Impeach Obama?

I've seen a lot of vitriol in this country, religious, racist, sexist, homophobic, partisan, all in various forms and degrees.  When I saw today, that you can already buy 'impeach Obama' stickers online, I nearly lost it.  To top that, groups are forming around the internet that support the removal from office, a man who, and I apologize for the caps, IS NOT EVEN IN OFFICE YET!  Do I need to repeat this absurdity?  Do I need to sit here and formulate a cogent argument for you as to why this is deeply insulting to the democratic values  that are the foundation of America?

Fine.  I will.  

Look, I was not a fan of George W. Bush in 2000, much less 2008.  I was not a raving proponent of Gore, either.  I was highly skeptical, to say the least, of the events surrounding the 2000 election.  There were, and still are, unexplained statistical anomalies, voting machine errors, and ethically questionable practices of over-sight officials. Nevertheless, from the moment Al Gore conceded the race, I made a conscious effort to settle down and make an difficult acceptance: George W. Bush, whether I agreed with his politics or not, would be my president for at least the next four years. 

During the eight years that followed, I very deliberately avoided the dismissive and derisive pitfalls many of my fellow progressives took.  I never refered to Bush as an "unelected president."  I did not call him a member of a  "crime family," or a "warmonger," or a diminished his office in anyway as fraudulent.  I criticized his politics at every turn, at every opportunity that presented itself, to any one or anything that would listen.  I made every effort I could to challenge the understanding of his supporters until, from the constant effort, I became exhausted and dispassioned.  But I tried to keep my head-above water, my pleas intellectual and not emotional.

It was not until, by my judgement, that Bush administration, under his guidance of George W. Bush, committed genuine offense to the spirit and language of law did I begin to actively call for his impeachment.  No, it was not the start of  Iraq War.  I believed then and I still do, that it is entirely possible the Bush Administration effected well-intentioned, but gravely misguided and mis-informed judgement in the committal of troops to warfare.  I did not call for his impeachment after the Abu Ghraib or Gitmo detention scandals, because, though I found the abuses reprehensible to my sensibilities and morals, I did not find a basis for impeachment in the language of the Constitution, which does not expressly grant constitutional rights to non-citizens.  Nor did I call for his impeachment after the politically-motivated exposure of an under-cover CIA operative because no conclusive evidence surfaced linking the president directly to the crime.

But when he violated FISA laws and launched a warrant-less domestic surveillance campaign on American Citizens, (and particularly when I learned this happened BEFORE 9-11), when he issued an executive order removing the right of habeas corpus from citizens he alone declared terrorist threats without a check and balance from second branch of government, I came around to the idea.

In other words: I waited through some pretty twisted shit before I pulled the big red impeachment fire alarm because I took the wording of the Constitution as conservatively as possible:  "The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." 

You'll see that it calls specifically for impeachment STRICTLY on the basis of criminal activity: not for stupid wars, not for calling you a communist, not for behaving like a jackass, not for doing things you find morally or politically disagreeable, not for wearing silly hats . . . not for anything less than a crime.

Call Barack Obama an elitist, a socialist, a communist, you can even call him a terrorist if you really feel that way (I really can't understand why you would, but whatever).  You can call him a hack, a self-serving politico, limp-wristed wiener, a nazi,  a space-martian, an igneous rock, anything you want!  But you can't POSSIBLY argue with me on this one point: THE MAN HAS NOT COMMITTED A CRIME IN THE OFFICE PRESIDENT.  Try it!  Try arguing that!  Its just not going to fly.

 . . . okay.    Truthfully, I wrote this more for my benefit than yours, because frankly, I was so pissed I didn't know what I was going to do the next time I saw a facebook group devoted to the impeachment of a non-existant president.  Its insulting and its only going to get worse, I know it.  Oh man, this is not going to be an easy four years.

Change

Who are you, changeling?
You are the change I make you.

If I am the flame on the stems of prairie grass,
You will be the blaze across the The Plains.

If I am the planks, you will be the the rope, and the tribe will cross.
If I am the leaven, you will be the na'an, and the people will feast.

If I am the rice, you will be the truck, and the gates will open.
If I am the bodhi, you will be awake, and there will be quiet.

If I am the pall, you will be the grave, and the good men will lay.
If I am the chamber, you will be the sear, and primer will burn.

If I am silent, you will be the word, and the word will be hollow.
If I speak, you will be the voice, and we will make verses holy.

If I am stone, you are the rubble. If I am embers, you are the ash.
If I am inertia, you are inert. If I am errant, you are the error.

Without me, you do not speak,you do not climb, you make gestures 
Without intention, your fingers have no purchase, your pockets
Have no stitches, your teeth will rot, your pen will go dry, your trees
Will not shade you, your sleep will not rest you, your food
Will not feed you, your men will not save you.
You will rust, you will wilt, you will die.

