What your soul sings

Go read the latest Morford.

That is all.

Dispatches from the front

So much to talk about.

First, I'm considering a pullback in the length of my posts here. I have to get cracking on my long-form stuff. While I'm not one to believe in signs or portents, I got blindsided by something I read on a Web site that just forced me get to writing, now.

When you write speculative fiction, you are always playing chicken with time. You never know when your grand ideas will be co-opted by reality, turning your fantastic vision into "Been There, Done That."

So, I dodged another bullet, but I'm thinking that my ideas are bound to see daylight in another form very, very soon. Huh, there's an idea for a reality show: An author is trapped in a room writing a novel, possessing only a window on which he can look out onto the world. Meanwhile, people gather at the window, armed with giant sketch pads supplied by the show's host. At random, members of the mob write down ideas, dialogue or some plot point and press it up on the glass for the author to see. If the author has it, s/he has to start from stratch. It's race to see who wins: The hungry crowd with non sequiters of paper or the author determined to craft an original thought before time runs out.

Legacy

In case you didn't know, television icon and friend to children everywhere Fred Rogers has died from cancer. I just imagine him up in Heaven now (I mean, if he can't get in, we're all doomed), hanging out with Jim Henson and Dr. Seuss, working in a kid-friendly improv group trying to find the ideal way to entertain tykes of all ages.

If you'll indulge me, I'd like to add to the pile-on of memorials given for the deceased figure who taught children how important it was to believe in themselves. He was a kind, gentle man, a sentiment you'll probably hear many times. He possessed a warm voice, an armada of soft sweaters, an imagination that outstripped modern kids programming, and a genuine gift for talking to children as if they were important, as if they could be trusted to understand the big things (friendship, honesty, creativity) and the tough things (divorce, death). He never condescended. He always, always made it feel as if he was talking to you. He loved kids, and not in the sullied way we associate these days with the Catholic Church and Michael Jackson, but it was as if children were endlessly fascinating to him for all their curiousity and unbridled cleverness.

Sure, he may have been corny and square as we got older, but we forgot that he was just waiting for a new batch of youngsters to come into his peaceful neighborhood. He spent his time with us, just as he did with children from an earlier age. There he was, day in and day out for three decades. For his years of service on children's television, he was granted immortality: One of his trademark sweaters hangs in the Smithsonian, along with the other cultural icons. He became a piece of history for being a nice guy talking to children in a calm, honest voice. Looking back on it, Mr. Rogers possessed a cadence that drew you in and made you tranquil, even happy to be in his presence, akin to any prolonged exposure to, say, Desmond Tutu or the Dalai Lama. You felt better for being in his world, if even just for a little while.

Mr. Rogers was there when my dad walked out on us and my mom took on the heroic task of being a single mom in the 70s, trying to get out into the workforce while struggling to make sure I was on the straight and narrow. I love her, and she did her best, but there was something about Mr. Rogers, telling me I was good when I didn't understand why my parents hated each other, why they yelled all the time, why I couldn't talk about one of them in front of the other during the appointed visits that were handed down by the all-powerful new, third parent: Mr. Judge.

Mr. Rogers loved me unconditionally, telling me in no uncertain words that I was special.

He told me I was good when I was confused and hurt. He let me know that imagining was a special thing, and that I should do it more often. Through the cathode-ray tube, he gave me a secure place to visit, a home where I'd always be welcome even when my mom's house and my dad's new digs were tension-filled places. He gave me a puppet kingdom, explanations on how things worked, stories and life lessons (long before I got exposed to everything I was supposed to learn in kindergarten).

He told me I was special.

As a kid going through the opening stages of a long, painful car crash of a divorce, I really needed that.

I would offer thanks, but it's just not enough.

Today's Word: Blast

From One Word

The fuse took far too long. No, bad opening. It's a loaded word, these days. A bomb. Destruction. Everything I felt yesterday when the truck jumped the curb in front of my building. I thought, for a second, it was a bomb being delivered and boom.

Breaking News



It happened today, right in front of my second-floor window at work. I heard it before I saw the closing seconds of the collision, several thousand pounds of asphalt-filled truck slamming up onto a sidewalk, yanking out a tree and tossing it like a caber; the final result ending with grass, fuel, oil and antifreeze tossed everywhere and another tree jammed through the truck's hood.

People from all over the newsroom wedged themselves into my cubicle, craning their necks to get a view of something so jarring and frightening, a metal fist of a vehicle at rest on our front stoop after clawing up pavement, sod and a bike rack now-twisted like an abused paperclip.

When I heard the collision, rather when I heard it coming and my brain lit up a warning sign that something terrible was coming (as you would when you suddenly hear screeching brakes and you wait for the unholy sound of metal crunching), I went cold, projecting the worst. Truck bomb. Driven by a zealot to crash through the glass facade of the entrance. A cargo of explosives. Semtex. C-4. Wired to a remote device. Akin to Lebanon in 1983. A truck bomb hitting a marine base and more than 200 U.S. troops killed in one hideous detonation.

This was it, I thought. The first attack in the next wave. A newspaper. Why not? Primitive kind of information warfare. Blow up the newspaper and TV stations, the prime sources of news in troubling times. Leave the natives in the dark. Isn't commandeering media outlets the first step when attacking a nation?

A tooth-rattling boom as the truck finished jumping the curb and twisted like it was trying to skid on a path of ice. I next imagined the explosion from the bomb hidden under the layer of asphalt, sending the black rock up and out, a wave of shrapnel riding the wave of the sonic blossom from the blast. The 10-foot-high picture window inches from my nose burst into pieces from the force and thrown grit, raining over me in a million razor-sharp teardrops. I'm simply shredded from the force, chunks of skin popping off me, followed by blood and the death of little cuts.

But it never came. Instead, a man clad in a black jeans and a black shirt ambled out of the cab, clutching a cell phone, calling back to the home office before someone else did so, cued by the "How I'm Driving?" bumper sticker.

And so, life spared, I thought about a tree I had on my L-shaped corner lot when I was growing up, and how one day it had to come down. It wasn't the designated climbing tree of our house; it didn't have the easy history of having birds in a nest or the time we nursed a squirrel back to health and then let it loose when it was better. The squirrel bolted up the climbing tree and then got stymied by birds protecting a nest. Our neighbors' dogs from across the street spotted the squirrel and bolted to our front yard, barking at the knobby base of the climbing tree. The poor trapped squirrel leaped off a branch, dodging birds and above the jumping, yapping maw of the German Shepherds, making to safety on the nearby tree...the tree that would someday come down for some reason. For that one day, that squirrel was thankful for that relief, that escape hatch, growing silently all those years and being the right height at the right time. The squirrel leaped, action-hero style, bounded a couple times on the bark, and ran for protection in another locale.

And one day sometime in the future, the tree was gone, leaving behind a tan, pulpy stump as a memorial.

It took about six hours to clean up the mess in front of our building. It took the police about 30 minutes to respond to our calls, longer for the fire department. From behind my window, the fire department workers in their thick tan coats and the blue-draped police standing on the crust of this accident pie scuttled around, spraying a white foam that turned the dirt into a sickly caramel, melting into the slices in the sod. It was my own emergency-response ant colony at work, seeing tiny men push brooms and chop of the dislocated trees. Soon, the tow truck came in to pull the dead mastodon out of the mud. The street was cleaned again, and traffic returned. Tomorrow, it'll be a memory. A shared history. Even a passing joke, told with levity afforded with an incident where no one was hurt.

Still, you have to admit, this was one place you didn't want to have a massive screw-up: In front of a newspaper. It's like robbing an armored car right in front of a police station.

Today's Word: Vapor.

From One Word

Fumes, perfume. The odor of any object, a ghost of scents. The state between liquid and gas. Planes slicing trails in the sky, giving the earthbound a tell-tale trace of where aviation has been. Water and mist cascading in the hot summer air, evaporating in heat and bliss. Up to the sky and back to us in rain.

