Day Ten and the Quiet Part, Out Loud

Morning Journal

Friday 11/10/23

08:26

After this journal entry, I’m gonna consume 400mg of Advil and 500mg of Tylenol, then watch the 1956 Kaiju classic, Rodan (Japanese language original with English subtitles), while contemplating today’s blog post about the depth of introspection that comes when one blogs for 30 days straight, as those days get shorter, and darker, and colder, and how this can’t really be good for humans to force themselves through; the writing, OR the reading.  Because, don’t we already have enough trauma in our everyday lives, without forcing even more of it down on top of us by dredging it up from the swamp that is beneath us, or some other shit-based reason to do it? 

Yeah, “Day Ten and the Quiet Part, Out Loud”.  I like that title.

Hopefully, this shit writes itself.

As it has been, with each passing year, it feels like, for me… and I can only speak for me… that it gets harder and harder, year to year, to complete the task of NaBloPoMoIng.  I, like any number of other bloggers, whether blogging is their principal platform of creative expression or not, run right into genuine reasons for slamming on the brakes during a November blog run.  Or even, as has been the case a few times since my first November back in 2015, just not starting at all.

Remember, there are no small reasons for missing blog seasons.

Yesterday, I wrote about how, instead of making National Blog Posting Month the raison d’ệtre for my November writing, and by default, the ONLY reason I had to write consistently all year long, that this year, I finally had other reasons.  Other, long-term reasons, to make the discipline of writing everyday an actionable part of my life, starting now, and continuing forward into 2024 and beyond. 

And that’s where I think I’m headed in all this talk about trauma, and heaping even more trauma on top of it.  How it’s okay, even preferable, to allow a little hurt in, now, while we may have just a little bit more motivation for us to sit and squirm, with the blank screen lighting up our early mornings, or late nights.  Because writing all the way through November could lead us into things we’ve always wished we would do, but never got around to, what with all the emphasis on these 30 days a year, and not the long-term pleasure that might end up coming our way… after.

And with that, here’s my encouragement, to make it all the way through the end of November, not missing a day.  And here also is my encouragement, to not.  It’s all up to you, and all up to why you wanted to do this challenge in the first place, because whichever way, or whatever combination it is, November Blog Month is here for you, and not the other way around. 

So, be encouraged, or encourage others, or any combination you feel good with, because this month is for you, in any way that you come away from it feeling better about the experience, and in whatever form that takes.

Talk to you tomorrow.

Day Nine and the Lower, Slower Fire

I wish I knew how they do it.

Every day without fail, line becomes page, becomes chapter, becomes book.  Day after day, becomes year after year.  Accomplishment becomes a lifetime of work, becomes legacy.  I sit at a keyboard for the same 30 consecutive days a year, and every year I discover, just like every other year, that whoever this is that I just wrote about, it’s NOT me.

And I still don’t know why.

Do I wish, somehow, that years and years ago, something would’ve taken a different turn, gone another direction, buried itself in the ground somewhere and reemerged, seventeen years later like a noisy cicada, as a different me?  Yep, you betcha. 

Every year without fail, I fail.

And every year, I try, all over again.

Yet this year, my reasons are cooking over a fire, lower and slower than ever before.  I no longer have dreams, I have plans.  But in the November meantime, I am still writing, still growing, and strengthening the muscles that I need to grow and strengthen for making the plans happen… next year. 

That’s not exactly calling my shot, but it’s not NOT.

And for anyone who is writing through November or even those who are participating by reading, your presence here is so very welcome.  Especially to me.  Let’s keep going, together.

Talk to you tomorrow.

Day Eight and the Sad Typo Club

Yesterday, being the Tuesday after the Monday that followed the Sunday that brought back another vastly under-appreciated time change, I felt the usual, annual letdown that tends to hit, one week into November Blog Month.  So with that, yesterday I decided to pull something out of the unreleased archives file.  A poem, already written, waiting its turn for publication, or maybe even already submitted for publication and rejected, because, for a poet, to be rejected is just any day that ends in, well… D-A-Y.

Laptop open, a couple of clicks later, and I’m looking at specific poems written after my move to New York, between the summer of ’22 and the summer of ’23.  And with a keen eye, sharpened by months of doing other things, I saw clearly, for the first time, exactly why, if I was in charge of reviewing submissions for publication, my writing was rejected.

TYPOS.

I may not understand every nuance of the word “irony”, but I sure as hell know how to type it WITHOUT spellcheck.

(checks spelling)

Yeah, irony.

Also yesterday, two writers I know well, actual friends, both dealt with the subject of TYPOS, one in an Instagram Story, the other in a post on Substack.  Each bemoaning, and rightly so, the accidental OOPS that happens when writers, or in their cases, EDITORS of writers, get bitten by that pesky typo bug.  One of them even had a typo in their post about typos!

I smiled, I laughed, I even pointed out the typo for the one… because I too have been an editor, and then got on with the day’s business of dragging a poem of mine into the light of day for others to read and maybe enjoy.  Until I realized that even in mine, there were typos everywhere. 

So, a few deep breaths and another cup of afternoon coffee later, I spent an hour editing a less-than-forty word poem into something that had a heart, a soul, and no nasty punctuation or spelling errors.

That I know of.

And I hope you liked that one, the way I hope you tolerate this one.  Also, I hope that The Sad Typo Club has taught me what I need to know for the future.  For the next three weeks of blogging, and anything else that wants to call itself “writing” in my foreseeable future. 

A future that’s not been written.

Yet.

Day Seven and the Flags at Half-Staff

Half-Staff

.

