Red Tide

Went to the beach yesterday morning to take our usual early morning walk. It was still dark when we arrived, although it couldn't have been much earlier than six. So, the days are getting shorter, something that we observe with as much eagerness as we used to scan the gray Atlanta skies for signs of spring.

Yes, our world has been turned on its head; instead of parsing the wind for hints of warmth we do exactly the opposite. We cheer for weather from the north. We praise the low chain-mail clouds that begin to appear in the fall. We pull out our long pants and long sleeved-shirts and put them at the top of our drawers, just in case they might be required. One never knows!

We have a Nor'easter, but we don't have the cold yet. When we stepped out the the car that's the first thing I thought. The second was that someone had mentioned a Red Tide about 50 miles north of our location. But surely that wasn't to blame for the sudden catch in my throat, the stinging eyes, and the itchy skin?

We persevered. We pushed the baby's stroller across the undulating beach which in the darkness always makes me think of the surface of the moon. Luminescent breakers were racing past us to the south, carving out tasteful slices of the sand with each glancing blow they struck. It was pretty, but my god, it felt as if we were being gassed. My eyes were tearing and I was coughing every five seconds. My wife was no better. Only our son, the little hearty robust son, seemed unaffected. He lolled in his stroller, staring vacantly out at the lightening ocean, his little chest rising and falling with the same steady rhythm as the waves.

Eventually we cut back up to the sidewalk and made our way back to the car over the surface streets, but this did not make things much better. We still coughed and sneezed all the way along. When I complained about the Red Tide ruining our beach walk, my wife replied that this is what happens when you fuck with Mother Nature.

Fri 9/28 - 1,474 Words

Knocked 'em out today... felt pretty good... got on a roll.

Getting very close to finishing the first draft... a couple of chapters away. Starting to roll toward a fun ending, so it's fun writing, for once... not so much of an extraction/blood letting. Still need to go back and fill in some major holes... but that will be just the first phase of revision. The basic story is here, the basic story is almost finished, and that's enough to give me a pretty good woodie.

Hope things go well for you today. All things. All bullshit, etc.

I'm glad we're here for each other.

Hey... we're getting close to a hundred posts. Damn... that's pretty cool. We should have a little party, eat some orange jello and some cream of wheat... you know, really live it up a little.

Switching Gears

"I prefer to think that it's like opening a tap in the brain and letting out the pressure which would otherwise drive me crazy in some way."

I feel very much the same way. I was just telling my wife the other day that it's like opening a vein and letting the story out. And just like giving blood, I know I can only give a little at a time. When my thousand words are up, I feel like I'm short on blood... not quite exhausted, but that the well is close to dry and I'd better not push it.

Which makes me think about how much trouble I have switching gears. I've been in a little quandary lately... lots of writing assignments coming in, which is great cuz we need the money. So I say yes a lot. Just said yes to another newspaper story five minutes ago. That's all fine and good, but I feel like when I hit those deadlines (and yes, I blow them the fuck off until the last possible minute) I have to make a choice... I have to tap the vein for a bullshit nonfiction assignment and get it done, or I can tap the vein to work on my novel, which is what I really want to be doing. I've said no to a few assignments recently, in the interest of allowing myself time to crank on the novel, but lately we need the money.

I wish I could just stop complaining and find the strength to write six hours a day. I have those six hours when the kids are at school, and I'm usually working in some way during most of them, but writing... the actual drafting, pulling the words outta the air and my ass, that's when the needle goes in and the valve opens full-throttle.

I usually dedicate first-thing-in-the-morning time to real writing, drafting, cutting open the vein. Then I'll do some editing and revision later in the day, and marketing and phone calls and other associated bullshit in the afternoon when it's okay that most of my creative juices have dried up and I'm just doing grunt work, crossing things off the bullshit to do list.

So do real writers really write for six, eight, ten hours a day? Well if those real writers do that, fuck 'em. They got a lot more blood than I do, I guess.

But then there's that amazing energy we've both talked about... that electric jolt that jumpstarts your day after you've knocked out your thousand words... I get that when I've done my thousand on the novel, and I have to admit I even get it when I finish a bullshit newspaper story or educational publisher assignment... It's quite a thrill when I can hit "Send" and know that the fucker is done, off to where it's supposed to go, on time, and about to come back in the form of a paycheck... That's good shit, just not as good as finishing a good chunk in the novel.

I'm not feeling like a failure with any of this... it's just yet another example of recognizing and acknowledging that this is all part of the writing process... my writing process... and accepting it and working with it, sliding the canoe in the water and paddling along to get from point A to point B rather than standing in the middle with a raised fist, the water cutting a V as it rushes past my body... desperately trying to tweak my process to work with in the constraints of my fucked-up needy alcoholic mind... I know how it works... I've fought this writing thinking game time and time again... I know it's better to accept the bullshit, the pain, the struggle, as part of the process.. my writing process... cuz when I paddle that canoe I get shit done.

1102

Not good, but they're done.

Now to focus on work. Yes, I let my work suffer for the sake of getting the words out. Work matters but not as much as writing, when I have a choice. I don't know if that will change as I grow in the craft but after doing this pretty much every day for the last four years I still see no end in sight.

I prefer to think that it's like opening a tap in the brain and letting out the pressure which would otherwise drive me crazy in some way. I know how romantic that sounds. I know that it's not a very sober or businesslike way of looking at life. But what can I say...

Beantown Breakdown

We went to a restaurant last night in the North End; Italian joint with tables set up in the big wine cellar. It was cool and dark and quite the tony experience. I hung out, soaked up the free food, and then made my way out to the street where I met this friend of mine from Atlanta who moved to Boston five years ago.

He and I walked around the waterfront; these huge majestic cruising yachts were gliding past us in the darkness, their lines tastefully accented by the silvery moonlight. As one boat swished by we could see these shadowy figures on the deck as they finished their dinner. You could hear the soft clink of silverware and see wine glasses glint and cigar ends glow. My friend said that there was no reason why we shouldn't be on that boat having dinner instead of down on the pier watching.

My friend was telling me about a company he wants to start. He's the incurable optimist.

"It's all a game," he was saying. "We just have to get it started and then it's all a game."

I was thinking about my gut. How if this one thing would fix itself then I could take on the world. A cartoon tiger named Tony would bound into the scene, throw his arm around my shoulders, and lead me through a montage of success. Show me writing the perfect code; signing the IPO papers while other entrepreneurs watched from the sidelines with loud exclamations of amazement and dismay.

Earlier in the day I put a sentimental song in my headphones and walked to the edge of this little promontory overlooking Boston Harbor. The sun was hovering over the distant buildings of downtown and the wind was hard on the water; in the place where the sunlight lay in a blazing path across the harbor it looked as if the sea were literally boiling. I watched this effect for some time, idly wondering if I hadn't read that descriptive in Homer. It seemed like a very old idea. Into this boiling stretch of water came a small sailboat piloted by an old man. He and his old wife sat very straight in little well of the sailboat as it seesawed over the waves. That made me think of my wife and I let myself love her and miss her a little bit. I thought that someone with more talent than myself could write a story where a character is mentally unfaithful to their spouse during a long trip but then comes to realize they really love said spouse. By this time the song was over and I turned to go inside.

1051

Made it. What the hell it's a grand of words when there's no time at all for anything. I'll take it. Think I'll walk to the Super Stop and Shop and get me something for breakfast, aw yeah.

And then off to the conference where they call me Captain Gladhands.

