POETRY MADNESS CONTINUES BEATNIKING MY HEAD

Another poem has found a home just in time for Christmas vacation. It won't like young Mr. Scrooge be forced to stay at school over the holiday. This time a haiku that I think very highly of has found its way onto the internet pages of Haikuniverse:

quantum effects—
an electron
lost in space

After so much end of year success with poetry, what will happen to my bucket list? I don't know. Recently I recalled when a friend some long time ago told me that I was a natural poet. It's been on my mind to get busy on the rewrite of Ghoul World, but I'm having so much fun messing around with poetry.

BEATNIKING MY WAY BACK TO POETRY

I'm sorry. Twenty days plus since my last entry. Here's why. I've done little to no work towards either of the entries on my bucket list. I've been working on old poetry and a few new poems that represent my style since my lyric days are past, the poetry of my past that came alive from dreams and intuition. I plod nowadays but am rewriting and reworking old poetry. My next goal is to enter into contests a book of poetry that I wrote 25 years ago in a certain pedestrian style that was inspired by the poetry of Hanshan as translated by Gary Snyder. Here's one of them:

DREAM OF FAME

Twenty-five summers since I wrote these poems, Han-shan,

Inspired by the pedestrian style that shunned the forms and fashions

Of the Tang Dynasty you were living in, abandoned on rocks,

On cliff faces that you passed by in your wanderings. Unlike you,

I must admit that all these years I’ve craved fame and found none.

Now the lyric flights that rose from my dreams have flown away. I’m left

Barren, abandoned, old master, limping along with unanswered questions.

Did you dream of fame as I did, and why did your thoughts turn to stone?

The reference to stone comes from the fact that no one knows who Hanshan was and by the fact that "his poems were written on rocks in the mountains he called home." Quotation from Wikipedia.

SALINGER & HAWTHORNE: STYLISTIC TWINS?

you know who

If what I say today sounds a little blurry, it's because my eyes are dilated. At exercise today, a beautiful new inky floater bloomed in my right eyeball accompanied by a ton of tiny circular floaters. After my cataracts were removed, I was told to watch out for this phenomenon as it might be a sign of retinal detachment. Thus I hurried to a nearby optometrist and had the eyeball looked into. No detachment, but now I have a bleeder on my optic nerve, the sign of a "violent" but fairly common detachment of vitreous matter [floater] from the back of the eye that will now drift in my eye in perpetuity. 

Salinger at war. PTSD in later life?

As to literature, the supposed purpose of this writer's blog. I'm giving up at the halfway point on reading House of the Seven Gables by Mr. Hawthorne. When I was working on my Masters, I was drawn to his writing, but no longer, it appears. His rhetorical flourishes are too much for me. However I was surprised when, as an antidote, I picked up Ten Stories by J.D. Salinger and realized that Salinger's method of writing can be traced back to Hawthorne — the p.o.v. of their narrators', the rhetorical flourishes and asides they employ, the way both take the reader into their cubbyholes, so to speak, to talk to them about their subjects and subject matter. If ever there were a scholarly article, there is one to pursue, i.e. similarities in technique and p.o.v. between Salinger and Hawthorne. I did a quick Google and found none. For reading, I've got Durrell's Judith and, somewhere in the limbo of inter-library loan, Ron Padgett's poetry is plodding its way toward my home. 

Durrell

It's obvious to me now that I can no longer write lyric poetry. My lines no longer sing, but Padgett's poetry may be my out. I've now written 6 or 7 poems in the style I imagined I saw in the Jarmusch movie, Patterson. So I continue to rewrite some of my 8 line poetry in the mode of Han-shan's poetry with an eye to creating a chapbook length work for submission to contests, etcetera, while also trying to create a few original poems. Still in the tube, the rewrite of my science fiction novel Ghoul World to remove some of the cleverness I thought was just too precious for words. And another movie???

A NEW POETIC LICENSE FOR SILENT BEAT BOOMER

blowing his own horn

Thank you to the 81 people who looked in today. I guess I must accept I'm a poet first and foremost. Look at the record. In April this year, my poem "Legacy" was accepted by Washington State poet laureate Tod Marshall for the anthology WA129. In September two of my poems were accepted for publication in Aberration Labyrinth. In October another poem was accepted for inclusion in Portland's Work Literary Magazine, and the Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal is still holding another poem for a "possible" future issue. All this while I'm waiting for someone to accept one of my novels for publication. Today, inspired by the movie Paterson and the poetry of Ron Padgett included in the movie to try a completely new approach to writing poetry, I tore off rough drafts for a couple of new poems. I feel rejuvenated to write poetry in a new way for me. We'll see if inspiration continues. By the way, if you're a poet at heart, watch that movie. It's a paean to poetry by Jim Jarmusch.

