The Key

photo by Everyday Basics

Times New Roman or Courier New? That’s the question. Which will offer me more success? Times New Roman makes me come off as the literary sort, whereas Courier New might make me come off as an efficient sort. So what are they looking for--literary or efficient? And which type matches my personal lifestyle compartment?

This and other important questions of the day examined.

News at eleven.

The key to successful and professional goal-setting is one’s ability to delegate. If I delegate my writing career to an enthusiastic underling, I can maintain what I’m good at: eating, sleeping, and staring at the ceiling.

Should I change my name to David Rich? The trouble is there’s another writer named David Rich. I might get mixed up with him. There’s a journalist on Jewish issues named Dave Rich, but I don’t believe people will think I’m him, although coincidentally my mother was Jewish. I’m not too into the judo-christian scene, though. Some things I like about it, but I see it mostly as just rules and regulations. I believe in the Universe, or God, or the Lord and the Lady, or I don’t know… What am I going about?

One must learn to focus. Laser-like focus.

Work four hours a week and vacation the other one hundred and forty. The key to ultimate fulfillment.

Short and Basically Sweet

So one piece glided into the other. Of the story I’m writing. I wasn’t even trying for it. A perfect ice capade moment. If it’s all this easy, I actually like writing. I knew that anyway, but when everything’s a mud puddle, I forget. Right now I won’t go on anymore about, because I don’t want to jinx myself.

Beautiful day today. I love it when the skies blue, even when it’s cold, but it’s warm.

A nice laughing Buddha statue came in the mail and it looks really good. You can’t tell by the online photo. I mean everything looks good ‘til you get it. That’s why I have so many horrible tarot decks, but this laughing Buddha is the bomb.

It feels nice to feel happy. I know my happiness should be totally inward and not dependent on material things or the the temporal fluctuations of fate, but at least I’m happy. That’s a plus.

Unless I’m too happy. Uh-oh!

Odin, AC, Food

Photo by Dan Gold

Wrestling my latest story. It’s scribble scrabble and the pieces don’t fit, but so far it’s ten pages and it matters a lot. To me. Wish me luck making this into a semblance of something someone will publish someday and if I can’t, let me get super into the process, enough to have made it worthwhile. This I pray to the gods of yore. By Odin’s blood and staff!

Meanwhile it’s supposed to go up to eighty-five today and I’m getting outside no matter what. Just the idea of feeling eighty-five on my skin is exciting me. It would be even nicer if I had a pool to jump into, but I take what I get. Maybe a cold shower?

I could  be forced to turn the AC on, although it hasn’t been checked yet, just so my blood pressure meds don’t fade in the heat. On the other hand, maybe that would be the best thing forcing me into a plant-based diet in order to survive.

One thinks one’s diet is healthy until one looks back and finds it riddled with eggplant parmigiana dinners, ( I know--eggplant's a vegetable, but really), and Gatorade.

I’m listening to the 2021 Food Revolution Summit with people like Joel Fuhrman and boy, do I feel  self conscious about my food. I eat healthy half of the time, but it's the other half. I don’t want to die of digesting junk in twenty years, although something will kill me eventually, so that’s another way of looking at it. 

More Talk

photo by Anders Jilden

Feeling better after me and Roe’s vacay, still on a dark stage talking into the void, but the floor’s been swept a bit.

Listening to aboriginal music. A lot. And getting into it. The didgeridoo. I know it’s ridiculous, but it somehow makes me feel at home.  Giving no credence to past lives, I guess it just hits me the right away. I don’t think it’s cultural approbation if you enjoy the sounds quietly to yourself making no claims to fame or anything.

Today’s a beautiful spring spent mostly inside writing and reading, but I don’t have cabin fever. I’ve cleaned up our rooms and the way the sunlight hit them through the window, everything seems spacious.

