It's 4:30 am, and I'm in a holding pattern for 10 minutes or so until I need to go prep Rachel's first dose of the day.
Thanks to everyone who's written to ask if I'm OK. Truth is...not really. I'm clinging to the precipice with fingernails dug in, circling in a world of stress, little sleep, and a creative fog. I so dislike the person I've become that I've stopped communicating any more than necessary, and my dreams have taken on a nightmarish surreality.
Solutions don't come easy. One of them - more sleep - does not happen on the current schedule (4:30am rising) without drugs because no matter what time I get up in the morning, my mind won't sleep until after midnight, sometimes later. People who think it's easy to reset a natural diurnal rhythm have obviously never tried it. For me, it takes discipline and diligence, and even after 3 months of a new drug-driven schedule, the minute I drop my guard, my internal clock resets itself within 48 hours.
I do not have a sleep disorder. Left to my own devices, I sleep an uninterrupted 7-8 hours, dream well, awake naturally and refreshed. My daughter is the same way, and she doesn't have the distractions of a job or electronics. Creativity soars. Right now, my creative spirit is at an all time low; my mind numb.
Sleep, unfortunately, isn't the only issue. I do wish it were.
It's times like these that the lesson of "count your blessings" is a lifesaver. I do so...every day. Rachel is stable. I have glorious friends, like those who've asked about my lack of blogging and writing. My mother, who turned 81 last week, is healthy, despite the normal problems of her age, and we still have a good time talking and laughing. Her wisdom never fails me. These are the things that keep me going.
And go I do. I've exceeded my 10 minutes, so I must run. Rachel and I need our caffeine...
Back on 4/26, I mentioned that I'd had a sit-down with PW Blogger Barb Vey. Well, we finished up the last touches on the interview, and she's posted it on her blog. I didn't realize I liked talking so much about writing. I got downright wordy.
Take a look, if you get a chance, and don't be afraid to leave feedback!
Note, too, that every Friday, Barb gives her readers a chance to post whatever they want about whatever book they enjoy. It's definitely a chance to share a few thoughts on one of your favorites.
Chagrin. A fun word that rolls off the tongue like the growl of a film noir villain. Or, mispronounced, it can sound like a Latin-dance-induced smile. Either way, it's more fun to say than to feel:
Chagrin. n. 1. a feeling of vexation, marked by disappointment or humiliation.
This is the feeling of realizing the emails you need to respond to are more than six weeks old, usually followed by a smack on the head. Geez, I knew May had been bad for me mentally when I woke up being verbally abused by John Wilmot for not writing. (Long story, involving way too much of my mental wanderings.) And while it sometimes takes me a while to deal with email needing no response back to the author, I'm not usually so lax with correspondence. I'm getting to as much as possible this afternoon.
And, with my determination to do more marketing this year, I've set up a MySpace page, complete with a video featuring Rachel. The page still needs a LOT of help, but if you get a chance, check out the video. www.myspace.com/ramonarichards
More later.
Mitch Toby Scratched was born in a sturdy, hand-built shack deep in the hollers of East Tennessee sometime between 1940 and 1942. His mama isn’t sure what year exactly because the Scratched family lived so far back in the hills that the shack had no running water, telephone, or electricity, and Mitch Toby’s grandmother and great-grandmother still spoke a variant of Elizabethan English. But life was anything but boring. Mitch Toby could pick a banjo and dobro well before he could spit accurately, and by the time he was 10, he could do a mean buck-and-wing. When he was 12, however, Mitch Toby realized he had contracted an ailment that had not tainted anyone else in the family.
Mitchell Tobias Scratched wanted to be somewhere else.
It all began when one brother came home from Korea. And one didn’t.
Mitch Toby came to me last night, in one of those half-awake half-dreaming states that go by a variety of a names. Like the vision of the corpse in Reclaiming Daisy Doe, Mitch Toby was just THERE, whole cloth, complete and already told. Getting him out, tweaking the phrase a bit, that's the writer's job. In the meantime, I have no idea how he really got there.
But unlike earlier such arrivals, I don't think Mitch Toby is intended as a novel, or even a lengthy story. I think he's a part of me, and a parable, a reminder that it's time to get off my butt and get back to doing not only what I do best but what I think God drives me to do more and more each day.
Write.
Apparently, I have a story to tell. For Him. Don't know what it is yet, and I think I have a lot of tales to get out first. Little ones. They still are His, but they are my ground tilling, all that has to come before. So write I will, and I'll probably post little tidbits of Mitch Toby and his journeys along the way. Little goading sticks.
More later today. Time now to do some Rachel stuff and curl up with the Dana to write.
