BEATNIKING THROUGH LIFE WHILE RIDING THE MAX

FB tells me I haven't written in this writer's blog lately, but they always tell me that one or two days after my most recent entry. I put in a good day's work this afternoon on Memoir Of A Nobody. Spent several hours on no more than three paragraphs, writing and rewriting, fine tuning, trying to get the past emotions down just right.

My current emotions are running hot then cold the past two days. Yesterday, I took the Max into Portland, felt recognition of some sort for all my life's work was very near. Everything I've written has been brilliant... then this morning I awake filled with doubt and self-loathing, remembering all the people I've alienated, imagining how no one will come to my funeral. Of course not. I'm not going to have a funeral, no showing, nothing. Wife and I have both decided on how the end of our lives will be without fanfare—drop dead and off to the crematory. 

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.

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.

SWEATING MY WAY TO ANOTHER PORTLAND ADVENTURE

Tonight, my Tuesday night 6:30 - 9:30 screenwriting course begins at NW Film Center in downtown Portland. Teacher will be Randall Jahnson. If you've been following my bucket list quest, you'll recall that I took time off from rewriting novels to write a science fiction film two summers [or so?] back. I enjoyed the process and thought I might be able to do that in my declining memory years. One-hundred pages of film script is easier to keep in mind than a 500 page novel. Two of my novels are open to turning into film scripts. 

For the past week, I've been full of fear about the course, telling myself I have nothing more to say, telling myself I'll be out of place among young writers, imagining they'll laugh at this 79 year old codger trying to turn out film scripts. I questioned myself violently, doubting everything about myself and hit myself over the noggin with my financially unsuccessful writing career. I experienced moments of fear that reminded me of the fears I felt when I put the bottle down 40-some years ago, i.e. how will I be funny and pick up girls...I'll be so alone, etcetera. One fear was about the expense of parking in Portland, then I looked into taking the Max line in from PDX but was deterred from that by my fear of standing at 9:30 pm in downtown Portland waiting for the Max line to show. They run the last two runs to PDX at 9:55 and 10:30. I truly want to learn to take the Max line into Portland, so I'm compromising tonight. I drove in to park expensively in a garage near the school, then I'll look around as I leave the school at 9:30 to see how scary it might feel at the stop I'd need to wait at.