Tag Archives: writing

W E Patterson's avatar

Short list

. Poetry, What I'm Writing . , , , . 4 Comments

The HR Lady

(that’s Human Resources Representative)

From the midtown agency,

Studies my resume,

Like it’s a Chinese restaurant menu,

Her lips move as she reads,

She takes off her tortoiseshell reading glasses,

And she looks at me,

Like she can’t decide,

On the Egg Drop, or the Wonton soup,

Finally, she asks me why I feel,

That I’m qualified for a lofty position,

On a lofty floor of a lofty,

New York City institution,

So, I say that I have 27 and three quarter years,

Of experience in such work,

Tho’ some of it is not directly applicable,

To the task at hand,

But I say that I enjoy a challenge,

And I’ll reach out – to whomever,

And I like to keep my finger,

On the pulse of the marketplace,

Strategizing to drive proper synergy,

To various business groups,

And whoever else,

Wants to tag along,

And I like to bring new ideas to the table.

I’m sweating, feeling faint,

My left eye socket pounds,

Sweat drips into my newly laundered,

Argyle socks.

I smile, and then she asks:

“Can you explain your last period of unemployment?”

Oh such a question they often ask,

But I dodge it saying that I was busy in the Poconos,

For nineteen months,

Busy?

Yes, busy proofing Leah’s first novel,

Painting an old house in Marshall’s Creek,

Planting asparagus, and setting out a strawberry bed,

Writing poetry at one AM,

Drinking wine while the sun rises,

Over the mountains by the Delaware,

And racing Leah through the orchard,

Naked, in the first summer rain,

You know, busy.

So I left — not knowing whether or not,

I’d gotten the job,

But I figured at least,

I’d made the short list.

W E Patterson's avatar

Difference of opinion

. Poetry, What I'm Writing . , , . 2 Comments

It’s spring, but the Prairie won’t hear of it,

Snow clings to the fence rows,

Where dead grass holds it in place,

Waiting for the warmth of someday,

To take it away,

Water is frozen hard in the potholes,

Of the narrow gravel road,

That runs through the pasture,

Up to the dead end,

A cold wind whistles through the phone lines,

The ones that run along the south side of the cemetery,

Where the Union Army vets,

(and two from the competition),

Lie buried side by side,

Flesh and bones long eroded,

And washed away into the Gulf of Mexico,

And beyond,

We are here to bury Uncle Leo,

A fine old soldier; but one given to disorder,

In matters of the heart,

Gary from the VFW says to me,

That Leo was a good old soul who,

Held his liquor well and didn’t swear,

And his first wife said he’d been a kind family man,

On the holidays – especially,

And Candice, a waitress at the Larkspur Inn,

Shivers in a black dress as she stares at the casket,

And tries to cry but she can’t,

But she holds a ten dollar locket in her hand,

And she tells me he always came around on Thursdays,

For Bacardi and coke, and left a five dollar tip – always!

And she didn’t care how many of his ex’s,

Showed up to bury him, because he was a better man,

Than any of them deserved,

Not that he ever spoke of them to her, then:

She starts to cry…

Silence descends and,

We turn our attention to:

The Unitarian pastor who holds her hair in one hand,

(a hard wind blows straight out of Saskatchewan),

She holds a prayer book in the other hand,

So we listen – carefully – as she does her best,

To give polite justice to a man she’s never met,

(not much of a church goer, Uncle Leo).

When it’s over, we walk carefully around,

Graves of dead soldiers, so as not to disturb them,

But before we reach the cars,

Wife three touches me on the arm,

She asks why I’ve come, and I tell her,

How he explained ‘Kentucky windage’ to me when I was ten,

And he taught me how to shoot,

Into a cross wind — he told me he could see a bullet,

As soon as it left the barrel – and follow it with his eye,

Then I say that he was a soldier, who fought,

For family and country, and I wanted to be like him,

When I was ten,

She shakes her head – ,

He was a lying old buzzard she says,

As she walks away

W E Patterson's avatar

In Pursuit of Completion – Reflections on NaNoWriMo

. Current events, NaNoWriMo, Writing . , , , . Leave a comment

Ernest Hemingway

You just  have to go on when it is worst and most helpless–there is only one thing to do with a novel and that is to go straight to the end of the damn thing.

