Blog or scroll?

Back to blogging basics, these last couple of weeks.

I worked on "Lilly Of Glaxo", "Mr. Winrick", and "Step Cousins".

I know it was 'work' because all three were set aside and published unfinished. If I had a boss he'd write me up; if I had a coach he'd say I don't follow through.

Deliberate writing as opposed to 'blogging' (let's rename it 'scrolling', why don't we?) is engrossing and can be satisfying though.

People always said my posts were too long, so why shouldn't I write stories with hooks?

Pull the reader along, write a novella maybe. But not this month.
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I set a bomb off in my life and behold! I'm on cloud nine.

For two years I stepped out from the assembly line floor into the weather. Old cars lined up in the concourse as carriers and haulers waited for the afternoon edition of the paper to come out on the conveyer belt. I likened it to a carnival atmosphere, especially when school was out and people had their kids along to help.

At the bookstore (I'll call it "Books-A-Million", or B.A.M., this time), we are a wing of the city's largest mall. When I step away now, there is a giant carasel full of children, and there is merry-go-round music as parents wave each time their(G)nat goes by. (Lilek's daughter must be five or six now?)

My shoes are a little slick on the tile of the mall floor; I have the post-LSD dread of over-stimulating shopping atmospheres, with their arrays of pulsing music, bewildering window-displays, and gorgeous young women wearing the finest, almost royal clothes.

I'm prone to the mental lightening flashes, flickering at border of 'panic'.

But I don't have to walk the mall. The centerpiece of fun, fun, fun! is near the exit (another exit to the weather, yes). And as for the crowded bookstore itself, I am completely at home, not minding the crowds at all. The individuals but not the crowds, no. (It's some of the friendly ones I detest--- I suspect they want to make a show of slowly dawning disappointed in me.) (There is this Jack Benny style, with the bright happy face falling like a leaf into disappointed heartbreak.)

"You..you're telling me you've never... heard of Hummels? May I speak to another clerk, please?"

The contrast between the two jobs has more to do with people, especially my co-workers. As I wrote before, there are a dozen "types" of booksellers, all on a spectrum from this crazy to that crazy, and if experience informs me well, they mostly love one another. The running jokes at this store are unique to this store (this is not Iowa, this is not the South). I listen, it's too early for me to join in, but I laugh too. They're all clever and quick.

This Tuesday I may be hired by a left-wing think-tank: a grown up job, a real job with a salary and meetings and swivel chairs (I love meetings. Such a waste of time. Why doesn't everyone love meetings? I guess they want to get things done, or they're bored with one another.)

I've almost achieved indifference, whether I am hired. Maybe even supreme indifference. My world has turned toward the light and there is warmth and security and I still have that fine feeling of putting one over (a character defect I can't wish away, just yet).

The subject at this mornings Spiritual Meeting was ironic and difficult: the arrogance of judging oneself too harshly. It may have devolved into a Smiley style "I like myself" meeting, but no. Apart from our behavior, and free will, we are as our Father wanted us to be. To have teen-age style self-loathing is a type of affront to God, when you think about it. There's maturity in accepting yourself as you are. There's arrogance in self-flagellation, too, when we have made honest mistakes, or when we reproach ourselves into alcoholic oblivion.
This is discussed in the November 11th daily meditation, for those who are interested.

Now I am off to a Cambridge Chapter meeting. I hope everyone is having good naps this Thanksgiving weekend. I am.