P.S.
The photo at top was taken by Jeff Larsen, a staff photographer. Sorry for any by-proxy credit I may have stolen from Mr. Larsen.

I'm not fat. I'm big-boned

It's me...if I was on "South Park."



You can be on "South Park," too, or rather, you can make a crude avatar of yourself and pretend Cartman is yelling at you. (insert your imitation of Cartman here)

Huge Gay Weener

Now that I have your attention.

My poet friend Cori sent me an e-mail with HGW as its subject line, sharing with me some of the delightful yet unsolicited missives she gets in her inbox.

I don't know the context of the message, but the header (pardon the pun) alone raises (again, pardon) a few questions:

1) If you are a woman, like my friend Cori, what do you do with the e-mail? Do you want a Huge Gay Weener if you are a female?

2) If you want one, does it arrive by mail?

3) Are there storage and use instructions?

4) Are Huge Gay Weeners grown somewhere for harvest and shipping? Or are they removed in some horrible Faustian bargain involving broke, gay college students and scary surgical instruments?

5) How do we know the weeners are gay?

As you ponder those, please enjoy some spam e-mail poetry, featuring subject headers of e-mails that came in to my inbox today, along with Cori's message.

Are You Happy?
It's 60% cheaper
Give the Greatest Gift

It's nearly a haiku

Today's Word: Roots

From One Word

Where you came from, where you’ve been. An historical rear-view mirror. We all came from somewhere. We all have a tale. I tend not to think about my heritage, because I glance across to many wars, too much bad blood. A low tolerance for history as revenge.

P.S.

I know it's "wiener," you left-brained word fetishists.

Every picture tells a story, don't it?

My co-worker Heather showed me a picture her girlfriend took of her. Done on a digital camera with the "Sunset" setting. Red light as background shining from the back, birthing her in a corona of ruby light. She, in low-light underexposed shroud-shadow, looking like a growing mushroom cloud from the heat-burned footage at the Alamogordo nuclear testing grounds. Radiant. A million degrees rushing out, chasing violated atoms fried out in an invisible blossom. The primal forces of the universe unleashed.

Making a list

A couple Saturdays from now, I'm taking part in a journalism course, teaching dozens of college students about the joys and miseries of going out and getting a gig in the news business. I did something like this when I was in grad school and i hated it. Don't ask me why I'm doing it again. I just have some overwhelming urge to help out some plebes a couple semesters out from braving the harsh world of media mergers, corporate news and a dreadful business market.

I'm on a panel with two others about how to break into the market. The other two, compared to me, have had pretty straight-arrow careers. School, internship, job. I took a Tom Joad-type journey throughout the 90s. School, intern, job, grad school, newspaper for three weeks, first high tech job, high tech temp, web design job, freelance web job, reporter, desk editor/designer, tech writer, copy editor, web site manager and finally calendar editor. It's going to be very hard to condense my life into a one-minute history for the kids. My subject for the panel is the "Things I Wish I Would Have Done While I Was In School." Not to say my educational years were misused and poorly spent, just I look back and see things I wish I would have done differently. A sort of "Ghost of Christmas Past."

I had to come up with a list of 10 things to talk about for about eight minutes. Ten, because our adviser told us that the kids like to have things in easily digestible nuggets. Top 10, famous by Letterman, is part of the ever-growing iconography spread by the USA Today virus. Although I'm not great in front of crowd, this is something I could talk about for hours. Maybe it's for the best I have a few minutes. Wifey says I tend to ramble.

Anyway, my top 10 things to do while you are still in school (for journalism majors and the rest of you looking to alter your lives)

- Take a foreign language, or brush up on the one you took in high school
- Take a trip outside of the country.
- Brush up on the current goings-on in media law
- Take a gathering information course.
- Take a tour of your local paper and talk to editors, reporters, photographers, etc.
- Get involved in a shadow project
- Start gathering your clips
- Take different courses (like business or poetry, statistics would be a good idea)
- Take different media courses (if you are a reporter, take a photo or design class or two)
- Consider grad school

Today's Word: Bridge

From One Word

Gibson. His bridge trilogy. A society in transit, locked on the broken San Francisco Bay Bridge. Two bridges in Seattle. Both ready to sink into the Sound at the next temblor. Little else to add. Bridges are fatalistic and noble things.


P.S.
This'll be the first and only time I use a Rod Stewart lyric as an entry title. Promise.

Holy somnambulism, Batman

Sunday.

Laundry.

Cleaned out my closet. One white plastic trash bag stuffed with clothes. Destination unknown. Spared some old, nostalgia-filled t-shirts after wifey said she could make a quilt with them. Really, I asked. I stood there stunned, as if she just told me the cats have built a functional rocket to Mars. I didn’t know you could do such things with t-shirts. For me, until today, t-shirts had two life stages. First, you wear it. Second, you part with it by throwing it out, washing the car with it or losing it when you gave it to a girlfriend because you thought she looked hot when she slept in it (or when she stole it from you outright).

Yoga.

Wrote a hell of a lot in my journal, mostly around the superhero project I'm working on. Did some thinking about the societal differences between Spiderman and the X-Men. Re-read "Dark Knight Returns" by Frank Miller. Personally, Miller jumped the shark after his masterful reinterpretation of Batman. Everything else he's done has been...well, not sub-par, but not as interesting. Or he's just surfing the same themes. Hyper-Republican government. City and world on brink of destruction. Slums as far as the eye can see. Outcasts, probably mutants.

Then again, I'm probably jealous. I'm surfing those same themes in my novel, too. At least I'm abandoning them when I work on my second novel. I wonder if Miller is channeling Dickens, too.

Worked a bit mentally drafting two blog entries. One on Michael Jackson, the other on "the Future."

Returned a couple emails, which reminds me: Go to ye local music shoppe and pick up Roger Waters' "Amused to Death." It's about a numb culture that is in love with media coverage of war and how men go into war way too easily these days. Written in the wake of the first Gulf War and pre-reality show TV, it's eerily reminiscent of our world now, and a sad commentary about how the Clinton era was a refreshing break between oil wars and flashy, sanitized explosions on CNN.

And if anyone knows how I can get my hands on satellite photos of the Feb. 15 marches, please get in touch with me. I know someone besides the CIA has to have them.

Also, I'm thinking about getting up very terribly early to work on my novel. I can't work that much in the evening; want to spend time with wife and cats. I leave my wife alone way too much anyway, sacrificing her for this keyboard. When I say "a few more minutes," she knows it's shorthand for an hour. It's not fair, so I think struggling out of bed, where at least one cat can keep her company, is a more fair abandonment. Let her enjoy the sleep of the dead. Let's have our evenings together.

Writers, from what I have gathered, like to work in the still-dark morning. Supposedly, the juices are flowing better when the fingers of dawn are creeping into the night air. Personal experience tells me the night gives something potent to the writing hands, or anyone in the artistic frame of mind. Maybe your body is overtired and the brain juices up, firing off different pistons to keep awake. Maybe it doesn't care anymore and bursts out with raw sentences, honest prose. No one is looking. The city is comatose, and in this silence your words are kings.

The drawback is, I'd be getting up at 5 a.m. Maybe 4:30.

The pain.

Today's Word...

Hasn't been updated yet...or at least by Sunday 9:30 p.m. Seattle time. The prisoner breathes a sigh of relief as the gallows fail to operate. A sign from above that mercy is to be on his head tonight, and not the hangman's noose.

Today, I...

Got up late. Watched "Mystery Science Theater 3000."

Surprised my wife with a bag of licorice.

Went grocery shopping.

Didn't protest. Still a bit bummed about that.

Got a bunch of Frank Miller and Matt Groening books from the library. Also got a Nick Hornby novel, I'm on a NH kick lately.

Had lunch.

Was going to go for a walk, but the icy needling of a February rain in Seattle kept me indoors. Burned through the Miller and Groening collection (all four) in about three hours.