Understand this:

You will not be my knight. You will be MY sword.
You will not be my king. You will be MY crown.
You are not my healer. I am yours.

-MD, 2008

An Argument Against Experience

An Argument Against Experience

There's a lot of talk this year about the experience levels of the individual presidential candidates and their corresponding vice presidential picks. Its fair in a lot of respects to demand a certain level of competence as demonstrated, strictly numerically, in years spent as a public servant. It is not a whole sale value system. That should be obvious. If your applying for a job and have 10 years sales experience, 8 of which are spent barely making the quota, you just aren't going to get the job over a guy who only has 4 years and who consistently out sells expectations. I'm not drawing any comparisons between the candidates here. I'm just illustrating an example, so get that out of your head.

So what ABOUT experience in a candidate and what does it matter? I recently watched a video clip on CNN about military experience and vital impact on who takes the reigns as the Commander in Chief of the armed forces. The McCain supporter in the video made the case, which I'm sure you know by now, that McCain was in active duty in the airforce during Vietnam. He was a lieutenant with command experience and played a leadership role even during his period of imprisonment by the Vietcong. Furthermore, he's had 25 plus years of serving in the US Senate in various committees legislating and overseeing the conduct of our military. He's ready to lead this country's massive armed power. Right?

Sure, it certainly sounds that way especially when you consider that Obama has no experience whatsoever in the military sphere. Hell, my years at Starcraft LAN parties make me more experienced than him. Ask yourself, who would you trust in the event of a Zerg Rush? Hmm? Yes, Obama has a glaring deficiency in that regard but does this really translate to negative quality as a candidate.

My argument is no and here's why:

Imagine you're the president. Yes, you. You've got the chops, the influence, the money and people like you. You're a combat veteran with leadership experience on the battlefield. During Nam, you commanded a squad of Hueys and you performed dust off missions right in the thick, the mud, the quagmire. You merited a purple heart and Congressional Medal of Honor, and all sorts of aches and pains and troubling memories that go with them. You went on to spend the rest of your life moving between state legislature, to the House of Representatives, to the Senate, you fought tooth and nail through a primary, and now, by god, you're the President of the entire U.S. of A. How's that for an old boy scout, Momma?

Three weeks into your presidency comes your first big test: the Georgian/Russian conflict has taken a turn for the worse and your advisors call for supporting Georgia. You've got to put everything behind them, send in a real force to be reckoned with: a full division, mechanized infantry, airborne infantry, 5 carries off the coast ready to send in the bombers.

Now, think back. Lean on your experience in the military, try to think of some experiences that might have some bearing on the situation. Yeah? Almost there? Well, wait a minute now. You were in 346th Medical Battalion, in charge of a platoon of chopper pilots in rescue missions. You were a captain, more than 4 pay grades away from a general who might have command over a force as large as a full division. Is managing 12 pilots all that different from managing 4 brigades, operating out of 6 neighboring bases, composed of more than 20,000 troops, and sucking up more than 600 million dollars a day in operation costs. Consider whats at stake: the lives of more than 20 million in military and civilian areas? Is this anything like the old days piloting hueys over the jungle canopy?

We have to ask ourselves if military experience really matters in the above situation. When you're the president, sure, you're the Commander in Chief, but this was a role designed to be a civilian position. The president does not have any real or honorary military ranking. He is not considered a PART of the military itself, only an advisory position to which ultimate decision making, at the highest policy and strategic level is deferred. Tactics, logistical and strategical planning at lesser levels are performed the rank and file of the military for a reason: the president has better sh*t to do.

The president is surrounded by advisors of his own, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, being his key advisors in military situations. This is a group of the highest ranking commanders in the armed forces, generals, admirals, what-have-you. Their collective experience, along with that of the Pentagon, the CIA, and other arms of the executive branch, dwarf the singular experience any one president could have by the magnitude of hundreds of thousands.

So why on earth is it considered a necessity to have military experience in this position, when the founding fathers intentionally reserved ultimate command of the military for a civilian, and when that civilian is surrounded by hordes of experienced and knowledgeable veterans? Wouldn't it be preferable to have a clear thinking individual who knows when to leave the military planning to the military, and can simply wrap his mind around the foreign policy and geopolitical issues to which the military commanders may not be aware? Wouldn't it be better not to have a lower-ranking veteran, who's military experience is behind him by some 30 or 40 years, attempting to weigh his own combat experience against those of the collective armed forces? Perhaps if said individual had fully devoted his life to the military, spent years in war college, and climbed, wrung by wrung, to the appropriate level of multi-division command. But what other avenues of life experience would this person be missing for his decision making skills? Wouldn't he have sacrificed for his military experience an in-depth knowledge of civil law, of constitutional law, of trade unions, of corporate regulation, of foreign policy, or even the history of the US and the world? Above all, its essential that a president be able to make military decisions OUTSIDE of the context of military experience, outside of military culture, taking into consideration consequences that may effect society and the world as a whole.

