FIRST DRAFT OF "VACANT BUILDING" GETS HARD EDIT -- TWO SHORT STORIES DUE FOR PUBLICATION SOON

I imported the scattered episodes of "Windows in a Vacant Building" into Scrivener authoring software to compile them and go through the combined texts with a hard edit. This is my novelette for young people and adults. Some previews of first draft texts are in posts below.
Beautiful thing about the software is the ease with which it lets one merge doc files simply by importing a whole written sequence into an embracing new file without copying and pasting. It just stacks them up in the order one designates. Love it, because usually I write texts in different files and even on different platforms. One can rearrange sequences simply but clicking and dragging along a time line.
Now the revisions and reworkings ...
On another note, my flash fiction piece "Pickpocket" will appear in an online version of the literary magazine Sugar Mule on August 14. My nonfiction short story "Tina's Story of Life and Death in Nicaragua" will appear in Black Earth Institute's About Place Journal this fall, with photos.

ABOUT 'PICKPOCKET' IN NEXT ISSUE OF SUGAR MULE LITERARY MAGAZINE

THE TRUTH DOES NOT SET US FREE ...

THE TRUTH DOES NOT SET US FREE:

The writer of investigative nonfiction, or fiction based on factual occurrences, relies on truth - burdensome because in reality the truth does not set us free.

Two problems:

One, error: What is understood as truth is a result of processing information through perceptions colored by biases and categories, including those one is unaware of (one’s “gaze”).

Two, danger: Even if facts may be as near an approximation as is possible with verifications that support it, their revelation could be so dangerous as to imperil one’s life or freedom, as the global assassination and imprisonment of multitudes of journalists and judicial activists indicates.

What one faces with some “truths” then are the potential perils to one’s freedom and life, and the need to critically examine how one’s gaze possibly distorts the information one considers truth, definite burdens, No?...

I WRITE BECAUSE ...

I write because I am totally puzzled about human existence. Philosophize, we imagine answers or speculations and give them categories that are deemed significant. Scientificize, we use observations, measurements and instruments that depend on the senses that came with our births, and the computer that came with the package, the brain.

I had nothing to do with how this thing called “me” became fashioned and have had a little bit to do with how it developed -- lucky “me” and the 18 billion year old molecules that move in an out of the ensemble I am.

Intriguing in the midst of this: We create stories and muse this way. And others of our kind read, listen to, or watch them. Imagine that.

EPISODE SEGMENT: 'WINDOWS IN A VACANT BUILDING' - In Progress ...

Mother Catherine smiled in amusement when John, Jennelle, Jessie and Jillie showed up outside the homeless shelter’s doorway where she sat in her wheelchair.

“I understand you’re a carpenter, Mr. Jones,” she said. “We just took delivery of a big TV set that was donated. I wonder if you wouldn’t mind putting it up on the wall for us so our older clients can watch programs in the lounge.”

Jillie began tugging at the leash Jennelle held, in the direction of the vacant building.

“I don’t have any tools with me,” John said.

“We have some. It came with a mounting frame that it slips onto. I think it just needs to be screwed into the wall. I’m afraid to ask any of our elderly gents to do it.”

Jillie pulled hard on the leash, drawing Jennelle away from the door.

“It’ll have to be attached to the studs,” John said.

“No doubt,” Mother Catherine replied.

“Probably a drill and screwdriver will do it,” John said. “You have those?”

“Sure do. It looks like Jillie wants to walk a little more.”

John looked over to Jennelle who had her hands full with Jillie’s tugging. Jillie turned and looked at him.

Mr. jones, go inside with Mother Catherine, she transmitted. John shook his head as if he had an impulse he couldn’t fathom..

“You’re right, Mother Catherine,” he replied. “You kids walk with Jillie a little. I’ll install the TV, it won’t take long, and when you come back, we can ask Mother Catherine about the photo album and the house.”

Come on, come on, Jillie signaled to Jennelle. We have to go down to the fourth window. It’s showtime.

“We’ll be right back, Dad,” Jennelle said. “Come on, Jess.”

