Incurable Insomniac

Aftermath

2013-05-22T13:43:00.001-05:00

Since moving to Oklahoma from southern California 13 years ago, I have noticed a recurring condition that strikes people after a tornado touches down in a heavily populated area. As a lifelong sufferer of PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), I recognize it all too well.

After the terror, after the all-clear sirens have sounded and the current threat has passed, after the adrenalin quits pumping and you stop talking a mile-a-minute, repeating things like, "It's veering north, right? It's veering north?" in order to convince yourself you're going to be okay, everything gets gloomy. The town is eerily quiet. Few cars drive by and when they do there are no blaring car stereos. You hear emergency vehicle sirens in the distance and helicopters overhead, but at street level it's as quiet as a tomb. The light is weird, not unlike that during the totality of a solar eclipse.

If you're like our family, you take a couple of beers out onto the front porch hoping to catch a breath of air that isn't heavy and sticky, and you start sharing your experiences of the event. You talk, joke, laugh, cry, and comfort each other, and your phone is swamped with texts, both incoming and outgoing. Everyone's accounted for, the cat comes out from under the house, and you surreptitiously watch the skies hoping no one will notice and get scared all over again. You take pictures to post in Facebook and Twitter so that your friends in other states and countries will not worry. And when you go to bed, you sigh overmuch, but you don't really sleep because you know those sirens could go off again, any minute, any day, for the next month or two.

You tell yourself this is the last spring you'll spend here, and you promise yourself and your family that you will somehow find a way to get them to a safer state. You wonder how long it will be until your number comes up and it's your face on the news, or the TV cameras closing in on your family digging through a mountain of rubble looking for anything—your grandmother's wedding ring, your child's plaster handprint, even that trinket you hated but would now give anything to find because it was the last thing your troublesome mom gave you before she died. You pray you will never be digging to find a family member, or a family pet. Eventually, you come to a place in your exhaustion when you have to think, "If another tornado comes, it comes. I can't care anymore." Then you sleep. Fitfully, but you sleep, and when you wake up in the morning after only an hour or two, you find you've become a little more philosophical about death and the meaning of life.

The EF5 tornado that hit Moore on Monday was, we've been told, the largest and most devastating in the recorded history of the world. The world. Of all time. You've probably seen more pictures of the destruction than I have, since I don't have cable, so I won't rehash everything you already know. What I will try to relate to you is the emotional and psychological impact it has had on the people of Oklahoma. It's a depressed state anyway. Besides having the highest poverty rate, lowest wages, unemployment, expensive or no healthcare, no rights protecting gays from violence, eviction, and being fired, the terrible state of the education system, and the Half-Nelson that the loony, bible-thumping Republican fringe has on it, Oklahoma also has its tornadoes. And BIG ones. Monday's was more than a mile wide, traveled 17 miles, and was on the ground for a solid 40 minutes. That's like a nuclear explosion on rollerblades.

The people who were hardest hit lost more than a night's sleep, of course. They lost their homes, their cars, their pets; some even lost family members, including children. No one can adequately describe what those people are suffering, and will continue to suffer for the rest of their lives. We all have been impacted to various degrees. The tornado was 75 miles south of us. A safe distance, but still close enough to knock out power, halt cell phone service, and to pose threats of other tornadoes that could drop from the storm clouds above us at second's notice. We got rain and wind, and the sickly green sky. Thankfully, that's all we got, physically.

What we got emotionally and psychologically was depression, shock, exhaustion, hopelessness, terror, grief, and a big old dose of that survivor guilt that we human beings are so good at inflicting on ourselves. We all know someone—some of us a number of someones—who were hard hit. The degree of separation is about nil, one at the most.

And then, on top of everything your psyche is trying to grasp and make sense of, you're subjected to arseholes who blame YOU for the devastation, if you happen to be gay, or black, or Jewish, or, or or... the list of scapegoats continues to grow. Hell, if I as an out gay had the power they endow me with, do you think I'd be living here to deal with their hatred and their devastating tornadoes? They also judge people who lost the shirts off their backs while braving the storm to save people and animals. Your neighbors are called rednecks, hicks, and hillbillies, and are callously advised to build a storm cellar or move, not understanding that most people just can't afford to do either. Most people couldn't afford to move before the storms; they especially can't move now that they're paying mortgages on houses they no longer have.

On a personal level, this has all played havoc with my ongoing health issues, as well as the depression I battle on a regular basis. Scientists are telling us that even the barometric pressure drops can cause depression, anxiety, and impedes short-term memory, concentration, and attention span. Small prices to pay, comparatively, but viable—and horrendous—nonetheless.

Finally, what it all settles into is gratitude. You're sorry for everyone else, but you're grateful that your family is okay. There are those who will try to make you feel guilty for feeling, or acknowledging, that gratitude, but they don't live here, have never been through anything like this, and they can f*** themselves all the way to hell's kitchen door.

Another Author in the House?

2013-05-18T10:56:00.000-05:00

You Come to a Wall...