The next thing would be to outlaw flags at

half-staff.  That is, if we’re not going to

outlaw their cause.

Easier to do the one, not the other, when

remembering the names of the dead is hard.

Day Six and the Book Title

It’s not just the working title of my next, and as I tell myself, last book. The phrase, almost, not quite, soon enough, could mean a lot of things, to me, to you, to just about anybody.  For today, for right this minute, as I write this post, what it means to me is, I’m very close to no longer giving a fuck. 

Almost.

The way it feels today, for right this minute, as I write this post, is, my skin is not quite thick enough to keep what’s tender inside of me, safe.

Not quite.

I love me some fiction.  The world-building kind.  But not the magnum opus, Stephen King, Black Tower kind.  Not the Bruce Wayne, Gotham TV show, binge all five seasons during the dark days of the spring of 2020 kind.  And not the I have an outline of some dystopian mega-novel that is burning a hole in my gut just trying to get out kind, either.  More like the Rod Serling kind.  More like the Richard Matheson kind.  Shit, more like the ten-page short-story that any kid in a twenty-dollar writing workshop could scribble out in the sixty-minute open writing portion of an afternoon, following the complimentary coffee and Danish, after a cold read of the syllabus, put together by someone with an A.A. degree in General Studies from an online community college.

Soon enough.

Almost, not quite, soon enough, I won’t have the nerve endings left to feel the sting of an opinion, different than my own.  About the world, about my work, about what others think about the way I write, hell, about who does or doesn’t wish me a happy birthday on Facebook, because who even uses Facebook, anymore.  I think that’s what I’ve been waiting for, before I begin doing what I’ve always had an idea was that ONE THING I was forever supposed to do, for which I have been waiting, until.

No more teases for now.  I’ll let everyone know when the book drops, sometime next year.  And, should that ONE THING happen like I want, I will be very loud about that, too.

Talk to you tomorrow.

Day Four and the Reminder Notice

Last week, got called a

Nazi for endorsing peace

by means other than genocide.

–

Yep, that’s the poem. 

Closer to home, in case you forgot, just 365 days from tomorrow, there’s a damn good chance that an election will be won by a candidate who actually hates Jews, Muslims, women, queer folk, Black folk, Asians, Spanish speakers, Democrats, all news outlets that call candidates out on their bullshit, defense attorneys, prosecuting attorneys, incarcerated people, the list goes on. 

I mean, the only people the candidate doesn’t hate are people stupid enough to vote for him.

So, while our limited attention is elsewhere, consider this a reminder notice. I’m not going to tell you who to vote for.

Just don’t vote for a Nazi.

Talk to you tomorrow.

Day Three and the Love Poem

Love Poem

Is a love poem always about love? Yes always,
although sometimes, a love poem is about
baseball, or a dog, or where you were raised,
even if you couldn’t wait to get out of
where you were raised, before you knew the
first thing about love, which you probably only
learned from baseball, or a dog.

I learned that love can make you angry when things
don’t go your way, like when the Dodgers lose
to the Yankees, from something as out of your
control as Reggie Jackson’s right hip.

I learned that love can make you cry when the
best friend you’ve had since you were six
looks you in the eyes at the vet’s office,
right before you go home without him.

And all of this, somehow, SOMEHOW prepares you for
a moment when you finally, FINALLY meet the love of
your life, who understands all of this, and does not
let you go while your child self, that loves
baseball and dogs, is working out all the things
that will lead you, one day, to them. Until you are home.
Home with your memories, and home with each other.

And you understand that yes, a love poem is always
about love.

Day Two and the Cartoon Bomb

CARTOON BOMB

–

A world dies by its own hand.

Never sees it coming. Pushing

the plunger on a cartoon bomb.

A coyote, can’t feel the dynamite under

its own ass. Clutching an Acme anvil,

with nowhere to go but off the cliff.

Beep-beep.

Day One and the Meme Above all Memes

Day One.

I journal every day. And because a journal is for getting things out before things overflow, or maybe even overwhelm, when the day’s journal is done, sometimes there’s just nothing left to say when it’s time to sit down and write for sharing with the public. That happens a lot, by the way. You can’t just turn it on and off like Stephen King, at least I can’t. Unless something you journal about becomes the something you write for sharing with the public.

Anyway, today is Day One of National Blog Posting Month, or NaBloPoMo. And during NaBloPoMo, I hang with a small collective that calls itself Cheer Peppers, because of that one time, at the very beginning of our existence, when our leader called it “NanoPoblano”.

And it stuck.

Today’s post is just a hello to those who read, and maybe write, every year around this time. The picture at the top was my journal entry from the last day of October, when all the anticipation of writing for 30 straight days turned into the existential dread of writing for 30 straight days. The meme I quoted in the journal entry, also supplied by leader of Cheer Peppers, helps address my November dread in a whole world filled with a high-grade existential dread beyond just a writer’s bellyaching about, well, writing.

It’s good to be kind to yourself in those moments when the hard things get harder. Yet for me, sometimes, it’s also good to take a kindly boot to the ass and just start typing.

So this is today. I’m already mostly done with tomorrow’s post. The post that, if I finish, might just make everybody hate me, and that’s okay. Or maybe I’ll just post cute dog pictures. I haven’t decided yet. But you’ll find out right after I do. For now, remember that when you read, please like and share. And if you’re one of those bloggers who are about to spend this month fighting their way through another November of existential dread, seasonal affective disorder, unnatural hatred of daylight savings time and the requisite “fall back” that happens this coming Sunday, or any other godawful thing happening in our small and getting smaller everyday world, remember, you are not alone.

See you tomorrow.