Well, sometimes no matter whether you have an idea for a blog post or not, life has other plans. Such is the case tonight. Of course, it could have something to do with the fact that my mom was on her Facebook page and then perusing her email inbox on my laptop, and then my brother wanted to see something on a different site...and now here I sit, with a solid idea for a blog post sitting patiently in my mind, and I know I can't write it. It's like sitting in a dingy motel room close to a major highway in L.A. You can tightly close the window, shut the blinds, scoot your chair all the way up to the crumbling desk or your back up against the headboard while your laptop steadily grows warmer on your legs...but yet, you're still the same atmosphere, and no matter how hard you try to crawl your way into your head with a few deliberate sentences and jabs at the smudged keys, that door isn't opening like a warped wooden door in its equally warped frame on a humidity-choked day.
So all you can do, then, is scribble a note on that door - legibally perferably - and come back later, hoping by the time you do that you'll be in a better atmosphere, an atmosphere that allows you to crawl inside your head more easily, like you suddenly shrink to a small child crawling into a bouncy house rather than an overzealous teeanger with more rolls of fat hanging off of their frame than all the jelly rolls in every New York bakery combined, and you can bounce around to your heart's content!
Well, before the metaphors become even stranger than the one just mentioned, let me end tonight's blog post. But first! I must write down two blog post titles for further reference before I forget. Of course, they won't make sense to you, and they might still not make sense to you when I write the blog posts attached to them, but then again, does anything ever make sense that comes from my head? Even when it's on paper?
Anyway, blog post title time! "Building houses without walls" and "A flickr of an obsession". :)
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Another look...in the pond of self-reflection
Why I am good at reflecting on my writing habits, and habits of myself, but yet when it comes to actually changing some of said writing habits - even editing my novellas, I find I can't do it? There's endless irony in life, isn't there? Such is what you get I guess when you're talking a little stroll down the pockmarked, crumbling asphalt of memory lane - or your mind just sort of wandered there on its own like mine tends to do when my hands are busy jacketing books and it realizes its not needed - and you happen across the pond of self-reflection, and next thing you know you're staring at yourself, in fragments, in haphazard fragments, and you feel like you're reading your own biography, written by an unfamiliar voice in your head, and you're reading it in that pond, word for word as it is typed behind your eyelids. Only just like when you catch yourself in a funny mirror, the overall person reflected back is familiar, but its the pieces that make up that overall reflection that are foreign. It's like a painting that started out as what is before your steadied easel set just right before the motionless lake shrouded in thin, morning's breath, but once you reach the center, that persistent, nagging white obliterated beneath hardening folds and broad sweeps of paint...it is something else entirely, and yet, it is the same a what nature has laid out before you, like a solid picture taken from time itself, translated from blank rolls of film, woven into shape from wordless pages of an endless book.
Ah yes, it feels good to ramble in my blog once again. It sort of feels like inching along in the sizzling, sun-glaring heat of an L.A highway and then in a moment of desperation when your patience has abruptly snapped against your heatwave-numbed mind like that old, chugging Ford wagon behind you spitting out backfires like the young teen cursing to your left, you decide...you need to go home for a good, long weekend and suddenly you find yourself in that yawning, unfurling space of swaying, whispering wheat fields and leaning telephone poles humming the same old tune, but with a tired grin on their faces, knowing that their fellow brethren they're connected to are carrying the same song hundreds of miles, both above in the frolicking air dipping into the drunkenly dancing fields and beneath them into the loamy, richly dark soil that has been the solid blood of many a farm for centuries.
And more rambling! But while I'm on the subject of L.A - well, kinda - let me just say that after watching the 1994 - I think it was made in '94? - Speed on VHS after I'd picked it up at a garage sale with my brother, that for some absurd reason I find myself wanting to visit L.A. Why? You might be laughing right now, and I'll be honest with you, as I sit here in a position that would make my chiropractor cringe on my non-computer chair at my laptop typing this, a part of me is laughing too. I mean, after all, I'm the person who has declared for how many years on this same blog that when I graduate college I want to live either A) In the countryside and have my neighbor's separated from me by undulating, whispering cornfields or silently stoic windbreaks of trees or B) In a small town that's miles - even hours - away from the nearest large metropolis and preferably have a population under a hundred people, and yet...I want to visit...L.A? Maybe it's because huge cities fascinate me and I just want to ride on one of those huge, sprawling highways that's like a football field for cars, or walk down a sidewalk right in the middle of downtown and feel the towering, arrogant air of all those gleaming, chrome-winking skyscrapers towering above me, crowding the sky until it seems as if they were there first and the sky is simply bleeding and etching itself around them, as if the city itself is a sort of metal forest, as if instead of soil and earth beneath their sturdy foundations it was instead nuts and bolts, steel beams and wire mesh.
