Writing · with · Power

My younger daughter got a lava lamp for Christmas. It wasn't working for her, so she asked me to help. I've put the thing together, wasn't very difficult, but the damn thing takes forever to get going. Right now it's sitting on my desk as I type. It's hard not to just stare at the thing waiting for movement, which it has done, but not very quickly. I think about all the times I've seen these things in movies and TV and they're always just flowing away, up and down in a really mesmerizing dance of "lava." No such luck here.

The instructions say not to leave the lamp on for longer than eight hours, hell, it may take that long just to getting moving. Oh well, Merry Christmas!

Writng is tough for me. It's not that it hard to get things into words, it's trying to slow down my thoughts to a pace that matches my typing ability. I speak just fine and I've given talks in front of groups of people with just an outline and there's no problem. It's writing that sucks. Slowing down to typing speed screws with my flow, that is, with the strange mind things that go on in my head and normally spill out of my mouth. It's tough getting that on paper, or computer as the case may be. Argghh.

It funny, sometimes, the things that go on in one's head. My head for instance. I want to see a movie, I know the movie, but can't think of it's exact title. I tell my wife, "We haven't seen that movie yet, you know the one, 'Restroom Guy Get a Job.'" Her response, "What?!" So I say, "You know, 'Restroom Guy Gets a Job' the story about a guy that lives in a restroom and fakes his way into business and gets a job, then becomes rich." (Why isn't real life like that?)(Oops, I guess it is, since 'Restroom Guy Get a Job' is based on a real life story.) So, anyway. I haven't seen the movie yet.

Maybe I've always been a tactile type of person. I don't know. I do remember when I was a kid that we'd visit an aunt of mine and I hated sitting on her sofa or chairs. The reason: she covered them in clear plastic. Yep, the kind of plastic that was popular in the fifties to prevent the normal wear-and-tear of furniture. I couldn't understand the sense in having a really nice couch, if you were just going to cover it in plastic and make it FEEL like a crappy one.

So anyway, recently I've noticed that a used book seems to be more desirable if it has its dust jacket. Why? I've always loved the way a nicely bound book feels. To feel the cover, whether it leather or just cloth doesn't matter, it has a beautiful feel to it. When I open it and there are the pages, and they too have that feel of a good book. I even love the books that have the natural oils of human hands on them. It's as if they have been sealed or protected in some way by these natural oils.

I'm sure someone will tell me that these oils are bad for the books, but I don't care, they just feel right. However, when I buy a used book and the dust jacket has been taped into place, so it wouldn't be lost. What is the sense in that? The jacket is meant to protect the book, I'm thinking while it's on the shelf before being sold, and once it is sold the jacket is supposed to be removed. Usually the tape itself, that holds the jacket in place, has left its glue all over the books cover, inside and out, and it's very disappointing. The book has this unnatural gummy substance on it that just won't come off. You can't take the jacket off and then put the book next to other books because the gummy crap then contaminates the other books and leaving the jacket on is just as bad because it doesn't have the durability of the actual cover and is torn, dirty and basically has become ugly to look at and awful to touch.

Leaving the dust jacket on a book, after it's been purchased, is like buying a brand new sofa and deciding to leave the plastic wrapping it comes in on the couch for protection, and worse yet, taping the jacket on is like stapling the plastic onto the couch. It feels bad, looks bad and doesn't give the person, using it, the pleasure of a quality piece of furniture. So, I will continue to buy books, preferring the quality made and printed ones to the mass produced, and I will remove the dust jackets. I will, however, treat these books with great care and respect, so even though they will no longer have a dust jacket on them they will be books anyone could take pleasure in holding in their hands and reading.

I've join a book trading community. This is very interesting because I am able to see exactly how many books have been traded by any one individual. Wow! Some have traded in the thousands, which of course means they originally bought those books, and so, there a whole lot of books being sold out there. I guess this is really no surprise, not to anyone that's visited a few bookstores. But to see the numbers directly in from of you is still amazing.

I also think about the people at my last job. Hoo boy, I think I was the only reader there. They were constantly amazed that I carried a book around with me almost everywhere. Now there were at least twenty people at this job, which would make me about 5% of that population. If that's the average percentage of readers in this country then an awful lot of book stores are being kept going by a very small number of people; percentage-wise.

I remember one fellow who saw me reading and asked me if I was taking a class or something. I told him "no" to which he replied, "Then why are you reading a book." Argghh! "For pleasure." I guess TV has gotten most people's attention nowadays. That's too bad. There's really not much to think deeply about on the tube. This may be why we have a president who is such an idiot.

Time's up.

Last night I had a really hard time getting to sleep. I've had this problem for a while. Sometimes, I will be up all night long. I don't know why this is happening, it just is. Although last night I did manage to have some dreams. A dream I have quite frequently actually, in a variety of contexts, or should I say with the details being slightly altered; anyway.

I dream that I am in school, or needing to finish school, and I can't find my class and I really don't want to finish anyway, but I am being pressured to do it. Last night one of the details of the dream was that an old friend of mine was in the dream. He was someone I knew in the navy, but he had aged since I last saw him. My friend is a black man, which seemed important in the dream. I often dream of a black man. It always seems that a black man represents a hidden side of myself. Maybe the idea of a "shadow side" to my personality is what's being presented to me in the dream. Anyway, usually the black man is a friend or confidant and I have either missed him or am caring for his welfare in some way. Strange huh?

So here was this black friend of mine in one of the classes I needed to finish. He was being very diligent and working hard, while I was trying to get out of class and go do something more fun. I'm not quite sure how the dream ended. I woke being a bit groggy and it seemed like I needed more sleep.

Ten minutes is up.

This journal is going to be a journey (no pun intended) to writing. I have just acquired a book on "writing with power." Catchy title, huh? Anyway, this book is intended to be used by people wanting to learn to write better without the aid of a teacher. We'll see how well this goes.

The first exercise in the book is to write for a solid ten minutes without censoring anything that goes down on paper and this is my first attempt at doing this. I know what you think, that maybe this is cheating because I'm not really writing about anything except starting to write and therefore shouldn't count. Well, it does and that is because I am not suppose to censor myself, so there, it counts.

I have noticed though that as I am writing this I am looking at the clock on the computer quite often. I think this is making the time go much slower. Oh oh, I do believe that time has stopped now; maybe even going backwards. Yes, it has I have entered a wormhole and time has begun to move back, back, I am now experiencing what I did as I got up yesterday morning. Oh, what a crappy morning it was. It did begin better today, or should I say tomorrow? Anyway, I'm still moving back in time and it going much faster now, days slip into years. I am standing in front of the class it is fifth grade and the teacher has just called the entire class stupid. I stand and tell her, oops it's gone time continues backward and this writing exercise is lasting forever.

Wow! It just ended. Ten minutes.