The Daily {W}rite December 2o16 wk o3, o4

Thursday,

Well the last nine days of the year 2o16. I plan to get as much writing accomplished as I can before I'm into a new year. This life is worth taking the time to write about it. Actually, all lives, every single life on this ball of dirt should have it's own autobiography. Each person should celebrate their individual existence by expressing his/her life in some artistic way, writing, drawing, painting, etc. Doesn't matter which medium ( or combination of mediums) you use just express what it is, what it means to have lived your life.

I'm still feeling tense in both mind and body. When the Werewolf shows his face, and it's difficult to herd him back into the mind closet. A few more days and he'll tire of howling at the world that lives inside  my apartment. I'm sure the neighbors are tired too listening to him rage and slam doors and closed and pound the walls with his angry fists at all hours of the early morning. Well, maybe not the next door neighbor who can be heard yelling at something almost day and night. A bunch of crazy bananas live in this building.
Friday, December 23, 2o16

Sitting in the dark. I do a lot of that. Sitting in the dark. Christmas is soon. People are still out buying presents, I suppose. I was always waiting until the last moment to go Christmas shopping. Not so much because I'm a procrastinator, mostly I like to go and watch all the people who are terminal procrastinators go mad trying to find a parking space in an already full parking lot. The Sooner Fashion Mall. Wonderful place to watch folks go crazy, searching from one store to the next for that perfect present that they had forgotten to buy earlier. I like watching the pushing and shoving that goes on. But believe it or not, not much of that goes go on. Most people in this frenzy to buy the forgotten gift are well aware that everybody else at the mall are in the same predicament as they. So, they smile a lot and say "I'm sorry" a lot as they run from one small shop to the next. The true meaning of Christmas lost on them.

I need to work on my poetry chops. You know, find myself as a writer, create more metaphors and similes, images, word usage, rhythm and tempo . . . a lot of work. I need to do it, though. I need to start acting more like a poet if you know what I mean.

Saturday, December 24, 2o16 5:45a.m.
Well, I got maybe twenty minutes of sleep before my eyes popped open and I was wide awake. I read somewhere that if you have insomnia you should get up and do something. Not productive to just lay in bed staring at the shadow cluttered ceiling. Actively doing something physical will get you back to sleepy mode faster than doing nothing. So, Here I am in the dark writing on the blog and listening to the Stone's Let It Bleed album. Honkytonk Women is playing right now. Not the rock version but the bluegrass version that's on the above mentioned album appropriately titles Country Honk.

The picture on the left? Yeah, that's me back around 2oo6 when I was teaching theatre at New Mexico Highlands University. I was the front man for a geriatric blues band, Still Kickin'! The band was made up of a bunch of real musicians . . . and me. I really wasn't good. Not anywhere near the professional level of my fellow geriatric band members. But I did okay . . . sometimes. Never was much of a singer but every now and then I could hit a note or two just right. During my band days I got into writing songs. Here's the first one I wrote for the band:

ROCKIN’ WAYS

E
When I was a younger man I tore it up,
D                                                      A            (d)
Just a rockin’ through the night until the sun come up
E
Now that I’m older everybody say, “Hey!
D                                     A           (d)
Man you gotta end your Rockin’ Ways.”
C                                    G
I may be older than the Rolling Stones
D
What little hair I got’s turnin’ gray
C                                                  G
But’cha can’t stop the rhythm in these old bones
B                                                             (or D to B)
Never gonna stop my Rockin’ Ways
(Chorus)
E
(Rockin’ Ways), Rockin’ Ways (Rockin’ Ways) Rockin’ Ways
D                                             A
I got that rockin’ knockin’ at my soul
E
(Rockin’ Ways), Rockin’ Ways (Rockin’ Ways) Rockin’ Ways
D                                    A
I’ll keep on rockin’ till I can’t no more
E
Rockin’ Ways
(Break)
E
Hey, Little Sweetie, ain’t you lookin’ fine
D                                        A            (d)
Let me introduce you to a friend of mine
E
Wrinkled as Methuselah, ugly as a frog
D                                              A                          (d)
But he can turn you lonely nights into a sweet love song
C                                 G
A little loving goes a long, long ways
D
To make an old man feel like a boy
C                                                G
“Let sleepin’ dogs lay,” I heard people say
B                                                                            (or d to b)
But grappa’s gonna shock ya with his Rockin’ Ways
(Chorus)
E
(Rockin’ Ways), Rockin’ Ways (Rockin’ Ways) Rockin’ Ways
D                                        A
I feel that music thumpin’ in my head
E
(Rockin’ Ways), Rockin’ Ways (Rockin’ Ways) Rockin’ Ways
D                                   A
I’ll  keep on rockin’ till the day I’m dead
E
Rockin’ Ways
(Solo)So if some little punk tells ya you’re way too old
To be shakin’ your stuff to the Rock ‘n’ Roll
Look him in the eye and set the record straight
“Ain’t no business of yours what I do,

anywayI been a rockin’ long before you were born

And I’ll be dancin’ on your grave
Remind the little sucker what the good book said:
“Thou shalt keep a rockin’ till your dying day!”
(Chorus)
E
(Rockin’ Ways), Rockin’ Ways (Rockin’ Ways) Rockin’ Ways
D                                             A
I got that rockin’ knockin’ at my soul
E
(Rockin’ Ways), Rockin’ Ways (Rockin’ Ways) Rockin’ Ways
D                                    A
I’ll keep on rockin’ till I can’t no more
E
Rockin’ Ways

Sunday, December 25, 2o16 12:45a.m.

