullshit. Just sit down and write a stupid story about something stupid and be done with it. I want to be done with it. I’m so sick of this shit. Of this shitty way of starting. This is good. You’re writing something, which is something you haven’t done in a while. Keep putting words on the paper and use this as your warm-up exercise. I don’t understand why you don’t consternate more often. Maybe once you finish consternating, something will come out. Yeah, sure this is a painful way to start, but who cares? Seriously? Get over yourself. You don’t have to post this shit. The only thing bad about this part is that you’re wasting part of your writing energies on bullshit like this. If you can get past this, then you’re golden. Golden!
Write a story about something simple with simple language and having no idea where you’re going with it. Why not? Why keep searching for the special nothing? Why not accept what you have and go with it. And for the record, this not-writing-everyday was a bad, bad idea. You need to keep at it, you need to keep writing every day for at least an hour otherwise bad things happen.
Wow. Taking off time from writing was not a good idea. Fuck the recharging of batteries. Fuck the organizing my thoughts and trying to figure out what I wanted to do with this thing. All of that was bullshit. What it turns out is that taking breaks is not what I’m good at. I had this same problem when I stopped my morning exercises (I’ve since restarted them to build somewhat less-chickeny arms): when I don’t do something almost every day, I end up doing it fewer times every week. By the second week, my day of rest turns into two days of rest. By the fourth week, I’m up to five days of rest. And after that I’m left with nothing. A steaming hulk of what I used to be.
That’s where I ended up with my writing. After taking time off, I’m finding it hard to get back into it. Sure, I write occasionally, and while some of it is decent, most of it is too little effort to come up with too few words. I’ve always said this is about effort. Talent has nothing to do with it since I don’t have any control over that variable. What I can provide is the perspiration, and my towel is dry, dry, dry. Sitting here and bitching isn’t helping things, but it is helping me put words on paper, something I’ve forgotten how to do. Nano taught me to put words on paper, and I’ve forgotten all the lessons of that time.
It’s not like I haven’t said all of this before. I’ve talked about how I need to stop worrying about quality and start worrying about quantity. I’ve talked about finding my voice and trying to get over my obstacles: conflict (or lack thereof), pathetic-ness, and resolution (the no-blue-balls rule). I’ve become so worried about these obstacles that I forgot to write. I forgot to put words on the paper and say something. Anything. And keep saying it.
There were times where I wrote stories every day. Sure, most of the stories sucked, but at least I was trying to say something. I need to return to those times. (I also, similar to some people who will remain nameless—get it? Nameless!—need to go back and actually edit what I’ve written, turn it into a story, and not give up on editing after rewriting half of it.)
And I need to start counting words again. I hate counting words. I hate working toward that elusive goal. But without goals, I’m left with little writing. I end up trying to write for fifteen minutes, and spending the next two hours surfing the web and ignoring my nobler pursuits.
What I’m telling myself, even as I write these addendums to NEQID, is that I’ve been trying to do that, I’ve been trying to tell a story, but I keep banging into a slick wall. I’ve tried warm-up exercises, I’ve tried barreling headfirst toward a story, I’ve tried planning, I’ve tried all the bullshit that I’ve spoken about and have little to show for it. What I forget, though, is that trying while preparing for failing is not the same as doing. What is it Yoda said? “Do or do not, there is no try.” Sure, he’s a puppet. And, yeah, he’s green. But so was Kermit, and we all know that it’s not easy being green thanks to him. Where am I going with this? I have no fucking idea, but that’s the beauty of working toward a word goal. It’s not the quality of words or thoughts, it’s the quantity. Damn. I hate that cliché: quality and quantity. There must be a better way to say it, something with count and some other word that means quality. The thesaurus was little help there.
My sister Randy arrived yesterday for a visit to the Castle. She was unimpressed with the neighborhood—like me, she enjoys more city-ish neighborhoods with lots of places to walk to—but the Castle has grown on her, and its peaceful ambiance has won her over, that and my modern but simple furniture. Where did I acquire such great style?
I’m counting now. It’s strange to try to write so many words again. I know I will have to reedit the first part of this piece. And I also know that I’m going to have to transition this musing/consternation/NEQID style into story writing one of these days, but for now, I’m just happy to get words back on paper. This is how I did pre-Nano, what I still consider my most productive writing time: I started with lots of long musings, keeping tracking of my word count. I then changed to story writing, still trying to get the 2k words (or at least get close with the clever asides) before I threw myself into the Nano contest. I’m many months away from the next one, but I need to get back into this writing thing. I’m sick of looking at my front page and seeing the same shit because I was too lazy to post newer shit.
I have been rather lax in posting everything I write. I’ve grown more selective on some of my shorter, more embarrassing writings. Many times during my funk, I would write a few paragraphs and give up. I wouldn’t post those until I could put more words before them (see below for an example). I hoped that my readers wouldn’t read it, or at least read it after seeing the long and beautifully edited and written post that followed it; thus giving me credit and not thinking any less of me. I do that too often: worry about what other people think. I like to pretend that I’m Mr. Cool, that I don’t worry about what others are thinking of me or my writing, but we all know that’s bullshit. I worry very much what other people think of me, which is, to a large extent, where my shyness derives from. When I’m in a group of people that I don’t know, I fear under-impressing people, and to avoid that, I keep my mouth closed unless spoken to. It’s a weakness, but the circuitry in my brain that worries about what other people think overloads in those situations. This is the opposite of a colleague who talks too much and doesn’t think of what others think, even in large groups. So many people to write about and so little time (or energy, more exactly).
I’m impressed if you’ve read this far. (As you can tell, I’m stretching for words now. I’m at around 1,500 before editing, which might involve cutting large swaths out of the first part.) This is the first step in my acceptance that I need to write words. I have a feeling that there will be days where my words will be like these—consternations or explanations or defenses for consternations. But so what? Words are words are words. If I have nothing to say, I’ll keep saying nothing until that fills up all two-thousand spots in my document.
Returning to visitors, this week will be rather busy. My mother is flying in on Friday, and Julie arrives Saturday. (Finally! I haven’t seen Julies in a long, long time and I miss her terribly.) This might be the first time I have four people sitting at my dining room table. I’m excited about that. (I won’t actually have any food to serve them, but I’m excited to have more than two people sit at my metal table.)
I finally called the gardener today. Over the next two months, my garden should return to the condition it was in when I bought the house. With no tending, my garden remained rather nice for the first six or so months I lived here. When the rains hit in the spring—and they’ve hit hard lately—the weeds sprouted up at amazing speed. My garden, which used to be a minimalist Asian-esque garden, has turned into a jungle. The gardener says it’ll be back to its original form in only a few months. I forgot how nice it is to delegate.
I’m closing in on the last three-hundred words of this entry. I know it’s not well organized, and it’s not terribly interesting. But I don’t care. It’s an inferior entry that I’m using as a warm-up to get me back into this writing thing. It’s late at night, I’m laying in bed, and I’m stretching the words out to meet my goal. I still have problems with laying, lying, laid, lay. My brain refuses to understand the difference, no matter how often I look up the word.
Okay. I’ll stop the torture here. I expect to improve on this torture tomorrow. My hope is that by next Monday, I’ll have settled back into my routine and start pounding out some real low-quality (which is better than this no-quality entry) but excessively long words. Now, I’m off to edit these words into a semblance of interesting work (heh) and go to sleep. I have an early day of conference meetings. There’s nothing like being lectured at for an entire day to put one in a terrible mood.
Words before editing (and adding this aside to increase the word count): 1887 words; caffeine: tall mocha; writing time: not sure (I should really start recording this). I’m thinking of automating this word count thingy. That way I can create graphs and all sorts of other things—like charts and other stuff. Wow, this bad writing is a great way to increase word count, by the way. Final word count, including this final word count: 2,161.
I’m back. This is the second day in a row (or second consecutive day, I should have said) that I will babble for 2,000 words. I’m still not ready to tell a story—or at least not a full-length story. That’s not truthful. I am ready, but I’m a bit nervous to stick my toe into the water to check the temperature. There’s a tendency for someone to push me when I do that, and I’m not ready to fall headfirst. Well, not yet, anyway. I’m hoping toward the end of the week, as inspiration strikes, or, more importantly, as I run out of things to talk about here, I’ll throw myself into the fray and restart the writing of meaningless and poorly drafted stories. For now, however, I’ll convey the excitement that is my life.
I’ve almost decided that the more I write, the more I write. I don’t think there’s a time where burnout plays a role for writing too much. If anything, the burnout occurs when I stop writing or start limiting (or sacrificing) my output in the names of rest and relaxation or other things unimportant things. When I looked back to my pre- and post-Nano writings, if anything, my output increased until the fall-off period, where I stopped forcing myself to write the 2k words and started writing only as much as I felt like writing, which turned into writing only when I felt like writing, which turned into a huge rut that’s taken me a long time to dig myself out of. If this entry is any evidence, I’m still in the process of digging, and I probably won’t hit pay dirt (you get it? It’s all part of my digging analogy) for another week or so.
I lit a fire last night in my living room fireplace, the first fire in a while. The logs, which I’ve aged by the alternating process of soaking and drying (thanks to a ripped tarp in my backyard), crackled more than usual, but the fire caught quickly and burned most of the way down, so I was rather proud of my efforts. What does this have to do with anything? It’s a very good question. I’d promise to get back to it, but I’m rather sure that that would be a lie.
I laughed so hard tonight that I cried. I know that’s a cliché, but it happened: both my eyes watered up, I wheezed, and I couldn’t breathe. When I think about it now, I can’t help but smile. As I said yesterday, I’m in a conference for work this week (or at least, I think I said that—I don’t remember what I said yesterday since, like today, I wrote it while my brain was too tired). Tonight, the conference organizers decided to throw a talent revue that was served with a nicely spread Italian dinner. The talent show had the usual suspects: piano players, singers, small bands, comedians, songs with the lyrics changed to make them funnier to the attendees (e.g., if the conference was for dentists—it wasn’t--the songs would have been about teeth) The emcee (I never thought of how that word was spelled until I saw it listed on the Powerpoint slide) was particularly funny. But the highlight of the night for me was a skit put on by members of my group. I, regrettably, had no association with any of the writers or actors or directors, which was probably for the best as you will see.
L, S, and I were sitting at a red-checkered table (remember the Italian theme), watching the performances and having a genuinely good time. S went up to get more food, and when he came back, he told us that some of the guys in our group were putting together a skit, and after one of the participants backed out, they were frantically looking for someone to step in. S read the script and turned them down. He told us that it was the worst script he’d ever read. There was nothing funny in the entire script, and while they might be prepared to make absolute fools of themselves, he did not want to participate in their tomfoolery.
L and I discussed the skit, and we both decided that we couldn’t wait for it to start. S was embarrassed for them, and started making excuses to leave, but we made him sit and watch. The idea behind the skit wasn’t terrible: they portrayed scenes from Star Wars and replaced the conflict with something more appropriate to the group (e.g., staying with the dentists, they would have used cavities or gingivitis or insurance companies). As S indicated, the script was gruesome. For reasons I’m still trying to figure out, however, L and I found this gruesomeness terribly funny. You know that saying, “it’s so bad it’s good?” That’s what we thought. Out of the four hundred or so people in the room, we were the only two people who consistently laughed at everything they did from the get-go.
The main problem with the script, besides the bad writing and awful jokes, was that only about half the audience would even have got the jokes had they heard them (the audio was pretty bad, thankfully). (E.g., imagine the dentists retelling Star Wars to a roomful of medical doctors and dentists.)
In honesty, we weren’t laughing with them so much as at them. I kept imaging the writers sitting around a table (a non-red-checkered table) with papers in front of them, writing the script, and either thinking to himself or perhaps saying to each other: this is great. This is going to crack them up! Even though I don’t think it was their intention to make it funny in that way, what came out was brilliant. I like to think that one of the writers secretly pushed the script in this direction, knowing it was awful, but seeing the humor in the awfulness. The terrible skit capped off a rather fun night.
One of my colleagues described me quite well after she saw me walking out of a conference session. She said, “You’re like a Generation X’er pretending to be a lawyer.” I do sometimes think I’m too cool for my job. Or maybe I’m just too lazy. I sometimes get those two confused.
The beautiful weather returned to Seattle today. It was in the 70s and sunny most of the day. There’s something about great weather (and great comedy) that makes me feel good. Randy is still out with my cousin Nancy, who took her out for dinner. I thought about blowing off the talent revue to go with them to dinner, but I’m glad I went. (We’ve already planned a few more nights of dinners.) I think watching that skit will help get me over my terror of embarrassment for others. In the past, I wouldn’t have been able to watch that skit. I would have averted my eyes and tried not to listen or watch. I’m embarrassed as easily for myself as for others. As part of NEQID, I kept looking for ways of getting around that embarrassment. I guess laughing at it is one way. I’ll have to practice that the next time I watch an episode of “Three’s Company.”
I’m less than halfway through and I’m losing steam. It wasn’t as if I had much steam to begin with. I keep telling myself: at least you’re writing something, you’re trying. Then I think about Yoda and it all goes to hell. Of course, my thought of Yoda brings me back to the skit. The person playing Yoda (and, of course, what’s a Star Wars skit without a Yoda?) wore a burgundy, hooded sweatshirt, with two fluorescent orange coffee cups stuck to his head, which I imagine he meant to represent the ears. He spoke with a jilted Japanese accent. Did I mention how incredibly funny this was?
Today, I read a blog entry about how to become an early riser. This is something I’ve struggled with for a while, and I thought the advice was worth trying. I told you before about a watch I had ordered that supposedly would track sleep patterns. The watch took three weeks to get here, and when it did, I used it for three nights. Julie claimed my sleep became worse during those three nights and suggested I not use it anymore. It was all for the best because the alarm on the watch, which is rather important since the watch is supposed to wake you at an optimal time each morning, stopped working. Without the alarm, it was useless. I’m still worried that I might have sleep apnea because I wake up sometimes overtired with headaches. Julie doesn’t believe in this self-diagnosis, since she heard it somewhere that you need to snore heavily to have sleep apnea, and she tells me I don’t snore. She also claims to be a doctor, so take all of that with a grain of salt. I do.
Steve Pavlina, the author of the above blog entry, has devised an entire website devoted to improving himself—a kind of NEQID for Steve (or NEQIS), if you will (I’ve linked to it in the reads section on a trial basis). In the early riser entry, he describes how he turned himself into an early riser. As I was trying to say before the watch dragged me off track, at various times over the last five years, I’ve tried to change my sleep patterns. I think I sleep too much and lose productive time while unconscious to the world. I usually fall asleep at around 10pm and wake up at 8am, averaging over 10 hours of sleep every night. Thinking of it like that (I try not to do the math too often), it’s rather obvious that I’m sleeping too much. Even taking into account my strenuous days (when you exercise—like I do once every few months—you usually need more sleep), I’m sleeping way more than the necessary amount. With all that sleep, there are many mornings and days where I’m completely exhausted—which, when I look at it in this light, is more support for my sleep apnea theory. Take that, bad doctor!
Getting back to Steve’s entry (I’m having a terrible time forming full thoughts or sentences today. Most of this is because I’m exhausted, and writing when I’m tired is never a good thing. But this is good for me. Even if the writing is terrible, it’s still writing, and that’s all that should count these days. Maybe it’s a good thing for me to get into the “first draft” mode, where I care less about what I say and more about the content. Not that the content is very good. Okay, I’ll stop now and close out this parenthetical), his suggestion for controlling sleep is rather simple: get up at the same time every morning, and don’t go to sleep until you’re tired. He, for example, wakes up every morning at 5am, and goes to sleep when his body tells him he’s tired. His test: if when he reads a few pages, he feels his eyes closing, it’s time for bed.
On the surface, this sounds like an ingenuous way to control my sleep. If I stay awake until I can’t read, I might never fall asleep. There have been many nights where I’ve forced myself to stay up to read. I guess that wasn’t the point of his test. Okay, maybe that’s not much of a problem. I guess I’m looking for excuses for not trying this. His other suggestion was that when the alarm goes off, you sit up and not give your brain a chance to convince yourself to go back to sleep. Now that I can appreciate. There are many times where I want to wake up early, but my brain convinces me that sleeping for another fifteen minutes (or two hours) is probably better for me, will make me happier, make my children (if and when I ever have them) happier and healthier, and perhaps bring about world peace. Just another ten minutes and I’ll be there. The short of it is I will try his suggestion and see if I can work it into NEQID.
I’m closing in on the last three-hundred words of this dreadful piece. Thanks for staying with me here. I have a feeling that I won’t be able to keep up this diary-style entry over the next few days. I’m hoping that I’ll have to jump into a non-thought-out story to make up the words, which was the original goal of this typing diarrhea (I still can’t spell that word).
I’m done for. I’m going to go back and edit this piece and hope to find a few places to pad the words. As it stands now, it’s not pretty. Word count: 1,751; caffeine: terrible tasting coffee with a bit of half-and-half—I estimate it was about a shot worth, the coffee not the half-and-half; writing time: 47 minutes before editing (yes, I know, you’re asking yourself how I spent forty somewhat minutes writing something that reads like it’s written by a five year old—this sentence helped me with about 40 words. Thanks!); edit time: 24 minutes; final word count: 2,226.
So, I started writing the story below, and got about here before I realized the story was clichéd and going nowhere and I didn’t want to write a clichéd story that went nowhere with characters that I didn’t care about and a theme I knew nothing about. Of course, that’s all bullshit. I should suck it up and write the bad story and put it out there. It’s a good technique, this writing bad stories. I can learn a lot of I forced myself to do it, but instead I’ll consternate and journalize. There. I said the real reason for not continuing (again). This is filler, of course, on today’s writing quest. I had hopes of writing a story, and look where it left me. I need to tell more.
Once again, fatigue drowns me. Another day of conferences, some great, others terrible, impossible to tell which until after they start. I’m waiting for Randy to eat at P.F. Chang’s, the epitome of homogenized-Chinese-American food. We finished dinner, and I’m at the bucks of stars while Randy goes shopping. Randy wanted me to help her pick out clothing for Eran, who dresses like a slob. I had to tell her that since I can’t stand clothing shopping for me, I certainly wouldn’t shop for someone else. Instead, I’ll sit here and pretend to write.
This morning, as I prepared for my soon-to-be ritual exercises, I found myself at a loss. A few weeks ago, I restarted a routine of jumping jacks (yes, there is still someone in the world who does jumping jacks), crunches, push-ups, and a “core” strengthening exercise of whose name I don’t know (the core is the torso area outside of the abdominals—the exercise places me in push-up position on my hands and elbows, holding that position with my back in a straight and slanted position for a count). To make the count easy, I do the same number of each of the four exercises, and increase my daily count by one every day I perform the routine. (I’ve only missed two days since I restarted.) As I finished my jumping jacks this morning, I couldn’t remember if I was at 28 or 38. It’s rather silly when I look back at this dilemma because I know I’ve been doing these exercises for more than a week, which means it was clearly 38 (since 28, doing my higher math, would be a week and a day into my routine). But my morning-drenched brain couldn’t figure out which one it was. I did 38 j. j. and crunches, since they’re rather easy, but when it came time to do the push-ups, my uncertainty proved my undoing. When I arrived at 28 and fatigue hit me, I decided I shouldn’t chance it and stop there. I think I knew I was cheating even then because I held the core exercise for a 38 count. I’m on the lookout to buy some sort of calendar-esque counter, where I can advance it one every day. Maybe I’ll buy one of those counters they used to use to count people getting onto an amusement park ride—you know what I’m talking about: a plastic counter with a big button that the attendants would push and advance the mechanical counter. I’ll take a looksy and see if I can find if anyone still makes it. Sure, I could probably get one cheap on eBay, but I’m afraid of those newfangled electronic commerce sites.
That was a good use of words. I’m about halfway through this entry, and I’m thinking it’s almost time for me to get back to a story. I’m not sure I can return to what I started earlier in the day. Yes, this certainly is a problem. I don’t know why returning to stories is so painful for me. I don’t mind returning to edit them—although, if the story isn’t fully baked or I want to make major changes (like the flying toe stomp), then I find it harder to get back into it. Words are coming out much easier after only two days of writing. Imagine if I had kept up this 2k writing (TTW, 2KW—I’ll still need work on the acronym) for the last six months. Oh well. Lessons learned.
Speaking of lessons, I thought about trying the new sleep-reduction trial yesterday by setting the alarm to 5am, but chickened out at the last moment and set my alarm to 7am. I woke at around 6am and pretended to sleep until 7am. I’m thinking of compromising tomorrow morning and setting the alarm for 6am. Speaking of alarm clocks, I wanted to explain my current alarm clock situation (and, yes, this paragraph, similar to this parenthetical, is a feeble attempt to pad my word count). After living with the same red LED radio/alarm clock since graduate school, I upgraded my clock to a large numbered version. Julie had one and I thought it was an excellent idea. With my nearsightedness, I could make out the large numbers with a slight squint instead of fumbling for my glasses or rolling all the way over in bed (depending on the position I end up falling asleep in, thanks to my “imagined” sleep apnea) to read the small numbers. I found the new alarm clock at Target (I don’t shop there often, but for reasons I don’t want to examine, I’m a bit ashamed to admit that I ever shopped there). The large numbers were great, and it worked exactly as I had planned. What I wasn’t expecting, however, was the horrific alarm that the clock sounded. When the alarm went off the first morning, I was horrified. It sounded like what I imagine a lawnmower running over a duck would sound like. I decided that morning never to use the alarm clock as an alarm clock again. I relegated it to big-numbered clock; it will never have a chance to fulfill its real purpose. I don’t feel bad for it, however. Just think of all the ducks I’m saving. Instead of the big-numbered alarm clock, I’ve used the built in alarm clock in my phone to wake me up. It took me a while to find the alarm clock function on the phone that is smarter than me. Since it was a first-generational product (the phone that is smarter than me, that is), the alarm clock functionality was buried with the time-setting functionality, and required me to click around eight times to turn the alarm clock on or off. This has an added benefit: because the process of setting the alarm clock ahead for more sleep is so difficult, I end up waking instead of fumbling with it. The downside, however, is that waking up before the alarm is annoying, since I have to decide whether to turn it off, or get out of the shower to the alarm ringing endlessly. I did briefly use my fancy sleep-watch as an alarm clock, but after Julie’s warnings, and the alarm functionality breaking (it might not be broken—the reason it didn’t work the last two nights I tried it might be user error), I decided to return to my trusty cell phone alarm. It’s still a bit painful to listen to early in the morning, but it’s nowhere near as annoying as the big-numbered alarm clock and it works.
Okay, I don’t have a clue what that last paragraph relates to or why I told you about alarm clocks. What I will tell you is that this paragraph saved me 453 words of storytelling. How about them apples? I might spend the last 500 words or so going back and seeing if there’s any possible way I can save the vignette I started earlier. I doubt it, but I figured it’d be worth trying instead of having to think up another useless story to tell.
I went back and I thought about writing the story, but I decided it wasn’t going to happen today. Instead, I’m finishing off the last 250 words by writing about how I’m not going to write a story and instead write nothings to finish my entry for today. I’m still holding to my promise of writing a story before Monday. (It’s easy to hold to promises that might—I mean will—happen in the future.)
This brings me to my customary paragraph describing my progress. I know once I get into this 2k storytelling (2KST? TTST?—I’m still in need of a good name for returning to this style), I’ll stop counting these asides and word counts, similar to what I did during Nano. See? I didn’t want to admit it at the time (actually, I did admit, but admitting that I admitted it would not make as good an introduction or explanation), but I learned much about bullshi…I mean writing during the Nano contest. As I was saying, my word count for today is 1,889 as of now. Caffeine intake: tall mocha, 3/4 pot of dragon oolong tea from P. F. Chang’s. Writing time: variable. Editing time: almost nonexistent.
I’m the last person in the bucks of stars seating area. It’s past 8pm, and it’s almost time to find Randy and head on back to the Castle. When I arrived here, I fought off fatigue with the tea. It (the fatigue) has snuck back up to me. I didn’t realize it was here until it tapped me on the shoulder. Stupid fatigue. I have around thirty more words to call in a two-thousand-word day (TTWD?). It’s been fun again. I’ll see you tomorrow! Word count: 2,001 (combining story and musing).
I have to make this quick. Well, I guess quickness is relative since I’ve dived back into these extreme writing sessions. Yeah, you can probably tell it’s going to be another one of those days. And, yeah, I probably shouldn’t be wasting your time by warning you that it’s going to be one of those days. But this is all part of my evil plan to get back to verbose writing so I can apply it to actual writing of the storytelling variety. Wait, what did I want to talk about here? Oh, yeah. I’m leaving work relatively early today to bicycle home. Scott and I rode in his truck with our bikes in the back to allow us to ride home. It’s a bit like cheating because we’re only riding one way, but it’s better than nothing. Today is the first summer day of the year. The thermometer has climbed into the mid-eighties. It’s almost too hot to be outside. Almost.
We’re planning to leave work around four-ish to begin our commute. Tonight is also video game night; although Will sent mail that he might have to ditch us. If he does, I’m going to have to hunt him down. We play as a team or not at all. That’s what I’m saying now, seeing as the antidote to my addiction is only five and a half hours away. Once I’m in front of the computer, all thoughts of Will will disappear and I’ll throw myself into the world. Isn’t that how it always happens?
I’m tired now. I’m afraid if I put off his writing until later tonight, I’m going to be too exhausted to write and might fail. This won’t happen, of course. I’m dedicated, and I’ll pound out the words even if my eyes are closed and my brain is asleep. The words might consist only of vowels (I guess they might not be words in that case), but they’ll get there.
Fourteen tables lined the dining room. The tables were wooden with black columns supported by a black circular floor plate underneath each section. Six seats lined both sides and salt and pepper shakers sat in the middle of the table at intervals.
It’s not happening. My brain is mush. I’m tired and consternated, or is that constipated? I’m not that either—I’m very regular thanks to good genes and jeans. I’m tired and I find myself not having much to say. I thought a story might help move this along. It obviously didn’t. Now I’m pushing out words and trying to get to the halfway mark before calling it a day. It’s getting easier to say nothing. I have to be wary of this nothing-saying. I don’t want to get into a habit of writing words about my habit to write words—circular words that end up saying nothing but moving the word count forward.
“I won’t stand next to you when they start throwing tomatoes.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s just if you keep this up, I’m going over there, and you can give you speech over here. Your touching on sensitive topics. These people have beliefs in what you’re saying. They feel strongly about it, and they’re not going to appreciate your logic games with these beliefs. You know where I’m going with this?”
“I have absolutely no idea. You lost me at tomato.”
It’s late and I’m exhausted from the long bicycle ride and the video games. I told you’d I’d be back (of course, you never knew I was away since I didn’t post the first part separate from this second part), but I’m here. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to write 1,500 more words. This might be shortened entry—even though I promised myself this wasn’t going to happen. Decisions, decisions.
Scott and I started riding back home at around 4:45pm, a bit later than we planned. It was hot, hotter than I expected. In total, the ride took me an hour and a half. Scott did it a bit quicker, since after we crossed the bridge he ditched me for a seven o’clock appointment. While the ride was long, tiring, and hot. As expected, my favorite part was driving past cars stuck in traffic. Sure, they’d get wherever they were going faster than me, but the riding past was one of the reasons I wanted to commute by bicycle. No traffic!
I really slowed down while riding through Bellevue. There are a bunch of street riding with lots of cars and lights, and I was not apt enough to know when to ride on the sidewalk to avoid the traffic, and when to stay in the street. Scott was blocks ahead of me and how to keep slowing down and waiting for me to catch up. It took us way too long to get through the city part. I will have to work on my traffic riding to save us time through that part.
I also need to work on my downhill riding. I’m not confident enough on the bicycle. I tend to use the breaks to slow down my descents, even when I have a perfectly safe and viewable downhill. More things to work on. It’s the same problem I had tryin gto ski. I’ve attempted to ski about five times. Living in upstate New York gives plenty of opportunities. Not one of those times, however, did I make it all the way down a non-bunny slope. I rarely fell because I lost control. Instead, I would begin to build up speed while in the snowplow position, and when I felt myself going to fast, I’d purposefully fall over to slow myself down. It’s a rather silly way of doing it, but I don’t trust myself to control the skis at that speed. I’ll chalk it up to another character weakness.
I’m not sure if I drank enough water during my ride. I finished my first of two water bottles before I left from the office, and drank the second one on the way home. I bought a Camelback backpack, but left it in Newport Beach, where it’s not doing me much good on my rides. Julie, when she visits this weekend—yeah—promises to bring it. When I finally made it back home, I finished a Brita water container. I was also ravenous. I went to get chocolate that I had left on the counter by the sink. What I didn’t realize, however, was that the chocolate had melted thanks to the sun and hot day. Being too hungry to care, I used a spoon and scooped up the chocolate in a kind of chocolate soup.
Video games tonight was rather fun. Will did make it to the game, although he was a bit late in coming. We played until around 11:30pm, which was way too late for me, particularly since I hadn’t finished writing yet. (These sentences sound horrible in my brain’s voice. The fatigue is taking a toll on my ability to form full, interesting sentences—wait, it’s not necessarily the fatigue; fill in obvious self-deprecating sentence about how I’m a pathetic writer here.) Even with the late start, we had a good time adventuring, gained levels, collected nick-nacks and gold pieces, my normal night.
Randy went food shopping at the organic PCC, and then took a ride down to the lake. I’m not sure what she was doing there—she claims she spent her time at the lake sitting near the beach and staring at the water—but when I took a break from video gaming at 10:15pm, she still wasn’t home. If you hadn’t figured out yet, I’m a rather anxious person. For example, last night, I couldn’t find Julie. I had it stuck in my mind that she was in the shower or blowing her hair and couldn’t find the phone. I called every ten minutes, until she finally called me from the hospital. One of her patients was delivering, something she had already told me but I had forgotten. Getting back to Randy, I began frantically calling Randy’s cell phone looking for her tonight. After the third call, she finally picked up and told me she was still by the lake, but she was heading home. I know she’s a grown woman, but I worry about her. She’s my little sister, after all.
What else can I tell you about to eat up the last 600 or so words? Tomorrow should be an early day. I have a few things to finish up at work, and then it’s three day weekend, baby. It’s Memorial Day weekend, and it should be a dozy. Randy stays until Sunday, my mother flies in tomorrow night and stays through Monday morning, and Julie (finally) flies in on Saturday morning and leaves Monday evening. I have to remember to make reservations for Saturday night, and figure out where I’m taking everyone on Saturday.
I haven’t been this tired in a long time. It’s not just brain fatigue. I know I think too much (and most of it is circular, relating to my anxiety), but tonight the fatigue is more related to my bicycle ride. My legs feel tight and I have a dull pain running up and down them. Too many hours on the seat. My head hurts a bit, but I think it’s from needing to sleep, and fighting it by writing instead. I left my work computer at work today, and I’m typing this entry on my Mac. I haven’t used this computer in a while, and I feel slower at the keyboard. The only benefit it has is that the MS Word has a built-in word counter at the bottom of the screen. I wonder if MS Word for Windows has the same word count option for the status bar. It is rather handy, as I watch the words increase as I type. I’m at 1657, as it catches up to my last paragraph.
For my final trick of the evening, I’ll talk about nothing and succeed where I feared I’d fail tonight. I had hopes of writing more during work, but there were a few work-related things I had to get done, and I wasn’t able to find the time before it was bicycle time. Our week of conferences is just about over. I’ve skipped many of the final conferences during the last couple of days. I’ve realized that there is only so much being talked at that I an take. It’s not that I like to hear myself talk all the time (most of the time is more than plenty), it’s just that I can only listen to someone else talk when they’re either conveying important information to me, or teaching me something I don’t know and care about. Both of those conditions must be satisfied (the not knowing and the caring about) for me to listen. Most of the conferences this week has not fallen into either category. There have been some happy exceptions, including that great talent night—which, I guess, wasn’t so much part of the conference as entertainment to escape the conference.
Okay. My babbling has reached new heights. Sorry about this today, but I was desperate when I finished playing video games and realized that I had only written about 600 words during work. I know I have to stop wasting everyone’s time with these consternated diary entries, and start wasting everyone’s time with my stories. How many times do I have tos ay that before it happens?
I’m getting to the end, so I’ll share the count, and maybe (doubtfully) go back and try to clean up this mess. On second thought, I might post it unedited and leave it at that. There’s not much in the way of useful tidbits of writing here, so I think you’ll forgive me if I don’t reread and make sure my spelling and thoughts are in order. Word count as of here: 2000.
I tried the story thing. If I wasn’t writing at 11pm at night while IMing Chris, a college friend I haven’t spoken to in about a year, I might have turned it into something. As it is now, it’s nothing but an exercise in getting 1k words onto the computer. There’s something in there I wanted to tell but I didn’t get to tell it. It is a non-musing, however. Something I haven’t managed to do in a while outside of a few stray paragraphs. My hope is that I can write another story tomorrow. Maybe write the entire 2k word entry in story form. That would be groovier.
Another problem I’m having is my hands are hurting me. My right pinky in particular is causing me pain when I’m typing. I’ve stopped using it for tonight, but I’m worried about typing so much. I know it’s not so much the writing as the internet browsing and, even worse, the video game playing that’s causing these carpal tunnel-type symptoms. I’ll try to cut down on some of my useless browsing to ease the pain.
I picked up my mother at the airport tonight. And then there were three people in the Castle. Tomorrow afternoon Julie arrives, making it four people sleeping in the Castle. A record as far as these things go. My sister Randy is officially a slob. I know I’m rather slobby, but I’m particular about my slobiness. If I am visiting someone (besides Julies or Mom), I am very conscientious about not making a mess in their house. For example, say I wore sandals and poured white foot powder into my sandals. And then, let’s say, I went into my host’s car. I know I would never think of taking my powdered foot out of the sandals and putting it on top of the shiny black leather console. I also wouldn’t put that same powdered foot down on the black tiles around my generous host’s fireplace. These are all things I wouldn’t do.
My sister, being the youngest, does have an excuse. Birth order really does define certain characteristics. The oldest, when they are older, are usually orderly and clean—sometimes to a fault. My older sister Eileen color codes her children’s closets. Julie, another first born, cannot stand being in a dirty house (something I take advantage). The youngest has the opposite problem. They are the slobs of the family spectrum when they grow into adulthood. Where Randy, when she was young, was an organized neat freak, as she left monsterhood, she fell into her expected role as the slob of the family. The same with Julie’s family, where her younger sister Jennifer serves that role.
My wrists and fingers are killing me. I have around 500 more words to pound out before calling it a night. The weather here has been dreadfully hot. I had to turn on my A/C yesterday, and after I finish posting this, I’m heading downstairs to turn it on for tonight. It’s difficult to sleep in this heat.
With all this entertaining I’m doing for my family, it’s been difficult to set the time aside to write. Hopefully by next week, I can settle back into a routine where these 2k sessions don’t become never-ending marathons. It hasn’t been hard writing these words—it’s just been inconvenient because of time or hand pain. Yesterday I was too tired to write, and today I’m too tired and in pain. I’m hoping to find a better middle ground.
I’m running out of things to talk about. I should go down and edit the story I tried to write, flesh out the middle and the end, where I ran (I’m using the verb “run” too much tonight) out of energy to write, but I’m lazy and tired and in pain, and I know that’s not going to happen. It would have been fun, though.
The story was based on something that I did to Randy when we were growing up. When we drove to pick up my mother, she reminded me of it. I guess she has certain memories of how mean I was to her as a child. I do vaguely remember this incident. My memory makes me out to be the hero of the incident without explaining how exactly I am the hero. I used to do this to her a lot. I won’t ruin the story (since I’ve already ruined it below), but this was my ordinary course of action to take possession of my rightful place in front of the television.
I’m on the homestretch here. Only about 250 words and I can call it a night. I know that reading this has been rather painful. Julie has the technique down to read these entries. She ctrl-F’s her name, and skims those parts before quickly closing the browser. It’s a good technique, and culls out the important parts. I can’t wait for her to get here tomorrow. I haven’t seen her in over a month, and I miss holding her. (Yes, I did write that last part so when she searches for her name she’ll find that sentence and buy me many gifts in the airport.)
That last paragraph was good enough to get me over the edge. Now it’s time to waste the last few words describing my progress and explaining how these description of my progress is furthering my progress enough to get me over my self-imposed goal for this tough evening. I’m now at 1,874 words. My caffeine today consisted of an espresso late in the day during dinner with Randy and my cousin Nancy. Espresso is a classier version of yummy caffeine. While it’s good—particularly the bottom of the diminutive cup—it doesn’t last long enough to satisfy my cravings. Maybe I should try a double espresso next time. That might be too strong for my tender belly.
That pushed me over the edge. I wish to thank the Academy for staying up so late with me tonight and allowing me to get this exercise over and done with. Of course, I could have used all this time and words to polish, no, actually write the story below, but that would have required more thought and attention than I was willing to expend. I’m beginning to think that Chuck was right, however. Perhaps it would have been less energy to write the story that bullshit for this many words. I’m running out of these bullshit comments. I’m soon going to have little choice but to write stories. I can’t wait.
Not surprisingly, it’s another late start to writing. I thought about storyizing again (how about that for a new word?) but I’m going to resist tonight, at least until I can’t think of anything else to write except filler, which, at that point, I figure I might as well just write a story and call it pathetic.
My guests are leaving one by one. Randy left this morning. My mother leaves tomorrow morning. And Julie leaves tomorrow night. Then it’s back to David and the Castle, alone again. I shouldn’t complain because I’m taking a vacation in two weeks to go to New York with Julies. My head is hurting a bit now. It’s either from too much sleep today, thanks to late rising and a long nap this evening, or the lack of yummy caffeine. Although I craved it today, I didn’t find an opportunity to drink it without showing my true addicted state. My mother tried to convince me tonight that it was crazy not to have cable on my television. I explained to her that it was a conscious choice based on my inability to control my addictions. My brilliantly articulated arguments didn’t change her conclusion that I was crazy. I’m trying to avoid yummy caffeine from going the way of cable. That part of NEQID will have to wait for another time. I’m not ready yet again to give up yummy caffeine. The bucks of stars might go out of business without my patronage.
Do you see what happens when I don’t eat my yummy caffeine? I become distracted and the Goal seems far away. I’m still looking for a way of articulating the Goal. Some things shouldn’t be forced, and the naming of an important part of my life will come. NEQID did—I guess that’s my only example.
The Nameless One made a comment yesterday about how my prolific writing impressed him. He claimed not to be able to write this many words in a day, even after acknowledging that the quality of the words were, how did he put it, rather low. What he failed to admit, however, was that it was not that he couldn’t write this many words—he did in fact write more than this many words during a time the Marathon—it’s just he doesn’t have the time. What I’ve realized by doing this over the last many days is that the difference between writing the Goal and my normal consternations or story drafts is rather minimal. Both take me around an hour or two. The difference between the two is editing time. If you hadn’t noticed, the time I spend on editing has decreased dramatically. I’ll throw an edit here or there, especially where it becomes obvious that I’ve lost my thought, or as I reread parts to figure out where I want to take the story or musing next, but I don’t spend the twenty minutes to an hour I used to spend cleaning up the prose and removing the clichés, poor grammar, bad style, and uninteresting parts. It’s all about the word count, baby. I live and dream by the numbers slowly ticking upward.
What I’ve stopped doing since restarting this process is worrying about what I’m writing or what people will think of my writing. (Not that I worried too much about that before hand.) Another thing that I’ve been working on is not worrying about repeating myself, or saying the same thing twice, or just going on and on by presenting the same idea. I’m all over that. I’ve realized many authors use repetition in their arsenal. One of my goals in life has always been not to bore people. I don’t know where I acquired this need, but I’m always studying people’s reactions, looking for the faintest sign of boredom. It’s one of the main reasons I don’t do well speaking in large groups (not in front of large groups, but in large groups—I’m not explaining this well: imagine six people standing in a circle talking about something). I spend so much time weighing whether what I have to say is important and interesting enough to say, that I end up not saying anything. It’s also why I didn’t speak much in my classes. Unless I had something very insightful to contribute (at which point, my heart would begin racing until I either said it, or decided not to share it with the class), I kept my mouth shut. Even when a professor would call on me, I would give the shortest possible reply, safe in the knowledge that the professor was looking for a key word, and once he received the word, he would take off and extrapolate the real answer from the word. Professors are so easy to manipulate.
Getting back to my writing (as if I talk about much else here), in the last couple of stories I’ve written (okay, I’ve only written two stories, and neither of them have been complete—I don’t know if I’ll continue either of them, by the way. I’m lazy that way, but I’m sure you already know that), I’ve tried to repeat characteristics and thoughts a few times at different parts of the story. It wasn’t a conscious repeating. Instead, I wrote what I was thinking, and kept writing. I, like most people, tend to repeat thoughts many times. I would usually filter those out when I wrote, thinking that since I had said the same thing previously, I shouldn’t say it again. For the first drafts, however, I’ve been trying to find all of these filters and shut them down. I’ll have plenty of time to go back and remove the ineffectual repetitions later. (Heh. That’s assuming I ever get back to editing. I’m not sure how I’m going to fit editing in with writing 2,000 words. That’s one of the major problems with my evil plan (2kep? EP?), when will I polish my mental diarrhea (nope, didn’t spell it right this time either)? I haven’t an answer for that yet. I’m hoping it’ll hit me along with the acronym for the evil plan or writing 2k or the Goal.
I’m halfway through today’s entry, and I’m not sure where the rest of the thoughts will come from. I guess Chuck was right when he said it would probably be easier to write all these words as a story instead of all these words as senseless musings. I felt today was not a story day, particularly since it was yummy caffeine free. I’ll get back into storyizing tomorrow and see where it takes me. But for now, I have to find where 900 more words will come in.
A good place to waste words is with weather. I understand somewhat people’s fascination with weather. I tried to stay away from this topic when I was younger. I thought that it was an inane topic and, like most of my hated small talk, the world would be better without it. Some things you cannot avoid, however. And one of those things is weather. Friday and Saturday were terribly hot. According to the news reports that other people told me about, both days set records as the thermometer punctured the 80s and reached toward the 90s (I see why it is so hard for weather people to think up original verbs for the changes in temperature and weather). Today was cloudy and cool, a nice break from the heat wave, and we spent much of it outside, visiting with a college-aged cousin in one of the outdoor malls, and walking around my neighborhood. Rain is back in the forecast, so this brief look into the summer is supposed to end early this week.
What did I tell you about weather? It was worth a few hundred words and pushed me closer to 1,500. I spoke about my count at the end of Nano. At 1,500 I’m for all purposes done. Anyone with a monkey can write 500 words. It’s getting close to that point that’s difficult. I lost my train of thought. I was talking about word count, and Julie, who is finishing up after her shower, called over to check my word count. As I said yesterday, it’s nice to have Julie visiting. I feel less anxious and less bored when she’s around. She’s a great calming influence on me. She helps me be nice to my family (something I still have a problem with—especially with Randy. I don’t know what it is with the younger sister relationship, but I keep feeling the need to make fun of her or tell her she’s wrong. It must be left over from our childhood, when Eileen and I would mercilessly pick on her). I’d rather not drop her off at the airport tomorrow. I might kidnap her and keep her here, holding her ransom from her residency program. I could probably get at least a basket of fruit for her. Just a thought.
I’m at exactly 1,500 words now, and I’m again stuck. I know I said that even a drunk monkey could write 500 words, but I’m not feeling very drunk. If it weren’t for the Goal, I would have stopped long before. I know most of you are thinking that that would have been a good thing, me stopping, that is. You’re probably right. But I won’t bore you with another paragraph talking about the Goal, and how it’s going to make me a better person, bring about world peace, cure cancer, and do all the other things that people keep telling me need to be done.
Everything past this line will be my feeble attempt to meet the Goal. Most of what was above was the same, but I’ve reached the limit of my caffeine-free writing abilities today. I’m going to fill this space with nothingness. I still have three hundred words and I don’t have a clue what types of words I will be able to type here. I should have written a story. I see that now. When I’m not vacationing, it’s almost impossible to fill up this much space with my thoughts. I just don’t think that much. Things happen to me (and sometimes I help make those things happen), but I don’t live an exciting life, and that’s reflected here. It’s one of the reasons I like to write fiction. I can take the mundane things that happen to me and turn them into something interesting or clever or wordy.
On days like this, I’m going to split my time between writing my thoughts and a brief vignette or story-like device. Julie is trying to distract me from finishing the last few paragraphs. I’m going to win, though. Maybe. With this last sentence, I’m pushing 1800 words. Trust me, it’s just as painful me to write these words than it is for you to read them. Okay, maybe it’s more painful for you because I don’t actually have to read these words after I put them on the paper. Even as the fly from fingers onto the page, I’m not really reading them. I’m trying to find the next word so I can keep the sentences going to get the next 100 words finished. This was a bad move.
Ah, finally. I arrive at the last paragraph of bullshit, which I have to write between moments of Julie requesting kisses. Today’s total, as of now of course, is 1912 words. Caffeine is none, zero, zilch, caffeine-free, if you will. Almost done here. I should have gone back to the beginning and added on some additional information to the first few paragraphs that actually talked about something. But seeing as I was too lazy to do that, and I’m approaching the end of this ridiculous exercise, I’m going to call it a good night. We’re sleeping with the windows open, and the cooler air is seeping into the bedroom. Sleep is close. Final word count: two thousand.
I have a slight headache today. It’s throwing off my schedule. Work was busy today, and by the time I arrived home, I was in the throws of caffeine or video game withdrawal, your choice. I delayed the beginning of this writing because of it, but now it’s late enough where if I don’t start writing soon, it’ll be a long night. I leave for New York City in two days, and I’m excited about this trip. Seeing Julie two weekends in a row is a rare treat. And my family two weekends in a row is almost unheard of.
We leave on Saturday morning, spend Saturday through Tuesday in Brooklyn, check into the hotel on Tuesday night, and leave Saturday. It’ll be a fun filled week in my favorite place with my favorite person. Okay, now I’m getting so icky I’m disgusting myself. I’ll move on to less interesting things.
I’m looking ahead to the pages of empty space I need to fill this evening and it’s rather discouraging. I’m barely 200 words into this, and I only have one or two topics left to talk about. I’m get through it somehow, of course. It’s just a question of how much pain I cause my readers and me.
I wish I had inspiration every day. Yeah, I know that I don’t need inspiration to write—this is evidence enough. But there are days where I’m inspired and everything around me is interesting. I sit at a table and every person who walks in is a character, and I can’t type fast enough to describe them, trying to capture the moments or their imagined personality before they run off. Those days haven’t happened often lately. Mostly, I’ve thrown about imagery tales in the hopes of finding a thread I can pull far enough into a story. I’ve failed, obviously, but I’ll keep looking and pulling, and when I’m not doing that, I’ll continue complaining or looking for those moments of inspiration where my vision opens far enough to talk about anything that passes near me.
My head is not doing well as I took a break to read the web for the fourth time today. I definitely have a problem with web addiction. I haven’t been able to find a way to fix it yet, though. I keep trying to limit my browsing to twice a day, but always something during the day distracts me long enough where I click on my reading list and begin looking through the sites. The ones that update every fifteen minutes are the worst. I know there’s new content on them, and it’s extremely difficult for me to resist clicking on it. I’ve thought about cutting myself off completely, but in this day and age, it won’t work. I can’t just cut the cable like I did with, well, cable. I need the internet to, among other things, post these word thingies, and check Chuck’s site, and my hotmail, and the myriad of other useful places with information that will help me personally and professionally. (I’m very good of convincing myself of these things.)
This doesn’t mean that I won’t do it. I want to do it, but I need to figure out a convenient way of doing it. Imagine, if you will, a world where David spends his time actually typing these musings/stories/consternations/crap instead of pretending to type while secretly exploring the back corners of the internets. It would be a wonderful world. If I could limit it to twice a day, I would be dancing in the street. I’ll let you know if I find the mechanism for that. For now, I’ll have to try to wean myself off slowly. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll try to limit my clicks to one thousand. Ugh. Even the thought of it gives me the shivers.
Speaking of withdrawals and shivers, it seems that tomorrow night Julie and I will not be playing video games with Will and Erik. After a short burst of e-mails in the beginning of the week, Will, Julie, and I agreed that Friday would work, but Erik noted a possibility.
Sorry for the interruption. Julie called me from her call room—she’s on call today (I was wondering how many “call” words I could use in one sentence, call. As she dialed my number, she was paged, so we didn’t speak except to explain the situation. It was very complicated, and since she just woke up from a nap, her explanation was not very, well, explained. Looking back over my explanation, mine isn’t all that well explained either.
Getting back the wayward adventures of video game planning, Erik e-mailed us today to say that he couldn’t make it tomorrow, meaning that the video game night is off. Remembering that we’re going to be in NYC next week out of range of our computers and fast internet connections, this means we’re not going to be able to play video games for over two weeks, having played last Thursday. Shivers, I tell you. Cold, cold shivers.
I like that word “shivers” today. I don’t see that word often enough. There are lots of words I don’t see often enough. I’ll try to point them out to you when I have nothing else to talk about. Like today, for example.
I’m closing in on the halfway mark for this musing. Of course, it’s always possible that I’ll go over my allotted 2,000 words. That mark, if you remember, is only a minimum for each day. I haven’t declared a maximum, but I’m thinking around 10k should be the maximum—anything more and my wrists my break in two. Now, all I need to figure out is where I’m going to find the last half of words.
I finished watching “Spanglish” tonight, the new movie (well, relatively new, since I Netflixed it) starring Adam Sandler. The acting it in, particularly Sandler, was rather painful, but it was a light romantic comedy with what I thought was a good ending. It was situational, but not painfully situational, and the characters were well developed, if not well acted. It’s a simple, well-trodden story about a Mexican maid who, with her daughter, spends the summer with Adam Sandler’s family. Adam Sandler (I didn’t like calling him Adam, and Sandler felt so impersonal) plays a generally good guy. A successful chef/restaurant owner who’s nice to his family, his staff, and wants to see everyone get along. When I get around to rating it for Netflix, it’ll probably get 3 stars—enjoyable, but not memorable, and certainly not something I’d see again. Now do you see why I wouldn’t be a very good movie critic? What do I have to add to this discussion?
Speaking of movies, I still haven’t seen SWIII. I’ve been waiting for Julies, and our plan is to watch it while in NYC. I’ll let you know my thoughts. I received probably the most accurate review of the movie today: the last 40 minutes of the movie made it worthwhile. And we all know what happens during those last 40 minutes. Evilness!
Julie called again. The person who paged her paged the wrong person. She hates that. She decided to go back to sleep, stewing in her anger about the wrong pager. It usually happens at 3am, which I can see why that would be annoying. But I’m back, throwing down more words in the hopes of getting closer to the Goal. I’m trying to resist checking the internets. I check the internets so often that I often run out of places to check. The internets are big, but there are too many times where I’ve checked all the interesting places, and there’s nothing left for me to do. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s rather pathetic. And, no, I don’t know why I call it the internets. It was the funny thing to do when what’s-his-name called it that. I don’t remember who it was, but he was political, and everyone and their mother used the plural form as a joke. I was slow on getting on that joke, so I decided to throw it into this paragraph, which has grown longer than I expected with even less protein than I thought possible.
I’m starting a new paragraph here. The word count is growing rather fast tonight. It must be the flan I ate before sitting down to type. My head still aches a bit, but it’s a small ache, and it doesn’t appear to be affecting me too badly. I don’t know what I would do without Word telling me the difference between the uses of affect and effect. I still have the darndest (is that a word?) time telling the difference. I know the effect is the verb, but it usually takes me a few times reading the sentences to figure out what it means to be the verb in the sentence; particularly since effect is rarely the primary verb of a sentence, if that makes any sense.
I’m on the homestretch now. It’s amazing how much I’ve improved in saying nothing. Getting back to the flan, it was of the plastic cup variety. Julie and I bought it at the PCC when she was over this weekend because she likes flan. It turns out that she didn’t like this flan, though. When I opened it for her, I mushed over the top because to me the top looked artificial, looking like the skin on the top of chocolate pudding. I thought with a few artful spoon maneuvers, I would make it look professionally baked. Julie thought it looked like vomit and refused to eat it. I ate the second plastic container in the pack of two. It didn’t taste like vomit. It was more like a highly fructose snack with little to no nutrition. If I’m going to eat a snack like that, however, I prefer chocolate.
There I go again. I had to resist clicking on the internet. It pains me that I’m this weak. I did resist this time, but I know it’s only a matter of time before I give in. There’s a chill in the air in Seattle. After an uncommonly hot weekend, the rains descended, and the sunny/rainy days have returned. There are times during the day where there is nothing but white puffy clouds in the sky. I’m convinced during that time that the rest of the day will be beautiful. An hour later, though, the dark gray clouds descend on Seattle, and I can’t believe that the sun was shining such a short time before. It does create spectacular rainbows. A few weeks ago I saw a rainbow while driving home that was breathtaking. The purples were so dark and deep that it was almost unreal. Almost.
I need to speak about one more thing to finish off the night’s typing. I didn’t mention much about stories today. Much is such a relative term. I spoke about it at the beginning, but a paragraph or two for me is rarely sufficient to get across my true feelings on the subject. Seeing as just mentioning storytelling has pushed me over to a little more than a hundred words to go, I’ll leave it that. I’ll see if tomorrow will spark a story, or let me continue with the George story I jumped back into last night. I’m hopefully, but not holding my breathe, if you know what I mean.
I won’t bother editing today’s writing because there’s not much here. I’m sure I said little and didn’t say that little so well. I want to say how I’m disappointed with writing such crap, but then that little voice in my head reminds me that I shouldn’t be disappointed, that even useless days like this—brought upon, of course, by a lack of a dose of caffeine—is pushing me ever closer to my goal of real writing. I just wish I was getting there quicker, is all. Word count for the day: 2013. Caffeine: none.
I’m in trouble now. It’s after 10pm already, and my flight leaves tomorrow morning at 8am. I should have finished this writing earlier, but I became distracted. If you remember, yesterday I was lamenting about not playing video games tonight. After I arrived home, I logged in to run my character around to get a last feel for the video game before I went on vacation, and who should I see but Erik playing. He was supposed to be with his wife that evening, but she must have been getting ready or something, and he had minutes” to kill. That 30 minutes turned into two hours, and before I knew it, it was after 10pm, and Will had logged in. I finally dragged myself away from the game when I realized how much time I needed to finish writing, get my shit together for tomorrow, finish my laundry, etc.
So, suffice to say, this will not be my best work tonight. But as I’ve promised, I’ll write my 2,000 words and call it a night. I did write about 800 words of a would-be story. I wrote it in true first draft form. I didn’t know what I was talking about or where it was going, and I haven’t (nor will I, at least tonight) edit it. I tried to figure out the story as I repeated different aspects, and tried out different angles.
Looking back, I probably should have stayed with the story and gotten another 500 words out of it so I wouldn’t find myself in this predicament, but who knew I would get dragged into the video game world on this night? It’ll all work out, I’m sure. It’s not like I have much of a problem anymore writing these worthless words, especially when I have a deadline. I don’t know what it is about deadlines, but I work much better going toward them than meandering about.
Everything is all set for this week. I entered the flight and hotel information into my calendar, so I’ll be rearing to go tomorrow. Is it rearing or raring or some other word that starts with R? Eh, who cares? I doubt anyone, after skimming the first couple of paragraphs and seeing where I’m not going today, will care enough to get this far down the page. That’s another thing about posting online: most people like short two to three paragraph entries that are sweet, polished, and get to the point quickly. My entries are anything but that. I’m long-winded, annoyingly vague and obtuse, and, my best part, I tend to get nowhere after spending along time walking around, poking at the bushes, and just lying down to stare at the sun and describe my blindness for a bit.
I’m moving along splendidly tonight. I again woke up with a headache this morning, which is lending more evidence to my sleep apnea theory. I went to sleep at a very reasonable (especially compared to tonight) of around 10pm, and woke up at the equally reasonable hour (especially compared to tomorrow morning—look at me milking these paragraphs for all possible words) of after 8am. When I woke up, however, my head was pounding and I was pathologically yawning. I don’t think I’ve described pathological yawning before.
(Improper paragraph break to make it easier on your eyes if not your brains in putting the ideas together.) My pathological yawning (or PY) is when I haven’t had enough sleep and I continuously yawn. PY is usually attended with headaches of varying degrees of intensity brought about by the aforementioned lack of sleep. (I don’t think attended is the right word either, but I was trying to force a medical term, and without Julie helping out, I obviously found the wrong one.) I can usually tell what type of headache I have by the availability (another wrong word that I’m going to ignore in my fast pace) of PYs. As a side note (not that any of this is not a side note), my caffeine-related headaches are also easy to identify by daydreaming about drinking yummy caffeine. If I get momentarily relief, then it’s probably a caffeine-induced (or actually a caffeine-lacking) headache. Getting back to PYs, the headaches that accompany PYs are curable by sleeping or even closing my eyes for micro-naps. Anyway, I had a headache this morning and a bad case of PYs. After my 10:30am meeting, however, the headache went away, and the PY had cut down dramatically. I don’t know if it was the walk outside or the excitement of the meeting, but something pushed me over the edge.
Throughout the day, people commented that I looked tired, even after the PY and headache had gone away. This brings me back to the point of these last three pointless paragraphs: somehow, even though I, on paper, got around 10 hours of sleep, I did not have high-quality sleep. This brings me back to sleep apnea, the snoring and occasional failure to breath that can cause bad nights of sleep, with the sufferer not even knowing that it’s going on. My family doctor (the one I visited last year but never ran blood tests because I don’t like needles, and he forgot to tell me to fast), told me about sleep apnea when I described my headaches. He suffered from it as well and even wrote me a prescription for a sleep clinic. I never made it to the clinic because, well, I’m not good at following doctor’s instructions (just as Julies about that), but I’ve been self-diagnosing myself for the past few months, and I’m beginning to believe these diagnoses more and more.
Enough about sleeping diseases. I’m almost on the homestretch, and I’ve been writing for barely 15 minutes. I should do more of these explosion writing to a deadline. It seems less painful, if, probably, less articulate or meaningful. I guess any writing is better than none. I should create a mantra like that and put it on t-shirts and sell it on the website. Did you know that blogs make the most money from selling t-shirts? Well, at least the good ones with content do, like the web comics, or too-cool-for-a-t-shirt type websites. I’ll come up with a business model for sewcrates as soon as I get more than 5 visitors in a day. It’s possible, you know. Unlikely, but possible. The first step is probably to cut down the 2k entries into 12 manageable and readable entries, better polished and actually saying something. Oh. On second thought, that’s probably just not possible with my writing.
I’m at the last 100 words in this paragraph, so I’ll leave it at this. Julie and I fly out at 8am tomorrow morning, and meet up in Newark airport at 4:30pm (with the change in time, it’s only a five or so hour flight). I’ll post the unedited writing experiment I did much earlier about a story that didn’t end up going anywhere. It’s a bit morbid, and probably based on a few too many bad movies (not that there’s a story—I’m talking about the premise because, like usual, I didn’t get much beyond the premise to make things happen. I have to work on that), but there you have it. Word count: 2,020. Caffeine: yummy tall mocha.
Speaking of goals yesterday, I’m adding another one to my bag of tricks. I’m staying with the 2,000-word daily goal, and I’m adding story goals, which are independent of the daily goals. Only story drafts will go toward that goal, and I’m going to try to write a 10k word story. Most of it will be crap, of course, but I know I need to work on longer, multi-writing-day stories, instead of the shit I’ve been writing.
I’m in the airport waiting to board my flight. I just spoke to Julie, and she’s safely sitting in her seat. We both got upgraded, so we should be fully rested when we get to Newark for our short drive to Brooklyn and dinner. I’m going to put the computer away since I can’t seem to think straight right now. My brain is aflutter and I need to rest it with a good book.
I have a little time before they serve what I’m sure will be a yummy omelet and the movie “Robots” begins. As I read the New Yorker during takeoff, I began thinking about my writing (what else do I do but think—and talk incessantly—about my writing? One of those thoughts coalesced into the idea of cutting down the noise in my writing. The noise, as I see it now, relates to my counting and objectionable focus on all things related to the count. It might be cute for a day or so, but after that day passes, it becomes mind numbing, even to me, who has a certain love affair with my own writing and witticisms.
I seen to have lots of goals today, the 10k story (remember, that’s a single story—a mini-Marathon, if you will), and the control of discussion of the Goal. Perhaps, I’ll still leave the final paragraph for such discussions, since I still feel the need to share with readers (and my future self) my successes and failures, how I’m feeling, and my squeaks toward the goal. That’s a good word for what my writing is: a litany of squeaks.
I know that cutting out the useless parts of my writing will make it more difficult to meet the (newly two-fold) Goal. To achieve this, I will hopefully begin expanding my thoughts, turning them from what start as short paragraphs into longer, more thought-out (I know, even to me the idea of writing “thought-out” prose is funny) musings.
Since there’s a saying about it never being too early to start (or is that too late?) I’ll begin with today’s entry. I have another fifteen minutes of writing before the movie starts or they serve breakfast. Here’s my opportunity to start part two of the Goal. Or is it part three? I’m confused: (1) write 2,000 words every day (check); (2) write a 10,000 word story (haven’t started yet); and (3) stop counting words and discussing how difficult or easy or downright unfair it is to have to write so many words in a single day (dismal failure as of today). There, I’m feeling better already with my three-fold Goal. Ah, the hot towels are coming. I will continue this after breakfast and the movie.
Yummy airplane caffeine sears through my veins. I stopped watching “Robots” (a rather enjoyable movie) to write a bit more. I didn’t want to waste these hours of forced solitude and reflection, and, of course, the yummy caffeine jolt. The initial jolt doesn’t always last long, and I decided to ride the wave, if you will, take the energy for what it’s worth and turn it into liquid words—wait, that doesn’t make much sense. I’m turning the liquid fuel into electronic words. There we go. Poetic as ever (as he coughs to cover up the fact that it is indeed not better than ever, and, in fact, is probably not even as good as fifteen minutes ago).
Continuing with today’s entry on NEQID (all this talk of goals and Goals can be nothing but an opportunity for me to opine on bettering David, I’ve realized), there’s another rather interesting thought I’ve been having—“Robots” distracted me again, as our heroes are swimming through fallen dominoes. Namely (getting back to the thoughts, not another senseless moment from the movie), I have a tough time knowing when to write, as I am now, sans internal editor, and when to go back with the Big Red Pen (BRP) to fix the words and make the work more sensible and fun (or educational or, hopefully, insightful) to read.
In the before time, the time when I would consternate each word and worry about where the next idea came from (which I, by and by, define as fifteen minutes ago), I would end up editing when I ran out of ideas to write about. I would skip back to the beginning, usually fill in a few interesting spaces here and there, giving the illusion of writing more, and then settle into the middling process of turning the poorly digested words into more exacting ones that better convey my immediate intentions—viz., the intentions I read into the words the second time around, since the inspirational moment that formed them was long gone. In other words (since I don’t seem to be doing a good job of conveying much in the way of information, but instead using lots of words as a mask for the reality of my poorly thought-out ideas . . . but I digress), when do I edit and when do I write?
I tried to tackle this dichotomy (I don’t know why I’m using big words today—especially since I always try never to use words unless I’m absolutely sure of their meaning, which I think I’m failing at here) earlier this week when I spoke about editing the Georges story. I tried to tack on a bunch of quasi-interesting themes to run throughout the experimental style, in the hopes of turning the words I had already written—which, I admit, ran only about a quarter of the number of words I would need to turn that dribble into an actual story—into a fully revealed story. I failed, of course, as I have in lots of my other experiments with words. Most of my stories start out with good intentions, and meander toward the end, as I run out of steam on the first day of writing, and have to force myself to tie words together to finish. You can see this in almost every story except the first two I wrote, which, because of their short length, I was able to pound out in one sitting. Of course, upon reviewing those stories (and that is something I do often, me being a lover and connoisseur of my own words, especially when I’m struggling to find something about which to write), you’ll find that while the words I wrote were, well, interesting (leaving that definition open, as I’m apt to do when I don’t have the will to think an idea all the way through)—again becoming distracted by the movie, showing what appears to be the penultimate conclusion to the movie—and (getting back to my original thought before the emdashes (that doesn’t look like it’s spelled correctedly) and parenthetical—like this one—destroyed the continuity of my thoughts, which related to the “interesting” aspect of my original writing), and while interesting, the stories lacked coherency (no comments about the coherency of this paragraph, thank you very much), and I had no ability to step back and ask myself, truly, what did I want to convey with the story and what did I want to get across.
In my most successful writing piece, The Flying Termite (or something like that, since I don’t have internet access on the plane, I can’t—thankfully, since I’m sure it’d be a distraction—log in and see what it is called, something I’ll rectify hopefully before posting), I had a chance after writing most of it (an arduous process that, after easily writing the first half after getting over some initial bad starts), to go back and turn it into a story. Of course, the first comment I got (from a reader that Chuck chased away with his nay saying, something he still, I’m sure, to this day feels terrible about), was, to paraphrase in quotation marks, “I usually like your writing, but I didn’t understand what the point of that story was.” This was after I had gone through the story with a fine-toothed comb, and Julie’s well-trained ear, and turned it into what I thought was a fine piece of literature. Now, I’m not saying that the story didn’t have a point, what I am saying, and have been trying to say for the last three paragraphs (and doing a terrible job at it—do you see what I was talking about with my disgusting editing?) is that I don’t understand the purpose of the edit. I either do too much of it, not enough, or the wrong type when working.
My real problem (again, starting a new paragraph because the last one ran over—I’m not sure if these comments should be excised like the counting, of which I’m past 1,500, if you were counting—d’oh, I did it again) is that I can’t turn off the editor and turn back on the writer. Once I start going back to edit (like I’ll eventually do with this piece—just kidding, this is what it was, except for some spelling and grammatical and this-should-be-funnier changes), it’s difficult for me to continue adding new stuff. It’s the adding new stuff after the editing has begun where my problems lie. That and the editing and writing. I’m not making much sense now. Too much caffeine and too much time brings me to this terrible but amusing (at least in my small brain) place.
I again have to thank small places with nothing to do, and, not to look a gift-horse in its mouth again, the yummy affects of caffeine, for this burst of creative energy that I mostly wasted on the above dribble about writing. I don’t know which is worse: keep track of word count and describing how I feel about it in musing form when I should be writing, or endlessly recounting my writing woes in a barrage of ill-thought-out and purposeless paragraphs and then, adding insult to injury (which I think is a beautifully crafted cliché, if you really look into it), spending paragraphs berating my efforts at writing about writing.
I don’t know why this type of writing is easy for me. I haven’t written so many asides in a long time, and I miss it. I’ve been relegating myself to my straight prose. Part of the problem, I’ll admit, is that I haven’t read much DFW in a while. He always seems to bring the worst out of me. His verbosity inspires me to incredible heights, and I take refuge in the fact that if he (an admitted genius—I’m the one admitting it, not him; although he probably, if I pushed or shoved him, assuming his bodyguards would let me get close enough, admit his own genius) can write what he’s thinking, repeating himself endlessly to get across a point, and hone it to a sharp point, and then stick it into the reader repeatedly, with beautifully crafted words (I know, I know: crafting words is an improper use of the verb, but I like it so), then why can’t I, a terribly inept and struggling (in every sense of that word) writer not do the same occasionally? Now, applying this inane style to a story or even to a more free-flowing musing would be interesting, and something I have not found a way of doing, as of yet. If I went back and edited this, it would be ground into a dull point of one one-thousandth size, and the reader would probably be a happier person for it.
I’ve had this argument with myself often (resisting the urge to self-deprecate about talking to myself by talking about my resistance instead of the prod): how can I tell a story in my own voice, with my own terrible idiosyncrasies (trying spelling that word without the help of Word’s dictionary!), and still be able to edit the prose when it’s finished. I mean, how do I know what to cut, what is charming and what is, for lack of a better (as my caffeine energy fades, I find myself reaching for the shift-f7, thesaurus, key to find a more unusual word, which slows my cadence and gets me thinking about what I’m writing and how, perhaps, I shouldn’t be saying what I’m saying because it’s not all that interesting—ugh, the inner critic/editor/the Demon Carl (or is it Larry?) at it again) word, idiotic about this type of discussion. Now, using this voice to actually say something is the first step. I can use this voice to type and type and get not much accomplished, like now, or use it to create a character that is me, but is also someone else. Ugh. I’ve reached the end of whatever train of thought I got on. The conductor is directing me to the door and asking to see my passport because he doesn’t believe I belong in this place. Sorry, sir, I’ll take the first train out of here and back to David-ville.
I’ve blown way past my Goal for the day (only the word count goal and not the story or lack-of-counting goal), but I still want to say more. I think I brought this up earlier above, but there’s something about being trapped inside a place for a number of hours that is strangely (and beautifully) freeing with my writing. I’ve written some of my best words in airplanes or airports. My favorite “voiced” story, the beginning of The Flying Toe Stomp (i.e., before my inner critic and hated editor got her—it’s obviously the female aspect of my Neanderthal brain because of her evil ways—grubby claws into my words and ripped them apart until the voice disappeared along with my failed attempt at telling my story. But I digress, as usual.
Now, I’ll need to take a quick bathroom break and hope that when I return to my seat, I can continue my tirade on the benefits of being trapped in small places, and flying more often (in first class, of course), or taking more trains, or perhaps it’s the getting up early, or not sleeping ten hours a night that’s given me the burst of energy. Whatever it is, I have to find it and bottle it and yank it out when I have something to actually say, instead of this shit. Such beautiful, wasted words, it’s the story of my life, you know. Now, without further ado (whatever “ado” happens to be), I’ll be right back (or BRB, in IM or video game lingo).
I’m back, not much worse for the wear. The “Robots” movie has long since finished, and an episode of, what I first thought was Friends, but quickly realized was Joey (the spin-off of Friends, which I’m not sure if it’s still on television thanks to NEQID) is now playing. This is less of a distraction as I try to claw my way back into whatever strange thoughts I was having before I was rudely interrupted by my bodily needs.
Oh, yes, another one of my favorite topics (by god, I’m talking about terribly uninteresting stuff to what I should safely assume is everyone but Future Davids) of yummy caffeine. It seems there is a happy middle ground of how much I should drink and when. The airplane coffee, which was exceptionally tasty, especially for black, virgin pot coffee, was in the right form. I think adding the incredible sugar from the mochas creates a fake affect: at first, the sugar rushes hits me, which is followed slowly by the caffeine rush. When the sugar rush ebbs, I begin to think that the yummy caffeine is ebbing along with it, and sometimes, mistakenly and usually on weekends when I have more free time than writing energy, try to cover the falling caffeine with yet another shot of caffeine. This leaves me in a precarious place, as too much yummy caffeine races through my system and leaves me drowning in energy and anxiety, a condition that is not, in any way, shape, or form (check out that cliché in written form) conducive to writing.
The ideas that earlier flowed from my brain like oil across a wet noodle have slowed. The caffeine-fueled energy has slowed with them and I’m thinking this might be a good time to take a break from this silly writing adventure. I’d love to return to fifteen minutes ago, when I was in an ecstatic writing zone, where every word that came across (even the words in the parenthetical, which, even now, I’m not embarrassed about, but just slightly amused in the way parents are amused at how their babies shit, or so I assume, since I do not have a shitting machine yet) felt real and actual and I could go on and on, repeating myself endlessly and in new clever ways about every and any subject. I felt like the monkey. You know the one, the one I was talk about, the million monkeys (I guess it should have been “monkeys,” but I have problems imagining myself as more than one person, even understanding that I have all these voices in my head that are still screaming to get out—a condition which, I assure you, is not sufficient to get me locked into an institution of not high education. But, continuing with the monkey theme, this is what I imagine those monkeys feel like when they pound on their typewriters, not understanding a word that comes out, not bothering to reread or even worry about the message that they are conveying across the paper (or, more probably and efficiently, the computer, which catalogues and searches the monkey’s output for meaningful English, or for that matter any language with the same alphabet as the keyboards, words or phrases or even stories).
But I’m not a monkey. I’m the monkey and the editor, and I need to find the right switch to start both of them in motion. Like today, I occasionally find the one that starts the monkeys banging on the machines, but I usually waste that button on senseless writings like this one. Okay, I’m going to start with the self-deprecation of today’s writing. I think it was a useful outing for me. I would have liked these words to have been a story or something (hehe, I said something), but I think I’m too hard on myself. I’m trying to find something in me, I’m trying to actualize (ugh, there’s a terrible word—the guy sitting next to me is writing/editing what looks to be a book or pamphlet on self-help; it either relates to sexual or work-life, the different parts I’ve eavesdropped (or peeked, I guess is the more accurate word), relate to those two subjects. What I wanted to convey in this aside is that “actualize” would be a word that he would use, and probably had used, although I did not witness it in my readings, and not a word I appreciate or usually bring out of my repertoire) myself and figure out what makes me tick and how to get over whatever boundary it is that’s keeping me from achieving my goal. Notice I used the lower gee (I really need to find a page that accurately spells out all the letters for me—I enjoy speaking of them in the abstract, but find myself unable to spell them without the clunky quotation marks; I discussed this and reported back where I did find a page that spelled out the letters, but I doubted the veracity of the page) for that goal. The goal I’m speaking about in the lower gee sense is my ultimate goal: writing something worth reading (and, in continuing in that vein, something worth publishing, and perhaps worth buying, but I’ll save such materialistic thoughts for my daydreams, where I’m lying on the beach, pounding out my 8th novel of the year—such a warm, happy feeling that gives me). I wish I was heading toward that goal quicker, but there are too few days like this one, where I can open up the spout and let it all hang out. And there are even fewer days like what I’m sure won’t happen later today or tomorrow, where I take everything that was hanging out, and stuff it back into my pants so people can appreciate the bulge, but not think it too vulgar. Now that, I must admit, was one of my better analogies. Kudos to me.
This is going on and on for me today. I think the 2,000 word entries have really helped me open up my writing, at least in musing form. The comfortable airplane seats (this is first class, so I don’t have to worry about the guy in front of me pushing his chair all the way back—which he did, but no worries—and stopping me from typing, or perhaps letting me type in a hunched over position, where each paragraph I squeeze out causes me incredible back, wrist, and shoulder pain), the warm coffee (I mean yummy caffeine, of course, even though the coffee was rather tasty, as I indicated before—as if anyone in their right mind read through this entry and found both accounts of my drinking coffee; I doubt I’ll ever have the patience to read through this garbage, even assuming I stopped right here and didn’t write another word), and the forced solitude, with no where to go, and no internet as a distract, have really helped me output. Back when I decided to write, I invested in my G4 Mac. It was expensive, but the keyboard felt great, and I was interested in trying out the later forms of the OS.X operating system. While I didn’t skimp on buying the cheaper, white plastic version of the laptop, I did skimp on the system specs, and, in particular, the wireless card. I had been using wireless cards for a bit, and I understood how valuable they would become over the next couple of years, but I feared that having access to the internet at all times would slow down my writing. I’ve used the excuse that the internet allows me to do spot research (which it does, to a lesser extent), and also let’s me access (at least using my work computer, which I’m on now) a more elaborate dictionary connected with Word when necessary. These payoffs, of which I knew a bit at the time of purchase, I decided outweighed buying the wireless card for my Mac. A month after I purchased it, I found myself in the too-cool-for-words (and therefore, becoming less cool every day, but at the time I was riding the wave of coolness, which I’ve since cooled on), Apple store and bought the wireless card, which fit nicely into the battery compartment.
