Lakers and Emil

     Dreamt I caught two lake trout last night.  Both were decent sized fish but lost a really big one when my line snapped.  I was in a hurry to show everyone the big trout and was trying to muscle it in.  Put too much pressure on the line.  My fault.  On the upside I did find where the fish were in the lake and drew a map for others to use.
     I figure the dream had to do with Uncle Emil and my trying to force a story out of him when he wasn't ready.  Called it 'Duel in the Boat.'  There was no spark in the tale.  All I was doing was putting words on a page instead of waiting for the old guy to tell me something on his own.  When he's ready he'll pop an idea into my head.  That's it.  Once the first few words hit the page, he tells me the rest.  Sometimes it comes out as fast as I can type, at others, in dribs and drabs.
     Simply put, I wiped it out.  No loss.  It sucked.  Should have waited.
   

What to Do, What to Do?

     I'm chicken.  Wrote this short novel in my uncleemiltales.blogspot.com blog about a fictitious fishing trip my Uncle Emil and I took to Manitoba back in 1961.  Not so much an adult novel as it has boys, or girls, in their tweener years in mind.  The me in the story who's also the narrator is a young fourteen.  So figure that as being the target group.  I'd like to move it from the pages of the blog onto those of an actual book.  Not many copies, perhaps a dozen or so.  Give one to each of my grandkids, a couple to the Pope, maybe one to Vladimir Putin.
     My son is a designer of some note and also a fair illustrator in an ink, line drawing sense.  If I could twist his arm for a few illustrations it'd sure perk the book up.  I might also draw a few maps to go with the pages.
     But it's hard for me to begin the printing process.  The book should have the look of something by Sigurd Olson or John Gierach.  Not that it's in their league but the classic look of their essays appeals to me.  To set mine apart, my son's illustrations could reflect the humor of the tale by adding a slight cartoon edge.
     Yeah, yeah, it all sounds so easy but at least for me it's not.

The Wanderer

      Lois and I took my grandson Matthew to the mall today.  Sounds pretty dull but Matt had a great time.  The trip was part of his fourth birthday present.  We took the light rail to the mall.  Yeah, riding the train was a big deal.  Don't know why little boys seem to get off on the idea of rail travel.  I don't think there's any connection to the mystique of trains, you know, that far off wail of the trains whistle at night singing to a young man of freedom.  Nope, think more on the lines of Thomas the Train and all of the stiff-upper-lipness that drags in.
     So he enjoyed the ride both on the train and the ones in Nickelodeon Universe.  Also had fun in Lego Land.  Good trip indeed.
     While on the train we were watched by an older man of color.  We knew it and didn't mind.  Matt's a happy, expressive kid.  Fun to watch.  While getting off at the mall the man approached me and we talked. He asked and I said my grandson's name was Matt.  He also asked my name and I his, "Ishmael."  The wanderer.  He then said he was from Norway.  Took him three tries to get me to understand.  Sometimes my mind has a hard time understanding a word when it seems to make no sense.  Finally the light bulb lit and I replied, "Funny, you don't look Norwegian." At the same moment images were flashing through my mind of how the world is changing; people, plants and animals far from their place of ancestry.  The man's name sure was appropriate.  Maybe born in the middle east or east Africa, lived in Norway and now in the United States.  The wanderer for sure.

Moment of Truth

     It happened at Menards in the checkout line.  Probably due to a misunderstanding a man butted in front of me.  On the other hand he might have just been an asshole.  It sure took me by surprise.  Hell, this is Minnesota, people just don't do those kind of things.  My knee jerk reaction was to call the guy on what he'd done.  Apparently that pissed him off and he gave me the bad boy stare like he was in a bar and looking for a fight.  Then followed it up with "I'm not retired like you and don't have all day."
     That stopped me cold.  It is true, I am retired.  He was close to my age, maybe five to ten years younger, had a beard and long hair.  By then all kinds of bells were going off in my mind.  Things like, no doubt about it I'm retired and out of the loop.  I've become like those bird house building putzers I never wanted to turn into.
     He, on the other hand, looked like men I've known who've had their problems with drugs or liquor.  Never had a steady job but had been handymanning his way through life.  Too young to have been in Vietnam.  Had no retirement in his future.  Didn't have any money saved.  Maybe an ex-wife somewhere.  In short, one of those men who fell through the cracks but not so far as the gutter.  And he was aware of it and that was part of his anger.  Maybe I was wrong but that's what went through my head.  In short, his words hit me hard and I had nothing to say.
     My mind works that way.  A couple of things click and there's a story being played in my brain.  Any ambition and I'd have been another John Updike.  Probably not but that's my story for the moment.

