Butterfly and Moon

You know those shots you wish you'd snapped with your camera? The unexpected happening in your everyday. The strange. The wonderful. But maybe it happens too quickly. You figure it wouldn't have turned out. Or tell yourself some other reason, which stops you even trying. I do that, all the time.

Not this time, though. I saw a little passing something on my walk home after staring a while at my old brown river. Butterfly and the moon. I glimpsed the little life fluttering past the edge of my eye, high enough there was sun and blue around him. And the crescent moon up there.

I've got pretty good reflexes. Gamer's reflexes, I'll call 'em. I swung round the camera. Took the shot. Really from the hip. Because it'd be gone in another blink. Naturally, it's not in focus. But then I wasn't after poster perfect.

Owed to Spring

Chucked out three versions I might've blogged here before this fourth.

First was too spiky. It's the end of another workweek. I haven't felt like bloggin' in...forever. Spiky wasn't a surprise.

Second was too purply. Too poetical. Edging over the knife-edge brim toward the precipice o' bottomless artistickal obscurity and black turtle-neckedness. I happen to know I'm quite unexpectedly sexy in black, but holding the requisite pensive expression only makes me look constipated, really.

Third was too much about the writing. About Last Joe, and me merrily plotting away just about all of it since NaNoWriMo. But me feeling good about it being Friday and I'd snapped a buncha cherry blossom pics was no good reason to go so far off topic.

Really, this is only about cherry coming into bloom along certain warmer sides of some Vancouver streets. And I've survived another winter to see the stuff.

Padding for Gold

I had been feeling slightly less cheery. About the Job-versus-Me word count exercise. Over these past couple weeks I'd noticed two issues.

Firstly. Every day, when I knew I'd written more for me than for the job, and knew I'd beaten the workday count, I slacked off in the evenings, usually didn't scribble much more. I'd mosey over my notes for Joe. Or that NaNo outline. Like I was whiling away my afterhours at the mall, window shopping.

I don't need phud after my name (um...Ph.D) to know where my head was at. Atop my shoulders where it customarily bobbles, Head, and I, of one mind, oh'yes, had decided we had done enough. There were numbers to prove it.

No matter. That's no huge problemo. Slacking will go when a deadline nears.

The second issue. I didn't like the feeling a lot of the scribbling wasn't much different from padding.

I was scribbling about anything and everything. The thoughts of the moment. Even the I'm tapping out words to be tapping down words starter, with variations, and goin' on from there. For however long the words kept coming.

And the words kept coming. A lot of the scribblings resemble journal entries. Fine. I'm glad the moments have been recorded. I might learn something from them someday. I also jotted down bits and stretches of stuff that will make fiction. Thrilling wee scenes that materialized in the space after breakfast (possibly digestion-related).

So, bring on the padding, I say. There's gold in them thar...words.

Round 1...Goes to Me!

I did it. After last weekend's promise to myself that I would this whole workweek just over write more for me than for the day job, I did it.

It wasn't at all difficult to do. Starting during breakfast every morning, in the hour before heading out the door to work, I scribbled down whatever I was currently mulling over. Whatever of the night's dreams still lingered behind my eyes. Story adds or maybes or dialogue-bits. The workday to-do list (or wish-to-do list). I wrote down anything and everything I could think on.

I call these 'scribblers'. I do these in e-form mostly, in a PC, or laptop, whichever's handy. I'm saving trees, and light-bulbs, is how I'm seeing it. My scribblers should probably properly be called tappings, or some such. Um. No. Scribbler accurately describes what it's supposed to be: just some non-paper place for recording...whatever, quickly, and edit-optional. It doesn't haveta be pretty.

My breakfast count averaged a few hundred words, every morning this past week. That put a spring into my step. I felt miles ahead, by at least a few hundred words, of anything the workday might have waiting for me.

I started a scribbler at work every morn too. An email draft, actually. I added to it through the day. So I only stretched my lead on whatever the work day dropped before me. I felt I could clear every hurdle. My day-end counts showed the proof.

I won't bore you with the numbers. Most folks don't swoon over spreadsheets, or go potty over pie-charts, or gaga over graphs, no matter how nice the colours. But my daily wins put a grin on my face, daily. Or nightly, yeah.

One funny observation: I'm remembering more of each night's dreams. Maybe I'm remembering more because I'm showing renewed interest in recording them. I used to fill 3-ring binders with dream records when I was a kid. It was a great writing exercise. I'll keep at it, of course. Wouldn't want to scare them away.

Sunday Fight-the-System Mini-Film-Fest

Spent Sunday mostly watching DVDs. Retreated to my fortress of solitude, here in the oft-unappreciated south of metropolitan Vancouver. Alone with a fistful of fave flicks and my thoughts.

