I should, first of all, apologize for the coloring of the new drawings. A little too much for the one, maybe not enough for the illustration of Ginny Cole, some lettering added.
So, that’s about it. Stay safe, surf when you can. I do. Can’t say much more.
I am working on the manuscript; and, as objectively as I can be, I do believe the advice I’ve received is helping to make it better. If I can compare it to house painting, we get it all painted, then do the “Tighten up,” going back over all the surfaces, making sure it’s tight.
I probably should start with the color version of the Ginny Cole illustration for “Swamis” before I get into anything remotely political. I am making progress on the novel; with at least one new character and so much concentration on how Jody’s father, Joseph DeFreines, Sr. died that I may have to severely cut back on the drama and adventure involved in the killings of Chulo and Gingerbread Fred.
Sequel? Not yet. Trish asked me if I wanted the drawing to be sort of mystical. Yeah, definitely; reflecting the time, 1969, and, more specifically, how a young person felt about the time, the place, life, love, surf, everything.
Fictional Ginny Cole on a mystical ride
I’m not actually through doing satirical political drawings. There is just too much material out there. For example, Ivanka Trump leading a public relations effort to encourage desperate and out of work folks to just ‘find something new.’ Yeah, like, um, with jobs at a premium and Republicans claiming the unemployed are just living it up on all the extra money; maybe what folks need is a new daddy. Works for her. Cake, yeah; let them eat cake; oh, and, because the owner of this outfit said nice things about her daddy; eat lots of Goya beans.
AND, I would like to do a drawing of Tucker Carlson, whose lawyers went to court recently to defend his right to tell lies; or, put in Fox-speak, Tuck-man is under no obligation to tell the truth. It’s not like he’s a real journalist. I would add, perhaps, a little sign that says, “Truth don’t matter; Ratings matter.” Yeah, it should be Truth ‘doesn’t’ matter; thanks for catching that.
This is a little soon between posts for me, and I’m only doing it, kind of stepping on one of my illustrations to put this out there; and, let me be clear, here, I really don’t want to be all political; but it pissed me off.
I waited until the fourteenth day of my allowed fifteen day response period, then sent off a check for $190 for my speeding ticket. I was guilty, didn’t want to stretch it out by asking for a court date (which I have done in the past), wasn’t hoping for some reduced sentence due to my advanced age or lack of regret or political connections. If $190.00 US currency was my debt to American society, I begrudgingly paid it.
That was last Friday, July 10, the very day Roger Stone had his prison sentence commuted. Oh, he’s still guilty on the seven felony counts, found guilty by a jury of, obviously, Americans, but no, not necessarily his peers.
Threatening a witness was one of the crimes, threatening the witness’s dog included in that one.
SO, he did the crime, doesn’t have to do the time. All he had to do is go on TV, allude to the true dirt he has on the president, convince Lindsey Graham that he’s a first time offender in his 70s (no, 67; I’m a many-times lifetime speeder, 68); and, voila, home free. No need for repentance or reformation, and the president’s twitter-blitz will insure that no Republican politician will stand up for the party’s much-pushed vision of rule of law, equal justice, all that mouth candy. Might seem a bit, uh, hypocritical.
Yeah, Mitt Romney; suddenly looking kind of cool.
ANYWAY, and with apologies for taking any kind of stand, sometime Friday night, after eating one too many chocolates too close to bed time, I woke up, did this little drawing. NOW, my friend, artist/surfer/kitesurfer/sailor/carpenter/chef, able to fix brakes and lay floors that are totally squared-up; Stephen R. Davis, soon off to Hawaii and whatever waves/confinement/big waves that might bring, said my first drawing was kind of (wait, it’s going to sound mean) “Cliche’.” Yeah, it probably is.
I haven’t shown this one to him, but I did describe it. “No, that might actually be clever.” I’ll take it. I do feel compelled to post it. SO:
This is my latest attempt at the negative-to-positive technique:
Virginia (Ginny) Cole late afternoon Swamis, 1969
I’m pretty satisfied with the illustration, at least partially because it pretty much turned out as I imagined it would, hopefully, pretty; and I don’t feel the need to go back on this drawing and make changes.
