Dream

 

photo by Sohaib Ghyasi

Nothing much happening around my neck of the woods. No news is good news.

Shame about  Afghanistan. President Biden makes it sound like their army is a cowardly one who won’t fight, but I’m wondering if they’re severely outnumbered, can’t seem to find this info in any of the articles I’m reading, don’t know where to look; only the basics seem to filter down to me.

The days here are hot, but now cooling off a little. Yesterday was pleasant: a breeze. The problems of the world swirl around the back of my brain like awful fiction contradicting my quiet American suburb. The problems seem unreal, but they’re not.

Unless you call everything unreal. All the physical universe a dream.

The Key

photo by Everyday Basics

Times New Roman or Courier New? That’s the question. Which will offer me more success? Times New Roman makes me come off as the literary sort, whereas Courier New might make me come off as an efficient sort. So what are they looking for--literary or efficient? And which type matches my personal lifestyle compartment?

This and other important questions of the day examined.

News at eleven.

The key to successful and professional goal-setting is one’s ability to delegate. If I delegate my writing career to an enthusiastic underling, I can maintain what I’m good at: eating, sleeping, and staring at the ceiling.

Should I change my name to David Rich? The trouble is there’s another writer named David Rich. I might get mixed up with him. There’s a journalist on Jewish issues named Dave Rich, but I don’t believe people will think I’m him, although coincidentally my mother was Jewish. I’m not too into the judo-christian scene, though. Some things I like about it, but I see it mostly as just rules and regulations. I believe in the Universe, or God, or the Lord and the Lady, or I don’t know… What am I going about?

One must learn to focus. Laser-like focus.

Work four hours a week and vacation the other one hundred and forty. The key to ultimate fulfillment.

Short and Basically Sweet

So one piece glided into the other. Of the story I’m writing. I wasn’t even trying for it. A perfect ice capade moment. If it’s all this easy, I actually like writing. I knew that anyway, but when everything’s a mud puddle, I forget. Right now I won’t go on anymore about, because I don’t want to jinx myself.

Beautiful day today. I love it when the skies blue, even when it’s cold, but it’s warm.

A nice laughing Buddha statue came in the mail and it looks really good. You can’t tell by the online photo. I mean everything looks good ‘til you get it. That’s why I have so many horrible tarot decks, but this laughing Buddha is the bomb.

It feels nice to feel happy. I know my happiness should be totally inward and not dependent on material things or the the temporal fluctuations of fate, but at least I’m happy. That’s a plus.

Unless I’m too happy. Uh-oh!

Odin, AC, Food

Photo by Dan Gold

Wrestling my latest story. It’s scribble scrabble and the pieces don’t fit, but so far it’s ten pages and it matters a lot. To me. Wish me luck making this into a semblance of something someone will publish someday and if I can’t, let me get super into the process, enough to have made it worthwhile. This I pray to the gods of yore. By Odin’s blood and staff!

Meanwhile it’s supposed to go up to eighty-five today and I’m getting outside no matter what. Just the idea of feeling eighty-five on my skin is exciting me. It would be even nicer if I had a pool to jump into, but I take what I get. Maybe a cold shower?

I could  be forced to turn the AC on, although it hasn’t been checked yet, just so my blood pressure meds don’t fade in the heat. On the other hand, maybe that would be the best thing forcing me into a plant-based diet in order to survive.

One thinks one’s diet is healthy until one looks back and finds it riddled with eggplant parmigiana dinners, ( I know--eggplant's a vegetable, but really), and Gatorade.

I’m listening to the 2021 Food Revolution Summit with people like Joel Fuhrman and boy, do I feel  self conscious about my food. I eat healthy half of the time, but it's the other half. I don’t want to die of digesting junk in twenty years, although something will kill me eventually, so that’s another way of looking at it. 

More Talk

photo by Anders Jilden

Feeling better after me and Roe’s vacay, still on a dark stage talking into the void, but the floor’s been swept a bit.

Listening to aboriginal music. A lot. And getting into it. The didgeridoo. I know it’s ridiculous, but it somehow makes me feel at home.  Giving no credence to past lives, I guess it just hits me the right away. I don’t think it’s cultural approbation if you enjoy the sounds quietly to yourself making no claims to fame or anything.

