BEATNIK BATTLES ICE AND SNOW

Just got another one. That's three rejections of my recent stories with invitations to send more work. Feels almost as good as an acceptance. Feels like I'm just under an ice surface, poking at it with an ice pick. I know where the image comes from. Wife and I recently watched first season of Fargo, the TV series. If you've seen it, you know where the ice image comes from and the thought of being trapped under the ice.

Lately, my work has stopped entirely. I live with a sort of dizzy, old age lethargy. Hard to generate a creative thought out of it. I may talk to the doctor about the dizziness, but, long ago, a doctor told me it's common with old age and likely to get worse. Over the years it has gotten worse. Too many days of it now. But, today, dizziness or not, I'm going to work on a story I began a month ago. See if I can feel my way to a creative ending, an entertaining middle, an enticing start. Of course, I can always work on the short story ms for submission to the most prestigious contests. Maybe all the stories together will generate a more positive energy. Enough to make a breakthrough. 

BARBECUE AND BEATNIK THOUGHTS

I just ate a pulled pork barbecue sandwich at the Van Mall. Delicious. Could have used a bit more of the delicious sauce. Will ask for it next time. A local company, the Backyard Barbecue.

Now to business. Has been suggested by several websites that these entries ought to occur every other day or so. To keep readers titillated. But I figure, why write if news is sparse? Just finished rework of poetry ms about cancer treatments YOU WAKE ONE MORNING, REMEMBERING and submitted it to BKMK Press contest at University of Missouri. Cost thirty dollars to enter. Administrative costs, they say. Well, a bit too much I figure. But, the contest is prestigious and those who enter do so anonymously. Fair and square.

Next task is to put together another short fiction ms and enter it in contests too. The one I have already put together contains too many stories that modern editors will reject. Their style probably sounds out of date to a youthful editor. I imagine they don't get the charge out of those that I do. I hope another surge of short stories arises in my psyche.

Last task on list is to put together a poetry ms from my lifetime of work, the published and the unpublished — the very best I have written and circulate the ms in contests.  

PS: The prostate cancer news is so so. Need more talk with urologist, I think.

GAMBLING, GAMBLING. LIFE'S ONE OF THEM.

Gambled a bit this morning at the Ilani Casino north of Vancouver. Lost but not much. Still ahead since winning 100 bucks in October was it? I only take $5 when I go.

Find photographer here

Prostate cancer news not so good. My plan is to make it to 88 or 90. However the PSA is increasing rapidly. Have telephone consult with my urologist next week. He's also more cautious in his promises. More later.

On the writing front, I'm hugely encouraged. Last three submissions of most recent short stories to the very best paying markets have garnered three rejections but all three included requests for more submissions. Same thing happened with four poems from my prostate cancer ms. Strong encouragement and invite to submit again. I know the work is good, but they also compete with the very best writers who go for publication in top markets. I might never crack those markets, but I'm in the mix now I believe. 

Three plans currently. Rework the cancer ms, put together a collection of short stories with the new ones plus a few older ones that have gathered good responses. Last, put together a collection of poetry that spans the years I've been writing poetry. The very best, the published stuff, filled in with unpublished I like. Submit these to prestigious contests.

URSULA, HEMINGWAY AND ME? FANTASTICAL.

Here we go. It's been awhile, but little to report. I seem to be stuck at 30 stories. I've been working on a story Weighty for some time now. Stuck. Probably because I ventured into unfamiliar territory. I'm a realist. Can't do much but stay there. I know. I know. Realism is a figment of anyone's imagination. One person's reality is another person's fantasy....and so forth and so on and such and such. Yeah!

Ursula

Recently was viewing a documentary on Ursula K. Le Guin. I was enjoying it until her hatred for Hemingway peeked through. She sneered at him as if it were his personal fault that most readers enjoyed his work so much that her own stuff did not make the cut for many years. I have had my years reading science fiction. Was a member of the Science Fiction Book of the Month Club as a youth in the Navy. Had books shipped to me at several duty stations. Nowadays, fantasy and science fiction demand large audiences. If you ask me, reality is taking quite a beating. Pushed to the side. Maybe? Maybe not?