–Ernest Hemingway

I was not going to write anything about NaNoWriMo this year. I told myself that a month ago, as the November 1st kickoff date for the event loomed. After all, the blogosphere is filled with commentary about NaNoWriMo, which for those of you who don’t know of it, is an acronym that refers (awkwardly) to National Novel Writing Month, and it takes place in November of each year – all 30 days of it. I was all set to move on to other topics, ignoring NaNoWriMo entirely, until I ran across the above quote from Hemingway. The quote is an excerpt from a letter that Old Hem wrote to Scott Fitzgerald back in 1929, presumably to prod his friend on to literary success (it obviously worked). And, since nothing inspires me to put fingers to keyboard more than a quote from Papa, and this one seems so perfectly tailored as an intro to a NaNoWriMo blog, here goes…

First off, NaNoWriMo is a challenge in which participants attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. To get some idea of the size of a 50,000 word novel, think The Great Gatsby at 47,180 words, or Slaughterhouse-Five which clocks in at some 49,459 words. In both cases, Fitzgerald and Vonnegut (respectively), would have needed to beef up a couple of chapters in order to complete NaNoWriMo successfully. Conversely, Faulkner would have handily picked up his NaNoWriMo award had he uploaded his 56,787 word manuscript, As I Lay Dying, to the NaNoWriMo server prior to the November 30th midnight deadline.

So, considering how large a 50,000 word manuscript really is, it is easy to see why completing such a large amount of work in such a short time period is a daunting task to say the least. It requires dedication, perseverance, and above all, hours of hard damned work. But the world has no shortage of aspiring writers. According to the NaNoWriMo website, the 2012 competition attracted 341,375 participants, and since its humble beginnings in 1999, 250 novels, birthed in NaNoWriMo have been traditionally published. I would venture to say that many, most, or all, of these novels would have found their way to publication without NaNoWriMo, but I can’t say for sure. Most were probably planned well before November, fleshed out during the competition, and then subjected to endless edits post-NaNoWriMo. But that’s just my feeling, so if you have taken a novel all the way to traditional publication and attribute your success entirely to NaNoWriMo (Jeez, one blogger is right, that acronym is damned annoying to type), then please feel free to comment here and flame the hell out of me.

There you have it. If you are ready to get your novel down on paper, or in the electronic can, head on over and sign up – just be aware that in order to complete NaNoWriMo, you’ll have to write a consistent minimum of 1667 words per day – 7 days per week, each day of the entire month. So what could possibly be controversial about a quarter million people or more, spending time writing novels? Seems like an innocent pursuit, right. Well, there are a good many people out there who do not share the love when it comes to NaNoWriMo.

Do a Google search for ‘nanowrimo sucks’, or ‘i hate nanowrimo’ and you will see what I mean. NaNoWriMo has haters. And many of them make very good points, one point being that the competition is totally about word count and finishing the work in the allotted 30 day period with total disregard to quality. Technically, Jack Torrence, Stephen King’s tortured writer in The Shining, could have submitted his ersatz manuscript wherein the words, “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” are repeated endlessly, filling each page from margin to margin.  As long as Jack’s manuscript reaches the 50,000 work mark (and he has an electronic copy available for upload), he can walk away with a certificate of NaNoWriMo completion. This rankles some writers who believe that the world needs far fewer bad novels, and far more good novel readers  – a point that I feel has great merit, but not enough for me to come down hard on NaNoWriMo. I think that the advantages of competing in a challenge that encourages finishing a project to be admirable, and I have no unkind words for NaNoWriMo participants.

