Only On Sunday

I haven’t posted anything in two weeks and I’m happy to say there’s a good reason for that: I wrote a story. Two in fact. I mentioned in my last post that while the idea bank has remained open, every time I made a withdrawal and headed out the door, the sidewalk would open up like quicksand and down I would go, story idea and all.

It seems that just the act of writing that down hardened the ground for me. Amazing what writing can do.

Not only did I come away with two stories written and currently simmering on the final draft burner but there are currently two stories cooking away on the first draft burner. I also came up with some interesting observations.

First, I’d forgotten how much I love being in the story zone, being so up inside your head the world around you recedes into the hazy background. As I drove around Albuquerque doing the pay-the-bills thing I found myself turning up streets for no reason and looking around to find I had no idea where I was or turning into businesses I had no reason to be at. The few people I had occasion to talk to probably thought I was on drugs. Here I was, a big silly smile on my face and I couldn’t complete a sentence, think of a coherent answer to their questions or even say ‘have a good day’ without twisting the words around or forgetting one of them.

And I was loving every minute of it.

I got the idea for the larger of the two stories on a Tuesday. Got the first line actually, a line I later didn’t use because it was too abstract but that line opened the gates. Friday was the Fourth of July and a day off for me. I sat down before the sun rose and started typing it out. Spent all day Friday and most of Saturday writing it, completely lost in the world of my characters. I let it simmer a bit over Saturday night and tweaked it on Sunday.

Damn but I missed that feeling, crossing back and forth over the line that separates the world of the real from the world of make believe. I get that when reading a really good book but the experience is so much more intense when the make believe world is one which I am creating.

The second observation I came up with was how important it is to have writing peers. I’m not the most social person in the world. Indeed, there are those who see me as borderline hermit-like and I guess I am. People make me nervous. The path that words have to travel to get from my head to my mouth is so strewn with obstacles that by the time they get there, they’re all jumbled and twisted around. When I communicate solely with the written word, I’ve found I’m less hermit-like as the path the words take from my head to my fingertips is relatively obstacle free with a lot of resting places along the way.

I’m thankful for Backspace in that regard and in regard to having writing peers.

I was so happy about being in the story zone after so long a dry spell that I mentioned it, perhaps a bit maniacally, to a couple of non-writing friends here in Albuquerque. They listened to my tale, as friends will do even when you babble, and then gave me an indulgent smile that could be read as, ‘oh my, is EJ off his meds or something?’

They just didn’t get it at all. Luckily I have friends at Backspace who understand such madness. I called one of them, the great and soon to be published A. S. King (The Dust of 100 Dogs, due out in Feb 2009 from Flux) and before I had completed my description of events, she was on it completely, relating her own dazed and confused up in the story zone story.

Thank the muse for peers. Thank the muse for Backspace.

And, for those few who visit this blog and might be interested, I’ll post at least the longer of the two stories soon.

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Technorati Tags: Albuquerque, Backspace, A. S. King, The Dust of 100 Dogs

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I haven’t been doing any writing on writing in this blog since I forced myself off my overlong hiatus. That’s what the point of this blog was way back when; to write and, most times, to write about writing, either the world of writing or my own personal experience with it.

Plain fact of the matter is, life’s been hell this last year, even worse, in my eyes anyway, than the previous two or three. Not going to go into detail or anything so you won’t have to wade through a pity-river rant here. Suffice it to say that I’m adhering to that old adage, if you’re going through hell, keep going.

The one intolerable thing about this last year is that I’ve been unable to write. It’s not so much a block, more like quicksand. The idea bank certainly hasn’t failed me but for reasons I can’t, or don’t wish to, get into here, I haven’t been able to translate those ideas into a story. Every time I try I find myself sinking beneath the weight of a lot of things that never bothered me before and the harder I struggle against it, the deeper I sink. Bottom line, I’ve lost the ability to write for myself first but I’ll explore that whole morass in another post.

This inability to write hit critical mass about a month ago and I decided to give this blog a try again. My idea was this is, more or less, non-fiction, I’m not really looking to impress anyone, I control what I want to write about and how I write it, I have no idea if anyone is actually reading what I write and, though I care about that to be sure, it doesn’t seem as important as someone reading my fiction. Not sure that makes any sense but who cares.

It also occurred to me that writing in the blog might, A) get me back in the habit and, B) help me to sneak up on my fiction. Weird, yeah, but whatever works and nothing else has thus far.

Which brings me to the point of this post, the first to fall into ‘The Literary World’ category since I resurrected the blog.

First, I read a novella recently, or more accurately, had it read to me by the author. I’m a big fan of audio books as what I currently do to pay the rent doesn’t leave me with a lot of time to read and I can’t live without books.

The author is Alan Bennett and I’ve been given to understand that he something of a famous playwright and author. Sorry to say I never heard of him but, considering the direction my taste in reading generally leads, that’s not saying much.