I’m worried, Jillie, Jennelle thought. I have an odd feeling about this trip.

No fear, Jillie replied.

Inside the shelter, John mounted the flat-screen television near the cable outlet used for the older small set that sat on a table, attached it to the cable outlet, plugged it in, and turned on the set with the remote to check it out. On the screen he could see images of Jennelle, Jesse and Jillie outside a window of the vacant building. The image disappeared then scrambled.

“What on earth!” he said. He turned to look at Mother Catherine. She nodded her head toward the TV screen.

On the screen, the image changed from a view outside the vacant building to a night scene in an urban area where buildings looked partially destroyed. John could see Jennelle, Jesse and Jillie walking toward a group of three children huddled around a small fire close to one building, Jesse looking in all directions, sometimes walking backward, stopping, then catching up with his companions. Jillie appeared to be leading the way.

“What is this?” John demanded. “Where is this view coming from?”

“It’s ‘Pirates of the Caribbean!” an elderly man explained, who seated himself to view the new set. “Ain’t you ever seen that one?”

“Yeah,” said another. “Get out of the way, you’re blocking the view.”

(c) 2013 Wes Rehberg

MIMICKING A DAY'S MEMORY

MIMICKING A DAY’S MEMORY: So, today we delighted in the last couple of breakfast hours with the Grafton, Massachusetts clan, drove back to our cabin wishing we could have stayed longer. I took a ride into Binghamton (NY) to pick up the last section of our kitchen sink’s base cabinets and completed piecing it together, mended the leaks, sealed the countertop, we ate, weary from all that has passed thus far, I washed the dishes in the now installed sink, big single bowl, unfinished oak base front with particle board sides, Lowe’s specials, and we were glad this new convenience finally came into place in our modest cabin and of this day of our days here and the sweet memories of this latest visit.

I write tired yet astonished at the experience we shared these almost two weeks - no time to link up with friends this visit, the work and family kept us traveling and laboring and joining with the extended clans. I miss that important connection.

On our return from Grafton, I read aloud to Eileen from Annie Dillard’s “Teaching a Stone to Talk,” the opening chapter, one I consider a friend to visit with now and then also, “Total Eclipse,” of the sun that is, in Washington state’s Yakima valley, Dillard’s cadences, musings, bold phrasings, stark observations, her lexicons and grammars now part of my physical sensibility. Like typing how news writers write to learn the style, as I did when I first tried to convince a newspaper to hire me and succeeded - learning the phrasings with my fingers.

A mimic seeking a little bit of originality. Thoughts that end without a formal ending. Selah.

TUSCARORA MOUNTAIN MILESTONES ...

EACH LITTLE STEP in our marriage-long Tuscarora Mountain saga on this patch of upstate New York land has been treated like a milestone, beginning with a ride here almost 24 years ago on a motorcycle to camp out a few often rainy days in a small tent.

Our current visit adds a few more little milestones - precious to us as this land is, a land we respect not because we have “title” to it, but because it is part of earth’s formation, and humankind’s history, whose inhabitants, including the Tuscarora Indians, etched it in their own ways.

We know it was logged. We know rural folks cut slabs of bluestone shale from it to eke out a living. The scars and mining formations are evident, even if covered with new growth. There are mounds too that will not be disturbed; let our imaginations play with the mystery they represent.

Even today, when I started to piece together a kitchen sink and countertop from scratch, marked a milestone, the first real kitchen sink for us here in all these years. And Eileen’s painting a new shade of color on our old 24’ x 12’ cabin fashioned from an Amish shed we bought 11 years ago after dwelling on our visits in old basically immobile campers in middle stages of dilapidation, that eventually had to be towed away as junk.

And then the 16’ x 16’ cabin extension with a sleeping loft that we had a contractor build two years ago that provided us with bathroom and kitchen space and - behold - indoor plumbing, with an indoor shower, and the commode and bathroom sink I installed last year, more little milestones.

History with family and friends too and their milestones, some passing from life itself, like we will eventually.