Wrote in my journal. Did some mediating on a graphic novel project I have in the hopper.

Wrote a note on my blogger friend's message board.

Tried to fight off a group of negative thoughts after rancorously comparing my site to their blogs. So far, it's still a draw.

Wrote in my blog.

On tap:

Dinner.

A movie on DVD.

Thinking about upcoming blog essays and returning a couple e-mails.

Sleep.

Today's Word: Duck

From One Word

Oh, damnit. What a stupid word? It's loaded these days, with talk of duct tape...duck and cover. Of course, the waterfowl. I see Lucky Ducky from the comic strip. I see a mallard in a polluted lake, which rhymes with drake.

P.S.

I’m sorry. I’m in a surly mood. I have nothing going on in the creative juices today, and that makes me hostile.

Folie d’un

When I get hit by a clever idea (or a brainstorm of what I think is a nifty piece of dialogue, a interesting scene or a piece of faux-history I can weave into a fictional character's life), I swear for a millisecond...just long enough to be a delusion...my vision is tainted with a light shade of red, then fades back to my normally scheduled sight. Nothing to be alarmed about: It doesn't affect my driving, video gaming or those rare instances when I make dinner.

I don't really know what to think about that sensation. When I was young, and these brainstorms would first it, they would crash onto my gray matter, akin to a mighty push, an almost sexual rush of ideas marching across my skin, my brain, my bones like static electricity. During one incident, I clearly recall leaping out of bed because I had to write the vision down, making an awful ruckus in the process, tripping and weaving and collapsing on a nearby pad and pen. I was naked at the time, too. Ouch.

That random fire is different now. I can feel it coming, and the wallop isn't so much of a fast shock, but a slow burn with a humming in my head leading to a scene or dialogue snatch taking shape in my mind's eye, Polaroid Instamatic slow-fade-in style. The sensation in my head is now a warning sign to quickly jot down what I've thought of. Wait too long to transcribe these flashes and the vision will fade with degradation of a nuclear half-life, receding in faster speeds into the fog of my swampy mind, maybe (but maybe not) snagging itself on a branch for a search party to later find. More often than not, it sinks beneath the murk. Some hunter I am.

Well, you try to outrun your own synapses sometimes, bub.

Anyway, I was talking to therapist friend of mine today after work. We got to talking about my pink, glittering ecstasies. In a fit of unabashed rationalism, I guessed the flash of pink results from the elevation in blood pressure pushing blood into the capillaries of my eyes. The bliss I feel, most likely from the serotonin levels. She thought it was possible.

And yet, I jumped back for a second into my Catholic upbringing, believing in a soul as a sort of conduit for my creativity. I don't know why I thought that. What if the notion of good and guilt we feel in our bodies is merely a neurochemical reaction caused by the training we get in whatever holy temple we wander into regularly? What if the soul resides in the brain, in a tucked-away cubic centimeter where some of the more active brain roads bypass each other in a jambalaya of a synaptic highways; and this part of the brain is stimulated by a series of words spoken in the right order by pastors or mullahs to activate traffic in our heads, making us feel pity or love or regret?

If what I feel as creativity is lodged in my brain, I have to guess that's where my soul, my spiritual sum of parts, resides, too. And if, as my therapist friend points out, we can change our thinking with mental exercise, then what does that say about the soul, about age-old religions, about human nature?

For some reason, the word “cryptography” is emerging in my mind. I don't know why.

And I also think about all those holy men driven to write the scripture from the heat of the fire rolling in their brains.

Today's Word: Exhale

From One Word

The relief coming from another posting. The itch that drives to write daily is sated for another day. I can relax, knowing it's the longest possible time before I feel compelled in a primal way to make the words dance for me, to wrestle thoughts out of my head and on to a text slate. I do this, and I can relax.

Iraq and a Hard Place

Hi, gang.

Look, I'm going to be blunt. I'm having a hard time putting together words. I'm just not into it right now. Just kind of lethargic, a writer's flu.

I was going to write an essay about the Hobson's Choice we anti-war protestors have to wrestle with. You see, even since the Feb. 15 protests and the international resistance to pull the White House away from the Super-Duper War Video Game controller, it looks like Saddam Hussein is using the aftermath of the protests to start road blocking U.N. inspectors (story here and here), something that's only going to make the anti-war folks look as if we are coddling a dictator.

It's been hard enough to carry a "No Iraq War" sign without getting comments from idiots in passing cars. We told ourselves we wanted the Iraqi people to be safe. Attacking Iraq to get rid of one despot and killing tens of thousands of civilians was (and still is) a horrible idea.

And don't get us started on the whole oil thing. Or the idea that Hussein has all these Weapons of Mass Destruction just sitting around.

Now, I'm conflicted, and I imagine I'm not the only one. I want to go to the weekly anti-war protest on Saturday, but to me this new maneuvering by Iraq has taken some of the wind out of the anti-war sails.

Here's the choice: Go out there and protest with this awful feeling that we kinda, sorta are helping Saddam, or do something less visible, something that looks like we are caving. The American press is dismissive to the anti-war folks to begin with (compare American and European coverage, and you'll see what I mean). Thanks to Hussein, I foresee the anti-war folks having a harder time getting the point across through the U.S. media that we aren't supporting Hussein, but worried about the Iraqi people, Middle East destabilization and Bush's pathetic Hamlet imitation.

But tell that to some average Joe spoon-fed some paranoid Tom Clancy-flavored line from War-a-Go-Go Fox News Channel.

Joe Conason over at Salon offers up a couple solutions, namely protesting the Iraqi side of the equation. His logic works like this: We put enough pressure on our own countries; it's time to put some of it on Iraq.

It's easy to say that, though. Slobodan Milosevic was brought down by his own people. Communist leaders fell under the weight of mass rallies, again by their own people. Gandhi and Martin Luther King led the way for nonviolent change with their own native populations. Yet, Saddam Hussein rules Iraq with an iron fist. Any attempt to rally an Iraqi-based uprising would be crushed violently. I get the feeling also that the pro-war tribes aren't ready to sit and wait for some coup or mass revolt to take place. No sexy ratings to be had there. Plus, you never know what'll happen to the oil fields, right?

And to think, there was some small buzz starting about the U.S. and its weapons of mass destruction stockpiles.

Afterthought

And if I'm thinking this glumly about holding up a sign, imagine what these people might be thinking?

On second thought, nevermind. I think if they have enough conviction to do what they are doing, then they're pretty sure of themselves to begin with. Hell of a way to spend spring break, though.

Afterthought, part two

The Guardian has an interesting article about how anti-war folks can push for a change in Iraq.

Today's Word: Circle

From One Word

A symbol of perfection, life, infinity. Yet, it's also a closed circuit. Round things are hard to pack. A circle is karma in all its glory. A reminder of what comes around goes around. It only depends on when it's coming back...on how big that circle really is.

Today's special: Pettiness

Story here. Snip below.

A fast food restaurant in America says it has received huge support after renaming its French fries, in protest at France's opposition to the United States' stance on Iraq.

Neal Rowland, the owner of Cubbie's diner in Beaufort, North Carolina, said his newly-named 'freedom fries' have been a hit with customers.


Well, damn. If this is how Americans are acting now, what happens if Turkey continues to stiff-arm support for a U.S. invasion of Iraq? What the heck are we going to do come Thanksgiving?

Also, does the whole "freedom fries" thing remind anyone else of Albert Brooks' rant to his wife in "Lost in America," when he dictated she could no longer use the term "nest egg" after nearly blowing it all gambling?

P.S.

Unfortunately, it looks like the North Carolina thing isn't an isolated incident.

Love, love is a verb

Happy 44 months, my darling wife.

I love and adore you.

I hope we stay together forever.