Well officially it's Christmas Day. However, I don't count the next day to be the next until I go to sleep for a brief amount of time and wake-up!

Suppose to go to David's daughter's house this morning and spend a few hours with her and her husband and David's son, Michael Khoo. The we are off to see Fences! I've been looking forward to this movie more than any of the other flicks we've seen. First August Wilson play to be made into a movie-movie. There's been at least one of his plays, The Piano Lesson, that had a TV movie developed from it. There hasn't been a theatrical release of any of his plays until now.

Monday, December 26, 2o16
Christmas day came and then went away. 363 days from now it will return. I hope there will be some of us still alive in Trumps America to celebrate it{no smiles this time}.

Christmas this year was nice enough. spent it with David and his kids and Brendan and his family and some teenage girl who barely talked to anybody let alone the old fart with the camera. I got presents, a stocking (filled with goofy little gifts and candy) and a Kung Fu movie series, IP Man, which I thought was I-P-MAN. IP was the main character's first name and Man his last name.  I felt odd because I didn't get anyone anything. Did take a lot of pictures of everybody so I guess that is something I contributed.

For some reason I woke up this morning wanting to go right back to bed. But I promised David that I would call at 11:30a.m.:
David: (answering phone) Grgggklaghbdrt!
Woodie: Time to get up man.
David: Can't call me in an hour and a half.

An hour and a half later.

Woodie: Dude, it's 2p.m.
David: Give me another hour and a half.

Seems like the both of us had too much Christmas to get up before 3:30.

The Daily {W}rite December 2o16 wk o2

I've been thinking . . . that's not true. I rarely think at all. Again, not true. I'm constantly thinking, my spiritual being (if there is such a thing)  focused inside my head where all the miseries live. A regular Treasure Island, a godless cove where  for all the years that I can remember my memories, from the day I was born, have shipwrecked, crashed against the rocky reef that reality has built up between the open seas of life and the sandy shores where truth speaks in tongues so wicked that language refuses to supply it words to express its blasphemies. Condemned, a castaway, a pale ghost forever haunting itself, haunting itself into nonexistence. That is what thinking gets you. A nonexistent existence . . . if there is such a thing. I'm no more human than I am dead. Whispers echo through the coffin I built for myself.

Wednesday, 14, 2o16

Anyway. The gossip that Russia may have "fixed" the election in favor of Trump was too much "not enough information for me" to handle without at least listening to one news program, and so I chose to watch Rachel Maddow because I trust her more than any of the other news pundits, And I  started to get all freaking out over Trump and his merry band of Nazi wannabes, and ALL the Liberals caving in and saying, "Ya know? A Trump presidency may not be all that bad . . . " WHAT? Yes, freaked out that President Trump will get us nuked and sent into concentration camps and . . . Okay. I finally stopped myself. I again stopped watching the news and decided to just create art. And get back to writing this blog!

And yes! I'm feeling physically and mentally well today. And yes! This feeling of well being may not last for very long. And yes, yes, yes! I plan to take advantage of it and write away on my blog for as long as my "Body and Minds" allow me to feast at this creative smorgasbord. A few interesting observations I have made in the last week AND even more interesting observations I'm making as I write this blog entre:

1. The Army football team has a wide receiver Named Edgar Allan Poe.
2. David hates it when you say, "I'm sorry, I can't hear you." He yells at me whatever it was he said that I didn't hear.
3. Some of my "friends" on Facebook are clinically insane. I'd unfriend them, but I'm afraid some of them might seek psychotic retribution against me, they all know where I live. 😰

4. The Christmas decorations around town are psychedelic-trippy this year. Or was that fuzz on the banana I just ate actually mold?
5. The hawk that drifted above us as we drove to Kohl's looked more like a kite than a hawk.
6. I'm listening to Howlin' Wolf and wish I had seen him play. But when he was alive, I didn't even know he existed. All, I had as a kid to listen to was Elvis and Pat Boone. My parents abused me . . . musically.

7. Without my goatee I look like a 68 year old  Charlie Brown.
8. I talk to much when I'm in a public place. Especially when I wind-up talking to some girl. If she gives me an in, I just start talking loud and as shrill as an overweight Chihuahua. Please, some one put me down. And she does with a sharp, "Well, good bye now." Believe me, it's the most humane treatment I've gotten from a women in a long, long time.
9.  Alan Thicke died yesterday. He was 69 years old. Six months older than me. Sigh.

10. I'm jealous. An ex-student of mine is up for an two Academy Awards, one for Best Actor and one for best Actress this year. A bunch of my actor friends are acting in  plays here in Norman-town and OKC and I do nothing but sit at this computer and  write this stupid-ass blog. And now I'm feeling like a shit because I'm envious of the success of others. Sigh. No, I'm actually NOT jealous of other's success. I guess it's more like I never accomplished anything artistically . . . Okay, that's not right either. I have created a few things that I'm very proud of, but proud in the sense that a couple times I'd really created art that seemed to work for the audience. What I'm feeling right now is a sadness that I can't seem to do that anymore, create art that people can really get into.

