Red-Wood Investigation.

Tonight may end up feeling like my only day/night off as we head to downtown for a movie and dinner night. This movie sounded pretty good and I downloaded Woody Allen's music list for the film from iTunes. The Jazz is first rate so the film may take on any form of good or bad it wishes to. I'll focus my attention on the music and Jackman/Johansson make-out scenes while holding my wife's hand.

I can think of worse nights off.

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After:

The film's a good one. There's a great chemistry between Woody and Scarlet that translates well to the scenes. Over time, she's all but doing an impression of Woody Allen. No wonder he sings her praises. Jackman's acting is actually quite good once he sheds the form-fitting neoprene suits and extendable claws. Quite convincing as a noble English aristocrat.

We ate dinner at Silk (formerly Pho Van) down in the Pearl District. It was quite a lovely evening after working so many extra hours. That's just the thing though, to have the chance to work so hard at a job I actually like is one thing; but to work so many and get the few days off that I do makes them all the more wonderful. Even after so many years of work, this revelation continues to surprise me.

Lazy Sunday: Part 1

I think, every one can agree with me on this. Even the writer can enjoy a day for simple reflection and not write. So I'm going to dedicate my Sundays' entries to display a fine picture, piece of artwork, comic of any caliber, a visual art for my Sunday entry. It'll just be something I find appropriate to enjoy and upon which to reflect. We all deserve a moment to relax after all.

Valles Marineris: The Grand Canyon of Mars
Credit: Viking Project, USGS, NASA

Like Tea, but Darker.

I've been a regular, irregular consumer of coffee since I was around 16. It is not a point of pride that I'm sharing this fact, simply that I have had both a lengthy enjoyment in café and in the locales that dispense it. I am hardly the first or last to know the lazy days that come from sitting for hours on end in a coffee shop. However, like many other would-be authors, the writing that comes from observing the surrounding environments, the demeanors of come-and-go people and the curious baristas grinding beans behind the steam plumes makes it staggering to think that some of the great writers in American and European literature ever got to be known having spent any time such places.

I reread my journal, littered with the scrawls of my modest handwriting in India ink, to find that I've been describing a lot but explaining very little.

"A lithe woman in her young thirties, with a stubbled head and tiny grey eyes, carries her infant son in an olive shoulder sling. A matching Army green tank-top and pine-colored long skirt of cotton, exposes the full length of her arms and a curious series of adornments I could imagine seeing in the recent issue of National Geographic. Upon her upper and lower arms, wrists, around her neck and each ankle, are green tattoos of three, concentric thin lines. In fact, in both of her earlobes are aught gauge wooden disks. The heartwood of a sappling, I suspect, as the outter rings are wider than would be expected of a larger tree. She looks up at the menu deciding on her drink of choice. The boy coos against his mother's chest as she orders a short cappuccino to go."

Perhaps it wasn't just coffee that mused the writers in those global cafés. A few pick-me-ups, bottles of vino or several cold ales would likely explain their choice of depressive-reflective writing styles over the brash and violent tendencies that a stimulant like coffee might invoke in any bard. I suspect this as more true than any would admit, but I can see why they went to these places to find writing matterial. As the description from my journal of that young mother shows, getting what you see written on paper is part of the way to writing well. Knowing why it's being written in another part entirely different to learn.

Of course, once they'd written enough and received their bill after a month of daily coffees, lunches, and emptied bottles, leaving to publish their tales made sense. If not to just pay off their debts, but to prevent the social stigma that would come from both a viewed permanancy in their loitering and the potential dismissal from such establishments for destitution. Writers can love cafés all they like for the inspiration, but I belive the good ones soak up only what they need for themselves.

Young Education.

I've been interested in politics of all sorts for as long as I've been able to chat with my grandmother about it. She moved in with my parents and I back home in North Bend around the time that I was 12. Her health was poor after decades of smoking and the recent loss of her husband. Her mind remained sharp as a blade however, and a level of humor and wit to match it made conversations with her some of my most pleasant adolescent memories. We'd talk about her favorite subjects: The Civil War, Jerry Brown, and life in rural Illinois. I would sit on my mother's twin bed that stood just aside of G. (short for Grandma) Dode's powered hospital bed for hours listening and asking questions about places like Appomattox, Sacramento and Saunemin. She was a first-rate storyteller and wrote many of her own childhood memories into short stories hoping they would be passed along for following generations.

Her death in 1994 is one I remember well, though that was a year that saw many deaths in my family. Not the least of which was my own father's with whom I also spoke with regularly. It's because of his and G. Dode's experiences that I feel a sense of seriousness for so young an age. While many of my peers played and gallivanted during high school, I worked and cared for my family at home. Writing then was a moment for me to step away from my responsibilities for a short while and the time I put into writing was never time I considered wasted. Though I regularly saw friends and had the occasional sleep-over (what kid doesn't?) they never saw my handiwork with my journals. My teachers in high school droned on about the need for completing their forms of required academia of which I found little to no interest and so incurred their ire in the form of poor marks in all areas but one: aptitude in reading and writing.

Today I talk and listen to people that remember their moments in secondary schooling and recoil at the memories of homework, substitutes and weekend procrastination. Then I ask them what they think can make it better for students today. Usually they have little to no idea as to a method or plan for making public education better, but they do agree that the schools need more funding, teachers' salaries deserve a high percentage increase, unionizing for assured benefits is a certainty, and mandating required teaching in the arts and physical education to improve not just the students' outlook on the world but teach them to respect their own bodies are essential matters that are sorely lacking.

