My old English teachers still mess with me, especially when reinforced by somebody’s good intentions, a person who thinks writing is all about being proper and following the rules.
It’s a hard thing to struggle against. We are raised in a culture where rules are important, where you get rewarded for following them: good grades, good schools, good jobs. If you keep to the straight and narrow, you got your path laid out in front of you: career, marriage with 2.5 kids, vacations, retire to Arizona, a European cruise, reasonable health care. It’s a life with no adventure.
It’s a life with no faith. Nobody in a rule driven life can go to a place they are yet to be shown. That’s not being careful. You cannot be careful and move into the unknown at the same time. Faith is a risky business.
So is writing. Real writing is putting words on the page one at a time, not knowing where you will end up. It is a courageous act of discovery not suited to the faint of heart. You have to be willing to break a few rules, get your page a little messy, be unafraid not to clean it up too much you take all the gristle and bone out of it.
If you do it right, what you will write is a living thing, going where it wants to go. You might have a leash on it, but there aint no choker and the better it is the bigger dog you got hold of following its nose. You got to put your trust in something besides yourself and what you know about writing. You got to trust it knows where it wants to go.
It’s just like faith when you put your trust in something bigger than you are and trust where He’s leading you. It’s not about right and wrong. It’s about who you are and where you’re going. There are times when you need to ignore those old teachers and not be afraid to color outside the lines.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Take Your Best Shot
I feel like I’ve gotten the rest of me back, the part I laid aside when making a living and providing for family became a priority. I squeezed in writing when I could, which was not often.
It’s odd that along with the stroke I’ve gotten the gift of time. I’m writing six plus hours a day. It’s not been much over a month that I’ve been doing it. I feel like I’ve still got a bit of rust to shake off. But I don’t know how to say how good this feels. Time to write. I’ve been dreaming about it, praying for years. I thought maybe when I retire. Maybe?
Now here it is, the shot I’ve always said I wanted. I feel very blessed. I think most people, for one reason or another, don’t get their shot. I guess I think most people don’t get as far as dreaming about a shot they would like to get. And here I am early into it.
Another thing I think most people don’t get is to know if they had the shot, would they take it? And having taken their shot, did they make it?
Well, I’m in the process of taking it. I know that much. But to carry it through, that’s another question. Back when I was going to Columbia College, near the end of the school year, I read SONNY’S BLUES by James Baldwin. My reaction to it, besides it being a fantastic story was “Holy Shit.” It was my first clear realization of how hard I was going to have to work if I wanted to write the way I wanted to write. I didn’t know if I wanted to work that hard and I didn’t right at all that summer. I went back to school in the fall and in my naiveté, I answered yes.
It’s maybe fifteen years later and here I am In front of that question again. I have to answer it every day. I’m always surprised how closely writing, for me anyway, parallels my faith. I am not so naive anymore. It’s the same question but I hear it a little differently now. If I want to write to the standard I want to write, am I willing to work that hard whether I make it as a writer or not?
I’ve got my shot. I’m going to take it. It’s a faith thing. I don’t get to know in advance. But, whatever happens, I’ll know I took the shot. I can live with that.
It’s odd that along with the stroke I’ve gotten the gift of time. I’m writing six plus hours a day. It’s not been much over a month that I’ve been doing it. I feel like I’ve still got a bit of rust to shake off. But I don’t know how to say how good this feels. Time to write. I’ve been dreaming about it, praying for years. I thought maybe when I retire. Maybe?
Now here it is, the shot I’ve always said I wanted. I feel very blessed. I think most people, for one reason or another, don’t get their shot. I guess I think most people don’t get as far as dreaming about a shot they would like to get. And here I am early into it.
Another thing I think most people don’t get is to know if they had the shot, would they take it? And having taken their shot, did they make it?
Well, I’m in the process of taking it. I know that much. But to carry it through, that’s another question. Back when I was going to Columbia College, near the end of the school year, I read SONNY’S BLUES by James Baldwin. My reaction to it, besides it being a fantastic story was “Holy Shit.” It was my first clear realization of how hard I was going to have to work if I wanted to write the way I wanted to write. I didn’t know if I wanted to work that hard and I didn’t right at all that summer. I went back to school in the fall and in my naiveté, I answered yes.
It’s maybe fifteen years later and here I am In front of that question again. I have to answer it every day. I’m always surprised how closely writing, for me anyway, parallels my faith. I am not so naive anymore. It’s the same question but I hear it a little differently now. If I want to write to the standard I want to write, am I willing to work that hard whether I make it as a writer or not?
I’ve got my shot. I’m going to take it. It’s a faith thing. I don’t get to know in advance. But, whatever happens, I’ll know I took the shot. I can live with that.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Interesting Times
My stroke fully manifested itself in three days affecting my right side. I am right handed. Along with the surrounding muscle my not insignificant bicep, I was after all a construction worker, turned into jelly and sloshed down to the under side of my forearm. After that, if I concentrated real hard, I could make my arm twitch. It lay at my side my hand curled into a fist.