Thursday, December 15, 2o16

A strange thinking pattern developed in my mind the other day. Driving along with David, I started thinking about one of the storylines for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo novels. All of a sudden I realize, it's not a storyline from the series. And then I think, well, it must be the storyline from one of the books.
Maybe it's from The Girl that Kicked the Hornets' Nest . . . but no, that's not right. This was something else. I couldn't figure it out. I knew there were three books in the series and none of them had this storyline! And then I thought, "maybe I made it up?' Bullshit, no way. And around and around my thinking went, looking to fill the blank spot in my memory. It was on my mind all yesterday and today. I mean I knew I had read this story but I couldn't remember reading it. Finally, after thinking it over awhile (a very LONG while), I realized that there had been a fourth book in the series! DAMN. My brain really threw me a curve. And JUST as I realized I had read The Girl In the Spider's Web written by David Lagercrantz (not the original author), a commercial for Alzheimer's Disease came on the TV and . . . that freaked me out a bit. It's been happening a lot lately, little glitches in memory, holes, gaps, blind spots. It's scary to think you might be losing your ability to remember.

Friday, December 16, 2o16, 5:20 a.m.
Another restless night for my body. I try sleeping but too many aches and pains forces me to get up off the couch and write until my body finally passes out. Here's something I started tonight:

God, Apes and Ripe Bananas
Something or some things are pulling at me tonight. Not sure what or who it is, is it real or imaginary? The fingers of God, perhaps, pulling at my existence, that other invisible thing that I call me. I know some don't believe that God exists. Nor do they acknowledge the soul. But that's okay with me I'm not offended like some folk are offended when our fellow apes dismiss the spiritual life for the solid, predictable reality of a ripe banana, but back to my point. Something or some things are tearing the metaphysical energy out of my body. I fight against it, this numbness growing inside my head.

They are clever thieves, though. They keep leaving bits of a blacker than black void in those hidden places in my brain where I, the I of I, resides. But they (or it) can't fool me because I remember that I once remembered things, experiences and emotions, that in this now, this present state of drifting time, I can't remember one moment of humanness. Yes, and though I believe I have loved another I don’t remember another ever loving me. Anger, however, remains constant reminder that once I smiled at another being, another creature of the flesh not unlike myself. But what it was that made me smile, I can’t recall.

Sunday, December 18, 2o16

I thought I'd take the day and just write. Not much else to do, nowhere to go, all my friends are either sick or working or . . . it doesn't matter. I'm on my own today and it's just too damn cold to go outside, ride the bike around. I mean, if there had been a heavy enough snow storm, if the weather had blessed (or cursed) us with a thick ice storm, then yeah, I might have decided to sling on the winter coat, grab the camera and shoot away! But it's just cold out there. Nothing to write home about. "Nothing to write home about." I've used that phrase a lot through out my life . . . don't know where I picked it up.

I did write a decent poem last night . . . or was it this morning? Yeah, I'm still staying up until 6 in the morning or more. Probably too much coffee late at night is keeping me awake. But I don't plan to stop doing that. Fuck it. I mean, I've given up every vice that I so much enjoyed when I was young . . . er. I don't smoke or drink anymore and I sure loved to do both. Okay, I admit, I chew nicotine gum and that still isn't good for me but it's not as bad as smoking. Besides that, coffee is my only other vice and I sure as hell ain't gonna give that up, so . . . GET OFF MY BACK! {smiles}

Simplicity

Easy enough to close my eyes
dreaming in circles until the dawn
comes along and shakes me
from my feathered grave.

Easy enough to close my ears
and listen to each soft beat
that makes up my heart
that chases me through the dark.

My fingers find it easy, far too easy
to wrap themselves into boney knots
and pound the darkness into light,
the cat cries beat to silence.

Yes, it's simple, simple as snow
curled up on the window ledge,
as easy as sleeping through
a whole day of consciousness.

Mostly life is made up as we go along
mostly made up of breaths and sighs
and wonders of why and why not and
where will we go when it all goes away?

Woodie 12-18-16

My mind feels somewhat . . . frail. Thoughts drifting away on some cosmic wave. Time is slowing down, winding down, the end of a party where the guests linger longer than they should saying goodbye and kisses goodnight and plans for lunch tomorrow with so and so who I have totally ignored the whole night. They're stalling. They don't want to go out into the dark, find the car and drive home. Why not? Because it's dark?

There's no reasoning connected with fear. Fear, a lack of knowledge, that's all. But even education can't supplant millions of years of instinctive training. Man invented fire because he feared the dark. Maybe that's it, maybe that's why I  don't like to sleep because my dreams are just too damn dark a place for me to go. Eyes closed, lying on the back. Maybe that's what troubles me. Sleeping is just too close to death, the dark is death, the murder of light, of consciousness, of existence. And when I close my eyes it gets even darker. No stars, no moon, no reflection from the streetlamp on the corner. Not a splinter of light to be found, just shadows inside of shadows inside of shadows for all eternity. But if I'm honest, the death I describe isn't much different than the life I live. Maybe that's what I, what mankind truly fears, not death but life.

