Mighty Beasts of Color

Once, upon a time just to the left of the normal flow of time, there was a 48 minute span that sort of fell out. Now there really can't be time without something going on while it's ticking by so all of a sudden, for 45 minutes exactly, there came into existence a world of many hues. The first three minutes were taken up by the creation of the world because, after all, it takes at least that long.
Now the main part of time saw this happenning off to the left and thought to itself, "That's a very pretty world of color, but as long as it's going to be over there playing around there ought to be some beasts or something." So Time lent to Partial Time some creatures that up until now had seemed a bit too rediculous but for this world were quite apropriate. Their stories have become the talk of the Time Stream.

The First Seven Minutes

Gremur woke up and immediately thought, "If I were a Green Lemur, which I am, and this were the first minute of my waking life, which it is, what would be my purpose for this minute?" This was a real stumper for him seeing as how he'd never had to think of anything before but since he was a naturally clever being he quickly thought that if he had someone else to reason this out with then a solution might be reached a little more quickly. Rising up from the bed of leaves he had been sleeping on he went in search of just the right being. He quickly climbed a tree and was busily leaping from limb to limb, simply enjoying his ability to do so, when in the middle of a pretty typical leap he ran directly into some sort of flying something. They became very tangled upon contact and on the way down to the ground, and quickly at that, Gremur wondered why this other creature hadn't watched where it was going.

Upon hitting the ground, which hurt quite a bit, the two creatures broke apart and Gremur looked to see what type of creature it was. As it turns out he didn't even really need to look because the little creature was obviously quite ready to tell him everything about herself and even a few other things Gremur didn't really think he needed to know.

"What business have you, you green ball of fur, flying all around in my way and knocking me down and not saying sorry for it and looking at me all confused like you did nothing wrong? I, being the prettiest blonde pixie around, obviously do not have time to be stopping, much less falling, and did you know you look quite rediculous. I'm hungry do you have anything to eat? Chocolate is good but I like lots of things. My name is Blixie or Pond I can't decide which but i think they're both cute and if you see something shiny let me know because I like shiny things?" She said all of that without even taking a breath which seemed a bit much for such a small set of lungs.

Regardless, Gremur thought she must be right except for that last little bit seemed like a statement but she made it sound like a question and this confused him because he didn't know if he was supposed to answer but he guessed he should since she had stopped talking and was obviously waiting for something.

"Yes?" he said. Or asked. Now she had made him do it too. That confused him more so he decided not to say anything else until he had puzzled it out.

"What?" She asked. "You're not a very smart green thing are you? I guess you might be smarter than most I've seen though since all the other ones have been plants and you don't look like a plant and you talk and move and they don't unless there's wind which only makes them move but not talk. By yes did you mean that you had chocolate because I'm almost out and I need more and the stupid White Dragon stole all of mine and I can't find him so you better give me something to eat before I get upset.

Now Gremur was not sure but by the way she said it he guessed that upset was something that he did not want her to get because she made it sound like something that would harm him in some way. This was actually the first intelligent thought that Gremur had come up with so far, and might have been the smartest thing he would ever come up with. But he didn't know that.

After a little more berating from Blixie because he had called her Pond they decided to go in search of the White Dragon to take the chocolate back because Gremur was starting to want some too since the pixie talked so highly of it. Along the way she told him that she had been asleep when it was stolen and when she woke up all that was left was a note that said...

I an the White Dragon.
I have taken your chocolate.
I am big and you are small so you
might want to just let it go.
If not you can find me destroying a
castle or eating some chocolate if i can't find one.
I'm scary though. Roar.
Please don't tell my girlfriend.
I think she'd make me give it back.
Hey you're kind of pretty.
The chocolate is mine. HA!

Regards,
The Supreme Conquerer of all Things Smaller than Me

It seemed like a strange note to leave someone but Gremur decided that he didn't even know what a note was so maybe it wasn't. They kept on jumping/flying through the forest hoping they were going in the right direction when they came to the edge of a river which stubbornly refusing to move out of their way. After walking along for awhile looking for a place to cross and listening to Pond, who no longer wished to be called Blixie, berate him for not being able to fly Gremur heard a strange noise. It sounded to him like a creature alternating between saying the words "Ow" and "Dang" very loudly and so he thought they should investigate. When they found the source of the noise they saw that it was a Blue Unicorn with his face pressed up against a tree and his horn pointing out the other side. He was trying to pull his horn out but was having little success. Gremur decided to see if he could help.

"Hey blue thing!" yelled Gremur.

"Hey thing yelling at me!" yelled the Blue Unicorn followed quickly by, "Dang!"

"Um, what is your name, I guess, and why is your horn in that tree?"

"Well, Ow, my name is Unirellacorn The Blue and I don't want to tell you why cause you'll make fun of me."

"Nuh Uh," said Pond.

"Fine I'll tell you but you have to help me out," he said. "I came to this river and decided I wanted to cross it so I decided that a tree would make a good bridge. So, I ran at the tree full speed to knock it down but I forgot about my horn. Now I'm stuck, the tree didn't fall, it it hurts real bad." said Unirellacorn.

When the other two got finished laughing, which seemed not very nice to The Blue, they picked themselves up off the ground to helped pull their new stuck friend out of the tree. It took awhile, but it worked. When he was out he spent a good while looking crosseyed at his horn to make sure it was ok. Once he decided it was they all sat around for awhile talking about what would be the best way to cross the river now that trees were out and only one could fly. Unirellacorn thought real hard and all of a sudden had an idea.

"Hey Pond! I could shoot some ice out of my horn and freeze us a bridge across! I bet it would work too!" he said.

"It's Blixie." said the pixie in a sullen sort of voice.

"What? Whatever! I'm gonna try it!"

"Why didn't you try it before you got your horn stuck in a tree?" asked Gremur.

"Because it gives me brain freeze!" said Unirellacorn.