Not yet, anyway. I am considering going back to the original and adding something referencing my novel, “Swamis,” Ginny Cole being a main character in the in-progress (still) manuscript.
AND, this image may end up on an ORIGINAL ERWIN t-shirt. If not, or if so, I’ll get a signed, framed, limited edition (limited, as always, by me) copy over to Tyler Meeks’ DISCO BAY OUTDOOR EXCHANGE soon, like, maybe today.
MEANWHILE, look for, wait for, or enjoy surf when you can, make sure you’re ready to vote in November, and STAY SAFE.
It’s July fourth, and, by some weird numbers thing, the number of deaths from the Corona virus recorded in Washington State since the start of the pandemic, 1,352, is noticeably close to the number of deaths in the good old U S of A, 1,362. At least I noticed, quite possibly because I click on the statistics first thing, every day, even before I check the buoy reports.
Oh, wait, that number, 1,362, lives lost; that’s from yesterday; real people who didn’t make it to this year’s celebration of national independence. The number of lives, so far, again, real people, is 131,509. That’s, like, more than two Vietnams (if we just count American lives), and, with the reported number of deaths worldwide at 525,491, America has the distinction of having… let’s see… yeah; about a fourth of the total deaths, world-wide, are Americans.
But, wait, of the deaths yesterday, worldwide, America has the 1,362 and the world has 4,136; so… yeah, more than a fourth. Moving up.
In confirmed cases for yesterday; let’s see: 219,036 for everyone else, 94,765 for us. So… bear in mind, I’m not really a numbers person… OH, SHIT, you have to multiply our number by approximately 2.3 to get the worldwide number of confirmed cases. That means, um, uh, well, it is bad.
America is first.
It doesn’t take a math genius to tell that, with many countries seeing (earning is more like it) a decline in cases, an end to the most severe part of the pandemic, we Americans just might have done something wrong. Or not quite right. I feel like I’ve been lucky; I haven’t been diligent enough, and still have managed to not get the virus.
Lucky. Add ‘not yet.’ It seems odd to me that people who believe all kinds of conspiracy theories don’t believe this is real; people who believe they are somehow protected by God or good genes or yoghurt or yoga are immune and are somehow too important or healthy or whatever to get this virus.
Common cold; ever had it?
OKAY, so I figure anyone who doesn’t believe their keeping socially distant or wearing a mask is something they’re willing to do has already stopped reading this; AND SO, here’s a drawing I did; and then felt a bit reluctant to post:
not anyone in particular
Wait, wait; maybe you don’t have to wear a mask OR maintain social distance: IF you can swear AND prove that you absolutely, positively do not have the virus, then… no, wait another second; I cannot absolutely, positively swear or prove the same thing.
So, obviously, I should, for your own safety, stay away from you. No problem; I can absolutely, positively swear I’ll keep my distance.
It wasn’t an accident that got me a ticket the other day, one hundred and ninety dollar fine for going seventeen miles an hour over the posted speed limit. I got a fucking speeding ticket because I was fucking speeding.
I do have an explanation, but not one that would get my fine reduced in a courtroom. Ya see, Judge; I was just pissed off; corona virus, people out of work, all kinda kooks coming over to the Peninsula, leisure time MFs (if you know what I mean), big trucks hauling bigger trailers and/or boats, cabover campers, and… anyway… oh, and earlier in the day, cruising up surf route 101, three vehicles passed me… me; one on a curve- had to pull over so I didn’t get hit by any shrapnel; I mean; good citizen, huh? Oh. Okay. So, I’m busy thinking about all that, and the stock market, and how black lives matter, and about Russia, China, Hawaii; whether the beaches will open in Mexico; lots on my mind; oh, and it looked like there might be waves the next day and whether I should go to bed as soon as I got home; and, yeah; I get down to 101 at Discovery Bay, over by Fat Smitty’s with his big Trump sign and folks waiting outside; not wearing masks, and I see all this traffic coming at me; so I pull out and I gun it. Now, I know it’s a 1987 Toyota Camry, but, maybe because of a hole in the muffler or something, it sounds like a sports car… and I’m moving along, thinking about the humane society and such, and… yeah, I’m slowing down because I’m catching up with other cars; you know, highway speed; and this car in front of me pulls over, over by West Uncas, in case you’re hep to this chunk of highway; and then, whoa, he pulls back out, lights flashing.
