Am I Any Better Than John Lennon?

           I was reading something about blogs and how to make your blog successful.  In fact, I think it was a blog, a quite successful blog, about how to make your blog successful. It reminded me of synthetic CDOs or the morning line on a horse race that only takes place in the shared fantasy life of an evening coterie of racetrack touts swapping lies at a bar.  At any rate, what I learned was that for a blog to succeed, you, the person penning the blog, had to provide your readers with something useful to them in their lives. So, here you go: “Don’t take any wooden nickels;” “Buy low, sell dear,” and keep in mind that at some point “the last will be first and the first last.” I take my cue, here from Sancho Panza’s wife.  Who in literature provided more useful advice that that wise woman?

           Now that I have done all I need to do to make my blog succeed, I can proceed.  I am just now back from the walk I take most evenings.  Recently a jogger was shot down at six AM on a street in my neighborhood. It was, in fact, on one of the streets I use in many of my midnight rambles.  It is a pretty street.

           This happened two weeks ago and out of anxiety emerging from pure cowardice, I found myself choosing other routes.  I did this until tonight when I decided that I could bear it no longer and would walk the route that most appealed to me.  That route took me, of course, right down the street where the shooting occurred.  My first thought in so deciding was “fuck it, I’ve lived long enough anyway.”  Next, I thought of John Lennon, “Am I any better than John Lennon?  If a madman in this gun-crazed culture can arm himself and gun John Lennon down, why should I necessarily avoid that fate.”  Hell, my life is insured, and it’s total vanity to think that the world absolutely needs more of what I am likely to provide, correct?  So why shouldn’t I walk where I fucking please.  I decided that if the worst happened and some dipshit in a new white pickup that I could not even afford decided just for the hell of it to blow away an old guy walking his dog after midnight, I could live with it.  Or at least take no regrets into that mineral blackness of death.

Scorpio

                So I had my walk.  One thing I noticed was Scorpio in the Southern sky.  It is comforting to see Scorpio, full blown in May, just as it is comforting to bear witness to Orion stalking the October skies.  But with Scorpio there is a bonus in that every culture on earth and seemingly every culture to have walked the surface of this planet has recognized Scorpio as a configuration of stars that looks like a scorpion.  Scorpio is one of those Jungian Universal Archetypes, very gratifying to the psyche.  Until humans can regularly gaze on the heavens from a vantage point other than our own, Scorpio will be a human universal, like the sun and moon.  Even better, unlike the sun and moon, Scorpio is a human construction, a universal interpretation of an arrangement of stars.

                Another thing I noticed was that there were bats about, slaying insects in myriad hordes around the streetlights.  I love the animals of the night and the margins.  I love the wild things that cohabit the cities with us, the merciless owls, the vulnerable rabbits (there are tons of rabbits living on the UNM campus just now), the inevitable skunks, and the coyotes which will soon be after the many rabbits at UNM if my prediction holds true.  The city, as far as I’m concerned would be uninhabitable without the animals, even the trash animals, the despised pigeons, the legions of sparrows and starlings, the crows, and even the multitudes of creepy roaches which swarm the streets.  This reminded me, of course, that I love life.

                I remember in one of Frank Zappa’s shows when Zappa addressed the audience thus: “Isn’t it great to be alive?  Yes, it is so fucking great to be alive… And if there is anybody out there who does not believe that it is  fucking great to be alive, they’d better’d go now, because this show is going to bring them down so much.”  Poor Frank Zappa.  Thinking of Frank Zappa, genius that he was, reminds me that I am not too good to die of colon cancer either.  Frank Zappa’s death convinced me that we live in a world that is more arbitrary and unjust than I had hoped.  The fact that Richard Nixon outlived Frank Zappa demonstrated to me that however much we may hope for justice, we cannot expect it.  When I listen to Zappa’s music, especially something like King Kong, I can hear the real and eternal stalking and destroying the unreal and illusory.

                So I came away from my walk convinced that we live in a wonderful and infinitely interesting world and that it is great to be alive.  But like Falstaff, I have heard the chimes at midnight and know, ultimately what their toll means.  And as long as I can walk, I plan to walk where my inclinations take me.