Since I write most of these entries (including this one—as I think I’ve already mentioned, but I’m sure nobody, again, has read this far, so I don’t mind repeating myself even if it’s only in the previous paragraph, a paragraph happy I am happy to admit, was too long for my tastes) on my work computer with the internet built in, I tend to browse the internet instead of writing. On airplanes, this addiction is controlled, since (thankfully) there is no internet available. The airlines, regrettably, are discussing adding wireless access points to airplanes, but I’m sure the expense will be too great for me to buy one in the next year or so, making these flights, at least the ones where I’m upgraded, still the best opportunity for writing. The only better opportunity, I would think, would be the outmoded trains, where there is definitely no internet, and the soothing motion and frequent stops, and adequate leg room, not to mention (although I will in a moment) comfortable seats, would allow me to write in probably more peace than I even find in the first-class cabin of airplanes.
What I meant to get to, in my torturous way, is that I need to do better with my addictions and my writing time. I shouldn’t have to wait until I’m taking a cross-country flight to write this many words. I also need to write these words about varied topics, not always just sticking to writing-related NEQIDs, but branching out to other NEQIDs, and, not surprisingly, stories that I want to tell. Let me correct that. I don’t have many stories “I want to tell.” I want to tell stories, but they’re not inside of me struggling to break free. I’m sure my imagination has plenty of fodder, but I still feel like I’m yanking out unborn stories in an attempt to get to the aforementioned little-g goal (I like that: LGG, little-g goal). I don’t know what it is about stories, but I love the idea of telling them. To be honest (and when am I not honest when I write here?) I’ve never been a terribly good storyteller. I have my moments, especially when I tell the same story multiple times, rearranging parts, inflating other parts, and seeking to find the funny, but those moments are rare and far apart. I like hearing stories, of course. And that is really what’s getting me into this business (although this is still, technically, a hobby, I spend more time on it than my regular business—well, perhaps not more time (since that would suppose I didn’t spend approximately one hour a day writing my 2k of crap lately)—but certainly more brain energy on it than my job (don’t tell anybody! Seeing as nobody will ever read this far, I guess I don’t have much to worry about that) or most other aspects of my life, except, of course, for Julies, who I spent tremendous amounts of energy on in entertaining, talking to over the phone, playing video games, and loving (there you go, Julies, an ode to Julie stuck in the middle of a verbose and inane musing—I know for this one, harping yet again on this point—you will certainly use the find function to avoid having to muddle through the reams of this crap.
Every time I move on to a new paragraph, I get that shaky feeling in my stomach, like, maybe this time I won’t have anything new to talk about. It’s worse in my story writing. I’m thinking if I stay on the same paragraph, or, at least, the same part for a while, I can find solace in knowing I won’t have to think of anything new to say and certainly nothing interesting to get across. This gets back to OT (original thought), of which I always say I talk about a lot, but which, in actuality (another overused phrase that adds little to the sentence), isn’t well understood by me, and, therefore, poorly explained in these long-handed musings. It’s what happens when I write the first part (or two) for a story, and then I spend the rest of my time editing that part, making it sparkle, only to give up and never go back to finish the third (or second and third) acts. I don’t want to think, or make decisions, or see something actually happen because then I might fail, or I might have to work, I might have to might (how about that for not making much sense as I approach quickly the end of this flight with mild trepidation because I have said so much, or at least written so many words when I was, I’m afraid to say, almost reluctant to again open my computer for fear that I wouldn’t have anything to say; a fear, which when I look back, is rather silly for the simple reason that I just drank an entire mug of yummy caffeine in a flavorful and sugar-free form, and I was trapped here. The best thing I ever did today was take off the earmuffs and put aside “Robots” to set down my thoughts; how I wish my thoughts were directed at a story! I know, I’ll stop complaining and close this parenthetical to get back to whatever ridiculous idea I was trying to get across to my mind-numbed readers). Ah, it appears I didn’t have a point, finishing the last part before the parenthetical with I might have to might, which, as I’m sure you’ll realize is a ridiculous statement.
I heard something about a snack being served soon before we land. It’s already noon (right-coast time), which means we should be landing in around an hour and a half. Actually, that’s got me thinking. I still have a lot of time to screw around on this page, so maybe I shouldn’t do I what I was slowly building up to in this paragraph, viz. (there’s a Latin abbreviation you don’t see often: viz. means namely (it stands for an actual Latin word, but me, not being a scholar, have no idea what that word is); along with e.g. (for example), and i.e. (that is), I have a full quiver of useless Latin abbreviations to throw out there and annoy my readers with, ala DFW), that I was going to halt this writing and continue my stretching and OAA (other airplane activities), such as getting through my New Yorkers (I brought three on this trip, which, if I can get through them, will put me in striking distance of catching up on my New Yorker reading—which, for me, means only being around 2 or 3 magazines behind) or jumping back into the wonderful book Motherless in Brooklyn (do you remember the time when I used to actual provide links to all books and other useful information in my musings? Even forgiving that I don’t have an internet connection and therefore can’t look up an Amazon link, I won’t go back and do it before I post this musing. It’s either that I’ve grown terribly lazy or, more probably, I’ve discovered that people who read these things don’t actually want to click on links unless it’s meaningful—i.e., they don’t shop in Amazon and immediately buy any book or movie I mention, much to my chagrin—and by meaningful I mean another website with more interesting information (which obviously isn’t a difficult task compared to this website) than this one.
Again, the beginning of another paragraph gapes in front of me (not sure about gapes there, but it certainly does look pretty). I’m almost pooped (as in tired not the other type of poopy), and I’m getting ready to call it a morning. So, this is what it feels like to write over 5,000 words—which, I’ll stop asking if you remember and I’ll assume you don’t, since I’ll tell you either way, Tamer’s girlfriend Tamara, now fiancé, the prolific and successful television (or is it screen?) writer told Tamer (you just can’t make up closer names—well, I guess two Pats marrying would be closer) that she wrote over 5,000 words a day. Not that this took me terribly long to write: I’ve been writing only for, what I’m estimating probably on the high side, was the last two hours or so. If I had had a real topic to discuss that didn’t relate to my problems with writing or NEQID (since there’s no way I can repeat this conversation every day), this might have bee more difficult. And, continuing with my ifs, if I had removed the parenthetical and asides that, while making this more of a David-style writing, doesn’t add much to the context or meaning or story of this writings, it would have been much more difficult to get these words across. This is a marathon session because I could talk about anything that crossed my mind and not worry about either tying it to a theme (which is laughable—since I almost never have themes) or connecting it to a story. I guess there are just days where it’s easier to be prolific or, more probably, days where all the stuff in my brain is pushed forward and propelled by caffeinated nervous energy onto the page. Today is a day like that.
I did have something else I wanted to say, but in finishing my last paragraph, it escaped my mind. This is not terribly regretful, since I’ve spent this most of today writing for the sake of writing, and not to convey anything. Oh, I think I now remember. It was about editing and what it would do to this piece. Well, that might have been it, but if it was, I don’t exactly remember why I would have brought it up or what I would have hoped to accomplish.
So far, there are no sketches or stories today. I’m okay with this, as my energy wanes, and reading looks like a better option. Perhaps I’ll thumb through the words and see if I can read them. I’m rather curious what I wrote, since I barely remember what I was talking about in the previous paragraph. I don’t know if this is a sign that I am letting go and writing what I feel, or something more related to my not caring about what I’m writing. Either way, this feels good, and I’m going to try to apply this good feeling to other aspects of my writing. With that, I’ll provide the count, since this is the last paragraph for this entry (I might split this in two—I wrote the first part in the airport and the start of the flight, and the second part after the caffeine jolt; I’m sure you can tell the difference), and I allow myself such discussions under the newly penned or named Goal (big-g). Words since this morning: 5,924 words. caffeination: yummy mug of Timonthy’s Custom Roasted Milano Blend Gourmet Coffee (I had to get the actual name because it was so good—they supplied us with a menu to choose our breakfast food, and forgot to pick it up when they took our order), black with nothing in it. Okay, I’ll go back and replace the little x with the word count, even though I don’t want to. I want to stay in this mode, I want to continue writing and writing and feeling the way I do in this moment. Maybe I’ll start a story. It’s clear that I need to close this musing. I’m pushing 10 pages, and the word count above (which is accurate and includes these words) is obscene, even for the aforementioned professional (i.e., real) writer. Okay. Enough babbling. If I want to babble, I’ll babble in another document in a more traditional story mode (or perhaps not that traditional at all—god damn (not the God, more like a god I’m damning—sorry people who believe in the invisible, intangible, unseen but probably green skinned, omnipotent one), this feels good and right and is making me terribly happy. I’ll stop now. Sorry. Again. Look above for yummy word counts.
Flight from Seattle to NYC | 2005.06.04 | Diary
Unlike yesterday, today is not going to be easy. It’s 11pm and Julie is not letting me write. She keeps bothering me trying to stick her tongue down my throat. I’m keeping her off me with extreme effort. It’s difficult, but I have obligations. Today was a long day. I slept through most of it after a family barbeque.
After too many late morning risings and naps, I’ve found another cause for my morning headaches besides sleep apnea. Julie is again trying to distract me from my writing duties by smelling me. I’m trying to resist her evil allures. It is difficult but we all have crosses to bear, and mine is Julies. She slapped me after reading the last sentence. She’s also trying to press the backspace button to erase the evidence, but I’m not letting her. I’m sneaky that way.
New paragraph. I’m sure when people see us together they are as sickened by our disgusting baby talk and touching as I would have been seeing two people like us together years ago. Now it’s funny and cute and sexy. I guess this will last another six weeks before it all becomes old and craggily. Julie, for those still paying attention, is now sucking on my neck, again trying to distract me from my writing endeavors. It’s been difficult coming up with different words, such as endeavors, duties, and obligations, but I’ve persevered to bring up to the minute Julie sightings and doings.
Getting back to my discussions on sleep, since I’m sure you’re more interested in that than in Julie’s groping (and if you’re not, there are plenty of other sites on the internet that you should be visiting; please send e-mail to Julie for the exact URLs of those sites—she again slapped me after reading this comment, denying any knowledge of the aforementioned websites). Mom, if you read this, Julie thinks that you should disregard all of the above because these terrible, terrible truths embarrass her. Now she (that’s Julies again) is trying to poke me upside the chest and stomach areas and yelling, “Change that, change that,” in a most threatening and scary voice. For the enjoyment and education of my reading audience, I shall again persist in keeping these words as they were written in a moment by moment analysis of the events as they occurred.
Once again, returning to the topic of the day—sorry for the interruption, but Julie, complaining about the terrible heat that has met us in NYC, demanded that we close all the windows in the bedroom, where I am writing and Julie is poking most inconsiderately, and turn on the air conditioner. The weather today has been terribly hot. The outdoor barbeque that my mother planned became an indoor, air-conditioned barbeque because of the heat and its affects on the partygoers and my grandmother in particular, who is in her 80s (I would have put the exact number down, but I’m not a very good grandson). Any who, I was trying to talk about sleep and my self-diagnosed sleep apnea. As I write this and Julie reads in real time (which, by the way, is the most reading she’s done of my website since I started posting—she always claimed to read everything I wrote, but I watched her today read yesterday’s efforts, and after reading the first twenty or so words, she immediately began skimming my beautifully crafted words for the “Julie” part, and then partaking in the “Julie” part most excitedly), she groans at the continuous mentions of sleep apnea since she believes I have a tendency to dwell on certain aspects of my personality. Of course, this is ridiculous. I do not dwell on such parts of my personality, but instead use this time and these words to better myself and evaluate me and my life, trying to improve it so Julie can have a better David. (After writing that last sentence, I was rewarded with a sweet kiss, which only goes to show you that writing for your audience is important, and the truth is not so important.)
New paragraph. Getting back to the sleep apnea question, it has come to my attention that perhaps, in some way, I was mistaken in the sleep apnea self-diagnosis. After taking a not-so-needed nap in the middle of the barbeque this afternoon, I woke up with a mild headache and a case of PY (pathologic yawning) (don’t feel bad if you didn’t remember what PY stood for, since I didn’t either without Julie, who is now making nice to David in the hopes of getting more positive mentions in this musings, to which she is obviously succeeding, who, getting back to what Julie did, reminded me that the name of the excessive yawning was pathologic). The mild headache and PY after today’s nap (which brought my total sleep time to over 30 hours for the last day), convinced me that perhaps, in some way, I might have incorrectly diagnosed myself with sleep apnea or the African sleeping sickness, which is another favorite diagnoses of mine when it comes to my sleeping problems. My mother made this more than clear after laughing off any possibility that anyone in her family would have sleep apnea, believing that no Figatner has ever nor would ever snore, except—as Julie points out sitting next to me as the judges in the Muppet Show would do during particularly poignant (thanks to Julie for that spelling or that word would have never appeared) segments—when sick.
Another interruption as Julie comments after reading over my shoulder (something I usually don’t let her do, but since I had nothing to write today, I decided to incorporate Julie’s distractions to show you how I overcome her normal distractions), she said, “I can’t believe that Chuck wants to read this (she was going to say crap here, but she didn’t, but since I lie all the time anyway, I’ll include) crap?” To which I have no response, particularly since he claims to have read yesterday’s bowl of crap, which, I am very proud to say, was one of my most prolific and brilliant works to date, which, by and by, only goes to show that Chuck has impeccable taste when it comes to writing. It’s either that or he’s a terrible masochist, glutton for punishment (another favorite cliché).
I’m halfway through with lots of words and not much to write about today. Today, if you haven’t figured out yet, is a caffeine-free day. I’ll pretend that if had not been, I might have attempted a story, something I am irrationally avoiding. After writing the first half of today’s entry, my joy and excitement has waned. I’m now tired and trying to squeak out more words to meet the Goal. This would have been easier if I didn’t spend the last three hours watching the Tony awards show. I particularly liked how they cut off the thank-you speeches with the music. I wish I could do that in real life. I would be talking to someone who was boring me, and then I’d say, “Cue music,” and the music would come up, and the person would know that they’re talking was coming to a close. Then, and this is my favorite part, if they continued to speak, the music would swell until I could no longer hear them and all their talking was for naught. Oh, what a world, what a beautiful world that would be.
We woke from our nap with all of the guests having left the house. Seeing as we had breakfast at midday (thanks to our late rising), and my mother served the barbeque at around 3pm, I didn’t eat much at the barbeque thanks to my bagel, cream cheese, and lox at breakfast. When we woke up after the barbeque and nap, I was hungry, and Julie and I ventured through the streets of Brooklyn (or “the hood,” as Julie called it) to find sustenance. We walked down the Avenue, passing many yummy pizzerias, none of which Julie would eat at because she, being Asian, abhors cheese, a condition that I, being a Brooklyn Jew, cannot understand, especially when it comes to pizza. We eventually settled on a greasy roast beef joint—which, as it turns out, was David’s original plan before we walked thirty minutes down the Avenue only to return to two blocks from my mother’s house for the greasy roast beef. It was a bit hot in the roast beef joint, but we found a table near the air conditioner, and ordered the dripping roast beef sandwich that I described poorly in The Flying Toe Stomp (I think—not the poorly part, but the describing part). The food was delicious as always, except at the end, where Julie noticed a friendly cockroach wandering around the area near the napkin holder and sweet relish. That kind of killed any remaining appetite, and we called for the check and went home.
The best part of our Brennan and Carr adventure was a large man who was sitting at a round table, which the waiters use when not serving the customers to add up their checks and waste time. He was an older, muscular man, with a thick neck and large, tattooed arms. When we first walked in, he was sitting in the chair with his eyes closed, holding a plastic cup filled with Coke. After waking from his short nap—he waited a long time for the waiters to bring him his two cheeseburgers—he began chatting with a waiter. He said with a profound Brooklyn accent, “Don’t waste your life. I’m 50 years old, and when I look back at when I was your age, I can’t believe how much I wasted. When you get my age, you look back and see everything you should have done, all the gorgeous girls you should have done everything with, you look back and wonder what you didn’t and why you didn’t do things. Regrets. Think about regrets now when you have a chance to do something about them. When you get to be my age, you have nothing but regrets and no way of changing anything.”
The same guy, after one of the waiter’s girlfriends sat down at a nearby table, started a conversation with her. “You’re gorgeous, you know. If I was thirty years younger, I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off you. How old are you? Twenty-one, eh? You’re just a baby.” The boyfriend sat down. “You hitting on my woman? What, you go after the younger ones now? Thirty-years younger?” The waiter was about half the guy’s size, but the guy laughed him off.
Okay, the scene was much better in person than in description. I didn’t have my Moleskine, and I missed many of the more interesting turns of phrases in the conversation. It was good to eavesdrop again, even if I didn’t do as good a job this time. Camera and journal: I have to start carrying them both around more often. I didn’t take any pictures during the barbeque or our walk along Sheepshead Bay last night. If I don’t start snapping photographs, I’ll have nothing to revitalize my photos section, which I haven’t updated in a long time.
Julie’s birthday is on Wednesday of this week. She was disappointed that I hadn’t mentioned it here yet. I told her I was waiting for Wednesday, but seeing as I have nothing better to talk about (not that there could be anything better than talking about Julie’s birthday—how about that for brownie points), there’s the mention. With a bit of caffeine tomorrow, I might try my hand at starting my 10k story. I had some ideas, most of which passed from my brain before I thought to record them. Regrettably, many of my stories revolve around magical objects, which brings me too close to returning to the Pink Sweater, something I am trying desperately to avoid to save my and my three reader’s sanities.
I’m approaching the end of this crooked musing. It wasn’t as bad as yesterdays, but, again, it was forced, something I’m growing more comfortable with the more often I do it. I don’t know if it’s helping my writing, but I am enjoying writing more, even when it’s just this type of crap. I can’t understand why, but I guess it makes some semblance of sense for an egotist, and I’m nothing if not an egotist (or I am an egotist, for those who have trouble translating double negatives). That last parenthetical pushed me over my self-imposed Goal. Word count: 2,122; caffeine: none; distractions: many.
I will this musing (which you will notice is obviously not a story draft—although I have a scattered, dream-related writing below) with my thoughts on the final (let us pray that it is the final) installment of the Star Wars saga. Julie and I finally went to see Episode III together. I’ll remove the suspense up front: I hated it. Of the three, I enjoyed Episode II the most, although that enjoyment is on par with perhaps “Spanglish,” a movie I barely got through before I left for NYC. I should warn you about spoilers, but knowing that so few people will ever read this, and those who do have already seen it, I remind you more because I like to pretend that I have an audience than because it is necessary.
Many people have complained about the casting, particular Anakin Skywalker (I won’t bother looking up his real name because frankly, I don’t care). For me, he was the highlight of the movie. His dark look—particularly when his head tilted down and his eyes rolled up, showing almost all white and tiny crescents of color—was perfect for the confused Anakin. When you evaluate the entire saga, Darth Vader is the central character. He makes the two main decisions: Episode III he chooses to join the dark side (why, I’ll never know), and in Episode VI he chooses to save his son and turn on the emperor (why, I’ll never know—I would have been much happier, now as an adult, if Darth Vader had waited until the emperor killed Luke, and then threw the emperor down the tube of death).
I thought most of the cast were quite talented, especially when you take into consideration what they had to work with, which wasn’t much. The dialogue was stilted and painful to listen to (since that is the easiest part of the movie to attack, I’ll leave it at that). The character development was confusing, especially Anakin and Padame (I think that’s how you spell her name), the only two characters who had an opportunity to change. Anakin turned to the dark side because he thought he could save Padame, and once he made his decision and swore allegiance, his entire personality shifted, as if it was waiting for this decision for the new him to appear. Padame is even worse. In the first two episodes, she appeared strong (although, except for running to and fro she never made any real decisions). In this last episode, she was weak and in the end betrayed and deserted her man (okay, perhaps that’s not exactly how it happened, but if you look at it from Anakin’s twisted viewpoint, it sure does look that way). The changes in the Anakin and Padame appeared forced and superficial. There was not enough basis or support for them.
Part of the reason for this weakness is of course the weak dialogue. In a love scene with dialogue like, “I love you,” “No, I love you,” “No, really, I love you,” you can’t expect that there’s much of an opportunity to build characters. But it’s more than that. Because of the large special effects budget (and I have nothing against special effects—I enjoyed most of the futuristic city views, but I could have done without the lava scenes), Lucas felt that he needed to use those special effects for drawn out chase scenes where the endings were preordained and there was no reason to watch except to see how the evil people (all of who were either robots or faceless people so as not to hurt the sensibilities of those who think of nothing but the children) would meet their end. I could have done without most of the action scenes, except for the lightsaber battles, which, because of my love of swords, I did enjoy.
There isn’t anything I can point to in the entire movie that I felt was redeeming. When Darth Vader at the end held up his arms after being reconstructed and yelled, “No!” he reflected exactly how I felt. There were so many missed opportunities with this story, so many places where Lucas could have turned this into a real character story with a moving plot, that I cringed at the missed opportunities. Lucas lost hold of his story, and it unraveled because of its very size and scope. He was too ambitious in telling the story. Much of the back story could have been just that: back story, and he could have described it in exposition and let the true character storylines develop. I didn’t feel for Anakin; I wanted to, but I wasn’t given enough time to understand how the Jedis and the Chancellor pulled him in two different directions. And when he learned the truth, his disgust and attraction seemed feigned, as if he already had made his decision.
(I wish I could turn this into an intelligent discussion instead of a badly framed critique. I think these are good—if probably well-worn—objections, but, finding myself in a truly caffeine-free night, with 900 more words to write, I can’t seem to put the words together the way I envision them.)
And then you have the emperor. Anakin watches him get defeated, and then decided, somehow, that he is powerful enough to help save Padame. He was shown to be weak, and yet he claims the dark side is more powerful. That I didn’t understand. The most disappointing aspect of the Jedis were how they weren’t able to sense anything wrong in the troops they were with. The troops, who must have known what order ” was before it was given, had to keep it from the Jedis, turn their feelings away from their evil thoughts, the preparation to kill their leaders. And the Jedis, who are supposed to be able to sense people’s emotions and thoughts—even going so far as knowing what they were going to do—didn’t pick up on any of this. Maybe it was because they were clones, or because Lucas couldn’t think of a better way to kill off all the Jedis. Either way, it was disappointing.
As a side note, there is an interesting series of sci-fi books by Margaret Weiss entitled Star of the Guardians, which she clearly based on the original Star Wars films. She takes the books in a more religious angle, but her main character, her Anakin, has a much more believable conversion to the “dark side,” and eventual redemption. The back story that she revealed (she started, as Lucas did, with the coming of age of the Luke-character), regarding the downfall of the Guardians (Jedis) was much more believable and interesting, with the Darth Vader character taking a much more active role in hunting down the remaining Guardians (Jedis). I wish Lucas had read this series and incorporated some of the feelings into Anakin. It could have been a great tragedy, instead of the, “what the fuck?” it turned into.
In case you’re curious, when I was younger I was a Luke Skywalker fan in the battle of Luke verse Solo. It was his lightsaber and magical powers in “Return of the Jedi” that pushed me over the edge. (I only saw “Return of the Jedi” in the theater. I think I was too young for the earlier ones.) There’s something about holding up one’s hand and making things happen that I find incredibly desirable (something I still to this day think and talk about probably too often). Looking back, I can see where Hans Solo would be the better character to cheer for, especially since he gets the girl. But the real hero, of course, is Darth Vader. Absolute, huge, and evil. What more can you want in your character?
Okay. That’s enough discussion for that movie. I think I had some interesting points buried deep within my commentary, but seeing as I’m too lazy these days writing all the time to edit anything, you’ll have to dig through it to find it, or not. Either way works for me.
After not sleeping much last night because of all the naps Julie and I took during the day, we spent a relatively relaxing day reading, watching movies, and eating. Tomorrow is our last day in Brooklyn before we head to the city. I should have interesting things to talk about once we get to there. I’m now struggling through the last five-hundred words of this entry. I thought about drinking an espresso at the Argentinean restaurant my mother brought us to in Queens (near where my uncle lives), but I decided against it. I felt that sleeping tonight was more important than clever or good writing. You see where my priorities lay?
I only have a few hundred words left, so I’ll leave it here. By the way, I should have figured this out earlier, but yesterday I lied about the caffeine. I said it was a caffeine-free day, but I remembered after posting that I did drink yummy caffeine in the form of the greasy roast beef joint’s fountain Coke. Now that I type that, I think I might have mentioned it—I remember bringing up the Coke is some context. I’ll get back to the word count after I finish editing the dream draft. Word count: 2,000; caffeination: (really) none.
This is the filler paragraph I’m using to finish off my 2,000-word goal. As evidenced by this paragraph alone, today was not a good day. But I’ll finish with these last 30 words and call it a night and hope tomorrow, when I have something to write, I’ll do a better job.
She said yes! I wrote a long musing with all the gory details, but i can't get the hotel's internet to work (this is posted on my smart phone). I'll post the real thing first thing tomorrow.
I’m very drunk now. You’ll have to excuse my condition. Today was the big day, the day I’ve been planning for over a month that I couldn’t talk about here because Julie might read it (not that she would read every word, but that she might read the Julie part and know what I had planned, which would ruin the surprise). I proposed to Julie tonight at dinner and she accepted. We are now engaged. That’s a strange word to write about myself: engaged. This has been a long time coming. We went out for the first time around Halloween in October 2002, and after a bit less than three years, I popped the question. I was very sneaky about the popping part, something I will explain in the rest of these words today. (Isn’t it great that I have all these words to get through today? You won’t miss a thing—not that most of you care, but this is exceptionally interesting to Julie and me, and probably my mother.)
As I type this, I’m attempting to drink at least half a bottle of a large Poland Spring water bottle. I drank way too much wine and champagne tonight as I worked up the courage to ask Julie to marry me. I now have to fully hydrate myself or run the risk of waking up miserable tomorrow. I’ll post this tonight, although it will cost me $10 for 24 hours of internet, which I will probably only use half of. But no worries. After dropping lots of money on Julie’s sparkly ring, and a little less money on my most expensive dinner for two persons ever. That’s no worry, of course. Tonight was a special night, a night I had planned for the last month and a half.
I’m about a quarter of the way through my water bottle. This will be the judge of the length of this musing. Why babble about word count, when I can babble about hydration? Julie has hinted at me for the last couple months about the ring. We had discussed it, and decided that I should buy one before she made her decision about applying for a fellowship for next year. That is, she hinted, and I listened carefully. She was becoming a bit frustrated speaking with her friends and family, most of which kept asking her, when is he going to ask you to marry you? Her answer to those queries was he’ll get to it eventually, but probably before December; at least that’s what we decided. As I said before (I’m likely to repeat myself in my inebriated state, but I’m sure you’ll forgive me—although, I’m not sure if Julie will forgive this crazy, drunken musing), this was all a surprise for Julie. We had agreed that I would propose before December because that was when she would have to make her decision about her next year’s fellowship.
Speaking of fellowships, Julie and I agreed that next year, when she moved in with me, she would (in a year from June, which is a year from now) apply for a fellowship in Seattle, so we can spend a year in Seattle before I have to make my decision about where I want to work, which, we’re leaning toward NYC—a place I feel more at home than anywhere in the world. The fellowship, which I was trying to talk about before becoming drunkenly (like most of today’s musing the drunken part should be a given) distracted, will be in Geriatrics, which lasts a year past her normal three-year family medicine residency. She has signed up for a one-month rotation in a Seattle hospital in September, the same place she would do her one-year fellowship.
Okay, enough preparation for the description of what happened, I’ll get to the description of how I did it, and the planning, etc. It’s difficult to concentrate on this musing as Julie calls her family to tell them what happened, but I am dedicated here, and I will get to it when I get to it. My mind is still wavy, and I’m trying to find the concentration necessary to get this across, as Julie keeps handing me the phone to talk to her parents and sister. I don’t think they really want to speak to me, but Julie is forcing it on them.
Okay, I’m really going to get to what happened now. I was going to get to what happened, but Julie interrupted me with a kissing moment—the moment lasted about thirty minutes, but you know how that goes. My water bottle is about one-third of the way through, and I still have to tell you what happened. I’m getting to it, calm down.
I started the planning a couple of months ago. Julie had returned from China, and she started hinting that we had gone out long enough, and perhaps it was time to buy her something diamondy. I, of course, resisted, being a guy and all. And, in case you forget, a rather fearful guy, afraid of heights, dark places, and, above all, commitments since commitments means I’m leaving myself out there to be hurt. But that is another story for another time. When Julie started to talk about the ring (she never actually brought up the ring, but she kept wanting to bring me places that coincidentally sold rings), I decided that it was time. I love Julie, and I want to spend the rest of my life with her, and it was silly to ask her to wait, especially after I asked her to move to Seattle with me.
So, a few months ago I made the plan. We would go to Vancouver for the first half of our vacation, I’d ask her in Vancouver, and then we’d go to the NYC for the second half, and I’d show off Julie with her new ring to my family and her family with her new sparkly ring. After making the plan, I spoke to my cousin Nancy who told me, after a weekend visit to Vancouver, that perhaps Vancouver wasn’t the best place. I had already decided that before I spoke to her, however, mostly because I didn’t know a good place to bring Julie. It was too risky to bring her to a place I’d never been before. What if the service or food wasn’t up to par? That would be unacceptable for such an important day. I decided that it had to be NYC—I had an ulterior motive as well. I still want to move back here in a few years, and I figured if I piled on enough good memories in NYC, it would be easier to manipulate . . . err, convince Julie to move here.
It was settled. We booked our NYC trip a couple of months ago, and then I started worrying about the ring. The first step in deciding what type of ring I wanted to buy was to figure out how much I should spend. This is a bigger question than most people know, especially after you start working for a living in a good job. There is the de Beers (or is it Bears? Who cares) methodology, which is something like two-months salary, which, I finally figured out was rather ridiculous when you get into the six-figure salary range. Only one of my colleagues even proposed a number close to that, and he had spent around $700 on his wife’s engagement ring, which got me thinking that perhaps he didn’t like me much and was trying to get me to spend ridiculous amounts on my ring.
That’s when I called Mr. Reliable. I always knew it would come down to his advice. He’s my metrosexual friend (although, don’t tell him I called him that): Tamer from Houston. He’s a great dresser, a very suave man, who buys presents that always melt the knees of his current conquests. After I called him, it turned out, he had just proposed to his girlfriend Tamara, but didn’t want to “steal my thunder” (as he recounted two days later when he called me to give his own thunder), with the news that he was engaged. I held this news back from Julies, not wanting to provide her with more fodder about my own lack of a ring (although it was already planned by this time), but I let it slip a few days ago, which began an entire new renunciation (I’m still drunk, and although that word looks long, I’m pretty sure it’s the wrong word), relating to why Tamer was getting engaged but she was not. This was a theme of a few conversations over the last couple of weeks, which was particularly poignant, especially after I bought the ring and was staring at it as I spoke to her. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Tamer suggested the right amount (as I see it now) to spend on the ring, and I followed his guidance, ending up a bit above because of tax and the fancy band, which I felt Julie would like because of its sparkliness (another made up word—but I figure I’m allowed because of all the great things that happened today).
My sister Randy came up last week, and Randy and my cousin Nancy, and I went to Seattle to find a ring. We first visited the place I bought the ring (it’s called “Seattle’s Tiffany’s,” aka Turgeon Raine). We found two rings that we liked—actually, one ring I like, and one ring Randy liked. I had Rachel, the saleswoman, write down the one I liked (seeing as I was buying the ring and not Randy), and we visited a few other places. None of the rings in those places cried out to me—and the ambiance in the other few places didn’t cry out for rings to be bought there—and we returned to Turgeon Raine around 5:20pm, ten minutes before the store closed. We spent the next thirty minutes picking out the right diamond for the setting. Randy was particularly selective, sure that there was a smudge in the diamond of the ring I finally picked out. I think she was seeing things, but that’s just me. It took them around four days to put the diamond into the setting I chose, and I picked it up on the Thursday before I was to leave (my flight left on Saturday, in case you forgot).
I’m a little past the halfway mark of the water bottle, but I’m thinking I should drink at least three-quarters of the bottle to be absolutely safe. Julie and I are meeting up with Julie’s family tomorrow night (except for her mother, who we’ll visit with on Saturday), and I’d rather not be too miserable for that meeting.
About a month ago, after I decided, with Julie’s urgings (her father recommended that we skip the whole Vancouver-thing, and go directly to NYC) to go directly to NYC, I made a reservation at Jean-Georges Restaurant, one of the top French restaurants in the city, and a favorite from my misspent summer associate program at the law firm, where the associates got to treat out the summer associates to $50/person lunches to impress them that the firm was a good place to work full time (it wasn’t—but the summer program was good enough to get me to sign aboard for a couple of years; so, I guess, in the end it paid off for them in a small way).
I’m getting to point. I made the reservation about a month ago. Keeping all of this from Julie was very difficult, particularly since I am so used to telling Julie everything. I cashed out my mutual fund, which I had saved up during my law firm day (they paid me too much, and I live relatively cheaply, allowing me to save a bunch of money every year, that was somehow—not through any of my own skills—grew enough to leave me a little left over after buying the ring), leaving me enough to buy the ring and pay for painting the Castle, which was an added bonus. The check hasn’t cleared yet (another discussion I’ve been dying to have with Julie, as I wait patiently for the check to clear before my credit card bill is due), but it should before I’m due. (Yeah, I know I keep repeating myself, but you try to write after all I’ve been through tonight.)
So, I bought the ring, made the reservation, and somehow kept this all from Julie (something I ruefully described to Julie as “sneaky,” “tricksy,” and downright “diabolical” (I made up that last one)). It was then time to take Julie out. We spent the first part of the week in Brooklyn. (Julie just got out of her evening shower—her third one of the day!—and she’s examining the ring on her finger; she’s decided that her finger I slanted, but the ring is fancy enough to make up for any slants.) I would have cut the Brooklyn trick off by a day, but I didn’t want to leave the ring in the hotel room—something I shouldn’t have worried so much about because the hotel had a nice safe, which I used to hide/keep the ring safe while we wandered the streets before dinner.
The dinner was incredible as always. We each ordered a different seven-course meal, which was, as I tried to say in the last sentence, phenomenal. I had originally planned to ask Julie around the third course because of the fullness factor, but, after tasting the food and watching the service, I decided to wait until after dessert, which was many courses, and many aggravating minutes away.
They sat us at a wonderful table: the king and queen table, in that it was a side-by-side seat that overlooked the rest of the main dining room. I guess making the reservation early was a good move on my part. The dinner was wonderful (did I mention that already?), especially a fish dish they served me with a popcorn-like sauce, which I declared would be the best food I would ever taste (I still hold to that conviction).
After dessert, and after Julie went to the bathroom to freshen up, I ordered another half glass of champagne (Julie still had more than her half of champagne left), partly to toast our engagement (if it worked out), and partly because I was running out of wine, and I wanted to make sure my liquid courage was fully, well, liquid. When she returned, I started kissing her continuously.
I then said, “am I a good Davids?” And she said yes. I repeated this a few times, asking her if she was a good Julies, and the I said, “I have a question to ask you.” This is when she claims to have figured it all out. She wouldn’t put everything together until later, when I revealed all the details, all the hints that were inadvertently thrown across her path (such as my mother revealing that I had made a reservation at a fancy restaurant, after I had left that a secret, throwing more subterfuge in the path of Julies; and my mother’s neighbor, thinking the deed was done over the week asking Julie and I, “And, so, the big day is over; how did it go?” To which I had to respond, “what are you talking about,” in my meanness David expression). Then I said, “Julie, I love you, I love you very much. Will you marry me.” By this time, I was crying, and Julie was crying, and she said yes, and I presented her with the green box with the ring. She put it on, and we were kissing and crying and kissing. She didn’t even look at the ring until we finished kissing for fifteen minutes. The waiters, being terribly professional, left us alone during this entire interlude. When she looked at the ring, I told her the whole story, how everything came together; the secrets I had to keep; how I told everyone I knew: my family, my friends (except for my video game friends, because I wasn’t sure they could keep the secret while we played video games) what I had planned because I had to tell someone, seeing as I usually tell Julie everything. It all came flooding out in a drunken stupor.
Julie is done her shower and is now reading wearing her beautiful new ring. I’m going to post this, and then hold her and kiss her and we’ll go to sleep (or perhaps do other things). There are probably many details I left out that will occur to me after I post this, but I think I hit most of the salient points. In short: I love Julie, and, as it turns out, she loves me too, and we’re getting married. I have about a quarter of my water bottle left, but I’m too happy to care.
Word count (as if I was counting for today’s musing): 3,009 (yeah, I forgot this in the original posting--I had more important things on my mind then); caffeine: espresso at the end of dinner, to ensure that more than alcohol kept me writing today. Feeling: wonderful (I’ll leave off the terrible “priceless” joke that was going through my head, or partly so).
Link to Julie's version
It turns out that trying to sleep after a seven-course meal is near impossible. Julie and I found this out the hard way, after spending the night tossing in the bed, trying to get past our large tummies to find relief. We slept in small naps. I finished almost the entire bottle of water, and I’m feeling rather refreshed this morning. I showered and came down to the lobby, where I found an open Internet connection to post this and the full blow-by-blow of last night’s engagement. I’ll try to throw up a few pictures as well.
(Okay, I only posted one picture...better than nothing!)
It’s me again. It’s late, I’m a bit tipsy (again). I think I’m secretly a wanna-be-alcoholic, my drinking kept down by the requirement of having to drive everywhere, first in Houston, then in Seattle. When I’m free from driving, as I am every time I visit NYC, I let my true self out, drinking copious amounts of alcohol to make up for all my time without the sweet nectar of the gods. Okay, I’m not really an alcoholic, but I do enjoy a drink or two (or ten, as it happened last night) with dinner to open up my conversation. I guess it’s true what they say: alcohol lowers inhibitions and let’s you be the person you would be if your internal critic wasn’t screaming his head off at the smallest opportunity in an attempt to save you from social inadequacy or disgrace. Of course, playing the part of the wallflower doesn’t exactly introduce you into the swells of higher society, but it’s hard to convince the critic of that.
For Julie’s birthday (today was officially Julie’s 29th birthday, although, unofficially, she was born in Taiwan in the morning, and with the time difference, her birthday, as she calculated yesterday, was around 8pm last night, making my birthday dinner and subsequent proposal the perfect birthday gift), her two sisters and I took her out to a Japanese restaurant called Kai. The décor and pottery were quiet nice (and this coming from someone who forswore all pottery in museums as something worse than torture), and the sake, a cold, unfiltered type selected by Janie, Julie’s middle sister, was thick and interesting, but not as tasty of some of the more refined sakes I’ve tasted. The problem with the restaurant, however, was the seven-course meal. Like the pottery and décor, the food looked very nice, but tasted rather bland and conventional, especially after coming off yesterday’s extravagance in the form of the French mastery of Jean Gorges.
While we again ate too many courses (Julie had one extra course, after the wait staff delivered her an extra dessert for her birthday with a candle in the miniature cake; before you start pointing fingers in my or the sisters’ directions, we had nothing to do with the singing. Because I have a terrible fear of being sung at in a restaurant during my birthday—the results, as I can best tell, of my social critic and my fear of all eyes on David—I do not participate in the planning of singing in restaurants for anyone else, including Julie. Julie did this to herself when she made the reservation. Janie told her to request a window table, and when she did, the restaurant refused her. She mentioned that it was her birthday (something that Julie is never shy about sharing), and all they promised was to try, which they failed; but to no real harm, as our table was no better or worse than the windowed table.
The dinner was fun. I don’t get much of an opportunity to spend time with Julie and her sisters without her parents around. Not that Julie’s parents are bad, but the sibling interactions are a more interesting study when the parents are not around.
Julie and I once again braved the heat this morning (or early afternoon), and after fielding many family calls wishing congratulations on our engagement, we went to my favorite brunch place: a diner. I, as is my normal operating procedure, ordered a grilled cheese sandwich, and relished the opportunity to dig my sharp teeth into the tender, lard-smothered bread, and yellow processed cheese. I don’t know what it is about NY diner grilled cheeses, but I’ve never been able to duplicate the taste in my own kitchen, or find such perfect grilled cheeses outside of NYC. I’m thinking it must be a Greek secret.
We visited F&O Schwartz, what used to be the world’s largest toy store as featured in the movie “Big,” which now is just a shadow of its former self, to try to find a present for my niece Rachel’s birthday. Her birthday is the same as Julie’s, so it’s much easier for us to remember (or, at least, it’s much easier for Julie to remember—she is definitely the birthday-rememberer of the relationship). We failed after being unable to figure out exactly what a four-year-old would want for her birthday. We did manage to buy a nice card, with a bear on the cover, and one of those plastic globes with a loose, large black circle inside. The circle usually represents a wobbly eye, but on this clever card, the circle is the bear’s nose, which Julie and I thought was quite clever, and worth a purchase in a stationary store in Rockefeller Center.
We visited the MoMa, or the Museum of Modern Art (to those who aren’t up on the NYC lingo). The MoMa was a small museum up through a few years ago, where they moved the collection to a temporary showcase area in Queens, and began construction of a new, larger museum at the same location. They finished the construction a few months ago, and the MoMa has been terrible popular ever since, attracting large crowds on the weekends, so much so that it is sometimes difficult to visit, or so I’ve heard. There was a decent crowd there this afternoon, especially for a weekday afternoon, but we didn’t have much of a problem getting tickets. They cost $20 per person, which for a museum I think is rather ridiculous. On the outside, the new architecture is interesting, with large walls, and large cut out boxes in the walls, to which you can see the inside of the museum, or through the museum to the inner walls. The inside is less impressive, however. It is a rather standard layout across six floors, with escalators running along the edges of the building.
The collections were interesting, but nothing groundbreaking. I enjoyed my visit to Paris’s modern art museums better, but part of that might have been my reaction to the terrible heat that has descended on NYC since our arrival. (This is similar to the heat that descended on Seattle when Julie visited two weekends ago. I’m beginning to see a pattern here, with the heat following Julie where she visits.) The heat sucks the energy out of Julie and I, and after the first four floors of exhibitions, we were accelerating our viewing. Overall, the MoMa had a rather large collection of paintings and drawings, but a rather small collection of the large, more interesting works of modern art (think deconstructed cars).
I had an expected treat, however, as I found a couple of paintings by Cy Twombly hidden in the back of one of the floors. As soon as I made out his distinctive scribbles, I made a beeline to the two paintings, dragging a surprised Julie behind me, to bask in his glory. I don’t know what it is about his paintings—most of which I don’t understand an intellectual level—but his scribbles really brings me hope in art. I think it was the Manil collection’s Houston museum, which dedicated an entire building to Cy Twombly’s eccentric art. The building smelled of plaster, had no admission price, and was usually empty. Every time I went in there, an intellectual peace descended over me. If I were to visit Houston again (something I’m not exactly looking forward to), that would be one of my top places to visit.
We picked up Julie’s younger sister Jennifer from Penn Station early this evening and went with her to her hotel. Since it was rush hour, I made the executive decision to walk from Penn Station to the Millennium Hotel near the United Nations, where Jennifer and her parents were staying. I was going to say that I don’t know why I make these bad decisions, but before I started typing it, I knew it was a lie. As I’ve talked about before, I have a bit of a problem with anxiety. It’s not debilitating or even that bad when I think about it, but there are times I’d rather be moving or doing something than standing around or waiting: e.g., looking for a parking spot, I’ll always take the first I find, even if it requires a long walk with a high probability of finding a spot closer; given the choice between walking or anything else, I’ll always choose to walk, since I feel I’m in much better control of my options, and there will be less chance of downtime or stoppage—which, when I think about it, is rather silly since it usually takes more than twice as long to walk most places than take the public transportation or car. Bringing this back to today, instead of either waiting in the taxi line by Penn Station (it was a long line), or walking a few blocks away and trying to hail a cab, I decided to take Julie and Jennifer on a long, hot cross-city walk to Jennifer’s hotel, while dragging her suitcase, and her computer bag on my back. If I hadn’t said so already, or even if I had it bears repeating: the day was hot, and the sport coat I was wearing in preparation for dinner wasn’t making things cooler. We did finally make it to the hotel, all of us in need of a cold shower to clean up. As I told Julie after we arrived, the next time you see me about to do something stupid, don’t let me. I do lots of stupid things trying to avoid anxiety that surely would end up less than the stupid idea. I just can’t see past the anxiety to the real pain.
Because I didn’t have any large pockets today, I didn’t bring my camera during most of our activities. I did manage to bring my camera to dinner tonight, but I, yet again, forgot to take pictures of Julie’s birthday dinner. When we returned to the hotel after dinner (we hailed cabs for both the trip to the restaurant and back to the hotel), I took off my sport coat, began emptying the pictures, and when I pulled out my camera, I cursed loudly (to which Julie answered with her own curse—very uncharacteristic of her; I’m obviously starting to have a very positive effect on her). I guess my days of being a good picture taker are wavering. Part of it (I’ll pretend) is that I’ve been very disappointed with the quality of pictures my camera has taken. I don’t know if it’s dirt on the lens or a weakening battery, but it’s becoming more and more difficult to get the proper flash distance on the subject, and the proper focus (this is one of those point and click camera) for the picture. I tried to take a close up of the engagement ring yesterday, and failed miserably. I also failed to take any pictures while in Brooklyn, where I have even less of an excuse (my excuse in NYC is that I don’t want to be mistaken for a tourist—I’m a local, and don’t you forget it). We still have an opportunity to take pictures of both my family (on Saturday when I visit my sister Eileen and her monsters), and Julie’s family (tomorrow and Friday), so we’ll see if I can turn this into a better picture-taking outing.
This has been a ridiculous easy musing to write. I guess these vacation musings usually are since I have something to say (unlike usually, where I go off about how I successfully picked my toe for two paragraphs before running out of anything else to speak about). I did have a little help from caffeine in the form of a few cups of green and brown tea at the Japanese restaurant. The restaurant was an outgrowth of a teahouse below it (or, at least, that’s what it looks like—I wasn’t sure which came first, or perhaps they came about simultaneously), and they served tea as part of their marketing program, a program I was more than happy to partake in to ease the efforts of writing tonight.
I’m (again) hoping that I will tell a story tomorrow. Julie has planned to spend part of tomorrow shopping with Jennifer, an activity I will allow them to do without me (you should know my fear of shopping—what with the lack of oxygen and the trying on of clothing). I will hopefully find a comfortable coffee shop or bucks of stars (since, obviously, they are two distinct things), and write a story. I keep saying this is going to happen and I keep failing. I’ll get to it eventually, just think of me as the little engine that could, or something like that.
I probably won’t be able to post this until tomorrow because the internet in the room doesn’t want to cooperate. I’ll try again anyways, since I still haven’t had the chance to write real work or personal e-mails (all that I’ve sent out over the last couple of days I pounded out at a record 5 wpm in T9 type, which, if you don’t know, is an ingenious, but not terribly useful, way of typing words on a phone keypad, which, as it turns out from an anecdotal experiment, is slower than Morse code). Time to brush my teeth and get to bed. Until tomorrow, where I’ll wow you with a story (cough, cough).
I’m slipping. I forgot to include a word count in this musing. Obviously (well, obviously if you’re reading this on Wednesday night), I was able to get my hotel room’s internet working. Word count: x; caffeination: brown tea, large cup, green tea, small cup, two refills.s
It’s noon, and I’m hot, tired, and hungry, sitting in the bucks of stars near where I used to live, having dropped Julie and Jennifer off at Fifth Avenue for a shopping extravaganza (that’s what I’m trying to convince myself of after abandoning them to the mean streets of NYC). My phone is in easy reach if they need me, or want to meet up earlier.
I promised myself an attempt at writing a story today, perhaps moving toward that elusive 10k story goal (small-g). While waiting for Julie to shower this morning, I watched the biography of Anne Rice on Biography Channel (look at all the high quality of shows I’m missing with NEQID). Anne Rice averaged one book a year for 30 years (I think I’m exaggerating that number, since she only has around 15 or 20 books to her name), but that seems like a doable goal. With my newfound ability to dump copious amounts of crap on the page, I should be able to write that much (as long as I don’t bother to edit or say anything meaningful or interesting). But enough procrastinating for now. On to that story (something I still don’t have many concrete ideas for).
Instead of writing, I got stage fright, and I’m now browsing the web, terribly disappointed in myself, but hopeful after I suck all the distracts from the internets, I’ll return to this page newly refreshed and ready to say something that isn’t about my exciting life (this might be one of the first times that people probably want to live vicariously through me).
It should be clear from the above (or below, depending if I decide to separate them) that I failed in my writing today. Part of it was Julie’s fault: after I finished typing the above, I called Julie to find out if she wanted to get lunch. She did. And after we ate lunch, I decided to head back to the hotel room instead of back to the bucks of stars. Once comfortably situated in the hotel room, I did the thinkable: I stayed in bed and watched television. I told Julie I would nap, and then write (I was a bit tired from walking in the terrible heat). As I said, I failed. My mother always asks me why I don’t get cable, why don’t I have the will power to have cable and not watch it (she says this, and not an hour later at dinner, she can’t resist a second large piece of cake during dessert—even after I put it out of reach). As I proved yet again today, if there is a television, I will watch it instead of almost anything else. This is similar to the rodents who will, when experimented upon (I think that if they weren’t experimented upon things might be different—like the cat in the box), choose the drugs over the food until they die. While I don’t think I’ll be dying any time soon from too much television, my soul, in a way, will squivel (quivel, quiver, roll into a ball—damn, my alcohol-laden brain is not working properly tonight) up until there is nothing left but a broken Davids with no ambitions and no memory of NEQID.
After my nap, Julie, Jennifer, and I met my mother near our hotel, and walked to a restaurant to meet Julie’s father for dinner at a seafood place recommended by the hotel. I asked for a pre-show restaurant, and while the restaurant they chose was rather good, the location was not. It was ten blocks away from the hotel, which is only a block and a half away from the show. I even indicated that we were going to a show and needed a “pre-show” restaurant. To me, that would have meant somewhere close by to the shows—but to them, it meant whoever paid the largest kickback, or at least that was what was making me angry as we walked the twelve blocks from the hotel to the restaurant in the terrible heat.
Much complaining tonight. I’m tired and still a bit hot from today, and the alcohol (a beer at a pizza/bar place Julie and I found after the show—I was on a mission to find a place to eat with “triangular food.” I now believe that there is a perfect food in this world, and that perfect food is triangular. Think: grilled cheeses, properly cut; pizza, regular slice; etc. (I used etcetera because I couldn’t think of another perfectly triangular food), which is quickly causing me to fall into a depression. This is why I avoid drinking unless I plan to do it in excess. I reach a point after a beer (or any single shot), where the alcohol leaves me feeling empty. This also usually leaves me tired, which is a good thing, since that feeling allows me to go to sleep and avoid the worst parts of the depression. My other choice, drinking to excess, allows me to stay drunk long enough to hit the depression while I sleep or, on particularly bad bouts, in the morning, with a side of terrible hangover. (That’s only true if I wake up soon after I would have woken up drunk—i.e., at the latter part of the drinking phase. If I wake up drunk, that’s almost a sure sign that I will have avoided the hangover.) With all the drinking I’ve managed over the last few days, it’s amazing that I’ve avoided all hangovers. It must be the copious amounts of water that I keep drinking. (Pause to drink more water.)
My mother treated Julie and me to the Broadway show: “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” which is based on the movie (and perhaps a book or play before that). Having seen the movie, the play was interesting (there’s my favorite word again) and highly entertaining, but a bit boring. John Lithgow, who was one of the leads in the show, was absent for the showing. We learned earlier from Jennifer that he was speaking at Harvard’s graduation in Boston. While we thought he’d be able to make it back for the show, it was clear he didn’t (want to or couldn’t, not sure which). As shows go, it was entertaining, I just find it more difficult to watch light comedies and find meaning. I guess I’m jaded and old and want to think too deeply too often.
I’m running out of things to say and I still have too many words remaining. I could bitch and complain about not writing today, but that doesn’t seem worth the effort. I’ll get to it when I get to it. For now, I’ll hit my Goal and move on with my life, knowing that I will find better things to do when I find them.
We only have two more days in the city before we head to our respective homes. On Saturday before we leave, I will confiscate Julie’s ring to have it remade in her size. I don’t think I conveyed this in my overly long and poorly detailed engagement musing (as it turned out, some of the details I gave, especially relating to the words I used when I worked up the nerve to ask Julies, were terribly wrong. The words Julie told me I said are actually much more romantic, and for that reason—and because she has a doctor’s memory, while I only have an open-book-exam lawyer’s memory—I like and will believe her rendition of the events. When she gets back, she’s going to redraft that paragraph, and I’ll post it along with my version, so you can get a better idea of what transpired. I’m just happy I’m more romantic than “Do you like Davids?”). The ring I bought for Julie was sized at five and a half (that does feel familiar—maybe from writing it in mails before the big event—did I mention how hard it was to keep my worries, consternations, and fears out of my musings, to keep it from the off-chance Julie would read a revealing paragraph?), when her finger is more of a four or four and a half.
When I return to Seattle, I will bring the ring back to the store I bought it, and they will remake the ring to fit her slender finger. The process should take between four and six weeks, a lifetime for Julie, who will have to use camera-phone pictures to prove to her colleagues that she is indeed engaged. (Being a guy, I don’t have to worry about that since guys wouldn’t lie about something like that; if anything, guys would lie about the opposite. Talk about Venus and other unrelated planets that have nothing to do with gender.) Julie should get the ring back in about a month, after which she will have plenty of opportunities to wear it. Before dinner tonight, she placed a bandage around the back of the ring for it to fit her ring finger. While it’s not an ideal solution (especially since she’s covering up some of the sparklies on the inside of the band), it beats her wearing it on her index finger as she had been doing since I gave it to her.
I seemed to have wasted my whole triangular foods bit. I was practicing it on Julies while at the bar/pizza place, and it seems wasteful to have used it in a parenthetical above, especially as I’m now desperate for words to close out this musing. My fingers are hurting a bit from either all my typing, or more likely, my sitting in bucks of stars not typing.
Dinner with my mother and Julie’s father went well, by the way. We still need to have the larger families get together (Julie’s mom and middle sister, and my two sisters and respective monsters), but it was a good first step, even if we had to walk too far in the heat thanks to the Muse’s “special arrangement” with the restaurant. They supplied us with a free glass of cheap champagne as a consolation prize, which was enough for me to open up and become more witty/outgoing during dinner. I really should start drinking more to increase my charm factor.
I’m leaning toward not including a word count in my entries any more. I was using it as more of a training exercise to prove that the writing was greater than 2,000 words. While I’ll still have the Goal, I don’t think I need to share if I made it or not. The assumption (and reality, if all goes well) is that I make it every day: i.e., if I write something, it’s the Goal. If I fail to meet it, I’m sure you’ll hear from me. The caffeination part I may or may not include. Today was a coke at lunch and a few sips of mocha at the bucks, since I left before finishing it (the terrible heat didn’t help me want to drink a warm drink—damn, my sentence structure is gone). Luckily, that pushed me over the edge for tonight. Hopefully I’ll be back in better form tomorrow.
It’s a beautiful evening on our last night in NYC. Tomorrow Julie and I leave for our respective cities, changed slightly (sort of like being moved to the left a bit). The weather today was again atrocious, unbearably hot and uncomfortable. We slept in the morning, foregoing and exciting-sounding trip to Long Island and the airport to pick up Julie’s mom and the Master Teacher, the spiritual leader of the Buddhist sect that Julie’s parents help run. Instead, we went bought a birthday gift for Rachel, and wandered in Central Park for a few minutes, before realizing that the incredible heat was driving my slightly insane.
Looking back, it might have been better had we slept during the day and ventured out only after the sun had safely set. I’d like to blame global warming for the heat, but it’s probably a freak occurrence (I’ll blame other things for global warming, like the melting of the ice caps and the upcoming shift in global climates thanks to certain Republican leaders—but that’s getting too close to politics, something I’ve tried to stay away from to because I have little to add to the fray and little energy or desire to jump in.
Jumping back to my meta-writing, I’m predicting this will be a rather painful musing to write. I’m tired, there’s only a caffeinated Coke running through my veins, and, while I have a few things I’d like to say today, none of them are likely to get enough of a rise out of me to provide me with the energy I need to say them well. I’ll plod away, however, and use these meta-writing paragraphs to pad my count. While cleaning out her bag in preparation for packing, Julie found a bag of chocolate coins, which I am liberally partaking in—what a terrible turn of sentence. I’m not into this tonight. After eating four chocolate coins, I had Julie take the bag away from me. I’m so weak.
Julie and I had dinner with Julie’s parents, Jennifer, the Master Teacher, and a few people in his entourage. One of his entourage was from Australia and spoke English well, and provided a good translation of the Master Teacher’s words. He provided his thoughts on Buddhism and education after the meal, a vegetarian Chinese dinner, which was surprisingly tasty. The two things I learned about Buddhism. First, there are “three poisons” of Buddhism: Hatred, Ignorance, and Greed. Selfishness is particularly bad since it includes all three poisons. Second, the world would be a better place if people removed the poisons from their lives. The Master Teacher used a Japanese “study” (he made it sound scientific, but I have my doubts), in which a researcher took glasses of water and wrote placards with the words “Love” in front of half, and “Hate” (or Ugly) in front of the other half. He then froze all the glasses, and studied their crystalline structure. The glasses with the “Love” in front had beautiful structures, while the glasses with the “Hate” in front had ugly structures, which just went to show you, as he explained it, that there’s something about happy thoughts being better.
That was a terrible discussion of a rather interesting lecture. I’ve the Master Teacher lecture before on the Buddhist television channel in Dallas and Taiwan. The English that scrolls along the bottom does not do his talks justice, or so I’m hoping. He’s much more interesting when the nuances of his stories are conveyed better. This goes to show you how valuable a good translator is (that’s for you Chuck).
I’m only 600 words in and I’ve decided to take a second meta-writing break. I don’t know why these are easier to write than actually saying something. It might be that I’ve becoming so efficient as saying nothing in these paragraphs, that I can write 2,000 words with nothing but nothings in the form of meta-writing. Or it could be a crutch that I need to grow out of, something I use to pad my writing when I could be spending this time working on something interesting or rewarding. (The same could be said of much of my diary entries, especially the one when nothing of interest has happened to me, and I have little to share). This lying in bed and typing, I’m finding, is not good for my wrists or writing energies. I sat up in the hopes that this will improve my output and save my wrists. I’m lying back down on the bed, after my back hurt. I’m too lazy to do anything constructive. But I’ll keep at it because that’s what I do: keep at it. I’ve used this mantra a bit too much over the last couple of days. I think I’ve been waiting too long to write. By the time I lie in bed, my muse (no pun on the name of the terrible hotel we’re staying in: The Muse—I guess it’s not a pun so much as a coincidence) is already sleeping and trying to drag me down with her. With the scorching heat we’ve experienced, nighttime has become the only comfortable time of day to wander the streets of NYC in comfort—my favorite pastime while here, which explains why I’ve written most of these musings way past what normally would have been my bedtime.
Looking back at my engagement, there’s definitely one thing I would have changed: I should have spoken to Julie’s parents before asking. I was in a bit of quandary before the date, asking everyone (except, obviously, the right people) about Chinese traditions, and whether it was necessary. Jennifer scolded Julie and I, first for ducking the drive to the airport, and then for me not asking Julie’s father before I asked Julie to marry me. He’s not angry—he’s happy as long as Julie’s happy—but he felt excluded from the entire event. I feel bad about that. I should have called Jennifer or Janie to get the contact information for Julie’s father. I wanted to keep it a secret (which was why I decided against it, that and according to my research, it wasn’t the custom it is in many other places), and I wasn’t sure if Julie’s sisters could handle the secret. All excuses now, of course. Nothing to do but apologize and move on. Our wedding, something that’s still a couple of years away in the likeliest arrangement, might consist of two parts: a Jewish wedding somewhere in the states, and a Buddhist ceremony either in the states or in Taiwan. Julie and I will have to figure it out. Of course, I’m still leaning toward eloping, but after the father mishap, Julie isn’t so sure we’ll be able to pull it off. Now that there’s no secret anymore, I’m free to write our plans and my thoughts on those plans here. Hopefully they’ll be better than the crap I’m throwing down today. (It’s so easy to write these self-deprecating comments about my bad writing today, a trick I couldn’t use during the Marathon to pad my counting. I’m not sure why I included that here. Perhaps I’m beginning to realize that while my 2k Goal (which is sacrosanct now) is important, I might have to tweak it to start forcing me toward my 10k story goal, which is so far from beginning that, to put it frankly and quite poorly, it isn’t even funny. Enough crap, time for a new paragraph.
I hit the three main points for today. Now I need to finish off the last 700 words and call it a night. We have a busy day tomorrow. We’re waking up early, checking out of the hotel, and heading over to Julie’s family hotel near the UN for breakfast. My mother is picking us up around 11 tomorrow morning (which is one or two words more than saying 11am, which is eight more words after I type this parenthetical—desperation is a disgusting beast) for a quick trip to visit Eileen and her monsters. From there, we head to the airport for our flights to Seattle and Newport Beach. It’s been wonderful, as always, spending a week with Julie. I can’t wait until these weeks can last longer, turning into months and years. But that’s another year away. If words were like wishes—or something silly like that.
During the parenthetical of the last paragraph, I came up with another part of the goal. While the 10k story goal is admirable, I’m not sticking my foot into the water on that one yet. What I need is a weekly story goal that moves that 10k goal forward. Perhaps a 5k or 10k story draft goal per week. I’ll give this a little thought before I jump into it. I don’t want to bang my head on the bottom of the pool or anything with a hasty jump.
I’m in the final stretch for this musing. I should start editing these down from the 2k I write. If I did, this entry might end up at around 250 words, and I doubt anyone would believe that I went anywhere close to the Goal for the day. Plus, the process of editing would take effort, something I’m lacking in both writing toward the Goal and writing in general. I need to get back into my routine, find sometime during work to thinking and drink coffee, and then pound out the words early enough where I don’t feel rushed to get this done before going to sleep. I also need to get back to my morning exercises (the physical kind, not the writing or mental). After managing to do them once while in Brooklyn, I haven’t managed another day of them. I was up to 45 push-ups, sit-ups, core, and jumping jacks. I should be able to do that again on Sunday. Maybe.
A motorcyclist is revving his engine outside the window of our hotel. There he goes, finally leaving. Our window looks out onto a brick wall, which make me wonder where the motorcyclist was parked. As I said before, our hotel choice was not great. This place was a bit expensive for the crappy quality (see “pre-dinner show” reservations from yesterday), or small room, or lack of a view, or sufficient toilet paper. One of the entourage at dinner today provided a good way of telling the difference between five star and three star hotels. (The Master Teacher has traveled the world over the last month, going to Paris, London, NY, New Zealand, Taiwan (maybe a few more places, or a few less, it’s just a general list.) A five-star hotel room doesn’t have its own coffee maker, while a three-star hotel room always does. I guess it’s more of a discussion on the type of people that stay in three-star as opposed to five-star rooms: the three-star people want to make their own coffee; the five-star people want their coffee delivered to them in the form of room service. This came up because the entourage needed a coffee pot to make tea for the Master Teacher, and didn’t find one in the hotel in NY.
This will be the last entry I write in this hotel. Tomorrow’s entry should be written on the plane, if everything goes as planned. I received my upgrade notice a few days ago, so I should have lots of room. With the delicious coffee Continental serves, I should also have plenty of yummy energy to get my juices flowing. All I have to do is focus those energies in some direction other than a retrospective musing on all the things I should have discussed on nights like this when I had so much to talk about and so little energy and skill to say them. As I close in on the last thirty words of this musing, the energy starts to flow. Until I took a hug-break from Julie, these were the easiest words I’ve written all musing. I guess good things always happen at the ends. So long from NYC!
I’m writing this after finishing a good dinner on my flight back to Seattle. I’m writing this after watching the first three quarters of a surprisingly entertaining movie, “Hitch.” I arrived at a rather uncomfortable part (read: the plot thickened and an embarrassing moment poked its ugly head), and I decided I should use the uncomfortable feeling as the push I needed to open the computer and start the typing. My mug of yummy caffeine arrived at about the same time, so I knew the fates were in agreement. (We’ll see what the muses have to say about things as I get further into this).
Not so good so far. After writing a line and a half of what I had hoped would turn into a story, I put the headphones back on as the people around me laughed. This is a good movie—but I’ve persevered, and I’m going to give it another try (and this has nothing to do with yet another uncomfortable moment—okay, it has everything to do with such a moment).
I’m nervous about writing again—stories, that is. These Hi Ho (to borrow an expression from Kurt Vonnegut) moments are painful. I see this large expanse of white space before me, and all I can think is how the fuck am I going to fill it up? And, more painfully, as if that’s possible, what the fuck am I going to fill it up with? I’ve given much thought to a story’s structure, what it is I want to accomplish in it, and I’ve not come up with much.
I decided to watch the rest of the movie, one of the smartest romantic comedies I’ve seen in a long time, second only to Sally and Harry. The dialogue was richly written, and there were a few surprises, which is always a good and usual unexpected thing. Now, I’m going to get back to this writing thing and see if I can find anything inside of me besides the scared cat (I always thought the word was “scaredy”).
I’m fed and hopeful. It’s amazing how life appears so bleak when hungry, and so full of possibilities when full.
There’s nothing there. I’m not saying anything. I don’t see it—come to think of it, I’ve never seen it. I white expanse waits for me and I hope for its embrace. Suck it up and say something, I keep telling myself. Stop masturbating with these thoughts about how hard it is and fucking write. Writing sucks. It sucks the big one. I need so much and I do so little.
They were in a booth in the restaurant, he sitting next to her, and they gazed at each other. People always say that so-and-so looked deep into so-and-so’s eyes, as if staring can somehow express the depths of feelings. Other people (or perhaps it’s the same people) say that you can see a person’s soul when looking into their eyes.
A tremendous shock shook the office. Seymour knew immediately that the office was going to fall down around his ears. He covered his ears to protect them when Mr. Dandry walked into his cubicle and began screaming. Seymour saw the spittle leave Mr. Dandry’s mouth before he felt it on his cheek. He knew he had no choice. He covered his face with his left elbow, and accepted the reprimand. Mr. Dandry’s shoulders were covered by dandruff, no relation to his name.
In a line next to the stairs were four shoes and two sandals. Kelly mouthed the words: “four shoes and two sandals.” She wasn’t sure if that meant four pairs of shoes and two pairs of sandals, or four actual shoes and two actual sandals, or perhaps there was a difference between shoes, which, she could imagine, does not include the pair, and sandals, which, she could imagine, does include the pair, especially since she’d never heard of a sandal, but she had heard of a shoe. That didn’t mean a sandal didn’t exist, of course. There were many things Kelly never heard of that were out there, semantically or otherwise. She wasn’t sure if this were one of them.
Kelly went to the living room where Brad waited. “Five pairs of footwear,” she said.
Breathing focus and life into nothingness to what end? I don’t see the purpose in this. Scold me, please. Explain it to me, what I’m after, what I hope to attain, why it took me so long to even want this or know what it is. Prolific in what sense? Messages on a disk? Where? First learn the classics, then work with what you’ve learned and turn it into something meaningful. First copy then create. How can you hope to create when you don’t know how to copy? Tell it simply and tell it well, then I can worry about what it is I should be telling.
Such easy words, and so hard times. Warming up, bring myself back to the realities of the anguish that I always forget exists at the bottom of these wells. Why am I so good at sharing pains, but not good at sharing results? Why do I ask myself such ridiculous questions? How does asking these unanswerable questions help me in any way achieve anything? I shoot the question mark, knowing that it in its own way brought about my downfall and called out for retribution.
I arrived home in the rain after a long delay before taking off—which I thankfully slept through—and my feeble attempts at writing and eating dinner and watching a movie. The eating and watching weren’t feeble, but you probably figured that out. Not surprisingly, Seattle was a bit cold and rainy when I arrived. I hate rainy night driving. It’s difficult for me to stay awake or concentrate. It takes an incredible amount of effort to concentrate on concentrating, which is not a sane way to drive when the roads are slippery. I guess I understand better what Julie means when she says she’s falling asleep while driving at night. I always tell her to open the windows and sing loudly. It’s difficult to do that when it’s raining, though.
I came home to a 1,000-word hole I’m not trying to dig myself out from. I had high hopes before boarding the plane, but nothing came together. As I said yesterday (and I think the day before) I feel like I’m forcing these musings to the Goal, and I don’t feel I’m getting much from this forcing. Go figure.
I might as well muse about something that might be useful: synopses. I still have trouble thinking on my feet interesting places for plots and characters to go. I’ve accepted that I can, when I have the inspiration and the desire and a good alignment of moon, planets, and stars, write a scene of some value on the interesting-spectrum. What I need now is to provide a flowchart for that spectrum. Most of my thoughts are rational like that. I blame computer programming and graduate school (although less the school, since my rational side was well developed before I ever stepped foot in college) for my ability (or limitation) to think of things in a linear, rational way. There I go again: procrastinating doing actual thinking. Why are you surprised? Let the skimming continue.
A guy walks into a bar and sees his friend. He pulls up a barstool and orders a beer. Two women walk by, and the friend points them out to the guy. The guy finishes his beer, cracks his neck, and walks up to the girls. He’s the lure for the evening, his job is to pull the women back to the guy and friend’s table for serious wooing. The lure gets first dibs on the choice, which must be respected, unless there’s a wave off. A wave off is where the vibe isn’t there for the lure and his choice.
The guy walks over and starts a chat with the two girls. The friend watches from the table, lifting his bottle in a silent toast when the guy points back to their table. It’s early in the evening and the bar is only half full. Two bouncers in black outfits and earpieces roam the bar, mostly talking to each other and puffing out their chests. One is black and short, the other is white and tall. The friend overhears their conversation as they walk by. They’re discussing a fight from last night and what they told the police after it happened. The friend listens in, but they pass too quickly and he can’t get anymore details.
When guy is doing well with the girls. The girls are showing interest, and their drinks are low. The guy offers to buy the girls new drinks if they’ll come over the table and greet the friend. The guy doesn’t say it, but he hints that his friend his shy, and is getting over a bad, abusive relationship. The guy is playing the sympathy card. After getting close to the girls, he knows that neither of them are relationship quality, and the friend and the guy have agreed that when that determination is made by the lure, outrageous stories should be used to increase the enjoyment of having to woo the lower quality girls.
When the guy returns to the table with the girls, the guy gives the friend the signal. He rubs the back of his neck. The guy introduces the friend to the girl, and tells them in a whisper that the friend can clearly hear to be gentle with him. The friend puts on a sad face and looks down and away, trying to figure out why he was sad tonight. The last time the guy pulled the sad routine, his childhood dog had died in the guy’s arms the night before. The two girls during that night were particularly heinous, but both the guy and the friend got lucky, and heinous girls are always more generous. At least that’s what they determined after sharing notes.
The girls were from out of town, here for only the weekend. This lifted the friend’s spirits, which he had to hide underneath his sad mask. The curly haired girl sidled in next to the friend and began whispering in his ear. She too had just gotten over a break up and she wanted to tell the friend everything about it. The friend dodged that line of conversation, telling her he wasn’t ready to hear the story—his pain was too fresh. He figured out the guy’s ploy rather quickly. He expected more, and would, later after they were done, one way or the other, with the girls, tell the guy that he was disappointed with his entertainment—not the girls since they never let their standards get in the way of having a fun night; but the creativeness of the lie.
The other girl, who might have been pretty if she didn’t wear fourteen layers of makeup over her pimple-riddled face, waved down the waitress and ordered drinks for her and her friend, looking to the guy and the friend, who indicated another round of beers. They placed their order and the same time, sure that the only way to enjoy this night with these particular girls was to drink, and to drink a lot.
The setup is there, now all I have to do is swing the bat. I stare down the ball as it approaches me, and I watch it fly past me into the waiting glove. Why don’t I ever swing? I’m thankfully approaching the end of today’s convoluted and annoying writing. At least I can start putting things down, even if I can’t make them move or anything. Sleep tonight and an early morning will do me good. I won’t bother making promises about tomorrow that I probably don’t intend to keep. Sorry for the unedited garble, but I got to do what I got to do.
It’s early morning writing on a pretend summer day. The morning faked me out—I woke up to a terribly sunny day, and expected it to remain that way. During my walk to the Sunday morning breakfast place, the sun slid behind thirteen layers of clouds, which moved into place thanks to a cold wind that ripped through my short-sleeved t-shirt and shorts. Oh well. I guess I’m not in Kansas (or NYC) anymore.
The day turned out nice after all. I spent the morning wandering the streets, and then I had a hankering for home improvement. I went to the local home-improvement store, bought some shelving and an extension cord for yard work (which I never got to), and then decided to buy replacement switches for some of my timed, outdoor lighting. The switch in the back doesn’t work anymore (mostly thanks to my tinkering), and the one in the front is off by a few hours, but I’m afraid to change because I might break it as I did the one in the back. I thought this a good opportunity to begin wiring my house in preparation for turning it into a fully computerized house, one of my dreams upon its purchase.
After discovering that the home-improvement store did not sell any gadgetry for home automation, and realizing that the thirty dollars that I would spend on high-quality timers would better be spent on high quality, computer-controlled switches, I made a trek to an electronics store. I spent many hours wandering around the store and discovered they it, too, did not carry what I needed, and left the store despondent, having purchased nothing, which for me in an electronics store is almost unheard of.
I did manage to put the shelves back up in the laundry room, but that was the extent of my home-improvement activities. Perhaps I’ll get to fixing up the garden this week. The first step, I always say, is buying the equipment. Everything after that is all superfluous. (If only life worked like that.)
I’m filling in these words to make my goal. I’m going to talk about splits and goals and Goals. All of it is meaningless. I’ll save you the surprise: I failed yet again at ulterior goals. I don’t know what’s wrong with my writing, but I’ve hit upon another story blocker. I’ll have a full deck of these if I keep at it. As it is now, I’ll continue pounding out the words, editing and adding to make my goal. What’s more interesting is Julie’s side of the engagement story I posted above. As I hinted at before, her recollection of the dialogue is much better than mine was. It makes me sound more romantic, which, of course, I am, even if I didn’t take her for a ride on the horses—a romantic cliché, if you will.
The rain set in after dark today, which is no excuse for not going for a bicycle ride. I did drink two shots of yummy caffeine (in the form of a mocha and an Americano) in two different coffee houses as I tried to break free of my problems with story telling. The caffeine did little for me except make me anxious during my drives. I’m not sure what has happened to its effects on me, but caffeine has been doing little except making me a prolific journal writer, not something I ever aspired to be.
I’m adding the last three-hundred or so words up here because I can’t bear to look below. It’s terrible. Awful. As I said, it talks of goals, and then it throws words against the page, which, I thought, might look like parts of a story, but turned out to be exceptionally pathetic words, filled with consternated thoughts and constipated stories. When they said writing was hard—whoever “they” may be—they certainly weren’t joking. I wish it was a little less hard a painful these days. But I’ll preserve and figure something out one of these days.
I return to work tomorrow morning after our engagement trip to NYC. I’ve been keeping my eye on my e-mail over the week, so I have a vague idea of what I’m in for, lots of e-mail cleanup and a few outstanding issues that kept looking for me while away. I’ll get to it when I get to it. I’m hoping to bring Julie’s ring to the jeweler on Tuesday so they can remake it, and I can get it back to Julie. I felt terrible taking it away form her at the airport in New Jersey, but it was either that or let her walk around with tape wrapped around its back forever. After spending all that money on wrapping the diamonds all the way around the ring, I didn’t want to have half of them covered up. And, plus, it makes Julie a better Julies. It’s all about patience, something I have yet to learn (i.e., to make David a better Davids, not a better Julies).
The two-thousand split is another part of my goal (small-g). I know I talk about goals too often on this thing, but goals are what keep me working toward something. I’m an external motivatee in that I need external motivation to get things done. Thanks to a form of schizophrenia, I am able to motivate myself externally through voices in my head (and on the page), which brings about these discussions about goals and the Goal, and the other shit I waste my time typing. Getting back to the two-thousand split, the new goal is to write a minimum of 1,000 words in story/voyeur/character/synopsis form every day. The other 1,000 words can be like this: crap about my life, my failures as a writer, how much lint is in my navel for that day, etcetera.
