Boring update. Do not read!

Well aren't you the curious one!

Okay. What's new:

1. I'm at the pub where I go on the first Friday of each month in order to write, work on the Dungeons & Dragons hosting business and snort a couple 18 ounce glasses of Friday-Special domestic draft beer for only four dollars a glass! Other than this I'm pretty much in bed every day.

2. I'm still getting my wound dressing changed by a visiting nurse every day. I've had this thing about seven months now and they keep telling me it's getting better and better. So yeah. This item is not actually new at all.

What's new/current (to be more precise):

3. Getting PSW assistance three times a week for hygiene purposes.

4. Getting outside every morning for a wee walk and some rehab exercises, kitty-cat feeding and work on the crossword puzzle creation. I kick out four or five new (newspaper quality) puzzles per week just from my brief daily sidewalk sojourns. I really should publish a collection soon.

5. Some of the crosswords are being diverted to another publishing project. A sort of daily almanac I'm throwing together largely because it's a no-brainer; the content is all stuff that I naturally assemble on a daily basis because of my own keen interests as a researcher and archivist. Here's the material: daily holiday/special observances notes; This day in history; tip, quote, word and song of the day; poem, film and vegetable (not exactly what you're imagining probably!) of the week; daily, weekly and monthly challenges; a daily puzzle (usually crosswords) and a weekly monologue. I may end up cutting a thing or two. We'll see. It's largely all tied together thematically. The thrust of it all is... here's a bunch of nudges as to how you can live life a little better perhaps! I will be releasing a 2024 first-quarter volume (Jan-March) this December! It's too much material to stuff a whole year into one book.

6. I've been writing short stories of late and between that and the "almanac" or maybe "lolmanac" I realized yesterday, on the second day of National Novel Writing Month that I might as well participate. It just won't be a novel.

Well... I think that's enough for now. I'm on my fourth four-dollar swill (more than I intended) and being so out of practice, drinking-wise, I'm feeling a little buzzy!

Later, 'gators.

[insert clever title]

Hah! Punked you. I did not return next month. Or the next. And now it's July and the day after the We're So Great We Rock Nuthin Wrong Here Day Holiday Fun Day and I am not hung over 'cause I can't afford to drink anymore. But maybe some day. Also I spent the day at home alone doing some real honest to god writing and hosting an event on the LemonCloud Survival-1 minecraft server AND... I ate some tuna sandwiches, worked on a video and sneezed riotously; making my back twitch and seize like a fucker. Same things I do every day.

Hey! You want to know what's on my mind! Well of course you do! All my imaginary readers are dying to know what's on my mind.

It's July Camp NaNoWriMo and though I'm probably done with NaNoWriMos for the foreseeable future I am happy that my buddy Chess Champ is participating and I am very much with him in spirit as I pursue my own challenge which is just 250 words (minimum) each day.

And for the record I am not counting any blog content; only my serious fiction project; a collection of related short stories which I very fully outlined a few years back.

Yesterday was day one and I wrote 650 words and even though I was not particularly well-rested it was not difficult. I'm happy with the work and also free of my usual perfectionist trip-traps. If things start to go sideways, big whoop. I can carry on in some not-quite-right direction, let the project evolve and edit it into the right shape when the time is right. How did I just spend years not writing and thinking I couldn't do it? What an idiot.

That's it for today. And don't worry. I am not calculating my word-count here! These 312 words shall not be logged!

Love you.

a·crop·o·lis /əˈkräpələs/

The Acropolises were the fortified heights of Greek cities way way back before Yahweh came barging in and did away with all the cool gods who are now reduced to Marvel action movie heroes and such. How degrading, right?

A handful of years back, some plot-building exercise led me to create a fantasy world scenario for fun, where a fortified city of great import (like today's Vatican but relating to the chief Norse gods) faced a dire circumstance. Religious artifacts had been stolen by a great witch from another plane of existence in a plot to expose the city to destruction from its neighboring volcano, from which they were, til then, protected by said Norse gods, but to then concoct a scenario where a new-in-town temple saves the day and purports to expose the historical rulers as corrupt and evil. The new temple was controlled by the witch who presented herself as a god.

But how to make the good guys win? Where do the heroes come from?