First, a little unfinished business. I promised someone I'd post the link to the interview with the Pirates screenwriters that I referred to below. I run into a lot of screenwriting interviews, mostly because it's a major interest of mine. I discovered, however, that not everyone who might be interested does. Anyway, that link is at Box Office Mojo.
On to other bits and pieces. First, apologies to those folks to whom I owe emails. I'm getting there, slowly but surely. The month of May left a dark fog behind when it left, and with it a streak of anger that I spend a great deal of time praying about. Even my sitters have noticed the shift in personality. While the number of people with whom I'm furious grows daily, the majority of the anger is at my own recent missteps - I've made enough mistakes over the past few weeks, on a personal level, that I feel like an idiot - and an arrogant one at that. All I really want to do is withdraw and avoid all human contact. Not forever - just to recover and find my feet again.
I cannot, however, do that. There is no time. Unfortunately for me, I take promises to complete certain tasks seriously enough that I will keep working and trying to make those deadlines.
But I don't let the pity party go too far. Yes, I have too much to do, not enough time to physically do it, and too many interruptions to get much done in one sitting - but aren't most people working on jobs like that? Hasn't that become an epidemic for a lot of folks today?
So the self-pity about current tasks has to go. The problem is that it leaves behind a sincere and overwhelming feeling that I'm not doing what God has planned for my life. So I focus instead on my own advice: Trust Him. He sent Paul to Athens for a reason and a season - but not forever. For the moment, I am where He planted me.
Sometimes, a particular combination of words can strike home in an unexpected way. It happened to me this past Sunday morning. We had a healing service at church, along with communion, leading to a level of formality that's a touch more "high church" than we usually have. Although we're Methodist, we tend to be far more "low church."
As I spoke one reading aloud, however, the words sparked within my heart, striking directly on that one spot where I most long for the presence of God. I don't know why...they just did. Words that are ancient, written in the 17th century by a Russian monk, but that still hold the craving of devout believers.
----------
Come, my Light, and illumine my darkness.
Come, my Life, and revive me from death.
Come, my Physician, and heal my wounds.
Come, Flame of divine love, and burn up the thorns of my sins, kindling my heart with the flame of thy love.
Come, my King, sit up on the throne of my heart and reign there.
For thou alone art my King and my Lord. Amen.
----------
A echoing reminder that words have an ageless power to touch, to inspire. We should not treat them lightly, especially when God has gifted us with the ability to use them to His way and light.
I have finished up a few more tasks, so I feel as if I'm on an upswing of accomplishment again. Next on the agenda is some home stuff, then a dive into CLUES, which starts this weekend. I plan to stir up lots of dust, creative energy, and weeds.
In the meantime, I sent these comments on a recent movie release to a friend, and she thought they were great. Suggested I send them to once of the local papers, but I thought I'd host them here instead. They aren't that involved, but they came about because she hadn't heard from any of her friends a "Yay" or "Nay" about the movie.
More blogging later...
-------------
I loved Pirates #3, with a few reservations. I’m going back to see it this weekend.
When I went to see Dead Man’s Chest, I had the same initial reaction, then fell completely in love with it over the next couple of viewings. I just read an interview with screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, and even they admitted it might take a couple of viewings to really get everything in #3. I am finding in a couple of discussions that some folks have missed a lot – things I got because I’d watched the first two just before I went.
The first 30 minutes or so are difficult for some, and definitely not a segment for really young kids (say, under 8). It starts dark, then turns surreal when you meet up with Jack in the afterlife, where he’s slowly going mad and having trouble telling reality from madness. For about 10 minutes, so does the audience.
A couple of my friends didn’t care for it at all, one enjoyed it, but my friend Jamie, who’s a huge movie buff, isn’t going back with me (as he did on #2). Jamie and I also discussed the burdens that the 2nd and 3rd parts of a trilogy bear, in that #2 has to stand alone as well as being the heavy middle of the main plot arc's bell curve, which means lots of tedious exposition that goes nowhere.
#3 also has to stand on its own, but is yoked with tying up all loose ends, which can interfere with even the simplest plot arc. And since, in this case, Pirates #1 wasn’t intended as the opening of a trilogy, it opened a lot of doors Ted and Terry never intended to be more than throwaways. So there are literally about 15 story lines to conclude, plus the main arc and the stand alone story. The result is a very busy, fast-paced 3-hour movie. There are no downtime beats to let the audience catch up, like the Jack-and-Elizabeth-on-the-island scene in #1. For some folks, this is going to mean it's a little confusing and exhausting to watch.
The bottom line for me, however, is that I had a LOT of fun with it. It’s challenging as well as sparky and cluttered, and I had a blast.