Perhaps I want to visit L.A for the same reason that after watching a whole summer of Nash Bridges reruns I want to visit San Francisco. And there's irony too there, folks! Because you see, I have this odd fear of not liking to go up - or down! - steep hills in vehicles. Why? Because I'm terrified of how cars tilt when going up, or down, them. And forget about parking on one! That would be unspeakable. Have I discussed my peculiar fears already? Perhaps I'll save that for another blog post. More self-reflection? I can see I haven't left the pond of self-reflection yet. Although it surely dark by now. Perhaps the one-eyed moon has positioned itself directly behind me, with an almost inaudible snicker...of what? Self-amusement, of amusement with me? With the moon, it's always hard to tell. It falls through billowing curtains, dancing their patterns atop surfaces of a shadow-striped bedroom, it falls upon the cold, ivory keys of a keyboard, playing a silent song with its rapid fingers, like the swiveling ears of a mother doe watching out for prey as her young prance on fluid legs seemingly coiled with the very breath of spring itself, or the wings of a small sparrow perched on a thin branch, its throat vibrating with a mellifluous song but yet its eyes scan the horizon for a flicker of danger, there is no respite even in his most natural of songs.
Perhaps, while I am still gazing steadfastly into this pond of self-reflection, I can say that...maybe my intentions of starting out each blog post with a solid idea for a subject...is foolishness. After all, in a vague, flimsy sort of way, each subject is like an outline. It's something to follow, something to stick to, something to plod back to when I've aimlessly wandered away from it. In fact, all the same I was going this way and that in the above paragraphs I've felt it weighing down on me, like a friend calling after you, or constantly sending you text messages, telling to come home now, just come home, it's getting dark out, the mosquitoes will eat you alive and your legs burn to outrun the arch of that voice, the way it layers itself upon you like the humidity-choked air just before a thunderstorm releases its vapory breath. You don't feel quite free when that voice carries to you, like a small piece, even a single thread, of the outside world has followed you through those silently observing woods, and there's no weed-infested path or arching tunnel of trees or abandoned building with its splintered eyes of wood and glass that can lead you far enough away, no place that can effectively seal you off like they had before, like they always seemingly had.
So what, then? I ask myself, and perhaps you as well, if you care so to answer, that is. What shall I title each blog? I know I can't just leave it blank, that would rub incessantly against my memory - that mental log I have of all the blog posts I've written in the recent past - like the rough-side of a cat's tongue. Titles, for reasons I haven't fully understood, are of high-importance to me, especially with blogs. But, and here it further misunderstanding, they cannot simply be bluntly put, or simple, they must be like the one for today's post, or something totally ambiguous or metaphorical. And yes, I know, it's probably the writer in me, and heaven knows that part makes up a hundred percent and then some! But nevertheless, it is sometimes vexing because it seems that that unquenchable need to arouse a clever title overpowers the need to actually pair a blog post with it. I've heard people say - mostly professors - that a title isn't everything, but apparently my mind never got the memo. Apparently I haven't got a lot of memos, but I think I've been doing well enough.
So, what then, you might be asking, what this blog originally going to be about? Well, I'll have you know that I didn't go completely off track, I just happened to paint this particular post in different shades of the same color, although, mind you, they don't all particularly match! Anyway, this blog was going to be about a fact I am to the realization of when I noticed that both Stephen King - of whom I've had somewhat of a reading obsession with lately - and Wendy Corsi Staub, both routinely set their stories in the states they were born and currently live in. For King it is Maine, and for Staub it is New York. And since I'm in the habit of skimming both the front and back flaps of most of the books I jacket, I have come to the conclusion that many other fiction writers are in the habit of basing their stories in the states - and sometimes the very cities or towns - that they currently live in.
So I asked myself, why is that? Is it because it's some place, familiar? Or because they feel a deeply rooted connection? Is it because they simply never thought of writing their stories in a setting anywhere else? I guess I'll never get a direct answer unless I ask the authors themselves, or perhaps hunt down interviews online, which doesn't appeal to me at all, let me tell you.
Speaking of which! While I was thinking about all this yesterday at work, I thought to myself, if Wendy Corsi Staub lives in NYC and therefore bases all her stories there, why haven't I written a novella based in Sheboygan? Immediately my mental voice starts to laugh, slap its thighs and throw its head back, and I realize I've gotten my answer. Sheboygan, to me, is unappealing and drab, that I could never imagine conjuring up any elaborate novella here. Plus, I wouldn't want to put any character of mine through the agony of having to live here, even if it's fictitiously. Do I hate my hometown that much, you ask? And the answer is...partly, yes. Sheboygan has it's appeals, but novella-wise? Ha! Not by a long shot. Give me Oklahoma, where I have never set foot but only in my fragmented and uneducated imagination and yet it is where my mind has gone since middle school to lend a home to my characters. And give me Upper Michigan! Which, as of late, has been my 'novella-setting-obsession', I think within the last few weeks I've written out two or three story thoughts that are set in the U.P. Did I mention before that the U.P feels more like my home than Wisconsin does? In all my years of writing, I've only based one novella in Wisconsin, and that as been the White Victorian story. All others have either been in Oklahoma or Upper Michigan. And even when a character moves from one state to another, they're not from Wisconsin.
