A Mother's Plea for TKC

Kansas City is a pretty small town, you know. I regularly smell the path of an ex-girlfriend's rancid perfume or hear a cackle reminiscent of some belligerent yesterday of hair-holding that I wish on no other man. But, the phone call that I got tonight was of a far different matter; a plea from a mother for her son.

You see, Tony has been living in his mother's basement for, well, since he hit puberty, which is somewhere give or take 5 years around when the Royals last went to the playoffs... and darn near as long ago as the Great Plaza Flood of 1977. That's a long time, kids.

How she found me? Like I said, small town.

But the story begins with the unknown tale of Tony Kansas City's long-lost twin, a gentleman also of great basement-residing fame, Mr. Michael Arrington, founder and former co-editor of TechCrunch. Aside from the obvious difference in content--one rants about something most of the world could care less about and the other lives on the west coast--Arrington was wise enough to invest his early returns in Hostess Brands, makers of Twinkies, and PepsiCo, providers of Mountain Dew. Smart decisions, because they allowed him to emerge from the basement with fists and pockets full of riches, a smirk on his face, and the Swedish Bikini Team in his hot tub sans bikinis. Tony, on the other hand, had to work 24/7 to keep up with his online pornography subscriptions--little did he know his own culinary habits would fill the vaults of his unknown twin. Enough of that story... let's fast forward to today...

On the other end of the line, through tears, I heard the faint sound of a woman's voice,

"Por favor, te lo ruego, termine esta novela de amor para que mi hijo puede aprender lo que es, encontrar una buena mujer, y salir del sótano. Ya han pasado 30 años, tengo que contratar a un equipo de Haz-Mat para incinerar todo, fumigar, y la manguera de salida del sótano--casi como esos chicos de Breaking Bad hacer cuando limpiar las ollas de metanfetamina."

Translated...

"Please, I beg of you, finish this novel of love so my son may learn what it is, find a good woman, and emerge from the basement. It's been 30 years, I must hire a Haz-Mat team to incinerate everything, fumigate, and hose out the basement--almost like those boys on Breaking Bad do when they clean the meth pots."

I replied,

"Si, mama, I will do this, And, for you would be enough, but I also know that TKC is solely responsible for bringing us el Google Fiber."

I heard her let out a Spanish prayer of relief before she ended the call. No further conversation was necessary.

So now, I am burdened with the task of teaching Tony about true love. While doing so, I figure I might as well teach the world. Therefore, I have created this foundational project on kickstarter to fund my novel about true love--the bible of my teachings.

FUND TRUE LOVE.

With these funds I will infiltrate TKC's posse (in fact, I already have, that's me peeking in from the left in the photo above) and teach from within using a Men in Black "Flashy-thingee" and a Lasso of Truth, which will be purchased with your pledges.

I urge you, as soon as the markets open, sell your stock in Hostess and PepsiCo, for TKC's singular ability to prop up these stocks will end as soon as my project closes, September 29, 2012.

For love,
Robert the True

Novels about true love await completion.

view full image

"Novels about true love await completion. "

Thing about me #3

3. Since I started writing, I listen more closely to what people say.

5 reasons why I'm not writing...

Image by Adams K. via Flickr5. Reading too much, likely, to make up for not reading enough last year. In other words, all my free time has my nose in another book, not with a proverbial pen in hand.

4. Unfortunately thinking: so much complete, but so much yet to say. It's hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Though, my busy mind may never see it and I should just accept that truth.

3. Been kinda quiet inside my head lately. No lovely ladies orbiting around my earth.

2. Spending so many hours in front of my laptop working that writing in front of it never sounds like fun.

1. That g'damn television in the living room. If not for the roommate, I wouldn't have one that was connected to any programming.

Thought on a morning walk...

In the effort to get back in shape, I've been walking through errands in the morning and hitting the gym at night. Unfortunately, it's like walking through air soup here in Kansas City right now. At 8am it's already over 80 degrees Fahrenheit and the humidity is pourable. However, walking is always a great opportunity for me to think...

On today's walk, I realized that my inclination to "see all sides" reflects itself in my photography. Now, I feel rather silly even saying "photography" because I'm far from a photographer like my long-time friend PoppaZ. I suppose I'd much rather say that my pictures often reflect the reflections that my eye has a tendency to see in surfaces; as if we don't have the whole picture unless we see what's there and see what's in the mirror... or on the window... or on the granite.