I told the late Liberal Theologian about it (my then-housemate) and we agreed at once to recruit a crew and run the thing as a Dungeons and Dragons adventure. The players were an acolyte and kennel master of a good guy temple where the head priest was kidnapped, a young dwarf who's engineer father had disappeared while contracted to head a major renovation to the (ultimately evil) temple of the witch, and a Frost woman who's brother disappeared when caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. In her search for her brother she got herself unfairly pegged as a suspect by the citadel master of the guard and had to be rescued, in effect, by the others.

They won the support of the Gjall; the great leader of the citadel (like a pope) who had been brought visions of the young would-be heroes by the Norns (divine Norse messengers who do such things - kind of like the three ghosts in Dickens' Christmas Carol).

Together they discovered that the Frost brother had been killed unfortunately but they raided the evil temple and rescued the Dwarven father who'd been set aside as eventual monster food because he knew too much, and they found their way through a tower portal network to a gateway world (literally an upside down world - and this was well before Stranger Things!) where they confronted and killed the witch monster without having to go all the way to her own plane. There they also discovered the Frost Brother in living form and there the Gjall, now murdered but returned in Revnant form, was able to help them all understand that he was in a kind of purgatory and could never return to his material plane but would be going to the Nirvana; the paradise, of his own kind and soon. And one day brother and sister (and all their kin) would be reunited there.

In the process they saved the Ruling counsel of the holy citadel by stopping the witch from ascending to the Gjall position in the false form of the successor which she had covertly executed.

The adventure was a great success and I started writing the novel according to our shared blueprint.

In Part Two they would go after the remaining artifacts in a race against time to shut down the volcano. But my housemate had become sick with cancer at this time and it did not feel like any kind of priority to any of us.

The Liberal Theologian then passed away and I stopped writing the book and haven't touched it since. Her D&D character was in essence the central character of the book, and there was a lot of herself in there, and everything feels different now. Maybe one day I'll pick it up again. Who knows.  

Camp NaNo

Camp NaNo: November's National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) light versions, held every April and June. Writing goals can be personalized, as low as 10,000 words. I am an April Camp NaNo rebel this time around. My goal is simply to write every day. So far this has not extended beyond Blogging A-to-Z in which the vague theme is simply unfamiliar words, some of which I'm making up myself on the spot!

Question C: What did you think was COOL when you were Young, and now: not so much.

James Bond (the movie versions; i.e.: Sean Connery and Roger Moore) And I still kind of love them but I know these characters are ridiculous and can't possibly defend them against criticism. 

Out-foxing youtube

Here are three little improvements in my life right now besides the solid health enterprise: I'm blogging fairly regularly. I'm exploring music regularly on Spotify. Music that is new to me along with dear old songs from the past that did not make it in to my personal collection as yet. And three: I'm putting a social consciousness to work much more regularly. And as a bonus the mindcrack addiction is a little more under control.

As you can see I've been folding this recipe together with useful petitions at the end of my posts. These are worthwhile movements which I have supported with an easy few clicks of a button.

The youtube links are songs which I have listened to recently on Spotify and which lyrically say at least a little about a subject at hand.

If you're following the links and getting ads then please make that stop. My method is by using Firefox browser and employing a Firefox add-on ad-blocker. If you have any trouble finding or downloading this excellent free add-on please leave a comment and I will post precise instructions! 

Shock the Monkey

Save forests and caribou

My dreams of you

The last four dreams I've had which were recalled by waking memory were all dreams of old friends: writers, gaming buddies and such loved ones as Earth Writer, Aqualad and Dog Whisperer. Covid has insidiously revealed, to my surprise, a capacity for loneliness.

Some friends (and family) I may have inadvertently alienated long before.

Facebook had become a force of unbearable toxicity to me and in a period of desperation, when it had become a source of anguish to my troubled sensitivities, I began severing connections. Stupidly; very very stupidly, I unfriended those who were avenues to subject matter I could no longer bear to think about. There were such better logistical solutions to deal with that but I was not very savvy at the time, and somehow did not consider that I might be insulting them. I had no such intention. Before long I realized my mistake and was too cowardly to go around apologizing. And a short time later I just left facebook altogether, which probably should have been my initial act.

But later the new "Scooterville Tigers" Marketing and Media gig seemed to necessitate that I embrace all social media and so I returned. Since then I have learned how to use facebook more positively, sparingly and safely.

It's November and NaNoWriMo has begun, hampered of course by the pandemic. My world now is small. My confidence is small. Health recovery is my only real bag. Commitments outside of that would be monstrously daunting. One step at a time.