I started to get movement back quickly. After a couple of days I could open my hand and my elbow started to work again. My upper arm, however, did not want to move. It eventually started to move with a lot of pain.
The thing is, one of the curious things about strokes is there is no pain associated with them. In me a small part of my brain died were working nerve connections had pathways that I used to tell different muscles what to do. The stroke, more or less, bulldozed those paths and I had to learn new ones.
There was a complication which explains the pain. Apparently I have an old rotator cuff injury. I’ve had trouble sleeping for over a year due to pain in my right shoulder. While I was still working, I was using the shoulder, keeping it moving. When I had the stroke, it stopped moving. It had time to freeze up.
I’m moving it now but I’m limited in my range of motion because of pain and that is interfering with me making those new pathways. It amazes me now how weak it is. It’s almost nine weeks after the stroke. I go to Bally’s three times a week. I’m working on the arm, but it’s slow going. I’m using the different machines to help strengthen the right side of my body. Everything is progressing really well, strength and movement wise, except the shoulder. With most of the shoulder machines, I can’t reach the handle. The one that I can reach, if I use it with the least weight possible and I start it out with my left hand, I can push it up about eight or nine times.
I got a cortisone shot about two weeks ago. It was supposed to help. I complained after a week it wasn’t helping very much. The orthopedic doctor told me to give it three weeks. It will be two weeks on Monday. At first they said it would maybe take a couple days to work.
They also said I might have a rotator cuff tare. That could mean surgery. Surgery means going off aspirin. They won’t let me do that for another four months. The usual test for a cuff tare is loss of strength. They can’t tell that because of the stroke. So I guess were waiting for the cortisone shot to officially not work and then they can schedule the much more expensive MRI to determine if I have the tare, in which case they can do something about it July.
So, just another reason that the ancient Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times,” is no longer my favorite.
I started to get movement back quickly. After a couple of days I could open my hand and my elbow started to work again. My upper arm, however, did not want to move. It eventually started to move with a lot of pain.
The thing is, one of the curious things about strokes is there is no pain associated with them. In me a small part of my brain died were working nerve connections had pathways that I used to tell different muscles what to do. The stroke, more or less, bulldozed those paths and I had to learn new ones.
There was a complication which explains the pain. Apparently I have an old rotator cuff injury. I’ve had trouble sleeping for over a year due to pain in my right shoulder. While I was still working, I was using the shoulder, keeping it moving. When I had the stroke, it stopped moving. It had time to freeze up.
I’m moving it now but I’m limited in my range of motion because of pain and that is interfering with me making those new pathways. It amazes me now how weak it is. It’s almost nine weeks after the stroke. I go to Bally’s three times a week. I’m working on the arm, but it’s slow going. I’m using the different machines to help strengthen the right side of my body. Everything is progressing really well, strength and movement wise, except the shoulder. With most of the shoulder machines, I can’t reach the handle. The one that I can reach, if I use it with the least weight possible and I start it out with my left hand, I can push it up about eight or nine times.
I got a cortisone shot about two weeks ago. It was supposed to help. I complained after a week it wasn’t helping very much. The orthopedic doctor told me to give it three weeks. It will be two weeks on Monday. At first they said it would maybe take a couple days to work.
They also said I might have a rotator cuff tare. That could mean surgery. Surgery means going off aspirin. They won’t let me do that for another four months. The usual test for a cuff tare is loss of strength. They can’t tell that because of the stroke. So I guess were waiting for the cortisone shot to officially not work and then they can schedule the much more expensive MRI to determine if I have the tare, in which case they can do something about it July.
So, just another reason that the ancient Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times,” is no longer my favorite.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Sucking Up To Health Care
I’m having trouble making up my mind about the health care debate and it occurs to me the reason is: I don’t know whom to trust. Maybe I should rephrase that. I am afraid to trust any of them.
It’s the divide down the isle. They seem to have fortified it with trenches and barbed wire and a machinegun nest. Middle ground is a no-man’s-land where everybody dies.
Think about it. The Republicans disagree with everything the democrat’s say and visa-versa. There is no give and take. According to each side the other side is a bunch of imbeciles waiting to drag the country down to the gutter given half a chance. They accuse each other of being self-serving narcissist with only their own interest at heart.
I can’t help but wonder if they really believe anything their saying or if they’re all just trying to keep their paycheck coming. It seems they traded serving their constituents for pandering to them.
