Decajour V: Feb 12-21

2/14 This cycle I pulled the chit for project #4, and will be somewhat more ipsissima with the writing log, noting here the actual time I work on it.     Yes, I know:  boring.   (But not for my Inner Leni.)


Day One of this decajour (2/12) started out pretty well:   Tyche delivered the focus and I pulled the graf essay notes down from the shelf.    Later that day I discovered that my employment world is undergoing a seachange... one that inaugurates a shift back to my writing life by the end of 2014.   Gradual, but inexorable.  

While most of my cohort in that milieu are taking deep breaths and looking around for the lifeboats, my very first instinct was to celebrate.   (Then, of course, like any sane 'Merican, I started to worry.) I get that my "2 maybe 3" years of corporate wage-slavery is over-extended.   Another opportunity has revealed itself over the last month or so, but as it appeared with the Merc Rx, I am nervously watching its arrival.   We'll see if it can carry me to the next phase. 

2/15  Opened up the graf notes from January and went through them, jotting on another notepad anything that seemed interior to the discussion.  Time: about an hour.

(Slipped over to WU's place yesterday, interrupting *his* writing, but fetched up a look at the  introduction to his new book.  Very long, but SO beautiful!  And inspiriting. . . )

2/16 
Woke up to a long, matronizing letter from my former mentor, recommending Tsultrim Allione's treatment of the Vajrayogini practices.  I just shook my head.  Um, no.  Last week I had an exchange with that lama, in which I questioned the wisdom of allowing her male hierarchy to "bless" the Vajrayogini practices.   It's not just unnecessary, it is obstructive.   (TA's response was to critique my spelling of Magchik's name...~Sigh~... )   But such are power-mongers, seemingly oblivious to the karmic blow-back of their arrogations.  

Fortunately, the Girl in the Bone Bikini is incredibly indulgent with her admirers/abusers, so ultimately no harm, no foul.   But this Emanation thinks "what a waste of time!"

~~~

Spent about 4 hours today working on the graf article.  Just getting through previous notes took another 2 hours.  And now my fiddling-around pixies are trying to take the rudder: "Oh, let's make a website and post the sources!"   Good idea, but a distraction.    So no.

Looks like I have a working title [Liminal Scripts: underwriting in the subcity].  After three months of twirling that lasso, this is *huge* ~ sets the tone for the whole essay.

2/17  Yesterday, I didn't even get out of bed for the first 6 hours, just pulled the Work off the floor, covered the bed with pages, computers and coffee cups and started chopping through the undergrowth. "Accumule, puis distribue..." said the poet. Managed to clearcut a path to the graf article, and re-discovered this singular fact: I have to have hours and hours and hours to backstroke lazily to the Real. That's just how it is. No 'hour a day' crap, no 'half-day writing/half-day employment,' no errands + writing. It has to be all day, all in.

Don't know how to quantify yesterday's output... I have a certain number of words (about 300), but also a much clearer, overarching sense of the essay's direction.    But the real catch-of-the-day was simply recognizing how I work.   Yes, I can write in smaller bursts, but nothing I would want to publish.


2/18-21  Not much on the graf piece.  Employment situation has gone into hyperdrive - so while I have cast a few wistful glances at the graf manuscript, have made little  progress - except for a quick phone call with my co-writer (who happens to be my son).

The total:  13 hours in 10 days.   600 words... and most of those done in the two days I did no other work.     I guess a clue is arriving:  Must. Organize.  Life.  Around.  Creative.  Work. 

Right.

Decajour IV: Feb 2 - 11

2/2
Dreamed last night that I met Hope Clark, the editor of FundsforWriters.   I subscribed to her newsletter before the Teen Emergency Years (2010-14), in both its paid and unpaid forms.  In my dream, Hope and I met in Austin as I was researching an article;  she was taller and somehow 'more golden' than her image online.    I was a little awestruck in the dream (in a way I would not be in person), but this has me poring over her free newsletter for any opportunities I may have missed. 

If any of my readers are feeling gifty, my birthday is only 5 months and 2 weeks away.  Fifteen bucks'll get you pushpinned onto the Immortal Corkboard of Support & Gratitude (Suzanity, Anya,  Raul G and Angel already have been duly mounted).    Wait, that didn't sound right. . . 


2/3
A friend wrote to me yesterday saying that while she appreciated the idea of the 'decajour' --10 days might be too long for her particular attention span.  I began to wonder what might be at the back of my easy adoption of this cycle - one I vaguely noticed after I read Turnbull's book (in 1973).    Today I realized that the old weekly cycle is based on the classical seven planets: Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn.   But with the addition of Neptune, Uranus and Pluto (yes, I know Pluto is a planetoid), we have 10.   Or actually, 10 gods - even if the Greeks didn't actually deify the Sun/Moon dyad.     So why didn't the week change?  How is it we can preserve the atavism of the gods/planets as the name of each day, but can't update them to include the more recently-discovered members of our solar system?

Apparently my creative body seems to have made this shift.  If I count the 1st of the decajour as Sunday (and this time it actually fell on a Sunday), then it goes Moonday (today), Marsday (Tues), Wodinsday (Weds), Jupitersday (Thurs), Venusday (Fri), Saturnsday (Sat) -- then in order of discovery -- Ouranosday,  Poseidensday and Plutosday.  

2/11
Alas.  The world of employment has eaten most of this d'jour.   I went for an interview for a second j.o.b. - and it seems I got it - though I won't actually be in the saddle till late March.  But that means that I have to wrap up my current workload before I head out to training.  Hyaaaah! (Crack!)

I did, however, go to an art opening (and opening and opening and opening) at the UNM galleries on Friday - which brought an intense desire to write about that work... but as I have five (ok, 4 and 0) in progress, I made my notes and will leave them to ferment  until one or another of the other pieces are finished.   Dang.

