Book up to now

BOOK, A FEW DAYS IN

Now that I have been an honest-to-goodness book author for three days I want to bring the wannabes up to date; wannabe being my category until now.

I have about fourteen chapters, an introduction and a table of contents put down. Some chapters are still empty but there is plenty of time yet. What I have found is that by thinking of a chapter heading certain memories of or around that period come to mind; I note them on a scrap of paper, then add the beginning of that memory into the chapter; building upon building.

Today I learned something, again; how to keep track of various drafts and to know which ones I wanted to keep. There were a couple of chapter headings that I had tried and then discarded; but which ones and were the right ones in the contents section. Two hours of sorting, finding missing files, rebuilding the contents list and then putting a desktop shortcut on the repaired master document has taught me to be more careful about drafts and preferred documents. But each time I go through one of these exercises I become better informed about how to use the master-document format and more wonders of the computer than I had imagined.

I wish that I could give anyone, just one, advice on how to find the thing you want to write about; I have looked for years until I realized, again, that there is only one subject in which I know more than anyone else in the world. I’ll try to remember that tip the next time I feel the need to begin a new project; but I have a feeling that I’ll have to discover or invent that suggestion again.

To write a book

Writing a Book

Many people if asked whether they have ever wanted to write a book will say yes. For longer than I can remember I thought that I should write a book; after all how hard can it be if so many have done it? The requirements are that I would to have a desk in the right place, a good light, pen & paper or a word processing program on the PC–then write it. As simple as a Bush war plan.

I have all of the right gear; Cathy had given me a Mont Blanc fountain pen and a leather bound blank book; and for the last twenty years I have had computers with word processing programs that offered more and more features and user friendliness; except that used them to write emotional drivel in my journal and to compose email. I had thought that I wanted to write a book but came to the realization that there was nothing whatsoever that I had to say worthy of the time and effort of putting it together.

Recently a pen-pal asked me to tell more of my past. And so I put together a list of events that I remember as being important to me, it was then I realized that these could be chapter headings for a book, my book. Not necessarily a book for others just a book that I would write as best I can about a subject that only I know; if it ends up being interesting for me, perhaps others will think the same thing.

There is one other attraction to doing this; I use a program (Open Office) that has much to offer, it’d be fun to learn how to put a book together on the computer.

I am posting this on the weblog because I want potential authors to know how I eventually came to start this job;

& because it puts me on notice and people can ask my progress; and because writers write.

I plan to update my progress on this weblog.

A Refurbished Part for the Engine

I have never had the imaginative cues that would have me starting a book nevertheless a saga, I have never done much writing at all other than journals and these few unscripted scribbles, so I don’t know the rules or guides for starting a new chapter, finishing another. About all that I know is intuitive aided by the thoughts of just a few authors and a friend or two.

I know intuitively that I have just completed a chapter of what voyage.

Without resorting to those rules and guides for either novels or non-fiction writing I figure that a chapter has characters whose role grew, diminished or evaporated through the circumstances that the protagonist experiences and how the characters may fit and be important, appropriate or irrelevant. Out of the weather of events and fates the main character emerges into the next chapter a different person, one who is more fitting to his fate. Routes and passageways have been explored carefully so as not to damage the keel although the loss of a little hull paint is no great price as it will be replaced at the next haul-out.

It is not that there are or ever will be winners and losers, instead there is a crew who may or not be aboard for the whole voyage. One plans then begins a cruise with the idea that the plank owners, the original volunteers and the paid crew will be there at the final port; there is no reason at all to believe this, it is a wish coming from inexperience and love. At each port along the way there is the opportunity for some to leave and some to sign on; there is languishing on docks ahead a few whom I have no reason to choose or be chosen because they are as yet unmet. There may or may not be berths open at that time, and once leaving port it is rare to return to sign on someone who had been left on land.

Yesterday I was informed that the engine needed a new auxiliary part and that it would lengthen the time I can be at sea and maneuver me more easily through squalls; this addition came as a complete surprise to the engineers but it will be installed shortly.

Right now the pilot is obtaining charts of what opportunities have just been offered by the current repair, the charts he thinks he needs are now being drawn as the previous are now out of date and will be stored away in the map drawer. Like all charts they provide information, but no chart, no meteorologist, no pilot knows all that lays just beyond the horizon—and that uncertainty is what makes everyone anticipate the long cruise. The pilot has a few more lines from squinting in bright sun , he is not as quick to bend or haul a line as he had been, but this is of little concern because the tackle we carry has been proven and maneuvers well practiced.

The boat will make a test run of but a few days to check out the maintenance and fitting of the rig while thinking again on those new charts that are arriving piecemeal from the cartographer. The anticipation, that anticipation, tomorrow’s anticipation sparks the crew-ready to embark and hoist sails.