BEATNICKING ALONG THE BEAT ROAD

Thirty stories now completed. Have been working today on my ms You Wake One Morning, Remembering. Rearranging the contents. I want to enter it into contests. Nearly 50 poems based on my dance with prostate cancer—it's discovery, treatment with radiation and hormone therapy and semi-recovery. The cancer's still there. Much reduced. My urologist says I'll die of something other than prostate cancer. Only time will tell. He's the one who likes to say, "Everyone's got to die someday."

Lately my rejections have been accompanied by requests to resubmit. Either editors are becoming kinder with their rejection letters, or I'm getting closer. I'm reading Hemingway's short stories recently, having finished Raymond Carver's. It's been a half year since a poem of mine was included in Washington State Poet Laureate Claudia Castro's project, Washington Poetry Map. It's there near Huckleberry Mountain just north of Interstate 90. My record is pretty consistent—one or two publications a year. Nothing spectacular. Not bad for a writer who is a stranger to most, if not all, editors of literary magazines, internet as well as hard copy.

The recent photo reveals the fact I'm letting my hair grow long on the top. On top that is.

THE HAPPY BEATNIK

Georgie Porgy nearing 82

Oh what a nightmare. We changed our internet from awful CenturyLink to Xfinity and lost our email address. In the midst of this wonderful late-in-life creative rush [now 27 stories], I'm fighting all the problems that come with new email addresses. The sign in problems. Password messes. You name it. I can't even explain some of the problems. Still? Creating like mad. Trusting my psyche, my imagination to lead me to the source. Anyhow... this is my check-in with those who follow my labors in the word arbor. I'm thinking I might do this. Since most lit mags won't accept any stories that have been "published" on the internet, I'm going to try this. I'm going to put my email address in here. Anyone who'd like to see one of my stories, email me with your email address. I'll pick one favorite story and send it as an attachment to anyone interested. You can judge how I'm doing. I'm very happy with what I'm finding in me to write about. I still need to pick one story. Waiting to get your emails: geomert.q.com@gmail.com The story I picked is less than a 1000 words.

Don't worry. I won't put you on a mailing list. I don't have one in the first place. And I'm so not a marketing whiz. 

BEATNIKING ALONG THE SHORT STORY ROAD

trumpery, the word

I'm on my third story in a week: "Game Of Hearts", "Activated Charcoal" the first two. I'm beginning a third today named temporarily "Superstition". Notice that I put quotation marks around the short story titles. And I use italics for novel titles. These affectations result from earning my Masters In English. I believe those are recommended by the Chicago Manual of Style which was the standard. Many professors demanded those stylistic requirements. What about movie titles and song titles? I know I could do research to trigger my recall of those long ago days, but, let me be honest, I truly don't care to take the time. I'd do it if it came up in a short story and I needed the detail. I'd rather use italics for everything. These days of trumpery, I suppose I would demand those standards of students if I were teaching. I'd forgotten all about that word, trumpery. Amazing how it came to me just now. And how fitting it is for these days of worthless nonsense in the White House.

Lastly, my first submission of a current story was returned from a reputable literary magazine. But I was specifically asked to submit again. That feels better than outright rejection.

CLEAN AIR AND SHORT STORIES

I feel the necessity to comment even though demand is

photo by Greg Moser

down. Since May 9, I have created 24 stories, beginning with "The Line Ahead". I just finished the 24th story, "The Phone Call". All this began when I picked up an old collection of Ray Carver's tales Will You Please Be Quiet Please that was yellowing on a bookshelf in the office. So he was influenced by Hemingway and Chekhov? Now I'm influenced by his writing. I also doted on Hemingway and Chekhov back in the 1960s. I believe a line can be drawn through the connections. What a bitch that Carver died at age 50 of lung cancer. He was a smoker. Now e-cigarettes are killing people with lung ailments. Drawing anything but air into our lungs is risky. Thus the need [political opinion follows] for protection of our atmosphere. Clean air is a necessity for the human species. For all mammals to be exact. Even fish need oxygen. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOGvQsWW1As

