Fall Festival and Old Friends

Over the weekend we went to the Fall Festival in Corvallis.  It's a two day craft fair where folks sell paintings, hats, ceramics, jewelry, kaleidoscopes, and women's hemp apparel.  It's very much like the Eugene Saturday Market, only with less (and cleaner) hippies and almost no tie-dye.

Near the end of our visit, I was looking at a man when something clicked in my head and I realized that I was looking at an old high school friend I hadn't seen since 1996.  It was kind of odd because when I think about him, I see the high school kid.   I'd seen him with a beard (I think he grew one for a production of "The Crucible.") but the one he had now was fuller and lighter.    I said his name and he turned and I introduced myself; it took him a second to recognize me, I think (I've always had longish hair, but my beard may have been new to him, and I'm definitely much grayer than I was even ten years ago).

His wife--they got married in 1984, I think--was shopping near-by, and we all started talking about other high-school friends, and how they've demolished the old high school and what people were doing.  M is still a grass seed farmer, but he's expanded to squash; T doesn't play the violin as much as she used to, but her daughter performs harp at the U of O.  

At one point, T commented that I had the same mannerisms that I did in school.  I'll take that as a compliment.   I introduced them to Mark and Arthur, and then it was time to leave the Fall Festival.  

Project:  OTP "Property" Challenge.  Polishing.  It's mostly done.  I should print out a paper copy for stupid typos and trim back mercilessly.

Weight-training (Monday):  120 calories in 10 minutes.  I got out of work late (first day of classes), and so I had to cut a few corners clinking weights.  

99W in Autumn

When we drive to Corvallis, we frequently take 99W.  It's the older highway system that was in place before Interstate Five, which runs to the east from Eugene to Albany.  

99W  runs through farmland which grow mostly grass and mint.   Hazelnut groves are my favorite because of the moire patterns made by the regular trunks.  There are a few windmill-pumps along the way, too.  The buildings are often shabby, unfortunately:  one-story rancher-bungalows that have seen better days and paint jobs.  The oldest have had all the paint peeled off, and the rain and sun bleaches the wood underneath.   At least the old, once-red barns look picturesque as thy decay in the distance.

For the longest time, there was a great haunted house candidate, an old gothic looking farm house with two stories and an attic under a steep roof.  A bramble was taking over one side, and parts of the porch were sagging.  For a while ten years ago, it looked like it might it might be salvagable, but it simply became more and more weathered.  Some time last year it was knocked down, because it's gone now.

The rain has returned for the autumn, and the clouds scud the grey clouds skud over the coastal hills.  As we get closer to Corvallis, Mary's Peak comes into view, its top in a white cloud.   We drive past old oaks, toppled in last year's storm.  There aren't any raptors visible today.

--

Sunday Workout:  It's a rest day or two, I'm not sure if mowing the lawn counts.

Project:  Finishing up the OTP "Property" challenge story.  I have the ending roughed in.  Now I need to polish it up.  I wrote the majority of it in SimpleNote on the iPad.  There's something to be said for being able to work on something where ever I have the iPad, but there's also something to be said for working on a larger screen, too. 

Journal: Sept 26, 2014

Project:  OTP "Property" Challenge

WD:  560 words in about 60 minutes.

Very tired this morning.  I channeled my inner Alethea Kontis and forced myself to write.  OK.  So, I didn't actually have my butt in a chair and I wasn't exactly at a desk; I was propped up on the couch and my eyes were closed some of the time, but I managed to keep my focus going and write words.  I'm going to have to finish this manuscript this weekend, because the deadline is looming.  

Workout:  160 calories in about 12 minutes plus weight clinking.  I'm trying to find a good triceps workout that doesn't make the tendon stretching through the outside my elbow joint feel strange, but so far the suggestions haven't worked or I'm doing them wrong.  Otherwise, my Wicked Plan to Look Good Naked (And Conquer the World!) appears to be (mostly) on track -- the hard part is eating less junk food so the spare tire around my middle melts away.

Journal Entry: Sept 25, 2014

Project:  OTP "Property" Challenge

Word count:  640 words in about 60 minutes.  Some very minor editing.

Starting with a blank file and working backward from multiple endings.  Still not completely happy with the ending... but it's getting there.  It probably needs to be less talking heads.  This flailing around is what I get for writing by the seat of my pants.

Reread the story draft before I went to be to try to sleep on the story.  As I was drifting to sleep my mind immediately played back old pop songs.  Not helpful.  I did dream something, but all I have this morning is a sense that something important or interesting happened.  