I came back from this latest trip to Europe and noticed that I took several pictures that highlighted the reflections of what I saw. To me, there's something fascinating about this. If thinking about my book, I can see a similar tendency to look at all sides. There isn't simply the light and the dark, we're all some combination of them--all some blend of gray. In order to achieve our goals, we must understand the real world and the signals we get from the metaphysical world. With both, we accomplish our dreams... and our dreams.

I often use the light switch analogy, stating that I simply can't be with someone who is either on or off. The right partner for me is a dimmer, changing the light and dark based on the situation or the circumstance or the mode or the feeling. This was never more evident than with the young woman I dated from a nearby city who consumed everything at a rapid pace--she was either running full-speed or dead to the world--that I once asked her why she was always in such a hurry. Her response, she didn't want to miss anything wherever she was going. Now, I eat my meals quickly, for example, but I'm never in a hurry to get up from the table. I like to take in the moment, admire my environment, stroll through the park, consume a book in the shade and cool breeze off the lake.

Now that I think about it more, this concept of "dimming" was very apparent in my couple of weeks with a former lover turned friend in Sweden. We made a wonderful team making meals, cleaning, planning, taking it easy, talking, exercising... there was no rush, even when there was some demand to get out of the summer house, into some nice clothes and visit a restaurant. We both adjusted to levels of light that complemented one another. That was nice, I must say. Now, if my teammate wasn't 6000 miles away...

I have a few hours today that I will be able to use on my novel. After yesterday's shredding (a self-edited, disheartening endeavor), I feel more like my own harsh criticisms are today's words of progress as soon as I fix the wrongs that I discovered. But first, GO USA!

It's Your Move...

How much of life is a game? It crossed my mind as I laid in bed, Faye’s lingering look across the room at Don still etched upon my mind—educated but vulnerable, porcelain but not pristine, edgy but not too sharp—she was the last one here; the last one that I remember being here; the last memory that I have of two smiles bouncing around the room with no cares overshadowing them, places to be but nowhere they’d rather be. Fresh carrots. But then the next day and the next day and the day after that I nibble away happily in my head—a memory of what was, leading to what could be would be should be, but will it… be the last time that she shares that memory with me?

Image by ROSS HONG KONG via FlickrI roll over into the place where she once was, an indentation untouched on a chocolate-colored pillow, and find a trace of what still lingers, but never stays long enough and my mind leaps from the cliff, giggling, feeling the rush of chance in my hair, massive risk with eyes tightly shut because I forgot my goggles (I always forget something), and I don’t want to see the bottom when it abruptly arrives. “He died flying,” they’ll say, but they’ll never know that I hummed a tune with the lyrics of a small girl singing in my head, “Und hier ist ein roter Ballon. Ich denke an dich und lass es gehen...”

And in that split-second before death, I discovered that I was in the wrong country.

Have you ever been to Spain? she whispered while fright of what I’d see kept my eyes from opening. My head shook back and forth in my head, but I don’t know if my head shook back and forth in her stead. And France? Playground’s greatest hits turned more loudly than the consuming carousel of Something Wicked screaming, “CHINESE. JAPANESE. DIRTY KNEES. LOOK AT THEEEEEEEESE.”

Will you go with me?

The carousel stopped. She looked at me. She got older. She stared into my eyes and no words entered her mind that deserved to ruin a moment of care-ity. “YES!” my own brain shouted. “YES! THIS IS THE RIDE I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR!” I stared back. Neither blinking. “I don’t know if you’re serious,” I thought. She nuzzled into the crook of my neck. We slept.

It echoed from the bathroom, bouncing off the tiled floor and walls, You’ve hurt me. My eyes popped open. Like freshly cut flowers, beauty singed my nostrils as if wafted from the dark tufts tickling my chest. I dared not move. Do you like what you see? a deeper voice asked, this time from outside the bedroom door. “Stay out,” I thought. “You’re fucking crazy,” not knowing whether I was speaking to the voices or the voices inside of myself. Show some respect, they said in unison. My leg twitched, a tinge of anger that emanated form my hip and surged out through my toes, straightening said leg like a seasoned plank. After forcing my eyes closed, I focused on what I had—her with my arms wrapped tightly around—and serenity washed my face, body and feet with the elixir for a beating heart. “Stop acting like children,” I thought. Somewhere a deadbolt twisted in a door frame with a snap and left on this side a sealed silence.

I matched the rise and fall of my chest to her own breathing and tried to see into her dreams—to leave my world and enter hers—but she squeezed me tightly in her sleep and thought, "Staaay."

Thunder began rolling off somewhere in the distance; first tumbling of a stormy forecast. "But I want to go with you," I replied as the last blocks crumbled...

