Why I Haven’t Been Writing and a Thought or Two Comparing Computers and Romance

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you probably have guessed that I stopped writing because I finally decided to respect your time.  Well, that guess is wrong.  Very wrong!

 

The truth is — and if any young children are reading this post, now might be a good time to go back to your Pokemon cards — because the truth is this:  I cannot handle the pain!

 

It is a punishing pain, an inescapable frustration — a crushing frustration– a deep soul crushing frustration…indeed a punishing crushing frustration!  A real pain in the ass.

 

What I mean really is this, writing on a goddamn Dell Studio 1735 laptop computer is a punishing pain.  And I’m sure Microsoft has some blame here, so perhaps I am after the wrong burden.  Either way, I quit my computer and started eating sandwiches instead.

 

Look, I’m not a fool.  I’m a wise guy.  Computer technology is something like romantic love…which is to say it is a lie, a cruel joke played on adolescents and the naive.  In short, computers are not supposed to work.

 

A Dell Studio 1535 laptop computer (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Not unlike romance, however, a working computer is more process than stability.  It is a relative thing, something like being only slightly less frustrated than the unhappy couple cutting each other’s throats down the block.  I know that.  So I came back.

(Here I am, little blog…)

 

But like dealing with a crazy bitch, there comes the time to cut away and now might be time for techno change, time to say goodbye.  You see, unlike romance, a computer should be more than mere folly.  Unlike a romantic lark, my Dell Studio and its Vista soul never has — and never will — offer any happiness!  (There’s no future in that, kids.  None.)  Pah!  It gets worse.  My Dell isn’t even naughty!  Try streaming a video late at night.  Forget it…it is not happening here.

 

This computer — if that’s what this is — should have been toxic waste in a landfill before its lid was ever lifted to the light of day.  It started badly, it is ending worse.  This computer is nothing more than a cruel hoax, nothing less than a betrayed promise…

 

Not me, but my feelings exactly.

But wait…maybe I have gone too far.  There is a positive side effect.  Trying to work on a computer like this puts people — real people — in perspective.  Suddenly I like people.  I like them a lot.  I talk to them now.   And sometimes I even listen to them.

 

But there’s a limit to all of that goodness.  I cannot write and research on the stomach of some slob sitting next to me at the bar.  I can’t do that.  I don’t want to do that.  As a computer, people have limits.  They can go only so far, only offer so much…

 

And so then I am alone again, recklessly starting paragraphs and sentences with conjunctions whenever I am not staring at some green spinning Vista ring on a faded computer screen waiting for something to happen.  Mindless waiting, pointless waiting, and not having much hope any of it it will ever be worth anything.  (Yes, computers indeed are like the women I love.)

 

So that’s where I have been, kids.  I have been AWOL, tripping about in a dark techno perdition that I wouldn’t wish upon anyone…other than, perhaps, the women I love.  (It is that bad.  Really.  But now look…I am back!)

 

And with that…I am done, with this post at least!  And finished it within 30 minutes, approximately the maximum stretch my computer gives before a needed reboot.

 

So, now that I have that off my chest.  Who’s up for reading the dictionary with me?

 

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Learning From a Review of Olive Garden

Marilyn Hagerty

I really dig that restaurant viral restaurant review, the review of the new Olive Garden in Grand Forks, North Dakota, published in the Grand Forks Herald.  Do you know what it is? It is a simple, almost majestic, kind of writing.  It is by far one of the best written reviews I have read in years.  Clear, direct, and trustworthy.

Marilyn Hagerty, the fortunate author getting all of the attention, literally walks you through the front door right to dinner and the service with perfectly clear efficiency.  Olive Garden surely spends millions hoping to market such a complete and welcoming image.  This essay shows that simplicity and honesty can carry the best impressions.

We forget sometimes what a review is supposed to be.  We all have different tastes and expectations, and too often reviews are written as if we all share identical tastes and expectations.  Critics are held in priestly esteem, an oracle that guides the self-initiated along the enlightened path.   But in truth, shouldn’t a strong review convincingly share an experience so you can guide yourself?  Or maybe Marilyn Hagerty’s review is more story than commentary.  I don’t know, I don’t care…I like it.

