On Writing

Funny Things: Like Rain, or Writing Mistakes (Like Too Long of Titles Which Take Up Two Lines, Instead of the Usual One Line, For Most Titles.)   P.S:  Three lines for a title are okay.

Rain is a funny thing.

What is rain? Be it beast, person, or mineral. Surely it is not living, but if this is so then why do we say “It’s raining cats and dogs,” and not ‘it’s raining like cats and dogs?” Of course these cats and dogs could be dead, and even if they were alive before their descent, I’m sure that would no longer be the case for long after a fall from a cloud to the impact with the ground. It’s a long fall… Yet, winter seems to come quick, and last long, but spring, unlike fall, or, I should say autumn…

Rain? Oh right, back to the subject…

Is rain good? Is it bad? Is it indifferent? Is it necessary? Is it wet?

If you faithfully answered, “Who cares” to the above questions, chances are that you won’t read on. So now all that I have to do is figure how many people are going to express that universally common, valid feeling, so that I can determine if I should go on writing. Read on. Right on. Write?

Well, let’s see. A quick review… I started off by saying that rain is a funny thing. That is a pretty catchy thing to start off with, but does it make sense? (I would rather make dollars than sense any day!) I mean, is rain really funny? Have you ever seen anyone looking out a window on a rainy afternoon and laughing hysterically? Has anyone even chuckled politely at rain?  Has rain ever been a punch line? Well, actually I can picture a line for punch, especially if it’s spiked! But who would wait in line for rain? Would even being caught in a rainstorm without an umbrella make anyone giggle?

I bet not.

No, maybe I didn’t get off to such a good start… It isn’t good policy to start off and article with a false statement. It works much better if you slip them in somewhere in the middle. This isn’t political writing but I would at least like it to have the same semblance of deception.

So change the first sentence to “Rain isn’t a funny thing.” There! That’s true enough and still catchy enough to satisfy for an opening. It may not be brilliant, but remember that there aren’t too many who can squeeze water from rocks, and I would rather have rocks upstairs that a totally empty belfry. That would drive me bats!

Then I ended the first paragraph. Should have I have ended it? Yes, I think so; it’s complete by itself. Also I don’t want this article to be run down by long, tiring paragraphs, and especially long sentences which seem to drag on and on and on with no end in sight, making the reader’s eyes water, and wearing down, his or her, which ever the case may be, brain to a point where he or she, again – which ever the case may be – doesn’t feel like reading on, and the whole point is lost and the readers begin to wonder if maybe the keyboards period key is broken, or some possibility such as that, if they are tenacious enough to make it this far, which most people today have the attention span of a teensy-fly, so they probably baled out long ago and are now watching funny videos on You Tube of people falling down, which all tends to draw from the whole message the writer, me, is trying to make, even if it is a worthwhile cause. So I’ll try to stay away from that.

There are many writing problems. I come across them often enough. Because I write them down when I see other writers make them, I totally avoid them.

The worst mistake that I can think of is not necessarily the run-on sentence. The incomplete sentence can also very often get on a person’s nerves, and don’t think that for one minute, or maybe even two, that just because a sentence happens to be extremely long, seeming to run on and on forever with a deluge of words, like standing under a waterfall looking for a drink of water, turning the trusting reader blue without a chance to take a breath (which may actually be the most healthy thing for you). I promise to avoid them, too.

Another thing I try to do is to keep my printer heads clean so that the e’s and o’s are not all colored in. That can also be a great strain of the reader’s eyes. Yes sir, I really try to keep up with my e’s and o’s.

But I guess that as long as the article is interesting and makes sense with a strong ring of truth to it, that either warms his heart or conversely chills his soul, the reader can put up with a few extra long sentences, along with some extra short ones, and maybe even a few colored in spaces. As long as the piece in question draws a solid conclusion and doesn’t just sort of ramble on at the end as if the writer doesn’t exactly know how to end the article. Possibly because there was never any purpose to the whole mess and no final conclusion could be drawn from his work on a day when he really had nothing to say, you may know that I’m a fanfaron, but I don’t like to boast about it. You may feel embarrassed spending your time with no form of remuneration, trying to grasp the meanings of niggling prose scattered throughout. You feel especially obtuse if you went through the trouble of looking up some unmomentous words that he tossed about, because you felt left out in not knowing their meaning. You find no punch line at the end because the writer really had little to say throughout the whole mess of words except a few fragments of thoughts that he never really tied together. Tying ideas together is sometimes like tying your shoes, if the stings are weak, nothing’s going to hold. By the end it becomes obviously clear that these random thoughts could never possibly be joined in a conclusion understandable to anybody, especially the writer.

