(Parenthetical)

I woke up as Hemingway: at dawn (too early), cat in my face (purring), my back stiff (old man), an aching head (I wondered if my ears were bleeding), and not able to recall the previous twelve hours of my life (enough Jack Daniel's to shock an Old West outlaw).  And it was a story that woke me up, a narrative running through my (aching) head about Emily.

(Those of us who heard Lloyd Bentson's quip to Dan Quayle are doomed to hear it reworked for the rest of our lives, as in:  "I knew [Ernest Hemingway] and you, Sir, are no [Ernest Hemingway]."  Certainly, I am not.)

I came downstairs, microwaved yesterday's remaining coffee, and felt a grating wheeze when I drew a deep breath.  (There were still plenty of cigarettes in the pack in my pocket.  I couldn't be certain, but evidence suggested I'd not smoked that much last night.)  I stood in the backyard, drank my lukewarm coffee (no matter what you do, microwaved coffee always tastes like, well, microwaved coffee), and had a(nother) cigarette.  And this narrative of Emily's was still streaming on in the back of my head.

(Sometimes, somehow, I just 'know' that it's best if I read or do internet research or blog rather than try to write.  [Judging by the date of the previous post, not that often.]  But actual writing is more important, so I shouldn't feel bad about not blogging.  That is, if I were actually writing, I shouldn't.)

While I am (indeed) no Ernest Hemingway, I do (like him) enjoy "the drink."  But this I can't reconcile:  drink+write.  Hangovers are nobody's petrie dish of creativity.  Yet, there seem to be (in my mind, anyway) so many boozy writers (or writing boozers?).   Which brings me to the title point:  (I just can't concentrate.)

(Fortunately--for me, not the reader--blogging requires little concentration.  [Self-indulgent tripe spawned from self-indulgent drinking.]  It's what the internet is for.  Spacebook, Tweeter, Glogspot, selfindulgenttripe-dot-com [look it up]; all these places to say: me, me, me.) (Oh, and p0rn.  If you didn't know, the internet is for p0rn.)

And Emily just pointed out to me that my weekends have become parenthetical.  (Till this point, I'd managed to ignore her.)  "You know," she said, "you haven't been listening to me, lately."  (Hey, I've been busy.)  "And--" Emily started to say.  (I expected her to start listing off my flaws.)  "And we all miss you."  (Don't you pull that with me.  Don't you try to make me feel guilty.)  "Just keep in mind," she said, leaning in closer to whisper, "we don't get to spend a lot of time together.  It's best if we make it quality time."  (Fair enough.  I'd let the entire month of February slip by.)

So (maybe) it can be that the week is (parenthetical, that is).  Sundays are the open parens, and Saturdays are the close (parens).  And what I need to do is make sure the rest is a full sentence (with subject-verb agreement, proper punctuation, and the active voice)--that is, not wake up feeling like Ernest Hemingway.

Forget the DSM IV... Laugh Out Loud

The sky was gray this morning, a gray that embraced the sun, not yet ready to release it to the day. I might have frightened some people on my way into work, under that gray sky. Sometimes I notice things that make me smile inside my head. Sometimes they make me smile on the outside. Sometimes, I even laugh. Out loud. That's when I notice people stepping away from me.

I see things differently than some people do. I think about things, particularly mundane things, a little differently. I don't know if it is a learned skill I use to fuel my writing or if writing is a natural result of seeing and thinking this way. I like to think I'm not like some (many? dare I say most?) other people.

I had an assignment in fourth grade to draw a caricature of myself: exaggerated head, little body, accentuating traits or personal interests. (I might be making that up. I don't remember the details of the assignment; it was a long time ago. It may have been an assignment simply to draw myself, but I interpreted it as caricature.) For a short time after the assignment was complete, I was called "Peanut Head." There's no surprise why: I drew my head in the shape of a peanut. (It wasn't as extreme as it might sound. It was sort of a circle, but I brought the sides in just a bit. Maybe more than I'd intended.)

I would have escaped unscathed, but my teacher decided she wanted to instruct from it. "See how Matt drew himself with a toy car in his hand? We all know he likes toy cars." "Matt has bright red freckles in his picture. We know his freckles aren't that red, but it gets our attention, and we recognize them when we see him." Why would she do this to me? "See how..." Ok, we get it. See how Matt has a head shaped like a peanut? (I've changed her name, but Ms. Amblewaddle has a lot to answer for: this—and other episodes.)

