SHOPPING AND CHOPPING LISTS

  What if it is all is part of a plan?

  I’m not talking about the big ‘ole God’s Plan for all of us specks. Nope. I’m talking about all things in an area having no value other than their use for the moment. Other than that, the stuff (when it is not being used) is just stuff that has no real value. Like a fork in a drawer, a hammer on a shelf, or an apple that has fallen from a tree in the middle of nowhere.

  What if people fall into this concept of stuff. What if each of us isn’t the center of the universe? We are only grains of sand on a very big beach. If someone needs some glass, then some sand gets scooped for the furnace. Those grains are serving a purpose. The rest of the grains just soak the wind, water, sun, and bird poop.

  This leads me to a question: is ‘good’ pointless, or is it a kind of weakness? With a ‘toolshed’ point of view of us mortals awaiting their job number to get picked, the concept of ‘good’ fails when set outside of the immediate group of human ‘tools’. The only answer that comes to mind is a kind of question: Is ‘goodness’ / morality a kind of control mechanism, like an adaptable lynchpin that keeps all the cogs spinning where they are supposed to? I suppose that the ‘Greatest Good’ would be either the clockwork frame or the clockmaker itself.

   OK, I’ll come back down. Here’s the deal It’s just that I’ve been unable to connect with folks around me very well as of late. My oldest was happy about getting some rollerblades the other day. No… ecstatic would be the better term. You know how they act; all fidgety and talking a mile a minute.

   I felt nothing. Just another thing to watch out for. This new ‘sport’ was something for me to schedule into my day…

#14: Clean the gutters out.
(adjustment) #15: Teach the kid to rollerblade.
#16: Put up the snow gear…

   So I’m moving to zero on the sliding scale of empathy. Looking at the ‘to do’ list, I suppose I still have a decent amount of compassion. I don’t think I’m autistic. I don’t overly fixate on stuff. Most of the time, I’m just trying to clear out whatever problems are messing up my day; like a fighting-flight response or something like that.

   That’s why I’m stuck writing the dreams down. I just want them gone so that I can move on with my life. Clear the white noise and all of that.

- I.K.

The Smoke Clears

  I missed last weeks blog.

  Sorry about that. I had been electrocuted and am currently tending to the burns. It is amazing that we meat sacks made it out of the wilderness.

  In the quiet hours before I passed out last night, I found myself wondering about parallel universes. Is there another me / another set of ‘me’ who did not walk away from that zap? One parallel me suffering heart seizure, another me put into a coma, another me trapped in the resulting fire as the building came blazing down…

  Nah, it wasn’t that bad for me. Well, for this me. Some idiot journeyman electrician kicked on a fuse while I was wiring in the mainframe. I got hit by the 220 and my right hand locked onto the jolt. I screamed and the other guys got on the horn to shut the line down. The EMT cleared me after salving the burn. The mainframe didn’t make it.

  Someone is going to pay for that bit of bad news…

  My money is on the idiot at the fuse box.

  Well, it looks like winter is finally letting us go from its icy grip. At least the temps aren’t below zero anymore. Shoot; I actually got the kids to go take a bike ride. The house was quiet and that is just the way this old bear likes it. Made it through the cold with only a dead battery and no real property damage to deal with.

 

   Looking back on the last blog, I also have to say that I'm Baaack! I kind of quit a couple of weeks ago, but the dreams sure as hell didn't. Nope. They just kept rolling in; repeating like some old CD set on replay. The nice thing is that once I put them down on my little scrap of digital paper, they begin to play less frequently.

 

   Interesting thing about the electrocution and this writing; I'm finding it easier to write death and corruption pieces within this little cell of homework sign-offs, dumping garbage, and listening to everyone else blather on about their problems. Like I can fix their stuff. Sheesh. There are times that I watch the mouths move but I cannot fathom the noise that is coming out. It might as well be horns honking in a traffic jam. What's the point? Just deal with it and move on, people!

- I.K.

Stuck in the Muck

  This book may not happen. It’s like a diet. I’ve made it past the first month and have started to realize that this is a lifestyle change.

  Shoot, I’m just a guy in a house in the middle of a town. If this thing isn’t written, who will know? If a thing isn’t made, then folks aren’t going to miss it. I’ve got some soul searching to do, I guess.

 Let me bring you up to speed. I had another recurring dream last night.

