turbine

Two working titles under consideration

1. “By the cool blue light of our television screens”

2. “Drone”

I finished up a zero-draft this evening. Banged out the final two paragraphs:

The man next door, who’s name is Todd, has been over twice to borrow something. Once a measuring cup, which Simmons couldn’t find while Todd stood in the living room and the next time flour.  Got some chick baking me cupcakes. Gonna eat her cakes when I’m done eating her cakes, if you know what I mean. Simmons knew exactly what he meant and forced a laugh. “I hear ya,” he said. It was not that night he first started with the cats. It was not while he sat in his bedroom and listened to the antic sex from next door, nor was it the next morning when the girl slammed Todd’s front door and jogged down the driveway clutching her shoes and some other clothes to her chest. It was not after Todd emerged from his apartment wearing nothing but boxers and a pair of sunglasses and scratched at his chest before lighting a cigarette and standing on the slim front porch as if he owned it and all that surrounded them. It was not after Todd said, Chicks and Simmons forced a nod as if he understood, and it was not after Todd returned the flour nearly empty and left not long after in his shiny silver BMW. Simmons didn’t stat with the cats until the next night, when the silence and absence of his next door neighbor allowed him to think, when he wasn’t able to lose himself in the books, and he wasn’t able to sleep. It was only then that he went out in the late night and patrolled his neighborhood by bike, finding cats and noting the locations of fenced dogs. It was only then when he patrolled the neighborhood and found cats with collars and tags and noted the addresses, and only then that he picked up his first cat and hurled it onto the asphalt. And it was only when the cat tried to crawl away, unable to see, it’s front legs barely working that Simmons picked it up and slammed it again to the concrete, over and over until it stopped moving. And it was only then that he hid his bike and cradled the dead cat in his arms and found the house listed on the cat’s collar. And only then, when someone finally came and opened the door that he sank to his knees and confessed to accidentally hitting the cat with his car, and only then that he cried and laid the cat on the doorstep and begged and begged for their forgiveness. It was only then he could sleep again.

“Do I dream?” He asks his friends, the food, the air around them. “Nah, man. I don’t dream for nothing.”

It’s about war.

Tomorrow I’ll print it, read it through and see where I stand. Then it’s time for the real first draft.

If anyone ever recommends this blog, I want you to promise you’ll affix no other sticker than that sweet, sweet Camaro because it reminds me of my SAT.

The 40

I turn 40 in December. A friend of mine turns 40 next year. As this milestone approaches in our lives, we’ve been IMing back and forth about all the things big and small we’ve been putting off over the years, and the things we never really finished.

I’m really tempted to grow my list to 40 items, but that’s the just internet talking:

• 100 things in 1000 days
• 365 project
• Top 10
• Top 5

I have to remember 40 isn’t the number of items or actions, and it’s not some get-it-done project. Rather, it’s a number of years, and the mark of my life’s second stage. It’s something that makes me want to shift some priorities.

Restore the Volvo - I own a 1964 Volvo station wagon currently languishing in my dad’s garage. It’s probably time I begin doing something about that.

Contemplate my next career move - self explanatory

Publish Boone’s Landing - ongoing

Write a new novel - I have this scene I’ve been thinking about. I imagined a man trying to become (as happened in real life) the world’s fattest person. In the novel he succeeds, but the cameraman sent with the news crew to capture the story is too drugged up on pain killers and antidepressants to understand the cultural significance and horror of what he’s been sent to record and broadcast to millions. It’s just an image that came to me.

Take the family on a vacation to Europe - They’re my favorite people on earth and I’d like to share some experiences with them.

Plant a garden - I keep talking about it, and I think food and cooking are some of the most important things on earth. I’m just not accustomed to nature and its cycles. The second half of a person’s life seems a fine time to change that relationship.

Practice home repair - Or maybe just slow down and start researching projects before I start them.

Move to a new neighborhood - Our house is a little small, but it’s given us some wonderful years and could probably be our home for many more. We don’t really fit in our neighborhood, though.

Attend a Tour de France mountain stage - A dream since I was a kid.

Learn to sail - Again, I think it would be fun to be able to take my family out on a boat and enjoy that experience with them. And I don’t want the boat to make a bunch of noise. We all have enough noises in our lives, don’t we?

Learn a foreign language - I took Spanish in middle school, and had German in high school and college. Dropped into Munich, I could probably get myself a taxi and a hotel and something to eat. This time, I’m thinking French, or maybe Spanish.

Learn to draw again - I used to be really good. Really. It’s a shame I let the talent wane.