2013-04-30T11:40:00.000-05:00

Many years ago, when my friends and I were at the age when most young people develop an interest in the workings of their sub-conscious, we used to give people we met a little psychology test. It was Deni, in 1969, I think, who first introduced it to me while we were on our way to the Santa Barbara Bowl to see Donovan in concert. It's no surprise that she would later earn herself degrees in psychology. You probably know it, or some version of it. Embarking on a little guided imagery, one is asked to describe, in detail, one's surroundings, as well as particular objects which supposedly represent certain aspects of the sub-conscious mind:

You are walking through a forest. Describe it.
Are you following a path?
You come to a body of water. Describe it.
How do you cross it?
You find a drinking vessel. Describe it.
What do you do with it?
You come next to a barricade of some sort. Describe it.
How do you get to the other side?
On the other side, you see a dwelling. Describe it.
How do you approach it? Do you enter it?

That's it, basically. I have also been asked to describe myself walking on a beach and another person who's walking toward me. There are many versions of this test. Of course, you can only take it once and you can have no idea beforehand what the questions will be and what they represent.

Anyway, my point is, when I first took the test and came to the part about the barricade, I saw a wall like in the photo above. A tall, mossy, ivy laden brick garden wall, the sort that is quite common in Great Britain, just like in The Secret Garden, one of my favorite books as a child. It was quite tall—probably 9 feet—and rather beautiful in the dense, green forest of my mind. I saw neither a beginning nor an end to the wall, but I scanned it for a gate from where I stood. Finding none, I inspected it more carefully, both with my hands and my eyes, and found uneven bricks and chinks in it, and so climbed over rather effortlessly.

As you probably know, or have surmised, the barricade represents life's problems and how we confront them. Over the years I have given this test to many people who have seen everything from a split-rail fence to the Berlin wall topped with razor wire. One person saw only a hedgerow with a wooden stile placed at her disposal. My wall tells me that I view life's problems as tall, but not insurmountable when approached carefully, and put in place long before I arrived. Knowing my life as I do, this could not be more accurate.

One of the barricades I face every day of my life these days is my health. I miss the days (not all that long ago) when I awoke ready to take on the world. And if I wasn't feeling up to snuff, all it took was listening to songs like A Little Is Enough by Pete Townshend, High Life by Stevie Winwood, and With A Little Luck by Paul McCartney & Wings while I got dressed, and putting on the right pair of shoes to set my mood for the day ahead. My best "conquer the world" shoes were a pair of turquoise Converse high-tops, which sounds kind of silly, but is true. When I put on those shoes, I could rule the world! They gave me confidence, optimism, and a bounce in my step.

It takes a whole lot more these days. Anymore, it takes a morning cocktail of prescriptions, vitamins, and supplements, as well as two cups of coffee, and at least two hours of waiting for the fog to lift. My newest mental exercise is to remind myself that most of my issues are in my mind more than in my body. It's that being sick and tired of being sick and tired that weighs me down the most, so I give myself a little pep talk: "Just get up and do the things you want to do and you'll feel better." This really works... on some days. Other days not so much, especially if I'm experiencing a lot of fibromyalgia and/or DDD pain and fatigue. On those days I leave the wall and enjoy my forest.

For someone who has always been very active, and who has always possessed an overload of energy, this is difficult, especially this time of year. I look out the window and see all the things I want and need to do: clearing and planting flower beds, setting up the porch for summer, etc., things I could do quite easily a short 10 years ago. But time is relative. Time that feels short when one feels good isn't so short when you feel like crap because life has plunged you prematurely into old age.

Still, I always look carefully for the uneven bricks and chinks, and I always find them, and climb over. It's just that I keep coming upon new walls more frequently than I did in my younger, healthier past.

Guess it's time to buy some new Converse high-tops.

Our House, Bookends Cottage

2013-04-26T00:13:00.001-05:00

Did I ever share this with you? I made it a couple of years ago. Hope you can view it.

Our House, Bookends Cottage

Springy Bullets

2013-04-25T11:09:00.002-05:00

Ah, spring! That time of year when you take the blanket off the bed because it's been 80° all day, only to freeze at night because the temperature drops to 35°. When you hope for one more year that the tornadoes will pass you by. When you never know what to wear because it can be either raining, snowing, or steaming. When you go through a box of Kleenex a day. When you take with you a jacket, a coat, an umbrella, sunscreen, sunglasses, flip-flops, Wellies, and antihistamine every time you leave the house. You get the idea.

This year we are experiencing what the locals call "a normal spring" in this state. I've seen a few in the years I've been here, but I believe this is the 'normalest' of the norm. I've had a sack of gladiolus bulbs for over a month that I haven't been able to get into the ground, but with the weekend forecast looking as good as it does, I'm going to get to it this afternoon. It will be 72° and sunny today, 71° tomorrow, and 79° on Sunday. Perfect for gardening, especially since...
I don't have allergies. Nettl is plagued by them, though. Spring is the only time of the year that she takes sick days from work. Judging from what she suffers, I'm damned glad I don't have these issues, but...
I have been typing my fingers to the bone on the production package, and I'm nearly done. All that's left is to finish the synopsis. Don't let anyone tell you that writing a synopsis is easy. It's harder than writing the actual book. But I have a lot of time on my own to work these days because...
Nettl is currently in rehearsals for a musical called Radio Gals, in which she's playing Effie Swindle, so life has gotten a bit busier around Bookends Cottage. Not only is she at her job all day and teaching lessons two days/nights a week, but she's at the theater six nights a week from 6 to 10pm. And then there are, of course, the after-rehearsal happy hour(s) at least once a week. I'm invited to those, which I enjoy because outside of the v-e-r-y occasional outing with my friends...
I'm mostly playing Gandhi between Nigel and Lowrider, lately. He's eight months old now and doing pretty well, considering he's half Dachshund. Still, he's a delightful clown, and very loving. Completely house and kennel trained, he learns quickly and is eager to please. We're always laughing at him.