Looks pretty good now!

The review of the long-awaited of Olive Garden strikes me as a perfect narrative, one that invites you to take in a shared experience without pushing any judgement.  Marilyn Hagerty likes the place, that’s clear, and she tells you why without preaching commentary.  It is brilliant!

For the record, I enjoy the simple marinara they serve.  Plain, sweet, and just like grandma used to make.  It has been years since I ate at Olive Garden, but now I really miss that simple sauce and pasta I thought I would forgo forever.

Good job, Mrs. Hagerty!

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I Started to Write Something, But…

…I cannot write a damn thing.  Obviously.

Hit when the hitting is good, or something like that.  Hit when its hot.  Right now the only thing that’s hitting are ideas, one after another they hit the trail.  (Can ideas hit the trail?)  One will not coalesce with another.  No way, not happening.

But I am forcing myself to write something anyway and you’re reading it.  Push through, write on…kind of like public speaking, you only have a moment to recompose and you cannot go back, it’s best to put your head down and move to your next point.  No looking back.  Keep going, keep doing it…like this.

Less than 12 hours ago I was full of ideas.  My thoughts we sharp and nimble.  This morning, however, I feel about as sharp and nimble thinking as a Republican.  That isn’t good.  Frustrating for me, but you know…I almost feel sorry for Republicans as I think about it.  I mean I literally feel it, feel what it must be like to be so…dumb.  In fact, I almost understand the appeal of the stupid clichés they follow…Ha!…They cannot think bigger!  It is a real experience, a real way of being, and, alas, kind of sad…

But back to me!

What should I write?  (Submit ideas here.)  Golly, I had such brilliant ideas last night.  Wow, I was something!  (You would have been impressed.)  The lesson here, boys and girls, is strike with the idea is hot.  Don’t turn out the lights and tell yourself you’ll be double-sharp in the morning.  No!  Put your ideas down when you have them.

Otherwise you might be writing something like this.  Or worse…empathizing with Republicans.

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If We Still Used Typewriters…

If we still used typewriters — something for which I am not entirely opposed — my desk would be a mess of single sheets containing a sentence or two, maybe a paragraph or two, all cut short in the prime of life as I lost my focus or enthusiasm or both.  Writing stuff is hard work.  That’s why I love my blog.

(Come here, little blog, let me give you a big warm hug…)

When I come here I write until some more pushy idea comes along to interrupt the flow…which, come to think of it, is exactly what was happening earlier today at my desk.

Maybe I think too much while I am at my desk.  I worry about which ex-girlfriend will be most offended.  And let’s not forget elder relatives, you know, aunts, uncles and my mother.  It is difficult to convince people close to you that fiction really exists unless you write about leprechauns or sex with Hollywood starlets, which, ironically, are two of the most truly autobiographical things I can do with pen and paper.

Maybe you can’t worry much about people and reputation to write successfully.

Until then, I need some purpose, some direction…maybe an assignment.   My little brother Gary thinks I should stop goofing around, and goofing around is exactly what I feel like I am doing now.

Don’t despair.

Where Have I Been?

Not me.  Mikhail Bulgakov 

 

Trust me, I have been trying.  I simply haven’t had the umph to write much more than the sort of stuff you are reading right now.  But that’s ok.  I am settling, like an old building, and will rest more firmly on my foundation when this listing finds its end.

 

Until that happens, why don’t I share some trivia?

 

You probably don’t know, for example, that nearly all my posts are written in bed.  Yep.  It is true.  And I am thinking of changing that approach so people can divide my blogging oeuvre (thank you Marieke) — my opus, as you might say — based on the bed and post-bed lacunae.  Or something.

 

I do many things very well in bed — primarily involving naps — and I am not sure accomplishing written work is one of them.

 

And as I list and settle, at least in an epistoler sort of way, I have been reading.  My bedside books keep me company and I am very much impressed by the books I haven’t yet read.  (cf. Photo of books.  The best are hidden from view.)  I want to point out in particular The Master and Margarita, a book I will be returning to in just a moment.