Do any of us know how to make this become a reality? I can only start to imagine what it will take to say I'm certain it can be so.

One of Five.

Last evening I began my week of work. For most people, I can imagine that the idea of starting five consecutive days of work is reasonably standard. They get up early to beat traffic or workout, see their family and take the public transportation or drive in to start the day. Eight "paid" hours later they return to their homes after making a stop here and there. Sounds all to familiar in suburban districts throughout the United States. My week is quite a contrast.

First of all, I work the night shift. So while Joe America is getting up in the morning, sucking down his coffee and half-listening to the traffic report on the radio, I'm screaming past him doing 55mph in the opposite direction because my bed is calling me. He works the hours of labour: weekday eights. I work the hours of a laborer: weekend twelves. Joe gets the holidays off, no such luck in health care (but the time-and-a-half is only partial payback for missing family on Christmas day.)

All of this is hardly complaining though. I've enjoyed the weekend night works as they keep me from the large number of visitors and weekly workers who go mad on the weekend. I find that I spend less money during the week because of my work hours. My wife and I can enjoy dinners out on the weekdays knowing that the restaurant workers have another shift the next day, but we can stay up as late as we like (well trained to do so with the consistent 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. shifts we both work.

Still the standard three shifts every weekend have given way to recent needs to cover extra shifts due to those out for vacations. No worries. I'll just take the money and run. I just hope to have a full day of rest after this stretch of work to enjoy it.

How Many?

An acquaintance of mine from back home was a much better writer even in his youth than I will ever succeed to be in my senior years. He once told me that he'd only start to publish his stories and essays, "after [he] had written a total quantity more of them than he possessed in years of age." At the time he told me this we were in our mid-twenties. I thought it was a sensible plan then and still do today having not currently met that goal. I looked at this logic as an avenue toward letting a publisher read more than one project at a time while letting a few others review more projects for style and editing. All the while, he or I would know there were still others available as back-ups. Even then, at 24-ish, at least one of those manuscripts had to have been publishable in some reputable literary magazine, public journal or in a book of collected essays for the region or state. He's a year younger than I am and has untold numbers of written material... all of which are in storage at home.

Now at 31, he has never sought out a publisher. He's written about home and little else. He's a brilliant man, writes in a style I've thought only the great writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries had, and he's with a wonderful family who love him; and no one will get to read his material until HE says they can. In this modern age of computer publishing, blogs like this amateur one and many more professional sites, Robin's stalwart nature is part throwback to the purist independent and part stubborn dissident to the majority.

I can see his point. I was told by my professors, writing cohorts and family members that writing and learning are best honed through a balance of practicing, dedication, inspiration and the possessing the ability to share, in candor, an awareness of both yourself and the matters around you. It's arguable perhaps that to Robin, disclosure of any such personal revelations for far less than they are worth can cheapen them. For if all are capable of reading your works freely and at their leisure, wouldn't that devalue your writings? In many ways, I think this is true; but it is also the great step toward repression of the written word.

Giving the blog-world a chance, I think of this as little different than writing in my journal (which I still keep.) However, since I keep an open journal (something everyone is welcome to read.) I lack the reservations that I suspect run deeply in Robin when it comes to his writing: my ideas are free for use and expansion. Are my words cheapened simply by sharing them freely on the Internet versus writing them on paper? I feel they are equivalent and pertinent to both our audiences and us. So long as we write, we are valued. Robin's wait may take another decade or so, but his character in taking on that wait will always, in my opinion, make him the humbler writer.

Rated ARRRRR!

Getting used to writing again is a hard thing for me. There was a time in my past when I did little else but write a short story or anecdote nearly every other day. That was when I did nothing else but write, work and sleep. There was little to no school involved, no charity work, and certainly no one of "dominating" interest in my life. Of course, I was also 15 years old and living with my mother while we cared for my aged and sickly father and grandmother, so the extent of my woes by all rights should have been limited to acne and lockerroom antics. Certainly, this wasn't the case.

Thinking back on those days reminds me that even when things are both less numerous and more difficult, the many little things that bother me today receive so much more appreciation in how easy they are to overcome.

Last evening my wife and I took in the movies: Pirates of the Caribbean 2. I thought of how simple a thing it is to go to a movie with her. How these last two years together have been hardly any work at all. I don't mean to say that marriage is a simple commitment, meet the girl, fall in love, run to the altar, I do, you do, rings, a kiss, and you're off. No, I mean that when you have one great matter that's so easy to focus on, everything else seems trivial in it's burden. My bills, five day work week (12 hours a day mind you), medical and exercise routines, all of that receives more attention to details when you don't have to worry so much on the certainty that comes from things like real love and commitment.

Bah, I'm just going off. Since few will ever read this though, I'll relish the idea that I can get back into writing again. Someone, somewhere might think this is a deep and philosophical point. To those of you that do, I can certainly appreciate what you're going to do with this line of thinking.

It just makes sense to worry less about the bigger things. They tend to be sure bets in the long run anyway.

The Single Step

So, it starts like this does it?

I suppose this way is as good as any to start a blog. Show a picture of myself in my favorite setting and let others wonder what the locale happens to be. Write a brief introduction statement and place expectations to write often (not likely), offer some links to interesting items on the "intraweb" (scant chance) and post pictures of those people that I know or wish to someday meet (isolation's got a warm place in my abdomen you know.)

Anyway, here's to you, me and the start of something new. Smile, kids. You choose the direction for your life, after all. Why not aim it for the highest point?

Photo treasure