Since I discovered that some folks have been reading this blog, I've decided to keep going. After all, an audience is an audience. And the audience is important. As a one time community theater actor I know how the audience effects the performance. What goes for actors goes for writers with the greatest difference being the time lag between the feedback. Actors feel the response immediately, writers must wait for little slips of paper or email responses (all too frequently polite no thank you). We keep on going regardless. Right now I'm going to stop because I wrenched my shoulder earlier this week and typing is painful. Who would have thought it was all so connected? "The foot bone connected to the ankle bone..."

I really don't have to write this and like every good student, I probably won't do much more than babble on into nothingness. Absolute nothingness. Nothing. Not a thing. Not a. Not. No. N.

a synopsis for a book not yet written

Synopsis of Tamsin’s Twin by Thos. Sabel

Didymus Bosch, middle school English and History teacher in mid to late forties, dutifully and moderately successful with a 50- year old Cape Cod style house in a passable working-class neighborhood, a marriage of 20 years, two children (details on the children), realizes something is profoundly missing from his life. This sense of the missing thing gnaws at him, a gnaw he first tries to ignore. He has had intimations of this feeling many times before and had vainly attempted to fill the void through a collection of unfinished projects, some of which filled the house and raised his wife’s ire. In preparing to teach a unit on World War II he chances upon an article concerning recently released experiments by Dr. Josef Mengele that had been held by the Soviets and now released to the public. These experiments dealt with the feasibility of testing the psychic communication between twins in the hopes of finding the perfect method of sending communications between the German High Command and its officers. Curiosity drove him further to the lab reports. As he read them, images of a twin sister kept invading his dreams, thoughts and intuitions. He tried to drive the images away but they would not go. When he spoke with his older siblings about his supposed sister they gave evasive answers. His mother became angry with him for asking about such nonsense.
Their answers failed to satisfy which drove him to the country church where he was baptized and he sees that beneath his name another name had been carefully scraped off and another written in its place. When there, one a very old parishioner called him “Tamsin” and then excused herself. The pastor explained that this man suffered from the early stages of Alzheimer’s and occasionally made strange, incoherent comments.
Convinced he must have a twin he began the process of creating what she might have looked like by using photos of himself and having them feminized through computer manipulation, with these he created a photo album of her life. Then he began writing her letters which he kept hidden in a box. To receive the answers his letters sought he then began writing her responses, using his left-hand (he is right-handed) and mailing them to himself. Through their correspondence he creates her life, her travels, her memories. He even goes so far as to write a brief autobiography of her (which appears as an appendix to the book) He attempts to keep this under wraps by having Tamsin’s letters mailed to his school. His wife believes he is having an affair and begins keeping a closer eye on him, watching for clues of phone calls, hacking into his email, managing his time very closely yet none of these reveal anything. When she finally discovers the truth by finding the letters and realizing he is the author of both, she is convinced his is crazy and demands counseling, etc. She contacts his family. They respond in a curious, off-handed manner, not in the way experience taught her to expect. Instead of being the friendly and forthright family she has known, they become evasive. The truth is that when the mother was carrying Didymus she dearly wanted twins, was told she bore twins, planned for twins including redoing the nursery for twins. When Didymus was the only child born she was devastated and went into a deep depression, rocking the empty cradle while ignoring crying Didymus. The twin’s name was to be Tamsin. She had a nervous breakdown leaving Didymus to his older sister’s care until the mother returned after a three-month hospital stay. This is what the family is ashamed of.
Back to Didymus’ wife. She demands he put all this away. He follows her wishes, puts the letters away (but doesn’t burn them as his wife orders him to) and life goes back to normal, at least for a year. Then he receives an actual letter from Tamsin, wondering why he hasn’t written, urging him to come to her and help her because her memory, which he has been restoring, is fading. The letter fails to say where she is and so he has to find her by tracing her life through her letters as clues to where she has been. The choice for Didymus is to chose between his wife and the life he has known, and his twin who never was, but is. This is the turning point in the book. If he remains with his wife what has been missing from is will always be missing with no hope of being found. If he goes to seek his twin, all that has been known will be lost for the sake of what may or may not be. He may well be insane. (what if his wife’s lover has sent this letter in order to get rid of him, for she has taken a lover because of Didymus’ strange behavior. Yes, the lover sends it to get rid of him. We still don’t know if Tamsin is real or a figment of all imagination.) His quest takes him through her life and discovers his twin who never was, but is, has been an artist in Brown County, Indiana, Montreal, danced with the Winnipeg Royal Ballet, part of the Gimli, MB, art colony, in Niagra, NY, ultimately made her way to Europe where she has been living as an expatriot for many years ending up in Gozo, Malta. Didymus finds her strolling along the beach . The immediately recognize each other but are unsure. He tells her of her life, as well as his. She takes the letters and autobiography from him and read them while he takes in the island. With his encouragement she flies to their old home to regain what never existed for her, but did. Didymus remains on Gozo, filled with what was missing and now a citizen of the world.

