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IndieInk Writing Challenge #1: "After the rain.."

A few weeks ago, the folks at IndieInk did me the honor of posting one of my essays. I felt kinda bad, because it was something I'd written for this site. So to assuage my guilty conscience, I volunteered to join a bunch of IndieInk'ers for the IndieInk Writing Challenge. It's a pretty simple idea; one writer throws a conceptual gauntlet at the feet of another, and it's on, as they say. I'm excited: recently, writing feels like work to me. Work that I love, but work nonetheless. This is my chance to play with words.

My first challenge, issued by the lovely and talented Fina, is pretty straightforward: "Head to IndieInk's latest art entry. Tell a story about the day/scene in 500 words or less. Link your entry to the page so that people can find the photograph you describe." So. Click. Keep it open. (It's a lovely picture, no?) And:

 

Consider the speed of light. When you look up at the night sky, you look into the past. The light from those stars is old beyond reckoning. By the time you wish upon it, that star, the one that you hope will bring you happiness, or prosperity, or even just a little peace, will have collapsed upon itself, its dust spreading out across infinity. The microscopic ruins of a star drift and swirl around the Universe, and will eventually become a part of something else - a comet, a moon, perhaps even a new star. But tonight, and every night, the stars that we see are just memories. Only the light remains.

Consider rain. You stand out in a late winter shower, the clouds billowing over the Pacific, a gray redoubt. Arms out, palms up. There's a reason you live here, of course; as a kid you lived through too many winters, too much cold, too many ghosts. At the warm edge of the continent everything is renewed every day. The Endless Summer. The rain: always cold, coming as it does from the heart of distant oceans. It feels ancient, as it should. Water is forever. It falls, is absorbed, evaporates, returns to the sky. The drops that fall on you fell on Magellan as he looked for a shrouded horizon. They were born from the icy depths where bowhead whales fed lazily, unaware of the harpoons awaiting them on the surface. The same rain carries the metallic taste of a U-boat's periscope and the hot smell of a sea lion's blood. The clouds cover the skies and the rain brings the ages down on you.

Then, it stops. The clouds break.

The raindrops become prisms.

Light.

Stars.

 

 

 

In Which I Talk To A Psychic

Internet pal Cecily asked a bunch of people if they wanted to spend 10 free minutes on the phone with a psychic. "OH HELL YES", I replied, with a zeal that prompted me to reply in all caps, a practice I normally abhor. Because I sorta believe in the Spirit World, since Beth and I used to live in a Haunted Apartment. This was years ago, when we lived in one half of a duplex; seems that a few years before we moved in, someone had hung herself in one of the closets in the other half, and her ghost chose to hang out after shuffling off this mortal coil, the duplex being a beachside location, close to some fantastic restaurants and shops...I didn't tell you this? I must have. Things being moved around, cold spots, the feeling that someone was in the room with us...no? Remind me to tell you about it sometime. Suicide ghosts. They bring some Freaky Shit.

So yeah, I'm decidedly agnostic when it comes to such things. Because really, who knows. We think we have it all figured out, and then someone reels in a coelacanth, "discovers" a Lost Tribe living in the Amazon, or realizes, hey, there might be a new giant planet in the Solar System. I figure if noted physicist Brian Greene believes that parallel universes are possible...well, he's infinitely smarter than you or me, so I'll keep an open mind. 

The site is Psychic Source. It's a clearing house, of sorts; you can scroll through the profiles of psychics and pick one that suits you: tarot readers, astrologists, clairvoyants, clairaudients, clairsentients (what do they call people that are clairvoyants and clairaudients and clairsentients? ClairAlls!), mediums,  empaths, spirit guide readers, and at least one member of the X-Men. Per the website, the Psychic Source folks have a rigorous screening process (I envisioned the phone interview: "Hello?" "Hi, is Joe the Psychic there?" "Yes, this is Joe the Psychic, to whom am I speaking?" "Well, Joe, you should've known. Sorry." Click.) And Miss Cleo and Dionne Warwick are not in the lineup.