So as not to do any of the above mentioned I will end this article right here and now and leave you in awe of it.

                                                   Mistakenly yours,

                                                                                                     .                                                                                èim  Uhr

            P.S. Next time I won’t try to write about rain on a sunny day...






South Central Rain                    England Rain?
               Madonna                         Is your reign wet?                             When Wet --- Sing!
   Drops                      ...and Mondays                              whatz dis bout?

Accused

A  C  C  U  S  E  D

                                            

Alone. I fight my way through the crowd. Loneliness engulfs my soul. Like a grain of sand that blows in the breeze, I, a speck of dust that blows amidst snowflakes. A star, buried in the soil. Fallen.

From the heavens to the sewer. From being free, to drowning in the muck of pity and self-loathing.

I, once a king of love, now watch my castles crumble –­ ginger bread, all. My heart eaten by the wicked tongue of deceit. Treachery ate at my bones like a cancer, weakening my resolve, distancing me from my feelings. I am the tree in the forest, strong and true, the one always expected to stand, plummeting to the ground with the most fury when I do fall. Crashing to the forest floor for all to hear.

I look at my surroundings, glancing through the crowd. All gathered to see my disgrace, coming here to jeer at me and mock me in my shame. But no, around me I only see a general contempt as I shove past unsuspecting ants, each in their own world with their own worries, and fears. . . and shames. No one has taken notice of my collapse from grace. At least not here. Here they only know me as another face in the crowd. A rude hand in the back as I push my way past. Rushing, always hurrying. Fast to the top, and fast down. Elevator down. Basement? I never knew there was a place so low. At my height I was only held up by a string, and now the cable has broke.

But no one here cares about my fall -- they're only worried about keeping their own lives level. Still... there is one who cares. If only she didn't love me, even after I have taken all her reasons to love me away. I ripped my love away from her, I tore her in half. Now she hates me. I can understand her hate, for I no longer see the thing in me for her to love. I think that all along I must have been fooling her, for there is nothing in me to love -- I doubt that there ever was. My insides are hollow, filled only with air. Breath can only be held for so long. I exhaled, collapsing -- my world fallen in on me, my insides, or lack there of, are exposed. It has been a trick of mine, pretending to be descent. I think that maybe she stills loves the memory of that trick.

I even imagine she would take me back. She loves scum, and I love a fool.

How can I go home to face her when I can't even look myself in the mirror? How can we act as if nothing's happened? How can I put her through the torture of seeing me day after day, knowing of my evilness? How can I face those eyes that will drill holes through my skull with a look of humiliation and betrayal?

I wish she could live without me, I know she would be better off, but I don't think that she's strong enough to turn me away. And God knows that I'm not resilient enough to walk away and have to start allover again. What would be the use? When a seed is rotten, it doesn't help to replant it in new soil. Its only salvation is to be thrown out.

I wish to be strong enough to face her, one last time, to tell her that I love her and that my errors are no reflection on her, but I know I am weak. Much too weak to face myself morning after morning. Much too fragile to take the pain.

But as my elevator of the inside has crashed to the basement of my soul, the "ding" tells me that I have reached the top floor in the "real" elevator.

From the elevator it's a quick exit out to where I can feel the wind at my face. I look down from the rooftop to see the ants below, the ants that I had, just minutes ago, fought my way through, the ones that looked at me indifferently, that didn't know my sins, that wouldn't have cared anyway. I long to make them recognize my pain by landing before their uncaring eyes, but I know that even as I lay at their feet, they will merely step over me, hurrying through their insignificant lives.

There is only one who will care.

There is only one who has cared. Only one who can be hurt by my erroneous ways. Only one brave enough to face the truth, still look me in the eye, and accept me for what I am. I know she careingly waits for me now. Patiently awaiting my return, even after she had every right to throw me out. My reaction to her discovery and confrontation only further proved my cowardice as I walked away without an explanation or apology. She never imagines the hurt that comes from loving me; she never sees it corning. For my truth is a horrible truth of lies and deceit. She gave me her heart, and I thoughtlessly broke it, and now on the edge of reality, the ledge of life, with the wind at my back, I plan to throw it away. Forever.