I see the one-eyed moon has moved away, even his eyelids - or eyelid - are drooping. Plus my hands are starting to ache, time for them to grip the Stephen King book I'm currently reading instead of skipping across this metal, perpetually smudged keyboard. Like I said earlier, it feels good to once again blow out all the "word-wind" in me and see how the individual letters arrange themselves on the page. And it is also good to occasionally gaze into the pond of self-reflection. After all, one never knows what may come up.
Ah yes, it feels good to ramble in my blog once again. It sort of feels like inching along in the sizzling, sun-glaring heat of an L.A highway and then in a moment of desperation when your patience has abruptly snapped against your heatwave-numbed mind like that old, chugging Ford wagon behind you spitting out backfires like the young teen cursing to your left, you decide...you need to go home for a good, long weekend and suddenly you find yourself in that yawning, unfurling space of swaying, whispering wheat fields and leaning telephone poles humming the same old tune, but with a tired grin on their faces, knowing that their fellow brethren they're connected to are carrying the same song hundreds of miles, both above in the frolicking air dipping into the drunkenly dancing fields and beneath them into the loamy, richly dark soil that has been the solid blood of many a farm for centuries.
And more rambling! But while I'm on the subject of L.A - well, kinda - let me just say that after watching the 1994 - I think it was made in '94? - Speed on VHS after I'd picked it up at a garage sale with my brother, that for some absurd reason I find myself wanting to visit L.A. Why? You might be laughing right now, and I'll be honest with you, as I sit here in a position that would make my chiropractor cringe on my non-computer chair at my laptop typing this, a part of me is laughing too. I mean, after all, I'm the person who has declared for how many years on this same blog that when I graduate college I want to live either A) In the countryside and have my neighbor's separated from me by undulating, whispering cornfields or silently stoic windbreaks of trees or B) In a small town that's miles - even hours - away from the nearest large metropolis and preferably have a population under a hundred people, and yet...I want to visit...L.A? Maybe it's because huge cities fascinate me and I just want to ride on one of those huge, sprawling highways that's like a football field for cars, or walk down a sidewalk right in the middle of downtown and feel the towering, arrogant air of all those gleaming, chrome-winking skyscrapers towering above me, crowding the sky until it seems as if they were there first and the sky is simply bleeding and etching itself around them, as if the city itself is a sort of metal forest, as if instead of soil and earth beneath their sturdy foundations it was instead nuts and bolts, steel beams and wire mesh.
Perhaps I want to visit L.A for the same reason that after watching a whole summer of Nash Bridges reruns I want to visit San Francisco. And there's irony too there, folks! Because you see, I have this odd fear of not liking to go up - or down! - steep hills in vehicles. Why? Because I'm terrified of how cars tilt when going up, or down, them. And forget about parking on one! That would be unspeakable. Have I discussed my peculiar fears already? Perhaps I'll save that for another blog post. More self-reflection? I can see I haven't left the pond of self-reflection yet. Although it surely dark by now. Perhaps the one-eyed moon has positioned itself directly behind me, with an almost inaudible snicker...of what? Self-amusement, of amusement with me? With the moon, it's always hard to tell. It falls through billowing curtains, dancing their patterns atop surfaces of a shadow-striped bedroom, it falls upon the cold, ivory keys of a keyboard, playing a silent song with its rapid fingers, like the swiveling ears of a mother doe watching out for prey as her young prance on fluid legs seemingly coiled with the very breath of spring itself, or the wings of a small sparrow perched on a thin branch, its throat vibrating with a mellifluous song but yet its eyes scan the horizon for a flicker of danger, there is no respite even in his most natural of songs.
Perhaps, while I am still gazing steadfastly into this pond of self-reflection, I can say that...maybe my intentions of starting out each blog post with a solid idea for a subject...is foolishness. After all, in a vague, flimsy sort of way, each subject is like an outline. It's something to follow, something to stick to, something to plod back to when I've aimlessly wandered away from it. In fact, all the same I was going this way and that in the above paragraphs I've felt it weighing down on me, like a friend calling after you, or constantly sending you text messages, telling to come home now, just come home, it's getting dark out, the mosquitoes will eat you alive and your legs burn to outrun the arch of that voice, the way it layers itself upon you like the humidity-choked air just before a thunderstorm releases its vapory breath. You don't feel quite free when that voice carries to you, like a small piece, even a single thread, of the outside world has followed you through those silently observing woods, and there's no weed-infested path or arching tunnel of trees or abandoned building with its splintered eyes of wood and glass that can lead you far enough away, no place that can effectively seal you off like they had before, like they always seemingly had.