History Lesson

Last night, as I drove to my weekly French class, I listened to a rebroadcast of author and director Sherman Alexie's speech at the Seattle contingent of the Feb. 15 anti-war protests, it occurred to me that there's a strong sub-reason for why we don't want, as a nation, to get anywhere near the whole idea of reparations for African Americans as part of America's vile slave-holding legacy. Sure, you'll hear reasons given such as "How do we begin to write a check for the pain inflicted?" and "Why do we want to dredge up the past?" and even "Didn't we solve this with the Civil War?"

Yet, there's something I didn't think about until Alexie, a Native American, stated that it was ironic that the United States was so upset about Iraq about "breaking so many treaties" with us. The crowd laughed, getting the tragic in-joke and suddenly a little bit more of history stirred together in my mind. The reason why we don't want to hand out any kind of reparation with regard to African Americans is that the moment the United States sets any sort of precedent with reparation for past, the next group at the door will be Native Americans looking to address the literally centuries of slaughter, abuse, lies and broken treaties performed by the U.S. government.

America would be shattered as a nation if it had to honestly redress all the tribes across the nation. Read any simple map about the collection of tribes in American before white settlers and you'll see there were prominent cultures here...whole peoples, legends, histories and even civilizations. How could the United States begin to repay what happened? How could we heal from this schism?

The trouble is, as time and technology march forward, more children are going to learn about it. History has a funny way of making the truth be known and eventually the United States is going to have to deal with it. Of course, the sinister option is to continue giving Native Americans crappy health care and education, keep them on the reservation, and let a life of sub-standard living kill off anyone who can state an argument that the U.S. does owe the Native American something...a bit like, I'm guessing, how you see Holocaust deniers springing up as the last of the death camp survivors pass on to their final reward. If you have no challenger, you can rewrite history to keep the ghosts further away.

P.S.

Here's a fun bit of trivia: Type in Sherman Alexie's name wrong at Google and you'll get a bunch of transgender sex sites as a result. Oops.

Today’s Word: Stairs

From One Word

My grandmother had a friend named Ruby. They grew old together, lived in different houses on the same street. Ruby was a firebrand who barely cleared four feet. She was full of spirit and love.

A couple years ago, she slipped down her front stairs, went into a coma-like state and later died. She was too wonderful to die that way. We should have been with her.

Forward motion

One of the first things any writer learns (besides that everything has been done before) is that there are some days when you think whatever you put on the page is crap. The second thing you find out is you don’t feel like writing anything sometimes, but you have to find a way to forge on…even if you think that whatever you are putting down on your page is toxic waste.

It is days like this when you have to put your creative juices on a forced march, letting it lead you blindly into some foggy foreign soil without a map. It’s a frightening time, testing your confidence in yourself as a writer. I’m taking it a bit at time, working this jigsaw puzzle from the edges inward. I have an idea of what the general picture is supposed to look like

It’s lonely in my head right now. The gang who use to treat me with dialogue and scenes and motives now all seem to have left the bar, and here I am bereft of their cleverness. My characters are strange animals, never letting me see them face-to-face. I spot them out of the corner of my eye, running parallel with me. If I look directly at them, they vanish or go through some horrible transmogrification of real and phantasm, like when you seen one of those images that is a kitten if you look at it one way and turns into a Japanime monster-tiger if you tilt it.

So, here I sit, like Jane Goodall waiting for her chimps. Diary ready to go.

Ode to Haloscan

Haloscan is a third-party Web feature that I picked up when I was looking for a comment application. I saw other bloggers use it, and it was free. Sounded good.

In the beginning, it worked. But apparently these days, if someone looks at the comment section funny, it vanishes, coming out of hiding when its feelings aren't hurt. Haloscan's comment section is a moody teenager, a sullen spouse, a lame dog, that groundhog that supposed to divine the length of winter, a spacey relative, a vagabond, a gypsy, a disappearing con-man running into the night with someone else’s sentiments, a thief of impromptu love notes.

Minor epiphany

My in-laws have joined us for a few days, coming up from the warm climes of Arizona to attend a wedding of my wife’s cousin. My father-in-law is currently duking it out with the baddies from “Halo” for X-box. He’s beaten the game a long time ago on his X-box and brought it with him on this trip, treating my wife and mom-in-law to a constant parade of video violence.

I played it and beat it months ago. I picked it up again when dad-in-law brought it up, gunning through alien corridors and unloading clips into various creatures that want to do me harm in serious, violent ways.

I hear dad-in-law now, blasting away in the living room. I hear the digitized screams of aliens being shot up or blown up. I hear explosions. I hear my wife going “geez” when something vile that I can’t see just took place on the TV set.

I’m in the other room, typing away on this entry. I have my mp3 player going. I’m waiting for my friend Cori to pop into MSN I/M. I have my blog buddy Mayamaya in another window talking to me about ways I can get out of my current dark mental cloud.

Best of all, I have my silver tabby cat perched over my computer like a decadent lady-in-waiting, cooking unevenly under the desk lamp. Minutes ago, she was dreaming, her body in a spastic combo of twitching feet, rapid breathing and snarling cheeks, sending her snow white whiskers waving back and forth in a savage metronome. She made soft, growling noises, either fending something off or reveling in primal lust for a target she was about to dream-kill.

I stopped typing and watched her, raising a cautious hand in order to pet her. I’m her daddy, telling her by the caress of her side fur that she’ll be okay. I’ll speak in low tones and go “shhh” a lot, as if she can understand English. My wife does the same thing when I awake up startled from a bad dream. I figure when I do it to the cat something has to translate along the way.

Before I pet her, she calmed down into a solid snooze. The episode ends. In a few seconds, her green eyes will come alive and spot me. I’ll pet her lightly and she rubs firmly against me, furred cheek across fingers.

My sleeping tabby cat is more interesting than any video game.

Today’s Word: Wire

From One Word

Cybernetic veins and arteries. Copper in the transit and electrons on the vibe. The closeness of machines to the human body. Any object in transit traveling on a circuit, back in on itself. Only works when it’s in one, uninterrupted piece. Like the rest of us.

Point and click

BBC News Online has a nifty page dedicated to protest photographs taken by people in the anti-war marches over the weekend.

It's a rare occurrence when a major news agency turns over the reins to the audience because, most likely, the reporters simply couldn't be at all the news spots at once.

Huh?

Okay, I know I might be burned on this. It might be as bogus as a Seattle weather forecast. It's about the Feb. 15 anti-war protest in New York City.

I know it's about politics, but really it's about free speech when you get right down to it.

However, I saw this via Tom Tomorrow's blog and I have to put something here about it.

Story here. Snip below.

There's a peace march scheduled in New York City today. But it will be more like a peace standstill. Unlike the 602 cities around the globe where protesters plan to march together to protest a war on Iraq, New York authorities won't allow it.

The Bloomberg administration made the decision well before last week's heightened security alert. A federal three-judge panel affirmed it - even though The New York Times reported a police commander told a federal judge that he had no reason to expect violence.

The Homeland Security Department alerted the country that there's a possible threat, but urged Americans to go on with our lives. Anyone considering marching with 100,000 other people can decide for themselves whether to take the risk.

But there's more to it than that. The Bush administration - which is in the midst of trying to sell the war to the public - filed a brief urging the judges to uphold denial of the permit. And the Bloomberg administration has no intention of forcing a St. Patrick's Day standstill instead of a parade - even though it's bigger and likely more raucous.

Note: Emphasis mine.

Happy President's Day.

On Edit
More on the story here.

Scenes from Seattle


Photo by me. Just outside of Nordstrom, underneath the monorail. The street (Fifth Avenue) was packed out for as far as the eye could see

Of course, the local television news coverage of the march was atrocious. Hey, I got your news for you right here. 20,000 people (a guesstimate from 15,000 by the cops and 30,000 by the protest organizers) marched from one end of downtown Seattle to another. Only one arrest was made. Largest Seattle march (besides WTO) since the Vietnam War.

