This morning was more taking notes on the sidewalk than it was pics.
I’ll jump to the notes because my brain is like, go directly to notes, do not pass go!
–Short story collection title or subtitle: Songs of Love and Corruption.
–Cameras see haze better than human eyes and minds do; we filter it out. The eye/mind sees sparkles *MUCH* better than the camera does.
–Some men are the irritant around which a woman makes a pearl.
–All Batmans are mushy Batmans.
–All photos are miracles.
I’ll try to touch on those with more context. Thank you, brain, for being weird.
Yoga: I broke off on my routine to do more backbends over the foam roller. I also did some rolls over my hips, because one hip is always tight and I always have trouble balancing on that leg. Verdict: I should probably keep doing hip rolly thingies, but it wasn’t a magic fix; in fact, the non-tight hip got more wobbly during the post-stretch tree pose (the tight one got less wobbly). My upper back is a LOT more flexible today.
The walk: I didn’t get to the one character’s chapter yesterday (the chapter I “just needed to wrap up” turned into two chapters instead, because the characters decided they were going to keep rolling), and he was out with me on the walk. “When’s my turn?” He’s the Batman-esque character, or the most Batman-esque character, anyway, and I was reminded of just how muuuushy they are this morning. He’s glad the female character and I are hanging out, but he was also like, “Nobody else gets your attention today.” So I guess I’ll finish up the other chapter later.
Tsundere: a Japanese term for a character development process that depicts a character with a personality who is initially very harsh before gradually showing a warmer, friendlier side over time (via Wikipedia).
Some Batmans are brittle; many are real shitheads who are more possessive than protective; most are fucked in the head with how insecure they are; I’m trying to give this guy a safe place to care about others. He doesn’t always take it well. To him, “trust” is something stupid people do. Guy better watch out if he wants ME to write him a chapter.
I got catcalled this morning by a whole group of dudes across a busy street. I didn’t respond to them, which I think they found irritating. It got me thinking: male assholes are used to encountering a certain percentage of women who have been traumatized enough that they think the proper response to being irritated is to cover over assholes and shine them up a bit, like oysters covering sand with pearl. Catcalling and other types of “compliments” are fishing for traumatized women who will cover up abuse.–But if you don’t respond to the catcall, then YOU become the irritant to the asshole’s ego and take the risk of getting punished, harmed, or undermined.
I was trying to take pics of the dew this morning and failed spectacularly but once again picked up a great deal of humidity in the air. I’m just going to call it: evolutionarily speaking, our brains magnify sparkles. Fool’s gold doesn’t just affect fools. There must be something about the rewards associated with sparkles that greatly outweighs the costs of adding extra sparkle to our vision.–Ray says our brains want to see things, which is why we filter out haze and mist. I tried using one eye at a time (in case it was a stereoscopic thing), but I still couldn’t see as much haze as the camera caught.–Another good thing about taking all these pics is that I fall in love with other people’s photographs just in general. “Look at that! I wish I could take one like that!” I added a flexible phone tripod to my Amazon cart but I won’t order it until after the move out of the AirBnB and into the new apartment (Friday).
I was trying to figure out what to do with some of the non-fantasy, non-horror short stories I’ve been writing for classes, and finally came up with a short story collection idea. I’ve been mulling over something that came to me a few days ago: love songs never get old–but neither do songs about corruption (Hotel California, Red Right Hand, Sweet Dreams, Handlebars, etc. etc.) Even murder ballads are less enduring (if still quite nice). Most of the stories I have in mind are about crimes, with romance showing up fairly often in them lately. I’m playing with the idea of doing the Arabian Nights thing with them (like I did for the fantasy, SF, and horror stories). Treating them like a playlist that another character is listening to while they go on a road trip to do something bad-romance-y sounds fun.
I really need to write down the full food tastes vs. genre tastes theory and send that out as a newsletter. I really need to finish getting my website updated. I *really* need to write Dan’s next chapter, though, because otherwise I won’t have any peace in my brain today.
May your characters slip an arm around your waist and tell you that you have company today whether you like it or not (if you’re a writer of some type) and/or a friend reach out to you for a small favor easily done.