Reading little stories here and there-a good one by Neil Gaiman called  Down to a sunless sea about an old woman lamenting hideous things that happened to her son when he was a sailor of the ocean. And an irritating book by a cosmic philosopher that’s too cosmic. When will people realize that I AM isn’t all that, just two words that mean what they say, such as I AM God, I AM bored. I AM eating sweet potatoes. 

Whatever. 

Maybe I AM unenlightened.

Writing and the Sun: Pain vs. Pleasure

photo by Oladimeji Ajegbile

photo by Pixabay

To read a sad story takes awhile. To write a sad story takes…a long time. In spring, I can’t picture myself doing anything but looking at the sun.  I guess I’ll get back to my moaning and groaning in type in a few days when it rains, but I’m thinking of only writing happy stories from now on, because… it takes too much out of you.

Me and Roe are booking some vacations. They’ll be nice. Various natural scenarios. The woods and the sea.

And now back to books.

No Heaven for Good Boys is too upsetting, but I’ll keep reading it. It’s amazing the sway the marabouts have over poor kids in Senegal. They take them from their families and treat them horribly. No one does a thing. The kids are beaten if they don’t raise enough coinage begging in the street. Or worse. Now I’m invested in the characters, I seem in for a horrible time, unless I throw the book out the window which I never do, although it might be for the better. Keisha Bush really places you there if there is where you really want to be. I feel torn between the sway of good writing and  the sway of heading for the hills.

My own depressing work of art isn’t good writing yet and won’t be until a lot more drafts. At least as good as it’s gonna get. I’m going to have to figure out a way to enjoy myself through it or not do it, because now it’s just pain.

Before I Hit The Bed

I’m writing this too late at night because I realized I needed a new post. I haven’t written anything for a bit and wanted to amend that before I hit the bed.

 Thus I sacrifice coherence for a word  count.

 When I’m tired I tend to get fancier as my meaning becomes more obscure.

 I hope I can still entertain you.

Finished Hamnet today which floored me. Unfortunately. I want to just think about it a couple of days before talking more, so that messes up this post. Sometimes when a book's so good, I feel immobile and shy to describe it. Like who am I? I think I may have read one of the best books in my life, suffice to say. 

We will be circling around Hamnet for awhile and even getting to it someday.

Meanwhile, I read my first Beowulf translation by Maria Dahvana Headley and it worked. Setting it in modern day bar lingo seems like a gimmick until you start reading the thing and see what passion and beauty and excitement is put into it. She did a really nice job and it was quite an adventure with some thoughtful things to say about morality and mortality thrown into the mix.

I first learned about Beowulf in fourth-grade where I read a little excerpt and Mrs. Gilbert introduced it as the first book written in english. I’ve been wanting to read it since, so it’s cool I did. A little triumph. You got to take ‘em where they come from.

I will try to do a more involved post next time. I notice spring is here where I live, so I might go outside instead.

After a series of flash fictions, I’m writing a longer story now. Wish me luck and I will wish you luck and we can be the lucky club together.

Zzzzzzzzz.

Good night.

Blue Skies and Books

photo by Elia Clerici

Blue skies and days like spring. Great, but a little disorienting after all that winter.

 I’ve read enough of Hamnet to realize I’m going to finish it. I feel like I’m there with  Shakespeare and family and Agnes, his wife, especially. The book has this really nice flow that involves me and hypnotizes me without drawing too much writer-word attention to itself. Beautiful.

Starting No Heaven for Good Boys by Keisha Bush about badly taken care of impoverished kids in Senegal. I thought it might just be a downer, but its written in a bitter-sweet humorous sad way and my feeling towards it are more complex. Although I’d love to have billions of dollars to just swoop in and put an end to the misery of the children the books based on, I’ll probably wind up sending twenty dollars to an African charity and think I’m doing something.

Finished Later by Stephen King which I enjoyed. The other characters were more vivid then the supernatural villain who kind of seemed grafted on  and a vaguer part of the story, thus making for a weaker ending. I’d definitely recommend it, however, superb fun and the characterization was generally top-notch three-dimensional which you don’t always find in adventure stories.