I’ve been watching movies. The past three nights I have watched the first 5 episodes of Star Wars. I’ve never seen them back-to-back before. The series is outstanding when watched in order. Even better having watched a bit of The Mandalorian beforehand.
I watched Jaws last Saturday night. I always get wrapped up in Quint’s story about his experience on the USS Indianapolis. He gives me chills when he tells it. And every time I wonder whether the fate of those sailors was punishment. I heard once that Oppenheimer felt great regret for his involvement in the making of the bomb. I wonder whether Feynman did, too. I really like him. He saw the world as a beautiful and wondrous place. How could he not?
No sense wondering whether the evils that combat evil are justified. Maybe Spock was right. You know, “The needs of the many,…”
I have read about the tunnels in Japan. My brother saw them. He felt the evil living in them, and he was terrified.
I don’t like to think about such things. I’m not qualified. I’m more of a Yoda fan.
“Train yourself to let of go of everything you fear to lose.” That’s my favorite Yoda quote.
He told that to someone powerful who felt too much. The man’s fear turned to hate, just as Yoda said it would, and that man’s fear destroyed his very soul.
Fighting fire with fire is a response to fear, is it not?
This is too much to dwell on on a Tuesday night before bed.
Ah the stress. The emotions that pour out as verbal abuse. Not like that. But snapping, Yelling. Someone gets hit with it if they are within listening range. Someone becomes an unintended target. Then on and on until the dog gets kicked. You know the story.
And the things we let get to us that cause the stress…some valid, others contrived. Mostly contrived, but maybe not.
I need a baseball bat and a room filled with fragile things. The inanimate kind. The kind I can smash without feeling bad about afterward. Without feeling regret. Like I do with the snapping and yelling at people who are in the wrong place at the wrong time.
This is why I hide. But hiding doesn’t go over so well, either.
I’ve been walking in 100+ degree heat (that’s 38+ Celsius for most of you) twice a day since summer began. Okay, not every day, but a lot of days. The heat burns off the negativity.
I should have walked longer this time.
I just erased a rant that would rival Scarface. I needed to write it. I needed to erase it. No one should be subjected to that level of anger. No one should feel it, either. I watched Anakin Skywalker turn into Darth Vader last night. I don’t want that to happen to me.
What’s the oldest thing you own that you still use daily?
My brain.
I could say any other part of my body, but sometimes I do nothing all day and make little to no use of my legs. I’ll go an entire weekend without muttering a word if I have the house to myself. I have the autopilot mechanisms that my body uses to stay alive, like breathing and pumping blood, but I don’t think it makes sense to say I use my lungs or heart. Those get used. Se usa el corazón. They use themselves.
Even to say I use my brain daily is a stretch. Some days I just watch TV. Often I misuse it. Abuse it. Se emborracha.
I do use my pillow to sleep with. And I use my cats for entertainment. Pero ellas son flojas. And cranky.
And now I will use the muscles in my face to close mis ojos y dormir.
“Notable things” has a positive connotation, I believe, and perhaps that means I’m an optimist. “Notable” is another way of saying “noteworthy,” which is in fact neither good nor bad. To me, if something is worthy of recalling, a positive implication is arguably the reasonable assumption. This quality of distinction is important for the sake of this post because today, which is now yesterday seeing as it is now after 3 am, there were only two things worthy of note among a plethora of bad, unworthy things. I got to spend more time with my family than I would have had I not driven to Dallas at all. I had planned to stay for two nights, but an unfortunate situation came up that required me to drive home today instead of tomorrow, and upon arrival I discovered my cat’s face is swollen, likely from being stung by a wasp or something. She’s been in the house for two days, so hopefully she killed the thing in the process of being stung, lest I lie here in danger of being stung, myself. I also received a disturbing text on my way home and another unsuspected, unrelated delay in seeing my husband. And I don’t feel well. Fortunately, a second thing “of note.” meaning a second positive thing to write about, is that I came home to a clean house and a cozy, made bed.
I started a book (two, actually), written by Richard Feynman. They are audio books, which I’m not sure count as books, but they should. I listened to them on my drive.