BEATNIK BOOMER STRIKES AGAIN

a catheter at close range

I've reduced most days to only three catheterizations: bedtime, morning (as late as possible) and in the afternoon. I've discovered that I can urinate normally for several hours before my bladder gets so extended that the urge to go becomes uncomfortable and it's time to insert the old catheter once again. This urinary practice extends the time between catheterizations. It is one of the benefits of not drinking 64 fluid ounces a day. I've had to learn all these things by myself. No one in the medical profession seems to be expert on the actual trials and tribulations of using a catheter.  

Now some happy literary news. I've had a poem accepted at Work Literary Magazine. Julie Madsen who edits it put out a call on Facebook. She hadn't received enough submissions to fill her online magazine. She's been doing the editing for ages. The poem combines a moment in Henry Miller's Tropic Of Cancer when two turds appear and my job cleaning toilets as a janitor in the very college I received my undergraduate degree from. I was janitoring at the University of Dayton after I had earned my BA in English. The labor was during my drinking and falling apart days when I was cruising the bottom of my capacities, but for all that, the poem is quite interesting, and it's about time someone gave it a home. You can find it online after October 30th.

BEATNIK BOOMER FINISHES A CREATIVE TASK

This afternoon I found the energy to do a final rewrite of the screenplay, Distant Enemies. It wasn't much of a chore. I was just tidying up a few errors Mertie found while doing a final read through of my script looking for typos, lapses of logic and et cetera. Still, I feel hopeful about returning energy. The senior exercise class I attend at Firstenburg Community Center is paying off.

I have learned another useful health fact. If your bladder is not working properly, do not follow the suggestion to drink at least 64 ounces of fluids a day if you have spent your entire life training your body to function while drinking much less than that. I'm certain that my recent attempts over the past six months to follow that 64 ounce recommendation gave me hours of unnecessary excruciating pain and discomfort. Still catheterizing, but I'm doing just fine on a much smaller intake of fluids, and I'm getting longer periods between. My doctor told me that the 64 fluid ounce requirement is just a recommendation and that the figure was for all intents and purposes "made up". His words exactly. The fluid intake falsehood might be another of the many fallacies brought to us by the medicine distrusting and vaccination avoiding Boomers who have made up health directions and diet recommendations from whole cloth. Most of them in order to create health and diet businesses for themselves.

EXERCISE INCREASING. CAN CREATIVITY BE FAR BEHIND?

Find photog here

Sitting at home today as I have been for the past few weeks. Today am joined by my working wife who threw up this morning and continues to feel nauseous. I am becoming accustomed to catheterizing myself and, yesterday, was on an 8 hour schedule rather than a 6 hour schedule, but it didn't last. Fortunately, I'm getting a lot more hours of sleep but still not enough to feel at all creative. However, I'm feeling well enough to walk more and exercise more. I've recently joined a group of senior exercisers at Firstenburg Community Center that meets Monday, Wednesday, Friday in the morning. The commitment to that will help. If this trend continues, maybe the return to working creatively will emerge again from the darkness of my subconscious mind and exhausted body. I wish I had more to report, but it is what it is. People are still looking in on this blog, and I thank them for the continued interest. Not too long before my bladder quit functioning properly, I did send off six queries for the novel Ghoul World, but not one has been answered. Maybe ghouls and zombies are on the way out.

THIS IS A MYTUBE PRODUCTION

Four times a day, I shove the red rubber foot and a quarter worm that I hold in my right  hand [that's right, my "right" hand], into my terwilliger until its snout says, "ur in." I then direct the "result" into a plastic pail to be quantified and logged in my "Daily Urination Log". That's right, I've joined the Urine Nation. Six, noon, six and midnight I do the deed. Often, I'm left with an uncomfortable sensation  — although the process is more uncomfortable than painful — that resembles an urge to urinate. This sensation keeps me awake when I'd rather be sleeping. I believe I'm living on 3 to 4 hours of sleep a day. Today I tried to go to the gym to exercise. I could only exercise about 20 minutes, but I did feel hale enough to go to the senior room where I attempted to play cribbage. I hesitated to join in playing cribbage because I suddenly feared I couldn't remember how to play cribbage after a lifetime of playing cribbage. I imagined at first that my mind was going, but I believe, now, that my exhaustion is so severe as to deprive me of my full mental capacity at times. If you think I can do much writing in this state of mind, you must be losing yours. My life resembles the life of someone in a railroad car where a terrorist bomb has just gone off. However, I am messing around with rewriting some very old poetry that I cannot do much damage to. I sent five of them off last night when I wasn't sleeping. I asked my urologist the other day, if I would be needing to do this "drilling" for the rest of my life. He didn't make any promises but suggested he has a few tricks up his sleeve. Meanwhile, for the next few months, I'll be trying to adjust my life to this daily boring process.

