Writing thoughts

I think I have a pretty good book about growing up in the 1970's inside me -- sort of like Ray Bradbury's "Dandelion Wine," only centered around my favorite music as a trigger to old memories.

The problem is, I've written about my younger days so much here -- and especially on Facebook -- that I feel like I've worn out all of my best old stories. I'm used to them now. Almost bored with them.

The key is if I can bring something new to them.

I have something in the works that I've been slowly writing for months. But I can't bring it alive in the way I want to if I can't bring something new to it, something alive, some sense of discovery.

Just collecting all my old posts about growing up isn't going to cut it.

Lately

So, "enjoying" my retirement?

I have maybe half the energy I used to. I'm definitely not 55 anymore.

But I "musicked-out" twice in the past week, more than usual lately. Recently I've been playing two or three hours of music maybe once a month, if that often.

Last music session yesterday was mostly new-to-me or overlooked stuff on CD.

Previous session was mostly recently-purchased 45rpm singles I'd recently tracked down -- but eventually I got to a first listen to Stevie Wonder's 1973 album "Innervisions," which I found to be pretty great. Seven of its nine songs were well worth hearing, and the new ones that especially grabbed me were "All in Love is Fair" and "Golden Lady."

Of course "Higher Ground" has always been great, and I've loved "Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing" ever since I first heard it way back in 1974. I hadn't heard "Living for the City" in *years,* and had forgotten how passionately Stevie sang it. And I'd never heard the long version before.

But for me, "All in Love is Fair" and "Golden Lady" were the standouts. When Stevie gets into a groove he's really amazing.

Of course I should have known all this already, but there are many gaps in my listening. I've loved many of Stevie's hits over the years and have three of his studio albums and a couple of best-of's in the house. But I sure haven't heard everything.

Anyway, "Innervisions" is the best thing I've heard in awhile.

Awhile back I also heard Harmonium's 1977 album "The Five Seasons" -- very nice melodic progressive rock from Canada, very pretty. Nice moods, and parts were exuberant enough to make me laugh -- even if I couldn't tell what the guys were singing. They sang in French, because they were from Quebec.

These days I'm doing good if I can get through three albums in a sitting. After that, my mind starts to wander or I'm worn out.

Awhile back I went on a sort of crusade with old Van Morrison albums after I found his "Best of Volume 2" CD and was charmed despite the old-fashionedness of some of it.

Think I did five Van albums in a row -- most were only average. "Inarticulate Speech of the Heart," "Beautiful Vision," "Into the Music," "A Period of Transition" -- "Wavelength" was the best of these. Most of the albums had maybe one good track and a lot of filler. OK, pleasant, decent, but nothing stunning. Mood music at best. Linda said it was like Van just couldn't do it anymore -- "it" being the magical spell he weaved on "St. Dominic's Preview," "Moondance" and "Tupelo Honey" -- and on "Best of Volume 2," even though to me the jury was out for a long time on that one until he finally convinced me with the brief "Coney Island" and the live "Rave On, John Donne."

My mind wandering has been an issue with reading fiction lately, too. I can read a few short stories and then I get bored with fiction. I can't remember the last novel I made it all the way through. Best short stories I've read lately are Joyce Carol Oates's brilliant and spooky "Six Hypotheses" and Dan Simmons' dark and creepy "My Personal Memoirs of the Hoffer Stigmata Epidemic" -- both cosmic-horror short stories.

I've been reading a lot of non-fiction -- for months now -- but I don't have that much new non-fiction in the house, so have mostly been re-reading old stuff. Was on a binge of science fiction writers' autobiographies and biographies for awhile -- Alec Nevala-Lee's "Astounding," Julie Phillips' great biography of SF writer James Tiptree Jr., Robert Silverberg's "Other Places, Other Times," Damon Knight's excellent history of "The Futurians," "Hell's Cartographers," stuff like that. But there isn't enough of it. SF-author bios and autobios didn't become "a thing" until recent years, unfortunately.

Have been doing a little bit of writing, though of course I should be doing more. Wrote an entire 2,500-word ghost story a couple of weeks ago, but have held off going back to re-read it until it "cools off" a little. Started another science-fiction story the next day, and got down some ideas for a third new story a few days ago, but I don't seem to have much drive to finish any of them.