Today’s a beautiful spring spent mostly inside writing and reading, but I don’t have cabin fever. I’ve cleaned up our rooms and the way the sunlight hit them through the window, everything seems spacious.

Reading little stories here and there-a good one by Neil Gaiman called  Down to a sunless sea about an old woman lamenting hideous things that happened to her son when he was a sailor of the ocean. And an irritating book by a cosmic philosopher that’s too cosmic. When will people realize that I AM isn’t all that, just two words that mean what they say, such as I AM God, I AM bored. I AM eating sweet potatoes. 

Whatever. 

Maybe I AM unenlightened.

Writing and the Sun: Pain vs. Pleasure

photo by Oladimeji Ajegbile

photo by Pixabay

To read a sad story takes awhile. To write a sad story takes…a long time. In spring, I can’t picture myself doing anything but looking at the sun.  I guess I’ll get back to my moaning and groaning in type in a few days when it rains, but I’m thinking of only writing happy stories from now on, because… it takes too much out of you.

Me and Roe are booking some vacations. They’ll be nice. Various natural scenarios. The woods and the sea.

And now back to books.

No Heaven for Good Boys is too upsetting, but I’ll keep reading it. It’s amazing the sway the marabouts have over poor kids in Senegal. They take them from their families and treat them horribly. No one does a thing. The kids are beaten if they don’t raise enough coinage begging in the street. Or worse. Now I’m invested in the characters, I seem in for a horrible time, unless I throw the book out the window which I never do, although it might be for the better. Keisha Bush really places you there if there is where you really want to be. I feel torn between the sway of good writing and  the sway of heading for the hills.

My own depressing work of art isn’t good writing yet and won’t be until a lot more drafts. At least as good as it’s gonna get. I’m going to have to figure out a way to enjoy myself through it or not do it, because now it’s just pain.

Before I Hit The Bed

I’m writing this too late at night because I realized I needed a new post. I haven’t written anything for a bit and wanted to amend that before I hit the bed.

 Thus I sacrifice coherence for a word  count.

 When I’m tired I tend to get fancier as my meaning becomes more obscure.

 I hope I can still entertain you.

Finished Hamnet today which floored me. Unfortunately. I want to just think about it a couple of days before talking more, so that messes up this post. Sometimes when a book's so good, I feel immobile and shy to describe it. Like who am I? I think I may have read one of the best books in my life, suffice to say. 

We will be circling around Hamnet for awhile and even getting to it someday.

Meanwhile, I read my first Beowulf translation by Maria Dahvana Headley and it worked. Setting it in modern day bar lingo seems like a gimmick until you start reading the thing and see what passion and beauty and excitement is put into it. She did a really nice job and it was quite an adventure with some thoughtful things to say about morality and mortality thrown into the mix.

I first learned about Beowulf in fourth-grade where I read a little excerpt and Mrs. Gilbert introduced it as the first book written in english. I’ve been wanting to read it since, so it’s cool I did. A little triumph. You got to take ‘em where they come from.

I will try to do a more involved post next time. I notice spring is here where I live, so I might go outside instead.

After a series of flash fictions, I’m writing a longer story now. Wish me luck and I will wish you luck and we can be the lucky club together.

Zzzzzzzzz.

Good night.

Blue Skies and Books

photo by Elia Clerici

Blue skies and days like spring. Great, but a little disorienting after all that winter.

 I’ve read enough of Hamnet to realize I’m going to finish it. I feel like I’m there with  Shakespeare and family and Agnes, his wife, especially. The book has this really nice flow that involves me and hypnotizes me without drawing too much writer-word attention to itself. Beautiful.

Starting No Heaven for Good Boys by Keisha Bush about badly taken care of impoverished kids in Senegal. I thought it might just be a downer, but its written in a bitter-sweet humorous sad way and my feeling towards it are more complex. Although I’d love to have billions of dollars to just swoop in and put an end to the misery of the children the books based on, I’ll probably wind up sending twenty dollars to an African charity and think I’m doing something.

Finished Later by Stephen King which I enjoyed. The other characters were more vivid then the supernatural villain who kind of seemed grafted on  and a vaguer part of the story, thus making for a weaker ending. I’d definitely recommend it, however, superb fun and the characterization was generally top-notch three-dimensional which you don’t always find in adventure stories. 

