This is great wisdom from Henry Miller – one of the literary greats.
I'm pissed.
Why? Well it started in Guatemala last week. I was eating in the weightlifting chow hall with Donny Shankle and thinking about the food. The meal that day included a sort of salad. Tasted like it had some kale in it, had some green beans, some corn, lettuce, and bits of bacon. There were diced up potatoes, cooked with onions. Diced up carrots that most people seemed to be mixing up with the potatoes and onions.
A great post about the trash the country feeds its citizens.
Dear Grandma, Smoke It If You Got It.
I hear about a lot of elderly people being headstrong. I don’t think it’s something that comes with the territory or slowly seeps into their heads; I just think that at around 90, people stop giving a shit. I mean, they’re going to do what they’re going to do and to hell with what the rest of the family thinks.
*On a side note, my grandmother called me a dyke yesterday, which I thought was pretty cool. But, anyway, back to the topic.
I’m 34 years young and I have three living grandparents. How fortunate I am. All of them are around 95, but still relatively healthy. They all realize they’ve lived ample and fulfilling lives. There’s nothing they would have done any differently and none of them have any regrets. Wow. What a deal.
Most of the family is accepting of their wishes and will take care of everything after they pass. There are some who, of course, are trying to put off the inevitable and do everything to make this person not leave; but still they slip away. One of my family members wants his mother (my grandmother) to fly to either Florida or Mexico to go to a health ranch to “get better” (stronger, faster, better – some Daft-Punkish wish). He wants the whole family to try and persuade my grandmother to go elsewhere. This is a woman who has never gotten on a plane in her life (fear of planes – pteromerhanophobia **tero-mer-hahn-a-FOBIA**) and is not going to start now. She’s also been in her house for more years than I’ve been around and will be damned if she dies outside of it.
My grandfather in Honolulu is in a care home and, a few days ago, decided he needed soy sauce on his dinner. What do you do when you need soy sauce? Press the RED EMERGENCY BUTTON on the wall, of course – the one designated for people to save you if you’re dying. Press it repeatedly, in fact.
Then, when no one showed up because he presses it all the time, he decided to take matters into his own hands and supported his weight on a roller tray, slipped, fell, and fractured his hip. He’s 94 – and probably pretty upset that they couldn’t just bring him the soy sauce in the first place.
Stubbornness, some would call it. I just call it being over 90. Outside of premeditated murder, I don’t think laws should apply to nonagenarians. Anyone who’s over 90 can smoke as much FILL IN THE BLANK as they want. If they accidentally off someone, well, it wasn’t premeditated and what the hell was the person doing around a 90-year-old in the first place. Care homes for the elderly should be party houses on the OVER 90 floor. I mean, c’mon, if you hit 90 – you make your own rules.
So, Grandma, you go ahead and eat, drink, and smoke whatever you want. You need more, I’ll get it for you. When you’re ready to go, go right ahead. We’ll take care of the rest. You earned it.
Nobody but yourself
“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”
- e.e. cummings (1894-1962)
Mother's Day Love
Today I witnessed the most intense form of love and gratitude for mothers. I watched my beautiful grandmother die. I watched my mother and her brother care for her round the clock. I watched them administer her medicines and clean her. I watched them stand over her bed and watched my mother stroke her hair as she died.
Yesterday I listened to my mother read her old letters that my grandfather wrote to his “dear Wifey” when he was overseas during WWII.
Thoughts on the Short Story
When was the last time you read a short story? I’m not talking about an article out of a gossip magazine or something your six-year old scribbled down in class with his boogers. I don’t care if it’s cute or related to you; six-year-olds can’t write. None of them. Focus.
I’m talking about a real short story, and by ‘real’ I mean a published work of fiction (I don’t count non-fiction in this discussion because the generally-accepted definition of a short story is one in the realm of fiction. That’s just how it is.) somewhere between 1,000 words to 14,999 words. That last number is specific because it’s at 15,000 words that the novella is introduced, and I’d just as well not get into that range. Hell, we can even bring in something lower than 1,000 words (generally considered ‘flash fiction’), but generally the short story tends to get over the thousand-word hump.
Well? Can you remember? Was it high school? If it was, were you forced to read it?
The reason I bring it up is because I’ve recently taken a look around the writing world and found that it doesn’t seem anyone is really writing short stories anymore. It’s not that they’re gone; they’re still there, but just not as prevalent as it seems they used to be.
You walk into a Barnes and Noble now and the most prevalent item is the book. Everyone’s writing books. It’s certainly not a criticism from me. Books are my babies, quiet and boogerless. But I wonder what has led to the decline of the once popular short story.
I like the short story, but it’s just not the popular thing. There are still some short-story masters around, but not as many as there used to be.
Short blog post. These are just the thoughts of the moment.
If you haven’t read it yet, or you read it some time ago and forgot all about it, I recommend “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe.
Brandon Sanderson’s 2012 Online Creative Writing Course
Brandon Sanderson’s 2012 Online Creative Writing Course
Here’s a link to all of Brandon Sanderson’s lectures from his 2012 Creative Writing course. It’s a brilliant idea and anyone interested in writing (especially those interested in writing Sci/Fi or Fantasy) would do well to listen to. I watch these and just want to be in the damn class, but I’m thankful that I can learn from a distance. My appreciation to those who put this together.
- L.P.
I Am The Tenured Guy
It’s official: I’m tenured, I’m promoted. Look out.
The poet Jim Daniels visited IUSB over the weekend and gave a terrific reading. Jim has a series of poems called, “The Tenured Guy.” I opened one of Jim’s books that I bought after the reading so that I could type up a Tenured Guy poem here, and I just found this note:
A great poem for my Wednesday morning.
An Allan Preface
The following I found in the Complete Tales & Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. This is his preface to the section of his poetry. What a magical command of English the man had. He is an element of inspiration for me.
- L.P.
___
PREFACE TO THE POEMS
These trifles are collected and republished chiefly with a view to their redemption from the many improvements to which they have been subjected while going at random “the rounds of the press.” I am naturally anxious that what I have written should circulate as I wrote it, if it circulate at all. In defence of my own taste, nevertheless, it is incumbent upon me to say that I think nothing in this volume of much value to the public, or very creditable to myself. Events not to be controlled have prevented me from making, at any time, any serious effort in what, under happier circumstances, would have been the field of my choice. With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion; and the passion should be held in reverence; they must not — they cannot at will be excited, with an eye to the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations, of mankind.
- E. A. P.
Everest and a Stepladder
Sam Sykes is a fantasy author who, at 25, slammed his mighty pen upon magical paper and cleared a space in the genre for his Aeons’ Gate Trilogy.
I follow his blog and I found this post particularly worthwhile to writers everywhere, and it wasn’t just because of the Everest simile…though that was the sealer for me.
Keep writing.