                Cognizant of the urgings to give blog readers something, I will provide a few links:

1)      My facebook Author’s Page

2)      My Amazon Author’s Page

3)      My Literary Promotion Wiki

Read my books, you will not be sorry you did so.  Afterwards, review them on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Goodreads, etc. or at least do the star thing.

On Librivox (a shout-out):

 My plan with this blog is to post about once a week.  The main things I will be exploring will be issues and topics that connect to my fiction, my creative writing.    But I plan to digress as the impulse moves me.  This is a luxury I cannot afford in my fiction.  Digressions are fatuous and self-indulgent.   This is true regardless of the era.  I’m obliged to note, however, that the entire enterprise of creative writing is self-indulgent.   More germane is the fact that modern readers are impatient.  As they read, modern readers are looking for a reason to stop, to move on to the next agenda item.  Digressions are likely to give the reader the excuse he or she needs to put a book down. 

Here I am, Michael the reader, reading along and following the story of a plucky teen mom’s struggle with the medical establishment in behalf of infant twins who have been diagnosed with cancer.  If the writer is skilled, I am hooked into the story and have a stake of some sort in the outcome.  What if this happens - I am reading along and notice that I am deep into a description of the arcane system that a particular hospital uses to keep patient records?  Unless there is a very direct route back to the plucky mom and her sick babies, I will be tempted to put the book down. 

As a writer, I do not want to provide my readers with reasons to stop reading.  So I avoid digressions.  As a modern reader I suspect that writers enjoy and have always enjoyed digressions much more than readers enjoy them.  I may be wrong in this.  I do know that the public has at times showed more tolerance for digression than is the case at present.   But this is irrelevant to anyone writing at this time and I’ve learned that I must ‘stick to the story,’ ‘get to the point,’ and ‘write lean.’

This is so much a matter of course,that I find it difficult to do otherwise in terms of style.  As regards content, however, I should have an easier time.  In this post, for example, I want to give a shout out to Librivox.  I note that the rationale for doing to is pretty tenuous.

Librivox is a website devoted to making audiobooks of public domain works.  The books, already thousands of them are available in several audio formats to download from the website.  Audiobooks, with some exceptions (ie those that are abbreviated versions of the full text of the original work) are wonderful.  Audible is the best known web example of a successful business that provides commercial audiobooks to the market.  I have listened to commercial audiobooks for years and have found  great delights in having someone read to me as I drive long distances, sit in uncomfortable chairs in airports or on airplanes, wait for my turn to struggle with clerks at the MVD, etc.

During the decade of the eighties, I was a long distance runner.  I trained 50 weeks a year and averaged 50 training miles a week.  In the summer I trained on the La Luz trail doing the ascent (I took the tram back down) at least once a week.  This spiraled down starting in 1990 or so with injuries; increased responsibilities; weight gain (and injuries related to weight gain); taking up a more agrarian lifestyle involving animal care and training, dealing with hay, etc.; and more of a hiking, wilderness focus. 

Gradually, I accepted the fact that if I wanted to be free of injuries, I needed to give up the running.  I started doing more walking.  I was living in Socorro at the time and found that I most enjoyed walking at night.  At night it was quiet, peaceful, and cool – even in the hot months of the year.  And I could take our dog or dogs along and not have to worry about encountering horses, other dogs etc.  This was not a cinch, however, because the dogs did find skunks and porcupines more often than was convenient.  Sometimes I listened to music on these walks. When we moved to Albuquerque in 2008 (to be helpful to my old and declining parents).   The night walks became essential to me and one of our dogs – who is so hysterical that he cannot cope with daytime walks.  It was around that time that I began listening to audiobooks on the walks.  Since then, I have taken walks on most nights and listened to audiobooks on most walks

But Librivox audiobooks have delights that transcend the experience of listening to skilled actors or the author himself/herself read good books.  Since 2008, I have probably listened to 500 Librivox audiobooks.   Librivox audiobooks are free and the people that read and produce them are volunteers.  Some of books have one dedicated reader who reads the entire book.  These are exactly like commercial audiobooks except that the readers are unpaid amateurs.

