Clover

After rounding the northwest by bicycle, I left 400 pages of journal entries at a beach home on the Oregon coast with a woman, Anne, who I met outside of a grocery store two months earlier. Her plan was to head south, to Texas, by the summer's end. Passing through, she stopped off at Amarillo to see my mamma, a wonderful woman from New Hampshire, who raised me at conception. Anne took the journals, packed them in a cowhide constructed satchel, and handed them over to my mom for safe keeping. 

Months pass, the journals collect dust, and I grow fervent for a look back. Retelling the story of said trip in conversations, I realized the difficulty in sharing the entire story with what attention span we have, giving me cause, joined with a passion of telling stories, to write a screenplay. Finishing the script, ending as a roman a clef (fancy word for real and fake), I knew that a detailed narrative was in order; at least as a source for future projects. 

After many calls of reminder to my mom, days of shipping, and hours waiting outside for the mailman: I unwrapped a postal pack of said satchel with a smell of worn leather. The first order of business was to scan hundreds of journal entries to guide the retelling and interweave as reference for weight. Months later, hours of writing alone in the basement, and 348 handwritten notebook pages later: the rough draft was finished. In the span of one month, two hours of transcribing chicken scratch, and 75,000 words of Times New Roman later: the first was complete.

Jotted below the machine-generated signature of the editor was this mot: "Not bad, but PUFFY. You need to revise for length. Formula: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft – 10%. Good luck." 

                  - Stephen King

Thanks to an engineer friend, with hundreds of free prints left on his account at Oregon State, I printed the book in single space to 152 pages. Taking a red ink pen, I read the entire book in two days (ten hours), making a glide of corrections as I went.

As of now, I am halfway through trimming down the book, ready to be done so that I can put it down for awhile while I finish up a fiction story I have been wanting to finish for three years. That book, an adventure story, is six thousand words into its rough draft. Hint: www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJdWneTeiAM

Some people live their lives as if nothing good will be the end result.

They live without deep intention, and only for the shallow moments that pass as wind does in the dark moments of the night's hour.

As I must confess, that I once lived this way:

The way of the aging,

I am now forever indebted to the newly constructed constellation in the sky.

I no longer live without a purpose.

In being, there is truth.

In truth, there is life.

Forever in unison,

You will never be alone.

Brevity

At 4,000 words written a day, I will have the first typed draft of my book complete by the end of this week, God willing.

Having a vision what a good cover would look like, I am growing my hair and beard out to match the grubbiness of my state on the road, watch out.

Due to the season, I haven't been wanting to write like an enlightened man, rather like one with True Grit.

Love.

December's Spring to Life

In passing, 

The splitting flood of daylight cuts my view,

 Seeing her watch the shadow of buildings come over my leaning look,

 Recalling her past us.

An increasing simmer boils up an emotion, 

"if they cannot control themselves" warms a thin built home.

Letting flames grow,

dancing down every square section of frailty, 

What glory that facade becomes ashes.

Exposed: a burning heart,

That "it is not good for the man to be alone,"

Make him a helper suitable to build for;

Be housed with.

Stare of a scared girl,

Hurt by an exposed heart blown over,

Wide eyes well at golden hour.

Soaking her expression with comfort;

She releases through warm waves of floodgates thrown open,

Quenching a fire she leaves in between us.

She goes home,

We lost it;

Tossed between the season and a calm heart.

Son of Man

Sunday

7:30 am

For reasons to publish, reflection, or rudimentary scribble in cleaning lingual bladder - a story of recollection from living on the road during June of 2013:

In Monroe, Washington, Marilyn (my cat) and I stopped on a concrete footpath that led into a convenience store to dial back and have a smoke (she forsook the latter).
This store coupled as a fuel station; passing of people paying inside, buying snacks, or to the perimeter for a quick drag. 

A young family passes us from the store back to their vehicle, young kids dragging their feet, twisting in a double take to see "is that a cat?!" 

Doors shut, latch opens, nozzle trigger releases, engine starts to hum.

Light footsteps and a brief voice; their son (no older than six), comes over to hand me cash - without fear of confusion or trembling - &c.

[November 9, 2014]

What compelled my sharing of this story, was the study of this occurrence impressing on me about parenting style: to encourage a lifestyle of generosity, along with the obedience of their son in a call to love.

Further than the money, what it could afford, or anything devoid of the like - was the jewel of value that registered longstanding in my existence - a compassion in household and choice to live out generosity in trusting obedience by their son.

At church, last week (November 2), the congregation was challenged to take a portion of cash (given to them), and plant a seed of loving justice by generosity into the community. 