Wednesday, December 21, 2o16
I don't know. I could talk about my "anger issues" in detail. Lay it all out for you. Maybe I will some day but it's still a part of me, you know? I keep trying to fight it, keep it in check. But sometimes it just takes control of me when I'm feeling threatened in some way. Once it's going, it stays with me for days, sometimes weeks . . . months sometimes but not often anymore, not months. You see, I know it's all bullshit. Yeah, it's bull but this anger has been with me for such a long time. And when someone catches me off guard, attacks me in some threatening way, it gets loose. It happened a few times this past week and I'm still dealing with it. Once it's out, it's out and running through my memory bank like wildfire, stirring up every moment in my life when someone, somewhere did me wrong. It takes a lot of energy out of me. And when it's drained me of all my energy and self-esteem, it walks back into its cage of its own freewill. This thing, this monster, my own private werewolf. {smiles}

Birthday Party Massacre

I only came for the cake but you can't just go
to a birthday party, eat the birthday cake and leave.
So, I chatted a bit, laughed a bit and was enjoying
the company of the "other" beings gathered around
the large, round table at Othello's. Very enjoyable, yes,
until the shriveled up drunk dude to my right screamed
in my ear, "Hey, are you a fake vet or a real vet?"
He was commenting on the Vietnam Veteran's cap
I was wearing that my sister had just bought me. I admit,
I got angry. "What the fuck kind of question is that?"

"Well . . ." he squealed in a voice that sounded

not unlike like a baby pig being slaughtered,
"I could wear a hat saying I'm Security, but
that doesn't mean I am one!"

which made even less sense than the question

he’d asked before, before he decided to piss me off.
I should thank him, though. As of late I had started
thinking,  "Maybe humans aren't really all that bad!"
Sorry, but no. They’re definitely brain dead idiots.
Woodie 12-21-16

The Daily {W}rite December 2o16 WK o1

The Daily {W}rite  wk1

Thursday,December o1, 2o16
Yes, six months since last I wrote something on this blog, on ANY of my blogs for the most part. Very few movie reviews on Small Town Idiot Movie Reviews, hardly any poems on the poetry page, HELL! I don't have an excuse other than my mind and body just gave up, they didn't feel like working on anything intellectual, creative. It's scary, you know? Almost my whole adult life I've been an artist. Granted, maybe not the greatest artist as an actor or playwright or poet or singer, but always I felt like an artist, always creating something. But lately? Almost nothing, nada, hasta la vista, muse! I think a lot of it has to do with being sixty-eight years old. Yeah, I know what you're going to say, "Age is just a number! You're only as old as you feel!" Well, if that last cliché is true . . . then I feel like I'm two thousand years old! it ain't no joke, you know. Getting old is a big bitch. I'm tired all the time, I just want to sleep or watch TV (the worst TV shows) until I fall asleep. When I go to Art Walk and stroll around, I get so tired, my legs ache as if I just ran five miles. It's tough, guys, getting old.

Friday, December o2, 2o16

Trouble sleeping last night. No, every night is tough. Hard to get to bed before 6 a.m. and even then I sleep maybe an hour or two and then I'm back up and just moping around the apartment, looking through Facebook posts with the hopes of finding someone else up. And on occasion I do find somebody else who just can't sleep. Mostly it's old people like me. Someone (on Facebook, I get all my information on Facebook.) told me that the older you get the less sleep you need. Yeah, well. I wish I could just get one good night's sleep for a change. It may be that I need to really think about getting a bed. Yeah, all I got is a short couch, my feet hang over the armrest. Uncomfortable. Yeah, maybe I need a new bed.

Saturday, December o3, 2o16 4:33 a.m.

A Work In Progress

GRUNT

I don't know. I hear Hawks say, "It's you duty to your country to go fight a war." I hear the Dove say, "Don't be fooled! It's only for oil." I DID go to one war without question about whether it was a war for country or a war for commerce. I DID go to a war, and everybody told me what it would be like . . . and I got there, hung out for over a year and came to the conclusion that war, this particular war that I participated in was NOTHING like what everybody said it would be! Everybody lied to me. Mom and Dad and John Wayne and Hollywood and the government and the protesters and . . . well, just about everybody. One bit of advice I got on my way into Nam was from a grunt that was just leaving. He said, 'Watch out for incoming!" "What's incoming?" "Oh," he said, "you'll know what it is when it comes in." And I did! I knew! From the first whistle of the first rockets they shot at me, (yes, I say me because war should always be taken personally), I knew it, "THAT'S INCOMING!" The only thing anyone ever told me about war that was true. Them grunts? They don't lie!

Sunday, o4, 2o16

Ugh. A lovely word to say in the morning after less than 3 hours sleep. "Ugh!" Yeah, with the exclamation point it says it all in one word . . .  but it's not really a word, is it? Onomatopoeia! Yeah, that's what words that represent sound are called. How could I forget that? I taught that particular "figure of speech" four to five times (or maybe more) a semester when I taught Speech, and Intro to Theatre.