Autumnal Musings

Autumn and rain have returned to the valley.  The ground in our backyard has been so dry the last few weeks that we've had big cracks in the garden, and I hope the rain closes things up.  I think the only way we could fix the cracks permanently would be to bring in a truck of soil and sand and replace all the clay in our yard.  

It's the new moon.  New moons are sometimes difficult for me--as I've written before I want to be mystical and prophetic during new moons, but I end up feeling sleepy and depressed.  Especially when I get story rejections.  I was looking ahead at various astronomical  events, and I noticed that for the next few quarter days (winter solstice, spring equinox), there's a new moon.  The full moons fall a little after the traditional cross quarter days (Halloween, Ground Hog Day).  If I were very clever, I would submit stories so that the editorial response happens during the full moon, and then I could be manic about rejections acceptances!

It's always amusing for me to read Dion Fortune's accounts of her equinoxes, as she would stay up all night keeping some sort of vigil and writing about the dangers of the time of flux -- I never quite understood what she was darkly hinting at, and suspect it has something to do with polarity:  with everything being equal she'd feel like all of her mystical cosmic batteries were uncharged; it's very different from the equinox rituals of the later Neo-Pagans celebrating balance and harvest.

Fall term at the university is starting soon; the new students arrive tomorrow and suddenly the campus will be filled with eighteen and nineteen year olds.  Already the foot, bicycle, and automobile traffic is becoming congested, and I expect pandemonium tomorrow.

Wednesday mornings are frequently skip days.  Tuesday night is Wordos night, and usually we go to the local bar and grill afterward for food and drinks and discussion.  Last night's discussion was focused on writing the feminist agenda in fiction, identity politics, and using writing to change the world.  I'm not sure how one sets out to write political fiction which works as fiction.  I believe that writing should be more about expressing one's experiences, the human condition, and telling a good story, and less about a manifesto... although I've enjoyed many of Sheri S Tepper's novels, so I think it can be done.  

The down side to post-Wordos socializing is that I end up staying up past 10 PM, and then the next morning is difficult.  I'm always tempted to drink more tequila than just one drink, and on those occasions when I channel my inner Alfred Doolittle, I'm always regretting the lost productivity the next morning.

Project:  Uh? Project? Blaming an emergency at work for cutting into afternoon writing ...

Workout:  150 calories in 12 minutes.  Plus weight-clinking with some increased reps.  (I lost momentum skipping Monday's workout)

Journal: First Day of Autumn

It's the first full day of Autumn.  It was supposed to rain, but I don't think it has here.  The last two mornings have been grey and cool, and while the leaves are turning red and yellow, many trees are still green.

Project: OTP "Property" Challenge

Word Count:  about 500 new words and some editing in 90 minutes.  The ending really needs work.  I tried to imagine the characters speaking with each other just before I went to bed, with the hope that I might dream their situation, but I had different dreams instead.

Workout:  0 -- wasn't sure what was going on with my shoulder, so I skipped the gym.   After talking with Mark, we're pretty sure that I overdid some building in Minecraft: our desktop has terrible ergonomics and I got focused on the initial foundation of a Hanging Garden of Babylon. 

In the dream department, I had some kind of traveling dream.  It wasn't too unpleasant, as the theme wasn't being lost or missing mass transit.  At one point it was the winter holidays, and I was speaking to my Grandmother Agnes (who hasn't been alive for several years) about what flowers were blooming in the snow.   The conversation started out fine, but gradually petered out and I have a sense that either the phone connection had gone out or she had put down the phone.  

This would be the fifth Talking with an Older Lady dream I've had in a row.  I'm not sure if this one is part of the same sequence, as I was doing most of the speaking.  Maybe my earlier interpretation of what the dream meant was premature.  

Where's Brunhilde ?

Sunday we went to Sahalie and Koosah Falls.


We got there about 11:45, and the sun made rainbows in the waterfalls' mist.  Koosah Falls especially reminded me of the Bifrost Bridge, and so I was humming bits of the Rhinemaidens' leitmotif and Siegfried's Funeral March.

Journal: Last Day of Summer

I've managed to pull my upper trapezoid (I think) muscle or a tendon in my right shoulder.  The result is that my upper neck has reduced mobility and will send little twinges of pain down my shoulder every so often.  Woke up about four times so that I could shift and just rolling in bed really hurt.  Hot water and some stretches seem to help, but I still have reduced mobility.  I'm hoping that whatever I've done will work itself out over the course of the day.