Meanwhile, equal time was given to a handful of pro-war yahoos who wanted to frame all the 20,000 protesters as being "against the troops," which we clearly weren't. It was aggravating to have the local press, under the cloak of "equal time," talk for a second about thousands of peaceful protestors halting traffic in Seattle and then cut to a handful of rabid wannabe warriors. I'm sorry, professional media. Did we ruin your day by not rioting?

The most tasteless media analysis I thought came from Seattle Times' Eric Sorensen's comments of the Seattle march:


As befits a parade, it was a motley display of punks and veterans, some Muslim students and garden-variety people in rain gear. Thousands held hand-lettered signs, dogs wore peace placards and several people carried papier-mâché effigies of Bush, including one depicting the president as a Roman emperor. John and Kathi Sleavin carried a French flag "to thank the French government for listening to its people and for standing up for what their people believe," John Sleavin said.


Apparently, Eric missed all the elegant Women in Black, moms and dads carrying small children, tykes with anti-war signs, high school students in groups, Vietnam vets who carried signs against this oncoming war, and elderly couples holding hands as the rain came down on their "No Iraq War" buttons.

Eric also missed that fact that this ribbon of humanity covered nearly all of Second Avenue in Seattle from Pine Street to the Seattle Seahawks stadium, a good two miles.


Second Ave. Seattle. A sea of humanity from one end to the other. I think I took this one, too. May have been my wife, who joined me, along with our friends Arna, Deb and Rachel.

Were there "fringe" elements there? Sure, but punks we weren't. Punks don't have the organization to pull off a global protest.

In London, 750,000 gathered. In Rome, about a million. Paris, at least 100,000. Madrid, nearly 700,000. Berlin, at least 300,000. In New York City, no one may ever know, but the crowds stretched 20 blocks long and two blocks wide.

Not enough for you? This is snipped from the link above:

About 80,000 marched in Dublin, Irish police said. Crowds were estimated at 60,000 in Seville, Spain; 40,000 in Bern, Switzerland; 30,000 in Glasgow, Scotland; 25,000 in Copenhagen, Denmark; 15,000 in Vienna, Austria; more than 20,000 in Montreal and 15,000 in Toronto; 5,000 in Cape Town and 4,000 in Johannesburg in South Africa; 5,000 in Tokyo; and 2,000 in Dhaka, Bangladesh.


The newspapers are calling this one of the largest global protests ever, coordinated in equal parts by the Internet and the voice to say no to war.

Just before the rally ended and the long march began, a rumor started circulating that British Prime Minister Tony Blair had reconsidered his alliance to George W. Bush on attacking Iraq. Although proven false (for now, hopefully), if the protests were going to have any effect on changing minds, it would have to be in London. The Brits who marched on Hyde Park were the most important protestors of the day, turning their footpower and will into a giant pry bar, trying to force Tony Blair back from the Kool-Aid. We in Seattle knew Bush wouldn't have a change in his black, oil-infused heart. Blair was the key. Change Blair's mind and Bush's little desert folly would look truly shallow and unprincipled.

On this day, we, the anti-war folk, were the majority. Under their own power, millions of people took to the streets to find another way than war. I don't know if it'll work, but we'd like to give it a try. Instead of using satellite photos of moving trucks to go to war, let's turn them over to the U.N. Let the inspectors get unfettered ground and air access. Let's go slow instead of doing something horrible we can't take back.

On the Sunday morning news shows, guest commentators indirectly painted the anti-war groups who marched yesterday as giving Saddam Hussein more time to get his defenses in order, to prepare his chemical weapons for use. Fine, paint as us naive dupes (even though there's a million reasons not to go to war; and if we are dupes, we're in good company with the likes of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela and others of noble spirit), but if we have to be dupes, let us be on the side of keeping a lot of Iraqi civilians (half of which are under the age of 15) alive and not plunging the Middle East, and the world, into chaos.

P.S.
Best sign at the Seattle rally: Last time we listened to a Bush, we wandered in the desert for 40 years.

With a little help from my friends

Hi.

Thanks to all for the nice comments regarding my post on Mayamaya's blog.

Some of comments you left behind had the ring to it of there's nothing you can do.

While it's grim out there these days, all isn't lost.

Tomorrow, protests will be staged in literally hundreds of cities across the globe.

Wanna fight back? Wanna make a stand?

Get out there and march, especially if you are in London, where there will be an estimated 500,000 people.

500,000! Check that for a second. That's about three times larger than all the U.S. troops surrounding Iraq right now.

If you protested in the 1960s (or continued to walk the talk against nuclear weapons, South African apartheid, pollution or the globalization movement), get out there. We need your spirit to remind us that change can be made.

If you feel hopeless, take a walk with a few thousand like-minded souls. Trust me. It'll recharge your batteries.

Remember: Don't riot, don't push the police around, don't be rude. Don't give the TV camera a chance to frame the anti-war movement as a bunch of hooligans.

Get the information about Feb. 15 here.

You aren't alone.

Happy Valentine's Day

Yes, nearly forgot to wish this all upon you. Sorry.

Tonight, wifey and I will be attending a wedding of a family member, which is sweet and all that, but it crumbled the plans I had in mind for us. Namely, dinner and a show in Seattle tonight. So, I'm still in a pouty, Edina Monsoon-frame of mind, grumbling that no one thinks of me, sweetie-darling. They just had to get married today. *irritated sighing and whining sounds*

Anyway, I'm sure it'll be a wonderful, romantic affair. Plus, we get cake.

Yum.

P.S.

Wifey and I exchanged gifts last night (because, as mentioned earlier, today we won't have time to properly celebrate V-Day). Okay, first, we had a spending limit because we're going to Europe in a few weeks, but we both ending up getting each other the same thing: Gift certificates (for the same amount) to our local independent bookstore.

Eerie.

Because we have to go to a wedding tonight (and because wifey's folks are staying with us to go to the wedding), we are going to celebrate this big smoochy-love-nuzzle day on Feb. 19, after her folks leave.

Feb. 19 also is our 43-month anniversary.

It's also the birthday of Nicholas Copernicus, who arguably founded modern astronomy.

There you go.

P.P.S.

Have I mentioned how much the new Massive Attack album rocks?

Today’s Word: Clue

From One Word

What to say? A mystery, elements left behind by inept burglars or clever men looking to deliver red herrings. In literature and cop shows, they are mere devices to speed the plot along. Sorry. My entry sucks today.

Word/up

My guest essay is up at Mayamaya's blog.

Share and enjoy.

By the way, the new Massive Attack album is stellar.

Of course, I'm kinda biased.

A simple fetish

Or when technolust rears its ugly, insatiable head.

If I had my way, this is what I want my next computer to be.

I want it to be an Apple laptop with a keyboard that rises up and folds out for more handspace. You know, the kind you once saw on IBM laptops. The screen is, of course, full color and not backlit, but instead of just a single screen, I want your main screen up the middle and a pair of side screens that open up like saloon doors to butterfly out with all the curvy, elegant beauty found in classic Greek arches, but beveled in half and hinged on each end of the main screen to open up and away. Like a refrigerator, when you open the butterfly screen from their off position against the main screen, arcing them open, the screen light would flash on. Once activated, you can use the butterfly screens as a sort of bone yard for applications you aren’t using fully right then, but don’t want to minimize.

For example, in my main screen would be my text file for my novel or a blog entry. On the left butterfly screen would be my mp3 player and my instant messenger application, both active. I could mouse over from one screen to the next and resume an i/m session or fiddle with the mp3 player to cherry pick a Massive Attack remix. On my right butterfly screen is my Web browser displaying content I’ll use for my blog entry. Again, with the mouse, I can drift back and forth between all three, dragging and dropping applications onto the different screens as priority allows.

Too wacky? How about this approach. Make the hard drive about the size of an iPod and completely detachable. Plus, build a tiny mp3 application into it so you can plug in your headphones and listen to some tunes while you carry your hard drive around with you. No more clunky laptops to struggle with. Just make the hardware itself generic and have the hard drive as your key item. Equate laptops with fancy docking engines and have your little juice box hard drive as something you can plug into anywhere.