So to save pain, I will hurt her again. I know it will destroy her. She doesn't deserve to be hurt, and I don't deserve an easy release. The path of least resistance has always been the preferable way for me, and even now, as the wind coaxes me out over the ledge, it is the toughest thing I have ever done to step back.

"I'm home." I know that my shaky voice can be heard by one who was been waiting.

        She enters the room after a moment. "So where have you been?" She looks at me with accusing eyes.

T h e    E n d .

Video                           Video2

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Bad Breath

B A D    B R E A T H

Take a breath. Make it a deep, long breath ... Now try it without coughing. Do it again. And again. See that? I bet I got you to do that for the rest of your life now. Breathing is a habit that is hard to break, and now you're hooked!

Why do we breathe? I have my own theories.

Breathing is only done when bored. It's a fact. And I'll be the first to prove it. Now think about it, isn't that the only time you have noticed your breathing, when you're thinking about it? Most of the time you don't even think about breathing-- and that's because you're not! People just sit there with nothing to do and they happen to think about breathing, so they start. They take a deep breath, then another, and soon end up gasping for air. But that's only because they are thinking about it. You don't need it!

You can prove it for yourself. Now take your mind off breathing, totally. Think of something else, say… air, for example.

O.K. Ready? One, two three, four, fi… Now stop! Are you breathing? Oh yeah, sure, now you are, because you're thinking about it. But at that second, when your thoughts returned from that other thought to breathing, were you breathing? Think about it. No, of course you weren't. Because there is no need to breathe. It's psychological. It's all in your mind (which at least proves there's something up there amongst the cobwebs.)

I may go down in history for this great realization. This could be more important than my stand against the typewriter companies. I'll be labeled as a genius. Millions will come to hear me speak at Bingo tournaments. My name in all the history books. My picture in coloring books. I may even get an academy award!

Air is stupid anyway. You can’t convince me that it’s in water, because when you take a fish out of water and let him breathe pure air – he dies! So if there was air in water, it would kill him. Who needs it? H20. H20! H20? What a dumb way to spell water. Why can't those crazy scientists be like the rest of us and spell this normally? If the had to write it in symbols couldn't they have at least made it WeT2r. How come air has no chemical symbols, if it did would it be A1R? Where “A” would stand for airline exhaust and “R” would stand for Refried beans.

I guess the reason scientists call water H20 is because of the hydrogen and oxygen in it. Which is another reason I also believe drinking or bathing aren’t good. After all, who wants the impurities of air in the forms of hydrogen and oxygen creatures to climb all over them or even to enter into their system? I think the hydrogen creatures are more neutral in and upon the system – it’s definitely the oxygen creatures that are the worst. Just breathe once and, before you know it, you have millions of oxygen creatures crawling around inside you. The hydrogen creatures aren't quite as bad, they pretty well stay put. But you have to watch those little oxygen buggers, they're so restless! Oxygen creatures breed faster too…

It’s a new-age fallacy that we have to breath. You have all those gurus out there trying to teach you to breathe – that’s because you don’t – not unless you’re thinking about it. So many charge you to teach you how to breathe, I think it would be money better spent to learn how not to breathe. Free yourself from your unnecessary addictions!

When you weigh the validity of this axiom please do not consider the source, just try to pretend that someone half sane is putting forth this idea. Remember, as Don Marquis once said:

"An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe in it."

Changing the subject, without deferring far from the original idea of this article, I wanted to answer a common type of letter I'm always getting. People from all over the world write to me and complain (usually at the end of their long, complementary letter). I figure they suppose they must throw in one complaint, because if their letters were all complementary then they would seem false praise and not be taken sincerely. The one, and only, complaint  by the adoring public is that my articles are always too serious. They are tired of crying and gnashing their teeth. It is said I should try to show the lighter side of my meaningful topics. Even though I take my writing very seriously, I think it is also important to comply with the wishes and whims of my readers even if it's something that I feel ruins the article.

So, in cooperation with the whims of my readers, in my never-ending attempt to be everything to everybody, I would like to cover not only the heavy, deep side of my topics, but also the lighter side. I would like to show that I can be light headed as well as hard. This is the first article I am to attempt this endeavor. If it goes well, and has a good response and makes me a lot of money, who knows, I may sellout many times in the future ...

