Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

I’ve discovered myself during National Novel Writing Month. The exercise has helped me figure out with a bit more detail exactly who I am. I am… a person who is not really interested in writing fiction. I love to read fiction, and I love to write non-fiction. I thought the two would somehow combine into an interest in writing fiction. But no, no dice! I’ve been writing fiction for the past three days and it’s like driving a car with a really messed-up alignment. I keep on veering back into non-fiction. I’m writing little non-fiction passages from fictional non-fiction books inside my novel, and those are the parts of writing my “novel” that I enjoy the most. Getting back to the story and the plot and character development is so boring to me compared to that.

Up until right now, I’ve countered that tendency by taking a deep breath and diving right back in to the fictional parts. But why do that? I want, I very clearly want, to write non-fiction. I think I’m going to do that instead. Am I limiting myself? Maybe. Might I want to give fiction writing another shot some other year? Sure. But the situation is akin to my “new food” policy with my children; I won’t let them complain about and refuse food without at least trying one bite of it (I mean, you know, unless it’s horribly burnt or infused with radon or something like that). I’ve had my bites for now, three days’ worth of them, and right now I don’t like the dish. When my kids say they don’t like a food after tasting it, I’ll take it off their menu for a few months and then maybe try it again. Sometimes they like the food on the second go. Maybe I’ll enjoy writing a novel with my second attempt, even though I didn’t like it this time. We’ll see — next year.

I’m participating in the National Novel Writing Month challenge for this year, in which the goal is to write 50,000 words of a fictional novel between November 1 and November 30, 2007. The goal is quantity, not quality, something that is designed to smash down the perfectionist’s writer’s block. I’m giving it a shot for the first time in my life. I’ve never so much as written a fictional short story, so this will be a real challenge and growth experience.

Here’s a fragment from yesterday’s writing:

“Why did he have to give me a name like ‘Bingley?’” asked the boy over a dinner of chicken drumsticks, jasmine rice and green peppers an hour and a half later.

With a teenager in the house, Carl had learned the value of maintaining what he called “meal sets” at the ready for deployment at a moment’s notice. Not only could a kid in high school be occasionally too moody to come down for a scheduled dinner, but there were the second breakfasts, the midnight snacks, and the unannounced visitors who seemed to have a way of nudging a space open at the dinner table. Carl didn’t mind this challenge; on the contrary, he seemed to savor it as a test of his abilities as a parental surrogate not just for Bingley but for all the kids who found their way to his kitchen.

When he was growing up, Carl’s mother on occasion would tell him stories about his grandfather, who would bring all sorts of what she’d call “characters” home for dinner without so much as a phone call. Grandma would complain around the edges, but she always seemed to be able to pull a meal together out of the contents in the pantry, no matter how meager they were. Any complaints by Carl as a boy when he was denied a wanted toy were met by his mother’s story about the potato – one large russet potato split six ways to feed a family of four and two homeless guests.

Even now, the bare mention of the potato story would prompt Carl to roll his eyes. Nevertheless, the tale’s repetition had accomplished its intended purpose in setting a standard for Carl to meet in his domestic life as an adult. “Just in case,” Carl would mutter to himself at the grocery store when he encountered an unnecessary item that might prove useful in the future. A pork tenderloin that surely would fit in the basement freezer. A head of cabbage; now that would keep from wilting or rotting longer than most other fresh vegetables. Packets of ramen would do in a pinch, too, as long as there was some green onion, some leftover chicken to shred, and maybe an egg to scramble into it.

Carl didn’t stock his kitchen like this for the hobos. Really, Carl had no idea how he would even find people to help out like that. Maybe homeless travelers didn’t make themselves public like they used to; almost nobody hitchhiked any more or stayed in the parks past dawn. Maybe Carl’s grandfather’d just had the knack, or maybe he’d had an open face. Or maybe it was Carl who had an unusual deficit in that regard. Carl had joked more a few too many times to his friends that he wouldn’t know how to find recreational drugs if he’d even wanted to try them, or how to find a prostitute if he’d been feeling lonely and inclined. His friends would to pause a few uncomfortable seconds before bringing up another more wholesome subject.

No, Carl wouldn’t know how to find such people to bring home for dinner. The way it had worked instead was that the kids found Carl. He’d stocked his kitchen well-enough, and treated area kids to delicious snacks and meals at odd times of the day for long enough, that eventually one of those kids would get locked out of the house accidentally and just know where to go until mom came home with her extra key. From there it was a combination of word spreading from friend to friend and the acceleration of events. From a kid getting locked out accidentally, to a kid who’d gotten drunk and didn’t want to face the music at home just yet, to a kid needing refuge from fights at school, to a kid getting locked out on purpose, to a kid finding refuge from getting knocked around at home. Because Carl worked from home, his kitchen was pretty much always open, and he just wasn’t the kind of man to say no to someone with a need. With some of the kids, he’d never even get to know their name; they’d just come in on the trails of someone else and drift out before anybody noticed. Some of the kids would stick around a while longer.