Anubis

Photo by Egor Myznik

Yes, I usually get eight and a half hours sleep no matter what, but the sun was so bright and inviting and my dream was so annoying: driving a helicopter looking for home, trying to compute my destination into its GPS and failing again and again.

I just woke up after six hours and called it morning.

I read my twitter first thing, even though I should have meditated or something, but I don’t feel too guilty. I mean, what the hell? My life, my rules.

Reading Hamnet and a book on writing and publishing, ordered Stephen King’s Later and Keisha Bush’s No Heaven for Good Boys, but they got delayed by Amazon. So I wait.

Wish management treated the Amazon workers better, but its the cheapest place I can get books. A quandary I often run into, like factory farming or fruit from unfairly treated migrant workers.

The best I can say is I cut out plastic cups for home use. I’m donating money to an organization that cleans up a ton of plastic from the ocean for every twenty dollars. My plastic cups gave them another ton of garbage to clean up, thus erasing any impact.

I don’t know if that’s enough for Anubis when he weighs my heart and feather, but it will have to do.

As the monster devours me, at least I helped the sea.

The Forest for the Trees and other Branches

 

photo by Valentin Salja

Finished The Forest for the Trees--a lot of fun, I don’t mean like a comic book. It was sophisticated and full of good advice, but it had a nice flowing writing style--inviting, like a knowledgeable friend talking about the publishing world.

Right after, I started another book, a more formal book about writing and publishing which more befits the dignity and magnificence of a serious author. In other words, boring. It looks like I’m going to be reading this one just for info not joy.

It starts out saying writing is the deepest, most important, most spiritual thing in the universe which for me is a yes or no depending on my mood and objectively probably somewhere in the middle. If zero is eating frozen pizza and ten reaching nirvana plus cosmic oneness with the universe, writing would probably hold a steady five along with other stuff like acting, singing, painting, raising a healthy child, a garden patch, a redeemed social condition, etc, etc, etc.

Agnes has married Shakespeare. Judith has the plague.

In trashy horror novel news, 6 men killed, five woman, two 9-year old’s, and various dogs.

Reading, Writing, and Stuff

 

photo by Enzo Muno

Writing my latest. There’s a story there somewhere as opposed to dramatic unrelated actions, but I’ll have to eliminate some blabber to get there, wish I could send it to Maxwell Perkins or someone and have them fix it.

I’m reading my junky horror novel quickly.

I’m reading Hamnet slowly.

And I’m also  enjoying the second edition of Forest for the Trees. Not much seems to have really changed since the first. I think the 2nd edition for the 21 century is just a gimmick to get people to buy it again, but it's been long enough since I last read that every statement seems newish. It's all over the place like a distracted fascinating conversationalist (or this blog). Some of it I relate to, some of it I don’t, but the book is good as well as more fun then I remember.

My junky horror novel is… junky. But exciting. I know how hard it is to write exciting, so I appreciate it.

photo by neonbrand

Hamnet I’m savoring like a fine wine if I drank. I feel like a hypocrite talking about fine wine, because when I did drink, cheap sangria was about as sophisticated as I got. That and alcohol mixed with chocolate. I thought of it all as candy. I gave that up and began a two gallon a day diet coke habit which I dropped and now I just drinking water and my strange cayenne pepper, lemon, and maple syrup tonic.

Spaghetti and More

Photo by Cottonbro

I really want to read now but I set an intention to write a blog post and feel I must fulfil it. 

It’s toward night now. Whatever the time my blog says I wrote this, don’t believe it. The man  is trying to screw with your brain or rather Blogger has me on Australian time and I live far away from Australia. This is the second time I’ve mentioned this and you figure I’d have it fixed by now, but it would ruin the conversation piece.

Made whole wheat spaghetti with a homemade sauce and me and Roe actually enjoyed it. I know people say no carbs, wheat belly, radiation has wiped out the soil or something; the last good crop of wheat was in the sixteen hundreds, but the spaghetti was very satisfying and what satisfies the soul satisfies the body so the stuff  I cooked tonight was practicality a health food.

 I really want to read, but I’m writing this damn post and the tragedy is after I’ve finished it’s my turn to do the dishes. I might hold them off until one in the morning. Then I can read, do a meditation, walk around the room. Everything.

I read the first edition and rather liked it. I'm starting the second edition of The Forest for the Trees by Betsy Lerner tonight. It's about writing and writers from a mass market editors perspective, now "updated for the 21st century", curious about what she's changed. 