DAVID EAGLEMAN SUPPORTS THIS BEATNIK'S IDEAS

David Eagleman

Absolutely nothing to report. Nothing. Last two weeks has been busy with non-writing tasks and around the house duties. We are looking into reflooring the condo, but laminated flooring may be not possible due to Condo Community Regulations. I finished another short story, "The Feels Of Homer". Like it. Recent reading has been Incognito by David Eagleman, an update on neuroscience that supports the theory we humans are as much robots as gorillas are. I accept that I'm a robot. It's that or evolution is a lie, and I know that's not true. Thus the human species has gone from believing it's the center of the solar system and in command of its own behavior to being just another instinct driven animal in the vast Cosmos. I find that an intriguing proposition. Nothing to fear. Now reading Rather Outspoken by Dan Rather.

MYNA BIRD BEATNIK

Eighty-six people checked in so time for another entry. I sent off a short story ms to a prestigious competition. I believe I have no chance. A name writer will have the best chance. The press will want to make money on their publication. A name draw will do that. Still, I had fun putting the ms together—stories written in many styles over the years. In truth, I think I've been a myna bird kind of writer. A copycat of styles. I read something and a story pops into mind in that writer's voice. The stories in the ms represent Hammett, Allen [Woody], Carver, Hemingway, Salinger... at least that many voices. Maybe Dickens in spots. I don't seem to have developed a voice of my own. Maybe I'm just an inauthentic character in someone's novel without a voice of my own.

At SIU during my first stab at a Masters In English, a fellow TA [Terry Brown] asked me to type up a ms for him, a paper he wrote on Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. I couldn't help myself and began to imitate Swift's style, altering the style of my friend's paper quite a bit. He couldn't believe I'd done such a thing. Looking back, I can't believe I did it either.

I've written 17 stories in the past two months. Reading Carver set them off. Him being a recovered alcoholic might have something to do with my sounding like him and their themes being similar. I seem to be happiest when I'm writing or when I'm in my wife's company. 

LOTS OF WORK, LOTS AND LOTS

Jeez, Louise, 82 people looked in this morning. Thank you folks. Been awhile, I know, but I've been hard at work. Spent three days straightening out the file cards I keep on all my poetry. Things were in a mess, and I found I was sending out poems I'd self-published in my two poetry books, Gray House By Cold Mountain and Tenderfoot [available Amazon or AuthorHouse]. That's a no-no in the publishing world, even though the readership of those books is extremely small.

Just finished a few minutes ago writing another short story I love to pieces called "Lennie". I'm also rewriting the poetry ms about my prostate cancer, You Wake One Morning, Remembering. I'm altering it from second person singular to first person and it will have a new undecided title. The reason I began it second person was some sort of shame or shyness about using first person. Don't ask me why. I don't understand it myself. After all, it's my cancer, my dealing with it, the humor I find in my dealing with it. In fact, I wonder if it's not too humorous in places while in other places showing too much self-pity. It's a complicated book, unlike any other cancer poetry I've read. Lot's of references to movies and personalities in the news of my days.

BEATNIKING THROUGH THE RAPIDS

 Photo by Ivana Cajina @unsplash

What more can I say? I've been roughing out a story every couple of days. Found a groove that works and that I trust. Will have to go back for rewrites, of course, but I like how these tales adhere to reality as I've experienced it and think about it. I tell you this...some of the trick is to change the names and tell it like it was. Words pouring out like rushing waters. Would not imagine that an 81 year old could feel this rejuvinated as a writer.