Stealing Writing Time in Boston

I don't know, maybe it was the roses. The roses or the ribbons in her long brown hair.

Woke up with that song playing in my mind, no idea why. Yesterday was a 15 hour grind. Conference started at 7 in the morning and wound up on a booze crooze of Boston harbor from which I disembarked at 10 PM. All the time I was upset because I wasn't writing. All the time I kept thinking "A house divided against itself cannot stand." And then I got to thinking about how all these people on the booze crooze (okay maybe two or three) were younger than I and already more successful, probably because they'd followed their dreams while I straddled the fence that divides Dreamland from Responsible Life and in the process squished my nuts flatter than two Lima beans.

Not to mention I was doing a great job with my freaking stomach condition until all of a sudden I wasn't and my gut went into full-fledged revolt. And in the midst of all this on a boat w/the grandeur of a sun-setting (and then moon-rising) Boston harbor scrolling impossibly past, I found myself in a conversation with the hot wife of some CIO and the conversation went on and on, she would not let it die, and something in me shifted from the happy technologist to the Desperate Comedian.

And I became the buffoon. Willingly. Gladly. I began to spout whatever nonsense came into my head and it felt good because people were laughing and it was almost like writing. When we got to shore I spend some time in a brown study trying to figure it out. Why did I do these things? Why was I so willing to sacrifice my tincture of dignity for some laffs?

My life. My stomach. My writing. All whirling in the head like Lotto balls.

But it's really all about powerlessness. That's what it's really all about. The willingness to LEAVE the fucking data points the fuck alone and not try, not endlessly grind, to make those data points into a coherent and happy story of MY LIFE. To not compulsively seek my happy ending.

I'm powerless. I DON'T know what it all means. I really don't. I DON'T know why I'm here, or why it feels like I have an angry gerbil clawing his way out of my esophagus (take that, Richard Gere), or why anything. And I don't need to know why. That is the mind-bending miracle (and the very high hurdle) of recovery.

So thank you for writing about your fight w/the wife and with such vehemence and eloquence. You did that thing that you do so well! You built up one of those composite images that always make me jealous when I read them. And, well, anyway, you know I'm there for you and that fighting w/the wife is the most painful thing you can do. Please let me know when the makeup sex happens.

Mon 9/24 - 1,559 Words

Hey... I think it helps to have a belly full of rage when you sit down to knock out your thousand words... 1,500+ ... Yee haw...

I still want to get that baseball bat out of the garage... maybe just feel the thing in my hands, swing it around near the cat a little bit...

Pissed Off Today...

"The glass of wine was so big, and she'd shrunk to such a degree, that it looked like she was trying to carry a fishbowl to her mouth every time she drank. "

This is your thing, Bill... this is your golden nugget. You peppert these little nuggets through your writing, and I betcha you just do it shooting from the hip. I betcha you didn't sit there thinking, hmm... what can I say to evoke an image... how can I bring this alive... I betcha it just comes flying out of your ass. I say that because you do it so often. It always impresses the shit out of me.. and pisses me off a little because I have to work so hard for stuff like this that I rarely have the energy to make it happen... or I just choose not to use up that energy...

Down in the dumps today... big fight with the wife last night... trying desperately to hand it over to God, trying to see my wrong in it all, when all I want to do is tell her to eat shit and walk away...
So hard to let it all go when I just want to go out in the garage, get a baseball bat, and tear up everything in the house... the fridge, the three-thousand dollar HD tv, the fireplace, the cute little paintings on the wall... just smash it all up, slamming the bat around without thought, just complete rage, smashin, crunching, loving how much the impact hurts my hands... the dog looking at me like I've gone fucking nuts... the cat hiding under the couch... setting the blender up on the counter like a tee-ball and then launching it through the fucking sliding glass door out into the grass, right in front of our zillion dollar conservation lot upgrade bullshit... mirrors... yes... plinking them carefully in the middle to get the best effect - a crinkled seven-year spiderweb of rage... dresser drawers... why not just fucking go for it, knock the toilet off its mount and send the water line into orbit, spewing water out across the eighteen-inch ceramic tiles cut on the fucking diagonal... all of it... the precious dining room set, hobble the bitch, knock each leg to a different length so it totters back and forth in the dust... hunt down the cat... why not... let the dog have something to play with after I drive the truck across the living room...

There... I handed it all over to God.
Doesn't that make me feel better God? Don't I feel wonderful now that I've handed it all over and looked for what I did wrong and made amends and buried the fact that I'm right and I have every right to smash things until my fingers bleed?

Titles at the Brewster Women's Library

From where I sit in a little sunny alcove I can see the openings to and portions of seven large book-filled aisles. I am surrounded by the stacks. During my various lookings-up (to think, to stare blankly) the following titles have penetrated my awareness so that now my eye is drawn to one of these three in sequence like a swimmer in a bay who charts a course between three buoys.

The Vienna I Knew (Memories of a European Childhood)
Europe by Eurail
Wild Animus

Nuttys and the Cape

You had me laughing with the tin of peanut brittle propped on gut w/the hopeful dog onlooking. Good stuff.

When I first cleaned up my act I was responsible for taking donuts to an early-morning meeting. I would go to the store and buy two boxes of donuts. I consumed one box on the drive to the meeting, then put the other box on the table and ate from that along with everyone else. I probably put away 10 to 14 donuts during that sugar-crazed donutastic orgy.

I'm at the Cape. It's nice. It's cool. I'm wearing long pants. It's dry. When you fly into Boston you generally take a turn over the harbor. I was sitting by the window and happened to look down at the water; we were high enough that the fishing boats looked like little white flecks of foam, and you could identify whole schools of swell rolling across the ocean. The sun was almost directly overhead and reflected back at me like a fast-swimming school of fire bright fish. They described arcing leaps over the islands and yachts, obscuring them from view as they passed, keeping pace with our plane.

Last night we took my wife's 98-year old grandmother and her 89-year old friend out to dinner. They had a glass of wine apiece before we started and then proceeded to get us lost on the way to the restaurant. We drove for two hours before we finally stopped to get something to eat, these two old women giggling the whole time, immensely pleased with the adventure and not a bit upset that the could not remember the location of their favorite restaurant.

Grandmother had another drink before dinner. The glass of wine was so big, and she'd shrunk to such a degree, that it looked like she was trying to carry a fishbowl to her mouth every time she drank. As she carefully decanted another sip, I could see only her white hair curling like fog above the flashing rim of the glass. It was quite droll. Later, when the food came, she (half in the bag by this time) kept complaining that she couldn't see what she was eating.

"I have no idea what I'm eating right now," she'd say in a querulous tone, "since I can't see."
To which her friend replied, "Yes, but you can taste, cahn't you deah?"

Grandmother was too wine-addled for a sharp response, so she just shrugged and reached out for the enormous glass. When you're 98, all things are permitted.

Apocolypto

"...and his face was propped on his coffee cup like a golf ball in a tee. Swear to god, when they took him away there was an unfinished Nutty on his plate."

Yikes... great image. I hope it's not a little flash of the future for me... I'll think twice about the nutty next time.
Remember the crew-cut (or maybe bald?) diet guru lady that shouted "Stop the Insanity!" at her audiences. That's how I feel... some day, hopefully, I'll stop the insanity.