Gremur was starting to realize that when not stuck in trees Uni was a very exciteable fellow. He seemed to yell out everything and every once in awhile spun in a circle when he was thinking real hard. Gremur had decided to call him Uni because the rest of his name was a little rediculous and and Uni didn't seem to be listening ever anyway.

After much concentrating, huffing, and Danging, Uni managed to shoot some ice out of his horn and freeze a path across the river that he and Gremur could walk across, which they did, with Blixie telling them both how useless they were the whole way across. When they got to the other side they walked back into the forrest again and eventually came to a clearing in the middle of which sat a large Pink Gorilla. He sat under a tree and on a sign hanging from that tree that said "Shh, I'm thinking," and was signed "Pryano". The three travelers decided that this gorilla's name must be Pryano and that maybe if they helped him think then he wouldn't have to think so hard. This happenned to be Gremur's idea because it was very similar to one that he had come up with earlier. When they got closer they saw that Pryano was staring at a very large, very round rock.

"What's with the rock?" said Blixie.

"I'm contemplating it's existence," Pryano grumbled grumbly-like.

Blixie found this very funny and fell to the ground laughing hysterically. This didn't seem to be coming to an end any time soon which distracted Pryano enough to look up and notice Uni and Gremur.

"Who are you?" asked Pryano.

"We are Blixie, Gremur, and Uni and we are looking for the White Dragon so that we might have some chocolate." Gremur replied.

"Well I don't associate with groups, I don't like the White Dragon although I think he might eat the green fella, I think Blixie is a dumb name, and this rock isn't going to contemplate itself." said Pryano.

"My name is Pond," said Blixie.

"Whatever," said Pryano.

The three companions talked for a bit and decided that if the Pink Gorilla didn't like the White Dragon then maybe he knew where the White Dragon was. They puzzled how to get him to help them find the White Dragon, eventually deciding that if Uni were to carry the rock in his mouth then Pryano might follow and they could make him show them the way before they gave him his rock back. This was Pond's idea, because she had a bit of a mean streak.

Their ploy worked, and after telling them all how much he disliked moving, looking, searching, and all manner of things that were not contemplating, he agreed to show them the way so that they would give his rock back and leave him alone. They walked for a long time, crossed many rivers which caused many brain frozen dangs, were told nine times that the pixie's name was the opposite of what they had called her, reminded Pryano five times that he could not stop to contemplate something new, and eventually not let Gremur lead because every time he did they only went in a large circle to the left. The right didn't make sense to Gremur. Finally they came to a burned up castle with a note one the side that said:

No White Dragon Or Chocolate Here.
Look Elsewhere.
Seriously.
Roar.

Regards,
The Supreme Conquerer of All Things Smaller than Me

(Who IS NOT Here)

Being confused by this the first three companions were about to go try another castle when Pryano reasoned that someone must have written the not and that only the White Dragon would write a note such as this. No one else, he reasoned, would have a need of such a note. The four of them walked through the gate and found the White Dragon laying on the ground in front of four rather large pieces of chocolate. This sent Blixie, which was her name at the moment, into hysterics seeing as how the night before she had at least five pieces of chocolate. (It was later found out the she had eaten the fifth piece and her hysterics were only useful in that they woke the White Dragon up.)

At first they were all quite suprised, because the White Dragon ended up being a pretty small little thing only about twice the size of Blixie. Being so much smaller that the rest of the animals he looked quite scared, backed himself into a corner, and squeeked out something like "Who are all of you?" Gremur had been working on this because he thought that their group should have an impressive name and so he spoke up first saying "We are the Mighty Beasts of Color and we have come for the Chocolate!". This sent Blixie who was now Pond into another bout of hysterical laughter which caused Gremur to feel a little embarrassed. It also caused Uni to strut proudly and Pryano to mumble that he was not part of anything and never would be if only he could have his pretty rock back. The White Dragon was quite terrified by all the commotion and immediately gave up the chocolate saying that he didn't really want it anyway, he just thought Pond was pretty and he was trying to flirt with her. (The mention of the girlfriend being a ploy to make her think he was unavailable because it had worked for him before.)

After that they all had a party in which Blixie kissed the White Dragon on the cheek (she really liked Gremur) Pryano left carrying his rock, Gremur danced a very impressive little jig, and Unirellacorn the Blue played happy birthday on the trombone that no one knew he had. It was pretty bad because he kept laughing while he tried to do it. Pond even shared her chocolate, but just one piece. She's very partial to her sweets.

(This is a work of fiction. All similarities to real people or events
might be coincidences but are probably not. My favorite was
the Pink Gorilla.)

Merry Christmas!!!

Back to Reality

I'm sure I wierded some people out with my last post or two. Don't worry folks, it's not real, I made it all up. That's the thing about this writing business. Sometimes people think they need to have something to talk about in reality. I say if you can't think of anything real that you want to write a whole page of words about, then fabricate something. Sometimes that's more fun anyway. It's interesting to just let your mind wander with no restrictions and see what comes out. Wierd things come out sometimes. If they have legs then you should let them run free. Woo!!

Just in case anyone was wondering, interested, or confused on the matter, you are not the White Dragon. Chris Casler is, as he so eloquently (and perhaps drunkenly) told Luke the other night. I believe the exact words were "I AM THE WHITE DRAGON, B*#@!." You gotta love that guy. You never know what he'll be. During working hours he is a soon to be pilot for the US Air Force. At night, on the other hand, he could be any other strange and nonsensical thing. The truth of the matter is that no one that I've talked to knows what the white dragon is or why Chris is the only one. It doesn't matter really. I've known him to be many other things over the years, most of which I cannot post here.

So, sadly, the White Dragon is taken. You could be a dragon of another color. The type of creature is probably something that can change too. I think the Pink Panther is taken already, as well as the Blue Ox. Those don't seem to be likely choices anyway.

