Moment Magnitude

Where Have I Been?

I have not vanished from this virtual world.

The real world has occupied so much of my time, that I have been left with almost no brain energy to write or update.

Okay, maybe I updated a little. Intrepid readers, take note: Some newer images in one of the photo albums. Comments management on this wildly popular post. Tweaking the first chapter on Plot Participant - heck, tweaking the entire archiving mechanism for Plot Participant. I dare you to go and hunt.

Rather than go into a lengthy diatribic/diatribical (I don't have my Websters dictionary with me; note to self: Self, bring your second copy out here) essay, I shall opt for an enumerated list of activities that have kept me from writing:

1. The IRS audit. I completed the third and final session of the first round of this damned process - the piecemeal review of all receipts and income for 2004. The next step is an appeal. I wrote the appeal request. Done. How's this for irony? The IRS agent admitted to me at the end of our last meeting, that if she were me, she would do exactly what I am doing (i.e., challenging the IRS, reviewing the tax return and receipts, making an appeal). So folks, take note. If you are an independent contractor, and you get audited, fight it. Be appropriate, but stay firm, take one thing at a time, and push back.

2. The Savior, my canny, dear friend as substitute-brother, convinced me to take the New York real estate sales agent licensing course and exam. I've been freelance writing, etc. for him since July, so... I did it, via the NYREI. I could write sitcom episodes out of those classes. Still, I took it dead-serious, studied well and diligently, passed the course, passed the state exam, and am going to work for one of the big-ass agencies, out of its Bridgehampton office. If a former Ralph Lauren supermodel from the late-197Os and 1980s works here, then I suppose I can do it too. Seems as though there are a few Mets fans in the house. That bodes well.

3. I got me a wee place in East Hampton. We're calling it the Ho-Ho House. Up in the Northwest (as it is known on the South Fork), and a stroll away from Sammy's Beach (glorious in the mornings - the Great Peconic Bay smacks of Winslow Homer), I am renting it from a British gal (mentioned here earlier), whose surname begins exactly as mine does: "Ho..." Ergo. Photos to come.

4. It's the last season of The Sopranos. I watch. I love. I am devastated.

5. I also watch Entourage. And The Tudors. These two are not as brilliant as they were (the former), or ought to be (the latter).

6. I made the mistake of watching an episode of one of the early try-out round episodes of American Idol. Let me say this right here. I have never watched that show before. Ever. I watched that one episode, and pow! That crap is crack. I am hooked. Strange, a core of my sharpest friends are long-time hooked. Go and roam here and here, by way of excellent NYC fan-based examples.

7. I started reading that Russian novel in translation, whose main character is a Sister Pelagia, and it didn't grab me. However, I read the first paragraph of Alice McDermott's Child of My Heart, and I stopped, until I realized I was holding my breath. I chose it because it is set out here, in East Hampton, and I was gratified to remind myself that Ms. McDermott won the National Book Award for her novel, Charming Billy. I dove into Child. I could not stop reading it. It made my chest hurt. I'm telling everyone to read it. I ordered a copy from Amazon and had it sent to my mother, for Mother's Day.

8. I had jury duty last week. I've been called five or six times in my life, been empaneled three times (I think), served one time, was sequestered that one time, and we sound up hung. This time I was empaneled, questioned, not selected, and then dismissed. Sprung. Clear for the next six years.

9. I had a date, egad. Maybe a sort-of date. An older gentleman. Whaddaya know, I am so not ready. I just, I just...didn't feel it. I am convinced I am still drawn to men some nine-ish years younger. This fellow is witty, intelligent, and has great stories. But I guess I still gotta go younger. The weather is only starting to move toward summer. Only starting. Patience.

10. I am re-reading Pride and Prejudice (apologies again to Sister Pelagia). It's still so fresh. Here in the country, where land and property are all, Jane Austen's novel manages to resonate - some two hundred years later.

Good grief. This has to be enough for now. I'm pooped. I want to take pictures and post them. I have not abandoned this space. I'll be back sooner.

Indulgence to Diligence

This week tested me. I started the process of a full-blown refinance on my loft. It's the one way, right now, to reorganize my personal finances, to get myself square by the end of the year, and to provide a fiscal cushion for the first six months of 2007.

My business partner and I plan to have initial funding in place for our company within the the first half of next year. We've been building the plan all this year. I'm ready, and I know the people who are depending on us are past ready. Breathe, two, three, four.

At the same time, I am in talks this week with an executive firm, possibly to go back into the workforce, functioning at a monetary level close the that which I left two years ago. Full-time.

All of this, plus a wicked, pernicious, head-cold-body-flu virus, put me into a funk. That deep kind of funk, where just thinking exhausted me. I've been falling over onto the sofa, prone, remote control in hand, watching anything On Demand.

I lost the ability to fantasize, much less write.