But my thoughts are joyfully with writer pals this month and I hope to do some vicarious living through them, and one such friend is Sick Boy; a victim of my facebook purge. I don't know how well apologies might be received, but if you're reading this, Sick Boy. I hope you are still running the HamNaNo group. I will be coming around online to say Hi to everyone; not to participate though, and for what its worth, I love you and I miss you. And I'm very sorry.

Seaside

Help 4-yr old Daksh be reunited with his Canadian-resident parents

The Query and the Question

Happy Q Day everyone. Still hanging in there with your quarantine survival, and your A-to-Z quest? I think we’re over the hump on both counts. Let’s renew our commitment and tackle that home stretch, eh?

So today’s assignment hails from the quiet, inquisitive, quick-thinking, quotable, master program facilitator; a gentleman and musician of the highest order; Mister Quickfingers on the guitar; the Soul Man. And he offers this:

Questions  

Yesterday I asked a dangerous question.

As a creative person you come up with original ideas. We must remember that originality is the act of integral creation. It lies in the process, not in the arbitrary matter of uniqueness.

We are tempted to turn to that Great and Powerful Oracle known as Google to plug in our creation and see if anyone has done it before us. Not a great idea. With 7-billion-plus on the planet there is an awful good chance that someone has, and knowing so is such an irrelevant downer.

But yesterday I dared. It wasn’t a big deal after all; a shallow matter; just a silly word. I googled Pandamondayum…

… and got lucky! And now at the other end of the depth chart:

While writing had been a robust daily habit and one which had grown very deep in its ambition, as I stared at a blank page for long long periods searching for the most illusive beast of all; the beast called truth, I asked myself deeper and deeper questions and finally: Am I evil?

Of course there would never be a real yes or no answer to that. There are so many contexts and ways to define evil. And ultimately, evil is not a real thing in the universe. It is a human idea. But though there would never be a lasting meaningful yes or no answer, it was almost surely the most important question I ever asked in my life. It lead me into a new area of intense examination, one in which I found more courage than at any other time in my life, and one that set off a chain of effects that changed my life vastly and completely.

Asking Am I evil led me to deep understandings of how immensely terrible and how immensely special I was, and eventually the same such observations in people around me. And it was only then that I seemed to find myself. After I seemed to lose the world, and all my ambitions, and then got the world back again but looking completely different. Only then did I find my place in it. I’m pretty sure that’s what finding yourself means: finding your place. And though I may, in some ways, have lost it again; myself; my place, I know the experience was real because I still benefit from so much of that journey.

What Soul Man had replied to me, with regards to a Q assignment, was “Questions; not to feed our need for answers, but to feed our need for understanding." 

How doth the city sit solitary that was full of people--Lamentations 1:1

Day seven already?

So I was a sleepless wreck for a few days. Finally last night I enjoyed a couple decent little sleep sessions and am feeling motivated today. I put all the garbage and recyclables out to the curb and am now still basking in the glory of this accomplishment.

But I have also committed to writing for the rest of the day and evening except for a skype break with my dear family and have invited my writing buddies to a virtual write-in on our google hangout. Two have joined so… here we go. Wish me luck.

False start: Day 1

Here’s a little suggestion for the few of you who still come peeking around here now and then: If you’re home from work now or otherwise diminished from the COVID19 business, keep a little isolation diary. It’s a healthy pursuit for different reasons, and a chance it will help you learn from the experience by facilitating reflection. Solitude is critical to real learning.

The virus has stormed into my life like Ganesh and bulldozed nearly everything in sight:

My security shifts
Circle meetings
Dismas gatherings
“Poetry Corner”
Write-Ins
Movie Club
Regular visits with Gramps and the Flaming Liberal
“Tigers” training camp
Scheduling and preparation of video shoots and Trivia Night fund-raisers
Sponsorship endeavors
Family gatherings
A paycheque...

Oddly my cell phone has been simultaneously knocked out of commission which prohibits still other activities!

It has not bulldozed:

Work on the kids easy-reader storybook.
Work on the Crazy Legs race horse novel
Blogs (I have another anonymous blog)
A ton of other writing and research projects
Work on Tigers web site, social media, articles, research etc.
Prep for April A-to-Z, Camp NaNo and Story-A-Day-In-May
Reading
A plethora of video pieces and board game projects
Bedroom restructuring
Sleep improvement project
Diet change
Exercise (no pools though)
Several other self-improvement endeavors…

Somehow it has forgotten to knock out Mindcrack and the youtubes. Day-one I did too much of these things. My only productivity was in correspondence and failed attempts to fix the cell-o-phone.