  I wrote it down in the journal that I’m keeping at the bedside. That was dream number five. From the journal, I copy them into the short stories / book thing that I’m putting together.

  Looking through the journal, I continue to have this weird feeling. The dreams feel… sent. Or received. How can I describe them? OK, think in this way: You are walking down a path in a park and you find a phone lying on the ground. It’s one that can take pictures and film stuff. Giving in to that moment of weakness, you discover that the phone isn’t locked, so you dig in. You find some files that have been filmed, and you check them out.

  Who’s going to know, right?

  After a few of them, you start to feel funny about what you are watching. It’s like the scenes that were filmed were real. Normal people. Normal environments. Normal reactions.

  The problem with the scenes are the fact that they are filmed at all.

  Every one of them is a unique moment. Like a garden party where the fountain sprays the guests with wine, and the camera is there at the right moment. Or the guy jumping off the diving board and the board breaks, and the camera is there at the right moment.

  But the camera has a LOT of them on file. The date stamps are too close for comfort too. See what I mean?

  Too many coincidences.

  ESP? Time travel? Great set ups, actors, and scripting?

  Anyway, that’s the way these dreams are starting to feel.

  Too coincidental.

  Too real.

  Too terrible.

  Ultimately, I have to remind myself that they are dreams. None of it is real. Like a thriller flick or a TV show done right… and that’s the thing. I’m not sure the writing is the ‘right stuff’ for… anything. I’m thinking about mothballing this whole project and getting back into Real Life. We’ll see how things go next week.

-I.K.

Busy Little Hive

  Well, I shook that head cold off. Ugh. Body aches and exhaustion was my weekend. The only up side was the mint cookies delivery from the neighbor girl. $14 bucks well spent!

  OK. Back to the writing.

 

  First off, I have discovered that I possess an I/O device that I can’t turn off.

  Sitting at the dinner table last night, I felt like I was drifting over the room in a surreal haze. My mind was struggling with a ghost struggling with demons. Around the table, there were conversations going on. Talk about the winter soccer sign up. Then there was a discussion about some new Hindi spices that we’re using on the beef.

  Do Hindi’s even eat cow?

  While all of that is going on, I’m watching the cars drive by out the front window. Folks walking dogs heavy jackets. Trees thinking about waking from the winter nap.

  Here I am; eating a cow with my family in my house, thinking about how I’m going to stick a technicians’ ghost in a demonic rite taking place in an insane asylum.

  Surreal!

 

- I. K.

Another Heart You Day Come and Gone.

Time for some post-V-day blogging. Lived through another one. Gotta love the card companies and their forced holidays. The kids were fixated on making (multiple) cards for everyone in the house. She got nothing for me. I got nothing for her. Too tired. Not enough time. You know how it goes. We’ve been with each other for 12 anniversaries and two years before that. Been there, done that.

  Also; abandon all hope, ye cyberstalkers who enter here!

  I got nutten fer ya.

  I think I’ve got my first ‘fan’! Here’s the story:

  So I get home and stuck in the front door is a copy of a book titled Killing a Mouse on Sunday. It’s in Spanish, so I can’t read a word. I guess some movie was made of it back in the 60’s. Haven’t been able to find that title, though.

  Haven’t looked too hard for it, either.

  Anyway, now that I’ve got a fan, I feel like I’m being followed.

  Or watched.

  Monitored?

  It’s weird. I feel like I should have a knife on me. No, not a blade. I don’t think I could ever get over cutting someone. Just the thought of doing something like that gives me the willies. Nope. Nada.

  I did cut off a wooden rod from some scrap out in the garage. Drilled a hole and attached a cord. Now I got me a thump stick!

  Heh.

  I’ve been noticing people a lot more recently. I’m starting to feel like my neighbors down the road. We call them ‘the watchers’. Nothing goes on without them seeing it in this neighborhood! It’s a creepy kind of security.

  Anyway; people watching has become a hobby of mine. It started out with watching to see who is watching me. Not many, if any, as it turns out.

   Who does seem to be watching me is this gal named Elana Connelly. I mentioned her in a previous blog.

 Check me out. I’m a blogger.

   OK. Here is my take on her being the force behind my current dream-cycle. I woke up on New Years day with the first dream as a memory. Naturally, I didn’t think too much about it. It was a story that I’m thinking about titling Loosing It. One that I haven’t dreamt of for a while; which means it will be coming back soon. There’s this gal in the dream who is working for… wait for it… Dame Connelly.

