Tag Archives: James Merrill The Changing Light at Sandover

Finally!! A Good Morning!!

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Guess who woke up breathing today??!!

Not only did I wake up breathing, but I got out of bed and went downstairs and was still breathing. And the morning has officially gotten underway here and I’m still breathing.

I can only hope this means that the virus is actually completely gone.

I even extended the yoga yesterday to half an hour instead of just the 15 minutes I’d been doing for a few days now, and I still woke up breathing.  I didn’t go in reverse at all. So I’m thinking that maybe I’m finally really well, gang.

I can’t tell you how relieved that makes me feel.

I slept with all the windows in my bedroom partially open all night, too. Even though it cooled down during the night, it felt so good to have all that fresh air. So maybe that helped, too.

It’s really just a gorgeous morning here today, gang. I’m in the best mood, too.

Peitor and I are planning to actually work on the “Lita” script today. Just checking the script for typos (there are tons!), and making sure the formatting is as readable as possible.  The script is 98% shots, lenses, blocking — it doesn’t read like a normal script does. So now we’re trying to make it “readable” for the other people involved.

I’m also feeling inspired today in two different directions, finally. Doing a final edit to Blessed By Light (and probably changing the title to The Guitar Hero Goes Home), in preparation for getting it into a publishable format. And also doing some brand new writing on Thug Luckless: Welcome to P-Town.

BTW, I did try to watch another episode of “Dummy” on Quibi (the show about the girl who befriends her boyfriend’s AI sex doll and they go on a road trip). But I just couldn’t stick with it. There are a lot of elements to the show that I like, however, the dialogue just aims way too low. And, in my opinion, it doesn’t have to. It could still be racy and dirty and challenging and funny, without resorting to just being smutty.

(You know, if I was able to laugh out loud over the dialogues between Adolph Hitler and a 10-year-old Nazi boy in JoJo Rabbit, then we ought to be able to move mountains — dialogue-wise — with an AI sex doll, right? I should think so.)

Okay.

I finally finished reading Love in the Time of Cholera. And instead of picking up Rilke (for now), I went for James Merrill’s The Changing Light At Sandover because I really am feeling like getting underway again with Thug Luckless. And I keep thinking that something about Sandover is going to inform the direction of Thug Luckless. (For some inexplicable reason, a few months ago, it occurred to me that the original name of P-Town before the Apocalypse was “Sandover.” I’d like to find out why that came to me.)

So I’m feeling inspired. And it really has been weeks since my mind was clear enough to attempt any new writing. So I just feel really happy.

Oh, and another “btw” — I looked through all the old lyrics & music sheets yesterday and never did find the chords I was looking for to that song! I found chords for everything else. Apparently, I thought the chords to that one song would simply live on forever in my mind. I did see a ton of set lists that indicated the song was in the key of C# — but I guarantee you, I never wrote a song in the key of C# in my life. That has to be something the lead guitar player changed at some point.  But it doesn’t help me. I see something now like the “key of C#” and my brain implodes. (“What the fuck is C#? How do my fingers do that? And what other horrible chords go along with it???” — stuff like that.)

Okay!!! So. Have a great Monday, wherever you are in the world, gang.  (May the 4th be with you, and all that happy Star Wars stuff!) I’m gonna leave you with two options today, both of which I have posted here before. My breakfast-listening music — John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme (1964) (because I was feeling supremely happy about love at breakfast today). And my post-breakfast-listening music, “Little Empty Boat,” by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, from their B-Sides & Rarities collection (1997, 2005). Enjoy!! Make it a really great day, okay? I love you guys. See ya.

 

Where Is This Day Going To??!!

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Well, I am trying to get started here today!

For some weird reason, I was just about to get out of bed at around 5am, when I decided to take mental inventory of the day ahead of me, and voila! — I was sound asleep for two and half more hours! WTF???

The glucosamine is finally beginning to work and I am starting to notice a bit of a positive difference in my legs. That same feeling, like: I hadn’t realized that things were changing and so now that there is the ease coming back into my joints, I am recalling how it feels to  just move really freely. It does feel great, but I still went to bed last night feeling some pain in my legs. I think that disrupted my sleep — well, that and this weird habit I have now of being on Instagram at all hours. Anyway.  I think that’s why I suddenly slept like a rock — the inflammation in my legs finally died down.

All righty!!