(And I should probably learn a computer language)

None of these have to be complete when I’m 40. It’s not a list about completing things. The last thing I need now is more check boxes. Rather, the list is about contemplating and learning. It’s about investigating travel and language and art. It’s about finding out the process involved in rebuilding a brake cylinder, making a door jam plumb, understanding the seasons and the sun. It’s about re-awakening old muscle memories and discovering new ones. It’s about becoming one of those mad runners who dashes along next to a sprinter so slogged from the day’s climb he can barely remember his name. In the end, it’s about getting on with it.

Color, Photos, and One Fuzzy Little Boy in a Field

merlin:

[view larger: 800 x 593 | 6090 x 4515]

Jack Delano - Chopping cotton on rented land near White Plains, Greene County, Ga. (Farm Security Administration, 1941)

A lot of the color photos I’ve seen from before the 1950s strike me as stiff, over-worked, or so experimental as to be a “Hello, World.” They’re cool from a technical standpoint, but they often don’t tell you any more about the subject than a well-produced monochrome image would.

Given the costliness of the film and the complexity of the process, it’s easy to understand why early color photographers had to be choosy about picking the subjects and conditions that their camera could capture well (rather than, as is ideally the case, working the other way around).

But, sometimes, an old color photo brings a distant image to life and produces something kind of special. The best ones make their subjects and their surroundings seem far more real and intimate.

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My Great Aunt Kitty was a sharecropper. She picked cotton, and traveled from Hornersville, Missouri to surrounding fields and farms in Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi. She pulled bolls from the pods and jammed them in a large canvas sack slung on her shoulder. It was best to pick in the early mornings. Partly because of the heat, but partly because they got paid by weight, and dew-soaked cotton weighed more than dry.

My grandmother told us stories of bleeding fingertips at the start of picking season; hard, calloused hands at the end. She ran away at 17 and met a brooding Swede from Nebraska. They married and had three kids. Two boys and a girl. The girl grew up and married a mercurial Jew from Salina. They had me and then my sister. Aunt Kitty stayed put and met a man called Monk. He wore his hair slicked back, and his ears stuck out from his head. Their sister Hattie stayed put, too, and she married a man called John.

Kitty and Monk had some kids. Late in life she gave birth to Steven Earl, who wasn’t quick as the others. Kitty wasn’t picking cotton then. She’d stopped years before and spent her time knitting afghans and tissue cozies. She got some Social Security money and earned a little more here and there doing clerical work and some cleaning. As far as I know Steven Earl never stood in a field and watched his momma work.

When he was young, folks from the city came and tested Stephen Earl. They told my Great Aunt Kitty he could probably live just fine on his own one day if she agreed to send him to the state school in Poplar Bluff. Kitty didn’t want government hands on the boy, so she told them no. Eventually he learned to sign his name and do some simple math. He could add and subtract and figure what people owed him for lawnmower repair and yard work. He once taught me “colored” meant black people.

My grandmother died, and my grandfather died. My Great Aunt Hattie died, and Uncle John died, and Monk died, too. My Great Aunt Kitty and Steven Earl still live in a small, closed house in Hornersville with three dogs under the porch, cats inside, and a sofa that smells of urine. I have no idea what she ever hoped or dreamed.

The Tea Party, Glenn Beck, All Of It: A Word

ohheygreat:

I rarely get political online - and for a few good reasons - but I need to take a moment to say something now. 

It’s understandable why so many are angry about Glenn Beck’s rally. It’s understandable why you’re freaking out about the Tea Party. It’s understandable why you’re standing here pointing back at Bush yelling “Those 8 years! Those! What about those!” 

After all, you say, where were people protesting the spread of big government and unfathomable debt then, right?

To which I say, where were you? And where are you now? 

If you’re so angry at what’s going on, if you’re so frustrated, don’t just keep writing Tumblr posts and blog posts and tweets and semi-anonymous comments. I’ve been reading about it all for years now. Years! Come on, guys. You can decry the ignorance of the Tea Party movement all you want, rail at the racism, and laugh at their illiterate signs and shirts. But you know what? There were thousands upon thousands of people at the rally. Just like there are thousands of people knocking on doors and going out in support of their candidates and getting word out of what they believe in. 

What are you doing?

There was that long moment, during Obama’s election. A huge swell of people had found not only a leader but a reason to come together. No more! Time for change! Are you telling me you can only do it when inspired by someone you perceive to be your leader? Are you telling me you can’t do it on your own, grassroots group by grassroots group? Because if that’s the case, then maybe you should stop rolling your eyes at the Tea Party and start worrying a lot more. They’re not afraid of your scathing blog posts. They’re probably not even reading them.

If you want change, it’s time to start making it. If you want to fight back, you better start. And you better hurry.