You are More Than a Vessel for Bad Pate´, OR, Brain Deconstructed

Full disclosure: You may have done, or are still doing, stupid stuff, but deep down, you are a smart person. Everyone has the potential to build a super collider, but some of us choose to put a paperclip in an electrical outlet.

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Quite a lot has happened since my last post. The short version is I think I had a mental break down/upgrade/low-grade epiphany/self-exorcism kind of thing occur. While my brain reassembled, and writing struggled to come to me, it gave me time to get a more holistic view of what is going on in the world.

Wow. My timing is, and continues to be, impeccable.

This isn't my first trip Being Undone, so I feel a bit seasoned when it comes to falling apart and then coming back together again. It's just my version of picking myself up after falling. Everyone has their version. Some of us are professionals. The point is to Come Back Together [comments about Enlightenment redacted].

But I'm rambling.

I've noticed recently people seem to be overwhelmed (more so than usual). We're bombarded with so much information. Unless you know what is and isn't crap, you're getting it too fast powered by too much emotion to process it properly. Domino Effect- 40. Mob mentality-30. Common sense-15. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

I've begun to actively seek information from sources that do not rely on over stimulating the senses to get attention. I've noticed the subtly of that tactic.

A large chunk of the beauty of what is emerging is that we are figuring things out. We are sorting out for ourselves what we do and do not deem okay, and we are getting there, not really on our own but On Our Own. You see someone touch a hot skillet, you learn that touching a hot skillet may not be a wise choice. You see another way to pick up a hot skillet. Hark! An oven mitt!

The key is education, and it's very simple. Everything has a history to give us context. Most of the time, the history is fascinating. For example, rarely does a war begin out of the blue with the first shot. A series of things led to the first blast.

If you had to place a label on my household, it is liberal [comments on the current political system redacted]. My husband read two biographies, one about Richard Nixon and the other on Barry Goldwater written by Rick Perlstein. My husband read the biographies because he wanted to understand the origins of the modern Republican Party so when he watches/reads/listens to the news he has a better idea of what the hell is going on with a portion of our political system. He's done this with other political, religious, social, etc. topics. My husband is a quiet, technological, hermit genius. He's cool like that.

One of the best things I've ever learned about not believing in something I learned from the 1st true nonconformist I'd ever met. He said (and I'm paraphrasing because it's been at least 15 years), 'I believe if you're not going to believe in something, you should read and understand why you don't believe in something before you choose not to believe in it. The same goes for believing in something.'

Watching all the beauty and horror in the world has helped me have an angle of perspective I didn't have a few weeks ago. Solutions show up in my consciousness. I think the joy and challenge for me, as it has been for other writers, is to take the clay and work it into stories for people who want to have a conversation and let the talk go where the talk goes. Sometimes the truth of reality is too much and to place it in a palatable medium of fiction makes the fact of real life easier to deal with when we're bombarded with "reality" TV [comments on Reality TV redacted].

More thoughts are sure to follow.

Like Somebody dumped Canterbury Tales all over a Modern Map, Part 1, Or, One Mother of an Opening Line

"I lost an arm on my last trip home."

Now that is how to start a story. I can't think of any other sentence that has such impact and meaning, and not be completely understood until The End.

So many questions.

It took a while to read Octavia Butler's Kindred, but I'm glad I did. Many parts of the story were hard to read. I found myself putting down the book, doing something, anything, else, before picking up the book again.

The story has so many layers of conflict, I don't know where to begin. I love the element of surprise, so I tend to be a stickler about spoilers. I'm trying to figure out how to talk about the novel's impact without giving anything away.

You know what's going to happen, but you don't really know.

It's taken me a while to attempt to "verbalize" how important this story is, and how it, in many ways, still resonates now as vibrantly as it did when it was first published.

Okay, I think what really stuck out for me were the relationships among the characters. It was like looking at a panoramic snap shot of ignorance-driven envy and it not being inauthentic. And not inauthentic from a historical point of view, as in, I wasn't there, how would I know, but not being inauthentic from the point of view of people treating each other like crap. It’s a matter of have and have-not. You-have-something-I-want-You-have-something-better-You-are-treated-better.

'Know anyone like this?

I think great stories are universal. The Universality is either very deep at the core or hovers just at the surface. I'm sure someone's already mentioned this. Great stories are the discussions that last long into the night, where there are agreements and agreements to disagree. Great stories are the maps that change from the medieval print of mythical beasts and personified clouds blowing winds toward exotic lands, to the time of Amerigo Vespucci, to any and all versions of Yugoslavia over that last 100 years. The same world. Different views.

I'm sure I'll touch on or around this topic again. But for now, this will have to do.

A Call to Action, Or, The Phone Book Fairies

An interesting thing has occurred for me. Well, a couple of interesting things.

I've heard back from 2 of my beta readers about Tempest Makers. Some of the observations they've made have me thinking, "Huh. I hadn't thought of that." Which, one, is part of the point of having beta readers, and, two, helps me understand the hundreds of plays and stories discussed in classrooms where the author had a certain set of ideas in mind and the reader "found" a few more, new ideas.

I hadn't really thought of Tempest Makers as being "subtle." I just write what comes to my head and sort it all out until it makes sense. Maybe I'm not adding enough emotional meaning to get worked up over it, or maybe I'm tired of freaking out over writing and so I'm effortlessly channeling any anxiety into writing. <shrugs> I dunno.

As I got over the hump of putting Tempest Makers out into the light, more ideas keep knocking at my consciousness, as if they are the people who come to your house to deliver your phone book. You open your door and there sits a phone book [esoteric trivia about ancient customs deleted].

