Body of Proof & Crazy Soldiers, Revisited

shlomi on March 1, 2013

I don’t have a television or cable, but there are several shows I watch online as “guilty pleasures.” One of them is Body of Proof on ABC. Yes, I know, I know: it’s silly beyond all beliefs; the science is bad, the procedures are insane, and the plots… Well, the plots are the source of this post.

I remember all those horrible movies in the 70’s and 80’s. Crazed Vietnam vets were a wonderful plot card to play. The first two episodes of this show were just new clothes on the old dummy: crazed vets doing crazy things because of what they endured at war, and came home unappreciated, ignored, or discriminated against.

There’s more reason now than before to not just honor, but actively assist the vets in our communities. Many survived injuries to which their counterparts from the 70’s would have succumbed. We have more treatments, and more understanding of, PTSD (from which I suffer).

While shooting scripts need to pull in the target demographics, we need not denigrate military veterans in the process. It’s time the entertainment industry took the easy joke, easy madman, easy antagonist off the eye-level shelf, and put it behind glass. Respect is harder earned, easier lost in our instantaneous communication culture. They risked their lives in their country’s service: let’s give them preferential treatment.

Returning From a Posting Hiatus

shlomi on February 21, 2013

I’ve been working a job, now a job search, and working on some cool software code that’ll debut on this site.

That’s come at the expense of writing. I’ve done precious little work on Infection (although I made some critical progress on some story arc issues to lock in the longer view). I don’t think I’ve written so few poems in this time frame.

Multi-tasking apparently gets harder as life stress levels rise. Time to take care of priorities: slow down to speed up.

On Focus (Again, and Again, and Again!)

shlomi on June 10, 2012

Six months ago for some reason I had a clearer “plate” for writing. But third rewrites, frantically writing down scraps of ideas for new stories, and working on what is turning out to be a monumental task for a simple thing (Google Charts embedded in WordPress, with data updates), plus the flotsam and jetsam of life’s issues, had made for a plate of raw squid tentacles (calamari, for those trying to keep with the metaphor) entangled with angel hair pasta, glued together in a sauce of lost time and chores.

And on my ride to work my train buddies ask “how’s the writing going.” It’s about discipline, I want to say. “And if you find mine, please give it back to me.”

So today I finish the rewrite of Generation to Generation so I can give it to one LAST reader before getting a {sigh} cover together.

Incidental Writing

shlomi on May 28, 2012

I’ve got a neighbor with a first-person-shooter problem. Well, it’s my problem, but his sub-woofers. I circulated this document to the folks in my building. So far, quiet. Maybe it’s because tomorrow’s Monday… We’ll see.

Still, it’s the kind of letter I’d like to receive if I were the guilty party. A bit funny, very clear in expectations, with just the slightest fillip of consequences. Feel free to distribute, but please don’t charge for this.

 

Appearing at a Drash Pit Near You…

shlomi on May 20, 2012

I’m a regular contributor to Drash Pit, a Jewish webzine composed of snark triggered by Torah. This month’s issue was devoted to “shunning.” My poem is up there, on the DrashPit.com site.

(Oh, and if you like buttons like the one at the right, check out zazzle.co.uk.)

Artwork…

shlomi on May 9, 2012

I do more than write, but don’t have my other site up and ready to sell ceramic artwork. Note to self: create the marketing and sales collateral before telling people about your wares.

Fractal Lists of Things to Do

shlomi on May 6, 2012

I’m drowning under the increasing lists of things to do. To-do items are fractal: each produces subordinate or successor objects, each demanding its time slot, its focus, its ramp-up and ramp-down resources and time.

Apparently it’s good for the writing soul, since I’ve started writing poetry after more than an eight-month hiatus. (Okay, there’s no causal link, but I’m trying to make lemonade here.)

More later — too many people hovering overhead.

Progress, Embarrassment and Poetry

shlomi on May 2, 2012

Great, a P.E.P. talk.

I haven’t written a good, solid poem (first draft, of course) in literally months. I get that way: in going over my record of about 550 poems (the edited, “finished” ones, not drafts or juvenalia) I’ve had gaps of over a year at some points. This seven month gap is the longest  in at least fifteen years. The draft isn’t ready for sharing, but was triggered, the day a car was rammed by a local commuter train, by the smell of creosote warming in the 90+ degree sun off the railroad ties at a train station.

Smells are said to be our strongest memory joggers. What’s irritating to me is that they job the fact that I have a memory, but I can’t remember why that smell is a trigger to remember something. Ah, the joys of incipient senior moments. The creosote was a pervasive smell where I hung out in Riverdale, down past the “jungle,” by the train tracks on the banks of the Hudson River near the NYC/Yonkers border. It was a great place for me to be daring, standing close to the trains as they whipped by: cargo, commuter, passenger… and sometimes the repair trains with their cranes. I remember when they built an overpass so people wouldn’t have to cross the tracks directly. And I remember walking over a tiny, rusted footbridge that was the only way across before it was replaced. I can’t imagine letting my kids go off and do that. And I guess I shouldn’t wonder what my kids have been doing while I haven’t been hovering overhead.

More anon. Sleep, perchance a deep dream, tonight.