blahblahblahdittydodah...

 blahablahahahahalblaaahbiddelyblahhhhh i don't know what to write about right now, but I'm sitting here in a cafe and it's what I do when I'm in cafes... sometimes I don't even decide to goto a cafe until I know I have a topic to explore, but today I came to a cafe becuase my best friend said she had time to a cafe, and did I want to come, and yes, of course, I wanted to meet her there... she and I used to cafe sooooo much in the early years of our friendship, aside from cemeteries, cafes were the central place that we would meet to spend time together... 

I just scrubbed my memory to figure out how long we've been friends, we met pretty close to 11 years and 6 months ago... anyway... what else is going on?

I did a LOT of walking last week, and using the Strava app my mileage was recorded; nearly 20 miles! A new incentive is using another phone app called RANDONAUTICA... it's a little tricky getting that app to work properly... like, it needs a data connection to calculate targets for you to go to, so getting it to work at Las Trampas would be tricky since most of that area doesn't have data....

.......

So the first part of this entry was written 6 days ago...

and I just got the urge to write something here... it's just more free-flow gobbledygook, so anyway, I am bingeing a show on Netflix at the moment (it's called 1899, a supernatural time travel story, and did you know that if you added up all the digits in the number 1899... well, no that's not what I'm talking about, not a full numerological calculation sum total of just one number... but add a 1+8=9, then you have 3 number 9s. Flip them over to make them appear to be 666, add those numbers together 6=6=6=18, then 1+8=9... but number 9 is the one number that erases itself from existence. Any calculation that has a 9 in it, you can just take the 9 right out of the sentence... blahblahblahdittydodah.......

what I really wanted to say is how much joy I feel when I watch a well-written film/story, I get a burst of warm light in my heart and in my mind when I think about what a beautiful gift it is to create, illustrate and share a story with others. I was fascinated by the art of filmmaking when I was a young teen. At that age I began to feel inspired to be a storyteller, a writer, a photographer, and/or a filmmaker... I love remembering the things that inspired me when I was in my teens. I told someone a couple weeks ago about how I had a fascination with Japan then. The martial arts were what initially drew me to think about Japan, but in time I became fascinated with many things that their culture offers. The religious manner of growing bonsai trees, for instance, was one thing that fascinated me. But the life of a martial arts student was what really drew me in. I even took karate classes during my teen years...

but back to the point, I know it's too late for me to think about going back to school, but as an amateur hobbyist, I can at least put time into doing this for myself. I had a small story idea pop into my head earlier this week... I even went so far as to jot it down in my notes app. it was a story of telling stories inside of stories... something that would give me so much freedom to let imaginary voices roll thru my mind into my fingers... it could be a very short story or it could be a momentous novel... I remember back in 2007 when I first got the inspiration for my Cemetery Girl novel, I spent 2-3 months jotting down character and plot development, I filled a large binder with all those notes and ideas (and I still have possession of that binder)... but that's what I can't tap into now\yet... that sense of boylike fervor to abandon myself into creative enjoyment... I'd like to. I'd like to feel that fresh, free love of the birth of an idea that can launch its carrier into the ecstasy of not carrying about anything else in the world but moving this idea from the mind, thru fingers into print. 

So I'm going to toss out a life preserver to myself, that's tethered to the belt of Archangel Raziel so he has the freedom to lift me out of this decades-long disregard for what lights the fire of joy in my heart... and wait to see what happens!

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Something worth mentioning, that I left out... when I was at UCSC I took two courses that were a pretty large divergence from my original plans of getting a degree in Anthropology. I got bored one semester and wanted to take advantage of courses being offered in the very first major I had ever contemplated following English Literature. A class on the life and works of James Joyce was being taught by a renowned Joycian, and with all my personal history regarding Joyce and Ulysses, it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me. I HAD to take the course. And I did... We read Ulysses in its entirety... I had to speed-read it pretty much, but I got thru every chapter of the book. Considering it was a 9-week course, I felt justified and proud of myself for doing something that probably no one else in the class even tried to do. Colleges are full of people that never read the assigned texts, it's very sad to have witnessed this, that people don't read books anymore if they can get away with passing a course otherwise.

The other class I took that quarter was Intro to Playwriting. I had never really thought about playwriting at all, but I wanted to have a class where I could write something "new".  The main assignment for the class was to write a complete a 3 Act play. Again, I filled the position of "class oddball" and did the assignment. Week after week the teacher asked about the progress everyone was making. Week after week people gave excuse after excuse about why they got nothing done at all. The most common lie was "I'm still in the plot research stage", but no one ever had anything but this excuse to share. No one other than me had something new to read to the class. I was frustrated that no one else cared. Somehow they believed that by not doing the assignment, they'd pass the class. But overall I was just in my own bubble of bliss, blowing myself away that I could write a play. 

After the course ended, I became fascinated by the idea of becoming a serious playwright. I had visions in my mind of how to stage my play, mainly intrigued by the idea of having it performed in Santa Cruz's downtown Irish pub, The Poet and Patriot, seeing that the entire play does take place in a pub. Also, I wrote 90% of the play INSIDE this very pub. After I finished the class, I gave a copy of the play to the owner of The Poet and Patriot, Chris Matthews to read. He's also a playwright and he was a big inspiration for me. He was a "big brother" type of inspiration to me. Being a "man's man" kinda guy that did something most men never consider doing. He liked the story but could see some places where improvements could have been made. Mainly, he stressed that it seemed like I rushed to finish the last chapter... which was true. I was rushed at the end trying to make the class deadline. 

There was another class that I took the next quarter, a beginning drama class where you could learn how to write "scenes" and then have them acted out by your classmates. This FASCINATED me so much and I had more fun than I had the entire time I was at that college. This turned on a gusher of creative ideas flooding thru my brain. I came up with so many ideas for plays that I wanted to write... there were two that I worked on during that class tho. I also started going to plays being performed by other classes in the department to study how actors have a process where they interpret the writing into action. 

Okay, I think this is all that I want to talk about here. There are myriad side-street stories about things happening in my life then that I could go into... maybe in another posting...