Ha ha ha. Yeah, I was having a bit of a laugh, reading through the website, but when it came time to call, I was a bit nervous. Because my wife had gotten the same deal, and the results were somewhat fucking creepy. So I picked out a Psychic who looked interesting (she apparently came from a long line of psychics, and had gotten good reviews from callers - the site's like Amazon for paranormals). After I told her my name (when she asked, I was this close to saying "Zuul"), we got down to brass tacks. And honestly, much of what she told me was vague, and really reinforced what most people believe about "psychics" - that they're excellent at reading into what people tell them, making guesses about people's lives that are vague, yet specific enough to give people the impression that the psychic has the ability to divine information about that person's past, present, and future. 

But...

There were a couple of things that got me. The first - her telling me, without any clue or prompt, that I worked with engineers, and that I worked by myself, usually from home. The second - that I would be taking a "big work-related" trip, in about a month, to a convention where I'd meet a bunch of influential people. Yes on both - I do work with engineers, I have a home office, and as you know I'm presenting at both SXSWi and Mom 2.0. Was that a wild guess on the psychic's part? Or did her tarot cards or crystal ball or tea leaves or pigeon guts tell her these things? Who knows. I tend to scoff at religion, and a belief that some Higher Power exists and calls the shots, but at the same time, it'd be kind of cool if there were people who had some sort of power to tell us what the future holds, what pitfalls await us, and what rewards we can expect. At the very least, we'd save a few bucks on movie tickets.

There were some other things she told me. She advised me not to pick Duke to win it all this year. Oh, and it turns out I've been dead since last September. Which explains a lot, actually.

 

 

Allow Myself to Self-Promote...Myself

See that shiny new badge down there? No, past that. Scroll down a bit more. There. The fine folks at Indie Ink are featuring a post of mine today. You should go check it out - not just for me, because the post appeared on this here site last year, so if you're one of the dozen or so people who reads the nonsense I put up here you'll be disappointed, but fear not, because I do plan on sending the fine folks at Indie Ink some ORIGINAL MATERIAL very soon, maybe even some fiction, because I haven't written a short story since college so hey, why not - because there's some tremendous stuff going on there. 

No Comment

"They" say that comments are crucial to your blog's success. ("They" are a lot of folks, blogger-types and social media "experts", too many to list individually.)

I have a hard time with this.

Sometimes I'll write something and I want to hear back from my readers. Tell me a story. Add to the punchline. Make me cry. Make me mad. Tell me I'm great. Tell me I suck. 

But - and please don't take this the wrong way - most of the time I don't really care what you think.

Imagine:

"Yo, Herman - white whale? More like white anvil! LOL!"

"Hey Joe - your book was awesome; I met a guy like Kurtz back in college when me and my buddies did that backpacking trip up the Congo. Guy was nuts but he had some kind ganj."

"DFW - this was brilliant!"

Do I like it when people tell me they like something I've written? Of course. Any writer who tells you that appreciation is irrelevant is lying. (If you didn't want an audience, you wouldn't have a blog - you'd have a diary locked away in your bedside table, intended for an audience of one.) Even ol' Salinger wanted a lot of someones to read their work, even if they ultimately didn't care what people thought of it, or him. (Can you imagine Salinger blogging? "Went down to the AM/PM to pick up some Cool Ranch Doritos, and let me tell you, the guy behind the counter gave me such a look when I asked him if I could buy some pee to go with them. They make Cherry Coke Slurpees, for crying out loud, but not pee-flavored? Everybody likes to pretend they don't like pee. Phonies.")

The beauty of the blog-o-sphere for readers is that they have a direct line to the writer. But should writers fully embrace that? I don't know. Like I said, sometimes I want to hear what you have to say, and I respond. But there's this: comments can be a lovely seduction. They lull you into thinking you're great. Or they can be a dagger aimed at your self-esteem. Either way, the effect is the same - take comments to heart and you run the risk of setting your brain on autopilot. Give the commenters what they want, dial it back because you fear their wrath/criticism, and you lose something essential. Two sides of the same coin, and the flip always yields the same results. Your voice becomes theirs.

(Apologies for that really bad Salinger spoof. Feel free to rake me over the coals in the Comments section.)