WRITER'S BLOCK AND THOMAS JEFFERSONS

Last time, I reported twenty dollars were on their way for two poems. Instead, the amount will be 30 dollars. They await me in Paypal for three poems appearing in the current issue of Teach. Write. Literary Magazine. One of the poems was rejected 18 times over several decades before finding a nest to nestle in. As editors constantly report, "Thank you for sending us your work. Sorry, these do not fit our needs. Perhaps they will be a better fit elsewhere." Of course, I fine tune my poetry every time I send it out, and so it goes. Sometimes, I'll see a revision that totally alters the poem, its arrangement on the page, even its underlying analogy.

I've reported writer's block several times in this blog. Now I'm dealing with a different type of writer's block. Some of the drugs I take, now, to delay my death by a high risk form of prostate cancer create fatigue, prednisone for one. This morning, as I sit at my local Starbucks, I can barely concentrate. I'm working on a rewrite of a story that includes brothers, sisters, friends and brothers and sisters-in-law. For the life of me, I can't keep them straight in my head. It's impossible to write when my brain is dazed like this. At least, it's not a hangover these days. 

Keep at it my friends. I've had more success this year than at any time in my life, and I'll be 84 the 20th of this month. Still, three more sarcastic poems to come out in Sequestrum. I like the company I'll appear with in that fine magazine.

BEATNIKING IT ON THE ROAD

I'm still alive. You'd think I'd stay home and write my head off, but staying home feels like prison. No more coffee shops to write in. Have been getting out on the road and driving, listening to jazz, making videos. But, hit or miss, I have polished off two more short stories that I began months ago but set aside when they weren't going anywhere. So I'm happy enough, waiting for my poem to appear in Zero Dark Thirty.

Have weird feeling from time to time before I set out each day to drive or get a soy chai that no one is outside anymore, but, there they are at the Starbucks for "grab and go" service only. The Vancouver Mall is closed currently for at least two weeks. Some small businesses are really getting hurt. The potential for this Covid-19 is awful, but if too many people feel as I do—not very scared at all—then they'll be doing risky business for seniors like myself. What is only a cold for a young dancer in a bar is death for a guy at the supermarket. 

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WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS UNDERSTOOD

One-hundred twenty-six people looked in a couple of days ago to see what's happening here. I finally put together the ms Wrestling Hanshan and sent it off to a contest, but, today, Monday, I feel so out of it that not a creative synapse is firing within the old cranium. Nada, even in a clean well-lighted room like this Starbucks I'm sitting in. Increasingly, I experience these hazy mornings, lethargic and uncreative. I checked four movies out of the library this morning. Maybe I need to go home and watch one. An odd movie is A Ghost Story.

I've also again taken out of the library the book American Poetry: The Twentieth Century, Volume One. Bios for each poet in the volume are included. You'd be surprised how many of their lives end in suicide. Also the range of poetry is surprising. Many wrote in styles I just do not understand. Last month's Poetry Magazine out of Chicago was dedicated to Native Americans who write poetry. Most of their poems were totally beyond my experience to understand. Don't get it, not at all. Why write poetry that most will not understand unless they take a college course? Even Bill Williams understood. Of course, he then wrote many poems that are hard to understand, even for a intelligent gent like myself. 

I wanted to write a poem

that you would understand.

For what good is it to me

if you can’t understand it?

                        — W.C. Williams

Exactly.

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.

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.

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.

BEATNICK BOOMER IS PLEASED, IF SOMEWHAT UNCOMFORTABLE

Staring through a rain streaked Starbucks' window that via the magic of Mac's Photo Booth app you can stare through also. Just finished rewriting Chapter 23 of Ghoul World. Earlier today in the morning got an X-ray of my ribs on the right side. Last week I lunged over the wooden arm of a chair to retrieve something I'd dropped and heard a crunching sound, followed by pain that has been with me for six or seven days. Since I'm on hormone treatments that make my bones likely to be brittle, my synaptic self directed me to talk to Doctor Sugarman about it. Thus the X-ray. 

Talk about old age mental lapses...I was going to relate something about an old age mental lapse in the recent past, and I forgot what it was while I was positioning the cursor to write about it.... Here's another lapse. Yesterday I received a SASE in the mail from a submission of poetry I made to Elysian Fields Quarterly, a baseball magazine. A message on the envelope reported it was not deliverable. Of course it wasn't deliverable. Elysian Fields went out of business in 2009. 

