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Crossing 20,000

Last night, crossed 20,000 and beyond. Now up to 21978. Blazin’!

An important moment this evening, as I discovered exactly who and what Decimal is doing here, in this story. Turns out, he was there when many different great men had their epiphanies. He’s a….well, I’ll let him tell you.

“Don’t I know it!” Decimal said. “The whole situation makes about the same amount of sense. I mean, it’s not like it hasn’t happened to me before. There was the telegraph guy, the mathematician, the blind guy, the musician, the candy maker…. Each time, each time I received a note under my door with an address and a name and I went, and though I’d never met the man before, I knew him, knew his life, and knew what needed to happen in order for him to fulfill his destiny.”
“This is more shitfuck,” Dui said quietly. He still hadn’t quite got the hang of it.
“I assure you, I am telling the truth. I have had this same conversation a dozen times and each man has had the same reaction. The same responses. The same disbelief. So, each time I have tried a different tactic. Some have worked better than others. I will make a note that mysterious and cryptic is not the right tack to take. Maybe next time I’ll figure it out.”
“Who. The. Hell. Are. You?”
“My name is Jonathan Decimal. I’m a facilitator. A synergizer. A catalyst for change in a volatile environment. I help men find their goals, achieve their aims, reach new heights. Where great men are stuck, I am there to help.”
“And you are here to help me?”
“That is correct. I am here to help you. Together, we’ll make you a great man.”
Dui still didn’t fully trust Decimal, the story was so fantastic that it defied belief, but at least the man’s intentions seemed benign. “Well then, Decimal. What exactly are we going to do? Where does my future lie?”
“I don’t know exactly, Dewey,” Decimal admitted. “But I do know one thing.”
“What’s that?” Dui asked.
“It’s going to have something to do with dots.”

Week 2!

Me, next to the Bears defense. Only one of the two of us showed up to work today.
As week 2 started, we were at 17,030 words which is about 2 days ahead of the 30 day pace. We still have no plot to speak of, but hell, what’s that matter? Words still come. I despair that there is nothing to write and then go ahead and write another few dozen words. This thing is being written in 100-word chunks, each of which takes about 5 minutes to write with 15 minute intervals in between each one.
As I write this, we’re up to a whopping 18699 words. Here are some of today’s. Not too many. It’s Sunday and I know you would rather be watching football. Or poking yourself in the eye.

“Come now, Mr. Dewey. Don’t be so dramatic,” Decimal said soothingly. “You’ve had a rough few days. It’s perfectly understandable.”
“But that’s just the thing,” Dui looked up. “The past few days haven’t been any more or less rough than all the ones before it. They’ve all been equally mediocre, more or less, taken on average.”

And on the Seventh Day….

More writing outside! It’s a beautiful day! Everything is sunny!

We’re a week into Nano here, and we’re over a quarter done on the word count. We still have no plot to speak of, but things are progressing towards one, perhaps. Nothing like a cryptic mysterious figure to speed things along.
But poor dear, desparate, deluded Dui. Here is a longish excerpt (467 words!) of a diner scene that rivals the great meeting between Pacino and DeNiro in Heat.

