NO FEAR LIKE SPIDER FEAR... OR OF A CLOWN

Today, my task is to complete a table of contents for a 76 poem ms of 8 line poetry. I'm entering it in a contest with deadline of June 30th. I guess I'll call it Wrestling Hanshan as is the longer ms entitled that I've selected the poems from.

I've been kind of down these past few days. This morning I went in to get a blood draw to test my PSA level. I was scheduled to go in June 1, but I held back. It's been six months since last test and I fear, for no good reason at all, the PSA level is on its way up. I'll soon know. If so, the cancer would be back. Last two days have felt very tentative and melancholy. I made the mistake of watching a video about Roger Ebert last night—Life Itself. He died of cancer. The man had no lower jaw, could not eat or drink the final years of his life. It was not uplifting to watch.

Yesterday, I rode the Max into Portland just to change pace. Read Milosz's poetry and sat around at sidewalk tables, watching people. Tried to write some poetry but haven't looked at it today to see if anything still clicks. The rewrite of the novel Ghoul World draws near, I think. The impulse to write poems seems to have eased.

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.

e.e. cummings AND BEATNIK BOOMER FEEL A LOT

Today is a disturbing day. A day of dizziness, and I can't get started on my science fiction screenplay, plus fecal incontinence threatens. Instead of sturm und drang, I'm suffering from shite and stress. Ah, well, it's a good excuse to put this writing day in the can (double meaning there) and unwind, maybe finish reading Craig Lesley's Winterkill. He lives in Portland, you know, just across the river from where I type this. He was born in 1945 and is 8 years younger than me. Makes him 70 or approaching 70 or leaving 70 for 71, depending upon the month.  

Plotting my science fiction movie has been giving me fits. I want certain things to happen and certain feelings to be aroused, but I can't quite focus on the necessary steps. I'm trying to imagine, instead of writing toward (as in fiction) certain frightening moments, but I can't grasp them imaginatively. A blank. It's old age and a failing imagination, or a case of plain old writer's block. 

Speaking of feelings, a friend of mine put the e.e. Cummings' photo and screed on my Facebook page, and I'm sharing it here. Feelings are wonderful. Younger, I suffered for many years with the near absence of emotions. Severe depression. A cold dead sensation. Without emotional guidance, a man makes awful mistakes, tries to make decisions based on rational premises. Only sociopaths are successful at that.

THIS AND THAT...A LITTLE BIT OF

Holy Jumping Jehoshaphat! Last two days of rewrite of Ghoul World, I've done two chapters each day. Will begin Chapter -15- tomorrow. Moving right along. I thought Colbert's second show was stronger than his first. His sendup of Trump during his first show was silly and juvenile, nearly, but his second night's political bit sounded more like the style he originated at Comedy Central. More sophisticated. Oh, listen to Mister Sophisticate, George Thomas, or Silent Boomer or ex-Beatnick hippy, and whathaveyou. 

Had a great time at the recent National Beat Poetry Festival: Portland PDX version. I mean it was grooving and moving, loud and packed.

For our 15th wedding anniversary, my wife, Mertie, took us to

Jimmy Mak's jazz club to listen to jazz and eat dinner. She did this because every time we've walked past Jimmy Mak's since arriving in Vancouver, I've said, "We gotta go there sometime." So, she got us there. What a sweetheart she is. I got her Crystal earrings and a Glen Campbell DVD because, lately, she's been saying, "We gotta have some Glen Campbell in the house." Secondly, because the 15th wedding anniversary is the glass or crystal anniversary. I've used Mak's in my Ghoul World novel, but the club in my book doesn't look anything like the real place, but, of course, it's two hundred years from now. 

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 BOOMER GROWS MOSSY

in the uninspired memedome today

Except for this blog entry and interactions with others through my Facebook personality, I won't write much today. Nothing at all on the Manning novel. If it weren't for the knowledge that the current novel has the potential to earn a few dollars, I might quit working on it altogether and go sit on my ass while my skin grows mossy in the rain. Manning is a good tale because it set my skin tingling as I conceived it, but the day to day process of birthing it is proving a grueling ordeal. (90 pp by 3 months)

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Writer isn't always a fun movie these days. I recall when writing was pure joy. Watching the words come out of nowhere and build their relationships with each other, take their place in the essay or story, novel or poem ... that was pure joy, endlessly entertaining. Though the whole piece might end up in the circular file later and no financial success, nothing was lost because I was entertaining myself for free, playing happily with my own feelings, words and thoughts or, more coarsely, dabbling in my own shit.

I'll get back to Manning tomorrow and the mystery he's trying to solve 250 years in the future. Today, I'll live in the moment, watching people until my lovely wife comes home from work, and we can sit to watch something informative or mindlessly comforting on TV ... like "Law and Order: SVU" which, by now, is almost family. Or "Dexter" ... also like family?

Had a good time last night at the book party thrown by Curious Monkey Publishing at Ford Food and Drink on the corner of 11th and Division in Portland. Those things are fun when I don't drink anymore and hungrily yearn for every cool lady in the house. A happy marriage has great side benefits. 

