My Study of the Art of Fiction

I want to write, but I want to write well. I am not presumptuous or impudent about my abilities. I know I have a lot to learn and much work to do. 

I've tried going to school, but it feels totally absurd at age 60. Everyone assumes you are some kind of pervert trying to meet young men or women. I am 6'3" and a muscular 250 pounds. Are you able to visualize me sitting in a crowded classroom at one of those ridiculous, flimsy little desks, trying to avoid eye contact? Can you picture me sitting there listening to some twenty-something with a Masters Degree, that anyone who shows up and and pays their fees can earn, ask what she believes are thoughtful and penetrating questions to a bunch of distracted, immature and inattentive overgrown children that are only there because it is "required"? No wonder there are so many shootings on college campuses. Not being the violent type, I have always chosen throughout my life to abscond from school when the first convenient opportunity presented itself. It is just not for me. I think I've really felt that way since the fifth grade, which I've always privately thought of as the pinnacle of my education. With the exception of science, it seemed like it was all downhill from there. Obviously this leaves me in a quandary about how to how to acquire and improve my writing skills.

Thankfully I do have other options. I have the myriad resources of the Internet at my disposal. I have two well educated children with Master's degrees that they actually earned from good schools, who have expressed interest in seeing some of my writing. At some point I may get good and prolific enough to seek advise and criticism from other writers. Armed with these resources and a little inspiration and imagination, I think I should just start learning and writing. I am inspired by Dave Grohl's "punk attitude". I heard an interview where he explained how punk music inspired him to make music, not meet anyone' standards or expectations, but simply "because he likes to".

The Illusion

Quantal thinking ... It's the bane of our modern existence. We oversimplify everything. Black and white people, red and blue states; everything reduced to on or off, 1 or 0. Yes the information we store and process in our brains, and more recently in computers, can be reduced to 1's and 0's, but does that accurately reflect reality? Isn't it more likely the result of how our primitive nervous systems work and aren't computers just extensions of our somewhat highly developed ape minds? Does quantal thinking warp our perception?

John Donne said, "No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main". It was more than an apt metaphor. Scientifically a human being is a system, which scienceclarified.com defines as, "any set of interactions that can be set apart mentally from the rest of the universe for the purposes of study, observation and measurement". Within the human system is a collections of subsystems: nervous, circulatory, respiratory, digestive, reproductive, and many others. None of these systems is isolated. An isolated system is one that is sealed off from its environment to the extent that neither matter nor energy can pass through its boundaries, but the fact is that there is no such thing as an isolated system. Some energy and matter always flows between a system and its environment, which includes other systems. Earth comes close to being a closed system, but the earth absorbs energy from the sun and stars and is subject to impacts by asteroids and meteorites. It reflects energy into space and loses hydrogen from one of its four main subsystems, the atmosphere. This exchange and overlap of all systems goes down to the subatomic level.

Quantal thinking became official when the Greeks came up with the idea of the atom. It's name is derived from the Greek word atmos, which means that which can't be split. It was a quantal concept. We now know that atoms can be split and that those subatomic particles can be split further. As our technology improves we keep finding smaller and smaller particles. I believe that will continue as long as our technology allows us to keep splitting matter into smaller and smaller components, because I believe that matter and energy; the entire universe we perceive, is continual. It is all one thing.

Everything we understand and perceive as real is actually connected.

The Path

No matter what I do or where my interests or my job lead me, I find myself wanting to write. This desire comes not from a need for fame or fortune or to share my ideas or values, but from the sheer enjoyment of the act itself. There is something about putting one's thoughts in writing.

It is something I simply relish doing. I suppose in school I was told I was a good writer, but I certainly don't think of myself as above average. I just like doing it.

I am actually inspired by the punk movement. At the time punk was happening I did not understand it. It just sounded like bad rock and roll. As time has passed I have come to appreciate it as a rebellion against the crass commercialism that infected rock and roll during the 1970's. Punk bands didn't care if they were marketable or if people liked their music. In fact they figured that if that were true, their music probably "sucked". That's how I feel about my writing. I don't want to be famous or expect to make any money doing it and I don't care who likes it. 

The impetus for my writing will be like that of the punks of the 1970's. I am going to write just because I like doing it.

Writing

I'm not smart enough or educated enough to be a writer. I'm not talented and I'm too old. As a young man I expressed interest in becoming a writer to someone who actually was a great one. He responded, "You don't write because you want to, you write because you have to. You write because there is nothing else you can do."

I've always had something else to do, but maybe now I've finally reached that place. I feel compelled. I don't care who reads it or who likes it. I don't want anyone to buy it. If by some accident you are reading this, I don't care what you think. I just want to write, no ... I just need to write.

Ghosts

It was cold and foggy early in the morning this time of year, but he was going to walk anyway. The two people that usually accompanied him were otherwise occupied. That didn't deter him, he could move faster walking alone.

The fog was thick, but not as thick as he had seen it before. He could make out faint stars above and the dark shadows of shrubs and trees on the other side of the river. The geese and ducks had already headed south and it was quiet on the water.

As he marched silently through the fog the ghosts of people he had known and people he knew appeared for a time and vanished, as they always seemed to.

His earliest memory of a dream was of walking behind his parents while they were walking side by side in the subway. He couldn't keep up as they got further and further away until vanishing in the darkness of the subway tunnel. They were really gone now and he missed them, especially his father.

People seem to appear to him like apparitions and vanish once they've gotten whatever it was they were after ... like ghosts ... ethereal and illusive. Imaginary?