On the Fourth Day

It's the Fourth Day of Christmas.  The Child and I are in the Library while Mark is home looking for employement.

I'm in the kid's section of the Library, which is taking me back a decade to when I used to take The Child to Enthusiatic Child Reading.   There are a lot of toddlers today, and I'm reminded of the toddler schedule of wake-breakfast-activity-nap-activity-lunch-nap.   

The kid-chairs are less comfortable than I remember them.

We had a open house for my birthday, and lucked out for the weather.  Mark worked very hard to make the house nice; we have to re-configure the davenport and the dining room table so that the living room would be convival for more than six people.  There was singing and piano and harp.   I think Nina won the prize for the most clever hat.  

I've decided being in my early fifties is difficult.  I can't pretend I'm still forty-nine.  Well.  OK, maybe I can if I keep my gym work up.  

On the workout front, I've gone to the gym a couple of times.  Given some advice, I've moved to an elliptical with ski-poles in an attempt to loosen up my shoulder joints before any downstairs weight clinking.  On the same advice, I've started up the reverse-pec-fly on low weights to strengthen my back muscles, which will allow me to continue on my pectorals.   Usually I start out at 20 lbs and then work up to 40 lbs.  The idea is to keep my collar-bone and shoulder muscles limber so I don't pull them like I did last September.   

Thinking About Writing

Not much on any fronts.  I've been off-again-on-again congested, which has made me off-again-on-again tired.  I'm also going to blame the weeks around Winter Solstice for a lack of light that makes 6 PM feel like midnight. and 8PM feel like 2 AM.

I've been ruminating about the novel form and the Amazon form.  The other day I was speaking with an English Professor about attention spans and voice and web design vis-a-vis monitors-versus-mobiles and she said that the department makes students read paper versions of the books they study.  Apparently e-reading is different from paper-reading, in a way similar to someone who plays weekend basketball is different to a professional basketball player.  As I have noticed recently that when I don't balance out my social media reading with longer pieces, I have to work harder to process longer pieces, what she said made sense to me.

When I think about Amazon form, I worry that it's not a good fit for my voice, and I wonder, how would Tolkien have been received.  Maybe I should approach Amazon Writing like I do Twitter tweets, especially haiku.  But then again, I'm probably over-thinking it.

Teeth

I'm waiting for a new crown to cure.  I'm trying to remember what it's made of, I want to say lithium disilicate.  So close to dilithium crystals.... It is monolynthic, meaning it comes in a homogenus brick that gets milled down and then fired in a kiln to stabilize the crystal structure.  The process feels fairly new: my dentist stuck a camera into my mouth, got a 3D map of the old crown and the teeth it grinds against, and was able to 3D mill new crown during my visit.

I Know They're Trying to Tell Me Something

Tuesday, Dec 5:  Lots of magical imagery in my dreams last night/this morning.

I was casting a spell in a cave, after which I met with Leslie the Shrew and had some sort of wise words from a female elder moment.  

There was some other stuff, involving a Mephistopheles like grey-haired man who told me a story of meeting with other gay men in the English Theatre, and an actor he really admired came limping in full costume (I think as King Lear) and everyone was really excited until they realized that he was leading in the Vice Squad.

Then I was in a Handel opera.  The entire cast was led by a baritone in seventeenth century clothes and a white wig.  I think the rest of the cast may have supposed to be shepherds and villagers, but I think they were dressed contemporarily.  The baritone was a prophet, and was singing an aria along the musical lines of "And who shall stand when He appeareth? For He is like a refiner's fire."  Only this was about the apocalypse and he was pointing to a hole in the sky where a middle-aged and matronly Virgin Mary was sitting and presumably intervening for us.

We ascended Ridgewood Hill, and may have gone to it's mysterious dream-North side.  At this point the baritone prophet was singing about how a new earthly paradise could be aborted.  I think the Virgin Mary took a rest from the hole in the sky and came down to Ridgewood... she was dressed in brown, with sort of frazzled brown and grey hair, and I'm sure she said or sang something, but I don't recall what it was.

And then I was at an Episcopal service with my folks and The Child (I don't recall that Mark was there).  The pews were arranged in four arms, and we were in a square chapel.  I want to say that Father Neville (the old rector from the 1970's) was leading the service.  The Child started playing my harp (which he played well), and Father Neville was offering a cup to people, only instead of having the Blood of Christ in it, it was filled with rain water.  I opted to take the cup, and was surprised that the silver chalice had a flat, triangular bowl.  Father Neville jammed the chalice into my face, and I felt the cold metal against  both my lips; I was aware of the points of the triangular bowl as I sipped some of the water.

I woke up thinking that lots of messages were trying to come through.

Writing Art and Craft

This has been the week for getting helful rejections from markets.  The latest said essentially, "great world-building, and get to the story sooner."  Which means the voice, writing and world-building wasn't enough to hold the editor's interest.  There is a bit of driving to the story, and it's there to introduce the reader to how the story's world is different from our contemporay one... so I guess I need to take a quick look at the manuscript from a craft POV.

