• Tag Archives Writing
  • Habitual

    Spring                                          Mountain Spring Moon

    New morning habit in process of forming. I’m going to protect the time from 5:45-11:00 am for work with timeout for breakfast. After long experience, I know that I don’t do well if my work times get interrupted. This means I’ll need to make appointments for the afternoons in the future. Yes, this potentially interferes with my workout regimen, which begins at 4:00 pm each day. And, yes, it could disrupt my nap, but I think the advantages outweigh the hassles.

    It also means I’ll not be posting here until mid-day, nor will I check e-mails, do other kinds of work on the computer until the afternoon or evening.

    What will I be doing in those morning hours? Latin. Moving forward with my translation of Book VII which I plan to be my first complete book translated. There are 15. Writing. I’ll be working on Superior Wolf, writing and researching.

    It’s odd, but the sunny disposition of Colorado really leans toward the outdoors, not like the cold and gloomy winters and early springs in Minnesota, where staying inside just made sense. This focus on mornings spent with the mind will have outside interference. I’ll have to focus harder on getting in hikes, plant identification, exploration in the time I have available.

    I’ve been taken over the last few weeks with an idea from the Baghavad Gita, action with out attachment to the results. In the Gita this notion prunes karma, since it is the entrapment of desire that bends karma one way or the other. With no focus on the result the action cannot produce bad karma. This is not the way I see it though I understand this more orthodox approach.

    Instead I find the idea of action without attachment to the result as a way to cut the final cord tying me to the bourgeois desire for achievement. It was this strain of thinking that cut across my cerebral cortex when living large popped up. In other words I learn Latin with no final end in mind. Being an amateur classicist is what I will do, defining the realm in which I will act. Just so the writing. Writing novels, being a writer is what I will do, what I have done. But the results of that action? Not important. Grandparenting. Gardening. Bee keeping. All the same.

    So creating the atmosphere in which I can act is critical. Creating an atmosphere in which I succeed, not so much so.


  • Living In An Abstract World

    Imbolc           Waxing Moon of Winds

    Oh, geez, as we might say here in Minnesota.  Got a phone call from my dentist’s office this morning asking me if I remembered my appointment.  No, I didn’t.  I said, “I’m just sitting here.”  The receptionist laughed and we rescheduled.  This is the second missed appointment in a month, including my showing up for a 10:00 o’clock tour at 10:45.

    I know what’s going on right now.  I’m deep in research for my American Identity presentation at Groveland on the 15th, researching my first Asmat art tour for this Friday and running fast to keep up with the changing legsilative fortunes of the Sierra Club legislation.  The research and the Sierra Club/Star-Tribune blogs occupy all of my attention.

    That makes me very happy because I love research and I love opportunities to turn around and share the results, which all of these instance allow me, but it also means I’m living in an abstract world that often fails to read the calendar. Oh, my.

    Gotta do something about this, but what?  Let me see, if I read something about it?


  • Wading in Your Media Stream

    61  bar steep rise 29.96 2mph NNW dew-point 45   Summer night, nice

                                  New Moon (Thunder Moon)

    I’d forgotten the all consuming nature of writing a novel.  It goes to bed with you, advances into your dreams and wakes up with in the morning.  Plot ideas, twists, character developments, inconsistencies, new characters.  All aswirl.  The novel bumps up against daily life, takes something from it, gives something back, a loop, a mobius strip.  Feedback.  A neuro-net firing and firing and firing.  It’s fun, a wild ride while its cookin’. 

    There are plateaus.  Superior Wolf landed on a plateau about 6 years ago, struggled to get off it a couple of times, then settled back down to rest.  Jennie’s Dead has been on a bit more of an up and down ride. She’s in storage now, but I can sense her wanting to break out now that her brother has begun to get legs, take strides.

    Somehow, as happens in my life, momentum has increased.  Both the velocity and the mass have kicked up at the same time, calling back into action skills set aside long ago.  The Sierra Club work will require a good deal of time.  The novel needs constant nourishment.  So does the garden.  These three alone would be a good deal, but I also have a sermon to write for September that will take at least a week of research, if not more.  I’ve also agreed to take on managing the Docent Book Club and my term for that starts this month.  Then there’s that pesky Africa check out tour.