 

The Master and Margarita is — in a word — a gem.  It is clever, engaging, and I suspect woven with a great deal of metatext.   Author Mikhail Bulgakov, apparently a well-known and tolerated Stalin-era Russian novelist, pulls off a thoughtful, surreal kind of satire that is entirely original and accessible.  And I learned today that Mick Jagger is somewhat taken by the book as was one of my humanities professors, George Kliger.  That’s all the endorsement I need.

 

The copy I picked up is a 1967 paperback which smells delightfully of the old musty bookstores you cannot find anymore.  I enjoy thinking that this copy might have been on a rotating book rack in a drugstore somewhere back when drugstores sold books and people bought them there.  I have a nostalgia for that sort of thing, especially those things I never really knew myself.  Fantasy can be more real than reality, which, by the way, might be a theme at play in The Master and Margarita.  I’m not sure…yet.

 

So I better return to my reading.  And, please keep in mind that while I might not be writing much and I expect you suspect me of slacking, nothing could be further from the truth.  I have been working hard, reading a lot, and keeping people happy.  That will hold me for a while and it will have to hold you, too.

 

Read a book.  Do something good for someone.  And make no excuses.  That doesn’t sound all that bad, does it?

 

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About More than Writer’s Block

I have writer’s block.  And, really, that’s all I have to say.  And if you’re a regular reader of A Little Tour in Yellow, you certainly are not surprised.

Typically I write something like this:

 I think I will treat myself to an essay or two from E. B. White‘s collection One Man’s Meat.  I like Elwyn’s style.  And I have a confession.  I thought it outrageously silly when, in my senior year of high school,  I got a copy of The Elements of Style and thought…No chance in heck (because I didn’t say hell back then) can this be the same guy who wrote Charlotte’s Web.  What are the odds, I thought, that there could be two men in the world going by the name “E. B. White”?  Such an absurdity.  One writes about a spider and a pig and the other teams up with a guy named Strunk.  Impossible.

(You can see the pickle I’m in.  It is self-evident.)

If only I had taken things a bit more seriously, or at least a bit more seriously than the vague moment in the future for which I am striving for now.

As it is I am up late, looking at the clock — good lord, it is late! — and I am getting anxious.

Maybe writer’s block — like most delays and procrastinations — is all about a perverted sense of time.  At the beginning you believe you have all the time in the world only because time passing is unfathomable.  Toward the end you freeze because you can’t bear to waste another moment of whatever unknown time remains for you.

Regardless of what it is, not a lot of time remains for writer’s block now and perhaps never did.  In fact the luxury of time has always been nothing but a parade of squander marching toward an unfinished line.

Think about it.

Tomorrow will be another day.  Then the day after that is yet another, stretching into weeks and beyond with all the troubling reminders of clocks and calendars and birthdays and more.  If you’re not careful, you could end up in a pickle, too.  And whatever the excuses of the past, I can’t waste anymore time thinking about it.  In the end it can never be too late to choose what to  do.  It simply is time to write through it.  Isn’t that the solution?

I dare say writer’s block reflects some serious business.

 

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Wasting Moments That Might Not Even Be Mine

The Thinking Man sculpture at Musée Rodin in Paris

Do you know what I accomplished today?  Nothing.  At least nothing that was on the carefully thought out to do list I created Sunday night.  Today is Tuesday…Two days in a row?  Ouch. That’s called a flop.

I started thinking about this…and it isn’t good.   It works this way…

When one wastes time by putting things off — at least when I put things off — I do so with the thought that I can always get caught up tomorrow.  But then … holy cow…what if I keel over tomorrow!  What if I don’t quite die but get laid up somewhere?  Or lose my mind?  Or just get lost?  What if I start forgetting things…

In more practical ways, what if I cannot do tomorrow what I want to do today?  Maybe I’ll just get too damn stupid to flesh out my strange sense about string theory.  I can’t say for sure.  Maybe I will simply forget what I wanted to do.  Who can say?

So when I am sitting about thinking I’ll get caught up tomorrow, that might not be an option.  In that sense, the time I a wasting is the time I think I have tomorrow and that time might not even mine.  Think about that because I don’t think I am making any sense.  That isn’t good.  Maybe you can explain it to me.

