Got things to say, just don’t know how to put ém together for some reason. Tried last night to post because I noticed that I hadn’t made an entry for the day. Tried again this morning. Just don’t feel like writing. I’ve already made an ass of myself this morning, so that’s not a fear nor the problem. Just don’t feel like it.
Maybe later. In the meantime, I’ll scribble the thoughts that are happenin’ down someplace so that when the mood hits, I’ll have something to say.
It’s depressing to see how many weblogs have been hit by comment spam, and hopefully all such nonsense will be eliminated soon by a higher intelligence (don’t take much, neither!).
I have been fortunate not to receive a lot of it, and have been sympathetic with those who have. It’s a pain in the neck to get rid of the offending comments, it’s time consuming, and worse, it’s something that you can’t help but take personally at first sight. Luckily I cut one off quickly today, but I’m sure other bloggers will understand that heartbreaking first message of “your site sucks and should die”.
But half-wits abound, and when they deal with writers they will find they fall far short in creative vitriolic vituperation.
So Mike@aol.com, IP 209.175.26.3, from Frankfort/New Lenox, Illinois, with the odd need to call yourself “Omar”, AOL has been notified, as well as sites that handle such as you. And though I suspect you are a prepubescent girl with low self-esteem and few friends (understandable), I still must need to respectfully reply in all polite manner (polite–go look it up in the dictionary):
May the eggs of a thousand fruit flies find a loving home in your hair tonight, and hatch along with your dreams to proliferate in abundance and so move downward seeking places needful of their own to copulate and carry on a quick regeneration of their hungry kind, and seeking fruit but finding just the jelly mass of you, evolve and learn to eat until by multitude alone they cover you entirely with the blackness of their bodies and then, when fully sated, leave you as you were, an empty shell.
Editing, revising; like outpatient and major surgery of a living thing.
The laser zaps that clarify a vision, or work on twisted tense and typos to remove distracting moles. The cosmetic reconstruction of poetics to make it just a bit more pleasing. Transplanting words from one place to another, from outside source of necessary organs for survival, to layers of words lifted from a thigh to patch it all together. Removal of an unloved and unneeded spleen; but anguish with the loss of womb and all it seemed to hold for future needs, yet freedom is recognized as a result when grief is done. Amputation of fifty pages is as traumatic as the loss of limb, yet life goes on and adjustments made. Scalpels held by editors cut around and pluck out tumors and offending useless mass of flesh and plot alike.
Eventually, no matter what the depth to which it’s carved, a story looks around a darkened room and hops up off the white sheets of a bed or paper and recovers
I lie in bed and life goes by in slow motion, bits and pieces, good and bad. But guilty memories refuse sometimes to sleep, and turn to guiltless dreaming. Dependent on, perhaps the point at which the restless mind succumbs to weariness, the movie halted at a point of guilty pleasure. And then delicious dreaming can embellish and pretend.
Most often, the strangest dreams begin within a house of many, many, rooms and filled with strangers with but a scattering of familiar faces in the crowd. This night’s is most unusual in that five close to me are there as well, but non-judgmental and I’m free to follow through without conscience as Director of the scene. Dali nights infused with Hemingway.
And no one has to know.
It’s almost 3:00 a.m., and I’m thinking too much.
I blog. A lot. Wonder sometimes if I have a lot to say or lead an exciting life (answered quickly, “no”) or if I’m just throwing things out there that are incredibly boring and better kept to myself. Blogging is vanity in its most flatulent form, acceptable because everyone else is talking about “me” so me can do so too.
A posting was formulating in my head relative to last Friday’s most wonderful visit by a high school best friend. The couple hours spent with her were half used with the present catching up, and half on the just-this-side of legal and hilarious escapades of two teenage girls with dreams. Pat’s younger sister was with her, and as she watched us, she remarked, “You two look exactly the same as you did back then. It’s so good to see you together again.” Well, no; we don’t look exactly the same, although we probably would with facelifts. But the joy was there, the bond that went beyond words, and the love and understanding.
But thinking about the past brings memories both good and bad. Many of the funny stories ready to be typed and shared with you led into dark corners eventually. I’m not one to turn my back on guilt and regret, preferring to accept them as price tags paid for whatever I needed or was seeking at the time, a balance of accounts paid in full. My weblog, however, isn’t a tell-all. It isn’t a memoir, and it isn’t a conscience looking for the little confessional at the back of the church.