FAILURE AND SUCCESS TOGETHER ... BUMMER

Despair about my inability to sleep and consequent exhaustion has finally driven me to seek counseling. First meeting on the 10th of month. I live every moment of my life in a sort of daze, a trance. I feel so dizzy at times that I make mistakes in medicine, and I can't carry on reliable conversations with my care givers. Last week, I asked Mertie talk to one of the KP nurses for me so that good information would be transmitted. I dread bedtime approaching. I seem to have no emotional resources with which to meet my painful existence. I'm quite a wimp.

In the midst of all this confusion and despair, Jessica Gleason, editor at online journal Aberration Labyrinth, accepted two of my poems for publication. They were written in what I think of as my Cannon Street period, quite different from the poetry that came out of my time at Eastern Washington University as I was escaping my addiction to alcohol. The journal fits quite nicely the poetry I was writing at that time. I like the poets I find myself among on the journal's pages. I'm too tired to feel much pleasure. 

BLUEBERRIES ARE GOOD FOR WHAT AILS THE BEATNIK BOOMER

Find photog here:

Thanks all who have checked in here recently. My continuing exhaustion means that imaginative writing is still some distance in future, but I visited a new urologist today and, again, a scope was shoved up my little urethra. The good doctor found nothing abnormal in my bladder except the scar tissue one expects to find after the application of high doses of radiation aimed to defeat a "highly aggressive prostate cancer." Turns out the Flomax generic I've been taking does not treat the condition that's been depriving me of sleep and comfort for the past 5 to 6 weeks. Flomax only works when there's a blockage in the system. There appears to be no blockage, and my problem is nerve damage associated with the high doses of radiation that were needed to treat my prostate cancer. The new drug he prescribed will hopefully calm the nerves that are sending too frequent and intense messages from the nerves in my wounded bladder to my brain. Hopefully, the urgent and continuous need to pee will lessen, and I'll catch a few more winks per night. I was near tears with feelings of hope as we talked. I cry at the drop of a hat these days. Where did Mr. Masculinity disappear too? Somewhere between the doses of hormone, I suppose. Maybe by end of next month, I'll get back to the writing projects I've put on hold. 

SILENT GEN BEATNIK BEATEN DOWN AND STALLED

Exactly two weeks since my last post. I have not written nor rewritten anything creative in that time. I've been so exhausted by lack of sleep and debilitated by the intensifying painful side effects of the radiation treatments that ended a year ago this month that my mind is a dull blank day after day. I feel I've tumbled rudely into a tangible fragile old age. Frankly, I'm frightened by the prospect before me.

find photog here

However, I do have a plan. For the foreseeable future, I will set my writing aside and attend to my health, forgetting all else. I plan to exercise as much as possible and stretch my muscles and go to the gym, lift weights, walk as much as I can until I stabilize and improve my condition. I do also have an appointment on August 31 to address my current ill health with a urologist, exactly one year to the day when I received my last cyberknife treatment at PeaceHealth Hospital. I will make blog entries from time to time and hope I can complete a few more creative projects before my health stops me altogether.

WHERE'S MY BUTTERFLY? BEATS ME.

I've started another screenplay, but it's not catching fire in my psyche yet. Based on the horrific story of actress Susan Cabot, the plot has some very intriguing possibilities. Then the rewrite of Ghoul World awaits. It has to be changed if it can have any chance of success. Got another rejection yesterday from Western Humanities Review. That's three rejections after an initial invitation to try again, and now they go into my file of disappeared magazines .

Find photog here...

The real story is how this past week has become another horror story of declining health, declining quality of life for me. I've got sciatica, and I slept very little for almost 5 nights. Honestly, I was near tears when my wife came home yesterday. Unable to write, unable to exercise, unable to sleep, I felt irrevocably old. Well of course. But I don't have to feel old just because I am old. Right? 