Some of the issues are hard to figure out, granted. But Canada has figured out how to sell us drugs cheaper than we can get them here. There are countries that give their citizens decent health care at a reasonable cost. It may not be great or the best, but it’s decent. I have to tell you, decent health care is better than health care that sucks. Right now we have health care that sucks. You don’t have to pass the mother of all health care bills. Please stop trying. Please stop painting your opponents in the worst possible light so you get a good sound bite on the boob tube, though I’m beginning to think you all belong there.
If you want to look good and get reelected do the whole country and yourselves a favor. Suck it up and work together.
It’s the divide down the isle. They seem to have fortified it with trenches and barbed wire and a machinegun nest. Middle ground is a no-man’s-land where everybody dies.
Think about it. The Republicans disagree with everything the democrat’s say and visa-versa. There is no give and take. According to each side the other side is a bunch of imbeciles waiting to drag the country down to the gutter given half a chance. They accuse each other of being self-serving narcissist with only their own interest at heart.
I can’t help but wonder if they really believe anything their saying or if they’re all just trying to keep their paycheck coming. It seems they traded serving their constituents for pandering to them.
Some of the issues are hard to figure out, granted. But Canada has figured out how to sell us drugs cheaper than we can get them here. There are countries that give their citizens decent health care at a reasonable cost. It may not be great or the best, but it’s decent. I have to tell you, decent health care is better than health care that sucks. Right now we have health care that sucks. You don’t have to pass the mother of all health care bills. Please stop trying. Please stop painting your opponents in the worst possible light so you get a good sound bite on the boob tube, though I’m beginning to think you all belong there.
If you want to look good and get reelected do the whole country and yourselves a favor. Suck it up and work together.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Books Win
I went to a round table discussion last night about the Internet and the future of publishing. One of the main questions is online publication killing print. It seems I’ve heard this all my life; nobody reads anymore.
The idea that books, I mean pages between too covers, will ever die out, is absurd to me. I myself am a case in point.
I started reading comic books, Superman and Archie. I still remember my earliest notions of lust directed toward Betty and Veronica. Then came Mad Magazine and Weird Tales and the like. Finally by first real book, The Illustrated Man.
The problem was, I was a working class kid. Reading was all well and good, but eventually you had to go to work.
“Okay, come on, now,” my dad said. “Put down that nonsense.”
Then there was grade school. “In the third grade I wrote a poem for a class assignment. I remember in it I took exception to that poem about little boys being made out of snail and puppy dog tails. My beef was yes, but so much more. Apparently my teacher was quite charmed with it.
One day in class she mentioned in class how one of the poems our classmates wrote was very good and she decided to blind side me by having me read it in front of class. Shy kid that I was, this was horrifying. I read it to the twitters of my friends. Mind you this was the fifties and they all razzed me for the nice little faggy poem I wrote. I don’t remember the teacher ever encouraging me to write another.
About that time my spelling abilities went the way of the dinosaurs and from then through high school failed attempts at spelling were all that was brought to the attention of the class by my English teachers. Reading became this secret, somewhat shameful thing I did.
I think It all changed with 1984, the book, not the year. I found someone I could identify with, like me, reading in secret. After that I didn’t care. I had survived childhood by becoming a non-conformist. I started to read in earnest. I’ve been reading ever since.
I write and read against all odds. I started writing in 1973; bad love poems about a co-worker at the North Suburban postal facility in River Grove, Illinois. I haven’t stopped yet.
So I’m not worried about our culture killing books. It brought all it forces against one working class kid and tried to kill the idea of reading and writing.
Books won because the good ones give us a place to go that the powers that be cannot touch and they have no weapon against.
The idea that books, I mean pages between too covers, will ever die out, is absurd to me. I myself am a case in point.
I started reading comic books, Superman and Archie. I still remember my earliest notions of lust directed toward Betty and Veronica. Then came Mad Magazine and Weird Tales and the like. Finally by first real book, The Illustrated Man.
The problem was, I was a working class kid. Reading was all well and good, but eventually you had to go to work.
“Okay, come on, now,” my dad said. “Put down that nonsense.”
Then there was grade school. “In the third grade I wrote a poem for a class assignment. I remember in it I took exception to that poem about little boys being made out of snail and puppy dog tails. My beef was yes, but so much more. Apparently my teacher was quite charmed with it.
One day in class she mentioned in class how one of the poems our classmates wrote was very good and she decided to blind side me by having me read it in front of class. Shy kid that I was, this was horrifying. I read it to the twitters of my friends. Mind you this was the fifties and they all razzed me for the nice little faggy poem I wrote. I don’t remember the teacher ever encouraging me to write another.
About that time my spelling abilities went the way of the dinosaurs and from then through high school failed attempts at spelling were all that was brought to the attention of the class by my English teachers. Reading became this secret, somewhat shameful thing I did.
I think It all changed with 1984, the book, not the year. I found someone I could identify with, like me, reading in secret. After that I didn’t care. I had survived childhood by becoming a non-conformist. I started to read in earnest. I’ve been reading ever since.