Perhaps it is up to me to manage the distractions and diversions and to make use of this golden opportunity to put some of my life back on the rails.

And I wonder… I dare to wonder… could solitary confinement be part of the answer that allows me to re-engage spiritually again; to value people again; to retreat from some of this contempt, back toward pity, back toward love. I know the wisdom of it. I have not forgotten.

Absence has made the heart grow fonder before.

Progress

I finally concluded that some degree of my reluctance to surrender important writing projects to a sleep-deprived brain, was edging into the overly-cautious realm. I won’t say paranoid. And so in my fair-to-middling condition I pushed forward and finished the rewrite of Mom’s Spring is Coming kids’ story and sent it off to her.

Relatively content with that endeavor I summoned the gumption to make my way to the Cat House (home of the Scooterville Tigers) where the Scooterville Stingers junior hockey club currently reigns, and caught a game.

But first I slipped in the home team door where I was met with a hallway full of stampeding husky young hockey players. Like some kind of fat Indiana Jones I scurried head-on and ducked into an alcove just in time to let the pack pass. They then about-faced and regarded the route back. I turned to the stragglers, now at the pole position. “Do you know where I can find Ken the Reporter or Chris the Marketing Dude?”

“Never heard of them.”

“Really? They’re part of your organization. Are there any execs here at all at this time?”

“Yeah. End of the hall on your left.”

“Oh. Okay. That’s a long way. If I head there now are you guys gonna trample me to death?”

“Yes,” he stated flatly.

I made the leap that he was prodigiously gifted in the art of irony and not a young psychopath and made the trek without tragedy. I finally tracked down their VP.

“Hi. I’m with the Tigers,” I said, “The guys who stink up your dressing room in your off season.” I offered a lightning-round summary of our shared concerns and opportunities as I saw them. “I’m hoping we can have a proper chat some time.” I then accepted an invitation to attend one of their exec meetings. Primarily I hope to land them as a partner in an ongoing trivia night fund-raising enterprise I’ve been putting together.

Okay. Were getting somewhere.

W is for Wavelengths

I met with Video Kid for the first time in months. We started making plans for a series of promotional videos with Scooterville Tigers players in pairs interviewing each other. I aim to provide all the necessary props and environments where they can just have fun with each other and bring out some humour. The idea is based on the Leaf to Leaf videos on youtube. I believe that potential fans need more than just a great product on the floor. We have a great team (and a strong organization to guarantee future great teams), and lacrosse by any criteria is a fast and fascinating sport but that’s not enough. Besides making Scooterville’s half-million-plus population (with pro and semi-pro teams in football, hockey, basketball, soccer and field lacrosse all competing against me) aware of us, let alone convincing them to come out and put their asses in a seat, I believe that fans need the opportunity to get to know the players as people, or at least feel that they are, in order to really build a solid fan base.

Video Kid has excellent equipment and shooting and editing skills but I don’t yet know about vision. We talked about the telling of stories, whether written or on film. I talked about their complex structures, in terms of novels, how multiple types of rhythms interact like wavelengths: writing flow; emotional resonance, the pattern of tensions building and dissipating…

I know that similar structures must exist in video but I am not experienced enough in this realm to view the accounting. Or am I? Have I actually tried?

We agree that there is too much video work worth doing for him to handle alone, and he is only ours for free for a limited time, and that I need to acquire some good equipment and get in the game.

I have put some lo-fi artsy fartsy little vids on youtube but this format won’t cut it in the realm of sports journalism.

N is for Nature

I was surprised when Mom announced she was writing a story. She’s a regular book reader but… wow.

It’s an easy reader; a picture book, so far without pictures.

I digged the idea. The story mom lives on a farm and takes her three young kids on a nature hike pointing out all the signs that the seasons are on the cusp of change.

I was later surprised when she asked me to partner with her; to give the piece an edit or a re-write. I said sure.

My take on it is that the elder boy (still very young) is impatient for the wet snowy weather to depart so that he can ride his new bike without such hindrances. He despairs that winter might never go away. Mom and older sis wish to prove that it will, by demonstrating that the transformation has already begun.

I needed there to be a problem to solve. Though I know, academically that most of my adult fiction priorities hold little weight in a kids’ environment, it’s hard to deny my artist instincts. And in similar regard, I’m likely employing too much subtlety.