They adjourned for breakfast, that morning, soon after meeting. Decimal spoke of a restaurant around the corner that Dui had long been a fan of. As they ate their eggs and bacon, they were silent, but when they had finished, Dui began firing questions rapidly at his tablemate.
“So, who are you?” he asked.
“We already figured that out,” Decimal replied. “I’m Jonathan Decimal.”
“Yes, yes,” Dui said. “I mean, who are you?“
“Oh, I understand. No wait, I don’t. I’m Jonathan Decimal,” Decimal repeated his name loudly and slowly, as if Dui didn’t speak English and just by changing the speed and volume of his speech, Decimal could impart understanding.
“You are a frustrating son of a bitch, aren’t you?” Dui asked. His swear earlier had felt good and he thought he might try it some more. He was always on the lookout for new hobbies.
“Oh you have no idea, sir,” Decimal replied, that infuriating smile, along with a fleck of scrambled egg, on his lips. He leaned back in his chair and patted his belly, and looked for all the world as a man without a care, a man without a thought, and absolutely, thought Dui, a man without any intention of explaining his sudden appearance in Dui’s quarters, in Dui’s life.
Well, thought Dui, I can play that game too. He took another sip of his coffee and leaned back in his own chair, patted his own belly, tried on an expression of smug satisfaction, checked his reflection in the window over Decimal’s shoulder, decided that the expression wasn’t the look he was going for, tried another, and another, until he felt that he had found the proper one.
Decimal laughed and said, “Are you going to make faces at me all day, or are you going to tell me why you called me here?”
“Why I called you here?” Dui asked, his facial expression returning to his usual (“worried schoolboy called to the principal’s office for something he may or may not have done but isn’t sure and is wracking his brain to discover if there is something infraction in his recent past for which he has been caught”) all sense of cool, calm and collected out the window. “You appear in my apartment unannounced, you know everything about me, you invite me to breakfast, you stick me with the tab” — Decimal had deftly ignored the check as the waiter had presented it, had waited it out so long that Dui had felt no option but to pay the bill — “and now you want to know why I called you here? Sir, I’ve had just about enough. I wish I could say it was a pleasure to meet you, but it has been anything but. It has been everything but.”

Getting Tense

So, I’m writing this thing in two different tenses — the “modern” stuff is all in present tense. Actions are happening, shit’s going down. The flashbacky stuff is all in past tense. It’s in the past. It’s done.

But I keep having to go back and change the flashbacky stuff to past tense stuff because I slip into present tense stuff, and it’s really starting to tick me off. I think I naturally like writing in present tense. I think if we went back and looked at my old stuff, a good majority would be written in present tense. I like present tense. Past tense is weak. Present tense brings you into the action (if there is any). Present tense is watching a movie, seeing this happen. Past tense is like, “Hey, if you give a crap, something happened yesterday or twenty years ago or whenever.”
I wrote a short story for my senior English class, that, if I remember correctly, was about an emergency in Hell, where all the damned were rising up and taking over and Satan was in a tizzy and had to call God for help or something along those lines. Anyhow, it was all written in present tense and one of the first changes my teacher made me do was to change it to past tense. And, yeah, I did it, because I wanted a better grade and everything, but I’m thinking, “This hasn’t hapepned yet.”….
Um. Anyhow.

Dui Don’t

“Yes, but have you invented the Dewey Decimal System while on weed?”
That’s right, I have introduced a little bit of deus ex sativa, if you will. Not for myself, mind you, but for Mr. Melvil Dewey (or, as he is referring to himself at this point in the story, “Dui.”) In actuality (according to the biography of Dewey that I am reading) the idea came to him while sitting in church; he nearly cried “Eureka!” during a long sermon. I, however, have taken some liberties with history (again and again). He’s still inspired by the divine at church, but only for things such as new and improved grape juice (Dewey invented Snapple?). Unfortunately, this does not lead him to the levels of greatness in his life that he had hoped for, so, at his wit’s end, alone (his dear Annie wants nothing to do with him anymore!) he turns to the pot. Poor, deluded Dewey. Don’t worry, gentle reader, all things will work out in the end; the DDS will be invented, the identity of our mysterious stranger will be revealed, and the 15,000 word line will be crossed shortly….
We join our intrepid hero in the throes of a marijuana high, his mind reeling, his heart racing, his thoughts completely nonsensical. (P.S., we’re both deeply sorry about the destruction of the ukulele. Dui borrowed it from a friend and promises to replace it.)

