Habitualized writing.
…and a book and a place to sit and enjoy them.
I was just going to take a picture of my house, but my wife said “That’s too easy. You should take a picture of a lawn chair with a beer and a book.” Which reminded of this photo I posted on Instagram a few years ago.
I was planning on getting all fancy with my DSLR and Lightroom- but sometimes the simple pictures are the best.
Postaday for May 22nd: Worldly Encounters. The friendly, English-speaking extraterrestrial you run into outside your house is asking you to recommend the one book, movie, or song that explains what humans are all about. What do you pick?
Book: Finnegan’s Wake. I have not read all of it and I am hoping that, like me, the alien will read a few pages and then toss it aside and decide the human race is too confusing to understand as a single entity. Heart and lungs, skin and bones. That’s more or less the only way we’re all the same, and any assertion to the contrary will sprout contradiction after contradiction.
For the most part, people are good, but there are a choice few who take advantage of this truth and exploit it for their own ends. I’d hate to have the alien read Harry Potter and decide we’re all courageous, only to have some coward steal his space ship and use to do donuts on the moon. Nor would I have the alien read The Stranger and find us all so disconnected and depressing that his plans to build a hyperspace bypass through our planet are accelerated out of indifference. And I would of course hate it if the alien read Dan Brown.
So I’d go to the book store and buy the book, and just so know one there would think I’m going to give it to extra terrestrial alien, I’d wear a sweater with patches on the elbows, make sure my goatee was grown out, and I’d stop by the coffee stand inside the bookstore itself and sigh at the quotidian menu and, seemingly reluctantly, order an espresso and frown when they served it and frown when I sipped it.
Back at my house I expect the alien would be sitting on my front porch, the beer I’d given him to drink while I was gone long since finished, his razor sharp stainless steel teeth slowly gnawing on the glass bottle. I’ll scowl at myself and think that I should have given him a beer in an aluminum can instead. But what’s done is done. I’ll park my car and set the parking break with a loud ratcheting sound. I’ll be prepared if the alien asks me why I set the parking break when my driveway is not very steep, or if he suggests that I install a few anti-gravity mag-lev inertia dampeners. And then when he doesn’t I’ll be a a bit disappointed because the argument I have ready is a really good one.
And he’ll see this on my face but not know what the frown means, because even though his quarter-inch photo-sensitive skin can read the variations in my body temperature to hundredth-of-a-degree accuracy, he will have no empathy gland, owing to a terrible space accident with an asteroid and joy-riding Melaplurx from Planet Gojaxicak. Hence the need for the book. Nevertheless he’ll ask me why there’s a centigrade temperature elevation in my risorius, platysma and depressor anguli oris.
And I’ll say, let me guess, you asked some asshat for the same thing you asked me, and he handed you Gray’s Anatomy?
And the alien will be a little bit confused, because, yes, someone did, and also because someone else handed him a Dr. Seuss book, and since my question to him rhymed, he would wonder if I was going to next tell him about my disdain for viridia ova atque perna.
The I would seize the moment! Thrust Finnegan’s Wake into his seven-fingered hands! All three of them! And I’d say, “This explains everything!” And then I’d go inside my house and eat some Doritos and play some Xbox.
And I bet you a thousand dollars we’d never hear from that alien again.
Postaday for January 15th: Brain Power. Let’s assume we do, in fact, use only 10% of our brain. If you could unlock the remaining 90%, what would you do with it?
First of all, I would separate my brain in ten pieces, so that I could do ten things at the same time.
One part of my brain would be watching TV shows, so I can get caught up on all the pop culture. I’m caught up on Game of Thrones, Brooklyn 99 and I Zombie. Need to watch all of Justified, Boardwalk Empire, The Wire, and House of Cards. Should also probably watch Breaking Bad and Walking Dead, but I’m only willing to do that if I can get a whole chunk of brain dedicated to it. Not that I have anything against those shows per se; I just found them tedious and dull when I tried them the first time.
Oh, and Battlestar Galactica, Portlandia, and Hannibal. People on Tumblr are going nutso over Hannibal, and I want to know what’s up.
There are other shows I’m way behind on, but I’m watching those with the wife. We’re just starting season three of Scandal, and we’re also watching True Detective. We watch Modern Family when it comes on, and we want to watch Suits and Homeland.
Then I’d have another part of the brain read books. Maybe have on part read news books and one part rereads old ones. I just discovered one of my all time favorite writers, Thomas Berger, passed away last year (kinda feel bad I didn’t know this sooner). So I’d reread all of his books. And reread The Chronicles of Amber by Zelazney, although I bet my super brain would get through that pretty quickly. I think also I’d reread Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies because when Hillary Mantel puts out the third book in the series I want to be ready.
The third book I’d read with the part of the brain for new reading. It would also read every Booker-prize nominated book over the last ten years that I haven’t already read. It might also read Game of Thrones, even though I’ve already read the first book and I did not care for it. I also have a lot of Jim Thompson to read.
Of course another part of my brain would be dedicated to writing. Blog entries, short stories, and all of the novels I’ve started and never completed. Also, book reviews for all those books those other parts of my brain are reading.
Here’s where it gets tricky: I have a lot of video games to get through. Not sure how I can write and play video games at the same time. I’m tempted to use some sort of dictation device for the writing, leaving me hands free, but I like the discovery aesthetic of writing and wonder if I would get too glib, being able to just let it flow. I don’t think I can think fast enough to speak what I write!
I know— I’ll dedicate a whole other part of my brain to solving that problem.
So one part for TV, one for books, one for re-reading, one for writing, one for video games, and one to figure how to do these things all at the same time. That leaves three parts. One I’ll need for miscellania, sort of a catch-all. Internet research, meal planning, vacation planning, and so on. One will have to be dedicated to work, I guess. And the last one is for meditation.
People will say to me, why do you meditate? I’ll tell them, I’ve got a lot on my minds.