I failed again at my morning exercises. I don’t think this bodes well for getting back into my writing rhythm. Vacations always do that to me: I come back, and it takes me a while to get back into my routine. Not that vacations are a bad thing, but I’m a man of habit, and when my habits are broken, it takes me a while to reinstate them into my simian brain.
Man, am I nervous. Sandra sits next to me, unaware that over the next three hours I will change our lives forever. What waits in my left breast pocket is the key to that change: a small green box hiding an engagement ring. I feel again for my pocket to reassure myself that the ring is safe. This has been a long time in coming, three years to be exact.
Why the fuck can’t I write anything? I keep thinking of nothing and then trying to write stories. I told myself I wouldn’t do this now. I even changed computers, thinking that a new blank screen would allow me to find inspiration. I was wrong. I’m not finding it. I’m not finding anything. Have I said fuck yet?
The Bears family lived in a large house. Momma, Papa, and baby led a simple life, enjoying simple foods, and simple tastes. They were an average family, living in an average house in an average town. The Papa—my god, this hurts. This hurts terribly.
Talk about funks: 1,000 words of funk.
He held the tip of the sword at the throat of Hendrick, daring him to move and give him an excuse to drive the point through his throat.
These words fucking hurt!
Terror sees me. I duck from it but it sees nonetheless, not so easily fooled.
The plastic ball was green, white, and blue, blown up by their father, and thrown into the air by their mother. The three boys batted it around on the grassy hill where their parents made the picnic. Their father had found this place in the park years ago, and every weekend, they visited the hill, bringing the picnic blanket and basket, and the dog, and playing games through the day. They never left until the sun fully set, savoring each moment on the grassy hill.
That day, they went further than they normally did, moving beyond the grassy hill and past another grassy hill, to a yet third grassy hill. The crowds had found this part of the park, and as crowds do, they attracted others, and soon the hills were full of people and their children. The family liked other people, but they used the weekends to spend time with each other and escape from the people, and they raced across the crowded hills until they arrived at the third hill. They had never been this far, but their mother opened the blanket and began unpacking the picnic. The boys tossed the ball after their father inflated it with large, exaggerated breaths.
Peter, the oldest, hit the ball away from the hill, and the three boys chased it as it rolled down off the hill. Their mother and father listened to them shriek and yell as they first ran and then tumbled down the grassy hill. The dog laid by the picnic table, exhausted from chasing the family across the three hills. It decided it was best to bask in the late afternoon sun then chase the boys down yet another hill.
Their father spoke to their mother, describing his week’s adventures at the office. They laughed at his tales of intrigue, and his descriptions of his co-workers, swine or back stabbers or butt kissers, they were all characters in their father’s tales to their mother. After attending many of his parties at the bank, she grew to know these characters, and to know that he, while basing much of his stories on what happened, took great liberties in the telling of the tales to amuse their mother, who, since she spent all of her time with the three boys, missed the adult interactions she foreswore when choosing the boys over her work.
It was when the shrieking stopped that both their father and their mother stopped their conversation. The dog, a white sheep dog with long straight hair and a nose so wet it dripped, poked its head up and looked sideways as if sensing, perhaps through the absence of yelling or with some other dog sense, that something was wrong. Their parents called out, and when there was a delay in answering, dropped the preparation for the picnic lunch and walked toward the top of the hill where the boys had tumbled down. As they got closer, their father sped up until he was running, their mother not too far behind.
As they arrived at the top of the hill, they heard the sound of a river, and when they looked they saw a stream swelled by the week’s rain making its way through the hilly valley. They did not know that water ran in this park, and when their mother followed the river she screamed, pointing at the plastic ball as it floated down river. Their father saw two of the boys at the stream’s edge, but didn’t see the third. He yelled and pointed and ran down the hill, looking frantically for the third. He identified the two younger boys, but did not see Peter.
The boys did not answer their father until he arrived at the stream’s edge and shook the youngest Norman by the shoulders. Norman couldn’t look at his father and pointed down river, where the ball had been. The stream traveled quickly, and the ball was no longer visible. Their father waded into the water until he the stream came up to his waist about in the middle. He began wading downriver, lifting his feet and floating, calling out Peter’s name. Their mother was pulling the two younger boys away from the river, calling out to their father to find Peter. She held the two boys by their shoulders and wouldn’t let go of them.
Fuck this. So much fucking. So much boring shit with no point and no purpose. Yeah, 1,000 words, not going to happen. No imagination, no words, no anything. And so my streak of failures continues, unabated by anything called progress or success.
The black crow flew onto the roof, presented its tail feathers, crapped a long, white stream to the ground below, and flew away.
***
“He was here before,” the barista said to explain why she let the guy jump in front of me at the coffee line. It was as if had he not had an explanation, she wouldn’t have let him do it.
“I don’t mind. Even if he wasn’t, he can still go on ahead.”
“No rush?”
“Bingo.”
***
After I finished peeing, I went to the sink to wash my hands. A bug sat near the drain, and I wasn’t sure if it was alive. I turned on the faucet. The bug, rolled in a small ball, was all legs and body. The water flooded around it, but it did not plunge into the drain. When I turned off the water, the bug, actually a spider, I realized, unrolled itself and began crawling up the sink.
I repeated this process with greater amounts of water each time, but the spider managed to hold on. It wasn’t until I opened both faucets fully that the water overcame the spider and washed it down the sink. As I began singing, “down came the rain and washed the spider out,” I saw the spider’s thread on the side of the sink, which I hadn’t noticed before. It must have used the thread to stop itself from falling down the drain. I broke the thread with my finger and turned on the water to wash it down the drain.
***
I’m like my mother in always believing that people are innocent, even when they’re clearly guilty. I was happy when the jury acquitted OJ, and I’m happy that another jury acquitted Michael Jackson. I think this is the only positive aspect of my personality: I want to believe that everyone I meet is a good person. While I haven’t met celebrities in the physical sense, I have met them through their work and, like an acquaintance; I want to believe that they are incapable of inhumane acts. I guess we all have our fantasies.
Today was a tough day. I feel bad writing what I’m sure will amount to a rather bad musing, especially after yesterday’s discussion on my plans to write stories using a more thorough and well-though-out approach. But as I say often, I can only work with what I have, and what I have is, well—I’ll leave the small dick jokes for another time. I woke early this morning for a morning meeting, and by the time the three-hour marathon ended at eleven, I had symptomatic PY, and I realized that today was not going to be a good day.
I had been optimistic about the day when I awoke, secure in my knowledge that I had fallen asleep at a reasonable hour last night. I remember waking an hour before my alarm went off, and deciding to sleep through that initial waking. I now believe that might have caused my bad day.
Sorry for the interruption, but I had to reboot my router after I ran into a problem with my wireless internet. Of course, I could have ignored the problem and continued writing, but that’s not how I work, especially on a sans-caffeine day. I can see it now: this is going to be a painful musing to write. Maybe I should give up before I hurt myself.
My head still feels a bit heavy, even after a thirty-minute nap. I don’t know what hit me, but a sick feeling accompanied my sleepiness today: my head was hot, I was dizzy, and I was sure I was coming down with something. There are plenty of sicknesses floating around work. I downed two Advil pills, and even napped for thirty minutes on the floor, but none of it helped. I didn’t bother drinking coffee, knowing it wouldn’t help (especially after the Advil pills failed), and after my last meeting of the day at 3:30pm, I got in the car and drove to downtown Seattle to drop off Julie’s ring. I would have preferred to go home to the Castle, but I worried that if I was becoming sick, I might not be able to drive there later in the week. As I said before, I’m not feeling much better after my nap. My head is still a bit heavy, but it’s not terrible, which is a vast improvement.
This is painful. I’m debating finishing this musing or calling Julie and coming back to it later, hopefully more refreshed or something. I didn’t have any opportunities to grind ideas or voyeur today.
As you can tell by the date of posting, I didn’t manage to post this last night. After writing the garble above, I settled down for a nap and then video games. We played until midnight, which relieved some of my sickness (especially when playing). I woke up this morning still not feeling great, but better than yesterday. Since I arrived at work (I slept in a bit today), I’m feeling better. I know I missed the Goal yesterday, but these things happen, and I’m not going to dwell on it. I’ll try to make it up today, and perhaps write a story (yeah, I kill me too).
It’s almost dangerous for me to be drinking this coffee. I don’t know what happened today, but after finishing my first meeting this morning, I found myself in a wonderful mood, the type of mood where my motto, “super great and getting back,” actually rang true. Part of it is thanks to the beautiful spring weather we have today in Seattle (supposedly, this will be the only beautiful day this week—we’ll see, I don’t trust these weather people anymore). Another part must be the delayed onset of P.H.D. (post-headache day, of course). I woke this morning still feeling a bit headachy, but after foreswearing the internets (thanks to Chuck’s last post—not that I haven’t tried this before, but it’s always nice to be reminded now and again), to working rather hard, I now feel great. But I said that already, and I’m trying not to repeat myself too many times, too many times.
Outside the crime-ridden streets of Island City, the masked hero is planning a surprise for the caped woman.
Okay, that idea didn’t pan out. I originally thought, wouldn’t it be cool to have a superhero asking a woman to marry him (working off my engagement theme, which I will somehow turn into a story). Obviously, that was the wrong angle. What I came up with during my walk and dinner (see below) I think is much better. Now, if I can only take the vague notes and ideas and turn them into a story, something I have not done in a while (the turning into a story part, not the story part), life would be grand.
***
I sat on the rocks overlooking the lake. The rocks—really cemented stones—walled in the water from the grassy park and trees, which line this part of Lake Washington. Mount Rainer loomed majestically (as if mountains can loom any other way) in the break between the house-covered hills and the watery horizon. I studied the rocks and brown mud through the clear, shallow water, which gave the rocks a wavy appearance.
Two girls sat on the rocks to my right. One was tattooed with slicked-back short black hair and a white muscle t-shirt over a black sports bra. She held a blue ball catcher, which consisted of a long blue arm and a small catcher cup on the end, and a squeezable handle that opened and closed the cup to clutch a ball. She used the catcher to fish a tennis ball from the lake and throw it far into the lake for her white dog to fetch. She wore black cargo pants and a black bead necklace with a greenish stone hanging over her neck.
Her friend was a chubby girl with short-cut hair and a red, puffy vest made of the same material as ski jackets. From where I sat, I could see an oval expanse of skin between her black parachute pants and black undershirt.
A boat, anchored halfway across the lake, played classic rock while turning slowly in the gentle wind-powered waves. Schools of ducks floated near the rocks to my left. The lake smelled of the rotting water moss and the duck feathers, which both floated over the lapping water.
Another pair of woman walked by and tugged a miniature dog behind them.
The white dog enjoyed his game of watery fetch and snorted as he dog paddled to shore, chewing contently on the tennis ball.
***
I order a glass of Chianti in the neighborhood Italian restaurant. I take my first sip and find something stringy like a tiny twig, at my lips. Thinking it’s a piece of cork, I pull it out of my mouth to examine it. It looks familiar, like something I’ve seen recently. As I continue to examine it, I remember what it looks like: the rolled up spider struggling in my sink on Monday. I fling it on the floor before I have a chance to verify its identity, and order a replacement, Chianti, hold the spider.
This is clearly a great neighborhood restaurant. As I sit here, munching on my salad, freshly baked bread, and sipping my glasses of Chianti and water, Ed the waiter comes over and asks if he should put in my order. He sees me scribbling away in my Moleskine and tells me to take my time, there’s no rush, he’ll put my order in when I’m ready. I eat my salad slowly. While I’d like to spend more time here writing, my mother called, and the phone signal is weak in the restaurant. I want to return her call before it becomes too late in NY. I ask Ed to cook my dinner. I know I’m using my mother as an excuse, when, really, I fear that my inspiration will run out and I’ll have nothing to do while they cook my food. I guess with all things being equal, I might as well eat first and worry about the details and the walk home later.
I finished half my dinner and my entire glass of wine. They’re boxing up the rest of my spaghetti and Chicken Marsala, which was okay, if a bit bland—surprise—and too sweet. I will eat the leftovers tomorrow before video game night. For the record, last night was an impromptu video game night as well, which was another reason I didn’t get around to finishing writing the Goal last night. We played until midnight. I think I mentioned that in my posting this morning, which were the remnants of what I tried to write last night added to all the excuses I came up with this morning to explain my absence.
I’ll resist dessert tonight because I’m not sure how it’ll treat me, viz., will it bring me down emotionally or keep this great day going. Whatever was in the warm air or breakfast this morning, this has been a great day on all fronts. There was a bit of a down time this afternoon after I drank my coffee (see the first paragraph), but that worked out for the best. Had I written at the end of work instead of in the park and in the Italian restaurant, I’m not sure I would have come up with the good material. And, of course, there’s always the thinking and walking I did before the writing (which I’ve been yelling at myself to do for a long time). I planned much of the underlying story for the serial I plan to write during my walk. I asked myself: what is it I liked to imagine myself as, and why the hell hadn’t I written a story about that before? I disregarded that my idea was childish and I concentrated on what excited me about it, remembering that any genre can be used to tell a story that touches people. Look at Lord of the Rings. Look at Peter Pan. They both have important themes that the authors get across in exceptional (and arguably clichéd) genres. It’s not the genre that’s important but the characters, story, themes, and messages.
Switching to the Moleskine, and, of course, the walk to the lake on this perfect night, was one of my better ideas in a long time. When I drank my coffee at the end of work and stared at the blank computer screen, I didn’t want to write anything. Escaping to the comfort of the pen on Moleskine paper let me get back to a warm place. I should have applied some of these diary/voyeur words to the story planning, but you know how I am: digression is my middle name, and word count is my other middle name. Now that was clever.
Yeah, I know. I missed it again. I wrote a few words, but not enough yesterday before video game night, thinking, sure, once we finish at a reasonable hour, I’ll have plenty of time to pound out the last thousand words or so for the Goal. Obviously, that didn’t happen. While I wasn’t too tired when we finished around eleven, my fingers and wrists were killing me, and I decided it best to go to sleep. Having an eight o’clock meeting today didn’t help things (even though I went to the meeting and didn’t say a word—I hate meetings like that. I’m like, why am I even here?).
Our gaming session last night was rather fun. Julie even joined in on our voice chat, which we use to talk during the game. (Julie and I still had our private phone chat for our adoring whispers and baby talk we don’t want to share with the freaks from Syracuse.) I have only a little more work to finish on what is turning out to be a beautiful, if tired, Friday, and I hope to provide more thinking and writing on my story, especially since I’m wasting all my diary words for the morning excuse. I got halfway to the goal with the excuse, not too bad for a video gamed day.
I have to write quickly to prepare for video game night. I received a mail from Will earlier, and I was afraid to open it. I couldn’t bear to read it if it was a cancellation of our game tonight. It wasn’t. Will felt like torturing us by sending a message with hundreds of “WoW…WoW…” written on one line. Obviously, he has too much time on his hands. Unlike me, who, instead of writing teasing mails, daydreams about the game tonight while I sit in meetings.
The life of the intern isn’t always glorious. I’m waiting in line for coffee (as if I do anything else with my time), and the barista asks one of the cafeteria workers to bring her a stack of pastry holders (you know the type: waxy paper bags where pastries spend their last moments of life). An intern, identified by his bright red shirt with the little white “intern” lettering, waits at the wrong end of the coffee bar, holding his money and the stack of pastry holders. The barista takes the stack from him, tsking her coworker in Spanish. “She just gave them to you?” “Yeah, she said I should pay over here and bring these things while I was on my way.”
The internets distracted me as I prepared to dive into more useless notes about my story. I was threatened yesterday with violence if I don’t turn these notes into some sort of story. I will be the first to apply violence to myself if I don’t write this story. I’m excited about it and the world I plan on creating. It’s just a matter of lighting the fire and seeing what erupts, which is so much easier said than done. But you knew that already, didn’t you?
I found another neighborhood eatery, although I should consider this one in the next neighborhood because it’s twice as far away as the Italian place I spoke about this week. I didn’t finish writing yesterday. Today, after taking a long walk down to Columbia City, the hometown of my MC, I’m sitting in the bucks of stars thinking of how to get out of my rut. I’ll save those words for my next posting. Here was the only crap I was able to write yesterday, thanks to movies and too much video games (I’m an addict, what can I say?).
-So, how goes your battle with cigarettes?
-I’m working on it.
-Let’s go.
-Where?
-To have a smoke.
-I don’t have any cigarettes.
-That’s okay, I have some.
-Ow, ow, ow, ow. You know, this is the reason I don’t bring cigarettes to work, John. Do you have a lighter too?
I twisted my fingers in a jerky, stiff movement and waved my arms and wrists. I had long forgotten how spastic this action looked since the few people who saw it had their own spastic action, or, more usually, forgot my spastic action moments later. Or that was how it had always been until Julia. She was the exception. I met Julia three months before in Tenement Used Books where I worked stocking shelves. I enjoyed the smell and feel of old books, and since the stock changed infrequently, I spent most of my time reading the shelves, and providing unsolicited guidance to the customers on the quality of the books they planned on purchasing.
I have four words for you: Too many video games. The dominant theme for this weekend was World of Warcraft. It was a beautiful weekend weather-wise, and while I did take plenty of walks, none of those walks produced any writing. I’ve been in a rut, and I probably always knew the problem: the day-after-video-game syndrome. You see, I can probably control my addiction if I played once a week. The problem I’m having, however, is that the day after I play, I go through withdrawal, and it’s difficult for me to concentrate on much the next day.
I don’t know what I’m going to do about this, but something needs to be done. I feel terrible wasting the weekend.
This hasn’t been a very good week for writing. I already spoke about my video game excuse, which, admittedly, is less excuse and more curse. But there’s more. I haven’t slept well lately, waking many mornings with a terrible headache and a lethargy that doggedly followed me through the day.
Part of my sleep problems relate to video games. When I play too often, as I did this past weekend, I have trouble falling asleep because after I close my eyes, my brain decides to replay my video game experiences. I see myself pressing buttons, reviewing battles, and repeatedly reliving the games. While it sounds enjoyable, it’s not. It’s repetitive and terribly annoying, like a little mouse in my head, running on a training wheel until smoke escapes through my brain cavity and out my ears. It’s not a fun experience, and it makes sleeping very difficult and not rewarding.
But that’s only part of the story. As the title of this musing indicates, I have creatures living in my roof. On clear nights (of which there have been many over the last few days—providing proof that, no, it doesn’t rain every day in Seattle), there is the unmistakable pitter-patter of little feet on my roof. For whatever reason, the roofers back in 1986 decided to use a material that amplified sounds. My bedroom is on the third floor, right under this acoustically enhanced roof. I learned of its abilities to amplify sound the first night it rained after moving into the Castle. The rain sounded like a symphony of percussions, and it kept me up the entire night. I’ve since learned to sleep through rainstorms, although I still wake if heavy rain starts after I fall asleep.
I noticed the scratching on my roof on different occasions. I didn’t know what caused it, and those occasions were so isolated that I didn’t think much of it. It sounded similar to the scratching in the wall I tried (and failed rather spectacularly) to describe in Grelko, added together with scratching and pecking, and a weird booming sound that echoed down the big chimney. It was when the rain stopped that I began to hear those sounds more clearly. I think the sounds have been there for the last couple of months, but because of the incredible amounts of rain Seattle has been getting in the evenings (the chance of overnight rain seems much greater than the chance of all-days rain), I haven’t heard the sounds, or at least I don’t think I heard the sounds. From last night’s experience (I fell asleep at 10pm and thought I slept until 6am, although I woke up disgustingly tired with a blaring, ice-pick friendly headache), I might be waking up from the scratching and booming and not realizing it, a sort of Sleep Apnea of Creatures Living in my Roof, if you will (I won’t even try to acronym-ize that).
I initially thought the creatures might be squirrels or other rodents that found a way onto my roof. I looked around my house, but unless the squirrels learned to fly or climb a vertical, wood-shingled wall, there was no way for them to get to the roof. This morning, as I lay in my bed until after nine (thanks to a hangover from not enough sleep), I saw a shadow on the blue screen that covers my skylight. I quickly rose from bed and pulled back the screen to see the cause of the pitter-patter. It wasn’t a squirrel but a black crow (I’m not sure if there are multi-colored crows). I had thought of birds as the source of the sounds, but I didn’t think they were heavy enough to make the walking noises I was hearing. I was wrong. A family of crows decided that the roof of the Castle would make a wonderful nesting spot. I think I even heard the squeaking of baby crows, which I will call crowlettes (which reminds me of Chicken McNuggets—and, no, I don’t know why) since I’m too lazy to look up if there is an official term for them, like chicks for chickens, or puppies for dogs.
Now, I know some of you are thinking about how the crowlette must be pretty cute, and how I would be a monster to interfere with the beautiful ritual of teaching the crowlette to fly and hunt. Those people, however, were never woken up at 11pm, 2am, 4am, 6am, and 8am to the sounds of crows walking on the roof, and they never thought they had a good night’s sleep, only to wake and find themselves more exhausted upon waking than upon first closing their eyes. I guess if they were my children, I might forgive them that (although, I still can’t visualize forgiving monsters for stealing my precious sleep—I guess it is part of the brainwashing process known as parenthood). I don’t know what those crows are doing up there, but it involves ripping and scratching and pecking, and, truth be told, I’m a bit nervous to climb to the roof and find out what damage they’ve caused. This maintenance is causing me to rethink house ownership. When I lived in an apartment, I never had to worry about crows or ants or gardens. I’m just saying.
Besides my fear of knowing, I also have the physical problem of getting to the roof. I have a flat roof with no built in ladders. There is an open porch on the third floor, which the building inspector used as the platform for his ladder to inspect the roof, but the only ladder I have is a wooden behemoth that the last owner left, and I’m not sure it will fit up the stairs of the Castle onto the porch. I meant to buy a smaller, cleaner ladder this weekend, but thanks to too much video game playing, I never made it to the hardware store.
Even now, as I write this musing, trying to push my way to the Goal, I’m receiving mails about playing video games tonight. I will resist, or try to. I can’t fall into the endless withdrawal cycle that happens when I play for more than two nights in a row. When I play, the next day is always a challenge to not play. Usually, I can rely on Julies to help me fight the draw. This past week, however, Julie was not around when the video-game siren called. Instead, I succumbed, which led to the cycle of playing every day, and eventually the majority of hours in ever day. I broke the cycle yesterday, but a big cause of that was feeling terrible and not even wanting to play. Tonight, as I finish this part of the Goal, I know I will resist. Whether I can hold out for the rest of the week remains to be seen. I know it’s not good for me, and I know what it does to me, but it is also fun, and something Julie and I enjoy doing together. Ugh. So much rationalization. I feel like a drug user, but I’m not. (I’m also not an alcoholic, mom, regardless of what you now believe after my drinking binge in New York.)
Like the carpenter ant problem that kept you riveted to sewcrates.com for weeks at a time, I’ll keep you updated on the crow problem. While I thought about buying an air-powered BB gun, I’m now leaning toward tossing the crow’s nest as far from the Castle’s roof as possible. That’s all assuming I can get up to the roof, of course.
I’ve wasted much of my caffeine-fueled inspiration today on work conversations, IMimg, and working. I guess it’s not exactly wasted, but I didn’t use the energy to write, which is why I originally started drinking yummy caffeine. (There might be other reasons I drink it now, more nefarious and less NEQID-friendly reasons.) It’s been difficult to get back into this writing thing. Writing, even about nothing every day, is easier when you write every day. When I take off days, as I’ve done, it’s hard to get back into it, to convince myself that this is worthwhile, and who would it hurt if I skipped another day.
It’s similar to my morning exercises. I’m still doing those, well, not doing those today, but doing them when I don’t wake up with screaming and crow-induced headaches, but I digress and repeat myself. I’m up to fifty each of the three exercises. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll wake up refreshed and do fifty, that is. The highest I’ve gone is forty-nine. But I’ll fight through the exercises as I’ll fight through these words and get back into both of them
It’s always easier to start writing when I have something to say, such as my diary entries while traveling or my crow journal entry today. The problem starts when I don’t have much to say. I’ve said before that it isn’t a problem, that the emptiness of thought or ideas is for me the springboard into story writing. I’m not sure how true that is. There were many days over the last week—and this is even before I tasted the video game tonic—where I had nothing to say and I didn’t want to spend more words on saying nothing, i.e., endlessly repeating myself about how hard this is, how I’ll never be a writer, blah, blah, blah. Even now, I’m beginning to count words, trying to hit the goal without having to delve into the dark, empty space where my story voice lurks. I’ll get there. I remember the 1,000 word goal, the 10,000 story goal, all the goals I’ve set myself that I’ve failed to meet on a consistent basis. I won’t get too down on myself, but I will try to remember that there were moments where I was dedicated, and I’ll try to revisit those moments from time and again (I never saw that saying “from time and again” before, but Word considers it a cliché I guess things turn into and out of clichés based on their use).
I’ve been watching “Band of Brothers” again, an HBO miniseries (on DVD) that tracks a groups of American soldiers during World War II. It’s excellent watching, and I end up watching all five (or six?) DVDs at least once a year. The character development, plot lines, themes, feelings that are conveyed, everything about is exceptionally done. Every time I watch it, it reminds me of the sentiment conveyed by the line in “Fight Club”: (I’m paraphrasing) “We have no great wars, no great depressions.” While war is a terrible thing, there is something great about being part of something bigger. I try to find that in the large companies that I work for, but it’s not the same. It’s the grander purpose in life, the knowing that you are sacrificing something for an ideal, even an ideal as simple as protecting the person next to you, it feels important.
How much easier it is to find purpose when there are great evils to fight. There will always be great evils, of course, but they appear in today’s society in much stealthier forms. That’s not exactly true. It’s much easier to look back and find evil than it is to look at the world around you as it exists at the current time and find it. What you might think of as not evil may turn out to be quite evil, and visa-versa.
But I’m babbling now, trying to push toward the Goal. I did have a story idea, but it’ll have to wait (or not be written, as has been my M.O. for far too long). I’ll leave you with a list of writing affirmations I wrote while in the throes of not writing. Ironic, isn’t it?
I finished watching “Band of Brothers.” The writers spent the last episode following the company in its last wartime posting. At the end, Richard Winters, one of two officers that make it through the entire series, explained what happened to the other soldiers that we had followed through the campaign. I remember when I first watched this episode on HBO (this was before my no-cable rule; I had a ReplayTV and while I recorded each week’s episode, I ended up watching them live more times than not), I was a bit disappointed by what happened to the soldiers. Except for a Wall Street Journal journalist, they didn’t amount to anything that I considered special. They lived their lives as simple men: mechanics, carpenters, human resource managers, and other mostly blue collar professions.
The reaction to this still embarrasses me. I tend to measure a person first by their intelligence and second by their jobs. It’s a silly measure, when I think about it. People are more than their jobs and they’re more than their intelligence. What the person does and how they think are important aspects, of course. But it is not the full measure of the person. Their accomplishments, be they family and friends, or effect on society or other people, is the true measure of a person. I think I tend to measure people by characteristics that I have in abundance. It’s easier to judge other people by these standards because I’ve excelled in them, and therefore they must be important from that perspective. What the soldiers in the series did—and I’m not speaking of what they did on the television, but what the real people accomplished as dramatized by the miniseries—made them great men.
When I first watched it, I assumed that Richard Winters, a Major by the end of the show, would be a CEO or important official in the civilian world. It doesn’t work that way. We shouldn’t define great people by these types of accomplishments. Let me try to put that another way: a person may be great based on their accomplishments, but a different person placed in the same situation may have been just as great. The alcohol is still fogging my brain a bit, and I’m not doing a good job of conveying this notion.
I’ll back it up a bit. To use the miniseries as an example, we could not predict a soldier’s courage before he entered the battlefield. There are character traits of people that do not show themselves until put to the test. This is why I keep going back to that “Fight Club” saying: how can I know my own valor or characteristics without a test? Ah, like most things I speak about, this one comes back to me. Not only was I embarrassed by my thoughts on the professions of the soldier, the fact that they were tested and I wasn’t also concerns me.
My thoughts are cloudy and my logic is not sound. I’m sitting on my porch on a beautiful Seattle summer day. The temperature reached into the seventies today, and now hovers in the upper sixties. It was clear and wonderful with only the remnants of clouds floating through the sky. It was the type of day where it helped to stand in the sun because the breeze felt cool and I welcomed the warmth of the sun.
The difficulty in my writing, as I said before, is a result of the buzzing in my heads. I drank a glass of wine with dinner at my local Italian restaurant. It was only a glass, but it sent me on a bit of a loop. I had hoped to write grand thoughts in my Moleskine at dinner or by the lake, but it didn’t happen. Instead, I worked my way through yet another New Yorker, attempting, always feebly, to catch up with the never-ending onslaught in my mailbox. I ate a heavy chicken cutlet Parmigian, which was better than I remembered. They still don’t use salt in the kid-friendly restaurant, but the cooked the chicken with the perfect amount of cheese, and I cleaned the plate, including the mound of spaghetti. I wasn’t paying attention much to what I ate I was a bit surprised when I looked down and realized it was all gone. I must have been hungry than I thought. This week my eating habits have ranged from healthy salads to greasy pizzas and everywhere in between. It was nice to end the week on a delicious meal (since I’m flying out tomorrow to visit Julie (yeah!), I consider this my last dinner in Seattle).
Before dinner, I took a wonderful walk to my favorite spot by the lake. The spot is about a ten minute walk from the Castle, down a steep hill and across the park. Seward Park, which is the namesake of my neighborhood, juts out like a thumb into Lake Washington. I prefer the right side of the lake (looking at it from my porch and while approaching it, that is; I’m not sure which way is north from here thanks to my directionally challenged brain), where there are cemented rocks along the water shaded by large trees. Families of duck float near the spot, and the woman I wrote about last time was throwing tennis balls into the lake for her white dog to fetch. She was with a different woman this week, but they both seemed happy. A SUV kept its doors open and played loud music in the parking area behind my favorite spot. It broke my concentration a bit, but I didn’t mind. I would have preferred silence, of course, or at least not changing the song every thirty seconds, but, as too many people say at work (I’m becoming one of them, no matter how hard I fight), “it is what it is,” or, in this case, “it was what it was.”
The water was cleaner than last time I sat there. Much of the muck and twigs had washed away. I didn’t write much or think about much. Instead, I enjoyed the quiet lapping of the water on the rocks, and watched the birds fly around me. Four small birds with blue backs received much of my attention. They flew acrobatic circles near the water, diving and hovering and circling above the water. They were fast little birds, and flapped their wings almost constantly. The tiny birds would have impressed fighter jet pilot with their feats, turning and twisting, seemingly at the final moment, to stay millimeters above the water.
I thought about a bicycle ride tonight, but I decided against it. While I enjoy parts of bike riding, walking agrees with me more for contemplating and writing. Not that I accomplished much of that—well, not until I returned home and started pounding out these words—but I did have hopes for the trip.
Julie had a particularly good attending at work today, and he corrected her on her use of “like,” telling her she sounded like (hehe) a teenager every time she used. I decided that Julie and I were now on “like” and “umm” watches, trying to improve our speaking patterns. Julie claimed that it was too hard, but my continuing ridicule of her should fix her of that notion. I called to check on the status of the engagement ring, and while it won’t be ready for this weekend, it is ahead of schedule, and the saleswoman said it should be ready around the fourth of July.
I spoke with my mother briefly today, and she referenced my writing. She agrees with my video-game-induced-headache theory. Now, it’s not hard for her to agree with this theory since she probably thinks I spend too much time in front of computers—something that, I would like to remind her, has paid off handsomely in my chosen career. But even with that said, as I said earlier, I am leaning toward cutting down on video game nights. Tonight might have been one of those nights, especially since I will leave Seattle tomorrow night and not have a chance to play video games until next week (if at all). Had I played tonight, I would not have written this. I would have been left with the two sentences I managed to write before getting home from work, and the twenty or so words I sketched into my Moleskine during my dinner and walk. Not that there’s much here of value, but I’m still of the opinion that this writing will somehow help me in my Quest.
I don’t think I’m going to attempt much in the way of stories today. Yesterdays were a half-hearted attempt, and I thought about them while walking. I’m still gnawing on the continuity and subject matter. I have decided on the story for Nanowrimo in November. It’s based loosely on one of the short-short stories I pounded out, which was, in turn, based on a story idea I had written down long before. I’m not sure how much development I’ll do on the idea before November—or even if I’ll wait for November to use the idea—but since Chuck has declared that he has an idea, I wanted to have one as well. It’s no Pink Sweater, but, then again, I never want to think about that wretched pile of words again.
I don’t have much else to add tonight. I find myself with a few hundred words left and in the terrible position of having to fill them with, well, filler. I’m not a fan of these ending paragraphs, but I’ve found that occasionally I’ll hit upon something that actually interests me. I’m hoping to focus more on storytelling in the coming weeks. I seemingly have forgotten how to write stories, finding myself, instead, writing fragments of about a page length. Even my list of what I should do while writing has not helped inspire me (not that I thought a list written while in the fathoms of not writing would help me produce much).
I’ve been thinking of trying to break up these long musings and post them in separate subjects. That way, it should be easier to identify the subjects and find the stuff that is worth reading. The problem with that strategy, however, is that then I have to name each of those fragments. The real reason I wanted to do that was to make my writing more accessible. But as I think about it more, I’m still not convinced that I want these long musings to be accessible. They’re written for me—as I’ve made clear in my much older writings—and the work involved in breaking them out seems not worth the reward. I still enjoy these writings (as all writers should) and that’s all that counts, at least in my small, black book.
My laundry should be ready soon, and I’ll get to folding them before piling the clothes I’ll bring to California tomorrow morning. Julie planned a nice weekend for us. We have two reservations at restaurants, a date to watch “Batman Begins,” and tickets to an Arthur Miller play. But that’s all second billing to seeing Julies again. I can’t wait to be with her more than just on these distant weekends. She’ll be staying in Seattle for the month of September, and I can’t wait for that to happen. It’s difficult not to be able to hold her whenever I want to. But I know good things are worth the wait, and Julies are definitely a good thing. The Julies name, as I think I’ve said before, comes from the “millions of Julies” that I always say when I hold her—the meaning for me is that I will be with Julie a million moments, and therefore there is a million of her. I never articulated that before, but that’s what’s creeping through my brain.
I draw to an end a few minutes before 10pm. It’s time to fold laundry and prepare for a hopefully crow-free night’s sleep. I haven’t done anything about the crow problem, by the way. I’ll get to it when I get to it (of course, had I done something about it, I would now be sleeping much better and would be in general happier—which is a small price to pay for the fifteen minutes it would take me to buy the ladder, but I digress. When have I ever made it easy on myself?).
This is difficult for me. I’m not drinking yummy caffeine today because lately I’ve found myself drinking it in preparation for writing, i.e., I would drink hours before I planned to write to rev myself up. That’s ridiculous, of course, and I drank it not for the revving reason but because I felt I had to, which is a sure sign that I’ve been drinking too much of it.
To avoid that fate, I cut off my caffeine for today and probably the rest of the weekend, with one caveat: there is a remote possibility that this weekend the hospital will call Julie for a delivery of one of her “continuity patients.” If this happens, I will find myself with two choices: sit around Julie’s spacious apartment basking in the glow of her television; or escaping her apartment and heading to Banana Bread, her local (chain) coffee/lunch shop with free internets. If that most unfortunate of happenings occurs, and I chose the second option (a slight possibility with lovely television waiting unrestricted for me to watch), then I might partake in the yummy-ness known as caffeine, err, coffee.
I keep promising myself that I will write a story-ish entry, and I keep trying and failing. My discipline is waning on this issue, and I continue to pound out words toward my Goal that have no value and are terribly uninteresting to read.
Tried and true, grayness descends over veiled sight. I wait in the gray clad airport, people stream by across stainless steel walls and glass overlooking skies of gray. The door opens and lines of people walk out, looking dazed as they exit as if they expected a warm reception from the gathered people. We’re not waiting for you buddy, keep it moving so we can get on sometime today, I’d say if they asked. But they don’t, they walk past and break their straight lines looking for their baggage or the toilets or their loved ones, but not here at the gates.
People chat on their phones or watch the television, the speaker blaring in half of the seated area: to keep people in a stressful situation calm, it’s always best to put a television in front of them. The news replays interviews on today’s kidnapped or missing or runaway child, as the man- or child-hunt for her continues through the airwaves. Today’s story of the day. We’re not happy unless something miserable is happening to others, and then we want to watch the horror, keeping watch over how we would feel in their situations but being secure that it isn’t our situation, it’s their situation, and we’re safe at home, and our children are safe at home, and watching the show is like watching a movie where we don’t know what’s going to happen at the end, and because of that, it’s rather exciting. We hope for a happy ending, but we’re sometimes more satisfied with the unhappy ending, our feelings can extend in those situations for longer than they would if everything turned out okay, a prank, or a fake runaway bride, calling in her own kidnapping and rape. Why do we care? I don’t, but the television subjects me to it as if I don’t have a will of my own. I don’t, obviously, not here, in this public space where the television caters to the least of our society, which is to say, the majority of the society who want to dwell in the world of conflict and adversary because their lives are oh so dull, not realizing that the reason they are dull, their lives, that is, is because of what they don’t do, what they sit around and hope to do from the distance of the screen.
Everyone is traveling somewhere today or returning to somewhere. I’m traveling, leaving on a jet plane, but I do know when I’ll be back, which is a bit disappointing. Work was short today with little accomplished except counting the minutes until I escaped and made my way home. I watched a movie, but the clocked ticked on and I left the house too early to hunt dinner at the airport lounges, and find a place to patter away on the keys to say something so I could say that today I said something, like every day. It wasn’t a thing of beauty or a thing of interest, but it was a thing, and in my strange state of NEQID, as I attempt to improve myself and those around me—even those unwilling—I feel this is the step that will take me over the falls into the rushing whitewater.
The walk around looking for chairs. He has black hair, like a helmet. Wears a brown leather coat and runs by me too quickly to find the other details. A mustache, I believe, but he’s gone now, a silhouette against the brilliant windows, where the sun hasn’t even thought about setting. We’re still in the long days, but now the days are growing shorter. They’ll feel like forever for the next few weeks, but afterwards, it’ll grow darker earlier and we’ll wonder where the daylight went.
There is a water fountain behind me with a funny, artistic touch: with each touch of the button, a loud gulping sound of water is sounded from a hidden speaker, startling the drinker and amusing the children who wait nearby, ready to jump out and laugh at the unsuspecting drinker. If I was drinking, I’d pretend it was nothing or perhaps pretend I was deaf so the children’s amusement would be less. It goes with my cool, On the Road, persona. I’m the Dean of today’s world. But don’t tell him because if he didn’t live in a book, he would hunt me down and slap me silly for pretending to be as cool or as out there as he claims to be.
Words of lords and mages try to escape me and I fight them, digging my teeth deep into their substance and refusing to let go until I stop typing. I wrote those before, those words of stories that go nowhere, and I went nowhere, as I’m wont to do. One of these days, I keep telling myself, things will be different. I will not pound out words like this, these consternated, if highly stylized, at least for today, words in an attempt to reach that not climbable Goal. I wish I could climb it and get it done with, a few moments of pain and then it would disappear and there would little for me to do.
My bags are heavy today. In lieu of the dragging bag I brought my backpack and packed it until I can barely lift it or throw it over a shoulder. I also have my shoulder bag, but I can lift that. The added weight of the two bags is almost too much for me. The flight should leave in an hour from now, which gives me time to press out these paragraphs and run to the toilet before the plane sits at the gate and loads the passengers. I’m hoping there are many children going to Disney. There don’t seem to be that many when I look, but I’ve since forgotten what most of them look like, or, more exactly, I’ve forgotten to look for them most times I’ve boarded, living in my own world of searching for my seat and looking down at everyone around me.
It’s hot in here and I brought my jacket. The guy across from me interests me. He has a Mac G4 on his lap over a carrying case that might be cool if it wasn’t full of Velcro. He has curly brown hair, which is receding slightly in the front. You wouldn’t notice it if you weren’t looking for it or didn’t have experience. He wears brown, rectangular glasses over his pale white face. He wears a yellow button down shirt and a black hiking blazer. His pants are black as well with black sneakers. He has three bags to bring on the plane, the gray computer bag fits nicely in his computer bag. It looks like he’s reading the internets, something I find myself doing too often instead of working or writing, but those are the breaks. Distractions dominate me and I want to give them their due.
Lots of phone calls are going on around me. I’m glad this ends, the phone calls, when the plane closes its doors. There is talk of allowing the calls on the plane. The FAA and the FCC are in discussions, perhaps to form the FBB to regulate the phones on the airplanes. I’m too clever sometimes I hurt myself. I’m trying to get the rest of these words out so I can relax on the airplane and read the New Yorker and my current book. I forget its name, but it’s in my books list. I like it. He has a poetic writing style that I would strive for if I understood it. I read another of his books about a CIA agent in a wheelchair. I didn’t like it when I read it, but I seem to remember to many of its details not to have somehow touched by its words. It is similar to movies that I don’t think I liked until I find myself thinking about them weeks later, wondering about this or that aspect, a sure sign that my dislike of the movie was probably misunderstood or misdirected.
My hands and wrists are buzzing from too much uncomfortable leaning, and the warmth of the computer is not helping me concentrate. I’ll be done with this and fetch a chocolate chip cookie before my flight. I already had Chinese food in the airport. There’s a conspiracy amongst the airport Chinese food places. They all serve the same food at, what I’m assuming, the same price. The bourbon chicken lady gives free samples because the mix of bourbon and salt makes the first bite much better than the rest. Dinner, however, found me hungry and I scarfed it down while watching CNN and Larry King, who, I don’t understand, still cares about the ridiculous people he interviews. Doesn’t he see how empty his interviews are? He’s a skinny one, his shoulders seemingly popping up from his thin shirts, and his suspenders holding his chest from jumping out of his skin. That wasn’t the poetic description I hoped for, but I can’t always find the words, and I’ve accepted that.
A couple is playing their walkman too loud, the speakers around their neck instead of over their ears. Who are they trying to impress with that tinny noise? I’m sure if they were given the option they’d be driving an SUV with the doors open and the music pumping out.
I’m hitting upon my last few words and they could not come soon enough. I’ll have more to say tomorrow, I hope. I’ll stick the fork in today and write it off to too much not thinking at work, and too little driving in traffic, attempting to control the road rage that promises to squash me one of these days. I thought that would do it, but there are still twenty-five words to the Goal. Make that only seven. And this one should do it.
***
I won't bother posting this in a separate post because, well, it's nothing...again.
“When do you think they’re going to send us out?”
“You’re that anxious to get into a fight?”
“Are you the new mage?”
“That’s me. Where’s the lord?”
“Sir Dendle is at the front of the lines, preparing for our next move. Do you need an escort?”
“No, I should be able to find him. Thank you.”
He wore flowing yellow robes as someone fitting his stature. He graduated from the mage academy the past Friday, and he received his first assignment: supporting Sir Dendle in his fight against the barbarians from the north. They provided him with provisions and a horse, and he spent three weeks riding to the front.
I stare at the screen for the first time in a couple of days waiting for it to hit me: the synopsis for my next story. I’ve seen and read many simple stories over the weekend, stories where there was little cleverness and few explosions (well, except for “Batman”: “I am Batman!” And, no, that line wasn’t in the movie, but I keep thinking of it, similar to “Spartacus”). They were character stories (since most stories are character stories), and they were enjoyable. After I finished watching or reading them, I thought about the story, thought about the characters, both of which moved me.
And here I sit, waiting for my brilliance to leak out on the page, waiting for me to learn the lessons from these stories to bang me over the head. It hasn’t happened, of course. Had it happened, I’d be leaping into those stories.
I was about to call it a day and not finish my words, but as I sat here, without Julies (I was talking to her on the phone but her parents clicked in from China), I decided to give it another go. I know the type of story I want to tell, and I’ve been working on a synopsis. I didn’t get very far (writing a synopsis, I’ve found, is not as rewarding as writing prose—mostly because when I reread it, the writing, being a synopsis and everything, is not as interesting or artistic). I’m going to push through it, though, and see if I can come up with something.
My brain doesn’t feel like I twisted it on right. I’m exhausted from my flight and from a terrible meal at Lee’s Sandwich, which made what would have been a bad flight into an intolerable one. Instead of lots of writing, Julies dragged me into the video game world. I spent the last one and a half in there, which is really just an excuse for not writing. I worked on a paragraph of synopsis and thoughts—all of which is crap—that I won’t post. I’m trying to keep it exciting (for me), and, more truth, it’s not terribly good.
I’ll try this again tomorrow, hopefully finding more in the way of words and inspiration and interesting things to talk about. Even with the synopsis, I only made about 600 words today on a tall mocha. I know, I need to write more and tell more stories. Preaching to the choir, you are, preach it.
Fuck. This isn’t working. This hasn’t been working for a while. What did I expect? Writing sucks. It’s painful and unrewarding and I spend so much of my day staring at blank screens that my eyeballs are in pain.
These last three days have been bad. I’ve been bad, actually. Too many video games. Yesterday, I canceled Julie and my accounts and tried to uninstall World of Warcraft. I’m not sure if the uninstall took, but I needed something to get me back here, writing.
The weather turned nice last night, and today I went on a boat trip with work in the afternoon. After a bicycle ride last night, I woke up this morning with a terrible hang over. I drank plenty of water yesterday, and I think the headache was caused by too much exercise after too much inactivity. I desperately swallowed two Advils before heading to the boat (I almost choked on the pills as I tried to swallow both of them without water at the same time and gagged). The Advils kicked in along with two Pepsi drinks.
I’m home, again staring at my screen, and typing these words in the hopes that putting words on paper will let me say something other than these words. Last night, Julie and I went through some of my story ideas to try and tie things together. I had been complaining about how I can’t write stories because I don’t have a plot. She said, fine, if you don’t have a plot, then we’ll work one out together. How hard is it to come up with a plot? Seemingly not that hard, but what is hard, is taken the developed plot and writing it as a story. I hate this part. I hate all the parts, but this is the worst. Okay, enough of this bullshit. More story words and less consternation words.
I write a paragraph, and I start surfing the internet. My dedication has gone from low to almost nonexistent. I just thought I’d give a bit of an update about how much this sucks before alt-tabbing back to my current reading.
Good news! After many close calls, I didn’t play video games tonight. Had we not uninstalled the game last night, it would have been a different story. The withdrawal symptoms were rather strong, and while I did work a bit on the story Julie and I discussed yesterday, it’s not in a state to post yet (if it never makes it there, I’ll remember to post it as it stands today).
It’s late, and after dot-painting the below, err, doodle, I’m tired. I’m hoping for a productive P.H.D. tomorrow, maybe get back into the 2k Goal-thing I’ve let fall by the wayside. Until then, though.
I forgot to post this last night. Not much here—I am trying, and that’s what counts (to everyone except Yoda, of course).
I’m trapped in the car repair place for an oil change, recall, and some minor maintenance. With good internet and a comfy chair, free machine-conjured coffee, one would think that I’m in heaven. I would be except for the large television which replays the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor endlessly, not adding much in the way of new information, but reiterating the same facts and analysis repeatedly. That is, they’re reiterating the same facts and analysis repeatedly. It’s enough to give me a headache.
But I’ll preserve and get to writing. I’ve done up my work for the day, and I’m ready for a long video-game-free weekend, where I plan to write, talk to Julies, and sleep. Maybe I’ll throw in some cleaning during the weekend: that might be pushing my dedication, though.
Margo: what a great name. I need to find better names in my stories. I’m sick of the usual suspects, with the beautiful and understood Kem being the exception. Okay, that’s enough babbling. Time to dive back in and maybe or maybe not write something. Pathetic, yeah, I know.
I’m home in the early evening. On a normal Friday night, with Julies not having call until tomorrow (which is why we’re not together this three-day weekend), we would be powering up the video games. But, thankfully, I’ve expunged the offending distractions from my machine.
I’m sitting outside on the beginnings of night. The clouds still hover over the lake and the thermometer can’t decide if it wants a warm or cool night. I hear a few firecrackers cracking in the distance, probably in preparation for Monday’s events. Or maybe the sounds are coming from a neighbor’s playing basketball or chopping wood. It’s hard to make out the noises. It’s definitely not firecrackers. Sorry for the false alarm.
I finished watching the directory’s cut of “Donnie Darko,” that amazing movie I spoke about a few months ago. The longer version (I’ve never seen a director’s cut that was shorter than the original movie—I guess in a director’s heart of hearts, they want to keep all the scenes in their movie, while the evil production companies what to cut the director’s little darlings) explained parts of the movie better, but I prefer the original. The, what-the-hell-is-going-on aspect was greater and therefore more rewarding to figure out w-t-h-i-g-o.
I know, I know, I’m wasting these words while I should be pounding out more words for the story I’ve been using as a skull cracker. I’ll get to it. I’m enjoying typing again, even though my wrists hurt a bit from working from the car repair place this morning.
There’s another breakfast called Caroline’s? Counter (okay, I forget who’s counter it was—it wasn’t Caroline, it might have been Catherine or Dandelion or, I don’t know—I’ll record it here next time I go), in Columbia City. And—and this is a big ‘and’—they serve wild mushroom omelets, which is my favorite type of omelet since there is nothing better than wild mushrooms (i.e., any mushroom except the white button ones). The food was good and the service was excellent. It’s a longer walk to get there than Susan’s (my truly local weekend-breakfast place, but it creates options, and options are always good.
Lottie Motts in its new incarnation in Columbia City opened as well. If you remember, I wrote about Lottie Motts before, an artsy coffee house with terrible décor, loud music, bad coffee, but incredible ambiance. The new place, renamed Lottie’s Lounge, serves alcohol, and the owners exchanged its artsy decor for, well, I’m not sure. I was a bit disappointed when I walked in, as a large bar (the alcoholic type) replaced a large section of the store. There was no coffee menu, which made me wonder if they even served coffee (there was a large wet bar behind the bar, and a chalkboard with a few sandwich offerings). I ordered coffee, sat down in one of the leather backed chairs, and drank my mocha. The coffee was better (it didn’t taste like dirty water as it did when Lottie ran the place), but I’m still not sold. There’s a large area for music in the corner now, but the place was eerily silent and a bit subdued and crowded (the tables, not the patrons; except for a man doing a crossword puzzle, and a kindly old woman typing away on her computer with her nose almost touching the screen, there was nobody there). I’ll give it another chance before heading to the local bucks of stars. While I have nothing against any bucks, the one in Columbia City has terrible Feng Shui, and I’m always looking for an alternative.
He stared back at me through the mirror. Stacks of woodened brains waited for me through the cellar door. Try as he might, his words, first brushed onto the canvas years before, never found an outlet or an audience, and, this truth came to him many years later, he didn’t care one way or the other. It was not the audience or the money or the hours of staring and cracking fingers that caused him to put things together. There was something more there, something he had to say, maybe his gusto, maybe his anguish, that pushed him to say it. It’s the pot of gold in the cave, the rushing from the cave before it collapses, it’s all the silly analogies and syllogism and all the other words relating to logic and writing, that was what he searched for and hoped to find.
Moments of inspiration, two hours and the first draft was done. The caffeine raced through his veins and he pounded out the draft, never worrying much about what it said until after he had said it and had moments to digest it. Get back to that! Get back to the Clockman, forget the search for conflicts, the creation of characters, the obliteration of the pathetic. All of that is for later, for now throw it out there and watch it stick and climb down the wall, like the rubber purple octopus that you had to keep washing for it to start sticking again.
***
The package arrived on Saturday, packed in a yellow, cushioned envelope. Margo removed it from the mailbox and carried it inside. It must be a present for her, sent by who knows who for who knows what. She brought it inside and stared at it, trying to influence its contents. She opened it, and the glue came off easily and she peeked inside, and saw not what she was expecting. An envelope of memories mailed off by her family, probably after cleaning out her room to ready it for her absence.
She had moved out six months ago, and while her mother seemed...
***
I want to meet whomever put the monkeys in a barrel. I’m going slightly insane staying home this weekend, and the fun thing is that the weekend has just started. Yipee!
“I don’t understand it anymore.”
“What’s that?”
“This storytelling. I mean, I’m supposed to throw down all these words and tell a story. Why do I need so many words?”
“You’re introducing people into the subject matter, getting them to know the characters, introducing the scenes and the world—that’s what you need all those words. Stop trying to be so clever with everything, and just write. The story is more important than the words. The words are there as the substance, the air or water—remember the fish story? An elderly fish swims by two younger fish, and says, “How’s the water?” The two younger fish look at each other, and one of them says, “What the hell is water?” Now, tell a story and don’t worry so much about the words.”
Passion. Gusto. I need to find a love for the story and the characters. I keep forgetting that. I need to love everything about it—or hate it. I need strong emotions. And I’m not finding it. I’m attempting to replace real emotions with cheap antics. Enough already. Enough self-analysis, enough masturbation (although, really, what is any type of writing except masturbation?), and get to it. Do it. Throw the Nike swoosh a bone.
The book Plot has been a bit of a disappointment. As I was saying yesterday, I thought it was going to be about how to find plot, instead, it’s about how to write plot, or how to tell a story from a plot’s perspective. There are valuable discussions of the storytelling process, but I was hoping for something simpler. That simpler discussion, the magic bullet of plot development, probably doesn’t exist, I’m seeing. Plot is about decisions in storytelling, not about the brilliant idea and self-creating story. I’m naive, what can I tell you? I’ll finish the book and find more hints about how to tell a story.
One of the valuable tools the book started with was how to identify whether an idea is sufficient to write about, i.e., what questions should I ask of the ideas floating in my head to determine whether those ideas would make good story.
Below are some notes I took on a few people I saw in the bucks of stars. There might be a story there if I can figure out what happens next.
Today ended up being a good day: I went for a long bike ride (I got a little lost, which is normal David), wrote a bunch this morning, and played video games with Julie in the evening. Not the best fourth of July, but next year Julies will be here, which will make it so much better.
When I keep my head still, it hurts less. Today has not been good. A headache dogged me most of the day, and my one pill of Advil (I have to be careful—I’m at risk to go over my self-imposed rebound-headache-reducing allotment), and my tall Mocha have not curbed the pain. There’s no mystery about its cause: my long bicycle ride yesterday is the culprit. Intense physical activity (or, as lately, moderate to light physical activity) can make the next day (it usually doesn’t hit until the next morning) miserable. I’ve checked my blood pressure both yesterday and this morning—I was concerned that my headaches might be the result of problems in that area—but both times the measurements have been well-into the normal range, more normal than I’ve seen consistently since buying the electric blood pressure device.
While the bicycle ride is probably the cause of today’s headaches, it is only a proximate cause. I think a more basic cause is the amount of sleep I received after an exercise-intensive day. The fact that the Advil didn’t do anything to help my headache is an indication that I didn’t receive enough sleep. Except for the early morning, I’ve not had many instances of PY (pathological yawning), but I think I need to find a way to get to bed earlier in the evening on days after exercising. While Julie and I finished video gaming rather early (9:30pm), I didn’t get to sleep until after 11pm, staying awake to read my current book Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins, which I’m enjoying more than the one other novel I read by him.
(I spent the last ten minutes updating my book and movie lists.)
Okay, enough self-diagnosis and updating lists. The caffeine has dulled the pain somewhat, and I feel the need to say something.
I’ve said what I can for today. Like yesterday, the original thought I typed took on a life of its own, and (unlike yesterday) I’m actually interested to see where this one takes me. This doesn’t mean, of course, that I’ll ever continue writing, just that if I did, it might interest me. Take that for what it’s worth.
I ate at my local Italian restaurant, and the wine buzzed me. I’ll probably play with some of my writing below for a bit before calling it a night and resting my overworked brain (the witchdoctor lady that Julie and I visited in Dallas—I spoke about this before, but I’m too lazy to find out where—said that my headaches are caused by too much thinking). I will attempt to rectify that problem as soon as I post this. Perhaps I’ll lose myself in a movie or video games—it’s all the same. As long as I don’t have to think, and I can work through the buzz and my wonderful (food) fullness, things will work out smashingly.
I was working on the Evil Studies story earlier, but now I’ve lost the energy necessary to continue. I drank my coffee, which usually fuels these two hours of productivity (that’s about all I can manage most days, what with work and video games and generally sitting around not doing much), but, today, for reasons I don’t have the energy to analyze, it’s not working. It’s either it that’s not working, or maybe the story that isn’t working. I’m not sure which.
I didn’t do any writing yesterday because I had tons of work to do at work, and when I drove home, firm in my resolve not to play video games, Julies tempted me, and I succumbed in a most horrendous fashion. I will not play tonight, but I do envision myself sitting in front of my huge television screen and watching a movie that I’m sure the little blue man has already delivered to my mailbox. (I’m not sure if he (or she, for that matter) is little—I’ve never actually seen the kobold that delivers my Netflix envelopes, one of the few pieces of mail that is of any value to my daily life.)
I planned to resist wasting another paragraph describing the weather in Seattle, but, as you will see, I failed at that as well. Suffice to say (since I know everyone is as interested in hearing about it as I am in wasting words to describe it) it is beautiful, yet again. At the end of the winter, the word about town was that because of the wonderful (i.e., dry and moderately warm) winter, the mountains hadn’t collected enough snow fall, and because of it, there may be a drought in the summer. The thought amazed me since I live less than a quarter of a mile from a large lake with, what I assume, is huge amounts of fresh water. Over the past couple of months, as winter gave way to spring which gave way to summer, there was much rain. Over the last couple of weeks, before these past few days of respite, I kept asking everyone, “Where’s this drought I was promised?” It seems we missed out on the drought and we now don’t have much to look forward to.
I’m babbling now. I’m going to take another break to let my brain catch up with the caffeine and my thoughts, and try to do more writing when I get home. I ate a late afternoon snack, thinking that it would help me push my writing through the evening hours before I ate dinner. Clearly that has not happened. I guess you can’t force genius, or, in my situation, poorly hidden hacks.
Julie is off delivering babies, and I managed to peel myself away from “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (a surprisingly good movie, if a bit harsh on the Asian stereotype with the neighbor upstairs played by Mickey Rourke). I took a long walk to fetch dinner at the small café at the end of my avenue, and assailed my senses with a delicious amber beer. I was at a Gotcha moment in the movie, and I felt this was a good time to avoid the embarrassing moment and do something else with the evening. After turning on my gaming computer, I resisted loading up WoW (Julie would be angry with her off catching babies and me keeling people), and decided to come out on the porch and see if I had anything left in me to write. I should note that on the way back from the café, I stopped at the grocery store and bought chocolate, which I’ve begun to munch away on, giving me this instantaneous, if alcohol-tinted energy.
That chocolate is certainly tasty.
Yeah, it’s not happening. I thought about thinking about writing, but I decided that in my current state I couldn’t do much more than put words down that are already spinning through my brain. Man, I wish writing stories was as easy as translating the ridiculous thoughts that go through my head onto the page. Writing would be fun and rewarding and awfully sparkly if it were. But there’s only awfulness and spinning clouds and trees in these necks (of the woods, of course).
Enough senseless babbling. I’ll post this and get back to Tiffany’s to see what happens at the end.
When my mother asks me three times what’s going on with the internets (as if by me not posting, the internets are somehow broken), I know there’s a problem. I was going to roll out this excuse about how I have been writing in my Moleskine (which I have, kind of), but I haven’t been transcribing it to the computer (which is true to some extent), but the real truth is that after I set myself up to write the Evil Studies story, I’ve hit a wall devoid of inspiration. Part of my problem, I know, is too many video games. I tried to pull the plug again, and this is my second day without them. Julie promised that we can play only after I write something, which means I’m back on the wagon as soon as I finish this abbreviated musing. I know that video games are an important part of the rot that’s been devouring my brain, but that knowledge by itself doesn’t much help me give it up. It’s almost blender time. I can see that from here.
A more profound block (at least to my own psyche) has been the pressure I’ve been putting myself under to tell this stupid story. When I first wrote the half page about the evil professor, I thought it was rather clever. My energy ran out (I think it was more that distractions of some form took over) before I got very far, but I thought about where I would have taken the story (if the energy lasted or the distractions stayed away), and found myself a decent story. I even wrote a few synopses about it over the last couple of days. Here are the basics:
It (was) a short story told from two points of view: the first, Darlene, a graduate student of the evil professor who has a terrible crush on him. She volunteers and he chooses her as his graduate assistant for the class. The evil professor, by the way, looks like the partially blind man I described in a paragraph about the man with one dark eyeglass. The evil professor lowers Darlene toward the lard while they discuss his methodology of evil. She begins having second thoughts before touching the lard, realizing that he does intend to boil her alive. She pleads with him not to kill her, and admits that she’s not good enough to be with him. (The evil professor, besides looking like the half-blind man, is a very charming and intelligent man—not the bald and ridiculed character I sketched in the first pseudo-draft.) The evil professor releases the hook and Darlene falls into the lard.
The second character takes over the narration (the character narration is in the third-person perspective present—I forget the technical name). He (I didn’t name him because I didn’t write much about him) is Darlene’s boyfriend, who initially let her infatuation with the professor go unchecked. He was comfortable with their relationship and didn’t feel that she had much of a chance with the evil professor. He watches the scene with the rest of the glass through one-way glass overlooking the vat. He has the advantage of a temperature gauge on the lard, and knows (and the reader first finds out) that the lard is at a comfortable, hot-tub-type temperature. When the evil professor explains that instead of dropping her into boiling lard, he’s going to raise the temperature slowly, as is done to stop lobsters from screaming when boiled, the boyfriend begins to have second thoughts about this experiment and eventually breaks down the mirrored glass to try to save Darlene.
In the end, Darlene is cooked by the lard, and the evil professor comments, “What did you think the ‘Evil’ in Evil Studies meant?”
That was the unrealized plan. I got tied up in the first part of the scene, attempting, much to Chuck’s chagrin, to be clever. I’m going to put this story to rest, like so many of my half-formed ideas and see if I can start writing again. Now that I’ve synopsized it and shared it with you, I don’t feel the need to write it anymore. I did have an opening and closing paragraph, it was the rest of the filler that I couldn’t concentrate more than five minutes to write. Yeah, I’m pathetic.
Two days of writing—well, if you consider this writing (which I don’t, at least not this part, maybe the next part, but we’ll see about that—yeah, that was a great use of commas). Even with the rain last night, I feel in my bones the beginning of the drought. Soon, it’ll be nothing but Clear Skies in Seattle. I bought some bicycling gear yesterday, and I can’t wait to try it out tonight. (It turns out that I didn’t try it out but went to the Italian restaurant instead. There’s always tomorrow.) I’ve started riding (I originally wrote “writing,” Freudian slip) again, partly as justification for spending so much money buying a bike, but mostly because it’s fun and it’s exercise, and exercise is something I’ve not seen much of lately.
Wow. In a paragraph I covered everything that’s happening in my life (sans video games, which, except for this reference, I’ll spare you my failed attempts to fight). I will finally see Julies on July 23rd, after a long, long absence. Her July schedule stinks, with calls every weekend, and other evil infestations that keep me from her. At least we always have our video games (ugh, I tried to resist, but I’m saturated by its evilness and must mention it multiple times—it’s a terrible addiction. We played for a couple of ours tonight, which is why this posting is rushed and full of incoherent words. Isn’t it great, this posting of things that make sense and are not even close to poetic? Where’s the Great Abstract David?).
Let’s see if I have anything in me today related to the creative persuasion.
***
Small stones of varying colors covered the ground in every direction. Tables and chairs surround me, which is not necessarily a good thing because besides the grayed rug I have nothing around me to talk about. No people to watch, no columns to hold, no chairs to stack. Well, I guess I do have chairs, but I don’t want to stack them.
“I’ll tell you what’s going on later.”
“Why don’t you tell me now? And, more importantly, if you’re not going to tell me now, why’d you even bring it up in the first place? Are you trying to build the anticipation? If you are, it’s working, and it’s working terribly. Now, tell me.”
“I wanted to give you a heads up that I was going to tell you everything later. For now, I have to run. How’re the kids?”
“They’re doing well. Sam finished first grade last Thursday, and Marie has a strange fascination with placing her fist in her mouth. You have time to talk about the kids, but not the big news?” George did that often. He would hint at something and then put off telling about it.
“I’d tell you, but I want to save it. Plus, it’d be a shame to waste the telling while we stand in line at the coffee house.” George collects his coffee and starts walking toward the door.
***
Not going very far very fast or very long. I wonder if it’ll ever do it. Charged nails spark when placed near the woolen cloths. The racing cars, looking over, at the taxis and the people fighting for places on the road. Zip goes the bicycle.
Blue crazy rugs over raisin-filled night and turn the red iron blades over to see the other side. Time to say nothing again: I say nothing with huge, earth-sized brush strokes. The sun beats me over the head, repeatedly. I wanted something so badly that when I decided to wait, I almost exploded from the pain. Bears with commanding presents.
Three windows up, clothing hung over the gate to dry. The walls painted peach, the shutters opened and painted black. I have nothing—my brain feels dead, like I’m carrying it around in the hopes of presenting it to someone; I wish I knew who I was supposed to give this to.
Rakes rip my eyes. Blood soaks my eyelids with broad strokes of nothingness. I have nothing, why? Because I have thick fingers and thin wrists.
Love triangle: he likes her; she likes him; he likes him, and kills her to get at him. It’s good to be evil. So easy to think about and so taxing to do. I need to find my stride again. Who stole it? (Didn’t I already use this analogy to explain my consternations?)
Story idea: first date ruined by taking a stand; Jessica; Maurice.
It’s a yummy caffeine-free day. Lately, I noticed a drop in productivity increase and a surge of forced consumption—i.e., drinking when I’m not in need of its wonderful energies. Those last two sentences were awfully business-jargon oriented. As was that, when I think about it. I’m trying to open up more into my strange, abstract place, taking things as they come, if you will, and at the same time organizing my thoughts and fully developing them. I don’t do that often: develop ideas. I think it has something to do with too much television watching as a child. It was the commercials more than the MTV videos that shortened my attention span. That and the clicking. I didn’t get to click until I was older, of course. Clickers weren’t common when I was young, but once I got my hands on a clicker, it all broke loose—my attention span, again, that is.
I’m going to stop talking about the clicker because I’ve grown bored with the subject and I’ve determined that it isn’t yet fully developed, and I don’t fully develop ideas. I think it might be against my religion. I’ll have to look it up. I’m forcing myself to count words on the off chance that I might myself caring again about word count. I don’t, yet. There’s always hope, though, hope that I care, that is. Do you see how fun it is to write something without having anything to write?
New paragraph time. We’re planning a long bicycling ride tonight. The weather is beautiful, and my new gear is burning a hole in its shopping bag (I’ve always wondered about the mechanics of money burning holes in pockets). I spend too much money on sporting gear. What else is new? I spend too much money on everything.
Did you notice how each the last three paragraphs were shorter than its predecessor paragraph. I don’t know what that means, but I’m trying to break the cycle with this paragraph. Or maybe it’s better if I don’t break the cycle, i.e., make this paragraph shorter than the last. Too late, I’m approaching the fourth line (at least in Word), which means that I’ve already made this paragraph longer. Can you believe the B.S. I pretend is writing?
That initial bout of energy passed quickly and I alt-tabbed away to do something other than write. I do that often, alt-tabbing away searching for distractions. I think I told you about that. I’m having issues with ‘am’ and ‘have’ in my writing. I think I use them too often. I think I am using them too often, or, perhaps, I think I have used them too often. I’ll get over it.
I enjoy the demarcation lines when it’s sunny outside. There’s shadow and then there’s light. It’s very easy to determine the sunny and the shady part. I wish all of life was that easy to judge. The good people would be on this side of the line (perhaps the dark, if we assume the light part is in the Houston-summer-sun area), and the evil people (I guess I ruined the division by telling you the name of the second group in the first parenthetical—I do that a lot, spoil things) would be on the other side. These are the good people, he said and gestured to one group, and these are the bad people, he said and gestured to the other group. There. It would be much easier that way.
Scott and I went for a long bicycle ride along the lake to Madison Park. I didn’t get a chance to post this POS (that’s piece of shit, for those who try to stay away from the jargon). We have a morale golfing event this afternoon, followed by a long (hopefully sunny) weekend of no-Julies. I will write more this weekend, and there is an off-chance that some of it might actually be useful or good or words. Yup, some of it will definitely be words.
I am not sure why people rest on their laurels, but I figure it can’t hurt too much, so I will try. I have not recovered from my last entry. I am not sure if it’s the caffeine or the writing, but I felt drained. I wish it wasn’t like that. I wish I could take the inspiration (and, I’ll admit, Sunday’s inspiration fell flatter and shorter than I had hoped when it first hit me after the yummy caffeine) and use it the next day to write and write and write. You can probably see where I’m going with this. I would use that next day’s inspiration to inspire me the next day until I had a viciously brilliant inspiration cycle, which would allow me to pound out five-hundred page novels, with my only worries relating to wrist and finger fatigue. Ah, to dream.
Nevertheless here I am trying again. I finished today’s yummy caffeine after taking yesterday as an NYC day—i.e., No Yummy Caffeine day. I drank liters of the stuff on Sunday, which caused some of the aforementioned fatigue and nausea.
Today is again brilliant as we finally hit upon the promised drought. I look at today’s caffeine as a bit of a reward. I attended my company-sponsored health screening this morning (all normal, mother—nothing to worry about). But after sitting here and attempting to pound out a paragraph, I realized that the caffeine would do little to help me along my way. The time isn’t right for me to start writing yet. I have to start accepting that. There are times I can write and times I can edit and times, well, where I’m not good for very much.
The health screening took place in a large conference room. Around fifteen stations were set up with a nurse at each station. Two of these stations had blood pressure machines, and the remaining stations had blood-taking machines. After waiving all liability and waiting in lines (so many lines), a nurse yelled, “Next.” I found her when she raised her chubby arm. I sat down and she asked me to pick a finger to prick. I didn’t realize we’d have this choice, and I was a slow in the choosing. She was asking me to sacrifice one of my fingers, and I wasn’t sure which one I liked least and would be willing to part with. I asked her if she’d return it when she was done (I was in my funny mood), but she didn’t see much humor in my statement. I gave her my left hand. She said it was too cold and made me shake it repeatedly to warm it up. Eventually, after squeezing all my fingertips with her gloved hand, she chose my middle finger.
She pricked the finger with the plastic pricking device—it’s a plastic box with a button on top, which, when pressed, releases a spring-loaded needle onto your finger. It’s a one-time use device (or so I imagine), and a small dot of blood formed on my finger. The nurse used a thin glass cylinder to collect the blood. She viciously squeezed my finger trying to get more blood from it. She didn’t think I was a good bleeder, and she blamed me for that, as if I somehow controlled how I bled. She switched to another glass cylinder, where with much squeezing and manipulating, she finally was able to collect her required blood. She told me that my finger would be soar from her squeezing tomorrow. I doubted it, of course. I’m a man’s man and as a man’s man, a finger pricking, no matter how painful it looked, does not cause me pain.
She placed a bandage on the finger and then warned me not to take it off until tomorrow. Her warning was like the terrorist warnings: she said if I did, there was a good chance that my finger would become infected and the infection would travel through my bloodstream to my heart, where it would do all sorts of bad things. Your capillaries, she said, traveled right to your heart, and you don’t need that infection spreading to your heart, now do you. Keep the bandage on, or I’m going to have to ask the secretary of health to raise the terrorist alert to orange. Suffice to say, the bandage is still around my finger. I like bandages: the sticky part is always fun to play with, push in, pop out, repeat.
Eight minutes later, when the electronic machine she fed my blood into popped, she called me over (she was busy with two more patients, but ignored them for a moment), wrote down the scores on my score sheet and handed it to me. No discussion of the meaning of the numbers, no idle talk, just the filled out form with a big circle around “desirable.” I felt gypped. I looked over and watched how the other, thinner nurses were taking their time to explain the results to their patients. How they were joking with their patients other about how normal or desirable they were. My nurse did none of that. She barely had time to hand me the sheet before she waved me off to begin her work up of her next patients. How was I to bask in my normalcy if she didn’t banter with me?
***
It’s hot out by the pool. The concrete burns my feet and we all run to the rubber mats that the lifeguards keep spraying down with the hose. A slight wind strikes us with the smell of chlorine, but doesn’t do much to cool us.
***
I read many articles where writers described their favorite part of writing (and it’s not the book tour, as I assumed). It seems that after planning a story, writing notes about characters, creating thumbnails of the scenes, the fun part, once of all that is done, is writing the story, living in the world that the author created in her head. Man, where do I sign up for that? I don’t know if I haven’t planned it well enough or if I don’t have the imagination to support that type of writing, but sitting down and writing the stories that float around (rather superficially) in my head is fucking difficult for me. Some of it might be that I’m not interested in writing the stories I plan. Part of it is that I rely too much on inspiration and don’t have the requisite tools (i.e., tools that I can deploy even when I am mind dead or in the pits of the opposite of inspiration). I don’t know what it is, but I don’t live in the world of my stories. I live in the let’s get this written world, and in my world, the worst thing I can do is realize that I’m writing because after I realize it, I know I’m not going to be writing for much longer.
I know I was supposed to consternate in story-form, but I haven’t found the story again. I had thoughts about it (I always have thoughts about my stories), but I’m not sure if I can turn any of those thoughts into actual writing (besides note writing, which is so much fucking easier than story writing).
***
Overhead from someone leaving a meeting: “I’m so sick of talking about doing work.”
***
As a side note, I had uninstalled WOW a few days ago as part of my VAAS or Video game Addiction Abatement Strategy (Julie defines VAAS as the Video game Account Activation System, which just goes to show you whose side she's on). Julie, using her impeccable charms, has convinced me to reinstall it. As I type this, WOW is reinstalling on my computer. I lasted almost four days, but alas, dear Ulrich, I knew me well. Here’s to the next time I uninstall only to reinstall a few days later!
***
Yeah, I know I should be separating these into multiple postings, but I’m lazy. Very, very lazy. At least I put separators between the different sections. Ain’t I nice.
I’m stuffed. I finished my Italian Restaurant dinner. Unlike most days where I try to make the meal last by bringing home half of it, because of tomorrow morning’s trip, I ate the entire dinner tonight. I cleaned the plate and I’m stuffed. I wobbled home and I thought it best to throw up a quick diary entry and the entries below.
As I hinted at, I’m off to visit Julies tomorrow. It’s been too long since I saw her. I picked up her resized engagement ring yesterday, and I can’t wait to present it. Now all her coworkers and friends will finally believe her when she says she’s engaged.
Besides my robot purchase, I also bought a new digital camera, the Casio Exilim EXZ750 7MP. It’s a very small camera with an almost instantaneous shutter action. Besides the size, my biggest complaint with my last camera was the multiple seconds it took when I pressed the button to flash and capture the picture. This camera does not have these problems. I’ll post pictures with it after I take some this weekend.
I’m in the process of reinstalling WOW. I uninstalled it again and this is the third time I’m reinstalling it. Yes, I’ll probably repeat this process another time. I have no real excuse, I’m a WOW addict. At least I wrote before I reinstalled (and played without Julies, who’s on call this evening—sucker).
Today was a bad day. Many bad things happened, but the worst was when I arrived for a late afternoon mocha, and the barista didn’t remember my drink. Granted, I have cut back on my caffeine intake (which explains somewhat the dearth of posts), but after a year of ordering drinks from her, you think a week of no coffee wouldn’t throw her for a loop. But a loop she took, and after stumbling through a list of drinks for which I said, no, not exactly, she finally hit upon the mocha. But it didn’t end there. She served my mocha without whipped cream. After my terrible day, I didn’t have energy to explain that I always take extra whipped cream on my mocha. It’s why I buy mochas—I love whipped cream seasoned with yummy caffeine.