When I was a young physicist, I worked with Nikola Tesla’s great nephew as an analyst. He asked me once about my thoughts on Dr. Feynman, of whom I had to admit I knew nothing. I felt humiliated, undoubtedly the most humiliated I have ever felt—and I’ve spent much of my life humiliating myself. I was a good analyst, and I knew a lot, but I did not know anything about the most prolific scientist of the twentieth century. And I had to meekly admit this dreadful lack of knowledge to Tesla’s great nephew.
I have been doubting myself quite a bit lately, and yesterday, while dwelling on my self-doubt during my long drive across Texas, I was reminded of that horrible moment that solidified the fact that I have good reason to doubt myself. I asked myself why I never took the time after that encounter with Dr. Tesla 2.0 to educate myself on Feynman and his work. So I searched a bit and found that he wrote a few books, one appropriately and rather ironically titled, What Do You Care What Other People Think?
I listened to him speak through the voice of some random voice-over guy, and I was comforted. I also listened to a couple of lectures he gave and discovered that he is probably the most knowledgeable person I have ever learned about. Ever. Though he was a theoretical physicist with a strong background in chemistry, he lectured on the role of physics in all other sciences. He explained how specific enzymes determine physical traits of all living things and how quantum particles determine the enzymes. I should have been fascinated by the content, but more so I was fascinated by the man. His approach to science in general was so simple. So practical. He made me feel that not knowing things is more interesting than knowing things…something he actually stated again and again. I still need to know more. I still have much to learn. But I don’t feel inadequate anymore. There were many things he claimed to not know, not because those things were unknown at the time but because he hadn’t learned them yet.
This from a Nobel-Prize winning physicist.
My peek into the mind of Richard Feynman today was most notable, and I feel vindicated in some way. What I knew nothing of, what humiliated me most of all, actually made me feel worthy of being a physicist. Not because I learned more physics but because I was told to not worry about what other people think of me and my not knowing.
After considering my terrible day, I now see how good the day actually was. I let the many bad things overshadow the few good things. And I’m now realizing this is my cozy, made bed.
Don’t run from things that scare you—I said that once. What scares you likely doesn’t exist and probably won’t come to pass. And if it does, this great man I met today told me not to care what other people think about my shortcomings. So don’t do that, either.
Life is full of notable things if you pay attention.
I imagine my tagline would vary depending on the day, the time, and of course who is referencing me. I have been called Jessica Day, Leslie Knope, and on occasion batshit crazy. Once I got a mom award from people who aren’t my biological children. I’ve been called inspiring and at times exhausting. My favorite, however, is “so weird.” I also like hot mama, but no one has ever called me that. Combined, these adorations might add up to:
“An oddball empath with a tendency to go overboard for the good of others as a guise for overcoming boredom, she plods along with staff in hand leading the masses in a claim to victory over the ordinary.”
That’s a bit much, but even this commentary proves the point.
My dad asked me once why everything had to be so extreme with me. Well, Dad, there ya go.
When I was a kid, there was a chocolate bar that had holes in it. They advertised it as being a chocolate bar that was like Swiss cheese. I guess it was Swiss chocolate? Seems dumb now, which is maybe why that bar doesn’t exist anymore (I haven’t seen it), but when I was young I wanted one baaad. I never got to eat one, though.
What I did get my hands on was a Zero bar. I ate one with a Pepsi after every swim lesson when I was 7 years old. I would drown in sugar while waiting for my ride home.
My favorite now and forever is a Skor bar, though I settle a Heath bar when I can’t find a Skor. I like toffee. A lot.
Snickers will do when I’m hungry, but those are too sweet. Nougat makes my teeth feel like they are about to fall out from instant cavities.
In truth, I haven’t had a chocolate bar in a really long time. I save my calories for ice cream.
Today I had planned to paint my bedroom. This is what actually happened:
There is tape around the edges, a plastic cover is precariously shielding my furniture and whatnots that were shoved into the center of the room, window treatments are down, and a little bit of paint is visible on few edges. The paint can is closed, and the brush is soaking.
In other words, I spent most of the day watching TV.
In other exciting news, I wrote a flash fiction story! Yay me! If you are interested in reading it, here’s the link. I wrote it in response to a prompt by this guy.