All of this is temporal, which makes it even more precious, as we fashion our story and this part of our lives here, and as it sustains ours and our four rescued pets’ during our time here, as well as our continuing dreams as a creative, mindful, socially and eco-conscious couple.

Milestones, to us, of deepest value.

23 June 2013

FIRST YEAR OF SHORT STORY AND POETRY WRITING ...

From The Faircloth Review and The Rusty Nail

Amazed at this:

I’ve published two poems, and four short stories have been accepted for publication since I started writing fiction and poetry in March last year.

The short stories:

“Scooter” in eFiction Magazine’s issue July 2012

“Halloween Eve 1945” in the Faircloth Review in October 2012

“Pickpocket” upcoming in the Sugar Mule Literary Magazine

“Tina’s Story of Death and Survival in Nicaragua,” upcoming in Black Earth Institute’s About Place Journal. (nonfiction)

The two poems - “Alien Bones” and “Tick Tock” -- appeared in July 2012 issue of The Rusty Nail.

There were rejections, too, especially with poetry.

Issues of eFiction Magazine and The Rusty Nail are available at Amazon.com

ACCEPTED: "TINA'S STORY OF DEATH AND SURVIVAL IN NICARAGUA"

An honor! … My non-fiction short story “Tina's Story of Death and Survival in Nicaragua” has been accepted for publication in the “Earth, Spirit and Society” issue of the About Place Journal published quarterly by the Black Earth Institute.

WILD AUTHOR/PHILOSOPHER FORMULA ...

Versatility + ADD + ENFP + curiosity + rebelliousness = unruly discipline.

So that’s it …

Tested in the context of experience and reality ...

I AS OTHER AND THE NOVELTY OF DERIVING CONCEPTS

I as other and the novelty of deriving concepts

Recouped Gilles Deleuze’s slim but packed “Kant’s Critical Philosophy” from an unruly bookshelf amid basement clutter - and then Eileen found her copy of his and Félix Guattari’s “Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.” Between Deleuze, Whitehead, metaphysics and writing, I’m lost in Rimbaud’s: “I is another” - (cited by Deleuze in “Kant”) - wondering which Other the Other is.

Other hand, it doesn’t matter.

“Each reading of a philosopher, an artist, a writer should be undertaken, [Gilles] Deleuze tells us, in order to provide an impetus for creating new concepts that do not pre-exist (DR vii).... new concepts are derived from others’ works, or old ones are recreated or ‘awakened’, and put to a new service”

“...from Difference and Repetition (1968 DR) trans. Paul Patton (1994: Colombia University Press, New York)”

-- On Gilles Deleuze, in the International Encyclopedia of Philosophy

In Brain Pickings Weekly, Annie Dillard is quoted in “The Writing Life” as supporting and adhering to a regular routine for writing, as are others …

I don’t have that discipline neither for reading nor writing -- I’m all over the place, writing bits here, reading snatches there … her book a favorite ...

DOWN THE METAPHYSICAL RABBIT HOLE ...

Thinking about surveying the difference between Whitehead’s and Deleuze’s metaphysics, but I should probably re-read “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” first …

… and replay “Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” ...

So ...

"Cheshire Puss,' ... 'Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'

'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat. 'I don't much care where—' said Alice.

'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.

'—so long as I get SOMEWHERE,' Alice added as an explanation. 'Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, 'if you only walk long enough.' Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another question. 'What sort of people live about here?'

'In THAT direction,' the Cat said, waving its right paw round, 'lives a Hatter: and in THAT direction,' waving the other paw, 'lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad.'

'But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.

'Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: 'we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'

'How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.

'You must be,' said the Cat, 'or you wouldn't have come here.'

And ..

'Take some more tea,' the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.

'I've had nothing yet,' Alice replied in an offended tone, 'so I can't take more.'

'You mean you can't take LESS,' said the Hatter: 'it's very easy to take MORE than nothing.'