And he’s not really buying my story. “I had you clocked at 72.” “Well; I was slowing down; I wasn’t going to, you know, hit you.” Oh, I’m trying to be nice; figuring it’s all on body cam; and hoping… long story short, shorter; I get the ticket, three options, fifteen days to respond; and I instantly start thinking about how mad Trish is going to be, one, and that the surf will undoubtedly be good the next day because there’s no f’ing way I’m going to get to go.
And, of course, Trish is, mad, and, of course, there is surf, like, maybe knee high, but… but, of course, every person who owns or can borrow a surfboard is on it, and their cousins, and their cousin’s kids, and… anyway; maybe you don’t care about surfing; but, then we’re supposed to go over to our daughter, Dru’s, place in Port Gamble for dinner and a movie… George Takamoto drove the Camry; Trish went on ahead; and, and all I see out Dru’s window, heading east, are rigs with surfboards on ’em… oh, and, yeah; the movie was “Ford vs. Ferrari;” so, of course, there are jokes. “There goes Erwin.” That kinda thing.
No, I’ll probably pay the one hundred and ninety dollars.
HERE’S SOMETHING THAT I will take credit for; though it was an accident. I did a drawing, added a bit too much shading; figured I would redraw it. Because the original was on card stock, I couldn’t just tape it to a clear drawing board and use that as a template for another, hopefully better, version. So, I stuck it in the printer, but the printer ran out of black ink. So, I printed it in color. Everything that had been black came out white. So, I added some more lines and… here it is:
I may use it for my someday-to-be-finished novel, “Swamis.” Incidentally, I did use some of the time in which I would have been driving (too fast, no doubt) to and from the Strait, ripping up waves… whatever, to work on the manuscript. It is coming along. Really.
FIRST, here’s a drawing I did, white and dark on medium-toned paper. I can’t seem to get a white that will work. I had a paint pen but it clogged up, didn’t work twice.
Won’t work twice, it’s all right. Ma. Unnecessary allusion.
HERE’S my explanation for the cut scene: Including the exchange between Joey DeFreines and the writer/editor is a pretty conscious effort/shoutout to the sardonic and wise (and I always associate the two) writer/editor who managed to work through “Swamis,” the unexpurgated version, and provide me with… I don’t want to say ‘guidance,’ no one seems to suggest a better storyline… constructive criticism of my manuscript.
I have changed the first hundred pages enough, cut out enough, that the story is… it’s different. I did, I thought, let the story kind of work itself out, with a certain goal in mind, a last line planned before the first line was written (and subsequently, re-re-re-written). Most of the storyline of Joey/Jody in his later years has been cut. SO…
KAFKA LAUGHING
The next day, after Rudolph had several quite distraught visitors (never introduced to me) whom he seemed to have to console, after lunch, after a nap (I slept longer), Rudolph, smiling, put down his own tablet, said, “Kafka. Supposedly he… serious stuff to most… readers… supposedly he was laughing his ass off while he was writing.”
I was writing, wasn’t laughing.
Rudolph made several disparaging comments on the current state of popular fiction, looked at me, pointed at my laptop with his tablet. “Your book’s on there, right?”
“Very observant.”
“Oh? That’s sarcasm. Fine. Don’t really know you, but… I do know writers; fucked-up crazy egotistical fucks… mostly; so… don’t take this personally, but… fuck you.”
Later (and not that much later), with Rudolph, evidently, having had enough of CNN (“Too redundant, too many commercials, too many panels of experts”), he switched the channel to Fox News, flipped off Sean Hannity. Both hands. “Double eagles,” I told him. Since I also had a remote, I switched to MSNBC; Rachel Maddow (“Love her; don’t think she loves me back”). Rudolph switched the TV off.
Rudolph- “Have any sex scenes in there?”
Me- “No.”
Rudolph- “No, not yet, or, no; never had sex?”
Me- “Not yet; but I hear it’s kind of fun. Ha. Ha. Really, it’s not that kind of book.”
Rudolph- “Oh. Well; every kind of book needs a little… sex.”
I hit ‘save,’ shut down the ‘Word’ program. “So, Rudolph… you do know publishers?”