And will I be participating in this year’s competition?  No, I will not. This year I’ve other priorities. But I shall be thinking of you all as the clock approaches midnight on Thursday evening, and I shall see you in my minds eye with nervous fingers tapping the keyboard waiting for the race to begin…good luck to all.

W E Patterson's avatar

Canoeing on the Delaware with Christine

. Poetry, Uncategorized . , , , . Leave a comment

Last night I dreamed one of those dreams,

the kind that doesn’t go away when you wake up,

it was early autumn,

and there I was: drifting down the Delaware,

in a rented canoe, with sweet Christine,

a girl who loved to canoe,

and sail, and play badminton and lacrosse,

unlike myself – fresh from office servitude,

a cube dweller,

an indentured servant to a chair.

I study her closely from behind,

and watch in wonder, as she dips her paddle,

so gently into the great Delaware River,

like she is afraid to hurt the water.

We’re heading south, mid-stream,

a mile or so past Dingmans Ferry,

“on to Washington’s Crossing,” I yell,

“here’s to the father of our country,” she shouts back,

“a merry old soul was he,” I shout out to no one in particular,

we’re throwing caution to the wind,

I notice the stencil on the back of her seat,

NO ALCOHOL ALLOWED ABOARD THIS VESSEL

” what’s up with THAT shit?” I say,

she laughs and

then I tell her she looks just like Pocahontas,

from the back that is,

with her black hair pulled back,

Christine: “Aye Aye Captain Smith,”

I steer us deftly around a rock,

dodge a log, put my back into it,

Pocahontas doesn’t break rhythm,

my heart pounds – my back aches,

“You having fun back there, Jake?”

she says that just to taunt me,

she knows I’m trying to find a beer in the cooler,

with my free hand,

but then she is gone,

so is the river,

so is the canoe,

I’m staring at a white ceiling,

right leg busted in nine places,

strung up like a Christmas goose,

pins and plumbing running every which way,

pans and pulleys,

morphine drip and a nurse from hell,

a doc with no manners at all,

let alone bedside ones,

but, I see the face of my sweet Pocahontas,

as I drift away again,

so glad to see  her face,

instead of the face,

of the bastard,

who cut me off on the I-80 overpass.

W E Patterson's avatar

Another day – like yesterday

. Poetry . , . Leave a comment

It’s Tuesday around noon,

I find a place at the bar,

At the Big Endicino Casino,

The one on the reservation,

Ten miles outside of town,

I dangle a wayward twenty,

Above the hungry mouth,

Of the video poker machine,

A queen winks at me,

Like an old hooker:

“hey guy, wanna have a good time?”

Jodi, the bartender,

Pours a coca cola for me,

In a frosted highball glass,

With three ice cubes and a lemon twist,

I give her a five, then,

She points (wistfully) at the Bacardi bottle,

“On the side?” she asks.

I shake my head. I need a steady hand,

The jacks and queens call to me,

From inside the electronic box,

They need to eat they tell me,

I’ve been away too long,

So I feed the creature,

Lights flash, like demon’s eyes,

The ones you see before you fall asleep,

In the early morning,

After an all-nighter.

A full house on the first play,

Three of a kind, four of a kind,

Inside straight – fill it – don’t stop,

Hammer it,  in spite of the odds,

Soon I’m sweating, the tide turns,

I worry about my future,

I consider my past due phone bill,

Jodi half smiles at me,

I know she wishes I was drinking.

A skinny guy with a goatee,

Wearing a Korn t-shirt, and a Caterpillar ball cap,

Sits down beside me,

He lights a cigarette and pumps twenty,

Into his own little monster,

“Shit” he soon says,

He pounds his fist on the bar,

And then stomps away,

I shake my head – an amateur that one.

You gotta THINK before you play,

You can’t be too reckless,

I slide another twenty,

Into the hungry little mouth.