My Problem with Potter

Just finished the 4th Harry Potter book (short review to follow) and I've realized a few things. These books act rather like Dementors to me; they drain my soul of all creative thought. Now, I am entertained by them, but I find that my mind isn't working in the background on my own stories while I'm reading--that's abnormal for me.Image via Wikipedia

They've put me in a dead zone--nothing much creative coming out of me at all right now--and if I could answer the question once asked about my own writing, "Do you want to write something of mass appeal or literary merit?" I'd have to say that literary merit is, by far, my preferred choice.

(My) Rules for Writing

My slow, but steady, progress on this draft of my first novel has had me reflecting on "process" the past few days. Here's what I've come up with so far:

1. Get it down on paper: There isn't enough time in the day to both live life and write about life; this must be why so many writers seek privacy or live a reclusive life--time to write without living. When you are living, you want to record life; make sure you learn how to take good notes so you can keep on living.
2. Add the back story, history, support, context: Create the foundation for the story--the world that characters live in--so that the reader has a template of laws that govern the life that you've invited the reader to join.
3. Focus the flow: If that thing or person on the periphery isn't part of the story, then set that piece aside for another day. Ask the questions that you'd ask if you were a character. Question what a character already knows and what is a the top of their list to learn.

If my goal is to write a story that makes you laugh and cry, then I must laugh and cry while I write it. I've had no shortage of ideas for new novels, two more this week, but I'm doing my best to maintain focus on my first. And, this particular week, was one about crying as I rewrote the chapters that focused on my main characters first love, and first love lost.

Those that have had the opportunity to read the rewritten chapters are shouting to me as loudly as they can that this version is good, really good. And that, to come full circle, is what has prompted me to think and record thought on my process so that I can do it all over again!

Either the Beginning, or the End...

I got some time to work on my book this weekend. Here's a snippet from it...

I stared at her incredulously. To think that I didn't understand her situation after years of doing nothing but discussing her situation--how could I not understand her situation? I mean, that's what all these meetings and emails and texts have been about, right? Understanding her situation? I might be the only person on the planet that did understand her situation.

"Have you known me to be more wrong or right when it comes to decisions about us?"

She paused, knowing the answer, but afraid of where saying it might lead. "Right."

"You, yourself, have said that you made a huge mistake in our past when you didn't take me up on my offer to figure it all out, together, as a team--figure out this connection that we have--before you got married. You've even said that you made the wrong decision by actually getting married, right?"

"Yes," the affirmation slipped from her lips with only meager conviction.

"And," I continued, my frustration bubbling to the surface, "Do you remember when I advised you to be proactive about contraception the first time you confided in me about how terribly your husband was treating you? Do you?"

She shook her head up and down this time, without speaking, and without an ability to look me in the eyes.

"And what happened?"

"I got pregnant," she said.

"You know I have nothing against your kids."

"I know."

"This isn’t about them." I gently placed my hand on her chin and pulled her face back up to mine. "This is about you."

Her face came up to mine, but she struggled to control her eyes, which had welled up with tears. "But it is about them," she pleaded with her own frustration. "It is. If I leave, I impact generations of my family."

"Do you think maybe I know you better than you know yourself right now?"

Hearing my words released her tears. Her hand shook as it wiped away and her voice cracked as she replied in the affirmative.

I knew that I had to hit her with my point before I lost her to emotion. "You don't see your pattern. You don't see the thing that you do over and over again, and you definitely don't see that it never changes anything. In that regard, it does impact your kids--it makes it harder for them to discover the truth because they have no example from which to model it after."

At the mention of the word pattern, I triggered a memory for her of a conversation that we'd recently had about my own pattern. "You're not you in your marriage. You never have been." It was something that I'd said to her many times before. "And, this role that you're being forced to play has nothing to do with decision-making and everything to do with the lack of it. Look at me."

She did.

"You don't make decisions in your relationship. You let the decisions make themselves."

Her look of confusion turned to understanding.

I put my hands around hers and continued, "And that's exactly what you're doing again. This thing that you call 'contemplation' is simply a ruse for not actually making a decision. Just when I'd helped you discover the voice of your heart--and I had so much hope for you, so much hope--that no matter what happened, at least you'd make your decision with your head and your heart involved. Right?"

Her chin had dropped to her chest once more.

"That was the plan, right?” I asked.

She moved her hand to squeeze one of mine, which confirmed her answer.

