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 Notes & Way To Work on a NovelAs a novelist suffering writer's block, writing this Blog had freed a mind to write once again."Notes on a Writer's Life," is essays on life; its reality, fantasy, joy, humor, sadness, frustration; even manic craziness, and memories, good and bad, of love, loss and eroticism. Chapters in part of two novels in progress, The End of Night and Wait The Dawn, two books in a trilogy, are added.OTHER "VOICESContributorsThose who would like to contribute thoughts to this blog, as writers, scribblers or just readers, are most welcome.Fictional & Real1) T.S. Hoeft, poet laureate of the author's novel The End Of Night, and protagonist of that novel. (2) "The Old Man," curmudgeon of stark old-age opinion, in reality, a rock; 3) Letters to members, some unidentified, to clarify points of view on many subjects; 4) Moody, bar owner and bawdy enforcer of the "rules" paralyzed War Vet, a humorous take on Wisdom."; 5) The Usher: Me, to borrow the role from my friend''s play; in a pedantic vein, and as reporter.Graphic Credit: Done by Artful1000, a sterling artist and poet, on All Poetry a site where she had a mystery running for audience and actors. I' was the Usher." |
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Dentist's Math To Fix "Antenna" in My Teeth
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Nov 22, 2009 5:11 am
Mood: Mars Calling,
46 Views
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Surprise! Not Spy Receiver but Connector Sprung
Paranoid delusions can get the best of you if you let them. Luckily, I didn't keep up the fantasy of a spy in my tooth. Instead I went to the dentist.
Guess I should have kept up the delusion, instead. It was less costly. Of course, I couldn't eat with a prong coming out of my false teeth, so I had little choice.
The good dentist called off this and that to do to carry me over until I could get another implant done, and it sounded as if his cost would be $300. When his assistant noted everything he would do in technical jargon as he probed my mouth, and his front office gal sharpened her pen, the cost suddenly jumped to $1,050, just for starters with him.
I wrote a check. A bit less than I thought I owed him.
I'd have to go to a specialist for the implant. The one who did the fine, fake tooth on the other side of my mouth. His costs were modest for such a thing, $500 first off, then $3,000 for a new implant. It was just an anchor, and not seen in my mouth.
Then back to the first dentist, or "prosthodondist," as he's called to finish fitting my woeful false plate. Looks like he sees, or his assistants do, at least another thousand dollars worth in my mouth.
I've got to get busy quick and make 5,000 bucks, all for a bit of hardware that, I think, shouldn't have sprung loose in the first place. Of course, I shouldn't have eaten all of that candy when I was a kid. either.
c-Copyright 2009 KHE by the author of this blog
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The Old Man Adds to The Boss's Look
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Nov 17, 2009 1:35 am
Mood: Indulgent,
62 Views
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I've a Good Head of Hair, He's Loosing His
I forgot. The Boss thinks what he calls my forehead is just that; actually it's a full head of hair that grows over my forehead. He can't see it because he's loosing his hair up front and thinks everyone at age 67 ought to have patches of scalp showing. Oh, I forgot. He's only 66, yet.
I'm ancient and have good hair. Of course, I was a young man when my face was embedded in a piece of lava rock. So the rock shows my face, in a somewhat grotesque way, compared to what I was like then.
The Boss is not so fortunate. I know from photos he had almost too much hair. He still has a good bit on the sides, like his father. And when he lets it, it will curl, like his father's did. The Boss's hair is curly all over, even now, where he has it, and when he lets it, keeps it just the right length for a curl.
I do envy his curls. Mine was straight and black. His hair is kind of brown with gray mixed in. Gray shows that he isn't too dumb, but may have earned a bit of wisdom.
[Image]
I wish he'd take a good picture of me. Instead he blows up an ugly one of himself. I'm a hard shot to get, 7-inches x 4-inches and getting a bit shinny now as I'm starting to crystallize. Would be nice though--more people interested in me, I should think. Go Figure.
c-Copyright 2009 KHE by this blog author
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The Old Man Explores the Boss's New Look
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Nov 16, 2009 2:50 am
Mood: As Told By,
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Getting to Look More Like Me, a Rock, Day-by-Day
The Boss, that's my name for my owner, this guy who found me and keeps me around as some kind of talisman. I'm a half a clinker of lava rock from an ancient time, rolling on the bottom of seas, a broken man myself, like the Boss is, whose other half was my woman caught in magical embrace at the moment of volcanic eruption, but somehow split asunder in the waters that covered our land after that.