My justification for the peanut head was that I figured everyone else in the class was going to draw a boring, predictable circle as a head and I knew heads weren't perfectly round. (I am not making that part up. I remember thinking that.) Admittedly, my head isn't peanut shaped (I hope), but why draw yourself with a boring, predictably round head unless you want to be seen as a boring, predictable person?

Because of my ability to see at things differently (and my willingness to be called "Peanut Head"), stories—and especially characters—seem to be everywhere I look. I was vindicated by a writers' how-to guide I found on my shelf, which I read in spite of its awful title (in fact, I won't identify it; there has to be something similar and more updated—and without a title that embarrasses you if you're caught reading it). Almost three-quarters of the book is focused on knowing your characters. Even without a story, to know your character inside and out, to know the ambitions, joys, fears, loves, and secret demons of your character, is the essence. The setting, tone, theme, and plot will form around her. What a relief. I have a city's worth of people in my head. And a city's worth of people I notice as I go about my day.

The author also repeats a quote, attributed to Mark Twain: "Truth is stranger than fiction, because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities." Turns out, I live by this. I did like toy cars, but I called them Matchbox cars. I always used that brand name, deliberately. Hot Wheels? Unthinkable. I still have a dust-speck of longing over a toy Lincoln, made by Matchbox, that was left behind when I was four and we moved. It was an unremarkable dark red two-door with a white top—and it was my favorite. It was a car a four-year-old might see parked on the street outside his window. Hot Wheels made cars like a station wagon with fat back tires, a ridiculous paint job, and absurd decals. Honestly, what normal person jacks up a car and paints it bright silver with a flaming skull-and-bones? Worse, it was a Pinto.

When I played with my Matchbox cars, I stuck to possibilities. For a time, a plain green Volvo station wagon was a favorite. It was when "Family Ties" was popular, and the TV family had a Volvo. My imagination took me as far as the Keatons! Was my imagination feeble? On the contrary, it takes a vivid imagination to make the mundane interesting, to make the ordinary worth retelling. True, a story without tension and conflict won't fly, but finding drama in the ordinary makes a story the reader can relate to, a story not outside the obligation to the possible. Although they were not named so at the time, I suspect Olive and Emily were driving around in those unremarkable, possible cars.

Most of us live ordinary—boring and predictable, even—lives. (Unless, I suppose, you're an Obama. Even so, everyone poops.) Still, I find myself writing my own story as daily life churns along. I imagine a typewriter clicking away, capturing observations and events on an endless sheet of paper. This morning as I walked, I noticed the autumn sky. I captured it and tried to see it as words on a page. "The sky was gray." Wait. "The sky was grey—grey with an E grey." No. "The clouds in the sky..." I kind of liked that 'with an E' thing. "The grey of the sky came with an E." Yuck.

After five minutes I realized I'd said 'gray' in my head two dozen times (I get the meaning of ad nauseum when this happens). I don't often take special note of the color of the sky, no matter how it's spelled. People, however, are rarely gray. Even during the soul-crushing experience of riding on a DC Metrobus, you see the richness of life. Down-turned faces and furrowed brows hint at the ambitions, joys, fears, loves, and secret demons underneath. Sometimes people let you know how important they by talking too loud on cell phones. Sometimes they fall asleep and flop against the disgruntled passengers next to them. Sometimes they just stare ahead and think about things a little differently from anyone else. That is why we're all funny enough to laugh at—out loud.

Scattered Nouns: People, Places, and Things All Over the Place

I've mentioned 'old writing' several times, now, and it leaves me with a twinge of regret.  How long have I been (not) writing?  If you're unlucky enough you need a money-making job, and unlucky enough you don't have someone taking care of your every responsibility, it's easy to fall victim to life getting in the way of writing (or any diversion).

I would go years without writing anything substantial.  Sometimes, in between, I scribbled thoughts down in notebooks, or sat at a computer, saving my ramblings about nothing in particular (I have a folder full of files named, for example, 2004-07-12.doc), but there were long lengths of time when nothing of note came forth.

Which, now, makes me older (through no fault of my own).  It's not that I regret not producing more, and sooner; it's just that I should have been practicing more.  Which is why I decided I must treat my writing as a part-time job.  And I can't just 'no call, no show.'  I've committed to twenty-five hours a week, and if I miss a day (when life gets in the way), I have to make up the time, later.

I count myself lucky, to some degree.  I now have the ability to produce--really move forward--in my projects, whenever I sit down.  That's a product of age.  It's not all luck; there's also deliberate, diligent effort and there's a scattering of ideas, which brings me to my title point.