METAPHYSICS AND THE PROBLEM OF SUBJECT-OBJECT DESCRIPTIONS

More on Metaphysics (the problem of the subject-object relationship):

A key problem to me is the “being-in-the-world” understanding (Heidegger’s “Dasein”) as a human, and the relationship with that which may be both of the world and not of it (e.g., God).

In this case, it seems to me to not be the subject-object relationship that Heidegger had a problem with (as I do, too), but a subject-subject one. That is, instead of “I have a relationship with God” (subject-object either way) one says “God and I and the cosmos and whatever is beyond are mutual.”

But even here linguistics constrains because “mutual” as a universal is the predicate of “God and I and the cosmos and whatever is beyond..”

Another way to look at this is what an anthropologist Eileen and I met with in Mexico City described as the linguistic difference displayed by the Cholojobal Mayan indians in Chiapas, Mexico, from the traditional language arrangement we’re accustomed with. To him (he and his wife lived with them for decades) this tribal group did NOT use the subject-cupola-object relationship (e.g. the fence is gray, or, he loves she) but instead uses a subject-subject linguistic in which the verb is dominant (love/he/she/shared). This is hard for us to wrap our minds around. And even now I have to use the subject/object linguistic to describe it.

Still, this latter way of speaking (linguistics) and knowing (epistemology) and being (ontology) is one thing I’m exploring in metaphysics, including how it impacts identity.

 

ROUGH NOTES - SOME METAPHYSIC CATEGORIES ...

From --Stephen Mumford -- “Metaphysics: A very short introduction”

Considerations:

-substances/substratum/ wholes vs aggregates sums/ reductionist (parts explain wholes)/ emergentism (more than sum of parts) holism/

-properties/qualities/re circle-wholly present, runs through the many/Plato’s forms (problem of Form and its relationship to the derivative form-resemblance[also a Form-infinite regress])/instantiating of/Aristotle’s immanent realism/

-particulars/ one and the same e.g./substratum view/bundle view (re properties)/united by degree of continuity/relational/ argument between everything is either properties (bundle e.g) or a particular-particulars/ complex particular (contra atomism)/ is wholly present (Aristotle) endurantism/ perdurantism-in itself no need of relation, succession of static properties/

-changes/ events-processes/ change or loss of property or within a property/ Aristotle- parts in space; parts in time/ (see endurantism-perdurantism in properties)

-causes/ most not all changes need causes (big-bang no)/ causal connection/ Hume-unobservable, part of a pattern/ other world/ Mill’s method of difference (actual/placebo control compare)/ singularism-regularity Hume/ general-particular mixup/

-relationships/relations (vav properties)/via Plato’s forms/

-possibilities/ all actual is possible (mere possibilities)/ shape interaction with world/ concrete possible worlds (like ours in some way) but abstract/ what one could have been/ recombinations/ fiction/ logically possible/ naturally possible/  

-time/ (events/processes) background of/ flows/ in-itself also could mean stops-starts/ need metaphors for/ two methodologies/ spatial analogy: past, present, future properties/ presentism (how long does it last?) (absolute simultaneity vs relativity of position or viewpoint)/ subjective present/ past via present as part of its reality (properties of events?)/ sequence view - past-present in relation temporally/ big-bang chain of events - Aristotelian resemblance/ Platonist- what time did big-bang begin?/ eternalist: past,present, future all real/ now: what past and future don’t have, a POV/

-personal identity/ person: human and nonhuman (Locke)/ quality of/ has a memory/ beliefs that change (or not)/ Wittgenstein’s rope-stand analogy/ Descarte: body and mind parts; relation between spiritual (mind) and physical (body) substance; body as extension/ space occupied by what? impenatrability (solidity) body, spiritual no extension-penatrable/ dualism/ materialism-idealism/ causal interaction between spiritual-physical/ causality question/ a one-one/ memory faulty or delusional/ bodily continuity/

-nothingness/ is nothing something or not?/ absences part of reality/ univocal-it exists or doesn’t/ negative property calculations/ incompatabilities/ causation by absence (of water, say)/ reified absences re properties-particulars-existences/ nothing just a word - nothing in world makes it true/ Russell, negative facts (metaphysical concept of facts)/ everthing existing is positive fact/ assertion-denial/ “if”/ nothing-absence-lacks no part of existence/