Fortunately, it's not degenerative bone disease or bone spurs. It's just situational and brought on by my declining ability to exercise because of fatigue which is a side effect of the hormone treatments and the real effect of the lack of sleep caused by having to get up nearly hourly to pee created by the radiation treatments that damaged my urinary tract. It's perfect storm of debilitating effects. When I'm in the worst of it, I imagine I'll never feel good again and will never write another decent sentence or bit of dialogue. It's not death I fear. It's being unable to move around and live a life of feeling and love and experience. Trapped ... I hate the thought of it.

DISCOURAGED, RUN AGROUND, REJUVENATED

Find photographer on unsplash:

I'm disheartened today, unable to write because of lack of sleep. A curtain hangs between my creative self and the words on the page. Nothing means anything. The characters are dead, the plot lacks liveliness and meaningful action. Up a zillion times last night to pee so I'm pulling up stakes at this here Starbucks and heading home in this soon to be 105 degree day to where the curtains are pulled and the darkness of despair awaits this silent beatnik boomer. Actually, I'm going to turn up our window air conditioning and pig out on Curb Your Enthusiasm. "If one can't create himself let him watch something creative," I always say. 

Find photographer on unsplash:

THEN what happens! The air conditioning comes on strong in this Starbucks, and I get a second wind as I realize it's allergies that have me down. Now I'm joyous. I'll stick around and work some more.

BOOMERIZED BEATNICK ON THE SAME OLD ROAD

marcelo-quinan-37437.jpg on unsplash

I'm currently tearing to shreds the structure of my science fiction film script Distant Enemies with an intention to add more action in middle of script. I have about 10 to 15 things [poetry and short stories] out to several literary magazines, and I'm facing another rewrite of Ghoul World to correct several major tactical decisions I made in envisioning the whole. They were comical ideas, whimsies that should have never survived a critical look at the novel. For example, the key evil corporation I call McDaniel's and they sell Irisher meat that sustains the non-Irish population. They're called McNugguts. Funny, eh? But really not up to the seriousness of the themes. The poetry manuscript that once was Up Your Ass has become You Awake One Morning, Remembering, primarily because the "you" pov calls so many cultural and political memories into the text. My daughter Eva wants me to keep the original title, and I understand that whole argument too. For all I know Up Your Ass may again become the title. 

My major problem these days is depression and confusion when first awakening. I have trouble making decisions about what's next, and I constantly forget things when I leave the house. Like this morning when I drove to Costco and on the way remembered that I'd forgotten the shopping list. I hate spending so much time in the bathroom too, either pooping or peeing. Ages I spend in there.  

BIG BIG BOOMER BEATNICK WEEK

Find photographer here.

A week! A freakin' week between entries, and I thought it had been only a few days. But I've been busy, getting in final touches on film scripts for contest entries ... maybe. This morning I sent off three poems to an on line magazine called Big Lucks. I prepared a short story to send to Virginia Quarterly Review on September 1st. It's ready to go. The VQR pays and it's big time as far as little and lit mags go. I've got several ideas in mind to turn into film scripts. Could even see Ghoul World as a film script. I wrote it with movie in mind, but thought the story was so good that someone would buy and publish the book and someone else will write the script. Really, the back story is marvelous. Possibly another rewrite is absolutely necessary. Absolutely possible, yes. Oh no, not again.

Big activity this week was my wife's birthday. Read about our fun times together here. Found a wonderful website called "Unsplash" where you can submit photos and use free photos by other photographers. I'm using a photo from that site in this posting. 

BEATNIK BOOMER'S SPONTANEOUS AMBIVALENT HAPPINESS

I'd been trying to rewrite the prostate cancer manuscript, Up Your Ass, all morning, but the world outside my head was in a parallel universe. I was forced to squint through an opaque curtain to see my poems. I miss hit so many keys I thought my fingers were drunk. Nothing creative happening.

I'd been that way all morning, then out of nowhere by sheer coincidence my wife drives by the Starbucks where I'm "not" working, and she sees my car in the parking lot. She's on the way to visit one of her clients and only has time to say, "Hi, honey," kiss me and mention that I look tired. "Did you get enough sleep?" 

Now she's gone, and I realize yet again that this familiar feeling is the result of not getting enough sleep. Ever since the cancer treatments, my pissing problems get me up all hours of the night, and I have drugged days like this. Way too many of them. Who can work effectively under such conditions?

As if to put a exclamation point on my dilemma, an overpowering and familiar urge to defecate hits me, and I race the length of Starbucks to stave off a dirty diaper, then as I try to type this happening into the blog ... what the hell ... the same urge sends me scurrying again.