Project:  OTP "Property" Challenge.

Word Count:  about 500 words (mostly recalling the previous night's dream) in about 80 minutes.  The ending is still not working, and feels a little preachy.

I did ask The Empress and The Hermit what dreaming Old Women was about.  While no Goddess or Sybil descended to interpret my recent dreams, I'm pretty sure that it's a desire for an older woman writer I know to have some health issues resolve so that she won't feel so badly (my shoulder issue is a stubbed toe compared to what she's been going through) and so I can study writing under her.  

Dream: The Old Woman Lectures

I dreamed I was going to a convention to hear an older woman speak.  (In waking life, I think she was an amalgam of Ursula K Le Guin and Kate Wilhelm).  I had A with me, and also the family cat, who was an amalgam of Machka (I love you/I slash you) and Smokey (I love you/I wash you).

The convention took place in a Hilton or a DoubleTree or possibly the MacDonald Theatre in downtown Eugene.  I remember there were some carpeted stairs we had to climb, and some glass doors we had to go through.  There was a huge crowd of (mostly, I think) women there to hear the Older Woman speak.  She was seated on a kind of round davenport or sofa, which may or may not have been on a stage.

At one point going up the stairs and through the glass doors, A and I got separated in the crowd and I had to turn back and find him (he was upset).  Then Machka/Smokey saw a mouse in the theatre, and promptly raced off to catch it.   I had to go back to the lobby to catch the cat, who was racing around in large circles.  Eventually, by placing myself on whatever path the cat was zooming on, I was able to have the cat smash into me.

I went back into the lecture hall / theatre.  The Older Woman was with two or three other Old Women getting a back massage, and I was trying to have a conversation with her, but I didn't want to sit on the circular bed she was on, because that would have made her twist on the mattress and disturbed the massage


At some point, the dream shifted to a kind of Muppet Movie.  All I really remember about it it is that the Bad Boss was named Ludo, and that I had to revive a teen aged character (who apparently was just a floating head) by putting on white Obi-Wan Kenobi robes and saying, "I am your father; search your feelings, you know it to be true.  Dress in saggy pants.  Get a tattoo.   And date that tramp of a girlfriend."  This energized the lad enough that he levitated out of the chair he was sulking in, which enabled another character to iron his brain, which was a CD.



This is the third night in a row that I've dreamed Older Women Telling Me Something.  This is a new dream development, and I've yet to figure what this symbol is trying to tell me.  I will have to pull out The Empress or the Hermit out of my tarot deck before I got to sleep and ask it to tell me what the Older Woman wants.

Journal: Wishing For Eternal Night

Saturday morning.  Earlier, as I was brewing my tea, I took a long look at the crescent moon as it sailed under Jupiter.  I'm going to miss the bright morning skies in a few weeks when the much needed rain returns.  At 5 AM, the city is so quiet and the sky is so bright with stars (and the moon), I wish that I could work underneath them all the time (even if the LED candle doesn't quite provide enough light to see the keyboard).  

Now, I'm ensconced in my writer's closet ... kind of not writing, but gearing up for it.  Darkspore, the music track, is drowning out the sounds of Stampycat Longnose and various Minecraft Shenanigans.  I've got tea, and there's enough glow from the borrowed night light (I think today's quest is for working light-bulbs for the non-working lights) to read the notes I scribbled on a manuscript to be able to transcribe them.

The other task I should do is sand the edge of the desk I installed in the writing closet some time ago.  It's sort of sharp and splintery and makes my wrists itch.

I did manage to get some very light editing in in the window of time that I had before the family (and guest) woke up.  Looking at the manuscript, there's a bit of walking (actually, an escape) to the plot (which is the result of the escape), and I'm wondering if this is two stories.  I mostly like it, and it still needs something to make it shine.

Project:  OTP Challenge

Word Count: Editing (tightening and cleaning up staging) and maybe 200 new words in about 2.5 hours.  Current MN WC is ~2500.

I'm a little sore from yesterday's workout; feeling stiff in my feet and hands.  I'm probably at the point where I should increase the weight on a few of the things that I do, because it feels like my body has gotten used to the lateral pull-down, the free dumbbell, and the sort of horizontal bench-press machine.

I had another older lady telling me something dream.  This time it was Aunt Margot, but I don't recall much beyond dreaming that we'd had some sort of conversation.  This is probably a reminder to send her a picture of the jade plant cutting she gave us a few months ago.

