THREE YEARS??

 Not at all sure how this happened, but *three* years since a post?  We note that meanwhile several other authors have tried to snag the title - yes, I’m  flattered, but SHOO!  I started this in the Aughties, so hold the c’rights to the name, better put it to work!  

Back after morning (cough, okay, mid-day) yoga, y’all…

Slippery Travel and Title Company

It has been almost a year since I have posted anything here? Whoa... 

Well, it was a year that contained another trip to Greece, albeit a rugged one.  Within a few days of arriving, I took a pretty hard fall on the ferry coming back from Corfu - making sure I stayed in one spot for  a while.  That would have been great if the spot had been 'hot' - that is, with net access. 

Beware of tripping gryphons. (Corfu castle)

But no.  While recuperating, I found myself in a basement apartment in Achaea with a) no net access, and b) a cell signal that only worked when I climbed on the kitchen counter --with my bunk knee-- and held the phone up to the ground level window.

Thus I discovered that I am fully addicted to the exoBrain we call the Internet.  There were withdrawals, I tell you:  mood-swings, appetite surges and suppressions, phantom keyboards, and worst of all - sudden spelling amnesias. Epic fail. 

Meanwhile, I walked --okay, hobbled-- around Patras and noted its charms, which included making the acquaintance of a nine-foot reticulated python in a pet shop a few blocks from my burrow.  I jumped (so to speak) into the writing side of this journey, sketching a half a dozen article-essay ideas.  In a few days I had  finished a 900 word piece with a handful of local images.  Or almost.  The summary --a good, bouncy title-- had not made itself known.  I had a body, but no face. 

At the bottom of the third draft, I took an evening walk through the holiday crowds to clear my head... aaaaaand here comes the first in a series of Very Unsettling Texts from a close friend.    He's in emergency ICU at the same hospital where we spent so much time together last year.  Now his daughter is flying in to take care of him.  Now he has a preliminary finding of cancer.  Now he is having surgery without a precise diagnosis.  Now he has a diagnosis ~ but it ain't pretty.   Now there will be more surgery.  And chemo.  No wait,  chemo and radiation, because what good is poison without some fire to go with it? 

My concentration?  Nil. Where am I again? Oh, yeah, Greece.  Netlessly.

The next six weeks were fog.  Mid-January I moved to an apartment across the bay for the wifi it promised - which tadaaa! disappeared the day after I arrived, and wasn't restored until the week before I left.  This time I was five kilometers from the nearest village, so there was no stepping out to a nearby cafe.  At least in this place I was above ground and could get cell service, which allowed me to hotspot the computer (another sizable budget and hardware burn). 

The little piece I had written in December?  It went out to a half-dozen websites, but without a strong lede, it didn't find publication.

§§§

Now back in the States, my old friend is halfway through his treatment protocols, and I am working out my haphazard day-path again.   The Darling Companion dropped in to watch me toil over the keyboard a few days ago. "I might have a new title for this piece," I muttered.  He had heard the previous nicktitles and politely declined to comment.  "How about this," I said,  "'Ten More Things to Love About Greece'."   He affirmed it good enough to pitch, so the listicle (with its new chapeau) is now making the travel mag rounds.

The convergence of listicle and travel format takes us to a subspecies other readers/writers may find of use:

Listverse - the gargantuan list site, which does pay $100 for lists that include travel topics.  But um, 1500 word minimum?  Wordy-rappinghood, y'all.  http://listverse.com/write-get-paid/ 

Expeditioner - http://www.theexpeditioner.com/submissions/ pays about $30, with a 1200 word minimum.  Suddenly Listverse seems reasonable. 

Fund Your Life Overseas newsletter is open to shorter listicles, and pays 75$ for an epistolary-style conversation about living abroad.  https://internationalliving.com/about-il/write-for-il/write-for-fund-your-life-overseas-and-incomes-abroad/

Big Grey Horse is for writers living (traveling, visiting, escaping from) Texas and pays $125-$200 for your take on this irascible place.  http://biggreyhorse.com/texas-writers-wanted/

Hidden Compass pays a little better ($200-300) than most, publishes quarterly and has a 'photo-essay' story form that starts at 500 words (listiclesque, in my book).  http://hiddencompass.net/contributors-guidelines/

(Oh and by the way, Top Tenz -- which used to pay $50 for simple listicles--
is NOT accepting unsolicited subs. )

Kala Tyche, fellow scriveners.