It’s a surprisingly slow process. As the family navigates the evidence of hibernation rituals, bird migration, river flows and even Grandpa’s maple syrup production, I find myself immersed in research at every step. I want all the science (and there’s a lot of it) to stand up.

I don’t presume to be a competent kids writer or that I ever will be. I just don’t know. I hope Mom will not be overly deferential toward my robust rewrite.

M is for Middling

In the last 36 hours I have:

• Lost my wallet and $190.
• Negotiated with burdened outdoor renovation workers to access my own driveway.
• Attended the 8th or 9th annual Wafflepalooza of which I was a founding father.
• Hugged friends.
• Reminisced with my dear writer pals concerning the inspiring ascent of The Liaison, who departed oh so young on the verge of a writing career breakthrough.
• Hugged more friends.
• Tinkered with yet another indulgent mindcrack lair.
• Found the wallet!
• Barely -- barely -- endured the 45-minute torture of an ultrasound session in which the tech sweated buckets trying to push holes through me (drawing blood even but not much).
• Butted heads politely with a senior bank associate trying to smother Gramps and I in a blanket of red tape and liability paranoia leaving me exhausted and almost hopeless before a wonderful junior associate, a young black man with brilliant instincts, wisdom and kindness gave us everything we needed as soon as the former departed.
• Parked strategically so Gramps could piss in a parking lot.
• Talked about life and literature with Earth Writer and remembered how we used to be closer (I think).
• Attended Scooterville NaNo Thank God Its Over celebration.
• Won nice little prizes.
• Hugged friends I’m very glad to find are still friends.
• Sat in the car hoping that a young person I will always care for will come to understand I would never ever want to hurt his feelings and that I only want his life to be better and him to be happy. And that’s all I’ll say about that.

I’m in the middle of things.

Peace.

H is for Hole.

It’s been a long long slippery slope falling this far in two years. Down here at the bottom of this barrel is a swirling swill of sleep deprivation, slothdom and immobility.

Back when I’d graduated (or thought I had) from my long stint at the banyan tree, I was so inspired; so motivated. My goals were so clear and so promising.

But the universe, as if Satan himself feared what I might accomplish, threw nothing but hurdles at me. The long gradual erosion of inspiration and motivation have surrendered me to my instinctive laziness. Several times I thought I was on the verge of climbing out, only to bang my head into more hurdles and collapse again.

And now, here at the very bottom (how I hope this is the bottom and it can’t get worse), what hurdles does the universe throw now?

None.

Now it throws only life-lines.

Three medical professionals are giving me as much of their time as I wish. Four dear associates who appeared to drift out of my life have recently reached out to me; revealed I am not as forgotten as I assumed.

The Eloquent Potter continues to be a miraculous comfort to me. The guy is a genius; incredibly wise and truth-seeing. He always understands me at once, and does not flatter. He understands my total alienation to this place, and feels it himself, but unlike me, is empowered to leave. And soon he will go. But we have the miracle of internet and so he will never be entirely out of reach.

I have started regularly listening to music again and feeling moved again by familiar words of wisdom.

I’ve managed a couple effective steps toward better sleep potential (and there are many more outstanding).

I sometimes ponder tasks without feeling overwhelmed; without imagining that the effort will be lethally exhausting. I don’t always rise and do them. But at least they’re not so intimidating.

And here’s something: I recently pulled up my work on the novel Crazy Legs (working title); the first 14,000 words. I was a little stunned to discover that I am not alienated from it after all this time! The characters are still intimate and very real to me. Everything was perfectly familiar! This has never happened before after such a long layoff. I know I am fully capable of picking it right back up again. November first and National Novel Writing Month is coming. I have a week to properly prepare.

I am not motivated. I am not inspired. But I’m thinking that maybe this stuttering semblance of momentum might breed more of itself and carry me, if even in fits and starts, until I can carry myself again.

B is for Brocrastination

Okay that was a cheat. But B is for bed-ridden, blurry-eyed and.... Bengals.

Bengals as in Bengal tigers - as in the Jr. B lacrosse team that landed in the middle of my life about the time I disappeared from blog world, and swept me away.

An old pal - we'll call him - LaxMasterMind has quietly become an internationally elite lacrosse GM and coach in the fifteen years since we were associates with the Chiefs Jr A team. Oh wait - I blogged about this two years ago.

