Tag Archives: Cheer Peppers

Day Sixteen is Seasonal (part 2)

Seasonal (part 2)

The angle of the sun is wrong.

I used to explain to friends that I hated when the seasons changed, and summer would turn to fall, simply because, in my estimation, “The angle of the sun is wrong.”  Almost no one understood how in-touch with such things I could be, having grown up in a world of asphalt and concrete, tract houses and freeways, with the sounds of cars and trucks drowning out the birds, and most days, even the wind in the trees.  What no one understood was that, as a child of summer, and with the vastness of a west-facing shoreline only minutes from my front door, that I grew up, almost Druid-like, with a “bonus sense” for things like angles of the sun, and the coming of the morning light.

It still lives inside of me, in this place that, though it is an “island”, more resembles the inland of the San Fernando Valley to me.  The only way I recognize it as an island is to drive the 45 minutes or so, from the middle of it, where I live, to the north shore, or “The Sound”, which faces Connecticut, or the other way; to the south shore, which is the westernmost edge of the wide open Atlantic.  It’s not like where I’m from.  No hills or overlooks, which gradually descend from the inland heights, to the 200 mile-long stretch of beaches that run from Malibu to the Southern Border.

I remember my first late summer here, in 2022, when out of nowhere, I caught myself thinking those same words, “The angle of the sun is wrong.”  Even though it was like 90 degrees outside, even though the shirt on my back stuck to me like I was locked inside a sauna, I could still see that the autumnal equinox was damn near on top of us.  It’s like I start to see the whole world in sepia-tone, and the shadows, still hot like a sidewalk in August, seem unnaturally thicker than they should be, before late September. 

Which brings me back to why I’m wanting to take a two-hour nap at 5:03 pm, because I really don’t know.  Blame my advanced age?  Blame the fact that, though I have worked at every hour of the day and night, now that I’m on the government cheese, I hate sleeping in past sunrise, just like an old person?  Hell, blame my Druid ancestors, all I know right now is, this is the first time something Seasonal is having its “Affect” on me, to the point where it feels a little like a Disorder. 

And I’ll let all my friends, who are readers, know just how this turns out, again.  AFTER November Blog Season is past; when the shortest, darkest days fulfill themselves in the longest, darkest nights.  At the height of winter, when I make snow angels again, and wearing tee shirts while I do it has had its way with me, again.  But now, every hour of every day is the same.  Every hour is a writing hour, until the next post… and the next… is done.  Just as this two-part post is.

Done.

Talk to you tomorrow.

Day Fifteen is Seasonal (part 1)

Seasonal (part 1)

I begin to yawn at 5:03 pm. 

This is the first sign that nothing is as it was in the past.  That is, as it was in my past.  This is my second autumn in the east.  My second, colder than I’d known before, darker earlier because the angle of the sun makes it feel like I live just beneath the North Pole, approach of winter. 

It’s really not cold, yet.  Not even in the very early morning, when the red-orange leaves on the ground are frosted, is it cold enough for me to wear anything more than a tee shirt, above a pair of sweatpants, when the need sometimes arises to walk outside with my first morning coffee.  Oh, and slippers.  Not fucking UGGs, mind you, just bedroom slippers. 

On Eyewitness News every day, anchor Liz Cho never misses the chance to tell viewers how “cold it is out there” before handing it over to meteorologist Lee Goldberg, who politely reminds the audience that it’s really a lot closer to late spring weather than it is an early winter, but he can’t convince Liz.  All I know is, having spent more than 60 years in Southern California, this isn’t cold.  Last winter, my first winter in New York, I made snow angels on the same front lawn where I found this morning’s autumn leaves all frosty.  Just like last winter, I was also only wearing a tee shirt, above a pair of sweatpants, with my feet in just a pair slippers.

And we know it’s not dark at noon, right?  Also, this is not a graphic novel about vampires in Barrow, Alaska.  At least that’s what I’ve been led to believe.  So what gives with my desire for all the zees, four hours before I turn out the lights?

In my life, I’ve worked all hours of the day, and night, since I got bit by the bug that made me a chronic sufferer of late-stage capitalism, sometime before my eighteenth birthday; when my first adventures on the graveyard shift predated my earliest understanding of the magical properties of coffee.  Nodding off, upright, in a warehouse full of rattan and bamboo, became a normal occurrence for seventeen-year-old, as yet still decaffeinated, Bill, when sleeping all day wasn’t the stigma it might have been, when my years of marriage and child-rearing would make their appearance, a decade-or-so later.

But today, I’m not 17. 

I’ve lived my adventures in, and out of, the light.  Now, there are only so many things I have left that I want to do, and none of them involve dozing off at 5:03 pm.

Next time, the conclusion of, Seasonal.

Talk to you tomorrow.

Day Fourteen and the Old Poem

When They Say Your Margins Are Good



They told me there’d be seasons in New York. 
I began to believe they lied. 

The skies have been gray since I got here. 
That seemed more than fitting. 

I’ve come to this place to die. 
No one knows that yet. 

I no longer ask difficult questions.  
That made the transition easier. 

Holding a grudge is hard when they say your margins are good. 

Doctors tell you what they want you to hear. 
It’s okay that I miss California. 

I want to see snow falling at night. 
Hearing I’m still young is getting old. 

I changed my mind about dying here. 
It isn’t worth the paperwork or the heartache. 

They told me that spring was the best time to move. 
I believe that was also a lie. 



*originally written May 15, 2022*

Day Thirteen and the Hi and Bye

Not every day is our best day.

Some days, no matter what we want to do, it is a day for other things.  Today I drank coffee, I journaled, I made breakfast, I did three weeks of laundry… and then, I did this.