"Your heart is gone. I don't know where it went, but it's gone. You're back in your goddamn head, probably because I haven't been around to constantly coax your heart into the open. I thought that we'd made progress. When you cried for two weeks about having to endure the possibility of a few months without me, I really thought you'd finally discovered the energy and the strength that's been locked inside of your heart."

I let go of her hands, stood up, and left her sitting along in the middle of the room. "Your contemplation is how you hide from having to make a decision. If you couldn't keep your heart open after all that we shared this past winter, then you aren't ready for true love. And, honestly, you may never be ready for true love. These 'couple of years' that you think you need to figure it all out will turn into twenty years and, seriously, you've already wasted a decade by thinking. Thinking gets you nowhere at all. But, you can sit there in the middle of your lonely room and think all you want because I'm done. Goodbye."

I walked out, without looking back, and closed the door behind me. I didn't want to see what the realization of an entire life without me would do to her, as much as I didn't want to see what it was going to do to me. But, she hadn't left me any choice in the matter. My life was at stake. The darkness drew nearer each day, slowly and surely. Up to this point, I'd used anger to stave it off, but anger was rotting my hope just as quickly as cancer destroys a body. In the worst shape of my life, mentally, physically, and emotionally, I was going to battle The Black. I already knew that most never returned from that battle--artists, writers, philosophers, in their desperate desire to understand the darkness, they'd all fallen victim to a disease found in the bottom of a bottle or a needle or in depression. I'd said my goodbye. No hand-written letters would find me where I had to go. This was either the beginning, or the end.

Crazy Coincidental Conversations

Image by S and C via Flickr

My life is amazingly coincidental--maybe all lives are when we open our eyes, pay attention, and retain our experiences to draw upon in the future. Most of y'all know what I'm up to in my quest to become a published author; passing along the things that I've learned about life and love. In the past week, I've had three conversations about teaching. Last week my aunt, a recipient of the Kansas Teacher of the Year award, told me that she thought I'd be a fantastic substitute teacher. The same week, a long-time friend, mentor, and my editor asked to speak with me about joining him in the effort to help troubled kids at his charter school. And today, I walked into Starbucks, sat down with my hot tea, and met a gentleman who has been substituting for three years. We spoke of the challenges and rewards of the work. We spoke of connecting with the kids. We spoke of generating loyalty with the teachers that you substitute for so that they continue to request you specifically.

As is usually the case, it's not so different from marketing a product, where the product just happens to be me.

Since I left the technology marketing world, I've done well to follow two passions: writing and doing good. Connecting with kids, even just one kid, would absolutely qualify as doing good. And, as a sub, it would generate some income to help me get from here (writing my arse off) to there (a published author). Often people assume that getting from here to there means I give up what got me there, but I don't consider that in my plan, at all. If I work hard enough and find myself lucky enough to get there, then I believe there gives me a greater opportunity to do more good.

I'm paying attention to the coincidences, are you?

Book Update: Loooooooove!

Spent a few hours making edits that were provided by a friend of the family... like six months ago. And, her version was really old, so it was a PITA to locate the sections and determine if they'd already been rewritten. Oh well, edits are edits--all good!

Now, if I could just get my Editor TO WORK! (said in the hope that he's checking my blog... I know, I know, saving kids' lives.)

I've not been feeling that great lately, and it may have been because my body was telling me to get back to work on the first book, instead of blowing out thousands of words on the next two. Maybe? Ya think? I hope... feeling like arse stinks.

Stay warm, my friends.

Wordz from Friendz V

A1 said,
"Very deep and I completely relate to your emotions.... you must keep doing what you obviously do best..... dream and tell THE WORLD!

A2 said,
"IF U wr not U & i was not alreaddy shattered in the universe, i wld say "come w/ me...and B my luv."

H said,
"I love that you are so observant and soak in your surroundings... details and passion of how you live, breathe and cherish each day. Bravo!"

L said,
"Whatever else you do, you must keep on writing!"

D said,
"That was brilliant. I hope you get an advance that is embarrassingly large, so that you can stay in the water until you're a prune."

Evolution of Blog

I archived my blog posts the other night, backing them up in word documents that serve as storage for poetry, -isms, dreams, and quips. Someday, should I want to turn them into books, they will be much easier to work on from those docs. While doing so, I noticed that it has undergone quite a change from my first post, which took place on March 18, 2004. It said:

"Aces in the world, but sometimes difficult to find and sometimes the ace you find is 'The Bullet.'"

At the time, it was an anomaly, most of the posts following it were funny things on the web, marketing articles, or thoughts about ad campaigns that I saw in the world. Now, I'm actually writing, not pointing at other places.

