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.