But I’ll get over it. Friday is upon us, and I plan to spend this weekend relaxing and catching up on writing. Besides the lack of caffeine and too much bicycle riding, my current addiction, David Foster Wallace’s The Broom of the System, has occupied most of my time. You can see his influences in my two dialogue snippets, neither of which does justice to his brilliance. I’m a grateful hack, by the way. In searching for my own style, I feel justified in stealing others. Imitation is the greatest form of flattery, after all.
I would have written more, but I spent most of the evening playing video games, and we all know that video games and writing don’t mix.
I brought Julie to my weekend breakfast place. I have a rotation of restaurants (mostly because I stopped cooking after my mother gifted me this incredible cookware set—no idea what the connection between the two events were). Susan’s is my standard breakfast place. It’s a small hole-in-the-wall eatery, with slanted floors, and local (read, mostly bad) artwork lining the walls. In its original incarnation, it was designed to be chic, with metal gating along the breakfast bar and chalked signs sharing a pagan ancestry (in that there were stars and half moons). The current owner bought it from three unsuccessful owners, all of which failed as the only breakfast/lunch place in Seward Park (which should get you thinking about what goes on in the SP). The thing that makes it great, however, is that it is within a short walking distance from the Castle. On any given week, I’ll try to visit Susan’s once on Sunday or Saturday morning.
Near Susan’s is my second local joint, P-something (it’s the Italian restaurant I always speak about, but can’t spell, Pizzuto’s, or something like that). I go there once a week as well (trying to keep my dining out where the same people can see me down to a minimum), eating half a dinner and bringing the other half home for a second meal (to justify the price). Because Susan’s is only open in the morning and afternoon, and Pizzuto’s is only open in the evenings, the two restaurants share some serving staff. (I’m a bit concerned about what will happen once Susan’s opens for dinner—she has been promising this for some time now, and has yet to deliver. Who will the serving staff chose?)
I brought Julie to Susan’s today because I wanted to show the staff that, yes, indeed, I do have a friend (a fiancé, actually), and I’m not the biggest loser ever. You see, when I go to Susan’s or Pizzuto’s, I’m always by myself, usually armed with my New Yorker or my current book (I’m taking my time and savoring DFW’s first offering, loving every page and not wanting it to end), and my moleskine, in which I will jot bad story ideas or stupid notes that turn into these even stupider musings. So, I had ulterior motives for bringing Julies to Susan’s: I wanted to disillusion the staff of my complete looserishness. When I told Julies this before we went, she didn’t believe me.
After we arrived, we found that they had table service. This is the first time I’ve ever had table service at Susan’s, and I was pleasantly surprised. Our waiter, a cute black-haired high-school girl, took our drinks order and smiled the entire time. After she brought us our morning juice, she said, “We’re so happy you brought somebody!” In other words, she was excited that perhaps I wasn’t the biggest loser in the world. She continued, “We always see you here or in Pizzuto’s, and you’re alone and usually writing. We call you “the writer.” When me and (names forgotten, but she referred to someone that works both Susan’s and Pizutto’s—maybe Pizutto’s is with one z?) saw you with someone, we couldn’t wait to talk about it! We’re so happy for you.”
Now, this of course made me feel two things. The first: I’m happy Julies likes looserish men because that’s what she got. And second: I eat at these places too often. I won’t do much about the second because of my cooking fears, and as long as Julies doesn’t realize what the first means, we’ll probably be okay. That could have been much funnier. . .but at least I wrote something.
Julie visited the Castle this weekend. As you can tell by the pictures below, Seward Park (okay, a few miles down the lake from the Park, but close enough) hosted the annual Seafair, the only cool thing to come around to these parts all year. (There is some Christmas caroling in the park, but I don’t think that counts as cool.) Chuck and his wife had planned to visit this weekend as well, but life sometimes has a way of changing plans on people. We miss them, though, and can’t wait to see them when they do get around to these parts again.
I open a crisp white page. I find myself at a loss. I feel as if my touch is gone, even though I know better than most that touches don’t go away so easily, no matter how many times you pound your head against the wall, rarely does it rattle the gray matter. Without talking about the pain and failures of my progress, I find little to say.
Sander was not a writer even though he played one on television. He really did. He starred in the B-comedy “Writing Places” about three struggling writers living together in New York City. Sanders played the right angle of the love triangle. He loved Rachel, who had a confusing crush on Tommy and discussed her infatuation with Sander. Sander gave good advice, but his face always gave away his feelings toward her. Tommy was ambivalent, of course, and we (the audience) did not know whether he had any interest in Rachel or women in general.
Tommy was the real writer of the group. He had published in a few magazines and was working eight hours a day on his first novel. Rachel wrote screenplays and talked about moving to Los Angeles, but never did, working as an editor at a small neighborhood newspaper. Sander worked in a chicken outfit for a fried chicken chain. He spent more time complaining about writing than writing. He never finished a story, and most episodes revolved around his daydreams as he turned his real life into voice-over words, which, we find out the next episode, he never wrote down, or if he did, he quickly crumpled up and let die. By the way, Sander’s name on the show was Sander—I thought I should clarify that.
A trend in my writing: My ADHD limits what I can say on a subject before boredom subsumes me. Case in point: (I’m in a colon type of mood) I’m writing this section on the subsumption of boredom and I flip to send mails. What I start to realize is that concentrating long enough on an idea to add flesh to its bones will make me a better writer. I read Chuck’s last entry with interest.
Here I am again about to dive into a bit of consternating. As Chuck pointed out in a pointed mail yesterday, I seem to have dropped off the map. Even my mother noticed; this was after she admitted enjoying my photos much more than my writing, and proclaiming that as long as I kept the photos coming (of which I’ll upload this past weekend’s NYC adventures soon), she wouldn’t miss these words that much. But here I am again, ready to wield the mighty keyboard and consternate about nothing.
I will bore you (after originally writing that I won’t bore you) with why I haven’t written in a while. I’ll even go back and post a few entries I’ve kept in my armpits, afraid that their quality and quantity did not sufficiently warrant me posting on this most spectacular of websites (yes, I’m talking about sewcrates.com, and, yes, you can stop laughing because I meant it as a facetious or sarcastic or downright self-deprecating comment on the brilliance of said website).
This is where I would normally write a paragraph about my flying misadventures to NYC. First: I overslept for my 6am Friday flight; and second: after a four-hour thunderstorm hovered over LaGuardia on Sunday night, I was stuck (with Julies!) in Houston after we sat unmoving on the runway until all chance of making our connecting flights dissipated with the lightning. But I won’t go into details. I’m finding details in all forms inane lately, especially as they pertain to my life.
In responding to Chuck’s mail yesterday, I provided him with a litany of causes for my output failure. What all the excuses have in common, however, is me not finding interest in this writing thing. I don’t know why I’m doing it or what I hope to achieve. I don’t want to be a “blogger.” I want to write, and I want to post those writings to receive feedback (i.e., positive feedback to feed my ego, not necessarily my back’s ego, but you get the picture). I would love to tell stories, and while I’ve had some admirable tries, I still haven’t found the right formula for me. I’m not sure there is even a formula out there for me.
And assuming I one day wake up and find my voice—and let me take a moment to define “voice” before I finish this sentence. There are two aspects I’ve used this in: the first is a more superficial sense, in which the voice is the narrator’s voice I use to tell a story (or write a musing—the voice of these musings, by the way, was developed during an illustrious career of writing e-mail during college, mostly to my younger sister, to report on my unhappiness, honed to a dangerous point in my exchanges with Chuck after college). While that voice is important, it is not as important as the second aspect of voice, the story voice, or what the hell I want to tell and why the hell I want to tell it. This has been the most difficult aspect of writing for me. Many of my feeble attempts at storytelling have been the recounting of events (or combination of events) in my life. While most authors draw on experience, I’m finding that I don’t have much outside of those experiences to draw on, and, more disconcerting, I find that I end up filling my stories up with these life events to pad words as opposed to push forward with whatever plot or theme I had hoped to get across in the words.
Getting back to my assumption, if I did wake up one day to find my voice (not to throw in yet another aside, but all this talk of voices reminds me that after all these travels, I’m feeling on the verge of sickness—a huge risk with me after subjecting my body to major changes in its strict sleep and eating schedule. As I sit here, I feel phlegm gathering its forces in the back of my throat, coating it to cover the slowly encroaching red mounds that form every time I swallow), if my voice revealed itself to me, I keep thinking my life would change in some drastic way. I’m not saying I would become the Great American Best-Selling Author of High Quality Literature (or GABSAQL, pronounced gab-sackle). What I am saying is that if it happened, even though I know it wouldn’t reduce the pain of putting down words, it would make the words I put down more useful toward my goal. I’ve said before and I’ll say again, I love typing words and writing. This crap I’m pouring out today, I’m enjoying every button I press, every word and paragraph that I form on the screen. What I miss, however, in not having the voice is a purpose behind these words. I can write many words today (even not counting the ridiculous asides like this one) because I have a purpose: to analyze why I’m having trouble in writing. I won’t fulfill my purpose, I won’t organize my entry, as I see so many other well-thought-out and proper writers do. I think I gave that up when I gave up writing academically. I realized the amount of effort in both writing and editing this would require, and I left myself wide open to the possibility (and probability, as it turned out) that I would not be able to bring enough energy to bear to both write and edit quality works in the short time I have to write.
Do I have a point? No, not really. I might have a point if I finish throwing down the words and edit them together to form something coherent (unlike this first draft, which, if you had to read it—and there is a small possibility you will, depending how strong the siren’s video game call is tonight), or David-coherent, which is much different from the normal, skilled writer’s version of coherency.
I’m back now. My throat is hurting a bit less, and I’ve exhausted most avenues of internet-related procrastination. Getting here, 1,000 words into this—whatever this is, has been an exercise. The last couple of weeks, I’ve lowered the priority time on my writing significantly. As I was saying before, I’ve been going through a bit of a challenge as to why I’m writing and what I hope to get out of it. I compounded that identity crises by deciding (arguably rightly) that I should stop posting consternations and complaints, and focus on real content. I realize the irony in saying that and posting this entry. I don’t think I can meet my own standards for blogging excellence.
The drought is almost over in Seattle. It’s been cloudy the last couple of days, and any day now the rain will open up and the dust will turn to mud. My car is covered by dry, microscopic dust. I washed it two weekends ago, but it helped only for two days. The back trunk is particularly bad, with my fingerprints covering the handle that opens my trunk. How’s that for senseless ramblings?
In a fit balanced between wanting to sleep and the combined effects of yummy caffeine and a glass of wine with dinner, I find myself laying in bed and pounding on the keys all the day’s Moleskine scribbles. Sleep seems far away. I wish it would get here already—but wishes, like fairy dust, we sometimes reserve for the over-privileged and under-anxious.
I wrote this snippet and the poem over the last week.
***
Memories of red numbers on black plastic nametags kept me up at night. Empty coffee cups stained along its inner rim of levels gone by. Raspy voices. Story Idea: Strafed by a WWII plane.
“I’m surprised more kids aren’t gap toothed.” Think about that. You walked in and overheard that statement with all of its attendant baggage. For one, this was said by the mother or friend of the mother about a baby or toddler who, and here I’m postulating, her child has a hulking, tie up the dog because this fence ain’t going to hold him in, gap in the monster’s (euphemism for children up through 26 years of age, without judgment on the quality of the child, instead it’s a judgment on the mushiness of the brain of said child—technical but important distinction) teeth.
Continuing the analysis, second, the child cannot be blamed for this gap because how can other children, not do—and here you’ll have to fill in the cause of the gap; perhaps the child sticks overripe carrots between her front two teeth (another conjecture on what teeth are gapped) or…
My analysis wears down here. The senselessness of the work, the who cares aspect—you get the picture, and, please, take it as far from me as you can get.
***
“Excuse me,” Ed the waiter asked as I read through yet another article about the confirmation of John G. Roberts to the Supreme Court. “I was just wondering, are you a writer?” My belly glows at the question. Here he is, an older, kind (and rather considerate, in that he takes his time delivering my food as I pick at my salad to catch up with my reading or writing) waiter, and he wanted to know whether I was a writer.
I answered, off the cuff (in that I accepted my initial stab at cleverness instead of delving deeper) and not honest and certainly not extending a branch of conversation, “Aspiring.”
He goes on, as if to explain himself, “I didn’t mean to interrupt, but I always see you here either writing or reading, and I think it’s great. I used to be a social studies and English teacher, and I just think what you’re doing here, your writing and reading, I think it’s great.”
Did I mention that my belly lit up the entire restaurant? How people covered their eyes when they looked in my direction because of the belly’s brightness? How I wanted to answer “Yes! I am a writer!” How I wanted to throw aside a my consternated baggage, point at the stack of my stories, and yell to the world, “not just a writer, but an author—a noble scribbler in the arcane art of authoring, idea-ing, and general brilliant discourse of the eye-opening and insightful (but not necessarily clever or at all self-indulgent) act of sharing. That’s what I wanted to say, to scream. But I took the other road and whispered my answer, and bored him (and frightened me).
The stack of stories? It’s going to grow. I’m sick, tired, and cliché-driven to write anything that will budge that stack and decrease my reliance on consternation to feed these pages (not that feeding this pages is in any shape my goal).
***
Where did the raising of the roof—Dearborn. Baseball. Fighting. The catch and hook. What moves you (i.e., David)? Fuck the rest (i.e., 3 readers)—what’s in it for you?
It’s very crowded today—the reining family-oriented (non chain!) restaurant. Four flowers on red and white table cloths. Exchange it for something becoming—practice the sound and motion—it’s been too long and too all-consuming. It’s not a once-a-week thing, it’s an every day, find something to say before going away experience. We’re in the blue XP bar. It’s better this way. Better in many ways.
Powdered cheese in small jars with large holes. Pictures flashed and minds mashed. Add a verb, form a sentence. Reach for a rod and spare the bait. I’m getting close, bursting along the close-knitted seams. I will pop out and run naked among you. I won’t disappoint—me again. The four of you, you can go to hell as you throw praises in the form of chocolate baskets and well-worded comments on the genius and growth and general (but not specific, expect where examples are cited and footnoted) brilliance of the latest stacked work in my moving from the world of aspiration to actuality—such an ineffective word to describe the rush and enjoyment and great spectacle of that most wished for achievement.
It’s a beautiful day in my neighborhood. I didn’t get to bed until I late and I woke rather early. I’m beginning to think (as opposed to ‘I think’) that sleeping less makes me happier. I’m not happier in the morning—mornings suck, and never do they suck worse than when I feel like I didn’t get enough sleep. But come the late morning and afternoons, I have more energy and a happier outlook on life when I sleep less. I work (relatively) harder on these days, taking more pleasure in my tasks and getting things done at an exceptional rate. And, since we seem to be keeping a record here, I went to sleep late last night because of too much video games. Maybe, and it certainly doesn’t pain me to say this, maybe, video games are actually good for me?
I have a new war cry: “try as he might.” The he is me, and no matter how hard I try (or how little I try, as today is turning out), something else happens.
It’s almost bedtime and I’m fighting its affects. I’m in the process of testing out my too much sleep theory (or TMST). The one variable I forgot to control for, however, was physical exercise. Since I haven’t done any of it in over a week, it does start to make sense that I would need less sleep. Once I start riding again (I will ride again, hopefully next week—unless the weather changes, in which case, I don’t know what I’m going to do, maybe wait to ride until next year and continue shriveling up into the anti-David, small arms and sunken chest), my belief is that I will need more sleep or wake up zombie-like, wandering the halls with my brain confused, pathologically yawning, and searching for a moment of sleep. Did I tell you I bought an Ikea lounge chair for my office at work? I plan to use it on those days—just for fifty or so winks. I’ll let you know how my experiments go.
After staring disgustingly at my empty pages, I decided to revisit some of my older works. The one that stood out (after a few failed attempts at the sci-fi story—I will be able to write it one day, it’s just that this is not that day) was The Flying Toe Stomp. I didn’t like the history lesson on my childhood, though. I liked the narrator and Charlie. I started a second draft many months ago where I cut out Roger and decided on a rather sorry end for Charlie. But by removing Roger, I killed the plot. Charlie is interesting, but without a conflict (or an adversary, I should say), the plot won’t move forward. So, I resurrected Roger.
I’m leaving for Chicago tomorrow for a Bar Mitzvah for my cousin and a wedding anniversary for his grandparents. I’m meeting my mother and younger sisters; I haven’t seen her two monsters in a while and I’m looking forward to taking many photographs of them. Julie is in Toronto with her family, after visiting Seattle this past weekend through Tuesday. (So nice having Julies around. I can’t wait until the middle of September when she’s here for—hold on to your hats and mittens—an entire month!) My head keeps falling to my chest and my eyelids are weakening. It’s time to call this done and try to get some sleep. I know, this is not what I had hoped to write. Video games took up most of my free hours tonight, but I’m not sorry about that. Since I started to level up another character (without Julies—a big mistake), it has come to dominate my free time.
I’ll give thoughts to TFTS and see where I can take it this weekend. It’s nice to be writing a bit again, even if it’s only coming out in spurts without much that is terribly interesting (to me).
After my last handwritten rant, I ran out of space in my Moleskine. There are a few pages left, but from sitting in my back pocket for most of this year, the bindings loosened and the final pages became awkward to use. So, I declared the 2005 Moleskine done. I finished my first Moleskine on 28 June 2004. While I wrote more on the computer this year than in the Moleskine, I still have found enough occasions to open the beautiful black book and start scribbling. There’s something almost arcane about drawing the letters, as if I was writing an incantation into a spell book. When drawing the Moleskine, I lose all temptations to edit anything but the immediate words, and I know that I’m only a page flip away from hiding from my last page’s failures. Ah, the beauty of consternations—even in talking about my Moleskine, there’s no mistaking it.
(The first scribbles of the new Moleskine.)
They sat. They talked. They bored the author until he razed their house and tortured their first children. He roamed the forest and spoke to trees, confusing them for friends he never would have had. His cheek caught on a hook and his head yanked with the fishing line until he felt sure that his cheek would rip.
“The old man doesn’t want to accept he’s getting old.”
(Scribbles end. Yeah, I know, pathetic.)
The weather is changing in Seattle. I feel I’m only a few weeks away from lighting my first fire of the season. I can’t wait. While this warm summer has been nice (at times too nice—I think my body can only take so much sunlight before I grow weary and squinty), I do miss the comfort of a dark room with a rosy fire. I miss lying on the couch, the blue and white glare of the computer screen illuminating me, while I listen to the cracking of the wood, and the pounding of the keyboard. I know I need to write more. I know I’m spending too much time in front of the other computer, the evil computer, not practicing my craft. I know many things. But seasons change and Davids change, and hopefully the things I know will coincide.
The talk. The emotional discussion. It comes up while discussing people, rewarding them with a word of praise swallowed in overflowed eyes. Getting choked up, are we? There’s nothing wrong with that. Nothing at all to see around here. You know the next part: now, move along. Story ideas fight me with wooden sticks. So few stories to tell except those I’m afraid to imagine. I live in a house of strangers. Wake up and play the roles, but whatever you do, don’t show yourself waking. Bad way to start. Stop thinking of rules and start writing. Too little thinking. Start planning. Where’s the outline you promised me for moments like this where I’m finding the words and the voice; I’m singing at the top of my voice but I don’t know the lyrics and I don’t know the tune. Why didn’t you provide me the sheet music? How am I to improvise without knowing the chords? Why do you insist on analogizing badly?
Blue boxes over blue tables on blue rugs. I’m not sad. I’m not sad. Terror awaits the sadness. I could throw undecipherable words on the page for hours at a time and end up having said nothing. That’s what I do: I say nothing with no plan to say anything and I talk about the endless nothing sayings as if that inandofitself is saying something. That should be a word.
Green shirt with a badge around his neck. Hair flopping behind him, crinkly and curled, like a cheap doll’s head covered in yarn. He doesn’t remember why he’s here. He knows it has something to do with making money, but he’s not sure if that’s enough anymore. He remembered a time of ideals. He met his wife with ideals. They were in a philosophy class and they were discussing Plato’s forms. The idea took him: a perfect embodiment of a Thing existing beyond our reality of the thing. His wife didn’t agree. She found it ridiculous, a child’s imaginings of a world that exists only for them and knowable only by them. He loved her at that moment.
She explained her ideals on their first date. She cared about people, but she cared about certain people more than about other people. She cared about family more than friends, friends more than neighbors, neighbors more than community, etc. She even carved out celebrities. Because she watched them and grew with them, she felt they were closer to neighbors and therefore it was all right if she cared more about them and read voraciously about their lives in trashy magazines. Her ideals were a lack of ideals. He did not share her views; he felt there was a perfect ideal, a utopia when it came to ethics and morals of society.
His wife won the argument in the philosophy class, and she won the argument about ideals. He went to work for a large corporation, made enough money to support their growing family, and found, at least in the beginning, that he was happy when she was happy, ideals be damned. He loved his family, but as time passed, he began to forget why he worked and what he worked for. His beliefs did not match the stock-price driven beliefs of his employers. He wanted his life to have a meaning besides his children—even though he loved his children beyond anything he thought possible before their existence.
The ideal question grew like a cancer in his stomach. At first it weighed down his commutes. Then he started thinking about it while he worked on his projects. He found himself staring into a world he thought he knew and enjoyed as he spoke with colleagues that he found he had less than nothing in common with. When the question began affecting his time with his children, he began to accept that this was not something that went away on its own.
This has been a great start to the leaf I flipped over yesterday. I feel calmer than I've felt in weeks. Julie attempted to draw me in to deon-dong-yuan-gee tonight as she fought her own demons, but I convinced her with calm words and beautifully crafted (if terribly self-serving) arguments, that it's for the best that she continue on her path of NEQIJ. She complied and I think she's happier for it.
The first day is always the easiest. I see that and I won't pretend differently. After staying in work later than usual, I drove home after the traffic rush, and jogged around the park. I can't remember the last time I did something that did not involve maximizing my video game playing time. I cooked a rather so-so dinner of salmon and brocoli (you might notice that I have more spelling and grammar errors than usual here today--it's all part of a new strategy I'll explain in a bit). I spoke with Julie, really spoke, about our days and what I was thinkikng and reading about, and she did the same. So many of our conversations of late have revolved around the hours we played video games and our days at work. It was nice to get past that and back to other topics.
(We're still concerned about the staring-thing. We worked out a strategy today: we will focus our staring at different parts of the face. Maybe start with the left eye for a few hours, and then move on to the nose, then the right eye, the mouth, etc. That way, the boredom will take more time to sink in.)
Inevitably, with our talk came the pulls of the video game siren. It was not bad today as I feel the toxins draining slowly from my body. But I know tomorrow will be another day with it's own set of challenges. At one point, as Julie was looking at the screenshots I posted yesterday, the urge to play the game was almost overwhelming for me. Had there been a video game store open at this time of night, I might have succumbed. What's that AA saying? "Take it one day at a time." We're trying to do that.
After getting back on the wagon, I began reading Modern Library Writer's Workshop by Stephen Koch. It's a scary looking green-covered book I bought many months ago when I was in a writing rut (shocking). I didn't open it at the time and I found it languishing away on my shelf. I read the first chapter yesterday, and since then, I haven't been able to put it down. Over the past couple of years, I've read many books on writing, and learned quite a bit about the art. What this book provides, however, is more than a discussion of characterization, story development, and the identification of plot. It provides an understanding of the fear and commitment that is necessary for writing, and provides practical advice to overcome some of these very common malladies, which are part and parcel of this pursuit.
I won't get into the details of the book. I skipped around in my reading, jumping ahead to the chapters that interested me the most (e.g., the discussion multiple drafts) before returning ot the earlier chapters that covered the basics I had read about in other places. Stephen Koch spent twenty-something years teaching writing to MFA students at Columbia University. It was his experience during this years that allows him to talk about the writing process and the common hurdles that most writers face.
For example, in one of his earliest chapters, he described the problem of storytelling. If you remember, I wrote many a musing about my fears that while I may be able to write, I have no knack for telling a story. The words might be nice, but there is no story there, and I didn't think I had the ability to tie things together to get anything more than a vignette. Koch discusses this problem in this chapter, relaying how almost every student in his program (he was its director for many of the years he taught there) would knock on his office door and admit to having this problem. How they each felt that they could never be a writer because they couldn't tell a story, as if there was a storytelling gene that they lacked (his analogy). It's not true, of course. He reassured them, and through the book, me that almost every writer shares this fear (and how, regretably, it doesn't go away even with success). To overcome this problem, he explains how storytelling occurs: storytelling is not about inventing stories from "thin air," but of uncovering stories that already exist (where they exist is not important). Stephen King, in his book On Writing, used the analogy of the fossil digger uncovering bones to support this same conviction. The story is inside the writer, and it only takes a discovery to draw it out.
With this inspiration steadily in hand, I managed to write a copious amount of words today. Almost all of them (excluding these) were toward a story. None of them are good, but that's okay for a first draft. Taking Koch's advice (and that of King before him), I'm not going to post what amounts to the first quarter of the first draft. I wrote around 5,000 words for this story, and in only the last few hundred did I find something. The rest will probably be dusted off and thrown away when I get to the second draft, but I'm still a bit a ways away from there. I also wrote voyeur entries and notes from the writing book in my Moleskine, some of which (the voyeur more than the notes) I hope to turn into other stories.
Now, whether this inspiration will last, I can't say. I am enjoying immensely this new inspiration and practice. It's been a good two days and while I haven't produced anything wonderful yet, I have rediscovered the desire to produce something wonderful.
I'm typing this entry directly on my website, instead of drafting and editing it in my word processor. I want these entries to be shorter (something I failed to accomplish today) and less of a writing sample and more of a quick entry to update you on my progress and the day's happenings. I know it's not as exciting as reading my terrible (mostly first) drafts, but it's my current plan for embracing what I want to write.
After a volcanic blast of energy yesterday, I fell back to reality today. I managed to crank out another 1,000 words in my story, and I even found a few hooks that might be interesting enough to propel me toward an ending. (I did write a version of the closing paragraphs of the story--but, like most of what I've written, I'm hardly impressed).
This writing exercise feels similar to the Marathon last year. The prose is terrible, the scenes are undeveloped and not described, the characters might as well not exist except for the name I gave them (all of which are obvious and uninspiring), and the story, well, the story moves nowhere and promises nothing, not even an adequate conflict. But that's okay. I'm writing this draft as an exploratory mission: the more I write, the better the chance I'll "uncover" some sort of story. I still haven't figured out if there's anything under the bad grammar and worse style. During the Marathon, as I piled on the words, I felt the same way: I didn't know it at the time, but I was searching for a story, and while I did get a few tastes of what could have been a story during the Marathon, I didn't realize that was what I should have been doing. This time I'm more clear on my goal and less concerned with the terribleness of what I've written.
All of this reminded me of Chuck's story draft from the Marathon. He needs to get back to it and turn his surprisingly good first draft into an editable second draft. To think what I would do with such a quality first draft makes me shake in jealousy. But I know that I'm not that type of writer. My first draft is and will always be crap. My only hope (and it's a slim one) is that I can turn that first crappy draft into something slightly better the second time around--perhaps something with a semblance of a story in it. As for Chuck and his first draft, get to it, man. I can't believe I need to twist your arm about this.
I am dreading finishing up the first draft (which is painful in itself) and starting the second draft. Skimming through parts of what I've written, I don't think there are more than a few sentences that I will savage. Almost everything will have to be rewritten in more painstaking detail. But I'm following Writer's Workshop's advice and plodding forward and hoping that I'll find a story somewhere in the pile of words, and some of the words I've written won't look nearly as bad with a few days time away from the work.
Speaking of work (my other job), it is quiet this week as most of my colleagues are in various conferences. One of our vendors sponsored an ice cream party, which would have been nice, except for the hard sell they put on us. I can't complain too much since I did get me some nice swag, and isn't that what it's all about: free stuff?
While I continue to experiment with less sleep, I did pay a bit for it this morning. The jog last night combined with less than seven hours of sleep left me in a fatigued state for most of the day. It wasn't a pathologically yawning type of day, but it was a I'd rather not be here one.
I'm babbling now and that's a good sign to end this. For those keeping count (and that probably consists of only me), I'm now at 5,867 useless words in my current draft.
Things are moving along in the world of storytelling. I'm up to 6,782 words on my current story, which is less than I hoped for today thanks to not writing yesterday. After a long walk following a beer-fueled dinner, I managed to squeeze out about another page of new material. I have almost figured out what the story is about--now I only need to write it and finish the first draft, which turns out to be much easier to say than do.
Julie is arriving on Saturday evening. She's visiting for an entire month, and I can't wait! I found this cute engagement comic during my normal surfing. Julie now insists that I draw a comic describing our engagement. I resisted, reminding Julie that my drawing skills involve painting monsters, and unless she wants me to draw her as a monster (and one that looks different in each cell), she should accept my bad poetry in lieu of clever comics.
I went to the dentist today for the first time in a year and a half. It turns out my teeth are in good shape. Cavities (of which I have had my unfair share) seem to be a thing of the past. The dentist explained that as you age, your teeth become more stable, perhaps less susceptible to bacteria (or something like that--I was busy breathing deeply and trying not to freak out to remember everything that he said). My anxiety stems (quite naturally, I believe) from my childhood visits to the dentist. My mother, in her Jewish wisdom, decided that the needles dentists stick into gums to dull the pain (hence the "painless dentistry we were promised) were somehow more painful than the drilling of ten holes (on average) per visit in my teeth. I'm still recovering from the child abuse. What my mother failed to realize is that while the needles might look scary, the pain is much quicker than the incessant drilling. From grueling experience I can now tell you that there's nothing like the feeling of drill bit on nerve to develop a deep-seated hatred for all things dental. I guess it doesn't help that my mother has good teeth and probably never had a cavity. She couldn't share those genes with me?
Yesterday, I wallowed in the midst of a terrible electrical storm, which shrieked through my brain. The migraine formed thanks to the convergence of many factors: seasonal change, caffeine and video game withdrawal, broken sleep patterns, sloppy eating habits. I survived thanks to Julie’s attentions. I expected to wake to a P.H.D., excited by the prospect of productivity and inventiveness that usually follows bad days. Instead, I found myself in the wishy-washy motioning of an in-between world, where the pain had subsided but had not been replaced by anything more interesting than a slight fatigue and the wonders of emptiness.
My brain cranks as if it skipped a gear and I search for the missing gear. I’m not much help in finding the slot. I stare into space with a blurred vision and make no effort to focus, relying on my apathetic feeling to grope my way towards something. My mind swishes too much to afford a search for stories. I again question whether I have any stories within me that need uncovering.
I think of new techniques: Maybe slower, maybe throwing words as fast as the brain thinks without the editorializing is not the way to write. I’m searching for the way—not the easy way, since I know there is not an easy way, but the way that will push me forward, as if any technique will recover what is absent from my searches.
I flounder and wish I could catch it and fry it and call it well done. Zonkers cover my lights and I walk blindly in the darkness. I don’t bother trying because down that path I imagine only darkness. I find much to blame for this darkness, but all of it is me, me, me, and what fun is blaming oneself for failing.
Crying rates as the highest fall out for large bugs that wander over the course riverbank. If only chairs raised on their hind legs to roar at those who approached and threatened to lower their enormous rears onto the comforting seat only to be thwarted by would-be contrarians in green overcoats. Spitting words across the table into plastic cups filled with used chew irked the local Peabody association of retired nuns. Needles of sparkling rage singed the naked rears of the streakers as the attempted to cross the campus.
Such foolishness leaves my fingers in its dazed state. I welcome it, welcome the escape and change from days of blankness in which I forgot to form words or hide behind heavy covers to forget the unforgettable pains.
My headaches have not cooperated in my quest to get back into this writing thing (pronounced qui-tig bit-writ). Today was (according to my off-the-cuff calculations) the official first day of the rainy season in Seattle. The forecast for the rest of the week is wet and showery, which means it’s almost time for me to light the fireplace. (It’s still not cold enough yet.) The sun has been annoying me the last few weeks, and I’m glad it’s going away for a few seasons. While I’m sure I’ll change my tune in a few weeks, it’s nice to wake up to dark and wet mornings, where I can turn over and sleep for another hour (especially when that sleep involved holding the incredibly warm Julies).
After dropping Julies off at the airport (she’s not going home yet, don’t worry, I wouldn’t let her escape that easily; she’s visiting San Francisco where she will receive yet another award for being a wonderful medical resident, and where I will meet her tomorrow night), I returned home (fighting through a terrible, rush hour traffic snarl), and went for a refreshing run in the rain. It was the furthest and fastest I’ve gone since beginning my twice-weekly run (I never intended to run so infrequently, but that’s about what I’ve been averaging). After I returned, rainy and sweaty, I warmed up last night’s leftover soup (it’s nice having a reason to cook meals) and showered. I just finished the dishes from my dinner, and I’m curling up with my computer on the warm couch typing words again.
It’s nice to do this again. All day, I’ve wanted to write. Fighting through traffic to get home from the airport was the worst part. I had all this creative energy looking for an outlet, and yet the other cars on the road would not cooperate. I went for a jog because the energy had built to such a fevered pitch that I had either to run or bang my head against the wall to relieve the energy.
Today was the first real P.H.D. I’ve had. While I haven’t had headaches every day, I have had headaches at least every other day over the last two weeks. Most disappointingly, the interspersed headache-free days have not resulted in P.H.D.’s. That is, until today. I spiced my today’s P.H.D. with a tasty Americano in the afternoon. The spice was what drove the creative energies from before, and now I’m trying to foster the remnants to write a few words. After not writing for a few days, I’m feeling rusty, like I have to force these words onto the page to say anything.
As usual when I’m not writing, I spend a lot of time thinking of inspirations. This week’s: write about the unexpected and wonderful. A couple of days ago, after poorly spacing our Netflix watching and finding ourselves with no movies to watch, we popped in and watched the first half of “Garden State,” the wonderfully wicked Zach Brach movie. That’s what got me thinking about the unexpected and wonderful. Every character and scene in his movie fit that description, from his antidepressant drugged main character, to his eccentric New Jersey friends. It took what could have been an ordinary story and made it extraordinary by thinking beyond the obvious and reaching for the unexpected.
I do love to blather about other people’s work. Speaking of my own work, the story I was working on before the headache hurricane is now officially dead. It is neither wonderful nor unexpected. It is trite, poorly written, and uninteresting. Such is the fate of most of my work. I might return to it when I have fresh ideas or when I throw together a workable outline, but part of the reason I’ve not written in a while has been because I’ve been digging myself deeper and deeper holes, which I couldn’t climb out of. I see the lifeline and it involves me moving on to something different. November is only a month away now, and I have to start revving up for the Marathon, which is a terribly scary thought.
As for now, I’ve written for a good twenty minutes the above dribble (or is it drivel?), and I think that’s a good start to easing me back into putting letters together to form words. Tomorrow, I’ll try to work on paragraphs, and maybe by this weekend (when I’m safely ensconced in San Francisco’s hilly streets), I’ll be able to think about storyizing again.
So far and low, the dirt covers me to my mouth. It’s dark and gritty, textured almost like an Oreo, until I realize that texture isn’t everything and I taste dirt. I’m low now. So low I’m not sure what type of shovel I would need to dig myself up. Exploding raisins dance across my vision and I want to jump and swallow them the moment before they explode. The darkness is almost complete, the disappointment too much so.
Soldiers in black outfits drop from the roofs. I welcome them to my breakfast nook and offer them a dinner roll. If we all eat dinner rolls, the world will be brighter, more possible; if I served butter with the rolls, the world might be a tasty place.
I don’t want to write this now. I don’t want to stay on the blue chair and move my fingers without moving my wrists. The door swings and I don’t know which direction to run. Running isn’t always good. There’s always walking and skipping and walking backwards, but what fun are those activities when the door swings.
I'm off to the airport to join the Julies in San Francisco. Notice the drivel below. Don't worry, mom, I'm not going to shoot myself.
In preparation for the Marathon next month, I’m cleaning up the place—this website, that is. I am reworking the design elements and trying to bring a few new themes to replace the current stodgy Cornflower Blue one. I guess this is further evidence of the maxim that those who can’t write, redesign their websites.
This is the second day with no headache. I don’t know what’s been banging around up there, but it’s a huge relief to feel normal again. I hated waking up each morning, only to shake my head in a wimpy attempt to check on my head. (I would sometimes try to go back to sleep on the bad mornings in the hope that more sleep would fix the pain that fixed itself behind my left eye. It rarely worked.) This morning, I forgot to check. I take that as a good sign.
I’m beginning to see a pattern here. You see, there comes a time every so often when I realize that this writing thing is not working, not because I’m a bad writer (the jury still remains out on that question—for now, let’s say that I’m not much of a writer, but I do, at times, put down words on paper, and if you want to get technical, then, yes, I am a putter downer of words, which, in a way, makes me a writer), but my writing is not working because, as I put it so freakishly in the last parenthetical, I’m not putting down enough words.
I can’t quantify these ebbs and flows (yet). A project I thought of as I wrote the last paragraph (and something I think I’ve thought up before and ignored, as I will likely do again) is to prepare a graph of my writing output. I’ll fit the time for preparation in between cleaning up this website, spending time with Julies, pretending to work on a “wedding website” (after I told Chuck about this project, he remarked, most wonderfully,
I wonder if the world is really ready for something so radical and groundbreaking as an engagement/wedding site. I admire your trailblazing spirit, but are you sure you don't want to let a few other engaged couples try it out before plunging head-first into such a bold undertaking?
And, yes, Julies, that is why I’ve backpedaled on my promise to finish the engagement site. I can’t take the ridicule. Blame it all on Chuck), work of course, and life in general—the traveling, entertaining, thinking, reading, etcetera. The data collection for this project shouldn’t take very long, and then it’s a matter of drawing a pretty graph in Excel and posting it. Perhaps I’ll automate it! (That’s always where I get in trouble—I’ve been wanting to automate much more in the redesign, e.g., I’m thinking of a live webcam outside my home-office window—another absolutely original idea—which, the window, that is, has a nice view of the lake (and wires).)
But I digress (as usual). Getting back to my writing, this is one of those times where I have to stop making excuses and start showing production. I wasn’t lying to you over the last couple of weeks when I said I wrote parts of a story. In the end, my unfinished story came in at a whooping 7,311 words, which doesn’t include probably another 1,000 or so words I started on a rewrite. As I said before, in the end, I failed. The story went where it usually goes—i.e., nowhere—and I had to “fish or cut bait,” and clearly you saw which path I took. I’m comfortable with that, and I’ve so far resisted the urge to share my failings with the world because, while I’m masochistic about my writing, even those urgings have their limits. During the Marathon, I have plenty of excuses for poor grammar, spelling, structure, style. I figure, there are tens of thousands of other people posting their writing during that month for their mother’s to read. My pride swells at the thought (or at least, I should say, doesn’t deflate nearly as much as it normally would) of how terrible those people’s writings are compared to my most awful of projects. I know, whatever helps me sleep at night, and during November, I sleep like a bear.
But not posting also enabled me to cheat. I would write and post the numeric output, but my incentive for finishing was not the same without having to show my work. I could always say I wrote another five hundred words, even if those five hundred words were backpedaling to rewrite a scene I had already sketched out. My point—and I do have a point, which I’m grasping at like trying to pick invisible spider strands from my hair—is that part of the reason I stopped writing was because I didn’t have a plan, a deadline, and a goal. My goal was to finish the story, and when it started becoming hard (as writing, at some point, always becomes), I lost interest, and without the goal and the website pushing me on, I had nothing to show for myself, and I allowed weeks to pass by, secure in the knowledge that nobody was watching and I’d get back to it as soon as my next brilliant idea came. Of course, no ideas came and I became less and less interested in continuing, until I find myself here, right now, trying to excuse my behavior for the last month, and figure out a way to fix it in preparation for the Marathon (and, in general, for my writing life, or WL).
To set another goal I will break in short order, I will try to write at least 1k words each day until the Marathon begins. I know this is much less than my usual 2k words, but I want to try to cut out some of the filler, and edit what I write (after I write it—I’m staying with the stream of consciousness first draft because it’s the only way I can create words). Obviously, I didn’t accomplish much in the way of editing today, but that’s okay because I didn’t accomplish much in the way of writing either, I just pushed more words. Now, back to redesigning my website (or watching movies or doing something other than having to think about saying something meaningful).
In other news, today is the second day of the Jewish New Years. I usually visit my family this time of year, but because the holiday fell out in the middle of the week (the Jewish calendar is different from the Gregorian calendar’s days, and consequentially the holidays fall out differently each year), we decided not to visit NYC until Thanksgiving.
The Jewish New Years, or Rosh Hashanah, is a time of reflections. While I’m not (by any taffy-like stretch of the imagination) an observant Jew, I do appreciate this holiday because it gives me the opportunity to take a few days off from work and look back over the year and see the things I did right, and the things I didn’t do so right. This has been a busy year: engagement, new job (arguably, I had this job last year around this time, but give me some leeway on my reflections), getting comfortable in the Castle, etcetera. I will give more thought to what (if anything) I want to say about these reflection next week, during Yom Kippur, which I plan to sit around, try not to eat (it’s a fast day), and attempt to meditate, which is the only form of praying I’ve been able to muster since childhood. (And, yes, mom, it’s because I can’t accept death and because I blame all the bad things that happened to me on that ridiculous invisible intangible green alien that supposedly lives in the sky.)
For the record, I made the goal today: 1,203—and this without real caffeine (only some chocolate, which I had to scavenge during a terrible moment of chocolate fever this afternoon).
Second days are harder than first days. I fueled yesterday’s writing through novelty (relative novelty, that is—this wasn’t the first time I set a goal, but probably my fourth goal setting maneuver). I struck out to write words and spent whole paragraphs (my only currency when staring at the blank screen) on the who’s and why’s of the goal. But today, like most second days, I find myself staring, unsure where my fingers will take me, or whether, I should state, they, in their digit-like glory, will take me anywhere.
Like most slow days, I’ll start this writing with my daily recap as an exercise, a way to warm up my brain (and, truthfully, as a way to eat up words). The day started rather poorly. I woke up early for a predawn meeting (my definition of predawn is before ten, for the record, if you were so inclined to keep one), and without even a shake of my head, I knew that it was a headachy day. I popped an Advil and went about my morning routine. For the first time this month, I showered before the Julies in the early morning darkness.
After a cafeteria lunch—during which I ate one of the best and freshest baguettes (outside of Europe) I have ever eaten, with a crunchy and buttery crust, and a not-too-squishy crust bread-part—my headache retreated to the balcony section, leaving me with the feeling that it was watching from far away, waiting for its next opportunity to run down the aisle to stick its power drill in my eye. This didn’t happen, thankfully, and my day turned out rather well.
After writing the above, I spent a few paragraphs of currency randomly spewing thoughts on the page. Nothing worth reading, but the words do count toward that total, and seeing as I’m not ready to throw back and write stories, I figured I’d share. The nonsense turned slowly into a repute of my secret story, again with the “wonderful and unexpected” theme that boils through my brain. What I’m trying to say is that what follows is David’s writing thought process, a painful reading of internal thoughts that I recorded to push my wordcount above where it should be (i.e., push it toward my goal since I haven’t made the goal “story” words). It’s meta-writing at its worst. I just thought I’d warn you, is all. (And, no, this doesn’t count as throat clearing. Really.)
Struggles with worlds of trouble. Random words spewed across the glassy lake. Righteousness rides random rollers across roiling rivers of right-angled railways. Nonsense breeds nonsensical unorganized thoughts.
Think! Unexpected and wonderful! It’s not your first thought of what would happen. E.g. (from “Garden State”): Your protag is home for his mother’s funeral. You want to introduce a friend. How do you do it? (A) He calls the friend when he gets home; (B) The friend goes to the funeral (C) Best (and the choice of Zach Brach—WWZBD?): the friend is a gravedigger watching the funeral. See? This is wonderful and unexpected! Set events in motion and ask, how best should I do this? How best should I introduce this character? How best to make the plot element (introducing a friend) happen? The plot elements don’t have to be hard or complicated (look at this one!) it’s how’s and why’s that are important.
Look at your failed story: Riding in a car, falling in love with a woman on a serial radio program. You want them to meet. How did you do it? He listens to the radio, and during an important part in the program, the signal dies out as he drives through a tunnel because of traffic. He goes to the station to find out what happened and meets the actor playing the woman. Boring! Not terribly unexpected, and certainly not wonderful. Make it so! Think! Don’t just accept your initial reaction. Second e.g.: Want to show that their difference in age is significant and may cause problems. My initial solution: go to a dinner and show the woman’s older friends (in this case, much older friends, even relative to the woman’s age). Stupid old person jokes commence. Hilarity ensues. Boring! Think. Where’s the wonderful or unexpected?
Writing is about story and then plot. It’s about original thought and not throwing down the first thought that crosses my mind. How do I reconcile that with the openness of writing what I feel, what I want to say? They say that it’s the job of the first draft to throw stuff on the ground, and the job of the rewrites to turn the first draft into a story. I’m not sure if that’s true. Once I’ve written the idea (such as the driving through the tunnel—which, I should say after rereading the description, isn’t exactly expected, although what happens next certainly is), it sometimes feels too late to rethink it.
What I experimented with a few days last year during the Marathon was throwing down a few line outline each day before I started. The outline didn’t have to be followed, but it was my initial thought, and, and here’s where I’m stretching, if I apply some OT (original thought) to that outline, it is possible, and I’m using that possibility in a very loose sense, I might come up with the unexpected and wonderful scenarios that I’m craving. And, yes, since I keep saying that, part of the U&W relates to cleverness. But I have to stop lying to myself. Without cleverness in addition to feeling, I don’t want to write. It is who I am, why I enjoy DFW and why I write asides with too many commas and em-dashes.
Okay, I’m going to talk a bit more about my goal before calling it a night and eating our wonderful chicken leg soup and watching a possibly (but unlikely) wonderful Netflixed movie. Obviously, I’m meta-writing again. And while some meta-writing is inevitable (this is David we’re talking about), I shouldn’t use it as a crutch to meet a Goal. Tomorrow, I’m going to write the Goal with story words, and then, if I have time left over (or possibly words, if I feel I’ve accomplished something), I’ll meta-write about the process.
That bit of meta-meta-writing about the Goal pushed me over said Goal. I’m at 1,066 words with a yummy Mocha.
This has been a difficult caffeine-free day. I had hopes of putting words together for a story, but after free associating a bit (see below), nothing stuck, and now that it’s after 11pm with only half the Goal finished, I’m not sure any story moving will get done today. I’m comfortable with that (as usual).
The autumn rainstorm blanketed the graying city that morning. But by the afternoon, the clouds gave way to a crisp day. The shed leaves had covered the ground when I toured the grounds on the previous day, but after the storm, only the leafy fossils remained, brown imprints on the concrete along the walkways leading to the hospital. I knew the marks wouldn’t last the day. By evening, a light rain fell and washed the dark gray sidewalks of the morning evidence.
This didn’t start out as I had hoped. For reasons I can’t fathom, I feel like I’m squeezing the words (even on the redraft), trying to make them fit in sentences that are too small for them. I’ll keep whacking at them in the hopes that something will fall out, hopefully not a tooth, and if it has to be a tooth, then hopefully not my tooth.
Rain drenches the wet ground. The grayness makes me sleepy. The weather has driven the Seattle residents insane, and according to the traffic map, I have a long drive in front of me. My excitement doth runneth. I’ll pick up last year’s rainy driving descriptions here. I still can’t understand how a city that receives as much rain as Seattle can possibly have drivers that are more timid in the rain than Southern Californian drivers who receive rain only a handful of days each year. Seeing as it’s always good to mix tenses, and how I write this both before and after my drive, I can report that the drive was as bad as I expected. Thanks to a caffeine-free day, though, I was able to keep my cool through most of the drive, and except for a slight unexplained pain in my left clutch leg (probably not that mysterious, as I’ve been driving in too much traffic lately, and started running in the evenings), I relaxed through most of the crawling traffic.
Trains choo choo across the late night roads and I wonder what ever happened to the things that shivered and hid from the onslaught of everything that wasn’t. I stare into space looking for something, maybe an idea that will describe the ideas that are hiding in the recesses of my brain, the areas peeking out from behind the walls. I come back to rainy raisins on days like this. My heart is always with the wet raisin. I guess the child in me always hopes for a mystical re-hydration so I can pound them back into the bits and pieces of wine.
Looking back across the expanse of the broken horizon, I wonder when the night’s sky first broke across the griddled backs of the men who walked the earth in large shoes that protected their feet from the industrial giants they created.
We will live in a place where the nanochip they implant in your brain will power you all the days of your life, where, and this is where things get scary, the nanochip, once it enters your bloodstream provides you the choice of ultimate pleasure at no cost. It regulates all chemical and electrical signals, destroying the feedback loop that drops you like a rock on a volcano after the chemical and sexual induced highs. When that happens, and the happiness machine is a reality, will there be anyone left, anyone able to resist trying and finding pleasure in its use? There will be religious folks who will not allow the device implanted. Perhaps it’s them who will inherit the race.
Momentary ideas flirt with my brain and I want them to take the next step. Exercises in babbling do nothing for the ego.
Tiger is his name. What type of mother would name her son after a ferocious animal? I never did get a chance to ask her that before she ran out on my brother and me. It’s fitting in a way that she would give me such a ferocious name.
I’m drawing to the end here, and my thoughts are on sleep and not on pushing the words anymore. I keep hoping for the newest inspiration, for finding the longest moment where my concentration hones in on the idea and takes me places I never expected but am dreadfully desperate to approach. I hate watching from the sidelines and having others take me there, take me to those places where I know I can find without their guidance if only I can get beyond this concentration, this ADHD of adulthood, where every minor thought, every minor distraction takes me further away from the goal (if not the Goal). How is it consternations are so easy and writing is so hard?
Don’t answer that. I have always known the truth. The good thing about consternations—and this is something I point out too often—is that you can only do them for so long before even the poetic moments vanish and leave you (me) with the sour taste of repetition and boredom. My brain feels slower now, as if I’ve finally hit the pinnacle of what it can offer me, and everything from here and forward will go down the hill, until it reaches such speed as all I’m left with is the politics and motions of my job and the holdings of Julies, which, by itself, should be sufficient to make me happy for the days of my life.
Tomorrow is another day, a caffeine-filled day, and I hope to make the best of the beginning of my last week with the Julies in Seattle. I am not looking forward to her leaving. This has been a terribly short month. I keep telling her that she can’t leave, that she promised to stay for a year, and we are nowhere near the end of that year—especially since that year starts anew each day. I’m not going to think about it now or even this week. It’ll only serve to ruin what time we have left before she returns to her residency and I return to my lonely evenings and weekends.
That depressing thought pushed me over the Goal. I’m at 1,136 now. Tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow I will say something—assuming I don’t shake my head and find my marbles dropped out and hit the concrete with such a loud thud that the echoes will reverberate the entire day until I just want to drill a hole in my head to repeal the pain. With that happy thought, good night.
With a blank page and a dearth of caffeine slogging through my brains, I fear writing the first word. I write about the fear but it’s only to momentarily pass it before throwing the other fear, the fear of wasted words and ridiculous statements, the fear of not thinking and then not thinking about not thinking in an arranged recursive ballet of nothingness.
Tired raised its ugly hands from his droopy eyelids and roared onto the scene. He did. He barked and stumbled his way to the top of the gang only to find that things at the top aren’t much better than the bottom huddlers who heap on the glories of those who cut their way to the top. Triangular motions move across the white plain. Beasts and hunters walk the grounds and avoid the pointed parts as if passing over them might attract undo attention.
I stare into space and my eyes fail to focus, throwing up three images of reality that pass slightly over each other. It’s difficult to choose just one to study when all three share the space. My mind feels mushy like the plaid ice cream that nobody craved and some wished to return. But I don’t take returns, and the ice cream shop follows what I say and where I go and forget the bargaining or the righteous indignation on the part of those who feel wronged.
I stand at the counter of the movie theater’s concession, accepting that they will gouge me. Three people wait in front of me and I notice all the lines moving faster than mine. Go figure, I think, thinking of the traffic that I fought to get this far along. I hold onto Julie’s arm and she pats it, trying to calm me as she sees the fire roar behind my eyes, the anxiety building and looking for an outlet. We’re here, she says, and everything is okay. We have plenty of time, no need to worry. I roar silently and look away as a large popcorn with butter in the middle and on top, and, what’s this, he wants more butter, fine, she says, and puts more butter on. I hope he’s satisfied. That woman he’s with, she looks awfully young for him. I wonder if he paid for her, or she’s her daughter. What a terrible thing to say, Julie says, and I agree. He pays the money and I move closer to the counter to order, but the couple thinks of something else. Do they want candy? Will candy help them enjoy the movie more. It seems unlikely, I want to scream. They already ordered, and they had all the time from the time they placed the order through the time the serving lady, in her, I get paid whether you get your food now or in twenty minutes, put the food together, which involved much digging and pumping and filling, to make a decision about candy. They want candy now? I ask Julie, who again pats my arm and says we have plenty of time to make our movie, and there’s no rush, but it’s not the rush I’m thinking of but the principle of the rush, and the principle of them having so much time to think about the candy when the serving lady was serving and before they pay, and now they want candy and they already paid and where’s the fairness in that? I look away and I don’t even see what candy they chose, but even had I watched, I’m not sure I could have identified the candy because of the red haze that fills my vision. He hands over a five dollar bill and takes his candy and soda and popcorn with two layers and a few extra pumps of butter, which is just right, he tells the serving lady, after she pumped the additional layer of butter when he didn’t think the original two layers sufficient. The lady is holding the popcorn and the drink, and I wonder why he’s not helping. I step forward and square my shoulders and move toward the lady, hoping she bumps into me, but she turns at the last moment and avoids contact and I have to resist, really resist, as in holding myself back or stopping myself from the screaming or the grabbing or the throttling, from running into her and spilling her popcorn and drink and his candy all over the floor because they made me wait an additional three minutes during which time I could have been eating my hot dog and drinking my Sprite, but instead I spent the minutes gnawing on my knuckles and thinking of the terrible ways I’d like to see them suffer for making me wait so long. I almost forget what I’m going to order when I get to the counter, but looking behind me and seeing the next guy in line, I order, and Julie teases about some candy she might want after I pay, but I ignore her because the rage is only slowly tapering away, like the candle that has too much wick left and not enough wax. We get our food and find our seats and everything is fine again. Everything would have been finer, of course, if I hadn’t been stuck behind that guy with the three buttered layers of popcorn.
That feels good, the venting, the screaming. You have no idea how often those words run through my mind and how much the anxiety of things not moving, or things not moving in the ways that I foresee as better, which, it’s funny to admit, is not necessarily actually better but at times turns out to be quite a bit worse than a better way which, had I taken the time to listen to what other people might be telling me, I might have not had to worry about in the first place.
That was easier than I thought it was going to be. I should convey my feelings on the evilness of waiting and the anxiety of the three-layer butter man more often. Painful as it is to read, at least it’s to the Goal, and this week that’s all I’m attempting: meet the goal at all costs (or miss it and take the lacerations), and don’t worry about the consternations or the words or the storyness of it, as long as it words and it meets the number: 1,079 today, caffeine-free.
It has been difficult to divorce myself from work today. I stayed home because of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement and the holiest day of our year. It’s a fasting day, and except for a late start last night and water this morning, I’ve been honest to the day’s demands. (I usually don’t fast because of the threat of massive headaches, and this year I thought to try fasting with water, which by tradition is still considered improper—mother forgive me—but might be enough to let me last the day.)
It’s also a day of introspection. It has been difficult for me to focus my attention internally, however. My head is full of job worries, opportunities, and plans—change is pounding at my house, and, not for the first time, I’m excited to see it done. Ripping me away from work has been difficult. I know of at least one mail I want to respond to—I snuck a look while setting the phone’s alarm clock for Julie last night. This morning, I threw my phone into the nightstand drawer haven’t turned on any computer. The tiny voices that share my brain haven’t stopped chattering, though. They remind me that responding to the mail now instead of tonight would be better. When did I become such a workaholic, and when did I start enjoying this servitude?
As I spend creative energies at work, I seem to have less and less left to spend elsewhere, my supply feeling finite and fragile. Lately, even when I have had the energy and time to sit and scribble, I find my voice sapped of its wild energies and my focus and desire not cooperating. Similarly, when I have (clever) ideas, I can’t summon the necessary words to do justice to the imagery or thoughts. I’m pounding my head against a locked safe even though I know that somewhere in my skull—even before the rattling began—is the safe’s combination, and finding it would be a much better use of my gray matter.
I don’t know what the answer is. Sure, I’ve thought of tearing this place down, using it as a repository for my photographs and quick tidings, returning to the moist warm embrace of cable television, video games, and Distractions, taking back my free time and accepting the leisure—escaping from the consternations, disappointments, and the constant senses of failure that makes me want to holler in disgust. It won’t happen, of course, I was just saying.
In keeping with the spirit (if not the traditions) of Yom Kippur, I’m going on a walk now. This writing—also prohibited—is in my Moleskine, a prophylactic against the siren’s call of work.
The walk was difficult and tiresome. I managed to read a bit when I returned home to wait for Julie. After arriving home in the late afternoon, Julie twisted my arm (most painfully and irreverently, I should say), and forced me to break the fast well shy of dusk, when the holiday (and fast) officially ended. I don’t think I missed much as my introspection did not improve, and I couldn’t think of much except worrying about work.
Usually, I learn something on these days. Today, I’m happy to have survived and written a few words. This evening, Julie again convinced me to start working on our wedding website. I have to get past the terrible taste Chuck left in my mouth after I mentioned it to him. The website Julie and I designed is rather busy and the interface is strange and probably unnatural, but it’s going to be fun to code. Except for the minor tweaks of this site, I haven’t gotten my hands dirty coding in a while.
I hope to return tomorrow to another story. With November looming its ugly head, I need much more preparation before the first day—but today, I’m satisfied having written even this small amount.
I suck my coffee’s whipped cream and wait for the sugar and yummy caffeine to strike.
I haven’t written lately, instead concentrating on the workings of Julie’s new wedding website. I was going at a pretty good clip for a while, but now I find myself grinding down, a bit unhappy with the code (geek aside: I started with inline style information in the DHTML, thinking it would speed up the process—which it did—but I now find myself with a load of work needed to separate out the style information into the CSS file; lesson learned), with one large coding project and one photo-story left to complete. My goal is to get it out the door in time for the Marathon, which starts on November 1.
Otherwise, life is good. Julie and I had a wonderful month together. It goes without saying that it was too short, but we’re around eight months from forever territory, and we’ll find a way to suck up the last bits, especially with our holiday vacations, and Julie’s remaining away elective in April.
Work is good as well. Today, I joined a vanpool that leaves a few blocks from my house and drops me off at work. So far so good. If this works out then there would be one less reason to move from the Castle. I’m holding my breath. I still like the job and since I broke the one-year mark, I’ve become more comfortable with the company and the people.
My planning for November has gotten underway, and by that I mean I spent approximately three minutes thinking about it. I’m trying to decide between two different bad ideas that I’ve floated here and there (mostly as notes-to-self during other writings). It’s definitely going to be sci-fi related, and the only question is how outrageous I’m going to make it. I’m thinking very, in case you’re wondering. I’m hoping the vanpool gives me time to either think or write. Going by how much I’ve been writing lately (and how busy I’ve been with works at seemingly all hours), this might be a very, very long month.
Ah. I finished my coffee. I haven’t had yummy caffeine in a few days—the last two have been bad with the headaches and things, and I always find it wasteful to drink caffeine when I can’t take complete advantage of its boosts of energy. Hopefully the headaches are behind me. I had hopes of a P.H.D. today, but, alas, as is happening too frequently, it was only a slightly less painful day.
I have continued my running regime, dragging the Julies with me on a number of loops around the park, where she ranged, on the complaining scale, from an amazing 2 (where 10 is, get her away from me before I throttle her) to a disappointing 8. Once I get her here forever, I’ll see to it she settles into a 1 (and possible 3 during the more painful times of her month). My only concern is that she was showing bursts of speed and endurance that might if continued lead to her outrunning, pacing, or outright destroying me on the field. That is clearly unacceptable. I am already planning to compensate, trying to figure on a way to tie her shoelaces together without her knowing it to hobble her rabbit-like speed.
Anxiety rolls off me like a wet blanket wrapped around my waist. It makes everything about me heavier, more concentrated: my heart pushes the blood through my tightened bloodstream, my stomach wraps itself tightly in knots, my muscles are weak even though I barely exerted them in my unnecessarily brisk walk. This is caffeine-free anxiety, which makes me wonder what I’m doing to my body when anxiety hits after a shot of coffee. I made my flight, although my body doesn’t know it yet, still in the animal response, which I’m trying unsuccessfully to calm down.
The plane is old, older than any I’ve been on in a long time. I’m typing while people are still loading. This flight will probably not take off on time, but I’m not worrying much about that. I’m still struggling through my earlier bout caused by not being two hours early. I have a long flight in front of me, and I’m hoping it goes by fast. I tried to read, but the words seemed worthless, my anxiety replaying missing the flight and the terror and annoyance that creates. The replay is worse than the cause: even had I missed the flight, the worst that would have happened would be a later arrival in Seattle, perhaps more time to scribble these thoughts (assuming anxiety did not swallow my efforts). I don’t know what it is about travel or appointments, but I need to make them. I hate that feeling, that knowledge that there is a chance I won’t.
That’s enough of this. I’m done with this. It’s time for me to log off and start doing something better to pass the time, like poking holes in my arms with paperclips.
Since Julie is studying Judaism, I agreed to study Mandarin Chinese. I don’t have a good history with languages. My mother, born in Argentina, speaks fluent Spanish. (I’ve relayed these anecdotes before, but I enjoy reminding my mother of them often.) When we were young, my mother spoke Spanish to my grandmother in front of my sisters and me. She used Spanish similar to the way parents use spelling in front of young children, e.g., “we need to go to the T-O-Y S-T-O-R-E later.” While young children usually figure out the spelling before long, we didn’t learn much Spanish. It is said that the best time to learn language is when you’re young and your brain is very mushy and malleable. I always tease my mother about not teaching us Spanish, vowing that (if and) when I have children, she will not be allowed to speak to them in English (that last part isn’t part of the teasing—our kids, if and when we have them, will be at least tri-lingual (English, Chinese, Spanish, and maybe Hebrew), to make up for all my language problems).
I spent six years in junior high school and high school studying Spanish. I like to tell people that I ended up learning one Spanish word for each year of study. While that is an exaggeration (albeit, a small one), I was not a good student. Learning language when you’re older requires study, and since I didn’t know how or want to study as a child (I got by on my dashing good looks), I was a terrible language student. This was also the reason I didn’t do well on the SAT. English, like Spanish, requires study. Thankfully, during college and especially graduate school, I learned to enjoy studying, and shortly after, writing.
I remember the first time I realized that there was an art and study to language. I was a junior or senior at Binghamton University and enrolled in a high-level philosophy course with Professor Weiss. He was a short man with amazingly short arms (you always remember the important details). While I majored in philosophy and received good grades, because of my distaste for studying, I was never a standout philosophy student. Professor Weiss required us to hand in papers on each week’s reading and on larger concepts (unlike high school, I was very good about turning in assignments in college—my first step toward becoming a better studier). Besides grading us on our philosophical understanding, he also marked up the writing for grammar and style. I’m sure other teachers and professor had done this before, but seeing those markups on the papers and asking questions after class (something I almost never did, except to argue for grades—yes, I was disgusting) about the markups (now that I think on it, I probably asked those questions because I was arguing for a grade), I caught my first glimpse into the structure of writing. Writing is very similar to computer programming: while very structured with many rules, you don’t just apply the rules. There is style and a great many best ways to accomplish anything. Additionally (and this is my favorite part of both writing and programming), there’s a “test” at the end, where you know rather quickly if the program works or the writing makes sense (or is moving or a good story or interesting writing). While checking your answers for programming is easier than checking for writing, the concept is the same.
As an embarrassing aside, I asked Professor Weiss to advise me on an honors philosophy paper when I was a senior. I don’t know if I ever intended to write that paper, but a few months into the semester—more exactly, after he wrote me a recommendation for graduate school—I dropped the honors class and never spoke to him again.
These initial English lessons followed me to graduate school, where I delved headfirst into the study of English, finding books (first Wright Right (I couldn’t find the right book in Amazon), and then Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style) and beginning my now decade-long love with the mechanics of writing. (The storytelling is an entirely different barrel of pandas.)
That brings me to what I wanted to write about today (finally), my beginning lessons on Chinese using The Rosetta Stone’s introductory (read: free) lessons. The lessons were not what I expected. They are taught with multiple choice questions, using a combination of listening, reading (either traditional or transliterated—I know there’s a more official term for that), watching (photos or videos), and speaking (using the microphone) for each segment. You receive a rewarding ding and smiley face or checkmark for each correct question, and level up (i.e., move on to the next segment) when you feel you’ve learned enough.
I did have more to say about this process, but Julie is prodding me for breakfast and movie (and, besides, as usual, I’ve lost the energy to continue—I’m pathetic). I’m flying back to Seattle late tonight, so we have the entire day to go about town, a town, by the way, which is deluged with rain, raising the interesting question of why I even bothered to leave Seattle.
My chair arrived this evening, and the PWA (Perfect Work Area) is now complete. I brewed a fresh mocha (yeah, I know it’s late, and I know I’m going to pay for the yummy caffeine when I try to sleep tonight, but with the chair arriving, I needed the full experience), and I’m reclined in my study, feet over the ottoman, coffee waiting patiently on the wooden coffee table, wondering (me, not the table) what I should write in the PWA, which was all purchased by the PJ for my birthday and Chanukah (which the PJ didn’t combine into one gift as the Moms did quite often when I was young—the bane of any child who’s birthday is near the season of giving).
I did decide on an essay, which I’m sure I’m typing away (after I post this and convert the photos and return to the PWA and somehow resist calling it a night). Speaking of photos, this is what it looks like from where I am now (hopefully):
The Throne:
The View From the Throne:
The caffeination is coming in hard and strong after I licked the residual grains from the bottom of my Americano. I’ve been busy lately and have not had much time to write. Even now, as I write, I’m fighting through the aftereffects of uselessness. Writing (like most things in life except video games and television and the Julies) works best as a habit. Once I break the habit, it’s difficult to get started again. This is true in almost all pleasurable but challenging aspects of my life: gym, park jogging, morning exercises, moleskining.
Earlier in the day, as I was washing my hands and exchanging a “how’s it doing?” with a coworker, I yanked out my 30/100 stock answer, “super great and getting better, you?” As I responded without thinking, I began wondering how my brain molded and stored these stock responses. I imagined a large mostly empty warehouse, which smelled of dust motes and wood chips, with piles of boxes with fading labels scattered about. Most piles consisted of only one or two boxes, but a few, such as the “how’s it doing?” stack, had many more.
I added my SGGBY (pronounced “Scooby” like the dog) box when I was working in D.C. at my first job out of college. I’ve relayed this stock story before (it wouldn’t be stock if I only said it once), but here it is again: since I never had a real job growing up, when I entered the work world, I fell into a depression. As most non-medical depressions are, mine was my own fault: partly I didn’t work hard to find a good job (i.e., I didn’t work hard during the job hunt, I actually worked relatively (for me) hard at school), but mostly I couldn’t wrap my brain around what it meant to work. Here’s an excerpt from a letter I wrote during that time:
I think it's becoming more than sad lately. I sit around and just think about what life can possibly hold for me, and I come up very empty. Don't worry, I'm not contemplating suicide (it's extremely awkward to slice off one's own head.) But, [sic] I do sense that something is missing within me. The problem of course is in finding what that grander purpose which [sic] I'm missing is. And the fact that I haven't had a deep philosophical discussion in a number of weeks is becoming quite a drag as well. Sigh. (Letter to Chuck, 11/13/1995.)
At my first real job, we sat in cubicles with low walls. Dawn sat across from me. Because of my mild depression, I was a bit of a sourpuss (I know, it’s hard to believe), especially in the mornings. Dawn was an optimistic morning person, and she grew sick of hearing me complain. She suggested I answer “super great” to her queries each morning (she at first tried to explain that I should treat the “how’s it doing?” question like a greeting and not actually answer it, but realized quickly that I would never be able to understand that social subtlety), and over time I added the “and getting better.” It became a morning ritual, which I have found is a good way to add boxes to the stock-answers warehouse.
I didn’t know it at the time, but there was another advantage to the SGGBY response. The SGGBY response (I do like that acronym) became part of my Smile Therapy. I first heard about Smile Therapy on “Ally McBeal,” the idea being that if you pretend you’re happy and positive, you may end up tricking yourself into being happy and positive. One of the lawyers on the show—the talented one with severe phobias and social issues—learned the Smile Therapy from his therapist, practicing smiling in the bathroom each afternoon. While it didn’t seem to do much for him (or me), I still keep hoping, and that box gets plenty of use, especially during my more merry moods.
Getting back to the bathroom, I provided my SGGBY response and dried my hands and walked out. My coworker was a step behind and called out before I turned down the hall.
“What you writing in that Moleskine?” He pointed at the book peeking out of the back pocket of my jeans.
I went through my stock story about being an aspiring writer and needing a place to keep notes that was both trendy and practical, etc. He surprised me by explaining that he wrote poetry, having taught English and writing for many years after receiving his MFA (Master’s of Fine Arts). He eventually fell into technology and started a family, and while he still read, he didn’t write much anymore. Besides a lack of time, he found it difficult to transition his brain from technology work to creative work.
This is where I normally take everything I wrote and tie it together in a pithy conclusion. The funny thing about relying on easily conveyable stock answers and stories is that it becomes difficult to reach beyond and say something original. That’s where I find myself, with nothing coming to me, although I know there should be an easy way to tie together the themes. It’s sad to think that usually my strength is the conclusion.
Because I’m not good at these essay things—I tend to get distracted, and after a hard night of writing, I find it impossible to continue where I left off, leaving me with a quarter-written essay, which I can touch and retouch but can never actually finish or conclude or somehow turn into something that people will want to read to discover what it says—I’ve decided to take the poor man’s route and turn this exercise into a transcription of a conversation on Judaism and conversion I had with my sister Randy yesterday (as in the day before I started writing this essay—who knows when and if I’ll finish it). There are problems with transcriptions (and, yes, I am adding these asides and throat clearing explanations for good and fine reasons, and, no, they aren’t because I don’t want to actually start writing and I figured it would be easier to explain the methodology rather than apply it; but good thinking, nonetheless), and in particular me transcribing, viz., I don’t have much in the way of a memory. Most of what I remember usually happened over the last five minutes. With that said, I’ll admit right up front, much of the remembering will be fictionalized by me—being the writer and, in case you’ve forgotten, an arrogant S.O.B. (no offense, mom)—as the hero in each and every scene.
Speaking of scenes, it’s raining outside (I’m in the recollection portion now—the rain miraculously wasn’t falling when I initially typed this, but, through the miracles of Seattle weather (and multi-day writing), is now falling, as it has been over the last 27 days, only five days short of some type of unholy Weather Record in these parts), a light mist in an otherwise warm day, and I’m walking in the dark after a not terribly busy day at work. I take a vanpool across the lake each morning and evening, and walk about fifteen minutes between the Castle and the vanpool drop off. As usual, after I leave the van, I dial the Julies. I’ve long since grown bored of the scenery, and since few people walk in Seattle—not counting the joggers, who are only interesting when I have to dodge a pack of them, but counting the dog walkers, whose strange habits and careful picking up of their dog’s poop intrigues me in a disturbing-to-admit way—there’s not much to look at but non-Castley houses, dark lawns, and lots of cars, most filled with people at the end of their dark and wet night commutes.
This is my first day back to work after the New Years’ vacation, and I’m chatting with the Julies when my call waiting clicks. The number is Private, and after mumbling a goodbye, I switch over. It’s my sister Randy. She asks if I have time to chat, and I explain that since I’m walking home from the van, I have nothing but time.
“I read the essay Julie wrote for the Rabbi,” Randy says. Both Julie and I wrote an essay as part of the first assignment in our Jewish conversion class. I was born Jewish, and by Jewish laws and customs, I don’t need to convert. Even a non-practicing person born of a Jewish mother (let’s say Jewish by genetics for now, I will explain the distinction between a converted and born Jew later) is considered Jewish, even if they (the person or their mother or their mother’s mother) practice or believe in Catholicism or Voodoo or Witchcraft or atheism. Judaism is not something you do or believe, it’s something you’re born into. (Randy once dragged me to a rabbi she was studying with. She introduced me as the brother who asked many questions and believed in little. Unlike other religions, Judaism thrives on questioning, although, to be fair (to me), most of the questioning revolves around explanations of the Jewish laws, e.g., “rabbi, why do we not eat the fat of the pig, which, when cut in thin slices and wrapped around a piece of fish, makes even dry and flaky fish delicious?” The very first question the rabbi asked me (before I could get into the bacon-wrapped fish query) was, “Do you have to believe in God to be Jewish?” I thought for a moment before answering simply, “No.” The rabbi looked at my sister and said, “I thought you said he was contentious?”) Julie was not born Jewish, and therefore needs to convert to pass on Jewish-ness to our children, something that is very important to my family, and, surprising even myself, important to me.
Returning to the phone call, Randy continues, “and I wanted to talk about the last paragraph, the one where Julie pointed out that Orthodox Judaism was sexist.” In case you didn’t get a chance to read the essays, the last question the rabbi asked us related to which type of Judaism we wanted to practice. Before continuing (okay, starting, really) on the conversation with my sister, I need to fill you in on the difference between Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Judaism.
The first thing the uninitiated needs to understand is that unlike some religions (say, Catholicism), Judaism does not have a central authority, there is no pope, no ultimate, all-powerful rabbi or committee who makes decisions for the religion. There was a time before the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem (we Jews are nothing if not systematically oppressed—I have my theories about that as well, but I’ll save that for another essay) where there was such a body. With that said, there are committees of rabbis who do opine on certain matters, and their opinions, while not exactly law, are followed by their communities. These Rabbinical Assemblies (I’m guessing on the name here) are further broken down into three major sects. There may be one or two others, but I’ve decided to talk about the Big Three because growing up these were the only ones I knew about.
You can think of Judaism as a spectrum, across which there are varying degrees of observance and belief in the laws of our ancestors. The strictest reading of these laws is, not surprisingly, the Orthodox Jews. They believe that God handed the Torah to Moses, and their Rabbinical Assemblies are very strict with the interpretation of these laws as they relate to the modern world. For example, an Orthodox Jew will not drive on the Shabbot or eat non-Kosher food (e.g., the bacon-wrapped fish). Orthodox Jews refer to themselves as Observant Jews, in that there is no real difference between an Orthodox Jew and a Conservative Jew—if you’re born Jewish, you are a Jew. Period. There are only different levels of observing the Jewish laws.
The middle ground for Judaism is the Conservative Jews. I was raised Conservative and because of that have the firmest understanding of their practice. Like the Orthodox Jews, the Conservative Jews believe in the laws of Moses, but they also believe that some of the laws need to be reinterpreted because society has changed an awful lot since the time of Moses. For example, while Orthodox laws would never allow a woman rabbi to lead prayers, most Conservatives (with the congregation where I grew up an exception), allowed woman Rabbis, and provided woman with the same opportunities as men in prayer. With that said, I find that Conservative Jews tend to be less observant in other more meaningful ways. A good way to judge observance is to see when people attend services (group prayer) at temple. By way of example, when Julie and I visited a Conservative temple in the OC, during Kiddush (food plays a big role in all Jewish activities, and the Kiddush follows the Saturday morning service with cake and wine), we sat at a table munching away on our food with another couple. The other couple pointed out—and this seemed almost defensive in nature, almost as if they needed to get this out before we could have a conversation with them—that they did not normally attend Shabbot services, but because their son was being Bar Mitzvah’ed (i.e., celebrating his 13th birthday and, by Jewish law, his becoming a man—which, incidentally, goes completely against my monster theory, that states that children stay children until they turn 26) the following weekend, they decided to attend. For prayer and observance, most Conservative Jews attend services during the high holy days (three days every year) and for life events.