I honestly don't know how I could have used all my newly learned, completely grokked tools to build up an inpenetrable wall against alcohol and other drugs, but still cave in to sweet shit that I know is slowly killing me... There is a tin of peanut brittle in the pantry downstairs, calling my name... I will go down to refill my coffee cup, and I will hear it scratching at the door, telling me just a little, just this once, a little bite, maybe a handful, maybe take the whole fucking thing upstairs with me and set it on my fat stomach while I write, rubbing sticky salty gunk off my fingers so I can continue typing, the dog looking at me with crooked ears and neverending hope...

So... on to Apocolypto.
It was entertaining... some good fight scenes, gory sacrifices, young tight-bodied Mexican girls dressed up as Mayan ladies, bouncing titties around, etc. Typical Mel Gibson... the protragonist was just a Mayan Bravehart, just like the Patriot, etc...

But, what struck me as I was watching it was the never ending firehose of conflict against the protagonist, up to the very end, when after all his struggle, family trapped in a well, raining so they'll drown soon, running from the nasty guys who want to use him for sacrifice, wanting to avenge his father's death, etc. etc... running, running, about to die just from exhaustion but then they keep coming, running, running, until he hits the end of a path, an overview of the beach, and then the ocean, and it is at that point (think Friday the 13th, floating on the calm water in the canoe at the end, Jason explodes out of the water) that he sees the whole fucking Spanish Armada, just now hitting the beaches with their muskets and small pox (or whatever it was). The point is... talk about conflict... gawd... the shit just got worse and worse and worse... Turned out at the end that he rescued his wife and son from the well (oh, that's the other part... she gave birth to their second child in the water of the well, as he was trying to pull her out... yeah...) and then they escaped deep in the woods, assumingly safe from the conquistadors, at least for the moment... yikes. I'd rather be kicked back at home with a fresh box of Toasted Nutties.

Blue Collar Dude Revisited

Did not see blue collar dude with the same clarity and focus as you my friend, although I knew of his existence. I was afraid his left eye was entirely missing and didn't want to verify for fear I'd see a small cave lurking behind that weepy lid. Took me until halfway though the meeting to determine that he'd only taken a good mashing, and that beyond that bloated slit there was something moist rolling back and forth when he looked around the room.

Funny thing about that meeting in particular, most of those guys are not blue collar (although your boy in question certainly is); most of them are just old and retired and half-senile. Take J, for instance: he had a string of cheap t-shirt shops (further proof of the statement "nobody ever went broke underestimating the American Public") and made his million.

G is a retired pilot who, along with several other fellows in in the room, does a yearly trip to South America to hunt up the whores. They go for a couple of months, rent a villa there (the continent remains the same but the country varies from year to year), and keep it plentifully stocked with young whores. G is actually famous for once getting a blowjob for a nickle. As the story goes, (this is pre-retirement) he was making his way back to his hotel in Rio after sampling the delights of a local brothel, still wearing his captain's uniform, when a whore stepped out of the shadows and offered him a blowjob.
"I'm tired, honey," he said. "And I been busy with that all night."
But the whore really wanted to get some work, and so G kept dropping her price until they'd literally gotten it down to single American nickle, at which point the value-conscious G realized that he couldn't pass it up. With a shrug he reached into his pocket, pulled out a quarter (a 400 percent tip!) and followed the whore back into the alley.

I could go on... a collection of characters in there. Last year G and a couple other guys rented an RV and did a tour of nudist camps from here to California.

So, those fellows always intrigue me. All kinds of character defects (perhaps, if you want to look at it that way) but an absolutely sterling sense of the principles of recovery, and all of them completely committed to service work (jails, newcomers, you name it). They have found something which works for them.

I would revisit the blue-collar dude at this point (and thereby justify my title) but instead I can't let this post end w/out discussing donuts. I worked at the Dawn Donuts on Saginaw Street when I was a kid. It was right next to the Goodwill and Saturday mornings were all about the welfare people making food-stamp purchases of multiple dozens of donuts. Loved that job and my god, did I eat me some donuts. Eventually became a devotee of the Nutty. Worked my way to the Nutty as the ultimate expression of Donutual Art.

However, was also partial to Creme Stix. Liked a Creme Stix or two as a means of setting up the Nutty.

One of the checkout ladies from the Goodwill took me behind the donut shop and made out w/me. Can still recall her downy 'stache ticking my upper lip while her pointed, crazy-flickering tongue went to work on my teeth.

Saw someone die in that donut shop. He wore a greasy old trench coat and his face was propped on his coffee cup like a golf ball in a tee. Swear to god, when they took him away there was an unfinished Nutty on his plate.

That Beat-up Blue-Collar Dude

Good catching up with you today. I won't say I'm sorry for what you're going through and ask if there is anything I can do for you and tell you that everything is going to be all right, cuz I know most of that just yields a moment of discomfort as you struggle with a suitable response.

So I'll just say, well shit...

And I'll tell you that I'm standing beside ya...

And we'll let it go at that.

I did, however, get a kick out of the nurse saying, "No... it's going to be a big prick..." There are so many areas for literary interpretation there... I love it. If you'd like, we can go back to the hospital some day next week and off the bitch. Let me know...

So... great meeting today. Good stuff, good thoughts... good exposure to some of the less privileged... maybe guys that are working a lot harder at it all than I've had to do in the past... good for me to see that... maybe not take it all for granted... Interesting to hear people read out loud, many stumbling over words, many just too fucking wiped out to focus, some that really struggled, but tried anyway.

I kept watching that beat-up blue-collar dude who faced us. Looked like he'd been taken down to the ground... been pounded on for a long time... maybe kicked once or twice... and it looked like he'd fought back - the fingernail on his right index finger was dark red, turning black...
But there was hope... Big ol' loud J sitting next to him, pushing up against him, engaging him, shoving him around playfully, forcing him to realize he was there... I watched the beat-up guy go through cycles... in one moment he would sit with a frown, slowly pulling his finger along the underside of his swollen eyebrow, digging carefully in the corner of his eye.... maybe it was itching really badly as he heals... maybe he was just feeling the pain again, reliving the experience over and over again in his mind, remembering the terror, maybe the rage... or maybe he doesn't remember it all and just woke up some where in his own blood and piss and vomit. But big ol' J wouldn't let up... dunno if you noticed that either... the beat-up guy looked annoyed at one point, I saw him push J's leg away from his... like he was feeling claustrophobic in that tiny space, up against the wall and trapped against the coffee table... J kept pushing, giggling, holding his book up for the guy to read, asking him questions... engaging him, making it clear that he was there, that the beat-up guy was alive... dunno if J was doing this intentionally, or if he's always like that, but I did see the beat-up guy start to smile, sit up a litle straighter, focus a little less on his injuries and a little more on the discussion...

So... will this help me eat fewer Krispy Kreme donuts? Probably not. Will I start training for triatholons? Uh....

What will I do? I will hug my kids just a little bit longer when they get off the school bus. Maybe enough that they'll feel the need to wriggle away from me and look at me like I'm fucked in the head. I will find a couple more reasons to laugh my ass off about something... maybe share it with my wife and try to get her laughing too... I will continue to teach my dog new tricks. I will throw my wife down on the bed and take more time than usual... maybe spend some serious time kissing her, being open to explore that never ending cave of what she really wants. I will write. I will call my friends, and be there for them, and make dinners for my neighbors and fly up to my brother's if/when they need me.

And I won't try to tell my friend that he should do this or do that, or that I have any fucking idea what he's going through. Cuz I don't. The only thing I can do to help is just be there.

And I will be there... probably munching on a couple of Krispy Kremes exercising the TV remote... but I'll be there.