Such is the life of a prostate cancer survivor — spontaneous ambivalent happiness.

BATTLING BEATNICK BOOMER NEARLY STRIKES PAYDIRT

Got back the critique of my screenplay Distant Enemies from the BlueCat Screenwriting Contest. Although I didn't win any cash prizes, I was encouraged by the feedback. The anonymous critic agreed, I think, with Randall Jahnson, my Northwest Film Center's screenwriting teacher, that my script was a solid attempt. The BlueCat critic wrote that my plot was "fresh and original". He thought my plot twist was "a fine touch by the writer". He noted the "pod" element in my script, and it's reference to "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". He said my handling of the pods was "neither unoriginal nor identical" to the earlier films. True enough.

About my character portrayals, he wrote, "There was an array of characters ... each of them gave a powerful image and had their own individuality that made the story stronger and fluid. It was quite disheartening to see some of the characters die off or appeared (sic) to have died." That sympathetic reaction was exactly my intention. I love dialogue writing and the character it reveals.

On the negative side, both screenwriter Randall Jahnson and the anonymous BlueCat critic thought the action in the middle segment of my screenplay was slowed down by elements that might be eliminated or shortened. I'll definitely see where action can be sped up in future rewrites. The fact that two separate writers agreed about this belt line sluggishness, made the suggestion specially forceful. 

Finally, my anonymous critic encouraged me when he wrote  "Distant Enemies is a solid script and could be rewritten to improve the pacing." I agree wholeheartedly.

SILENT/BOOMER BEATNICKS ON

For sleeping w/o scratching itchy eyes...

I value those of you who follow this blog. Seventy persons checked in over the last 24 hours, and I apologize to all for the 14 day lapse between this and my last entry. It's been medically trying for several  weeks. At this very moment I'm having a hot flash that makes me sweat as if I've just completed a marathon while I'm seated in a very chill Starbucks. I remain in physical therapy in an attempt to gain more control over my bowel function. Monday I had cataract surgery and am now in process of recovery from that. I'm having to wear reading glasses to see this blog or read a book or newspaper. Creative work is not possible when one is straining to see. From radiation treatments for prostate cancer to bladder stone and cataract removals ... this is the most extended period of time I've ever experienced of discomfort and office visits to medical doctors, ORs and physical therapists. If I didn't feel so youthful, I'd swear I'm growing old. Okay. I laugh. But the truth is I'm not the most courageous captain of my fate. I feel like whining a lot and must exercise some control so as not to overburden my wife whose father died last Wednesday morning after a lifetime of dealing in a very brave way with Type I diabetes. Heart failure. He was a sheet metal worker, and I earned my bread as a CNC machinist. Blue collar earners, the both of us, and I think that has a lot to do with the love my wife and I share. He was a good and humble man, and I'm so grateful that he raised the woman who is my wife. I'm also happy that my cancer treatment seems to be successful for reasons beyond my own survival as you can well imagine.

Has anyone noticed how this blog has devolved from an account of a man on a bucket list quest to the diary of a sick bed? I have several creative projects in mind, including another film script. If I can just get these metaphorical catheters out of my wrist and arise from my metaphorical sick bed, more will be revealed. The screenwriting class went very well. Bye-bye and buy bonds.

BUSY AS A BEE-ATNICK WRITER

Do I look as tired as I feel?

This morning, I finally got around to doing something once more toward achieving the first item on my bucket list. I worked on another cover letter to send to potential agents for my novel Ghoul World.  I've put that off for much too long and have not been sending out agent queries for any of my novels. I foresee another rewrite of my novel The Porn Writer too.


I've also been working through a rewrite of the poetry that was inspired by my encounter with prostate cancer last year. I intend to send it around to small publishing houses and to various contests. The title may be morphing from Up Your Ass to Cancer Doesn't Sing ... a reference to the prosaic rather than lyric nature of the poetry. 


The sci fi film script I now call Distant Enemies has been sent its merry way along with 50 dollars via the internet to the BlueCat Screenwriting Contest and, now, I'm preparing to send the first 30 pages of the same script to the Willamette Writers Screenwriting Competition. Deadline is June 15. Fee 10 bucks. A man could grow poor with his writing, eh? Still if feels good to be sending stuff out.

Outside this Starbucks where I write, the sun is shining and the birds are singing and there is a presence in the air that hints of a return to rain and daytime temps in the 60s and nighttime lows in the 40s. Thank you to anyone looking in on these blog entries.

