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.