My Esophageal Morning

Just figured I'd write about this here. Because why not, we write about everything else here, and we do it (at least you do...I try) without sentimentality and hopefully w/a little humor...so here goes.

Got to the doctor, they took off my shoes and shirt, put me in a gown, laid me back on the cart, and the nurse came in. "Am I going to feel a little prick?" I said.
"You're going to feel a big prick, actually," she replied, not deigning to adopt my sophomoric, desperate-for-a-laff tone.

It was a rather big prick, I gotta say. She just kept sliding and sliding that IV needle in there. And kept telling me, "Don't move your hand so much. Relax your fingers. Relax your fingers."
Like I could fuckin' relax my fingers when a needle as big around as a Bic pen was sliding in between my fuckin' tendons?

But that nurse was as determined lass, and she got it in. Then I lay there with my stomach gurgling, reading a book about Java Design patterns and wishing the hell we could get this over with so I could go home. All the while I had that creeping saline numbness going up my right arm.

Wife came in, I tried to crack a few jokes with her. When they wheeled me into the operating room I was off on some rant about the equestrian scene of Saint Augustine and how I was a famed bareback rider. I think the initial anesthesia was already starting to take effect.

Next thing I know, I'm coming to. They're asking me if I want a cup of coffee. I say "yes'" and mumble a lot of other complicated sentences that are intended to be jokes but get lost on the way to the punchline. All the time I'm thinking about how my friend Steve cracked them up w/the Little Miss Muffett routine.

Doctor comes in. Says it doesn't look good. I've got what looks like lots of irritation. Could be Barrett Esophagus, a bad condition. Not fatal or cancerous, but pre-cancerous; not what you'd want. Geez. In my half-stoned and belligerent state (I remember thinking that the doctor was really harshing on my party) I started asking him all sorts of questions. He wanted to defer these until the biopsy came back, of course, and after listening to me ramble and mumble for awhile, he gave my wife an apologetic nod and moved on to the next curtain, where I clearly heard him say, "Good news! Looks great in there!"

The curtain came back to reveal this bloated, popeyed, white-haired old man who looked as if he'd spent his life drinking bacon grease and eating batteries. But his esophagus was fine! The doctor beamed with pride as he pointed out the lovely smooth contours of the man's esophagus on a color printout.

My wife was putting on my shoes. They stood me up. I staggered for a door and boom! was outside. Rode along, watching the gray clouds scroll backward against the building tops, still not quite comprehending my situation. Still outraged, even now, but getting over it. It's just, man, I was NOT worried at all. I was sure I'd be in and out, no problems.

But hey, no big deal, right? Who needs a fucking esophagus anyway? They'll just put in a length of PVC pipe and install a little handle on my neck...I can pull the crank and drop the food straight into me gut.

Water in Face

I was walking back from a meeting the other day and had just reached the point where my street ended at a cross-street when I saw two people standing in front of a low white wall, having one of those conversations that take place without eye contact because both participants are too busy looking elsewhere. In the movies, these conversations occur on the decks of military ships (two sailors diligently scanning the horizon) or at fancy dress parties (a man and a woman working out the logistics of an affair with ventriloquist-stiff lips). In Saint Augustine, people have these conversations while waiting for their drug dealer.

The man and woman were both of the sun-bleached Florida-redneck-homeless variety. It was impossible to guess their ages. When the Florida homeless pass 30 and until they hit at least 70, they seemingly don't age at all. Some have more teeth than others; some have darker hair, some walk stiffly, some lope smoothly along like an animation of Early Man. But age does not seem to play a role in any of these factors; rather, it has more to do with how many nights they are able to find shelter, whether they have been able to avoid falls from pickup trucks, bottles smashing mouths, campfire brawls, angry pimps and crooked dealers.

The two homeless in front of me were of the well-preserved variety, roughly the same age (or so it seemed). He wore a pair of denim pants, frayed at the cuffs, and black high-top sneakers. A red baseball cap framed that woefully familiar expression of proud defiance which indicated that he, like most of his kind, based his entire self-concept on some vague ideal of one's ability to "survive" hardships (both self-imposed and those that are visited upon a man by the authorities).

The woman had hair from which all the pigment had been stripped by a combination of time and exposure to the blazing sun. Her face was unshaded, all downward angles and unexpected abutments of pudge. Her small eyes looked out from cupolas of leathery skin with a vaguely hopeful glint; a gray t-shirt lay on her rounded shoulders and two twig-like legs (covered in patchy bark which might've been eczema) poked out of her stained khaki shorts.

As I approached, the sun emerged from behind a long, thin cloud, setting the street corner on fire. Suddenly, the man turned and threw the contents of a Styrofoam cup straight into the woman's face. Water struck her and and blossomed in all directions, making a dark line on her t-shirt. The woman gasped and spluttered, raising her eyebrows and lowering her lips as she stumbled toward the man, her balance upset by the shock. He gave me an angry glance and then began walking away toward the St. Francis house. Presumably we were all to blame for his problems; me, his woman, and who knows how many others?

What surprised me: the woman's face never lost its meek expression, not even in the moments following her dousing, when she realized what he'd done. She wiped her eyes on the hem of her t-shirt, ascertained her man's bearings, and began to follow him at a respectful distance of three paces while he, with an occasional glance over his shoulder, muttered at her "leave him be" and to "go on back." She continued to follow, pleading with him in a soft, low voice, until they reached the porch of the St. Francis house and were lost in the shade.

1919

Words of pure outline. But they were words, right? Wondering if I should grip now. Wife always comes home if I decide to grip. If my wife is ever lost in a plane crash or natural disaster, I'll just duck into the nearest bathroom and start stroking the sausage.

Guarantee she'll turn up in a few minutes, bits of smoldering fuselage in her hair, and say, "Hey, what are you doing in the bathroom?"

Doesn't Have to be Perfect

Right? Writing is a gift. The time to write is a gift.

So funny, your stuff about the Priapus Platypus. I was laughing out loud when I read it. I was thinking of another take on the word: What do you call a small-bodied, large-cocked wandering minstrel who hammers every broad he can lay his hands on?

Priapatetic.


Okay. I have to write some schroff now. I'm feeling rather desperate...like when you have a zit forming on your face and you tell yourself, "Don't pop it! It's not ready!" But then you succumb to the temptation, you're carried away by the remote possibility that it just might work if you hit it just right and you whirl back to the mirror and give it a harsh squeeze. Nothing...just a shooting pain right at the tip of the pimple that carries down into little flashes along your jawbone. You turn away from the mirror with a shrug, pretending to be casual, but feeling in your heart like a jilted lover.

You walk away, determined to give it time. That was dumb. Never should have squeezed it that once but hey, you had to give it a shot. Now you know for sure it's not ready. You'll just forget about it now and go about your day. It's really not all that noticeable anyway. Then, passing the hall mirror, in defiance of all logic, you whirl suddenly and give the pimple a vicious, groan-inducing squeeze. Nothing! Nothing! "Damn, damn!" You say aloud. Now the thing is twice its original size and pulsing like a second heart. You try to tell yourself that no one will notice but it's no use. If only you'd left it alone in the first place...

Priapus Platypus

Congrats on the 1500 yesterday... good for you for sticking with it. Even if you only end up hanging on to a third of it, that's still a solid couple of pages.

I have to decided to abandon all other writing work and focus all of my attention on a new children's picture book idea, called "Priapus Platypus."

Here's some of the first draft...


