CHEECA

It was early. Faint light resting across the harbor highlighting white caps offshore and the wind was angry and stirred the blue waters beyond the reef and salted winds blew across the dock leaving the taste of the ocean on his lips and it was warm and inviting. He stood facing the sea and the men gathered behind him and he thought of turning back but this was the only day they had. The journey of men with names like T-Bag, and Stick, and Roman, and Bagger; men with names changed to reflect accomplishment or lives led.

The first mate made his life from the sea and the fish and the harvest the tourists would capture while laughing and joking as he pulled the lines and baited hooks for their pleasure. He had lived in the Keys for the past 5 years working and away from his home in Oklahoma where his father and mother had passed. The Captain should arrive soon he said and they could load the boat with the supplies. He looked out to the sea and watched the white caps crash over the small jetty that would serve as a guide to the boat returning to port. “It will be a rough day. Not good for the faint hearted or weak stomached,” he announced.

The first mate didn’t pause from his work and said, “You think you guys still want to go?”

“It always looks worse from the dock,” he said. The others agreed. “Let’s load it up.” And he thought of the men. How unwavering their hope; their confidence pure in their youth and how they carried their truths on their shoulders as if cut marks on a rifle barrel.

The winds lay across the bow of the 56-foot vessel at 20 knots from the southeast as she cut westerly toward Calusa. He knew what the day would hold and how the seas would move you and seemingly keep you unaware of the horizon. Mother Ocean is hard to resist and more so when one knows of the bounties she holds in her belly. Feeling the roll of the water beneath the ship’s hull, he thought of his father and his father’s friend and the time they ventured into a gray and stormy ocean in search of fish from the depths in swells that could have easily consumed their boat. The old, cut from the same past, they were strong and men of character and true beliefs and men these men would become tomorrow when time sees you through life and your hair grays and lines on your face tell of the stories within the generation you have lived. The old men held in their hearts those times all men hold onto and give back to their sons as they hand down to their sons. They had fought a brave fight as the sea fought back and they landed the behemoth and brought him back to the dock to please those they loved and carved thick fillets and shared cigars and scotch as some men do when celebrating.

Men can be foolishly brave believing they can endure the nature of force given without effort from her. The men on this day had faced the exhilaration of battle, the hope of survival, the moments of sheer terror when all is thought lost. But the world is full of foolish men and their follies and Mother Ocean knows with a beckon of her salt spray and the wind of calling in your face and the dream of conquest all men will follow her. Men challenge their fear all of their lives not knowing it is the fear defining their life.

The Captain had warned of the weather and said the fishing would be poor but this trip was for men with bravery welded into their souls and what they had within their hearts; men experienced with the effects of war, times of challenge and moments of pure terror and seeing friends lost and loved ones crying and nothing is quite the same again. Friendship bonds life; those around you become priceless treasures when they will offer their lives so others may live in freedom and peace.

The shoreline near Calusa Cove had become a small building on the horizon behind them. The trees on the shoreline were black marks above the water and the sky was gray and the wind cut through their bones like a fillet knife. The Captain saw the type of men on this journey and wanted to reward and he stopped at the reef just five miles out. With good fortune the quest would yield a bounty from the sea. But the catch and conquest was neither the day nor the reason for men to gather and be one. Their fortune would depend on the kindness of the Mother and what she would give and this father asked her for kindness and giving knowing this day would be the beginning of a new life for one man; his son.

The Captain anchored at the eastern edge of the reef. The men gathered courage and with wobbly knees pressed against the transom and pulled the fish off the reef. Within a short time the cooler filled with fish and with each triumph they yelled their pleasure. The Captain had warned of the bad days past but they carried on as if they knew nothing would stop them.  In a few short hours, their hopes fulfilled, the swells reached twelve feet and a few succumbed to the calling of Poseidon as they prayed on their knees and called to him below the turbulent waters. Still the gathered their strong stomachs and veritable character as Mother Ocean failed to defeat them.

Captain turned to him and the swells grew higher. “Time to head back?”

He thought for a moment and looked over the crew, “Give them their time.” But he could see the resilience weakening in the group; the uneasy feeling when you can’t feel the horizon and your insides don’t understand where up has gone.

At port the Captain cleaned the catch and the men enjoyed sandwiches and beers and talked of times in the past. They separated ways knowing they would meet again in a few hours to celebrate the reason for being there. Their friend, their comrade, their ally in fighting arms would marry the woman of his dreams and today was only the beginning.

When you have lived the battlefield one does not speak of the battlefield and how if affects. A man is quiet and holds a confidence only a man of this cut can hold and when he talks he recalls times with his friends and how they spent their time and what they did and what they drank and the women they loved but they never speak of war.

The day ended in merriment on the beach as the sun fell below the horizon and they relaxed, sitting at the water’s edge in chairs of wicker and bare feet in sand. Time passed and a sliver of moon rose across the still water as they drank Balvenie and smoked fine cigars and talked of nothing and everything as they knew tomorrow would hold the day.

IS A LIE THE TRUTH?

A friend of mine wrote; In a conversation with my wife, we talked about my writing. It seems that over the past year or so I have simply not been motivated to sit at the keyboard and pound out a novel. Admittedly, there has been a bounty of challenges in my life over the last year and it has taken time to heal both physically and mentally; it seems a lot of it is in the past now and perhaps I can move on.