My new passion, not my old passion.

And, I must say, I like it this way--thoughts on life and love--so much more than the old way.

Thank you for your continued reading!

A Night for a Spin

Was it the world spinning, or was this my own Sit N Spin? I was the eye. Aye-aye! The eye of the musical hurricane whirling around me, spun quickly like gold from straw, silk from grass, a string of pearls from dust, spinning faster and faster, the carousel exerting a force around me, but not on me, turning all that I once saw into streaks of horizontal light… and dark. My life canvas, once caked with years of finger-painting, was being washed by a sideways rain in defiance of gravity’s fierce rule.

Watch and learn. I’d learned already; learned to listen to the voices inside of my head. Listen before I act. Listen. Think. Interpret. Act. Yes, there was more than one voice in my head. So, I sat down, cross-legged, elbows on the inside of my knees and chin propped on balled-fists.

Turning gray. The last thing I want is for the color in my world to turn gray. Swear you’re not black and white, like you always do. I’m not black and white; I don’t see the world that way, at all. It’s never this or that; there are always far more options. The gray. If you’re a light switch, I’m not interested; give me a dimmer. Dimmed, but not dim. Exactly. I need someone who can balance her intensity with what’s happening in her world. Someone who can brighten my day or turn down her light when it’s time for us to rest, and I will give her the same. All day, all night, bright light from the fright, beacon for the plight of the blight. My mind does this rhyming thing, on a whim. It’s not me; it’s him. Like I said.

When I closed my eyes, I left the deterioration of color behind, and then I could hear: a combination of strings, guitars to violins, eventually allowing drums to exhibit their beat, a measure of time, steady time, lub-dub-tap, lub-dub-tap, lub-dub-tap, the strings waving over each stanza like the wind in the leaves of the summer trees, ebb and flow of intensity, undulating across the steady churn of Mother Earth’s bass, getting nearer, bringing to me a voice…

What you want to say?
I’ll wait till you get home.
I'm sick of communicating now over the telephone.
But tell me how you feel,
for I am lonely, too.
Need you to know
I'm just as cold and numb as you.

The feeling in the words of the last line were left hanging, cold and numb, over my soul, left only with the solitary strum of the guitar, accented by a seldom pluck of the violins. The sudden lack of volume in the sound forced me from cold and numb to lonely and empty. I urged it to return, begged it to return in full force; giving me the energy I needed to break free.

And when it came back, it came with force, in me turned fierce, vengeful, and pointed directly at my canvas, which I now knew as my hiding place—the closet of my life where I could hide under dirty clothes, sometimes to the light of a solitary candle, but more often completely in the dark, no light to give me away. Behind my eyelids, I saw the light of my soul return, relit by the love of another.

I etched with my eyes closed, decades of paint warmed again, needing only my touch, like a gray scratchboard, when scraped away it creates a world not before there. The first touch to the spinning canvas gave me a window to the outside world; a world of bright color, smiles, sunshine, opportunity, and the long grass blowing in the invisible wind. My touch left what looked like a tear in the shroud of me. With the canvas spinning around me at such a great pace, it was a constant view outside of where I’d been hiding. Odd that it would be my finger, acting as an eraser to what my fingers had previously created. Years of paint had accumulated on that first etch, layers of gray gathered from the nail of my index finger just past the first knuckle. I did what any child would do: analyzed it—gathered the input of sight, smell, and taste—and found that I gained no additional value from it. It simply was what it was, my past. In that moment, I knew that I’d taken all from it that there was to take. All the time that I’d spent looking back, thinking, writing, discovered things under memories that’d never before been overturned, which exposed the patterns of failure that I’d unknowingly repeated, that rocked me as hard as any love lost, because I was wrong. And, wrong more than once, wrong a lot. Even when I was right, there were times when I was right for the wrong reasons; just lucky, that’s me. With the thumb on the same hand as my life’s detritus, I flicked the dry, hardened byproduct from my finger and watched as it evaporated.

“Thank you,” I said. “These are my respects to you, memories, you’ve served me with greater purpose than I ever before knew.”

But I could fly away,
or I could be no one.
And you could be the
sunshine falling over the mountains

Her head peeked above the closest hill as she hiked through the tall grass toward me. My fingers took a direction all their own and began to etch away the lifeless paint. Like a child’s night light, I carved dinosaurs, and horses, and balloons that floated across the sky providing entertainment and security, but most of all, the light shining from the inside, from me, out through their forms gave her a beacon: a house of light, the palace where she’d dreamed the princess inside of her would reside, a royal resting place for her heart.

