A new title for the project: Dancing On The Titanic. Because that is what I am doing ... the question, why write anything given the dreary decline of the planet, which looks more dismal every day? It is like dancing on the Titanic: facing imminent death with present joy. The interior drama of the book, between Author and Reader, mediated by CJ. So we should go to the Titanic as well as to ancient Greece and the Little Big Horn.
Talk about an ambitious, difficult novel! But I love the challenge.
*
How best to set up the strange "rules" of the narrative? Very critical to do this and very early on. The special tone and rules here.
*
MONDAY. On the deck, trying a new way to set the tone for the new book.
*
Wrote something. Needs a lot of work but I think the concept might be right, the way to begin the adventure.
*
On the deck, just past noon. Watching the birds feed. Trying to get my head into vacation mode, out of a slight funk that's been with me for some days now.
Trying to convince H to take several day vacation and rent cabin on McKenzie River out of Eugene. Haven't been there in decades but it is gorgeous. Many fond memories from grad school days. Be nice to get away for a few days before a longer trip to Boise after Labor Day, to see her incarcerated grandson.
I am not sure I have the stamina to do the new project ... each one comes harder than the one before. Maybe it's just old age. Or increased challenges and ambition.
Already worn out for the day. A little writing, a batch of biscuits ... so little can exhaust me these days. That's either pathetic, symptomatic or normal. Not sure which ha ha.
*
Outliving your best friends sucks.
*
TUESDAY. On the deck. Sometimes the lack of continuity in my every day life, due to H's memory loss and the constant reinvention of the wheel, not only daily but sometimes hourly, really gets to me and I want to go jump off the nearest bridge. I need a vacation -- ALONE. Might have to work out something along those lines.
I have a transition from mission to Little Big Horn that will work, I think, in the seamless "quantum landscape" I have in mind. Can try it soon. I think these moments need to come early in the narrative to set the reader up for more to come. The real fun, for me, is after I have a workable draft and can start fiddling with it. These pieces are like, will be like, pulling teeth.
Writing here makes me feel a tad saner than I felt before I started. Writing has been my salvation before.
*
CONTINUITY. Perhaps one reason lack of continuity flips me out today is that my life has been defined with whole cloth, my life's work a testament of continuity. Indeed, the half-century old story from LITERARY REVIEW, "Fragments Before the Fall," which I wrote in one quick sitting, angry at getting a mailbox full of rejection slips, replying with my "fuck you" artistic statement, trying to show what my work was about, why I write, sending it right back to LR -- which accepted it!, a victory of passion over rationality, I suppose; this work speaks to me today, is still the principle from which I write, though with virtually no audience now, which I try not to get me down, thinking, or hallucinating, that I will have an audience in the future, as past old work has found an audience as much as 30+ years after it was written ... you have to keep the faith to a degree to write at all, unless you decide going in that you are in diary mode. But I've always been a public writer, whether in a popular or oblivious part of my professional cycle. The point being, Continuity is the bread that feeds me in my professional life, it is stressful when it disappears in my personal life.
I really should be living alone in a studio apt in the southwest now, I think, among strangers, doing my work and maybe finding a few friends to pass time with. I am not a good care giver, though I always do my best. But I don't know if H will ever give up her old habits and ghosts and live in a present tense reality again, dealing with her limitations instead of pretending they don't exist and putting up such a bullshit front to her family and friends. I seem to be the only one who experiences her reality.
I love this house, though. If I can figure out how to deal with H's changes in a less stressful way, this could be a great place to spend my final years, writing, brooding, watching the birds. Especially in summer, good weather. This is like a vacation cabin at its best. Like now, I really dig being out here, pounding on the AlphaSmart.
L in LA is the human who knows me best, the one still alive. I wish she were closer to hang with. She has known me for most of her life, over half a century, and she has seen me at my best and at my worst. She knows me as a writer, though I'm not sure she is "a fan." Nor is H a fan, really. That's fine but inconvenient. It's nice to be around folks who give you strokes.
I had a great, major stroke running into an old actor acquaintance a few months ago. In a social setting, he went on and on and on about how great my plays are, how important my work is, etc, and this to a crowd around us, he went on so much I actually got embarrassed, and it's not easy to embarrass me. But what mattered to me was this: if you were there, if you saw the work, you remember! And I don't think the work is less powerful now, it's just invisible. Someone should revive it. Etc etc etc. I guess I am close to whining so better stop. I abhor whiners haha.
