notebook / @tww

The Jorkie and her patio.

In which my mother’s cat meets Kirby for the first time.

Sunday.

It’s taken a long time – too long, probably – to find my note-taking method, but I’ve found it: Fisher Space pen scribbles in cheap spiral memo pads in a cheap memo spiral pad holder jotted down on the day’s run and throughout the day’s non-writing hours.

This is my brain – and now there are two (though only one is in use, as is usually the case).

Story being: late last week, after returning from a visit with my grandfather – where I made him an addict of the work of both Wallace Stroby and Alison Gaylin – I received a text from him (this grandfather being the internet junkie – I don’t talk about what we’re watching via streaming until we’re finished because he’ll binge the damn thing and finish it before we can – and technophile; the other being a technophobe who, in rare moments of actionable peturbation, writes letters of dissatisfaction to catalogs – and, more often than not, gets results): I had left my beloved cheap memo pad holder on the front porch.

When I arrived an hour or so later, give or take, to retrieve my illegible brain, he handed me the memo pad, but it had, in the interregnum, grown: he had filled it with a new pad, a fresh one – as he had extras, he told me – because he figured I could use it.

And maybe, one day, I will – but not now, not yet: that night, I ordered another memo pad holder (same as the old memo pad holder) and, upon its arrival, filled it with my cheap memo pads for the recording of cheap thoughts; the original, with its grandfather–gifted extra memo pad remains, for now – and in full defiance of his original purpose of gifting – just as he returned it to me: blank, fresh, and unblemished with my illegible brainmatter: a tactile memory of a thoughtful kindness from the man who granted me not only my love of classic film (and books and music and…) as a child, but, now, as I near 40, the gift of a cheap memo pad, again and always encouraging my path in ways large and small – but in ways always great.

Never underestimate the value of a “kind things people have said about your work” folder.

Memorial Day weekend and the furnace is on. Not sure if there’s anything else to be said about that.

Watching: PORT OF CALL (1948), dir. Ingmar Bergman.

Love my morning posting routine but it needs to change: hate rushing about, especially when I’m trying to write things of quality and longevity in the large blocks, so decided to give this post-run, postprandial time slot a try.

Thinking being that I can write these in my head on the day’s run (give me something to think about during) and translate them, assuming I can read what I wrote on the notepad, into a digital self-offering of questionably quality in the minutes before the day’s non-writing work begins, a little shut-down ritual for what passes for my brain, sharing goings-on about my surrounding environs.

On that: changing my running route as another untended dog ran across the highway to bark at me and I refuse to have a dog getting hit by a car on my conscience, no matter how useless and negligent their humans may be. Plus, downtown’s become an even more depressing place since that local convenience mart / gas station franchise tore down the mom and pop grocery a couple years back and continued their malignant spread throughout the area, turning small towns into highway pit stops.

I’ve long been attempting to force myself into writing in my journal after lunch, after the run; perhaps this is the way I accomplish that.

Yes, yes, I think it is; farewell, morning posting, hello postprandial.

P.S. I love Bear.

EarBliss, 29may2021: VULTURE PRINCE, by Arooj Aftab.

Early morning (0400 instead of my usual 0430) wake up call thanks to a certain large and growing puppy’s intestinal woes. He’s doing fine, up to his usual routine of pre-breakfast Jorkie harassment while I write this dispatch to the void. We increased his food yesterday - a bit too quickly, it would seem. Scale back, move on, keep the Lysol at ready.

Giving Bear its first in-the-wilds of morning Informalities testing this morning (and what better way to do so via remarks on puppy intestinal woes): So far, I like it quite a bit - though I do miss Drafts’s “Send to Micro.blog” capabilities; that said, as much as I liked using Drafts over the last year, it was a bit too much for my needs.

(Is there a way to publish directly to Micro via Bear? I know there’s a lot I’ve yet to discover at this early stage of our scrivenly bonding…)

Getting somewhere on that first short story release. Thinking I’ll move up its release to the second week of June so I don’t have too much time to fuck it up.

The day’s adventures - probably lawncare - await.

EarBliss, 28may2021: OUTSIDE CHILD, by Allison Russell.

Giving Bear a try for the first time. Think I like it.

The future of concerts is hybrid, via Axios.

Elizabeth Holmes’ lawyers want to know how often jurors blog, via The Verge.

Final John le Carré novel, Silverview, to be published in October, via The Guardian.

Sharing because this one of my favorite locations in the Yakuza games: Don Quijote opens new sake and sweets stores at Tokyo Station, via SoraNews24.

Barry Windsor-Smith is back: ‘Monsters has been a slow and difficult experience’, via The Guardian.

Rainy afternoon.

Gave this little unweeded garden of thoughtspace a bit of new cover art / logo / whatever over at the main site:

The update to the update being: as Squarespace’s iOS app has become even more nightmarish and sucktacular (I can’t, apparently, write in Markdown now - not that I could at all, as editing a Markdown post there resulted in a cacophony of style breaks and way too much effort spent to change a misspelling), I’ll stick to the daily pieces in this space and leave the main site as a landing platform for stories, podcasts, and large-scale projects. Plus, I need every morning I can get on the Stories and the novella (and TSR). Priorities, priorities…

(Also, I’d rather dedicate my online self to making this thoughtspace something intriguing to myself and my three or four readers.)

German Shepherd puppy-assisted yoga is… a challenge.

ICYMI: featuring new music from Elizabeth Joan Kelly and new words from me, RE/EMERGENCE0003 is now available for a limited time. Very proud of this one.

Raining this morning and for the next few days: Jorkie in full refusal to go outside and get wet mode, hell no we won’t go etc etc.

Updating Informality 0001 (read: plans have changed thanks to reality): THE GROUND LOOP mini-pod is on hiatus; weekly essays - Informalities - will appear on either Sunday or Wednesday (if I include an audio component to these Informalities, they’ll probably land on Wednesday; if not, Sunday) at the main site while daily posts - MicroInformalities - will appear here every day (the writing and posting of these flights of fancy entertaining only to myself grant my morning a sense of conclusion before I head out into the day). Stories page launched yesterday - and I will follow the re/emergence release model, taking each new story down a week before the next one arrives.

Finally figured out what’s been wrong - I think - and am moving forward with the solution. More when I know it.

With dog-child.

Reading:

Added a new Stories section to Parenthetical Recluse. Aiming for the first one to arrive, newsletter-exclusive, next month.

Micro-sages: is there a way to include a link to my newsletter sign-up in the nav (About / Archive / etc) area - or am I better off simply making another page?

Thinking back, thinking through to how I came out of a similar situation years back, and it was - to my recollection - through throwing myself into The Work, through casting off all things non-Work-related percolating in the brain and giving myself up to the sanctuary of the woodshed.

But I’m not certain that The Work is a sanctuary this time or the cause. Operative words the past few days, yesterday in particular: heartbroken, dispirited, and adrift. I haven’t felt this bad - and this close to walking away - since I left music school.

For now, focusing on things I enjoy doing; only moderately surprised that returning to these daily pieces, cultivating this thoughtstream, and turning away from more ephemeral sources of connected anxiety is the first thing that came to mind. Other things: smaller workblocks dedicated to the things within my control spread throughout the long day, ports in the storm of life.

All I can do is do; and so the day begins.