    Right now this all feels good.  Blood flowing, mind working.  And I’m sure it will feel that way for a good while, probably on into December, then I’ll feel a need for a let down again.  Right now, though, I’m jazzed.

    My Woolly meeting is in August this  year.   I sent out the following e-mail so guys could prep for it.

    Hi! Your Media Stream:  This is the water from which you take much of your intellectual nourishment.  What is it?  The radio stations to which you listen, TV programs you watch, movies you see, books you read, magazines and newspapers you take or consult.  I-Pod fare, music at home.  Any media, in short, that you use for either entertainment or education. How will we organize the meeting?  Like this—please bring a book you are reading right now.  Please bring a book you consider important and formative for you, perhaps one read long ago.  Bring a copy of your favorite magazine.  Be prepared to let us know your favorite radio program, TV program (if any), movie (again:  current and from the past) and newspapers.  We’ll set music aside for this evening, but it might be fun to pick up again at some point as both Scott and Frank have led us to do at retreats. The physical objects themselves are important, so please bring whatever you can.  2 books and 1 magazine at least.  If you can jot down your favorite radio program, TV program and movies (past and present) and newspapers, I will collect your lists and send them to Bill to publish on our website. What’s the point?  To dip into each other’s media stream for a bit, to hear why we like the books, movies, programs, newspapers and magazines that we choose.  I imagine five-ten minutes each of sharing, then a round of conversation about what we’ve heard.  This is for fun and to expand our grasp of who we are.


  • Will I Build A Computer?

    76  bar rises 29.76 6mph NW dew-point 51  Summer, pleasant and warm

    New Moon (Thunder Moon)

    A new head has been found for the red car.  Hopefully it will get placed on its automotive neck tomorrow and we will go back to two vehicles.  This is important with the rise of gas prices since our Tundra has a V-8 (may be an antique walking) whereas the Celica averaged 30-31 mph on the Alabama trip.  Co-ordination is not such a big deal for us, though that can matter.

    The computer has shut down on its own, without warning, twice already today. I bought the tools to crack the case, get inside and clean out the cooling fan, but I’ve hesitated due to a hyperactive June.  Now available time and increased urgency have moved closer to taking the step.  In the back of my mind, the fantasy part, I see myself building a computer from parts.  The tools I bought would serve that purpose as well.

    Ate lunch with Stefan at the Modern Cafe.  I had a lamburger and Stefan had a smorbord, pickled herring and beets.  Both were tasty.  We discussed his poetry and he feels I’m helping, so I’ll keep at it.

    He wants to start a support group for children of successful parents.   My hunch is it would be big hit.

    On the way home from the Modern (it’s in NE Minneapolis) I drove north of Anoka (really, west) to Anoka Feed and Seed where I picked up four bales of bedding straw.  I’ll use it to mulch the garden over the next few days.

    Now, a nap.


  • Garlic Harvest

    77 bar steady 29.93 5mph N dew-point 49  Summer, hot and sunny

                          Waning Crescent of the Flower Moon

    Wrote this AM.  Appended chapter 3 of Superior Wolf to its page on this website.  Next week I’ll take down chapter 1 and put chapter 4 and so it will go until I have written myself to the end.  We’ll see where it goes.

    Moved mulch, created by renting the super chipper from Home Depot and grinding up branches, tree trunks and chunks of shrubs.  The mulch goes on the perennial bed first, keeping the weeds down as we move into high summer and also cooling the soil just a bit.  This involves a wheel-barrow, a pitchfork and a lot of moving from one place to another.

    After a nap I unburdened the kitchen table of a couple of months of magazines, catalogues and desparate fund-raising pleas.  This involved a paper-sack, a lot of sorting and moving from one place to another.

    Now I’m gonna cook supper, red beans and rice with some prime rib left overs thrown to make it interesting.  The now standard fare of lettuce, onions and cilantro from our gardens inside and out will join store purchased tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers for a colorful salad.  Later in the season we will have all of these ingredients. 