But for me, the deeper delights of Librivox emerge from the books that have multiple readers, each of whom read a chapter or a number of chapters of particular works.  At first this was distracting and seemed to disrupt the unity of the book.  But as I listened to more and more books of this sort, I began to really enjoy them.  One of the amazing aspects of this experience is that it is like the ultimate postmodern (how I shudder at this word) experience.  Take War and Peace, for example.  Tolstoy wrote it between 1861 and 1869. It is set in Russia (mostly) the time of the Napoleonic  wars (1805-1813).

Leo Tolstoy

TheLibrivox audiobook is based on the Louise and Alymar Maude translation into English (1923).  The various readers read in the dialect of English most familiar to them.  So as you listen to the audiobook you hear readers from New Zealand, England, South Carolina, Mombai, Ireland,  Scotland, Pakistan, Holland, New England, California, Texas, Belieze, South Africa, Wales, Jamaica, Quebec, Australia, etc. collaborating in 2007-2011 to read the 1200+ pages of one of the greatest literary works of all time (even Tolstoy hesitated to call it a novel). The Librivox effort involved 134 individual readers , most of whom read multiple chapters (not necessarily in serial order).  These readers mostly did not know one another and never met face to face either with one another or any of the Librivox coordinators or proof-listeners.  The Librivox reading of War and Peace is 77 hours and 6 minutes in length.  In my view, the end product is wonderful, absolutely astonishing.  Admittedly there are gaffes, a couple of the readers did a poor job and in a couple of cases the recordings were less than optimal.  But these were small annoyances in what was for me, a superb literary experience that I plan to repeat.

As I got familiar with Librivox, I started to develop favorite readers, readers I really liked. I then began to do Librivox searches to find the works they had read or participated in. I listened to many of those works and ended up finding and appreciating books that were unfamiliar.  Some of those readers are:  Gesine, Barry Eads, Nicholas Clifford, Lucy Burgoyne, Lee Ann Howlett, Simon Evers, Chip, Debra Lynn, Mil Nicholson, Fr. Richard Ziele, and Jersey City Frankie.  I know that I am missing some of my favorites, but I have not kept records.  Some books are more amenable to production as audiobooks than others.  I have found Librivox a great way to read classics, books I have always meant to read but seemed too formidable or something I just never got to.  I have made some great discoveries through Librivox.  I think the greatest, for me, has been Anthony Trollope, whom I’d never read.  His appeal, for me has been both aesthetic and anthropological – through Trollope, I’ve come to understand some very bizarre English customs (like fox hunting) and the workings of politics in all realms of English life.  I will doubtless refer to Trollope several times as my blog unfolds.

I have been tempted but do not think highly enough of my reading voice, to volunteer.  One spin-off from Librivox for me has been that I learned that several people from Librivox were involved in a company Iambik that produces commercial audiobooks.  I contacted Gesine, one of the Librivox readers involved in the endeavor and the issue is that Iambik is producing the audiobook of my novel Ostrich which should be released around the time (June 1, 2013) that I release the e-book version on Amazon. More on that later, but listen here to the sample first chapter, read by Victoria Scott.

Introduction: The Morning Line

Introduction:

     Ever since I was a little kid, I have been hooked into horse racing.  Raton, New Mexico, had, when I was a child a race track, La Mesa Park.  I went to the races with my Great-grandmother, Molly Killian, nearly every racing day from 1952-1962.

     Most people will wonder why I start the intro. to my blog by maundering off about my childhood at the horse races. Well, I'm getting to that.  I have called the blog "The Morning Line."  This has nothing to do with early rising (I am more of a night person). And it has nothing to do with bracing stimulants one takes to get the old motor going.  

