Potential waits

It was a dream that she had given him that morning. He had scribbled it down, inspected it, measured it, looked for the genius and then shoved it into his pocket with all the others. It was simple and uninspired. He pulled it out now and read it again. Had he missed something?

“Distractions are silky skinned pole dancing whores, who with a wink and a smile, coyly pull us away from the monogamous feet of Potential. They work in an unremarkable place called Procrastination which serves a bitter ale called regret, a drink that drains ambition and desire but inexplicably keeps you coming back for more.”

Irrelevant, worthless drivel.

Daniel winced and gaged as he forced himself to swallowed the thick putrid bile that slid from the dirty glass, down his throat. He watched a scantily clad woman dip, bend over, and then return to her pole with no particular commitment or promise. He forced a smiled, hesitated, folded the dream, reached up and slid it into the waistband of her g-string.

He wondered if Potential would notice that he was a few dreams short. He doubted it. If she would just crack open the pursestrings once in a while he could really be somebody, but she doled out genius with rarified accounting, and he was sure she saved the best dreams for herself. As if she cold do anything with them. She needed me.

Daniel reached down for his glass, looked into the mouth of the beast, closed his eyes tight, brought the drink to his lips, and forced himself to imbibe.

Potential leaned back and smiled as Robert adorned her feet with kisses and attentions befitting her gifts. She knew where Daniel was, and knew that it would be quite a while before he could pull himself away from his demons and work his way home. It was sad she thought, he had unique ability and talent. but he mistakenly thought that their relationship was exclusive.

Potential closed her eyes as Robert worshiped her. Robert understood how it worked, She was not, and never has been monogamous. She folded a dream, ran her fingers through his hair and, like a whisper, slipped the idea into his ear. She watched as his blue eyes brightened.

It was the same dream that Daniel had just given to the dancer. It was no small irony that all dreams began and ended with Potential. With what Daniel had spent on distractions, Robert would build a lasting legacy.

She shifted and relaxed into Robert’s soft focused adoration. She thought; No, You can’t cheat potential, because ultimately I am an opportunist at heart.

Romantic interlude..

A beginning to a story which has no ending. One of many.
***
When I was a 12, I had a girlfriend who lived right next door to our row home. The houses where very close together, to the point where I often wondered why the builders didn’t just link them together as townhouses or apartments. Luck had created an enduring lack of creativity in the architect to mirror each row home’s layout from left to right, alternating down the street, leaving my window exactly opposite hers. With barely enough room for three trashcans below in the ally, our rooms where near extensions of the other, isolated by a 25 foot drop to the ground. If we leaned out our windows, reached and stretched our fingers towards each other, the tips would brush together with barely a fingerprint to separate us.

As I think back on this memory it was the separation that made the effort so exhilarating, so wonderfully full in my memory. To touch but not touch. To lean forward and extend yourself beyond mere physicality so that auras of spirit stretch foreword, and arcs of electricity jump from the limits of constrained boundaries, bridging the gaps of bridled restrictions, and replacing them with the latent conduits of potential.

It was as dangerous as it was pure, and as deeply sensual as any experience I came to know as an adult. It was desire un-fogged by any expectation of more, because it was all we had to give and therefor it was everything.

As an adult I have sat by many windows that separate the sexes and have extended a hand to the girl on the other side. Some close the window, some look back with quizzical expressions, some invite themselves over to your house and skip the window all together, while select others cautiously extend there own. While the sun has set on summers long forgotten and fear now often outweighs the risks we were so willing to embrace while we were young, I will often whisper to myself as I reach forward in hope and anticipation.

“Are you willing to share a lifetime in a moment?”

Lakegazette Readers!

The ad in the IWL newsletter makes reference to Blogs or Blogging. I wrote this little article last month and is in my August archive of posts. To make it simple however, I have included a direct link on the immediate left of this post; its called to blog or not to blog.

And just for kicks and giggles … I will include a link to another one of my blogs (I have many — one for each mood) called ConspirEssays. This blog you are reading is FREE to set up and managed by Google. The ConspirEssays blog is also FREE to set up and managed by WordPress.

Feel free to ask questions if you have them.

Children’s book idea

A little boy on the way to the market to buy a loaf of bread hears two people gossiping about the miller’s wife. He listens as he passes and as he walks they climb onto his back and continue to talk. He continues to pass people on the road and in turn collects them, each climbing on his back, swapping gossip, stepping on faces, pulling hair and pointing to the others as the ball of humanity gets bigger and bigger and more complex until he finally yells “enough!” and dumps them in a pile at the city gate. He enter town buys his bread and walks back out again … this time whistling and covering his ears as he passes the quizzical pile of towns folk.

