A new mileu

Okay. I'll try to write dead-pan humor. Like I tried to do once about gummi theology. Or the comment I gave to Jess a moment ago. Humor is good as long as it has a bite to it. Slapstick is painful and can't be delivered over the internet. You would have to slap yourself and then fall down on your own banana peel. No surprise there, and why would you want to. I could comment on the world around me that doesn't make any sense at all, as if no one was paying attention to what is going on. Like where do women get nylon quilted jackets that are grey in color and fit too tight and are only worn by people who look like they have used up their lives? I never see those coats in any regular store. Are there special stores that I don't know about? I realize I seldom go into a woman's clothing store. I'll walk all the way around in Target so I don't have to look. Maybe it's because of a bad memory of having to sit quietly and watch my mother try on dresses at a really nice department store. Or that my sixteen year old son alwasy points out the bra and panty sets that I hope the girlfriend he doesn't have never buys and wears, at least with him knowing about it. Quilted nylon with snagged stitches aren't found there. Where are they?
I tried to write humor and I think it flopped. Like telling a joke from the pulpit. Tried it once and the listeners were too polite to laugh, but then they were trained Lutherans.

Stretched too thin

Lately, I've been feeling stretched thin. Teaching duties, parental duties, and now, preaching duties (the second and fourth Sundays at St. Paul, Otis, IN, east of Valpo) has been impinging upon writing duties. And the writing has been neglected for the past three days, which means It'll be all the more difficult when, on Wedneday, I finally get back to the novel. The last time I was at it, little came out other than the feeling that this was all very insignificant. Yes, that's the word I entered into the journal, insignificant. I suppose what I'm looking for is someone whom I trust to tell me that it is significant and that I am skilled enough to finish the first rough draft by Sept. 8 (the anniversary from when I began it).

The start of something, maybe

I’m not sure what to do with the following. Any suggestions? I’m not sure if I should remake it as a short story, flesh it out further, or merely tidy it up a bit. The chronology is a bit off. Or does it have the weight of a synopsis for a novel? Comments welcomed.
She came from a time and place that was fearful of flavor, favoring the bland over the spicy because flavors would bring undue excitement and chaos into the confines of her well ordered and regular life. Her hair was set just so, as it had always been, or at least as long as always had been for her. Her clothes were of a style she had grown accustomed to when she was young and confident and she had not yet seen a reason to change from what she considered a classic mode of dress even though her coworkers saw her as dowdy and priggish.
It hadn’t always been this way. Once, she would have relished the opportunities to sample, to taste, to try new flavors. Once, in years past, she would have jumped at the chance to not only try exotic foods, but to rush off on a plane to the roots of origin of those flavors. Once, she would have flown off on a whim to what had been called the Dutch Spice Islands, suitcase already packed and waiting in the hall closet by the front door. Once she would have gone if she had been asked. If only she had been asked, if someone would have ventured into her life to disrupt the flow that it was headed down, if only someone would have set up an eddy in her stream. But no one did and in time she took the suitcase from the closet, unpacked it, and let her passport expire. Then she enrolled in Jones Business College and learned her trade, a trade befitting a young woman of her time.
She graduated near the top of her class but she didn’t accompany the top students to careers (and husbands) in Chicago. They were younger than she had been, going straight from high school to the college and she had allowed a few years to elapse. And so, with her parents’ approval, she settled for a position near at hand- the Des Moines Insurance Company. She entered the workforce there, and there she stayed. Over time she became the anchor around which her department revolved. She knew what was what, and what had been, but never did she figure out what might be.
Her penmanship had always been a point of pride for she had worked hard and long at it in the waning days of the Palmer method. She labored to match the loops and curls with utmost precision, fighting against her natural inclinations to find her own way through the letters and words. She recalled those long days of practice, of making each loop just so, and each slanting letter just so, seeing in their perfection a doorway to freedom, seeing in each uniformly shaped letter a way to grab her suitcase that then had remained in the front hall closet, still waiting for the chance to fly out the door to the taste forbidden spices she had only heard of.
What she didn’t now (nor could she know) that each loop, each careful turn of the pen, each perfect and impersonal letter was a trap that would keep her locked in a time which no longer valued such niceties. She did as her superiors instructed her. When the manual typewriter gave way to the electric, she followed suite, thankful for the sake of her arthritic hands. When the computers entered the office bearing word processing, her thanksgiving gave way to disgust. At least with a typewriter she could see the keys strike the paper making a permanent mark on the page. She placed no trust in the computer, despite the constant assurances she was given. When they unpacked and installed the computer at her desk she began to think of the suitcase that once had sat on the closet floor. And of spices never tasted.

Retrowriter

In today's garage sailes (made unavoidable since they filled the neighborhood) I found the perfect tool for the studio- an Amish word processor. It needs no electricity and still produces a printed page in New Times Roman- a Voss manual typewriter. This machine represents the high point of post WWII craftsmanship, filled with signals of vaunted German design and efficiency. The lines are sleek with chromium imbellishments. A beauty, a dream, and perfect for typing out the second draft. The first comes by hand, the second by typewriter, then the third on the electronic devise. Does composing on a manual typewriter throw me back to some romantic age? I did most of my earlier work on a manual machine for self evident reasons. I'm beginning to think that my writing bears a retro ethos. Not quite post modern. Not brutely modern. Somewhere that hopefully is myself.