Yes, after washing out some socks, I grabbed a milk tea, and settled in. Sunday afternoon, through evening. Recharged myself for the writing week ahead. I even managed some jottings and spontaneous scribblings during the numerous intermissions this mini-film-fest Sunday.

Sunday's word counts, just for marking them somewhere. Outta-nowhere jottings and spontaneous scribblings: 823 words. Day-job-relateds: zero!

---

Mini-film-fest line-up:

Bladerunner: Man versus the System.

District 9: Mutated man versus the System.

Moon: Being human and fighting the System.

Hair: Hey, Maan, fight the System.

I'm about to roll Tristram Shandy. A little ridiculousness before bedtime. It should keep the upcoming week in perspective.

Words Count

In my ghosting around the triple-w, the worldwide web, I've noticed real writers on their real blogs sometimes display a sidebar daily word counter, to show themselves as well as interested others how they're doing, daily word-count-wise.

I've been wondering how mine would look. One day's worth. So here's a sampling of my writing word counts. Friday's. Because I'm not free time-wise to fulltime work on my many projects I'd be only too happy to work fulltime on, I'm counting in the wide range of writing opportunities Friday presented me: jottings, notings, emails at work, and the grocery list.

Friday morn dream notes: 56 words.

Editing Last Joe, Chapter 7, during breakfast: 116 excised; 48 grafted in; -68 words. Um. Yeah.

Day-job emails: 616 words.

Roughing-out this blog, Friday night: 109 words.

Friday night's grocery list for Saturday morn: 42, including pictograms.

Pictograms? Aye. Instead of, say, Hot Sauce Herring in the 100 gram tin, I'll scribble HOT, and sketch a fish. Pictograms are great. Pictograms and words, together, are like a full-brain wow. Left and right brains handshaking across the corpus callosum. I'm a firm believer even the humble grocery list can, perhaps should, become a full-brain exercise. For warding off urban zombie-ism.

But back to the topic. I wasn't surprised most of my Friday's writing wasn't spent on the make-believe worlds inside my head. I only wish I was thinking about Last Joe, or anything, other than those work emails totaling 616 words, late Friday night.

Cascade Creature...What Cascade creature?

Y'know, I'm going to leave that Cascade creature dead link...dead. The original You-Tube poster unposted the vid, for whatever reason, the reason I'll have a moment's fun here imagining...

Perhaps a visit from Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, thoroughly amiable and disarmingly nice men in black. The You-Tuber would've forgotten their visit, of course...

Or maybe a visit from someone forgettable for ten-thousand green-back reasons, a non-descript nobody, and presenting hush-money from the engineered plastics industry, maybe, could be, why not possibly be, eh?

I'm just tossin' maybes about, it's how I make my own fun where I can.

Cascade Creature

Too too fascinating not to share this...and from work.

The Russians...Are Here

Okay. So it’s a grainy pic, snapped during grey drizzle about noon on about the last day of January. Snapped with the office Nikon CoolPix, which usually sees duty photo-recording work-related stuff that’ll be reported on in fascinating work-related emails to persons-in-charge who reside in exotic locales I might like to vacation in. I’m probably the only one in here inclined to so...broaden the CoolPix’s photographing experiences.

I started to hear...geese. Work is in the vicinity of Vancouver Airport. I won’t be more specific about work, simply because it’s boring. Vancouver Airport, aka YVR, sprawls over a low island dyked off from the surrounding Fraser River estuary and the sea. YVR is on the flyway, not only for migrating humans, let’s just say. I’d heard geese before. It wasn’t remarkable.

I kept working. I heard more geese. Looked up. Saw nothing remarkable out the front windows. Yet more geese honked overhead. I stopped working, dashed for the Nikon CoolPix, because now I could also hear jet airliners, engines spooling on the taxiway and not going anywhere.

It looked like an invasion crossing the grey sky, west to east. Those snow geese aren’t from around here, by the way. They’re Russian.

Mid-January Harvest

I'd like to write. Yeah. Well, I suppose I am, even doing this. Right. Harvesting a few words.

So, okay, I won't whine then.

I'll resist the urge. Y'know, to whine. I will.

And if I really would rather be writing...anything else...any one, or every one, of the gazillion potential projects, or actual projects, currently in mind or merely drifting through...then now's really as good a time as any, isn't it? I am astounding myself that I'm comprehending the logic in this, and on a Saturday. There's only so much time available in the average weekend, after all.



Hmmm. Just doing a little math. If I allow fifteen minutes, say, of contemplation per each one of one gazillion projects, actual or, y'know, merely drifting by, I am going to run out of weekend, to be honest.

Okay. Five minutes per, then. And I'd best get started.

Pre-Triggerin'

I’m tapping away at this just to be writing something.

Long day.