      The Morning Line is a technical term familiar to racetrackers, people that hang out around race tracks. The morning line is the list of horses that will run in the races on a particular day along with the jockeys assigned to the horses.  A track official, the handicapper, assembles the list, organizes it into the twelve races that make up the "card" for the day and assigns the morning line odds on each horse. Obviously, the handicapper must complete the task several days prior to any given race day and programs are printed with the morning line information.  Of note to racetrackers, is the fact that the morning line provides the public with the track's view of the likely performance of each horse in each race against the particular horses running in that race.

     Here, for example, is the morning line for the Aztec Oaks, an important race for New Mexico bred fillies (a filly filly is a female horse under the age of four). This race will be run at SunRay Park in Farmington on May 25, 2013:

1)Tyger Teras (Alfredo Juarez Jr.), 5-2

2) Dance With Trixie (Miguel Perez), 10-1

3) Silver Streakn Gal (Enrique Garcia), 20-1; 

4) Chapaquiddick Hush (Macario Rodriguez), 4-1

5) La Luz (Isaias Cardenas), 6-1

6) Grand Flame (Ricardo Jaime), 15-1

7)  Lakehouse Fun (Enrique Gomez), 4-1

8) Swedish Goddess (Aldo Arboleda), 10-1

9) Appleina (Miguel Hernandez), 8-1

      The morning line is a baseline, a default assessment of the field for each race that provides the public with a starting point for the often elaborate assessments individuals make prior to making their bets.  The morning line odds for each race are posted on the computerized tote-board after the official posting of results for the previous race and prior to the moment that "the windows open" and the track begins to take bets on the outcome of the race in question.  The Aztec Oaks, for example, is the eighth race of the day on May 25.  The tote-board will post the morning line odds a few minutes after the seventh race is declared official and the results and payoffs posted.  When people begin to make their wagers, the odds will shift to reflect the wagers that the public makes up to the time that the horses are in the starting gate and betting ceases at the "bell" which sounds loudly when the gate actually opens.  Generally, the odds at that point have shifted away from the morning line projections.  If, for example, it is a rainy day and the track is wet, smart handicappers may learn that Swedish Goddess is what is known as a "mud runner."  She has won but two races in her life but both of those wins came on rainy days in sloppy conditions.  So, instead of running at the morning line odds of 10-1, she may very well end up as the favorite in the race at 2-1 or even 3-2 odds.  This is because many people are ignoring the other horses in the race to back a filly who has shown that she can win in the mud. (I have no idea if Swedish Goddess runs in the mud or not, I am using her as a hypothetical.)

Mine That Bird wins in the soup at Churchill Downs 2009

 (Probably the most famous mud runner in recent years was Mine That Bird, a New Mexico connected horse who won the 2009 Kentucky Derby on a sloppy surface at 50-1 odds - the betting public apparently ignored the fact that he had mud runners - Mr. Prospector and Northern Dancer - on both sides of his pedigree).

       But the blog is not going to be about horse racing, at least not primarily.  Instead, I am thinking of  The Morning Line metaphorically.  The track handicapper considers many factors all of which emerge from the past.  Based on his/her consideration of those factors, he formalizes his projections of a likely future.  He does this knowing that circumstances outside of his/her understanding will almost certainly intervene to prove him wrong. But that fact is one of the things about horse racing that I find so attractive.  It is very clear at the end of a race that you have either made the right choice or that you have made the wrong choice. It's usually the latter, of course, and you learn the brutal truth very quickly.  Very few decisions in life have this admirable and immediate certainty of outcome.  Sometimes it's nice to know where you stand even if that knowledge is unpleasant. So my idea with this blog is that like the morning line handicapper, I can make assessments, weigh perspectives, ponder possibilities, and explore intriguing landscapes with the full knowledge that the wisdom I bring to bear on the discourse I take up will be always inadequate and often erroneous. But at least I will be able to expand beyond Facebook updates as expressing my observations and reflections.

       But touching on the races, I think I will end by posting a song that suggests, among other things, that horse racing is a possible pathway to ethnic and religious tolerance and harmony.

 "There was yet no animosity no matter what persuasion but sportin' hospitality inducing fresh acquaintance."  What could be better?