He fell back into his chair, the drapes fell back together, Dui became yet another shadow behind yet another curtain in yet another building in yet another city. Anonymous, nameless, faceless, soulless. Urban life was soul stealing, he decided, and decided also, that he was fine with that. Closing his eyes, hearing music in his head, seeing colorful patterns that matched the beat and tempo of the music, he smiled, wondered how long he had been sitting there, what time it was, how he had gotten so tired, so hungry, just sitting there, thinking, wondering what his friends were doing, where they were, where he was — no wait, he was in his room, he knew that much, what that music was, what —
Dui woke in his bed, his eyes crusty with morning mucus. He scratched at them, clearing them enough to open. His eyelids felt creaky, rusty, like his joints. His mouth dry, a disgusting taste lingering, so thick that not even a long swallow of water from the glass at his bedside could cut through it. Dui moaned, now regretting his choice of the previous evening. This hang-over was wreaking havoc on his senses, his sensibility.
He sat up in bed, took stock of his room. It looked as if a hurricane had swept through, upending books, scattering papers, disheveling his bedding, his clothes. What demons possessed me last night? he wondered. He set to cleaning up his mess, noticed that his ukulele had been splintered, split in two.
“Son of a bitch,” Dui said aloud. He wasn’t given much to swearing, but he also wasn’t given much to getting intoxicated and tearing his room apart, so he figured it was a day for new and different experiences. By the end of it, he mused, he’d be gambling on the outcomes of the prostitute cage matches that were held in the south end.


Footsteps….

“You could bring the sun to tears,” the man says again, shaking his head, a small smile on his face, a wistful look in his eyes — they are green, Dot notices, beguiling, ever watchful, tricky, deceptive.
“How can I bring the sun to tears when it never shows its face?”
“I want you to remember my name,” says the man.
“Do you remember mine?”
“Of course — it is Melville Louis Kossuth Dewey. And also it is Melvil Dewey, and also Dew-E and Do-e and Dui and now, simply Dot. I imagine by the time we finish with each other you will have changed it to a symbol, something indecipherable but undoubtedly deeply significant.”

“How do I know you? How do you know me? I remember you but I don’t remember you. I know you but don’t know you.”

“Because I have always been with you, you have always been with me,” the man replies.
Dot looks back at the way he has come, sees one set of footprints, his lone trail stretching off into the distance. “But I came here alone.”
“You refer to the lone set of footprints. Looks can be deceiving.”
“What do you mean?” Dot asks, but he thinks he knows, thinks he has read this story before, written in flowery script on framed pieces of paper in bathrooms in houses he has visited.
“Melville, you see but one set of footprints because I was carrying you,” the man says.
“But…. You can’t be….”
The man laughs, heartily, the sound as strange to Dot as anything he has heard. “No, Melville, I’m just pulling your leg. You’ve been alone this whole time.”

Houston, We Have Another Character

The voices buzz up again, frantic, reaching new levels of noise, new heights of pain in his head. Dot clasps his head in his hands, willing the agony away, but nothing he does, nothing he can do, eases the pain, the noise, the din, he just wants some goddamn quiet, and when he thinks he can’t take anymore, when he knows that the noise is going to kill him, it stops. Suddenly. Completely. Silence like he hasn’t known in ages.
And then the man speaks.
You could bring the sun to tears, he says. It is a whisper, but Dot can hear it as if they were standing side by side. The voice is gravel against brick, out of practice, disused. But familiar, known to Dot like the road, like the man himself. Another piece of another puzzle. Dot fights the urge to talk, to reply, the man can’t possibly be talking to him, can’t know he is there, hasn’t turned, hasn’t seen him, Dot is silent, Dot is hidden, Dot is nowhere.


Street Scene

Surprised again? These are deliberate photos. How do I always look so shocked? Tomorrow: a new expression. I promise.

Melvil Dewey invented the vertical file. That’s about the extent of the writing I can find about the event. Here is a more detailed description of his initial conception of the item. I’m pretty sure it went exactly like this.

“A vertical file,” he said. “A hanging file. I don’t know what to call it yet. The verti-hanger, perhaps. The Upright File Storage Brigade. I’m not sure. Regardless, imagine two sheets of heavy paper, attached at one edge, lengthwise, and at the top, the opening, two rods extending the length of the paper. You could put documents into the opening, and use the rods to hang the contraption in a deep-bottomed drawer. A vertical filing system. Each one of these files could then be labeled, kept in order, all documents in one particular file would pertain to one another, so perhaps, there would be a file for information concerning your home loan, and another file concerning your applications to various colleges or universities, yet another dealing with the intricacies of your health situation, records and such. No longer would all these documents have to be scattered about, or tied together with bits of string or ribbon, or bound into large unwieldy books. Stored in my device, they would be kept flat and wrinkle-free, and what’s more, incredibly easy to locate when one needed to consult them.”

