homework by Harry Herman Roseland

I wonder if anyone has invented, yet, a screen lock for writers and others who may need it. I know there is various software that mimics a typewriter (some with no backspace) and others like jdarkroom and such that claim to eliminate distractions (I tried that for a bit, hated it) but what I need – and I’m sure I’m not the only one – is something where I can voluntarily lock myself in, so to speak. Open the writing thing (Word, blog, whatever) and click something to lock the screen there. Maybe for a set period before one can opt out. No wandering off to check email, or to google this or that or to read blogs or news pages or anything, just for that period of time, until the lock releases (or, if you’ve gone past times up, you release it yourself).

I think it could work, but those little netbooks are so small and light, I think more people would be tempted to throw them across the room in frustration, after being locked in, so maybe not.

Besides, there is still nothing (beyond willpower! yes) to stop one from wandering into the kitchen for a snack or checking the tv and watching some insipid show for “just a few minutes” or deciding the cat looks lonely all curled up there napping by herself or a gazillion other things. Sigh.

It’s the vein thing I have the most problems with, I think. You know -

“ There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”
- Walter Wellesley “Red” Smith

(Whozzat?)

I am notoriously closed mouthed, keeping my own counsel and not really letting go. There’s nothing wrong with that (says I) but well, veins carry life’s blood and to get to where I need to be to do what I need to do, I need to let loose of a little of that. Maybe I can start with pricking a finger, then work up to the whole wrist slitting thing.

Okay, here’s a drop – though I am fascinated with this era and can’t wait to read more and more, I started on this journey down histories pathways very reluctantly. Very reluctantly. I wanted to start reading/writing about what I knew about my family anywhere but here. It’s just that my Uncle Louis kept bugging me; for months, he just would not leave me alone, telling me over and over that if I wanted to understand this particular person or thing and their actions, I first needed to understand him. And more.

Now, we all have importunate relatives who want to direct our lives and our work but, see, Uncle Louis is just a tad different, seeing how he has been dead for over 200 years and really, how may have relatives like that? I sure didn’t, before this.

There’s a story there, this should be written but have I done it? Well, sort of – one of my many, many “drafts” which never get finished. I’m tempted to delete them all and start fresh. Might keep the titles and make notes to remember what it was I wanted to write about in the first place, like index cards, but there are always new ideas and things that want writing about.

Like stories of growing up, something Amy Tan (and others) recommended to do. I wonder if it’s an easier subject when one is younger and thus closer to the time period? There are some memories that have stuck with me over time – others are completely lost, though some may return if I do start writing the stories down.

We’ll see.

*And, of course, the “blank page” part is no longer true either, because, well… I have written.

Of the so many things I have to do, I actually did very few of them. Or, rather, halves of everything. Half the laundry done (washed and folded, but not put away), half the kitchen cleaned (floors, counters, dishes but not pots), half a post written and so on.

Mostly, though, I just did nothing. Except watch a couple of shows on TV. One, called um… I think  Gravity, I can’t figure out at all. It’s about space, I think, but the same people are on earth too. Is it present, past, future or all three? Add to that that everyone seems to hallucinate at the drop of a hat and what do you get? Who knows? Entertaining, regardless – confusion is just part of its charm, I guess.

I’m thinking of a few pieces related to all the reading I’ve been doing, but I think I need time to process everything, and perhaps read a bit more. And, as opposed to just dashing something out to post, I’d like to write with intent and purpose and take my time – not only to get my thoughts in order but to give full measure to the subject matter. It’s important and precious stuff, so I need to make sure I’m treating it with full respect.

I picked up Amy Tan’s autobiography a week or two ago.  I don’t know why as I don’t usually like biographies, but there it was just sitting there on the library shelf each time I visited, so… Anyway, I’m glad I did. I haven’t read anything of hers before, although of course I’ve heard of the Joy Luck Club. I think I’ll pick that up next time I’m at the library because reading her biography produced a desire in me to now read the book, to see what else I’ve been missing out on.

I didn’t actually pick it up for writing advice, but she has some in there anyway about her process. Of course, all these books do no good, I’ll not actually figure out my own process until I sit down, seriously, and just do it. I’ve not done that yet, though I am planning to with the series of articles I have planned on what I am learning from my reading. And, of course, the book.

Anyway, the strategy didn’t work.  Either I lost access to it (likely, as it took me weeks after digital switch to bother getting a box/antenna – for mom’s TV, still haven’t bothered for mine) or I lost interest in it (also likely, considering) but whichever… I have no hope of catching up and don’t seem to have much of a desire to do so.