A few more steps, and the light from her smile cast its gleam through my etched windows, and she began to run towards me.

Or you could come to stay;
you could come right home.
Don’t see why I have to
live this life all alone.

Instead of brushing off the pieces that I’d already scraped from the canvas, I reached with both hands, palms turned into direction of the spin, inserted them into the shroud, and muscled the exterior away. Pieces of gray flew out, above and below my hands, evaporating as the rest had done before them and peeled away all the protection that I’d built up around my heart. It was hers, and she was running towards me to wrap her arms around it. She would give it all the nourishment and protection that it would ever need—more than it ever had—and we would build our home in the light that shined for each other, right there, on that hill overlooking the world, and that all the world could see.

I know there is a way to make up for old mistakes.
And, I know what's happening is for a reason.*

*John Butler Trio, "What You Want," Watch the video.

Wordz from Friendz III

My friend G said...

"FYI I don't want you to get a day job. I want you to sell your writing. (Which perhaps seems a little wrong...commodification of something that is creative...)" :)

[Thanks, G!]

Born from a Dream: New Novel

A week and a half ago, I noted that I'd dreamed a full blown movie in one night... as it turns out, I only saw a portion of what is shaping up to be my THE STAND--a war that is coming between entities for the control of the world. I've blasted out about 10,000 words this past week and have a billion notes that are at the beginning and end and inbetween. Seems I dreamed a healthy chunk of the middle of the movie, but not how we get there, nor where we are going. Fortunately, as I write, it reveals itself.

Here is a (rough draft) snippet:

“Double yellow lines?” My fingers scraped the pavement to confirm what my eyes saw on the road and found the coarse texture turn smooth as the color changed from gray to gold to gray, and then quickly back to gold. I repeated, “Double yellow lines.” There was only one place where I knew double yellow lines to exist, and it was a place that I was quite familiar with, the road. What the fuck am I doing in the middle of the road? With one hand spread across my eyes, I simultaneously ran a thumb across the right and an index finger across my right eye in another attempt at visual clarity, exhaling in the process. Unsuccessful, I used the same right hand to lay a hard, open-handed lick on my right cheek. “SHIT!” I shouted in response to the stinging sensation that racked my body and, finally, brought me to full awareness.

“Okay, up. We. GO!” on the last word, I pushed myself up to a standing position. “WHAT THE FUCK!” I yelled as I noticed the people standing around, encircled me. In one smooth motion, despite my grogginess, my feet split, readied for action from a balanced pose, and my hand reached for a firearm that was most always below my left armpit, but was not to be found. With a quick glance, I confirmed that there was no weapon, not even the shoulder holster that I wore as if it was attached to my body. “Dammit,” escaped my lips in a fashion less like utter disappointment and more like that which would be synonymous with the situational irony of such a quirky word as “zoinks.”

Have I been here before? There was a familiarity, yes, a definite déjà vu. The bullring. Ole! If not for the burden of the unknown, I might have laughed, even entered into such a fit of laughter that I’d end up on the ground that I’d just found a way off of. Fortunately, my survival mode was stronger than my funny bone.

With no advancement, which didn’t necessarily mean there was no threat, I focused less on defense of my ground and more on understanding my plot, though I didn’t approach without my dukes up. It was five standard steps to the closest person, a distance that I crossed with caution; as if I expected to find a sinkhole each time I planted my foot. Within three feet, a distance that most Western persons would consider to be within their “personal space,” and I’d seen nor sensed any change in the person I approached. For a full minute, I stared no where other than into the eyes of the man in front of me, and in those eyes, I saw nothing; nothing whatsoever, and sensed exactly the same nothingness.

“Oh well then, fuck it,” I said as I raised my hand to my chin and proceeded to wiggle my fingers in front of his face and emit a childish sound from my lips. I walked the circumference, looking at each person. “Fuck you. And you. And you. And you, too,” I said, pointing at individuals. My words did nothing to change their emotionless expressions. I had the urge to dance, bounce like a kid on a trampoline, feigning a jab, two jabs, three jabs, spinning around, and acting like I was ready for them—all of them—should they want to throw down. “Let’s go, Fuckers. Let’s do the Funky Chicken. No? Roger Rabbit?” I broke into a dance from my past, one leg swinging behind the other, and then alternating. “No? How about some Running Man?” Running in place, sliding my feet on the ground, breaking it out sideways, and pumping my arms horizontally. “Yeah, that’s it. That’s the ticket. You can’t hold me,” I proclaimed, followed by grunt of accomplishment. “You can only hope to contain me. Yeah, Fuckers.” But, none of my gyrations raised a stir in them. “Y’all are about as fun as a stump,” I said and stopped dancing.