Depth

     After reading King's book on writing I pulled up the Kirkus Review website.  To me Kirkus has proved to be a reliable standard.  If they give a book a starred review I figure the pages might be worth checking out.  Doesn't mean I'll like what's written but I figure the book might have some meat on its bones.  Why Kirkus?  Sounds reputable to me.

     Holy moley.  Turned out half of King's novels had starred reviews.  Was I missing something?  So I read the reviews and found one, 'Hearts in Atlantis', that sound up my alley.  Took it out of the library and am reading it along with another novel, 'Regeneration', by Pat Barker who was on a list of books King had read.

     In short, 'Atlantis' is a page turner.  Smokes along, holds my interest and could be read anywhere.  'Regeneration' requires a quiet space and attention.  Every so often strikes a chord, gets me to stop and think about what I've read.  

     King is a story teller of the first rate, no doubt about it.  But two hundred pages into 'Atlantis' he has yet to stop me, get me to stare off into the distance and think about what I've read.  Doesn't mean he won't and doesn't mean his tales don't function without depth.  Could be he takes a meaningful thought, digs it out and spreads it into a story like peanut butter on whole wheat.

     My original intent was to say Stephen King's tale simply floated along on the surface.  But that may be blindness on my part.  Could be some authors take depth and bring it to the surface for the reader to see.  And some, like Barker, make you plunge in every so often to check out what's below the surface on your own.

     Another of King's points is that the author is only half of the connection, the reader the other.  The author paints the outline, the reader fills in the personal detail.  I like that.  And it gets me thinking about my role as reader.  Maybe King seems easy to follow but in truth he's difficult and I'm not equal to the work of finding the depth.  Too big to see?  Forest and trees?

     Gotta think about that.

     

Waitin' for It

     A month ago I read Stephen King's book on writing.  Not something I'd do under nearly any circumstance but it was a half buck paperback at a library sale that I intended to read someday.  Maybe. Someday came quick, maybe too quick.
     I haven't read Stephen King.  Not a word.  But a couple of his novels did make good movies. 'The Shining', 'Stand By Me', 'The Green Mile'.  But me read his novels?  Not happening.  Way too popular for my tastes.  But that's my problem.  I figure if it's popular it can't be good.  Short and sweet and not necessarily right.
     So there it sat on the shelf.  Non-fiction.  Couldn't be all that popular, might even be worth reading.  But I had my doubts.
     During the time King came to visit I was reading "The Best and the Brightest' by David Halberstam.  A tome about the Kennedy and Johnson administrations during the early days of Vietnam.  I'd done some time as a grunt in the Mekong Delta and figured Halberstam's history to be the be all, end all of why we were there.  It was.  And told the story in no less than a half million words of fine print.  It were a struggle of endless detail.  But I was up to it every evening, at least till my eyes went blurry.  I needed something lighter with larger print to break up the Halberstam.  Some sherbet to clear the palate.
     And over there, on the shelf, sat Mr. King.  I took him down.  Placed his book on the table and looked at it from five angles.  Hefted it.  Woulda even smelled it but being a left over, hand-me-down from God knows where, there was no appeal.  I have my standards you know.  Finally hoisted the worn pages and gave it a look-see.
     On the back the publisher claimed it was a best seller by the bestest selling author on the whole damned planet.  Damn.  Temptation and sin.
     In short, I succumbed and read it.  And enjoyed it cover to cover.
     At the time of reading I was most of the way through writing a convoluted tale about me and my fictitious Uncle Emil.  Writing it was pure enjoyment.  A hoot.  Started at a railway station in Alexandria, Minnesota and the two of us were going fishing somewhere.  And that's how it sat for more than a half year.  Goin' fishing, somewhere.
     Finally I picked it up again.  Put the two of them on the road in Emil's '56 Chevy Nomad wagon.  And off they went.  Each day they told me what they wanted to do and what was going to happen.  Sometimes it just came out of my fingertips as I sat at the keyboard.  I was both telling the story and hearing it at the same time.
     Where do ideas come from?  I have no idea.  Can't say I ever had one on my own.  Seems to me my brain is a hole in the universe that stuff passes through from somewhere else.  I'll leave it at that.
     I read the King book.  The first half was autobiographical.  The second on writing.
     So what did I learn?  King had his problems, tragedies and successes.  I found myself rooting for the guy who just happens to be my age.
     And learned his stories came from the same place as mine.  My one and his many dozens.  He took his characters, put them in a situation, and they told him what they wanted to do.
     Also, when he wrote a story, King wrote it in one shot.  Just fired it out till it was done.  Two thousand words a day.  The rough draft that is.  Then walked away and let it age for a month before going back to work on it. Kinda like a grizzly bear with a kill.  His rule of thumb on the rewrite was to reduce the rough draft by ten percent.  Smooth it out, clean it up.
     That's where I sit at the moment, waitin' for the month to go by and knowing that the story I began  had characters who in the beginning were much different than the ones coming home at the end.  Need to resolve that and maybe go deeper into them.  Don't know but I'll find out.
   