SILENT COMPLETES THE LAST REWRITE OF ANGIE'S CHOICE

A happy note! Wife Mertie did the final reread of Angie's Choice today. Five last chapters and only about six errors found. I will not look at it again, except to send it around to agents and directly to publishers. I culled through the 2013 Writer's Market and built a huge list of possible publishers. More of the kind of work that it would be nice to have an agent do for me as Agent Ruth Cantor once did for me back in the 1980s. 

Today I went into Portland to the Humanists of Greater Portland Sunday meeting. Then took an hour walk in downtown Portland and realized, as I enjoyed my walk, that under my original plan (to get someone other than myself to publish a book of mine) there lies another plan—to make enough money from one or the other of my novels to buy a modest condo in Portland. Well ... I'm 76 now and might just as well dream big as small. Eh? Of course the book I'm pinning my hopes on is Manning (working title). Also in the wings for complete revision is my most serious novel, Delinquent Lives. The Porno Writer could be a scorcher if I can write a final polished draft of it. It's done, but needs polishing. I think there's work enough ahead to carry me to the crematory but into a Portland condo...?

ANOTHER SILENT BOOMER, MANNING'S MODEL, JERRY ORBACK (born October 20, 1935)

Lennie Briscoe/Jerry Orbach

Today the writing went extremely well. Finished segment 14. I don't call them chapters because their length is irregular. In a filmed drama, they'd be scenes. That's how they break into segments—as scenes.

In this 14th segment, Manning's character becomes more fully revealed. I sometimes picture Manning as Jerry Orbach in character as Lennie Briscoe of SVU. Coincidentally, I was born on Oct. 20th, 1937. In this segment, one of Manning's longtime friends goes missing, and since it's Manning who has brought his friend into harm's way, he feels guilty. He's already lost an acqaintence to whatever the forces are he's dealing with, and he's pretty far from knowing what those forces are. He's certain they're pretty bad forces. Being a physically fragile ghoul, Manning would like to give up this job, but his friend is missing now. 

Also had an interesting sense of time today. I'm setting novel this in Portland, Oregon, 250 years in the future. Anyway, I've got Manning going to a Starbucks on Lombard Street, near U. of Portland. Then I stop to wonder if Starbucks will be there in 250 years. Two-hundred-fifty years is a long time as far as cultural icons go. Compare it to Sears and Roebucks which began in 1893 as a mail order catalog. That's a mere 120 years ago. According to some people, Sears is fading even as we speak ... or as I write. 
 
Zags won again last night! Olynyk is playing for Celtics. My feeling is Kelly's the type to make something of his opportunity. Maybe even moreso than the solid Ronny Turiaf.

BEAT BOOMERS HIS WAY THROUGH CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Just completed rewrite of Chapter Fourteen. Eight chapters of rewrite to go on Angie's Choice. If I set a pace of one chapter minimum per week, I'll be done in two months.

It's not all peaches and cream in Portland

For no reason at all that I could at first discover, I included this photo from downtown Portland on Labor Day two years past. As I uploaded it, I thought it ought to be titled: IT'S NOT ALL PEACHES AND CREAM IN PORTLAND, then I realized this photo actually refers to the previous post in which I mention the unmentioned reasons for the time lapse between my first novel under the tutelage of Britain's Kenneth Hopkins in 1965 and my appearance in the writing program at Eastern Washington University ten years later in 1975.

In my drinking years and in my struggle to imagine myself as a writer, that image of people sleeping in a doorway, and others like it, have always burned in my imagination. I literally felt I was one misstep from sleeping in doorways myself. The photo on the right is a picture of me in a Cheney, Washington alley not too long after my arrival in Washington to attend Eastern Washington University. I'm in full blue collar, drifter regalia except for the book bag slung over my shoulder—denim jacket, denim shirt, Levis and steel toed boots. I took several pictures of alleys that first summer and fall in Cheney.

This alley photo is aptly dark and mysterious, I thought at the time. You can see the snow on the ground and the winter light explains the murky quality of the photo...a technical detail I still don't know how to fix, but, hey, I was a murky sort of individual at the time, and I have managed to tone that up a bit. Everything an individual does always psychologically fits, if you think about it. I like to know the personal histories of the writers I enjoy. It makes sense that most of the writers I was drawn to were alcoholics, doesn't it? Oh yeah!

BEAT BOOMER BUMBLING ALONG

I'm experiencing an extended period of ennui that began with a cold and has continued unabated into my (almost) recovery from it. All of me (why not take all of me) screams to drive over to Portland and walk the sunny streets and sit in coffee shops to read a book, but my goal to get Angie's Choice into shape quickly so I can circulate it to potential publishers would nag my every step down the sunny Portland streets. Damn it, I do sometimes envy painters who can stand and walk around the room as they work on a canvass (if they want to). Sitting before this shiny screen on my ass for hours is what feels like a marathon run.

Back to the grind.... 

Put sandals on...ready to walk.

Late news flash: writer George Thomas decided today to forgo writing, ignore his guilt and go out and enjoy the day. Dadblast it!