WRITING AT THE SAVONA

Writing at the Savona, sounds like a movie title or a song. I like this little place with stars covering all the lights. There's an abstract painting leaned against a wall behind a plant I can't identify. Five stuffed couches, a writing bar against a window facing on the Columbia River, two TVs without sound but with closed captions if you want to, ice cream, sandwiches, soups and what all. I ate a sinful cinnamon roll this morning when I first got here. I took a Miro art book out of the library yesterday and will go get another one today before I drive home. Writing was slow this morning. Awful tired after exercise class. It's 3:00. Time to go to the library and get another art book to look at. I used to take art library books out all the time back in Ohio, back when I was young and carefree.

ON THE ROAD WAS LONG. FIRST ROUGH DRAFT IS DONE. FIREWORKS!

My friends, it's time to leave the library where I'm writing and get my car out of the parking lot before my two hours expire and I get a ticket. Going to walk down by the Columbia River and drink in the 63 degree weather and the feeling of being done with the first rough draft of Ghoul World. I cheated the finish just a little bit and before I start a rewrite on page one, I do have to go back over closing paragraphs to tweak out the exact feeling I want to end the novel with. My feelings about this being the final day of rough draft are a little ambiguous. Still I'm calling this the last day of rough draft.

THE HAUNTED BEATNIK WALKS THE COLUMBIA RIVER

Walked by the Columbia River this afternoon, a golden time, the sun slanting low toward the horizon and long shadows spilled across the grass. 

only 3:30 and looks eveningish

An old phantom came to haunt my morning as I was writing at the Torque. How do I explain it? It's a destructive little snot. I've no idea how to explain why it comes nor where it comes from. It appears in my consciousness unasked and carries with it a troubling sensation. The sum total of the sensation is that I don't feel like a writer. The sensation says: "Hey, who do you think you are, trying to write a novel? You're not a writer, silly goose." I deeply experience this sensation, so deeply that it convinces me momentarily of its undeniable truth. 

My father seems to haunt the edges of it when it comes. Could be that when I sent him a bound copy of my MFA poetry thesis, he told me he hadn't read it because he didn't understand it. Maybe that's why his image is always a part of the sensation that materializes within the synapses of my brain. The thoughts that become clear when I'm feeling this sensation is my middle class, working class background and my wage earning dad who, actually, was a self-taught tool designer, a pretty technically difficult job that he learned on the job. Anyway, I put my head down and kept at, and, finally, had a pretty good morning and early afternoon of writing.

BEATNIK BOOMER CONTEMPLATES LIFE AS A DALAI LAMA

Wonderful day. Just completed 4 mile walk along the Columbia, the frisky breeze rumpling my hair. Notice the disarranged hairs on the hair line atop the bald football field of my head. I was going to say "bald spot", but, today, I eschew the ridiculous.

Who understands the mysteries of an unstable brain? Yesterday, and for a few days previously, despairing yet again, I gave up writing. I imagined myself throwing my consciousness into meditation 4 hours a day, becoming an ever-giving spirit. I imagined myself turning into a smiling Dalai Lama. I dreamed of becoming such a love-filled personage that I shit sweet-smelling begonias ten times a day. That's right! It wouldn't stink. Oh, it was a marvelous dream, filled with pain and wonderful highs after days of suffering. Then, today, I woke up, perfectly contented, and returned to work on the Manning novel as if there had been no yesterday and will be no tomorrow. 

I have no idea where my moods come from. Brooding thoughts of my mortality accompanied the writer's block. Negative thoughts about what a horrible husband, son, stepson, father, worker, intellect and friend I am. I don't know whether the negative thoughts produced the writer's block or whether the writer's block produced the negative thoughts. They come and go like ghosts in the outhouse on a cold winter's night in Southern Ohio or coastal Alabama. Much like the capricious moments that drive the newly sober Florida alcoholic to go back to searching for the elixir of life in the Fontainebleau of Life. 

ADDENDUM TO JULY 1: BEAT BOOMER BUMBLING ALONG

Eventually, in the cool of Black Rock Coffee, after a slow 75 minute walk along the Columbia, my spirits did revive today, and I began the rewrite of Chapter Thirteen of Angie's Choice. What I mistook for ennui was diminished energy due to the cold. It's difficult to distinguish a physical from a psychological condition since both are the same sensation. A feeling is no more than a comfortable to uncomfortable physiological excitation as we have learned to label it by our brains' language functions.

More importantly, I came upon this pair of osprey by the Columbia. (I carry my camera on my belt now at all times.) Osprey mate for life and go South in the winter and often return to the same nest year after year. Years ago I wrote a haiku based on that information:

the osprey couple—
busily tidying up
their summer timeshare

PS: This pair's timeshare is not visible in the photo. Years ago when I wrote the haiku, the female was on her nest, and the male was nearby, picking out suitable fish for supper.

SILENT BOOMER IS IGNORED BY A HERON

Today has been a creative bust. Couldn't get my wangbanger fired up. Sat at keyboard, wearing my backside flat, trying to connect with my characters. They weren't speaking to me or to one another. I decided to change my venue and drove into downtown Vancouver to Torque coffee shop and looked for my characters there. They'd been there, I was told, but left just a minute before I arrived. Did find a huge crowd lined up to eat free bowls at The Mighty Bowl, a traveling food truck which was celebrating one year of a solidly successful existence. Through the week, the Bowl changes locations, and Thursdays it parks at the Torque. The line ran 40 people long and still going after an hour and a half. I couldn't imagine how a truck that small carried enough food to serve all the patrons who showed up. Actually, I couldn't imagine much of anything. 

Cursing my muse, I left Torque to walk by the mighty Columbia River where I met an aloof Gray Heron upon a rock. "What's the haps," I asked, but he sat upon a gray rock that set off his feathers quite nicely and gave me the bird. He was writing haiku most likely. About grayness or ambiguity or Mark Twain on the Mississippi. As for me, I had to be satisfied with a purloined thought...the one about tomorrow being another day.

BOOMING DAMN BRAIN DAMAGE!

Photo filched from the Black Rock website

Anymore, I don't think of it as writer's block. I now call it old age brain damage! Been several days since that last writing jag left me. This morning I sat in the Torque coffee shop in downtown Vancouver and had to write a letter to the editor just so I wouldn't feel so burned out. Then I ate a lunch of five sushi rolls and a banana while sitting by the Columbia River in my parked, beautiful as any horse to me, Yaris. Later a stroll along the river in the overcast chill of Vancouver perked me up. Now I've driven east and sit near my home and Costco (where I'll do a little shopping). I'm sitting in a Black Rock coffee shop which I enjoy very much. A chain...all in black and white it is. Feels alive to me here, like someplace in a modern city or in the future even. Yeah, in the future...that's what they've aimed at. The future. I'm hoping to live another 25 years and stay as alert as I feel now. Part of what has happened, I think, is I lost sight of my goal to write for Boomers, Silents and the last of the WWII generations. Then I start thinking GREATNESS again, and it all goes to hell in a hand basket. That picture above is a feel of what they're attempting. Couldn't find an interior for the place I now inhabit, typing this.