   

The Cabin

     Consternation.  It's so much easier to not change directions.  Life on a straight line till it peters out.  One day the idea of selling the cabin seems wonderful.  Close that door with a thank you, it's been wonderful and move on.  See what new lies down the road.  Other days it feels a terror. A 'why in the world would I want to do that?'.   Hell, some of my blood is in the wood.  Thousands of hours have been spent sawing, hammering and filling the space.  There's a lot of love within those walls.
     Truth is, it was my baby.  My family was dragged along for the ride.  Kind of like our first visit to California back in the early '90s.  I got this bee in my bonnet (an appropriate phrase) to see the concrete stairway where Laurel and Hardy's "The Music Box' was filmed. Their only academy award winner and a classic if you like that kind of thing.
     It took us the better part of an afternoon finding the location.  A car full of grumbling in the Silver Lake district of LA.  Once there we found a torn up hillside of rubble.  It was gone as a stairway but remained as piles of chunked concrete and dirt.  No California gold to be seen.  You could hear the air come out of my sails all the way to Dodger Stadium.  Pssssssssss.
     Fortunately my sharp thirteen year old daughter said, "Why don't you grab a chunk, Dad?" And I did. Called it my piece of the Berlin Wall of comedy.
     The point is, it was my quest and I was dragging along three others who were way less enthusiastic.  And that was only for a single afternoon, not years.
     These days it's pretty much me and me alone who travels north to the cabin on Deadman Lake.  There are those who won't be dragged and those who would but can't.  The few who do come up are exactly that, few.
     Perhaps it's time for a new me.  But it ain't easy.

Noontime in Sioux Falls

     Where shall I go from here?  The question that drives a lifetime or a civilization.  Always there up front or hiding in the background.  It refuses to go away even though a person answers the question every day.  And that's where I sit at the moment with a blank page in front of me.
     'Ripening' was chosen as title for this series of thoughts and reflects an idea which has grown on me over the years. In short, none of us is done growing up till we're dead.  Not done till we've evolved into other things.  Maybe on all levels, seen and unseen.  Ain't that highfalutin'?  But it's how I feel at the moment.  And it doesn't mean we're always changing for the better.  A dark red apple tastes better to me than a brown one puckering down from a bare branch in early April.  But if we're lucky we end up as brown ones before we fall off the tree.  Not a perfect metaphor, has its holes but it's hopefully not far off the mark.
     While I'm on the subject, the large reflects the small and vice versa.  Back in the '60s that was dope talking.  But it tends to be true.  By tends I mean there are always exceptions.  No rules just general tendencies (except maybe the grim reaper as in 'This too shall end').  Perhaps that's it.  Everything graspable comes to an end.  The only exception is the infinite unknown and unknowable.  Yeah, I like the sound of that.  So Old Testament and Taoist all rolled into one.
     But that's not what I want to write about.  Unless it works out that way now and then.  Sometimes I'll write about my feet and why people who know me won't touch that subject.  Or maybe my decades on the job.  Or how the garden is going.  Maybe something I saw in passing as I crept by on a forestry road up north.  Truly I have no great plan.  What'll be will be.