Have a great weekend!

A Moment in Time

2013-04-21T22:46:00.000-05:00

At the Boomarang Diner

There are moments we remember forever. I'm happy this one was captured.

Return to Normal, Whatever That is

2013-04-12T11:49:00.000-05:00

Life around here is finally getting back to normal, it seems. It has taken seven and-a-half months of Life with Nigel but, outside of picking up plush toy stuffing, acting as referee between him and the cat, and taking him out on four potty trips each day, my days are balancing themselves out. I have one more section of my film production package to complete—the synopsis—and this phase of the project will find itself in the proverbial can. Of course, I always save the most difficult part for last... But you need to visit my other blog to keep up with all that.

Lynette has been selected to play of Effie in Town & Gown Theatre's upcoming production of Radio Gals. This has changed our schedule around here considerably because she comes home from work at 5:30, then is at rehearsal from 6-10, Sunday through Thursday. Add this to her Sunday afternoon and Friday evening voice students, and she's one busy lady for the next eight weeks.

Yellow & white cottage with
yellow porch floor.

Meantime, I'll be getting Bookends Cottage ready for spring and summer when we do most of our entertaining. I'm painting the floor of the front porch a pale sea foam green as soon as the weather stabilizes and will be planting a hoard of gladiolus bulbs tomorrow. Since the city gave our old neighborhood all new sidewalks, I want to get the yard in better shape. Not easy, though, since the workers left a lot of sand out there to bolster the concrete. I envision lots of flowers, wind chimes, my mason jar hanging lanterns, and the Tibetan prayer flags that Dr. Kielbasa brought me when he returned from a short trip to Sedona last winter. I love this time of year because I can open the windows and doors and set up the front porch in anticipation of the long, warm evenings we'll spend out there from May through September.

Last month I decided to give Twitter one last chance and was surprised to find that I enjoyed it. I don't know why I just never "got" it before. If you'd like to follow me, please click the tab in the navbar, above, or the image just there ->

I'd love to follow you!

Not an earth-moving post today, I'm afraid, but I'm itching to get up and get busy. Have a great weekend!

Peggy Moffitt: When Fashion Meets Theater

2013-04-02T03:06:00.003-05:00

The 1960s saw the advent of the Supermodel. There was the elegant Jean Shrimpton, the baby-faced, ethereal Pattie Boyd, the striking Veruschka, the oddly doll-like Penelope Tree, the wholesome Cheryl Tiegs, and the gamine Twiggy. Fan and fashion magazines were full of photographs of these young women who, each in her own unique way, typified the decade, giving it iconic looks that remain half a century later. But there was one young woman whose looks and style lifted her out of mere fashion and into what, in retrospect, can only be called performance art. This was L.A. born Peggy Moffitt.

Borrowing makeup techniques from Japanese Kabuki theater, and an a-symmetrical hairstyle that catapulted hairstylist Vidal Sassoon into the pop culture stratosphere, Peggy drew both compliments and complaints from the public and the press.

Whenever Peggy appeared, either in the fashion pages, the catwalk, or in commercials, it was she who grabbed your attention, not the clothes she wore, or other models who shared her space. It was like they didn't even exist. She didn't pose, she struck attitudes in a somewhat mime style that made the viewer stop and take notice. It was about shape and it was about impression. It was a kind of dance.

It was this acting, this creating of characters, and not modelling, that set her apart from the others.

Because of her statuesque yet curvy figure, she was asked to model designer Rudi Gernreich's topless swimsuit, a photo that sent shock waves through the world in 1964 when such things were unheard of.

Moffitt commented about the picture in 2012, "The shot seen around the world. Think of something in your life that took 1/60th of a second to do. Now, imagine having to spend the rest of your life talking about it. I think it’s a beautiful photograph, but oh, am I tired of talking about it.”

Today, at 72, Peggy Moffitt, who still models, has lost none of her unique, eccentric style.

Here is a fantastic video of Peggy Moffitt talking about her amazing life and career:

See a Peggy Moffitt photo gallery by clicking here.

A New Dawn

2013-03-31T13:11:00.001-05:00

Throughout my life people have tried to destroy my innate joy. It's gotten a little close sometimes, but I always bounced back and usually higher than from where they found me. I am living proof that no matter what your circumstances are, you can be happy. It's a choice, not a condition. Don't be helpless; prove those circumstances wrong by choosing to be happy.

Happy Easter, everyone! This day marks a new beginning in our lives, a fresh start. Let's make our lives what we wish them to be, and let's start from within!

All I See is Black

2013-03-30T12:15:00.000-05:00

Every now and then I have a dream in which everything conforms to one idea. Back in the 1970s, for instance, I had a dream in which everything in it started with the letter C. Carrots, caps, China, etc... Last night I dreamed of black.

