Today, friends, was a good-for-nothin’ day. In fact, it was great for nothing. Soaked the sun and visited with family. Almost nothing else. So nice!
I may even write a little tonight. It’s hard – I have “free time,” didn’t have to write at all today … but you know? I have almost no desire to write. First day off from speechwriting, and you want me to write other stuff?
And East of Eden is calling me, too – what to do; what to to? I can tell you this: until I decide, I’m doing nothing!
I woke this morning to a dull grey sky and great cacophony of crow voices shouting from just beyond the trees. The din continues even now. To what end? I don’t know. If flocking crows are called a “murder,” then this is the most audacious, persistent and outrageous murder I’ve ever encountered. Does this bode well for my writing? In truth, it may be just the thing …
Jodi and the kids are headed to Watertown, SD, for another family reunion. I stayed behind with the dogs – the goal is to write many pages of fiction (plus take care of a little yard work when I get blocked).
Hard to find time to really work at fiction, you know? Got a day job writing, and kids, and stuff. But here goes – wish me luck and inspiration!
Managed to spend today visiting with family, reading Moby Dick, and watching Puck try to decipher the comings and goings of phantom gophers and rabbits. Guess I did make a run into Rapid City to take the boys to a great hobby shop and a nice little used book store. Got three of the remaining four books I needed for Coach’s summer reading project: Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, and a solid verse translation of Homer’s The Odyssey.
Still searching for an affordable copy of McCarthy’s Blood Meridian – even used, it’s pricey. Maybe I should bag it and read Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, since it’s already on the bookshelf.
Only thing that could’ve made me feel better about the day? About a dozen pages of new fiction, written and saved. Ah, well – can’t have everything …
Blogger’s Note: Since we’re packing, I’m cheating a little. This was the beginning of a collective fiction exercise I tried to get rolling at my last job. Basically, a colleague submitted a photo of a little terrier on a pile of household junk in the back of a pickup. Another colleague suggested the opening line, “It was either Barney or me.” This is what I wrote next.
* * * * *
It was either Barney or me.
Oh, I saw it coming. I was born in the doghouse and grew up on the streets, so when Luka picked me out of that line-up at the shelter, I had no illusions. The chew toys, the futon, the treats flavored with real bacon — I had it too good. Free and easy never lasts, and usually it’s some dame that derails it.
Sure enough, six months in I’m asleep on my end of the futon when Luka shows up with kung pao chicken and a Meg Ryan flick. Tells me to go lay down — as though I wasn’t already. Then she walks in, and hell if my ears didn’t perk up. Dark hair, dark eyes and long, lovely stems that belonged in a vase. An organic chemist, by the smell; beauty and brains so enthralling that I cocked my head despite myself, then scampered to the bedroom, embarrassed.
Wouldn’t you know it? Two hours later they ran me out of there, too, and a couple weeks ago, she moved in. Riley, Luka calls her, and her fat eunuch of a calico, Barney. He — and I use that pronoun loosely — pranced around the apartment like he owned the place, shedding like damn Sheltie, rubbing up against everything, crapping in a box in the corner instead of outside like a civilized animal, and generally suffering from delusions of grandeur.
When he went tomcat one night and curled up on my end of the futon, I hit the end of my leash. No declawed she-male was going alpha in my house. It was him or me, and that night, it was him.
Archangel Stomp 