I'd rather a person with experience in other avenues who can listen to his advisors (and choose them well), a person of reason and intellect who had spent his time attempting to understand the civil aspects of America, the issues it faces, and not its military ones. Qualified advisors can fill him in on the rest, present the situation, the options, the permutations and from there a decision can be made. Frankly, there's been enough politicians in the past several decades trying to tell us they know more than our nation's military, doctors, scientists, climatologists, historians, emergency responders, journalists, and other free thinkers. I'd rather have some one who could just LISTEN for a change.

Back Again

I've been completely and utterly absent.  In a lot of ways, too, not just physical.  Mentally, for the most part.  I haven't given a single serious thought lately as to how to move forward with my writing or any other creative project.  At least, not in any sort of holistic manner.  Sure I've thought about writing and thought about working in very tertiary ways.  I've thought long and hard, as I always do, about how wonderful it would be to finally finish something soon, but I haven't grown past that in any meaningful way.  

I've been in a slump.  A dead slump.  I blame a lot of things for this problem but most of them don't deserve the blame.  Take for instance work.  I hate work.  I don't hate doing work, I don't mind getting up in the morning at those ridiculous hours it sometimes demands of me.  I don't mind deal with the people and trying to spread my will among them like some movie-set dictator.  I don't even mind the ego struggle.  The only thing I mind is the fact that it draws me so far out of my regular routine.  (Maybe "regular" should be in quotes, because its hard to call that regular when you are working more than half the year).  When I'm working, I want to be writing and its all I can think about.  I want to be applying me creative aspect to the word.  I want to be etching my place in the human graffiti wall.  But all I have the energy and time for is waking up, working 14 to 16 hours, and coming back home to sleep.  There is the occasional weekend, and I'm grateful for them, but like anyone else in the business, I'm lucky if I have enough time to catch up on my sleep and do my laundry in the whole of those two days.  Where the hell all those 48 hours go, I'd love to know.  

At any rate, here I am again.  At the beginning, supposedly, of another stretch of "me time".  I'm off again.  I have no prospective projects in the future.   Or at least that's what I'm trying to tell myself.  I know that there's something right around the corner and that more than likely I have about a full week before I'm scouting again.  Bugger.  But we must soldier on, mustn't we?  At least its money and in the mean time, I have these few precious moments to myself where I can entertain the idea that I've broken past the need for real work, the money, the ladder-climbing, and have set down in an virgin world of fresh ideas waiting to be formed in the medium of my words.

Alright.  That's the warm up for today. On to bigger and greater things now.  Adios.

I Saw You

A found art poem. Based on the real, and not so real, ads from the Weekly Alibi. Part one of however many we need.

I SAW YOU

TO "DAMN YOU’RE SEXY"
I’ve got the red, red
hair, but no tattoos.
Carried a parasol
at the parade and
wore a feather boa
to Renee’s. Did
you see me?

DIDN’T I
Leave you once
already? How come
you keep playing
all the characters
in my soap opera?
-Mr. Clean.

CLUB 211
Blonde beauty in
black, your eyes so
blue they must have
been a gift from the
angels: Negro Model
& Camels ... who are
you, my love?

OUR TIME SPENT TOGETHER:
Immeasurable.
Vists:
Regular.
Surroundings:
Varied
(dentist, car . . . )
I’ll always be
a part of you.
Who am I?
Do you
need to ask?

CHET OF THEBES, DORK BOY
the Fund ...
Ballon Fiestas ...
Power of One ...
"-er" ...
nefarious plots ...
movies ...
Ben & Jerry’s ...
know all and see all ...
Lord of the Rings ...
I’m always right.

MIDNIGHT BLUE
I saw you at Castle
Superstore.
I like what
you bought.
I was the one
sad about
the mouth for
sale. Call me
or just come
over.

PULSE ON 7/7
Dancing Gladiator
of My Night: I’m
apologizing for my
behavior in case I
caused you any
trouble. Would like
to start over / See
you again for wine /
dinner if unattached
/ interested. I am
your words so true,
a kiss whould only
be shared by two -
maybe me & you -

CREAMY BEANS
Can I chew on
your butt with
my molars?
Love
the FBI

PIG
Last time I
place and ad
it was to cele-
brate your love.
Now it’s because
you’re gone.
I love you
anyway.

BEFORE SUMMER
You laid on the
couch in your
shorts and I’ll
remember the
way you
protested my
birthday gifts
with the
creamy blue
of your eyes.
I could’ve been
your Charlemagne.