Anyway, back to my trouble sleeping. It's chronic. Still staying up until 6-8 in the morning and sleeping until noon. This week it seems to be this sinus infection (also a chronic aliment. Do they travel in pairs?) is so bad I just can't close my eyes. I think I need to go to the doctor's.

Anyway . . . another anyway! Can't I come up with some other phrase that indicates I'm starting a new idea? Anyway, I feel pretty energetic for a 68  year old guy . . . well, it comes and goes. Comes and goes. Existing then non-existing. Non-existing? Is THAT a real word? Must be because there's no little red line under the word non-existing when I type it out. Okay there IS a red line when I don't use the hyphen. Isn't this the most exciting blog ever?

Tuesday, December o6, 2o16
What the hell, MAN? I just finished a beautiful story about my first broken arm, I mean, it was really great writing, BUT the damn blog page decided on its own to delete it! WHAT THE BLOODY HELL, MAN!

So, First time I broke my arm I was showing a classroom full of six graders how to take a prat fall without hurting yourself and . . . I slipped on the linoleum in the classroom and broke my arm. Yeah, go ahead laugh at ME! Years later I fell off my bicycle broke the same arm again! Yeah, hah ha, have your fun! And when I was in Las Vega, NM, I slipped on a bit of ice and broke my hand . . . Yep, the same damn arm! Don't believe me? Take a peek (if you haven't already) at the photo to the left! That's my HAND!

So, the reason that I told this story was to point out that when you break a bone, a whole hand, once it's mended doesn't mean that you can just go back to using that body part like nothing ever happened. You got to rehabilitate the body part, get it back to full strength. And so it is with writing a damn blog. Since I haven't written in quite a while (six months) I need to practice writing, you know, get my Muse back to fighting weight. So, here I am writing. Maybe not writing my best but I am writing.

Wednesday, December o7, 2o16

Words on a page. Every philosophy, religion, every thought, every piece of poetry significant or childish . . . instructions to put something together, tear something apart, war, peace, how to do everything. All that man has to offer. All of "it' amounts to nothing more than words on a page.

David: Do you want to go to Walmart and Sprouts?
Me: Well . . .
David: Wait! You're getting ice cream at Walmart.
Me: Gezz, that's right. Maybe we can go to Sprouts tomorrow?
David: Yeah.
Woodie: It will give us reason to get out of bed in the morning.
Both laugh at the stupidity of that last line of dialogue.

It's cold. Inside my apartment the heater only half works. It keeps shutting off before it's warm enough inside to take off my sweater. Gotta jiggle the thermostat to make it turn on. AND the pilot light keeps blowing out. When that happens, it gets so cold I wake up, get my flashlight and reboot the pilot, which is a bitch of a thing to get back on.

I think I'm done writing for the night. There's more, I'm sure of it, but don't think my creative spirit is up for the task. I can feel her settling down inside my brain. She wants, she needs a nap. It doesn't matter how much I write. As was said above, it's only words on a page.

The daily {W}Rite June 2o16 WK o3

Thursday, June 16, 2o16
The idea that there is more to this flesh-life that we live has always been worth a thought or two. I would like to believe there is more to me than just this . . . this box I'm living in. Ha! Can't seem to get away from clichés. Think outside the box. But maybe what I'm looking for is a phrase that includes all areas of this existence, not just the physical world of m my senses, but something unseen, not heard, smelled, tasted or felt in the skin, in the bones. Existence that sleeps inside each individual. Maybe I'm thinking of the imagination. True, I sort of pride myself on being imaginative. But am I really? Maybe what I think is creativity is merely the byproducts, the fumes, the dreams of a sleeping imagination. Maybe it's time for me to wake up that creative side of me that hasn't yet been introduced to the reality world.

The Daily {W}Rite June 2o16 WK o2

Thursday,

If I had the flexibility to do so, I would pat myself on the back. I'm very proud the of the fact that I have, in the last few days, really focused on writing poetry, movie reviews, and the blog. Maybe that anti-creativity wall I've been smacking into for the last year or so has finally broke into a billion little pieces. It feels good to write without worry about how it comes out. 

Listening to some of my old music. yes, I shut off the TV and I'm just writing away while listening to Sam Cooke sing his sweet, gentle sounds. Very calming. No, I don't listen to just one kind of music. I got Hendrix, lots of blues, and a killer album, Tales From The Crypt. Oh, don't get all weirded out. I know it's a horror TV show. But it's got a lot of cool, jazz oriented music on the album. All the songs are background/mood movie for the different horror stories they told. The music is really moody, haunting and lovely.

Monday, June 13, 2o16

Haven't done much writing this week. Yesterday was another torturous day for America. Orlando, Florida 50 killed and 50 wounded in another mass murder . . . excuse me . . . terrorist attack . . . no, a hate crime. Okay, so maybe it's a combination of all three.  People are upset yelling for gun control laws again . . . freaking out again on Facebook. And I don't think I can blame them. There's a lot of rage over this "mass murder." And there's a lot of frustration too. But we keep covering the same road when it comes to solving this big problem, and the road always turns into a dead end. Why? Politics, I guess. Or maybe it's just no one has a clue what to do to resolve the "situation." And there's where my frustration starts. No one is capable of solving this problem because they can't get on the same page. Look, the political Right and Left need to work together and get the job done. How? Hell, I don't know. Hell, I may well be as big a part of the problem as the suits in Congress.