Not Bad

Photo by Neel

I know this doesn't hold much authority. Probably saying your mother likes your story is more impressive, but I have to mention--I don’t know why I have to mention, but you’ve got to fill these blog posts with something,--I just read one of the short stories I wrote: a flash fiction piece and I was able to get a little outside myself for once and just read it like I’d read a regular story, detached a bit and not analyzing every mistake or worried about whether it’s accepted or not. It was pretty good. I mean not a masterpiece, but decent. I’m rather impressed with myself.

In less sillily self-congratulating news, I’m into new thought books. I’m  unimpressed with Joe Suit blabbering on about his three hundred dollar law of attraction course "definitely a 2000 dollar value”, act now or be lost, but sometimes the classic books are written so nicely I get swept up in the language and excited. I’m talking mainly about As a Man Thinketh by James Allen and The Game of Life and How to Play it by Florence Scovel Shinn. There’s something very satisfying about  reading them whether they work or not or whether I want them to.

Slowly going through Hamnet, but now I have a junky horror novel,  so we’ll see if the former goes to shit. However, at this point, Maggie O'Farrell has my attention.

In these uncertain unprecedented times my reading patterns are weird. I’m just reading because I want to, when I want to, with no effort to improve my writing, or mind, or anything. It’s works for me now. I don’t know for how long though.

 

Photo by Jose Antonio Gallego Vázquez

Meanwhile Roe plays too much Bruce Springsteen. I like him too, but every songs so vivid and incredibly dramatic I can take him more in limited quantities. Like a small block of fudge is delicious, but ten blocks of fudge gives you a stomach ache. She enjoying him so much, however, I don’t want to say anything about it to her. I’m thinking of silently suffering  as long as she doesn't play Point Blank more then once.

$

photo by  金 运

Money is made of green bills.

In the United States they have presidents on them.

Money symbolizes power and freedom. Without money you are poor. Poor performance of funds is piss poor. 

Money is God. No, God is God and he will give you money

Money is green like the woods.

I want money, but by stating I want money, I am stating I need money. I am stating I don’t have money. Therefore, I am creating a resistance. This is difficult, because I am obstructing the flow of money.

Money is a beautiful thing.

Money is the root of all evil.

Spend money like it’s going out of style. You’ve got to spend money to make money.

This money: it makes the world go round.

Buy a ticket, win a lot of bread.

You can’t take it with you.

 

Light Blues

photo by green ant

I really want to go to bed. I somehow I got my blogger set for the Australian clock, so I don’t know what time the system claims I’m writing this.  Here however, it’s late night.

Writers must write though.

I sent out my heavy story. I think it’s good. Maybe in two months I won't. In any case, now other people have to judge it. The most unfun part of hopeful publication. However without gatekeepers, no ones going to want to spend time reading anything and literature becomes a vast unlooked at twitter, so as a gray day’s rain keeps us from dying in a desert, editors have their place too.

I ate baked penne at an Italian restaurant for lunch and salad for dinner to try to balance it out. I know it won’t and my health will suffer, but just for a day or so.  

Nothing really great has happened. I just have bits and chit chat to inform you. Maybe I should review a book or something, before everyone runs away.

It’s cold, but the sun’s coming back, days getting longer, slowly but surely. I haven’t gotten the winter blues this year. Well, maybe light blues, not falling into despair, but a kind of permanent annoyance. No one wants to comfort me. They kind of want to give me the third finger. I can’t really blame them. The consequences of being obnoxious, but not truly depressed.

Roe puts up with me, so I’m happy enough and I can reign things in to the extent various baristas enjoy my company, while I wait for my iced tea: which is good, but makes me colder.

I have food and shelter, so now I should be busy seeking the top of Maslow’s self-actualization pyramid instead of sitting around. Maslow would be very disappointed if he knew or maybe being self-actualized, he wouldn’t care.

Tonic, Ganesha, and my Heavy Story

 

Photo by Josh Cris Gayle

I’m writing this blog instead of doing the dishes that are left over this morning from a tonic I make everyday.

It consists of spring water, lemon, maple syrup, and cayenne pepper. It’s supposed to do something. It feels like it's doing something, but I’m not sure what.