NOTE: got to be mostly illustrative, from multiple angles with lots of little details and stories within the jumbled up blob of people.

Good and Plenty

They are small, white and pink, and vaguely shaped by purpose or happenstance to resemble a pharmaceutical. I can’t help but be happy when I see a handful of Good and Plenty candies. Perhaps it is the nostalgic memory of drive-in theatre cabaret dances that mimics the steam driven pistons of a locomotive. (For those that remember this you have my sympathy and do your bones ache too?) Maybe it is the lost innocence of candy that does not shout to get my attention, that pulls me towards something simpler, quieter, more refined. Either way it is one of my secret indulgences.

A friend saw me pop one the other day and questioned in a particular welcome to the club way. “Anti-depressant?”

I reached into my pocket, pulled out a half dozen more and slid those into my mouth as well. “Oh yeah,” My retort mingled with a false air of conspiracy “want some?”

NOTE: Did you know that Licorice is a natural (homeopathic) remedy for stress. Although G&P contain less than 2% licorice extract I wonder if there is a connection?

School Starts

Those who “can” do it. Those who “can’t” teach. This is my second year teaching at NIC. (I teach Illustration). It is just one class (two sections) and I can not tell you how much time it takes to compose lessons, dream up assignments, mentor and monitor students, and keep up to speed.

I love teaching, but like most things, I hate the administration behind the scenes.

I can “do” and teach right? I would hate to be fooling myself in this.

I should write something about this, something poignant and moving.

Or maybe I will just watch the last of the summer reruns and reality shows. Its not like they will be around forever.

Creativity

Creativity is a cloak I wear that has a mantle of brilliance and a yoke of insanity. Without one or the other it is just another pile of fabric. It hangs in my closet. I am afraid to wear it most of the times. Afraid of one or the other, the expectation of brilliance the incrimination of insanity. Not that I am able to control it. Because more often than not I will slip it on hoping for brilliance and instead wear the purchased scribblings of madness; the embarrassing, pointless wanderings born of chaos and bled to bedlam.

Not that chaos is bad. I love chaos. It is comforting, like a pallet of mixed paint. Potential unlimited by technique or time. Unsaid and thus unspent, a vault of banked, horded latent genius.

Of course, if I long for the comfort of chaos, I get brilliance and all the presumptive completeness that kills chaos and organizes it into the palatable. The praise of all those chewing bites, the ingested, digested, and excreted bits of applause that seek to support the tickling idea in the back of my head that I have made a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. A funny fact that presumes that a silk purse is better — just don’t ask the sow.

So it hangs in my closet, and most times I push it aside and put on the t-shirt of mediocrity. It has a clever saying silk screened to the front. It’s not brilliant, nor madness, it’s just comfortable in its well worn nondescript way.

A part of a thought

In the sound track of my life I change moods according to the cues given to me by a tone deaf music director.

Physician heal thyself

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do. — Thomas Jefferson

A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who instead of aiming a single stone at an object takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit. — Samuel Johnson

Yeah … I know, I am the human shotgun of literary composition.

To blog or not to blog

As writers it seems that we are constantly deluged by eager converts of electronic mayhem who want nothing more than for us to join their ranks. Computers, software, and the internet have reached inside our comfortable toolbox and swapped out our trusted typewriters for keyboards, and our number 2 pencils for flashing hypnotic cursers. For the most part this transition, although difficult for many, has left us as a group better equipped to create, and in some cases, better writers. Lately, however, I have felt the electronic robed devotees trying to pry into that ultimate sanctum sanctorum; my diaries and journals. They of course have a different name for it, they call it blogging or blogs and despite my initial reluctance, I must say that I now count myself as one of the hive-minded zealots. In a similar way that adding a few simple lines to a square can magically create a cube, a blog can move your personal writings, journals, or diaries into a multidimensional, interactive expression that is more than just the sum of its parts.

A blog can be the best of both worlds. Where diaries are normally layers of individual, private, and static content, blogs are typically layers of social, public, and interactive content. What would seem at first glance to be at diametrically opposite spectrums can mystically be merged, however, by the effective use of privacy options. This means that your personal writings can remain personal and your more public writings can be open to a select audience. More importantly your polemic rants and raves can be accessed by the world at large.