Had an idea fully fleshed this morn and zero opportunity to jot any of it down.
It’s gone, of course. Only fragments of remembering I had it this morning.
ALL the chapter.

I’m not going to jot the bits down here. It’d be too messy. I’m about to go home. I’ll map it out, scribble and draw the bits, branch and-or connect whatever. It’s how I re-construct, too often these nights. It can be a better way to work up plot and all, though. Funny thing is the map will probably trigger other ideas, other maps. That wouldn’t have happened this morning, rushing breakfast, hurrying out the door to work.

Intro...Nat

Introducing...this guy. 'Suppose an introduction is in order. Yes, the guy from this very space in cyberspace last week. The same guy painted high on my imaginary apartment wall, over the framed summer morn in a kayak. Am naming him Nat.

He's a natural guy, y'see, a...nature man. No, Nature Man sounds as if he should be at heroic doings with his spear. Prodding plodding politicians and poking polluters, perhaps. He's just Nat. Nobody's hero. Only an example of humankind I'd like to re-connect with. The back-to-basics kinda guy, following his true nature. Nat never would sell his days for a pay-cheque. Nat's on the trail of all his dreams. And daydreams.

Nat simply happened, last week. I had prehistoric Lascaux on the brain and could never have rendered an ice-age horse. I could draw Nat. Wanted to, even. Nat was fun, easy. Nat might have been waiting ten thousand years for me to paint him on a computer with a wonky mouse, he happened so effortlessly.

Cannot say the same for the handprint...which isn't there, nope. I couldn't do it right. Spitting mouthfuls of pigment over my hand would've worked just fine for leaving my mark on rock. Not so well on a monitor.

I feel like drawing Nat for a while.

First 100 Words

I like Saturday mornings. Wish every morning was Saturday morning. Unlike those other used-up mornings, Saturday morning is all potential. All is possible. Anything might happen. The first one hundred words, perhaps.

For me, most Saturday morns begin with groceries shopping, the urban human's nod to the ancient need to hunt down dinner. Only I am pushing a shopping cart. And the ground beef is easier prey. Have an inexplicable hankering now to fingerpaint the apartment walls like Lascaux: the hunt for the great ground beef, its one-pound pieces across the freezer case, and my hand print.

Heh, Yes, Saturday morning groceries-gettin'. I've become fond of going the couple of miles east to the Superstore. There's the hunt, already mentioned. Just as useful, because on occasion I write, is the Saturday morning opportunity for people-watching. Useful, for the research. People-watching also is non-fattening, free entertainment.

Saw the expected this morning. People ignoring the mostly vacant parking lot away from the store: the resultant gridlock of too many cars and not enough parking at the store front. And folks chattering away on cell phones as they shopped.

And some really quite personal chatter, y'know. Hey, I don't consider it eavesdropping when someone decides to chatter private matters, in a public place, and loudly enough this weekend writer hungry for research can hear them from the next aisle over. They're lucky I'm discreet.

Did spot one scene. It happened before me like a scene. Like something that might work in sci-fi. The bluetooth flashing ear-bug directing a fit-looking fellow in unnecessarily bright beach shorts and t-shirt along the pasta aisle.

---

It is a nice sunny Saturday out, too. I'd like the beach...

Crosshairs

Sheba's a pan-dimensional pirate, foot to the floor, taking all she can from this shade world, while she remains here. Soul harvester. Loving the swing and swerve of this place. Of the clumsy machine she acquired. Air reeking of sour brimstone. Wailings of the damned.

Her disguise slips but briefly. Glimpsed horns. Nasty grin, all teeth. She isn't concerned. No one ever believes the horror they've seen.

She re-composes her mask, removes her one eye from the flatworlder road, relishes the slow thumping of her heart, and checks new email. The buyer willing to sign, his life, his children's, for the cramped box in the sky.



Okay, so it's only my artistic impression of what the entity perhaps be. Am on vacation, at last, y'see. Needed a free writing exercise.

Earth Hour: My Way

How's this for one way to observe Earth Hour: Go out, watch the stars come out after sunset, and need no light at all?

That was my plan last night. But it was cloudy. Still, it was pleasant, west of Vancouver Airport by the sea. Planes came and went. A heron, like a still life, waited over something in the marsh at Iona. The colour dimmed from the world.

I've got a hand-crank pocket radio: crank the handle, charge the internal battery, great for living off the grid. It has a single LED flashlight, too. I used it to find my way from the marsh back to where I'd parked. No, the flashlight wasn't really necessary. I can see fine in the dark when there's a big bright airport one mile south. The handcrank-powered flashlight was to prove a point.

Windowsill Farming

The harvest's in. Cherry Belle radishes. Tiny Tim cherry tomatoes. From the windowsill. From plastic ice cream buckets recycled for this purpose of windowsill farming, and supermarket potting soil. South-facing window.