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Pen-gigging and other meditations

22 days ago I made my way back to the States, and after 3 weeks of  job-seeking (punctuated by a three-day nap and a bout of flu), I have yet to find the j.o.b.,  the paygalleon, jobby(Jºbj(o)B)j0b.

Not for nothing are the initials 'b.j.' embedded in that last fusillade of frustration.   There've been blows (if not jobs) since February - beginning with the unexpected rubbishing of the Humandala website, and continuing to the evaporèsumé -- gone from all my backups.

Am I whining?  Maybe, but it has never taken me more than a week or two to find work.  And what I couldn't find,  I could cobble together.   Till now.

But soft,  situated in my 6th House, this new moon says The Gig will turn up if I keep grinding: applications, combing Craigslist, Flexjobs, Indeed, Linked-in.  To do otherwise, I am told, is to succumb to terminal optimism, and/or bust up my lifelong pattern of make-work to pay for creative work.§

19th C Writing Ball

So let me check:  either  I can cheer up, get to work until my own paysprings begin to bubble; or cheer up and work for someone else's crewe?

I get that the 6th House story is one of service, linked with routine.  That is why it is seen as the house of employment.  My 6th is in Gemini, ruled by Mercury,  and has Venus/Mercury (the Greek Aphrodite/Hermes) wandering through it.  And that question of  'routine' will ever and forever be the bête noir of anyone wearing the writer's cape.   Or should I say bête blanc, the empty page with its polar-bear-in-a-snow-storm appeal, the One True Thing of a writer's life.  It's not that I don't have the tenacity to return to that blanc again and again - it is really a question of what can be said vs what needs to remain sub-rosa, whispered from one mind to another.

The subjects of my inquiry --the sensory array and its subtle iterations; creating boundaries for intensive meditative practice; what constitutes a functioning art object, to name a cryptic few-- do not amend themselves to the usual rhetorics. Writing about them is a waggle-dance through several dimensions, which rarely align with the track we mark as 'logical.'  It is often possible to turn my assertions inside-out&backward and find an argument as beautiful, (disturbing), compelling as the one I thought I made.

One might say that such writing is a form of speech. Not speech as verification - truth on one side, mendacity on the other - but speech as a flow, a percolation into the spiraling corals of the mind shared by both hearers.  Since capturing that interiority is so much harder than letting it spill into space, the diversions of glib Mercury are constantly tempting."Say it once. . ." he whispers

". . . but for all."

The 'for all' being the challenge.

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§And creative work always leads to play (a.k.a. 'life'), which cycles back to ...

List of Publications...

...is slowly being restored and linked here.   Post-humandala-crash and a continent or two later.

The work will not necessarily go up in chronological or alphabetical order, but according to how it relates to what I am presently writing.  The first to be republished is Ονειροκριτικών: the Gold Room.

Jeffrey Davis on the 'Selfish' Writer

"A healthy selfishness looks like being intentional, setting boundaries, changing habits, and testing out new patterns in devotion to a big project like writing a book. "  JD

I've been following author-inspirationalist Jeffrey Davis for a couple of years.  His writing program, Tracking Wonder, turned up on my screen while I was in Cyprus -- via my brilliant friend Saundra Goldman. Although I haven't yet attended the workshops, I have been the delighted recipient of his newsletters.  This week's Dispatch wrangles one of the leftover gremlins of my (and most mothers') writing life.

The original doesn't seem to be on his blog or website, so I am sharing the entire letter.  Enjoy... 

SUNDAY DISPATCH - Jeffrey Davis, TrackingWonder 

Why We Need You to be Selfish and Write Your Book Anyway 

It turns out that a healthy, deliberate selfishness is characteristic of many high-performing creatives and entrepreneurs who feel fulfilled in many facets of their life - including family, relationships, and work.

They carve out pockets of time for, devote lots of attention to, and invest money & resources in their own projects. So do I. I'm selfish in these ways that let me relish instead of resent other facets of my life - and I support my family and clients to do likewise. 

An unhealthy selfishness looks like grabbing and grubbing for scarce resources, not caring about the needs of others, and shutting one's self off from others.  

A healthy selfishness looks like being intentional, setting boundaries, changing habits, and testing out new patterns in devotion to a big project like writing a book. 

Why do we need you to be selfish this way? 
Consider the consequences.  

Love & generosity: The people I've researched and worked with who start most of their days or considerable time each month focusing on their book projects report in turn feeling better about the rest of their day. They feel more present and open to demands others make of them.

Clarity of your message & medicine: If you work in a service industry or in another way in which you help people, then there is no substitute - none - for writing a book to give you super-clarity on what you do, what you think, and why it's valuable. Client after client reports that they are better speakers, teachers, and consultants for having written their books.  

