A strange brew is this, and not all of it is pretty. Partially a record of a crackup and partially a tale of rising from that crackup back into a useful life; and part of that is how I decided writing was necessary to my life and recovery; and another part is just keeping a record of where I have been and what I have learned. You can see the topics I cover the sidebar. The hope is to help others; the purpose is figuring out where I am going. Thank you for dropping by. Feel free to comment.
Well, I thought yesterday was Wednesday. I made a few corrections to what was "Stew". I got the Medicare straightened out. I got dozy only for about two hours. Submissions were made but that is for another post. I walked down to the insurance agent; that problem was not solved. Then down to the old courthouse where I found that I could vote and did so. I still needed milk. And here came another problem. Time for the school children to be on the buses and the schedules screwed up. I waited close to 40 minutes to get a bus to the grocery, and then not to the one I wanted. CC called. We met at the grocery and helped her with another of her problems. It was after 5 by now. I had left the insurance agent around 4:20. I got home around 7:26. At least I got some exercise. Wednesday I had not left the apartment to go any further than the convenience store. It was a truly dozy day, but I also cut down the intake of cola. I did get a 2 liter of RC last night.
Then it was off to The Paramount Theater for The Rocky Horror Pictiure. It had been close to 30 years since I last saqw the movie. J had never seen it. The lower floor was pretty much full. The crowd was younger than expected. I would say most were in their thirties or forties with a scattering of younger people and a dusting of older people like me. The crowd was not the best I have seen, but not the worst. It is the crowd that makes the experience what it is.
J was a little shocked, fairly well amused, and disliked the lack of plot or meaning.
I got back here around 1 AM, and slept in. I woke with a pinched nerve in my neck, which has left me walking about at an angle.
I went to the bank and tried to clear up that part of the rental insurance problem.
Then it was to Payless and back here.
Management has changed the interior lighting. They have created the possibility of risk. The back end is pitch black.
I watched MobLand and started on my blog posts where I found this one unpublished.
“Remember this: Someone with as much power as the Texas Attorney General would only take desperate action like this lawsuit because he is scared,” Menefee continued. “I hope everyone in Harris County who is eligible to vote sees this lawsuit for what it is, and goes to cast their ballot in this election.”
Another two days of not wanting to go out, to do anything. The best I did today was watch Bottle Shock. Go figure. Tomorrow must be different. Even this is just being done to get something done.
Catching up after a period of unwellness has left me without time for more analysis or comments on the following.
I have written much about Orhan Pamuk as I think he has something to say to America in our day and age, as an empire tottering on collapse and facing the costs of our history. Jeffrey Meyers's Symbolism in Orhan Pamuk’s ‘Snow’ (TheArticle) does not touch much on this aspect of Pamuk's fiction but does offer insights into Pamuk's skill as a novelist.
Ipek first agrees to escape with Ka, then changes her mind and decides to remain. When the snowstorm stops, Ka leaves Kars on the first train out of town. Liberated from the horrors but weeping about the loss of Ipek, he ends in a dark mood: “All the people on the platform disappeared into the thick-falling snow. As I looked out the window through the snow at the orange lights of the outermost houses of the outlying neighborhoods, and the last snow-covered rooftops, the thin and elegantly quivering ribbons of smoke rising from the broken chimneys at last seemed a smudge through my tears.” Like the snow in Mann and Joyce, Pamuk’s snow is symbolic, thematic and tragic.
Can you dismiss from your mind whatever project you’re on when you’re away from the typewriter?
HEMINGWAY
Of course. But it takes discipline to do it and this discipline is acquired. It has to be.
INTERVIEWER
Do you do any rewriting as you read up to the place you left off the day before? Or does that come later, when the whole is finished?
HEMINGWAY
I always rewrite each day up to the point where I stopped. When it is all finished, naturally you go over it. You get another chance to correct and rewrite when someone else types it, and you see it clean in type. The last chance is in the proofs. You’re grateful for these different chances.
INTERVIEWER
How much rewriting do you do?
HEMINGWAY
It depends. I rewrote the ending to Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied.
INTERVIEWER
Was there some technical problem there? What was it that had stumped you?
HEMINGWAY
Getting the words right.
INTERVIEWER
Is it the rereading that gets the “juice” up?
HEMINGWAY
Re-reading places you at the point where it has to go on, knowing it is as good as you can get it up to there. There is always juice somewhere.
INTERVIEWER
But are there times when the inspiration isn’t there at all?
HEMINGWAY
Naturally. But if you stopped when you knew what would happen next, you can go on. As long as you can start, you are all right. The juice will come.