CONTEST DEADLINE LOOMING AHEAD

This entry will be brief and to the point. I'm rewriting a screenplay in order to submit it to a contest recommended to the screenwriters at the NW Film Center by the Center. Deadline is May 31st. I'm hoping the Film Center's recommendation makes the contest authentic and safe. There is one big prize and several smaller ones. The size of the prizes suggest that many scripts will be sent in with fees. Thus I have to keep at the rewriting task and keep this short. At least Ghoul World is done for now. The screenplay is still untitled. Excuse me as I've got a script to tinker with. PS: Also notice alterations to my bucket list.

BEATNIK BEATEN BLACK AND BLUE

PICTURE FOUND HERE!

This Beatnik Boomer is bushed and beaten and bumbed out. My age is showing. On Friday last, I had stones removed from my bladder. In the afternoon, I took pain pills that caused constipation, then a laxative on Saturday to cure the constipation. I had good reason for the pain pills. The diameter of my urethra was undersized and my urologist had to insert a tool and expand it. Yep, she had to tear open the "narrow fibromuscular tube that conducts urine and semen from the bladder and ejaculatory ducts, respectively, to the exterior of the body." My poor Willy was bruised black and blue for many days afterward and peeing was more than uncomfortable. Then the laxative kicked in and all day Sunday I trekked to the bathroom on a regular basis on demand of both terminuses of the path from my mouth back into the world. I did little from Friday afternoon till this Tuesday morning but lie around the house and visit the bathroom. I ate little because of the constipation. Thus I awoke this morning aching all over, and when I tried to fold a couple of tee shirts and bundle one pair of socks and hang up a shirt, I was literally exhausted by the simple tasks, and my brain absolutely fails to operate creatively. This simple listing of details is all it can do. A man my age should never be inactive for as many days as I was. Move even if it hurts.

SILENT BOOMR FINISHED ZILLIONTH REWRITE OF GHOUL WORLD

Seventy-eight people looked in on The Silent Boomer yesterday. Hi, howdy and thank you. As for my bucket list item, I came across the news yesterday that Hollywood is snapping up sci fi novels like a snarling dog takes to a bone just as I'm just finishing my current rewrite of my sci fi novel, Ghoul World. In fact, today I finished it. Of course, Hollywood is looking for serialized novels. I set Ghoul World up so that it might be serialized, but I'm awfully far away from writing number two. Don' t know that I have the least interest in taking the serialization on. I'll know more later when I finish the screenwriting course on June 6th.
 
Grey skies above today. I'm tired of looking at grey skies above. It was 49 degrees and rainy in downtown Portland yesterday and the traffic hellish. Maybe it's all the new people pouring into town. Don't know, but they blocked cross streets like crazy. Very selfish drivers  when all along I've noticed how cooperative drivers have been Portland. It's got to be the Californians flooding up here to escape the selfish drivers in California? OK. I know. Vast generalization. Sunny days ahead on Thursday. That's tomorrow. Can't wait. 

BEATNICK BREATHING THE WAFTING AIRS OF SUCCESS

Wouldn't it be nice?

Nothing is more mysterious than our emotional apparatus. Mine included. I've been experiencing continuous days of happiness, sometimes punctuated with ecstatic joy. I'm not spending thousands of dollars on stuff I don't need, not flying off to exotic vacations on Caribbean islands. It's not the manic phase of a bipolar swing. Maybe it's the screenwriting course I'm enjoying extravagantly. Maybe it's the increasing number of readers of this blog. Maybe it's the recognition and publication of my poem Legacy in WA129 [Sage Hill Press] and the concurrent invitation by Poet Laureate Tod Marshal to join him and Clark County Poet Laureate Chris Luna and his wife Toni Luna for a joint reading sponsored by the Washougal Library two weeks back. Very good to be included among them. Perhaps it's Tod's warm appreciation of other of my poems as well. Part of my joy has to be the steady sunshine of my wife's love for me that warms and nourishes me, and the love I feel for her that opposes the constant goads of ego that we all experience. I'm blossoming like a petunia in the corner of a rarely visited garden of the literary arts. Maybe it's Portland itself. Whatever it is, I'm standing at the window of World Cup Coffee at the corner of 18th and Glisan in Portland on a powerfully sunlit day and feeling as successful and rewarded as if I'd just won the Nobel Prize for literature. Can something be awaiting my lifelong efforts? Feels like it, but, then, the emotional apparatus of the human species is mysterious as hell. Isn't it? And as far as I can see, no actual gold laden Spanish galleon rides the horizon.