"Jeez, Priapus Platypus," said Mr. Kangaroo. "You are one ugly motherfucker, but Crikey! that is one big dick there, brother. You get what I'm sayin'?"

"C'mon over here a sec," said Priapus Platypus. "You sure got a furry mouth."

"No way, Priapus Platypus," said Mr. Kangroo. "You ain't getting that thing near me. Why don't you go talk to Mrs. Wallaby?"

----

That's part of the opening scene. Needs a little work.

Want - Priapus Platypus needs to find someone who can handle his big schlong.
Obstacle - Duh. It's right in front of him, bobbing in front of his eyes, blocking his vision, scaring away the other animals.
Action - He will visit Mrs. Wallaby, right after he hits the CVS to pick up some Turbo KY Astroglide.
Emotion - Take it, bitch...

That'll work.

1502

Rambling brambles around the re-order of the plot. Lots of what we talked about came out in the new plot summary. A collective cell. Martin and Oskar getting together to take the money as a team. Good stuff. Thanks dude. What I wrote tonight was utter crap, just ramblings, but it has established the new mode for the story. Oskar needed someone to talk with. Had to give him his brother. Feeling better now.

The Priapus post made me split my cock I laughed so hard. I was doubled over with laughter, poking myself in the eye with my penis, and then I swung around to answer the doorbell and took out all the plants on our windowsill. Hate it when that happens. My tiny little body was shaking with laughter while my cock led a phantom orchestra through Beethoven's Fifth.

Thur 9/13 - 1,117 Words

Well... the clouds didn't part for me this morning, sending down glowing yellow lights of brilliance as a result of cleaning up my outline. But I did crank out my thousand... and I knew what I needed to write when I sat down.

It was a scene I couldn't really give a shit about but needed to be written to wrap up one part of the story. I'll probably end up cutting most of it later... but hey... the words are on the fucking page, and it's still pretty early, and I can move on to other shit, cuz my thousand words are done, even if they are absolute excrement.

Love,

Priapus

They Call Me Priapus

Priapism...

Heard it during a Cialis commercial last night (at the very end, in the fast-talking legalese about side-effects, erections lasting more than four hours (which I've heard a million times now but still cracks me up just the same), etc.)

Priapism is a "continuous, usually non-sexual erection of the penis." (ya gotta love that definition... I mean c'mon, what else would it be.. a non-sexual erection of the left nostril?)

So I looked up priapism and got the above definition, but I also got some more...

"A god of gardens and fertility, Priapus was the son of Aphrodite, who disowned him because he had a grotesque little body with a huge penis. He was a member of the retinue of the god Dionysus and chased after nymphs."

".... a grotesque little body with a huge penis..."

Wow! What cool stuff!

How can someone not totally groove on discovering a guy named Priapus - a guy who has a grotesque little body with a huge penis!! I mean come on... that is some cool shit.

So, from now on, in jazz clubs and beat poetry circles I would like to be known as Priapus... They'll all nod knowingly as I swagger in through the front door... "Dude.... look at that grotesque little body of his...." "Yeah... it's pretty grotesque, but you should follow him to the bathroom... that's something you gotta see...."

Priapus... I like it.





(If you would rather not have my new little hero action figure show up in our blog, feel free to delete...)

Outline Catharsis

I worked a total of five hours today on the novel. Didn't write a single word in the manuscript, but did a major overhaul of the outline.

Now, I am clean, refreshed, purged... perhaps even ready for another lovely colonoscopy.

My outline had the first seven or eight chapters right on target... then the middle (about nine through fourteen) got way wiggy... then fifteen through twenty were either not represented at all or just globs of notes out of order, etc...

I'd reached a point where I wasn't using the outline anymore, and I felt like I was driving off the road. I was still writing, still staying on target with the plot, allowing myself freedom to stray from the outline, etc., which is good, but I was starting to lose a sense of how everything tied together... Here... you can relate as both a writer and a programmer... it was like having that big chunk of code checked out of the configuration management software, and the bitchy redhead CM manager is tapping a pencil at you in your cubicle, telling you you better get your shit checked back in and updated to the current development version.

So, I started this morning, first making some solid decisions about exactly where the rest of the story was going (and it's exciting, because I feel like I've reached that point... I'm in the home stretch... I still have a lot of little scenes to add here and there in the revision, but the major chapter chunks are there... the scenes carry the plot, and I just have to fill in some holes, spackle it up, and start sanding...) and then I went through both documents side by side - the manuscript right next to the outline (a word document in outline view so I can expand and collapse giant sections of text and not go fucking crazy, but I still do anyway... what I need is a monitor the size of a wall... that'll do it...)

I went back and forth between the outline and the manuscript, updating the outline with quick notes about the chapters... marking stuff in red that I needed to go back and add/fix/troubleshoot, etc...

I just finished... and tomorrow morning I will be starting chapter seventeen (of twenty). And I have a good, solid chunk of notes in place for how I'm currently thinking about the chapters, but... at the same time... I know it needs to remain a LIVE DOCUMENT, and I need to allow myself the flexibility to change it, let it fly, cut it, add to it, totally fucking ignore it, etc... I'm cool with that.

However, I'm far enough along with the story now that I'm pretty confident in the notes I have for these last four chapters. In fact, I've been thinking about the last three for months... I have them pretty much written out in my head (or at least acted out in a strange mental movie without sound or even dialogue, just characters moving around, emoting, wanting, conflicting, etc...)

So I'm pretty comfortable with where the rest of the story is going, and it feels great to be thinking that way... I'll probably be singing a different tune in a few days, but let me ride this for a while... while I can...

I'm learning, over time... to start with strong characters, a strong situation, and start nailing down an outline document with character notes, revision notes, to-do lists, etc... and then, most importantly, a chapter-by-chapter breakdown, with each chapter broken down into scenes if needed, so that there is some kind of framework... some sense of where the story goes next. If there are gaping holes, if scenes and chapters end up completely out of order, if characters show up who never existed, etc... that's no big deal.... it's okay because it's a live document... it'll never be checked back into configuration management... it's mine and it is a glowing, living thing... Every once in a while I have to clean it up, move the blocks around, get rid of the clutter and put the socks back in the drawers so I have got some semblance of order... so it makes better sense and morphs from a thinking and brainstorming document into a map, a set of instructions...

This is what works for me... I'm learning that, and that's the most important part... that it is what works for me... It's not a rigid document that I must follow... it's as alive as the story, but it still must exist.

So... with your most recent post... you sound a little bit like you're pulling your hair out... but you also sound like you're letting the current take you... stepping out in faith like Harrison Ford on that invisible bridge... that's okay... let it carry you. You told me you took a whole writing session recently to update and revise and retweak and rethink your outline... that's great too. I think we're both onto it... maybe it means a shitload of revision down the road... but maybe we just gotta get over that and dig in and do that revision when the time comes (and as you know, it's always ninety-times less work than we think it's going to be while we're procrastinating and not doing it...) So hang in there... hang in there... let it carry you, when you splash up against the river bank and you can comfortably hang onto a tree branch or something for a while, hook it under the corner of your arm and take some time to tweak the outline again... morph that freeform brainstorm craziness back into something that resembles a map a little bit more... but don't sweat it, don't force it... don't fix it until it breaks...

And remember, beyond everything, that A: We're in this together... there's someone at the other end of this screen who's right there next to you in the trenches, he's got your back, and he won't laugh at your bean sprouts (unless you're laughing too) and B: It's all part of the game... and it's a fun game when we sit back and look at it... it's not a job, it's our fucking lives, but it's a game all the same... It's a game, and we're on the same team, and we're fucking winning, dude... I can feel it in my bones... We're winning.