Lynette and I had just bought a house in the coast just south of Liverpool Harbor, in England. It was a lovely sunny cottage surrounded by other cottages, flowers, and cobbled footpaths. From our window we could see the harbor in the distance and other homes and cottages on the northern coast. Of course, Liverpool looks nothing like this; the view, in my dream, actually looked more like this Cornwall harbor, only much larger. "Like Ventura harbor," I thought.

The harbor was full of ships slowly entering and leaving, and suddenly we saw a huge, gorgeous black ship sail in. Its masts were full and it was coming in really fast. I wanted to see it more closely, so I started following the footpath that lead along the coast to the city. It was curvy and on either side sat pretty cottages.

Because I was new to the area and had never ventured out until now, I got lost, but I knew that if I kept to the path, I'd end up in the city. Getting back would be easy, I thought, so I kept heading north to see the ship.

It was then I saw on the path before me a black lamb. It was very

friendly and came up to me. As I stood petting it, I saw a black cave and, as I looked into it, I saw the eye of a panther looking out. I knew that if I didn't take the lamb with me, the panther would get it, so I picked up the lamb and continued walking.

Somewhere along the line I put the lamb down, knowing it was safe. Then I realized that I'd somehow started walking south, and that I was lost. I kept to the path, though, and soon found myself in the city. Knowing I'd taken a wrong turn, I began retracing my steps.

It was then that I woke up. I'm still interpreting it, but the major consensus is that 'black' represents potentials and possibilities.

Harbor = future security
Ship = suppressed desire for freedom
Lamb = vulnerability
Cave = concealment
Panther = enemies working to do harm
Lost = feeling worried and insecure about the path I am taking

This all makes a great deal of sense to me--even the sequence of events make sense--and seems to be about my new prospects with the film project.

Don't you just love the subconscious?
__________
UPDATE: After reading this post's comments, I have to say, Debra's interpretation makes much more sense than mine does. Thanks so much for your insight!

Spring Cleaning the Old Blogstead

2013-03-26T11:54:00.003-05:00

It's amazing how much crap (rhetorical) you can find when you go through 10 and a half years of blog posts. Amongst the bilge, however, I did manage to find a little cream. I can even be kind of funny when I'm not giving in to despair or self-pity. This is an exercise I recommend to all bloggers. Yes, it takes time and no small amount of chutzpah, but, when you consider your blog might very well outlive you, it's not only therapeutic, it might just be wise.

I haven't deleted posts in which I've cast myself in a less than favorable light, though; I have that label called "I'm Only Human", after all. What I've done is edit my posts for grammar, overall readability, and relevance. Those which I've deleted altogether were mostly pointless, whiny, unkind, or simply redundant. How many times can you read, "I'm tired of this crap!" before you want to comment, "Then change it!"? Trolls who have accused me in the past of only posting entries that make me look good, or perpetrate a favorable image obviously have not read this blog enough to make that claim. And even if I do, what's the problem? I also wear makeup and a well-fitted bra when I go out. But then, when did the barmy accusations of internet trolls ever make sense anyway? Enough of them, though. They are neither worth the net space nor the consideration.

I've merged some labels. Why have both "Health" and "Thyroidzilla"? A lot of those hit the cutting room floor anyway. "Travel" and "Armchair Circumnavigator" were married as well, and so on.

Whilst doing all this spring cleaning, I discovered the following stats:

Most Accessed Entry: "101 Christmas Gifts Under $10" = 4,029
Most Commented: "Go Home" = 31*
Most Google+ Referrals: "The Folkie Never Dies" = 224,851

Okay, so 31 isn't the highest comment count the Web has ever known, but for an unknown, uncelebrated, personal blog, it's all right. A bit underwhelming, but my readers are loyal and lovely and I'm grateful that you come here at all.

__________
*Well, crap. I just went through the comments and discovered Blogger had doubled some of them and attributed the doubles to me, so I deleted them. There's no way I'm going through 3000+ posts again to find out which one got the most comments.

Pull Weeds, Walk Dog

2013-03-21T11:35:00.000-05:00

I've spent the past week weeding through all of the posts I've written since I started this blog in 2002, and I think I deleted nearly 200 of them, those that went were either boring, no longer pertinent, or just plain embarrassing. It's okay, though, because I republished some that I'd reverted back to draft at different times in this blog's history. I may clean out even more posts. Who knows? I found a few that I thought were rather good, so I feel some hope that I still might one day make a decent writer.

The one thing I realized has been missing from my posts in the past three or four years is the personal tone my older posts had. My voice became stilted and I began being less silly. That may have been a consequence of the serious turn my life took in the mid-2000s, when I was sideswiped by ill health and financial distress. Hey, I'm only human. I'm going to be working on bringing back my lighter side. Life is much better, after all, and I'm feeling better than I have in years. And now that I have a blog dedicated to my life as a writer, I think I can find my way back to making this a truly personal blog, where I share things about myself and my life that have little to do with how and why I write. This blogging about blogging crapola has always bored the stuffing out of me anyway.