The Novella in question is titled “The Uncommon Reader” and it is a most charming little story about the joy of reading. The ‘uncommon reader’ in the story is the Queen of England and it revolves around how she accidentally becomes a reader and the subsequent changes that come about because of this. The author’s obvious talent and feel for the story and that dry British wit and humor I love so much makes for a wry and entertaining little tale that will keep you turning the page (or changing disks) right up to the very last words. “The Uncommon Reader” was one of those rare stories I wished wouldn’t end and Alan Bennett does an excellent job of reading it.

The second item is a bit more perplexing.

I’ve never read Lawrence Block. No particular reason and he’s certainly prolific enough that I wouldn’t miss noticing him. Reading him just never happened until recently.

“Small Town” is a beautifully written, complex story that, from my understanding, Mr. Block was working on when the Twin Towers came down. Not sure where the story was going before 9/11 but the course Mr. Block put it on afterward makes it one of the most compelling and haunting stories I’ve read in a long while.

The story takes place in - where else? - New York, the ‘small town’ of the title, roughly a year after the tragedy. It is, in one sense, a murder mystery but it goes way beyond that in many ways. And one of the ways in which it does is the antagonist.

I’ve always had a fondness for the antagonist, both in what I read and in what I write. In general, if there is one main character in most genre novels that comes off as flat or cliched, it’s the antagonist. Not sure why this is but that’s been my experience so finding an antagonist such as the one in ‘Small Town’ has been a real joy, and a real study of a master writer at work.

So why am I perplexed?

I am by no means a prude. Sex in stories, right up to, and including, soft porn, doesn’t bother me so long as it’s integral to the story. Which, sad to say, it ain’t in “Small Town”. And believe me, this story is full of sex. Kinky sex, hetro sex, homo sex, you name it sex. Hell, I do believe there’s more sex than story. Indeed, if one performed a Reader’s Digest surgical procedure on this book, removing all the sex, you’d cut its size in half, if not more. And that’s kind of sad because the story itself is so wonderfully wrought and in no way needs all those throbbing cocks and silky vaginas not to mention the banana.

Would I recommend “Small Town” despite this nit-pick? Oh yeah. You bet I would. In, well, in a New York minute.

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Technorati Tags: Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader, Lawrence Block, Small Town

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Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits, George Carlin is dead.

I get up at 4:30 in the morning. On weekdays it’s work related. On the weekends it’s the cats. As any servant of the feline knows, cats don’t do weekends.

My usual routine at that hellish hour is to first plug in the IV bag of caffeine while groping about for a cigarette and trying not to trip over the cats in the process. Next comes the feline feeding frenzy, of course. Once the clamor has died down, I’m free to check; 1) Backspace, and 2) my email. This morning I wish I’d checked neither.

Not that it would have mattered. I would have found out soon enough. Once at work, I listen to NPR all day and the news about George was all over that station today.

It’s strange the way the death of a celebrity can affect you. And in different ways, too. When Kurt Vonnegut died last year, I was depressed for days. Yet, when Sydney Pollack and Utah Phillips, both of whom I greatly admired, died recently, it was sad hearing of their deaths but the sadness wasn’t lasting.

I’ve been sad all day. Profoundly sad. It’s like the universe has lost some essential part of its structure. To say that the man was an icon of my generation would be a vast understatement. And as hokey as it may sound, he was one of my heros.

I was first turned on to George back in the sixties. I don’t remember the exact circumstance. Hell, I don’t remember much of the sixties or early seventies come to think about it. Be suspect of anyone who does. But I remember listening to George on the stereo and seeing him a half-dozen times at different venues. The pony-tail, the gruff voice, the way he dressed, the combination of extreme intelligence and defiance in his words had a profound impact on this twenty-something kid. He had a way of surgically cutting through the bullshit, of saying fuck you to the rules, of exposing the emperor in all his naked absurdity.

In this, the twenty-first century, with the political and religious absurdity in the world at an all time high, he will be sorely missed.

If there’s a heaven, George, give it hell.

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Technorati Tags: George Carlin

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I don’t exactly have a positive history regarding long-term, marital type relationships. Been there, done that, three times, none of em worked. My first was open warfare, starting with the first salvo fired about an hour before we tied the proverbial knot and more or less ending with her stripping the house down to, and including, the dirty shag carpet five years later and carting it all off. She didn’t even leave me a pillowcase. Nor a pillow for that matter.

My second went a bit smoother. We lived together without benefit of legal formality for nearly two years, decided to do the nuptial thing and subsequently broke up less than a year later. I spent several months wearing out Bob Dylan’s “If You See Her, Say Hello” before she once again appeared on my doorstep. Looking back on it now, I think I was reluctant to start things up again. But I did. And it didn’t work. Less than four years later she was gone again.

My third? We never did the nuptial thing but the five years I spent with her, as chaotic as they were at times, were the best five years of my life. Losing her changed me in ways I could never have foreseen. I wish it would have worked out. But it didn’t. Life can be like that sometimes.