We are all filled with anticipation, and perhaps a little anxiety, for the return of the self proclaimed White Dragon to the Lone Star. The Hub City is a little less dragonly without him. Perhaps it is a bit less magical too. Although recently the dragon tends to bring a little lady home with him who we all like better than him anyway. She's smarter for sure. Definately less twitchy. She's also secure enough in her humanity to not feel the need to convince people that she is in fact not human, but a mythological creature. She will however build you a rocket if you happen to need one of those. All I've ever seen the dragon build is a paper airplane. Maybe it was out of balsa. Regardless, even he thought it was a pretty pathetic airplane. It's a good thing all he has to do if fly them. Otherwise he may never leave the ground, Dragon or not.

To all the rest of the far flung friends and family fearlessly forging a future elsewhere, we miss you. Come home and see us sometime. Even if you're not a Dragon. To all my readers (I think the grand total is something like 7 or 8 now) thanks for your time. I realize it would be better spent elsewhere. Based on my counter down there at the bottom of the page I'm creeping up on 200 hits. If you take away all the ones that were probably me that means about 37 people have visited the site. Or 4 people have come by that many times. I think that's a prime number so someone is coming by more that the others. Cheers to that guy. You should probably get a job, whoever you are. That's kinda sad. Seriously, this is not a way in which you want to stand out.
Anyway, if you look at my map down there you'll notice that there are 4 red dots. They represent my hits, as the map explains, and that means someone in Lubbock is visiting (that's the dot at the top left in Texas), someone in Austin is visiting, someone in Japan Dot 1 is visiting, and someone in Japan Dot 2 is visiting. Dot 1 is the bottom one. It has a different name I'm sure. Maybe one of th JET folk can post a comment and let me know. If not they will remain Dot 1 and Dot 2. I think those people over there should race to see who can make their Dot bigger the fastest.

This blog was pointless enough I think. Maybe I'll write one later today to make up for it. I warn you though that it might be a fabricated story. You'll never know.

Until Next Time

The Green Lemur

(Way better than any dragon, at least mine exists, with the help of green dye at least)

The Chain

Yesterday Dave woke up at about 3pm. He was late for work, and he knew it, but still got online instead of getting ready. He hated his job, his apartment, and his desktop computer that usually didn't work, but he was too lazy to do anything about it. It was easier not to. The computer worked this time though so he killed about half an hour checking email, trying to figure out what sulfamic acid was (he'd only ever heard of sulfuric before), and watching some stupid videos on Utube. He didn't really like people much either, but still randomly read some blogs every now and then so he'd have something to make fun of later while he was slacking off at work. On this day it was a blog by some guy in Texas about wierd things like books and dreams and other hippy things. Plenty of fodder for the day. He signed off and got ready to go catch the bus into Boston Proper figuring that by the time he got there he'd only be 45 minutes late. "Whatever," he thought. On the way out of his apartment he heard the phone ring, checked the ID, and seeing that it was his boss he ignored it and walked out the door. "Whatever," he thought again.
Gina hung up the phone cussing. Guys like Dave pissed her off to no end. Every day coming in late. Every day having a sorry attitude, forcing everyone to listen to his woe-is-me stories, and making fun of everything unfortunate enough to attract his attention. He was the kind of guy that made managing a restaurant miserable. The good employees usually turn over pretty fast because they're using the job as a stepping stone to something else, but guys like Dave just had no ambition. To them everything was good enough. Gina walked out of the office up to the front doors handing a stack of ones to the bartender and a sleeve of paper cone-cups to the busser on the way. She thought that maybe today she'd fire Dave. She hated doing it, otherwise he'd have been gone a long time ago, but there's only so much benefit of the doubt you can give someone. Passing the host stand and getting an ill-concealed eye roll from the new hostess, Gina fished the key to the front door out of her pocket. She openned the door, said hello to the young couple waiting outside, and handed their little girl a peppermint as they walked past her towards the scowling hostess. "It's gonna be a long day," she mumbled.
Meredith liked peppermints a lot but her parents would never let her have them before lunch so she tried her best to hide it. Her mom saw though and took it away quick. She hated the Italian places. Their food was wierd. The only thing good they had was spagetti but the sauce was wrong. It had big chunks of veggies and stuff like that in it. The guy behind the bar winked at her and she tried to wink back but both her eyes kept closing instead of just one. It made her walk into a wall because she kept them closed too long. That made her mom mad but it really didn't hurt. Dad was on the phone still talking to Grandma. He'd been on since they left the house but only told Mer to hush when she asked to talk. Finally though he let her talk and Grandma said that she was excited to see her over the holidays and that she had already made all the Christmas cookies. She said Grandpa was excited too but he was asleep right now so he couldn't talk. Mer was pretty sure that you couldn't be excited and asleep at the same time but she really didn't know. Maybe you could if you were old. Anyway she had to get off the phone so she said bye and starting coloring her placemat. That was the other thing about this place she didn't like. They only gave you two colors and if you asked for more it took them forever to bring them back. How can you color Santa with only blue and green?
Grandma hung up the phone and went to see who was at the door. It had been ringing for the past few minutes so she guessed it was important. It turned out to be the delivery boy for the grocery store. His name was Ted and for the past year, since Grandpa had his fall, he had been bringing them their groceries once a week. It was really very nice of them. The manager of the store had set it up when he found out that her eyes weren't good enough to be driving anymore and their neighbor had been bringing her to the store. Everyone had been so helpful. Grandpa was getting better though and it wouldn't be long before he could start doing the driving again. The order Ted brought this time was a big one. It was all the stuff they needed for Christmas dinner so he helped her carry it to the kitchen, talking the whole time about the new book he was writing and how he was gonna get famous with it. She hoped he was right. He was a nice boy. She really didn't understand all this fantasy business he always talked about, but he seemed to enjoy it and it was all he talked about. She didn't have much to say on the subject but that seemed ok with him. Some people just need someone to listen. She was good at that. She'd been doing it her whole life. Ted finished bringing in the groceries and said thanks on his way out as she handed him a tip. He always told her not to tip him, but she always did anyway.
Ted hopped into his old truck and gunned the engine for a few minutes after starting it up. The lump of steel was temperamental so he had to start her up just right or she'd putter out after fifteen feet. He needed a new one bad, he knew, but to accomplish that he needed a lot more money than he had. He was praying that the manuscript he just sent to the publisher would go through for once. He had already been rejected ten times but on the last try, after he had send in the first three chapters, he'd gotten a call from them asking to see the whole thing. He was excited. No one had ever called for any reason. They had always done their dirty work with letters before. It made him think that maybe this time he had a chance. He drove home as fast as the could so he could check his answering machine and see if he had any calls from the publisher. He got to the house and ran inside only to see that there were no messages on the machine. He thought maybe it was too early. He'd sent them the manuscript only a month ago. Maybe it took longer than that for someone to get around to reading it. He sat down at the computer to search the web for awhile. After thirty minutes or so he would get around to writing. It always took him awhile to clear his head and get to work. He stumbled across a blog entry on the same service he used that had been written by a guy in Texas. It wasn't great, but he agreed with a lot of the things the guy said about writing. They all say the same things though. Some writers make it and some don't. Sometimes it didn't seem like it mattered whether they were good at it or not. He hoped the guy in Texas would make it. He left a comment on the guy's blog saying as much. He thought that maybe he would start his own blog. Maybe people would read it, maybe not. "Whatever," he thought. Life's too short to worry about what some stranger somewhere else thinks. It would be nice if they thought good things about what you were doing though. Some blogs are just not very interesting though.