And I wanted to include this just for the hell of it:
INTERVIEWER
Who would you say are your literary forebears—those you have learned the most from?
HEMINGWAY
Mark Twain, Flaubert, Stendhal, Bach, Turgeniev, Tolstoi, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Andrew Marvell, John Donne, Maupassant, the good Kipling, Thoreau, Captain Marryat, Shakespeare, Mozart, Quevedo, Dante, Virgil, Tintoretto, Hieronymus Bosch, Brueghel, Patinier, Goya, Giotto, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, San Juan de la Cruz, Gongora—it would take a day to remember everyone. Then it would sound as though I were claiming an erudition I did not possess instead of trying to remember all the people who have been an influence on my life and work. This isn’t an old dull question. It is a very good but a solemn question and requires an examination of conscience. I put in painters, or started to, because I learn as much from painters about how to write as from writers. You ask how this is done? It would take another day of explaining. I should think what one learns from composers and from the study of harmony and counterpoint would be obvious.
I have been trying not to be distracted by politics; almost an impossibility. Worse is being distracted by digestive problems. I collected the following since roughly last Friday up to today. I meant to write more, but I needed what energy I had for my fiction.
Even so, it appears that Trumpism and its incipient fascism has come up against the fact you can fool all the people only part of the time.
It may be that I will finally get confirmation that Indiana wants change, what it lacks is a focus and faith to initiate that change.
“Whenever the news turns bad, this creep reaches for one name: mine,” Omar said in response to the president’s social media post. “So let’s make it crystal clear. My name has always been Ilhan Omar. Maybe you should focus on what your VP’s real name is,” Omar said on social media Friday.
“Any other implication is a flat-out lie,” Jackie Rogers, spokesperson for the congresswoman, told the Minnesota Star Tribune on Friday.
Blatant political attack showing the Trump people's inability to make a blatant political attack work.
Three days of gastritis dominating my days. No writing today, other than catching up on this blog. A run to the grocery. MNaybe get my voting done. It could be a full afternoon. The morning has been pretty empty: some reading, a trip to the convenience store, a lot of wishing the pain would subside. Insomnia again has left me listless.
It took all day to write 8 pages & 2293 words. I have got to leave the green curry alone as well as the red. Add to this laziness that has overtaken me these past few months.
All together 72 pages. Taking a break tomorrow. Too tired to work on it now and need to do some other things.
Mostly, I kept trying to catch up on the sleep I did not have the night before. I went to the convenience store.
Sunday:
Liturgy followed by a day of unsettled digestion. A little writing done, some emails deleted, and not much else.
Saturday:
Some writing done, a trip to the Farmer's Market, a convenience store trip, passed on going further from home.
“A Heart’s Judgment Judged” rejected
Thank you for submitting your writing to Passager. We are sorry that your work was not selected for publication this year. This reading period we received thousands of pieces and we loved far more submissions than we are able to publish.
The editors must agree on all acceptances unanimously. Sometimes our decisions are based on how the issue is coming together, or what we published most recently, and not a reflection on the quality of your work.
Best of luck with your writing—we always hope you keep us in mind.
At this time, the editors at Gordon Square Review have chosen not to publish "After Making Landfall" in the next available issue of Gordon Square Review.
While "After Making Landfall" was not selected for publication, please know that the editors carefully considered your piece.
Friday was the group class. I still need to write up my notes. Two rejections arrived. I binge-watched Lupin on Netflix. Great show, and it looks like there will be more. Omar Sy! And a rejection:
Thank you so much for submitting to the 2026 Boudin Novelette Chapbook Contest. We received an exciting and overwhelming amount of submissions. The finalists are currently under consideration with our final judge, Robert Olen Butler. We enjoyed Plain Tales From The Flatlands a great deal, but I'm sorry to report that it did not make it to our semi-final round.
We're honored that you chose to submit it to us. We have no doubt you'll find the perfect home for this piece, and hope you'll consider submitting other work to our bi-monthly online journal.
We can say politicians are crooks. After all, they willsay what they think we want to hear to get elected.
I have thought for most of my life that at bottom politics are about morals, or as KH might say ethics, how we the citizens aim to treat one another.
Politicians are then only tools for realizing how we are live together.
It is not the personal behavior of the politicians that matters; it is not their ethics that should dictate how society functions; but it is our morals/ethical viewpoint that matters.
“The First Day of Feeling Free” rejected yesterday:
We're grateful to have had the chance to read your work, but it's not quite a fit for us this time.
Thanks so much for considering Variant Literature as a destination for your work, and for supporting the magazine. We hope for your success in finding a home for this work, and for all of your creative endeavors.