But that's enough about me. I'm supposed to be telling you about my good friend, The Boss, who sits at my right hand, if I had one, that is. But we are almost face to face; so I'm a good judge of what he's come to look like.
Tired, he says of the narcissistic way of talking about himself all the time, he assigned me with the task of telling you how he's coming to look more like me.
I'm a handsome man, really, for a rock. Verily, I was at one time. Well, I'd say that The Boss may still be considered one, too, if you like a man whose once beefy cheeks are sunken, whose bright eyes have lost some luster, whose big nose, just like mine, has become ever more a prominent feature of his face. It's big, not gigantic; just more visible than ever.
Unfortunately, The Boss does not have his teeth right now, they're in hock to the dentist who's remaking them, he says, after a permanent plate broke off in food at the farewell dinner for his wife along with two of her kids and his granddaughter. He didn't eat much that time. Not that it would have helped, had he eaten or if he could eat real well now.
He's so skinny, all bone and not much meat. He should complain, at least he has a body, unlike me. I'm just a head of stone. For him, it gives this gaunt look, like the line from Shakespeare, "Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look." That's him, lean and hungry. And I don't think he's hungry for food. He eats a lot, what he can, but little sticks to his diminished frame. No, he's hungry for what he doesn't have.
A whole lot of things makes The Boss look kind of sad these days. Much like me, who lost everything to a volcanic storm. He does brighten up at some things, and there's this sideways kind of grin. Some people, I guess, think it's charming, even without his teeth.
You wonder how it is that a rock writes as I do. I am highly educated--self educated--as my mind roams The Boss's library and learns all he can. I was endowed with many things when he made me a companion, and this has been one, intellect to explore with my mind, travel with it to places in the physical plane, and learn.
Now that's also how I can explore The Boss's countenance and explain it. I guess he's not too bad a guy; he turned me from a rock into a man.
c-Copyright 2009 KHE by the author of his blog
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Living on a Penney When You Were Used to a Dime
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Nov 8, 2009 4:12 pm
Mood: Changing,
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Not Yet a Total Bum, I'm a Lot Worse Off Than I Was
There are many worse off than I am; I know, I spent some time with a number of them recently. At least I'm not penniless, not yet; so I'm not a societal outcast, a derelict. Well, not yet. That could come.
I've lived on social security that is so little, it couldn't pay the mortgage on my little mountain house. At the time SoSec. calculated it and sent my first check, I was grateful that it was anything at all. I hadn't worked at a job that deducted it out for me in over 17 years, making what little living I did from from freelance writing.
I'd been lucky that I had parents who believed in me and in the work I was doing, writing a novel. They provided for me in their wills.
The work went well until my mother died. Then my writing dried up and so did I. It took seven years to realize some things and begin the book again. Unfortunately, while I only lived at all lavishly on my father's quarter, most of it invested in a home where my mother spent her last days with us, I was on dimes by the time social security came, and it was pennies.
You can't tell me that a single person can live as well as a couple can. It takes two today to make ends meet to have more than two pennies to rub together. I'm beginning to appreciate more than ever these unwed, and/or abandoned mothers and how they cope.
I found this out painfully when I found myself more-or-less suddenly alone.
When I didn't have even the pennies that were enough that my social check afforded, I borrowed. Getting bills paid, the mortgage, medical insurance and nearly a thousand dollars a month to climb out of the Medicare "do-nut hole," I borrowed against excellent credit.
This way, I still had some dimes left to get new printers when mine broke down, and other items to provide start-up for a business venture, a long-held dream that at the time seemed just right to proceed with. And still keep my head above water for awhile.
Waiting for a reverse mortgage to finalize and keep the mortage paid was a challenge. When it was closed, there wasn't much in my drawing account. I'll empty soon to pay back credit card companies and continue to live. It seemed banks were going to make up their exorbitant "stimulus" pay the government was asking for with my hide.
Not yet living on pennies, but I am having to think more and more that way. I bought a pair of reading glasses, and as usual thought that if I broke them, as I do, I could just buy another pair. But not so fast, Bub, those were dime days, think in pennies now. Don't break the glasses, there might not be money to replace them.
My thinking is having to change, and that's not easy. I understand now the sacrifice my parents made living on pennies themselves at times to provide me the quarters and dimes that they did later.
So, as a priviledged man, my way has to change. I've layed out things to sell off and am looking for other opportunities to make some quarters to pay debts.
