Late Winter Notes For This Year's Novel

The idea that each moment has everything possible within it. Life has been bumpy lately. It’s so very strange to put in time/effort to be something, and then, not only is all of society (indeed civilization itself) moving in a different direction--to a world far away from the one you had trained for--and the people apart of your life, your contemporaries, cannot see you for what you are based on your actions for the past ten/twenty/thirty years. For instance, the Article V Convention means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but if it did emerge into reality it would transform America, and in transforming America it would transform the world. How would things transform exactly? No one knows of course, but you can make good guesses based on what history shows, and all we know to be true about the human condition. So if the Article V Convention would be revolutionary, and you’ve been talking about it for years, burned through a small inheritance and then some, getting Supreme Court ruling, making documentaries, traveling to various political conferences to persuade others, etc--that would make you a revolutionary, right? And if you wrote a novel, sold a few thousand copies and occasionally get fan mail saying your work changed a life, that would make you a novelist, right? And if you’ve been creating/giving away/selling art for years, and continue to think about visual art constantly, that would make you an artist, right? And if you've written scripts and plays, and people have performed some to positive reviews, that would make you a playwright, right? And if you’ve been writing poetry since ten years old, a few collections worth, and still more to this day, that would make you a poet, right? Now what if you had done all these things, and everyone around you says things like “you better get your shit together” retirement saved, and looks at you as if you're just another human being? Guess what, not all lives are equally important. Anyone at any time can make their life important. Not because I say so, but because the universe says so. With the way things are going, having just read that, anyone might say--Wow, get a load of this guy blowing his own horn about how great he is. Well, yes, it could be that, but I’ll tell you it’s not: it’s a poet/writer/artist/revolutionary crying out in the wilderness, crying out in a world that is bleeding soul and not likely to survive without something. In some ways I love that it’s happening like this. Except that I’m not kissing one or two special women at present, that part I don’t exactly care for. The two fellow facebookers I fumbled? One of the things that crossed my mind was, what if instead of ditching me, they swatted me on the butt and said something like, “Don’t ever do that again, we’re not in it for romantic love, we’re in it for human love--if there is to be a love between us it will be higher, one that fits like the smooth, warm glove of old friendship; one that is stoic, free from any worry other than being true to what is in the heart and mind that moment.” Who knows, maybe life will unfold in such a way. Today I had to drive to Los Angeles to try to get my computer fixed; had no idea if it was going to work or not. Everything in life is upside down if I don’t have a functioning notebook. Turns out the person I paid to fix it pulled it off. I can write again, like a fish back in water. Of course I can write in a composition book, but when you’re working on a novel, you want it text in a word processing program; because re-writing is writing, it takes the same amount of time and means the same thing ultimately. Stone me now. Or, I’m stoned. No, I’m sad we can’t juice cannabis to cure cancer. Not yet at least. Time will tell. Remind to tell you about a sculptor I sold a Shakespeare book to, and her experience with gypsies while attending art school in Italy. And then tell about Nancy, the girl with Saint tattooed on her, then the gypsy with the light tattoo later that day.