Last Sunday morning I knew I was short on my twenty-five hours, and I was supposed to make up my time.  The problem was I was facing nine hours and I was feeling uninspired.

The first reason I thought I should be able to write something(s) for nine hours was that I have no less than a dozen on-going projects.  There are plays and prose (and another, less-stupid--though probably no musically better--musical).  There are projects in historical fiction, humor (anecdote/memoir), narrative fiction, satire, and even thriller/horror.  Among the projects, I can usually (though not last Sunday) find something calling to me.

Or should I say, someone?

Another reason I should have been able to do nine hours' work was each project has at least a few (and, in some cases, many) characters.  Characters have facets and depth (I hope, for goodness sake) and somewhere within them there should be something I like--or don't like--that would inspire me to start writing.  I tried to drum up some sort of inspiration from them last Sunday, but nobody wanted to boogie.

So I boogied on my own.

Tolstoy says, "Music is the shorthand of emotion."  (I looked it up on-line; I don't--can't & won't--quote Tolstoy off the top of my head.)  Having sat for ten minutes, uninspired and un-writing, I turned on internet radio.  I was in the mood for 1950's early Rock-n-Roll.  That was all it took:  a nudge from music.  Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, and Chubby Checker helped me put in nine hours of writing.

Granted, Etta James isn't going to roll up in my house singin' the blues and handin' me a plot.

Time, however, can.  Which is why I don't regret not producing more when I was younger.  I didn't have it in me.  I don't mean to discount young writers--hey, if you have it, work it, Baby.  Personally, I found though I could develop characters, describe settings, and delve into thoughts, a (big) problem remained:  nothing...  ever...  happened.  It took some life experience to get through that.  And it worked out in two different ways.

First, I read a book.

Leisure reading, as a writer, is a bit of a guilty pleasure.  "If I have the time to read a book, shouldn't I be writing, instead?"  Maybe...  but, no.  If nothing else, it brings you alternative approaches to style and structure.  For me, Anne Tyler truly cured me in an unexpected way.  I suffered from I-have-interesting-characters-and-perfect-settings-but-I-don't-have-a-plot-line-itis (look it up in any medical dictionary).  I've invested too much time reading Anne Tyler to disparage her - but she's not one to get overly concerned about plot.  By the time I got to my third or fourth of her novels, it occurred to me:  Anne Tyler is all about the characters; just as much as--if not more than--the plot.  Don't get me wrong, in Anne Tyler's novels, the characters do things, there is a plot, things happen.  But I began to realize that a book can be as much about the internal workings of the characters, their settings, and their surroundings as it is about getting from point A to point B in the narrative of the story.

Secondly, I answered a question.

I wrote a note in one of my college literature class text's margins that reads, "Is a person's life a series of episodes, building to a climax - or is it a string of otherwise unrelated events, bound together only by that common individual?"  Yes.  (It is both.)  Maybe all that is a little 'fillosofickul,' but the point is plot doesn't have to be grand.  If planning to make it out to the mailbox, then making it out to the mailbox, and having made it out to the mailbox contains a good story, doesn't that constitute a plot?  And if that story then includes a trip to the mailbox at ages fourteen, forty-one, and one hundred and four, wouldn't that make a plot?

In the end, I'm certainly no expert: I'm just sharing my thoughts.  (The only way I'm 'seasoned' is my salt-and-pepper hair.)  If nothing else, I've put in one and a half hours on my second-job (I only get half-time for blogging).

Fiction, Science

I started my first self-initiated, independent writing project during the summer between third and fourth grades.  I was nine.  The movie E.T. was released that June and I loved it.  My project was something between a comic book and a kid's picture book (e.g., The Cat In The Hat).  I guess I had trouble even then following conventions:  rather than write a "once upon a time" story, I was building a fictional Encyclopedia of Alien Lifeforms.  Each entry was introduced with a labeled diagram of an alien, identifying the important anatomical systems (sense organs, circulatory and nervous systems, etc.) followed by written descriptions of home planets, common characteristics, and--possibly the most inventive of the writing--how they differed from human beings.

By mid-winter I'd created perhaps forty different entries in my book.  One morning during a snowy, windy walk to a waiting school bus, my entire collection of work was caught up in a gust, blowing every page across the cold, wet snow.  I could never bring myself to try to recreate it: the project was lost to the cruelty of nature.