Maybe, come the dawn, I’ll have reread the bad parts of the book and stored them back where they live. I’ll take notes of the good parts as they fly by, and bookmark them for sharing.
Wonderful suggestions from Crof over at Writing Fiction: He has expanded upon another post regarding READING some of the great literature of the past, from the Bible to Contemporary, to learn how to write.
He gives us an excellent list of examples from his own viewpoint, and sticking to these alone would, I feel, offer an extremely well rounded basis and guide to expansion to include so many more classics.
I get e-mail notices from Yahoo regarding Tunxis College events, and this one this morning had me giggling over its rather silly insistence:
LAST DAY OF CLASSES/EXAMS
Monday May 10, 2004
All Day
This event does not repeat.
Notes:
LAST DAY OF CLASSES/EXAMS
In typical Susan style, I immersed myself in literary mode this weekend to the exclusion of the less exciting world of picture framing and housecleaning. My husband forced me to take a break by suggesting we take a quick ride uptown to a new nursery, not that he’s all that interested in landscaping, but I believe it was an effort on his part to gently remind me that we have grass, trees and missing flowers beyond the walls beyond the office, beyond the computer. He was even more subtle about maybe having something for dinner. He let his growling stomach serve as his voice.
I tend to remain true to myself in dress as well as other choices in life. My uniform for many years now has been jeans and plaid flannel shirts (t-shirts in summer) and I’ve become kind of a “camp” leader in our small town in setting fashion trends. But this long involvement with writing that’s got me in its grip perhaps deserves a more spiritual or aesthetic choice of apparel. I’m thinking flowing caftans and wild untamed hair, maybe larger gold hooped earrings.
This morning I dug through my closets and searched for my new look among thirty years’ worth of Susan moods. I throw nothing away. My niece found a Halloween costume here once when she wanted to dress as a hippie.
I found what I was looking for, and the freedom of flowing material swirled over my head to fall softly around my physical form which, in this state of mind, doesn’t matter–it’s my mind that counts. Felt good, freed from constricting waistbands, buttons, and rough denim. Ah, this is what a writer should wear. I went over to a mirror to glory in the physical change.
I looked the same as I always had in these outfits; like a highly artistic, colorful graffitied inner city fire hydrant.
In my next life, if I am still of a creative nature, I want to be at least five and a half feet tall.
I know what I wanna be when I grow up–besides a writer, I mean. I wanna be an copyeditor.
Tomorrow I’m going down to Tunxis College and sign up for their tutoring program. Then I’m going to look online for editing positions.
Another quickie —
Amazing color depth to nature during drizzle; so much more intense than viewed in sunlight.
I know that there is most likely a scientific explanation for this, and blue light versus yellow light, etc., but leave me alone, I’m being artsy.
Finally added the books mentioned in my previous posts on The Writers’ Festival authors to my Amazon Referral list on the lower right hand column. Check ‘em out.
Just a real quickie post because I have lots more to say, but will have to step back down to reality for a couple hours to get some dumb reality necessary tasks out of the way before I can return to my preferred world.
Pay bills, write e-mails, write up a frame quote, grocery shop, charge a battery, plan a down-to-earth post on my girlfriend’s visit here the other day, and balance emotions between resentment of time required by my first-ever notice of jury duty versus the excitement it can offer.
But this as well, and cover your eyes if my writer’s honesty is offensive, but part of the writing mood is set by familiars or quirks that we may do or need to produce words. While I have not been dependent upon anything lately since I in truth have viewed reality as the intrusion into a seven-month mood, I will admit here that for certain writings I have set a mood in anticipation. Some mornings, I choose thong underwear.
Anyone else out there willing to share your little secrets?
I cannot reconcile the two
the clintons and the chickadees
the kerrys and the kin of yeats
the george and lilac bushes.
Philosophy can infiltrate
politicals and poeticals
to flourish as an apple tree
among the weeds of eden.
(Lost my train of thought here.)
Since dawn my mind is filled with poppycock and pretzels, and wanting to devour yet needing still to loose itself from grounding as the daily theme.
I need to dig my fingers into earth, perhaps in gardening, to bolster up a tenuous grip on the reality of things.
And then perhaps, I can again see this time not as morn, but morning.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology