On becoming fuzzy

I can feel the mental clarity and energy with which I started the day slipping away. I'll be dragging ass soon enough. Fascinating process.

Covering a tragedy

Here's something I stumbled on and which surprises me: the most comprehensive current coverage of the tragic theater shootings in Colorado is not in the NY Times or Denver Post or CNN ... but at Deadline, Hollywood, an online trade website. I'm impressed.

Global Warming's Terrifying New Math | Politics News | Rolling Stone

Global Warming's Terrifying New Math | Politics News | Rolling Stone:

"Three simple numbers that add up to global catastrophe - and that make clear who the real enemy is"

I think we're doomed.

But I think a Romney/Republican victory might help us since instead of gridlock and frustration we will get a series of wrong decisions that may just get great numbers protesting on the streets and raise the heat of the debate, no pun intended, and get the seriousness of this out front and center where it belongs. Of course, if the populace were educated, we'd get an Obama/Democratic victory and with a Democratic congress and a last term, the President may find his balls and do some necessary radical things.

But all this is probably wishful thinking, either way. We're probably simply doomed. Nature wins. Always.

Transitions

I'm really struggling to define a new video project. I want it to be a series of short pieces on my blog. I want it to have narrative continuity and, of course, be interesting TO ME, and therefore to those with my sensibilities (few as they are). But so far, nothing. I expect to come up with something eventually.

I know how I want it to look. I want the narrative to require mobility through the city and area. I want to be able to do most of it alone, only occasionally engaging either an actor or a character on the street. I'd love for Sketch to play a major role. It might be a mystery. I suppose I am the lead character by default, which is fine. I want a strong but subversive element of social commentary, particularly about issues of aging. It might be a movie within a movie, serialized. It might have the feel of a video diary. I suspect there may be a mystery to solve at the head of the narrative.

I'll do some experimenting. The greatest challenge, perhaps, is getting the right look. The visual element. I have an idea for a 2-camera shoot through much of it. Do I get H involved? She's a character, to be sure.

Well, brooding is good for the soul. So I continue to brood about this. I bought a new camera, unable to resist a sale (and turning two others on to it), so now I am a three camera guy, and H has a fourth.

But I won't start until I am satisfied with the concept and structure. And I am a long ways from either, or so it seems to me at the moment. But this strikes me as the project to do, rather than writing something. My goddamn archive is large enough with writing! Words, words, words. I want to do something smaller, visual, that grows. I want to do something where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

And boy, do I have a lot of energy this morning! I suppose the crash will come about 9 or 10 this morning.

Sales v. reviews

I read a publishing blog daily and feel like I'm up on trends in the industry. And I'm again taken by how different the publishing universe is today than when I began, at least for "serious" writers. (Or are there any serious writers left?). We never, never talked about sales! We were not aiming to write "best sellers." Our high goals were to publish a story in The New Yorker or Esquire, get published and reviewed in the NY Times or New Yorker and selected as a Best Book of the Year or Best American Short Story (I made all but the last cut, the "Roll of Honor," three times). Sales? I swear, sales never entered the mind. We weren't writing genre fiction, after all. We were trying to write literature. The only possible way to make money at this was to sell the book to LaLaLand. But this had nothing to do with us. Our agents handled all that sort of thing.

You can't find a more different universe than the one today. Fascinating.

In today's universe, in fact, I doubt if I would have aspired to become a writer. Why? There are easier ways to make money, if that is the goal.

---

I should say that I feel great this morning! The first few hours of the day have been pretty good. Then, apparently, the heart starts misfiring and I start dragging ass. Obviously the doctor isn't overly concerned about the timing here, there is no rush to give me my pacemaker. The physical and mechanical aspects of the heart are good, he says. It's just old and not handling electrical charges right. Poor conductivity. That's my understanding, anyway.

H is more stressed out by all this than I am. I'm getting used to dragging ass. It's a little like being high. As long as there is nothing I have to do, I can almost "get into it," a kind of fuzzy surrealistic drag ass world where nothing is in sharp focus.

H leaves for Canada Thursday and definitely wants this settled before then. We'll see.

Read recently on Kindle

The Breaks of the Game by David Halberstam

Bill Walton loved the basketball program at UCLA because it was so tightly disciplined and so meticulously well run, so little left in the hands of chance. By contrast he loved the rest of his college years because they represented the height in personal freedom. He was lionized, but in a very light sophisticated way, and on his terms, not so lionized that he lost his privacy. He loved the informality of the school, the quality of its education, the political excitement that UCLA in the early seventies seemed to be at the center of. Where he wanted discipline in his life there was discipline, and where he wanted freedom there was freedom. He switched early in his career from engineering to history and his grades were excellent.Read more at location 5163

Add a note

In his senior year Walton talked with Wooden about his need to smoke marijuana after a game. He asked for permission to go back to his motel room or his apartment after a big game and smoke. He needed this, he said, to relax. It took him hours to come down from the excitement of competition. Wooden said he was absolutely against it. Walton insisted; he was so tense after a game it was costing him sleep and affecting his readiness for succeeding games. Finally, reluctantly, Wooden had given his permission. All right, he had said, but don’t tell your teammates about it.

 Bring Your Own God: The Spirituality of Woody Guthrie by Rev. Steve Edington, Woody Guthrie

I believe Woody Guthrie struggled with the same question as did Gandhi and Jesus, as cited earlier: “Who is my family?” It likely was a painful struggle for Woody to face this question, however consciously he asked it of himself or not. He felt a mystical link to a greater human family even as he surely knew he was coming up short with the families who needed him the most. He loved deeply while struggling to show his love for those who personally needed it the most. Artistic creativity, more often than not, grows out of, or is a response to, emotional pain. How many of Woody’s wonderful songs and poems grew out of a painful emotional and psychological and spiritual struggle he was having with the contradictions he found within himself?

*

 Woody Guthrie’s vision for America was not bound up in a particular, hard and fast political ideology, be it communism or any other “ism.” The roots of his vision were spiritual. If Woody believed, as one of his songs clearly indicates, that every step one takes is on holy ground, then all human beings who are taking those steps should be meaningful participants in our earth’s essential holiness. Such was Woody’s vision; he left it to others to work out the details—details we’ve yet to complete.

 Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire by Morris Berman

It’s all a catch-22, because as long as the goal of our society is to advance the standard of living, no alternatives to the technological paradigm are possible.Read more at location 1522

Add a note

Humankind’s nightmare of seeing our machines taking control of our world seems on the edge of becoming reality—not in the form of robots…but as an electronically based system of financial transactions.

More about heart

Echocardiogram revealed no additional issues, i.e. not a mechanical problem but a conductivity problem. Still waiting to be scheduled. I hate waiting.

Growing Doubts About Advertising | Common Dreams

Growing Doubts About Advertising | Common Dreams:

Nader on advertising.

Terry Simons on advertising.

I have experience similar to Simons'. My last "traditional job" (9 to 5 etc) was Managing Editor of Oregon Business Magazine. Here the content-ad relationship is more complex because they are one and the same, we report on businesses who are the advertisers. What I hated were the ad salesmen who would come in 15 mins before we were going to press with a half page ad to insert. And the boss made us do it. So we were forever cutting up stories at the last minute to get in more ads.

I was a misfit as a business journalist. We were under-staffed so I wrote a lot of features myself -- interviewing CEOs in downtown high rises in jeans (but wearing a tie) and a full beard. I had a long interview and argument with Phil Knight for our Nike story. I tried to convince him to give some crumbs to the arts. He hated me and told my boss. It was the beginning of "cleaning up my act" but fortunately shortly thereafter I received a fat grant and was able to give notice. I'd already done all the fun work, which was converting a total piece of shit into a respectable state business magazine. Myself and the art director did virtually all the work. We were the only two employees at the time!

Norman Brown on Kindle!

At last Brown's Life Against Death released for Kindle. More coming I hope.

First introduced to this as senior at UCLA ... one of texts in Amer Intellectual History. Loved the course and professor who lectured. Did not like Grad Asst who ran the class most of the time. GA read and graded all work except the final. He didnt like me much. I had a C going into the final.

Then an academic miracle. I got a call from the professor after taking the final. He wanted to see my midterm and term paper ... low grades from GA on them. Prof read and changed grades to A! Amazing. Ends up Id written one of best finals hed ever seen esp on Brown and Life Against Death. I got an A and a generous letter of rec to grad school. GA it turns out hated Brown. He and prof always fighting. Ah academia.

Anyway very exciting to reread after all these years.

p.s. up after a bit of sleep .... a little energy ...

Dragging ass

Energy early a.m. but really dragging ass since mid morn. Get tired texting here on Kindle. Jeez. Come on pacemaker.