And, finally, there is Reform. I know the least about the Reform movement because I was never exposed to it. From what I do understand, Reform Jews pick and chose the laws that suit them, a smorgasbord, if you will, of rules for the choosing. With that out of the way, we return to my phone conversation.
Ah, I mentally rub my hands, Randy wants to have a religious discussion. “Before we get started,” I start in, “Julie’s comment was based mostly on my descriptions of some of the Orthodox laws related to woman, and how they seem awfully old-fashion and—and I think I used this word exactly to describe it—sexist.” Although true, I did this to deflect the blame away from the Julies. Julie has been incredibly good about the conversion process. She has been doing lots of reading (while Julie is a good student, she isn’t always the best reader, e.g., see how few of these paragraphs (outside of the sentences with her name in it) she reads—which, when I think about it, probably has more to do with what I’m writing and how I’m writing it than her desire or enjoyment), reaching out to rabbis and attending Shabbot dinners and Orthodox and Conservative services, in other words, she’s being more Jewish (regrettably, only in the “observant” way and not in the being Jewish way—if only it were that easy) than me.
“Some of the Jewish laws relating to women are quite beautiful,” Randy says. By this time I’m walking down the hill that leads to Wilson avenue. This is a tricky hill as the ground is wet and it is steep enough for a construction sign warning “Snow Route Do Not Enter” to be leaned against the Stop Sign, ready to be deployed in the rare Snow Event in Seattle. There is also some over-brush, which I have to duck and maneuver my head around, which is difficult because a rain hood obscures my vision and the brush blocks the light so I end up running into low-hanging branches, some of which have dangerous curved spikes.
“Beautiful but sexist,” I say. “Just look at the laws involving covering the body, or the that-time-of-the-month laws, or the keeping house laws, or the not going to temple laws, or the separation of men and woman at temple laws, or the having children, lots and lots of children, laws. Where do you want to start with defending these laws and showing how they’re not sexist?” Just so we’re on the same page, I’ve studied Judaism, but I am in no way an expert or even someone who is terribly knowledgeable about it. I can’t quote the Mishnah or the Talmud, or tell you who begot Rachel (the biblical Rachel, not my beautiful niece, of whose parentage I’m fairly certain), or whether removing the stopper of an ancient water jug would be considered work prohibited on the Shabbot, the day of rest. There are many things I don’t know, so take everything I say (and the words I put into Randy and my mouth) with a large chunk of good old NaCl.
“Where do you want to start?” Randy asks. She doesn’t give me an opportunity to answer. “The laws are beautiful when you understand them. Do you know why Orthodox men are not allowed to touch women?” This was one of the laws that Julie learned when she met a Chabad rabbi during a Jewish class in the OC. Before the class, her friend—a Jewish coworker who has been helping Julie experience the California version of Judaism—warned her that the rabbi would not shake the hand of any woman at the class. When Julie asked me why, I explained:
“Cooties.”
“Close, but not exactly,” Randy says. “Orthodox men do not touch woman other than their wives out of respect for those other women.”
“Respect in that the other women are protected from the groping hands of the lecherous Orthodox men? Do you see how the Jewish religion has no respect for women? It thinks that if an Orthodox man touched another women, he would—or is it she would?—be unable to resist her charms, analogous to how rape is the ‘woman’s fault.’”
“Let me finish before you judge,” Randy says, warming up to the debate. “For two weeks of each month, a married woman may not be intimate with her husband.”
“Ah, this one I know is about the cooties and how unclean the woman is during her cycle.”
“No, again, you’re not seeing the beauty. It’s not about being unclean, it’s about desire and the increasing of the sexual desire of the married couple.”
The hill is steep and I end up walking much faster than I realize until at the bottom the sidewalk widens into a semicircle, which provides a runway to work off the extra speed and complete the turn. Wilson avenue is busier, and after turning, I switch the phone to protect it from the cars zooming by.
“When you don’t see Julie for a few weeks, how do you feel when you see her again?”
I don’t answer because it’s a trap. I see where she’s heading, and it’s nowhere good. She wants me to admit that desire is increased by absence, and, hence the Jewish law makes sense, and everything is right with the world. In situations like this, I find it’s better not to answer, to change the subject or, in this case, to pretend bad cell phone coverage.
“You feel more . . . attracted to her, don’t you?” Randy prompts me. “It’s the same way with the Jewish two-week period. By not touching each other for two weeks, the couple enjoys heightened desire for each other. You’re probably now going to ask what this has to do with a man not touching another woman.”
“You seem to be doing great without me.”
“During the two-week period, the woman is not allowed to touch any man. Another beautiful aspect of this law is privacy. It is considered rude for someone outside of the marriage to inquire about the woman’s time of the month. Because a man doesn’t know, and can’t ask, when a woman is in her two-week cycle, he assumes that she always is, and therefore never touches any woman but his wife, to protect the other woman from having to either disclose the timing of her cycle, or to disobey the Jewish law.”
“Before you go any further,” I say, “take a step back and realize who is making these laws. While they may appear beautiful to you—and for now I won’t argue their intrinsic beauty—understand that this was not a cabal of Jewish woman sitting around deciding what was best for woman. Instead, this law—as well as all Jewish law—was written by men, interpreted by men, and enforced by men, men, I should add, who were mostly older and had a thing for long scraggily beards. I’m not one to judge a person by his facial hair, but there you have it.
“What happened to it being God’s law?”
“Don’t get me started on this line, or we’ll never move beyond this. Suffice to say—and this is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg—there were many authors of the Torah, the five books of Moses. To think that Moses would transcribe the words of God, and then use different voices, tenses, tones, and, more particularly, styles in a single work boggles my mind. So many wasted opportunities for proving or at least supplying additional evidence, even outside of faith, for the honesty and authorship of the Jewish works. Let’s stay in the realm of provable and good, as in these laws are good for a good reason, and not because God said they were good. With that said, I imagine a cranky group of old men dressed in black sitting in a small room and deciding what is best for woman. Even if we assume that God wrote the Torah, it has been interpreted by rabbis, and by rabbis, I’m again speaking of male rabbis. Why weren’t woman involved in this?”
“Women are inherently closer to God,” Randy says, “and don’t necessarily need the study and prayer that men do to understand God.”
“Hogwash. That is a man’s excuse for excluding woman from important religious decisions, and keeping the woman barefoot and pregnant. But let’s move on. Let’s continue with the inherent goodness of these laws. What about the modesty laws? Why must Orthodox Jewish woman cover themselves from their heads to their toes?”
“They don’t cover themselves from head to toe. Their face shows.”
“We’ll get back to that after you set the groundwork,” I say, enjoying setting her up to be knocked down later.
“Fine. Woman cover their body out of modesty, and—and the idea here is similar to the prohibition on sexual relations during the two-week cycle—this rule again increases the sexual desire of the couple. Everything that you keep hidden makes it that much more exciting and special when it’s finally revealed. When you see bathing suit-clad woman, are you even attracted to them anymore? There’s nothing hidden.”
“I can assure you I am.”
“Anyway, the hiding is what makes it appealing. Think how much more appealing a woman is when you don’t see flesh all day every day.”
Walking down Wilson avenue,
Walking on the street. Crossing the next hilly road.
Sending Julie a book.
Crossing the road that leads up to the driveway.
Getting to the Castle, checking the mail, turning off the alarm.
I consider myself rather eloquent when I work myself into a lather. Passion brings it out in me, the lather, that is. I can talk hours about something I’m passionate about, continuing to speak long after my overly developed conscience would normally have stopped me (one of my notable features is that I am very empathetic of what other people are thinking when I speak—i.e., I’m always watching the listeners for some sign of either boredom or contempt. This consideration usually takes the form of imagining me in the listener’s place and considering what I would be thinking if I were they. I know this is terribly inaccurate since I have a much lower threshold for pain (of the ennui-type) than most normal, well-adjusted people, but I cannot bring myself to end this practice, similar to how I still cannot watch the climax of most situational comedies, imagining me in the place of the confused stooge who is about to realize that he has completely misunderstood the situation, think Jack in any episode of “Three’s Company”). And the Jewish conversion process has me up in arms now. I thought I’d write a short essay to share some of my early understandings of it, explain the ins and outs of some of its particulars, and, in general, to peel things from my chest.
Journey every day. Something you see and deal with and have to like a habit get used to. Like my daily walks to and from the van. It’s a habit, and that’s what Orthodox Judaism demands of its converts. Conservative demands love, and love is an awfully important part. But Orthodox takes it the next step. They want you to follow the mitzvots, the Jewish laws, and the way you follow the laws is to do them every day. You don’t teach children to cross the street by explaining the concept of Safe Street crossing. Instead, every time you cross the street with them, you grab their hand, look both ways, and show them how it’s done, until they start emulating and eventually crossing the street as you do. It’s the same with Orthodox beliefs.
Little old man in the airport. What type of monster am I?
I mentioned how much of an insensitive clod I am before, but here’s another example. I hid this away for many weeks, but the guilt became too great for me to keep it a secret.
I arrive at the airport over two hours before my flight to California to visit the Julies. There was a time before when I arrived at the airport at the last possible minute, sprinting to the gate moments before they closed the doors. I can’t seem to do that anymore. I somehow acquired a quite retched anxiety problem, probably something to do with too much caffeine and not enough sleep.[1]
I stop at the computer kiosks outside of the ticket terminal to print out my boarding pass for the flight. I think how much it’s going to suck when Normals figure out how to use the kiosks to change their airplane seats. As it is now, there is usually space to move my seat to the front of the plane (the front is always better, since you receive service first, and leave the airplane faster after landing) using the difficult-to-use up arrow to scroll through the airplane’s seating map. After printing the boarding pass for seat 7F, I head toward the escalators leading to the gates.
An old man stops me. He wears a fedora and an old-fashioned gray suit, and carries a small black carryon bag in his left hand. Gray stubble covers his cheeks and chin. “Excuse me,” he says. “Do you by any chance happen to have a pen I can borrow?”
Regular readers know that I most certainly do have a pen. I carry my Moleskine and a pen[2] with me everywhere I go to provide the illusion of writerhood. After thinking for a moment, I shrug and apologize, informing the old man that, actually, I do not have a pen.[3] After brushing off the old man, I make haste to the escalator to ensure that I get to the gate at least an hour and a half before they board, the only sure way to avoid any anxiety-based issues.
It doesn’t take me long to question why I lied to the old man. He didn’t seem the thieving type, and, given how much time I had to spare, I was not in that much of a hurry. Clearly, I have some serious issues when it comes to helping people. I trace most of those issues to growing up and living in NYC. There has been much written about how impersonal the city is. There are good reasons for this. NYC is very small and many people live there. If you don’t create space for yourself, the city quickly swallows you. What this means practically is that you divide the world into two parts: those people you know and those people you don’t. The people you know, you are polite and kind to. The people you don’t know, you ignore.[4] There’s an entire world out there of people who are kind and helpful to strangers, i.e., people they don’t even know!
So, this experience with the old man got me thinking: Do I really want to be the type of person who lies to an old man about a pen? I haven’t hit upon an answer to that question, but by calling myself an “insensitive clod,” I am moving in a certain direction.
[1] As an embarrassing example of this, the Julies and I visited Dallas over the Christmas weekend. At the end of the weekend, Julie drove us back to the airport, with her middle sister and grandmother in the car. She had driven her parents to the airport that morning, and she said it had only taken her fifteen minutes. We left about an hour before our flights, and there was an unexpected traffic jam. As we sat waiting for the cars in front of us to move, I glared at the Julies, continuously pointing out how if we had left earlier and left ourselves more time, I wouldn’t be sitting in the back seat, anxiously staring at the clock and the traffic and back at the clock, slowly growing insane with worry, my mind endlessly spinning on fantasies of missing my flight and being stuck in Dallas overnight (I’ve found from experience that the fantasies of missed flights are always worse than the reality—but this wasn’t a rational fantasy). I was quite rude in front of the Julies’ sister and grandmother, and when we arrived, I didn’t give her a goodbye kiss, instead choosing to run through the terminal. I made it in plenty of time (even having fifteen minutes to grab food), but, thanks to my anxiety, I was a monster during the ride. The Julies brought up NEQID often after that, and I’ve since added controlling my anxiety it to my list of things that’ll make David better.
[2] The Julies provides me with ample free medical-sample pens to choose from. Finding the perfect pen is a more difficult process than it sounds. There are two major considerations in reviewing pen freebies: First, there is the writing quality of the pen. I prefer thin blue-ballpoint pens, and am very careful to avoid ballpoint pens that spot after continued use. Second, there is the size of the pen. Since I carry the pen in my pocket almost all the time, it has to be thin and short, with a good-size clip that keeps most of the pen inside my pocket.
In my pocket at the airport I carry a blue-ballpoint pen with a NuvaRing® advertisement. The scientific parenthetical provides the pharmaceutical description: “etonogestrel/ethinyl estradiol vaginal ring.” The website referenced on the pen (www.nuvaring.com) confirms my suspicion: NuvaRing, a female contraceptive, two inches in diameter, remains in the vaginal wall for three weeks and releases a low dose of hormones that prevent pregnancy. This has me thinking that maybe I should include a third step in the pen-selection process: reading the advertisement to ensure it’s not too disgusting or weird to carry it in my pocket.
[3] At the time, I did not wonder if he saw the pen sticking out of my pants pocket. I do wonder now, as my pen, depending on my choice of pants, sometimes peeks further out of my pants pocket, especially after sitting, which I had been doing while driving to the airport.
[4] When I arrived at college, one of the biggest surprises was how rude my friends thought I was. Their biggest example was that I would not hold the door open for the person behind me. If the door was closing, I either slithered through the opening or pushed it open only wide enough to fit. I never bothered to hold it open for the next person to get through. I had learned this growing up, and I had never questioned it until I was in college.
I can’t sleep, the lags of jets catch up to me after many days of hiding and playing sick and sleeping with cough syrup. Tonight, after an hour’s rest, I wake rested but restless, phlegm growing like pulled cotton balls in my throat. I lay awake and wander the stairs, looking for the exit to this forever night. I grab my pad and scribble away. Words have avoided me lately and I have not want for effort to track them down. It seems such a pitiful thing, these words, wasting away as leaves at autumn’s end.
I read books with driving plots and riveting stories and wonder where my rivets and drivers wait. I miss the golden words that plead to be shaped, only beautiful when scribbled and three days out.
As I dredge through my half-slept state, my clock winds and my eyes lose focus, the words first doubling and then tripling until my stomach rumbles and my mind tumbles and I crawl back toward my dreams of sleep.
I’m sick. I lost my voice yesterday and found parts of it scattered about today. Julie thinks I sound like a Munchkin, which I find difficult to believe. Why do woman’s voices become sexier when sick but men turn into creatures from Oz?
Following my evening dosing of Nyquil, I’ve gone to bed at around eight for the past four nights. This leaves me about an hour and a half to watch a couple episodes of Buffy (yes, I’m re-addicted to the show, working my way through the sixth season, which has some amazing episodes and some downright terrible ones; the subject matter is darker, but I find myself fast forwarding through the bad episodes—I don’t think I’ve done that for any of the other seasons), eat dinner, chat (or squeak, in yesterday’s case) to the Julies before finding the beautiful drug-addled sleep. I have not kept up with my Chinese lessons, my writing (obviously), keeping the Castle clean, or my plans to run around the park to get back into that shape thing.
I reach out for contact of the un-human variety. My mind twirls on the edge of depression daring me to call it delicious and dance barefoot in its grassy fields. It makes me want to smile but I tilt my head and look askance wondering what if anything is left and why I can’t find it. Judge everyone and jump through their skin; raise your eyes to their eyelevel and let it say something about them. Or is it you you’re supposed to be saying something about.
Have you noticed how most problems look bigger when you’re close to them? I mean, when you take a step back and really look at the problems, examine them from the proverbial 10k feet, the problems shrinks like the farmland as seen during takeoff, until there’s not many problems left. Everything finds its time and, in the end, its course. Now, some problems grow with the distance, and when I say grow, I mean exponentially, huge increases with modest distance gains. It’s these problems that have eyes, these problems that see what you’re doing—the stepping back—and take that into account and manage to warp space around you by piling other problems on top of the original, narrowly described problems, until you’re so overloaded that the tiniest straw, well, you know where I’m going with this. You have to be wary about the problems with eyes. They’re always watching and waiting. It’s no good stepping back or holding forth. You have to dive into the details and chop the heads off the details. Sure, you’ll end up surrounded by mounds of decapitated heads, but you’ll blind the eyes, and blind eyes can’t see what you’re doing with all that stepping.
Far is where I’m heading on the lonely roads of nowhere. Why do the chairs bark and the lights blink? It is early and I throw down thoughts on the page because that’s what thoughts do: throw down and move in certain directions even if that direction lacks a destination. I reach for the release valve and yank. I don’t care what oozes forth.
I rise above it all and hope to see something to fruition. The fruits don’t bloom and I worry that nothing will remain. I revel in my historical facts and can’t find where the new historical future begins. I work and worry and rise above what is not there.
It feels good to write again. Actually, I formed the last sentence before I sat down and typed it, which probably means I should have said, it feels good to think about writing again. It seems I can never escape the fact that I enjoy the final product of my writing much more than the process.
Today, although I have nothing much to write about, I did need to write something. And not because I’m feeling guilty about not having written—my output from this weekend soothed any such thoughts—and not because I haven’t posted in a while—my doodles, while technical not writings, do show up as new content (by the way, I don’t always post my doodles to the front page; there are lots more in the doodles page that either I didn’t think worthy of a front page posting, or would make the front page too doodle heavy)—but more because I’m in a great mood now, and I don’t want to waste that mood. I woke up with another terrible headache, and it took most of the day and a gym visitation for me to find this stride, and now that I’m skipping along, I don’t want to waste the movement. Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention, I’m back on the gym track. I hired yet another personal trainer (realizing that I am useless without external motivation, at least for gym goings), and today was my fourth session. I’m bigger and stronger, so strong that if I flexed, I’d poke out the Julies’s eyes—at least, that’s what I keep warning her.
The following writing isn’t much of a story, but it is writing, in a sick and sadistic and mildly entertaining way. It doesn’t go anywhere and there’s not much of a point to it. It’s just based on what I was seeing around me when I started writing. I guess I’m putting excuses down because I don’t know what else to say about it.
Yesterday, I bought a tall Americano, sat down with my computer, stared at a blank screen for about twenty minutes, and then decided to throw away the coffee without drinking it or writing a word. What does this say about me?
Brief update on my pong story: Chuck delivered his serve earlier in the week, and after an initial burst of 888 words, I’ve put it aside for a few days to think it through. I have decent ideas, but I don’t have a prognosis. I am enjoying this story, which is a much better serve than what I sent over to Chuck.
I’ve been silent for too long. Silence breeds silence. This weekend, I sat around and pretended to think and write (and draw), but mostly I passed the time with video games and DVDs. I hit the breaking point yesterday, when I spent the better half of the day watching an entire season of South Park and playing Battlefield 2 on my Xbox 360. I was a captive to the video game. I sat at the console, playing each round and silently (and then not so silently) cursing myself, trying to convince myself to turn off the damn machine and get outside before the beautiful day escaped. As each round ended, like a zombie to its master, I would hit the start button and enter the next round, my mind screaming but my body refusing to obey its frustrated calls, even after it was perfectly clear that any tidbits of fun had long since worn away.
I did manage to escape the Castle (barely) late yesterday afternoon, after a well-timed network error pushed me off the couch. I left the house to wondrous weather, the sun blindingly bright, and I wandered around Seward Park, making it halfway through the loop before the dark cold rainclouds moved in, bringing a cold breeze that slit open my Spring jacket. I hoofed it back to the Castle, stopping briefly in the supermarket to buy groceries for dinner, before the rain fell.
My wasted day did have painful consequences. I watched so much television and played so many video games that by nighttime my muddled brain felt like it was moving a million miles a minute and getting nowhere fast. I slept poorly and woke no better, my brain still racing around its meaningless track. Only a well-timed morning ibuprofen pill saved me from what would have been miserable day.
I’m sitting and sucking on my bitter pacifier, waiting for its effects to take hold. I keep jabbing away, hoping to find something. Lately, I’ve been writing too little while I wait for perfection. My sentences feel affected, short, personality-less, faux poetic. I reach for brevity and find haughtiness.
The first day is always difficult. I’m puttering out here. I should get to the story or write more bullshit.
This seemed more profound when I wrote it over the weekend. But since I did waste ink, I figured the least I could do is post it.
Julie to me: “it’s strange that you’re sitting next to me. I usually think of you just as a voice in my ear.” (Referring to our nightly telephone conversations.)
While I wait for my food, I figure I’d jot down some words, useless all of them, but you knew that without me saying so. I’m sitting outside of Banana Bread, with a mug of coffee, and enough reading to take me through tomorrow. Of course, I don’t have until then. Julie is emptying her fish tank for one of her colleagues to haul away. She will arrive in Seattle on Friday and stay throughout May, return to California for a brief few weeks, and then move to Seattle permanently at the end of June. It’s all very scary but also very wonderful.
The more I read nonfiction texts, the more I see the words as a dialogue between the author and me. I imagine the author (even the dead ones) waiting for my underlines and scribbles in the margins. The author responds to my questions and I hear him arguing with my placement of the underline: “no, that’s not the important part—read it again.” The author wants me to interrupt him, to find out what he means by his writing, how it fits in with his earlier statements.
It’s not the books I’m reading that have changed but my reading style. In school, I read to find what the professor wanted me to know in the shortest possible time (I was and still am, more to my chagrin now, a minimalist: minimum energy expenditure for maximum result—the trick is deciding on what “maximum” means for each situation). Now, reading is more of a source of discovery, partly what the author wants to tell me, and partly what I want to learn buried within the author’s thoughts. Maybe Plato named his writings “dialogues” not only because they were conversations between Socrates and his foil, but also because he thought of his writing as conversations between his readers and him.
I’m back from moving Julie’s fish tank. All that’s left is a deep impression in her rug. Banana Bread is more crowded, and I had to fight for a table. I won, if you’re wondering.
I am reading two distinct and very dissimilar books on spirituality (or, in the case of one book, anti-spirituality). I haven’t recorded this quest, even though I have occasionally eluded to it in my writing. It’s a strange journey and my mind refuses to reconcile the different truths, wish-washing from side to side depending on whose words I’m hearing.
My original approach was to take the disparate thoughts and think deeply on them, synthesize a world view before putting pen to paper. Knowing how I work, I should have realized long ago the pipe-shape of this dream. I think best on paper—this is where I synthesize and bring together my thoughts. There is never a second opportunity for me to jot down the truths as the pass. Whether the words turn out to be truths after I examine the recordation, well, that’s why I record them. How else will I know if I pass drivel or something profound.
And there’s another reason I want to jot down these thoughts (as an aside, as if I ever write anything except asides, I’m writing these words on a brown napkin on my flight to visit Julies. I forgot my Moleskine on my table and my computer is low on juice. My thoughts sometimes find the unlikeliest avenues for escape): I complain to you, dear readers, constantly about my lack of words brought about by my lack of thoughts. As you might be able to tell from my Doodles, I work best off a reference, i.e., something that ignites me. Left alone in an empty room, I would consternate about emptiness before running out of thoughts and fading, or more exactly returning to silence, staring at nothing, my mind as void as the room in which I sit. To not record my thoughts when given the opportunity to actually have thoughts, that seems criminal.
I say these things and I feel my ego rearing itself. I imagine the photos of these words on napkins on the site. I don’t know why this overrides my rational thoughts, but it does, like driving on fumes, these feel like the last words on any subject before I put the napkin aside and return to my unobservant, un-thought-provoking reveries on nothingness and nowhere-ness.
My conflicting course of studies are steps to enhance my philosophy and religious beliefs, and to hear my beliefs and thoughts and beliefs on beliefs (to use a Dennett phrase). I end up as I said before: wafting between the extremes, like most important questions there is not only the white and black, there’s a spectrum with many choices between these categories: (i) profound Jewish belief based on a more ontological understanding of God and the universe He caused; (ii) a rational and obvious acceptance of religion as a meme, passed down through generations through natural selection, like a virus mutating until only the strongest survive; and (3) a spiritual uncertainty that draws my nose deeper into the philosophical and religious writings. My truths (and beliefs) usually last for moments, and, regrettably, are more often based on my last meal and temperament than on clear thinking.
I carry around my writing pad but now realize that is not always enough. I need to record more, not go back and rehash moments but record the moments in mind-conversation, suck the life out of the words and replant them on the page, even if only as scribbles or stakes in the ground. My hope is they’ll guide me in rewriting my momentary truths and allow me to confront them on paper to determine if, yes, there’s something to be said there.
It turns out I did remember to bring my Moleskine, it was hidden in my coat pocket. I guess sometimes I need musings on a napkin to remind me that it’s not the medium but the feelings—my thoughts are rarely unclouded by emotion, no matter how much I put on about being a rational being, and I find that I will never understand these feelings unless I record the brief glimpses and search for any possible truths before they disappear.
In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been very slow in posting my next ping-pong story. I started off strong, pounding out over eight-hundred words in the first day without knowing what I was doing. After that, I spent a few days planning and ended up with what I thought was something and somewhere interesting. I puzzled out a few of the more clever aspects, including some ideas that sounded wonderful when I jotted notes, but turned out beyond my writing skills.
After the first week of inspiration and writing, I was over a thousand words and working my way toward the finished product. Which is, of course, when I came to a grinding halt. As I managed a paragraph or sometimes a few words at a time, I found myself reading and rereading the words, not moving forward, but pedaling backwards to add an article or remove a word, not wanting to know what would happen later in the story. My narrator is a slightly mad woman, and because of that, I find the writing a bit more difficult than usual. I need to craft each sentence to keep the voice true, and by doing so, I spend more time concentrating on the words (and editing the voice) than the story, and the story suffers, moving in starts and stops.
That’s enough of that. I pounded out a few more paragraphs and am calling it a night on the writing front. It’ll get done when it gets done—which, I’m afraid to say, couldn’t be soon enough.
Julie spent her first May weekend in in the Castle. She’ll be here throughout the month, and it’s wonderful not driving her to the airport on Sunday night. As you can tell by the photographs, we cooked a Shabbot dinner on Friday night. I’m not sure where my Jewish studies are taking me, but I’m willing to experiment here and there with what it has to offer. I’ll hopefully write more about it when I get around to writing more about it (I know I have to stop promising and not delivering). We spent a wonderful weekend unpacking Julie’s boxes and moving Julie in to the Castle. There is now Julie evidence on every floor and in every room. It’s a nice touch from my usual stark taste.
I baked Banana bread tonight. I’m not sure what inspired me, but the loaf is cooling on a rack in the kitchen. It’s too late to eat tonight, but I’m expecting a yummy (if hopefully not too sweet) breakfast of yogurt and bread. And, no, Chuck, I’m not becoming obsessed with breads like some people. But I thought it would be fun and it was relatively easy. I will have to experiment with the ingredients once I taste this one. I was inspired by a pumpkin bread we ate at a Shabbot dinner last Friday (I have to find out what they used instead of butter in the recipe—probably some sort of oil).
Again I’m going to have to whip out the “enough” word. I’m sounding way too domestic in this entry. It’s been a wonderfully long weekend and I’m sad to see it pass. Luckily, Julie and I have many more weekends ahead, and then after a brief month apart, even more weekends to look forward to. Here’s to finishing stories and beginning lives.
The first letters are always the hardest. It’s been long since I sat down and wrote. I don’t know how long I’ll write today. I drove to downtown Seattle to look for a specific coffeehouse. I brought the wrong address, choosing a coffeehouse I visited previously and vowed never to write in again because of its corner feel and painful yuppie ambience. Instead, I drove aimlessly through downtown Seattle for over an hour (and probably more than $30 worth of gasoline) looking for a better coffeehouse. To think, in the coffee capital of the world (well, at least the corporate coffee capital of the world; the Italians might take offense), I was unable to find any decent coffee places. I ended up back in the bucks of stars in Columbia City, my second-most least favorite coffee place, but at least it was close to the Castle and comfortable in the way familiar places tend to be. As you can probably tell by the meanderings, I haven’t sipped my coffee yet. It’s sitting there waiting for me. If coffee talked—and I’m not saying it doesn’t, so don’t get all coffee-rights on me—I imagine it’s voice would be low and grumbly, or maybe I’m thinking of coffee grinds. It’s calling out to me, and I’m not sure I want any of its yummy goodness.
This is the first Julie-free weekend in a while, and I don’t know what to do with myself. A full three-day memorial day weekend, and I’m wandering through video game worlds, breaking my computer (I smelled something burning yesterday and I hoped it was related to my intensive dusting. I was wrong. Update: after a couple of trips to the local electronics store, the patient is better and should last at least another six months or until the next time I get the stupid idea to open up its innards again. Elective surgery my ass). Now I’m looking for something new, something easy and something green.
Try as I might there is nothing there to go for, nothing to wait for or head out toward. I am waiting in the wings hoping to find something in the real life of the last. He’s a tall thinly striking man—where’s my drawing-pad type of person? I keep looking forward to seeing something but I don’t know of anything to see. I need the best themes of the righteous. I don’t remember how to do any of this. Ah, why isn’t this easier?
The caffeine is not doing anything for me. I’m waiting for it to kick in and turn me into something, but it hasn’t, and I don’t know when or if it ever will. I’m tired of this shit, tired of this not doing anything. It’s a lonely weekend on a lonely evening over the lonely of the last tired of the blue hats and green genie bottles. I’m going to keep hammering away. I don’t know what else to do. There’s not much more going on around this table or in this empty head.
And as if on cue, I put down the funny pen and opened up my Detective Milkshake story. I know it’s not one of my better stories, but it is a “finished” story with an ending, which is a lot more than I can say about most of my writings, and I spent some time cleaning it up, removing lots of extra words and paragraphs, and generally redrafting it. I think this draft is better. Julie still doesn’t like this story. I think she prefers more action, or at least crazy people heading on trains somewhere or something like that. (Or, and she did make this comment and it’s only now I’m agreeing: the idea of a family fighting over a will is awfully trite.) But I did spend time on it and I figured I’d post it. So there you have it.
I’m still waiting for Chuck to finish his pong story so he can send the ball back over the net. I’ve been in the mood to write something new. Julie and I were thumbing through some of my older stories earlier, and we hit upon the Circus story and its more interesting outline. I’m not sure I’ll get around to it, but I was thinking one of these days I’d like to write what I had planned. It would have to be a longer story, perhaps bookish sized. Who knows. Just throwing it out there more as a reminder for myself than anything else (certainly not a promise or prediction).
I need to stop starting these entries with explanations for why I haven’t been writing these entries. Such explanations shake with age and cloud the pages with dust. Or, to put it more plainly, bore the hell out of you and me equally. As the photographs below show, Julie and I returned yesterday from our road trip. We drove Julie’s car from Newport Beach to lovely Seattle. I should have taken notes and documented our happenings (and taken more pictures), but I didn’t. I haven’t been much of a writer lately. With preparing for Julie’s arrival, work, and excuses (lots of the latter category), I’ve spent little of my time leaning over the keyboard to pound out words.
During my silent time, I managed to write a few paragraphs here and there. Nothing of note, regrettably. The most interesting (topic-wise, not word-wise) was a musing on reinstituting my 2,000-word days. It didn’t get posted after I managed to write only 400 words that day. Not an auspicious beginning to my program.
And so here I find myself, on Julie’s second night in the Castle, trying to say something. The Julies is busy working away on her newly decorated desk. The day has long since passed, and even in Seattle, where in late June the night is coy and hides away until the wee hours, darkness has fallen. It’s almost time for sleep, but I’ll try to squeeze out the remaining paste. Always start from the bottom and work your way up. That’s something you learn if you read life’s instruction manual.
Since I have nothing but complaints, I’ll continue in that vein. I have not started the next pong story yet. Chuck sent me a topic (well, it wasn’t so much a topic as a solitary thought about the narrator), and I have thought of some interesting approaches. I haven’t turned any of these ideas into words, though. I thought I was waiting for something, waiting for the germs of the story to take hold and spread throughout my system. It hasn’t happened yet. For me, it’s less about freewheeling ailments and more about pounding out words in moments of inspiration, and then stretching those words until they cover the naked skeleton of the story. I have only a few bones now, and none of them are connected. I’m afraid if I start stretching the skin, I’ll end up with rolls of fat that are impossible to shape. I’ll leave the analogy there instead of brutalizing it any further.
Even my consternations seem forced. I miss the days where I would spout words about my inadequacies. They’re there still—my inadequacies, that is—don’t you worry. I’m finding that at the end of the day, I don’t leave myself with enough energies to get through more than a semblance of writing time. This moment and these words feel better all of sudden. More words are coming out. I still can’t find the dark cavern but maybe it’ll pass. Trying is the first step, regardless of what Yoda claims.
As easily as I say it, the inspiration (or is it perspiration—at least my clichés are well and ready for me) passes. This is again hard, and I find myself reaching for distraction. I’m going to continue sitting here and staring at the page for at least another thirty minutes. I owe myself that much.
The page is as it was, white with parts of gray. I feel like I’m missing something. I spent the day without my Moleskine. I had two eureka moments, and I managed to catch only one of them on paper. Of course, eureka moments are nothing if not mundane when seen without the light of inspiration. When I reached for my notebook for the first one, I realized I didn’t have it, and I felt naked, as if I left my clothing on the nightstand when I meant to dress this morning. That didn’t happen, of course. I’m very meticulous about wearing clothes before going outside. Although, with the terrible heat wave Julie and I have been under the last few days, you might forgive me for not wanting any sweat-collecting agent to fall between my skin and the suffocating air.
To pass the time while driving, Julie and I spent much energy perfecting our road theories. In the hopes of throwing down words (and, yes, passing time), I’ll spend a few moments sharing them. As I drove toward each day’s goal, I tried to devise ways of passing the time, my attempt to wash away the intervening time between start and finish. This is not the best way to live in the moment. It’s not very Zen or NEQID, but driving for five to seven hours each day, I found it difficult to focus on improving myself while staring at the backside of cars.
The thing about long-distance driving is that you can figure out rather easily how much time you gain by speeding. During my trips to college and graduate school (three and a half and four and a half hours, respectively), I spent many hours calculating in my tiny head the risk and benefit of speeding. I’ll take a simple example (to waste some words and time in my thirty minute writing quest—and, yes, I opened a spreadsheet to double check my math). Say you’re traveling 400 miles. You have a couple of choices as to what speed you will drive. The lowest stress is the speed limit, let’s say 60 mph. To drive 400 miles at 60 mph, it will take you 6:40. If you drive that same 400 miles at 70 mph, it will take you 5:42, a saving of almost an hour. The longer the trip, the faster you drive, the more time you save. It’s really simple math.
Of course, it’s never that easy. The first thing you notice when you try to speed is that the other cars may not cooperate. You must maintain an effective (or average) speed over the course of the entire trip to gain the benefits of speeding. If the road is clear, this is not much of a problem. Of course, the roads are rarely clear. I can understand and accept when there’s lots of traffic. Roads are designed for a certain capacity, and once that capacity fills up, there’s no way to go fast. What provides the sport, however, is not when the roads are crowded but when the roads are relatively empty. It’s deep in the relative part of the empty roads that we hit upon our road theories.
The general rule on roads (and the law in some states) is that slower cars should stay to the right except to pass. In a perfect world, all cars would obey this simple rule, and the faster drivers, who are trying to take advantage of the law of higher speed, would zoom on by, slowing down only when there’s a slower car passing an even slower car in the left lane, which while painful, is acceptable, as long as the slower car moves to the right after passing the even slower car. The problem, however, is that there are left lane hogs. A left lane hog is a person who thinks they belong in the left lane, and clearly does not because they’re not passing cars in the right lane (or if they are, it’s indiscernible), and they’re holding up a line of cars behind them who only want to effectively use the law of higher speed. The easiest way to identify a left lane hog is to count how many times the left lane hog is passed on the right.
The trick to getting around left lane hogs is to approach driving as a game. The object is to effectively remove blockages from the road. (I have a disintegrator ray button in my car that I use for left lane hogs and line cutter-inners. After pushing the button, the offending car is disintegrated fifteen minutes later. This gives me plenty of time to separate myself from the victim so there is nothing to trace it back to me. This also has the advantage of me never knowing if the ray worked or not. I assume it always does (or will) work, which greatly improves me mood without pesky reality butting its annoying head into the mix. Of course, the ray doesn’t do much to clear blockages because of the time lag.)
The trick to clearing blockages is to identify the worst culprit, i.e., the left lane hog who is causing the backup, and maneuver your way past them. This is usually but not always the person leading the pack in the left lane. The best way to get around blockages is to find openings in the middle or right lanes and weave your way past the left lane hogs (or the cars driving behind the left lane hogs, who themselves may be left lane hogs, or, like you, patient drivers waiting for an opening). If you take it one car and one blockage at a time, the game becomes fun, with small feelings of vindication as you get through blockages.
There is another problem with the law of high speeds: cops. Depending on what state you’re driving through, there’s a good chance that there’s a state patrol car waiting behind bushes to chase you down and give you a speeding ticket. I spent a good part of my driving time while in college and graduate school worrying about receiving my first speeding ticket. It wasn’t until late in graduate school that I made a startling realization: it’s not that big of a deal. It still pays to be observant and to look out for hidden police cars, police cars approaching you from behind, or sudden brake lights, but in the end, the worst that will happen is you will receive a speeding ticket. The world will not end, you will not be thrown in prison (unless you’re driving ridiculously fast, which I never do—but I always get out of the way of people who do!). Once I figured that out, the stress surrounding my speeding decreased significantly.
There was more I wanted to write here, but I’m lagging. I managed to fight through the last thirty minutes of writing, providing me with a solid hour and about 1,740 words. Not bad for a first night back in the saddle.
I’m back! This is my second day (in a row!) where I place fingers to keys. My goals are small: write something, anything. The quality doesn’t matter, I’ll take introspective, observational, pathetic, consternated, in-the-style-of-a-young-uneducated-baboon writing. What matters is I put words down for some small amount of time. My reasoning is simple: if I do this over a number of days, I’ll eventually grow bored of saying nothing and think of something to say, and, if the stars align and the winds stay to the east, maybe, and this is a large maybe, I’ll actually say that something. Either that or the muse will finally lower her size 13-feet and provide me with fodder so I won’t have to go through this sad exercise.
So with further ado, here goes nothing. Do you ever use your network passwords as daily affirmations? I changed my password a couple of days ago, and for the second time, used a slightly altered daily affirmation. I’m not sure if it’s working, but I am firm believer that self-belief is the first step in self-improvement. Where do you think NEQID (that’s the Never-Ending Quest to Improve David, for all you newcomers) came from?
Ah, as soon as I felt energy, a large cork floated by to stop up the outlet. Damn bottlenecks.
Religion is a funny thing. I’m still exploring this Jewish thing, as you can tell by my books list. Right after a lesson, or while reading a good Jewish book, I feel inspired, wonderful about religion, wondering how I could ever think that any of it was a bottle of hogwash. Then, moments later, when the classes and the books pass on by and I have nothing but the world around me to think on, I begin to have all of my questions again, all of my doubts, and my thoughts about the hog’s water returns. It feels almost like those dream fears, we’re you’re trapped in a crowded elevator that grinds to a halt, and you can’t get out, and the air is oppressive, and why aren’t the people moving away from you, and where’s the backup lighting that’s supposed to switch on when the electricity fails, and maybe there was a huge accident in the building and you’re just moments away from the fireball heading in your directions—that is, until you realize that you’re not claustrophobic, it’s not that dark or crowded in here, and, besides, it was just a dream, and you convince yourself that you will never fear in dreams again, until, of course, you dream again.
That’s how religion feels (with the run-on sentence and everything). When I’m steeped in the learning, I understand and catch glimpses of the amazing beauty, ethics, truths, and consistency (and Judaism is nothing if not terribly consistent with its underlying principles); I become the dreamer who cannot understand how this can be a dream. Or maybe it’s the other way around: maybe it’s when I’m steeped in the learning that I’m truly awake, and my dreams begin only when I’m away from the books and thoughts.
It’s difficult to tell the difference. I do feel that I missed opportunities to start earlier. I’ve had this thought about writing many times before: if only I wrote more as a child, if only I continued after seventh grade to write my (terrible) stories, maybe I would be doing more of this now. But regretting and planning is not the same as living, and I try to limit those thoughts. It’s more important what I do today than what I should have done, or what I plan to do tomorrow.
If nothing else, what my study of Judaism is providing me is a better ethical understanding of life, and a wonderful opportunity to apply NEQID to aspects of myself. I wrote in my Randy dialogues that Judaism has at its heart self-improvement, making a better David. I need to get me more books and continue my journey. One of the commandments in Judaism is constant study (of Torah, the bible), and while I certainly can understand how studying helps propagate the religion (referring back to Dennett’s memes, and my earlier virus theory on the spread of religion), I also see how constant vigilance on the lessons for improving life can be very helpful.
Okay, enough deep thought for one day. And, no, now that you ask, it’s not really deep thoughts—mostly it’s surface thoughts, the small ideas that worked their their way up through the dense layers of my convoluted brain’s knowledge and reasoning that I’ve accumulated over my current reading and to the surface, like the iceberg’s tip. The surface thoughts provide evidence that all my reading and, to a lesser extent, thinking is creating some sort of growth in me, in (hopefully) the positive sense.
I’m throwing thoughts against the wall and watching them slime their way to the floor. I miss those purple rubber octopuses. You remember those? They felt sticky but they weren’t. They were more slimy. You threw them against a wall, and the octopus would walk its way down, the top detaching and flopping down to stick to the wall. They worked great for a while, but eventually hair and lint and rug covered the octopus until it wouldn’t stick to the wall. I would try to wash the octopus in water, and while it would remove the dirt, the octopus would never stick the same way again. Whatever happened to those wonderful creatures of the wall?
Wow, my digressions today are Olympic. It’s growing late in the evening, and while I don’t have much to show for it, this is a day’s work. I’ll try to keep scribbling away tomorrow. Maybe I’ll even get around to returning Chuck’s pong serve. Nah. That would be asking way too much. Julie returns on Friday! Finally! Yeah!
It’s me again. I’ve failed over the last few days. It happens. I managed a few hundred words a day, none of which was worth sharing. I’ve also failed in writing the story for our ping-pong match. I did come up with a sneaky and ingenious idea, and I hope to implement my plans for world domination “from the perspective of an animal.” Stupid animals.
Julie changed her plans: she isn’t returning home until Saturday night. One day isn’t a big deal, but I was very much looking forward to seeing her tomorrow, and when she told me this morning, I was sad. But all is not lost. This gives me another day to clean up the Castle, which, in her absence, has disintegrated into a mix between a Laundromat splayed open by a tornado and a restaurant at the end of a mad Valentine’s eve rush.
I’m in the process of editing our Sagamore video. This is the first video I’ve edited, and it’s turning out more challenging than I expected. Picking the right music and the right transitions, and then cutting and pasting in the right places, is easier said than done. Plus, I’m having technical issues as I run a beta version of Windows Vista, with a not fully baked movie editor. I’ll get around to finishing my first video masterpiece one of these days.
Open up the docks. There are external forces at work here. The rug is blue and the sky is blue. I wait for the shock of inspiration but settle for the shock of flat fingers on keys. I hope to have something to say. I should go back and say what I said but better. I’m sick of saying poorly. Is there a difference? What am I hoping to accomplish by saying anything at all.
What followed this was the first draft of the ping-pong story. I can’t post it yet because it’s not finished. Suffice to say, I wrote about 297 words of story, and 212 words of notes. One of these days, Alice, one of these days.
This is the low-resolution movie of my family trip to Lake George. I'll be sending higher-resolution DVDs via snail mail to those in the know over the next week or so.
I spin aimlessly. I cross legs and hold court. Nobody makes an argument. I need to draw. I need the meditative silence. I need to research. I need to write. I need to create. I need. I need to stop fast forwarding through time. All of it is here for me. Why do I waste it hoping and waiting? Needs and desires.
Triangles make nice shapes. People wonder where the greatest pee shooters are in the internet. I have to find where they combine the pictures in my head and the words that dance in my legs. Short pithy remarks. Drawings of shady whereabouts. Like this one (not drawn by me, regrettably):
(via, original)
I don’t know why I like this drawing, but it’s simple, disarming, and yet complicated. It tugs, and I like tugging. (Or it might be that I saw it at my moment of inspiration, when everything was lucid, and like the song playing at odd times in life, I associate that song or this drawing with that feeling.) I want to do the same but then add the words. Words need to be in those clouds and around the picture. I want the words to say as much as the picture, be in the picture, of the picture, bloody the picture. They’ll say something—not something I plan, but something that comes about during the creative moment. I’ll write when I create, not before or after, but there, in that moment. Words in clouds, words everywhere and nowhere. Something to be seen and something not seen.
Again, inspiration strikes, and I expect it to pass unabated. I don’t know if anything will ever come of it. Too many times I do this. At this moment, right now, I feel I can accomplish anything. And then it passes, and that everything, well, it’s gone. I remember it vaguely, I can reread these words and wonder what they meant, and possibly relive for a moment before the feeling fades and it’s as if I didn’t even have the feeling earlier.
Create, research, write, draw, become. What more can I want? As long as I repeat those things, I’ll achieve what I want. Achievement. I don’t mean the end goal, I mean the continuing quest. I won’t achieve until and while I do. There is no afterglow, there is only the glow of progress.
Do you have any intelligent thoughts on this? Where are you? What do you have to say? Why do you write in such little windows? There you go. That made me smile. I’m a short sentence whore. I sing-song my way to understandability. Is that even a word in these days? Should longer sentences survive? Is this what the future will look like? Ah, the easy answers for hard questions. The vowels to your consonants. The tides to your moon.
Crazy talk becomes me today. Julie leaves for NYC tomorrow, and I join her for the Labor Day weekend. We have plans to bum around the city, and visit friends and family. I am visiting with Scott and family, and Chris, two college friends I haven’t seen in years. I’ll see Steven, and my mother, of course. We’ll try to find our NYC wedding venue (the Taiwan venue has been set, I hear). It seems like the easiest thing in the world to find wedding halls, but clichés always do.
Silver fish fornicate in the river. Words string together random thoughts and feelings. I wonder if anything moves in there.
Through the magic of Paintshop Pro, Julie and I (actually, mostly Julie), have been scanning and touching up old photo albums: adding new colors, cropping, lightening, removing scratches, etc. Isn't modern technology wonderful? Click on the photos below to see the full albums. Enjoy!
Julie and I spent yesterday shooting our wedding photographs. From what I’ve been able to gather, this is an Asian custom. Either before or after the wedding, the bride and groom trek down to an overpriced photo studio and spend a couple of days choosing outfits, posing for photographs at various picturesque locations, and selecting the finished photographs. This is an extraordinarily painful exercise for the groom. The brides really seem to dig it, however. I’m told there are many such sacrifices in the course of a marriage.
Check out the slideshow for the photographs. They came out better than I expected. While I can’t now say they were worth the pain, I'm told distance (in time) tends to dull it. And the pictures, well, the pictures will last a lifetime.
Today is my last full day in Taiwan. I leave tomorrow on a late-night flight for Seattle. Julie is staying for another two and a half weeks to finish shooting videos for The Dr. Julie Show. I will miss her terribly as usual. Since she moved to Seattle, our time apart has noticeably decreased. She’s still escaped me a few times, but overall I can expect to find her at home (or on her way home) most evenings. As I’ve said before and I’ll say again and again, having Julie in Seattle is wonderful.
For me a full week is about as long as I can stay away from home. I’m a creature of habit, and at the end, as pathetic as it may sound, I enjoy sameness. A regular schedule helps me ward off my frequent headaches and keeps me leveled. While the P.H.D.’s (Post-Headache Days, for the uninitiated or forgetful) are wonderful, I’d gladly trade them in for headache-free days any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Yeah, I never got that saying either.
The weather has been amazing in Taiwan. That shouldn’t be so important to report. It seems most small talk always begins and ends with a discussion of the weather: too hot, too cold, rainy for longer than expected, sunshine in the rainy season, expect the world to end at any time and cats to befriend dogs and sheep and wolves to bed down together. It’s all inane—the weather, that is, and my writing, of course—and yet here I am, reporting on the weather patterns.
The weather has been in the 60s and 70s, and sunny most of the week. A torrential rainstorm did catch up to us on the day before our wedding photo shoot. Julie was very nervous about the next day’s weather as all the weather predictions pointed to the rain continuing and it turning cold. It did no such thing. I caught a glimpse of the pregnant gray clouds after waking in the morning. The clouds covered half the sky, and I wasn’t sure whether they were coming and leaving. As you can see by our photographs, the clouds were leaving after an early morning shower, and the weather remained brilliant for the rest of the day.
When I saw the clouds in the morning, I ran over to tell Julie not to get her hopes up about a good day for photos. During the day, the cameraman told us about a bride who had scheduled her wedding photos for the previous day. He said she cried the entire time because of the rain. I doubt Julie would have cried about the weather—although, I have seen her get emotional over poorly written Chinese soap operas. And, I will now admit, the prospect of us not shooting the photographs outside did brighten my mood. But in the end, the weathermen were wrong and we got lucky. While the photo experience was as terrible for me as I hinted at yesterday, I know that the memory of pain tends to dissipate faster than the good photos and memories, and, it should go without saying, Julie’s happiness.
Enough sappiness. I have at least 500 words left to write, and it’s time to jump into my next story idea.
Okay, that didn’t work. I had every intention of starting my new story based on my wedding photography experience. But as soon as I started (okay, after I wrote three sentences and then browsed the web for a bit), Julie informed me that it was time to go to dinner with her family. Her big uncle (Taiwanese, and I think most Asian people, call their aunts and uncles by their birth order: big, small, and middle) had stopped by the previous day to invite us to dinner. We were meeting at a “traditional” place near where Julie’s uncles live. Julie’s parents used the word “traditional” a number of times when describing the establishment, which I translated with Julie’s help as hole in the wall.
Our translation wasn’t too far off. When we arrived, we found an outdoor kitchen stacked with meats and dead fishes at the entrance, and a few ratty tables behind the open kitchen. Only one of the tables was occupied with customers. The host (or was he the cook?) pointed us toward a backdoor that led to a staircase to the second floor. The conditions on the second floor were not much better. But the place seemed to have the necessary accruements: three big round tables, Julie’s family, and an old-school coin-fed karaoke machine, complete with 1980s backdrop photograph hanging above the stage. Julie’s uncles had reserved the whole floor for our get together.
Stacked on the tables were food dishes and many bottles of Taiwanese beer, most in a half-empty state. The beer is going to play an important role in this story, so I should describe it. The bottles themselves were much larger than what we in America think of beer bottles. They were probably a liter or so, although I didn’t think to look at label—ignoring, for the moment, that the volume was probably written in Chinese characters. There was a green glass version and a brown glass version. Since they gave me only the green version to drink, I can’t say what the difference was. I imagine one was a light beer and the other a darker beer, but, again, that’s only supposition. I learned later from big uncle that this Taiwanese beer (I didn’t catch the name either) came from a region of Taiwan that was once a German colony. Seeing as Germany is the home of the best beer in the world, big uncle assured me, this was very good beer. From what I remember, big uncle was right, the beer was good. At least I think it was. It is difficult for me to remember a lot of what happened that night. I have doubts about whether the memories I do have are my own, or details I made-up or created through Julie’s telling to fill in the gaps. But more on that later.
The large tables were like most large tables you have probably seen in Chinese restaurants in the states: an inner circular platform on the table spun on tracks to allow the family-style dishes to rotate around to the different chairs. When we arrived, the uncles made room at the first table (the one closer to the Karaoke stage) by supplanting Julie’s cousins. This allowed us to sit with Julie’s little aunt (an elementary school principal) and her husband, her middle aunt (Julie’s mother, I guess, would be big aunt, as she’s the oldest of the family), her big uncle, and her grandmother, the matriarch of the family. Julie was the first granddaughter on this side of the family. She uses this to explain why she was so spoiled while growing up in Taiwan. She’s no longer spoiled thanks to the ruthless children in America, and, and this story I find particularly insightful into Julie’s character, a perm haircut her mother forced on her at a young age to look more American, we presumed. The middle uncle sat at the second table with his wife and their four supplanted children, the second of which dragged her husband along for the festivities.
The simple dishes of food arrived through the early part of the night until the table was covered in plates. I ate lightly, sticking with vegetables and mayonnaise-covered albacore. Julie’s uncles sent the youngest cousin (and the only male cousin, the other three being, like Julie and her siblings, all females) out for vegetable dumplings for Julie’s dad, who, after reading a book on nutrition probably by a smarmy pseudo-doctor, had foresworn fish and meat and eggs and simple carbohydrates and frying oils, for the tasteless world of vegan delights. Big uncle is a vegetarian as well. He was the first in the family to move to the states, and his English is very strong, stronger even than Julie’s parents.
Because of my experimentation with keeping kosher (at least my version of it, what I dubbed ‘Kosher Style’) I ate only fish, vegetable, and rice during time in Taiwan. This was by far the hardest trial in my kosher experimentation. There are lots of yummy dishes with duck and beef and chicken and pork in Taiwan, and to limit myself to only fishes (of which I only have a mild fondness, except when deep fried, since, as we all know, even deep-fried shoe is tasty. But, regrettably, deep fried food has a tendency to cause my stomach to summersault and back flip and do all sorts of nasty dances at the strangest of times) and vegetables seemed criminal.
I made only one exception to the Kosher Style for Julie’s grandmother’s drunken chicken. I promised Julie I’d make this concession before we left so as not to insult her grandmother as it’s one of her specialties. I kept my word, and even though it contained non-kosher chicken, I ate it for dinner one night. What amazed me most was the simplicity of the recipe. All the times I ate the chicken in Dallas when she cooked it (this was pre-Kosher Style David), I assumed she had slaved for hours preparing the meal. For those who have not eaten drunken chicken, you are missing out. It’s chicken cooked in an alcoholic broth. Here’s the entire recipe as told by Julie’s grandmother: chop up chicken legs with a large cleaver; fry the chicken pieces in sesame oil with sliced ginger until browned; transfer the chicken and ginger to a stockpot; add equal parts rice wine and water; cook until done (she wasn’t more exact about the doneness and ignoring Julie’s repeated requests—since she only speaks Taiwanese, I wasn’t in a position to ask her directly—for more details about the signs of doneness. The soup contained no vegetables, and is all about alcohol and grease and chicken. It was the wonderful exception to Kosher Style that convinced me that for all my posing, I could never be a vegetarian. Over the course of this week, my stomach has shrunk to a small ball. I can’t even look at Chinese food or fish without growing a bit queasy. For me, at least, it’s true that the food you grow up eating has a huge influence on the food you crave. Maybe if I stayed in Taiwan for long enough, I could get used to their dishes.
Since big uncle turned vegetarian, he missed the mixed wasabi and soy sauce that sushi and sashimi are paired. He told us that he now dunks the strings of white radishes into the dipping wasabi sauce. I’m not sure why I brought that up. I guess there are some details that add nothing to the story and yet seem so important when you first hear them that I feel I have no choice but to record them. And then when I get around to writing them, I find there’s really no place in the story for it but I refuse to cut it (and only partly because it would push off reaching the 3,000 goal). Or maybe, and here we’re dipping into David’s deep psychological waters, maybe it’s just that I really like to type radishes in wasabi.
The place settings at the tables suited the traditional aspect of the restaurant: fitted inside a beige plastic bowl was a small glass cup—smaller than your average water glass in a restaurant—stacked upside down. I immediately wondered how much beer one could drink from such a small cup. I had always heard that Asians enjoyed binging on alcohol. But judging by the size of the cup, significant doubts crept into my mind. Perhaps my Asian friends were not so keen on drinking. Perhaps their boasts of drinking were as empty as their food made me fell an hour after eating it. Now, I will admit, I was never one of those people that judged a person’s worth by how much alcohol they imbibed. (At least not really: I often belittled people for their lack of drinking skills, but that was social pressure. If you’re not in the belittling group then you’re in the belittled group, and we all know which group gets all the girls.) But looking at the tiny glasses, I wondered if maybe there were times when size did matter.
It wasn’t long before the uncles sent a bottle of beer across the table to me. Except for Julie’s grandmother, all the women at the first table chose to drink tea instead of beer. This provides additional evidence in support of the hypothesis that women truly are the smarter of the sexes. It was only when I popped open the beer bottle that I realized the true ingenuity provided by the small cup. You see, drinking beer in Taiwan is not about sipping. It’s about downing shots of beer. You fill the cup, and then you drink it in a gulp. After a few rounds I realized that this was a very civilized way to drink beer. Similar to how chopsticks are civilized because diners aren’t expected to saw through their meat before forking it into their maws.
With the small cup, there was no hiding behind the colored beer bottles. I did that in school: I hid my slow drinking behind colored beer bottles. I was never a strong drinker in college, and in order to avoid ridicule by my friends (some of which are reading this—well, are probably reading this, if they’ve make it this far into this overly long musing), I would upend the beer bottle, and keep my tongue partly lodged in the mouth of the bottle, which allowed only a trickle of beer to make its way into my mouth. This left me with plenty of time to position the beer at the back of my throat for a proper swallow. As I said, I was not a strong drinker, and the sad fact was it wasn’t that I couldn’t handle my alcohol; it was that I really couldn’t drink it. My throat refused to swallow more than a few sips.
It wasn’t until sometime after graduate school that I found that drinking alcohol wasn’t as hard as I made it out to be. It was all about relaxing the throat and swallowing the alcohol without twirling it around in your mouth. Alcohol does not have a particular good taste on the tongue and nose, and the faster you get it out of your mouth and into your belly where it can perform its magic, the better. Relaxation was the key.
Besides the small cups, there was another devious custom in wait for me. As in America, there is plenty of toasting. But unlike in America, where at the end of the toast, people are expected to graciously sip at their wine glasses, in Taiwan people are expected to down a shot. I was already into my second bottle when I realized that anytime I caught the eye of any person, they would immediately raise their cup for a toast. I was three bottles into the wind before I realized that they were out to get me drunk. It was a conspiracy, I tell you. At one point, Julie’s female cousins lined up in front of me, and each toasted me separately. That’s three drinks for me and one for each of them.
There were some people who were not involved in the conspiracy. Julie’s mom was one of those people. As I began my quest to drink too much beer, she kept pointing me to the food, telling me I shouldn’t drink beer on an empty stomach, I would get sick. It turns out she was right as mothers usually are. But at the time, I politely nodded and continued to toast and chug full glasses of beer. That was another secret Julie’s mom shared with me the next morning, as I struggled to keep my stomach in check while in a disgustingly terrible hung-over state: you don’t have to fill your entire glass to toast. You can fill it halfway or with less alcohol, or, and this she repeated many times during breakfast, you can toast with hot or cold tea, the temperature really didn’t matter, she assured me.
What Julie’s mom did not understand, however, was that getting drunk was fun. There was much singing and dancing (see photos for evidence), and while, as I grew drunker and drunker, I was less likely to find the proper key in the karaoke singing, nobody seemed to mind. Big uncle in particular was a fan of my excellent drinking skills. He told me that his father, Julie’s grandfather, was a very skilled drinker as well. He could substitute beer for food when needed. One time, big uncle was called by Julie’s grandfather to pick him up at a restaurant. When he arrived, he counted 48 empty bottles of beer on a table with only two people. That is an insane amount of alcohol. I can’t imagine how long it would take to empty 24 bottles of beer (and I’m really thinking of emptying one’s bladder after the drinking). It truly boggles my mind.
I consider myself a relative good drunk. I tend to get very happy and social once I cross over the drunken line. I managed to toast everyone with their Chinese names, and even convinced the cousin’s husband to punch a song into the karaoke machine. Everyone sang except for Julie’s grandmother. Not even a Japanese song could convince her to get up on the stage. The earlier parts of the night I remember better. I definitely drank too much and sang too much and danced too much, but everyone agreed (well, maybe with the exception of Julie’s parents) that I was a fun drunk—as in, a drunk we can all point and laugh at. Yeah, that about sums up my night.
As with most good things, there’s usually a price to pay when it’s done. The tab for the night was very high. I’ll provide one example: Julie found me in the bathroom with my head literally in the toilet puking. That example is rather tame compared to a few others that I remembered only vaguely, but which Julie filled in the details the next morning. I’ve heard it said that you can judge a wife by how she treats her husband when he’s drunk. If there’s any truth to that, then Julie will be an excellent wife. I do believe that the uncles’ karaoke night was the most drunk I’ve ever been. But I also believe that I’ve been close to this drunk before. Just don’t tell Julie’s mom.
(Disclaimer: no, I don’t get drunk often. Stop worrying, mom. And, yeah, I did have more juicy details to add to the price part—but I’m tired now, and I wasted most of my energies on the earlier part. I guess you’ll have to let your imagination run wild on the other parts.)
As I penned these words on my flight back to Seattle from Taipei, I was constantly interrupted by “serious turbulence,” a term I guffawed at when the flight attendant first went on the horn to instruct us to tighten our belts. I now freely admit and accept that “serious turbulence” is a very complete and accurate description of large swaths of the flight back. The captain had warned us at the beginning of the flight that we would run into turbulence over most of the flight. I have been on many flights where captains gave similar such warning, only to hit a few bumps here or there. On those flights, I would look around at the shocked faces of my fellow passengers, secretly secure that the rational parts of my brain knew that the rough air—since that is all that turbulence is, dips and currents in the air, similar to potholes in the road—will not damage the plane. For the most part, my rational brain wins out over the more primitive parts of my brain.
What the turbulence will do, however, and is doing now in a most egregious way, was aggravate a sensitive stomach. Yes, my dear friends, after yesterday’s fiascos, and even counting today’s hang-over remedies and partial recovery, my stomach was still delicate. I’ve found that these particular bumps in the road are not a good balm for my ailing stomach. Reclining the seat all the way and taking short naps did help keep the demons from bursting forth during the more aptly-named stomach dropping moments of the flight. This flight has been one of the worst I’ve ever experienced in my extensive flying time, falling out somewhere between high flying rollercoaster and awkward bumper car memory, of which I’m sure you remember: you’ve waited an hour in the blistering sun downing hotdog after hotdog and washing each dog down with sugary colas, only to find yourself hot and bothered and behind the wheel of a bumper car, the smell of rubber heavy in the air, the repetitive carnival music drowning out the sounds of screaming children, and after the electric cars unfreeze, and you ram the rubber end of your car into the first thing that moves, you realize that the dogs swimming in colas in your stomach have declared war, and while you’re not sure who the enemy is, you are sure that if one more person bumps into you, the partially liquefied dogs will ride the brown sugary water up and through the esophagus to erupt and give new meaning to the bumper in the cars. It was times like that you focused all your efforts on driving true and straight and avoiding pile ups. The day’s turbulence was no different. It passed again, and I managed to keep my stomach for now.
And for those keeping score, while on the uncles’ karaoke night, I promised and failed to deliver on the 500 words to reach my goal (no matter how much I want to, we’re still too close to the Marathon to capitalize ‘goal’), I made up for it on the flight home, pounding out my 4,000+ words. This should cover me for the drunken day and today. I haven’t been able to do the math yet, but since I left on Sunday at 11pm Taipei time, and return on Sunday at 6pm Seattle time, I can also write another 1,000 words on the second Sunday night. I’m not sure if it will be necessary, however. I figure the goal is something I aspire to (as opposed to during the Marathon where it is something that cannot be missed), and my aspiration begins at ends not at the daily count, but at the more accurate weekly count.
Regrettably, my batteries died after I wrote the first few paragraphs of my next story. I’ll save those paragraphs for tomorrow’s entry. These last two weigh enough to keep me in check. And besides, it’s past time for me to get to sleep. Staying up for one and a half days instead of the normal one day has made my brain a bit weirder than usual.
I’ve delayed this enough. Okay, I’ll delay it a bit more. I’m tired. Very tired. I thought I was being good last night. At Julie’s urgings I stayed up to 10:30pm, my normal bedtime. I was out to the world moments after hitting the sheets. And then I woke at one forty in the morning. It was one of those awakenings where you know there’s no chance of getting back to bed but you’re too tired to do anything, like grabbing the computer and pounding on story. So I took the lazy man’s way out and trekked to the living room, popped the first DVD of HBO’s “The Wire” into the box, and proceeded through half of the first season, stopping only when my third-floor alarm clock started beeping to tell me it was time to shower.
The day wasn’t as terrible as I expected. I was tired, but a morning coffee got most of my work done, and an invigorating, snow-filled van ride home covered my evening. I seared a tuna steak and I’m now cuddling on this lonely snowy night in my favorite chair, with my green blanket and laptop to keep me warm in lieu of the Julies.
I still feel exhaustion clawing at my britches, and I expect that I won’t have the willpower to stay up to 10:30pm again. That’s okay. I always have more of “The Wire” waiting downstairs for me. I’m not even sure if it’s good. It is there, however. And in the middle of the night, when the rest of the world—at least the physical world around you—is sleeping, it’s a way to pass the time. I know, I know, I shouldn’t be passing the time. I should be embracing the time. But there are only so many hugs I can give on cold nights.
And yes, I used this musing to push my word count so I wouldn’t have to work anymore on my story. I’m a terrible man. But the story is moving along somewhat. I have a voice, of kind, and if I don’t exactly have a plot yet, I do have vague ideas, which, if you think about it, is like a plan only, well, vaguer. Okay. I’ll stop now. Not because I have to but because I want to and because that want is to scroll up and see if I can add more words.
I added a few more words, and to keep with my goal, I’ll post the first short part under lock. That way I won’t feel the need to rework it and edit it and man I am exhausted. I can’t keep me eyes open anymore. It’s 9pm, and this may be the best I can do for tonight. Hopefully this won’t be another 2am night.
Word count: 1,220
And here’s the real test. I don’t want to write today. I’m tired and it’s cold and there’s snow and ice outside and I haven’t had my coffee and Julie woke me up late last night and I was angry at her and then I wasn’t but I still have the taste of anger in my mouth and the last thing I want to do is put these words down. Have you ever noticed that anger tastes a bit like lamb fat?
I knew going in that the real test of my new goal would be on days like this. Would I meet goal? Would I consternate endlessly to sneak around the goal’s backside? Would that even count? Or would I story? I pounded almost two sentences of story before my eyelids started sliding. I commanded them to stay open but they weren’t listening. I have a pesky suspicion that they never listen, at least not really. They close of their own volition constantly. I just poked a finger into my eye and guess what: my eyelids closed even after I told them not to.
I’m still jetlagged with a balance of sleep debt hanging on top of my head. I’m not sure I’m even a believer in sleep debt. Or maybe I’m a believer but not a true believer. There’s a big difference between the two. Believers believe something is true, where true believers know something is true a priori, that is, the true believer believes the truth before and not withstanding any investigation or experience. Yeah, I made that up too.
The problem I see with sleep debt is that even when I’m very tired and sleep extra sleep to try to work it off (assuming, for the moment, that it exists), there is a good chance that the extra sleep will reset my sleep schedule and cause me to wake up pathologically yawning. That is bad as with pathological yawns comes blazing headaches, and with the headaches arrive nausea and a desperate need to work off the sleep debt.
I do wonder whether you really need to work of sleep debt like you would credit card debt, or whether it dissipates over time. I spent some time trying to think of an analogy for the dissipation and I didn’t find any. Maybe there are some dissipating credit card debts, but I’ve yet to find them. That would be cool: a credit card where the debt disappears over a long enough period of time. I guess that’s how minimum payments work. Regrettably, it would take fifty years to work off any significant balance that way.
My thoughts are very random and unorganized and very unintelligible and very padded today. My eyes are glued to the word count at the bottom of the page. I know they shouldn’t be, but it feels like one of those chore days during the Marathon. Yes, I know, get on with it. Get back to the old man and his wife and their wedding photographs. That’s what my story is about in case you haven’t figured it out yet.
I switched off the wi-fi on my computer. I was very close to browsing through inane videos and even inaner message boards. I’m an information addict, and not in the good way. I crave the refresh more than the information, the fanboy more than the reasoned debate, the boring more than the engaging or challenging. In short, I’m a typical American in search of ways to strangle time on the mat while the referee slaps out the three-count.
Ah, I’m almost there today. These consternations really shouldn’t reckon toward the word count. There’s much in the world that really shouldn’t happen but does. This is just another one of those things.
Speaking of weather, if you’ve been catching the news, the State of Washington has been buried under snow and ice over the last two days. It hailed and snowed during rush hour yesterday, beginning almost exactly when we started walking to the van. There were plenty of accidents on the roads and the commute was long but exciting. Our eyes were glued to the traffic thingy, and I watched with some of the information addiction as they updated the maps and accident reports. I refreshed the information often and it was very satisfying.
Today promised to be dry and cold. I woke up hopeful that school—err, work—would be cancelled because of yesterday’s weather. I checked my mail and there were no messages. I was disappointed. I would have liked to sleep in to work off some of that sleep debt. Who am I kidding—I’m not a true believer, there is no such thing as sleep debt. So I drove to the vanpool, and most of the riders were still planning on driving into work. I had my moment of choice. I knew my choice had consequences, since all choices have consequences. And I also knew that those choices and consequences were the very meaning of why I was put on this earth. I won’t try to sugarcoat it for you. Every time you make even the most unimportant decision, you’re designing and deciding your character. You are the decisions you make, just like chickens are the bugs that they eat.
Halfway to work, we received the mail message informing us that while the campus was open, the facilities would not be open. That meant no cafeteria. Getting back to the choices, one of the reasons I decided to go to work was because of the hot lunch. When I stay home I sometimes forget to eat. Maybe it’s not so much that I forget to eat and more that I’m too lazy to get something to eat. Not surprisingly after a week away my cupboards are bear. That’s a funny word: cupboards. I imagine there was a time when it was very novel to have boards hammered onto the wall that held the cups. Cups were probably the first dishware. You don’t need plates (think oversized turkey legs held in grubby greasy hands) and you don’t need silverware (think pocket dagger for the hard to chew beef slabs). But you need cups if you want to drink. I guess you could drink out of a bucket or a trough, but those are hard to move around. If you want portable drinking, you need cups. Everything else is optional. And with cups there’s a need for boards to hold them. I should have been a etymologist but only if they let me make stuff up instead of base my findings on research. These are ridiculous sentences. Sometimes I need to write ridiculous sentences to say nothing. This is a lot of nothing.
At this point I would normally sing a short song. The song doesn’t have lyrics, but is more of a sweet tune, which, I am sorry to report, is difficult to convey using the written word. It’s short and catchy but not very memorable—you’d probably forget it after the first time you heard it. And if you heard me sing it, you probably wouldn’t even catch the real tune. I’m not very good at finding notes myself. I need something to cue me, like the Julies or my trumpet. Instruments are good that way: when tuned properly, they make it easy to find the sweet spot of the note, which is the right pitch for that note. Not that I ever was capable of finding that sweet spot, but it is possible.
So I’m in the van and we’re halfway to work and I realize there’s no turning back. I’m stuck going to work. The roads are empty and mostly without ice. The campus roads are a bit icy and dangerous and very empty. The offices are no better, at least with respect to the emptiness. I didn’t find much ice inside, and it was no dangerous than the normal backstabbing and politicizing and the dodging of falling computers. When the mail went out about the service closures, most people chose to work from home. Those are some smart people. The day was sunny and cold. I did manage to eat something at lunch. I had to bum a ride from a coworker to go somewhere that wasn’t closed, but it was better than starving.
There you go. That’s the goal. Sorry for the absurd musing. I had hopes of better things but hopes like wishes don’t always fly. I’m such a loser.
Last night was another bad sleep. I had hoped that I was passed the jetlag, that I had already licked it. But when I woke at 1:40 in the morning, wide awake, I checked my tongue in the mirror, and there was no sign of cherry red goodness. I don’t know what it is about that time of the morning, but my body seems stuck to it. I hope I didn’t accidentally trip an alarm setting in my brain. I’m a good programmer, but I have no idea how to manage the data structures in my gray area. I did manage to take a nap on the van ride home. My stomach was feeling a bit off, and the nap got me through the ride and relieved some of the sleep pressures (perhaps even going as far as relieving some hypothetical debt). I didn’t drink any caffeine except hot tea this morning. I am as ready as I ever will be for a full night’s sleep tonight. Two people have told me that Tylenol PM is the way to go. If things go wrong tonight, a PM’ing I will have to go tomorrow.
I’ve been working on the wedding website again. That link still points to the old version, which lacks the wedding details. The redesign feels simpler and cleaner. I hope to roll it out this weekend. Since this is my first Julie-free weekend, I should have plenty of time. Unless I break down and buy a video game. I don’t feel the urge to do that yet, but I know it’s always there, at the edges of my consciousness, glowing with a pleasant light and soft soothing beeps, like one hears at casinos, encouraging you to put just one more coin into the slot machine. The urge waits patiently for me to reach and grab it and swing. Once I get the desire in my head, there’s no turning back. I’ll stop talking about it before these words trigger the very desire I’m trying to keep at bay. Tasty bays.
I don’t have much more to talk about. These non-caffeinated writings are not my strong suit. I’ll manage, don’t you worry. Perhaps it’s time for story? I tried. I really did. I squeezed words onto the page but my brain refused to cooperate. I’m exhausted. Did I mention that yet? Tonight will be an earlier night to bed. I can barely keep my eyelids open now. Don’t you worry: I won’t return to my eyelid and true-belief rambling. I’m much too cultured for such uncouth words.
If I can’t write it, I might as well write about where I am heading with the Unnamed Photograph Draft. Before I wrote that part, I thought I had a good idea. The story was going to be about a married couple who travelled to Taiwan at the wife’s insistence to take wedding photos. The couple had been married for a while but they never had an actual wedding ceremony. The wife read about how Taiwan was trying to encourage its tourism through these wedding photo places. The wife looks at the visit as an opportunity to fix the mistakes they made in the past, and create new memories for their future.
There are other less pleasant reasons for the trip as well. Their marriage is not doing well. I was thinking infidelity, but it could be more of a trust issue, or perhaps they’re just growing apart. The couple is looking at this experience as a way to either work through their problems. Yeah, I know. I don’t have enough planned. Who are these characters? What drives them? Do they want the marriage to work? What makes them interesting? What about motivations?
When I write a short story, I usually try to find something interesting to focus on related to the writing itself. This time I had decided to focus on obstacles. I tend to baby my characters too much. I don’t challenge them, and I have a feeling that is why I run out of things to write. Without obstacles or challenges or goals, the characters do nothing. They sit on their lazy butts—just like me!— and wait for something to happen. When nothing happens, they look to me with their large watery puppy eyes, and beg me to say something. I end up spending a paragraph describing something uninteresting, only to record an inane conversation or action-less scene, accepting that puking through words is as good a way as any to make goal. I wanted to use this story attempt as a way to improve how I torture my characters. (And torturing the characters is not the same as consternating with the characters. Consternation tortures the reader.) I want my characters to be given the opportunity to grow. And the only way you grow is through life’s decisions.
With that in mind, I wrote that first segment of the story. An old southern man narrator appeared and I decided to run with it. I knew full well that my chances of finding his voice after the first marathon session were very slim. As is my usual way, I began the story with a few paragraphs of complaints. I cut the complaints while pre-editing it. (Yes, I know I shouldn’t be editing, but I was searching I wanted to finish something with decent writing. I’m sick of Marathon-level writing. Ah, that’s my evil inner editor speaking.) I made the cuts after deciding that the narrator should be likeable, and therefore unlike David. The narrator should not spend eight paragraphs complaining, only to sit around while nothing happens to him and he does nothing (sound familiar?). I wanted him to be happy. Everyone likes a happy person. I like happy people (which explains my love for the Julies—she’s a very happy person, usually. . .).