Long story short: I was dragged out of my Total Lacrosse Retreat by LMM with the news of a local Jr B team which he was basically running and which I did not even know about (this community has spawned previous junior lacrosse enterprises over the years which emigrated to nearby communities). I saw a game, was amazed at the new elevated caliber of Jr B lacrosse, felt inspired to write about it, but was at a complete loss how to do so. One: I have changed so much in the intervening years and competition, winning and losing have become so very uninspiring compared to such higher-evolved things - like creativity for instance, and generosity, which are for me important elements of lacrosse. And two: I was no longer an insider. I knew nothing of the current lacrosse community and its peoples. How would I write as an outsider?

Fast forward April 2019 and LMM speaks up again: the team is looking to fill new exec positions including Director Marketing and Media Relations. I seize on that one. It's my way back in. I take it on faith that I will find a way to write about it. And god knows I should have the time for it given the 101 important projects I've been blissfully ignoring (B is for blissful ignorance).

"I'll be your director media marketing," I type back after literally about 20 seconds of deliberation. I was intentionally bold. Take it or leave it.

He took it.

The task I took on for myself; the goal, is enormously ambitious. The work I cut out for myself is potentially endless. And I admit I don't know how to accomplish the goal, if indeed it's possible. But I trust in finding useful components and pursuing them on faith that they will be part of the final solution. More on all this some other time.

Was I crazy to take this on given I can't keep up with anything currently? Here's my weird rationalization: To take on a world of work which is unlike most of my current work in that there are tight schedules and outside stakeholders, which means I will be properly motivated to Get It Done, which may be just the thing to re-teach me a proper work ethic. When the season ends in a few months I can move my new work ethic and apply it to my own works.

Well that time is now.

So I'm back.

I say that I am here to stay. Fingers crossed.

And by here I mean blog world, yes, but I mean much more. I want to really be here. Being present again. Being productive. Making a difference. Being the person I should be instead of the loser I have been for the last year and a half.

This morning I arose after 6 hours of sleep (not bad! though sleep remains a critical Needs Improvement Area) picked up Chess Champ, met up with The Healer, journeyed to Station One former fire-house turned cafe and there met Sweetproserpina and the Ponderer for a joyful write-in. Here I am. The Ponderer's partner is beating her cancer. The Healer's mate has finally become employed again by a college where I worked for awhile. And Chess Champ has finally released some writing to the semi-public sphere. A big step. I really look forward to finally giving him a read. Given sleep and eye problems I have not really read for this year and a half. Another Needs Improvement Area.

Continuous improvement. Every day. Am I back? It would be nice if I were back.

Love Fwig

Theme Reveal: April A to Z!

Oh what fun... it's April A-to-Z time. When you say to yourself you will blog every day (26 days actually) and hit every letter of the alphabet... A is for Apple... B is for Bugger Me, It's Day Three and I'm already behind...

I normally start dealing with this on March 1st and get some stuff prepared ahead of time (and then still usually fail to make it to Z). Not so this year. I didn't know until three minutes ago that I would be participating this year. But I accidentally went to facebook while browsing (a place I have almost no interest in anymore) and ran smack into an A-to-Z theme reveal post and thought "Hey, I should just do an A-to-Z on stuff that's wrong with my life! What could be easier than that?" The material is everywhere!

Theme revealed.

Roller coasters and merry-go-rounds

Ooh, I wouldn’t do that, I thought. No, I wouldn’t do that either... Mmm… I wouldn’t say that... This is too linear and yet unclear….

She had sent me the draft, looking for an honest opinion. Would an honest opinion be possible? The 6-minute oral memoir performance was scheduled for this evening! If there are too many problems with the draft there wouldn’t be time to fix them all. In that case, better to down-play concerns? No sense worrying someone about that which cannot be fixed.

When it comes to storytelling, whether I am on the telling or receiving end, I am firmly in the subtlety camp. Not necessarily on the blog, mind you. When people send me tell-not-show writing, wanting my feedback, I am at a loss. I barely remember my tell-reading days. I can no longer really identify what works and what doesn’t. I eventually tell tellers, "Look: You have to find someone else to beta read for you; someone who gets your style. I’m not in that camp!" So my feedback did not seem to me very useful at all.

I also have no experience at six-minute memoirs (though I was approached by the event organizer last night about my possible future involvement, which indeed interests me as I have always been a natural with public speaking, even when I was a shy, awkward, teenage introvert. Which is rather mysterious I know. I was always instinctively more comfortable talking to an audience than to an individual. Weird is all I can say.