So time to get myself back on track!  I am going to start holding myself accountable again.  I will publicly announce my tasks and chores.  And I think the best way to do it is to start with the ugly stuff first.  If you start your day eating a bug, everything you do the rest of the day is better in comparison, right?  Isn’t that the saying?

(Why do I seem to be asking so many questions lately?  Is that an early sign of dementia?)

First on my list tomorrow — after a hearty breakfast of waffles and eggs scrambled with black pepper, spinach, and shredded Parmesan cheese — I will call the client who wants to take me to court, just to see how he’s doing.  But in no particular order — other than task #1 —  here is my Wednesday list:

1. Call the client who wants to sue me.
2. Clean kitchen and dining room.
3. Read before Netflix.  (This has to become a hard rule.)
4. Write before Netflix.  (This has to become a hard rule.)
5. Schedule my client follow ups…before Netflix.
6. Daily walk.
7. Reset my Carbonite back up.
8. Write to Ed Doering.
9. Pay my currently-expired magazine and journal
   subscriptions.

I think that is a complete day.  In fact I think I will get a jump on things by finishing Elizabethtown tonight so I can drop the disk in the mail and not think about Netflix, disk or streaming.  (Elizabethtown, by the way…how did I get that?)

9.  Check Netflix queue for films like Elizabethtown.

There, now that is a complete day.

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Writing Other Things

I woke up this morning full of ideas.  In fact I started writing bright and early.  Email mostly.  I even felt on my game writing thank yous to clients.  Midday I listened to an inspiring Ray Bradbury interview.  It was a good day.  I felt on pace for big things.

Then I got a notice from the State Department of Revenue.  Remember them?  I don’t…or I should say I didn’t remember; I forgot about them.  Well, hell…it is summer for crying out loud.  A guy goes on vacation.  Prior to my vacation I wanted to know why the State of Minnesota thought I owed money.  They sent some  information that I quickly figured out, then went on vacation, came back…and forgot about it.

The State of Minnesota Department of Revenue, however, forgets nothing.  With the help of some laws, they will get what they need from my next two pay checks!

Actually, this isn’t such a bad thing.  It is a relatively small tax levy and I do in fact owe the tax.  But what a shock…At one moment I’m light as a lark and even thinking I might flit about tweeting like a lark, then I get this email from my payroll manager:  ”Hey, uh, do you know anything about this?”

That will take the wind out from under even the most light and nimble lark, trust me.  In fact, an email like that is to a good mood what a shot gun is to a little song bird.

As an aside, what is a lark anyway?  I will have to consult my Sibley Guide.  I can’t say I would know a lark if I were one.

This post needs more sex appeal and it will be great.

Anyway, the bank account will cover my legitimate tax bill and I quickly recovered…but only after giving the collections department a piece of my mind.  (I understand why men grow cranky as they age.  It is fun!)

Sadly, however, the writerly spirit that awoke with me this morning never returned after that.  It is out doing some flitting about of its own somewhere, leaving me with a hot laptop purring on my thighs.  That’s not quite what I like purring on my thighs, or on my anything-else for that matter.  So I looked for inspiration.  I read a little Thomas Merton (The Seven Storey Mountain), Moby Dick, and a short  novel by Stefan Zweig, Journey into the Past.

None of it did anything to inspire me.

Next I tried an essay in Sunday’s paper by Molly Ringwald.  She wrote about parallels between writing and acting.  While I can’t say I didn’t like the essay, it reads like my blog posts, i.e., it reads like a first draft.

Who am I to cast stones, right?  For the most part I don’t proof and edit here either.  I keep an eye out for typos as I write and that’s about it.  Molly’s essay read like someone else kept an eye out for typos.  I don’t mean to be mean (should that be edited?), but her essay appeared in the New York Times and I feel that it should have a bit more depth and polish, suitable for the New York Times.  I get the gist of her essay, though; it makes sense and I guess that’s key.

At last inspiration.  I thought being a bit more careful and polished might not be a bad idea for my stuff.  Working and reworking some of my writing might even help get something finished.  (I benefit greatly from deadlines, by the way.)  So I pulled out some writing I have done recently, found a clip board and a red pen, and sat down to read, edit, and think a little.