John Updike existentialist

FEBRUARY 24, 2009 WEBLOG

There is a lighted sky after five in the afternoon.

Snow and ice are gradually being reduced as the mercury peeks above freezing now and again.

People are responding to these changes even though February isn’t quite finished.

I awoke about four this morning feeling that abysmal dread that can arrive at that hour; a void that is filled with the blackest of blacks, and from which there seems to be no way out. As this despair swept over me I knew that I could avoid the strongest of what was to come by getting out of bed, turn on the television or go check the computer; I also knew that it was and is an honest feeling that is appropriate especially now.

I have an elderly patient in the hospital for whom I have consented to do medical approvals which are coming daily. I received lab results on tests I had done last week; I entered them manually in Google Health and noticed where they lay in their respective ranges. A very good friend who has agreed to do some things for me has just moved in a couple of blocks away; and I have another test this week.

All these combined as a perfect wave of anxiety that carried me upward to despair at that blackest hour; and today I read a review of John Updike’s life in the NYRB, how he recognized and handled the existential anxiety that he recognized early on and grew to be his muse. Reading that article meshed with what was going on with me, what goes on with anyone who will avoid the computer and television when it arrives. I didn’t get out of bed but lay there feeling and examining the great truth of meaninglessness that this despair brings.

And today the sun is shining through a thinly clouded sky, there are paths down most sidewalks that are free from snow; people are pleased to be experiencing these days because they have gone through a hard winter, a winter which tests but cannot destroy.

Five Minutes Daily

There is much that I can do to fill up five minutes of writing time; describe what is going on with the weather, birds in the yard, something about work, something about health that isn’t a complaint; it could be a memory of growing up by the Falls, a year long trip to Europe in 1960 when things were quite different, the reasons that I bounced around at university for six years and never went for a diploma, the story around my epiphany although it is of value only to myself; thoughts and words I have now about the future, how it will remain the same and how it might change. My intention is to write five minutes daily and then post to my weblog with the hope that more writing and thinking will follow. I’ll keep the above paragraph pinned to the wall above this machine so that my eyes cannot avoid it.

Hatching an idea

I feel the need to write because I want to break through, to discover something that is just about here and needs a bit of a push.

That’s what I thought until I put those words down here; for weeks now I have been banging and crashing around in a search for the idea that is about to break out, the idea that needs release, I need to proclaim some kind of discovery. That’s what I though until I wrote that first paragraph, and until I looked at it long enough to realize that there is no great idea ready for hatching, that I have been planning a coming-out party when there is nothing new about to emerge. I was planning the party in order to have a party, nothing more than that ego trip of self-proclamation. I don’t have anything new to say, nothing new to address, nothing new to conquer; but I like the idea of thinking that I do.

Here is the background for what I am trying to say: I enjoyed writing a few satisfying posts during the winter, when they came out well I felt good, when a few people read them and commented I felt better; they were early morning discoveries that added meaning to my day, and then the well went dry. I had nothing to say other than the few things I had done, I have no new way of saying the old ideas, I have no message that can’t be found many other places. I missed that writing.

And then I began to make explanations for my frustration, some discovery was about to burst forth with my help; I felt that I now had a serious chore to find a new idea and share it with everyone—-but I don’t, it was a fool’s errand, and here is why.

The idea that tomorrow will be as today, that the continuum has no breaks or quantum jumps was depressing. I want the excitement of a brand new idea or challenge, and so I manufactured one, a Potemkin’s village made out of the following:

I am about to turn seventy this Halloween, a significant number, no longer will I be anything other than seventy and counting. The second thing is that the work I have been doing at the Chronic Pain Clinic is making me healthier than I have been in decades, a most unexpected result. The third thing is that I have been put back on anti-depressant medication for the pain, but it is also doing things for my mood, I had thought that anti-depressants were something that I had long got past, that my brain was making its own feel-good molecules and needed no assistance; this is known as denial. I am going backwards and forwards at the same time; healthier in body; and yet needing medication to alter my mood, just as I had used them years before.

I walked past a senior-center that the City of Chicago runs just around the corner from me, I was out doing my cardio-vascular exercises when I looked in through their window, saw the umpteen individuals sitting and doing what appeared to be board games. There was something important for me to see here; the Pain Clinic doesn’t care about my age other than for calculating my target heart beat, the subject doesn’t really come up over there; and yet here were people of age similar to mine hunched over boards, moving their markers, killing time and chatting. I couldn’t get that image out of my mind.

There are dozens of platitudes about age and aging that are as helpful as breasts on a boar; this is a complicated business that has no role models that fit me exactly; I don’t know if they fit anyone exactly, or do people fit themselves into the model of the geezer that is put before them. A good friend asked me recently what role model I was using for this next chapter of my adventure?, I have none.