At one thirty, the bus from Kansas City rolls up,

Retirees on oxygen and social security totter in,

Jodi comes by and asks if I need anything,

Another eighty five bucks, I tell her,

After that I go outside to call the office,

Boss asks how the meeting went,

I say it went just like the one yesterday.

W E Patterson's avatar

Hunting the perfect moon

. Life . , , . 2 Comments

Paul Bowles

“…because we don’t know [when we will die] we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.” —Paul Bowles

Readers of this blog will recognize the quote above, from Paul Bowles’ 1949 novel, “The Sheltering Sky,” as having previously appeared here at EEOTPB. It is one of my all time favorite quotes, and I keep a copy taped to the whiteboard above my desk at my office, alongside a weathered printout of Shelley’s “Ozymandias of Egypt”, and the classic villanelle by Dylan Thomas, “Do not go gentle into that good night”. But it is Bowles’ quote that I read most often, and I also keep an electronic copy on my phone, although I could probably delete it as I know it well by heart.

I was thinking of this quote last Friday, October 18th, as I was making my way north on I-95 from my home in northern Broward County, Florida to my office in Boca Raton. It was 6:15 AM (or thereabouts), and there was a full moon hanging low in the western sky.  But this was not just your ‘run of the mill’ full moon. This was the kind of moon that you very seldom see no matter how many times you try. This was the kind of moon that only sheepherders tending flocks at night and astronomers perched in mountaintop observatories get to enjoy seeing.  Certainly not the kind of moon one generally sees as one is maneuvering down the fabled New York to Miami, balls-to-the-wall, flip-em’-off, lay on the horn and hit ’em, main drag, known as Interstate 95, on the cusp of rush hour.

It was such a perfectly beautiful moon that I would later note it in my daily planner: “Beautiful full moon this AM over Boca – tried to get pic but too low.”

So that is what happened. I wanted to take a picture of the moon, but at 75 mph with a tractor trailer half a car length from my rear bumper, snapping a picture was out of the question. In the interest of public safety, I waited until I pulled into my office parking lot at around 6:35. I parked my car and quickly jumped out, giving a lady that I recognized, but really don’t know, a bit of a fright as she was unloading her bag out of the trunk of her car.

“I’m just taking a picture of the moon,” I said to her, as I rushed across the parking lot, my laptop computer bag in one hand and my cell phone camera at arms length in the other.

“Oh, that’s nice,” she said, as she nearly ran away from me toward the safety of the building.

I hurried on across the parking lot, trying to get a shot of this perfect moon before it dropped below the trees that border the parking lot, but no matter how hard I tried, something was in the way – a light pole, a tree – something, and then finally the perfect moon withered away, into something less than perfect. I watched until it dipped below the dark outline of the buildings in the adjacent office park, and then finally it wasted away over the Everglades, and then on out over the Gulf of Mexico, and out of my life forever. Ah well, I’ll get a shot of it next time…

So after that, I went into my office and sat down and read Paul Bowles quote again. Somehow I felt a little better for it.

W E Patterson's avatar

Considering Facebook

. Uncategorized . , , , . Leave a comment

A colleague of mine, a very technically savvy guy, a gentleman some years younger than myself, told me last week that he did not have, nor had he ever had, a Facebook account. Even though his own wife, his 75 year old mother, and his two teenage daughters, all had Facebook accounts, he was resistant, and when I pressed him for why he’d never opted for an account, he told me he didn’t have time for such foolishness. What I wanted to say was, why is your time so much more valuable than that of your wife, your mother and your very own offspring, but before I could say that, he was gone, leaving me standing in the proverbial dust contemplating my own relationship with social media, Facebook in particular.

Having been a semi-faithful user of Facebook, almost from the start, I confess to having a love/hate relationship with it. Actually, love/hate is far too strong of a term to attribute to an online social networking service – maybe “like/don’t care so much for it” is better. Best not to give too much power to the relatively insignificant. In any event, for those readers who happen to have come of age after Al Gore laid down the information superhighway, let me briefly outline the way life was for us before we all became so interconnected.

