Saturday 11/11/23
Began early today--3 in the morning--for the start of this week. Came up with three story ideas, but I'll keep them in my head for now. I don't need to write these stories yet and I have much to complete and compose. I can always write and make the work what the work needs to be, but I prefer to write something when I have to write it.
As I intimated yesterday, I've not been doing what I need to do, not trying as I need to try. I want this to be a big week where I max out. There's beach to be taken right now, if I'm focused, putting all of the time in, and brave.
Downloaded a box set of BBC recordings from the Graham Bond Organisation and a set of theirs at Klooks Kleek in 1964. Pre-Cream Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker. I've been majorly into Cream since I was a teenager, and my appreciation has only grown over time.
The Three Investigators book I sent my nephew for his birthday arrived. It was a different edition than the one I ordered, with this ridiculous cover, with Jupe, Pete, and Bob all looking about twenty-years-old and like they're about to try and buy some beer. Who the hell designed this? It's a very 1970s cheapjack cover, but if you just saw this cover you'd think the book was something very different than what it was.
My sister asked me if it would scare the boy, because he gets scared easily. I always have to take care in answering questions like these. I can't just say, "I started reading the series when I was his age," because people inevitably do that thing where it's "But you're super Colin, other people aren't like you," etc. like everything I do and have done in my life is something someone else couldn't do.
Frankly, people use this as an excuse a lot. Like when I'm kind. No matter what I've been going through for so long, I'm kind. I make effort. I help people. I take initiative, I give time and energy. I am treated like garbage. No one will even hit the like button when it comes to me on social media, as we've seen. If I say something about how I'm always able to do what anyone needs, but I'd have to beg someone for nine months to do the simplest thing for me, which could take five minutes, they're apt to say, "People aren't like you," etc.
As for this book: I was the boy's age, I didn't go off on some expedition hunting for it, and it was right in my fourth grade classroom on a shelf. So obviously once upon a time, at least, it was viewed as what a fourth grader might read. I always take care with these things.
Sent a letter to an editor. Need to get paid for something. This is the 2400th entry in this journal, by the way. I did a word count a couple weeks ago. I had miscounted in the past. The whole thing is 2.7 million words long. And to think, over the same period as this journal's lifetime, the word count of all of the fiction I've done is greater still. When people start to study and write about and simply process all that I've done, the level it's all been at, what I am, I honestly don't know what they are going to say. Completely without precedent, so many different ways over. No one will be able to point to anything or anyone else. They'll have to deal squarely and solely with what this one artist unlike all other artists is.
I've "finally" finished this story called "Devil You Do." I think it's been three days. Just a little something. I've written or finished about forty works of late, and I'll account for all of that, thoroughly, in a single entry, and let that be reckoned with and contrasted with what any of these people of this evil, incestuous publishing system do over the whole of their lives. It'll take some work for me to go through it all, but I will. Something else from this story:
The girls knew that if they entered the woods and walked for a bit—it wouldn’t take long at all—that they’d find the devil on the ground. Out in the open. Just lying still. He could be sleeping. He could even be hurt. But they knew that he wanted them to know.
Mary Ann looked at her friend who used to be her sister. She felt like she was becoming less of herself as their friendship eroded. Every day she was getting a little more lost than the day before. And it was in everything. All of life. Not just this single friendship.
Loving who and what she loved kept becoming harder. When that happens, it becomes harder to know what love is. And when you don’t know what something is, it’s extra hard to know that it exists.
The woods had become places she desultorily took herself through, but so were the places outside of the woods, which came to be darkened forests themselves. It was no way to live. Anywhere.
“I think we should try and kill him,” Mary Ann whispered.
“What are you talking about?” Jessica whispered back. “Are you crazy?”
But she wasn’t being mean this time.
“He knows we’re here,” Jessica continued. “That’s why we know he’s in there. I think he needs help probably. Maybe he’s injured.”
Mary Ann didn’t want to upset her friend who had begun to move past the first few trees, which meant Mary Ann had to as well, because she wasn’t going to let Jessica go alone.
A friend doesn’t say, “See you on the other side, if you get there.” That isn’t how it works. There’s only one side for a friend, and that’s alongside. It’s not like friendship is a hexagon with all of those different sides to pick from, Mary Ann thought, surprising herself that she knew what a hexagon was.
A child could read and understand this story. And adults could discuss it and debate its meaning ad infinitum, really.
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