-emergence/ particulars emerge at a higher level of reality/ qualities emerge/ how does mind emerge from bodily parts?/ life an emergent quality/ what possible is emergent?/

-Metaphysics/ concerned about nature of things in general terms/ understand fundamental nature of reality/ science truths general and concrete; metaphysical truths general and abstract/ science (physics) based on observable; metaphysics not necessarily so/ Hume dismissed metaphysics/ Kant metaphysics-description of our structure of thinking about the world/ what the world is like/ how concepts that describe world relate to each other/ scientific powers of observation exaggerated/ metaphysics at theoretical end/ what of counterintuitive or contradictory/ (me) observation limited by senses and cognitive powers/ theories based on reasoning alone insufficient/ how know anything is true/ theoretical virtues- gel with other theories, consistent.

ASSERTION AS DIGITAL JOURNALIST

Assertion as Digital journalist:

Because I write and have filmed nonfiction and documentary work I've decided to classify this part of what I do "digital journalism" to assert the protections allowed under shield laws, the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the "reporter's privilege" aligned with the amendment. This includes what I may post from other media sources.

A helpful website in this regard:

http://www.rcfp.org/digital-journalists-legal-guide/sources-and-subpoenas-reporters-privilege

ADRIENNE RICH'S 'SCHOOL' SETS ME FREE

I am feeling so much freedom reading Adrienne Rich this time. What a stimulus to loving language (and thus to write).

Excerpt 1:

“... when fear vacuums out the streets

When the whole town flinches

blood on the undersole thickening to glass

Whoever crosses hunched knees bent

in a contested zone

knows why she does this suicidal thing …”

- Adrienne Rich, from the poem of the same name in “The School Among the Ruins”

Excerpt 2:

"... I need the border-crossing eye of a tornado

I need an ancestor fleeing into Canada
to rampage freedom there or keep on fleeing
to keep on fleeing or invent a genre
to distemper ideology."
-- from the poem “Variations on Lines from a Canadian Poet” in  “The School Among the Ruins”

SUGAR MULE LITERARY MAGAZINE TO PUBLISH "PICKPOCKET"

Sugar Mule Literary Magazine notified me that it will publish my short story “Pickpocket” in its upcoming themed edition “family secrets.” This is the third short fiction story accepted for publication since I started writing fiction last year. The other two: “Halloween Eve 1945” in October’s Faircloth Review and “Scooter” in July’s eFiction Magazine.

'YOUR KINGDOM COME ON EARTH AT IT IS IN HEAVEN..."

I convened and guided the Seekers Class this Sunday morning in church around the day’s topic, the Lord’s Prayer, and challenged some common Christian interpretations as well as Marcus Borg’s more liberal ideological interpretations in his book “Speaking Christian,” the consensus text the group has been working through.

We covered this part of the prayer, presumably taught by Jesus: “Our Father who art in heaven hallowed by your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven …”

* Challenge One: The gender of the holy name - how is it that anyone can adduce from the mystery of a divine a gender and make that gender’s name holy. Christian differences are sharp on the gender question.

* Challenge Two: Why the necessity of “on earth as it is in heaven.” If heaven exists, why is not “earth” created as part of it.

Why the need, thus, to go through struggle at the human level? How could an omnipotent God devise such a cruel separation of two places, one a milieu of pain, violence and injustice contrasted to a place presumably of bliss and peace? Borg is silent on that question and insists “heaven” in the prayer is not about an “afterlife,” his interpretation, which is a speculation, just as conservatives speculate that it does address an “afterlife.” To him, it’s about working for the “kingdom” via justice-efforts for God’s vision and compassionate feeling toward the world.

Really? God’s vision and compassion? Again, what does this say about God.

One theological thought is that God is not omnipotent after all; another, that in order for there to be choice and free well, this was the only way creation could be devised. There are other rationales as well, including one that makes the divine egotistical -- God wants us to choose “him.”

