Confessions of a Clifton Boulevard Drain-Raker

At about eleven fifteen tonight I was driving home from having spent the evening with several friends. During our gathering a storm broke out, complete with hail, a momentary power failure, and three of our number on a walk outside without their phones. These three did return safe after the worst of the storm was over, having taken shelter with some friendly nuns, and as I drove home in a light drizzle I thought the night's adventures were over.

That was when I noticed that a new river had formed between me and home, flooding more than one lane of the street and I couldn't tell how deep. When I had steeled myself to cross the stream, there was a moment when I envisioned my car swept away and unable to get traction, but then I was across and a moment later was parked and walking inside. My mother greeted me at the door and mentioned that she had been clearing debris from the storm drains to lessen the flooding, but apparently more debris had collected since then and the rain was still falling. I put on hold my plans to change my clothes and settle in to bed, and instead went back outside, rake in hand, to clear the drains again.

I spent the next half hour wading from drain to drain for three blocks, putting my arm elbow-deep into the opaque water to clear leaves, branches, and other debris that had washed down the gutter from downed trees to the west of us. A neighbor joined in, and we traded sympathy and encouragement while coordinating our efforts. Twice the streetlights flickered or went dark above our heads while we blindly groped in the rushing water. Cars continued speeding down the road, but one man in a pickup truck managed to slow down long enough to shout "You're fucking crazy!"

When I could no longer see any massive flooding, I made my way back, re-clearing the drains I saw on the way that had already accumulated more leaves and sticks. But I was seeing and hearing sirens, and wanted to change out of my pants that were soaked to the knee. I could have done more.

Voyage to Earth

Starting four weeks from now on June 1st, I'll be starting a science fiction serial; one chapter a week will be posted on http://voyagetoearth.blogspot.com/ on Tuesdays.

This story will take place a few hundred years in the future when humans have colonized some of the solar system and made some new friends in the universe. Voyage to Earth chronicles the journey of an interplanetary bus as it transports two crewmembers, an astronomer on the brink of insanity, and a young alien diplomat on a classified mission to Earth. Meanwhile, an interplanetary summit is stalled out as some delegates have become mysteriously silent, and one of the human colonies on Mars is entertaining revolt.

I hope you'll come read the first chapter on June 1st, and if you like what you see then I hope you'll come back each Tuesday for more.

A rough timeline

Two months ago I interviewed for a job I wanted but didn't think I was qualified for. Two weeks after that, I found out my new employer thought differently, and four years of unemployment ended.

28 days ago I went to my friend Jasen's place to watch Mythbusters. We sat on opposite ends of his couch and contemplated the gap between us, but didn't close it. The following Wednesday I came back, and the Sunday after that we watched the new miniseries "Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking." On that day the gap closed, and six months of solitude ended.

One week ago I fulfilled a promise I made to myself five years ago and saw Faith and the Muse perform live.

Four days ago I joined forces with some close friends and some new acquaintances to celebrate all that is possible, and all that we wish to make possible. I also bought a pair of sandals that I had been searching three years for.

Tomorrow, according to what I've heard, my uncle leaves his wife and children to move in with another woman. He remains my favorite uncle, and his wife, my favorite aunt.

Nine days from now my third godchild is due to be born, but it could be sooner.

Four weeks from now I begin posting a chapter a day of my science fiction novel (more on this later).

Two months and six days from now, two of my best friends are getting married to each other, and more than three years of planning will come to fruition.

***

Life is governed, it seems, by the principle of punctuated equilibrium. Change is slow and arduous but inevitable; our solitudes and our personal famines last excruciatingly long and then, in a moment so fast and unexpected it hardly reaches our notice sometimes, they're gone in the flood of new direction. Sometimes it seems you need only close your eyes for a moment and you wake up in another life, an unfamiliar one, one you never expected and never hoped for oftentimes only because you didn't know it was possible. And then, sometimes before we even notice that it's happening, we habituate to it and begin to think that it was always this way, just as a river that bends so slowly that it appears to be straight until viewed from above.

Where is the river going?

The effects of having a job

As I keep forgetting to inform whatever segment of the population who reads this blog but not my twitter, and also that I don't ever see in person or email or chat with, my job search is at an end (at least until Autumn). I'm now a seasonal employee at the Cleveland Metroparks, member of the invasive plant strike team, which means I get to spend my days in the woods killing weeds. (I would be doing that right now, except it's raining. Outdoor work is like that sometimes.) Midway through my third week, I still believe that I have the best job ever.