Love what you said about cheddar cheese blockage, inflated 'roids, blue fireworks... ya cracked me up good on that one.

And I already had dictionary.com saved on my link toolbar, but thanks to you I am now a card-carrying member of the word of the day club.

If anything, bud... just remember that we should be proud because we so fucking do not go gentle!!

High noon tomorrow?

A Grand, Barely

Last night I had to do my writing because I'm the single parent and you know all of this already, so moving right along, I had to do my writing. And so I wrote from a female character's POV an ode to her 4th metacarpal which had recently been halved. She literally eulogized her missing digit.

I'm telling you flat-out, I'm not happy about this at all, I'm kind of nervous. But here are the themes which are emerging (trying not to pay attention to them and swerve into THEMATIC IMPORTANT WRITING MODE).

Free will.
Racism.
Chaos.
Personal Power.
Magic.
The love/hate of family

Where it's all going I have no idea. I am teeeetering on the brink of total blockage, of "just ate a pound of cheddar and when I strain on the toilet my 'roids inflate like airbags while little blue fireworks go off in my head" blockage.

So I'm going to ignore reason and accountability and move on, otherwise I feel I'll be blocked fer sure. Here's a pilfered sentence (from dictonary.com) which I have been using as a balm for my inflamed brain.

"Body is flux and frustration, a locus of pain and process. If it becomes impassible and incorruptible, how is it still body?"

A locus of pain and process, indeed.

What's Great About a Blog

When you finish, all you gotta do is click the "Publish" button and you get this message which says, "Blog Published Successfully!" Now that's some instant gratification for your ass.

Fucking A, I'm published. Goddam right. Many times as I want. People see me on the street, they say to themselves, that is one graphomaniacal motherfucker right there.

Kid Won't Sleep

It's 9:15 and the kid is rattling the bars of his crib. He SO does not want to sleep. His dad SO wants him to sleep so his dad can write. When wife is out of town, father writes at night because he figures all bets are off at 3:30 (his usual time).

Father would probably write at night when wife was at home, but wife has an entire checklist of tasks associated w/her care and maintenance which make that impossible (leg rubbing, listening to her problems while she lies in bed with her arms flattening the covers tight to her body, talking about our day -- it's no wonder it takes me like three weeks to read a book).

While writing this post the kid has racked. Hallelujah. I'd better get cracking. If I ever *do* publish, I'll thank my family because by taking away all but the thinnest slivers of my time they've made me realize just how fucking much I love to write, just how fucking much I need it.

Oh. I saw parts of Brokeback Mountain while I was doing kid duty tonight. I cried. That's a great movie.

Alligator

I like the post about the Drishti? Did I say that right? Very much.

There's something you do so well. You're like a placement pitcher. You're like a Greg Maddux when you write. You don't always go for the 102 mph fastball on the outside corner. I mean, you're capable of it, don't get me wrong. But you often go for a series of placement pitches, one high and inside, the next an 88 mph split-finger, and then back with a curveball. That's how you build up your descriptions and scenes. Clear images, clear little phrases that stack up on each other. You take your time with it, the phrases kind of overlay, and one has the pleasant sensation of looking through a series of acetates that, all together, make this cool collage of images. It works for you and I really enjoy reading it. I could not imitate it if I tried; I'd get lost in the pacing and lose track of my point.

So, about the alligator. You may find this interesting, creepy, or not worth a damn, but I'll tell you something strange. One of the first stories I wrote (probably six months into my first stab at writing) was about a boy who drives his car into a deep drainage pond in a Florida suburb. He's ambivalent about surfacing (he's depressed, etc.) until, out the windshield, drifting in the still-lit headlights, he sees a massive alligator go gliding past. He's terrified to be left, dead or alive, down there with this monster, and so he makes for the surface. My alligator scene (aside from being entirely imaginary) was done in murky greens and browns.

Drishti, Dude...

A lot of the yoga poses we do involve balance. You've probably seen some form of the "tree" pose being done, where a student stands on one leg, the foot of the other leg pressed against the inner thigh, hands in namaste prayer position, focused forward.

Yoga instructors teach you a little trick. They tell you to find something in the room to focus on. This helps (or in my case, is supposed to help) you keep your balance. It really does make a difference. In combination with breathing through the form, finding a drishti (Sanskrit for focal point) helps you maintain balance, keeps you from falling over, flailing arms, falling down on the floor, etc..

So... you understand what a drishti is in yoga. A point of focus. A way to stay on target. A system for keeping you from falling on your ass.

You.... You are my writing drishti. You, this relationship, what we share, what we write in this blog, how we laugh at and with each other. How we savor the experience, how we keep each other upright, balanced, strong.

And I'm glad we've found each other, cuz without a drishti I'd be phlopping all over the place, losing focus, miserable, depressed, doing stupid stuff, self-destructive behavior, etc.

So thanks for being my Drishti, Dude...

(and let's not take a yoga class together at any point.... I could see us getting kicked out pretty quick... them hot-body yoga instructors put up a good front of peaceful coexistance with all of the earth's glorious creatures and all that... but start laughing at farts in one of their classes and they will take you out back and kick your ass... and they got the muscles to do it, believe me... I wonder sometimes about those rock hard butt cheeks... brings a certain Eddie Murphy/Mr. T standup gag to mind...)

Mon 9/10 - 1,087 Words

Hey... cracked my thousand today.

Had to really work myself back in...

Now... off to create some to-do lists for two other projects that I need to get out the door!

Tennis and Waves

This weekend was actually pretty special. The only thing I did wrong (and I should start with that, since it's about writing); I didn't write yesterday. Totally blew it off. It was Sunday, I'd had a hard week, it was my wife's birthday, and there were waves. Given that combination of factors, I turned off the alarm and slept straight through until at least 6:30. 'Twas a delicious orgy of somnabulence.

Waves, oh, waves. Three good sessions with a friend of mine from California who just happened to be in town. Won't go into the surfing experiences too much (waves are waves) but I did kind of finally click w/Hemingways' fiction when I was out there. Since you turned me onto Cleaver, I've been constantly noodling in the back of my mind about what makes for good dramatic conflict, and that always leads me to try to identify it in books I've read. So I think I have a good theory on Hemingway now. Remind me to tell you if you're interested.

As for the strange ladies? I too am overcome by a kind of torpor when the rubber hits the road. I too do not have what it takes to "close the deal". Heck, I can hardly handle the woman I got, let alone another one. I'm a writer, dude. The low risk/high fantasy lifestyle is much more suitable for me. All those years I was out there getting hammered and forcing myself into crazy situations, that wasn't really working for me, you know? I look back and realize that when I was around 11 I had life pretty well figured out. Back then I'd lie in bed and read books. The Star Trek television adaptations by James Blish, the Mission Earth series by L. Ron, and anything by Asimov and Heinlein. At night I'd lie awake in bed and fantasize (in a pre-pubescent innocent way) about girls from other star systems.

Then came the brain-chemistry Armageddon of puberty, the need to impress the ladies, participation in various sports teams, the sauce and the drugs. Only after having my head clear for a few years have I realized that underneath all those dead layers of personality I'm still the 11 year-old daydreamer.