So what, then? I ask myself, and perhaps you as well, if you care so to answer, that is. What shall I title each blog? I know I can't just leave it blank, that would rub incessantly against my memory - that mental log I have of all the blog posts I've written in the recent past - like the rough-side of a cat's tongue. Titles, for reasons I haven't fully understood, are of high-importance to me, especially with blogs. But, and here it further misunderstanding, they cannot simply be bluntly put, or simple, they must be like the one for today's post, or something totally ambiguous or metaphorical. And yes, I know, it's probably the writer in me, and heaven knows that part makes up a hundred percent and then some! But nevertheless, it is sometimes vexing because it seems that that unquenchable need to arouse a clever title overpowers the need to actually pair a blog post with it. I've heard people say - mostly professors - that a title isn't everything, but apparently my mind never got the memo. Apparently I haven't got a lot of memos, but I think I've been doing well enough.
So, what then, you might be asking, what this blog originally going to be about? Well, I'll have you know that I didn't go completely off track, I just happened to paint this particular post in different shades of the same color, although, mind you, they don't all particularly match! Anyway, this blog was going to be about a fact I am to the realization of when I noticed that both Stephen King - of whom I've had somewhat of a reading obsession with lately - and Wendy Corsi Staub, both routinely set their stories in the states they were born and currently live in. For King it is Maine, and for Staub it is New York. And since I'm in the habit of skimming both the front and back flaps of most of the books I jacket, I have come to the conclusion that many other fiction writers are in the habit of basing their stories in the states - and sometimes the very cities or towns - that they currently live in.
So I asked myself, why is that? Is it because it's some place, familiar? Or because they feel a deeply rooted connection? Is it because they simply never thought of writing their stories in a setting anywhere else? I guess I'll never get a direct answer unless I ask the authors themselves, or perhaps hunt down interviews online, which doesn't appeal to me at all, let me tell you.
Speaking of which! While I was thinking about all this yesterday at work, I thought to myself, if Wendy Corsi Staub lives in NYC and therefore bases all her stories there, why haven't I written a novella based in Sheboygan? Immediately my mental voice starts to laugh, slap its thighs and throw its head back, and I realize I've gotten my answer. Sheboygan, to me, is unappealing and drab, that I could never imagine conjuring up any elaborate novella here. Plus, I wouldn't want to put any character of mine through the agony of having to live here, even if it's fictitiously. Do I hate my hometown that much, you ask? And the answer is...partly, yes. Sheboygan has it's appeals, but novella-wise? Ha! Not by a long shot. Give me Oklahoma, where I have never set foot but only in my fragmented and uneducated imagination and yet it is where my mind has gone since middle school to lend a home to my characters. And give me Upper Michigan! Which, as of late, has been my 'novella-setting-obsession', I think within the last few weeks I've written out two or three story thoughts that are set in the U.P. Did I mention before that the U.P feels more like my home than Wisconsin does? In all my years of writing, I've only based one novella in Wisconsin, and that as been the White Victorian story. All others have either been in Oklahoma or Upper Michigan. And even when a character moves from one state to another, they're not from Wisconsin.
I see the one-eyed moon has moved away, even his eyelids - or eyelid - are drooping. Plus my hands are starting to ache, time for them to grip the Stephen King book I'm currently reading instead of skipping across this metal, perpetually smudged keyboard. Like I said earlier, it feels good to once again blow out all the "word-wind" in me and see how the individual letters arrange themselves on the page. And it is also good to occasionally gaze into the pond of self-reflection. After all, one never knows what may come up.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Just a quick posting! I didn't forget about my blog! Honestly!
I feel extremely guilty for not posting a blog for two weeks, and I knew I couldn't let it slip into three weeks so I'm just going to do the old standby and post a photo. Today I really did have a posting in mind to talk about, but unfortunately I don't have time to talk about what I wanted to, so below you will find a sunset picture that I took while on a bike ride I went on earlier this evening! I have found a certain road - and roads! - that I love biking down and have always wanted to take my camera along, and finally tonight I followed through! I really can't explain my obsession with photographing telephone/utility poles. It's just one of those things I love, right alongside sunsets and old houses. There's just a part of me they reach out and snag, a part of myself I can't quite locate but they seem to have no trouble at all!
Oh my, I'm rambling, and the hour for my bedtime has come and gone. Enjoy the picture! (P.S: every time I stopped to snap a picture the mosquitoes found me, but I consider each picture worth it!)
Oh my, I'm rambling, and the hour for my bedtime has come and gone. Enjoy the picture! (P.S: every time I stopped to snap a picture the mosquitoes found me, but I consider each picture worth it!)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)