Soja and the Revelation of St. John

This is only the beginning. Much more will follow later. When Soja talks about Levevbre's Production of Space as a fugue I am reminded of the better way to read the Revelation of St. John, that poor misunderstood last book of the Bible. The misunderstandings highlight what happens when a nonwestern text (and possibly a reflection of Thirdspace) is read in a western, linear fashion. I will discuss this later.

Saturday afternoon. Beautiful day outside and I'm inside getting a few things done. A few things done. Odd sort of phrase, all ambiguous and abstract. How many is few? What is meant by things? Does a time limit commit itself to done? Or am I asking too many questions, or the wrong questions. Asking questions has tended to me in trouble because my questions arrive with multiple layers or try to pop holes in the illusions and lies which surround us. Like Socrates I sometimes ask questions to get people to think and thinking can be a subversive act especially when the authorities and experts are to do the thinking for us (but who is the us?) But I don't want to drink hemlock. Or, to go Biblical, earn a prophet's reward- which was the equivalent of drinking hemlock. But to not tell the truth for the sake of keeping some sort of peace for peace's sake is little more than drinking hemlock in a slow and as deadly way. I really didn't plan to off on philosophical veins again. That is part of my nature. A strong philosophical bent perhaps because philosophical discussions are safe in their distance. I can do that without getting into the nitty gritty of how I feel. I can keep feelings at a distance by being smugly philosophical. What sort of constraint is this? One that comes from the inside, or one that has been placed on from the outside by the controlling community. This is wrong, because as calm as I seem it is a bit of a facade; a facade I've worn for so many years that it almost seems real , but I know it isn't . I know the truth but it hasn't set me free. Instead, I feel chained, or caged, or alone. All are the same. "If you scratch me, do I not bleed?" Shylock's statement claimed in a different way.
I was envious of the folks hanging out at the Shady Nook. Yes, they were busy taking their shots and beer, possibly to a greater extent than needed, but I envied their friendship and creation of their third space. But I didn't envy them enough to want to join in, even though the Nook is but a few blocks from my house. We walk to Dairy Queen during the summer. But I doubt if I'll go back even though I still have a free beer token. One of the aspects of controlling constraints is guilt. Guilt used through generations to maintain control. Subtle control and so difficult to break from. So I try to tell myself in story and poem. Someone said that all fiction is autobiographical to some extent. I believe them. My difficulty is... what? honesty?... freedom?... courage?... who knows? I could ask you, but you wouldn't say perhaps because there is no you out there. In that regard blogging is like prayer. One blogs or prays in earnest but is anyone on the receiving end? How am I to tell? Ah, there must be faith. Faith is distant commodity. And this from one trained in the ministry, and... oh, you know the rest so no sense in the telling.
For the rest, I'm going to tack on a poem. I hope you enjoy it, Mrs. McGilicuddy, wherever you are (nod to Jimmy Durante)

I join the chorus of corpses

walking on deadened feet through

deadened fields of waving

conundrums already at blossom,

moving as one along the way

with arms linked tight and ankles

bound with silken cords,

attending life’s travails

in a slow melodious shuffle

raising clouds of mild despair.

I join the chorus of corpses

undead and yet still dying

gleeful of our brotherhood,

moaning our undead song.