~~~
Truth: I barely touched Project #1.  It sat in a small pile near by writing/fainting couch (when you visit you'll see), opened two or three times.  It seemed to take about an hour for the Genii  of the piece  to rise and circulate, and by that time, I had to get back to my wage slavery.

Argh.  Argh, I say.

***
**
*

Decajour III: Jan 23 - Feb 1

1/23
It might help my readers (um, both of you) to describe again the aleatory technique I use to figure out what to write and when.  Since I can never definitively choose ~trust me, I've spent weeks dithering~ I leave it to the great goddess Tyche (Chance) to light my way.   There are presently 4 projects in play - each title written on a piece of paper and balled up into a bead, indistinguishable (I hope) from its fellows.

Every 10 days I take out the jar, waggle it  while humming some gnostic melody, and pull out the focus for the next decajour.   Oh, and there is a fifth bead, marked "Wander Around,"  which means None-of-the-Above.

The other four can be characterized by the length of time I've been working on them:

The title for No. 1 [Annus mirabilis] has been rattling around in my world for almost 20 years - but  I only had a vague sense of its trajectory.  In the last two years, it has taken shape, definition and some sense of urgency. 

No. 2 [I Do Not Live with Five Men] is a contemporary tantra, but probably won't be read with any clarity until after my death.  The exegetical remarks will be written by a future self, but not if I don't get the damn thing finished.   This lifetime.  

No. 3 [Oneirocriticon] walks my particular method of art crit out of its woven shade.    

No. 4 [Liminal Script] looks at graffiti from an anthropological and evolutionary perspective.     With greatest respect for los que desafian de hacer/dejarlo.   (Look, there are things I can only say in Spanish -  and hey, why aren't you bilingual?) 

~~~~~~~~~

D'jour III brought forth No. 5, the 'Wander Around' bead!   So today, this has meant a long meander through my files, finding opiilette* that are,  in the 140-character squish of contemporary human attention, practically novellas.    Tidied up and submitted,  शाबाश! 
*opus=work, opii=plural work, opiilette=small works

~~~~~~~~~

As this 10-day period actually aligns with my interest/disinterest cycles, I'll just continue down this path until each work is complete.     

After that, I move to France and become a clocharde.  Or Baba Yaga.   

Better to be a baglady in Paris than an ign/oracle in Abiquiu.    

1/29
Over the last few days I have been roaming around in the biblioverse next door, online and up the street at the University.    Ordered a few books from here and there, esp. Elizabeth Abbott's trilogy on modes of relationship - her History of Celibacy; History of Mistresses and the elusive History of Marriage.  The last one is her latest in the set, and a bit harder to find as a loaner.   But the other two await me next door, so I am eager to see her treatment. 

Meanwhile, I've also been reading Diedre Bair's bio of Simone de Beauvoir, and continue to take little sips of Frans de Waal's The Bonobo and the Atheist.   Joined Goodreads a good while back, but am now actually *putting* those books in their list, along with a glimpse here and there of my impressions of the work.  

On Sunday a mild case of the flu put me on my back for a couple of days - reminding me how differently the brainbody of a writer works.   I read L. Durrell's bio a few years ago in a similar fog, and his story cut through it like a searchlight.  De Beauvoir's is sadder, but probably because I recognize so much of myself (and the Philosopher Husband) in its lineaments.  Though I plowed through 400 pages or so while in a febrile daze, could I make a cup of tea?  Barely.  

2/1
I did manage to dig out and polish up three pieces for submission during this cycle.   One poem, one oblivoir (the things I've forgotten this lifetime, so far), and a shortshort story --  all fairly self-contained.    Sent off to paying markets - as I dust off my old NLP trick of merging the infinite with the impossible - may their combustion light up my bank account.   

Backzephyrs: 20 years of digitized notes (to go with 6 boxes of handwritten notebooks).  In them I kept finding these fragments that are so funny and strange that they'll probably never properly fit into anything but their own polygonal niches.

Tonight --from godnose elsewhen-- I found this fragment.  I recognize the general umwelt:  my meeting with the  massive Pilot whale stranding in 1977, but the protagonist is a musicologist nun(?!).   What the hell was I thinking?  Anyway:

          "The barkeep moved slowly, toweling the wood as if warming up the spot for her drink.  “Tequila rocks, please,” she said.  “Do you have a label in mind?”  “Oh whatever’s on the bottom shelf; I’ve taken a vow of poverty.”      He noted the drab skirt and short-sleeved shirt, buttoned to her collarbone.    “No, uh… headthingy?” he swirled his hand around his head in that universal sign for  ‘wimple.’   “Not since 1969,” she grinned, “when we crept into the laundry and tie-dyed all the whites.         "The target of their attack turned out to be the veils, though the novices had been aiming for scapulars. But what did you expect?  It took place mostly in the dark, with puzzled whispering beneath a flashlight that never stopped flickering.   And dropping it repeatedly didn’t seem to help.    “Turn that damn thing off!  You might as well be standing next to Reverend Mother's bed with a foghorn.  Jeez.”      The next morning the Sisters of Mercy woke up to neatly folded, pink mantles with starbursts of plutonian purple spreading from the backs of their heads."  

~~~~~~~~~

Preview of D'jour IV:  Tyche just delivered her next assignment: a third round with project No. 1!! Fortunately (or not), this persistence --and the research it compels-- confirms my suspicion that the proposal it sets forth is *way* overdue;  and that it needs to be funny and persuasive, yet dauntless.  In other words, perfect.  

Which means messy and imperfect... for a while, anyway. 
***
**
*