“Sure. Not as many as I once did; worst kind of pricks. Not, um, needy, like writers, but used to feeling needed. It’s worse. Still, they spend some time on their knees. Publishers, now; scared shitless of not making their money back.” He held back for a second. He seemed to enjoy that I was enjoying his commentary. He had the inside information, dissected and delivered in a sarcastic/realistic way. “But, really, my temporary roommate; Amazon. Self-publish; it seems to be the way.”
I reopened the program, hit the ‘Pg Dn’ button until I got to the end, kept writing. Typing, backspacing paragraphs, rephrasing. I thought about laughing, just to mess with Rudolph.
“You know,” Rudolph said, during the setup for some BBC crime drama, one I had seen before; “I’ve never really watched a writer write before.” I looked over at him, did a ‘was I drooling’ wipe at my mouth. “Let me tell you… it’s an ugly process.”
“That’s why I don’t put on my writer clothes,” I said, “and go down to the café and fire up the laptop.”
“’Light up… light up the laptop,’ it’s better;” Rudolph said, editing, as if changing my words was amusing. “I assume you’ve google-searched for information on writing and publishing,”
I chuckled, gave him a ‘just a second’ gesture, went back to typing. Rudolph said, somewhere during another ‘begging for money’ break on the local PBS channel, “Of course you have. It’s sixty to ninety thousand words for a novel.”
Me- “Not a novel.”
Rudolph- “Yeah; it is. If you changed one name, forgot one thing, it’s… it’s your take on things. There’s what’s the true truth, and there’s… it’s a novel. Yes, all writing is, in some way, autobiography; but, Joseph; it’s a novel. Where are you at, right now?”
Me- “Pages?”
Rudolph- “No. Words. Jeez.”
I was at a little over twenty thousand at the time. I was at 25,931 when I started writing about Rudolph, but I keep going back. Every time I open up the (yeah, I guess) novel, I tend to start at the beginning, get bogged-down. In the time I have, with the energy I have; I’m not moving forward; at least not quickly. I’m editing. Editing. It sounds like cutting things out; but no; there’s always something I thought of overnight.
Something new. Something old, rather, but newly remembered.
NOT DROWNING
“This is my new addiction,” I told Rudolph, “I look forward to writing the way I’ve always looked forward to surfing. I miss it when I can’t do it.”
“This surfing;” he said, “the water’s cold, huh?”
“Can be.” I had to add more. “Probably, around here, gets up to 75 degrees or so, for about a week… August; goes down to 55, for about a week, middle of January, probably; again, for about a week. In the old days, 60s, if you put on a wetsuit; and we only had short johns, before, say, December 10th or so… water down to 58 degrees… that was the cutoff; or if you put on a wetsuit before Easter; again, 58 degrees… you were a pussy. Nowadays…”
Rudolph was smiling. I stopped talking. “60,000 words; shouldn’t be a problem.” We both smiled. “Do you ever think about… drowning?”
“No; I mean, I have but, I’ve seen people who have drowned… I mean, any real surfer has had experiences where… I’ve just decided against it. Cold water. Bodies turn kind of… seaweed, um, green.”
“Yeah. So, not dying, then. Better to die in… Las Vegas, maybe. Toasty… I’m thinking about the colors… tourist tan-burn. Yes! Hot, but dry.” Realizing he was enjoying the moment, the conversation, a bit more than he might normally allow himself, Rudolph nodded toward my laptop. “You finish it, I’ll give it a read. When it’s done. First draft, at least.”
“Whoa!” I pointed at Rudolph, pointed back at the laptop. A few seconds passed. We both seemed to know I would ruin the mood. And I did. “Are you sure you’ll live long enough to read it? I mean, you’re saying you will… read it; and I… I appreciate that… I just want you to tell me about… style. I want to write it the way I want, but… I feel like, I believe I have a… style.”
“Fucking writers. Egotistical fucks.”
“You said that… before.”
“Well, thanks for fucking listening to something other than the voices in your head.”
I laughed. “Yeah; that’s what I’m in here for. Voices.” I tapped on my head.
“Oh.”
I waved my hand to suggest I was kidding. I smiled, blinked several times. “They don’t want to, uh, remove them… the voices; some doctor thinks she can translate them… into, uh, German.”