During our elementary/high school/college years, and on into the work world, we made friends (or we tried to make friends). Sometimes we made friends that we stayed in touch with for the remainder of our adult lives, and in some cases we even married our friends, but in many cases, we lost touch with them. Upon parting with our friends, we would exchange telephone numbers and addresses, and say to one another that we would write and call, but lots of times that never ever happened. Life became hectic. People moved, and telephone numbers changed. Sometimes a letter to an old friend would be returned as undeliverable, or a call to an old friend would be made to a disconnected telephone.

As years ground on, with no word from our old friends, we would reminisce about them over coffee, or cocktails. We would think about so-and-so, and we would wonder if she ever made it into medical school, or if he ever wrote that novel, or if she ever opened that organic restaurant in the Catskills, or if he/she had really ever married that guy/girl that he/she dumped us for…

We would wonder such things, and occasionally we would find out the answers. Sometimes, we would get a card around the holidays from an old friend who had somehow unearthed our address. Or, perhaps late at night, we would get a call from the truck stop up on the Interstate. An old friend, having recognized the exit for our town had pulled off the road, and after finding our number in the local telephone directory (the one that was bolted and chained to the phone booth), had called us and we’d chatted for fifteen or twenty minutes about old times until he/she ran out of change.

Old Friends From Out Of The Blue (OFFOOTB), that’s what I called them. And on the flip side of it, we too were OFFOOTB to others, dropping in and out of old friends lives sporadically and when we did so, we were always on our best behavior, always wanting to put our best foot forward.

In those days, the following conversation would NEVER have occurred:

Phone rings. I answer.

“Hi Ed!”

“Hi.”

“It’s me, Ralph. Ralph Thornwhistle.”

“Oh, hi,” I say, trying to remember if I owe anybody named Ralph any money.

“You remember me, right? From Mr. Bricker’s 3rd period biology class – 10th grade.”

“Oh hi Ralph. What’s it been, 42, 43 years now?”

“More like 45 old pal. Hey – do you want to hear the top ten reasons why Obamacare sucks…”

Ok, so maybe my example is a little extreme, but similar encounters seem to happen often online. I mention it here to illustrate how I am starting to view Facebook – I now know far too much about people that I’d almost forgotten about. And it’s not that I don’t care about maintaining contact with friends and family scattered afar, because I do. If there is one thing that Facebook, as well as other social media like Twitter and LinkedIn are doing very well, it is changing the entire dynamic of how we interact with each other on a long term basis. And if I had, in fact, stayed in contact with (fictitious) Ralph Thornwhistle for the past 45 years, I probably would not be as put off by his political views as I would be if they were suddenly dropped on me from out of nowhere, after accepting him as a Facebook friend. If he and I had kept up with each other over the years, maybe we would be friends in spite of our differences (always the best), or perhaps not.

Marriage counselors, family therapists, as well as pastors, priests, rabbis and anyone else who is in the business of listening to peoples marital woes report a surge in infidelity brought on by people who have hooked up with old lovers thanks to Facebook. And I suppose there is something to that, as it is hard to hook up with those we can’t locate, and Facebook has changed that. I know of two marriages that ended due to cheating spouses who ‘found ex-lovers’ on Facebook. Personally, I feel it is unfair to blame an online social networking service for marital discord. After all, people tempted to cheat have been doing so for…maybe 10,000 years.

But sometimes I do find that I would rather have just remembered some friends the way that I remember them, and not as I find them today. I also imagine that some of them feel the same about me.

W E Patterson's avatar

Autumn leaves

. Uncategorized . , . 10 Comments

The first leaves of autumn

Gather under the empty, grey, park benches

That are arranged so neatly

Beneath the one hundred year old oak trees

In the county courthouse yard.