A blog is a diary or journal to which you can hand out keys. You can also rescind such privileges and take back the keys you have granted. You can write just for yourself or for a group of friends. it is as discreet or as public as you make it.

With a journal or diary your best laid plans are often foiled when somebody stumbles across its secret location; hidden behind War and Peace on the bookshelf or wrapped in a manilla folder called “Taxes 02.” The power of blogging lies not in its single location (find it once and find it all) but in its inherit ability to remain true to itself, with some writings being open and other writings being private. Because it does not have a physical location inside your home it can also be as accessible on the road in Cancun as it is in your bedroom or den.

Because you can control the content and you control the audience, a blog can be an expression of interest to a very narrow audience on a very narrow subject. To make it even more intriguing there is nothing stopping you from having as many topical blogs as you have whims. A blog for personal thoughts and wanderings, a journal on 18th century beer steins for the public, or a publication of short stories for a writing group.

One of the great advantages of a blog is that it is indexed. Do you need to find a character reference you wrote last year as part of a larger group of research? With a blog, you type in a keyword and the all relevant hits appear without a signal page being turned. You can even search comments made by other people. An even more powerful feature of blogs is the ability to track or link back to another blog or web article. Are you writing about gothic vampires in 17th century New Orleans and have found the perfect historical reference on the subject elsewhere on the web? With a simple link it has now become part of your blog that you, or others, can refer too at will. These “Pings” or “trackbacks”create further dimensional extensions. The work of others now becomes part of your own library of thoughts feelings and connections.

A blog can be a creative workspace that promotes interchange with like minded individuals. It offers validation of great ideas, applause and critiques. Everything you write on a blog that you make public has the option of being commented on. This interactive element creates an atmosphere of collaboration where thoughts can be answered and suggestions or support offered that speak directly to the topic or concern you were writing about.

In a world where the cost of printing and publishing thoughts or creative explorations is almost prohibitively expensive it almost feels like a conspiracy. It is an obstacle that seems set to weed out individual expression to an amalgamated cookie cutter product of what others decide is publicly palatable. A blog on the other hand is the easiest, cheapest way in the world to be self published. You decide what is palatable. and you write to the constraints of your heart not necessarily to a market niche. Truly, within seconds of finishing, your thoughts can be published and people can be reading it. Your audience is only limited by how much access you give to it and how much you promote it.

In fact, blogs are so universally accepted and used by so many people that having a space to write freely in daily or weekly installments has become the new rage in self promotion. Have you written a book or do you have a following of people who read or are interested in what you do? A blog is a great way to keep people informed of what you are creating, how you do it, and what matters in your life. JK Rowling has stated that between books, her blog (website) and others kept the media as well as her friends informed on progress of individual chapters and clues as to what was happening and her feelings about certain events. This “constant presence” in the hearts and minds of her readers has now become the new standard.

Believe it or not what works for giants also works for the unknown. A blog can contain public parts or snippets of your work. You can talk about progress you are making, publications, or upcoming book signings. On password protected pages you can showcase completed but unsold work. You can create a portfolio of published work.

A blog is the power to share collective ideas or keep the secrets of your heart all at the same time. It is a reflection of the many facets of yourself, the public persona and the solitary soul. It is a private place to soliloquize and a public place to sell. if a word processor is a tool of creation, A blog is a tool of expression. Finally a tool I can use.

***

Blogging note:
Not all blogging software is created equal, and there are differences in levels of privacy and complexity. I don’t recommend any specific one, and as a matter of fact I have used (or am using) different blog engines for different reasons. Here are a few links to some popular blogging engines.

Blogger. This is the easy way into the blogging world. It is free. All you need is a google account (like Gmail) and it is simple to set up. It does not have all the privacy features that some might like, but you will be up and writing (blogging) in minutes! This blog you are reading uses a Blogger account!

WordPress. There are two flavors of WordPress. One that is hosted with them on their servers and one that you set up and install yourself (or have somebody do it for you). Word press is a great piece of free software with a lot of power and flexibility. I use it for all my domain specific blogs.

LiveJournal. This is the great grandfather of blogs. It has been sold and is under new management but the core product remains the same. It is a good alternative for quick, set it and forget it blogging and has a large community of users.

iWeb. If you happen to own a Mac, this is a no brainer. You might already have it on your system and not even know it. It is offered as part of the iLife suite if purchased separately and includes iMovie and GarageBand, and iPhoto. Apple is the King of drag and drop, and this software works like it is billed, very intuitive and a breeze to set up. However, you need an .Mac account (or web server access) for it to work.