Took time off to recharge the batteries

I plan to put my current work into the NaNoWriMo site. My user name there is Arlo Clyde. Current tale under construction: Walk on the Sky.

Sleeping With Strangers

The title of my novel, Poppy Fields of Mars, is now, Sleeping With Strangers. Still trying to get some attention to this one.

At Seventy Five

There is a calmness and satisfaction in older people's lives. I don't think we earn it. It seems to be a natural cycle, one of the many stages of life. But it is not altogether smooth sailing. Roiling the calm are poverty and/or infirmity, for many. Until recently, I had been completely certain that I would defy at least the latter. Then I learned that I have a damaged liver and that for years have been eating, always, the very foods that I should have avoided. Recently, for days I had gotten so lethargic as to spend most of the daylight hours either asleep in the easy chair or wasting time on social media. None of my stories progressed. It seems entirely logical that I might have fallen asleep and failed to awaken. During the last five days I have changed my diet and already my energy level is up, so I have possibly bought some time. I feel better now. Much of the mental fog has lifted and I have been staying busy all day, as of yesterday.        

Kazuo Ishiguro

Our Great White Winter

Brother Sam and I were footloose through the last years of the 60s, except we were becoming settled, in Kansas City, in 1969. We rented a home in a boarding house and got jobs and an auto. He drove a delivery car. I worked at a plant that provided caustics for soaps and the like. As it settled into winter, we had lots of ice and some snow. I recall one day watching a thermometer go to minus eight. More than once, my feet skied out from under me and my butt slammed into the sidewalk.

After work, we two introverts would go home, and play records, into the evening. As one unhappy resident put it, walking past our door, "Clang, clang, clang." We had just discovered Leonard Cohen and we had Beatles, Judy Collins, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Donovan and the Band, and The Fugs. Sam discovered James Taylor. He loved Sweet Baby James. I never liked Taylor's delivery and ignored him, except later, when he sang Fire and Rain.

I had recently been in New York City and DC, to participate in civil rights and antiwar protests. I avidly bought the LA Free Press and other anti-establishment publications and collected R Crumb comics. R Cobb had some fantastic editorial cartoons in the LA Free Press.

Lately I had been staring at blank spiral notebook pages, yearning to write. Finally, Sam said to me, "Write a story about Wild Wormwood." Inspired, I began to turn out daily stories, all instigated by Sam. "Write about Nathan Warlock." And so on. Then we began to collaborate on a magazine, which never materialized.

This period I have called Our Great White Winter, because, in the ice and snow of Kansas City, we were inside, warm, and the artistic ferment seemed wrapped in a pure, white, secure, blanket. And the seeds were planted for the future.