Friendship, Indiscretion, and Once Again... Those Williams Sisters

Good stuff you said about our friendship. I agree. I think we'd have found each other out on the blacktop... two of those weird kids who sat by themselves but then ended up sitting by themselves at the same table. Woulda been cool to have found each other then, when a good solid friend was so badly needed. But then again it took me into my mid-thirties to figure out how to be a friend without screwing people over... So if we'd met when we were younger I would have just squeezed everything good out of you I could take away and then left you like an empty tube of toothpaste... that's the way I did things...

Sorry to morph your good thoughts into dark memories... but that's what friendship used to be for me... Now, five years and change later, I've started to realize what friendship really is. And it's so beautiful I just want to run around holding up signs and shit. I've never in my whole life known what it felt like to truly be accepted, to accept unconditionally, to have friends for the sake of friendship, without the underlying ulterior motives, wondering what I can get, how much I can impress, wondering if I can slightly increase my miserable social status by stomping on yours...

Bizarre shit... You hear people talk about only being twenty years old psychologically... I usually just laugh that off... but learning how to be a friend... I feel like I'm in that age range... and progressing, but it took me a long time to get here.

Funny story about the mack monster you created. Sounds like a potentially sticky situation, although he's the one that broke, not you...

I think God has helped me out with that kind of stuff in the past. I've always had the fantasies, always wondered what I could get away with, but somehow I never put one foot in front of the other, never moved my body forward enough to take that kind of action. I do believe there has always been some kind of anti-magnetic push, keeping me back, keeping my dick in my pants.

Now... if Venus and Serena had been standing behind that door in their short tennis skirts (maybe even glistening with sweat after a hard doubles match... boing...) It would have been all over. Still would be. I'd punch through that door and give them everything I had, slurping and moaning and scraping and pounding for at least three or four minutes.

Conflict

Oh, I was talking to someone else about conflict and they pointed out that conflict ended when the character exhausts all their resources in the struggle against the obstacle, whatever that might be. When the character is out of resources and options, you have resolution.

BTW I'm not good at the manly-feelings thing but damn, I sure love our chats too. I love the friendship. If we were kids I'd have the non-sexual crush going and be calling you all the time and be offended if you didn't sit by me at lunch etc.

Don't want to write. Don't want to write. Words on the page. Words on the page.

Elohel

Dude, you were killing me with the scalding shot of espresso to Barney's eye. That was pure genius!

There's this guy I work with, he seems to believe that his life unfolds w/in the context of a Merchant-Ivory film. He pronounces the word "genius" thusly: "Jen-yuss."

He is flamboyantly pretentious; it works for him somehow. He is married to a large, handsome woman who has borne him one charming daughter and who brings home about buck fitty/year or more as a software saleswoman. This man, my colleague, he has the perfect life in many ways, but on top of all that, he's a mack. He's always boffing some chick at work. He's tearing through the women at my company like a bag of Hershey's minis.

He was not always like this. I am responsible for his sexual emancipation. Once there was this co-worker who was interested in me and to divert her attentions, I suggested she go after my friend. I considered my friend untouchable and thought of him as a kind of outer space where the warhead of her oversexuality would detonate in a silent, harmless ball of flame.

Boy, was I wrong! I bet this girl that she couldn't crack my friend and considered my money as safe as if I'd put it in the bank. Never bet against a woman. When she got tired of my friend (after many many hours of mindless fucking) she left behind a newly minted, fully operational married perv.

He gets chicks with the smoldering glances and references to beat poetry, abstract art, and arcane personal technology. He's about three feet deep but incredibly wide. His personality is like that lake in Africa that you can walk from one end to the other, but it would take you four days to do it. Chicks love this. They are not looking for depth. They dig the easily understood and easily accessible.

Fri 9/7/07 - 1,378 words

1,378

That's my thousand words plus a little bonus to make up for yesterday's terrible indiscretion.

I like it... I like it...

So everything's working great until I figure out the next psychological monster that will prevent me from getting words on the page. I imagine next time it will be a big purple dinosaur... bouncing up and down to the music, flapping its arms at me, singing a song about how fucked up my writing is and how I should go out to the playground and buy some crack from him...

Barney, the anti-muse...

Celebrity Death Match - Barney the anti-muse vs. Miss Bitch Barista... Let the Romper Room music begin... Miss Bitch Barista opens with a scalding demi cup of espresso, a double, faking a right and then launching the espresso into Barney's eye... Barney screams, singing a quick song about being kind, turning around and dropping the Barista Bitch with a spinning back kick. She's down, reaching for the plastic jug of 2% soy... Barney pulls out his AK-47... the kids stop dancing and run for cover... Barney screams "I love you... You love me... Say hello to my leetle friend, you fucking mocha java sumatra kona latte gift card bare-ass barista!

God... help me.... help me....

Five Minutes, Ten Minutes

I need to train myself to take advantage of five and ten minute openings of free time. I need to be able to open the spigot, write for that five minutes, close the spigot.

I need to get to a point where I don't need half an hour of warmup and fuzzy feel good fru fru time before I'm willing to open my precious little writing gates.

As a parent, I have no other choice. I gotta take the time when I have it.

Teenager in the shower right now, wife about to leave for work. Instead of turning on CNN to hear about the latest suicide bomber or fucked up NFL player, I opted to come upstairs and maybe do a little writing... even this, right now, dumping words to the screen, may very well be what I need to get the spark started, scrape the tinder... After I get them off to school, and the house is quiet, maybe I'll be that much further along, maybe...

Yesterday's exercise helped... I like the idea of writing through the thoughts... that makes so much more sense than thinking through the writing. Thanks for helping me understand that.

I always walk out of our Starbucks Summits so charged up and ready to get back in the saddle again. I'm sorry to do this to you, but I think we're going to need to meet every morning, talk for an hour, and then go write. That's the secret. That's the magic solution.

So, to keep you on your current schedule of getting up at 3:30am to write (gawd... that hurts just to _type_ it...) we'll have to meet at the Starbucks at 2:00am (allowing drive time).

I don't know who will be on duty at the coffee counter, but I bet it'll be one ugly mother fucker... The nightshift barista bitch.

The Barista Bitch, who secretly keeps her BDSM toys under the counter, waiting until things are quiet and there is only one customer in the store.

Where the hell am I going with this?

Words on the page.

I just recently deleted a spam email from the Christian Debt Elimination Service. Thank God they've found me. I'm almost as excited about this as I was to receive the email for Black Singles Dating.

I've made it perfectly clear I'm not interested in black singles. Serena and Venus would be considered a double in my book.

Thur 9/6/07 - 900ish

900ish... at least it's something... and half of those words are from a short session of "this is my problem so I'm typing it so I can have a little self-conscious dialogue with myself about my curent predicament... "

But then I went right in and finished a previous scene... so that was a good experience.

It's words on the page... words on the page... words on the page...

Back in the Saddle

Thanks for a good lunchtime meetup there, Bill. Good for me in many ways... got my juices flowing, hyped up, stoked, saw some fine lookin' ladies walk through there, one in particular.

As we discussed, I'm struggling a little bit with the novel because I'm at a point where I feel like I need to write toward cementing the plot together... piece together what must be "told" to keep the story on track, to make sure plot point A meets B, etc... And, as such, I feel stilted, phoney, forced, like I'm trying to complete the essay so I can hand it in. When I get that way, I know the writing's for shit... It reads like it writes.

BUT... once again, I have to accept that this is still a part of the ever-loving smuck-ass process... the lifestyle we have allowed ourselves to be dragged into... like we really had any other choice...