ON 6TH STREET
You:
in a green
& white ford
with a
great smile.
I want to
be yours
forever.

LOVERBOY HURTS
more than a bit.
Nothing to grip
except myself.
Soft pressure
of your fingers
along my length.
Lactose tolerant.
Exquisite
exhaustion.
How does
your journal
read now?

MEGAN
Library smiles,
Catechism
prayers,
Glances in
the cafeteria.
I’d trade every
day since
to go back
and turn
you around
and just
kiss you but
You’ll never
be absent
from my
heart.

JOEFIEND
Are you sure
you don’t want
to try those
naught things?

KINKOS GIRL
I saw you at
Kinkos. You
had a cerulean
smile. I was
wearing shoes.
I never order
enough copies
and the quality
is never
good enough.
-Nobody.

ENGLISH 101
I’d believe you
if you said the
Germans won
the war. Let’s
debate who
wants who
more and I’ll
buy you another
bag of tootsie rolls.

I SAW YOU DANCING
in the kitchen.
I thought your
pelvis was broken.
Let me feel
your pain.
I want you!!!

T
I would climb
the stairs to our
secret microwave,
forever with you,
if you’d only run
away with me.

JOHN H.
I met you
after Boot
Scoots. You
helped me
defrost
my windows.
I was hoping
you and I
could get
together.
Find me.

ELEGANT WOMAN
and beautiful, too!
You have been so
good to me. Why
for?!? I am captiv-
ated by your jewelry
and I like your car, too.
Is it for sale? Love me!

CANCEROUS
You lick your
pixie sticks like
you’ve been
home too long.
Call me when
you forget the
names of the
constellations
again, my genie.

CORPORATE COFFEE
(Starbucks, shhhh)
You: cool, blonde
preppie, feminist
with an attitude.
Beautiful, loved
by all. "I’m not a
WASP because
I wasn’t brought
up that way."
Oh, really?
Me: brainy, dressed
in silver spandex
and faux lapin
(I’m not sure which
you’ll recognize first
- my brain power
or fashion sense).
Hey, California girl,
NOT WASP, Leo,
give me another
ride in your
big blue Ford.
I want to kiss
your freckles
one by one.

Absent

Yes, I've been absent. Completely AWOL. I've been working (on that OTHER job of mine) and working takes a severe toll on my writing time.

I've recently decided that I'm going to pull my old postings from myspace and move them here
to blogspot. For the majority, those posting were poetry, so expect to see more of that side of my personality here as well. This site is just going to have to be a hodge -podge until I figure out what needs to go where. Its sort of like moving from one apartment to another, except I'm moving from one brain-space to another and all the contents are in utter disarray.

More about what the hell I think I'm doing later. Thanks

Poem About a Dead Cat I Found at Carino's

We are murderers.
Our substance is murder:
Our hunting eyes, our
long fingers, our
brutish thumbs, even
the hot breath off our tongue
is murder.

Even the our best
intentioned, the well
intoned, the perfectly
measured assemblies
of our gnosis are ladened
with that fearful capacity.

And were I a pigeon
or a mouse or some
critter trapped here in
our dense matter, our
thousands of thundering,
gas-smelling islands, I might
seize with the urgent horror of it,
of being entombed by these
machines a hundred miles thick.

Of all the powers of the
cosmos, of all the spheres,
of all the sephirot, all the
forces impersonal which
reign their Judgement, who
would have thought it would
be a chair --a chair!-- to
snatch up that spirit.

I was made the sad
accomplice for having
to bare witness -- because
didn't some one have to? And
wouldn't it be you, had you
been the one to chance that
place at that moment, on this,
the dry crust of the earth?

I'll share because it wounds, and
to be wounded is like reading
a book, like hearing the sound
of creation, or so we say now
when all of us are fallow fields
for much else but grief. Shush,
you chattering jawbones, let me share:

The poor cat had wandered
in of his own. It must have smelled
like a meal in that building, even
old as it was, but its curious
to suppose how even in our
dried up husks there's enough
to nurture the small
things that wander by:

Our rubbish is mana, sweet vanilla.

But this one, little cat, followed a bird
through the hole in the wire mesh in
the screen where the copper thieves
had, earlier, cut through with their clippers
and made off with only the nickel
off the chrome sheen of handcuffs.

When I found him there, he was
on the seat of the chair, the yellow
one, neck twisted and body
lounging. It hadn't stirred to my
approach, ever clumsy, rubber
squeaking, pockets jangling, even
teeth clacking and cotton
rustling to sharp ears of cats.

So stiff, the body of his fur
calm and unchanging, level
like water on a cool pond.
His arm, I saw, when I stood
above him, was caught
between the slats that made
the backrest of the chair, caught
where the wood tapered to a vice.