What's hard for me, now, is, how do I write about my inner and outer life and still maintain the privacy I feel I need to establish now that it looks like my work may go hugely public? I considered going through every post and changing all names to initials, but I like that kind of blogging even less. And if I resist mentioning friends and family members entirely, then I'll be omitting a huge part of my private life. So, what to do? I'll go on as I have been where the kids are concerned, because, since they're all grown and out on their own now, they can let me know if they don't like being mentioned every now and again.

That solved, onward.

We finished watching the US production of "House of Cards" on Netflix last night, and now we don't know what we'll watch in the evenings. We do that. We get our teeth sunk into a series, spend a week or two obsessively watching it, and then feel a bit adrift when it's over. I think a lot of people do that. In the afternoons, during my hour nap time, I've started watching "Monarch of the Glen", which is pretty nice to nap through. A few months ago I napped through "Star Trek: the Next Generation". I'm trying to get addicted to napping through "Deep Space Nine", but I'm not terribly fond of it.

Meanwhile, Life with Puppy continues; he'll be eight months old next Tuesday. Unbelievable, not only that we've had him that long, but that I've actually survived it. But he's a great dog. Smart, joyful, and sweet-tempered, but he's also part Dachshund, which also makes him stubborn, mouthy, and a proficient ankle-biter and cat terrorist. And if it lands on the floor—regardless of what it is—it belongs to him. I ~~assume~~ hope he'll outgrow some of those traits. If I don't see you before, have a great weekend! After a few days of warm, sunny, spring-like weather, we're expecting rain and snow. Damn. Walking a dog in those conditions is no fun.

A Writer's Life

2013-03-16T12:44:00.001-05:00

I finally came to the place in my life as a writer that I felt the need to divide myself between two blogs, one for my personal life and one for my artistic life. For those of you who keep coming back here, this is no surprise as I've been blogging about doing this for several weeks now. Well, it has come to pass. To this end, I am pleased to announce that my writing blog, which is hosted through SK Waller.Com, is now live. (As you can see, this blog has gone back to being called "Incurable Insomnic", a title I admit I have missed.)

I have transferred the 'writerly' entries from this blog to that one; in the following days I shall be deleting them from here altogether. I also will be taking down posts that are too personal, about other people, or just plain pointless.

All I ask of you is, if you're nice enough to visit the other blog, and kind enough to leave a comment from time-to-time, you'll restrict those comments to the subject of writing, reading, or whatever the particular post seems to be about, keeping this blog for the usual comments and observations I've come to love and value. I'll appreciate that more that I can say!

So, without further ado, here is my new writing blog!

Coming Full Circle

2013-03-10T11:25:00.002-05:00

It has taken me a few days to work out the details in my mind—what, exactly, it is that I want and how to make that happen as expediently as possible—but this is what I've come to in the Grand Simplification Dog & Pony Show. Erm, that sort of defeats the purpose, but you know how I am about these things.

Presently, I am creating, coding and designing my "official" SK Waller weblog. It will contain nothing but posts about my work and related things—updates about my books, articles, and screenplays, the film project, appearances.. that sort of thing. I will also post book reviews, as well as posts about the craft of writing, my personal observances about the writing process, and life as a writer. To keep out the riff-raff, I will set the comments so that your first comment must be approved, and then you're home free. No moderation, no security, no questions. I like that. Certain email address and IPs have already been blacklisted.

This site will go back to its original name, Incurable Insomniac, and will remain as my personal weblog, containing my usual sort of posts, sans writing admonitions, author angst (well, most, anyway), and so on. Most of my existing posts about writing are currently being moved, edited, rewritten, and posted on the official blog. I'll also be taking down certain posts that are too personal, that is, those which are a bit revealing about my family, friends, and my private life. Understandable, under the circumstances.

So, in a sense, in my own convoluted fashion, I have come full circle, and it feels right. As soon as the new blog is live, I'll make a post about it. It will also be linked in the menu bar. Incurable Insomniac will NOT be linked on either the official blog or my static website, and I'll be turning off all search engine bots. The only people who will know about it are those who already know. At least, that's what I'm shooting for.

Okay? Let's get to work!

I Don't Want to Spoil the Party

2013-03-05T10:59:00.002-06:00

I know that I've been moving toward this for some time. I've blogged about it, but I guess I had to finally come to this point to actually do it. As I've gotten older I've begun to crave less complication in my life. I'm searching for a less cluttered existence, I'm throwing out junk I no longer need, and I feel the instinct to pare down and simplify.

Frank told me this would happen.

I remember one afternoon in 1989 when he phoned and asked me to come to his house. He was only three years older than I am now. When I walked up his driveway, I found him sitting on a crate inside his open garage, looking through a stack of vinyl LPs, all Classical, of course. In fact, he had thousands of albums; the walls of the garage were lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves to hold them all.

"Take whichever ones you want," he said, and that day I went home with about 20; after that, he would give me three or four more whenever I left his house.

When I asked him why he was getting rid of them, he said, "One day you'll feel the need to simplify. Then you'll understand why."

That day has been coming for a long time.

