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Writing Day
Nov. 6th, 2017 09:04 amWriting day!
Actually, I'm not even sure if I need writing days anymore. Maybe the past couple of writing days have loosened a block for me, made it easier for me to get around that filter that tells me that there is nothing interesting happening and I have nothing to say about it anyway. Maybe I can go back to the old way, when I would just stop and write then and there when something got my attention, like when you are a small kid and everything in the world appears wondrous and full of inviting mystery. But I am sticking with the new routine for now.
Oh, and I almost forgot: I still need the writing day to help me get through the Old Journal. The inclination is strong in me to forget about all that dumb scribbling, but ... having poured my best adulthood into it, I should at least touch upon it - take another look at how the disaster that was my life unfolded itself over the years, like watching in slow motion a twenty-car pile-up of a freeway accident, all the twisting metal and shattered glass and ruined lives.
* * *
After another mass shooting yesterday, at a Texas church, David Frum tweets: "Crazy thought: lifetime gun ban for anyone who raises a hand against a woman or a child." He is kind of a goody-goody dreamer. He would have more luck with a gun ban for all colored people.
* * *
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman says he’s cracking down on corruption. But the sweeping arrests of cabinet ministers and senior princes Saturday night looked to many astonished Arab observers like a bold but risky consolidation of power.
-- Washington Post
It looks like a coup. A Trump-supported coup at that. So much happening so fast with such a key Middle East power, it's difficult to say anything. It sounds like there is some intention to liberalize and modernize the country, but what can you realistically hope for from someone who makes this kind of a power-play? And anything Trump supports should be suspicious. Yet, yet, the Saudi regime of old has been such a support-system for Islamist terrorism, one can kind of hope that maybe a big change like this might stomp that out. It's all so wild - too much, too fast. You cannot know what to make of it. You have to see what transpires over the coming months. Now that I think of it, it is kind of that way with Trump, too.
* * *
The hardest thing about 'writing day' is 'no Dreamland Football League'. If I don't push it aside, though, I will spend most of the day playing that. As it is, I wonder if I should leave aside my poetry books and Solitaire-playing as well - focus that much harder on the writing and the Old Journal. Hell, maybe even forget about Twitter and give it all to the Old Journal. I am not prepared to go that far, though.
* * *
Regarding that church shooting, Speaker Ryan, like many, spoke of the need for prayers. Wil Wheaton replied, "The murdered victims were in a church. If prayers did anything, they'd still be alive, you worthless sack of shit." A Christian rejoined, "They are alive. They're in a place where they don't have to experience ugliness like yours ever again. The shooter...not so much."
* * *
May 12, 1994
The lottery was perhaps too much on our minds in the 1990s, including my own. It was a new thing in Texas and a big deal. If you are poor, maybe it has to capture your imagination. Though, Teri doubtlessly took it too seriously. After one drawing, she said to me, "One person won that 40-million dollars. That's our money!" There was clearly an edge of real anger and frustration in her voice.
Maybe I should be touched by the fact that she said 'our' money. She naturally included me. We were a real family unit. Or, might I be mistaken in this? Is it possible that she was just thinking of Jack and herself? Heh, it's a mistake, lord knows, I've made before.
- - -
See, this is the value of going through these old entries. I'm touched not just by the 'our' but by her whole statement and feeling. Of course, I had forgotten it completely, yet it is worth remembering and re-imagining it. It enriches my sense of our lives, and the experience was saved from the oblivion of forgetfulness by my journal. Even if all my journal is lost tomorrow, I still got to re-live that experience today - so sweet, it hurts. I just want to hug her.
* * *
May 12, 1994
The carpet in the living room had been going from bad to worse. I tried to raise Bo and Princess right, even read books on it. But I failed to see that it was not smart to put the dogs' bathroom-papers on the carpet. The problem actually became rather disgusting.
I tried to do something about it. I treated the carpet with baking soda. I must have read about the idea somewhere. I wrote, "It cannot replace a good carpet shampooing and steaming, but it's an improvement."
