DAMS, DAMN IT

Coming out of my cold at 15 days time, still coughing, however, from time to time. Three lüshis yesterday and four lüshis today. They must have been stuck behind the damn of phlegm in my throat, waiting for the strength to push their way out. That's all the news I've got today. Thank you to those still following this ancient beatnik from the Silent Generation. These days, I feel my not so silent observations come from a unique viewpoint in time, so listen up, everybody. Laugh here if you must or want to. I'm so glad I discovered Hanshan [Cold Mountain] 25 years ago during a summer of great internal freedom.

THE QUERULOUS PROCESS OF QUERY LETTERS

Outside, it's a beautiful sunny autumnal day. I'm wearing a brand new pink shirt, celebrating Pink Out for Planned Parenthood day, and currently sitting at the Cascade Park Library where I just finished rewriting Chapter -29- of Ghoul World. An extremely long chapter, I took several days to complete it. Today, 143 people visited this blog. It's the biggest number to visit this Beatnik, Silent Generation Boomer's blog about an old writer whose goal is to get someone other than himself to publish one of his novels before he dies. I'm now circulating three rewritten novels to agents while completing the third rewrite of my recently completed science fiction novel. Still to be rewritten is the novel I used as my thesis for a Master's in English (with an emphasis in creative writing). It's called Delinquent Lives. Also, something is stirring in me about an entirely new novel. Who knows? I recently recommitted myself to sending out more query letters to agents. I realized that every time I enter my office, I flinch to see the 4x6 yellow cards upon which I record my queries and their results. Rejection is always a painful thing to experience. Two rejections of queries came my way last week. For the fun of it, I sent one query over the Atlantic last night to a British agent.

BEAT AS EVER, THE BOOMER TAKES A SPILL

You're not going to believe this...or maybe you will. I'd feel horrible about it, except I've read of major authors who fell into a similar ditch. 

Elderly Man Falls Down

 

I was looking over the early pages of Angie's Choice in preparation to sending  another sample chapter or number of pages (as requested) to the agents I was querying when I found a glaring error. I'd combined the first name of one of my major characters and the last name of another male character. On page two of the manuscript no less. If you've been following this blog, you know that I've been sending out these Angie's Choice samples for several months now. Oh, no!

My hope is that I made the error relatively recently. I always find something to change every time I make a new submission. I'm hoping that I only recently momentarily confused the two characters. I hope that's the case. Otherwise, my error, spelled a-s-s, has been hanging out there for a very long time. I'm chalking this kind of error up to the brain fart of a old man from the Silent Generation. My wife who reads voraciously tells me she catches such errors in books all the time. I don't think she was lying to make me feel better.

PS: the internet photo is titled exactly as I entered it.

TOM BROKAW, THE BOOMER TURNED SILENT

       The piece on Brokaw's identity crisis is still in the air. Last night I did not sleep and my intention to polish off the first roughly  completed article seems in peril today. It's hard to focus with two hours of sleep fogging the pre-frontal cortex behind my eyeballs. In the following two paragraphs, I introduce my half-brother who was a full on Boomer as was Tom Brokaw...almost.

Tom Brokaw's tight Boomer smile

"Brokaw’s grinning demeanor, for certain, reminds me of my pot smoking, long haired, Boomer half-brother who was born in 1948 when I was eleven. He died at age 36 of accumulating drug complications created by his mixing Black Beauties with all the medications he took to fight the pain and symptoms of the rheumatoid arthritis that was slowly crippling him. At age 19, he underwent a hip replacement. His philosophical answer to all that came his way with pain, illness and “the times” was, “fuck it,” delivered with a tight smile very much like Tom Brokaw’s public smile. My brother, of course, held most of the views of his generation, but he was not likely to be demonstrative. I went on the protest marches. He did not. The fact that he sold nickel bags and a little powdered cocaine for a time is probably why he kept a lower profile than I did. Brokaw, like my brother and also for business reasons, chose not to reveal his personal political views. 

"Our relationship was not as close as it might have been, but my brother told me that a bit of advice I gave him had helped him as his face was being slammed into the desk top by an interrogating police officer. He says I told him, 'No matter what, they can't take your mind from you.' I don't know who 'they' were when I offered the advice, but my brother said he held that in mind as he was being face-smashed."