My favorite book from childhood is Helen Keller. That isn’t the actual name of the book, but it was something similar to it. Or maybe the name was completely different. Whatever the case, the book was an autobiography written, I think, by Anne Sullivan, Helen Keller’s teacher. Or was it written by Helen, herself? I really need to look this up. The point is that this book was a game-changer for me. I must have read it a thousand times. On the back cover was the alphabet in braille. I tried to learn it to no avail. (To no avail…that is an odd expression.)
Helen Keller was a miracle. What she overcame is beyond what I can put into words. The book served me well in adulthood, as I discovered, not by choice exactly, that I am able to connect with children with disabilities, particularly severe autism. I was direct support for a nonverbal, often violent six-year-old. He and I bonded quickly, and he responded to me better than anyone else. Why this happened, I attribute to Helen Keller. Or perhaps my fascination with her had something to do with my natural ability to connect with people who cannot connect with the world.
I was a loner as a child, always off in my own little world. I guess on some level, I related.
Must I choose just one book? The Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling was one of my favorites. The cover of the book had an illustration of a jungle with eyes peering through the darkness. I remember a tiger climbing out of the page. This image was ripped straight from a memory I had when my family drove through the southern countries of Africa. Mostly, the landscapes were savannahs, but there was a place (Botswana, I think) that looked JUST LIKE THAT COVER. Obviously, there weren’t any tigers, but in my mind there could have been. Everything scary lurked in the dark behind the tangled branches. I read some of the book, not all, but Rudyard Kipling, I felt, was a kindred soul.
Busy, Busy Town was another that I loved. I liked how all the different kinds of animals played different roles in the town. Everyone had a job to do, and they all did it with smiles on their faces. Indoctrination? Eh, maybe. In any case, I was introduced to societal norms in a utopia. The colors were bright, and everyone was happy. I wanted to live there. In a way, I still do.
I also had a record player and a vinyl that had all the Peter Rabbit stories on it. The Tale of Benjamin Bunny was my favorite. But I’m not sure that records count. I think they should.
Books that have the greatest impact on me do so mostly because of how they are written. How some authors play with words makes me feel more than their stories do. I can say these books or those books are my favorites, but truer to my answer to this prompt is the authors, themselves.
James Joyce made the greatest impact. Ulysses is so brilliantly written, I feel lightheaded and a bit euphoric when I read it. Joyce was an eccentric when it came to writing. He refused to use quotation marks because he didn’t want his words to be closed in by upside-down commas. For that alone, I love him. He liberates me to break the rules. In Ulysses, his timing is brilliant, his wit is genius, and the way he crafts ideas is untouchable. I read the book for how it reads; how the story plays out is secondary. The impact? He made me love literature more than any other writer could.
Kurt Vonnegut, specifically his book Mother Night, digs deep inside me. Vonnegut is crafty and smart. He is the guy you want to drink a beer with at a bar and talk with until dawn. How he shoves into the light the absurdities of the human race is beautiful. Political correctness is not a blip on his radar, which allows him to highlight the ugly truths of the human condition. Why Mother Night in particular? Because of how the message cuts me. The antagonist cares nothing for anyone but his true love and his craft (which comes in first is hard to say), to the point that he accepts the honor of doing a patriotic service in secret to satisfy his lust for admiration by the enemy. In the end, he wins his freedom in his trial for committing crimes against humanity when the secret of working undercover comes to light. He convicts himself for caring only about what he loves, however, and commits the execution he feels he deserves. His last words and the final line in the book, “Auf wiedersehen,” could be for anyone, but are likely spoken to the Nazis he kept company with for his own gain, who he likely feels he will meet again in hell. Or maybe they are to Helga, his love, who disappeared in the war. Regardless, one can’t help but feel sorry for the guy, nor conviction for one’s own selfishness. That conviction hit home for me, and the story could not have been conveyed so brilliantly by any other author. Vonnegut is a cynic and an idealist rolled into one, much like I am. He, however, is the clever one, and I have not seen his equal in that regard. I look upon his voice to guide my own.