I am currently working toward closing every site and blog I own, except for this and the accompanying skwaller.com, which will be revamped. Most people don't know that I maintain 11 blogs and sites. That's a lot of work, but more, it's a lot of clutter that has begun to steal energy from the things that really matter to my life. Like working on my film project, finishing Book Three and writing more books/movies in the future. Most of my sites I began for other people and I would never close them down. What I can do is add those people as authors so that they can maintain them for themselves, if they want to. Otherwise, they'll stay on the web as info blogs only. Other blogs, which have to do with my various creative endeavors, will be condensed and given a single page on my website. The book blogs will go.

And what about the social networks? Well, I've already closed my account with Twitter and have quit using Google+. All that's left is Facebook (I consider Pinterest to be no more than a magazine, anyway, so I'll keep it for that 15 minutes once or twice a week that I visit it). I'm keeping Facebook because I really do enjoy talking with friends over my morning coffee, but I think one visit each day before I get up is reasonable.

Basically, I'm just getting bored with the Internet. I'm tired of the marketing, of being followed by Google and Facebook, by being hunted down by a number of crazy stalkers and trolls, and of being constantly on-call. I'm tired of all the hours I spend sitting with my laptop, not actually creating something. This technology, which was meant to work for us has enslaved us. I'm getting off the grid. I'm limiting who has access to me, and how. If you have my cell phone number or my email address, that's good enough. Otherwise, I'm not available. And if you do happen to be one of the pains-in-my-ass who think you have some kind of power over me, I'm making you disappear by leaving your party. I no longer care about your beef with me, how much money you think I owe you, or if you're just stupid and insane enough not to get the difference between a biography and a dedication in the front pages of a work of fiction. You ceased mattering to me a long time ago. In fact, I haven't read one of your comments in a couple of years. I get a notice when I receive one, and then it goes to spam. I don't even open it. Find someone who cares. Better yet, get a life of your own. Life's too short to follow me around. That's just pathetic.

In about 20 years you will be in a bed, dying.

Do you really want to look back and realize how much precious time and energy you wasted on me? Talk about regrets. That's not what life is for.

As for me, I'm pulling the plug on you. My friends--both online and off--know who they are; I have no room anymore for the rest.

Dreams are the Roots of Success

2013-02-22T11:12:00.002-06:00

I know this is the second post of this nature, so please bear with me. I'm so busy of late constructing my production package (and trying to cope with some very bad health issues) that I just don't have any excess brain matter to give to my blog. This morning I created this graphic to remind me there are THREE steps to making dreams come true:

1. DARE TO DREAM IT!
Literally every human-made thing on this planet first began as an idea. Every book on every shelf, every machine, every work of art. Everything was first conceived in someone's fantasy, dreams, or daydreams.

2. GIVE IT THE BREATH OF LIFE!
Move it closer to becoming reality by manifesting it in some physical way. Write about it, take pictures of it, or talk about it. It will never come to life hiding in your imagination. Breathe on it.

3. CLAIM IT!
If you imagined it, it's yours and you have the right to own it. Don't be timid, either, and don't listen to those who accuse you of "just" being a dreamer. Others who were "just" dreamers include Steve Jobs, Paul McCartney, Leonardo da Vinci, Oprah Winfrey, and thousands of others. They are no more deserving than you and they possess no special powers; they just stuffed their Piggy Bank of Dreams more confidently.

Have a great, dream-filled weekend!

33 Ways to Stay Creative

2013-02-16T14:13:00.000-06:00

28 Handy Words

2013-02-13T10:58:00.000-06:00

Following is a repost of an excellent article a Facebook friend linked to, titled, 28 Handy Words that Simply Don't Exist in English. The author is Alex Wain. (My comments are in italics.)
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Age-otori (Japanese): To look worse after a haircut. (I could have definitely used this one a few thousand times.)

Arigata-meiwaku (Japanese): An act someone does for you that you didn't want to have them do and tried to avoid having them do, but they went ahead anyway, determined to do you a favor, and then things went wrong and caused you a lot of trouble, yet in the end social conventions required you to express gratitude. (I experience this a lot in parking lots, where people would rather be nice than just follow the law. You came to the intersection first; don't wave me on, GO!)

Backpfeifengesicht (German): A face badly in need of a fist. (Only the Germans...)

Bakku-shan (Japanese): A beautiful girl… as long as she’s being viewed from behind.

Desenrascanco (Portuguese): To disentangle yourself out of a bad situation. To "MacGyver" it.

Duende (Spanish): A climactic show of spirit in a performance or work of art, which might be fulfilled in flamenco dancing, or bull-fighting, etc. (Maestro Salazar used this word often.)

Forelsket (Norwegian): The euphoria you experience when you are first falling in love. (Why don't we have a word for this? We write enough songs about it!)

Gigil (Filipino): The urge to pinch or squeeze something that is unbearably cute. (In my lexicon, this is called "dental drills", because a friend once said to me, "They're such a cute couple, I just want to take dental drills to their eyeballs." It stuck, and now it's widely and casually used in my circle of friends.)

Guanxi (Mandarin): In traditional Chinese society you would build up good guanxi by giving gifts to people, taking them to dinner, or doing them a favor, but you can also use up your gianxi by asking for a favor to be repaid. (Meh. In-Laws.)

Ilunga (Tshiluba, Congo): A person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time. (Hey, that's my "3 strikes" philosophy. I'm ilunga!)

L’esprit de l’escalier (or l’esprit d’escalier)(French): Usually translated as "staircase wit,” is the act of thinking of a clever comeback when it is too late to deliver it.