One of Many

A place exists, in some form or fashion, where the mind can be at peace. It can be found, not easily, and not quickly, but there is a path and the beginning is somewhere near. There are hints of it in books. There is a part of your mind, somewhere down deep way in the back, that seems to vibrate, or pulse, whenever there is a beginning that we just refuse to see. The little inconcistencies in life, the subtle little moments when everything works, those bright little moments in which there doesn't need to be a meaning are parts of this journey. Sometimes it's like coming in from the cold.
Is it the structure of our lives that allow us to really experience them, or is it the structure of our minds? Sometimes we get the two confused. Sometimes the lines blur. Where would we go if our carefully constructed, strategically placed things just fell apart. They may seem like the things we need, but it is the dependence we place upon them, for the most part, that make them a necessity. Is it possible to create this type of place, this home, someplace in our minds? Is it already there? We did not always have our stuff. We had to go somewhere before we did. If we could take a deep breath, close our eyes, and separate ourselves from the surroundings of the physical world, would it be a thing worth trying?
If you could see a place in your mind's eye, a place that existed nowhere but there, maybe it actually would exist. If you wrote it down it would be words on paper, it would exist. This internet exists even though it is only bits of memory and code and electric signals flashing between machines. It exists. Most of us are here every day and yet somewhere else at the same time. Maybe it's not the number of people experiencing it that makes it real. It's here if we are and even if we are not. There must be many places like this. There is one, I mentioned it earlier, that is in my mind now. At least at this moment it is at the surface. It has been there for years. This is not the first time I have seen it, but it is only one of many. Maybe they are infinite. So many things are.
It can be found only on the cold days. It must be cold. The path starts at the edge of a forest that covers a landscape of hills. It is an old forest, this is a thing you can feel. At the beginning there is a horse, he has no name, but the horse knows the way and so I ride him. He walks a winding path in the dim light, very little gets through the thick canopy even on days that aren't cloudy. On these days it always is. There are drifts of snow everywhere, but it doesn't cover the ground. Thr branches catch most of it. It is so quiet here. I hear my breathing and his. I hear the muffled thump of his feet on a carpet of fallen leaves, but there is nothing else to hear. It seems right that way. Hours could go by as he walks around and over hills. Maybe it's only minutes. It doesn't matter. There's no rush. After some amount of time passes, or maybe it doesn't, the place we are headed comes into view. My horse steps out of the forrest and climbs to the top of the hill. This takes longer. The trees caught no snow here so it is a foot deep in places, but he takes his time and we get there. Looking down on the valley we see that there are only a handful of trees. They were not cleared, they just did not grow here. This is not their place. The valley is as long as the bend of the river and as wide as it needs to be. The forrest surrounds it. No one else comes here. Only the horse knows the way, I can never remember it, but the horse only brings me.
Off on the far side of the valley I can see a cabin. The lights are one. I can see smoke coming out of the chimneys on either side of it. It's not a huge place. It is the right size though. I haven't been there yet. It is mine, I know that, but this is as far as I've come. That's ok too. I already know what's there anyway. There's a stable out back for the horse, for when he's not coming to show me the way. There's an old leather chair in a room full of books. There's a fire going. It's not time yet though. I turn back, just like I always do, because now is not the time. It will be home, but it's not home yet. There's a lady that carries my home with her and she's not here. She hasn't seen this place yet. Maybe one day I'll bring her and she'll bring home. There's no rush. There never is. Just looking is enough for now. That's the best part about this place. It doesn't need anything, not even me.