A SILENT TRAVELING BETWEEN THE POLES

The following is another paragraph from my essay, "Tom Brokaw's Identity Crisis", about the psychic distance people of the Silent Generation had to travel if they wanted to remain relevant in the Boomer times:

Al Capp from the site FanPix.net

When I summon John Lennon and Jack Kerouac into my imagination, the generational differences that I was attempting to assimilate as a representative Mr. Silent who got on the Boomer bus becomes jarringly obvious. Put Jack Kerouac (born 1922) instead of John Lennon in a public bed with Yoko Ono and imagination grows bizarre. Add in Al Capp’s (born 1909) appearance at John and Yoko's bedside in Room 902 of the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel during the couple’s March 25 through 31, 1969 “love in” and my task of assimilation becomes surreal. Capp’s attack on the couple and his insult to Yoko could just have easily come from the lips of Jack Kerouac or me if I had remained with Wayne’s Conestoga wagons. I have a lot of Al Capp in me. Conflicted impulses to cry about something lost and to laugh with joy about things gained are equally compelling. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZkRdPxQENU&noredirect=1]

THE SILENT BOOMERS AMONG US

In an essay I'm currently working on about those members of the Silent Generation who decided to throw their lot in with the Boomers, I wrote. 

Author as a Silent Boomer

"A “Boomerized” Silent’s reality is the result of our having been torn between the generations that came before and after ours, of our being equally drawn to the courage of the Greatest Generation and the vision and science of the Boomers. Divided between allegiances to the Greatest and Boomer generations, we have borrowed from both camps. We know something about reading the Bible and can enjoy the beauty of an old fashioned hymn. We’ve also read On the Origin of Species. We’ve tasted the gritty dirt and limited vision of the Oklahoma dust bowl and heard the ocean spanning song of whales in the silences of deep space. We’ve glimpsed the black hole within the human breast that can make us do awful things and the monstrous black holes of the Cosmos, eating space and time. We have, with interest and curiosity, watched Gone With the Wind, John Wayne’s Sands of Iwo Jima and a few foreign films like 400 Blows, reading along with subtitles. Later, we found Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Federico Fellini’s 8 ½ and Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. Most recently, with perhaps a touch of skepticism and with our hearing aides tuned to theater settings, we have watched Hunger Games and the Twilight series and most recently, with great interest, Drive.

"Looking at those movie samples alone, the distances between a Silent’s points of reference become evident. They’re quite a stretch, aren’t they? Spanning those distances has been an exciting cultural journey in both space and time. Will all you Silent Boomers out there who have successfully bridged the gap within yourselves please stand up and give yourself a hand! We should be quite joyful."

What's This Blog All About?

I'm 75 and hoping to address a community of intelligent seniors who enjoy lively writing. I'm one of that Generation called the Silent Generation who found himself aboard the Boomer's VW bus, heading in directions that would surprise me as much as they altered me.

Reminiscences about old times are wonderful, but they oughtn't to be all seniors have to talk about. A long time ago, when I was a young man, hitting up the bars, I realized that the alcoholics on the neighboring stools, the ones I saw every day in the neighborhood taverns I frequented, were stuck in the past. They carried around a set of stories that they used, I realized, to make themselves feel bad and to keep themselves trapped in their cycles of drink and despair. I'd hear a familiar story appear on the lips of Sam (for example) and I'd tell myself, "Well, Sam's not going to return to work this afternoon." I was frequently right, and I swore that would never happen to me. However, if one spends enough time in the company of heavy drinkers, he'll soon find he's drinking pretty heavily himself...won't he? Ha! Ha! There's the rub, as Shakespeare would say.

Alcoholics aren't the only ones who tell themselves stories that hold them down and create despair. Everyone falls into such traps at times. But, there's a pile of difference between using one's past from which to create solid ideas about reality and using tragic memories to beat oneself up with.

Most of what I put in this blog will aim toward the enlightenment I've experienced rather than dwelling on the despair that forced me to change, but there will be a few hellish moments! Sex might even creep into the discussion, and that's one scary subject. Many seniors might not be comfortable aboard this craft (analogy intended) where all sorts of ideas are likely to appear...thoughts and experiences that might make the faint of heart faint dead away.

Feel free to sit down, pull off your socks or support hose, make yourself comfortable. I'll be checking in every day or so to see who's showed up and add another piece of lively writing for your entertainment and enlightenment...

 ...I hope.

Might even point you to where a couple of my books are stocked on the internet and to books I enjoy reading and to books I'm working on.