* Challenge Three: “Your kingdom come …” Even if one takes a progressive peace-and-justice on earth understanding of a “coming” worked through by efforts here; or in contrast, one particular conservative understanding that speaks of the “coming” as a “second coming” that lifts humans out of suffering, the word “coming” is operative. Or a third, that speaks of the afterlife in its interpretation that “comes” when we die and will thus be free of misery.

But why a “coming” and the wait, and the necessity to toil as part of the “coming”? Did God choose this way for humanity? To suffer? Again, the question of divine power and intention.

* Challenge Four: Ideological differences among Christians -- how disparate are they when humans amidst these different understandings do similar work among suffering humans (in fact, it might be that conservative Christians do more “kingdom” work among the poor and the disenfranchised on person-to-person levels than liberals, and have a more cooperative communal way to operate and share despite Borg’s assertion that those of this ideology are prone to stress “individualistic” ways of living and understanding the teachings and its promises. I haven’t seen that individualistic stress so pronounced at the ground level where the word “sharing” is noted. Both liberals and conservatives, though, proclaim their ideological bent at times amidst this work, though. Really! Who’s more wrong in the efforts to persuade about an ideology?

* Finally, the person of Jesus as the Christ. What does (my term) “Jesusness” mean in the struggle and the work? If liberation theological Christians say “we are part of Christ and work to foster our liberation from oppression as part of the Christ of the Poor” on the one hand, and conservatives do similar work because they have “accepted Jesus as their Savior” who compels them to do this work, what does the presumed difference mean, or how different is it?

This is a short résumé about the morning hour’s conversation, which was more subtle that I’m able to summarize in this short space.

The Seekers meet Sunday mornings in the basement of St. Luke United Methodist Church in the Stuart Heights section of Chattanooga TN. I get a chance to guide it once in awhile.

FOREBODINGS ...

Going through the news and the lists of news and analyses that come via email and apps is a disheartening but necessary process. Such an intensity of war, violence, expropriation of land and people, violations of human rights, environmental depredation. And the constant propping up of the international economic structure so dependent on consumer behavior when consumer incomes are descending.

And what are so-called “developing world” populations called? -- Emerging markets … For who? For the global economic elite ...

Then, there’s the US war machine and now its government efforts to wedge US fossil fuels into the global market to create a dependency to help counteract its own international economic perils. Plus, the rampant tunnel vision of “first world” consumers even as they’re preyed on.

Forebodings …

Pyramid schemes abound ...

AN EASY SPOT TO SIT AND LET BE AMID THE WOODS AND DISARRAY

Back deck, swallows piecing together a nest in a roof overhang section, carpenter bees flitting and buzzing, squirrel on the bird feeder, Mercury aware and at the screen door, robins feeding on the ground, chickadees and cardinals zipping around, an occasional wasp -- the wasps haven’t stung in years so they must be non-stinging; slightly cool for me, somewhat overcast-sunny day on this half-acre site backing against woods and a power line cut; Spring, Eileen’s gardens sprouting, an easy spot to sit and let be.

Our Chattanooga house is a melange of worn carpeting, the former owners odd taste in wallpaper, Eileen’s paintings and others on the walls, my photographs, too; a mix of furniture styles, some cheap some costly; Eileen’s office (once a spare bedroom) and her studio (once the dining room) with things spread around on tables and floors, my create room (also a spare bedroom) also similarly endowed; a basement with a garage converted into a workshop, shed, bookshelves and storage space with piles of stuff on the concrete floor in disarray, with another bathroom with clothes washer and dryer and old rust-colored tile floor, and a large living space with exercise apparatus, futon, couch, more bookshelves, old computer on the old rug floor, old TV on an end table, my paintings and others on the walls.

Jillie, our other rescued dog, enters the back deck and Mercury, barking, now needs to chase the squirrel vertical and upside down on the bird feeder, both dogs rushing off the back deck. And here I write to the punctuations of a woodpecker, the sounds of bees, bird utterances and barking.