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE HUCKLEBERRY

The rewritten "All About Jane" has already been rejected by a magazine called Chestnut Review which collected a fat $5 fee for considering it. They took all of 5 days to consider it. Fair to say I get rejected a lot. Most writers do unless they have huge name recognition, but 5 days and $5? Makes me think it could be a scam. Easy... form a magazine, put it into Poets & Writers Magazine and charge a $5 reading fee. Publish the magazine online for very low cost and make at least pocket money rather than lose money as I did publishing George & Mertie's Place. Most magazines these days use Submittable to handle mss and Submittable gets $3 to handle a ms. Fair enough, but $5? I'm tearing up my file card for that market. Too suspicious. 

by rob mulally @unsplash

Good news on the other hand. One of my poems has been accepted by current Washington State Poet Laureate Claudia Castro Luna. It appears on the map. You will find the poem by clicking on the red button about 2/3 of the way on Interstate 90 from Spokane to Seattle. A very handy blip on I-90 occurs just below the red dot. The dot represents Huckleberry Mountain in the North Cascades whose name is in the title of my poem "Group Encounter at Huckleberry Mountain".

SMILING LIKE A ROBOT BEATNIK

Seven days since I wrote that my writing days might be over. In those seven days, I've rewritten one story and added three new stories that I believe may be the sort of stories that get published. How it came about?

I was rewriting a tale now called "All About Jane" for the who-knows-how-many times since I first scribbled it long hand on college lined paper when I was struggling in graduate school at Southern Illinois University. That would be 53-some years ago. 

The plot was influenced very much by the symbolic young man I was at the time. It concerned a high school boy who could not bring himself to have sex with a willing wheelchair bound, very intelligent high school girl. She represented the world he was having trouble accepting because it was such an ugly world, but they eventually had sex and all was well with the world afterward. 

Every time I rewrote it, I cleaned up the language [not sexual language], a too florid style. Eventually I changed it so they don't have sex, and the boy much later in life looks back at what he learned. Still not satisfied, this last time I changed the final line of the tale and brought the story into the way I look at us robots these days, and, voila, there it was—finished? Then I wrote three more stories from a robot's pov. 

BEATNIKING THROUGH LIFE WHILE RIDING THE MAX

FB tells me I haven't written in this writer's blog lately, but they always tell me that one or two days after my most recent entry. I put in a good day's work this afternoon on Memoir Of A Nobody. Spent several hours on no more than three paragraphs, writing and rewriting, fine tuning, trying to get the past emotions down just right.

My current emotions are running hot then cold the past two days. Yesterday, I took the Max into Portland, felt recognition of some sort for all my life's work was very near. Everything I've written has been brilliant... then this morning I awake filled with doubt and self-loathing, remembering all the people I've alienated, imagining how no one will come to my funeral. Of course not. I'm not going to have a funeral, no showing, nothing. Wife and I have both decided on how the end of our lives will be without fanfare—drop dead and off to the crematory. 

SILENT BOOMER BEATNIK'S LAST HURRAY................MAYBE

Ninety-nine people recently looked in. Thank you. Three of my haiku may be found on the website Better Than Starbucks. They also appear in a hard copy edition that can be found here.
 
I haven't written anything for days. I'm tired a lot. The memoir languishes. Poetry is hiding out in my synaptic self somewhere beyond my prefrontal cortex. I'm not certain, but I fear my writing days may be over. I have ideas but not energy to get to work. Only time will tell. I'm now reading The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. I took a course in Chaucer as an undergraduate and read the work in its original Middle English. 

My bathroom reading is Ray Carver's Will You Please Be Quiet Please. I met him once in a coffee shop at Eastern Washington University. When I asked him where his stories came from, he replied, "I don't know. I just hope they keep coming."

BEATNIK MEMOIR ON A ROLL

Eighty-two people looked in on The Silent Boomer today. Thank you. All my jabber in recent entries about my psychology and the memoir I'm working on and a current rereading of Steinbeck's East Of Eden has created the following Facebook discussion with myself and friends. The picture above is a cartoon I created for my microzine, George and Mertie's Place, long ago and far away.