    I also learned from a piece of paper recovered from the literary overburden of the table that I can  harvest the garlic now.  Somehow garlic has become my favorite crop.  Don’t know why.


  • The Book Fort

    79  bar falls 29.80 0mph NNE  dew-point 63   Summer, cloudy and mild

                             Last Quarter of the Flower Moon

    F- runs in the Star-Tribune daily comics section.  When it connects with me, its humor reminds me of the gold standard, Gary Larson.  It doesn’t hit that point much for me, but once in a while.

    One that didn’t hit me that way, but, in Kate’s reinforcement, has begun to reveberate featured a librarian looking between a pair of stacks.  In the back, near the corner, a man sat on the floor with books arranged around him in a rectangle and he had another book in hand to add to the walls.

    The librarian has a walkie-talkie and he says, “Book fort.  We have a book fort going up.”

    Kate looked at it, laughed, and said, “That’s what I’m going to call your study, a book fort.”   

     I laughed, too.  If you go into my study, you would first notice a small bookshelf filled with books and other books stacked up on top of it perhaps ten books high.  These are the books I may want to read soon.  To the right is a green cupboard with four shelves and glass doors.  That one is full, too, and contains books on liberal religion and liberal political thought. 

    On the wall that extends to the east from that cupboard stands another series of books cases.  These have philosophy, folk tales, folk myths and stories, aesthetics and art, and some religious books.  These are more reference volumes.  Directly across from them are a low series of bookshelves that hold my Asian collection.  It’s pretty deep in Chinese and Japanese literature, but there are volumes here on Hindu topics and Angkor Wat, too.  On top of these shelves sit my poety collection, perhaps 15 feet long.  Along the wall nearest my desk and half way along the room’s north side are travel related volumes, reference works and material on the Renaissance.  There are also books on the military, on water rights and gardening.

    Directly behind my desk is a tall bookcase filled with art history books.  I use these volumes a good deal when I prepare tours.

    So, book fort is an apt description.  But.  Forts are battlements, a place to hold out if the enemy strikes.  I do hide behind these books, retreating into my book fort to meditate, to study, to push away the enemies of distraction and human contact, except through printed words.  There is a hermetic quality to my life here in Andover, a quality I like, even prefer. 

    Fortresses though can keep one in as well as others out.  After giving it some thought, I would not trade my book fort for a trading post or a tourist venue.  In it I have the luxury of safety and a safety which protects my contemplative life.  This is not so much retreat from as it is retreat to.  If you ever come over, you are welcome inside the moat.  I’ll lower the draw bridge for you.


  • Making My Soul Hum

    Superior Wolf is underway again.  The other day I hit on the point that had me stuck, a character I’d carried over from another novel.  He didn’t belong in this one, but it took me 25,000 words or so to figure that out.  Now a new plotline, more salient and tight, has emerged with a strong character, a protagonist who will drive the book.

    It feels good to be back at fiction, a long caesura, and I hope the next one is brief.  Fiction speaks from my soul, the rest tends to be, as we said in the sixties, a head trip.  Over the years since then, I’ve learned to respect head trips.  I earned a living with them for many years and they’ve kept me engaged with the world.  They do not make my soul hum, though my  Self speaks through them as well.

    Kate made a trip to the Green Barn, a nursery she really likes on Highway 65 near Isanti.  She picked up composted manure, sphagnum moss and several plants.  We have some new ferns, cucumbers, morning glories (the ones I grew in the hydroponics died outside, though the tomatoes have done fine.) squash and several grasses. 

    Tomorrow morning I’m going in for a breakfast meeting at the Sierra Club, a meeting with the political director of the national Sierra Club. Politics makes my soul hum, too.  Though I can’t say exactly why, water issues matter a lot to me, so I’m angling (ha, ha) to get on the committees that deal with Lake Superior, rivers, lakes and streams.  Watersheds seem very important to me, so I hope to work on projects related to watersheds, too.  One thing I know about politics is that showing up matters, so I’m gonna show up.