So, on the lighter side of… hmmm. What was I talking about earlier? What was the purpose of this article? You don't remember either, huh? Or possibly you never knew! Well, let us just turn back a bit. No, I promise you don't have to reread it.

Oh yea! I was talking about air and all its advantages. So…!

On the lighter side of air -------------------------- Helium!

                                          Thinking (lightly) of You,

                                     èim  Uhr

P.S: HaH! I caught you not breathing again!

But, proving that you are a hopeless creature

of habit, I bet you started again as soon as I

brought it up again. This concludes another

one of my breathtaking articles .............................. gasp …

____________________________________________________________

Girl in a bubble.

Catch her breath.                Breathe in Breathe out...

                                             Do machines breathe?

Breathing in cement

Babbling Stream of Words

BABBLING STREAM OF WORDS

It's raining out. Not really, but I feel like writing about rain again. Rain is a funny thing. Really! I've never thought about it before-- yes it's true I have written about it, but I didn't think about it -- but it really is. I may not stand on street corners watching the rain roll down my nose and laugh hysterically, but I do chuckle at it every now-and-then. My smile is my umbrella and the clouds are my raincoat (though I sometimes feel like the emperor in "The Emperor's New Clothes.") I have sunken so low at this point that when I sneeze it rains in China.

Even if it wasn't raining out (which it isn't) I could write about rain (which I am) and prove to everyone how diversified I am (here's your proof).

I am a great writer…

So good in the clutch…

A miracle worker say some…

When all seems to be lost, at that moment when the sky's at it's darkest, the breath comes in spurts, when the rabbit first awakens in the middle of the race, afraid to look ahead at the progress of the turtle as the sun sets behind him… a miracle occurs! The turtle, having taken a wrong turn, is calling from Toledo…

Miracles have saved many a fairy tail. Miracles have (believe it or not) supplied the Bible with many of its stories.

But what is a miracle?

Who cares?

I was planning on going on and on about how loosely the word miracle is used today. That how, at one time, a miracle could only be performed by God, and not the 2030 Cleveland Indians.

But who really cares?

I reached a point now where I have became sure that all the readers will find this all terribly boring. This is unusual, indeed. No, not that I have discovered this to be boring, but that I discovered it to be boring before the end is what is unusual. If I got bored even before writing it, why should I wish to succumb my readers to such misery?

Wentworth Dillon once said,               

   "Words once spoken, can never be recalled."

And that is true even with the written word, my readers don't recall what I've written seconds after reading it.

Believe me, this was not going to be one of my better pieces.

But it certainly isn't one of my worst, because at least this time, I had sense enough to stop my babbling.

Do you realize the countless other times I have babbled on without having the willpower to put down my pen and go to bed?

If there is a heaven, for my sake let's hope that God isn't a writing critic. I tell you it must have been a fool who said, "The ignorant are without sin!"

While preaching in my writing that ignorance is bliss, my critics, upon receiving my latest article, say "Oh no, the ignoramus is babbling again!"

If I weren’t so smart, I’d agree I was stupid. But if I’m as dumb as they all say, how come I’m not dumb enough to get caught up in believing that I’m not smart?

Just because no one understands what I’m saying it doesn’t mean that what I’m saying is of no importance. Mark Twain knows how I feel:

"In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French;

I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language."

One person can look at a glass and remark that it’s half full. Meanwhile his friend comes into the room and drinks the glass of milk without ever noticing how full it was.

The second person may not be too observant, but at least he is unlikely to be malnutritioned.

That’s the whole point of life; Some people go through life taking note of unimportant trivialities calling themselves smart, while others go through life blind and fat. I strive for that middle ground, proving it can be reached by being the perfect combination, being skinny and dumb; while thinking I’m smart and well built.

Remember, everyone is someone else’s person. Isn’t everyone constantly trying to be like someone else’s version of themselves? Don’t you wish that just once you could please everyone at once? God knows I have tried many times. Even in my writing, after all isn’t it a little bit of everything and a lot of nothing?

O.K. I’II admit it, I’m no genius. But I’m not dumb! Average? No, I’m well above average. So what? – Most people are!

I am smart, but not a stand out. (There is a neat word play possibility with "stand out", "outstanding", and "out… standing in the rain," but I can't find it.)