The Daily {W}Rite June 2o16 WK o1

Thursday,

I didn't write much last month, my BIRTDAY MONTH. Being honest, I'm not quite sure what to write about. Or maybe I DO know what to write  . . . but can't find my way in. Funny thing happened today on our way to the gym:
David: (looking at the sky) Hmm. Are those rain clouds moving toward us from the east?
Woodie: (looking at the sky) (pause) How the hell should I know? David: Well, normally storms come in from the west not the east.Woodie: Ew! listen to you, Mister Weatherman. Ew!
Got home about four, turned on the news just in time to hear the weather person say, "Looks like we are going to have more rain. Not too heavy, but the weather pattern is a bit strange. Usually a front comes in from the west. However, this front is approaching from the east." Fuck! How did David know that? Better question, why didn't I know that! I question my ability to see the world clear enough to write about it. I always thought of myself as being extremely observant, I mean, that's one of the basic tools of an actor, the ability to observe and to know what is actually being observed. I didn't even notice that those damn rain clouds were even moving!

11:48 P.M.
I was thinking about the human race today. Not a lot but a little. When I talk to someone on the street and they have a charming, polite smile for the old dude stopping by out of nowhere just to talk to them, I can't help but think what a wonderful America we live in. I get home, turn on the TV listen to the Blonde Boy politician  ramble on about how rotten my America is, when I hear his crowd of supporters cheer him on, I think, "Well, that's a step backwards . . . . maybe two."  And I get depressed. I just stare at the inside of my coffee cup, and after awhile I get angry and maybe toss the Koosh ball at the door, yell a long line of David Mamet like obscenities  at the wall! And then I let out a disappointed breath of hot air, sit in my favorite chair and think . . . "Someday all these hateful folk are gonna understand, they're gonna get." Maybe not during my time on this big ol' Koosh ball of an Earth . . . but they'll get it someday. Maybe.

Saturday, June o4, 2o16

I could tell you a million stories about how Muhammad Ali changed my life. He surely did transform all that “White America” propaganda that I was fed my whole life by my parents, by the government, the school system, the TV commercials and TV shows, the movies . . .   But then one day Ali came along and nullified all that racist, anti-American nonsense I had drilled into my head as a kid. Ali was an individual and stood as an individual against the "great white-American hope" that black folk would just magically disappear from this country, that we, the mighty Pale People, could wake up one morning and walk outside our pretty little suburban houses and see nothing but go ol' white America faces! "Oh, oh say can you see how white my skin be."

Ali was a “real” American man, a true patriot, a man with fire in his fists and in his voice, “I am the greatest! I’m pretty! I’m a bad man!” He was an honest man, a man that stood up when everybody else said, “Sit the fuck down.” Everything that I now believe about my country, about how the Constitution of the United States should work, came from Muhammad Ali’s stand against the Vietnam War draft:

“Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality. If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years.”

Patriotism is not just about standing up for your own personal rights but also standing up for the rights of every other American citizen. It’s about putting yourself, your beliefs on the line, but NOT in an attempt to make just your life better, but in an attempt to make everybody’s life better, to make America a better place for all live.

I got home from Vietnam in '69. I stayed with my mom through my thirty day leave before I reported to 29 Palms, CA to finish up my "term of service" in my Marine Corps. So, I turn on my Mom’s TV and . . . HEY! Ali’s gotta fight going on! Great! Got me a beer from the frig, settled back onto the couch just as the first round began. About half way through the second round, my mother comes running out her bedroom, over to the TV set, watches a few punches and then shuts the damn TV off! "Mom! What the hell?" And my Mama said, "You can't watch that man fight on MY TV in MY house." "Why the heck not?" "Because YOU went to Vietnam and HE didn't!" Well, I thanked her for the thought. I mean, it was kind of sweet of her. “But I really wanted to see Ali fight, Mom.” With a Christian martyr sigh, Mom turned the TV back on and went back to her bedroom and slammed the door shut!

I try to live my life by the example that Ali set. I try to believe in the Constitution as it should apply to all citizens of this country of ours. I try to have the strength to go against the odds not for any other reason other than it’s the right thing to do.

Sunday, June 5, 2o16

I'm bumming a ride off my sister. I'm in a desperate need of food. Okay, you'll have to forgive the drama school training. I do tend to "overact" my daily life dilemmas. I do need to get to the store, though. Need the nicotine gum! Chewing way too much of it lately.