The obvious answer would be detoxifying, but I don’t think that’s scientifically possible. A body doesn’t really build up poisons that need to be released, despite popular opinion, unless one has cancer or something and  that wouldn't involve detoxifying. That would involve chemotherapy or something.

 I like the way the drink tastes though. It feels like it's clearing you out, maybe just mentally, but in any case, it can’t hurt.

 Better mood finally, but  I’m writing a heavy story. I’m trying to make it light enough to be accepted somewhere, but it's hard because it sooooooo heavy. Maybe I could find a heavy editor… Wish me luck.

 I took down a gaudy colored poster of Ganesha, but then I got worried he wouldn’t help me anymore so I put up a little gray and white xeroxed picture of him. I think this goes the other way into too subtle however. You can’t get a charge out of it or even really see it.

Maybe a statue. That cheapest nice one is 48 dollars  Two spaghetti dinners. Spaghetti’s all right, but I like the fresh vegetables and fish 48 dollars privileges me. Roe likes them better too. She says spaghetti makes us fat and perhaps she has a point, but a nice statue of Ganesha vs. a little weight, you know?

Being a quasi-elephant, Ganesha is very fat, but I digress.

Stopping

photo by Lawrence Chrismorie on Unsplash

I stopped cleaning the apartment and stopped writing and just stopped.

When I searched for advice, an angel oracle card told me I should accept my nonduality, but still reek of humanity, which was rather obscure.

Still glad to be alive. I mean, I wouldn’t commit suicide, particularly not over being scatterbrained, but it feels very unpleasant.

Read a little Hamnet. That was good. I also got a high speed blender from Amazon, plus stainless steel salad tongs.

That’s it, not a great day leaves me with nothing much to say, but I’ve tried to put forth a mildly entertaining effort.

Magick, Books, Covid

photo by Content Pixie

Me and Roe are running out of places to go. The coffeeshops are not available to sit in so we order from Starbucks--I know, there are independent coffee shops that are much more exciting--then we take our drinks to the car where we use them and read in the parking lot.

We might drive to a local park, but it's too cold to go for a walk, so we just drive through it. Sometimes twice.

We go to Stop and Shop and select ingredients for dinner and hope we don’t get corona-virus.

We read at home and stare out the window.

Roe’s convinced that if she gets corona-virus, she’ll die immediately. I don’t think I will, but who knows?

We’re getting stimulus checks. I’m not knocking them, but we don’t have anywhere to spend the money, except on food and shelter. 

I could be a little grateful.

Reading New Thought. Particularly The Game of Life and How to Play It. I’ve read this twice. Reading a Self-Identity Ho’oponopono book. also. One book tells me to think positive thoughts to get rich. The other book tells me to think no thoughts to get inspired.

I’m not exactly unhappy, but I’ve got an edge to me that’s a little too sharp for comfort. I want to go to the beach, but of course that’s unrealistic.

Trying to do magick. I feel the power in my body, but it’s not the fast lane to fulfillment, yet. I think things would be much worse if I didn’t do my spells though. Also I’m a beginner, can’t expect to play piano concertos in one day, so why should I expect to be a mage in a minute, etc, etc,etc. 

Stoic

From Wikipedia Commons

Winter wonderland: cold. New year's past. Patiently waiting for everything to change. Vaccines are here, but not distributed. Biden isn’t in ’til the 20th. I’m not famous, just waiting around like a lounge lizard. There’s really no day to be seized, so don’t ask me to seize the day or I will ask you to seize your nose and blow it.

 I hope I’m not bitter. A few centuries ago, I’d be dead by now. Today, I have a number of years to look forward to assuming a piano doesn’t fall on my head. And where there’s life there’s hope. After death there could be hope also, but no one knows.

 I tried stoicism, sometime in 2020, but I was basically getting my information from a business book. It kept talking about making executive decisions and sited Andrew Carnegie as a stoic god. I couldn’t translate this to my life in anyway, but when I read Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, it gave me pause. It was all right. I’m not a roman emperor either, but somehow, what I understood, I related to. Not entirely, but a lot. My books on how to live my life are mostly from a new age feminine perspective, so it was nice to have another point of view.

 It basically depends how you look at logos that decides whether I’m into stoicism. If you look at logos as a logical, but still mystical force like God/Goddess or the Universe, I’m all ears. If you look on it as an intellectual framework for getting your to-do list done, not so much.

 Different strokes for different folks, of course.