I graduated at the bottom half of the top half of the class. Though I’m above average intelligence (at least that’s what I tell myself all the time), I was never given a chance to feel superior to anybody, or to gloat for even a little while. They made sure I was placed with students smarter than me, so I would spend my whole life at school feeling like a dummy. I never did anything to them. They must have just picked me out as one of the kids not to like from the start. It wasn’t anything I did. Honest.

I was born under the unusual sign of "take the pitch." So every single time, I just stand there watching that third strike float across the plate.

"Words of the wise" are just a dumbbells disguise. "People in the know" are 1% knowledge and 99% show. It’s true, no words make anyone wise, it’s thoughts and the diversities therein that breed genius. People who are really "in the know" know enough not to say so. There is always someone else who knows more on one subject or another. All it means is that the "public genius" is good at show, and has found his particular nitch.

There are numerous ways to use and abuse knowledge. Knowledge is a handy but sometimes dangerous tool, and can be used by the good or cruel, but is most deadly when it falls into the hand of the fool.

"Grace is given of God, but knowledge is bought in the market."—Arthur Hugh Clough.

So as clouds form in the sky to bring rain down upon the land, forming pools and eventually rivers that lead to oceans and lakes, that support and make possible the miracle of life in the form of fish which eventually will and has led to the development of land animals on a long string in the evolutionary process which leads to man, and which will, no doubt, someday lead right past him. So as the river flows past, so too babbling stream of words must also end.

Before I part (dry up) I would like to say one thing that does make sense. Of course it’s not from me, rather a quote from a man who knew how to make sense, even on Mondays and rainy days, Andrew Lang:

"He uses statistics as a drunken

man uses lampposts — for support

rather than illumination." –– Lang.

                                                   Supportingly Sober,

                                                            èim Uhr

P.S. A drop of rain, a miracle?

       … or the neighbors sprinkler? …

What makes you think of sleep more, my writing or this video?

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From the archives... "What's next?"

WHAT'S NEXT ?

I'm not sure I will ever write another word again…

After years of rolling dice and drawing lots, of struggling with characters and plots, to just trying to think of something that I haven't already said, I just may shut my mind off and go to bed.

Starting approximately ten years ago with cartoons and puns, I realized I couldn't draw, and grew bored with tangled verse. I dropped the comics all together, or maybe they evolved into the never-ending scribbles present on every single long land first draft I have ever written on any topic. The puns turned to poems and satirical verse. I envisioned many of the poems with music set to them, to someday be heard on the radio, although I can't write music. Eventually, I realized it was all for naught, they would never be set to music because, despite my "long piano fingers," I was never musically inclined. Though I hummed the melodies in my head and pictured each instrument flowing with the words, I knew all along that I lacked the know-how to make other people understand. So I set my poems aside for a day when I finally decide to take advantage of my "long piano fingers." Someday I'll take lessons ... someday.

In my search to find ways to waste ink I described imaginary battles and football games on paper. I ran in literary circles just to help me jog my memory.

Then a thought occurred to me, "Wouldn't it be nice to be an author?" As you can probably summise, with a fulfilling writing background such as I have described, this was not quite the perfect stage in ones career to sit down to write his first best selling novel. It is often said that a person’s first novel can never be expected to be a best-seller, but I would like to see the one who sits down at the typewriter with the intentions or dreams of doing anything less. It started off easy, even though afterward no one seemed to understand that the first chapter really wasn't part of the main story. It was just sort of a symbolic recapping of life up until the beginning. At least I knew the format I wanted the book to follow. After all, doesn't everyone attempt to write their first novel in the style as their favorite book? At least I could see the similarities between "A Mixture of Men and Martians" and Ray Bradbury's "Martian Chronicles. "It was set off in the same type of short, distantly related chapters. A Mixture of Men and Martians isn't so clearly defined in years as Mr. Bradbury's work of art, but it does contain progressively timed stories about different, unrelated people and places as the Earth nears destruction with Mars left as the only sanctuary.