Litost (Czech): A state of torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery.

Mamihlapinatapai (Yaghan): A look between two people that suggests an unspoken, shared desire.

Manja (Malay): To pamper. Describes gooey, childlike and coquettish behavior by women designed to elicit sympathy or pampering by men. “His girlfriend is a damn manja. Hearing her speak can cause diabetes.”

Meraki (Greek): Doing something with soul, creativity, or love. It’s when you put something of yourself into what you’re doing. (I really like this one.)

Nunchi (Korean): The subtle art of listening and gauging another’s mood. In Western culture, nunchi could be described as the concept of emotional intelligence. Knowing what to say or do, or what not to say or do, in a given situation. A socially clumsy person can be described as "nunchi eoptta", meaning “absent of nunchi”.

Pena ajena (Mexican Spanish): The embarrassment you feel watching someone else’s humiliation.

Pochemuchka (Russian): A person who asks a lot of questions. (Four year-old child)

Schadenfreude (German): Pleasure derived from someone else’s pain. (I know a couple of people who experience this. They also happen to be German.)

Sgiomlaireachd (Scottish Gaelic): When people interrupt you at mealtime.

Sgriob (Gaelic): The itchiness that overcomes the upper lip just before taking a sip of whisky.

Shlimazl (Yiddish): Somebody who has nothing but bad luck. (I've always loved Yiddish, and have always wanted to learn it.)

Stam (Hebrew): An agreement out of amusement and frustration that something doesn't have a satisfactory answer among those talking.

Taarradhin (Arabic): Implies a happy solution for everyone, or “I win. You win.” It’s a way of reconciling without anyone losing face. Arabic has no word for compromise, in the sense of reaching an arrangement via struggle and disagreement. (Well, that explains a lot!)

Tatemae and Honne (Japanese): What you pretend to believe and what you actually believe, respectively. (In English, I think this would be called hypocrisy.)

Tingo (Pascuense language of Easter Island): To borrow objects one by one from a neighbor’s house until there is nothing left.

Waldeinsamkeit (German): The feeling of being alone in the woods. (Is this literal, or figurative?)

Yoko meshi (Japanese): Literally, "a meal eaten sideways," referring to the peculiar stress induced by speaking a foreign language.
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Thanks to Andrew McFall for the link!

My Little Pooper Scooper

2013-02-03T11:41:00.000-06:00

Nothing More to Say

2013-01-21T09:42:00.000-06:00

What's the Big Deal About Aging?

2013-01-03T11:43:00.002-06:00

We live in a society that fears aging. That's not news. It's not just a fear, though. It has become a clinical phobia that regularly results in discrimination of all sorts and styles: denial, neglect, abuse, disregard, lack of respect, denigration and out-and-out violence. We abhor it. We tell ourselves it will never happen to us. We've created an "ick" factor around it. But in the end, no matter what we do or how much money we spend, it happens.

I'll be graphic. Just as you got over the ick of going down there and doing that to someone (and don't lie. You were 12 once), get over your biases about elderly love and sex and you're imbecilic aversion to other people's wrinkles. Get over the "Eeewww!" will you? Unless you take a gun to your head right now, or employ some other method of offing yourself, you're going to get old. And then you're going to die. What happens after that is anybody's guess. Comfort yourself, dry your tears, do whatever you must, but damn it, come to terms with it and stop treating older people--and yourself--so badly. And for fucksake face the fear and stop letting it cripple your spirit.

The past year has been one long lesson in accepting my own aging. I'll turn 62 this year, a fact that I really have a hard time accepting because I feel like I lost a decade and-a-half when I was caretaking each of my parents in their turn. Life feels short so far, because I have no idea where my late-40's and 50's went. It's hard to feel my actual age due to my health issues as well, but actually, aside from two incurable "conditions" that are a direct result of those hard years, I'm in great health. There's no reason for me to think that I won't live at least 30 more years. There are a lot of people in their 80's and 90's who are still vital and active, and still working toward their goals. Hell, Ravi Shankar died recently at the age of 92 only four weeks after giving his last concert. I remember Maestro Salazar telling me once that his wish for dying was to be in the middle of conducting Beethoven's 9th Symphony when he went. He very nearly got that wish.

It's time for me to stop the partying. After all, I've been doing that for 30 years. I need to concentrate the next 30 on my creativity, not on hangovers and depression from my serotonin being gobbled up. I've out-partied all of my friends anyway. What did I prove? I can't do it anymore and I'm ready to face that and accept it. I'm aging and there's nothing I can do that will take me back to age 32.

So can we as a society just grow the hell up and get over it? Can we at least try? Seventies songwriter/recording artist Emitt Rhodes wrote,

"You must live till you die,

You must feel to be alive."

How can we really live if we continually and habitually refuse to face the only absolute truth there is? The truth that we have been aging since our conception, that we will continue to age, and we will die. Everything else is just a collective hunch.

Things Are Changing

2013-01-02T11:12:00.001-06:00

This has nothing to do with New Year resolutions, but I wanted to save it for my first real entry of 2013. After keeping this blog for 10½ years, it's time to change things a bit. After all, everything around and in me has changed considerably through the decade; I think it's only fitting that my personal expression on the web should change, too.