BEATNIKING A PATH TO UNDERSTANDING

Putting aside the memoir today. It's escaping me and that's discouraging. Trouble is the timeless connections within the unconscious. I'm working on Chapter 5: Cast Of Characters. I want to rough out limited bios of the people in my family who most affected me. But as I begin to write about my mother, thought leads to thought and emotion fires up emotion and soon enough the hidden connections between my mother and my ex-wives takes me to the moments in my marriages when I feel my mother in the images of my exes. I find myself

far off target, in a memory that belongs to another chapter. I mean, when you understand that the abuse your mother suffered as a child is connected to how you picked your wives, what chronology can contain that awareness? Where do you write it—when the twist was put, without your knowledge, into your psyche or when decades later you finally discovered it hidden there? When I understand my life, everything seems connected to everything else. I wonder if another structure is called for? One without a chronology of any sort, but, I've tried that too, and I can't imagine anyone reading it with any patience. Think I'll go home and pick up where I left off in my third read of Steinbeck's East Of Eden. Let me tell you about finding myself with James Dean in the movie East Of Eden, cold and lonely atop a freight car heading to Monterey to look for his whore mother—connection to connection to connection....

BEATING THE BEATNIK TO DEATH

It's 5:30 am, and I'm unable to sleep. Writing my Memoir Of A Nobody is turning out to be quite a disturbing task. Writing stirs up memories in me that won't go away and let me sleep. Several nights recently sleeplessness has overwhelmed me. It's a good thing I don't write every day or I'd be in awful shape. My life contains many disturbing events, many psychologically terrifying periods. Fortunately, I don't believe I normally realize what I've been through. I have so many tales to tell and many psychological insights that I've gotten from them and through counseling and reading in psychology, specially in evolutionary psychology. I truly have something to offer about the process of recovery from many emotional difficulties to find happiness and love. I spent four hours today writing and rewriting four paragraphs, trying to get the facts and feelings down as they truly happened. I'm writing about my experiences as a 19 year old with prostitutes in San Juan, Puerto Rico. In many ways those experiences foreshadowed the troubles I would later experience with all women. I've rewritten the opening sentences below too many times already. 

1. Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

I wonder if writing this memoir will be the death of me? Lit by a computer monitor, here I sit, age 81, at 1:52 am, naked except for white briefs, bent over a computer keyboard, driven out of bed by a restless memory to begin….

Somewhere within me my stepmother’s words are indelibly inscribed: “You’re selfish. You’re not like your father at all. You’re not a Thomas.”

    I’ve begun many times in 81 years to write this memoir, and every time I begin, I tell myself memoir writing is the most selfish task a person can try. I immediately begin to quibble with myself....


It's now 6:15 am as I finish this entry and still no sleep....

Now 2:43 pm as I add this entry. My lack of sleep has nothing to do with guilt. I'm long past that, but my mind just goes hyperactive sometimes. Thoughts run riot.

EVERY LITTLE BEAT GOES ON

I had a cold recently. As a result I suffered with loose stools and crapped my Depends twice within a three day period. Once at home and once at a Yumm! restaurant. Yummy, eh?

See photographer here...

Now for some healthier news. My Memoir Of A Nobody is back on track. Three haiku will appear in the May issue of an online magazine Better Than Starbucks. Google a look if you'd like in May. An "Afterword" I wrote for Geoff Peterson's poetry book Archipelago is now available in his book at Amazon, Authorhouse or in any bookstore. Most bookstores will be glad to order books for you. Archipelago is a collection of  Peterson's earliest poetry. He wrote most of it before he entered the creative writing program at Eastern Washington University or during his early years there. My "Afterword" in Archipelago covers those early days and my arrival in Cheney Washington in April 1975 and our first encounters. We eventually both lived at Sutton Hall, the veteran's dorm at Eastern. He also became the poetry editor of Willow Springs Magazine that I co-founded with four other lit. majors. When I quit after a dispute over a couple of poems, he took over and—by the happy way—included the two disputed poems.