On Writing

Today I'll write on a subject that hits as close to home as almost any I can think of. Today I'll talk about writing. I do this often and at length (as I'm sure my readers can tell from my previous posts) and I love to do it, but my true love is the writing of books. It is also a great many other things to me. It is a constant disapointment when the books I try to write turn out to be, in my opinion, very bad. It is a constant itch at the back of my brain where idea after idea shows itself and then retreats back into the depths of the grey mass never to surface again. It is a vision of a career, a lifestyle, that I've never been able to let go of since it occurred to me that not only could I love to read books, but maybe I could write them too. Maybe I could. So far I have not. I have boxes full of rough drafts, ideas, partial manuscripts, and sketches that started off the way I wanted them to and then, inevitable, took on a life of their own and either wandered off staring at shiny things like a lost little puppy or took a nose dive off a cliff like lemmings following all the others. None of them are dead, but most of them are bruised and broken. The one thing that gives me hope that the dream is alive is the writings of successful authors, on writing, that talk of their own struggles to create something new, valid, and worth reading.
One of the main things that they all seem to agree on is that almost none of them ever made it before watching so many of their projects fail that they were on the verge of giving up. Like all artists, for writing is definately an art, they were their own worst critics. They threw manuscripts away, burned them, abandoned them, and sometimes gave up for months or years at a time. But they always came back to it. In the act of writing there is a love-hate relationship that cannot be denied or ignored. The desire to do it comes from a love of the written word, the desire to create something new, something great, and ultimately something that will last. In the process of all of this the writer tends to be dissappointed in his work and in his ability to do anything the way he intended. The constant failure pushes every writer away but it also always brings them back. Always.
So I keep trying. I write things down every day and add them to the box of errant ideas and then start writing more. I start up a blog because it's easier, more forgiving, and for some reason I can write here without hating what I write. Writing a few paragraphs that other people are willing to read is much easier than writing a whole book that someone will be willing to read. The truth is that writing is what I intend to do. It's what I've always intended to do since I realized that it was a possibility. It is a release for me in ways that nothing else ever has been. So, to use a quote from an excellent movie, I keep beating my skull against my desk until something useful comes out. Sometimes something does.
The thing about the box of the bruised and broken is that sometimes they heal themselves. After an undeterminable amount of time goes by they can be pulled out and reshaped into something that works. You can see where the wounds were, you can still see the scars, but often their all the better for them. The truth is that no one likes perfection. No one believes perfection. Even if they did, perfection is not interesting. It is the flaws, the inconcistencies, and the differences between us that make others interesting to hear or read about. This holds true for fictional people too. Perfection may be pretty, but it's boring. We like the characters with the scars and wounds. We like the people that try and fail. We like the bad guys and the good guys not because they're perfect, but because they never are. The bad guys do good things and the good guys do bad things. They're conflicted, confused, and usually only the way they are by chance. Knowing all this, however, does not make them easier to write.
Writing a fictional person is a lot like trying to change a real person. Ultimately what you're writing is some part of youself so that character will do things you don't want them to, things you don't like, or completely the oposite of what you want them to. You'll tell them to do something and they'll smile at you very politely and say "no." Just that. No reasons, no explanations, just "no." So you put them in their box for awhile to give you both time to think about the situation and then when you pull them back out you're both a little bit more willing to compromise. This may sound crazy, and maybe it is a little bit. I don't think I've ever seen or heard of a writer that struck me as normal. The act of creating fictional people and places is essentially the act of dividing up your brain and providing each of those characters a place to live and think. You have to know what they think, how they feel, how they'll respond to different stimuli, and why they're different from each other. They have to be different from each other, as anyone who's ever read a bad book will know.
So this is why I write. I think it is why I always will. The truth is no matter how many times I try to give it up, I always come back to it. Sometimes I find myself doing it without realizing it. It's just a part of who I am. So for all those people who read this (thank you very much, by the way) the books will come someday. Maybe they won't. Who knows. The point is that the effort to create them will always be there. Or it will be here. I don't know where there is yet. I'm looking for it though. I'll let you know if I find it. I hear it's a cool place.

Travels with Charlie

Just when you were tired of reading about books here's a post about just one. Arguably it's one of the best, by one of the best authors, and I forgot to even mention it. I even did my high school Senior Thesis over this book (I got an A by the way) and I forgot to mention it. Before that I read it at Philmont while trekking through the mountains of New Mexico over a two week period. It was a book for which we had to buy a cheap copy for us kids because we weren't allowed to use the family copy. This may be the best travel book there is. It may not, but I've yet to read one that better instilled in the reader a desire to load up the dog in the truck and just head out for a few months. Every bit of it is enthralling.
From the onset it's easy to see that Steinbeck takes as much care in the preparation of his trips as he must have writing his books. There's the part about how he designed his own truck for the trip, the catalogue of all the things he took with him (the weight of which ended up causing him to need to replace his tires mid trip), and how the truck was almost lost in a freak storm before ever leaving his garage. For all those interested this truck is apparently located in a museum in Salinas, CA which is dedicated solely to the great author. Rocinante was her name after the horse created by another great author. Cheers to those who know who that author was.
So Steinbeck set out with Charlie, his poodle, and Rocinante. They did a tour of the country in which he related his meetings with people old and young, nice and mean, intelligent and ignorant, and everything in between. The man made coffee with eggshells and whites to "polish" it in some way. I've yet to be brave enough to try it but it sounds good the way he describes it. He ate corned beef hash from a can, and fresh fish he caught himself crusted with bacon. He gave rides to hitchhikers, witnessed racism, visited the Salinas valley of his childhood for what I've read was the last time in his life, and witnessed his wife's lapse into a southern drawl when surrounded by other southerners (she apparently didn't have one when they were at home in the north). He watched Charlie try to protect him from a bear, which is what every good dog should do. The interesting part of that was that he knew Charlie had never seen a bear before.
I could go on, but the short of it is that this book should be at the top of everyone's to read list. At least if you haven't read it yet then it should. It's one of those books that you go back and read again every now and then just to remind yourself of all those little details you forgot. It also sold more copies than any of his other books. That alone should be an indicator of how good of a read it is. If anyone has any other books they'd like reviewed let me know. If i haven't read it then I will. Otherwise I'll just review one of my own in a week or so. What will it be? You'll just have to wait and see.