I’m finding it difficult to keep my eyes open. This bodes well for my sleep. Assuming the sleepiness is not one of those fake sleepiness where I wake up in a few hours feeling awake but not rested.
But with the nice old narrator and his bookish wife, I began to have worries. What possible conflicts and challenges could I throw their way? I thought about the obvious one: rain during the photo session. The photograph told us (through Julie’s translation) that the bride the previously day had cried hysterically because the torrential rain had ruined her photo shoot. That looked like conflict to me. Then there was the relationship itself. The narrator seemed very fond of his wife. I wonder if that’s an act or if he deludes himself. I find it hard to believe that an old person would bother, but there are many superficial old people out there.
I’m chock full of ideas. Oh, wait, I mean I’m chock out of ideas. I wonder if you can be chock out of something. I need to get back to actually writing the story instead of writing about writing the story.
It’s raining outside. We were expecting a snow shower that would gradually turn to rain as it warmed. It’s good that there’s interesting weather going on here or I would have trouble making goal. The sound of the rain hitting the roof has a slight tinkling to it, as if some of it is hail. If it gets colder instead of warmer tonight, then tomorrow may be the snow day I’ve been craving. (Yesterday should have been the snow day, but I was too dedicated. I’ll happily trade a full night’s sleep for a snow day tomorrow. I’m not sure if it works that way, though.
I’m getting close. When I first wrote those words, I looked down in dismay at three paragraphs of story crude. I thought about going down and reworking those words. But after playing with words for a bit, I realized my mind wasn’t there enough to move it forward. If I wrote story, I would end up pushing words to meet goal instead of words to tell story. I’m so easily manipulated.
Word count: 1,335
What follows are senseless ramblings, even more so than normal. Enjoy.
It’s thicker than worms worming through the glacial journey of the last movement of the world. Moving fingers to say nothing. Coherent thoughts not coalescing. Where are the last of the tines that rise off the righteousness? I always return to that word righteousness when I’m spouting nonsense. I wonder what one has to do with the other.
I was delayed for a moment while I find the right word. I didn’t find it. I substituted nonsense for it. The action waits for no man, and I am the no man. The worm drills through my brain. It’s made its home. You think it would treat its home right, but it doesn’t. It continues to drill and push. Its actions exhaust me. I yawn and yawn and yawn until I beg for someone to throw a tennis ball into my mouth. They don’t. I’m alone and home and tired. Too tired even to sleep. I managed to sleep last night. I thought that would make me feel better for this morning. It wasn’t to be. I woke this morning worse than ever, my head holed with the worms and exhaustion threatening to drag me into its fathoms.
It’s getting close again to sleep time. Then the weekend. I have no plans and I’m afraid that the weekend will drag me down into itself, leave me flapping my legs and arms trying to swim on dry land and look for something or anything to occupy my lonesomeness.
Randy, my sister, gave birth to beautiful twins today. She’s a brave girl, my sister is—actual both of are. We come from a brave family. Don’t ask what happened to me.
Still words flow through empty caverns. They’re searching in the nooks looking for a secure step to stand on. They want to go higher, say more. But they have to settle for what they do. And they’re not doing much today except nonsense. I need rest. Exhaustion has overtaken me. Try as I might, there is nothing left. No thoughts will make up for that. My fingers ache at the losses.
The weather changed and changed. It grew warmer and then cooler and then warmer again. The worms in my head don’t like the changing weather. It triggers the pain. I still pound away, today less organized and thoughtful than yesterday, which was barely organized and thoughtful. But it’s the word count that matters. Storying would be nice, but nice doesn’t make the ache go away.
The last twenty minutes have been better than most. I ate two Advil today. I’m not proud. I usually try to wait until the pain is unbearable to eat them. The pain was unbearable this morning. It was again this evening. Two Advil in one day is not good. I try to limit myself to a three or so a month. I used to get nasty rebound headaches, the type that left me upside down on the floor trying to relieve the pressure by forcing even more blood into my head. It sometimes worked, you should try it. What I found was that taking Advil continuously, while relieving the pain somewhat initially, would bring back the pain tenfold when taken often. It’s like the pain gets angry at me for trying to snuff it out, and returns with a vengeance to dance upon the burning embers of my brain. It’s the worms talking. I know it. I just can’t figure out what it is they’re saying.
I’m struggling with these words. It’s a bit after nine in the evening, and I want to start preparing for bed. But first I need to finish this. Man, I wish I was saying something useful today. I’m not even sure what useful words look like anymore. They’re probably really big and strung together in such ways that they don’t droop in the middle. Droopy middles don’t agree with me.
Tomorrow’s another day. And then the day after it is yet another day. It’s funny how days work like that. I played hooky from work today. Well, it wasn’t hooky since I genuinely was sick and exhausted and worm filled. So I guess it was just a sick day. I’ll be back to work tomorrow, don’t worry. I just need two nights in a row of good sleep. I got that yesterday, by the way. The first day, that is. I slept the entire night from when I put down the keyboard. Aren’t you proud of me? I had my doubts too. It felt great to sleep and terrible to wake up. Well, more terrible than usual.
This is all filler. There will come a time when I won’t be able to write filler anymore; where this will all seem ridiculous and puerile and a terrible waste of time. Then I’ll either write something worthwhile or give up. My track record doesn’t bode well, I’ll warn you. I tend to give up at times like that after a last fiery burst of inspiration. I think it’s the final inspiration that pushes me over the edge. I mean, I’ve done it then, you know. I’ve created something worthwhile. What more is there after that? It’s the process that’s important. This is painful, this typing without actually saying something excuse for fun.
So much consternation. It feels good to consternate again. I think my writing has suffered from lack of consternations. Where would I be without consternations? Oh, yeah. Now I remember. I would be actually writing something that people may want to read. I always forget that part. I’ll end this as I began, with sense-free words.
Bursting organs and twirling chairs while I keep my eyes off the road and type away. The chimney pokes out of the roof and birds take a likening to its poking. It’s hard to conjugate poke, in case you’ve never tried. There aren’t many options.
I’m not looking forward to scrolling up and trying to put this into some sense of order. Maybe I’ll correct the misspelled words and call it a night. This musing definitely needs a warning to throw off the sense of pathetic talentless hack. Sleep beckons. After tonight, I should be back on the schedule, ready to conquer the world again. I wonder if the world still needs conquering. I’m always afraid that I’ll go to sleep one day, and when I wake up, the world will be perfect and no longer in need of my particular skills.
It’s early and I’m sleepy. I don’t remember feeling this way before. When I close my eyes to blink, the blink takes a long time. It’s not that I’m blinking slowly—it’s very difficult to control the speed of your blink. Try it if you don’t believe me. It’s more that once I close my eyes they don’t want to open again. Throughout the day, I caught myself momentarily sleeping. With my eyes closed everything felt desirable and warm and proper in that everything is right with the world if I just keep my eyes closed kind of way. Sleep pulled me down toward its dark maw. I resisted, it not being sleep time and everything. I forced open my eyes, imagining tiny replicas of the Jaws of Life they use in car wrecks. It didn’t have that satisfying metal grating sound, however. I guess there is only so much my imagination can manage when I’m sleepy.
I slept a full night again last night. That’s two straight full night’s sleep. That’s a strange expression, “night’s sleep.” Does the sleep belong to the night? Or maybe it’s “nights sleep.” Word doesn’t seem to think that’s correct. It underlined the words with green and blue squiggles. Either way, it is clear that I need more sleep. I’ve become a true believer in the truths of sleep debt. There’s too much in the way of red ink on my ledger. I miss the days of ledgers. Not that I would have ever used one (heck, I never even used my check register). But the idea of a large book with all of my finances written in small print in little boxes seems somehow soothing. I guess I played Accountants too much as a little kid.
I don’t know what’s going to happen when I finish with the sleep debt and the jetlag, and the weather stabilizes. I’ll have nothing to spend paragraphs complaining about. I guess at that time I’ll switch back to consternating about my lack of writing. Well, seeing as I’m keeping to my goal, it’s not exactly a lack of writing, it’s more a lack of storying. Once I story again I won’t need to worry about the consternation because I won’t have time for it. Imagine that: spending so much time and effort telling stories about imaginary people that I barely have enough time to tell stories about myself. Yup, the world would be a better place when that happens. I find that imaginary people live much more interesting lives than me. I’m a bit green about it. Or is it pink or blue or lavender? I always forget envy’s color.
The story draft below is a snippet that went nowhere. I always thought nowhere would be an interesting place. After visiting it, I can honestly say it’s not all I expected.
I do not have self control. I spent the day watching television. I popped in one DVD after the next, eating episodes like gummy bears, where I have no choice but to finish the bag. Not only are gummy bears yummy, but I can’t in good conscience leave a gummy bear alone in a plastic bag. The jealousy would be too great. I couldn’t stop watching the DVDs as long as there were more episodes waiting for me. If exhaustion didn’t kick in about ten minutes ago, I would still be stuck to my couch watching the final two disks of the second season of “The Wire.” I am pathetic.
Late in the afternoon I managed to peel myself off the couch and leave the Castle. It was difficult but hunger won out. I was afraid that if I vegetated the entire day, I would wither away. My pants have grown suspiciously loose around my waste. Even my belt is too small. I might need to shorten it again. This is all not a good sign. It’s just that I’m not good alone. Given enough alone time I’ll end up sitting around all day doing nothing. It’s an inertial thing. I don’t have the energy to start doing anything. My trip to Albertsons was born out of desperation. If there was any food left in the Castle—and I spent some time searching through the cupboards, good ol’ boards of cups—I would have eaten at home until I found crazy. Crazy is right around the corner most weekends when I have nothing to do but quietly comb my hair with my fingers. Yes, it’s that bad.
My sleep schedule is almost back to normal. I’m only a bit skewed toward the early hours and evenings now. Maybe a “bit skewed” is not the right description. I woke up at around four this morning and didn’t nap. I had plans to nap but nothingness won out and I sat around and celebrated its anniversary. I’m hoping to slip back into my normal 630 to 2200 schedule soon enough. I’m tired now and it’s barely 2100 hours. Military time is easier to type without the pee and ays and ems.
I thought about storying but my brain couldn’t wrap itself around an idea right now. I should have storyed before, when it was still early and I had all the time in the day. There are many things I should have done. It is the proverbial broken record of my life’s story. I wish CDs and mp3s skipped like broken records. I wonder if that saying will disappear as nobody remembers what a repeating record sounds like. Broken digital music usually doesn’t sound like anything. Ah, isn’t filler great? That talk about skipping records was only a small sentence before. Now it’s a good eighty words and growing, as I talk about how long it is. I have to get the Marathon out of my fingers. By January I should be back to my on word paragraphs.
My eyes are closing as I read through the internet. Yeah, I wasn’t writing a few minutes ago. I was distracted again. My fingers and wrists hurt from programming the wedding website and typing these stupid entries and ridiculously bad stories. I’m not in a good mood tonight, it seems. Such consternation coming out of my little keyboard, it’s embarrassing sometimes. I can’t even stand my own complaining. I need to focus these energies on better things. I’m pushing words to push words instead of to tell something. Isn’t this what my new goal is all about?
Before the filler, at this point I still had lots of words left for today. It was not a good sign then, but now it’s not so bad. Tomorrow I hope to spend a few hours writing the wedding photos story. I’m going to ditch my first part draft. I don’t know how the old man narrator who, as the Julies put it, had part Texan part New York accent, stormed into my story, but suffice to say he was not invited and it turns out he didn’t bring much in the way of gifts or interesting stories. He can go now, unless he wants to write the rest of this entry. No? Then he is not most definitely not welcome (or “most def,” a favorite terrible line from “The Wire”—I waste way too many of my brain cells remembering details about that show).
I feel like everything is too tight. My muscles ache—probably from too much sitting and laying about—my fingers feel like they’re about to fall off, and my body feels uncomfortable and not capable of holding in my insides. It is a very weird feeling. I’m watching that Word Count very closely. It’s been another one of those days where I want to get this over with, but at the same time I wanted to say something. Today those happened to be contradictory goals.
I’m picking at my brain trying to find something to write about. Usually large slabs of gray matter flake off when I start picking, but today there’s not much there. It’s smooth and useless, kind of like my body feels. I need to get out of the house tomorrow, experience some things, run away from the computers and the televisions. I’m actually looking forward to work on Monday. Julie warned me about the stir craziness. I always seem to forget how bad I get when I stay at home.
I’m off to New York starting next weekend for a continuing education class. I needs me some smarts. It’ll be nice to see my family again. I won’t be visiting my sister and her new monsters until probably new years. These are all very important details that I felt the need to record. Do you see where blankness gets me? I record my travel schedule. We’re also planning to visit Dallas over the holidays. This will be a busy two months of flying.
I hit my allotted words for the day. I’m not proud but I am done. I figure if I keep at it, writing words every day, eventually some of the words may start making sense or forming together interesting sentences, and once I can tie together sentences, paragraphs won’t be too far off. I don’t dare dream further than paragraphs. I understand that’s way beyond me. For now it’s all about tiny steps on tiny keyboards.
My coffee shop has limited batteries. I’ll try to make the best of it. I caress the keys knowing them by touch alone. I won’t waste my words today. The yummy caffeine is tasty and I’m hopeful. I’m surrounded by wooden hope. The wooden floors are still dirty but even they are hopeful.
I thought I had more than I did. That’s the way it goes with these things. At least I’ll always have the nice floors.
The words I wrote today were too disorganized to even post locked. They’re new fragments from the photo shoot story, and there were a lot of them. Mostly useless but I saw some story elements forming here and there. Let's see if I can mush them into something more useful tomorrow.
I find it hard to balance telling a story with writing a story. I lose myself in either the telling or the writing and end up with crap: good writing that meanders about without saying anything; or terrible writing that tells a story without showing it. The storytelling is in how I blend those two pieces into one.
I don’t have an easy answer for this. It’s the same with thinking. Too much thinking or too little thinking, both are no good. Neither is the wrong type of thinking. The rational mind is sometimes a barrier and sometimes a muse. Take the photography story as an example. I’ve tried the writing-only approach twice and both times I did not end up with much of a story. I tried deep thoughts and rationality and came up with only one obstacle: rain on the wedding day (okay, on the photography day—The Morisette song was stuck in my head). How sad is that? There was also some sort of broken relationship. My originality is truly astounding. Dumbfoundingly so. There are two explanations: I’m a moron (okay, that’s a given), or I really have no ability to tell stories. I can convey what happened but when it comes to creating new happenings, I end up with a blank stare and a rainy day.
Argh. How do I fix this then?
Today was a depressing day. Let me clarify, the day itself was not depressing. Nothing bad happened and even the weather turned decent after a brief rain shower. What I mean is that I was terribly depressed today. It was a combination of missing the Julies and “The Wire” withdrawal, and maybe a few other minor things thrown into the mix. Whatever caused it, I went around like a zombie searching for brains. I don’t even know what that means. After seeing all those zombie movies, I’m not sure that analogy is apt. I just found myself not caring about much today, going through the motions. Even two cups of yummy caffeine didn’t seem to help things.
But that’s mostly over I think. It’s early evening and I’m tired again. I think another good night’s sleep followed by a busy morning tomorrow should get me out of my funk. It’s not a bad depression. I’m here typing away which is a good sign. It’s not a delicious depression either. Those days find me typing words of incredible emotive power. Yeah, that was funny for me too. Imagine me writing anything with incredible anything, let alone incredible emotions. Except for the little girl bicycling and falling, I don’t think I’ve ever written anything emotional. I probably don’t even have that ability. However much I would like to pretend, I ain’t no Dickens.
That was one of my hopes: emotive writing, along with insightful and choice laden and philosophical and theological and real, always real, and all my other piles of missed but nicely sorted dreams. I have a long list of musings for my writing, and yet here I am, consternating about how poor all of my realizations of those dreams end up. I’m blasting through my word count today. I should be spending these words on something more valuable.
I based this teeny tiny story on the view I caught while walking home from the van’s meeting spot. Most days recently I have driven to the pickup spot instead of walking, which goes to show how lazy I’ve become. I used to enjoy the walk, and only partly because of the good weather. It’s not that I’ve stopped liking to walk; it’s more that I grew tired of the same walk. There’s only one realistic route to the van’s meeting spot, and after I’ve walked it a few hundred times, the houses and the scenery don’t excite me anymore. Well, most of the time, that is. And I won’t talk about the weather. Wait, I already did. It rains here often. And it’s been cold. And did I mention it even snowed last week.
I woke up early today to a thick cold fog. For reasons that I still can’t explain, I thought that once the fog lifted it would warm up. It stayed cool all day, but I’m glad I walked this morning. On the way home, I walk down a huge hill that overlooks the lake. (This means I walk up the same huge hill in the morning—my daily exercise, which leaves me huffing when I reach the top, a few hundred feet from the synagogue’s parking lot where we leave.) Most of my neighborhood overlooks the lake, but this view in particular on this particular day was spectacular. It was dark already and the moon hung low over the lake. The lights on the houses casted long reflections onto the lake. These reflections were swallowed up by the moon’s own reflection. The horizon behind the houses was slightly illuminated by the city lights. There was a feeling of pink in the lights and reflections. Ah. Who am I kidding? These words are not doing justice to the view. But they do eat into my word count, and that is also important.
This morning’s fog was spectacular when we crossed the floating bridge over the lake. It was sunny on the bridge, but I could see my neighborhood covered in the fog with only the tops of trees poking out. Mt. Rainer, which majestically stands at the edge of the lake, was crisp in the cold morning air. Half of her was covered by the clouds, which looked suspiciously like a too-too around her expanding waist.
I’m leaving for New York City in a couple of days to attend a continuing education class and to visit the family and friends. I’m looking forward to my trip even though I only recently managed to get over my jetlag from Taiwan. This will be a busy end of the year, as I finish up work projects, make a couple of trips to New York and one to Dallas.
This paragraph is going to push me over my goal. Chuck sent me some feedback earlier in the week. He thinks I’m torturing myself for no good reason through my pursuit of the Goal. Looking at last week’s writing, I would agree with him. This week I’ve been doing better. There are many more locked posts, which I believe is a good sign. And talking of signs, I think this will push me over the Goal. Nope, but this will. Yes, I know, I’m pathetic. So sue me.
I will live with story synopses for the rest of the week. I need to start thinking beyond my clever writing and start telling stories. The words don’t matter—the words never mattered in the beginning. Once I have a decent story to tell, then I can worry about the words and whether I’m telling the story well.
I arrived in Brooklyn tonight after an uneventful flight. It’s cold. I wrote the below story synopsis on the airplane between movies and television (I realized how much I missed FoodTV on the plane—isn’t cable television on airplanes great?). The synopsis is terrible, but different once you get passed that sick feeling in your stomach that the topic invokes. I’m pushing envelopes—the type with large paper airplanes stuffed inside them. I wasn’t comfortable writing it, but I guess it’s good to push my boundaries. And that’s what I did up to the end where I lost steam and gave up. I’m good at giving up at the end. You can even call it one of my super strengths.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, I have a few hundred words left and I’m going to stick them here instead of synopsizing more.
Julie is in Hong Kong this weekend. Wow. I never realized the words Hong Kong looked so much like King Kong. She’s returning to Seattle either Wednesday or Friday. I’m hoping for Wednesday. This time away from her has felt much longer than usual. Before our Thanksgiving trip to Taiwan, we didn’t travel much over the last six months or so. We fell into a nice routine in the Castle which I liked. I think Julie was looking for a change, though. She seems happier when she’s doing different things. Once she figures out what she’s doing in Seattle, I’m hoping she grows more comfortable with the sameness. Or would it be differentness if that’s what she chooses.
I have lots planned over the next few days. I’m spending the morning and afternoon with my mother tomorrow, and then visiting Steven, where we plan to play many video games over the course of the night and early morning. On Sunday I’m visiting Eileen in New Jersey before heading into the city to check in to the hotel for the course. On Monday night I’m visiting with some friends from my old firm, before heading out Wednesday morning. Oh, and there’s some sort continuing education course I’m taking. That’s why I came, if you remember.
That did it, pushed me over the count. Yeah me.
It’s one of those days again. I don’t have much planned to write. In a few hours I’ll head over to Steven’s for a night filled with video games. But first I have to Goal. There are days when the Goal feels like a chore. This is not one of them. Even with nothing planned I’m looking forward to sitting here with my mug of Folgers’ drip coffee and pounding away.
Speaking of coffee—it’s always nice to free associate on unplanned days—I’m a bit of a coffee snob now. “Now” is probably too strong of a word. Up through a few years ago I didn’t even drink coffee. (I’m experimenting with dropping the early commas—let me know what you think.) I began my addiction at the bucks of stars in Houston, Texas. Tamer and Natalia, two former colleagues and current friends, dragged me to the bucks during our coffee breaks. I ordered hot chocolate. It was embarrassing.
This wasn’t the first time I was embarrassed by ordering hot chocolate at a coffee joint. When I was working in NYC, we travelled to D.C. often for a case we worked on. At the D.C. office, one of the partners used to take us out to the bucks of stars there. This was before the bucks of stars became popular in the city, and at the time, I don’t think I even heard of it. (Take that with a grain of salt. Remember, I don’t trust my memories from last week, let alone seven years ago.) I certainly didn’t know the difference between tall, grande, and vente, or cappuccino and espresso. The partner was an addict, however. I used to look down on coffee addicts. I used to think they were weak because they relied on drugs to live their life. I was wrong, of course. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Back to Houston: After a while I began experimenting with mochas. Mochas are hot chocolate with steamed milk, a shot of espresso, and a dab of whipped cream. If you look back through sewcrates.com (not something I recommend you do on an empty stomach), you may notice a correlation between when I started writing in earnest and when I started drinking yummy caffeine. I didn’t make the connection then, but there may be something to it. I won’t discount that it was during Houston that I started this website, and it was the website that provided me a vehicle to share my thoughts. Without a place to share my thoughts I probably would never have recorded so many of them. (We’ll leave the value of these recordings for another day.)
Speaking of mochas, I never understood the people who dissolved the whipped cream into the coffee. It seemed such a waste. Like my theory of butter on waffles and bread (the butter should never be allowed to melt), I like my whipped cream whole. It’s only when whipped cream is in its solid form that I taste the yummy fattiness. The only exception is that I sometimes spoon the whipped cream up and dip it into the chocolate, which is the only acceptable exception. Okay, that was a completely random thought, even for such a random musings that came out of nowhere.
After leaving Houston I arrived in Seattle, the coffee capital of the world. At least that was how they branded themselves. And seeing how the bucks of stars originated there (in Pike Street market), I guess they have good evidence that coffee did become popular here in coffee shop form. In Taiwan the coffeehouses have become popular as well. They replaced the boba tea places (I didn’t spell that correctly—it’s the milk teas with the tapioca balls at the bottom that you suck up through a very large straw). And, not surprisingly, many of the coffeehouse chains in Taiwan claim to have originated in Seattle. I’ve been to most of the Seattle coffeehouses and I have my doubts about that claim. I imagine the Italians may have a different view of the history of coffee.
It was in Seattle that I began to experiment with different coffee houses and coffee drinks. I moved from mocha to cappuccino to Americano (my Houston boss’s favorite drink—he swore by the vente-sized one) to drip. Julie bought us an espresso machine for the Castle. This has been a wonderful addition as I can write in the evenings with a hot mug of coffee.
I am now at the point where I can drink anything to get my fix. I do have preferences. The baseline is the bucks of stars coffee. It’s a decent blend and I find that the coffee and the flavored coffee drinks are adequate if a bit on the sweet side. The higher end coffee is usually made by the independent coffeehouses scattered throughout Seattle. Even among those houses I have my preferences.
This has been a very long way for me to say that I’m okay with the Folgers brand I’m drinking in Brooklyn. It’s clearly of a lower quality than the bucks of stars, but it has caffeine, and, as you should be able to tell by these words flying off my fingers—I wish there were a way to convey the velocity of the words—the caffeine is what enables me to write.
So, as I was saying, I’m in Brooklyn with a mug of Folgers coffee, sitting in the living room with my mother. She is playing Sudoku on a new electronic gizmo that my brother-in-law bought. It is late afternoon after a not-so restful sleep last night. Julie called me after I fell asleep, and my mother received a late night call. The telephone ringer in my sisters’ old bedroom (where I sleep when I visit) is very loud. It went off a few more times after I woke up.
I spoke to Randy, my youngest sister, for a while this morning, which is what made me think of my history of yummy caffeine drinking. I was talking to Randy about her life’s plans. She wants to write a book as well. Not a fiction novel, as is my never-going-to-happen plan, but a non-fiction entrepreneurial book. She asked how I got through the losing focus part. I pointed her to my track record, and the fact that I’ve never written anything of note. But after providing disclaimers and hemming and hawing, I gave her my advice: write every day and dose yourself with proper dose of caffeine. It’s difficult to find the right dosage, but once you do, the focus and the inspiration become secondary.
We also discussed my personal growth over the last few years. Obviously Julie played an enormous part in this growth. But I told Randy that yummy caffeine came in a close second. But for caffeine, I wouldn’t be writing or thinking as much as I do. I can’t believe I wasted so much of my life without drugging myself.
Speaking of Julie, I realized over the past couple of week that the more I’m apart from Julie, the more I revert to my childish lazy ways. And I’m not saying that to (again) make her feel guilty for abandoning me. There, I’m doing it again, and boy does it feel good.
Okay, enough. I’m hoping to get back to synopsizing tomorrow. Today I felt like ranting and reminiscing, and rant and reminisce I did.
I spent the day with Eileen and her children. I’m now in my hotel room relaxing. I have a mug of yummy caffeine from the bucks of stars next to me and a few hours to pound away before Julie wakes up. I haven’t had much time to talk with her over the last few days. She’s been very busy in Hong Kong and Taiwan while I’ve been busy with the NYC family and friends thing. With the time difference (which is even more extreme on the east coast), our schedules haven’t overlapped much. Hopefully that will change tonight. This leaves me still a few hours to wander around in my empty head to see if anything stuck over my fun-filled day (expect niece photos when I return).
I spoke with Julie after finishing the first paragraph (I misjudged the few hours thing). When she called she was halfway between sleep and wakefulness. After chatting for a bit, she decided to return to sleep. I don’t know what that says about me.
The coffee isn’t doing much for me tonight. It was a long day. Tomorrow promises to be longer with the continuing education class. I chose a topic I know nothing about this year. I’m hoping that it will be more interesting because of that. In the past I usually chose topics that I was intimately familiar with from work, hoping that the class would add knowledge that would help me at work. Every one of those classes was terrible. We’ll see if attending classes with topics outside my comfort area will improve my concentration or interest, or if these types of classes in general are a natural waste of time (so says the David, he who is too smart to learn anything new. All hail the brilliant David).
Still nothing: no new ideas flirt with me. If I was an idea, I’m not sure how much flirting I would want to do with me either (can’t you just taste the overcomplicated sentence and what that means for my word padding?). Things are quiet in the hotel room except for the neighbor’s monsters. The monsters are the loud squealing type. When I’m not paying attention I don’t hear them. Give me a moment of quiet reflection, where the words stop flowing and an oversized cork wedges itself between my brain and my fingers, and I hear the monsters’ squeals and screams echoing through the halls and throughout my room.
My lips are chapped. I’m not used to the New York cold and I meant but failed to buy chapstick. I’ll rectify that tomorrow and report on all the waxy goodness. (Does my randomness ever end?)
Speaking of randomness, overall I’ve been happy with my writing output. I wish I wrote more stories and synopses, but overall it feels good to write something every day, even if that something is bland recordings of non-happenings or endless consternations about how terrible a writer I am and always will be. I figure when I run out of things to say about the day and the weather (which was surprisingly warm in NYC today) and the rest of the useless things I include in these silly musings, I’ll get back to the business of the day, storying. The television beckons me but I know better to resist than be drawn into its clutches this early in the night. I guess it’s not that early anymore if I look at east coast time.
I’m very popular today. I just got off the phone again. This is not conducive to my early word count. I’m heading into the final stretch, however. And I did think of something to write about. For better or worse I included all this filler before the meat. Mmm…filler filled meat.
Before heading to Eileen’s house this morning, my mother and I stopped along Coney Island Avenue to buy a menorah for the Castle. I haven’t owned a menorah in some time, since shifting away from Judaism in high school and then college. (My mother kept pushing menorahs on me, which I placed at the top of various closets in my geographically challenged homes.) As I’ve written about before, since Julie and I have been going through the conversion classes, I’ve been slowly rediscovering my religion. Buying a menorah for the Castle was only the next step in this rediscovery.
The area we visited around Coney Island Avenue is a very Orthodox Jewish (or Observant Jewish, depending on who you speak to) area. The Jews there very much believe the old teachings of the ancient rabbis. They live a very orthodox life, e.g., the men, even the non-rabbis, wear yarmulkes (head coverings), pray three times a day, and the woman wear wigs or hats and long skirts, and usually have a cadre of children running around in skirts and dark suits. This is very similar to the much smaller community near where I live in Seattle (except for the suit thing—somehow the suit tradition didn’t make it to the west coast).
When we entered this five or so block radius (after struggling to find parking—that’s one thing I don’t miss about NYC, the constant circling and hunting for a place to stick your car for an hour), it’s like we entered a different world. All the restaurants, delis, butchers, i.e., any place that served food, was certified glatt kosher. As I’ve been experimenting with eating kosher (moving from a “kosher lite,” which included not mixing milk and meat together, and eating kosher-style meats (e.g., no pork), to a more heavy “kosher lite,” which includes only eating certified kosher meats, which means I eat only fish and dairy out in restaurants now and save my carnivore impulses for Castle meals), it was strange to see so many places that served kosher food. In Seattle, there are only a handful of kosher restaurants or even grocery stores that have a small section for kosher food. Here was an entire neighborhood that followed these strange and old rules and ideas.
My mother and I shopped in Eichler’s Juadaica store for the menorah. It’s a weird experience to be around so many Orthodox Jews, and only partly because I felt everyone of them as judging me (yes, I know that not one of them probably gave me a second thought—not everything revolves around me, me, me). Here were people who chose to live their lives in a specific way according to rules and customs set down thousands of years ago by rabbis. With my ego and authority problems, I’m not sure I can ever do that. I mean, who are these ancient rabbis who know more than the great and powerful David. (Down, ego. Down!)
The store had a decent sized book collection. What was not surprising was that every book they carried (at least as far I was able to determine) supported their world view. While I didn’t expect a section devoted to Christian teachings, it would have been interesting to have a section devoted to non-traditional Jewish teachings. The Judaica section in a mainstream bookstore is larger than Eichler’s store because it carries the works of not just Orthodox Jews but all Jews.
The Orthodox Jews live a very insular existence. I’ve done a lot of thinking about that choice. I don’t have any answers, though. Their insular existence protects them from the outside world and its very negative influences. There are many positives about this way of life, and I can see how the outside world threatens it. One of the books I thumbed through seemed to emphasize this point. I don’t remember the title, but the point of the book was to discuss the children of Orthodox Judaism who were moving away from the orthodoxy, and what to do about this modern exodus. My point isn’t to belittle or judge the Orthodox Jews’ choice but to understand it.
I didn’t arrive at where I wanted to go with this anecdote. There were so many questions and discussions ricocheting around in my brain about theology, and I didn’t touch any of it. It is getting late and I have an early class tomorrow. Maybe I’ll reach some of these issues later in the week. Or, better yet, turn some of these issues into a poorly written story. Wouldn’t that be swell?
I’m starting this writing late. It’s not fun to begin these entries with complaints, but complaints (and consternations to a greater extent) get my juices flowing. I guess no matter how much I pretend to have grown as a person and moved beyond complaining to all who possess ears, my senseless writings betray (in my slightly inebriated state, written as “portray”) my best intentions and allow my true self to (proverbially) shine through. Speaking of complaints, this may be an especially painful entry as my stomach is performing tricks that I don’t remember teaching it.
The first session of the class was more informative if no less boring than my previous continuing education classes. They provided snacks during the breaks. One of the snacks was gourmet jelly beans. I don’t remember these beans from when I was growing up. The beans were all different colors, some with speckles and some solid colors. The colors and patterns represented the individual flavor of the beans. There was popcorn and chocolate and apples and various wonderful tastes, each more unexpected than the last. Don’t tell anybody, but I had more than my fair share of jelly beans.
After the class I met some friends from my old firm for dinner and drinks at a restaurant close to my hotel. The food was good but left me a bit sick. I’m not sure if the food was too fatty or if I ate too much of it or if there was something wrong with it, but I’m happy to be back in the hotel room where I can recover in peace. My friends are doing great. It was nice to see them again. They’re all older and more experienced but generally the same people as when I left them in NYC. They kept asking me when I planned to return to NYC. It’s a very good question for which I don’t have an answer yet. As to what I’ve turned into after my five years away from NYC, they didn’t comment.
I did have plans to write something story-like today. I obviously failed. What follows is more consternations and senseless musings. Shocking and surprising, I know.
Did I mention I’m slightly drunk? Okay, I’m not drunk. I only had one beer. But with my stomach feeling the way it does and the late hour, I’m thinking I may not have enough to go on tonight. Okay, so I’m being a drama queen. I won’t post this until tomorrow but I’ll obviously finish it tonight as I always do (even if it turns out to be nothing more than complaints—which is not far from what happened).
I have the choice between buying overpriced internet at the hotel for $15 or overpriced wi-fi at the conference for $9. I bought the hotel’s internet yesterday, which meant I missed out on possibly working and browsing the magical interwebs during the class. I won’t miss the same opportunity tomorrow. For the price that people pay for these courses, the wi-fi should be free. I guess the same could be said about the hotel internet. Any way people find to make a dollar, they make that dollar. Isn’t America wonderful? Although, for my money, I think Asia is more entrepreneurial than the US. From the constant negotiations in the shops to the street vendors and crowded streets covered in neon signs, Asia feels like capitalism overdone. Except for a few holdouts (including NYC), the US feels like it is one big overstocked strip mall.
I’m multitasking. I’m writing this while playing poker in the other window. I’m a terrible poker player and the computer is winning. I won’t be quitting my day job to play professionally. I don’t know how those people do it. I can’t imagine playing poker all night. I’d fall asleep before I won any money. I guess different people are built different ways. I’m built more skinny and weak and unable to play poker or at least able to win money at poker. Now if we talked video games that might be a different story. It beat me again, by the way, the poker computer. But back to video games. My video game night—which I haven’t gotten around to reporting on—went well. Steven and his brother and I played Champions of Norrath for many hours and ate authentic Brooklyn pizza. All in all, a great way to spend an evening of my NYC visit.
That was Julie on the phone. She called to check in. She’s finalizing our wedding photos today, and she needed my help to choose the photo album and the two enlarged photos. With the full-day wedding photo shoot and the humongous oversized photo album, Taiwan has the wedding industry down to a science (will the cliches ever stop?). I won’t say where that down is, however.
I’m still not doing well in poker. I’m beginning to think the beer had a larger effect on me than I first thought. My judgment seems to be off. I’m growing tired. I stayed up too late last night watching television. I’m such an addict. Give me the choice between watching television and sleeping, and I’ll choose television every time. I’m like the chimpanzees they tested cocaine on: they choose cocaine over being with other chimps and eating food—going as far as starving to death instead of choosing food over the drugs.
I think that’s one of the reasons my last jetlag was so terrible. I had an entire two seasons of “The Wire” to watch, and by staying up all night, I was able to whip through the seasons. That’s only partly true, of course. The jetlag gave me the excuse to turn it on. My addiction kept me up beyond when I was tired and could have gone to sleep. Still, it’s bad either way.
My poker game is getting worse. I should give up and finish writing and go to sleep. Julie will probably call back, so maybe I should continue playing, or, better yet, finish my words and turn on the television and play poker. That would be excellent. Man, this should not count as meeting my Goal. It feels too damn cheesy and terrible.
Wow. Even as I wrote the last paragraph I managed to win a game. It’s strange to play the last hand of the match and not realize you have the winning cards until the music plays. Yes, I’m that bad. But think how much worse the computer must be (or how much worse it pretends to be—I’m sure like in chess, a well-programmed computer would stomp a human player every time).
Class went by quickly today thanks to internet access. I’m not sure I heard every word but I heard enough, and besides, I received my credits. Isn’t that what life is? The pursuit of empty ridiculous achievements that see you through the lonely nights? I’m venting. Surprise. I left class with high hopes tonight. The New York air was warm and the crowds were thick as cobwebs as I walked back to my hotel. Inspiration was in the air and I breathed deeply, filling my lungs with its heavy scent.
I returned to the hotel room, watched a wee bit of television before heading out for a steak dinner at a kosher restaurant. They don’t have kosher steakhouses in Seattle, and I thought it would be a nice change. The food was delicious but the service was less than fabulous. Since we’re close to Christmas, there were many company holiday parties sitting at pushed-together tables. I had forgotten the attitudes of New Yorkers. It’s not that they’re rude, although it does look that way to those who don’t understand them or those that have been away awhile. It’s that the city is big and you can’t be friends with everyone and maintain your sanity. It’s why I never learned to hold the doors open for other people when leaving a building. If you do that when in New York, you’ll never escape the door. There are too many people that walk in and out of those doors.
In Houston and Seattle (to a slightly lesser extent) there are smaller crowds and people tend to be nicer and in less of a rush. When I arrived at the restaurant at seven and asked for a table for one, the hostess looked disgusted. She made a remark about holiday parties and reservations before escorting me to a table. The waiter at the section made the comment, “another one top?” (a one top is a single table in restaurant-ese, and I clearly wasn’t the first that night). I frantically chose a glass of wine—selecting on spelling alone after they were out of my first two choices, which I had chosen based on geography—and settled in for my meal. I wrote notes in my Moleskine while eating, feeling a bit self conscious about pulling out the New Yorker I had brought with me to read. Eating alone on a Tuesday night used to be rather common. I’ve grown uncomfortable in restaurants alone. Julie has spoiled me. I wrote that a long relaxing evening waited for me. There should be nothing wrong with relaxation.
I ended the dinner conspicuously. After paying the check I stood up and dragged the tablecloth with me, knocking over my empty wine glass. The glass fell to the ground and crashed loudly. At first I thought to leave without saying anything. Surely the wait staff heard. But I couldn’t do it, and I decided to do the right thing by telling the waiter. He ignored my first two attempts at eye contact and explanation, waving me off, before, clearly feeling my need for a response, said something along the lines of there’s nothing you can do about it now. I read his mind and added the “so leave” part to the end of his response. As I struggled to put away my New Yorker, Moleskine, and wallet with my dinner receipt, I managed to knock my water glass over. I caught it before the glass fell off the table. I didn’t bother to look back. I juggled my things into their respective pockets and escaped through the restaurant door and into the crowded night.
I don’t know if it was the heavy (if delicious) steak or the glass of Chardonnay, but something threw me for a loop. One minute I was jotting down notes for a story as fast as I could scribble, and the next I’m staring at the empty walls wondering when they planned to devour me. Depression struck and struck hard on my walk home. I ended up sitting in bed staring at the tube for the last few hours after typing about 20 words of a story that went nowhere quickly. And it was such a beautiful night for my final day in New York City.
I met my uncle for lunch today. We went to the Stage Deli, a tourist trap that my uncle had fond memories of. They stack deli meats high on rye buns and serve it with oversized pickles in crowded tables. A line forms outside each day, as the big red double-decker buses (some of which are no longer red) supply a constant stream of people. I ate tuna fish on rye. I was a bit nervous about my stomach after last night’s heroics, so I decided to go slow with the eating. I managed only half the tuna fish and very little of the bread. My uncle took home the other half of my sandwich and his, and the rest of his fries. He’s very good at eating leftovers, having been taught not to waste food by his depression-era parents. He tells me my father was the same way. He finished what was put in front of him. I never had to learn those hard lessons.
I returned home to find that while I was away, the heat had turned itself off. The Castle was freezing. It must have grown lonely with both Julie and me gone. I don’t blame it. I’ve since gotten the heat up and running again. My nose is up and running again as I hide under the green blanket waiting for the Castle to warm up. I ate a quick dinner and I decided to get the writing out of the way. Not that it was in the way necessarily, and not that I have anything better to do once I get it out of the way. It’s just that I’m not caffeinated and I acquired a slight headache on the return trip home, which has left me out of sorts. There was plenty of traffic from the airport to the Castle, and with the headaches and the complaints and the coldness, well, I’m not moving my fingers so well.
I didn’t get any writing done on the plane. I grew discouraged when my power cord did not work in the airport. I have a few plugs for my laptop, and this one (the one I use at home and when I travel) seems to be on its last cord (heh—it was funnier when I first wrote it, trust me. You had to be there). I’m writing this on battery power, which means if it runs out I won’t be able to post it tonight. So far I’m doing rather well (this is the editor David talking—the first draft David finished about five minutes ago).
The flight back was uneventful. I watched the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and then about five sitcoms. This is the first time I’ve seen Continental televise sitcoms this way: one after the next with no commercial breaks. I realized how little I missed watching regular television as each episode grew more painful than the previous. The plan was to show the Simpsons last, which I was looking forward to, but we landed before it got there. The sitcoms did help pass the time or get the time out of the way. For that I was grateful. The ride was a bit bumpy at the end but not too bad—certainly not as bad as my return flight from Taiwan, where the drinks threatened to spill over if they were not properly covered by the palm of my hands.
The weather cooled and turned rainy in New York. Seattle greeted me with almost exactly the same weather, except for higher winds and more traffic (which can be explained by the fact that it was noonish when my mother drove me to the airport in NY, and around six when I drove home from the airport in Seattle).
Yes, I’m pushing words now. You should be used to it and ready to ignore these useless words. I’m okay with that. On days like this all I can hope for is to keep my finger and words in shape so on the days where I have the energy and ability, I can actually write something. I bet you didn’t see that coming: consternating about not writing stories. Unexpected, huh. And I bet the consternation about the consternation was unexpected as well. I could go on like this until I reach the Goal but I choose not to. There must be other things to talk about.
I set up the new menorah my mother bought us. It’s in the living room on the table with its candles ready to go for Friday night. It looks like Julie won’t be returning until Friday night. She was on standby for the Thursday flight. Even if they had room for her on the Thursday flight, I wouldn’t be able to pick her up from the airport until much after she arrived. The Thursday flight gets in at 2pm, and I have too many meetings and work to catch up on to escape before five. This hopefully won’t be a problem for Julie’s Friday night flight. I just have to figure out when I’m going to get to Albertson’s to ready the groceries for the late Shabbot dinner when she arrives. Such a lucky Julies.
For a decaffeinated night, I’m pounding through these words. I only have a few hundred left and I can call this written and posted before my batteries die. I don’t know what I’m going to do for the rest of the evening. I would like nothing better than to lie down and fall asleep. I took a nap on the plane, which I now think pushed over my sleep clock. I pathologically yawned on the drive home, and I feel no better now. A good night’s sleep is what I need. I just wish it was sleep time.
Speaking of sleep, I managed to snooze for more than an entire hour this morning. The alarm went off at 8am (it was set for my class the previous two days) and I decided that instead of resetting it, I would enjoy the snooze time. I know snooze time does not equate to good quality sleep time, but there’s something exceptionally gratifying about having permission to hit the snooze button repeatedly and roll over and sleep in nine-minute intervals. I could have reset the alarm at any time but decided against it. By snoozing and having my vibrating phone on the hotel’s rug (which caused me not to hear it over the street noise and the heater), I missed Julie’s early morning calls. I did catch her as I contemplated whether I should get up at 9am, and even spoke with her for longer than usual. I guess snoozing wasn’t all I had hoped it to be.
I realize the ridiculousness of these non-entries. I don’t say anything but I do get words. I’m on my last twenty now. I’m going to go downstairs and veg out in front of the television. After watching a crapload of television over the last four days, I’m going to have to wean myself off of it slowly. Maybe the headache is television withdrawal. It’s possible, you know. Very possible.
The van took over an hour and a half to row home through the flooded Seattle roads. The rain came down something awful tonight. It turns out Seattle’s roads are not designed for heavy rain. While that may sound counterintuitive, remember, Seattle is not known for its heavy rains, only for its constant rains. People sometimes describe these rains as “misty.” I’ve heard this more than once—although both times it was from people trying to convince me and others that they should move to Seattle. I didn’t (and still don’t) believe this myth of “misty rain,” not for a moment. The rains were heavy, the type that I sometime hear described as “raining cats and dogs.” I didn’t see any animals falling from the sky, but had I seen them, I would not have been surprised.
Besides the rains, the winds have been outrageous tonight, topping out at ninety miles per hour. There were some worries in the van that the floating bridges would close. As the name suggests, the two bridges that connect the eastside (i.e., the suburbs of Seattle including where I work) with Seattle float on Lake Washington at their lowest points. With strong winds the lake water sometimes swells and swallows these sections of the floating bridges. Not surprisingly the authorities close the bridges when this happens. Luckily, the bridges did not close tonight. For a better view of what I’m complaining about, see the Seattle traffic map. If you scroll down to the middle of the map, you’ll see the two bridges with the words “Lake Washington” between them. The colors of the road segments indicate the traffic: green is clear, yellow is worrisome, red is slow, and black is terrible. The lake isn’t huge and the van does have the option of driving around the lake to return to Seattle. That option, however, adds an additional thirty minutes to the commute. It was a wash whether it would have helped our commute today. We decided to brave the bridges, and while the bridges were not too bad, many of the roads leading from the bridge to home were flooded.
The rain is still coming down. It’s a strange downpour. It sounds like every ten minutes there is a bucketful of rain dumped on top of the Castle. It takes a while for the bucket to empty itself, and when the final drops falls, another bucket is dumped on the Castle. If nothing else, it’s an interesting night here. The electricity has been flashing, which I think is causing the Castle’s heat to turn off. This may be what caused the electricity to turn off while I was away in NYC. When I turn off the heat, turn it back on, and wait the five minutes (the wait period for the thermostat to restart the heater), the heat works again. I’m hoping this is not a problem with the Castle’s heating system. Since I’m in the hoping mood, I also hope that our spot sealant work Julie and I did on the leaking porches hold through this rainy onslaught.
Okay, enough on the weather. It’s wet and thundery and miserable. But I’m hopeful and while not exactly warm, I am hiding under my green blanket with my laptop keeping my lap awfully toasty. That’s something at least.
I'm sitting at home with no electricity since very early this morning. A terrible wind and pain storm swallowed the area last night. Work closed today and it's cold in the Castle. I'm pecking this entry out on my cellphone, which is rapidly losing its charge.
Julie is in the air as I type, rapidly making her way to flooded and cold Seattle. I can't wait to see her.
Once everything returns to normal I'll post yesterday's entries and start working on today's.
I still don’t have power. The electricity went out at two thirty this morning. I know the time because the Castle alarm system has a “feature” where it starts beeping incessantly when the power goes out. You have to press Cancel at an alarm pad to turn it off. That means I had to get out of bed, go downstairs, and bang the button. If I was capable of channeling anger through my thumb, that panel would have been in big trouble. The alarm system is designed to work on batteries in the event of a power failure or if someone cuts the power lines. I don’t understand why it feels the need to beep. It’s pretty easy to figure out that the power went out: The cold air and the blank alarm clock clued me in to it even without the beeping. I guess safety before sleep is the alarm company’s motto. It’s probably better that it does beep. I can imagine some scenarios where bad buys cut the power to the alarm box and wait for the batteries to run down. I just needed a place to channel my anger at losing power and being woken up and not having enough food in the house—especially since my thumb is disgustingly weak.
After waking to my vapory breathing, I used my phone’s internet to check my mail to see if work was closed. It was, momentarily warming my cold heart (hands!). The local papers, at least the online versions, didn’t have much information on the power outage. I used the last of the Castle’s hot water to take a long shower. I then set out on a short drive to reconnoiter the damage. I figured if the outage was limited to my immediate area, I would be able to find a place to hole up, eat lunch, drink coffee, and write (assuming an adequate electrical outlet—not always a safe assumption). After driving through a dozen broken lights on the way to the highway, I realized the outage was not limited. I decided to turn back. Not surprisingly, no stores were open to buy food. While driving home in the van last night, one of the rider’s wives informed us about long lines at the supermarket checkout. We joked about how ridiculous people were to wait in long lines to buy food because of the risk of a little rain. I mean, this is Seattle where we have rain every day during the winter. It wasn’t that funny this morning. The storm last night was very abnormal for Seattle: we’re not used to crazy winds and flooding streets.
When I returned after my military reconnaissance, I scrounged the Castle for food. My cupboards were in a sad state. My house runs on electricity, and I do not have gas for the heater or the stove. That means I could only eat cold prepared food. Since Julie isn’t around I didn’t have much in the way of edible food. I settled for a power bar and crackers. I tried a sliver of cheese on my crackers from the warming fridge, but the cheese had an aftertaste of decaying food that threatened to gag me. The taste may have been in my mind (the fridge smelled of it, but the cheese was heavily packaged), but in my mind or in the cheese is the same thing. So crackers sans cheese and power bars it was.
After lighting a fire in the fireplace and finishing a couple of New Yorkers (it’s almost time to admit defeat and throw out a few months worth of magazines), at around noon I decided it was time to brave the elements. The crackers and power bars were not going to hold me. Near the airport is a large mall. There are many restaurants and bucks of stars there, and it is only a short drive from there to the airport. I headed in that direction. The roads were slow because of the broken traffic lights and the closed streets, but it didn’t take long to arrive at the highway. The exit leading to the mall was a different story. After inching through four mergers and three blinking lights, I arrived at the mall. The mall itself had power as evidenced by the packed parking lots. I thought better of going into the mall, as I figured it would be crowded from refugees from the power outage and holiday shoppers enjoying their weather-related day off.
The traffic lightened as I passed the mall and I quickly realized why. Except for an overcrowded Sizzler, the surrounding restaurants, shops, and, worst of all, bucks of stars were closed. I weighed my options and decided to head to the airport. I knew the airport had power, and there was one decent food place before security, plenty of coffee shops, electrical plugs, and even internet access (for a fee).
It’s now 4pm and Julie is scheduled to arrive in about an hour. After waiting in a long line for food and buying a large mug of coffee, I found an empty outlet next to four recycling bins and sat myself on the floor and against the wall for a bit of computer time. Except for this rushed entry I can’t say this was a particularly successful writing day. It’s nice to have electricity, internet, and food, however. I guess I should be thankful for the small things.
I had more to say but I need to pee and Julie should be here soon. I know as soon as I stand and leave the electrical outlet, somebody will swoop in and take my coveted spot. I hate the vultures. They’re looking at me now, seeing me weaken, watching me struggle with my bladder full of water and yummy caffeine. I must not give in. It is too late for me. Go on without me. (Wait, who am I talking to? Yes, the power outage has turned me mad. Or was I mad already?)
We have electricity again. No internet yet—though when I get a chance to post this, I imagine the internet will be back. Driving home from the airport with Julie last night, we decided to stop at a restaurant with electricity. There were many neighborhoods without electricity and we weren’t sure if the Castle would still be dark. After dinner we drove home and the heater’s rumbling greeted us when we parked. The Castle was still cold but warming quickly.
The weather today was cold again. Frosted grass and slippery steps greeted us in the morning as we trekked to our breakfast place. The line was past the front door and we decided to grab pastries and coffee before buying groceries and cooking breakfast at home. We spent some time emptying out the fridge of the spoiled food—if nothing else, a great excuse to remove old food.
I wrote the first half (or quarter?) of a story Chuck suggested. It’s based on my experience in the NYC restaurant. I have a vague idea where it’s going. Obviously these words in this musing are to get me to Goal. I ran out of energy where I stopped storying. I don’t know why, but I love exploring how people are always worrying about what other people are thinking, even though those other people are almost never thinking about them. We’ll see if I ever get back to finishing the story.
It’s nice to have Julie home. I gave Julie her Chanukah gift last night. What I didn’t write about in my musing (for obvious reasons) was visiting the 47th street diamond district with my uncle when we met for lunch on Tuesday. I bought Julie a bracelet for the holidays (and for her birthday since my funds ran low at that time). Because of the weather yesterday, today feels like a Sunday. Thankfully I have another day off tomorrow to enjoy the Julies.
The internet is still not working in the Castle. We went into my workplace today to capture a few hours of connectedness. While I’m the first to admit I’m a wee-bit addicted to the internet, it’s not just the lack of the constant flow of information that causes me to miss the tubes. Okay it is partly the shaking that my hands do when I’m away from it for more than three waking hours. It’s also strange being without it even for a few days. (Although, truth be told—and when it benefits my narrative I will at times tell the truth—I do have some internet through my very smart phone. It is slow internet on a tiny screen with not enough buttons, but it is internet.) There are things I take for granted: the internet is today’s yellow pages, television, and newspaper. It’s been years since I’ve had to search for a phone number or address, watch television (that’s more of a choice than a decision that the internet is better than cable), or read the dead trees (as the next generation—I remember when we were the next generation!—call it).
I can’t escape talking about the weather. Once Seattle returns to its humdrum wintry weather of constant misty rain in the mid-40s, you won’t hear much about it from me. But for now you’ll have to deal with my constant complaining and explaining of the strange weather patterns. It was cold again today. We woke up to frosted grass and car windows, and while the sun melted most of the frost and frozen remnants of the rainstorm, it didn’t get much above the 30s today. I pulled out my long heavy black coat, the coat I bought during our winter visit to Paris and that I usually reserve for visits to New York’s winter. Houston spoiled me. There I learned that cold exists only in supermarkets and shopping malls. Seattle was teaching me that wet is a state of mind more so than a slice of weather. It’s now teaching me about long black coats and heated seats.
I started this entry late, as Julie and I attended a Chanukah celebration tonight. It’s interesting to see the different ways the holiday is taught. As a child growing up in a conservative home, I learned that Chanukah celebrated the miracle of the oil. After the Jews drove the Greeks out of Jerusalem, they returned to find the holy of holies (the high temple) defiled by the Greeks. As part of the temple service, special oil was required to be lit each day. They searched for the undefiled oil but found only one vile of oil that should have lasted one day. They knew it would take eight days to fetch clean oil. The one vile of oil burned for eight days. For the victory of the Jews over the Greeks and for the miracle of the oil, Chanukah is celebrated. It turns out there are many different versions of this story, many of which don’t even mention the oil.
Julie is pushing me to finish this up. I’m only a third of the way through my words. It’s cold in the Castle and we returned late from the class. She’s still jetlagged from her trip to Taiwan, and she wants me to hold her (and I want to hold her) to keep warm. She went to sleep ridiculously early last night, and woke up ridiculously early this morning. At four thirty in the morning she stood over me as I slept. She resisted poking me awake and instead stood there staring. I could feel her doing that, however. It was like how children hold their fingers an inch off their sibling’s face, and say, “I’m not touching you.” Julie stood over me and I opened my eyes and saw her staring. It was not a bad way to wake, but it was still too early in the morning for me.
I didn’t get to bed until midnight, as I began playing with my computer. I sent my brand-new Alienware computer back to be fixed. The technology I bought was too cutting edge, and something was wrong with the motherboard and how it handled the memory. Or something like that. I got around to putting together my old computer and reinstalling Windows. Because I grow addicted when I start a project, I had to finish installing Windows before I went to bed. I don’t know what it is about me and projects, but they can keep me up to all hours of the night. And this was a silly project. Without internet, I couldn’t complete the installation or install any drivers or do anything useful with the computer. But still I remained downstairs watching the countdown until it finished installing.
Tonight I obviously won’t get back to the story I started yesterday. I spent many hours forming those words. Except for the Marathon, I usually write in that fashion: I draft a few paragraphs and then return to them to hammer them into some semblance of either what I originally intended them to say, or what I realized after the fact that I now wanted them to say. Either way it takes a lot of manipulating and patting, adding clay here and removing clay there, to get to a form that works for a particular paragraph. Ideally this should happen after I throw the entire raw story on the page. But this is a rare occurrence.
I wanted to get the bones of the story on the page yesterday. I wasted so much of my energy figuring out the best way of saying what I wanted to say (which I didn’t figure out until the third or fourth rewrite for that particular paragraph) that I didn’t get very far. But I’ll take the little storytelling time I can get. I’m hoping to return to it tomorrow if energy and time permitting. For today, I’ll be satisfied with this. I am trying to cut down on the consternations. I didn’t today, but it is a plan.
I keep telling my fingers to move. I stare at them and will it to be. It’s exhausting. I suppose I could start typing when they’re not looking. But my fingers are very clever. They learned all about reverse psychology in one of those many classes I attended. I’m glad some part of me was listening when the professors droned on and on. I regret that that part of me didn’t have much use for that knowledge. (Don’t tell them, they’re sensitive about what they can and cannot do.)
My spacebar is sticking. This is not a good sign. Youmightstartseeingsentencesthathavenospaces. You’ll have to learn to deal with it. For the record, that earlier sentence should count as more than one word. I’ll let the powersthatbe know. It’s fun to invent space-free words. I hear the German language is full of them.
One of the blogs I frequent—I would provide the link but I still don’t have internet access at home—posted an entry made up of nothing but consternations. It was surprising to see another author sharing his inner demons. That almost makes it sound noble, like sharing your secret deep important parts. I know it’s no such thing, but it was nice to think of it in that way for at least that moment. If nothing else his entry provided me a mirror to see the ugliness and self-defeating nature of my own consternation-filled musings: The incredible wasted effort and time. The widowed children. The heartache and pain and seared words.
Who am I kidding? There was no ugliness in his entry. I enjoyed reading every word of his consternations. It was fun to watch someone else suffer—to revel like a pagan over a particularly bloody sacrifice, if you will, in their suffering. I am not alone in this practice. Other people go through the same pains and failures as me. It turns out the demons are all closely related—I’m thinking first cousins on their mother’s side. Their manners are slightly different, and they whisper different words, but when it comes down to it, they all get up early each morning and put one leg at a time into their pants. And they pack their own lunch. And, yeah, I don’t know where I’m going with this either, but I hear it’s warm and fuzzy and they serve lunch.
I’m tired again. It’s still early and I had hopes of all sorts. I’ve whittled those hopes into a fine point and I’m balancing precariously on its point. I expect to fall off at any time now. My real hope is that I don’t have other sharpened hopes waiting for me to fall. That may be slightly on the painful side. To explain to those who are not following my convoluted and inane logic: I don’t want to fall from the sharpened point of this hope (i.e., my hope to say something tonight), only to land on other hopes, which I suppose would be altitudinally lower than my current hope. These other hopes may or may not be sharpened to a point—my worries only increase if it is sharpened to a point, obviously.
I spent a few hours recoding the inner workings of sewcrates.com. When I moved from self-hosting to a hosting provider, I lost a bit in the CPU or disk cycles, enough so when I regenerate the content (musings, categories, cached index pages) for the site, it takes a long time, up to two minutes in some cases. I’ve reworked the code and added a smarter indexer. It now only regenerates index pages with information that changed since the last update. I’m almost done. Not that you’ll notice any changes. It’s all the same from the user’s perspective. That’s one of the problems with all of this work. There’s no bang. But it’s there and I’m having fun doing it and it makes me happy and it’s better than writing these stupid senseless entries that seem to go on forever in my pursuit of this imagined Goal when what I really should be doing is writing stories that people may actually want to read instead of going on and on in a poor attempt to amaze everyone with my long ungrammatical sentences that start nowhere and end at the corner of nowhere and get the fuck out of here before I go medieval on your ass boulevard.
Speaking of webpage work, I’m also in the process of reworking our wedding website. I think I mentioned this before. I am having trouble with the redesign, and I have a feeling that I will reuse the engagement design and make only content changes. (That was my mother’s idea. I know, you’re never supposed to listen to your mother, but I’m getting desperate). I need to add the wedding dates and information and include our fancy new photoshopped wedding photos from Taiwan. That all has to wait until my new computer returns from the shop. Supposedly Alienware shipped it back today. As I’ve documented before, this has been a nightmare new computer purchase. Assuming the computer works when I receive it (a huge assumption), the nightmare should be ending. I’ll withhold judgment until then. Once I get my computer set up, I’ll go about recreating the content and changing the site. I should have had this done a long time ago but I get easily distracted.
I finished a mug of yummy caffeine. I’m waiting for it to hit me over the head and light a fire under my arse. It hasn’t. I’m not sure if it ever will tonight. It’s another one of those forced entries. Okay it did eventually hit me and it left me typing strange and illogical things. I guess that’s a good thing. I do tend to get stifled when I’m controlling the words. I have to learn to release control and see where things take me. They don’t always lead to interesting or useful places, but it’s better than tightly muzzling the muse and then crying when I can’t hear her sing. Muzzled muses. I kill me!
Speaking of weather (can you believe I made it this far without mentioning the weather? In Seattle?). It seems there are still many places in Seattle and on the eastside still without power. I can’t imagine not having power for four days. The power outage did give us something to talk about at work. The normal, How are you doing, was replaced by, Power? The other person would then launch into their soliloquy on their power situation: how long it’s been out, how they’ve been surviving (the mall and work are excellent places to keep warm), how now they’re going to go out and buy a generator so this won’t happen again (only to forget about it three months from now until the next disaster), and how long their Thursday night commute took (mine was over two hours). According to my detailed calculations, the Power question should last for three more days. After which we will return to our normally scheduled “How’s it going” programming.
Am I the only person who uses daily affirmations for my passwords? I started this almost a year ago. I take an affirmation and change some of the letters to numbers, add symbols, and, viola, assuming I remember it, I have a new secure password. It has two advantages: extra security and fulfillment of my dreams. I learned from Stuart Smalley that repeating one’s hopes and dreams every day makes them come true. Check back in a few years and I’ll let you know how it’s worked out. I’m hoping that revealing my secret doesn’t undermine the security of my passwords. It’s not like my daily affirmation is that difficult to figure out: “don’t kill Seattle drivers no matter how poorly they drive—it’s not their fault, they were just raised funny.” Okay, so I don’t use that password too often, but, remember, it’s for the children!
My computer’s spacebar is still giving my problems. In my quest to fix it, I removed some of its underlying parts. It seems to be working better without these parts. I’m not sure how long this will last. By better, I should say, I have to concentrate with each press on finding the spacebar’s sweet spot to ensure proper spacage (that really should be a word, pronounced space-ij, not space-age). This is starting to slow down my typing. At first I thought it was rather novel, something else to think about while pounding out the words. Now I see it’s just annoying. This will go in tomorrow. I can’t survive another musing night with this spacebar.
Julie is off the airport to pick up her parents. That leaves me a few precious minutes to finish up today’s entry. Internet returned to the Castle a few hours ago. There are still people in Seattle and its surrounding areas that are without electricity. As I met people without electricity at work today, I tried to explain to them that while having electricity is all good and everything, it’s really the internet that keeps me warm at night, and not having the internet is worse than not having electricity (ignoring the fact that if you don’t have electricity there’s no way you can have internet). None of these electric-free people were impressed by my observation. If anything, most of them ignored me and continued their sob stories about sleeping in the frigid cold and scrounging food and bringing their cats to work because they looked cold in the house. It’s possible that my story about the internet keeping me warmer than electricity was something that played out in my head while they were telling me their problems. I’m not always sure of what I say and what I think while someone else is speaking. To me it amounts to the same thing. It’s my watermelon philosophy.
My most entertaining exchange about the power outage: “We lost power for two nights. The first night was great. My family sat around and talked the night away. It was our conversations that kept us warm. The second night was not as great because we ran out of things to talk about.” It was funnier how she put it. I should have written it down.
I steamed through the first half of the words. The second half may be more difficult. I just got the call. The second half of this entry will have to wait until I return home. I’m meeting Julie and her parents at a restaurant for dinner. I have a fun drive ahead of me at the tail end of the rush hour. Wish me luck!
I’m back. The spacebar is still playing games with me. Not a good sign, especially with upcoming weekends away from the Castle where the little computer that could will be used extensively.
I’m reaching now. Returning from my second trip of the day to the eastside hasn’t granted me any insights or energies. I don’t know what I was hoping. I’m toward the end of the writing, so I might as well throw some dialogue up.
I started with an idea I had earlier, and then lost it. Not surprising. At least I pushed words, and this with my spacebar still on the fritz.
I spent a few hours working on the inner workings of the website again. I’m hoping to finish up the changes by this weekend so next week I can get back to the engagement website. It’s good to have little projects running around. It’s either projects or video games.
I returned to the gym for the first time three weeks today. I’m exhausted. I can barely see these words on the screen. It’s still early but I’m going to call this a night. Julie finished her shower and I think we’re going to hit the sack early. I have a big day tomorrow. It’s that time a year again. It pains me to think about it. I guess I have all day tomorrow to dwell on my own mortality and how little I’ve accomplished in those years.
Write about what is around you. The rain started early. There were blue skies and then there weren’t. Mirrored puddles covered the roads. The drivers didn’t mind as they weren’t worried about how they looked. I cared as I watched the cars pile up around me, each trying to look closer at the reflection of the other cars around them. I only desired to look at my reflection. Write what you hear. The rain pounded on the roof until I couldn’t remember what anything else sounded like. It was like staring at the sun: do it too long and you will always see the sun wherever you look. Write what you feel. It was cold but the sound felt molten in my ears. My ears threatened to melt under the heat. I turned my head but couldn’t find relief. I screamed. “You have to turn down the stove if you don’t want to singe your ears.” She’s a wise woman but someone stole the oven knobs. Write what you see. Wet words covered everything around me. I tried to escape them but they stuck to me like caramel. The more I pulled the more the words separated until letters blackened my fingers. Write what you want. Silence buffeted the drops. The silence was rhythmic, much more so than the rain could ever hope. In that silence I found calm. If you look hard enough you can locate its center. The fastest spot on a merry-go-round is along the outer edge. If you stand near the center you will spin slower. If you stand at the center you won’t move. The world is the same way. Find its center and you can remain there forever without moving forward. The trick is to find the center of life and revel in it. The center slows down life while you remain there. It connects you to something bigger than yourself. In that way you escape the unimportant parts and realize that the infinite truly surrounds you. Not only does it surround you but that you can be part of it. You can be part of the infinite.
An inky black descended on me today. Julie thinks it’s my time of the month. The morning found me tired but satisfied. After yesterday’s workout I worried that my head would ruin my big day. It was quiet this morning and remained so the rest of the day, hiding its hammers for the time being. In exchange it drew down its black curtain. Work was slow as is its wont for the two weeks between Christmas and New Years. It’s not something I tend to complain about. I had my spacebar fixed today. It’s amazing what corporate IT departments can do when they put their minds to it.
Most Thursdays I spend my lunch break in a rabbi’s class. I went there today hoping it would break the monotony and punch through my curtain. The class was crowded as people had little excuse for not attending. If you were at work chances were that you had the time. It was an ordinary discussion. I was silent most of the time, staring at the walls and playing with the wires in the cabinet. I chimed in at the end. I didn’t have much to add, more cynical and unhelpful observations and complaints. We are approaching the topic of prayer, something I have many questions about. I know about its mechanics but I don’t understand its purpose or “what’s in it for me.”
While discussing some of these points another student interrupted our conversation. My vision flashed red. I don’t know why he angered me. What he said wasn’t relevant to the conversation and it was slightly belittling, but I’ve heard worse. It was my black mood rearing itself up. I resisted responding. Any response would have been heated and violent. I let it pass and returned to staring at the walls.
I’m not sure what caused this mood. Usually I can point to something, some small action or inaction, some wrong decision or slight that at the time I don’t realize affects me so strongly. I looked through the past two days and didn’t find much. It could be the birthday blues. They write songs about it. But I’m not feeling particularly bad about this birthday. I’m in a good job, preparing to marry a beautiful and intelligent woman, living in a big house, managing to write every day, exploring my spiritual and philosophical side, and still fitting in time to play video games and watch movies. I don’t get to see my family as much as I would like, and I’m not living in my first choice city, but these I hope to rectify in the future.
As I was saying, I don’t think the blackness is because of my situation or regrets about my birthday. Sometimes the ink can’t be explained, I guess. I wish I had better news than that but there it is. It’s early in the evening and the black ink is running and I’m hoping it passes before the rest of the evening is wasted.
We decided not to go out as we had originally planned. It’s raining and cold and Julie bought yummy lamb chops from Albertson’s and we decided to stay in and enjoy each other’s company for my birthday evening. I will finish penning these words, go downstairs to eat my cake, and we’ll do our Hebrew lessons. It should be a good night. I’ll sleep in tomorrow and go to work for a few hours. We fly to Dallas on Saturday morning and I return on Tuesday. I’ll meet Julie in Buffalo next weekend. My week should be slow at work, and I expect I’ll have plenty of time to write and catch up on video games. Maybe I’ll plan and write an actual story. More likely I’ll consternate the time away. Maybe my black mood will survive my birthday and continue unabated through the week. It’s not important. The now is what is important. It is always the now that is important.
It’s nice to type with a spacebar again. I don’t have to worry about whether it was pressed, no more backspacing so I can repress it. It’s relaxing and freeing, is what it is. Everyone should have a working spacebar. There, that’s my birthday wish: a working spacebar for all.
My depression left me this morning. A brewing cold replaced it. We leave for Dallas tomorrow morning and we haven’t packed yet. We’ll get around to it. I’m hoping this is an illusory cold and not one of those nasty real ones. Maybe it’s the beginning of a cold that will not take root, like when you get warning signs only to find out that there’s not always fire where there’s smoke. I’m mixing my analogies again like pineapples and apples in a milkshake. My older sister is home sick with strep throat. Now, I’m far enough away from New Jersey not to have to worry about he being contagious—but, now that I think about it, I did talk to her on the phone a few days ago. I’ll have to ask Julie if germs can pass through the phone line. I hear that they can if the conditions are right. You know, the sun and moon aligned and the planets circling like planets, well, circle.
This is bad. My nose is running and my eyeballs are leaking. That last part sounds so original and yet I know it’s probably been written millions of times before. Ignore those times. Mine is clearly the first and only instance of such poetic and deep feeling words. My body aches and I’m running out of things to complain about to meet the Goal. I keep switching over to the internet hoping it will inspire me. Surprisingly it hasn’t. That doesn’t stop me, though. Not that I should be stopped. I’m halfway there. I need to put the blinders on and finish this puppy.
Julie wants me to pack. I have to resist to finish the rest of these words. Today was a slow day. I worked from home as the office was empty. Being home all day, even with the Julies, can wear me out. I don’t know what it is about breathing the Castle’s air, but it tires me out and even sickens me. Maybe that’s what I’m coming down with: castle-itus. It’s to the airport tomorrow morning to escape it.
As for the dialogue below it’s based off real conversations I have with the Julies. She doesn’t understand that when I’m complaining and miserable, she needs to comfort me. Not walk away and abandon me to life’s miseries. Or maybe she does understand and gets intense amusement out of watching me suffer uncomforted. I’ll have to ask.
Speak of the Julies, she gave me a couple of sweaters and a pair of slippers for my birthday. I haven’t owned slippers in a long time. I think she’s trying to convert me to a slipper wearer. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I’m more of a barefoot or socked-foot dweller. I guess we’ll see if my new suede on the outside, white fuzzy fur on the inside slippers will convert me. I’m easily manipulated, especially with cold feet. I’m thinking part of my illness comes from cold feet. My feet are pretty far away from the rest of my body, and I can see how the cold could seep up through the floor, into my bare soles, and up to my body to get me sick. Not that I believe in that old wives’ tale about being cold (as in temperature) means you’ll get a cold (as in illness). Seattle is still cold. One of these days we’ll break out of these cold spell. This isn’t Seattle weather. It’s supposed to be rainy and cool, not freezing. I’m going to find the weatherman and give him a piece of my mind. Or is it weatherperson now? Yup, Word seems to think so.
I’m waning here. I’m sure this forced writing is torturing some of you. I don’t mind it so much. My hands, like the rest of my body, is aching a bit. It’s almost ten, and seeing as we have to get up at five or six tomorrow. And here I was looking forward to sleeping in finally after too many early van mornings. The rest of the weekend we’ll sleep in. Until I fly home, that is. I think that flight is early as well.
There we go. The word count is rapidly approaching four digits and I’m going to sign off and leave it be. It’ll be better tomorrow. It’s always better tomorrow.
Try as he might, there was a large empty screen in front of where he sat. His fingers, poised at their home position, teased him with their readiness. It was now or never, he knew. He chose never and continued to stare. He chewed on the end of an oversized straw, and peeled rims of plastic from its end. His work would wait until the screen stopped laughing. That is, if it ever stopped laughing. Its maw grew large and threatened to swallow him along with the blank page. He wondered what the belly of a blank page would look like.
Today will be replete with more consternated efforts to write. I don’t seem to have many thoughts or beliefs. I read through two New Yorkers on the plane. I should steal their thoughts and pawn them off as mine. Here’s a goody (one of the rare comics where I laughed out loud, as in, “LOL for real!”): a writer is sitting in front of an audience. A sign above his head says: “Author reading today, 3pm.” The audience members look angry. One of them says, “Aloud!” Now that’s funny! I don’t think the passengers around me shared in the humor, probably because they were not seeing what I was seeing (as in the comic, not the deeper meaning, which I could spend paragraphs on—that is, if I knew anything about deeper meanings).
What are my thoughts, my beliefs? Why am I not sharing them? What is in it for me? Is there ever anything in it for me?
It’s hot on the airplane. I spent the night sick, alternately shaking from the cold and pounding my head against the pillow to try to stop it from thumping. My headache reminded me of the Pathological Yawning’s headaches. Breathing felt labored and I moaned and groaned until Julie took pity on me. She nursed me through the night, providing a heat pad to keep me warm and a nasty Chinese dried herbal packet, which she said contained Vitamin C. I have my doubts. I think you’re supposed to pour the contents of the packet into hot water and drink it. Julie told me to rip open the packet and pour it into my mouth. I did so and the dried leaves (or whatever they were) stuck to the crevices in my mouth, sucking the moisture until I did not think I could swallow. I drank and gargled hot water she brought and dislodged most of the leaves. Nasty stuff. After that and the heat pad I found sleep.
We woke early to catch our morning flight, leaving the Castle before seven. I was not a happy camper in the morning, although I woke with only the remnants of a headache and a stuffing that goes way beyond turkey. Even now I feel its aftereffects. My nose, clear in one nostril, feels like its sucking in acrid chlorinated air with each breath. How’s that for being a complaining baby?
On the airplane when I turn my head this way and that I’m blinded by the sun from a passenger’s window. I keep my head just so and open the computer. There’s much about and much ado, although the doings are not much and what’s about is barely worth mentioning. I have so few stories to tell and yet so many words to share.
The babies cried in the back of the plane. I waited for fondness to find me. She kept her distance. Something will happen and I’ll record its happenings. I can’t cut a word. Not a single word from this after it is done. If only it were that easy.
My ears pop like corn. I tend to reuse stuff. I repeat it endlessly hoping to suck new life from it. It wasn’t that clever the first time I used it. I don’t know why I expect the millionth to be much different.
After dinner, Julie and her sisters sit around. They play piano and Julie sings, a karaoke night but with live music. Then they run out of music to play and sing, and we sit around and talk.
It’s another slow night and another forced ending. I don’t even have the snippets of story to turn this into anything. I understand that. I know this is worthless and a waste. But I push through it and put the words down. It’s about discipline. Much in life is about discipline. About forcing yourself to do something that you may not want to do, at least in the short term, but that you’re glad you did in the long term.
I’m not sure I’ll ever be glad to have written these paragraphs. That’s not true. Even today, as I waited for our baggage to revolve on the conveyor belt, I read through my old posts and realized that while I waste tremendous words consternating, some of those words are entertaining to me (as most of my words are, I realize—writers are nothing if not self-absorbed). I enjoy that I wrote much of what I write. It’s the writing part that’s not always fun. That’s not true. Even this writing, this forced put words on the paper and get done with it so I can go to sleep and relax my aching body, even this is not painful. I enjoy the words and the flow and the hopes. That’s what it’s always about for me: there is this tiny voice in my head that hopes one of these words will spark something in me that will flame into something Good. It may not be today or even this year, but it’s that hope that keeps me going. That keeps me, as I repeat often, putting one word in front of the next to form sentences that may or may not make sense.