This morning, I woke up to an idea that wasn't words but imagines, and for the most part continues to be images. I run them back through my memory to make sure I remember enough to jot them down in my notebook or draw a picture. When my brain is happy the images and pictures are enough, the mute button is switched off and I can hear some dialog; some of it "coherent," some of it not, yet.

It reminds me of an essay Neil Gaiman wrote about being asked where he gets his ideas. The essay is in Writers Workshop of Science Fiction & Fantasy.

He says, "'I make them up,' I tell [people who ask]. 'Out of my head.'" He explains, "I don't know myself where the ideas come from, what makes them come, or whether one day they'll stop."

And you know, I think that makes absolute sense. I think if you have a spark of an idea, for me, it is the idea of Justice, and with a little bit of "glue and construction paper," and not stress over creating "something", your brain will have the space and power to come up with some pretty creative stuff.

I think the moral of this story is don't rush it. Have patience. A phone book will show up on your doorstep soon enough.

Physiology, or, This is more than 3-times-the-charm, or, I'm over this crap

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but my main day job is retail, so picture a basic retail shopping center.

I was at work, walking to the rental car (long story short, southerners don't know how to drive in snow) to sit in quiet during my break, when I heard tires screech and a thud, I turned in the direction of the sound and saw a car bounce back from hitting the curve as it turned into the lane I was walking.

I thought to myself, "I've clipped curves like that before." I felt embarrassed for the driver. As I began to turn back I noticed the car speed up as it headed for some cars.

"That's weird. They're not slowing down-- oh god, they're not slowing down."

If you've never seen or been a part of a car accident, please believe me, everything slows down the way you've always been told it does.

The crash had a plastic popping sound and not really metal crunching. Parts flew everywhere. (In the  moment I don't know why I cared and tried to mentally process why it didn't sound like it was supposed to sound. Whatever that means.)

I'm running to the crashed car. I feel like my legs are in thick weighted boots. I'm walking through the thickest air ever created. The phone is in my hand is a brick (I can't even process it as MY phone). It takes an eternity to push 4 buttons.

I approach the car. Half of the front of the car has merged with the car it hit. For a minute the only things that exist are me and this smoking car. I come closer and in the window from the smoke a hand appears. My primal brain says, "Car explode." A firm voice in another part of my head says, "Open the door." As I reach out to the handle, primal brain says, "door hot," another part of my brain asks, "door locked?" The door handle is cool plastic and the door swings open smoothly. The lady is sitting in the driver's seat. She looks like she's about to fall asleep. She mumbles something about the car skidding.

I'm on the phone with the emergency dispatcher. I tell the driver not to move. I tell a man who's approached the car, "Be careful. It looks like coolant on the ground." (God, there's a lot of coolant. Coolant's pink, right?)

The driver is saying her leg hurts. I'm talking like I have lead on my tongue, the dispatcher is telling me to calm down. I'm answering her questions. I give what I think is the correct address (I'm better with landmarks. I give landmarks. The local police know where we are.), No, I don't know a pole number, we're in a parking lot (what the hell?).

I'm telling the driver not to move again, and at some point reach into her car and put the car in park (Wow, what an unusual gear box). Primal brain stopped talking. The "smoke" was apparently the chemical reaction from the air bag and quickly dissipated when someone opened the passenger door. Another lady brings a blanket or something for the driver. I'm pacing, completing the call with the dispatcher and waiting for the police. (I feel like I want to cry, but not a good time to cry. The driver needs help. No time to cry. Important stuff first. Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Deeeep breaths. This lady needs help. Help this lady. Help. Her. First.)

As time sped up to normal, the total damage was the driver's car, plus 3 other automobiles, including a minivan that was parallel to the store but ended up facing the store by the time the owner emerged to discover the damage. It was at the tail-end of the lunch rush and the weather forecast was calling for a good chance of bad weather. By the smallest probability I was the only one walking on the far end of the lane. I consider myself an armchair anecdotal statistician. The Vegas odds of a pedestrian not getting hit would have been obscene.

Later, a few employees came up to me and commended me on stepping up the way I did. I wanted to tell them, "That is the slowest I've ever moved in my life," but felt uuber weepy, and just smiled. I received a very grounding hug (Still didn't have time to be super weepy. I was at work. Had to work. Work.)

It occurred to me, or at least has occurred to me now, the people who run into fires and jump into raging rivers often comment about not feeling like they did anything extraordinary, probably because they too felt like they're moving slow as a snail and it’s a miracle they were able to do what they did.

I get it.  I don't think I did anything anyone else wouldn't do, but I get it.

So my point for telling the story is that, one, I needed to tell it. It's cathartic. Two, later, when I was processing what happened and what I was feeling (I'm an analytical empath.), it occurred to me the feeling of fear that the car might blow up and being in survivor-helper mode did not feel as the terror of writing, or, more specifically, as submitting a story for publication.

Because health scares, an emergency water ascent, and surviving my twenties weren't enough.

Aren't I a funny little human.

So now, after I've processed as much as I could to FINALLY cry, the demon sitting in the corner, the one who slipped all those subtle notes of "You can't be, do, or have_________ because of __________." just sits there, arms crossed, looking sullen because it knows I know the only way to break the cycle is to keep walking through hell. To get use to the heat. To realize it is bearable. It's not that hot. To think of it as warm (I'm a SOUTHERNER, for Pete's sake. Heat is our THING. We OWN it. It's our JAM!) People who support me will hand me glasses of water (Ice cold water with pellet ice in a pint glass is the awesomest, bestest, greatest thing and is worthy of horrible grammar.) You just have to say, "Hey, man. It's hot and I'm thirsty. Can you hook me with up with some water."

Easy peasy.