So I’m trying to do laundry here. Trying to get ready for my several hours of script work today with Peitor. I’d been hoping to get to answering some emails this morning, too, but I’m also feeling frustrated by the lack of productive time I am finding to spend on Thug Luckless: Welcome to P-Town.

Yesterday, I stared at the file, open in front of me on the desk top, for hours. Literally And only made about 3 changes to what was already there, and then came up with the name that P-Town had before the “accident.” (And that is: Sandover — in honor of James Merrill’s epic multi-volume poem from 1976-1980, The Changing Light at Sandover.)

(In my novel, so far I am only calling the accident: “the terrible accident at the factory.” I’m not sure yet, but I don’t think I’m ever going to say what the accident was or what they did at the factory because everything comes from Thug’s POV and he is an AI robot and only “knows” what people tell him.)

(I’m starting to see very clearly now that Thug Luckless is going to be another experimental novel. Which of course translates into “small press/no money.” But you know what? I just can’t go there anymore. I can’t worry about it. According to international legal resources, the book has already been pirated anyway, and it hasn’t even been written yet!!)

(And I’m not sure why all this stuff is in parentheses, but it is.)

Whatever. If money were the thing motivating me ever in my entire life — well. I don’t even have to explain what the rest of that sentence might look like. (i.e.: My life would look nothing at all like how I live.)

Last night, it occurred to me that my home-ownership priorities are just so strange. I’ve been here 2 years now and I don’t have a dishwasher yet — just a gaping space for it in the kitchen. Or central AC — although I’m not likely to ever get that because I have this love affair with open windows. I still haven’t put the door back on the linen closet in the upstairs hall (the door is out in the barn, so it’s not as if the door is just somewhere handy.) But the light at the top of the stairs went out last night so I replaced the bulb because I have a whole stockpile of energy efficient light bulbs. And then the battery in one of the smoke detectors went out and I got out of bed and replaced that because I have a plethora of batteries around here of various voltages.

I mean, I have so many batteries and light bulbs, and paper towels, and toilet paper and Kleenex. And a stockpile of filters for the vacuum cleaner. And I have just tons of cloth dish towels, even though I only always use the same one. And I have 17 thousand-million dishes, and glassware, and bar ware — including cocktail shakers and ice buckets and ice tongs, etc., that never get used.  And I have so many bed linens in this place that you’d think I was running a dormitory (I even have linens for twin beds, which I don’t even own).  And of course, the tidal wall of age-defying products from France bursting from the storage closets of both bathrooms…

Weird, right? I think that’s weird, anyway.  Such an extreme amount of only certain things.

Including leaves. Even I was forced to sigh heavily and shake my head this morning, as I glanced outside my backdoor window and saw just the enormous pile of dead leaves that had blown into a massive heap outside my backdoor — where my neighbor’s privacy fence meets my yard. And try as they might, all those leaves cannot get up enough velocity to blow themselves up over that really tall fence and settle nicely into my neighbor’s yard.

I have no idea what to do about those leaves.  Because I am definitely not raking them. But I can just see my lawn guy getting right back into his truck when he comes to cut the grass for the first time next month and sees something like that.

Or the gutters. We are not even going to talk about the gutters, although I am at least aware that I need to deal with my gutters.

What I really need, though, is someone to be the actual homeowner here so that I can just wear the title: Homeowner. And then just sit at my desk for hours on end crafting masterpieces of fiction that most people the world over will not understand. (Starting with my father.)

Okey-dokey!!! On that lofty note! I gotta scoot, gang. The morning is almost officially over. I need to get ready for Peitor.  (Who is out there in West Hollywood right now, doing yoga and meditating to the sound of Tibetan bowls and all sorts of spiritual goodness type stuff.) (He’s even a vegan– he recently one-upped me on my vegetarianism.) So I’m gonna get crackin’ here.

Have a terrific Tuesday, wherever you are in the world!! (And while I was typing here, a little fruit fly landed in my coffee cup and had all the limp signs of being horribly drowned to death. But I scooped him out of the coffee with my fingertip, put him on the back of my hand, blew on him a little bit and then let him just dry out for awhile. And after several minutes, guess what? He came back to life, walked around on the back of my hand and then flew away! Tiny miracles everywhere, gang. You just gotta know where to look. And you’ve gotta make up your mind that you’re gonna see them when they happen!!)

So! I leave you with my listening-music from last evening!! Turn it up and just smile (or, you know, grab onto someone you’re super  hot for & swing.) Have a great day. I love you guys. See ya!!