Once, someone said something to me about losing the ability to fantasize, losing the creative motivation. It was Dale Launer. I had dinner with him over ten years ago. We had just met, and if I recall right, we met a couple of times over as many days and talked and talked.

Given the unreliability of memory, I think he said something like, "When I'm depressed, I can't fantasize." He might have said, "I can't fantasize when I'm depressed." Either way, that statement stuck in my head.

I think he was right.

("Ruprecht, do you want the genital cuff?")

The freedom to accept creative inspiration, for me, means the elimination of money worries. If that were true, then the world's richest would be the world's writers. That blasted worry nearly shut me down.

The indulgence of creative writing, that indescribable urge that takes hold and requires the creation and assembly of words into phrases, sentences, stories, and more, it's like a drug. When it takes hold, it is a privilege and a pleasure. The goose bump kind. I cannot ignore it, it has to be addressed, and in that process, I take on a kind of diligence, striking a delicate balance between the torrent of inspiration and the subsequent rounds of editing - an iterative refinement.

I fell off the log for the past two weeks.

And then, mid-last week, my partner and I went to see a screening of the documentary film, God Grew Tired of Us. For the first time in Sundance Film Festival history, a documentary won the Grand Jury Prize as well as the Audience Award. The film traces the history of the "Lost Boys" of Sudan, focusing on three from among the thousands of boys displaced by the twenty-plus years of civil war in that ravaged country. Their families annihilated or forced into refugee camps, these boys flee, many perish, the remaining boys come together in a Kenyan refugee camp, before many are taken in my the United States, and given the opportunity to start anew. These boys, who grow into young men, who have suffered unspeakable horrors, somehow manage to convey a love and hopefulness that transcends the evil, and frightful hardships they have faced. They are beatific. I met one of them at the screening, John Dau, now in his twenties, who is doing the good work to help his homeland and his people. He is luminous.

The film was picked up by National Geographic. Everyone, go see it. 

My money troubles pale in comparison, and I am reminded again that living in the here and now is most important, and that life is a gift.

I'm not out of the weeds yet. But I will be. It's a small thing.   

Sister Blog

I am on the brink of creating a sister to Moment Magnitude.

There, as promised or threatened (depending on who you are in my world), I will serialize the novel-in-progress (but recently on hold), as a way to jump start the writing, and to create a community, an audience who might appreciate the work (or not - I don't flatter myself that it is a pearl).

The challenge right now is what to call it. The sister-blog, that is.

After attempting to open my mind, which has been difficult, given this lousy head cold, and its pernicious refusal to vacate my sinuses, I doodled various words and phrases, and distilled them to two.

They are:

No Name Novel (since the title is a working one, and I'm not sure I like it anymore).

Plot Participant (which suggests the community who will kick my butt in various directions - I hope - to make the work better).

Feel free to send me your thoughts, whether in the Comments section here, or by email (those of you who have the address).

Meantime, I have to poke around and establish the weblog's format and design.

Yee-ha.

Horse Latitudes

I could call it the doldrums, but horse latitudes has that Olde English sound to it.

When just about everyone seems to be feeling grey, if not living grey (or gray- never could get that quite right, evidently grey is a variant of gray, making gray the preferred usage, ah, pedantry), what else can you call it?

It is the hey-day (hey-grey and day-gray) of the season, and we ought to be filled to the brim. Filled with the potential excitement of every day, the surprise warmth of the select few days of early fall, before the inevitable hiss of steam heaters, and thick socks and wishing for the summer that just ended. The last day when you can sit outside in Madison Park and sip on a frozen black and white custard from the Shake Shack.

Only five months until spring.

We all of us seem to be in a kind of...stasis. Me. I need investors to get this new company off the ground. In the meantime, I push my personal network for any and all freelance writing, editing, and various other media work. Scary. As yet, I am still sleeping through the night, but the hovering, the grey hovering, it looms, it threatens.

I am not alone.

Monsieur is waiting for investors, those who said they are ready, ready to embrace his concept for changing the company for whom he works, driving forward, making it a viable entity in this mad, vast, media world.

We're in New York. Walk the street. This is where it happens.

We talk, Monsieur and I, the grey tones in both our voices. I am deciding to be upbeat in the face of uncertainty, and after, I leave him funny voice messages. Heck, I laugh as I leave them. I laugh after I've left them, a lighter shade of grey.

Hot Momma and I spent Halloween - one of the handful of amateur nights in the city - she on my sofa with her funny, little dog, and me with Jake the cat, who was slouching in the background, all of us sneezing. We were happy in each other's company. We could not muster the energy to dress up and go out. And it was nice. Geez: the season finale of Weeds! Better than grey.

Datomantrix has burrowed under too. She's not been out on the scene so much either, cleaving to work and family. Sometimes, I wish I could do exactly that.