As I got older, I found it increasingly difficult to suspend my disbelief around science fiction.  I liked science too much to allow it to be cast aside for the convenience of fiction.  Some time around seventh grade I was assigned to read a Ray Bradbury story (I forget which one) and hated it so much that I never returned to the genre.  And I became increasingly intolerant of sloppy science in fiction, especially time travel.

I began to come around finally when I read Machio Kaku's Hyperspace from the mid-nineties.  He put forth a hypothesis I could buy.  1) Time travel required a machine (rather than being just an "action") because it required control of an immense amount of energy. 2) Travel through time could only happen as long as the machine existed; you couldn't go back in time before it, and you couldn't go forward beyond when it stopped functioning.  This theory made time travel a slightly more acceptable fictional tool.

As I continued to learn about developments in modern science, as I encountered increasingly bizarre and nearly-fictional scientific theories, I eased up on my resistance to suspending disbelief in science fiction.  In some cases, I have to suspend disbelief to trust science fact.

Being so unfamiliar with science fiction, I feel I would be unfairly encroaching to write it.  Also, I suspect the genre's community would think I was making fun: there's no way I could write science fiction with a serious tone.  To me, it's frequently too "out there" for me to be serious.  I had an idea about an alien fact-finding mission: a series of observations of humanity from the perspective of an outsider--in the extreme.

Most of the beings have a tissue growth at the top of their bodies.  It is a fine, soft, flexible growth, possibly originally developed to keep their brains warm.  Those that have it seem to be excessively fixated on it.  In fact, many of those that don't seem equally fixated on recreating it, either with a synthetic substitute or through chemical-induced regrowth.  They shape it, twist it, and even discolor it.  Vast amounts of resources are used on it, though we do not observe any sort of greater social value derived from the expense and effort.  We assume it is for some sort of mating purpose, though as of yet have not found any consistency in its effect.

The trouble is, in writing, you have to satisfy two audiences: readers and yourself.  Regardless of how entertaining such a work might be to the rest of the world, my lingering angst over science fiction keeps me from feeling compelled to write much more than the above.

I Hate Guitars For The Same Reason You Hate Chess

I found yet more old pieces I've written and I am going to post one.  I think to myself, shouldn't I be working on and posting new stuff? -- but the coincidence of finding this file on this particular day has led me to put it up.


I created all the lyrics to the songs for a musical I'd intended to write.  The plot was wretched and the characters were lifeless and the thing will never see the light of day.  Neither am I any kind of musician; I still have in my head some of the old lessons about scales and meter and such from eighth-grade music class, but I think I'd have to collaborate to make something palatable.


So, I'll just call this a poem.  And it came about because of a friend (whose birthday is today--thus the coincidence and appropriateness of posting this) who is the "You" of the title.  I really don't hate guitars, of course, but I think the complex psychic mix of supposed hatred and self-aware jealousy written in between the lines of this ditty make it entertaining--to me anyway.  I really can't speak to the rhyme or meter... there was a reason behind it once, but that was forgotten long ago.

When the lull comes and silence arrives,

The conversation is ended and still.

It seems to last for hours, and now

We can't find anything to talk about.

You run off to play guitar:

You know I don't know how to play.

Does that damn’d guitar treat you well?

Is it loving; is it caring: a better friend?

I don't know how to play; you don't know how to play:

I hate guitars for the same reason you hate chess.

Go on and play your guitar;

I'll go play chess.

When the lull comes, deadly silence invades:

We have nothing to talk about.

It can last for hours: feel the silence

Until we must run away.

So I set up the board, lost for hours in this game:

Too bad you don't know how to play.

The game I enjoy treats me well:

Gives me what I can't hope to find anywhere else.

I don't know how to play; you don't know how to play:

I hate guitars for the same reason you hate chess.

Go on and play your guitar;

I'll go play chess.

I sometimes forget you won't always be around,

But when we can't connect, then

You go off and play guitar,

And I go off and play chess.

I suppose I could learn how to play guitar,

And you could learn how to play chess.

I suppose I could put aside my disdain,

And you could end your disapproval.

Don't you know we could teach each other how to play:

I learn guitars for the same reason you learn chess.

Come and teach me guitar;

I'll teach you chess.

Why I "Noticed"

I'd like to think I'm fairly observant, particularly of the small, commonly overlooked details hidden among the main events of life.  So this is my little spot to self-indulge in noticing those little things and pointing them out to others.


I'll throw in some short stories and excerpts now and then, too.