First thing I notice, if I may say so, is the writing I picked to edit isn’t all that bad.  Second, it is a lot of fun to read and rework stuff; as long as I don’t overdo it, a little tender loving care might actually help.  And the third and final thing I’ll admit to discovering…I write very differently when I write other things.  On this blog, I think I write as if I were composing a quick email asking you to join me for lunch.  I just put it all out there, like a chatty seven-year-old, and thus not very efficiently.  (That’s a nod to you, U No Hu.)  Seven-year-olds have such a nice economy of words, don’t they?

So tonight I have had the red micro Sharpie out and been stroking like a mad man.  Wait a minute…certainly that should be edited, but true to my blogger form…nope.  Broad red PEN strokes — Sharpie strokes, to be exact — have been good to me tonight.  That’s what I meant.

What about you, have you done anything good for yourself tonight?

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Moby Dick and A Little Tour in Yellow

 

“Out of the trunk, the branches grow; out of them, the twigs.  So in productive subjects, grow the chapters.”  – Moby Dick, Chapter 63, “The Crotch.”

Midway through Moby Dick it appears that Melville felt the need to explain the process forming his novel.  As I am reading Moby Dick and considering my own writing, especially A Little Tour in Yellow, these lines could not be more apt.  After all what is A Little Tour if it isn’t a bunch of branches and twigs?  (Maybe even a leaf or two.)  I like to think there are more than a few productive subjects in this blog.

If you read Moby Dick — and I think you should, it is chock full of good reading — you will notice that the initial narrative breaks down into an almost encyclopedic collection of vignettes, essays, and stories about whaling, whales, ships, and sailors.  It is as much a history as it is a story.

Melville’s style becomes “sloppy.”  He randomly starts and ends chapters.  Some are poetic and high-flowing, even a little stilted, perhaps, while other chapters more pragmatically strive for objective explanations of sea life and life at sea.  Often he stitches these chapters together with threads like the lines quoted here.

Isn’t A Little Tour in Yellow very much the same?

Of course I don’t have quill pen and whale-oil lamp lighting my desk.  Little excuse for me to so quickly turn the page and start again on a new topic without taking a little care about what I write and how I write it.  I do edit mistakes as I type now, which is an improvement over the early days.  (You’re welcome.)  But I don’t really stitch things together.

Nevertheless, as you read A Little Tour in Yellow, seek patience by seeking a classic.  Pretend, as much as you can, that you’re reading a book that is very much like Moby Dick!

Now scroll down this blog and find something you like.  Tell your friends and family to do the same.  Then tell me about it.

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Maybe If I Write About It

Photo credit: indywidualny

Dear Reader…don’t be embarrassed by anything you find here.  It is all meant to get me from A to B and maybe just beyond a bit.  That’s all.  More fundamentally, this is all about getting ideas down on “paper”, so to speak.  Although…perhaps…writing on a computer might be like taking a ride in a car and calling it a walk.  Writing on a blog — to extend that comparison a bit deeper — is a lot like riding on a public bus and calling that a walk.  Big old Metro Transit — Vroom, vroom, beep, beep, Whssshhh — but what an empty bus we have here, alas!  Much like the lowly Route 8 I would sneak onto sometimes as a boy.

But I have been walking a lot, walking a lot indeed.  My feet finally feel a bit of healing working into them.  The bruises and blisters not so much a problem anymore.  Not quite heel-clicking time, but I seem to be recovering from the malaise a bit more efficiently these days.

What’s there to worry about?  When people don’t read your blog, you can write stuff like this:

If I had lived more

And offered more than this

Much more than lonely sorrow

Would I have lived to be here

To be here with you tomorrow?

What happened here — just so you know — is I thought I would take up sonnet writing, specifically Petrarchan sonnets.  All for good fun.  This one got going ok, but I’m not sure I will ever know an iambic pentameter when I see one so it is a stretch to think I might actually write one.  But anyway, that’s what you have there, the fruit of an idea, the idea to write Petrarchan sonnets as a hobby.

Ok, all right.  I will stop, I will stop the bus, but only for the night.  I will seek our more riders.  (Who have you got for me out there?)  Yes, Reader, don’t be afraid of anything you find here, just come along for the fun.  And bring a friend or two.  Invite them to take a little tour in yellow.

 

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