I write and read against all odds. I started writing in 1973; bad love poems about a co-worker at the North Suburban postal facility in River Grove, Illinois. I haven’t stopped yet.
So I’m not worried about our culture killing books. It brought all it forces against one working class kid and tried to kill the idea of reading and writing.
Books won because the good ones give us a place to go that the powers that be cannot touch and they have no weapon against.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
The Faith To Doubt
I did a search to find out, as some suggest that God is sending a new message with the increase in earthquakes? Apparently not as, statistically speaking, there has been no increase. In fact there has been a slight decrease.
There is a thing in us humans; we want to know what happens next. This is fortunate for writers of fiction. What happens next is our bread and butter.
However not all purveyors of fiction are benign. I’ll give those I am speaking about the benefit of the doubt and assume they are in denial of their fear of the future, of a God that does not fit in their box, and are only trying to figure things out. Explanations are easier to live with than a mysterious God.
I guess it’s no sin to speculate about when the end times is coming, or asking what we can learn from events around the world and beyond that God allows to happen. However I think it’s important to remember we don’t really know. Oh, I want to know and I want to know definitively, without doubt. The trouble with that is, and I don’t think I saying anything here that isn’t widely accepted as a Christian worldview, we are called to live by faith. It is only on the other side of our earthly bodies that we will have no questions.
I know it makes for a scarier world, living with the unknown, but we are called to this, to work out our faith in fear and trembling. We have confidence, but our confidence is in Him, not in our own understanding of why He allows earthquakes.
There is a thing in us humans; we want to know what happens next. This is fortunate for writers of fiction. What happens next is our bread and butter.
However not all purveyors of fiction are benign. I’ll give those I am speaking about the benefit of the doubt and assume they are in denial of their fear of the future, of a God that does not fit in their box, and are only trying to figure things out. Explanations are easier to live with than a mysterious God.
I guess it’s no sin to speculate about when the end times is coming, or asking what we can learn from events around the world and beyond that God allows to happen. However I think it’s important to remember we don’t really know. Oh, I want to know and I want to know definitively, without doubt. The trouble with that is, and I don’t think I saying anything here that isn’t widely accepted as a Christian worldview, we are called to live by faith. It is only on the other side of our earthly bodies that we will have no questions.
I know it makes for a scarier world, living with the unknown, but we are called to this, to work out our faith in fear and trembling. We have confidence, but our confidence is in Him, not in our own understanding of why He allows earthquakes.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
This Is Sad
Let’s just say this up front. Michael Jackson’s “doctor” and I do say it in quotes, listen up AMA, ought to be bared from practice. Maybe I’m uninformed and you’ve done it already, but I don’t remember hearing anything. I don’t know if you can call him a drug pusher but, as I recall, there is something in the oath you guys take about doing no harm and it seems clear he did do harm for profit. He ought to be prosecuted.
That said, there is Michael’s cupability. I watched “This Is It” the documentary made out of the rehearsal film for his come back concert set to start eight days after he died.
I had heard it would show me that the tragedy was that Michael was on his way back and his genius was cut short by an untimely tragic death. Certainly his death was tragic, but watching his rehearsals was a sad experience.
I love come back stories, fighting back after being brought low to come back in triumph. That’s what I wanted. What I got was a tired narcissist trying to perform his old tricks. He wasn’t up to it. I watched really great dancers fawning over their self-important idol. It had to be hard going through their moves with the King of Pop wearing no clothes.
Maybe, ultimately that’s what Michael died of, his youthful narcissism, his belief in his own hype. Whatever kind of childhood he had, the man was fifty years old. How much more blatant can you be? He lived on Neverland ranch and refused to grow up. Michael Jackson was a false god, incapable of rising from his own ashes. I'm sorry for his passing but he should not be idolized. The truth is he died of a really screw up life aided by some heavey duty meds.
That said, there is Michael’s cupability. I watched “This Is It” the documentary made out of the rehearsal film for his come back concert set to start eight days after he died.
I had heard it would show me that the tragedy was that Michael was on his way back and his genius was cut short by an untimely tragic death. Certainly his death was tragic, but watching his rehearsals was a sad experience.
I love come back stories, fighting back after being brought low to come back in triumph. That’s what I wanted. What I got was a tired narcissist trying to perform his old tricks. He wasn’t up to it. I watched really great dancers fawning over their self-important idol. It had to be hard going through their moves with the King of Pop wearing no clothes.
Maybe, ultimately that’s what Michael died of, his youthful narcissism, his belief in his own hype. Whatever kind of childhood he had, the man was fifty years old. How much more blatant can you be? He lived on Neverland ranch and refused to grow up. Michael Jackson was a false god, incapable of rising from his own ashes. I'm sorry for his passing but he should not be idolized. The truth is he died of a really screw up life aided by some heavey duty meds.
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