Mark's John Thing™ Gift

Mark came back from visiting his family on the East Coast.  One of his brothers lives near Monticello, and when this adjustable magnifier was spotted in the gift shop, the response was "That's totally a John Thing™."  

For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of a John Thing™ this wins because it's

• got moving parts
• optical
• shiny
• raison d'être is interactive 
• has a historical connection 
• got a Jules Verne feel to it
• the sort of thing you'd find at Café John
• a good prop for a savant character in a play

And, most importantly, it's a love gift.  

Journal: Writing Under the Stars

I dreamed I was talking with an amalgam of some older women I know, and they were telling me a list of mutual friends who had died.  I would ask, "Oh, and how's so-and-so doing?" and one or the other of them would say, "Oh, don't you know; they died just last month."

This morning I managed to wake up a half hour early and get my brain working on the latest story.  In the half hour or so of dosing, I came up with something that would further the manuscript along and hopped out of bed to write it.  The crescent moon was next to Jupiter, and in the southeast sky stood Orion and Taurus; the Pleiades were in the zenith.

I decided to work outside under the stars. Being wrapped in blankets and quilts keeps me seated and typing; and if the family wakes up extra early it's less intrusive than when I'm sitting in The Burridge Chair  

Project: OTP Story

Word Count:   500 to 700 words and some editing in about 90 minutes.

I was cringing to "Newsies" -- I have a low tolerance for what I perceive as power chord ballad after power chord ballad, the shouting, and the broken English and accents, which then get lodged in my head -- when Mark accused me of  liking similarly repetitive and inane music.  "It's like the samovar calling the kettle black."

Workout:  160 cal / 120 minutes + various weight clinking.

Sept 18 Journal: There Will Be Cats

Workout:  150 cal / 13 minutes on the rowing machine.  Usual weight clinking routine.  Tried some inclined triceps reps, but I'm not sure I did them the right way.

Project:  OTP "Property" Contest

Word Count:  about 200 new words, lots of editing.

Not the world's most productive morning, I think.  I got up a little after 5, but I wasn't properly awake until a little before 6.  Editing always feels like it takes longer than it should, and since I'm not creating new words, it feels like I'm just dinking around with text.  The story is following traditional folktale structures and I need to mix it up a bit.  

I sat inside, in the Grandpa Burridge Chair, figuring out tea placement and negotiating with Smokey where he would sit while I write (he becomes a bit of a pest the closer it gets to his 7 AM breakfast); as soon as he figures out, "Oh, the taller human is writing" his routine will be to go perch on top of the CD rack and play vulture and pounce on Mark when Mark wakes up. But today he kept batting my legs to try to get my attention.  

Some days the words flow more than others I guess.

Egyptian Bedtime Fanfair

Yesterday I ate something for breakfast that upset my stomach.  So after Wordos I had some soda to try to calm it and ended up staying up later than I should have.  The result was that, predictably, I slept in until 6:40.

Project:  Dream Journalling:  400 words in about 20 minutes.

Several dreams last night.  The most fun image was when the Queen of Egypt, dressed in a fabulous wrap around dress of blue with raptor wing feather motifs, retired for the night.  Standing in the hallway to her bedchamber was a line of about twenty women with curving horns with great wide bells playing a fanfare.  Behind the horn chorus, the wall showed a painted frieze of women with shields (or else horns), the main pattern being an Egyptian red circle, with a wide black rim, repeating with each painted woman.   Later, the dream involved a two-foot-wide blue crystal ball the Royal Egyptian family used for scrying -- my point of view changed to someone looking out of the watery depths of the crystal at them.

Dream: Train and Sand

Project:  OTP Story

Word Count:  500 words in about 50 minutes.

Project:  Dream Journaling

Word Count:  700 words in about 50 minutes.

Vaguely unpleasant dream last night (I'm guessing that between the cat and a slightly unsettle stomach, I defaulted to the floating anxiety dream format).  It started out as a Dr. Who dream and there was lots of being chased and chased off in it.  The most interesting image was a steam locomotive which was chugging across the sky without any rails, and a glass goblet that filled up (don't ask me from where) with sand.  When the goblet filled completely, it exploded in glimmery, shimmery, slow motion and teleported the protagonists elsewhere.

Even though this wasn't the cheeriest of dreams, I wrote it down in an effort to encourage my dream recall to improve.  I'm also hoping that if I take the time to write my dreams down, I'll have more pleasant, fun, and magical dreams (instead of ones filled with unfocused menace, labyrinths, and (missed) airplanes).