On Books

I'm sure you've all (and by all I mean the 4 people who read this blog) noticed the list of books and authors I've got posted on my page. It's a little short right now but only because all of my books are in boxes right now and I can't remember the titles and authors of all the ones I love. There are hundreds. I would consider them my prized possessions. Right now they are packed into 15ish boxes and sitting on the floor of our new duplex. I think I've only read a little over half of them. By themselves they took about two days for me to pack only because, as addicted as I am, I felt the need to go through them one by one, read the jacket or the back, mark them as mine with my little stamper (this is the only deformation of books that I can handle without freaking out), remember all the one's I've read and still love, get excited about all the ones I haven't read yet, and wonder once again if my reading is ever going to catch up with my collecting habits. Secretly I hope I never catch up. You could say I have a problem.
I still remember when I first discovered the wonderful world of books. It was a program they started in elementary school called Accelerated Reader that really kicked off my habits. The program was designed create such a love for books as the one I developed but I remember most of the kids hated it. The idea was to assign point values to books based on reading level, length, and other similar factors and then test kids after they read them. A perfect score would give students the full point value with each missed question diminishing the point value. We were required to get a certain amount of points every six weeks (remember six weeks?) and then at the end of every semester they would have point sales where you could use your accumulated points to buy things like posters, candy, more books, and things like that. It was a wonderful system. For me it felt like constantly winning.
This system was what first introduced me to some of the original books and authors that I still love. Laura Ingalls-Wilder and her "Little House" books were wonderful. Maniac McGee. Ann McKaffrey and her dragon books. "Where the Red Fern Grows" and "Summer of the Monkeys" are still two of my all time favorite books. I'll admit that Red Fern still brings tears to my eyes every time I read it. There are so many more and I wish that I could remember them all. Sometimes I walk through the kid's section at the bookstore just to remember some of those old books that, in my opinion, are no less masterpieces for being kid's books than many of the widely recognized adult classics. It was walking through this section the other day that I realized my addiction started much early than I first thought.
First I found Winnie-the-Pooh (which I promptly bought, read, and then bought two more copies to give to my niece and my cousins daughter for Christmas) which is almost profound in its simplicity. If you don't believe that try reading "The Tao of Pooh". Milne is concidered a bhudist master for his stories of Pooh. It's not hard to see why. Then I saw Dr. Seuss and almost bought all of those books. There's another master no less astounding. Then I found the series that I was addicted to when I really started reading on my own. They were the first books I bought with my own money. They were "The Boxcar Children". I still have them. They are in a box waiting for my children. There are many of these in the series but I still believe that for young readers it is still one of the best. I'm itching to buy the rest of them. I grew to higher levels of reading much faster than I could buy and read all of the Boxcar books but one day I will have them all. I intend to read them all. I doubt if my brother realizes it but I also have all of his "Hank the Cowdog" books which I never had time for because of my Boxcar books. For awhile we had a contest to see who could read more faster. I think I'm still ahead.
It didn't take long for me to get to the point where I was reading faster than my allowance allowed, and so I found the library. Here was a wonder. Not only were there lots of them in town but they were full to the brim of thousands of books only a fraction of which I would ever get to read. Not only that but you could take them for free. FREE!!! Then I realized that school librarians, seeing a young person with a fully developed love for books like their own, were easily talked into fudging the rules on how many you could take at a time. Especially when they knew that you would be back in a few days looking for more. They absolutely love that. They also love to talk about their favorites as much as any other book addict. Conversations like this could (and have) gone on for days.
Taking books back is hard though. You find ones you love, and then you have to take them back, watch other people read them and inevitably tear them up. It's a terrible thing to see. So you find ways to get as many as you can for the small amount of money coming to you in those years. For birthdays and holidays all you ask for is books. You find amazing things like used bookstores and library sales where you can get books they don't even carry in stores like barnes and noble anymore. And you can get them cheaper. You can also trade but this is almost as hard as giving them away. Almost. Then some genious invents gift cards. The first time I got a gift card to a book store I realized I had really hit the jackpot. Not only was someone giving you money, but they were giving you money that you couldn't spend on anything other than books. I didn't even have to justify the purchase anymore. You would be amazed at how fast I can spend a bookstore giftcard. I still am everytime.
It took quite a few years, however, to convince people that if they were going to give me something for a birthday or Christmas I REALLY DID only want books or the means to buy them. I have so many I haven't read but I still have a whole list in my head of ones that I want. I'll never have them all. One of the main reasons I miss school is that I had so much time to read. For somewhere close to ten years I was reading six or seven a month, sometimes more. Teachers were constantly telling me to stop reading and pay attention. Everyone around me soon realized that if I was reading something, I did not in any way see or hear the real world. I don't know when that happenned but now when I read my surroundings no longer register. If someone says something to me it can take up to half an hour for me to respond. If I respond at all. It takes my mind that long to realized something happenned outside of the story, that there IS an outside of the story, and that maybe I should try to figure out what is happenning in that outside. I can't help it, but it pisses people off to no end. It usually takes some sort of physical contact to break my trance. The same thing happens when I'm writing, but I do that less. I'm less good at that. By far.
For all those interested, however, I highly recommend this trance type reading. I don't know how it's done but I do know that you feel like you're in the story. Really in it. Your eyes are reading words but they SEE the world you're reading about. All your senses work the same way in this state. You hear, you smell, you taste, and you can feel all the things you're reading. People often wonder why I enjoy the fantasy genre so much. I'm sure you can understand why when this is the way I experience it. I start reading and without realizing it at all 7 hours can pass and so can 300 pages. I remember none of that but I remember everything in the pages. This takes an excellent author however. Only the best can get you this deep into a book. J.K. Rowling is up there in ways that even some of the best aren't. Most authors hit a very specific group of readers with very specific interests. She hit the whole world. Age, race, preferred genres, and pretty much any other wall to most authors didn't stop her. She's just that good and I don't the she even knows how or why. She's not the only one though. She's just the newest that I know of. C.S. Lewis. Tolkein. There are many others and in other genres too. I just don't remember a lot of their names by memory. Every author and book on my list over there, though maybe not of the same caliber, are authors that I enjoy reading and re-reading.
Some of them start their career off strong and then something happens, who knows what, and they lose that thing they had that made them great. Eddings was like this with his newest series. Even his loyal followers are wondering what the hell happenned. With others it seems that either they changed or their readers changed around them. Michael Crichton seems to be this way. I've read almost everything he's written only missing the ones that I can't find and I've always enjoyed them. Some are better than others. Some more political. But all of a sudden the political types are fighting over books that he writes which say, in the very front of them, fiction. Not fact. Whatever. Some people will fight over anything. He's a very entertaining author though. If anyone has old books by John Lange let me know and I'll buy them.
Anyway I could write on this one for hours. I'm sure everyone has already stopped reading it. It's pretty long. Whatever. It entertains me. If anyone wants to talk about books, I'm always up for it. Always.