There was fight in the wood,
a hard fought fight, but only
teeth marks in the lacquer
and chips in the veneer.
And there was fight in
the joint of his arm, a
hell of a fight, and
I could see all the
work of it on the floor,
beneath his mouth
in a heap of black,

So it was that chair,
the yellow one,
and not the purple next to it,
or the blue, or the red,
that had brought him
thirst and hunger and a
belching black murder.

And had I come earlier, so
what then? Another creature
lives on and dies some
other way in the stomach
of a dumpster, or under the
wheel of a tractor trailer, or
what other fingers of death
are there in this city?

It was only an odd one,
in some ways inevitable,
just a jarring end to witness,
and maybe next time: mine.
So what then? And who
comes in to find me in the corner,
slumped in the chair, and
who writes the poem of me?

I hope their pen is murder; their
eulogy, a fine death and a long
tale of regicide, speaking that
I took the coin of the dead and
passed it on to the Merchant, but
I'll be content if they say he did
nothing but find a dead cat on the
yellow chair at Carino's.

I, Nerd

In my high salad days, I was a terrific nerd.  I've gone through several variants of nerdiness since high school, some of them classic archetypes, some boarding on normal, some scary in their own right.  After college, I became much more balanced and even sociable to the point that I had actually forgot just how bad I used to be.  Here's a sample:

Starting around junior year, I was on the chess team in high school.  More than that, I spent my lunch hour in the math teacher's classroom (he was also our coach) mastering chess problems and playing speed chess, and this during a time I actually had my own car and could have propelled myself into some inchoate form of popularity by leaving campus and eating at the "cool" joints.  I spent thousands of not-very-hard-earned dollars on Magic: the Gathering, played in local pro-sanctioned tournaments, and still own most of my cards, though I don't play anymore.   I played a druid in AD&D until my teenage hormonal imbalance made me angsty enough to graduate to Vampire: the Masquerade.  I even played MUSH (Massive User Shared Halucination) text-based games over the Telnet, logging in days, maybe even months of my life role-playing alternate identities.   Like most boys, I was fascinated with dinosaurs, but my devotion remained long after most healthy children take up sports-- or for that matter, begin dating, move out of their parents houses, and have children.  As a child, I watched Bill Nye the Science Guy, Beakman's World, and literally took notes on MacGyver, once building a small fertilizer bomb based on what I learned from an episode.  Only two semesters of science were required in high school, but I took a class every semester for four years including my favorite science of physics, which ironically, I nearly failed due to my then-developing lethargy toward homework and complete inability to do even the math required to play Scrabble.  I even read chapters that weren't required, and spent my free time reading books by Asminov, Hawkings, Sagan, and Greene.  Once, on our senior trip, I found myself in a hotel room in Paris explaining general relativity to a drunk line-backer because he wanted to understand his place in the cosmos.  I was also one of the proud few who knew how to optimize the first megabyte of RAM in MSDOS to ensure my PC could run Descent as efficiently as possible.

I'm not trying to say I was smart.  Far, far from it.  I was never in any advanced classes in high school.  Laziness has been the bane of my academic achievement since I first realized, in first grade, I could save myself the trouble of loading my backpack every evening if I just left all my homework in my desk and did it hastily the next morning.  Since then, I've been sublimely lazy. On top of that, I have the memory capacity of a Cassio wrist-watch.  I've been bested at the Memory Game by four year olds and often can't recall major events or people in my own life.  I did, some how, pass an advanced placement test for math in middle school but I never actually bothered to sign up for it.  I'm positive, though, if I did I would have been drummed out in less than a week.  Really, there must have been an administrative error that occurred after they reviewed my test because math and I just do not get along well.  Maybe the scan-tron machine, after decades of boolean input, decided to take a more artistic interpretation of my penciled-in squares and decided my test was "pretty."  I don't know.  I do know that I can't be trusted to balance a check book, or give small change for a dollar, or calculate a tip, or even be the banker in Monopoly without unmitigated, economic disaster.  

Why I am writing about all of this?  I guess I've just been reminiscing, and lately my old nerd-tastic tendencies have been coming back in full force.  My love of science being chief among them.  I'll make no bones about it, science was my first love and that love has always been around since I was little.  I was memorizing latin names of megafauna as soon as I could read them.  I was catalogue rocks from the yard as soon as I could walk out the door unsupervised, and at every stage of my life, I've wanted to become some form of scientist: a micro-biologist, a geologist, an astronomer, a paleontologist, a forensic scientist.  Lets face it though, I've never been all that good at it.  Real scientists are fastidious and comprehensive.  They can spend nearly their entire lives in dedication to a single experiment, and the rest of their life in defense of that single experiment.  They tread water just to keep up with their peers, overwhelmed with results, data, new experiments, new theories, even new BRANCHES of entire sciences.  Its an entirely UNromantic reality they live in and you just have to have the personality to cope with it.  I don't.  