Spring break is past and the rivers have crested. I'm sitting at IVYtech, Harshmann, Adjunct Lounge. Listening to others talk about the flood and the amount of sewage that runs through the water which led to a discussion of sewer systems. Sewer systems and the subterranean lands underneath. Hidden worlds beneath our feet. Secret tunnels. Follow Jean Valjean down the sewers of Paris, a place of excitement. Tours are given daily. Step in the boat but please don't let you fingers trail in the water (or whatever the liquid may be). I'm going to stop this because I have to go teach in a few minutes. I'm never quite ready but it usually goes well. I'm goin to add more to this later.
Now I'm home. It's late. Everything has been graded and Pat Benetar is wailing on Barracuda. Four Gummi Bears are living in fear because the gods are going to snatch one up deus ex machina but not in rescue but in sacrifice. One will be taken and three remain. Which one? Because three are red and one is green, the red ones assume the green will be gone. That, in red Gummi Bear logic, is justice. The odd one is justly removed, restoring homogenity to the system and their world is in equilibrium. What they don't know is that the gods they fear are capricious and have no logic. Only desire, only hunger and a lust for Gummi blood. A rather primitive religion. And yet... Don't we often see life in this way? Don't we have a sort of Gummi logic, or Gummi theology, fearful of what the gods might do to us? Forgive me, the theologian creeps out once in a while. (The red Gummis were wrong; one of their kindred was taken from them. Now there are three.) I must be in a theological mood because of reading "The History of God" over spring break. I find that what I read often gets under the skin and influences my thoughts, at least for a while.
One of the things I did not get done was clean up the study. I did, however, come across a card with a note. I like to use blank 3x5s for random notes and ideas. The card reveals a work that was birthed by a spelling error: worskopping. Sounds sort of Scandinavian. With the mood I am in, I could apply it to the Gummi to describe the taking of one of their kind by the gods. "What happened to Fred? Worskopping. And the Gummi crowd suddenly quiets at the word, the word they would rather never hear, a word that strikes terror into the hearts of all. Worskopping, when the fingers of the gods blacken the sky, throw shadows over them suddenly and then one is gone, never to return. Some have suggested that in worskopping the Gummi is assumed into heaven, but that is a pious lie told to soften the blow. The truth they wish not to see. The writer brings a mind to the Gummi and creates thoughts and language into lumps of gelatin and high fructose corn syrup. The writer's task to give life and voice to the dead and voiceless.
Want a Gummi?

Does feeling mellow count? Odd question perhaps but so often it seems that I must be dealing in angst as the Weltanshauung impedes upon the Zeitgeist. Forgive the German which may have been used incorrectly. I was playing with the term angst. Playing with words instead of wringing meaning out of them. Two ways to look at the same event perhaps but with very different results. The anguished writer wrings out words like a washerwoman (feminists forgive me) of yore wringing out rags with mighty arms and a vice-like grip. The anguished writer trapped by the spirit of the age, rebelling against all comers like a tent-show wrestler, past his Champion Slapdown prime but still strong and able, eking out a future by taking on the town bully until... you know the tragic ending with the long-lost daughter coming on the scene at the last moment in order to cradle the dying wrestler's head in her lap, a tear falling from her eye. Camera moves in for the close up. Unless the wrestler is from Gaul and then he becomes the subject of an ancient Greek sculptor, Pergamon by name, copied by the Romans (those great forgers) and will live on forever reproduced in countless Art History books. So goes the writer, a Dying Gaul, seeking immortality by way of anthologies.

That is, the writer wrapped in anguish. What of the other kind. Not trapped in Romanticism. (I wish I had discovered them later in life and not in the impressionable teens.) The Romantic myth of the anguished writer may have served us ill these many years. Writers, like all heroes, live by the myths of the forefathers. Seek out Homer to live the hero's life. Who are your forefathers? Who are mine? Who are those I seek to emulate. Like a chameleon, I tend to pick up on the colors of my surroundings. Leave me too long with Shakespear and my speach patterns begin to change. Gingsberg's Howl sent me off down a strange verbal path. But what of my voice? (the mellowness is changing to introspection). This course has brought me to examine the issue of voice- the real and valid voice, the bare voice, the pure voice, the living voice--viva voce! Or some such linguistic butchering. Where is it? Or is it? Have you found your voice? The one you use to call out in the dark, not sure if you truly want an answer? Or the voice to speak love? Or the voice to... maybe not a single voice but a plurality of voices. More voices than meets the ear. A choir of voices (and they may not be so heavenly). A mellow voice in all this? I wonder. Why not? As long as it isn't as mellow as Manilow for such is the way to dullness, and excited ennui--the attempt is made but the excitement manufactured. Then the voice again. Where do I find it? Jump down my own throat and sit among the vocal cords, reaching out to pluck them like the harpist on the strings or the piano tuner with head under soundboard? Pluck, pluck and send the sound out around the world for distant pleasures.

For those who have made it this far, thank you for putting up with the ramblings. I hope you had fun.