A to Z Day Five: Everybody Has A Dream

Everybody Has A Dream

A To Z Challenge, Day Four: Depression

Depression isn't the blues.

It isn't glamorous, or dramatic, or artistic.

It isn't disappointment, or being sad.

Depression is a disease, a horrible, grasping thing that changes people, destroys lives, and kills people as dead as Julius Caesar and Ty Cobb.

If you're depressed, get help. Please. Before it's too late.

A To Z Challenge, Day Three: Cancer

Like my favorite podcast host Matthew Berry, I, and This Blog, have always opposed cancer. Among the shocks that flesh is heir to, the big C has never been a big worry for me. Not because it isn't serious, but because I always assumed something else would get me first. (Like the late Mickey Mantle once remarked, if I had known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.)

Cancer is an unusual disease, as such things go- it's not an organ or system failure, like diabetes or MS or heart disease. It's not (well, not entirely, at least not as far as we know) an invasion from outside. It's a cell's own machinery gone haywire, controls broken or missing, normal functions gone crazy. It's a ninja disease, sneaking in and wreaking havoc, and the one sure risk factor we know of is being alive.

Cancer has now touched my family, making me think about it in a way I never have before. (Obviously, I've thought about it before. But i can only think of so many things, so some (koalas, the balance of payments, forechecking) get shoved to the back burner.) It is now real for me, like it has been for so very many others, and I feel an awful kinship now that I did not ask for and would like to give back.


(Boring technical note: as far as I know, I have legally, morally, and ethically posted each and every day (all three of them.) I cannot understand why Blogger seems to think I posted three times on March 30th. I did not. I'll try to obey whatever witchcraft Blogger wishes in the future.)

A To Z Challenge, Day Two: Baseball

"The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and that could be again."
-James Earl Jones as author Terence Mann in the film "Field of Dreams".

A To Z Challenge, Day One: America

(This post is part of the A To Z Challenge 2014.)

I'm going through one of those phases I go through. Suddenly I can't get enough of the Revolutionary War and the Founders, and I'm tearing through books like I'm in college again, even listening to Joanne Freeman's Yale course via ITunes U, burning through Mike Duncan's marvelous podcast Revolutions, and starting through the Gordon Wood books on Audible. This, like any fever, will probably abate in time, and I will become obsessed with something else. 'Twas ever thus.

I'm not someone who is regularly overcome with patriotic feeling. It always seems false and phony and holier than thou to me. (I don't think less of you if you have those feelings. I'm just saying that I don't.) I instinctively distrust whenever a feeling is assumed to be universal, because I don't think anything ever is.
The more I learn and relearn about this period (I'm quite forgetful), I am struck by a simultaneous awe for what occurred against tremendous odds, and a sense of shame at how much was left out, and how very imperfect they all were, and how many Americans still struggle to this day for their "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness".

Baseball historian Bill James, talking about another systemic injustice, the color bar in Major League Baseball, once pointed out that we should look kindly upon the mistakes of the past in the hopes that future generations look kindly upon our own. The more I learn about the world, the more convinced I am that I don't know anything about anything, and everything is more complicated than I thought it was.
I still hate the Yankees, though.

Testing, testing...

*blows dust off of blog*
*coughs*
*taps microphone*
*winces at feedback*

Uh, hello? Is this thing on? Can anyone hear me?

*silence*

Hey everybody!

("Hi, Dr. Nick!")

Guilie Castillo Oriard, whose talent is as wide as her name is long, is participating in an A to Z Challenge over at her blog. The A to Z challenge lives over here and is a network of almost 1700 bloggers who have committed to posting one entry for every day in April except Sundays, each entry thematically linked to a letter of the alphabet. The special part about Giulie (other than her being all that with a side order of clam strips) is that her entries are centering on and around the wonderment that is Matt Potter's 2014 book project as the featured arc for her blogging activities. She will feature contributions from This Blog as well as other, more talented people, all touching on characters, themes and events from our stories in the 2014 books.

For those of you who are terminally unhip and have missed out on "2014", it is a series of 12 volumes, with one story per day, each story written by the same author on the same day each month. (The story on February 11 is written by the same person who wrote the story on January 11, and also March 11, and so forth.) Each story is self contained, but they take place within the same universe. It's a fantastically ambitious project, and is worth your support.

In other news, This Blog is quite tickled by the idea of an A to Z challenge, and is going to try to make a go of it.

Let's promote someone else for a change, eh?

Pursuant to a series of events I won't bore you with, I now hold in my hand a copy of Marian Kent's new book, "Superpowers", which is available by all the usual means. I'm not a poetry person. I don't have the patience to write it, and I usually feel unsatisfied after reading it. But Marian's book is different. It's gorgeous, first of all, with art that makes it look like a comic book. The font she used is utterly perfect. And the poems? God, the poems. She breaks your heart and makes you smile, sometimes both in the same poem. The book is without peer, and I recommend it strongly to anyone who is now currently, or has ever been, alive.

Sunday is For Self Promotion

It has been made clear that I have been somewhat remiss in pointing out that Pure Slush's "2014" project is well underway, it being 2014 and all. Every single day, Sundays and holidays included, there is a new story available for your reading pleasure. The volumes are very reasonably priced, in both electronic and regular flavors. Please visit pureslush.webs.com for details, or search "Pure Slush 2014" on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever it is you obtain your reading materials.

Thinking Of Self Promotion On Thursday

My friend Matt Potter, one of my top ten favorite mammals, continues to crank out the wonderfulness down there on the other side of Spaceship Earth. Available for sale now (and perfect for gift giving) are the first two volumes of the series '2014', a deeply creative idea that involves a set of interlinking stories, one per day, for the entire year. I am deeply honored to say that the 15th of the month will feature stories by none other than yours truly. It should surprise no one that the stories will include a baseball theme. Continuing to be available is 'Obit', and 'Gorge', and 'Slut', which contain works of mine, and many other works as good or better that do not.