“Okay. All right. Look; If you live long enough to finish it, Joseph; I’ll live long enough to tell you it needs work.”
“Deal,” I said.
“Deal.”
Rudolph seemed to be, over the next hour or so, doing what I do, replaying the conversation in his mind. For most people there’s no replay, no rewind, no editing. Most people. My recall isn’t perfect, quite. I replay the ones that seem important. Over and over if I’ve fucked up somewhere in the back and forth. There are, I’ve discovered, few conversations, ever, that I’ve not fucked up somehow.
Sometime during the eleven o’clock news, after another nurse, Martha, had come in to introduce herself to Rudolph, check on him, with a cursory check on me; Rudolph took his phone from the side table, and said, “Let me give you my address. You’re fine. Do some of that surfing or something. Thrive. It’s, my address; it’s a condo. Solana Beach. On the bluff.”
“Solana Beach is wall-to-wall condos,” I said. “I remember when…”
“Yeah, of course you do. Remember. But, hey, Roomie, if I might get a word in here; remember, remember when that swimmer… last guy in a group… got killed by the shark?” Pause. He nodded toward our big, shared window (view of apartment buildings, mostly). “Happened right out my window.”
“You saw it?”
“No, but I felt as if I had. I’m not a fucking writer, but I can… (he twiddled his hands in the air) visualize.” He pointed to my cell phone, close to the edge of the bed.
I didn’t visit Rudolph in his condo. I tried to call. He never answered. I wouldn’t leave a message, but would call back, let it ring once. Missed call. Or I’d text, something like, ‘working on it,’ or ‘the narcissists are in bloom.’ He would text, occasionally, something like, “Any SEX yet?” or “Entertaining the HOSPICE people. Pre-hospice. Counselors. Like manic-depressive humorists.” Followed by, “Almost said BLACK HUMORISTS.” “Different group. DOUR lot.”
I texted, “Dour. Good word.”
I missed an actual call an hour or so later. The voice mail message was, “Oh, so now you’re not picking up? Probably quoting Shakespeare to seagulls or something. Anyways, dour. Yes, I prefer it to ebullient.” In a higher octave, “’Yes, you’re dying; but, hey, look on the bright side.’ Ebullient.”
When I did visit Rudolph, he was back in the hospital, one room over from the one we’d shared. Same view, slightly different angle.
“They, the bastards, didn’t kill the child,” he said. He wasn’t talking about the doctors, though he said he had given up hoping another test would have a different result, another consultant would have another opinion, a better prognosis. He was talking about Nazis. “But, in a way, see, they did. I never got to be a child. I, my life; I look for errors, for mistakes; and I envy the writers who have, like you; a sense of wonder. Wonder. What does that mean? Passion, longing, wanting to fucking know, wanting to feel, to touch the magic.”
“Uh huh. Yes.”
“So, that’s good is what I’m saying. Shit, man; I’m pouring it out here, and you, best you can do is ‘uh huh.’ Writers?”
“Sorry, Rudolph. It’s just that…”
“It’s just that, Joseph; I hope you don’t… sixty thousand words; that’ll take the wonder out of it; but not… not the magic. Nobody… nobody who matters gives a flying fuck about flowery passages and perfect sentence structure; even about the… overall… construction. Just tell the fucking stories.”
“Okay.”
Rudolph and I did exchange some stories. He had felt passion, wonder, love; he was even capable of forgetting, briefly, that he had been robbed of a childhood.
Rudolph, who didn’t die in the concentration camps, who repeatedly told me the bastards would get him; eventually; never read a word.
I read some early chapters to him on one of his last days, in his condo on the bluff, looking out his windows, imagining the shark picking off the last swimmer. One of his sons (looked up his name- Jacob) and Jacob’s two children (didn’t get their names) were there at the time, along with, briefly, a quite dour Hospice nurse (didn’t bother with her name). My name, evidently, was on some sort of list.
Rudolph kept dozing off and waking up, possibly disappointed he was still alive. I kept reading. I could tell when something I’d written was awkward or wrong. Jacob would look over at his father.
“Needs work.” That was the last thing I said to Rudolph.
“Perfection,” Jacob said. “My father says, ‘perfection is difficult to attain, and impossible to maintain.’”