The sun rose, bathing the dark sky in a wash of light. It prompted me to stop, look, and catch my breath. Furthermore, when I looked back at the crowd, I realized that I no longer saw the differences among them. I pulled my invisible six-shooters, one on each thigh-holster, and proceeded to feign the act of pumping lead into each chest—not with rapidity, but with deliberation. My mouth provided the soundtrack, and the only audible effects in the silence of the world. As I dead-eyed each target and squeezed off an unrealistic number of rounds without reloading my guns, I imagined them falling to their knees, chins bouncing off their chests, lids slamming like heavy, windblown doors. Each one that dropped gave me a clear line of sight to a brand new chest-target. I laughed with the hope that I wouldn’t run out of ammunition.

--
Mom says I get the strange side of my creativity from my Pops, ay-yup. You can see my mood from the past two weeks in here--a seedling of frustration in a world that I can't yet predict, a defense mechanism found by being humorous. What you don't yet see in the character is his penchant for optimism; in a world of the unknown, believe that it will work out.

More to come!

Art Pencil to Quill

I sat down with two former-teachers-turned-friends this week to get caught up on life. With one of them, I’d reconnected several months prior when he’d volunteered to help me with my writing projects; the other I’d not seen for twenty years. Back in grade school, one was my creative writing instructor and the other my art instructor—the right-brained mentors of my childhood and teenage years.

Image via Wikipedia

“How did you end up writing? And, what are you writing: a novel, poetry?” the artistic one asked.

As I began to tell her the story, the analogies and images formed in my mind that would make it a grand story, piecing themselves together as an on-the-spot-aspiring-author was slowly learning to do. “I followed my artistic passion into the study of architecture, but found that I wanted my structures to be more sculptural than practical. I believed that I wouldn't get the chance to push the boundaries of design when I entered the real world and college was the best place to do so. But, my instructors kept asking me if I’d designed to code. A common question like ‘Does this space have the required number of toilets?’ would send me into a debate about what we should be focused on in our education. So, I wrote an opinion-editorial for the school newspaper that compared our education to being herded like cattle. It caught the department’s attention, and that of my current term’s instructor.”

“I can tell that you’re not happy with architecture,” he said. “So, I don’t want you to work on the project that I assign the rest of the class this term, I just want you to write. I don’t care what you write, just write about your thoughts, feelings… write essays, poetry, whatever you wish, and we’ll sit down and talk about it each week.”

“It was at that point that I laid down the art pencil and picked up the quill pen,” I told my friends and former teachers. “My architecture instructor was a former dean of the department, and through his network of contacts, he arranged interviews with people in a multitude of professions, then asked me to speak with them about their passion and their choice of employment.” As I spoke, my hands gestured wildly, an art that I’d learned complemented that of storytelling. “That process opened my eyes to the things that I should focus on during these important, formative years of my life; years when I was deciding what I wanted to be when I grew up.”

“Such as?” they asked.

“Education, to me, is about learning the vocabulary that you will use once you enter your profession. The ‘how-to’ will be a style that is taught to you by your first employer to make sure that you are doing things their way. They weren’t going to make me an architect, they were simply teaching me the language so that I could be trained as one once I entered the real world. If anything, what they taught me was the reality of that world, and my disinterest in continuing to pursue it.”

“How did you get from there to here? That’s got to be a pretty interesting path,” the artistic one said. “By the way, you were a brilliant artist, but waaaay too mechanical. I knew that you’d never do anything in the fine arts.”

“Odd, isn’t it? I was too mechanical an artist and too sculptural an architect.” We all smiled. “I started studying business and found that my right-brained expertise excelled in group projects and organizational behavior experiments. There was a great combination of logic and creativity inside of me. I could see all of the options, ones that the rest of the class couldn’t see, and bend the rules to my advantage. I ended up in technology marketing for years. Basically, finding ways to tell consumers a story about products and services so that they would see the emotional need and take the desired action.”

“So, once he picked up the quill, he never put it down again,” said the writing one.

“Exactly,” I confirmed. “Press releases, ad copy, web site copy, you name it and I wrote it for a decade. During the day, I wrote for my employer, but at night at wrote for myself. I have a stack of poetry and random thoughts that’s twice as tall as this novel,” I said as I picked up the spiral bound manuscript.