Many say to me, you've got to give up your home; and, if needed, throw yourself on the mercy of the state to take care of you. Get a place where you can have help when you need it, so you don't fall and break another bone.
Maybe that sounds good to some, but I guess I'm just too proud. It's not the first time I've been deep in debt, and paid every penney of it back, though not when they wanted it. I was without credit for seven years; then slowly built it up to the top of the ladder. You need good, if not excellent, credit to maintain a business.
Knowing what it's like to be down, I also knew the risk I took, when I took the banks' money, but jumped off the precipice anyway. I couldn't loose my little house in the woods so close to getting a solution.
Giving up my home and how it's arranged for my various endeavors now, to be shunted into a small space, doesn't seem to me the way I want to live. So, I have to trust Providence and my own work to dig me out of the hole I've put myself in financialy, and in other ways; such as the anxiety of living like this.
If pennies aren't enough, I'll have to count out ten at a time and make do, until I can get back to shinny dimes.
c-Copyright 2009 KHE by the author of this blog
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Some People Never Look At Catalogs; Do You Believe It?
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Nov 5, 2009 6:02 am
Mood: Dreaming,
179 Views
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I'm a Catalog-A-Holic, I Admit It!
There's not a catalog I won't look at.
I get over 100 of them in the mail on a good month. Even the women's clothing ones I used to get for my wife, I glance at the pretty models before I put them away. Hey, I'm human, underscore the "man."
Now, with Christmas coming, I get more and more daily. Practically an avalanche!
What kinds of catalogs do I get? Not to be exhaustive, but these are some of my favorites: Home Furnishings; Home Needs; Men's Wear; Gift Catalogs; Outdoor Items; and Dog Supply Catalogs--dreaming about getting a dog; as well as Outdoor Bird ones, to keep my feathered friends happy.
That's enough, isn't it; especially since each category has up to a dozen catalogs in it that I would like to look at.
Of course, I don't get to look at all I'd like to. I have other things to do, too.
Have a catalog and dream.
It's what I did as a kid. I dreamed over the ones I got ahold of and dreamed about everything I would get when I was grown up. Sears & Roebuck was a big one, and JC Penney, especially the Christmas Wish Book.
Can't understand people who seem to even hate catalogs. As if shopping in stores is the only way to buy things. Even eBay and Amazon are just giant online catalogs.
Let's go dreaming. Pick up a catalog and...
Dream with me.
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Not Paranoid, but Wires in Head Wonder Someone's Not Been Listening
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Oct 30, 2009 9:36 am
Mood: Painful Awakening,
263 Views
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Unplugged, a Wire in Tooth Popped Out Like Antenna for Listening Device
I'm not normally a paranoid person. I don't think in terms of secret cabals and plots, not against myself surely; for who am I that anyone would want to spy upon.
So that when this prong became evident, a rig waiting for a tooth in a plate, which I'd allowed to go unattended too long, I thought just that. I'd messed up again. I should have spent the $1400 to get it fixed, instead of paying bills.
Then I looked at this funny wire sticking straight out of the socket being prepared for a tooth, a tooth affixed to my head. It looked just like a car antenna, the kind of antenna I was most familiar with, in miniature, of course. There was a base, a mount, and metal rod. Much too long to be in a tooth like that.
I noticed a similar set up on the opposite side where an expensive implant waited to receive some kind of permanency in my mouth with this plate.
Getting a bit paranoid, I thought here was the perfect place to hear every word I spoke. Problem was, living alone, I spoke little aloud, and wore the dentures even less. So that didn't make sense for a spy to monitor me. Even much of what I thought ended up in this blog, one way or the other, sooner or later, so why bother spy on me.
So it wasn't spyware, just an expensive boondoggle I got myself into, likely having to pay thousands of dollars extra to get this "antenna" wound back into its place in the plate.
My next trip will be to the dentist with $1400 in hand.
c-Copyright 2009 KHE by this blog author
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Thank God, my mind is clear
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Oct 27, 2009 5:46 pm
Mood: Busting Blocks,
265 Views
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The Evil Blocks Thrown Up Against Cognitive Reason Lift
Still not easy, but I can think when I apply a simple formula to guide me through the labyrinth of my too often chaotic mind. I can cut the red tape of linear thinking, get at what I need most, and simply "Let the Lord."
You've heard this adage if you are of the Christian faith, and I'm sure others use it too. Often it's prefaced by "Let Go and..." If you're going to Let the Lord, you need to put yourself in his hands. Best that way.