Added a couple scenes over the last couple days to a trashy '80s/'90s-style horror novel I originally had the idea to write a couple of years ago. I wrote maybe 7,500 words of it in a few days right after I first had the idea a couple years back, then backed away from it because -- although the words were coming out way easily -- it meant nothing to me personally. It was just a thing I was doing, it didn't actually involve me.

A couple mornings ago it occurred to me that if the words were coming and it was fun to do, why not just continue on with it? Writing used to be fun for me, so why not roll with it as long as I'm having a good time and not having to force it?

So we'll see where that goes.

Otherwise, I don't feel terrible, but my energy level comes and goes. On cloudy, rainy days it feels like I never really wake up. Each winter seems to get longer. This is a problem for me because the first 80-degree day we had here in western Washington was in the last week of June. The first 70-degree day we had was sometime in early May.

Some days it takes an act of Congress to get me out of the house, even if the sun is out.

What bothers me is, sometimes Linda feels the same way. And usually she was the one who got me to get up and get out even if I didn't want to. Now we both have to make an effort to get something rolling.

Did go see my daughter in Seattle for Father's Day, which was a real step out of my comfort zone. Visiting somewhere new? Riding a ferry across Puget Sound? Braving the Seattle traffic? Actually sort of getting lost for a bit? Pretty daring, for me. But my daughter was awesome as usual, and I got to meet her boyfriend and see their cute, tiny apartment, and had a wonderful couple of hours. So it was all good.

And that's what's been going on lately. More soon.

Banned in Boston -- and everywhere else!

So, I just got banned from Facebook for 24 hours because I joked that I wanted to launch my neighbor out of a cannon.

This isn't the first time I've been banned. I got a fact-check warning a couple years ago for posting an obvious satire about Donald Trump making a campaign stop in Boise and being so drunk he fell off the stage while making a speech full of gibberish. It made a pretty funny story too. But Facebook doesn't like it when you make stuff up -- sometimes.

Before that, I was given another 24-hour ban for "hate speech" -- because I dared to suggest that some white men can be pretty dang dense sometimes.

Interesting that FB should go after me for these things when they allow people to spread right-wing conspiracies, coronavirus vaccine misinformation, and massive conspiracy theories implying that Donald Trump will be returned to the presidency -- not to mention the usual racism and misogyny, and specific threats to specific people. But those all seem to be OK.

But let's get back to my neighbor. I don't even know who he is, but I have this neighbor a couple houses away who has a cannon he sets off around Independence Day ... or whenever the Seattle Seahawks win a football game, or at 2am, or whenever he damn well feels like it. There'll be the usual neighborhood near-silence and then ka-BOOOOOOM! This is what led me to say I'd like to launch him out of his own cannon. And that's what FB banned me for.

A couple years ago, back when we had a dog, the fireworks around July 4th used to send our dog to hide in the bedroom closet. And the sound of the cannon made him start shaking. I saw that shaking lead to convulsions. Foaming at the mouth, eyes rolled back in the head, the whole bit.

And our dog was scared of nothing else.

But that's OK FB, keep patrolling your pages and making the world safe by shutting up people who dare to say that things aren't all hunky-dory with their neighbors. I get that I was banned because I (jokingly) made a specific (joking) threat of (technically impossible) bodily harm against somebody. Even if I don't know specifically who it is.

But I was joking. And Facebook's bots don't get that. They have no concept of "context." They can't tell if someone's joking.

I'll be OK without FB for 24 hours. But I'm sure the QAnon folks and the vaccine deniers and the "election was stolen!" people will be allowed to continue peddling their BS -- along with the racists and fascists and women-haters and gun-rubbers. Really an ugly bunch to be hanging out with, to be honest.

I get why FB doesn't like talk of violence, especially these days. But I was just joking. I wasn't really gonna launch my neighbor out of his cannon. I'd never be able to squeeze him into it, for starters. I never meant ... aw, forget it.

There is one upside. My getting banned at FB forced me to write my first post here in eight months. So that's got to be a good thing.

Hoping you are the same....