I ask the waitress at the cafe on the corner

Where they’ve all gone –

The old men who used to sit out

On the now forsaken grey benches

Every day that it didn’t rain

They were there until the first snow

The ones who still wore overalls and work boots

Even in retirement – in less than perfect conditions

The ones who carried pocket watches on Brockway fobs

And smoked pipes packed with Prince Albert

Or Muriel cigars or Lucky Strike cigarettes

As they discussed…

the drought and the flood

the County Attorney and the last election

the heat and the cold

the John Birch Society and the N.F.O.

the Warren Court and Richard Nixon

the checkout girl at the Save-a-Lot

the Chicago Bears and the price of gas

the price of haircuts, and Kaiser-Frazer cars

the good war and the bad war

the new war and next war

the wife they’d lost to cancer

the son they’d lost to drink

the daughter they’d lost to Jesus

the friend they’d lost to carelessness

the farm they’d lost to the bank

the life they’d lost to toil

the dreams they’d plowed under

…those men…

the waitress shrugs

and says that nobody like that has sat on those benches

in over thirty five years.

W E Patterson's avatar

Cheap imitations

. Poetry . , , . 6 Comments

Roy, the guy who mows my lawn on Wednesdays,

Comes around on Thursday, and tells me,

He’s come by to trim the date palms in the back yard,

I’m sitting by the pool writing a book about bicycles.

I tell him to be careful because dangerous things,

Lurk in date palms, but Roy is unafraid.

“Spindle a…bolts to sprocket lifter b…”

I tap it out on the laptop and I wonder if it’s right.

Roy comes around later and asks if I have cigarettes,

I tell him that I quit ten years back,

Then he asks if I have beer and I direct him,

To the fridge on the porch, and tell him to bring me one too.

Antioch, the yellow tabby who sleeps under my sling chair,

Senses confrontation and heads for cover.

Kerouac died drinking a Falstaff he says to me,

Then he asks: Did you know that? I shake my head.

We should be safe with Coors, I tell him – at least for this afternoon,

I tell Roy that I’ve always been an admirer of Kerouac,

And he says he’s read ‘The Subterraneans’ seventeen times.

We toast Jack, and Roy asks what I am writing about,

I tell him, after which,

He says he probably knows more about bicycles than I do,

No offense intended – none taken,

So we leave it at that and the conversation trails off,

Antioch rubs against my leg, glad that things are going well,

So I’ll see you Wednesday he says, taking a beer for the road,

I ask him about the date palms and he says that,

Only Phoenix dactylifera are true date palms,

Mine are just cheap imitations.

W E Patterson's avatar

A flag for my lapel

. What I'm Writing . , . 4 Comments

I’m going to get a flag pin,

To wear on the lapel,

Of my fourteen hundred sixty four dollar,

Brooks Brothers suit.

The suit I am going to buy from,

The shop up on Madison Avenue,

The day I get a job,

And leave the house promptly at 8 am,

Every day.

…and then…

I’ll park my ass at Starbucks,

For forty minutes or so,

Just so I can check out the shit that’s,

Buzzing into my cellular telephone,

And my electronic tablet,

And all of the other electronic devices,

The ones that I am going to need,

Once I arrive at my job…no – my position,

Where I do lots of high speed things,

Requiring electronic endurance, and motivation.

…but…

My wife comes into the room,

It’s about a half an hour before sun up,

And she says to me, quietly,

“you silly old hippie, Jack,

You haven’t been out of bed in a week,

And you sure as hell aren’t buying,

Any Brooks Brothers suits with,

That tiny little check that you get,

From the United States Government.”

So you might as well get up,

Come drink tea with me before I go to work,

And then sit at your desk with the cat,

And try to write something…anything,

That’s what you’re good at…writing something,

How about a poem?

And I tell her that I haven’t written a poem,

Or at least a poem that I can remember being good,

Or a poem that was even halfway decent in say

— ten years,

Not since before my first deployment.