These days I'm experiencing moments of sheer ecstasy that arrive out of nowhere, delivered by my synaptic self for my personal enjoyment. I say, "Keep them coming," hoping those words tickle my synaptic self into delivering the goods. Hey, is this an instance of free will or just the synatic self enjoying itself for the pleasure of my consciousness?

Aha! The sun just came out.

WALKING IN DIAPERS FEELS OKAY

At Starbucks in Portland at 28th and Burnside, I'm dressed for the walk I just finished, and it was a chilly walk. Greater Portland Area is expecting maybe some few drops of snow mixed with rain during the next few days. Found some more interesting restaurants along 28th between Burnside and Sandy Blvd. Found Epif, a vegan restaurant with South American flair that has been advertising on PIFF screens. Tonight, however, I'm going to dine Italian. Saw a place with a vegetarian pasta dish...tomatoes, broccoli, you name it with zita pasta I think. Worked on rewrite of Ghoul World some little bit in early afternoon, and 70 people checked into this blog since yesterday. Thank you who are following my bucket list saga. Movie I'm seeing at PIFF tonight is Life After Life. Sent out a few more things recently to be considered for publication. I really don't do enough of the "sending out". Life is good, even in diapers. It's great walking the streets of a liberal modern city not caring if you poop your pants because it won't show through your diapers.

THE THAW

Mr. Sunlight peeking in.......

Starbucks on 162nd Avenue, Vancouver Washington. A cold day at 3:47pm, but Mr. Sunlight is beginning the thaw that a rainy tomorrow will complete. If not tomorrow, the next day at least when the rain will pour. Speaking of pouring, I'm back on track with rewriting Ghoul World, and I see ahead after the Ghoul World rewrite several projects that I've mentioned in the past: (1) putting together the chapbook Up Your Ass about the prostate cancer experience [hopefully in the past], (2) putting together the best of my short stories into a book Many Voices One Head for sending to writing contests and (3) gathering a collection of poetry from all the "periods" of my life together for contest entries. And after that (4) I see myself writing some movies and plays. On another hand, getting back to sketching intrigues me. When I'm not doing any of the above, you can find me with mechanical pencil in hand—eraser on the end—working crossword puzzles or Sudoku. Yesterday I watched from a distance a professorial type older gentleman working away at a crossword puzzle with a pen.

ASIDE: Finished Saturday's Sudoku in two tries. The tiny slip ups of concentration can raise hell.

BEATNIK ON HOLD, PURRING

Another rainy day in the Greater Portland Area, i.e. Vancouver, Washington. Monday noon and I'm sitting in an extremely loud and very busy Starbucks on 162nd Avenue in Southeast Vancouver, wishing I wanted to want to get back to work on the umpteenth rewrite of my novel Ghoul World and happily anticipating the February appearance of the 40th Portland International Film Festival. I'm absolutely certain my psyche has been rearranged by my 8 month cancer journey; that and the burden of a lifetime of hoping for financial success of some kind, that is a job as poet in residence or a best selling novel that is turned into a movie. The bucket gets ever closer; the list remains the single wish to find someone other than myself to publish a novel of mine. My state of mind wasn't helped much last night when wife and I were watching the movie Solace. In that movie Anthony Hopkins as a psychic says something like this about cancer, "Eighty percent of the time cancer returns, then it's a bugger to deal with."

Weekly I work the NYTimes crossword [takes all week a little at a time] and the Saturday Sudoku that requires much concentration to do correctly. Took five tries to come out right on Saturday evening. You know? I had great fun writing my scifi movie last year and felt I was better working with dialogue than writing descriptive passages. That may be my next project—another movie script. I think that's enough for this entry. Now what picture ought to accompany it? I know—a photo of self in the loud Starbucks with my Gonzaga Bulldog hat on. Wow! 15-0.