If I can write this dreck, surely you can write something better. Go ahead, give it a shot.

Eventually, all the scam artists get to their point:

The Sadgurus gives the right knowledge, even without your service. When you are convinced then only, you can do service to him which will help him, to help others. In fact a Satguru does not need your service because He is the God. He can help others, by his own powers. But you will not have the right benefit, because you did not show, the gratefulness to him. Suppose a doctor gives you medicines, without taking any fees and you get good health. If you are not paying the fees, even though you are capable, due to greediness, you will die, with a new disease. So, only for your safety, Satguru advises you to participate in the service.

Service consists of two parts.
 Paying the fees in terms of money, which you have earned by your work.
 Doing some work for the Guru.
You can do either of these or both as per you convenience.

Yes, for our safety. Oh, that Satguru Lord Datta sure does have our interests at heart. Thank you for saving our lives by taking money and work. Oh, thank you.

A final round of thanks goes out to Frank Liberal, who I imagine with a brassy voice making Aunt Gertrude drop her silverware in embarrassment at Thanksgiving dinner. Frank’s not afraid to say what I’m not sure most of us are thinking, but which I imagine a lot of us come close to thinking. I’d never before thought about the curiosity of bottling plants going at full tilt in a time of drought. I should have.

These are only a few of the people whose words, for varying reasons, I find it really enjoyable to read here. You are the anti-Dattaswamis, and I wanted you to know (sniff! honk!) that I care. Cue the violins. Sweeping arpeggios!

I never know what to expect from Iroquois’ diary postings, and that’s a good thing. Iroquois is eclectic, particular, general, biting, forgiving, questioning, answering and always challenging. Thank you, Iroquois, for shoving my brain out in different directions whether I like it or not. Thanks for helping me to laugh. You can have the part of Antarctica I was saving for the icegoing cephalopod mutants.

I appreciate it when Damen posts news articles on topics that the main Irregular Times page might not be covering. It’s a digestion of what Damen considers critical, and although I’m hungry to hear more about what Damen thinks about these stories, I often find myself discovering something I didn’t know, and there’s a lot of value in that. Thanks, Damen.

Another shout-out goes to Scott. We haven’t heard from Scott lately, but he has a very thoughtful short series here in the diaries on religious thought. Thanks for provoking my thought, Scott. Scott’s latest diary was entitled Mocking God and was written on April 24, 2007.

Dattaswami’s latest bout of religious diarrhea gives me pause, since his is a cut-and-paste job, one that bullies space away from other writers without even being especially thoughtful. It says a lot that Dattaswami has chosen to demonstrate such negative character traits in the name of the true religion for which he claims to hold swami status.

There’s a contrast between what Dattaswami has done and what others have done using the diary system. Rather than cede the stage to this fakir’s song and dance, I thought I’d take the opportunity today to express appreciation to some diaries and diarists whose efforts I really appreciate. Perhaps I haven’t taken enough time to express that appreciation before now; now is the perfect time to do so.

The first diarist I’d like to single out for appreciation is Red Dave, whose ongoing Iraq Body Count series is a daily effort to keep count of what many people would like to forget — the toll of dead and injured in Iraq. Thanks, Red Dave, for ringing a reminder out loudly and persistently. His latest post, the Iraq Body count for October 25, 2007, is here.

The whole world is the kingdom of Visa

You must realize that the whole world is the kingdom of Visa as stated by Mastercard. Because I said so, that’s why. Any injustice will be punished by Customer Service and you need not worry about it. Your view of the debt limit is revenge but our CEO’s view of interest rates are to transform the blah blah blah blah blah…

Sorry, I lost steam. Here, let me start again:

The more definitively someone tells you they know what God is, the more desperate they are to nab your cash.

Fair? Unfair? True? Untrue?

This morning, as I was sending off the latest set of anti-Bush buttons in the mail to people who had ordered them, I lingered for a moment over the address of one recipient: Mankato, Minnesota. The name “Mankato” brought me right back to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie books, which I read over and over as a kid, and the Little House TV series, complete with Melissa Gilbert flying down a hill with her little arms stuck out wide at the end of each show.

Another town I think of is Skokie, Illinois. When I hear “Skokie,” I think of Nazis, and so for me the name Skokie is associated with white racism. That’s unfair, because Skokie is a fairly liberal-friendly place, picked on by Nazis outsiders back in the 1970s because it has a lot of Jewish people living there.

What place names can’t you hear without some association, fair or unfair, to the past?