Ah, well.

bloodhound

I guess I’d never seen one in person before, though I could have sworn I had. Droopy eyed,  loose-limbed pleasant and fairly harmless looking creatures, in my imagination (or possibly from cartoons or book descriptions). And some may indeed fit that description.

Not this one. The eyes may have been droopy, but the face meant business. Hugely muscled body, looked more like a pit bull than anything else as it pulled its handler up the stairs of the mall, where they were apparently looking for someone.

Anyway, I have issues with dogs so I was pretty rattled – but considering all the reading I’ve been doing about the antebellum South, my first was to wonder if this was the sort of dog that they brought out to track runaway slaves.  Pretty scary to think of something like that being after you. It sort of brought all that home to me, sort of freaky even though I was standing in the middle of a modern mall, not the object of the dog’s interest and not running through the woods.

I’ll have to add that to my research list, though.

night sky and rock bridge

I’ve been looking at quotations. Phrases and thoughts disconnected from their original settings and placed in isolation – or rather, a sea of isolation as they space with thousands and thousands of other fragments of related, but not connecting, phrases. How do they decide what goes in, I wonder.

Most sources quoted are, of course, from people in the West – from the ancient Greeks to modern US business owners or athletes. Primarily men. A few from Asia, with far less variety of sources – from casual perusal you’d think that only five or six Asians – Sun Tzu, Confucius and a few others – have said anything worth saving and savoring over the years.But those few said a lot, so you have your pick there.  Even fewer Blacks or Latin@s are quotable, it would appear, especially about anything not dealing with slavery or civil rights issues.

I’m familiar with a lot of them. I used to have a Bartlett’s  when I was younger, and I’d sit and read page by page, absorbing some, instantly forgetting others. In this way I learned the names of many thinkers (or people with a knack for words) but little, if anything, about the original text, or about the writers/speakers themselves. Of course, the quotations often stand on their own, the little snippets enough to encourage or motivate or inspire, but I sometimes think about how easy it is to change the meaning of a sentence just by removing portions of it and I wonder if what I think I know or learned bears any resemblance to what the author meant. And then I wonder if that even matters.

Probably not. I guess I decided that early as I rarely look past the few words given and seek out the sources. I am, I find, most often content to let the fragment before my eyes contain its wisdom or knowledge or pleasure, each a minuscule world in itself.

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

–Yeats

photo from here – via Our Luminous World

A boy and his ... deer? Nara city

I was looking through random photos to try and get some sort of inspiration for writing, when I came across this one from maiscio’s flikr photostream and was, of course, charmed.

A doe eyed, seemingly tame deer and a tostle headed young man sitting companionably on the sidewalk – who could resist? Also, what the heck? Where in the world do you see scenes such as this?

Apparently Nara City, which is, the Google tells me, an ancient city in Japan. Full of ancient temples and other structures, tourists and deer.

I don’t really have much to say about it besides that – maybe if I had time to read up on it and all that, but as it stands now… I just like the picture.

Turns out, I like most all of maiscio’s pictures, that I’ve seen so far. I’ve spent way too much of my writing time just clicking through the pages.  They are pretty cool, works of art some of them, but then she is a pro. Amazing how much difference training and practice make.

Only, still no inspriration, even with a world of images open before me.

Luckily I don’t (really) have a word limit attached to my daily writing something/anything promise.

I’ve read all the books I got from the library the other day, save one. No great feat – I only got four in the first place because, even with the small selection they had, I had a tough time seeing the books. The titles or the author names or anything. I do wear glasses and I do need new ones, but it wasn’t that exactly; maybe it’s that I am unused, anymore, to looking at shelves of titles instead of scrolling through a list on the screen. Who knows. It was an odd feeling, though.

So, as I said, I’ve read three of them, all basically mystery/thrillers (by Nevada Brown, Michael Connelly, Linda Howard – I am familiar with all these authors, and I just grabbed them so that I’d leave with something), so it was easy zipping through them with little thought or need to ponder anything. Throw in a lawn chair and a pool and it’s just basic summer reading.

The fourth, however, may take a bit. As I was bringing my haul to the counter to check out, on a last minute impulse I grabbed a book off the paperback rack that I had seen, and passed over, when I first came in.

The first three having been dispatched, tonight, when the house was quiet and everything was (mostly) done, I reached into the bag and reluctantly pulled out the last book – To Kill a Mockingbird.