- - -
"That doesn't seem like such a great memory."
Heh, it isn't. But it marks that time period of our lives. It was ... a pretty big factor toward the end of our time at Bay Horse, and pretty bad, too. It was the main room of the house, the living room, where we had the big-screen TV, and to have it literally stinking and funky with shit and piss. Pretty disgusting. We just weren't smart enough to handle the situation better. You could say we belonged in the trailer park, or the inner-city projects. But it's who we were - not very bourgeois, I guess.
* * *
Oleaginous Ted Cruz is at the church where that mass-shooting happened. He said, "We don't need politics right now", as he continues to play politics, laying down the Christianity card on behalf of the Grand Old Party and his presidential ambitions.
* * *
May 14, 1994
"Happy birthday, Monkey-Knight! We've managed to tough it out for another year. It wasn't easy," Romantic Soul announces.
"Yeah, happy birthday. Here's to the art of frustration!" Dark Spirit declares.
At this period in my journaling, I was experimenting with some new voices, the different voices of the self. There is also an Ego voice. This experiment, like all the others, did't go anywhere, of course. I can't recall if I had come up with Pi and Daimon yet. It's interesting to see that I am coming up with the same sort of characterizations, as Pi is obviously like Romantic Soul and Daimon is quite the Dark Spirit - sunny and dark, kind of a feminine ideal and a hard masculinity, a yin and yang.
In this entry, I also wrote, "Twenty-nine years old. What will become of the Monkey-Knight?" Twenty-three long years later, I suppose we have an answer: not much, not much at all. I made some pretty good blogging friends for a few years, but that's about it, really, unless you count my relationships with the dogs and cats. But, no, I really don't have anything to brag about, do I?
* * *
Three Old Journal entries in one day. Pretty good. I think I'll cut Writing Day short today as a kind of reward to myself. Besides, I want to get back to the DFL. Staubach's Cowboys are having a tough time against Elway's Broncos.
Actually, I'm not even sure if I need writing days anymore. Maybe the past couple of writing days have loosened a block for me, made it easier for me to get around that filter that tells me that there is nothing interesting happening and I have nothing to say about it anyway. Maybe I can go back to the old way, when I would just stop and write then and there when something got my attention, like when you are a small kid and everything in the world appears wondrous and full of inviting mystery. But I am sticking with the new routine for now.
Oh, and I almost forgot: I still need the writing day to help me get through the Old Journal. The inclination is strong in me to forget about all that dumb scribbling, but ... having poured my best adulthood into it, I should at least touch upon it - take another look at how the disaster that was my life unfolded itself over the years, like watching in slow motion a twenty-car pile-up of a freeway accident, all the twisting metal and shattered glass and ruined lives.
* * *
After another mass shooting yesterday, at a Texas church, David Frum tweets: "Crazy thought: lifetime gun ban for anyone who raises a hand against a woman or a child." He is kind of a goody-goody dreamer. He would have more luck with a gun ban for all colored people.
* * *
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman says he’s cracking down on corruption. But the sweeping arrests of cabinet ministers and senior princes Saturday night looked to many astonished Arab observers like a bold but risky consolidation of power.
-- Washington Post
It looks like a coup. A Trump-supported coup at that. So much happening so fast with such a key Middle East power, it's difficult to say anything. It sounds like there is some intention to liberalize and modernize the country, but what can you realistically hope for from someone who makes this kind of a power-play? And anything Trump supports should be suspicious. Yet, yet, the Saudi regime of old has been such a support-system for Islamist terrorism, one can kind of hope that maybe a big change like this might stomp that out. It's all so wild - too much, too fast. You cannot know what to make of it. You have to see what transpires over the coming months. Now that I think of it, it is kind of that way with Trump, too.