John McCain is an active older guy, but his mind was frozen into the patterns of long ago, he is just a champion for what he thinks was right back then. There are older businessmen, but life has shown that I am no businessman, they take that stuff seriously, they really believe that acquisition and control are important. I have never written anything for publication, so don’t know that road enough to find my way very far down it. I never earned a college degree, could never figure out which direction to go there nor reason to expend all of that energy; I was too young and unformed. I can’t find a future down any of those paths.

What I am trying to say is that I had erected a monument to being a person of a certain age who should be acting and feeling a certain age—-and the monument was made of cardboard. The new idea that I have been incubating is that there is no new idea, no roadside marker telling me to change my ways to those of someone who should be getting ready to shut down, preparing to wrap it up, or in love with the past. There may have been a valid sign years ago when bodies wore out quicker, minds could be in love with the past; but I don’t find that to be so now.

I don’t know if and what changes I will find in life as I go on, but I am beginning to think that there will be less than I thought, that the jokes of old age may be becoming passé.

I do feel better, clearer for having written this; but it isn’t over, this is the first draft of an attitude that I need to install in my soul, I hope to refine it.

Why write?

I have not felt the urge to put anything down here recently, for no reason in particular except that I have been focusing on the pain clinic and the variety of homework required. It is easy to be diverted from writing, there are always more reasons not to write than to sit here and figure out what the next word ought to be; there are hundreds of quotes from writers on just that, in the end there is the simple rule that writers write .

Taking medicine is the easiest part of handling pain and discomfort, to change the behaviors that have either caused the pain or have grown up to protect it is difficult. I haven’t done any exercise for my heart and vessels in a long long time, since I injured my knee; as a result I don’t have a lot of endurance, I become fatigued quickly. It was easy to blame the fatigue on Lyrica, but when Cymbalta caused the same problem I began to wonder. Reading the list of side effects for almost anything it is easy to find what I am looking for, someone has reported fatigue somewhere the line, and I seconded that effect.

There is a growing list and daily log of stretching and strengthening exercises that will protect me from injury and discomfort, these are new to me, and none of them is easy if I am doing them correctly. But I can feel the improvement, it feels pretty good.

The reason I was not writing was not the time that I devote to exercise, it is that I have to think in different ways, additional ways. I feel natural when thinking and writing about philosophy or theology, the nature of the religious experience, the agonies of existential being and becoming; all that stuff fits well into who I am. The business of taking care of this body has been neglected, and I paid the price of neglect; perhaps I can incorporate these two areas of who I am together. Writing this helps that happen.

The cupboard is empty

For a couple of months now I was in a great habit: I would lay in bed very early, and something would come to me that I would write about. That was it, the habit arrived, I followed it, and did it again the next morning.

I wrote because it felt good to put down things that came clear from my center, as honest as anytime in my life; I wrote about life, death, joy, sadness, disappointment, and the brown sparrows outside my window. A few people read what I was writing, that made it better, a few wrote to me about any number of things, that was even better.

Recently I found my cupboard empty; something bad has barged into my warehouse and destroyed whatever it is that lets me write about cancer and sparrows and acceptance. I suppose that a few of us have old, bad ideas and attitudes that have the ability to stop us going forward sometimes; that is what is going on with me right now, that I am confronting.

I am writing this today for two reasons: It is good to admit to the world and myself when something isn’t going right, just as it is good to put down words when they flow well. The other reason is to suggest to anyone else that if they have a problem that impedes, you ought to consider facing it.

I hope to return to writing that stuff that I did for a couple of months, it was fun to write, good to know that people read it; I don’t know if that will return, but I am doing what I can.

What is down the road?

As I was reading a review of Shelby Steele’s book on Obama I recognized that notion of Obama going along that long road to find himself; that resonated with me, it is an answer to that oldest question ‘where am I going?’; it gives answer to the existentialist anxiety over meaninglessness, lack of direction, emptiness. Where I am headed is to find myself; for some reason that I don’t understand I am not complete, my definition is unfinished, my questions unanswered:but what really is the problem here?

There is the theory that we are separated from our essential being; I take that to mean that being before words and ideas, we were the animal that ate, shat and fucked; and still are that animal. There are some quite wise people who have said that we miss being that part of who we are, that part that was put aside when we learned to talk, to think, to know that we are mortal; those people go on to say that the power of the story of Christ is that he unites, redeems, salves that estrangement; and somehow that is what is behind the allegorical power of the story of Jesus. I have to keep reminding myself that the power of any great story, such as the bible, is the allegorical truth; literal understanding of the bible is food that cannot satisfy, it is as if eating only sugar. There is something most powerful behind that story, a reason that it has been referred to for all of this time, used in all manner of way, but used. Just as I disclaim any connection with Pfizer or the medical business when I talk of my experience with Lyrica; I am not affiliated with any church, creed, cult–I think of myself as a guy who is looking around, listening for what resontes.