Change of heart, mind, and life: Similarly, if your hours of time and attention writing and publishing your book translate to your book helping people live, work, relate, or create better, then the impact factor outweighs perceived selfishness.

Contribution to culture: Books build our culture and help us feel more fully human. They are mirrors of, windows to, and artifacts of our quirky, astonishing human minds. They provide knowledge that we simply cannot find in blog articles or magazine articles. They offer stories and imagined worlds that provide rich meditative explorations of the fundamental questions of our species: "Who am I? Who are we as a people?" "What am I here for? What are we here for?" "How can I make life better for myself, others, my community?" "How do I challenge the status quo or abusive authority?" "How do we endure hardship with a grounded hope?"  

So, who are you not to contribute to that, however big or small?
If someone calls you "selfish" in these regards, consider it a compliment.

When I was 18 and a college freshman, Walden was the book that cracked open my mind and soul. It was the first inkling that it might be okay to live according to different principles than those I observed at the time. Thoreau's two-year experiment in the woods, a walk away from his friends' and family's homes in Concord, helped him get perspective on our hurried way of life. It helped articulate why he refused to pay taxes to "that state which buys and sells men, women, and children, like cattle at the door of its senate-house." It helped him write "Slavery in Massachusetts" and "Civil Disobedience," whose principles have rippled through civil rights and human rights movements since.

Your book matters. Be selfish for us.   

~Jeffrey Davis, Tracking Wonder

I was especially intrigued to see JD's remarks on  'clarity of message.'    Not only do I think more clearly, but I perceive more patiently in the deep toil of writing.  The search for the right word and rhythm also goes dousing for the key idea itself, whether invisible pyramids in Galveston, Texas; or the mysteries of Greek kilometrics; or the playful contrast of sculptors.   There is always far more to write than anyone has time to read, but crafting a beautiful sentence can reveal the kernel of the topic, carrying the reader toward new insight, and sometimes, experience.  

The fact that it has a similar effect on the writer is almost an afterthought. Maybe writing that book isn't so selfish, after all.  

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non-proliferation & noctjournals

As I mentioned last week, there are 3 projects actually, actively open on my desk here.   I am cleaving to the wisdom of a friend who reminded me that sometimes the most strenuous work of a writer is to keep competing ideas properly contained (read: ignored) ... until it is their turn.

Right, I say - then there is the Journal.  Not just a daybook (though I have one, or 43, of those), but the journal of this Third Peripateo - my present wanderings in Greece.

I rented a car last week to widen my ambit -- thinking it clever to justify not-walking by calling it 'treading.'  As in 'tire-tread.'  Ha.  (cough)  I kept pretty good notes on the major events of this peregrination, but it had so many dazzling moments that at least half of them went unwritten, and have sifted through my memory.

Or lost the mooring of their context: such as the morning after a visit to an abandoned temple.   I had woken up three or four times in the night with the word Katabatikos resounding through me.   By the morning, the purpose of it was entirely gone, only the chitinous shell of its meaning (meteorology: 'downburst') left.

Good thing, too.  If I try to capture every-freakin'-thing from those circuits, I will never get these documents in the can. I just wrote a 400-word blog about two rivers that course through Epirus, and that took most of the day. Hell, I realized walking through this village today that I could spend a month capturing an hour of light on the Ionian Sea.  

Therefore some accounting may be useful.  I intend to spend five hours a day writing, and most days I exceed that.  It's pointless to set word-goals ~ I'd rather have 10 exquisite words than 1000 dystonic ones, and Ladylord knows we (as a culture) have exploded the dams with our written noise.  So. Smaller, with a commitment to emotional beauty ahead of intellectual 'clarity' - which in my case can lead to hyperhypointraexplanatory excesses.  (See?)

But I remind myself: Quentin has been gone for less than two years, and with Sarah's death, it was more than three before I could write again.   It's coming, my voice, and not so slowly, after all...

(thank you, Greece)

&

ζωές θεά

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Humandala's Defunct...

"...who used to ride a watersmooth silver stallion

and break onetwothreefourfive pigeons

just like that..."

(Epitaph borrowed from the incomparable eecummings ~~ )

In short, Humandala, my website since 2006, has taken a tumble.   For now, CVs and List of Publications will be found here. Soon. 

Thanks for your patience,

Alana Keres (art critic)

Eleusis D (oneirologist)

Syala N (erotographer) 

                                                   Mysti Easterwood (Matrix)