Margaret Atwood made an impact on me, not only for the terror The Handmaid’s Tale violently stirred in me but because of the purpose she gave the book. Atwood paints a picture of bondage and fear that I could not shake. Not even now as I type these words can I think on the book as being simply a good read. Within the tale, she opens the door for her readers to tell their own stories. She encourages her readers to write in the end. I intend to.
Lying here in the dark, it occurs to me that what I need is a muse. I’ve never been able to write without one, be it a human or a cut deeply puncturing my soul.
I have neither. I have concepts and puzzles and interpretations. I have physics, which used to be a passion and could be a powerful source of inspiration if the passion was still inside me.
But I’m numb. How can words be found in a heart that is void of feeling?
I’m teaching people to write concisely, with precision. I am training people to express their knowledge fully in four sentences. The work is cold. and the knowledge is just that…knowing.
I could not teach how to write creatively. How to dig inside oneself and find questions and meaning. How did you do it, Mrs. Sizer? How did you inspire me so deeply? I wish I could ask, but you are dead now. I still have questions. I never asked for answers–you punctured my soul without my permission. And I am grateful.
I cried today because I thought someone was dead. The person fell of the face of the planet: no longer worked at his place of employment (the front desk person was not helpful); disappeared from social media; did not return my texts for the last week; just gone. You might be saying to yourself, “He blocked you, loser.” But no, he is my trainer, a person who I’ve known for years, a person who changed my life. I have no personal relationship with this guy other than the fact that he is my trainer and my friend. Not a talk-outside-of-work friend, but a friend. We confided in each other. He made me capable of lifting a ridiculous amount of weight. He empowered me. I was stronger physically and mentally because of him. And then, poof. Gone.
So yeah, I cried. He was dead or in jail or on the run. Those were the options. In the middle of all my crying, he texted back that he was fine, “lol.” Asshole.
I’ve been numb, lethargic, and nothing has brought me joy lately. The cry was cathartic, and I felt better after pulling myself together when I got his whatever text. “If you need me, I’ll be …” I do need you, actually, but let’s ignore that I asked.
I was in the Home Depot parking lot crying my eyes out in a hot car. I suppose I should thank him for breaking the thick shell that encased the emotions I haven’t had access to. I stopped going to training sessions for the last few months because work was keeping me late every night. I told him we’d start back when school ended. He was his usual, “Hell yeah, we will gym it up” dumb self. He’s not dumb. I only wrote that because I’m mad at him. So it seems I don’t have a trainer anymore, and I’m down one friend. I have few friends by choice. I have too many sides to me, which means I have too many ways to feel what other people feel when I’m around them. Too many friends exhaust me, but I cherish the few I have. He was one of them, and now he is being an ass. Or maybe he is running from the law.
“lol”
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I am redoing my bedroom. Tomorrow I’m going to paint it a powdery cornflower blue. In a week or so, I’ll be replacing the floors with a dark laminate tiles–you know, the kind that look like hardwood but aren’t.
So much for spending my time prepping for next year. I’m being dramatic. But you know that.
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I had a conversation with Chat GPT a few weeks ago. I asked it to explain a physics concept that I was grappling with. It gave me a long explanation about basic stuff that not only did not answer the question but was wrong. I tried to guide the program to address the problem while correcting it along the way. Each time, it apologized and agreed with the correction. I finally gave up and thanked it for the attempt. It apologized again. Maybe it learned something. Maybe I’m contributing to the demise of humanity by helping to train AI. Who am I kidding, we all are.
I also ask it things like, “Write a mission statement for a mad scientist in the style of Kurt Vonnegut.” I was disappointed in the response. Again, “… in the style of F. Scott Fitzgerald.” Not great. Then James Joyce. And that’s when it occurred to me what it was doing. The voices were void, but the vocabulary was spot on for each. I then asked it to do the same task in the style of Dr. Suess. That response was awful. AI has no imagination, but why on earth would it. Digression–rhetorical questions should be written without a question mark. That is not protocol, but it should be. Back on topic–I asked it to draw a butterfly using keyboard symbols. Here’s what I got:
I’m pretty sure that’s a dog.