Tuesday!

This is my usual Tuesday spot — booth at Morseland, awaiting liquor deliveries. I think somehow I took myself by surprise with this photo though, and I’m not quite sure how that works.

Writing Dewey’s mother is strange. First of all, it makes me realize just how much my own mother — well, no, how some character’s mother — appears in my writing. And the father is mysteriously absent or overlooked. But Eliza Dewey is nothing like my mother was, save for her previously mentioned predilection towards organization….

Days later, he found himself visiting his mother and father at their home in Adams Center. They ate supper, and afterwards when the dishes had been done, and Joel Dewey had retired for the night, Dew-E followed his mother around the house as she adjusted out of place objects, setting things right again, organizing the universe.
“Was I a happy child, mother?” Dew-E asked.
She did not immediately respond, focusing instead upon straightening a picture that, to Dew-E’s eye, had not been askew. She ran her finger along the top edge of the frame, checking for dust, and only when she was satisfied that there was none, did she reply.
“What does it matter? Were you a happy child? What a question.” She moved on to the next photograph. “Are you happy now? And what does that matter? Do you honor God? Do you contribute to society? Happiness,” she scoffed, shook her head. “He speaks of happiness!”
NaNo tip of the day: Never say “her fingertips” when you could use “the tips of her fingers.” That’s three bonus words!

Day 2

Phil and Tina and Veronica are in town and Phil and Tina came through Morseland. Advent of the netbook with webcam means the daily picture can be taken anywhere — today, Phil does a guest spot in the photo of the day. So lovely to see the two of them, always a pleasure, and always great to know that no matter how much time has passed that we have enough shared history that we can pick up where we left off, still know how to make each other laugh, and still remember all the old jokes.

So, we’ve already crossed the 5000 word mark (smack dab at 5300, as a matter of fact). As usual, not sure how good they are. The story is progressing as a series of flashbacks that old man Dewey (who has changed his name to simply “Dot”) is having. Much easier writing the stuff that takes place in the present as opposed to the flashbacks, because that is much more flowy — a combo of McCarthy & Beckett that I find very very easy (and satisfying) to write. The flashbacks require more structure because there is more interaction, and this is where (currently) the actual happenings are happening.

Anyhow — three excerpts today. One, a lesson in how to construct a sentence:
He coughs, automatically, unwillingly, the sound comes forth from his throat like a revelation, the only thing real that he has heard, aside from the rain, and aside from the dust, the feel of the rain on his head, the general dampness in his bones, he is not sure that the rain is real, that the sound of the rain is real, that the dampness in his bones is real, and while he thinks about it, that the cough is real.

That’s 81 words. Take that.

Now, for a more substantive excerpt:

Those words echo in his mind, anything is possible, he remembers her name, he remembers her face, he remembers her eyes, he remembers her voice, her questions, her desire to know that anything was possible. He remembers telling her, looking into those eyes, telling her, yes, anything is possible, everything is possible. He wonders how he knew that it was, where he found the positivity to convince her that it was, that it is, that everything is possible, his footsteps in the dust, and he looks behind him and sees a trail of footsteps, distorted by rain, by the sudden wind that swirls up, but still the footsteps obviously there, obviously made by him, and he realizes that this too is possible, that he has moved, that he is moving. If the world has moved on, as all evidence appears to indicate, then he too will move on, will move onwards.


This is from the “present-day” section, and I like it, and I like where it came from.
And from the corresponding flashback:

Everything is possible, he thought, and realized that he had said it, had breathed it, his mouth against the nape of her neck, the most amazing thing his lips had ever touched, aside from the rest of the places on her body that they had explored earlier.
“What was that?” she asked. He lifted his head, reluctantly removing his lips from that mystical place, that amazing skin. He looked at her in the eyes, “Everything is possible,” he repeated, louder, firmer.
“Is it?” she asked. “Is it really?”
“Yes,” he said, and with his eyes tried to show her, didn’t know if he was showing her adequately, but tried, and at that moment, vowed to himself to always be trying to show her with his eyes, knowing that his words would not suffice, that words would never suffice, and if anything was possible, that it would be possible for him to show her with his eyes just how true it was.