During this telling of story, I was brought to mind the challenge with Church, inspiring me to shine a personal light from an engraved experience at how a seed of generosity grew in the garden of my life.

of Works

Important to writing is reading and listening for ways in learning what not to do from terrible material while grafting quality linguistics of which to cultivate from the best material we have. Reading a Stephen King book about writing: his memoir of the craft, I took from it a place to evade bad books for utilizing time in reading those of quality ("He who walks with the wise grows wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm." - Proverbs 13:20). This morning, after returning A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson before finishing it (188 pages of its 274), I took out Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, an admired classic, in exchange.

By Bill Bryson, the work stung in scattered opinions, a cliff note rambling of historical facts along the crushed vertebrate of plot, itching me to the bone with his childish outlook about being human while he (could have been) sitting at some desk in home with his wife threading her opinions into his patchy story for print at her passing to shower. He, several times, ran off course to a part of him that scratched for words in filling a quota, returning to the back cover synopsis at the very last possible sentence before I should have closed it earlier. This paragraph is counter intuitive, using a myriad of words to conclude that I hate being pulled around in a book by an author with an arrogant typeface.

At the fuel center, my manager, a scholastic collegiate for literature, helped me walk through said issue; him echoing that "classics" (such as Walden, which I finished just before A Walk in the Woods) "spoil us from contemporary works", since awarded classics have been regarded high above others for years.

Becoming a writer (a person who has written a particular text) is not just a gift, it's a commitment to hour long entries that may include a backspace key punch many times. No one who does it can achieve much without writing a lot, drafting, and having to exchange terrible for improvement. That process could never end, but at some point, it has to. Movie editing is considered the final rewrite of a screenplay, when still it could have been done better.

My conclusion: for a focus to grow in telling stories, growing learned, and becoming more at mind than have been; it is my desire to inherit from those works regarded as top tier for the divine improvement associated with what passions have been put into my hear for pursuit. For this time of life, which ticks away, I will run frequent at improvement, at increasing the ability, to shoot arrows at the stars than be scattered about by drawn lines connecting dots of disarray.

Man: Untold

Just 55 five minutes ago ended a straight five day work week at the fuel center, here in Corvallis, Oregon (44.5667° N, 123.2833° W).

Without seeing what application this duty has to my desires in heart, I could forsake mention of the job, other than to tell you how good it feels to be out of there (which it does); though, thanks be to God, I can look at is as helpful in preparing me for my future. Directing on a movie set, you have the leadership to walk with an intimate crew through constructing a scene, while having to discern creative decisions in balance. Without detailing specifics, attending fuel is similar, granting me hope enough to sink my teeth in with passion.

Hours following from here, I'll type more transcribing of a book being written on a bicycle tour I took from Los Angeles (area: Paso Robles, San Luis Obispo, Cal Poly) to Oregon, Idaho, Spokane, Seattle, south to San Francisco, and hitchhiking north into Corvallis. Right now, in it, I'm north of San Francisco at the beginning of my ride (20,000 words in, about one third of the way through its bound totality).

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."

~ Ernest Hemingway

Man of Earth

At the seventeenth hour and its thirteenth minute -

Waking up, though awful in an ache to rise from comfortable sleep with my cat, Marilyn, it is an abounding enjoyment to see another day. Still in youth, growing to "wake up" at life, we know enough now at how fleeting it has proven to be, and what myriad of gifts we are given by the moment it possesses.

Reminding myself of that surges my sensory in coming to its front and typing to you a cleaner outlook of where to write from. My day went well; working from 5:30am until 2:30pm, before sitting down for a time to transcribe my handwritten skeleton of a book into a typed first draft, which is such fun to involve with.

Reworking the journals of my life at a pivotal spot, where I walked from being a boy into more handling personal responsibility, accomplishes a thankfulness for how much God has done in taking something broken and restoring it to His image: outside myself.

Going home now, gathering to rest a hand on Marilyn's belly before coming back to work, tomorrow.


Love &c.,

Caleb

Preface

Sunday, November 2nd, 2014
1:52 pm


The start of this had to begin somewhere.

Inspired for an idea as such began out to lunch with a friend on whose couch I spent my earliest of nights in Corvallis. Most of the writing in this season that has been getting accomplished deals with a book I'm writing, a subject that you'll be painted about in the great rotation of time, save journal entries done by hand in a loft apartment in Oregon I dwell nights at.

In order to demonstrate growth as an author, combined with the mayhem of opening a window for humanity to observe, this blog was born for you to read.

For time of day, I'll let you browse the interweb longer, while I spend the next couple hours typing a book I'm writing about my bicycle trip taken from Los Angeles to Seattle.


With abounding love, &c.

Caleb