this blog is hibernating

this blog is hibernating
it is winter for self-reflection & cultural commentary
what writing I do is novel
and it's a lot
it has to be
I've been a decade about the enormous task and it's time to finish

but writing about writing is boring
days of writing are good and bad but the large effort is mundane
Twitter Michelangelo:
473 chisel strokes on "David" today. Still not happy with toes. Piece got in my eye. Stings!

one day I promise a finished book
one day I hope an audience curious about it
then I'll have a reason to blog
for now monthly visits to my site may reveal goodies
but no promises

as my valediction - here's where I'm at:

what I am learning is that the writing of a novel is sculpture
the shaping of a big mass of ideas
my early failure was to write it as if reading it
to dictate finished prose as I went through
this is fine strategy for
a college essay
a 400 word column
a 'blog post (present company excluded)
the comfortable mellifluous voice as practiced as penmanship

but the work in the rock is only in the sculptor's mind
it is not revealed but shaped by persistent application
until you see it, it's not there

I wasted a lot of prose on this error
but at least it could be recycled as outline
and I figured out the writing style too

the unwritten second half of the book requires a new strategy

I lucked into a useful workshop (link may expire)
the emphasis not on critique but on pages
even before the first session its ethic inspired me
now I have an outline and three draft chapters

the drafts read hardly better than these posts
- unsure
- unpunctuated
- %%NOTES WHEN I'M STUCK (percents a distinctive search tag)
and often incorporate years of notes pasted in
it will need varnish and lots of sandpaper

still
3 chapters! before I wrote one every six months!
and for the first time a total plot summary

back to work
goodbye for now

6 months idle

so yeah I have this blog
idle and happily so
since the last post I went skiing
got married
had a honeymoon in the Galapagos and Peru

and did no writing

I didn't think about it much
and now I feel my eyes are fresher
I've also learned I can write on a screen but I can only edit on paper
- I don't think it's my fault
- the tools are less flexible than my dexterous hand even if the printing looks neater
- I think it will be a while yet

So all in all it was good for me
But now I have to get started
In the meantime
some thoughts I have these days

George Bush is the Republican Monkey's Paw
In their quest to raise Reagan from the dead
The Republicans brought back Nixon
Bush has all Nixon's staff
His strategies of division and pandering
His ambition and paranoia
But not his foreign policy
If Nixon could talk to "Red China"
Why can't someone talk to Iran

After Nixon was Carter
I think next year President Obama
I don't want Obama to be Carter
But without someone who knows where the bodies are buried
I worry he'll get shoved aside
at least Obama says things I find neither insulting nor improbable
and that's a start

I think Mitt Romney should go to Iran
The Iranians will respect him
- a man publicly recognized for his moral behavior
- a business success
- he ran the Olympics - one thing Iran and the US both do
Americans will respect him too
But also because Mitt Romney is an American Mormon
His church also based in mountains and desert and fertile lands
I think a Mormon can understand the chips on Shia shoulders
In a way a Baptist or an Episcopalian or a Catholic American
just can't

That's about it
hello world
I'm working my way back to you

(one final note)
people have suggested these are poems
I am sure this passage has disabused them
I consider this blog a notebook
The entries not crisp meter just hurried jottings
If there is a virtue it's brevity

Upcoming posts - trying to figure out Missy ; Twitter sucks ; William Blake

21 years ago

"He must be mad to go on enduring the unexquisite agony of writing when it all turns out drivel. Mad. Why didn't he become a spy? How does one become one?"
-- Edward Gorey, The Unstrung Harp

21 years ago I studied in Paris
in April 1987 I walked down Grands Boulevards from Opéra to my humble room
on a great billboard above Printemps
The Cure's Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me
lips blown up like Helmut Newton's photos but in color
orange-red like sunset above Paris
My hair long and curly, ripped jeans and engineer boots
It is a strong memory and I don't quite know why

I wanted to buy it then
(I bought it later - too poor a student then and the VAT made albums so pricey)

Now a song from that album pops up in shuffle
on my phone
The fashions are returning
My hair has gone

I wanted to write even then
Even before then
And then I would have said I would have been a writer 21 years from now
Instead I spent years away from home
I struggle to finish my first book
But I have good memories

Did I choose well?

A family friend who I thought owned a store told me he worked for the CIA
And invited me to apply
I wanted to be a writer, and I didn't apply
I later bought his old credenza

Would I have been a good spy?
I did some drugs but I'm good with languages
Probably not but it's a nice thought
In some other universe I am a frustrated spy
Bad novel in the drawer
In another I was a good spy
But not good enough
A slip in my Arabic - a slit throat
In another universe I died halal
But in this one I am fat and wealthy
I don't speak Arabic
And I still haven't finished my first book

I dreamt I wrote this
while looking at a sun just before sunset
clouds slicing it like a hard-boiled egg
Dreamt I wrote it in an old photo album
I used mustard sauce for ink and a spoon for a stylus

21 years from now the fashions may return again
I will be even older
and by then I may write I
dreamed

God

I have tried to write this many times

since I am writing about Good and Evil
I feel I should have something to say about God
or Religion or that which is greater than human

Maybe that's a bit much
anyway here's some notes

Evolution explains the world around me
I can make accurate predictions with and find evidence of evolution
In every biological system
And I am fine with what that means
I see how close my DNA is to my monkey cousins
How my heart is like a pig's and my voice like a whale's
How I know when my dog is sad
And I am comforted

To reject the broad idea that we are all products of one continuous system
To deny that on the whole the system moves blindly
Through chance and mutation and luck
Even as we (perhaps) move with intention and free will
To reject this humble truth is willful and vain

Are you so proud of yourselves
That a god came down and shaped you like sandcastles
layered the earth with you litter of divine imagination
set it all in motion then
left us with this mess
that's Mark Twain's malign thug
And I don't believe in that god either

Genesis 1:26
Let us make man in our image, after our likeness
Perhaps the image of god is not the human but HUMANITY
not the soul but the body

We are not the person behind our eyes
The part of us we pray continues after death
Or at least we are not DEMONSTRABLY that
I can demonstrate
Physically we are each a society
A coordinated effort of two hundred bones
Tens of organs
Trillions of cells
Maintaining themselves over time
Then when their time is up producing offspring
Every 7 years you replace all of your body

I can demonstrate
We are each part of a great species
A complex network of billions
sustaining itself in every environment
Coming (despite internal feuding) to a broad consensus on basic issues of law and order
Communicating over vaster distances than any other species
We even left the earth

But no one of us did all those things
No one of us is eternal
No one of us is the same over time
We are small and many and worked together
And our children worked after us

Perhaps no one of us is the image of god
Perhaps the image of god is a being that works collectively
and individually
That settles questions of rightness and worth
through interaction and conflict
Codifies its ideas
A god who changes
A god who rightly says I AM WHO I AM
Since god is the product of trillions of actors over time
And god is never the same
God persists but never the same

No one else seems to want a god like that
But I do

I'd like to think I could find a religion
I like churches synagogues mosques temples monasteries
I visit them in other cities
Religion looks fun
And you meet a wide cross-section of people

Maybe I'll find a church someday

Obligatory praise of gadgetry

Obligatory praise of gadgetry
And wry complaints
My right thumb grows numb exhausted by pointing and text

For me it's the maps. What should characters see? What could they see?
Now I can see it down to street level. Huge.

===
Sent from my phone