Vancouver’s summer 2010 essentially over mid-August: am guessing these all would’ve cooked in the south-facing window, if not for the cooler weather.

Naturally, immediately had to sample a little of this bounty. A taste. Each. The radish: satisfyingly crunchy, then the peppery note which kept building. The tomato: tangy, then slurpingly sweet; even though just a wee tomato I held between thumb and forefinger.

All of this windowsill harvest an experiment I’ve long wanted to do.

Yup...Lookin' at You

Figured if I can't find the time to blog, so I keep telling myself, I should at least stumble over moments enough for adding fave movies to my profile. Added Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt. Also, Fail-Safe. Nevil Shute's On the Beach.

I've always liked movies. Character and story. How it's all worked out at the end; for better, or worse.

Y'see, watching a movie feels like I'm just idling, only filling my head with entertaining sights and sounds. Actually, I'm taking mental notes. Protagonist. Antagonist. Begin. Mid-point crisis. Ohh'maan, however will character-A fix this and close the door on wicked, nasty, opposing B, and end this?

Yup, watchin' a movie's my kinda work.

"I'm takin' m'four-minute break...It's in m'contract"

Am taking a break on Victoria Day Monday. Reacquainting me'self with the bloggin', in this four minutes while the tea in the ol' smirkin' mug spins on the glass tray inside the microwave.

The best kind of break, this. Am home, not at work, because today's a holiday, exactly. And it's me taking a break in my own day full of some of the doings I haven't been able to get to because of that thing named Work.

It really is a four-letter word: Work. It's been using me up and keeping me from writing, from Protag, from clumsy bloggin', from my better nature and sweet dreams, from family, friends, wine, women, and song. Y'know, I might say "Thanks, I've had enough. Keep your w**k." Can't say when. Some day. I might.

Won't have to, of course, if that golden someday ever comes that w**kers of the world have long dreamed of. The Future so bright...and flying cars...there's a scary vision.

Of course, there's also the thought that connects with the scary vision. Someone's got to maintain those flying cars; or maintain the robots that'll keep them flying. So I suppose there will always be someone, some when, staring up and feeling his existence reduced to a four-letter word. Depressing.

Meanwhile, I'll just have my tea now. Return to outlining, and notes. And whatever might come. And not think about tomorrow morning.

Tea's Stewing

I’d like to tap here that a tea’s brewing and I’m just contentedly tapping away at story ideas, etc. Truth is: tea’s stewing in the office microwave – I’m rushing to do something for me before everyone else shows up – and knowing full well it’s now or never.
Have no idea now what to write: only that I want this exercise, and any exercise has got to result in some good. Maybe these choppy sentences will train me to get to the point, for one.

I’ve just excised the whining bit: it poured out of me – solid paragraph in minutes – done, and good it’s gone, believe me.

Can’t really look around in Protag: not from work. Too many eyes in here. Too wiped at the end of the day to write anything sensible there. Kitty’s back from America – and inspired again to work beneath Paddington Station. Elo: gotta Thank her for her opening my eyes about my sloppy writing. Stella: Vampire Heart – I’m caught up on and thoroughly enjoying.

Just remembered, good. Last night: too tired, I was sure, stared and stared, the page blank. Page stayed blank: good, now I’ve a blank page for tonight.
Last night, staring, idea came that connected with Big Project…1, let’s call it. A tone that’ll run through from start to end, with a complete twist at the end, of course. Scribbled that little nugget on the back of the shopping list in my back pocket. Maybe, some quiet moment today, I’ll play with that.

Musings re Updates Available

Thanks…really, Thanks for the interruptions.
Am referring to all those ‘helpful’ little pop-ups that pop up in the middle of waking the computer at work.
I want the Saturday job done – I want to get on with the Saturday that isn’t job-related.
But first I’m supposed to dally, to hold even these briefest of conversations with these unhelpful guys…

“But you have unused icons on your desktop. Sure, you can trash-can the shortcuts yourself whenever: I’m here now, I can help. Cummon, wouldn’t you really rather wanna maintain pc desktop cleanliness? It’s not going anywhere, y’know: the mind-numbing work that’s compelled you in, on a Saturday morn, after a workweek long enough already. Cummon, let’s do it together. Desktop maintenance is fun! Here’s another reminder…in case you forgot the one three seconds ago.”

“Beg pardon, Java Update Available Pop-Up here. While you’re at it, how’s about updating Java? I realize you’re prob’ly busy, cleaning up those unused desktop icons and all, however my Java Update should only take another moment of your busy time. And if you really have not got this moment available for updating my Java, how’s about perusing my Update Later options? That’ll take hardly any more of your Saturday, really.”

“SystemAdmin here. Important Notice. Your system password will expire in thirteen days. Would you like to change your password now?”

Yeah...