   Now, I would like to point out that Connelly is the same Connelly that is in our world. I don’t know how I know it, I just KNOW IT. Once I sat down and looked into her stuff last week, I could see the same patterns of philosophy and the same voice that I hear from her in my dreams. Ultimately, she is a nihilist within a veneer of cultural morality. Does that make her a good person dealing with a devastating core; or a bad person playing a role to get by?

Rites of War is on Paper!

  Elana Connelly. Right now, I’m blaming her for the dreams. More on that later.

  I looked her up the other day. She was the one who had the writing credits for the afore mentioned Text flick. It turns out that she wrote some other books about a frame of mind called Evolutionary Ethics. The idea that she is trying to get out there is that ‘amorality is moral’ verses ‘amorality is a complement to normative ethics’.

  I have no idea what that means. Lots of amoral stuff, apparently.

  Being a good little author, I looked a lot of stuff up and read until my eyes burned and my brain hurt. I took notes. Here is the simplified version of my take on the whole shebang:

  First of all, what does ‘moral’ really mean? I mean, really? There are easy ones, like don’t kill and don’t steal. Then there are grey ones, like listening to a Christian far-right gal talking about gay marriage and a wiccan far-left guy taking about big business.

  With that in mind, I decided to lock into the black-and-white argument. First came the side of ‘amorality is moral’ it sticks to the idea that morals are relative to the situation at hand. You’ve got laws that define that killing and stealing is wrong. But those laws don’t count for the cop who shoots a perp, a soldier who opens up on the enemy, or the home owner defending themselves against a hopped up attacker with an axe. What about finding a $20 on the street? Is that stealing if you pocket it? It isn’t your money. What if you are broke and starving and there sits a hamburger that some dude left on the table to go use the can? What if you are unemployed and going to go home to starving kids; and someone left groceries in the back of their shiny, new pickup?

  This got me thinking about some of the characters that could show up in my book.

  Then comes the side of the argument where ‘amorality is a complement’ in that it is a cause-effect, a consequence, a relationship compass, it sensibly defines contexts of ethical meanings, and is part of family roles. You drink at an office party with your boss, you drive home, you kill a kid on a bike. But you have kids of your own that you are working hard to support. You’ve made sacrifices for those kids of yours. However; the world sees you as ‘that drunk that killed that kid with his car’.

  For me, the argument seems to boil down to one of self-control. Where you draw the line is what defines morality. The guy who drank with his boss could have done a watered-down drink or a few baby sips verses gulping it. Did that guy need to be drinking with his boss in the first place? What kind of place is that guy working for, anyway? Maybe that guy should have found another job.

  See? Self control with a dash of… foresight? Common sense? Flight verses fight? I suppose it boils down to how you are wired.

  Anyway, in Dame Connelly’s work sits all kinds of interesting plot devices and messed up characters to work with. A seed for them, anyway. The question is; where will they end up once I am done with them?

   That brings me to my FIRST dream-based writing; a little ditty that I call Rites of War. After putting the thing down on paper, I’m considering changing the title. I’m also thinking about making this book into an anthology of short stories based on the town I’m dreaming about. Each dream is the same, but different. I’ll be able to better explain once I have a few more written up.

   Hopefully…

Do we leave marks, or add to the ones already here?

Lovecraft.
  I suppose most folks have been exposed to this guy and his ideas in one form or another. Mine came from a movie titled The Text of the Maestro. It was a little indie flick about a pianist who began manipulating his most ardent fans with his music. At first he was the prime suspect when murders began occurring within the homes of folks who had come to his concerts. Then it became a hunt for a parasitic serial killer using the Maestro’s fan base as a buffet line. As I recall, there was a psycho, but they were under the sway of the music as well. Near the end of the film, the pianist had to come to terms that their passion was the murder device, fed by energies beyond the confines of our little blue planet. I remember the final scene’s weirdness, as the camera pulled away from Earth; it was like a P.O.V. shot that yanked us away until Sol was just another star in the sky of a living planet of chaotic… things.
   Well, that’s kind of the way I feel right now.
   A speck in the crosshairs of something else. I don’t know why that film came to mind, but it inspired an idea for a book. Well, not a single story, but a book of short stories. As a lark, I opened this blog the other day (my first!) and last night I began organizing the ideas for the… idea.
  Dreams become letters, letters become books.
  Are books solid dreams?
  More to come later!

I.K.