Future endeavors from this corner of the dugout include a book of short stories to be published by that jewel of the Berkshires, Marian Kent's ALLCAPS, and not one but two novels that should be finalized and ready for my adoring public before the Earth crashes into the Sun.

In the world that does not, shockingly, involve me, among the other events of your life, you should make yourself stop in over here if you value heartbreaking clarity and beauty in your blog reading.

And last but not least, my brother from another mother Lance, whose blog continues to be able to beat up my blog, is cranking out novel after novel at a pace that defies good sense, and at a level of quality and sharpness that makes me seethe with envy.

And someday, I may actually write again for simple publication here. Who knows?

VV 100WC: More NaNo-ish goodness

{Velvet Verbosity's 100 Word Challenge, who has a slightly better command of the strike zone than Yasiel Puig, offers up "invincible" this week. I reply with another potential NaNo fragment.}















My brother smiled at me as his son tugged on my hand.

"Unca! Come see! Unca! Come see!," the boy kept saying.

"You still with her?," he said, his voice dripping with condescension.

I pictured Em, the red flush coating her cheeks as tears made tiny pale tracks down her face. We had a screaming match before I left, and I wasn't positive I was welcome back.

"Yes," I said.

He looked down at me, as I leaned to one side, his judgment clear, his pride in his perfect family and beautiful house invincible and pure.

"I see," he said.

TWC 100: Another NaNo Fragment

[Those triple threats over at the Trifecta Writing Challenge pose challenge number 100 this week, using the third definition of the word "phantom". This is yet another potential fragment of a novel I may or may not write during November, which is almost certainly going to be held after October.]











Em looked at me, her body rigid with anger. She was arguing with a phantom, a version of me that I couldn't recognize. She thought she knew what I felt. I wasn't sure if she did. I wasn't sure if I did.

"You're just jealous," she spat. Her hands were moving in sharp, controlled movements, like she was working a heavy bag.

"I told you, that's not it," I said.

"I told you the rules," she said. "I told you the rules when we met. This is the way I am. I'm wired this way. I can't be any other way. I can't be the way you want me to be."

"I love you, Em," I said.

"You don't," she said. Her lip curled, and her brow furrowed with effort as she tried to fasten her bra behind her back. "You like me. You like my body. You like being with me. But you don't love me. This is part of me. This is who I am. If you loved me, you would know that."

"I do know that, Em."

"You don't. You don't, or you wouldn't have even said that. You wouldn't ask me the question, because you'd know what the answer would be." She took her dress off its hanger, arranging the green and tan fabric on her arms.

"Em, I just want...,"

"You want what? A picket fence? Two dogs? A daughter and a son? PTA meetings? A fucking minivan?"

I didn't say anything. I half knew this was coming, but that didn't make it any easier to hear. Em lowered the dress over herself, pulling and tugging until the fabric fell the way she wanted. She slipped her bare feet into tan heels, stamping once on each foot, making the dress shimmer.

"I have to go," Em said, turning to leave the bedroom.

"I love you," I said.

All I got in reply was the door slamming shut.

Once More, With Feeling

"Yesterday it was my birthday-

I've hung one more year on the line- 

I should be depressed-

My life's a mess-

But I'm having a good time." 

-Paul Simon 

TWC: NaNo Fragment

[ My three piece and a biscuit ordering friends at the Trifecta Writing Challenge give us a page (the 99th) from the OED, and offer us 99 words to wrap around one of the words thereupon, in honor of the 99th TWC. The following is something that may or may not be a fragment from the novel I may or may not write during National Novel Writing Month, which is absolutely positively happening in November. ]










"A baby?," I said. I could not disguise the disbelief in my voice.

"What?," Em said. She sounded hurt. I winced.

"I don't need to tell you how many ways that's a bad idea," I said.

"I know," she said. I could see the pout on her face, even in the darkness.

"But you want a baby?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"You need me to explain?"

"No."

I turned over. Her skin glowed slightly, the light from a power strip on the floor making everything look red.

"A baby with me?," I said.

"Of course," she said.

I swallowed.

100 Word Song: "First Time"

[Our friend Leeroy, who fortunately suffered no ill effects from the government shutdown, and his more biological master Lance present us with the uber heavy "Thunderkiss '65" from White Zombie as this week's 100 Word Song. This story is called "First Time"]

Her palms were sweaty, and she hastily smoothed them on the backs of her thighs. The music was all around her, unrelenting and punishing, the bass making her ribcage rattle. His room was a mad landscape of clothes, papers, books, and everywhere pictures of huge, hairy men who looked like monsters. His voice was in her ear suddenly, his hands at her waist as he guided her towards his bed.

"Isn't this great? It's White Zombie!," he said to her as she tried to pick her way across the floor, her shoes finding spots of floor delicately, her stomach fluttering.

100 WS: "Taylor Grey"

[ Leeroy, our metal music man, and his carbon based pal and acclaimed author Lance, offer "Poor Places" by Wilco as this week's 100 Word Song. This piece is called "Taylor Grey" ]



















She sat on the edge of the bed as if it might explode. His eyes opened.

"Hey," he said weakly. His face was a roadmap of cuts and bruises.

"Hey yourself," she said. "How are you feeling?"

"Like someone beat me up," he said. He tried to smile and managed a wince.

"You're an idiot," she said. "You should have ignored them."

"I could not."

"I can handle myself."

"I know."

"So why? Why take them on?"

"I had to."

"You didn't!," she said. She went to grab him, then stopped.

"Some things can't be allowed to stand," he whispered.