It’s getting close to sleepy time. Even by west coast time, it’s late. We spent too much time downstairs talking and playing piano and singing. Well, I didn’t do any of those things, but I did sit around and listen to others play and sing and talk. I’m sated for the evening. The hope will spring eternal for tomorrow. I can’t fail forever, right? One of these days, these worthless exercises will bloom and I’ll have something to show for it. If nothing else then the chronicle of my failures should, in itself, be entertaining.
The sickness did not go away as I hoped. Yes, I’m wasting more time with irrelevant discussions. While clicking around today, I found a blog with a Christmas post. In it the author wrote that he provided personal information only once a year, during Christmas. He added that he was not one of those people who wrote “what he ate for breakfast” and “what type of socks” he wore each day. (The rest of the time he provided important links to humor websites—clearly a much better use of his time.)
Am I turning into one of those people? With these long entries, I’m beginning to wonder if this is the direction I really want to take. I’m wearing tan socks, for the record. My socks are thick and match most of my khaki pants, except for the khaki pants I packed for Dallas. These pants are darker and more brown than tan. I still wear the socks, but I’m more self conscious of their color. As for breakfast—it was more at lunchtime—it was a one-time box of cheerios with a surprisingly small plastic spoon. I didn’t even know they made such tiny spoons. Julie bought the cheerios for me sometime over the last couple of days. I can’t seem to remember exactly when. I’m sure if I had that information and shared it with my dear readers it would be very useful, and it would not in any way turn me into one of those people.
I feel a bit loopy from the DayQuil. Julie has been drugging me. I was coughing and sneezing all day and congested. I woke with a bit of a headache along with the aforementioned symptoms. Two oversized DayQuil pills made short work of the headache. I drugged myself once again in the afternoon. My congestion lessened but my sneezing and coughing did not. Did you know that they changed the rules on covering your mouth when you sneeze and cough? I learned as a child that an open hand or a closed fist were both acceptable. It turns out that that is no longer the case. You now have to sneeze and cough into the crook of your elbow, with your mouth covered by your arm. It turns out—and this makes an incredible amount of sense, almost to the point that you have to wonder what the doctors and parents were thinking—that sneezing into your hand, and then shaking other people’s hands or touching objects that other people touch, is not very sanitary. And, to go further, actually spreads germs, which in turn spreads disease. It’s amazing what a little science can teach you.
As I sit here finishing this writing (I would have finished earlier, but I got into a heated debate on spirituality and then political science with Julie’s middle sister), Julie is threatening to take my NyQuil away. She claims I’m not sick enough to drink it. Clearly this is not the case. All day I’ve been very much looking forward to my binging on NyQuil. It’s one of the greatest feelings in the world to wake after a night’s rest amplified by NyQuil, especially if you can wake, turn over, and fall back to sleep to your heart’s content—which, seeing as I’m on vacation, is what I plan to do. Julie is sleeping now and will have no control over the suggested dosage. After I finish up this entry and post it, it’s off to NyQuil land for me.
We went to dinner at a Chinese restaurant. I’m sure there’s a joke in there somewhere about what Jews do on Christmas Eve. There were carolers at the restaurant, moving from table to table to try to collect donations for some charity related to a flood. (It wasn’t clear what flood they were raising money for.) Many of the tables were taken up by Jews (and other Asian people), and they didn’t have much luck. All in all, they were not very impressive for carolers. When they did sing they were not very talented. And they didn’t even bother dressing the part. The only concession one of the two singers made was to wear a Santa hat.
I rushed through some of these words to watch rented movies. It turned out that my impromptu debate with Julie’s sister negated the movie plan. I did have big writing plans today. It turned out (lots of turning today) that I never did get around to implementing them. Isn’t that the story of my life? I’ll see if I can at least put a description around my plans so it won’t be a completely wasted day.
On witnessing a drinking competition: Pull it out to show him your size. It was the first thought that crossed both of their minds. Other thoughts couldn’t find their way past the initial ones.
On being behind a talkative lady on a short flight: She still talked. She was always talking. She was loud and talked and talked. When she came on the plane I knew she would be trouble. And yet she had interesting things to say. She was almost murdered. Most everyone given the opportunity has important things to say. Will I ever give them the opportunity?
On posting so much crap: I complain way too much. I need to start editing this down to something worthwhile. I can hide the other parts in separate posts, or leave them on my hard drive. I should keep all evidence but not necessarily bore everyone with the boxes of crap that passes between my ears.
On a layover in Houston: There’s an hour between my two flights. I remember the Houston airport fondly. I traveled much for my job (and to visit the Julies) while working in Houston, and I spent a good deal of that time sitting in the airport. When I realized I had a two hour layover in Houston, I thought of Houston’s wonderful airport. It turns out that the airport is not as wonderful as I remembered. (I think I was confusing it with Continental’s Newark terminal, which is newer and wonderful—at least I think it is.) Memories do play tricks on me: I remember the good parts and those good parts are taped together much better than they ever were when I lived them.
On the book I purchased at the airport: A voice, a scream, a Philip K. Dick novel. I’m reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? It’s the book that the movie “Bladerunner” was loosely based on. I’ve been thinking about it since yesterday when we watched “A Scanner Darkly,” another Dick-based movie. Sheep more a novella than a full-length novel, and I managed to read through it a few hours. It had a strange and unfulfilling ending, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Like his movies, I left it with much to think on. Will it inspire me? Of course not. Nothing ever does. I see it as more fuel that I’ll get around to burning one day. If nothing else, Dick does have a way with story. That’s what I need: a way with story.
On realizing I’ll never have an original thought: Sheep reminded me of my terrible Garden story (I went back to the beginning of the Garden story today in the airport to confirm it was terrible—if I had the red confirmed stamp, I would use it, stamping multiple times across the page. Regrettably, I don’t have the stamp, and, besides, even if I had the stamp, it wouldn’t work on the screen. Everything I wrote from now on would be confirmed terrible. I guess that wouldn’t be too far from the truth.) What I did notice about the Garden story was that it had a similar basis to Dick’s story: a world where real animals were rare and people craved a connection to something living besides them. The cause of the dearth of animals in Dick’s story is war, while in mine it is technology (or the belief that technology is better than the real thing). Both end up in the same place. Except his is relayed well and mine is crap.
On what I learned from Dick: Preach. I want to preach. I want my characters to cry onto injustices and demand retributions. I want the readers to cringe at the soliloquies and the knowingness of their tone. I want the readers to think that this isn’t how people normally talk. This shouldn’t be how people talk. And yet there they are, my characters, talking and making sense. And the reader will want to know why it is they said what they said because what they said, that moved my readers a few inches to the left.
On what inspiration I’ll find for my writing: I should write a story about magical times and societal ills defined by fictional worlds. That’s where I want to go. That’s where clever is accepted and encouraged and explored. I need to stop stopping myself and embrace it. Have an idea and run with it. Stop pretending that I have no ideas and I have no stories. Everything is a story in itself. What I need to say is take one of those stories and add the twist that makes me interested. Change the time or the technology. Make it exciting and possible. Take something obvious: “The strength of leaders and the manipulation of people around those leaders,” and turn it into something.
On my use of technology: I had to turn off the “word count” display on Word’s status bar today. It became too distracting. Ever few words I found myself looking down to see how I was doing with Goal. I wrote to the count and not to the David. I should always write to the David. Goals are something that should come later.
On meaningless babble that I should have cut but it turns out I’m too lazy and protective to cut my precious little words: There are far away so many things that drew my imagination and my memories toward where I did not want to go. There is something there that waits for me to see where I am going to head before I head there. That is how it is meant to be and how it always will be.
On small inspirational statements that get me from one section to the next: One more hour and I leave from here. Bitch and complain and say something important about something: addiction, religion, philosophy. Natural storyteller I am not. But that’s okay. It’s something I will learn—sink or swim or sink again. It matters not. It’s about me doing what I want to do and not about doing nothing and saying I could have and should have but didn’t.
On running to the bathroom just as turbulence starts: That’s some bumpy air, I said to nobody in particular. A dangerous trip to the bathroom on the airplane put my stomach in its place. And here I thought I was adventuresome: the way I surfed on the city subways, the way I laughed at the spinning parking ramps that never did seem to end. All that adventure I left on the floor and then some. But I survived my trip back to my seat and here I sit, pecking away at the keyboard, hoping the battery lasts long enough for me to get these words across before it peters out, as batteries have a wont to do. That word “wont” has been popping up at strange places. I should keep my eye on it. It might want more than I’m willing to give it. It’s definitely someone to watch out for.
On negativity: So much negativity today. I guess that’s where I’m coming from. I’ll try this again later, when I’m caffeinated and in the Castle and ready to rethink my goals here.
On endings: This is the end for today. I had thoughts of going on but I need to get to sleep. I’m going to try to sleep without the NyQuil (I’ve said that over the last two nights and failed), but I have a feeling I’ll get out of bed in fifteen minutes and take my shot. Addiction is a wonderful thing. If everything works out, I’ll wake tomorrow feeling right as rain and head to work as a new man. If it doesn’t, I’ll wake up congested and unhappy. As long as I’m better by Friday as I would hate to have to cancel my trip to Buffalo to visit my new nieces.
My cold hangs on by its final threads. I should be able to cut those threads by tomorrow or Saturday at the latest. Julie and I are still heading to Buffalo tomorrow. I may have to stay away from the newest monsters and stay on the yummy ‘Quils, but Julie and I will visit with my sister and her family and spend New Year’s Eve with loved ones.
I’m in a strange mood today. I’m not depressed (thankfully) and I took great pleasure in writing today’s entry. It felt so much longer than it turned out. I might have forgotten how to write longer pieces with this piecemeal Goal. I’ll take what little I can nowadays.
I still have a few words left. I don’t have much more to say so I’ll waste them here. In a couple more days the year will be over. The next year holds great promise. All years do. Nothing would give me more pleasure than fulfilling some of those promises.
And so the fragment ends. I had a difficult flight today. I thought I was feeling better until I left the Castle. It’s amazing to feel so good at home only to leave it and not feel that great. It might be the subfreezing temperatures Seattle is enjoying. Maybe there is something to that global warming thing. (Anecdotal evidence should never be trusted!)
After I arrived at the airport it went downhill. I bought overpriced DayQuil and drugged myself for most of the two flights. I met Julie in Newark and we flew together to Buffalo where my brother-in-law picked us up. If it sounds like I’m recording breakfasts and socks, then there’s a reason for that: I am. I’m pushing words to get this finished. I won’t get back to the little fragment I started below. I had hopes but like usual those hopes were squashed by too little effort and too much time. I need to get back to my study and sit down and stare at the screen with nothing to talk about until I realize that being blue in the face isn’t going to get me closer to the Goal. But I digress, as usual.
I’m typing this in my sister’s study. I’m writing this while attempting to get internet connectivity. It’s harder than it looks to juggle. The connectivity is fighting me but I’ll win, eventually. We had a late-night snack and it’s almost time for bed. I think I’m back on Seattle time while Julie is on Dallas time. One of these days we’ll be on the same time again.
I didn’t have anything in the way of yummy caffeine today, and I’m more overtired than tired. Tomorrow we meet my two newest nieces. They were asleep when we arrived at around 10pm tonight. It will be a quiet relaxing holiday weekend with family.
I managed a few more paragraphs in the fragment below. I’m not sure where I’m taking it but I couldn’t think of anything else to write down here. As I said: that’s the truest inspiration for me. When I have nothing else going for me and nothing else to discuss.
My coughs are starting up again. I have to be careful around the monsters. I’ll drug myself again with the ‘quil before going to sleep. I think the ‘quils are causing my stomach to jump around. The flights were particularly tough in that area. But I’m complaining, something I’ve been doing too much of lately. Once I get over this cold and get back to Seattle and settle back into my rut, then I will not complain as much. Maybe I’ll even be happy with everything in my life. That is a big maybe. Okay, you know why I’m writing this last sentence. There it is.
I don’t have much today. I survived most of the day with a bit of the ‘quils. But this evening a headache descended and stayed with me. The monsters were cute, all four of them. And to celebrate the monsters we watched “The Monster House,” a computer-animated movie that was a bit too scary for my sister’s two older monsters. They went screaming out of the room three-quarters of the way through. It probably would have been better if they stayed to the end of the movie to see the happy ending. But I guess the tension got to them. “Can I look now,” was repeated many times. The answer was usually “no,” as the Monster House tended to eat anyone who got too close.
I haven’t been able to post my musing in Buffalo. There is wi-fi here, but my computer has been having trouble connecting. It’s been acting up for a bit now. I’ll wait until I arrive home on Monday night to catch up on my postings. It’s enough that I’m writing now trying to get this finished. With my head banging away, I thought today would be the day I wouldn’t get this done. I’m more hopeful now that I’m in front of the computer, delaying my much-needed sleep. I’ll get to it after I finish typing these words.
My sister’s two older monsters have developed distinct personalities. It’s interesting to see how different they are as they grow up. I don’t get to see them much, and because of that I get to see the marked differences in the personalities between this time and the last time. I last saw time I saw them was during our Sagamore trip this past summer. The younger was not much of a person back then. She’s developed a personality. The older has grown up but is still the same person. The two newborns were still A and B back in the summer, gestating in my sister’s belly. Big differences across the board.
Buffalo is as cold as I remember. This weekend turned out warm for a Buffalo winter, but for me, cold is cold is cold. I lost my cold weather abilities when I left NYC many years ago. After Houston and now Seattle, I barely remember the cold. Well, that would be true except for Seattle over last month. I don’t know what’s happening there, but I do know that I’m remembering what it means to be cold again.
Julie is still downstairs feeding one of the newer monsters. I’m trying to keep my distance to ensure that whatever illness still bakes in my body stays far away from the newborn monsters.
We slept in late this morning. I probably should have gotten up a few hours earlier to avoid the headache. After a ‘quil, I was feeling decent until the headache descended. We spent the day in my sister’s house enjoying most of her kids. Her oldest was out for the day visiting a friend. I’ll post photographs when I return and once again have an umbilical cord to the world. That’s some fancy imagery there.
Finally past the halfway point. I didn’t think I’d ever get here. I’m low on things to talk about and my head is still pounding away. It’s again one of those pathological yawning headaches. I think they might be caused by too much sleep or not enough breathing. I haven’t figured out which yet. But it’s not pleasant and made me first of two days in Buffalo not as good as it could have been. Que se va, or something like that.
My sister’s house is packed with too many toys. She acknowledges it. My older sister has given her plenty of hand-me-down toys, and my mother and my sister’s in-laws provide the rest of the presents. In Buffalo, real estate is relatively cheap and she lives in a very large house. Even in such a large house it’s difficult to find a place for all of the toys. That’s going to one of the rules if I ever have children: no toys for the monsters. Or, and this is a huge concession, one present per monster per year from any one person (including proxy gifts, mother!). That should keep our house (or hopefully condo) neat and tidy and not overrun with toys that monsters don’t play with.
We’re sleeping in my sister’s finished attic. Over the last week she took all the toys that had clogged the downstairs areas and stored them up here. The floors are covered with the toys, and two oversized closets are packed to the gills. I don’t know this from firsthand knowledge. I’m trusting my brother-in-law who warned me not to open them, lest the toys fall out and crush me. I’m not one for being crushed so I’m looking at the doors. They’re tempting, very tempting. But I’ll resist opening and seeing the mess.
When we arrived, Julie attempted to straighten the attic as much as possible. She’s of the personality who cannot stand being in messy places. Similar to my older sister and (to a lesser extent) my mother. As I’ve grown older, I don’t like living in a mess. But I’m of the personality that won’t do anything about it. If I’m in a messy room, I’ll feel bad about it but I won’t clean it. I think I have the worst type of personality there. At least my younger sister doesn’t mind it as much. I guess when you have four monsters you stop minding many things, including how the house looks.
I’m glad I finished this. Even with monster headaches (and by monster I mean large, not caused by monsters of either the children-kind or the movie kind), I can still pound out the words like a champ. I’m going to go find Julie and see what she and the monsters are up to. It’s almost bedtime and I think I’ll sleep well tonight without any ‘quils. The ‘quils are still causing havoc on my stomach.
It’s New Year’s Eve and our plan is to spend the rest of the evening watching the boob tube. Okay, before you start thinking what I know you’re thinking, please realize that I’m not complaining about that decision or trying to justify my looserishness. As to being a loser, remember, my sister has four monsters, two of which are barely over a month old. Clearly she was not going anywhere, and with Julie and me visiting with her, we were not going anywhere anyway.
As to the complaining, I actually prefer it this way. If you look back, I spend most New Year Eve’s watching television. I rarely watch the ball drop—and when I say ball drop, I’m thinking of the Times Square ball in New York City. I found out today there there’s also a ball in the center of downtown Buffalo where ten thousand people show up to watch another incredibly small ball covered with lights fall from a rope held up by a crane. I don’t know who started the dropping of the ball on this last day of the year, but it is a ridiculous practice. We’ve really evolved much more accurate timepieces than dropping balls down poles or ropes and letting gravity decide when the year should end (or are they deciding when the new year should begin? That’s probably it). Maybe it’s time we start using one of those more sophisticated time-telling devices. A digital timepiece would be an example—and yes, I do realize that most of these ball-dropping locations have a digital clock to go along with the ball falling. There is a chance I’m complaining for the sake of complaining. Kind of like my consternations over the last couple of weeks.
Returning to the two reasons I stayed at home to watch television on New Year’s Eve. First, I don’t like most parties when I actually attend them, what with the drinking I rarely do and the speaking to people I don’t know (again, which I rarely do), and the loosing of my voice in any cigarette-filled room or whenever I talk above a normal speaking volume for more than five minutes, which happens when the music is pumped at anything less than elevator levels. And, second, seeing other people at a party is just—what’s the word I’m looking for, oh yeah—absolutely ridiculous and clearly not fun. It’s not like I’m jealous of the fun they’re having (see reason number 1). And I don’t even think those people are having fun. They’re probably too self-conscious of the fact that they might be on television and wondering what the millions of people watching are thinking of them—disregarding the fact that none of those millions of people (with the exceptions of perhaps friends and relatives who told them to watch for them on the television) actually care who the audience members are or spend more than a moment looking at them, with the possible exception of the really hot blonde in the tight black dress in the front with, what is that, purple sparkly makeup on her naked chest. I mean, really, how am I supposed to not look at that?
We spent the day with the monsters, walking around my sister’s neighborhood and visiting an art museum. There is a rather impressive art museum within walking distance of her house. I’m again impressed with the neighborhood she lives in (even though I’m not impressed by Buffalo, New York). She has a bucks of stars and an independent coffee house within walking distance (and, no, I didn’t get to visit either of them. I’m staying off the caffeine to help me sleep at night. I’m still not doing well with the sickness, and I’m attempting to survive without the ‘quils. I didn’t manage last night as I awoke in the middle of the night with a blinding headache. My tossing and turning woke Julie, who, after about an hour of movement and ineffectual banging of my head against the pillow, demanded I take the ‘quil in lieu of the more effective Advil, since we didn’t have any Advil on hand and it was too late to wake my sister).
There’s a bunch of restaurants and shopping also within walking distance. A very cute neighborhood, even cuter than the one we live in Seattle. It has lots of character. Don’t expect me to move here anytime soon, however. At least not until global warming (or is it now called “global climate change” to make it sound less scary?) transforms Buffalo into the next hotspot. That would be a good thing for me (while maybe not for the world), as my sister and brother-in-law own lots of property here. I guess there’s always a bright side to these things.
Now my sister doesn’t want to remain in Buffalo much longer. She’s longing to move back to New York City. I know another person who is longing to go there also: me. Both of our reasoning is suspect, of course. And neither of our significant others are that thrilled by our unreasonable desires. In the end, though, we’ll both probably end up moving there, and end up very happy to have moved there. It’s very difficult to explain the draw to those who haven’t lived there—or even those who have lived there and hated it. There are plenty of people in that second category. They go for a year or sometimes a vacation week expecting to be blown away, and are turned off to the experience by the grime or the unfriendly people or the size and movement of it all.
But for my sister and me, it’s about the energy and the opportunities. There’s no other place in the states like it. The small neighborhoods in Seattle come close to being similar, but they end up as either too small or too far away from another neighborhood or too, for lack of another word, derivative. I’ve talked about this before and probably just as unsuccessfully. This would be a great theme for a story. Of course, I’ll never write it. I’ll probably write a few paragraphs for it and call it a day and never return to it. I can’t believe how much of that I’ve been doing. But I won’t let that get me down today. Tomorrow is the day for reflections. Today is more the day for diary entries about my travels.
It’s nice to travel and have something to talk about. These words come much easier I things are happening. With these easy words, however, comes the lack of focus to write story. Once I return to my boring schedule in Seattle with nothing to write about but the weather and my lazy ways, then I won’t have easy night where I can say something without having to think or push story. I look forward to those nights only to get past this rut I find myself in for the past few months. I also need to get back into Chuck’s ping-pong writing. I wrote some decent stories when that was forced down my throat.
Well, that’s the end of these words. Happy New Years, and may next year bring you everything you promise yourself!
The one and a half months of travel has drawn to a close. I am sitting in my Castley brown chair at the end of a whirlwind travel day, and I find myself contently contemplating the blank page. We missed what turned out to be nasty weather patterns along the east coast. We began our flight back this morning at an unreasonable 6:30am. Through the miracle of time zones we arrived home at 11:30am, completely exhausted and swearing up and down to anyone who would listen that it felt more like eight or nine at night. We did cheat and take a nap in the afternoon, and spent the rest of the day cleaning up the Castle and lazing about. Newark (the airport we flew through after leaving Buffalo) had two hour delays later in the day. At first our decision to leave early seemed foolhardy. Looking back, we now look like geniuses.
It’s early evening and I’m drinking a small coffee trying to get the juices flowing. I doubt they’ll flow tonight. It’s not that it’s difficult to find optimism on this rainy night, it’s that I’m too tired to care much about these happy feelings. I am glad to move my fingers on my keyboard on my couch and feel its cushiony goodness on my backside. I have high hopes for this chair and this keyboard and the next few months. We’ll see if anything comes of it.
It’s after New Years and Julie asked the big question: what is your resolution this year? I don’t usually make resolutions. I think self-improvement is an ongoing 365 days per year type of deal. I say that because it’s easy to say. It’s very hard to submit into practice. I have made huge leaps this past year. I’m more than two months into my daily writing, and while it sucks and I don’t have much story to show for it (yes, I know my real resolution should be: no more consternating about my lack of storying), I have managed to put words on paper each day, rain or shine, sick or well, something to say or nothing running through the cavern that I loosely call my brain. There’s something to say about dedication, no matter how ill placed.
We do have big plans for the rest of the evening after I get through this entry. We will resume our Hebrew lessons after we took off a few weeks while visiting Dallas. And then we will watch “Samurai X,” another in a continuing line of anime following the adventures of an assassin turned good. The catch: he now uses a “reverse blade” sword, which allows him to injure people but not kill them. The DVD we have waiting downstairs is the first of his pre-history—when he was still a killer working for the government. It’ll be interesting to see how they deal with his morals when he hasn’t “turned good.”
My mind is still blank. I think it is dialogue time. I’ll apologize in advance for the nonsensical words. One of these days I’ll start on a dialogue and it’ll turn into a story with characters and conflict. Damn, I miss conflict. I still don’t know what conflict is or how I find it or what I should do about getting it into my words. That should be my resolution: cultivate conflict in everything I do. When a character stumbles, throw another conflict in his path. When it looks like she’s about to reach her goal, trip her up, skin her knee, show her who’s boss. If only it was that easy. If only.
As part of NEQID (there’s something I haven’t used in a while. I originally wrote “ever-improving David,” before I remembered my wonderful acronym for this quest: “Never Ending Quest to Improve David”), I’ve added another element to my daily Goal. Besides the 1,000 typed words, I will also handwrite one full Moleskine page worth of thoughts, notes, writing. (These very handwritten words are transcribed and reworked from that Goal.) It’s a small addition, but it’ll keep me thinking throughout the day about writing, and give me something to do when during my free moments when I don’t feel like or don’t have the time to open the computer and start pounding away.
I sort of met this Goal today. I probably should have written another two lines to make it official. But close is good enough. Once the cow dies, well, it’s dead, and there’s no amount of prodding that’ll wake it. I don’t know what this has to do with the official writing goals or weather, but there you have it. (Seattle: balmy and intermittent rain, if you’re curious.) For what it’s worth the Moleskine jotting did get my juices running today, which was its purpose. The two cups of yummy caffeine probably helped in that as well. It’s been too long since large amounts of yummy caffeine flowed through my system. Oh how I’ve missed its bitter yet invigorating taste!
We had a bit of a problem with the heating system in the Castle. Over the last few months or so the fan that forces the heat from the furnace around the Castle began to shut off. I rationalized this failure by blaming power outages in the Castle. I had anecdotal evidence as one evening I found a blinking clock concurrent with a fan failure, thanks, no doubt, to the strange weather Seattle has experienced. (This was not during the Big One that left me without power for 24 hours.)
When I reset the system at the thermostat the fan would turn back on after the five-minute waiting period. Over the last few days this failure became worse and more frequent. Last night, as we went to bed, I didn’t hear the fan churning away (the fan acts as white noise as it’s usually on when I sleep, blowing cold and hot air. I only seem to notice it when it’s off. It’s amazing how reliant I am on the white noise. When it’s off I find it hard to sleep). I was bundled under the covers and I told Julie that I thought there was a problem with the heating system.
In the morning I reset the heater and went to work. When Julie woke the fan was off again. After resetting it three times in as many hours, she called the HVAC guy. He arrived this afternoon and quickly discovered the problem. I don’t know how many of you are homeowners (actually, I do: Moms-homeowner, Chuck-not a homeowner (yet), rest of readers-imaginary and therefore probably not homeowners), but the HVAC guy said there’s something called a “filter” that connects to the heating and cooling system. This filter is supposed to be replaced or cleaned every one to three months. I last cleaned the filter at the beginning of the summer because the air conditioner was not conditioner the air enough.
It turns out that when you don’t clean the filter, not only does the heat or cold not circulate around the house, but when the filter is dirty enough, it blocks the fan from blowing air and the system shuts off. The guy said the pressure builds up because the air can’t get through the filter and shuts off the system. Clearly he’s a fraud. In the end, it cost us $150 + $3.97 + tax to fix the system. The first part was my incredible stupidity. The second was the cost of the replacement filters. And the third was the greedy liberals stealing all of my money. (Okay, I’ll admit it: I’m one of those greedy liberals.)
I have big plans for writing today. The problem is I’m exhausted. I didn’t sleep well last night. Jetlag caught up to me. Not that I can actually have jetlag from travelling from Buffalo, NY to Seattle. It’s only a three hour time difference, after all. But something caught up with me. I tried to go to sleep at around 11pm last night, and found myself staring at the ceiling. My eyes didn’t want to close and I couldn’t find the sheep. It was until well into the morning that I found the sheep. And when I woke to meet the van early this morning, I found the sheep did not want to let me go. So it goes. (To steal Vonnegut’s line from Slaughterhouse Five.)
This might have had something to do with the two cups of yummy caffeine yesterday. My caffeine intake over the holidays dropped significantly, and I might not have been ready for the boost of wakefulness. Or it could that while I didn’t have jetlag, I did miss my window to sleep. I should have hit the bed earlier, as by the time my head found the pillow, it was already passed the middle of the night New York time. Or it could be I overanalyze everything, this included. Either way I woke up exhausted.
I did manage to go to the gym today. It was extra crowded as the New Year’s resolution people descended. They’ll be gone in a few weeks having failed yet again to stay with their goals. Not that I’m judging them. I miss plenty of goals (with the small G).
Julie is singing as I write this and it’s difficult to concentrate on these words. She’s done now and I can get back to the writing.
As I said, I had big plans for writing today. Not fictional stuff, although I did take a big step in that direction when Chuck delivered his simultaneous serve for our next ping-pong story. We haven’t set the deadline, but I’m hoping to have something up by early February at the latest. (Chuck, I’ll e-mail you tomorrow with a suggested deadline.) I won’t be publicly posting the fragments so as not to influence one of my two readers in his version of the ping-pong story. Once I post the final draft at the deadline, I’ll remove the secret flag on all of the drafts. I’m sure you will all be desperate to go back and read the earlier versions of my masterpiece. Really. Let me say that again: Masterpiece. It has a sweet sound to it, sort of rolling of the tongue like a block of hard brie.
It’s raining outside, and raining hard. I point that out as a way of telling you that I won’t get back to the essay today. How many of you thought I would? Honestly? I thought as much. I have excuses. Many of them. Some of them relate to the weather, others to traffic. Seattlians have much experience driving in the rain. The experience, regrettably, does not translate into ability. With rainstorms such as this one, the drivers tend to slow down to 5 mph. They are very cautious. That caution, however, results in taking over an hour and a half to drive home from work today. In the vanpool. Using the carpool lane. Leaving at 4:30pm! That’s early. That’s way before rush hour should start. That is unacceptable! (As are these short sentences. Truly. Pathetic.)
I did manage a few hundred words on the essay, and I even thought of some more important truths. But that’ll wait until tomorrow when a few more of my brain cells have rested up and I’m not so grouchy. I just yelled at Julie who tried to detract me from writing. She’s looking through other people’s wedding websites because ours is so old and incomplete and not updated and will not be ready for the time the Save-the-Date cards go out. That’s version one, if you remember. I won’t link to version two because you probably won’t be impressed by my purple screen and photoshopped picture of Julie and me sitting on a rock. It’s bad. Very bad. I need ideas, a fresh IV of them. I need inspiration and dedication and…. I can’t even finish this paragraph. I need to move on. My brain is caving in on itself, like rocks falling from ceilings. Yes, I’m exceptionally poetic tonight. I’m able to take images, grab them by the neck, and choke the life out of them until I distill them into two words that should never be used together. Like this cold-blooded mammal! Man, that was terrible. I’m sorry.
I just gave Julie the finger. She’s pointing out all the other people’s wedding websites, saying things like: “look, David. Their wedding is after our and their wedding website is finished. And, look, it’s Flash. Why don’t we use [evil] Flash technologies on our website?” And other unprintable things that I can’t repeat and keep my G rating. (Did you know I received a G rating from the National Online Parental Association of…. I can’t do it. I was trying to spell “No Pants,” but I ended up with “No Pa” and gave up. This is a bad- and slow-brained day.)
To make matters worse, after I finally returned to the Castle, Julie had already started cooking dinner. Do you know what that means? Yes, sports fans, it means since Julie cooked I had to do the dishes. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate dishes? How lonesome and greasy and sudsy and downright evil the washing of dishes (and clothes) is? Well it is. Evil, that is. And I hate doing it. But after dinner I did it and now my fingers are pruney and my back hurts from bending over the too-low sink. Come to think on it, most of my kitchen is too low for my excessively perfect height. When I chop vegetables and meats, I find my back starting to hurt, as if warning me that I do not belong in the kitchen chopping food and doing dishes. The one thing I’ve learned from the health experts is you’re supposed to always listen to your body. No matter what. And see we’re not mattering what right now. I probably should not spend any more time in the kitchen except when I need to grab chocolate-related foods, or yummy breakfast cereals. It seems only fair to my back and my body and my sanity and my crinkled fingers.
Work was busy today. I went to sleep a bit later than I should have. I told Julie a couple of days ago to stop me from working on our website at exactly 10pm. Julie did so, and I had a great night’s sleep. Last night, when Julie came to me at 10pm to remind me that it was time to go to bed, I used my Jedi mind tricks on her and told her I was fine staying up for another hour working on my project. I wasn’t fine. I wasn’t even close to fine. I paid for it this morning, waking up too tired and having to drug myself with plenty of yummy caffeine to keep me going during my meeting-laden day. I blame Julie. She’s too easily manipulated. And I blame George W. Bush. Clearly he’s at fault too for the dish thing. Okay, that’s enough politics. I don’t want to scare you. I bet you’re surprised I knew the name of my nation’s president. I am too.
I’m trucking right along today. This should be more painful. I should be consternating and worrying about my Jewish essay which is languishing on my hard drive. But I’m not. I’m typing away listening to the rain slam the roof. Julie is bothering me again. She’s looking at other’s websites and trying to convince me that we need to design our website just like theirs. I’m resisting my fists of throttling anger. I’m anxious tonight, ready to do something but not sure what. I need rest and relaxation and a few moments to catch my brain up to the rest of me.
I can tell when my brain begins to fry like day old eggs on a carburetor (and, no, I don’t exactly know what a carburetor does, but I think it has something to do with a car engine, and therefore gets hot, and therefore may be able to cook an egg on its surface). Earlier I’m sitting at the Shabbos dinner table (and, yes, because of the traffic, and because I didn’t drive into work and leave way early, I arrived home after Shabbos officially started, once again showing I’m a terrible Jew), and talking to Julie about my day, and I’m trying to describe something (in my current state I can’t think of what that something was, but let’s say the it was the word “carrot,” and how it sounds so orangey, but it’s not—not orangey, that is. The word at least), and I can’t grasp the word. I’m staring into space, wandering through the closed aisles of my brains, and nothing comes to me. Not the word or a description of the word. Just little lights and fairies with umbrellas (except they didn’t have umbrellas and I don’t think they were fairies). And then they’re gone, all of them, and I’m left without the word and Julie is looking at me worried as if something is wrong and I shake my head and wave her off and change the subject and forget about the word (carrot) and get back to eating the big chicken she cooked dreading the thought of washing dishes in soapy water where my hands will get wrinkly but knowing once the dishes are done I’ll run upstairs and start typing these words and type away my innermost scary thoughts until Julie against taps me on the shoulder about a wedding website. What’s that dear? A pretty green website? Yes, I’d love to see it. Of course ours will be just as good. No, an ugly website does meet I don’t love you. No, not at all.
In the middle of last week, Julie and I finally made our way to Loews—the home improvement store not the movie theater—to purchase supplies for a number of home-improvement projects we’ve been talking about. The plastic bag full of goodies sat on top of the dryer all week. It wasn’t until early this morning that I finally opened the bag to start in on my first project.
Our downstairs toilet has been acting up, so much so that I had to turn off the water. The toilet has sat (mostly) unused for the past few weeks. It was running and when I wiggled the thingamajob like I usually do to fix it, the running continued. I tried to tighten all the screws, and then loosened the screws, then changed the angle and direction of the ball thingy, and I eventually came to the conclusion that the tall thingy that the ball and lever work off of and that connects to the water under the toilet was in need of replacing. As you can tell by my technical descriptions, I’m an expert when it comes to plumbing and other home improvement projects. I bought a replacement tall thingy at Loews as part of our project planning.
I spent twenty minutes attempting to take off the old plastic tall thingy and failed when I realized I didn’t have a large enough wrench to loosen the plastic nut under the toilet. That’s how those home-improvement stores always get you: they know no matter how detailed your list of supplies is, you’ll always have to come back for more junk to get your job done. I think they could make a fortune if they provided home delivery. I would have home delivered that wrench to continue failing in my project. I didn’t make it back to Loews, however. After I confronted the unconfrontable plastic nut, I threw my tools down and escaped to the world of computers, a world that is just as frustrating, but doesn’t involve automobiles when I need to fix something.
I can’t go on with this diary entry. I thought I could. I thought I would finish it like every other day where my head is pounding away and even the brightness of the screen makes my eyes water. I thought lots of things but I can’t wrap my brain around these words. I tried not to make it another day like this. I want to write, I really do. But I find myself not having the energy or effort or whatever it is in my brain that allows me to focus and concentrate and pat words into large absorbent balls, which I can roll down the hall and post on my seemingly self-torturous website. Whatever it is is now gone.
I spent most of the morning, after failing at the toilet, working on our wedding website. Julie and I finally hammered out the design and I’m working on the beast. It won’t be the quickest or the lowest bandwidth site, but it will be pretty. Why torture myself with a day of fancy photos if I don’t intend to use them? That was rhetorical, of course we intend to use them. And by them, I mean the wedding photos we took in Taiwan, of course. I’d link to it but that would involve additional work, of which it is next to impossible at this moment.
This is much easier when I don’t have to think about what I’m going to write. Of course this is useless, but what else is new? It’s art, my art, and fuck if I care if it becomes anything. It won’t. But so what? I’m putting words down and this is what I told myself I would do. These are words for me not for you, as I’ve said plenty of times before.
What happened to my spreadsheet? In my pain I forgot about recording the beginning time or my feelings (1s across the board). Another in a long line of failures.
Julie is sitting at her computer working away. We ate a throw everything in the kitchen into a pan and call it dinner dinner. It turned out better than I thought. We even cooked the frozen kosher shrimps I bought a few weeks ago. (Shrimp, like all shell fish, is not kosher. This was faux shrimp.) After defrosting them in water, they looked like real shrimps, minus the vein and the shells and tail. They pan fried nicely with scallions and a bit of oil. As we cut into the first shrimp we realized that it looked much more like shrimp than it tasted. It tasted like fish balls, which was probably because that is what it was: white fish squished together into shrimp shapes, with some sort of orange food coloring along its edges.
My head is threatening to remove itself from my neck. The pain is not improving, and the one Advil I managed to swallow earlier hasn’t helped much. I think it’s a sleep problem today. I went to sleep late last night and woke up in the middle of the morning. I can’t do the math now because my head won’t let me, but I think I slept either too little or too much, and, whichever one it was, I slept outside my schedule. As part of my anti-headache regime, I try to keep my sleep patterns as constant as possible. I failed last night. I woke up this morning with a slight headache, which staying on the computer working on the website most of the morning, and not eating until noon, certainly didn’t help. Life is about sacrifices I guess. I’m on my way to finishing my sacrifice for tonight. I need sleep and I need sleep badly. It’s one of those pathologically yawning headaches that I know will go away with a good night’s sleep. Or at least I hope it will. I’ll wear my sick sweatshirt to bed just in case. That always fights away the bad bugs that run around my body on these weakened nights.
Drinking too much coffee made my concentration worse, not better. There is a limit to yummy caffeine intake, and I located it this afternoon. I keep forgetting that I have to watch the dosage. Too much yummy caffeine, no matter how tired I feel, will only replace the tiredness with anxiety. This is something to think about when you embark on the wonderful path of caffeination.
I have this friend, let’s call him Sam. Sam has this habit of finding opportunities to test his friendships. What follows was my (failed) test. I was probably as much at fault as him. But since I’m writing this I’ll look the hero I always dream I am. It’s interesting how difficult it is to analyze yourself and so easy to analyze other people. I guess that’s how therapists can be so insane and yet have a positive effect on their patients. (That most mental health experts are insane is beyond question.)
Sam asked me on Monday if I would drive him on Friday to get his car from the shop. I spoke about my wonderful vanpool before, and because of it I rarely drive into work. But I told him I’d be happy to drive into work because, you know, that’s what friends do. To provide a bit of background, Sam is a nice, decent guy. (I try to hang out only with nice, decent guys.) He’s great when he’s alone, but tends to go over-the-top when in a large crowd.
Since Sam asked on a Monday, I said, “Let me know whether you still need a ride later.” Part of me didn’t want to do Sam the favor. By driving in on Friday I risked strong traffic which the vanpool helps avoid. Come Thursday I completely forget about our conversation and his request. Some of it may have been subconscious, but most of it was because I tend to do that: forget about things that aren’t in front of me. I caught the vanpool into work on Friday and left my car happily at the Castle.
I stopped by Sam’s office in the morning to let him know I wouldn’t make lunch because of meetings. He gave me this strange look, and said, “I bet you didn’t drive in today.” When I agreed he went ballistic. An argument ensued with various name-callings and gender questioning.
His argument: I asked you to do a favor, and a real friend would have done the favor. My response: you didn’t remind me, and I wasn’t sure you even wanted me to drive. My arguments weren’t well formed because it was early Monday morning and I had yet to hit the bucks of star machine for my yummy caffeine. Since I became a (fully admitted and celebrated) caffeine addict, pre-coffee times are the worst. I’m mentally slower and slightly detached. I have done the risk-benefit analysis often, and yummy caffeine’s wonderful powers far outweigh its few side effects.
We made up this morning when I stuck my head in his office and asked if he still hated me. In the end it would have been better if I had driven. The traffic Friday night was dreadful, and had I driven, I would have left earlier and may have avoided it.
In preparation for our new wedding website, Julie has been busy photoshopping childhood pictures. Here’s what Julie came up with for me:
It’s amazing what four inches of snow falling during an evening rush hour will do for my perspective. Even though I didn’t return home until after 9pm, I had a good night. The snow was unexpected. The notoriously unreliable Seattle weather people were expecting cold weather with chance of flurries. Prediction of precipitation is very tricky in Seattle. It has something to do with the large mountains and volcanoes that surround the area, as well as the rotations of the planets and their respective moons, and the astrological signs of the weather people’s children. It’s very complicated. I would draw charts but I’m not good with multi-dimension illustrations. The chart I’m thinking of would have at least eleven dimensions with three sub-dimensions for every fifth full dimension. (The string-theory people will know what I’m talking about. The rest of you will just have to accept its complications.) The weather people were right about one part: it was cold.
I had a feeling that snow was in the air. Besides my education in conformity in Syracuse, NY, I also spent much of my time working on a minor in snow studies. I learned the signs, and as I walked outside from a meeting at 4pm, there was an ominous and heavy silence, a sure sign of either impending snow or a large predator in the woods, like a sphinx on the prowl for an early evening supper. The outside was eerily quiet. By the time I went to my next meeting, things were bad and on their way to worse.
The van left work at our normal time of 5:30pm. We drove about one hundred feet past the parking lot when we realized that this was going to be extraordinarily bad. We had a short discussion and unanimously decided to return the van into the parking lot and walk to dinner. A few hours would make a great difference in the volume of cars. I jumped out of the van and directed traffic to facilitate the van’s backing up. (Who says I don’t add value to the van rides?).
The walk to the restaurant was invigorating. It was cold but the snow was perfect: it was wet and thick and stuck heavily to the ground and the trees, forming excellent snowballs and oversized but stable snowmen.
After a vegetarian dinner, we trekked back to the van. This is where it gets weird. After more discussions, we decided to put chains around the rear wheels. This took twenty minutes. Once chained, we started out on the roads, which had emptied in the two hours since we had first ventured out.
Once on the highway, the snow lessoned significantly. We thumped along on the chained tires, the driver pushing the van on the open highway. We were making wonderful time until we grew close to our exit. There was a large crash followed by a sick thumping sound. We slowly made our way to the shoulder where the real men went out to review the damage. (I stayed in the van, trapped in the far back seat—my opinion not asked for or required.) It turned out that the right tire’s chain had caught on the wheel well of the van. This caused the metal rim in the wheel well to bend down over the wheel until the metal rim rubbed on the tire and the chain. Two state police cruisers stopped as we tried to fix the problem. We removed the chains and they encouraged us to go on our way. We left the shoulder slowly and when the thumping grew louder, we tried to pull the van over again. The police would have none of it. There were much worse problems on the road this night, and because of the angle of the metal (it was facing the same direction as the tire spun), they didn’t think it would puncture the tire. They switched on their loudspeaker and made it clear that we could not return to the shoulder. “Stay on target, stay on target!”
The van thumped along and we leaned forward and to the right to try to keep weight off the tire. When we drove downhill or decelerated, there was no noise. Other times it was the loud thumping. The snow returned in force when we finally drove into our neighborhood. One moment we were driving through wet but clean asphalt, and the next snow buried the roads. By the time I walked back to the Castle from the drop off point, the snow was four inches deep and mostly pristine.
For such a long commute home, I was serene and enjoyed myself. It’s sometimes good to put things in perspective; to realize that everything is but a test of character and self, and without “everything,” there would be nothing, and I would be sitting around consternating and complaining all the time. (I’m not going there, don’t worry.)
In other fronts, my mother is angry with me. She has been telepathically communicating her anger. From what I was able to gather from my short telephone conversation with her tonight, she’s angry that I don’t telephone her enough. She was waiting until I called to tell me that, I guess to prove her point. (For the record, I called yesterday to see how everyone was doing, but didn’t get a hold of her.) The truth is I love my mother very much, but I’m not a good caller. The only person I consistently call is Julie. Everyone else is on a monthly schedule. It’s partly that I’m lazy and partly that I don’t have much to say (as evidenced by the thoughts I record on these pages). Her passive-aggressive strategies did impress me. The problem with her strategy, however, was that it may take me a long time to remember to call, leaving her telepathic message unanswered. How am I supposed to feel guilty if I don’t even know I’m supposed to be feeling guilty?
Julie is becoming a businessperson. I’m not sure she’s happy about it. Julie is the nicest person I know, it’s one of the things I love about her.(1) Like many nice people, Julie enjoys when people like her. And as a businessperson, she’s finding that sometimes she needs to be unkind to people. Being unkind, of course, results in people not liking her so much.
Unkindness is one of the unwritten rules of business. If you’re too nice, people walk all over you. If you want to be successful, you need a streak of cruelty. Many people don’t want to believe this. They think that by being nice and accommodating, people will like them better and want to do business with them. They point to successes in customer relations as an example. But they are mistaken. Even the best customer relations professionals only take it so far. There are limits to what “the customer is always right” means. (The greater the potential payment, the greater are these limits.) If there were no limits, the business would be out of business. It’s about being polite but strict with rules. This strictness is what people usually mistake with unkindness.
The most successful people are not only the smartest and luckiest, they also have a streak of meanness. They know when to say no or when to fire people, or when to be an asshole to get their way. I’ve met many successful people in my career, and I know this to be true. It’s not that these people are “mean people.” Most of them are very nice. It’s just that when the time is right, they can be mean and aggressive. Meryl Streep’s character in A Devil Wears Prada is a perfect example—albeit an example of the far extreme of this type of ruthlessness (If only I could be that mean and successful).
Julie is managing properties for her parents in Seattle. She’s beginning to learn these lessons. I stayed home today because of the snow, and after a particularly difficult phone call, Julie rested her head on my chest and said, “I had to be mean. I don’t think they like me anymore.” I didn’t say anything. Julie knows that if she’s not mean, the tenants will walk all over her, which will make things much worse. I held Julie and didn’t say anything.
My mother (who I still haven’t called since I’m a mean, mean David—and because I felt like absolute crap all day today) is not a mean person when it comes to business. She’s very nice and accommodating. She hasn’t done badly being like that, but at times she makes decisions that make me want to pull my hair out. But she is who she is and she’s happy with it. That’s the good part about being a businessperson. You get to choose your meanness appetite. There are costs involved, of course. Well-placed meanness always has benefits. But if you believe in karma or the next life or a moral life, sometimes you’re willing to pay those costs.
(1) As opposed to David, who—to make it seem nicer by speaking about him in the third person—is mean and grouchy and whiny. Julie finally realized I was whiny today. We were sitting at the dinner table and I was lamenting that we had made four pierogies instead of two because she had said she wanted two. (She didn’t want her two because they were undercooked.) As I lamented, she turned to me and said, “You’re whining. You’re whining like a monster! You’re just a child. I knew it!” I then gave her the silent treatment to show her that I wasn’t a child. Luckily we’ve already spent too much money on the wedding to call it off. That was all part of my Machiavelli strategy. That David is always two steps ahead of the game. Two very mean and aggressive steps.
I spent today working on that illustrious Jewish essay I promised a while ago. I did add large chunks to it, but I don’t want to raise your hopes too much. I’ll post it when it’s smooth and ready for consumption. Right now it’s bumpy and a bit wider than it is long, and very hard to chew. (I won’t pain you with more of that analogy.)
Julie is off to the airport in a few hours for another two-week visit to Taiwan. She’s continuing her delayed dreams with what may be a big step into China.
I’m always sad when she leaves. I turn angry and depressed and attempt my passive-aggressive telepathy on her (something I learned from my mom). I know this is something that Julie really wants, and I do want to support her. It’s just hard for me to be away from her for even a couple of weeks. In the end, I do kiss her goodbye and I’m glad for her. It’s a tearful scene in the airport, but we remind each other that it’s only a couple of weeks. There will be plenty more weeks when she returns.
And, besides, it’s good for relationships to be apart occasionally. Part of the reason there’s such a high divorce rate is because people spend too much time with their spouses. Get out of the house and do something by yourself! (And that doesn’t mean hit the bars every night, Homer.)
I spent today watching snow flurries fall from my window. Along with the rest of the west coast, Seattle is stuck in the midst of an arctic blast, which arrives every ten to fifteen years. We’ve been sitting on twenty-degree weather for the past few days, and with our record for precipitation in the winter, it’s no wonder snow keeps finding us.
When my nose wasn’t stuck to the glass of the windows, it was stuck to the glass of my computer. I watched most of the first season of Heroes, the NBC show about modern-day people who find they have extraordinary powers. It’s a very addicting series, and the first network show I watched exclusively over the internet. I’m afraid if the networks offered more television this way, I’d have to give up internet. I’ve lived a much better life since I gave up television more than three years ago. For all the good the internet provides, I know I spend too much time visiting and revisiting sites. I’m as much an internet junky as I ever was a television junky.
I wrote a short essay on family, but I don’t have the ability to finish it today. It’s another in a long line of unfinished and unposted works.
First Draft
You may have heard the stories. In the old country, families were large. Huge even. Some families were the size of villages, and distant cousins shared beds under leaky roofs. Entire generations resided in harmony under these conditions, the younger generation bringing joy to the older generation, and the older generation providing wisdom and care for the younger generation.
Then like a freight train ramming a hastily constructed brick wall, something happened. We entered the modern times. Modern times were supposedly better. Technology improved, and standards of living increased (at least in the places that could afford it), alongside longevity and decreases in infant mortality. In short, modern times introduced utopia. Only it didn’t.
Modern ideals and goals splintered families and split them apart. Technology replaced human contact and people drifted away, becoming less involved and less caring about the family that welcomed them into the world. I don’t say this to judge others. I am no better. I live across the country from my family. I’ve moved further west each year until I arrived as far north and west as I could go without courting bears.
People like to think that the old country was a simpler place. Today feels very complicated compared to that place. They did not have the internet or telephones or televisions or large libraries or modern science and medicine or any of the conveniences we could not imagine living without today. When I think of the past, I usually imagine what the future will think of us. Will they laugh at our naiveté, our simple way of life? If they did they would be as wrong as we are in thinking that the past was simple. People of all times are complex and live complicated lives. Life’s meaning and complications are not about the technologies or jobs or even standards of living. Life’s complexity is about, always was about, and always will be about human relationships. Relationships are a constant that has followed human development. I dare say relationships are what make humans human. And the most complicated and rewarding of all relationships are the family relationships.
They say blood is thicker than water. It’s true. What they leave out, however, is that blood is also hotter than water. Family provides the greatest opportunity to learn about connections with other people. The danger with those connections is that there’s a risk involved. Once you’re in that circuit, your connection can easily burn you. To have a relationship you have to let people close to you. And once they’re close, they know about you, they understand your weaknesses.
It’s not that we’re able to escape
And living close together with anyone is a recipe for an argument. Living close together used to mean geographically close. Thanks to the information age, living close together has a different meaning, at first more complex and in some ways shallower.
There were strange findings in genealogy over the past ten years (see Slate, Nature (partial), and Atlantic (partial). The findings made the headlines and have been used both appropriately, and inappropriately in supported of some questionable racial findings. What has been interesting, however,
Seeing as we’re talking about what people are saying, there was a study done
You may have heard the stories. In the old country, families were large. Huge even. Some families were the size of villages, and distant cousins shared beds under leaky roofs. Entire generations resided in harmony under these conditions, the younger generation bringing joy to the older generation, and the older generation providing wisdom and care for the younger generation.
Then like a freight train ramming a hastily constructed brick wall, something happened. We entered the modern times. Modern times were supposedly better. Technology improved, and standards of living increased (at least in the places that could afford it), alongside longevity and decreases in infant mortality. In short, modern times introduced utopia. Only it didn’t.
Modern ideals and goals splintered families and split them apart. Technology replaced human contact and people drifted away, becoming less involved and less caring about the family that welcomed them into the world. I don’t say this to judge others. I am no better. I live across the country from my family. I’ve moved further west each year until I arrived as far north and west as I could go without courting bears. I say this only to question its conclusion: that physical closeness is the only way to achieve closeness in a family.
People like to think that the old country was a simpler place. Today feels very complicated compared to that place. They did not have the internet or telephones or televisions or large libraries or modern science and medicine or any of the conveniences that we could not imagine living without today. When I think of the past, I usually imagine what the future will think of us. Will they laugh at our naiveté, our simple way of life? If they did they would be as wrong as we are in thinking that the past was simple. People of all times are complex and they live complicated lives. Life’s meaning and complications are not about the technologies or jobs or even standards of living. Life’s complexity is about, always was about, and always will be about the human relationship. Relationships and communication are what define the human condition. And the most complicated and rewarding of all relationships are the family relationships.
They say blood is thicker than water. It’s true. What they leave out, however, is that blood is also hotter than water. Family provides the greatest opportunity to learn about connections to other people. The danger with those connections is that there’s a risk involved. Once you’re in that circuit, your connection can easily burn you. To have a relationship you have to let people close to you. And once they’re close, they know about you, they understand your weaknesses.
It’s not that most of us are able to escape our families. You choose your friends but you don’t choose your family (except for your spouse—and you see how badly most of us do with that). Living close together with anyone is a recipe for disaster. Thanks to the information age, living close together has a different meaning, at first more complex and in some ways shallower.
This was more disorganized than usual. I thought I had something to say, but as I pieced this together tonight to place it in some condition for posting, I realized I didn’t. I wanted to talk about how families were difficult, but how you only have one family and you have to be careful not to fuck it up. I wanted to say how in the modern age there was closeness even when there was geographical distance. I wanted to talk about how much I loved my family, no matter how screwed up they are, or how screwed up I am, or how screwed up I made them. I wanted to say a whole bunch of things. But in the end I didn’t, except here. The simple statements are sometimes easier than my long convoluted ones. Conveying an emotion, in case you were wondering, was what I had planned. Searing and poorly organized logic is what I was left with.
I realized today that when people criticize me, I don’t listen to them. I agree quickly and cut them off before they have a chance to criticizing. (Before I started dating Julie, I told her, “I have to warn you, I have a lot of issues.” The criticisms usually relate to those issues.) I realize I cut people off often, and not just for criticisms. I think that I’m very smart and I know what the other person is preparing to say. Since I know, I don’t need to listen because I can finish their sentence for them. It’s all ridiculous.
I also cut off criticisms as a defense mechanism. I have to learn to bite my tongue when someone begins to criticize and hear them out, especially when the criticism comes from a friend or respected colleague. If I’m serious about NEQID, then I need to understand where I’m weak. For all my introspection, self-analysis, and judging of other people, I’ve turned out to be an awful judge of myself—and, to be honest, an awful judge of other people—I always think I know what’s right for them, and I’m usually wrong.
I’m much better at receiving written criticisms. It’s easy to ignore the first reading of mail. But I’m such a narcissist that I have to return to any writing addressed to me, and the more times I reread something, the more difficult it becomes to ignore its contents. That’s not a hint, that’s just how I am.
I doodled for the first time in a while today. I’m not sure what to think of my creation. I always liked the cartoon-building style, and the little people staring at the rising circle thingy, reminded me of the scene in “City of Angels” where the angels wait on the beach for the sunrise. I don’t think I could sit through that movie again, but it was disturbing and very powerful. And it had a great soundtrack.
I spent a few hours working on my Jewish essay, and I tried to polish the short family essay (you can see below how disgustingly I failed). There’s plenty of snow and ice in my neighborhood. It’s nice to be one of the few neighborhoods in Seattle that still has the remnants of the storm.
I had another pathetic moment today. A snowstorm blanketed Seattle last Wednesday. (As if I would let any of you forget—it seems all I can talk about lately is the weather.) I walked home in the snow from the van’s drop off and arrived at the Castle at 9:30pm, wet and cold, my pockets full of freshly fallen snow. I rang the bell to let the Julies know that my momentous journey was at an end. I unlocked the door and let myself in. My hands were full of gloves and hats and a Zune (don’t let the hype fool you, the earbuds that come with it will not keep your ears warm). With all the juggling, I forgot to remove my keys from the lock in the front door. I found them the next morning as I filled my pockets to go out. They were hanging on the outside keyhole, the metal sparkling in the morning sun from the ice crystals that had formed overnight along the keys.
You would think that I would learn my lesson from that experience: when juggling, make sure to grab the keys from the door. You would be wrong. I woke up tired this morning after a fitful night’s sleep. I decided to forgo a morning shave, and I was ready to leave a few minutes earlier than usual. I looked out back and saw that ice covered my car. As it was early and I hate scraping ice, I decided to brave the snow-covered sidewalks and walk to the van. I went out the front door and juggled my gloves and my Zune (I didn’t wear a hat today because—a little known fact among non-cool people, which I will share with you because I like you and everything you stand for, and I feel bad that the cool kids always make fun of you. Just don’t try to talk to me in the hallways because I’ll completely ignore you and make your coolness factor worse—cool people don’t wear winter hats). I walked to the van and managed not to slip, although I did slide successfully across a sheet of black ice, and I performed a perfect pirouette without the spinning and the gracefulness and the perfect part.
I read the Silfkin book on the van ride to work, amazed at my increased tolerance to reading while driving (when I first attempted to read in the van, I would turn green after only a few pages). My morning was uneventful. At around 9am as I reached for my phone I patted both of my pants pocket. The left pocket felt wrong. I reached in and found my wallet but my keys were missing. (I have a very complicated pocket system: cellphone in right front pants pocket, wallet and keys in left front pants pocket, Moleskine in right back pants pocket, pen hooked onto right front pants pocket, Zune inside left jacket pocket, and optional book in right front coat pocket. Yes, I know, TMI.)
There were a few frantic moments as I thought about my keys. I mentally retraced my steps. There were two possibilities: the keys fell out as I slid across the seat leaving the van this morning (I sat on the far side of the backbench, and I dropped my gloves as I attempted to maneuver my way out of the van), or my keys were helplessly hanging from my front door. I called the van driver and he graciously agreed to check the van. Nothing there, he told me. After much planning, some begging, and some evil manipulation, I borrowed a friend’s car, drove back to the Castle, and found my keys on the front door, unmolested and quite safe. I could have taken a chance and left them there all day, but I’m from New York. And in New York you don’t do such things.
Moral of the story: I’m a terrible juggler who trusts no one. Oh, and my brain is growing stale from misuse.
I’ve had a few friends confide in me that they suffer headaches. I’m glad to hear this. It’s not that I wish anyone pain (except the Road Runner—never have I hated a cartoon character so much, the moronic look, the earsplitting beep-beep, the placidity in the face of extreme odds, the arrogance of a bird that doesn’t even fly[1]), it’s that I’m glad to find others who suffer from headaches. My gladness is a bit on the selfish side: in the silly putty I call my mind, the more people who have headaches, the less likely it is that I have a brain tumor. My reasoning being that brain tumors are relatively rare, and if there are plenty of headaches to go around, then it is unlikely that my headache is a strong indication of a brain tumor. This is good because brain tumors are very bad. They eat away at what makes you the person you thought you were.
[1] According to Wikipedia, the roadrunner, while capable of flight, spends most of its time running along the ground at speeds up to 15 mph.
Brain tumors also provide a strong counterargument to the question of a soul: if your personality (and by extensions the choices you make, which is one of the ways Judaism defines the functions of the soul) are so drastically affected by a breakdown of brain material, perhaps the two and half pounds of brain is who you are after all. The rabbis respond by saying that a person with a disease is not liable for their actions, since their decisions are not their own. God therefore does not judge diseased people. This only gets the rabbis around the ethical problems with judging people who are incapable of controlling their choices. It does not explain why so much of your personality and choices are tied to the proper functioning of your brain. If the soul had that great an influence over a person, then even with the breakdown of the brain, a sick person’s choices would still be soul inspired (which sounds suspiciously like a groovy 70s song). It’s at this point that the rabbis usually stare me down and explain slowly and patiently and using very small words that the soul in an imperfect vessel cannot fulfill its mission on earth (which is to grow closer to God—more on that in my elusive Jewish essay). And that is why it is important to explain that God does not judge sick people, similar to how God does not judge children, as they have not fully developed their ethical senses (which, again, begs the question of why this sense needs to be developed if its innate in the soul—but I digress and pound away).
This week I took four tablets of ibuprofen. Today was the second set of tablets. I say this as a cathartic confession. I have a rule about ibuprofen: four tablets a month. I used to pop ibuprofen daily. Then I learned about rebound headaches. Since I’m a recovering rebound headache-er, I have to be very careful when I take too many pills in a short time. I did sleep in this morning as I woke up in the middle of a heavy snowfall and learned that the van had been cancelled. I drove in to work after two additional hours of sleep (I always wake up tired, and it's not until I leave the Castle that I lose the desperate need to crawl back under the covers, especially when the Julies is sleeping away). Too much sleep is a trigger for my headaches. At the peek of my headache, at around 4pm, I decided that there was no need to chop my own head off—I should grab some medicine from the handy-dandy corporate medicine cabinet and deal with the consequences. (According to the Chinese herbalist Julie visits, he can tell a person who takes too many ibuprofens by blackness on their fingertips.)
I’m not sure you can tell, but I’m feeling great—almost P.H.D. great. After finishing this short essay, I’m going to see if I have another doodle in me. Julie likes my little guy, and I’m going to see what my Wacom tablet has in store for me today.
Today was a work at home day. I got a surprising amount of work done, thanks to an early infusion of yummy caffeine. I can’t say enough how much of a wonder drug it is. (And I do go on about it!)
After work, I managed to write the first 400 words of the ping-pong story Chuck served. It’s a slow start to what may be a shorter-than-usual story. I won’t make any judgments yet. I’m glad to put words on screen so I have a little momentum. From what he tells me, he’s not doing much better. That shouldn’t make me feel good, but by now you’ve probably realized how evil I am, and how something like that would keep me toasty on the insides. Speaking of warmth, the cold finally broke in Seattle. It’s now warm, dark, and rainy. Just like it’s supposed to be in wintertime in the Northwest.
I received my new smarter-than-me phone today. It was why I spent the day at home. Since Julie is in Taiwan, I couldn’t risk missing the UPS guy. He arrived at around 6pm, so there was a small chance I could have gone into work and made it home in time for the delivery. My meetings today were all teleconferences, so the only thing I missed was the gym. My gym goings is still rather sporadic as I average about one to one and a half days a week. The gym has been triggering day-after headaches for a few months. I’m still trying to figure out why. My working theory is that I’m not doing enough cardio, and I pay for pushing myself with the weights with a day-after migraine. I could experiment by doing more cardio, but I’m a lazy, lazy man. I’ll just suffer in silence and continue to look for excuses not to go to the gym.
The phone is smaller and better than I thought it would be. I’m such a gadget freak. I get all shivery and my mind begins to focus solely on the delivery until the toy is in my grubby little hands. Today wasn’t as bad as when I decide to buy a new video game and drive around frantically trying to purchase it and make it home to play it. But I did look out my window for the brown truck at least a hundred times. I’m like a dog just out of reach of a bone, if you excuse my unimaginative analogy. But it’s here. Now I have to try not to drop it for at least a week. I’m on a phone-a-year plan. That’s a David plan, not an annoying mobile carrier plan (I had to order from the UK to get around their two-year contracts).
I did more doodling today. Except for slight pains in my wrists, I’m enjoying the drawings. I stored a few away for days where I don’t feeling like hitting the tablet. I’ll dole them out slowly. Like crack . . . for the children. Not that anyone (except the Julies) cares. It just makes me feel better to talk about it.
I don’t have much to write here today. I whipped through a first draft of one of my four Jewish principles. It’s still not ready for posting, but the additions are long enough to meet Goal. I have two more principles to finish and a lot of polishing and reorganizing afterwards. But I needed a placeholder between doodles.
I have a large supply waiting for my daily posts. I'm still enjoying drawing my little monsters. We’ll see how long it takes until I run out of things to draw or say.
I just finished a huge delicious steak. Every time I think on the perfect steak, the scene from “The Matrix” pops into my head: it’s the one where the evil guy meets the evil agents in the steakhouse. The evil guy is telling the evil agents how he knows that this big delicious steak he just cut a slab from is not real, is only a computer-generated image of the steak (I’m obviously paraphrasing here). He understands this, yet when he puts the large luscious piece into his mouth, he can’t help but enjoy its flavor and texture, and wish beyond anything to return to the days when he enjoyed simple pleasures like steaks and fine red wines.
I wasn’t sure what I was going to write when I ran upstairs to the computer. I arrived home a bit tired from work and the gym. When I looked in the fridge, I found the only remaining meat from my last Albertson trip was a huge steak. I had put off cooking it because it was rather large and seeing as the Julies is still out becoming famous, being alone with such a large steak was somewhat intimidating. I took a deep breath, found a clean pan (there weren’t many—I’ve gone through the grill pan, the nonstick pan, and the strangely shaped pan, which leaves me only the All-Clad frying pans), and set it on the electric range at a heat setting of six (out of ten).
The steak was thicker than usual, almost an inch and a half at its thickest part. I added a bit of olive oil to the pan and when it became fragrant, I added the steak. I moved the steak around so it wouldn’t stick, but after a few seconds, I found it hadn’t worked. I peeled the steak off the pan and slid it around until the sliding was slick. I set the microwave timer at four minutes and went to spend some quality time with the internet. (I spent too much time with the internet today. It feels like a scorned lover, always wanting more from me even after I know that neither of us is good for the other). At the beeping, I cut open a rounded roll with my oversized bread knife and set it in the toaster at the two-minute setting (for such a fancy toaster, it takes a surprisingly long time to toast anything consistently). I went to the pan and turned over the steak. It had sealed beautifully, with a brown crispy coat. After realizing that the steak was not going to cook through on just the range top, I turned on the oven at 350 degrees and returned to the cozy embrace of the internet after setting another four minutes on the clock.
The toaster beeped first, but I ignored it. When the microwave beeped I peeled myself away from the internet (reading a particularly funny website: tremble.com, via kottke.org), and returned to the pan. The second side stuck as bad as the first, but after freeing the meat, I squished it around until slick and settled it in the pan. I turned off the oven top and slid the pan into the heated oven. I set the timer for another four minutes, pulled the hot bread out of the toaster, juggled the bread slices between my hands like, well, the proverbial hot potato, and placed them on a dinner plate. Since the steak was so large, I decided tonight I would splurge and use the large plates instead of the medium-sized ones that we bought as “salad plates” (even though they were larger than my last dinner set’s dinner plates).
The oversized dinner plate waited quietly next to the oven, with the split roll upside down and staggered on the edge of the plate. I returned to the internet yet again. I had a New Yorker on the table—I have many New Yorker scattered throughout the Castle[1]—but I resisted the printed word for the electronic one. And, besides, I had a few more articles at tremble to read.
[1] I am still very far behind in my New Yorker reading, and I’ve decided not to renew until I catch up. This is a valid strategy, I think, because I’m constantly reading New Yorkers that are three months old. I read the New Yorker not so much to learn what’s going on in the world, but instead to validate my overly liberal ideals of the world and, of course, remember how wonderful New York is—if only I could move back. Missing a few months of New Yorkers, therefore, will not be too bad. The only part I fear is the letters section in the beginning. I hate when I read a New Yorker and realize I don’t know what article the letter author is referring to. I’ll have to suck it up somehow for the months I miss, regardless of how many free calendars the New Yorker offered me. And, yes, I did need a calendar. I removed last year’s New Yorker calendar from my wall at work, and the pushpin still waits in the wall for a new calendar.
The microwave beeped and I headed into the kitchen. The steak smelled surprisingly good. I pulled it out of the oven and grabbed a fork and knife to check its doneness. I had stuck all of the full-sized forks into the dishwasher and I was too lazy to open it and sort through the silverware. I grabbed a small salad fork to eat the large steak, which was a sacrifice, but in the grand scheme of things, not a terrible sacrifice. I remembered to pull on the oven mitt before pulling the pan from the oven. There have been too many times where I’ve forgotten this simple but highly effective glove, and pulled my hand away in horror at the sudden pain. It’s amazing how sometimes the pain hits too slowly, and in that moment before you realize what you’ve done, you wonder what is wrong, since you know something is wrong but you just don’t know what it is. Most of the time, I forget the mitt after the pan is sitting on the oven top and I’ve eaten my fill. It takes a surprising amount of time for the metal panhandle to cool sufficiently to move it to the sink without that sudden surprise.
After cutting into the steak, I realized it was not ready. I flipped the steak and turned the oven back on. In four minutes it was ready, and with mitt in hand, I served it up to my plate, carried it over to the table, and, with my New Yorker open and ready for reading, I proceeded to stab and slice away at what was a perfectly fatty and quite delicious steak.
You may be asking yourself why I bothered to describe my dinner experience in excruciating detail. I don’t have a good answer. I should have used this sudden burst of inspiration to write something meaningful. Perhaps I should have returned to my Jewish essay—although, since this is Shabbos, the day of Jewish rest (I shouldn’t even be typing this words), I decided not to risk the wrath of you-know-who in typing words about Judaism. Or perhaps I should have returned to the ping-pong story, which sits like a lonely cat on the edge of the stoop waiting for its tray of milk. But I didn’t. Steak just seemed a much more apt topic for today. Now, I’m on to drawing new monsters. They’ve been yanking at the corners of my sweater all day.
Another short public post today. My Jewish essay is limping along, growing by long paragraphs and longer asides. But I’m not complaining. I managed a few more doodles today, and spent a part of the day in the coffee house. The initial rush of the yummy caffeine wore off after about an hour of essay writing. I’m very thankful for the little things.
To show that I don’t only talk about bad weather, Seattle is under a spell of cool beautiful weather. Blue skies with playful clouds gave me a chance to take a long walk around the neighborhood. Now I’m tired. I think a traditional Shabbos afternoon nap is in order. (That’s about the only Saturday custom I follow.)
Today has not been a good day. A headache descended on me after lunch and hasn’t removed its razor-sharp talons from my skull. Between the clawing I did manage a few more doodles. I’m not happy with today’s posted drawing, but it was better than the original version. I like having a secret stash of doodles that Julie can review. It gives me a chance to go back and rework some of the problems before posting. I’m still a talentless hack, but at least I’m a well-edited talentless hack.
As sad as it sounds, I’m looking forward to returning to work tomorrow. Lonely Sundays are the worst. Especially when my fridge is running low on food and I’ve done a terrible job of managing my Netflix queue. We had rented two discs of anime, which Julie really enjoys. Regrettably, we didn’t get a chance to watch it before Julie left for Taiwan. I resisted watching them this entire week until today. I gave in to the temptation and lost a few hours to their drawn goodness. The anime was “Samurai Champloo,” and except for its fascination with hip-hop, it’s a very good anime. The animation is excellent (probably the best animated series I’ve seen), and the story somewhat intriguing.
Julie and I are getting together our save-the-date cards for the weddings. That means that I have to return and finish the wedding website. I’ve put it on hold to draw doodles during my free time. I might have to cut down to one or so a day. The more complicated ones, which I should begin posting in the next few days, take a good amount of time to get right. I’m still waiting for the addresses for the save-the-date cards from my mother (consider this my nag!). Then we have to print and stamp and lick and mail. It all sounds like a lot of work. I guess it’s time for Julie and me to start working on the wedding. Everyone tells me weddings are not about fun and games. Now eloping, eloping would be about fun and games. Too bad it’s too late for that.
Chuck pointed out that there was a difference between “yay” and “yeah.” In a mail to him, I said that there really should be a way of describing which “yeah” you were talking about (at the time, I thought that you could write “yeah” for either “yay” or “yeah”). Looking back over my writing, I have used “yay” before. I think the problem is that Word does not have “yay” in its dictionary. It’s amazing how powerful spellcheckers are for changing the spelling and writing habits of writers. I know every time I see a squiggly green or red line, I immediately look to change something.
I was talking to a friend the other day and she mentioned that sometimes when she writes in her paper notebook, she pauses for a moment to wait for a squiggly line to show up when she’s not sure of the spelling of the word. Technology is wonderful, it’s just not that wonderful yet.
My head feels better today. It was touch and go when I woke this morning. It still hurt but I resisted the early-morning Advil. I have had luck with breakfasting and then riding the van to relieve my headaches. My work-morning Flintstone vitamin (especially the gummy variety) may also have a beneficial effect. Whatever it was, it worked. By the time I arrived at work and dug in to my delicious workload I was fully rested and headache free. It was almost a P.H.D. (it didn’t reach that level since a true P.H.D. starts when I first wake up).
My morning coffee surely didn’t hurt the process. And before you start crying that my headache was yummy caffeine withdrawal, let me point out that you’re wrong on so many levels that I can’t accurately define or explain. I’m slathering all over the keyboard as I type this at the thought that some of you may have this idea burning in your tiny brains. And, no, the levels that you’re wrong on have nothing to do with my addiction levels, as we will disregard the loose fact that I failed to partake of yummy caffeine on Sunday, when, if you remember, my head sprouted talons.
I didn’t manage any story or essay writing today. I’m still tired from this weekend. I only have nine days left in the ping-pong story, and it’s not looking very good. I’m going to pound something out there starting, umm, tomorrow. I might have to ask for an extension. I always hated those people in school: I would work my butt off to finish my papers on time, and those people would saunter up to the professor after class on the day the paper was due, and give a sob story and walk away with an extension. I know I’m not supposed to hate anybody, and that I shouldn’t judge because I don’t know if their sob story was true. For all I know their dog/cat/guinea pig may have died the previous night, and they spent the late evening hours when they would have been putting the finishing touching on their paper/late-term assignment/take-home test wallowing away in a makeshift funeral ceremony for their beloved pet. I just don’t know the truth, and it’s wrong of me to think badly of them. And yet I did. Maybe if I were there now, with those same people and their same sob story, I would think differently. Knowing David, as much as I talk about NEQID, I don’t think I’ve grown much, particularly when I begin talking about those people.
Today I posted my favorite doodle. I’ve been looking forward to this day since I first drew it last Thursday. The perspective, while perhaps not technically accurate, was very satisfying. I started with pencil lines to plan where the walls and window should appear. Everything came together after that. And when I was trying to figure out what to do with the floor space, the slipper struck me. Technically, since his tail/leg falls backward, the slipper should have faced the other direction. When I tried it that way, however, it didn’t look as good. I think they call this artistic license, or, in my case, Dav-tistic license (for obvious, I’m-not-an-artist reasons).
After finishing a doodle, I came up to my chair to write some words in my ping-pong story. Chuck had thrown down a challenge after reading my veiled request for an extension yesterday. I knew there was no more ducking Story. The thing was I didn’t feel very good about writing. In truth, I was dreading it. It turns out my dread was misplaced. I steamed through a thousand words of Story. The words weren’t great, but I didn’t have anything planned, and an actual character—okay, a very derivative and almost caricatured character—grabbed my hand and took me for a short spin. I don’t know if anything will come of it, but I do feel more confident about getting a first draft out by the end of the month.
I think my doodling is helping my writing. The doodling puts me in a more creative and less judgmental state of mind. It feels good to write words and not worry about where I’m heading or what I’m saying. We’ll see if I can duplicate this feeling and write Story tomorrow night.
Julie is flying back on Friday, which means only three more days of loneliness. Julie showed her mother my doodles. After looking through the squiggles, Julie’s mother became very concerned about my well-being. She diagnosed me as depressed. Julie assured her that I was always like this. I guess it’s true. There’s a part of me that is always like this. It doesn’t matter how busy or how happy or how tightly I hold the Julies. It’s there, always waiting, distant and alone. Until my monsters, I didn’t have a consistent way to share that part. I guess my consternations were a painful release valve. It’s nice to have other mechanisms that don’t grate so much on my two readers.
