PASSIONATE RATIONS

So, in case you’ve been wondering why my postings of late have been fewer and farther between, it’s because I’m taking a novel-writing course. Writing a novel takes mucho tiempo. So does writing decent blog posts.

Sigh. Wish I could do it all. Since I can’t, I’m going to try and tie these two endeavors together a bit, at least for today.

Writing is really the art of translation, i.e. translating one’s observations into words and then, in the case of a fiction writer, manipulating them into stories. It pays to be vigilant and I’ve recently started to record daily observations as a possible method for mining my own life for material.

What I put down in these lists has not, so far, been big, flashy sorts of observations, because whose life exists at that level all the time, after all?

No. It’s much more mundane stuff. Something as small as “florid-faced pudgy gent with tufts of reddish-gold hair on his earlobe” can make the cut. Whatever strikes me on a given day. Life’s little rations.

Over the last couple of days I have noted the following:

Small-ish man who plasters himself against the farthest wall as I walk by, making me wonder if he’s obsessive-compulsive, or if I’m just smelly.

The spotless cleanliness of the new Puerto Rican bakery I entered for the first time recently, the encased food looking like perfect replicas of food (The pastry, by the way, was excellent. I’ve recently learned that the Puerto Rican community in Springfield—where the bakery is located—is the City’s largest community).

A semi tractor-trailer truck hauling an enormous copper steeple.

The truck in front of that hauling a copper vestibule, presumably to be placed beneath the steeple somewhere.

Yet another truck hauling an enormous black cylinder full of holes, the use of which was decidedly indeterminate. I’ve seen a similar thing at work in a trash-sorting operation (as a tumbler), though.

The view from a platform eight-stories high as I watched two crane operators operate enormous versions of the prize-grabbing claws seen in amusement arcades in a very similar manner to the arcade games. These claws, however, were clutching at and moving several tons of garbage with each grab. (No, I do not spend all my time around garbage. Just some of it.)

Alas, since I’m writing a pre-industrial-revolution fantasy novel, I can’t use much of the above in that story, but perhaps it will all prove useful somewhere…..

One can dream.