GVWonder is closer, or further. He's been using that big brain of his. He's on the precipice. His success will color the rest of our outlooks.

Tomorrow, I'm co-hosting an event for a snowboarding film: Snow Blind. It's Prima-downhill's gang - and they are a good lot. The venue has wall-to-wall plasma flat screens, and every one will run the film in a run-time loop. Gotta wave the guns.

Spare the costume and make-believe festivities. I gotta put on the snow dog. For now.

Hold On To Your Ego

Once, probably two decades ago, when I was starting my career in publishing, my friend Carter Roberts met me for dinner in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

As a young acquisitions editor for Prentice Hall, I was calling on science professors at Cambridge's most eminent universities, seeking new authors. Carter had completed his business degree over off Soldiers Field Road, and had secured his first job, very corporate, at Gillette (I think). I had a little crush on Carter. I think I always will. I paid close attention to anything he said to me, and remember pieces, sentences, these many years.

He asked me about my work, and I told him.

"You know," he said. "I am jealous of you. You have the best job." He has one helluva bass baritone voice, that one, and at the time a strange boyishness which reminded of a less homicidal Norman Bates.

Carter Anthony Perkins

I thought he was kidding me, in that subtle, southern, deadpan way he has.

"I talk to scientists, Carter. I think most people would find that boring."

"But it's not." his tone, soft as it was, suggested that there could be no argument.

Sometimes, the work could be boring, but in truth, I did find it intriguing, since doors to the offices of some of the world's biggest brains were open to me.

"I figure," I said," that if they can describe to me what they do, their work, in a way that I can understand it, then I think that is the first sign suggesting they can write a book."

"Don't you see? You have the opportunity to learn something new everyday. Most people don't have that."

Today, I remain astonished at the insight, the wisdom of that observation. He was right.

Many years later, I worked with Murray Gell-Mann on slight revisions for the paperback edition of his beloved book, The Quark and the Jaguar. I remember reading it, struggling through the sentences that sought to make accessible the deep ideas he had about the nature of nature, about complexity and emergence. I was often confused, and made annotations in the margins, question marks, squiggled sentences and scrawls.

This was Murray Gell-Mann, however, the Nobel Laureate in Physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles. Think quarks. I started working with him in New York. But it wasn't until I called on him at his beautiful home in Santa Fe that I understood what it meant to be in the presence of greatness, greatness of mind.

Our meetings, and our work, were not about me, much as I attempted to describe the confusion I experienced when reading through various of the passages in his book. I parked my ego at the door, and opened all my senses, because, recalling Carter's remark (as I did and have on regular occasion), I knew I would learn something everyday I was in the presence of Murray.

My mother had moved to New Mexico by then, and I would stay with her. She would tell or remind me, "Murray called," since I gave him her number, the surefire way to get me once I landed. Mom would put on her best Brooklyn accent. I think she rather liked talking to him those brief moments. It takes a New York ear to recognize another New York ear, even two time zones west.   

Here is what I learned, although my memory is faulty. I am sure I've synthesized Murray's explanations, but I own my memories, my interpretation of them. I am fond and protective of both.

I learned that some species of snake that lives in African continent is blind, but not so, for the remnant of its eyes are part of its biology. It has vestigial eyes.

That's one helluva term: vestigial eyes. Sometimes my eyes feel vestigial.

He also told me his notions of the source of my surname. He thought it might be a Middle English word, perhaps spelled "yddr." But he seemed more certain that my name was the name of a river in England, and that my name described the milder of two rivers, the ancient "yddr" meaning mild, or milder. There is a river in England that bears my name, although I have not seen it. I suppose it is a mild river. Why would I think otherwise if I had not been there and seen it myself?

Something more that I've learned since that learned encounter. Just about everybody can show me something I don't already know. If I exercise patience and careful questions, I will learn something. I kid that a back hoe operator knows more about back hoes than I will ever know.

The Tennis Pro and I chatted this week. And he said that one of his clients was a "choochberry," his word, part of his personal vernacular. I asked him what he meant by it. Instead of providing his own working definition - hey, I like made-up words almost as much as those that the OED defines with rigor - he veered off onto a tangent, about how he teaches people, many wealthy and influential, who most times are caught up in their special universes, in which they are the master, the one in charge, the operator and controller. (This is my extrapolation, tbt.)

When he has them on the court, his domain, they have to give in, give up, and allow him to teach them. In the process, he pokes around a bit, tests them. I can imagine his gentle queries. He is relaxed, but seems to be perceptive that way. Like The Savior, his particular genius is contained in his body. But he has the presence, if not the temerity, to open his mind, and learn something or other from his clients.

In that sense, we are similar. And in that conversation, I realized that we shared a common behavior. We both know when to put ourselves aside - even though he is as much an expert in tennis as I am in editing and book publishing - and pay attention. Because we like to learn new, well...stuff.