Under an Overcast Sky

The clouds form overnight
Dewy and heavy, they touch the ground

The sun may make a guest appearance
But here the rain is the true star

Not that heavy mid-western rain
That appears out of nowhere
Thunders across the sky
To vanish and evaporate in a summer's heat

But a steady, familiar drizzle
You could almost set your watch to

A steady, familiar drizzle
That leaves the weather guessers scratching their heads
Because they never know when or where
They only know that it will

And I look forward to these days the most
Between the seasons
When the winds are cool, and the days are shortening
And I feel the most at home
Under a Northwestern Sky

You shall know me

I've taken to wearing my steel toed boots before I plop down at the keyboard and hack away. Lately the hacking has been competing with the incessant daydreaming which is like junk food and leaves me with a nice empty feeling.

Upstairs, on my foot locker there's a plastic binder that haunts me. It's a gloss blue, three ring that I probably paid 89 cents for. When I got it, say 11 years ago or so, the idea was to put the pages of my book in it, which I did. 85 of them written in my barely legible lefty script, the words piled on top of each other appearing forced out and squished together. No spaces between lines, and surprisingly for me very few line outs or other typos.

"And that's all it takes," Gregg said; Is the last line that I wrote. I wonder what caused me to give up then? If I read it now, I can see the answer clearly. THE STORY WAS GOING NOWHERE.

That is about as horrible a feeling one can have. Ideas form and get sketched out in the rough, a thin string holds them together, but this means nothing. What means something is 250 pages of a cohesive entertaining story that the writer feels tells the story they want to tell.

I started to write another story, recently and got 42 pages, but the story lines were so similar from my first one that I had a hard time navigating the plot. It didn't help that I came upon inspiration at work for another idea. This lit a fire in me so hot that I had no choice but to get the first scene down, which I did after stalling it out for a week. This is my story. If I had one book to write, one shot this is it.

That week turned to another week after I finished the third chapter and realized that the POV I used would fail to tell the story I wanted, so I rewrote the whole thing. That turned into another week when it came to me that even though I knew the dominant themes of the story, I had no idea how to tie them all together.

After three days of staring at a blank screen, and surfing interwebs, I woke up on Sunday and immediately wrote five paragraphs, then curled up on the couch with my two cats and spent a half day plotting. That yielded 3 and a quarter pages of material. It's a start, but not enough to avoid the snags, pitfalls and little traps that I keep creating for myself.

So I will spend at least another week plotting, letting it simmer and develop into the idea that I want it to be. I'll be easy enough to recognize if you come looking. Mine will be the steel toed covered feet sticking out from underneath the pile of wasted paper, silly ideas, hackneyed plot devices, overwrought cliches, grammatical and syntax errors, two-dimensional characters, and barely comprehensible premise.

This is how you shall know me.

Fruit Flies

We have a few. Probably because we compost and they love that. They swarm around our little compost bin and breed, devouring the fruits and veggies we toss into it. Occasionally they venture from the kitchen to the living room, or my computer desk.

The journey usually ends there, because fruit flies seem to have a taste for bourbon, but not the stomach for it. I've found a few floating on the surface of an unfinished glass, or stuck to the bottom in the residue of an evaporated swig's worth.

Of course while I'm writing this, one has developed a taste for Haymaker Extra Pale and crashed landed into my drink. He flails about for a minute, finally his movements slow and he appears dead, floating motionless on the surface of my beverage.

I'm as average as the next guy which means I may be a snob about what I'm drinking but that doesn't mean I'd pour it out because one of God's Creatures took a dive into it. Have you seen the price of microbrew these days?

I fished the fly out with a spoon and finished typing this, wondering if I've underestimated the species' sense of irony, or if this stupid heatwave is making me loony. The beer surprisingly still tastes just like I did when I poured it into the glass, which is all right. I forgot that Extra Pales are more like lagers i.e. Rolling Rock.

Yeah, the heat is probably making loony. Oh well, society's loss, since that means I'll spend today and as many as I can get away with hiding from the sun only opening the shades after the sun's gone down.

I'm sure my witty conversational banter will be missed, at least not by the fruit flies. They're not going anywhere.

Sunbreaks

You are so bipolar
happiest when you're sad
and nothing means
all of it
when the sun
goes away
for days
I watch you swim
up your river of tears
to never drown
in joyous sorrow

If You Were Born on This Date

You could be:

Sir Mix a Lot
Cecille B. Demille
Pete Sampras
Christy Matthewson
Miss Cleo
Rebecca Gayheart
Michael Ian Black
Dominique Swain
Casey Affleck
Antoine Walker

or my cousin Channell.

You could also be me, except for the part that I'm me, at least last I checked I still was. (Notice how I omitted Willie Horton and Richard Reid from that list?)

Those are the cool ones I found, I'm sure there could be more.

Happy Birthday, Leos of the world! Feel free to celebrate by bossing some folks around, preening yo'self in the mirror for an hour or three, or overindulging in all kinds of overindulgencies.

Don't hold back.

Vanity

She's all so sure
of herself
with a proud, haughty glare
a persona not blanched
by neuroses or fear

She's all so sure
as she stands
high on a ledge
knowing she'll never slip

She's all so sure
to the world
her chin high
and imposing
cold eyes a stop sign

She's all so sure
all so lonely
so far and away
detached from us
that are unsure and afraid

How To Succeed

No, I haven't forgotten about this lonely internet place mark. I've been spending my free time writing, believe it or not. I'm at the 17,000 word mark of my book which means only 63k or so to go, woo-hoo!

So, in the interest of doing something with this space, I've decided to post some of the stuff I wrote from ages ago when my mind was in a completely different place.

This piece is about 8 years old, and it describes the quickest path to success:

The key is not to ask why.

Move forward, at a breakneck speed, using any advantage you encounter.

Never hesitate to toss impunity into the face of the other man.

Sand is good for blinding your enemies.

Trust no one.

Sleep with one eye open.

Keep secrets from yourself, as well as others.

The fist is the sharpest sword, darkness your only friend, shrouds of secrecy the uniform, brazen lies the code word.

Always underestimate yourself, never the enemy.

Believe in nothing, nobody, not even you.

Neglect your sanity.