Rudolph woke up just before I was leaving the condo. He didn’t seem to notice his son or me, but did look, through the afternoon glare, at the sliding glass doors. Jacob’s two girls were playing, outside on the little deck, pressing themselves against the panels, salt stained, seventy-five feet above the ocean, their movements creating the on-glass equivalent of snow angels. Jacob and I both noticed, smiled. Not that we were ebullient.
It’s drizzling outside. Heavy drizzle. I’ve been working for about two and a half hours on the latest rewrite/edit of “Swamis.” That would be about as long as my last surf session, if one doesn’t count getting into and out of a wetsuit; so, sure, writing session.
The Summer Solstice might mean something different out here on the Olympic Peninsula than it does elsewhere. This area, more specifically the Strait of Juan de Fuca, has become, with my lack of surf travelling, my locale. It’s a strange world where surfers wait for ocean swells to find their way forty, even eighty miles into a narrow (compared to the open seas) opening; and then we hope they, diminished in size by the journey, hit the right beach at the right angle on the best tide, and then become a really good (I am tempted to say ‘righteous’) wave.
Oh, and we’d prefer glassy and uncrowded conditions, and, if it isn’t too much to ask for, a little more size. Huh?
ANYWAY, without going through what I went through to get in my last session (hint- daylight is, like, seventeen hours) within a very narrow window, and without mentioning the number of times I was skunked or near-skunked, I will now pivot to a story from elsewhere and elsewhile:
Shuichi Conces
This is a photo Trish found on Facebook while doing some sort of research after she got a friend request from Don McLean, a guy in my class (1969) at Fallbrook High. Don tried surfing, didn’t stick with it, but his younger brother, Billy, did surf, and did manage to get my other friends and I in trouble on more than one occasion.
In fact, of the two times I spent time in custody of the Police, the second time, for curfew, along with Phillip Harper, Ray Hicks, and Mark Metzger, was almost totally the fault of Billy McLean. I have written about it. I’m not sure if Trish accepted Don’s request.
The first time I was held, for truancy, Shuichi and some other older guy (might have been the other guy in this photo) were with me. I was held, they lied, said they were going to Palomar Junior College, I got to follow the cop in my hand-painted psychedelic 1958 Buick, hang around the Oceanside Police station until my mother, who knew I was headed for a car show in San Diego, and, well, might as well go surfing, came from work to pick me up; me, still dressed in trunks, holding my driver’s license they finally returned to me; oh, and by the way, the only reason they put me in the holding cell was because I was just too nosy, checking out the station, reading stuff coming off the teletype. Criminal. No charges.
That’s pretty much the story, other than my mom did not allow me to continue on to the car show, and she did feel obligated to turn me in, in person, to the school. Detention.
Notoriety. Another story. “Oh, no; they did lock the cell. What? No, an hour, hour and a half. At least.”
The narrator of “Swamis,” Jody DeFreines, is the son of a white father and a Japanese mother. I wrote him as such because, with surfers from the sixties self-identifying as loners and outsiders, I wanted him to be more of both. I was influenced, also, because two of my longtime friends, George Takamoto and Archie Endo, are of Japanese descent.
Oh, but Shuichi is closer to Jody. We (Phil and Ray and I) once rode with him, after school, to El Toro Marine Airfield in Orange County, where his father was stationed. The plan was for him to visit his dad for a while, then we’d surf San Onofre. It seemed to me his relationship with his father was a bit, um, fraught. We waited. He came back. It was too late to surf.
Shuichi was at least one grade ahead of me. Because I made sandwiches for my six siblings and parents, and his mother, evidently, did not, he started buying lunch from me, the proceeds I then used to buy ice cream bars and such. Or gas money. I could make more sandwiches.
He was in my art class. We had a pretty redneck-ish teacher (I took four years of art, not that it shows) who once, because he feared break-ins, actually considered rigging a shotgun over one of the doors. He did, at least, discuss it. Oh, and, this tidbit might transfer somehow to “Swamis,” (changed to mostly male Big Jacket photography students) the regular teacher seemed kind of pervy toward the girls; and most of the students were girls. Artists? Yeah.