I love to read about it, though.  I love to be part of it in that small way, but not immersed in it.  I couldn't live like that.  I am, however, starting to find myself more and more interested in communicating the sciences to other people, in writing about them.  I have always had that talent and I'd like to find the opportunity express it more.  These days, with our scientific education lack so severely in our schools, its more important than ever to encourage people's natural curiosity of the subject.  And people are curious.  Its a natural human survival instinct to want to know how the world around you works.  Our anti-intellectual culture has a way of stigmatizing that tendency, but with a little nurturing, it often comes back to life.

Climate Change, or more popularly, Global Warming, is a scientific subject that, in particular, needs a hefty amount of explaining.  Unsurprisingly, the media has done a piss-poor job so far and some one needs to do it.  I've reading up in my spare time on climate sciences and in the next few weeks I intend to blog a bit on my take of the subject.  I'll see you then.

Writing with the Subconscious

There's been a flood of sage advice coming at me lately, for what reason I don't know.  Truth be told, none of it has really helped . . . yet.  I assume that at some point that will change.  Possibly when I begin to heed said advice, but lets not get overly speculative here.  Yesterday, my Dad gave me a book on the subject of writing called, "Writing Down the Bones."  He doesn't read these sorts of things so Lords know where he got it from.  It just sort of popped up out of nowhere, with no explicable reason for him having it, or wanting to read it,  or having the motivation to get dressed, leave his house, and buy things.  But really, it seems like a decent enough book when its all said and done.  Or at least, it seems that way from the cover and the couple of pictures I saw while flipping through it.  

Its written by some lady named Natalie Goldberg, who by odd coincidences, happens to live in Taos.  Or at least she did when she was alive.  She may still be alive for all I know, but I wanted to put that qualifier in there just in case she's at the bottom of a ravine right now, her neck being chewed clean through by coyotes.  If that were the case, I'd come out quite the fool if I said she was still alive, eh?   The fact that she lives in Taos, and that her book was in random possession by my own father, leads me to believe, by the logic of my Hollywood-trained brain, that I'm going to have a life crisis soon and that I'm going to have a cute- meet with Mrs. Goldberg at a bus  depot.  She'll listen to my foibles and set me on the path to self-actualization in my third act.   I can't wait.   Until then, I'll just read the book and from the bits and pieces that I've managed to read while waiting for the toaster to pop up with my tasty tortilla nibblets, her book actually seems rather fascinating.  We seem to have drawn similar conclusions about the craft.  

In a chapter titled, 'Composting,' she illuminates with much greater clarity, a concept that I've been rambling on about for some time now: the idea that failed writing is necessary.  I'll admit right now that I hadn't come to the exact conclusion as she, and actually do prefer her version of it.  Here's the gist: the subconscious works, like a computational sub-routine, quietly in the background of your thoughts.  Spontaneous leaps of creativity, logic, and understanding come from this capacity of the subconscious.  In order for this part of mind to work efficiently, we need to feed it raw materials, events, characters, things from our past, emotions, experiences, whatever.  By writing, in freeform, in automatic writing, in journals, diaries, blogs, we do precisely this.  We till the soil of our thought, turn over ideas, bring them to the surface and let them breathe, settle.  

While you're working away at other things consciously, like say, trying to perfectly toast a tortilla so that the surface temperature is just right for melting butter into a gooey puddle of deliciousness, you're subconscious is beneath it all, toiling in the dark recesses of your brain.  It may come to conclusions down there in the cellar that you never would have come to just by analysis, and when its done and ready with one of those conclusions, they bubble up to the surface at seemingly random times, like say, while eating a soft, buttery tortilla.  We call these Eureka! moments.  Not necessarily having anything to do with the Sci-Fi Channel show, Eureka!, but having more to do with the surprise and clarity of the thought bubbling up from the obscure machinery of the mind.

When you're writing out the back of your behind, like I usually do on this blog, and failing miserably at the point you're trying desperately to illustrate, you're doing yourself quite a service.  Isn't that nice to hear?  You are actively feeding the subconscious the materials it needs to germinate the greater ideas, the more coherent ones that you will ideally capitalize on once you recognize them.  Most writers know this intuitively, as I did for many years.  This why most novels are proceeded by the writing of pages and pages and pages of 'notes,' and why note taking is essential to the process of non-fiction writing.  Everything feeds into the subconscious and gets slushed around like so much wet concrete until the appropriate moment.