So my friend gets up and reads her piece. And I am completely hooked. The words have not been changed dramatically that I detect. And yes, I would have done it differently, but what she has done, now that it comes from her own mouth, with her own precise tones and inflections, well damn… it’s perfect!

She speaks of her roller coaster love life past, and the merry-go-round that is her stable new relationship. Like a pro, she carries the metaphor through to the inspiring end. I was hugely moved. I was in tears for six minutes. So much panic she had seemed to endure and why? She had it nailed! But what deep courage she needed in order to go through with it, both for obvious reasons and also for “political” ones. Meanwhile I continue to put off the stand-up comedy workshop even though I have several routines prepared because… well, what if I’m not funny?

I write this at the Espresso bar in Little Italy, a block from the Eloquent Potter’s home and looking forward to a major dinner-and-drink binge before he departs for Vietnam for another three month tour. This will be the last before he relocates permanently. I am armed with beer, wine, bread, cheese and a bouquet of flowers. The florists all hugged me; yes hugged me! - when I told them my friend would be leaving permanently! “Oh you must be broken-hearted!” they said. This is riotously funny. I guess when a man buys another man flowers they assume they can only be a gay couple!. It is such a warm moment for them that I just smile and tell them I will be fine! I do nothing to correct them nor to mislead them further.

The potter has made great strides learning a ridiculously difficult language and planning a new business and new life abroad, in a beautiful ancient culture.

I was once extraordinarily courageous. Then I became largely a chicken-shit again; just a wiser one. Today I am in awe of the courage of my sweet friends.

Growing up

I am so old that my life can now be conveniently measured in centuries. This week I officially turned .5 centuries old. And I feel like it. Though I seem to remember youth as though it were very recent, I have felt old for years now. In physical terms this age brings growing hardship. In terms of emotional health it is a comfort.

My older friends are aghast when I report being old and they insist that no, I am young. But I cannot abide their optimistic view. They seem to imagine that they are still young and that all these physical ailments are some cruel offence against us. But of course we are old. These wonders of technology and medical wizardry are a perversion to natural life (for which I am grateful!) and so of course they come with costs. These tricks prolong life but not youth. We are a race of elderly. Of course we should expect to suffer. Unfortunately there is no fairness to it. I have suffered less than my share while others whom I love have suffered more. When my dues finally mature I only hope to make peace with my own ills.

Meanwhile this milestone comes at a convenient juncture. As the many symptoms of my own neglect ramp up and finally weigh so heavily that I am truly moved toward self-improvement, so does this 50-year marker remind me how little I have accomplished in terms of the outer purpose I so easily recognized for myself years ago. I seem to have taken the easiest, most optimistic approaches to this goal, expecting myself to have the ability to successfully communicate when the moment calls for it, and for others to easily catch on, and perhaps most significantly: for others to make the rare assumption that I actually possess (or may possess) the rare insights I hint at.

Well this all has to go.

I have toyed with many organizational structures for documenting my learning and many attempts at writing THE BOOK. I have tried it as biography and other forms of non-fiction and also as eclectic collections by different themes and structures. No attempt has lasted long.

Recently I believe I may have realized finally what angle I should approach it from, which I intend to explain later. 

Aqualad told me recently that teaching is a good way to learn, and I get that. I am thankful for that reminder and reinforcement. And this, after I confessed my own doubt in being a teacher to him, for the reason that it might - it might - be fair to say that the program I dared to teach is one that I have not truly graduated from myself.

The first step toward everything; a program for others, a one-off problem solving tool for others, a book that “the world” might need to hear, and perhaps most important of all: a written “proof” behind my condition; a consolidation for my own confidence, was completed - oh - more than a decade ago. And still I have not taken the obvious second step! Which is to flesh out the framework; the complex hierarchy, into a proper outline. To assemble all the math, in other words.

Why have I avoided this so long! Subconscious fear? Laziness?

I have to do this. And I realize that this is probably a test. If I do it - and I must - I will appreciate a result. Maybe I will be reinforced and emboldened. Or maybe I will fail and fall into doubt, and turn to some other outer purpose.

Afterimage

The Liaison, so far as I currently understand, had three basic categories of friends: Writing friends online from around the world, writing friends online who he met in person at various writing retreats and workshops, including some of the most committed and robust programs out there, and writing friends online who he also knew in person right here in Scooterville including myself, Sick Boy and Chess Champ, each of whom you might glimpse in the video below.