Like Crabs in a Bucket

It's a sad story. My humble little blog is just barely one day old and already there's doubt that it can be interesting enough to last. It seems that the theory behind this is based on the fact that I'm in Lubbock and therefor my blog is likely to be mostly about Lubbock or the occurances that happen therein. This is probably an accurate assumption. Based on that, we can assume that either the naysayers are correct that there is little of interest going on in Lubbock at any given time or, as one can only hope, there is much of interest going on that few people see. I will admit that it could turn out to be a difficult task to write about Lubbbock in such a way that people will keep coming back to read more. Anyone that spends 24 years anywhere, I daresay, will stop seeing the new and exciting and start to only see that which they expect to see. It seems to be some kind of tunnel vision caused by doing the same things day after day. The idea is to force yourself into new perceptions.
On that note, today I'm going to talk about something that is on everyone's mind this time of year. That's right, Christmas. Many of us spend the whole season wondering what all the madness is about, whether it is right, and whether it is worth the trouble. The eating, drinking, and gift giving is not a new thing even though we Americans seem to take it to a whole new level each year. The truth is that the Romans were doing the very same thing, this same time of year, long before the birth of Christ in a celebration attributed to one of their gods, Saturn. Apparently, in the year 350, Pope Julius I declared that Christs birthday would be celebrated on December 25th so that the Romans would be less likely to revolt against their new religion. They got to keep their gift giving and feasting and all they had to do was call it something different. So the unreasonable waste is nothing new. It was going on long before we started celebrating that which we are ostensibly celebrating this time of year. The general concensus among historians seems to be that the actual birth of Jesus most likely happenned in or around September.
The truth of the whole matter is that the Christmas holidays are not and never have been about one religion. They are about a great many different aspects of different religions from different countries all being melded into one. It happenned long ago. The yule log was a Scandanavian pagan tradition carried out to encourage the sun to come back the next year. The first Christmas Tree was decorated somewhere in Germany in the 1500s. At the time there was apparently a religious leader who thought it was a terrible and blasphemous thing. Young couples originally began kissing under Mistletoe because it was considered a sacred plant and this act was thought to bring about fertility.
Christmas was not a big deal in the United States early on. The disapproval major religions of the time along with the resentment of anything and everything English meant that early settlers did not celbrate Christmas to the extremes that we do today. It was apparently against the law to celebrate the holiday in Boston for a number of years. It was until a few big time novelists wrote books favorably talking about the holiday season that it began its comeback. In 1870 it was declared a federal holiday. There are lots and lots of other facts about Christmas out there. Spouting them off in a big list is easy and quite interesting, but it doesn't really matter.
The point is that over thousands of years we have been celebrating something this time of year. At the very least it has always been a time to see family you haven't seen in awhile, a time try to think about other people instead of yourself, and a time where the things that we do day after day don't seem so important for just a little while. Does it matter that different people believe different things about why it exists? Do we ever, instead of buying lots of things for lots of people who already have plenty, buy things or donate time for all those people who might have nothing this time of year. Or worse, do we ever think of the people who might have no one to be with this time of year. Is it our responsibility to help them? Maybe it's not necessarily a responsibility, but at the very least it's something we should remember to think about.
The whole season seems to have turned into a huge mass of wants that are presented to us at every turns as needs. I don't need a new car, tv, computer, or ipod. I may want these things, but they are not needs. I already have the things I need. I have food to eat, a place to live in that's warm and dry, a job for which I get paid well, a family who loves me and a wife who I love more than I could ever say. I can't claim that I have always thought about or done what I could for others who do not have all these things that I've been blessed with, but I'm trying. It's hard to get out of the habit of thinking about wants as if they were needs, but I'm trying. What I've starting thinking about a lot is that when I was a kid I remember waking up every Christmas and having presents under the tree, family gathered around, and wonderful food to eat. It was a nice feeling. What is not a nice feeling is thinking what it would be like if you were a kid who woke up knowing that kids all over the world were experiencing that while you were experiencing none of it. You wouldn't need it, but you would definately notice the lack of it before you were old enough to understand that. Or what if you were an elderly person who's family all lived far away and you were home alone. You might have old memories to comfort you but you would wish for new ones. What if you had no family. What if you had nothing.
I don't feel guilty for the things I have. I don't feel responsible for other people not having those things. What I do feel is that the act of giving, in it's purest state, is manifested by the gift of something from someone who can afford it to someone who needs it. We should give because we can and because so many can't. Maybe it's time instead of money. Maybe it's a hug instead of a toy. Maybe it's a book to increase someone's knowledge. Maybe it's a homecooked meal or a ride to the nearest bus stop. Maybe that guy asking for gas money to get his family to the nearest town actually needs the money for just that purpose. What people do with the gift is their responsibility. This season should be a reminder to us not to do these things just for a short while, but to do these things as much as we are able. It should remind us that wants are not necessary, needs are things that you cannot get by without, and any kind of help from someone who has to someone who has not is the kind of thing that makes this world a place worth living in.
It's easy to preach. It's easy to have ideals. What's hard is to follow through with them. I think that the realization that I've come to is that life is too short to do things that you don't believe in when you know that you don't believe in them. If we find something that we are passionate about, regardless of what other people may think, that is the thing that we should strive for. No matter what we do there is always going to be someone who doesn't agree. It doesn't make us right and it doesn't make us wrong. We judge each other constantly but that doesn't mean that we are right to do so. No one sees the whole picture. No one knows everything. The only people that we can come close to understanding is ourselves. The real question is whether or not we believe that what we do is right, regardless of the judgment of others and regardless of the concequences. Try to remember that every day that goes by is one that you won't get back. We should try to make them count. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