THIS OL' BEATNIK POET WILL BE READING...

I'm honored! I've been invited by Poet Laureate of Washington State Tod Marshall to share my poetry at Washougal High School in Southwest Washington this coming Wednesday, the  26th at 7:00pm. Chris Luna, Clark County Poet Laureate, will also be reading and his wife, the accomplished poet Toni Luna. I'll be reading my poem "Legacy" from the anthology  Washington 129  as well as older work and perhaps one or two from the collection of poetry I wrote while dealing with prostate cancer last year. Washington 129 is a collection of poetry all by Washington State poets. Here's a chance to support poetry in Washington State by going to the Sage Hill Press internet site and purchasing a copy from the publisher.

Randall Jahnson

I'm elated and surprised. My second short film script is done and emailed in PDF form to Randall Jahnson. I am enjoying this process all to hell, and I fear I'm learning that I ought to have taken to screenwriting as my first choice in writing. I enjoy it so much and my imagination seems to flower more completely. When I think about my misspent writing life, I realize that when a book became a movie, I always referred to the movie in my head when I talked about the book. Another interesting thing to me has come up because of screenwriting. Except for my science fiction novel, I have a hard time not writing about myself. I'm the main character in much of my poetry and fiction. Not all, but a great deal of it. However, my first two short film scripts are completely imaginary affairs. I'm not in them at all except as writer. I'm floored by this realization, and hope it doesn't turn into depression based on lost opportunities. What the hell! It's fun now, and I'm still alive and writing. Who knows how it'll turn out?

BEATNIK BOOMER REVELS IN SCREENWRITING CLASS

Belmont Theater—home away from home

Ninety people checked in on this blog this morning. Thank you. Rewriting of Ghoul World continues apace, and the screenwriting class was a smashing success as far as my mood went and goes. I particularly enjoyed the time we spent during which each of us shared our favorite movies. I had so many come to mind that I feared I would take up too much time so I rushed through, a freight train of words ending in a blushing gush of "I just love movies". Fears behind me, I'm excited to be in the class. Being the oldest among them, I also realized my youthful classmates might enjoy the fact they are sharing a screenwriting class with an old duffer who'd actually seen "Sands of Iwo Jima", "Fort Apache" and "She Wore A Yellow Ribbon" when they were first run in an old fashioned single picture neighborhood theater. Mine were the Belmont and  Dabel theaters.

Tomorrow I do plan to ride the Max into Portland. When I first entered the NW Film Center last Tuesday, I ran into a youthful very attractive woman and asked her how safe it was to be riding the Max late at night. She said she regularly rode the trains and buses of Portland late at night. Well...I thought to myself...if she can do it, so can I. Our teacher was part of the writing teams that produced "The Doors" and "Mask of Zorro". He's also written scripts for HBO's "Tales from the Crypt". He mentioned the fact that screenwriting can be streaky—you can be "hot" and "not" by turns. In the back of my mind, I have an intention to show him my novel Ghoul World with the object of co-writing a script for it. I began the novel with clear intentions for it to become a movie. I'll wait to see if we hit it off before I make the suggestion.

SWEATING MY WAY TO ANOTHER PORTLAND ADVENTURE

Tonight, my Tuesday night 6:30 - 9:30 screenwriting course begins at NW Film Center in downtown Portland. Teacher will be Randall Jahnson. If you've been following my bucket list quest, you'll recall that I took time off from rewriting novels to write a science fiction film two summers [or so?] back. I enjoyed the process and thought I might be able to do that in my declining memory years. One-hundred pages of film script is easier to keep in mind than a 500 page novel. Two of my novels are open to turning into film scripts. 

For the past week, I've been full of fear about the course, telling myself I have nothing more to say, telling myself I'll be out of place among young writers, imagining they'll laugh at this 79 year old codger trying to turn out film scripts. I questioned myself violently, doubting everything about myself and hit myself over the noggin with my financially unsuccessful writing career. I experienced moments of fear that reminded me of the fears I felt when I put the bottle down 40-some years ago, i.e. how will I be funny and pick up girls...I'll be so alone, etcetera. One fear was about the expense of parking in Portland, then I looked into taking the Max line in from PDX but was deterred from that by my fear of standing at 9:30 pm in downtown Portland waiting for the Max line to show. They run the last two runs to PDX at 9:55 and 10:30. I truly want to learn to take the Max line into Portland, so I'm compromising tonight. I drove in to park expensively in a garage near the school, then I'll look around as I leave the school at 9:30 to see how scary it might feel at the stop I'd need to wait at.