Not having had a regular job before, I'm noticing some interesting effects. One is that the blog entry I had intended to write yesterday never got written, because I came up with the idea right before leaving for work and by the end of the day was too tired to write more than a few paragraphs. By the time I started working on it today, I had lost interest in what I was going to say, which is understandable because it wasn't terribly important anyway. So I deleted what I had written and started writing about my job instead.

This is fascinating to me, because for the first time I'm having to make an effort to manage my time. Trying to predict when I will be hungry, when I will be tired, when I will be home, when I will be able to put gas in the car - all this was much less complicated when my schedule consisted of "eat when you're hungry, sleep when you're tired, and just try to get out of the house at least once a day so you don't go crazy." It's an adjustment I'm glad to make, since with it comes the joy of occupying my time with something worthwhile, getting plenty of exercise in the course of my regular workday, and meeting new people who share some of my values and interests. All this and I get paid too.

The jury's still out on how much this will affect my various writing projects, but so far they're still progressing, just a bit more slowly. I'll tentatively say that my sci-fi novel, Voyage to Earth, is going to start going online in late May/early June, updating with one chapter a week, probably Tuesdays. In the meantime I might be working on some short stories, which I may post here.

More later on subjects such as poetry, philosophy, art, and alien invasions. Peace out y'all.

On confidence and planning for the unexpected

Many developments have taken place since last April, but overall the situation is largely unchanged. As usual, I've been searching for a job and have a few good prospects on the horizon (including an interview next week). I'm starting to ramp up my efforts to get poetry published, and working on a couple of different fiction projects.

One fiction project is a sci-fi novel, first in a possible series. People have expressed an interest in reading the story in installments, and so I am going to attempt to post one chapter a week starting in a month or two. If you're interested in interspecies diplomacy, the Kuiper belt, Martian politics, and the personal lives of long-distance bus drivers, then be sure to keep an eye out for that (and I'll be sure to let everyone know as soon as I've thought of a title).

I'm also entertaining the notion of self-publishing a poetry collection; if so, I will be using this blog and my twitter account (username: pickletomboy) to promote it and report any developments.

The Acoustic Aesthetic

In this entry I'll be discussing music, using lots of words whose meanings I'm not entirely sure of, not having had much formal education in music. Just so you know, I'm no expert, though I sometimes act like I think I'm one.

The latest addition to my music collection, and the last one I plan to get in a very long while, is Vienna Teng's superb new album Inland Territory. I greatly looked forward to its release, and was certainly not disappointed, as it's by far her best album - and as her first three are fair contenders for my favorite music ever, that's saying quite a bit.

From the beginning I felt somewhat ambivalent about the second track, White Light. Not for any reason I could name at first; the lyrics, as always, are well-crafted and thoughtful (one of the reasons I adore Vienna Teng), and there's nothing specific about the music that bothered me, except a vague sense that it didn't quite capture my interest. After several listenings, I judged that I felt it was a bit over-produced - too much had been done to it, too many electronic elements, making it seem almost like techno. After more thought, I decided that White Light reminded me specifically of Madonna's Ray Of Light, which I hadn't heard in almost a decade. Though I used to like that song (not well enough to buy it, but well enough), I do not remember it fondly. I remember it as being over-produced, and overrated, possibly because of Madonna's massive popularity. It's also possible that I don't like to be reminded of what I was like in my early teen years, when I listened to such music.

Interestingly, I'm actually fond of some techno music, though in the past few years I've mostly left that behind in favor of more folk-style, acoustic tastes (and, of course, heavy metal). For instance, I still enjoy a techno song from my past, I'll Fly With You, which is very over-produced. And another Inland Territory song, Stray Italian Greyhound, also has a few electronic sounds in it, which I think add to its appeal. Yet White Light wasn't appealing to me.

Today, then, I received an email from Amazon saying that, since I had pre-ordered Inland Territory from them, I was eligible to download a promotional "free exclusive MP3" - White Light, the acoustic version. I was immediately intrigued, and curious what it would sound like - would I like it? After all, I actively disliked Faith and the Muse's song Annwyn Beneath The Waves, until I heard an acoustic version of that song and instantly fell in love. Might the same thing happen again?

Well, I downloaded the acoustic White Light, and though it wasn't love-at-first-note like it was with Annwyn, I did enjoy it much more than the album version. And, after listening to it a few times, I could listen to the album version and enjoy it, because it reminded me of the acoustic version.

I find all of this extraordinarily interesting.

And it became wild

Today I took the train into the city and walked past the prison. Around that prison was a fence, and atop that fence was a ring of barbed wire, and also a robin. It was singing so sweetly as to turn the fence into a bough, and the wire's barbs into spring leaf-buds. Its song compelled me stand and free myself from the city and its noises.

That's why I was late for class.