By no means was that ALL I did, but those are the things I can tell you, here.  And I will tell you, all those things… the for you to know parts… and the NOT for you to know parts, were all more important than to write another head-scratcher of a blog post about theoretical physics, or baseball.  Which, actually, both occupy the same universe. 

I mean, have you ever seen a slider come out of a pitcher’s hand at 93 miles-per-hour, rotating at 4,790 revolutions per minute, breaking almost 3 whole feet, downward AND right-to-left, spinning more than 170 times in just the 55 feet from release-point to the ball’s terminus, in the pocket of the catcher’s mitt?

Physics, baby!  What the batter calls straight-up witchcraft, the slowest of slo-mo cameras calls… PHYSICS.

Damn, just when you thought you were gonna miss out on two of my favorite subjects in all the world.  And every bit of it only taking up the space of a November hi and bye.

So with that, I’m headed downstairs to do one more load.  Tee shirts, I think.  And for next time?  Well, I still have coffee.

Talk to you tomorrow.

Day Twelve and Motivation Monday on a Sunday

What is motivation? 

Or in this case, what is MY motivation?  Unlike what passed for motivations in the bygone times, my children are grown, and the days of 30 weekly hours of overtime have given way to government cheese and, by the time New Year’s rolls around, a job that’s just enough to supplement my government cheese, without working too many hours, so that the government cheese industrial complex won’t take any of my monthly supply away from me, because I have some minor ambition for the finer things in what’s left of this life.

All I want for Christmas is a new book in print, and then one more in the next year.  And yeah, if you’re a writer, I know we know dozens of people who seem to give themselves this same gift, every year.  The only difference with me and this gift, and with the motivation to give it to myself for the first time in SIX YEARS since the last time, is…

I really don’t want this gift to suck.

Because with my old motivation, if I had published a book in 2019 or 2020, maybe in 2021 or 2022, hell, even in some part of 2023, I promise you, that book would’ve sucked.  It would’ve been like a gift you gave yourself a generation ago, when neckties were really wide, and Netflix still mailed you DVDs.  It wouldn’t have been something that you, now, should be okay with. And since this is a gift to yourself, you shouldn’t have to lie when you open it and, with a straight face and a fake smile, tell yourself just how much you love it.  Because you don’t.  And you shouldn’t.

Because it sucks.

And if any of you reading this have read anything I wrote between 2018 and the middle of this year, and still insist on telling me that it DIDN’T suck, just know, I’ll always love you.

But that is why today, I’m writing a post about motivation, since I haven’t had enough of it to write something so good that I felt safe letting it go out and play in the daylight, for damn near six years.

That was then, this is now.

So let’s call this Motivation Monday… on a Sunday; just a short blurb of a blog to remind myself that I can feel differently about what I write, and how I write it, and continue on with it, even when the reasons for writing have changed as much as fashion neckwear, or how we get our entertainment.

But I do still miss my stainless steel Motorola Razr.

Talk to you tomorrow.

Day Eleven and the Uncertainty Principle

Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. 

Famed in everything from Movies, to TV shows, even a blend of coffee once available, two decades ago, at Trader Joe’s.  Here’s how it actually reads, or is, at least paraphrased,

“… we cannot know the position AND speed of a particle… with perfect accuracy; the more we nail down the particle’s position, the less we know about its speed and vice-versa”.

And for the sake of blog brevity, I’m not going to go into, or for that matter, go anywhere near, the dissenting argument of Albert Einstein, or the counter-dissent of Niels Bohr, within the scope of Planck’s Constant, let alone the assertion of John Stewart Bell, that part or maybe all of the assumption of “uncertainty” could, in fact, be falsified.

Nope, not even going there.

However, all that to say that, that I know where I’m sitting right now, as I write this post.  And I pretty much know just how long it should take me to finish writing it, based on the speed with which I type (not fast, but constant, at a max of 35 wpm).  But what I can’t know is how fast my thought processes will reach a destination of thought, sufficient for the completion of the journey of this post, from first keystroke to last, because EVERYthing between A and Z has the very real potential for change without notice.  As writers, we all know that. 

As humans, we know that with even more (certain) uncertainty.

Now look at life.  Life, as it is being lived, right in front of you.  Now, look away.  I hope you hit save just before you did that.  And yeah, I know that posts like this one, like with all things written in formats like this, auto-save, but that doesn’t mean that even if we never auto-save for ourselves, that we don’t always ask that friend, who lost everything they were writing, if they clicked save right before it happened. 

A lot like when I.T. asks you if you tried unplugging your computer before, yeah, well… before that.

Now look at life, again.  Life as you wished it was being lived, right in front of you.  Now, look away.  Did anything change?  How do you know?  According to Heisenberg, you can’t.  Forget Einstein, forget Bohr, forget Max Planck.  Just use your own senses.  Yes, you moved.  Something about you, maybe noticeably, more likely, imperceptibly, shifted.  Not so much on the outside, but down deep.  Chances are good that somewhere inside of you, some particle moved.  And so, with that, my only question is, “In what direction?”

In the direction you wanted, or in another?

I know that, in the macro, I have next-to-zero control over things I cannot physically encounter, theoretical butterflies notwithstanding.  But in the micro, my own very personal, so under my control micro that it becomes macro for me, only me, I have just enough control to keep moving, imperceptibly, immeasurably, ahead, in the direction I want to go.

And in this case, that direction is finishing this post.  And so, I did. 

But don’t ask me about tomorrow, because I can’t see tomorrow from where I’m sitting, until it gets here, maybe bringing with it another cute animal picture.  I really couldn’t say.

See you tomorrow.

Maybe.

(save)

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.