Monday 4/24/23
Went back to the Mother's Day op-ed I wrote last year and expanded it. Wrote an 1800 word piece on this grail of a Rolling Stones tape. Still not done with it.
Have worked more on "Finder of Views." I work on it in short intervals because it is a difficult story to work on. Not because of the act of writing itself.
After several days of too much physical inactivity, I walked three miles on Thursday just to get the legs going again. Walked six miles on Friday and did 200 push-ups. Walked twelve miles on Saturday and did 500 push-ups. It was cold and pouring rain--nobody outside--on Saturday, but went out and ran 3000 stairs.
I think about the people of this industry with each stair, reminding myself how every stair, every story, every piece, every post, plays its part in how I'm going to prevail, and it gets done, because I am not going to succumb or wither, not in any way, including physically. Did 100 push-ups in the slop and the mud, too.
After more work today on "Finder of Views," went out late to run 3000 more stairs--back on the big ones at Government Center--and do another 100 push-ups.
Sunday also marked 2478 days, or 354 weeks, without a drink.
Did my Civil War reading at the cafe yesterday afternoon with the Bruins game on a large TV taking up most of a wall. Will get into my thoughts and observations in another post. On the sound system of this cafe (Dello Sport on Hanover) was the music of Cream, solo George Harrison, the Zombies ("Care of Cell 44)," 1963-65 Bob Dylan, and Nick Drake's "Know," all of it mingling with the voice of Jack Edwards from the TV. A strange mix, further underscored by Cream's "Strange Brew," whose airing felt inevitable before it did eventually come on.
Listened to some episodes of Uncanny. There are publishing things to go into that are the usual amount of twisted and horrific, and a developing theft/renege on payment issue but I'll go into that elsewhere and likely in separate entries for each, though also not necessarily. What I do know is I'll be thorough.
Regarding "Finder of Views": there is nothing more powerful than this story. I don't mean another story. I mean nothing. Of any kind. Any union, familial connection, life experience, weaponry.
The thing with writing is, you have potentially the most powerful form of energy and impact that exists. You have something with no limitations. Everything is possible with writing. There's no cap. The variables are endless. Infinite permutations. And if you can harness all of that, you can do with writing that which can't be done with anything else. You can pull back the veil so that people can understand what is behind it all. Behind who they are, who people are, what the world is, what things are beyond this world that also inform the world.
I've had this story for a while--though not that long--and I've worked on it. It was in manuscript some time back. What I mean by that is that there's the first word and the last. And all of the in between. And I've just worked. I cut back a lot. Then I added, Then it became longer than it was before I had cut it back.
This story is like the most intense form of concentrated energy there could be. Like this ultimate laser. I've harnessed something that humans can't harness. That no one else has. I am as aware of this as I can be of anything. I had just added quite a bit this morning when a friend called. I was shaken, because, as I said, this is not an easy story to write. Because of that intensity. Because of the obliterating power of the thing, which at the same time holds a beauty that exists nowhere else as it does here.
I described the story to this friend of mine. They asked me how I ever thought of these things. Where does that come from? Just from the description, they said that they'd be carrying this around forever now. They got a work call and said they'd ring me back, and I returned to the story, fixing what I had just written. Then I read it. And read it again. I texted my friend and said that if he wanted, I'd try and read him some of it aloud.
Phone rings right away. I told him, look, this is horrible. I don't know if I can get through this. Then it just keeps getting worse. I mean, it's horrible how intense this is. Then it gets worse after that over each of the last three paragraphs, with each paragraph. He said he wanted to hear it.
So I started to read. I had to keep stopping. I just kept breaking down. Was simply too much. It took me longer than it should have by a decent amount, and then my friend, in this shattered voice, said "Good God." He was messed up. I guess you could say it's a story about a guy and his daughter. My friend was at work, and he told me that he had to go, because he wanted to go home and check on his girls--on account of the story--who were home from school today.
He called me again about it tonight, too. I could hear all of the emotions in his voice. How blown away he was, how angry he was that these sick people of this industry won't let the public see it, how that is the answer for me, the public, the masses. The awe in his voice. I don't want to talk about how amazing the story is, do you know what I mean? When this is happening. When millions of people could and would be having the experience this friend of mine has had. I don't believe this man cried when his mother, whom he loved very much, died. And I heard things in his voice today that I have not heard in the twenty-five years that we have been friends.
Anyway. At some point, I'm going to post that excerpt I read my friend today--exactly what I read on the phone--in an entry in these pages titled "Candle" because there is a candle in this excerpt. That excerpt references something that happened--actually, it was also imagined--with a couple of cops earlier in the story, and builds off of that at the end of this excerpt. I had gone into the plot with my friend and explained the first appearance of the cops, so someone reading these pages is going to get the excerpt without the background, and will just have to wait to see the whole thing when it's possible for everyone to see the whole thing.