Let the Lord is a powerful tool for anyone like myself whose mind can get to racing, and thoughts crowd like cord wood piled for splitting, While chopping away, I often get a mixture of slow down signals that can stop me in my tracks to hunch over in deep reminiscence. These can be arcane moments of a life relived or imagined and useless for my novel or just thoughts I get stopped with, most of them sad.
I rouse myself of reverie and go on; often with a head that feels like splintered cord wood shards stuffed filling my head, along with a a cup of saw dust. I might be weak and have to rest. Or the series of tell-tale jerks would start as prelude to possibly passing out. These moments liked to come as I traversed my little home with my Humvee, a Rollator to many of you. I always said it did everything but climb walls, and I did that.
As a manic depressive, and a rapid cycling one at that, my always brewing brain has a way of its own. There is a place, like a slip clutch phase, where the affected mind goes into a mixed state. It is not one or the other, not manicky or depressed. It's here where pandemonium seems to reign, and evil blocks tumble the piles of waiting thoughts into a log jam. My rapid cycling feats are somewhat legend to my wife who caught me after surgery going from raving to crying in an hour. No wonder she left me after 20 years of marriage.
In the mixed state, I've caught myself talking so animated, I thought every word a gem, then ending in mid-sentence subdued, downcast and feeling depressed.
Behaviors in the mixed state is where I let the Lord the most. Or, where I should.
My personal way each day can be set by prayer as I ask the Lord what it is he wants me to do that day. That's the idea when I do it. Too often I forget to pray for that guidance. Then I can find I've become a sinking, rudderless old hull, wallowing about. Then I can learn a lesson.
The Lord is merciful, and he will sometimes make my day as good as if I'd asked him before I set out on it, even though I forgot to ask. I never know how it will end up either way. I'm in charge or he's in charge, it blurs in the process of living each day for the Lord.
There are times when I go all by myself, it seems, even as I walk with him, and all is just fine. I don't trip up, I avoid the usual evil traps. Then I think, hey, I haven't said "Lord, I let you." I then have this quiet assurance, "It is well." I should have known it.
As I go, I'm always confronted by choices--what to do, how to do it, etc. Too often I forget to ask for help. I'm the stubborn driver who just keeps going, thinking I'll find so-and-so until I'm so lost I can't even find my way back to where I started, the place where I should have stopped and asked directions.
Often, when I forget to ask first, the Lord in his mercy gives me his way and I follow it like having a GPS unit in my noggin, hooked to Holy Power, maybe. When I come to a turn, a new way to go or a hard part of the route to travel, I can say "I let you, Lord." Then what's easy is easier, what's hard isn't hard at all. It's not simple, but it goes better than if I went on by myself. I can get lost too easily.
The blocks that came at me were physical ones, I realized. Dry ice cold sensation in my head of hypothermia, the evil chill that assailed my body. Then there were evil blocks of worry, which created confusion: worry over how to meet my needs to live, to provide for myself. There were worries for sickness, real or imagined maladies that lay on my mind. Worry about being alone, falling and not getting up. Worry about giving up yet another home of my heart, even though its heart didn't seem to thrive in my care.
These all came at me like so many blocks to cloud my thinking.
In other words, I got so caught up with myself, I didn't do anything for myself. I was cold and full of worry.
The worst evil blockades came like building blocks piled before a child. To a toddler, they seemed large and confusing, and he had but one solution as they heaped around him. He knocked them down.
There was no better solution for the child; nor is there to us who face confusion like mountains too high, windmills enchanting or a road too fast, too much traveled when the way we need is a road less traveled but guided.
When we can take the road less traveled at last, then we can use this little prayer, "I let you, Lord." At every glorious turn in the road; it could show us all that there is to see around each bend when we got there.
For now, with the Lord's help, I'm busting up blocks of evil I built for myself, slowly working my way back to where I started, somewhere, in a time I've forgotten. I've yet a lot of block busting to do.
I'll be looking for that real road less traveled, hoping for the day when I dare drive it, and seeing each turn become a visual and living adventure.
c-Copyright 2009 KHE by the author of this blog
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A Buff In The Head
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Oct 23, 2009 10:32 am
Mood: Confutled,
299 Views
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Not a Knock, but a Swipe Inside the Snoggin by Something Strange
Some definitions might be in order: Buff means here buffing like you would your car when you polish it. Knock means it wasn't a hit in the head, like knocked with something. Swipe means wipe, like a cloth wipes something dirty; only here, it adds "dirt." Snoggin here means inside the "noggin," the head; here, it means the brain. Strange means just that, it is unknown.
