BEATNIK BOOMER IN BURST OF JOY

Here's looking at you. This will be short and sweet. Got to get on to exercise. Yesterday I pushed myself hard on the bike and brought my heart rate to the "high level" for a 79 year old male. I felt invigorated afterwards. I'm emerging from the physical weakness created by the radiation treatments for prostate cancer. Am rewriting Ghoul World at a chapter a day pace and believe it's as readable as a novel can be. Where in hell is that perceptive agent who sees its worth and its cinematic potential? Yesterday 82 people looked in on The Silent Boomer writing blog, AND I got news about a poem of mine that I won't disclose until it's confirmed by contract. It's a bit more than a publication in an anthology and encouraging and humbling at same time. AND tonight is my first film at the Portland International Film Festival: We Are The Flesh. Wahoo!

SILENT BOOMER BEATNIK GOING TO THE PIIF

Drove into Portland this morning to buy tickets for 10 films during the Portland International Film Festival. For me starting on the 9th thru 23rd September some of my writing time will be interrupted by the Festival and the required dislocating travel to and from Portland at odd hours. I especially look forward to two 10:30 pm films at the Bagdad theater for adults only. Lovely experience to come out of theater magic into the nighttime Portland streets and feel all alone creepiness. These foreign films will have subtitles and that allows me with my bad hearing to enjoy films at theaters that don't have captioning devices for old codgers like me. Sometimes when my schedule is so disrupted, writing time gets scramble too, but I'm anticipating great viewing experiences ahead. Mertie who works will go to one film with me on Sunday the 12th. She's okay with this since she likes her routine even more strongly than I like mine. This PIFF extravaganza has become a routine with us. It will be great when she can retire too and join me, but, of course, I'll be in my 90s then...as long as cancer doesn't come back to get me.

MANY VOICES, ONE HEAD... OY, A WRITER'S CRAZINESS

Tonight at 8:30 I'll see my final PIFF film, a Columbian film, "Land and Shade". At OMSI, a huge IMAX theater.

The One Head of the book's title

Reworking the short stories for a book of short stories is going well. Calling it tentatively Many Voices, One Head. I've decided I'm going to enjoy and like my stories for their uniqueness —or not—as I rework them rather than notice that some don't fit any current mold going the rounds at the MFA programs or in the major literary magazines of America. Over the years, I've tried many forms, tried many styles and "voices". One piece I'm working on now is a mock film treatment for a nonsensical absurdist epic romantic film. Think Doctor Zhivago set on the moors of England, put together by a creator from Loony Tunes. Think Wuthering Heights, Bronte on acid. The stories I'm reworking don't speak with one voice. Serious themes rub elbows with absurd nonsense.

I don't want to put a beat down on major American writers, but, what you do notice in many notable authors is that their stories have a recognizable and certain feel. Raymond Carver is Raymond Carver. You read a collection of his stories, and all the stories sound the same. They speak with one voice. I don't know whether that's necessarily a strength. Or a weakness. It's just the way things are with writers. They find a successful voice and go with it. 

I felt that way about poetry. I knew when I wrote a potentially PUBLISHABLE poem, and, sure enough, those that fit the mold in my head of what was publishable were published. I don't know what to make of that. Do you?  Among my fictions are a few that fit the voice of what was going about 30 years ago. One of them placed 3rd in a contest, and another was a runner-up in the Writer's Digest annual contest. Neither of them has seen publication. These will appear in Many Voices, One Head too. Maybe I don't spend enough time sending my fiction work out, but I like to spend my writing time writing. Right. OY! And I'm not Jewish.

THE OLD FART BEATNIK LIVES AND LOVES

I'm smack in the middle of the last section of the novel. I thought I'd be done by now, but what I'm writing so interests me that my imagination is constantly adding to it. I wish I'd thought about writing science fiction when I was younger. I can't tell you much about the concluding scene because it contains so much spoiler stuff. If you think evolution is interesting, be sure and read my novel, Ghoul World [aka the Manning novel] when it comes out. It touches on some of the same stuff. 

As I write this, I'm sitting in a Starbucks in the World Trade Center, Portland, waiting for the PIFF film, NUOC 2030, to begin upstairs at six pm. Spent an hour, earlier, walking in the cold drizzle of Portland's streets. Better, if you ask me, than snow, and, like a smart kid, I wore the raincoat Mertie bought for me when we first moved to Vancouver to wear during my rainy walks. I'm loving life pretty much right at this moment, thinking about my wonderful wife. 

BEATNICK SILENT GETS HEAD BLOWN OFF TWO TIMES

Oh, good heavens, Minerva! I'm at Black Rock. Planned to work on my best selling novel, Manning and discovered my brain farted again, left me with soiled frontal lobes. I carry my novel back and forth between laptop work at coffee shops and desktop work at home on a thumb drive. Sometimes, I forget to load the most current Manning file onto the thumb drive for transport. Today, I'm stuck here, drinking my soy Chai latte, with yesterday's Black Rock file on the thumb drive. This morning's home work remains there. 

My forgetfulness is a minor inconvenience today. Worse when I spend a couple of hours reworking Manning and discover, I've been working on an older version of the novel. Then I've got new work in an older version of Manning and a previous rewrite in a separate file. The two versions are irreconcilable, beyond mere copying. They cry to be rejoined. Sayeth, yon Romeo:

Chris and Toni

See how she leans her cheek upon her hand. 
O, that I were a glove upon that hand
That I might touch that cheek!  

On a happier note, my piece of creative non-fiction, "The Kiggins and I Were Meant For Each Other", appears in Feb's Vancouver Vector, and a poem appears in Ghost Town Poetry Anthology, II, eds: Toni Partington and Chris Luna. Coincidental is the fact their photo appears near a mention of  "Romeo and Juliet". Fortunately no family feud  intervenes. 

Speaking of family. No more nasty family could be found as Siyar's murderous bunch in last night's PIFF film, "Before Snowfall". The last scene, a wedding, blew the top of my head off. Still stunned, recalling it.