Over the weekend I went to a Self-Publishing on Amazon workshop.  There was a ton of information, and what I took away from it was, 

• short stories probably work best on Amazon as marketing freebies;
• an anthology of short stories would work best with the same characters in all stories and with an over-all story arc
• I probably need to choose a different pen name for each genre I write in because Hell Hath No Fury Like An Amazon Reader Lead Astray By A Cross-Genre Author.
• Amazon Readers want strong characters they can identify with over story plot over world-building.  
• Amazon Readers read differently than physical book readers. 
• It's all about keeping a steady stream of novels coming out.

I looked at the anthology of my various stories and realized it would be a mis-step the way I've got them arranged currently:  it's a mix of high fantasy, science-fiction, urban fantasy reprints -- I could probably sell it to super-fans once I had built a following, but currently I'm not at that point in my writing career.  

Insert my Great-uncle Conrad's Cautionary Translation-Of-The-Bible Story here.

Gym Reports and Male Desire

I've gotten behind in my gym reports... Um,  Went to the gym last Tuesday (11/14) , Sunday (11/12),  Thursday (11/9).  I'm still just doing 30 minutes on the eliptical (roughly 315 calories) and 3 sets of curls on the Roman Chair.  My shoulder's still stiff, but improving, so I guess staying away from the barbell, pec-fly and lat pull-downs for a while is a good thing.

Went on an impromptu museum visit with Mark Wednesday (11/15) night to look at 17th century tapestries.  Mark usually likes art I usually am indifferent to, and it's always fun to hear him speak about technique, or a part that he likes.  Also, this is 17th century art, so it's a little over the top, which means Theatrical Mark and John's Art Show moments.

Between Thanksgiving and fighting off some sort of illness, I did not manage to post much...

Went to the gym Tuesday (11/28/17).  A half-hour on the elliptical, not my usual machine, which reported that I did 400 calories -- which seems high.  Downstairs I did 3x12 Roman Chair curls, 3x12x10lb triceps pull-downs and 3x12x5lb dumbbell curls.  I keep thinking my shoulder is OK one day and then goofy the next.  

Went to the gym again Thursday (11/30/17).   Back for a half-hour on the elliptical on my usual machine, and back to my usual odd 320 calories.  Downstairs I did 3x15 Roman Chair curls, and skipped everything else.

On the writing front, I finally finished (11/28) a 4300 word short story.  I'm OK with the ending, but it feels a little mechanical.  I also got a short story rejection that was nice; it was a standard, "we've seen this sort of thing before" form rejection, but it had and admonition that it had taken a newly published new author 17 tries to break into this particular market and to "never surrender, never give up."  

On the essay front, I recently read an opinion piece: Stephen Marche's "The Unexamined Brutality of the Male Libido."  In wild summary, the opinion piece goes something like this:

Men's libidos are out of control and their beliefs about sexual equality and cultural appropriateness have no impact on their sexual misbehavior.  The nature of men is about their grotesque sexuality; men are pigs, with ugly and dangerous libidos. We should fear the male libido, which is unexamined in personal and intellectual circles.  Men don't have a social network for examination of their sexuality, often defaulting to aspiring to be better feminists.   Freud says men must repress their libidos.  Sex is an impediment to any idealism.  Social righteousness only takes us so far, and shame is on the rise as a sexual control.   How can we have nice things if the mechanisms of male sexual desire are brutal?  We must examine male sexuality -- and deal with the fact that men are monsters -- to find the answers.  

I think the overall tone of the piece is anti-sex and that men are damaged goods--which makes me instantly suspicious that the author is selling self-help. However, I agree with his call to have men examine male sexuality. And I agree that sexual harassment is unacceptable. But he seems to be stuck in a hetero-normative-Freudian-Joseph-Campbell-"Brute-of-a-Thousand-FacesConcupiscent " world view when he complaims about getting into a world where there is sexual equality and men's sexual expression.

Folks like Harry Hay have explored subject-subject consciousness as an antidote to the sexually exploitative subject-object consciousness; and Starhawk has offered the concept of Power-With as an alternative to hierarchical Power-Over.  But Marche seems to be unaware of these different approaches to people loving their partners, and focuses on men as monsters instead.

The piece relminds me a little of a passage from CS Lewis, wherein he opined that men have an animal nature and a devilish nature, leaving out their angelic or higher nature.  I guess that's the danger of having a transcendent, body-mind-body-spirit theology instead of an immanent one. 

And it also reminds me the Minotaur... and centaurs.. and fauns... and the comcuspant company of Pan.  I think Marche is wrong to say that we have to suppress the male libido, so much as we have to link it to and direct it with -- like the charioteer in the tarot card "The Chariot" -- the rest of our drives and desires.