At one point we had a substitute teacher, a woman artist from La Jolla, very hip and chic, who said Shuichi should seriously consider, as a career, being a gigolo. I’m not positive she ever gave him this advice. She did tell me, and I was under the impression that she may have had some actual clients in mind. I, of course, did tell him what she suggested. Again, evidently Shuichi was eighteen as a senior, so, almost-sorta-kinda-not so shocking.
It was to me, of course. I don’t know that he didn’t follow that line of work. His latest Facebook posting showed him, fairly recently, getting married; so, I would guess, not for the first time. He still looked good. His work history seems to reflect sales, and representing this company or that, so… good on him.
OKAY, so, like somewhat over an hour on this, this session. Happy solstice to all, no matter how far waves have to travel to get to you; and remember, it’s all downhill now for the next six months.
I continue to struggle in completing a publishable version of “Swamis.” Mostly I’m struggling with myself. I respect the opinions of the people who have read part or all of my unexpurgated manuscript. I believe the feedback. Confusing, too many leaps in time; all true.
I AM, HOWEVER, stubborn. My most recent addition to the manuscript is included here, but first; and there may be a connection; here is a drawing I decided is too busy, too overdrawn; just not quite right. SO, I flipped the paper over, traced the outline on the other side.
simplifying is not easy
YOU MAY NOTICE that, included in this passage, is something that came from here, from realsurfers.net. It’s the chaos/dreaming/writing thing; and backs up what is, evidently, my method of writing and speaking; say enough, write enough, something accidently profound might just happen.
PROFOUND. Yeah, it’s my ego. I’ve been humbled by the process; but my goal never was to write a novel, maybe one of a series. ANYWAY, stay safe, stay sane, try not to panic, stay tuned. OH, and, not sure if this passage will make the final cut, and do bear in mind this is (mostly) fiction; here it is:
CHAPTER SEVEN- TUESDAY, JANUARY 21, 2020
I’m sitting in my de facto office, folding table in my mother’s nearly-empty condo, part of what she called the “Great Condo Wall of Del Mar,” looking out at a scarred ocean, rip lines, squall lines, light pollution; gray on gray on gray. There might be waves, weakly pushing off the ever-refreshed rip rap protecting the ever-eroding bluffs. Can’t tell. A dark line halfway to my horizon can appear to be a wave. It would be a big one.
This is where I am, not where my mind is.
I have to decide right now, at this spot in my latest edit of “Swamis,” if this is a memoir or a mystery. If it is a mystery, I have so much material to cut, I’ve been advised, to keep from losing the reader. That’s you. That’s free will.
Painful. I wanted to include little bios of people I ran into, little details, things that would let you, the reader, know that it was real, that I was fucking there.
Does adding the ‘fucking’ make me seem angry? I am; even though I realize why it makes sense to cut out and condense and to make sure the narrative is, most importantly, clear.
Okay. Thank you for reading, but here’s the thing: I’m telling the story. To you. I know who I am; what I don’t know, what I have to constantly worry about and wonder about, who I have to adjust my storytelling for, is you.
I don’t know you.
Again, thank you for reading. If I’m trying not to lose you by burrowing into some peripheral background information on a background character, some wordy journey to another side story that I believe offers some possible explanation as to why I or someone else behaved in a certain way; I will also endeavor to not try to fool you or withhold information in order to create some artificially engineered intrigue.
Still, I will be saving (some of) the unnecessary scenes elsewhere, some other file, like those little plastic things for resealing loaves of bread, hundreds of them, in various colors, that my mother kept in a dedicated drawer and that I threw away; like the notes my father kept from his encounters as a deputy and then a detective; like miscellaneous nuts and bolts kept in jars for some day. Some day. Okay. Move the cursor. “Cut.”
My submission was late for the Quilcene Community Center Newsletter. It’s now June 12 and I never got one over the electronic network. Because I post these pieces here, usually, I probably should apologize for it taking this long. There is some surf news to report; I did just recently surf with Nick, nicknamed, probably only by me (and because I got it from him) God.
He took off in front of me; twice; but said I deserved it. I will explain next time. Meanwhile, and partially to help the financially struggling United States Post Office, which, out here in the boonies, I particularly appreciate; I am considering preparing and sending a number of postcards to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC, 20500. No manifestos, just brief notes, like, um, maybe, “Which voices are you listening to right now?”