Scientists have a theory: Life is a simulation created by . . . well, their
not sure about who came up with the idea of developing a race of simulated people. Some theorize that there's an Evil Demon that created both reality and the way in which we perceive that reality. Of course most of us understand (to differing degrees)  the idea of God as the ultimate programmer. But scientists, of course, don't believe in God (or gods) so they theorize that simulated world we wallow around on was created by a society of advanced human beings who were on this Earth before us. They (of course) are so advanced that they were able to create a computer universe where we (humans?) could live and struggle in the same manner  as  the advanced society that created our simulation had struggled in their lives before they evolved into a highly advanced, technological civilization. Sound familiar? of course it does, it's The Matrix! Or, if you like, The Thirteenth Floor. OR, if you like again, Dark City. Or, if I may one more time say, perhaps our reality is just an advanced video game, like SimCity! The possibilities are endless. I always liked the one that our universe, our reality is nothing more but a dream the God is dreaming while he cat naps. Now don't freak on me. Gods short naps are much, much longer than our little head bobbers we take during a boring movie or on a ten minute break. No, His nap can last millions and millions of years! But still, IF it is just a nap, then that means at sometime God will wake up . . . what will happen to us then?

Monday, June o6, 2o16
Up early today, 6 a.m. Had to ride with my sister to a doctor's appointment in OKC. On the way back we searched the service road along I-35 for somewhere to eat. Just by chance we found this little café called Pickles! Hee. AND I had breakfast! I didn't realize that I haven't actually had breakfast in a long time. Chili omelet! After that we shopped at some of the shops around the Warren passing time before we went to see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows. If I had been 6 years old I would've loved it. But being old . . . er it just put me to sleep. After that, we went to the new super Walmart and man, is it big! I had a pleasant day. I don't spend much time with my sister. I need to.

Tuesday, June o7, 2o16

Tonight the darkness is a bit more confused than usual. I can see the huge elm across the street nodding in agreement. Above its leafy head a noncommittal quarter moon stands stoic in the evening sky. They never like to get involved with the questions humans instinctually ask whenever the sun removes itself from the conversation.  I'm quietly disturbed by the silence that surrounds me. Not one train has passed by tonight which seems a bit unusual. To add to that, no traffic, no dogs howling up a mournful growl. Perhaps they, the dogs of this world, have given up. It's hopeless, you know. No matter how loud you scream at night, no one ever hears you . . . or chooses to hear you. Perhaps no on cares to share your fear of the dark.

I should take a shower. Haven't done so in weeks. Please, save your scorn. I know, I probably smell. But so far no one has passed out from the stink. I think that's why I don't have nightmares anymore. Ghosts are sensitive beings. Perhaps cleanliness is not closer to Godliness. Oh, He's always around. There's nothing that'll keep Him away. The rotting flesh of a billion years, the smell of heaven.  Wait! It could be that His nose has burnt out, the nostrils being nothing more now but twin tunnels that carry the southern winds across Norman-town, across the salted oceans and the deserts and those tiny islands of red that populate the heart. Am I making any sort of sense? My thoughts are often wanders with no direction, distracted by the glimmer of moonlight on the Duck Pond, by the Abby Road album now shouting Lennon's I Want You from my computer speakers. Am I making any sense? I suppose it doesn't matter. Not really. I'm done writing on this last day of the first week of June. Goodnight.

BIRTDAY MONTH 2o16 WK o3

Sunday, May 15, 2o16
Sundays. A lazy day traditionally for the Woods clan. A very sad day as I remember it, it's like your whole life ends with the end of the weekend. I don't know if that's grammatically correct or poetic that last phrase,   . . . your whole life ends as the weekend ends.  Any better? Maybe not. I'll keep it anyway. Yes, Sundays seemed like graveyard time to me as a kid. Still does. You know that feeling you get sometimes when you feel as if all eternity, all existence is slowing down, that if it stops (and sometimes it feels like it will) all life will also stop. Sundays. A mourners' parade to the gloomy days of Mundane Monday . . . Tortuous Tuesday . . . Wistful Wednesday . . . Theoretical Thursday . . . but resurrection on Freedom Friday . . . I wrote a poem about my family that tries to capture that dreary existence we all call Sunday:

My Mother’s Day

Sundays were always lazy days

around our house. Dad would lie
on the couch drinking beer, watching
the Figure Eight races on TV, nodding
off every now and then. A single snort
from his open mouth would wake
him with a start. He’d take another
sip of beer, wipe his eyes and fall
right back into whatever dream he was dreaming
without even noticing that car 56 had just been
rammed into oblivion by a Plymouth Fury.

Mom busied herself in the kitchen. Doing what?

I don't know, motherly things, I suppose.
She'd scurry about all daylong from the kitchen sink
to the  refrigerator. Always looking for something
but never finding whatever it was she kept looking for.

Me and Brother Dennis would sit on

the back-porch listening to Mother
banging around in the kitchen
and mumbling to herself.

We never talked my brother and me.

We just sat on the back porch steps
digging at the dirt with the heels
of our tennis shoes quietly dreading
school on Monday. We hated school
almost as much as we hated each other.

And my sister? She moved out ‘long ago

to our Aunt Ella and Uncle Ace's ranch  
in the high desert. I never knew exactly
what she was doing up there so far away
from her family, her real family. I never
understood my sister or her moods.

Come to think of it, I never understood

any of the women in my life. That’s
probably the reason why I live alone.

