The Blog

baseball poem

Wednesday, 17 December 2008 16:51

frozen cleat marks
behind the backstop
bare branches creaking
in the cold winter wind
the mound stands naked
within an infield
clothed in white
snow on the bleachers
where fans will sit again
when spring comes
dreams thaw
and the boys play
on grass grown anew

60 days until pitchers and catchers report for spring training.

Crap on Scraps

Monday, 15 December 2008 16:22

I have a stack of pages with my scrawl on them.

Poems, observations, complaints and ideas.

I've started typing them, but there's such a backlog I'm afraid I'll never have time to finish. You see I keep finding other scraps of paper to write on, so it's a task like painting the Golden Gate Bridge; once done I must begin again as the beginning's now the end. Sisyphean.

The writing's a neurosis. Hypergraphia.

The desire to blog it is something else.

Last night I was exhausted from a weekend of fun. We had people over. I made my Jammin' Clam & Salmon Cioppino. It snowed. We built a snow fort. In short, I hadn't a moment to write crap like this. So, even though I was exhausted (fell asleep in front of the fire at 8:15) once I'd lifted my fat sack of bones off the couch, brushed my teeth and laid down in bed, the thoughts racing in my head kept me awake.

I had to find a pen and scribble notes on a scrap of paper:

"Compulsion - Documenting"

"Guy with Writing Disorder" (This note referred to Robert Shields who I'd read about once. Am now uncertain whether it's good or bad that Google enables me to find these flimsy memories).

"Why take pictures? The moment. Writing about the moment. History - Memory - Reality." (This is a 4,000 word post. I'll write it tonight when I can't sleep).

"Fulan Gong - PR" (See Attack of the Flak for more on this).

This gets me back to the beginning, the thing running through my brain since the Do the Little Things post, which is a "Do the Big Things" post, which I'll do as soon as I clean up the kitchen and take my medication.

Sublimation

Thursday, 11 December 2008 16:47

Sublimation: the transformation of unwanted impulses into something less harmful OR a transition from the solid to gas phase with no intermediate liquid stage.

I'm speaking of the former.

It's been 38 hours since my last cigarette. I'm going to go heads down on typing the last of The Magic Circus in order to transform my unwanted desire for nicotine into a complete screenplay. It remains to be seen if the complete screenplay will be more or less harmful.

I told a friend who had something to do with M. Night Shyamalan's "Sixth Sense" that I would mail him the script. I need to do that by Dec. 13th. I thrive on deadlines (ahem).

I'll keep you posted.

Lugubrious

Wednesday, 10 December 2008 17:41

It is now less than two weeks from Winter Solstice. Since moving to the PNW, I've been far more in tune with that date when the days start getting longer. When the sun sets later, rather (all days are 24 hours, no?)

On days like today, gray and cold, I have a tendency to jump right past bummed-out and go straight to lugubrious:

Pronunciation:

\lu̇-ˈgü-brē-əs also -ˈgyü-\

Function:

adjective

Etymology:

Latin lugubris, from lugēre to mourn; akin to Greek lygros mournful

Date:

1585

The good news being I love saying the word lugubrious. LOO-GOO-BREE-US.

It cheers me up.

I just need to focus. There's a lot of bad news out there. I've got a lot of things, a lot of ideas and possibilities I want to take to fruition. 

The Stay-at-Home Dad Survival Guide - a potential book

The Magic Circus - a potential screenplay 

The Return of the Superbas - a novella that helps explain the cartoon within The Magic Circus

Gone Postal - a novel that helps explain the animated TV show within the cartoon within The Magic Circus

My friends tell me my fiction is too complicated.

I think my reality is.

For example, I still can't figure out how to find a job.

LOO-GOO-BREE-US...there, that's better.