Sure. It sounds impossible, but dreaming this stuff up is how real innovation starts, right?

Today’s Word: Rocket

From One Word

Nazi engineers built them to reach England and, one day, the entire world. The U.S. space program is built on the backbone of an Axis program designed to slaughter millions. Incredibly phallic, a long-distance spear. A triumph of finding escape velocity.

P.S.

I have a guest essay ready for Mayamaya’s blog. It should be up there soon. I’ll let you know more as it happens.

Snip, snap, snipe

Quick thought: Now that Eminem has been nominated for an Academy Award, can he please stop his dexterous yet foul-mouthed bitching that he's an oppressed, crazy white boy that no one understands.

Dude, you're mainstream now. You're a success, selling albums, appearing on video screens, and haunting magazine covers at a rate that would red zone even the J.Lo Coverage Spectrometer. You're the punk kid who spat in the face of America, and we asked for more. You're infectious and everywhere, like AIDS and we don't mind. You're loved by MTV and hated by the Religious Right...a sure sign of budding immortality, up there with a Dionysus from Dixieland named Elvis shaking his hips and John Lennon rightly pointing out at the Beatles were more popular than Christ. Barring some supernova self-destruction, you'll be a fist in the gut of pop culture for years to come.

Of course, being content will probably play havoc with writing venomous screeds for your next album. Oh well, price of fame and all that.

If you're still upset, Marshall, do what the rest of us do: Go to therapy. It's not like you're strapped for the co-pay.

Today's Word: Strung

From One Word

Strung out on connecting words together...thought bridges. It's his latest addiction, world buildings with the arcana of text in the age of crude holography and dancing animations on Web screens.

Road Trip

So, I’m hanging out at The Sinister Sister’s web site. She’s a writer who lives in the Philippines and is perhaps the only regular reader I have here who leaves some sort of acknowledgment after reading my work. If you see an entry in the Comment section after a posting of mine, it’s a good bet it’s her.

I’m killing time at work today, banging away at my mundane task until I think enough time has passed so I can pack it up and go get a haircut. I have an imaginary buzzer in my brain that acts like a radon detector/canary in a coalmine telling me when I’ve had enough of my job and my office. When it buzzes, I shutdown my computer and go home.

Anyway, as I was waiting for my buzzer to click awake and alert me to dangerous levels of Workplace in my blood stream, Mayamaya (her blog name) and I exchanged posts on her message board about art, my embryonic novel, food (her family runs restaurants, hoping to expand its number soon), and mostly about how I should stop being so worried about accidentally copying someone else’s style and just create my own.

To all those who visit her site, Mayamaya is a type of den mother to bloggers, offering them advice or encouragement. Coming from an artistic family (and as a practicing poet), she understands the daunting labyrinth of the creative process, so see offers kind words or a good-natured kick in the pants whenever she sees fit. Guess what she’s been dosing out to me lately? Here, look at my stress-damaged jeans for a clue.

But today, Mayamaya went the extra mile, offering what I would never dream of doing to a stranger: her blogspace. Today, she offered to let me post an entry on her blog. She told me the entry can be on anything, but let’s be honest: You just can’t throw anything into a guest spot. To me, there’s etiquette to follow. With her site, she’s maintained a sense of gentleness, introspection which becomes the musings of an amateur online anthropologist with children in Southeast Asia.

To me, a blog is someone’s home, at least his or her mental or artistic home. Coming and just dropping down any entry is going to someone’s housewarming party with a can of tuna and a bag of Cheesy-Poofs. You should put some effort into this.

I’m humbled and flattered by this invitation. Hopefully, I’ll have something up soon.

Almost late

Just a note for Internet immortality.

Today is my step-dad’s birthday. I nearly forgot to call him. I’m lucky he got the card from my wife and I on time. He (and my mom and grandma) live 2,000 miles away and, characteristically, I forgot to put it in the mail at the last minute, reduced to a frantic prayer that the postal service will get it to his door over the weekend.

I tried to call earlier today, but he was out. Then, as I was sitting down to draft up tonight’s entry when the lightning bolt hit me: You never called him back.

It’s two hours later, approaching 10:30 p.m. his time. I thought I blew it. He’s asleep, I forgot the guy’s birthday. I suck.

So, after a minor freak out around the house (I’m not a good man in a tight corner, sorry), I grab the phone, hope he’s not asleep and call. He and mom are awake, we chat, and I wish him a happy birthday. They both got home from a vacation in Las Vegas today, when he found our card in a stack of mail. Salvation! The post office comes through.

Yes, I know it sounds like it’s an obligation, but I didn’t want to let the day go by without wishing him a happy birthday. Just wouldn’t seem fair.

So, Mike, Happy Birthday.

Today’s Word: Vendetta

From One Word

An elegant word for revenge. Tales of righting past wrongs are sexy and dangerous, but the story always seems to end after the angry man puts his bullets through the scoundrel’s heart. What comes next? Does the wronged man ever feel at peace? Does he, with his newfound justice, feel empty with his grand quest over?

Notes on protesting

One, I was the only knucklehead today who didn’t bring gloves or a hat. Even if it isn’t cold, bring gloves because carrying a sign makes your hands raw after a while.

Two, if you are for the war and driving by and see a bunch of people with signs against the war, and you would like register your option, get out of your car and hold up a sign. Driving by with a raised middle finger is unsafe driving. Also, driving by and yelling obscenities isn’t just rude, it doesn’t work. The Doppler effect of a moving car moving along side a stationary body of people negates whatever message you have to mere select syllables. You may think you’re being clever, but we can’t hear you. Sorry.

Three, if you are protesting anything these days, make the words on your sign short and to the point. No quotes by Tolkien, no in-depth support of U.N. resolution 1441, nothing with more than seven syllables total. Think the billboards from “Fahrenheit 451” and you’ll get the picture.

Good, simple sign slogans: “Would Jesus Bomb Iraq?” “No Iraq War” “Books Not Bombs”

Four, bring a friend when protesting. Standing by yourself is a drag, even when you are surrounded by like-minded people.

Five, if you're protesting and you don’t like insults being hurled at you, stand near a sign-waving grandma. No one, and I mean no one, shouts harsh words at a grandma unless they already have a luxury suite waiting for them in Hell.

Six, if you protest naked, you have more guts than I do.

Speaking of New York

If you have cable, there’s going to be an “Absolutely Fabulous” special tonight on Comedy Central. The girls hit New York for Fashion Week, and to track down Edina’s constantly missing son, who apparently wanted to remain absent for all these years. Hilarity ensues.

If you have no idea what “Ab Fab” is, then get an education here and find out about the new episodes being planned.

Today’s Word: Compliment

From One Word

The first thing I think of is it being the opposite of guilt. You are given praise; you have nothing to be ashamed of. They only mean something when they are true. Sometimes, you tell a string of them to get a girl in bed with you Compliments are for people who can’t use wit or imagination. A get out of jail free card for making conversation.

So, what did he say?

In person, William Gibson is a large fellow. Tall, lanky. The Yao Ming of sci-fi writers. Impossibly thin, a walking stick in a formless gelding of a leather jacket. A movable skull with a shock of Brillo hair and owlish wire-rimmed glasses, all holding his head together from the supercharged brain about literally explode with ideas. Harry Potter by way of Thomas Dolby, blinded by science and practicing a high, secret form of magic. Here was the guy who wrote "Neuromancer," taking a sledgehammer to the axis of sci-fi lit, walking with a awkward stoop and a bit embarrassed with being on display.

This was his second day of his U.S. tour, and the night before he also was in Seattle at the University of Washington. When I saw him on Tuesday, he was holding court at Third Place Books, an independent bookstore in the eastern suburbs of the Emerald City.