* * *
The hardest thing about 'writing day' is 'no Dreamland Football League'. If I don't push it aside, though, I will spend most of the day playing that. As it is, I wonder if I should leave aside my poetry books and Solitaire-playing as well - focus that much harder on the writing and the Old Journal. Hell, maybe even forget about Twitter and give it all to the Old Journal. I am not prepared to go that far, though.
* * *
Regarding that church shooting, Speaker Ryan, like many, spoke of the need for prayers. Wil Wheaton replied, "The murdered victims were in a church. If prayers did anything, they'd still be alive, you worthless sack of shit." A Christian rejoined, "They are alive. They're in a place where they don't have to experience ugliness like yours ever again. The shooter...not so much."
* * *
May 12, 1994
The lottery was perhaps too much on our minds in the 1990s, including my own. It was a new thing in Texas and a big deal. If you are poor, maybe it has to capture your imagination. Though, Teri doubtlessly took it too seriously. After one drawing, she said to me, "One person won that 40-million dollars. That's our money!" There was clearly an edge of real anger and frustration in her voice.
Maybe I should be touched by the fact that she said 'our' money. She naturally included me. We were a real family unit. Or, might I be mistaken in this? Is it possible that she was just thinking of Jack and herself? Heh, it's a mistake, lord knows, I've made before.
- - -
See, this is the value of going through these old entries. I'm touched not just by the 'our' but by her whole statement and feeling. Of course, I had forgotten it completely, yet it is worth remembering and re-imagining it. It enriches my sense of our lives, and the experience was saved from the oblivion of forgetfulness by my journal. Even if all my journal is lost tomorrow, I still got to re-live that experience today - so sweet, it hurts. I just want to hug her.
* * *
May 12, 1994
The carpet in the living room had been going from bad to worse. I tried to raise Bo and Princess right, even read books on it. But I failed to see that it was not smart to put the dogs' bathroom-papers on the carpet. The problem actually became rather disgusting.
I tried to do something about it. I treated the carpet with baking soda. I must have read about the idea somewhere. I wrote, "It cannot replace a good carpet shampooing and steaming, but it's an improvement."
- - -
"That doesn't seem like such a great memory."
Heh, it isn't. But it marks that time period of our lives. It was ... a pretty big factor toward the end of our time at Bay Horse, and pretty bad, too. It was the main room of the house, the living room, where we had the big-screen TV, and to have it literally stinking and funky with shit and piss. Pretty disgusting. We just weren't smart enough to handle the situation better. You could say we belonged in the trailer park, or the inner-city projects. But it's who we were - not very bourgeois, I guess.
* * *
Oleaginous Ted Cruz is at the church where that mass-shooting happened. He said, "We don't need politics right now", as he continues to play politics, laying down the Christianity card on behalf of the Grand Old Party and his presidential ambitions.
* * *
May 14, 1994
"Happy birthday, Monkey-Knight! We've managed to tough it out for another year. It wasn't easy," Romantic Soul announces.
"Yeah, happy birthday. Here's to the art of frustration!" Dark Spirit declares.
At this period in my journaling, I was experimenting with some new voices, the different voices of the self. There is also an Ego voice. This experiment, like all the others, did't go anywhere, of course. I can't recall if I had come up with Pi and Daimon yet. It's interesting to see that I am coming up with the same sort of characterizations, as Pi is obviously like Romantic Soul and Daimon is quite the Dark Spirit - sunny and dark, kind of a feminine ideal and a hard masculinity, a yin and yang.
In this entry, I also wrote, "Twenty-nine years old. What will become of the Monkey-Knight?" Twenty-three long years later, I suppose we have an answer: not much, not much at all. I made some pretty good blogging friends for a few years, but that's about it, really, unless you count my relationships with the dogs and cats. But, no, I really don't have anything to brag about, do I?
* * *
Three Old Journal entries in one day. Pretty good. I think I'll cut Writing Day short today as a kind of reward to myself. Besides, I want to get back to the DFL. Staubach's Cowboys are having a tough time against Elway's Broncos.