When I first discovered blogging it excited me so much because I had already grown bored with "static" websites that seldom changed, if ever. I knew something new was afoot, and I'd already grown bored with website guest books, so I began to look into things. I loved what I found and I launched this blog, known then as The Incurable Insomniac. At first, I managed it through FrontPage, then I found Wordpress and, later, Blogger. Many of you have been with me through all of my myriad design changes, which was kind of fun, I think. I've never been afraid of change. In fact, I require it.

There wasn't so much concern about privacy in those days and I had no problem writing intimate details about my life and posting pictures of my family and friends. That changed when the internet cockroaches slimed out of the woodwork, however.

The first indication I got that people were no longer stopping by to read blog entries and take part in conversation was when the feedreaders showed up. I hated them because I knew they were the death knell of the blogging community--what I call Blogsville--but I had no idea what was in store. I didn't foresee the social networks coming. Facebook made its debut with its social interaction and photo posting, its immediacy, and its ongoing drive toward security. (Whether they've succeeded or not is a subject I'll leave for other bloggers who enjoy writing about such things.) I got caught up with it too, and I still love it, warts and all. All of a sudden blogs that I'd bookmarked disappeared and those that survived had less frequent entries. Where I used to get tons of comments, I'm now lucky to get one per post. Let's face it. People would rather go to one place, leave one comment and have that go out to everyone they know in a second. Who has time to blog hop all morning? But look, if blogging is books, social networking is magazines. I'm not too happy about it, but will I leave Facebook? Not on your life! Not until the Next Big Thing comes along, that is, and it will. Quote me on that. It will.

The painful demise of the weblog phenomenon reminds me of the old DOS based AOL back in the early 1990's. Sure, it was expensive, but it was fun. It was a secret world we arrived at through the bleep, bloop, screech worm hole of the phone modem, and at last we were in. "Welcome! You've got mail!" Then, Windows 95 burst on the scene, and the Internet, and those of us with older computers (mine was only two years old at the time) were shut out of AOL as they gradually made DOS obsolete. "AOL -- The Dark Side" it was called. I still miss it sometimes.

So what has all of this to do with changes I'm making in my Internet existence?

I am not closing this blog, but I will be posting an entry only once a week, on the weekend. Changes will appear in the sidebar, but I'm not sure what those are just yet; I'm still mulling things over.
Other blogs will be discontinued, some given to the people for whom I created them so that they can maintain them.
Due to copyright security concerns, all reading blogs will be taken down. These include Character Interviews and Enharmonic Intervals.
Alla Breve as a web design cooperative will change to an author assistance cooperative. I will be taking on no new commercial web design clients and those I'm currently serving will have to find someone else once their project is completed. I will only do web design for authors, and even those will be few. I'm going to get picky and work only for dedicated writers whose work in which I find a certain degree of excellence. That site will undergo a total change when I can get to it.

Here are the sites that shall remain:

SK Waller.Com (linked with an "official" blog, which is still to be created)
California Gold Coast Dreamin'

I'm going from 12 sites and blogs to two. That's a huge change! So why am I doing this? As I said, my life has changed and it's heading into new directions that already do not afford me the leisure time I've had in the past. Work beckons. Serious work. I am being offered opportunities that I cannot, shall not miss. The nature of my entries won't change, just their frequency.

In many ways I have the Internet—and computers in general—to credit with teaching me how to roll with changes as they happen. From 1995 to today, everything about communication on our planet has changed. It will continue to change, and I along with it.

Have a great 2013. I look forward to sharing it with you!

Another One in the Proverbial Can!

2012-12-31T09:36:00.000-06:00

2012 was a pretty cool year for me, all in all, which was a pleasant and welcomed change, but something tells me 2013 is going to be fantastic!

My wish for you? Health, prosperity, and creativity. I wish you the ability to roll with the punches and feel deserving of the strokes, to claim the positives that are already yours and waiting for you, and to be strong enough to hold the negativity at bay until it dissolves back into the paper tiger it is.

I look forward to yet another year of sharing my life with you!

From Us

2012-12-23T12:31:00.001-06:00

I, Nigel, and his Farting Pig wish you all a very happy Holidays!

Happy End of the World!

2012-12-21T10:16:00.002-06:00

I figure if there is the remotest chance of a Big Kaboom happening today, all of the our departed rockers will be welcoming us to the Other Side with the greatest concert ever held. Imagine the line-up! But I doubt we'll see it just yet. Instead, check out my son Micah Atwell's latest recording. It's called 13th B'ak'tun and is just awesome!

(A b'ak'tun is 20 katun cycles of the ancient Maya Long Count Calendar. It contains 144,000 days, equal to 394.26 tropical years. The Classic period of Maya civilization occurred during the 8th and 9th baktuns of the current calendrical cycle. The current (14th) baktun started on 13.0.0.0.0 — December 21, 2012 using the GMT correlation.)

13th B'ak'tun is a FREE download of four amazing pieces that feature Micah on a shredding guitar. You won't be sorry you gave it a listen!

Actually, let's stop this end of the world negativity crap and start focusing our energies on making life here more pleasant for everybody. Welcome to the beginning of the New Era!