I have spent the last three days, today included, fighting some unknown ingredient that seems to be attacking my brain. More specifically, that cognitive part of the brain that helps me think well. Whatever it is that wipes something "dirty" across this part my brain, it is evil. Therefore I fight it as I would any evil, spritually.
It does slow me down. It makes thinking slower, and interfered with this evil "swiping." To run interference I usea simple prayer that opens the way for me. Each part of the way I go, I pray to help me go, or to let go of the evil hold on my mind. Then I can think, but it is slow going. It takes me a long time to to get where where I going.
Part of this evil throws distractions at me; real things for me to do or seemingly false ones to do, all of which seem real at the time, that trap my time.
There are traps that I make for myself. Even minor disasters, like getting angry and spilling my walker as a result with its gathered contents carry in a small pan, and things I have set aside, like projects I plan to do, and items to put away.
Ssying this simple word, even things come to distract me from what I am to do, and I am lured away from what I mean to do. The result is, it takes me a longer time to do things, evern when I get back what I am to do.
To cap things off, my eyes get blurry, and even with my strongest glasses, I can't write because I can't see the letters plainly. Oddly, at times I see the best without glasses. This does not last.
Even the slow typist and mistake laden one I am, slows me down greatly, too., along with my colors and my ability to preview text.
Am I having a mini-stroke? I don't think so. Although at times, one seems to be threatening, I can stave it off. At least for now.
I've had a messed up three days.
I did get things done though.
But slowly.
c-Copyright 2009 KHE by this blog author
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I've a New Toy, a Jitney
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Oct 21, 2009 1:57 am
Mood: Having Fun,
377 Views
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A Jitney to Fly Around My House With
I've gone and done it. Allowed the powers that be get me a power chair to use to get around my house. I call it a Jitney.
A jitney, to those of a legalistic mind, is a small vehicle used to transport people. A bus or van at the airport that holds but a few people and luggage might be called a jitney.
My jitney is small, too small in a way for my big frame. But I had to get it that small to fit in my overstuffed house and get through my narrower doorways.
How did I come upon this toy of mine. Well, I'm not sure how it started. Where the initial referral came. But I think it was from someone at the care center who saw me trucking, sometimes unsteadily on my wheeled walker, my Humvee.
It's a scaled down Jazzy, a favorite brand owned by many who where residents at The Laurels. Yet I don't know who did it, put the company that ultimately supplied me my Jitney.
You've seen the TV adds: You're asked to have a company evaluate your need, social security and medicare qualification, and your insurance, and they do the rest.
This company called me, I said what the heck, give it a try, might be fun to have one. I qualified, and in a weeks I had my Jitney parked near a power supply to zip around my house.
Not zipping yet. Having to get used to the joy stick. Sensitive as all get out, and most of the speeds are fast for me. Fits most places I have to go; yet still need a cane or two to get up on my desk chairs, etc. It's that low.
The power chair may be more stable than my trusty Humvee, but for now, I'll still depend on it.
It is fun to drive. I like to see how it fits in tight spots, if I can get in and out. Getting out is the operative word.
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Open Letter of Apology to Arty
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Oct 12, 2009 4:08 am
Mood: Abject,
632 Views
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Treating Friends Worse Than Others
Dear Arty,
Why is it that we treat our dearest ones worse than others.
That's not a question, it's an admission.
Forgive me.
I never meant to leave you without confirmation of receipt of your labors to get me grafics for what has become a vainglorious attempt at promoting myself with a poem, and I'd hoped your work, too, but without subterfuge.
It's all become too much, I'm afraid.
Yes, I received the work over two weeks ago. That would have been Friday October 2.
Forgive me for not acknowledging it immediately.
To say that I was under some amount of duress at the time is not mia cuppa, for it is not good enough excuse.
I thought I had added a note to one of your many responses to my blog entries. If I did, it did not show up for some reason--likely I may have been timed out, as I may be with this. Busy, I guess, working on the entry the precedes this.
But that, and the circumstances of it, are not sufficient as excuse. For there is none.
Somehow, I'd like to talk with you about the work that I received. I don't think it represents your best, or truest representation of the originals I saw online.
Sincerely, Jack
Note: For those interested, Arty is my nickname for Artful1000 whose poetry can be found here on SFF and whose work, both poetry and art, can be found on All Poetry, a members only website open to visitors under a similar name.
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To link to this blog (JackXsup) use [blog JackXsup] in your messages.
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