His dearest friend of all is the very sweet and deep-minded Cerulean Blue, a constant online companion from Europe, who has flown out here many times for extended vacations with him. She is a satellite member of our local NaNo chapter and our little year-long writing sub-group.

I sense that their companionship is of some special design of their own which they need explain to no one, and I sense that this was the only non-familial relationship of any significant intimacy in the Liaison’s living experience and I am very glad that he had it.

When Cerulean first appeared on the scene I was troubled by an email from her in which I sensed a pre-mature attachment to us and unwarranted worry over subtle interpretations of online encounters which I personally viewed as inconsequential. I thought it inappropriate that she would presume that we had some kind of deep friendship at stake when we’d never even met in person and I was not shy at the time to try to firmly inform her of this.

In the end, it appears that she was on the right track. I came to sense a special friendship between us and now I wonder why I have seen so little of her when she has spent most of her time here in Scooterville with brief returns to her home abroad, ever since November when the Liaison fell ill. The blame is surely my own.

Now that he’s gone and with her next return flight scheduled for the day after his funeral (in essence a coincidence) there remains for her a couple of free days and a couple of partly free days and no one for her to give constant care for.

Yesterday those of us available took her out for the afternoon, which slipped gently into the evening. We went exploring with no urgency or real agenda, with a strong bond in our hearts and common private thoughts on our minds - of a sweet boyish man whose hard-felt absence seems to have washed away the tensions of tentative friendship between we of very sensitive, but otherwise diverse personalities.

I will see Cerulean at least two more times before she goes away. Given the pain she has endured here, I doubt she will ever come back. And my own chances of ever getting to Europe are slim. It is with significant heaviness that I consider a likely-final farewell. I wonder how her life will change now, with such a significant absence, and how comfortably she might endure a continued online relationship with us, where triggers may abound.

Today the same gang will go hiking and what-not without me but with the excellent Healer and her canine companion Doctor Snuggles.

I hope they all feel the same love which I did yesterday and which I attempted to capture here:

The Big Renege?

I’m suddenly unsure about what I’m doing this April. I know I have to get moving again on the novel  I call Crazy Legs (working title). I was also about to take on the poem-a-day idea which I sort of view as a pact between the Ponderer and I.

But…

Today’s Evensies event was very well attended. Normally outside of November NaNo we usually get a couple or few participants on any given Sunday. Today we had around ten.

We used to meet every other Sunday outside of November; every even-numbered Sunday date, hence the name Evensies. When a core of us grew fonder and started meeting every single week we pondered a name change. It was The Liaison who said in essence: Hey, might it be cool if we just kept calling it Evensies? Even the odd ones! And not even explain why!

Yes of course it would, And so we did. And thank god because few things are so ghastly to me as a group who dares call themselves a writers group who collectively betray no imagination or sense of mystery.

Today’s Evensies was well attended because it was not so much a write-in as a call to arms. The Liaison himself has fallen. His battle with cancer ceased a few days back when his treatment strategy was dialled back with the goal to just keep him comfortable. Yesterday he died. His name was Chris Kelworth. His writing is here and there on the internet.

Today we shared a lot of tears and hugs. Shy writers who probably have social fears and disorders, I’m guessing: even they threw there arms around myself and others.

Chris passed on the eve of little April Camp NaNo. It was the eve of the main event; November NaNo when he fell sick in the first place. The irony is cruel. These events meant the world to him. Though I would like to think that the internet publishing success he was beginning to make a habit of meant a lot more!

In November he returned from brain surgery and still made his 50,000 word count which seems miraculous and yet I think we all knew he would. And now we’ve decided that this April we must honour him by tackling our own most ambitious word counts and following through. I am inclined toward this but it may mean I will have to let the poem-a-day endeavor slide.

About twelve years ago I came out to my first NaNo write-in and the Liaison was there; as quiet as a mouse; riddled with anxiety himself. He sat beside a priest who seemed the unofficial leader at the time and he would only talk to her. If someone would have told me that this priest would become a tremendous friend of mine; who would confide in me things she trusted to no other person, that I would move into her home and finally watch her perish from her own cancer and that this mousy little fellow would take over as our leader and a strong one at that … I would have said impossible and impossible!

People can be so different than what they appear or what we imagine. They never fit in the little box we design for them.