Death by Hepatitis

Dark title, isn't it? I had a flash of insight that I will die by hepatitis, a liver gone bad. No, not gone bad. Used up. Slowly desicated from the years of rugged misuse, of too many delicious cocktails and wine (red or wine, doesn't make a difference) taken for the sake of health. Antioxidants are a delightful excuse. I should give a warning to Jess about such activies but I doubt if she would listen. When I was one and twenty (so goes the poem) I believed in my own immortality and hold the stories to prove it. At fifty four I still stuggle against mortality but now with an added dimension--time lost. I have begun attempting to create a body of work, or at least I tell myself that. Today I crossed the threshold of 200 pages of the most recent project and the end is still not in sight. That's 2oo handwritten pages, not typed, and it comes out to about 4o,ooo words, more or less. I suppose I should count this as success since I began it on Sept. 8, 2008. I date beginnings and I date ends. The middles can care for themselves. I have wandered from the theme. Accept my apologies. Hepatitis turns the patient yellow or yellowish-green. The color is returned when the liver is more fully functioning. Why I'm offering this up, I don't know except that it's late, my defenses are down, I'm tired, and I wanted to write to someone. Thanks for listening.

Writng certain scenes

Writing certain scenes can be very odd. A poor sentence to begin with. Not a decent lead for a news article, hopeless for a freshman comp essay: too much ambiguity, not enough concrete reality. What I'm trying to say is that writing sex scenes is ... what? I'm not sure of what word to use to describe it. I've spent the past several days writing up to, and into a scene in the novel that becomes explicit. And here's the odd part: while it may seem a bit voyeuristic, it isn't. I'm trying to be honest and true without being trite, hackneyed, or textbookish. (Textbook sex was well illustrated by Monte Python's Meaning of Life.) When we talked in class about breaking out first and second space, how about breaking out of moralistic space- which is one of those "supposed to be" places. And here's another question- why am I blogging this topic? I'm the lone male in the remnant since Troy has gone on to other ventures, and should I be raising the issue? Regardless of the answer, I need to be off to the next task, which is preparing for tomorrow's class in which I lecture on Anselm's Ontological Argument for the existence of God.

Coming in December

Last night, Friday, George asked me if I would be willing to read at a first Friday in December or February. Looks like I'll need to get creative over the summer. Actually I have been, in the studio. Even though I have three windows, on the cardinal points of the compass except for the south, I face the south looking at a white wall. I had been looking out the window at a tree trunk but the action on the tree became too involved. A squirrel would come by and try to stare me down. There we were, eyes locked, neither willing to break the gaze for whoever broke the gaze lost the game and the stakes were high. Who had the right to the nuts? Who would prevail over the territory? The squirrel, you see, was attempting to lead me down the wrong path, trying to force me back into safe territory, back into first space, back into the known, back into the manipulated lies of squirreldom. I have turned my back to the squirrels of the world after discovering how akin they are to rats. If you skin a squirrel's tale you get a rat. And we know what rats are like. Michelle and her beau were the only ones of the class present on Friday. Not another until August. I'll keep writing until then.

Layers of homes

Here is a bit of a story I've started. The germ came from walking down the street of an old neighborhood and noticing sidewalks that went to houses that no longer existed.
Little Tony lingered by the steps that no longer were at the house that had long since been gone. All that remained was a change in the sidewalk, the sidewalk that had been poured when the house still stood and the steps were needed. The grass and weeds had tried to break up the relic and had nearly succeeded. He stood motionless, except for his eyes that moved like a movie camera’s up the missing steps and stopped at the place door of the absent house should have been. Then he saw the absent house. It lay like a faded transparency over his own house, nearly blocking the view of his house except for the door. The doors of each houses was in the same place and through the faded oaken door of the absent house he could make out the green steel and fiberglass door of his own. He put his hand on the knob of the oaken door, turned it, and tugged. The door was stuck—it hadn’t been opened for many years, not since the house had been torn down to make may for a more modern subdivision. He tugged again, harder, with both hands locked on the ethereal knob. This time the door opened, slowly at first and then quickly, giving a soundless screech. The steel and fiberglass door opened effortless, allowing Little Tony into his own (that is, his parents’) house. He walked in and expected the aroma of dinner being prepared, but instead of catching the scent of his mother’s garlic and onions, he sneezed—once, twice, then to five times. Layered atop the garlic and onion aroma was the dusty smell of strong fish and sour cabbage.
“Mom! You know I can’t eat fish.” he called.

Tis true, Tis true

What they say about writing each and every day is absolutely true. I spend a horrid morning attempting to write five pages this morning. I didn't write the day before because I was preparing a lecture on the Cosmological Argument for the existence of God. When I got down to the writing this morning very little came out. I couldn't get a handle on my character who I thought I knew. There are strands that are simply "out there", floating above my head and I can't seem to catch them. One would be a lifeline. Other than that, life is good. I'm attempting to discover modern and post-modern literature. Most of my writing is influenced by too many dead guys. Or long dead guys.