Dreams and Memories

I woke at 4:30 in the morning today, with the dream of a friend who'd passed still fresh in my head. I'm going to the Library of Congress today, to register myself as a reseacher. Apparently I need to proclaim myself as this in order to view things that they have. A collection of memories in the form of the written word. I feel myself to be more curious than anything, and would prefer to register myself as something other than a researcher, but there's not that option. Very typical in the American government system, that they pre-emptively define the parameters for you, then let you choose to accept those parameters or not.

Travels

I've been traveling and not writing, although the ideas are spinning through my head. Saw a fantastic exhibit at the National Museum of the American Indian, of an artist who really impressed me. It was not so much his style that did it, but his integrity. He was consistently who he was. Fritz Scholder. He allowed his art to flow from his life in the moment. That is what I'd like my writing to do, and often, it does. In one series of images, he made skull images with spilled Coke and his own blood, on hotel memo note paper. It's provocative, fleeting, and something I will never personally do. I'd be too afraid they'd figure out a way to use my DNA and re-create me at some moment in the future when wearing polyester would be mandatory.

In a way, though, I completely understand it. From what it said beside the art, his health was in decline and he was facing his own mortality. Every moment that we exhale, we ought to be contemplating our own mortality, but denial kicks in and we go blissfully in the direction of thinking about something mundane.

Submitted a story for a contest

So I've gone and done it now. I submitted a story for an Esquire contest. Never done that before, but then, lately there have been a lot of things like that popping up.

I have a non-fiction piece that I wrote that doesn't fit a particular market - The whole idea of writing needing to fit a particular market is somewhat offensive. I consider writing a form of art. Art just is what it is, and on some level, the integrity of that needs to be respected.

I was talking with a friend the other day about the whirlwind of controversy one of my stories is likely to generate. I don't like controversy and don't write for that purpose. Yet I can see it coming on the horizon. She said to me that "Art is Controversy." Or maybe I imagined that she said it, because it's what I wanted to hear?

I used to write when I was a kid, because I enjoyed doing it. Then I stopped, because the more people told me I was good at it, the less of a challenge it became for me. Instead, I took a different path. It's been quite an adventure up to now, and I've grown and learned a lot along the way. I find myself having come full circle and writing again.

I enjoy writing for the sport of it, but I don't want it to become a contact sport. I'm all about the refinement of manifesting a concept into characterizations and dialogue. Perhaps my writing never had been art before, until it became controversial and stirred up folks emotions.

Today at my regular challenging job, someone was talking about The Secret and the idea of the Law of Attraction. A small group of us debated if we believed in that or not. I fully believe in it, but I don't feel that I like the way in which it was packaged for a market. If memory serves me from when I read the book, it talked about attracting to oneself power, success and money. Of course, it was marketed that way on some level, because what sells is the idea of people getting those things.

Maybe my anticipation of controversy is related to the Law of Attraction. So I could go hide myself in a fox hole or get on with the idea and face off with it like the great warrior I am.

The Summer of Pomba Gira

I've written a novel about two Chicago families and I'm going to have it published this year. It's so off the beaten path that I can't fix it into a gendre so I may self-publish it and be done with it. The story is related to empowerment, substance abuse, teenagers, internalized sexism, internalized racism, spiritual intercessions and relationships. I think that I will dedicate this novel to the memory of my parents.