The Challenge

Recently the frequency of Luke's blogs has started to lag quite a bit between posts. It's quite understandable that the initial excitement of doing something new will create large amounts of fodder for blog posts and that over time that excitement will decrease, bringing about less and less desire to write down what's been going on. The other side of the story, however, is that there are lots of people stateside waiting patiently and checking every day for his next post. To us it's still very exciting to see and hear all these new things. We even check the posts of his fellow English teachers, people who we don't know except for through his and their descriptions, just to get a few little bits that he might have left out. So now we have a situation in which he is writing less and less while his audience keeps hoping for more. This cannot end well. Therefor I have decided to help big brother out because, after all, that is what little brother's are for. The main problem, as I understand it, is a lack of inspiration. Maybe if we're lucky I'll be able to help out with this. It is possible that what is needed is fresh eyes, or a fresh perspective. Grandmother has been telling us a story for many years, as is the case with a great many of her stories, that I think might apply well to this situation. The story goes like this. One day she was in class teaching (which she did for 44 years) and asked her fifth graders to tell her something that they had seen on the way to school that day. As you might expect of fifth graders they apparently they all told her they had seen nothing on the way to school. This seems suprising as you would expect them to have seen, at the very least, the inside of a car or possibly the ground as they stared at their feet while walking. She went on to tell them something along these lines and the she had seen, on her way to work, some skunks or racoons or something like that digging through one of her neighbors' trash cans. It may not be a very exciting story but the point is that even when you're doing the same old thing day after day there's always something new and interesting going on even if you don't see it. The idea is to make the effort to see it. Or maybe just to remember it. So the way I see it is that if I can write a blog about day to day life in my hometown then Luke ought to be able to write one about the foreign country that he's teaching in. So I'll start this challenge to Luke with a story of my own. The whole time that I've been writing this blog (at a coffeehouse in Lubbock, TX) there's been an older fellow who is a reguler here talking to me pretty much constantly about lots of different things and the following has pretty much been the progression. First he told me that he was doing nothing today. Then he told me he watched the movie 8 Below. I think that's the one with Cuba Gooding or his little brother or something. Then he asked me if I knew if there were Aurora in Antartica. I didn't know. Then he told me about a mumified seal in the middle of nowhere in Antartica. Not sure how he knows about that one. The he told me about how the diesel is thick like molasses in Antartica. Apparently they have to heat it before they put it into their trucks. I don't know who "they" are but i feel sorry for them. Then he told me about all the places he had fished on the Snake River up in Wyoming/Idaho. There were lots and lots of them. Just in case you were wondering it was a year or so after the big fire in Yellowstone. He also told me that Yellowstone is about to have to move some of their wolves. They apparently have too many. He also told me that it was the Pinon Pine that needs forest fires for the seeds to sprout. I think he's right about that one. Then he told me that he was never again going to lay tile. I agreed with him that the act of laying tile is not much fun. At that point he was finished with his coffee and so he left. This was the second time I saw him here today and I would bet money that he will be back in the next two or three hours. He does this all day. So that's my story. More to come later. Your turn big brother.

The Onset

So today I decided to take a note from my big brother and start up a blog. He is currently in Japan teaching English and occasionally writes a blog about whats been going on and all that. It's been pretty interesting. I'll attach a link to his blog just as soon as I figure out how to do it. But anyway, this one's not about him, it's about me and everything interesting and exciting about me. For those of you who don't know, this past september I convinced the most beautiful girl in the world (pictures to come) to marry me. I'm still not sure how I did that but there you have it. I'm a married man. After a whirlwind honeymoon of driving to Montana and back we settled down the everyday life of working for a living. She works at Texas Tech University as an advisor for the Texas Success Initiative Program and I'm workin at Collins Tile and Stone writing programs for a machine that cuts granite and marble countertops. Currently we are working on moving out of our current cramped apartment into a much larger duplex with our roommate of the past year Ward. We spent this whole weekend painting the new place. It was exhausting but after a little more touch up work it will be finished and it does look really nice. Then we get to start moving. Then the holidays will be here with all the madness that entails. Then on MLK weekend we're going snowboarding to a little ski resort in New Mexico that most of you have probably not heard of called Sipapu. It's between Mora and Taos and it's about as close to perfect as ski resorts get. It's small. Few people know about it. We grew up going there. Learned how to ski and snowboard there. Took many a Boy Scout Ski Trip there. Lots of good memories. For anyone interested in checking it out their website is www.sipapunm.com. The first picture is of Big Brother Luke mushing dogs at his last job somewhere in the backwoods of Wyoming. The second picture is of me and my wife Mandi on a backpacking trip to the Guadalupe Mountains the summer before we got married. To the right you'll find some helpful links to my brother's blog and a few other blogs of some friends he's made of people doing the same thing as him in Japan. You'll also find a little list of books I've read that I liked. There will be more of those to come, I just didn't have time to post all of them. I think that's about all I've got for now. There'll be more to come soon. Enjoy!!