BEATNIK BELEAGUERED BY BOWEL MALFUNCTIONS

Find photo here....

Today I labored on the rewrite of Ghoul World, but I'm wondering if my sole bucket list item is receding from my grasp.Tuesday I went to see a biofeedback therapist to look into getting my bowels better under control. She was hopeful, and we also got into my frequent urination trips to the bathroom at night. Today, for example, I'm exhausted and it's only 1:00 in the afternoon. I try to go to bed at midnight every night and arise at 9:00. I get up about every one to two hours to pee and to experience a simultaneous hot flash. I don't know whether it's the hot flash or the urge to urinate that awakens me. In the last year, post-cancer, I've gone from being a vigorous pretty youthful old dude who walked an hour a day, 6 days a week, to a fretfully tired old codger whose thoughts are beleaguered by his incontinent bowels and his all too frequent trips to the pee-potty. Tiredness compounds my problems in that I must exert all my psychic strength to make myself exercise at all anymore, and of course, exercise helps in overcoming the other problems. I'm about to close up the rewrite shop for the day. I'm too tired to work effectively. For all I know, I'm creating more stylistic errors than I'm fixing when I work this tired. All in all, this is a down day. At least it's sunny outside right now and sunshine will hopefully stimulate me to walk outside. Hope for better tomorrow. 82 people looked in on this blog recently. Thank you. Some part of me feels hopeful about my bucket list item, i.e. to get someone other than myself to publish one of my novels, but I don't know why.

BLOOD SWEAT AND TEARS ie A BLADDER INFECTION?

Today 125 people looked in on this writer's blog. Thank you for taking an interest. Cheer up poets and fiction writers, essayists and writers and philosophers of all sorts. E.O. Wilson writes, "If our species can be said to have a soul, it lives in the humanities." 
      The Meaning of Human Existence — p.185

I have done no rewriting for two days. Yesterday, I spent a good part of the afternoon in Kaiser-Permanente's urgent care on Mill Plain Blvd. I was pissing pure blood and pus and clots of blood. There was so much thick matter in my bladder that several times I had to push quite hard to get a flow started. I won't know until tomorrow, after a culture grows, if the cause of the bleeding is a bladder infection or the type of bleeding that can follow irradiation of the prostate because of a thinning bladder wall. For safety sake the PA put me on a strong antibiotic. Today I was too tired to write effectively. I didn't sleep last night for fear I wouldn't be able to pee in the morning when I got up. The threat of visit to an emergency room and a catheter was hanging over my head. Wanted to keep the flow going all night long. Drank quarts of blueberry/cranberry juice. Today, the urine is clear again. Whew. No catheter!

I'm tired right now and am bringing this entry to a close so I can go sit in my lounge chair again and luxuriate in the feelings of an invalid.Tomorrow the Zags play South Carolina in the NCAA tournament.

FREE WILL AGAIN PARDON MY MUSINGS

Why free will is an illusion. From the works of E.O.Wilson, but modified in such a way as to clarify Wilson's own inability to be rigorously objective.

"Our [brains] consist of storytelling. In each instant of present time, a flood of real-world information flows into [the body's] senses. Added to the severe limitation of the senses is the fact that the information [the senses] receive far exceeds what the brain can process. To augment this fraction, [the brain automatically triggers familiar] stories of past events for context and meaning. [It] compare[s] them with the unfolding past to apply the decisions that [it] made back in time, variously right or wrong. Then [the brain imagines] forward to create—not just to recall this time—multiple competing scenarios. [The brain emotionally evaluates them] against one another by the suppressing or intensifying effect imposed by aroused emotional centers. An [emotional trigger is automatically thrown] in the unconscious centers of the brain, it turns out from recent studies, several seconds before the [awareness of having made a] decision arrives in the conscious part."
                                     The Meaning of Human Existence, p167

But Wilson says, and I agree, we must believe we possess free will. 

"Confidence in free will is biologically adaptive.... Without it the conscious mind, at best a fragile dark window on the real world, would be cursed by fatalism. Like a prisoner confined for life to a solitary confinement, deprived of any freedom to explore and starving for surprise, it would deteriorate."
      The Meaning of Human Existence, p170

Boy does that remind me of my first shivering encounter with Camus' The Stranger and Meursault in his prison cell awaiting his execution and the moment that he contemplates his meaningless existence within the benign indifference of the universe. I felt my existentialism in spades.