It’s growing late and I need to clean up today’s doodle posting, and maybe draw another one. I have a nice pile of doodles waiting for posting. It almost pains me not to post them all immediately. But I like the one-a-day schedule. It allows me a little leeway if I decide to slow my output. It also gives me a chance to touch up the older doodles, and rewrite the titles.
I enjoyed today’s writing, and I don’t want to end this missive. But I won’t bore you with more words when I have nothing left to say.
I wrote another 500 words in the ping-pong story today. I guess I moved it along. While showering this morning, I figured out where it was going. It’s an interesting twist—although I’m not sure if I’ll do it justice in this first draft. I guess we’ll see where it takes me over the next few days.
I figured out why showers are so good for inspiration. It has nothing to do with the hot water. It’s about being alone with nothing to look at and nothing to do. I spend so much of my time being distracted that when I’m alone for fifteen minutes with no internet or meetings or interesting things to look at or listen to, ideas whip at me from all directions. I use a small sound recorder to capture the idea before it runs away. I’ve found my ideas have a very short life if I don’t record them somewhere.
I was feeling wonderful this afternoon. An early morning gym visit along with a warm sunny day left me in a great mood for most of the afternoon. By early evening, I was tired. I managed only one doodle today, and I don’t think it was up to my usual quality. I’ll clean it up in a few weeks when it’s time to post it. Today’s is another in a spattering of “David Sayings” doodles. Similar to the “Go on without me” (which I don’t think I did justice to), I tend to repeat today’s words a lot. I’m nothing if not repetitive and predictable.
I played too many video games when I returned home today. I finished the video games about twenty minutes ago, and spent the rest of the time pounding out another 500 words of Story. It keeps getting longer and not going anywhere. It feels like Marathon writing. But I’ll keep plugging away. I know where I want it to go, and I’ll have to squeeze where I want to go through the tiny hole I created. I doubt it’ll fit but I will arrive at the end. It’ll be a pile of crap, but I hear that’s what first drafts are supposed to be. I’m saving a serve in a few weeks to edit one of our piles of crap.
Julie flies back tomorrow night. I can’t wait to see her. She’s going to cure me of my newfound video game addiction. It’s been a lonely two weeks, but I guess distance does make the heart grow fonder. Or something sappy like that.
Today marks the first return of the Snowman. He makes a couple more comics later in the week. I still have one or two more frames to draw for him.
Julie arrived at the airport at around six this evening. A couple from our Jewish conversion class had invited us to a Shabbos dinner early in the week. We had accepted, knowing that the best way to defeat jetlag when returning from Asia was to keep busy. We loaded Julie’s bags into my car and drove from the airport directly to dinner. They served delicious shish kebobs, good red wine, crunchy challah bread, and good conversations.
We made it home a few minutes ago. Julie is unpacking and surveying the mess that I created over the last two weeks. There are times when I am very clean, and times when I am anything but clean. These past two weeks have fallen squarely in the latter category. I don’t know if it was my inner passive-aggressive child attempting to exact revenge on Julie for abandoning me over the past two weeks, or when Julie was gone, I returned to my natural state of lazy dirtiness. Either way, the Castle hasn’t looked this bad in some time. Our housekeeper came last Wednesday. If it weren’t for her, the Castle would be almost unrecognizable. As we returned to the Castle, I left the kitchen lights off, afraid that the shock of the stacks of dirty dishes would be too much for Julie’s jetlagged-laden brain to handle.
The weekend is upon us, and finally I have the Julies back. This probably means that I will no longer have to draw my depressing doodles. Luckily, I have a large stack of them waiting for posting. I had a plan to do one today, but it doesn’t look like I’m going to get to it. I also won’t get back to the story today. I opened up the document and added a sentence, but realized that I didn’t have much left in me. This week has weighed heavily on me. I am looking forward to the weekend for a chance to recover and relax, and, of course, hold the Julies.
I’ve spent the past two weeks growing a beard. It didn’t fill out as much as I had hoped. I misplaced the plastic part of my beard trimmers and it looks scraggily. I did not impress Julie with my attempt at facial hair. I had warned her that I was planning to grow a beard while she was away. She assumed I would shave it off before she returned. She was wrong. I met her at the airport scruffy. She claims not to have recognized me, which I find hard to believe. Personally, I think it makes me look more manly and sophisticated. Our dinning couple agreed with me. We’ll see if the beard stays past my shower tomorrow.
For now, I’m pushing out the last few words before going to sleep. I hope to return to my rare form tomorrow. I’ll probably have plenty of time, as I imagine Julie will sleep through much of the day. Now, if I can only resist the call of the video games.
Today was a home improvement day. I had two weeks to improve the Castle while Julie was gone. Not surprisingly, I failed. I think I needed Julie around for inspiration and a kick in the pants. Things we checked off our list: Cleaned our part of the newly paved back road (David with Julie’s help at the end); Washed our cars (Julie while David was raking and shoveling the road); Fixed the bedroom Tatami door (Julie because David failed at it and hadn’t even put it on the list); and Finally finished fixing the toilet downstairs (David, thanks to a timely stop in Lowes for a large wrench ). As you can see, it was part inspiration and part having Julie here to do some of the work. She’s good that way.
I wrote exactly five hundred words in my ping-pong story today. I decided to throw down the ending in case I ran out of steam over the next couple of days. My internal editor is not happy with the quality, as it’s even lower than my Garden story. I have a few elements in the story that I like, and most I don’t. I just need to keep reminding myself that it’s the first draft, and Chuck will kill me if I don’t finish it by the end of the month.
I’ve been toying with a name for my doodles: “Cast of Horribles.” I reserved the URL a while ago, as I liked the sound of it—it was the title of a so-so story I wrote in 2005. After finishing the redesign of our wedding website (as a warning: it will not be impressive), I will put together a site for my little doodles. It will be very simple. I don’t want a complicated PHP backend as I have for the family of sewcrates sites.
Another day and I wrote another 500 words in a story that grows larger if not better. I’m over 4,000 words, and I should finish with the word growth tomorrow. That’ll leave me one day to sit down and see if I can turn this pile of words into something readable for my end of month posting. I imagine Chuck is hunched over his computer pounding out his brilliant ping-pong story.
The snowman storyline in my doodles continue. One more finished snowman awaits posting. I may get around to drawing one last one to call the set complete. Notice the black squiggly lines around the borders. It’s supposed to represent a dream of the little guy. (Since nobody gets it, I figured I’d spell it out.)
Now that I finished my writing and drawing for the evening, Julie and I will head down to watch a bit of a Woody Allen movie before calling it a night.
The ping-pong story is finished. Well, kind of. It still doesn’t make much sense, but I guess first drafts don’t always have to make sense. I’ll finalize it tomorrow, rearrange some parts or alter the larger plot points, before posting it.
I also had an idea for my serve in the ping-pong story. I had a dream last night, and I think Chuck will be paying dearly for my weird, apocalyptic dream.
I’m exhausted today. Yesterday’s gym hit me harder than I thought. My legs were exhausted, and I almost fell down the stairs in the Castle yesterday. After struggling to wake this morning, I made it to work and through lunch without many problems. It was after my afternoon coffee that I ran out of steam. The yummy caffeine did not work its usual magic. I desperately wanted a nap. My exhaustion continued through most of the afternoon and into the evening. It has now dripped all over these words
Julie and I made a delicious beef and broccoli dish for tonight. I don’t know what I did before finding cornstarch. It works just like cream for thickening sauces, but without the fat and dairy flavor. I’m hungry just thinking about it (the beef dish, not the cornstarch, which I don’t think has much of a taste). Next time we will make more of it. And I’ll even try not to burn the broccoli. I browned it a bit too aggressively in the wok. It’s important to add water before it burns. Very important.
We finally returned to our Hebrew lessons. We did surprisingly well on our vocabulary flashcards, considering we haven’t looked at them in over a month. It is possible some of the words are starting to stick in long-term memory. It’s also quite possible that we were very lucky and tomorrow we’ll realize the extent of that luck. As long as we return to daily study, we’ll be fine. It’s the whole chipping away at the mountain, one rock at a time, thingy.
I had thoughts of returning to my Jewish essay today, but I don’t think I will go there. Today will be a day of rest, similar to yesterday but without the frantic posting. I might even skip doodling. Not that doodling is terribly taxing. On the contrary, it’s relaxing. I can spend hours pushing and pulling lines, and adding subtle gradients and shadows. Julie wants to watch another “Samurai Champloo” DVD. As I said before, it’s a quality anime, and we may watch it late into the night.
In lieu of a new serve, Chuck has suggested that we enter a short story “contest.” The contest has an interesting premise, but I haven’t decided yet. Except for posting my writings here (where thankfully nobody reads them), I don’t think to share them much. I guess this is my defense mechanism. If I don’t share them, nobody will judge them, and I can pretend that I’m a good writer. That almost sounded like a consternation. I’ll give it a few days thought and see if I can think on an original angle to the topic. Assuming I can, I may attempt a story for the contest. I guess I don’t have much else to do with my time, if you don’t count doodling, working, travelling, coding three websites, getting married, commuting, learning about Judaism, and holding the Julies.
I had thoughts of not making Goal today, but seeing as I was so close, I went back and pushed the remaining words out. I’m nothing if not consistent. Or, in simpler words, I’m disgustingly consistent.
Julie and I went to see “Swan Lake” at the Seattle ballet company (or whatever they called themselves). The only ballets I had seen were on PBS while flipping through the television. This was my first live ballet. The music was amazing. I caught many snippets of themes that were used and expanded upon in my favorite movie scores—isn’t that what happens to all good classical music? It makes its way into popular culture in the form of mood music for the movies.
The dancers were good, I guess. It’s hard to know the difference between what is good dancing and bad dancing. The fast technical moves impressed me, but they were far and few between. Julie suggested we go see River Dance as a way to catch the fast moving steps. While it might be more exciting, I’m not sure it would fall within the same realm of art.
I couldn’t decide if the story of “Swan Lake” was interesting. It definitely has possibilities: On the prince’s birthday, the queen informs him that he must choose a wife. The prince doesn’t like to be told what to do by his mother. He takes his mother’s birthday gift, a crossbow, into the woods for a hunting trip. At a lake in the woods, he meets a beautiful woman dressed in white. He falls in love. He finds out that an evil sorcerer had cursed her. Each night she transforms into a swan. The only way to break the spell is for a man to promise his devotion. If he breaks that promise, she will remain a swan forever. The prince pledges his devotion and promises to return.
The prince arrives home to a party the queen prepared for him. During the party, many woman attempt to seduce him, but he pushes them all away, wary of his promise to the swan. The evil sorcerer appears at the party with his daughter. He has bewitched his daughter to look like the swan woman (only wearing a black sparkling tutu instead of a white sparkling one). She tries to seduce the prince. The swan appears at the window during the seduction, but the sorcerer hides the swan from the prince.
Even though the prince probably knows that the woman is not the swan, he agrees to marry her. After agreeing, he realizes what he did: he broke his promise to the swan. He returns to the lake to find the swan. But he is too late. Because he broke his promise, the spell was not broken. She will remain a swan forever. He realizes what he did and she forgives him. But he does not forgive himself.
Classical ballet is very much like a pantomime punctuated by dance solos and larger dance numbers. It’s similar to older Broadway shows, where the singing didn’t move the story forward. The dancing while graceful rarely helped the story. I’m thinking that modern ballets do a better job of this. Either that or they do away with the story and focus on technical and impressive moves. It takes nothing more than a cartwheel to impress these audiences. The dancers spent much of their time pantomiming what they were trying to convey. There’s only so much one can do with pantomime to tell a story. Luckily, we read the synopsis before the ballet began.
My grandma died today. I tried to organize my feelings here, but I have mostly failed. Molly Figatner was born in 1914, and would have been 93 years old this week. She struggled with Alzheimer’s for over a decade before passing peacefully this afternoon in New York with her son at her side. She leaves behind a devoted son, three grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. The funeral will be on Tuesday. Julie and I are travelling to NY tomorrow morning to attend.
My grandmother with her two sons (my father is on the left) in 1969
For much of my life, my grandmother lived in an apartment in a middle-class housing project in Canarsie, Brooklyn. When they first built the housing projects, they designed them to provide affordable housing to the growing middle class. Like many housing projects from that time, it was a failure, and over the years, it became more rundown and crime ridden. My parents and uncle tried to convince her to move, but she preferred to stay in her rent-stabilized apartment. She grew up during the depression, and she believed in saving every one of her pennies.
My uncle tells a story about my grandmother’s visits to Sizzler and other all-you-can-eat establishments. She would bring a large purse, and move up and down the buffet lines, filling her purse with food when nobody was looking. It’s difficult to relate to this story because I have never lived through such times. It’s so easy for me to take food and money for granted. It is only when living in a time of wanting that you truly appreciate what you have in times of plenty.
My grandmother remarried when I was very young. Her wedding, which took place in our first house in Sheepshead Bay, was the first wedding I ever attended. I don’t remember much from it, but I do remember running downstairs to my other grandmother’s apartment to use her bathroom instead of waiting in line to use ours. I remember being very proud of this fact. Clearly, with this much insight, I was destined for big things. Her second husband, Lou, was an artist, and we would sit and watch him draw and color cartoons for hours at a time.
Her home was a reprieve from my mother’s somewhat-strict Kosher kitchen. It was at my grandmother’s that I would eat cheeseburgers. My mother describes a chicken dish that my grandmother cooked. As far as I can remember, she never made it for us kids, probably because we wouldn’t have eaten it. What I did eat were her grilled cheeses. She cooked them in thick slabs of butter. She would press down on the sandwich with a plate to seal in the cheese, and create unimaginably thin and amazing grilled cheeses.
There is much more I didn’t know about my grandmother. She lived a difficult life, but I never asked her about it. I never took an interest in most of my family’s lives. It’s something I regret. I wish I were more outgoing, more willing to sit down and pry into their pasts so I could learn about where I come from. I failed to do this with my grandmother before she grew too sick to remember. I failed to do this with my mother’s mother as well. Such interesting times they must have lived in. How quickly and easily those times can be forgotten.
We arrived in New York. I’m sitting on my sisters’ old beds, typing away. We changed our flight plans from last night to this morning. It’s bitterly cold in New York, the coldest day this winter. Julie and I looked through old photograph albums. Someone should start a service where you mail in old photo albums, and they generate CDs of scanned photos. They probably already have this service. I want to upload more photos onto my site. Scanning the photos takes a lot of time. I want to trade that time for my money. Isn’t that why capitalism is great?
This evening, Julie and I met with the rabbi who will officiate at our wedding ceremony in New York. He drilled Julie for a bit, but it wasn’t a difficult interview. The wedding grows ever closer.
I need to start on my next story. I’m still not sure I will join Chuck in his adventurous challenge, but I’ll do a bit of writing and see if I come up with anything. Anything beats these empty words.
I wrote managed to write Story. None of the words was useful or led me anywhere. Beginnings are always hard. I’ll give it more thought and see if I can figure where to take it.
As written and delivered by my sister Eileen
I will miss my grandma so much. All those things we should have talked about, the things I could have learned.
My grandma was a quiet person, but a doer. Until just a few years ago she was a very independent person, and always on the move. Whether she was playing at the senior center or proctoring exams, she was on the move. My grandmother would always come to all the grandkids functions, and we liked her there.
She had a tough life, but never let us see that side. She had a contagious laugh, that I still hear today, and a wonderful warm smile that stayed with her right until the end. She taught my brother David, my sister Randy and I how to play Rumicube, how to make silver dollar pancakes, and how to enjoy life. I remember that she had so many friends who loved her, but no one who loved her like her family.
Her son, my uncle Freddy visited her everyday for 8 years, missing only 2 days in those years. He was so very devoted to her, his sweetheart as he would call her. He loved her so. My mom who insisted that she, even wheelchair-bound, be a part of all family functions. She felt it important that she remained part of our growing family holiday dinners and even towards the end of her life, a part of our every growing clan.
My entire family truly enjoyed her company and appreciated her. My grandmother had battled breast cancer, and won, lost my dad, her son when he was only 44, but still kept moving, kept doing. We all should be as strong a person as my grandma was. I know everyone who came in contact with her, truly felt her sincerity and her kindness.
We will always share stories and pictures with all her great-kids so that my grandma’s memory never, ever be forgotten! We will miss you grandma – give my dad a big hug from us, we know you are in a better place, where you feel no pain and you are still smiling.
I have only a few short thoughts today. I’m spending my words planning a possible Chuck-suggested and contest-entering-and-losing story. I used the words yesterday to try to start the story but ended up hitting a large and particularly pointy wall. Today I spent my words jotting notes. I haven’t had much luck with this strategy before, and I’m not sure this time will be much different. The next step is to talk it over with the Julies and get her idea, claim it as my own, and write a particularly dastardly take on a surprisingly good idea.
The funeral was difficult. These things are always difficult. As much as I dreaded the day, there was a certain sense of closure and family closeness that came of it. I learned an incredible amount about my grandma. She led a very difficult but happy life. She never complained. She was a beautiful person who loved to dance and was very friendly with everyone around her. I also learned about the history of my family, and I even dredged up memories from my childhood. (I didn’t think I had any memories from before last year.) Death is a powerful event. If you believe there is a larger plan, then death has a purpose for everyone it touches. I’m just not sure I believe in the plan. (It may be a growing older thing or a real thing, but I do feel myself leaning in that direction—see my mythical unfinished Jewish essay.)
One of the beautiful parts of sitting shiva is discussing memories of the deceased. My uncle started sitting shiva after the funeral, and we discussed my grandmother’s life. I learned that she played the piano. As we pried additional information from my uncle about her piano playing, he exclaimed, “I remember she played piano in Carnegie hall!” This is an amazing fact for many reasons. First, only minutes before, we had not even known she played piano. Second, my grandmother never had much money and certainly did not own a piano (this was way before anyone could purchase an electronic piano for pocket change). And, finally, if she played in Carnegie hall, this would not have been a fact hidden from the family.
As quickly as my uncle said it, his cousin corrected him: “she did not!” My uncle insisted, following up that perhaps she was a child prodigy and played while young. While we may never know the truth, I tend to believe my cousin. Her explanation was that my father started this rumor when my uncle was very young. If he did, it was very funny. (Isn’t torture of the younger sibling a rite of passage?) Of course, there may be some truth in it. I doubt we’ll ever know. It was a very funny exchange, however.
It’s early but late now. The travelling caught up to Julie and me. I can’t concentrate on much. My brain is mush from the terrible movies and bubble-gum novel I bought for the plane. I keep pasting my story ideas on the page below these words in the hopes that something will catch fire and I’ll start typing away. I don’t see it happening today. It’s been a long week and tomorrow promises to be a very long day at work. I glanced at my inbox and I’m scared, very scared. I’ll get through it and get to sleep and then get around to writing again.
I had thoughts of a Jewish essay or barely started stories. Neither of them tasted appetizing. I spent a long time drawing today’s doodle. You won’t see it for a while, of course. I have twenty-one doodles in reserve, each wait eagerly for their chance to appear on the front page. (I haven’t produced more than one a day in a while, though. I might have peaked.) I sketched today’s doodle while drinking my coffee early in the afternoon. I was a bit disappointed when I translated the sketch to the computer.
In Chuck’s post today he spoke about his ultra-efficient work mode. He remarked that one way he achieved this mode was by turning off non-work internet use during work hours. I’ve hinted that this is a problem for me as well. Like Chuck, I also previously attempted to give up casual browsing during the workday. I failed on this initial attempt. Today, inspired by Chuck, I made another go of it. It’s amazing how much more efficient I am when I’m not tempted to ride the information tubes.
For me, browsing the internet creates a feedback loop. The more I browse, the more I want to browse, even when there’s nothing much new going on. With millions of content “creators,” it’s still difficult to find interesting new content at all times during the day. But it’s more than the lack of content. It’s the feeling I get when I’m endlessly browsing, hoping for this new content. Instead of creating or doing something, I’m waiting for others to create or do something to entertain me. This feeds into my natural lazy state. It’s only when I step outside this state and force myself to get going that I start accomplishing things.
With my one day of recovery, I managed to slog through my mails and catch up at work. Tomorrow I’m hoping to get through my task list, leaving me with a relaxing weekend. I can’t believe it’s the weekend already. After our whirlwind trip (I don’t know why my trips are always “whirlwinds.” I really need to come up with a new adjective), there’s not much left of the week.
Yes I know this is filler. I need to get on with it and back to it. Where “it,” in this case, is writing of some sort. I’m thinking it’s probably the horned scary sort. I’ll have to look into it. For now, I’ll content myself with worthless words, and escape downstairs to a movie. We finished the anime “Samurai Champloo” and are now at the mercy of our unorganized Netflix queue. I find myself adding movies when I read or hear about them. When those movies pop up at the front of the queue months later, I sometimes forget why I added them and regret the choice. No matter, I need only an hour or so of movie before sleep.
Chuck has poo-poo’d my plan to name my doodles “Cast of Horribles.” He doesn’t think they’re horrible enough. He does have a point. The thing is, I reserved and paid for the URL almost a year ago, and I hoped to get some use out of it. I guess that’s not a very good reason to name something. It’s like saying: we already labeled his underwear, what’s wrong with naming the kid “Hanes”?
I do like the “cast of” part. I just need to fill in the blank: Cast of Ordinaries, Cast of Little Guys, The Little Guys, or Big-Eyed Depressed Question Marks (BEDQM). There we go: BEDQM, as in bedqm.com. It’s available if not very good. Little Guys Inc. (taken, weird). Ah, it’ll take more thinking and doodling to get a decent name for the Little Guys. I guess it’s better that I not name them too soon: there’s a tradition of not naming babies until their parents were sure they would survive. I guess the same will go for the Little Guys. Until we know they’ll be around for a while, let’s keep them unnamed and unloved, a footnote on sewcrates.com, also known as the least read website in the universe.
I’m not sure where that negativity came from. I guess I was hoping for something bigger today. I’m falling into a five-hundred-word rut lately. It’s 7:47pm, as in the airplane, as in where my mind isn’t today. Julie is washing the Shabbos dinner dishes and practicing singing for her concert at the end of the month. Since she’s singing in Chinese, it’s not distracting—except when she hits the high notes. I worry for the windows in the Castle.
I keep glancing down into the corner, watching the number grow. You’re reading rock bottom. Enjoy it while it lasts. The only place to go from here is up. I’ll get on that right away. As in tomorrow.
I took off a couple of days from writing. I know it’s not like me. Over the weekend I found myself burnt out. I decided to stop pounding my head against the laptop screen and give it a rest. I’m back. Not reenergized or bursting with ideas, but I managed to curve my fingers over the keys and press buttons for a few minutes.
I returned to my Jewish essay only to run away from it screaming. Parts of it are terrible, and most of it is unfinished. I won’t get back into it today. I’m thinking of posting it in sections. The first one, while terrible, is almost complete. I think I was being too ambitious holding out until I discussed all four (or was it five?) principles that float around my tiny head.
Otherwise life is good. It finally warmed up in Seattle. We’ve been enjoying evening rains and beautiful days. For the record, night rains are the best type of rains. You wake up to a lush (and dry!) morning. The geese have returned to campus, and spring rapidly approaches.
Julie heads back to Taiwan next week for her concert. I wish I could join her, but I have a business trip the day after her concert that I can’t miss. I’m sure she’ll be wonderful. She’s been busy this past week composing and arranging original songs. I’ve penned some lyrics for her first song. The music is good, but the lyrics . . . some of you have read my poetry. Yeah, it’s that bad.
The wedding website is almost complete. All I have left is coding the guestbook and testing it for different browsers. It should be finished this week or weekend, depending if I can find time away from doodling and writing (and the Julie time! She claims I don’t spend enough time with her, with all my evening doodling and writing) to get the coding done.
I’m still looking for a name for my Little Guy to start my next coding project. I should have more David time to code when Julie abandons me for three weeks. How about: “The Ontologist”? Ugh. I think my Little Guy names are getting worse. I might as well call it “The Proctologist.”
And here, dear friends, I come to the end of these short musings. I feel a bit creaky, out of practice. It doesn’t help that I still don’t have much to say and I am allergic to returning to my writing projects. At least I’m not consternating, well, not much.
You didn’t think I’d replace all the words on this page with doodles, did you? I was very close, of course. Today would have been the big day: empty word day. I have made a couple of go’s at writing over the last week, but since taking off from writing that fateful weekend, I’ve slowed down. I’m not going to consternate or complain about it. It was good to take the time off and focus on other things: mostly the Julies. With the doodling and the writing and the working, I was left with very little time to spend with Julie. I had to give up something, and writing seemed the lesser of the evils at the time. (And, no, we did not discuss giving up Viva Pinata. Who knew that tending a virtual garden and deciding which pinatas live and die would be so fun and addicting? Fun for the whole family, it is—or, at least, the Julies and me.)
I had some strange thoughts this past week. I printed up my 2005 Marathon, and started digging through my Moleskine for notes about the story (it’s sad that I’m still on the same Moleskine from 2005). There’s a huge chasm between what I wrote and what I planned. I put aside entire magical systems and back stories and history and religions to pound out the words. I’m not saying I’m going to return to it or rewrite or do anything foolish like that. I’m not saying anything yet because saying is so easy and doing is so difficult. I will either sit down with my notes and plan and drastically rewrite, or I won’t. Today is my first tiny step. I typed up these words between watching “The Usual Suspects” (was there anyone who didn’t figure out the ending after the second scene?) and today’s Cast of Horribles.
I’m tired. I dropped Julie off at the airport last night, and I didn’t fall asleep until past midnight yesterday after hitting late-night construction on I-5 on the return trip from the airport. Looking to the distance, I see three weeks of David time, which means two things: possible depression and a chance to find my rhythm in my writings. As the Horribles said, the first day is always the most difficult.
It’s over. Finally. I watched two full DVDs of “Battlestar Galactica” (the first two for season 2.5, for those who know anything about this). It’s now after midnight and I’m drained. I gorged myself on media and I’m sick to my stomach. It wasn’t good. It’s never about goodies or pleasure. It’s about completing a meaningless project. There is no pleasure in this journey; there is only pleasure at its conclusion: late at night with little rest and no writing.
But my feast is over. I will not return these videos until after the weekend to ensure I don’t smother the days off by staring into space. The shows were good, but they were not great. How can consuming anything be great? Creation is great. Consumption is adequate. It fills you up but leaves you empty afterwards. Creation is painful and guts wrenching and leaves you skinny and unsatisfied. It’s only the next day after you’ve created something that you realize that it really did hit the spot, only at the time you were too exhausted to realize it.
I’ll return to writing real words soon. For now, I’ll content myself with these exhausted musings. The first puking I’ve done in a while.
Did you notice anything different? I cleaned up a bit. There were all these pesky doodles laying all over the place. I stacked them in a neat pile above and called it good.
It took me a very long time to realize that filling sewcrates’s front page with Doodles was taking away from my productivity. It’s not what you think. Doodling doesn’t take much time. What it did remove was the incentive. I’m what you would call an “externally motivated individual.” Without an external motivation, I don’t get much done.
One of the reasons I started this website was to provide a place for people—and by “people” I mean me, and sometimes my mother—to stare and compliment me on the cleverness of my thoughts. I do love to read my own writings, and to hear how much others like my writings (see my previous discussion in drowning out people who want to criticize). As my doodles filled the front page, I felt less reason to pound out the words. I figured I was writing three to ten words each day in doodle form. It took me a couple of weeks to realize this wasn’t sufficient. I wanted to tell stories, and I wanted to tell them with words—maybe illustrated words in the future, but mostly words. That’s why I’m back, baby! (I must resist consternating and adding, “For how long?” There. I did it. I resisted.)
The new “Cast of Horribles” code (and I am going with that name until another one strikes my fancy) is rather horrible: it’s all spaghetti and hacked together. I should have added this functionality the last time I messed with sewcrates.com’s innards. But it’s mostly working, and I even added a friendly-if-oversized slideshow based off the wedding website code. I’m still considering creating a separate website for the little guys. I played with a few designs, but I couldn’t make anything work. Throwing doodles on a webpage does not make for a very interesting experience. Words really seem to flesh out the page. Or maybe I’m just not creative enough to see how to make it work.
Julie is (finally) returning to Seattle on Friday from her three-week trip to Taiwan and Australia. She performed in her first headline concert a couple of weeks ago. I was planning to attend, but a work trip interfered. She was wonderful, of course. She posted a few photos on her website maintained by her biggest fan (that’s me!): Dr. Julie Show.
I can’t wait to see her again. This time apart was good in some ways, and very bad in most ways. When I turned the corner on the second week without the Julies, I entered a massive depression. I’m not blaming Julie or anything (definitely Julie’s fault!), but it kept me down and drawing depressed doodles for more than a weekend. I’m out of the funk now, thanks to a busy work week and plenty of gym goings.
The “Save the Date” cards for our wedding are almost ready to send out. I’m still missing a few friends’ addresses (it would help if I sent out email requesting them—have I told you how lazy I am yet?), and I’m still fighting with the printer. After printing the first sixty or so envelopes, it didn’t want to feed the envelopes anymore. It decided the addresses would look much better on the far left side, or—and this was what finally pushed me over the edge—completely off the paper for no conceivable reason. I’m letting it rest for a few days before trying again.
It feels strange to write again. I’ve been doing a lot of writing (well, emailing mostly) at work, so it’s not as if I’m out of practice. I do miss jotting down useless thoughts, however. In my quiet days, I did print on my Nano 2005 and attempt to read and plan for a rewrite. It didn’t last very long, but it is something I would love to do. I even found the story I meant to tell in my Moleskine. It seems as I was racing through that November, I forgot all about my intensive story planning. Before I get there I will probably play with some short stories again. It’s all about baby steps. Tiny, tiny baby steps.
Well, I started in on the short story. I wrote a thousand words. Just a moment ago, three sentences of misgivings and consternations filled this space. Did I mention I am an optimist now? There’s no room for such negative words about my wonderfully drafted story.
I watched “Stranger than Fiction” before writing tonight. It was very entertaining. Before reading the end credits, I had thought the “Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind” guy (Kaufman?) wrote it. It was similar to his weird meta-fictional stories but by a different writer. “Stranger” spent more of its time analyzing the structure of storytelling than telling the story. I tried to watch the extras on the DVD, but I turned it off halfway through the “making of.” The screenwriter looked to be about twenty-five years old, which was unacceptable on many levels.
Julie is flying back tomorrow. She’s leaving Taiwan in less than twelve hours. I should probably get going to the airport soon. I wouldn’t want to miss her.
I can’t write anything. I’m broken. I jot down a few sentences and give up. It feels like I’m starting over again. In some ways I am, I guess.
Julie is almost over her jetlag. She came back with a small cold, and I have been drugging her. The first night she ate 30ml of Nyquil, and slept through the night. The next evening she convinced me that the dosage should be 15ml. The back of the bottle did give percentages based on a 15ml dosage, and with her being a doctor and everything, I believed her. She coughed through the night. I know because I was awake for most of it. The next morning, I quizzed her on the dosage. At first I thought she only pretended to eat the medicine the previous evening. I used my keen interrogation skills to determine that she had lied about the dosage. The 30ml I drugged her with the first night was the correct dosage.
Tonight I will drug her with the full dosage. Not only is Nyquil a good way to get over a cold, it’s also a good way to get over jetlag. Nyquil truly is a wonder drug. I bet Nyquil can even get me writing again.
Exciting things breathe across my back, and it is past time to record my doings. My stomach has been churning lately. I’m not ready to pack it in and run away, though. Give me a few weeks. Julie left for Taiwan last Friday to finish the Taiwan wedding planning, and, because she would never miss an opportunity, she’s recording a few songs and interviews for the Dr. Julie Show. She left me home with too much time to think and worry and do all the things I probably shouldn’t do but end up doing anyway. These are excellent times for doodling. I’m still behind in posting as I have twenty or so doodles in the queue. Suffice to say, my doodles reflect last month’s feelings.
Over the next two months, I will travel to Sacramento, Boston, Taipei, and New York City. At the end of the trips, I will have a shiny new ring, my precious, my, I can’t believe I selected such a small size, how am I ever going to get this thing off? I have large knuckles with very thin fingers. Unlike the real One Ring, the ring Julie purchased does not change size to fit my finger. It’s a pain to put on, but once on it fits snuggly. I already warned Julie that I’m not much of a jewelry person. I guess putting on a ring I can’t take off may change that.
My bachelor party is this weekend. I fly to Sacramento tomorrow for a weekend of whitewater rafting and camping. I’m very much looking forward to being friends I haven’t seen in a long while. Steven has done a great job organizing the trip. I’ll take plenty of photographs and report back.
This is unlike me. I’ve typed barely three hundred words and I find myself at a loss. I have nothing outlandish or humorous or even consternated to write about. I guess taking the month off from writing has left me haggard. I will rip away the cobwebs once the wedding months get into full swing.
My bachelor party is over. While this was not technically my last weekend as a bachelor—we have a few more weeks before heading to Taiwan to start our world-wind wedding extravaganza—we celebrated the coming end of the early chapters of my life, also known as the PJ days, that’s the “pre-the Julies” days. To give away the ending early: I had a wonderful weekend. While it was not a traditional bachelor party, it was tailored to my likes: great friends, deep conversations, easy drinking, plenty of meals, physical exertion, and moments of faux danger. Steven did an incredible job planning and bringing everyone together. He did this while working hundred-hour weeks at his firm, which just goes to show his many talents.
I tend to collect small handfuls of friends in each stage of my life. While I’m not terribly social, I consider the friends I do manage to make more than acquaintances. Most of them live in far-flung places, and I was very happy when five agreed to make the trip to Sacramento this past weekend. The chance to meet up and hang out with old friends was fantastic enough. To do so while camping and rafting down the South Fork American River was gravy, the fattening type that tastes like melted caramel.
Most of us flew in on Friday night and stayed at a musty hotel outside of Sacramento. We arrived late and went to Lyon’s, the west-coast version of Denny’s. It’s always a bit weird when friends from different parts of your life converge at such an event. It was a cross-section of my childhood friends (Steven and Chad), law school friends (Erik and Will) and my brother-in-law (Eran). We ordered greasy food and bottomless French fries, and talked excitedly about our trip.
Erik and Will, my married-with-children friends, explained that my bachelor party was the only reason their wives would let them go away for the weekend. For Erik, this was his first time away from his wife Gloria and their beautiful first baby (a boy), born only a few months ago. It turns out that once you have monsters, life changes, and your opportunities to run off on short notice for beer and manly doings becomes much more difficult.
Well, that may not be completely true. The rafting company provided camping space on their grounds, which we shared with the nice family who followed us in a second boat for our two-day adventure—and we should not measure the danger levels of the trip based on this family’s two children (aged somewhere around seven and nine), who paddled and braved the same rapids as we did. From my perspective, our boat took hard lines through the rapids, while they hugged to the easy waters. And, yes, thinking this does help me sleep better at night.
Besides the nice family, there was another group in the camping grounds: a very large collection of fathers with their second-grade daughters. They rafted the upper part of the river the first day, while we started on the lower. They stayed two nights and rafted one day. At night, they built bicycle walls and sang loud songs. We learned an important lesson: bachelor parties are not the only way men can escape their homes. While I’m sure their wives imagined that their husbands were bonding with their daughters, it turned out the trip provided the men an opportunity to drink beer and hang out with other men. As an example, as we waited for the barbeque dinner to cook, our guides provided everyone with two coolers: one filled with sodas, and the other with beer. As we partook of the latter, we watched as the eight-year old girls snuck into the beer cooler and carried the cans back to their tables. A gaggle of dads sat at the next table, their faces deep in their own cans and oblivious to their daughter’s exploits. It took fatherly Will to stand up and let the girls know that they should not be taking the beer. When we tattled on them, the dads shrugged and laughed. To be fair, they did eventually send an envoy to the girls’ table. And the girls were not exactly drinking the beer. They poured the beer into plastic cups and delivered some of their concoctions to our table. When we asked, they informed us that they were practicing in preparation of poisoning their fathers. We stayed away from their red cups.
We arrived at the campgrounds on Saturday around ten thirty in the morning and began our preparations for the first day’s rafting. We were given the waiver of liability, and even though four of the six people in our group were lawyers, we managed to sign without making a fuss (only partially because of the unenforceability of many of the clauses—terrible lawyer joke, sorry).
A long debate followed, as we had to decide whether to wear the wetsuits we had rented for $25. The guides told us that the water was cold, in the high forties or low fifties. None of us wanted to slip into the tight suits, knowing how uncomfortable and awkward they tended to be. In the end, all of us except Eran went with the wetsuits. Eran decided on a newly purchased water-tight shirt. Personally, I felt like a superhero in my wetsuit, especially the first day when I wore it inside out, with the black on the outside (wearing it right-side in, with the blue on the outside, while perhaps technically more superhero-ey, didn’t feel as super). You’ll have to judge for yourself when you see the photographs.
Speaking of photographs, I should be posting some over the next few weeks. Eran purchased a waterproof film camera, and he’s developing the photos as I write, and promised to send them along for posting. A photography company took photos of our raft as it raced through a few of the rapids. We had a chance to look through some of the photos before leaving, and ordered the bunch. I should receive the CD in about a month and I will post it soon afterwards.
After a safety briefing, our guide Max settled us in the raft and we set sail. Erik and Eran sat in the front and set the pace for our paddling, while our guide in the back ended up doing most of the paddling and navigating. Except when we approached the rapids, our paddles rarely touched the water. It took us a while to realize that Max used our paddling to better attack the more challenging parts of the rapids. If we didn’t paddle, we would float by without the death-defying drops and hairpin turns. As Chad yelled whenever we started paddling towards the rapids (at least during the first day before the Event cost him his nerve), “charge the mountain! Put your back into!” (I’m paraphrasing as Chad is very funny and much cleverer. I miss his constant stream of funny asides and stories.)
Our guide Max was a twenty-four year old Bay-area native, with curly hair, droopy eyes, and a European face. He had spent the past four summers guiding inflatable rafts down the river. Before becoming a guide, applicants pay $600 for “guide school.” If you don’t have the money, your pitiful salary goes toward paying down this debt. Max managed to pay his debt by, among other things, building a hot tub for the owner of the rafting company. A hot tub, I should add, he never even soaked in. Max graduated from Columbia University film school without a clue what to do. He’s an avid outdoorsman, and he survived school by joining the kayaking club. They met twice a week in the pool for practice. What he loves, he later realized, was rafting. He spends approximately six months every year as a guide. He has not applied his film-making skills since graduating. His last film was a river rafting film. He claims he doesn’t have the money to purchase a camera for filming. The reality, of course, is that he found something he loves much more than film making. There’s something to be said about the life of the outdoorsman, whether it be a white-water guide living on a commune, the scuba or ski instructor, or a golf pro. You live a life doing what you love. While you don’t necessarily make large amounts of money, there are fewer days where you regret your choice.
During one of our many deeper conversations, my friends and I sat around discussing our own choices in life. We are successful in different ways, and we all wondered what would have happened if we had made different choices. Steven, for example, is always looking for the next radical turn in his life. I respect his choices. While they have not always worked out, he has taken risks and tried to fulfill his ambitions. After working as a lawyer for a number of years, Steven decided to pursue a dream of working on renewable energy. He made a plan to pay down his credit card debt in the hopes of returning to school. He moved into his brother’s basement, and did just that. He quit his job, and after exploring graduate school, he took a trip to the Far East. While he ended up returning to law, he doesn’t regret his choices. While it’s important to dream, dreams are only the first step. It takes a very strong person to transform their dreams into reality. It takes planning and sacrifice and study. A person grows only through challenge, risk, and adversity. Failure is never an outcome when you do something. It’s always the journey that determines success, not where you end up.
The first part of the river was rather tame. Halfway through the morning, as we approached a slow rapid, Max encouraged us to jump into the white water. He counseled us that the more the fall looked accidental, the more entertaining it would be for those that remained in the boat. Most of us concentrated on not falling in. Only Eran, after a few moments of soul searching, threw himself into the water. Eran is an accomplished swimmer: he was a lifeguard in his younger years, and a certified scuba diver. He is comfortable in the water. As we finished paddling the rapid, I turned around to look for him. He was nowhere to be seen. He was no longer sitting in the front of the boat. The water behind us was empty. It was only when we looked over the side of the raft that we saw him hanging on to the yellow cord that circled the raft.
We pulled him back into the raft, and Chad attempted to claim his second save. Chad had previously informed us that on another rafting trip, he had saved a drowning man—or at least pulled someone back into the boat after they fell and were in danger of drowning. Serious danger as he explained it. It seemed more likely that someone had jumped into the water and was swimming around and needed Chad’s help to return to the raft. It turns out that getting from water into the boat is not easy. The raft is inflatable, and the sides are slick. It is difficult to gain leverage to pull yourself in. The prescribed method is to have someone already in the boat pull the swimmer by the lapels of their lifejacket.
The water was as cold as the guides had warned. In the tamer parts, everyone jumped in. The initial shock did take my breath away. Since I purposefully jumped in—artfully removing my baseball cap before taking the plunge—I was prepared. The wetsuit helped, but I lasted only a few minutes before pulling myself back onto the raft. Max jumped in with a back flip. This was the first trip of the season where he did not wear a wetsuit. Because the water in this river flows from the bottom of a dam, it never truly warms up, even at the end of the summer. There are other rivers where the water turns warm, almost uncomfortably so. Steven, less of a fan of the cold water than most, said he would have preferred it bathwater warm.
We stopped by the side of the river for lunch. The three guides (the second boat had a main guide plus a trainee guide) set up a small table and spent a good twenty minutes laying out the cold cuts and cutting the fruit. This gave us an opportunity to warm up and hang out in the picnic area. The conversation turned to unions, a subject Eran is passionate about. As a real estate developer, he has to deal with the unions in Buffalo. While initially a force for good, Eran believes that unions have outlived their usefulness. (From my family’s perspective, unions treated us well: my mother, a retired NYC teacher, and my father, who worked for the telephone company, raised us on their union pay and benefits.) Eran, with the help of my sister, has done very well for their family. He spent some time explaining the ins and outs of his deals during dinner. Eran is Israeli and quite handy. I have photos of his time in Seattle fixing the Castle as evidence. He also builds and flies airplanes when he’s not taking care of his growing family: four girls, the latest two twins still in their first year. All in all, my two sisters have provided me with six beautiful nieces.
The sandwiches were tasty and we were hungry from our exertions. We chomped on salty goldfish and Fritos as we waited for the guides. I ate cheese and peanut butter sandwiches (separately, thankfully), and pickles on the side, which, for this record, is the only way to properly eat pickles. With our bellies warm, we headed back on the river for the second half of day one. In the morning, when a rapid’s wave first crests over the raft, you are cold. In the afternoon, after lunch, when that first wave finds you again, you freeze. The combination of post-lunch dryness and warm bellies are a recipe for cold.
We were now veterans of the river, having learned Max’s commands: “paddle one” (paddle one time); “paddle two” “paddle” (keep paddling until); “stop paddling” “back paddle” (paddle backwards); “turn right” (the right side paddles backwards, the left side forwards); “turn left” (the opposite of right); “left side” (everyone goes to the left side of the boat, used when trying to avoid a rock); and “right side.”
We were ready for a few rapids, and rapids we started to hit. Where the morning was slow and easy, the afternoon was fast and furious. We hit named rapids, like the Meat Grinder, and the Widow Maker (not technically the name, but I did include it to scare the wives). The river was rated class III, where class V is almost un-navigable with an extreme chance of death, and class II is barely white water. Class III was a nice round number, where the age limitation was six or so, which was perfect for us inexperienced (and even the experienced) rafters. It was during one of the afternoon rapids that the Event happened.
We were paddling through a vicious rapid. We were taught to use our paddle as a type of tripod. Our outer foot was wedged into the boat, we were seated on the edge of the raft, and our oar made the third leg of the tripod. If you dug the paddle into the water during the rapids, you were better able to keep your balance and stay in the boat. At least that was the theory. The Event happened as we crested a tall wave. We don’t have an exact measurement, as we were busy trying not to die, but I would estimate we were a good five feet off the water. The front left side of the raft tipped over first, and before we knew it, Eran and Chad were in the water. Erik, who was seated on the right side across from Eran, later told us that he had no recollection of how he moved from the rights side to the left side of the raft.
Both Eran and Chad managed to stay near the raft as it continued down the rapid. As they held on, a large rock found Eran’s tender backside, and smaller rocks bruised Chad’s legs. Steven and Will pulled Chad back onto the boat, and Erik grabbed Eran. I watched from the far side, unable to provide much assistance, as I was on the far back side of the boat. For the rest of the trip, Eran popped many Advil pills in an attempt to dull the ringing in his tailbone. Chad, as I said earlier, lost his killer instinct, and spent parts of the second day rapids huddled in the middle of the boat, cross-legged and hanging on for his life. Named Events can do that to people. While he was hoping to nock a few more saves on his belt, he turned out needing saving.
After the Event, we paddled for a while longer before hitting shore early in the evening. After I peed into a toilet-covered hole in the ground, we loaded the van for a thirty-minute windy drive back to camp. After changing, we opened the cooler Will and Erik had purchased the previous evening before dinner. We popped open beer bottles and went about setting up our tents and sleeping bags. Erik and Will made the right choice, renting both. The guides had set up their tents and sleeping bags, while the rest of us had to fiddle with the poles and camping accoutrements. After we set up camp, we piled wood in the fire pit and Eran used his fancy phosphorous (or something like that) shavings to spark the wood into a cheery camp fire. He learned his outdoor skills from the two survival television shows, where crazy men are dropped into dangerous parts of the world to survive using only their shoelaces and wits. Will’s liberal use of lighter fluid on the pile of wood did help Eran’s fire quite a bit.
As we sat around the fire talking about this and that, Chad told me that he and his wife Corrine occasionally read this site. Chad and I don’t talk much, which I always regretted. After graduating college, Chad went to work for a rental car agency. We used to make fun of him for cleaning cars and driving people around. Chad has an excellent work ethic, and worked his way up through the ranks of his company. Besides working hard, he is very social, funny, and well organized, which is a good combination in corporate America. Chad told me that while they liked my writing, many times they had no idea what I was writing about. Corrine would tell Chad that I had again went off the deep end, clearly overdosing and allowing the caffeine to write the words. They much preferred to read the entries about my doings. I guess that’s part of where this overly long entry came from. Perhaps I have been focusing too much on fictional storytelling, and not enough journaling the more noteworthy moments and thoughts in my life.
We sat on the picnic benches and Chad’s folding chairs and sucked from the bottles. Crickets chirped from around the fire pit, and we watched as the sky darkened, and the crescent moon rose. Venus appeared a few degrees below the moon, heralding the arrival of the star-filled heavens. The Big Dipper ascended and we spoke about small and large things, content to breathe deeply the smoke-filled river air.
Max found us in camp and led us to the eating area for happy hour. A cooler of beer, and carrots and chips with dip awaited us. We sat around a large picnic table and continued our conversation while the guides cooked beef, chicken, and fish on a lopsided cast-iron barbeque, the grill held up by chains, which they raised and lowered away from the charcoal with oversized wheels, which provided it the ominous look of an ancient torture device. The guides turned chefs prepared a myriad of side dishes and cooked chocolate brownies in large pots by placing hot charcoal pieces over the pots’ cover.
We spoke about how everyone dealt with their spouses, and what I should expect from married life. Everyone provided advice and took turns grabbing refills from the cooler. Erik, the new dad, explained how his life changed with his child. He seemed wiser than the last time I saw him. I asked about how his brainwashing was coming along. I’m convinced that new babies release a hormone that causes their parents to dote on them. It’s either that or they are, somehow, innately loveable. Erik is another friend in a transition point in his life. He has worked for large corporations, started his own business, and returned to work for a large firm when his business was purchased. Now he’s exploring returning to school for a drastic change away from tax advice to computer science. As a recovering computer scientist, I have nothing but good things to say about the profession. I sometimes wonder whether I have the guts to make such a move.
By the time the rafting guides banged the dinner triangle, we were starving. We grabbed our plates, pushed the eight-year olds out of our way, and piled meat and fish on our plates. I selected the tinfoil salmon, mashed potatoes, garlic bread, and a few grabs of a side salad, cognizant that, as Homer Simpson taught, one does not make friends with salad.
We returned to the table and the conversation moved to my decision to eat Kosher food. I don’t proselytize much about my religious decisions, but I do try to explain. I always hedge my bets by explaining that I’m still experimenting. After some prompting, I delved into what I found intriguing about Judaism. Chad, in particular, was more interested in why I ate Kosher, as he told me he subscribed to the Delicious religion: if food is delicious, he eats it. I explained that eating Kosher is only one small aspect of the religion, and I don’t have a good reason to follow it but for what I find interesting about Judaism itself. We discussed my religious philosophy for some time. I won’t bore you with the details (I figure I bored the guys enough already).
I did learn an important thing about myself; actually, a few important things. If nothing else, religion provides me an opportunity to stretch my philosophy muscles. In college, I would sit around with my friends and talk about all matters of philosophy and religion. I realized that exploring Judaism provides me with similar opportunities. But that wasn’t the only thing. As I explained that I was experimenting with praying in the mornings, Eran added that he has been wrapping tefillin a few mornings a week. This is where I realized something terrible about myself: one of the reasons I enjoy my Judaism experimentation is that I like feeling special. I enjoy it when I tell others of my accomplishment, and lose some of that joy when it turns out others are exploring and learning as well. I know it is a terrible thing to say, but I like to feel special. I like to stand out as different. It is, of course, an ego thing, and something I am trying to quell. In my tipsy state, as I eloquently explained my philosophy by repeating some of my rabbi and book’s teachings, I realized this terrible truth about myself. I look at it as just another opportunity to grow. When you start as low as I did, the opportunities are truly plentiful.
After long and wonderful conversations, we retired back to camp where we added more wood to the fire. We sat around and talked before zipping ourselves into our tents and calling it a night. We woke early to a damp morning. It took us many attempts to relight the fire. Luckily, while it was chilly in the morning, the fire was not absolutely necessary. There was no risk of hypothermia—interesting fact from Max: if the water temperature plus the air temperature is greater than 120 degrees Fahrenheit, then there is no risk of hypothermia. Below that, there is a risk. Luckily for us, it was in the seventies and eighties both days, with the water in the low fifties.
We ate breakfast at the eating area and watched the fathers and daughters pack up their tents. We reluctantly pulled back on our wetsuits, which had not dried completely over the chilly night. We packed up our tents and bags, and left them in our cars. We met Max for a thirty-minute van ride to the start of our second day’s rafting. Unlike Saturday, the rafting on Sunday started very fast, and slowed after one last large rapid after lunch. The last hour we spent lazily paddling down the river. Will and I switched places with Erik and Eran. The front of the raft provides a much better view at the cost of more work. I also learned that it is very difficult to hear Max when paddling in the rapids. I had thought that Erik and Eran were slightly deaf from their performance on Saturday. I quickly learned the error of my ways.
After lunch, Will and I offered the front seat to Steven and Chad. They turned us down, quite content to remain in the middle of the raft. The air was a bit colder in the afternoon, and each wave that crested over the raft edged me closer to the middle of the raft in an unsuccessful attempt to get away from the cold water. I tried to lean forward and into the waves, hoping to miss the splash. I never did master that technique. By early afternoon, our rafting trip was finished. We ended up at the camp, and helped the guides carry the rafts up the hill. We showered and changed and prepared for the airport.
Chad lives outside of San Jose, and drove a SUV down to the site. He brought Steven and Eran to the airport. Both had red-eye flights leaving at midnight. Since we finished around two, they had ten hours to kill before their flight, which again shows their dedication in joining me on this trip. I went with Will and Erik, who had rented a car. Will drove us to the airport. Will is one of the few lawyers I know who has always enjoyed being a lawyer. While I have found contentment in my career over the past few years, Will left law school (and probably even went into law school) knowing he wanted to be a lawyer. He became a litigator and while switching firms once, he seems very content with his choices. Even in law school, Will was a very good student. He studied with determination and the knowledge that he was preparing for a job he would love. I very much respect that. For most of us, it takes a very long time to find pleasure in work. Some people, regrettably, never find much pleasure in what they do.
We dropped off the rental car at the airport and I parted ways with Erik and Will on the bus carrying us to the terminals. I tried to get on an earlier flight to Seattle, but was turned away. I spent the time catching up on reading and speaking to the Julies.
Julie finally reached me at the airport. A conspiracy theory had been running through her head over the weekend. She thought the guys had convinced me to leave my cell phone off during the trip. That since this was my bachelor party and last hurrah, I should celebrate by not talking to the Julies. While that would have been very funny and probably a good idea, the truth was that this conversation occurred only in Julie’s head. While the other guys were able to call home during the weekend, my cell phone did not receive a signal at the camp. My cellular provider, which has good coverage in Seattle, does not have as good coverage in California. Since I do not have a phone card to call Taiwan and must wait for her to call me, I could not borrow one of the guy’s phones.
I told her of my weekend, and she told me of her Taiwan doings. I promised to write this entry to give her a more detailed look into my wonderful weekend. While not as crazy as other bachelor parties (what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas—or something silly like that), as I said earlier, it was exactly what I wanted. Proper and yet disgustingly fun. I again wanted to thank everyone who made the trip. I wish I could do this every year.
And since I won’t have the photographs for a few weeks, I’ll leave you with my rendition of the men-overboard Event of the rafting trip. (This will be posted again when it comes up in the rotation for the front page.)
Top, from left to right: Will, Chad (overboard, bruised legs), Eran (overboard, bruised buttocks). Bottom, from left to right: Me, Steven, Erik.
See my other Cast of Horribles to gain context on my weird doodles.
Ah, our new dining room table. Julie picked it out without any guidance from me. The first table we chose was from a Vietnamese furniture store. We negotiated the price down to a reasonable price, and were left negotiating only the delivery fee. When she wouldn't budge on the seventy-five bucks, I used the slow walk out to try to push her to see our point of view. She waved as the door hit us on the way out.
I think walking out only works in movies.
As to the dark table, after drawing the chair, I grew tired. I figured if I made everything dark, I wouldn't have to draw the other chairs or most of the table. I was right. Don't tell anyone, though. It's all about artistic effect. Or is that affect in this case?
I'm in Boston with the Julies for a few days, as we celebrate her sister's graduation (and Julie's birthday!).
I'm usually good at putting things together. Give me a large Ikea box, and I can build furniture in less than an hour. The barbecue we bought for the Castle wasn't as easy. A few of the screws they gave us didn't fit in the holes they drilled. I spent many hours trying to make them fit, and then decided to create my own holes. I used too large of a bit, of course, and ended up with bolts holding on the left arm-thingy.
That's my mom (who visited for the weekend) and Julie in the back, watching my frustrations. While I didn't come away with a bandage on my head, I did get a few nasty splinters in my fingers from the deck.
The instruction book was really fun to draw. I need to do more of those.
In a few hours we board the kick-off flight for our wedding extravaganza. Even as I write, Julie is busily stuffing her bags. It’s a night flight that leaves Sunday night and arrives Tuesday morning, staying in the air for around 12 hours. Yes, it’s confusing. Suffice to say we’ll try to make the most of Tuesday when we arrive. We have a busy week, even we don’t count the actual wedding day.
People keep asking me how I’m doing with the whole wedding thing. Truthfully, both Julie and I are doing very well. I think when you’re older, weddings come easier. You realize that life is a lot bigger than just one day, no matter how important that one day is. Julie has been wonderful during the planning process. She gets a bit frustrated with my lazy ways, but she has a way of working through a list (or sometimes lists of lists) that is downright angelic.
Speaking of plans, the plans for our two weddings are as finished as they’re going to get. We have a fun two weeks planned for Taiwan, and I’ll try to document our doings. I know things have been quiet around here. It'll give me a chance to liven up the place.
We wait in a Switzerland-branded coffee and ice cream shop. It’s hot outside, Houston hot. We grabbed a taxi from our hotel to Julie’s parent’s neighborhood, with the hope of meeting them after they finished their lunch meeting.
Julie reads a New Yorker article on the development of obstetrics. It’s an interesting article that shows medicine, in its purest form, is about improving success rates against failure rates. Medicine is not so much an art as a mechanical process. Obstetrics has shown the greatest improvement of all modern medicine. The percentage of baby mortality has had a precipitous drop compared to the rest of the medical specialties. One of the driving forces was the introduction of a way of measuring success. A scale was introduced that measured the baby’s health at various stages after birth. The doctors were measured against the success of the babies on the scale, and the delivery processes continuously evolved through competition to improve the doctors’ scores on this scale.
We dig into a single scoop of vanilla ice cream. I sip a coffee while Julie drinks tea. Except when I order mochas, I don’t drink my coffee with milk. I alternate black coffee with sweet, creamy ice cream. Vanilla ice cream has received a bad rap. People use vanilla as a way of describing a boring, conventional choice. Vanilla is my favorite flavor of ice cream. What people fail to realize is that vanilla is a flavor. This is most apparent when you eat vanilla verse plain yogurt. Vanilla has a wonderfully intense taste. It’s different from other flavors in its singularity. For me, it’s about the contrast of flavors: the black coffee followed by the sweet vanilla ice cream. The comparison is severe and delicious.
Today is a holiday in Taiwan. It has something to do with wrapped rice and the suicide of a nobleman as his way of protesting corruption. From what I’ve gathered, the story goes something like this. Two thousand years ago, a nobleman drowned himself in the river to protest the government’s corruption. When the people heard of this, the races their boats to try and save him, and threw rice wrapped in leaves into the water so he would have something to eat. To celebrate this occasion, people in Taiwan and Hong Kong race dragon boats, where large teams paddle downriver in long boats to recreate the attempted rescuing of the nobleman. People also throw the wrapped rice into the river. The symbolism of food survives even beyond death.
We had planned on reviewing a few Dr. Julie Show music videos, but with the holiday, we settled for a lazy day of wandering, long naps, and television watching at the hotel. We shopped around Julie’s old neighborhood, dodging from shade to shade, and air-conditioned store to air-conditioned store.
I’m proud of my corporate master. The pen I write these words with is blazoned with its logo. I want people to glance over and know I’m one of their minions. It’s the ego again. I want to be seen as belonging to something bigger than me. Perhaps it’s more than just wanting to be seen: I also want to be part of something bigger, something more important.
We sit at the window of the coffee shop and watch as mopeds zoom from place to place, probably doing their parts to contribute to the overall warming of this tropical place. People walk back and forth in front of the coffee shop, visiting the surrounding shops. I watch the same three girls pass the window five times. After we leave the coffee shop, we do the same thing, passing in front of the coffee shop’s window a number of times as we wander the streets.
People write stories about great people hoping to capture some of the greatness. What makes people great can never be bottled or taught. It is the instinctual reaction, the deep thoughts and analysis, the desire for power and the grasping of the lightning rod at the moment of the strike.
Everything has its plan, its providence. We sat at the coffee shop and I threw my New Yorker at Julie to keep her occupied while I finished The man in the high castle. She found the obstetrics article and she is reading it. It seems more than chance that brought it to her. Or maybe I read too much into everyday events. We humans are excellent at seeing patterns where there is only randomness. It’s either that or there is no randomness, only apparent and mathematical randomness.
It’s these times away from words, these times alone with only my thoughts that I miss while working. When I work, my creative energies are subjugated to the job, even more so over the past few years as I my job began to interest, entertain, and bring me great satisfaction. What I lose, however, are these quiet moments of reflection, where I dig out the built-in crud and begin exploring the more important and harder to find parts of my life.
Perhaps that was what I was getting at yesterday with my discussion of writing and doodles: I can doodle without reflection because the doodle is my reflection. But to write I need quiet moments where email isn’t dinging and I’m not anxiously waiting for the next fire to ignite so I can run over and stamp it out, lose myself in the familiar activity until only a smoldering heap remains as evidence of my efforts, evidence of a life. I don’t want to judge that life right now. Perhaps it is for the best to concentrate on small fires and not worry when the forest burns.
Julie’s parent’s lunch meeting went long. We ate a delightfully modern Japanese lunch before grabbing ice cream. We window shopped for a bit before catching a cab back to the hotel. We met her parents for a late dinner and went to sleep early. It’s morning now as I type up the notes. I slept well last night. It’s always the second day where the jet lag hits. I like to think I’ve beat it, but I won’t know until tomorrow.
As I reread the musing, I realize that I’m too hard on myself as usual. I have to realize that life is not a zero sum game. Julie finished her article—and with it my musing.
That's Jason to the left. He was my trainer for the past couple of years. He's a big guy. Very big. I'm a small guy, much smaller now that I stopped seeing Jason and starting riding my bicycle home from work three times a week.
I find myself in the same Swiss coffee shop as yesterday, alone this time. Julie is taking a facial. We took haircuts earlier this morning, and my hair is punkier than ever. There’s something to be said for pink hair. I can’t say it, of course, but I’m sure people with pink hair talk about it, a lot.
We’re in Julie’s parents’ apartment, and I’m typing up my little black book’s notes from my Swiss adventures. Julie finds her cousin’s journals. They’re eight and nine years old, and are probably keeping the journals for their school in Dallas, or perhaps, like Julie and her family, because they’re overachievers. Julie reads the entries out loud. Their writing reminds me of my own words these past few days. They did this and that and this again. Then they slept. But before they finish describing each day, they pause and return to the beginning. They can’t resist starting at the exciting parts of their day, and once they exhaust the excitement, they slide back into the mundane: the brushing of the teeth, the haircuts. The New Yorker does this in its articles. It starts with an anecdote, and then, a few paragraphs or pages later, skids back for the history lessons. I guess all writing does that. Time is monotonous when viewed in a straight line. I wonder how we humans deal with it every day.
My family arrives tonight after what I imagine was a hellish journey: Buffalo to New York to Detroit to Osaka to Taipei. I have my own reasons for looking forward to their arrival. I want to speak English again. It’s only been two days, but isolation hit me harder and sooner this time. This is my fourth trip to Taiwan. We did the math yesterday, and Julie initially didn’t believe I had visited four times. I had to show her my passport stamps to convince her. She was right to doubt me: my math skills, like my geographic skills, are not strong. I tend to make small errors that multiply the longer I use the incorrect calculations.
Part of my isolation, I realize, would be rectified if learned Chinese. My fear is even if I learn the basics of conversational Chinese, I still won’t have any enjoyable conversations. Knowing the basics of English doesn’t guarantee me many good English conversations. I’m all about amusing myself (and, with luck, others) during conversations. And without a strong grasp of the language, the only way I will amuse others is with my errors. I guess there are worse types of conversations than comedies of errors.
After eating a late lunch, I realize that some of my isolation might not have been because of Taiwan or my language skills, but because I was very hungry. Julie keeps forgetting that like a small child, I grow moody if not regularly fed. Once I ate grilled fish and vegetable hand rolls, I felt (and acted) like a new man, no longer just the sulking boy-man.
I not only went to the same coffee shop as yesterday, I also sit at the same table, and eat the same vanilla ice cream and black coffee. What did improve: they play the best of Louis Armstrong on the radio. After I hear “It’s a Wonderful World” for the third time, I finally give in and make my way back to Julie at the facial place. The buzz me in and I sit patiently in the lobby.
The coffee is making me anxious. It’s either that or the heat. It rained when we were at the beauty salon earlier in the morning. It was one of those hot weather downpours, where the sky opens up and rain slams the earth. It lasted a little less than an hour before clearing up. It washed away the heat for a good five minutes.
As I wait first in the Swiss coffee shop and then the salon, I start and finish Kurt Vonnegut’s Man without a country book. It’s a collection of essays he wrote in the later part of his life. Vonnegut is a bleeding-heart socialist. I very much respect him for his beliefs. As he lived through the younger Bush years and the Middle East wars, he became very disillusioned. Perhaps he was always disillusioned with our government and world. While many of his stories display a toxic pessimism, his essays bring that pessimism to a higher level. He seems to hate human beings, completely losing faith that we can do anything right. I like Vonnegut and I like his intelligence, and because of that, his words don’t bode well for the rest of us. My regret is he died before Bush left office. It is almost impossible for whoever takes his place to be worse. How is that for optimism?
And then my family arrived and we slept, but not before we brushed our teeth.
I'm married. Much has happened over the past few days. With my family and friends arriving, and the general things-to-do before the wedding (not to mention the cable television at the hotel...), I haven't had much time to record many thoughts. The Taiwan ceremony was Sunday, and we returned to Seattle tonight.
I'm in the process of uploading the first set of photographs. You can find Charles's excellent photographs of my wedding at his website.
I should also have a few videos and hopefully other sets of photographs over the next few days and weeks. When I have more time, I will go through the albums and select the best photos for a summary album to save you from having to look through the hundreds of photos. For now, I wanted to get something up.
One wedding down, and one to go. This time next week, it'll all be done, and we'll be back in Seattle for good, plotting our honeymoon. While I had a wonderful time this past week, I need some serious David (and Julie!) time. I over-socialized, and it will take me weeks to wash off the smell.
Ah, the day and a half between the Taiwan wedding flight and the NYC wedding flight. Surprisingly, I wasn't that tired. We somehow avoided jet lag on the way home, and relaxed during the break. I even caught up on some work mails.
The title was taken from the fact that people who fly in airplanes a lot gain microseconds on their life. This is a relativity thing: if you move fast, time for you slows compared to things moving slower. When you fly at 500mph, you are moving faster relative to the people on earth. It's not that you live longer since according to your watch, you live the same amount of time. It's more that your life appears longer to those who aren't moving as fast. It's confusing and funny and absolutely brilliant (not my doodle, but that it works that way).
I drew this right after we returned from our wedding extravaganza. I enjoy sameness. I like habits and patterns and doing the same thing over and over again. I like change as well, but I view change as the opportunity to create new and better habits.
My mother called me after this was posted. It went up after our wedding, and my mother was very concerned about the newlyweds. I assured her that I drew this much earlier in the year, and it had nothing to do with our relationship. (This was posted before my fancy new website, with Create and Post dates, and squiggly lines on the bottom.)
Julie and I used to jog in Seward Park. This was in our starry-eyed living-in-sin stage. We would jog around the park, and I would listen to Julie complain: pain in her side, trouble breathing, heart rate too fast, unbearably itchy legs (I can't make this up!). After a while, I began keeping a complaint meter. The more she complained, the higher the levels. From the looks of the smoke coming from our sneakers, you can imagine the level of complaints.
Spiderman 3 was similar to the earlier Spidermen (and, yes, I can create a plural for a trademarked movie franchise): fun but not spectacular. It would have been better if it focused on less stories. There's only so much you can do in two hours and change.
This was drawn before summer, during a spring heatwave. Very few houses have air conditioning in Seattle. We happen to live in one that does. Of course, everything is relative. You get used to anything after awhile. That's why I keep trying to get Julie to join me as a Mountain Man (and Mountain Doctor!) in Alaska. You know, to test my theory.
I drew this after we returned from Julie's sister's graduation. At Harvard, they wear funny robes with little swirly things on the collars. Since I'm reading the Harry Potter series, it makes me think of Hogswart as everything reminds me of Potter's world. (I hate being a Muggle, by the way.) The trip to Boston was fun. The graduation was a graduation. It feels important, and yet, for all its importance and pomp, it is excrutiatingly tiresome. We did have yummy Japanese food to celebrate.
Jennifer was a bit concerned that I made her look witchy, what with the green skin and red hair. She did dye her hair red, so I had no choice but to draw it that way. The green skin was an afterthought. It's always difficult to figure out what color I should make people. Many times green is my default. I already have the beige, pink, and blue people. Green is the big missing one.
Ziggy was amazing yesterday. He learned to sit (sometimes--mostly when he wanted a treat, regardless if we asked), and even walked to the park without us having to drag him. He's still not properly housetrained, but he is getting better. While running up the hill after our park walk, I accidentally stepped on his foot when he crossed in front of me. Ziggy is a small dog, and there were lots of warnings about how delicate Italian Greyhound's legs are. He yelped for a good three minutes, and it left a nasty cut on his toe. I spoke with Dr. Julie, and she assured me he would survive. Barely.
We finally hit another nice week of sunshine in Seattle. I was concerned that summer had passed us already. I may even bike sometime this week. I'm a bit nervous: I feel my muscles attrophying even as my appetitie dissappears. I'm destined to be overly skinny, and to hear about how bad I eat everytime I see my mother or Julie's parents. We all have our issues, I guess.
It’s bad to leave the Each Day post as my last real writing. It feels dirty, like I set myself a task and failed so miserably at it, that the only evidence of its existence lies in its failure. I’m here to rectify that. I’m slogging through a short story that is not moving along very well. It’s been wallowing in my folders for a bit. I keep pulling it up, wondering where I should take it, before slipping it back under the piles of used newspapers, hoping it’ll accidentally end up in the recycle bin. It hasn’t yet, although not from lack of effort on my part.
I’m reading through the Harry Potter books. Jennifer, Julie’s sister, suggested we read the series when she visited Seattle. We bought the books a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve done my part. I’m halfway through book five in the seven-book series. It’s been an enjoyable read, except for the end of book four where Lord Voldemort speaks an overly long exposition of what he did while we weren’t looking. For such an evil guy, he talks a lot. My theory is that J. K. Rowling rushed into writing the book without planning how she was going to tie everything together at the end. She realized too late that the reader was going to need a lot of information in a short time to understand what had happened. She accomplished this inelegantly by having him describe what he was doing for the benefit of his cronies. It’s so easy to criticize. It’s also possible that she thought this through and agonized over her decision. She had a lot of information to convey, and without switching perspective (which, except for the introductions (arguably), she never did), there was no way she could get across what he had been doing.
For a children’s book, it’s very good. I’ve read better fantasy novels, but J. K. Rowling has a wonderful way of making you feel like you’re at Hogwarts (the witch and wizard school). It made me miss school, something that’s almost impossible to imagine—that’s grade school, not graduate school, which I do miss. Her characters are strongly drawn, even if a bit one-dimensional. I keep hoping that some of the eviler characters, like Draco Malfoy, will come around and save Harry Potter. I doubt it will happen, but I’m hopeful.
Besides school, Rowling also does a great job of portraying the strong emotions of children and people in general. For example, in her fifth book, she returns to injustice (a very common theme among children for obvious reasons). You feel what it’s like to be the child who’s misunderstood and misjudged, or just unfairly treated because they are powerless.
This was well portrayed in the last movie, which showed the fifth book (and fifth year at Hogwarts). The movies, by the way, are very close to the books. So close that you wouldn’t miss many details if you decided to forgo reading the books. I don’t recommend that, though. The books are addicting like chewy candy that gets stuck in your teeth. Even before you tongue the leftovers off your teeth, you’re already popping the next one into your mouth. Like a good Stephen King or John Grisham novel, you just want to know what happened next. Good storytelling does that.
Julie and I went to see Harry Potter: The Order of the Phoenix. We were both very excited, and the movie was quite good. The wizard fight at the end was one of the best magic fights I've seen. I'm more convinced than ever that these are books that were written to be watched and not read.
Since I wrote that paragraph I read passed the first book, and started rewatching the movies (yes, I am a Harry Potter addict). While the books are not much deeper than the movies, the differences become more apparent and meaningful in the later books. As with all books, there are more details that fill in the whitespaces in the world. I still think the movies are more enjoyable, but it's best when you combine the two.
Julie was convinced my original rendition of the wand looked phallic. I explained to her it's very difficult drawing something coming toward the viewer. She nodded in agreement, and again asked why there was a penis sticking out of the wall.
In the posted version, I tried to make it more pointed, and less penis-like.
I'm on the seventh book of the Harry Potter series now. As I said before, she's a very good storyteller. The books don't have the meat of a deep fantasy series, say Robert Jordan's overly long saga, or George R. R. Martin's incredibly original series. But for all its faults, it is a great and addicting read. Ask Julie, who barely sees me without my nose buried in the middle of a book, waving her off so I can concentrate on finishing the latest chapter.
With Sukkot fast approaching, Julie and I scavenged wood from last year's attempt to reform our Sukkah. As always, my plan was better than my execution. After buying new roofing materials, and additional wood, I managed to get the walls and ceiling sort of done. Once again, I question the sturdiness of the roof, and worry that the 2x2x4s that hold up the roofing will come falling on our head one evening.
Today was Halo 3 launch day. Julie and I met up with Steven for many hours of playing the co-op campaign. Julie is a bit of a novice when it comes to FPS games, but she held her own. The game played wonderfully, with only a bit of lag caused by my sub-optimal DSL connection.
I decided to post a bit out of order because of my back log of Horribles, I keep missing date-relevant doodles. We'll return to my massive collection of Ziggy-related posts soon.
So it’s been a while. I usually sit here and don’t type very much. I don’t think very much, for that matter. I keep pretending that I’m going to do things other than scribbles. I don’t anymore. I don’t even consternate. It seems that my decision to stop consternating turned off the spigot of writing. I realize it’s like my drawing: if I have no ideas I draw a little guy staring at a colored background. If I have no ideas for writing I either consternate or don’t write. Consternating is my way of saying nothing.
And even now as I approach paragraph number two I slow down. I keep thinking there’s something I want to say but I don’t know what. All I know is that I have to stop censoring myself. I have to get beyond the silliness of what others think. Isn’t this why you’re writing, though? For others to read it and woo and wow when they see the cleverness of the words? It feels that way. It feels like all I’m ever looking for is approval of others, to see comments and love from the social world. What is life beyond that? Is there anything in life beyond the relationships with others? I thought the relationships were important? Perhaps it’s something more, something that my lack of ego can live without. Do I care who reads this or who comments on this? Do I care about much?
I’m sipping my coffee. It’s cool today. I’m still a bit sick: congested and headachy. I meant to take medicine before I left the house but forgot in my hurry to get an egg and cheese sandwich. It wasn’t as good as I remembered. Nothing is ever as good as I remembered.
My attention wanders and I pop open my browser window. I’m not trying to make goal or do much today. I’m just putting words on paper and hoping for an epiphany. I don’t have many of those these days.
I woke up in the middle of the night last night worried about stuff. I worry a lot. Sometimes I worry about work, sometimes it’s about family, and sometimes it’s so meaningless that I can only laugh at the idiocy of waking up at that time of night for such a triviality. I have as little control over what thought wakes me as I have over how long it takes me to get back to sleep.
Still there is nothing worth anything anymore. I’m not sure why I’m here. I’d like to believe the fairy tale of religion. I would love that my purpose was to be tested and to choose to grow closer to G-d, to bring him into this world through my actions. I would like that there was a purpose, that the world was not just a random bit of matter spinning in an uncaring universe. But I’m small, tiny even. And sometimes my desires or wants are not interesting and don’t represent much.
This is not going to the front page. This is going to the pile that nobody reads.
I used to have hobbies. I don’t remember what has happened to them. I’m awfully bitter today. I guess I’m disappointed in myself. Here I have almost two weeks of little work and I don’t do much. I should have set up a project for my down time. I should have thought this through and used my time efficiently. Instead I’m just sitting here on a Sunday morning, the only time I actually sat down and did something, and not doing anything. Ugh, I’m not sure what I should be doing.
I don’t even know what projects I want to do. I want to write I want to draw I want to program. But I have no real goals. I should work on the Chinese website to help me learn Chinese. Not that there aren’t thousands already out there. I need some goal some purpose something.
I need inspiration and goals and wants. I need help.
I need motivation and I need needs. If I want to make video games, make video games. If I want to write, write damn it. Why do I need inspiration for that? I should have plenty for what I have now. It doesn’t make any sense what I’m doing or not doing. I’m sick and tired of my bullshit and my lackadaisical attitude. I’m sick of not doing something because I don’t do it. That excuse is and always has been old. I want something new, something with meaning, something that shows who I am for those who care who I am.
And yet here I sit and do nothing. I think about returning home and playing video games, of wasting away the day and not accomplishing much. I think of the nothingness of life and wonder what I was ever thinking that made me do something of value. I want to write about things that happen. That makes me happy. But if nothing happens what can I write about? I need to make things happen and then write about them. What could be easier?