He read with a cadence on loan from the Greater Beat Poet Performance Attitude Emporium, swaying and punching at words in the beginning, finding a rhythm to get into as he was describing the protagonist having lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant with a massive case of jet lag. He's not sure about the tone of the page yet, admitting he never reads the same passage twice on a book tour. He was empty-handed when he got to the stage, sans book, the thing he ached into for a couple years. Eventually, casually, without trying, he talks in a narrative. We're there in the eatery, seeing the Zippo lighters on the wall and trying to drink wine while our angry bodies think it's five hours in another direction.

The audience, a motley cadre of maybe five dozen, half still wearing the black jeans and combat sneers that were the standard dress of the antiheroes in Gibson's gritty cyberpunk universe. The rest of the crowd was in suburban stealth mode, having grown up to occupy Gibson's imagination as freelancing Web designers, avid e-mailers or just regular Webheads who ditched the mirrorshades, got married and get jittery at the notion of our nation becoming a post-apocalyptic neon-infested Rio de Janeiro under Team Bush.

Gibson then answered questions, talking about his exploits going to Tokyo these days, the struggle with finding the legs for his new novel, how tragedies have a gravity that pulls us all from our separate bubbled-off lives into the same place at once. He revisits older books and previous characters, including one that an audience member suggests was actually Gibson in disguise. Eyes twinkle. He laughs. No, he swears, that character was without haste and couldn't be messed with. I, on the other hand, procrastinate too much and am easily messed with.

Perhaps it's too early in the tour session, maybe he likes Seattle, but he looks at ease and fresh. He hasn't been worn down by the road yet, buffeted by the same questions over and over. At least the audience changes. The answers will be new to them. That's the beauty of a traveling Q&A session: The author may hear the same questions over and over again until the words haunt his or her sleep, but s/he can always get a jones off the looks of appreciation the audience gives when The Wise Answer comes rumbling off the lips.

Me? I sit and listen. I'm way too scared to get up and ask what I've been rehearsing for days.

And then, the line forms to get our copies of his latest, "Pattern Recognition," signed. I'm in the rear quarter and beginning to get sweaty that he'll have to stop and run off to Some Other Engagement before I get to him with my question. I'm the kid in "Christmas Story," trying to plead my case to Santa Claus for the BB gun, watching the clock run faster to closing time and the line never moving an inch.

I hand my copy to Gibson (holy jeepers, I’m two feet from the guy who wrote "Neuromancer." when I tell people I was seeing Gibson, they'd say "who?" I'd ask," Did you ever read 'Neuromancer?'" and get a dead fish stare back. I backtrack. "Ever heard of the word 'cyberspace'? " This reels them in. "yeah." "He invented it." Whoa...in all it's shades and varieties, they reply) and he sees my name on the post-it note attached beforehand by the event coordinator. He begins to write the standard "Oh crap, I’ll be doing this a zillion times on this tour" name/date string, although he has marvelous penmanship. I pipe up. "Can I ask you a question, Mr. Gibson? I was too nervous to ask earlier."

Mr. Gibson. I'm 30. He’s in his mid-50s. But I can't call him "William."

"Oh sure." A high, tinny voice. Squeaky, like the cheese in a dish of Mutter Paneer. At once I get the impression he would have made the coolest science teacher ever.

And I ask him the question.

"Suppose you start writing another novel, something you are really getting into. As you are writing, you find out some of the subject matter or plot device you are using has been used by a pre-eminent author in the genre. What do you do? Do you cut your losses or try to find a new spin on it?"

Gibson stops writing. He looks up with eyes that imagine the future and win him awards. Time slows between him and me in that gulf of two feet at the signing table. Glaciers melt and chunks of ice are falling off the Ross Ice Shelf due to global warming. Children are dying of AIDS in Johannesburg, Bangkok and Detroit. Genital mutilation is going on in Africa and brown smog is killing people in South Asia. And I'm worried about this. In a second before he responds, I'm open and naked, vulnerable for all my fears and rife with petty concerns. Gibson leans back in his chair.

And I can only paraphrase because I'm still in shock that he answers me.

"Huh. Well, if you really got it going on with a story, I'd say keep at it. Remember, if you rely solely on a device, you're sunk. If the idea is all that matters, then you might want to find a new idea. A good writer will find a way to make something new. You'll find your own way.”

And then he closes my copy of his book, hands it to me. A moment passes as he looks at me. I drown in the words and absorb them the best I can.

I nod, smile and say thank you.

I walk away, drifting in semi-compression, trying to press the time into a shape that I can store in my brain. This moment I need to remember, something I can grab off the shelf, open up and experience. For weeks, I've been in a fever worrying about how my embryo of a novel would sound like Gibson's "Idoru” and in dread that my story would be savaged by readers and critics as a deluded copy of a superior work.

A recurring image I have is all the comparisons people would make. I can see a murder of readers gathered in some dark, smoky room...a copy of my book sitting woefully in the middle of the table...a bare bulb shining down dead center, torturing the poor thing. They'd flip through the text. "Here's 'Handmaid's Tale', here's 'Idoru', here's 'Shockwave Rider', here's 'Clockwork Orange', here's the film version of 'Minority Report', here's Faust, here's elements of Dickens. He's a big scam, he is." Although, I'm hoping someone gets the last two comparisons. Those I don't mind.

What Gibson said was a challenge, I think. If you believe in what you're writing it'll work out. You need that foundation, that interest in the world you're building first. Gibson commented that he isn't writing about the future, merely a twisted view of now. See what's around you and write about it in a compelling way. Performance artist Laurie Anderson once commented that people would believe virtual reality when people can see dirt in it.

Since I spoke to Gibson, I've been going over my notes. I have something here. I need to find out the soul of the story a bit more, not just the neat paint job and decals I'm going to splash on the chassis. So far, I got something I like.

Now, to assemble the sucker.

Today's Word: Outfit

From One Word

Heh. The mob, in nice suits. Modern battle dress, designed to attract the opposite sex, designed to get attention. I have six outfits for the week. I stack them together after laundry so I don’t have to think about what I’m going to wear during the week. Heard Einstein did the same thing.

Breathe in, breathe out

Tomorrow, I’m skipping work to catch William Gibson at a local bookstore. He’s on tour for his new novel, (7th or 8th, depending how you’re keeping score) “Pattern Recognition.” If I’m lucky, I’ll get a chance to ask him a question in line when he signs my copy.

Here’s the question: Suppose you’re working on a new novel and you find out that what you’re writing about has already been done, or at least part of it has, say with a certain plot device. Do you cut your losses or try to find a new spin on it?

In case you don’t know who Gibson is, in 1984 he published a novel called “Neuromancer,” which only changed the face of science fiction forever, scooping up every major sci-fi writing award and spawning a flood of copycats trying to emulate his hacking-at-the-apocalypse-in-the-neon-glow-of-globalized-paranoia-and-shady-characters. When you think of Gibson, think “The Matrix” or “Blade Runner” and you’ll get a general idea of the stuff he writes about (give or take all the vague mysticism and slow-motion kung fu). He’s also the guy who coined the word “cyberspace” and is on record in the miniseries “Wild Palms” as “living to regret it.”

My trouble is I’ve started out building the wire framework of a novel that features a character who has something noticeably in common: the ability to divinate, to some degree, the future by sifting through oceans of data.

In “Idoru,” Gibson’s seer is Colin Laney, who can absorb data and predict outcomes through “nodal points” where everything comes together. In “Pattern Recognition,” there’s Cayce, a “coolhunter” who can pick up on trends before anyone else does (to be fair, coolhunters already exist and are hard at work tracking proto-fads like hunters on safari).

And, of course, I plan out my character (one of two main ones) before I read “Idoru.”

So, my heart sinks when I go wind of Colin and Cayce. I’m burning through “Idoru” right now. The verdict: it’s close enough to what I’m thinking about, although Colin’s (and it appears Cayce’s) ability is merely a device to move the plot along as well as a subtle envisioning on the evolution of trendspotting mixed with a global communications diet.