When the Army Was Democratic by William Pfaff | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books

When the Army Was Democratic by William Pfaff | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books:

"At a recent event in Aspen, Colorado, General Stanley McChrystal, former commander of the international force in Afghanistan, said that the United States should go back to the draft in order to continue waging its wars. “I think we need a national service,” he said. McChrystal argued that a professional army is unrepresentative of the citizenry, and if a government goes to war, “everybody [should have] skin in the game…every city, every town, needs to be at risk.”"

A draft also provides for a more energized peace movement. Today it's too easy to look the other way because there's no personal stake in war.

Death with dignity

I really would like to see this law challenged ... presently to use must have terminal illness six mos to live ... what defines terminal illness is area to challenge ... how about being ready to go ... terminal disinterest in hanging around ... in other words challenge accepted morality of quanity over quality of life ... in fact if one has had a decent life and is a certain age and clearly quality now can only diminish ... and this person is ready to pass it is inhumane to make them wait for a quote terminal illness unquote ... Ive thought of challenging law myself but cant find a lawyer who agrees with me ... cant find non lawyers ha ha ... left to writing about it instead but really needs a court case and arguments ... de facto forcing messier more painful options.

Death of a Natural Man (poem)

My heart is old

My heart is tired

My heart is dying

And no wonder!

24/7 through 7 decades

pumping without stop

or hesitation

through bodily abuses

booze and women

not enough sleep

not enough nutrients

taken for granted

the engine that

drives it all

taken for granted

If I were my heart

I'd be tired too

and maybe a

little pissed

If my heart had

stopped in my sleep

saying screw you!

I would have understood

but it didn't, it

pumped as best

it could, misfiring

out of sync

and I dragged ass

before dragging myself

to a doctor

who gave me the lowdown

on this miracle machine

my heart

which in old age

needs a little help

from high tech

unless I want to

drag on like

a car on half cylinders

but a tiny wondrous

coin-shaped pacemaker

should do the trick

says the doc

and I say

I never intended to

become a bionic man

but I do feel sorry

for my old tired heart

I want to help

since this dying heart

for reasons known

only to itself

decided not to

cash in and

call it a day

which is what

I would've done

--Charles Deemer

Theodore Bikel, Songs of a Russian Gypsy

Used to sing this in a group in LA.

Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins

Three doowop classics

The Flamingos


The Moonglows


The Five Satins

The Killer

The London sessions, 1983

Last days of a natural man

Feeling really good this morning. But taking it easy, waiting for the heart surgery to be scheduled.

Awoke with opening of poem in my head, "Death of a Natural Man," hmm, wonder where that came from. May fiddle with it today and see if it goes anywhere.

A long neglected household chore to do: clean out my closet and get rid of stuff I no longer wear. A perfect day for it.

We want to get this heart business done before H leaves on her next trip, to Canada end of next week.

Man, the Olympics are close. We have a woman going for her third gold here in town, a fencer. I love all the minor sports more than things like basketball. I doubt if I'll even watch a basketball game, certainly not if rowing or fencing or table tennis is on! I get no kick out of watching amateur millionaires. I want to see some of our Oregon distance runners do well.

As a bionic man, ha ha, I hope I discover a return to the incredible energy of earlier years, or some approximation thereof. I'd love to find a second wind in the creative life.

I bought a Sony HD camcorder on sale,couldn't turn down the price, and it should come this week. Now I have to figure out what to do with it. I now have 3 mini cams. I did a lot of 2 camera shots in Farewell Wake and the Shaw documentary. Now I can do 3 camera shots ha ha.

I'd like to find a voice, or point of view, or angle, to do a series of short videos for my blog, something that would keep my interest. Been looking for this without luck for a couple years. Maybe there's no answer.

Haven't heard from actor reading the novel since he said he was halfway through and liking it.  No rush.

I hope I hear from the hospital today to schedule and get this show on the road.

Update Lite

Exhausting day at hospital ... yep tis heart ... upper lower chambers firing out of sync ... if out feel bad if in feel ok ... can let it ride slowly get worse ... or pacemaker to fix it ... chose latter ... waiting for surgery appt ... bionic man

Blog scammers

Here's how scammers have learned how to infiltrate blogs:

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Health report #1": 

What's up, just wanted to say, I liked this post. It was funny. Keep on posting!
My web site:

 They leave generic comments with a link to a website that sells something, usually. Ironic, though, that the comment is on my health report and is "funny"! Once these started, I began to moderate the comments, publishing only legitimate ones, but I had to share this. It did make me laugh.