Talk about an ambitious, difficult novel! But I love the challenge.
*
How best to set up the strange "rules" of the narrative? Very critical to do this and very early on. The special tone and rules here.
*
MONDAY. On the deck, trying a new way to set the tone for the new book.
*
Wrote something. Needs a lot of work but I think the concept might be right, the way to begin the adventure.
*
On the deck, just past noon. Watching the birds feed. Trying to get my head into vacation mode, out of a slight funk that's been with me for some days now.
Trying to convince H to take several day vacation and rent cabin on McKenzie River out of Eugene. Haven't been there in decades but it is gorgeous. Many fond memories from grad school days. Be nice to get away for a few days before a longer trip to Boise after Labor Day, to see her incarcerated grandson.
I am not sure I have the stamina to do the new project ... each one comes harder than the one before. Maybe it's just old age. Or increased challenges and ambition.
Already worn out for the day. A little writing, a batch of biscuits ... so little can exhaust me these days. That's either pathetic, symptomatic or normal. Not sure which ha ha.
*
Outliving your best friends sucks.
*
TUESDAY. On the deck. Sometimes the lack of continuity in my every day life, due to H's memory loss and the constant reinvention of the wheel, not only daily but sometimes hourly, really gets to me and I want to go jump off the nearest bridge. I need a vacation -- ALONE. Might have to work out something along those lines.
I have a transition from mission to Little Big Horn that will work, I think, in the seamless "quantum landscape" I have in mind. Can try it soon. I think these moments need to come early in the narrative to set the reader up for more to come. The real fun, for me, is after I have a workable draft and can start fiddling with it. These pieces are like, will be like, pulling teeth.
Writing here makes me feel a tad saner than I felt before I started. Writing has been my salvation before.
*
CONTINUITY. Perhaps one reason lack of continuity flips me out today is that my life has been defined with whole cloth, my life's work a testament of continuity. Indeed, the half-century old story from LITERARY REVIEW, "Fragments Before the Fall," which I wrote in one quick sitting, angry at getting a mailbox full of rejection slips, replying with my "fuck you" artistic statement, trying to show what my work was about, why I write, sending it right back to LR -- which accepted it!, a victory of passion over rationality, I suppose; this work speaks to me today, is still the principle from which I write, though with virtually no audience now, which I try not to get me down, thinking, or hallucinating, that I will have an audience in the future, as past old work has found an audience as much as 30+ years after it was written ... you have to keep the faith to a degree to write at all, unless you decide going in that you are in diary mode. But I've always been a public writer, whether in a popular or oblivious part of my professional cycle. The point being, Continuity is the bread that feeds me in my professional life, it is stressful when it disappears in my personal life.
I really should be living alone in a studio apt in the southwest now, I think, among strangers, doing my work and maybe finding a few friends to pass time with. I am not a good care giver, though I always do my best. But I don't know if H will ever give up her old habits and ghosts and live in a present tense reality again, dealing with her limitations instead of pretending they don't exist and putting up such a bullshit front to her family and friends. I seem to be the only one who experiences her reality.
I love this house, though. If I can figure out how to deal with H's changes in a less stressful way, this could be a great place to spend my final years, writing, brooding, watching the birds. Especially in summer, good weather. This is like a vacation cabin at its best. Like now, I really dig being out here, pounding on the AlphaSmart.
L in LA is the human who knows me best, the one still alive. I wish she were closer to hang with. She has known me for most of her life, over half a century, and she has seen me at my best and at my worst. She knows me as a writer, though I'm not sure she is "a fan." Nor is H a fan, really. That's fine but inconvenient. It's nice to be around folks who give you strokes.
I had a great, major stroke running into an old actor acquaintance a few months ago. In a social setting, he went on and on and on about how great my plays are, how important my work is, etc, and this to a crowd around us, he went on so much I actually got embarrassed, and it's not easy to embarrass me. But what mattered to me was this: if you were there, if you saw the work, you remember! And I don't think the work is less powerful now, it's just invisible. Someone should revive it. Etc etc etc. I guess I am close to whining so better stop. I abhor whiners haha.