Anyways,

it’s Sunday, Mother’s Day. As I write
this poem, I wonder what my mother’s doing . . .
probably walking to the refrigerator, to the kitchen sink,
stopping to fold and refold the dish towels, the cloth napkins
her mother had willed to her two years before I was born.
She still searches for that something she could never find.
Woodie o5-13-12 (rewrites o5-11-14)

Thursday, May 19, 2016

So, I've had this idea of creating a comic strip based on my friend Michael. Michael is a recent graduate of OU! Yes, he is now one of Dylan's "Twenty years of schooling and they put you on the day shift" generation. An interesting kid living in one of the most interesting towns I've ever known. I know, I can hear the eyebrows raising and the skeptical voices shouting out, "What about Paris, New York, London?!" Well, I am sure that they are very lovely, creative and absolutely cool places to live . . . but when you look at them in the cold, hard light . . . Brother, they ain't nothing but glitter dust compared to good ol' Norman-town.

Went to dinner with David and his family. Got invited to go with Brendan to go see a movie this weekend! Highly honored. Brendan's a interesting guy. Don't know his whole story but a very creative guy, smart. He has a movie review blog, The Norman Nerd. He writes really "beautiful," very creative reviews. He's a hell of a lot better writer than I am. I'm jealous.

A few entries back, I talked about love, about how I missed being in love. I may have misspoke a bit. To be as honest, as it is possible to be honest when writing a public blog . . . I'm not sure I've ever been in love. Does that sound odd, maybe callus? Probably. Look, I've been told my whole life that "love is the answer." Never mind what the question is because nothing matters other than, "love is the answer." , I mean to say, people have demanded that I love other people, and I'm not all sure I ever have. Damn it. Am I just too self-centered? Too much a loner? Maybe I'm sociopathic. Nah! I'm not all Silence of the lLmbs. I'm crazy but not QUAZY!  YET! I need to think more about this . . . I'm guessing. But let me leave on this bit of thought. Maybe love is an illusion, a shadow within a ghost or a shadow within a shadow of a ghost.

2:17 p.m.

I am having an alien moment . . . day. It's true. I've never quite felt at home here on this planet, this plane of existence. I could never get my physical balance quite right. Oh, I tried but put me in a crowd of you  . . . you Earth Thingies and all the instructions given to me by . . . those in charge . . . just escape my body and computer chip brain leaving me a stumbling, mumbling mess of  . . . flesh . . . well, simulated flesh. I rather admire you . . . you Earth Thingies. How you are capable of keeping your balance on only two legs! And seeing with only two eyes? How do you manage to see anything at all. No wonder the other . . . beings . . . from other . . . worlds consider your species to be nearsighted . . . if not totally blind.  No wonder we can run around among you with you barely realizing that we . . . are . . .  here!

Friday, May 2o, 2o16, {2:06 a.m.}

I can't force it. There are no magic words, there's not a lullaby with a soothing enough melody that can lull me to sleep. My fantasies, my stories that I always visualize when I close my eyes for the night . . . I mean, the morning . . . work like counting sheep  . . . but not tonight . . . I mean, this early morning. I'm hoping that by three my body and mind will have had enough consciousness. My poetic-self is waiting to stroll the shadows, speak to the many fantastical creatures that live there. Perhaps I'll dream but it's not necessary. This "waking life" is dream enough for me. I prefer the darkness, the empty void of a dreamless sleep. It always makes opening my eyes into another day a BIG surprise! like rising from the grave, waking every morning is small miracle of resurrection. Jesus must of smiled when he rose and strolled out of his tomb. I bet he appreciated life even more than before.

4:42 a.m.
My eyes have betrayed me once again selling me to the deaf darkness morning brings. Night has become my master and no amount of pleading seems to move her highness to show me any pity. I am doomed to an eternity of sleep depravation. Unconsciousness is nothing more than fairytale, an empty equation that proves only that science is a myth and all the heroes that Ancient Greece produced were nothing more than smoke caught in the wheels of the ceiling fan above my head. Might as well make the coffee, slap in a CD (Blind Faith is playing on the laptop) and await the inevitable dawn to tap at the window blinds.

Saturday, May 21, 2o16

I'm surprised that I made it through all of Friday with only 2 hours of sleep in my gas tank. But I did. No nap, no closing the eyes for a minute. Went to OKC with David. He had an eye exam thing at one of those BIG ass buildings downtown. I was a little freaked out with the number of old people patients there in the eye doctor's waiting room sitting in uncomfortable chairs, sitting there watching the huge flat screen TV (some kind of gardening show playing) just waiting for one of the security locked doors to open and for one of the extremely young receptionists to callout a name. "Jenny!" I watched Jenny slowly rise from her chair. She used a cane as she waddled over to secured door #1, her right hand gently covering her right eye as if she was afraid it would fall out and roll around on the floor. Door #2 opened. "David?" I watched my friend disappear into the other unseen room. I heard the security on the door click into place. All of a sudden, I got a chill. This place was so creepy with its security doors and overly pleasant employees. It must be a trap. A trap for old people. They weren't doing eye exams. They were engaged in the harvesting old people organs for . . . for . . . okay, it was a silly idea. What would they want with old people organs? But I couldn't shake the eerie feeling that there was something wrong with this place. It finally dawned on me. This wasn't an optometrist's office! I was a top secret government lab where they test teleportation devises. Yeah, that made sense. They would use old people for that sort of thing. Old people are expendable.  Damn it! How am suppose to get home? David does all the driving! This is bullshit, man!