            I can understand where his head is. To a non-writer the act of writing seems simple. One sits down and just writes what is on their mind. How hard can it be? The non-writer just talks and words come out and writing should work the same way. Or so it is sometimes thought, especially by the uninitiated. I have tried to “talk” writing; pull out the DVR and open a dialog. It never seemed to work for me, although it could for some, and I ended up at the keyboard. Then again, I don’t like audio books either so that may have an effect.

            I explained that writing, at least in my definition, is getting into a rut or groove. I noticed this while working on my first novel. Writing of this magnitude consumes your every thought. Your characters live inside your head every hour of the day. You dream about them. They are part of your life. It’s not like a short story, or this article. Those things pop into and out of your head like yesterday’s lunch. It over and done and you move on to the next thing.

            The other side of writing is feeling. Unless you are writing fantasy, your writing is probably reflecting exactly who you are and perhaps that is not what one needs in fiction. Imagination is a key along with creativity but unless you have lived what you are writing, good luck with coming across as it being an experience. Or can you?

Let’s say you want to write about the time you were involved in a battle during a scourge in a foreign land. You have never been there. You have never been in a fist fight. And yet you think you can narrate something as complex as killing a man charging at you with bayonet aimed. Can you do that? If you do create character is it a fragmented memory from television, movie, or perhaps a book you have read?

            Mark Twain or was it Hemingway (seems it has been lost in translation) said “Write what you know.” Others have said, “Know what you write.” Perhaps all of them are wrong.

Ponder for a moment.

Was Toni Morrison a slave? Was Nabokov a murderer?

My guess is they were not.

So, what do you do?

The answer is not easy and most writers shudder at the thought of creating something from nothing…although the uninitiated think this is what a writer does. Should you use your past as reference? Of course. It serves as a baseline. But to create a real character the story needs to be truer than true. Hemingway, who was a master at autobiographical fiction said, “From all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive.”

Your job as a writer of fiction is to take that character, that story, and make it truer than the truth in that the truth is your story based on you that is probably not very interesting. This is some of what I try to point out to memoir writers. Your life…your real life…is simply not that intriguing unless perhaps you were a double agent for the KGB and the United States. Even then you were still just a person that put their pants on like the rest of us. With that, if you wrote your memoir to include every truthful detail of your secret life, we would probably be asleep at the first page.

Write in order to tell the reader about themselves. Alan Moore said, “Artists use lies to tell the truth. Yes, I created a lie. But because you believed it, you found something true about yourself.” The truth is your audience reads to escape their own reality. You write to escape yours.

To paraphrase Bret Anthony Johnston; Rather than thinking of your experiences as structures you want to construct in writing your story, consider them scaffolding that will be removed once your work is complete. Take small details from life to bring to mind a place along with the characters that will inhabit it. Those details serve to illuminate your imagination. Many force their fiction to conform to the contours of their life; change your methods to look at every point where a plot could be rerouted away from what you have always known. Write not to express yourself, but to escape yourself.

All of this thinking, creating, lying, truth telling and more lying and stretching whatever truth you believe as the truth can be exhausting. It requires a focus and for you to sit and stare at a blank screen or off into some space where you can adjust yourself into that groove and begin or continue the process. You sit and begin and before you realize it, hours have passed.

Point being it takes time and a lot of it but perhaps writing is a simply a state of mind where the truth is not always a lie and a lie is not always the truth.
What do you think?

I believe this is a perfect way to spend a rainy day

DO YOU REALLY WANT TO BE A WRITER?

Driving to the office recently, listening to a morning talk show, I finally heard something worth repeating. Dave Berry had called in and the group discussed the Miami Book Fair which is slated for November. Why they are talking about November in March is beyond my intellect, but that was up to them. I am guessing the other reason was the Berry’s new book is due out soon. After discussing the new novel, the book fair and a few other topics, one of the DJ’s mentioned to Dave, his son was an aspiring writer. My immediate thought was, I can think of a lot of things to aspire to. A writer is not one of them.

In true form (and with me in agreement) Dave responded, “Get ready to support him for the rest of your life.”

Think about that response for a moment while you ponder the fantasy of being a writer. If you have any cranial propensity at all you realize…it ain’t gonna happen. In short, Mr. Berry said that few understand the immensity of writing and a lot of “writers” create one book and think that’s it. He continued, “Most people don’t understand it takes more than one book to make an author.” The reality being that a writer will probably write a number of books before settling on that ONE that becomes published. He cited that StephenKing wrote a large number of manuscripts before ever writing something that would sell. The fact is that most writers are writers long before they become writers and even with alliterative resolve, forming two words in harmonic repose is really, really difficult.

Granted, our dream is not necessarily focused on being the talent giant Stephen King represents, or being as prolific and humorous as Dave Berry. Most writers simply want to tell a story and most of that is directed at memoir writing which is typically what one will find with the writer’s groups dotting the countryside. Still, even these hapless souls would be thrilled at the aspect of completing a manuscript inevitably becoming obsessed with their little darlings to the point of boring the shit out of everyone within earshot of their voice. That said; I don’t know what the hell I want to do at this point but it has nothing to do with writing a memoir.

On a personal note, I am going to give it a year or before my mind (and life) calms down. Technically I can retire in about six years and the reality is I don’t have the time (or the inkling) to sit and write another novel—at least not until I stop working. Even then, I am sure that I will want to spend my time fishing and wondering the woods or ocean. I have two really good stories initiated but can’t seem to find the motivation to keep them going. Last year I lost my dad and my nephew and it kinda sucks right now. I miss both of them beyond any imagination. Maybe in a few months things will change. Until then, I have pondered extensively and have come to the conclusion that, while I like a good story, it’s probably best for me to be buying the book and not writing it.