That is a big question, it is something that requires a person, any person, all people to look inside for an answer; providing that a person finds the question resonates within, if there is no ringing, don’t bother reading any more. It is the resonating sound that makes me listen, wishing for more.

All of this on the morning after the Bon Jovi concert at the United Center, where there must have been close to a thousand limousines and exotic vehicles waiting outside the hall, to take the, strangely homogeneous, audience back home.

Sparrows are not so active this morning, with the temperature above freezing, the snow gone, the pressure to exist is lessened; there is a scattered few in the bushes, exposed to the morning sun, resting and warming.

I finally bought a hat

The temperature is low this morning, -4°F, winds are expected to gust up to about 30 m.p.h. The sun is bright, the sky is a clear blue, the bulky sparrows wait their turn at the feeder.We like this “wind chill” business, it lets us feel that we endure Siberian and Shackleton brands of cold as we sit inside centrally heated houses, watching the meteorologist detail just how badly we have it. This is sort of like buying a shirt with your favorite player’s number on it. Our wind chill right now is -24°F.I have been outside when the thermometer reads -40°F, I was north of Cochrane, Ontario in late February. Cochrane is as far north as one can go by road in Ontario, from there I went by train north, towards James Bay, about half way up the line was a place called Coral Rapids, I don’t think that it exists anymore. That kind of cold is different, needs no wind to imprint its seriousness, it was just fucking deadly cold .After I arrived in Coral Rapids I was told by several people that if I was out walking and began to feel sleepy, that I should knock on the first door I saw, house or office, tell the person who came to the door that I was feeling sleepy, they would take care of me. The sign of hypothermia is sleepiness, the body shutting down to preserve energy; lay down in that fat snowdrift, have a bit of a nap, it doesn’t feel so bad now, just a nice sleep, that long, long sleep.So much for morbidity: The low sun angle makes a great picture of bronze birds, branches and feeder, shining surfaces and deep shadows contrast. I am being reminded that I sit in a sunporch that is open to the outside, underneath this thin floor. The bright sun in my eyes, the cold soles of my slippers makes for an interesting morning, but a short lived one, this will get old after a while.I was going to write another post about how to face whatever fearful thing is available, overcome it, accept it, move on kind of piece; but maybe I have done enough of them. The idea I was trying to get across has been said for several thousand years, my recent ruminations are enough for now.I have been playing at arranging in some sort of system how I experience and understand revelation and the spiritual life; without success. This is the most slippery chore I have ever come across, it explains why there are so few theologians who have anything important to say. I knew a woman who was working on her PhD. in theology at the U of C, the average time for someone with a M. A. to get a doctorate there, was 5 years, that is a long time to figure out the addition she could make to our knowledge of the divine. I think that she ended up doing some kind of women-in-religion kind of thing, not quite the divine; but I do remember knowing a few woman who took me to heaven and to hell.The coffee is just right this morning, I shut my eyes and face the sun after a swallow of strong, fresh brew; I feel the effects on my body, the caffeine doing that wonderful thing it does, the heat in my belly.

I did buy a hat yesterday, went into a Western wear store in my neighborhood; there were hundreds of hats, most of them too cowboy for me, but then I found the area of felt hats from fedora to rodeo styles. Of all the hats there were only two that were my size, both the same style, one black, one mink (brown). I have a big head. (Many have said that, but used different phrases to express their estimate.) Now I own a Resistol, 4/xxxx beaver, “self-conforming“; and I love it. I have just put it on as I sit here, tilted so that the sun is blocked, the edge of the brim is at the top of my vision, it feels good, and I expect it to feel even better as the years shape it to my cranium.

I feel sad because I am coming to an end of the kind of writing that I have been doing, don’t know what I will write tomorrow; what I was saying has become redundant. I could write on food and cooking, but there are a million writers of that; what there aren’t many of is people explaining what is going on when one prepares food. I found myself that if I know the why behind anything then I do it better, am freed from the mindlessness of recipes, perhaps there are some who would read that kind of thing.

I continue to feel good about my visit with Bert yesterday, the purity of his welcome & thanks, the freedom to say to him “my old friend”; between us there is no history, no agenda, no reserve nor embarrassment. It is an experience unlike any other, I am fortunate each time, with each person that this connection occurs.

My left hand, wrist and forearm are wrapped in Ace bandage this morning, sprained from a fall on the ice; this will be the end of typing today.

It’ll force me to focus on thinking what I might put down here tomorrow.