My biggest revelation, lately has been my understanding that the first draft of a story is essentially a part of this process: composting.  This is why most writing advice urges you to hurry through the first draft as quickly as possible.  The idea is to culminate the final stage of rumination inside of your subconscious so that the second draft will be more finely crafted.  In general terms, the first draft is the great big pile of shit from which grows the real story.  Hurry through it, get that big ol' plop down and let it sit.  It doesn't matter how terrible this version of the story is, because, in essence, it is NOT a version of the story.  Its nothing more than a comprehensive set of notes from which you will be able to see what works, what doesn't, and why.  Consider this an intentional failure.  The first draft will stink, get used to that concept and begin believing in the necessity of it stinking.  Compost doesn't come in any other odors. . . . Tortillas on the other hand, will never cease in their savory fragrances and so, I'm going to go eat one.  Adios, o' mi hermanos y amigos solomente.

On Politics

For the first time in my life I wrote my Senators.  I've got two of them.  You've got two of them.  I wrote them both.  I had hoped for a salve to sooth the burning sensation I felt, still feel, like a spider bite in my chest.  The bill amendment I  wrote about had already been voted on and I don't harbor any delusions that I'll affect their future voting habits.  This is why I considered it a salve and not a remedy.  I needed to make a gesture, just flap my arms, huff my chest, let out a little shudder of distaste.  Or I thought I did.

Does it matter what I wrote them about?  This is not a political message at its core.  There are people far more qualified than I who blog daily on the subject of politics.  They've spent their lives in vigilance and if you've the mind to read or listen to that sort, then you probably already have and you don't need me to further evangelize.

But there's a sense I've been having, very distinct, that a once great momentum is being systematically diverted.  Other people have been aware of this far longer than I and beyond that I think there is a general sense of it in the American people at large, too, if only as a fleeting, discomforting thought.  Blind and contended as we're made out to be, its there.  We see traffic cameras and we know we are being watched.  We read the news and know there are pages missing.  We see kids in their schools and know they could have, should have, much more than what we've provided.  

I feel it, know it, but I'm not out there marching.  I'm not speaking out.  I'm not finding my representatives and giving them the hell they deserve.  I read the news, listen to the radio, and hear every plea in my head that something MORE must be done, but I haven't brought myself to any action.  I vote my conscience and glad that, for once in my life, I have the opportunity to vote for some one I believe in and not merely against some one I don't.   Beyond that it is only a vote.  Sure, we're told that voting is a great act of citizenship, a duty, but to be honest, I when I left the polling booth last week, I felt like I was just filling out a restaurant comment card.  Did you like our service?  Would you visit us again in the future?  Were our servers kind and courteous?

I want only to know why: why it has taken me so long just to write two emails.  I've known all my life that I was being trained to ignore the world around me.  You feel it to, that sense, don't you?  Its as though there's a magician out there somewhere trying to get us to look at his right hand, when really the canary is in his left--and we don't give a damn because he puts on one hell of a show.  We're deluded and we don't care.  That's my generation's mantra, but I just don't know how much longer I can go on with all this double-thinking going on in my head.

I hope that writing as I did, to Domenici and Bingaman, wasn't just an isolated outburst.  I need to feel, more than I ever have in my life, like I am fighting.  Not just against the forces of erosion in the world, not just against the selfish lot who are driving modern policy, but against this apathetic feeling in my heart.  If that's corny, then fine, its corny.  Have a good laugh.  

If any one has any stories of activism they'd like to share, I'm willing to listen.  I know its the small changes that have led to the large and, like Archimedes, I'd just like to know where to stand. 

Snow, Almost

As I was sitting here, writing my post for today, I looked out the window and saw snow falling in gentle sheets.  I was going to say how there are few greater things in life, to me, than to be warm and writing while its snowing inside.  Then I looked outside again and it had stopped, cleared up, and is now completely sunny.  I expect, any second, to see budding flowers sprouting from the earth and robins dancing on the hood of my car.

That's New Mexico for you.  It'll be a blizzard in about an hour.  

Grisham

Somehow its possible, though I reserve judgement, to write during any sort of physical or mental difficulties.  There's the dim cloud of a headache drifting over my consciousness today and its threatening to bring the whole parade down.  How a person is supposed to ignore this fact and continue on with the process is a stunning feat to consider.  The act is beyond comprehension to me, mainly because I am in the throes of it.  Perhaps if I were beyond this, and into the next day when, I hope, all this nastiness as worn off, then I would see a little more clearly how it could be possible.

But then, what would be the point really?  I'd wouldn't have a headache anymore and I could write just as though it were any other day, mostly for the fact that it WOULD BE any other day.  But today, yeech.  I can feel the sick throbbing building up like a tantrums of some hideous beast in my skull.  There's filth in my brain, rubbing around in a disgusting friction.  That's a headache to me.  Its not even a migraine.  Imagine if it were.