The length of the book grew as I fought to fill empty pages. But I soon found it exasperating to try to bring in new situations and characters into each new chapter while making the whole thing evolve and show some sort of time lapse from chapter one to chapter three hundred and ninety-five. Each chapter became fragments of unrelated stories. By the middle of the book I found I could not go on unless I were to ruin the format and start tying things together by using the same characters throughout the rest of the book. I couldn't give up my first attempted work of art without suffering severe mental quirks. So I poured out my cup of sentimentality and ruined the format. One thing I never knew until years after writing A Mixture of Men and Martians" was the Ray Bradbury wrote much of "The Martian Chronicles" as separate short stories, only later to be collected and tied together to form a book.

Every one of the stories from "Martian Chronicles" flowed much more smooth than any part of A Mixture of "Men and Martians" did. Even using the same characters throughout the rest of the way it dragged on to a point where I had no idea what my next word would be, let alone the next chapter. My characters acted at random and dice and lots were common solutions that either led them right or left. I didn't know where I should end it or how. But I just knew that I didn't want it to end too fast and have the world think that I coped out on my first best selling novel, so I did the gallant thing and on and on I forced it.

Then at the point I determined to finally end it, it ran fairly smooth again as I had led from the present state of chaos to the final conclusion. I almost hated to end it ...

The worst of "A Mixture" hadn't yet begun. You see, since I had written all the material out in long hand (and mostly still do) my two fingered "peck typing" is a holocaust after a work of any length. I typed night after night growing bored and irritable, reaching a point near insanity, I had to wrap it up for a while or run the risk of being wrapped up myself for good (I do admit I look lovely in white). I typed it on and off for over a year, keeping any new project as short as possible, making some revisions on "A Mixture" along they way, until I had it done.

Once it was done I put it down without rereading it. Later I would make a feeble attempt at selling it, but basically it stayed in my drawer most of its days. The only thing I learned from it is the kind of thing one learns from a first attempt at something such as this; Mostly, never to write another!

So it was fun for a while with short stories. But after all my "off the top of the head" plots were down I found it hard to dig up new story-lines. So the, at one time, barrage turned to a trickle. I started stories, finished stories; but rarely put the two together and completed one. I had fragments of stories scattered all about. And don't believe when they say these parts of stories and ideas will save for a future time when ideas don't come so readily. "You can sit down with a part of a story you had written long ago and forgot about, and magically the story, which in the past wouldn't work itself out, writes itself."

BULL. Write down ideas to be used at a later time and it might work, but the minute you start the story, either finish it or forget about it, unless you're in the likes of Mark Twain. I find that when I attempt a Mark Twain job I end up with the beginning of one story and the end of another. Mark Twain set stories down for years and came back to write them so that none were aware of the break. Some scholars say they can tell where he took his breaks, but I think these may be mere guesses. I have trouble setting a project down long enough to get a nights rest and not have it suffer for the gap. Many times it turns into a whole new story, leaving me to wonder where it would have ended up had I finished it on that first night.

I hope that someday my beginning fragments will equal my ending fragments. I have already planned on that glorious day I shall put them all in two bins, separating beginnings from endings, and draw one of each out at random and mail the resulting stories to my favorite editor. No SASE will be included.

At one point in history it dawned on me that what I needed was a way to air my fragments of thought, thus came the article writing. Maybe it would be possible to restrain my fragments to articles and finally get them out of my system, so I would be able to complete a few stories.

This article writing was something new, fun, allowing me to be my usual cynical self. It also led to my taking a first shot at serious science writing. Actually, I can't say for sure if I started "Born With a Bang" before or after my articulate writing, but they are closely related and one was bound to lead to the other. "Born With a Bang" was a pleasure to write. It was probably the most unique writing experience I have ever had. Even though most of it was common knowledge to anything even close to a scientist and could be found more clearly explained in any of a hundred other sources, I was quite proud of it, in my own insignificant way. It seemed to me, at least at the time, that I tied everything up a bit better than anything I had read up until it. I can honestly say that I wrote it before I had heard anyone else mention the possibility of the Universe becoming one big black hole in the end. I found afterward that it was just common speculative knowledge, and I did see the possibility mentioned quite a few times after. In that article I tended to boast of it as if it were new knowledge, almost a new discovery.

So "Born with a Bang" has a place in my drawer close to "A Mixture of Men and Martians." It is my drawer that is full of papers, while my wallet is only full of cobwebs.