BEATNIK BASHED ON THE INNER EAR ROCKS

Facebook tells me on an irritatingly regular basis that readers of this blog are craving to hear from me. The memoir is coming along very slowly, nearly not at all. I have far too many dizzy days, and when those days are upon me, not a creative spark appears in my synaptic self, and he's the self who writes for me and which my conscious self recognizes after the fact. As no doubt you all know by now, if you keep up with evolutionary biology, the conscious self exists as about five or six constantly changing pieces of data which is all the human animal can retain in its consciousness at any one time. Consciousness is a flickering moment to moment existence at best, and when one is dizzy on a regular basis, consciousness becomes an even more fractured phenomenon.

Find photographer here...

Why am I dizzy and what can be done about it? Decades ago, I consulted an eye ear nose guy, and he said the little hairs in my inner ear, awash in and reacting to the fluid sloshing around in there are getting flattened and worn down with age and inactivity. He said it would only get worse. He was right. 

I continue to send out pieces of writing and get regular rejections. I fear my work is out of date. I truly like my 8 line poetry, specially the simplest clearest expression of my thinking, but clarity is not in fashion. And that's okay. 

PRIVILEGED WHITE MALE..... NOT SO MUCH.

Still writing the memoir tentatively called Privileged White Male. The title is to be understood as somewhat but not entirely ironical. I fully understand women's complaints, but, I've not been entirely successful when compared to the self confident and/or Type-A males in the workforce. The memoir clearly reveals this. Thus, I identify with women more than they might like. And women do quite well in the writing community these days, whereas I'm not doing as well as I believe I deserve to be doing. More women than men buy books.

FIND PHOTOGRAPHER

Lately, I've sent off some eight line poems (roughly comparable to Chinese lushi) that are quite good. I believe in them. And one editor actually complimented the "spirit" of them, but rejected them for not being the sort of metaphor he desires, though not in those words. My lushi express an atheistic existential point of view, but I think many editors these days can't see through the plain surface of my lushi to what lies beneath them. They expect, and many demand, some sort of metaphoric and jumbled word play. In fact, if a poem says something clearly on the surface, they would rather it be a puzzle that must be puzzled over. Seriously.

In conclusion, one outcome I can depend on is that on an irregular and frustrating basis, crap will appear in my diaper.

BEATNIK BEATS ON AFTER NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE

Photoprapher find here

Watching the Super Bowl half-heartedly. Fell into a creative funk for a couple of weeks after DAW rejected Ghoul World, and my poetry manuscript about prostate cancer experience also fell short in two prestigious contests. Of course, those contests were filled with many excellent manuscripts by well known poets. I shouldn't feel so bad, but I thought my writing days were done. Nothing was issuing from my inner sanctum except the sound of silence, but this week, a couple of poems were handed out through the sanctum doors into my conscious brain, and I began to write a memoir for the umpteenth time. I've got some interesting psychological thoughts and insights to share, but I have to deal with the old grouch synaptic self that undermines me at every turn. "What makes you think you've got anything worthwhile to say?" I sent Ghoul World limping out again. Hell, it's only been rejected about 20 times. What's that in the scheme of things? Nothing. And two eight line poems slipped into view from the synaptic self. I really love the eight line form and Hanshan's temperament that I fell in love with. Somewhere in my unconscious self, there exists a hermit in the Chinese mountains.

THE NEWS IS IN AND IT'S ALL BAD

The poetry ms based on my bout with prostate cancer has come back from University of Pittsburg Press and from Iowa University too. Also novel Ghoul World has been rejected by DAW Publishing. I truly thought the novel had a good chance and was holding my breath. Perhaps self publishing with Amazon will be the final act, not that self publishing with Authorhouse is helping me sell my two poetry books: Grayhouse By Cold Mountain and Tenderfoot. I'm also bored with intermediate algebra. Yesterday, I drove North to Ilani Casino and gambled a very little money away, but I was tempted to get more money and keep going, hoping for a big hit. Scary thinking to be having when one is disappointed in other things in life. Alcoholic thinking?

The photo is one of the slots at Ilani in case you're interested.