BEANICK BOOMER FINISHES A TASK AND TALKS ABOUT INSANITY

Yesterday I finished the 7th rewrite of The Porn Writer, but the doubts are back, a swarm of squids on the sea floor of my imagination. Today I'm reading at the Black Rock on 164th Avenue, Vancouver. Twelve ounces of soy chai for $3.75. At Starbucks it's $4.39. I found a shiny dime on the floor just now. I'm making the mistake of reading Plimpton's book on Truman Capote: in which various friends, enemies, acquaintances and detractors recall his turbulent career. If you read it you'll conclude that you must be alcoholic or bat shit crazy to be creative. It's a picture of how I tried to behave and talk during my drinking years. I thought craziness equated to genius. At least two women in my past told me that the way I used language in those days was a sign of a mentally unbalanced mind. A psychologist who was leading a weekend group encounter session in the Huckleberry Mountains north of Spokane once told me I had a "quicksilver mind". I was quite proud of that, then he asked me if I was there to learn something. When I said, "Yes," he asked me to shut up and listen to what the others had to say. I kid you not, I fell over on my side and went immediately to sleep. That first session he'd put out bottles of wine to loosen us up. I was quickly very loose. The second time I showed up I'd quit drinking. During a walk down a mountain road, the psychologist told me he hadn't liked me very much that first weekend. He said I was now a very different person. I was, but for all my trying to behave like a creative person [my output is immense], I'm 78 [79 on October 20] and have little financial or public acclaim for my efforts. Sometimes I wish I could grasp even a fraction of the way my mind shot between metaphors and linked them in mad clusters of language when I drank. I can't even come close. 

BEATNIK ENTERS A MOVIE THEATER WITH JAMES CAMERON

Only four days between last entry and this entry. Still waiting for an intelligent agent to seize on one of my novels and sail with it... when next to me on a long bench at the Starbucks in Kelso someone across the bench from me knocks over their coffee cup and a tsunami of coffee heads toward computer to the left of my own—commotion, confusion, lights, camera, action—as someone experiences one of their most embarrassing moments while another feels pure terror...but, as noted earlier, I'm now onto a film script for a scifi movie, having decided it might be more fun, because novel, than writing another novel. Enjoy the use of the word novel in two of its historically connected forms. 

Having usual steep learning curve when attacking a new procedure...script writing. Long ago, in the 60s, I did have a TV script agent-forwarded to the Bob Hope Chrysler Theater. The script was returned for being too short. As I rewrote it, the Chrysler Theater's lights went dark. Missed again, have another drink—my reaction in those days.

In order to proceed with a semblance of professionalism, I Googled "script writing" and came up with far too many suggestions about how to write a script, some of them frankly contradictory. Then I Googled "horror film scripts" and found James Cameron's first draft (May 28, 1985) for Aliens. How better to learn than to read a pro's script, eh? I read it through yesterday afternoon and this morning. I recognized he followed roughly the form most experts recommend, but, at times, as his excitement mounted, he'd slip out of form and go for the gusto, he'd forget about camera directions and write prose. Typos sprinkle the script. Then I noticed a comforting thing about his "scene description" elements. Many of them were cliched emotional directions. I could see the child in James Cameron, getting carried away and appealing to the child in his viewers, in some cases, appealing to the youths who are drawn to his movies. This was comforting to me, to see a great movie maker and how his sometimes immature emotions are laid bare by the script he's writing. Fingers crossed, emotions tingling, I embark on the script writing ocean. And, he's a vegan.

FRED ASTAIRE DANCES TO MY BEATNIK

12:10 pm on a Wednesday. Only 3 days between last posting

dead man

and this one. Sitting at Starbuck's a few blocks from home. The writing has gone well enough for the past couple of mornings. I've been working on the dialogue and exchanges between Charley Manning, his sidekick, Beaunita, and Nathan Dane who writes and makes films about Yetis and Bigfoots. Simultaneously, I'm dealing with old age stuff that impedes good writing, with dizziness, weakness, tiredness (even though I've slept well) and accompanying pinchy bowel stuff that sends me frequently to the can to deliver resounding farts but little else. This condition appears from time to time in its own good time whenever it pleases. I know you don't think you want to know this stuff, but it's the stuff of an old writer dude, still trying for financial reward in his mid-70s. I think of Norman Mailer who was being interviewed as part of a PBS show, and how old he looked. I wondered, at the time, about his ability to continue writing with arthritis plaguing him. I don't recall that what he was working on at that time has ever seen the inside of a printing press, and he's gone now. Finished. His brief time upon the stage strutted away. As if to accent this rumination on Mailer's and my own age, at this very moment, scratchy on Starbuck's speaker system, Fred Astaire is singing Cheek To Cheek to Ginger Rogers. Ah, the coincidence of it all!