Even typing the title makes my stomach clench up. I dread books like this. Still…

I got comfortable on the couch, opened it up and within the first few pages realized that if I’d ever read this book before (I thought I had) it’s been so long ago that I’ve forgotten everything about it. Scout, Jem, Atticus and Boo Radley I remembered, of course (I really liked the name Boo Radley)… but you don’t even have to have read a page of the book to know those names, or the broad outline of the story. But Dill? Who the heck is that?

My dread increased. What else hadn’t I remembered? Had I even read it, or did I just skim the story because I thought I had to or wanted to read it, not absorbing any of the particulars? I do dislike books like this and it’s bad enough when I think I know what is coming; the possibility that there were even worse things lurking within than I imagined was enough to convince me that, after a mere 30 or so pages, it was time for a break. That will probably be the pattern until the book is done, unless I am somehow able to immerse myself in the writing and the unfolding story without hearing that “something bad is behind that door, don’t go in!” music in my head.

Reading about small Southern towns from way back when, especially when there is a Black person involved, is not my favorite pastime. Plenty of monsters behind doors and everywhere else in town.

I want to read the book, though (again or for the first time), as an adult who is far more aware of – well, just about everything -  so I’ll just deal with the sick feeling in my gut whenever I look at it. Maybe it’s not as bad as I almost remember. It doesn’t help that my copy is a brand spanking new paperback, with nary a crease in the spine and some pages still stuck together; for some reason I think it might be easier if it was a nice, sturdy hardback with dog-eared pages. I don’t know why.

I’ve just realized that I’ve never spoken to another poc, particularly another Black person, about how they feel when reading this book or ones like it. Well, wait – I lie. Yesterday my teen granddaughter was digging through my carrying bag (she’s a reader, thank goodness) and, pulling TKAM out said “Ugh! Why did you get this? We had to read this in school.”

Pause.

“I didn’t read it.”

Pause. Then an – Aha! Something good to say about it – voice

“But I like the name Boo.”

Maybe it’s a family thing, not a Black thing.

I should set a 9pm deadline for writing so that, for one thing, there is a chance I’d go to bed earlier. I need sleep. Not that I stay up just for this. Sometimes I am reading or cleaning or something and I either don’t notice the time or since it’s not close to midnight I don’t think about writing something.

Anyway, I have nothing to say at all. I could, of course, comment on a couple of news items, but I don’t really want to get into that here. I have another site for doing that – although I don’t really want to do it there, either.

So…

old world map

Across the street, anyway. No more than 5 minutes away.

I finally went and got my library card today – a quick and painless process. I was right about them not having much selection; it’s just an itty  bitty place and most of their books are large print (because they cater to seniors). I don’t much like those, but they’ll do until I put in order in for some books I’ve been wanting to read but didn’t really have the money to spare to buy.

Speaking of those, the weird thing is, when I went to the main library website I couldn’t remember the names of any of the  books I’ve been looking foward to. Not a one. Still can’t. I then tried to find one of those services where people list the books they are reading or want to read, you know? Couldn’t remember the name of any of those, either. I’ve been really tired today, but that’s ridiculous. I might have to start taking ginko or something.

I should have more to say but my brain and body are just tired.

picture from old book art, a really cool site.

I can’t really even say I’ve written anything today (outside of my head) because while I’ve started a couple of times to put something down, I never got past the first paragraph. It’s frustrating, no? When you know what you want to say but not really how you want to say it – or really even if you want to say it. Out loud.

What I was going to write an entire page about was… well, I don’t know. Indulgence was the word that kept coming to mind.

Cherish, coddle, cosset (I have the thesaurus open in the next window). What great words… but most often used to refer to babies or lovers. Not to ones self. At least, not for many of us.

Delight in, bewitch, captivate, charm – don’t those words bring a smile to your face? But why is it considered okay for me to bewitch, captivate or charm you (had I the power to do so) but not to be captivated by myself?

(I think this can be partially blamed on Narcissus – again with the ancient Greeks! Or maybe Romans, I don’t have time to look it up.)

I don’t want to stare at my reflection in a pool or mirror or prance and preen – I do want to be captivated by my thoughts and ideas, by who I am however I got to whoever I might be. And there, oftentimes, is the problem – if we set out to charm ourselves, to sit for an hour or two or a day or a week in introspection, we are ‘wasting time’. Letting the life pass us by, not paying attention to the dreadful things happening each and every day, not being a participant nor holding up our end of society, and not… well, not doing a lot of stuff outside of ourselves because we are concentrated on the inside.

I think, much as we may recoil initially from the prospect, eventually we are, if not captivated by ourselves, at least held captive. In stasis. Unable to move in any direction because, unfortunately, life doesn’t come with a GPS system.

Unless it’s within and we just have to look for it before it can direct us.

Be captivated.