All the responses I got after the Dr. Suess request, regardless of the question, were in rhyme.
Interesting.
Next:
write two stanzas of a poem in iambic pentameter about a butterfly interacting with a dog, then draw a picture in keyboard characters conveying that poem.
In fields of green, a butterfly takes flight, Its wings a kaleidoscope of colors bright. It dances with the wind, so light and free, A delicate beauty for all eyes to see.
A playful dog, with wagging tail and zest, Approaches the butterfly, eager to invest. With curious eyes, it watches in delight, As the butterfly flutters, a joyful sight.
That is a cat and a dog. But I appreciate the emojis for clarification.
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Write a haiku about writer’s block.
Blank page, stagnant mind, Words elude like fleeting mist, Writer’s block takes hold.
I noticed that most of my first sentences in the last post were a little dark. I like the idea of writing something akin to The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, but I lean toward suspense. I think that means that Coraline is up my alley. Alice in Wonderland, even. A first sentence and a genre. Progress.
A reflection of my life possibly.
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My posts are close to if not after midnight. This post is for June 5, but it is currently 9 minutes into June 6.
Let’s pretend we are on 2015 laptop time. Computers kept time for crap back then. I kinda liked it.
In keeping with my goal to write everyday, I am here at my computer with nothing in particular to say. I need to overcome that. Let’s just write, shall we?
My vacation does not feel like a vacation this year. It feels like time to do a bunch of stuff that I normally wouldn’t have time for. I find joy in my walks in the hot summer sun, though. Today was not hot; super weird for this time of year in the swamp where I live. I used to live in a hotter place, one with no humidity. My lungs would singe with every breath, but my young self didn’t have a problem with that. I ran around barefoot on asphalt that had tar bubbles. We fried an egg once on the pavement. Texas can be brutal, but I love the heat. I’m happiest in the summertime. Even here in southeast Texas, where the air is so thick with humidity that you gulp every breath, I feel joy when I’m in it. And there are alligators in the suburbs–I’ve seen them.
I cheated and went in search of something to post that I wrote in the past in a running document. The document began several year ago and is still going strong. Sometimes I date entries, but mostly I don’t. I don’t know when I wrote the entry below, but it was a while ago. I have exhausted my thoughts for the evening, so I will end with an old post.
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I have decided to practice writing first sentences…
It was a dark and stormy night. (jk)
The new keys were springy and danced beneath her fingertips.
She shrieked with a magnificent look of glee and terror as she careened toward the ground through thin clouds in a blue sky.
And that was that.
“So far, so good,” she thought, as she spun the dial of the lock to ensure nobody could get into the vault—or out.
It was a pleasure to burn. (Okay, not mine, but maybe my favorite so why not see what it’s like to write it.)
Day faded into night, releasing the moon and the eyes that it lit in the darkness.
The shovel made a thud on the ground as she brushed her hands together to wipe away the dirt and blood.
Indignation dripped from his downturned mouth and down the back of his throat as he nearly choked on the words that he allowed only his hateful glare to convey.
***No more “as he/she’s”***
“We’re lost, aren’t we?” He whispered so the dark couldn’t hear the fear in his voice.
They stood at the edge of the precipice and waited for the last sunrise.
Only the bones of their love remained.
The second time was even better.
He was mesmerized by her audacity.
High noon follows the sun around the planet every second of every minute of every hour. But the sun chases midnight and never catches up to it.
I prefer the old pond to this new one. Few people were ever seen around the old one, and the wooded stretch was more woody. The old trail was a bed of dirt and roots and leaves, and the new one is concrete. But I shouldn’t complain. It’s still a nice walk. Much less character along the way, but nice. Cookie-cutter.
…… … . . . . . .. … .. .
I feel like my life is in its homestretch. There aren’t anymore surprises, just a couple of plans to play out. It’s not that I don’t like the prospects, because I do. I’m just sad that I know what they are and that there are so few of them left.
I say that like I’m a hundred years old.
I might as well be.
The older you get, the more each day is the same as the one before and the faster they all fly by. Before you know it, you’re fifty, your dad is ninety, and everything feels, well, over.
I miss my friend.
… . .. .. . .