So, about the GoNoGoLoCoRecoRoco... I like that you've made me think... I'm a little pissed that you've made me think, cuz I'm thinking about how much fun it could be, and I worry that that potential may cloud my better judgement... but I also need to get the hell over myself and be willing to try something new, different, even if it's slightly uncomfortable and maybe only hurts for the first few minutes... So as we agreed, we'll do some thinking and see where things go. Regardless of what we end up doing, I think between the two of us we can come up with some seriously funny shit.

Now... if I had nodded in her direction and said, "Damn, look at that cute little ass..." when your wife walked into the Starbucks, I think your reaction would have been to agree and then recognize the humor in the situation, rather than jump up, backhand me out of my comfy Starbucks chair and then dump the remainder of the sample pumpkin-spiced latte in my hair.

Fortunately, she had a smirk on her face and went right for you, so I assumed it was someone you knew, and I realized at the exact moment that maybe it was indeed your wife and maybe I should keep my perverted forty-something thoughts to myself just that once.

Great talking with ya, as always...

1300

I don't know what kind of freaking silly nonsense we've had on this blog lately. We need to get a better class of blogger in this place. Whew! Someone open a window in here. Smells like toe cheese and menthol cigarettes.

1300 words today. I am in the Desert on a Horse with No Name. I am wandering around out there like the Children of Israel. Chuck Heston! Patron saint of phlop writers everywhere! Save me. Lead me to the promised land. My plot is so far off the rails there's no way I can ever get back and yet I keep writing. Because they tell me to. Because they tell me drafts are messy.

When they say mess, do they mean casual disorder, untidy piles of paper? Or do they mean carnage, blood and entrails on the wall? Both are messes. Only the latter describes the disaster that is my novel.

Like John Henry the Steel Drivin' Man I keep pounding those stakes, one at a time. Gotta beat that motherfucking steam-powered machine. They goanna carry me away from this novel in a horse cart, my booted feet jangling over the back gate, my face stolen by the Grim Reaper and replaced with a gray rubber mask that will never smile again.

I wish I had one of those spring-loaded arms that were always available to the Three Stooges during their cream-pie fights. I would take it into the town square and fling pies into the faces of passersby.

Serena vs Henin-Hardenne

Once upon a time a person obsessed w/sexual innuendo could have some good fun with Justine Henin-Hardenne's name. Now that she'd divorced and the hyphenate is gone, it's much more difficult. Why did you divorce, Justine? I can no longer imply through my pronunciation of your last name that you are, in fact, an erect male phallus, battling the world's top women players in a best-of-three contest for the right to advance in a grand slam.

Disappointing, perhaps, but in a way fitting, since Henin really isn't a joke anymore. She dominated Williams the Younger last night, winning in straight sets. Serena put up a fight in the first but was clearly broken mentally in the second set, losing 6-1 and running her record to 0-3 against Henin in Grand Slams this year.

Early, Serena looked a bit sluggish, as if she were having trouble answering the bell. Serena's breasts looked quite alert and fit, but they were muffled on this night, with only a bare hint of that lush cleavage peeking out. Perhaps this had something to do with the final outcome? Still, after a few games Serena was lathered up and looking good. The broad, muscular expanse of her back and shoulders glistened under the lights. Her nostrils flared, her biceps, triceps and lats clearly defined, she looked like every tennis player's nightmare.

And yet Henin stood firm. She laced her penetrating groundstrokes into both sides of the court, thrusting deep, withdrawing, thrusting again, varying her pace and rhythm to keep Serena constantly off-balance, occasionally urging herself along with a quiet, "Allez." It was clear that if Henin worked her opponent with that hypnotic rhythm, Serena would lose control of the match. It made for captivating tennis; Hennin's aggression, Serena's efforts to retain her composure and prevent Henin's deep thrusts to her ad and duece courts.

And so it went, point after tense point, game after tight game until finally, with a loud shriek of agony, ecstasy, and capitulation, Serena collapsed in a quivering heap and remained there, panting, for several minutes. The constant rhythm of those fuzzy balls had done their worst. She had again suffered the mini-death against the former Mrs. Hardenne, and would have to wait until the next match for her revenge.

Breathing w/Diaphragm

Supposedly one can mitigate the effects of heartburn, GERD, etcetera by deep abdominal breathing. I'm sure you, as a yoga practitioner, were aware of this little tidbit but I'd never heard. So I'm sitting in my chair writing and trying to be conscious of the inward and outward protrusion of my belly. When I do this breathing I feel a pleasant downward pulling sensation in the points of both shoulders, as if something is stretching out. Interesting.

Glad you finished your stuff. That's got to be a great feeling. Anytime the words come out and get their asses on the page things feel better. As for my weekend, well, Little Champ was sick and so you know how that went. Time off work = time with Little Champ and I'm never sure which one is more of a grind. Little Champ is a lot more fun, though. He fell asleep one and woke up with two devil-horns of hair curling up from the backside of his capacious head. I called him "Little Devilish" and held him in a kind of bear hug until he squealed at me to let him go. Repeat that scene about 200 times and you have my weekend. Deeply mindless, exhausting and very good.

Sorry you feel that way about the anonymity of the program! No ReCoRoCo? That would be very sad indeed. It would be funny. I suppose I'll have to wait to get your take on anonymity, when you figure out what it is that's bothering you (and I understand waiting to articulate a feeling, believe me!).

Starbucks Summit Revisited

Yes my friend that is all true, what you said about the writing friendship, it's all true (sniff). I was telling my wife that we are no longer allowed to move from this area (we have a bit of a familial wanderlust) because I've found a friend. I have a friend, a buddy, a pal, someone who gets me, someone I can snigger with and with whom I can barter my sandwiches and snacks during lunchtime.

That was the height of intimacy in school; letting someone get to know your lunch. Letting someone get to know the dietary tendencies and shortcomings of your household. I knew I was really and truly friends with a person when I let them know that the tangled, spongelike collection of sprouts in the plastic baggie had been grown by my mother in the dark pantry below the basement stairs and that yes, she expected me to eat them. If my friends didn't disown me then, I knew we were going to be okay. And imagine my joy when Tim Sweeten actually expressed an interest in trading his Oscar Meyer Bologna w/mayo for my mother's whole-wheat/natural peanut butter/organic preserves PB&Js.

We do something similar in these Starbucks sessions; we pull out our crinkly, grease-bespotted brown bags. We dig inside, we lay the contents out on the table and then, when all our treasures (and trash) are lined up for inspection, we help the other see that it's not so bad. That it's salvageable. That with a little rearranging and a couple of prudent trades (and yes, maybe those creepy sprouts go in the trash) a fine lunch can be had by all.

Have I crushed, pulverized and pestled this metaphor into nothingness yet?

Good. Moving on to the RecoRoCo. I don't get your concerns about anonymity at all. The program is not anonymous. It's far too late for that; the program, the format for meetings and the 12 steps of recovery have long since entered the pop-culture lexicon. We can't put those cows back in the barn. As for breaking anyone's specific anonymity, I have very little concern that we'll do something like that. The names, locations, etc. will be changed.

Funny, I have no qualms whatsoever where this is concerned, nor do I have any issues with how the recovery movement is portrayed. To me, it's not perfect. Meetings are full of psychotics, hustlers, liars, perverts, and hypocrites (and that's just when I show up!). And yet it somehow *still works*. And that, that underlying miracle -- the sum total of our defects and miseries adding up to something positive -- is a theme that I believe could be explored in a comedic way.

Just my thoughts.