I have written more articles than anything else (except maybe poems) mostly because they’re so easy to write. It’s not often you get a chance to shoot your mouth off about nothing (see "Thinking of Nothing"). In my articulate writing I can get serious for a moment or two, I can let loose with all my insanities waiting to bust free, I can ramble on, I can change topics in the middle, I go at my own pace, but most of all, I can grow tired of it. It seemed inevitable that I would grow bored with my articulate writing, which I hinted at almost at the start. That’s the magic of them though, I can set them down at any time, but somehow I have the feeling that I will never be able to put them down for good.

But where do I go next? Is it time to set my pen down? Close the drawer on my articles? Is this the last page in my tablet? I can see the headlines now, "Wishy-washy Writer Retires at age 21."

Yep, I’m the first to admit that I’m over the hill. I just wonder if I’ll be able to swim it, cause like the song says; "Over the hill and through the river, to grandmothers house we flow!" …No, that can’t be right…

Ah, we don’t get wet after-all. "Over the river and through the hill, to…" …er, what a dumb song!

Do people actually get paid for writing things like that?

                                                               Sincerely,

èim  Uhr

P.S.   The only question left is WHAT IS NEXT?

Well, after quite a few years I published a novel titled "Touched" so I guess I did continue to write...

Remember youth, though beautiful...

Isn't always well spoken. 

Getting Serious... Or senile?

Getting Serious or Senile?

I haven't written anything for quite a while now. (No, it's not that I'd been sleeping since the last article!) It's not for the lack of trying, but from the lack of heart. Writing no longer seems magical, as it once did when words flowed freely from pen to paper, in a never-ending (almost to the point of rambling) stream. All kidding aside -- and it is -- I used to love to ramble, words appearing like raindrops upon some meaningless subject as readers searched for shelter from the storm. I used to enjoy joking about my rambling on about worthless points and satirical stands. I rambled on about my rambling on to a point where it became obvious as to what I was doing. After all, the best way to prove you're a goof is to stick your finger up your nose while explaining reasons why you're not. A clown who laughs at himself is always laughing the hardest. So I would be a fool to make believe I haven't had fun. I rest my case.

"One loses so many laughs by not laughing at oneself."  —Sara Jennette Duncan.

But sometimes I feel as though I am the only one laughing, or worse yet, I am the only one who can see past the laughs.

J.J. Proctor once said, "There are things of deadly earnest that can only be safely mentioned under cover of a joke."

You see, normally, right about at this point I would start wandering off my subject and interjecting little points-of-fact in. I would drift off slowly, showing only the subtlest of signs of mischief, hopefully bring the reader to the point of a suppressed laugh. But before I give him a chance to let his air out I send a friendly poke in the ribs, worth maybe a giggle or two. That's about where I let loose with all the tactical obscenities I can pour onto the paper. Hopefully, though, before I let it get too out of hand I bring the whole mass of confusion to an abrupt halt. Then, finally I would drop in a clue or two suggesting I was serious.

It was as simple as that – but it was fun. But no more. I haven't written anything past the first two paragraphs in months. It has become work to try to interject new twists into my articles. The absurdities are either so subtle they're true, or so blunt they expose themselves before they're ripe. I have turned to old joke books for material. I have sunk to watching situation comedies on the tube. I set my alarm clock earlier to catch the morning deejays. I search for off the wall material in men's rooms. I watch U-tube endlessly hoping that I can somehow conjure a way to transfer a hit to the groin to paper. I enter crowded women's restrooms hoping to get into a situation I can write about. Funny, no one seems to notice…

It almost seemed to come back to me there for a minute. A flash lit up in my eye, like old times, momentarily. I felt a glimmer of rejuvenation. But the feeling quickly turned like that of the last few gulps of salt water a drowning man can hold before he sinks to the bottom.

My caffeine buzz faded quickly…

Why? Why did this have to happen? Why has my time been so short? My head's growing dizzy and the words are blurred. From tears fogging my eyes, or from frequent hand spasms? – I know not which.

But what causes the well to dry up? Rome to fall? Why this sudden lack of interest in me? Is the effect of the universal tides, changing the number of neutrinos passing through my brain, or is it because the rain has stopped. Yes, that must be it – the climate changed. As a well gets its water through a cycle that brings it from the various sources that are all eventually dependent on rain, so I am also dependent on my sources. If a well isn't replenished from underground rivers and streams because of a lack of needed rainfall to keep up the continuing cycle, that well runs dry. As this process takes place the deserts creep outwards, slowly expanding the drylands. Maybe something similar is happening to me! Creeping forward in a conquering form of entropy.