  • I Think That I Shall Never See

    71  bar steady  30.00  1mph SSW dewoint 35  Beltane

                Waxing Gibbous Hare Moon

    A morning at the Rum River Tree Farm.  Kate and I went wandering among the trees up for adoption.  We looked at fruit trees for our orchard apple, plum, pear and cherry.  We also looked at some willows, Niobe for example, with a wonderful yellow gold bark.  Great accent trees.  The larch look great, too.  Both of these require a wet environment, so we might have to change our irrigation system around a bit.

    River Birch clumps go for around $260.  I figure 3 or four would transform the lower part of our front yard into a shady grove.  One or two other trees, running up the slope, would follow the elevation.  Kate wants lanes of grass among the trees.  I want more trees, so I imagine we can come to a compromise.

    We also will buy some tree lilacs, trees for our grandkids, planted in their honor.  All of this comes from the permaculture thinking.  I’ve added some to that page if you follow that part at all.

    Now it’s 72 degrees outside.  This means it might be a good day for morels.  It also means some of those seeds we sowed will begun to germinate, some more of them, I should say.

    Spent an hour last night editing Superior Wolf.  It’s a keeper, needs expansion, filling out and elimination of one whole story line, but it’s a good one.  So’s Jennie’s Dead. 


  • BMI 25.1, Blood Sugar 98. Yes!

    22  82%  28%  2mph NNW bar30.06  wincdhill21  Winter

                Waxing Crescent of the Winter Moon

    These next three weeks are, on average, the coldest weeks of the year.  I’m glad to see them come.  I love the snug as a bug in a rug feeling of very cold days, work I love and a home place to do it.

    Weighed in this morning.  My BMI is now 25.1 and my blood sugar is 98.  I’ll continue on with the nutrisystem at least for the rest of this month, then I’ll have to have a good maintenance plan in place because I will head off for the Dwelling in the Woods, then 3 weeks in Hawai’i.  Hawai’i should be ok because the fish, fruit and vegetable type menu is common there.  It would not be the same if we were headed to, say, England or Austria.  I feel good about this effort so far.  The challenge now will be a healthy long term eating plan, one I strayed from too far for too long.

    Still no joy on the sound system.  I had the DVD player sending signals through the five speaker set up, so I know I have them connected and working.  When I exchanged the Toshiba HD DVD player for a Panasonic Blu-Ray player, however, I eliminated the sound success I had made.  Since I won’t get the Blu-Ray until next week, I don’t know yet whether I can convince it to communicate with the speakers.  I know, right now, that the coaxial cable I got to connect the DVR/HD box to the receiver did not produce instant results.  Sigh.  I may have to talk with the folks at Ultimate when I go in to pick up the Blu-Ray.  This is part of the learning curve, less steep now than when I opened the first box, but steep enough to block my vision so far.

    Today is more work on the Faery Tale and garden planning.  This is the work I love.t


  • Lovecraft Meets Sigurd Olson

    39  74%  29%  0mph NNW  bar29.59 steady 39windchill  Winter

                   New Moon

    New technology takes some time to absorb.  This setup has optical links, which I’ve never used before, and the cables I have don’t work with the receptacles situated on the DVD player, TV and audio receiver.  So, back to Ultimate Electronics.  Then, since I’m using an HDMI connector with the cable HD service the box Comcast has with the HDMI cable is the DVR which costs more.  Of course.  And so on into acronym chaos.

    As luck would have it, however, the Woollies meet in Minnetonka tonight at the Istanbul Bistro.  The route to there from here takes me both both Comcast and Ultimate so I should have all the supplies necessary to put this puppy to bed by tomorrow.  The speaker connections are all in place, the subwoofer is ready to woof and I’m ready to hear the damn raindrops.

    No joy on the Asia tour as a result though I do have a plan:  faith traditions of Asia.  I’ll hit the Ghandara Buddha, the Mandala (tour requested), Poet Contemplating the Waterfall, Confucius, Kuan Yin, Pocket Buddha, Jizo and the Divine Rainmaking Boy.  

    The Gunflint story progresses nicely.  Sort of HP Lovecraft meets Sigurd Olson.

    Kate’s off today.  Nice having her around.  She’s finishing up the second curtain for the living room, a red brocade with a pale gold dragon fly motif.