Stationary

I’ve kind of gone back in time 10 years and have been reduced to having to entertain myself. I hate it and I love it. I have read two books in two weeks. I thought I only had the attention span to handle short online articles. It had gotten so bad that I couldn’t even sit through an episode of a TV show. I still can’t, but taking away my distractions has been great for me. I am serious about writing a book. I’m not sure the length and I can almost guarantee it won’t be very well written,  but who knows, I may surprise myself.

The books I read this week are ‘Bird by Bird’ by Ann Lamott and ‘On Writing’ by Stephen King. A friend once made fun of me for liking Stephen King because some of his writing is ridiculous. I’m not sure of the exact words he used, and I agreed to an extent because some of it is. However, he’s a great story teller and this became more evident as I was reading his memoir. (There is a reason this book is on the Time Magazine’s top 100 nonfiction books of all time) At the end of this 20th anniversary edition there was an interview between he and his son. His son was asked “What is the most messed up thing your dad did to you as a child?”  He replied “…I thought about this a lot because there’s this old Jay Leno joke, right? And it goes, Stephen King asked the kids, do you want to hear a bedtime story?  The kids go, “NO!” But the thing is, it was never really like that, you know? I mean, we always loved bedtime stories. It was the best part of the day. And I sometimes think that it’s a basic misunderstanding of my dad’s work that he sells fear. Politicians sell fear. I’ve always thought that my dad’s stories sold bravery, that they essentially were making the argument that, yeah, things might get really bad. But if you have some faith and a sense of humour, and if you’re loyal to your loved ones, sometimes you can kick the darkness until it bleeds daylight.”

It’s been a really good couple of weeks. I got my office together so I could have an acceptable place to do homework, scan negatives, and write my story. It’s coming together nicely, and the best part, I found Nirvana: Unplugged in New York on vinyl. Probably not hard to find, but I wasn’t looking for it and I didn’t realise I needed it. When I was younger, I used to listen to the radio late into the night with my headphones on (especially on school nights). The radio station used to play an entire album at midnight and I used to record some of them on cassette tape. The late night DJ announced his album choice: Nirvana, Unplugged in New York. I hit the ‘play’ and ‘record’ button and fell asleep shortly after. The next day and for the next few years after, it became my favorite album of all time. It’s probably still in my top 20. The Meat Puppets and David Bowie covers are outstanding. ‘Oh Me’ is particularly brilliant.

I haven’t done much in the way of photography as of late, but it’s been nagging at me. It’s been hot and the sky has been hazy because of the California fires, so conditions haven’t been optimal, but I’ll get back to it in time.

I had a friend e-mail me in May and I didn’t see it until a few days ago. When I e-mailed her back, she told me that she thought I had died. I had gotten off of Facebook over 5 years ago and probably seemingly fell off the face of the earth. Maybe I kind of did, but I’m enjoying this going back in time thing. I thought about doing a private Facebook account for my family. There are things I miss out on, for example, I only met my brother’s grand babies today. His granddaughter is about 2 years old and I have maybe only seen a photo of her once or twice. But what did we do before social media? We sent letters, and we saw people at family reunions and things. My question is, do we all need to be this closely a part of everybody else’s life? It’s a genuine question. I see equal pros and cons to the social media debacle. I think I’ve just been inspired to buy stationary and start writing hand written letters. They still sell stamps don’t they? That’s still a thing right? 😉

Have a good week/month or whatever, and thanks for reading.