Girl Ass Kicker.

Book #2

Outline, done.  Hook, done.  Synopsis, done.  Writing engaged in Chapter 5, already.  This is much easier than book #1.

Agents beware, I’m going to blow up your imagination!

Bridge & Tunnel

Quite A Lady.

It’s a Hard Life…

Exile

This song has been bound to me since childhood.  When my parents were married, this song was popular in Oklahoma and my brother used to sing this back when soda was made in small glass bottles.  My mom would try to get my baby brother Jeffrey to move his shoulders a certain way, but he would just shrug them up and down.  Headed to church on a Wednesday night, this song would play and the three of us, in our bubble, would bond.

Mom, do you remember this?

Rest In Peace my baby brother (Jeffrey Lee Ben 1984-2001)

All Sewn Up

For the first time in years I’m able to fully listen to that Longwave “The Strangest Things” album that pretty much was filed away like my eleven journals; categorized as content from that one time in my life.  It’s an amazing album if you still buy albums, but if you’re of the download ilk then you’re really missing out in the privilege of albums indexing mutual stories.  I’m not knocking one-off downloads at all.  Believe me, I like it a lot better than the cassette single.  During the repeats of the album, I could feel every vibration of the music within my soul and it sawed me to the bone.  Now, I don’t have a need to listen to it on repeat but I know I’ll find it again when I need to feel that I am more than a daily routine.  The second time around for music discovery might bring more clarity than the all-consuming power of the holy spirit of emotional sound; you’re in too thick the first time around. 

I took an ex girlfriend on vacation to California, once, and some song came on the radio that made her excited spirit turn to this infinite sadness that left me helpless.  It’s a strange thing that moment-making happiness can be easier broken by moment-taking sadness in a simple fleeting thought–nostalgic melancholy and her impact.  Here I am feeling sorry for my former self, and she was right about one day I’d understand how it feels that an otherwise typical tune isn’t about someone else. 

In reality, there are few things that cause you to feel what’s inside you but when it does it’s a cannonball to the heart.  This is probably why I really understand the visuals that the hippies used to zone out to during moments of music in dropping acid, but I suppose I was lucky that I’ve never needed a drug to feel the highs and lows within a waking hour. 

I’m thinking that when you’re all sewed up, it’s better than the bite because you’re going to mend and it’s better than the scar because you can still feel it.

Webcomic #7

Writing is wasted on the young.

Plenty of things are going on even if I fail to update my blog.  A co-worker and I were in the elevator and our entire seven-floor ride consisted of connections through social networks.  I knew he DJ’ed through another co-worker’s blog and we poked fun at an update of his that ‘I liked’ before he mentioned reading that (and I’m paraphrasing) people have a hard time blogging in more than 140 characters nowadays.  Wow!  Truth be told, he is absolutely correct, and I fall victim to this. 

I was thinking, just this morning before I ran into him, that I’m not really sure I remember what my penmanship looked like.  Naturally, I wrote out a list and it occurred to me that saying about ‘use it or lose it’ is so true; my penmanship had somehow morphed into some sort of shorthand.  I’ve made it my New Year’s resolution to write a letter once a month so that at the end of the year (and potentially the end of a handwritten era) I could remember how I used to communicate with people.  How exciting.  It’s kind of like learning to write all over again and this time for the novelty of it and not because I have to.  I suppose it’s the same mind set, but of course on a smaller scale, of going back to college in your thirties; harder work but man it feels like you’re actually accomplishing something this time around rather than goofing off. 

That whole adage of ‘youth is wasted on the young’ really stands true except truly, writing is wasted on the young.  I no longer write without outlines and it’s becoming increasingly hard to hear myself think with popular music (yeah, strange I used to just write from stream of consciousness to Jeff Buckley and consider it genius–of course I was probably also writing stoned) playing in the background like I used to. 

You know, it’s all about going back to the basics but this time with more experience and knowledge that you got from doing it all wrong in the first place.  Radiohead – The Bends, come to me so I can write Chapter 4 in Book #2.   Don’t worry, tomorrow is Madonna’s Celebration album (Imma let myself finish but Madonna’s got 36 mo’fo hits on this thing) and that typically puts me in a conquer-the-world mood to write my query letters for book 1.

Alright, time is short and I ain’t that young.