“That’s good,” my editor said, nodding his head. An air of excitement appeared on his face noting the feeling that he’d always had about the discovery process.

My Day (Edited)

I'm meeting my editor this afternoon for lunch. Our time together will be more about catching up than about work, for we're having lunch with one of my favorite grade school teachers (well, technically, my editor is also one of my favorite grade school teachers). So, our lunch is one that will take place in the way-back machine...

Image by fd via Flickr

However, he and I decided that we'd start by editing some of my poetry so that we can market it. I gathered up these smaller writings (my 150,000-word novel waits in the wings), and found that I've got an expandable file folder full of poetry.

So, I suppose that I'll give him a choice:

• 3" stack of poetry
• 2" stack of novel

Hmmmmmm.

A Man, A Move, A Mission

It's a strange time in life for me. Though I'm avidly pursuing a longtime dream to become a

Image by Jasmic via Flickr

writer, I have to leave everything behind--a lifestyle that I once knew--in order to put myself in a place to realize the dream. I've rented out the condo, packed and placed most of my worldly belongings in storage, taken to a quiet life in the country... last night, I sat in the hot tub, jets off, listening to a sundown party of yelping coyotes, an owl repeating to me, "Who-who? Who?" and watching night creep up a nearly leafless tree, bright yellows and oranges slowly turning to muted, sleepy colors.

The beans need harvesting. We can't burn scraps from the woodshop for fear that an escaping spark might ignite the field. The road that winds through the country has recently been repaved. "We tried an experiment," said the road worker, because you can stop and talk to them out here. "After we drilled a core sample, we found thirteen inches of old road, so we ground it up and recycled it by mixing it with concrete before laying it back down." We wonder how long before the dump trucks going to and from the quarry will mold this "experiment" into the bumpy ride that we knew before. A man walks through the woods a quarter-mile away, two dogs by his side, surveying the tree line. We wonder what he seeks. Yesterday, we were given a basketball goal by a friendly neighbor, and my stepdad dunked for the first time in his life.

The Internet was my mission today. I had to answer the question, "Where can I find it?" Mission accomplished, though the woman walking around this small town library in bare feet (it's forty-something degrees outside) concerns me only slightly less than the librarian who is re-stacking books, but breathing with such intensity that it sounds as if he just walked twenty fights of stairs.

I overheard...
"Do you ever get a song stuck in your head?"
"I was listening to Sha-Na-Na this morning and now I can't get 'With Doctor' out of my head."

Two massive tomes rest on the desk next to me, MOTOR: Auto Repair Manual, 2002.

I woke up this morning to find frost, and it made my question whether I wanted to go out in such temperature to exercise. But, what I realized was that it wasn't the temperature that dissuaded me, it was the urge to write, since I haven't been able to do so for many days.

So, here I am.

I am the Water

There's a nice view from the dock. The planks are aged, but not unstable; they creak in greeting

Image via Wikipedia

and in parting, happy to have my company. I've been sitting on the dock now for nearly two years. Seasons pass, animals come to quench their thirst at the water's edge, birds come to bear and raise their young before returning back to their home in the sky. Everything changes, everything renews, everything grows, except for me and this dock--all we do is age, a motionless, emotionless aging.

Right below us rests the unknown. In the depths of the water there are things never before seen, at least by me. I wonder what's down there. I wonder what it feels like to swim again, hold my breath and count, expunge all of the air in my body and sink to the bottom for a tea party, "MARCO!"

For the two years that I've been sitting on the dock, nothing has disturbed the water aside from the slurp of a deer here, an arrival or departure of a bird there, the flap of a curious fish, or the dance of a water bug. No great force has fallen from the sky to splash down into the lake. No water nymph or Kraken has emerged from beneath the surface. It's quiet. Very quiet.

I am the water: quiet, undisturbed, watchful, waiting, hiding a massive wealth of treasure beneath my own surface.

This past week, I stood up from my cross-legged posture on the dock. I stood up, closed my eyes and took a huge breath of air, several of them actually, for I don't know how long I'll have to hold my breath once I make the leap. Yesteryear I was one thing, tomorrow I will be something else. I'll be something frolicking in the water, floating on my back to feel the sun upon my face, playing like a breaching whale while I explore a new world.

Yesterday I was a marketer, tomorrow I will be a writer.

My toes are gripping the edge of the wooden dock, twiddling up and down with anticipation, and the animals have gathered on the shore to watch the show, even the sun has stopped its course across the sky so as not to miss this leap. Breath. Deep breath.

I whisper, "Marco."

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