So why am I going on about this marriage thing? I’ve never been a big supporter of the institution of marriage nor have I been particularly opposed to it. I could say I’m not very good at it but would that be accurate? What I’m not very good at is a long-term relationship with a woman, with or without the formality of marriage, which has nothing to do with the actual institution of marriage. For me, living together or marrying are an either/or thing. If I lean in either direction, it would be more toward the living together side if only because there’s one less thing to deal with when the relationship comes apart.

Not everyone feels that way, of course.

83 year old Phyllis Lyon and 87 year old Del Martin don’t feel that way. They wanted to get married, have wanted to get married for a good number of years and did just that last week in my beloved San Francisco. I don’t know Phyllis or Del but their marriage brought a tear to my eye. I do know why it took them so long to get married. And I know why their first attempt at marriage four years ago failed. The law wouldn’t let them. You see, Phyllis is a woman and Del, well, she’s a woman too.

The institution of marriage has become something of a battleground of late and the battle heated up dramatically when, in a move that surprised more than a few folks, the California Supreme Court overturned the ban on same-sex marriages, opening the way for Phyllis and Del and thousands of other same-sex couples to finally have what I and the rest of the hetros so take for granted: a trip down the aisle or a few words before the judge and all the protections those actions afford.

The fundamentalists and the homophobes are going ballistic, of course. Oh me oh my these queers are gonna destroy the sanctity of marriage! Sanctity? What fucking sanctity? And what constitutes sanctity anyway? Love? Devotion? Read Paul Monette’s “Borrowed Time” and then come back and tell me it’s not possible for a man to love another man every bit as much and every bit as deeply as a man might love a woman.

Longevity then? Nah. Sure as hell can’t be that. ‘Divorced’ is as much a marital status today as ‘Single’ or ‘Married’. If longevity is part of what constitutes the sanctity of marriage, then Phyllis and Del have most hetros beat by a mile and a half. They’ve been partners for more than 50 years. Jim and Tammy, the ultimate evangelical, opposite-sex couple didn’t last that long before they divorced. And those 50 years of Phyllis’ and Del’s are 33 years longer than my three relationships combined.

The fundamentalists and the homophobes aren’t through yet. No such luck that the rapture will occur and rid us of their ilk. No, they’re gathering signatures to put a referendum on the next ballot, a referendum to amend the California constitution to ban gay marriage. I wish I could get enough signatures to put a referendum on the next ballot to ban them. As it is, all I can hope for is that the people of California do the right thing and shoot that referendum down in flames.

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Technorati Tags: Phyllis Lyon, Del Martin, California Supreme Court, same-sex marriage, marriage, California, gay marriage

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A friend, after reading the previous post, asked me how I felt about what I’d written, about what’s going on out there. Was I angry, he asked? Angry, hmmmm, yeah, I am, at times, angry. Not the rock-throwing, take-it-to-the-streets righteous indignation anger I felt back in the 60s/70s during a previous unjust and unnecessary American war. More a frustrated, tired, disappointed anger. So much of the dream we had back then, so much of the energy to achieve that dream, is gone.

The anti-war and civil rights movements saw tens of thousands taking to the streets, dedicated, defiant, willing to face the consequences of trying to change a system they believed to be deeply flawed. Today I see a dozen people dressed in black standing outside the Federal courthouse here in Albuquerque, protesting a war as heinous, if not more so, than the war I fought against. And while the traffic streams by on Lomas Ave, those pathetically few brave, protesting souls are no more relevant to those self-absorbed drivers than shadows on the street.

A black man and a woman vie for the presidency while our government builds a fence across our countries southern border. Whatever happened to ‘Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses longing to be free…’? If the Statue of Liberty could weep, her tears would form a waterfall of despair.

The infrastructure of this country is falling apart, children in the richest country on the planet go hungry, the education system is falling apart, the gap between the richest and poorest grows, the middle class is disappearing while our government tries to foist ‘democracy’ on other countries at the end of a gun. A very expensive gun. A gun we pay for, I might add. And they won’t even let us see the body bags of the children who held those guns nor the devastation those guns have wrought on other children.

The pursuit of fear alleviation has replaced the pursuit of happiness. We, the ‘common’ folk, pay the vast majority of taxes and few of us are more than one paycheck away from homelessness. And that paycheck is getting smaller by the day.

Retirement? The Golden Years? Fagetaboutit. If you’re lucky enough to have a job, you’re going to have to keep that job until you fall face down in your Cream of Wheat some morning to be replaced by some slightly younger poor fuck who will have to work until they fall face down in their breakfast cereal.

So, yeah, I guess you could say I’m angry.

Langston Hughes wrote of a dream deferred. Has the dream become the raisin or the sore or a heavy stone sinking below the surface of our waking self? Is there enough left to reach a critical mass, to explode again? I hope so, but I’m not real big on hope these days.

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Technorati Tags: anti-war, civil rights, Albuquerque, Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses longing to be free…, Statue of Liberty, Langston Hughes

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