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.

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.

THIS OL' BEATNIK POET WILL BE READING...

I'm honored! I've been invited by Poet Laureate of Washington State Tod Marshall to share my poetry at Washougal High School in Southwest Washington this coming Wednesday, the  26th at 7:00pm. Chris Luna, Clark County Poet Laureate, will also be reading and his wife, the accomplished poet Toni Luna. I'll be reading my poem "Legacy" from the anthology  Washington 129  as well as older work and perhaps one or two from the collection of poetry I wrote while dealing with prostate cancer last year. Washington 129 is a collection of poetry all by Washington State poets. Here's a chance to support poetry in Washington State by going to the Sage Hill Press internet site and purchasing a copy from the publisher.

Randall Jahnson

I'm elated and surprised. My second short film script is done and emailed in PDF form to Randall Jahnson. I am enjoying this process all to hell, and I fear I'm learning that I ought to have taken to screenwriting as my first choice in writing. I enjoy it so much and my imagination seems to flower more completely. When I think about my misspent writing life, I realize that when a book became a movie, I always referred to the movie in my head when I talked about the book. Another interesting thing to me has come up because of screenwriting. Except for my science fiction novel, I have a hard time not writing about myself. I'm the main character in much of my poetry and fiction. Not all, but a great deal of it. However, my first two short film scripts are completely imaginary affairs. I'm not in them at all except as writer. I'm floored by this realization, and hope it doesn't turn into depression based on lost opportunities. What the hell! It's fun now, and I'm still alive and writing. Who knows how it'll turn out?

BEATNIK BOOMER REVELS IN SCREENWRITING CLASS

Belmont Theater—home away from home

Ninety people checked in on this blog this morning. Thank you. Rewriting of Ghoul World continues apace, and the screenwriting class was a smashing success as far as my mood went and goes. I particularly enjoyed the time we spent during which each of us shared our favorite movies. I had so many come to mind that I feared I would take up too much time so I rushed through, a freight train of words ending in a blushing gush of "I just love movies". Fears behind me, I'm excited to be in the class. Being the oldest among them, I also realized my youthful classmates might enjoy the fact they are sharing a screenwriting class with an old duffer who'd actually seen "Sands of Iwo Jima", "Fort Apache" and "She Wore A Yellow Ribbon" when they were first run in an old fashioned single picture neighborhood theater. Mine were the Belmont and  Dabel theaters.

Tomorrow I do plan to ride the Max into Portland. When I first entered the NW Film Center last Tuesday, I ran into a youthful very attractive woman and asked her how safe it was to be riding the Max late at night. She said she regularly rode the trains and buses of Portland late at night. Well...I thought to myself...if she can do it, so can I. Our teacher was part of the writing teams that produced "The Doors" and "Mask of Zorro". He's also written scripts for HBO's "Tales from the Crypt". He mentioned the fact that screenwriting can be streaky—you can be "hot" and "not" by turns. In the back of my mind, I have an intention to show him my novel Ghoul World with the object of co-writing a script for it. I began the novel with clear intentions for it to become a movie. I'll wait to see if we hit it off before I make the suggestion.