First Amendment, folks. Still, because of the omni-demic and all, I am considering wearing gloves in the process. That I am also considering sending them anonymously and from a different zip code; well, the farther-out folks on both ends of the conservative/liberal spectrum do agree that, as Americans, we always have to worry about our rights, alienable and otherwise.
Again, only positive messages. Like, uh, “Considering building a bunker: any ideas?” “Juneteenth? Really?”
Surf Route 101; somewhere in Washington State
OBVIOUSLY READY TO FROLIC
It’s Saturday, May 30, 2020, and, here in Quilcene, Washington, Spring’s last push toward the eminent arrival of Summer, is, other than the bright yellow blooms on the non-indigenous Scotch Broom, the changing of the landscape from grays and browns and more grays, to green.
Maybe it just seems like it was a massive invasion, a sudden and overwhelming onslaught of green.
Everything is green. The north side of the car you parked because you really had nowhere to go. Green. That patch of dirt where you had the car parked. Green. And all the trees, shrubs, hayfields; green and growing, unchecked, undeterred by the intermittent dry days, pushed forward by the rainy days, greens in shades from almost yellow to almost blue.
Greenness, everywhere, and so crazily active you can see grass grow, leaves spread, plants crawling out of their pots before you can get them in the ground. Blackberry vines are winding their way through your flowerbeds, dandelions outgrowing your lawn, thistles and nettles competing for the chance to sting you, you out in your Summer clothes… Ow!
Okay, I could have gotten all lyrical here, but the truth is, I’m a day past the deadline and I’m racked with guilt. Racked? Is that a word derived from THE Rack, medieval torture devise? Maybe. I won’t Google it. YES, if you are receiving this a day later than you anticipated, it is my fault.
I won’t make excuses. I hate excuses. The guiltiest people have the best excuses.
So, here’s mine: I went surfing. Friday. Dawn. Yeah. Could have been writing. The first two vehicles I passed while heading north on Surf Route 101 very close to Lake Leland, were towing boats. No, not those big boats that loom over the truck hauling them. Those boats are headed to or from ocean waters. The next car had one of those very plastic kayaks on top of it. Again, it was a Friday, and I don’t know what these folks, were supposed to be doing, but they were obviously ready to frolic.
Obviously. Not me. I was going stealth. I had my board hidden inside my work van, with six ladders on the roof. Incognito. BUT first, in order to go surfing on Friday, one day ahead of what might just be a weekend rush from people cooped up anywhere east of the Olympic Peninsula, I had to try to use the best scientific data available to divine that there might be waves on the Strait of Juan de Fuca. BUT, first, I had to finish a job in Bremerton on Thursday.
Quite late on Thursday, and it’s an hour home; so tough to get up early enough to drive an hour and twenty-two minutes (on average) and be in the water before the sun comes up at… checking… 5:21 am. Didn’t make that. Got there at 7:10, surfed two hours, took a nap in my wetsuit, on a towel, in the reclining passenger seat, went back out in the very small waves for another hour or so, then went shopping at Costco, then Walmart, then QFC.
I do have an explanation for why it is necessary to shop at each of these stores. I did skip Home Depot and Office Depot, and might have gone into Michael’s if they let people in. Not yet.
With groceries to put away, and quite tired (not, you say, that it takes maximum energy to tap on a keyboard), and having passed so many recreational vehicles, other surfers, cars and trucks towing boats and trailers with motorcycles, and, of course, motorcycles, and all the folks who come over on a Friday in an attempt to beat those who foolishly wait until Saturday, I got home around 4:20.
“…foolishly wait until Saturday…”
Okay, you’re right; I could have taken a nap and written a piece on… wait a minute; I did actually write a piece on how people are afraid to dream due to anxiety connected with the whole Covid omni-demic. I do dream; and I did write about it.
Although the piece didn’t seem totally appropriate for the Quilcene Community Center Newsletter; here’s a bit of it. “If dreams are meant to make some sense out of chaos, writing is dreaming; and I write.”
Not necessarily ahead of a deadline. Be safe, be well, dream fearlessly, and definitely frolic when you get the chance.
Oh, maybe that’s a good message for the White House; “Are we having fun yet?”
Real Surfers 