"How can you write if you can't cry?" –– Ring Lardner.

 How can you have rivers if it doesn't rain?

So where do I get my ideas? Is my head drying up? Should I use a conditioner the next time I shampoo? I do get the ideas for my articles from my head, but I firmly believe that they originate from experience and outside influences by way of people and places I come across. These experiences are developed and nurtured in my head and changed in ways so that I can make the best use of them.

When the truth is changed how can it become other than lies? But I won't let that get in my way.

What I'm about to say may be a bit hard to follow, but seeing I lack the grace to spit it out clearly, do your best to follow my murky reasoning. If I ever spewed out reasoning that wasn't hard to follow I wouldn't be me. And I got to be me, no matter how unfair that is ...

So bare with me… No, That doesn't mean I want you to take off your clothes!

So let's try to set this straight, using the dry well analogy. The final output (article, paper, book, or blog) is the well, and that is what has stopped or went bad. The rain is my experiences, the people I meet and the situations I witness. It is the raw input of the substance that will be fed, filtered and relayed on to become that final paper, article, blog, or book (the well). My brain is the river or stream which directs the intake of the source and sorts out that raw input (rain) and puts it into the well (article), or, in other words, into readable form.

So quite obviously, something has gone wrong with at least one of these important areas, if not more, which is throwing off the whole system making me unable to write.

But where is the malfunction? Is it my river, ahh… I mean brain, that is giving me trouble? Are my brain cells deteriorating in old age? At what age do cobwebs begin to form in the brain? Hopefully, not before thirty! But I'm not sure what the facts are about brain deterioration. So seeing that I don't have the knowledge, or the facts available at this moment to check out this matter and research it properly, I will just let it go.

That the final output is bad (the well is dry) is the only given, so to figure out this equation we must have access to more variables. But I have already shown beyond a reasonable doubt that it is one of two things causing the bad output, and since above I have shown that it is not my brain that is malfunctioning, so then it must be the rain. Rain is a funny thing …

In short (???), it's you that's messed up. I haven't changed, I know I could still write the same intellectually stimulating and witty articles I wrote before, if the people and world around me continued to be different and exciting, changing from day to day. I need new topics to consume and different angles to approach from. Not the same old political rhetoric, or conspiracy theories.

I need stimulation to be able to shed light on a few mysteries of the universe and at the same time to open up new questions that bring about new mysteries. To have new worlds to explore… new comics to head… new hope… new life ... A new article.

So now as we draw our conclusion that it is, in fact, the rain that has turned sour, that the world is sinking into a boring rut, remember what happens to the river when the rain falls no more. It dries up. So at this very second my brain may have shriveled past a point of return, this will also mean an end to the well – my writing. So if the world goes, I go. And if I go, the articles go.

And that… Is a fate worse than Hell! Or at least close…

Oh sure, the world may pick up again in the future. Like when the rain begins after a long dry spell, rivers start anew to fill the well again. But these will be new rivers, young talent will wash away any traces of the old, and I right along with it, leaving only the fossil remnants behind, to be scrutinized, and worse; to be outdated and forgotten.

So if you want to help out an ageing writer (there still remains the possibility that I am old enough for my brain to be deteriorating all by itself), then make the world more exciting again. Be a positive influence around me. Tell me of new ideas, or better yet-- write to me about them. Include new jokes and subtle puns. You know the type of material I use. You know how I write. Then if you see some closely related ideas to what you wrote in one of my future articles you can gloat (but not tell anyone) over the fact that it was you who supplied some of the basic thoughts that led to the construction of a brilliant article. But if you see an article that appears to be exactly the same as what you wrote to me, word for word, pay it no attention, it will probably be just a coincidence.

Or maybe I could leave my basement once in awhile. So if I do decide to crawl out into the light and you should happen to see me in the street, remember to offer words of encouragement, and speak of new, regenerative, hopes.

By the way, it would help if you stand close and speak clearly while talking to me.

Forever Yours,

èim  Uhr

P.S. If you detect a tendency to ramble in

       the above article, please have mercy,

       I'm getting up in years. If the rambling

     should ever get to a point where you feel  

     a violent act coming on, just skip a few

     sentences and hopefully the action will

    pick up again. Thank you for your patience.