She moved to Jakarta about six months ago. A couple of days ago, she moved into a high-rise apartment and now lives on the thirtieth floor overlooking a bustling city. She is a light in the world, now thirty floors up where everyone can see her. I should text her. Evening has arrived on my side of the globe, and her day is just getting started.
She and I made a paper rollercoaster once with a pulley system. It was genius.
We also skydived and made excessively large cakes.
We were an hour away from each other during the lockdown, so we made videos for each other. One of hers was a tutorial on how to juggle. She did not know how to juggle, so it was more of a how-not-to. She was juggling by the end of the video. I made a Claymation video out of playdough, and I used a catapult that I constructed out of a shoebox and a plastic salad spoon to launch a variety of objects across the living room. I didn’t use clay to animate any part of the catapult video, but I did launch the playdough. I used the slow motion setting and drew over the video the parabolic trajectories and all the math stuff involved. We were teaching youngsters from afar, so I made sure they benefited academically from my attempts to keep myself and my friend entertained. We still make random videos for each other, especially now that we are in opposite time zones.
We had plans to build a massive pendulum filled with paint so that we could make a painting. That never happened.
We were ridiculous, and I miss her. I feel like I’ve aged since she left.
I stepped outside this evening to meet a big, full moon on my back porch. My plumeria stood tall in the moonlight, quite proud of himself. He was about eight inches tall with two leaves when I put it in my cart at HEB two years ago. He is now several feet tall and outgrowing his pretty blue pot. I would plant him in the ground, but he doesn’t like the cold winters we’ve been having. He lives inside a few months out of the year, dormant and sad. When I put him outside in the spring, he wakes up within days. Within a week, he is covered in leaves.
An old man stopped me in the paper-plates aisle and commented on my little plant the day I bought it. He asked if I knew what color its blooms were. I did not. He was strangely excited for me; said he got one at that age, like we were talking about kids. I told him that I was surprised how well they do in my town since they are tropical plants. He said his grew magnificently while living in New York. His grew pink flowers, but he wanted red. I still don’t know what color mine will bloom. Maybe I’ll find out this summer.
Side note: he is not the only old man who has approached me in a grocery store. The last one was Pablo, who walked over to discuss the pastries in the glass case I was looking at. That was an interesting conversation that ended with “I’m married” and a sincere apology. I believe the plumeria man on the paper-plates aisle really just wanted to talk about my little plant. That was a nice encounter, seeing as I didn’t know anyone who liked plumerias as much as I do.
I went on a date with a young Pablo in Mexico when I was a teenager. He was kind and nervous. I was, too, and the date didn’t go anywhere. I would have gone out with him again if he had asked, but he didn’t. That was a magical time. No plumerias were involved in that encounter, No pastries, either. Just a warm, summer-night breeze in Cuernavaca, a jeep, and just the right amount of cologne. Polo, I think.
Tropical plants and trees were scattered about the town. Is it a coincidence I gave my plant a Spanish name? I never considered the possibility. The moonlight suits him, regardless.
For me, summer vacation generally involves hiding from the world. This summer is different than the rest, not because I’m not trying to hide from people but because I have plans to do productive things. One of those things involves preparing for next year. I’ve managed all my adult life to avoid spending my summers working on non-summer activities (i.e. work work), and it sickens me a little to know that I am making this change. But if I don’t want to lose my mind next year, I have to.
Writing is a decompression, as is walking and anything else I can find to do that I like doing. Writing used to be a burning, insatiable need, but time away from that passion snuffed out the flame. I never believed that could happen. I’m as shocked as I am saddened by the loss, but perhaps that fire in my belly will return. I hope so. In the meantime, I’ve set a goal to write at least once everyday. Much of what I post will likely be garbage since I’ve made writing a goal and not a whim. I still enjoy writing, I just don’t always have anything to write about. My brain isn’t as creative as it once was. Or I’m not. Brain just does what I tell it to. Or is it the other way around? If Brain is in charge, I’m in trouble. Then again, if Whim is in charge, I’m in bigger trouble. Neither of these likelihoods bode well for me. Maybe I’m better off sticking my head in a book.
Another Writer, Another Blog 