SILENT BOOMER AND WIFE BEAT FEET ON MISSISSIPPI STREET

Did absolutely no writing today—except the limping poem below. Had I written, I'd certainly have dispatched Chapter Sixteen of Angie's Choice. I feel the thrill of the hunt as the end draws near for that rewrite with only 6 more chapters to go, but today is my wife's birthday. We've been having fun together, swapping spit and partying on Mississippi Street. We went to the Mississippi Street Fair and found another vegan place to eat, the Homegrown Smoker Food Cart at 4233 N. Mississippi Street. 
 
She munched down 
on a Macnocheeto Burrito 
while I chomped on
a Tempeh Rib Sammich very neeto.
Great sauce and greens,
that rhyme with yum,
and a side of BBQ beans
so good for the tumtum. 

The sea of people in the video was awesome. Mississippi Street slopes down toward downtown Portland. At first that river of people was a mirage. I didn't realize it was a river of people, then I got it, and my wife and I swam from one end to the other. A good two hour walk in the afternoon sunshine.

Back to the task on Monday. Humanists of Greater Portland tomorrow. 

SILENT BOOMER CAUGHT RACING ALONG

Yesterday I shot through the rewrite of Chapter Fifteen in a couple of hours. That pace, I'll be done with Angie's Choice next week—a goal achieved! Today my attention wanders among the words in my head, waiting for them to make a combination that will explain to me who I am today and what I'm supposed to be doing as a 75 year old man at ten-thirty am on a Thursday in July morning, living in America in the early 21st Century of the Year of Our Atheism, CE. 

Me, in the time of writing this....

In brief... should I go walk beside the Columbia River and dream away my remaining hours or should I sit my ass down before a computer screen and peck away at the keyboard until my little fingers burn with arthritic pain?  

Jung said the first half of a man's life should be filled with DOING—establishing a career, making a living, supporting self and a family, all those time-consuming, attention-diverting tasks. (Women can make their own lists.) The second half is to be used for THINKING—philosophy and wisdom. I got it backward. I was a flop in the roles of husband, father, bread winner, son, responsible male animal. Writing never became a bread-winning career. I was diverted by poetry, art, movies, novels, alcohol and my lovely pain. I did all my philosophical suffering early. I frittered away my youth, eating cake and drinking life—both it's frothy top and its seedy dregs. A life of feeling, of dreaming, of thinking.

To this day, almost daily, I write whichever words in my thoughts yell the loudest to be let out (like now), but I do know that some of the most awakened moments in my life arrive when insistent words jar me from a dream and drive me to set them down fast as possible before they escape back into unconsciousness, or when words come alive with their own intelligence as I wrestle with them over the shape of human reality and my fingers are forced to fly over the keyboard to fill the emptiness of a blank screen to get reality down before it disappears back into the silence that is NOW. Hum....

Guess this old ape will keep pecking away, see what's next. These days, love fills up a lot of time. How long it took for that sweet flower to blossom in my stony philosopher's heart. How much failure it took to learn how to nourish it!

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!

KENNETH HOPKINS...A GOOD WAY TO LEARN TO WRITE

Rewriting on Angie's Choice continues, and my wife has begun to read the yellowing, typewritten pages of a novel I wrote in 1965 while I was a candidate for a Masters in English at Southern Illinois University. She tells me without a trace of irony that she likes The Man In the Mirror.

Kenneth Hopkins and anonymous lady

British writer, Kenneth Hopkins, created the excellent opportunity to write that novel. He'd been a humor writer for Punch after WWII until a round of economizing cost him his position. He decided he had enough money to last two years and, with his wife's agreement, he took that time to write and sell a mystery. 

Hopkins was the first visiting writer I ever encountered at a university. SIU brought Hopkins over to teach one section in creative writing. First day of class, Hopkins announced there'd be only two grades in his course—A or F. If you completed a long project—poetry ms, novel or play—you earned an A. If you didn't complete a long project, you got the F. He never held another class but said he'd be available in his office if we gave him a call first. I sat my ass down and typed an 11 chapter novel in 11 weeks to earn my A. (The boundless energy of youth, eh?) Mr. Hopkins liked the novel so well he took it too England to show his editors. They said, "Have Mr. Thomas write a couple more novels, and he'll be able to rewrite and sell this." The story about what came between me and those "couple more novels" would fill a biographical chapter. Or two.

SNAKES IN THE GRASS BITE THE SILENT BOOMER

No writing today. Independence Day, 2013. Instead, my wife and I went hiking along the Clackamas River in the Mount Hood National Forest. It's been a rough 4 weeks of not getting much writing done what with cold, ennui and depleted energy supplies, and various psychological snakes-in-the-grass like we encountered on our hike today, but tomorrow have plans to do more rewriting on Angie's Choice in the morning. My wife has a 4 day weekend so we'll be doing a few more fun things together also. Hope to take in a movie at Fox Tower or Living Room Theater and eat at the Vegan Red and Black Cafe again.

ADDENDUM TO JULY 1: BEAT BOOMER BUMBLING ALONG

Eventually, in the cool of Black Rock Coffee, after a slow 75 minute walk along the Columbia, my spirits did revive today, and I began the rewrite of Chapter Thirteen of Angie's Choice. What I mistook for ennui was diminished energy due to the cold. It's difficult to distinguish a physical from a psychological condition since both are the same sensation. A feeling is no more than a comfortable to uncomfortable physiological excitation as we have learned to label it by our brains' language functions.

More importantly, I came upon this pair of osprey by the Columbia. (I carry my camera on my belt now at all times.) Osprey mate for life and go South in the winter and often return to the same nest year after year. Years ago I wrote a haiku based on that information:

the osprey couple—
busily tidying up
their summer timeshare

PS: This pair's timeshare is not visible in the photo. Years ago when I wrote the haiku, the female was on her nest, and the male was nearby, picking out suitable fish for supper.

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!