So, here I am. In angst. Trying to figure out the right way I can spin this, to salvage my work that now feels as if it’s been grafted to my muscle fibers. A conjoined twin of creation. Remove it and, well, who knows what might happen.

Okay, anything but that. Find. A. Way.

And once in a while, something will appear. An idea, a curious commentary. Off I go to write it down, along with the other creative castaways bound together to make something of themselves. Maybe my id rises up and say “Gibson isn’t all that hot anyway. He doesn’t know how to write people, just overheated prose.” And I tell my id to calm down and have a seat. If it was anyone else but Gibson, maybe. But this guy is Shakespeare of modern sci-fi. People will notice if you rip him off. You’ll end up like Case in the opening of Gibson’s “Neuromancer,” on the run from hit men because you crossed the wrong guy...in this case, you ripped off The Big Man. You’ll look like one of those sad sacks who rise up from their swamps to sue J.K. Rowling for stealing their ideas because, um, they thought up Harry Potter first…sure, that’s the ticket.

Meanwhile, I’m wallowing. All this work. Gone. Maybe I can jettison the first main character and keep the second one, make the story about her. No, they’re intertwined, but they don’t know it. Ahh, the globalism of novel characters.

And so, one day, trying to drown my misery with fiction, trying to get Mt. Gibson out of my vision, I stumble across a Philip K. Dick short-story collection. In certain sci-fi lit circles, Dick is considered John the Baptist to Gibson’s Jesus, the former paving the way for the latter. (I’m nearly positive the comparison would embarrass Gibson and give fits to the deceased Dick). So, I get curious about pre-Gibson sci-fi lit. I’ve only read on Dick novel before, and that was “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” which sharp-eyed nerds will recognize as the basis for “Blade Runner.” I remember not liking it when I read it long ago because it had little to do with the film (which I still adore to this day). I kept imagining Harrison Ford in the pages and linking Ridley Scott’s neon-and-slum imagery in the book’s passages. Some of it dovetails, but some definitely doesn’t.

And lo and behold, what I did I find in the short-story collection, but a work (it was later made into a film with Tom Cruise) called “Minority Report” about 21st-century cops who prevent crimes before they occur with the use of precogs, mutants who have the ability…wait for it…to see crimes before they happen by surfing through some kind of psychic data.

Whoa.

Reading deeper, Dick used precogs in several works, making them a recurring theme. Gibson claims he never read much Dick, but the similarities are striking, especially when you look at other Gibson works, seeing how he used the “future seer” trick on a number of occasions.

Now, it’s okay for Gibson to rip himself off (perhaps he's so big he can be forgiven for the "precog" copy), but since he’s so big, can someone else one day use the same device without getting labeled as a poseur?

It depends who you ask. I asked a critic who works at the paper I also work at a variation on the question I hope to pose to Gibson. With a frown, he cautioned that the artist would have to be careful not to plagiarize, but he didn’t rule out the chance (a slim one) that some new trail could be blazed.

A blogger I chat with occasionally believed the writer always adds something new to the creation, and therefore it will be different.

My wife constantly reminds me that there is nothing new under the sun.

My friend Cori tells me to shut up and write the damn thing.

It’s tough, I admit. Who wants to be the next white rapper after Eminem? Who wants to write a wizard book in the shadow of Harry Potter? Who wants to look like part of the crowd, a wannabe with a half-developed muse?

And then I got this in my inbox at work. It’s a press notice about Gibson’s events in Seattle. Standard stuff: list of locations, book summary, author praise. But at the end, singled out is a paraphrased quote: As one character observes, “the creative process is no longer contained within an individual skull…Everything, today, is to some extent the reflection of something else.”

Now, all that’s left for me to determine whether you’re going to paint something original based on that reflection or take a photograph of it and pass it off as my own.

Hopefully, Mr. Gibson will be able to shine a light on the whole matter.

Today’s Word: Barrier

From One Word

The Great Ocean one, you know…the reef off the coast of Australia, home a zillion forms of life and so achingly fragile. No, it’s okay, we’ll be careful, honest. And then some rich idiot plows by it with his Megayacht and ruins some heartbreakingly beautiful natural sculpture. I could stare at the reef for years.

Today’s Word: Record

From One Word

One day, I’m going to go back over all my jotting, all my inspired fits of writing and see some kind of collection of what I was thinking, what really motivated me to write what I did. Indirect psychological anthropology. A quick collection of a frustrated artist doing the equivalent of tickling the ivories.


P.S.

Regarding yesterday's post: When you think about it nearly all tributes to the dead are, by their nature, bittersweet.

Per Aspera Ad Astra

I was in seventh grade at the time, going from gym class to the locker room to clean up and change when I heard about the Challenger explosion.

"The Russians did it. Ought to nuke 'em." Or so went the political analysis at Dirksen Junior High boy's locker room.

By the time I got to my next class, the battered TV on the rickety A/V stand was plugged in and alive, showing the contrails of an exploded space ship, blossoming out and then down like branches on a willow tree.

My generation had never known a televised failure that dramatic. We had lived through the daily death count in Vietnam or that fateful motorcade in 1963 Dallas. Reagan getting shot was close, but he lived. The Challenger was real, though. We saw it on the TV.

There's something just a touch more tragic about this than other tragedies. Space shuttle crews represent the best and brightest among the gene pool, all acting for the holistic benefit of man. To Americans, in love with the idea of pioneers, the crews are the first settlers in space, continuing that sense of adventure and pride from landing on the moon in 1969. Going up into the void was progress, a true meritocracy where the smartest wins out and talented scientists could literally get above our petty bullshit and craft something new out there. I don't know where, but as long as it wasn't here, with crime and corruption and war and pollution and mindless religious fanaticism. Space was our happily ever after ever in a fairy tale for the empirically minded.

The shuttle explosion today was the first massive spacecraft failure since that day nearly 17 years ago. You have to admit, you never think about the hazards related to space flight until something like this happens. You also have to admit that, statistically speaking, it's a pretty safe way to travel. While it is a tragedy, the Columbia was the first U.S. space shuttle in orbit, beginning its spacefaring days back in 1981. According to CNN, also borne in 1981 if memory serves, it made 28 launches in its lifetime.

The cable news coverage of the disaster is now moving from facts to fillers, asking witnesses how they feel as Americans. Footage of debris, impacting in some field in Texas, is sprouting up. You are being warned to stay away from it since the materials are potentially lethal to touch. This is good to know: Space shuttles are flying boxes of poison. Whose brilliant idea was to launch boxes of carcinogen that could explode in-flight? Apparently, no one at NASA thought something like "The Andromeda Strain" could relate to the pretty white birds they shoot into orbit.

Just curious: How soon will Columbia debris show up on e-Bay?

Pretty quick, it turns out.

No hint of terrorism with this tragedy, despite the constant reminder of an Israeli astronaut was among the ranks of the doomed crew. No, it looks like this machine just fell apart, too much strain on re-entry. Too many times around the block. You just hope whatever happened up there took their lives quickly. You place yourself in their shoes to imagine the sense of one massive clusterfuck coming their way, nothing you can do except to pray that mercy, traveling on gossamer wings, is faster than a space shuttle going 12,000 miles per hour.

I lived in the heart of NASA for a few years while I was in Texas and had neighbors who were in the control room when the Challenger exploded. I remember stories they would tell about how they got through those next hellish days by comforting each other, holding on to the great goals of exploration and the optimistic beliefs the crew died fast. In these next days, we shall weep and have our spirits laid low. Perhaps, when we are finished mourning, when the wreaths have been laid, when the professional speechwriters hear their words uttered by the head of state, when we have dutifully and lovingly comforted the families of the lost, when the tributes go silent, we will start talking about retiring the current stable of shuttles that may have looked way-bitchin' during the Jimmy Carter-"Moonraker" gambit of sci-fi imagination and instead try for something new, something safer, something sturdier, something not packed with cancer-causing agents.

It'll be bittersweet, but it's a tribute nonetheless.