Last night was an interesting revelation.  I watched the Charlie Rose Show as I occasionally do and on the screen was a friendly looking chap in a sharp tweed jacket (is there such a thing?) talking in the most casual of tones how wonderful his life was.  I'm always intrigued to hear how other people live, how they manage a day, how they relax, what they need to get through it.  He seemed like a genuinely happy, contented, well grounded, successful man and I wondered just who in the hell he was.  As it turned out, he was John Grisham.   Now, I will admit, I have always held some small air of contempt for the name.  Why, I can't say exactly.  I'm sure it stems from jealousy.  The man's written 21 novels, all of them wildly successful.  Not a single bomb amidst them even when he's ventured outside of his standard genre of the legal thriller. 

I have a hard time admitting it, but maybe I simply feel the same way about any popular novelist.  Not that I'm a literary snob, though my college years, looking back on them, did seem to cultivate in my mentality some kind of foolish sanctimony about the practice of writing.  Well, my introduction to John Grisham last night dispelled all of that in one single stroke.   And I'm grateful for it.  That man is just such a genuine person, I can't help but like him.  And more to the point, he and I have a lot in common.  Mainly that we are both supremely lazy and make no bones about it.

When asked by Charlie, how it is that he can manage to be consistently prolific, Grisham quipped that there's really nothing all that difficult about it.  He takes every precaution to prevent his writing from becoming work, which is only second nature when you regard work, as I do, as the Great Satan of our time.  He said he cranks out a book a year as a matter of practice and will never waiver form that schedule.  He holds fast to deadlines, which is what propelled him into the favor of publishers. But more importantly, he sticks to about a 5 to 7 page range per day.  Not a heavy work load, particularly when you're as practiced as he is.  He lives in Charlotte, Virginia, which I've visited in my distant past.  A reasonable place for a writer to live, I always thought, especially if you own a horse ranch, as Grisham does.  His wife is his primary editor and unlike many writers of his stature, he willfully submits his manuscripts to the harshest scrutiny of his editors, both professional and wedded.  "I make too many mistakes," he said.

Now that I've come around to liking the guy, I've begun to reconsider my stance on his writing style and his books in general.  I might just give them another try, particularly his new one, "The Appeal."  Its a fascinating concept that drives to the heart of one of our biggest problems in American today: the corruption of our judicial system by big business interests.  While I'm not typically into the legal thriller genre, I have grown more and more politically minded as I get older and the idea is becoming more attractive to me.  Its clear, too, that Grisham is doing precisely what I'd like to be doing: illuminating the problems of our day by entertaining the readers with them.

--Oh, and if you've been wondering what I've been doing in my absent time, see my other blog here on blogspot, via my profile.

Stuck? Draw a Map

No, I'm no star anise.  I've not shriveled up and died.  If its worth anything to you, I'm still here and I'm still trucking along.  The work continues.  The dude abides.

The swing of things have been so gloriously tuned, if you can believe it, that lately I haven't needed to warm up much.  There have been a few days, in fact, where I was able to just jump right in.  Other's I've needed only to lay down a few words, get a few blockades out of my head and proceed.  The warm up exercises from those days are hardly worth reading, much less posting.  

Today is a whole other story.

A lot of it depends on where in the story you end the previous day.  I assume that a lot of you writing types have by now figured out the secret but if you haven't, I'll be glad to share it with you.  Its not a big deal, really, just end the writing day at a point where you know what the next word, the next sentence, the next scene will be.  Don't write it.  Let it be and write it the next day.  If you know Baxter, the former world heavy-weight champion of chapter 2, now needs in Chapter 4 to confront his drug-addicted manager at the Piggly Wiggly, then end Chapter 3 on the way there. 

Not too tough.  Fairly obvious.

I failed to do that last night.  What?  Of course I have an outline!  No, you can't see it!  Get away from me you maniac!

I know where the next scene needs to go story-wise, I just don't know the setting, the ambiance, the exact logistics of how I'm going to get from the emotional start to the emotional end.  Its going to take some figuring.  A little elbow grease, if you will.  

I have a notepad in my desk, a small one, for just such moments of anxiety.  The idea, when you don't know how a scene should progress, is to take this notepad out and begin to draw a map.  Put the circumstances of the scene's beginning in the top corner and the end in the bottom corner.  The add events in small boxes as stepping stones along the way.  You can either add them to the top corner, reaching down, or to the bottom corner reaching up.  If you don't know whether one direction is better than the other, branch with both options and continue creating the map with multiple possible routes.  Add enough stepping stones, connected with a little line from one end to the other, and you'll find yourself with a clear path for the scene, and very often with a logical emotional arch.

Next time you're stuck, give it a shot.  Tell me how it went.